There’s something of a standard operating procedure for monster books. The usual protocol is that a fairly hefty amount of monsters, covering a vast range of creature types and Challenge Ratings, are needed in order to have something that’ll sell. The flipside to this is that you don’t need to worry too much about fleshing the monster out. A paragraph or two about it, maybe one or two more for its ecology and such, and that’s it. The rest is all focus on its stats and combat abilities. Rite Publishing, however, disputes that paradigm with Veiled Denizens.

Veiled Denizens says right on the cover “Requires the use of Monte Cook’s Arcana Evolved,” which I found to be rather confusing. Each monster has a box of alternate rules for various forms of d20 gaming, such as alignment, 3.0-style damage reduction, sanity loss, taint, etc. This seems to imply that Arcana Evolved isn’t actually required to use what’s here, and indeed it’s not…for the most part.

Five new monsters are presented in Veiled Denizens, all of which are relatively low-powered (CRs ranging from 5 to 8). Rather than shy away from flavor, this book revels in it, with the description for each creature being given in-character by the creature itself. There are expressive Lore tables (that is, skill checks) for what can be learned about the monster at various DCs, and sometimes there are notes from the designer or playtesters tucked in the book also, before the sidebar with the variant rules. The stat blocks for the monsters, likewise, are very well-formed, and each monster has at least one power that’s not only unique, but lends itself to driving a plot also. That said, the fluff text is specific to the Arcana Evolved setting, so GM’s looking to use these creatures elsewhere should be prepared to make up their own backstories.

In regards to artwork, Veiled Denizens does an impressive job. Each of the book’s monsters has an illustration depicting them, often using very soft colors and shades that seem black and white, but have enough toning that you’re unsure if there’s a mix of colors in there too. Black borders alternate on facing sides of each page, usually with a light reproduction of part of the monster’s illustration. There is no printer-friendly version, but in a book this brief (particularly when you’re likely to just need to print out one monster at a time) I can’t really hold that against it.

However, for all its merits, this book does have its flaws. For one thing, there are no bookmarks. It seems odd to mention that for a PDF that’s twenty pages long, but ease of navigation is always a top priority in PDFs, even the short ones. There are also a few errors, such as the playtesters note about the Red Harlot being reproduced for Vlada-mrak. One of the things I found most lacking, however, was a reproduction of the description of Arcana Evolved-specific spells when they were mentioned. The Trikar-mrak, for example, can use Unknown once per day as a spell-like ability. I have no idea what that is, since I don’t have Arcana Evolved. Now, to be fair, the book does say it requires Arcana Evolved, as noted previously, but the conversion sidebar seems to fly in the face of that. Why give me everything I need to use this monster in a straight 3.5 game, and then not explain what its sole spell-like ability does? It’s the little things like this that flaw what would otherwise be a perfect book – even then, the people who do use this for Arcana Evolved won’t have this particular problem anyway.

If I had the option, I’d have given this book 4.5 out of 5 stars. As it is, I’m rounding that down simply because I came at it from the perspective of a 3.5-edition gamer, so I felt the incompleteness of the “variant” information keenly. This book’s successes far and away outweigh its flaws though, and the new monsters here are crafted so exquisitely that Monte Cook himself would be proud of them. Veiled Denizens brings a great set of sly new creatures to your 3.5 game, whatever variant it may be.