Edge of Infinity: The Scarred Planes

[Messageboard Golem]

At the Edge of Infinity
As large as the Scarred Lands are, they are tiny compared to the
vastness that is the Great Beyond. From the horrendous wastes
of the Apocalypse Abyss to the beatific glories of the Adamantine
Heavens, the planes that lie beyond the Scarred Lands are places
of wonder. Discover how the very existence of these realms
empowered the gods and led to the downfall of the titans.

 

[JoeGKushner]

I almost think that the Scarred Lands have lost their innovation. Now don’t get me wrong, a war between titans and gods certainly isn’t new, but the way the setting originally handled many things new to third edition was certainly original. Now it seems that most of the books are just a nod and are the dreaded word, interesting.

Take Edge of Infinity. This book details the planes of the Scarred Lands setting. This is a great idea as the planes here have only really been hinted at and never delved into. Turns out its just a mediocre book with a few redeeming features. I hate to say it that way because it’s like dismissing the authors’ work but that’s how I feel when I read it.

Let’s take a look at The Divine & The Defeated for a second. “Tied to the living, thinking beings of Scarn, the gods began to feel twinges of pain and suffering every time a titan slew a mortal.” Interesting right? Not quite the cause to go to war though as another section shows that. “After an incident involving Mesos’ magic cloak, the enraged titan struck back at the Jester, stripping him of his divine powers and cutting off his connection to his followers.” Well, that was enough and Hedrada convinced the other gods that now was the time for war.

Or was it? Let’s flash forward to Edge of Infinity. “The gods believed rightly that the titans’ power was tied to Scarn itself. If they could somehow sever the tie between the two, perhaps they could obtain the titan’s power for themselves and escape their planar realms. The Divine War was thus an effort by the gods to regain their liberty through the acquisition of the power inherent in Scarn.”

Revisionist history, even in a fantasy setting, sucks.

I had to put the book down for a couple of days after that. I’ve read all the SL books and enjoyed many of them. I’ve run a few campaigns in the setting, but have found it more and more difficult as books continue to expand the age of the setting and change some of the fundamental issues of the setting. This was just another example of a huge part of the back story being changed for no good reason.

Anyway, after a while, I came back to the book. The first few sections were like a poor man’s Manual of the Planes. They cover the Fundamental Planes, which are in essence the negative and positive plane and the elemental planes. Apparently somewhere along the way, the djinni have been freed. Now in Echoes of the Past, there is a timeline that shows the djinni being freed from their prison. I assume that’s taken place off stage. Bad enough for this to happen, but to happen off stage like this is poor fantasy fiction.

After that, the Occult Planes are covered. Once again, I felt like I was reading a SL book of material already out there. Here we get Ethereal, Astral, Shadow and Dream. It’s like reading about those planes in another book but they’re missing something.

Then I realize what it is. First off, there are no maps. Of anything. Now I’m not expecting a whole plane to be mapped out, but to be useful right off the table, some maps of some local in the infinite can get the ball rolling. There are also no detailed game statistics for the NPC’s here. There are comments about how they fit one type of creature with the following modifications, but that’s only half the job in my opinion. Providing more characters and game stats for those characters would once again, give the GM more use of the product right away.

When I look over the Divine Planes, I find myself once again, feeling that I’m reading a SL Manual of the Planes. The Mitrhil Heaven? The Iron Hells? The Pestilential Abyss? Each section is like the previous in that it has planar traits, most of which are almost always the same. This includes normal gravity and time, with an infinite size as well as having domain spells be maximized and empowered.

One of the nice things is the section on the Entities. Most of these sections include the gods and demi-gods that make up the notable inhabitants of the realm and end with a reference “is further described in The Divine and the Defeated” but there are some that are just powerful or unknown characters. Sometimes though, it gives more information about those demi-gods mentioned but not heavily detailed like Trelu, the demigod of form and artistry.

One of the saving graces for the book, was the Zodiacal Planes. These are more like mini-planes that corospond to the various Zodiac signs in the stars and are fairly easy to get to, but can only be traveled to when that sign is ascendant, something that occurs only during the month that the sign is associated with.

