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Purpose of the Book:
Ruins of Rathess is a general setting book full of information about the environs of the lost city of Rathess, its denizens, and other information useful to the Storyteller and players alike. It is split up into four chapters, each detailing a different aspect of the setting, and also has a section in the introduction detailing potential uses for the book [which I thought was a nice touch].
The cover is the usual red spine and full colour image affair, with a full colour picture of what appears to be Dragon Blooded Exalts fighting Dragon Kings within ruins of some gargantuan building from the first age. It was painted by Brian Glass.
Internal art is very good in most places, with only a couple of mediocre drawings. This is purely subjective I know, but I've never cared for wash-and-tone-sheet drawings outside of manga comics. That was the only drawing that I felt detracted from the book.
Chapter One: History and the Dragon Kings.
This is the briefest chapter of the book, being only eleven pages long, but it fulfills its purpose admirably in giving a brief overview of the history of Rathess and of the Dragon Kings. The history of Rathess is also the history of the First Age, abeit from a slightly different viewpoint [that of the Dragon Kings]. It has lots of juicy information about the fall of the Solar Deliberative that Storytellers would find useful, even if they have no plans to use Rathess as a setting in their games. The information on the Dragon Kings themselves was somewhat brief, and I would have liked to have seen more detail on creating Dragon King characters to use as both NPCs and possible PCs. Runour has it that details on creating Dragon Kings will be included in the Exalted Player's Guide, which is due out next spring, but I would much rather have seen them in this book.
Chapter Two: The City and the Vicinity.
This chapter is rather more detailed than the last, and has everything you need to plot adventures exploring Rathess. The first part of the chapter details how to get to Rathess and the dangers that travellers are likely to face in doing so. This section details a new desease [disentry] and new flora and fawna, as well as referring the reader back to Creatures of the Wyld. It also mentions the face that the Realm is also interested in exploring these ruins for First Age artifacts, which gives the storyteller another plot hook to use with his Solar players.
There is also a map in this section detailing the local river and land routes to Rathess. The one small criticism I have of this map is they didn't provide information of where this piece of jungle is in relation to the rest of Creation. A little box in the map's top right corner showing the south east and a little cross for Rathess would have been nice.
The next section is the structure and architecture of Rathess, and here it has a map of the city. The map is fairly well detailed, but somehow it reminds me of a pizza for eight. The city is round and split into eight sections, or "Octads", one being full of lakes and canals for the water Dragon Kings, and one being the former human sector. To the south of the watery octad is Lake Therak.
Other diagrams include the triangular living towers and the sky-scraping Flying Towers, as well as a basic sketch of a section of the Underways.
Chapter two is very well written, with plenty of details that do give rise to plot hooks, some of which are obvious, and some of which are a little more subtle.
Chapter Three: Stalkers, Gods, and Other Foes.
This chapter has all the nitty-gritty details on monsters, characters, and creatures that a party of explorers are likely to encounter. There are also some spirits and minor gods detailed in this section, whiis always a nice touch. There are a lot of plot ideas hidden amongst the spirits mentioned, as they are easily transportable to somewhere like Nexus or Whitewall.
Chapter Four: Rewards of Rathess.
Time of Tumult brought you Warstriders, but Ruins of Rathess brings you Warbirds! They remind me of that old fantasy cartoon, Cities of Gold, and I loved it. This is just one of the many goodies from the First Age Artifact grab bag that is Rathess [you can tell that I come from the "Kill them and take their stuff" school of Storytellers].
Summary.
All in all I found Ruins of Rathess to be a very useful tome of ideas, and I do look forward to putting my troupe through these ruins at one point in the not too distant future. With the potential to set up a new Solar Deliberative written into the setting, I think this setting is best used later on in your chronicle.
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