Deadwood Clan

[Jex]

So I'm still... very slowly... working on my Marshedge gazetteer (which I've been "working on" for almost two years now, and I really need to focus and get the damn thing done... let's see if I can do it by the end of this year).  I've been poring over old materials referencing the Lismelder tribe, and, among other things, trying to incorporate, or at least avoid contradicting, any information from Tales of the Reaching Moon (the last few issues of which have a lot of material on the Lismelder) that haven't since been superseded by more recent material.  (While I'm focusing on the Marshedge clan, I'm also included a brief overview of the Lismelder tribe in general, though with much less detail on the other clans.)

Anyway, in TotRM #20 there's a mention of the Deadwood Clan formerly of the Bachad Tribe moving south and settling in Lismelder territory—specifically, at least initially, in the territory of the Greydog clan.  The immigration of another clan from so far away—even if it ends up getting absorbed into an existing clan rather than staking out its own territory—seems like a significant enough event to be worth mentioning in the Lismelder overview.  But in TotRM this event occurs as part of an adventure scenario, so how it resolves is left open-ended.  There seem to be three main possibilities:

1. The former Deadwood clan members are allowed to stay and absorbed into the Greydog clan.
2. The former Deadwood clan members are forced out of Greydog territory and end up joining the Poss clan.
3. The former Deadwood clan members are either wiped out or driven out of the Lismelder lands entirely.

Does anyone know which of these actually happened in the Greydog campaign (or, failing that, which is most likely)?  Outside of a brief mention in the Sartar Companion, I can't find any reference to the Deadwood clan elsewhere.

[David Scott]

The current Lismelder King, Skalfi Blackbrow is from the Deadwood clan. Skalfi was adopted into the Greydog clan. As for the Deadwood clan, I think it's a name created when we didn't know any names of the Farpoint clans. Just use it as an alternative name for one we now know about, or have it disbanded.

 

[Jex]

Oh!  That's very interesting to know; I wouldn't have guessed that the current King was a former member of the Deadwood clan.  Thanks for the answer!

As for the name of the clan, I inferred from the description in TotRM 20 that the entire clan (or what was left of it after the conflict with the Yelmalions) left Far Point and fled south, so it effectively no longer existed as a separate clan after the events of the adventure—although I guess rereading the text it doesn't explicitly say that.   Still, if that was the case, the fact that its name doesn't match one of the known clans of the Bachad tribe wouldn't be a problem.

[David Scott]

Note that the current King might change due to a rethink of the history (remember this is all unpublished) to Branduin...

[Jex]

Yikes, again?  I was told originally that Branduin was the current king, then I was told he was dead and Skalfi was the king, and so now it may be Branduin after all...

Hm, while I know YGWV and all and my work for the Jonstown Compendium doesn't have to completely match canon, I'd like to conform with canon as much as possible; do you know when the matter is likely to be definitively decided?  (Though I guess I can always edit the file and change it after the fact and upload a new version; the identity of the king of the Lismelder is something that I feel obviously kind of has to be mentioned in the tribe overview, but doesn't actually affect anything in the adventure or the writeup of the Marshedge clan itself, so it's a pretty trivial change to make.  Also, I'm guessing it's very likely there are a lot of other places I accidentally contradicted canon that I won't find out about until after the gazeteer is published...)

Edited 9 hours ago by Jex