The blue-state model: stay out of the nursing home

The butcher's bill in the USA is likely 130k as of now. IFR holds true at 1% like it did at the start. So whassup?

There are various allegations about reclassifying deaths - on the part of Team Red. WI is cooking the books on the Team Blue side. WI's reclassifications keep the official numbers lower than the excess death rate should be. On the other hand FL is looking to have OVERreported. Governor DeSantis errs on the side of caution. When the Right tout FL they're justified - which hints well for TN. Unsure about others like TX and GA - or CO.

There's a real question about how this disease is so clustered with the Team Blue districts. Does this mean their harsher lockdowns don't work?

The numbers got so high because of nursing-homes; this 0.6% accounts for (by some reckoning) about 43% of the death although if the overall deaths are higher, I expect that better-documented proportion be lower. Also some excess deaths, at least in the UK where the situation is similar were "Alzheimers" - read: shock, and nurse-abandonment, even without personally bearing the pathogen.

The nursing-home excess is squarely on Team Blue's governors. Even where they imposed decent policies for the rest of us, their murderous actions against Teh Oldz ran up the score against themselves.

That doesn't mean their stringent measures elsewhere were/are bad per se.

Shooting the wounded: all matter accounted for

From Science Daily, ICRAR's 27 May press release. The question here is to account for such (apparently) invisible mass as is not bound up in galaxies. So this is not Dark Matter, detectable precisely because it is clustering in galaxies. They're talking free baryons - that is, protons, otherwise known as "hydrogen". Also I think they were expecting to see more hydrogen (mostly) from the cosmic-background, than is today inferred from galaxies.

So they were looking at intergalactic space. This space is a near perfect vacuum - sparser even than interstellar. But it might bear (barely) enough gas, mostly hydrogen remember, to scatter light. That light should be emitted from as distant as possible, so scatter such that we can see it here. It also helps that they are confident in the Hubble Constant now.

A gamma-ray burst should do it, and that's what they've seen. Now the numbers add up, for baryonic matter. One more intergalactic dragon slain.

HUBBLE HOBBLING 11/6: Anyone claiming confidence in Hubble this year is a damned liar.

Tunguska not explained

Now that the angle of a meteor is being included in calculations for effect, how about where the angle is side-on. Such a meteor might skip off the Earth's atmosphere, never landing at all. It is still a "meteor" because it did enter the atmosphere enough to heat up and be seen.

More to the point, heard. Tunguska is being implicated. I'd first read about this one when I was about eight. That aerial explosion famously didn't drop debris. They figure the core asteroid might have held together if it was iron, in which case the blast was a shock wave.

They do admit that the damage on the ground should have been elliptical, where Tunguska was circular. I'd say they need to go back to the drawing board. My theory since, I dunno, age ten was that the meteor was a comet with an icy core. Pretty sure that's most theories that don't involve gateways from the overcrowded Sumerian underworld.

Which is not to say that elliptic shock didn't occur in other times and places in history.

The origins of the present mass-homicide

It's been over a month since I last rapped atcha 'bout the 'Rona. So:

We're getting a picture on how we got here. Genetics show it is from one February Chinese lineage, and several Euro lineages, whence the real spread began.

COVid-19 broke out sporadically in the US from November to January, but these were among people who didn't get out and about much. Otherwise the numbers stayed near-negligible. After DJT imposed his travel ban to/from China (a good idea in isolation), 40000 American citizens had to get back home. They came without quarantine. Then, this Administration sent the right drug to the wrong places. And yeah, for those insulated as well as DJT, mask-wearing would be symbolic.

And this Administration isn't done being negligently deadly. Fauci is striking a new tune, that masks are "symbolic". And the White House is now saying it's okay to sing in a choir again. You could believe That Guy On TV... or you could believe papers like this one and academics like these, or just basic sense.

Donald John Trump deserves to lose this November. Our problem is his likely opposition.

Once the influx came, mostly to large (Democrat) cities, their governors like Cuomo and Whitmer sent the sick to those nursing-homes. They made a bad situation almost twice as bad, 140% as bad to be more-exact.

If I were a cynic this might have been done to blacken Trump's name, 140% more than the orangeman had done to it himself. And it might be done to raise the apparent IFR: this could cause panic, for that once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. (An opportunity taken, Kotkin adds.) Further, the affected population is the elderly, which still skews white and even if not in a nursing-home (and dead) yet, they can be moved against Trump by fear. Their IFR is much higher than 1%.

Once again, me lads: the Stupid Party and the Evil Party.

Northern "Serbian" DNA

Yesterday the Turtle posted about Bronze Age DNA from what's now northern Serbia - Mokrin, prettymuch the tip.

It's R1b-Z2103 with a touch of J2b. R1b is associated to the older, nonAryan IndoEuropean populations like us Bell-Beakers; Z2103 an ancient branch (15 kBC!) more typical of Shqiptarët called "Albanians" by us Latins. The J2b, more Near Eastern, is presumed L283, also common to modern Albania. The J2b had likely got here first. As to language, J2b may have spoken an "Afro Asiatic" tongue but the great Indo-European migrations swamped that out.

Both modern Albanians and modern Serbs speak Indo-European languages today, and they've grown up together in a Sprachbund. However. The Slavic peoples trend more to R1a. That the north shore of the Danube was Shqiptarët implies most of the Morava, and especially the Ibër watershed was protoAlbanian well into the Iron Age.

We shouldn't identify this with classical "Illyria". The Adriatic southern neck spoke Messapic and Doric, the north was exposed to Etruscan dialects and in between, of course, Italic owned the Italian shore. Historic precedent suggests that who owns Venice has a claim on the Dalmatian seafolk. I'll leave others to haggle over "Illyrians".

I'm talking about the land which these data describe, the latterly eastern-Yugoslav inland. I'm talking about eastern Kosovo and the Ibër to the north. And frankly I'm talking about the people there, who weren't Slavs and weren't Serbs until Late Antiquity. (At a guess, the Ibër was protoTosk and the Danube was paraGheg.)

There were many Milosevics in the Serbian nation's past, steadily driving the Shqiptarët south. And yes, it was population-replacement.

The Levant

Two papers in Cell. One is "Genomic History of Neolithic to Bronze Age Anatolia, Northern Levant, and Southern Caucasus" doi 10.1016/j.cell.2020.04.044. The other is readable, "Genomic History of the Bronze Age Southern Levant".

Together they agree that all the action in the Levant, which is Bronze Age Canaan, happened to the place from the north and northeast. So, we need to understand the north before we understand Canaan. The key, which I expect will appear in the press-releases, is During the Late Chalcolithic and/or the Early Bronze Age, more than half of the Northern Levantine gene pool was replaced.

Following that, the latter paper notes "Hurrian" personal names appear in the 15th and 14th centuries BC, at Megiddo and Taanach. The Hurrians proper were along the Jazira. Behind them, I think, were protoUrartians around Lake Van. At home, they weren't admixing with others much. Abroad, under the Mitanni especially they became a strong force in the Jazira. Note that they brought their women: ALA019 at Alalakh was an Aryanette. (Obviously she didn't bear a Y chromosome, they weren't #woke enough for that back then.)

At Chalcolithic Arslantepe, Davidski finds an R1b, in one man. That is not Aryan and, indeed, it's pre-Mitanni. R1b-V1636 is rare today but back then, it was rife in the North Caucasus Piedmont steppe which, in Eurogenes parlance, means Crimea on east and northeast. This piedmont proper - the old Circassian forest - should be Maykop and points south.

Back to pre-Palestine besides the admixture and incidental foreigners, the latter Cell paper makes clear that the genes correlate with the historical Canaan. Analogy is made with Yamnaya. It makes sense then to consider a Canaani ethnos.

Relative to that baseline, the coastal ports Sidon and Ashqelon were mixed-ethnic. So was Baq‛a, here more tilted to some eastern population.

We all got baked

Geological periods are associated with fossils. After the fossils shift, that's a new period. The old life tended not to die quietly - there was a mass extinction event. One such period was the Devonian and its violent ending was 359 million years ago.

The press release states what's going on. East Greenland (and Titicaca) rocks on the 359 million year border were heated to see what was in the air at the time. That would be spores, consistent with Devonian flora: ferns and mosses. These spores weren't healthy. They had spines and were radiation-baked.

The Great Baking might be a Proxima-level flare, from our Sun or from some neighbour gone nova. Another model has that the ozone dissipated right here. (We got an ozone air-quality warning right here in Denver these last couple days.)

Before the Cretaceous rifting, Greenland was geologically part of the eastern North American Craton. (Which is why Trump wants it back.) Over the Devonian, this craton was in turn part of Euramerica, alias "Old Red Sandstone" - an equatorial continent. (Titicaca was, then, Gondwana, southern.) East Greenland in that continent had a big lake, which environs they say was like the Lake Chad region today. So the Euramerican ozone shifting was not because of some move to the Arctic.

It happens that the Devonian Earth was cold. This planet, at this time, heated rapidly. That heating knocked out the ozone-layer, planetwide.

Onyx Path

I was a fan of the Sword And Sorcery Studios' output in the early 2000s, but dropped off when SSS dropped off. 1d4chan has the postmortem.

