On The Origins Of Orcs, Chapters 27-28

I’ve got so much campaign prep to get done that if I don’t do it here, I’ll never get it done in time…

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Chapters 27 and 28 were partially unfinished when I started this series, which means they are presented in first-draft form and not the fully polished form of the early chapters.

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The Second Great Dwarfwar: Aftermath: The Forging Of Mithral

The terms of the peace treaty meant that – for as long as it lasted – large quantities of the useless metal, Mithral, were going to pass into the possession of the Elves. Accordingly, while the primary focus of the Spellweavers would be the black gems for the foreseeable future, a smaller project got underway to try and tame this material and make something worthwhile from it.

This investigation soon learned that the metal was partly ethereal in nature, and that heating and working the material to forge it denatured and severed that connection, leaving the metal brittle and worthless. Melting it once and pouring it into a mould, then attaching it to another red-hot metal before it had fully cooled – the solution found by the Dwarves – avoided the worst of the problem, but left the material useful only for decoration. But it was a solution discovered by trial and error with no real understanding of the source of the problem, or of the properties of the metal in question; a better solution could almost certainly be found.

In due course, one was. Alloying Mithral with silver, platinum, and steel (the exact process remains a closely-held secret not even known generally amongst the elves) transformed Mithral into Mithryl (a name change so subtle that only elvish ears can detect it, which is not entirely an accident), a metal in which much of the weight is carried within the ethereal plane. The result was a metal only slightly softer than true steel but which could be much thinner and a fraction of the weight in attaining that strength – resulting in lighter armour and stronger weapons. It was also determined that the smaller and thinner the shapes forged, the greater the relative gain; to take maximum advantage, new weapons and armour forms would need to be designed. The more they investigated and the more they uncovered, the more highly they prioritized the effort.

As their understanding and experience of Mithryl grew, they used the material to create weapons of surpassing speed, bows of uncanny pull and accuracy (for their weight), mail of finer links than were dreamed possible that was just as effective as full steel chainmail but weighed one tenth as much. Heavier grades of the mail is second in resilience only to the Adamantium plate of the Dwarves, a material they had not yet discovered nor learned to work, but would weigh less than 1/4 as much even if cast in the same Dwarven moulds – not that the elves would ever contemplate doing so.

Only one mystery remained impenetrable; the origins of the raw ore. From whence had the Drow obtained it, and how, and for what intended purpose? This was a secret held only by Lolth, and perhaps a few elite members of her favoured families.

The secrets of forging Mithryl became one of the most closely-guarded state secrets of Elven Society. The reasoning is typically elvish: deep and subtle, and relates directly to the reasons why this research assumed a greater and greater priority within post-war Elvish Society.

With the benefits of perspective, Elvish society was collectively horrified by the extremity of the Huyundaltha plan for winning the war; for the first time, they had been forced to acknowledge that the darkness that drove the Drow was also a part of, a potential of, every Elf. While the Huyundaltha were the guardians of Elvishness from all threats, both foreign and domestic, it was the decision of the Elvish Council that engaging in a war was inherently corrupting, and was to be avoided in the future at all costs. (It is worth noting that similar conclusions are often reached by the survivors of any war, only to be forgotten when fresh justifications and imperatives present themselves).

Furthermore, the Huyundaltha suffered from a handicap that only an elf could fathom: it was not in their nature to do that which was not in their nature.

This statement was intended to express and codify a significant restriction on the effectiveness of the Huyundaltha: they, more than any other Elves, were bound to the narrowest, most pure, interpretation of the tenets, principles, and philosophies by which the Elves defined themselves. In many ways, they had less flexibility and free will even than the Drow, who Elvish society continued to believe had been corrupted by the ego and willfulness and arrogance of Llolth. There was an ongoing empathy for their lost brothers and sisters, and a new-found feeling within the members of Elven society that only good fortune had spared them from the same snare of self-deception.

(It might seem that this awareness would make the Elves less hostile toward the Drow; in fact, it had the opposite effect. No elf could look at a Drow without being aware of the seductive temptation of darkness, of their own weakness, their own imperfection; and, since their faith in themselves was the cornerstone of their existence, they became more rabidly anti-Drow than ever. And secretly ashamed of it).

Despite these limitations and restrictions, the Huyundaltha had to be regarded by outsiders as credible defenders. In order to be taken seriously, the prowess of each individual member of the order must be bolstered and reinforced. The easiest means of doing so would be through Spellweaving applied to the members of the Huyundaltha, but that would violate their natures, by which they qualify for their lofty responsibilities. Hence, external augmentation is the only viable solution. In essence, the outside world must be convinced that the Huyundaltha possess arms and training that make them the superior of any warrior who might challenge them – not by a small margin, but by a vast gulf. Only in this manner can the Huyundaltha be sheltered from the corrupting influence of actually being pressed into duty in war.

The Elvish mastery of the secrets of Mithryl, and of the forging of Elvish swords, bows, gloves, and mail were the solution to the need to make their defenders so seemingly-invincible that they would never be challenged – or so the Elves hoped.

Once that mastery had been achieved to a satisfactory standard, the Elves (and, in particular, their Spellweavers) turned their attention back to the black gems that had been so prized by Lolth for their ability to focus and contain arcane energies, and the way in which they loosened the bonds that set creatures and objects in the fixed forms and natures just enough to make those characteristics more amenable to manipulation. This was far more frustrating research, and progress was as markedly slow as progress had been remarkably fast in the research into Mithryl. But scarcely had the Elves begun when their social attention was diverted by the arrival of a trade delegation from the Human Kingdom of Zae’y’lish…

The Rise Of The Elvish Merchants

Prior to the sweeping events of the Second Great Dwarfwar, Elvarheim had never contemplated the potentials of trade as being important to them; they were self-sufficient, needing nothing from outsiders. What they had not considered was that the decision not to trade held just as much potential impact as the decision to trade – but because it removed the non-trader from any position of influence over the relationship, it left the progress of consequences entirely in the hands of outsiders. This was unacceptable to the Elves; better by far to trade on their terms than to become embroiled in the consequences of the trading arrangements of others. Such was the thinking of the Elvish Council when ambitious traders from the Kingdom of Zae’y’lish arrived seeking exotic skills and craftsmanship.

The Elves had not previously contemplated the lessons held by the the recent conflict with the Dwarves, and had certainly never contemplated trade with Humans, but the two races had established amicable relations. Since this was clearly a question of relations with outsiders, it naturally fell under the purview of the Elvish King, as advised by the Royal Council; that advice, in a nutshell, was to find something – anything would do – that was not culturally sensitive, and that could be traded to the humans, and something – anything – that would be desirable in exchange.

That was not as straightforward a task as it might seem. The elves were not especially interested in exotic foodstuffs, and the greatest craftsman of a human empire could not compete with the product of an elvish mastercrafter – if no elf had mastered the craft, it was because the product held no value to Elvish society. While artistic and literary works, with their alien perspectives, might hold some limited attraction to a cultural subsection, they were not generally prized. Human advances in arcane theory were expensive and valuable, but again were only of interest to specialists. Ultimately, the only products of value to the Elvish people as a group were not products at all, but raw materials – and since Elvish workmanship was so self-evidently superior, only the best and most pure was suitable.

But it was King Endabberas – one of the wisest of the Elven monarchs – who best summed up the situation from the Elven perspective: “It matters not should we gain or not through these exchanges and others like them; the import is in the act itself, and the opportunity it imbues for the ongoing protection and goodwill toward our race that the act engenders in the perceptions of those who might otherwise become enemies or rivals. This gain more than counterbalances any minor inequality in trading terms.”

Naturally, the Elvish self-pride (some would say ego or arrogance), being what it was, immediately drove them to seek to perfect this new skill. While it may have been true that the first to trade with the Elves took shameless advantage of their new association, the Elves learned very quickly, and soon became recognized as some of the sharpest negotiators at any bargaining table. They were aided in this by the perspective lent them by the nature of their longevity, which enabled them to take a longer view than the humans.

Traders from Zae’y’lish were followed by representatives of the Kingdoms of Erilion, Casipodes, Horwitch, Asaorales, Visunia, and Garinath, and to each the Elves offered their services for a price they deemed fair (and that the merchants decried as exorbitant). But the craftsmanship was superior, if slow of completion, and in the end they begrudgingly agreed to the Elves terms.

Soon, Elvish craftsmen were regularly accepting commissions throughout the Human Kingdoms. Elvish mages became infrequent but regular visitors to their human counterparts (and ever thereafter it would be rumored that some taught the humans more than would have been permitted by the Council had the latter been consulted); Elvish woodworkers and metalsmiths were all over the place. At first, the latter were unwelcomed by their human counterparts, who saw the high-prestige commissions moving beyond their reach, and feared that they would be supplanted entirely; but as the Elves learned the finer points of trade, and as Human craftsmen united into trading guilds, it became clear that the elves prices were so high that the majority of work would always remain in human hands. A number of the Guilds demonstrated their perspicacity by travelling to Elvarheim to instruct the Elves in the finer points of trade negotiations, the better to ensure that both groups’ welfares were protected. It was not long before Elvish Craftsmen were considered de facto honorary members of the professional Guilds throughout the Kingdoms of man.

These events impacted human society as strongly as they did that of the elves. The security and protection of those Elves who undertook a Human commission was, for example, one area in which the Guilds played all sides against each other to enact social reform almost entirely unnoticed until it was too late. First, the Guilds taught the Elves to bargain for the protection of those craftsmen who undertook Human commissions, frontloading the costs of that protection into the bargains. They supplemented this with the concept of wergild and guarantees. With these principles established, they then demanded that the various Kingdoms to which their members belonged provide those members with equivalent protections. While forced to compromise on the value received, as they had expected, they nevertheless succeeded in providing all professional guildsmen with some level of security whilst “on the job”, and, should the worst occur, a token payment to ease the burdens of the family of the deceased.

It must be admitted that many of the consequences of the increased interaction levels between the various societies in question were unforeseen by anyone. And of these unforeseen consequences, by far the most vexing to the Elves was the rise of the Half-bloods.

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The Ongoing Elvish Glossary

• Alkaith: Curved 14-inch dagger favored as a weapon and general cutting tool by Elvish Spellcasters and some High Elves.
• Arnost: Simple Speech (Modern “Common”, a human tongue)
• Arrunquessor: Plains Elves
• Ayer: Nuthanori word meaning “Squat”. Mont Ayer is the name of one of the two peaks that define the traditional elvish lands.
• Calquissir: High Elves
• Corellan: The First
• Drow: “Those Who Dwell Apart” (in Nuthanorl). Added to Ogre by the Drow with the meaning of “Smart”.
• Ellessarune: The “Shining City” of the Tarquessir, home of the Elvish King and capital of the Elven Lands to this day.
• Eltrhinast: “Guiding Spirit”
• Elvarheim: “Blessed Leafy Home”: The Elven Forest, homeland of the Tarquessir and the centre of Elven Power in modern times
• Gilandthor: “The Gathering”, the formal title of the Elvish Council.
• Hithainduil: High Elven Language
• Huyundaltha: “Masters Of The Ondaltha” (literal), “Bladedancers” (colloquial). Formerly Noletinechor, now Guardians Of Elvish Society.
• Ondaltha: A two-weapon combat style based apon Elvish Dance, practiced exclusively by Huyundaltha.
• Illvayssor: “The Other”, a mythical race
• Isallithin: “The Sundered”, a name applied to Aquatic Elves
• King: A human title interpreted by Elves as “speaker to others” and defined as such within their language.
• Magi: A corruption of the Zamiel word “Machus”, which means “of the wise.”
• Mithryl: the Elvish name of an extremely fragile metal given in trade by the Dwarves to the Elves. The word is imported from Dwarven, who in turn obtained it from the Zamiel Tongue name of the metal, “Mithral”. “Mithryl” means “Moonsilver” in Elven. The word also enjoys popular usage as a metaphor for a treasure found which appeared initially worthless.
• Mithral: the Drow name for Mithryl. A literal translation from Zamiel is “Shadowsilver”.
• Mont: Nuthanori word meaning “High Place”. Used human-style in the naming of Mountains.
• Noletinechor: “Lore Shields”, an elvish historical vocation
• Nuthanorl: Low Elven Language, Common Elven
• Sarner: A human abbreviation of the Hithainduil word “Saranariuthenal” which means, literally, “Swift and Wide”. The River Sarner runs through the central valley of Elvarheim.
• Tarquessir: Forest Elves
• Thuyon: Nuthanori word meaning “Tall Spires”. Mont Thuyon is the name of the taller of the two peaks that define the traditional elvish lands; Modern Elvarheim lies between the foothills of Mont Thuyon and the River Sarner.
• Verdonne: “Quickbranch”, an artificial race created by Elves to be “The Guardians Of The Forest”.
• Zamiel: Drow Language

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Next time: Cults, Half-breeds, and The Circle Of Harmony; new complexities to vex the Elves and complicate their lives: Chapters 29, 30, and 31!

I’ve got so much campaign prep to get done that if I don’t do it here, I’ll never get it done in time…

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Chapters 24 to 26 were partially unfinished when I started this series, which means they are presented in first-draft form and not the fully polished form of the early chapters.

That means a change in style for the latter third or so of this post, because my objective here is to tell the story to a usable standard (as explained in Game Prep and the +N to Game Longevity) and not to spend a lot of time rewriting to cast paragraphs in the mode of speech of a particular contributing “speaker”. Think of it this way: Broad Notes to Detailed Notes to Outline to First Draft to Final Draft – the goal from the last sections of Chapter 21 onwards is First Draft standard, and not a polished Final Draft.

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The Second Great Dwarfwar: Armistice

The Dwarven King and his retinue exited the tunnel to find the mouth ringed three-deep with Elves with bows drawn, and more on the limbs of trees on all sides. A tense standoff resulted until Kazeth was brought forward. He described the events in the Dwarven King’s court, but the Elvish Council was wary; all they knew for certain is that their Prince went down the tunnel in the company of a Dwarf and failed to return. Since the Dwarven King was also suspicious, the two parties were soon glaring at each other, a hairsbreadth from renewing the violence. The people who were most convinced that the Dwarves had been manipulated by the Drow were Kazeth and Therialas the tracker. While Kazeth had not been so certain initially, he had developed considerable respect for Prince Elbareth during their travels together, and the betrayal by the Drow Ambassador had been the clincher. The pair stepped forward to act as peacemakers, and quickly agreed to the offer of armistice. After dispatching runners to advise the Elves within the Dwarven tunnels to stand down but not withdraw. King Veldergrist, having anticipated this result, had left instructions with his commanders to stand down but maintain defensive lines if the Elves ceased their attack.

They then opened discussions of the possible terms of a more substantial peace treaty, starting by proposing and accepting that both sides had suffered equally in the war. The Dwarven King interrupted to dispute this. The Elven King’s son was killed while under his protection and that weighs heavily on his honor. He cannot accept the agreement on this point unless the stain on his good name is considered a separate debt, not covered by the statement of equal losses. The Elvish Council, who placed no special value on the life of a Prince (as compared to any other Elf) were quick to accept an advantage in the negotiations. This put Therialas in an awkward position, because it gave the Elves an undeserved advantage in the peace negotiations, but he could expose the ploy without disgracing his people in the eyes of the Dwarves and jeopardizing the entire peace negotiation, and without revealing the secret of the Elven nobility – a secret that could easily trigger wars with several other races, especially humans, who could be almost as prickly as Dwarves when they perceive insult.

After protesting (privately) to the council, Therialas threatened to walk off away from the negotiations completely. This was an empty threat, and the Council knew it; the aged tracker would never permit a single elf to be killed in a resumption of hostilities for which he alone would be responsible. Nevertheless, they were concerned that he might reveal the secret in order to equalize the negotiating position, and agreed to permit him some latitude in setting the peace terms – subject to their approval, of course.

Therialas started by repatriating the Dwarven Prince to his people, describing him as brave and resourceful fighter of whom his father should be proud. Of course, it did not hurt negotiations that he was able to confirm that he had been well-treated. For the next several hours, the Elves described their theory of Drow manipulation, and pressing the Dwarven King for greater details concerning the promises and agreements; but the Dwarven King was reluctant to provide such details. The Drow were allies of the Dwarven Nation who – so far as the Dwarves had been able to tell – had treated fairly and honestly with their people. Until it could be proven that the Drow had betrayed the intent of that alliance, King Veldergrist would not give the Surface Elves any advantage over their subterranean Kin. But the certainty of the Elves had grown with each retelling of the theory, and they were consequently strongly motivated to offer concessions.

They started by recapitulating the terms of the agreement with the Drow, point-by-point, accompanied by their interpretation. As they did so, on each point, they made an offer. They promised to trade food to the Dwarves at the same price the Drow were offering. They offered to supply timber to the Dwarves at terms that even the Dwarves considered generous; so much so that King Veldergrist was minded to accuse the Elvish Council of attempting to bribe them out of bloody-mindedness and hatred for the Drow. Since timber rights was the initial cause of the conflict, the Elves were able to convince the King that an agreement on the issue was in the Elves own best interest.

King Veldergrist responded by acknowledging the offer, and in a gesture of good will, and as a mark of thanks for the good treatment of his son, he handed over one of the Black Gems and a small sample of the metal, Mithral, that the Drow had been trading to the Dwarves. Because these commodities were central to the doubts raised by Prince Elbareth, he offered them to the Elves to study while he retired to consider their offer.

After contemplating the offer overnight, King Veldergrist determined that if supplemented by an apology from each side, he would accept the proposed Peace Treaty, but even while the two negotiators were arguing over the details, a band of Dwarves erupted from the tunnel which led to the heart of the Elven Lands. The elves reacted with alarm at this fresh incursion, and once again the fragile peace came under threat. Under the same flag of parley that he had carried into the Elven forest the previous day, King Veldergrist left his protective shield of Dwarven Warriors behind and approached the confrontation, where he spoke in hushed tones to the Dwarves who had emerged from the tunnel. When the conference concluded he raised the standard of peace high, so that all could see it, then dramatically swept it to one side, signaling an end to the peace. The warriors with him all drew their weapons, as did the Elves in the gathering. In a loud voice, the King demanded, “Therialas of Elvarheim, I require an explanation. You have deceived us with your false Armistice and pretence of laying down your arms, even while releasing into our tunnels monstrosities and abominations to slaughter our wives and young, continuing the war by proxy and subterfuge.”

“I know not who is attacking your women and children, Dwarf-King, but it is not us. I give you my word.”

“Trust between us is broken, Elf. Your word is worthless until that is restored.”

“How do you propose we do that, King of Beards?”

“I do not know, tree-lover, but a way must be found before the sun sets, or the peace between us will end – for all time.”

The Final Betrayal

The Elvish council had withdrawn to consider how best to satisfy the fractious and irritated King of the Dwarves. “If it is not us, it must be the Drow – unless it is a Dwarven fiction. We have seen no evidence of these monstrosities.”

“We are on the verge of total victory and they know it. They would be insane to resume the conflict under the current circumstances.”

“Perhaps they are insane. They are Dwarves.”

“That may make them different, but not insane. Let us assume that this is the handiwork of our Kindred. In order for that to be the case, they would have to know what the Huyundaltha planned. How might that be that possible?”

“Easily. They know us, and might be able to predict our solution. The Queen Of Spiders may have scried our preparations. And it is always possible that we have a spy in our midst. Any of these would have yielded the intelligence.”

“So, assuming that this is the work of the Drow, what is her objective?”

“The Dwarves were about to subjugate themselves to her rule without realizing it. The accords threaten that. At the very least she disrupts the peace. At best, she increases the pressure on the Dwarves to accede to her proposals. Further, by attacking the helpless and placing the burden of responsibility for the attack apon us, she may enrage the Dwarves to the point of seeking revenge at any price. Finally, I am sure that some Dwarves will doubt us no matter what, so she divides an enemy.”

“There are ample strategic reasons for this attack, then. Next, we must ask ourselves how she has achieved this?”

“That answer would seem simple as well. She could have learned of the intent of Deruan almost as soon as it was formed, so this stroke could have been in preparation for as long as the Huyundaltha were committed to the course. Moreover, we are considerate to those creatures we manipulate with our Spellcraft; Lolth is far more ruthless. Her programme could have started later and still overtaken ours.”

“Then there remains only one question. How do we convince the King of the Dwarves of all this?”

“There is but one way,” replied Therialas. “Lolth has but one failing, her ego. It drives her to always take anything she undertakes that one step too far. She would not have been content merely to counterfeight our creatures, she would have been driven to “improve” on them, producing – as the Dwarven reports state – monstrosities and abominations – if she could.”

“That is the flaw in all these arguements. Our creatures were as perfectly suited to their task as we could make them; indeed the Huyundaltha waited until that was the case. We had not the skill and spellweaving ability to enhance them further. How then can we explain her ability to exceed those limits without acknowledging the unthinkable, that she is our superior in our own chosen craft?”

“I can answer that,” came a new voice. “I have been examining the black gem provided by the Dwarves, the gems which so fascinated Lolth that she traded more than generously to obtain them, and one example of which enabled her Drow to penetrate our spellwoven defenses. How it and its like came to be, I cannot say, nor how they came to be located where the Dwarves found them; but they contain a symmetrical arrangement of all six forms of natural energy. These resonate with the energies of the subject of a Spellweaving, loosening the hold of the natural form, and making the subject more receptive to spellweaving. With enough of these gems, used in concert by enough spellweavers operating in harmony, Lolth would have been capable of twisting and reshaping the world to her liking. She could have obliterated us as an afterthought.”

“With such ability, it becomes clear that we never figured into her immediate objective. This entire war was directed at the subjugation of the Dwarves, and we were never more than unwitting pawns in her scheme.”

“So,” concluded Therialas, “Lolth had both the capacity and predisposition to produce abominations far more extreme those we would ever create. That is her mistake, and it leaves us a slim opening through which to thread the needle of peace. I know now how to convince the King, if anyone or anything can do so. Will the council grant me the authority to continue to speak for our people in these negotiations without interference, regardless of how unlikely my tactics may appear?”

One after the other, the members of the council nodded.

A short time later, the Council and their appointed negotiator returned to address the King of the Dwarves. “Your majesty, you demanded that we provide an explanation. I must tell you that at this time we cannot.”

“Then your honor and the peace accords are forfeit. We will grind you into the dust, if it take a thousand years, no matter the cost. To arms!”

Hastily, and with his hands held open before him, Therialas added, “What we can offer are suspicions and surmise without proofs, and I say that because you, your majesty, hold the proof. We cannot give you your answer because you already have it!”

“If this is some obscure jest, tree-lover, I am not laughing. What is this explanation, and what is the proof that you claim is already in my possession?”

“It is no joke, you Majesty, but were I to give you the surmised explanation we have devised, it would compromise the proof. To prove beyond doubt our innocence and restore the bond of peace between us, you must first study the proof with your own eyes, and only then may we offer an explanation for what you will apprehend. You have with you descriptions of the horrors which even now assault your civilian population? Do not tell me of the details, but please ensure that those details you have in your possession are fresh in your mind.”

“I will never forget them, for they conjure images most loathsome and evil. Speak quickly, Elf, for all our lives hang apon the thread of my patience, and it wears thin.”

“I must point out that you have not shared this knowledge with us, save only in the most general terms – ‘monstrosities and abominations’ was the phrase you used. I will take you now to the glades where our creatures await their role in any renewed conflict. You may compare them with the descriptions you hold and assure yourself that it is quite impossible for the two to be related.” A sudden buzz of consternation erupted from the Council as Therialas’ intent became clear.

“Don’t go, Your Majesty, it is a trap!” cried one of the Warriors who had brought word of the massacre.

“You may bring your entire retinue, including these uninvited additions, for protection. Your son and heir and the strike force he commanded was our prisoner; you arrived under flag of truce and with but a token bodyguard, into the heart of our power. Had we wished to entrap you, it would have been done easily and long before these additional forces arrived. Were we as bereft of honor as you now suspect, there would have been nothing to prevent it.”

“I do not need an army. Your point is well made. Very well, I will see these creatures.” Turning to his compatriots, he instructed, “Assemble my honor guard. Take no action save to defend yourself until I return, or until the sun sets, at which time it will be clear that I cannot return. My son shall be your commander and King should that transpire.”

A short time later, the Dwarven King, still surrounded by the muted whispers of protest from the Elven Council, was inspecting some of the creatures the Huyundaltha had bred: a gopher standing as tall as a Dwarf; A worm to whose flesh weapons and iron of any kind clung as though glued in place, at once disarming and forming a protective barrier from attack; a termite as large as a hand; a tiger with great green eyes, adapted for to hunt in the dark. “Elven Spellweaving,” explained Therialas, “may enhance an existing quality or capacity of a creature, may make it more obedient or docile, even more aware and awake to the consciousness of nature, but it remains true to its nature. We cannot force a creature to become something against that nature. Compare these with the descriptions you have received, and you will observe that the two cannot be related.”

“You speak truly, Elf. These creatures may be dangerous, unusual, even noteworthy, but they are still minor variations on the theme of what they were. They cannot be compared to the perversions of nature that assault my people. And now, I’ll trouble you for that explanation you promised.”

It was the work of only a few minutes to recite the logic of the Elven Council as the pair walked side by side back to the central glade where the Dwarven tunnel exited into the Elven Realm, followed by the Elvish council and Dwarvish Honor Guard. “Perhaps Lolth believes that the Battle continues, because without the reports of the Ambassador to your Court, her sources of intelligence are reduced; or perhaps she knew of the peace conference, and sought to pressure you while disrupting it. Perhaps she planned to use her creations in the first manner but turned them to the second; it matters not, the outcome is the same,” said Therialas. “What matters most is that you have seen this proof with your own eyes, and that it not only confirms our speculations apon the origins of this attack, but also verifies beyond doubt the allegations we had already made. This war is the result of misunderstandings and short tempers, fueled and manipulated and ultimately triggered by the manipulations of a liar and a deceiver.”

“Indeed, Elf. We must have scared the witch more than we thought when we sought justice over the Prince Of Lies affair – but hold, what is this?” All were surprised to see a fresh contingent of Dwarves erupting from the mouth of the tunnel.

“More Dwarves? If this keeps up, Lolth may yet win your Kingdom, Veldergrist, because all your nation will be here!”

“Fear not, tree-lover – when I depart, I will have the tunnel collapsed and sealed throughout its length. If I choose to depart, you understand,” replied the King with a twinkle in his eye.

“Your Majesty, that jest was almost Elven,” laughed the negotiator.

One of the newcomers, spying the King, saluted in Dwarven fashion and announced loudly, “Your majesty, I have urgent news. One of the monstrosities erupted from a tunnel near to the front lines and assaulted our forces there. They were close to being overrun when the Elves took up arms. For a moment, we thought they were intending to take advantage of our distraction, but instead they joined with us and together we were able to rout the creature. They then aided in the treatment and care of the wounded. The commander of the battle force instructed us to send this news to you at once, as it bears strongly apon the character of the negotiations you currently undertake. He adds that several of the elves were heard to utter the words ‘unnatural’ and ‘perversion’ in description of the monstrous creature; he is convinced that they knew nothing about it until its attack.”

With this final confirmation, King Veldergrist was convinced, and returned to the negotiation of peace terms. Since most of these had been agreed before the disruption, the negotiations went swiftly. Within an hour, a treaty of peace had been drawn up, which included the terms of trade proposed by the Elves. The Elven King then came forward and placed his flowing signature apon the document, where it was soon joined by the more angular runes and personal flourish of King Veldergrist. So concluded the second Great War between Elves and Dwarves. As his entourage, led by the Prince, returned to the tunnels, the King stopped, and turned, and announced: “Know you this: I swear apon all the Honor of the Dwarven People that we shall, henceforth, kill any Drow who may violate our tunnels, apon sight. To avoid unpleasant accidents, it would be well for your people to avoid them also unless invited to enter. Twice now, the Spider-queen has made fools of my people, and while our lives may be shorter than yours, we have very long memories. Very long memories, and this humiliation will not soon be forgotten. Be warned, and remember the warning well.”

