Description
Warlock Opens Vaults Long Sealed!
Thanks to the Warlock Patreon supporters, the new Midgard 5th Edition Warlock booklet is here—with cover art by Pedro Potier.
The topic is lovely, filthy, glorious treasure and its many strange vaults and hiding places. The discussions provide details of famous vaults in the Wastes and elsewhere, plus the equipment and magic of Perunalia (archers, take note!), 11 magic staves suitable for handing out to either villains or heroes as the mood strikes you, and the Darkest Vaults of the Great Maze itself (shudder!). Give your everyone ordinary dungeon and its loot a serious upgrade with Warlock: Treasure Vaults!
Weighing in at 32 pages, this booklet’s esteemed sections and designers are:
- Treasure Vaults of Midgard, by Mike Welham
- Treasures of Perun’s Daughter, by Lysa Chen
- 11 Magic Staves of Midgard, by Marc Radle
- Darkest Vaults of the Great Maze, by Richard Pett
Support Warlock as we expand the dark fantasy options for 5E!
gatesvp –
This book has 4 sections.
Section one provides overviews of a variety of vaults you would find across Midgard. None of these are really complete in and of themselves, but they are all adventure seeds or flavour elements that you can work into your campaign. Coin drake is so much fun.
The second section consists of 18 magic items purported to come from the duchy of Perun. The items range from Common to Legendary, so there’s something for everyone. But the formatting here is all weird. An item will contain a 6 sentence piece of world building followed by one line of actual game text: “this longbow is not heavy”.
Some of the items also don’t feel “ready” to be just dropped in. Things with spell-like abilities but no attunement. A “legendary” artifact that is handed out every year. An item that has an effect for each “color of feather” you use, but then no actual description for the number of feathers.
Section 3 is a list of 11 staves. Each of them comes with an evocative piece of art. The author has built a variety of cool ways in which they are destroyed on the last charge (roll of 1). A few of them even have critical successes that recharge them!
But the whole suite is very much “on the rails”. Nearly every staff is “Sorcerer, Warlock or Wizard” with a couple of Druid and one Cleric. They’re mostly just “spell themes” with rarity defined by the number of spells in the list. They do give a little color to the world as each one has the incorporated world history in their descriptions. But outside of dropping these on an enemy Wizard, I don’t see these playing a big role.
The last section is similar to the first section, but with a focus on Mazes instead of Vaults. Again, there are several descriptions of locations hidden within the infinite Maze, but these are adventure seeds only. This section is also a lead-in to an adventure just published: “An Enigma Lost in a Maze”.
As always, the artwork is excellent and the editing is pro. But I really felt this issue was mostly seeds with very few sprouts. Like the whole issue was groundwork for a bunch of future Warlock Lairs.