Science or Séance?

“The dead tell me a great many things. Sometimes more than I can bear to hear.”
     –Alyssa Graham

Next Thursday, you should stay in bed.

You should just call in sick and stay in your house with your doors locked and your covers drawn. If you do, you might slowly forget or rationalize away the many evils you've seen. You might be able to tell yourself things weren't quite how you had seen them. Memory is pliable, after all, and if you stay at home and go no further along your investigation, you may somehow avoid the terrors from Undimensioned and Unseen.

Others will die, of course, and there's no telling what terrible fate the rest of humanity may suffer.

But abandoning your investigation now is the only way to retain any illusion of your significance. If you continue with your investigations, you will find only madness. Further inquiries lead only to the irrevocable realization that you, as a human, are but a speck in cosmos filled with many greater and more terrifying entities. If you do not turn back, you will encounter invisible abominations that are completely impervious to all your daggers and bullets. They cannot be harmed by your baseball bats, nor by your dynamite.

To continue forward is to abandon all caution. You risk your life, your limbs, and your mind.

Next Thursday, if you go to your retailer and pick up your copy of Undimensioned and Unseen, you step beyond the realm of monsters that can be thwarted by mortal powers. You step beyond the mysteries of strange abductions. You step beyond the limits of understanding. And you come fully face-to-face with the terrifying realities of Arkham Horror: The Card Game.

Nothing Can Prepare You

How do you prepare yourself for the types of challenges you'll face in Undimensioned and Unseen?

Science will fail you. Weapons will fail you. Your whole concept of reality will fail you. There is, in fact, nothing you can do prior to the adventure to prepare yourself for your encounters with its hideous monsters. All you can do is keep your eyes open for any solution that might present itself.

In the scenario, this means looking for answers beyond the limits of our senses and faculties of reason. It means opening your mind to new possibilities. And, specifically, it means uncovering and deciphering the Esoteric Formula (Undimensioned and Unseen, 254) that can render the creatures vulnerable.

But in the midst of your terrifying ordeal, how will you be able to distinguish this vital formula from the other eclectic passages of text that surround it? How can you even tell it apart from gibberish?

Again, you must free your mind. Only by questioning all that you know can you learn to see the truth. And among the player cards from Undimensioned and Unseen, you'll find a couple that—while they cannot carry you all the way to your solution—may get you started down the right path.

If ever there's a clue at your location, the Seeker card Inquiring Mind (Undimensioned and Unseen, 227) can help you find it. Or it can help you evade an enemy or retain your sanity while you stand in the center of absolute chaos. Basically, so long as you remain open to discoveries of all shape, the three wild icons on Inquiring Mind provide you one of the most potent and versatile boosts to your skill checks that you can find anywhere in the game.

Meanwhile, as your Seekers rely upon their Inquiring Minds to make sense of the clues and other information that sit before them, your Mystic may look for guidance from the realms beyond. For starters, there's much you can learn from consultations with the Sorcerer Alyssa Graham (Undimensioned and Unseen, 232).

While you won't learn how to defeat the abominations that threaten you, you may gain advance knowledge of the other terrors that you might face—knowledge that you can use to avoid some of the worst of them.

• Perhaps you'll be able to avoid a monster that would devour you and, instead, only shudder a little at the sight of The Creatures' Tracks (Undimensioned and Unseen, 259).
• Perhaps your consultation with Alyssa Graham will focus inward, and she'll help you avoid stumbling into a moment of panic brought about by your Chronophobia (The Dunwich Legacy, 39).

Either way, you'll want to be sure you make the most of your consultation. Communing with otherworldly spirits and the spirits of the dead takes its toll. Simply asking Alyssa Graham about the future costs you very little, but using her powers to manipulate your fate adds one doom.

In the end, though, a point of doom here or there might not be such a terrible price to pay when you're up against creatures you cannot see and cannot fight. A bit of shock and a bit of pain are to be expected. Terror is to be expected. If you get yourself out of bed for this one, you'll be lucky to survive.

Ruin and Destruction

Undimensioned and Unseen arrives at retailers next Thursday. If you're going to continue with your investigation, you'd better grab a shotgun. The forecast is a ninety-nine percent chance of ruin and destruction…

Face your fears and encounter the Undimensioned and Unseen (AHC06) next Thursday!