Chapter One: Atlantis starts with the familiar legend from Plato; the god Posiedon loved a young maiden and built a palace for her on an isolated island. They raised ten sons, who divided the island among themselves. In the Hero Universe, their leader was named Vondarien, given the title Atlan ('first among equals') by his brothers. Atlantis rose to power at the end of the "Valdorian Age", and as the power of magic grew, so did the effectiveness of the Atlanteans' magical technology. For thousands of years Atlantis ruled most of the world in a Golden Age. But around 30,600 BC one of the Atlantean generals rebelled against Vondarien, and to secure victory this villain pledged himself to the Chtulhu-like Kings of Edom, becoming "Sharna-Gorak the Destroyer." The final battle between the Destroyer and the ten founders of Atlantis destroyed all parties and was of such magical power that it shook the continents and destroyed the island of Atlantis. But Poseidon saved the survivors by magically transforming them into sea-dwellers. The rebuilt kingdom of Atlantis remained unknown to the surface world until one of its exiled nobility wound up moving to America and fighting the Nazis in World War II (hmmmm....), which led to an increasing level of contact with outside civilization.
The Atlantean culture is pretty well detailed. Some written records exist, although underwater they have to be die-stamped into metal sheets. Atlanteans are more familiar with magic than humans, although most of their native magic was not very powerful before superpowers developed on Earth. Even so, some Atlanteans developed certain magical "mutations" like superstrength or the ability to breathe air- making Atlantis a good background for a PC.
Chapter One also goes into some detail as to how to run an adventure underwater (which is necessary for the setting, of course). Similar rules were given in out-of-print Hero sourcebooks (like the 4th Edition Atlantis) but it's good to have them in print for the current game, especially since not all sea adventures are going to take place in Atlantis.
Chapter Two: Arcadia focuses on the Empyrean race, who have been mentioned in previous Champions sourcebooks, including Champions Universe. The Empyreans are basically their own "power category"- not magical and not exactly mutants, they probably most resemble Marvel Comics' Inhumans or Eternals. Basically they were engineered by a supremely advanced alien civilization from Homo erectus examples some half-a-million years ago. While not truly gods, they were all immortal and some of them were powerful enough to parley with the gods that were attracted to humanity. They were around when the "Elder Worm" ruled the Earth, and were instrumental in their downfall, they faced the dark lord Kal-Turak and lost, and tangled with both Lemuria and Atlantis over time. As with Atlantis, the Empyreans stayed on their home base of "Arcadia" (now a secret enclave in Antartica) and tried to avoid open contact with humanity, but this becomes increasingly difficult in the age of superpowers.
However, while there aren't that many Empyreans left (most of their elders having gone to space and many younger ones hibernating in 'Silence'), an individual Empyrean is considerably more powerful than the average hero, being built on at least 377 points (where the 5th Edition standard for beginning PCs is 350), of which 100 goes to custom powers and 18 goes to a Contact with fellow Empyreans (the average Contact costing 2 points...). So while the Empyrean race could be valuable NPCs for a game, or plot devices (it would really destabilize the world if such powerful beings pledged themselves to one Earth faction or another), they really aren't good as PCs unless the GM is running a Very High Power level game (like Galactic Champions, where one of the example heroes is an Empyrean).
Chapter Three: Other Hidden Lands details other realms that might not be as important as Atlantis, but still have some mythic resonance. Among these is the martial arts sanctuary of Shamballah (which might serve as a training ground for a hero), a gate to the Australian Dreamtime, the spooky town of Sunday Pond, Maine, and "Beast Mountain," the home of animal-man hybrids created by a descendant of the real Dr. Moreau. None of these places are given a lot of in-game detail in the chapter; however the description of the settings themselves gives just enough to start several storylines.
Chapter Four: Gamemastering briefly goes over GMing tips for running these hidden settings but spends most of its text on the customary "GM's Vault" of material for GM's eyes only, some of which is fairly spoiler-iffic for those who've read the previous chapters. There are also some game stats for a few NPCs, including the guardian of Sunday Pond, an extremely obvious knock-off of the Phantom Stranger.
