Blood and Shadows

[Messageboard Golem]

Rumor and legend made the drow infamous – now learn the truth. This book contains detailed information on the dark elves of Tellene, including history, culture, religion, social structure, subraces, and more! Whether you want to fight them or play them, this sourcebook is an invaluable resource on all things drow, and usable by players and Dungeon Masters in any D&D campaign setting.

 

[JoeGKushner]

Blood and Shadows is another entry in the Kingdoms of Kalamar racial books, this time covering the dark elves of Tellene. The book weighs in at 114 black and white pages for $19.99, coming in at the lower end of the market, as most books of that price range are 96 pages. Authors Trvis Forshee and Mark Plemmons provide all you need to bring the dark elves to life in your Kalamar campaign or to provide alternative origins to them in another campaign setting.

The section on history, told by one Mithelizek, covers when the dark elves were actually known as the twilight elves and what happened to bring them down. Using a character to tell the history allows the GM to pick and take what he likes about the history as an individual, no matter how sure of his convictions or history he is, rarely knows the whole story. More importantly, the section is easy to read with some personality coming through, “The grey elves lived in the most remote places, doing Gods-know-what ever it is they do.”

The history reveals that even back in the time before humans, that the twilight elves, who ruled the mountains, were often arrogant and that war threatened to loom. Attempts to forestall this were made with a arranged marriage, but the bride, a fierce and dangerous worshipper of the Lord of Scorn, used this time to set her people, the twilight elves, against the other elves and use that war, to lead her people down below where she eventually gave birth to a divine being of evil who continued to lead the twilight people into darkness and shadow until their skin took on the color of shadows itself.

Now Drow’deltha wasn’t alone as she had a sister who was pure of skin and heart and actually serves Lady Love. Drow’deltha’s ascension leads to madness as she declares herself a god, and the people who worship the Hatemonger are turned against themselves until Lady Love and the Hatemonger put a new plan in place where Persephaine, the worshipper of Lady Love, leads her people against Drow’deltha and wins over her twin sister. At this point, the race is given an option, follow Lady Love or the Hatemonger and the two split off forming the twilight elves and the shadow elves, also known as the dark elves or the drow.

Other events happen that shape the history of the shadow elves. One event for example, the intrusion of mind flayers on their territory, makes good use of their official Dungeons and Dragons license and also introduces the Githzerai to fill out background details. In this case, an alliance between the Githzerai and the shadow elves that leads to the defat of the Mind Flayers as well as the creation of two monk orders.

Other events are sprinkled through the text from several viewpoints as the narrator who first learns of the shadow elves goes and discovers the lost twilight elves and gets their view of things. One of the things I enjoyed about this from a ‘meta’ thinking view if you will, is that it helps explain why females have such power, as their rulers were all powerful woman. It also helps explain the name drow, as one of a set of twins who was the pinnacle of the evil of the race, was named Drow’deltha. It helps keep the continuity of drow in other settings without relying on a spidery patron goddess.

For those wondering about role playing potential, information on how the races approach the different core classes and variant Kalamar classes like Brigand and Infiltrator is included but no information on psionic based classes is included.

In terms of playability, the races here, the dark elves and twilight elves, are not like the drow found in the monster manual as the dark elves have no magical bonuses and have no listing of an ECL adjustment meaning that they can be played from first level.

In utility, the book includes starting packages for dark elves using all of the core and alternative core classes. This allows you to get playing with the new races right away, but on the other hand, as a GM, I would’ve rather seen NPC’s of various level so that when a party is invading a dark elf lair, I can just pull out some warriors level 1 or warriors level 5.

For those wondering how the dark elves specialize on this world though, there are several PrCs. Some, like the Brotherhood of the Twilight Fist and Sisterhood of the obsidian Gaz’zirad are easy to pinpoint in this setting’s background while others could come from any campaign setting like the Guild Artificers, mages who master crafting items or the Demonbound who swear oaths to demons in exchange for power. Most of the classes are well done but one thing I hate about the format of PrCs is that the hit dice is separated from the class information and some times, like with the Demonbound, those hit dice get lost.

