The Vault and Time

Game: The Vault and Time
Publisher: Ronin Arts  
Series: Whispering Vault
Reviewer: Wyrdmaster
Review Dated: 1st, July 2003
Reviewer’s Rating: 7/10   [ Good ]
Total Score: 7
Average Score: 7.00

Stalkers go anywhere and anywhen but this doesn’t mean time is meaningless to them. Thankfully, The Vault and Time doesn’t get lost in complex, Stephen Hawking-like, science lessons about the nature of time, paradox problems and reality. In fact, The Vault and Time reminds the reader that Forbiddance is there to ensure the time line doesn’t get messy. A Stalker could try and take out Hitler but wouldn’t get very far before Forbiddance thwarted their plan, in fact, most Stalkers find that they need to tread lightly

That’s right. You have to resist the temptation to cast an Unbidden in the role of Genghis Khan or Caesar Borgia. Why? If these people were unnatural then they couldn’t have made history – the Forbiddance would rub them out. If they’re supposed to be part of history then an Unbidden couldn’t take them over and use them at will – the Forbiddance would rub the Unbidden out. There is a loophole. The Vault and Time includes a sample Hunt where the Unbidden is the Roman Emperor Caligula. Ah. I suppose that’s a bit of a spoiler but the PDF throws that at you just as unexpectedly. I’m going to claim that two wrongs make a right.

I could easily say that The Vault and Time is a collection of pre-written Hunts and I wouldn’t be entirely wrong. I wouldn’t be entirely wrong if I labelled The Vault and Time as a bit of a history lesson either. As you’ve guessed, it’s a bit of both. If you hate history with a passion, dislike being told even one date and don’t care to know the difference between a Roman toga and a French guillotine then this isn’t a supplement for you.

There’s an 11-paged timeline. It begins at 3 Million BC and continues forwards until 1985 when Gorbachev comes into power in the USSR. This isn’t a Whispering Vault timeline but a/the real one. That said; the events on it are both important and picked with the Whispering Vault in mind. I may like my history and therefore be bias in favour of facts with dates but I found that these 11 pages caught my attention – even if I didn’t painstakingly read it all. I’ll list some examples at random and see if they catch your attention.
13,600 B.C.: Arctic warming leads to a 130 foot rise in sea level and worldwide flooding.
1470 B.C.: A volcanic eruption destroys the Minoan civilization.
450 B.C.: Celts overrun the British isles.
693 B.C.: The Assyrian king Sennacherib has Babylon razed.
333 B.C.: Alexander the Great defeats the Persians. He goes on to conquer Egypt.
80 A.D.: Anthrax sweeps through the Roman Empire.
538 A.D.: Buddhism introduced to the Japanese court.
850 A.D.: Arabian scientists invent the astrolabe. Coffee is discovered.
1249 A.D.: Roger Bacon fights to have science included in the curriculum at Oxford.
1493 A.D.: A papal decree divides the world into two halves, granting the Spanish colonization rights for one half and the other half is given to the Portuguese.
1631 A.D.: Cardinal Richelieu takes France to war with the Hapsburgs.
1885 A.D.: First system of fingerprint identification is developed.

Still with me? The Vault and Time might just be a supplement for you then. I think the chances are that this sort of plot bait will appeal to most Whispering Vault gamers.

The rest of the 33-paged supplement takes Ancient Rome, Medieval Japan, Colonial America, Victorian England and Occupied France as periods and places of specific interest. The supplement spends a few pages describing the “world setting” of each in purely historic terms and then more pages providing Whispering Vault specific plot strands and background. These later pages aren’t a walk-through linear style adventure; they credit the reader and would be GM with more intelligence like that. This is good but there’s no using The Vault and Time if you need to run a Hunt in a nick of time when roleplayers visit without warning. Each setting comes complete with a timeline of it’s own, a more minute look at important events of the era.

The Vault and Time is everything you’d expect and demand from the Whispering Vault series. It’s cerebral and atmospheric. The writing is as good as ever and the artwork is darkly surreal. The Vault and Time has one of the best covers in the series, a glorious colour illustration of a twin katana wielding warrior. It’s a great example of what a Stalker’s Vessel might look like – human but with that unsettling feel, in fact, if you look closely and try and see through some of the blur, it might even be an unmasked Stalker. The PDF quality is similarly high, this isn’t a poorly scanned issue of a print product that never was. The only complaint with the electronic side of the Whispering Vault is that its often shy of bookmarks and when they’re present they’re only crudely thrown in. The Vault and Time falls into this latter category.