To summarise: their parent company White Wolf messed up at every level. Fortunately one of WW's earlier messups allowed one subset, Onyx Path, to break off before the rest of the company collapsed. Onyx, having avoided that unpleasantness, got to keep the Scarred Lands setting. As for other SSS clients / offshoots... Malhavoc is off to non-d20 projects and I don't know what Necromancer Games is up to [7/8/2020] Necromancer is now Frog God. In 2017, Onyx started to pick up the pieces in Scarn as a "second edition", for D&D's fifth.

I cannot dispute the 1d4chan review of the original lorebooks: they started off chaotic, got organised a little better, then when it all started to fall down the company dumped the remainder of what it had into one final hardcover. Strange Lands reads for 3.x Scarn what Other Lands was for 2e Krynn.

Now that Scarn is (more) active, it is more difficult for fanbois (or 'stans', whatever) to go wild with suggestions than it is for unsupported settings.

Under the Hasbro umbrella, Taladas, (especially) Blackmoor, and Mystara seem abandoned these days. Outside Hasbro and Onyx, Fantasy-Flight seems about done with the Midnight setting. There was some third-party work around Arcana Evolved but again, not lately. Violet Dawn's Avadnu has been quiet. Obviously, that doesn't mean anyone gets to pirate this stuff. It does mean you'll not be butting into the designer's canon if you supplement it, under fair-use or (if you're adventurous) under contracted permission.

I get the feeling that the Scarred Lands in this iteration might not get around to revising everything they'd done in the 2000s. I get the feeling that the fans will be safe reworking the Strange Lands or even the bulk of Termana.

Watches in the east

Far to the Shadow Elves' east, two caverns serve to connect the Gilfyn and Sojourner rivers. Together the caves detour around the Lost Souls. The Sojourner river is in the text; the Gilfyn is not.

In the map, the northwest corner of Starpoint underlies Alfheim. In the text, the shadowelves don't get there from here: they get there from Losetrel's route to northwestern Darokin. As for the dwarves, that connexion is more-canonical. Rastignac guards the Alfmyr mines from Rockhome, on that main Sojourner approach. More exactly, this village supplies the secret lookouts, unmarked on the map. The dwarves remain (officially) ignorant of the elven kingdom here, and this strategic arrangement ensures that lie. Rastignac's defence is in the Shards southwest, and eight miles of almost solid rock north.

The text's omissions are understandable - for Rastignac. This is all VERY out of the way from the City's perspective. As I said, Rastignac is canonical-enough. That yuuge cavern south of that is another question.

One possibility has the southern cave's elves face east. Here, Saulia was the watergate; Jeredor is the town square, and Noran is a frontier village. The elves here struggle uphill against the Reaches of Salandria. For this orientation's Saulia I say "was" because there's no real need for it to be walled anymore. Assumed is that Elmglow is a thriving farm-community. That there's nothing wrong with the desert called "Lost Souls" north of the woods.

If however we orient this cavern's elves westward, then Noran and Jeredor are not the frontier - the Ilrondal lake is the frontier. Saulia is this cave's active line of defence.

I prefer that the cavern face west, against the Lost Souls. The next question is, do the mainline shadow elves own it; or do rebels own it - starting with the lost clan but maybe even surface agents. It's all far enough away we can't rule rebels out.

If not under City command, the caves can be pushed further east - in which case, Rastignac would come under dispute, and we'd be tempted to add another cave between Alfmyr and Rastignac, more firmly under the army. If mainline I don't know if the routes between the City and these caverns are wide enough that the City can post and rotate many skinwings. The mainline option further constrains how far east we can push these caves. My investigation doesn't take sides on which elves, except to generalise the inhabitants as elves.

The Starpoint terraforming so far has ensured that the region is self-sustaining, plus enough to feed an armed defence. The Delnador Flow between Joran and Jeredor is the "civilised" part of the cave.

Over the south Gilfyn, Narfrendal's Krak (crag?) is a freestanding watchtower. This implies the elves don't much dare the Salandria "reaches" along the Gilfyn southeast. If there be sentient aliens here, I'd look to the geonids. Whatever be here haven't conflicted with the elves, nor really communicated with them at all.

I assume this cave has mines not noted in the map. More metallic than crystal, since crystal would get noted.

Jupiter's moons

So much science news this week, compared with last week. Glad I got all that D&D done! I admit that here I'm catching up to news from before last week.

The planetologist Constantine Batygin has had a rough month, his Planet Nine being under scrutiny. But now he's trying his hand at the Jovian moons - by which they mean, the four actual planetoids, not the captured comets.

The 18 May press release summarises that young Jupiter's disc was a "dust-trap". At first, Jupiter itself formed. Far around it, some small rocks orbited into ring-formation - like Saturn's but reaching much further out. Between them Jupiter had a thick gaseous exosphere, no longer present today. Gravity wasn't directly the main force here and then. The matter in this soupy part of the disc continued to rain onto Jupiter - but also there was a wind of gases, "entraining" select particles.

Batygin's model has, per particle, the entrainment and the inflow canceling each other out where the particle is about a millimeter of mostly-ice. These stayed in the disc for long enough that moons could form.

The protomoons started out like Callisto - mostly ice and undifferentiated. Over time three of them formed inside (what's now) Callisto's orbit in mutually-resonant orbits. Here, these could not bang up against each other... but they generated internal heat, from the resonance, besides the intense radiation from young Jupiter. This boiled off all the volatiles from the innermost, leaving only the rock and sulphur now called Io. Most of the water left Europa as well. Ganymede third-out endured less radiation, and fewer and weaker tides. So Ganymede kept most its ice although it did differentiate out into internal layers.

Batygin is more looking at the abrupt flares of the young sun than the heat of Jupiter and of resonant-orbit. His model has Callisto itself forming last.

Fecund Neanders

Story here is that Neanders were genetically more fertile than Africans. (We're mostly east-African.)

h/t HBDChick as these things usually are. Assuming the same nine-month gestation, more total childbirths would account for the late-shift in Neander maternity.

Late childbearing and the known Neander clannishness (from the low population) would induce morbidities, especially together. They'd need all the extra cubs they could beget.

The unnamed horror downstream

I'm continuing to salvage the Shadow Elves' south. To that I have some observations about downstream of Losetrel, in the map. Here follows the original from the PDF.

The elves have set up multiple fortifications here. Sylaros is a "fortress", which I assume is a walled town or village. Twenty miles further in, Durfyn's Belfry is another tower by icon - but I think it's an aerie. Durfyn skinwings shuttle to/from the Dragon Lake over the Lost Souls. In transit these flights are always accompanied by shamans.

The map's also etched out a "secondary" footpath between Sylaros and Losetrel's southern bank. This path serves to bypass the Sojourner, in case anyone wanted to route around the north (through the Lost Souls) or the south. Travelers will consider the southern riverbend: down the Sojourner, up the Gilfyn. It can't be much less navigable than the path. So I question the safety of the river downstream of Losetrel.

The elves could write off the entire Elmglow cavern - indeed, my earlier posts here have argued that the Elmglow was a stray thread, and worked around it. In this salvage-operation, I counter-assume there's something the elves need, in its western spur Vyarii. For that, the Mylandiel cave looms to the west of the Belfry. This offers strategic-depth for the garrison there.

"Mylandiel" mainly applies to the highland. The elves own nothing here directly and specifically. Geographically Mylandiel slopes downward to the northern mudflat - steeply. That is why the middle section is marked as mountain, and why the southern "hills" are dry. These "hills" are indeed a highland, relative to the rest.

The map does propose a mine in the caves south and more southeast of that. I doubt the spiders or the living dead do anything here either.

Whatever's in Mylandiel, it's peril enough to hamper further exploration downstream. The elves have enough of the cavern secured that the east of its highland offers strategic-depth for the Belfry. Maybe they let captives loose here for their skinwings to hunt. Maybe the Mylandiel cave is where the elves put their skinwings out to stud.

If Mylandiel is their skinwing ranch then it is also their southwest border-buffer. Protecting and maintaining that is why the elves need their Vyarii fortifications.

Durfyn's minaret

From the Hills of Mylandiel the passage to the Elmglow cave opens straight into Durfyn's Belfry. It's worthwhile to digress into what a "belfry" means in a society like that of The Shadow Elves, lacking Middle English church buildings.

The word "belfry" in English is etymologically a portmanteau, worthy of Lewis Carroll himself. Linguists track this one to Germannic, for that burg which keeps the peace: *burganfrithuz. This compound got into (Old) French, which contracted it berfrei. At some point "berfrei" got applied to moveable siegetowers, but I don't know that this caught on in England. Later we English thought the word had something to do with a bell, often found in watchtowers - and in churches. So we folk-etymologised that word in there: bell-frey.

On to how an English visitor in shadowland, like the late Dr Carl Lynwood Sargent, could hear "belfry".

The point of any tower is to create, artificially, a height advantage, for observation and alarms. If you lived in a rocky cavern, would you build a whole new rickety stone building; or would you rather clamber up the side of the wall (somehow) for some ledge that Nature has assuredly put there for you. It also happens that the shadow elves own an air-force. So the Belfry complex need not be a freestanding tower as the surface knows it.

