This book is a guide to Ceoris, the keystone chantry of House/Clan
Tremere during the Dark Ages (shortly after the Clan's founding).
Hewn from the rock of a Transylvanian mountaintop, dedicated by the
murder of one of the clan founders, and filled with treachery,
monsters, and twisted magics, Ceoris is the front line of the
centuries-long war between the Tremere and the Tzimisce. By showing
how the Tremere behave in their stronghold, we are also shown a
portrait of the clan itself and its relation to the still-living
members of the Hermetic house.
The book does an excellent job of setting the mood. I have no problem
visualizing Ceoris' dark rocky walls, hearing the howls of strange
beasts in the night, and seeing the pale figures that flit from
shadow to shadow, most of them pawns in games they barely
understand. My main objection style-wise is to the art. There are
plenty of illustrations of torture, nudity that seems put there
mostly for nudity's sake, and in one image, both at once. It does
do a good job of matching and illustrating the things described
in the text (the Tremere are not nice people, and are
well-matched to fight the Tzimisce), but it makes it very difficult
to read this book anywhere where someone might be looking over
your shoulder. Definitely not the sort of thing your parents are
likely to approve of. (It's not Black Dog, either.) The other mild
gripe is that the first page of each chapter is in an awful Gothic
font that is impossible to read.
The first part of the book is a history of the chantry and the clan,
told by the ghost of the man whose murder consecrated the site.
This is, however, almost the only bit of first-person perspective
in the book. Unusually for a White Wolf product, the majority of this
book is devoted to objective descriptions. In this, it reads very
much like a D&D module. We are shown the chantry's location in
relation to the rest of the world, then given a room-by-room
description of the various floors and who will be where when. The
system of patrols, wards, and monsters is described in detail.
The book ends with capsule bios of the more powerful or important
chantry inhabitants, followed by the semi-obligatory description of
new Thaumaturgical tricks. Inhabitants are described in
terms of how they fit into the ongoing political rivalry between
clan elders Goratrix and Etrius: should the vampires just Embrace
all the mortals straight off, or take the slow approach?
The book is tied in to White Wolf's
Transylvania Chronicles line of adventures, and thus makes
reference to characters' destinies within that storyline and the
greater White Wolf metaplot. There is also a small segment at the end
that describes a few other Tremere chantries, just to illustrate
what the clan is like outside its stronghold.
The new powers listed are reasonably balanced. They are meant to
illustrate Thaumaturgy as a young and highly experimental discipline,
and many of them (particularly the section on magical potions)
come with some nasty drawbacks. It is certainly not the case that
a player character could master any of these without spending years
and years of study. Moreover, he wouldn't do it without losing a
whole bunch of Humanity. Much of the book is given over to describing
the Gargoyles, the Tremere's race of re-animated semi-vampiric
monster-slave-soldier creatures. Several special types of Gargoyle
and other magically created monstrosities are described, and any
of them would be equally at home in a Tzimisce castle. Most of
the creatures and powers are described as being abandoned before the
modern age, but an enterprising GM can always let a character
discover a dusty tome with the right spells.
So, if this book has balanced powers and a good description of the
chantry, where does it fall down? In my mind, the problem is that
I just can't see it being very useful to most Dark Ages stories.
Unless you want to set a series in Ceoris itself, or send your
characters off to try to break into it (not a good plan), there's
not a lot here for you. None of the creatures described here is
going to be found outside the immediate Ceoris environs, and
nobody outside Ceoris is supposed to know these Rituals and
Thamaturgical Paths. The descriptions of power struggles and
relationships is interesting, but again, most Dark Ages games won't
come anywhere near any of these people (given that most of them
spend all their time in Ceoris). If you're a Tremere buff, you'll
want this for your collection, but for the majority of gamers,
it's not worth the price.
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