Faces of the Tarnished Souk

By Thilo Graf

Faces of the Tarnished Souk – Ankhar-Kosh the Unstoppable, by Rite Publishing is a 13 pages pdf, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page SRD and 2 pages of advertisements, leaving 8 pages of content.

This pdf presents Ankhar-Kosh and acts as both a nice stand-alone product or as an add-on to Coliseum Morpheuon.

The pdf kicks off with a page containing the background of Ankhar-Kosh, including information for CM’s Dreamburning mechanics and a note on how to and how not to use this bodyguard.

Ankhar-Kosh comes in 3 vastly different incarnations for different levels:

The first one is the whopping CR 21 dreadnaught protector quickling manimal ankylosaurus armiger and his stat-block takes up 2 pages and is a beauty to behold – AC 64. ‘Nuff said. He IS the ultimate bodyguard. All his skills and special abilities are aimed at keeping his charges alive and he packs a mean, mean punch. He also comes with 3 unique magic items and 2 feats reprinted from Super Genius Games products (1 page), a cooperation I’m just loving.

The second one is a CR 14 protector quickling manimal ankylosaurus fighter 5, taking up 1 page.

The third incarnation is a CR 7 manimal ankylosaurus. It takes up half a page.

The pdf closes with 3 templates, Dreadnought (CR+1 to +4, depending on the HD), Quickling (CR+1) and Manimal (great nod towards the cult-series in the name, btw.!) CR+1, including some ideas on how to implement them.

The pdf also features the new spell Create Manimal [Drd 6, Sor/Wiz 7], which makes a manimal out of an animal.

Conclusion:

Editing and formatting are top-notch, I didn’t notice any mistakes. The b/w-artwork is great.

If you say Rite Publishing, the first thing that comes to my mind is far-out, imaginative design. And stat-blocks. Big, beautiful, bad-ass stat-blocks. Coliseum Morpheuon features a huge array of great, powerful characters and this pdf is an awesome addition to this setting/adventure and I hope we’ll see more in this series.

My final verdict will be 5 stars – I’m just in love with this beautiful, deadly CR 21 incarnation.

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