Gossamer Worlds: Aethersaur Island

This installment of the evocative Gossamer Worlds-series clocks in at 12 pages, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, leaving us with 10 pages of content, so let’s take a look!

So, what happens if three worlds converge? Awesomeness, that’s what! What a prehistoric earth, a steampunky Edwardian age world and one of eldritch horrors and alien vistas blended, the result was pretty much catastrophic, resulting in a rather small gossamer world, wherein aether-powered technology and magic co-exist and the ingenuity of mankind obviously found a way to blend aether and dinosaurs to create rather badass beasts of burden and war machines. So far, so cool – but, of course, that’s not where it stops – for one, there are troglodytes, lowly amalgamations of lizard servitor races. And then there is Cyrano (nice nomenclature here…), an erstwhile Umbra master now blended with a friggin triceratops. Oh, and said megamaniacal mad…saurus lives in Mount Doom, doubles as the rather nasty lord of the place (full stats provided) and would like nothing more than to reign unopposed.

Have I btw. mentioned his steampunk-cyborg T-Rex Queen Victoria? Yeah, if that leaves you cold, I don’t know anymore. Better yet – thee is one more twist: The aethermind, a massive alien consciousness trapped in a frequency beyond visibility, which could potentially highjack whole armies. Of course, we also get the domain-summary table and yes, the basics of aether-based technology are explained.

Conclusion:

Editing and formatting are top-notch, I noticed no significant glitches. Layout adheres to Rite Publishing’s beautiful 2-column full-color standard for LoGaS and the pdf comes fully bookmarked for your convenience. Artwork consists of a blend of glorious full-color pieces of original art and thematically-fitting stock.

Matt Banach’s Aethersaur Island is awesome in all the right ways – in that it caters to the 4-year old in me that knew the Latin names of all dinosaurs in his encyclopedia by hard. This gossamer world is unashamed, hilarious pulp that could easily be turned upside down into a pretty apocalyptic mess – with the wink in the eye that the best of steampunk books offer, we receive a downright joyfully far-out setting. Like when we were kids and said “And then there are Dinoasaurs…and Cyborgs…and Dinosaurcyborgs!!” – the writing is excellent and overall, this humble pdf provided a lot of joy and fun for me – and what else can you ask from such a nice little pdf? Final verdict? 5 stars + seal of approval.

You can get this inspired pdf here on OBS and here on d20pfsrd.com’s shop!

Endzeitgeist out.

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