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Mage the Awakening: Secrets of the Ruined Temple

Secrets of the Ruined Temple

This chronicle book, containing the very sort of adventures I love that combine cod-archaeology with the game world, get off to a bad start - the flavour fiction at the beginning is virtually illegible, block printed on a dark, heavily-patterned background. As far as I can make out it's an account of a mage-driven expedition to South America in search of Atlantean secrets and there's something about a solar eclipes in there too, but something that should have set the scene admirably falls flat on its face through poor layout.

So, moving on swiftly to the Introduction, there's a summary of the history all mages teach their pupils about the past glories of Atlantis and how only scraps remain... but maybe, just maybe, there is more out there to be discovered. This book is a guide and resource for those who want to have the search for further material as part of their on-going adventures. But it doesn't do it in a way you might expect. The Storyteller won't find complete maps and inventories of Atlantis ready for the cabal to explore. Rather, it actually makes things more mysterious, presenting multiple possibilities and even more questions, rather than answers. The idea is that you use these resources to come up with your own version of Atlantis and are then armed with appropriate clues to scatter throughtout your ongoing chronicle for the mages to pick up on. Neat, and novel, idea.

Chapter 1: Atlantean Apocrypha starts with what it says in the core rulebook, then builds on it and twists it out of all recognition with variant legends of Atlantis for you to pick through and decide which (if any) works for you. Or you may be inspired to come up with your own, of course. Don't discard the bits you don't decide are the truth, though. They might be deliberate misinformation, or erroneous information that has crept in through the generations.

Next, Chapter 2: Beneath the Sediment provides a wealth of advice about planning and running cod-archaeology adventures involving finding and exploring Atlantean ruins. It includes ways to get your mages interested (and the things that their elders might say to dissuade them) as well as hints and tips on designing the actual places they will go poking around in... and the perils they might find there, which are covered in Chapter 3: Gatekeepers and Treasures, along with ideas for the sort of loot they might possibly escape with if they are really, really lucky.

Finally Chapter 4: The Living Temple takes matters to an entirely new level... the Astral Plane. Those who dare to poke around within dream and myth may find awesome secrets... or their own undoing. To round everything off, there's an Appendix: High Speech and Atlanean Runes jam-packed with the mysteries surrounding the language and writing of the ancients, a new look at the magical words and glyphs all mages work so hard to master.

Overall, this is a fascinating tome to dip in to: there is a lot to digest, and you'll have to do a fair amount of preparatory work before you have a chronicle ready to run... but this work will give you tools and ideas to run enthralling adventures delving into the Atlantean past.

Return to Secrets of the Ruined Temple page.

Reviewed: 6 September 2016