Wrack & Ruin

[Ghostwind]

The great City of Penance is the oldest settlement on the Forge, literally containing millions of years of history in its deep hulking mass. Though nearly forty million souls call the city home, less than half of one percent of the city's locations are inhabited. The bulk of the Pedestal is a madly stacked and sprawling ruin, only superficially explored by the relentless rafters and treasure-seekers of the surface world.



Every home in the city has a hundred others lost beneath it, and every city street stands atop an incredible three-dimensional maze of corridors, alleyways, and crawlspaces - a maze where time has left nothing unchanged, eroding and distorting the framework of magic and even the laws of physics themselves.

Long past the grasp of any human control, the ruins of Penance have become a true landscape, vast, beautiful, and unforgiving, with their own unique ecosystem and their own set of hazards and comforts. Strange plants and creatures have evolved in the eternally darkened streets below the city, and prey upon those foolish enough to step out of the city's gilded cage of civilization.

Wrack and Ruin is an essential guidebook for anyone intoxicated by the forgotten secrets of the past, or by the potential power lost within the great city's crumbling majesty. Don't leave your Bloodhold without it!

 

[GameWyrd]

In many ways Wrack & Ruin marks a special moment for Oathbound. The cleverness, the flexibility, the flavour and the sheer scope of this colourful high fantasy setting come together in one distinguished product. Wrack & Ruin just bristles with life, it is packed to the hilt with information, plot bytes, game mechanics, flavour and artwork. The City of Penance feels more real than ever before. It seems that the book’s authors know their creation inside and out and are tripping over themselves to share as much of their knowledge as possible.

Wrack & Ruin isn’t just a splatbook. Splatbooks are typically a whack of mechanics for a popular but wafer thin niche, you know, like Drow or Fighters. Wrack & Ruin isn’t trying to stretch a niche as far as it will go, this book has the luxury of being able to draw from a hugely diverse (and just huge) city. Penance is the fantasy equivalent of MegaCity One. Writers have been weaving stories from the latter for decades. In the inhabited sections of the colossal city the politics is crucial. Bloodlords rule over cantons. Although they can only do this in a way that The Queen approves of, they’re effectively in charge of hundreds of thousands and extremely powerful armies. We’re given a further insight into this deadly to and fro. Most of the city is inhabited or only scarcely so and these areas are known as the Wrack. The Ruin is an even more tempting area to adventure in, it’s a vast maze of streets and houses that have been built over and buried. If you’ve struggled to explain the presence of so many underground strongholds and the plethora of powerful foes that challenge high-level characters but never seem to bother with conquering the world then Oathbound and Penance is your saviour.

The Oathbound setting is so large and there are just so many races (and prestige races!) available that I find it hard to keep track of them all. Reading the first Oathbound novel, Forged, before Wrack & Ruin helped. I do think Oathbound, if Bastion Press keep supporting it, can become the next Forgotten Realms. In my opinion it’ll be much better than the Forgotten Realms simply because Oathbound designed to cope and use thousands of weird races. Wrack & Ruin introduces new fantasy races, some quite powerful, to Penance and there’s absolutely no sign of the "why hadn’t I heard of them before?" problem at all. Bonus.

Wrack & Ruin is a black and white book – but I didn’t notice. I may have become accustom to colourful Oathbound, but this supplement proves content is better than candy. US $25.99 for 98 pages is pretty good value. The book actually tallies in at 128 pages but right near the end there’s 30-paged pre-written adventure and I don’t count it. Pre-written adventures have to be something different to warrant a positive mention from me and in this case it seems best to discount it completely.

The supplement hits the ground running; we go through the main races that are found in the Wrack. Humans, plenty of the more common Oathbound races and significant new races are all present in numbers worth noting. More than just races, the book looks at how different Bloodlords deal with the empty spaces of the great city and how it can be used. The undercity, the maze, is the perfect dungeon crawl environment and it retains the Oathbound colour; there are sections in the maze where gravity, even time, does not function as you’d expect.

Okay. It’s reached the point where I’d consider listing some of the extras in Oathbound to be something of a spoiler. If you’re playing in Oathbound and are enjoying the surprises then go read something else on the site.

The Nkoll, a snake-like, tentacled race, aggressive race had a go at taking over Penance. As you might except most people in the city consider them to be history, if they’ve heard of them at all. The Nkoll have re-grouped and are building a powerful empire in the maze. They’re not be underestimated. The Scar are an angsty race. They’re ugly and know it. The race is, by and large, infected with natural symbiotic organisms that protect them some sunlight and natural diseases but make a mess of their face. Just a word of nit-picking (eww, gross pun) organisms can’t be alternatively describes as parasitic and symbiotic, the relationships are mutually exclusive. Incidentally, the Scar like sunlight but would burn in it without their face destroying symbiotes. The Wyrgith are yet another evolution of the Drow. Genetically unstable race, anyone?

