What Happens to Greymane After Pennel Ford?

[Eff]

More or less as the title says. Does Greymane die at the Battle of the Pennel Ford? Do either or both of his sons survive? I assume Hardral's pro-Esrolian/Kethaelan faction is in the ascendancy afterwards, given that the Lunars are gone and won't be back until the 1640s or so. And in general, what's happening in Maniria, especially Wenelia, between the time of the Guide and the time of Runequest Glorantha? 

[Joerg]

36 minutes ago, Eff said:

More or less as the title says. Does Greymane die at the Battle of the Pennel Ford? Do either or both of his sons survive? I assume Hardral's pro-Esrolian/Kethaelan faction is in the ascendancy afterwards, given that the Lunars are gone and won't be back until the 1640s or so. And in general, what's happening in Maniria, especially Wenelia, between the time of the Guide and the time of Runequest Glorantha? 

I wouldn't expect many Solanthi to return home from that battle. Many would have been slain by an enraged Harrek Those who broke and ran may have been rounded up by cavalry on that wing, and may have ended up as prisoners waiting to be ransomed. As successful as Greymane's earlier raids may have been, ransoming back thousands of warriors will have been above the financial abilities of their kin, so many of the captured survivors may have ended up in slavery.

If Greymane or any of his closest companions - including his sons - survived, then possibly as the result of a successful Divine Intervention, but an enraged Harrek might be able to interfere with even that.

The Battle of Pennel Fort may have hit the western barbarians almost as badly as the Dragonkill hit Saird and Peloria.

[scott-martin]

20 minutes ago, Joerg said:

ransoming back thousands of warriors will have been above the financial abilities of their kin

Maybe over the holidays we start putting some gini together on some of these homelands!

When this came up last year consensus was that the old man and the boys are all dead but I think something needs to survive from the Lion's organization into the RQG era simply to conserve that background for actual play. It would be a shame otherwise.

Maybe there's a previously unrecorded heir / pretender / regent situation to feed the inevitable power vacuum. Maybe the Wolf Pirates make people an offer they can't refuse and so their story feeds into that whirlwind of adventure. Depending on how the gini plays out there might be an incentive to use the remnant tribes to open or close the western routes. It's what I'd do if I had a motive.

 

[Eff]

34 minutes ago, scott-martin said:

Maybe over the holidays we start putting some gini together on some of these homelands!

When this came up last year consensus was that the old man and the boys are all dead but I think something needs to survive from the Lion's organization into the RQG era simply to conserve that background for actual play. It would be a shame otherwise.

Maybe there's a previously unrecorded heir / pretender / regent situation to feed the inevitable power vacuum. Maybe the Wolf Pirates make people an offer they can't refuse and so their story feeds into that whirlwind of adventure. Depending on how the gini plays out there might be an incentive to use the remnant tribes to open or close the western routes. It's what I'd do if I had a motive.

 

My assumptions (I have had some thoughts on working towards a campaign/setting in Wenelia) is that there's a power vacuum that sees the Merchant Princes trying to reclaim their former preeminent position in the face of opposition from Handra and the New Coast, the Pralori expanding their influence eastward with Greymane gone, and then of course Arstola as the center of the Reforestation. And then you have Ramalia in waiting as a bomb ready to go off and the situations in Safelster and Seshnela ready to spill over. And then I realized that I was unsure if there was any kind of canonical look at the near future of Maniria. 

[Sir_Godspeed]

1 hour ago, scott-martin said:

When this came up last year consensus was that the old man and the boys are all dead but I think something needs to survive from the Lion's organization into the RQG era simply to conserve that background for actual play. It would be a shame otherwise.

 

A couple of decades of being into Warcraft and Star Wars (not gonna claim this is a boast, given the 40-some years of fandoming some people here have in their resume) has taught me that it's generally a bad idea to cleanly kill off a story thread. It leads to awkward ressurections, circumventions and brothers of Darth Maul called "Savage Opress" without a hint of irony. So yeah, keeping one or more sons of Greymane alive seems like a good thing to do. Doesn't mean they'll have to be a big player, but they'll be around for adventurers who want to go in that direction.

