Subject: MYSTARA-L Digest - 22 Jan 2004 to 25 Jan 2004 (#2004-24) From: Automatic digest processor Date: 26/01/2004, 19:00 To: Recipients of MYSTARA-L digests Reply-to: Mystara RPG Discussion There are 4 messages totalling 508 lines in this issue. Topics of the day: 1. Small update to my Taymoran project 2. History of the Dwarven Race - Dwarves of the Second Age (revised) 3. History of the Dwarven Race - Dwarves of the Third Age 4. For Sale: Darokin/Alfheim/Azca/Nithia/Milenian/Red Steel/Amber ******************************************************************** 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: Sun, 25 Jan 2004 12:47:39 +0100 From: =?iso-8859-1?q?la=20Volpe?= Subject: Re: Small update to my Taymoran project > Wererats Are not wererats in fact rats that can change into humans, and not viceversa? If I remember correctly this could be an issue... Iulius Sergius Scaevola Captain of the XXth Cohort Port Lucinius, Thyatis ______________________________________________________________________ Yahoo! Mail: 6MB di spazio gratuito, 30MB per i tuoi allegati, l'antivirus, il filtro Anti-spam http://it.yahoo.com/mail_it/foot/?http://it.mail.yahoo.com/ ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 25 Jan 2004 13:06:00 +0100 From: =?iso-8859-1?q?la=20Volpe?= Subject: History of the Dwarven Race - Dwarves of the Second Age (revised) A revision of this article (thanks to Giampaolo Agosta) before I move on to the next installments. The only update is the fact that I haven't provided the name of the other dwarven clans. I'll explain this better in the next installment. Anyway, it's not meant to be read if you already have; it's more for Shawn that he can use it for the Vaults. HISTORY OF THE DWARVEN RACE 2. DWARVES OF THE SECOND AGE At the time of the Rain of Fire, all dwarven colonies near Blackmoor were immediately destroyed.(1) According to the few remained chronicles, for years the dust clouds that were raised shaded the sun and made the temperature drop. The dust brought skin-affecting diseases and cancer, that fell upon the Dwarves and their neighbours. In order to flee from sure death, Dwarves begun to build homes underground, and thus developed their first skills in mining and underground engineering too. In those years, Rockhome's climate was beginning to change toward ice-age: the mountains were always covered with ice and the dwarven agricoltural skills were failing. Dwarves lost gradually contact with their neighbours, human and humanoid races became extinct, disappeared or fled from the Known World. Little use to the Dwarves were the friendship they matured with another race, the Gnomes, around 2900 BC. Gnomes are believed to be related to Dwarves, and moreover both races revered the Immortals Kagyar (whom the Gnomes also call Karl) and Garalin (whom Gnomes call Garl or Garal). In the end, after wars for survival had wiped out all the last traces of culture, only Dwarves remained, in the regions near Rockhome, apart from the Gnomes, who were settled in the area now known as Northern Reaches. The diseases continued to harass the dwarven race: even if the climate, around 2500 BC, had slowly begun to revert to normal, most children were stillborn, or bore deformities, and many Dwarves were born sterile. Around 2000 BC, only some ten-thousand Dwarves were present, and the race was facing the risk of total annihilation, of extinction. Most knowledge of their past had disappeared with their past greatness; in a desperate move to avoid ultimate oblivion, clinching to their art and their existance as the testimony of a race condemned to death, the Dwarves begun to compile extremely precise and definite genealogies of their families and clans, descriptions of their activites and history, while living their desperate lives. However, one of the six surviving Dwarven Clans, the Hrukats, got in touch with the Dark Elves. The Dark Elves had been enemies of the Dwarves in the past. They were servitors of the Father of Demons, and lived north of Rockhome. The Hrukats Clan was in charge of the fortresses in the north that had been built to repel the Dark Elves in the past. The Hrukats were proud and noble, and had always defeated the enemies of the dwarven race, defending the other Clans from the threats in the north. After the defeat of the Dark Elves, the Hrukats had remained to guard the passes of the north, waiting for an enemy that for a long time didn't show again. Four centuries after the last battle, the Dark Elves returned. After long years of decadence and desolation, the Hrukats had mostly forgotten about them and their adoration of the Father of Demons. So the Dark Elves pretended to offer a truce and an aid to the Hrukats. Although the Hrukats King expelled the Dark Elves, he secretly arranged to have some meetings to discuss the matter. The Father of Demons was an obscure divinity. According to the ancient dwarven mythology, he had fathered some of the most foul of creatures: Garm, the Devourer of the Sun; the Midgardwurm, a monstrous demonic snake; and Fenris the Wolf. Later on, the Vikings would identify the Father of Demons with Loki, although currently the dwarven clerics suggest that the Father of Demons was none other than Orcus. The Dark Elves told their necromantic