Then Deruan, leader of the Huyundaltha, architect of the Elven strategy during the war, who had only just returned from the tunnels and who was still struggling to absorb the full meaning of events, stepped forward and said, “It is not enough. Too much Elven blood has been spilled, and too much Dwarven blood. We have been used as much as your people, yet you would strip us of the opportunity to seek Justice. I demand more!”

With a wary eye, King Veldergrist turned to face the Elf. “I will hear your proposal, Tree-lover,” he replied.

The Second Great Dwarfwar: Aftermath: The Isolation Of The Drow

Deruan’s proposals were quite simple. Elven archers, under the leadership of the Huyundaltha, who were now accustomed to fighting beneath the surface world, would be led down the Dwarven Tunnels to join in the protection of the Dwarvish civilians. At the same time, he and the Dwarven War-leader would plan a suitable act of retaliation against the Drow, a series of combined maneuvers that would drive the monsters back from the Dwarven domain. This would also ensure sufficient force was on hand should Lolth, in fit of pique, attempt a more traditional invasion while the Dwarves were relatively vulnerable. After all, most of the Dwarven defenders had been brought into forward positions relative to the accessways to the Surface, leaving only a token guard force standing between the Dwarves and the Drow.

King Veldergrist was forced to acknowledge that if the subjugation of the Dwarves had indeed been Lolth’s primary objective, she would not waste the opportunity.

Deruan stated that it was only right and just for the Dwarves to defend their realm against such an invasion, but with the losses they had endured, they did not have the numbers to both protect their civilian population from the Drow Monstrosities and defend themselves against a Drow invasion. Only if the Dwarves permitted the Elves to guard their flanks and protect the civilian population could enough warriors be spared. The elves would drive the monstrosities back down the tunnels dug by the Drow to direct the attacks of the monstrosities and hold them there while Dwarvish miners sealed the passages, entombing the Drow with their own creations. Elvish spellweavers could then reinforce these passages using some of the Black Gems so that not even Lolth could break through them. Only when the safety of the Dwarven population was assured could the Elves withdraw, able to state with clear conscience that they had done their best to undo the harm they had been manipulated into causing.

This came close to repeating past offences against Dwarven sensibilities – once again, an Elf was telling them how to defend themselves, and how to conduct a joint operation, and on what terms the two nations would cooperate; but the Elves had, as has been explained, learned something from past mistakes. The Dwarven specialist immediately added, “Unless your War-Leader has some better idea. He would know the tunnels connecting your realm to that of the Drow far better than we, and likewise the disposition of your remaining forces, King Veldergrist.”

Suitably mollified by this acknowledgement of superiority (of a sort), the King agreed that they should proceed as suggested by the leader of the Huyundaltha as an interim measure until more concrete plans were agreed between the two military leaders.

As it transpired, this agreement was reached barely in time, and if it were not for more units of the Huyundaltha taking it apon themselves to defend Dwarves against incursions by Lolth’s abominations without orders to do so, the Dwarven nation would have been quickly overrun, as a four pronged simultaneous assault began. Monstrosities attacked the Dwarven armies on two sides, pinning them down, while more attacked the sheltering civilian population from above and below, creating panic that ensured that no defenders not engaged by those initial forces could make their way to the relatively unprotected rear through which an army of 1,000 Drow flooded in sudden and unprovoked attack.

But Lolth had not fully reckoned the martial nature of Dwarven society into her plans; from the time he can first walk, young Dwarves train with hammers and other weapons, regardless of age or gender. The “Civilians” might be less proficient than the military specialists of the official army, but they could, and did, fight to the last breath. In this way, they held out until Elvish relief could reach the Soldiers at the former front, who were then able to make their way through the outraged civilians to the new battle-lines, where an anarchic stalemate quickly developed.

At first, the battles were far more anarchic than the elegant strategy proposed by Deruan, and Elves and Dwarves were often engaged in joint moments of desperate action. Over the next few days, the Drow attempted assault after assault, but each time there were more Elven and Dwarven defenders on hand to repel the invaders, and the battle against a mutual foe did much to erase any lingering animosity between the two new allies. It was symbolic of the campaign that both Deruan and the Dwarvish War-leader perished fighting alongside each other in the most heated of those joint battles. Slowly, as the allied force gained control of the bottlenecks which connected the Drow realm to that of the Dwarves, the battle structure became less improvised as the two forces learned anew how to work together to best effect. It became routine; time after time, a Dwarvish strike force would rush forward in a charge under cover of Elven bow-fire to savage the enemy ranks and drive deep into the heart of their lines, which would collapse inwards to surround the Dwarves. At a prearranged distance, the Dwarves would abruptly halt and form a skirmish line out to each side, dividing the Drow attackers, and would then hold firm in defensive position, with the archers breaking up any organized counterattack, while a trailing element of Huyundaltha swept through those Drow who had been isolated mowing the enemy down like sheaves of wheat with their hypnotic swirling dance and flashing twin blades. When they reached the Dwarvish lines, having annihilated the Drow that stood between them, the archers would advance and take up fresh positions, ready to do it all once again.

After four days of intense battle, the Drow – who had suffered terrible losses – withdrew, and a fresh wave of abominations spewed forth from hidden side tunnels, even more deadly and perverse than those which the Dwarves had previously seen. These creatures were savage and free of all restraint, attacking anything and everything in their path. Under this fresh assault, the Allies were forced to retreat, but they did so in an orderly fashion; but so dangerous were the creatures that the Drow attackers dared not advance. Instead, both sides walled off the passages occupied by the abominations, establishing a monstrously-guarded “no man’s land” between the Dwarves and the Drow.

When at last, the Dwarven tunnels were reported free of attackers, the Elves began to withdraw, leaving behind them what supplies they could spare and taking only the minimum needed to reach the surface safely. Even as they withdrew, the first shipments of trade goods from the Elves arrived, for which the Elves accepted in payment whatever the Dwarves had on hand and did not need. So it was that the Elves came into possession of a substantial quantity of the fragile metal, Mithral.

Lolth described the entire engagement to her people as a great victory, of course. They had succeeded in walling the Dwarves off from their subterranean homes, securing them from possible Dwarvish incursion. She announced that new and secret tunnels could now be dug to the surface without the danger of attracting Dwarvish attention. She decreed that the Drow would now leave the Surface World unmolested until the memory of the Drow people was long-faded and they could strike without warning, having spied out all the vulnerabilities of their enemies. Until that day, she directed her people, they should turn their attention to mastering the ways of stealth, subterfuge, and disguise, and to the taming of the wild creations she had made in her people’s name, the Dryders and Phase Spiders.

Lolth herself was privately far less satisfied with the outcome than she pretended. For the second time, her chosen people had come off second-best in a confrontation with outsiders. While her peoples’ continued adoration was a given, since the entire structure of the society she had imposed on them was designed to detect, contain, and punish those who did not display absolute faith in her, she was all too aware that her continued power, existence, and continued unification relied completely apon that faith. When she had been a mere alliance of spider-totems, she had drawn her power from nature itself, but when she broke away from nature’s dictates, she had also cut herself off from that source of power, replacing it with the adoration of her subjects. If her people were ever to fall, or to lose their faith, she would be undone; before she could again risk them in direct confrontation, she would need to find a way of protecting her own existance, by recruiting other subjects to worship her.

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The Ongoing Elvish Glossary

• Alkaith: Curved 14-inch dagger favored as a weapon and general cutting tool by Elvish Spellcasters and some High Elves.
• Arnost: Simple Speech (Modern “Common”, a human tongue)
• Arrunquessor: Plains Elves
• Ayer: Nuthanori word meaning “Squat”. Mont Ayer is the name of one of the two peaks that define the traditional elvish lands.
• Calquissir: High Elves
• Corellan: The First
• Drow: “Those Who Dwell Apart” (in Nuthanorl). Added to Ogre by the Drow with the meaning of “Smart”.
• Ellessarune: The “Shining City” of the Tarquessir, home of the Elvish King and capital of the Elven Lands to this day.
• Eltrhinast: “Guiding Spirit”
• Elvarheim: “Blessed Leafy Home”: The Elven Forest, homeland of the Tarquessir and the centre of Elven Power in modern times
• Gilandthor: “The Gathering”, the formal title of the Elvish Council.
• Hithainduil: High Elven Language
• Huyundaltha: “Masters Of The Ondaltha” (literal), “Bladedancers” (colloquial). Formerly Noletinechor, now Guardians Of Elvish Society.
• Ondaltha: A two-weapon combat style based apon Elvish Dance, practiced exclusively by Huyundaltha.
• Illvayssor: “The Other”, a mythical race
• Isallithin: “The Sundered”, a name applied to Aquatic Elves
• King: A human title interpreted by Elves as “speaker to others” and defined as such within their language.
• Magi: A corruption of the Zamiel word “Machus”, which means “of the wise.”
• Mithryl: the Elvish name of an extremely fragile metal given in trade by the Dwarves to the Elves. The word is imported from Dwarven, who in turn obtained it from the Zamiel Tongue name of the metal, “Mithral”. “Mithryl” means “Moonsilver” in Elven. The word also enjoys popular usage as a metaphor for a treasure found which appeared initially worthless.
• Mithral: the Drow name for Mithryl. A literal translation from Zamiel is “Shadowsilver”.
• Mont: Nuthanori word meaning “High Place”. Used human-style in the naming of Mountains.
• Noletinechor: “Lore Shields”, an elvish historical vocation
• Nuthanorl: Low Elven Language, Common Elven
• Sarner: A human abbreviation of the Hithainduil word “Saranariuthenal” which means, literally, “Swift and Wide”. The River Sarner runs through the central valley of Elvarheim.
• Tarquessir: Forest Elves
• Thuyon: Nuthanori word meaning “Tall Spires”. Mont Thuyon is the name of the taller of the two peaks that define the traditional elvish lands; Modern Elvarheim lies between the foothills of Mont Thuyon and the River Sarner.
• Verdonne: “Quickbranch”, an artificial race created by Elves to be “The Guardians Of The Forest”.
• Zamiel: Drow Language

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Next time: The forging of Mithryl, more on the consequences of the Second Great War, and how they reshaped Elven Society forever – and that’s just chapters 27 and 28! (and yes, those chapters were expected to be part of this post – Chapter 25 went into overtime, it was originally planned to be part of Chapter 24).

Encounter tables seem to have gone out of fashion lately, and I’m not entirely sure why that is. Perhaps its a trend away from random or “wandering monster” encounters in a wilderness setting in favor of planned encounters – the latter can be defined as encounters that advance the plotline, while the latter are often viewed as meaningless, or worse yet, as sources of cheap XP for the characters. Perhaps its simply the spontaneity of the random encounter, which almost certainly means that they are less developed than a non-random encounter. Perhaps its that healing is thought to be too easily obtained and the old-school function of random encounters – that of wearing characters down to increase the drama and tension of the planned encounters. Perhaps it’s just that our lives have all become more crowded, and we have less time to game, and less tolerance for “non-contributing” encounters. Or perhaps its because the simulation aspects of gaming have become slightly more dominant in the last decade, and combats take longer to resolve as a consequence – perhaps too long to be tolerated in a climate of shortened attention spans. Or, finally, perhaps its because all-too-often, a random encounter table seems cobbled together at the last minute and detracts from the standards of verisimilitude that we seek in our gaming.

None of these objections are good enough. All these flaws can be overcome with surprisingly little judicious prep, and in the first sections of this three-part series, I’m going to show you how to do it – and why and when it’s worth the effort. Part two, “This eats that,” (next week) will focus on how to create better, more useful encounter tables. Part three, “Encounters with meaning,” (two weeks from now) will conclude the series by offering a technique for crafting better results from your encounter tables and integrating them into your plotlines in a meaningful way, and how to adapt the principles to urban and dungeon settings.

The Traditional Function

Here’s how it used to work, back in my AD&D days: The PCs would gather in an inn or tavern, all charged up and ready to go. They would learn the location of a dungeon, and decide that it was worth exploring. On the way, they would have various random encounters that exhausted or diminished their available resources – consuming healing potions and prepared spells and eroding the charges in wands and what-have-you. In compensation, they would receive a token amount of treasure. The degree of consumption would set the parameters for their dungeon crawl, because they could never be certain of uninterrupted rest to recharge, and the amount of quick healing from external sources that they had on hand had been eroded en route. When they reached the point where they were no longer confident of being able to make it back to home base, they would set out for the trip home. Now, the random encounters that they had experienced en route to the dungeon assumed a greater significance; not only were they are relatively low power, but they might also face additional encounters from “people” they had ticked off in the dungeon, at least for the first few days. Furthermore, they were relatively heavily encumbered, slowing their movement, giving more time for random encounters to occur. In compensation, they had the experience and knowledge that they had acquired on the trip out, enabling them to avoid some of the encounters, and of course, they had depleted the number of creatures out there to encounter on that trip out. Still, the number of times that I got them back to home base with only a hit point or two each made them properly cautious and respectful of the environment around them.

Then they started to get smart. Instead of being eager to explore the dungeon as quickly as possible, they decided that it was better to take their time on the outward leg, relying only on renewable resources. They increased their stockpile of non-renewable resources to the point where they were almost as heavily burdened on the trip out as they anticipated being on the trip back. Instead of trying to carry all the loot at once, they started burying caches on their way back, progressively lightening their load – the least-valuable items first. This meant that not only could they explore more of the dungeon per trip, but that they could expect greater profits per trip – easily sufficient to replenish their stockpiles, enabling them to make one or more trips to specifically to retrieve their caches. Slowly, they found ways of diminishing the risk.

At the same time, their power levels were rising, making them more self-reliant. Greater combat prowess made them able to defeat casual encounters more readily and at lower cost in hit points; they had more hit points at their disposal, anyway; and the party healers were better able to supply the demand for what healing was required. Their capabilities were expanding exponentially, and random encounters eventually became more trouble than they worth. At first, they were tolerated, but as the situation continued, the complaints became more frequent and more vocal.

I thought about an escalation in the difficulty of the random encounters, but a couple of experiments in that direction quickly convinced me that this was a dead end. The first was that these encounters provided still greater levels of treasure, exacerbating the general problem more quickly than they resolved it. The second was that they quickly became improbable to the point of being ridiculous. “Okay, so we somehow managed to avoid noticing or being noticed by four blue dragons? I don’t buy it.” The entire system was beginning to break down.

The final straw came when a party earned more experience and got more loot from the random encounters going to-and-from the dungeon than they did within it – and returned to home base with full hit points, leaving the wilderness because they had exhausted their capacity to carry more treasure. They started talking about buying wagons and recruiting lesser adventurers to guard them so that they could remain in the field for longer, and avoiding dungeons entirely – the risk-vs-reward wasn’t as favorable as dealing with random encounters.

2e and 3.x change the balance for the worse

Many years later, when I started my Fumanor Campaign, I was persuaded – somewhat reluctantly – to use 2e as the game system. The campaign was designed to be run using AD&D, a system for which I had worked out solutions to the imbalances that led to these problems, or so I thought. The combination of more experienced players, rules changes between the editions, and a GM who was completely inexperienced with the new rules system soon produced results that were even more drastically out-of-kilter. Things only became worse when – after an abortive attempt to translate the campaign into Rolemaster – we went to 3.x as the game system. The reason was that healing became more readily accessible. When combined with a lower play frequency – something I’ve addressed separately later in this article – tolerance for random encounters began to wear very thin once the PCs topped 12th level.

At low character levels, random encounters work as they always have. As character levels rise, the familiar problems I’ve described return, even more rapidly than they used to.

Phased Encounters

My solution was to phase random encounters out completely unless they were plot-significant – the chance of a roll being required 20 minus the average character level. Beyond this, encounters were dismissed as trivialities not worth mentioning. At best, I would include them in a daily/weekly synopsis of their travels, compressing the entire journey from A to B into a single descriptive passage. This had the unwanted effect of ensuring that the players knew that any encounter I did not hand-wave was significant, but that was a relatively small price to pay.

The XP Giveaway

One of the perceived problems with random encounters, especially at mid-to-high levels is that they are an XP giveaway. In pre-3.0 games, this perception is completely valid, a problem that has to be addressed. In theory, this is resolved by the 3.x system of awarding XP based on a theoretical risk-vs-reward scale – an encounter is worth less XP if the characters are a higher level, and eventually reach the point of being worth nothing. However, my experience is that the diminishment of xp is geometric in nature (or, more properly, the increase going in the other direction is geometric) while overall character capabilities increase on an exponential scale. To be truly balanced in this respect, characters gaining a level would have to choose between additional HP, improved combat capabilities, or dedicating the level towards an increase in class abilities. Spellcasters would have a fourth choice – to increase the number of spells they received.

But the game system is what it is, and my players would lynch me if I tried to implement anything so draconian.

The point – and the reason all this is relevant to the current discussion and not relegated to a sidebar – is that it still gets progressively easier for the characters to earn the XP on offer in the form of random encounters – far faster than rising character levels erodes the value of these encounters.

There are two solutions to this problem.

XP reflecting the encounter significance

In July two years ago, I proposed the concept of objective-oriented experience points. This approach solves the XP-Giveaway problem immediately – if the encounter doesn’t contribute to the characters achieving the plot objective, it’s worth nothing to them; at best, a random encounter is just another roadblock that the PCs have to circumvent or overcome in order to achieve their goals.

But even if a more traditional xp structure is in place, there is no reason why a partial solution can’t be adopted to this specific problem. The first solution is to make the XP reflect the significance of the encounter, and then adjust the difficulty of the encounter to conform. This recasts the XP problem as one of encounter planning, where – perhaps – it belongs.

For example, if you have an encounter indicated by a random encounter table that should be worth an estimated 500xp but the significance would be more commensurate with 100 xp, then you adjust the difficulty accordingly. Give the PCs a passing ally. Let the creatures being encountered be already wounded. Assume that there will be circumstances in the encounter that prevent the creatures from using one of their more dramatic racial abilities. Any one of these could be enough to halve the XP value of the encounter; all three in combination reduces it to something like an eighth, which is about 63 xp. Any two of them would drop the value to about 1/4, or 125 xp. Either of these values is close enough to the 100-point target, especially if you keep track of your overs-and-unders and add those to the next random encounter XP target.

Encounter significance reflecting the XP

The alternative is to ramp up the significance of the encounter – possibly in terms of the current adventure, possibly in terms of a more long-term development – until it is commensurate with the XP that will be earned. If the encounter has a book value of 500, and you think that as a purely random encounter it should only be worth 100xp, then you have 400xp worth of significance to load in. Perhaps the creatures are chasing/hunting an NPC who never appears in this adventure, but who will provide the hook to a future adventure. Perhaps the encounter itself is a harbinger of greater activity by that species or race within the campaign. Perhaps the creatures have attempted (or even partially succeeded) in looting the same dungeon the PCs are heading to, and have escaped with a book detailing some of the background of the place (which the GM would have to read anyway), or one of its treasures (one that’s worth about 400xp).

Either solution yields the same effect: the XP received becomes commensurate with the significance of the encounter.

Personally, I find the second solution to be less work and a greater spur to creativity, so I always attempt to employ it first; if that doesn’t work, then I look to reduce the XP value of the encounter.

Note that you don’t have to explain these adjustments to the players. In fact, the results are arguably better if you don’t – but have the reasons become self-evident later.

The Loot Giveaway

Most monsters have treasure – somewhere. Some have a trivial amount, others have lots. It does the GM no good to carefully moderate the treasure that he places in a dungeon if a random encounter table throws additional goodies into the mix.

Don’t let your campaign be held to ransom by the results of random encounters. Having fixed the XP problem, let’s look at ways to solve the Loot problem.

Enhancing the encounter significance

I’ve already touched on this solution when I suggested using the encounter as a “mule” to bring part of the background narrative or treasure from the dungeon to the PCs in advance of their arrival at the dungeon. But there is a further way to apply the concept: if the dungeon is going to require a magic item that the PCs don’t have, for example something that permits an attack against an ethereal foe, having a random encounter furnish just such an item can make the difference between a great game and an exercise in frustration.

Any of these three approaches provides loot in the random encounter that does not significantly unbalance or destabilize the game or the adventure – provided that sufficient care is taken in choosing the goodies in question.

Value reflecting the encounter significance

Another approach, one that works hand-in-hand with reducing the XP value of the encounter to some arbitrary value, is to reduce the loot that derives from it in a commensurate fashion. After all, if an encounter is only to be worth 100XP when the book says 500, and you have weakened the creatures encountered in order to achieve that 100XP target, it doesn’t seem at all unfair to reduce the treasure obtained by a similar ratio – while it does seem grossly unfair to have the loot have the full value that would go with a 500XP encounter, under those circumstances.

Remote Goodies

So your monster has a lair, and its supposed to be stuffed to the gills with goodies. Where is it? Is the monster smart enough to conceal it? Just because your players have won the encounter doesn’t mean they are entitled to the loot – at best they might get some of it and have bought a chance to look for the rest. And look, and look.

I once ran an encounter in which a dragon hid various bundles of hoard in 100GP units in various ways, then hired an adventuring party (the PCs) to try and find as many as they could. What they found, they got to keep – so they were well-motivated. It cost the dragon about 4,000GP – but at the end of the day, he knew which methods some very savvy PCs had not penetrated, and was able to hide the rest of his hoard accordingly. Another converted his entire fortune into statuary – then buried them upside down so that the statues looked like paving tiles. The PCs spent months searching while never realizing that the hoard was literally underfoot the whole time. A third found a hollow tree, stuffed his loot (in bags of holding) into it, then polymorphed the tree into a different variety of tree – one that have hollow spaces.

I’m not suggesting that every creature encountered will have a scheme to hide their loot that’s up to these standards – but they will all have been as clever as they can. After all, the lair is where the young are.

Potential vs. actual value

A favorite approach for random-encounter treasure is to furnish the PCs with a treasure that is worth quite a lot – to the right person, or if treated the right way. Sometimes it will also be grossly inconvenient or cumbersome in the meantime. Some goodies are naturally concealed, like a creature who uses gold flecks from creek water for roughage – it drinks the water, concentrates the gold into pellets, then passes these through its digestive system to help grind down the tough plants from which it derives its nourishment. The pellets are enveloped in the creature’s dung when expelled. When washed clean, these are worth about a silver piece each – but they are fragile and prone to returning to the gold fleck state when the dung holding them together is washed away. Over time, if the problem is properly tackled, you can earn quite a lot of money – but PCs never seem to do so. They are usually more get-rich-quick in orientation.

Little irritates a PC more than discovering that an undamaged pelt from a creature that they killed would have been worth $$$$ if properly preserved and not cut full of holes – but in the condition it’s now in, it’s only worth $. But the creature can still legitimately be said to have “loot” of $$$$ value – it’s not the creature’s fault that the PCs made it virtually worthless in the process of obtaining it.

While I describe this as a favorite approach, that is not to say that I use it all the time. I use it only when it makes sense. And I’m not above the PCs hearing false rumors from time to time – for example, that Bugbears have a pair of ivory molars at the back of their jaws for a brief period in adulthood.

Consumables and Irrelevancies

Finally, never forfeit to deduct the value of consumables and irrelevancies from the total before you start looking at how much actual wealth a creature has. A rare meat might be worth 10 GP per pound – and that comes to a lot when you’re talking about, say, a Bulette. But: How quickly does it spoil? How hard is it to preserve? How expensive is it to preserve? How hard is it to transport? What else will be lured to the vicinity by the smell of rotting meat?

I once gave a PC a “golden” berry, which – in fourty years – would grow into a tree whose leaves were real gold.

He ate it.

Random Relevance

By far the best solution to all the problems with random encounters is this: Make the a delivery system for something that matters. Information, Narrative, Background, Environment, Plot Development – whatever.

Information

What do you want the PCs to know? If sentient, an encounter could parley that information for safe passage. Is there something the PCs want to know about? Ditto. If non-sentient, is there a way for the very presence of the encounter to provide the information? I once had some PCs trying to track down The Well Of Life to resurrect a fallen comrade. En route, they came across a pack of undead squirrels – and started suspecting that there was more going on than met the eye. Sure, I could have had a random NPC pop up with the information, or one of the Sages that they tried to consult – but it was a lot more effective when every encounter started having the word “undead” tacked onto the front of it. Undead squirrels. Undead Orcs. Undead trees. An undead Roc. Undead… mushrooms.

Exported narrative

There’s always a lot of descriptive narrative that you have to get across. Putting as much of it across as dialogue with some creature encountered is always preferable to simply reciting it from on high. Perhaps the Chimpanzee has been to the Temple Of Unmitigated Disaster and can describe it – if the PCs use an appropriate spell – instead?

Background information

At one point I had a lot of background information about a location to impart to the PCs, and was looking for a way to dress it up and make it interesting. When the random encounter table came up “Ghost” I found what I was looking for. One of the PCs found himself caught in the middle as two ghosts recreated the climatic (and unresolved) final battle between them. Instead of dry, third-person narrative, I was able to bring it to life for the PC.

On another occasion, I wanted a PC to find out what some elves were up to. I had a tree tell him. Why not? He was a Drow who had been converted to Corellan. It started him no end when the tree started talking to him, though. The next problem was getting them to be quiet – for a while, everywhere he went, the tree limbs would rustle in welcome and groan with gossip and innuendo – mostly about other trees and the wildlife around them. Even now, the character can be doing his best Stealth act when a tree will suddenly cry out in welcome.

Environmental awareness

If you create an ecology-based encounter table – and I’ll be talking about those extensively in part two of this trio of articles – encounters are the best way of bringing the ecology to the attention of the PC. Once they recognize the principles apon which your ecology is based, they will start anticipating, and a minor encounter (worth nothing) can serve as forewarning of a dangerous change of environment ahead. The more the PCs interact with their environment instead of simply passing it by without notice, the more real your world will be to them.

Plot development

I’ve touched on this one earlier. A single pair of Orcs – in war-paint and a long way from where they might be expected to be – can be the first signs of a new war of aggression, just a single raindrop can announce the arrival of a storm.

En route to a dungeon ruled by a necromantic sentient phase spider with umpteen levels of mage on the side, some PCs in one of my games began noticing that just before they were attacked by a wandering monster, there would be a peculiar light and a sense of spiderweb drifting through the air. Proceeding to investigate the next time it happened, they learned that the owner of the dungeon had scried their approach and put a bounty on their heads, arranging ambush after ambush as they approached. Suddenly, the “random encounters” had a purpose and a malevolence behind them.

A subplot dressed in random encounter clothing

This only works in urban settings where virtually every encounter is with something sentient. Take a simple story and divide it into small sections – five to ten of them. Have that story happen around the PCs, never involving them directly, but always connecting indirectly with them through random encounters. Or invent a narrative as you go, using each random encounter to advance that side-plot. Since the players won’t know that it’s an entirely separate plotline to the main plot, they will have a lot of fun spinning spiderwebs and conspiracy theories from moonbeams.

The imperative of play frequency

There’s a lot that you can do when you play weekly, or even fortnightly, that you simply can’t do when you only play monthly. There’s far more imperative to “get on with the story” with less frequent play. To some extent, the approaches to encounters that I have described here were developed out of the necessity to give random encounters a reason to be noteworthy. Of course, it helps to have cultivated a reputation for dropping obscure clues years ahead of their becoming relevant – and of playing it straight when the players try to make sense of these veiled hints. The advantage that the PCs receive as a result is fair compensation for the additional investment in thinking about the campaign that the PCs have put in.

The more often you play, the more often you can afford to lose a quarter- or a half-session of play to a meaningless encounter. Finding the level that’s right for your circumstances is all important – because these techniques are all the more powerful in moderation. Used all the time, they can lose some of their oomph – but that’s still a better choice than the alternatives.

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UPDATE 5/4/13:

I tried, folks, but I simply wasn’t able to get part 2 finished in time. So for the second time in 5 years, I’m afraid there will be no post when one was scheduled. I could have taken time off from the article to run up something to appear this week but doing so would mean that it still wouldn’t be ready next week. So I decided to bite the bullet. Normal service will be resumed ASAP!

