>Does anyone know anything about the cities of Arkat's Hold and
>New Crystal City ? (re: RQ2 Dragon Pass map)
The RQ Companion cites them both as having populations of 2501 to 7500.
Arkat's Hold was obviously established by Arkat the Liberator. Or was it Arkat the Destroyer? It was a Troll Stronghold during the time of the Only Old One after the Chaos Wars (Geolgin visits it to witness an impromptu ceremony to Annilla in the Troll Gods booklet). It was probably cleaned out by the Pharoah when he took over and is now your typical esrolian demense (albeit with heavy darkness overtones).
Behind New Crystal City is the only gap in the Building Wall that delimits the frontier to Dragon Pass against the Lunars. The Gap is manned...um...guarded by Axe Maidens according to ToTRM#13. I dunno why it is called New Crystal City.
Steven E. Barnes:
I had written to the effect that most spirit magicians are not capable of casting their spells to the limits given in the rules.
Steve commented:
>However, man is an animal capable of learning. Since they
>have been using Spirit Magic in some form for thousands of
>years, I believe they have a pretty good idea of what their
>spells can, and cannot do.
The fallacy in this is that Gloranthans have also been singing ever since the dawn of time in one form or another but most Gloranthans are not good singers. The secrets surrounding the spells are not easily taught IMO as most of the components are personal. If a gloranthan sees a spirit magician do something 'spectacular' with a spirit spell, he would attribute the effect to the spiritual prowess of the magician rather than realise that the magician is merely using the same spell.
He *could* ask the magician how she did that trick and recieve instruction from her (which is something I hadn't said before). This would be akin to the attuning a spirit spell to a focus in the RQ3 rules *but* his understanding will be limited to that spell only. Thus he would know how to cast fireblade on another person's weapon say but not how do the same thing with protection.
The shaman OTOH because of her knowlege does not need to seek anybody's instruction to do 'spectacular' stuff with a spell and can sometimes transcend the spell limitations given in the rules.
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