arts to the Hrukats, promising the King that these arts would slow and prevent the decline of his people. The King and his counselors and closer relatives became thus, secretly, powerful necromancers. In the beginning, they used their spells to halt and then erase the diseases from the population: but Evil always corrupts who uses its powers, and in the end the Hrukats leaders became tainted by Evil, isolating the Clan from their brethren in the south. The dark arts tainted the heart and sould of the dwarven necromancers, madness spread and the cult of the Father of Demons spread too, openly. Most of the population, having been denied any contact with the other Dwarves, forced to live always in the depths of the earth, ruled by necromancers, became apathetic and indifferent, while instigators at the service of the Dark Elves spoke against Kagyar and Garalin, and told the Dwarves that their patrons were to be blamed for their condition, as they had forgotten their race and left them to suffer in the claws of Evil. Around 1900 BC, the southern Dwarves begun to see clearly what was happening, and started to plan a way to expel all Hrukats from Rockhome (2). However, given the necromantic arts of their rulers, that had halted diseases and sterility, the Hrukats counted the same number as all the other clans together.(3) Called Morkwarf ("dark dwarves") by their own breathren, the most impious among the Hrukats rulers planned an attack against their own race, allied with the Dark Elves, with whom they forged five cursed weapons, each built appositely to be used against each remaining dwarven Clan. A group of dissident Hrukats were able to discover the plot and managed to convince the other Dwarves that something dangerous was happening and that they had to move before the Morkwarf did. The Dwarves held a Council (1812 BC). Here they decided to attack immediately, before the Hrukats were ready, hoping in a spontaneous revolt among the Hrukats population. However, the intransigent nature of the dwarven race, and the malice spread by the followers of the Dark Elves (whose purpose was to destroy the whole dwarven race, like the Father of Demons wanted), had caused most of the population to actually hate and despise their southern cousins because they believed that they had been indifferent to their fate before, and now only desired to conquer and destroy them, blaming the whole Hrukats Clan for what was just the responsability of their rulers (and of their gods, moreover). The dwarven attack was extremely hard. The five Clans strangled the Hrukats in a long siege, that went on for six years. The Hrukats were suddenly abandoned by their allies, the Dark Elves, and the Morkwarf had to crush internal revolts in blood-bathes. In the end, the Dark Elves had nearly obtained their goal, as the dwarven population had nearly halved itself with the long and bloody, cruel, war, and the race was near extinction. Desperate, the Necromancer-King of the Hrukats surrendered (1806 BC). (4) Hate between the two dwarven factions was at its peak. Both had suffered terrible hardships; the life of Dwarves in the last thousand years had just been suffering and desperation. Almost bursting in tears, the Morkwarf-King of the Hrukats, the son of the Dwarf who had allied himself with the Dark Elves, shouted his wrath against the southern Dwarves, that he considered simply put jealous of the achievements of his necromantic comrades: they had relieved the Hrukats from the curse and disease of Blackmoor, from sterility, and to do so they hadn't esitated to use any means. Crippled, suffering and debilitated because of the dwarven race disease, the general of the dwarven army, Commander Tor, showed his plagues and his sore body to the bounded Morkwarf and proclaimed: "In no way shall the Dwarven race be consumed and tormented by the Disease of the Soul, even when this shall mean be consumed and tormented by the Disease of the Body! So, all Dwarves who stipulated the insane alliance with the Forces of Evil and the Dark Elves and the Father of Demons will not be Dwarves anymore! And their name will be removed from the Clans Cronichles. The Hrukats Clan is dead, it doesn't exist anymore. But you surrendered, so we will leave your people to leave our land. However, you and your batmen are sentenced to death, in the name of Kagyar and Garalin." So the survivors of the Hrukats Clan left Rockhome and moved, in shame, east to the mountains at the border between Rockhome and the lands of the Gnomes. The pride of the Dwarves of the five Clans moved the heart of Kagyar the Artisan, the Immortal who had always loved the Dwarves. Kagyar has never wanted to interfer with the lives of mortals: he is a respectful divinity, who wants to leave mortals free to choose and live their lives, according to their laws, and not as pawns of the Immortals. But in that time, the only time in the history of Mystara, Kagyar stepped in and acted, saving the Dwarves. In 1800 BC he sent them Denwarf, a Dwarf with great powers, that would guide them and save them from death. Denwarf was the First Cleric of the Dwarves. (5) He cured the Dwarves of their diseases and brought to them the secrets of the earth and fire that Kagyar and Garalin themselves had taught him. (6) DM