Akashic Nodes: The Home of Memory

[Crothian]

If knowledge is power, then the collective memory of all who passed before must be powerful indeed. Akashic Nodes: The Home of Memory is the first in the AEvolutions line of sourcebooks from Blue Devil Games, providing exciting, original material for Monte Cook's Arcana Evolved.

Written by the Keepers of the Oath, a dedicated and talented enclave of AE scholars, this book explores the phenomenon of akashic nodes, locales where the concentration of memory is at its greatest. Each chapter presents a unique, fully-described node as a way of introducing new rules, including:

# Citadel of the Wayhunters: A fallen sibeccai fort with detailed mechanics for expanding the concept of the node. Epicenters, aspects, lore, and echoes offer new ways to customize your nodes.

# Academy of Visions: The ruins of a small community of akashics, magisters, and runethanes, this chapter explores the connection between nodes and magic, presenting new spells, runes, and magic items for characters and GMs alike.

# The Forgotten Graveyard: A mysterious resting place marked by bones of every shape and size and home to many strange creatures from the vicious akashic reavers to the mysterious mind giants known as the merro.

# The Burlboughs: A secluded area of the Harrowdeep, where the Green and the Dark wage a centuries-long battle for control. This chapter offers new rules for adapting nodes to aid characters of every class.

# The Serpent's Heart Guildhall: An exhaustively described akashic guild with a dozen fully described NPCs and enough plot hooks to sustain an entire campaign.

# "The Fading of All Things": A full-length adventure, in which the party races through the sands of the southern lands to undertake a node ritual and avert a war, all the while harried by a band of vallorians and their dreaded minions.

Each chapter is peerlessly illustrated by a different artist: Marcio Fiorito, Daniel Harris, Sergio Isaza, J.P. LeClerc, Bradley K. McDevitt, and Jeff Ward. Featuring cartography by Ed Bourelle. Fully bookmarked. The demo includes the cover, table of contents, and the entire first chapter!

 

[Crothian]

Akashic Nodes

[imager]http://www.bluedevilgames.com/images/Cover_akashic.jpg[/imager]

Occasionally it is nice to see a different take on a game. It is one of the reasons I like d20 so much there are all sorts of authors offering up interesting and new ideas. The inclusion of so many people can keep a game fresh and new feeling. And while d20 has succeeded and failed in this regard, this is about Arcana Evolved and a different company doing some work. Malhavoc usually does the work but this book is done by Blue Devil Games.

Akashic Nodes is a PDF by Blue Devil Games. Blue Devil Games is best known for their Poisoncraft book and Dawning Star Sci Fi campaign setting. This one hundred and three page PDF has a separate file for the cover and the bulk of the book. The art is done by about a half dozen different artists each of them having their art in a separate chapter. The writing is also from different authors for different chapters. The book is mostly black and white with a bit of color here and there. It is not so much color to make it difficult to print and there are no borders or other large ink eating areas of the book. The book is very well book marked making it easy to use and find things on a lap top or other computer.

Akashic Nodes deals with places of knowledge but that are not libraries or places of learning exactly. They are places of great events. They can be great battle that left tens of thousands dead. Or they can be a peaceful glen that a village resided on for many centuries. There are many different kinds of nodes but they all can be used potential by the Akashic, one of the classes presented in Arcana Evolved. This book is written for the Arcana Evolved rules. With some work the ideas can be used in normal Dungeons and Dragons or even a completely different system. The mechanics though may take some work to get it to the proper feel, but the descriptions and ideas of a place that retains something of the people who lived and died there is an easy and common enough idea to be easily useable.

The most interesting part of the book I found to be the first chapter. It goes intro different types of nodes. Each has a type of power rating, an area of effect, a particular theme, and personalities able to actually manifest themselves. There are many different types of nodes described here, and even dozen to be exact. There is the alien node. It can be created with a group of outsiders or possible a planar gate in the vicinity. A Haunting node is formed when a community, if one can call it that, of undead is finally put to rest. Hostility Nodes form from a civilization of great hatred. They could be possible raider, xenophobes, or genocidal conquers. Then there are the powerful Legacy Nodes. They can only be formed with the passing of Dragons. The variety and adventure ideas for each node are really excellent. The ideas in this chapter alone really make the book worth while.

One weakness of the book, and it is a weakness of d20 in general, is the stat blocks. Some companies have found some good ways to deal with it and it would be nice to see some of those used here. It gets a little tiresome flipping pages to get past the extensive stat blocks at times. I have found that placing them in an appendix works well especially for PDF products. The ability to place a direct link from the page to the stat in the appendix and from the stats in the appendix back to the place in the book they go makes moving between them easy. It also allows a reader to not have to worry about the stats if they do not want to at that time.

