Wes Baker
Taken on it's own, this book is not a great introduction to the Cortex system. This book is a toolkit with a basic set of rules that you add things to until you're happy with your game. The problem is all of the options are thrown at you pretty early on. You do get an example of how dice are rolled and the basics, but then you're thrown in the deep end.
However, at roughly the same time, the publishers of Cortex came out with the play test material for Tales of Xadia and that is a much more focused “book” (something like 50 pages) and a better example of how Cortex can be run. Instead of presenting itself as a ton of options, Tales of Xadia is a specified set of mods that make a cohesive whole. Having that as an example of how a Cortex game can be run really helped things for me. That being said, I think there's some benefit to reading the main book for a little bit, getting confused, and then reading one of the current settings to clarify things (either Hammerheads or Tales of Xadia).
As for the system itself, it's clever. Everything is a die pool of d4s, d6s, d8s, d10s, and d12s. Typically your pool will consist of 3 or more dice. You'll roll them and add two together to get your result. From the remaining dice you can pick one as the effect die where the face doesn't matter, only the size of the die. The bigger the die the greater the result (e.g. a d6 is a middling success, but a d10 is pretty fantastic). From there things expand outwards quickly, but once you've picked your mods, it seems simple enough.
One thing to note for GMs out there is that there is no bestiary, but you don't really need one. By default there's no hit points (there's a mod for that) and since traits are all represented by dice it's easy to make something up or just add dice to the dice pool (in the case of mooks).
I'm looking forward to trying this one out, though it'll likely be with my sons. That being said, I think it'll be easy to adapt for kids and look forward to seeing how they handle it.
It has a lot of things going for it:
- A dramatic resolution system where even the smallest die can turn into a big success
- A simple initiative system that makes it easy to know when you go
- A built-in system of hindrances that give players something to roleplay
- The ability to easily move between genres
So why three stars?
While I like the idea of raises, it's division. It's not particularly hard or anything, but reduce complexity wherever you can. Second, there's a lot of hidden complexity in some of the weapons, automatic guns in particular. Last, there are just so many other systems that are as simple that can borrow some of what makes Savage Worlds good: grab a deck of cards for initiative, add some kind of meta currency, and roll for a disadvantage at the start and you've gotten a lot of the good parts with none of the weird parts.
It's also worth mentioning that while I appreciate that they need to make money, most of Pinnacle's Kickstarters heavily push towards $100+ pledge levels with all sorts of bits and bobs. There's nothing inherently wrong with that, it just rubs me the wrong way.
For the most part, I enjoyed the book. I appreciated the philosophy on duty and maybe the more mundane parts of being a solider, something I'll never be. However, there were parts I flat out disagreed with, namely the rant that corporal punishment is good and social workers and child psychologists were wrong. He points toward hitting dogs and rubbing their noses in their accidents as proof that he's right.
There's so much wrong in one small paragraph. Hitting teaches that hitting solves problems, it usually doesn't. Positive reinforcement is generally the best way to train a dog and crazy enough it works great for kids too (maybe not all, but it's worked great for my kid who was deemed spirited by quite a few people). Additionally, social workers and child psychologists can do remarkable things for us as a society and the idea that if we just hit people more is so reductive that I'm kinda flummoxed by it.
All of that said, there were parts of the book I really enjoyed, I'm just not sure I'd go around recommending it to everyone. I think it hits hard with it's idea and philosophy and duty and I can't think of another book that does it nearly as well, but there's a lot of baggage that goes with it.
This review comes from reading and not playing. Ideally I would have played it, but I only have so much time in a given week.
Warlock! is a mixture of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (with it's career system and lack of levels) combined with some OSR elements, a d20, and some more modern sensibilities.
For skill checks you'll roll a d20 and add the relevant skill and attempt to get a 20 or higher for a success. Anything less is failure. There's a defined set of 32 skills along with career skills (which are the average of a given career's relevant skills and used when nothing else makes sense).
When you create your character you'll start by picking some beginning skills. You choose ten skills to start at 6, ten skills to start at 5, and everything else starts at 4. Keep in mind though that a skill at 6 only has a 30% chance of success! After that you'll roll for stamina (effectively hit points) and luck (which serves as a saving throw of sorts, except each time you test it, you deduct 1 from your luck for the rest of the adventure (recovering it afterwards).
You'll pick a career and have 10 more points to invest in career skills. Careers define a set of five skills that you can advance in as you gain experience. With the beginning careers there's two skills that allow you to advance as high as 10 and three that can advance as high as 12. After advancing at least three skills to 10 or more you can move on to advanced careers that have 6 skills: three as high as 14 and three as high as 16.