These planes start with The Fastness of Turros the Eternal, one of the few towers that survives the ravages of the titan Kadum and end with the Duality of Drachys, a demi-plane ruled by a two-headed gold dragon. The nice thing about these mini-planes is that the entities that reside there often can provide aid of one sort or another to those who petition them. Sometimes this is straight information but as in the case of The House of Blades, sometimes a physical item, even a weapon. This provides a lot of utility that isn’t covered by one of the core Dungeons & Dragons books.

Another section that does well is the game mechanics. The first appendix covers feats, magic items, and a single spell. My favorite item is the Crystal Scimitars of the Ragged Dervish. I know I’m not the only one whose had a scimitar that can be hurled at the enemy and this is a nice magical version of such a weapon being a +2 keen great scimitar that can be hurled in a 50 ft. long by 5 ft wide path and cut anyone who fails a Reflex DC 15 saving throw.

The second appendix covers the PrCs. It’s a nice mix and includes several different feels. Take the first one, the Iron Lord. Here we have a tyrant in the making, a warrior based PrC that uses fear and Chardun’s blessings to improve his own leadership abilities. Then we have others like the Moonlight Lord, a servant of Belsameth that gains powers fitting for a shapechanger like damage resistance that can only be overcome with silver. Unfortunatly, this fighting based PrC only had a d6 hit die.

The new monsters include some templates like the Spirit-Eunuch Djinni and the Paragon Beast, as well as new creatures like the Thulkas spawned Fierien, warriors who live only to serve, created from the very sun that the titan is imprisoned in.

The art is solid. The PrC section shines with Timothy’s art. His work graces most of the PrCs these days in the SL product line so if you’ve seen any products in the Player’s Guide series, that’s most likely his work. The layout is simple two column of text with the rough stonework border, similar to the cover, but in black and white. The use of a full page to separate the chapters seems unnecessary but as there is no advertising in this book, seems a fair trade off. The price, $23.99 for 144 black and white pages, is about industry average. If the product had been the 160 originally noted in the review guide, maybe more details and utility could’ve been crammed in.

The book isn’t bad. It just that outside of the Zodiac planes, all of the rest of them don’t say, “Scarred Lands”, they say, “Standard D&D with some SL Trappings.” Not a good thing for something that’s supposed to incorporate the magic of the planes to them. If you’re looking for official Scarred Lands material that can be augmented through the standard books and some hard work in creating the game stats for the entities found there, Edge of Infinity is your book.

 

[Trickstergod]

Although previous Scarred Lands books have offered a glimpse of the settings planes, such as in Divine and the Defeated, it is only as of Edge of Infinity that we get to see a more complete picture of them.

After having seen a number of less then interesting Scarred Lands products come out, along with a few that were just outright bad, Edge of Infinity looked like an oasis just off in the distance as I awaited its arrival. Sadly, upon reaching it, it proved to offer only some relief and certainly not enough to make up for the tepid string of books that came after the last setting book that caught my attention and I considered essentially good, the Termana hardcover. It's not that Edge of Infinity is bad, merely that it goes over a decent amount of familiar planar ground, only with a Scarred Lands twist to it.

One thing I did like was how the first chapter established that the planes of Scarn really don't have any one, set way of being viewed. A number of different theories are offered up about the planes and the way they're set up, but they don't necessarily agree with one another and all have some valid points to them. At one point a picture is shown of the planes being set up as a tree, but in the page across from it, the group that sees the planes as being akin to a tree believes that it's more of a metaphor then the universe really being structured like a tree. This I liked. As the books title states, the planes are, for the most part, infinite, and laying them out in a structure like with the Great Wheel is almost silly, to a degree.

