Dark Tyrants: A Vampire: The Dark Ages Anthology

11 stories set in the Vampire: the Dark Ages universe. Of them 6 impressed me a lot and the other 5 were solid. The primary Clans here are Ventrue, Gangrel, and Nosferatu. There are others as well such as a Settite, a Lasombra, a Tremere, a Cappadocian, and others. So both High and Low Clans are here though not all of them. That is my only real complaint for the collection: it would be nice to see how all of the clans around between the 10th and the 14th centuries were surviving if not thriving in a religious and superstitious Europe.

This is a fine anthology of stories using the VAMPIRE: DARK AGES game setting. It captures in very readable tales the full range of true saints (Lawrence Barker's "Not Damned"), redeemed souls (Richard Lee Byers' "The Winged Child") and tormented monsters (Patrick Hadley's "Eating Medusa") which characterize this rich game setting. There are stories set in cities ("The Winged Child"), remote villages and settlements ("Not Damned", Edward Carmian's "The Burden") and castles (Jackie Cassada's "Toujours", Don Bassingthwaite's "Three Days or Six").Among these is "My Brother's Keeper" which many will recognize as the masterfully chilling opening of Gherbod Fleming's DEVIL'S ADVOCATE. (Interesting thing: the author's name is given here as John Steele.) That, of course, is volume one of the BLOOD CURSE trilogy so if the story's conclusion seems a little open-ended, keep in mind that it took three whole books to resolve the issues presented here. There's also a story ("Bearer of Bad News") involving Lasombra vampires by Richard Dansky (author of CLAN NOVEL LASOMBRA and most of the game supplements for that clan.)The only problem is that, with too few exceptions, there was a certain sameness to the stories. Despite the great variety of situations and settings, too many seemed like they could easily have been written by the same person. Perhaps it's because the stories here were so faithful to the game setting but the best RPG fiction anthologies always have a few selections that break out and do something different.Fortunately, the stories were also uniformly good. My favorites (aside from the Steele/Fleming BLOOD CURSE teaser) were the idealistic "Not Damned", the tenderly romantic "Toujours", the darkly seedy "Eating Medusa" and Tim Waggoner's "The Seeker" (one of the few really different stories in the bunch and featuring a highly original portrayal of wilderness Gangrel.)

This book is good for spawning ideas for your V:DA chronicle. However, some of the stories are better than others. Many of the clans are mentioned including: a great story about native Gangrel being colonized by Christians in Ireland. Unfotunately there is no stories on everyones favorite: the Tzimice. Oh well....It would be nice if they would have released Dark Tyrants in a regular paperback novel format so as to reduce the price. Oh well...... Steal it!!! Property is Theft!!!