Subject: MYSTARA-L Digest - 4 Jan 2004 to 5 Jan 2004 (#2004-6) From: Automatic digest processor Date: 06/01/2004, 19:00 To: Recipients of MYSTARA-L digests Reply-to: Mystara RPG Discussion There are 18 messages totalling 558 lines in this issue. Topics of the day: 1. Ending of the Helskir story 2. Ships of the Karameikan Navy (5) 3. Atruaghin Languages? 4. Naval Terms (2) 5. Other Naval Titles (3) 6. Question about Darokin (2) 7. Extended Northmen Pantheon ver. 1.5 8. Where in the world is Rahasia? (3) ******************************************************************** 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: Mon, 5 Jan 2004 11:08:36 +0200 From: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Ville_V_L=E4hde?= Subject: Ending of the Helskir story Happy New Year to everyone. Hope you had a good time during the festivities. I've been reporting on the progress of the Helskir thief-storyline a few times. For those who are interested, here's the conclusion. In my last update I told about Yuri's and Ivan's plan to chase the Alpher secret agent mage with Locate Object spell. They had one on a scroll and one in a ring of spell storing. That didn't work well, as they didn't fare well in their "luck rolls" - meaning, they just started in the wrong direction and kept looking in wrong places.) (We use 3d6 as the Luck Roll. I have divides the results by the percentage chances to get a good trajectory with most of the rolls signifying "nothing special" and only a very few rolls signifying very bad/good luck. This is used in situations where the sills of the PCs and the choices of the players don't directly determine the outcome. Like: does the thief find a certain rare drug on the streets? Obviously a mere successful skill roll doesn't determine this, the luck roll is used to see whether success is possible at all, or to give modifiers to the roll. We also use the 3d6 result trajectory to determine results of 20/d20 in skill rolls and 1/d20 in battle rolls - "fumbles", that is. Result 9-12 means "nothing special", and the closer you get to 3 or 18 the worse the fumble gets. Thus you don't have a big failure with every 20 result in skills, that would be too big a percentage. An example: During long riding trips I have each player roll a riding skill - or a "default" roll which is a -4 attribute check for the respective skill, DEX -4 in this case - once per day. A failure means just that the PC rides slower than usual. In the case of result 20, the end result will usually be like a regular skill failure, but there is a small chance of extra trouble.) Back to Helskir: The next thing they did was that they decided to find out about the "inn" where the attack on them took place. (The storeroom that the Alphers had prepared for them.) They went to look for ownership information from the officials - a wholly unexpected move. After many surprising turns, they finally understood that "some powerful official faction" was behind the "inn" ambush. So finally they started to realize that 1) Janus wasn't Sokoban's men and 2) Janus might be either a competing mobster or an Alpher agent. They retreated to a tenement house to plan further. First they tried to find out about the prostitute-thief through whom they had attempted to send the note to Sokoban, and found out that she had disappeared. The extent to which they had been fooled was starting to dawn on them, and after some further developments (involving another dead body) "Janus" contacted them and simply told them that they wouldn't be left alone if they didn't finish off Sokoban. The Alpher Master agent realised that the initial plan to fool Yuri into attacking Sokoban had failed and resorted to more direct means. Well, in the end finding any information about Sokoban proved very difficult. I had drafted an open-ended adventure and decided to give them no "teasers" - they would have to devise the method themselves. Finally Yuri decided to lure Sokoban to him. He and Ivan simply started threatening the local merchants into giving them protection money and thus attracted Sokoban's attention. It still took a lot of time and effort to find one of the two humans who knew about the hideout of Sokoban the weretiger and his weretiger goons. Yuri managed to follow this human into his house and witness one of Sokoban's goons try to kill the poor man. The weretiger realised that their hideout was in danger of being revealed - in such a case Sokoban's orders were: "kill all our close contacts and retreat back to HQ, where we will wait for the situation to cool off". Well, Yuri managed to kill the weretiger, but unfortunately the human managed to escape. It was darn close to back to square one, but Ivan thought of searching the human's house thoroughly, and they indeed did find a hidden hatch to a tunnel that led to the weretigers' den. (I had decided this well beforehand.) Yuri and Ivan followed the tunnel to Sokoban's lair - and the Alphers followed their progress with Locate Object and Wizard Eye. There was a big battle during which the guys didn't fare very well. But the Alpher agents finally stormed the place and apprehended everybody inside. Conclusion: "Janus" forced Yuri into a sort of semi-employment by the Aplhatian Security - meaning that they can ask him to kill or rob someone without due compensation. Janus declared that if Yuri would refuse, they could destroy his organisation in Freiburg. This is actually true, since due some previous events they have copies of the accounts (legal and illegitimate) of Yuri's mechants's guils (a front for his thieving operation). Even better: during the battle Ivan was wounded badly (technically he died, but in a high-magic campaign I see a quick Raise dead-rescue like successful CPR). The Alphers saved him but also cast a GEAS on him. Now Ivan must obey the Vestland operative of Alphatian security! Needless to say, Ivan was a bit peeved with Yuri. