These messages are the accumulation of the messages that were sent out on 
the Blue Room email list between May 1995 and June 2000.  A large portion 
of the information is directly from Professor M.A.R Barker. When the list 
members joined during the time the list was active, they agreed to refrain 
from sharing this data with non list members.  When the list ended, it was 
urged that the data be made available to non-list Tekumel fans, and it 
seemed like a good idea all around.

I only ask that if you download these digests, or have received them in 
some other way, please respect the agreements the list members made, and 
refrain from passing them around and instead point people to the Tekumel 
web site, www.tekumel.com so that they can download them for themselves, 
and see all the other material available on the Tekumel.com web site.

Many Thanks.
Chris Davis
Moderator:  Blue Room mailing list 

Creative Commons - Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 
CC BY-NC-ND

BLUE ROOM ARCHIVE -- VOLUME 30  [26 December 1998 - 6 January 1999]

871: Qarqa/Quyo/Quyove
872: Accent Reply
873: Sailing Reply
874: Gods of the Pe Choi
875: More on Cows
876: Kuni Birds
877: More on Dogs
878: More on Cows
879: More Hlaka Eyes
880: PBEM Game forming
881: Fenul Legions 
882: Terraforming and Evecon
883: Black Qarqa Correction
884: More on Chlen Hide Weapons and Western Lands
885: Casual Tekumel Comments
886: The Pariah Deities
887: Tumissa
888: Pronunciation Aid Idea
889: Beginning GMs
890: New Year's Greeting
891: Engineers and Architects
892: Miscellaneous Questions
893: More on Chlen Hide
894: More on Animals
895: More on Hlaka Eyes
896: Peeking
897: More on Pronunciation
898: Hekellu
899: Tumissa
900: Observations on Current Events

*******************************

//871

[Moderator's Note:  Bob Alberti answers some questions about the differences]
[                   between Quarqa, Quyo and Quyove.  (A very few of you got]
[                   this message twice.  If you did, this is the one you    ]
[                   should keep.  Chris)                                    ]

>>... the Livyani Goddess Quyove, who is a goddess 
>>of amorphous darkness and death that makes Sarku look like a Cub Scout,
>>second only to Black Qarqa for sheer terror.  

>I had noticed that, in the pre-press edition of _Mitlanyal_, Quyove is
>listed as a demon associated with Sarku, while Black Qarqa is not listed
>among either Sarku's aspects or demons, so my question is: just how
>different from Sarku and from one another are Quyo(ve) and Black Qarqa
>and what are the essential characteristics/qualities of these deities
>and how does their worship differ from Sarku's? (I'm assuming that
>neither of them is represented as a five-headed worm...? and I do recall
>some mention of ritual (?) cannibalism being involved in Qarqa's
>worship.) 

The Tsolyani consider Quyo a demon, the Livyani consider Quyove a god.  She
(it?) and Sarku are definitely two different things.

Black Qarqa is much more horrible than Sarku.  Qarqa is, um, Cthulhoid in
character, while Sarku is merely Lugosiesque.  If I had to guess (and it's
just a guess) I'd say Qarqa could be part Sarku, part She Who Must Not Be
Named.

The three are definitely distinct beings, however.  As far as the rituals
of Qarqa, I don't know or I refuse to remember.  The last time I was there
(Gashchene) it gave me a stomach-ache.

>And since I'm sure others are also wondering, is there any word on
>T.O.M.E's publication of _Mitlanyal_?

Hahahahahahahaha... Oh, I just love a kidder!

TOME's phone number is (610) 935-7622 and their e-mail address is
clashofarm@aol.com.
-----
Chris Davis      Moderator, The Blue Room        blueroom@prin.edu
The Blue Room's FTP site:  http://nexus.prin.edu or  ftp://nexus.prin.edu
Available 24 hours a day, except when my PC is down, or unavailable.

//872

[Moderator's Note:  Professor Barker replies to Mark Pawelek's questions ]
[                   about Accents.                                       ]

>I've noticed a few anomalies between the placement of accents in some
>words. In the Different Worlds Sourcebooks a few words are accented at a
>different position to those of the TOME. Which is correct?

>Eg. A quick search revealed the following four anomalies:

>Hrihayal - accent on the first or second a    [first a]
>Mrelu    - accent on the e or the u     [on the u]
>Khirgar  - accent on the i or the e     [on the a]
>Fasiltum - accent on the i or the u     [on the i]

Different dialects account for some of this, but the real reasons are more
likely to be carelessness by this author, by proofreaders, typists, etc.

Anomalies such as these are likely when people copy, type, and proofread
"furrin"" language materials. We tend to forget about stress-accents in
English, although wesometimes employ them phonemically to distinguish
between words: e.g. :PER-mit "a noun denoting a license" and per-MIT "a
verb denoting to allow, etc."  You cannot interchange these words -- try
saying  "PERmit me to help you" and "He sold me a perMIT." The Tsolyani
don't write accents either, but they are aware of their presence. You can
always argue that PERmit and per-MIT are the "same" word, but they cannot
be substituted for one another in "native" speech.  Note, please, that I am
talking about verbal phenomena here, not "spellings," where all kinds of
english anomalies occur. Charles Hockett used to use the example of "The
sun's rays meet" versus "The sons raise meat" as an example of a completely
homophonic string. Oh, I could tell tails...

Regards,
Phil
-----
Chris Davis      Moderator, The Blue Room        blueroom@prin.edu
The Blue Room's FTP site:  http://nexus.prin.edu or  ftp://nexus.prin.edu
Available 24 hours a day, except when my PC is down, or unavailable.

//873

[Moderator's Note:  Professor Barker replies to Peter Bismire's questions ]
[                   on sailing.                                           ]

Short questions: quick answers!

>A couple of questions for the professor (when you get the chance):

>1/ What is the format for ship names? Are there differences between
>military and civile vessels?

No real "format." People name their craft according to whim, according to
the dictates of some clan-elder, as some higher official decrees, etc. Just
as you have a dozen ships/boats named "Belle" (or "Lady-belle" and the
like) moored in U. S. harbours, so you may find a dozen or so named
"TuplanJakalla" ("Beloved Jakalla") plying the Missuma River.  The Imperium
tends to be stuffy (like Terran navies...1) and names its vessels after
important but forgotten admirals, Imperial princes, high priests, etc. Who
devises these names is a mystery to me.

>2/ Are there nationally preferred sail colours?

Usually dyed sky-blue in Tsolyanu, scarlet in Mu'ugalavya, black in
Salarvya (and the Shen fleets from Shenyu and Mmatugual). Imperial Tsolyani
craft may have some sails white and others blue, with yellow (= golden)
trim.
The Livyani use all sorts of colours: reds, yellows, greens, etc.

>3/ Does traffic on the Missuma River follow a similar pattern to the
>Nile ie drifting downstream using the current and up using prevailing
>winds?

Yes.

>4/ What is the best way to render local accents into English, ie if
>Tsolyani was English what would a person from Bey Su sound like, Jakalla
>etc.

It is difficult to distinguish in English between the Tsolyani spoken in
Jakalla and Bey Su. These regional dialects are actually pretty close to
one another. I have pointed out the difference between the "umlaut u" and
the "barred i" (I can't differentiate these in e-mail.) Other than this,
there is a slight "lilt" to Jakallan, which is even stronger out in Vra.
The northerners speak in more measured tones.

I do sometimes try to distinguish social-level accents: e.g. peasants who
do not speak "correct" Tsolyani. ("We's gotta  git the veggy-tubbles out o'
the sun afore they rots...") I do similar things for nonhumans and
occasional foreigners. This has to be "ad hoc" -- there are no guidelines
for transferring, say, an "Irish" accent to Tekumel and using it for a Yan
Koryani accent. Do as you see fit with this. If you aren't skilled at
accents, then don't do them. Your players will thank you...

Regards,
Phil
-----
Chris Davis      Moderator, The Blue Room        blueroom@prin.edu
The Blue Room's FTP site:  http://nexus.prin.edu or  ftp://nexus.prin.edu
Available 24 hours a day, except when my PC is down, or unavailable.

//874

[Moderator's Note:  Bob Alberti provides information about the Gods of the ]
[                   Pe Choi.  There may be some other info in the Pe Choi  ]
[                   article on the ftp site.                               ]

>Also if this topic has not been discussed, I would love to know
>more about the Pe Choi deity Black Old One. 

Here is everything I have on the Pe Choi.  Enjoy!

Within their own enclaves the Pe Choi have neither priests nor temples.
There is little interest in theological speculation, although this species
does produce excellent logicians, philosophers, and sorcerers.  Adherence
to their two deities is governed more by family and village tradition than
by any religious conviction.  

Urban Pe Choi celebrate the New Year with a feast featuring music (stringed
instruments which click and hum, of a Pe Choi variety), singing of folk
songs, etc.

FATHER OF NESTS
The Father of Nests encompasses the range of the Lords of Stability of the
Tsolyani pantheon, thus a Pe Choi worshipper of this god might join any of
the Tlomitlanyal when settling into Tsolyani society.

--The Outer Doctrines

----Marriage rituals
The Pe Choi custom is simple and elegant: the bride and groom visit the
homes of relatives and friends and quietly announce that they are now wed.
Divorce is handled in the same fashion.

----Funary rituals
The Pe Choi bury their dead with no ceremony in forest plots outside their
villages.

--Temples
Only in Pe Choi settlements in human cities does one find real temples to
their dualistic gods.

A shrine consists of a single oblong hall in which stands a stylized stone
image of a male Pe Choi.

If the shrine is dedicated to the Father of Nests, the idol grasps a golden
sphere, a stylized green branch, the double circle of Hnalla, and a crystal
chalice.  There are no rituals.  Worshippers enter, squat down before the
image, and silently meditate.  When they are finished they rise and glide
away again with not a word to anyone.

--Holidays
---- Trantor
5)  The Pe Choi celebrate their New Year on this day.  Their calendar is
dated from the mythical event of their emergence from the forest paradise
of Hh-kk-ssa, which many assume to be a race-memory of their home world.
To determine the Pe Choi year, add 73,332 to the Tsolyani year.

BLACK OLD ONE
The Black Old One represents a theology which encompasses the Tsolyani
Lords of Change.  Thus a Pe Choi adopting Tsolyani faith might join any of
the Lords of Change, although they rarely choose to join the Temple of Sarku.

----The Cities of the Dead
Many legions of Tomb Police of the various Cities of the Dead are
accompanied by Pe Choi members, usually worshippers of the Black Old One,
whose night vision makes their service valuable.

--Temples
Only in Pe Choi settlements in human cities does one find real temples to
their dualistic gods.

A shrine consists of a single oblong hall in which stands a stylized stone
image of a male Pe Choi.

The image holds a writhing serpent, a lightning bolt of iron, a purple
circle with a diagonal scarlet slash (borrowed from the icons of Hru'u),
and a black mace or sword of obsidian in its four hands.

--Military party affiliations

The Legion of the Nest of Ttik-Deqeq, 9th Imperial Pe Choi Auxiliary Medium
Infantry
Kerdu K'K'tk of Paya Gpa
A good and ancient legion only now rebuilding itself after a plague which
afflicts the Pe Choi ravaged its numbers, slaying several hundred troops.
Its general worships the Black Old One and hates worshippers of Thumis and
Ketengku passionately.
-----
Chris Davis      Moderator, The Blue Room        blueroom@prin.edu
The Blue Room's FTP site:  http://nexus.prin.edu or  ftp://nexus.prin.edu
Available 24 hours a day, except when my PC is down, or unavailable.

//875

[Moderator's Note:  Professor Barker replies to Peter Huston's message on ]
[                   cows.                                                 ]

Re: cows on Tekumel. I see that I did not answer Peter's question
completely. The two statements ("there are cows" -- "there are no cows...")
are both essentially correct *within their own contexts.*

"There are cows...": this is true as a statement sbout the totality of
Tekumel. There *are* small herds of wild cattle (somewha modified by
mutations and changes in environment), way out in the Hokun states on the
other side of Tekumel. These beasts are not used for milk or labour,
although the Hokub are said to hunt them occasionally. In this context
there are indeed cows.

"There are no cows...": cattle are too rare and far away from human
territory to be expanded into a commodity for human use. They are as wild
as the Okhiba and other hunted species (Bestiary, p. 7). For practical,
economic purposes, thus, it can be said that cows do *not* exist, so far as
humans go. They are not available in the Five Empires, and hence for all
practical purposes do not exist.

