A Warrior's Journey: A Look at the Wandering Masteries (Patreon)

There are two weapon masteries which are not like the others, Katana and the Twilight Sword. Both of these represent pieces of a larger world story and seek to tell a small portion of a bigger narrative than the one which your own settlement(s) tell. They are both at the same time an utter triumph of storytelling and a dismal failure failure of game mechanics. 

It is this stark peak and trough design that makes them so fascinating, there is a rich and interesting wealth of implied story surrounding these two masteries, from how they are gained all the way to the journey that their owners take. It's a cracking piece of storytelling straight out of the pages of a book and that is what we'll look at first:

The Twilight Order and their Swords

The Twilight Order, originally penned to be one of the character classes for Labyrinth are a faction of antagonistic humanoid survivor types (cause survivors are not strictly speaking humans, they're monsters) who are dedicated to the protection of history through relics and written lore. This sets them ideologically against not just the White Speakers (who preserve and embody history via storytelling/folklore) but also against the current maintainers of the status quo. The Ethereal Dreamer and the Watchers.

The Watchers are the main foe which the Twilight Order set themselves against, they will seek out settlements where the Watcher has taken root at its heart and give one of the most experienced survivors a Twilight Sword. With the aim of having a member of the order return within a few years and administer some 'tough love' in order to make sure that the settlement is strong enough to face and kill the Watcher at their heart.

They do not do it themselves because it seems that the individual twilight knights are fewer in number than the swords they have available. Instead they 'seed' settlements with users, hoping that the survivor with the sword will become strong enough to leave and join the Order. Everyone else is considered to be completely disposable - the Order know about the Gold Smoke Knight, they know that killing the Watcher will draw Goldie to the settlement and force a confrontation. One that will end with the death of either the Knight or the Settlement (usually the settlement in the lore) - but they do not care about that. The Watcher dying and a new Knight joining their ranks is what matters to them.

This is why they are so rough and unpleasant to their potential recruits, if you are going to join the order you need to be not only able to master your sentient blade, but you need to be tough enough to walk through the dark wilderness alone with nothing other than your weapon, your tools and yourself to rely on. Once the sword has fully bonded with its user they are compelled to leave and find the Order, and once in the Order - few leave.

In Game

This is where all of this narrative is expressed, and unfortunately it is where it misses the mark. This is because the above Order would be fantastic in a passively consumed narrative such as a book or television show; but when it comes to an actively consumed narrative, such as that in a board game - it struggles because of how the personal investment of the consumer is changed. 

When the Twilight Knight arrives as the 'Hooded Stranger' they thrust the sword, a cursed item, onto the survivor with the highest hunt XP returning from the hunt. Narratively this makes sense, the Knight is seeking the strongest member of the settlement to wield a blade and be eventually seduced away to the Order. But mechanically what this means is one of the player's weapon masters-to-be (which is what a high XP survivor is), gets a second weapon thrust upon them and is forced to deal with it, because they cannot get rid of this sword (without Crystal Skin) and need to improve with it, because the Twilight Knight is going to return and make them spar with it. If they're not good enough the Knight will hack that survivor to pieces without hesitation. The Order has no time for weaklings who can't master the Twilight Sword.

That is a horrible situation for a player to be in, they have had their own investment hacked away from them by a forced lock, and now they have to either change tack and invest in the Twilight Sword; ignore the sword, have 8 slots and risk getting beaten up in a few lantern years or dump that character and start over again with a new one. 

This is the first problem that causes friction in the game, and one of many instances where the sandbox nature of Monster is called into question. Sometimes these questions work (Nemesis monsters acting as 'checks' to force a settlement to develop against mounting pressure), but here it just doesn't. 