The word in Elvish, then, agglutinates connotations of "peacekeeping", "fortification", "height", and "alarm". There may be an additional connotation of the elvish call-to-prayer, but we needn't count on that. What "belfry" here does not connote, is a freestanding tower. Nor does it require an actual bell, nor any other sonic form of alarm. Durfyn's main alarm-mechanic is the line-of-sight to Sylaros, through a beam of light. Visitors from Ylaruam under comprehend languages will comprehend "Durfyn's Belfry" as "manârat Durfyn".

Shadow elves tend to park skinwings in their belfries. The elves' idiom lacks that mildly-blasphemous twentieth-century Americanism, bats in the belfry, although some might smile should they first hear it. They might say instead "his belfry is a few 'wings short of a flock". Trust me, it sounds better in Elvish.

Durfyn's Belfry is an aerie, [very] high off the Elmglow cavern floor.

Chicxulub's angle

In Chicxulub news, the meteor hit Yucatan's shore at 60 degrees. They tell us that is bad.

It was back in January noted that the Deccan Traps weren't the dino killers. What I didn't know was that the Deccans happened before that strike from the stars. I'd thought they were a (literal) knock-on effect, from the mantle being sloshed about. But no. Just a coincidence. In the short term anyway.

The analogy might instead be to Permian / Triassic. There was a smaller extinction first. (In an ecosystem already alien to Jurassic-era fauna.) Then the next event knocked this reeling ecosystem into mass death.

Squeak!

The mus musculus came to Europe 4500 BC. This dead mouse lived in a Neolithic house in Serbia, which burned down about his small fuzzy ears.

Apparently there hadn't been evidence for a mouse so early across the Dardanelles. Mice had, of course, infested the earlier-agricultural Near East for many thousands of years prior.

Since reading in 2018ish that Yersinia Pestis hit the Balkan cities in the late 4000s BC - before the Sons of Aryas, if you like - I'd assumed we'd found that evidence already. Also the article notes cat domestication in Cyprus 7500 BC. It does, at least, seem as if researchers, from all that, now Knew Where To Look.

I assume this mouse is actually musculus musculus, the East European mouse; not the musculus domesticus which the article names. Domesticus is Rhineland and points west, I think.

I understand it was a Balkan custom in those days to burn down the town and start over. I figured in 2018-19 that this may have been the way the Balkan Neolithic handled plague-spreading vermin and the problem of debt.

...I wonder what "Old European Culture" blogger thinks of this.

The new south

I've redone the Shadow Lands' south. Really, its south and southwest:

Alfheim and Darokin stay in the same place since that's not up to us. The Red Rock Bellows is also in place lest there's a volcano up there (Karameikos?). Otherwise I've cut the southernmost and southeasternmost caverns off. Tho' Rastignac remains in place, for the sake of argument.

The Dragon Lake is wider north-south by two hexes, 16 miles. There's a watergate leading out southwest, and a bypass to the Lost Souls between that and beleaguered Dunedea. All the southwest, where not deleted, is shifted south. Losetrel city included - so the Warrens connect to that cavern's badlands.

The Desert of Lost Souls is now broken in thrain, if that's a word. The three stagger southwest to northeast. The southwest cavern keeps the fertile Elmglow south of that. Starwind is still in there as well.

As to the easternmost third of this cavern, the original map had marked it by the un-elflike name, Land(s) of Doog. Its name looked trollish to me at first, but now the cave belongs to the geonids South Of Alfmyr. So it is fertile. Since it's got to drain somewhither I'm draining it into the Dragon Lake's newer, longer eastern shore. That river will be more like upstream Lethowan, so the least of that lake's inflows.

I assume that Elmglow is haunted. Durdael and Selinae are either ruins, or moribund colonies. I've plain deleted Melawae, but maybe it will exist in some future or distant past. Sylaros and Durfyn amount to the Losetrel's forward march against - well, everything down here; but especially the dead. Gilaen / Ilrondal is further from the Elmglow, so not haunted, and safer.

If you don't see a hex-pattern on this map, that's the extra space added. It is terra incognita and the DM may add whatever. I can suggest new Warrens, more land for Losetrel, a small island in the Dragon Lake (north of Dunedea is my pref'), bigger Ilrondal - as I said, whatever is desired. Heck, you can even restore some of the caves I deleted - starting with that massive and inhabited Salandia-Starpoint cavern. Although I'd push that one further east.

The haunting of the south Goes To Eleven after that moron finds what's left of the Crown, fixes it and tries it on. The Doog cavern then becomes the desert badland we know from the gazetteer. I expect also the dead guy builds various strongholds along his borders, kidnaps some elves and geonids to boost his army-of-darkness, attacks Dunedea and Gilaen and Sylaros, pollutes the Dragon Lake, corrupts Renathys, and generally has an absolutely wonderful time at the elves' expense.

RESTORATION 5/27 : Downstream the Sojourner, after Gilfyn drains into it, is ... something. The elves have posted three (3) fortifications against this frontier: Sylaros, Durfyn (probably an aerie), Bathadia. That something is not Darokin, and it's certainly not geonids. Sylaros and Durfyn confront the living dead, and the Bathadia might corral runaway spiders before they get further and escape downstream. Durfyn in particular is put there for some reason. The map has somewhere to put that reason: Mylandiel. So, let's keep it. The original map separates that toroidal cavern's northern mud from the river, so I connect them by tertiaries.

If there exist elf mines or a "village" beyond that, these are wildcat operations - not unlike Gilaen.

The Post-Quranic Arabic Bible

Academia.org recently raised to our attention Miriam Hjälm, "The Qurʾānic Subtext of Early Arabic Bible Translations".

The Arabic Bible wot we got exists only in later mediaeval copies. Its language is close to the Qurân's; and both to the Syriac Bible tradition. There are longstanding questions about whether the Qurân used that Arabic Bible, and if so to what extent. Baumstark was big on this, as you may read in translation in Ibn Warraq's Christmas in the Quran. Sidney Griffith is just as big on the opposition, that no Arabic Bible existed until long after the Quran became The Arabic Book.

This post isn't to take sides. But it will list where Hjälm takes sides, and evaluate those instances.

Hjälm comments that the Arabic translator has Daniel 3 refer to the sura 3 Hajj when talking about Nabuchadnezzar's (sic) idols. For Genesis, the translator edits its closing Joseph tale such that it is more in alignment with sura 12 than translations elsewhere. In the books of Samuel, or "Reigns" in the Septuagint, Saul is "Talut". I do not think that this form of the name ever existed before sura 2.

Some other changes are harder to square with an Islam-leading audience. The translation of Job has Uz somewhere around Harran. Ibn Sa'd in the 'Abbâsi era thought Uz was 'Âd. Again, without taking sides, at least this points to a translator not working in an Islamic milieu.

For purpose of evangelism, the whole Reigns cycle wasn't anyone's first choice for translation. Daniel, as apocalyptic, supposedly was popular in Late Antiquity. Especially out East: Chase Robinson wrote a study mentioning that when the Arabs invaded Khuzestan, Tus, and Tustar. Likewise the, I dunno, first book in the Torah Genesis.

Hjälm thereby sets some important constraints on the Arabic Bible. It does not look like Daniel 1-6 circulated in Arabic before the taking of the Khuzestan. Likewise, Genesis - and the Torah generally - didn't get into full Arabic until the move into Egypt (and I'd say 'Abd al-'Aziz's reign there). If we follow the "lectionary theory" whereby the Arabic biblical readings were piecemeal and sporadic, this lectionary stage persisted well into the Islamic era.

That still leaves the Psalms.

Out there in the cold

Forgive my excursions into Fantasy Archipelago last week. I was aiming to keep each set of musings into the same batch of blogposts. Anyway just because I was off, doesn't mean the anthropologists were. Now we've got news from Lake Baikal: "Paleolithic to Bronze Age Siberians Reveal Connections with First Americans and across Eurasia" (doi 10.1016/j.cell.2020.04.037), from under the delightfully-named chief author He Yu.

As the press releases have it, Lake Baikal in 12000 BC looks populated by the same crew as populated the Americas. This is before Clovis. But it's also after when the Americas were supposed to be populated.

This implies that the founding population of the Americas mixed and formed in Siberia, and not in Alaska. That tribe also survived in Siberia for thousands of years. Modern Siberians have, since, taken on a lot of East Asian DNA.

When we're tired of the same old

I have to say, it's refreshing to see a fantasy-setting that explains why the same human races are in this setting as well as others.

The War of Powers series was, you know, basically pr0nz but there was thought to its worldbuilding, among which a notion that its humans dropped in from elsewhere. Same with Riftwar, although it did less well at explaining how everyone got to Midkemia in the first place (maybe this is mooted in later books). Same with the Pern series. (Although here with more a SF touch. In the 1970s there wasn't that split between epic fantasy and science-fiction as we have now.) Now I think on't, same with freakin' Narnia. Much of Beyond Countless Doorways deals with worlds what aren't human, so the humans what are there are explained as later arrivals.

Another trick is to have the races be different. Blue or green skinned humans has been a SF/F mainstay, although meh. More to the point what they call an "elf" in Faerun is not at all what they have in the Accordlands. I always wondered what might happen if those elves should meet.