Along with your skills, stamina, luck, and career you'll get some basic possessions and career possessions, and pick some character traits. Then you're off to the races.
Combat is made with opposed rolls with the attacker getting a +5 bonus to their roll, so sure your character might start with a 6 in short blades, but that +5 makes it an 11 which gives you a 55% chance of success. Whoever rolls highest in the roll gets to roll for damage (ranging from 1d6-2 to 2d6+3). Armour reduces damage by 1d3 for light armor, 1d6 for modest, and 2d6 for heavy. When an attack hits it will always do a minimum of 1 damage. Critical hits only ever happen if stamina is reduced below 0 and from there you roll a 2d6 on a chart, adding how far below 0 stamina the victim is. For example: you hit a character with 2 stamina for 4 damage, they roll a 1 on their light armor so you do 3 damage. 2 stamina - 3 damage = -1 stamina. This is a critical hit and you'll roll 2d6+1 on the critical hit table.
Initiative is handled by each side rolling a d6 and highest going first, with ties being rerolled, but then it goes back and forth from the winning side to the losing side, with each side choosing a character who hasn't acted yet. I like that wrinkle from B/X D&D.
Recovery is much faster than in other OSR games: characters recover half their lost stamina if they can rest for 30 minutes. A full night's sleep recovers the rest. However, critical injuries take much longer to recover from.
Magic is probably the most interesting to me, mainly because Wizards typically have fewer hit points in D&D to balance their greater strength in offense, but here everyone has the same stamina roll. Instead, in order to cast spells you must sacrifice a certain amount of stamina, whether you're an arcane caster or a divine.
From all of this, I'm definitely intrigued, I think it could make for a very fun romp through a medieval city. I really like how careers are handled and how simple it is (as I typically bounce off of anything too complex). I'm looking forward to running a small arc of this at some point in the future.
I have a weakness for generally applicable programming books because they'll be valuable longer and are a better use of my time than learning a language, framework, or something similar. For example, [b:The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master 4099 The Pragmatic Programmer From Journeyman to Master Andy Hunt https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1401432508s/4099.jpg 7809] is one of my favorites.This book feels like a spiritual successor to The Pragmatic Programmer and I'll recommend it to any experienced developer. There are some oddities (the author recommends goto at one point), but for the most part the recommendations are good and serve as great discussion topics with co-workers and other developers.
This is a relatively big dungeon (for a session-length module) with a bit of a preamble and a big hook for future adventures.
You're newly minted heroes, looking for a village that needs saving and this village has seen various creatures skulking about, killing livestock and people. This is not the highest paying job I've seen, but hopefully the 50gp and the promise of a good adventure lures your party to this town. If it does, you'll meet with the “Parliament of Eng” and be told about the killings which turn out to be a combination of impalements and a traveler torn apart.
Marrow's Farm
A bit of poking around leads to Oggo Marrow's farm, someone who lived here in the time when the fae realm was friendly to the humans. He has his superstitions (salt and iron filings across his doorstep) and will help the party if they take care of the thing killing his livestock. He describes the creature:
Big it is, with eyes that burn red in the dark. It leaves cloven hoof prints in the mud around me pen, but they vanish when the sun rises. It kills with a single blow, stabbing me animals to death. In the morning, thee's not much blood around as there should be, leaving I's to think it sups on gore.
If the party decides to help Marrow, they can hang around at night and await the beast who turns out to be an Unseelie unicorn, a normally placid beast turned vicious by its Unseelie nature. Once killed, Marrow will tell the party about how Eng used to be and about the mound near the Ivy Wood, where the fae creatures would appear after coming to our world.
The Faerie Mound
This is the dungeon proper, though the dressing may not feel like it. You're certainly in the mound, but when looking up, you see a dark night sky and stars glittering. Moss covers the floor and there's a lot of natural vegetation in here.
Players have potential to go full murder hobo, sneak around, or role play why they're there. They can put on disguises, split the party and have the elves go ahead, or find disguises within the mound. The sheer number of routes the players can take makes this one of the more interesting dungeons I've read so far (which admittedly is not many, so take this all with a grain of salt).
I think my favorite interaction in the entirety of the mound is the dwarf slave you find: Fimbulfambi. He was captured by a group of fae and brought before Prince Ashheart (the faerie who started this whole mess). The prince then condemned him to toil in his smithy making weapons for the Unseelie fae. That's fine, but what makes this NPC interesting is his burning rage. If you save him and let him come with you, there's a very good chance (DC 18) that his rage will get the better of him and he'll rush the prince and attempt to kill him.
