Pyramid Review
Spirit Warriors (for Hell on Earth)
Published by Pinnacle Entertainment Group
Written by John Hopler
128 pages, $20.00
Spirit Warriors is the latest in the line of sourcebooks for Pinnacle's Deadlands: Hell on Earth setting. Having already covered mutants, psychers, cyborgs, junkers, templars, and road warriors, this time around they take a look at shamans. But don't expect a simple rehash of the original Deadlands shamans. Where the old west shamans worked with nature spirits to work their magic, the shaman of the Wasted West deal with toxic (aka pollution) spirits.
That's right, in addition to the classical four elements, PEG has now given us the four spheres of pollution: Radiation (fire), Sludge (water), Smog (air), and Trash (earth). They also throw in Insect Spirits as a kind of miscellaneous extra category. Thanks to all the environmental, radioactive, and supernatural damage caused by the Reckoning, a whole new species of spirits exists which want nothing more than to turn the entire world into Love Canal. As if having the Four Horsemen running around loose was not enough of a problem.
The book is laid out in the standard PEG Deadlands/Hell on Earth format. First is the Posse Section, done in the form of an interview with a Toxic Shaman, which provides some more of the history of the Wasted West setting, updates the status of the Indian nations, and fills in a few more pieces of the setting's backstory. It also describes the two . . .
This article originally appeared in the second volume of Pyramid. See the current Pyramid website for more information.
Article publication date: May 26, 2000
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