So I really wanted to like this book. I really did.
And truth be told, once I'd finished reading it, it wasn't quite so bad, after all. But that's mainly because of the way I read it, and not in the ways I wanted to enjoy it.
Now, if you're not into the Scarred Lands setting, than you have little business reading this review in the first place. Go check out the Scarred Lands Campaign Setting: Ghelspad, or Relics and Rituals, or some other setting book for the Scarred Lands first. Because this book is wholly and completely a setting specific book. I mention this because I intend on writing this with the thought in mind that those who read this are already familiar with the setting. If you're not, this book isn't for you in the first place.
Perhaps the fact that I read this book with a review in mind colored me against it from the start. After all, reading a book for the simple pleasure of reading it will differ from reading one for review purposes. But, that's what I get for mouthing off about a book before even reading it.
It's also possible that I just expected too much out of the book. There are two major factors to my interest in the Scarred Lands - the pantheon and how it all fits together so nicely, and the forsaken elves. This is why I wanted this book to begin with; while it details the charduni dwarves of the setting, half of the book is devoted to the forsaken elves. As such, I'd been anticipating it since the moment I heard about it. However, my hopes weren't too high after details begin filtering in about just what was and wasn't in the book.
So you might want to take this review with a grain of salt. Because I'm about to slam half of it, and hard.
For those not in the know, the Faithful and the Forsaken details the forsaken elves and charduni dwarves of the Scarred Lands setting. One, titan-slayers whose god was destroyed 150 years ago and took to decadence and decay in the intervening years. The other, the first creation of the Lawful Evil god of slavery and tyranny, named for the very god who created them.
The book is divided into five chapters, along with a one-page introduction and brief appendix on prestige classes. Each chapter starts off with information on the forsaken elves, then goes into the charduni. I’ll be reviewing it the way I read it; first I went into the forsaken elf half of each chapter, and then the charduni.
The Forsaken Elves
It’s for the forsaken elves I bought this book. It is in part for the forsaken elves that I liked the Scarred Lands as much as I had initially. It is a painful thing for this part of the book to have been as disappointing as it was for me.
Having read this book with the thought that I’d be reviewing it in mind, I mentally ticked off just what to give it. It lingered somewhere around a two, and finally around a one once I’d actually finished up with the forsaken elves. Their section was awful, just awful, in my opinion.
For one, their section of the book comes off as far too modern. I was given more a sense of the IRS, the US postal service, current day politics, mall-ratting and civil rights protestors with its junior posts, rogue nations, things being “all the rage,” and emancipation of gnollish tribes than any images of an empire of elves. Instead of giving me any sense of fantasy and magic, it came off as fairly banal and mundane. The descriptions may have been appropriate to a regional book on Hedrad or Karsian, but for the high elves and Jandaveos, they were far too bureaucratic and the way they were presented was too ill fitting for my liking. Even some of the NPC's backgrounds came off as fairly modern in their feeling. Like Vladawen, who's "mired in an existential crisis of faith." Existential crisis of faith, eh? What is this, Vampire: the Masquerade or Wraith: the Oblivion? Not that I have a problem with either of those RPG's, but I don't believe even Planescape ever had the brass ones to say an NPC was "mired in an existential crisis of faith." Give me a break.
Many details and explanations on the information within are also lacking. Take for example the seven immortal leaders that the high elves once had, that came one after the other. If they were immortal, why didn't the first one just keep on ruling? What sort of method of succession did they have when growing old and feeble wasn't going to happen?
Or how about the "dark blights" upon the elven empress' soul? What in the world are they other than a tepid explanation for giving her the 133t powerz of a 9th level cleric? From what I interpreted from her background, it seems her dark soul of divinity is powered by her internal angst. Which is a fairly poor explanation and source of power in my book.