One more thing worth mentioning (though there's a lot of other good parts here) is during the fight with the prince there's a chance the PCs will become cursed by him. The prince will then stop the fight and negotiate his release in exchange for lifting the curse. If captured and threatened, he will lift the curse, but if the party believes him and takes him where he wants to go (the exit from the mound to the fae realm), he'll have his lackey Herne the Hunter attack with his Faerie Mastiffs.
Final Thoughts
There's more here worth mentioning: a lot of the loot disintegrates outside of the fae realm, time may or may not have passed while they heroes were in the mound, there's a bwca (a smaller faerie creature similar to a brownie) who will likely help the party who talks in rhyme.
When I read this one, I was a little miffed by how short the preface was to the mound. It seemed a bit like a railroad, and maybe it is, but once inside the mound, your players have a bunch of options. They can go full tilt or they can play it cool, use their wits, and come out of the bargain with few scars and more riches.
This adventure offers three things: a nicely fleshed out town with a serious problem that needs to be dealt with soon and a lingering sense of paranoia, a small dungeon filled with traps, tricks, and a fight or two filled with surprises, and a “boss” monster that must be researched before taking it on.
Everything in that list is exciting to me. As a judge I'm happy with the maps and descriptions, but I felt that the connection between the burial mound and the town could be more obvious. You should be feeding your players plenty of rumors as they ask around and those rumors should include the tomb. Make sure they get heard and make sure the players hear about the spear and shield.
Beyond that, I dig it and I feel like I could easily reuse all of these elements in different games. The town is a great example of a town that has a timely problem and doesn't just open the doors for adventurers. The tomb is a great little dungeon, a good example of something that requires more thought than just kicking down the door and barging in. The hound makes your players think and penalizes them for (again) just rushing in. I can't wait to try this one.
I really enjoyed half of this book, namely the Pigs from the Pit (a transitional adventure for level 0 characters going to level 1) and the Adventuring Ties (a series of reasonable excuses for why your freshly rolled characters show up after another character dies). In particular, the adventuring ties do a great job of giving you some kind of advantage and disadvantage. Maybe your group only attracts level 0 characters, but they're really lucky, stuff like that.
Pigs from the Pit
Pigs from the Pit has a hilarious series of monsters to attack in the form of pigs with sentience and magical powers gained from eating a sorcerer and his belongings. I'm looking forward to running this adventure at some point.
The Stone Heir
The eponymous adventure seemed alright. The general idea is you're sent off to recover the petrified form of the local baron's son who was paralyzed by a basilisk he was hunting. Along the way, you stay at his hunting cabin and find one of his lovers who was stuck underground for weeks and has sustained herself by eating the bodies of her maidservants, and is now turning into a ghoul. Grisly.
After that you make your way to the basilisk's cave and after some quick exploration you figure out that the whole thing is a money making operation for a gray dwarf (Duergar) who sells the “statues”. There is a fun encounter earlier in the cave where the party comes across an old and somewhat feeble ooze who's just too old for this shit.
This adventure didn't have nearly as many fun elements as the previous one and felt like it was on rails. I'm not sure of the point of the hunting cabin other than being a convenient place to sleep and therefore have an encounter? I guess that's it. The cave is a good example of a five-room dungeon and could be solved by roleplaying, which I always appreciate.
Everything Else
There are three other sections:
- a series of tables describing your level 0 character's background
- a series of tables for bartering your initial set of trade goods for something else
- three classes that turn the demihuman classes (dwarf, elf, and halfling) into human sword and sorcery classes that feel just different enough while reusing most of the rules for those classes
The classes are probably my favorite part and the other two are just okay. I like seeing what the players concoct for a backstory during play and I'm always curious to see what the players do with the goods from their original profession. Make them use their heads.
Final Thoughts
I bought this one in print, but I'm not sure I'd recommend that. For a PDF, it's probably worth picking up (that recommendation gets stronger if its on sale from its normal ~$5).
I've only read it once so far, but I found myself rereading chapters regularly because 1) the main point of the chapter wasn't neatly condensed into a one-liner (which is neither good nor bad) and 2) the chapters moved so quickly that I felt like I missed something. There's a lot of good ideas in here, but whether you can actually make them happen at your company is a whole other matter. I feel like the advice in this book has several audiences and your use of this book largely depends on whether you're an employee, a manager, or an entrepreneur.
An entrepreneur would get the most out of this book, though they have to be willing to hear its advice and try it—it certainly goes against typical practices.
