In the midst of the legion horde, the Thousand Eyes of the Destroyer laughed at the blood of the fallen and the souls of the dead.

This collection of texts tell of the many battles of the Galchutt known as Bhor Kei – the Eyes of Legion, the Laughing Destroyer, the Black Reveler.

ASPECT OF THE TITAN: “Its quaded arms – each raised in beclawed glory – wrought fountains of blood and rivers of gore. And in its flesh was reflected the gore of its fury.”

In its aspect as the titan, Bhor Kei maintains a humanoid form with four arms, each ending in huge, terrible claws like serrated cleavers. The eyes of the Bhor Kei titan glisten deeply green, staring out from a long and pointed face. In this form it strides the fields of battle wreaking destruction.

The Aspect of the Titan is also referred to as the “Eye of the Legion”.

ASPECT OF THE MANY EYES: “A murder of craven eyes. A fury of orbed sight. Seeing all that is ending; knowing all that is broken.”

In its aspect of the many eyes, Bhor Kei is seen as a cloud of bloodshot eyes and blackened wings. In this aspect it has no true shape or substance, but exists as a spiritual manifestation of destructive might.

In all its forms, Bhor Kei is seen to work alone. But there are those texts which describe it as actually representing the destructive thoughts of a multitude of beings – and in that form it is the Many-Eyed Prelate of the Blooded Death.

The Aspect of the Many Eyes is also known as the “Eyes of Legion”.

THE TRAIN OF SOULS: Many tales claim that every living thing that Bhor Kei destroys is doomed to follow forever in its ethereal wake – ghosts bound in spirit to its material form for all eternity. From these souls, Bhor Kei is said to draw upon an endless reserve of strength and power.

THE PAEAN OF DESTRUCTION: Bhor Kei is guided only by emotion and instinct. It lives in the moment. It lives for destruction. It lives with a tireless lust for destruction.

The sum and total of its life and deeds is the Paean of Destruction – the Song of All Chaos. In this song, Bhor Kei moves across the many worlds, rending and killing with a scream of dire pleasure. It revels in its endless pursuit of annihilation.

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The Rimbound series by Stella Condrey is a set of twelve Mothership trifold supplements and adventures. These are pay-what-you-want and also available for free download. (However, while they’re available on a variety of platforms, it seems that the series has only been partially uploaded to many of these platforms, so you may need to poke around a bit to track them all down.)

I’m reviewing these in the order I read them in. I admit this is quite idiosyncratic, but I wrote these reviews as I went along, and when I reorganized them into numeric order I discovered it was like giving a presentation after dropping your notecards on the floor and shuffling them into a random order. So you’ll just have to join me on this journey.

RIMBOUND #6: REDSCREEN

One of the challenges with executing a micro-supplement, whether trifold or otherwise, is making sure that it offers something of value beyond the basic pitch. This is something that Redscreen: A Disease for Androids unfortunately struggles with.

The basic concept is that Redscreen is a virus that infects AIs (including androids) and makes them murder humans.

And now that I’ve told you that, you don’t need to buy Redscreen, because you already know everything in the trifold. Ostensibly there are three sample infected AIs, but these largely have no actual value: One full panel (out of six) explains in laborious detail that a space station AI could turn off the life support systems. Another full panel goes into great detail about how a ship AI could slam automatic doors to hurt the PCs. If you can make the intuitive leap from “infected AI wants to do harm” to “will use computer-controlled systems to do harm,” you’re good to go here.

The other challenge is making sure your micro-supplement includes all the necessary information to use it. Here, too, Redscreen struggles. For example, guidelines are given for what to do “if a PC becomes infected with Redscreen,” but it forgets to explain how the PCs could get infected in the first place.

GRADE: D-

RIMBOUND #11: UNDER THE DUNES

Under the Dunes is a pretty solid foundation for a cool adventure: While scanning a desert planet for ore deposits, they stumble across the buried wreck of a spaceship. As they breach the wreck, a sandstorm rolls in: It’s going to be hours before they can leave. What mysteries, dangers, and wealth will they find inside?

Opening up the trifold, there’s a good map and a functional key.