I’ve got so much campaign prep to get done that if I don’t do it here, I’ll never get it done in time…

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While most of Chapter 21 had been done when I started this series, Chapters 22 and 23 were at best partially finished, which means my easy ride is over. In the end, it proved easier to complete these partially-written chapters properly (it was simply topo jarring going from finished paragraphs to draft paragraphs and back again. But these are the last chapters for a while that will be written in final form.

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The Second Great Dwarfwar: Elvarheim Invasion

The Dwarves soon found trade to be a profitable exercise, especially the refined Adamant Ore. Mithral, they discovered, was a far more delicate material, too fragile to used for weapons or armor. It was pleasing to the eye, though, and light enough to be used for inlayed decorations; but even the most profligate such usage could not make a serious dent in the supply, as first hundreds and then thousands of ounces of the brittle metal accumulated. For close to 50 years, trade in foodstuffs, gems, and ore flourished, and was soon accompanied by the products of various crafts.

But eventually, and inevitably, the false peace was broken, as the Elves at last released their assault on the Dwarven caverns. Clouds of noxious fumes issued forth from the ventilation shafts; some of the Dwarven water-sources became blackened and foul-tasting, and soon proved toxic, while others simply dried completely; tree-roots the size of a Dwarf erupted from the walls, resistant to axe and flame, and knocked down supporting pillars, crushing whole communities in their cavernous homes; and rumors of strange creatures being encountered deep in the Dwarven tunnels were accompanied by the inexplicable disappearance of isolated Dwarves. While most of these can be accurately blamed on the creatures released by the Elvish Bladedancers, some were opportune kidnappings by the Drow, who were always eager to press others into their service. Even today, it is rumored that there are Drow Houses with Dwarven slaves hidden deep in the bowels of the earth, performing hard labors for the profit of their masters.

King Veldergrist was now elderly by Dwarvish Standards, but remained a vital and strong ruler; as a youth, he had ascended the throne, in his prime he had negotiated a friendship of sorts with the Drow, in his middle age he had managed trade between the two underground-dwelling races to the betterment of both, and now, as he approached his century of years, he faced the renewal of hostilities with a calm and grim determination to prevail.

He immediately sent word to the Drow Ambassador, and told him, “As your Mistress prophesied, so has it come to pass. Now is the time for plans long-held in abeyance to be realized. Long ago, She offered the aid of her Spellcrafters in a direct counterassault apon the surface; now we accept that offer, while they are distracted in the upper levels of our Mines. We ask also for increased shipments of food, that our remaining growers may be armed for war, and beg leave to repay this generosity in more sanguine times. And when we have prevailed, we should be most pleased to accept the offer of Spellcraft in undoing these unwarranted and unjustified assaults apon our realm.”

To which, the representative of the Spider-Queen replied, “We shall be most pleased to render unto you the aid that was promised so long ago by She Who Is Eternal. As I recall, there was also the offer of refuge from these travails for yourself, your immediate family, and a small cadre of Warriors, but you make no mention of this; I assure you, the offer remains open; will you accept our hospitality and shelter?”

And the Dwarf did reply with pride, “Eld may I be, but not yet in my dotage. My people will fight all the more stubbornly and proudly for the knowledge that we share in their discomforts. Not until the last possible moment will I abandon the protection of my people; they would accept nothing less of their King.”

“But surely,” said the Ambassador, “you would wish to see your wife and children escorted to a place of safety?”

“My wife refuses to leave my side, for which I am grateful, for she is the rock apon which I stand; and my children insist apon joining the ranks of those who will fight for our homes. I may be able to keep them from the front lines, where the dangers are greatest; beyond that, my authority seems to be somehow lacking.”

“Truly, a great Lord may master his people, but never his kin,” the Ambassador managed to announce, all the while contemplating how one of the House Mothers would react to such a statement. Were such a tragedy to befall him, the best for which he could hope was that his torment would be ended quickly lest others be exposed to such blasphemy! Truly, the Dwarves were ignorant savages to hold to such beliefs.

“Aye, in that you have the right of it,” replied the King.

“Very well, your Majesty. I shall depart at once to make the arrangements.”

And so it was that the Drow directed the Dwarves in how to tunnel beneath the roots of the forest of Elvarheim, and then nudged to one side those spellwoven defenses that lay between the bearded warriors and the heart of the Elven Realm. To those used to tunneling through hard stone and unyielding rock, the soft earth of the forest was the merest trifle, and progress was made at a prodigious rate. Even as the raiding party prepared to emerge, and the Drow spellweavers retreated down the tunnel, Deruan was leading the Bladedancers in renewed invasion of the Dwarven Mines, armed with a list of promises and guarantees to be demanded of the Dwarves before their surrender would be accepted.

The Spider-queen was at last on the verge of achieving Her initial purpose when She instructed Her people in how to instigate the conflict between the Elves and Dwarves, more than 70 years earlier.

The Dwarvish insurgency did not go undetected; even as they labored to complete their breach of the Elven forest, a youth serving the council as messenger felt what he regarded as a strange vibration in the earth, and an unsettling shudder of the leaves of the tree he was ascending. Being conscienscious, he dutifully reported his experience to the Council; but the Spellweavers employed their arts, and reported that the forest’s defenses were intact and undisturbed, and the warnings of the messenger were dismissed as youthful imagination and overexcitement. As a result, the Elves were totally unprepared when the Dwarves erupted from their tunnel.

It is ironic that of all the races, Elves, Orcs, and Dwarves are in many ways, the most alike. In all three of their cultures, everyone is expected to be able to defend themselves, and everyone acquires at least a minimal skill in some form of combat. For the Dwarves, hammers and axes are as natural as black leather is to a cutpurse; for the Orcs, it is broadblades, maces, or polearms; and for the Elves, longswords, bows, or the curved 14″ daggers known as Alkaith that the mages favor. Even the curved blades of the Bladedancers are reflections of this aspect of their fundamental natures. This is a truth that has been lost in the modern day. Curves are as natural to Elves as straight lines are to humans, and circles are to Halflings.

So it was that even with their official defenders engaged in the Mines by an ill-timed act of aggression – the product of decades of patience wearing increasingly thin, for it is a limited resource even in an Elf – the Dwarves encountered stiff opposition from the everyday Elves who happened to be passing that part of the forest at the time, and pitched battle erupted.

To understand why the Bladedancers had chosen this moment to renew their assault on the Dwarven mines, it is necessary to understand the strategy that had been conceived and executed by Deruan.

As is usually the case, battlefield reports – especially those of a dramatic nature – are frequently exaggerated. This truth was evident in hindsight to those who heard the reports of the Dwarves to their King, and in the King’s summation to the Drow Ambassador.

In reality, the Bladedancers were not indiscriminately targeting the Dwarven mineshafts and tunnels; rather, they were using their arsenal to restrict the tactical options of the Dwarves that they encountered, and restricting the battlefield to a direct – if convoluted – line to the chambers which contained the Dwarven Throne.

Elves are not pacificists, but do not engage in wholesale slaughter of bystanders; every death must be the only remaining alternative. This is one of the fundamental differences that separated them from the Drow; for their subterranean kin identified more with a racial collective or nationalist grouping of people instead of dealing with them as individuals; but this merely made them dangerous. It was for the love and adoration of their Dark Queen that they committed the most despicable, vile, heinous, and diabolical acts, because they did not perceive the targets as individuals in individual circumstances, but as members or representatives of an entire populace or population segment. (It is notable that when Drow behave thus, they always fail in the final analysis; only when engaging others as individuals, as their Ambassadors did with the Dwarven King, do they achieve success). The question of whether this failure of perception is due to Lolth, or inherent in those who follow the insect totems in general, or is a deficiency that drew them to others with the same flaw, is one that has endlessly been debated – without resolution).

Standing between the Bladedancers and their ultimate goal were four fortified salients, manned by grim and angry Dwarves who were predisposed to believe that they stood between arch-fiends bent on the slaughter of their entire race and their families and friends. They were prepared to fight to the last defender to protect their homes, just as the Elves of the central forest were fighting to protect their homes and families.

But the Bladedancers had planned, and practiced, and equipped themselves with specific weapons for the task that lay before them, while the Dwarvish incursion was assembled in haste, ill-prepared, and an act of desperation. No matter how analogous the two situations, they were predestined to have inevitably divergent outcomes. Even as the Bladedancers overran the first salient, penetrating the first line of Dwarvish defenses, and released their Spellwoven creatures into the side tunnels that did not lie apon their path to the Dwarvish King, the incursion that had transpired at the command of that ruler was itself being overcome and taken captive.

The Second Great Dwarfwar: Captive Revelations

The Elves, quite naturally, were in a state of acute shock and distress over this invasion, which smacked to them of everything that they had feared since long before the Verdonne had been created. Like any people who had been violated in the area of their greatest cultural insecurity, they considered the Dwarvish invaders to be guilty of one of the most unimaginably heinous outrages possible, a crime that was unforgiveable. Though most of the invading Dwarves had been killed during the incursion, many had been captured; and the Elvish Council regathered to consider how this should be punished. Their deliberations were brief, and the council were preparing to announce their judgment, when one aged tracker stepped forward from the gathered crowd and interrupted them, demanding to examine the boots worn by the invaders more closely, for something was greatly amiss. Thus did Therialas reenter this narrative.

At a nod from the head of the Council, the Elves who had captured the Dwarvish invaders rudely stripped their prisoners of their footwear and brought the apparel before the tracker for inspection. None of the elves had ever considered the unique needs of an underground culture in terms of their footwear, and they were amazed by the craftsmanship as feature after feature became evident. The boots had a steel-reinforced toe-cup and articulated steel strips with jagged teeth down each side. The heels were layers of rigid leather held together by four recessed bolts which also passed through eyelets on the side-assemblies. These enabled the Dwarves, when climbing unstable and narrow ledges, to support their entire weight on the edge of a boot, or by their toes, or their heels; while leaving the centre of the boot extremely thin, soft, supple leather so that the wearer could ‘read’ changes in the surface beneath their feet. “How long have Dwarven boots had these teeth along the sides?” demanded the aged Tracker.

“Two hundred years or more. My son has just started wearing the pair crafted for my father when he was a child, and he is that old. We replace the soft leather and heels when they wear out and reuse the steel bindings,” came the surprised reply from one of the Dwarves. Examination of the other pairs of boots bore out the statement, revealing different levels of wear consistent with decades or more of use. The Council, while this inspection was underway, were growing impatient, and now demanded, “And what is the significance?”

“The boot prints at the site of the original destruction matched this design. The boot prints at the second attack, when the fires were directed toward Elvarheim, did not; they matched the designs that I saw as a youth when we pursued the Prince Of Lies. I felt perhaps that they were a new innovation, not available to common warriors, and thought no more about it. But if that were the case, you would expect at least a few of these to be wearing the old-style of footwear. I can only conclude that someone has manipulated us into this war for their own ends.” The Council immediately went into whispered conference. After a few minutes of serious exchange while the Dwarves waited anxiously – was the judgment against them about to be suspended? Had they been made cats-paws – and if so, by who? – the head of the council turned once again to address the prisoners. “Tell me your story again, Dwarf. And leave nothing out.”

If they were not already inclined to suspicion, the Dwarves might not have mentioned the trade alliance with the Drow; but the conversation had primed them to mention any involvement of non-Dwarves in their society, and history had made them doubly-suspicious. Hence it was not long before the Dwarves first mentioned the Drow Trading alliance and its terms. These only reinforced the suspicions of the listening Elves. They were intrigued by the mention of a metal too delicate for the Dwarven artisans to work, and fascinated by mention of the Black Gems that the Drow had found so irresistible. Especially tantalizing was a comment made by the Drow Ambassador implying that the Gems were somehow connected to the ability of the Drow to guide the Dwarves past the defenses of Elvarheim. Without those defenses, Elvarheim was completely exposed to any enemy; learning how to prevent future such incursions would forgive any offense resulting from the Dwarvish incursion, no matter how unforgivable that incursion might have seemed at first glance. It did not take the Elves much thought to uncover the rather more sinister “alternative interpretations” of the largess of the Drow, and to point these out to the Dwarves, who were suitably enraged by the prospects. The inadvertent mention of the use of one of the Black Gems to penetrate the defenses of the Elven forest makes it clear that the Gems – mentioned almost as an afterthought in the negotiations – held much greater significance and value than they first appeared.

At the same time, while the Dwarvish tale had the ring of truth to it, there remained the possibility that it was all a very plausible fiction. The Elves were not willing to simply ignore what had transpired, and release the Dwarves. After several hours of debate, the Council decided on a course of action, resentful of the urgency which prohibited serious contemplation of alternative courses of action. One prisoner would be released to act as an escort to an Envoy back to his people. That Envoy would be the Youngest Son of the King – while a member of the Royal Family and hence a Prince, he did not expect to inherit the title and hence had received some practical education. This Envoy would carry an offer of a cease-fire to the King of the Dwarves.

The Elves, notably, did not make it clear to their Dwarven Prisoners how little value they placed on the titles of Prince – or King, for that matter. To the Dwarves, this offer amounted to an exchange of Hostages of high Rank – one Prince for another – a serious gesture towards reconciliation.

Even as these revelations were uncovered and analyzed, the Huyundaltha were penetrating the second tier of defenses surrounding the seat of Dwarvish Power, breaking through the fortifications erected by the Dwarves after driving the defenders away from their positions with their weapons of noxious fume and poisonous gas. Only one last barrier now stood between them and the Civilian Dwarven population, including the Royal Family. As every foot of descent brought them closer to this final barrier, so the pressure on the Dwarven King to accept the Drow offer of Sanctuary increased; already, many of his advisors and personal guard urged him to reconsider his refusal. Only the hope of a victorious conclusion to the bold raid into the Elven homeland stayed his decision.

The companions bearing the offer of an armistice were engaged in a desperate race. Could they reach the Dwarven King before Lolth succeeded in annexing the Dwarven Tunnels?

The Second Great Dwarfwar: War’s End

Even though the passage was relatively straight, without the maze of turnings and tunnels that marked most Dwarven tunnels, it was still a journey of over 60 leagues – more than 200 miles – to the heart of the Dwarven Kingdom. Even at a forced march, and resting for the minimum possible time, it was still going to be four long days journey, probably more.

The pair caused quite a sensation when they staggered, almost falling over themselves in exhaustion, into the court. Dirty, dusty, covered in blood, and bleeding from numerous wounds, they interrupted the King as he was desperately sending reinforcements to the front lines, now less than a mile from the civilian population. He immediately ordered the Elven messenger taken captive and summoned a healer to attend the Dwarven Warrior, who had passed out in mid-salute.

As the Elven messenger attempted to declare the purpose of his mission, one of the Dwarves covered his mouth and instructed him to speak only when spoken to. It was at this moment that the Drow Ambassador swept into the chamber, with his escort. As he observed the captive Elf, he froze, hissing in alarm. “Ah, Aberzherisharde, come in. Fear not, the Elf is restrained. His kind are another matter,” announced the King. “It may be that temporary refuge for our citizens will become necessary before we succeed in repelling their attack. Is your Queen’s offer of sanctuary still open?”

Recovering, the Drow Ambassador replied, “It is, your Majesty. Do you wish me to send runners to advise her of your acceptance?”

“To describe our condition as ‘Acceptance’ would be premature. But since we may need to move to such a position without further warning, I wish to make all the arrangements – should the need become pressing. My paramount duty must be to my honor, but my duty to my subjects is only barely the lesser.”

“As always, a wise decision, Your Majesty. I shall request that the appropriate preparations commence immediately.”

The Drow Ambassador bowed stiffly, and – after another glare at the helpless prisoner – withdrew from the royal chambers. As he exited, the Dwarven escort awoke with a groan. “Easy, warrior,” said the King gently. “What is your unit, and how came you to escort this prisoner from the front lines?”

“I am Kazeth, your Majesty, and I was part of the strike force into the forests of Elvarheim. My companion is Prince Elbareth, and he carries an offer of armistice. Our strike force has been captured with heavy casualties, My Liege.”

“What of my son?”

“The Prince survives and is being well-treated,” replied Kazeth.

The warrior then recounted the full tale of the incursion, its capture, interrogation, and his return in the company of Prince Elbareth. “As we left the passage dug specifically for the invasion and entered our familiar tunnels, we were unexpectedly attacked by a monstrosity the likes of which I ever imagined. It had two heads, and was lizard-like, but with great tusks projecting from a grotesque jaw. Razor-sharp spikes fanned out along the bestial spine, rippling with every movement of the beast. And it moved like lightning, bounding from wall to wall, clinging to ceilings, and twisting the path of its bounds in mid-air as though gravity were its personal servant.”

“No doubt one of the monstrous creatures that the Elves have released into the tunnels to bedevil us,” replied the King.

“Perhaps, your Majesty, though it seemed as surprising to Elbareth as to myself. In any event, it took the both of us striving to our utmost to drive the beast off.”

“Release the Elf,” directed the King. “Prince of the tree-lovers, I reject your offer of Armistice. Your offer smacks of desperation, and perhaps explains the intensity of your current incursion. I had, in my mind, explained that as simple fanaticism, but desperation seems a more likely fit. You will remain here, a hostage to the good treatment of my Son. If and when he is liberated or repatriated, so shall you be – I give you my word of honor.”

“Your Majesty, Mighty King of those who dwell beneath the mountain, you cannot reject an offer until it has been made. I beg your leave to formally present the proposal of the Elven Council before you issue your judgment in this matter, and permission to return to my people with your reply. Should you grant this, and should your son grant surety that he will not come against us in battle once more, I will insist apon his being released to you as a gesture of good faith.”

“I trust you not, tree-lover. Seek not to beguile me with your artfully-honeyed words.”

“I think you confuse me with some of my detested Kinfolk, your Majesty,” replied the Prince. “But is your honor so great that it can tolerate the confinement of an Envoy of peace? How many of your warriors, women, and children will perish while you delay – lives that could be spared, if my offer is genuine? For I swear apon the spirit of my Deity, the lordly Corellan, that this is no deception. May he strike me down if I speak falsely.”

The King stiffened, stung by the accusation of dishonor. “Very well, speak your piece. But I will hear of no insults to our loyal and valued allies, the Drow,” he warned.

“No insults, nor even accusations, your Majesty. Mere questions. Should you know the answers, you will be satisfied; but should you not, is not the possibility of deception worth considering? For both our peoples are children in comparison to the webs of deceit of which the Queen of the Spiders is capable. Her subjects worship her as a deity, and with some justification, for she is nearer to that state than you or I, or any that are mortal. Our most subtle planning may look forward a decade or two, a generation at the most; beyond that span of years, we seek simply to create an environment in which the lot of our subjects and families are better than those we have known, in the hopes that they will be able to take advantage of the opportunities we have procured for them by stint of our labors. Being immortal, her plans may encompass centuries. My questions are these: Of what value is a metal that is too delicate to be worked? Why are gemstones which enable the learned to penetrate defenses erected and reinforced over the passage of centuries but an afterthought, accorded little value in your negotiations? You are promised refuge in the tunnels of her Drow, but are you assured of your ability to come and go and rule amongst your people as you see fit? Will your people not be required to pay for such refuge with service and subservience to the laws of your hosts? What of the law that mandates the worship of Lolth, whose violation even in seeming, brings death? The creations with which our people now assault yours are fearsome and bestial, but still recognizably akin to their progenitors; whence, then, came the monstrosity which Kazeth described to you? For if we did not create and release it, who did, and for what purpose? The tunnel in which it was encountered does not connect with those apon which our forces proceed, save here, behind your lines, so how came it to be where–”

Abruptly, the Elven Prince fell to the floor, collapsing. His body shuddered and then was still.

“So he spoke false, and his God has punished him. Let that be an end to it,” muttered the King. “We will crush them, and liberate my son from his captivity. Have a company of warriors prepared,” he instructed a page.

“I heard no falsehood, your Majesty. If I may be permitted?” replied Kazeth, gesturing toward the body.

“Nor I, but falsehood there must have been. Go ahead,” answered the King.

Quickly examining the body, Kazeth gave a startled gasp. Rising, he held out something for the King’s inspection. “I think not, your Majesty. Unless the God Of The Elves employs poisoned darts of Drow manufacture to enforce his will.”

“Who would dare to besmirch my honor? I gave my word that he would be well-treated,” replied the King, his temper flaring.

“No-one who valued honor would do so, your Majesty. And if an Elf could reach us here, you would have been his target, not Prince Elbareth. That leaves only a third party. I must ask you to consider one final question in his name, as a bandage to your wounded honor – did you not find his questions troubling? For you answered none of them, and your son could not do so. Indeed he sent this to you,” replied Kazeth, retrieving a patch of parchment and a ring.

Gasping, the King inspected the items.

On the parchment were the words, ‘Father, I believe them.’ “He chose this ring to authenticate the message, knowing that you would know that had it been written under duress he would have included his seal of Rank and not his personal signet, as a signal to you. If the assassin was not one of us, and would not have been an Elf, it must have been a third party. And only one third party is involved here, and they only stood to gain if the charges were truthful. Prince Elbareth did not accuse them, nor – as per your instructions – did he insult them. I do both, my Liege. The Ambassador and his people are without honor, and have deceived us into fighting their war for them. I demand the right to confront the Ambassador with these questions.”

Wearing an expression that mirrored both troubled thoughts and a stern anger, the King instructed, “Summon the Ambassador Aberzherisharde. He is to come immediately. Do not accept a refusal,” he instructed two members of his personal guard.

A few minutes later, the pair returned, empty-handed. “The Drow delegation appears to have fled, Your Majesty,” explained the more senior of the two. “We found these in his quarters,” he added, holding up a pair of darts identical to that which had taken the life of the Elven Prince.

“I uphold your challenge to the honor of the Drow, Kazeth,” replied the King. “Give instructions to hunt them down. Let them never return to the Queen which sent them forth,” he instructed. “I will accept the offer of Armistice. Prepare a formal honor guard – we travel through the tunnel to Elvarheim. Have the body of the Prince interred amongst those of my ancestors, for no less than my family, he was under my protection when he died. Until my honor is washed clean of that stain, he will remain so.”

Not unexpectedly, there was an immediate outcry amongst the King’s advisors. “This might still be deception on the part of the Elves,” they argued. “Another may have followed Kazeth and the so-called Prince to assassinate him for the purpose of bringing about this accord,” said another. “We have them on their knees, your Majesty. Do not give away the victory now,” advised a third. “The Ambassador may merely have been fearful that the Elf would deceive you,” chorused a fourth.

“All true, replied the King. But they have earned the right to negotiations in good faith with blood, and seemingly at the hands of one who claimed to respect our ways. I do not say that I am convinced – merely that I will give them the opportunity to prove their claims.”

Three hours later, the King – with full honor guard – set out down the invasion route to the heart of the Elven Forest.

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The Ongoing Elvish Glossary

• Alkaith: Curved 14-inch dagger favored as a weapon and general cutting tool by Elvish Spellcasters and some High Elves.
• Arnost: Simple Speech (Modern “Common”, a human tongue)
• Arrunquessor: Plains Elves
• Ayer: Nuthanori word meaning “Squat”. Mont Ayer is the name of one of the two peaks that define the traditional elvish lands.
• Calquissir: High Elves
• Corellan: The First
• Drow: “Those Who Dwell Apart” (in Nuthanorl). Added to Ogre by the Drow with the meaning of “Smart”.
• Ellessarune: The “Shining City” of the Tarquessir, home of the Elvish King and capital of the Elven Lands to this day.
• Eltrhinast: “Guiding Spirit”
• Elvarheim: “Blessed Leafy Home”: The Elven Forest, homeland of the Tarquessir and the centre of Elven Power in modern times
• Gilandthor: “The Gathering”, the formal title of the Elvish Council.
• Hithainduil: High Elven Language
• Huyundaltha: “Masters Of The Ondaltha” (literal), “Bladedancers” (colloquial). Formerly Noletinechor, now Guardians Of Elvish Society.
• Ondaltha: A two-weapon combat style based apon Elvish Dance, practiced exclusively by Huyundaltha.
• Illvayssor: “The Other”, a mythical race
• Isallithin: “The Sundered”, a name applied to Aquatic Elves
• King: A human title interpreted by Elves as “speaker to others” and defined as such within their language.
• Magi: A corruption of the Zamiel word “Machus”, which means “of the wise.”
• Mithryl: the Elvish name of an extremely fragile metal given in trade by the Dwarves to the Elves. The word is imported from Dwarven, who in turn obtained it from the Zamiel Tongue name of the metal, “Mithral”. “Mithryl” means “Moonsilver” in Elven. The word also enjoys popular usage as a metaphor for a treasure found which appeared initially worthless.
• Mithral: the Drow name for Mithryl. A literal translation from Zamiel is “Shadowsilver”.
• Mont: Nuthanori word meaning “High Place”. Used human-style in the naming of Mountains.
• Noletinechor: “Lore Shields”, an elvish historical vocation
• Nuthanorl: Low Elven Language, Common Elven
• Sarner: A human abbreviation of the Hithainduil word “Saranariuthenal” which means, literally, “Swift and Wide”. The River Sarner runs through the central valley of Elvarheim.
• Tarquessir: Forest Elves
• Thuyon: Nuthanori word meaning “Tall Spires”. Mont Thuyon is the name of the taller of the two peaks that define the traditional elvish lands; Modern Elvarheim lies between the foothills of Mont Thuyon and the River Sarner.
• Verdonne: “Quickbranch”, an artificial race created by Elves to be “The Guardians Of The Forest”.
• Zamiel: Drow Language

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Next time: Now we’re into material that only exists in note form, so I’m not sure how far I’ll get. If all goes according to plan, next time will show how the aftermath of the War permanently reshaped Elven and Dwarven Societies in Chapters 24 through 26. Join me next week to see how much I actually get done….

One of the most contentious issues in modern times is set to escalate to a whole new level. That’s right, people, copyright law, trademark law, and its enforcement is about to get messy – well, messier than it already seems. At the same time, recent developments have given me a new perspective on past events as well, to share.

For a starter, let’s look at the more egregious outstanding issues that we’ve already got on our plate, and at least some of the story about how we got here. Some of these might not seem directly related to RPGs, but I’ll connect the dots at the end, so bear with me.

The Old Problems

There have been problems and minefields related to the protection of ideas for centuries. Some of these landmines have been defused, some have corroded with changing technology, and some have gone off.

Trademarking A Color

Let’s start with something that, so far, has been relatively benign.

It used to be that a unique design was needed to receive a trademark. I first became aware that the landscape had changed in 2007 when some promotional materials for one of the big four banks in Australia, the ANZ included, in the fine print, that the color of the logo was trademarked (as “ANZ Blue”, I think – from memory). I soon discovered that this was not the only corporation that had trademarked a color, as this discussion reveals. These days, the practice is increasingly widespread, as this article shows. I understand that some car makers have even trademarked particular paint colors.

I can see how specifying a particular color as one of the distinguishing features of a trademark would be legitimate. I can see how patenting a particular process of painting a vehicle to produce a unique shading scheme, as for the McLaren formula 1 team’s silver transition paint job, might be legitimate. Even trademarking the association between a particular type of product and a particular shade would be reasonable – and that is, reportedly, what the Bank were trying to achieve. But trademarking a particular color seems extraordinarily problematic to me. It’s all about restricting what we are allowed to do with color, a natural phenomenon.

Color is used as a focal point for corporate identity in the modern world. Specifying a particular color for a logo and then using that color for outlet paint, uniforms, etc, all creates a unifying association between those elements. It’s only right and fair that a company be able to protect that association, I don’t dispute that; but being actually able to trademark the color itself? No.

Just because a legal principle is used in a benign manner does not mean that it will only ever be used for that purpose. By accepting the principle of trademarking color, a can of worms has been opened that sooner or later will cause problems. This is one of those legal landmines that has not yet gone off. We can only hope that it’s a dud.