Now the main reason for this failure is the forcing of the Sword onto a fixed survivor. It's the same reason that Murder is such a detested card and a cousin to the reasons why players avoid noisy (Harvester) or heavy keywords (Cracks in the Ground, Sinkhole). The first time this happens you are blindsided (known as a 'Gotchya') and made to feel really helplessly bad. You made a poor choice, but you had zero way of knowing that the choice was poor. The game doesn't warn you in advance that noisy gear can cause a survivor to die 1% of the time per basic hunt event. It doesn't warn you that heavy gear can 'delete' itself by falling down a hole and here it fails to warn you that the event you trigger when you reach that 5th innovation can punish you if you have the wrong survivors returning from the hunt.

That's a pretty feels bad situation, but it doesn't have to be that way and we can see a smoother, more balanced and enjoyable rendition when one looks at Katana and its introductory event 'Edged Tonometry'.

The Katana

I am absolutely not a fan of how people act around the Katana. For myself, it has never been an interesting weapon, but as someone who grew up with training in medieval Western armaments (bastard swords, crossbows, axes and flails) and later on Chinese weapons (specifically the guandao and butterfly swords) I am naturally biased - so I would not take my opinion on that matter seriously.

However, I do greatly appreciate the way that the Katana is introduced in KD: Monster as it is a masterwork of storytelling. There are two ways that a Katana master will arrive in your settlement, either they turn up after 5 innovations in People of the Sun or they turn up after you've slain a level 3 Sunstalker.

Now I've talked about this in the past, but the story loop surrounding the People of the Sun, Katana wielders and Sunstalkers is one of the most fascinating and well crafted frameworks we have. It's pretty much a perfect chicken and the egg situation - we know that People of the Sun happen more often than one would imagine; these settlements attract Katana masters who come and seek those with the potential to wield the katana against ancient sunstalkers and we know that it is ancient sunstalkers that attract the katana masters because they also turn up after any settlement defeats an L3 sunstalker. Then these new katana masters, if they complete their mastery, will depart for the 'call of the storm'.

Now interestingly this could be a reference to the Storm (Knight); a weapon orientated entity that lives in a sword shaped tower as per the two store extracts that follow:

The Worshippers of the Storm measure stature in lighting scars and those with the most beautiful burn patterns lay claim to the best weapons and armor from the corpses of failed questing survivors. The homes of the wealthy are decorated in all manner of metal trophies, filling the rain drenched town with the constant angry clattering of rain hitting metal.

At the base of the sword shaped castle in the sky is a culture that worships the Storm (Knight) as a god. They are both crazed and opportunists. Questing survivors who perish in the castle are tossed down to the town where their bodies are scavenged. The worshipers sell the weapons of the dead to newcomers hoping to traverse the castle.

We know a bit more about the Storm from People of the Stars and Krampus, but we will not be diving too deeply into this here, because what I've looked at suggests that the call of the storm is not so literal.  The storm is a master of most weapon types, however the evidence points that it does not master Twilight Swords or Katanas - which are the weapons of choice for the wandering ronin and questing knights featured in this article.  

In fact, I'd go as far as to say that the likely truth is Storm and its associated Storm Knights have a vulnerability to katanas (and Twilight Swords) because of how the lore and mechanics surrounding the storm silently exclude both the wandering types from interactions. You will almost never find a Storm constellation survivor wielding either of these weapon types - in fact, without house ruling People of the Stars no Storm constellation will EVER gain Katana proficiency. That's not something which Adam does by accident, there's always  purpose behind exclusions like this. 

Also, just as an aside, it's not clear if the Storm Knight and the Storm are the same thing at all, all descriptions of the Storm (which stays stationary and appears to be very jelly/cloudlike are contrary to the descriptions we have of the Storm Knight (which roam around and are indicated to be multiple in number). 

So I'd posit that the 'call of the storm' is more a general call to arms, or maybe a drive to face and best/slay the Storm entity. However, the latter of these two seems unlikely given how more clearly driven katana masters are to hunting Sunstalkers. 

