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Like other Caste Books, Eclipse is broken down into the following:
Short Fiction Story (A Dramatic Tale) Introduction Chapter One: Our Souls Through Our Eyes Chapter Two: Obligations of the Caste Chapter Three: The World Awaiting Us Chapter Four: Voices Not Our Own Chapter Five: Dreams of the First Age Chapter Six: Magic of the Eclipse Appendix 1: Signature Characters Appendix II: Other Notable Eclipse Caste
So here’s the breakdown for those who’ve never picked up a caste book before.
The introduction provides a quick breakdown of the different chapters and a list of source material ranging from television to fiction. A nice handy reference point, especially for a caste like Twilight, because they’re not martial art masters, assassins, or spellcasters but “Travelers, diplomats and spies”.
After the intro, we get Our Souls through Our Eyes. If you’ve ever wanted some ideas about how to work a character’s background before and during his Exaltation, this section is for you. It takes the ‘signature’ characters, the characters fully written up here including the cover figure, and shows what they were like before their Exaltation and how their Exaltation came about.
Obligations of the Caste shows what these characters feel and believe about their Caste and how it fits into the setting. Sure, there’s a general section that provides quick information on what the Caste used to do, i.e. the law makers and keepers of the Old Realm, now a mockery of itself under the Dragon Blooded, but the real meat of this section is the different examples of each character with some text pulled to the side to showcase how to use some ability or important role playing ideas like how to keep open lines of communication, or the importance of allies, even to beings as powerful as the Exalted.
Chapter Three, The World Awaiting Us, shows what each member thinks of different factions including other Solar Exalted, The Realm and the Dragon-Blooded, The Threshold, Other Exalted, The Deathlords, and even mortals. For those new to role playing or looking for examples of how this caste works in the setting, it’s another chapter that can help shed some light on character role playing. Because it’s different people, you get different opinions. Not a great-unified response but one that allows the player to make his character different from the other.
It’s important to note that this isn’t just one of the characters ranting about how they hate the Deathlords and have vowed to kill them, but sometimes illustrated through a short tale of interaction. For example, Rune gets a bit of coverage with his encounter with the Abyssal Exalted. Nice touch of drama as the Abyssal in question is Rune’s sister.
Now I’ve got to admit, if this was a hunter book, I’d probably have put it down due to the heavy amount of fiction. Perhaps d20 has spoiled me in that I look forward to seeing a lot of game mechanics. Perhaps because this is a setting that’s not earth and sets its own history and background where there isn’t a lot of information available on the setting, I enjoyed it. I found it useful to read about the different experiences that the characters went though. I found it helpful to see how the Deathlords, Mortals, and other creatures react to the Eclipse Caste members.
Chapter Four, Voices Not Our Own, is an important chapter because the Eclipse Caste are so social. While the last chapter showed what each signature character though of the world, this chapter turns things around. It’s not too appropriate for a player’s guide as it’s telling the character what to expect in many ways, but since this is a dual-purpose book, it’s fitting. My one complaint here though, it that it ties itself too closely with the ‘signature’ characters as those reactions recorded are as they related more often to those specific characters by people they knew.
Dreams of the First Age, Chapter Five, is a short chapter. One of the most interesting things, to me, about Exalted, is that in some aspects, the characters are mighty reincarnations of past heroes whose souls continue to move through time while retaining some previous knowledge. The snippets here help the GM flesh out those occasional flashes.
Now for me, as a player and GM who loves rules, I looked forward to Chapter Six, Magic of the Eclipse. It starts off simply enough with Charms. We get Bureaucracy charms like Forgetful Bureau Charm that can erase evidence, Martial Arts based on Mantis Style including the Grasping Claw Method and the Crushing Claw Technique. Perfect for any social creature like the Eclipse, the Socialize charms enable the user to make spying on them more difficult, read an enemy’s body language, or even determine motivation of a subject.
Not everyone wants new charms though. Some want to whip right through to the Hearthstones and Artifacts. The Heartstones range from two to three dots like the Merchant’s Jewel that provides a bonus to Conviction when buying or selling merchandise while the Jewel of Whispers uses the Jewel as a listening device. They can plant it and listen to the sounds around it as if they were there. Useful and compact, the Folding Ship can be carried when not needed while the Iron Horse, a beast made of iron, is not only intelligent, but can travel without tiring.
The Signature Characters in appendix I follow the standards. Name, Quote, Prelude, Roleplaying Hints, Image, Equipment, illustration and apparently hand written character sheet with all boxes and circles filled in.
Appendix II, Other Notable Eclipse Caste, provides name, illustration, and character background information. I actually wish that these characters had more details to them as they’re not starting off characters and could provide some excellent templates to base your own NPCs off of.
Art in the book follows previous books in that most of it is top notch, making Exalted one of the best illustrated fantasy games and giving it a very anime style while maintaining its own internal consistency. Layout and editing are normal for a White Wolf product. In my opinion, for 96 pages, $16.95 is a pretty good deal.
If you’re a GM looking to round out his Eclipse NPCs or a PC looking to try out something different, than Caste Book Eclipse has something for you.
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