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The book is a large paperback of 320 pages (a great value at $26.99). Like Pulp HERO, it has an obviously computer-generated cover piece that really doesn't fit the genre- it's also a bit hard to interpret in that the wizard creating a portal to another, brighter time (in the middle of a landscape that looks like the Acropolis in the Mojave Desert) may be from the future or the past. The interior art is not great, but it's good, and Keith Curtis (as usual) produces a lot of well-done and well-detailed maps.
The premise of the setting is that after a relatively peaceful few thousand years after the death of the last Dark Lord, strange omens and mystic disturbances heralded the birth of a new threat, who took the name Kal-Turak and displayed magical power on a global scale, raising a giant spire in the northern wastes as his fortress almost overnight. Since then the evil of his influence on the world has taken both subtle and obvious forms, and as "the story begins" the player characters will inevitably drawn into conflict with his forces.
Even though Kal-Turak is the Dark Lord or "Big Bad" of the setting, he isn't actually statted up here or in any other Fantasy HERO source- but he is, in a way, written up in the Champions sourcebook Conquerors, Killers and Crooks, where he became Takofanes the Undying Lord, a lich who rose from his tomb in Oklahoma with an army of undead and the worst morning breath of the millenium. To give you an idea of how powerful Kal-Turak is supposed to be, Takofanes is written up as a master villain on par with Champions' Dr. Destroyer, and CKC mentions in passing that Takofanes' magic is actually weaker than it was during the Turakian Age.
Chapter One, The Turakian Chronicles: A History Of The Turakian Age is a more detailed review of the world of Ambrethel (which certainly sounds a lot more imaginative than 'Earth'). According to humans, the gods created the first three Men- Ordon, Khor and Sirrenos- as the forefathers of the race, and for a time they lived peacefully on the southern continent of Mitharia only to be attacked by the reptilian Drakine race. This led to the Great Migration to the northern continent of Arduna, where Men encountered the nations of Dwarves and Elves ...and more Drakine. After the first major empire of Men broke Drakine power in Arduna (only to collapse quickly itself) there was a Golden Age of peace and progress lasting two thousand years until the rise of a general called The Lord of the Graven Spear, who had magical power and served the dark gods. The Spearlord ruled half the continent for twelve years until he was slain in accordance with prophecy, and again there was another period of development marked mainly by a great schism within the religion of Men. And then Kal-Turak showed up.
After the history concludes with news of Kal-Turak's development of a stronghold in the frozen north, there's a timeline of major and not-so-major events on a calendar lasting 5000 years as dated from the "first recorded histories of Men" with "the First Epoch" ending with the death of The Lord of the Graven Spear in 2853 and the Second Epoch dating from 2854 to the present (5000).
Chapter Two, Commoners And Kings: The People of Ambrethel is a list of races "commonly chosen by player characters." Since Men (Humans) have no racial Package Deal they are described mainly in terms of ethnic cultures: The descendants of Orden settled the Westerlands of Arduna and resemble medieval Western Europeans. The Mhorecians (descendants of Sirrenos) are vaguely like Central Europeans and the Khorians resemble Mediterraneans but have a more austere culture because of their strict religion. Meanwhile, the Men who stayed in the southern lands have something closer to an Indian or Indonesian culture, which is unusual for a Fantasy universe. Of special note are the Ulronai - a strange people with an innate talent for both magic and war, who rose up against the Lord of the Burning Spear and were defeated and cursed by him, so that "no man shall trust the Ulronai." In game terms Ulronai have access to their own fighting style and magic spells, but also must take two hefty social Disadvantages to reflect the curse. However, the curse only affects the Ulronai as a group, so that an individual may come to be accepted over time (otherwise an Ulronai couldn't join a group of PCs...).
Drakine are a large and tough race with natural armor and weaponry due to their reptilian (or dragon) heritage. Man for man they're tougher than Humans, but they do not reproduce nearly as quickly, so while they were once the main rivals of Men, that is no longer the case. Dwarves and Elves are much like they are in other Fantasy settings, except that Elven longevity apparently led to the development of a language where the short words have a dozen syllables and a typical conversation would bore a Dragonlance Tinker Gnome. Orcs are counted as one of the major races due to their numbers and power, and there's even a "civilized" Orc nation in the south, but that doesn't change the race's general evil reputation.