34 minutes ago, Eff said:

My assumptions (I have had some thoughts on working towards a campaign/setting in Wenelia) is that there's a power vacuum that sees the Merchant Princes trying to reclaim their former preeminent position in the face of opposition from Handra and the New Coast, the Pralori expanding their influence eastward with Greymane gone, and then of course Arstola as the center of the Reforestation. And then you have Ramalia in waiting as a bomb ready to go off and the situations in Safelster and Seshnela ready to spill over. And then I realized that I was unsure if there was any kind of canonical look at the near future of Maniria. 

I like the sound of a build-up to a clash between a Pralori-Arstola alliance and the Merchant Princes who perhaps finally have to swear fealty to Guilmarn, or call upon support from the Quinpolic League. Perhaps the Solanthi find themselves torn between either, or making even more bank as mercenaries.

Edited December 13, 2019 by Sir_Godspeed

[jajagappa]

8 hours ago, Eff said:

Does Greymane die at the Battle of the Pennel Ford? Do either or both of his sons survive?

My belief is no - all are dead. Remember that these include the folk who were ostensibly Broyan's allies who treacherously switched sides and joined the Lunars and so enraged Harrek. And who was going to tell Harrek not to go after the ones already on the Lunar side?

6 hours ago, Eff said:

is that there's a power vacuum

Yes, I concur.

The logical person to step into the vacuum is the Queen of Handra. Samastina and the Demivierge of Rhigos are still squaring off in 1625-6 and likely trying to recruit whatever mercenaries may still exist from there, but Handra is closer. There are also refugees from Nolos who arrive en masse in 1625 and settle in Handra and Nochet particularly. These might be recruited or used to help influence or dominate the barbarians.

5 hours ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

or call upon support from the Quinpolic League

Guilmarn's already hit this area in 1625. The Quinpolic League is in a shambles and major fleets of refugees sail east. There is no support to call on from here.

[g33k]

9 minutes ago, jajagappa said:

My belief is no - all are dead. Remember that these include the folk who were ostensibly Broyan's allies who treacherously switched sides and joined the Lunars and so enraged Harrek. And who was going to tell Harrek not to go after the ones already on the Lunar side?  ...

But if MGF suggests to someone that some "heir" of Greymane survives, then... sure, absolutely!

If the OP wants maximum agreement with "canon" and yet (as jajagappa suggests) "all are dead," you could just hypothesize some heir (a bastard son, maybe?) who had logistical problems getting to Pennel Ford from somewhat further away.: A blocked pass, a small side-battle (20 leagues distant) that they just can't break free from, etc etc etc...  Their unit was SUPPOSED to rejoin the main army a week earlier, but... shit happens, ya know?

There's also the whole "fallen and left for dead" schtick.  Someone unconscious under a pile of corpses, etc.

Edited December 14, 2019 by g33k

[jajagappa]

1 minute ago, g33k said:

But if MGF suggests to someone that some "heir" of Greymane survives, then... sure, absolutely!

Well that's a whole different matter! Of course there should be some "heir" - I suspect Greymane had a LOT of heirs! But his two prominent sons are dead, as is Greymane himself.

[scott-martin]

7 hours ago, Eff said:

I was unsure if there was any kind of canonical look at the near future of Maniria. 

I think we're all in roughly the same boat so let's goof around a little while we're waiting. 

The function of the Road now is probably to keep ur-metal from going directly into Harrek's war machine. Everything else is a sideshow to fill in the caravan slots and give partners on both ends a low-cost / slow-speed option. There's probably a lot of what we would call smuggling. The question is what if any contraband the Safestrans wouldn't want to go east.

Maybe the better question is what would be too dangerous to run through Pasos so close to LePlain's watchful and punishing eye: religious artifacts, "heretical" texts, the body of western magic going to join the cousins in the Holy Country. Ethilrist has buyers in the cities. So do God Forgot and those lunatics in Malkonwal, or they did back when they could afford it. Maybe there are things the Dwarf needs too and he hasn't figured out that the ships are back.

We also need to figure out where the slaves come into the western end on their way to the labor-starved Esrolian farms and dwarf mines, or just to Saltcastle. Ramalia really isn't on the way . . . more to the point, if Ramalia were the entrepot the Road would have been built to swing south of the hills. It's tempting to speculate about a breakdown somewhere farther west we don't know about yet that forced people into long-distance servitude. Captured Ralian barbarians? Impoverished urban dwellers enslaved and deported? When did it start? Why does it continue once population pressures eased and labor demand stabilized? It might have started as a refugee program in the wake of the luathan disasters that got institutionalized. Mother Esrola Needs Hands.

