The Privateers are at it again. Having shipped the IKCG to the printers back in May, the crew of Privateer Press have decided to wave pages of their long-awaited tome under our noses. Last week we were given glimpses of several sections, and this week we get even more.

The second preview contains a lot of juicy goodness:

1. A fraction of the explanation of the Morrowan Calendar, including major feastdays and the origins of month names.
2. The the Cleric class entry and the beginning of the Druid entry.
3. A snippet of item descriptions for miscellaneous equipment.
4. The tail end of the description of the god Menoth, and the beginning of Dhunia’s entry. Information regarding the origin of Menoth is especially tastey. We also see that Dhunia has four brand-spanking-new clerical domains, one for each season.
5. A pageful of alchemical healing items. A couple of them look at lot like what my players have been relying on in my Falconbridge campaign. Volden Mirsk would be proud. My version is a lot more potent and I have made them much more affordable, but I tend to run low-money games, so I suppose it fits. Nothing listed for alchemical goods is what I would normally consider a good bargain.
6. An appendix of clerical titles (Priest, Chaplain, Battle Chaplain, Rector, et cetera).

Overall, this provides a pleasant combination of fluff and crunchy rules-stuff. I was seriously concerned, when the IKCG and the IKWG were split apart from the original IKCG project, that we’d get a whole bunch of new rules in the first book, and all the excellent Iron Kingdoms fluff in the second book. I recognize that more people are looking for crunchy rules than fluffy background information, but I’m glad that it at least looks like they’re putting in a solid effort to achieve a balance.

The IKCG is at the printers as of this past Thursday, and after a night or two of joyous celebration, the Privateer Press folks have released an official IKCG Preview. This is differentiated from the various “sneak peeks” we’ve been given in the past in that

1. It shows the actual version that is being printed, not a draft subject to changes
2. There is a rather broad cross-section of content, ranging from descriptions of the Midlunder ethnicity, to the beginning of a multiple-page entry regarding Iosan Mage Hunters, to descriptions of Wurmist Cults, to rules regarding the creation of Mechanikal magic items
3. It is in the form of permanent content on the Privateer Press webpage instead of simply an entry in the “From the EIC‘s Desk” section, which I’ve always perceived as temporary.

It looks like their server has fallen over, so I am putting up a temporary mirror of the IKCG Preview PDF file. Download a single copy of it to your hard drive for posterity. It’ll be a few weeks before the finished product actually hits the shelves, so this will have to tide you over.

Here’s a direct link to the IKCG Preview. It looks like their name servers had issues earlier today, so who knows if the link will be working…

The fine folks at Privateer Press have the IKCG in layout now, and have decided to consolidate all their past Behind the Iron Curtain entries and give us an eighth sneak peek at the contents of this long-awaited tome of RPG goodness. This time we get snippets of the descriptive text for the various races and ethnicities of Immoren. Caspian, Sulese, Kossite, Dwarf, and Ogrun are covered, each getting several paragraphs accompanied by Brian Snoddy’s excellect artwork. The following is from the entry on Kossites:

“In the khurzic tongue, ‘kos’ means ‘wolf.’ Indeed, like ravenous wolves, the Kossites once stalked and raided throughout the north, but by the time they decided to move southward, the Khards were already firmly entrenched. At first, they dealt with one another harshly, pillaging, plundering, and burning one another’s settlements, but after decades of violence, the Kossite chiefs opted it was more lucrative to make an alliance–actually they pledged fealty–and be united with what was an even more numerous tribe. The Kossites immediately took to the partnership with delight, leading many of the Khardic charges against their shared enemies, and before long, they were accepted as mighty “wolf-brothers” by the roving horselords….”