(Some of their more flashy abilities add to this effect as well.) This is both good and bad: good, because this makes them much less classlike than the V:tM clans bad, because rather than giving them the feel of fighters, magic-users, and thieves, they can seem a bit like international Street Fighter opponents.
In this case, however, the Vampires are much more in line with actual vampire legends from around the world. Like their cousins from Vampire: the Masquerade, they are grouped along bloodlines. Both exist in a state of undeath, but while the Revenants are the deceased trying to return to some semblance of life, the Vampires are the living exchanging damnation for eternal unlife.Īnd speaking of Vampires, I have mixed feelings about the way in which they're presented in this game. I particularly like the contrast that the Revenants present with the Vampires. They cannot rule with impunity, however: aside from constant opposition from the forces of light, Death itself sends its own servants into the world of the Living as Revenants to slay these Underworld escapees and restore the (super)natural order of things. In this they more strongly resemble the vampires of the World of Darkness than do the vampires of the Everlasting, although some of the latter do participate in these machinations.
The Revenants survive by draining life itself from the living, and they maintain a vast "Kingdom of the Night" to manipulate mortal society and provide themselves with a steady supply of victims. (In a particularly horrific twist, certain Ghuls bring captured humans into the underworld, eject their souls, and sell their still-living bodies to other souls seeking to become Revenants.) These bodies may be their own corpses or the living or dead bodies of others. The same cannot be said of the Revenants, ghosts who have escaped the Underworld to inhabit physical bodies once more. And, unlike many other Undead, they need not harm the living to survive. On the other hand, they could easily serve as a source of dark humor if played properly - they are perhaps the ultimate cynics, to whom even the Underworld is just another place to do business. These beings present an interesting roleplaying challenge - playing a "dark" character is hard enough, but Ghuls are both dark and extremely revolting. A lucky few maintain a human-like form and degenerate only mentally, while some even become physical and mental superhuman beings that may eat only long-decayed flesh. Most become the traditional disgusting undead horror, although some unfortunates transform into even more nightmarish forms. Ghuls are truly repulsive and pathetic creatures, duped into imbibing an elixir that grants immortality at a terrible price: an eternity of feeding on the dead marked by a slow but inevitable physical and/or mental degeneration.
The three main races of Eldritch (supernaturals) presented in this book are the Ghuls, Revenants, and Vampires, each with their own fascinating societies, abilities, and (for PCs, anyway) moral dilemmas. For the Unliving, every day presents a new set of choices between Good and Evil and, unfortunately, to obey their true natures means giving in to the latter. Certainly, characters may balm their consciences with belief in moral relativity - indeed, many members of the darker races see angels as nothing more than holier-than-thou immortals - but unlike in the World of Darkness, the players will know that world view doesn't wash here. Ironically, the presence of a clear-cut "light" side - the angels and questers, not to mention God - make the darkness seem all the more horrid by casting it into sharp relief. Since I recently reviewed The Everlasting: Book of the Light, which shares the same rules and setting with Book of the Unliving, for the purposes of this review I'll be focusing largely on the unique aspects of this book.īook of the Unliving deals with the darker side of the world of the Everlasting.
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