The Rafter Prestige class is extended. This is the first time I’ve seen anything like this. Career Rafters can continue through levels 11 to 15 and enjoy impressive class specials every step of the way.

Channeling was introduced in Plains of Penance as an alternative form of spellcasting. The world of the Forge oozes divine magic and channelers are able to manipulate this directly. Wrack & Ruin summarises this but I suspect those gamers who succumb to the lure of this book will go out and buy Plains of Penance if they didn’t already have it. Channeling is summarised because Wrack & Ruin introduces more Channeling powers and the Spellwarden Channeling prestige class.

I bet Oathbound is some gamers’ favourite setting simply because of the prestige races. Wrack & Ruin adds the Focus of the Arachnid, Focus of the Chameleon, Focus of the Cockroach, Focus of the Exile and Focus of the Mole to the list. Prestige races and foci allow people to evolve. You can evolve your character up through the foci tree, meet the prerequisites, pay the XP and change physically (and game mechanically) as a result. The first stage of Focus of the Cockroach has the character grow a second, back-up, brain in their abdomen at the first stage and an armoured (if unsightly) exoskeleton at the next level.

The vast majority of the book tours the Wrack and the Ruin – pretty much doing what it promises to do. We’re taken through interesting places like the Queen’s enclosed hedge maze at the centre of the city or the Nkoll controlled area. There are some interesting ways into the maze such as a harem that lets people in through their entrance on request of a "deep special". There’s a whole bloodhold hidden in the wrack, it’s such a secret that the inhabitants might even be nomadic, moving around the vast underground area like hunters on the plains.

There’s no doubt about it, Wrack & Ruin does very well. The book ties in nicely with what’s gone before and this helps build the Forge into the engaging and exciting setting that it should be. The new additions in the book suit what’s gone before and are refreshing enough to inject life into a flagging Oathbound game. The mix of crunchy bits and flavour is just about right. Wrack & Ruin does the Wrack and the Maze justice. If you wanted to simply read about these locations, discover how they happened and how powerful Bloodlords respond to it then the book comes good for you. If you’re strictly buying supplements for crunch bits then the first third of the book will appeal strongly to you. There are plenty of gamers without my distaste for pre-written adventures and they’ll enjoy the thorough scenario at the back of the book.

* This Wrack & Ruin review was first published at GameWyrd.

 

[trancejeremy]

Wrack & Ruin is a location sourcebook for the Oathbound d20 setting
from Bastion Press. It details the outlying (wrack) and underneath
(ruin) parts of the city of Penance, which is more or less the primary
area of Oathbound.

Penance was actually detailed fairly well in the Oathbound campaign
book, with around 150 pages devoted to it, but this details the outer
and under lying parts. Its an unusual city. Because it's so ancient
(tens of thousands of years old) and has a fixed location (around the
citadel of Israfel, one of the 7 rulers of the world of Oathbound),
people just keep building up and up and up. But when buildings
collapse, rather than fixing them, they either build on top of the
wreckage, or move to another place in the city.

It sounds weird, but it's not unprecedented. Several old real cities
are supposed to have similar underground areas. There was an episode
of Scooby Doo that took place in one of them.

After an intro is a chapter on rules related material. There are 3 new
PC races introduced. Another reptile race (goodness knows Oathbound
doesn't have enough of those), this one fairly snake like, somewhat
reminding me of the Sathar from Star Frontiers, only with tentacles
instead of arms & legs.

There's also a race that is like the Drow, but not quite like the
Drow. They're sort of to the Drow what a Hobgoblin is to a Goblin, or
a Flind is to the Gnoll. At least they think so. They have
multi-faceted eyes, like a spider or bug. It has odd (-1/+1) stat
modifiers, which can be a problem in d20 (it's advantageous during
character creation, or can be), but is somewhat unavoidable here
(they're supposed to be slightly better or worse than Drow in a stat
that they have a -2/+2 in, so it couldn't really be helped).

Lastly there is a near human race, but one that happens to have a
symbiote skin covering to protect them from light (without it, they
get really really bad sunburn). As if that weren't bad enough, the
symbiote gives them the appearance of lepers. A very unique race, all
in all.

