Hollowfaust city of necromancers is a 132-page book that details a city-state in White Wolf’s Scarred Lands setting. From the beginning, I looked favorably on the concept behind this product. I found the idea of a city of necromancers that was not bent on world domination exciting, and this product does just that in a realistic way.
This book is broken into six sections, and an introduction. The introduction is in the form of letters written by visitors to the city. They are interesting to read and give you an idea of how different people view the city; my only complaint is that the first one is very difficult to read due to the font.
Next comes chapter 1 covers the History of Hollowfaust. This chapter goes along way toward setting up how the city is governed and why it exists the way it does. Overall, it contains several interesting ideas and I liked it a lot.
After that, we see in chapter 2 a description of the upper city or the civilian quarters. This section describes many locations in the city proper and some information on the ruins around the city; it also covers the laws and culture of the city, and certain of the more prominent citizens that live there. It is also in this section that they have three new feats. Two of the feats are in one section while the third feat is hidden on page 62. None of the feats seam to be overpowering and in fact the feat on page 62, is the same as at least one other that I have seen in another book if I remember correctly (you can perform a coup de grace as a standard action). This is also the first chapter that in which I see an error, and that is in the sidebar on Hollowfaust’s sewer system, in which the conclusion is left out.
In chapter 3, we get a description of the necromancers’ section of the city. This section talks most about the guilds in Hollowfaust and gives a rundown on the responsibilities, requirements, living conditions, and membership requirements. It also gives you stat blocks for the guild masters of each guild, and one other NPC that you can use. There don’t appear to be any errors in this section, and some of the inserts in it such as the table on body part prices give people a good basis to work on when character sell body parts to the necromancers.
Chapter 4 is probably the weakest one in the whole book. This one gives plot hooks that can be incorporated into a Hollowfaust game. None of them seem to be vary original, and in most cases don’t seem to promote strangeness of the city. The only one that I thought had a lot of potential was the one called “A Slight Indiscretion” where a young man looses his curfew token.
Now chapter 5 covers new magic items and spells. These are all in keeping with a necromantic theme and I like most of them a lot. My only compliant content wise is that they gave wizards a cure spell as a second level. This spell is relatively weak and fits in well thematically with the city’s back-story. Also in this chapter we see a fairly major editing mix-up in that three of the spells description text are with the wrong spells. It looks like they just scrambled the three and luckily they are all on the same page so it is pretty easy to figure them out. The spells that got scrambled are Essence Shift, Soul Exchange, and Phantom Wounds.
And last of all we have an appendix. In here we have 5 prestige classes that all fit well within this city, and would be useful in many other games. All of them are for people who deal with the dead in one way or another. Two appear to be primarily for wizards and we have one each for bards, rouges, and fighters. Only one of them raises real concerns and that is the Animator because it has three problematic powers. At third level, they get the ability to animate dead as the spell but with no limiting on how many times per day. Their next problematic power is at sixth level when they get Create undead also with no limits, but this is less problematic in that it takes an hour for an application anyway. Finally, at seventh level they get Control Undead, again without limits. In addition, in this chapter we get some new monsters. Several of the stat blocks are problematic at best because they do not account for ability scores in their attack bonuses.
In conclusion, I feel that this is book has many wonderful aspects that can be mined, with only a few minor drawbacks. It portrays a vibrant city and culture that will give people a new way to look at necromancers, and the relationship between the dead and the city they are from, and with very little work this city could be put in any world.
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