False Advertising And The Music Industry

The File Sharing / Music Copyright problems, for example, seem to have largely quietened down, at least for the moment. An overprotective music industry which sought to squeeze every last cent of profit, draconian protection mechanisms, lopsided legal influence. Or have they? The success of iTunes and similar legal avenues for the purchase of music in digitally-encoded formats has taken a lot of the steam out of the issue, but it simply puts a more legitimate frontman at the front of the parade – Apple have a far better case for attacking P2P file-sharing systems as they directly compete with the for-profit distribution channel that they have built and popularized. Heck, I buy some music through iTunes myself.

Really, when you get down to it, the heart of that problem is that the Music Industry was guilty of false advertising for decades. They advertised music as “for sale” – “buy the new album by X” – and focused on the medium, thinking that the two were one and the same. The first warning that this perception was flawed was the kerfuffle over piano player rolls but it went unheeded. A more serious wakeup call came with the advent of blank audio cassettes, but that warning was also unheeded. What they were actually selling – at least in their minds – was the limited right to use the music for one particular purpose, i.e. listening to by the person who bought it. You couldn’t use it for any other purpose without negotiating the right to do so with the “permanent owners” of those rights. What customers thought they were buying was far less than that – and so, when the recording industry moved to restrict public usage to what they saw as the valid purposes for which the purchaser had paid, excluding those purposes that the public and the industry disagreed on, people got angry.

Music used to be given away to the public for free, so far as the public was concerned. It came over the radio. But what was actually happening was that the radio station was paying the record companies for the right to broadcast the performance, then extracting payment from their listeners by broadcasting advertising. If you wanted to listen to the music, you had to listen to the advertising. When music videos became successful marketing tools, once again the music industry gave them away for free and recouped the cost of doing so through the increased sales that resulted. Then they got greedy and started to charge. Or perhaps it was simply that the sums being spent on the videos made no economic sense, and this was the only way to continue funding them. Either way, most of the music video shows died, or shifted to the more liberal independent sources.

From the public perspective, what was happening was that they heard the music for free, and if they liked it, they could buy a copy for their collections. There were some artists whose work they liked enough that they would buy it, unheard. Because this programming was cheap for the radio stations, and later, for the TV networks to produce, they proliferated.

When the music industry first demanded that the radio stations pay-to-play, the Radio Stations should have accepted on the proviso that they were advertising the product and would pay the fees if the record labels would pay the full commercial advertising rates for the duration of the song. This would have brought the whole mess into the open and enabled some reasonable compromise to be reached.

The upshot was that by discounting the benefits received in promotion of their products, the music industry killed the promotion and distribution channels that had grown up as secondary industries around their primary function. As these began to die, they looked for someone else to blame, found the file-sharing services that had stepped into the breach – nature abhors a vacuum, and that holds true for human nature as well as physical reality – and became draconic in enforcing their “rights”. Since they weren’t addressing the real problem, it didn’t have much effect. The promotional channels shut down, the hits stopped happening, and the retail stores that survived by selling the hits to the public collapsed and went away. And, to a large extent, the record labels collapsed in consequence.

No-one could argue that there have not been some benefits from the collapse of the old distribution channels. More people are able to make and distribute their music than ever, simply because they no longer have to jump through the hoops of attracting record label interest, getting a contract, getting their recordings through the A&R filter, then through the selectivity of the old promotional channels before the product became available to the general public. These days, you can do it yourself, and put it on YouTube. There is a greater freedom for artists to express themselves.

But Commercial Mass-market doesn’t mean bad. The old system pushed artists to find some common ground with a large audience segment, filtered out the extremes, and ensured that a product could be enjoyed by a large number of people. Their work was more accessible. One of the reasons I buy a LOT less music than I once did, even in proportion to my income, is that there is simply less out there that I like. (The last CD I bought was of the 2012 Eurovision Song Festival – one of the remaining global promotional vehicles. Which, I think, proves my point.)

While these problems may have receded from public awareness, defused by the advent of iTunes, by a less over-the-top aggressive stance on the part of the RIAA, and by the public backlash from the DRM/Rootkit Scandal, ongoing fallout constitutes the leading edge of new problems, and those directly affect the RPG industry.

Monopolism and the Channels Of Distribution

Comics
Newsstands used to be the primary outlet for Comics Publishers. When these became fewer in number, allegedly because of the Wal-Mart effect, primary distribution shifted to specialist stores. A combination of oversaturation with “collector’s editions” and marketing gimmicks, internal industrial disputes such as the breakaway formation of Image Comics, and escalating prices for deluxe formats brought about a collapse within the industry. Both Marvel Comics and DC Comics, the two largest producers and distributors, have had financial problems as a consequence. As the market shrunk, the prices needed to sustain profitability escalated to nonsensical levels, further shrinking the market. Comics used to be cheap – I can remember being able to buy five or ten each week with a reasonable amount of pocket money, as a kid. I stopped collecting them when they hit A$10 each. These days, I’m told the price is closer to $A20 an issue. I don’t consider $100-200 a week to be a reasonable amount of pocket money. The parallels with the collapse of the music industry are obvious – and it may be no coincidence that both are owned by media conglomerates.

Small businesses have it rough, and have always operated on a razor’s edge profit margin. One of the greatest criticisms of superstores like Wal-Mart are that they increase the pressure on small businesses beyond the breaking point, with the result that the small businesses fold. Consequently, the variety of products that were available in the specialist store is reduced to only the most popular commodities.

Wal-Mart
By centralizing purchasing power in this way, the superstores become subject to charges of monopolism. These can be easily countered provided that the superstores do not engage in monopolistic practices; unfortunately, most do. Control of the retail sector becomes more vertical, dominated by a relatively small number of corporate entities. That’s a recipe for corruption and excess, and most of the criticism of Wal-Mart comes to two factors: unfair market advantages and monopolistic behavior.

It was big news within the industry a few years back when Wal-Mart changed its policies with respect to RPGs. Hard-covered books that could be handled by the book sections were still fine, but soft-covered low-cost elements like game modules were considered magazines and to be pruned from Wal-Mart stores as unprofitable in comparison with other products.

Amazon
Similar criticisms have been leveled at Amazon.com by bricks-and-mortar bookstores. Again, many can be boiled down to an allegation of monopolistic practices.

And yet, the ability of many independents to compete for sales through Amazon’s new-and-used operations provide a new distribution channel for struggling small businesses, expanding their customer base from the strictly local to the global. So, as much as Amazon may be part of the problem, they are also part of the solution.

Online Home Shopping
Being physically disabled to some extent, I found it very difficult to shop at the local supermarkets. For a while, I managed by using home deliveries; but these days I do my grocery shopping over the internet at one of the leading supermarket chains. It’s cheaper than home delivery plus fares to the supermarket to do the shopping in person, and less physically strenuous. In effect, this is similar to buying books on Amazon, and amounts to the conversion of the supermarket chain into a virtual superstore with a multitude of suburban distribution centers that also have a direct-to-the-public retail capacity.

This can’t help but put more financial pressure on the neighborhood corner stores. The convenience of being able to just pop in when I need something is therefore under greater threat as a result. I therefore make it a point to use those local stores for the purchase of those products that both have in common. Even so, the majority of my purchases from the local stores tend to be products that the online supermarket simply doesn’t stock. Since they will stock what sells, the corner store is becoming a specialist store in “everything else”, and anything that needs physical inspection before I am sure it’s the type I want, like light bulbs.

Because that’s the pattern that I’ve been observing over the last 3 decades or so – superstores closing specialist stores with a resulting monopolistic trend, collapse of minority industries, and resulting absence of the products that I want to buy from the marketplace.

The New Problems

Which brings me to the new problems that are crawling out of the woodwork.

Copyrighting Genetics

For the last 30 years, genes have been patentable. 20% of the genes in the human body are now the “property” of someone as a result of such patents. Check out this article. Those patents are now being challenged. With biotechnology set to become a big-ticket industry over the course of the current decade, this one is going to get bigger and bigger.

Copyrighting Vocabulary

There are a number of trademarked words that have entered the general vocabulary. “Google” is recognized as a verb for carrying out an internet search on Google.com, and is included in many dictionaries. Wikipedia maintains a List of protected trademarks frequently used as generic terms that is surprisingly long. If you scroll up, you will find a much shorter list of terms that started as protected trademarks, became general vocabulary, and have remained in general use after the lapse of the original trademark, like “Zipper”. Perusing both lists shows that this is nothing new, and we’ve managed all right so far, so what’s the problem?

In 2010, Facebook trademarked the word “Book”. Facebook have also trademarked “wall,” “like,” and “face”, according to the article. Apple have trademarked the use of the letter “i” as in “iTunes” and “iPad”.

It’s one thing for a product to become so universally recognized that its name enters the general vocabulary. It’s quite another for an existing general term to become a protected trademark. This flew under the radar at the time, but sooner or later the dysfunction between popular usage and what usage is permitted under the law is going to explode in someone’s face. And, like the music industry example, there will be substantial public acrimony when it does.

Custom File Formats As A Protection Mechanism

It is becoming more common for DVD Recorders to use a proprietary file format to store its recordings so that they cannot be played through any other device. Is this the latest move to protect copyrights on the part of the media conglomerates? Or is it the choice of the device manufacturer, seeking to protect proprietary technology within the device?

By adding yet another layer of complexity, how long will it be before material is offered in a proprietary format that enforces DRM? Oh wait, some file formats already do that. How about a separate file format with it’s own user-agreement?

At some point, someone will sue a maker of file-format conversion software, for accessing the file format in a way or for a purpose forbidden by the terms of the usage agreement, and the whole copyright issue will explode again.

Trademarking Basic Concepts

The most recent development puts Facebook on the receiving end of its own aggressive protection practices. According to an article published on Mashable on Feb 12, just over a month ago, Facebook are being sued by Rembrandt Social Media LP, owners of a patent by Dutch programmer Joannes Jozef Everardus van Der Meer, who used a button for people to “like” other user’s content in Surfbook, a product that predates Facebook by 5 years. With the lawsuit only filed on February 5th, this has all the hallmarks of an opportunist grab for wealth, but at least superficially, it would seem that Facebook – who have a history of aggressive protection of their corporate identity (as described above) – have a case to answer.

But this irony is only a recent expression of a more troubling and much deeper issue – the same one that recently manifested in the Apple vs Samsung stoush, and before that in the legal battles between Apple and Microsoft. The whole question of whether “look and feel” – in other words the way we do things – should be or can be protected, as opposed to the behind-the-scenes mechanisms or code that translate that action into some action.

Can you trademark human behavior?

Social Networking And Responsibility

Still brewing up is another huge question – that of social networking and responsibility. If I say something on a business’s twitter account, how liable is that business for what I have said in their name? How about if someone else says it and I simply rebroadcast it or like it or whatever the correct usage is for a particular social network?

Are social media comments public or private communications? Especially if you have to specifically opt-in to receive those communications?

If I say something negative on twitter, is it libel? Is it slander?

Can Social Media comments be trademarked or copyrighted?

I am not a US Citizen – are my comments through a US-based system like Twitter, whose licenses and usage are handled under US Law, protected as free speech?

To what extent am I not entitled to state my opinion?

As usual, the law is a decade or more behind the wavefront of technology and social behavior, and most laws are applied through legal confrontations – so this is an issue that is only going to grow over the next decade.

The Regulation Of Human Behavior

Ultimately, all these problems can be summarized as attempts to regulate human behavior. The laws all spell out things that we are not allowed to do, for what at least seemed like good reasons at the time. Corporate entities are using those laws for other purposes, though. They are using trademark, copyright, and patent laws to protect things that should never be trademarked, copyrighted, or patented.

Of course, it’s always easier to extend an existing law to cover something similar. ePublishing is neatly covered by existing laws relating to publishing. This only really goes awry when the potentials of a new storage format or medium create additional capabilities for public usage that were not present at the time the laws were extended. Changing technology is a game-changer.

Treating digital formats as just another medium to present music which could be protected and controlled under existing laws governing usage is what led to the DRM / file-sharing legal wars. So long as you couldn’t do anything more with the digitally-encoded format than you could do with the old technology, those laws worked and were seen as satisfactory. But the new medium brought additional inherent potential usages that were not explicitly dealt with under those laws, and it was those usages that the Recording Industry sought to curtail.

There are analogous arguements to be made regarding all of the other situations cited above. Business laws framed at a time before technological change made the superstores – the Wal-Mart’s and the Amazons – feasible, are inadequate for dealing with the new social reality of their existence. For a time, when the new arrives, the old laws work; but eventually the opportunities provided by the new circumstance evolve beyond the scope of existing laws, at which point the laws become counterproductive to society.

The Purpose Of Copyright

Copyright law was originally intended to foster and encourage creativity, by ensuring that the creator received fair remuneration for their act of creation. It was limited in duration to what was deemed a reasonable period. Specifics vary from country to country, but they all have that common aim.

In effect, owning the copyright gave the creator:

• The Right to Control what was done with their work;
• The Right to Profit from their creation, enabling them to continue to create;
• The Right to develop Derivative Works from their creation, enabling an author to write sequels to his own works.

All these seem utterly reasonable, so where did it all go so wrong?

The Causes

I think there are three direct causes that have collectively led us to this mess over responsibility and control.

Restrictable Rights

In describing the purposes of copyright, I said that the right to control what was done with their work seemed completely reasonable. But I can trace a lot of the problems with copyright as it is compared to its original intention to this one element. Perhaps it would have been better to have stated (in legalese) that once a work existed, you could do anything you wanted with that work provided that you paid the author a reasonable return for the use of their work. Such usage would not constitute an endorsement of the second use by the creator.

Once the original Sherlock Holmes story gets published, anyone is free to write another, so long as they pay a legally-mandated sum to Arthur Conan Doyle. Of course, subsequent works by Doyle – suitably credited as “by the creator of” – would have greater cache and marketability.

If someone wanted to use a particular piece of music as part of the soundtrack to a movie, they can – they simply have to pay for it. If someone wants to make a movie based on a book, they can – under the same condition. If someone wants to write a new song based on an earlier one, they simply have to pay for the use of the old song.

Removing control from the equation ensures that copyright can no longer stifle creativity.

Transfers Of Ownership of intangibles

The second major plank in the current misery comes from the concept of transfer of ownership. If a publisher simply acts as an agent for the creator, acting as a collection point for the revenues owing to the creator of a work and taking their percentage accordingly, there is no difficulty; it is only when the publisher can claim ownership of some form (even if they paid the author a considerable sum for it) that real problems arise, because there arises a potential conflict of interest between the creator and the publisher.

Gene sequences cannot be subject to protection if the principle of transfer of ownership of intangibles is never established – only an original usage of a gene sequence. Look-and-feel issues go away. Ridiculous issues like the trademarking of “book” and the patent of a “like” button become non-starters – because the idea itself is free for anyone to use provided they pay the legally-mandated sum to the original creator, or his estate.

A corporation should never be able to “own” something; at best, they should be holding it in trust for, and administering it on behalf of, their shareholders and customers.

Money as free speech

If the laws are slipshod, or shortsighted, or inadequate, must we not look to the elected officials who created those laws when we assign responsibility for the mess we find ourselves in?

Donating money to a cause may support a cause, but it does not publicize that support, and hence should not be considered free speech. The contrary position permits those with the largest chequebooks to dictate policy, against the public interest, for their own benefit. Equating money to free speech may be viewed as putting your money where your mouth is, but if the mouth is absent, it’s simply a bribe to see things “the corporation’s way”.

The Dynamic Of Responsibility

To see how these causes have led, and are leading, the world into a tar pit, there are three additional factors to contemplate.

Unenforceable Rights Are Non-Existent Rights

If you can’t enforce a right, you may as well not have that right. Seems fairly obvious, doesn’t it? Your rights are not what the law says they are, they are what the interpreters of that law will enforce. Long court delays and appeals processes favor those with deep pockets, and lawyers are perfectly willing to use the size of their employer’s pockets to intimidate opponents.

Corporations As “People”

A corporation is a magical thing. In some ways it is considered to be a legal “person”, and in others it is not considered to be a person at all. The problem, of course, is drawing the line between these two conditions.

The general principle was established so that corporations could be sued in the same way as individuals, should a transgression be alleged, or vice-versa. Nothing wrong with that.

It’s in some of the other applications of the theory – that a corporation should be able to own things in the same way that a person would, that a corporation has rights in the same way that a person does, that a corporation can donate money to political campaigns as though they were an individual – that provokes greater contention.

We would all be far better off if a corporation was a separately-defined legal entity, with its rights and abilities enumerated completely separately from those of a citizen. Such an explicit statement would remove much of the fuzziness.

The Determinism Of Wealth

The combination of these factors is greater than the sum of their parts. Corporations have financial resources far beyond those of most individuals. They can employ the best lawyers. In theory, politicians are supposed to represent the people, giving them a collective voice and equal say in the way things are done. The real effect of the “Money is free speech” principle is to give corporations a greater voice in politics, in the framing of laws, than the ordinary citizen. With dominance in both politics and the courts, they have near-complete control over what rights can be enforced by the individual. Only when they do something so egregious that the courts cannot tolerate the transgression do they suffer a reversal.

The Brave New World

So, where does all this leave us?

The Lowest Common Denominator

It’s long been my contention that the internet erases much of the national boundaries that have shaped our world. If the US bans an activity, the service can be relocated to another country where it is not illegal. I’ve held this view since the very beginning of the Napster lawsuit. In effect, what is enforceable is the lowest common denominator amongst all the laws of all the countries that are connected through the web.

Technology has modified that position somewhat – China is notorious for filtering what its internet users can access – but only at prohibitive cost in terms of censorship and – according to studies proposing similar filtering software for Australia – in terms of connection speeds (a loss of up to 87%).

Nevertheless, in general terms, the principle holds.

Counterculture Inevitable

With the public at large feeling under assault by corporate interests with political connivance and support in the DRM mess, a counterculture movement was inevitable. Feeding into that counterculture are the availability of cheap second-hand and remaindered products through Amazon which devalue residual value of published material in the minds of customers, who will quite naturally gravitate toward the lowest price they can find – if they get what they are paying for.

Also contributing to that view are the relatively cheap prices of e-books – some available free on Amazon Kindle.

It used to be that all an e-publisher had to worry about were pirated copies showing up on P2P networks – sometimes with malware such as viruses added. The debate was about whether or not reducing prices would act as a disincentive to such activities. These days, the pressure is to maximize the short-term profitability of an e-book, and a little piracy after that period is more trouble to chase down than it is worth.

The Devaluation Of Intellectual Property

Worryingly, though, when you devalue residual worth, you devalue all intellectual property in the eyes of the culture, and especially the counter-culture. People expect books and eBooks to be cheaper, even without economies of scale and with increasing labor costs. It doesn’t take any less time (per page) to write a book, or produce an illustration, but in order to sell, the price has to be reduced. The consequence is that it gets harder for the author to make a living (even at a reduced living standard) from his writing – and that’s a disincentive to write. Authors feel undervalued by the public, and some are even resentful.

The Impact of RPGNow

I wrote a couple of well-received articles last year on the pricing of RPG materials (Part 1 and Part 2). What I didn’t predict in the course of those articles was a new phenomenon that I’m beginning to notice: content written to meet the price point. In part 2 of that series, I divided PDFs into sizes by page count for detailed analysis (and the analysis was a lot more detailed than what saw print, I assure you). Well, the tail is starting to wag the dog, in my opinion. Rather than writing a product and seeing how large it is, people are writing to achieve a given page count – and saving anything that doesn’t fit for a subsequent volume.

Why? Well, if you write a 25-page PDF and break it up into 4 page lots, you would expect to get eight PDFs out of your 20-page work. But, by the time you include front-page and contents and licensing pages, suddenly your four pages is down to a page-and-a-half of valuable content, 2-and-a-half if you’re feeling generous. And that means that you can serialize your 25 pages into 10-16 PDFs. Call it 13. That’s the equivalent of a 62.5% increase in profitability – at the cost of perceived value-for-money. Even if that perceived loss of value costs you 30% lower sales, profits are still up 32.5% – and you still have the option of compiling them into a bigger omnibus edition, and hopefully selling the same content to the same people multiple times.

Spreading the costs thinner and ramping up the effective price both plays into the mindset of reduced value and reinforces it. Will the trend last? Is it all in my head? Time will tell.

Pushbutton Comments

Comments are dying. No, that’s not true – comments to the source of content are dying. This is an unintended development of social media. It’s easier to tweet that you like something, or share it, or like it on facebook. No thought needed.

The pushbutton comment is far more transitory than a comment to the source. After a few days (or less), you have to actively search for it in order to find it. And it contributes less to the discussion, simply because there’s no content-add.

That contributes a lack of lasting feedback to the content provider, reducing their ability to target products to an existing audience. And that means that profitability of products is diminished.

Must Copyright Be Sacrificed?

There aren’t many ways out of the current problems, save struggling with them one at a time. Wholesale reform is not going to happen. Nothing will happen, in any event, until either a crisis flashpoint is achieved, legally or in public opinion, as it was with the Sony Rootkit scandal, or until the US political situation is resolved.

What are the alternatives in the meantime? The harder it gets for authors and publishers to make money writing and publishing, the more of them will stop doing it. Under these conditions, producers will either get aggressive and vitriolic about protecting their intellectual properties, or will simply give up on copyright enforcement beyond taking a few basic precautions, and live with erosion of profitability – or simply stop.

But there are larger legislative issues in the wings, with far-reaching consequences only dimly-observed at the moment.

RPGs and the copyright/publishing tangle

One of the proximate sources of inspiration for this article was a discussion on Linkedin concerning the value of using old works, whose residual value was now minimal, as bonuses and marketing materials. This is a trend that I’ve observed in kickstarter offerings. I offered my two cents worth in that discussion, but that started me thinking about the larger ramifications.

The impact on the RPG industry is this: it’s harder than ever to write RPGs full time and live on the proceeds. That points to an imminent market implosion, something that might only be prevented by am OGL-like explosion in DnDNext-related materials. If DnDNext is the hit that Wizards hope it will be, and if the third-party publisher terms are more reasonable, a new boom could manifest.

In the meantime, there will be a rise in the use of kickstarter as (effectively) a pre-ordering system. It’s not going to be about marketing and distributing a product, it’s going to be earning the money from a kickstarter project to justify putting the time into creating a product in the first place. And there will be a restructuring of products toward smaller items offered through RPGNow and subsequent omnibus collections of proven product who have already paid off most of the creation overheads that amounts to a reduction in the value-for-money quotient.

I still expect Print-on-demand to be the game-changer. With both Amazon and RPGNow getting into the PoD game, the incentive to produce direct-published paper-and-ink products can only diminish. So the future is digital, and will be subject to exactly the same pressures that the music industry has struggled with for the last 20+ years. Hopefully, we’ll learn from their mistakes and not get too heavily into DRM and aggressively strong-arm protection.

RPG production is going to become even more of a part-time hobbyist activity and less professional in standards. Prices will drop. Markets will become more insular, more closely-focused. Small businesses will stop, and will agglomerate. The honorable ones, like Purple Duck, will live up to the promises of the businesses that they absorb. And by virtue of being there, they will be in position to capitalize on the next boom, when it comes.

And we’ll continue to look over our shoulders. We live in paranoid times.

I’ve got so much campaign prep to get done that if I don’t do it here, I’ll either never get it done in time…

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Chapters 18-20 are all in final form. I don’t change “speaker” in mid-paragraph, but the speaker does change from one paragraph to the next. So if it seems like the tone changes direction suddenly – sometimes it does.

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The Second Great Dwarfwar: Dwarven Incursion

The delegation returned to the King and his Council with word that the Dwarves were more arrogant and stiff-necked and unreasonable than ever, and claimed all the forest save that which had been transformed by the Elven Arts as their own, to do with what they willed; and that they were impolite and disrespectful to the person and Title of the Elvish King; and that not even the threat of hostilities had moved them to bargain in good faith.

“That was their final word?” asked the King.

“No, your majesty. Their last words were, ‘Kiss my Braided Beard, You poncy snob. We’ll give you more war than you can stomach if you set foot in our domain again.”

The council all agreed that this was unacceptable, a direct challenge to the stewardship of the forest by the Elves, which was a sacred trust with which they had been charged by Corellan himself. They had no choice but to accept that the Dwarves had given just cause for a declaration of War. “In any event,” argued some, “it would be well to learn how to fight in the tunnels and holes deep beneath the earth, for sooner or later we must confront the Drow once more.”

Only one major objection could be raised: the Elves had not yet formed a military force with which to respond to this threat. Even as the council retired to consider solutions to this conundrum, which now assumed an urgency that had not previously been felt necessary, word arrived that another Dwarven expedition had been sighted felling trees, and lighting fires which they were directing toward Elvarheim itself.

The inner forest would not burn easily, the Elves knew; but this latest assault on top of recent events made it clear that the Dwarves were being belligerent in the extreme, and escalated the Elvish need from ‘Urgent’ to ‘Dire’. Lacking any other solution, the Elvish Priests appealed to Corellan to solve this problem before Elvarheim itself came under direct threat.

And Lo, the most holy Corellan didst hear the anguished beseechments of his people, and he came to comfort and guide them, as he had promised; and he did say unto his people, bring before me the Noletinechor, and it was done, and Corellan in his wisdom and majesty didst say unto them, “Ye have been chosen by your kin to be the guardians of all that is Elvish. This is a high honor indeed, but the designs of those who ordained your order are incomplete, for to be a guardian is to do more than shelter and remember, it is to protect, nurture, cherish, and teach. This is a sacred trust, the stewardship of the spirit of the Elven peoples and all that makes them great and good in the eyes of Nature, and I charge you with the duty of forever being worthy of such trust. I shall call forth those Totems who are gifted in battle, and together we will teach you that which you will need to discharge this duty and trust, guardians worthy to succeed the Verdonne. And you shall issue forth with the most skilled hunters and warriors of the Elven people to repel this and any future invasion.

“And when this crisis doth abate, you shall establish, in some far distant place, a fortress, a bulwark, to be the home of your order, and the seed from which all may begin anew should the worst befall your people, for yours is a difficult and lonely task that shall persist until the last Elf is no more. You must keep alive the traditions and songs and cultures of your people, resisting those changes which are alien to its nature, and yet permitting the race and society of the beloved of nature to grow and evolve as its nature doth decree.”

And the then-beloved Spider-queen of the Drow, Lolth, scrying from afar, was infuriated, for Her plans to take advantage of the Elvish vulnerability had failed. It had seemed a simple proposition: a few Drow in stolen Dwarvish boots, a few carelessly-guarded trees, and one enemy would destroy another. But the plot had failed to allow for the interference of Corellan, and it never paid to ignore a God when devising your tactics – an error that she would not repeat on future occasions. And still worse, it might well result in teaching her enemies how to fight more effectively underground, in an environment all-too-similar to that of Her people, costing their own defenses a tactical advantage that might be irreplaceable.

It was all the fault of Her military advisors, of course, and several were promptly made the centre of attention at a public beheading at which their failures were publicly announced to all, object lessons in the consequences of failing their Queen.

The Second Great Dwarfwar: The Huyundaltha

It proved less easy than Corellan had made it seem. The Noletinechor were artists and musicians and dancers, and while they had received basic instruction in bow and sword, that instruction had been abandoned in favor of a more cultural education. When it came to martial matters, they were hesitant and clumsy. With the need pressing, Corellan and the totems he had summoned devised, in desperation, a martial style founded apon the delicate dance steps that the guardians of culture had mastered, using two equal weapons for balance; a style that combined grace and elegance, mobility and nimbleness of foot and hand, into a lethal art. And this art he did name Ondaltha, and to the Noletinechor he gave the title Huyundaltha,’Masters Of The Ondaltha’, or (literal translation), “Bladedancers”.

Thus it was that the Noletinechor were transformed into a martial order, their mandate extended to the protection of the Elven homeland and way of life, and the replacement for the Verdonne. Satisfied, Corellan departed, having faith in his people’s ability to chart their own course, make their own mistakes, and live their own lives.