From there we step into the elemental planes, the very building blocks of reality. There's the traditional four Western elemental planes within, as well as the settings positive and negative energy planes. Here's where problems really begin to crop up. First, the planes are a bit overly similar to what you might find in the Manual of the Planes. That's not the big deal, though. The big deal is that in previous books, it had been established that the great cities of the djinn were locked away from the outside world. None could get in and none could get out. Here, however, we see that something broke the magical seals keeping them in. No explanation is offered, no hints are really given and not even a book reference to where the djinn cities were freed from their confinement is offered up. Just one moment the djinn are supposedly locked up, the next they're not. I dislike this for my previous statement about how no explanation is offered up at all, as well as the fact that it's better to have things to do then places to go. I think the locked up djinn cities offered more story potential then them being unlocked did. Maybe that's just me, though. Furthermore, I believe that by ridding the Scarred Lands of another semi-unique setting element, it's only causing the setting to look more and more like all the other generic fantasy settings out there. Bad move.

However, I will say that I enjoyed the take on the positive energy plane, known as the Highest Brilliance to Scarn's people. Instead of being a bleak, destructive wasteland, the Highest Brilliance is brimming with life. Sure, it's still exceedingly dangerous, but instead of being filled merely with energy, it's a reflection of the real world, only everything is living. The stones, buildings, every last object has life breathed into it. Furthermore, those unprotected from the planes destructive nature, instead of simply being blasted to nothingness, are blasted into various fleshy bits. Those body parts then go on to become their own individual creatures, fueled by the energy of the plane. The Highest Brilliance is populated, in part, by living hands and legs and limb monsters that seek to join with and become a part of any creature not protected from the Highest Brilliance's positive energy. Flesh is in a constant state of flux, as body parts join together or split apart. It comes across as both unique and fitting for a plane of life and energy. It's a lot more adventure friendly then the regular positive energy plane.

Next up we come to the occult planes, or what would be known as the transitive planes in the Manual of the Planes. Can't say for sure which name I prefer, but the two are fairly similar otherwise. The astral, ethereal and shadow plane aren't too removed from their Great Wheel counterparts, though the plane of dreams is thrown into the mix. It goes into the realms of Nemorga, Drendari and Erias in some detail, as well as giving reason to why the occult planes are named so. As it turns out, many spellcasters aren't even aware of the occult planes existence, despite making constant use of them. One needn't know you're traveling through the astral plane to dimension door, for example. A neat little tidbit that a DM could take advantage of.

Chapter four brings us to the divine planes. Sadly, I believe it's this chapter I had the most problems with for it contradicting past books (namely, The Divine and the Defeated) amongst other things. To a degree, this chapter perhaps most emulates the Manual of the Planes in the way it's written and D&D cosmology in general. Outsiders are created from the souls of the dead – something I dislike in normal D&D, as it just makes them, in my mind, just another form of undead...bleah. It has a similar alignment structure to the Great Wheel. Even many of the names are quite similar; the Mithril Heaven, Howling Limbo, Iron Hell and Pestilential Abyss, for example. At least the Lawful Neutral plane isn't Mechanus. It differs also in that there's no True Neutral plane. That I actually like. The book doesn't state as such, but it's a safe assumption that Scarn itself is meant to be the True Neutral focal point that all the idealogical planes center around. Of course, the fact that the book doesn't even offer this up as a theory does make me complain; I don't need everything spelled out for me, at least directly, but the more explanations I need to think up personally while reading through a book, the more that book has failed. Not everyone will realize just why there isn't a True Neutral plane, I think. It wouldn't have taken more then a sentence, perhaps, or at most a paragraph, to offer up some small reason as to why one is lacking. Still, the not too far leap of logic that the prime material plane doubles as the True Neutral one is an idea I can appreciate.

The thing that most irked me, though, while reading through this chapter was the write-up on the Howling Limbo. First off because while the other divine planes list how the demigods of the setting fit into the planes, the text on the Howling Limbo lacks them. Apparently this was for space reasons, but it's still disappointing. Secondly, the planes madness inducing nature. Chaotic Neutral doesn't always equal insane and within the Scarred Lands, the deity of madness is Neutral Evil, not Chaotic Neutral. The Howling Limbo shouldn't be the plane that makes folk nuts because of that fact.