With as many authors as they have the books stays with a rather high consistency of writing. Having different authors and artists for each chapter almost makes them feel like individual books. This is one of the better books I have read that tackles the multi author and multi artists. Usually they come across more hit and miss then this one does.

Blue Devil Games once again shows they can produce a good quality product. The writing and ideas are very flavorful and this book has a lot of adventure ideas as well as a full adventure in it. It makes a very strong addition to Arcana Evolved and it also can serve as some interesting encounter ideas in other games.

 

[MRTrice]

Thanks for the review. I wanted the node descriptions to keep with Monte's original concepts of versatility and empowerment. I think we all entered the project with goal, and Justin and Alex did a superb job keeping our voices unified.

Hope everyone enjoys it.

--Michael

 

[JoeGKushner]

More support for AE in the form of memory nodes

Akashic Nodes is a sourcebook for Arcana Evolved, published by Blue Devil Games. Akashic’s are an interesting class in AE as they’re a skill-based class who dive into a pool of memory to augment their normal abilities. The PDF has the standard bookmarks and outside of the covers, is in black and white.

The art and writingvarying by chapter. For example, Chapter One is done by Bradley McDevitt while chapter two is done by Derek Kupper with illustrations by Jeff Ward. This allows a wide range of authors and artists to contribute to the world setting by using one solid theme. Maps look to be done by Ed from Skeleton Key Games.

Layout is crisp and simple. Each chapter starts with a full page single column of text that’s in story form and then moves into the more traditional two column spacing. There are no borders for ease of printing. About the only thing that bothers me is the blue devil logo at the center of the bottom page, as I keep expecting that to be the page number, but the page number is at the top of the page and unfortunately, doesn’t provide any information outside of the name of the book and the page number, where it could be the chapter of the book and the page number.


The book starts off with ideas on how to expand the Akashic Node. This includes different types of nodes and how they’re formed as well as what aspects those nodes have to them. For example, what would a node be like of a civilization that passed away while dreaming and what intensity modifier does that node have? Other mechanics are snuck in including knowledge checks for history and magic with different DC’s and new diseases. It’s a fun little chapter for the GM.

Chapter Two, the Academy of Visions, is subtitled the Magic of Akashic Nodes. The Academy buildings are mapped out and it’s background detailed along with ideas on how to learn exotic spells, and several new exotic spells for those rules to be used with. Because magic isn’t just about spells, we get some new items like the Dagger of Rememberance and Si-Caran’s Maul.

Moving on to The Forgotten Graveyard, the Creatures of the Akashic Node, we see that the manipulation of the flesh isn’t limited to the dragons as we get several new monsters here perfect for those looking to expand the dangers of AE from beyond the excellent Legacy book. Some of these are potent foes like the Akashic Reaver looking like an undead wolf man and clocking in at a CR 14 to the Merro, also known as the Mind Merchant, who advance through character class and appear to be similar to giants. Perfect for expanding the range of playable characters in the setting.

Now not every node is for an Akashic and chapter four, the Burlboughs provides some new options with different aspects for different classes as well as some new spells and runes. These bonuses range from gaining a bonus to skill checks when sacrificing a Hero Point while within the node for unfettered to gaining an aspect of power for a magister.

Moving past that, we see The Serpents Heart Guildhall, an akashic guildhall. Here we get maps for the first through sixth floor as well as numerous NPCs for the GM to add to his campaign as either patrons or foes for his campaign. The best part is that many of these are not human characters so that we get things like a giant alongside a sprite.

Now that you have all this information though, how do you use it? Well, the Fading of All Thing is a quick “adventure in memory” written by Justin D. Jacobson himself. It’s a fairly high level adventure, for 8th-12th level, and includes a few brief notes on how to scale it, as well as tools like an adventure timeline, background, NPC’s, and of course, maps of the landscape and specific adventure locals.

By using the nodes as a common ground, the book is able to bring together various elements that might not normally belong together or be associated with akashic nodes in the first place. It has new spells, magic items and other goods and has possible patrons, allies and enemies for the GM to use as he sees fit. For players it’s a bit weaker as most of the material is aimed squarely at the GM and the mechanics aren’t dovetailing into dozens of akashic PrCs and feats. We’ll save those for another book.

For those looking for support for AE and want more than the two books Malhavoc currently has out, this is a good place to start.

 

[MRTrice]

Thanks for the review. I'm glad you enjoyed the collaborative nature of multiple writers and artists. I know I loved McDevitt's art in for the chapter I wrote, and Justin worked hard to find artists who could capture the feel of each chapter.