Subject: MYSTARA-L Digest - 12 Jun 2003 to 13 Jun 2003 (#2003-154) From: Automatic digest processor Date: 14/06/2003, 17:00 To: Recipients of MYSTARA-L digests Reply-to: Mystara RPG Discussion There are 12 messages totalling 589 lines in this issue. Topics of the day: 1. X10 - Red Arrow, Black Shield - Miissing info! SPOILERS! 2. X10 - Red Arrow, Black Shield - Miissing info! SPOILERS! (2) 3. X10 - Red Arrow, Black Shield 4. [Mystara] Evilish Masters of Brun (3) 5. ideas on the haunted mansion in Glantri City 6. Mystara relation to real world cultures (4) ******************************************************************** 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: Fri, 13 Jun 2003 13:27:21 +0300 From: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Ville_V_L=E4hde?= Subject: Re: X10 - Red Arrow, Black Shield - Miissing info! SPOILERS! My solution to the story-related problems of X10 was to move X4 and X5 to distant history, 500 years ago. We never played them, but the First Nomad War was hinted at in many handouts years and years before I took out X10. So, the Master was defeated the first time around 500 AC - and the Crystal Dagger was created for that! An alliance of Elves, Halflings and Humans defeated Hosadus's incarnation of that time, but didn't manage to destroy the Soul Gem of Thanatos. Hosadus's allies (Thanatos cultists) hid the Soul Gem to await better times, that is the incarnation of Hosadus around 1012 AC (X10 IMC). "The Good Guys" hid the pieces of the Dagger to Alfheim, Shires (the temple was a tomb of a good cleric originally) and the Soul Gem was given to safekeeping to a Lizard man priest in Malpheggi. IMC also the PCs got hints about the history, so the pieces of the dagger didn't just happen to fall into their hands. Also, the Glantrians were surprised when the PCs found the first part, and Laran/Jherek had to do a lot of research to find out its significance. At the same time, attempts to find info using Commune etc. were stunted by Thanatos. Ville ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 13 Jun 2003 12:58:42 +0100 From: Mark Alexander Bertenshaw Subject: Re: X10 - Red Arrow, Black Shield - Miissing info! SPOILERS! ----- Original Message ----- From: "Ville V Lähde" To: Sent: Friday, June 13, 2003 11:27 AM Subject: Re: [MYSTARA] X10 - Red Arrow, Black Shield - Miissing info! SPOILERS! > My solution to the story-related problems of X10 was to move X4 and X5 to > distant history, 500 years ago. We never played them, but the First Nomad > War was hinted at in many handouts years and years before I took out X10. > > So, the Master was defeated the first time around 500 AC - and the Crystal > Dagger was created for that! An alliance of Elves, Halflings and Humans > defeated Hosadus's incarnation of that time, but didn't manage to destroy > the Soul Gem of Thanatos. Hosadus's allies (Thanatos cultists) hid the > Soul Gem to await better times, that is the incarnation of Hosadus around > 1012 AC (X10 IMC). "The Good Guys" hid the pieces of the Dagger to > Alfheim, Shires (the temple was a tomb of a good cleric originally) and > the Soul Gem was given to safekeeping to a Lizard man priest in Malpheggi. > > IMC also the PCs got hints about the history, so the pieces of the dagger > didn't just happen to fall into their hands. Also, the Glantrians were > surprised when the PCs found the first part, and Laran/Jherek had to do a > lot of research to find out its significance. At the same time, attempts > to find info using Commune etc. were stunted by Thanatos. > > Ville I like this idea - it seems more "Lord of the Rings". When it comes down to it, the "Known World" has never really had any Sauron type figure, and that would fit the bill. -- Mark Bertenshaw ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 13 Jun 2003 17:51:57 +0200 From: Jacob Skytte Subject: Re: X10 - Red Arrow, Black Shield Mark Alexander Bertenshaw wrote: > On my copy, the Generic City Chase Flow Chart (pg. 7), and the Sayr = Ulan map > (pg. 29) for that matter are missing letters and numbers, as described = on > pg. 3. Now, the letters you can make a pretty good guess at (left to = right, > top to bottom), but the location of the numbers aren't clear at all. = And as > well as that, I suspect that there is supposed to be some other text - = maybe > directions, since it is not obvious how you are supposed to described = the > alternative paths the PCs are able to take at each intersection. Can = anybody > enlighten me? The Akesoli City Chase Flow Chart is identical to the one in DA4: The = Duchy of Ten. The 10 numbers are, in that adventure module, located in = the following locations (which you correctly assume are lettered from = left to right, top to bottom): Q: 1 V: 2 W: 3 Y: 4 Z: 5 T: 6 S: 7 8 is missing (I placed it in J). F: 9 C: 10 But there is nor eason to place the numbers in those partiocular fields, = as they are just 10 randomly placed numbers. Nothing else is missing. There aren't supposed to be directions - those = are mixed winding/straight streets that happen to intersect at