The campaign setting itself has a distinctive flavor which manages to be both familiar and innovative. Even the familiar part is welcome, however – a medieval feel (as opposed to the post-modern or tribal feel of certain campaign settings); high adventure combined with enough detail to make the setting a very intriguing place for role-playing; and lots of good, solid information to draw players and GMs into the game world and keep them happy once they’re there. The quality of the material is almost uniformly very high and there is little “waste material” – even things with no direct game effect still add to the mood and flavor of the setting. What is familiar is the attention to detail, the grand scope, the internal complexity and logic of the world which brings it to life without sacrificing the capacity for heroism, which reminds one strongly of the best of the old campaign settings.
There is plenty of innovation too – there is no doubt that this is a very distinctive, exciting campaign world that isn’t just a knock-off of any previous product. The heart of the campaign as it’s presented is the ancient enmity between the Solar Monarchs of Aesios and the Black Summoners of Insarc. The material is handled very well so that the Solar Monarchs don’t come off as formulaic do-gooders. The Black Summoners are truly interesting and threatening villains – any hero worth his or her salt is going to want to square off against these unique cads. They are developed in considerable depth, and the fact that they come across as fairly realistic makes them all the more creepy and formidable, because they’re believable. But around this central struggle, there are many, many other nations, fascinating locales, peoples, cultures, and other material that provides a living, interwoven world to game in. Nations don’t exist in isolation, and the people of those nations come across as real people, with distinctive cultural habits, philosophies, societies, ambitions, and fears. And, of course, plenty of inspiration for adventures.
The races which populate the campaign world are refreshingly new. There are humans, of course, since campaigns which aren’t basically ‘humanocentric’ usually don’t provide any point of reference. There are elves in the setting, but they are far removed from the standard elf – these elves are mysterious, beautiful, and a bit sinister. The other races are: orcs (who are presented as a PC race, although they are more vile – and more interesting – than there are in most settings), half-orcs, molossovirs (a formidable but good-hearted canine race), dwarf molossovirs, halfling molossovirs, crickles (a small flying race of moth-like wanderers who seem very intriguing), quaishi (honor-bound, conquest-obsessed beetle-men ruled by murderous despotism and preoccupied by achievement), quickthorns (practical, hard-nosed sentient plants who often serve as mercenaries or bodyguards), and spivs (good-natured goblinoid sneaks who live in nearly every city of the world). Each of these races is described in considerable detail. There’s a lot of cultural and personality information, illustrating how the minds of these creatures work, and just reading them over gives many ideas for unique adventures and quests based around them. Statistics-wise, the races seem fairly well balanced. For the people who want new “crunch” for their races, each race also has an exotic weapon. These weapons seem to be based on real weapons for the most part, but they are a nice bonus and seem to be well thought out.
I will get a couple of minor quibbles with the book out of the way here. I would have liked more maps (although there are enough to run a campaign quite effectively) and I don’t think that the description of which spells work better in which months is very useful. It would be too much of a headache to keep track of – but, luckily, this material occupies a tiny fraction of the book and can be ignored without detracting from the rest of the material at all. These are the two reasons why I gave the book a 4/5 rating, rather than 5/5.
A lot of the book is dedicated to describing the different nations of the main continent, Imcras (which is where the two rival nations are located, among many others). This is a good thing because it gives a lot of scope for the gamemaster to work with and a lot of room for the heroes to explore. There are both national descriptions and plenty of individual locations as well. The descriptions are pretty thorough and they don’t “talk down” to the gamer – the material is logical and fantastic at the same time, and gets a treatment that doesn’t insult the reader’s intelligence.
The end of the book features chapters on the Gods, another on new classes and prestige classes, one with new monsters, and a final chapter with spells, feats, and magic items. The treatment of the Gods is pretty thorough – the gods are memorable and interesting, and there’s enough information on priesthoods, temples, and creeds to make the pantheon presented here one of the better ones that’s been published in a game setting. The classes and prestige classes are well-made and intriguing too, and add to the game flavor if that’s the kind of thing you like (I personally don’t like too many of the prestige classes that have appeared for D20, but a couple of these – especially the Blood Guard and the Knight of Boreas – look pretty interesting even to me). The feats, spells, and magic items look good also – I especially like the “Egg of Storms,” it has that strangeness and almost poetic quality that the best legendary items have. The D20 rules and stats seem to be properly calculated, and they must have been checked carefully, because I haven’t found any errors yet. I disagreed minorly with the level of a spell or two, but the same can be said for the Player’s Handbook, and it’s a minor and subjective quibble at worst.
As a small side-note, the artwork, although black and white in the interior, ranges from very good to stunning. The picture of the sunlight breaking through the clouds above the mountain, or the statue-city looming over the Exetharian Plains, are really true works of art. The book is 284 pages long, perfect bound, and has an attractive layout. Each page is crammed with information and there is very little “white space.” The cover is very striking, too.
In summation, there’s so much fascinating, solid material here that I’m surprised that they managed to fit it all into one book. As a stand-alone, this book is truly outstanding. With supplemental material, it will easily become one of the legendary fantasy campaign settings. The setting is made for the D20 rules, but it could easily be used to make a great campaign in any game system – and that, in my opinion at least, is high praise indeed.
