Joerg

We don't have separate counters for them, but they are in the unit description. I am starting to wonder whether the Bush Children and similar mounted cavalry units in the game are (possibly apostate) Templar or Sun Dome Militia units. True. All Yelmalio has (left) are the geasa against letting horses suffer, which are right alongside the ones for elves.

The Battle skill in RQG is suspiciously similar to Pendragon, which means I don't expect anything groundbreakingly new there.

Control is a spirit spell. A pretty useless one for people unable to discorporate or otherwise initiate spirit combat, except for this one use to keep a bound spirit or other entitiy in the enchantment or crystal after it performed its service.

Perhaps the difference is that the Theyalans all cooperated to contribute, whereas the Pelorians are ruled from above to better contribute, or... The Theyalan way brought an exchange of ideas and concepts, and created more of a shared identity, whereas the shared identity in Peloria is having the same overlord.

That's where Countermagic steps in, protecting all the weaker spells cast before. And each dispel of a Countermagic can of course be countered by having a supporter cast another one. Unless you use coordinated teams of spell strippers, a single magic supporter can frustrate your efforts at spell stripping.

And Arkat. Or as the separation between the two. Ho hum. I am not convinced yet. As with Nysalor, it wasn't the entity that caused the evil, but misguided followers. If Malkioneran had a champion against him, it might have been Halwal. But then, Halwal's main opponent was a Makanist like himself, Yomili. Red Goddess and Sheng come as a pair, much like Arkat and Nysalor, but Sheng gets disposed of early. Jar-eel is Argrath's Other, I suppose. Following this list, Gbaji is the Devil, within Time. In a way, he may also have been Kazkurtum, whose demise starts the pre-Time that gives us the first 600 year cycle from the Greater Darkness. But it was the expurgated versions which were circulated by the fringe splinter groups. The initial error probably lay in declaring portions of the book as ballast. The Makanist Hrestoli majority in the Empire was as much at fault with this. The early great successes of the God Learners were founded on the unabridged book - burning down most of Vralos, calling down Tanian. As I am not agreeing with your equation of the Devil with Gbaji (see below), I don't think this is the case. But what it definitely did was weaken the fabric of the world (aka Arachne Solara's web which holds it all together). That's their difference to what the Arkati did (and keep doing, either ones from the original era suspended in timeless questing, or their heirs unwittingly using half-understood fragments of secrets. At least some of them, others fail greatly and provide the opposite effect.) Interesting. I viewed it not so much as a guide to Illumination than as a guide to entering the world of myth through stories, something the old Hrestoli questing apparently did not do. Hrestol's quest (and other quests begun in the Hrestol's Saga collection of fragments) appears to be more a stumbling into the myths by confronting or more often being confronted by guardians of the magical places/the Otherworld. Almost always some confrontation with a (or the) deceiver. I didn't think that Impossible Landscapes was Nysaloran in origin, either - I placed it in the Arkati camp, as a basic tool for their heroquesting to guard the Otherworld. (Which doesn't make it any less prone to conveying some mystical insights.) Despite you making excellent points here, I think I disagree. Gbaji is the Deceiver, the twister of Truth (rather than the bringer of illusion). As such he is instrumental in paving the way for the real bad things, and I am firmly convinced that e.g. all the Ompalam stuff that rules/ruins Fonrit is based on Gbaji, and much of the orthodox Yelmic doctrine is, too (beginning with the rise of Brightface before the so-called Golden Age).(Umath and Orlanth are bumbling efforts to express their disagreement with that, perhaps more destructive than anything Gbaji creates himself, but naive in their raging.) There might even be a case for equating Antirius or Metsyla or Govmeranen with Gbaji - the immortal part of Yelm. The Devil on the other hand is something released by Orlanth, if unwittingly and unintentionally. Release Orlanth into the world, and the Devil will follow, and it is a lot worse than anything Gbaji produces. Sure, it was Ragnaglar's misdeeds that set up the creation of the Devil, but it was Orlanth's (and Ernalda's) mismanagement of the situation that brought about the vengeful acts of the Unholy Trio. Orlanth stepping forth, showing his power to right a situation, and achieving the opposite.