Either way, it's a triggery topic so it's probably controversial among the Traders so we can have sympathetic and unsympathetic factions. When shipping broke the business model it would have seeded a religious crisis (business = religion within "Ashara") that working for Greymane only distracted them from for a little while. Now that he's gone, they're busting out trying to figure out who they want to be and where they want to go.

The Pralorelans might covet a piece of the action beyond Highwater but I don't see them having a good shot at even taking Yolanda without serious help. Some of the Traders (especially around there) work for the forest. Castelain married an elf. It's how their trail stays cut through the Arstola . . . so far. The forest might ultimately prefer the elk people but I'm not so sure. Maybe they're conflicted too. Guilmarn covets it all because he's a jerk. He's in full One True King Of The West mode right now. Good luck out there.

Gini is everything. It's all about human resources in motion, people on the move.

SOME NOTES ON THE ROAD. Drom to Nochet is (very) roughly 700 miles if you go Highwater / Yolanda / Jaraz / Ferry / Yellowstone / Swartz / Saltcastle / Staton. At about 30 km a day (mule train) you can do it in about five weeks. There will be set Markets on the way where you can lay out your beads and shingle and get your points back.

There's probably a bifurcation between "Trader" Trader Princes who stay on the Road from end to end and Trader Prince "Princes" who maintain a particular town. I forget if Blood over Gold talks about this . . . the alternative of local Traders taking over the caravan across a particular segment and then handing it off at their limit is not nearly as fun. You want the romance of the long haul trucker here, brothers and sisters of the Road. "Geasa" similar to the ugly hyena business might also apply out here to force comfy people to light out for the territory when they roll bad. God is good.

Because the Road runs roughly parallel to the coast shipping has a huge edge in terms of speed. Under RQ3 rules you could move the same cargo from Alatan to Nochet in roughly a third of the time. (Looking at the coast raises the question of what exactly the League was exporting. I guess they'd get tea from the interior but the population centers of Tanisor that survive really aren't coastal.)

I like Ashara quite a bit but I am a perverse individual given to fancies of esoteric issarism. I'm torn. On the one hand, it's tempting to assume it's a post-Closing (post-apocalyptic) phenomenon when the sea routes stopped working and we needed to roll out a Road instead. But it's also interesting to treat it as a stubborn atavism within the Empire, a specialized network of relative traditionalists who preserved a strain of pre-imperial cultus that would otherwise have died out. It's really only a question for hobbyists. Now there are 3 new replies so signing out.
 

Edited December 14, 2019 by scott-martin

[Eff]

2 hours ago, scott-martin said:

I think we're all in roughly the same boat so let's goof around a little while we're waiting. 

The function of the Road now is probably to keep ur-metal from going directly into Harrek's war machine. Everything else is a sideshow to fill in the caravan slots and give partners on both ends a low-cost / slow-speed option. There's probably a lot of what we would call smuggling. The question is what if any contraband the Safestrans wouldn't want to go east.

Maybe the better question is what would be too dangerous to run through Pasos so close to LePlain's watchful and punishing eye: religious artifacts, "heretical" texts, the body of western magic going to join the cousins in the Holy Country. Ethilrist has buyers in the cities. So do God Forgot and those lunatics in Malkonwal, or they did back when they could afford it. Maybe there are things the Dwarf needs too and he hasn't figured out that the ships are back.

We also need to figure out where the slaves come into the western end on their way to the labor-starved Esrolian farms and dwarf mines, or just to Saltcastle. Ramalia really isn't on the way . . . more to the point, if Ramalia were the entrepot the Road would have been built to swing south of the hills. It's tempting to speculate about a breakdown somewhere farther west we don't know about yet that forced people into long-distance servitude. Captured Ralian barbarians? Impoverished urban dwellers enslaved and deported? When did it start? Why does it continue once population pressures eased and labor demand stabilized? It might have started as a refugee program in the wake of the luathan disasters that got institutionalized. Mother Esrola Needs Hands.

Either way, it's a triggery topic so it's probably controversial among the Traders so we can have sympathetic and unsympathetic factions. When shipping broke the business model it would have seeded a religious crisis (business = religion within "Ashara") that working for Greymane only distracted them from for a little while. Now that he's gone, they're busting out trying to figure out who they want to be and where they want to go.