Unfortunately, with this foundation in place, it seems as if Condrey wasn’t entirely sure what to do with it. I’m left with the impression that she just started throwing stuff at the wall and hoping something would stick: The ship is from three years in the future! …and maybe one of the PCs could find their own dead body? It’s a cool moment, but there’s no explanation for how this happened and no real development of the idea.

Okay, so there’s a squad of military fleshbots onboard! They’ll activate and attack the PCs! … but why? And also, what are they doing on an ore transport vessel?

In short, there’s a bunch of ideas here, but nothing fully developed or coherent.

With that being said, I’m slipping Under the Dunes into the stack of adventures for my open table. But it’ll need a little TLC to build something compelling on top of its foundation.

(While Under the Dunes provides the sample desert world of Euthana, it would be pretty easy to locate this adventure on The Desert Moon of Karth, among others.)

GRADE: C-

RIMBOUND #9: UNDER THAT BLACK SKY

The clever thing that Under That Black Sky does is taking TWO cool concepts and combining them into a single adventure. If an adventure only has one big idea, it can be easy for it to run out of gas, but when you combine ideas you usually end up with something greater than the sum of its parts as you combine and contrast them in countless ways.

The first idea here is a colony planet with a cloud cover so thick that no visible light can penetrate, so you can only see what your artificial lights illuminate.

The second idea is that this planet was once the bioengineered hunting grounds for an alien species, and now something has awakened the ancient xenofauna generators, unleashing horrific beasts into the wilderness.

These aren’t just cool sci-fi concepts, they’re both unique vectors for horror.

Here’s the problem:

Why are there are no monster stat blocks or descriptions?

To let the beauty of your imagination create your own Hyades V, dear warden.

So you completely failed to actually write the scenario, but you’re pretending it’s a virtue?

Well… That’s too bad.

GRADE: F

RIMBOUND #7: GEAR FOR A SPACEFARER

The central feature of Gear for a Spacefarer is a couple dozen pieces of new equipment for Mothership. I quite liked this. Items like airlock foam, jerry cans, an algal starter kit, and trail cameras provide a nice blend of unique functionality and gap-filling. There are several times, while reading through the equipment list that I realized something should obviously be available for sale and even more where I said, “Ooh! That’ll be fun!” Like all good equipment lists, therefore, this one both adds tangible depth to the game world and great gameplay options.

I would, however, recommend reviewing the listed prices. Many of them seemed a little wonky to me, with the worst example being a drone listed at 2% the price of a drone from the core rulebook.

Gear for a Spacefarer also includes the Cadwal Trade Depot, a caravan of vessels providing the services of a C-class starport. This is only sketched in with the broadest strokes, but does include a fun 1d10 table of plot hooks that immediately started inspiring my creative muse.

GRADE: B

RIMBOUND #10: COLD OPENING

Twelve years ago the PCs were placed in cryosleep onboard the Thelma 2. Three months ago, the ship went off course. Two minutes ago the ship’s AI woke the PCs up.

You’ll be shocked (shocked!) to discover there’s an alien predator called the Cretin onboard.

Nothing wrong with a good trope. (Although I will note that this particular trope can be troublesome to pull off in Mothership since android PCs don’t enter cryosleep.) The problem here is that nothing makes sense: Why is this journey taking twelve years? How did the Cretin get onboard? Why are the PCs being woken up now?

As with Under the Dunes, I’m overwhelmingly left with the impression that a bunch of random, undeveloped ideas were just randomly dumped into the adventure key in the hope that something would stick: The Cretin turns out to be a robotic creature, but someone smeared feces all over the airlock. There are “yellow-tinged eggs” in the antigrav generator. There’s religious ramblings in an unknown xenolanguage scrawled across the rooms of the reactor room. A seemingly unrelated religious organization engraved a metallic cube with a message and stuck it inside the Cretin. And so forth.

Perhaps the kindest thing I can say for Cold Opening is simply Unfinished. This one doesn’t make the cut for me and I won’t be running it.

GRADE: D

This supplement can’t quite focus itself: As a sourcebook it tries to cover too much. As an adventure it doesn’t cover enough.

