Pyramid Pick
Star Crusade (for Fading Suns)
Published by Holistic Design, Inc.
By Bill Bridges, Samuel Inabinet and Rustin Quaide
144 pages, $25.00
Star Crusade is the first major campaign expansion to Fading Suns since the game's release in 1996. Originally scheduled as part of a boxed set, this book is the first of two volumes describing over two dozen new worlds for this science fiction role-playing game. These worlds were all lost to the inhabitants of the Known Worlds after the disastrous collapse of the Second Republic. For centuries, their jumpgates were closed, blocking any passage to them. Now, a few brave souls have found ways around this problem, opening up a new frontier for adventure. In addition, Star Crusade provides a great deal of information about two major enemies of the Fading Suns setting: the Kurgan Caliphate and the Vuldrok Star-Nation, as well as suggestions on how to integrate their worlds into an ongoing epic.
The Fading Suns rulebook describes the Kurgan Caliphate as a mysterious vaguely Arabic empire against whom a vaguely Hispanic noble house, the Hazat, wages a lengthy war. Borrowing a page from El Cid and the Reconquista, the Hazat have asked for support from the Universal Church of the Celestial Sun by emphasizing the heretical religious views of the Kurgans. Beyond that, we know very little.
Star Crusade changes that. We learn the history of the Caliphate, including the odd story of its founding by a megalomaniacal merchantman . . .
This article originally appeared in the second volume of Pyramid. See the current Pyramid website for more information.
Article publication date: March 24, 2000
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