There are also some new prestige races. Prestige races are essentially
a mechanism in which a character can spend xp and get special powers,
basically, by evolving. The ones in this book are a bit, er, icky,
being taken from various underground critters. For instance, the Focus
of the Arachnid, the first step gives a character compound eyes.

Rounding out the section are some new "Gifts", which are rewards given
to characters who enter the Forge (some of these are pretty funny,
like "Mr. Creepy", which means a character no longer needs to blink,
or the "Bladder of Holding", which is perhaps self describing), and
some obligatory prestige classes.

The abandoned parts of the city (the Lost City, it's called) get about
20 pages. They're really not abandoned (or lost), because some people
do live there, but because of the peculiar laws of penance, unless
1000 people live in an area (a canton, it's called), there can be no
laws or ruler. So essentially they are lawless regions.

This is a fairly interesting chapter to me, because it answered a lot
of the questions I had about how cantons work, and how to go about
developing them (to eventually take them over). There's enough detail
in it to let your PCs become real estate agents or land developers.

Fairly detailed info is included on two of the groups that are
prominent in the ruins, the Band of the Sun (a criminal group) and the
Rage Maidens (a militant feminist organization that works to free
female slaves). It uses the guild rules from their previous product
"Guildcraft". Basically, you spend xp and get a power. Personally, I
don't like that system, I think that is exactly what prestige classes
should be for, but it's not too unbalancing.

There's also a description of the many interesting places of the Lost
City, including bits on the history of lost cantons. Almost like a
travel guide in depth, though with some legendary places mentioned as
rumors. There's even an Penance version of Brigadoon, though
thankfully minus the singing.

Next is on the "ruin" or the part underneath the city (not
surprisingly, called "The Undercity"). It's around 30 pages, and is
mostly a detailed description of the place itself, not much rules
material. It's a very interesting read, as there are dozens of
fascinating locations underground. Again, it's somewhat travel
guide-ish, so it can be somewhat dry reading, but enjoyable, if you
like that sort of thing (which I do). There are literally dozens of
adventure ideas present.

Highlights include a canton run by a vampires and a cannibal cult;
just about everything there is to know about the Grinder, a rather
curious monster that alternately chats with and eats people, depending
on her mood; and a lost, technologically advanced civilization that
literally polluted itself to death.

The last 32 pages or so are devoted an adventure. It's apparently a
metaplot adventure, there seems to be something of a story arc going
on. I'm not sure if it's directly tied into the adventure in the
"Plains of Penance" book (which I don't have), but it's pretty much
stand alone.

Like most metaplot heavy adventures, this one features a fair amount
of rail-roading. The PCs have to recover a magic item from the depths
of Penance, then they have to give the magic item away to the guy that
hires them. It's a bit straight forward, going from point a to b to c,
but there, there is a bit of variety, including opportunities for
role-playing. It also reveals some of the mysteries of the world of
Oathbound to the PCs, and they get to meet some of the major players,
not just in Penance, but the setting itself.

Physically, it's a solid book. It uses the fairly heavy paper that
they've used since switching to black & white interiors. The margins
are average sized, but the type face is pretty small, so the text
quantity of the book is pretty good. Art is somewhat sparse, but is
generally good, much better than in the original Oathbound book.
There's one really nice full page picture of a Rage Maiden (non
sleazy, too). They seem to be going away from frequent small
illustrations in past products in favor of fewer but larger and higher
quality ones. (Good move, I think).

This is a must-buy book for Oathbound fans. B+. It answered many of
the questions and things I wondered about when reading about Penance
in the Oathbound setting book. (Though I still have more things I
wonder about, like why technology is so low (that one lost canton
excepted). And I still think it needs a supplement featuring mechanics
for running a canton/bloodhold, like the old Birthright setting for
AD&D 2nd edition).

I also have to say that it's nice to see a company support it's setting so well. I'm a fan of a couple of other settings, but they seem to have almost been abandoned, or put on the back burner.

 

[Messageboard Golem]

Did you really reference a Scooby Doo episode as an example of something "not being silly"????

Just kidding, nicely done review

Chuck

 

[JoeGKushner]

Oathbound Wrack & Ruin provides a good amount of player material, GM material and an adventure to get the game rolling.

The title of the book comes from the primary locations detailed in Penance, a book I believe now has enough information to run several campaigns in it. The outer areas, the wrack, and the buried portions of the old buildings are the ruins.

For players, we've got the standard Oathbound goodies. This means new races, prestige classes, gifts and prestige races in the front of the book. The three races may not be perfect for all players as they tend to be odd.

