No One Survives MÖRK BORG... And That's the Point
I bought Pirate Borg a while ago and absolutely fell in love with it. That put this idea in my head - why don’t I cover all the Borgs? But if you’re going to cover the Borgs, you need to start with the mother: MÖRK BORG.
It’s a gorgeous book. I’ve owned it for years. I’ve got an awful lot of joy out of reading and rereading it - you get little bits more each time.
It serves many functions. It’s a piece of art. It takes every rule of game design or book design and throws it out the window, ignores it completely, and somehow still manages to work.
The Inside Covers Are Brilliant
The back inside cover has all the rules and an index. The front has things like what you find when you plunder a corpse (there’s a lot of corpses in this game) and names you can never have enough of at your fingertips.
Super functional… until you get into the main pages, in which case it ceases to be functional in all ways.
The Tone Is Relentless
Most games start with character creation. MÖRK BORG scraps that entirely. It starts with tone:
“The wind from the west, from the Sunderland rot, rides it in the stench of blood. Cursed walker, will you travel there?”
Throughout the book it just keeps feeding in this tone. The world is dark. It’s terrible. It’s going to die. Your characters are going to die. Everything’s going to die.
But that’s the framework in which you can have a lot of fun. The game’s also light-hearted. The mechanics and tables lend themselves to mayhem and fun.
The Two-Headed Basilisks
In the background, there were prophecies from a monk called Anuk Selga who encountered one of the two-headed basilisks - Verhu. These basilisks are godlike beings with two heads that hate each other.
The prophecies are absolutely factual as it says, and have thus supplanted all other scriptures.
The World Is Awful
Every location is broken:
Galgenbeck - The big city built around a cathedral. Run by an arch-priestess who is “old but still young” - she colludes with Nechrubel, the shadow that covers all.
Grift - Used to be lovely and protected from plagues. Now the king is mocked in the streets. His plan when the end comes? Take all his people to the cliffs and get them to jump off.
Kergus - A frozen waste ruled by the Blood Countess Anthelia. Some say she is eternally young. “She cries out for color or warmth, but she drains the world of both with every glance, every touch, every breath.”
Valley of the Unfortunate Dead - Suicide cults go there. The air depresses you into death. “The few twisted trees begin to droop strange fruit from hemp and rope.”
The Campaign Clock
This is brilliant. You decide how long your campaign will be. Every day you roll a dice - on a one, one of these prophecies comes true:
“The lake and brook shall blacken and the water becomes tar.”
“The trees shall wither, shrivel and die.”
When you get to your seventh, it’s always the last one:
“The world finally dies. The seventh seal is broken for the seventh and final time. The game and your lives end here. Burn the book.”
Character Creation
Everything’s on tables. I love tables. And the tables give you cool stuff.
When the first weapon you can get is a femur, you know what kind of game you’re playing.
Roll a character in seconds: Lazy. Rotting face. Wears a face mask. Eats bugs. Very recently murdered a close relative. All of a sudden you have a character that’s really freaking cool - which is what you want, because your characters die fairly easy in this.
The Classes Are Mental
Fanged Deserter - You have 30 or so friends who never let you down: your teeth. Disloyal, deranged, or simply uncontrollable. Any group that didn’t boot you out, you left anyway.
Wretched Royalty - You can be royalty with useless people following you. One is Hamfund the Squire who has a magic sword - but there’s a chance when you use it you’re going to kill him.
Creatures Aren’t Just Stat Blocks
All you need is hit points, morale, armor, and damage. But they’re twisted:
Goblins - Even being attacked by goblins sends a curse. Miss or hit, you must find and kill the goblin before your mind is paralyzed. If it still lives D6 rounds after the attack, you will warp irrevocably into one yourself.
Wickheads - A lantern for a head. Can magically douse all nearby light, ignite its own blinding light and attack, then vanish into darkness.
The System Is Dead Simple
- Roll D20 against DC12 (usually)
- Four abilities: Agility (defend), Presence (aim), Strength (melee), Toughness (resist)
- Armor is damage reduction
- Hit zero? You’re broken. Roll D4. You might be dead. Or fall unconscious. Or lose something.
- Rest after combat for D4 HP. Full night for D6.
- Morale matters. Enemies flee on failed checks.
Getting Better: The GM decides when. Roll 6D10 - if higher than your max HP, increase by D6. Your abilities might go up or down with each roll.
Omens (Not Optional)
You start with D2 per session. They let you:
- Deal maximum damage
- Reroll a dice
- Lower damage by D6
- Neutralize a crit or fumble
- Lower a DC by 4
With a game this harsh, you really want to be using them.
Should You Buy It?
Would I advise buying the PDF? For running, absolutely. For easy access, absolutely.
But it’s almost like the difference between having a picture of the Mona Lisa and the Mona Lisa. This thing is art and it’s gorgeous. It just feels great.
I would absolutely advise buying this book even if you don’t think you’re going to read it or run it. You will read it. And when you read it, you’ll want to run it.
Get it. MÖRK BORG