For well over 20 years, Palladium Fantasy RPG players and Game Masters have been creating their own adventures that required the heroes to confront the minions of The Western Empire. These adventures have been created by using the hints and minor details about the mysterious land that have been given to us over the years in the first seven volumes of the Fantasy game. Certain things became so popular that even though many players have never met each other, the ideas of what the Empire was grew to become a living legend in the Palladium game system. This is something that I like to call a "shared belief" because the clues that have been given to the players have been put together to make a picture that is common to all the serious GMs and players of the game.
So what was really "known" about the Western Empire?
Not a whole lot. We all knew that it had once been such a great power that it caused the downfall of the Old Kingdom. We knew that it was a decadent society loosely based on the same structure as the Roman Empire, being composed of city-states that considered themselves "kingdoms" and vied with each other for control of the whole Empire. We knew that they once had the most feared navy on the face of the Palladium world and often used these forces to attempt to expand their realm. We knew that over the past 600 years or so, the Empire had suffered great losses from within and had stopped expanding. We knew that the Empire used demons to crew some of the most powerful and fearsome ships to ever sail the seas and that the Cyclops would often join their armies and give them the fabled lightning weapons that they held the secret to making. We also knew that this would not last because recently (within the past 20 or 30 years) a young Lord had risen to power and became the first undisputed Emperor of the Empire. We even knew his name; Lord Itomas. All of these things allowed the GMs to create new adventures that took place in the fringes of the Empire, but seldom was anything ever done in the depths of the area. Until 1998, when a bold new writer for Palladium Books created this volume.
The face of power:
After the carnage of the Elf-Dwarf War, a war that lasted 10,000 years, a warrior-king lead his barbarian hordes into the western peninsula of the world. He and his people fought mighty battles against the monster races that lived there and at last drove them off to establish a small kingdom. With the discovery of the Isle of the Cyclops and vast mineral riches in the nearby mountains, the small kingdom was able to expand and draw ever-increasing amounts of human settlers into its borders. The warrior-king declared himself Emperor and began to expand his realm in earnest, with the help of powerful mages who used summoned demons, devils and other dark minions as their troops. For almost 2000 years, the Empire expanded, as it's people explored and built the most powerful human society to ever grace the face of Palladium.
The Golden Centuries:
For the next thousand years or so, the Empire was the most powerful country on the face of the planet. It began to take in members of almost any civilized race that wanted to relocate. When the hysteria of the Changeling Inquisitions began, the current Emperor used it as a means to further expand the power of the Empire. This opened the way for a long period of peace and prosperity after a truce with the now independent Isle of the Cyclops was made. This period lasted for such a long time (500 years) that the Emperors became weak and the nobles of the various city-states began to abuse their power.
The sun truly does set in the West.
With the rise of power to the individual Noble Houses, the Empire began to lose much of its power. The various city-states formed alliances with each other and the massive standing army of the Empire became nothing more than a bunch of House Guards with loyalties to a Noble House instead of the Empire as a whole. The Western Empire's military became a laughing stock to the rest of the world and many conquered nations broke free of the Empire during the chaos. Civil wars broke out as the Noble Houses of the Empire openly fought with each other to place someone who would rule in their favor onto the seat of the Emperor. The Empire was shattered, its roads destroyed by centuries of warfare and the power that it once maintained outside its borders lost. The economy was a total failure and the people lived in fear for their lives from both the warring armies and starvation.
A savior comes?
About 90 years ago, House Leopold emerged from the western shores commanding a massive army that used the lightning weapons and of the Cyclops and was attended by Cyclops advisors. Region after region fell to this army as it marched across the Empire and gave each Noble House a choice: surrender or annihilation. The Empire was rebuilt and when the last of the Leopold line died, House Itomas was given the throne.
Wow, that's a lot of history, but what about the book?
The largest part of this volume deals with the various regions and colonies of the Empire at present. Each region has several cities and a Capital and there are around a hundred of them that make up the Empire. The Noble Houses are given great detail and the Imperial Army and Navy are fleshed out a little. No, we aren’t given actual stats about how many of them there are, but we are given a darn good idea. Trust me, you don't want to get into a fight with this army.
Each of the Regions and most of the cities are given wonderful detail, to include a listing of the standing army that is protecting each one. Almost every city is carefully mapped so that a GM can take his players into almost any of them without having to do much in the way of leg work (that's creating new stuff and filling in the holes).
As if that wasn't enough to have fun with, there is a ton of all new magic items, herbs and drugs that are only found in the Western Empire. Then Bill Coffin and Kevin toss in something that has never been seen in any Palladium book before. They created a section of rules on Generating Cities! This is perhaps the coolest thing about the entire volume. For years, I have often spent months just making a working village for my adventures to use as a base. I once worked for almost 9 months to create a massive city for my players to use as a base of operations. Now I can create a city of any size in a few hours by using these simple rules. Of course, the rules are designed with the Western Empire in mind, but this is something that can be adjusted quite easily.
Last but not least, you will find three adventure outlines. I call these outlines because they are just the basics of the adventure itself. They basically tell you what is going on, gives you all the background info, gives you a general idea of where the main adventure will take place and guidelines one what the players will run into. The payoff is listed out for you and suggestions of where to go from there are included. It also gives you the stats for all the main monsters that the players will encounter and the basics of the common ones. Pretty much everything else is left up to the GM. I rather like this way of publishing adventures, because it leaves much more control in the hands of the GM. Before, when everything was laid out on a silver platter, a player could get his hands on the book, read the adventure and either notate where the main stuff was to be found or memorize what was going to happen in the adventure. To me, that's cheating and it takes most of the fun out of the game. As a player, I prefer to know nothing about the details of what I might encounter in an adventure. After all, the biggest part of the game is the discovery and solving of the problems that you run into. Knowing what is about to happen removes the mystery of the game, but there are players out there that do this.
Oh yeah, for those of you who are interested, this is also the first book of the Fantasy RPG to be issued as 100% 2nd Edition for the first print. That makes this volume the first all-new material sourcebook publish for the Fantasy game in over four years. And things only get better from here.
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