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2. A phoenix takes 9 days to rise from the ashes
It offers a useful guide to some of the hidden secrets of Ambrethel, including a page-by-page Here s what really happened summary covering the setting s history and the secrets only hinted at throughout the society chapter. On another page, headed The signification of lines and other marks in the hands , we receive the news that certain lines denote a trusty and faithful person , while others indicate, Let the party take care to avoid deep water.
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Magic snd otu
This was a difficult book to review. First, you should know that I received the book as a review-copy. That I hope to get more big fat HERO books for free might influence my opinions of the game. However, that�s not why the game is hard to review. The Turakian Age succeeds in what it sets out to do--create a typical high fantasy world for adventures using the HERO system--and for that I need to respect it, but my problem is with the goal itself.
The Turakian Age will win no awards for originality. There are some good ideas between the covers, certainly, ideas worth mining and implementations worth using, but the setting itself is nearly interchangeable with half a dozen others. Krynn, Oerth, Toril, Lodoss, and now HERO�s Ambrethel: sometimes they appear to be all the same place with different names attached. I may fight the depredations of Bane or Ivid the Undying or (here) Kal-Turak, but they all feel similar. Elves, dwarves, cat-men, lizard-men: sometimes they get different names, but they�re still the same thing.
So you can see the pickle I�m in. I can�t get too enthused about another generic fantasy setting. However, that�s what The Turakian Age does, and does so very well. But let�s get to the meat of this setting book, and you can decide for yourself whether you want or need HERO�s high fantasy setting.
The book weighs in at a little over 300 pages, soft cover. The cover art is done in a bright, simple style with the figures positioned a bit awkwardly, making it reminiscent of very early D&D art like that of Erol Otus. For those of you keeping track at home, that�s not a good thing, unless you�re an Otus fan: the cover looks like something from an earlier age of gaming, and I suspect that it�s not a deliberate homage.
The interior is better. The art isn�t exceptional. It�s black and white, with the best stuff reminding me of the more polished Exalted art. The text is elegantly and intelligently laid out, with good use of white space, though the border information reminds me of GURPS� �cram stats into the corners� method of organizing data.
The book opens with a history, where we learn that the Turakian Age is actually an epoch in HERO-Earth�s past (from 73,000 to 65,000 BC). Not much is done with this fact, though. Ambrethel, the main region of play, resembles no modern landmass, the Turakian gods echo no gods of any known culture (except insofar as they mimic a typical Greek-style pantheon), and the people of Ambrethel are more like analogues for medieval peoples than their hypothetical ancestors.
The history covers a great many wars and migrations that I won�t detail here. Unlike many fantasy RPGs, where the history just sits there in great useless clumps arranged by date, The Turakian Age makes sure that several historical events are also plot elements. The Hargeshite heresy (a religious schism vaguely like the Protestant reformation, if the Protestants were total jerks), which might be a bit of back-story in another game, is still important during the game�s default starting-point. Strange plagues from a half-century ago serve as portents warning of the setting�s main villain. The back-story isn�t as relevant as it could be, mind you--there�s a lot of �Orcs attack good guy city but are beaten back� and �Border skirmishes break out between two distant kingdoms�--but there�s definitely an attempt to make the Turakian Age�s history influence play.
A breakdown of the different human and non-human races follows the history section. Most of the different human groups fit into one or more cultural archetypes, though not so painfully the clich�s makes my teeth hurt. A few show more variety, like the Thunese (Lovecraftian cultists, just begging to get their butts kicked while trying to summon an extradimensional horror) and the Indusharans (subcontinental Indian analogues--that�s a culture I don�t see explored enough in fantasy RPGs, and honestly I would have liked to have seen more about them).
The non-human races include Elves (with impossible-to-remember names like �Fendirililiqwan�--really, what good is that?), Dwarves, and Orcs, all doing what you expect Elves, Dwarves, and Orcs to do in a fantasy setting. Ambrethel also features the Drakine, a race of dragon-people that have often contended with humans for food and territory.
The �lesser races� include Gnomes (Dwarf-Halfling hybrids), Halflings, Goblins, Leomachi (lion-taurs), Pakasa (cat-people), Seshurma (lizard people), Trolls and Erqigdlit (dog-people, and no, I don�t know how to pronounce it either).
All of these races are statted out in full as package deals. Though I couldn�t care less about Erqigdlit culture, it�s nice to have their stats on-hand in case I ever need some dog-people. The stats, by the way, all work; I should mention now that though I�ve only given the numbers a cursory examination, I haven�t found any calculation mistakes anywhere in the book.
After the races we hit the places. And there are a whole lot of places. I haven�t read giant blocks of geographical data since the original DragonLance boxed set. This is definitely not the sort of thing you want to read straight through (unless someone�s sending you free books), but as a reference it�s invaluable. Each kingdom gets a write-up covering its basic data (government, languages, military organization, etc.), plus a page or two summarizing the kingdom�s society and history. Most of this information is abstract and technical, more useful in establishing a place�s feel than in building adventures.
