Thread: Questioning chirine ba kal

Originally Posted by Shemek hiTankolel

Thanks Chirine, this helps a lot! Lots of fodder for mayhem to ensue.
Jakalla seems to be the "big underworld" in Tsolyanu, but is there one located elsewhere that rivals, or even surpasses, the one under Jakalla?

Shemek.

Bey Su, supposedly; we didn't see much of any of it. Purdimal - see also MoG; Avanthar - tiny, but very, very choice; Malchairan, original home of the Petal Throne itself. Those are my choices, based on personal observation, and I freely admit to being biased...

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

Bey Su, supposedly; we didn't see much of any of it. Purdimal - see also MoG; Avanthar - tiny, but very, very choice; Malchairan, original home of the Petal Throne itself. Those are my choices, based on personal observation, and I freely admit to being biased...

Excellent! Thanks again.

Shemek.

blue fish of Khirgar.jpg
The Blue Fish of Khirgar.

Found this on line and thought I would share it.

Shemek

Originally Posted by Shemek hiTankolel

blue fish of Khirgar.jpg
The Blue Fish of Khirgar.

Found this on line and thought I would share it.

Shemek

Yep - that's the tile inlay over The Gate Of The Blue Fish at Khirgar; the little and mostly unknown Shrine Of The Blue Fish is up the street after you go into the city, turn left into a small alley, and look for a blue door on the right-hand side.

Amazing how some in-jokes just keep on going and going, decades later...

Originally Posted by Neshm hiKumala

Hi Chirine,
Hi everybody.

Chirine, a little while back, you mentioned, on your Workbench blog, an airship which you saw (got on? used?) during your adventures.
Would you be able to share with us more information about it? The circumstances surrounding the encounter? Where was the ship's owner going with it? Which of the Undying Wizards was the owner?

Many thanks.

This sort of thing was a feature of Phil's games from the beginning; we used to see mysterious airships at night in the skies over the Milumaniyani deserts, and this got mentioned in the NW Frontier booklet. You'd be minding your own business, and you'd see moving lights in the sky off in the distance. So, one night we're siitting around the campfire and this metallic sphere floats up, a hatch on the top opens, and Turshanmu the Wizard pops his head out to ask the way to Khirgar. We wound up getting a lift from him, and further adventures ensued over the years. Getting shot at - and missed - by the giant lightning bringers as we flew past Avanthar was possibly the worst time we took a trip with him. His little intra-system ship is a nice comfortable sphere; light and fast, and seats a party nicely. I now have a model of this, too.

There's also one of the Undying Wizards who flies around in the 'winged' ship like the Bajoran Lightsailer that I got; I can never remember her name, but she and her ship is in either "Prince of Skulls" of "Death of Kings". About the only Wizards who we didn't see flitting around in this kind of thing were Nyelmu, 'cause he's imprisoned in the Garden, and Thomar, who uses his network of towers to get around. Basically, if one of these busybodies happens to be passing by, and the party is of interest, they may stop and offer the party a lift to somewhere in return for 'a favor'. (Like assaulting the palace of Bassa, for example.) Mayhem normally ensues, as one might expect.

While the Undying Wizards are often helpful and informative, they are a pretty secretive lot who just happen to forget to mention what they are doing at the moment. They like to send PCs off on quests and errands, and a lot of very fun adventures came about because of them. We mere mortals usually have no idea what they're doing, or why, but it does beat walking...

Does this help?

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

So, one night we're siitting around the campfire and this metallic sphere floats up, a hatch on the top opens, and Turshanmu the Wizard pops his head out to ask the way to Khirgar.

Did Phil play this kind of thing with humor, verging on comedy, as you seem to imply? Or was the in-game tone fairly straight with the jokes done out of character?

Originally Posted by The_Shadow

Did Phil play this kind of thing with humor, verging on comedy, as you seem to imply? Or was the in-game tone fairly straight with the jokes done out of character?

Yes, and yes; it depended on the situation and the people involved. Turshanmu, for example, was privately surnamed "The Putz", because while he is one of the more famous and skilled of the Undying Wizards, he's also famous for not really paying attention to the details and - in game terms - missing his dice rolls. He'd cast A Mighty And Powerful Spell, and then we'd hear his lament" "Oh, bother!" as the spell backfired somehow.

Phil, in general, did not 'tell jokes'; he wasn't that kind of person. He loved to set up situations where there would be a comic payoff, and a funny punch line. Like the time Lord Chirine was sick in bed, and the doctor filled out an order for medication. It was returned: "Colleague, this is perfectly legible." "Oh! Sorry! Let me fix it!" And then while we were laughing over the joke about doctors' handwriting, the NPC making notes came up with: "So, then, you want him to have two handmaidens and call you in the morning?" And so on...

Phil's Tekumel had a lot of humor to it, and he played that for all it was worth. Sure, there were times when he scared the crap out of us, but in general his was a bright, sunny world where "Action! Adventure! Romance!" held sway. His humor, as we've mentioned, very dry; a lot like Howard's Anderson's, Vance's, or Dickson's. If the situation called for comic relief, we got it; if it called for very serious play, we got that.

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

Does this help?

It sure helps a lot, yes. Thank you. But, of course, now I have more questions!

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

This sort of thing was a feature of Phil's games from the beginning; we used to see mysterious airships at night in the skies over the Milumaniyani deserts, and this got mentioned in the NW Frontier booklet.

The above sentence suggests that there may be other air-ships, ones not manned by any of the wizards. Would that be a fair reading?

Also, "this got mentioned in the NW Frontier booklet": by Jove, we need a centralized encyclopedia or guide for all this information! It's all so spread out over so many books over so many years.
Yes, one can always dream.

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

and Turshanmu the Wizard pops his head out to ask the way to Khirgar

Love the humour here.

Question: would Chirine and his companions immediately recognize the strange man at the helm of that magical flying chariot as one of the Undying Wizards, or would they gradually come to that realization, either by asking "the man" directly, or by suddenly remembering an old tale about such wizard or other? Would their mind be blown by that, or would they accept it as something that happens from time to time, 'cause you're on Tekumel and in Tsolyanu and this how stuff rolls sometimes.

And just to be clear, these Undying Wizards are closer to being gods than to being human beings, are they not? They were humans in the past, though, correct? How far into the past? When Tekumel was still part of the Humanspace? I guess it depends on the Wizard.

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

by the giant lightning bringers as we flew past Avanthar

What would the people of Avanthar chat about the following day? Of some weird "UFO" in the skies of the city? Of an attack by the Red Hats or the Baron's armies? All of the above?

As a follow up to my question on the PCs' realizing that they are chatting with one of the legendary "wizard" figures, this suggests to me that Tsolyanis and other people are overall quite used to witnessing super weird and freaky occurrences, like a weird object flying through the skies, or like a nexus point suddenly popping at the top of a temple, or like a strange creature suddenly appearing and vanishing in the middle of a market. Would that be correct?

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

in return for 'a favor'. (Like assaulting the palace of Bassa, for example.)

You've mentioned this event here in the past, but I love the idea of having a group of adventurers going about their often dangerous albeit pretty mundane adventures (as mundane as they can be on Tekumel), and suddenly being asked to "oh, could you attack Bassa's fortress for me?" My response would be, "Huh, what? Are you insane?!"
Shows you how utterly detached from reality these wizards are.
So, actually, how did the wizard convince you that you could even do it?!