Then there are the still-forsaken nations. The book offers up no proper explanation on just why some of those elven nations that decided not to join the Divine Empire of the Rose still have a majority-population composed of forsaken elves. The Shealas League, for example, came off as being disgusted with the political ramifications of their god's resurrection, as opposed to actually having any problem with the deities return himself. As they’re written, with talk of the league wanting to stay free to pursue, as the books says, a “‘purer’ elven life,” they come across as being quite fine and accepting of Jandaveos returns. Unless purer elven life here means abandoning their patron god and accepting the state of corruption that the titan of disease placed upon them - which seems to be what the book is saying based off the 82% rate of still-forsaken elves in the Shealas League.
The book also ignores a few statistics for the elves. The Empress of the elven empire apparently joined the army when she was physically all of...oh, 10 or so. Leastways if you go by the basis that the starting age of an elf is based off of how long it takes for them to reach an adventuring age as opposed to some artificial contrivance. I'll go with it not being an artificial limit, and that an elf half the age of what most PC elves start at is roughly equivalent to a human who is half the age of what most PC humans start at. Then there's the fact that all the NPC elves in start at around a listed height of 5'10" and go up to around 6'8" or so. This in spite of the fact that, even if you disregard the Player's Handbook starting height for elves, previous Scarred Lands material (the DM's screen companion, most notably) has shown forsaken elves in various pieces of artwork to be shorter than humans. Perhaps this is nit picking on my part, but I personally prefer consistency.
Which is another thing that it lacks all around. Consistency. Take a look at the dates from the Faithful and the Forsaken and the Termana hardcover. The events described in each don't match up. Or the fact that the book mentions that the still-forsaken elves (those who haven't been healed by Jandaveos return) still cannot cast above 2nd level divine spells. Despite the fact that those few forsaken elves who started worshipping another deity (generally Enkili) were able to cast raise dead and similar magic's according to previous Scarred Lands books.
Also, much of the text is coming from a third-person, omniscient, instead of the first-person perspective many other Scarred Lands books in the past has taken. What does this mean? Well, it means that information that in other books one should take with a grain of salt for the source being partial, that the information in the Faithful and the Forsaken should just be trusted at face value. Despite the fact that some of it dispels certain ideas that previous Scarred Lands books had made a point of never giving a definitive answer to. Such as with one of the very first lines in the first chapter that says "the elves were created by the titans." Which, up until this point in the Scarred Lands, while it had been assumed, was never directly said, and hinted that it might not have been the case. Well, there goes that idea.
And hey, how about that Jandaveos, eh? You'd expect to find some information on the newly resurrected deity, wouldn't you? Maybe his alignment, just what he's a deity of, perhaps his domains, all that jazz, eh? Well, this book spites all logic by not giving you any of that. It's hinted at here and there, but at no time does the book devote a section solely to Jandaveos. You can surmise his alignment based off the fact that one of his priests has the Chaos and Good domain, and there's tidbits about the god strewn throughout the book, but it never puts them all in one place, and they're usually only a sentence here and a sentence there. Furthermore, that priest with the Good domain - useful books that actually mention the domains of Jandaveos while he was dead don't list Good amongst his domains. I always figured the elven gods death and his peoples ensuing fall to decadence cut them off from it, but the book never says that. Just one moment he doesn't offer the Good domain to his priests, the next, we see a priest of Jandaveos with the Good domain. One of the, what I thought to be, most blatantly obvious "Well, duh, you should put that in there" parts of the book was completely and utterly lacking. For a book that focuses so heavily on his return and its ramifications, it seems that it describes the god in only the vaguest, most useless of terms.
Let’s also not forget it’s almost cartoon-like way of naming things. All right, all right - Empire of the Rose, Council of the Archons, etc, etc - all fine. But…a city of demons named Daemonius? Let’s not forget the constant use of the word multiverse. I kept waiting for a picture of the Silver Surfer or Thanatos to pop up at any moment. Or how about Draconius, the city of the demon dragons? What's next, Humanopolis, or Elfville? Perhaps a touch too snide on my part, but the flaws in the forsaken elf part of the book are many and varied.
