From: Adam Justin Thornton <adam@owlnet.rice.edu>
Subject: Review: Melnibone
System: Elric!

The first, and (at least by me) eagerly awaited, supplement for Chaosium's _Elric!_ has appeared: _Melnibone': Dragon Isle and Dreaming City_. The encapsulated review is simply this: it is an excellent supplement, superior to the _Elric!_ rules and possibly one of my favorite Chaosium products ever. I don't remember being this excited about any supplement since first edition _Dreamlands_.

The book is mostly the work of Richard Watts, with Geoff Gillian, Penelope Love, and Mark Morrison. The first section is "History and Geography," and it seems to be a good recap of the history presented in Moorcock's books. The book is putatively set the year before _Elric of Melnibone'_ begins, although it could certainly be used with minor changes up through the sack of Imyrr. A handy timeline is provided for this purpose. Great emphasis (perhaps too much) is placed on the decadence of the Bright Empire vis-a-vis the Young Kingdoms. The geography is fairly uninspired, but, one assumes, necessary if one wishes to run a scenario set outside the walls of Imyrr. The overall effect is, however, nicely surreal: imagine the Dreamlands with teeth. The surrealism, as is appropriate, only gets more intense in the description of Imyrr itself; the "Places of Note" are especially evocative.

The second chapter describes the "Culture and Traditions of Melnibone'ans"; it's well-done, although I feel that too much emphasis is placed on the constantly stoned state of the Melnibone'ans and their slaves. Sure, the denizens of the Dreaming City are probably usually high, and their slaves doubtless have their wills sapped by the perfidious diet of pharmaceuticals they are fed. Nonetheless, it gets tiresome to read about. Perhaps a view of other forms of decadence, such as outre' sexual practices, descriptions of Dr. Jest's elaborate tortures and mass sacrifices to dark gods, would have been more interesting. I don't remember "garbleweed" being so obviously everyone's favorite Wacky Weed Of Wonder in the Elric series, but I was young and innocent when last I read the books; the drugs are nicely sinister for the most part, but my jaded tastes demand more. The "Personalities" section contains those whom you'd expect (including Elric before he gets his runesword) to find here. The
"Theology and Cosmology" section is a brief gloss and contains nothing of substance not found in _Elric!_.

The remainder of the background is "Encounters on Melnibone'" and "Melnibone'an Digest". These are excellent. I suspect that I discern the editorial hand of Mark Morrison in the "Digest" (although it was written by Richard Watts and "Divers Hands"). It reads a lot like the Dream-Zagreb scenario in _Orient Express_ (which was, for my money, the best part of _OE_). We find soldiers, dragons, nobles, sorcerors,
scholars, dreamers, slaves and demons. Many of these, with a little fleshing out, would make fantastic general NPCs. One of my favorites is the Visionary Artist: "She is the city's artist, its sculptor. She walks inside her greatest work, making final adjustments before presenting her work to the emperor. That building needs some lattice, this wolfhound must be blue, that adventurer's nose simply will not do."

The rest of the book is taken up with three scenarios: "The Sojourner's Guide To Melnibone'", "The Suffer Glass", and "The Ghost of Cities". The first two are by Geoff Gillian and the third by Penelope Love.

"The Soujourner's Guide" casts the players as cartographers for the Disordered Scribes Of The League Of Tumultous Erudition, a bunch of chaotic scholars (with the marvellous quirk of long, varnished hair spikes to impale papers on) searching for one of their number who disappeared on the Dragon Isle. The scenario is actually pretty standard: the players land on the isle, meet various and sundry people, and eventually find their lost cartographer, whom they can recover by amusing a bunch of jaded dilletantes. The plot is not the high point. The high point is Nokdoxtor, the demon scribe they are assigned, who is among the most obnoxious and most entertaining NPCs I've met in a while. Its need (demons in _Elric!_ have "needs"; these can range from "rub a piece of yellow silk constantly" to "bathe in the blood of a virgin daily") is, quite simply, to make the worst possible comment at the worst possible time. Each of the locations is illustrated with Nokdoxtor's quip, to give GMs a good idea of his personality. It's dreadful, and GMs ought to have a great time playing him. The various locations are interesting, but not very
deep, and should present little challenge to a good party; some of the encounters (D'Bravad and the snizzbings, for instance, a bit of grue that would feel right at home in CoC's nastier moments, or the encounter with the Lawful counterparts to the League of Tumultuous Erudition) ought to be entertaining. More interesting is the criterion for winning the scribe's freedom: the Melnibone'ans want to be amused. If the players can amuse the GM, the characters win. This has the potential to be dreadful, although Gillian's admonishment, "appropriate skill rolls may assist. In this situation a fumble is of as much interest as a critical," might make it more fun. If your players are good, this may well be genuinely amusing.