I remember thinking that if I admitted that cows exist on Tekumel, my
players would soon find ways to create cowboys, Dodge City, range wars,
Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, and High Noon! The Tekumel "reality" is that this
is far-fetched in the extreme. I didn't want to take the time and paper to
explain the true position, and this has now rebounded upon me! Sorry!

Many years ago, Prince Rereshqala sent out an expedition to explore the
farther reaches of the world. I don't recall exactly, but I think they
accidentally opened a nexus point and found themselves on a grassy island
where there are small herds of cattle. Nobody lives there, and there is
little timber to build boats with. Blue-misted mountains are visible across
the water, so it is not too far from a mainland or other, larger island.
These cattle are really wild -- and dangerous. After a great deal of effort
the expedition managed to capture a couple of specimens (try this without
horses!). Later, a shipload of Hokun arirved from the land across the
channel (hunting, I think), and the party hotfooted it out of there and
made it back to Tsolyanu (arriving in Si'is because of a mistake in
spell-casting). They took their specimens to Avanthar, where they presented
them to the Imperium. The Emperor had them popped into the zoo on the upper
slopes of the mountain below the Golden Tower. One cow died (or was it
two?), but one is still alive, although she is getting pretty elderly by
now. A certain priestess of Lady Avanthe  has been raising money to pay for
revivification when the old animal dies. She believes that such rare
species must be preserved in order for Stability and the Cycles of Nature
to continue. Finding a mage whose spell will work upon a cow may be a bit
of a problem...

>[Moderator's Note:  I remember that you had mentioned to me that there was a]
>[                   hobbit on Tekumel on display in the Zoo at Jakalla. I   ]
>[                   guess he has now been moved to a Museum...              ]

He was stuffed by the best taxidermist in Tsolyanu and is now on view in
the museum of Prince Rereshqaa's palace near Jakalla.

Regards,

Phil
-----
Chris Davis      Moderator, The Blue Room        blueroom@prin.edu
The Blue Room's FTP site:  http://nexus.prin.edu or  ftp://nexus.prin.edu
Available 24 hours a day, except when my PC is down, or unavailable.

//876

[Moderator's Note:  Joe Saul writes on the subject of birds on Tekumel.  ]

Giovanna Fregni wrote, regarding the Kuni:

>Kuni birds have limited intelligence compared to humans, but are far and
>away more intelligent than Terran birds.

As the owner(ed?) of an African Grey Parrot, loyalty compels me to step in on
this one.  If the above is true, Kuni are *very* smart, probably as smart as
a 10 or 12-year-old human child.


>Probably less intelligent than
>a Hlaka, they can be trained to speak intelligently but with a limited
>vocabulary. 

So can African Greys.  They learn grammar, make sentences, and create
compound words if they don't know the word for something.  (Do a Web search
on "Irene Pepperberg" for confirmation.  She's a researcher at the University
of Arizona.)  They can even count.  And this is using a wild-caught example,
with early-generation training techniques (people still don't understand
parrots very well).  Imagine what you would be able to teach an unmodified
Grey after, say, 500 years of scholars working with them.

I'm posting this not as a brag about Greys, but because we tend to either
under or overestimate what animals are capable of -- which makes it even
trickier to guess what modified animals, like the Kuni or Renyu, can do.
Being able to put simple sentences together wouldn't, taken alone, make the
Kuni far and away more intelligent than a Terran bird; I'd want to know what
the Kuni talks *about* before making that judgement.  Likewise the Renyu.

>According to the Bestiary, they  can be used for reconnaissance work.

In the sense of "Bawk!  Mens coming!  Many mens coming!" or "Reporting, Sah!
Two semetl of Mu'ugalavyani Heavy Infantry at Grid Point 255, Sah!  Looks
like Mourners in Sable, Sah, and they're digging in for a long stay!"?

Joe
-----
Chris Davis      Moderator, The Blue Room        blueroom@prin.edu
The Blue Room's FTP site:  http://nexus.prin.edu or  ftp://nexus.prin.edu
Available 24 hours a day, except when my PC is down, or unavailable.

//877

[Moderator's Note:  Gordon Neff and James Fetzner make points about the    ]
[                   development of dogs on Tekumel.                        ]

Gordon writes.

>... The Terrier group is represented by an Airedale analogue.  The Airedale
>analogue is big and can hunt in very rough terrain due to his Otter
>hound ancestry.  He also makes a good guard dog...

>Herding dogs are almost exclusively a variant of the Old Earth Border
>Collie, albeit a smooth coated version. (NB All the dogs on Tekumel have
>short coats or wiry coats, any other coat is too hot and was bred out.)

>Guard/Protection/War dogs are essentially variants of the Old Earth
>Belgian Malanois, a close relative of the German Shepherd...


No, no, no.

Look, we're talking tens of thousands of years, here. These
specialized breeds, or ANY breed recognizable, haven't existed for a tenth
that time. All 'working breeds' of that nature have emerged in the last few
centuries, merely, as a result of intensive selection by professional
breeders. That's -without- specific, deliberate genetic engineering, mind
you.

What would happen to dogs after five thousand years? I think the
question would not be over thickness of coat or possible draft use, but
rather how many languages they spoke.

Draft animals? More likely they served as chauffeurs and
bodyguards. Vehicles and weapons crafted for their use would puzzle the
jeebers out of a modern Tekumelani archaeologist.

I always considered this to be something of a throwaway, a tip o'
the hat to traditional antiquity. Dogs existing on Tekumel would be weirdly
strange by now, even if they weren't before. Certainly strange enough to be
-mentioned-, which they otherwise never are again...

G.
--

James writes.

>[Moderator's Note:  Scott Maxwell and Giovanna Fregni respond to the dogs on]
>[                   Tekumel                                                 ]

>Scott Maxwell writes...

>As a companion to the dog question, I'd surmise that cats would be limited
>to short, wire hair type cats and sphynx (hairless) type cats.  The wire
>type hair was used in the late 1800s by scientists discussing evolution.  It
>was originally thought that the wire coat was an evolutionary change in the
>breed for warm weather climates, but it was discovered that the mousers on
>the ships would change into wire haired cats over the period of a month or
>two of extremely hot weather.

>As to the hairless variety (I personally own two of them), hairlessness is a
>very common mutation among cats and has been kept relatively rare because of
>the colder climates (among other things).  There are three known cases or
>spontaneous mutation in North America in the past 20 years where the
>hairless gene has bred fairly true.   Then there is at least another
>spontaneous hairless mutation coming out of Russia.  Now these are all I
>know of right now and it seems strange that there are not herds of hairless
>cats in india and the Arabian Peninsula, but maybe there are, I don't know.

>Anyhow, The inclusion of hairless cats might make a tie in to the Mihalli.
>Maybe the "myth" of the Mihalli might be explained as an anthropomorphized
>sphynx type cat.  Maybe the Tekumeli equivelent of Puss-n-boots was a
>sphynx.  I'm just brainstorming now, but the inclusion of sphynx type cats
>on Tekumel (even if they were hunted down as "unclean" or whatever) could be
>used by scholars to many ends.
>--

>Giovanna Fregni writes...

>I thought I'd throw in a couple of comments here. Having my bestiary at hand, I
>thought I could make some suggestions.

>The Terrier group is represented by an Airedale analogue.

>That's a scary thought. Phil had a crazed Airedale until he passed away a
>couple years ago. I don't know that Phil would immortalize Cyrus on Tekumel
>as sane working type dog. Of course, that is up to Phil. How about the good
>old black lab? (Phil owned one of those, too).  I don't know if the long
>fur theory would hold up, since hma and hmelu and other animals do have
>longer coats.

>It is interesting to look at the various art renderings of Renyu. I used a
>German Shepherd as my 'model'. Other artists have leaned toward other
breeds.

>I would think that over time, dog breeds intermixed and and the resulting
>mongrel would tend to look like the generic shepherd/collie mix, or
>something on the order of the dingo. I doubt that we'd see any really
>identifiable AKC type breeds, simply because pedigreed dogs today are bred
>for conformation rather than health or longevity. Anyone who's owned a
>larger dog knows about the problems of displasia, especially in dogs that
>are pedigreed.

>I recall one party member had something on the order of a yappy little lap
>dog, so there would be small pet dogs. But for the most part dogs would be
>working animals, probably bred indescriminantly as far as looks go. It might
>be a good idea to see what dogs generally look like in countries like India
>or in South America where there is little pressure to have a specific breed.

Looking at our own history, all of the dog breeds we know were developed
within the "short" span of 10,000 years or so.  Given the long time line on
Tekumel, even if only a single breed were brought there originally, it would
have had the opportunity to diversify to the point where the available
breeds on Tekumel probably outnumber all those currently found on Earth (and
each probably fills its own unique niche for the area in which it is found).
In answer to the comment on areas with little pressure for breeding:  I live
in Turkey, and have spent the last two years watching the local populations
of wild dogs (and cats).  Most of the dogs here tend to look a little like a
german shepherd, though there is even a large contingent of long-haired dark
colored dogs.  In the case of cats, tortoise, various tiger stripe, and
single color cats abound, with a large sprinkling of long hair cats as well
(in a climate where the summer time temperatures remain at around 40 degrees
C for 5 months straight).

All of this tells me that diversity will always remain the order of the day.
This is a good thing, because it allows all of us to use our imagination and
happily journey through the world Phil revealed to us.

-----
Chris Davis      Moderator, The Blue Room        blueroom@prin.edu
The Blue Room's FTP site:  http://nexus.prin.edu or  ftp://nexus.prin.edu
Available 24 hours a day, except when my PC is down, or unavailable.

//878

[Moderator's Note:  Gordon also comments on the cow thread.  He also makes   ]
[                   another interesting point.                               ]

The cows are mentioned in EPT...
>[Moderator's Note:  I found the line.  What it says is that the descendent of ]
>[                   the cow came to Tekumel.  Who's to say what genetic engin-]
>[                   eering and tens of thousands of years have done to the    ]
>[                   present day cow?                                          ]


See? See? Hah? And dogs are -far- more 'engineered' already...



>"Some of you will recall that once a lady D-n-D player insisted on
>transporting a dragon and a hobbit over to Tekumel... I think the
>hobbit eventually died of loneliness, but the dragon might still be alive."

If the lady's -character- was also, she ought to have been tried
for attempted crimes against humanity. Within five years of contact with
Europeans, something like 90% of native Hawaiians on all the Islands were
dead. TB, cholera, smallpox-- one horrific plague after another scythed
through their population. They spread like prairie fires... and destroyed
just as widely.

JUST what the epidemiologically isolated population of Tsolyanu
needs. God knows WHAT pandemics that 'hobbit' was carrying-- every garment
on him was probably crawling with death.

(The dragon, I figure to be sufficiently alien in biochemistry not
to be a problem. Like fish: You can eat fish raw, because they don't carry
anything we can catch.)

G.
-----
Chris Davis      Moderator, The Blue Room        blueroom@prin.edu
The Blue Room's FTP site:  http://nexus.prin.edu or  ftp://nexus.prin.edu
Available 24 hours a day, except when my PC is down, or unavailable.

//879

[Moderator's Note:  Thomas Worthington and Martin Stuart comment about  ]
[                   Hlaka eyes.                                         ]

Thomas writes.
>>I have a question for the professor which I am hoping he can answer.
 
>>Why do Hlaka and the related species have 3 eyes?
>>I mean what is the evolutionary advantage?
>>Do they all function?
>>Do they all see the same sort of spectrum?

Hold a string out in front of your eyes so that it forms a horizontal 
line. Now try to judge the distance to the string. Its much harder 
(esp. if someone else is holding the string) than a line at any other 
angle. A third eye which is not in line with the other two will see 
the range much the same regardless of the angle.

It is certainly the case that this could be an advantage for flying 
creatures, as well as a minor advantage for any hunter, and 
correspondingly for prey. I feel that, if the adaption was to show up 
in the early stages of evolution, there is no great argument against 
it staying around and being passed on to many `higher' species that 
come after.

Thomas Worthington 
-----

Martin writes.

The advantage of binocular vision over one is not that it gives two
dimensional 'flat-plane' vision (Does one eye just give one dimensional
vision? What does that look like?) but that it allows depth perception.
This is not releated to the orientation (side by side) of the eyes but
merely the difference in viewpoint between them. A third eye would not add
any improvement to the depth perception.

One way to think about this is to work in sperical coordinates. Even a
single eye can give the relative direction to a point in space (ie from the
eye at the origin) but its position cannot be determined without any depth
information. Some depth can be gained by making assumptions based on size.
The best depth info is gained by taking a different direction reading (ie
from another eye) and triangulating. To improve the accuracy of the depth
perception, increase the distance between the two eyes.

