A new horror novel from Permuted Press by Wayne Simmons!

As tattoo artist Star begins to ink her first client on a spring Sunday morning, something goes horribly wrong with the world… Belfast’s hungover lapse into a deeper sleep than normal, their sudden deaths causing an unholy mess of crashing cars, smoldering televisions and falling aircraft. In the chaotic aftermath a group of post-apocalyptic survivors search for purpose in a devastated city. Ageing DJ Sean Magee and shifty-eyed Barry Rogan find drunken solace in a hotel bar. Ex-IRA operative Mairead Burns and RIR soldier Roy Beggs form an uneasy alliance to rebuild community life.

Drop Dead Gorgeous by Wayne Simmons is available at Amazon.com.

Book three of this series has Tavi being sent out of the way (both because of who he is, and to get training) to infiltrate a new legion being created. Since most lord’s have their own legion, a new one was being created to try to serve no political uses. But Tavi is supposed to see if anyone in the legion is in fact a spy. That is what he does since he is a Cursor (also a spy) for the First Lord.

Quickly, things escalate. Lord Kalare, whom has eyes on the First Lord’s throne, launches an attack and starts civil war in the realm. He also kidnaps other high ranking nobles, and holds them prisoner at his fortress.

Review by Stacey Chancellor

White Wolf Publishing has a new eBook bundle available for a limited time only at the Flames Rising RPGNow Shop. This week explore the what it means to be a soldier in the World of Darkness. This bundle includes both World of Darkness: Dogs of War and the SAS Adventure Ruins of Ur.

These materials normally retail for $31.98, but in PDF form for the next seven days, you can acquire both products for $18.99 (USD), a savings of 41%.

The service trains you to be strong. It teaches you teamwork, how to rely on others and how to rely on yourself. Which is a damn good thing. You need every edge you can get. You’ll see for yourself when you discover what else is out there in the night…

The World of Darkness: War is Hell bundle is available at the Flames Rising RPGNow Shop.

The definitive collection of Tolkien’s classic “fairie” tales, in the vein of The Hobbit, illustrated by Oscar winner Alan Lee.

Never before published in a single volume, Tolkien’s four novellas (Farmer Giles of Ham, Leaf by Niggle, Smith of Wootton Major, and Roverandom) and one book of poems (The Adventures of Tom Bombadil) are gathered together for the first time, in a fully illustrated volume. This new, definitive collection of works — which had appeared separately, in various formats, between 1949 and 1998 — comes with a brand-new foreword and endmatter, and with a series of detailed pencil illustrations by Alan Lee, in the style of his other award-winning Tolkien work, most recently in The Children of Húrin.

Tales from the Perilous Realm is available at Amazon.com.

“Vampires’ Quest” is a card game about competing vampires and is the first offering from Headless Games. In “Vampires’ Quest” players compete to match Bite cards with Victims, turning them into vampires and racing to create an army of the undead.

The game is played in rounds, scoring points based on the number of bitten victims claimed.

There are 15 different kinds of cards (including Bite and Victim cards) that can affect game play. Some allow you to steal claimed victims from other vampires, send claimed victims back to the deck or counter other players’ cards.

Review by Michael Erb

Author and game designer Greg Stolze has two new products available at the Flames Rising RPGNow Shop. First up is Reign – A fantasy game of dominion and leadership. I picked this book up at GenCon 2007 after an entertaining demo run by the Mr. Stolze himself. It uses the One Roll Engine, so if […]

One of the challenges of any fantasy role-playing game is coming up with new, unpredictable and fearsome foes to tangle with your heroes.

“The Random Esoteric Creature Generator” by Goodman Games is sub-titled “For Classic Fantasy Games and their Modern Simulacra.” Simply put, it’s a monster-maker for d20 and similar fantasy
role-playing games.

The 31-page .PDF document is filled with random roll charts to help you design bizarre and unique creatures, giving you everything from size and body shape to special attacks and defenses.

Review by Michael Erb

Come Join the Fight to Protect Earth!

Monsters and demons have existed on Earth since its inception, terrorizing humanity throughout history. But some of them decided to fight back, creating a company of like-minded beings (even other demons) to defend the Earth from supernatural threats. Today, the shadow company has it’s hands in every facet of life all around the globe, using this grasp to police supernatural activity. Demon races that live on Earth (i.e. the aquatic Lochs, shape-shifting Changelings, or even the pyrotechnic Burners) have joined the company as well, ensuring their safety as well as humanity’s.

Apocalypse Prevention, Inc. is available at Lulu.com and RPGNow.com.

An innocent human learns of the supernatural amongst us in Kelley Armstrong’s Living with the Dead.

Robyn Peltier’s client has been killed, and she’s being set up for murder. Still recovering from her husband’s death, the last thing she needs is her pal Hope Adams and her guy Karl Marsten parading their coupleness in her face, but they’re the only ones who have insight into who the murderer really is…and with whom she’s in cahoots.

But Robyn doesn’t know that Hope is a half-demon and Karl is a werewolf. And when she does find out, Hope and Karl are less than civil to her.

Just one day of our super end of the year holiday sale left! We have, just in time for sale pricing, the long awaited new edition of Titan from Valley Games, Hedge Magic for Ars Magica, Dead Reign from Palladium, Thaumotology for GURPS, The Keepers of the Tradition expansion for the Vampire CCG, the new […]

Howard Phillips Lovecraft is one of the few authors of the horror genre who has been dissected rather thoroughly (Edgar Allen Poe being another). Kenneth Hite, who’s made much of his living as both a critic and a Lovecraft enthusiast, has a few things to say on the subject, and they make for very interesting reading. Tour de Lovecraft — the Tales is an engaging breakdown of all 51 of Lovecraft’s mature prose fiction, from 1917’s The Tomb to Lovecraft’s last work, the Haunter of the Dark from late 1935.

