> Come on Nick, as you said yourself ('RQ Con Compendium'), the Lunars will
> tell you...
Yeah, the Lunars will. But the Coders won't. They'll say "We love to fight and kill Chaos, just like you hearty barbarian types do. Sure, none of us would ever worship a Chaotic deity, or use Chaos powers. Join the Lunar Way, and be like us!" But that is *not* the Lunar Way, and I regret that these otherwise estimable people feel the need to misrepresent the Empire in Prax. We should educate the Praxians to understand that Chaos can have a place in the world, not pretend that we agree whole-heartedly with their primitive moral and ethical codes. The Coders leave themselves wide open to ignorant objections like "What about the Crimson Bat, eh?" or "I saw that priestess cast Chaos Gift last week: why don't you kill her?", to which a more honest presentation of the powers and perils of Chaos would provide the answers.
> Anyone have any idea how common Vadeli raiders are in the Western oceans?
I see an encounter with Red Vadeli pirates as similar to the Mad God's seaborne cultists from Moorcock's "The Mad God's Amulet". They are frothing lunatics who'd make Blackbeard look tame. The Red Vadeli corsairs aren't swarming all over the Western Ocean (yet), but they do seem remarkably able to target the richest and least-defended merchantmen attempting to break their Brown cousins' grip on the trade lanes to Pamaltela. Almost as if someone dockside was tipping them off, and receiving a cut of the cargo as compensation...
NB: I'd prefer the links between the Brown and Red Vadeli races to be revealed in the course of play, e.g. through personal effects turning up in a Brown merchant's trade goods, rather than be known from the start. The Brown Vadeli peddle valuable (albeit immoral and perhaps illegal) wares for which there is no other source, and the safety of their persons is protected (at least in Loskalm) by some obscure tenets of Hrestoli scripture: Prince Hrestol spent some years in his exile as Judge of the Vadeli, and so long as the Vadeli *publicly* restrain themselves from excessive or grotesque behaviour, they are not subjected to pogroms and persecution as a race.
Remember that the rebirth of seaborne trade, the resurgence of the Vadeli as a Great Power, and the discovery that the Red Vadeli race still exists (or "now exists again") have all taken place within the lifetime of Gloranthans alive today. The structures within which these factors are newly mobilised have yet to settle down: there is a vacuum in the Western Ocean with the Vadeli returned and the Brithini departed, and my bet is for a Vadeli Empire (perhaps a mercantile one like the Carthaginian hegemony, perhaps an outright attempt at Thalassocracy in league with the inhuman Waertagi) within the next few years. If there isn't one there already, albeit unrecognised...
I would *not* like to visit the Vadeli Isles today: the thought of their bloody altars, spawning pools and other abominations leaves me cold. I very much doubt that any outsiders who do visit them are permitted to leave (though persons looking just like them may do so, speaking warmly of their friendly reception). Things are afoot there which the world is not ready to learn: blasphemies and atrocities best not spoken of. Every dog has his day, and that of the Vadeli is now dawning -- an unnatural dawn in the West, of course.
Powered by hypermail