The Torn World Character Pack Series is here to provide game masters and players alike with pre-made characters for your Torn World adventures or homebrew campaigns. This set includes five unique characters ranging from levels 3 to 5, complete with background, personalities, abilities, equipment and high resolution full-color original artwork!
The Shattered Blade Thieves consist of:
Eridor Kirith - 3rd level cavalier
Karalea Kel'Rae - 3rd level evoker
Usulor M'jir - 3rd level cleric of Hel
Ridd - CR5 Tayavon Thrasher minotaur
Moreshea Cethla-Riyll - 5th level rogue
These characters can be used in a one-off encounter or perhaps as a recurring villanous NPC party, to be a constant thorn in the players' side.
"You sure you have this?" Eridor's words were deeply questioning and more than a little dripping in doubt. Moreshea turned her head, a frown etching her features in a flash of anger, but it was the minotaur—Ridd—who stepped forth.
"She said she had it, knight, that's all there is." In the faint glow of the twin moons, Ridd's immense form was imposing; the snort of breath from his nostrils on the cool night air, and the dragging spiked chain he liked to call a ‘weapon' only emphasized how dangerous he was. He seemed to have a soft spot for the teenage girl, too.
Eridor did not step back. As a knight of Shaalkuss, a former Odin's Oak, and an aspiring member of Her'ta Churel, fear was not something he gave himself to.
"It's okay, Ridd." Moreshea gave a small flick of her head towards the towering Thrasher minotaur, and as his countenance visibly relaxed, she sent her shark-like eyes towards Eridor. "Just be here when I get back. No peasant-filled hovel is going to stop me getting what we came for, but there's no telling what will be on my heels when I'm done."
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This pdf is 17 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page ToC, 2 pages of SRD, leaving 12 pages of content to introduce us to the Shattered Blades, so let's check them out!
After two pages of introduction, we are introduced to the respective thieves:
Moresha Cethly-Riyll is a blight-touched human female rogue 5 (CR 5), born with a soul and the blessing of the immortal lich-king and fighting with her deadly blightsteel weapons - these cause an additional point of damage that is essentially vile damage from D&D 3.5 reloaded - the damage can only be healed when influenced by a consecrate or hallow effect.
Ridd, a CR 4 Minotaur belonging to the Thrasher-tribe and fighting with their signature thrasher chains (large chains that do 3d6 (!!!) points of damage and get full stats) is next, while Usolor Mij'r, cleric of Hel and sycophantic healer of the troupe makes for the third of the evil antagonists. Second among the tanks of the group, Eridor Kirith, cavalier of the order of the cockatrice could be consider a good-looking fellow, were it not for his personality and the the noble drow evoker Karalea Kel'Rae, exile from another world completes the group of villains.
Conclusion:
Editing and formatting are top-notch, I didn't notice any glitches. Layout adheres to a full-color, two-column standard and each of the characters gets his/her own stunning artwork, which is plain and simple awesome at this low price. The pdf unfortunately has no bookmarks, though. The shattered blades thieves are interesting characters obviously intended as a rival adventurer group for lower levels of play and this role they fit quite well. The prose is generally well-written and makes references to quite a few Norse pastimes and fluff, which is a nice touch. However, not all is excellent about this pack: While every character gets a neat piece of fluff that makes one more intrigued in the World of Torn and its peculiarities, said fluff is rather sparse - the respective characters get only a rather bare-bone background when compared to other, similar offerings of even Torn's LaCroix.
Another problem is that quite literally, while the characters are cool, at low levels they are also rather simple builds - I could have created each of them myself and didn't consider them terribly exciting - probably due to the lack of an overall narrative tying them together. They are a group, but we don't really get to know that much about what makes them tick, how they got together etc. - the background story of the group, hinted at in the respective character sections, perhaps a scarce one or two pages of it, would have made this pdf much better. Unfortunately, I have to rate this in context and the context is RiP's excellent "Faces of the Tarnished Souk" series as well as TPK Games stellar line of "Infamous Adversaries": RiP's FoTS has 3 incarnations per character and the respective builds are highly complex. TPK Games offered us STELLAR fluff with their latest offerings and even a whole campaign outline, minions etc. for the villain. In comparison with these, this character pack falls rather short. Don't get me wrong, the artworks are neat indeed, the potential is there, but try as I might, I can't rate this higher than 3 stars. I look forward to reading more from Torn, though!