An employee will long for some of the ideas, but will only have so much power to make them happen. Some of the employee-applicable content will feel like common sense, but some of it runs counter to prevailing ideas, in particular the idea of not being constantly available.
A manager is somewhere in between the entrepreneur and the employee depending on their ability to change current practices, but they can be the champions for sane deadlines, trimming down scope, and protecting their employees' time. They can also be a good example for their team(s).
Overall, I enjoyed the book, but I feel like I need to read it again, or at least read over my highlights, in order to get everything out of it. The short chapters lead to the idea moving quickly through my head and I want to better hold some of those ideas because they're worth holding onto.
A caveat: I haven't played this system, but given the sheer number of systems out there, I cant play them all. I'm not sure when I'd use this over another system. It's both simple and complex at the same time. It offers character advancement and progression, but seems flat. I both like and dislike the exploding dice as it's fun, but swingy.
I can remember reading/playing this gamebook back when I was in middle school. I was poking around at OSR blogs on Blogspot and found Fabled Lands and it came right back to me. The rolling of the dice, the decisions, the weird places and people. This was almost exactly as I remembered it being and it was great.
I do think the book was a little short, but I could certainly play it several times through and lean in one direction or another. Also, I'm planning on picking up the other books in the series so I can continue my character's adventures elsewhere.
There's so much good material here. You could run almost any sci-fi game you can think of. Want to play out Voltron? There's a whole chapter on mechs. Want to pilot a ship and trade goods? Totally doable. How about Starship Troopers? You can make it happen. I have so many ideas I want to run after finishing this book and Kevin Crawford gives you all the tools to come up with even more ideas by generating sectors, planets, societies, missions, NPCs, patrons, and more.
Much like what someone else said, this feels more like a manual for Day One rather than a method or way to use it. Now, there are some pages devoted to how to best use it, but it's crammed into one chapter, almost as an afterthought. You can also find most of that content elsewhere for free in a blog post or two.
This is a dense book and it took me a few months to get through, mostly due to me forgetting to pick it up, but the material is excellent. I've read a few books on biases and heuristics before and always enjoyed the material, but I felt like this book did a better job of really focusing on the repercussions of them and how they might affect you.
The ending is a bit of a letdown as the author concedes that he's not sure how to fix these problems, but being aware is an excellent start.
Definitely a very good book on Ruby, the best I've read so far. It describes some typically hard-to-understand topics in a very clear fashion. I already knew most of what was being taught, but there were still useful bits here and there. I'd recommend reading this if you're newer to Ruby and maybe even skim it if you're an experienced Rubyist.
Let me get the parts I liked out of the way first: the art is great. The characters are drawn beautifully, a god's action certainly looks like a god did it, the use of panels and multi-page spreads are gorgeous. I liked the gods as characters, with Lucifer being the protagonist and the most interesting.
That being said, the book is about gods reincarnating as people who are in their teens to twenties. They are gods and have the powers that go along with it, but they only get to live for two more years. That part is pretty interesting, but the gods have reincarnated as incredibly narcissistic brats who want nothing more than attention for those remaining two years of existence. I get that gods are typically portrayed as selfish and quick-to-anger, but seeing it modernized as some of the worst traits of my generation just didn't appeal to me. We already have enough of this kind of behavior without mythical superpowers.
I think this book would appeal to someone younger than myself, probably someone more in tune with popular culture, someone who can enjoy the parallels of these gods to rock stars. However, for me, a nerdy programmer, the story just didn't appeal to me.
I'm a sucker for stories about dogs, especially dogs that are in bad situations. Kinski is a story about a man—Joe—who, while on a business trip, finds a stray dog. He goes very quickly from trying to find the owner to claiming it's his dog, but then animal control takes the dog to the shelter. After that, it's all about Joe's desire to get this dog back which eventually involves both theft and breaking and entering.Mingled with this is Joe meeting the owner of the dog—Holly—while they're staying at a hotel before the drive home. He finds out that she owns Kinski, who's actually named Bosley, and quickly gets out of there. She later picks him up and by this time has put two and two together and leaves his ass by the side of the road.Restitute, jobless, and with a newfound criminal record, Joe seems to slip into destitution, all due to a dog that was never his that he wanted for no reason that was explained. Yet, in the end, all books with a dog have something of a happy ending and Joe gets a phone call from a veterinarian's office in Mexico. He picks up the dog and apparently moves to North Bend—where he was at the beginning of the book.It was certainly a fast read, and I really enjoyed the black and white art. There are some great panels with the full-page panels being the best:The writing is sparse, but that seems to be intentional. It reminds me a lot of [b:The Road 6288 The Road Cormac McCarthy https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1320606344s/6288.jpg 3355573] by [a:Cormac McCarthy 4178 Cormac McCarthy https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1414695980p2/4178.jpg] in that way. I wasn't a huge fan of the writing in The Road, and it didn't do much for me here either.I think my biggest problem with the book is Joe's motivation to get this dog. It only takes a few panels on three pages to go from “No collar, huh? Where are your people? We'll figure this out.” to “I found him. He's mine.” He's asked a few times about why he's doing this and it only ever comes down to feeling like the right thing to do. As a dog owner my gut would tell me to get this guy back to it's owners if everything about the dog looked alright. If the dog was injured, especially if it looked abused, that'd be another matter and one I hope animal control would notice. Yet, no matter how I spin it, I can't quite agree with what Joe did and that's why I didn't rate the book higher.
