Product Review

Someone else started it…

The Nemesis sourcebook gives us the lowdown on the most stereotypical of all the aliens in Conspiracy X. The Greys are the typical X-Files, beaming people up, telepathic aliens we all know and love. They will probably seem less alien to many of us simply because we have seen what they look like in various posters and even toy figures. Don't let this fool you though, they are just as sinister as the Atlanteans and just as mysterious as the Saurians. A dangerous new enemy walks amoung us, keep your guard up and curiosity in check.

The Grey homeworld is a water covered planet in a binary star system 40 lights years from Earth. They followed a very similar evolutionary path to humans… to a point. As we plodded on through our own history the Greys developed an array of amazing psychic talents, which they have honed to perfection over the years. A major resource on Greyworld is coral, which the Greys have managed to infuse with psychic properties and can now make it do anything from power psychic abilities to form flying space craft. Their society was one of peace and tranquility. They searched for nothing more than enlightenment and a furthering of their psychic skills. This was until the arrival of the others...

The others? Does this explain why they are picking on us?

Well, I won’t go too far into the deep blue sea of mystery as it'll ruin the storyline you’ll find in the book. But suffice to say, Eden have linked the Greys into the overall Conspiracy X storyline flawlessly. They are not simply coming to earth for fun, they have very serious reasons and motives behind everything they do. We even learn the reasons behind the famous ‘beaming up’ stories many abductees tell and why they often can’t remember much of what happened.

So is there any cool stuff for the players in this book?

Yes there is. Not only is there a rundown on Grey technology with it's various game effects, there is also another character type which could be added to a veteran group if the GM decides you can handle it.

The players will also enjoy reading the first few sections of the book as it has lots of HERMES download information in that will help them get a feel for the Greys. This is good for at least one player in the group to read as it is highly dangerous for an Aegis cell to have no knowledge of these strange aliens.

In fact I found it useful to give one of the players a brief rundown on the Greys before we played, so the group had a specialist of sorts to help them understand what was going on. It is best to sort out what you’re going to tell the player beforehand and then don’t repeat yourself or answer any questions they may ask. This should leave them with a suitable number of knowledge gaps and misunderstandings to make their discoveries in the game a surprise.

The rest of this book is very well put together and the Greys are perfect antagonists for your gaming group. The “GM eyes only” section has lots of cool information in and introduces a ‘loose cannon’ faction within the ranks of the Greys, who may prove to be player character allies or enemies depending how first contact goes.

The end of the world as we know it…

There is a fairly good adventure in the back of the book, which could help you give your players an idea of where Aegis, The Black Book and the Greys stand in the bigger picture. It comes with a nice map of the area your players will spend most of their time in and some decent NPC’s which you may find useful in your other adventures as well.

This is another good quality sourcebook from Eden and it just reinforces the fact that they have storytelling well sussed. The only problem I have is once again the rules. I still think it could all be far simpler and probably more fun if they ripped this system to shreds and started again. It almost seems like they have tried to build the game around the system and not the other way round (which I believe is a better idea). All in all though I was pleased with my purchase and I recommend it to any budding Conspiracy X GM’s out there.

I had come up with something witty and amusing to write here, but I can’t seem to clear my thoughts, in fact I’d best go an write that Nemesis review before I forget again…

Reviewed By Jon Simpson