There are also several other more exotic "lesser" races including Halflings, Gnomes (who in this setting are descended from Dwarf-Halfling crossbreeds), Goblins, Leomachi (carnivorous lion-centaurs), Sesshurma (a barbaric lizard-man race who are despised by Drakine), and Pakasa (cat-men). I also like the Erqigdlit (yes) who are a dog-headed race of northern barbarians. And then there's the Trolls. Trolls are not the thin, rubbery brutes of D&D or Warcraft but like the hulking, magically skilled near-giants of Norse myth. It is theoretically possible to play one with the Package Deal presented, but the list of Powers it includes (mostly enhanced Characteristics) costs 142 of a basic character's 150 points - MUCH more if you use the standard Hero rule that non-superhero characters have to pay double for any stat above 20.
Chapter Three, Strange and Wondrous Lands: The Realms of Ambrethel, is the gazetteer of the setting. It is HUGE. Even by Steve Long standards. 112 pages not including the title on page 49. The campaign map is about 7200 miles horizontal by 5400 miles north to south with the lower area touching the Equator and the northern continent of Arduna being "roughly the size of Eurasia." So it's not the entire planet, but it's at least a quarter of it.
Within this chapter, most of the realms are introduced on a template that includes government type (usually monarchy), the name of the current ruler, the capital, population and race demographics, type of currency, main resources, main religion, military composition and the realm symbol, described in terms of European heraldry. It starts with the deliberately generic Westerlands then swings east through Arduna down to the exotic kingdoms on the continent's eastern coast, down to the southern lands, including the continental mass of Mitharia, which contains Orumbar, the last great Drakine empire. Off the coasts there's also the sinister island of Thun, whose mystic cults rather purposefully resemble those of Lovecraft, with evil sorcerer-priests trying to "liberate" primeval and alien gods from imprisonment within the earth. Then after briefly describing Kal-Turak's holdings, Chapter Three mentions "the Sunless Realms" (aka Underdark) where Dark Elves and considerably stranger creatures build their own kingdoms. It also touches on the possibility of planar travel through spells.
Chapter Four, Beneath The Looming Shadow: Life In 5000 CE (or Life in Ambrethel) is a brief review of "local color" in various parts of the world. This includes the mostly-accurate calendars used by several nations of Men and Greater Races, funeral customs and marriage and family customs. This section touches on the role of women in the world, which in many cases is inferior to men, especially in nations where more authoritarian religions rule. In the Westerlands, the non-human kingdoms and many of the southern kingdoms, women have most or all of men's legal rights. In lands run by the Indusharan or Hargeshite versions of the High Church, moral standards are strict enough to impose a Social Limitation on women (which is usually taken by female characters from or living in these regions). At the worst extreme, women in the southeast lands like Thun have no rights, are treated like slaves and can be sacrificed to alien gods (but then in Thun, this can happen to anybody).
Chapter Four also touches on the popular opinion on magic, which most people rarely see and so regard as often unpredictable and dangerous, "much like the adventurers who so often wield it". This is largely because not everyone can use magic or clerical spells and even those who can do not want their abilities to be too "common" or make the populace too dependent on them, which is more trouble than it's worth. This ties into discussion of applied technology and the institution of slavery, which is fairly common outside the Westerlands. Despite the high "tech level" of magic in the setting, flashy magic-based gadgets (other than Alchemy recipes) are uncommon and magic doesn't replace manual labor or medieval technology levels- partly for social reasons and largely for game-design purposes, so that the world doesn't look like the 21st Century or Star Trek with a magical dressing.
Chapter Five, Wizard, Warrior, Priest, Thief: Turakian Age Character Creation presents data on character professions (classes) that may add onto the racial and cultural packages presented before. As the title indicates, these present generic Fantasy archetypes, much like the Package Deals in Fantasy HERO, but again these are intended to display specific aspects of the setting. Thus most of them are not complete packages in themselves but add onto the Fantasy HERO Package for a particular character type, or give brief bits of info on particular groups like the orders of knighthood, specialist orders of priesthood in the High Church, and so on.
This section also contains important information on Perks (it costs 20 points to be an Emperor), language familiarity levels (based on the heavily-detailed Hero rules for real languages) and various Martial Art schools, only one of which is intended for use without weapons. That art, Tran-Dhuk, is practiced only by the warriors and monks of an isolated land in the south.
