"The invasion of the skorne and the blighting of the frozen north are events that have brough the terrors of the wilderness to our doorstep. If there is one lesson you will learn from this book, it is that you were never safe cowering behind lock and key. The shadows bumping in the night have grown long and bold. They openly stalk even the bravest men of the kingdoms. An ignorant man is a dead man, and sometimes it takes more than just a bigger gun. Arm yourself with knowledge, and buy my book!" -Professor Viktor Pendrake

Discover the most dangerous and deadly creatures known to the Iron Kingdoms in this tome of over 50 monsters for Iron Kingdoms role-playing.

Read Professor Viktor Pendrake's journey to eastern Immoren and explorations of the Skorne Empire. With far more than just monsters, this tome is a treasure trove for the Iron Kingdoms Enthusiast. With this book you will:

• Discover clues to the destruction of ancient Lyoss, the doomed elven empire.
• Learn the legacy of the mysterious giants of Immoren.
• Explore unseen corners of Immoren and adventure where no man has stepped.
• Behold the entirety of Immoren with a brilliantly illustrated full-color poster map.
• Run an entire campaign in the Skorne Empire with three new character classes.
• Challenge characters of many levels with fearsome creatures exhaustively detailed by the Iron Kingdoms' foremost expert, Professor Viktor Pendrake.

Let's get right on into it, shall we? I mean, I want to read this thing, not sit here explaining a bunch of junk that has nothing to do with the contents of the book.

Phsyical Review

The book itself is hardbound, glossy cover, and as for page count, it's just a little too thin to lay a dime flat between the covers. This seems like an extremely thick book for fifty monsters- but then, it's supposed to have a lot more, isn't it? My rampant Privateer fanboy-ism says more=good, so I expect they won't disappoint. Spine appears to be clusters of pages glued to cloth, which is then attached to the cover- slightly concerning just because it looks like they might've skimped a bit on the glue holding the pages- but on closer inspection I think that's just the cloth folding over to hide it. Nice, solid, hefty book. I'll have to sacrifice something from my D20 shelf- but I don't really need the Monster Manual now, do I?

The map is attached to the back cover via rubber cement, two spots- removal leaves a slight discoloration to the inside cover, but there's no text so it's nothing to worry about. The map itself is glossy, a four-panel fold-out that's smaller than letter size per panel- lemme grab a ruler... 10 15/16ths by 7 15/16ths per panel, it's still a good setup. Landscape orientation, and a lot of detail- you've got what looks like all or nearly all the names from the Iron Kingdoms World Guide map, with western Immoren taking up roughly a third of the continent. If your players have ever wanted to go somewhere else, you've got a heck of a lot of options. Lots to work with here.

Right- let's move on to the innards, shall we?

Contents

Checking, there's a couple pages of advertisements in the back, so the last 'gaming page' is 237. Two hundred and thirty-seven pages, $40 MSRP, you're at roughly $0.168 per page. Not bad. The copyright text is amusing, as always- I won't spoil it but they've had fun here, oh yes.

Contents page starts at Ancestral Guardian on page 6, but the contents themselves are page 3. Monsters go through to page 175, it appears, with the remaining devoted to other bits- Intro to Eastern Immoren, Skorne Empire, Weapons & Gear, templates for beasties, and Skorne Character Classes. No, Dis, you don't get to play one. Of any of them.

Flipping through, I can quickly see that the black and white inked illustrations from the original Monsternomicon have been faithfully continued, and in fact most of the format has remained the same, including at least some of the fonts. The stat blocks and flowing script of Pendrake's notes are all there. Definitely a 'volume 2' to the original.

Introduction

Short introduction to the book, filling pages 4 and 5. It highlights the background of what's happened to Pendrake to lead him into all this newfound knowledge, as well as a brief detail of the book's background in real world terms.

Ah- there's some slight changes to the format, and a nice addition or two as well, all listed here. Senses, that's a nice thing to know, isn't it? And Immunities/Resistances have been separated out as well. Useful.

Page 5 is, regardless of the Hordes/Warmachine tradition, wordless. It's a black and white scaled-down copy of the map that comes with the book. Nice- if only as a backup if you don't have yours at hand, or some slippery gobber's gone and grabbed it out of the book before you bought it. I suggest checking that, by the by.

Wee Beasties

Alright, so let's get into the monsters then. Looking immediately, I can see that there's a broad variety covering things from the Hordes game as well as a good number of new critters that we haven't seen prior. It's a good mix, with creatures from western Immoren as well as further east, and as with the original Monsternomicon a good portion appear to be at least remixes of old favorites- Basilisks, Cyclops, Chimera, Hydra, Giants, and so forth. Some are remarkably different- if your players aren't paying attention running into a Bloodstone Manticora could be much like facing down a Gazebo. Only this one fights back.

A notable lack is the beast on the front cover, the Shredder of Hordes fame. This has been noted by Privateer, and apparently it was a space-saving issue: due to the fact the Shredder is just a Harrier without wings (give or take), they decided to list the Harrier and let people extrapolate the Shredder. I don't know if this is something I care for, but it's not as if they skimped on the monsters. Also noteworthy: the razorbat, of summon razorbats fame in the IKCG, finally gets a full-fledged monster entry. Not that they've had a wealth of skipped opportunities, but it is here. No need to borrow the IKCG from your players to look them up.