Originally Published March 14th, 2002

Slavers was published in 2000 as part of the effort by Wizards of the Coast to revive the Greyhawk line. As a supplement for the second edition of AD&D, it would require conversion before it could be used in a D&D3 campaign. This review assumes that this conversion is going to take place: In other words, the question “Is this worth taking the time to convert?” is going to be part of the final judgment of the product.

CONTENTS

Slavers bills itself as a sequel to the “Slavelords saga”. For those of you unfamiliar with AD&D history, the Slavelords saga encompasses the first edition A1-4 modules (A1: Slave Pits of the Undercity, A2: Secret of the Slavers Stockade, A3: Assault on the Aerie of the Slave Lords, and A4: In the Dungeon of the Slave Lords).

This is, in my opinion, the first mistake that Slavers makes. When Slavers came out, the original modules had not been available for more than a decade. Yet Slavers relies heavily on the DM’s knowledge of the previous adventures, and even (at some points) seems to assume that the players will at least have a passing knowledge of the importance of past events. (Slavers was not the only product in the renewed Greyhawk line which suffered from this problem. Return of the Eight, which I reviewed here, referenced products which had been out of date for nearly three decades.)

The second mistake Slavers makes is billing itself as a sequel, when it’s really more of a sourcebook. Of course, as a sourcebook it also seems confused as to its identity: The sourcebook seems to go wherever the sparsely plotted adventure takes it. So it’s sort of a sourcebook about the Pomarj; and kind of about Nyr Dyv; and somewhat about the lands of the Flanaess (but not all of them).

We’ll come back to that.

PLOT

Warning: This review will contain spoilers for Slavers. Players who may find themselves playing in this adventure should not read beyond this point.

The problem with the plot can basically be summed up with this quote from the book: “However, these sites and people have only vague links that tie them together into a grand adventure.”

“Vague links” and “grand adventure” do not really belong in the same sentence together.

Here, however, is roughly how the plot is constructed: The PCs are based out of the city of Dyvers. Slavers begin operating in the area, and players eventually hear rumors of slavers operating out of the Blackthorn Caverns. The outline tells us that: “Care should be taken so that the heroes don’t discover the precise location of the entrance to Blackthorn’s Caverns.” This prevents the heroes from doing logical things (like informing the authorities of the slaver’s stronghold). The outline also gives us several ideas about how to go about doing this… none of which actually work. The PCs are also supposed to lose at Blackthorn; and lose badly.

When the PCs return to Dyvers in defeat, they will witness the end of a slave raid by the Pirates of the Yellow Veil. “They can only stop a few of the raiders, and are too late to prevent the ship from setting sail and escaping.” (That’s great: Not only is the adventure vague, it’s railroaded.) Of course, the PCs’ friends are among those kidnapped by the Slavers.

And off they go: To the secret base in Nyr Dyv. To the Slavers’ Cove. To the slaver ship Eternal Sun. To more slaver bases. To more slaver bases. And still more slaver bases. And a few more slaver bases. And, eventually, the Big Slaver Base.

What the adventure lacks in epic structure, it makes worse through lack of imagination. The scenarios quickly boil down to a series of very short, very boring, practically identical raids. There is no sense of the epic here, and very few original ideas. Simply put, Slavers lacks greatness: The PCs never go anywhere with more than two dozen encounter keys (and most have a half dozen or less). An epic requires scope, and Slavers never finds it.

SOURCEBOOK

As a sourcebook, Slavers provides background material for Dyvers, North Woolly Bay, the Orcish Wild Coast, and the Pomarj.

The first problem here, as noted above, is that there doesn’t seem to be any particular rhyme or reason why these particular locations are covered in a sourcebook together: Other than the fact that the accompanying adventure outline supposedly carries the PCs through these locales.

This begins to create a cascading problem: The book appears to be more interested in being a sourcebook than an adventure, and the adventure suffers as a result – becoming little more than a rough outline of ideas. But as a sourcebook, it’s only definite use is in supplementing the adventure it’s busily undermining by trying to be a sourcebook.

