Hollow Moon Introduction: "Freiburg, der Adler hat gelandet..."
by Sharon DornhoffTo misquote Spelljammer: Everything
you know about the Moon is wrong.
At least, that's what can be true of the visible Moon -- i.e.
Matera -- in your Mystara campaign, if you like the ideas I've come
up with. (Sorry it took so long ... it's been one of those cases of
the more research you do on a topic, the more new details you come
up with, that require still more research, ad infinitum!) Up until
now, the moon Matera has seemed downright boring, next to Mystara
-- hollow; hundreds of races; magic and mystery and historical
background up the yin-yang -- and Patera -- invisible; Japanese
cat-people; home to Myojo, everyone's favourite fuzzy samurai --
its companions in space. Apart from a single city of Immortals --
who seem to have had pretty lousy taste in neighbourhoods, and
won't let PC mortals find it anyway -- there's nothing to see,
nothing to do, nothing to bother investigating, on Matera.
That's surprising, considering that -- from what I've been reading,
while boning up on the Moon's role in fantasy -- the face of
Earth's only natural satellite was THE first fantasy-setting in
literature! Long before Gulliver's Travels, writers used the Moon
(the real-life one, that is -- hereafter called "Luna", to
distinguish it from Matera & Patera) as the place for races of
human giants, utopian otherworlds, and satires of humanity's
political and moral failings. The folklore of fairylands and of
exotic realms of the dead may have preceded these books -- which
first appeared in the 17th century, immediately after the invention
of the telescope -- by millennia, but lunar fantasy-lands were the
first otherworlds to be created specifically as popular fiction;
it's in them, that the roots of both sci-fi and fantasy novels can
be found.
This being the case, I could almost say we owe it to those early
writers, not to leave Matera -- the only direct counterpart to Luna
in the OD&D/AD&D game settings! -- as a lifeless hunk of
rock. Moon-men were the first true "demihumans" that creative minds
ever came up with; and the mythical mountains and rivers of Luna
were being mapped, centuries before Tolkien or Gygax set lines on a
piece of paper. Why should Mystara and Patera have all the fun,
while their celestial sister is left (literally) all alone out in
the cold? I hope, once you've read what I've dreamed up for her,
you'll agree that Matera has a lot to offer a campaign ... and I
welcome you all to contribute to the Hollow Moon setting, because a
whole moon's a big piece of real estate to fill.
Before I start posting my material, I thought I'd stick this
Introduction on the board, so as to clarify a few points as to
where I'm coming from with this concept; and also, to give folks
time to dig up an IRL moon-map, so you'll know what place-names I'm
referring to (more on this later). I also wanted to submit a new
Immortal for consideration, as Mystara seems short one Moon-figure
in its published pantheons. If you have thoughts on who she's
likely to get along with or oppose, among the established
Immortals, please reply with all the juicy details -- I'm still
missing my Hollow World material, so I don't have a full roster of
Immortals to go by, in deciding Seshay-Selene's role in Immortal
affairs.
So, here's those few points:
1) There's going to be a fair bit of historical revision, in the
backstory of the Hollow Moon -- as if that doesn't go without
saying, for ANY Mystara-related product! ;-) -- which I hope won't
contradict too many peoples' home campaign histories. In
particular, I'm aware that my decision to withhold interplanetary
travel from the Blackmoor culture is at odds with some of the
home-grown timelines already available on the Web; I'll try to
explain my reasoning for this in my first post on lunar
exploration, and I hope my choice won't ruffle too many feathers.
Other than that, most of the alternate Mystaran history I'll be
proposing should concern things that happened so long ago, PCs
won't know the difference.
2) As I mentioned above, I'm missing most of my Mystara materials
at the moment, although I've asked my family to send my copy of the
Hollow World by mail. I also neglected to purchase the Almanacs
when they were available (Doh!), and am forced to rely on Web
timelines, for information on recent Mystaran events. If anybody
spots any glaring errors, please e-mail me with details or post a
correction that resolves the discrepancy: I'll appreciate it. (I'll
kick and scream and yell about "my" concept getting changed, but in
the long term, I'll appreciate it. ;-D) Just don't bury me in
e-mail, if the flaw's already been pointed out and dealt with on
the boards.
