It took the sun magics of Tarkalor's allies, plus the unified resistance of all their tributary clans, to push the Kitori out of the valley. I imagine that quite a lot of them perished, most of the rest took refuge in the woods, and some trapped in the west might have taken refuge in or around Blackwell.
I suppose they now rely mostly on their great dark pigs to feed them, with some meagre crops of rye (IMO dark bread is appropriate for darkmen) and barley, and a couple of roots other Orlanthi wouldn't touch.
Carolyn closed her case:
>I don't know what MGF is.
MGF is the abbreviation for the Maximum Game Fun principle we try to adher to here on the digest. It doesn't necessarily mean "the sillier the better" (though it can at times, like with ducks), but it means whatever leads to your best enjoyment of Glorantha as a game setting. MGF and Gloranthan purism often clash, but rarely irredeamably so.
>I'm *Certainly* not trying to insert elves into
>your game, just looking for a good reason why they wouldn't be in mine, or
>anyone elses.
For my game, I assumed that there would be some aldryami presence in the Troll Woods - about as much as in Sartar, where there are occasional dryads with their entourage. One documented case is Tarndisi, in Colymar lands. I don't see many green elves haunting the woods, they are just too tasty morsels to last long, even with bows ready. Maybe a couple of secluded groves in side valleys where some Vronkali remain, but hardly enough to withstand a decently sized troll raiding party _on their own_. In their groves, tanglethickets, war trees and dryad magics make them a different case.
I'm fairly convinced that the Troll Woods would be predominantly fir woods, which provide real spooky darkness even with moderately overcast skies. Anybody with field archery experience will agree that fir woods can be bitchy wrt light, so bow-armed elves aren't really on their home turf...
If I'm right about the fir wood, then treetop elves would look somewhat silly - anything larger than a squirrel wouldn't last hopping from branch to branch.
>I guess my Troll Woods need them, because when we started
>really looking at Trolls + humans + beetles, we didn't want to cram the
>place with so many hunter/gather/herders that the woods would look all
>sketchy and fake like D&D, or be ecologically doomed. Since there's no
>official rule I know of, we figure there Are elves, it's just not widely
>known because it's frankly none of anyone's business outside the Kitori.
No problem with low profile elves. Certainly even the trolls will regard certain parts of the Troll Woods as haunted (not by chaos, that's down the southern slope only), some by notorious hags, others possibly by dark dryads.
>But maybe they gossip about it in Dakori Inkarth, those crazy Kitori!
There's enough gossip around the Kitori already, with Urrggh the Ugly, a (deceased) character from Stafford's house campaign who was rumoured to be the offspring of the royal house of Sartar and a troll queen. (Not too unlikely, really, as there are rumours about both Telmori and duck offspring of Sartar as well. Prince Arquack, anyone?)
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