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DarkSasha · Posted: Wed Oct 05, 2011 2:57 pm Post subject:

This is exactly the type of Cthulhu campaign that I remember and cherish from years gone by. From the detail in this entire book, serious research was done to maintain a high level of verisimilitude necessary to make a Cthullhu campaign come to life. Multiple time periods and locations are used as settings. Historically accurate details are fleshed out in each of the five settings. From art, to maps, to source material and literature, to depictions, and translations of the multiple languages the investigators would need to know, everything is either an excellent replication or an outright true place, item, or event taken straight from the annals of history.

An example of this is in the first part. This is set on an island just off the British coastline. The level of detail of the map of the island and the monastery are accurate enough to fool anyone. And in fact if you were to look up the Holy Island and Lindisfarne in Northumbria, you would note that it is a real place with a real temple to St. Cuthbert and the ruins of the ancient church can be seen via satellite. Granted the island is in fact much bigger than the one presented in the adventure. But still – wow – the level of factual detail is amazing. This is the kind of thing I used to love to do for my own Call of Cthulhu campaigns. It speaks to the ancient historian, storyteller, and the amateur archaeologist in me.

Now for a very minor quibble, the maps used in the later parts of this campaign, while clear and useful, do not have the same sort of authentic feel to them. Instead, they clearly have a computer generated look. Normally this would not be a problem, but with the utterly awesome authentic feel of the maps in the first parts of this campaign, they seem out of place. The challenge level represented by the encounters in this book and the adventure as written hearkens back to the true feel of a Call of Cthulhu campaign in which death was the least of an investigator’s worries.

In addition to the maps and content of the adventures, a multitude of player handouts for each of the parts as well as extremely useful and in fact necessary player character pregens are included. For the Keeper, full NPC information, motivations, and stats as well as useful note on how to run the different parts and finally timelines of events. In short, everything a Keeper needs to run this campaign is present, except for the rules.

This is an epic campaign and plays to the heart of what a truly amazing Call of Cthulhu campaign should be. However many stars or other award handed out to game materials and supplements, this one has earned as many as I could give it. If there was one higher category of awesome, I’d give Red Eye of Azathoth that as well. “That which is dead shall refuse to lie” is true of Call of Cthulhu too.

(I spotted a couple of minor editing errors. So very minor that I forgot about them entirely as I read, reviewed, and contemplated how to torture my players with this gem.)

Cheers,
Dawn Fischer
(FGG's Giant Abyssal Dire Frog of Editing)

Kobold Courier