Wooden blades
Wooden-tipped spears are realistic, but not axes or swords. No wooden blade, no matter how hard the wood, could remain sharp. Remember that wood is made of tiny, empty cellulose cells (yes, even in Glorantha), so it always wields a little when compressed, just enough to lose sharpness after the blade hits. Furthermore, a wooden object is thicker than an equally-heavy metal one to be resistant, and good blades are _not_ thick. Of course, the elves can use magic to keep the wooden blade sharp, but then they should sacrifice POW to the blade, not to the tree that grows it. This sounds a bit too costly to me: POW and/or a long time and care to make the blade, POW to keep it sharp. Not a good idea. I think grown arrows and speartips are still realistic, sort of specialized thorns and no need to keep them sharp, but would not allow swords or knives.
Wooden armor
Armor is another story: it does not matter if the plates are 1 inch thick as long as they are not heavier than their bronze counterpart, and they help the wearer if he tries to sneak - they actually _absorb_ sounds.
Keeping wooden objects "alive"
Erik Sieurin suggested that elves can make special rituals to keep their wooden objects alive. Wrong IMHO. Wood is _dead_, as dead as the part of your fingernails upu use to clip. Would you tend them in order to keep them alive? Would you tend leather in order to keep it alive? Of course not. An elf bow is a totally different matter: a living, photosyntesizing (sp?) plant, with leaves and lymph running through its body. To continue the parallel, it is as though a human cut off and kept alive his entire finger, not just the dead part of his nails.
Copper elves and copper trees
I liked James Wadsley's ideas of the copper trees hidden in the deepest of the forest, but all these copper trees/aldryami are somehow "ungloranthan". We are going a bit out of the way with this copper elf thread. I'll try to explain why I think so.
Vegetables extract minerals from the earth and concentrate it in their secretory tissues. In RW this is limited to smelly essences or irritating fluids (like poisonthorn arrows - they are highly realistic from a botanist's POV), but in Glorantha there is no reason why plants should not be able to extract Ga's blood and bones (copper) ands concentrate it in special structures shaped as tools. No Aldryami is made of Ga-metal, but Ga granted some of them the ability to create metal parts, just as they extract magnesium (what is the Gloranthan equivalent?) from Ga to produce chlorophyll. Of course, this is possible only where ga-metal is near the surface, or by means of extraordinarily deep-rooted plants. Metal-producing trees are found in areas where metal is available in the soil, not where metal elves tend them. As any farmer can confirm, the quality of the crops depends heaviliy on the soil composition. Armor and weapons should not be an exception.
Good plant tenders can even _fertilize_ the soil when they need to grow weapons. Maybe they put scrap metal or looted armor that would not fit their warriors near the weapontree roots, and after some seasons it starts growing blades. I have always been convinced that aldryami use a lot of looted metal tools and weapons. This way they can reshape all the looted metal without forging it with heat or Lodril's spells.
On a more mythical plane, we may say that metal is not of Aldrya, but it is a gift from Ga and Ernalda that Aldrya's children can extract from Ga's body and use. This is one of the reasons why Aldryami are always earth-friends.
New rituals
I do not agree on some of them for the stated reason, but at least half of them are going to find a place if I ever start an elven campaign. Erik Sieurin's "Mask of the Meaties" is extremely nice IMO. The idea of trolls taking extra damage from wood weapons had been introducen in a non-gloranthan campaign I played in years ago, but never really exploited. I like it because pinewood is full imbued with resins, so making it poisonous should be an easy task.
Personally, I think there are different spirits that grant them for different tribes, and no tribe has them all, but all of them are present in a given forest, so all are accessible in case of need. For instance, Vronkali should have pine spirits teaching Enchant Pine, while Mreli know Oak spirits which grant Enchant Oak.
One good idea would be short descriptions of the spirit cults that give access to the rituals you suggested.
Physical mutations
Another of James Wadeley's good ideas. I tend to consider them Armoring or Strengthening Enchantments, too, but this physical description is a clever suggestion. In fact it solves some of the problems connected to enchanting one's body that had been raised digests ago. I think elves are at an advantage when enchanting their bodies. They need no tattoo, frex, and if you use Sandy's rules for Enchantment (+1 POW to enchant living being), I think elves growing a thick bark on themselves are exempt from this rule. Of course the ritual is slower and maybe it includes rooting for at least one season. There is no need to introduce spirit cults for them because Aldrya provides battle magic spells for these enchantments, but would you be so kind as to describe the actual ritual, James?
Suggestions
We all agree that elves grow all sort of fruits, most of which are of some importance. But, in our limited visions, we have concentrated upon the less important specimens: weapon-sprouting plants. But even elven warriors, IMHO, are more likely to rely on vegetable potions and essences rather than "exceptionally tough wooden or copper melee weapons", though the latter probably exist. Note that these are essences flowing out of the plant's own body rather than concoctions like the ones descried in the Mee Vorala cult write-ups. Voralans are much more similar to human alchemists than true Aldryami. Clearly the plant must be somehow appeased by the gardener in order to freely give his concoctions: as James pointed out, elves would never mutilate an unwilling plant to exploit parts of it.
Thanks
I wish to express my appreciation for the more mythical and less technical part of the aldryami thread, too. The "HKE resurrects Flamal" discussion is very interesting.
http://www.geco.it/~guccione ------------------------------
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