I'm sure this is the intent of certain dwarfs' actions, but my theory is that there are still nilmergs or secret devices from ages past, still containing their long-obsolete messages which they are still trying to purvey to long-dead individuals. Note: the dwarfs would use gremlins to KO the messenger nilmergs, and I bet these gremlins hardly ever get out of control. Not more than once in a hundred times. Knock wood.
SANDY'S THEORY ABOUT DWARFS
I think of dwarfs as somewhat less mechanistic than most
Gloranthan theorists, I suspect. I think that dwarf hallways are not
geometrically-constructed sterile Star Trek corridors, but rather
they are dank and fire-lit. A sign of dwarf work is
overornamentation. Their doorways, halls, and tools are all carved
with intricate detail -- tiny grinning faces, strange symbols, work
scenes, or just non-representational art. Some carvings are animate,
almost sentient. Some are magic, some just weird. Do the eyes in
that carved face follow you? Somewhere in the multiplicity of
flutings, interlocked hands, and twisting carved chains on that
chest is the latch, but where?
Iron dwarf armor, to me, must look like that hideous baroque Italian and German stuff, with grotesque faces hammered into the helmet front, metal bulges and weird engravings coating every inch. Nothing else in Glorantha looks anything like it.
And the halls are full of ancient ancient stuff that the dwarfs don't care about any more or bother to repair. For instance, the Greeting Face of the Hall of Crystals always tells you the wrong way to go, because they changed the hallways millenia ago. But no one changed the Greeting Face's instructions, because all the dwarfs knew to do just the opposite of what he said. So why bother? You have to jump over the fourteenth step in the Sloping Stairwell, as it's slippery and dangerous. The dwarfs won't forget -- they've been hopping over it for seventy-five years.
Old, broken, or overproduced gremlins haunt the corridors and sometimes cause trouble even for the dwarfs. And occasionally a nilmerg goes wrong. They're a problem. Sometimes the dwarfs try to kill them, sometimes they don't care. "Don't bring those weapons into my home! I've got a nest of arms-wrecking gremlins somewhere in the south wall."
Sometimes the halls echo with a lack of life. Sometime they're filled with scuttling dwarfs, nilmergs, jolanti, and less-describable forms of underworld life.
C.D. Graham re: The River Styx
>Seem to believe I've seen a map that has a location called the Stxyx
>grotto located in some troll infested hills located in the Holy
>Country.
You have to sail for a Looooong time in the Styx Grotto before you can be (un)lucky enough to get to the real Styx.
>Oaths sworn using the name of Styx are very powerful, breaking
>them are deadly so few oaths are sworn used her name.
Supposedly even a god who breaks a Styx oath will undergo a suffocating pain, hence her name of "Strangler of the Gods".
Tim Torres re: Gold
>But with all due respect, any metal, when "properly
>enchanted," will glow in the dark and double the effectiveness of
>light producing spells
How do you figure? Merely tempering gold in the Gloranthan style gives you this effect. Other metals require special light-inducing effects, and require more oomph behind the enchantment to get anywhere close to what gold provides with ordinary tempering. And some metals, such as lead, require heaps of magicking before they'll glow at all.
Every Gloranthan metal has magic features. Sea-metal floats, despite the fact that it's heavier than water. Iron is harmful to the Elder Races (except Dwarfs), and has an anti-magic effect. Gold glows readily. Lead is resistant to light and to sensory spells (because darkness = ignorance, I suppose). Unlike Earth, hammering a copper nail into a tree trunk is _good_ for it. And a number of plants are able to grow copper like a crop. The plants are magic, of course, but even so.
End of Glorantha Digest V2 #148
WWW material at http://hops.wharton.upenn.edu/~loren/rolegame.html
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