Pyramid Review
Veil of Night (for Vampire: The Dark Ages)
Published by White Wolf Game Studio
Written by Chris Harford, Ellen Kiley, James Kiley, Michael Lee, Sarah Roark, Lucien Soulban, and Adam Tinworth
$29.95
Let me start off by saying I don't think I can approach this book with the lack of bias that no one really expects from reviewers anymore. My background is from the region it covers (Northern Africa and Western Asia, generally termed the Middle East), so I'll probably cheer for any book that portrays the region as more than a radioactive wasteland (ala Cyberpunk 2020).
This year I've got a lot to cheer about, thanks to White Wolf making it the Year of the Scarab. Like the Year of the Lotus before it, the YotS books will focus on a specific region; this time Araby instead of the Orient. The first book of the series was the dissapointing Mummy: the Ressurection, and there will be more books for the various White Wolf games.
Veil of Night is the YotS sourcebook for Vampire: the Dark Ages. It gives readers a quick tour of the Near East and Northern Africa, from Moorish Spain to Persia & Pakistan.
The book begins with an encounter with Muhammud, the Prophet of Islam and a vampire (presumably, Suleiman Ibn Abdullah, the founder of the Isharra sect of vampires & a major player in this book). The encounter was well done and respectful, and shouldn't offend.
The theme of the book is the effect that Islam has had on the vampires of the Middle East; it's had just as strong, if not a . . .
This article originally appeared in the second volume of Pyramid. See the current Pyramid website for more information.
Article publication date: June 15, 2001
Copyright © 2001 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.