"Eliten Manor" is location article for Columbia Games Harn generic fantasy role-playing setting, written by Patrick Nilsson.

For those not familiar with the setting, Harn is a Madagascar sized island, loosely based on 11th/12th century Britain. It is a place of mystery and strange happenings, on the island are nine states, seven human (Chybisa, Kaldor, Kanday, Melderyn, Orbaal, Rethem & Tharda) and two non-human (Azadmere & Evael).

The article is available from www.lythia.com, as a free 0.98MB ZIP file containing a GM map, a picture of the lord of the manor, the lord's coat of arms and the article itself in the form of a 6 page, 1.53MB PDF file.

HARNWORLD: ELITEN MANOR, OVERVIEW.

The article describes one of the richest manorial settlements in the eastern Harnic kingdom of Kaldor. It is famed throughout Kaldor for its orchards and these bring much trade to the village. It is also the location of buried treasure, which rumors date back to the days of the previous lord of the manor, a man noted for his greed and corruption.

It begins with a title page that shows an aerial view of the manor, the second page provides the historical background and an overview of the village, the next two pages contain a numbered list of the manor contents which is to be used in conjunction with the interior maps on the last two pages. Also provided is brief information on four villages subordinate to Eliten.

HARNWORLD: ELITEN MANOR, COMMENTS.

This article is amongst the earliest fan articles to be placed online. It dates from 1998 and shows some differences from the later articles.

The standard Columbia Games settlement article begins with a history of the settlement; a listing of the settlement inhabitants and a keyed interior map of the major buildings in the settlement follow it.

The 'Eliten Manor' article drops the list of village inhabitants and concentrates almost entirely upon the manor, this is both a strength, in that the GM who uses this article freedom to improvise and a weakness in that a lot of work will be required to fully detail the settlement.

The three maps that accompany the article are clear and readable if a little sparse, the lack of an unlabelled players map is a slight hindrance but one that can easily be resolved through the use of any graphics program.

There are also three pieces of artwork with this article, the first, the title picture of the manor, which was apparently taken from the original Harn boxed set, is clear and gives a good impression of the manors overall appearance, as should be expected. The second picture, that of the Lord of the Manor was drawn by the author himself. While not a professional piece of artwork, this 'warts n'all' picture does give both the GM and the players a strong impression of the lord's appearance and something of his character. The final piece of artwork is a nice picture of the coat-of-arms of the ruling family.

As with all HarnFan articles 'Eliten Manor' is stat free and could be easily adapted to any fantasy role-playing system.

HARNWORLD: ELITEN MANOR, VERDICT.

While I would not recommend downloading this article as strongly as I would some of the later Harn location articles, (See my reviews of Whyce Manor & Iversen Manor for more info on these,), it is nethertheless something that could prove very useful for a GM who is willing to spend time 'fleshing out' the background material provided.