4.5 out of 5 stars

It’s an FR day today in Dragon with a release describing a city from that setting.

Well, actually Tu’narath is probably one of the FR locations that least deserves the title of ”FR location.” That’s because as a city of the Astral Sea, it’s not really tied to the FR world in the way that, say, Waterdeep is.  Indeed, while we haven’t been there yet, it wouldn’t be impossible for the Scales of War adventure path to visit Tu’narath at some point, and that adventure path has been designed from the very start to simply be set in a “generic” D&D setting.  Indeed, given the inclusion of information related to the adventure path in this article, it wouldn’t surprise me to see some excursion to Tu’narath as the climax to the Paragon tier for the assassination/liberation of Zetch’r’r, the githyanki emperor whose pact with Tiamat is a driving force behind the Paragon tier adventures in the path.  We’ll have to check that out on the 22nd when A Tyranny of Souls comes out (while not labeled as the Scales of War, it’s the only other Dungeon adventure scheduled for this month, and we already know that Web of Chains wasn’t in the adventure path).

In addition to a location description, we also get a histrorical description of the githyanki and the githzerai from this article.  Given that it lacks an explanation for the “-yanki” suffix though on the former name, said history must be assumed to be incomplete.  It’s also one-sided as we see nothing of the githzerai history after the mutual withdrawal that ended the gith civil war.

While the article is almost completely fluff (though good fluff), one mechanical element does appear within its pages: an Astral Carrack, a sort of troop transport that the githyanki use to ply the Astral Sea.  It’s unlikely that players will ever have need for one, but if your game tends more towards a political scale, then maybe they’ll need one.

Overall I’m fairly impressed with the content here and the information that ties Tu’narath into the Scales of War adventure path only serves to emphasize the portability of it all.