The Pralorelans might covet a piece of the action beyond Highwater but I don't see them having a good shot at even taking Yolanda without serious help. Some of the Traders (especially around there) work for the forest. Castelain married an elf. It's how their trail stays cut through the Arstola . . . so far. The forest might ultimately prefer the elk people but I'm not so sure. Maybe they're conflicted too. Guilmarn covets it all because he's a jerk. He's in full One True King Of The West mode right now. Good luck out there.

Gini is everything. It's all about human resources in motion, people on the move.

SOME NOTES ON THE ROAD. Drom to Nochet is (very) roughly 700 miles if you go Highwater / Yolanda / Jaraz / Ferry / Yellowstone / Swartz / Saltcastle / Staton. At about 30 km a day (mule train) you can do it in about five weeks. There will be set Markets on the way where you can lay out your beads and shingle and get your points back.

There's probably a bifurcation between "Trader" Trader Princes who stay on the Road from end to end and Trader Prince "Princes" who maintain a particular town. I forget if Blood over Gold talks about this . . . the alternative of local Traders taking over the caravan across a particular segment and then handing it off at their limit is not nearly as fun. You want the romance of the long haul trucker here, brothers and sisters of the Road. "Geasa" similar to the ugly hyena business might also apply out here to force comfy people to light out for the territory when they roll bad. God is good.

Because the Road runs roughly parallel to the coast shipping has a huge edge in terms of speed. Under RQ3 rules you could move the same cargo from Alatan to Nochet in roughly a third of the time. (Looking at the coast raises the question of what exactly the League was exporting. I guess they'd get tea from the interior but the population centers of Tanisor that survive really aren't coastal.)

I like Ashara quite a bit but I am a perverse individual given to fancies of esoteric issarism. I'm torn. On the one hand, it's tempting to assume it's a post-Closing (post-apocalyptic) phenomenon when the sea routes stopped working and we needed to roll out a Road instead. But it's also interesting to treat it as a stubborn atavism within the Empire, a specialized network of relative traditionalists who preserved a strain of pre-imperial cultus that would otherwise have died out. It's really only a question for hobbyists. Now there are 3 new replies so signing out.
 

An immediate thought: the field traders running the caravans could very well be the relatives of the Trader Princes proper. I have never read Blood over Gold, though, lol, so I have no idea how validated my suspicions about the transformation of Malkioni life in Wenelia were in said previous vision. 

I would probably run with "Manirians never picked up the Alakoring reforms and their politics had the warlord/king as just one position among many until Greymane emerged", if only because that provides a nice third "traditionalist" faction to opposed the Young Lions. (Now if only we could conjure up a fourth and assign lionish representatives to each!)

[Joerg]

I wonder what kind of "The Lion Cub" story one might weave from the Solanthi. Hakkuna Mattata, anyone?

Yes, there definitely should be heirs to the Pendali lineage, although every able-bodied male of weapon-bearing age should have been involved in the raid/mercenary business. The Greymane business has been the hottest investment the Solanthi and their neighbors have seen in generations, whether led by the old lion or his two sons Hardral (who sided with Broyan) and Varstari (who took Lunar silver).

 

How much lion behavior do we want in the Pendali/Basmoli lineages?

We know that Greymane has several wives, and that his favorite wife owns the farm where he would usually spend his time after the 1618 raid.

We don't know anything about the mother(s) of Hardral and Varstari. Could be his favorite wife if he chose his favorite by her fecundity, could be other wives if he chose his favorite wife for her qualities as his hostess and entertainer inside and outside of the bed-chamber.

 

Greg wrote a couple of lineages for the Pendali kingdoms, with the divine lineage descended from Ifttala unbroken by other lineages edging in - not even cousins with a similar lineage. But then, Greg distanced himself from those Pendali houses

 

As to ancient Pendali culture: Do we have a pride of female queens supporting the strongest male as their alpha? This kind of social structure would be a form of polygamy where the females determine the membership in the pride, with the male acting as the genitor for their offspring and occasionally called in to aid in the hunt on extra-dangerous prey?

But then, the Pendali and their distant heirs among the Solanthi aren't hunter-gatherers (with rather little gathering), but a nobility among pastoralist/agriculturalist subjects, acculturated themselves to such life. Tenants take the role of infertile wives in a pride - contributing to feed the alpha and the mothers of the pride.

