Elves and Dwarves?

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Glorantha doesn't have a direct equivalent of Tolkienesque elves. Gloranthan elves are mobile humanoid plants, closer to Tolkien's ents except for the size (which is about human-sized). There is a race of humanoid immortals living on Brithos and in some coastal regions whose sunk homelands lie in the distant west, but the Brithini have a totally different society than any elf culture I have ever seen (including Stephen Brust's Dragaerans - which might be another fine background for RQ).

Some aldryami elves are sexually attractive to humans - probably as much a function of looks as of smells and pheromones. Dryads are nymphs related to plants, and are counted as aldryami (though not as elves). They can choose to appear as attractive females of either species, and are willing to mate with human males now and then. They tend to be fertile, but their children usually don't retain much of their fathers' race.

Of the three major elf races of Glorantha, only two have females (brown and green). Yellow elves rely completely on dryads for propagation, and brown elves can father children on either brown elf females or dryads.

Gloranthan dwarves are different from Tolkien's dwarves as well. Either were created as tools for the Maker deity, but in Middle-Earth they are a lot closer to humans than in Glorantha (and even more so in more mainstream fantasy settings like Midkemia). Game-stat wise they ought to be equivalent to our standard dwarves. They aren't exactly made of stone - their bones turn into the metal of their respective caste (function), and their original creation process included clay. They are the lesser form of the original helpers of the Maker, the True Mostali, which were made from rock or one of the Mostali metals (called copper, silver, gold, lead, tin, quicksilver, brass, later also iron). Don't get me started on Gloranthan metals not being like standard metals...

Chaos in Glorantha isn't that different from elsewhere. Overpowered, destructive, not-from-this-world. Untameable, and feared by all sane people (though lunatics and Lunars are more accepting).

Ducks are a problem of their own. Taking them serious makes you silly, but treating them as only silly may cause problems with some of their descriptions. Their likeness to Donald or Duffy is in keeping with their origin in Glorantha - someone wanted to play Donald in a White Bear and Red Moon boardgame. Best thing to say about them is that they are quite obscure during most of the Second Age..
 
Jorganos: Thank you very much for that summary.

And I always felt Ducks was one of the more sensible creatures in Glorantha... :lol:
I have a much easier time (though my players do not) accepting anthropomorphic animals than intelligent walking plants.
 
Archer said:
Jorganos: Thank you very much for that summary.

And I always felt Ducks was one of the more sensible creatures in Glorantha... :lol:
I have a much easier time (though my players do not) accepting anthropomorphic animals than intelligent walking plants.

While I have seen both high drama and utter silliness for anatomorphic creatures in Glorantha, dealing with the elves of Glorantha was fairly easy for me: I don't call them elves, but instead use those Gloranthan terms like Vronkali (Green "Elves"), Mreli (Brown) and Embyli (Yellow). Human-sized ents or less tree-bound dryads of either gender, and there you go.

I remember the ducks from Drakar och Demoner... not exactly the high point there.
 
Perhaps it was just our gaming groups style, but the 'oddity' of Gloranthan elves and dwarves never really seemed to grate on us for some reason. I think it was because we saw Glorantha campaigns as so humanocentric, the fact that elves were plants wasn't an issue -- they were 'monsters' in that sense, after all... strange, alien creatures that the rank-and-file of humanity would seldom come across, and not the sort of creatures one would likely associate with, much less play as one in the game.

The overwheling majority of the characters we played in our games were human, or the occasional uz (which to this day still remains, IMHO, the most well-developed fantasy race out there).
 
I don't think it is unreasonable for players to play RQ elves or even Dwarfs.
If I remember rightly in several publications we were told that it was said to young elves, "go out, explore the world, then when you come back you can put your roots down".[groan]
The whole 'die if they leave the forest' thing came much later in the development of RQ and was a very poor one in my opinion. Granted they should never be seen as Tolkien elves or even worse D&D ones [shudders], but they should never any be more (or less) difficult to play than Trolls, and as much info should have been dedicated to this effect.

