Both run on Manjaro (I just dumped the tarball and ran the executables), but book 1 doesn't have sound. It's not a huge setback but if someone knows how to deal with it I'd be happy to get it fixed.

Did you run the start.sh file or did you click the actual bianary?

The game ships with it's own audio libs, so use the .sh and the audio should work...

I had to run it from the terminal because apparently you can't just double click .sh files in manjaro (the latest XFCE version), and it gave me this:

Running Eschalon - Book I
libGL error: unable to load driver: nouveau_dri.so
libGL error: driver pointer missing
libGL error: failed to load driver: nouveau
libGL error: unable to load driver: swrast_dri.so
libGL error: failed to load driver: swrast
X Error of failed request: BadValue (integer parameter out of range for operation)
Major opcode of failed request: 155 (GLX)
Minor opcode of failed request: 3 (X_GLXCreateContext)
Value in failed request: 0x0
Serial number of failed request: 39
Current serial number in output stream: 42

Have you tried dragging the .sh to a terminal window?

It worked, thanks, but the same output happened.

I actually I think I just botched an update. I got it working just by reinstalling manjaro.