Castebook: Twilight is a supplement for
Exalted. It’s the third in the series devoted to the five castes of the game’s default protagonists: the Solar Exalted, Chosen and favored by the Unconquered Sun.
Twilight’s contents follow the structure established by
Dawn and maintained by
Zenith: a four-page short story, introduction, a chapter describing how the caste’s broad description allows for a breadth of archetypes, a chapter describing what the caste’s duties, one describing how the Twilight caste sees Creation, one showing how others see the Twilight caste, one showing the memories of the First Age as seen by the Twilight caste and one premiering new magics—Charms, spells, Artifacts—that Twilight characters would find particularly useful or interesting. The two appendices detail the five characters used to provide the subjective points of view used in most of the book and a brief description of other notable Twilight caste members throughout Creation.
Most of the book—as with the others that precede it—is fluff. The book’s method is to show the reader how Solars of the Twilight Caste go about fulfilling the mandate of their caste: to seek out knowledge, preserve it against all harm and make practical use of it for the good of Creation. The five characters that provide the majority of the book’s stories are the five sample characters detailed in the first appendix: Sayn the smith, Arianna the sorceress, Fehin the crime lord, Horakinis the scholar and Iay the witch. Others of the caste—those described in the other appendix—appear in some stories, and a few others fill out the rest. Together, this corpus of gamer fiction combines to show the reader what the Twilight caste is about while simultaneously giving the reader a window into what the state of Creation is at this pivotal point in the Second Age. Because most of the book is fluff, there’s precious little to playtest. If you’re not into fluff—however good or useful it may be—then you can safely skip this (and all of the other) castebook.
The crunchy bits are all in Chapter Six (the last chapter) where an array of new Charms, Artifacts and spells (of all three circles) await those who seek such things. All five of the Favored Abilities of the caste receive new Charms, and there are also spells under Occult. The new Craft Charms prove to be a good power boost to this Ability: Body-Forging Travail is a potent defensive Charm that is compatible with armor or other Soak-boosting Charms (such as Durability of Oak Meditation); Edifice-Smashing Blow seems to be a redundant Charm (given that Brawl has some serious stuff to do this) but the ability to be a part of a Combo with other Abilities is huge, because it allows this Charm to be used with other Charms like it. Investigation gets some practical Charms that replicate real world forensics. Linguistics gets a cheap, narrowly-focused Charm that won’t see much play time, and the others are mostly filled with (very) powerful Charms with Essence requirements that put them far beyond the scope of your average Exalted campaign. (Though Injury-Forcing Technique (Lore) and Unhealing Wound Infliction (Medicine) are rather neat, practical and well within the scope of a typical Solar campaign. These two Charms provide means of violence to those who aren’t big on the combat Charms of Archery, Brawl, Martial Arts, Melee or Thrown.)
As for the spells, they are all-around neat. The two new Terrestrial Circle spells will see much use, and not just for Twilight caste characters; Peacock Shadow Eyes is very good for the Night caste character that needs a potent means of influencing a target’s mind, and Whisper In The Grass is excellent for anyone (such as an Eclipse caste character) who’s keen on making the natural world an alley. The Celestial Circle spells won’t see much use, but only because Essence ratings above 3 for PCs is a pain in the ass to acquire. (So, you can imagine how rare Solar Circle Sorcery is in the Second Age of Creation.) Curse of Betrayal and Hidden Judge Of The Secret Flame are downright mean, and those judges are nothing to laugh at. The two Solar Circle spells are wondrous: the transformation of water to fire makes Atrocious Fire Transformation into a thing of terror that all but the most powerful entities ought to fear, and Evocation Of The Mirror makes the old D&D Mirror of Opposition into what it should’ve been all along.
The fact remains, as pointed out above, that anything requiring an Essence rating of 3 will not see use in play. Therefore, including such Charms (and spells greater than the Terrestrial Circle) are more illustrative of what Solars are capable of (and, maybe, the Deathlords) than they are useful for PCs. This is not so with the items, such as the Heartstones and Artifacts. The stones possess a variety of useful powers, ranging from a reduction of the Difficulty of Willpower checks (Earth; Manse 1) to the ability to transform oneself and one’s possession into the form of a firebird for up to 12 hours at a stretch (Fire; Manse 5). The items range from the useful to the must-have in power, with the latter being the Sorcery-Capturing Cord. This magical rope can capture and hold up to three spells; the weakest version handles only Terrestrial spells and the greatest can go up to Solar Circle in power. I expect to see a lot of these in play right quick, as they can be used in place of the Countermagic spells to defend one’s person from hostile sorceries.
There’s nothing broken here, and only the above-mentioned magic cord falls into the “must-have” category. There are reasons to take, and not to take, all of the new magic powers and items in this book that are equally compelling. My crew and I agree on that. The only bad to say--and I disagree with the crew here--is that there isn't enough crunch that's certain to see use. (i.e. Charms with that need Essence 3 or less, Terrestrial Circle spells, etc.) Other than that, we're fine with it. Sure, the new stuff allows for some nasty stuff to go down; so does the stuff in the preceding books, as well as in all of the other books in the Exalted line. Nothing here that is within likely reach is unstoppable, and that which isn't will be stoppable by the time that any PCs acquire enough Essence to gain access to it.
With regard to the signature characters, I appreciate seeing them as if they were starting PCs. It cements in the mind of the reader what the signature characters mentioned over the course of the book’s fluff content are capable of doing (and being) from the get-go; this is a vital task for a splatbook of any kind, and the approach shown here is a valid and effective one. It shows the reader how it can be done, instead of just telling him, and that goes a long way with minimal expenditure of time (for the reader) and resources (for the writer). I agree that it seems wasteful to have all of them be sorcerers, but one must keep in mind that sorcery is the grand calling and foundation of the Twilight caste as much as combat is for the Dawn caste. The Twilight without sorcery is as pointless as the Dawn without skill at melee combat, so it is wrong and counterproductive to expect otherwise.
In conclusion, this book is recommended to all but required by none. You can get by without Castlebook: Twilight just as much as you can get by just fine without any of the rest. That said, you do yourself a disservice by not snatching this one (and the rest) up as soon as you can afford it. This is one of the best splatbooks yet published, and it is a fine example of how to make use of fluff—that is, something other than objective fact and rules—to bring your product alive in the mind of the target audience and enhance the game as a whole and the reader’s enjoyment of it. I’m glad to have a copy.
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