> As for the origin of the Hellwood chaotics, Ken Rolston had distributed > several theories some years ago. I think Shannon Appel or Eric Rowe wrote > them, and as I recall they were not for general distribution.
I don't know about any others' thoughts, but Old Uncle Ken was playing with a few of my ideas a few years back. As there's no sign of any product coming out in the immediate future from Avalon Hill, I'll post edited chunks from our discussions here. I hope the author of each comment is clearly indicated; this was a speculative discussion, so *please* don't assume we're being dogmatic: just chucking around ideas, is all. Also note that this was written before the gloriously unsubtle Hellwood encounter from "Lords of Terror" saw print...
BTW, Tales #14 came back from the printers on Friday, and looks BEAUTIFUL!
On with the show.
The population may be exclusively from Rist, but the corruption that has been worked upon them can be blamed on the ambience of Dorastor. Maybe they *thought* they could replant a "clean" forest in Hellwood and were sorely disappointed: like the ever-popular "failed colony gone native" theme from Science Fiction (Cherryh's "40,000 in Gehenna", et al.). Elves are long-lived, and some of them remember and could recount this tragic tale.
Maybe the mediating self-sacrifice of the Hellwood Krjalki to the forces of Abomination keeps the chaotic taint from all the (apparently) normal brown elves of the forest? Noble, eh?
Hellwood elves venerate and fear krjalks.
[Maybe] Krjalk elves can manifest krjalk features as a divine magic in warm seasons. In winter they are involuntarily and constantly krjalk.
Reputations of krjalks among broos is fearsome. Even Ralzakark appears to respect their borders. (Is Ralzakark in some way a krjalk? Has he a quiet pact with them? Do they participate in waking Dorastor --wittingly or unwittingly?)
Count mine as a vote in favour of this. It's neat. Holdstock had something similar in "Lavondyss": friendly holly-jacks becoming cruel, non-sentient winter-wolves. It worked there, too.
> Do they participate in waking Dorastor -- wittingly or unwittingly?
A great philosophical question. Krjalki battle chaos monsters by becoming chaos monsters. The elves wouldn't have a phrase for "fighting fire with fire", now, would they, or maybe they'd be able to express what was going on. But the whole Nietzsche thing is inherent in Arkati and Illumination. Krjalki and other Illuminates would appreciate the irony.
In preserving borders, Krjalks do not parlay unless force fails. They fear death greatly, and avoid melee where possible, preferring to use missiles, magic, and terror. Nightime ambush is a favorite. In winter krjalks are less timid, less rational, more berserk, and may melee recklessly rather than use the terrain and maneuver to advantage.
The Krjalki elves can't be Sensed or Detected as chaotic (as they're all Illuminated), and they only *look* chaotic when they cast their Become Krjalki runespells. Why should any negotiators, PC or NPC, Orlanth or Urox, imagine the Hellwood elves are at all chaotic? Especially if they clearly want to get out of Dorastor back to safe, non-chaotic Rist.
"Common Knowledge" about the Hellwood Elves (p.19Lc) doesn't mention any chaotic connection, meaning it isn't even suspected.
While a potential problem arises from Land of Doom (p.52Rb), "a group of Hellwood elves is usually accompanied by at least one krjalki," on the other hand, krjalki don't usually manifest their chaos features... met normally, they look like any other Wood Lord or elvish leader type.
Krjalki are only monstrous all the time in Winter, when they *can't* be met in the company of normal brown elves (who are asleep). As a glib-tongued speaker for the Hellwood, I'd point out that in waking times the woods are kept safe from chaos monstrosities by the vigilance of the brown elves; these can only roam around freely in Winter. Isn't Hellwood's opposition to all the native life of Dorastor well-known (and, indeed, Common Knowledge)?
The occasional brown elf manifesting a chaos feature (only one of the seven shown on pp.52f) could be movingly described as a victim of his environment and another reason why the Hellwood wants to move back to Rist: "You want us to stay here until the Corruption claims us all?"
The existence of some warped Aldryami doesn't prove the Hellwoods are all tainted -- unless you'd say the existence of Greyskins shows all humans to be chaos monsters at heart...
I think your laborious defence of the idea of an alliance between Orlanthi and elves from Hellwood presupposes that those Orlanthi have discovered the biggest secret of the Hellwood Elves: that the chaotic monsters encountered in the winter woods are the same as the homicidal (but *normal*) Wood Lords who defend them in summer. The difficulty of making this connection (short of evil players picking up a copy of "Land of Doom") should be stressed in this product. It's a Big Gloranthan Secret (or should be one). You know: emphasise how nasty *normal* elves can be, with the sting in the tail being that they have other resources too...