various = points. It's not an orderly thing. You can say things like, "Slightly to = the left of the street you just came from runs a narrow alley that seems = to twist as it goes. Opposite from that is Kirk's Corner, a street that = turns so sharply that a passing coach almost topples as it speeds down = that way." Then make notes at the appropriate roads "narrow alley", = "Kirk's Corner." That's the beauty of the Flow Chart - it lets you make = things up as you go and take small notes for future reference. Saves you = from making up the whole city in detail ahead of time, since players = will only be interested in certain locations anyway. Jacob Skytte scythe@wanadoo.dk ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 13 Jun 2003 18:08:56 +0200 From: Bertrand Lhoyez Subject: Re: X10 - Red Arrow, Black Shield - Miissing info! SPOILERS! ---------------------------- I like this idea - it seems more "Lord of the Rings". When it comes down to it, the "Known World" has never really had any Sauron type figure, and that would fit the bill. ----------------------------- Well, i disagree on this point (if you allow me). Mystara do not lacks "Sauron type figure". There are plenty of them but i agree just a few are plainly described (remember X11 - Shadow lord - and what do u think of King Thar in the broken lands - and i'm sure we here can easily named a few other). Of course, it's difficult not making a parallel between "the lord of the rings" and "Red Arrow - Black shield". But it's one of the advantage of Mystara that there is not "one" "sauron-like" enemy to defeat, but many (if not many many :-) ). And the more you master Mystara, the more you see it's not oriented primary towards epic, but more towards ruling / leading / building / defending / ... . At least to my opinion. In a political way, it's more realistic (consider the size of the world, you better understand that hosadus is no so potent - while he is still embarrassing obviously). Having just one arch-enemy can be interesting, but in fact minimize the game possibilities. What after him being beaten (or winning if you play to his side) ? Even if you take into account Morgoth, well that only makes two adversaries (Vador / the emperor :-) ) which do not led to more possibilities, as the first is the minion of the second. In Mystara struggle do not center around one enemy but a plethora of personnalities which have conflicting interest. The emphase in Mystara world is, for me, the intricate policies of the world. Of course politics is not everything. Adventuring is important too. And the world is rich and various ... But in Mystara, you can have adventures which more easily impact global politics. Cause the game has a good part of it build for understand if not playing this. While i do really appreciate Middle Earth as a game settings, if you want to find a "Lord of the rings" feeling, you should better try MERP. This is more appropriate to epic against one great evil. This said, x4 x5 x10 are one of my best souvenirs (with x1 and b2) ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 13 Jun 2003 18:14:41 +0200 From: Bertrand Lhoyez Subject: [Mystara] Evilish Masters of Brun hi ! i propose to make a list of the more impressionning "sauron like figure" that lives in Brun (or around) or that you particulary use in your campaign Please distinguate immortals List of "Evilish masters of Brun" : Non-immortals Hosadus King thar Landryn Teriak (the shadow lord) ... Immortals Alphaks Bozdogan (loki) ... more to come ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 13 Jun 2003 18:38:45 +0200 From: =?iso-8859-1?q?Havard=20Faanes?= Subject: Re: [Mystara] Evilish Masters of Brun --- Bertrand Lhoyez skrev: > hi ! > > i propose to make a list of the more impressionning > "sauron like figure" > that lives in Brun (or around) or that you > particulary use in your campaign > > Please distinguate immortals > > List of "Evilish masters of Brun" : > > Non-immortals > > Hosadus > King thar > Landryn Teriak (the shadow lord) > ... Bargle Ludvig Von Hendriks Prince Morphail Kol (???) > Immortals > > Alphaks > Bozdogan (loki) > ... Hel Thanatos Orcus Demogorgon Arik etc etc... ______________________________________________________ Få den nye Yahoo! Messenger på http://no.messenger.yahoo.com/ Nye ikoner og bakgrunner, webkamera med superkvalitet og dobbelt så morsom ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 13 Jun 2003 13:24:43 EDT From: Alex Benson Subject: Re: ideas on the haunted mansion in Glantri City > Anyone ever come up with some plausible ideas on the haunted > mansion in Glantri City? > > It would have to be something powerful enough to deter even > a Glantrian prince, unless the whole thing was a hoax or another > Glantrian prince was behind it. Are you speaking of Solvan Manor in the Noble Quarter? If so, I had it involved in my M-PS project. That project basically introduced Planescape races, creatures, and plotlines to Mystara. Alot of it had to deal with the relationship (or lack of) between Mystara and the multiverse and the role of Immortals