Canon books

[windling74]

Hi all,
I'm Andrea, an Italian Earthdawn player, since the beautiful 1st Edition from FASA!
I am very glad to say that I possess ALL of the official Earthdawn novels and I was always very curious about a fact: which ones of them, if any, are considered canon in the Earthdawn world?
A few seems to be canon, at least in part, like the Jrole's trilogy but others of my preferred ones, like Prophecy or Shroud of Madness, are not even mentioned in the rulebooks.
I would also like to know, if some of the novels are canon, in which years they should take place, respect to the official timeline.

thank you

p.s.: by the way, Andrea is a male name in Italy

[Mataxes]

While the novels outside of the original trilogy are not is blatantly integrated as the others, they are all (more or less) canon.

For instance, the Ristul entry in the ED1 Horrors book is presented by Cymric, and refers to the antagonist from the novel Prophecy.

This sort of thing is pretty well on track with what FASA did back in the 90s with the SR novels as well. In-character comments or other passing reference to stuff that happened in the novels, not so much on obvious integration.

I'm going to do my best to keep from contradicting anything established in one of the novels. I don't see any reason to contradict them unless I absolutely must. And more likely than not, information that runs counter to something described in a novel will be presented from within the setting, and therefore subject to 'unreliable narrator' syndrome.

[LouProsperi]

Hello,

Josh is correct here. All of the Earthdawn novels were considered canon at the time of their publication. Part of my job at the time was to serve as a "story editor" of sorts for the novels to make sure they were more or less consistent with the Earthdawn setting as presented in the game products. This was always an interesting give and take exercise, in which some times the novels would change to accommodate the game and at other times, we would alter what we did in the game products to accommodate the novels.

Also, as Josh mentioned, the original trilogy of novels written by Christopher Kubasik were perhaps more integrated to the game than the others, as those original novels established many key aspects of Barsaive and the Theran Empire. For example, one of the reasons that the original Thief discipline had 7 First Circle talents instead of 6 like the other Disciplines is because J'Role uses all 7 of those abilities in The Longing Ring, during which he becomes a First Circle Thief.


Take Care,

Lou Prosperi

[windling74]

Thank you very much for both your answers: I am not surprised that even this aspect was very well taken care of. I want to thank all the good people at the FASA of the past and of the present day for hundreds of hours of amusement. And I agree with Lou: Earthdawn forever, baby!

[Slimcreeper]

Are those books readily available? I've always kind of wanted them.

[Mataxes]

There are explorations under way to try and get the novels available again.

[Crusader]

In the meanwhile, there are select retailers around the world where you can buy these ancient tomes. In a few years I got the collection almost complete.