We’re finally here at the last planar book for Fourth Edition D&D. Sadly, this will not be the last actual article covering this edition in our series—far from it, in fact—but sometimes you’re thankful for small blessings, and at this point I’m so ready to move on from this grating and interminable cosmology that I’ll take what I can get. This is also the last Player’s Option book for this edition, with Player’s Option: Heroes of the Elemental Chaos filling out another portion of the multiverse with new options for PCs. Hilariously, there would never be a fourth book to finish this product line, presumably because by this time what would later be called Fifth Edition D&D had been officially announced. After this, there would only be two more Fourth Edition-specific books published, and only absolute diehards were sticking with this edition rather than either playtesting what was at the time called D&D Next or finally making the transition over to Pathfinder. 

As with its predecessors, I was on the fence about covering this work at all (note: there’s no true entry for Heroes of Shadow in A Walk Through the Planes because its new lore is so minimal). These books are largely filled with crunch dedicated towards players, and while at times this can reveal things about a world, anyone dedicated enough to look through the new feats and abilities for hints of these revelations is a more obsessive person than I. Honestly, I didn’t even find that material terribly impressive here, as there are only two full builds and both of them are just Fourth Edition reconceptions of classes from earlier editions. At this point adding much more than some janky spells, powers, and paragon paths to the game was wasted effort, so I get it, but even so these final releases always seem almost intentionally skippable. 

As such, all of Heroes of Elemental Chaos‘ lore essentially appears in its first chapter. While there are some quick location descriptions similar to what we received about the Feywild, that’s not what I’m talking about this time out, as once again they’re essentially recycled from earlier sources. What is weirdly new to this book are greatly expanded profiles of all of the archomentals—and I don’t just mean the evil ones. All nine receive full write-ups here, and while the only thing really different about them from before is that they’re all primordials now (because of course they fucking are…), I’m also just happy when weirdo fringe characters like Chan or Sunnis even get remembered. The archomentals are also far more firmly linked with Tharizdun than in the past, but I’m unclear how canonical this is supposed to be in other editions of the game (well, Fifth Edition and 5.5, I suppose) where Tharizdun isn’t the ultimate big bad and everyone and their sister isn’t a primordial. The whole Elder Elemental Eye business remains messy in a Marvel Comics universe sort of way.

Which isn’t to say that there aren’t any entirely new primordials included within the book. Fourth Edition can never resist adding more swaths of primordials to the multiverse, and so six new bound primordials and three free ones are added. Are any of them good? I read through this section a week ago rather than, say, an hour ago as I really should for how dull I find Fourth Edition’s lore, and unfortunately that means that I failed to remember anything about a single one of these individuals. Skimming over them again, I can’t help but notice that almost all of them have the type of sterotypically dreadful Fourth Edition name that makes your brain glaze over instantly, i.e. “Castanamir, the Shattered Khan,” “Heur-Ket, the Storm Unabated,”and “Ty-h’kadi, Prince of Thunder and Lightning.” I think some of them were good and some weren’t, but in all cases Primordials are just unmemorable, and if you want some examples to use then there are far more thorough articles about them in prior books and Dragon articles—every one created here here would receive a couple of paragraphs, and then never be heard from again.

Considering how small the Fourth Edition pantheon is and how shitty and weak its deities are, it makes less and less sense how the Dawn War went down with every release. As if wishing to emphasize this point, Heroes of the Elemental Chaos includes an absolutely massive “Roster of Known Primordials” that lists every Primordial mentioned in an official D&D release along with a couple basic facts about them… while also never including where their previous coverage actually was. So while I love having this list of 74 (by my sloppy count) Power-level individuals, actually making use of them is going to require a lot of weird research. Which is, I suppose, not so surprising for Fourth Edition, in that it’s what sounds like a good idea but is in fact a mess when actually put into practice. 

Even Wizards of the Coast for once remembered to support this book with both of its house organs, though the quality of the actual articles is questionable. For instance, the “Reborn from Chaos” article by Matt Goetz (in Dragon #408, February 2012) just offers a couple more character themes. Meh. Far more interesting is “Elemental Patrons and Palace” by Claudio Pozas. Despite what the title of this article might imply, it’s not about generalized elemental patrons, its concerns are for genies in specific. A genie patron is profiled for all four races of elemental genie (i.e. no jann), which might not sound terribly exciting, but Pozas gives each one of these individuals a great deal of character. While unfortunately their backgrounds all hinge heavily on Dawn War nonsense, the individuals all have unique—if somewhat stereotypical—personalities and appearances, plus their own opulent abode of some sort, though the nature of this differs as much as those of the genies, ranging from Kristobal’s tent city to Lureq’s palace floating in the middle of a raging storm cloud larger than a city. It’s not difficult to chuck all of the Dawn War nonsense and just use these individuals as unique genies living in a typical version of the Inner Planes, and if you’re needing, say, a memorable djinn noble lady for your own campaign then this is a great place to crib from.

I rarely find magic item profiles worthwhile, as they’re just not something I’ve ever used in games (I like ’em bespoke), but “Treasures of the Elemental Chaos” by Michael W. Haneline is still pretty solid. It only profiles three items—kind of—and each of them gets quite a backstory. Xenda-Dran’s Array in particular is fantastic and even usable in a normal cosmology. Xenda-Dran was a deadly slaad and his “array” consists of trophies collected from his greatest kills, including even other slaads who crossed his path. The other two items are a tad less interesting, but will perhaps still be worth reading about for Fourth Edition fans. A short article, as it should be, but I’m a fan of any time hilarious slaads receive more coverage.

And then there’s Keith Baker’s Eberron article for this issue, “Baator,” which seems like it would be useful to general planar fans but really isn’t. Eberron has its own weirdo cosmology, having developed in Third Edition post-Planescape, and it’s never meshed well with the Great Wheel. But Baker and other Eberronians sometimes still like taking ideas from more generalized D&D, so you end up places like Eberron’s Baator which resemble their Great Wheel counterparts but are still quite a bit different and essentially non-canonical. While Baator and many other familiar names are bandied about here, a sidebar explains that, “A great deal of lore has built up about the Nine Hells through the editions of the Dungeons & Dragons® game. In this article’s interpretation of Baator, the devils are only recently freed and largely unknown in the outside world; the place is a maximum security prison now ruled by the inmates.” Essentially, this Baator is not the usual one, and its lore is too closely intertwined with the general morass of Eberron’s past to be of use to anyone playing in other settings. Eberron’s cosmology always seemed pretty neat and well-developed, but it’s simply beyond the purview of this series. 

Dungeon was also a tie-in issue this month, with two of issue #199’s (February 2012) three articles linked with Heroes of the Elemental Chaos. However, I’m not covering the Lord of Chaos series at the moment (*sigh*, I’ll get to it soon enough…), so the first of these, a profile of Olhydra and Yan-C-Bin, will have to wait. The final article consists of bestiary entries for the Dao and Marid. However, these entries focus on various statblocks for these genies who can be punched by players, whereas the actual lore is lacking and adds nothing to the game. My suggestion is to skip this issue entirely, even if you’re a big-time planar fan, as nothing included here adds anything to these genies besides repeated use of the words “Elemental Chaos.”