Hello Backers! It’s Nick once again for your BackerKit update. We have heard your desire for a meatier update game-wise and some new content that’ll help you keep the game going while you wait for the final book. July was a hectic month with preparation for Gen Con and wrangling art updates, so we have an extra-long one for you today. Let’s end Automata Summer with a bang! We’ve got a bunch of lore and mechanical previews below, plus some exciting news for people who haven’t been able to make it out to the cons but still are looking for a group to play Eldritch Automata.

You’ve been asking for more enemies to show off to use for your game, so here we are with a special look at four new Horror stat blocks (plus an existing one with art!) for your Automata enjoyment. Hope you enjoy the new Horrors to mess around with, and they’ll get some use out of the games you’re running now.

(Note: This is not the style of how they’ll appear in the book, just something I cooked up for the Backer previews.)

 - CP Recruitment Operative Five-One-Six, to Gehenna Institute Researcher Samael Rivera

Established long before humanity was first exposed to the designs of the Architect, the Chimera Project – or simply, “the Project” – is merely the latest iteration of a long-standing truth. There will always be those who value knowledge over ignorance, strength over safety, and ends over means. Founded in the 1930s with the guiding mandate of advancing humanity toward its next evolution, Project research teams have conducted experiments in almost every controversial branch of fringe science known to history, as well as several that have never left its facilities. Initially backed by wealthy entrepreneurial dynasties – and eventually by governments scared of being left behind – the Project enjoyed nearly a century of unchecked and unsupervised scientific inquiry prior to the catastrophic events of Advent Day.

During the early days of the Liminal Fall, the Chimera Project suffered only marginal losses, retreating to isolated bunkers deep underground. The Project’s sequestered and clandestine nature served it well in avoiding the rush of Horrors that befell major population hubs. With its main facilities undamaged and its operatives ready to infiltrate and integrate with the then-emerging nations, the Project quickly began to lay the groundwork for new avenues of experimentation. Resources and intelligence were reallocated from pre-Advent-Day endeavors to studying new phenomena brought on by the Architect, with different divisions tackling Horrors, Seraphs, and the environmental alterations brought on by the Architect’s presence.

When the Gehenna Institute began its first forays into the research of Anathema, the Chimera Project stood quietly in the shadows nearby and learned from their discoveries. When the secondary applications of the Basel Experiments fell to the wayside in favor of the immediate necessity of developing weapons of survival, acquisition agents funneled neglected research documents into the Project’s own developmental laboratories. When the Nordic Dominions obtained the concepts for Project Skysplitter under the Automata Accords and sought to build massive airships, funding, materials, and knowledge of advanced technology were offered from Project assets in exchange for one of the finished iterations.

When the Automata clashed, Project cleanup crews swept in afterwards, obtaining samples and material data from battlefield surveys and discrete acquisitions from government research facilities. When nascent Automata resistance was blindsided by the arrival of the first Seraph, Project assets were on standby to suggest new armaments and curry favor. The Chimera Project’s conflict-forecast prediction models pointed to inevitable escalation on the combat front well before the first clash, and, when the next development in the war occurs, the Project will be there, pursuing the next iteration of its original mandate with single-minded intent: To use the influence of the Architect to guide humanity to the next step.

The true horror of the Chimera Project is that it does not view the Architect’s creations as monstrous, for it has long since been a monster itself.

The Automata Project was established with the construction of a base within the Atacama Desert, using its vast emptiness as a perfect location for humanity’s most ambitious project. Construction began and sprawled across the desert, away from civilization to minimize the risk of Horror detection and prevent the inherent risk of a widespread catastrophe from affecting the outside world. But while this construction was underway, the outside world was crumbling. Cities were wiped from the map, and many of the modern-day empires and civilizations fell or went underground, and the nations that still stood poured their resources into the Automata project.

With over 10,000 personnel on staff, construction on Genesis began with building the skeletal structure out of materials that had been deliberately exposed and tempered to Anathema. Regarded as “awakening” each component before installation, this process developed a pseudo-nervous system for the Anathema to operate within. Next, the Ego Chamber was designed to sit as the core of the Automata; the design had been restructured from the rough prototype of the Basel Experiments. The Ego Chamber had been modified to house the Anathema, as well as act as the cockpit, barely shielding the pilot (or rider). Derived from the research of consciousness synchronization from the Gehenna Institute, this new interface would allow for the pilot to interact with the Automata by using the Anathema as a living bridge. By keeping the Anathema connected to these two systems, scientists and engineers believed they could avoid the risk of an overload. Thanks to years of exploratory engineering, the Automata was completed surprisingly quickly. All they needed was the perfect pilot. 