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 5 Jan 2004 10:17:06 -0000 From: Colin Davidson Subject: Re: Ships of the Karameikan Navy > This also brings about a good point... are there > really only *8* ships in the entire navy? Or is that 8 > War Galleys and then a compliment of smaller ships? Or > are there other ships not officially part of the Royal > Navy that cooperate with them (ie Privateers)? There are likely to be a whole range of other vessels. For example, for protecting harbours you'd want some smaller, handy oared vessels (small galleys or longboats), you'd also want some seaworthy sailing vessels for exherting influence in the sea of dread, or it might be the case that with such tremendous naval power in their doorstep (Ierendi, Minrothad and Thyatis are all major sea powers) they choose solely to rely on oared vessels for coastal defense. Privateering is only really profitable if you're at war with someone; otherwise a privateer is nothing more than a pirate. I doubt whether Karameikos would have a cooperative pirate fleet of any real worth, considering the proximity of the mighty Minrothad Privateers Guild. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 5 Jan 2004 03:36:22 -0800 From: Andrew Theisen Subject: Atruaghin Languages? I think I may have asked this question here before, but I really don't remember. I've been going over the Atruaghin Clans gazetteer lately, and darned if I can't figure out where William Connors got the words for the Tiger Clan portion of the gaz. I've been able to deduce the languages he used for all the others based on a couple of words he threw in )(Horse Clan- Siouan; Turtle- Wakashan; Elk- Algic), but I can't figure out where he got the words he used in the Tiger Clan section (or in the Bear section, for that matter). Given that he used real world words for the other Clans- tipi, wampum, patshatl (different spelling than the Nootka word, but phonetically identical), I can't imagine he made them up. My first thought was that he might have used Nahuatl (Aztec) for the Tiger Clan, but the vocabularies don't match up. I've tried looking at a ton of Uto-Aztecan languages, but can't seem to find anything that matches exactly. Does anyone else have any ideas, or should I just assume he made up the words, and move on from there? ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 5 Jan 2004 08:58:41 -0500 From: Chris Cherrington Subject: Re: Ships of the Karameikan Navy Personally, I like the Traladaran names. Of course the pride of the fleet would have flagships with more Thyatian nomenclatures. I would suggest this fix, use both. Ruling Traladaran families would have had several ships handy to protect their harbors for trading. Stephan would not have disbanded these small ships and left all his harbors defenseless. More likely he would have purchased the best of 8 ships and put one or two at each port to “recruit” the current ships into the navy. Since the original Traladaran ships were not appropriated by naval funds, they are not listed as naval ships; but funded by Stephan as a “Coastal Watch” or Coast Guard. Of course the Royal Navy gets funding directly from the Duke, while the Coastal Watch receives funding indirectly through larger families and local barons, and has less allegiance to the admiralty (but in times of war, the admiralty will supply trained officers to advise the captains of ducal policy). ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 5 Jan 2004 09:28:06 -0500 From: Chris Cherrington Subject: Re: Ships of the Karameikan Navy Although having 8 ships to start a new Navy seems a bit small, so you had to have a larger fleet initially. Stephan could have had 4 more ships initially. 2 lost through battle, 1 mutinied (read “Black Pearl”), and 1 lost at sea (what was the name of the ghost ship in Thunder Rift? That would make it really lost!). There was also a Dungeon Magazine adventure that dealt with a sunken ship from Karameikos. The US names ships by class, Fast Attack Submarines are named after cities, Ohio classed subs are named after states, boomers are named after presidents, early diesel/nuclear subs were named after sport fish, et… (I only know about the subs) ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 5 Jan 2004 09:52:10 -0500 From: Chris Cherrington Subject: Naval Terms Here are some real world naval epithets (derived from one of the oldest Anglo-Saxon naval shanties “What do you do with a drunken sailor”… Put him in bed with the Captains daughter *the "captain's daughter" is the cat o'nine tails Make 'im kiss the gunner's daughter ** the "gunner's daughter" is being tied to the barrel of the cannon while they fire it four or five times. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 5 Jan 2004 09:53:04 -0500 From: Chris Cherrington Subject: Other Naval Titles Speaking of naming ships, what are the abbreviations on the front of Mystaran Naval ships? For example HMS Her Majesty’s Ship, HRN His Royal Navy. These titles need to be added to the front of every ship’s name. What would be appropriate for Thyatis, Alphatia, Minrothad, Ierendi, and all the others? Would reavers from Ostland use a modern convention (OS Odin’s Ship)? ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 5 Jan 2004 16:17:28 -0000 From: Colin Davidson Subject: Re: Ships of the Karameikan Navy ----- Original Message ----- From: "Chris Cherrington" To: Sent: Monday, January 05, 2004 2:28 PM Subject: Re: [MYSTARA] Ships of the Karameikan Navy > Although having 8 ships to start a new Navy seems a bit small, so you had to have a larger fleet initially. Stephan could have had 4 more ships initially. 2 lost through battle, 1 mutinied (read "Black Pearl"), and 1 lost at sea (what was the name of the ghost ship in Thunder Rift? That would make it really lost!). There was also a Dungeon Magazine adventure that dealt with a sunken ship from Karameikos. > The US names ships by class, Fast Attack Submarines are named after cities, Ohio classed subs are named after states, boomers are named after presidents, early diesel/nuclear subs were named after sport fish, et. (I only know about the subs) > But that's all a little bit dull :-) Ship names in the Royal Navy from the mid 18th century till about 1840 can be found at this site: http://www.cronab.demon.co.uk/INTRO.HTM ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 5 Jan 2004 16:27:40 -0000 From: Colin Davidson Subject: Re: Other Naval Titles ----- Original Message ----- From: "Chris Cherrington" To: Sent: Monday, January 05, 2004 2:53 PM Subject: [MYSTARA] Other Naval Titles > Speaking of naming ships, what are the abbreviations on the front of Mystaran Naval ships? For example HMS Her Majesty's Ship, HRN His Royal Navy. These titles need to be added to the front of every ship's name. What would be appropriate for Thyatis, Alphatia, Minrothad, Ierendi, and all the others? Would reavers from Ostland use a modern convention (OS Odin's Ship)? > In my campaign, the prfixes for military vessels are: Alphatia - Her/His Imperial Magestys (HIM) Thyatis - Imperial Service (IS) Minrothad - Guilds Ship (GS) Ierendi - Her/His Majestys Service (HMS) The Five Shires - Hin Naal (HN) Traldara (as Karameikos became in my game) - Traldaran Service (TS) The Northern Reaches do not use such a convention, but other nations refer to their ships as ON (Ostland Navy), VN (Vestland Navy) and SN (Soderfjiord Navy). Ylarum has little in the way of a naval force in my campaign, with few vessels other than coastal schooners and some galleys, nothing of note. Darokin maintains a small force (DS, Darokin Service) to ensure the freedom of trade and fishing in its Malpheggi ports. Sind protects its shipping likewise but hasn't got a coherent, formed navy of which to speak. Ships from further afield are less well defined in the Known World. Of course, non-warships don't use such nomeclature, but are still expected to carry a flag of origin and fly it when challenged. That doesn't mean that it's always the right flag that's flown... ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 5 Jan 2004 16:39:25 -0000 From: Colin Davidson Subject: Re: Naval Terms ----- Original Message ----- From: "Chris Cherrington" To: Sent: Monday, January 05, 2004 2:52 PM Subject: [MYSTARA] Naval Terms > Here are some real world naval epithets (derived from one of the oldest Anglo-Saxon naval shanties "What do you do with a drunken sailor". > > Put him in bed with the Captains daughter > *the "captain's daughter" is the cat o'nine tails > > Make 'im kiss the gunner's daughter > ** the "gunner's daughter" is being tied to the barrel > of the cannon while they fire it four or five times. Also of interest might be this glossary of naval terms from the age of sail: http://www.psych.su.oz.au/vbb/woronora/maritime/Glossary.html ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 5 Jan 2004 08:31:51 -0800 From: Daniel Gioffre Subject: Re: Ships of the Karameikan Navy I'm not sure if someone mentioned this already, but the cutout counters in GAZ4 have lists of the names of Karameikan navy vessels. -Dan --- Colin Davidson wrote: > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Chris Cherrington" > To: > Sent: Monday, January 05, 2004 2:28 PM > Subject: Re: [MYSTARA] Ships of the Karameikan Navy > > > > Although having 8 ships to start a new Navy seems > a bit small, so you had > to have a larger fleet initially. Stephan could > have had 4 more ships > initially. 