Chapter Five: Lemuria is probably the most meaty and fascinating section of the book. It's placed after the GM's section (making it also GM's eyes only) because the Lemurians are intended to be used as villains, Lemuria having a rather more weird and sinister reputation than Atlantis. In the Hero Universe, the ancestors of Lemurians were a certain shape-shifting inhuman race referred to in the back of The Valdorian Age book. One of this race's best sorcerors made an important arcane discovery, finding a certain magical element that made it easier to channel magic than it had been before. This sorceror, using several other discoveries, invented powerful arcane technology and used it to found the Empire of Lemuria. The expansionist Lemurians eventually clashed with both the Empyreans and the Atlanteans- in fact Lemuria sank several thousand years before Atlantis, as the doomsday weapon Lemuria intended to use on Arcadia backfired and sank their home island. Unlike the Atlanteans, the Lemurians did not adapt into an aquatic race, rather they used their "mechano-mystic" technology to turn what was left of Lemuria into a domed city. Since then the diminished Lemurian population has tried to strike at the surface world in secret, with mixed success.
In 1800 AD a rogue Empyrean called "Arvad the Betrayer" used his mental powers to trick his way onto the Lemurian throne, and since then the undersea realm became much more active in its plots, even joining the Axis Powers in World War II. Because of Lemuria's location, the Allies were never able to conquer it, and since the war, Arvad has tried to search the world in attempts to find the knowledge that would allow him to rebuild Lemuria's greatest wonder weapons- and use them to conquer Arcadia.
The descriptions in this chapter emphasize a theme of decadence and decline. The Lemurians were never actually human, and their evil degenerated into lotus-eating and self-indulgence as their population declined. Their technology is still powerful enough to threaten the world, but there are not enough native Lemurians to man their armies and few technicians who can maintain the ancient works, let alone build anything of their caliber. They rule a subterreanean race of Mole Men (actually the descendants of Lemuria's native population) who would seem incredibly alien to humans. Arvad himself is an impressive master villain, perhaps deliberately resembling an old Hulk villain called Tyrannus the Mighty.
The chapter concludes with writeups of Arvad, his inner circle, the Mole Men, and several examples of Lemuria's distinct technology, which is described to give off an appropriately weird feel.
SUMMARY
Style: 3
The artwork on Hidden Lands is the typical Hero Games mixed bag. The cover by Storn Cook features most of the Champions (where's Ironclad?) with their costumes in tatters looking over the dinosaur-inhabited enclave of Arcadia. It's very good work. The artist on the Atlantis chapter is really bad, but his portrait of Queen Mara on page 26 is surprisingly good. The character portraits of the Empyreans are pretty good. The art in the Lemuria chapter is a bit sketchy, but in a good way; it resembles the pictures in one of those 19th Century illustrated novels, contributing to the setting's "antiquated" feel. The best interior work is probably the cartography by Keith Curtis, with the well-detailed maps showing major place names in a cool, angular text. I am pleased to say that as uneven as the artwork is, it's a LOT better than in Dark Champions: The Animated Series.
Substance: 4
Simply by providing background and game stats to some popular mythic settings, Hidden Lands is useful not only for Champions games but can provide effective source material for non-Hero gamers. Indeed, some of these settings (like Shamballah, Beast Mountain and Lemuria) would be VERY appropriate for a Pulp campaign, if the power levels of the NPCs were toned down.
As a Hero fan, I'm also intrigued to see how this book helps all the pieces of the current "Hero Universe", from the pre-Turakian Age, to the Valdorian Age to the present all fit together. It reminds me of how the old World of Darkness books all tied things together into a secret history of the world. Of course, like the oWoD, it also requires one to buy into the attitude that "everything science tells us is a lie" (If the Turakian Age was 70,000 BC, why aren't there any fossils of Elves?).
Again, this book, like most Hero books, is not terribly original. And like most Hero sourcebooks, it isn't intended to be. It simply covers its subjects with a very high level of quality. Hidden Lands is definitely worth checking out for its take on its settings, and contains a great deal of material that a GM could use for any system.
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