I don't like the Humans at Night comparison, I'm afriad, 'cause Humans can use torches. While Trolls could use giant umbrellas to create shadows, I fear it would be impractical... would make all the shadow spells more useful, though.
So, a weird suggestion: darkness _always_ existed. Before light. It is not the absence of light, it's the norm. There's always darkness around you, even at high noon -- humans just can't make it out, but trolls can, because they'z uz, dammit. Light doesn't drive it away -- darkness is still there, ever present. So trolls always have enough darkness to use darksense, but darksense is superior when light isn't around.
Also, frex: why in the world would the cave trolls and trollkin be demoralized in sunlight when they actually have big ol' eyeballs and can see, while the darktrolls and uzuz aren't? I'd say it's intelligence or POW, but a trollkin can amass quite decent INT and POW, natch. Seems like the trollkin'd love daylight, since the uzko wouldn't be around to boss it up. I'd say this suggests that darksense works well enough during the day (and that sight is, furthermore, a _liability_ during the day).
Heh. Considering troll's crappy vision, Darksee would be better replaced with something allowing trolls to use their Darksense at full value during the day.
> I see several problems with the Sound carried by Darkness idea... one is
> that I have never seen anything to imply that sound decreases with the
> intensity of light. Also (as was mentioned) Orlanth's "Wind Words"
> certainly Does imply an air-sound connection.
Ah, the jerk just stole it from Kyger Kitor, I bet. Just like Sandals of
Darkness. Does ol' Windy have _any_ rune spells of his own? Jeez, if he
didn't have all those Lightbringer goons following him around, KL'd have
clobbered him for sure.<g>
It appears I'll never be a godlearner, though. :( Too many flaws dividing
the senses by runes. Yeah, air could have both sound and smell. I prefer
to think that stench is what truly distinguishes all those storm types,
though. At least Storm Bull.
(Apologies to all you storm devotees out there. I'll try to make fun of
lunars, next time, instead).
> Yeah, but are YOU going to be the poor sap to tell a Subere priestess
> what to do??? <shudder> it ain't gunna be me! I don't think many subere
"Yo, babe, on deck! Need a spell! Haul that cute butt up here and --
ARRRRRRGHHHH!" <thud>
--The first and only troll warrior to tell a Subere priestess what to do.
> priestesses ever leave their temples, and there arn't many Wind Lords
> who would go poking around There (or would live long if they did).
I was in a campaign once, though, where a Moonsword cultist strolled into
a Xentha temple (and was slain, natch. Horribly). When we asked him why
he went in, he said that the lights were off, and he didn't think anyone
was in... :P 'Course, he didn't _know_ it was a Xentha temple until he
burst in on the priest and defiled all the rites with light, but still,
did we laugh...
> I don't think that texture differences on the order of ink/paper are
> going to be detectable to darksence, (we can sence differences in
Sure -- this is probably paint in many cases, anyway. Most of the medieval
books I've seen you could probably even run your hand over (with good
training) -- the ink/paint layer is _thick_. And glossy. The letters are
usually big, too. You'd probably have to get used to it, but I think it
could be done for the books of yore. Not for modern books, no. Yah, it'd
be fair to require special training for it.
It did occur to me that color pictures are right out. (Troll scholar: "Another black page? Where illustration? Stupid humans.") Maybe _that_ was the secret of all those horrible drawings in Troll Gods... I can't make out the details with my weak trollish eyesight and lack of color vision... yeah, that's it.
And for MGF: if they _do_ use Darksense, they want a nice dark library, of course. So they blow out all the lamps much to the discomfort of the _human_ scholars who may be there. "Why you turn on light? Grarg try to read book."
> fingers) but this is just IMO. of course, I like the idea of Uz
> "humanologists" having to train value trollkin to read to them... maybe
> spelltrading an ocasional Detect Lie from the Lhankor Mhy to weed out
> the unreliable (Yum! <burp!>.)
This is almost worth junking my belief they can use texture to read! Heck,
it _is_ worth it. This'd be reason #33 Why Trolls Make Better Graduate
Students: Trollkin slave race to do their reading for them. <g>
> Actually, I'm still convinced that the nose would be most crippling...
> but I havn't really determined just how all this fits into Uz culture...
Maybe you _don't punch there_, just like you don't (usually) punch the
throat in human culture in friendly fighting? MGF -- the trolls get in a
bar brawl in Pavis. The human hits him in the jaw/nose. The troll gets
_very_ angry, now... (Raising the question, where do trolls punch each
other for fun? Maybe it's more polite to slam the other troll in the gut?
or the ol' knee-in-groin doesn't carry the same social stigma?)
> (doing all I can to hold up the dark end of things... (why would ANYONE
> want to talk about YELM -- how MORBID! <g>))
All hail the Dark Threads! Morbid indeed -- you don't see anybody getting
excited about Live Action "Yelmball," do you? Unless Yelm _was_ the
ball. Bwahahaha. The greatest of all heroquests...
Hey, maybe it's true. See, Zorak Zoran is in Hell, and each night Yelm shows up. So ZZ grabs him, and punts him up in the sky. Now, ZZ's so strong, he kicks Yelm up so high, it takes a whole day for him to fall back down. At the end of the day, Karrg catches him, and passes him back to ZZ, where they repeat the cycle. Yelm: The Cosmic Football. Boot.
Powered by hypermail