The Bestiary

I always take the following bit of trivia as significant: the first book published for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons was neither the Player’s Handbook, nor the Dungeon Master’s Guide; it was, instead, the Monster Manual. At the risk of drawing too much meaning from a chronology, I think this tells us something about the priorities of many a fantasy gamer. Namely: “what can I or my players fight?” Monsters, perhaps more commonly called antagonists these days, remain an essential element in a fantasy game, alongside swords, sorcery, and semi-clad maidens.

And thus, Morrigan Press’s first supplement for its Atlantis line is the Bestiary, an antagonists atlas, if you will. As with the core book, Atlantis: the Second Age (hereinafter, A2A), this book is essentially an update of material originally published by Bard Games in the mid-80’s, adapted to the new system’s mechanics. There are a few substantive changes, which I will note later in the review. As with my review of the A2A core book, this review attempts to examine the book both from the perspective of an update to a classic and as a brand-new book. I also note that this review is based on the pdf of the Bestiary, rather than the hard-copy.

Appearance

The Bestiary is laid-out much like the A2A core book, in two-column format with the same occult library border design (which, for true trivians, was originally used by then-small publishers Wizards of the Coast for the Talislantan magic supplement, The Archaen Codex). The interior is black-and-white with a substantial amount of art by the core book artists, depicting the various beasts. All is serviceable.

The cover is a P.D. Breeding-Black picture of a dragon fighting…something (possibly a Frost Daemon) in rather blueish tones. It’s not the most evocative piece of Ms. Breeding-Black’s art, but any new work by her is appreciated by me. However, it is interesting to compare it with the cover of the original, also by Ms. Breeding-Black, which depicted a wizard serenely levitating above some odd beastie. The original was much less heroic, but played more to her strengths in capturing a bit of fantastical whimsy.

The most striking aspect of the original book’s art, however, was the interior illustrations. In a quirky twist of fate never again to be duplicated, the entire interior of the original Bestiary was illustrated by a single artist. And what an artist: Bill Sienkiewicz, fresh off his success as artist for Moon Knight and the New Mutants, and about to plunge into cult stardom as the artist of Electra: Assassin. Stephan Michael Secchi, authour and publisher of the original Atlantis books tells me that he more-or-less randomly bumped into Sienkiewicz one day and got him to agree to do the art for a song. I hope it was a heckuva song, because the result was that the original book oozed style. Every beastie had a drawing in the jagged-line style Sienkiewicz was developing that brought the entry to life. I always particularly appreciated the pictures of the beasts interacting and the full page montage of the seven Arch-Demons which looks, for all the world, like a Marvel Comics splash-page.

It would be unfair to ask the new book to live up to that. As noted above, the interior work in the new book is all serviceable and it matches a lot of the core book, which is nice.

Layout

The original book was laid-out in a fairly unique manner: first, the monster descriptions contained no stats at all. Game mechanical information was all tucked into the back, along with smaller versions of the artwork. This allowed GM’s to show the players the pictures, without fear of revealing monster stats (and what GM wouldn’t want to share the pictures?).

Second, the creatures were organized into types, rather than alphabetical order. The original Bestiary was divided into sections such as “Sylvan Creatures”, “Oddities and Monstrosities”, “Humanoids”, and “The Undead”. Each section began with an evocative quotation from some chronicle or scholar, discussing the type of beings. This contributed to the feel of the game. It also made finding a specific creature a little tricky, although the last page was an alphabetical listing of all beasts.

The new book is laid-out in a much more typical fashion: game stats are included in each description and the beasts are all listed in alphabetical order with no “types”. The quotations that formerly introduced each section are now spread around within the book, usually (but not always) next to a representative creature. This lay-out is certainly clearer, although it loses a lot of the old flavour.

I will briefly note that I noticed distinctly fewer typographical and formatting errors in the Bestiary than in the A2A core, which is a good sign for Morrigan Press.