Take the Nkoll, a serpent race with four tentacles instead of arms. These creatures have holdings under the city and are building up their numbers in order to strike at the surface world. Could be a good substitute for Drow in a long running Oathbound campaign. Another strange race, the Scar, might have been fully subterranean once as they have light pale skin and beautiful features. However, they burn in the sun and must have parasites placed in them in order to survive for any amount of time in the light. These parasites tend to leave scars and distortions across the skin as they expel waste. And you thought Elric had it bad eh? The worst part about it, is that they know they're ugly and freakish and don't like it. The one race I didn't like is actually a subspecies of drow, the Wyrgith. They're a little better than the drow but use those odd numbers for some of their stats as they're not much better than drow, just a little.

For PrCs, we get the Career Rafter, what might be the first potential Epic level Oathbound PrC as one of the requirements is that you have to have ten levels of rafter in order to enter the class. They can detect the strange fields and auras around many of the ruins in addition to knowing how to make their way around the maze or pick up bits of knowledge here and there. The Spellwarden uses the unique channeling found on the Forge, the ambient power of the chained god fueling special abilities. The bad news, as with any channeling class, is that if you leave the forge, any ability reliant on that ambient energy is not useable. Now that's a quick way to make sure that a player stays on. This is a full ten level PrC and gains different abilities as they go up in levels ranging from Bind, placing a spell within an object to Resistance, spell resistance as well as resistance against channeling powered effects.

The new gifts tend to focus on survival or concealment such as Night Eyes, giving you darkvision of 60 feet or Bladder of Holding, allowing you to avoid all of that bodily function thing. The new earned gifts include material like Fast Healer and Luck of the Cat, things that help you survive either immediately, as the latter gives you a +4 insight bonus to Reflex saves or long term, as the former gives you double healing.

The new prestige races focus on some odd areas this time as we got the arachnid, chameleon, cockroach, exile and mole. Of these, my favorite is probably the Exile as it's definitely a different type of prestige race. You're branded on the face with one of the seven brands of exile and with it, a penalty of death if you go into Penance. There are some benefits to this brand though, and the abilities of the Exile, range from knowing if any of the seven or their spies are within 1,000 feet to basic immortality, immunity to aging and disease in essence.

Now note, I mentioned that those player goodies were up front. The first appendix also includes some new spells, equipment and magic items. It's not a huge section, but it does add some new options like the spell, Smokeless Fire where you create fire without the smoke, giving you the heat you may need to survive in something like say, a maze, where smoke couldn't escape.

Now that's all well and good for the players, but what does the GM get? Penance is a big city, we've got no doubts about that. Its also old. What happens to those ruins that are build atop of and built above that and then have some more stuff thrown above that? Why, they become underground and abandoned cities is all.

The first section for Dms, The Lost City, or the Wrack, explains a great deal about the lawless land and it's lawless because in the city, to be under the law, you have to have a certain amount of people. Most of the Wrack doesn't have enough people to do so with only a few settlers here and there in the ruins. The important thing to remember, is that there may even be a few bloodholds with enough people to sponsor that title but because the place is so huge, they're still effectively isolated.

Now for those who explore, the GM has some tools like using predators or collapsing buildings, as well as running into squatters or having whole sections sink. Those who survive find that not everything is profit as there are taxes to be paid and other matters to deal with. Fortunately, there are also survival tips that the GM can pass out to the players in order to increase their chances of surviving. Players may find themselves in the roles of builders, trying to claim salvage from the Wrack or even making a Canton of their own if they can secure enough land and make it safe.

In this dangerous area, we've got two groups freshly detailed with rules following Guildcraft, also by Bastion. In essence, you pay experience points for ranks and titles and gain special abilities. Be careful when using this with other experience point costing abilities like the various schools from Fantasy Flight Games , Mystic Eye Games or Mongoose Publishing as you can easily unbalance your campaign. Still, it's unlikely that players will join the Band of the Red Sun or the Ragemaidens. The former an organization devoted to serving Lord Narcis and the latter a group of women warriors determined to free females in need of help.

The next section, the Undercity, has material not only on the architecture, climate and air, but the hazards that are part of daily life such as collapsing buildings, plants, animals and locations to explore. If you liked Undermountain in Waterdeep, you've love The Bold Rasher, a 'bar...located on the avenue of 1000 fountains...has a door that opens into the maze...' so go into the bar, pay you fee and go crawling. Classic setup. It is here that the holdings of the Nkoll are detailed, the Sarrissar, a massive 10 cantons with over sixty thousand souls, most of them Nkolls.