There's not much to love about this book. The art can sometimes be great, but more often than not it's muddy. My best guess is this is done intentionally to simulate the confusion of war, but I was frequently confused as to who was on which side. I knew whose side the Americans were on, but it was necessary for them to tell you who was killed because you had no attachment, didn't know the names, and had a hard time realizing who was killed from panel to panel.
I think the biggest crime of this whole book is that it's too short. Instead of feeling like an epic last stand, it comes across as a chore, something they're taking care of in a day or two.
I enjoyed this book, but I can see how some people might be completely disinterested in it. It's a story about loyalty to a cause, a person, an ideal, these are things that I think we've forgotten as a people and I think that's why I enjoyed it so much. I think part of the reason that so many people don't enjoy it is that it's hard to associate with a group of people so bent on avenging their lord's death that they know that they'll die at the end of it whether they're successful or not. That's just not how we live our lives these days and it's incredibly hard to associate with a group of people like that.
Still, there is another reason to not like this book: the prose is stuffy and the lives of the people we follow are pretty flat and one-dimensional. I think there's a valid excuse there too, this was a piece of history that became a play and some depth would need to be removed for that medium.
Then there were times in the book where things were slower than others, parts where you were waiting for something interesting to happen. Here I feel like we're in the same stasis that Oishi—the main protagonist—is in and we suffer with him.
All of these things are negatives, but they all have their reasons and excuses and at the end of the book, I can say that I truly enjoyed this book. It was worth my time now and will be worth my time again. It's a parable or a proverb about loyalty to a cause and the things in life worth dying for. You might disagree with Oishi and his ronin, but they knew in their hearts that their master's revenge was worth their deaths.
This is the first of a possible 8 (I think) books that detail the lives of Hadrian and Royce before the events of the Riyria Revelations series. In this first book, we learn how Hadrian and Royce are brought together and how two people so different become a team—yes, it's the Crown Tower mission and Arcadius puts them up to it. The book starts out focused on Hadrian and his return from Calis. He's making his way to Sheridan, the university, because of a letter from Arcadius about the dying wish of Hadrian's father. After disembarking from his boat into the city of Vernes, Hadrian is quickly introduced to a little man named Pickles who steals his bag, runs away, and then shows back up holding his bag and offering to help him find his way.