A heartfelt nay to temporary membership of Babeester or some other such Dark Earth avenger - choosing the Dark Side of Earth is for eternity. Choosing to walk in hubby's steps with hair dyed red is a far cry from the commitment to the Dark Earth. It is female fertility suspended, not female fertility sacrificed. To address the original question: to go Vingan is a change of gender, a change of outllook. It makes a woman unstable and emotional, losing her cool. While this is a weakness in civilized company, it is an adequate response to unciviized conditions that may have arisen because the males didn't do their part of society's duty properly. I am inclined to make this a temporary (one assumes, at least at the beginning) change of personality. Ruleswise, I have no recommendation on how to derive the temporary Storm rune ability from the now unaccessible Earth rune ability. All access to Earth rune magic is suspended for the time following Vinga. Some Storm magic will come from the act of the gender change, but whether at the same level of power is a different question. A passion might be turned into that temporary rune ability.

I am fine with the "hard cap" on stackable spells applying to spirit magic taught by the temples. To shamans, there should be no hard limit. In RQ3, shaman-taught spells were harder to learn than temple-taught ones (greater spirit resistance, D6 POW per point of the spell rather than D4), and I ruled for my games that casting a spirit screen during the learning gave the spell spirit the opportunity to break off the combat it only started under coercion. This kind of soft capping did the job in RQ3.

I have the Chaosium version of Carse, which is a reprint of the Midkemia version, with no Glorantha content at all. I like both these supplements (and Tulan of the Isles and the smaller Midkemia location supplements which I know from German language reprints/adaptations to the setting of the German Midgard rpg), and have played extensively in Carse, starting with the German translation in the Midgard setting, but then did a lot for Gloranthan Karse (I had a wiki running for a while, until the wiki provider folded). The Midkemian original has just twelve deities (although they have different names and aspects in different places), which is a bit poor compared to Glorantha. (They used to have more, but many were lost to their version of the Gods War or Titanomachy). I used to make the temple to Astalon as the main male Aeolian temple, but that was when I thought that Esvulari and Heortling would share many of their shrines. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midkemia http://www.crydee.com/raymond-feist/encyclopedia/riftwar-cycle/gods/midkemia I re-interpreted the Temple to Killian as to a joint temple of Ernalda, Esrola (mother of Choralinthor) and Triolina, with a shrine to Aldrya. It is used jointly by the Karse Pelaskites, the Karse Orlanthi and the Karse Esvulari, each of which have their own private sections. The Midkemia population of Carse comes in three flavors - Kingdom of the Isles, mixed, and old (formerly provincial Keshite) coastal and forest dwellers. Kingdom of the Isles translates to either Heortlander Orlanthi or Esvulari (which may not have been that prominent when the campaign was played, but then they figure again in the Refuge context). Old coastal dwellers translates to Pelaskite and a lesser flavor of Esrolian. The Pelaskites of Karse are a lot more Orlanthi in their culture than their Rightarm Islander cousins. They have access to tended forests on the upper Marzeel where their master shipwrights produce the purpose-grown timbers for their boat- and ship-building, probably combined with a form of pilgrimage and homage to the Kitori and Ezkankekko. They have a number of other pilgrimages mentioned in the HeroQuest There is no trade god in Midkemia, but the market will serve as an Issaries temple, and the great traders in the city have Issaries, Etyries (I made the Al'Hazara clan immigrants from Kostaddi, using Sables rather than Camels, no idea what the Chaosium house game did) and Argan Argar. The Esrolvuli variant of Issaries would be present, too - I am not quite clear what current canon makes of their relationship with Manirian Ashara. Dormal is big in Karse, and the shipyards (off-map from the main city plan of Caernarfon). Judging from the timeline of published bits of the Gloranthan campaign, the Karse games would have fallen into the 1617-1619 bracket, i.e. before Fazzur's conquest. Post-conquest Karse would see some deaths of intrepid defenders (at dragonewt blades), but many non-defenders would have survived mostly unscathed. The supplement has quite a big garrison of the Baron's forces in Carse, who would be the prime victims of Fazzur's assault. Citizen defenders who threw away their martial gear in time would have survived. Carse as presented in Men of the Seas would be post-conquest Karse, with Fazzur and his forces curiously unmentioned. (The Hero Wars/HeroQuest 1 timeline started around 1620 or 21 and went on to 1624 with the Boat Planet quest.) Refuge/Sanctuary has a different set of deities to accommodate - a local Ilsigi culture recently conquered (or, in case of Sanctuary, just annected by a minimum force of a few veteran peace-keepers accompanying Prince Kadakithis) by the Rankan Empire. Ilsigi translates as Kethaelan, Rankan as Lunar (mostly Tarshite). If you have Tarsh War, Prince Orontes makes a good stand-in for Kadakithis, a bystander in the conflict between Pharandros and Fazzur. Kethaelan comes in a number of flavors, though - God Forgot Ingareens/Brithini, Esvulari, and probably regular Heortlings, with a smattering of Heortland Pelaskites optional. Jubal would be an Agimori, though it is up to you to say whether he is a renegade (and midget) Men-and-a-Half, a Pithdaran sailor who left the Wolf Pirates, or a Fonritian. I have reserved the Beysib refugees for a return of the Waertagi, in fact a dissident faction fleeing the hell-spawned returnees. Possibly from the Sog or Maslo exiles, or from one of the rooted city-ship islands out in the sea (see the Aftal fragment in Missing Lands). Ils and Shalpa may both be Orlanth (as Thunderous and Adventurous), or alternatively Orlanth and Lanbril (giving a way too important role to Lanbril, though). Vashanka could be Yanafal, or some weird variation of Shargash or a martial Jernotius (taking the Sacred Band motif to another sexually indeterminate form). S'Danzo might be Three-Bean-Circus or a similar Old Earth remnant. Nisibis seems to map nicely to Spol. Blue Star might be Blue Moon.

