I like Chris Lemen's description of Elven fixed defenses! Hmmm, some
possible suggestions on other potential specialized plants for the
defense:
- Those nasty little dart-throwing flowers from old "Star Trek".
- Some sort of "sword grass" -- tough, sharp, capable of slicing up
someone who falls or walks on it. Plant it in broad swaths to make killing
fields -- the enemy will have to either waste magic going through it or
time going around it, and you can shoot at 'em when they're bunched up.
- Strong, prehensile vines -- you can foster them to grow on enemy
fortresses and erod the walls' strength (which is how the Winterwood elves
are gonna take care of all those Human castles in the reforestation zone).
You can also set them as traps in your border zone -- when some poor jerk
sit on them, they grab 'im and rip limbs off. Ouch.
- Similarly, some sorta super-kudzu to choke up rivers and whatnot.
- Some sort of siege weapon tree. (Coconut death from above!)
- Really, really, flammable trees. Which you deliberately torch as the
enemy enters a grove of them, in a scorched earth policy. (Which'd require
a segment of Elfie society that has some sort of compromise with fire,
natch).
- Plants that magically or chemically corrode metals Elves don't use much
- -- iron, lead, silver.
- Exploding trees. "This end toward enemy." Rare, but nasty. Maybe a
varient of armor trees, so you get nasty bronze/copper shrapnel.
- Tougher runners in areas where you face nastier parasites: if the local
trolls breed nastier bugs, you breed runners that are even nastier to deal
with them. (You need _some_ parasites, of course, but clever trolls
release infestations of special breeds to attack Elves).
- And, of course, poisonous stuff everywhere -- the Poisonthorn elves
being the masters.
Interelven warfare is probably even nastier -- fostering plant diseases on
the enemy, deliberate burnoff of enemy forest, use of Voralan mercenaries
or fungus creations to assault plant growth... biological warfare meets
Glorantha.
Hmm. And the Garden in Pavis must be among the deadliest of all Elf
forests -- after all, you don't have much of a boundary forest, you've got
every Elf enemy possible in spitting distance, and you breed slower than
all of them. They must be really, really nasty to have not just survived,
but _flourished_.
Just something to throw out: me thinks the Elves may deliberately "breed"
segments of the population to some extent. IMO, the nature of which
individual type of tree an elf is related to will have a link to the elf's
nature -- since elfies seem to have a lot of dryad blood in them from
cross-matings, it'd make sense. (I played a lemon elf, once: oooh,
bitter, bitter.) And you may be able to tamper with Junior when he's just
a wee seed -- encourage traits you want to see, discourage others.
So if you think the forest is going to be at war over the next couple
centuries, you direct the breeds with warrior traits to raise more
children, and ritually tinker with the kids-to-come. Very intrusive, but
the Elves always struck me as as being less interested in individualism
(unlike us freedom lovin' trolls, I'd point out).
Jamuz Fruzetta
"Since the beginning of time man has yearned to destroy the sun."
- Proof that Monty Burns knows which pantheon is boss.