A Review of the Role Playing Game Supplement The Hunger in the Void

The Hunger in the Void by Robert J. Schwalb is a role playing game supplement published by Schwalb Entertainment for use with Shadow of the Demon Lord. This supplement provides new rules related to the Demon Lord itself, which is also called the Hunger in the Void.

The supplement is available from DriveThruRPG as an 80 page PDF for $10, as a softcover print on demand book for $24.99 or as both PDF and softcover for $24.99. It is also available in a printed version from sites such as Amazon. The PDF is the version reviewed which was purchased at a greatly reduced price as part of a special bundle. The PDF comes in two versions, one with and one without page backgrounds. Two pages are the front and rear covers, one page is the front matter, one page the table of contents, two pages the Index and one page an ad for A Glorious Death.

The brief Introduction explains that the book covers demons and the Void and gives a short overview. It explains that many disturbing concepts are covered, that the Demon Lord’s Companion is needed to make best use of the supplement and that Terrible Beauty is referenced as well.

Chapter 1: The Shadow Darkens explains that the universe of Urth is one of many, each of which grows like a tumour on the Void. They were created from the Void and a boundary protects them from the Void itself. When the boundary is breached, the Void intrudes and the universe starts to end.

Intrusions of the Void are caused by mortal efforts, ripples in reality, the collapse of the hidden kingdoms of the faeries (it’s not mentioned in either supplement, but the destruction of Niflheim mentioned in A Land of Dreams and Darkness could have been such an event) and the use of dark magic. These cause a blight on the world, with a variety of effects given, with stats for a creature, the Void larvae mob, and a means of turning other creatures into demon spawn.

Shadows of the Demon Lord is an expansion of an element in the core rulebook. The Shadow of the Demon Lord, when it falls across a world, causes changed. These were briefly covered in the core book but are now expanded upon a lot more. These expansions cover the in-game effects and there are four adventure hooks for each, one each for Staring, Novice, Expert and Master. Some of these Shadow effects have suggestions on how to stop them fully happening, but many of them do not and as such, many of these are definitely game world ending when run out, but that is essentially the theme of the entire setting. These cover things such as a rogue star, the zombie apocalypse, awakening eldritch creatures (the Great Dragon is mentioned but there is a reference to using something like a Lovecraftain-style elder god lurking in the ocean, awakened after dreaming for aeons), invaders from another reality, out of control plant life, animals turning against everyone and more.

Chapter 2: Servants of the Void is organisations that serve the Void. It opens by asking why would anyone serve something that wishes to end all things, including the individual serving it. The answer given is that no-one would, and they are instead serving masks of the Demon Lord. The vast majority of a cult doesn’t know the truth and by the time an individual rises high enough to grasp it, they are so warped by the Shadow’s influence, they no longer care.

Eight organisations serving the Demon Lord are given. Each gives some background on the organisation and what it does, how to join it, stats on some typical members, including some of the higher-ups as well as an item associated with the group. In most cases this is a relic, but for one it is a potion.

There are details on the becoming a priest of the Demon Lord, for level 1 or higher groups, and on demonic magic. Most spells related to the Void come from the Demonology tradition, but there are also spells used by cultists from other traditions.

Chapter 3: Beasts of the Demon Lord covers the four races of beastmen, fomors, wargs, bugbears and minotaurs. It starts by explaining that these were formed from humans when the trolls used magics in the war with the faeries that warped tribes of humans, turning them into beastmen. There are overviews given of the different races and stats for some sample creatures, as well as how to create a beastman character for each race, if a player should want one. In particular, the fomors and bugbears depart from typical portrayals of such; fomors are not the warped gods from Irish mythology, but goat-headed beastmen and bugbears look like humanoid bears.

Chapter 4: Demons covers demonic possession, expanded from Demon Lord’s Companion, and there are rules on summoning and binding demons, including binding them to objects. There is an extensive series of tables on creating demons randomly, which mentions that doing so takes time and should not be done in-game. There are also details on Demon Princes, the most powerful demons other than the Demon Lord, with three sample princes given.

Chapter 5: Secrets of the Void starts by explaining the origins of the different universes and how the Void and the demons and the Demon Lord came to be. In the beginning there was a singular deity. It was lonely and spoke the first word of power that created a companion, the demiurge. The Demiurge spoke words of power creating genies from its own body. The genies then spoke words of power, creating the universes from the initial deity’s body, diminishing it, and the Demiurge as well. This resulted in the Demiurge fragmenting into the demons of the Void and the initial deity was reduced to an entity of hatred and madness, one with the desire to undo what had been done. The Demon Lord.

The genies created Urth’s universe and sacrificed themselves to seal it off from the Void. The demons who were trapped became the faeries, who lost much of what they were and knew but still despised the genies. The genies fought to turn the faeries against each other, creating the trolls. Then the genies stole more demons from the Void, and created the mortals from them. So the faeries and mortals on Urth are actually formed from demons.

There are rules on entering and exploring the Void and details on its inhabitants – there are more than demons here. There are also fragments of worlds and other things that have been absorbed into the Void when their universes were destroyed, but are not fully destroyed themselves. There are some rules on creating random islands in the Void followed by some actual locations, including an entire world which survived and has the remnants of an advanced civilisation (Godless: A World of Fire and Blood is referred to here).

Finally, there are Incarnations; genies who leave the barrier protecting Urth’s universe to create a physical form. Rules are given on creating characters with such a background.

The Hunger in the Void in Review

The PDF version with a background is bookmarked with most major and minor sections linked. The table of contents is to a similar level of detail and the Index provides even more depth. In the PDF with the backgrounds, the table of contents and the Index are also hyperlinked; however, the background-free version lacks books or hyperlinks in the table of contents and Index. Consequently, navigation is very good in the background version and average at best in the other.

The text maintains a two column format and appeared almost free of errors. As mentioned, there are two forms of the PDF, one with backgrounds, one without. There are a lot of colour illustrations, up to full page in size, and these would appear to be custom. Presentation is excellent, and occasionally disturbing.

As the Introduction says, there are disturbing concepts in this supplement – the cover is disturbing for a start. Although Shadow of the Demon Lord is a dark fantasy/horror game, this isn’t that obvious from the core rulebook. It’s the additional rulebooks like this one that start to really add the darkness. From the core, it appears to be more of a dark fantasy setting with some steampunk elements; these additional supplements are what really start to add the horror. As such, it may not be for everyone.

This supplement adds a lot of new options. Many are not really suitable for characters, unless a GM really wants characters fighting for the Demon Lord in what will likely be a pretty dark game. However, they are very useful for creating foes to fight against. The section on the Void is particularly interesting, because it gives the history of Urth in details that were never provided in the core book, perhaps giving a far different impression of how things came to be. This also gives a new place for suicidal characters to explore, but a place with lots of potentially interesting areas to explore – should they survive. The expansion of the effects of the Shadow of the Demon Lord are also interesting; it’s just a shame more of them don’t have suggestions as to how the characters could stop the world ending. Although as in one case this involves a rogue star, stopping that would be tricky at best. The supplement provides a lot of new details on demons and demonic-related things and is a good addition to the setting, with a lot of potential adventures to be found amongst the text. The Hunger in the Void can be found by clicking here.