by Stephanie Pui-Mun Law
SHR Main Page | Opera Propria | Gifts from the Moon Introduction
The story that explains the paleness of the Dolomites is given in Sanctuary of Ice. The material there is based on Tomie de Palao's retelling of the story, because it is more coherent, in the sense that the motivations of characters arise from their interactions, not from the simple assertion that they are so. Some of the additional material in the Wolff version is, however, of use.
The Prince was the only unhappy person in his kingdom because he desired to go to the Moon, and had wished to do so for as long as he could remember. He sought out the wisest men he could find to assist his passage, but all failed to satisfy him.
One day, the Prince became separated from his hunting party and camped out under the stars in a box canyon filled with Alpine roses. He had a dream in which he saw a group of people on a monochromatic landscape. A red Alpine rose provided the only colour. He offered the rose to a beautiful maiden, who introduced herself as the daughter of the King of the Moon. He awoke, then picked some roses while he considered the dream, and wallowed in the sort of self-pity expected of the obsessive and vaguely delusional.
The Prince heard voices and, suspecting evil spirits, went to investigate. He drew his sword, but forgot to put down his bouquet of flowers. He then climbed one of the cliffs, following the voices, while somehow retaining both his drawn sword and roses. It may be that this was simply a very steep hill. When he reached the level where the cloud shrouded the peak, so that no moonlight reached it, he groped about and found a doorway. In later tellings, the Prince finds this doorway with the assistance of a spell from Tsicuta, a witch, after an epic adventure involving the avalanche spirit Ce-de-Lu, and a battle with Spina de Mul.
When he entered he found two small, extremely elderly men, who were alarmed by his presence. After he calmed the men, he conversed with them for some time, and during the conversation they stated that they lived on the Moon, and were about to take the lengthy journey home. The Prince described, at length, his fixation with visiting the moon, becoming pale with excitement, and the two old men agreed to take him along on their journey. The cloud surrounding the mountain lifted away, bearing the three of them aloft.
On their voyage, the Prince and the old men described their home kingdoms to each other. Here the moon men gave a hint as to the size of their kingdom - they said that everything - "the meadows, mountains, woods and cities" - was a dazzling white and that the rivers and lakes were like quicksilver. Their kingdom was, therefore, larger than a city-state. The voyage ended with the cloud coming to rest about a lunar mountain. The old men proceeded off to the west by foot, but the capital was to the east, so the party divided and the Prince set off alone.
The capital's houses and towers were of a white stone. A gate of glittering metal, fantastically wrought, prevented entry into it. A gardener working behind the gate saw the roses in the Prince's hand and asked him where he found them. After the Prince replied that they were from the Earth, the gardener instructed him that the daughter of the King collected rare blooms and would reward him handsomely for his bouquet. The Prince laughed and pointed out that as a Prince, he did not need any reward. The gardener threw open the gate, asked the Prince to come inside, and ran off to tell the King that a Prince had arrived.
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by Stephanie Pui-Mun Law |
After so long that it seemed their happiness would be life-long, the Princess began to pine for the Moon. Her growing homesickness became incapacitating, and her father came to the Earth to take her home. The Prince followed her home, but his eyesight rapidly began to degenerate, and his duty to his Earthly kingdom prevented him from embracing blindness as the price for remaining with his love.
When the price returned to Earth, his obsession with the moon was worse than before. He stayed in the palace only during the nights of the new moon, spending his remaining time under the stars in the secluded places of the kingdom. After several weeks he stopped returning to the palace and became something of wild man. One evening, when the weather turned bad, he retreated to a small cave, where he met an equally-desolate stranger.
The strange man was three feet high and had the extremely long beard one associates with faerie kings in the local folklore. He was also wearing a crown, which no doubt assisted in his identification. He explained to the Prince that he was the king of the Salvans, a people who had once lived in a beautiful country far to the East. His kingdom had been invaded and burned and his people killed or scattered. The neighbouring countries had refused to take the émigrés in, except for one, which had taxed the Salvani so appallingly that many more had died working in mines for their new hosts. The few Salvani who remained had fled further west and were scattered. The Prince, to console him, told him of his own misfortunes, and then the canny king burst into a smile and said "Prince, we are both saved!"
The little king offered the Prince a deal. He stated that the Princess had been forced to leave because lunar people were used to a far brighter light than Earth people and because the mountains of the kingdom were so ominous and black. The king suggested a trade: if the Salvans could make the mountains as white as the Moon, then the Prince could get his father to grant the Salvans the right to live free of molestation in the kingdom. The Prince noted that his half of the deal was easy, and the Salvans' half was too good to be possible. "We have done much harder things than that!" noted the little king, so the Prince agreed and took the Salvan to see his father. They hiked for two days to reach the castle.