One thing that some, including myself, feel is overpowered, are spellcasting PrCs that gain abilities and spellcasting power at every level. The Keel’thaile is a divine spell caster that gains spell advancement every level in addition to special abilities. Their first level includes detect good, poison use, and combat knowledge, which gives them a bonus on all Knowledge skills relating to art of war or military checks equal to their level.

While there aren’t a lot of new skills, most of the standard skills are discusses in the scope of what utility they’d have underground. For example, using Handle Animal allows you to breed animals while Craft allows them to work bones. A few feats and new weapons and armor help round out the material, but really, this is a book about fluff, not about crunch. In some cases, some of the weapon descriptions are a little vague like the Jelyenesh, a sword that’s over 5 feet from pommel to blade tip and inflicts a massive amount of damage, clocking in at 1d12+1 with a x3 multipler. Why is it so dangerous and not an exotic weapon? I don’t know.

One of the things I wasn’t expecting is the section on poisons as it includes several sample poisons in addition to rules for modifying poisons.

The writers do the GM an extra service by having a chapter of secrets, information that is not known to the general population or is known, but is wrong. This allows the GM to customize the dark elves and provides an excellent example of how misinformation is the GM’s friend. Perhaps a little out of place is that this section includes information on how various secret societies interact and view the shadow elves. This includes information on the Golden Alliance, The Secret Network of the Blue Salamander and Vilhellites, amont others.

The appendices including information on the gods, such as their name according to the dark elves, as well as their symbols, alignment, divine focus, and other important bits of information. New magic items are included like the Elemental Anthame, a double-edged knife that cast’s a summon nature’s ally spell to conjure an elemental. The good news is that they’ve included the caster level, feats, and price, the bad news is that they didn’t include the caster cost in gold or experience points.

A few new monsters, like the werebat and umber bulk (think rothe from the Forgotten Realms) are included to help round out the book.

For those bad with names or desiring random starting ages like those found in older editions per class and race, that information is also included. I love having a table of names as it makes my job as the GM much easier. For those who love indexes, one is included.

The layout is two-columns with the familiar border at the top of the page with the title of the book on one page and the chapter identification on the other page. Outer borders are about an inch while inner and bottom borders almost hug the page. Most of the interior artwork is solid with a few great full page illustrations breaking up the chapters. Some of my favorite illustrations are those that show various dark elves belonging to different classes lined up against one another. It’s especially amusing when you see how much taller the twilight elves are in comparison to their dark elf cousins.

As a player resource, the book serves it’s purpose in providing a lot of options in terms of new races, PrCs, and a few options in the new spells, magic items, poisons, and alchemical items. The starting packages are a blessing for any time pressed player or GM who just wants to outfit a bunch of dark elves at 1st level and throw them against a low level party. As a GM resource, it provides a great deal of information, but because it doesn’t include maps, NPC statistics or pregenerated adventurers, isn’t as useful as it could be.

The Kingdoms of Kalamar Dark Elves aren’t magically inherent like those of the Forgotten Realms, but that doesn’t make them any less interesting and those looking to see how Kalamar handles it, now have their own resource.

 

[Psion]

Blood and Shadows: The Dark Elves of Tellene

Blood and Shadows is a product by Kenzer and Company for their licensed Dungeons & Dragons setting, Kingdoms of Kalamar. It is one of their line of race-oriented setting books, including the outstanding Fury in the Wastelands.

The book is written by Travis Forshee and Mark Plemmons.

A First Look

Blood and Shadows is a 114-page perfect bound softcover book priced at $19.99, which in comparison to many other d20 products these days, looks fairly reasonable.

The cover illustration is by Mark Smiley, depicting an armored female surface elf facing off with the classical white-haired coal-skinned dark elf woman casting a spell (most likely intended to depict a duel of historical significance described in the book.)

Interior illustrations are by Keith DeCesare, Ginger Kubic, Partick McEvoy, and Chris Maildore. The interior is black and white, but the illustrations are fairly high quality, most being detailed and nicely shaded, many depicting dramatic scenes.

