I have just picked up the new Sword & Sorcery sourcebook, “Mithril: City of the Golem” (MCG) and I have to say I am quite pleased with it overall. The supplement set out to document the city and its environs, as well as some of the major personages player characters could encounter. Other than a few annoying layout difficulties, this goal was tidily achieved.
MCG is the first regional sourcebook for the Scarred Lands campaign setting. It covers the city of Mithril itself, the sites and influential characters within, and the surrounding area. Mithril is a holy city dedicated to the god Corean and is situated on a peninsula overlooking the Blood Sea. It was built at the feet of a titanic mithril golem, which aided the divine races during the Titanswar, but has been motionless for a century and a half. The area surrounding Mithril is filled with all sorts of nasty Titanspawn (read: monster races) who would like nothing more than to crush the city.
The Good
MCG does an excellent job of detailing the city. All the major sites are noted as well as many minor ones. A number of the entries include plot hooks that a clever DM could convert into adventures with little preparation. As well, “Chapter 5: Adventures” covers six full scenarios that would give a DM the basic framework to run an entire campaign in and around Mithril.
As a bonus, MCG also details the smaller settlement of Mullis Town. Mullis Town, with its comparatively simpler design, represents an ideal place for novice players to get into trouble without taxing a novice DM. It also represents a place within Mithril’s sphere of influence that player characters can visit when they grow restless and want to leave the bigger city.
The supplement can be looked at in a couple different ways. It can be used a source of heroic adventures, perfect for groups of clerics and paladins and like-minded characters. In Chapter 6: Characters in Mithril, the Corean church in Mithril is outlined and the roles of the various levels of cleric and paladin are explained. The Mithril Knight prestige class is detailed, along with its inherent powers. On the other hand, it can used to run a grittier, more jaundiced campaign centered on the Harbor City. A number of shadier characters and groups are outlined, and the descriptions of the poorer Harbor City sites definitely aid a DM in this type of campaign.
The artwork on the cover is well done. The coat of arms of the paladin’s shield on the front cover is a faithful rendering of Corean’s symbol. The beastie, which I assume is a Piscean (I don’t have Creature Collection II), is big, green and scary. The Golem is correctly rendered with the damage to the left shoulder produced by a vast fist crushing it, as described in the text. However, it has a cartoon-like look to it that is out of place with the rest of the picture. The city of Mithril, which is also in the background, appears to be missing Harbor City and is raised on a high cliff, which is contrary to the impression given in the text. On the whole though, the cover is intriguing and pleasing to the eye.
Within the book, I found a number of excellent drawings. They ranged from the simple portraits of influential characters in Mithril to more complex sketches, like the vengaurak on page 63. There was enough artwork found within to continue to entertain the eye but not so much as to sacrifice content.
The Not-So-Good
Unfortunately, this book did have a few problems. My primary beef is that there isn’t an index for MCG. On a number of occasions the text would make reference to a character, like Barconius, or group, like the Guild of Shadow, and I’d have no way of figuring out who or what they were. It would have been nice to flip to the back of the book and look up the piece of information I was after rather than waiting until it was covered in the text and missing the relevance of the earlier reference. Instead, I was left wondering who or what the book was talking about.
Secondly, I found the keyed map of Mithril extremely confusing. On the top of page 20, there is a note stating, “See city map of page 35”, which is not the page the map is on. Fortunately, it is on the facing page so I didn’t have to hunt too hard for it. I admit I have trouble with maps with a lot of keyed entries and this one is no exception. Though the detail given on the city is commendable, it might have been better to include close-ups of certain sections of the map to aid finding entries.
Thirdly, there was information left out that may have been useful. Many references were made to the Behjurian Vigil and to Vigilants but a reference to the appropriate volume, in this case “Relics & Rituals”, was omitted. I was frustrated that I couldn’t check into this new prestige class. In fact, unmarked references to S&S Relics & Rituals’ prestige classes happen throughout MCG and I was left with the feeling that I should have memorized all the information in S&S’ previous publication. A very simple solution would have been to indicate which prestige classes were from Relics & Rituals among the abbreviations on the cover page of Chapter 3: The City (page 19).
Finally, let me say a word on typographical errors. In this age of word processors and spell checking software, misspelled words should be almost non-existent. However, on page 62, at the top of the map, in the caption for “The Proud”, one sees the following, “- with thier(sic) resurgance(sic), the proud have once again taken to raiing(sic) settlements” This is an incredible display of poor spelling, especially on something as visible as a map. More careful editing should be employed in future publications.
Summary
I thoroughly enjoyed Mithril: City of the Golem. However, the lack of a proper index, references to previous publications and spelling errors detracted from an otherwise superb sourcebook. A DM would be able to use this for either a Scarred Lands campaign or, with some modification, in any other setting. I would recommend picking up MCG and be forgiving of its short-comings.
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