"Truth is like smoke. It rises from the ashes of the worldly."
Arhanoht, the Iron Gavel is a fallen angel of the forces of law, broken and cast down into the chaos of Dream. Now, repairing himself and regaining power, he roams the streets of the Tarnished Souk, dispensing justice with his iron fists of fury and serving as the one honest judge in a land where madness, nightmares, and half-truths walk personified. His job ain't easy.
This product provides Game Masters with details on an incorruptible inevitable found amongst the Faces of the Tarnished Souk, ready for immediate use in any campaign—but especially for use within the Coliseum Morpheuon. Each entry features ingenious stat-blocks from multiple OGL sources, history, motivation, secrets, and insight into the NPC's most carefully guarded dreams, along with complete game statistics for low, middle, and high levels of play.
Within you will find: Arhanoht, the Iron Gavel, an invincible inquisitor guaranteed to wring out the truth at any cost.
New magic items, including the earth-shattering meteor hammer that falls like a comet upon the enemies of law
Stats for a unique inevitable—the basic model in the pursuit of justice
Broken, Exemplar, Suzerain, and Time Seer templates—because even a perfect natural leader who can see the future may one day find himself down and out, and his story must be told
Authors: Matt Banach and Justin Sluder Cover Artist: Toby Gregory Pages: 16
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Faces of the Tarnished Souk: Arhanoht, the Iron Gavel by Rite Publishing
This product is 16 pages long. It starts with a cover, credits. (2 pages)
Iron Gavel (11 pages)
He is designed to be used with the Coliseum Morpheuon. It starts off with a history, some lore charts about him, his dreams, and advice on how to use him. He has 3 stat blocks of different levels, CR 6, 12, and 21. The CR 21 is a Exemplar suzerain time seer lesser kolyarut inquisitor 13/monk 3. The CR 12 is a Broken exemplar time seer lesser kolyarut inquisitor 5/monk 3. The CR 6 is a Broken (x3) exemplar lesser kolyarut.
In addition to his stat blocks we also get. A new weapon Meteor Hammer, two new traits, and Three new magic items.
Bracers of Determination – Like AC bracers but with breath of life as well. There is a lesser and greater version of these.
Hammer of Justice – A very cool weapon with several interesting powers.
There is also three new feats.
Extended Bane – adds wis bonus to bane length.
Extra Cohort – gain a extra cohort if you have leadership
Lasting Judgment – A judgment last for a little while after a combat is finished. Allowing you to possible use it in two combats or more.
A new variant monster a lesser kolyarut, and four new templates. Broken, Exemplar, Suzerian, and Time Seer.
It ends with a OGL and 2 ads. (3 pages)
Closing thoughts. The artwork is black and white and good. Layout and editing is good, there was one minor error I noticed but nothing major. The character is well done and interesting. The magic items, feats, templates and such are all well done and almost worth the price of the book alone. He is heavily stacked with templates and classes, which will make him be a pretty nasty surprise to most PC's as a lot of what he will do will be unexpected. If you are a fan of Coliseum Morpheuon and looking to add more or just wanting a some stat blocks for a interesting NPC then this is worth picking up. So what's my rating? Well it gives exactly what it claims in a well done manner with only one single tiny editing error. So going to give this one a 5 star review.
Yet another useful NPC to join the denizens of the Tarnished Souk, Arhanoht is a force for order and law. Beholden to no one but his own exacting standards, Arhanoht performs his self-imposed duty to keep order in the Souk. For the PC’s Arhanoht might be an ally, though he will not act against the Khan, at least not openly; and openly is the only way Arhanoht will act. He might serve as a resource for PCs due to his vast knowledge of the lore of various planes, not the least of which are the highest planes of order from which he fell. Though he will never be met in the Coliseum for reasons he does divulge to anyone, he may become an adversary of the PCs if they flaunt the law or cause disruption in the Souk. Uncovering Arhanoht’s story might become an adventure in its own right. Should the PCs give him what he desires the most, they would earn themselves a loyal friend for life and beyond.
As is typical of the Faces of the Tarnished Souk, this product comes with several stat blocks for the NPC at various levels as well as a number of character specific traits, feats, and magic items, including the Hammer of Justice, Arhanoht’s special meteor hammer. In addition, there is a variant monster: a Lesser Kolyarut (Inevitable), a lawful neutral being of low to mid levels for extended use anywhere in a GM’s campaign. Also there are new templates used for Arhanoht that may be applied to any monster the GM wishes.
