Heortland's not protein-starved -- Heortland's CITIES are protein-starved. Heortland is in a state of chaos at the moment, with it unclear whether the Lunars, the Orlanthi, or the Malkioni are to be in power. The normal trade patterns are disrupted. Quite a lot of farmland was destroyed by the Queendom of Jab, too.
The people in the countryside have plenty to eat. But they're no longer taking it into the cities to cell. As a result, the cities are starting to shrink, with folk vanishing into the hinterland (where they're not particularly welcome), becoming bandits, etc.
>If the horticulture of Caladraland has a protein-deficite, I wonder
>why. They don't have real cities.
They don't have real cities, but they do have some places dense in population. They also don't have any roads, so the best way to transport food and other goods from place to place is via ocean-going vessels. which is now much harder.
>Merchants have lower profit margins now, with all the extra guards
>or safe passage vouchers they have to finance, and run a greater
>risk, but trade still goes on on a considerable scale
Trade is still greater than you'd find in Ralios or the Wastes, certainly, but Ralios and the Wastes don't have economies that depend heavily on trade and seaborne transportation. It only takes a tiny deficit in food to wipe out a very large urban population.
Here is an easy example. Say that Heortland is 97% farmers and 3% urban. Now, if shipping losses, trade disruption, and greater difficulty in fishing destroys just 5% of the nation's food production, the farmers and fishers will certainly keep all the food for themselves. Normally they eat 97% of the food, and now only 92% is available -- in fact, they're going a little hungry. But the cities are getting absolutely nothing. Famine sweeps the streets.
This isn't just a made-up example -- famines in ancient and medieval times often came about as a result of just a small drop in food production, causing the farmers to keep their food for themselves. Similar things happen even in more modern times, though often the situations are reversed -- during the Irish potato famine, Ireland was exported food, because English landowners were able to get more money for their produce in England than Ireland. Thus, a proportion of the crop was being sent away that could have been used to save lives back home. This also occurred during the dreadful Bangla Desh famine.
>All the Sixths are becoming more paranoid. No doubt soon it will be
>time to introduce a new Unifier, and all will be ready to receive
>Her.
>>Her.
>>You seem to know something, unless this is a cheap repetition of
>>the Convulsion 3D heroquest party conclusion...
It is not the latter, though my belief on this point is mine alone. I have not yet vetted it with anyone else, but I think that the logic behind it is sound and that if Greg were to hear it (or Nick), they would concur with my theory.
"Her" is not the Red Goddess.
>I don't think that the shaman can effectively hunt down a spirit
>which sticks to the mundane plane.
He can if he discorporates, or uses totemic magic to take out the spirit. Example: ancestor worshipers have the Free Ghost spell.
> 2) If the shaman wins a spirit combat, bringing a spirit's
>MPs to 0, he can bind it into his fetch or a magic item, whether
>he's corporate or not. He doesn't even need a Control spell.
>>Great. Really useful. Does the spirit regain its MP?
Certainly, unless it is a spirit sans POW, in which case, the sorcerer will need to find some way to provide it with some.
>I tend to play that only a sapient or extremely desperate spirit
>will attack a shaman when there are so many weak prey souls in the
>flock. Does the wolf attack the shepherd or his dog when all he
>wants are sheep?
Again, when discorporated, a shaman can _initiate_ combat, and doesn't have to wait for the spirit to come after him.
When not discorporate, he has more spirits available to him than the sorcerer. Here's why: assume our sorcerer and shaman are of comparable skill -- both have about the same number of magic items, too. A higher percentage of the sorcerer's items will be spell matrices (far more useful to a sorcerer than a shaman). So the shaman will have more spirit-bindings. Even if the two magicians have equal numbers of spirit-bindings, the shaman _also_ has the spirits in his fetch. He almost certain has more, so he can more easily afford to loose some otherworld creature to attack an annoying spirit. Even if that spirit won't attack the shaman directly.
NOTE: I'm not saying that a shaman is superior to the sorcerer, only that a shaman is superior when dealing with spirits.
>Here the rules get fuzzy as well as unsatisfactory. The same spirit
>cannot break off spirit combat with any embodied entity unless it
>has 10 MPs more than its victim, or the victim has zero MP?
I play that when the victim has 0 MPs, the spirit can either break off combat, or possess the victim. Normally, he'll be possessed, even by a spirit which cannot normally initiate spirit combat. And of course if a spirit has +10 MPs, it can always depart.
>What about magical protection against spirit attacks (provided from
>outside sources, that is): will this be a sufficient reason for a
>spirit to break off its attack when the protection makes all attacks
>futile?
It's pretty rare for a spirit to both have +10 MPs over its target, and also to have a real weak chance to overcome that same target. I suppose a big Spirit Block could do it.
If it's "sufficient reason" for the spirit to break off probably depends on the spirit itself. I would rule that if the spirit had +10 MPs over the player, but -10 or more offensively (because of Spirit Screen or whatever), then the spirit could choose to break off if it wanted. A human can't break off, of course, because the spirit can always catch him and resume. But if two spirits were in combat, and each had a +/- 10 differential, I would play that _either_ spirit could choose to break off.