The problem is made worse by the fact that the adventure (which, remember, is rendered into little more than an outline) warps the presentation of the sourcebook material. For example, in the section on Nyr Dyv you don’t get comprehensive coverage of Nyr Dyv – you get paltry coverage of Nyr Dyv, with some focused detail on a handful of locations which are only important for the adventure.

Once again, this creates a cascading problem: You don’t have enough of a general focus to provide a good general-purpose sourcebook. At the same time, you don’t have enough of a specific focus to provide a good sourcebook for the adventure.

CONCLUSION

Ultimately, Slavers can’t quite focus itself: As a sourcebook it tries to cover too much, too randomly. As an adventure it doesn’t cover enough.

As a result, I really can’t recommend this one to anybody who isn’t a compulsive collector of Greyhawk material. Fans of the original Slavers adventures might enjoy this book more than others; but, by the same token, there’s also a good chance that they’ll hate its flaws even more.

One mitigating note, however: Those willing to dig a bit will find a lot of juicy material here that can be pried out and used in other places. I, for example, used material from Slavers to help flush out and fill in the weaknesses I perceive in the original Slavers modules: Essentially combining the strengths of both the original and sequel, while excising the combined weaknesses, to give the raw material for a single epic adventure track.

Style: 4
Substance: 3

Author: Sean K. Reynolds and Chris Pramas
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
Price: $18.95
ISBN: 0-7869-1621-4
Product Code: TSR11621
Pages: 128

Around this time I was planning to run the Slavelords saga as a follow-up to the Freeport Trilogy. I wanted to expand the original tourney modules into a node-based campaign (although I wasn’t referring to it as node-based design yet) and I’d picked up Slavers in the hopes that I could use it to flesh out the original material. This, as you can see from the review, didn’t really pan out. I eventually just dumped the original A-series modules entirely and started designing my own Slave Lords campaign from scratch. Unfortunately, that group fell apart after running through the first couple slaver adventures and I ended up never finishing the campaign.

For an explanation of where these reviews came from and why you can no longer find them at RPGNet, click here.

A very crunchy, very useful supplement for D20. Like, Minions, Arms & Armor suffers from a price tag just a little too high for its content.

Review Originally Published March 13th, 2002

CONTENT

Arms & Armor is Bastion Press’ second D20 supplement. Like Minions, Bastion’s first offering, Arms & Armor is a 96-page soft-cover book featuring full-color printing on glossy pages. As the title would suggest, it focuses on weapons and armor: Simple, martial, exotic, magical, and more. There is also a short section on martial constructs: Golems and other constructs which are, essentially, forms of weapon and armor which “wield themselves” in one way or another.

GOOD STUFF

Arms & Armor is very, very crunchy, delivering exactly what it promises.

Weapons: Somewhere in the ballpark of 125 new weapons are introduced here – ranging from the mundane (claymore) to the unusual (combat hook) to the foreign (cicada wing sword) to the practical (brass knuckles) to the exotic (double-bladed sword). Combine that with roughly 70 new properties for magical weapons (my favorites are alterable weapons and pivoting arrows), roughly 50 new magical weapons (including class weapons and artifacts – my favorites are the silent dagger, which projects a 5-ft. field of silence around itself, and the arrow of seeing, which allows the user to see everything around the location where the arrow lands), and new rules and options for intelligent weapons.

Armor: Roughly 60 new types of armor are described here, approximately 70 new magical armor qualities, along with new extras and accessories for armor. Several dozen suits of magical armor are discussed, including class-based armor. Optional rules for armor (including the first published 3E system for armor as damage reduction) are also given. My favorites in this section include bone mail (chain mail made from bone), daggered plate (with daggers concealed as armor decoration), quick don armor (which cuts down the amount of time necessary to don the armor), phoenix armor (which will resurrect a character who dies in the armor once, destroying the armor in the process), and healing armor (which can be used to heal the character wearing it).

Other Stuff: Arms & Armor also includes rules for cleric domain rods, arcane school staves, racial masks, and martial constructs. The domain rods, school staves, and racial masks are all very useful. Martial constructs include amulet servitors (golems which collapse into small amulets of tightly wound metal when not in use), golem armor (your armor is alive), and the silver steeds (magical mounts). Several types of new material for weapon and armor construction are also covered.