The Bladedancers were amateurs at this ‘war’ business, and they started by making a lot of amateur mistakes. The exterior of the Dwarven Mines were undefended, and rather than giving them pause, this encouraged the Bladedancers to take advantage of this overt defensive weakness. They had not realized that the entrances were unguarded purely to lure would-be attackers into a realm shaped by the Dwarves in a manner not dissimilar to that of Elvarheim; a giant trap in which the architecture itself was a weapon. In their preferred habitat, the Dwarves were just as at home, and just as deadly, as the Elves were within their forest.

Gathering a band of twenty aggressive young warriors, the Bladedancer Hoddell penetrated the mineshaft, ignoring the gong at the entrance, and descended into the depths, and promptly become lost in the twisting, turning maze of tunnels. Four days later, they found themselves at the entrance once again, having never seen a Dwarf, returning to Elvarheim tired, thirsty and covered in dust. Undeterred, they tried again, and this time never returned.

Expedition after expedition followed, and slowly the Elves learned many of the secrets of navigation below ground – systematic exploration, mapping, always following one wall, dropping markers at key intersections. Eventually, some reached the second layer of underground defenses, only to be lured into deadfalls, or pits, or pockets of foul air, or chambers that were then flooded by Dwarves, or galleries with many narrow slots in the walls for weapons to penetrate while the wielders remained safely behind solid rock.

After 24 years of sporadic and wholly-unsuccessful expeditions and adventures below the ground, Deruan, leader of the Bladedancers, reached the inevitable conclusion that if the Elves continued to conduct their war on Dwarven terms, they would lose it. Their foes were the masters of their domain, and inherently superior in skill over the Elves while within it. In order to emerge victorious, they would need to change strategies, and to make the Dwarven environment work against the residents and not in their favor. While all conceded the need to change tack, the strategies that Deruan proposed were extreme, radical, and ruthless, and caused many to have misgivings. Those in opposition described them as too similar to what might have been expected of their estranged cousins, the Drow, and questioned once again whether the Elves had been right to start this war in the first place.

Many on the council considered this a healthy debate for the society. A proper understanding of the question, and of why the Elves had made the decision to go to war, could only yield a greater insight into the natures of the Elvish people themselves, to the unending benefit of their society. But to the Bladedancers, this was cowardice akin to high treason against the Elvish race, and they denounced those who opposed and undermined their efforts towards Victory. THEY were the nominated guardians of society, who had sacrificed their personal liberties to this sacred cause, and as such, their decrees should supersede those of the Council in matters of the defense of the realm and the prosecution of war. So aroused and inflamed were passions over the issue that the Council had no choice but to bar Deruan from their deliberations, lest tempers lead to a impasse that could only result in violence, one Elf against another, an act so heinous that it had led to the ostracizing of the Drow.

For the moment, Deruan was able to invoke the blessing and authority of Corellan, and override the concerns of the Council, and press forward with his plans. His strategy was four-fold. The Totem Spirits were beseeched for their aid, causing Rabbits and other burrowing creatures to search out the source of the waters that fed into the Dwarven realm; these would be acidified. In the process, the entrances which funneled clean, fresh, air to the depths would be found; they would be poisoned with noxious fumes. Trees would be planted in every crack and crevice, and spellwoven to grow their roots faster and more deeply, widening the cracks and destabilizing the walls and ceilings of the Dwarven halls. And many forest creatures, and other creatures who preferred an underground existence, would have their natures altered through Spellweaving to make them larger, more aggressive, and more fitted to living deep beneath the surface, then released into the tunnels to make their homes; deadly foes with which to vex the subterranean Dwarves and compete with them for food and water and living space.

Fifty-three years of superficial peace passed before all was prepared, with the Bladedancers suppressing all expressions of doubt or concerns over morality, as they single-mindedly pursued what they regarded as their sacred trust.

The Second Great Dwarfwar: A Dwarven Perspective

Lolth had not repeated Her error in ignoring those who shared Her preference for living within a completely controlled underground environment. She had sought to use the Dwarves as pawns, weapons against Her true enemies, the followers of Corellan, he who would unmake Her, in a rare moment of their vulnerability. Although superficially successful, this plan had backfired tremendously. But Lolth was a realist, despite all Her grand schemings, and possessed of a rare instinct for survival; no matter what the situation She was presented with, She would always seek (and usually find) a way to turn events to Her advantage. Even as a long twenty-four years of defensive engagements between the Dwarves and the surface Elves began, She undertook the difficult and dangerous task of establishing diplomatic relations with the Dwarves.

The initial approach was fraught with danger, and several diplomatic missions were slain by the Dwarves before the envoys they carried could be conveyed to the Dwarvish Court. But these were expendable lackeys, unimportant in overall life, and easily replaced. Approach after approach was attempted, until random chance found a successful formula: one of the envoys on this occasion was a Drow of great size and strength, a Giant amongst his people. and it so happened that he challenged the leader of the Dwarven Patrol that he encountered to a wrestling match for the honor of being escorted to the King.

Aberzherisharde was the name given to this walking mountain, and when his challenge was curtly rejected, he mocked the Dwarven Patrol as cowards. A known hot-head, who had been sentenced to this duty for brawling in defiance of Lolth’s Laws, there were several amongst the Spider-Queen’s advisors who thought his selection to be most unwise; but Lolth’s instruction overrode any debate, and so he found himself bandying insults with the leader of the Patrol.

Knowing the Dwarven nature now, as they did not know it then, it is clear that this was in fact the perfect response to the situation. He Challenged the Dwarven Arrogance, stung the Dwarven Pride, and then engaged in a game of friendly insults in which he took as good as he gave, all in tones that showed that he did not take the insults directed toward him personally. As the game wore on, and minutes became hours, the nature of the insults being exchanged gradually evolved into a series of backhanded compliments; insults of which the target could take pride at being accused. In due course, the Patrol Leader, Khalzesh, agreed to convey the deputation to the Dwarvish Crown under his personal protection, and at last Lolth’s message could be conveyed to the King.

These deputations had been comprised of carefully selected malcontents, given personal and private instruction by the Queen Herself in their deportment, and had their families held hostage to ensure their full cooperation. Not even the Priestesses and House Matrons were permitted to know of the instructions they carried; were these to become public knowledge, they could have undermined the very foundations of Drow Society. No members of a delegation would ever be permitted to interact with ordinary members of their society again, something of which they had not been informed prior to the undertaking of their missions. Only when the Drow peoples lost our [their] Dark Queen was the truth revealed, as the surviving members of the diplomatic corps were discovered living in hidden harems of untold luxury and zero liberty. (The Matrons who discovered them heard their words, but (under the-then-operative circumstances) could not permit themselves to accept such blasphemy, and executed them all immediately). Only when Lolth was restored, and abandoned Her people, were their words remembered, reconsidered, and found trustworthy, even insightful:

The diplomats began with a humble apology from the Spider Queen for the mistakes of the past, while deflecting most of the blame onto the House Matrons of the time, and especially the Princess whose ambitions had enmeshed all three participant races in the Prince Of Lies affair. They filled the Dwarven Hall with tales of the torture and retribution exacted apon those deemed by Her to be principally responsible for dishonoring their people. Nevertheless, Lolth Herself admitted that She had erred in Her handling of the matter, and was just as fallable as any ruler. In recognition of what this had cost the Dwarven peoples, She offered recompense in the form of rare gems and minerals that had been wrested from deep beneath the earth, deeper even than the Dwarven Tunnels could reach; Rubies and Sapphires and Adamant Ore, which (when refined by those with sufficient skill and expertise, which Her people lacked) would yield a metal named Adamantium.

This blend of humility, nobility, and pride – backed up by wergild – appealed to the Dwarven King, as every word reinforced his innate senses of pride and moral superiority. From that point, steady progress was made, despite the occasional diplomatic stumble.

After some years of periodic hostility between Dwarves and Elves, the Drow came to the Dwarves, and said, “It seems that we now find ourselves with enemy common, and that our expertise and experience might benefit you in your current hostilities should matters develop in an unseemly manner.”

To which the Dwarves replied, “Our homes are our weapons. Those who trespass are little more than an annoyance, a rabble who we need no aid to overcome.”

And the Drow Envoy replied, “And we hope that this remains the case. We have no desire to disparage your capabilities; but if it should come to pass that the pattern of this conflict should change unexpectedly, we wish your Royal Highness to know that we are at your disposal for advice and assistance.”

Once again, life in the tunnels returned to a routine, and the Drow bided their time, until the day arrived when the Dwarves looked back apon the year past and realized that the Elves had discontinued their futile assaults. And the Dwarves were greatly puzzled, for this sudden absence was not expected of the Elvish Character; even the Dwarves acknowledged that. Next to them, the Elves were the most tenacious race in existence.

So it was that the King, who had been but a young Prince when the offer had been extended, summoned the Drow diplomatic representatives and asked for their interpretation of the change. And the Drow Ambassador said, “You are correct, as always, your Majesty. Our surface brethren would not simply stop; they would either concede and negotiate a peaceful settlement of your differences, or they would withdraw to change tactics, conceding your people’s mastery of the battlefield. Any other enemy would accept that they have been beaten, but our surface brethren have no honor, and will stoop to any depths to achieve a victory they do not deserve.

“Since there have been no peace envoys, the war between you continues unabated. We see but two possible courses for their conduct of this war: either they will seek to create some great provocation to lure you out into an environment where they hold the advantage, and will do so soon, or they will seek to turn your advantage against you by arcane means, which will take much longer. The solution to the first we leave to your own tactical acumen; but should battle not resume in a handspan of years, we shall return to discuss how best we might contribute to the countering of these underhanded tactics.”

Five years later, they returned, and said to the King, “Greetings, your Highness, from your sister Monarch, Queen Of Spiders. In the name of our close bonds of friendship have we come to discuss the tactical support that our people can provide you in your quest for justice from our common enemy, the Elves of the surface. Our Queen bids you to understand Her position on these matters from the outset, lest false expectation should undermine the friendship that has been forged between us; this is your war, not ours, and while we wish to you every success in this matter, we cannot fight your battles for you. Nor do we expect that such a brave and noble people as yourselves would expect anything less of those who respect your most sterling qualities.”

To which the Dwarf-king replied, “We would never ask another to fight our battles for us, you have the right of that; yet, this then begs the question: if you so not offer the strength of force of arms, what value do you then attach to this friendship that you will not fight for it? What assistance will you render, in the name of the friendship your Queen professes, that the cynical amongst us should not dismiss them as merely an empty platitude?”

This was troublesome for the diplomats, revealing as it did a measure of wit that they had not previously attributed amongst the King’s gifts. The King had matured greatly since their previous visit, it was true; perhaps in the case of Dwarves, wisdom came apon them suddenly, when the weight of accumulated experiences suddenly forged associations of understanding, where for other races this developed more gradually over the course of time. Choosing his words with care, the Envoy answered, “Your words, in effect, do say unto us: ‘Friendship is easily professed, but true friendship requires deeds of fidelity’. We accept that burden in the name of our Queen, may She be ever-blessed, and convey from Her many promises of aid of practical value unto you.

“Firstly, we bring word of what She and Her advisors have Divined of the underhanded and unworthy stratagem to be employed by the surface dwellers; it is our Queen’s belief that they will turn the waters you drink, the rock you tunnel, and yea, even the very air that you breathe against you, in a bid to drive you from your homes forever, into the ambush that they will have prepared; and that should this be insufficient, they will release horrors and fell beasts unimaginable to plague your daily lives, for they are corrupting the very creatures that they profess to guard and protect into abominations most horrifying and perverse to do battle in their stead. And should this come to pass, our Queen offers refuge for you and your Court and a small army of stalwart Dwarven defenders within our tunnels, and the aid of OUR spinners of spells to the end of undoing this harm to your homes.

“Second, we offer to trade with you food, that you may increase the number of warriors that fight to protect your lands; and shipments of Adamant Ore and unprocessed Mithral, that you may better arm your warriors; and that we will sell these things to your people for gold, and silver, and platinum, and for the black gems that rumor states that you have found in the wash of the underground river that runs through your domain.

“And thirdly, and most greatly, should all come to pass as our Queen has foretold, She bids us to offer unto you this aid: we shall draw aside the curtains of sorcery that protect the surface dwellers and give you the opportunity to strike directly back at the heartland of our mutual foe from beneath their very feet. Should you capture the heart of Elvarheim, you will force our brethren to bargain for peace on your terms, and achieve a total and lasting victory in the war against our mutual foe.”

The King, his countenance unyielding, replied “Those are great gifts of friendship, it must be said; and we are honored to be numbered amongst the friends of the Drow and their Queen, and we are very happy to accept Her offer of trade with our people. In honor of that accord, I shall have the most brilliant of the dark gems of which you speak polished and mounted apon a circlet of purest platinum as a gift to Her, in recognition of Her enlightened rule. Many details remain to be settled, of course, and I in turn would charge unto you this task: to relate unto your Queen that we do not fear the surface Elves, and do not think them capable of inflicting the travails your relate apon us; always, it doth seem to me, those of the surface world wish to hold themselves blameless for the ill that befalls another at their hands, a smugness and self-important superiority that is unmerited, and such deeds would bind their hands to the axe-handle while blood still drips from its blade. Yet, it might be that in this, we are the ones who are mistaken, and should that be the case, only then would we countenance such a dangerous tactic as an invasion of the Elven homeland. In our tunnels, we have the advantage, as they have learned to their great cost; should we have the foolish audacity to brave the leaves of their twisted and defiled forests, it is they who would have that advantage, and we who would do the dying. A foolish bravado is not bravery, just stupidity.”

This set the Ambassador back on his heels; his Queen’s expectation had been that Dwarvish Bravery extended far beyond the point of folly, and that they would leap at the chance of engaging the surface Elves in direct combat; indeed, Her instructions had been for him to permit himself to be reluctantly persuaded to aid in mounting the direct attack as soon as possible, and not as a far-off contingency plan. He was also more than a little concerned that it was he who would have to inform Her that She had underestimated Her people’s Dwarven neighbors – an unenviable position, and one that might prove painfully fatal; few survived the voicing of such criticism.

Fortunately for the Ambassador, the Queen was entirely satisfied with the outcome. She had no doubts of what the followers of Corellan had planned, for She had emplaced spies in their midst; and it would have taken a very blind, deaf, and inept spy indeed for him to have remained unaware of the debate and controversy over the plans of Deruan The Bladedancer. As a result, She was of no doubt that the royal family of the Dwarves would deliver themselves to be hostages of Her good will, subjugating Her Dwarvish neighbors; that the offer of trade for food would see the Dwarves becoming economically dependant apon Her people, and providing them with the resources and ready capital to funnel into the vast espionage apparatus that She envisioned for the future, while refining ore and crafting weaponry that would ultimately be turned to Her ends; and that in the final course of events, the Dwarves would succeed in obliterating the Followers Of Corellan for Her, in response to the war that She had started between them. She was eternal, and could wait.

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The Ongoing Elvish Glossary

• Arnost: Simple Speech (Modern “Common”, a human tongue)
• Arrunquessor: Plains Elves
• Ayer: Nuthanori word meaning “Squat”. Mont Ayer is the name of one of the two peaks that define the traditional elvish lands.
• Calquissir: High Elves
• Corellan: The First
• Drow: “Those Who Dwell Apart” (in Nuthanorl). Added to Ogre by the Drow with the meaning of “Smart”.
• Ellessarune: The “Shining City” of the Tarquessir, home of the Elvish King and capital of the Elven Lands to this day.
• Eltrhinast: “Guiding Spirit”
• Elvarheim: “Blessed Leafy Home”: The Elven Forest, homeland of the Tarquessir and the centre of Elven Power in modern times
• Gilandthor: “The Gathering”, the formal title of the Elvish Council.
• Hithainduil: High Elven Language
• Huyundaltha: “Masters Of The Ondaltha” (literal), “Bladedancers” (colloquial). Formerly Noletinechor, now Guardians Of Elvish Society.
• Ondaltha: A two-weapon combat style based apon Elvish Dance, practiced exclusively by Huyundaltha.
• Illvayssor: “The Other”, a mythical race
• Isallithin: “The Sundered”, a name applied to Aquatic Elves
• King: A human title interpreted by Elves as “speaker to others” and defined as such within their language.
• Magi: A corruption of the Zamiel word “Machus”, which means “of the wise.”
• Mont: Nuthanori word meaning “High Place”. Used human-style in the naming of Mountains.
• Noletinechor: “Lore Shields”, an elvish historical vocation
• Nuthanorl: Low Elven Language, Common Elven
• Sarner: A human abbreviation of the Hithainduil word “Saranariuthenal” which means, literally, “Swift and Wide”. The River Sarner runs through the central valley of Elvarheim.
• Tarquessir: Forest Elves
• Thuyon: Nuthanori word meaning “Tall Spires”. Mont Thuyon is the name of the taller of the two peaks that define the traditional elvish lands; Modern Elvarheim lies between the foothills of Mont Thuyon and the River Sarner.
• Verdonne: “Quickbranch”, an artificial race created by Elves to be “The Guardians Of The Forest”.
• Zamiel: Drow Language

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Next time: Violence and Mayhem as the Second Great Dwarfwar climaxes in Chapters 21 to 23!

For a recent superhero adventure, I went looking for a map, preferably a 5′ scale map that I could use with miniatures. I couldn’t find what I needed, and that surprised me greatly. After all, there are so many maps and map tiles on offer through RPGNow – there are umpteen castles, marshlands, swamps, forests, forest clearings, villages, and so on. Heck, you can buy entire cities. So I felt sure that anything you could think of would be catered for by someone.

The more I looked into it, the more maps I was able to place on my wishlist of maps that were simply not available. So this post is for all you mapmakers out there. I don’t know how big a market there would be for any of these specific items – but there is going to be some market, and – the last time I checked – it was a market that no-one was catering for.

Circus Tent, Arena, and/or Amphitheatre

The specific map that I was looking for was a circus tent, complete with audience seating, central rings, acrobat platforms, high-wires, etc. But I was prepared to compromise – I could have worked with almost any arena or amphitheatre map and dressed it to my needs.

I couldn’t find any of them (heck, I couldn’t even find any maps or blueprints on Google). And the surprises, well, the heck out of me.

Arenas and the like have been part of the landscape from just about as long as we’ve been building cities. The Ancient Greeks used amphitheatres for debates. The Romans had their coliseums. In medieval times, tournaments were regular events. Modern times have the circus, plus rock concerts, and plays, and heaven knows what. Scientific Conferences, perhaps. University lecture halls. And in the future, any of the above might come back into vogue.

Solving the immediate problem

In order to solve my immediate needs, I had to get creative. I used wall panels as rows of bleachers, stone floors as a set of elevated stages (I thought about putting dice under them to raise them, but it proved enough to use some unwanted tiles as a layer underneath the “stage” to raise it just a little). I used portals to represent major supports for the tents, pits for recessed areas (like an orchestra pit and a hidden passage beneath the stage where the dressing rooms were located). Burning torches represented the position of spotlights. Pieces showing something else – spiderweb, I think, but I’m no longer sure – became the anchors and platforms which were connected by high wires.

A really important factor was the size of the end-product. I had assembled stacks of the different component elements before I started laying the ‘map’ out on the playing surface and roughly added up the amount of space that I could fill using those tiles.

While it took an extra half-hour of game time to lay out the map, it worked reasonably well. While there were undoubtedly holes and flaws within the resulting map, neither the players nor I could spot them in the course of play. So it was good enough, in the end.

Labs

Getting back to the main point of this article, we come to Labs.

Frankensteinian Labs. Gothic Labs. Futuristic Labs. Chem Labs. Electrical Labs. Robotics Workshops. Leonardo’s Workshop. Labs, Labs, Labs. You can never have enough diversity in Lab Spaces.

And of course, most of these have fantasy analogues. The Chem Labs work for alchemist’s labs. Leonardo’s workshop could definitely be useful in a steampunk setting. Frankenstein’s Workshop works for all sorts of Necromancer’s workshops, not to mention golem construction workshops. Astronomical observatories and astrological workshops can be interchanged – at least well enough for one map to be used for another.

Some of these maps are available, most don’t. But its the futuristic labs that are really hard to find.

Special Rooms

There are a number of special rooms that recur in various game genres time after time. The throne room. The conference room – one with round or elliptical tables and one with rectangular tables. Armories – which will be different in different time periods. Mobile armories, like those that might be used by a Swat team. Armored Cars. Ambulance interiors. Operating theatres. Caves with entrances that look like giant skulls.

Most of these just aren’t around. Some of them can be replicated using standard map tiles and appropriate dressings – but having a baseline to work from would make things so much easier.

Special Locations

Finally, there are a few “special” locations that keep coming up, and that are very hard to fake with something else. Cemeteries, Casinos, Las Vegas showrooms, Medieval Japanese Castles, and a period-correct Egyptian Palace. Oh yes, and the TARDIS, or some other sci-fi starship bridge.

So, there you go

These are all examples of locations that I’ve needed to use in adventures in the past – and couldn’t find. And if I needed them, so could others. So it’s over you, mapmakers. Who will take up the gauntlet?

Only a short article this week, for a change. Don’t expect it to last…

I’ve got so much campaign prep to get done that if I don’t do it in public, I’ll either never get it done in time…

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Chapters 15-17 are all in reasonably final form. I try not to change “speaker” in mid-paragraph, but the speaker does sometimes change from one paragraph to the next. So if it seems like the tone changes direction suddenly – sometimes it does.

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The Verdonne Insurrection: Elves in the Age Of Heresies

Throughout their history, the Elves had largely been preoccupied with social and interracial problems. They had given little thought to the larger theological reality that surrounded them, and had no true conception of the vast powers against which Corellan struggled to protect his people. Elvish theological thought was focused on the Totem Spirits of Nature that guided them; their scholars debated whether the belligerency and inconstancy of other races could be attributed to their seeming inability to perceive the wisdom of their spirit-totems, and Elvish philosophy was turned continually inward, focused on defining exactly what it meant to be an Elf, and how best to have that quintessential Elvishness express itself throughout their society. Even the rearing and education of the Verdonne had been left to the Verdonne themselves, so preoccupied were the Elves in their soul-searching and expression of the results through Spellweaving to more closely conform the environment to their natures and perceptions.

The crushing disappointment of the truth of The Other, who they had romanticized into idealized and nobly tragic figures, had soured any interest in the outside world and the beliefs and knowledge of outsiders. The world hurt so much that they turned their backs toward it and became an insular and self-preoccupied society.

This was a state of acute vulnerability to the forces which had corrupted the Spider-totems with Ambitions, and when what became known as The Age Of Heresies began, that vulnerability would exact a heavy toll on Elvish society.

The weapons employed by the Chaos Powers against the Elves were curiosity, insecurity, and ego, and they would prove devastatingly effective.

The Elves of the time had accepted the presence and role of the Verdonne within their realm as a part of everyday life. The subject was no more to be given special consideration than were the presence of the Bluebird and the role of its song as an inspiration to poets and artists. The Verdonne, who were long-lived even as were their Elvish creators, slowly began to perceive that the forest they protected with life, leaf, and limb was altering in its nature, little by little. From one day to the next, the changes were so insignificant as to go unnoticed, but over a span of centuries, they added up into an increasingly alien world. After discussing it amongst themselves at length, they resolved to ask the Elves, and here the Spellweavers proved that history was doomed to repeat itself apon the preoccupied.

After the episode with the Dwarves, the Elves had created the Council Of Elves to ‘guide’ the King toward his decisions in all matters relating to other species; but they failed to apply their hard-learned principles to their own creation, treating them as part of their domain, and not as a separate species with whom they had a relationship based apon common interest. Instead of referring the Verdonne’s gentle questions to the council, they answered in simple terms and without thought, being distracted by whatever they were concentrating apon at that particular moment, replying that they were changing the forest to make it a better home for the Elves, closer to their nature.

The Verdonne questioner accepted this, and left; and he and his kind thought long and hard apon the over-simple truth of the reply. Almost thirty years passed before the Verdonne came to the realization that the more perfectly the Forest suited the Elves, the less perfect an abode for their kind it became. Increasingly, they would come to exist only at the Sufferance of their elvish masters, slaves to their whims and fancies; and yet it was by their efforts, and deaths, that the Forest remained unmolested.

The question of what should be done about this was another to be given slow and careful consideration, but in time – another 22 years to be precise – they reached the conclusion that their role was to protect the Forest as Nature had intended it to be. The Elvish manipulations were as unnatural as the destructive instincts of the Fallen Races against which the Verdonne struggled regularly. The Elves had to be treated as an enemy by the Verdonne.

The result was a Slave Revolt (from the perspective of the Verdonne) and an act of Heresy (from the perspective of the Elves). The first strike was against the Spellweavers, and those of martial prowess, and it was swift and brutal. A few at a time, the Verdonne infiltrated the heart of the Forest, where they were welcomed by the Elves. Few realized how many had gathered until their appointed leader, Silverleaf, gave a great booming cry and signaled the attack.

If the Forest Elves had been spared the worst of the Orc-wars, they bore the brunt of this unexpected assault. Their most powerful and learned were felled in the first stroke. To fully appreciate the magnitude of the calamity, it must be recognized that the Verdonne had been entrusted with the keys to all the defenses of the Forest, were trusted completely, were able to proceed unmolested to the most sensitive of locations throughout the Elvish Kingdom in preparation for the assault, were as able to instantly relay messages from one to another by means of the trees of the forest as were the Elves (in fact, messages between the Verdonne were presumed to pertain to the defense of the realm and were given priority at the instruction of the Elves themselves), and the greatest vulnerability of the Verdonne – fire – could not be exploited without irreparably harming the forest itself. The result was a slaughter.

Some Elves were desperate enough to resort to weapons of flame regardless of the risks, and in the struggle, control over the fires was soon lost. The resulting conflagration swept through the forest as an even more unstoppable and implacable foe than ever the Verdonne would have been. And yet, the desperate measure achieved its objectives, as the Verdonne fell back before the flames and fled, all coordination amongst themselves lost to the panicked cries of the Forest, retreating instinctively to the banks of the Sarner. The Elves had beaten back the Verdonne Insurrection in but a week, but within the course of that week the heart of the Elvish Realm became a smoking ruin. More than half of the population of Elvarheim were lost in insurrection.

When at last the fires abated, the survivors began to reconstruct their society in imitation of its former glory; but much context and understanding had been lost, and often the forms were preserved and mimicked without an understanding of the reasons those customs had evolved, or their purpose. Elvish society began to stagnate from that moment, and its eventual collapse became inevitable.

Though it took weeks of patient discussion and debate, the survivors formed a new Council, and confirmed the ascendancy of the sole survivor of the Royal Family. The council then directed the formation of a delegation to approach the Verdonne Enclave that had gathered by the banks of the Sarner, to learn the cause of the conflict and what might be done to resolve the Verdonne’s grievances. By the time the delegation warily approached, almost three long months had passed, and to their surprise, the Enclave had been all but abandoned. Only Silverleaf remained, mortally wounded and badly burned in the fires. He informed the delegation that his brethren had all departed, to take up the burden of the protection of forests and glades wherever they might be found; and that so far as he and his kind were concerned, Elvarheim was a true forest in seeming only, perverted and twisted as it had been by Elvish Spellweaving, and unworthy of the protection of the Verdonne, who would henceforth hold themselves fully independent of the Elvish Kingdom.

Silverleaf had been waiting patiently to deliver his message of Verdonne Independence, sustaining himself only through sheer force of will bolstered by his healing arts; this last task achieved, the Liberator Of The Verdonne permitted himself to succumb to his wounds.

The Elvish delegation were greatly puzzled by this statement. Only when information was forthcoming from their Human neighbors about the religious strife that they had been experiencing, the acts of heresy and betrayal and compounded confusion that had been experienced, did they begin to grasp the root cause of the disagreement, even though the specific misunderstanding that had been central to the Verdonne Insurrection remained unknown. By this time, almost a century had passed, and it was too late to repair relations with their creations.

So it was that the delegation returned to their devastated forest home to begin the long process of mourning, and the slow process of rebuilding, still in a state of confusion over what had transpired and why.