Chapter Six, Mysterious Ways: The Gods of Ambrethel, describes both the major gods and major religious beliefs of the land. Most but not all Greater Races believe in the same pantheon of deities, who are extensively described here. In the setting, these deities of the "High Faith" are worshipped by most of the Men, Dwarves, Elves and Orcs, although the evil "Scarlet" gods of this pantheon are worshipped only by the likes of Kal-Turak and before him the Lord of the Graven Spear. The Drakine hold to their own religion which holds that their gods created them from dragons to rule the earth, while there are some civilizations of Men that believe in polytheistic cults, among them the various nations of Vornakkia and the theocracy in Thun. Thus their gods are also described.
After a description of the gods comes a description of the major religions. In most cases worship of the main gods of the High Faith is synonymous with the institution of the High Church, and while each of the Greater Races and each cultural group calls the gods by different names and worships by different standards (with the Indusharan High Church having a lot of Hindu references, for instance), they are all still within the same framework and all acknowledge the same Bonifact, or religious leader, akin to the Pope. However in 2993, a monk named Hargesh claimed he received visions directly from the gods that contradicted the fundamentals of the High Church. Under his influence the land of Vashkor split from the Church hierarchy and became a great empire and the main representative of "Hargeshite" faith. While Hargeshites acknowledge the same gods as the High Church, the religion comes off as more strict and oppressive, especially toward women; it is also culturally chauvinist, largely because none of the other races or neighboring states will follow the truth of the doctrine. Chapter Six concludes with brief descriptions of Thunese and Drakine religious belief and rituals.
Chapter Seven, Mystic Lore: Turakian Magic starts with a list of the various schools or Arcana that spells are grouped into, including various "lesser arcana" like Shamanism and Ulronai Warrior-Magic. The arcana spells are all described in The Fantasy HERO Grimoire with most of the lesser arcana given in Fantasy HERO Grimoire II. This means that you NEED the main Grimoire along with this book and Fantasy HERO to play a spellcaster in this setting. The bright side is that this format allows character writeups to be presented with just a list of spell names and the book and page where each spell appears, e.g. Alzamar's Cloak of the Unseen [FHG 182] means that the spell of that name is fully described in page 182 of the Fantasy HERO Grimoire. This is a lot cleaner than the standard Hero approach where the full writeup of each power is given on the sheet (though with Champions characters the flexibility of superhero concepts makes that necessary).
Another thing that makes the spell system more "user friendly" is the setting rule that once the final Real Cost of a spell is determined after all Limitations, the Real Cost is further divided by 3 - which makes spells very cheap given that they have a lot more flavor Limitations than Champions superpowers, and among other things means that a spell that is normally 4 points or less costs only 1 point in this system, allowing even new PCs to have a decent spell repertoire. (The spells in the Grimoire are the models for this setting's magic, but they are not intended to be setting-specific, so they're presented in that book with their full Real Costs. When using those spells with TA characters, the writeups apply the divisor to each.)
Finally, each arcana uses its own Skill Roll and all spells require a requisite Limitation (Fire spells require casting with the Power skill of Fire Magic, for example) which encourages specialization in arcane magic schools. Priests and paladins only require the Faith Power skill for all their spells, which balances out by the fact that their magics are conditional on the desires of the gods (a -1/2 Limitation). Paladins also get access to their own holy powers that are "spell-like" in that they do not require a Faith roll (and thus do not benefit from the 1/3 divisor). It should also be noted that there isn't anything specifically preventing a spellcaster from using armor (especially given that paladins and Ulronai are both fighters and spellcasters), although most priests and wizards don't seem to do so for flavor reasons. Besides, they tend not to have the Strength to wear armor, and have access to Force Field spells anyway.
After a brief discussion of magical training and GM guidelines for prices of "magic as commodity" (buying spells and magic items), this chapter gives spell writeups for two lesser arcana not detailed in the Grimoires: the aforementioned Ulronai Warrior-Magic (which as you'd guess is optimized for combat buffs) and Theurgy, by which an arcane wizard can channel the powers of the gods and the heavens, including the power of the five "greater stars" (identified in the GM's Vault as Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn). However, because these powers are not used with divine sanction, Theurgy spells require Side Effects (which most Turakian arcana spells and divine spells don't). There are also quite a few sect-specific divine magic spells with both combat and non-combat applications. Finally there is a list of several magic items in addition to the ones in the Grimoire and FH, including unique legendary items (artifacts) like The Bloodstained Scrolls of Thronek.
Chapter Eight: Gamemastering The Turakian Age is the GM's advice section. It includes a GM's Vault section with several very interesting details, among them the true parentage of Kal-Turak and the nature of the gods and why they allow schisms like the Hargeshite faith.