Under the section Talons of the Undercity, several groups are detailed for GM use including the Grinder, a powerful gnarl who is worshipped as a god by the Ground organizations. Others include the Black Dagger, a group of assassins and producers of poisons as well as the Rafter's Guild.

Now all of this information is a lot to take in at one sitting. How to use it? How to mold it? How to run players through it. Why, go through Black on Black, an adventure for 8th-12th level characters. Like other Bastion products, this one has a few bits and pieces taken from Arms & Armor as well as Minions, Fearsome Foes, but the adventure is still useable without them. It can also be tied into Dark Welcomes and Ascension Day as it assumes those events have happened with the Grey Stranger gaining solid form.

The adventure has a lengthy history behind it and is heavily involved with the metaplot of the setting. If you haven't run the previous adventurers, you can still run this one, but players might have some questions about the nature of the setting. In dungeon crawls, it's often a simple thing to go here and do this but here, there are pawns, knights, rooks and kings all moving about the same board but to the players, much of this, if done properly, will be invisible for the most part.

There are some other goodies for GMs to experiment with. For example, how to monsters from the Monster Manual or Minions fit into the Maze? There are notes in the appendix providing the GM some hints. How about random buildings in the maze? Covered. Unique monsters? Covered.

Wrack and Ruin uses a standard two column layout. Editing could've used one final round as a few sentences seemed to be a little vague but for the most part, the text flows easily. The loss of color and slick paper is noticeable and the book, at 128 pages for $25.95, seems a tad on the high side but in comparison to say, any of the Secrets of the Clans books by AEG or their Swashbuckling Adventure books which are 96 pages for $24.95, it's competitively priced.

The book allows the GM to have endless dungeon crawls as the party explores the past of the campaign setting as well as a full fledged adventure that pushes the plot of the setting along. In some ways, this might be a weakness as while it's nice to have an adventure to make the material immediately useful, would more maps, illustrations and PrCs be even more useful for players and GMs? Your mileage may vary, but I think that the metaplot should probably go into its own sourcebook and focus on making the book more player and GM friendly with more options. After all, this is the Forge and who knows what we'll find here right?

GMs looking to expand their Penance campaigns and have more information about the Oathbound setting at their fingers, should look into Wrack & Ruin.

 

[Voadam]

Wrack and Ruin is sourcebook detailing the ruins and undercity of the Oathbound d20 campaign setting's city of Penance. Penance itself is described in the campaign setting book and is currently also supported by the Oathbound product Plains of Penance.

Oathbound is a high powered, high fantasy campaign setting with mechanisms for drawing in creatures from various worlds. There are populations of normal D&D PH races, monster manual races, races from Bastion's Minions: Fearsome Foes book, and the Oathbound campaign setting with easy opportunities to add in more from other sources.

Penance is sixty three miles across, a huge area with most of the surface uninhabited and not subject to legal rule. These lawless regions of the surface are called the wrack. The inhabited regions are ruled by individual bloodlords who essentially set up their own nation states within their territory with culture and laws varying wildly from one region to the next, some being incredibly evil. The whole of the city is ultimately ruled by a semi-divine figure, the Queen Israfel of Penance. She magically draws in non-natives for her own purposes. She sets up and enforces the rules governing bloodlords but does not directly take a part in the city's life or direct governance.

The city is also half a mile high. Levels and buildings were continually added above existing ones throughout its multiple thousands of years of history. Occasionally these buildings collapse and sink lower into the undercity known as the maze. Since sunken buildings fall until they reach a stable position there are gaps and incongruities such as a building's front door leading to the third story window of a neighboring building instead of into a street. The city is continually shifting and settling as more material is placed on top and different portions below collapse. Sections underground and on the surface can sink at any time and make life subject to catastrophic change. When a building sinks into the maze, the former inhabitants usually find it easiest to rebuild anew so most sunken buildings are abandoned, sometimes with valuables still inside.

The maze has some bloodhold city states itself (one with a population of 65,000) and a thriving ecology of monsters. There are also a number of random magical phenomena due to the high concentrations of magic over several tens of thousands of years in the city. These range from time and gravity manipulations to magical interference zones. The city has an entire guild, the rafters, dedicated to exploring and guiding people through the maze.

The setting requires major suspension of disbelief, the building upon layers idea is physically infeasible, the logistics of getting materials up to the city is more than daunting, and the underground populations seem ecologically iffy (as all underdark ones do). The reward for engaging in the suspension however is a great set up for D&D adventuring. There are reasons for a huge dungeon, random monsters, multiple PC races, weird magical effects, unexplored areas and abundant loot. Also there are plenty of clear bad guys and solid home bases for adventurers in various bloodholds. At any point everything is subject to change as buildings collapse shifting the balance of power on the surface and possibly opening up new opportunities in delving.