[Moderator's Note:  I am not sure I agree with you Martin.  If there was some]
[                   process that took the triangulation info from all three  ]
[                   eye pairs and somehow combined the results, there might  ]
[                   be some improvement in depth perception.  Of course, it  ]
[                   is hard to be certain.                                   ]

Martin Stuart
-----
Chris Davis      Moderator, The Blue Room        blueroom@prin.edu
The Blue Room's FTP site:  http://nexus.prin.edu or  ftp://nexus.prin.edu
Available 24 hours a day, except when my PC is down, or unavailable.

//880

[Moderator's Note:  Scott Maxwell is starting a play be email game on      ]
[                   rpghost, which you can find at the address below.      ]
[                   James Fetzner mentions that rpghost has a couple of    ]
[                   Tekumel games running.                                 ]

I am starting up a game on RPGHost (http://www.addr.com/~rpghost/ ).  It is
a Tekumel/Empire of the Petal Throne Game where the players are all members
of the Radiant Dark Clan.   The Radiant Dark Clan is a small, medium class
clan limited to a single clan house in Pala Jakalla.  Ancient servitors of
the Dark trinity of Hru'u, Ksarul, and Sarku, the clan has fallen on hard
times.  The Black Y Society has already been called upon to solve the
problem.  But things have progressed beyond the purview of the Assassins'
clans; now only a small group of dedicated clan brothers can be trusted to
rescue the Radiant Dark.

I will be accepting 3 to 5 players for this game.  Any who are interested
should write me directly at turgon@nidlink.com .

[Moderator's Note:  Scott wants to start by 1/1/99.                        ]

James Fetzner writes.

RPG Host seems to be a strong support center for Tekumel gaming online.
Check them out!!!!  One closed game in progress and a second one looking for
players.

http://www.addr.com/~rpghost/

Everyone should add this to their Tekumel links:
------

//881

[Moderator's Note:  Anderw Lorince provides info from his campaign about   ]
[                   Legions in or around Fenul.                            ]

I'm slowly catching up on the digested material so heres my entry into
the legion string.

There three legions assigned to fenul as follows:
30th Heavy infantry The Legion Of Shattering of Ssuyal with 8 cohorts.
43rd Medium Infantry The Legion of Smitting of the East with 10 cohorts
35th legion of archers The Legion of the Wind of Arrows with 8 cohorts

Commanders of all three legions follow Avanthe but legions are
unalligned.
The ranks of all three legions have been increased by refugee's from
the civil war and struggles with Salarvya and Ssu.

yuninash hi'ancholbel
governor of fenul
-----
Chris Davis      Moderator, The Blue Room        blueroom@prin.edu
The Blue Room's FTP site:  http://nexus.prin.edu or  ftp://nexus.prin.edu
Available 24 hours a day, except when my PC is down, or unavailable.

//882

[Moderator's Note:  Andrew Lorince provides some other info from his campaign]
[                   in Fenul.                                                ]

Here i go puting in my 2 qirgalworth a year late .
Reading the gunpoweder/ explosive track i wondered what kind of barrel
you could make from chlen hide and how you would do it, not to mention
how well it would function--not!!!

It also came to me why the ssu dislike us so much.
When man and his allies came to tekumel with there great lasers the
Ssu and their cousins were already here.
They didn't develop here they traveled from somewhere else, may be
another planet or another plain. but they had just spent a
billion-billion sogarts to Ssu-form the planet and we come along and
in a few days destroy all their work. No wonder their pissed.

[Moderator's Note:  I am pretty sure the Ssu were native to Tekumel.  I    ]
[                   believe they only had rudimentary space flight when man]
[                   arrived on Tekumel.  Of course that doesn't make it    ]
[                   definite.  No one would consider that the Tekumelani   ]
[                   are descendants of a vast spacefaring race, either.    ]
[                   But there has been no evidence suggesting the same     ]
[                   thing about the Ssu. Of course, this is the cool thing ]
[                   about everyone being able to have their "own" Tekumel. ]

Whats a sogart? I haven't the foggest.

[Moderator's Note:  Andrew will be at a Con the first few days of the new  ]
[                   year.                                                  ]

Just to let those in the northeast know earth tekumel transfer service
and governor of fenul will be at EVECON at holiday inn frances scott
key mall in fredrick maryland jan 1-3.
My standard policy will apply if i can finf 2 players i will run a
tekumel game. this is usually done after the close of dealer hours
each day.
For more information on the con check www.fantek.org

yuninash hi'ancholbel
governor of fenul
-----
Chris Davis      Moderator, The Blue Room        blueroom@prin.edu
The Blue Room's FTP site:  http://nexus.prin.edu or  ftp://nexus.prin.edu
Available 24 hours a day, except when my PC is down, or unavailable.

//883

[Moderator's Note:  Bob Alberti corrects an error in his post on Qarqa.    ]

>I don't know or I refuse to remember.  The last time I was there
>(Gashchene) it gave me a stomach-ache.

Okay, I meant Tsa'avtulgu, not Gashchene.  This is an example of how
horrible Black Qarqa is -- I don't even want to remember correctly where he
holes up.  If anyone ever sent me on a mission to visit Qarqa, I'd wind up
in Gashchene full of innocent bemusement and far, far from Qarqa.

Our latest visit to Black Qarqa went something like this...

We departed the harbor at Tsamra just ahead of the Mu'ugalavyani squad that
was searching the docks.  Takan cradled the small stone statue given to him
by Missum, Lord of the Despairing Dead, whom we'd bumped into in the
Underworld while fleeing Jneksha'a in search of Lelmiyani.  The
Mu'ugalavyani anti-magic stones were attracting the attention of all sorts
of interesting folks -- demons, lieutenants of Sarku, and flaming guardians
-- who then became trapped and inevitably quite frustrated.  We had decided
to leave.

Missum had given Takan the statue with the admonition to use it to free
Livyanu from the anti-magic stones, and Takan took his mission as seriously
as his dubious mental state would allow.  

Out in the bay, safe for now from the Mu'ugalvyani, we pursued what our
researches told us must be out there.  The anti-magic stone which completed
the pattern suppressing magic over Tsamra had to be somewhere at the bottom
of the bay.  The fishing trawler loaned to us by Fireface, the Livyani
resistance leader, provided perfect cover.

We scoured the bottom for days, tiring our Avanthe priestess whose Breath
of the Goddess spell allowed us to search underwater.  Finally, however,
her spell wavered and puckered as it encountered the greasy black
anti-magic stone.  We hauled it aboard.

The key, the wizard Thomar had informed us, was not to destroy the stone,
for then it could simply be replaced to restore the pattern.  Instead, the
stone had to be drawn far enough off the pattern to damage the pattern.
Then to repair the pattern, the Mu'ugalavyani would first have to locate
the stone.

So we sailed east to the mouth of Kaprakoi (sp?) bay, worrying all the way
about how far would be far enough.  "Now?"  one of us would ask?  "Not
yet," the others would mutter, until one of them said, "Now?" and the cycle
would repeat.

The magic users grew more and more irritable.  Surely this was far enough?
Suddenly we heard the muffled "crump" of an explosion.  Searching the south
shore of the pay, we saw a cloud mushrooming up into the sky.  A moment
later there was another flash, further west, and a few minutes later the
"crack!-crump" of the explosion reached our ears.

With each explosion, the magic users felt the etheric vibrations of magic.
It was working!  Magic was starting to creep through!

"Those must be spells that were executed, but did not go off, during the
interdiction," muttered Sanjesh, "they've been pent up all this time."

"Now?" somebody asked.

"Not yet," muttered Arjai.

As we kept sailing, the feeling which had irritated the magic users all
afternoon grew more pronounced -- a sense of attenuation, of stretching.
We agreed it must be nearly time, and suspended the stone on its winch over
the side of the ship.  The stone was clearly hanging off-center, straining
back towards Tsamra.  Suddenly there was a great flash, visible in
daylight, from over the horizon back in the direction of the Livyani city.
Things there were obviously getting pretty hairy...

"What do you think," Sanjesh asked Arjai, "now?"

Arjai hiVaisoner peered sternly into the distance.  His keen sorcerous
senses pierced the muddled veils of interplanar energy for the clue to the
perfect moment...

A Livyani crewman screamed, "Look!"

All about the ship, greyish bubbles were rising up through the air.  The
bubbles shimmered and wavered, drifting slowly and growing quickly.  Where
the surface of a bubble intersected the bay the water puckered, pouring
into the grey oval.

All about the ship, the fabric of reality was tearing open into hundreds
and thousands of nexus points!

"Cut the rope!" screamed Arjai, Sanjesh, and half the crew at once.

A crewman chopped the rope with a cutlass and the stone plunged into the
water just as the ship itself sailed prow-first into a gaping nexus point!

[The ship grounded in a desert on a distant plane, where it was set upon by
raiders eager for its wealth of wood and provisions.  Our party had many
adventures thereafter, too numerous to relate here.  However, eventually
the worshippers of Hru'u and Wuru, Eshine (EH-shi-ney, not "e-shine") and
Takan, along with Takan's stone idol, were separated from the party and
jumped through a nexus point to escape a battlefield...]

Takan and Eshine groped in pitch darkness across grass wet with dew until
they came to the cold, waxy form of a corpse.  Eshine cast a tiny light
spell, and saw that they were on a battlefield some time after a battle --
had their nexus point simply opened ten hours ahead in time?  No, they had
fled a Tsolyani battlefield, and these corpses were bearded like the
Salarvyani.

Hearing a moan, they found a wounded Salarvyani who begged their assistance
fleeing the "evil ones."  They assisted the wounded man for a while,
cresting a couple of low hills in the blackness until they came to a small
copse of trees.  There the Salarvyani passed out, while Takan and Eshine
talked over their next steps.

Suddenly they heard voices, and the whisper of something among the brush.
Eshine had long ago extinguished his light spell, so the two sat in
darkness and listened.  Something was searching.

The moons had risen to join Shichel in the night sky, and with eyes fully
adjusted to the dark Eshine could make out forms moving across the field.
Some strode tall and manlike, but other forms flowed... or loped... or
scuttled.  It twisted the eyes to look upon them.

Eshine watched as the group stopped.  Invisible eyes peered through the
blackness towards their hiding place in the brush.  Then a voice called.

"Come out.  We won't make you suffer."

The Tsolyani remained silent, and the wounded Salarvyani breathed softly.
Through the brush, things moved.

No eyes shone, but something watched them from the brush.  Then with a
crackle, a man parted the scrub and stepped forth.  For a moment he peered
at them.

"You're Tsolyani," he said without preamble, "we're searching for Salarvyani."

"Uh, there's one right over there," commented Eshine, "you can have him."

In the darkness, lit only by one moon now and one dark distant planet, the
man nodded and stepped past.  Around his knees creatures that seemed like
crawling, naked humans ambulated strangely.  Picture an oily black surface
beneath which skeletons crawl, sometimes over each other, towards a common
goal.  They moved gracefully, swiftly, but silently, and yet exuded a sense
of ravenous hunger.  The creatures and their keeper loped and flowed to
where the sleeping Salarvynai breathed his last.

It was very quiet.  The man finally returned, wiping his mouth.  Suddenly a
new voice spoke.

"What have you found?"

"Two Tsolyani, great one," replied the man with a respectful bow.

A taller man in a great crested helmet stepped forth.  Details were hard to
make out in the dark, but both the new arrival and his helmet seemed to be
watching the Tsolyani.

"You have not yet killed them?" the figure asked.

"They..." the man seemed to stammer, "they fed us, lord."  Behind him the
black creatures eminated a sense of satisfaction which brought to mind a
renyu licking its chops.

The baleful gaze turned full upon the Tsolyani like a gust of hot wind.

"Well.  Since we have accepted your food we must do you honor." the
creature intoned.  Eshine and Takan breathed a small sigh of relief.

"You will be permitted to kill yourselves."

Eshine stared in horror at the blackness.  The dark creatures nearby seemed
to perk up in interest.  But Takan acted.

"Hah!  Destroy them, my creature!" he shouted, and cast forth the idol
granted him by Missum, Lord of the Despairing Dead beneath Tsamra.

The terrible stone idol moved.  It seemed to grow and swell before their
eyes, and it loped forward on powerful limbs and bared its vicious fangs as
it charged towards the tall figure.

Then it bowed low and touched its cruel face to the ground at the feet of
the figure in the helmet.

"Ah, how nice," said the figure, "you know, we make these in Tsa'avtulgu."

Eshine and Takan turned and fled into the darkness!  Behind them the
loping, crawling black figures gave silent pursuit...