Noletinechor: Guardians Of The Elvish Legacy

Elvish society is organic in nature, slowly growing and evolving to accommodate sustained changes in circumstance, much as does a tree. Change occurs in miniscule increments, and traditions and forms remain unchanged for centuries, until the old ways are proven inadequate to the burdens of a catastrophic and usually unexpected disaster.

The loss during the Verdonne Insurrection of their most learned, and wise, and their most adroit Spellweavers, and most subtle (and incomplete) Spellweavings, was just such a calamity, and as was their way, the elves reacted to it by debating for years what should be done to prevent a recurrence. Indeed, it was only the imminent demise of the most senior of the survivors and awareness of the loss of the unique perspectives and understandings that would result, that cut short the debate.

The elvish solution was a planned society as rigidly defined as any promulgated by Lolth; the Royal Council instituted a completely regimented career path for all the young elves approaching maturity designed to protect and preserve as much of the elvish culture as had survived.

Any who had shown the slightest potential for Spellweaving was apprenticed to the aging masters of that craft. Of the remainder, any with any talent for any of a dozen arts or crafts or disciplines that had been identified as ‘uniquely’ or ‘characteristically’ Elvish by the committees formed to debate the subject were recruited into a new vocation, the Noletinechor, or “Lore Shields”. Each was then trained intensively in each of these definitive social attributes, and those who did not achieve a satisfactory standard of accomplishment were released back into the general population to contribute to society as they wished.

From their beginnings, the Noletinechor were subjects of considerable controversy amongst the elves. Never had the free-spirited woodland dwellers been subject to such harsh regimentation, and the prospect of being forced into the Noletinechor was hugely unpopular, though the elite few who succeeded in the disciplines were greatly respected – and the subjects of considerable sympathy. They were also the butts of much Elvish humor, which did little to brighten their dispositions; that, when combined with the general hot-headedness of youth, quickly gave the members of the group a reputation for being grim of demeanor and irritable by nature. ‘Prickly… almost Dwarven,’ was the frequent comment, accompanied by a wry smile.

The Noletinechor were artisans, poets, and musicians, craftsmen of the highest caliber. They memorized the 1145 songs that had been identified as ‘Fundamental expressions of Elvishness’, they learned the 7 musical modes and 173 forms of dance that were ‘definitively’ Elvish, and were educated, in as much detail as possible, in the history of the Elven peoples. His role in that history made Corellan himself another vital field of knowledge that the Noletinechor had to master. They became, almost by definition, the experts on elvish rituals and social customs, the keepers and protectors of the legacy of an entire cultural development.

They were not warriors.

The Second Great Dwarfwar: Beginnings, Boundaries and Confrontations

Having safeguarded the things that made them Elvish, the learned bodies that had created the Noletinechor had turned to the pressing question of protecting their borders. While it was recovering, the forests held little of interest to outsiders, and as yet the Fallen races did not realize that the Elven lands were now unprotected; neither situation could last. The forest had bloomed with new foliage years earlier, but the trees were just trees; they had not yet been awakened and assimilated into Elvarheim. An invisible line within the Forest demarked the territory of the Elves. Nevertheless, since the new growth formed a connecting corridor between Elvarheim and the huts of the Amrunquessor, which lay between the forests and the mountaintop dwellings of the Calquessir, there was periodic travel through the new growth.

The first indication that their grace period had expired was when one such pair of travelers, named Arudrial and Denowyn, found that many of the trees in the vicinity of Mount Elrozi had been cut down and the timber removed.

The travelers first blamed Ogres, seeking timber for their seige apparatus, or other members of the Fallen Races, seeking lumber for construction, woodworking, or bonfires. But when the scene was surveyed by the experienced Pathfinder Therialas, the true culprits were identified.

Therialas had been a tenderfoot warrior, barely adult, during the confrontation over the Prince Of Lies affair. Now a very respectable 549 years of age, he was the greatest tracker in all Elvarheim; but even with all his experience, it was no easy task to cross the five-hundred-and-ten year gulf since the last time he had seen the imprint of a Dwarven Boot. Nevertheless, he achieved the task and duly reported to the Council that undoubtedly, the footprints he had seen were those of Dwarvenkind.

This posed a new challenge for the Council to debate; the Elven lands had never had any formalized borders, and while the Living Forest of Elvarheim was clearly their domain, protected and nurtured and shaped by Spellweaving, the trees that had been felled were… just trees. Could they truly claim this as part of the Elven realm? Should they? Was this really a cause, a justification, for war?

Ultimately, the decision rested on a very human perspective, viewed through a very Elvish perspective. Instead of their normal pragmatism, the decision was founded on sentiment and emotion; many Elves had died protecting the trees that had previously occupied that region, and with their long lives, that was an even more poignant sacrifice. Further, it was a connecting corridor between the habitats of the differing branches of the Elven people. Finally, there remained the suspicion that there might be another force behind the Dwarven Incursion; Calquessir divinations had long ago revealed the connection between the Drow and the assaults by the Fallen Races, and there was the potential that this was simply more of the same.

And so it was resolved that the Elves would seek reparations for the damages, and for the incursion, and would offer to negotiate forest management for the Dwarves. A trade agreement would benefit both – in comparison to the alternative. A delegation was assembled for the purpose and given careful instruction by the ‘Dwarven Expert’ from the Council.

The Elvish delegation approached the entrance to the Dwarven mines with caution; they were used to the forests of Elvarheim, which were ringed with layer apon layer of defenses. What they were seeing as they approached was nothing but unspoiled wilderness, save for a large spoil heap – a small mountain, if truth were told – filling a valley next to the entrance with rubble. The closer they came to the unsealed, unguarded entrance, completely out in the open, the more nervous they became.

Their caution approached paranoia as they examined the silver-plated steel girders that framed the entrance, and the delicately-carved runes inset across the entrance. “Ring The Gong,” pronounced an Elf who was learned in the Dwarven script, “and wait.” A scout warily approached the entrance, and found a large bronze gong mounted to the ceiling on one side, just beyond the portal, with a hammer on the ground next to it. Warily, the scout picked up the hammer and struck the gong gingerly.

He was completely unprepared for the massive swell of ringing bells that sounded from the enchanted device, and fled back to the remainder of the party. It was clear that the Elvish hearing was more sensitive – it could almost be said, more delicate – than that of the Dwarves. In the distance, even removed some small way from the entrance, the party could clearly hear other bells relaying the summons into the shafts of shaped stone.

While they waited, the Elves examined the workmanship of the portal more thoroughly, and were increasingly impressed. The lines might be rigid and straight, and broadened to resist weathering from the elements, but the edges were crisp and sharp, and the decorative shapes were subtle and not without their artistic merit. They might have their own style and a different set of chosen materials, but the Dwarvish artisans were clearly as proficient as any Elven craftsman.

For three days, the delegation waited, while nervousness turned to anxiety, and anxiety to boredom, and boredom to irritation, and all the guidance of the council became a distant memory.

If you climb too quickly from deep under the ground to the surface, you forget how to breathe right. Weaklings die from it. You have to be slow, and patient, and take time for your body to remember how to breathe thin air. Even more if the surface is high in the mountains. Elves don’t dig deep, not like Drow, so they don’t know this. Stupid of them.

But eventually, the patience of the delegation was rewarded. A small group of Dwarves exited the tunnels and took up a defensive posture, weapons drawn and at the ready, lips curled in thinly-disguised contempt. They were followed by a Dwarf dressed in somewhat better fashion, with gems and gold practically dripping from his clothing and personal effects.

“We have come to discuss the unlawful destruction of Elvish trees by your kind without our leave. The forest is ours, and you have harmed it, cutting down that which belonged to the Elvish nation and carting it away. We demand the oath of you and all your kind that this will not happen again, and we demand wergild for those trees whose voices you have stilled,” began the leader of the Elvish delegation.

“Hear me, Elf: we want none of your sickly and twisted forest. That which we cut down and removed belonged to none, the trees were good and healthy and unprotected, and we will take as much of the lumber as we want or need. Go back and tell your scrawny little King that neighbors are polite to each other, and if he wants to discuss things in a civil manner, he must kiss my boot in apology. We have learned our lessons from your kind, and will never be as helpless again as we were when they drove us from our homes. Who do you think you are, to make demands of The Clans?”

“We are those who were injured, whose lands were violated, the party wronged – that is who we are, and the source of our demands. You are the one who will apologize, for your actions, for the actions of your kind, and for your disrespect toward the King of Elves. Withdraw your ridiculous request and apologize, and we will discuss fair recompense for the slaughter of the outlying forest; refuse and a state of war will exist between our nations!”

“Kiss my Braided Beard, you poncy snob. We’ll give you more war than you can stomach if you set foot in our domain again.”

Thus it was that the Elvish people and the Dwarvish people found themselves at odds once again.

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The Ongoing Elvish Glossary

• Arnost: Simple Speech (Modern “Common”, a human tongue)
• Arrunquessor: Plains Elves
• Ayer: Nuthanori word meaning “Squat”. Mont Ayer is the name of one of the two peaks that define the traditional elvish lands.
• Calquissir: High Elves
• Corellan: The First
• Drow: “Those Who Dwell Apart” (in Nuthanorl). Added to Ogre by the Drow with the meaning of “Smart”.
• Ellessarune: The “Shining City” of the Tarquessir, home of the Elvish King and capital of the Elven Lands to this day.
• Eltrhinast: “Guiding Spirit”
• Elvarheim: “Blessed Leafy Home”: The Elven Forest, homeland of the Tarquessir and the centre of Elven Power in modern times
• Gilandthor: “The Gathering”, the formal title of the Elvish Council.
• Hithainduil: High Elven Language
• Illvayssor: “The Other”, a mythical race
• Isallithin: “The Sundered”, a name applied to Aquatic Elves
• King: A human title interpreted by Elves as “speaker to others” and defined as such within their language.
• Magi: A corruption of the Zamiel word “Machus”, which means “of the wise.”
• Mont: Nuthanori word meaning “High Place”. Used human-style in the naming of Mountains.
• Noletinechor: “Lore Shields”, an elvish historical vocation
• Nuthanorl: Low Elven Language, Common Elven
• Sarner: A human abbreviation of the Hithainduil word “Saranariuthenal” which means, literally, “Swift and Wide”. The River Sarner runs through the central valley of Elvarheim.
• Tarquessir: Forest Elves
• Thuyon: Nuthanori word meaning “Tall Spires”. Mont Thuyon is the name of the taller of the two peaks that define the traditional elvish lands; Modern Elvarheim lies between the foothills of Mont Thuyon and the River Sarner.
• Verdonne: “Quickbranch”, an artificial race created by Elves to be “The Guardians Of The Forest”.
• Zamiel: Drow Language

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Next time: War, subterfuge, hidden agendas, festering resentments, and the origins of the Huyondaltha as the Second Great Dwarfwar continues in Chapters 18 through 20!

Last night, I caught up with a documentary that I’ve been waiting to view (lack of time) since early February. The subject, and title, of the documentary was the question, ‘Are We Still Evolving?’. And, as with many subjects that I digest, it sparked a number of thoughts, all of which are relevant to the shape of humanity in the distant future – which is directly relevant to any science-fiction setting. Because of this relevance, I thought I would take a few minutes to expound my thoughts on the subject.

Let’s start by revisiting the fundamental assumptions.

What is evolution?

Evolution is the process by which traits emerge, are conserved from one generation to another, and accumulate until the species is so transformed that it is no longer compatible with the previous form of the species (if any representatives survive). Where these traits are only preserved in a limited subpopulation of a species, it eventually gives rise to a new species.

Survival is not sufficient

The driving force behind evolution is Natural Selection. It used to be thought that the driving force behind Natural selection was the capacity to survive, and this remains a key factor during times of extreme environmental distress – if you don’t survive, you don’t pass on your genes and any mutations that they may contain – but these days we know better. It’s not enough merely for an organism to be better adapted for survival than another member of the same species, it also has to be able to reproduce. The capacity for survival is simply one of a number of criteria that, in combination, determine whether or not an individual will successfully reproduce.

Consider that if a mutation renders a species incapable of reproduction, there will be no new generation competing for food supplies and other resources, and hence more to go around for the existing members of the species, who are more likely to survive as a result. This shows that a pro-survival evolutionary trait can actually be counterproductive in terms of the survival of the species.

The distinction lies in the false assumption that what is good for the individual is also good for the species. It ain’t necessarily so, and neither is the converse: that what is bad for the individual is also bad for the species. In both cases, the statement can be sometimes true and sometimes false, depending on which specific benefit to the individual we’re talking about.

It’s the journey that matters, not the destination

It also used to be thought that once humans had achieved intelligence and began manipulating its environment to enhance its capacity to survive and prosper in relative comfort, that evolution stopped, because there was no environmental stimulus to select one characteristic over another. The human form was therefore described as the pinnacle of evolution, perhaps in need of a few tweaks here and there, but overall perfection and inherent superiority to every other life-form on the planet. These days, we know better concerning this misapprehension as well.

There are still factors that can wipe out large segments of a population. 400 years ago, one in three children survived to reach adulthood. 200 years ago, that had gone up to two in three. The ability to resist those diseases was clearly an evolutionary factor – and if the diseases remained unchanged, we would have evolved a resistance to them long ago. Influenza used to be a killer, and I don’t just mean the rare ultra-virulent strains, I mean the everyday ordinary household variety. These days, most children survive the flu with nothing more than bed rest – and even that treatment is more concerned with comfort, effectiveness, and restraining the spread of the disease than actually curing it. So long as our environment poses a threat to our health and hence our ability to reproduce to our maximum biological capacity, evolution is at work. The journey never ends, and hence the destination – perfection – is a chimera, and has no significance. What matters is accumulated generations of adaptability to whatever the environmental conditions happen to be – the ongoing process of evolution.

But isn’t evolution just a theory?

I don’t intend to get into a big arguement about science vs. religion at this point. What any individual believes and how they reconcile those beliefs with the accumulated understanding of the way the world works is none of my business, and I’m happy to keep it that way. This “counterargument” is a different kettle of fish entirely, and comes from fundamentally misunderstanding science or willfully distorting what Science is.

At its heart, Science is simply a process for proposing and validating theories about the nature of reality. No scientific principle is ever etched in stone, immutable and eternal; it’s a best approximation of our current understanding. All scientific theories must continually face attack from people looking for flaws, for holes in the logic, for exceptions that disprove the universality or accuracy of a theory. Science, in other words, gives the term “Theory” a slightly different meaning to that of colloquial English, and employing the term in its colloquial sense misrepresents the meaning.

The colloquial meaning of ‘theory’ (note the lowercase) is more akin to the scientific usage of the term ‘hypothesis’ – an untested, unproven explanation for an observed event or condition that may or may not be accurate. Only once a hypothesis has undergone rigorous testing and verification by independent scientists can it advance to the point of being called a Theory. Becoming a theory means that the hypothesis has been analyzed and codified mathematically to the point where precise predications can be made, and that those predictions are testable by controlled and repeatable experiments and have been so tested, and the results verified. In general, it is also true that no new hypothesis will be accepted until there is some observed condition or phenomena that the existing theory does not adequately explain. That doesn’t eliminate its viability as a good approximation in most cases.

Einstein’s was not the only Theory Of Relativity. There were half-a-dozen or more of them. But its predictions were closer to the observed reality than that of the others, and so it is the one that’s accepted – and remembered – these days.

That, by the way, is where the arguement for creationism being taught in the classroom falls down. Creationism, or Intelligent Design as it is now named, is a hypothesis, but it has not been subjected to the rigorous development and testing of evolutionary theory, and it cannot point at an event or phenomenon that it explains but existing theory does not. To its adherents I say: find those exceptions and do that research, and then make your case. You might even be right, but propounding dogma and rhetoric as logical arguement will never prove it, and until you do, its about as scientific as fairies at the bottom of the garden.

We used to think there were natural laws that, once stated, would stand inviolate as the last word on a fundamental principle of the universe. As our understanding of what Science is has grown, we have become less arrogant. It was not uncommon for scientists in the 19th century to believe that a complete understanding of physics was possible within their lifetimes, and several lamented that soon we would know all that there was to know, and speculated on what we would do once that had been achieved. We now double the sum of human knowledge every X years (it used to be 10, I think it’s now approaching 1 – but it may even be beyond that numeric threshold) – and there is no end in sight. But it’s not the broad principles that elude us – its the details, and the extrapolations of those broad principles beyond the limits of our understanding, and the causes and relationships between them.

The principles of Evolutionary Theory are just as solidly verified and as widely accepted as the Theory Of Gravity.

Evolution in the lab

In fact, you can watch evolution take place in the lab. Time-lapse photography of the growth of antibiotic-resistant E. Coli showed evolution in action as part of the BBC documentary “Defeating the superbug”. While this documentary is not apparently available on official DVD (it’s an episode of the BBC2 “Horizon” Science series), a reveals a number of sources which claim to permit one to watch it online (well worth the effort). The images were of an experiment in which panels of successively stronger doses of an antibiotic were incorporated into a growth medium for the bacteria, until the final panel which had an antibiotic dosage as high as a human could medically tolerate and survive – any stronger and it would kill the patient outright. In the course of a week or two, bacteria which were just a little more resistant to the antibiotic successfully colonized one panel after another, growing more resistant at each step, until finally they invaded and conquered the strongest panel.

Of course, this produced only a new strain, like a new breed of dog. To actually change the bacteria so much that they became a new species, much more time would be required.

By way of comparison, how long would it take for an equivalent amount of change in humans? Well, typical bacteria double in population (assuming adequate food supplies, etc) every 20 minutes. Two weeks is therefore equivalent to 1008 generations. The human equivalent is roughly 20 years – so about 20,000 years could produce a similar amount of change – at least in theory. There’s a secondary consideration: persistence of environmental influences. In the lab experiment, there was no significant change in the environment in the course of those 1000+ generations; the same can’t be said of a time-span of 20,000 years. For one thing, there is a complete seasonal cycle in each one of those years. So, rather than constantly selecting for the one criterion, we would be diluting the evolutionary trend – the question is, by How Much? To one-fifth? That’s 100,000 years. One-tenth? That’s 200,000 years. One-twenty-fifth? That’s half a million years. Anatomically modern humans first emerged about 200,000 years ago, according to the fossil evidence, while our immediate forerunners evolved between 250,000 and 400,000 years ago. That’s the sort of timescale we’re talking about. Evolution is SLOW.

Explosive Evolution

At least, most of the time. The theory of Punctuated Equilibrium suggests that evolution occurs more rapidly in small populations or geographically restricted habitats – that there are long periods of stability and then some environmental catastrophe or cataclysm that triggers a period of rapid change. This theory is not universally accepted, as a quick scan of the “criticism” section of the Wikipedia Page linked to above, shows.

I find it quite credible that following a mass-extinction event, or some more local equivalent, there might well be a drastic increase in population amongst the survivors and occupation of multiple ecological niches which would lead to rapid differentiation. In the short-term during the recovery from such an event there would be decreased competition for food, permitting rapid expansion of population levels. The natural behavior of population growth is for numbers to increase unchecked to the point at which the food supply is barely adequate for survival plus one generation of expansion that crosses the line from sufficient food to drastic competition. Those subspecies that have diverged sufficiently to have occupied an ecological niche outside of the primary niche formerly learned have a clear advantage in this climate of drastic competition, and so begin the transition from one species to another.

But that doesn’t mean that evolution would stop at other times. It just means that the rapid increase in numbers and the availability of empty ecological niches promotes an acceleration in the rate of evolution.

Actually, evolution would still be slow – but the rapid increase in numbers would compensate. The overall rate of evolution is dictated by the base rate multiplied by the total population, multiplied by environmental/competition distress, multiplied by the number of opportunities for sustainable differentiation of sub-populations. At least, that’s my hypothesis. On certain occasions, all these factors line up and the result is rapid evolution when viewed as a species; the rest of the time, most of these factors are muted, and serve to inhibit differentiation from the norm, because each such differentiation exposes the species to a new source of competition from the current occupant of the ecological niche in question.

Evolution in the modern world

Another segment of the documentary revealed that the Sherpas of the Himalayas actually have a slightly different anatomy to the rest of us, and that this is the reason they can breathe the rarified air without the problems that plague the rest of us in that environment due to the relative atmospheric density and resulting shortage of oxygen. Less convincing was a study of the residents of a small town over a period of more than 60 years by a single scientist. This study suggested that evolution was continuing in that town, favoring a slight decrease in average height and a slight increase in average weight. While interesting, I have reservations about this research. The sample size seems too small, as does the time span; the social factors (such as the general rise in obesity in the western world) have been discounted, but the results would seem to be well within the consequent margin of error.

But that actually leads me to the key topic within this subject that this article is intended to address.

There was an elephant-in-the-room that the documentary completely failed to address. In fact, there was a whole herd of them.

Social Stratification and evolution

Selection of preferred mates continues throughout the human population. Over time, this can’t help – if sustained – but differentiate the population. But the criteria used to assess the suitability of a mate are different at different social strata; just as there are ecological niches, modern society has defined social niches. The key here is sustainability of this evolutionary pressure – for it to have any long-term impact, it will have to be sustained for millennia.

Economic flows and evolution

In pre-modern societies, and even into the early industrial age, wealth was a dominant factor, because the wealthy had better health care. Wealthy individuals could support larger families, and hence as a proportion of the population, the descendants of wealthy individuals would make up a larger segment of society. Once the feudal model of the “eldest son inherits all” was abandoned, this had the effect of dispersing that wealth more evenly amongst this segment of the population – a general migration of the wealthy into a new middle class.

At the same time, modern technology brought new means of creating wealth and new paths for the flow of money through an economy. This elevated whole segments of what were once considered ‘the lower classes’ into that middle class, eventually forming a continuum.

In modern society, the economic capability of an individual to provide for children is one of several social factors that dictate the size of a family. The gradual elimination of any social stigma attached to women in the workplace over the last century has produced a social evolution in which two-income families have become the norm of that middle-class, and in fact a way for those who are slightly lower on the economic scale to take a step up into that middle-class.

There are still a few families in which being a member of the aristocracy or the gentry – coming from ‘the right family’ – are dominant criteria for the selection of marriage partners, but these days they are viewed as being out of step with society, anachronisms and dinosaurs. They are lampooned, ridiculed and pitied in various measure by modern media; witness the character of Charles Emerson Winchester III in MASH. Increasingly, they comprise a shrinking pool of genetic diversity which is slowly being eroded by exogamy.

The overall result over the last century has been a more even distribution of wealth, position, and authority, and hence a reduction in the traditional criteria which had previously been used to determine the desirability of potential partners.

Society and evolution

You only need to examine a few “dating” websites to realize that the number of possible factors unwed individuals look for in a partner has diversified tremendously over the last century or so. A search for “What men look for in a partner” reveals no fewer than 262,000,000 results on the subject; the distaff equivalent search yields 307 million results. In combination, that’s a total of 569 million sites on the subject!

This is natural selection of the most ruthless variety: individuals excluding potential mates from consideration based on socio-economic and personality criteria. It seems logical to me that these same criteria are extant within society in general, though the choice of a partner from a more diverse community would blur the selectivity. I don’t think it is going to far to suggest that the dominant driver of human evolution is now social in nature and not biological.

This is so radical a change in behavior that it is as though the evolutionary landscape had been completely flattened; the old criteria are just one factor in many. In the short-term, this cannot help but reinforce those elements of the social and personality traits deemed desirable that derive from the genetic makeup of the individual. It is as though the entire human population suddenly exists within an environment that had been subjected to a mass-extinction event; the old criteria for opportunity to secure potential mates no longer apply.

Consequently, it can be argued that human evolution is about to kick into high gear, especially if any of the other driving factors in evolutionary explosion apply.

Diffusion

It has been suggested that this multitude of criteria has the effect of diffusing the evolutionary impact. In one generation, an individual seeks intellectual stimulation as their dominant criteria; a child of that generation might seek emotional sensitivity; the child of that generation might seek artistic capacity, or generosity of spirit, or adventurousness, or physical attractiveness, and so on.

This suggestion relies on the assumption that advancing in a different direction negates whatever evolutionary trend occurred as a result of previous generation’s choices, that each generation is resetting the evolutionary clock to zero and setting off in a different direction. This is an oversimplification that cannot be supported on closer inspection.

Each generation, statistically, the species overall within an isolated social or geographic confine would be selecting for those criteria, in the overall priority assigned by surveys of what people are predominantly seeking in potential partners. An individual from the next generation doesn’t have a completely uniform field to draw from, they have the results of the union subpopulation who selected for that individual’s desirable criteria. “Progress” may be slowed, but overall, the race is still selecting for the same capabilities in order of statistical superiority.

Unless one criterion is directly opposed by another – and there are some which are, such as security vs. willingness to risk security for advancement – the evolutionary steps will accumulate, generation after generation.

Fake it ’till you make it

There have been two developments over the last half-century or so that will act as an accelerant to these evolutionary imperatives. The first is the increase in accessibility and desirability of plastic surgery, and the quest for perfection. The dark side of that quest is the rise of new psychological disorders such as Anorexia Nervosa. In evolutionary terms, this is as much about concealing imperfection as it is achieving some personal view of perfection; it amounts to an elimination of physical characteristics as a reliable determinant of suitability as a mate, and hence elevates other characteristics to primacy.

One of those secondary characteristics is the capacity to afford such artificial “perfection”. Economic prosperity has found a new means of expression. At the same time, there is a natural reaction against such social imperatives for whom they are not available, and I suspect that the current trend toward tattoos and piercings is as much related to distancing oneself from false “perfection” and being perceived as a real person (i.e. ‘genuine’ and ‘honest’) as it is about personal expression. This is a new cultural divide and a collective identity for a counterculture, and as such it will probably have a limited lifespan, just as the members of past countercultures have been reabsorbed into the mainstream of society.

The second development is genetic screening and gene therapy. It is becoming entirely possible for an individual who has achieved an artificial “perfection” via plastic surgery to perpetuate that idealized self-image to the next generation by manipulation of the genetic inheritance of their unborn offspring prior to conception. As with all such technological developments, there are deep and complex ethical issues to be resolved, but the technology already exists and is already being used in a limited way.

The immediate consequences will be apparently beneficial, as IVF clinics routinely screen for genetic diseases and defects; given enough time, these will be eliminated or reduced in impact on society. The longer-term impacts and potential psychological and social consequences will take longer to emerge, let alone be recognized. It’s easy to envisage a teen in arguement with his or her parents exclaiming, angrily, “I’m exactly what you wanted me to be, so let me be me!”

In evolutionary terms, this represents the collapsing of many generations of development into a single child, a tremendous acceleration of the evolutionary trend of potentials towards those deemed desirable by parents.

Compound Complexities

Of course, Genetics is not that simple. The potential for intelligence is not controlled by a single gene, but by a number of them, and a complex relationship amongst them. For anything more complex than Blue Eyes or Blonde Hair, this is true. A single gene may affect more than one attribute, and while it may be possible to select for potential, there is no way to guarantee that this potential will be realized in any specific case. The individual is a complex blend of many different genetic, social, and environmental factors.

It’s even going too far to label some genetic attributes as desirable or unwanted. Doctors learned that lesson from Sickle-cell Anaemia (drepanocytosis), where it was discovered that having a single sickle-cell gene conferred a resistance to Malaria. At the price of having 1-in-4 children suffer from the Anaemia, 2-in-4 children gain resistance to a more serious medical problem – an evolutionary ‘win’ for the overall population at the price of individual heartbreak.

I was once involved in the creation of a Traveller campaign in which genetic engineering was combined with medical teleportation technology (something akin to Star Trek’s transporters, incapable of beaming anyone or anything anywhere due to the data storage, transmission, and energy requirements) to permit anagathic restoration of individuals through a very expensive process. Only the ruling class of Nobles could afford this treatment – and only years later was it discovered that there were all sorts of side effects, including a high incidence of birth defects, a compromised immune system, a tendency to develop aggressive forms of cancer, and an ongoing dependency on the treatment. The Nobles of the Imperium were all hundreds of years old, (some pushing four figures), sustained artificially, and hopelessly out of touch with the normal population as a consequence. With one stroke, they had transformed themselves (unwittingly) into an entirely separate species of human. The overall plot of the campaign was going to centre on the nobility’s search for a “cure” to these side-effects, employing ruthless medical experimentation on commoners, producing an extremely dystopian society, which in turn would result in a rebellion to be (eventually) led by the PCs in a very Star-Wars-esque narrative. (This was all worked out one New Year’s Afternoon over a decade ago by myself and my friend Stephen. We never got to run it.)