I suppose I'm overthinking it some. With the "planar" model, some universes are just parallels to each other, so will cough up similar races. But there are a lot of same-y Prime Materials in fantasy fiction. If a world is already stuffed with nonhuman sentients, it cannot hurt to add a backstory for how the humans (or dwarves, etc) got there.

The languages of the Triassic colony

The languages of the Liber campaign follow an Indo-European-like pattern.

On arrival on this alien tropical continent, everyone had to understand the Spider Queen's language. Her humanoids, not possessing the vocal organs to speak this language, pidginised that best they could. The pidgin was never written, so drifted over the years, but always stayed in accordance with the Arach baseline, which was written.

Over millennia, sporadically, groups of human slaves found their way out. These ran away - as far away as they could get. Some of these tribes survive in the Great Swamp. This is like how the Anatolian and Tocharian branches left the first iterations of Indo-European. Some scattered, insular tribes - especially in the Swamp - maintain their "maroon" descendent of the Arach pidgin active at the time they left. Other tribes found the Tisyah friendly so have adopted the Tisyah dialect closest to them; these are not in this chart's scope.

The Nange language today dates from the Nange rebellion, Year Zero. That language hasn't changed much, given that they live longer than we do, and also acquired a literaty standard. The language of the Kham's earliest books is very similar to Nange. Human escapees from the Kham have spread successor-languages, diverging from Nange and from each other not unlike mediaeval Italian and French from Church Latin.

As a rule, if the tribe's ancestors left the Spider's web before the Nange revolt, it is illiterate and at a Chalcolithic/Ceramic stage at best. As with Americans in our New World, every effort for the last millennia has been toward survival on an alien planet.

Some regions have got to the pictograph stage, like Xia China or Predynastic Egypt, or the pre-hieroglyph Maya. Others have managed a syllabary, aping the Arach characters if not their meaning or sound, like Bishop de Landa (badly) transcribed old Maya and like the Cherokee started over with their script.

For over two centuries Kham has imposed its rule, with a simplified trade-version of the Nange language, upon the tribes in its territory. Here, the para-Kham "dialects" are basically gone and the older tribal languages are dying out. Such languages are doing a little better across the watershed on account their neighbours aren't human.

Kham's first humans

The Liber campaign's first humans came alongside its first para-humans, the Nange. The Nange here see a "Time Memorial" of millennia, when they were slaves to a Spider Queen. Seven hundred years before the present, the Nange (probably) east of what's now Kham rebelled.

This is about the earliest "calendar" we get for this campaign.

Before the Nange revolt, the Spider Queen's foremost servants were intelligent spiders. Lowest in rank were humans like us. Some of her spiders, for whatever reason, elected to transplant their heads onto human bodies. These were the Temple Sentinels. An arthropod race would envy our improved lung-capacity, on a lowish-oxygen planet (although this world's oxygen hadn't dipped so low for the dino detour). That would imply that the Queen wasn't from here.

For a Beyond Countless Doorways tie-in, the Spider Queen hailed from a high-oxygen plane like Dendri. It may be the Zhival who led her to (evil) greatness. She picked up servants as she traversed the Doorways. Along for the ride were vermin: mosquitoes and rats; and the housecats to control them.

Most of this world's mainline d20-rules races descend from the Queen's invasion-force and entourage. Vermin (including cats) did what vermin do, slipping away into the forests and swamps. Most sentient races fled during the revolt. The humans count as "vermin" for this purpose, going cimarrón in bits and batches over the millennia of servitude. Kham's elite descends from them.

Some of the earliest-diverged tribal maroons have adapted to a permanent forest canopy. They trend to fair, freckled skin; dark-red curly hair; wide eyes; flat noses; short stature. The beastlords of Kham descend from in an urban population, albeit also cluttered with artificial pillars as befits a spider civilisation. These are not freckled but tanned, like Amazonians on Earth. Besides these two races I don't think the human founding-population has since enjoyed much time to acquire separate characteristics in tune with the environment.

The races have, however, evolved separate languages, indeed language-families. Also keep in mind that this world is still subject to conjunction with others: the tundra orcs, for one, likely found their own way here. Other continents may host other extraplanar humans. Elves too, given the Faerie link.

Triassic Park

In the Liber campaign, humans never settled the Great Swamp. The Gharial, Quisloi, Skresh, and Tegano are all amphibious-to-reptilian. The Skitterwings look mammalian - but they are Fey, so for all we know, mosquitoes are intrusive. It doesn't look good for the Great Apes, either. Nor for any mammals, even monotremes: the adjacent Tisyah took a separate evolutionary road from the then-reptilian synapsids. Also missing: dinosaurs, including birds.

In multiverse terms, Kham's biology is separate from our world's as if the two worlds diverged before the Permian / Triassic. [10/19/2020 - better, internal to Triassic: preCarnian.]

Kham's continent is like the shared southern America-Africa supercontinent of the Triassic, with a warm Pacific and without the Andes. In our world's Jurassic, America broke off west and the rest of Africa started moving north. This didn't happen to Kham's continent. In deep time, the opposite happened here: two ancient cratons met and uplifted that western watershed, now eroded back to Appalachian heights. Other splits perhaps applied instead - or maybe, like for our long Eurasia, they didn't. As mentioned, I claim confidence in Kham's north, west, and south but I have no idea about its east.

Some components of the D&D slate have inhabited at least the planet: hill giants and trolls preceded the Qor (p. 89), orcs roam the tundra (p. 130). Men are here too - the Kham is a human empire. Many mammalian humanoids here are monsters that the Kham's geneticists created through Low Beast Magic. The Nange and Temple-Sentinels came out of a different and earlier empire's work.

When I say "two worlds" I mean, worlds. The Kham continent is such an ultra-Australia it cannot share a planet with any continent like ours. Every mammal and every bird here who is not a para-mammal like the Tisyah, descends from some conjunction with a mainstream D&D plane.

Kham's Continent

Colville's relations imply a Liber campaign map.

An arbitrarily-large swamp-jungle incorporating a myriads-encompassing empire implies the sort of jungle as on our world. That's the Amazon or Kongo basin. That's in the thin black pencil line.

The Plains of Life dryland, opposite from the Qor dryland, must be north. In our New World what would be that region is mountain and Caribbean. It was easier to imagine a northern savannah from the African model, so para-Kongo it is.

The cities, Makhas and Phon-Thir (which the Pen-Togh rules), should be on riverbanks. To divide Kham from the rest of the jungle part of the swamp, I imposed a watershed, here purple in MS Paint's "Crayon". The watershed extends north, beyond the Kongo part. It follows close to the coast. That is to keep "the Great Swamp" as mostly swamp; the drier jungle is inland.

The swamp dries out into the drier latitudes in the high teens° North. Here are the Plains of Life, also extending southeast beyond the watershed. This savannah / sahel is "thousands of square miles" but it also supports about a thousand Tisyah tribes; so it must be larger than Kham rather than, as the text implies, a tenth that area.

Kham includes the snail island in its jungle demesne. Kham does not control past the jungle, nor beyond the watershed; there are no real hostilities with the Swamp's denizens. East of Kham could be more jungle - but it's not, because that land is Athas-style defiled. Likely is that the Nange's ancestors have set up a magical rain-shield, to dry out the Spider Queen's old empire.

Southeast of the snail island, the Swamp does NOT return. Here is terrain fit for hill giants: so, Namibia. That is where the Qor live.

Overall we're looking at the bulk of Africa if Africa's northern part was further south, aligning more with Brasil in our world. There is no northern Sahara. Nor does the south leave the infertile subtropics: the Qor "south-africa" ends at 35° South like for us. We don't know what's east.

The interrelations of Colville's beasts

Let's talk about the world(s) of Matthew Colville's campaign, underlying Liber Bestarius: the Book of Beasts (Eden, 2001-2).

I've reviewed Liber Bestarius somewhere online but never on my own territory. I regret I don't remember where else. Maybe the Eden Odyssey forum. So I shan't review the book here - except to report that I liked it overall.

Colville explains the setting pp. 148-9 - rather, he lists four "settings" in it. Three of them are in what we'd call "the Prime Material": Beast Lords of Kham, Empire of Jade, Great Swamp. A fourth, Realm of Faerie, is what Monte Cook would call "in conjunction" with the Prime. It turns out that some of these settings interlink with each other, and with other settings in the text: Faerie, for instance, links with the Swamp (p. 107). The skitterwings are fey representations of the Swamp's mosquitoes.

Colville's inter-"relations" matter to the rest of us where they interrelate temporal settings. Those may happen also through planar conjunction... but in most cases, they don't. Since these relations are temporal, and since distances of tens of thousands of miles are being bandied about, these settings serve to constrain a single game world.

Here, relations bind the Swamp with Kham. The Kham's Thet, the Flumph of this campaign and artifically so, connect with Quisloi, Skresh, and Tegano p. 132. The Thal, also artificial, connect less explicitly with Quisloi p. 128. Colville makes more optional the Tisyah's interrelations p. 135. These are both to the Skresh and to the Qor that is, both to the Swamp and to Kham.

The Skresh city Phon-Thir is in a "jungle" part of the Swamp, and its centre. The Tegano own the Swamp's seashore p. 122. "Centre" here means inland. It turns out p. 128 that Kham, hundreds of miles wide as it is, is not sovereign over all its jungle - let alone its marshes.