The King was initially opposed to the agreement, because it seemed dangerous to allow a foreign people to establish themselves in the country. The little king said that his people wanted to live only in the deserted forests at the fringes of the kingdom and would not use the meadows or pastureland at all. The king's counselors thought this was a lot less threatening, and so they agreed and solemn oaths were sworn. The little king then left to collect the scattered Salvani.
The Salvan king returned a few days later at the head of a procession of tiny people, which wound through the kingdom into the high forests. They chose homes "in among the rocks, in caves, behind waterfalls, and under heavy networks of vines." Some retellings suggest that this Salvan King was Laurin, and that the Rosegarten was founded at this time, although that does not appear in the La Monte/Wolff text. The Salvan king then sent word to the Prince that the great magic would begin that very night. The Prince, who was all but insane with anticipation, waited on top of one of the higher mountains so that he could watch their efforts. As night fell, seven dwarfs (a term never used for their king) wound their way to the summit of the mountain on which the Prince waited and formed a circle.
The Prince watched the flying motions they made with their arms and the odd movements of their fingers and asked "What are you doing?"
"We are spinning moonbeams," answered a dwarf, and a luminous clew formed in the centre of the circle. As their spinning continued, the clew grew larger, and the Prince, scanning the peaks of all the mountains in the kingdom, could discern other dwarfs at work on each peak, illuminated by their clews. When the Moon went down each dwarf seized a thread from his clew and sped off toward another mountain. They wove a net of light that hid the dark outlines of the mountains.
The Prince returned to the Moon and went to the Palace. He met an attendant who told him the Princess had only moments to live. She was dying for the lack of him. He burst into her room and told her the good news, and her will to live was rekindled. When she returned to the Earth, she was never troubled by nostalgia, because the kingdom, now that it had both the paleness of the Moon and the colours of the Earth, was more beautiful than her old home.
The Princess's nostalgia did not die entirely, however. Those who see the beautiful peaks are infected by it and will feel a persistent pull, drawing them back to the Dolomites.
A key question you should answer is this: in your campaign, are objects from the surface of the Moon considered to be from above the Lunar Sphere, and therefore, as in The Fallen Angel, immune to Hermetic magic? As a guide to response, if your characters are ever going to actually go to the Moon, the answer should probably be "no," If, however, they are going to encounter rare items of lunar provenance, then an interesting answer is "yes."
Bonuses: Mountain rose: +3 Charm faeries, +1 Create passion, Rusty-leaved rhododendron: +3 Charm faeries, +1 Resist aging
The term "alpine rose" is used for three different species, the Rosa pendulina (Rosa alpina in older nomenclatures), Rhododendron ferrugineum and Azalea indica. It is not clear which flower the Prince carries. The rosa alpina and rusty-leaved rhododendron are both found in the Alps and both sometimes have crimson flowers, as required by the story. The Indian azalea, sometimes called Chinese honeysuckle, is probably not the flower described, although it shares the red-pink range of the other two.
The bonuses for the mountain rose differ from those of the more conventional roses because it is usually a thornless variety and is usually pink or mauve.
Bonuses: +3 devoted love, +3 clouds, +2 protection from Alpine conditions, +1 death by falling
The name edelweiss ("noble white") is too modern for the Hermetic period. Two older names are wollblume ("wool bloom," but sometimes translated as "cloud flower") and alpine star.
Edelweiss is, according to the tale above, a xenobotanical weed. In a campaign with few lunar influences, Virtuous Edelweiss might be immune to Hermetic magic. This great secret, lost with the Druids, would allow the crafting of arrows that ignore the usual Hermetic protections.
The edelweiss is rather a dull plant by modern botanical standards. It is a perennial that grows in gritty soil. It is hardy, and traditionally grows in places that are difficult for people to get to, for example under cliff overhangs. Its growth corridor lies from 1,600 to 2,800 metres. Its older name is derived from the thick coat of wool-like fibres that the plant grows to protect its leaves from high-altitude sunlight and weather. Its flowers are tiny and yellow but are surrounded by a star of white, floral leaves.
Getting an edelweiss flower for a young woman was a traditional sign of masculine bravery, since falls when climbing cliffs for edelweiss used to kill people occasionally. This is the key reason why, although enchanted edelweiss items could help defend redcaps from the weather, they refuse to use them. They believe the plant is unlucky. In the wider Alpine community, the flower is considered a bit of romantic novelty, a sign of things pure and difficult to obtain, and a useful cure for dysentery.
It is traditional for the Swiss to decorate their doors with garlands of edelweiss on Ascension Day.
Bonuses: +4 moon, +2 safe travel, +2 protection from cold; in this region, +6 to affect the illuminated stones
It is tempting to suggest that all stones on the Moon are made of moonstone or, better, its close relative, adularia. Moonstones are yellow and when exposed to light develop a blue or white halo about the edge of the stone - a property confusingly called adularesence.