Noted...

What Harald/ @jajagappa said. RQ2 had dwarves in Pavis and in Griffin Mountain. Both are connected to Greatway, where the dwarves are Individualist and Openhandist-leaning, just on the border of the Nidan definition of dwarven apostasy, and more often than not well beyond orthodoxy. Both these products were screwed into the setting of Glorantha after their conception, and came with standard elves and dwarves of the early eighties products. Compare e.g. Midkemia for a rpg setting with some substance. Also compare the Judges Guild dwarves, probably the biggest dwarven supplement that there was from the RQ2 era (those very nice dungeon floorplan cutouts etc.). All of these were for a Generic Fantasy RuneQuest, but will have entered many a gaming group's Gloranthan experience as they were available supplements of high gaming value, and available for the system. But they never were Gloranthan from their conception, and they would fit nicely into Midkemia. The Flintnail cult is an example how to make a round plug fill a square hole through invention of myths. The Balazar dwarf encounters are somewhat similar, with less effort being spent on their mythical background. Openhanded, Individualist heretics (what other dwarves would leave their lairs?) that would have been evicted or recycled as apostates if coming from Nida, and probably just barely tolerated in Greatway as incorrigible heretics.

The ur-Theyalan culture is really a hodge-podge of different cultures stessing their common attributes (including the Elder Races of Dragon Pass). Kethaela has six distinct human cultures (if you count the Kitori as human) on an area of maybe three Heartland satrapies. Many hill barbarians have but a rudimentary culture. Local costume is dictated by way of life, climate and habitat. Farming with ox-drawn plows, herding cattle and sheep, raiding neighbors.. . so you say that the Old Irish, the Thracians and Vedic India were the same culture? It takes a dedicated linguist to make out the similarities of elements of their language. The Neolithic Revolution was a radical change similar to the Theyalan missionaries.

If I may be so heretical, our one source that the Devil reappears every 600 years is a disreputable sage's attribution of a quote to Argrath in "Argrath and the Devil". It does have a nice periodicity roughly in synch with the ends of the Ages, but that's all that speaks for it.. Besides, the date for the re-appearance of the Devil appears very much off. Gbaji appeared when? In 375 when Nysalor was hatched/Arkat was born? Earlier, when the Pseudocosmic Egg was found? Let's play with 375. 975 has no special events in either EWF or Middle Sea Empire, and 1575 saw Tarkalor becoming King of Dragon Pass. The Red Goddess was born in 1220, and she re-appeared from the Underworld on the Crimson Bat in 1235 after her self-confessed confrontation/union with the Devil. This would date the Second Age appearance of the Devil to 635, roughly the appearance of the Abiding Book, and the Dawn Age appearance to 35 ST, the arrival of the cult of Humakt in Prax (at the Block). Is that the cycle we are looking for? Or let's assume that Argrath was self-absorbed enough to make his personal confrontation with the Lunar Empire his arrival of the Devil. That would be some time after his Lightbringer's Quest and his defeat of Sheng, when things become vague. Say 1650. That gives us 450 and 1050 to deal with. But hey, 450 and 1050 are the years of the solution of the troubles of the previous ages, not the appearance of the big ultimate trouble. No, this text is the confused report of a sage who writes down a heroic hyperbole. Taking it too seriously will lead us on very thin ice.