 

The Holy Country section of the Guide refers to Ditali and Solanthi collectively as Entrulings. But given Greymane's boast that even the Solanthi shepherds drink from golden cups after his 1618 raid, we can assume that while the boar and pig are playing a bigger role in their sacrifices than among the Heortlings, their agriculture is pretty similar to that of the Heortlings.

 

I wonder into which direction the Arstola aldryami want to go with their magical seeds. Apart from the bottom of the river valleys, Maniria is pretty much forested already, until you come to Ditali lands and Longsi Land (where the Esrolian shepherds are strong). While the climate is a lot more clement, the degree of cultivated land appears to be similar to what Caesar and Varus found east of the Rhine, with too much bloody forest already. Not an obvious target for magical reforestation, rather a target for a takeover of a woodland council as in Umathela. The two big targets with unforested lands are Ramalia (which is adjacent to Tarinwood rather than Arstola) and Esrolia.

Do the Redwood aldryami have any plans to participate in this venture, or does it require a forest with a Great Tree? But then, if Peloria is going to be subject to this, there a no such elf forests outside of Dorastor in Peloria, and the closest strong presence of aldryami are the refugees from Erigia in Rathorela who lack such a Great Tree, too.

But then, the reduced fertility of Prax might be an additional problem for the Redwood aldryami, although it wasn't Chaos that destroyed the Redwood savannah, but the humans directing Oakfed against the trees.

 

[Austin]

5 hours ago, g33k said:

If the OP wants maximum agreement with "canon" and yet (as jajagappa suggests) "all are dead," you could just hypothesize some heir (a bastard son, maybe?) who had logistical problems getting to Pennel Ford from somewhat further away.: A blocked pass, a small side-battle (20 leagues distant) that they just can't break free from, etc etc etc...  Their unit was SUPPOSED to rejoin the main army a week earlier, but... shit happens, ya know?

Honestly, that in itself sounds like a blast as the start of a campaign. "So Harrek's just killed your meal ticket, your meal ticket's sons, and a good half of everyone you knew (alongside this Broyan fellow and Argrath ragamuffin... you're fifty miles away with the snotty-nosed youngest son of your meal ticket, who now claims he's a ruler. Half the countryside wants to kill you, half wants to enslave you. What do you do?"

[Bill the barbarian]

1 minute ago, Crel said:

Honestly, that in itself sounds like a blast as the start of a campaign. "So Harrek's just killed your meal ticket, your meal ticket's sons, and a good half of everyone you knew (alongside this Broyan fellow and Argrath ragamuffin... you're fifty miles away with the snotty-nosed youngest son of your meal ticket, who now claims he's a ruler. Half the countryside wants to kill you, half wants to enslave you. What do you do?"

Good eye!

[jajagappa]

4 hours ago, Crel said:

What do you do?"

"Run away!!!"  (Btw, don't forget that there's a frenzy of blood-letting in Esrolia post-Pennel Ford as the Old and Warm Earth Alliances go after the Red Earth Alliance holdings, and probably stray Manirians who look like promising stock for the mines.)

Also, you're only ruler, if you can get back to your people to stake your claim! And we all know that rumors of a disaster fly faster than folk traveling through now-hostile territory. If you want to be ruler, better get back to the Solanthi lands real fast.

 

[scott-martin]

49 minutes ago, jajagappa said:

Also, you're only ruler, if you can get back to your people to stake your claim! And we all know that rumors of a disaster fly faster than folk traveling through now-hostile territory. If you want to be ruler, better get back to the Solanthi lands real fast.

Love all this. I just want to get back to Coney Island so Scar and the Riffs will leave us alone.

In cold light of morning I realize that Guilmarn has trouble enforcing his will on the Road for a funny reason but it's probably a SPOILER and close to maximum MGHV. Basically every time he tells the Traders to submit they say "pass" and he says "okay." It's the weirdest thing. Funny things show up in the terminal Hero Wars era, maybe for the last time.

Likewise I wonder what Arstola really wants, where the seeds travel. They can hold a grudge a long time and their biggest one is Rist. At minimum there's probably also a Brown / Green philosophical schism going on from tree to tree: do we come out the other side? how do we come out the other side? how do we define that? Suddenly Maniria becomes very important to people looking for what "conventional" elf tutelage looks like. Dragonewt is to Kethaela as Elf is to Maniria. Either way, I would love to know what Redwood wants. A real Reforestation Project will need to reach out to all the known stumps and invite them to contribute their precious quarter cup of pixie dust. It's good manners. The worst they can say is no.

