Pyramid Pick
Burning Empires
Published by Luke Crane
Written by Luke Crane with Chris Allingham, Radek Drozdalski, Alexander Newman, Thor Olavsrud, & Mayuran Tiruchelvam
Cover by Christopher Moeller
Illustrated by Christopher Moeller with Michael Kelleher, Jordan Worley, & Peter Bergting
656-page undersized full-color hardcover; $45
It is 597 of the Hanrilke Era. The last emperor of the Federated Empire, Ober IV has been dead for a century, eight Iron Empires control human space, established after the Great Civil War following his assassination, maintaining an uneasy peace. The nobility leads space armadas, their Hammer, and their planetary militaries, their Anvil. The theocracy of the Mundus Humanitus is the Iron Empires' foremost faith, believing in fate predetermined. Merchant leagues and princes direct great commercial ventures, smugglers supply the populous with contraband, outlaws hide from the authorities, and criminals prey on society. Psychologists, trained in their Foundations and capable of reading and directing thoughts, serve as advisors to the nobility even as they are reviled by the faithful. Even as the fractious Iron Empires feud for power to restore the Federated Empire, they ignore a threat that will enslave humanity: the Vaylen.
Consisting of a host and a Naiven worm, the Vaylen eye humanity greedily for the memories and experiences inside the human brain. A vast empire organized along clan and caste lines, the Vaylen have only been kept at bay by limited available . . .
This article originally appeared in the second volume of Pyramid. See the current Pyramid website for more information.
Article publication date: May 23, 2008
Copyright © 2008 by Steve Jackson Games. All rights reserved. Pyramid subscribers are permitted to read this article online, or download it and print out a single hardcopy for personal use. Copying this text to any other online system or BBS, or making more than one hardcopy, is strictly prohibited. So please don't. And if you encounter copies of this article elsewhere on the web, please report it to webmaster@sjgames.com.