Which only means that such knowledge will be preserved in the Restricted sections of the library (and it should be fairly easy to re-theme that other Knizia boardgame for Chaosium to be set in a Sairdite LM/IO library in Mirin's Cross, or Tarshite near the Reaching Moon Temple east of Furthest).

The Slavewall regiment is Orlanthi in culture, though not in worship. The vast majority of Lunars in Tarsh are Orlanthi clansmen who worship the Seven Mothers or a specific aspect of them rather than Orlanth, and who worship Ernalda just like the Sartarites or the Esrolians do. While you find less Ernalda worshipers in a military unit, they all are quite close to the hills, in case of Slavewall literally (less true for northern Tarsh which lies in the vast fluvial plain). Only the Hendriki and their descendants have ancestral obligations to let thralls go free, most Heortlings and definitely most Orlanthi have no such compunctions and will take captives in battle or raiding and bring them home to do low status work (or ransom them back). Hendriki descendants seem to be over-represented in the make-up of Sartarite clans - this special attraction to liberty may have been a selection criterion when Heortlanders packed up after Belintar took over. Kethaelan Heortland has maybe 20-50% Hendriki-descended clans, with the clans that fell under Aventus' foreigner laws making up the rest.

It is a matter of magical bonus through purity. I am in the "a spear by name" camp for the side arm of the Templars, and my latest thought was that just the spear tip is enough of a short, leaf-shaped sword that it would be usable as a side weapon, as well as a replacement should the original spear break off. The Greek-named Assegai was my first proposal. Daggers and lance points off the shaft for those with restrictive geasa. A bayonet in reverse, meant to be a spear point but usable without the shaft. Tolat has the Red Sword, but Shargash has clubs or maces (with skull motifs), not blades. Shargash is a lot closer to ZZ than Tolat. While Jar-eel's Liberation sermon shows Tolat with a red blade, I haven't seen any such item in Dara Happan depictions of the Red Planet god. I do wonder whether the Red Sword might be original sword still steeped in the blood of its first (or second) victim.

If you don't want to use Time as the extra dimension, you could use "Stepping" as in Sir Terry Pratchett's cooperation with Stephen Baxter to move to another, similar plane. There are a number of downsides for applying this to Glorantha. If the newts have this ability, the trigger for the Dragonkill would have been a non-event - just grab your eggs and go sideways. (You might come and argue that the eggs are rooted in this place only. Why would that be so? Ion storms and magnetic interference whenever the story demands that the Enterprise crew cannot beam directly?) Dragonewts do use roads that allow translocation along the dragonewt rune vectors. Apparently they are also able to used Godunya's bridges this way. I don't claim to know the mechanics for this kind of transfer, but the easiest way to explain permeable walls that don't just change their substance or substantiality would be a short range road effect like this. Possibly explicable by weird topological effects.

Sorry if that offended you. But... The full Babeester Gor stuff to me is the nightmare. There are other Axe women which often get mixed up with Babeester, but - at least in my Glorantha - these don't have the full spectrum of the nifty Babeester magics as they don''t buy into the more gruesome parts. This is similar to the Lead Cross Humakti, Eurmal the Kill-Eye, Orlanth Deathwielder. Individuals with such powers exist, have to exist to make the world run, and they will mutilate your life (as a Gloranthan) or your game (as a player of Glorantha) if you let them into your community. It is right there with the Cults of Terror in player hands. And she is welcome to do so, as is your campaign to accommodate such forms. My stance may be that of "not a real Scotsman" here. But then, when the "Onslaught" Humakti fiction appeared on the Digest and contaminated the Cult of Humakt, I decided to go with that, use it as the part of Humakt I didn't want to have part of in my campaign, and contrasted it with as borderline a version of Humakt that was sociable and almost completely based on the Truth rune with just the necessary Death connection to still be within Humakt. And after designing this paragon as the would be initiation patron of my character, I had him duel with Onslaught, and be killed, and my character shying away from the idea that he might join Humakt. True. The rulebook gives a number of shorthands, which also serve as templates for similar cults, with similar though not quite identical magic - see the bitter Elmal Yelmalio discussions. The longer write-up of Babeester may feature lots of unpleasant stuff that might you and your wife reconsider finding her a similar but not identical deity or aspect that you couldn't have learned from the rulebook. Then there is enlightenment and transitioning the cult (or at least a local portion of it) into a path different from those gruesome things. Something like Monrogh applied to other cults. But in the end, I stick to Peter Parker/Spiderman principle also in its reverse. If great power comes with great responsibilities, then some of the great powers provided by deities on the dark spectrum come with dark responsibilities, and for non-dark characters to have these breaks a balance. This may turn into Grimdark, and if you say that your game goes without that, all the power to you. I feel that a Grimdark lingering just beyond bad decisions of the main protagonists of the Gloranthan story is appropriate, and adds to the threat of doom that the Hero Wars ultimately are supposed to bring. Like you, I prefer my campaign not to be immersed with that, but the occasional dip or splash of that serves for presenting that threat. There is definitely a call for gaming in a lighter, less conflicted Glorantha, but picking the most conflicted cults to play out in that sort of contradicts that approach as far as I am concerned.