One clever touch is that the kingdom section never specifies the size of each kingdom�s army, only the ratios between different types of soldiers (heavy cavalry, light infantry, etc.). This allows the GM to customize army sizes for his needs, and is a nice example of in-game utility trumping encyclopedic detail.
Following the details of each kingdom are general details of life in the Turakian age, covering calendars, life, death, marriage, women, laws, slavery, technology, trade, and of course, how magic changes all of the above. Though brief, it serves as a good primer on Ambrethel�s general feel.
Once The Turakian Age completes its �soft tour� of Ambrethel, it moves on to the hard numbers.
The rules help inexperienced players build characters by offering package deals for the most common character types--priests, thieves, and wizards--plus packages for additional �sub-classes� like guild thieves, setting-specific witch-hunters, barbarian Wolf-Lords, and different paladin orders. These descriptions are split evenly between general description and technical data, and do a fine job of defining what sort of characters we can expect in the Turakian Age. I would have liked to see more imaginative and obscure character types, though, like the Wolf-Lords and the Ulronai Warrior-Mages. I can already figure out how to build a ranger, but weird cults and secret societies are always useful.
The next chapter describes the gods. The gods are divided into good, neutral, and evil (here Blue, Gray, and Scarlet), and cover the usual array of concepts: hunting, battle, healing, Pure Evil, and so on. This section, more than any other, struck me as interchangeable with nearly any other high fantasy setting. Only the more obscure local gods (of things like beards, just causes, and the mantelpiece) are interesting or different. However, while the gods themselves are uninspired, the religions that follow them are not.
The setting�s main religion is the High Church, which is a typical �Catholicism with many gods� religion. It differentiates itself from other settings� religions in that it�s henotheistic--followers of the High Church worship all the gods equally. Even the priests do not single out a single god for reverence; the pantheon is taken as a whole. Also interesting is the major heresy, the Hargeshite faith. The Hargeshites are a splinter group distinguished, largely, by being slightly more obnoxious and bigoted than the High Church. Prone to misogyny, idolatry, Manicheanism, and the occasional sacrifice (animal, not human), the Hargeshites make great �wild-eyed fanatics� and fantasy Huguenots for the heroes to beat the stuffing out of; they�re not evil as such, but they�re definitely a step down from the fairly benevolent High Church.
The Turakian magic section offers a solid overview of the different magical traditions, including the different branches of arcane magic, divine and druidic magic, and theurgy. Theurgy is pleasantly interesting and unusual. It involves stealing or �borrowing� bits of magic from different gods and using that power to produce magic effects in keeping with the concept surrounding the god. The only problem, of course, is that the gods don�t like people doing that. Priests suffer from having to serve their god�s will when working magic; theurgists know that if they attract a god�s attention he might maim him, blind him, or something even worse. It adds a zesty element of danger to messing about with the forces of the cosmos, something sometimes lacking in HERO�s effects-based framework.
Theurgy also makes good use of multipowers; those theurgy spells that specializing in the planets (the �Greater Stars,� as Turakian philosophers call them) receive planet-themed spells that each contain several related powers.
The other spells include battle-spells, utility spells, and defensive magic, divided by region and style; though The Turakian Age advises you to pick up the Fantasy Grimoire, there are certainly enough spells present to give you a feel for Turakian magic. A handful of magic items (most unique and all well realized) rounds out the magic chapter.
The book closes with a game-master section. It offers a useful guide to some of the hidden secrets of Ambrethel, including a page-by-page �Here�s what really happened� summary covering the setting�s history and the secrets only hinted at throughout the society chapter. This is a great addition to the game. In fact, it�s a great addition to any game, and I even wish they had been more definite about certain bits of the secret history, though the section is good about spelling out two or three possible answers to each mystery raised in the main text. Filling up the sidebars are tons of plot hooks, and the rest of the chapter contains write-ups (stats and back-stories) for enemies and allies. This last chapter offers up a big juicy pile of setting ideas and plot elements, and does a very good job of turning Ambrethel from a collection of general ideas into something you can use for next Saturday�s game.
So that�s The Turakian Age. Can I recommend it? Yes�conditionally.
If you�re not too experienced with this �role-playing� thing, or new to HERO, and want to cut your teeth on a solid fantasy setting, pick up The Turakian Age. Likewise, you should pick up the game if you want a good high fantasy setting for your HERO game but don�t have time to write 300 pages of setting notes. If you�re starved for ideas on plot hooks, or how to get a fantasy campaign going, you still might want to pick up The Turakian Age; while it�s by no means overflowing with story ideas, there are good plot elements scattered all throughout its bulk, and concentrated especially in the final section.
However, if you�re looking for something different in your fantasy, The Turakian Age is not your book. Especially if you have Fantasy HERO, there�s no reason to pick up this book if you don�t want standard high fantasy, if you want to build your own setting (there aren�t enough stealable bits in here to justify getting the game as an idea-kit), or if Fantasy HERO already gave you more ideas than you can use.
In summary: The Turakian Age does exactly what it sets out to do, and it does so very, very well. Whether what it does is of any use to you depends entirely on where you are and what you want.
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So that�s The Turakian Age. Can I recommend it? Yes�conditionally.
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