There was a liking for Uz over the other two races in Chaosium and this, like a hungry Trollkin should be thrown out on its well chewed ear.
 
homerjsinnott said:
I don't think it is unreasonable for players to play RQ elves or even Dwarfs.

Shannon Applecline is working on a HeroQuest players book for aldryami, so in general the publishers seem to agree with you. At one point, I talked to people thinking about a merman campaign book...

Playing dwarfs in Glorantha probably has two ways to go: one is playing the misfits, heretics or even apostates who hold out on the fringes of dwarf society. Another might be to play an entire orthodox dwarf hive, with all the (not very) individual dwarfs as followers, and match yourself with ofther dwarf hives or with non-dwarf problems - a strategic or tactical game.
 
jorganos said:
Archer said:
Jorganos: Thank you very much for that summary.

And I always felt Ducks was one of the more sensible creatures in Glorantha... :lol:
I have a much easier time (though my players do not) accepting anthropomorphic animals than intelligent walking plants.

While I have seen both high drama and utter silliness for anatomorphic creatures in Glorantha, dealing with the elves of Glorantha was fairly easy for me: I don't call them elves, but instead use those Gloranthan terms like Vronkali (Green "Elves"), Mreli (Brown) and Embyli (Yellow). Human-sized ents or less tree-bound dryads of either gender, and there you go.

Those names are a lot better than the corny "green", "yellow" and "brown" names of elves.

jorganos said:
I remember the ducks from Drakar och Demoner... not exactly the high point there.

No, most of them were not a high point at all.
Only reasonable image of them, was the pirate duck in the Monsterboken 1 or 2 (don't remember which). With DoD'91 they looked just like Donald Duck, and the race's image was completely and utterly destroyed. They became just silly.
 
Wulf Corbett said:
Archer said:
Well, I more meant, how will elves look in the new version of RQ and Glorantha? :)
Still to be seen...

And the world has yet to see one single illustartion of a Duck that doesn't look bloody silly...

Wulf

Come on Wulf. The picture in Anaxial's Roster (I think) is pretty cool.

As to elves (aldryami) and dwarves (mostali) I sure hope they keep to the new (post Elder Secrets) stuff and don't go back to the generic fantasy elves and dwarves of RQ-1&2.

Clay mostali, that is the modern dwarves, are made of clay in an alchemical process. This still needs a male and a female dwarf, but the result is grown in a container and emerges fully grown many years later. The mostali are an ultra technocrat society, where individuals are just cogs in the great machine. They are one of the cooles things about Glorantha.

The elves are children of Aldrya, the goddess of the forests. The vision I've been advocating, and which seems to be pretty well accepted these days, is that the elves are fairly human like when young, but become more and more treelike as they grow older. Even the most humanlike have large, vulpine, ears and large eyes that are all in one colour. They are deeply tied to their forests, and draw power and guidance from the song of the forest.

One of my favorite things about Glorantha are the nonhumans. Trolls, Elves and Dwarves. The trolls look monsterous and eat babies, but they are actually the ones that are closest to humans in their personality and motivation.

The Elves often look quite pretty. They are also rather small and shy and people often think they are harmless. In reality the elves are utterly alien in their motivation, and want to cut you up and bury you under a tree to fertilize their forests. They have very little in common with humans.

The dwarves seem like the most harmless bunch of them all. They look like short, ugly humans, and can be traded with. In reality they are the most dangerous bunch. They have very high tehnology (steam tech, golems, firearm, even ballistic missiles) and powerful sorcery. They want to return the world to the way it was, when everything was in it's place and no individual thought or growth was allowed. They are tireless and will never forget or forgive.
 
Archer said:
No, most of them were not a high point at all.
Only reasonable image of them, was the pirate duck in the Monsterboken 1 or 2 (don't remember which). With DoD'91 they looked just like Donald Duck, and the race's image was completely and utterly destroyed. They became just silly.