Both Avanapdur and Jogrampur showed that sufficiently powered propaganda would become tangible reality, although of a weaker kind that might not survive the test of permanence that exposure to the Ultimate provides. There is an entire clade of entities that would fade away or become transparent when exposed to near-ultimate, the Iradgenderi or the transient folk. But then, what are their characteristics? They get destroyed by unprepared exposure to the Void? Many entities do. They aren't shape permanent? Neither are Hsunchen, Sea entities, or Darkness entitiies. They are transient? Mystics teach that much of existence is transient. Back in the days of the Three Separate Worlds dogma, there was also the concept of Short Worlds, Otherworlds without a direct connection to the Absolute but leeching the power from adjacent places that do. (E.g. through worship or emotions.) These short worlds are real enough if you don't test them too rigorously, may exchange content with the material world (such as inhabitants) that is assumed non-transient. Avanapdur's Empire possibly was such a realm, contagious to the non-transient world, and in my personal opinion most of its transient content was pre-existing the creation of Avanapdur through the power of worship. The antigod Avanapdur just was the first to unite the disparate transient places into one realm. I think that living next to transient places, and even using them in your daily routine, wasn't anything of a great deal in Godtime. These transient places may have been placeholders for Creation still waiting to happen, and having a transient reality nearby probably was vastly preferable to having a Void of non-Being in its place. Dangerous entities would emerge from non-transient places just as much as from transient ones. Transient places change the rules - but so did the altered realities of the Bright Empire, the EWF dragon emanation, the Glowline, the Closing, or the fallout from the Syndics' Ban, and probably others. When Arachne Solara cast out her web, rather few of these transient places were rescued. Many had succumbed to Chaos and were lost by the contact, or had become so corrupt that they couldn't conform to the Compromise, another filter imposed on the post-Great Darkness material world.

I lived a year on Tysfjord... The Closing wasn't an issue for traveling from Winterwood to Ygg's Isles, but it cut off the islanders from their whaling and seal hunting grounds on the shelf ice. The Ban on the other hand did separate the mainland (which was part of Winterwood) from the archipelago. As far as I know, the isles weren't separated from one another by the Ban. They may not have been affected by it at all (though that wouldn't remove the border mist around Loskalm and Winterwood) as they might be reckoned not a part of Fronela but of the Neliomi Sea. Not during the Closing, when Winterwood was still freely accessible, but during the Ban when it ceased to be so. That's still three generations of no access to the hereditary logging grounds and mismanagement of the forests on the bigger islands. The Yggites on the smaller islands would have to find solutions that didn't require wood. I think that the Closing initially brought lasting malnutrition rather than starvation, with essentials taken from whale oil or seal blubber missing. The resources may have been stretched wisely, or used up at normal speed in Trumpian carelessness, but even so there was an end date where marginal sustainability was broken. Frankly, I am astonished that they still had goats to take on to their new colonies. For a Gloranthan setting a bit further north and a lot colder, I postulated a group of Vadrudi married to selkie shape shifter wives. I don't think that the Ouori have much of shape-shifting magic to make them any more attractive to even the most touch-starved young adult. The niiad ancestors did have all the shape-shifting magic they wanted. I suggested taking a look at the Bjarmen as described by Ottar, so we seem to be fairly close on this topic.