I'd be careful about this. GM assumptions aren't PC assumptions. This also plays to the kind of scenario encounters you run between PCs and Hellwood elves: if you use blatant chaos as part of the social defences of the wood, the cat is out of the bag. I'd suggest not doing so: the Krjalki can take on that burden in Winter, and *enjoy* doing it, and not implicate/incriminate their fellow Aldryami at all.
This would change the migration story. The Rist elves would lose many of their Dryads in the Moonburn, and (of course) be unable to bring any of the survivors with them -- Dryads don't travel. But on arriving at the future Hellwood location, their Gardener shamans could summon nature spirits into existing propitious trees: the way disembodied Dryads seem to work in RQ. These, however, would be chaos-tainted Dorastan dryad-spirits, and would set about the subversion of normal Aldryami society as soon as they became established. (Seduction followed by betrayal is, as you noted earlier, a common Dryad motif; doing it to your own people is the twist in this tale).
In the Moonburn, the entire Rist elf Council of Elders were slain defending the forest. The ranking survivors -- a group of young Wood Lords -- swore a Great Oath of Vengeance against all Creatures of Flesh, and promised to serve any god who would promise to aid them in their vengeance. One Rootless Elf among the refugees stepped forward, and said that his Lord would guarantee them a safe refuge and revenge against their tormentors, if only they would swear allegience to the Lord Krjalk. Many devout Aldrya cultists opposed this bargain, but the majority, bitter in hatred and conscious of the failure of Aldrya to protect them, swore to serve the Krjalk-worshiping lords if they could promise sanctuary and bloody revenge.
In Hellwood the Krjalki rule over and protect the Adryami as a lord might rule over a subject people. The relationship is honorable on both sides, for the krjalki do not abuse their power, and the Aldryami gladly sacrifice the orthodoxy of the cult for the protection of the forest land and its plant hosts. To avoid offending the Aldryami worshippers, krjalki do not manifest chaos features in public, but only in private worship, except when in defense of Hellwood, when such manifestations are understood as avatars of wrath and vengeance.
The Great Temple of Krjalk in Hellwood is a secret cult worship center. In this temple are shrines to Primal Chaos and Pocharngo. Wood Warriors tapped for candidacy in Krjalk make a half-season vigil in this temple. Those elected for Krjalk receive chaos features which enhance their ability to serve the forest. Those judged unworthy become distorted and misshapen; those who survive may become wild horrors in Hellwood.
The Hellwood elves' acceptance of Chaos becomes like more normal societies' acceptance of war. We hate it. It is harmful, and damaging, and can really mess you up. But you need specialists to deal with it: warriors or krjalki. They have been exposed to the dangerous, unwelcome situation, and are now considered to be masters of it. Though this in some ways unfits them for civilian life, they get a lot of respect for their socially-necessary skill and dedication.
Perhaps, given the elvish emphasis on Community, concentrating the chaos taint in selected, strong individuals is a way of protecting the mass of elves from receiving any taint at all. To the body politic, the "amount" of chaos in the Hellwood is constant. Krjalki use their unnatural magics to concentrate it in themselves, and so protect their brethren. Aldrya's purity is protected by their heroic sacrifice... or so the Dryads said.
"VARIANT ACCOUNTS OF THE ROOTS OF HELLWOOD"
Here are the three Absolutely True and Mutually Inconsistent accounts of the roots of the Hellwood elf cultures that may be discovered or inferred by Abran Insilli or the adventurers or received as legends from Hellwood informants. [Nick: Maybe the ancient traditions of Dorasta Shrine record one of these accounts, yes?] We do not indicate here which is the Real Truth, because of that rude Player now reading this sentence, but GMs and Gloranthan scholars will immediately recognize which of the three is the Real Story.
In fact groves did survive, and their dryads. Also, those elves who could fled into the mountains, descending later to find ash-choked stream bed and withered vegetation. In that time the Ash Flat filled the low bowl of the Illlands, and the Foulvale valley, leaving the Demon Plateau an isolated island, and cutting off the Hellwood region from Poisonthorn. The aldryami communities survived in the high hollows of the Rockwoods, but in a wretched manner, and all dryads, aldryami, and plant life suffered the slow accummulation of the taint of Chaos that lay on the land. In this time some elves turned to the worship of Krjalk for aid in surviving in the blasted land. At first this worship was the furtive practice of desperate warriors; in time all came to accept the open secret of krjalk worship among the warrior class, so long as worship and practice was kept from public sight.
