The description of the new Player's Option: Heroes of the Elemental Chaos (HOTEC), has tantalizing hints of Lovecraftian beings beyond time and space. The book's release, after all, is tied directly to the D&D Fortune Cards, Spirtal of Tharizdun, which in turn is meant for use with the D&D Encounter season The Elder Elemental Eye. The cards offer "in-game benefits tied to the theme of madness." HOTEC throws around words like "chaos," and "primordial." And the cover even has a tentacled monstrosity duking it out with fantasy heroes in epic fashion. Was this the book where Tharizdun would be finally revealed in all his mind-blasting glory?
Nope. Tharizdun lurks on the periphery of the book as The Elder Elemental Eye, but he's never even mentioned by name. Good ole Tharizdun first appeared in The Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun. An insane god and eater of worlds imprisoned, slumbering, only fitfully awake, Tharizdun may well have been inspired by Clark Ashton Smith's demon lord Thasaidon. But it doesn't matter, because Tharizdun doesn't have much to do with HOTEC.
This is as much a result of 4th Edition's changes to the Dungeons & Dragons cosmology as it is with Tharizdun's evolution. He is associated with elementals instead of aberrations, more chaotic untamed energy than sanity-shattering evil. That sums up HOTEC, which is a bit chaotic itself.
The elemental princes, harking back to the Fiend Folio, are all here: Imix, Ogremoch, Olhydra, and Yan-C-Bin. The tentacled fellow on the cover is actually Cryonax, who reminds me a bit of Ithaqua, lord of blizzards. Imix was a major force in my first Advanced Dungeons & Dragons campaign (see my book, The Well of Stars, to learn more about it).
With the fluff out of the way, the book dives into themes (demon spawn, earthforger, elemental initiate, firecrafter, ironwrought, janissary, moteborn, primordial adept, watershaper, and windlord). Janissary is an odd choice for this book but it's a sign of HOTEC's diversity, which includes Middle Eastern influences.
Each class gets additional powers too: druid, monk, sorcerer (elementalist), warlock (pacts with primordials), and wizard (sha'ir from the Al'Qadim setting). There are ten paragon paths, including demon-bound, doomlord, elemental anchorite, elemental savant, favored sha'ir, god warder, herald of Vezzuvu, legendary hexblade, prince of genies, reforged soul, and speaker of xaos. Epic destines include emergent primordial and lord of chaos. A passel of feats, elemental companions, and elemental rewards round out the book.
On the one hand we have the sha'ir, janissary, and prince of genies; on the other we have demon-spawns, demon bound, primordial adepts, and speakers of xaos. HOTEC isn't nearly as focused as Heroes of the Feywild, but given its subject matter perhaps its chaotic nature is appropriate.
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