[And you people wonder why I don't like remembering Tsa'avtulgu...]
-----
Chris Davis      Moderator, The Blue Room        blueroom@prin.edu
The Blue Room's FTP site:  http://nexus.prin.edu or  ftp://nexus.prin.edu
Available 24 hours a day, except when my PC is down, or unavailable.

//884

[Moderator's Note:  Joe Saul, Andrew Lorince, Professor Barker and Steve ]
[                   Semienick comment about Chlen hide weapons (and the  ]
[                   Professor comments on the western lands).            ]

Joe writes.
I know I'm going to regret doing this, because there's probably a real
engineer or physicist out there, and that's probably who we really need to
answer this:

>Maybe there's a medieval combat recreationist out there who can support or
>disprove this point but given that a melee weapon is supposed to deliver the
>maximum amount of kinetic force at the point of impact surely the weight of
>the weapon itself must be a significant factor

My understanding is that damage from an impact is based on the weapon's
*kinetic energy*, which goes by the formula mv^2 (mass times [velocity
squared]).  If true, this means that yes, mass is important -- but the
velocity with which the weapon impacts is much more important, because the
velocity term is *squared*.

You can swing a lighter weapon a lot faster than a heavy one.  So the
difference in damage may not be anywhere near as great as you think.  (The
published systems, by the way, have chlen-hide weapons doing a bit less
damage than steel -- but still quite lethal.)

Joe
--

Andrew writes.

Perhaps it would be better to think of chlen hide as fiber glass
reinforced polyester such as the stuff used in auto bodies and modern
body armour as opposed to the plastic swords found in the toy
departments of many stores. Also damage done by a weapon is factor of
the area in contact, speed of movement and mass of the weapon. I've had
some nastey cuts from a piece of paper. And been pricked by many
splinters either of which without proper treatment could lead to other
complications.

>Again an archer might be able to answer this but would a chlen-tipped arrow, 
>quarrel or javelin have different range and other flight characteristics to 
>a metal-tipped one as well as doing different levels of damage ?

>If this is true, then it could offer an explanation for the fantastic 
>designs of most Tekumelani bladed weapons - while these would be impractical 
>and regarded as a scandalous waste of good metal on earth, a chlen-hide 
>blade can actually use more square inches of material while still weighing 
>only half as much as a sensibly-shaped Terran metal broadsword AND if it is 
>still going to cause less damage however you design it,  then you would 
>expect fighting styles to develop which aim to use hooked and serrated 
>weapons to disarm, wound and capture rather than kill enemies (which is 
>going to be quite difficult if they're armoured anyway).

Remember their armour is of the same material. Besides, a baseball bat
kills as effectively as a mace when the person using it is trained for
combat with that weapon.

>The closest analogy would of course be with Aztec and Mayan warfare where 
>the primary aims were to display one's skill and bravery and to subdue and 
>capture enemy warriors  for sacrifice - so that even quite 
>formidable-looking weapons of wood, stone and obsidian ended up doing
>limited damage to relatively lightly armoured and armed Spaniards who fought 
>to kill.

>Quite apart from rulesy questions about what damage chlen-hide weapons 
>should do compared to bronze and steel equivalents and whether someone only 
>trained to use chlen-hide weapons should have a negative modifier when 
>employing a much heavier metal one (particularly if for aesthetic reasons 
>your metal sword is designed to look and be used just like the chlen-hide 
>ones) this has some interesting consequences - for a start the great 
>majority of battle casualties must be disarmed and lightly wounded prisoners 
>rather than dead or severely wounded.  This raises logistical problems - yes 
>you can probably use many of your prisoners as porters after a battle and 
>sell or sacrifice them at the end of a campaign but you'll still have to 
>guard and feed them for the duration.

Or you just leave them for their own people to take care of thus
keeping them from pursuing you even into their own territory.

>Running away must also be considerably easier for someone dressed in the 
>equivalent of plastic armour - particularly if there's no mounted enemy 
>cavalry to pursue and round you up (and in most circumstances someone 
>running for his life and liberty is going to outrun an equally fatigued 
>pursuer who has to hang on to his own weapons and shield and only has honour 
>and perhaps greed  to spur him on).

>Given the formalised and ritual nature of Tekumelani warfare would ransoming 
>and exchanging prisoners not be a more sensible option in most situations ? 
>(particularly after a qadarni-battle) - as both the Germans and Russians 
>discovered in the last world war getting a reputation for systematically 
>killing or enslaving your prisoners only encourages the enemy to fight to 
>the last ditch and the last bullet. And if so, what sort of conventions and 
>laws of war exist about POWs and ransom ? Is surrender or running away 
>regarded as the more ignoble act ? and what happens in a duel or ritual 
>battle if one is disarmed - are you allowed to rearm and fight on ? etc

Some tekumelyani might find capture and sacrifice more honorable than death
from wounds.
--
Professor Barker writes.

>1) The Naqsai down in the SW are IIRC mentioned as trading with the Chima in
>the Bestiary - can the professor tell us any more about them ?

Several of my group have adventured in the mucky, seaweed-filled ocean
south of the great continent to the southwest. The Chima live on rafts
there, fishing and bird-hunting. They are also said to have a solid-land
"kingdom" someplace or other down there. They fight the Hokun and
occasionally the human states of this fragmented region. We just had a
party go down south, and the local human/Hokun lordlings got the party
fighting to Chima. They were surprised to find the Chima do have some
sorcery! They escaped, of course, and used the old favourite nexus point to
get "the hell out of Dodge."

>2)  The Sourcebook also has a tantalising mention of the land of Tane
>somewhere off the west end of the map - has anyone got any more information
>on them ?

Tane was described in one of the only two issues of the first Tekumel
Journal. Chris, if you have a copy, please post it on the Web at your site.

[Moderator's Note:  I'll see if I can find it.                             ]

>3) As a more general question while in some ways it's kinda cool for us to
>actually not know very much more about the rest of off-map Tekumel than any
>well-informed Tsolyani scholar would, presumably the professor and the
>best-travelled of his players must have something resembling a full-world
>map -  has the professor any plans for  this sort of information to be
>released in the foreseeable future ?

I have no actual map of the "backside" of Tekumel, but I know where things
are and what lives there. Some of my Thursday night people kept records and
tentative maps of their travels there. I wish they'd write up their
adventures and let you all in on the secrets of those regions!

>My final question is about Chlen-hide weapons - given that they are much
>lighter than iron or bronze weapons shouldn't they do much less damage ?

This is true. Chlen-hide weapons often have a rod of lead or other metal
sealed into the central rib of the blade. These are the "best" kinds of
weapons. Common Chlen-hide weapons are made heavy by using a relatively
thick Chlen-hide and paring and  sanding it down to a thin blade on one
side. The fancy spikes, curves, and what-all serves as reinforcement. The
average fighter learns to use a lighter weapon and often prefers its
manageability over a heavier and less wieldy bronze or other metal blade.

>Maybe there's a medieval combat recreationist out there who can support or
>disprove this point but given that a melee weapon is supposed to deliver the
>maximum amount of kinetic force at the point of impact surely the weight of
>the weapon itself must be a significant factor ( I really can't believe that
>hitting somebody with the equivalent of a plastic sword can possibly do as
>much damage as hitting them with an identically shaped metal one ?)

You are right, but the force delivered by the blade is affected by its
speed and easier targeting. I admit that a Tekumelani sword blow might be
less damaging than a comparable blow with a mediaeval broadsword or
hand-and-a-half sword. The jags and scallops make it a fearsome weapon,
however.

>Again an archer might be able to answer this but would a chlen-tipped arrow,
>quarrel or javelin have different range and other flight characteristics to
>a metal-tipped one as well as doing different levels of damage ?

Aside from possibly a longer range and a need for balancing the shaft,
point, and feathers, I can't answer this question.

>If this is true, then it could offer an explanation for the fantastic
>designs of most Tekumelani bladed weapons - while these would be impractical
>and regarded as a scandalous waste of good metal on earth, a chlen-hide
>blade can actually use more square inches of material while still weighing
>only half as much as a sensibly-shaped Terran metal broadsword AND if it is
>still going to cause less damage however you design it,  then you would
>expect fighting styles to develop which aim to use hooked and serrated
>weapons to disarm, wound and capture rather than kill enemies (which is
>going to be quite difficult if they're armoured anyway).

Most of us think in terms of a straight sword of some kind: the "Robin
Hood" variety, or now the Japanese Kendo blade. But there have been (and
still are) societies on this planet who use elaborately curved and designed
swords: e.g. the Nepalese Kora, which is blade-heavy and more like a
longish cleaver. There are Indo-Persian scimitars -- and I have a couple
myself -- that are so curved they practically bend back upon themselves --
and who end in double-bladed "blade breakers." I also have several Katars
-- heavy blades with wrist supporters that one grasps horizontally; these
are used to punch holes through chainmail armour. I even have one Katar
that opens into two wicked scissor-blades when you squeeze the hilt. Cut
your victim open, then give him a quick apendectomy...!

>The closest analogy would of course be with Aztec and Mayan warfare where
>the primary aims were to display one's skill and bravery and to subdue and
>capture enemy warriors  for sacrifice - so that even quite
>formidable-looking weapons of wood, stone and obsidian ended up doing
>limited damage to relatively lightly armoured and armed Spaniards who fought
>to kill.

All of this is true and correct, to my understanding. An Aztec Maquahuitl
(a club set with glakes of sharp obsidian) can do a horrendous wound.

>Quite apart from rulesy questions about what damage chlen-hide weapons
>should do compared to bronze and steel equivalents and whether someone only
>trained to use chlen-hide weapons should have a negative modifier when
>employing a much heavier metal one (particularly if for aesthetic reasons
>your metal sword is designed to look and be used just like the chlen-hide
>ones) this has some interesting consequences - for a start the great
>majority of battle casualties must be disarmed and lightly wounded prisoners
>rather than dead or severely wounded.

Not necessarily. There are also halberds, spears, maces with stone or
bronze heads, etc. to do serious melee fighting. Then, too, there's archery.

>This raises logistical problems - yes
>you can probably use many of your prisoners as porters after a battle and
>sell or sacrifice them at the end of a campaign but you'll still have to
>guard and feed them for the duration.

The Five Empires don't use highborn prisoners as bearer-slaves. This would
be greatly ignoble! Lower soldiers and noncombatant prisoners are
occasionally so used. The upper class captives are sometimes traded back to
your foes, or offered for sacrifice. The lower classes are sacrificed or
put to hard work in behind-the-lines areas where they can be watched.

>Running away must also be considerably easier for someone dressed in the
>equivalent of plastic armour - particularly if there's no mounted enemy
>cavalry to pursue and round you up (and in most circumstances someone
>running for his life and liberty is going to outrun an equally fatigued
>pursuer who has to hang on to his own weapons and shield and only has honour
>and perhaps greed  to spur him on).

All true, but the cultures of Tekumel consider running away to be a
horrible breach of nobility. Realistically, it is very possible, but don't
let your comrades -- and even the enemy -- see you do it! Some units fight
to the absolute end, while others kneel down and throw their weapons on the
ground -- the difference between ordinary troops and good, highly-trained
soldiers.

>Given the formalised and ritual nature of Tekumelani warfare would ransoming
>and exchanging prisoners not be a more sensible option in most situations ?
>(particularly after a qadarni-battle) - as both the Germans and Russians
>discovered in the last world war getting a reputation for systematically
>killing or enslaving your prisoners only encourages the enemy to fight to
>the last ditch and the last bullet. And if so, what sort of conventions and
>laws of war exist about POWs and ransom ? Is surrender or running away
>regarded as the more ignoble act ? and what happens in a duel or ritual
>battle if one is disarmed - are you allowed to rearm and fight on ? etc

The conventions of war differ somewhat from country to country. Some people
prefer the "last ditch stand" method, while others exchange prisoners,
"sell" prisoners for loot, food, and other goodies, etc. Highborn captives
generally make poor slaves and so are usually echanged or sacrificed, as
noted above.

>All of which brings home to me again just what a weird and wonderful world
>Tekumel is and how we need to completely rethink all the Fantasy RPGing
>conventions when venturing there....

Enjoy!
Phil
--
Steve writes.

Concerning Chlen hide weapons:

The weight of a weapon is not necessarily a significant factor in the damage
it will inflict.  An example from my own experience might serve as an
illustration. Some years ago, I was toying about with a draftsman's ruler,
about 24 inches long, 2 inches wide, and perhaps 1/16 inch thick, made of
stainless steel. It was quite light, and very flexible. Swung edgewise, like a
sword, it would easily embed itself into a block of soft wood. I had no doubt
that had I been of the mind to do so, I could have inflicted a great deal of
harm on a living target. Sharpened, it might be capable of beheading a human.

