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What's the deal with Man Vill?


dumuzid

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East of Wild Temple, South of Duck Point, square on the old trade road to Esrolia, lies Man Vill.  It's not in the Guide, it's not on the Argan Argar Atlas, it's not in the Glorantha Sourcebook.  I haven't read Smoking Ruin myself since I'm in an active campaign but my GM says they couldn't find a reference to it in there either.

So what's up with Man Vill?  What's going on there?  There's probably something interesting to be said about the only human settlement of any significance on a direct line between Duck Point and the Shadow Plateau.

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6 minutes ago, dumuzid said:

So what's up with Man Vill?  What's going on there?  There's probably something interesting to be said about the only human settlement of any significance on a direct line between Duck Point and the Shadow Plateau.

A lot of outpost-size settlements only show up in the side maps in the HeroQuest Dragon Pass: Land Of Thunder gazetteer and Greg's masters but are never described in print. I could be wrong but am thinking Apple Lane scale, a cluster of cottages. The name of course is a gag reference to the way everything else around here is ducky: Duck Point, Duck Ferry, Mallard Town, Man Vill [sic] where the freakish humans congregate. Maybe they adopt durulz clothes and other ways so are embarrassing to everyone. Now that you mention it, maybe some clever person will come up with a Jonstown scenario that plumbs the place's secrets.

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42 minutes ago, dumuzid said:

So what's up with Man Vill?  What's going on there?

If you go back to the old Dragon Pass Gazetteer, you'll find it roughly in the same location as a village that was called "Smithers", the entry on p.50 was:

Smithers
Village on the border of Durulz and Beast valleys (B4)
Source: Jonstown Compendium.
The beast-men do not possess the secret of metalworking, but instead trade here with humans for metal goods. As a result, this tiny village has many smiths.

My guess is that either: the correct name was found on one of Greg's old maps, or that it wasn't a particularly good name and so was renamed.  Basically figure it's a place where some humans reside who provide services to the Beastfolk.

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  • 1 month later...

Not sure, if you are aware of that, but just for completeness:

While recently doing a research similar to this here about Ash Anvari:

@Jeff himself confirmed @jajagappa's assumption from above, that Smithers is the same but incorrectly named village as Man Vill. He even provided an excerpt from his master maps regarding this area.

In addition I've realised, that Man Vill is already on the Upland Marsh map in Wyrms Footnotes #15 and in Sartar: Kingdom of Heroes, p.321, which both stem from Tales of the Reaching Moon #19 ...

With Tales of the Reaching Moon #19 from (I think) the year 2000 and the Dragon Pass Gazetteer map from 2003, it seems to be obvious, where the mistake was made ...

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  • 2 years later...
On 4/26/2020 at 10:57 PM, Oracle said:

Not sure, if you are aware of that, but just for completeness:

While recently doing a research similar to this here about Ash Anvari:

@Jeff himself confirmed @jajagappa's assumption from above, that Smithers is the same but incorrectly named village as Man Vill. He even provided an excerpt from his master maps regarding this area.

In addition I've realised, that Man Vill is already on the Upland Marsh map in Wyrms Footnotes #15 and in Sartar: Kingdom of Heroes, p.321, which both stem from Tales of the Reaching Moon #19 ...

With Tales of the Reaching Moon #19 from (I think) the year 2000 and the Dragon Pass Gazetteer map from 2003, it seems to be obvious, where the mistake was made ...

Thank you - was doing some research on Beast Valley for the next phase of my campaign and has questions about Man Vill...

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Man Vill appears on Greg's master maps. It appears to be the only [Hu] Man Vill [age] in Beast Valley (much like Tink in the Dragonewt Wilds). If your are going to use any maps as reference, I'd suggest the The Tribes of Sartar, 1625-1626 map as it's an excellent reproduction of Greg's original. Beast Valley has all of the original features of his map.

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