The Beasties Themselves

In general, the beasts presented are drawn from myth and legendry, although some or more faithfully adapted than others. They cover the range from tiny, harmless fae to trolls (several different species) to dragons to the tyrant of demonkind. All of the entries from the original are retained and a number of new entries are added. These new entries are a mixed lot. They are largely imported from Dungeons & Dragons or from Talislanta. The D&D monsters are either the distinctly wacky monsters of the grand old game or the D&D version of mythical monsters. Thus we see the Scavenger Slime and Pseudodragon in the first category and, in the second, the Doppleganger, which has nothing to do with the stories of doppelganger and everything to do with the D&D race of shape-shifting baddies.

The presence of Talislantan additions can be explained by the fact that Morrigan Press is also the current publisher of Tal and, I must assume, felt free to do a bit of cut-and-paste. Thus we see “Servitors” (Talislantan Monads) and “Daemons” (Tal Demons). That last might need a bit of amplification: in the original Bestiary, the fiendish supernaturals were divided between the chaotic hordes of Demons and the infernal hierarchy of the Devils. And yes, that was lifted entirely from D&D (and, for the record, and didn’t care for it then or now in Atlantis). In Talislanta, that distinction was further modulated so that the Devils become a sub-race of exiled Archons (that is, fallen angels) and demons became, quite literally, anti-elementals. Although you can see the original D&D distinction maintained, the Tal version acquired its own distinctiveness. In the new Bestiary, both distinctions operate, by adding in the race of “Daemons” (i.e. Tal Demons) on top of the infernal Demons and Devils. And I like this idea even less than the original idea. The Tal version is distinctive and ought to remain so; the D&D distinction is derivative and ought to remain with that game. In my version, I hearken back to the work that informs both Talislanta and Atlantis, Bard Games’ The Complete Spellcaster, which, in good S&S style, had nothing but demons.

The remaining new monsters include the Neanderthalic “Chono” (who were part of the setting in the original game, but had no entry in the bestiary); the Ulloans, a classic, subterranean “lost race” seeking vengeance against the surface world; additional species of Andamen, the sorcererous “furries” from the First Age; and, for lack of a better description, “others” (although I swear that the Venin, skull-headed snake-things, are from the Fiend Folio or someplace).

Finally, for completeness sake, I note that the Hag entry in the new book has been shorted from the originals, without substantive loss, but with some loss of flavour.

Additional Information

Both the original and the new book had information beyond the monster entries. The original had a short section on the gods and cults of the Antediluvian Age. This was largely reproduced in the new A2A core book, except for the short list of the Old Gods, those primeval beings reputedly defeated by the New Gods, but which are still worshipped by the savage peoples of the world.

The new book replaces this information with a much-longer section discussing the cosmology of the setting. Here the Talislanta concept of the Elementals and the Anti-Elementals (i.e. Demons i.e. Daemons) is introduced. In addition, there is a very flavourful idea that the “Underworld” of the Devils and Demons (but not the Daemons) is literally under the world: the fiends are imprisoned deep within the hollow bowels of the earth. I quite like this little pulp touch.

Both original and new Bestiary conclude with lists of mundane animals that can be encountered, divided into categories such as “Land Mammals” and “Reptiles/Amphibians”. I find the old book much more useful here in that it also contained lists by geographic area, so that, at a glance, you could see what sort of wildlife might be encountered on Atlantis and how that differs from the wildlife of Lemuria.

Conclusion

I have a mixed opinion of the Bestiary, depending upon which viewpoint I am adopting. As an update of the original, I find it generally underwhelming: stylistically, practically, and in some design decisions (like importing Talislantan concepts and putting them on top of the original D&D imports). Although there are some additions I quite like (such as the Underworld), there are outweighed by the additions I don’t like. I would be happy to play a game set in the Antediluvian Age using the new rules with my old Bestiary: I don’t see a burning need to update since the rules are simple enough that I can translate from the old system to the new in my head and still look at the Sienkiewicz pictures.

On the other hand, as a new book, presenting the inhabitants of the Second Age to those who have never encountered it before, I think it’s a good book. The monsters generally, and the scholarly excerpts particularly, add to the flavour of the setting. The Machinae, for example, bring out the science-sorcery vibe of the First Age, and the Ulloans conjured up great pulp scenarios which D&D drow no longer can (to me).

At this point, future publications in the line are up in the air. I certainly hope that Morrigan can continue to put out books for the line. The improved editing was particularly heartening and since the two books now cover everything from the original game, new books would only expand the setting.

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