The second scenario is Gillian's "The Suffer Glass"; this is an excellently-detailed time travel scenario in which the characters assume the forms of Melnibone'ans in the ancient battle between Law and Chaos for control of the Dragon Isle. Their task, set by the sinister Doctor Qua, is to prevent the destruction of the Suffer Glass, a chaotic artifact of great power, at the battle of Castle Crow. To make things better, the adventurers discover they are Dragon Riders, and are quickly pressed into a battle with the Army of the Wind; opportunity for plenty of entertaining, over-the-top high fantasy roleplaying exists here. After their triumphant (or grim, depending on the outcome of the battle) return to Castle Crow, the characters finally get to see, and experience the delights of, the Suffer Glass. The siege of the castle allows more heroics, and somewhere during it, the characters will either prevent or witness the destruction of the glass. The scenario is, of course, more interesting if they do succeed in their original mission; returning to the present, they find that a world ruled by Chaos is not all Dr. Qua had imagined, and he sends them back again, this time to destroy the Glass. This must be effected by a journey into the nightmare universe inside the glass itself. This last bit is terribly simple, an excellent test of your players' ingenuity, and contains one absolutely execrable joke. Assuming the characters survive this last tribulation, they must again deal with the Dr. Qua who originally sent them into the past, who now thinks they have failed their mission. (Devious GM's will, of course, note the possibility that they are sent back to the very beginning of the scenario: Dr. Qua wishes to send them back to preserve the glass again. If you like the idea of recurring nightmares, this could be a great deal of fun.) I have no idea how well the scenario as a whole would play. I intend at some point to steal the world inside the Suffer Glass, and maybe the bizarre Battle Effects Table for my games, but not, probably, to play the whole scenario.

The third scenario is Penelope Love's "The Ghost Of Cities". It involves the forced rescue of a Melnibone'an noble from a very odd city that exists only as a dream, inhabited solely by dreamers and ghosts. The nobleman's wife, one Klo'astra Yn, hires them; before they even enter the dream-city, the adventurers must run the gauntlet of Klo'astra's vapid daughter Mariad, Theese Ax'af, the ennui-ridden lover of both Klo'astra and Mariad, and Klo'astra's horrid son A'Ary and his pet demon Fidelak; the standard nuclear Melnibone'an family, one assumes. The adventures in the city itself seem fairly pointless; the fact that the nobleman, Jaxoon, is obsessed with "phantom roses" and has no desire to return home should come as no surprise to anyone by now. The challenge comes from Embol Krang, a once-mightly Pan Tangian sorceror who is trying to claw his way back to the land of the living by imprisoning the souls of the ghosts and dreamers wandering through the Ghost of Cities, maintaining an army of zombies, and being generally unfriendly; he has also angered the Spirit of the Ghost of Cities and, during the course of the adventure, will seek to imprison both Jaxoon and Mariad. Foiling him doesn't seem particularly difficult, given that Krang's chief slave is the still-loyal house slave of Jaxoon, and once the adventurers discover this, they are home free, although at least one will almost certainly die while destroying Krang. Unless this is their very first _Elric!_ adventure, something I would recommend against, that should come as little or no shock.
It's not a bad adventure, but "The Ghost Of Cities" is the weakest of the three; the Shadow Tower and the phantom roses are neat, and the
setting has possibilities, but it doesn't seem as if it would be terribly fun.

Overall, the supplement is excellent. The proofreading is much better than in _Elric!_, the setting is charmingly decadent (I would strongly
recommend reading Moorcock's End of Time series as well as the Elric books, for that _fin-de-siecle_ feel), the generic NPCs are well presented, the background is well-written and the scenarios are enjoyable and possibly useful. At $20.95, it's a bit pricey, but I feel it's worth it. I only hope that the Pan Tang supplement arrives soon.

Adam