That the Swamp and Kham are so intimately bound means that Kham is coming from inside the hou... er, Swamp. More, Kham's centre is so far from the swamp's centre Phon-Thir, that Kham cannot even be the half of it. Kham, like Phon-Thir not marshy, is also inland for that same reason. The term "Great Swamp" is applied by outsiders and by Kham, to "that part of the humid tropics what Kham don't got".

Besides the great rainforest-wetland and the Tisyah-dominated savannah, Colville brings further locations. Far "north" is a "tundra", where live the Orsk, Ruhk, and Thark pp. 85-6, 100-2, 129-30. Kham conducts a brisk traffic in Orsk visual organs p. 128. Kham owns the snail island to the south p. 141, so coastline not under Tegano command; that's how the ships get out. Another location is the Desert of The Nange: once jungle, p. 78. The implicit relation here is p. 90 to the Qor, south of Kham. But this assumes Qor are unfamiliar with the Nange, so there is no necessary direct relation.

The geonids under Alfheim

The Shadow Elves don't have many intelligent peers down here. The walking dead shamble through the south, and Rockhome holds the east. Northeast (and up), is the Yellow Orkia. Southwest at Losetrel we're told of aranea; but these spiderfolk might have squeezed in from above, or even through a dimensional gate to the Sixty Sixth Layer (grognards know what THAT is). As with the Known World map, north and west are terra incognita. Southeast is our opportunity: here, "south of Alfmyr", the setting puts the geonids.

Geonids were introduced in X5, inhabiting the Great Pass between the great western desert and the Hos-lamic Republic Hule. They are Stone Age sentients, roaming in bands of 2-12 under a shaman. Permanent-ish "lairs" run 30-80, hinting at the classic Neander / Palaeolithic extended-family clan model. Their ethic is "Chaotic" but without real evil in their description, which presents them tortoise-like and defensive. If outsiders are fighting any, it's usually because they've wandered into geonid homes. Over the X4-5 series, shamanistic humanoids fit well within the story theme.

For the Shadowlands, these geonids have been plagued by the Lost Souls. It happens that clerics do well against the undead, when Stone Age tech fails - when all tech fails. That is why these rockmen have evolved their own theocracy. Also, why they haven't graduated to metallurgy. The shamans use magic to fuse the local rocks into the shells of their young, when they reach adulthood; that is when they acquire their fabled armour-class.

The (bad-)Lands of Doog is the geonid home, where the clans meet. A splinter (and illiterate) tribe might further be indigenous to the Shards, bisecting the cavern southwest of Rastignac. The geonids in the great western pass have, also, splintered from the Doog base, floating downstream and then taking a route we know not. Small parties and maybe additional clans wander whatever rocky caverns are south of the Gilfyn. And I washed a symbiotic tribe ashore Ilrondal.

Geonids, at least here, are not savages. They own a literature. It is on stone and parchment, and scrimshawed onto their own calcio-silicate shells. Daily records are on clay: ostraca and tablets. Personal property is gemstone and ceramic, and organic. If geonids have metal treasures, these are the property of the shamans. Metals are in vaults not for their own sake, but for barter with metal-age races. The central geonid library is in Doog, as is the treasury.

Other authors have dealt with their ecology, where they are close to the surface, which at least reveals their biology as carbon. Down here they don't eat horses, nor anything taboo to the elves nor - east of here - to the dwarves. Geonids are not so belligerent or fecund that they present a threat.

Unfortunately for their relations with the elves, the geonids' shamans do use soul-crystals. It is possible that a rogue shaman aided in corrupting some of those crystals which stud the Crown as "rubies".

One low-Expert-level adventure, set before the Crown is found (or made), is a struggle against a bad shaman with his bad rubylike crystal. Then the crystal must be purged - 15th-level Shallatariel helps with this. If all ends well, some peace is hammered out between the shamans of each race.

Once the Crown is donned, the elves have a refugee-crisis.

Ilrondal

Ilrondal is the name the elves have assigned to the only lake south of the Lost Souls. This lake fills over two thirds of a cavern, fed and drained by the Gilfyn River. Upstream and east is the Citadel of Saulia and the large vault behind that. Downstream and west is the Elmglow side of the Lost Souls cavern.

That part not filled by the lake is on the western outflow. This ground is mossy, and on the bank is a "village": Gilaen. No more than two thousand elves inhabit this cavern.

I've taken a screencap of the 8mile-hex PDF map, expanded it, and overlaid white 2mile-hexes on that. It has about the area of the Boiling Lake, so ties with the smallest on the map. The DM may expand at will: if these are 4mile-hexes, the lake would be the size of Estenreth. Almost anything goes south of the desert.

This whole area is beyond the City's reach. I've proposed that the upstream is dark elf and (more forcefully) downstream, is dead. Ilrondal is no place for normal folk. The lake, then, is host to shadow-elf exiles and semiëxiles.

Farms dot the mossy plain to the north. South, less fertile, hosts a geonid tribe, numbering about fifty; as often for hunter-gatherers on the farming fringe, these have taken to slug herding. The "village" on the map hosts few permanent residents. Along the river are the pontoon and sometime trading post; also, some inns.

Most elves live on rafts upon the lake proper. Also, some wizards have carved out hollows in the walls of the cave above. Aloft the lake's north corner is an aerie for skinwings and their tenders. Not to say there are any, at present; but sometimes the army visits. The shamans have set an Ethereal barrier to the west.

Most geonids dislike the water. Their shamans have, however, experimented with fusing shells with pumice instead of the usual harder, heavier rocks. This pumice is imported (somehow) from the distant Red Rock Bellows far southeast. Some fifteen young geonids here are, as a result, able to swim. Also, they can move faster and bear heavier loads. Their armour-class is concomitantly worse than the geonid mean.

Open worship of Atzanteotl is not tolerated by either race here. Rafiel, too, is not much honoured, except by shamans. To the extent a libertarian shadowelf or civilised geonid exists, it's here.

Where The Evil Dwells

In The Shadow Elves, The Desert of Lost Souls is known to the titular pointy-eared protagonists; but it is the furthest land of all the lands noted on the map. It also the furthest by player character level.

The desert is long, extending east to a narrow cave fringed by the badlands "of Doog". Before it gets to that narrow part, it gets more wasp-waisted still. The main cave, with the main ruin Starwind, pinches also to the south. But not by nearly as much. This part opens up to the fertile and populated (by the living) Elmglow Forest.

My change to the southwest has warped the Lost Souls caverns. The DM may as well run with that: consider a network of haunted caverns. We can keep Starwind in the desert's southwest, where the Crown or its components be found... but Shallatariel, I'd move to the cavern(s) south of Renathys. Which subcavern, we can still adjoin to The Lands Of Doog. Also I'd wipe all the elvish settlements off the south (though not the southeast), except Sylaros the forward-keep and plucky Gilaen. And the Elmglow doesn't exist.

Currently this waste serves as the great southern barrier, between the Dragon Lake - Alfmyr run, and the rest of the south. As long as nobody wears the Crown, which bane the elves rate with the old wives' tales anyway, the undead are just as annoying to outsiders as they are to the elves. The elves are content to let the dead rest, as it were.

Unless and until some idiot actually goes looking for the Crown, that is.

At that point the Elmglow gets its settlements, Durdael and Selinae. Shallatariel has kidnapped them from the north and southeast. Cattle for the living dead.

The fifth clan

One Balinor plot explored the caverns on the other side of the map from Mylandiel: south of Rastignac. This plot was another MacGuffin hunt, to the Red Rock Bellows; which Balinor's party left for home, by way of the Belfry of Thirith. Monsters were fought along the way. So far, so basic.

What springs out is that some of the "monsters" are elvish servitors of Atzanteotl. Not heretics either: these hadn't even heard of the elves' patron, Rafiel. Based on what I've seen from this DM, he was introducing the Schattenalfen from the Hollow World. But.

The City is already short a 100,000 headcount. The desert waste, since it became Lost Souls, is a formidable barrier to the Core; who knows what's down there, besides the dead. Further, the Starpoint Woods / Salandia Reaches cavern, right beneath Alfheim and stuffed with elvish placenames, is guarded by a castle... to the west. The lake downstream has a village on it, and there's the town Jeredor just eight miles UPstream; why fortify the clearly-placid space between. And then there's the module claiming that the Shadow Elves have tunnels as far as Thyatis. Sure, we can scoff at the "bad design". But.

Why not just go for it. Leave the Starpoint cavern as-is; shifted eastward, perhaps (it doesn't need to be directly under Alfheim city). It keeps its tower, castle, and towns. But these are not righteous towns. The cavern belongs to the Anasazi Elves, that offshoot before the four clans came to Aengmor. Their base is still further upstream, of both Gilfyn and Delnador. Maybe they're hooked into the Hollow World of the red sun, but that doesn't matter.

I bet a good portion of the enormities which the surface races impute upon the elves of Rafiel have nothing to do with Rafiel, but instead are the work of the feathered serpent.

It follows further that Rastignac could belong to either sort of elf. It all depends on which tunnel got carved out first, the north one or the south one.