When the time came to select the pilot for Genesis, a selection committee was formed to investigate which candidates would be the most ideal. They began seeking individuals with experience in piloting aircraft and other vehicles, but their minds shattered under the pressure of exposure to the Anathema, and they were seemingly unable to form a connection with Genesis. It was noted that it seemed like Genesis wasn’t “allowing” them to control it. Although they had not built Genesis with the concept of sentience or personality, it would appear that the Anathema had other plans for them. It was then theorized that more malleable minds could prove possible of interfacing with the divine architecture of Genesis. A wider net was cast, drawing candidates from military backgrounds and other psychological overviews formerly seen as unfit – especially those who had developed trauma from Advent Day directly. Initial results in connection showed adaptability to the Anathema and successfully accessing Genesis’ interface, albeit shy of direct connection.

The committee would soon come to an uncomfortable truth: The ideal candidates weren’t the mentally strongest or those who would be considered “peak performers.” The candidates best suited to connect to the Automata were often ones carrying deep psychological scars. This is not to say trauma makes better pilots, but those who have endured significant trauma have already experienced a fundamental shift in their understanding of reality. By cracking this prerequisite, we could test the Automata compatibility in a safer environment. It was also discovered that those with a lack of close personal relationships consistently performed better in tests measuring consciousness interfacing than those with strong family ties or deep social connections. However, those who had those pre-existing bonds had a higher possibility of skill than those without. There was no perfect profile of an Automata pilot; what we considered normal markers of being unfit to operate were advantages in context. The core of being a pilot is a strong but adaptable Ego, one that would not defend itself from the death of the self.

Out of 50 pilots chosen to test with direct interface with Genesis, only one managed to interface. A pilot who would become the ancestor to the Horror killing machine: Alicia Aguilar.

The Manufactured has long been our most popular Pilot Archetype. With the ability to play a robot, android, or something not human in Eldritch Automata, the Manufactured offers a distinct playstyle that makes it fundamentally different from every other Pilot Archetype, much like The Operations Admin is to the Automata Archetypes. By the way, to those who are playing both at the same time, you are the true heroes.

Still, even with the release of the Backer-specific updates, the feeling was that the Manufactured was a great concept, but NOT perfect. Its special rules often made it clash with a variety of abilities, and it never felt like the special mechanics ever felt worth the investment and reward needed to really accompany the journey behind this Archetype. On a fundamental level, it always made every archetype start out in the same place in terms of “I am a thing, not a person,” when starting with Integrity over Empathy. 

So naturally, to fix these perceptions, we’ve done some major tuning to the Bio-Programming talent and the two talents for achieving the max in either Integrity or Empathy: Plaything of a Body and Overclocked. 

Bio-Programming has received a full rewrite. The Integrity/Empathy Stat now starts at 2, with the player choosing which side of the scale they initially fall on. This lets you start as a more emotional and human-like Manufactured, gaining Stress and playing as normal, to explore that journey to an emotionless and inefficient machine. Second, we’ve added the distinction that your maximum Ego Field can never be reduced below 2. This is to ensure that those wanting to embark on said journey aren’t penalized too hard in their Ego Fields. We often saw players not wanting to cross the threshold of the midpoint (0) because it rendered their Ego Field non-existent for combat. Third, the official trigger for moving toward Integrity has been changed to “Whenever you defy your own agency due to someone’s will or your programming…”. We did this because it was found to be much too easy to trigger Integrity movement in any situation, even where following an order was the human response. The last, but biggest change, is that Integrity and Empathy now go to 6 on their respective scales, allowing Manufactured to get to that high base Ego Field number. 

Plaything of a Body has been adjusted as such:
When you are at Empathy 3 or beyond, you become capable of truly feeling emotions. You gain a bonus die to all actions involving Empathy and can make a free push on an Empathy roll once per scene.

Overclocked has been adjusted as such:
When you are at Integrity 3, your code is working at optimal efficiency and calculates the most efficient method to execute the next action. Once per scene, you can ignore the Stress cost on a talent or from pushing a roll.

We rewrote these to keep with the idea that reaching Integrity or Empathy 6 should feel like a big achievement, but that there should still be some compensation for taking this talent on the way there, and adding secondary effects for being in the higher bracket of your bar. We hope that these changes will be a welcome addition, allowing more control in how you play your Manufactured while still feeling like it’s fair to play them at any given point in time.

With Titans of the Deep finishing up editing and about ready to go to print, the time to get this adventure formatted and laid out in a week has been a whirlwind. This is what happens when I’m left to my own devices. I just keep writing. Here is a special preview of a few pages, including some spoilers for those who’d like to experience Titans of the Deep without knowing any of the background and some of the twists and turns around it.

Titans of the Deep serves as a sort of testing stage for ideas for something grander down the line, but as I added more and more to it. It took on a life of its own and became an homage to some of my favorite fiction, with inspiration from media such as Underwater, The Abyss, and the Alien RPG’s Heart of Darkness. I wanted to write something in the style and structure of a zine, and about 60 pages later, here we are. This was a product that was never meant to be, and just kind of stumbled out of my head from a con scenario I wrote. Who would have thought? The visual style of this book is intentionally rough and “in the weeds.” I used a particular design technique to get the text and style how I wanted for extra grittiness, and sourced all of the art on my own, separately from our art direction on the core rulebook. It was kind of a litmus test to show that anyone can make their own product with enough time and enough guilt from internal capitalism. I discuss a lot about the scenario and give some things away in this next section, so if you’d like to avoid spoilers, I’d consider skipping it.

