Sky Point and Vivane (1995) is the final Earthdawn box set and it offers some radically different opportunities for play than the rest of the line to this point. You can tell just by looking at Stephen Hickman’s cover art, which looks a bit like something out of Metropolis, that this isn’t the familiar Earthdawn. A somewhat smaller artist pool is on duty inside: Tom Baxa, Joel Biske, Kent Burles, Jeff Laubenstein, Larry MacDougall and Mike Nielsen.

Three books, two maps and a booklet of handouts. Book one details the portions of the city of Vivane inhabited by natives of Barsaive. Book two looks at the quarters reserved for Theran citizens. Book three is dedicated to the region around the city, as well as the Sky Point platform, the aerial fortresses above it and the slaving city in its shadow.

All of this makes up the lone outpost of the odious Theran Empire in Barsaive. Most folks in the province are loyal to the Dwarven kingdom, though the Therans claim the whole thing belongs to them. They’re a bunch of sorcerous, slave-holding assholes though, clear villainous types who, if I recall correctly, had a really rough go of it during the most recent Scourge. So, while Vivane looks nice, I guess, it looks nice in a very “cover of Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead” kind of way. I see the appeal of having a city to explore in contrast to the dangerous wilderness and the corrupted kaers, but not Vivane. I wouldn’t want to live there. I wouldn’t want to visit, unless I had an army at my back and some mobile guillotines, you know? What power the Therans have is built on the backs of slave labor. Let’s have an exercise in violent, fantasy justice.