I don't have the time to read each entry (well, not while writing this anyways) but just going down the list, it's a nice set. A very nice set indeed.

Oh, and before I forget- it also has the usual useful silhouettes of a human and the beastie on the upper right of the stat blocks. Gives you a great idea as to just how big a critter is, instead of just vague 'large' or 'collossal' or whathaveyou.

Tourist Guide to Eastern Immoren

That's about what it is, to be frank- five pages and a whole continent, not exactly the royal tour, is it? Or maybe it is- I can't say I've ever been on one. In any case the five pages are fairly dense text, with important names highlighted in bold, and just one illustration. Not really the sort of thing that'll map your game out for you, but then, after reading a bit, managing to take up five pages when describing what's mostly desolate wasteland isn't too shabby. Huge sections of untamed or abandoned wilderness, really. Certainly worth reading up on if you want to head that way, but plan on spinning a lot of whole cloth as you go. Still, this is the place to be if you're after traditional D&D type adventuring with wandering monsters, ruins, and the like. Just keep in mind the nearest town is a few thousand miles thattaway...

Skorned

The section on the Skorne Empire stretches from page 181 to 210, and I'd wager that there's not much better you could do with the space. If you're familiar with the Iron Kingdom's World Guide, there's a similar layout here, if in much more cramped space. There's details on the Skorne as a whole, including history and society, social ranks, and schools that you can attend. Illustrations offer a good look at the way things are when they Skorne aren't swinging a sword at someone (note this usually involves swords anyways) and gives the same treatment to the Empire as has been given to Cygnar, Khador, or Llael in the IKWG: all major and minor cities are looked at individually as well as the nation as a whole.

I think I would still want to draw at least in part upon the information in the Hordes: Primal rulebook, but this is an excellent (if short) writeup on this area. It's certainly enough for casual games, and a solid foundation to build off of if you want to truly get into detail with a Skorne campaign.

Shopping Trip

The Weapons & Gear section is divided into two unequal parts- the first, and shorter, portion is devoted to yet more gear for Western Immoren. This is a nice selection of things you may find useful in unusual locales, like the far north, or underwater. Most of it isn't going to see use by your average dungeon delvers, but if you're like me and you get a thrill at the idea of collapsing shovels, frame packs and mechanik's boots, you'll like this stuff. Oh, and there's a staff that lets you call down lightning. Minor detail.

The Skorne equipment section's more verbose, but it rather has to be. Most of it deals with unusual things, rather than backpacks and the like which (one assumes) the Skorne have the same as humans. Weapons of all varieties (well, all varieties of pointy) and a selection of armor's presented, as well as a few bits of gear.

Commemorative Plates

The next section in the book is Quickplates, which is Privateer's take on templates. Rather than a 'skeleton' template or anything like that, these are small add-ons which adjust a monster's abilities to fit a situation. For instance, the Haywire quickplate which is for use with out-of-control constructs, or the Alpha quickplate from the original Monsternomicon (for that lead beastie).

The Monsternomicon Vol. II gives us six quickplates, three that are ubiquitous, and three that are Skorne-related. It's brief, to the point, and takes up two pages. Quick. Fitting.

Insert 'Class' cliche joke here

Alright, we've got three brand new classes for the Skorne. They're not pretty, and honestly I expect that most people would only use them for NPCs. They're not happy, friendly people. But then, neither are the Skorne.

The Paingiver class is basically just that- a basic class that excels at causing pain. They're not quite warriors and not quite rogues- they are experts at torture, and all their class abilities extend from this. It's not something I would suggest for most campaigns, and not something I'm entirely comfortable describing here. Suffice to say it's unique as a base class, with a mixture of arcane, skill-based, and combat abilities, and a code of behavior.

The Mortitheurge is variation on the necromancer, one who draws upon pain, life, and death to make use of magic. In particular the class draws upon injuries to fuel spells, and carries some rather harsh penalties. It is, after a fashion, the Skorne arcane basic class. Again, not something for most campaigns.

The Extoller is a prestige class that effectively exists as a branch of the Mortitheurge- where the Mortitheurge focuses on injury and the manipulation of the living (or nearly dead), the Extoller focuses upon the spirit and the already dead. This primarily focuses on dealing with the spirits of ancestors, which with the Skorne means you'll spend a lot of time talking to rocks, and you'll poke your eye out. As these rocks are also a requirement of Skorne magical devices, the Extoller could be seen as a sort of artificer, although only indirectly.

The Roundup

Overall I'd say this is a good book. Dealing with the section on the Skorne classes left me a bit out of sorts- but I would prefer to think of that as a good thing. Whether it's a good thing because of what it says about me or because of what it says about the quality of the writing, I leave up to others to decide.

As a sourcebook for the Iron Kingdoms I think it's quite solid, and even if you never got past the monsters you'll find the money well-spent. I look forward to sitting down and reading through all of the monster entires at my leisure- and then throwing some of them at my players. Oh, yes indeed. I'm already taking notes.