Which brings me to the demons in the book, the Shining Horde. Who are essentially alien invaders who have neither a link to the titans or the gods, and Scarn comes off as nothing more than the next pit-stop that they're about to conquer. Personally, I like my campaign settings to come off as the center of their respective universe. Or if they're not, like with Planescape or Ravenloft, that it's established that they're not from the very beginning, as opposed to some cheap little aside in some poorly written supplement.
Not to mention...a vast, demonic army of fearful and exceptional power that's occupying a good chunk of an elven isle? Wow, that's a great idea...or it was, the first time around, when it was introduced in the Termana Gazetteer, with the Eternal Isle. It's one thing to copy from another source, but within the same campaign setting? And make it so very, very, very similar? That's just...gah! I can't believe something like that actually made it into a book. "If it wasn't for my horse, I never would have spent that year in college." For those who get the reference to Lewis Black, yeah, it's a lot like that. That's my thought on the Shining Horde. I have absolutely nothing nice to say on the matter.
Honestly, a lot of the information presented in it I truthfully just found...dumb. Their first ruler being mute? The elves existing for who knows how long without knowing death until their seventh ruler? In a setting called the Scarred Lands where the gods overthrew their parents for them being careless forces of natures who created and, most especially, destroyed at a whim? Not to mention the dark blights and existential problems of their NPC's. There were many times throughout my reading of the elven section of the book where I just grew sick of it and had to put it down before my brain rotted in my head. Harsh, I know, but I really found it to be that bad.
Maybe my growing sick with it was just because the whole book smelled like cabbage, though. Which it had, for some strange reason.
All right, all right...so the history and background for the book, absolutely atrocious. All right. How about the new mechanics and rules that it offered up then?
This is a Scarred Lands book. They were, as usual for a Scarred Lands book, just this side of horrendous. Sometimes far, far beyond that.
The new feat, Beautiful Blade, allows an elf or half-elf with Combat Expertise and a Dexterity and Intelligence of at least 13 to take up to -5 on all their melee attacks in a round to confer up to a +5 morale bonus to all attack rolls and Will saving throws to all allies within 30 feet, and using the feat also allows one to perform bardic music while it's in use (thus negating the 20% chance of failure bardic music suffers while the bard is deaf). Or, the user of Beautiful Blade can bestow up to a -5 morale penalty to all enemies instead, affecting attack rolls and Will saves. That's a...a bit much, in my opinion.
But nowhere near as big a deal as the Death Ward arrows. For 240 gold, or an Alchemy craft check of 17 to make them on your own, you can have 20 arrows that deal, at max, 1 point of damage, but also cause the target hit to make a DC 30 Fortitude save or immediately fall unconscious for 24 hours. This can be ended early if someone succeeds at a DC 15 Heal check on the target, but that's cold consolation to any victim of the arrow. The description of the arrow itself says that they're used primarily to slow the metabolisms of dying creatures (Death Ward arrows also stop damage from bleeding, poisons and drowning), but nothing in the text itself says that they can't be used to turn enemies into coup des gras meat. Poorly thought out, mechanics-wise.
Never let it be said that the Scarred Land material is universally over-powered, however. No, it's underpowered or redundant as well.
Like with the Constellation Weaver who, at first level, learns how to use the Craft Wondrous Item feat to craft clothes into wondrous items that don't take up a magic item slot, for twice the price. You know, like the way the Craft Wondrous Item feat normally works, where you can create magic items that don't take up a magic item slot, at twice the normal cost. Which, if you wanted, you could have them be clothes, or simple stitching into clothes, or whatever. Without needing a prestige class for it, and without any limitation on how many you could have (like the Constellation Weaver's ability includes; a limitation on how many can be had).
After all this complaining, though, one might say, "Well, I heard that a lot of the information in this book was optional, anyway." Which, if by optional, you mean the book says "Though Jandaveos does return in the canonical storyline," then sure, it's optional. Optional, canon material. Wait a minute...
