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After I finished the first Kinfire Delve box, Vainglory’s Grotto, I knew it was going to be a tough act to follow. As I talked about in my previous Kinfire Delve designer diary, each of the Delve boxes are built around their Well Master, and Vainglory had a great vibe to build off of...so I needed another strong villain.
Casting around for inspiration, I came across a clip of Les Misérables on YouTube and listened to Javert sing for a bit — and that became the initial spark for Scorn. Whereas Vainglory was a collector, Scorn would be a jailor.
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With that core element nailed down, Scorn started taking shape. Visually, he became a sort of twisted reflection of Lady Justice, with a sword in both hands rather than a sword in one hand and a scale in the other — and rather than representing blind justice, he had a big eye on his chest that clearly cheated the concept.
As always, the art team knocked everything about him out of the park and really delivered on the keyword I gave them for Kinfire Delve: Scorn's Stockade box, which was "imposing". (Vainglory’s keyword was "beautiful", for the record.)
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I actually spent a lot of time discussing Scorn's backstory with the rest of the Incredible Dream Studios team, and while it's unlikely that anyone could completely suss it out from the materials in Scorn's Stockade, a lot of hints and allusions are laid out in the card text and art. I'm curious to see what players will make of it all. I will say that he is the only Master so far who is an Atios native — at least partly...
Mechanically, Scorn and his Well are designed to make you feel hemmed in — imprisoned, if you will. Abilities that you've taken for granted in Vainglory's Well may abandon you in the face of the challenges lurking in Scorn's Well.
Scorn himself adds a great deal of risk to a basic tactic you may have used to good effect against Vainglory. Much like Vainglory increases the difficulty of any challenge with more than one copy in play, Scorn says that if you choose not to play an action card on your turn and just roll the dice, then you roll the darkness symbol, you immediately gain an exhausted card. No more sopping up those free progress tokens when you're just a bit short. There's some nasty stuff in there, I'm warning you now.
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As an interesting aside, each of Scorn's exhausted cards specifically targets one of the six Seekers and shows Scorn mentally tearing them down. Originally, I wanted to include dialogue balloons on these cards to show what he's saying, but they wouldn't fit, so we had to cut this idea. But of them, I think my favorite was on the "Haunted" card, which targets Khor:
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"You're not even a person, Revenant. You're just a cage trapping a soul...an oyster that thinks itself a pearl."
One last thing: While it’s not completely relevant to Delve, Scorn and the other two Well Masters get a nice cameo appearance in the upcoming Kinfire Council as one of the threats that hangs over the city of Din'Lux. They have appropriately big and splashy effects. As for Scorn, you might say that he cares not for the laws of man...
Anyway, stay safe out there in the Wells, and here's hoping that you find the Master Key!
Kevin Wilson
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