Dark of Star: Beta Content Review (Patreon)

The strain disturbed her sleep, just above the persistent rumbling din that hung over the settlement. She followed the fragile song, drifting from one pool of lantern light to the next until it the sound was at her feet. raising the ruptured lantern, she heard the familiar refrain sung by someone lost in memory. Incandescent ooze ran down the twisted filigree. She threw back her head and let the light pour into her mouth and the song suddenly burst forth from her scorched throat.

Dark of Star released recently and comes with one miniature, two gear cards and a bit more insight into the settings connection to music. As is always the case, we'll look at these beta content drops through the lens of being more optional and experimental than stuff that comes in black or white boxes. So there's always room for things to be a bit more wacky and playful than in the mainline releases.

The Miniature and Flavour

One could almost accuse Adam of designing this miniature as bait to get me excited, except that I doubt he knows how much I adore KyuYong Eom's illustrations (One of the top two or three KDM illustrators for my personal tastes alongside Zeen Chin and Melissa Natalie K Cochran) and I really doubt that he knows just how much I adore Hellraiser I & II (I've still not seen the remake/requel thing, but I love the costuming in it). So lets not be a narcissist and instead I'll just acknowledge that the miniature and artwork surrounding this piece is my favourite stuff since Summer Aya. KyuYoung's work is just so; moist looking, in the best possible way.

The miniature sculpt is not as enticing as the artwork depiction of Dead of Star; in fact I doubt I am going to assemble this one anytime soon due to the sheer fragility for the pieces that protrude outside the base limit. She's also got a lot of “collagen lips” going on which makes her face look quite crude in a fashion. I think what I'm looking for here is the miniature version looks dumpy (short & stout) when compared to the artwork. That's not a bad thing; a variety of body types in miniature lines is really important to me, but this is one of the first times I've looked at a miniature in the beta line and felt it didn't represent the character in the art.

One other thing this miniature did make me think of was the Mother and Grandmother sculpts from the Holy Lands line. I think it is just because they all have a face on their belly and that's not an intended thing, especially because the face there echoes more of The Goblin's aesthetics here rather than anything the Golden Entity dreamed up.

Anyway let us get onto the other part of the aesthetic; the Hellraiser elements. So a Cenobite is a title for a Monk who lives in a community rather than choosing Asceticism, however in more modern times this title is closely associated with the Hell Priest and his Disciples – or as you might more commonly know them; Pinhead and his Cenobites. The Cenobites in Clive Barker's work are beings who come from an extra-dimensional realm ruled by Leviathan (not necessarily “Hell”). They are individuals who follow a nebulous religion and are (at least when Clive Barker has his hands on the wheel) an amoral group of beings who seek to bring extreme sensation to people who call them through one of the objects that creates an extra-dimensional link to their realm.

My personal preference is for the older depictions of the Cenobites that happens in the first couple of movies, where they are not the direct antagonists despite their horrific and deformed appearance. As Pinhead himself states at one point “It is not the hands that call us, but the desire”. The first Hellraiser in particular is a masterclass in small scale horror, with the events surrounding what happens to a single family; and the antagonists being Kirsty Cotton's stepmother Julia and uncle Frank. The Cenobites only turn on Kirsty when they believe she is trying to deceive them (she is not, she doesn't know that the body she presents to them is her father, because Frank is wearing Larry's skin). In Hellraiser II; the Cenobites are defined further, and a lot of exposition removes some of the mystery, however I don't think this is to their detriment because they remain bound by a narrow code and are mostly here to recover Julia, who has escaped from their clutches after her death in the first movie.

Things go of the rails in this series when we get to Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth and Hellraiser: Bloodline; the Cenobites are retooled into more traditional villainous entities with designs on conquering all of humanity. It's a lot less interesting, and it leads the series off into a whole bunch of increasingly awful movies, mostly created to keep hold of the rights. This continues right up until the time that the series was rebooted with a new Pinhead. I've not had a chance to see that movie yet, but I do love the new Cenobite designs.

Anyway, all of this diversion is to say that I appreciate the thematic design of the Leotard and Thurible (that's the name for the type of censor that is filled with incense and hangs via chains). It's really well done as a nod to the franchise without having Dark of Star being self mutilated in the way that the Cenobites she is a homage to are. At its root it still feels true to Kingdom Death in its aesthetics, but also fits in with Hellraiser's themes.

The Game Content

These two gear cards are designed to work together, with the Leotard being a body slot armor piece (not Accessory or Outfit) that asks you to sacrifice a traditional armor set bonus (you can still get Clothed & Satiated) in exchange for a pile of Death Tokens. You will not often use one of these without the other, as the Leotard is not worth losing a set bonus over and the Thurible is just an affinty and a lantern without those Death Tokens.

However, one can gain and use Death Tokens through the Lanternism Philosophy mechanics, so this pair of gear cards is designed with that particular Philosophy in mind and that increases its value for owners of the Gambler's Chest. So let us dive into them, starting with the:

Cenobite Leotard

Cost: 2x Leather, 1x Scrap

There's a lot of interesting synergy sat behind this unassuming little piece of armor. I am disappointed it does not have the Outfit ability to make it something that could be used with a range of different sets, something that would increase its power to a reasonable level without making it too strong due to the very low armor points for a body location. So, we are left using this with either no set bonus, or via Clothed & Satiated for Arc Survivors. It is a shame when design does not take into account the Gear Grid slot limitation, or in this case the armor slot limitation.

Ignoring Frenzy Brain trauma is also something of a mixed bag, Frenzy is one of the few brain trauma results (outside of Accept Darkness settlements) where there are combat benefits for the survivor who gets it. It is not even an optional ability here, you just do not get to frenzy. That's thematically appropriate for the calm demeanour that the early depictions of the Cenobites, but it's not great to have a blank result here.

So the main power from this leotard needs to come from its activated ability, which has the awkward up facing blue needing to be connected and a red somewhere else in the gear grid. Due to this being a body slot armor piece, there are plenty of blue down helmets which can be connected, so it is less awkward here in builds than other non-armor pieces. It gives you death tokens for each permanent injury, but death tokens have no particular properties without other things that let you use them. If you are a GCE owner and have Lanternism in your campaign then there is more value to Death Tokens because of all the Knowledges which grant bonuses for this token type.

Outside of Arc Survivors however, you are going to only be able to spend Death Tokens with the censor, so let us look at it.

Cenobite Thurible

Cost: 2x Broken Lantern & Memento Mori innovated

Outside of People of the Lantern's End Game, the only uses for the Thurible are that red affinity (which is in a good orientation) and the death token expenditure. So let us take a look at what we get for it; and the answer is... It depends. This is an ability that relies on the loss of good survivors either intentionally through choice or coincidentally through cards and monsters. Now the real crux here is that Death Tokens do much better things if you have the Knowledges that interact with them, and if you don't it's kind of a pain to get these online as you need permanent injuries many of which have negative statistics tied to them, so you might not even get much of a bonus if you have things like Broken Ribs.

Summary

This one is really for players who have the Gambler's Chest Expansion, and even then I do not think it's worth a lot of value outside of rare situations involving philosophy and knowledge combinations. I like the aesthetics and concepts behind this, but omitting the Outfitability (and setKeyword) from the Leotard pulls it from being an interesting piece of gear in some situations to one that takes a lot of work to get sufficient juice. If you missed on this one, I wouldn't worry to much about it, especially if you do not have the GCE. Too situational, too limited in scope and not powerful enough to make up for those drawbacks.