Arms & Armor also manages to largely avoid a common pitfall of products like this: Weapons and armor so incredibly goofy that they make you want to burst out laughing. There are still some things which will likely make you wince (particularly if you value a high degree of realism in the non-magical weapons of your world), but nothing incredibly bizarre. And even if you really dislike the bizarre and exotic weapons of 3rd Edition, there’s more than enough here that you’ll happily be able to incorporate into your campaign.

BAD STUFF

I don’t like Todd Morasch’s artwork. I commented on this in my review of Minions, as well (Morasch serves as Lead Artist and Art Director on both books): It’s not that he does bad work. But he doesn’t do exceptional work, either. The term “mediocre” fits his work perfectly, I’m afraid.

Of course, that’s just my opinion: Feel free to glance through the book and form your own opinion. However, his work in Arms & Armor is objectively flawed insofar as his artwork just plain fails to match the text. For example, on the very first page of weapon descriptions he manages to draw the chained axe (described as “a double-bladed axe-head attached to a haft by a length of chain”) without a haft. His illustration of the basket-hilted broadsword, described on the same page, not only fails to possess a basket hilt, but appears to possess a double-blade for some unfathomable reason. And so forth.

It’s also regrettable that, despite space on the page, the decision was made to not illustrate all of the weapons described in the book. Almost all of the armor is also devoid of illustration.

In terms of design, I haven’t spotted anything horribly unbalancing after reading the book through and playtesting as many of the items as possible. There are, however, a couple of designs which will leave you scratching your head. For example, the axe-hammer is described like this:

An exotic weapon, the axe-hammer is a long hafted weapon with an axe blade on one side of the head and a blunt hammer on the other. Due to the strange balance of the weapon, axe or hammer wielders cannot use it proficiently; special training is required.

Which is all well and good. But the axe-hammer is statted up as a double weapon. Which doesn’t make sense. If there was an axe head on one end of the haft and a hammer head on the other, sure – that’s a double weapon. But as it stands, an axe-hammer should no more be a double weapon than a greataxe.

CONCLUSION

The only reservation I have in recommending Arms & Armor is the same reservation I had for Minions: The price. At $20 this would be a book which I would happily hype as perfect for every DM’s game shelf. At $24.95, however, I get a little bit choosier about 96 page sourcebooks.

My own mileage:

At the moment I am working on redesigning and repopulating the lower levels of Khundrukar (a dwarven city which serves as the setting for WotC’s Forge of Fury Adventure Path module). As a result, I’m looking for all sorts of nifty and unusual weapons to strew around the dungeon as treasure and/or set dressing. Thus, Arms & Armor is absolutely perfect.

So if you have a niche like this in your game you’re trying to fill, then Arms & Armor is going to fill it very well.

On the other hand, if you don’t have such a niche for the book (if it’s something you’d only dip into sparingly once or twice over the next few years, rather than seeing constant usage), then Arms & Armor will probably prove a little too pricey for you.

Style: 4
Substance: 4

Author: Greg Dent (Lead Designer)
Publisher: Bastion Press, Inc.
Price: $24.95
ISBN: 0-9714392-2-2
Product Code: BAS1001
Pages: 96

Bastion Press’ D20 System supplements were mechanically sloppy and often ugly, but as a GM I got an incredible amount of value out of them. They were often the first thing I would reach for when looking to add either depth or a touch of the exotic to an adventure. I believe this is the last of their books that I wrote a review for, but their entire product line still sits on my gaming shelf.

For an explanation of where these reviews came from and why you can no longer find them at RPGNet, click here.

The ultimate source of all miscreation and abomination. The gray mass quobbled and quivered, and swelled perpetually – and from within it, in manifold fission, were spawned anatomies that crept away on every side through the grotto. Here there were things like bodiless legs or arms that flailed in the slime, or heads that rolled, or floundering bellies with the fines of fishes; and all manner of things malformed and monstrous. And those that escaped not swiftly ashore when they fell from the pool of the Beast were devoured by mouths that gaped in the parent bulk.