The font used is small, but the leader space is a little large in comparison for the font size. The layout is fairly crisp and well arranged, but a few headers in the prestige class abilities, spell lists, and (particularly irksome) the magic items are not bolded, making some abilities/items hard to spot at a glance. There were also a few noticeable spelling gaffes, such as misspelling the ability song of discord as song of discard.

A Deeper Look
(Spoiler warning: some secrets revealed in the book are discussed here.)

The Kingdoms of Kalamar setting is built upon many of the core elements of the D&D game, though it does have its own take on many of these elements. The ever popular (in some circles) drow elf is no exception. Also similar to earlier Kalamar racial books, Blood and Shadows introduces a new subrace, the twilight elf.

Also no exception from other Kingdoms of Kalamar books, Blood and Shadows spends a considerable proportion of its length discussing history and cultural details. The book is organized into six chapters, the first three of which are very rules light and exposition heavy. The book also has five appendices and a short index.

Many sections of the book are told in narrative format, from the vantage point of a historian, first who interviews a dark elf defector, and then who visits the twilight elves.

The first two chapters discuss dark elves (or as they are called in Tellene, shadow elves) themselves. The first chapter focuses on history, and the second upon culture.

The story of the history of dark elves in Tellene bears certain similarities to other such tales: the race once dwelled on the surface with their brethern, but a schism caused them to go underground in an ancient age. In the case of the dark elves of Tellene, the author of the schism was a twilight elf (a mountain dwelling subrace of elves) named Joleriel. Joleriel was to be the bride of a political marriage in a time where violence between elves was unknown. However, she was corrupted by the deity commonly called the Hatemonger. She created a cult in her honor. One the night of her wedding, she staged the brutal murder of her family and made it appear as if the lowland elves were responsible. She then slew her groom in feigned retribution, and of course, the other twilight elves, believing the staged murder, fell in line behind their new Empress.

A great war with the lowland elves ensued, and Joleriel milked out the hatred and bloodshed to please her master, and eventually bore a daughter by him. A daughter that would take her life. That daughter was the first of many of the twilight elves to bear twins, one of each twin would be born with the shadowy skin of the dark elves, thus the race was born. Joloriel’s dark grandaughter eventually disposed of her mother as well, but instead of revering the Hatemonger, she set herself up as a goddess. Her sister (guided by the gods) took part in a civil war that eventually deposed her. The remaining shadow elves were given the option to enter gates into the darkness, or remain behind as twilight elves. Thus the race of dark elves was born.

The second chapter covers the society of the shadow elves today, and sees the first vestiges of crunchy bits in the book. Dark elves of Tellene have different attributes than the classic Drow elf. Essentially, the race has been recast as an LA +0 race. Spell like abilities and magic resistance is gone, and the race has balanced statistics modifiers: +2 intelligence and -2 constitution.

The chapter discusses the nature of dark elf society, again nominally from the vantage point of a renegade. (Though in this chapter, the facade wears a little thin in places, with statements like "you might wonder how a chaotic and individualistic race like ours lives under an ordered structure." Would that really be something a native would mention?) Like dark elves depicted elsewhere, the drow seem to have a society controlled by fear. The Tellene dark elf society is a little more ordered than other takes in that most fall under the rule of a single empress, instead of being widely balkanized.

Dovetailing with the society notes are a number of notes about adaptations of existing classes (including Kalamar specific classes) to the society of dark elves. Through it all (with the exception of actual rules materials in shaded blocks, such as race statistics, the earth druid variant, and variant shaman totems), the author maintains the tone of the narrative by the drow renegade.

The third chapter is very much a mirror of the second, discussing current situation and society as well as a few mechanics for twilight elves much as the second chapter discussed shadow elves.

Twilight elves do not share racial characteristics with shadow elves beyond the most basic elfy things. They are even a little unusual for elves. They actually have a constitution bonus, of all things (+2 con, +2 cha, -2 int, -2 wis.) They have darkvision and their favored class is fighter.