The worst offender, though, would lie in the fact that the titan Lethene is in the Abyss, not Limbo, as was stated on more then one occasion in The Divine and the Defeated. She was put there by Vangal as an act of mercy, essentially free to kick around his plane. She was happy with her lot, not being imprisoned like her brethren, only put where she could do Scarn no more harm.

Not so in Edge of Infinity, however. It contradicts The Divine and the Defeated. Says she's in Limbo, imprisoned and currently raging against the cage she's been put in.

Bleah.

I like consistency. While I don't mind a later book contradicting a previous one if the previous one had written in it some foolish or stupid idea, perfectly fine ones should be left the heck alone. Lethene being in the Abyss is perfectly fine as is. Edge of Infinity saying otherwise gave me a rather low opinion towards those who are supposed to keep consistency within the setting from one book to the next. I can understand writers not knowing everything about the setting they're writing for and the more people working together on a setting means there's going to be differences in opinion or takes on certain subjects, but isn't that what editors and developers are for? If I have one complaint about Edge of Infinity, it's the screw up of Lethene being in the Abyss, when it's already been stated she's not there. If the book can't be creative in some ways, it should at least be consistent within the setting. This one wasn't even able to do that. It's worse because the book constantly makes reference to The Divine and the Defeated.

Gah.

Not that the divine planes are all bad, mind you. While the chapter may bear inconsistencies and a similarity to the Great Wheel, Scarred Lands books are, in general, better written then those of Wizards of the Coast, at least in my opinion. This chapter is rather descriptive, from Enkili's ship, Fortune's Wheel, which is a city-sized boat filled with gambling and games of chance, to the Grove of Endless Terror, where the souls of those children sacrificed to Belsameth go to suffer after death.

Then there's the Mirovan Henge in the Pestilential Abyss, an altar covered with the remains of four titans. It's here that the god Vangal creates demigods out of those who truly impress him with their feats of slaughter and death. Those so rewarded are then summarily hunted down and killed by Vangal, who's more interested in challenges worthy of his caliber then anything else...

The last set of planes gone into in the book are also the ones lacking any ready correspondence to the Great Wheel, the zodiacal planes. Sixteen in total, they match up to the constellations of Scarn, each only accessible to planar travel during the month over which they preside. Travelers that stay too long are similarly restricted from returning to Scarn should that month pass with them still in the plane. Each of the zodiacal planes are of limited size and governed by a manifestation of the constellation in some form – Ursos, the bear or Lycaeus the wolf and so on. Most serve as fonts of wisdom of some sort, generally in regards to whatever the constellation is associated with. An interesting chapter for those looking to do more with the Scarred Lands zodiac brought up in Relics and Rituals II and mentioned briefly in one or two other setting books.

That wraps up the planar chapters and leads into the crunch. Curiously enough, while the first appendix is all about feats and magic items, it's the flavor of the writing itself that I take issue with.

Why? Because it has an unreasonable amount of focus on Belsameth. Out of the nine new feats offered up, three of them are focused on the elemental planes, one of them is fairly generic whereas the remaining five all center around Belsameth. Followed up by the consistency problems in the Howling Limbo, this was the second most obnoxious part to the book. I sincerely wanted to swat the writer for the feats with a newspaper. I enjoy variety. If I pick up a book on the planes, I don't expect it to have a strong focus on one god above all the others. I don't necessarily believe that all divine entities should necessarily have feats or the like associated with them, but one definitely shouldn't be favored to the exclusion of all the others. Sure, one of those feats mentions Tanil as well as Belsameth. Oh and two of them mention Sethris...Belsameth's daughter, another Neutral Evil deity at that.

Bah. It's all well and good that whoever wrote the appendix here loves Belsameth. Great. Go write a book on Belsameth then, instead of focusing on her here.

The same with the magic items; of the two gods associated with the magic items detailed, they're, hey. You guessed it. Belsameth and Sethris.