Balinor's journey

The Shadow Elves Gazetteer left the lands south of the Lost Souls' Waste as names on a map, only. Although I haven't ventured an opinion, I did find one gamer - from LONG ago - who has. Meet Igor Betti, a force in Italian RPGs.

Betti wrote down his avatar Balinor's journeyings through Gaz13's underworld. One 'Brizio translated most pages to English, and consulted Betti where the pages were missing.

Balinor's group explored a little north of Caerlinyl; but whatever was done there, could have been done in the maps provided. They also did a circuit of the Mylandiel anti-donut. This was quite literally a March Around The Square, since - by the map - there is nothing here; although their DM did present a (sub)cave for them to loot. Their DM further took the geonid presence "south of Alfmyr" literally.

I don't wholly blame the DM for these uninspired grind missions. I've been looking at the map and the book all week, and I still have no idea how I'd do better. I mean, besides doing over.

The southwest

I've observed that the southern part of The Shadow Elves is amorphous in the text, and I deemed it unfinished. So let's put some finishing-touches to the best-constrained part, the Losetrel / southern-Dragon sector(s).

For constraint, the north is Core so stays where it is. I further see no need to alter Renathys. I maintain Dunedea and its immediate environs, longitude-wise. Given all that, Dragon Lake has no room to expand north or east; and neither do the Warrens. There's more room west, although I don't want to budge the Desrii bypass which is west enough. Same to the rivers it bypasses.

Southwest has more opportunity. That's the Losetrel cavern. This underlies western Darokin - Akorros, specifically. Losetrel connects to the other elves in three places: Lethowan / Atapian, a Sojourner (flowing from 'neath the Desert), and the Warrens in between. (Also the Sylaros road leads off south, for what that's worth.) So I can't go eraser-happy. But:

I expand Dragon Lake by 2-3 hexes / 20 miles southward (I am vague here), and extend Lethowan / Atapian and the Warrens to fit (I am insistent there). To keep up with the Warrens, I've ceded some hexes in Losetrel's north to them. The Sojourner is a bit longer so Losetrel cavern annexes further east. (Opposite to 1945 Poland...) Losetrel city has moved south and southeast. So the main, naval throughfare shouldn't take much longer. The other routes are supposed to be The Long Way.

The old lake had a bottleneck north of Dunedea and south of Qedain; my expansion expands that width to inconsequence. If the DM wants the bottleneck back, assume shallows north of Dunedea for another hex or two. Overall the dragon turtle will appreciate the extra space to swim in, and the skinwings to fly over.

For the southern shore I've maintained the map's insecurity between the Desert and Dunedea's west. This isn't through the river outflow, where the elves will demand a watergate keep, so is through some "tertiary" passage.

The Warrens has gained enough breathing-room that I considered bending the extra lakefront a hex westward at it, although in the end I'm leaving that up to the DM. Instead I took the liberty to colour-up one "central" hex. I'm not particular about where exactly. This can be the old 900s-BC era Felestyr "union hall", back when the clan was learning to mine as Gelbalf clients. It didn't name itself "Old Alfmyr" but some explorers since have tagged that name to it.

As for the mining cavern west of Losetrel: I'm not disputing that here, but it's on the mapedge for a DM to expand as desired. Likewise if the DM feels like expanding the greenery southwest, although Bethadia Tower should move to wherever the river outflow goes.

Renathys

Renathys is one of the two Dendranel-populous "towns" in the core map outside the City. It is off the wayside from Joran's Path. Before the Alfmyr tunneling, it was the terminus of said Path: astride the Sojourner. I propose that from 1040 to about 800 BC, it was Felestyr's capital. (Since I don't dispute the 8mile map here, I am not yet starting a 2mile one.)

After the Felestyr economy moved up river, much of the older larger Renathys was abandoned, and demolished. The most beautiful historic homes are maintained along the riverbank, and in the old town centre (that part marked on the map). As the shoreline gets muddier to the southwest, the houses get more dilapidated. There is enough riverbank sprawl that since the 700s BC, Renathys is less town than a New-Grunland-like district.

Renathys remains predominant Felestyr. It is the bedroom-community and retirement home of choice for Alfmyr's miners... well, until comes Wander time, anyway. People here like it quiet: in Gazetteer terms, their end of Joran's Path was left to decay into "secondary" status, with the main road diverted right to Alfmyr.

Old Town Renathys is on a stream flowing from the Willowdew Grove, still the Felestyr's primary breadbasket. The Grove must however be refertilised from time to time. And much food is imported, here as in Alfmyr, mainly from New Grunland.

Renathys' primary threat comes from the south shore of the river. That cavern as it dries up becomes rugged. The living dead have been encountered here. Some elves suspect a passage to the Desert of Lost Souls. Renathys has erected an Ethereal barrier across the area but, as usual, no protection is perfect.

Adventuring here is of the haunted-house type, suitable for low-Expert on up. There is also role-playing opportunity in Felestyr high-society. Particularly at the high-Expert level, when Shallatariel turns: his undead agents infiltrate this society, with an aim to Alfmyr.

Dunedea

Dunedea exists solely on the Shadow Elves map. It is a Dendromel-sized village, so 3000-4000 souls, on the southern shore of Dragon Lake. By the map it basically is the southern shore.

I trust the map for the northern Dragon Lake, but not for the south. I do allow that on detail, Dunedea's environs are tractable. Also we could do that bit more with the Crown Of Corruption cycle.

I used HexTML's map editor, then MS Paint. According to the legend in the City Of The Stars map, the shore is mud to the west. The mud yields to fungal "trees" east of that, to mosses on the rise southeast along the cavern wall. The trees east of town dwindle back to mosses.

Thorfinn's map had the western shore encroaching more toward the town. I've split the difference: I agree that the northern promontory is ragged; I disagree on the western shore. Also the east is plain safer. So I have the town's main port to the east. Although the town also has piers to the west down a less-traveled path. My map is just a rough guide anyway.

This cavern's walls, marked with those black triangle "mountain" hexes, were prospected when the town was founded. They were not ore-bearing - which is just as well, because the Desert of Lost Souls is nigh. What mineshafts haven't collapsed, are abandoned. Dunedea serves the Alfmyr / Losetrel trade, feeding the traders mostly with fish, although basic farming is done here too. The northern tip has a lighthouse: mostly in the red, so more visible to elves than to surface folk.

I've proposed that Dunedea was founded when Renathys was the Felestyr capital (and Felestyr hadn't specialised in mining yet). The town has never been a large one. More, over the decades the Felestyr clan found its niche in mining, those Felestyr here held to the old agrarian ways. After Alfmyr was founded, Felestyr reoriented east, and arranged with Gelbalf that Dunedea - by now the odd duck in the Felestyr flock - be a free port between them. Gelbalf meanwhile does spider-wrangling, another pursuit never of interest to Dunedea. For almost two millennia the town hasn't identified with either clan.

Dunedea's people are mixed across clans, especially those two. The townsfolk are loyal to the City, but not exceptionally so. If the City bureau needs a clan-based census, the lackey posted here will pad the numbers either way, depending on what he thinks his superiors want to hear.

Undead come from the west, and monsters from the sea. Those threats have plagued Dunedea for all its many centuries of existence; the town has arranged its defences accordingly. The mud does bog down the less-intelligent living dead, but does less well against the spectral type. So an Ethereal barrier spans that mud. (N.B. I'd yesterday imposed a castle on the Sojourner outflow. The way the map is structured, this castle throttles the Desert too. If we accept that castle, some of Dunedea's westerly defences might be lax. Still, the castle focuses on the Lake-Losetrel waterway. It can't stop everything creeping along the shoreline.)

Basic-level adventurers do bounties, tracking down the odd ghoul or escaped (intrusive, from a Gelbalf trader) spider in the forest; or they could help defend the town against a coastal threat. Expert-level go out to the mudflats, or underwater.

At Companion, the party should be stopping the problem at its source which is, of course, the Lost Souls' Waste. Before that point, Expert-level characters can meet Shallatariel of Losetrel: still neutral-aligned and among the living, making a study of the undead here. He is a 15th-level wizard. Add to his spellbook, animate dead; which he won't need anymore where he's headed. Subtract the power words.

The Felestyr trek

The shadowelves had plenty of time in the hard school of the Refuge cavern to learn how to farm in the Shadowland. After the coronation 1040 BC, the clan Porador was first to venture into the nearest caverns around. Those north and northwest of the City were most promising, their bards already praising them as a "new Grunland". The city Alfmyr did not yet exist; Losetrel, if it existed, was far distant.

Back home, the serpent of strife invaded the paradise. Where Parador had volunteered, Felestyr followed perforce.

There was, on the face of it, plenty of room in the caverns north of the City. Felestyr started, or at any rate continued, the laborious work of terraforming the largest, a rather noxious hellhole watered by the sulfrous springs of Skullhorn and plagued by monsters from its own eastern highland, Talreth's Crown. And all was still close to the City, and mutual tempers remained uncomfortably warm too.

And these caverns themselves were not yet secured. It would not be too long before disaster struck the Cearlian cavern, rendering it uninhabitable.