Further, consider the Japanese swords such as the Katana, much more lightly
bladed than contemporary European battle swords, yet which were rated as to
how many human bodies they would sever with a single stroke.

My guess is that Chlen hide weapons would be quite deadly, particularly
against lightly armored foes. The greatest advantage metal weapons would have
would be in armor penetrating ability.

As to arrows, there are many factors involved in flight characteristics,
weight of the tip being only one, and easily compensated for at that. Total
weight of the arrow is more important. One might expect the fletchers of the
Five Empires to use different weight shafts to compensate for different point
weights if all were meant to be shot from the same bow. However, as metal is
so prized, its use for arrowheads would be limited to ceremonial and
presentation arrows, as battle arrows are seldom recovered. Fortunate indeed
would be the bowman who had even one steel tipped arrow in his quiver, and I
might imagine that shaft would be saved for "special" shots.

Best regards,
Steve
-----
Chris Davis      Moderator, The Blue Room        blueroom@prin.edu
The Blue Room's FTP site:  http://nexus.prin.edu or  ftp://nexus.prin.edu
Available 24 hours a day, except when my PC is down, or unavailable.

//885

[Moderator's Note:  Professor Barker comments on Gavin's pub style of play. ]

You have learned the secret: have FUN! Your descriptions quite match mine
and my players here. We went from simple "dungeon-delving" to outdoor and
urban backgrounds, to complex military, religious, and social simulations,
to other Planes, nexus points, the politics of the gods and demons, the
Undying Wizards, the College at the End of Time, etc. etc. by natural,
gradual evolution. The old EPT was "elementary Tekumel," the socially
conscious, poltiical Tekumel was "intermediate," and the high Imperial
politics and intrigues were "advanced. There are many stages above these,
which I term "post-graduate Tekumel." My current players are all good folks
who are finishing up their degrees in some variant of the post-graduate
stages.

[Moderator's Note:  Gavin Reid describes the casual way his group(s) enjoy ]
>[                   Tekumel.                                              ]

>I think the way that we played Tekumel (currently in abeyance due to child
>pressures) was probably pretty beer and pretzels.  EPT was the first RPG I
>ever
>played, back in 1975 and certain things made a great impression:

>1)  My first GM made sure we did not see the book (apart from the odd picture)
>so there was a real sense of mystery and the unknown and a huge world to
>explore.

>[Moderator's Note:  Gavin, when I first started playing RPGs, our GM did the]
>[                   same thing.  We didn't even roll our own dice.  Every-  ]
>[                   thing was a mystery to us.  It was quite fun.           ]

I tried keeping things from my players, but I never was successful.
Sometimes when I went out to the bathroom I'd return to see my sourcebooks
placed at slightly different angles than when I left. Hmm. -- Oh, I can't
say that people peeked; perhaps some god intervened, or a non-player
character was overcome by curiosity? (By the bye, I don't believe in
"non-player" characters. On Tekumel *everyone* is a "character," all real
and each the same as the others; it is the noncorporeal "player characters"
who are mythical and fantastic. Reality is thus amply served.

>2)  The names of animals, the Gods etc had such a strong flavour that they
>created a really intense fantasy atmosphere.

Some folk consider the names, etc. the hardest part of Tekumel. I love 'em!

>Our group then moved onto D&D which was interesting but far too rules
>bound and
>limited (I am also a wargamer so I am quite happy with rules but in the right
>place and in my view they were irrelevant to good fantasy gaming) so I started
>to GM a different group assembled to play Petal including a few other D&D
>rebels.  After one successful experience we always held the games in a pub
>lubricated with lots of beer (no pretzels).  The aim, which was pretty
>successful with a very mixed group (many with no other gaming experience), was
>to maximise flavour and atmosphere and keep it fun.  No one except me saw the
>book, and the map was fairly secret.  The box cover and pictures were the main
>stimulants to imagination (apart from the beer).  We always played foreigners
>who always knew their place at the bottom of the Tsolyani pile  -  quite
>literally in the average Jakalla flop house.

We now play Tekumel without any but the simplest rules. The story's the thing.

>The next EPT artefact was the infamous Book of Ebon Bindings, which had a
>serious effect on play  -  we found the strange twists of the Professor's
>imagination and his beautiful turns of phrase hugely conducive to evocative
>play, The Scythe of Flame and the Lord of the Legions of the Despairing Dead
>being two favourites.  Making the party or members thereof chant out the
>supplications to Ruutlanesh in a crowded pub had a particularly gratifying
>effect.  (In passing I should confess we also tried D&D again inspired by the
>original City State of the Invincible Overlord.  By deleting the magic system,
>the combat system and every other system except character generation, by
>creating a suite of gods along the lines of Tekumel's  -  I have to confess I
>purloined Ssrykarum and made him a God of Blood Boltered Battle

Lord Srykarum gave me a skeletal grin when I showed this to him. He only
pointed out that his name begins with a simple "English-like" /s/ and not
the retroflex /ss/. There's a paragraph in the source books about the
pronunciation of /y/ -- really a German umlaut u with two dots, which my
e-mail can't show.

>moving the action outdoors in a semi-coherent mediaeval society it turned into
>an excellent game.)  Combined with the Swords & Glory Volumes 1 & 2 from GS it
>helped to develop a "mythic" style of play where the aim was to use the maps,
>the names and the hints of mysteries and strange places to wrap them into a
>legend rather than to indulge in the niceties of Tsolyani society.  Key
>features were:
>Players remained foreigners so they were bottom of the social heap at all
>times
>and were always pawns of greater forces, ranging from Gods to the Tsolyani
>officer who conscripted them into a moat filling Tsurum.  This led to a
>certain
>loathing of the arrogant Tsolyani which was only mitigated when they
>fought the
>Fascists (I think an accurate use of the term) of Muugalavya or were used by
>the devious Livyani

Even when my players become high generals, senior priests -- and in one
case the wife of an Imperial Prince == they tend to remain pawns! Alas, so
do we in this world here!

>Various devices were then used to make this worth playing and put them
>into the
>most interesting parts of Tekumel, like making them part of the working out of
>an ancient Poem of Destiny, putting them through demonic gates etc.
>Their actions would often have significant effects (like causing the fall of
>Khirgar, which delighted them in view of their treatment by the Tsolyani) but
>without it being their aim.

On our own Tekumel Plane Khirgar never fell. The Yan Koryani couldn't get
there fast enough with sufficient men and materiel.

>Player aims varied  -  for example the main aim of one was to learn more
>of the
>Lament to the Wheel of Black, which was granted as he helped to work out a
>Qonic Poem of Destiny.

I'd send him down to the scribe's copying bazaar: they have copies of some
of these texts for sale, since they are used in the temple schools. Aside
from the Tsolyani recensions, there are various Engsvanyali versions, a
Mu'ugalavyani version, and bits and pieces of Yan Koryani and Salarvyani
variants as well.  The ancient Bednalljan version is available in a few
libraries but is quite obscure. I'd advise your player to start elsewhere.

>Players never saw sourcebooks or rules (though they did read Man of Gold and
>Flamesong);  I was the only EPT GM (I played in our {d&d} games) so knowledge
>could not carry over from GM to player.  The effects of spells had to be
>worked
>out by trial and error since only the name was known (ie the Affable Blight of
>Lord Uni);  each mission or session would normally start with a "Rumourpak"  -
>a collection of assorted facts, mostly collected from the Sourcebook, plus a
>few things relevant to the mission at hand.  Some would be serious ie
>"Metlunel
>III, Seal Emperor 1407-58 was known, for reasons unknown, as "He Who Thirsts",
>which was the key to the whole mission, others less so such as The Priestly
>Party are incensed following the public consumption, yet again, of priestesses
>of the Blue Goddess by Ahoggya from the Legion of Guruggma while passing
>through Bey Sy."

You have a great imagination! These adventures sound like fun!

>Though we moved out of the pub into houses as we got older and more job bound
>we always tried to keep the sessions convivial, and did not accept players
>plotting against each other.  We found one or two players would hog the GM's
>time and the atmosphere would sour.

Similar experiences here -- except that my players do not drink during a
game (except for an occasional bottle of beer or stout). I don't drink
myself, and only one hold-out still smokes (I *used* to turn the air blue
with cigar smoke). What my players and I do best now is *eat*: junk food,
chips, cookies, and candy -- and "drink" soda, coffee, etc. Everyone has to
have some vices...

>The net effect of all this was that I did have to work pretty hard,  know as
>much about Tekumel as possible and try to create a coherent legend-like story
>line based on my vision of the Prof's world.  Clearly it was not "realistic"
>Tekumel but I think it captured a lot of the feeling of Tekumel.  The players
>could absorb the story, soak up the world and contribute hugely to a "fun"
>experience without fussing about rules or trying to dominate the game
>background to inflate their egos.  We found that when it worked well, which it
>did most of the time, it made for very memorable gaming.

Sounds to me like you did a *great* job.

Regards,

Phil
-----
Chris Davis      Moderator, The Blue Room        blueroom@prin.edu
The Blue Room's FTP site:  http://nexus.prin.edu or  ftp://nexus.prin.edu
Available 24 hours a day, except when my PC is down, or unavailable.

//886

[Moderator's Note:  John Schippers shares some questions and answers the  ]
[                   Professor provided for the UCon activities on the     ]
[                   subject of the Pariah deities.                        ]

>1) Tsolyani society permits a great cultural/ethical diversity. In a
>society that permits worshippers of Sarku to raise the undead  and
>worshippers of Vimuhla to commit human sacrifice, what is it about the
>worshippers of the pariah gods that is so unpalatable?What cultural tenets
>do they violate? Presumably some worship still goes on,  what form does it
>take? In essence how does this worship offend the sensibilities of lan
>individuals? I need to create an atmosphere for the players and promote
>player understanding that the pariah gods are "other" or "taboo" from
>Tsolyani culture.

It is not so much that the Pariah Deities *violate* cultural norms and
standards. It is their ancient hostility to the Pantheon of Pavar (to which
most of the Five Empires gives some sort of allegiance) and their stated
objective of wresting power and control from the present holders. They also
have the unintelligible (to humans) goal of consuming all matter, all
energy, and all else on the Planes they conquer.  They don't just want
domination for themselves -- they want *nothing* to exist in the Universe
*outside of* themselves!  Rather like the "cosmic Monad" proposed by some
philosopher (can't remember who). They seem to derive pleasure/sustenance
from "eating" whole Planes, but perhaps this is a human perception and thus
limited. They have no interest in human scruples or morality, and their
response to human events is always cold and calculating. If they need you,
you live; if they don't, you get eaten, no matter how loyal or useful you
may have been in the past.

>2) Obviously the pariah gods must have something to offer  You once went
>on record, stating that they offered power to individuals. These
>individuals gambled that they would get power in their lifetime and the
>time frame of the pariah god's goals made this consequence not really an
>issue for most mortal servants. I am curious as what kind of power they
>can offer humans. If the answer is as simple as spell knowledge, secret
>society contacts, etc.  you really don't need to say too much as I have a
>great body of inspirational materials to work from, but I suspect that the
>pariah dieties might give worshippers something that would give pause to
>even the worshippers of Sarku or Wuru.

The Pariah Deities offer whatever the prospective worshipper seems to
desire: life everlasting (often a trick: try having fun when you are
500,000 years old -- and show every moment of it!); spell powers; wealth;
temporal power over some state or group (this often requires preparation so
that the group agrees to serve); religious power -- high priests of some of
the standard temples have been caught performing the Pariah rituals;
undiluted hedonistic ecstasy (which annoys Ladies Dlamelish and Hrihayal no
end); passage to many of the Planes of Otherspave and dull lives there in
different bodies and species; and many, many more "goodies." None of these
things is unique to the Pariah Deities: they do offer it quickly,
efficiently, and in quantity. But, like the hideous drug, Zu'ur, there is
no turning back: once you're in, you never get out. The hope of new recruit
is that these delights should never end; the hope of those who have enjoyed
them for an age or two is that they should end at once, when the Pariahs
seize the Plane and consume it all!  Offer an American fifty million
dollars, a Porsche or two, a bevy of fashion models, and all the treasures
of the earth, and he'll enjoy it for a while until it becomes boring,
humdrum, and without value...

>3) Finally, my gut instinct is that the interaction between the "One
>Other" and Ksarul is quite important. He put the final barrier up around
>the sleeping Lord of the Blue Room after Dormoron. There was a temple to
>the One Other close to Humakuyal that was destroyed by Trakonel I,
>coincidence? Can you comment?

