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The Book of Bone and Ebony is “a compendium of Necromantic Lore for Exalted.” What that means is that it augments information for those who have Exalted The Abyssals, noting that it’s a book mirroring Savant and Sorcerer, but for necromancy. That means in short that having Exalted the Abyssals and Savant and Sorcerer are pretty vital for getting full use out of this book.
Internal art is handled by many of the old UDON crew, including Greg Boychuk, Eric Kim, Noi Sackda, and others, as well as Ross Campbell, Chynna Clugston and others. The book uses a standard two-column layout and for the most part, makes good use of white space. The text is laid out in an easy to read format and chapter indicators are located at the top of the page. Due to the background border though, the reading of the chapter indicators is a little more difficult.
The book is broken up into six chapters and starts off with an introduction. The introduction is more or less what this book is for and who should be using it before getting to the meat of the book.
Chapter one introduces and details the greatest city of the Underworld, Stygia. Details on it’s founding, it’s current rulers, and the districts are included, along with the leaders of the dead. This includes the Dual Monarchs who channel the essence of ritual and prayer, to those who run the council of Stygia itself. This includes The Mistress with the White Hands, unmatched beauty and a master of the Shifting Ghost-Clay Path, who works alongside others like The Hollow King, the longest running member of the council.
Details on the districts include places of interest. While visiting Little Shoe, the home to Stygia’s poor and destitute, check out the Festival of Ashes. This is a once a month festival that’s open to all of Stygia. Merchants come from all over the city to sell there wares and even food and clothing sell well.
Some might not be interested in a mere city when chapter two promises to unearthe the arts of the dead. Here new types of Arcanoi are detailed starting with common Arcanoi like Scent of Sweet Blood, costing one mote with a minimum compassion of 1 and a minimum essence of 1 that allows the ghost to smell spilled blood or bleeding wounds at the range of one mile per dot of Essence. Arcanoi are also found in the Honored Ancestor Ways, Scholarly Ways, Noble Craftsman Ways, Tenacious Merchant’s Way, and Chains of the Ancient Monarchs. The powers are listed from least powerful to most powerful and have no index of Arcanoi or breakdown at a glance. Each Arcanoi includes cost, duration, type, minimum conviction, minimum essence, and prerequisite charms, followed by the description of the power. For example, Manifest the Dark Steed has a cost of 3 motes for one scene with a minimum conviction and essence of 2 with prerequisite charm of Embody and allows the ghost to create a single ghost animal into a manifest form when he manifests.
Chapter three moves onto “The Wonders of the Dead”. It talks not only about the use of soulsteel but how it’s actually explained. After all, no one wants to admit to actively seeking out something that is forged from hammered souls trapped in eternal pain do they? No, they inherit such items or they’re gifts from others, never something that is consciously sought out.
Artifacts are listed in dot order, then alphabetical order and include number of dots of artifact, and include details where appropriate. For example, the Forms of Harmony, musical stringed instruments made from black ash, are worth more when in a set of five or more. For one form, it’s artifact one dot, but for five, it’s artifact two dots. After it’s power description, each one includes a list of artifact traits, including power, usefulness, game impact, script immunity, and drawback.
With the art so heavily focused on huge swords and other weapons of mass devastation, I was surprised that most of the items here were items of utility. Take the Storm-Warding Parasol. It protects the owner from the storms of the Underworld, protecting them from the rain, blood, hail and bone common to such storms. How about the Essence Dice? Cared out of bone with inlays of ebon taken from the pupils of a ghost, the dice absorb Essence from those making a wager and restore it to the person who wins the wager. Good deal for ghosts in need of Essence.
This isn’t to say that there aren’t any weapons. How about the Hilt of the Bloody Sword? The hilt is dipped into fresh blood and forms a red blade of crystal. The sword has the abilities of a jade daiklave and returns to normal form at the end of the scene. Some even have a setting for a Hearthstone, but those are a little rarer and have a higher rating on the Artifact dot listing.
Those more interested in mass combat or learning how the armies of the dead battle, will want to flip to chapter four, “Creations of Bone.” Learn the details on how zombies are used in combat and how they can be saved, in essence by crafting multiple mutilated zombies together. A gathering of resources that shows waste not want not. Want to know how hungry ghosts or nemissaries are used? How about specific nemissary Arcanoi and specially crafted bodies for them? All included here.
Others might want to skip past that and find out how to create siege engines like the one that took Thron. While perhaps not as powerful as that engine, the rules here include resources needed, how to craft the frame and components, what class sizes are possible, such as colossal made of jade or on a human scale made of brass.
Of more interest to some might be the dead warstriders. Very similar in power to the standard ones, these machines of bone will never be mistaken for their counterparts in Creation. They are machines devoted to the purpose of Creation’s destruction and it shows in their crafting.
Chapter five moves away from war and back into magic with necromancy. Here the rituals and magics of the different circles are provided. We start off with shadowlands circle before moving into labyrinth circle. For those who’ve waited patiently, spells are detailed showing how to create new shadowlands with the Forsaken Life Engine, a powerful and expensive (50+ motes) way to blight the land, but thankfully, they bring in a Solar Circle ability, Cleansing Solar Flames, to counter it. The spell descriptions are often part ritual and part game effect. Take Black Faith, 30 motes and 1 lethal health level. In essence, the caster is committing ritual suicide in the hopes that his masters will not take him and instead transport him to where he needs to go. Better make sure that you’ve got all your bases covered here.
Chapter six ends with creatures of the underworld, including horrors like plasmics. These are broken up into different regions starting with Eastern. Among them is the lethe serpent, a creature whose venom causes ghosts to enter Lethe. If that’s not your style, try the black garda from the south. They are suicidal birds that ignite themselves with Essence and dive bomb their foes, engulfing them with black fire.
Strangely enough, not quite a monster, but a set of scenarios, Winter’s Day, is included here. Using Juggernaught, the Deathlord overtook Thorns but now the maggots devouring the beast are ready to hatch, to evolve. We’re presented with four different scenarios, raging from Juggernaut Reborn, where the maggots devour one another till the last and that one becomes the new Juggernaut to Winter’s Soldiers, where the maggots become powerful mimic creatures that can even use Abyssal Charms in addition to learning how to ride, fight, and master the martial arts.
It’s an easy read. When referring to Abyssals or other books, the page number is noted. This makes cross referring something extremely easy, provided that you have the books. The writing style is evocative of the themes of death and darkness and outside of the Abyssal fat splat itself, has rarely been evoked. Like many of the larger source books, it has enough information to provide dozens of adventure seeds.
For example, while Winter is one of the best known deathlords in Creation, he’s far from the most powerful and those who are plotting there next move, like The First and Foremost Lion, are good antagonists for even a higher level Exalted game.
If you’re looking to expand the ranks and abilities of your Abyssal foes as a GM or looking to boost your death knight characters, the Book of Bone and Ebony is for you.
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