Babeester Gor is way more restricting than "play as a girl" - it is play as a virgin girl in gore. Think Carrie without the telekinesis. You're feared and shunned just for your cult membership, with a "respected" standing little better than that of a Trickster. That means severe reaction malus on human interaction (and by that I mean malus on dice rolls). People will address the character through its keeper, much like with bonded tricksters, for fear of "catching" whatever troubles made the individual take the Babs route. Most of the bad things about the Trickster, and few of the fun things (other than beer and ripping off other peoples' genitals). The player will have the disruptive element in the party, some ability to go scot free with behavior nobody else would be allowed without serious repercussions, and bringing a groan to the rest of the party for the Leroy Jenkins element of that. Depending on the patience or pain threshold of the rest of the party, be prepared to be the target of Sleep or Befuddle quite often in friendly fire. There will be times when you get released from the attic, but prepare to spend some quality time there counting your trophies.

Does your player want to play an independent assassin or a killer in the service of an Esrolian house playing at high stakes politics (possibly as a vassal of one of the most powerful houses)? In either case, Orlanth might be a good choice, with spells like Darkwalk and Scarf of Mist. Orlanth is often seen as a sinister deity in Esrolia, and this character could take all the bad stuff they have to say about Orlanth (and Kodig) to heart and act upon that, though possibly under orders of his Grandmother (who will disavow him at some point in the future, possibly sending her other minions after him - that's what happened to Rastagar, the last Vingkotling king to rule over Esrolia).

There will be some time before that kind of information will become available, but the collective of us old hands might be able to cobble something together that resembles the Sartarite character creation. The character's grandparental and parental previous experience will do little to integrate it into the Dragon Pass-centered campaign, though, but it ought to be able to illustrate the difference of Glorantha. Ralios is a complex place, with lots of options and dark secrets. The grandparents may have been affected by the events that led to the birth of Argin Terror, and the parents would have had the chance to participate in the rise of Surantir's Chariot of Lightning movement and the Seshnegi conquests in Dangim. What kind of sorcerer does your player envision? The rules for Rokari sorcerers are in the RQG rules, but a Rokari might be harder to integrate into the Dragon Pass workings than a Chariot of Lightning adherent or an Arkati. The personal experience of the sorcerer might be tied up with the last stages of Argrath's Circumnavigation at Harrek's side, and she might have a character tied in with Argrath's warlocks as a result. Basically, some brain-storming and a crash course in Ralian events seems to be what you might be facing. Interested?

Yes. With the shape-shifting ability of the niiads, both Warera and Nelarinna may have appeared in the shape that became the pattern for the Ludoch, but it was one of several possible. I do wonder how much the Swan Maiden motif (sea deities frolicking in an unusual shape while their accoutrements of their normal shape are left aside, then discovered by the groom or rapist) is involved in these sea goddess matings. The story of Hiord bears great similarity to Wayland, but I have seen Chinese variants of such myth which didn't seem to inherit much from the Germanic story, so it could be a way more archaic myth behind this. Possibly one connected to the discoveries of Svante Pääbo's team of palaeo-geneticists. Thrunhin Da(Harantara appears to be an entity not directly descended from Triolina, possibly of the Manti lineage (as far as the Sea Tribe is concerned, never mind the eastern humans). Merfolk roleplaying doesn't seem to be that popular - the three-dimensional possibilities and the lack of two-dimensional dungeons might make immersion into the story harder for us land-lubbers. It would be interesting to see it done right.

Yes, in the wind shadows, there are bound to have been some effects of living on the fringe of a Great Forest. While those are great for ersatz-logging (as long as you aren't on the lookout for those perfectly bent trees to provide the ribs for your ships and are fine with straight trees only), if these patches are spruce forest, too, they don't have that much to offer as wild pasture. Not even for goats, a lot less so for reindeer. When I think of Ygg's Isles, my immediate models are the Vesteralen, with some Lofoten, Steigen and Hebrides tossed into that, but the forest changed to fit Winterwood. I have no familiarity with Vancouver Island and the coast there, but without the high coastal mountain chain, I don't expect that much of the cold rain forest effect there. The Maidstone Mountains are a lot further inland than the Rockies. The Svartisen probably bears some similarity to Valind's glacier, except that Valind's flanks are of ice rather than rock, apart from the wall of rubble and debris that it is pushing ahead. But you probably have to have been there on Polar Circle Norway and further north to appreciate these comments.