jontukontar

I’m sure that most of you, by now, already own The Books of Sorcery, Vol. III: Oadenol’s Codex but I intend to talk about it anyway.

Over the course of it’s 160 pages, you have four chapters that cover: Artifacts, Demense, Manse, Thaumaturgy, and creatures. Overall, most of the content is useful for an ST who is interested in adding more detail to their stories related to these issues.

For artifacts, it includes generally descriptive information about the various levels of artifacts and offers up some negatives that you can add to your device to reduce it’s cost. (These negatives can be added by an ST if a player botches a roll. It also adds two charms for the creation of these artifacts.

For Demenses and Manses, it add generally descriptive information about the types of structures (eg. Sidereal vs Fire Aspect). Interestingly enough, it talks about how most Terrestrial structures are built on the crossroads of two “dragon lines” but most Celestial structures do not necessarily coincide with the dragon lines, this makes them harder to find. It also adds a formula to create a manse, which almost reads like a way to explain the Invisible Fortress (not that this is a negative). It did give me some interesting ideas for a Manse that I’m designing, a Fire Aspected Manse with “The Glorious Halo of Hesiesh” and “Dragon’s Nest (Fire)”.

Thaumaturgy is much more useful with the information provided in this book. There are all sorts of procedures for the various “Arts” presented in this book. They also talk about the history of Thaumaturgy and how it’s currently used in creation.

Creatures are pretty much a rehash of some that came out of Exalted 1st Ed (Heart Wasps and Chakra Orchid) but there are a couple of creatures that I haven’t seen before in an Exalted supplement.

Looking at both this book and The Books of Sorcery, Vol. I: Wonders of the Lost Age, it strikes me that a plug-in that combined the few charms in these books would be a good idea. So, once I get WotLA back, I will incorporate those charms into my new plug-in. Which brings up a tangental subject, am I the only one that finds the lack of charms in most of the current books odd?