The Porador predominant in the Cearlian had the stark choice of resisting the blight, moving back to the City, or shifting to the New Grunland cavern. The Porador were farmers, not warriors; they chose the latter. Felestyr and Porador now had to share a cavern, which although large was still barely fit to support even a single clan. Felestyr had just lost a war with Celebryl. It had little stomach to fight another clan, and be cursed thereby as the pariah of the elven race. Some memory of lost Aengmor remained.

So Felestyr sent exploration-parties: northwest, east, and southeast. Tame Fairbrow was considered first. As a cul-de-sac, this one stood a long-term chance of subjecting the Felestyr as permanent clients to the Porador. Talreth's Crown was prospected also, to the east; but deemed too dangerous. It would take a literal army to push back that frontier.

The elf Joran took the southern route. This path, though arduous and leading below (what they now know) was a vast lava lake, ended up at the Willowdew cave and the Sojourner River. Here, the Felestyr could relocate and regroup: Renathys. As they explored west, they found another anchorage at the southern shore of the Dragon Lake.

In the meantime, the Gelbalf in Losetrel and the City trafficked through the Firemouth Road; the Dragon Lake being unsafe for the City. Between Gelbalf and Felestyr, the Gelbalf started with the upper hand, so delegated the mines to Felestyr. Felestyr mined shafts west and north, breaking into the Warrens for the latter. Felestyr profits went back east to Dunedea and to Renathys.

Finally, upstream from the Felestyr main entrepôt Renathys, around 800 BC, a rich vein of crystals was found.

Felestyr there founded Alfmyr, and prospered. Joran's Way became a Porador-Felestyr highway. It was Felestyr wealth which funded the 792 BC expedition upward of Blackstone. Losetrel, too, oriented its trade more with this newly-wealthy city; Dunedea became a free port between Felestyr and Gelbalf. The shamans pledged support for Alfmyr if they got their cut.

Celebryl sued for terms. What else could they do?

How we got here

Discrepancies abound in The Shadow Elves between the map and the text. (I also found space for a few more lavatubes, castles, and towers here and there - but they don't count, for this purpose.) As for how the map and text diverged as far as they did:

Assuredly some first-edition of the map underlies all the published material. I note that much of the text is interested in tying itself with The Orcs of Thar. So I have an idea on how that first map started: from the lavatubes in Thar (maybe also Glantri). Logically the outflows from the lava lake above had to come through here. Naralf's Hole and Sethandor were marked, going down; and Fire Dragon Mountain serves to push some of the lava back UP. Jorfyn Depression was mooted, for the lava to flow down to, for which location the map's authors figured Fire Dragon for as good a spot as any.

The Blackstone Hollow "checkpoint" coincides where the 792 BC explorers got to Kol, thence to Gnollistan and the Anvil. The northeast Marches, likewise, tie well with the Yellow Orkia. These look intentional. If so, both the Jorlinrath and Estenreth caverns featured on the first-edition map.

The northeast Marches, more important to the first sketches, didn't make the final cut, except for the vestige on the map.

The authors and editors were less interested in any political links further up, to the surface. Elves of Alfheim notes an egress in Darokin near Alfheim. For that, this map has no room - except in the vast neglected south. Losetrel was found to underlie Akorros' suburb Crowlerd, so the Shadow Elves text has run with that.

New Grunland vacillated between cavern and city, and Porador was a farm town... somewhere. I suspect that the "Day" inset was written first, at a very early stage of the map. Later, Porador became a clan, so left the map. Nominally.

Alfmyr was supposed to underlie Glantri. That means its first edition was in the cavern now "New Grunland". Alfmyr moved out, but didn't quite find a place to move TO, except vaguely "south". I suspect the Warrens - which the writers then rejected for Alfmyr too. Near the last minute, Alfmyr got warrens of its own. These were upstream of the east Sojourner with the dwarves. Meanwhile the Cearlian cavern, which just takes up (strategic) space now, may have been first-edition rustic Porador / New Grunland. After the first draught of the text, Alfmyr's former cavern became New Grunland; after its FINAL draught, the map set Jelden / Larkpoint there.

The Dragon Lake was thought out... for its northern shore. Not its south, though. The Lost Souls' desert was ultima-thule, placed where it is before the rest of the south was done. At that point, I doubt it was even the Lost Souls; it was probably just the sandy southern shore of the Sojourner, opposite the Sands Of Qedain.

If so, the Elmglow was original - maybe also its villages, and Sylaros. When the shoreline was split from the Sojourner network, and the long beach became the long desert, this cut off the Elmglow. Beyond that, the south was scrabbled together, to fill up the space left in the 8mile hex map covering the interior foldout.

Last, but the proverbial Not Least: The City Of The Stars. That this vault is upside down has come about because it was a tie-in with the Hollow World. It straddles the gravitational divide between the twin surfaces. The City map ties in with Jorlinrath, likely named late in the process. I suspect much of the confusion here came out of the City's development, and how to merge this with Alfmyr / New Grunland 'neath Glantri.

The map and the text

Sargent and Thomas, for the Shadow Elves, sketched out a map and a Gazetteer. At some point their editor was supposed to align the two.

In many cases over at TSR, this last part didn't happen so well: e.g. available Norwold space is less than the full map of CM1, Taladas went out rife with internal contradictions. And then there's Night Below. (Errk!) The ethos was, "let the DM smooth it all over". If we're to do that, first we have to isolate the roughness.

We'll start small. In the small map "Jorlinrath" names a road due east of the City. In the big map, the Jorlinrath cave hosts a Blackstone Hollow "tower" - but many miles northeast of the crossroad. This tower is redundant.

Page 5 in "History as the Shadow Elves Know It" summarises "New Grunland". This is a city, inside a cavern which is "half the size of the capital's" that is, the starry cavern of the Refuge. "Porador" is a farm town in "A Day in the Lives of the Shadow Elves". On the map, New Grunland is the cavern and it is much larger than the Refuge's. Instead the capital is "Jelden" and it's adjacent to a "Larkpoint" castle. There is no town "Porador"; other parts of the text will note it as Grunland's shadowelf clan.

The main text is insistent pp. 7, 8 that the 802 AC plague started in Glantri and hit hardest Alfmyr. The map makes this quite a feat given that Glantri is over New Grunland space; and over Alfmyr, is a lot of Alfheim. That the dwarves are blamed reminds of that old Yiddische kvetch, "goy fight goy and they blame . . ." Alfmyr is on the presumed Rockhome route, however.

The "Geography of the Shadow Elf Lands" p. 17 starts with Lakes and Waterways. Dragon Lake here takes effort to reconcile with the Dragon Lake of the map. The great Sojourner rivers flow slowly away from Dragon Lake in both directions: on the map, they flow from east to west, slightly southbound as well. Northeast goes to a pebbled shore, presumably the Sands of Qedain. That old lava flow on the map corresponds with Naralf's Hole, very much active, and which agrees with an outflow from Orcs of Thar.

That much is reconcilable enough. Less so is this unwieldly sentence:

The lakeside can be crossed on foot from the north canal to the point where the Boiling River flows out into Dragon Lake, but the temperature can be very extreme here at times so the shadow elves have built a series of rope bridges with very tough, fibrous fungal "rope" around the west and south sides of the Lake.

Say whut? This lake isn't sinuous Lake Travis, a dammed-up river. This is a roundish pool. Visitors will see no point in rope bridges "around" (over?) the lake. But wait - there's more! The south side of the lake is all coastline, wide enough at one point to sport a sizeable "town" - 3000+ people - which is named "Dunedea". None of this is in the text. The DM must assume the rope bridges to span the east Sojourner and Boiling rivermouths... which are on the east and north sides of this lake.

Also on the southern shore is the Desert of Lost Souls. Close upstream of major city - and Darokin route - Losetrel. Yeah, the DM's gonna hafta 'splain THAT away too. This horrible place is also connected by way of a wide neck to Elmglow, riddled with presumed-elfin villages. Certainly that neck is wider than that to its own east, the Lands of Doog.

Concerning the southern third of the map beyond the Sojourners and the Lost Souls' Waste, the text says all of this: south of Alfmyr, p. 29, are geonids and maybe extra caeciliae and basilisks. Interesting because the southern third underlies both the Alfheim and Darokin cities. Otherwise, pp. 53, 60 put agents up to Crowlerd via Losetrel.

Estenreth's topography

As the shadowlands' northeast geopolitics go, the deep elves need only the western Marches of Caetel. Normally elves would leave far-flung caverns like the Estenreth vault to some other friendly race, like they don't contest the dwarves for Rockhome's underworld. Here at Estenreth, the elves did once have a problem with the local neighbours, not being always friendly. But even in 1000 AC when those neighbours are at least grudgingly quiet, the elves maintain their hold here.

The elves' reason for holding this cavern must, then, be that they have use for the cavern's resources.

The Bethis mine in the Dessaris Crests coincides with an Orcs of Thar "Lava Flow" river, from a magma lake above the Jorfyn Depression (that lake also flows out to Naralf's Hole, which feeds the Jorfyn). Underground, "hills" and "mountains" imply topographical shifts, up or down; "badlands" implies jagged terrain, chasms, and outcrops. So we aren't told if the Bethis mine be below the river, or above it.

So let's make a decision: ashore. The Dessaris Crest overlooks both the Grunelgard and the lake, which are at about the same level. The lava is in the Dessaris, as in, in: under its surface. The mine connects to the lava flow.

