The Divine and the Defeated

Originally, I was going to incorporate some of the Scarred Lands materials (Hollowfaust, Relics and Rituals, many of the monsters from the Creature Collections) into my own campaign world. I bought this to help me flesh out some ideas about gods and religions and the history of my campaign world.I'm a Scarred Lands convert now.This is the best sourcebook I have _ever_ read about a pantheon. Much more than just the stats and a blurb (like most books), this contains tremendous amounts of coherent background material, excellent descriptions of the gods, titans, servitors and religions. And like much of the Sword and Sorcery works, it is very well thought and internally consistent.This book was enough to get me to purchase the Ghelspad campaign setting (another story and another review, but also excellent), and was good enough for me to use lock, stock and barrel. What is nice about this work (like many other Sword and Sorcery work) is that it could be used outside of the Scarred Lands with minimal work - and that is a serious boon to the many busy GMs out there.

Very detailed book allowing for great game play and an excellent source for DMs and gamers alike. If you are an online player in Fangsfall, this book is caulked full of very usefull info to deal with your players dieties and others. As any avid gamer knows, the diety worshipped plays a huge role in you characters life, as well as any foes of that diety, not only does this book have a list of Dietys, Avatar stats, and Titans; it also has a great amount of information for followers such as holy weapons for lesser known gods, and some great arifacts. The artistry isn't the greatest and you -could- manage without this book, but it's a wonderful addition if you have the extra *ching*.

Divine and Defeated is a truly epic work about the gods of the Scarred Lands. The deities are well thought out with a CONSISTENT background that is both detailed and open enough for a G.M. to use in almost any plot that can be imagined. All the gods and titans are given a standard layout with a large amount of easily found detail. If you intend to use a Scarred Lands setting i would rate this as {5 STARS}. As a resource for other campaign worlds, it's a bit limited. Unless you intend to drop the entire pantheon into your campaign each god you do use will need some surgery on his history. Which defeats some of the purpose of buying a book with such detail. What makes it useful for other games is that {Divine and the Defeated} can show a G.M. the right way to create a pantheon. The Scarred Lands are supposed to be 3E with a 1st feel. I would say they succeeded admirably.

This book is a must-have if you are a fan of the Scarred Lands setting, being chocked full of information about not only the divine avatars and the titans, but demigods as well. It also introduces the notion of Divine Heralds and Pages, the more potent servitors of the gods. Interspersed with the text about the gods are several major and minor artifacts with a backstory and indicators of the roles they have placed in the world. Perhaps most impressive, however, are the several new divine spell domains presented. These are an excellent addition, and are useful for rounding out the powers of clerics and gods in other campaign settings. In all, I strongly recommend this book; it is very well written, the art is excellent, the material is absolutely imperative if you run a Scarred Lands game, and much of the content is useful even to other campaign worlds.