You want darkness? You want evil, immortal characters who will stop at nothing to get what they want? What's that you say, "Vampire: the Masquerade"? Hah. They're amateurs. Check out the
real bad guys...
The Shadow Court is...well, consciously evil might be the kindest thing to say about them. They're selfish, corrupted, immensely powerful and knows things that would make an Elder Kindred go...um, well, not pale...blush?
To put it in an easy way, the Sabbat and the Camarilla are both trying to avoid Gehenna. (Well, most of them, in their own ways...)
The Shadow Court are trying to get it to happen. Because when the vampires and shapeshifters have slaughtered each other, and the Technocracy lies in ruins, the Shadow Court will rule the world in Eternal Winter. At least, that's the main idea.
The fact that one of the SC noble houses are almost directly tied to the Wyrm, and that one has to perform a little distasteful thing called Rhapsody (burning out mortal dreamers for a massive fix of Glamour) so as not to begin aging prematurely, and that the third is absurdly overconfident and arrogant...well, let's not talk about that...
And that's without mentioning the really, really evil members of the Shadow Court...the Thallain...
Ogres and Beasties and Boggarts and things that go bump in the night, oh my...
The section on the various factions within the Shadow Court is excellently done, making it quite clear that these are people you want to avoid with, say, a ten thousand mile radius? Especially the Children's Crusade (Childling assassins) and the Glowing Eye (corrupters allied with the Black Spirals, fomori and certain more unhealthy vampires...).
Then comes some descriptions of the Unseelie "special" days, how normal Unseelie fae behave, and last, the Thallain, wild, savage creatures without a Seelie side...(so they switch from wild...to wilder).
Now, what about Arts? Oh yes, they have those...mostly designed to be dark counterparts of the cuter Seelie versions. Mockery is a direct way of going against Sovereign, Delusion is a cruel, mocking version of Chicanery, etcetera...
The style is excellent, the graphics are lovely, the design is dark and slightly malevolent, and the texts within are...more than adequate. Actually, the other WW writers might take some hints here. They manage to make the Shadow Court seem mysterious and secretive without leaving out information, like some other supplements have done...and the descriptions of the different factions are quite informative...
One of the most amusing things to do is to use it to confuse the hell out of melodramatically angsty Vampire powergamers (there are quite a few, unfortunately), as I did, and to convince the players that whatever they do, the Inconnu and the Shadow Court are just using them for cannon fodder...
Style: 4 (Classy and well done)
Substance: 5 (Excellent!)