As far as solid game material, Wrack and Ruin provides a lot of d20 mechanical bits. There are three new PC suitable races (disfigured almost humans, a serpent race, and a more spider-like type of drow) and a PC suitable template for natives of the maze. There are five new prestige races, (an xp for levels of power concept introduced in Oathbound) nine new arrival gifts (special magical powers roughly equivalent to a feat that the magic of the world bestows on new arrivals), and seven "earned" gifts. The prestige races are foci of the arachnid, chameleon, cockroach, exile, and mole.

There are two prestige classes, one is a five level extension of the ten-level rafter prestige class from the setting book, and one is a ten level channeling class. Channeling was a type of spell point magic introduced in Plains of Penance and sufficient material is presented here to use the new spellwarden class which can bind up spells for long periods of time.

There are two new guild organizations. One, the Band of the Red Sun, is criminal based and one, The Rage Maidens, is dedicated to helping abused women. The Rage Maidens are presented mechanically using the rules from Bastion's Guildcraft including six levels of guild benefits and three rage maiden only feats.

Six spells, six monsters, six new pieces of equipment and four magic items round out the new d20 rules materials.

As for setting material there is information on the various bloodhold relationships to both the wrack and the maze. These range from Lord Abyddon's attempts to find routes through the maze to conquer the Alliance to why there are so many monster attacks on Divinia.

New secret bloodholds in the maze are introduced as well as a mobile secret bloodhold of exiles in the wrack. There are weird fantasy animals and plants native to the maze, lots of little organizations, places of interest and rumors. The maze has legendary lost bloodholds that sank hundreds or thousands of years ago with rich stories about their significance and the lost treasures they contained.

Finally there is a forty page epic style adventure that continues from the events in the adventure contained in Plains of Penance (although starting here would not be a problem). It is designed for five eighth level characters but has notes for scaling the adventure up for higher powered parties. The events involve bloodlords, Israfel, the Rafters, and other major power players of the setting. There is a high level of brinkmanship with disaster ready to overcome the land (or the PCs) if the party makes missteps or tarries too long. One part where the party must submit to capture should probably be rewritten as most PCs will predictably balk at the situation.

As a sourcebook expansion for the Oathbound city of Penance, Wrack and Ruin does its job providing numerous options for adventuring in the lost portions of the massive city and expanding the rich, high powered, high fantasy milieu that is Penance.

 

[Messageboard Golem]

By John Grigsby, Staff Reviewer d20 Magazine Rack

Sizing Up the Target
Oathbound: Wrack and Ruin is a Dungeons & Dragons supplement for the Oathbound campaign from Bastion Press. This is a 128-page black & white softcover by Darrin Drader and Greg Dent. The cover art by C. Michael Erikson depicts what might be a rafter (an adventurer in the Forge) standing in a glass room, overlooking Penance. Alexander Leonard, Ben Eargle, C. Michael Erickson, and Christopher Pickrell contribute to the interior art. Oathbound: Wrack and Ruin retails for $25.95.

First Blood
In the Forge (the setting in which Oathbound campaigns take place), the city of Penance sits on a plateau measuring an incredible 67 miles in diameter. However, only about 30% of the city is occupied. The remainder of the surface has been abandoned. Sometimes this is due to a massive die-off, such as the result of a plague. It might also be because of a war between rival forces, or simply a natural result of the residents having moved on. These uninhabited regions have come to be known as “the wrack.”

In Penance, the buildings are very close together, with little or no room for outward expansion. Thus, when a building becomes old, unsightly, or just no longer useful, it is common for residents or owners to build atop the old structure and most buildings are designed to hold far more weight than just that of the original edifice. Sometimes, however, the underlying structures give way, causing the buildings that are supported to fall beneath the surface. This phenomenon is known as “sinking.” Over the years, it has become common practice that when an area sinks, the residents just patch the hole and build something over it. The end result is that beneath the streets of the city lie the remains of buildings of the older city, in a chaotic, twisting design known as “the maze.”

The maze is home to the dregs of society, the beasts that have been driven from the city proper, and those who wish to travel unseen. No one knows exactly how deep the maze goes, but given that the plateau is one-quarter mile high, there’s plenty of room to work with. The wrack, on the other hand, is a lawless zone outside the established Bloodholds, where the Bloodlords hold sway. Loners, cast-outs, and dangerous beings inhabit the wrack, for a variety of reasons. Needless to say, either region is a place to find adventure.