This book is not written as any what if. It's written with the idea that that most powerful, potent and interesting of plotlines to work with - the resurrection of the forsaken elves god - is done and over with, so you can just go home with your little shards of the forsaken and Autumn Blade and inspiration to run a game that centers around bringing back the forsaken elf god, at least if you intend on the PC's being the center of the story. Not, at least, if you intend on following canon. Now, you might say that's not such a big deal - you can ignore what material you want anyway, right? Of course. But the more material I'm going to ignore out of a book, the less likely I am to buy it. I don't like metaplot, at least in my role-playing settings. I like the Dragonlance novels, but you know what? They helped to kill playing in the setting itself in my opinion. I've also heard a number of complaints about all the Forgotten Realms novels. If the Faithful and the Forsaken had been written as a "What if?" that related to the novels it was, in part, based on, well, hey, that wouldn't have been so bad. But the book at no point gave me the indication that's what it was going for, despite hearing from a Sword and Sorcery muckity-muck here and there that that was the case.
Furthermore, it seemed to go out of its way to say, "Yeah, your PC's? Not resurrecting the forsaken elf god." It goes so far as to say in relation to the settings new Drizzt and Elminster, Vladawen, that he had a link which "meant that he, and he alone, had a chance to resurrect That Which Abides." Why in the world would the author even say that? Why does that line exist? To purposely spite all the people who could give a toss about the metaplot?
All that the Faithful and the Forsaken offers up is a few plot crumbs. At one point it says the players might want to be involved in the resurrection, so the DM could have them playing guard duty to Vladawen, for example. Not that..hey...the PC's could be the center of it all. It also offers up the idea that...maybe Vladawen wasn't successful. Maybe Jandaveos is still dead, and the forsaken elves are still forsaken. But in that option, all it really says is that things are dark, dank and bereft of hope.
The way the Faithful and the Forsaken is written, it seems to have utterly ignored the fact that a DM or player might want to bring back the forsaken elf god, and almost goes so far as to dissuade someone from wanting to do that. It offered absolutely no help, aid or plot ideas for one who might want to run a game like that, outside of playing henchman to the settings king of the existential crisis, Vladawen. Who is, after all, the only one who had a chance to resurrect Jandaveos.
All told, the elven section of the book at no point truly captured the spirit of a people both tragic and beautiful, who while even in their decadence, still held onto a dead faith, who so loved their god that they would take no other even though it might mean their doom. The attempts at portraying that were usually poorly done and involved "dark blights" and...yeah...you can probably guess what I'm going to say here....an existential crisis.
Pot holed, plot holed, and onto the charduni.
Now, this half of the book I didn't have to put down every few minutes after the forsaken elves made a concerted effort at dashing all my hopes for the Faithful and the Forsaken. The charduni proved a refreshing read that caught my interest and kept me reading almost straight on through. It wasn't spectacular, mind you, but was a veritable oasis in the desert after having trudged through the elven half of the book.
One thing that it has up on the elven half of the book is that most of it is told from the perspective of the charduni sage, Pexan the Younger. So when she makes statements about some of the settings fundamentals, which sometimes may fly in the face of them, well - that's all right. Because there's every possibility that she may be wrong. It also means that if later material contradicts this book, it's easier to say that it's because the source in this book was hardly omniscient in the first place.
It also delves more into the faith and lives of the charduni, giving me something of substance instead of lines like "There are dragons, and then there are dragon princes, and then there are Dragon Princes" which the elven half did. It's more strongly focused on the charduni mindset and their role in the Scarred Lands universe. Everything blended well together and made sense. I like it when evil races can be portrayed as being more than just some caricature of a supervillain, and their portion of the book did it rather aptly.
