Diverse fauna

From: Joerg Baumgartner <joe_at_sartar.toppoint.de>
Date: Thu, 07 Dec 1995 23:59:40 MET


Joerg intruding into a discussion between Sandy and John Hughes:

> John Hughes
> >I'm no biologist, so Sandy or someone, what's a good rule-of-thumb
> >for Gloranthan variation? Around 5% over a hundred Km?
> Well, if there is some mythic or chaotic reason for
> variation to be greater, it can be whatever you please. I'm sure
> _all_ the Shadow Cats born in the shadow of Mount Zedec have
> pink-tinged fur, for instance, but nowhere else.

Mythic reasons are fifteen a dozen in Glorantha. Lots of mythical hunting grounds border onto numerous places of Dragon Pass, and a lot of hunts for faerie deer are described in KoS. Think of Pwyll's hunting tour which ended up in Annwn, a very HeroPlaney place in the Mabinogion, and you can justify the lonely pack or herd of exotic prey without any problems. I suppose that Hunter cults like Odayla or Balazaring Foundchild know the fringe regions where faerie-related prey can be hunted even when the mundane population has been wiped out or suppressed by a really hard winter. Ernaldi (IMO some part of Esrolia, if not all of it) lies adjacent to the mythical hunting grounds of Engizi, whose metal deer was hunted by Grazer chieftains and Tarsh kings alike. Sighting or hunting one of these may bring more, maybe only slightly exotic beasts across the shifting borders of reality and procure the small population available on the mundane plane with a sufficiently large gene-pool to draw upon.

Or think of the consequences if only one iron stag mates each autumn with the non-mythical deer of some valley, and does so every year. A bit like the amazons of Trowjang, enough to keep an entire species close to a small area.

>	Other than that it's hard to figure, since climatic  

> variation in Glorantha seems to be more abrupt than on Earth. In
> Fronela you have a colossal glacier just a couple hundred miles
> away, yet the land is extensively forested.

No real problem, IMO: the southern tip of the glacier likely is a huge loss area rapidly replaced by the immense hinterland ice masses, which get replenished all the time. Thus the edge of the Glacier at Winterwood and Rathorela produces a huge meltoff ultimately swelling the Janube, and Porent is all the tundra you need for reindeer and moose hsunchen.

Arctic Norway (well, inside the arctic circle) sports large areas of forest which would count as open heath in Cornwall or even on the Hebrides, effectively a mild tundra with a few trees in. In my Glorantha, northern Winterwood would be like the middle Swedish forests at its worst, i.e. incredibly open for Aldryami forests. The Vronkali of this region are grim and solitary types, and their birch runners and dryads aren't too sociable either. They might even have mosquito-winged pixies with strange notions of making fertilizer out of living intruders...

> Pent is a huge flat
> land, but it doesn't seem to have any swamps or bogs unlike (for
> instance) Canada or Siberia.

North Pent likely has one summer swamp or bog above its permafrost. I once made a stab at that region as a playground for isolated people sitting around a few hot springs or other geothermic areas, constantly shrouded in mist or fog and with a daily eclipse of the sun by the Red Moon around teatime.

>	True enough. I suppose it would be nice if we could all sit  

> down and figure out a generalist ecology for Greater Genertela
> (i.e., everything but parts east of the Wastes and the Shan Shan),
> and then have everyone more or less adhere to it, except with local
> mythical or chaotic or manmade alteration.

Hmm. We already have Genert's Garden with all kinds of animals from African Savannah (impalas, sables) to 50 degrees latitude taiga (bisons) in one place, and once again in Ralios' Great Wood of Godtime and the Darkness and Silver Age, well into the Dawn. Ralios has almost everything Prax has - llamas, zebras, extinct Basmoli...

Northern Fronela and North Pent have (or had) pleistocenic giant fauna like the Mammoth, the Woolly Rhino, or even the giant sloth.

> This seems unlikely.

Without a map showing the climatic zones including the effects of elevation and mythical interaction (like Kalikos), quite impossible, too. One of the features I like most about the Harnworld description are the maps detailing this.

> To make things a bit easier, here is a
> first stab at it -- an attempt to give a basic skeleton on which we
> all can build.

> ECOLOGICAL REALMS OF GLORANTHA

>	GENERTELAN = Jrustela and all Genertela west of the Shan  

> Shan and Teshnos. The realm here is basically similar to the
> Pleistocene Nearctic of Earth.

Mixing North American and European beasts, plus Genert's zoo.

>	VITHELAN = Kralorela, Teshnos, Fethlon, Teleos, Vormain,  

> East Isles. The realm here is basically similar to the Oriental
> realm of Earth (India, SE Asia, Indonesia, etc.)

Where would you put temperate china, with its quite normal deer and exotics like the panda? Shan Shan west of Ignorance?

>	ERRINORAN = Pamaltela north of the mountains, from Umathela  

> to Dinal. The realm here is ??? Probably not that much like
> anything on Earth.

Madagaskar, Sumatra, even some Australia, IMO. The Jelmre are lemurs like the Madagaskar ones, and would inhabit similar territory. The koalas always strike me as eucalyptus runners.

> DORADDAN = Pamaltela south of the mountains. The realm here
> is somewhat African, with plenty of dinosaurs and weird stuff.

Plus Miocene beasties like Baluchithere, Titanothere...

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