Stormhaven - City of a Thousand Seas
By Patrick Younts
Mongoose Publishing product number MGP 5002
64 pages, $14.95
Stormhaven is the second in Mongoose's "Cities of Fantasy" series, and it is a city unlike any you'll see anywhere else: Stormhaven is practically an artifact, a magically-enhanced stone structure much stronger than it has any right to be, rising up out of the ocean on four massive pillars. Basically, it's two cities in one: there's a city on the circular platform balanced on the four stone pillars, and another one floating on the surface of the ocean underneath, moored to the pillars. It's quite a striking image, one that makes me wonder if the author based it on the water-based lair of the villain Hugo Drax from the James Bond movie "The Spy Who Loved Me," which - apart from size and building materials - bears a striking resemblance to Stormhaven.
The book is laid out as follows:
- Introduction: A brief section explaining the basics of Stormhaven and what the "Cities of Fantasy" line does for you
- Stormhaven - An Overview: The history, government, military, festivals and holidays, religion, and magic of Stormhaven
- Upside - Castles in the Sky: Buildings, architecture and people of note in the upper city, plus a few extras like a new fighting style
- The Driftdowns - Pillars of Broken Dreams: Buildings, architecture and people of note in the lower city, plus a few extras like a new sea goddess
- Sailors, Soldiers and Scoundrels: Big-name NPCs and important organizations in Stormhaven
- Sailors Tales and Glittering Gold: Rumors (which make excellent plot hooks), 2 new spells, 2 new feats, a new magic item, and two new artifacts (one major, one minor)
The cover is by long-time Mongoose artist Brent Chumley, depicting the city as seen from the side. The addition of two sailing ships helps make the sheer size of Stormhaven come to life, although the dimensions are way off (according to the text, Stormhaven is 300 feet above sea level and two miles wide - it would be difficult to do an accurate picture with those dimensions and get it to fit on the cover and still look good).
The interior illustrations - all black and white, 26 in all - are done by David Griffith, Eric Lofgren, Danilo Moretti, and Stephen Shepherd. They are of comparable quality, about average overall, although the water elemental on page 10 is one of the silliest renditions I've ever seen. Surprisingly (for a Mongoose book), there is no nudity. Several of the illustrations of specific NPCs are a little bit off (Gretchen VanFleet is drawn backwards, for one thing - the multiple ear piercings and tattooed arm should both be on her right side, not her left; and Kromodus Stormhaven is drawn without his order's loose-fitting robes, which his write-up says he is
never found without), but these are just details and for the most part they're well done. (It's easy to tell who each of the NPCs are, even when they're not labeled.) Oddly, two different artists chose to drawn their renditions of Busted Skull and Odobo, a blind orc and his trained dire weasel.
Both inside covers are put to the best possible use in a book of this type: maps of both levels of the city on the inside front and maps of typical buildings on the inside back. The maps are clear and readable, even without any gridlines or scale. The only major gripes I have are that area 7 (Seawillow House) on the Upside map is inexplicably floating off to the side of the disk rather than somewhere on the disk where it belongs (probably close to area 10, the Stone Forest), and it would have been nice to have the four pillars named on the map. Throughout the work, the four pillars are used as geographical reference points, but nowhere is it explicitly stated which pillar is which. By studying the map and referring to several clues in the text, I think it's Dastos in the Southeast, Vachan in the Southwest, Vespius in the Northwest, and Olmak in the Northeast.
The proofreading is much better in this book than the Mongoose standard - kudos to proofreader Ian Barstow and editor Alejandro Melchor. Author Patrick Younts is a bit more restrained in his language in this book (he's not as "flowery" as he is in
The Quintessential Sorcerer, the other book of his I've read thus far), although I'm still at a loss to explain the "City of a Thousand Seas" subtitle of the book, as Stormhaven is firmly planted in the middle of just a single sea. (I could see the nickname if Stormhaven was a nexus to a multitude of alternate worlds via their oceans - which it isn't - but I suppose it's just because it can be plunked down into a thousand different campaigns and work well in any of them.)
Patrick gives us everything we should need to use Stormhaven "right out of the box," as it were. The different districts of both the upper and lower cities are detailed, along with the major buildings found within and major personages as well. Plot hooks are sprinkled liberally in these sections, allowing the DM several ready-made ideas for adventures. And while
Stormhaven makes frequent reference to other Mongoose books, it doesn't look like they're necessary to use what's in this book. The School of the Winter Blade, for instance, is a fighting style taught by one of the inhabitants of Upside, and while the text says that
The Quintessential Fighter has the full rules for using fighting styles, I don't think you need that book should you wish to incorporate the School of the Winter Blade - everything you need's right here. Similarly, the book frequently references
Seas of Blood - not surprisingly, since
Seas of Blood is the Mongoose book of water-based adventuring and Stormhaven is a city in the middle of the ocean - but you probably don't need the actual ship maps found there to understand that the Orca is a type of trading ship, as is the High Seas mercantile ship. While one of the NPCs is an undine (a monster from
Seas of Blood), if you don't have that book you could easily substitute a triton or use merfolk stats and grant her a land speed.
Stormhaven is well-conceived, laid together in a logical and interesting way, although I think I would have preferred there to be some kind of wave-calming effect on the waters underneath the disk (it would make more sense to me that the floating undercity's wharf and piers were still intact after all this time), but that's nothing I can't add on my own if I wish to. Patrick's writing is straightforward and to-the-point, although I noticed he managed to sneak a couple of jokes into a couple of the NPCs. (Edwin Schroedinger is an Exp2/Wiz 3 with a back cat familiar, making it "Schroedinger's cat" - a common term in quantum physics. Also, there's a doppelganger named "Alehandro," which may or may not have been named after the editor of this book, as that's how his name is pronounced, if not spelled.) There were a few times where it looks like he confused himself (or changed something about the city but didn't catch all of the times the "old way" was in print), such as the dimensions of the four pillars - are they a quarter-mile in circumference (as on page 4) or a quarter-mile in diameter (as on page 34)? Is Stormhaven a "free-floating, artificial island" (as on page 4) or a steady fixture whose pillars reach down to the sea floor (as on page 34)? Personally, I think the evidence points toward page 34 being correct in each case.
Stormhaven is an interesting idea for a fantasy city, and the book gives you enough of a background to use it either as a place to visit or even to base an entire campaign. Not bad for a 64-page book!