Take for example, the charduni's slave-taking ways. To their frame of mind, being a slave isn't such a bad thing, anyway. While charduni may be busy taking slaves, according to their mindset, the charduni are also slaves, slaves to their deity, Chardun. It's simply the natural way of things, and they're not quite so hypocritical about it. In fact, a lot of what they do is for the simple fact of trying to please their deity - a personality trait that almost cripples them at times. Because as it turns out, despite the fact that Chardun named these dark dwarves, the charduni, after himself, it is they, not the forsaken elves, who are forsaken. While Chardun desires submissive and competent servants, when those servants fail, it is that servant's responsibility to get back into their lords good graces, for Chardun is not a merciful lord. Those who deign to apologize for their failures are weak in Chardun's eyes, yet when the charduni had a severe failure which hadn't been their fault, their supreme faith in Chardun caused them to offer the most fervent of apologies, causing Chardun nothing more than disgust, and to forsake them.
It's a shame, then, that the charduni section has one fatal flaw. That flaw being that a lot of the book centers around the fact that, as of late, the charduni have begun worshipping other gods, and the repercussions that has had on them. Which has been the charduni government cracking down on them as heretics.
Why is this a flaw? It's because it flies in the face of already established Scarred Lands material that says when you don't allow others to give proper praise to the gods, those gods will give you trouble. All the trouble with the charduni began when one of their own gave a prayer to Hedrada during a dedication ceremony to a legal building. He was summarily executed for that simple prayer.
Even the holy cities of Mithril and Hedrada have shrines to gods opposed to their patron deities alignments. When Mithril had tried to outlaw worship of the evil gods, those gods visited plagues and other troubles upon the city until the leaders finally broke and set up shrines to the three major deities of darkness. Why in the world wouldn't the gods do just the same to the charduni when they refused to let others publicly worship other gods? It's one thing for the charduni to naturally be predisposed to not worshipping other deities, but for simple things like a prayer to the god of law when dedicating a legal building get one killed, in a setting that's established in previous products that going that far to dissuade worship of other deities will have those deities smashing your navy with storms, infecting your populace with disease, and causing infants to be stillborn, it just doesn't fit. It goes against what's already been established.
Still, as I said - one gets a strong sense of the charduni from their half of the book. It has personality, which I hadn't entirely expected out of the dark and dour dwarves. While the heresy of the charduni doesn't quite fit in the Scarred Lands, it did give one a glimpse into their psychology and provide some ideas on just how a charduni might act when amongst those of a mixed faith. Their general view is of Chardun being the king of the gods, and even those who don't go that far, they put him as the first amongst equals.
Of the groups in the book I might make use of, there's the White Axes, a group of charduni intent on taking over the empire, as they believe it is the current way things are being run, and the current One in White, who have continued to earn Chardun's disfavor. This group believes that they must take the empire back and turn fully towards their old traditions if they hope to win back the favor of their dark god. Even the Heretic's and Deists (those who believe in giving the other gods their proper due, to varying degrees, or even going so far as to worship other gods), whose primary reason for existence I disagree with to a certain degree, provide some salvageable traits.
Also, where the elven section of the book helps to destroy plot for the elves, it does provide plot for the charduni. While I never would use the specific details in the forsaken elf part of the book, the general idea of their god returning and the reunification of their nations and how it puts the charduni in a rather difficult position, where their enemy of old is even stronger now, and that much more of a threat, while the dark dwarves still haven't entirely recovered from the Divine War - well, that I might use. The reunification of the elves also means that the charduni have a chance to wage war and win against a powerful foe, potentially winning back the favor of Chardun.
Problems, however, still crop up in the charduni section of the book. Such as the fact that out of a nation with 2,000,000 people, over 350,000 are in the military. Maybe it's just me, but isn't 1 out of 6 people in the military a bit...excessive? I'm no military historian, however, so perhaps it's not. It certainly seems it, though.