as opposed to gods. I had the manor as the ancestral home of the Solvan Clan, an old Glantrian family of renown merchantile talent and magical ability. The problems began when the third borne son made a pact with a fiend to remove his older siblings and give him the business and magical savvy to lead the family. He was a duntz and really did not stand a chance alone. Anyway, the son assumes the role as family head. Business prospers. He becomes a renown mage. He marries a socialite, furthering the family fortune and stature. He has children. Life is good....well until the fiend appears and tells him that the time approaches for him to live up to his end of the bargain (soul). I figured that fiends would relish the chance to soil the state of bliss by reminding the son of his impending commitement. The son scrambles to save himself from his part of the pact. He ignores the family's business interests and spends it funds to find a means out of the contract. He finally finds a cleric prepared to place protective wards throughout the manor to protect him from the fiend. The day arrives and the firend appears before the son and is held at bay by the wards. Bolstered by the wards, the son rebukes the fiend's claim. The fiend leaves. The following years see the fiend's influence dissapear and the son become a veritable prisoner within the safety of the manor. The family biusiness fails. The son's children are killed in a series of duals, accidents, etc. Neglected by his paranoia, his beloved wife runs off with a mysterious suitor. The son breaksdown and slays the rest of the family. The fiend appears and chastises him for attempting to break the deal. The fiend had sent a minion to pose as the cleric. The wards were fake. The fiend had engineered the family's demise. The wife was seduced by the fiend. (Their offspring plays a role in M-PS). The fiend shows the wards' true purpose. They are a powerful enchantments, turning the Manor into a trap for souls. Those perishing inside appear as spirits unable to leave, bound to the house until collected by the fiend. Until then they wander its halls tormenting those that enter, adding those that they slay to their own ranks. The son does not get off so easy. The fiend leaves him alive though trapped within the manor. The spirits of his family and servants haunt him until he dies broken and insane. The son's soul was bound to the Blood War based on his actions. The pact insured that the participating fiend got him. However, the real boon was the manor as a means to collect souls. In the years since, the manor has swelled its ranks of trapped souls, gaining a reputations as being haunted. In my M-PS project, the fiend sends a group of tiefling mercenaries to Glantri to collect on a several pacts. They are also there to take a break from the Blood War, settling in Glantri because it seems more open to magical races and because they scorn clerics. These tieflings are to deactivate the wards and initiate the transfer of these trapped souls to the Lower Planes. Coincidentally, one of their number is the offspring of the son's wife and the mysterious lover. She is a tiefling and has a claim to the manor as a member of the family. They offer to clear the manor of its "ghosts" in exchange for a eased transition of the manor into their possession. Suspicious, the Glantrians dictate that the tieflings must hire adventurers to clear it. The Glantrians suspect that the tieflings can use some of their planar talents to clear the manor. Anyway, there's more to it than this summarized version. I have the rough files somewhere around here. I lost alot of my Mystara works in a recent HD crash. I am currently redoing my lost Divergan materials. Among other projects the M-PS is on my "to do" list. As always, real life is not helping much either. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 13 Jun 2003 20:38:42 +0200 From: Richard Eckart Subject: Mystara relation to real world cultures Hi folks I'm starting to play on Mystara again and I was goolgeing for some reference which relates Mystaran cultures to real world cultures. To be short: I didn't find much. I now present you with a little list, please feel free to add to it. Alfheim: no real world equivalent Darokin: Italy, Genua Ethengar: Mongolian Haldis (people originally from the land now called Heldannic Freeholds): maybe Kelts? Glantri City: Gothic venice Karameikos: Rumenian/Slavic Ostland: Wikings Nouvell Averoigne (Glanti): Gothic french Rockhome: no real world equivalent Soderfjord: more tolerant Wikings Thyatis: Roman with some German charakteritics, Hattians seem like warlike Bavarians (from Bavaria in Germany) to me. Vestland: more tolerant Wikings Ylaruam (Alaysian): Arabs Wendar: Wales in England with Elves living there? Hmm... lots of Wikings ;) Btw. Ylaruam can't be a very hot desert, can it? The clima zones on Mystara seem very twisted. -- Richard Eckart ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 13 Jun 2003 14:59:15 -0500 From: Stone Marshall Subject: Re: [Mystara] Evilish Masters of Brun

