Night Druid's Review of Secret of the Spider Moon part 2.

Second Part of my thoughts/review of Secret of the Spider Moon.

Chapter 3: Equipment and Magic
        Details guns, cutlasses, and cannons.  More fodder for a more general
article, but oh well.  Guns work, in game mechanics, pretty much like
crossbows.  The introduce three 'new' guns: a hand-held flamethrower, a
blunderbuss, and a six-shooter.  The pickings in the 'non-weapon'
equipment is pretty slim: space suits, gunpowder, and passenger
services.
        There are essentually 5 magic items: 2 types of helms (standard &
lifejammer), the float anchor, the gadabout (basically just a space
suit), and crown of stars.  Already went over helms, so I'll move on.
The float anchor is essentual in this game: none of the drow ships can
land, and they're supposed to be one of the major baddies.  More on them
in a bit.
        There are no new spells, just a brief section on the effects of spells
in space.  Not much, except for a few spells allow intraplanetary
travel.  That's a new one on me.

Chapter 4: Setting
        The meat of the article.  The system consists of 5 planets and an
asteroid belt.  Every race gets their own homeworld, except halflings,
who share one with the humans.  Here's a quick rundown:

Pyre - fire world, home to fire creatures living on earthbergs.

Ashen - A desert world with lots of treasure-filled pyramids and desert
monsters.  Egypt in the 18th century, except take away the Nile & actual
people living there.  Once a powerful civilization, now long-dead.

Verdura - A jungle world with lots of treasure-filled ruins and reptile
monsters.  Dominated by Yuan-ti clans.  Central America in the 17th-18th
century, except that you have snakemen instead of Mayans.  Used to be
dominant civilization, now ruined.

Quelya - An ocean world with lots of underwater, treasure-filled ruins.
Homeworld to humans & halflings, constantly threatened by the sahuagin.
Reminds me of Pacific Ocean, maybe the main world of Pirtelspace.

Perianth - A forest world with a SHOCKING lack of treasure-filled
ruins...in fact, Perianth & its moon are the ONLY planets not noted as
having treasure-filled ruins.  Homeworld to elves.  Think Cormanthor,
without the High Magic and constant wars.  Has the only moon in the
system.
Spider Moon - A wasteland, home to Drow and some scattered monsters.
This moon's section is pretty brief and surprisingly uninteresting.  It
does, however, raise an interesting quandry: if one can use fly and like
spells to travel to other worlds, why haven't the drow developed a
mass-fly spell to attack Periant?  Obviously it orbits Perianth, so the
trip should be real short.  Just need a good supply of space suits or
just use an army of undead.

Chain of Tears - Asteroid belt cluttered with garbage & wreckage.  Lost
homeworld of Gnomes.  Being colonized by formians, a few hideouts of
pirates.  Main resource is ore & salvage.

Mordin's Forge - Homeworld of dwarves, orcs, & half-orcs.  Conquered by
the illithids.  Very cold, most creatures live underground.  All that's
left of the previous dwarf & orc civilizations are a few hidden outposts
struggling to survive.

Chapter 5: Foes
Illithids - Came from 'beyond' after they discovered a colony ship of
slumbering humans; I kinda wonder what the greater system is supposed to
be like, because I don't think its supposed to be 'Real Space'.  I say
that because the illithids 'tracked' the colony ship back; that's a
pretty fantastic feat if its in 'Real Space.'
        Theirs is an initial scout force.  They use an army of grimlocks.  I
kinda wonder about that, because with the ships carrying so few people,
the initial invasion had to have had thousands of ships to bring any
kind of noticable army of grimlocks.  They currently use the drow as
agents to get magicial items of power.

Drow - The pawns of the illithids.  The illithids gave them lifejammers
in exchange for them to go out tomb-raiding for artifacts of power.
They desire retribution on the elves more than anything else.  Probably
the villian you're most likely to run into.

Yuan-ti - Reminants of a fallen civilization, now they pretty much serve
as sword-fodder for tomb raiders.

Formians - Not really evil, but they are very quickly overrunning the
asteroid belt with colonies.  A serious threat to pirates, prospectors,
and gnomes.

Sahuagin - Main threat on human world.  Mostly the barbarians at the
gate, kinda same role as orcs & goblins in a standard game.

The Rest
        There are several sizebars and rather large, massive-font information
blocks.  They detail three cities (a drow city, a free dwarf town, and a
human city) as well as some sites.

Overall, it's ok.  Not great, probably just a good place to get some
ideas.  I'm a bit puzzled as to the whole 'Secret of the Spider Moon'.
What the hell is it?  The drow/illithid alliance?  That's pretty
blatently obvious, so I'd hardly call it a 'secret'.  Ah well, at least
SJ is back in print (somewhat).

--
Adam Miller