Later in the book Hadrian is making his way up to Sheridan and is on a barge with three other merchants, a woman, and a man wearing a hood who keeps to himself and doesn't talk much. The merchants and woman are convinced that the man wearing the hood is a killer from the city of Vernes and conspire to kill him. Hadrian, being the guy he is, implores them not to because they have no proof. After a few days of traveling Hadrian wakes up to find a barge with everyone dead or missing.Assuming it was the man in the hood—since his body is nowhere to be found—he makes his way to the nearby town, Colnora. He only stays for a few days after bringing the sheriff to where the barge with the murdered victims was, but it was missing. The sheriff was a bit suspicious of Hadrian so he had to get out of there quickly. From there he makes it to Sheridan, finds the professor and is sent on his mission to the Crown Tower. The mission goes awry the first time when stealing the book as Royce ditches Hadrian since he's _stupid_ and slow. Hadrian realizes he's been left alone and heads back to Sheridan to find Royce already back in the professor's office with the book they were supposed to steal. The professor, frustrated with Royce, asks them to return the book back to the Crown Tower as the whole point of this mission was to have Royce and Hadrian work as a _team_.Royce is furious at this point, but this is the one thing that will grant Royce his freedom from Arcadius's debt. They practice climbing, but Hadrian just can't get a hang of the hand claws that Royce uses, so in frustration they decide that climbing harnesses might be a better call. After figuring that out they head back to Crown Tower and climb it. During the climb Royce leaves Hadrian in a lot of sticky situations but he keeps getting himself out of them. At the top, Royce's internal alarms are going off and something is _different_ from the last time he was there.Royce sneaks into the hallway and sees one priest sitting there and before he can do anything Hadrian stumbles into the hallway panting. The priest sees them and starts to scream. Royce kills the priest, they put the book back, and run out of the tower—Royce running one way, Hadrian the other. Hadrian makes it back to the rope and harnesses and sees two harnesses. Royce on the other hand, runs into four guards, which is about two too many. Hadrian realizing that Royce—the man who doesn't care for Hadrian whatsoever and who has left Hadrian for dead several times—is in trouble, goes to his aid. It's at this point that Royce finally sees just how good Hadrian is with his swords. Hadrian manages to take down a few guards and Royce runs for the harnesses, but encounters a very strange looking guard in strange looking clothes with a strange looking weapon (even in a spoiler, I won't spoil who this is). Royce has no chance with this guard and takes a rather severe hit and is only saved in time by Hadrian. Hadrian's sword is destroyed by this strange guard's strange weapon, so he's forced to bring out his spadone. Fighting faster that Royce has ever seen, Hadrian is parrying and working the strange weapon and keeping the guard at bay, but he won't be able to keep it up. Royce sees that there's blood by the crenelation that's behind the guard and Hadrian must have noticed it too because Hadrian manages to shove the spadone into the guard's breastplate, not hurting the guard, but pushing him over the side of the tower.They make it down the side of the tower with little fanfare and are forced to jump into the river to stay hidden. All the while, both Hadrian and Royce are injured, with Royce being the more injured of the two. Via the river, they manage to make their way to Iberton—a town they passed through on their way to the Crown Tower—and to the inn where they went before and were welcomed and protected. Only the owner is there and they come in and start patching up once the owner lets them in. However, after a bit Royce notices that the owner is gone and presumably reporting the incident to the church, so they leave that building and make for the trees.After a bit of rest, Royce sees a pack of men with dogs on their trail so they make for a nearby house. The house happens to belong to a man who served under the noble that Hadrian befriended at the inn in Iberton, the same man who protected them when they were being looked for back then. The home's owner gives them food, while the wife is worried about the repercussions of them helping Hadrian and Royce. The soldiers eventually show up and start beating on the door. In an attempt to protect the family in the house, Royce tells the men outside that if they try to open the door, they'll kill the family—Hadrian leans over and tells them that they won't really do this, that it's just ensuring that they aren't implicated.We're then treated to a final showdown as Tom the Feather (the owner of the house) picks up his bow, Hadrian his swords, and Royce his dagger. They rush out the door, Hadrian handles the soldiers, Royce goes to cut the knight out of his horse, and Tom shoots the soldiers. Royce's job of cutting down the knight works but the horse falls on his leg in the process. The kite shield that Tom gave to Hadrian manages to protect Hadrian from most of the arrows, but he takes one from the last hidden archer, and Tom makes it out just fine killing the archers.Both of them bleeding, Hadrian and Royce seem to have given up, but a cart stumbles it's way over to them as Tom yells for the man. We know this man from the secondary storyline, it's Dixon from Medford. So, about that secondary storyline: Gwen DeLancy is a whore, she didn't realize it at first, but the only place she can get a job, food, and housing is a bar in the Lower Quarter of Medford. She originally thought she'd just be a server, but soon realizes that also means she's whored out to the customers. She tries to escape once, but with no luck. And every time she tries to escape or do something willful, Raynor Grue, the owner, hurts her and tries to keep her under his thumb. After one of the whores is killed by a frequent customer, she's afraid and runs to the sheriff who only asks that the customer pay compensation to Grue. That customer promises to come back once everything is paid off and ask for Gwen. Grue actually refuses the man, but Gwen knows the customer is going to kill one of the whores anyways.Knowing no other ways out, Gwen convinces all of the ladies to leave Grue's bar and go to the abandoned building across the street. They get some blankets and some food for the first night, but it's a cold and miserable night. They manage the night and Gwen shows that she has some gold coins which she then uses to buy the writ to operate the brothel and uses another coin to have some carpentry work on the house to fix it up. After a while, Gwen has built herself something of a place and the artisans are happy to have the work, but Raynor Grue is upset that she's making money off of his whores. He sets her up for failure saying that he'll take over the business and give a cut to the local quarter assessor, the man who can approve or deny Gwen's writ. Gwen finds this out using her _gift_ and makes the same deal Grue made with the assessor, but instead she makes the deal with the magistrate, the man above the assessor.There are two more relevant parts to Gwen in the context of these notes. Her _gift_ is the ability to see the future of people. At one point, the customer who killed one of the whores comes to their place and wants..._service_. Gwen will never let him have one of her ladies, but he's adamant and Dixon, the House's normal protector, isn't around to save them. Gwen looks into his eyes and sees his future, she sees that _he_ (a man her mother told her is in Gwen's future and must be protected at **all** costs) will end up killing this man (the customer who killed the whore) and it will be so horrible that Gwen is apologizing to him. The man is scared and leaves telling them he'll never be back. The other relevant part of her gift is when Gwen looks at Dixon, the man with the cart, and realizes Dixon will end up saving _him_ and that he'll need to take his cart, get a horse, and go to a certain spot where Gwen know's _he'll_ be. Well, if you're this far along, you might realize that _he_ is Royce and that Gwen is meant to protect him. But why?