STOP MORE SPAM with the new MSN 8 and get 2 months FREE* ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 13 Jun 2003 23:42:34 +0200 From: Eyal Fleminger Subject: Re: Mystara relation to real world cultures Haldis - I think these are similar to early Germanic tribes Sind - India Atruaghin Tribes - Amerindians And you forgot an obvious one: Thyatis - Imperial Rome -----Original Message----- Hi folks I'm starting to play on Mystara again and I was goolgeing for some reference which relates Mystaran cultures to real world cultures. To be short: I didn't find much. I now present you with a little list, please feel free to add to it. Alfheim: no real world equivalent Darokin: Italy, Genua Ethengar: Mongolian Haldis (people originally from the land now called Heldannic Freeholds): maybe Kelts? Glantri City: Gothic venice Karameikos: Rumenian/Slavic Ostland: Wikings Nouvell Averoigne (Glanti): Gothic french Rockhome: no real world equivalent Soderfjord: more tolerant Wikings Thyatis: Roman with some German charakteritics, Hattians seem like warlike Bavarians (from Bavaria in Germany) to me. Vestland: more tolerant Wikings Ylaruam (Alaysian): Arabs Wendar: Wales in England with Elves living there? Hmm... lots of Wikings ;) Btw. Ylaruam can't be a very hot desert, can it? The clima zones on Mystara seem very twisted. -- Richard Eckart ******************************************************************** 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: Sat, 14 Jun 2003 00:19:20 +0200 From: =?US-ASCII?Q?Andres_Piquer_Otero?= Subject: Re: Mystara relation to real world cultures Some more for the list: Some TSR source (X1 I think) says specifically that the Heldannic Freeholds (pre-Hattian invasion) are moulded after middle-ages Iceland. I would not make Wendar Wales... where are the Celtic elements you spotted?? IMHO the whole Wendar-Denagoth area is a small tribute to a Middle-Earth style setting, so no connection with Earth (excepting for the heavy influence of Norse and Celtic elements in Tolkien's own work). The Celtic populations of Mystara are in Northern Davania and in parts of the Isle of Dawn (Caerdwicca, Furmenglaive) Somebody else made some analogy between the three Northern Reaches countries and Denmark / Sweden and Norway (according to how much of urbanization and Christian "civilization" came to them). Jennites are specifically inspired by Scythian civilization Sorry, but when you say Hattians = Bavarians, I guess you meant Prusians (that's the German war-like cliche) Klantyre is Scotland Belcadiz is southern Spain (you don't get much lace and flamenco in the north) Morlai-Malinbois is more like Provence than like the Versailles-France of Nouvelle Averoigne Caurenze is Renaissance Italy (Florence or Rome) well Glantrian principalities are quite obvious... Hule is hard to put down, as it's a huge territory, some of the names and images look quite Turkish to me, but other elements (like the "Desert Nomads" themselves) have some Caucasic / Iranian feeling. Alphatia is inspired by RW Atlantis legends... though I cannot help feeling that the designers got a lot of ideas from Moorcock's Melnibone. Then, some things are quite anomalous and funny: 1) Glantri city feels a lot like a flooded New York 2) Darokin, despite the Italian mercantile city air, looks a lot like the USA (at least the 13 oldest states) of the 1st mid-19th century, both in some political attitudes, territory government system and some puns on architectural designs, street names in Darokin City, etc... even DC (Darokin City) sounds like a small pun of Washington _DC_. 3) Shadow Elves are definitely "Biblical" in their outlook: their traves, Rafiel's Commandments of Stone, etc... have a clear Exodus inspiration. Andres ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 13 Jun 2003 20:31:02 -0400 From: Dan Eustace Subject: Re: Mystara relation to real world cultures > Thyatis: Roman with some German charakteritics, Hattians seem like > warlike Bavarians (from Bavaria in Germany) to me. Thyatis also has alot of Byzantine aspects to it. The Hattians and Heldannic Knghts are definitely Germannic. Many of the Savage Coast nations are Spanish and/or Portuguese (Savage Baronies), plus Eusdria is Germannic, Robrenn is Celtic, Cimarron is the American West, Renardie is French, Bellayne is English. There are others, too. The Pearl Islanders and/or Makai seem Hawaiian/Polynesian to me. Ochalea is China, but it's location is generally thought to be a poor fit. There are quite a few RW references in the HW (Aztecs, Egyptians, Greeks, etc.) > Btw. Ylaruam can't be a very hot desert, can it? The clima zones on > Mystara seem very twisted. Yes, Bruce Heard addressed this in an old Dragon issue, claiming that a "micro-climate" with a regional connection to the Plane of Fire made Ylaruam significantly hotter than normal for that lattitude. What do people think of Ierendi and Minrothad? Any other parallels? ------------------------------ End of MYSTARA-L Digest - 12 Jun 2003 to 13 Jun 2003 (#2003-154) ****************************************************************