> Why should the Red moon glow?
Because she... does?
Look, it's as simple as this:
I've got a piece of Moon Rock here (it's the most precious thing I own). See it? It glows red.
Up there in the sky is a great big Red Moon made of this stuff. And what do you suppose it does? It glows red.
I cast a fair amount of Lunar Magic, all of which glows red. The most magical Lunar thing we can see is the Red Moon, which glows red.
And when I get the Lunar College of Magic to nuke your absurdly recalcitrant little village from orbit ("it's the only way to be sure"), I'm sure you'll find the rocks in the craters they make will glow red....
It seems to me the onus is on anyone who thinks the Red Moon *doesn't* glow red to state their case! (It'd be absurd to suggest it glows by the "reflected light of Yelm" (in anything other than a spiritual sense), as any fool can see the Moon shines most brightly after Yelm descends to the Underworld).
> But isn't [the Moon] always full within the Empire?
Nope. See the extracts from the HeroQuest draft I quoted earlier in this thread.
Old RQ accounts bizarrely led to a Red Moon that was below the horizon outside the Empire and always appeared full within it. The more rational version we constructed during the nineties, which is now appearing in HeroQuest, has the Red Moon visibly going through its phases within and beyond the Glowline.
There is a visual difference for some people (a 'halo', 'nimbus' or 'corona' which appears around the moon in its dark phases within the Glowline, but not outside). I'd also suggest that the Black (parts of the) Moon are visible in the daytime sky within the Glowline (i.e. on the day of a Crescent Moon you'd see a red sickle around the edge of a black body in the sky), but not beyond, although this is not what's described in the HeroQuest draft (though it *is*, ironically enough, what's depicted on the cover of ILH-1). So: on the day of the Dying Moon, inside the Glowline, the moon appears by day as a black orb and by night as an empty black spot in the sky with a red nimbus showing where it is(n't). Outside the Glowline, it's invisible both by day and by night. (Also, outside the Glowline, it's much more likely to be obscured by clouds, or mountains, or other things which are not so common in the Pelorian Heartlands).
Parts of this are my 2p'orth, parts are HQ, parts are old news. Mix 'n' match: YGWV.
More fun stuff is at www.etyries.com/moonie, as always! And www.etyries.com/moonie/phases.htm is very relevant.
Cheers, Nick
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