With The Dark Passenger and now Titans of the Deep, you might notice that I always put song lyrics at the beginning of all my splash pages for Operations. This has become sort of my signature that I like to put on every Operation. The song that the lyrics are ripped from is “Top 10 staTues tHat CriEd bloOd” and is one of the songs that I had on repeat while writing Eldritch Automata in the final stretches of preparing the Backerkit. Its relationship to Titans of the Deep might make this the most heroic Eldritch Automata Operation.

It wouldn’t be an Operation without testing out some new rules and some new equipment. I considered, at one point, doing a full underwater rule set and campaign book, but it never had the right amount of meat. This may turn into an expansion for “Extreme Environments…” Either way, Equipment Degradation is super simple and not meant to be overly complicated. Every Shift in these extreme depths (but also you could do this in any environment that might degrade equipment at high speeds), you make a D6 roll for every bit of equipment you have, then you see the consequences. Sometimes the equipment can sustain minor damage, other times it can break. With that, I introduce three new items: a Sonar Mapping Device, Ballast Control Systems, and Deep Pressure Armor. I’d honestly not recommend giving your Automata the armor in this Operation, which is why they don’t start with it, because it makes the finale of the game more of a ticking clock with damage consistently building as the Automata start to break and bend from the ocean’s depth.

Titans of the Deep follows the same three-act structure I used in The Dark Passenger, although Titans will take you at least three times as long to finish if you’re doing every event. When running initial tests of this Operation, we found players spent an entire session or more on Act 1 to track down information, talk to people, and investigate. Whereas The Dark Passenger was designed for more on-rails guidance as a one-shot, Titans of the Deep gives a lot of choice back to the players, as it should. The tension doesn’t really kick in till Act 3, where the players are forced by a flooding station to attempt to get back to their Automata before the big-beastie lying in the trench wakes up. Act 1 takes place solely on Elysium, the above-surface research station, and can play out over multiple nights if you want to run that sort of slow burn for your players. If you want to run this in a single 4-hour session (which I did do at Gen Con), I’d recommend getting them through Act 1 as quickly as possible – even expediting them to skip it altogether, because they can spend a lot of time there. When the group arrives down in Tartarus in Act 2, it becomes a Dead Space-esque dungeon dealing with enemies, exploration, and just more messed-up things one after the other. Depending on if your players bee-line through the station or not, this can be the longest part of the scenario. I try to dissuade rushing to the end by locking the doors and planting keycards across the base. There’s also an NPC that’s out of the way in Act 2 that the players would do really well to eliminate to spare themselves an extra combatant in the final fight. At one point, our traitor pre-gen actually killed the NPC themselves and then took their secret Automata out for a spin and fought the rest of the party. It was a great experience.

Last, I want to showcase the pre-generated characters in Titans of the Deep. These are some of my favorites, and I think vast improvements over the pre-generated characters in The Dark Passenger. Not having an NPC like Kylie Summers in this Operation meant we really needed to step up the player characters themselves to be the driving force. Administrator Barath here is actually based on a friend’s LARP character from a mecha game we played for about three years (thanks Jax!) and was the first character I made for Titans of the Deep. I wanted to start with the Operations Admin because it’s one of my favorite dynamics that’s really unique to Eldritch Automata but felt too advanced for a “starter” scenario like The Dark Passenger. Here, not only does the Operations Admin have a reason to tag along and go down to Tartarus, we’ve given them a little drone that can scope out rooms. In the run of this I did at Gen Con, the Operations Admin acted as the initial scouting party. The drone, sadly, did not survive the mission…

Per our last update, we’re still trudging along with art direction. The horror showcase above includes some of our latest pieces, and we’re working on Seraph and environmental art as our final items. This will put us in place to finalize the PDF and start our second round of feedback before print! This still doesn’t give us a firm date for shipping, but it does give us a sense of when PDF distribution will start (before the end of the year).

Internally, we’re looking at our full Q4 plans for 2025 this week, including this timeline and when we’ll be pushing manufacturing on the rest of the accessories and extras, and we will have more information there in our September update.

We’ve been lucky that our team has been able to go to a bunch of conventions and run Eldritch Automata in person. But we also want to give everyone the ability to play and appreciate this game. While we can’t share any specifics yet (but very soon in the future), the team here at Gehenna is working to run some online organized play events in the next few months that will allow players who don’t have a gaming group a chance to play E//A (and some other great games). We’re working on a few ideas of how we can allow current Backers first choice on joining these games, and while it won’t be incredibly expansive, we’re hoping our initial test run of things will open more opportunities to do this in the future. Most likely, these will be ticketed events, but I’m hoping that these will be a great chance for people who haven’t been able to find a group to play the game, and also, yours truly might even be running a game or two.

That's it for this month. Stay tuned for our update in September after we get back from QuestCon Orlando!