Subject: MYSTARA-L Digest - 14 May 2002 to 15 May 2002 (#2002-132) From: Automatic digest processor Date: 16/05/2002, 17:00 To: Recipients of MYSTARA-L digests Reply-to: Mystara RPG Discussion There are 5 messages totalling 148 lines in this issue. Topics of the day: 1. Malachie du Marais (3) 2. Savage Coast =... Madagascar? 3. Mystara Equipment Costs? ******************************************************************** The Other Worlds Homepage: http://www.wizards.com/dnd/OtherWorlds.asp The Mystara Homepage: http://www.dnd.starflung.com/ To unsubscribe, send email to LISTSERV@ORACLE.WIZARDS.COM with UNSUB MYSTARA-L in the body of the message. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 15 May 2002 17:33:37 +1000 From: Alfred O'Meagher Subject: Re: Malachie du Marais Maybe the people from Averoigne are touched with the blood of something inhuman that confers "long years" on them -- that would fit the mythos flavour of the averoigne tales. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 15 May 2002 17:53:18 +1000 From: Alfred O'Meagher Subject: Savage Coast =... Madagascar? Sounds like Earth has a few cinnabryl affected species also! : : "At least 12 new species of fish and coral have been found off = Madagascar. A survey of the Indian Ocean there even found one coral the colour of = blood which has never before been recorded. Local fishermen worked with scientists because they are concerned about = declining catches." [source: ANANOVA 15/5/02] ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 15 May 2002 17:33:23 -0400 From: Christopher M Cherrington Subject: Re: Mystara Equipment Costs? > For nations so close together and with no weird considerations > such as the Hollow World Spell of Preservation holding them > back, I would imagine that equipment availability is fairly > uniform. There would of course be some magic or special > items that are more expensive or even unavailable in places > other than those where they were manufactured, but it is a safe > bet that if PC merchants are looking for a major economic coup > anywhere in the Known World region, some crafty Darokinian > merchant probably already beat them to it. > > Other considerations are marketing of national products. Rockhome Axes could fetch double their price in Thyatis. They are not much different in quality, but because their dwarven made, they are more artistic. The same could be said for Alaysian Steeds, only a true horse lover would notice the subtle differences (this also opens the market to not so trustworthy merchants; charging double for authentic Glantrian wines, when they are really a simple Traladaran house wine). ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 15 May 2002 22:33:14 -0400 From: David Knott Subject: Re: Malachie du Marais From: "Giampaolo Agosta" > > (Malachie might be a different case, OTOH). Well, he is a werewolf -- and Dawn of the Emperors has a pair of werewolves on the Isle of Dawn who are each sixty years old but look thirty because of their lycanthropy. It thus seems likely that Malachie would have required no special aid to live an indefinite lifespan. Throw in the fact that several of Prince Etienne's relatives are werewolves, and you have a likely scenario for brining him to New Averoigne. Suppose that after the events of X2, Etienne decides to bring across as many wizardly allies as he can find from Old Averoigne, and his relatives offer suggestions of any other wizards that they know. In particular, those who are werewolves track down the wizards among the known werefolk and recommend that they be brought across (and they might have a special fondness for Malachie, who might have granted them a sort of immortality long before they would have acquired it otherwise under Etienne's influence). In that way Etienne would have brought across many Averoignese wizards, with a disproportionate number of them being werewolves as well. However, there is clearly something quite peculiar about the aging of the d'Ambreville family themselves that cannot be accounted for by Etienne's magic or by the transfer from Laterre to Mystara. The key person in this mystery is Etienne's mother's sister, Marie-Helene. She was a warrior, not a wizard, as was her husband. The fact that her sister was a wizard and that both of her two sons became wizards, however, indicates that she carried the genes for wizardly talent -- and I would guess that those genes gave her and the other d'Ambreville family members their extraordinary longevity. After all, she was all of 66 years old when Etienne created the gate that took the family from Laterre to Mystara, and furthermore she was severely wounded in the battle that they fought before they passed through the gate. Never- theless, she fully recovered in Mystara and lived there another 168 years before Etienne's curse affected her along with the other members of Etienne's family immediately after his murder. In any case, by 1012 AC she was 350 years old and did not look a day over forty, and there is no evidence that she ever suffered any major physical debilities from aging. The same seems to be true of most of the d'Ambreville family members to a lesser extent. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 16 May 2002 13:16:23 +1000 From: Alfred O'Meagher Subject: Re: Malachie du Marais I think the aging question and the genetic solution offered for it would be the basis for an excellent Power for 2e skills and powers or a Feat for 3e: D'AMBERVILLE BLOOD aka CHILD IN AMBER Requirements: Wisdom OR Constitution OR Intelligence of 15 or more, can only be chosen at time of character creation; may only be selected by a player whose character is human or of a race that can successfully interbreed with humans [Although not restricted to scions of the noble house of D'Amberville itself, this power of the bloodlines of Old Earth is often named such simply for convenience.] You are a descendent of an alien bloodline of wizards, witches, . This means that your metabolic rate is different from that of a normal human and as a consequence you age 5 times slower than a normal human. Additionally, when choosing to prestige class or multiclass in a magic-using or monstrous class, ONE prerequisite of the prestige class or true class that you wish to change to may be ignored, to reflect the alien powers of your bloodline. Those people possessed of this type of bloodline are frequently hunted by Blood Mages, Blackguards and evil Necromancers, who wish to win from the character the secrets of their alien genetic potential or simply sacrifice the character to their Dark Gods. ------------------------------ End of MYSTARA-L Digest - 14 May 2002 to 15 May 2002 (#2002-132) ****************************************************************