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The Way of the Shadowlands feels like the weak sister in the trilogy of Fu Leng. The first book - which I don't have - is the Book of the Shadowlands, which laid down the basics of the Shadowlands and, presumably, also detailed the creatures that lived there. Bearers of Jade was the best of the lot, coming up with mad idea after mad idea about the Shadowlands until you had enough material to keep the players entertained - I.E scared out of their minds - for years.
The Way of the Shadowlands, by contrast, doesn't have anything to do with the Shadowlands. Well, that's not entirely true - there's some small amount of information about Fu Leng's realm, and its inhabitants, but the bulk of the book is primarily about the Taint - the supernatural corruption of Fu Leng, which usually results when you get too close to the Shadowlands, or to the creatures that live there. If you've seen Princess Mononoke, you'll recognize the concept - it changes you, making you stronger right up until you die. The paralells aren't all there, but it's close.
Anyways, Way of the Shadowlands discusses how to use the Taint - what it does, how fast it spreads, and how you can get rid of it. But it's awfully boring, lacking, in large part, the sheer madness and innovation of Bearers of Jade, the idea that wandering into the Shadowlands is like stepping - in the words of this site, whose author never puts his real name on his work (hint, hint):
"Going into the Shadowlands is like hunting Aliens (yes, those Aliens). With swords When the Aliens are living inside the Chernobyl Reactor No. 3 Containment Structure. And the Facehuggers are invisible. And the aliens are serving Great Cthulhu himself. And Great Cthulhu isn't an indifferent horror, He hates you and your family personally with all the venom of a thousand years of rejection and imprisonment. "
Fortunately for the author of the site, the above paragraph is split up into seperate sentences, but it gets across the point that I want to make: If anything, the Shadowlands should never be boring, and Way of the Shadowlands gives me the impression of being just that - not really interesting enough unless you need to have more cool powers for your Tainted NPCs or characters.
So, what's it about? The book opens with a short story - not terrifically interesting - about an Oni who's managed to get ahold of someone's name, making it that much more powerful. The book explains its purpose early on, making it clear that the book is for players, rather than for GMs, and that it's also primarily about dealing with the Taint - but then why not call it The Way of Corruption? Calling it Way of the Shadowlands just doesn't seem accurate.
The next chapter has various bits of information involving encounters with Shadowlands creatures outside of the Shadowlands - ronin serving under bushi, a particular Shadowlands menace being spotted outside of the Shadowlands, a Sparrow clan storyteller who mouths off about how the Shadowlands are no threat - and winds up being skinned - and a Tainted child who turns out to be undeserving of mercy. It's solid writing, but not terrifically interesting. If you've read Bearers of Jade, then you know that the Sparrow clan storyteller is an idiot, although why she turns up dead makes for an interesting adventure hook. Even the description of a man slowly tearing the decaying pieces of his face away doesn't carry the visceral bite that Shadowlands stories should have.
The next chapter deals with the clans and how they relate to the Shadowlands. We find out why the Clans haven't invaded the Shadowlands and wiped it out, which seemed pretty self-evident; however, the book comes up with additional reasons that I hadn't thought of, like the fact that the other clans of the Empire aren't interested in strengthening the Crab with new lands taken from Fu Leng. There's a list of what the other clans - besides the Crab - know about the Shadowlands, and how they deal with Taint - it's okay, but again, nothing revolutionary.
There's a list of the attributes that the Shadowlands look to corrupt - the young, the curious, the bold, the ambitious - but, really, one of the great things about Taint is that literally anybody can get it. You can be the most heroic samurai in Rokugan, but one splash with Tainted blood that happens to touch an open wound, and you've got it. While it may be difficult for the Taint to spread in certain individuals, it doesn't discriminate on the basis of what you are - it's like cancer, or tuberculosis. Or, at least, that's the impression that I've gotten from previous books.
