Re: mythic diversity in fauna

From: Sandy Petersen <sandyp_at_idgecko.idsoftware.com>
Date: Wed, 13 Dec 95 11:04:13 -0600


Joerg
>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.

        This is very true. HOWEVER, if every single little valley has an entirely new fauna (to overstate the case), we have three potential problems.

        First, too much diversity leads to sameness. You all know what I mean. If every single valley is utterly different then the players get into a mindset of "It's Thursday so this must be Belgium", not to mention the GM burden.

        Second, you lose realism and suspension of disbelief. No one would have the humans in every single valley be of a wholly different culture. Some changes, yes, but when traveling in Heortland, you expect most (not all) places to be rather Orlanthi by nature.

        Third, it's hard for the players and GM to extrapolate from earthly experience. "We're starving. I'm going to look for deer tracks." "Sorry, there's no deer in this valley, just armored quill-mice."

        All I'm saying is that exceptions to the norm should be rare. The metal deer of Engizi are great, but it would be grim to have something like them _everywhere_, so they lost their dazzle.

        Another thing is that lots of Gloranthan mythic reasons lead to fairly minor effects that won't affect game play much. There's always clouds around Stormwalk Mountain. But it doesn't make much difference to most folk. The pink-tinged fur of shadow cats born near Mount Zedec is interesting, but not alarming.

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

Joerg
>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.

        The point is that having a huge ice-mass that close by would totally screw up the weather for a long long way south on Earth. Even if the glacier were melting, a similar situation on Earth would lead to Porent being not tundra-like, but Antarctica-like (lichens only, please) and south of the Janube it might get warm enough for real tundra. This doesn't happen, and it's evidence of Glorantha's steep climatic clines.

>Arctic Norway (well, inside the arctic circle) sports large areas of
>forest

        Arctic Norway is not 100 miles south of a colossal permanent ice sheet, plus it is near to the ocean, which mitigates temperature.

>In my Glorantha, northern Winterwood would be like the middle
>Swedish forests at its worst,

        I agree. Or like the Alaskan woods. (Which I bet is similar.)

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

Joerg
>North Pent likely has one summer swamp or bog above its permafrost.

        It might, but if you look at terrain maps of Canada or Siberia you soon see that enormous swaths of territory are covered with icy marshes. Not the case in Pent, despite its flatness. No doubt there are mythic reasons for this that even the Pentans are unaware of.

Generalist Ecology for Greater Genertela
>Ralios has almost everything Prax has - llamas, zebras, extinct
>Basmoli...

        Yeah. Ralios and Prax would be part of the same zone, just as Alaska and Mexico are.

GENERTELAN ZONE: Pleistocene Nearctic
>Mixing North American and European beasts

        Not really. I don't recall many animals in Genertela that are restricted to the old world, but I know of many Genertelan creatures that are absolutely unique to the Americas.

        Lions, camels, wild horses (inc. zebras), and a wide variety of antelope were all present in the American Pleistocene. Horses even evolved here. Only the sable and impala folk seem imports -- no doubt escapees from Genert's Zoo or something. They sure didn't come from Pamaltela (no cloven-hooved animals are native there).

        And I know for a fact that Genertela has skunks and gophers.

VITHELAN: the Oriental realm of Earth
>Where would you put temperate china, with its quite normal deer and
>exotics like the panda?

        China is part of the Palearctic -- i.e., the ecozone from Europe through North Africa through Asia to China. In China there are some seepages from the Oriental zone (bamboo, tigers).

        I personally believe that Kralorela's equivalent to temperate China is the KoI, if anything. I don't think that Kralorela's ecology is all that similar to our world's China.

>The Jelmre are lemurs like the Madagaskar ones, and would inhabit
>similar territory.

        Jelmres live on mountain slopes and a little bit in the open plains, actually. They don't live in heavy forest normally. They might look a bit lemur-like, but either the similarity is superficial, or they're land-lemurs, just as humans are land-apes. Take your pick. They are hairless, by the way. Maybe a little fuzz, like velvet, on their skin.

>The koalas always strike me as eucalyptus runners.

        Hmm. I believe that gigantic trees in Glorantha flourish mainly in Kralorela and Umathela, except for isolated cases like the Redwood. I mean _really_ gigantic trees, like Eucalyptus, Redwood, Sequoia. Relics of the dinosaur age.  


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