>I say that a sorcerer entering the ruins of a foreign culture
>_should be_ better able to fend off haunting spirits than a shaman
>entering the ruins of a foreign culture, simply because the
>sorcerer is less preoccupied with cultural taboos and superstitions
>wrt these entities.
And _I_ say phooey. The shaman is still better off (if only in dealing with spirits), because he can apply the lore he knows about the spirits he normally deals with to help him understand the new unfamiliar ones.
Look, just because a man is an expert on North American wildlife and ecology isn't going to _hamper_ him on a trip to Africa. He will have never seen a lion, but he'll immediately identify it as a large predator cat. Learning that lions hunt in groups will be an unpleasant surprise, but he'll remember what he knows about pack-hunting predators of America, and apply that knowledge to what lions might be able to accomplish. I'm not talking about a pedant here, either -- I hereby submit that a Sioux Indian from 1700 would be _better_ able to survive in wild Africa than an armchair ecologist of the 1990s such as myself. Even though he is riddled by "cultural taboos and superstitions".
The exact same situation holds for a shaman and a sorcerer. The shaman might not have seen a pain elemental before visiting the Machine Ruins, but he'll be able to figure out how to deal with it sooner than the sorcerer, with his rote spells and stratospheric logic.
>>I suppose that the first reaction was to call for a Tournament of
>>the Masters of Luck and Death
>This civil war was, in effect, a kind of MOLADS tourney.
>>An unusual one, then, especially since the 1616 Tournament was
>>"wrong" both in the outcome and the cause.
Well, duh. ;) For one thing, the Pharaoh wasn't available to organize it properly. No wonder 'twas a disaster.
>>But did the other Sixths have any realistic candidate to unify all
>>the Sixths?
>They had Richard the Tigerhearted, the Admiral, several competing
>Esrolian matriarchs, the Littlest Only Old One, Gemborg's champion,
>and at least one Lunar imposter. No real Pharaoh material.
>>I wasn't even looking for a pharaoh, only a leader strong enough to
>>make a majority of the Holy Country follow his lead.
In that case, I guess the answer is "no", since they eminently failed at getting a majority of the HC to following any of their many leads.
>That sounds like there was/will be a major involvement of the
>Queendom of Jab with greater politics at some time.
The Queendom of Jab is pretty much wiped out now. Which doesn't mean that some _other_ chaos danger (or a revived Queendom -- after all, the scorpion folk remember it) can't surge forth.
>then the Queendom would not have been able to seize its opportunity
>when the countryside erupted.
>>What happened? Were there huge bands of scorpionmen roving around
>>in 1616/1617?
In late 1617 into 1618 and maybe later. The Queendom acted kind of like a huge locust horde. Basically, every single plant and animal in the territory the scorpion folk swept over was devoured, leaving only barren soil. In the years since the Queendom was beaten back, only small grasses and pioneer species of plants have managed to return. This was a pretty large area affected, too -- maybe a sixth of all Heortland (mostly in the foothills).
> Of course, I suppose we could blame the Storm Bulls for
>wasting their time resisting Richard instead of keeping up their
>anti-chaos duties.
>>Did they resist Richard, or did they resist the sudden lack of
>>essential support (like beer supply) when the Rokari stopped the
>>redistribution of the tithes?
Always looking for a reason to fight, they participated wholeheartedly in the Orlanthi resistance. Also, Richard made limpwristed attempts to restrict the cult; his logical Western personality just wouldn't let him permit these undisciplined oafs to run rampant. For several years, Richard wouldn't permit the Orlanthi to pray to Stormwalk Mountain, for instance, which weakened the spirits there, which are all Storm Bull connected.
>And in my heart of hearts, I can't help but feel that the scorpion
>folk are at least a _little_ at fault here. ;)
>>You mean the three queens which let themselves be eaten?
What I was actually getting at is the tendency of certain historians to over-emphasize the responsibility of the victims for atrocities inflicted on them.
>>What is the Ludoch position to the cult of Dormal?
> There is no "Ludoch" position on this cult, any more than there is
a "human" position. But the two Ludoch nations with the most human
contact both claim that Dormal is acceptable to them. (These two
nations being the Ludoch of the Rightarm Islands, and the Coral
Queendom in the East Isles.)
>I believe that _all_ ships afloat on the high seas in the
>3rd Age are Dormal ships, or at least ships altered to use Dormal's
>techniques. Possibly wiht the exception of elf gallegas and mostali
>cement ships.
At a minimum, certainly they all use the Ritual of Opening before setting sail -- even dwarfs and elves. And perhaps dragonewts, but maybe not, since their "ships" are, IMO, always at least half-submerged.
>> If so, why should they prefer a Waertagi domination on the seas?
> Because they're kin.
>>So are the Malasp and Ysabbau... Kin makes the best rivals. Could
>>you imagine the Aggarites destroy Lunar Sylila only to make place
>>for the Bilini? Or the king of Raibanth destroying the horse
>>warlords to give way for a ruler from Yuthuppa or Alkoth?
Do not apply human standards and conceits to the mermen.
I pointed out that if the Holy Country had failed to lose several fleets in battle, they would have had three huge fleets by now. Joerg questions:
>What would he have done with them?
Not get beaten by the next seagoing power who happens by. Perhaps not get beaten by the Wolf Pirates, if the Holy Country had still possessed its Kralori fleet.
Powered by hypermail