A pool of grayish, horrid mass – a choking river of mud marled with obscene offal. A horrid protean mass of dark muck. Such is the form of Abhoth, the Source of All Filth and Lord of the Zaug.

THE CHILDREN OF ABHOTH: “And from the broken, turgid mass there is given life of dark bounty.”

Those Who Have Gazed Upon Filth (as the Parchments of Bido pronounce them), describe obscene monsters which crawl constantly from Abhoth’s gray mass. These warped and twisted progeny can assume many forms – from the half-functional to mammoth-like horrors. Abhoth’s tentacles and “many-formed limbs” are described as seizing many of these creations and dragging them back into the depths of its bulk. Of those that escape, a few are described as “attendants of the rivulets of muck”, while others wander into the “dark cracks of the world’s black heart”.

THE DARK MIND: The mind of Abhoth is a warped, twisted, and cynical thing. It gives forth great telepathic waves, and Those Who Have Gazed Upon Filth speak of their thoughts being filled with “black rivulets of nether birth” – twisted forms of mental energy that squalm forth from creature’s mind even as its twisted progeny rip their way out of the creature’s viscous body.

LORD OF THE ZAUG: Among those titles given to Abhoth, “Lord of the Zaug” is given often. It is even possible that Abhoth is responsible for their creation. Some, including the Xillian Fragments, even describe the zaug as being “infested with the filth of All Filth”.

THE RAT GOD: Among the ratmen, Abhoth is worshipped as the “Rat God”. But this is nothing more than a guise behind which Abhoth’s true form can be worshipped.

…. a loathsome, night-spawned flood of organic corruption more devastatingly hideous than the blackest conjurations of mortal madness and morbidity. Seething, stewing, surging, bubbling like serpents’ slime is spread its dark mind and mass like a septic contagion.

– The Dasha Codex

UBBO-SATHLA: Even older texts speak of an entity known as Ubbo-Sathla, the Unbegotten Source. Like Abhoth, Ubbo-Sathla is described as a huge, protoplasmic mass resting in deep grottoes beneath the “frozen surface of man’s mind”. Some texts treat this as metaphor, others as literal truth. A few scholars have apparently tried to rectify the discrepancy between these descriptions and those which place Ubbo-Sathla in the “gray-litten crypts of Y’qaa” or “beneath the depths of four-coned Mithradeth”.

In some myths, Ubbo-Sathla is said to have “spawned all life”, yet “whatever her touch lay upon was blighted and no life could be seen in it again”. Other texts limit the extent of her creation to “all life which is dark”. Other speak of her as “the womb of all demon-kin”.

Still other prophecies, such as the Visions of Dezzerak’s Blood, say that Ubbo-Sathla shall one day “take back into her breast the life of all living things” – that all life will be reabsorbed into her mass.

The ultimate identity of Ubbo-Sathla, however, remains hopelessly confused. There are those who see Ubbo-Sathla and Abhoth as the same entity viewed in different epochs and under different names. But there are also other texts that refer to Ubbo-Sathla as the “Mother of All Filth” and Abhoth as the “Father of All Filth”, suggesting some foul and horrid mating between the two. Others describe them as siblings or even as schisms of the same being.

THE TABLETS: “About it, prone or tilted in the mire, there lay the mighty tablets of star-quarried stone that were writ with the inconceivable wisdom of the demon gods.” Ubbo-Sathla (and thus, perhaps, Abhoth) is also said to serve as “murky guardian” to tablets containing secrets of the Demon Gods – “lore lost to all mortal minds and kept in secret lest it be turned against them before the End of Days”.

Fuller records of these tablets (or even the tablets themselves) have been oft-sought by sorcerers and scholars, but none is known to have yet succeeded in acquiring them.

Horrible it was, if there had been aught to apprehend the horror. And loathsome, if there had been any to feel loathing.

DESIGN NOTES

Abhoth can be found extensively in Ptolus and The Night of Dissolution, but was originally created by Clark Ashton Smith. Ubbo-Sathla has been lifted from the short story of the same name, also by Clark Ashton Smith. The reference to “Dezzerak” is to an entity from The Book of Fiends (more on that later).

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