Not from Games Workshop's point of view. ;)
>what kind of communities do they live in?
An elf considers himself to be a leaf on the tree of the Forest. Moreover, he considers the forest itself just a branch of Aldrya. The basic unit of elf society is the Forest.
The Elf Paradox is thus: an elf lacks self-awareness, and does not seem to consider itself an individual that lives, acts, and dies separately from the rest of its kind. But an elf is also keenly aware of the finest distinctions between individuals.
Elves have no real economy, or more accurately they have a somewhat Marxist one. They use no coinage. Instead, an elf takes what he needs from other elves. He does not take more than he needs, and in hard times, he will take less than he needs. As per the Elf Paradox, if times are very hard, an elf willingly starves himself to death that the community can survive better. He will even starve to death so that another elf, whom he views as more valuable to the Forest, can survive. No gratitude is felt on the part of the survivor, normally, since death is not considered a Bad Thing.
Elves _do_ engage in commerce between forests. Normally barter or pure gift-giving is the nature of such "trade".
Elves build no towns or cities. Each elf lives within the forest, either solitarily or with a friend or two. Elves may pair bond, but many do not. An elf "marriage" is probably more like a human friendship than a true marriage. Elves do support places within the forest for activities that require mass participation, such as worship ceremonies, crafting, etc.
>Do they HAVE communities?
Yeah, but not like humans do.
>How do the brown elves get along with the greens, exactly?
If the brown elves live in the same forest as the greens, they get along fine.
How about elves from different forests?
They get along okay, unless one of the two forests begins ecologically displacing the other. In such a case, it depends on what the races are in the two forests. If one forest is a different race from the first, the two forests may fight, and the First Age experienced the infamous Aldrya's Woe, in which millions of elves died. The elves learned from the Woe, and nowadays if such a displacement should occur, there would be serious attempts on both sides to prevent such a war. These attempts have been known to fail.
If the two forests are the same type of elf (i.e., both brown or both green), normally they will just merge into a single forest under a single High Council.
The most interesting situation is when a mixed-tree forest begins to interact with a single-race forest. For example, if a mixed-tree forest began to displace a hardwood forest, trouble might arise. The brown elves of the hardwoods may well fight. The green elves in the mixed forest will certainly fight back. But the brown elves in the mixed forest may do one of three things: 1) they may stay neutral, 2) they may join with their green brothers against the hardwood elves, even though the latter are the same race, or 3) the brown elves may attempt to convince the hardwood elves to join with the invading forest to make a single tribe under one High Council.
>Are there elven colonies set up in dark, elfless forests, trying
to >'spread the religion' so to speak?
Not really. Such forests are still considered part of Aldrya's metabolism, they just don't happen to have elves. In the same way that some forests don't have sassafras bushes, a lack of elves isn't that big a deal. If such a forest is suddenly placed under threat, elves from nearby forests may travel to try to defend it, if their own forest (which has higher priority) will not be thereby threatened.
Sometimes a dryad will spontaneously spawn in an elfless woods, and she may seek a coterie of elves to help build up the forest. However, such a dryad is as likely to recruit humans or other non-hostile beings as she is elves.
Usually when elves feel a need to spread their dominions, they will either spread the borders of their current forest, or a small party of elves will attempt to start a new forest elsewhere. Building up an old forest is rarely done.
>How about with the lesser aldryami?
They get along fine. Technically, the lesser aldryami are more important than the elves, since the elves are purely protectors of the woods. If all hostile activity (woodcutters, certain insects, bad winter, forest fires) were eliminated from the cosmos, then elves, too, would dwindle and become extinct, but the lesser aldryami would remain. Perhaps that is what happened on Earth (ha ha).
Paul W. Stolar
>Has anyone ever worked on some troll heroquests? I have a few
ideas, >like Bostakang's one, and many battles against chaos. Any
other >ideas?
The initial journey from Hell to the Surface is a major quest. The murder of High King Elf. The killing of Stone. The conquest of the world during the Gods War. The fight against Chaos during the Gods War. There's five exceedingly major Troll Quests worth looking into.
HARNMASTER VS. RUNEQUEST
I don't view HarnMaster's rules as particularly more
"realistic" than RuneQuest's. You can do anything in RuneQuest that
you can do in Harnmaster, it's just that normally you don't. If a RQ
player says he wants to try to stab his enemy in the eye, or stab
upwards with his shortsword so as to slide up "under" the scales or
whatever, I can figure out a way to reproduce it with one of RQ's
three basic systems for resolving stuff. Of course, this is not just
a truism of RQ, but applies to any RPG, even Tunnels & Trolls.
The real question is whether Harnmaster _feels_ more realistic than RuneQuest, a purely subjective view that no one can answer.
To me the great flaw of Harnmaster has always been the world. I view Harn as realistic, complex, fully-developed, carefully worked out, and utterly dull. Glorantha is far below Harn in quality of presentation, and for a GM who is confused by the weirdness of Glorantha, Harn is doubtless a safe haven, but once you get to know Glorantha I think it's second to none.
Peter M.
>It seems to me after reading Sandy's latest post that Generts
>position as God of the Continent was not the same thing as his
>holding important fertility powers (a la Flamal) which I had
assumed >they were. I now think Genert and Artmal achieved the
status of >Continental Ruler by Heroic Deeds (like Pamalt does
during the Gods >War) rather than through an act of simple theogony.
Certainly possible, but I tend to believe that Genert's chief Heroic Deed happened to be his birth to some real important Earth Goddesses. In the rather kingly/hereditary culture of Genertela, this had import that Pamaltela would not recognize -- on that continent the hereditary absolute ruler is unusual.
Paul
>RE: The Humakti geas of _Accept no magical Healing at all_,
>(associated with the gift of _Do DOUBLE damage after penetrating
>armor_)
>Is this a consequence of Humakts disasociation with the healing
>arts, or as a result of a Humakti's requirment NOT to shrink from
>death during combat?
This is symbolic of greater service to the forces of Death and representing one's dedication by discarding the forces of Life. It does not apply just during combat, but at all times. First Aid is, of course, legal.
This is considered a very harsh gift, of course, and warriors who accept it are highly regarded. When they are crippled, they are generally taken care of for life by the Humakt temple, given sinecures working around the garden and such.
>Where are the Humakti Holy Sites in Prax, and where are the
temples >to Humakt, and what is their size?
There are no Humakti Holy Sites in Prax. The temples exist wherever your campaign needs them (and you as GM can justify them to your players), and their size is whatever size you need and can justify. Sorry if that's not explicit enough, but if you're looking for a general rule I would have such temples few and far between. In my campaign I put a Humakti temple in Barbarian Town, a Humakti nomad tent-temple with the Pol-Joni, another Humakt temple in Pavis, and that's all, really. Unless you count the temple to Yanafal Tarnils in Corflu.
Sandy P.
End of Glorantha Digest V2 #243
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