I'm still at the stage where the chronicles of the archaic Entruli cross my eyes . . . I think the important early thing is that these are apparently LB "missionaries" who might have had a distinct objective in resettling what some people called "Ernaldaland" after magical disaster wiped out the relatively advanced original nation. So they would have started out a little funky and then developed along their own lines. Later this is the prime Arkat route so he's going to leave a mark on religious consciousness that future generations wouldn't even know they needed to try to scrub away.

I've always liked the 'Mane as a juicy Shakespearean role, "Lion in Winter" jokes notwithstanding. Oliver Reed. Somebody in this period should put the puzzle of what happened to the last Pendalite nation that went into exile in the east . . . there's probably a geezer or defrocked sage or somebody nearby to provide exposition on these things. It doesn't really matter to the epic saga but it ties off a few loose ends in a dramatically satisfying way.

As for my friends in Pasos, what I want for Christmas is a compelling Episode Two: The League Bites Back scenario. The southwest gets boring if the bad guys win before the curtain even goes up. We need to collect pockets of resistance and revolt now. Slow that guy down. Hurry up please, it's Time.

Edited December 14, 2019 by scott-martin
greg compass dyslexia syndrome

[jajagappa]

2 hours ago, scott-martin said:

The southwest gets boring if the bad guys win before the curtain even goes up. We need to collect pockets of resistance and revolt now. Slow that guy down. Hurry up please, it's Time.

Yep. Maybe it's time to explore the Kanthor Islands - what's really there? Outfit an expedition to Jrustela - bet there's some God Learner secrets to use against Guilmarn! Recruit some Wolf Pirates to the cause - yes, Harrek raided our lands (we can blame Guilmarn for that!), but they are always looking for loot, and Guilmarn has lots of that now....

[Joerg]

2 hours ago, jajagappa said:

"Run away!!!"  (Btw, don't forget that there's a frenzy of blood-letting in Esrolia post-Pennel Ford as the Old and Warm Earth Alliances go after the Red Earth Alliance holdings, and probably stray Manirians who look like promising stock for the mines.)

On the other hand, there is a frenzy of blood-letting in Esrolia post Pennel-Ford, with rich pickings from the Red Earth Alliance houses (that may already have suffered on the way in). Defeated, but laden with plunder is better than defeated and barely holding on to one's shield.

 

2 hours ago, jajagappa said:

Also, you're only ruler, if you can get back to your people to stake your claim! And we all know that rumors of a disaster fly faster than folk traveling through now-hostile territory. If you want to be ruler, better get back to the Solanthi lands real fast.

The good news is that you know pretty well where the bulk of the troops in Esrolia are, and while both sides of the slaughter are hostile to you, there will be opportunities to kill and plunder rather than ask nicely on the way back. The party might pick up a few Esrolians as guides and allies (read: additional PCs) to direct them to rich, soft targets. They might even already have one or two in their party.

 

1 hour ago, scott-martin said:

 I realize that Guilmarn has trouble enforcing his will on the Road for a funny reason but it's probably a SPOILER and close to maximum MGHV. Basically every time he tells the Traders to submit they say "pass" and he says "okay." It's the weirdest thing. Funny things show up in the terminal Hero Wars era, maybe for the last time.

What authority could Guilmarn have this far beyond the woods? Not even Tiskos (which is of Rokari confession) acknowledges him as the direct superior of their prince. Estali pretty much shields the access to Maniria, and those cities on the lake are as hard to starve out by siege as Nochet when you don't have the superior fleet.

 

1 hour ago, scott-martin said:

Likewise I wonder what Arstola really wants, where the seeds travel. They can hold a grudge a long time and their biggest one is Rist. At minimum there's probably also a Brown / Green philosophical schism going on from tree to tree: do we come out the other side? how do we come out the other side? how do we define that?

Rist and Erigia. And possibly those tree stumps in northern Pent. And Prax.

Possibly the Grazelands (thinking of that Wood Hackers episode mentioned in King of Sartar).

1 hour ago, scott-martin said:

Suddenly Maniria becomes very important to people looking for what "conventional" elf tutelage looks like.