Wrack and Ruin opens with a brief introduction that explains these two concepts (the wrack and the maze) in a little more detail, as well as familiarizing both newcomers and veterans with Penance itself. The system of cantons and Bloodholds is explained, and the Radial Coordinates system first introduced in Plains of Penance is recapped here (along with a new coordinate for measuring depth beneath the city). The dominant races of Penance and how they fit into the scheme of the wrack and the maze are examined, and the established Bloodholds (and their Bloodlords’ views on the ruins) are described.

Cantons, which in previous Oathbound products have been explained as being simply square-mile sized designations of land, are given a detailed treatment here. Though seemingly arbitrary, the canton lines are quite real (and discernable to those with the proper training). Each canton is a tiny city in and of itself, with an individual name, center, distinctions, and style. Lost cantons are sometimes reclaimed and often renamed and rebuilt in a new style. The face of Penance is constantly in a state of change.

Explorers of the maze may also encounter another of Penance’s little surprises; warped realities. These are areas where the magic of the unbound gods have congealed with permanent spells and great age to form zones of organic magic that take on a unique form. These may include regions that impede magical movement, wards against teleportation, anti-magic fields, magic amplified zones, fear zones, monster lures, gravitational anomalies, or temporal anomalies. The effect is enough to keep explorers constantly on their toes, and can make rafting (exploring the maze) not only very entertaining, but also very challenging.

Wrack and Ruin also introduces some new rules for your Oathbound campaign. Three new PC races and a new template are offered for your use. The nkoll are an aggressive and charismatic snakelike species, the scar are disfigured humanoids that dwell on the fringes of society, and the wyrgith are a subrace of drow who have been changed by the magic inherent in the Forge. The Lost is a template that can be added to any living creature to represent a being better suited to life underground than on the surface.

Two new prestige classes, the career rafter and the spellwarden, provide new avenues of advancement for the PCs. The career rafter is an explorer supreme, who picks his way through the catacombs as easily as walking down a crowded street. The spellwarden makes use of a new ability, also described in this section, called channeling. Channeling was first introduced in Plains of Penance but is recapped here for those lacking that reference. In brief, channeling is the ability to tap and focus divine power for a specific purpose. A channeler has learned to channel the innate energy of the Forge so as to be able to manifest spells without having to prepare them. They differ from sorcerers in that, instead of being limited to a certain number of slots per day, channelers are limited by their physical and mental endurance. Spellwardens are individuals who have refined the science of channeling to an art form. They contain magical energy into non-living objects, setting specific conditions for the release of the magic.

Newcomers to the Forge gain special abilities known as arrival gifts. Several are described in Oathbound: Domains of the Forge, but there are a few new ones added here, along with a few new earned gifts (abilities that are received as rewards). In addition, five new prestige races are described in Wrack and Ruin. All are quite interesting, if a little unnerving. They are the Focus of the Arachnid, the Focus of the Chameleon, the Focus of the Cockroach, the Focus of the Exile, and the Focus of the Mole.

With the introductory material out of the way, Wrack and Ruin jumps right into the wrack, describing the feel of the ruins, how to get in and out, conditions and travel hazards, staying on course, and survival tips. Each Bloodhold has its own entrances to the wrack and the maze, and each sets its own tolls, entry fees, and cost of membership in the local rafter’s guild (and only a fool would go rafting alone). The survival tips are of particular importance, not simply because they add flavor to the game, but because they can actually affect game mechanics. For example, roping your group to one another grants a +8 bonus on Reflex saves to avoid sinking should a section of the maze or the wrack give way beneath your feet.

There’s more to the wrack than just exploring empty streets and ruined buildings, though. A body can earn a good living by helping in the rebuilding process. There are several reasons that one might wish to reclaim lost cantons, though the most obvious are to expand an existing Bloodhold or form a new one, naming yourself or one of your friends as a Bloodlord. It isn’t an easy process and it takes a significant investment of time and money, but if you’re willing to persevere, you can claim your own little section of Penance.

Penance, like any living city, is forever changing, and Bloodholds are lost and reclaimed with startling frequency. Also, given that an area usually sits empty for hundred or even thousands of years before it becomes a part of the maze, the wrack generally holds more of value for treasure seekers. Though largely unexplored, the wrack does have some locales that have been well-visited, but still hold plenty of adventure for those of a mind to seek such things. Wrack and Ruin describes five Bloodholds that have fallen in “recent” history (within the last few thousand years), as well as a number of well-known sites that are worth visiting.

