Now in Print: Gothic Icons

World of Darkness: Gothic Icons, our April Fools product for 2015, is now available in print!

Inspired by the success of the Dark Eras Kickstarter, Onyx Path Publishing has decided to overhaul every classic and new World of Darkness game in their catalog to transport the entire line back to the nineteenth century, during the height of Gothic literature’s popularity, to add Historical Angst™!

To highlight the new, gothtacular path they’ll be following, the company has filed a trademark for the phrase Historical Angst™ and created Gothic Icons to help shed some insight on where the line is headed.

Gothic Icons includes six characters that represent the gothiest Gothic icons, and have been drawn from several sources found in Gothic literature.

The gothtacular characters included in Gothic Icons employ the rules update to the World of Darkness rulebook using The God-Machine Chronicle. They are presented in chronological order of their Historical Angst™ appearance in the 1800s-ish timeframe, and include:

• Captain Robert Walton: Walton is a failed poet who believed his only saving grace was to launch an expedition to the North Pole that, unfortunately, ends with his boat getting stuck in the ice. From Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, Walton represents the epitome of the suffering goth.
• Countess Anna Fedotovna: The Countess is not only an arrogant yet absent-minded Russian royal who boasts friends like the Comte de Saint Germaine, but is also a gamer with “the” trick to winning card hands. From The Queen of Spades by Aleksandr S. Pushkin, Fedotovna is “the” gamer goth.
• Princess Hermonthis: A four-thousand year old Egyptian teenaged mummy named Princess Hermonthis is beside herself, because she lost her foot. From The Mummy’s Foot, written by Théophile Gautier, the Princess highlights the turbulent nature of the angsty goth.
• The Black Cat: No collection of Gothic characters would be complete without a terrifying Gothic creature, and this poor, distraught, one-eyed, pitiful black cat represents the emo goth. From The Black Cat by Edgar Allan Poe.
• Baron Vordenburg: After taking up the charge of his vampire-hunting ancestor, Baron Vordenburg arrives in the nick of time to save the day! From Carmilla by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, the Baron is the iconic wannabe goth, for he’s actually never hunted or encountered a vampire before.
• Thomas Carnacki: Last but not least, Thomas Carnacki is a ghost finder for England’s elite. He dresses up in Victorian era clothing, pens unusual occult tomes no one else has ever heard of, and tinkers with strange objects like his electrified pentagram. From Carnacki the Ghost-Finder, the occult investigator dresses so well, he’s labeled a Victorian goth.

Where’s Sothis Ascends? Unfortunately, a PoD glitch caused us to go back for another round of proofing, so we won’t be able to release it this week.