The Legros Valley has a tribe of humans exhibiting all the qualities we expect from the ancient Entruli confined by the Arstola Forest, a model civilization for human behavior under aldryami overlordship.

1 hour ago, scott-martin said:

Dragonewt is to Kethaela as Elf is to Maniria.

Did you mean the (former) Holy Country, or did you mean Dragon Pass (Kerofinela)?

And western Maniria has its own dragonewts - the one unforested region that I am pretty certain won't be re-forested in a hurry.

1 hour ago, scott-martin said:

Either way, I would love to know what Redwood wants. A real Reforestation Project will need to reach out to all the known stumps and invite them to contribute their precious quarter cup of pixie dust. It's good manners. The worst they can say is no.

In the French edition of Nomad Gods, the spirit of Redwood was somehow co-opted into the Lunar spirits that the Sable Riders have an affinity with, alongside Bronze Treasure (Tolat, never Shargash) and of course the Twin Stars.

1 hour ago, scott-martin said:

I'm still at the stage where the chronicles of the archaic Entruli cross my eyes . . . I think the important early thing is that these are apparently LB "missionaries" who might have had a distinct objective in resettling what some people called "Ernaldaland" after magical disaster wiped out the relatively advanced original nation.

Are you talking about Herilia (nowadays Erenplose), lost in the first Sinking of Slontos in the Gods War?

1 hour ago, scott-martin said:

So they would have started out a little funky and then developed along their own lines. Later this is the prime Arkat route so he's going to leave a mark on religious consciousness that future generations wouldn't even know they needed to try to scrub away.

The kingdoms of Herolal etc. appear to have been in early contact with the Serpent Kings via the eastward journey of Aignor's son. The expedition of the Vathmai established Lightbringer cults in a not that peaceful manner, but it also ended the Pralori overlordship.

 

1 hour ago, scott-martin said:

I've always liked the 'Mane as a juicy Shakespearean role, "Lion in Winter" jokes notwithstanding. Oliver Reed. Somebody in this period should put the puzzle of what happened to the last Pendalite nation that went into exile in the east . . . there's probably a geezer or defrocked sage or somebody nearby to provide exposition on these things. It doesn't really matter to the epic saga but it ties off a few loose ends in a dramatically satisfying way.

There is Basim on the other side of the watershed, too.

1 hour ago, scott-martin said:

As for my friends in Pasos, what I want for Christmas is a compelling Episode Two: The League Bites Back scenario. The southwest gets boring if the bad guys win before the curtain even goes up. We need to collect pockets of resistance and revolt now. Slow that guy down. Hurry up please, it's Time.

They are caught between the Waertagi (and a Brithini army carried by them?) and the Tanisorans. Nolos is probably not defensible, but the Pasos islanders might be able to flee into the elf-dominated channels of Old Seshnela.

If Aamor survives the betrayal at Brithos, this Man-of-All prince in exile might have the motivation, resources and contacts to harbor a fleet of refugees. Possibly on Ginorth, as the Wolf Pirates will be the major naval opposition to the Waertagi and their crusade against the Cult of Dormal (which they probably see as a continuation of the Free Men of the Seas?). Possibly on that coastal stretch just south of Erontree.

[scott-martin]

39 minutes ago, Joerg said:

What authority could Guilmarn have this far beyond the woods? Not even Tiskos (which is of Rokari confession) acknowledges him as the direct superior of their prince. Estali pretty much shields the access to Maniria, and those cities on the lake are as hard to starve out by siege as Nochet when you don't have the superior fleet.

That is the thousand-mage question that rolls up all these other ones. (I think the broad answer to all the others is "yeah" or at least "sort of.") Technically the One King Of The West gets access to imperial authority as long as the ritual architecture was tight enough. Which I doubt is the case because I'm alive here in barbarian country and I know there are others who conveniently "missed their flight," got snowed in or sent an actor to the seventh ecclesiastical party and went underground. It's been a crazy couple years for those of us who aren't actively dead so I haven't really gotten a chance to think about it until now.

The ritual architecture has at least three gaping holes in it big enough to drive an actual dragonship through, maybe as many as five. Depends on the island Aamor happens to recover. But I am but a simple genealogist and don't want to say too much on an open crystal ball. What is everyone else up to as we look toward 1626: the year we make it through if it kills us? How are you planning on kicking things up to slow the big man's roll? That's all you need to do. Slow him down a little so we can keep this part of the world playable and let the ritual architecture implode on its own.

