clyde

Okay. To make out more interesting for people to play humans, which would represent the main antagonists of the mush, my idea is that we introduce a new faction of them.

Cue the Hearthstone humans! They'll be the Romans to the Iceholt's humans Gauls: more technologically advanced, with basic writing, nautical technology and consisting of a hundred different cultures united by a shared nationality. They arrive on the eastern shore of the Forevergreen and quickly begin colonizing and making their way across it, forcing the indigenous populations to assimilate as they travel - either willingly or forcibly.

The Hearth view the elves and trolls as just different types of humans - and in the case of the elves, ones that are unusually primitive, and thus unusually uninteresting. Subsequently, their interests are less in trying to assimilate the elves and more in trying to displace them from the vital resources of wood and ore, no matter the consequences.

The main Hearth settlement would be on the northern shore of the Forevergreen, and would be accessible at the ends of the plains area / around twenty days journey from the holt / center of the Forgotten Grove. Scouting parties puppeted by the admins or by players would be available for all PCs to scene with from the beginning, and one of the first major TPs could be a permanent settlement being created on the western coastline - and the tribes having to decide what, if anything, they're going to do in response.


The refugees:

The refugees as a whole represent the entirety of elves from Sunholt. They're not one tribe - they're the Sunholt diaspora, representative of every elfin attempt (and failure) to colonise the southern continent.

There'd be some major groups that the majority of refugees come from. One example would be the Plainsrunners, which would be semi-nomadic elves that live separately in family groups of 1-5 elves, but come together as a whole every year to trade / party / Recognise at an event called the Gathering. Others could be established semi-canon tribes, like Wolfhaven from the RPG book - descendents of Two-Spear that fled south rather than north and assimilated into the pureblood population.

However, there would be a number of characters would probably be from groups that tried to settle the continent and failed - tribes where there were only 2-6 elves left, and the majority were offed by the encroaching Hearthers, or their way of living was destroyed by their advancement.

This could allow for people to create their 'own' tribes without necessarily needing a tribe behind them. If someone wants to create a 'cat elf', then they could create a refugee from a wolfrider offshoot that, in the Forevergreen, adapted their bond from wolves to cats - and other PCs could follow. Two people might want to make Wavedancers, but one wants them to have flesh-shaped gills and the other wants them to survey the seas on rafts. Under the Refugee idea, both would be possible - and if enough players banded together under one idea, then they could create a tribe separate from the Refugees all together.

Certain restrictions would have to apply. My personal feelings are that there shouldn't be any animal-blooded elves except for the Wolfriders and their descendents, but certain genetic predilections should be allowed for. (Wavedancers that self-shaped all the original members and their descendents have gills - fine! Wavedancers that fucked fish and produced fishblooded offspring - not so much.) That's my personal biases, though!

This is all in flux. The goal is to create a MU* where people can roleplay Original Quest styled Elfquest, but with book characters (as much as I love reading River Twine Holt's fic!). The problem is, though, that the original quest setting is pretty stagnant. Elves tend to be reactive rather than proactive, and all the momentum comes from outside sources. So how do we make a MU* that won't just slowly die?

My personal solution is to kill off certain book characters and revive others so that the most reactive characters are leaders of each tribe, and then add in a significant outside influence to encourage play.

In this case, this would mean:
* Killing off Cutter. (Noo!) This could be in the Troll War or after the Troll War, it doesn't particularly matter - as long as Ember is too young to inherit the chief's knot. This would mean that Strongbow would likely take over as the Wolfrider's chief. Strongbow is a reclusive traditionalist, but the holt is in an area where all of their immediate neighbours are decidedly *not* reclusive. This would naturally lead to conflict in the tribe, between insular members and the more outgoing, but also between tribes.

lord Vol surviving would be the second main change. Winnowill does not take control of the Blue Mountain, and after they discover the Palace, they are able to use it to firstly return home. Under Vols leadership, the Gliders are slowly being ousted from the Mountains cradle, some more reluctantly than others, and forced into integrating and contact with both the awe struck villagers as well as the reclusive wildfires.

The third main change would be the entertain of elves from Sunholt. These would be a mix of pebbled and wobbled nomads with no real unified culture, except the shared annual gatherings where groups would meet, be created and dissolve. The presence of iron age ship Wrights from H earth stone would have driven them from the southern contingent up north, where b they are being forced into contract with the northern elves for the first time.

The iron age humans would have never seen elves before, and thus not have any set preconceptions. They want to assimilate the various tribes into the coalition slash empire that exists on H sandstone, and refuse to take no as an answer. Elves seen as another type of useful humans? Positive relationship with trolls so PCs have an incentive to play one?