3) One critical question, for any Mystara-based campaign which
might involve space travel, is whether to use the version of outer
space that's presented in the Spelljammer rules -- wildspace,
phlogiston, solar systems inside crystal spheres -- or the
"realistic" version from the Princess Ark's adventures. Whenever
possible, I'll try to give alternatives for both space-settings, in
terms of the rigours of space travel, the history of the
Mystara-Patera-Matera planetary system, and how such things as
gravity can work in the game. (For reasons that you may or may not
be able to guess, the Hollow Moon setting assumes that the
AD&D/SJ system does, at least, EXIST; what's debatable, is
whether Mystara is actually a single solar system in a crystal
sphere, or if it's in an alternate universe, reachable from, but
not the same as, the Spelljammer setting.) If you haven't yet
decided whether Mystaraspace is sphere-bound or part of a galaxy,
it might be best if you adopt the SJ "fantasy astrophysics", when
adding the Hollow Moon to your games: it may or may not be as good
a system as what the PA materials describe, but it does make
incorporating the HM setting a lot simpler.
A word of warning: While it's not hard to find copies of the map of
Luna (you'll only need the near side), either on paper or on the
Web, one of the first things my moon-research turned up is that
selenologists -- yep, that's a real word -- can't get their
directions straight! Lunar maps from before the 1980s tend to put
the South Pole at the TOP of the map, to match inverted images seen
through compound telescopes. Only since bitmapping and computer
imagery became the norm in astronomy have moon-maps been flipped to
the same orientation seen from Earth's Northern Hemisphere. On a
positive note, moon-maps tend to also reverse their East/West
directions, so as to match the compass-points of observers who look
up from the moon-facing side of Earth; this is actually helpful, at
the Hollow Moon, like the Hollow World, really SHOULD have reversed
longitudinal directions! Given that moon-maps' directions are so
screwy, and inconsistent from one map to another, I'll try to cite
specific external landmarks such as craters or maria (so-called
"seas"), rather than compass bearings, in all geographic
references.
Finally, here's the lunar Immortal that we've never seen before ...
an ol' friend of Protius with a very similar origin. As I've
pictured her, she's a bit younger than Ka, got involved in the HM
project on Khoronus' say-so when she was an Eternal, and attained
Hierarch status only after fulfilling her duties for millennia as
the custodian of Matera's tide-based weather and hydrodynamics
(which is why we've never heard of her before -- she's been working
her flukes off).
Seshay-Selene (Hierarch of Time) "Singer-To-The-Moon" [cetacean],
"Tchirichee/Great Stormspume" [cryion], "Tidemother" [var. lunar
cultures], "Nephthisi" [ancient Nithian]
Alignment: Lawful (OD&D); CG (AD&D)
Sex: Female
Race: Humpback whale
Clerical Alignment: Any non-evil but LN
Followers' Alignment: Any (placated by many evil lunar races)
Description: Once the wise matriarch of her pod, Seshay-Selene
(seh-SHAY see-LEEN = "Moonsinger" in Aquarendi; her original,
whale-language name would probably crack the glass on this
monitor!) attained Immortality after uniting her kind into a common
nation of whales, and devising ways by which they might defend
themselves from the dire threat of their kraken enemies. Her
greatest innovation, the Unending Sojourn, was the custom of
continuous pole-to-pole oceanic migration she instilled in her
followers -- one that permitted them to forever leave their
cephalopod predators behind, while becoming the farthest-travelling
race of nomads Mystara has ever known. Because of her intimate
knowledge of tides, seasonality, and the role played by celestial
phenomena in regulating such cycles, Ka invited Seshay-Selene to
take Ixion's place in making the Hollow Moon livable, after the
solar Immortal disdained to consider assisting a world without a
sun. She has faithfully maintained the tidal forces that give
Matera's interior its winds and geothermal heat for countless
millennia, and is virtually forgotten on Mystara except in the
seas; her own cetacean kind still revere her, as do Matera's
inhabitants and those marine races who haven't turned to Calitha
Starbreeze as a mother-figure for their pantheon. Though a gentle
sort, the Immortal whale has a soft spot for the shark-kin race,
who have never forgotten her, and it was she who brought some of
their kind to the Hollow Moon on not one, but two, occasions.
Ancient Nithians once worshipped her as the Immortal Nephthisi,
mistress of silvery moonlight and, by extension, wealth (silver is
more precious than gold to Nithians), but her following died out
among Nithians long before the culture was transported to the
Hollow World.
Symbol: A whale with a shiny crescent moon for her tail-flukes
Interests: Materan weather, Materan seas, tides, whales, migration,
natural and biological cycles
Worshipped in: The Hollow Moon, all oceans