NOTES: (1) At this time there were approximately 2 millions of Dwarves. (2) This is, again, a false memory provided by Kagyar. The ancestral lands of the Dwarves were the Northern Reaches, and most Dwarves lived on the eastern side of the Rockhome/Vestland border mountains. (3) At this time, there were about 30'000 Dwarves, 13'000 of which belonged to the Hrukats Clan. (4) At this time, there were about 8'000 Dwarves, 3'000 of which belonged to the Hrukats Clan. In fact, not all Dwarves that "disappeared" had died in the war; a group of 4'000 southern Dwarves had been preserved in stasis by Kagyar and Garalin and put to sleep in the caves of Rockhome, while the two Immortals were discussing with Ka and the Hollow World Council how to move them to the Hollow World to become the Kogolor Dwarves. (5) This could be a "false memory" of the Dwarves. Anyway, being Kagyar and Garalin so aloof and silent for so many years before, this could be a possibility to explain it. Kagyar was so "uninterfering" (à la Benekander) that he didn't even provide spells to his worshippers! (6) At this point, there should be about 5'000 Dwarves. According to GAZ6, the original Dwarves were 500, but they are way too few, in my opinion, to rise in 400 years to the metheoritic number of 125'000 Dwarves... ______________________________________________________________________ Yahoo! Mail: 6MB di spazio gratuito, 30MB per i tuoi allegati, l'antivirus, il filtro Anti-spam http://it.yahoo.com/mail_it/foot/?http://it.mail.yahoo.com/ ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 25 Jan 2004 14:52:20 +0100 From: =?iso-8859-1?q?la=20Volpe?= Subject: History of the Dwarven Race - Dwarves of the Third Age HISTORY OF THE DWARVEN RACE 3. DWARVES OF THE THIRD AGE It is said that Kagyar created Denwarf from a rock (1). Thus, the Dwarves thank Kagyar claiming that they were "born from rock, born by Kagyar, born to the world in those days of death and danger and silence" (2); thus, the Dwarves that were helped by Kagyar and Denwarf call themselves Denwarf, that means Rockborn. Dwarves never speak about things that happened before the advent of Denwarf, and will never reveal this part of their history to any non-Dwarf (exceptions are extremely rare, and are only true and longtime friends of the dwarven race). This secret is so important that never did a Dwarf reveal it to anyone (not worthy); even the most empious and traitor among them will never ever even THINK about revealing it. Denwarf was the first King of the Denwarf Dwarves, and ruled justly a long time, bringing the dwarven race to an age of peace and prosperity. An intransigent and harsh King, he was respected more than loved. He guided the Dwarves in a careful project of planned growth of the population and careful exploration of the mountains around their homes, that hadn't been in their control since a long time; they slowly expanded their colonies and opened new mines in the region, regaining control of their land, that with their decline had been occupied by barbaric tribes of goblinoids (3). The Dwarves soon learned to hate Orcs, Goblins and Kobolds, creatures that lacked any artistic sense and form of civilization and culture; soon conflicts arose, and those conflicts saw the Dwarves victorious over their enemies, that were forced to leave the mountains. Last of those who were repelled were the Orcs: this marked the start of a hate that would never end. When the Dwarves occupied the mountains and started to build new communities and colonies, Denwarf assured himself that he only could confirm the community leaders and town majors in their position, and ordered all communities to send him a representative. In this way he created the basis for the current government system of Rockhome, and of the Senate. But even Dwarves grow old, and the Dwarf Master felt that his body was weakening after long years of peace and prosperity under his rule. He went into the forge, and made himself a new body of rock and steel, so that he could guide his people for coming centuries as well. But Kagyar spoke to him then and said: "Are you not happy with the body that I have given you? Seek you to improve on the work of your Master?" And Denwarf answered: "Forgive me lord, for it is not arrogance that has lead me to do this work. But is it not an apprentice's task to learn from his master?" Kagyar answered: "Very well. You will have this new-forged body, but for now you must leave, and allow younger Dwarves to rule themselves." Then the legends of the Dwarves say that Kagyar added: "I will let you return to the Dwarves when it is once again need for you among them." The Hurwarf Clan especially backs this legend, pretending it's true, while, hesitantly, some others (like the Everast) say "after all it's just a legend" (4). Denwarf had discovered a great system of dungeons under Mount Everast. He gave the name of Dengar ("rockhome") to the caves and told his followers to build there their capital. Then he choose as heir a Dwarf of the Everast family, prophetized his return and left his kingdom for the dark caverns under Dengar (5). The communities had changed from small families to big families, from villages to cities. In 1400 BC, the Dwarves had almost reached 125'000 units, and the race