This chapter starts with a brief later history of what happened in the Hero Universe after the starting date of year 5000 in the calendar of Men. Essentially, Kal-Turak began his conquests in 5010 and in only a few hundred years conquered the world. But in 5500 the resistance managed to forge a great blade specifically to slay him and after an epic battle Kal-Turak's armies were defeated and the lord was finally put down. Peace reigned for over two thousand years, but Kal-Turak's necromancy eventually brought him back as Takofanes the undying lich, and in this form he reconquered the world and ruled with even greater evil. By that point his power was so great that when heroes were able to confront and defeat him a second time, the magics unleashed by both sides were enough to destroy the continents and remake the world (thus leading to the Valdorian Age).
So while there are many, many other story seeds in this chapter, the first suggestion for a campaign theme is "Swords Against The Ravager," which is based on the premise that the PCs and their allies become aware of Kal-Turak's strategy and work to undermine it by attacking his underlings, forcing him to take action before he becomes nigh-invulnerable, so that in theory he can be confronted directly and stopped. Of course the problem with that idea is that if Kal-Turak is ONLY as powerful as a world-class Champions villain and the PCs are on a human level with a few spells and magic items, they still don't stand a chance. It might be better to do what Tolkien did and have the Dark Lord defeated only indirectly or symbolically. Otherwise the PCs will have to get to at least Rand al'Thor level to face him. If that's what you want.
Chapter Nine, Nobles, Knights and Necromancers: The Renowned of Ambrethel gives writeups of several "enemy" NPCs and a few potential allies. These are all very good, coming from a variety of backgrounds including a powerful evil wizard, a heroic nobleman and a destitute beggar who happens to know pretty much everything about the City of Aarn. They're not only interesting backgrounds, they provide good examples of how experienced characters with spells and weapon Martial Arts look in the writeup lists. There's also a one-page subject index. Usually Hero Games indices are a LOT more extensive than that, but apparently the one for this book was so extensive that they had to put it up as a free download PDF on their website.
SUMMARY
For effective purposes "High Fantasy" translates as "generic/D&D style Fantasy." Some people dismiss this stuff as a plain-vanilla approach. More to the point, they wonder why another company would produce such material when Wizards/D&D has this market covered.
Well, speaking for myself, I like plain vanilla. More specifically, having grown up with my tastes cultured by the old TSR AD&D material, and the genuinely involved and imaginative campaign settings the company produced, I find myself still drawn to that genre and its potential. I also became painfully aware of how limited and restrictive AD&D's rule system was, and while 3rd Edition D&D did a great job of improving that system, most of the attempts to make D20 a universal system just showed how limited and restrictive it remained in comparison to something like HERO or GURPS that was designed to be universal. So it makes sense for one of those universal systems to demonstrate its potential by tackling the Fantasy field.
The Turakian Age works because like Forgotten Realms or some other fantasy settings, its scope provides potential for any level of play. This setting is so large and full of STUFF that it comes across like a real world, especially in contrast to the shrunken scale and stunted characters of The Valdorian Age (the successor FH setting to this one, which is to Turakian Age what Conan is to Kull... only not quite). There's practically no end of things that PCs could do or that GMs could devise for them.
Furthermore, HERO's character creation system in combination with the setting rules here gives players a lot more options for character design than they'd have in D&D (under any edition... yes I'm looking at you, 4th). In particular, the organized magic system creates a great transition for fans of D&D magic, making spellcasters actually feel like spellcasters and not just low-level Energy Blasters (which was a big problem with previous Fantasy HERO material) while also removing a lot of the rigid restrictions of D&D's "fire-and-forget" magic system.
This also means (again) that you need the rulebooks, especially Fantasy HERO Grimoire, to make full use of the Turakian Age setting, so Hero-haters will find less to use here than they would with some of Steve Long's modern setting books (like Pulp HERO or Dark Champions) that have more universal application. After all, if you want D&D, you have D&D. But if you want High Fantasy and loads of adventure with a different perspective from the previous D&D paradigms, then The Turakian Age can't be recommended strongly enough.
(NOTE: While I don't normally get to do playtest reviews, I did run a campaign of this for a while, and wrote a chronicle of it on the Hero Games website- unfortunately the saved text seems to have completely mangled the quotation marks, so the text is practically unreadable.)
Style: 4
The Turakian Age is just enough like D&D World to appeal to that desired audience and just different enough to warrant attention.
Substance: 4
The breadth of this setting allows the GM to build almost any style of fantasy campaign.
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