That lava then flows beneath the Grunelgard too, east of that. I have marked a red circle on this map, where that lava runs through a maelstrom down to Mystara's magma core. Just southeast of the Grunelgard.

The mine isn't a soul-crystal hotspot, but it's still quite useful. The Lava Flow burps up all manner of minerals from that big magma lake up above. It's also a wonderfully hygenic garbage-disposal.

The Marches of Caetel

The Shadow-Elf core is centre-north on the map. The Gazetteer suggested plot-hooks for exploring beyond, proposing northwest for that. That leaves the northeast.

The map presents the northeast as like Thulingard / Fairbrow northwest: an extension of New Grunland.

The first cavern east of New Grunland starts with "marches". That implies military.

The northern parts of this network lie below the Ethengar Khanate. Those parts are the whole of Caetel (on the map) and Mistpoint, and Targael and Caitros in northern Grunelgard. I assume that the elves haven't bothered digging their way up thence. That's not the elves' military interest.

Above Morkia / Estenreth, south of that, is the northeast "Yellow Orkia" quadrant of Broken Lands. The Bethis mine and most of Grunelgard are below "Darokin" except, that's the Dwarfgate Mountains part, which everyone leaves to Darokin's responsibility just so the elves and dwarves don't have to share a border. Think: the northwest frontier, when British India claimed it.

This suggests that at least the Estenreth cave was orkish (or some other humanoid) before the elves got here. Caetel was that contested ground where the two peoples met. Those relations collapsed in 448 BC when the orcs and hobgoblins got as far as the City. 448 BC is likely when these Marches changed hands.

As of 1000 AC the elves own all three caverns. The elves' military interest here today is defensive - to protect New Grunland. No elf wants the Broken Land surface, nor even its caverns, much less the open-sky Khanate; and it's too much a pain to move agents through these roads to what elves do want, which is Alfheim. Those agents who'd insert themselves to the surface prefer, for their base, the south. From Estenreth the elves maintain cordial relations with Yellow Orkia inasmuch as Yellow Orkia doesn't covet the Estenreth (again?). The caverns are peaceful enough now to rate as a backwater.

To keep it all sleepy and cordial, the central-command military (and not a New Grunland militia) still garrisons that tower Caitros. To this day the military applies "the Caetel marches" or "the Caetel front" to the whole network, even obscure Mistpoint.

This is the furthest edge of the City's writ. We can allow that Mistpoint be larger than the map presents to us, maybe northeast Grunelgard too. The elvish population of the whole network - mines, towns, tower, and whatever lies beyond - maxes out at 3000.

The shadow elf population is overcounted

The Shadow Elf population is touted 550,000. Let's do a census.

250,000 dwell in the City of the Stars including the 40,000 in Wendolen "village" - assuredly a city in its own right. Roughly another 7000 inhabit Dendronel and Piliny(l) together, NOT counted in that City total. The various soldiers around the place can be assumed to belong to some town or city or other.

In the major cities: New Grunland accounts for 40000, Alfmyr 25000, and Losetrel 17500. All of these will refer to what we'd call a "metroplex", like the City of the Stars includes Wendolen. New Grunland, in particular, has its urban centre at Jelden, but nobody says "I'm from Jelden".

The Core so far can account for 339,500 souls. I judge this count as solid. Let's send our censustakers to the less-documented habitations.

The map marks a distinction between the bighouse Towns, like Dendronel; and the doublehut Villages. I count four other towns: Dunedea and Renathys also in the core; Jeredor and Durdael in the south. Those four account for another 15000 total if I assume Dendronel as the baseline, and round up. Then there are ten villages. Another 10000 villagers, eh wot?

Castles next. Larkpoint won't count - that's the New Grunland acropolis, where Jelden is the surrounding city. Since all four castles are in greenery, the others can be assumed palisaded villages. Those are: Desrii, Sylaros, Saulia. I consider Rastignac as good as a castle too, but we've already counted it. Another 3000 souls.

‭367,500‬ total. Maybe I can fudge that up to 389,000. For that we must allow Dendronel (3000 minimum) to be smaller than average. The thirteen castles and the villages are then 1500 on average, with the four towns each 7500. Note, I don't see the four towns needing this many people each; and I'm pushing it for the castles and villages.

Even so fudged, and even after I add another few thousands in new castles on the Dragon Lake: I've now got to share no less than 150,000 strays over not-that-many mines, none as important as Alfmyr's, and "towers" which are likely reserved for the military where they're not squatted by ifrits and jinns from Hell. (Allahumma ehfazni!) And these elves are not Huldrefolk content to live in treehouses. They are shadow-elves with a deep community asabiya. They live in villages or they don't live long.

Are there elves living off the map entirely? If so, the transliminal villages aren't any larger than Dendronel, or we'd know about them; and remember, too far out and the City Of The Stars loses control, like it hasn't any hold over Oenkmar up above, and (literally) can't count on those elves for its census. I don't think the City can even count on the elves south of the Lost Souls.

More realistically, consider that many thousands of shadowelves are not in the Shadowdeep... at all! They have infiltrated elven and even orkish communities up above. Even here, I am not seeing Alfheim (nor Darokin) letting the shadow elves get away with over a hundred thousands of them.

To sum up, the maths DON'T sum up. The City can claim nowhere near 550,000 elves. This population isn't even cracking the 400,000 mark and really, 375,000 seems more like it. But what's a 31.8% discrepancy among fellow elves?

The Cearlian, laid Waste

I was considering the low-level exploration mission northwest of the shadow elf core. It struck me that finding a disused largish cavern is one thing; taming it is quite another. And resources attract rivals. Especially in the Underdark.

I propose that the party (and patsy) can discover the muddy passage to the Cearlian Vault - when it's not all that bad. When they discover it, the "waste" is just fallow dirt fit for cultivation. The Efreet's Claw - which does not lead to the surface, luckily for Glantri - has certainly helped keep the phosphates replenished. The Darkleaf Bastion is here but whatever critters are in it now, aren't a problem for 4th level adventurers - so, no âfrît. The patsy will end up with The Credit, as the underworld equivalent to Lief Erikson. Gee, I wonder if the old colonists ever found any trouble here . . . NAAH IT'LL BE FINE.

Over the next year, Porador and Gelbalf second-sons migrate to the Vault hoping to make it farmland, like Thulingard by the Fairbrow. The Lethowan canal is dredged; Darkleaf is rebuilt, new tunneling is commenced to the Sojourner. The player characters find something else to do, someWHERE else, to level up.

Then comes the âfrît, then comes the Waste, and the new farmers need help. High-Expert help; with or without Droopy Ear. And certainly the City Of The Stars can't tolerate a minion of al-Shaytân commandeering trade on the Sojourner.

The High Expert player characters can fix this. NOW they get the credit.

The patsy comes to the Cearlian Waste

"Follow the Patsy" is an "Expert" level adventure where you escort some droopy-eared goof through "hitherto unmapped" territory. Implicit is that the monsters here aren't as strong as the monsters in the next adventure on, which are 73 hp / 10** HD Boneless and Elemental Drakes. So this one is good for 4th level...

... unless it's played in the locations it's been assigned to.

This adventure's examples are the North Sojourner river and the Continual Rain cavern. Both are northwest quadrant - both also, coincidentally, flow from volcanoes (although they didn't set Skullhorn on the map). That terra isn't wholly incognita, to the elves, first because both the river and the cavern lie in territory core since 800 BC, secondly since the patsy is (especially if chasing a MacGuffin) following a trail in "an old book". If that book had maps, nobody followed up on those maps. BTW this blog allows for a dark-age deep in core territory before the shamans brought enlightenment.

Sargent and Thomas were veterans of RPGs, if not for D&D itself, so were already aware of what bores players. Fetch quests and grinds bore players. Hence, why the comic-relief NPC. As for what's fetched here, the usual MacGuffin in GAZ13 is the Soul Crystal. By this point in this Gazetteer, the two authors must have realised that this plot-device was getting well-worn. So the plot does allow for other motivations - or just the joy of exploration.

If you've seen the map we got, in the core regions both the North Sojourner and the Continual Rain waterways have their headsprings not beyond to the north, but to ABOVE. This would rule out soul-crystals being the MacGuffin.

But there can be nuance around the waterway which runs northwards of the Cavern of Continual Rain. To some, this looks like an author thinking of the Lethowan.

To Desrii Castle, the Lethowan runs from due north, skirting the Continual Rain and Sethandor to the river's east. Upstream it flows through Bethlandor Cave - as the old book calls it. Beyond that, is muddy Caerlinyl Lake; or, the explorers can take a "tertiary" tunnel to a vault to the east.

As you know, I am not invested in "canon" maps that haven't been explored in canon. I'd be fine with pushing Caerlinyl further north, or northwest or wherever. That vault with the Cearlian Wastes, though, is designed to tunnel out to the North Sojourner between the City and New Grunland. I can't budge it. Also if Desrii was worth a castle, that goes double for this region.

I think Darkleaf Bastion is outpost for a now-dead colony. That tunnel from the Lethowan was a canal; and so the Old Book describes it. Since then the canal has silted up, leaving enough moisture for the Oakstalk, but not for the Cearlian beyond. Somehow the region has avoided attention.