2 lost through battle, 1 mutinied (read > "Black Pearl"), and 1 > lost at sea (what was the name of the ghost ship in > Thunder Rift? That > would make it really lost!). There was also a > Dungeon Magazine adventure > that dealt with a sunken ship from Karameikos. > > The US names ships by class, Fast Attack > Submarines are named after > cities, Ohio classed subs are named after states, > boomers are named after > presidents, early diesel/nuclear subs were named > after sport fish, et. (I > only know about the subs) > > > > But that's all a little bit dull :-) > > Ship names in the Royal Navy from the mid 18th > century till about 1840 can > be found at this site: > http://www.cronab.demon.co.uk/INTRO.HTM > > ******************************************************************** > 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. > __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Find out what made the Top Yahoo! Searches of 2003 http://search.yahoo.com/top2003 ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 5 Jan 2004 08:38:51 -0800 From: Thibault Sarlat Subject: Question about Darokin i know that Darokin has very few coasts, but it seems strange to me that they have never tried to make attempts at building a big merchant fleet. they do have the ressources, the need (to gain more markets and new products) and they effectively would not rely on Minrothad for ever (even less once Thyatis get his hold on it). How is it that darokin has not built "comptoir" all around Mystara; Ground caravan are fine, but they are slow, and they require a lot of ressources... I know that some savage coast nations have built trade port on many continents (well, other continent than their), why not the darokinian??? any answer would be appreciated thib ===== Thibault SARLAT a.k.a Clenarius www.mystara.fr.st ICQ 16622177 MSN Messenger: clenarius@hotmail.com __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Find out what made the Top Yahoo! Searches of 2003 http://search.yahoo.com/top2003 ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 5 Jan 2004 17:27:37 -0000 From: Colin Davidson Subject: Re: Question about Darokin ----- Original Message ----- From: "Thibault Sarlat" To: Sent: Monday, January 05, 2004 4:38 PM Subject: [MYSTARA] Question about Darokin > i know that Darokin has very few coasts, but it seems > strange to me that they have never tried to make > attempts at building a big merchant fleet. > they do have the ressources, the need (to gain more > markets and new products) and they effectively would > not rely on Minrothad for ever (even less once Thyatis > get his hold on it). > > How is it that darokin has not built "comptoir" all > around Mystara; Ground caravan are fine, but they are > slow, and they require a lot of ressources... > I know that some savage coast nations have built trade > port on many continents (well, other continent than > their), why not the darokinian??? > > any answer would be appreciated Competition, and lack of ports. They've got nowhere good for a major navy to base itself, so their merchant fleet would be more or less without that kind of protection. Consider the damage that Minrothaddan and Ierendian privateer fleets would do, with the egging on of more respectable merchant guilds seeking to out-compete them. They also don't have a nautical culture, so while they might aspire to be sea merchants, they haven't got the generations of background it needs to make a merchant naval fleet. Compare that with Minrothad, with generations of sailors, sea elves, and privateering halflings, and soon it becomes apparent that there's little in it for Darokin at sea. A -really- enterprising Darokinian merchant might find an un-used port in Atraughin, perhaps, or might even have something defensible built in the Malpheggi swamp. Or they might even be able to tempt Karameikos or the Five Shires into hosting a navy for a tax levy on any merchant profits. Or said merchant could, individually, make a far better profit elsewhere. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 5 Jan 2004 18:23:31 +0100 From: Giampaolo Agosta Subject: Re: Extended Northmen Pantheon ver. 1.5 Eric Anondson wrote: > > Before you get to posting version 2.0, I thought you might want to > have this brought to your attention. From the Savage Coast... Cut -n- > Pasted from tsr2521a.rtf: > >> Tiuz (Ilsundal): Patron of elves, wisdom, law, and trust, Tiuz is >> often represented as a warrior missing his right hand. > > The major point I think this brings is the prior usage of Ilsundal as a > stand-in for Tyr... sort of... Though this association is only done in Eusdria, where the large number of elves among the locals justify the syncretic cult of Ilsundal as Tiuz/Tyr. Elsewhere, other immortals may fill the role of Tyr, which could be considered a sort of "cultural constant" for the Norse people, including e.g. those of Laterre. -- Giampaolo Agosta http://digilander.iol.it/agathokles ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 5 Jan 2004 13:13:02 -0500 From: Chris Cherrington Subject: Re: Other Naval Titles > > From: Colin Davidson > > Ylarum has little in the way of a naval force in my campaign, with > few vessels other than coastal schooners and some galleys, nothing of note. Gaz 2 mentions that the Ylari have merchant ships in every port of call across the Known World. That is not to say they should have a Naval force, but they are very able bodied seamen. IMC, they have trouble going north with Ostland’s Sea Reavers, but every port south to Ochalea and between the Isle of Dawn and Alphatia is full of Ylari merchants. Remember Al Kalim’s sponsor is the Old Man of the Sea, and that part of his pilgrimage includes seafarers from Ylari to Minrothad. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 5 Jan 2004 15:35:26 -0500 From: Chris Cherrington Subject: Where in the world is Rahasia? Where in the world is Rahasia? This is one of my favorite modules. I first played this module at a convention in Hartford many years ago (got to play another adventure DM’ed by Gygax the same weekend). These Arabic flavored Siswa elves are nowhere to be found near a Dwarven built temple (the showing of friendship between elves and dwarves). Could these Siswa be woodelves from Minrothad living near the Dwarven island? Here are some theories to suggest such an item… 3 immortal candidates adventured in Minrothad to achieve immortality, Sinbad, Minroth and Al Kalim. We know Sinbad’s and Al Kalim’s sponsor was the Old Man of the Sea, but we don’t know Minroth’s. Was it not a clever dwarf that invented the whole story anyways about Minroth, to increase tourism and/or create a national character? Could not Minroth be none other than Sinbad? Making Minroth a proto-Ylari and not Nithian? I mean nobody is supposed to know about Nithians, but Ylari people live where once Nithians did, so why not invent an Ylari native as a Nithian when you want to sound very mysterious and powerful to other bigger and badder nations? (Read my previous posts that the whole nation of humans and elves on Minrothad created a fantastic lie to promote their wares and build their mercantile kingdom). Anyway, woodelves from Minrothad would be more inclined to turn to a foreign religion than any other elven clan living near Ylari, and worshipers of Al Kalim regularly follow his path to Minrothad as a pilgrimage. Al Kalim followed the same route as fables mentioned his previous candidate, Sinbad. Dwarves also were invited to build in the Guilds. Could not part of the agreement made, to include building a temple near Al Kalim’s or Minroth’s or Sinbad’s Pilgrimage route, or near its zenith? ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 5 Jan 2004 22:18:04 +0000 From: Giampaolo Agosta Subject: Re: Where in the world is Rahasia? Chris Cherrington wrote: > Where in the world is Rahasia? This is one of my favorite modules. Unfortunately, it is quite hard to place this module anywhere in Mystara. Personally, I set it near Selenica, in the south-eastern tip of Alfheim, but I toned down the "arabic" flavour of the elves. A placement in Minrothad could work, but I fear Minrothad is too small, and the local elves do not fit much the Rahasian elves. -- di nuovo come un tempo sopra l'Italia intera urla il vento e soffia la bufera ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 5 Jan 2004 17:16:18 -0500 From: Chris Cherrington Subject: Re: Where in the world is Rahasia? > > From: Giampaolo Agosta > > Unfortunately, it is quite hard to place this module anywhere in > Mystara. Personally, I set it near Selenica, in the south-eastern tip of > Alfheim, but I toned down the "arabic" flavour of the elves. > > A placement in Minrothad could work, but I fear Minrothad is too small, > and the local elves do not fit much the Rahasian elves. > -- The Siswa are a very small clan, and they live more humanly than elvishly. Being that they live in a town and not forest homes, adopted a Ylari culture in language and some beliefs. Alfheimers have very little good relations with Dengarians and vice versa, if Dengarian Dwarves built a temple as a peace keeping mission for elves, it should certainly be in one of their histories. Humans and elves are way to quiet in Minrothad for having such a long history. Even Ierendi has a very short history, but the aboriginal peoples there did not have such an advanced culture to keep good records. Minrothad has a lot of dead space in their history, especially for a country with many elves. Of course the Night of Long Knives kept a lot of human interpretation of ancient events pretty quiet (convenient if you ask me, are elves really allergic to lycanthropy, or is that another lie they spread to keep the visage that humans need to be exterminated when it comes to telling the truth, I mean lycanthropy). Minrothad IMC is much more paranoid and filled with mistruths than the Gaz goes into. A whole culture of paranoid and delusional elves and humans co-habiting their islands (There may be plenty of immortals keeping up the many rumors, Koritiku, Eirendyl, and Loki). Could the elves really even be two clans seperated by sinking lands and "re-found" or actualy seperatists from Ilsundal, followers of Eirendyl that stayed in Minrothad and not continue to Alphatia? ------------------------------ End of MYSTARA-L Digest - 4 Jan 2004 to 5 Jan 2004 (#2004-6) ************************************************************