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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Messageboard Golem" data-source="post: 2010095" data-attributes="member: 18387">By Bruce Boughner, Staff Reviewer d20 Magazine Rack and Co-host of Mortality Radio Sizing Up the Target Death: Guardian of the Gate a 72-page PDF supplement book published by Dark Quest Games and Natural 20 Press. The author is Darren Pearce. The cover is by Gillian Pearce and is the dark lady looking out over the land. She also does the interior art it is available for $6.95. First Blood This supplement is a treatise on the Lady Death and her worshippers. Probably inspired by DC’s Vertigo imprint version of Death as one of the Endless. The book opens with the story of the Pale lady, once an elderly gentle healer she was brutally robbed and murdered. Abandoned and thrown into a pauper’s communal grave, her home looted and destroyed and she was forgotten. As she appeared before Death, she was without fear and so Death, weary of his task, stepped aside to allow the healer to assume the mantle of Death.Appearing to the narrator, the newly appointed Death approached Lucien (again a Vertigo character who is caretaker of the Library of Dreams), who dies in a duel, pierced through the heart. Smitten by Death, Lucien becomes her caretaker of souls. The narrative then switches to become the Pale Lady herself who then expounds upon death, reincarnation and the juxtaposition of souls from one life to the next. The book then moves into stat block descriptions of Death, her retinue, and the tenets of her church. The High priestess of Death’s clergy is introduced, as is the tenets of the faith. Then a prestige class of paladins is laid out, The Lady’s Chosen, and another of Clerics, the Shade Warden. Chapter three deals with the dogma of the faith on numerous topics such as drugs, art, entertainment, and education among others. The next chapter deals with the clerical classes, Follower of the Lady Pale, its skills and feats and also the Master of the Eternal Flame, Melancholy, Guardian, Mysteries, Seals, Shields and Sisterhood of the Shade prestige classes. Chapter five brings forth the magical relics of this faith while the sixth deals with the rituals, myths and legends of the Pale Lady. Seven deals with NPC’s and spells and in chapters eight and nine are articles of poetry. The last pair of chapters have ads in them and delineate the Great Library (of Souls) and a final revelation (story). The author uses the final couple of pages for dedications and the OGL. Critical Hits I’ve not seen many works dedicated to just one deity and its clergy, this one is thought out and rambles more than a little. The art that graces the interior is very well done and the artist should be seeking more independent work. Critical Misses First and foremost this seem to be merely a goth D&D module, but digging into it, those of us who crossover a couple of different genres, this is putting DC comics Death character, almost virtually unchanged, into a D&D product. Coup de Grace Some of the work here is first rate, Piers Anthony’s On A Pale Horse is what comes to mind in some of the chapters but it is more a send up of Neil Gaiman’s character than anything else.To see the graded evaluation of this product and to leave comments that the reviewer will respond to, go to Fast Tracks at <a href="http://www.d20zines.com/html/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=index&catid=&topic=4" target="_blank">www.d20zines.com.</a></blockquote>

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