The new feat and prestige classes the book offers up also draw my ire, unfortunately. The once-charduni feat, for example, allows a charduni to be an alignment other than lawful evil. That, and it gives them +1 Strength and -1 Con. The point is, though...it allows them to be an alignment other than lawful evil. Because apparently, they normally can't be. While I do understand that they're listed alignment is "always evil," I think the existence of this feat only penalizes a PC who would rather not be lawful evil. If the book wanted to say that non-lawful evil charduni gain +1 Strength at the cost of -1 Con, well, hey, that would be fine. But forcing a character to take a feat just because they don't want to be lawful evil is just a poor thing to do, in my opinion. Particularly for a race intentionally written up as a PC race, as opposed to say, a lycanthrope, or an outsider.
Then, oh boy...the White Fist. Urg...first off, it's poorly written. The abilities the Prestige Class grants essentially make it a Blackguard devoted to fighting chaos which is also set up for the charduni by shifting some of the abilities away from Charisma (which a charduni usually won't have particularly too high). The flavor text, instead of spinning the White Fist as the anti-chaos version of the Blackguard or an order Chardun created to better fit his unCharismatic dark dwarves, goes onto how Chardun had a snit about other evil deities making Blackguards of their own. Boo hoo. The write-up is subpar.
And so are the mechanics. The prerequisites are minimal; a 4th level fighter can easily meet them, and if you don't mind holding off on picking up the prestige class until 6th level, you can also buy those 3 ranks the prestige class requires in Knowledge (religion) in-class as a cleric and advance your spellcasting ability every 2 levels as the White Fist offers. But really, the abilities the White Fist offers are just fine without needing the 1/2 spellcasting it offers. It's frontloaded and broken as all get out. First level: You can detect chaos at will. You can lay on hands like a paladin - only that it's based off of Strength, instead of Charisma, and you can also inflict damage with it, whether or not the target is undead. You gain a divine bonus to all saving throws equal to your Strength. You become immune to critical hits and sneak attacks! All at the first level you gain in the Prestige Class! Quite possibly at a character level of 5! With very minimalist requirements - a Base Attack Bonus of +4, Power Attack, Cleave, and 3 ranks in Knowledge (religion)! Oh, and rather like a paladin, the White Fist has a code of conduct that doesn't allow them to commit chaotic acts. That, and has to be a charduni - which isn't a balancing factor. Big whoop. Immunity to critical hits and sneak attacks. With the first level. A number of paladin abilities that are based on Strength. Because, you know, the Strength ability isn't powerful enough already. Because a fighter needs more incentive to churn it up to ridiculous levels. There's a reason paladin's abilities are based off Charisma, not only from the description of the class and what's appropriate, but from a mechanical one as well. Idiocy, just idiocy. The White Fist, along with the Blessed of Mesos (featured in another book), make for the two most broken prestige classes I believe I may have ever seen. The lack of balance in the Scarred Lands reached a new low when it introduced this prestige class. I suppose that's, ahh...something.
The problems I had with the feat and prestige class take up all of 6 pages, out of the 40 or so, so I suppose that's not too bad. The other 34 aren't nearly quite so bad.
All right...finishing tidbits.
Artwork: Cover. Meh. Not so good. The art for the forsaken elves....eh. Ok. At parts. The charduni, though...absolutely atrocious. The face of Pexan the Younger was adequate, but absolutely every other piece of artwork done for the charduni was just terrible. So there you have that.
Parting thoughts: Do you like the forsaken elves, and want a book dedicated to them, like I did? Well, keep waiting. Everything you might ever need and want that is currently available is in the Termana hardcover, or the Creature Collection Revised, or anywhere but here. Avoid this book like the plague. If you're interested in the charduni, however, well, it's not so bad. The parts on the forsaken elves are better left unread, but the charduni provides a decent portrayal of their people. I don't know that you'd want to pay $20 for about 40 pages worth of material (6 of which are about as broken as the Berlin Wall), but, hey...so it goes.
Of all the Scarred Lands products I own (which is many, if not all), this is easily the worst of the lot, and made all the more disappointing for my love of the forsaken elves. Worse yet, I still have more complaints about the book that slipped my mind as I wrote this review, or that at this point, just seem too much to add onto an already long review.
