Thread: Questioning chirine ba kal

Originally Posted by Bren

Yes. And search me.

Though I would suggest starting a new thread so people who are interested in painting and modeling don't necessarily have to wade through all the other posts.

Right; gotcha.

Originally Posted by Greentongue

I have read that Magic Users are a treasured resource, closely guarded and hoarded by the clans and temples.

Was this something that can up in play or is it something that was appended later?

If in play, how and what impact did it have?
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Well, short form, in my experience the really good ones were very treasured; the average ones got sent out on adventures, missions, and quests, and the bad ones got either retrained into other career paths or dead in action.

Both the temples and the legions tended to hoard the experts for emergencies, and use the usual run-of-the mill magic users / lay priests / etc. on all sorts of business that would either see them get better or get dead; if one survived, one got better and better training as a result, as well as access to more and more advanced spells and devices. This also applied to one's connections in the temple or legion, too; if one was a well-connected person, one did not get sent out on 'odd jobs' but got the nicer ones.

Personally, I got a lot of 'odd jobs' at a very high level due to my connections inside the Imperium, which my temple approved of because it got them status and favors - "We'll loan you Chirine to fix your little problem in Malchiaran, if you''ll promote our candidate for the Governorship in Hau'ma...", that kind of thing. As I was a pretty resourceful kind of guy, and a pretty powerful military sorcerer, I tended to get the really 'odd' and really 'dirty' jobs that came along...

Originally Posted by Greentongue

There is a very explicit encounter with the "The Food of the Suu" in the Man of Gold book.

How often did you encounter the original native flora?

Any good stories of how that went?

The rule book gives details of some of the more hostile fauna but very little on flora.
Is this because it just "funny color" but has little in game effects?
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And it's a nasty encounter, too.

We generally saw the stuff when we were 'off the beaten path'; we didn't do a lot of 'wilderness adventures' or 'hexcrawls'. It grows like the proverbial weeds, and is only kept down in agricultural areas with a lot of work. We saw the horrible stuff in most of the 'wet' areas, like the swamps south of Jakalla or around cities like Penom or Purdimal. It doesn't grow at all well in dry areas, and we never saw it in the high mountains. Temperate areas, we'd see it in the low-lying wetlands.

You know, I don't think we ever actually got into a patch of the stuff; we tried very, very hard to stay away from it, as we knew how nasty the stuff is. It's very corrosive, and will pretty much wreck anything organic that isn't native to the planet.

There's not much at all in the existing literature about the flora; Phil just wasn't interested in the subject, and about all we ever got from him was that "the stuff is nasty and will kill you". He'd describe swamps as "fetid", because he liked the sound of the word - and our reaction to it! He could describe things like mangrove swamps in lurid detail, because he'd been in them, but beyond the descriptions that kept us from going into the nasty bits he just didn't seem to worry about it.

So, add man-eating plants and suchlike to taste - Phil would.

Does this help?

Originally Posted by Hrugga

Does it grow underground as well?

I'd include it somewhere as the run amok remains of some botanical garden lit by weirdly glowing globes that have continued running unattended for thousands of years...

...or are those globes truly unattended?

Originally Posted by Bren

I'd include it somewhere as the run amok remains of some botanical garden lit by weirdly glowing globes that have continued running unattended for thousands of years...

...or are those globes truly unattended?

Chirine, this one gets it...

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

It doesn't grow at all well in dry areas, and we never saw it in the high mountains.

Okay I take it back, there is ONE good thing about Milumanaya....

Originally Posted by Hrugga

Does it grow underground as well?

Thanks,

H :0)

Yes, but under artificial lighting. We saw this in the 'gardens' of the palace of Bassa, king of the Black Ssu, in early 1977 when we went there at the behest of Thomar the Wizard.

Originally Posted by Bren

I'd include it somewhere as the run amok remains of some botanical garden lit by weirdly glowing globes that have continued running unattended for thousands of years...

...or are those globes truly unattended?

You have it. And the globe lights also appear as rod-shaped ones, and I've seen them as flattish disks. They are powered by other-planar energy, and do last for what amounts to forever. They have no moving parts inside, and simply stop working if you break them - like Origo did, when he tried to open one. They are not hollow, and we did managed to put him back together.