To be sure, there's interesting stuff in here as well - a book called Dreams and Follies that describes the Shadowlands as not really that bad of a place, and which has infected some of Rokugan's nobility with the idea that the Shadowlands aren't dangerous. Some historic oni are named, and an alternate version of the events that took place during the building of the Kaui Wall - which seperates Rokugan from the Shadowlands - is presented, one which makes you realize that even treasured heroes of the country may be corrupt. And there's a remarkably interesting section about ogres and the nezumi (ratlings) that describes what ogres were like before Fu Leng got ahold of them, which I assume will be more fleshed out in Way of the Nezumi.
Besides areas of Taint within the country, and a description of other spiritual realms besides the Shadowlands, we get the meat of the book - the various schools that work with Taint in one fashion or another. I haven't playtested them - they seem pretty decent in terms of game balance, especially a particular school of Damned Crabs that lets them inflict double the amount of damage on a Shadowlands creature in exchange for both an extra rank of Taint and the same damage applied to your own character.
However, the Unbroken have the ability to reduce their Taint if they inflict damage against Shadowlands creatures, to the point where they can literally remove all of their Taint - but I guarantee that the Crab Clan will mortgage or sell their own mothers for that technique. Taint is almost impossible to remove within the traditional game, and even though the Unbroken are a small group, I can imagine the Crab sending anything that the Unbroken want in exchange for the technique. I hope that future books deal with their fate, or otherwise it could change the metaplot of the Crab in a lasting fashion.
Equally interesting are the Nameless Ones, shugenja of the Void school who wound up being Tainted - and who were able to fight it off, becoming amnesiac, hideously deformed versions of themselves that are devoted to fighting the Taint. The neat thing is that they're good as both PCs and NPCs - they're a pretty substantial role-playing challenge, and could be fun for players who are getting bored with run of the mill samurai or shugenja.
There's also Shadowlands powers, which I assume are there to allow Tainted villains to surprise players who aren't expecting their opponent to grow claws, or move like the wind, or to suddenly manifest a cloud of blackness. I believe that they're also for GMs to throw at the PCs as a form of temptation - sure, you can run away from this situation; I just need you to gain a point or two of Taint in exchange. It reminds me of Wraith's conflict between the Psyche and the Shadow, except that this conflict isn't really played up too much - they're just neat powers, and while it's good stuff, it's nothing truly inventive. I liked the symptoms of the Taint that can manifest - as a matter of fact, one of my favorite NPCs has a flaw in his Water that causes his footsteps to be damp no matter what the circumstance.
Various famous characters from the Shadowlands, including Yogo Junzo - again, it's solid, without being really breathtaking. There's sample characters which actually did catch my attention - I like the Damned Crane and the Nameless One, the latter mostly for the art. Rounding out the book are descriptions of the psychological effects of the Shadowlands, the Elemental Terrors, dark kiho for corrupted monks, Dark Oracles, and some Oni in a pear tree.
Would I recommend this book?
To be honest, I don't know. It all depends on what you want from the Shadowlands in your game. The Taint will provide k3wl powers at the cost of your soul, which is an easy snare for overconfident players. But most of the horror, most of the true innovation, seems to reside in Bearers of Jade - that's where you could open the book up to any page and get both some wonderful fiction and a great bit of maliciousness to throw at your PCs. In Way of the Shadowlands, you're more likely to find a new swordsman school, or a description of ronin who are fighting with ogres, or a page of Shadowlands power, without any of the atmosphere that makes other books in L5R so good. And it's that lack of atmosphere, of horror, of the sense of the corrosive disease that is the Taint, of anything but cool powers and swordsman schools, that ultimately brings this book down. There's no sense of continuity from the previous books. It's just a grab bag of information without too much holding it together - and while there's good stuff individually, it breaks apart as a whole. Bearers of Jade didn't do that.
Ultimately, if you really need more information about the Shadowlands, you could look elsewhere. It's an okay book, and it notes some of the changes made by the newly started Clan War, but it's not vital to your game in any way.
-Darren MacLennan
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