The Serpents of the Greatlands

From: Greg Stafford <greg_at_glorantha.com>
Date: Wed, 11 Apr 2001 10:50:07 -0700


At 11:45 AM 4/10/2001 -0700, you wrote:
><< Also the heads are inside the Dead Place, so I'd guess that the three
that
>are shown
> flow downhill normally.
>
> Does the Dead Place have "serpents" though ?

The Wastelands (or as the Praxians call them, the Greatlands) have many valleys and riverbeds that generally go towards a dry central crevice. Some of these are the exposed graves of the rivers of Genert's Garden. Some of them are where monsters were dragged along by Praxian heros and giants. Some of them are where good spirits rose out of the dirt and exposed water. Some are enemy monstrous serpents that are hidden underneath there and that rise up accompanied by hosts of creatures, springing to life when rains fall instead of sand, or when invading storm gods (Orlanth from the south, Valind from the north) hire mercenaries to plague the Praxians and so send the rivers roaring.
Any of these causes often cause the river to flow uphill, at least for a while. Not always, and perhaps not even most of the time, but often enough to be a known random feature of these spirit beings. And as the ultimate of such back flooding, at times the Ultraserpent (that may be Korgatsu) comes bursting forth from the Underworld, filling up the Dead Bottom and sending fifty foot waves roaring up the serpents, spilling over the banks, and eddying up even the smaller arroyos (or wadis). At times these flooded riverbanks become tangled growths of plants from the Garden, where live long-lost peoples, often hsunchen of living or extinct creatures. When the waters recede the plants die quickly, the people usually soon after.
- --------
Greg Stafford
Issaries, Inc. 900 Murmansk St., Suite 5; Oakland, CA 94607 Phone: (510) 452 1648 Fax: (510) 302 0385 Publisher of Hero Wars, Roleplaying in Glorantha See our site at: <www.glorantha.com>


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