Sadly, it does not. It was always a longshot, but I figured if there was anywhere that Earthdawn's gayest character would appear in 4th edition, this would be it. Last time we saw him, he was Throal's envoy to the Crystal Raiders and Vasgothia has kind of a similar vibe. This is the land where screaming marauders wield big axes and wear bearskin armor. It can be quite . . . unruly.
Though maybe not unruly enough. I'd sort of forgotten that Vasgothia was a province of Thera, and so it came as a bit of a surprise to have about a third of the book devoted to Thera being a total buzzkill. I mean, I should have seen it coming because Vasgothia has always very, very clearly been classical Germania, and would Germania even be Germania if it didn't have some imperialist pricks oppressing it?
I am trying real hard to pin down my feelings about all of this. You've got these axes of conflict in the setting - an imperial aristocracy of ethnic Therans oppressing the Theranized urban Vasgothians (called "Empirists") with racist laws and institutional discrimination, while the Empirists, at the behest of their Theran overlords, wage a low-intensity war with the rural Vasgothians (called "Barrites"). And then, on top of this there are the lingering perils of the Scourge, the vague machinations of the dragons, and the unpredictable consequences of the deaths of the local Passions (i.e. "gods").
And it's all potentially very interesting. Hell, it is often actually interesting. But . . . I couldn't entirely escape the feeling that the setting was somehow . . . holding something back? The book had a subtle, but persistent "coloring inside the lines" feel to it. Like, damnit, it was going to be fantasy Roman Germania one way or another.
I think the culprit here is the Dread Yearning and the Place of ReNaming (and let me tell you, I am not a fan of Earthdawn's find-and-replace-esque habit of capitalizing "Name" mid-word, so I won't be doing it again, even if it results in a misquote). See, Vasgothia indulges in one of the primordial ideas of English-language fantasy: the Spooky Forest that Will Kill You. Classic fantasy. Almost universally beloved. And as far as Spooky Forests go, the Deep Forest is actually pretty damned cool. It's the astrally-corrupted remains of an epic battleground between the Passions and the Horrors, and even to this day you can find the physical remnants of the combatants, which, if consumed, will give you divine or profane magical powers, respectively. So, as you might expect, there are weird creatures who may or may not have been influenced by those remnants, and strange monuments to dead gods, capable of bending mortal minds into unnatural shapes.
All very well and good. If you are of Vasgothian descent, or if you wander to close to a particular cave, you may feel a magical call in the depths of your soul - the Dread Yearning - that will cause you to venture to the deepest part of the Deep Forest and go into a magical cave that will absolutely ruin your life. I have no problem with this. It's great. Where it veers away from the good kind of spooky into the realm of "coloring inside the lines" is in what happens inside the cave.
Those who enter the Place of Renaming ("cave") will (usually) lose their memories and emerge with a totally new Name and personality. Specifically, they will change from an Empirist (or even a Theran) into a Barrite.
See, the fundamental justification for Thera's imperial ambitions is that they had the foresight and the political will to spend vast resources developing magical apocalypse shelter technology and so everyone who used that technology to survive the apocalypse basically owes them everything forever. And in Vasgothia, the Empirist/Barrite split existed even before the Scourge. The Empirists partially assimilated into Theran culture and swore fealty to the distant Theran government, so they were allowed to build shelters using Thera's tech. Whereas the Barrites followed the uncompromising ideals of their leader, Barri, and fought both the Therans and the Horrors to the very last, suffering a very badass, but thorough extinction in the Scourge.
Until, that is, the Dread Yearning began luring the Empirists out of their cities to the Place of Renaming, where they had their minds rewritten to believe themselves the reincarnations of the dead rebels and inheritors of the lost Vasgothian culture. And the how and the why of this is never fully explained.
Now, I have a theory. I think the Place of Renaming was the Vasgothian Passions' inhuman alternative to Thera's kaers. When the Horrors emerged at the height of the mana cycle, the lives of the rebels were inevitably forfeit . . . but their culture, their values, their memories could potentially survive. So the gods made this spooky cave, a sort of soul kaer, to house the Barrite spirits, and wove it with powerful protective magic so those spirits could not be consumed by the soul-eating Horrors. It was in defense of this sacred ark that they eventually perished.
Then, centuries later, the blessing/curse came to fruition and the traitorous blood of the Theran collaborators was called to the Place of Renaming, to serve as a vessel for the rebirth of the Vasgothia they abandoned in their fear.
This is a theory that does not, technically, contradict anything in the book, but neither is it particularly supported by it. The book just doesn't bother to explain it.
I think rpg writers believe that there is a magnanimity in not explaining things. Why, if there had been a concrete explanation for how the Place of Renaming worked, I would not have had the space to come up with my totally awesome personal theory! Except . . . from my perspective, it didn't feel like a writing prompt, it felt like homework. There was a mystery there, but it was a kind of question-killing mystery. The book's default presentation was a series of events without a theme. A partial story, in other words.
And my theory was an attempt to add themes, to complete the story in a particular way. If the Dread Yearning was an intentional act, then that has a certain mythic resonance, but it's also an immense violation, an atrocity, an injustice by the past against the future. A ghost story, in other words. But are the Barrites meant to be a ghost story? In the rest of the book, they're mostly presented as regular folk - the rural Vasgothians who are maybe a little disconnected from the region's past, but they're working it out, joining ideological camps, organizing into rival anti-Theran alliances who hate each other almost as much as they hate the occupiers.
The strangeness of their origin largely exists in the past. The Barrites have a mysterious origin, but they are not, themselves, treated as a mystery. Nobody really expresses disbelief that these people inexplicably exist. The mystery stays where it belongs.
Which is what I meant by "coloring inside the lines." The Place of Renaming didn't feel sacred to me, it felt like The Weird Cave That Makes This Germania.
But I'm not sure how much of my discontent I want to put on the book. Mostly it's okay. This is a very gameable region, attractively and usefully presented in a handy reference volume. It wouldn't necessarily benefit from an elaborate justification for its genre tropes . . . except that justifying fantasy tropes has historically been Earthdawn's signature move.
So I guess my verdict for Vasgothia is that I like the outline, and I like the details, but I wish it had wasted more of my time with pipe-laying exposition.
Ukss Contribution: It is speculated that the deadly fungus of the Fungal Grotto derives nutrients from some giant, profane creature buried deep in the earth. Exactly the sort of thing that belongs in the Spooky Forest.
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