This was an excellent book, one that I'd hardily recommend to someone who's read the Riyria Revelations already. I originally thought that I'd be better off reading the books in chronological order rather than published order, but knowing what you know from Revelations only makes the Chronicles just that much better. It gives you a feeling that you know a secret and you know more about the story then the characters. This book is definitely worth reading, just make sure you read Revelations first.
What an amazing end to this series. I have a lot of favorites, and my preferences change from time to time, but this is among the absolute best fantasy series that I have ever read. This goes right onto the favorites/re-read bookshelf.
Notes for the first book:
Arista and Degan are set to be executed on Wintertide, the same day that Modina, the empress, will be married to Ethelred. Saldur and Guy plan on killing Modina once Ethelred is emperor, just to remove the loose end. Hadrian makes a deal with Saldur to free Arista and Degan at the expense of Sir Breckton, but both realize that they've been setup. Everyone is imprisoned and Royce goes to break them out but fails. Alric and Mauvin end up breaking everyone out because Modina sends her guard to Drondil Fields to stop the siege against Melengar and asks them to rescue everyone who has been falsely imprisoned and accuses Saldur and Luis Guy of treason. In the end, Gwen is killed by a crossbow bolt ostensibly fired by one of Marrick's cronies, though he denies it. Royce in a complete fit of rage burns down the building that Saldur, Marrick, and Modina are in. Married manages to escape but is killed by a vengeful Royce and they both spill over into the nearby river. Meanwhile, Arista goes into the burning building using Esrahaddon's cloak and rescues Modina. Hadrian, not seeing Royce, notices hands by the bridge crossing the river and sees Royce. Hadrian implores Royce to not let go, but is only able to motivate him to reach for Hadrian's hand after saying "I need your help."
Notes for the second book:
This is the finale, when we get to see everything that we've been waiting for come to the ultimate climax. At the beginning of the sixth book, we learn that the elves are coming and they are the ultimate army, unbeatable in almost every way, the only way to beat them is by finding the horn, but what does the horn do? A party of 10 people (Royce, Hadrian, Alric, Arista, Mauvin, Myron, Degan, Wyatt, Elden, Magnus) sets out to find Percepliquis and find the horn, which is most likely buried with the last emperor. The party is carefully put together based upon the needs of the expedition: the heir (Degan), a spelunker (Magnus), someone who knows the history (Myron), and some sailors (Wyatt and Elden). We're not sure why the party needs some of these skills, but along they go.They quickly make their way to Amberton Lee, where the original city of Percipliquis is thought to be and find a way in, though there will be a lot of climbing to get there. They make their way to the bottom and among other problems encounter an underground sea with the city of Percepliquis on the other side. They find a ship and Wyatt and Elden prove themselves useful by sailing the boat across the sea. They encounter some of the Ba Ran Ghazel in one ship at first and are able to shake them, but encounter more and Arista must use the Art to destroy them, but in the process she almost destroys their own ship.Once on the other side, they explore the old city, finding indications that others have been here before them (including Bernie being on the ship they sailed), they make their way to the library (finding Antun Bulard), and then to the Teshlor Guild. There they make their stand against hundreds of Ghazel, again saved by Arista's magic destroying the guild and scattering the Ghazel. They run to the destroyed palace and find their way in, all the while being chased by the Ghazel. They eventually end up in the antechamber to the Vault of Days, where a Gilarabrywn is guarding the tomb of the emperors. We learn that this Gilarabrywn is actually the last emperor known—Nareion. Royce figures out that he can communicate with him (but why?) so the manage to get in and find the horn among an all-too-small number of sarcophagi. Gaunt blows the horn and nothing happens.Meanwhile, the elves are still marching to Aquesta and are destroying towns along the way. We're unsure of how, but the boys who are left to watch the horses at Amberton Lee eventually figure it out. They play a song along the way and it puts anyone who hears it to sleep. That allows them to go in untouched and destroy everything in their path. Knowing this, Renwick leaves the other