Mechanically things aren't so great, either. Sure, Servant of a Bone-White Moon requires a 15 Charisma and Wisdom, but for what it does? It's still too powerful. +1 to the save DC for all spells at night and +2 caster levels for overcoming spell resistance at night. Considering how easy it can be to do nearly all ones adventuring at night, sleeping at day instead of evening, Servant of a Bone-White Moon is almost effectively, in my opinion, a single feat that grants Spell Penetration along with all nine Spell Focus feats. Even with the restrictions it has, I fail to see how that balances out one feat equaling ten feats combined.

Not that they're all imbalanced towards power. Some are underpowered. Like the Bloody Cauldron, an artifact that, essentially, allows for someone to be unwillingly plane shifted. Big whoop. Craft Wondrous Item could accomplish the same without the item needing to be an artifact. Without the plethora of limitations the Bloody Cauldron has.

So, mechanically, more or less the same that I expect out of the Scarred Lands when it comes to their mechanics. That is to say, not so good. Worse for the fact that the flavor is limited in its focus and shows a definite author bias. That, or just one-track creativity, which isn't a good sign, either.

Next up, prestige classes. One for Belsameth, as my previous comments likely foretold we'd be seeing, and yet another paladin-friendly, Corean based prestige class, in a setting where, even outside the paladin guide, there's already a glut of them. There's also the Keeper of Great Laws, a lawful neutral prestige class that eventually grants immunity to law-based spells; how many law-aligned spells are harmful to lawfully aligned characters? Not many, it seems – the law immunity primarily seems to be a disadvantage and not one that I think was intentional. Sloppy. Including these three, there's five in total, the remaining two being the Iron Lord, a Chardun fighter/leader based prestige class and the Occultist, a prestige class for those conjurers looking to have power over the occult planes.

All in all, none of the prestige classes overly enthused me.

The book wraps up with six new monsters. Two of these are templates, the Spirit-Eunuch, which is meant for djinn, and the Paragon Beast, which is applied to those animals native to Tanil's realm. The other four are the air walker, bird people that are native to the zodiac realm of Rukha, the fieran, fiery, giant outsiders created by Thulkas after he was shot into the sun, the night people, bat looking folk living in the home of the great bat Vespis and lastly, the maintainers, who ensure that the zodiac realms are functioning as they should.

Oh and for those who were hoping to see the Ignan template in here that should have been in the Scarred Lands guide to wizards, bards and sorcerers, or failing that, Savage Bestiary, but wasn't in either...well, it's also not in here. It's since been posted on a few messageboards, so finding it shouldn't be too hard to do, but who's to know when it will finally be published, if ever? It's not even out as a web enhancement. Obnoxious.

The artwork for the book is, for the most part, quite good. Eric Lofgren, in particular, impressed. His piece for Fortune's Wheel is truly atmospheric, leaving me with a sense of the creaking wood of the ship and the tossing of the sea as gamblers roll the dice within, whereas his art for the Black Lands, with the moon shining down balefully, also sticks out. Even Tim Truman, who I generally think is an adequate artist at best, has one good piece in the form of the Moonlight Lord.

Despite what I may have lead some to believe, I did enjoy Edge of Infinity. It wasn't the best book and did emulate the Great Wheel a bit much, but at the least, it benefits from better, more descriptive writing when it comes to the flavor text. It also has a few nifty ideas here and there (again, I really enjoyed the Highest Radiance). Were it a little more consistent in the Howling Limbo, a little less Belsameth centered in the first appendix and had it just detailed the djinn cities as still being locked up (I'm not a fan of metaplot; even had the book referenced where they were unlocked, it'd have disappointed me), I might rate this book a bit higher. As it is, with all of those problems along with the similarity to the standard D&D planar set up, I found it to only be average. If you don't have the Manual of the Planes and are interested in the Scarred Lands as well as its planar set-up, it's a good book to have, but other then that, its utility decreases. If you do have the Manual of the Planes as well as The Divine and the Defeated, you could probably make do with just combining those two together. However, Edge of Infinity will do just fine for those running a Scarred Lands game who don't have the Manual of the Planes (but who do have the SRD, come to think of it – the book makes use of a few mechanics from the Manual of the Planes, which are in the SRD, at least). Not bad, but not great. Some of the mistakes were easy ones to fix and, because they weren't, seriously hurt the book.