Games Workshop released its long awaited material on Chaos in two volumes. Realm of Chaos: The Lost and the Damned was the second in the series, and it is by far the rarer of the two. The first book, Slaves to Darkness, apparently had a larger print run and was reprinted twice. Consequently, the latter book is the more sought after and costs two to three times as much as its companion volume. This book is worth more, as it is superior to Slaves to Darkness.

Realm of Chaos: The Lost and the Damned is a hardback book, with slightly better art than the first volume and lacking a dust jacket. The cover's colours are an eyesore, quite appropriate given the content.

This book primarily focuses on the other two 'big gods': Nurgle and Tzeentch. The first volume, Slaves to Darkness was heavy on detail and light on atmosphere, and this book strives a little harder to remedy the deficiencies of the first one. The inside cover though, is of little value being essentially a play sheet for WFB, and the Table of Contents seems less dense than in the first book.

The book begins with "The Siege of Praag" which reveals the book's aim to develop atmosphere. A three-page introduction serves both the WFRP/WFB and WH40K communities and provides useful information, answering some cosmological questions that have been long-neglected. Beginning the Nurgle section is another piece of fiction and a picture of the Chaos God. Nurgle gets a somewhat brief write-up, which doesn't match the format in the earlier book, but is concise and intriguing offering a very complex and paradoxical power. This description proves to be one of the best pieces ever written on the Chaos powers and revolutionises the concept of Chaos in a way like nothing before. It then proceeds to describing the daemons of Nurgle, all in considerable and entertaining detail that really adds colour to the faceless hordes of Chaos whilst also building on the previous material. This section is truly inspiring! Of note are a handful of stories offering insight into the mindset of Nurgle and its minions.

The "Magic of Nurgle" is next, in all of its putrid glory: spells, rules for Nurgle's Rot, and magic items of Nurgle. Unfortunately, none of it has any rules-details for WFRP and some of it is quite powerful.

Like the Nurgle section, the Tzeentch section adopts an identical format beginning with fiction and then offering a picture of Tzeentch itself. The description of Tzeentch, while less colourful and refreshing than that of Nurgle, is more extensive. The daemons and magic of Tzeentch are given just as complete a treatment as the Nurgle material. Once again, for the magic material there are no WFRP-specific details.

"Champions of Chaos", covered in extensive detail in the first book, are given a summary here, including reprints of the Chaos Rewards table plus tables for the gruesome Gifts of Nurgle and the Gifts of Tzeentch. In contrast to the earlier book, it is given a (blissfully!) short treatment here.

New to the book is "Narrative Campaigns" which is a series of short scenario ideas for battles between Chaos warbands. A few of them can be cannibalised for WFRP, otherwise it is of little use beyond a WFB Chaos campaign.

"Chaos Monoliths" is another new addition to the book, detailing giant slabs of stone imbued with great power and battled over by the servants of Chaos. Some nice background but of little use in a normal WFRP campaign.

"The Dark Tongue" section details Chaos Runes, as well as the language and phonetic rune alphabet. All useful background material.

Breaking up the focus on the 'Big Four' is a section on "The Lesser Powers of Chaos", which discusses the constant evolution of beings in the Realm of Chaos; a useful section that provides the tools for developing one's own entities. A Daemonic Attribute table is used to make each God unique and there are a handful of interesting concepts here that cry out to be used. A rather lacklustre example ("Kweethul") is offered, along with details on how to create daemonic minions.

Of course, these books are used to peddle miniatures, so there is the obligatory 'Eavy Metal miniatures section with 16 pages of colour plates of miniatures.

The "Chaos Warbands" section in this book is presented as a chronicle of battles fought by two different warbands providing a better feel than the section in Slaves to Darkness.

"Beastmen" provides an in-depth look at Beastman society, telling of their origins, the distinctions amongst them, their society, magic, and relations with others. This is an excellent section, which gives more detail to the Beastmen than anything produced before it.

"Centaurs" provides a similar treatment to the creatures later to be called "Chaos Centaurs" and offers a different version of them than the previous WFB material, but in comparison to the Beastmen chapter, this is notably shorter.

"Minotaurs" is another short section and it seems that the treatment of Minotaurs, Centaurs, and Dragon Ogres should have all been lumped together into one integrated section. Nonetheless, they have their own details, no matter how brief, outlined here in an 8-page section. This may seem like a lot, but most of it is taken up by rules.

"Dragon Ogres" has four pages like the Centaur section, serving as little more than an introduction and warband information.

"Undead Champions of Chaos" revisits some of the earlier material in Slaves to Darkness about the death of a champion, retitled from 'Skeletal Champions' to 'Undead Champions'. Little to be excited about here.

"The Eye of Terror" presents material for WH40K, but this section has less utility than the same section in Slaves to Darkness, focusing on the actual area of the 'Eye of Terror'. The section on Chaos Cultists is highly specific to WH40K as well, although some useful information can be gleaned. On the other hand, the section on "The Emperor" and the "Star Child", while informative and valuable for WH40K fans, has nothing for WFRP/WFB.

The last third of the book is "The Armies of Chaos", which usefully details some of the minions of Chaos and some interesting magic items. However, most of it is simply rules for WFB.

Concluding the book is a summary of the rules, including an Attributes Summary Table from Slaves to Darkness, and many of the other tables from elsewhere in the book.

This book is an improvement over the lists and tables of the first book, and while it has less "mechanics" in it, the book conveys far more atmosphere and presents a much more varied and versatile picture of Chaos than in Slaves to Darkness. For those disappointed by the earlier book's lack of attention to the "feel" of the Old World, this book does much to remedy it. The first book was good, but this book is one of the best ever put out by Games Workshop. Highly recommended.