When selection takes place naturally, the effects are relatively gradual, giving the species the opportunity to weed out undesirable reinforcements and complications – even to abandon the selection if the genetic cost is too high. When selection is taking place in the test-tube, we will have to live with the consequences with no editing. This will cause an escalation of natural selection in at least some cases.

Equating genetic screening for social, intellectual, and secondary characteristics with Thalidomide is probably going too far, but at least some varieties of genetic manipulation of the species will undoubtedly result in similar problems. (I am not unsympathetic to those affected by the Thalidomide crisis; my cousin, the same age as me, was one of them, missing one forearm and hand and needing to wear a leg brace. I was always aware that ‘that could have been me’). We may yet be thankful, as a society, that not everyone will be able to afford such genetic treatments.

Environmental Distress

I made the point earlier that human evolution could be about to kick into high gear, especially if any of the other causes of Evolutionary Explosion applied. One of the causes I identified earlier is environmental distress.

Pollutants and Evolution

Modern urban populations are facing threats and environmental factors that the species has never had to deal with before. Every possible form of pollution is a consideration and present to some extent – even deliberately induced, in terms of the fluoridation of our water supplies. This environmental stress has been blamed for the sharp rise in incidence of allergies and dietary intolerances, though specifics of the logical relationship have been short. While it is possible to demonstrate the existence of a connection statistically, the causative connection has not been identified (to the best of my knowledge). The best explanation I am aware of rests on the stimulation of the immune system by pollutants to become hypersensitive to compounds found within some foodstuffs, which sounds plausible, but only talks about the how and not the why.

I propose the possibility that the environmental distress on the population caused by pollution is causing rapid (if slight) evolutionary changes in our immune systems as a species, and that while some of those changes may yield a dividend in tolerance for contamination of our environment by pollutants while others are dead ends in that respect, some of them have also resulted in alterations to the biochemistry of individuals that has conferred allergies and dietary intolerances.

I include in the category of pollutants another possible vector for the association, the manipulation of feed provided to our food supply, including the practice of lacing feed with antibiotics.

In the long run, if this theory is correct, a new evolutionary equilibrium will be attained. At the moment, we are seeing an overreaction to the modern environmental distress, one with undesirable side effects. While we have been able to mitigate those side effects through adjustments to individual diets, every such adjustment carries an economic pricetag that will slowly impact the relative proportions of afflicted sufferers in the population. Assuming that one exists, chance will evolve a tolerance for atmospheric pollution that doesn’t have any unwanted side effects, and that will spread through the urban population. It will only take 100,000 years or so – at most. But the genetic butcher’s bill will still have to be paid at some point.

The revenge of biology

Did I really write that human evolution is now more socially-driven than biologically-driven? In terms of selection of mates, perhaps it is so, but biology won’t be ignored that readily.

I’ve already touched on the rise of antibiotic-resistant diseases. Add to that the resurgence of viral diseases such as Ebola and HIV – there is evidence that both have been around for hundreds of years, periodically exploding into brushfire epidemics – and mad cow and bird flu and… new and potentially deadly diseases have been coming out of the woodwork in droves over the last couple of decades, or so it seems.

So far, the race as a whole seems to have dodged these bullets. But it’s fair to suggest that the modern environment is stimulating the evolution of our microbiological ‘natural enemies’ at a ferocious pace, and that the result is not only eventually going to be another pandemic like the Spanish Flu of 1918, which killed between 50 and 100 million people, up to three percent of the world’s population, but is an ongoing assault on our viability as a species. An additional evolutionary pressure stemming from our environment, in other words.

Health authorities have long warned that dissemination through modern transportation systems will eventually result in a pandemic that is far worse than the Spanish Flu. The problem with such prophecies is that they only have to come true once to be catastrophic. If it’s three times worse, that’s about 10% of the population – dead. Five times: 15%. Then factor in the economic cost in terms of lost productivity alone, never mind the costs of producing and distributing vaccines that may or may not be effective, at least at first.

Some areas will undoubtedly be harder-hit than others, depending on the epidemiology and local conditions. The inevitable result will be yet another evolutionary spur as those most susceptible are eliminated from the population.

Not only does this point to an eventual catastrophe-induced evolutionary spurt, but there is also the slow, ongoing, impact of this continual assault. Make no mistake: as more diseases become drug-resistant superbugs, resistance to those diseases will play an increasing role in the capacity to contribute to future generations. History is replete with waves of virulent diseases being followed by periods of relative freedom from that disease. Then the virus or bacteria evolve into something against which that acquired resistance is less effective, and a new epidemic spreads.

Global Warming

I’ve written about my reservations concerning the “Menace” of “Human-caused” Global Warming (refer to The Frozen Lands: A Science-Fiction Campaign Premise). I’m not going to go into that again, here.

Global Warming, as a trend, is relatively indisputable. And that’s yet another source of environmental pressure on the human race to evolve.

It’s also potentially catastrophic in another sense: we are, if the trends are to be believed, approaching a time when weapons will be cheaper than food. In other words, under this doomsday scenario, it will be cheaper to buy weapons and take someone else’s food. As if the global warming and potential drowning of the majority of humanity (80% of the population live on a coast) weren’t enough.

With three (or more, depending on how you count them) sources contributing, that’s a second causative factor to rapid evolution that’s conclusively in place, in my opinion. And the third?

Population Pressure

According to Wikipedia, there are currently 7.07 Billion people on the earth. If that’s not population pressure, I don’t know what is. It’s also fair to state that we have, as a species, already occupied all the ecological, social, and economic niches available to us as a species. How many more people can the world sustain? Well, that depends on a great many factors. Western agriculture is currently retreating (slowly) from the agricultural practices that supported the booms of the mid-20th century – herbicides, pesticides, and so on. Free Range is the buzzword.

The capacity of the food supply will further shrink if (as I fervently hope) the practice of lacing animal feed with antibiotics is banned world-wide – it’s already happened in some places, while others are holding out.

In other words, we are reducing our food production to the point where it will be insufficient – if we haven’t done so already. And yet, there are other developments that have increased food production, such as the development of Norin 10 Wheat, sometimes referred to as Dwarf Wheat. Judicious genetic engineering of crops promises further increases in agricultural capacity.

Couple that with uncertainty as to how the world population will change in the future, as shown in the graph above, and there is great uncertainty as to whether or not capacities will be sufficient. There are social and economic factors at work that are not applicable to other species, and which make prediction especially difficult. That’s ignoring any reduction in arable land as a result of Global Warming, of course.

All of that adds up to: there is existing population pressure contributing to the evolutionary rate of humankind. This pressure may increase or may decrease in the future, possibly drastically – but for right now, it’s definitely present.

Crystal Ball Gazing

With all three of the primary requirements for an evolutionary explosion within the Human species demonstrably present (the extent may be subject to debate), if the hypothesis proposed holds any validity, we’re in for a period of dramatic change in the very definition of what it means to be human.

But what does that actually mean? What are the changes that can be anticipated in our biology, and how quickly might they occur? How might the implications manifest in a sci-fi game? This final section of the article will attempt to do a bit of crystal-ball gazing.

Physical Changes

We’re not talking about everyone suddenly sprouting little green tendrils, here. I would expect little-or-no gross anatomical changes. What we might get is a trend towards the ideal man and woman as described by the dating sites as what the other gender are looking for. More muscular, prettier, higher potential for intelligence and desirable personality traits, etc. Most people won’t exhibit all of these, many will exhibit none at all. The potential might be there but social and environmental factors will determine who taps into that potential and what they can do with it.

Allergies will continue to rise for quite a while, then slowly decline – unless humanity drastically cleans up its environment. However, these will become more general throughout the population and less specific to individuals. Regional trends will appear in response to variations in evolutionary stimuli. Depending on what these are and where, these could have anything from minimal impact (an allergy to goat’s milk wouldn’t bother most Australians) to socially catastrophic (an Italian allergy to tomatoes).

There might be some minor changes to jaw lines, cranial shapes, nose sizes, etc. Most of these will be cosmetic and within the range of normal appearance we are used to; it will simply be that more people will have a given characteristic.

Digestive Changes

As food supplies are stretched ever thinner, the ability to survive on fewer calories will emerge somewhere (probably Africa). This would be coupled with adaptions increasing the tolerance to Heat described below (presupposing the accuracy of Global Warming trends).

Different foodstuffs will become dominant in various regions of the world based on the allergy/intolerance factor mentioned above. This will subtly alter national cuisines.

Some of these changes will be the result of faster evolution of the digestive bacteria that we keep in our gut, a symbiosis that permits a more rapid evolutionary response than we, as a species, are capable of achieving.

Diseases

The more people there are, the more attractive a target we make to emerging diseases. The virulence of some dangerous diseases will moderate even as we struggle to develop new treatments for them. Consequently, many of these will become survivable with only palliative care and support, just as the common flu is now.

Tolerance to Heat

If the world is really growing slowly hotter, we will begin to adapt to the climatic changes. This will take the form of a darkening of skin tones, and perhaps a greater systolic pressure in some cells facilitating improved retention of water. As the area most strongly affected by thermal climatic conditions and heavily populated without external technological support, it is most likely that this change would emerge in the Middle East.

The Rate of evolution

If explosive evolution is not a reality, these changes would take place over a period of about 100,000 years. If explosive evolution, as I have described it, is a reality, then it might take as little as 10,000 years. Which means that from one generation to the next there would be about 0.2% change – spread over the entire human population. That’s 1% change a century. Even explosive evolution is SLOW.

Have you ever seen pictures of Neanderthal Man dressed in a business suit? I don’t have one handy, but the fact is that you would be hard-pressed to see anything abnormal about them. Neanderthal Man still fits generally within the range of appearance variations of humans.

Diaspora

If the race comes up with any sort of workable FTL drive, or decides to launch generation ships, all bets are off. Not only will increased mutation rates be probable due to radiation exposure, but what we will end up with is a bunch of isolated communities pre-primed for rapid adaption. The one thing that’s for certain: within 1,000 years of settling an alien world, differences in physiology would be noticeable; within 10,000 years, citizens of different worlds would show as much variation as we have on earth – everything from Pigmies to Eskimos, and all points in between, plus variations we’ve never seen before.

Impact On Society

These changes should have a marked impact on Society. Note that ideals of beauty have changed over the centuries in some details but there are many aspects that have remained consistent. That means that even if exhibiting pronounced diversification as a result of a diaspora, the general trend will be for changes to be internal and not external.

Beyond This Horizon by Robert A Heinlein

Heinlein’s second-published novel, Beyond This Horizon, is not his best work, by any measure. I have a vague memory of reading that he himself disliked it immensely, especially the John W. Campbell-esque focus on telepathy and psionics in the latter half. And yet, even without accepting the materialistic utopia that he proposed, the genetics and their impact on society seem increasingly on the mark to me, combining scientific progress both responsible and irresponsible with very human fallibilities and good intentions.

In conclusion

If evolution is being driven by society while spurred on by external pressures – and that is the thesis of the day – then the results of that evolution will reflect the society from which it emerged. What’s more, since this is a characteristic of any sufficiently intelligent organism to be readily simulated in a human RPG, it should also be true of any alien species populating that RPG. That’s something to bear in mind as you develop settings and encounters, personalities and cultures. You can either work backwards from some physical development you want to the culture necessary to spawn it, or integrate the consequences of a historical outline into the modern-day biology of your creations. Either way, evolution serves as a signpost on the road connecting what was with what will be.

Food for thought.

I’ve got so much campaign prep to get done that if I don’t do it here, in public, I’ll never get it done in time…

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Chapters 10-13 are all in final form. I don’t change “speaker” in mid-paragraph, but the speaker does change from one paragraph to the next. So if it seems like the tone changes direction suddenly – sometimes it does.

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The Power Of Ideas

From Lolth’s perspective, the only benefit from the (premature) commitment of her people to a path overtly opposed to, and by, the other Totem Spirits was that her people no longer needed to operate beneath a veil of subterfuge. Their secret was now revealed, permitting them to operate more openly, and thereby to pursue their current agenda – whatever it happened to be – with greater speed and vigor. Having forcibly stabilized her power base, Lolth began by addressing a personal vulnerability: so long as her followers were all Drow, She was as much a hostage to their fate as they were to Hers. If, for any reason, they were to fall from grace or, despite her best efforts at ensuring their safety, be slaughtered in sufficient quantities, She would be unmade. It was essential that She develop a second tier of worshippers.

For practical reasons, these should have Strengths that her beloved Drow lacked, so that the one threat was less likely to overcome both. Any shortcomings could be overcome through Spellweaving, but Her primary criteria must be size, strength, and an innate bond with the Surface World. While She, and Her people, had spent many long years in isolation, She had not permitted herself to become ignorant of the world above the surface; just the opposite. She would spend long hours scrying through her Spiderweb Mirror, searching not only the now but the possible nows of tomorrow. It is not unfair to say that She knew more of the surface world than did the Elves or even their beloved, simpleminded, earnest, Corellan.

After contemplating the possibilities, She gathered the most powerful and subtle Spellweavers from amongst her subjects, and together they did labor for decades to produce – two berries. When ready, these berries were planted most carefully in selected places by stealth. With the passing of a handful of seasons, the vines of these berries flourished and prospered. With these preparations complete, a small company of hand-picked Drow followers were sent forth in the guise of Elves to befriend the leader of the Ogre Clan of Ketchzagrat.

The ogres were a simple people, Hunters and Fishermen and Gatherers of leaves, and were all one people, one tribe. Then came the Elves, who liked the way they lived with the land, and took the smartest thinkers to teach them religion and other mighty tricks. And when these returned, they were strong, and clever, and called themselves Magi, as had the Elves, and they warned that some of the Elves were jealous, and were arousing Humans to attack the Ogres. But the Ogre Magi had learned of a miraculous plant that would make the Ogres bigger and stronger and thicker of skin, a plant which they called Bluevein. The ogres knew of Bluevein only that it killed any who ate the leaves, but the Ogre Magi had been taught the secret of squeezing out the oil from the berries of the Bluevein. And they taught that there were two types of Bluevein plant, one with thin leaves and one with broad leaves, and that the thin-leaved variety was good for Ogre Magi only, and that the broad-leafed variety was just for Ogres who were not Magi.

To the Ogres, it seemed right that the earth to which they belonged should protect them, and so they eagerly swallowed the brew of the Ogre Magi, and they grew strong and tough and beat the humans who dared to attack them until they went away. And the Humans went to the leaders of the Elves and complained, and the Bad Elves chased away those Elves who had befriended the Ogres, telling them never to come back. And so the Ogres knew that the Humans and Elves were bad, and they named the once-Elves who were their friends Drow, which means “smart”.

Then Humans and Elves came, and tried to trick the Ogre Magi into taking away the Bluevein because they were scared of the Ogres, but the Ogre Magi told the ordinary Ogres and we hit the Humans and Elves until they went away, too. And the chief gave his cub to the smartest of the Ogre Magi and went away, and the Magi Azh-krupt became the chief of all the Ogres.

Azh-krupt told the Ogres that the Humans and Elves would come back in greater numbers, too many for them to fight even with the help of the Bluevein, because the humans would cheat. It would take a long time before the Ogres were strong enough to hurt all the Humans and Elves, but if they did what the Magi told them, they would be safe. He made it a rule that Ogres drink Bluevein every week, and the Ogres liked feeling big and strong and the Magi was the leader, so they did it. And he broke the Ogres into tribes, and each Ogre Magi took one of the tribes away to keep them safe.

The Ogre Magi did not like to be in charge, so they made it a rule that there was a Chief of each tribe, and they made it a rule that the Chief was in charge unless the Magi said different, and the Ogres liked easy rules so they did it that way. And the Ogres grew big and strong and did well.

The Power Of Blood

Lolth had observed the tactics and techniques that had evolved between the Elves and Dwarves in the First Drow War, and had deliberately built an army that would enable her to utilize the most effective of them, while maintaining what she perceived as her people’s advantage. Given that She assumed that her Drow were, by definition, inherently superior to the Elves of the Surface world, she had only to choose a martial ally capable of overpowering the Dwarves. The Ogres fitted this bill perfectly – bigger, stronger, and almost as hardy, even before the Drow provided them with Bluevein. Eventually it came time to put the new alliance to the test.

There was also a security vulnerability that could be tolerated no longer: the Aquatic Elves. While the Drow had been merely estranged from their Surface kindred, and the Aquatic Elves knew not where to search for them, the Underdark Tunnels had been secure. The comfort of this veil of secrecy was now gone; the Surface Elves were now Her people’s implacable foes, and moreover knew where they resided. It might take the Isallithin a while to find the underground rivers apon which Her Drow were dependant, but eventually they would succeed. The only choice was to obliterate the water-dwellers while the opportunity presented itself.

The Drow contacted one of the newly-scattered tribes of Ogres, who happened to have settled on a riverbank, and taught them to make nets and boats and spears with barbed heads. They then told the Ogres that they had learned that the Elves were trying to sneak up on them by breathing the water in the river. The Ogres thought this was cheating, and decided to hurt the River Elves until they went away. And the Drow friends of the Ogres said that they would help.

Elsewhere, other agents of the Spider Queen were rousing other Ogre Tribes with the same story. Thus the Drow led an army of Archers and Ogres, and a small corps of Magi, in an unprovoked assault on the Aquatic Elves from multiple sides. Villages were razed and whole populations slaughtered. Fleeing in terror, the Riverdwellers were driven upriver toward the very underground channels that Lolth had feared they would one day discover and exploit, and which she had carefully mapped and charted in preparation. When they were trapped, Lolth turned the waters into flame. Hotter and hotter, she exhorted the flames, reveling in the destruction of those who were, in her eyes, an abomination. For millennia it was believed that the Isallithin had perished utterly on that terrible day (though it was rumored that, in desperation, Aquatic Spellweavers had transformed the last survivors into a new variety of Isallithin that could survive the deeper oceans, and that interference in the weaving perpetrated by the Dark Elves and haste-induced errors caused this change to go awry).

With the success of these tactics, she directed her Ambassadors to the Ogre Magi to educate their pupils in the principles of indirect warfare, and called apon the Ogres to harass the Elves of the Surface World by proxy. The objectives of these raids was many-fold. Firstly, to keep the Surface Elves off balance, never knowing if this strike was the beginning of a major confrontation or just another feint. Secondly, to enable her allies to slake their need for constant conflict without risking major confrontation. Thirdly, to probe the defenses of the Elves and locate any vulnerabilities for eventual exploitation. And finally, to erode the knowledge and resources of the Surface Elves. For there was always the chance that a raid would kill someone of high skill or power through mischance before they were able to pass on that skill – and every such setback would be twice as hard to overcome, thanks to the draining of resources that the raids would cause. A people under perpetual siege tend to lose the little things that give them an edge in more significant confrontations.

Lolth had no fear of Elvish warriors, no matter how skilled they were; she was apprehensive about what such warriors could do if backed by Spellweaving. And so, at Lolth’s behest, the Ogres exerted themselves against less-dangerous opponents – Orcs, Goblins, Bugbears, and the like – driving them by conquest, or by the simple occupation of key territories, toward the Elven lands, and confrontation.

The Guardians Of The Forest

The Elvish Spellweavers had not wasted their time, either. Long before the act of genocide that would cement an implacable barrier between Elf and Drow, they had known that their Kin would be coming, in person or in proxy. The first act of the newly-formed Elven Council was to look to the defenses, especially those of the “capital” of Elvarheim, which had been named Ellessarunne. With this complete, they turned their attention to their first duty and the impact that these developments would have apon it; the Elves had been created by Corellan to be the Stewards of Nature, the guides and masters of life. That task now forced apon them the creation of Guardians to protect the forests themselves.

Long ago, the Elves had awakened trees.

The Sharing of Elven Blood with the awakened trees had created Treants – half-Elven trees.

Now the Elvish Spellweavers began to craft a still more aware form of tree-life, which they named Verdonne, which means “Quickbranch”.

The timing was more critical than they knew: even as the first Verdonne saplings were being planted, Lolth was committing her act of unforgivable hatred against her subjects’ kin. When the first bodies of the Isallithin washed up apon the riverbanks of the Sarner, the elves were stricken with grief, and for days wandered their homes of verdant green in confusion and shock, unable to comprehend what had taken place. But the spirit of Corellan moved amongst them and comforted them, and slowly they began to ask who had done this. And the Forest Elves consulted the trees, and the High Elves consulted the auguries, and the Plains Elves did beseech all the creatures of the world to search for the answers, and in time, the truth was revealed, and the Elves knew that their kindred were truly beyond redemption. Corellan was inconsolable, and in his grief and rage, he proclaimed the Drow to be a Fallen Race, and declared eternal enmity between the surviving branches of Elvenkind and the subjects of the Spider-Queen, Lolth.

And even as the first Verdonne branch sprouted and budded and began to grow, Lolth’s allies’ cat’s-paws were preparing their first assaults against the greenest of Forests.

Orc-Wars and Fallen Races

By this time, the Elves numbered almost 40,000, the highest population level that they would ever record. Five thousand of these were High Elves, and twelve thousands called the forests home, but most numerous were the Plains Elves. The assault masterminded by the Drow was a masterpiece of tactical savagery.

It began with a feint by small bands of Orcs, raiding into the forests down the mountain slopes of Mont Ayer and Mont Thuyon, the twin peaks that straddle the valley of the Elves, while thousands of Goblins mounted on wolves drove across the valley homes of the Plains Elves, driving all before them toward the Sarner. At the same time, Ogres dragged steel mangonels from hidden tunnels and commenced bombarding the towers of the High Elves. The ammunition fired by these siege weapons consisted of heavy, spiked balls of steel, augmented magically to inflict greater damage on their targets by fragmenting apon impact. The Towers, which consisted of fitted stone blocks held together by the weight of the blocks without mortar, were unable to resist, and great rents quickly appeared, into which hordes of Orcs wielding short spears and bronze swords swarmed. Although individually these foes were no match for the High Elves’ arcane abilities, force of numbers took its toll and thousands were killed, especially the young and the infirm. Most significantly, these attacks prevented the High Elves from coming to the aid of their kin in the valley. In effect, they were reduced to the choice of a sure and prolonged defense, or an uncertain counteroffensive which would certainly cost the lives of their families.

Without the protection of the High elves, the Forest Elves were forced to respond to the marauding bands of Orcish raiders, and they did so with seemingly great effect; the invaders turned and fled from the forests, dashing at full speed through lines of wolf-mounted Goblins, who made short work of the Forest defenders who eagerly pursued them. With this sudden reversal of battlefield fortune, it was the Forest Elves’ turn to flee from the field of battle, hotly pursued by the faster and more mobile Wolf Riders, while the Orcish attackers reformed into a picket line and showered the plains elves with arrows from their short bows.

Even as the Forest Elves made their desperate dash toward Elvarheim, the outlying tracts of forest before them erupted into flames, put to the torch by a more substantial army of 3,000 Orcs and 500 Ogres armed with oil and torches. This force had made their way along the Sarner by stealth and remained hidden while their kin lured the defenders of the forest into the open fields. Had the High elves not been engaged in their own desperate struggle, their elevated vantage points would have permitted them to warn their Forest Kin of the danger; Lolth’s initial strike was intended not only to prevent the High Elves from assisting the others, but to prevent discovery of this intrusion until it was too late. The defenders of the forest were killed quickly where they stood and fought, or incinerated ruthlessly if they braved the inferno before them, or slaughtered, helpless, by the stealthy force if they managed to force passage through the wall of flames.

With the outer battalions of Forest Elves dead, the Wolf Riders resumed sweeping the Plains Elves toward the river, to which the force that had put the torch to the forest now retreated, reforming their ranks on the riverbanks, and trapping the Plains Elves between two armies. All told, 7,000 attackers slaughtered more than 36,000 elves in one grim day of battle. The surviving High Elves numbered but a few hundreds, the survivors of the Plains numbered barely a thousand more than this; only the Forest Elves survived in numbers. Almost 1/3rd of the forest of Elvarheim had been blackened and burnt.

But now those Forest survivors counterattacked; even as the invading hordes advanced warily into the tree line of the forest, the Spellweavers and inner battalions (originally intended to be nothing more than reinforcements, to be deployed where needed), turned on the attackers, and by sacrificing much of their power and lives, devastated the invading force. Routed, the invaders began to flee, and the bugbear infantry and their goblin cavalry support quailed, giving the surviving High Elves the chance to rally.

This was the tale of the day the Elves met the Other. It was not the joyful reunion that had been wished for. For the next 110 years, all of Elvarheim would bend itself to the protection, rearing, and education of the saplings which were intended to be the Elvish masterstroke, while those to whom the Elves owed their very existence, the Other, layed siege apon the Forest’s defenses. The bitter irony of the situation was not lost apon the Elves. While any besieging Orc who dared brave passage beneath the forest canopy was quickly killed, the same fate awaited any Elf foolish enough to seek passage beyond the protection of the Spellweavers of the Forest.

After decades of patience, success came to the Elvish Spellweavers, as the newly-matured Verdonne drove back the Orcs; but they would come again, and frequently. The Elvish sacrifices had not been in vain, and the siege was broken. For the 270 years that followed, the Forests of Elvarheim would remain inviolate and under the protection of the Guardians Of The Forest.

A pattern soon developed, a rhythm of life: this race or that would invade or assault the Elven borders, sometimes in strength and sometimes in isolation, sometimes openly and at other times from concealment or through cunning. The Verdonne, guided by the Elves, would block the incursion, and turn it back, before returning to their dwelling places to await the next assault. It even came to be perceived as ‘normal’ by both sets of combatants.

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The Ongoing Elvish Glossary

• Arnost: Simple Speech (Modern “Common”, a human tongue)
• Arrunquessor: Plains Elves
• Ayer: Nuthanori word meaning “Squat”. Mont Ayer is the name of one of the two peaks that define the traditional elvish lands.
• Calquissir: High Elves
• Corellan: The First
• Drow: “Those Who Dwell Apart” (in Nuthanorl). Added to Ogre by the Drow with the meaning of “Smart”.
• Ellessarune: The “Shining City” of the Tarquessir, home of the Elvish King and capital of the Elven Lands to this day.
• Eltrhinast: “Guiding Spirit”
• Elvarheim: “Blessed Leafy Home”: The Elven Forest, homeland of the Tarquessir and the centre of Elven Power in modern times
• Gilandthor: “The Gathering”, the formal title of the Elvish Council.
• Hithainduil: High Elven Language
• Illvayssor: “The Other”, a mythical race
• Isallithin: “The Sundered”, a name applied to Aquatic Elves
• King: A human title interpreted by Elves as “speaker to others” and defined as such within their language.
• Magi: A corruption of the Zamiel word “Machus”, which means “of the wise.”
• Mont: Nuthanori word meaning “High Place”. Used human-style in the naming of Mountains.
• Nuthanorl: Low Elven Language, Common Elven
• Sarner: A human abbreviation of the Hithainduil word “Saranariuthenal” which means, literally, “Swift and Wide”. The River Sarner runs through the central valley of Elvarheim.
• Tarquessir: Forest Elves
• Thuyon: Nuthanori word meaning “Tall Spires”. Mont Thuyon is the name of the taller of the two peaks that define the traditional elvish lands; Modern Elvarheim lies between the foothills of Mont Thuyon and the River Sarner.
• Verdonne: “Quickbranch”, an artificial race created by Elves to be “The Guardians Of The Forest”.
• Zamiel: Drow Language

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Next time: Insurrection, Aftermath, and the Beginning of the Second Great Dwarfwar – All to come in Chapters 15 through 17!

In the course of the last week, two different emails have been sent to Campaign Mastery that are going to form the core of today’s article. Since they are about as different as chalk and squid ink, the results might be more than usually schizophrenic, but I think it will all come together in the end.

