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So, I was hooked from the start. Skimming through the book I found elves that hadn’t lost touch with their fey heritage, a huge empire, and lots of rules to back it all up. The artwork is nice and the layout looks good. The book struck me as being a little thin … more about that later, but I picked it up and started reading when I got home.
Chapter one is only a few pages long and serves as an introduction to the world. It’s a nice touch because I can hand the book to my players and say “just read the first few pages” to get the swing of things.
Chapter two is where it all gets started and it starts as a bit of a dud. The elves and dwarves are “elder races” in this world and they get some nice special abilities. No problem there, except that these abilities are presented in the form of racial levels presented as a 5 level prestige class. None of these racial levels gets a bonus to spellcasting. None. To make things trickier the book suggests that players must start out with at least one level of these racial classes which basically nixes any chance of being a decent spellcaster and getting access to these nifty abilities. The book does have the option for letting the players use the standard ECLs and start out with all the abilities. This is something I would unreservedly recommend.
Gnomes and Halflings are also part of Morningstar, the various subraces get some tweaks to distinguish them, but nothing like the treatment dwarves and elves received. Humans are presented “as is”. There is a new race, the Thull. The Thull are a kind of orc predecessor, who taught mankind everything it knows. I was not enamored of this addition. For a wise, older race their race abilities focus on survival, they even receive a penalty to Lore checks. The game mechanics don’t match up with the game fiction.
We’re still in Chapter Two and moving on to classes. The Artificer is an item creating class and I’m going to go light on evaluating it. This class takes up a total of ten pages, most of it item creation rules. It’s a little intimidating. The class doesn’t cast spells, but it can use spell books and mimic those spells in items. The other new class is the Eidolon which is sort of an alternative paladin, but more focused on personal glory.
The prestige classes are a little bland and are more reminiscent of what organizations would exist in the world of Morningstar than what would grab a player’s attention. The Dolphin Legionnaire is a prime example of this. Morningstar isn’t an oceanic game. So why do we have Flipper here?
There are a few new feats, with the metamagic ones really shining out. My personal favorite is Mage Staff, which lets you store a single spell in a staff. This is pretty interesting, and has been added to my own game.
Page 59 hosts the start of chapter three, Mystic Forces. The Morningstar setting takes place on the world of Thraxis, but it has a water-world moon named Arrill. The two worlds create a kind of nexus that generates all the magic. This cosmology is pretty important because it drives what magic is strong and weak at any given time. This is pretty central to Morningstar because it cascades into types of magic lingering about different parts of the world. These are called signatures. A given area might have a signature of “Auran/Terran: 3” which means I’m going to get bonus metamagic feats added to my air spells and air spells will be harder to resist. Earth spells will sustain penalties. Additionally, the people and the cultures in the area will tend to have an air theme about them. The cultures and the signatures feed off of each other, which adds an excellent high fantasy theme to the setting. Several new spells are also in this chapter, most of them are at least 4th level and there are plenty of 9th level ones.
Chapter Four is about the main Empire called Brendir. It’s a really good rundown of pretty much anything you want to know about this society. Their beliefs, dress, military, government, weapons, armor, transport and yes even their pets are all covered. This is an excellent chapter. It also covers the various provinces of Brendir and their obligatory signatures. My only complaint, and this is reaching a bit, is the timeline which is somewhat sparse.
Chapter Five covers the rest of the world, but not nearly to the detail that Brendir had. The other Empires have their provinces listed and a rough outline of the various cultures, but that’s pretty much it. The one I would have really liked to have seen more of is Zeikrus, a dragon populated land that is in perpetual civil war. All of these empires look great and could easily stand on their own alone.
Chapter Six covers the pantheons of Morningstar. Gods are a little malleable in Morningstar. If a god of law has an offshoot that worships him as a god of tyranny, and if that cult grows, eventually that god will indeed become a god of tyranny. Clerics do not worship a specific god, they worship an entire pantheon and can draw any two domains and one weapon that the entire pantheon offers. The pantheons operate completely independently of each other, and some are unaware of each other’s existence. You’d think the clerics might drop a hint or two about that over the years, but apparently not. The pantheons don’t really stand out. They each have their own flavor, but the only one that grabbed me was the Ijamvhul who essentially worship themselves. An Ijamvhul cleric basically thinks of himself or herself as utterly amazing and they generate their own divine power. Cool stuff, but we only get two longish paragraphs on them. Pity.
Chapter Seven is the adventure chapter in which we find … a starting adventure? No! It’s all about the prophecy that spells doom for the land of Morningstar. There is the “greater canticle” which outlines things in very broad strokes and the “minor canticle” which is a lot more specific. The major canticle is meant to be the big signs of doom, usurper gods coming back and Morningstar’s equivalent of dark riders who are fleshed out (especially the Flesh Smith! Pun! Ha! Thank you ladies and gentlemen, I’ll be here all week!), and the various other bad things that will happen. The minor canticle is supposed to pertain to the party, and here the book gives the DM guidelines for creating a minor canticle. We end the chapter with the factions of Morningstar. They’re all doomsday cults with the exception of The Nation, an organization of Halflings who are attempting to reclaim their own land and culture. There’s only about a page and a half on these factions, which is also kind of disappointing, but it makes for a nice segue into my conclusions.
Conclusion
This book is incomplete. It needs another 50-100 pages of pretty much anything. There are attempts made to bring these cultures to life, but the only real success is the empire of Brendir. From that I can gather the impression that the core game is meant to be based in Brendir, but then why all the racial classes for elves and dwarves? Maybe if I sat down with the author, I’d have a better idea of the world, but as it is now I can only say that this book is the finest presentation of a homebrew setting that I’ve seen. If Morningstar is re-released, I will take a look at it, but right now I can only say that this product is average. I do not mean to damn the book in this way, there are good ideas that can be swiped and placed into an existing game. However, as I said, it is currently incomplete.
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