Elder race presentation in Griffin Mountain

[Richard S.]

I was reading through Griffin Mountain and the way the elves and dwarves are described in the encounters section struck me as kind of odd, given how we seem to look at all the elder races nowadays. They feel much closer to humans, in terms of personality and background, and there's a whole lot of breaking what are now racial taboos going on, yet they seem to be intended as just usual members of their species. Hell even the dragonewts are described in a less alien light, just a weird one.

Personally I do like this, since it is nice to see elder races other than trolls presented in a not-so-weird light, but I'd like to know what others think of it. Also I'm curious whether y'all think people like Rockheart and Strongbark's parties could still fit in current canon. I know my Glorantha has some room for non-hereticapostate dwarves who play chess and go on adventures, or elves who join troupes or were raised by Balazarings, but it's interesting to see how y'all deal with this sort of stuff.

Edited February 18, 2022 by Richard S.

[soltakss]

I like it when the Elder Races are portrayed slightly differently.

Not all dwarves are alike, same for Aldryami, Uz, Dragonewts, and, in fact, all of the Elder Races.

[French Desperate WindChild]

I don't know why, (from where I conclude this ?) but in my thoughts (that is just personal) :

 

trolls are 100% like humans, except culture, shape... and taste: In a roleplay I would not see more differences between a seshenegi and a praxian than between a Halikiv troll and a sartarite.

aldryami are 70% like humans, more able to sacrifice themselves for their goddess/forest/.. because that is not the same cycle of life, but individuals share the same ambition than humans for example

dwarves are 30% like humans, because they have a very strange cycle of life (if you consider remanufacturing as a life cycle, of course) and they are "part / component" of One machine but they know conquest and protection, bargaining and alliance, have different views (the different "sects") about others.

dragonewts are 30% like humans, for the same reason than dwarves. But few years ago, I would have said 10% ...

 

of course all these % have no means, and humans are not one monolithic block, that just to figure the oddity of each race in my own referential

 

 

Edited February 18, 2022 by French Desperate WindChild

[metcalph]

2 hours ago, Richard S. said:

Also I'm curious whether y'all think people like Rockheart and Strongbark's parties could still fit in current canon. 

Rockhart is from Greatway.  His worship of Mostal could be explained as a conscious imitation of non-mostali ways to recreate the original (now lost) worship of Mostal.  Nida probably has a file on him labelling him an apostate and Greatway refuses to take any action against him to annoy Nida.

[Joerg]

5 hours ago, Richard S. said:

I was reading through Griffin Mountain and the way the elves and dwarves are described in the encounters section struck me as kind of odd, given how we seem to look at all the elder races nowadays. They feel much closer to humans, in terms of personality and background, and there's a whole lot of breaking what are now racial taboos going on, yet they seem to be intended as just usual members of their species. Hell even the dragonewts are described in a less alien light, just a weird one.

Griffin Mountain was ported into Glorantha, and in the elf and dwarf stats and descriptions it shows, IMO.

That doesn't take anything away from it being one of the most inspiring examples of wilderness sandbox adventuring, one with deeply Gloranthan flavour.

 

5 hours ago, Richard S. said:

Personally I do like this, since it is nice to see elder races other than trolls presented in a not-so-weird light, but I'd like to know what others think of it. Also I'm curious whether y'all think people like Rockheart and Strongbark's parties could still fit in current canon. I know my Glorantha has some room for non-heretic dwarves who play chess and go on adventures, or elves who join troupes or were raised by Balazarings, but it's interesting to see how y'all deal with this sort of stuff.

Rockheart as king of the Greatway Dwarves - no way. The dwarves show little if any caste-specifics. They might be purpose-created human interface automatons, or possibly drones remote-controlled by teams from several castes. They might carry the curse of the Trickster. They might be humans transformed into dwarf bodies.

IMG I would replace the game data and much of the descriptions with somewhat more orthodox openhandists and individualists, a surface team of mainly iron mostali with a silver caste magician, a beast tamer/automaton driver, possibly a few Jolanti, a food processor, led by a gold mostali with two more gold assistants, and accompanied by a small host of nilmergs (possibly resting in a small hive carried by an extremely limited Jolanti bearer). The Griffin rider would become a gold dwarf alongside Rockheart, a communicator so dedicated to his task that he joins the solar creatures in flight.

My clay mostali remain closer to their castes even if they are broken.

IMG Strongbark would become a borderline psychotic aldryami, kept away from the home forest to interact with the other inhabitants of the region, a task he seems to be well suited for, and his band are similar. Almost of them are purpose-pruned Other Race interface specimen, although I probably would re-design one or two of his band to be a lot more tree-like, miniature ents. At first reaction, player characters should take them to be some different form of forest creature.

[AlHazred]

7 hours ago, Joerg said:

Rockheart as king of the Greatway Dwarves - no way.

Rockheart was never "king" of the Greatway Dwarves, just the leader of the dwarf party the players meet. They are in the region to trade with humans, maintaining the Greatway Openhandist doctrines. They use humans from the Balazaring tribes to hunt game and provide other resources that are out of their skill set; in return they provide them a small amount of manufactured goods, spearheads and arrowheads, that kind of thing. Just using humans to continue repair of the World Machine. The Decamony might not even really be aware of the implications in that there are three tribes of humans, but the dwarves who travel to Dykene certainly know the differences -- they remain wary of all humans until they can be certain of a human's tribal affiliations.

The only real modification to the dwarves is a little bit of clarification with Harc Skybraver, the dwarf who might possibly join a party of human adventurers. He's absolutely curious about the outside world, but that is by design -- the Greatway Decamony intends to use him as an agent, and his personality has been manufactured to make that more feasible.

The elves need little work. They have strong ties with Balazar because of the ancient connection with Yelmalio/Halamalao. However, the citadel with the Sun Dome has been conquered by Lunars, and the elves aren't too keen on them, what with the Moonburn still fresh in their memory. They're investigating possible alliance with Trilus as a result.