All in all Arhanoht is a necessity for any Tarnished Souk campaign. He is also useful as a high level “Judge Dredd” style NPC for any campaign. His story is full of secrets to be discovered, a temptation many adventuring parties will find either irrisistibly intriguing or extremely useful. As Arhanoht is an Inquisitor with special abilities, the GM will want to have the Pathfinder Advanced Player’s Guide to understand all of the abilities of this class. Though the stat blocks in this product do tell enough about what the special abilities do to run Arhanoht. The cover art does a fantastic job displaying Arhanoht wielding his meteor hammer to its fullest effect as a very intimidating individual that would give even the most hardened criminal pause.
I rate this supplement at 5 out of 5 stars, excellent work as usual from the folks at Rite Publishing.
Kolyarut inevitable with censer-meteor-hammer? Awesome & Win!
This installment of the Faces of the Tarnished Souk-series is 16 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page SRD and 2 pages advertisements, leaving 11 pages for the 3 incarnations of Arhanoth, so let's check them out!
In the tradition of the FoTS-series, this one kicks off with an aptly-written one page of character introduction, information on dream-burning (though this one is dream-barren), a lore-section as well as a how-to-use sidebox for the DM.
As per my format for these reviews, I'm going to work from back to front: There are a lot of templates in this book: The "Broken creature"-template that makes constructs "broken" and thus weaker (immensely useful in my opinion), the exemplar template that makes a creature one paragon of its kind with better and more pronounced attributes, the suzerain template, which makes you a natural born leader and the time-seer template (which is probably the coolest), which lets a creature perceive the future and act according to this constant barrage of possibilities via a wisdom check - otherwise it gets impeded by the conflicting images it constantly perceives. The pdf also does something I've longed for quite some time, introducing a lesser version of the Kolyarut-inevitables that clocks in at CR 6, making it easier to give them class-levels.
Next up is the low-level incarnation of Arhanoth and what can I say - He's a Kolyarut-inquisitor using a meteor-hammer (a chain with a huge ball, gets its own stats) that doubles as a censer. Matt Banach and Justin Sluder have officially infiltrated my mind - in my home-brew campaign there's a legendary inquisitor with exactly that weapon, including passing dispassionate judgment! The low-level incarnation has no class-levels and thrice the broken template and has not yet the time seer template, while the mid-level incarnation gets monk and inquisitor levels. In the most powerful incarnations, he is the leader of the Iron Gavel, a group of powerful individuals serving Arhanoth and passing judgment in the Souk. He gets 2 traits, Dream-barren and Killer and 2 new bracers are introduced that keep their wearers alive. His deadly meteor-hammer gets its powerful stats and 3 feats are provided to expand judgments, extra banes and cohorts.
The true star, though, is the awesome, deadly high-level CR 21-incarnation of Arhanoth: Using 3 templates, cool items and finally providing for a cool high-level inquisitor/monk, he ranks among the most deadly and relentless combatants I've seen in quite some time.
Conclusion:
Layout adheres to the classic B/w-RiP -two-column standard. Formatting is top-notch and I only noticed one very minor editing glitch, a superfluous asterisk in the time seer template. The piece of artwork for Arhanoth is awesome and the NPC per se is awesome - hell, I practically admit to having just about this character in my home-campaign, thus, of course, I love him. If his signature litany would be In Strict Confidence's "Engelsstaub"-song as a theme, I'd be sure that Matt and Justin have somehow infiltrated my table - With the lack of any significant glitches, the cool ideas and the beautiful stat-blocks, I'll settle for a final verdict of 5 stars, continuing the excellent track-record of the FoTS-series.
You do know being fast isn't always a good thing right? :)
Oh, I can be very slow and tender with my reviews, too, but this time I felt like doing it fast and rough. Sometimes, a guy has to get it out of the system, you know. ;)
I'm not Steve, but I believe there will be a compilation of the Faces when he (Steve) feels we've done enough.
*It was not until much later - far too late - that poor Justin and Matt learned that they were working on Rite's newest series, "101 CR 20+ NPCs"... if only they had known...*
*It was not until much later - far too late - that poor Justin and Matt learned that they were working on Rite's newest series, "101 CR 20+ NPCs"... if only they had known...*
(kidding)
I could certainly use 30 of them. That isn't an unreasonable number. Is it? :D
I am hoping to have this one reviewed by the end of the week. First reaction: love the "Judge Dredd" feel of this guy and it fits a needed niche for the Tarnished Souk. Also, "earth-shattering meteor hammer" - awesome.
