My feeling is that the Veldang had not adapted well to Time, or just not good at adapting, so they have not recovered much in five centuries, just carried on eating snails, making their weird boats but not thriving. Garangordos is almost like a Genertelan Lightbringer, allowing Time to start for these people. Artmal is in his tomb, the Fat God becomes skinny and slow before disappearing altogether, another sky witch getting darker and darker until she's no longer visible. These all seem, to me, to be stories from a culture that is on its last legs. Easter Island springs to mind. On top of the decline of Veldang culture, the remnants of Selvukko, the Bad Land, take their toll. Examples of this would include the Hungry Goddess, the moving forests and unnatural landforms of Mondoro, the outlaws and criminals that lived on the Bad Mountain.
>
> If only the other hand, you meant that the Dawn Age civilization
> destroyed itself rather horribly as a result of the Sunstop Revelations,
> then I am intrigued. What sort of disaster do you think took place?
I hadn't thought of this approach, seeing it as a more gradual decline, but perhaps the Sunstop did things that made things worse in a step- change, perhaps the Hungry Goddess was released then, or Seseine was unleashed, or Jraktal enslaved Ompalam.
> You may have simply meant exploring which sounds better to me but
> Garangordos still needs a better motivation than to just boldly go.
Exploring Fonrit is how I see it. The motivation would be: Initially "lets get out of Laskal, the Forest Folk are too demanding/have outlawed us/have made it impossible to make a living". Then they explore the various locations in Fonrit as they attempt to find somewhere to live, and pick up hints about the new improved Ompalam relgion that they could reveal. Visions in Goan, perhaps about "releasing Ompalam" perhaps about an invisible "Jmijie" road, perhaps about a beautiful blue woman. My idea is that the player characters are the Garangordites - so they would develop their own motivations.
> I'm currently seeing Ompalam as a Pamalt equivalent - the same deity in
> two different religions (although the Doraddi would probably say that he
> was Bolongo looking like Pamalt). Thus when the Doraddi speak about
> Pamalt doing such and such, the Fonritan myth is about Ompalam. Where
> Pamalt emphasized kinship ties, Ompalam stressed duty. I think at the
> Dawn, Ompalam was worshipped in Fonrit and Laskal rather than being a
> new god revealed by Garangordos..
That makes sense to me - not a new god but perhaps, like Yelm was revealed, a new improved Ompalam religion. Ompalam was perhaps worshipped, but with different groups worshipping different aspects.
>
> Tentacule and Darleester are more like religious practices to bring the > worshipper closer to Ompalam rather than independent deities in their > own right.
Again, that makes sense. Perhaps they were minor practises that didn't really work (hence the poor performance of Fonrit pre-Garangordos) without the support of the new Ompalam cult.
>
> > I was using p42 of Revealed Mythologies:
This is what started me off on this campaign idea.
. Secondly Seventeen is too
> big and unwieldy number and I would have chosen Five.
Seventeen is too big for an RPG as well. I see the 17 split into a few groups or factions, of which only the first need to start of in Laskal:
Garangordos, his mother Aininlahay,the shaman Mandakusour, Galagorib, El Jazuli and Bendaluza.
Then one could encounter (and recruit) the extras along the way, perhaps as an episode Chouanaibos, Echeklihos, Zienbeski - I'd have these be met in Dumanaba, perhaps with Echeklihos "She on the boat of splendor" having some position of power in the raft city, while Chouanaibos could be a guide into the wilderlands.
Abdamedric, Malubadou, Mouladehas, Tenoarpesas - these guys seem to have skills; smelting, alchemy, fighting, priest, and I'd be tempted to make them come from Garguna, or Thinokos.
Lohanasen, Alakhainas, Abalibost, Lalliminou, Udayankos - could come from anywhere in Fonrit or Laskal.
> Garangordos should be trying to recreate a great rite that
> hasn't been performed for centuries (just as the Princes of the Ten
> Tests were reviving the ancient Dara Happan Empire - they weren't
> perverting the existing knowledge). That gives him a motivation to
> travel all around Fonrit.
That makes sense as a story hook too - to do this rite you need a)cross the Baruling river b) find a MacGuffin in the tunnels of the hungry goddess, c) defeat the miniature gargoyle plague coming out of Vralos d) unite the cults of Darleester and Ikaadz etc. ....
> Why is he travelling to Fonrit? For example, Garangordos had a
> particular enemy in the Yellow Elves. He started off in Laskal. Yet
> instead wiping out the elves of his homeland of Laskal before moving
> onto Fonrit as most people would have done, he moves to Fonrit and wipes
> out the elves there. It seems to me that his folks were in exile.
Yes - exiles, refugees, economic migrants, rather than a conquering army. Perhaps the view was that it would be possible to wipe out the elves of Fonrit while the rest of the Jungle just goes on, apparently forever, so Fonrit would make sense in that context.
Thanks for your feedback Peter.
Keith
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