Creatures of the Wyld: A Bestiary of the Second Age

by White Wolf Publishing

Fiction

Genres: Fantasy, Role Playing Games

128 pages, Paperback

First published January 20, 2003

About the author

White Wolf Entertainment AB, formerly White Wolf Publishing, was an American roleplaying game and book publisher. The company was founded in 1991 as a merger between Lion Rampant and White Wolf Magazine (est. 1986 in Rocky Face, GA; it later became "White Wolf Inphobia"), and was initially led by Mark Rein-Hagen of the former and Steve Wieck and Stewart Wieck of the latter. White Wolf Publishing, Inc. merged with CCP Games in 2006. White Wolf Publishing operated as an imprint of CCP hf, but ceased in-house production of any material, instead licensing their properties to other publishers. It was announced in October 2015 that White Wolf had been acquired from CCP by Paradox Interactive. In November 2018, after most of its staff were dismissed for making controversial statements, it was announced that White Wolf would no longer function as an entity separate from Paradox Interactive.

source: Wikipedia

Reviews

[Brian]

When I first read Creatures of the Wyld I was a bit confused. Exalted is a game about mighty heroes whose power shakes the foundation of heaven, and here was a bestiary that included large crabs, octopus-like beasts that hide under the ice and eat people, or slightly more humanoid gorillas. Sure, there were some unique monsters as well, but what's with the wildlife? Since then, I've learned and now I appreciate the book for the window into Creation that it is.

Also, I finally read the note at the beginning that said it's designed to support any game, from mortals to Exalted, which is good design. But that's not the reason I appreciate the book so much.

My favorite bestiary for any RPG is the Old World Bestiary because of the sheer volume of fluff it contains, but Creatures of the Wyld is a close second. It's valuable as a source of antagonists, legends, companions, and wildlife for an Exalted game, but it's also valuable for what it says about the world. For example, from the corebook, the Wyld has the Fair Folk and creatures recognizable from real-world mythology like gryphons, as well as some general talk about mutants. This book shows just how expansive that definition can get, with creatures like the rock-roller, a mixture of eel, spider, and living totem pole; or the Kaigani berg-riders, formerly-human mutants made of ice who control icebergs as ships and live as pirates on the high seas; or the karmeus, predators in Nexus that look like giant vultures with screaming human faces inside their beaks. The titular creatures of the Wyld expand the possible range of Wyld mutation greatly beyond just "Fair Folk and their creations and beast-people."

There's also a lot of worldbuilding in the creature descriptions. Creation is an incredibly dangerous place even ignoring all the Wyld mutants. There are a number of large predators who think nothing of preying on humans, like the undercoat (the aforementioned octopus-like beasts), the emperor rat, the horned snow hunter, or the claw strider. They're found all over Creation, even in places where civilization has continued for thousands of years, and are a constant threat to human life. They help explain why it is that the world is so dangerous, and why there are so many areas of unspoiled wilderness when in the real world, humanity ruthlessly hunts all predators to the point of extinction if necessary. There are other things that make the wilds more dangerous like elementals, but the fauna of Creation is inherently more dangerous than that of the real world even before Exalted genesis projects, Wyld taint, or the actions of rogue sorcerers.

But I think what I like most are the hints of the past. Late in the Exalted line, the First Age was nailed down more and more until finally it was depicted in Dreams of the First Age as a magitech world-spanning civilization basically indistinguishable from modern life, including lunchboxes and the internet. In Creatures of the Wyld, it's much more down-to-earth. There's room for mortal kings in a world ruled by Exalted, like in the story of No-Key the Mushroom King. There's evidence of a long, grinding war to conquer Creation after the Primordial War, as depicted in the story of Proto Puma Prime. There's more room for different types of stories in the past of this book as compared to later books, which makes for better gaming.

Also, something is actually attributed to the Shogunate! Will wonders never cease.

This book is not as good as Old World Bestiary, but it comes very close and is worlds better than bestiaries that are just a dry list of statistics and combat tactics. The best part of Exalted is Creation, and Creatures of the Wyld is up there with Scavenger Sons in showing what that world is like.