This is true. The One Other is more "social" with the Gods of Tekumel than
the Goddess of the Pale Bone, who is rather a nasty piece of work. The One
Who Is tends to remain alone and remote and takes little part, even in the
rituals of his (its) followers.

The temple you mention was destroyed as part of Trakonel's major campaign.
He saw two many good citizens slipping into servitude to these beings, and
he did his best to stamp out their shrines, ceremonies, power bases, etc.
etc.  He perceived their worship as degrading: toadying to deities who in
the end would happily eat you! The temples to the Pariah Deities (mostly to
the Goddess,some to the One Other, only a few to the One Who Is) were not
large or elaborate architecturally. Some -- as you will still find on the
Isle of Eyes in the southern seas -- are more like open rings of great
monolithic menhirs, like Stonehenge. Others were part of the underground
labyrinths. There is still a shrine under the City of the Dead outside of
Bey Su; cf. the "Adventures on Tekumel" series. The shrine near Hmakuyal
was comparatively larger and better organised than the others, with local
peasants paying tithes of agricultural produce and money, regular
hierarchies of priests/priestesses, and more typical Tsolyani-style
bureaucracy. Exactly what was done there, nobody knows. Emperor Trakonel's
senior high general, Tenchai hiVriddi, refused to enter the innermost
shrines himself but had them sealed off. Some say he used priests of
various faiths to fill the labyrinths with several types of poisonous gas
first. No one ever spoke of these shrines again on pain of death, although
it is said that at least one of them is still operating...

We know that there are still small cells of worshippers of the Pariah
Deities in Tsolyanu and Mu'ugalavya. Some say that the city of Dlash in
Livyanu is a major headquarters for them, and there are half-ruined temples
down on the coninent to the far southwest, in Naqsai territory. The Undying
Wizards (Thomar, Subedim, et al) are currently having a hard time keeping
the minions of these beings away from various Planes and time-lines. My
players are active this endeavour.

Sincerely,
Phil
-----
Chris Davis      Moderator, The Blue Room        blueroom@prin.edu
The Blue Room's FTP site:  http://nexus.prin.edu or  ftp://nexus.prin.edu
Available 24 hours a day, except when my PC is down, or unavailable.

//887

[Moderator's Note:  Eric Johnson-DeBaufre asks for details on Tumissa.     ]

I am planning to run my first ever Tekumel campaign (yahoo!) and am looking 
to set the action in Tumissa.  However, I find myself needing a few details 
about the city and its inhabitants.

[Moderator's Note:  Eric, there is a gif of Tumissa on the web site.  You  ]
[                   should check it out.                                   ]

Reading through the first S+G book (the Different Worlds reprint) I notice 
that "Tumissa sits upon the shores of a volcanic crater lake" and that the 
city's temples and palaces are of reddish sandstone (p.57).  I also recall 
that in _The Man of Gold_ the Lady Eyil hiVriyen came from the city of 
Tumissa, that her clan (the Green Kirtle Clan) was fairly powerful in 
Tumissa and that they were friendly with the Clan of the Grey Cloak.  In 
addition, Eyil mentions that the temple of Thumis in Tumissa contains a 
"clockwork simulacrum said to have been constructed by the wizard Thomar 
himself" (p.361).

I was wondering if anyone out there (including the Professor) could give me 
a few details about the city.  What is this clockwork simulacrum like and 
who is Thomar?  What other peculiar mechanical, architectural, botanical, 
etc. wonders might one encounter in Tumissa?  What are the major clans, 
and/or prominent personalities of Tumissa?  Anything at all would be 
appreciated.  Thanks.

[Moderator's Note:  Thomar is one of they Undying Wizards at the College at]
[                   the end of time (see message 783).                     ]

Eric Johnson-DeBaufre
-----
Chris Davis      Moderator, The Blue Room        blueroom@prin.edu
The Blue Room's FTP site:  http://nexus.prin.edu or  ftp://nexus.prin.edu
Available 24 hours a day, except when my PC is down, or unavailable.

//888

[Moderator's Note:  David Bozzini inquires about digitally recording the ]
[                   Professor as a kind of guide to pronunciation of the ]
[                   Tsolyani Language.                                   ]

I recently subscribed to the Blue Room mailing list, but have seen no
messages yet, nor have I received the archive of previous messages.
Therefore, I don't yet know whether my question has been answered, but
I will ask it now lest I forget.

[Moderator's Note:  You should have a bunch now!                         ]

I am wondering whether anyone has digitally recorded Professor
Barker's voice as he prounounces the various sounds for the various
languages of Tekumel, and made these available as .WAV or RealAudio
files?

I don't know about the other members of this list, but I have a hard
time understanding how to pronounce certain sounds and words, mostly
because I have no one to demonstrate to me what the sounds are like.
It would be great if the professor or another person with expertise
could make short sound files available so that we could all hear how
to pronounce words like Ssu or Hlutrgu, for example.

I have never met a Welshman, and so have not had the opportunity of
hearing the Welsh "ll." I work with some people who were born in
India, but when I ask them for the Sanskrit "s" (represented by "ss"
in the books), I'm not sure I'm getting what Professor Barker has in
mind.

Thanks.
-----
Chris Davis      Moderator, The Blue Room        blueroom@prin.edu
The Blue Room's FTP site:  http://nexus.prin.edu or  ftp://nexus.prin.edu
Available 24 hours a day, except when my PC is down, or unavailable.

//889

[Moderator's Note:  Andrew Lorince comments on beginning GMs.            ]
[                   I have a few more stragglers after this message, but ]
[                   have numerous questions to send to the Professor.  It]
[                   would be helpful in the future if you didn't send    ]
[                   big long lists of questions for the Professor.  Send ]
[                   in a couple that you really want answered, and then  ]
[                   send in the next few, and repeat the process until   ]
[                   all your questions get answered.  Thanks.            ]

Having been in the situation of being a begining game master my self,
I can understand some of the problems. When I first started offering
to run games at cons my self in late 80's or early 90's my first
thoughts were weather to plan an adventure in detail or not.
You must remember at this time I had only participated in a few demos
run by , I think, Adventure Games personal. I had sit in on a number of
Phil's secessions as an observer while visiting Minneapolis. and played
in afew games run by by Phil and Curtis Scott at other cons.
I finally decided I didn't like preplanned adventures and started
offering unplanned events.

I now offer games at cons that advertise that even the gm doesn't know
what will happen, characters are generated, I look at their skills and
decide how best to use them. now I use a simplified AOT system,
previously a simplified s&g system was used.
I start the ball rolling by assigning the group a sketchy mission e.g.
your temple commandant wants you to go looking for some artifact in the
under world, or your cousin in the clan needs some special herbs to
replenish his medicianal stocks. I generaly do not tell them any
specifics, its up to them to find out specifics which usually requires
some inducements, the chief scribe may look at you dumbfounded if you
offer too large inducement for a minor task.

The primary requirment for this type of gaming is knowledge of the
area you are in.  That's why I usually stick to Fenul and Chaigari.
The best games have involved at least one person familiar with Tekumel
and others who will follow his lead, then I can just go with the flow
even if the party takes me into some compleatly different line.
I have also used a "character manual" to some effect. This simply
involves a player stating that they which to consult the manual and
stepping out of character to request information on what they might
know in this situation or what is the appropiate inducement to the
situation. And then going back into character and continuing with this
game.

good luck
yuninash hi'ancholbel
governor of fenul
-----
Chris Davis      Moderator, The Blue Room        blueroom@prin.edu
The Blue Room's FTP site:  http://nexus.prin.edu or  ftp://nexus.prin.edu
Available 24 hours a day, except when my PC is down, or unavailable.

//890

[Moderator's Note:  A note to everyone from Professor Barker.               ]

Dear friends,

"Happy New year!" or, as the Tsolyani might say, "Razhin laisan nalun/ (the
/u/ of /nalun/ being an "umlaut" with two dots on the/u/, but impossible on
this computer -- I used to use "y" for this phoneme). One can also use a
suffix formation (cf. the grammar, General Attitude Suffixes): /laisan
nalunrazh/. People do not add the usual "nonhonorific suffix (/-ikh/)  to
/nalun/)/

Actually. the custom is to visit friends, exchange little gifts, drink a
glass of wine, chumetl, etc. together, and say /chalukolumel/ "For the
Emperor." When Dhich'une was emperor, somebody changed this salutation to:
/chalukolumebabar/ "For the Empire" -- sort of a despairing "God help us!

Regards,
Phil
-----
Chris Davis      Moderator, The Blue Room        blueroom@prin.edu
The Blue Room's FTP site:  http://nexus.prin.edu or  ftp://nexus.prin.edu
Available 24 hours a day, except when my PC is down, or unavailable.

//891

[Moderator's Note:  Professor Barker answers a question about the use of ]
[                   Engineers and Architects by the Temples.             ]

>I had occasion recently to wonder about engineers and architects in
>Tsolyanu.  Given the great constructions, it must be a noble and
>relatively popular profession.  Certainly each Temple must have its own,
>to construct and maintain their many sacred places, but are there clans
>that specialize in design or construction?  Or particular Temples that
>offer the best expertise?  Ketengku's priests would seem likely
>candidates, but from my reading of Mitlanyal, his aspects seem to be
>devoted entirely to healing.  Perhaps there is some other unmentioned
>aspect who is patron of architects or builders?

>Thanks,
>George Hammond

As far as I know, there are architects/engineers in many of the higher
clans. Golden Sunburst, Cloak of Azure Gems, Grey Cloak, and a dozen others
all have renowned practitioners in their ranks. Perhaps the reason that no
single clan has a monopoly on these people is that each clan and religious
sect prefers its own people and not experts from some other -- possibly
hostile -- clan/temple. You wouldn't want a serious rival clan to have
plans to your buildings and secret treasuries and passages. Usually these
specialists work only for their own clan-brothers/coreligionists, but there
are exceptions. The Imperium hires engineers and architects rather
carefully, taking religion into full account. Thus, for example, a team
working on the Sakbe Road near the City of Sarku recently hired labourers
and experts from Sarku clans and temples all around the country. This is
deliberate, with considerable fanfare.

I can't think of a "patron" Aspect for architects or engineers right now,
aside from the usual deities who specialise in learning. I suspect that
there might be Aspects that take charge of these skills, but the Tsolyani
may consider them too diffuse and widespread to be "covered" by any one
deity. Experts are respected, but the professions of engineer and architect
are not all that highly valued and respected. They are just "there":
important and respected, but not high "noble" skills: rather like the
castle builders of the European Middle Ages.

Regards,
Phil
-----
Chris Davis      Moderator, The Blue Room        blueroom@prin.edu
The Blue Room's FTP site:  http://nexus.prin.edu or  ftp://nexus.prin.edu
Available 24 hours a day, except when my PC is down, or unavailable.

//892

[Moderator's Note:  Professor Barker responds to the first group of miscel-]
[                   laneous questions from Martin Howard.                  ]

>1.Who, or what? Is Gorun, the undead priest of Sarku; mentioned in
>War of Wizards game. Some form of Jajgi? or something else entirely?

He was a rather famous expert on the Undead back in the reign of Emperor
Durumu "the Copper Blade of Sarku," in c. 1750 A.S. I chose him to be a
part of the game because I needed somebody like him. It is said that he
went on to become one of the Undead and may still be active (not strictly
"alive") in one of the Underworlds somewhere..

>2.How would one classify 'The Beyond' in the Sunuz language, if
>making reference to the planes beyond one's own? Would it be classified
>as an Other-Planar object, an Unknown object or as a Plural object?

Other-Planar.

>3.The Bednalljans called The One Other Aikh Amom [The One Other], The
>One Who Is, they called Aikh Halom [the one [who] exists] and the
>Goddess of the Pale Bone, they called Mshek But what does it mean?
>Could you provide a similar literal translation?

I have never seen a translation of the Goddess' Bednalljan name. It seems
to be a survival from some earlier language.

Regards,
Phil
-----
Chris Davis      Moderator, The Blue Room        blueroom@prin.edu
The Blue Room's FTP site:  http://nexus.prin.edu or  ftp://nexus.prin.edu
Available 24 hours a day, except when my PC is down, or unavailable.

//893

[Moderator's Note:  Numerous folks add to the thread about Chlen hide   ]
[                   weapons.                                            ]

Chaz Tompkins writes.

Many years ago I had the privilege to study fencing under a former member 
of the U.S. Olympic team.  At one point he mentioned that the shift from 
broadswords to rapiers was not a brief episode of dilettantism before the 
adoption of the gun, but a genuine improvement in warcraft based upon 
advances in metallurgy.