In Game

Oh boy, it is like light and day when you compare Edged Tonometry with Hooded Stranger, you can just see the refinement and improvement in design between the two so starkly, it's like night and day.

Edged Tonometry; which is a neat name in itself as it means testing the pressure inside an eye with a bladed weapon. Is a really evocative and well designed event. It's one of the best ones in the game in my opinion and a big part of why I like the Katana mastery system so much. This event hands out 3 Eyepatches to the settlement (there's only one in the Sunstalker box, don't ask why - there are problems with this event) and half the time a survivor will gain Katana mastery. In addition, in a really neat mechanic, each survivor who is a Sun Eater will independently gain Katana mastery in 40% of the results. This is another sweet bit of story telling

Sun Eaters are those survivors who have imbued a great deal of the Sunstalker's substance, either through Sun Dipping; a process where survivors stand in a beam of light from an ancient Sunstalker, through ritualistic acts of improving their sacred pool or by directly consuming a newly born Sunstalker's body completely. In short, they are part Sunstalker themselves, but in a cannibalistic, antagonistic way that can be turned against Sunstalkers. Katana masters learn to cut light itself as part of their crusade and Sun Eaters are more likely to be able to understand the message inside that cut light and take up the mantle themselves.

I do need to note that this event has one rather large mechanical issue; Katanas are rare and can only be gained from one hunt event, the Phoenix and the Slenderman. Which makes this event a little off; because survivors gain a weapon proficiency with no way to use it. This is being fixed in Campaigns of Death, so it can be forgiven.

The Destination

One of the aspects of these two masteries is that when you complete the mastery you do not get a shiny new ability + innovation in the settlement, in fact you lose the survivor who completes the journey as they leave the settlement forever; either 'in pursuit of a higher purpose' or 'to hone their art'. I actually really love this part of the masteries; it is a lovely narrative arc that gives one survivor in the settlement an open end to their journey and I consider it to be a wonderful moment. Especially in Sun or Lantern settlements, because everyone they leave behind is doomed, so if you want to look at these two arc in a different manner, People of the Lantern is the tale of a Twilight Knight, who took up the mantle and left their doomed settlement behind them. Plus an epilogue where the settlement meets their fate (and a similar ending for Sun). It's a way of getting some form of closure to the story that is nearer Stars in design (and Stars has the best written ending of all the campaigns we've seen so far).

So, while I can see why players are not as fond of the Twilight Sword & Katana masteries, I think they do a superb job of telling a story and provide a great mechanic for narrative expression, both in respect to the larger world and also in respect to survivor who grow and strengthen before moving on into the darkness where their stories will continue long after their fellows have met their fates.

I really do adore the narrative of these two weapons, however they both absolutely do need some work. The Tattered Package from Allison (White Box Promo) helped fix some of the Hooded Stranger/Twilight Sword issues, but in truth the Timeline Event needs a rehaul to make it less of a chore - the main thing needed being a switch in who gets the sword the way that Katana Mastery makes it all optional - I'd also say it's a bit odd how the sword wielder can actually leave long before the Watcher awakens, I would have designed the mastery to have the sword master depart after the defeat of the Watcher, but that would have involved some kind of spoilers. Edged Tonometry on the other hand is almost perfect, with the correct number of eyepatches and actual Katanas being a bit more available (plus training Katanas given to the new masters) then it will be really sweet - and the only downside is how you can't get early access to it outside of Sun (because of the need to kill an L3 Sunstalker).

Despite their rough edges and wrinkles, these two masteries are some of the better ones in the game, because you're encouraged to complete the mastery, but you do not feel punished if the wielder dies along the way; you don't miss out on an innovation the way that you would with any other mastery and that just feels better. It's another example of how nicer it feels when the settlement's mastery is decoupled from individual survivors, and how players are freed up to instead enjoy the stories that happen and take risks. You're always going to take risks with your Katana/Twilight Sword master because of their temporary nature, and that's a sweet carrot katana to chase.