Not really. The whole brown duck mercenaries, white duck merchants and
black duck pirates was rather entertaining. But on the whole I don't think they really ever got worked into the setting in DoD. That having been said, the italian-renaissance merchant-ducks of Ruhl as portrayed in the Trakorien sourcebook are really good stuff. That's the way it's supposed to be done. Not very close to the RQ original, but none of the DoD ducks where.
 
Etepete said:
Archer said:
No, most of them were not a high point at all.
Only reasonable image of them, was the pirate duck in the Monsterboken 1 or 2 (don't remember which). With DoD'91 they looked just like Donald Duck, and the race's image was completely and utterly destroyed. They became just silly.

Not really. The whole brown duck mercenaries, white duck merchants and
black duck pirates was rather entertaining. But on the whole I don't think they really ever got worked into the setting in DoD. That having been said, the italian-renaissance merchant-ducks of Ruhl as portrayed in the Trakorien sourcebook are really good stuff. That's the way it's supposed to be done. Not very close to the RQ original, but none of the DoD ducks where.

On that I agree. the DoD ducks was never really considered when the Ereb Altor setting was developed, and they felt more "glued in" than part of the world, just as you say.

Trakorien would be a good setting in itself, IMHO.
I just loved the Svavelvinter campaign.
 
Adept said:
Come on Wulf. The picture in Anaxial's Roster (I think) is pretty cool.
Nope. Just different. Still daft, but different.
As to elves (aldryami) and dwarves (mostali) I sure hope they keep to the new (post Elder Secrets) stuff and don't go back to the generic fantasy elves and dwarves of RQ-1&2.
Cannot agree there in the slightest. The ent-like elves of recent publications are typical of HeroWars/Quest. Different for the sake of being different, without any actual reason or purpose to the changes. The Runes have gone back to RQ2 - the POPULAR version of RuneQuest, and the POPULAR game of Glorantha - hopefully the rest will too.

Wulf
 
Wulf Corbett said:
The ent-like elves of recent publications are typical of HeroWars/Quest. Different for the sake of being different, without any actual reason or purpose to the changes. The Runes have gone back to RQ2 - the POPULAR version of RuneQuest, and the POPULAR game of Glorantha - hopefully the rest will too.

Wulf

Can't help but disagree here - if anybody had bothered to read the elf descriptions, they would have found "leaves for hair" etc. Check the illustration at the "Temple of the Wooden Sword" closing episode.

I do think, though, that youthful aldryami resemble human ideals of beauty more closely than older stay-in-the-forest types. Their character hasn't changed notably.

The Griffin Mountain dwarves around Rokheart Veinseeker are among the most heretical ones you can imagine. Note that dwarf looks still haven't changed, only dwarf attitude.
 
jorganos said:
Can't help but disagree here - if anybody had bothered to read the elf descriptions, they would have found "leaves for hair" etc. Check the illustration at the "Temple of the Wooden Sword" closing episode.
The descriptions did indeed read like that. But the illustrations (I don't know the specific one you refer too, what was in published in?) thankfully ignored them. And even at their worst, the descriptions never had them looking like the atrocities on the cover of "The Thieves Arm".

Wulf
 
The picture I am referring to was in Wyrms Footprints, and most likely also in Wyrms Footnotes 13 or so, definitely RQ2 era.

I guess you're after Paul Jaquais-illustration style non-humans?
 
jorganos said:
I guess you're after Paul Jaquais-illustration style non-humans?
My Aldryami never really got past the Louise Perrine drawings...

But, basically, so long as they look like ELVES, I'm happy. I always preferred the image of a strange, ethereal beauty that looks just somehow different, until you study them closely, or just catch an unwary glimpse, and... hey, her hair looks like leaves in this light... and her eyes are all the one colour... and the skin...

I won't be having mini-ents in my campaign.

Wulf
 
None of these images are available somewhere on the web?
I am curious to see some images, other than the RQ3 / Glorantha Bestiary images that I have seen.
 
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