I of course found this a little hard to believe. Conan, after all, would 
rather be in a mini-skirt and pasties than brandishing a glorified toothpick.

Some years later I joined the SCA and on a lark tried a bout or two of foil 
vs.  broadsword.  I was stunned to find that in single combat the foil ruled.  
At one point, I was up 11 touches to none.  It is a little hard to account 
for variables such as armour, press in melee, etc. but I tell you what, it 
does get one's attention when 4/11 touches leave a dent in your mask, one 
inch in front of your left eyeball.

It is also worth observing that in at least two historical sequences in 
our own sphere, bigger did not prove to be better.  Both the Romans and 
the Zulus found that close formations using short weapons (thrusting 
swords and spears respectively) made mincemeat out of Conan and his ilk.

A curiousity from another sequence: the obsidian edged, wooden weapons 
used by the Aztecs were rather more potent than one might suppose.  
According to one account a native warrior once struck off the head of a 
horse with a single blow.

Make of it what you will, but I for one would not snicker at that line of 
men dressed in red, decked with feathers, and wiggling fancy swords.
--

Joe Saul writes.

>All of this is true and correct, to my understanding. An Aztec Maquahuitl
>(a club set with glakes of sharp obsidian) can do a horrendous wound.

Too true.  My parents are physical anthropologists who divide their time
between historical research and modern forensic work.  One of my Dad's
long-time slides is a photo of a Maya skull which has had a thick flap lifted
up by one of those obsidian clubs.  (Interestingly, the guy lived; the flap
has healed around the edges.  But it went all the way through to the brain,
and it's quite a large flap.)  Don't underestimate those things.

Joe
--

Ian Atkinson writes.

A kendo enthusiast once told me about pieces of straw being embedded in
tree trunks during typhoons as a way of emphasising penetration through
speed and technique, not strength, in swordsmanship. 

The Japanese choice to emphasise speed and to de-emphasise mass was a
cultural one, just as the European choice to go the other way was also
cultural.  Armies are inevitably expressions of the cultures that spawn
them, and Tsolyanu is no exception.

It is conceivable that a Chlen hide weapon, being nearly as hard as a
metallic one and much lighter, would give its wielder such a great
advantage in swiftness of parrying, feinting, etc, as to actually be
superior when used by a person of skill. 

A low-skill soldier fighting a low-skill opponent who just stands still
and waits for it may do better with a big heavy slow weapon but the
Tsolyani, like the medieval Japanese, tend towards forces of elite noble
swordsmen.  Chlen hide swords make sense in Tsolyanu.

Historically, swords tend (I think) to be as long as possible within the
limits of the user's strength and the brittleness of the steel they're
made of, and that metallurgy varied greatly between periods and cultures. 
Maybe non-enchanted Tsolyani steel is not very good by Earth standards.

Ian Atkinson.
--

Chris Vickers writes.

Physics of weapons
I have a graduate degree in astronomy and know some physics. I also spent
some years wearing armour and hitting people with wooden sticks. There are
certain limits to the weight of weapons if they are going to be effective
and the definition of effective is going to vary with the armour of your
opponent. While it is true that a lighter weapon moves faster than a heavier
weapon, you are still accelerating your arm as well so it will not be direct
correlation; ie half the weapon weight will not double weapon speed and some
where around a pound or so is probably the lightest cutting weapon you would
to use against armoured opponents. At the other end of the I used a 3 1/2
half pound one handed mace and while you do not have to swing that fast to
do damage, if you are too slow you wind up leaving your arm extended for
being chopped off if it is too slow on the return. It also can cause
injuries if the weapon has too much momentum. Chlen weapons can be designed
that fit easily in that range. Apart from metal cores, sand at 2.9 grams per
cubic centimeter could also be used to add weight to the blade and pommel
weights and basket hilts used to adjust its balance. As far as mechanics of
gaming is concerned, any system which allows for the subtle weight
differences discussed as well as undiscussed ones (ie bladed weapons are
airfoils and all sorts of deceptive blows which change direction with a
slight twist of the wrist are possible) is probably also unplayable.
-----
Chris Davis      Moderator, The Blue Room        blueroom@prin.edu
The Blue Room's FTP site:  http://nexus.prin.edu or  ftp://nexus.prin.edu
Available 24 hours a day, except when my PC is down, or unavailable.

//894

[Moderator's Note:  I have combined the discussion of Dogs, Cats, Cows, and]
[                   any other Tekumelani animal under this subject.        ]

John Smith writes.

While we are on the subject of dogs on Tekumel I would like to point out
an interesting bit of feline lore.  I suppose most people are aware that
some cats are born with extra toes.  These are called "polydactyls" and
it is a common spontaneous mutation.  It is also dominant, which means
that with relatively little effort you could create a regular breed of
polydactyl cats.  I know people who are polydactyl enthusiasts and I
don't know why someone hasn't started a breeding program yet.   The
intriguing thing is that in some cases the extra toes form fully
opposable thumbs!  

Now consider what would happen to a true-breeding line of cats with
manual dexterity over 60,000 years.  Even without genetic engineering we
could have what amounted to a "semi" intelligent race.  Considering how
much has been done with genetic tampering in Tekumel's pre-history we
could easily expect some travellers to hop out of their tube car into
the City of the Cat-People.  

[Moderator's Note:  It took 3 million years in Red Dwarf!!  :)           ]

John
--

Joe Saul writes.

>JUST what the epidemiologically isolated population of Tsolyanu
>needs. 

But *are* they epidemiologically isolated?  They're isolated from Earth, but
anything available in any of the planes of existence accessible from Tekumel
has probably wound up there at one time or another.  (Hmm.  Maybe those
"silver suits" are biohazard protection...)

It's worth noting that, although diseases carried by the Europeans caused
massive casualties in the New World, the reverse did *not* occur.  Anyone on
the list know why?  I don't, offhand, and the answer might be relevant here.


> (The dragon, I figure to be sufficiently alien in biochemistry not
> to be a problem. Like fish: You can eat fish raw, because they don't carry
> anything we can catch.)

Actually, they do -- parasites like fish tapeworms, for instance -- but not
as much as something closer to us would carry.

Joe
--

Leonard Erickson writes.

>>"Some of you will recall that once a lady D-n-D player insisted on
>>transporting a dragon and a hobbit over to Tekumel... I think the
>>hobbit eventually died of loneliness, but the dragon might still be alive."

>If the lady's -character- was also, she ought to have been tried
>for attempted crimes against humanity. Within five years of contact with
>Europeans, something like 90% of native Hawaiians on all the Islands were
>dead. TB, cholera, smallpox-- one horrific plague after another scythed
>through their population. They spread like prairie fires... and destroyed
>just as widely.

>JUST what the epidemiologically isolated population of Tsolyanu
>needs. God knows WHAT pandemics that 'hobbit' was carrying-- every garment
>on him was probably crawling with death.

>(The dragon, I figure to be sufficiently alien in biochemistry not
>to be a problem. Like fish: You can eat fish raw, because they don't carry
>anything we can catch.)

We can get some parasites from them. But those are easily spotted.

But both the "D&D" world *and* Tekumel have sorcerous means to deal
with unknown diseases. This makes a big difference.

Leonard Erickson
--

Alan Brain writes.

> What would happen to dogs after five thousand years? I think the
> question would not be over thickness of coat or possible draft use, but
> rather how many languages they spoke.

Renyu. Obvious, really...
-- 

Chris Vickers writes.

Selective breeding of dogs for specific purposes is old or at least
predating scientific method. The vicuna of South America looks considerably
different from the llama and alpaca which it is thought that pre-colubian
South Americans bred from it. There are substantial differences in size and
wool between llamas and alpacas for that matter. The Quechua were using up
to 150 different varieties of potato when Europeans arrived as well as many
different varieties of quinoa (a seed grain richer in complete protein than
soy) and gourds. These changes took place in far less time than man,
tinaliya, and other sentients have been on Tekumel. The actual genetic
differences are not that great, however. Apart from mechanical difficulties,
every breed of dog is cross fertile with every other breed and posibly even
with wolves so true speciation (individuals not cross fertile or hybrids not
viable or neuter like mules) may take as long or longer than man has been on
Tekumel.
-----
Chris Davis      Moderator, The Blue Room        blueroom@prin.edu
The Blue Room's FTP site:  http://nexus.prin.edu or  ftp://nexus.prin.edu
Available 24 hours a day, except when my PC is down, or unavailable.

//895

[Moderator's Note:  Joe Saul and Chris Vickers comment on the Hlaka eyes  ]
[                   thread and on genetics in general.                    ]

Joe Saul writes.

It's also important to remember something about evolutionary theory:  a trait
does not have to be adaptively positive in order to be passed on.  It just
has to not be adaptively negative.

Having three eyes doesn't have to *help* the Hlaka (over having two); it just
has to not hurt it.

Joe
--

Chris Vickers writes.

Human vision has a range of binocular vision of about 120 degrees without
moving your neck but moving your eyes and peripheral vision of about 190
degrees in a horizontal plane. It has no binocular vision in a vertical
plane and maybe 150 degrees of vision vertically. I think from the
illustrations Hlaka have up to 180 degrees of binocular vision and 240
degrees of periperal vision in the horizontal plane as well as some
binocular vision vertically. Hlaka should probably be more dificult to
surprise or ambush in daylight than humans.
-----
Chris Davis      Moderator, The Blue Room        blueroom@prin.edu
The Blue Room's FTP site:  http://nexus.prin.edu or  ftp://nexus.prin.edu
Available 24 hours a day, except when my PC is down, or unavailable.

//896

[Moderator's Note:  Steve lets the cat out of the bag, but Professor       ]
[                   Barker doesn't believe him.  :)                        ]

>I tried keeping things from my players, but I never was successful.
>Sometimes when I went out to the bathroom I'd return to see my sourcebooks
>placed at slightly different angles than when I left. Hmm. -- Oh, I can't
>say that people peeked; perhaps some god intervened, or a non-player
>character was overcome by curiosity? (By the bye, I don't believe in
>"non-player" characters. On Tekumel *everyone* is a "character," all real
>and each the same as the others; it is the noncorporeal "player characters"
>who are mythical and fantastic. Reality is thus amply served.

Actually, professor, your players *did* peek. One of your playes once
confessed to me at a gaming convention that he'd once broken into one of
your filing cabinets and learned what the cataclysm was that hurled Tekumel
into a pocket dimension. Of course, he *might* have been spinning a yarn.
But he seemed pretty earnest about it...

-- Steve

Professor Barker's reply.

Dear Chris and Steve,

I doubt this story. My filing cabinets are way up on the third floor, and
the person woujld have had to get past my wife and my two dogs (in the old
days -- dogs deceased now; wife still operating). Unless I go with a guest,
too, it is  hard to sneak past this entourage of guardians. The next
problem for the interloper is more crucial: I don't keep my Tekumel secrets
in *any* filing cabinet or file-folder. Whatever I have written down is
elsewhere. Furthermore, I do not even have some of these "secrets" *written
down*; although I know them and can fit my players' adventures into the
world structure, I just hate having to write things down that I may decide
to change later. I always intended  to write some of these things down, but
I just never got to it.

Sorry to scotch a great rumour. Probably made the "player-snooper" feel
really good to brag about "knowing Tekumel's darkest screts," but it is
quite unlikely. I have enough trouble fending off my brilliant players who
work their way through the logic, mystery, and deliberate hoodwinking and
flummery to discover some of my "secrets" that lie in plain sight. Some of
our Thursday night sessions consist largely of arguing theories and talking
about evidence and conclusions. Various players end up being bored by this,
and I have to return everybody's attention to the game ("Oh, look, folks! A
horde of Hokun wielding glass spears has just come hurtling over the
horizon!")

Chris (and many others) can verifty what I have said here. Your
"player-snooper" may have indeed looked at the stats on non-player
character cards, or peered at a map of some part of Tekumel (all I have are
available to anyone who wants to see them). "Secrets" -- no way.

Hope I am not raining on your parade!

[Moderator's Note:   I haven't ever seen Phil go to a file cabinet.  I    ]
[                    wouldn't even know where it would be.  The cards are ]
[                    sitting in the basement as Phil said, though.  While ]
[                    I have been in the 3rd floor office alone, working on]
[                    Phil's computer, he doesn't leave often or for long. ]

Regards,
Phil
-----
Chris Davis      Moderator, The Blue Room        blueroom@prin.edu
The Blue Room's FTP site:  http://nexus.prin.edu or  ftp://nexus.prin.edu
Available 24 hours a day, except when my PC is down, or unavailable.

