I recieved my playtester copy of the final product on Saturday and I've spent a good deal of time reading it both yesterday and today although I haven't really gotten all of the way through the Bjornear chapter yet I thought that I'd share the contents and my first thoughts with the rest of you.
After a quick read-through, I very much like the book. The mysteries of the mystery cult houses are all that you'd want and far more extensive and interesting than I would have expected if I hadn't participated in two rounds of playtesting. There are a few choices that I would have made differently but that could be said of any book.
Introduiction: Here we get a stripped down look at mystery cult initiation mechanics, i.e. the rules on what it takes to gain virtues and flaws. What I think may come as a surprise to some is that these rules are sufficently open ended to alow characters to create their own mysteries (that's characters not players and storyguides) it's difficult to do but easier to pull off than adding new virtues to hermetic theory by original research (as it should be, you don't get the benefit of shareing your discovery with the rest of the order). The chapter also has mechanics for the potent magic virtues because they don't really fit anyplace else.
Chapter 1 house Bjornaer: We get as much history and philosophy for the mystery houses as we did for the true lineages and the Bjornaer have changed quite a bit from their 2nd and 3rd edition selves (much like the Tremere and Guernicus did). Bjornaer has seprate "clans" within their house (6 of them) each of which has three clan specific mystery initiations. These clan initiations are all of virtues from the main book or from mysteries revised (one or two of them) so while it's really cool that Olaf Corvus of Clan Marhus has undergone the trial of the chains, It's not particularily exiting that he limped away from the ordeal with a puissant art and unpredictable magic rather than something that we haden't seen before. This in its own way is good in that it leaves us page count to see the house mysteries and a critter statting system. As far as the house mysteries, we get more detail on the heartbeast, we get three minor house mysteries (Secret name, Theriomorphy, and sensory magic), Three major mysteries ( the inner heartbeast, the inner heartbeast, and the inner heartbeast) and a path for further intiation after achieveing the inner heartbeast that allows Bjornaer to make their inner heartbeasts more kick-ass than they already are. all of this stuff looks solid mechanically to me. Sensory magic in particular looks to be a virtue that players are going to have fun with (I fully expect it to become a target for original research and self guided mystery initiation in many games). The major mystery (all three different flavors of it) is really cool but I don't think that young characters will get a great deal of power from it when you consider that every season that they spend working on it is a season they spend not doing something else that very well might benefit them more. However, I think that it is neat enough that at some point before they turn eighty most bjornaer will want to look into it.
There is also a section characterising heart beasts in terms of the four humors, some beast-o-matic system that I've not yet had a chance to read and a complete mystery that is a relic of the merinita who joined the Bjornaer after they were ousted by Quendelon.
Chapter two the Criamon: The criamon have changed a great deal from their 2nd and 3rd edition selves. I think that this is all to the good as I sense that criamon were mysticism for the sake of "look at me I'm confusing and therefore mysterious and interesting" in previous editions. The fifth edition Criamon take material from sanctuary of ice and run with it. The house Criamon exists for one purpose: to break humanity free from the circle of time. We get ghosts of the primi, enchanted tatoos, and physical manifestations of the impurities in the minds of the magi. We also get four initiation paths; one that focuses on the body, one that focuses on perception, one that focuses on strife and one that focuses on harmony. I thnk that Criamon who have traveled the avenue of the spherical mirror and arrived at the station of the microcosm are fantastically cool. But lingering at the station from which to ignore the real seems like gobs of fun as well. It would be hard to choose a path of enlightenment for a criamon they all look fun.
Chaper three Merinita: We get a good deal on what the hermetic magi think about faerie here. I enjoyed it. The merinita and the Verditious are a bit less structured in their mysteries than the bjornaer and the criamon.
The merinita have four collections of mysteries one of which (nature mysteries) is not based on the outer mystey of faerie magic but instead nature lore (and therefore interfaces with the forest paths in guardians of the forrest and the mysteries of the huntress in the wood back in the bjornaer chapter)
All of the Merinita mysteries access a mystery virtue called "binding of the gift" which pulls more use out of familiar cords. The three faerie based mystery "groups" are: Arcadian mysteries from Quendillon dealing with arcadia, creating faeries and becomming a faerie; Folk mysteries (by a character who is introduced in the book) dealing with folk wisdom, stories, and symbols; And Illusion magic (brought into the order by our old friend Mr. Pendule who I don't think we've seen since first edition) which is very poorly named because while it does intiate the virtue of glamour magic the other secrets it teaches are all new spell durations, whch are pretty darn cool but don't have a darn thing to do with illusions.
Chaper four Verditiuos: We get a fine rundown on house verditious that touches on less material outside of the houe than any of the other fifth edition house writeups to date. We also get verditious mysteries; four minor (items of quality, enchanted casting tools, reforging enchated items and verditious elder runes) and four major (automita, Bind curse, Bind magical creatures, and item attunement).
From having just zipped through the book in a few sittings, the verditious chapter pings my "bad mechanics sensor" hardest of the four chapters. I haven't worked out the numbers yet, but I susspect that by enchantng a device with a bunch of effects drawn straight from the guidlines a magus could create an automita more easily than someone using the major virtue of automita (major virtues should IMHO be beneficial to the characters). On the other hand, at first glance, verditious elder runes seems to be more valuable to a verditious character than any other major virtue in the game. I haven't really pulled apart the numbers in detail yet but if any of the authors want to chime in with their thoughts I'd love to hear them.
All in all a book I never want to play a saga without again. There's tons and tons of stuff in here. Darn near all of it looks great on first glance. What I see as the biggest deal withthe book is that each mystery house now has more mystery initiations than any character could plumb in a hundered years and they're all dripping with flavor.
(edit: I really need to fix the space bar on my computer so it works every time I press it.)