Your friend, Geleron Green
deep in the sticks
halwal: not a town, not a castle, not even a dude . . . a state of mind



(Basm. Niiiiice.) 

Edited December 14, 2019 by scott-martin

[jajagappa]

47 minutes ago, scott-martin said:

How are you planning on kicking things up to slow the big man's roll? That's all you need to do. Slow him down a little so we can keep this part of the world playable and let the ritual architecture implode on its own.

As was once said, "Arkat Returns! Not once, but five times!" Surely this is one of the responses.  After all with the unification of Seshnela, "The king launches an even greater invasion of Ralios with the goal to exterminate all Arkati. The Arkati strike back, with unexpected magic and new Heroquesting secrets."

Also, from this bit: "Theoblanc heads the proceedings and chooses one thousand wizards from across the West to question about the teachings of Malkion. Those who hold wrong beliefs are killed by demons." - I have to imagine that at last one of those with "wrong beliefs" becomes a Martyr around which some segment rallies.

[scott-martin]

Out of reacts.

5 minutes ago, jajagappa said:

The Arkati strike back

Yeah, the assault on crazy town is going to unleash all kinds of crazy up there for those players. Good times!

6 minutes ago, jajagappa said:

Martyr

Love this. No one move a muscle as the dead come home.

[Joerg]

So the First Wizard of Seshnela decrees the infallability of his office's decree, and Malkioni outside the military envelope of the Kingdom of Tanisor are supposed to be bothered?

Even if something like this happened, I doubt very much that the decrees of that pony show will have any effect on anyone not voluntarily submitting to that God Learner-like hubris. Theoblanc does not have the power of the Middle Sea Empire behind his decrees. Yomili had no influence to speak of in Fronela or Ralios, and if Slontos still followed his decrees, that may have been out of lethargy rather than out of conviction, and Slontos still was part of the same empire as Seshnela, even if traffic between the Archduchy and Seshnela was blocked by the Closing and Halwal's activities.

Seriously - did the previous Ecclesiastical Councils change the Malkioni magic or truth in any way? The last ones didn't do anything about Arkati magic or to save Seshnela from internal dissent.

There is no such power as in the investiture conflict between Rome and the Holy Roman Empire. The King of Tanisor may push the agenda through by military conquest, but what other means can Theoblanc bring to convince local wizards or talars outside of Guilmarn's reach to follow his lead?

[scott-martin]

All out of "haha" reacts!

2 minutes ago, Joerg said:

what other means can Theoblanc bring to convince local wizards or talars outside of Guilmarn's reach to follow his lead?

I hear you man, but those guys' heads exploded. Clearly he speaks for God and the West Is One. I for one like my brain inside the skull.

Crusade mode engaged. But there's a trick to it or else the spells don't work. 

[Joerg]

7 minutes ago, scott-martin said:

All out of "haha" reacts!

I hear you man, but those guys' heads exploded. Clearly he speaks for God and the West Is One. I for one like my brain inside the skull.

Crusade mode engaged. But there's a trick to it or else the spells don't work. 

In order to question them, they must have made the mistake to attend his tribunal, right?

Theoblanc clearly made use of forbidden Vadeli (or Zzabur's) magics there.

 

"It's a trap!"

[scott-martin]

1 minute ago, Joerg said:

In order to question them, they must have made the mistake to attend his tribunal, right?

Beautiful invitation, all gold and that phosphorescent calligraphy we had in the good old days. I guess he still had some or figured out how to make it again? "You are cordially invited to the Seventh Ecclesiastical Conference of Malkion to participate in the clarification of the True Faith and birth the Egregore of the Occident. Honorarium will be provided."

I was tempted for three whole minutes and flattered for maybe one, then mysteriously the prentices forgot to book the flight and by the time we figured it out the weather had turned. Anyhow he's figured out range-boosted brain busting at high enough intensity that it's practically indistinguishable from God's Will if you catch my meaning. Got to go!

[Bill the barbarian]

35 minutes ago, scott-martin said:

 I for one like my brain inside the skull.

Recommendation, avoid this horror, this Malia’s curse which stalks the north lands... well, like a plague! Just a head cold, its just a head cold...
<achoo! damn there goes a little more brain!>