//897

[Moderator's Note:  Brett Slocum and the Professor respond to the idea of ]
[                   making a new pronunciation tape.                      ]

Brett Slocum writes.

>I am wondering whether anyone has digitally recorded Professor
>Barker's voice as he prounounces the various sounds for the various
>languages of Tekumel, and made these available as .WAV or RealAudio
>files?

I have a WAV file made from an old tape that originally was included in the 
Tsolyani Language books on my web site 
(http://www.io.com/~slocum/tekumel.html). Unfortunately, the sound quality is 
pretty poor, and it's rather long. I have a feeling it was recorded on one of 
those portable tape recorders from the 70s. If someone in the Thursday Night 
Group could get a decent tape recorder into Phil's basement and convince him to 
make a new pronunciation tape, I would be in their eternal debt. And have him 
include all the major God names, country names, major city names, etc.

[Moderator's Note:  Brett's file seems to work on some machines, and not on]
[                   others.  On my PC, I can get it to work, but on my Mac ]
[                   (or any Mac) I have never heard of anyone having any   ]
[                   success. (The sound quality is pretty dismal though.)  ]

Fortunately, my Tekumel formative years were spent in Craig Smith's campaign at 
The Little Tin Soldier Shoppe with occasional stints with Phil, and I have an 
ear for sounds, so my pronunciation is pretty good. It also helped my when I 
struggled with Welsh names while reading the Mabinogian. You think Tsolyani is 
tough, try a language where the sounds don't have much to do with the letters.
Pwyll (the main character of the First Branch of the Mabinogi) is pronounced 
sort of like a stone splashing into a lake ('Pwilsh', sort of).

Brett Slocum  --  slocum@io.com  --  ICQ #13032903
--

Professor Barker writes.

>I am wondering whether anyone has digitally recorded Professor
>Barker's voice as he prounounces the various sounds for the various
>languages of Tekumel, and made these available as .WAV or RealAudio
>files?

I did produce a mediocre-quality recorded tape of Tsolyani pronunciation.
This was many, many years ago, and I no longer have a copy -- that I can
find, that is. I think perhaps Brett Slocum (see his website) may still
have one.

>I don't know about the other members of this list, but I have a hard
>time understanding how to pronounce certain sounds and words, mostly
>because I have no one to demonstrate to me what the sounds are like.
>It would be great if the professor or another person with expertise
>could make short sound files available so that we could all hear how
>to pronounce words like Ssu or Hlutrgu, for example.

I wouldn't mind recording a tape or computer piece for the list, but I
don't know how to do it or have the needed equipment. The software exists
for downloading on various web sites, of course, but I have poor luck
trying to figure out how to make it work. (I still have a half-dozen
"attachments" that open up to reveal pages and pages of unintelligible
"code." Any six-year-old child could read them easily, but I lack the
talent!)

>I have never met a Welshman, and so have not had the opportunity of
>hearing the Welsh "ll." I work with some people who were born in
>India, but when I ask them for the Sanskrit "s" (represented by "ss"
>in the books), I'm not sure I'm getting what Professor Barker has in
>mind.

I could describe these sounds in phonetic terms for you, but it would be
like describing the joys of Cobol to me. You can't learn it until you
already have it...!

If I figure out how to record a computer essay, I'll happily oblige. Sadly,
though, I am told that the little microphone that comes with my Macintosh
Centris 650 (now nearly a certified antique) is a tinny as "His Master's
Voice." I can't afford to go in for fancier equipment.

Regards,
Phil
-----
Chris Davis      Moderator, The Blue Room        blueroom@prin.edu
The Blue Room's FTP site:  http://nexus.prin.edu or  ftp://nexus.prin.edu
Available 24 hours a day, except when my PC is down, or unavailable.

//898

[Moderator's Note:  Andrew Lorince comments on Michael Schwartz's anonymous]
[                   description of Chaigari.  The anonymous writer also    ]
[                   reveals himself!                                       ]

Andrew Lorince writes.

After reading the article by Michael Schwartz I delved into my
archives and came up with the following:

1 I never developed the area around hekkelu to any great extent
detailing only hexs 3625 and 3629 on the old E. P. T. maps.
suprising in hex 3625 I found no iron. hex 3629 which is on the
Kilalammu border showed 10% of its resources in iron.

2 I have only detailed fringes of hex row 3500.

3 In the area that i did detail within 3 hexs of Fenul the only
significant iron deposits were actually in SSuyal and not very
productive (I wonder why?)

4 Alltogether I have developed, to different degrees, some 20 maps on
the scale of NE Frontier covering the "Eastern Marches " of the empire
and parts of Salarvya, Sssuyal and Pechano.

At some point I hope to get these in a form that can be easily
reproduced. currently they are pencil drawn topicgraphic style maps.

5 I can't comment on the geology section outside of the plate
tectonics sugested seem somewhat plausable.

The rest of the document seems pretty reasonable considering I have
not provided any one with much information on resources.
Perhaps I did mention something of large iron artifacts that were sent
on to Bey Su however.

yuninash hi'ancholbel
Governor of Fenul

P. S. This might have some bearing on the reality of Tekumel theme also.
--

Chris Vickers writes.

I have been catching up on my Blue Room e-mail lately and was interested to
see some work I had done as campaign background some 16 years ago reprinted
as anonymous. I was living in Calgary at the time and made a photocopy for
Bill Hartley who also ran a campaign of original EPT.
As I recall, Bill said something about sending it off to  Prof Barker and
that is the probable provenience of the copy that Michael Schwartz found.
AS you may be able to tell, I was working as a geophysicist in the oil
industry then, although my university training was in astronomy.
I now live in Victoria but still run my campaign once a week ( and play in
another campaign once a week which has been running since 1975). My Chaigari
has changed with time and now has iron in it. The dice just kept putting it
there (but of course I don't beleive there is any real Tekumel which leaks
through).
It was written back when the old maps put Hekellu in Chaigari and I have
gotten around that by having some administrative functions for Chaigari run
out of Hekellu for pragmatic reasons, especially during the recent problems
in the empire.
Anyone who wishes to make use of this may feel free to do so, just spell my
name right.
I also produced maps on several scales. One set is on the same scale as the
northwest frontier maps (approximately one hex equals 7 tsan). There are
eight maps which make up this set and it includes as far west as Ferinara
and Sokatis.
There are more detailed maps of Hekellu and environs at one hex equals 0.5
tsan, six for Hekellu and one for Sirsum. There are also city maps for
Hekellu and Sirsum at a scale of one hex equals 40m, four for Hekellu and
one for Sirsum.
Unfortunately, these tnd to produce huge files when scanned, but
photocopying and snail mail are a possibility if there is any interest. I
think Prof Barker may have received copies of these as well. The Hekellu map
was made from a photocopy of a Prof Barker original which he had mailed to
Bill Hartley.

Chris Vickers (sigis@islandnet.com)
-----
Chris Davis      Moderator, The Blue Room        blueroom@prin.edu
The Blue Room's FTP site:  http://nexus.prin.edu or  ftp://nexus.prin.edu
Available 24 hours a day, except when my PC is down, or unavailable.

//899

[Moderator's Note:  Professor Barkers replies to Eric's question about    ]
[                   Tumissa.                                              ]

>Reading through the first S+G book (the Different Worlds reprint) I notice
>that "Tumissa sits upon the shores of a volcanic crater lake" and that the
>city's temples and palaces are of reddish sandstone (p.57).  I also recall
>that in _The Man of Gold_ the Lady Eyil hiVriyen came from the city of
>Tumissa, that her clan (the Green Kirtle Clan) was fairly powerful in
>Tumissa and that they were friendly with the Clan of the Grey Cloak.  In
>addition, Eyil mentions that the temple of Thumis in Tumissa contains a
>"clockwork simulacrum said to have been constructed by the wizard Thomar
>himself" (p.361).

All true. The problem is that a "city-book" for Tumissa might occupy more
pages (and writing time) than I currently have available! Eyil, by the bye,
went off with Harsan and a delegation send by Prince Eselne to Livyanu.

The "clockwork simulacrum" is quite complicated. It is about human-height,
in the form of an enameled gold-and-old-ivory girl with patrician features
and delicately carved limbs, dressed in an Engsvanyali costume from the west
-- Mu'ugalavya or northern Livyanu. The thing is thus very old, but it has
been in the Governor's museum for centuries. Nobody knows how to repair it
or replace it, and it now only sings a couple of Engsvanyali folksongs and
does a mincing little dance when its button is pushed.

Thomar is mentioned in the old EPT history section. He is a leader amongst
the "Undying Wizards" who dwell in the College at the End of Time -- a
whole different story!  He followes Stability (but no one knows whom he
worships -- if anybody), and he has been quite friendly to adventurers over
the years, although he cannot often recall whether he has already met them
or will be meeting them some time in their future. That's one of the
problems with interlocking and mutli-dimensional Planes Beyond.

Perhaps some of our players could be bribed to write down a few of their
doings with Thomar.

>I was wondering if anyone out there (including the Professor) could give me
>a few details about the city.  What is this clockwork simulacrum like and
>who is Thomar?  What other peculiar mechanical, architectural, botanical,
>etc. wonders might one encounter in Tumissa?  What are the major clans,
>and/or prominent personalities of Tumissa?  Anything at all would be
>appreciated.  Thanks.

The map of Tumissa at the ftp site should give you the basics. It
identifies temples, Sakbe Roads, marketplaces, public building, etc. etc.

Almost all of the great clans are represented in Tumissa, as well as some
of the smaller ones. Vimuhla's great temple dominates the southern ridge
surrounding the city, just as his followers dominate its social and
political life. My suggestion is to first download the map from the ftp
site, then set up an adventure in Tumissa using all the  information
already in the various source books. I'll bet you come close to "Tekumel
reality."
-----
Chris Davis      Moderator, The Blue Room        blueroom@prin.edu
The Blue Room's FTP site:  http://nexus.prin.edu or  ftp://nexus.prin.edu
Available 24 hours a day, except when my PC is down, or unavailable.

//900

[Moderators' Note:  Wow, 900 messages.  We'll just keep plugging along!    ]
[                   James Snead makes some interesting observations about  ]
[                   the current situations on Tekumel.                     ]

Bob's description of recent events in Tsamra and other postings 
concerning the "magic stones" employed by the red hats in Livyanu
make me wonder about the global impact of such developments.  The
power to shut down magical activities on a subcontinental scale is,
as far as I know, unprecidented in recent Tekumel history.  From
outward appearances, there seems no reason why such a strategy couldn't
be applied in other conflicts, and while Tsolyanu isn't as reliant on 
magic to defend itself as was Livyanu, the potential for the 
disruption of communications at the very least must be considered a
threat to the security of the empire.  Is it possible, for instance,
that such forces are already in place in the Mu'uglavyani-occupied
sections of the Chakas?

And does this mean that the red hats now go to battle without 
magical protection themselves?  Or are can they somehow "undampen"
the field?  Either way, a significant shift in the way war is conducted
may be in process.  On the other hand, it isn't clear to me how
any of the Tekumel empires has the logistical ability to forceably
occupy another.  The maintenance of "martial law" throughout a territory
the size of Livyanu and the extraction of tribute would present an enormous 
strain on the organizational capacity of even such masters of order as
those of Ssa'atis, and involve tens of thousands of soldiers, administrators,
etc.  Other than the war of 2020, the swapping of protectorates & small
dependencies seems to have been the mode of warfare between the empires
for a thousand years or more.  Tsolyani troopers may sing of marching
down the boulevards of Mmillaka, but not of Tsatsayagga...And yet now
the Mu'uglavyani have somehow managed to mount a two-front war against 
different opponents, holding down the Livyani on one hand and harrassing 
the frontiers of Tsolyanu on the other.

This may mean that they have considerable confidence in their present
ability to wage warfare - which should give any tactician pause - Or
are pawns in some inter-planar escapade, but it may also mean that 
Mu'uglavyanu itself is a hollow nut, denuded of legions in order to 
satisfy a strategy of conquest powered by some logic not immediately 
discernable to outsiders.  Doesn't it seem that the authorities in 
Avanthar and in the temples are a bit slow to react to the threats that 
are implicit in this pattern?  Or that time is now overdue for a 
full-scale military test of the red hats' resolve?  Maybe The Legion
of the Givers of Sorrow needs a new song...

James Snead
-----
Chris Davis      Moderator, The Blue Room        blueroom@prin.edu
The Blue Room's FTP site:  http://nexus.prin.edu or  ftp://nexus.prin.edu
Available 24 hours a day, except when my PC is down, or unavailable.