No discussion of the wrack would be complete without mentioning its populace. Yes, despite the dangers, a great many people, from outcasts, to settlers, to criminals choose to inhabit the lost city. Likewise, though there are no formal laws upheld within the wrack, there are several guilds and criminal syndicates that can be a boon to members and a bane to strangers. Two such criminal organizations, the Band of the Red Sun and the Ragemaidens, are described (using the guild structure from Bastion Press’ Guildcraft), along with a secret Bloodhold that exists within the wrack, unknown to most of the populace of Penance.

If the wrack is dangerous, then exploring the maze is downright suicidal. Despite this, there are several rafters who ply a comfortable living delving into the dark corners where sane people fear to tread. As with the wrack, the maze is given its own chapter, which tells the GM everything they need to know to make it an exciting source of endless adventure. Hazards, flora, and fauna, as well as the more commonly known ways in and out are all given the same detail that the wrack was given in the previous chapter.

The maze differs from the wrack in many ways, the most notable being that everything found underground is older, most often far, far older than anything on the surface. A feather in any rafter’s cap is the rediscovery of a lost canton or, more rarely, an entire lost Bloodhold. It does happen, however, and Wrack and Ruin describes but a few of the lost regions, both discovered and yet waiting to be found.

As above, so below, the saying goes, and the Forge is no exception. Some regions of the maze are as much legitimate Bloodholds as any on the surface, and just as fiercely contested over. Four such regions are described in the book, leaving plenty of room for the GM to develop her own. And, just as above, there are organizations that offer protection and predation to those who would risk the maze.

“Black on Black” is a 34-page scenario for Oathbound that draws a party of adventurers into the depths of the maze in search of an artifact that will prevent a mad member of an ancient race from killing the Bloodlords and taking over Penance. This is not an introductory scenario, but is designed for characters that are familiar with the Forge and with Penance. Though intended for 10th-level characters, notes for scaling the adventure for those of levels 8 to 12 are included.

Following the scenario are a series of three appendixes; Spell & Items, Monsters, and Designing the Maze. Appendix A introduces six new spells and a handful of specialized equipment and magical items. Appendix B contains five fearsome new foes that will fit well into any Oathbound campaign, and Appendix C is a detailed essay on generating believable maps of the maze, as well as typical denizens thereof.

Critical Hits
Even at 128 pages, Wrack and Ruin is a fairly small and lightweight book, but still packs a powerful punch! If you’ve been putting off running an Oathbound campaign, this may be the book that motivates you to action. Light on mechanics, Wrack and Ruin breathes life into the wild areas of the city of Penance, providing the GM with plenty of descriptive atmosphere, while still giving them all the necessary rules to handle adventures set therein.

Since I first laid eyes on Oathbound, the maze has held my fascination, and with the addition of warped realities, I’m hyped to send my ground deep into the bowels of the city. I admit that I hadn’t thought much of the wrack until I read this book, but it has opened my eyes to the possibilities there, as well.

Critical Misses
One thing that stands out immediately is the lack of an index! Look guys, indexes not only serve to provide a means by which to reference key points from the book, they also provide closure. They let us know that the author didn’t just die at the keyboard and the book was shipped off to press. I know they’re a pain to provide, but every good reference book should have one. Okay, enough harping on that.

Now, the three new races that are found here. In general, I like them, particularly the scar, but I could have done without the wyrgith. As a foe, I like the drow, but they’ve been overused to the point of being cliché and the wyrgith are just, well, spider-drow. I’d rather have seen a race that was a little more original. Besides which, a cardinal “rule” of 3E is violated by granting the wyrgith a +1 modifier to Intelligence and a –1 modifier to Constitution. Racial ability score modifiers (or any ability score modifiers, for that matter) should occur in even intervals.

Coup de Grace
GMs running Oathbound campaigns should move this book to the top of their wish list. It is absolutely essential reading for any GM seeking to capture the flavor of the Forge (and Penance in particular). The material is aimed specifically at Oathbound campaigns, of course, but there’s a good bit here than can be squeezed into other settings easily enough. It wouldn’t be difficult to create a city very much like Penance in a homebrewed campaign, and even if you don’t want to go to that extreme, some elements of the wrack and even the maze can apply to any good-sized ruined city.

Overall, the book is an excellent value. The margins are standard for the industry and the typeface is perfect for readability, with few (I didn’t notice any) spelling or grammatical errors. The artwork is sparse but of good quality and is well-matched to the text. Open Game Content is largely limited to game mechanics (about 30% of the book), but the work maintains a high-level of adherence to the d20 standard.

Final Grade: A-