This is not a book of literary criticism, as I first assumed, but rather criticism of literary criticism. Hite takes pains to offer quotes and examples of criticism from a number of noted Lovecraft scholars, and offers his own opinions that don’t always mesh with those notions. In effect, the book breaks Lovecraft’s work down into what might be considered Hite’s Top-10 list of Lovecraft’s work. Hite spends time analyzing Lovecraft’s most effective tales.

Irish writer, Derek Gunn, has sold a new novel entitled The Estuary, to US publisher, Permuted Press for publication in 2009.

According to the author, The Estuary is a fast-paced, horror adventure tale, about a desperate plan formulated in the darkest years of an evil empire, which now threatens to engulf the residents of a small community in Southern Ireland.

“I’m delighted that The Estuary is going to be published by Permuted Press who are making tremendous strides forward in publishing horror/post-apocalyptic genre fiction” says Derek.

The war-torn world of Simarra is filled with many horrors. Some are creatures who have plagued the inhabitants of this world for countless centuries, others nightmares unleashed upon this world with the invasion of the Keza-Drak. Tainted beasts – once locked in the threshold realm – have found their way into the world through the stone gates. In addition, the dead lands have opened once more, unleashing hordes of undead into the world. Not all of the strange and horrific creatures that can be found in this world are otherworldly in nature, however.

Written by Mathew Kaiser and David Jarvis, the Book of Bones is 69 pages of new creatures and templates for your True20 Game! While all of these creatures are set in the war-torn world of Simarra, they can easily be used in your own amazing campaign worlds!

The Book of Bones is available at the Flames Rising RPGNow Shop.

Underland Press has the first few pages of Jemiah Jefferson’s “wovel” up on their website:

Firstworld

Like me, you were probably wonder “What the hell is a wovel?” Conveniently enough, they have a What is a Wovel? page just for us. The author posts part of the story the readers vote and things continue from there. They make claims that it is the first of its kind, but I’m not so sure that is true (for one example, Tim Buckley from Ctrl+Alt+Del did the Idiots in Space series earlier this year).

Pregnant with twins, Princess Meredith NicEssus embarks on her biggest battle yet in Laurell K. Hamilton’s Swallowing Darkness.

With impending motherhood, Merry knows the safest thing for her unborn children, her lovers/guards and she is to escape faerie to Los Angeles. After all, her cousin Prince Cel desperately wants her – and her nearest and dearest – dead. Or maybe just maimed.

But escaping safely to the Western Lands means working with humans, who may not be fully aware of the deadly task they face of protecting Merry and her posse. Old wounds will bleed again…

Our next contestant is Iron Wind Metals. Rising from the ashes of the fallen Ral Partha Miniatures, Iron Wind first began cranking out miniatures in 1999. Since then they’ve attempted to resurrect many of the figures for which they became famous in the 1980s and 90s, but have so far found little success getting their re-tooled fantasy lines into stores. Ordering online might be your only option to acquire these beauties, but check your favourite local game store first; they may be willing to special order Iron Wind Metals miniatures for you.

The miniatures we’ll be looking at come from several different product lines. As usual, I will list the miniatures by name, stock code, and by MSRP (Manufacturer’s Suggested Retail Price). I try to include the sculptor’s name whenever possible; credit where credit is due, after all.

I first came across Kay about three years ago when someone from out sci-fi/fantasy book club chose one of his books. Tigana. It was such a rich and beautiful book that I immediately went out and read the Fionavar Tapestry (a three book trilogy) and really liked it as well. So, I have been waiting for this to come in trade peperback for a while and finally bought it recently.

The story revolved around a fifteen year old boy named Ned. He is from Canada and the son of a famous photographer. They are in France, and on site at Aix-en-Provence’s Saint-Saveur Cathedral.

Review by Stacey Chancellor

The gods of the Shroud know that names give you power over them. So it is that they are not called by their true names, but instead by their titles within the sacred zodiac. The Silent Sister. The Rider. The Bone Witch. The Shadow Above. The Root. And more… Thirteen gods in all, though their newest member is an upstart, fresh-born of a once-low race now taking its place among the tribes of men. All vie for power and position through their faithful intermediaries, each one shaken by the coming of the Shroud — or perhaps secretly its source.

Gods of the Shroud is available at the Flames Rising RPGNow Shop.

Hardboiled Cthulhu is billed as an anthology of “Two-Fisted Tales of Tentacled Terror”, and mostly it delivers. However, the quality is quite uneven, though in some cases pretty creative. For example, “Eldritch Fellas” by Tim Curran, a “Goodfellas” pastiche with the Great Old Ones as mobsters, while initially amusing, was far too long. It wasn’t really clever enough to justify its genre-bending inclusion here.

Likewise “Day of Iniquity” by Steven Shrewsbury is neither particularly hard-boiled nor terrifying.

The ancient dead keep their own counsel, and they have learned from bitter experience to hold onto any advantage to avoid Oblivion. The Charms within represent such advantage in the Underworld, a means of bringing powers unknown to most of its denizens to bear when necessary. Once practiced only by the dark realm’s elite, these […]