was healthy and safe from extinction. But their past history had changed their way of living dramatically: removed for centuries from all other sentient races (bar the Gnomes), having suffered any sort of hardship and desperation, the Dwarves had developed their taciturn and stubborn attitude. The fear for the fate of their race, threatened by the folly of Humans and Elves, and by the contact with violent and barbaric Orcs and Goblins, made them suspicious of all other races. It's also for this that the Dwarves write long and accurate genealogies, with whom any Denwarf can trace her roots back to the few survivors that had been visited by Denwarf and saved by the love of Kagyar and Garalin. The dwarven legends say that "Denwarf had seven retainers; these became the Dwarven Lords, founders of the greater Clans" (6), but Denwarf Dwarves know that this isn't true (7). When Denwarf founded the new dwarven nation, he forged, with the help of some apprentices, the first three Forges of Power. These three he gave to the most important and influential families: the Everast and Torkrest that followed Denwarf to Dengar; and the Skarrad of Smaggeft. Most of the smaller families allied themselves to these three, effectively giving birth to the structure of the dwarven Clans as they are known today. The legend of the seven retainers is very popular, and is considered true outside of the Dwarves, among Humans and Elves, as an example. However, Dwarves are not so secretive about this legend, and the truth may be found studying the dwarven genealogies with the help of a friendly dwarven sage. NOTES (1) Denwarf in dwarvish means: born from (warf) rock (den). (2) Translated from dwarven poetry: "dènwarf, k'àrwarf, gò'rwarf / ì karrdag à h'kardag à stildag". (3) In fact, the ancestral home of the Dwarves were the Northern Reaches, but Kagyar gave them false memories of having always lived in Rockhome (Aaron Allston, "Hollow World Boxed Set"). (4) Haavard Faanes, "Legends of the Dwarves". (5) Aaron Allaston, "Dwarves of Rockhome". (6) Haavard Faanes, "Legends of the Dwarves". (7) The Buhrodar and Hurwarf Clans, at the very least, were created later in dwarven history. See Aaron Allston, "Dwarves of Rockhome". ______________________________________________________________________ Yahoo! Mail: 6MB di spazio gratuito, 30MB per i tuoi allegati, l'antivirus, il filtro Anti-spam http://it.yahoo.com/mail_it/foot/?http://it.mail.yahoo.com/ ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 25 Jan 2004 14:39:05 -0700 From: Leroy Van Camp III Subject: For Sale: Darokin/Alfheim/Azca/Nithia/Milenian/Red Steel/Amber I am going through and cleaning out my game collection, getting rid of =20= a bunch of game stuff I will never use and is just taking up space. I =20= am putting a lot of stuff on eBay, but for some of this stuff I am =20 trying here first. Milenian Empire/Kingdom of Nithia/Sons of Azca ($15) These are the Gazetteer-style supplements for three Hollow World =20 nations. These are in near mint condition and include the maps, also in =20= near mint. I am selling these three as a lot. Red Steel ($7) This set includes the booklets, maps and box, but no CD (thus the low =20= price). I don't recall the CD being all that significant, though, =20 mostly being background music. The books are not quite near mint, but =20= very, very close (very minor shelf wear only). The maps are near mint. Mark of Amber ($7) This is everything=97including the CD=97but does not come in the = original =20 box. It is just about near mint, with only very minor shelf wear on the =20= booklet. Elves of Alfheim ($30) Yes, in (almost) all its glory. This is basically a spare (You didn't =20= think I would sell my only copy?) that I have had for some time. The =20 reason I am selling this here rather than eBay is that it does not have =20= the map. For many Mystara fans, this is less of a problem since they =20 may have other map resources (such as the Trail Maps). It is in overall =20= good condition. The outside cover shows signs of wear, with a crease on =20= the front left, but the booklet is in excellent condition, and the =20 middle insert is still intact, having never been removed. The Republic of Darokin ($15) A spare like Alfheim, it also does not have a map. The cover is in a =20 bit better condition, with no crease, though one of the booklets has a =20= light, small stain on the back. Like Alfheim, in good, overall =20 condition. Shipping and handling on these is $3 for media/book mail in the US, =20 except for Red Steel and Mark of Amber which is $4. I will ship =20 overseas, but the buyer will be responsible for all shipping costs. My preferred method of payment is PayPal, but I will accept money =20 orders from US buyers. All funds must be in US currency. All payments =20= must be received within 7 days of acknowledgment. For those who don't know me, feel free to check my eBay rating... Leroy Van Camp III malacoda@cableone.net ICQ #20039817 " We tend to scoff at the beliefs of the ancients. But we can't scoff =20= at them personally, to their faces, and this is what annoys me." ------------------------------ End of MYSTARA-L Digest - 22 Jan 2004 to 25 Jan 2004 (#2004-24) ***************************************************************