Email the First: From Joey

The first email reads:

I have been interested in D&D for a long time and have tried running a game with my brothers and my mother, but I haven’t been able to get a game going for the longest time, not once! Could I get some advice on increasing their interest in the game? Thank-you for your consideration.

I have to admit that I initially misread this (despite its brevity) and thought that Joey was asking for help in increasing the involvement of players in a campaign that was dying. Rejuvenating ailing campaigns is not a subject I’ve talked about yet, so I was all set to dive in, head-first, despite not being an expert in that part of the hobby. In fact, I had a good portion of my response quick-drafted in my head within minutes of first (mis-)reading the email. Fortunately, when I went to outline the actual response, I reread the email and got it right this time.

A call for collective wisdom

Joey has managed to get his family to play at least once, but they seem less than interested in continuing. I’ve offered my response below, but this is a very different subject to the one I was going to write about in reply, and one on which the ground underfoot seems far shakier. So I’m throwing the floor – well, the comments section – open to suggestions from the audience. Can you think of anything I haven’t suggested below?

Mike’s Answer:

I’m afraid that there is not a lot of good news, Joey. Once someone has tried a game and decided that it’s not for them, it’s usually better to accept that and find someone else with whom to play. Heck, for all I know, they weren’t actually interested to begin with and gave it a try purely out of family loyalty. The first game that I ran was for my two brothers, David and Paul; both had fun, but for the older of the two, the hobby was a diversion and nothing special; he dropped RPGs from his list of activities when I left home. A couple of his kids are far more into the hobby than he ever was. My younger brother, Paul, enjoyed it far more (even though he was considerably younger than the recommended age) and five years or so later found his own group to play in; but he too has since dropped the hobby for other pursuits.

Look Elsewhere

But that actually offers a potential solution to the initial problem. People hate to be left out, especially when it comes to fun. Look beyond your family circle for players, using the techniques offered in (US$7 from DriveThru RPG), or the latest addition to the options available, EnWorld’s Gamers Seeking Gamers Service.

If you generate enough fun at the gaming table, your family might be persuaded to join in simply because they don’t want to be left out. Of course, if everyone is having fun already, it probably won’t matter too much if your family don’t come around; we’re all different in tastes and hobbies, and yours simply might not appeal to them.

I know for a fact that I would never be able to get my parents or sister to join in a game. It’s just not their thing. Though my sister came close, running a couple of “How to host a murder” games in which all the participants went all-out with period costumes – which goes further than I ever went at the gaming table!

Make their interests relevant to the game

Once you have a gaming group set up outside the family circle, involve interests that your family actually do have. If one of your brothers is seriously into sports, get his help in coming up with games for an Orcish Arena (shades of Blood Bowl!) – key players, team rankings and histories, the “sports”, the championship, and how the players might get mixed up in all of this.

If they are into wood- or metal-work, get their help in making some props. If into sewing, involve them in designing clothing for important NPCs. If into art, get them working on illustrations for forthcoming scenes. It especially helps if they are strong in an area you are not – consulting their expertise makes perfect sense under those circumstances.

Involve them on your side of the table, and if everyone has enough fun, they may decide to make the leap to the other side of it – or simply stay put as assistant GM. Either is a win, in terms of your stated goals.

Engage their mercenary instincts

If you still can’t get a gaming group together, start writing adventure modules for sale through RPGNow or DriveThru RPG, and get them to assist (as above) for a share in the proceeds. Of course, any module has to be playtested before you actually sell it…

Ummmmm…

…but that’s where my list of ideas for possible solutions runs out, beyond some extremely generic advice – try to find out what they didn’t like about the game(s) they did play, and see if you can improve it in that respect. So at this point in this discussion, I have to throw the floor open to suggestions from the audience, and move on.

Email the second: From Tabz

The second email doesn’t require anywhere near as much effort on my part as the first did!

Tabz writes:

Geek & Sundry’s TableTop (hosted by Wil Wheaton) has made a huge impact on the gaming community. After every show stores run out of the game that was featured and millions of people have watched the episodes.

More than that though, we’ve been getting email after email about how TableTop has helped people through difficult times by introducing them or reintroducing them to gaming. It’s blown us away and, as a response, we’re organizing the first International TableTop Day to celebrate this hobby that has meant so much to us and fans of TableTop. (Feel free to embed the video on your own site). We’ve partnered with game publishers, local stores, and more to put on one event in many cities across the world. Everyone is encouraged to go play more games (as Wil always says) on March 30th.

We’d love for you to share this news with your readers and encourage them to go to tabletopday.com to sign up for an event OR create their own event! If you can’t write about it right now and still want to support this community event, we’d love for you to use the hashtag #TableTopDay and let your social media folks know about the event.

Ironically, Saturday the 30th is one of the few dates this year on which it’s less likely that my friends and I will be gaming than usual, but even if I can’t participate in person, I’m behind the concept in principle.

Connecting the dots

Of course, the whole concept of an international Tabletop Gaming Day is, ultimately, about the benefits of the hobby, about spreading the word about it, and about bringing lapsed players back into the fold. It’s about reminding people of the importance of having fun – and that makes it directly relevant to the question posed by Joey. It’s a day that’s all about the solution to his problem. (For those that want them, you can download more logos and banners at to use on your website.

You can kick-start your participation in both the event and the cause it celebrates by offering any further advice you might have on Joey’s problem. So, I’m officially turning the floor over to you, the readers…

I’ve got so much campaign prep to get done that if I don’t do it here, in public, I’ll either never get it done in time…

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A shout-out to the sources

There aren’t many sources of non-original material that I have used in my Campaigns, but sometimes something is just too useful. These chapters reference two such sources.

Click to get the free download from DriveThru RPG

The Grave Of The Prince Of Lies from 0one Games

free mini-module, all about Dwarves and Drow and Betrayal and Obsession published by 0one Games (“Zero-One Games”, I think) and available at DriveThruRPG – , and tell ’em Mike sent you!

I freely acknowledge the copyright of 0one Games and the author, Mario Barbati. Any content below that references the original sources is intended as homage and acknowledgement. It might also be useful as an example of how to adapt such third-party material into an existing campaign.

Click to buy as a PDF from DriveThru RPG

Relics & Rituals

The material on Spellweaving was extracted and adapted from the descriptive passages of a Prestige Class under development, though the concepts been part of the Fumanor campaigns from the very beginning. This prestige class is an effort to formalize the concepts into game mechanics, which in turn have been based on material within Relics & Rituals by Swords & Sorcery Studios and published by White Wolf.

This game supplement is available from RPGNow (reduced to under US$11 as I write this). Some sellers still have copies of the hardcover version for sale through Amazon for about half that price – plus postage and handling – less if you buy one of the second-hand copies.

While the concepts for the prestige class were my own, elements of the game mechanics derived from this source have undoubtedly shaped and influenced the descriptive content, so I feel it only proper to acknowledge the source.

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Chapters 6-10 are all in final form. I don’t change “speaker” in mid-paragraph, but the speaker does change from one paragraph to the next. So if it seems like the tone changes direction suddenly – sometimes it does.
Chapter 5 is first draft, extracted and modified from a Prestige Class under parallel development with this history – finishing that is part of the camnpaign prep that needs to be done. But one thing at a time!

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The Art Of Spellweaving

As they grew learned and wise, the Elves began to master the natural world, developing the art of Spellweaving. Unlike the gross magics of other species, Spellweaving is a slow and delicate shaping of patterns of nature; a single Spell might take years or even decades to weave. This is an art that only Elves, with their long lifespans and persistence of worldview and Elven Sight, could master. While some rare Humans might live long enough to learn the basics of Spellweaving, their attitudes are too inconstant, their attention spans too brief, and their faculties too limited, to permit true understanding or the delicacy of touch and deftness of control that is necessary. Elvish Spellweaving controls and shapes the most powerful of forces over vast areas. Elves view the energies of the universe as a tapestry woven from “threads” of energy, and possess the ability to feel the shape of the weave of the resulting tapestry.

It is normal for elves to grow in their abilities to work with this weave over time, eventually entering into “The Song Of Life” more directly than other species can. Most elves retire from adventuring eventually purely because they become overwhelmed with the “other world”. Eventually, some learn to reshape the patterns they perceive, becoming what the elves term a “Spellweaver”. These are both more powerful and more subtle than most human magics, and quite literally enable the elves to shape their preferred environment, manipulating it in many ways. Spellweavers form the innermost layers of Elvish society.

High Elven spellweavers use their powers to construct towers otherwise impossible, influencing the natures of the herds and farms, and shaping the raw beauty of the mountain wilderness. Beyond these simple purposes, they tend toward more esoteric and theoretical studies of the weave and less toward practical applications. Indeed, many of the greatest craftings are centuries old, and require only a little maintenance, further reducing the scope for practical applications of their knowledge. A High Elf might not be able to persuade a tree to grow into a shape suitable for a dwelling, but he could outline the peaks with eldritch fires, craft elaborate illusions to lead unwelcome strangers away from their homes and herds, and create subtle and sophisticated magic devices. Many High Elves specialize in air, earth, divinatory, and weather magics of great power, frequently cast only at need. More than any other elves, High Elves are interested more in what the weave and its properties are, and less with exploiting this knowledge in their everyday lives. Paradoxically, this makes their lifestyles the most akin to humans.

Forest Elves abide in forests which teem with life, much of it modified through Spellweaving. They utilize spellweaving routinely in their daily lives, and are the best-versed in using it for practical ends. They tend to have little interest in the theoretical extremes of the High Elves and are far more skilled than the Plains Elves. Trees grow in ways that suit the Elves, forming an impenetrable barrier about their forests, dwellings for elvish families that are green and grow with the family, community and common buildings, etc.

Forest elvish craft their dwellings by growing and shaping trees into the forms required; creating large hollows within the tree trunks, frequently 50 feet or more above the forest floor. Elvish trees can be anything up to 60′ in diameter, so these “rooms” can be quite substantial in size. A single dwelling for a moderate-to-large family might well consist of ten or twenty such trees, each containing five to ten “rooms”, which may be individually subdivided into smaller compartments. Such a dwelling “cluster” could be home to up to 150 Elves. These trees are connected by branches which form ramps and “broad” avenues (perhaps 2 inches across), which elves use to travel from tree to tree and room to room. Humans consider it possible for an Elf to go anywhere within an Elven Forest while never touching the ground – though that is something of an exaggeration, as humans are want to do.

Much of the plant and animal life within the forests have been modified through spellweaving to serve the purposes of the elves. Certain trees grow with their roots rising completely above the surface of the ground, forming shaded hollows beneath the trees that are large enough to walk through. In these places, a particular lichen grows which, when mature, glows in the dark, producing sufficient light to read by. There is a particular moss which grows along the tops of the avenues and ramps of the forest dwellings which provides a more certain footing when wet by rain. These are but two examples among many.

In modern times, the forests below the lowest levels of the Elven “buildings” there are other trees, whose tops form a thick carpet that rises no higher than the lowest avenues. These form mazes which do not bar forest wildlife below 3′ in height, with many hidden passageways through which the elves themselves can pass. These mazes are sure death for any invader, however, leading through many traps and dangers crafted through Spellweaving. Vines that grow at ground level across deep pits, naturally disguised by leaves and virtually undetectable, trees bearing seemingly-edible fruits of extreme toxicity, and many other such dangers await any who force their way through the protected outer barriers. Regularly-spaced glades are used as the locations where spellweavers work their arts, where weddings and other ceremonies are conducted, where large social gatherings take place, and so on. These glades are strong in the weave and are amongst those parts of the forest most manipulated by the Elves. Those uninvited to enter will frequently not even perceive the glades, or will be attacked by the trees themselves apon entry, or will find that anything of once-living matter about the invaders’ person – wood, leather, etc. – immediately beginning to decay and rot, or will turn on the wearer. Each such glade is different in nature, but all are natural defensive formations and strongholds within the forests. Whole armies can now be destroyed apon entry to the forests without an Elf coming into sight.

The greatest dangers to the Elven buildings from an enemy who has penetrated the forest are the ramps that lead from ground levels up to the heights, and the Forest Elves realized this long ago, and crafted traps accordingly. Perhaps 1 in 20 such is genuine; the others are vines with burning sap, weakened (hollow) limbs which are home to stinging insects – wasps, scorpions, and other such – or snakes which kill by constriction.

Perhaps the greatest enemy to these Elves and their Forests is Fire. The Elves have strenuously sought to craft alternatives which make torches unnecessary. Fires naturally occur within forests as a means of clearing undergrowth, permitting other species of plant to mature. Some plants require fires to become fertile. None of these holds true in an Elven Forest, where the spellweavers perform these tasks; and hence at best, small campfires are cautiously tolerated. Standing guard against larger conflagrations are other plants which grow, vine-like, amongst the branches of every tree. These store vast quantities of a watery liquid which is released when a fire beneath grows too hot, inundating and extinguishing any blaze.

All this makes Elven Forests a haven for wildlife, especially smaller creatures. Squirrels, Birds, and many more species abide there, as do some more substantial creatures of diminished stature – boars, grenedraken, bears, and the like. All have been modified somewhat through Elven spellweaving, to the point where none will attack a Forest Elf, and many will obey the commands of senior elves. They remain wild creatures, however, and will rarely leave their sheltered forest dens.

While High Elves study the weave itself and manipulate the unliving environment, and Forest Elves weave patterns in the nature around them, Wood Elves (also known as Plains Elves) weave subtleties into their own natures; through the exchanges of children, traits thus developed slowly spread through the general elvish population. Most of the physical characteristics associated with Elves originated with the Wood Elves.

Plains elves are in fact in many ways cleverer and more advanced than the members of the other subcultures. It is the province of villager diplomats to settle disputes between the differing socially-acceptable subcultures, and they are more adept artificers than either of the other groups. “Elvish Mail” is always of Plains Elf construction, being crafted of equal parts metal and spellweaving. Weapons from the Plains Elves are more commonly enchanted or of superior workmanship. In watercraft, since the Fall of the Aquatic Elves, none can match them. Where other subcultures either manipulate their environment or the animals themselves to their ends, Plains elves tend to take both as they are found in nature.

Aquatic Elves were closely related in many ways to the Plains Elves, and used their powers of spellweaving in similar ways. They preferred to live on coasts and in shallow waters, and modified themselves accordingly. They were sailors and shipwrights of uncanny ability.

The spider-clan of the Plains Elves long ago settled into a new environment and are now known as Dark Elves or Drow. They believed that the surface world, with its myriad distractions for the senses, interfered with the development of the abilities to sense the weave, and that by living an ascetic existence within caverns deep underground, these distractions could be avoided, producing a manyfold increase in the powers of elvish perception and spellweaving. Those elves who accepted this concept were then joined by members of the other subcastes, and in particular by large numbers of High Elves (one reason why they are so much less prevalent today). The spider-clan thus began to utilize their spellweaving abilities in all the diverse manners of all the other subcultures, from the environmental manipulations of the Forest Elves to the raw Spellcraft of the High Elves.

At this point in our narrative, these arts are still in their relative infancy, and many of these changes have not yet been achieved, or are present only in rudimentary form. Each is the result of hard lessons learned.

Man

It was while searching for The Other that Elves first made themselves known to Humans, seeking leave to explore through, in, and beyond the Kingdoms of Man. Although there had been sporadic and individual contacts in the past, this was an altogether more organized approach, and exposed the Elves for the first time to the full political machinery beloved by Humans – laws, treaties, “Diplomacy”, and deception, the full range of human social relations. And it exposed the humans of the era to many facets of a perspective alien to their perceptions – for while Man accepted and tolerated the vagarities of nature, he perceived it as something to be controlled (not gently shaped); as something to be sheltered from, if it could not be controlled (not lovingly appreciated); and as something to be endured and escaped, if it could not be sheltered from, not something to be revered. “A human,” it was said, “would take the world apart to see how the mechanisms worked, and more importantly, whether or not they could put it back together in a manner more to their liking.”

The formal contact changed both societies dramatically. Humans rediscovered the potential for a more harmonious relationship with the natural world around them, which ultimately manifested in the resurgence of Druidic orders. The Elves, for their part, were forced to structure their society somewhat, formalizing relationships and obligations that had simply been there through the long centuries previous. They also chose a King to represent them to humanity; this role was not taken very seriously by Elves, being adopted for the sole purpose of making Humans more comfortable. The Elves recognized that Humans had an innate preference for centralizing authority and dealing with other centralized authorities, and while their race had no such drive, they were willing to accommodate the human need.

And so they chose the most vain amongst their people, the Elf with the greatest love of luxury and its trappings, provided him and his family with a throne, crown, clothes, and the finest furniture and food, and entrusted to him the responsibilities of greeting and entertaining visitors from other races, and of formalizing any agreements with non-Elven Authorities with seal and signature.

Since this was a purely ceremonial role, there was no need at this time for a Council of Advisors; nor did the King hold any authority over the Elves as a people. His sole function was to formalize decisions once they were taken; Elves persisted in deciding matters amongst themselves as they always had, through the binding consensus of interested parties.

Dwarves!

It was through their association with Humans that the Elves first learned of Dwarves, a discovery that set in motion a chain of events that would forever alter Elvish society. Some years earlier, some thousands of the bearded folk had crossed the borders into human-controlled lands, wounded, despondent, and despairing. They had been exiled from their homes by the betrayal of one of their own, seduced by a Princess from another race called Drow. Details were sketchy, but the Dwarves had been permitted to travel to the lands to the far Sunset, where they had settled into a vast tent city. Some hired themselves out to raise the money for food, but most had given themselves over to abject despair, spending their days drinking themselves into insensibility and bitterness, or crafting improbable schemes for the reclaiming of their homes. A proud and noble people, skilled smiths and wrights, now broken and humiliated. Could these “Dwarves” be the “Other” that the Elves were seeking, inquired the Humans?

The Elves who heard this tale knew immediately that the Dwarves were not who they had been seeking, but the involvement of the Drow nevertheless made this a matter of vital interest to the Elven peoples. Unwilling to reveal to humans matters that were none of their concern, the Elves answered “Perhaps,” and urgently sent a deputation to learn the truth of the reported event from these refugees.

When these investigators returned, they bore grim tidings. The Drow had formed a matriarchal society, based on cruelty and the enslavement of others, within tunnels deep under the mountains. Family groups called Houses competed with each other for the favors of their Spider Goddess; when their population had grown to the point where these tunnels became crowded, they chose to annex those carved by another race, the Dwarves, rather than extending their own domains. The Daughter of one of these matriarchs, seeking to elevate herself and her House, had seduced the youngest Prince of the Dwarves, inveigling him through romance and sorcery until he was utterly enthralled.

At her instigation, he had raised a band of personal followers who had slaughtered those ahead of her in the line of succession to rulership of her House, a deed met with considerable approval by the Queen Of Webs. The Princess had then prevailed apon him to spy out the defenses of his people, and apon ascending to the rule of her House, a combined assault by her forces and those of his personal entourage penetrated those defenses and routed the Dwarves completely. So profound was the anger of the Dwarves that the offender’s name had been expunged from all records; they renamed him “The Prince Of Lies”.

This forced the Elves into an unhappy position. While angry at the disrespect paid to Corellan by the Drow, these were still their brothers, sisters, parents, nieces, nephews, husbands, and wives. They had come to understand why Corellan had prevented them from starting what could only be a Civil War which would entangle the entire Elven Race.

And yet, Corellan’s instructions had been not to interfere with the Drow “so long as they impose their will apon no others”; clearly, they had overstepped that boundary, and the Elves were forced to interpret Corellan’s instructions as a Divine Commandment to oppose the Drow and their dark Queen. The search for the Other was, of necessity, abandoned until the Drow problem had been dealt with.

An army of Elves was gathered at the instruction of the Elven King, and travelled to the tent cities of the Dwarves, where they announced that they were the Kin of those responsible for the Dwarvish Exile, come to aid the Dwarves in reclaiming their homeland. Alas, the Elves (for all their wisdom and learning) had little experience in dealing with other races. The Elvish attitude – “We are going to do this, we have been commanded to do so by our God. You can help if you want to” – was guaranteed to irritate and further humiliate the Dwarves, whose natural pride was already sensitive because of their situation.

Despite the growing irritation of the Dwarves, the combination was extremely effective, and succeeded in overcoming the Prince Of Lies and his Drow paramour, and reclaiming sufficient of the Dwarven tunnels for the Dwarves to return to their homes. Lolth, never one to forgive incompetence or presumption, closed the links between the Drow tunnels and the Dwarven mineshafts, trapping both the young House Mother and Dwarven Prince between the Drow and the invading armies.

Even so, it should not be presumed that the pair were without resource and skill of their own; they successfully evaded the conquering allies and fled, pursued by a mixed force of Elves and Dwarves. Ultimately they were cornered in some remote corner of the world; when they were finally trapped, the Drow Matron turned on her Dwarven lover, seeing no further use for him, and killed him and his surviving personal guard with a Curse, only to be slain herself by those who had pursued the couple so remorselessly.

Legacies of The Prince Of Lies: Dwarves

All three groups had been marked by the events surrounding the Prince Of Lies episode. Despite the success of their collaboration, relations between the Dwarves and Elves had been forever poisoned by the Elvish attitude. It was natural, for an Elf, whenever engaged in, or proposing, some joint activity with a Dwarf, to remind that Dwarf of how successfully they had united in the past. They could never quite grasp the fact that Dwarves resented the humiliation of the need for the aid of outsiders. The Dwarves had not asked for any of it – the manipulations of the Drow, the exile, or the aid of the Elves. They further resented being made secondary participants in the war to reclaim their homeland. And they absolutely and definitively resented the perception that Elves expected them to be grateful for their unwanted and multiply-humiliating interference!

To be fair, relations with Dwarves were always going to be difficult; there were too many personality traits in opposition. Everything from sense of humor to stiff-necked pride would have gotten in the way. Nevertheless, events conspired to do irreparable harm to relations between the races. It must be remembered that from the Dwarvish perspective, Elves and Drow were one people. They were all Elves. They perceived irrefutable similarities between the attitudes of the Elves and the Drow – both had treated the Dwarves without respect. Coupled with the Elvish sense of humor and ability to find the sunny side of just about anything, and their never-ending ability to “babble”, the Dwarves were left with the overall impression that Elves were an untrustworthy, arrogant, and deceitful race, who delighted in belittling and humiliating Dwarves and in regurgitating past humiliations.

As a people, their racial pride had been publicly humiliated by the events; and while they did everything in their power to erase all memory of that humiliation, that pride aroused a feirce determination never to be so humiliated again. Their culture was forced down an increasingly martial path in consequence. Where once they had prized skills in finding, mining, and working the treasures of the earth, military prowess now became the dominant desirable trait.

This cultural transformation was as much a reaction to the Elvish behavior as to the Drow manipulation of events. Had the Elves approached the exiled Dwarves in a manner that did not offend the always-prickly Dwarven Pride, commonality of purpose could have produced an alliance that would have held steadfast for all time. It was the difference between “We have come to aid you in reclaiming your homes” and “We are here to lead your people back to their homes.”

Legacies of The Prince Of Lies: Elves

The Dwarven reaction to the events of the first Drow War greatly puzzled the Elves of the time, and they spent long years analyzing the events and how they had led to the bitterness expressed by the Dwarvish King at the War’s end. When they reached the conclusions set forth above, they were able for the first time to see themselves through an outsiders eyes, however dimly. Humbled by their unrecognized and unremarked mistakes, the Elves decided never to speak of the Prince Of Lies or the circumstances of the first Drow War again. As the generations passed, the matter was lost to memory, and the status quo came to be accepted by the Elves as simply “the way things are”. Only humans, who were only peripherally involved in events, retained any record of the tale, and at the time they had insufficient experience with any of the races involved to understand the all-important subtexts that had dictated the consequences, so their records were woefully incomplete.

That said, the Elves were determined not to make the same mistakes in future. It had become clear to them that the authority granted, and the responsibilities delegated, to the role of King were more important than they had appreciated. This time, they had resulted in a Civil War, and perhaps perpetual mistrust with another Race; what effect might they have next time? And yet, the Elf chosen for the role had been selected not for his relevant abilities, but for his love of pomp and ceremony. While he had managed – just barely – the Prince Of Lies crisis, it was not unfair to lay the blame for many of the mistakes during those events at his feet. While the chosen King was more than sufficient under normal circumstances, events could transform into the extraordinary in a heartbeat. At such times, the King needed Advisors to guide him – although he would remain the public spokesman, the Council would make the decisions.

Years were spent considering and debating the structure of the council, and who should be eligible for inclusion, and the issues of mandatory vs. voluntary participation. Ultimately, a ruling body evolved that was uniquely Elven in character. Actually, years were spent considering and debating each of these issues.

At the heart of the Council (known formally as The Gilandthor (The Gathering) were five Elves: a representative of each of the four branches of the Elves: Mountain, Forest, Planes, and Aquatic. Of course, the Aquatic representative was unable to participate directly, but worked closely with a volunteer Elf from one of the other groups who conveyed the position of the Aquatic elves on any matter to the Council.

Supplementing these four were specialist members who were dedicated to each of the major races, and whose primary responsibility was to consider that race’s reactions to any action proposed by the Council. If this council of advisors had been in place prior to the crisis, the theory went, the Dwarven Specialist would have been able to point out the consequences of the approach adopted by the King, and a more amenable tone adopted. It might not have prevented the subsequent estrangement of the allies, but it would at least not have exacerbated the problems.

Legacies of The Prince Of Lies: Drow

The impact of these events apon the Drow were no less profound. Through the presumptiveness and independent scheming of one Princess, centuries of planning had been torn apart. While the damage was not irreparable, the confrontation with the Elves had been instigated precipitously, before She had completed preparations for a decisive blow. As a result, although Shehad approved of the ambition and cleverness of the House Princess, the results were completely unsatisfactory.

She resolved never again to be caught unprepared, without a ready-to-implement backup plan for any action contemplated. In the meantime, it was clearly long past time to bring the House Matrons firmly into line, and to bind them more closely to herself; She ordered that the Priesthood of Lolth be elevated to dominance over all other elements of Drow society. To celebrate this ascension, the existing House Mothers were martyred in Her name – a rather pointed reminder to their successors of the consequences of exceeding their authority.

The sacrifices struck Drow society like a thunderclap, and a superficial peace enveloped Drow society as a whole. While the newly-elevated House Matrons would never cease their attempts to climb above those around them in power and authority, the conflicts between them became the stuff of plots, intrigues, and shadows. While each priestess was loyal to their House, they were first and foremost the Children of Lolth; should any House conflict even threaten to endanger the most trivial whim of the Spider-Goddess, betrayal from within was certain, and the punishment swift.

This change completely transformed the balance of power between the Drow Houses. Previously, there had been six arenas of primacy, all of roughly equal value: Wealth, Political Connections, Spycraft, Secular Authority, The art of Spellweaving, and Martial power. The change to a Theocracy elevated the Secular arena to dominance over all others. The ranking of the House Priestess relative to that of other Houses became the sole measure of success, and all else was merely a tool to be exploited in this pursuit.

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The Ongoing Elvish Glossary

• Arnost: Simple Speech (Modern “Common”, a human tongue)
• Arrunquessor: Plains Elves
• Calquissir: High Elves
• Corellan: The First
• Drow: “Those Who Dwell Apart” (in Nuthanorl)
• Eltrhinast: “Guiding Spirit”
• Gilandthor: “The Gathering”, the formal title of the Elvish Council.
• Hithainduil: High Elven Language
• Illvayssor: “The Other”, a mythical race
• Isallithin: “The Sundered”, a name applied to Aquatic Elves
• King: A human title interpreted by Elves as “speaker to others” and defined as such within their language.
• Nuthanorl: Low Elven Language, Common Elven
• Tarquessir: Forest Elves
• Zamiel: Drow Language

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Next time: Lolth schemes, the Verdonne are revealed, and at last the Elves find “The Other” – but it’s not the glorious occasion they hoped for. All in Chapters 11 through 14!