When in later times the Rist elves arrived in Hellwood, they found the wretched
survivors of the ancient forests - but they showed no outward appearance of
chaos worship, and though aldryami and plant life alike were stunted, warped and
twisted in Hellwood, the Rist elves believed the tale that this was the result
of poor soil and the loss of ancient breeding stocks. The native Hellwood elves
invited the Rist elves to share their groves and dryads - the Rist elves forced,
of course, to abandon their groves and dryads when they left Rist. The Rist
refugees gratefully accepted - and as the Rist elves mated with the tainted
dryads of the ancient warped groves, the healthy Rist community unknowingly
admitted
the taint of Chaos into their tribes. At the same time, the Rist elves accepted
the sovereign rights of the ancient groves of Dorastor, and acknowledged their
seniority in the High Council. In time the Krjalk worship was discovered, and
there was a short and bloody rebellion, but the ancient Hellwood warriors, proud
and strong in their chaos features, easily destroyed the rebellious Rist elves.
The surviving Rist community had no choice but to accept the conditions of their
refuge.
This, the two community theory, implies that two elf communities survive in
Hellwoohd - one, the corrupted survivors of the Curse of Cleansing, the other
the
subject refugees of the Rist Moonburn. The elves of Rist descent remain free
of chaos taint; the ancient elves are corrupted beyond hope of redemption.
Elves of Rist descent might wish to escape the rule and impiety of the
Krjalk-dominated elves, while the Krjalks are simple, corrupted villains. We
may sympathize with the latter's struggle to survive, but we do not admire their
deceit in tricking the Rist elves into sharing their taint, nor do we sympathize
with their keeping the Rist elves as a subject race (a thoroughly un-aldryami
thing to do).
"Let us go to our cousins the Poisonthorns in the land of Dorastor."
"You will find no welcome there, for they are bitter and turned inward by the
foul taint of their land and by their cruel betrayal by the Lords of the Bright
Empire."
"Then we must attempt the blighted lands beneath the Rockwood mountains."
"But the Poisonthorns say that land is blasted and without life, and its ash
marked by the tracks of monsters of unimaginable fierceness and horror. We are
the children of sweetness and plenty; how shall we ever toughen enough to live
in such a land?"
"We shall because we must; we may fall like the leaves of autumn, but perhaps
the seeds most hungry for life shall burst forth in spring."
And the Rist elves indeed fell like the leaves of autumn in that cruel place, but the survivors laid their seeds and prayed for the best. And indeed the seeds most hungry for life did burst forth in the spring, but not all their hungers were wholesome. The strongest of the young colony's sprouts tormented their yearmates and denied the authority of the elders, and looking back, the High Council realized that these had taken the curse of the blighted land in the seed.
The ruling class of the Hellwood elves are descended from these first cursed seeds. The community itself has been shaped by the soil that nourished its seeds; none are free of the influence of that cursed land. Only the ruling warriors actively worship Krjalk, but the nature and culture of all Hellwood elves is corrupted by the Chaos of Dorastor.
This, the one-community-but-all-corrupted theory, portrays all Hellwood elves as tragic but corrupted villains. They cannot be redeemed, because the taint of the soil has entered their natures through the seed. The Krjalk-worshipping nobles are likely to be more fearsome and dangerous than the "normal" aldryami-worshipping elves, but all willingly accept the role of Krjalk in their culture, and all share the bloody-minded ferocity of the native Dorastan.
[In some versions this stranger elf was a Krjalk of the ancient Dorastan stock. This stranger led the Rist elves into Hellwood and delivered them into the hands of the scheming ancient corrupted chaos-worshippers. These versions are simply variants of the Corrupted and the Betrayed. Only in tales where the identity of this stranger elf remains shadowy and mysterious does this version preserve the ambiguous nobility of the Krjalki.]
In this version the Rist elves arrive in Hellwood to find it unoccupied by other elves. The Rist refugees in Hellwood in this version remain a pluralistic, complex society. The majority of the community acknowledges the noble self-sacrifice of the krjalk-worshippers in protecting the community, but there is still no unanimity on the honor and virtue of such methods. The Krjalki are content to endure the contempt and hatred of a small righteous minority while the majority treat the krjalki as fierce sentinels ever condemned to be pariahs in the community. Many Krjalki may even acknowledge that their methods - possibly even their motives - are unsound, but they have made their choice and learned to live with it.
In this version of Hellwood the aldryami community granted the authority of the defender and protector of the realm to the Krjalki. The relationship is honorable on both sides, for the krjalki do not abuse their power, while the not-undivided counsel of the aldryami community is to sacrifice the orthodoxy of the Aldrya cult for the protection of the forest land and its plant hosts. To avoid offending the Aldrya worshippers, krjalki do not manifest chaos features in public, but only in private worship, except when in defense of Hellwood, when such manifestations are understood as avatars of wrath and vengeance.
The Great Temple of Krjalk in Hellwood is a secret cult worship center. In this temple are shrines to Primal Chaos and Pocharngo. Wood Warriors tapped for candidacy in Krjalk make a half-season vigil in this temple. Those elected for Krjalk receive chaos features which enhance their ability to serve the forest. Those judged unworthy become distorted and misshapen; those who survive may become wild horrors in Hellwood.
End of Glorantha Digest V2 #543
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