Yelm in Umathela/Pamaltela

[davecake]

7 hours ago, Joerg said:

I still say that these non-deciduous temperate broadleaf trees (if encountered on Glorantha - possibly on the East Isles?) are tied to yellow elf populations that toughed it out, rather than making them tied to green elves. Hence, no females, dryad mothers only, but probably elf bows rather than blowpipes.

Sure, just not tropical pygmies. 

[soltakss]

1 hour ago, davecake said:

Sure, just not tropical pygmies. 

Runners take their place.

[Joerg]

2 hours ago, davecake said:

Sure, just not tropical pygmies. 

All elves are significantly smaller than humans - brown and yellow elves max out at 12 points, although browns have a lower limit of 6 rather than the 2 of yellow elves (and no, that's not what I expect from either jungle nor temprate non-dediduous forest guardians).

Exceptional green elves reach similar height and mass as tall humans, but small green elves have to look up to an average-sized duck or trollkin.

Although smaller size may just be lower body mass. Strangler figs are notorious for their hollow stems..

 

I wouldn't mind using green elf stats for some types of yellow elves. What is important IMO is the gender structure (absence of elf females) which is the opposite of the green elves (no reproduction with dryads at all, which is rare as dryads are nymphs able to mate with just about anything and generate viable offspring).

But yes, aldryami are strange and weird.

[Sir_Godspeed]

Honestly, the lack of ent-sized treemen being unleashed on someone who's angered The Forest seems like a missed opportunity. IMG there are a few of these ancient giants, possibly first-generation seedlings of the local Great Tree or [insert mythic explanation], mostly slumbering, but who can be awoken with rituals for various purposes. I know it's outside established lore, buuut, um, I plead Rule of Cool.

Although hordes of runners overrunning the offenders with a million tiny branches gouging in every orifice like a brambly tidal wave is also pretty evocative.

[Joerg]

11 minutes ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

Honestly, the lack of ent-sized treemen being unleashed on someone who's angered The Forest seems like a missed opportunity. IMG there are a few of these ancient giants, possibly first-generation seedlings of the local Great Tree or [insert mythic explanation], mostly slumbering, but who can be awoken with rituals for various purposes. I know it's outside established lore, buuut, um, I plead Rule of Cool.

We do have war-trees. They just aren't tree shepherds, but get animated/awakened on  necessity.

11 minutes ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

Although hordes of runners overrunning the offenders with a million tiny branches gouging in every orifice like a brambly tidal wave is also pretty evocative.

You can have the Birnam Wood equivalent with Aldryami assaults. Although thorny or strangling vines rolling out in advance of such a force would keep any defenders too busy to take in the scenery.

Death by thousand pinpricks is more in the realm of pixie waves of attackers.

[soltakss]

12 hours ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

Honestly, the lack of ent-sized treemen being unleashed on someone who's angered The Forest seems like a missed opportunity.

and

12 hours ago, Joerg said:

We do have war-trees. They just aren't tree shepherds, but get animated/awakened on  necessity.

In my Glorantha, Warriors of Wood can occasionally be awakened as Familiars, so can be found wandering around.

Each Aldryami Forest would have Warriors of Wood planted in strategic locations, ready to be awakened. In Power Gaming mode, I would have an Awaken Warrior of Wood spell matrix with a condition of "Only usable by a Rune Level of Aldrya" enchanted into each Warrior of Wood tree, so that it is easy to awaken them.

[Sir_Godspeed]

All right, all right, all right, this is more like it.

EDIT: Bonus points if it's possible to play around with the anthropomorphization, so in addition to two-legged vegetative giants, you've also got four-legged things, and maybe something like a giant banyan who moves on a mass of root-tentacles, like some kind of leafy giant octopus.

Edited August 25, 2019 by Sir_Godspeed

[Sir_Godspeed]

Having just finished Esrolia: Lo10kG now, I'm moving on to the Book of Heortling Mythology, and in one section ("The Palace of Gold"), it lists mosses as part of the Yellow Forest, which I'm not sure if meant to imply that they are part of the Embyli complex.

This is kinda weird, since mosses aren't even vascular plants. Hell, ferns, which ARE vascular plants, and thus more closely related to gymnosperm and decidious tress in the RW are relegated to the Slorifings, who are said to not have descended from Aldrya at all.


Personal thoughts: Mosses are the descendants of a primeval child of Flamal, who were some of the first to cover the land, and as such they are more closely tied to Darkness(?) and even Water (although neither rain nor rivers or lakes apparently existed in the Green Age....) than later Flamali. They were effectively considered archaic even by the end of the Green Age, and have since just sort of hitched a ride with other plants. They do not produce humanoids aside from tiny moss-sprites. (Maybe they also mixed in with the Red Elves/Slorifings, as the massive marshes in Pamaltela, which are the main domains of the Slorifings are presumably also thick with mosses - incidentally both of these reproduce with spores). 

EDIT2: After a bit of looking around, I can't tell if the Will-o-Wisp depicted in the Guide is given a mythic origin, so I'm just going to go ahead and claim that Will-o-Wisps are a kind of moss-sprite I mentioned above. Perhaps they're the moss-equivalent of dryads or nymphs or something, just teensy. They hang around other Flamali because - and I'm just spinning a yarn here - the Moss God died during the Gods War, and they've been parentless ever since. Humans have a hard time connecting to that thread of things, but some Aldryami heroquesters have awakened and connected with larger divine moss entities.

Plot hook(?): Delecti used the local nymphs in his swamp to corrupt the Will-o-Wisps to his will, so that they maliciously lead adventurers to their deaths, however if an adventurer party managed to get a particularly clever elf party member with them, they might do something tricksy to get the wisps to their side again....

(EDIT: RW biological relations are of course merely suggestive of Gloranthan relations, not to be taken literally, still I think mosses deserve their entirely own category, moreso perhaps than ferns.)

Edited August 27, 2019 by Sir_Godspeed