The fourth chapter, devoted to characters, is the first extensively "crunchy " chapter in the book. There is a brief bit of advice given to conceptualization of shadow and twilight elf characters, but most of the remainder is rules related material.

A good deal of the chapter is alternate starting packages for shadow and twilight elf characters. While I saw the purpose of starting packages in the Player’s Handbook, I don’t particularly consider this space well spent.

The remainder of the chapter is prestige classes:
-Brotherhood of the Twilight Fist: An ancient order of monk/assassin types, the brotherhood of the twilight fist has long since fragmented from the dark elves. The brotherhood prestige class is specialized in fighting mind flayers.
-Divine Chorister: This short prestige class is for divine casters. The divine chorister express their praise for their deity in song. They have full spellcasting advancement and gains abilities to hypnotize, countersong, or confuse enemies through song.
-Guild Artificer: This short class lacks any spellcasting advancement, but is a good fighter and receives bonus item creation feats and other item creation bonuses. This would be a thematically good choice for (and is available to) dwarves.
-Demonbound: A spellcaster (with full spellcasting advancement) that bargains with demons. The class gains bonus metamagic feats, energy resistance, and ability to smite good. Overall, this is a pretty attractive alternative to a single classed arcane caster. However, it does have one drawback: each ability the character uses takes a year off their life. Overall, this seems like from a milieu standpoint to be a pretty credible drawback, but with the proper race, it probably is not a deterrent for the average PC and thus is probably too giving.
-Keel’thalie: This class is a "holy warrior". The class has good BAB advancement and full divine spellcasting advancement. The also have blackguard-like and combat abilities but lack the good will saves of clerics. The class is not particularly difficult to qualify (especially for a cleric with the knowledge domain), so it still seems like it comes out a little on the strong side compared to a single classes cleric.
-Sisterhood of the Obsidian Gaz’zirad: This class replaced the Brotherhood of the Twilight Fist after they abandoned the shadow elf empire. The sisterhood, as the name implies, is exclusively female. They retain some monk abilities, but have a bit more rogue/assassin like bent. They are trained with the gaz’zirad, a long knife-like weapon and gain special abilities with it.

The fifth chapter introduces new. There are a variety of new skill uses, many of them culture specific. There is also a new skill, sense dominanc. The text states that for the purposes of class and cross class skill designation, it is treated as sense motive. I am not entirely certain that this skill shouldn’t be tucked under sense motive.

There is a small selection of new feats: birthright and improved birthright (which allow material boons and bonuses to some social skills), improved blind fight, and the shape spell metamagic feat. New equipment also appears herein, including weapons, armor, poisons, and drugs.

The handful of new spells include bat’s blessing (gives bat like capabilities) and bonesteel (turns bone to steel for construction purposes.)

The sixth chapter is entitled secrets, and contains a bit of DM only information, some of which is alluded to in the first three chapters of the book. A number of distortions are unveiled, and activities of the drow and related organizations and individuals are unveiled. All this serves as fertile soil for campaigns.

There are five appendices. The first is a summary of Kalamaran faiths, with some outlines of the multi-faced deities of Tellene as viewed by the dark elves. Appendix B is probably the most significant, containing new magic items and artifacts, some instrumental in utilizing plot hooks planted earlier in the book. Appendix C is new creatures, Appendix D is a small lexicon, and Appendix E has assorted character details: names and vital statistics.

Conclusions

Blood and Shadows continues the same sort of detailed world background that has become the beau of Kalamar fans, and the idea of the drow as a dichotomous race is an interesting hook that DMs of other setting might wish to import.

The mechanics are generally acceptable. Some classes push the limit, but none egregiously so.

Blood and Shadows presents a set of dark elf statistics that are unique to Kalamar. Some non-Kalamar fans who want an LA 0 race might consider using these statistics instead. The twilight elf makes an interesting non-evil alternative to the dark elf as a subterrainian elf. Either way, the remaining statistics are not terribly dependant upon the Kalamar unique statistics.

Overall Grade: B-

-Alan D. Kohler