four boys with the horses and rides for Aquesta to let them know what they're up against. Breckton makes Renwick his aide-de-camp and starts to plan out the defense of the city.When the elves arrive at Aquesta, they come out a company at a time. At first it's 100 elves on horseback, nothing too bad, then it's another 200 on foot, 100 archers, more riders, siege engines, mages, and more. The mages start to cast a spell and the foundation of the city begins to shake with walls and buildings being torn asunder. In the panic, the elves walk into the city killing all in their way with little resistance. With no hope being left to them, the Gilarabrywn are set upon the city and with little else to do, Modina goes out to defend her people and city by exclaiming:> “I am the daughter of the last emperor,” she said with a loud clear voice. “I am the daughter of Novron, the Daughter of Maribor. I am Empress Modina Novronian! This is my city, my land, and you are my people. The elves will not have you!”After that, the elves treat with her and ask where the horn is and why it hasn't been blown to reestablish the treaties, agreements, and so forth. She explains they're still finding the horn, and hearing that the elves go off to meet the party sent to find the horn.The party makes their way out of Percepliquis and finds the Patriarch of the church waiting for them. (While underground, they they determined the Patriarch is actually Venlin, the architect of the destruction of Perciplquis and the empire. He's wants to be king because it means he'll be welcome in their society again after being exiled after killing his own father.) They hand the horn to the patriarch and he sounds the horn, challenging the heir (Gaunt) for the rule of the elves.The fight begins the next day with both Mawyndulë and Gaunt naming champions in Lord Irawondona and Hadrian, respectively. Hadrian fights very well, but can't hurt Irawondano and that means that Hadrian, while being claimed as Gaunt's Champion, is not the _heir's_ champion. That's when we learn that Royce is the heir, not Gaunt. Irawondona, spurred on by Mawyndulë, goes after Royce and tries to kill him before he can name Hadrian as his champion, but is able to do it in time. At this point Irawondona and Hadrian are facing off again, but with the spadones (swords of the Teshlor knights) instead of the elven polearms. They fight for a bit, but Hadrian starts to walk away, back facing Irawondona hearing his father in his head telling him to sense his opponent and trust his instincts, and he slashes at where he knows Irawondona will be, cutting the man in two, making Royce king of the elves.The elves bow down to Royce quickly, with no hesitation. Everything now clicks neatly into place. Royce and Hardian were put together by Arcadius because he knew they were the heir and guardian even then. Royce almost dies, but Arista's healing brings him back only because they figure out that Mercy is actually Mercedes, his daughter by way of Gwen DeLancey (his love and his reason for living). We also see Hadrian and Arista admit their love for one another, we see dwarves and mir made citizens by imperial edict, Allie (Wyatt's daughter) is adopted by the empress, Mauvin becomes governor of Melengar, Degan becomes earl of Chadwick (sorry Archie), and Magnus becomes the head builder of New Percepliquis (and is possibly a/the dwarven prince).That leaves us with Arista, Hadrian, Myron, Royce, Modina, and Nimbus. Modina asks Arista to head up the Cenzaur guild, Hadrian to do the same for the Teshlor guild, and Myron to start a new university. They'll all be needed for the new empire. Royce will be leaving for the elven homeland so he can settle things there and he'll be taking Mercy (his daughter) with him. Modina will continue to rule, but without Nimbus as he's done his part and needs to be on his way. A bit before this, Royce recognizes Nimbus—having not seen him in his Chancellor role before today—as the man from Manzant who helped him escape the prison. He keeps asking Nimbus who he is, and why he helped, and tells him that he wanted to thank him. Nimbus just smiles and says "You already know that." When Royce, Mercy, and Nimbus strike off, they eventually split. Royce and Mercy hear lightning in the sky and look over to see blue skies and a white feather falling down as Nimbus reaches up, grabs it, kisses it, and stashes in his bag. (We learn that Nimbus is Kile, the human form of Erebus, the father of all gods, because we've been told about this parable many times over during the course of the book. This means that Erebus was doing this good deed, helping Modina and Royce and all of humanity and without his help, where would they be?)