Adularias are clear and develop a blue halo. Adularias are native to the Alps, with most coming from a tiny area around Adula Mountains. It is not clear if medieval people considered adularias to be anything other than moonstones.
It is tempting to suggest that the Moon is a giant, clear adularia that takes its brilliance from the Sun. This would create a blue haze that blinded the Prince. Alternatively the Moon might be a pale yellow moonstone that has white or silver adularesence. In the myth this clearly is not true, because the haze of the moon is like the sun on dolomitic limestone.
This presents a Storyguide whose characters are mining on the Moon with a couple of options. They can have it made out of moonstone, which is aesthetically pleasant, or made of limestone, which is pleasant due to its bizarreness. Why is the moon made of coral, and given that coral repels demons, does this make it a great place to found a covenant?
Bonuses: +3 to potions that affect things strongly connected to the Moon
The water of the moon is like quicksilver, but is potable. This would make is suitable for use as a potion base for effects that are linked sympathetically to the Moon. Virtuous water from the Moon might contain vis - or something similar that is not quite vis.
The gate of the capital of the Moon is made of a glittering metal. This is odd, because it is one of the few things on the moon that is not luminous. It might be silver, traditionally linked to the Moon, but to glitter there would have to be a fellow wiping it over every week or so with a polishing cloth. If that is the line you are following, then the Buffer of the City Gate is probably a better NPC to meet the characters than the gardener. Possibly silver does not tarnish on the Moon, which is a great boon for butlers. In another version the city is surrounded not by a wall but by a hedge with shining stakes. In that version, shining armaments are found on the walls of the castle.
Moon metal could be just about anything you would find on Earth. Powerful people, like kings for example, collect props that demonstrate their power and wealth, otherwise people wonder if they are entirely up to their jobs. The King of the Moon might send people to the Earth to collect things like flowers and steel gates for the same reason that Earthly kings used to keep menageries. If this is the case, simple objects that the characters carry as a matter of course may be tremendously expensive. This idea was used in the television series Alf, in which the alien life form's ship had gold plumbing and platinum taps. The most valuable substances on his planet were wax and foam.
Spun moonlight is the substance that the dwarfs create to remodel the mountains of the kingdom. It is difficult to be certain what this is but it might be radiant vis - the Moon's raw astrological power to fix fates. Astrologers designed using the supplement, The Mysteries, should treat spellcasting in this region as if it were always receiving direct and powerful influence, either positive or negative, from the Moon. In some areas, particularly Faerie Auras tied to the Bright courts, they may reduce the amount of vis required to create periapts that are based on the fields that the Moon influences (Mysteries, page 64). Standard Hermetic magi cannot benefit directly from the lunar correspondence, but they can use the stones of the area to gain bonuses in enchantments linked to the areas of the moon's significance, and can also use the auras that occur in the area as normal.
Wolff does not ever specifically state that the people of the Moon are a faerie race, but for the purposes of Ars Magica this is the most useful alternative. For faeries they are particularly human. They live in cities, have a monarchical system of government, and practice the custom of marriage. Their system of government and style of life are not described in any detail. Their capital is a walled city, but a stranger, like the Prince, can wander up to the gate of the city and be met not by a guard but by a talkative gardener.
Why the men who ferried the Prince to the Moon were on the Earth is absolutely unclear. They have a little waiting room, with a smooth door, hidden in the side of the mountain that their cloud departs from. This suggests that the trip is not a singular event. The only other clue offered by the story is a possible link to one of the king's courtiers.
The old, old men told the Prince that the Moon would blind him if he stayed, but the Princess did not believe this until a wise old man of the court confirmed it. It is possible that the old wise man (wizard?) and the old, old men were in some way connected. Was there a Lunar style of magic working? If the Lunar people are not faeries and are simply an odd human tribe, then clearly there should be. Even if the lucent people are faeries, they are so human, in other respects, that their mystical activities might be learned.
The people of the Moon are only slightly exceptional, physically. The men are always described as old, although two are described as "very, very" old. The only woman described is the Princess, and she is as young and beautiful as folk-tales require. The Princess, while on Earth, glows sufficiently that she banishes shadows under all the nearby trees. This is more remarkable than it sounds, because using two light sources does not banish the shadows of both - it means objects have two shadows. Perhaps items around the Princess become luminous.
Lucent faeries - well, the Princess, if she can be considered an exemplar - are particularly susceptible to death from melancholy. Moonlight seems to spread melancholy, so that the Prince - who is admittedly a lunatic from the beginning - acts in a manner appropriate only for the insane or religious when his wife returns to her father's palace. People of the Dolomites suffer gentle homesickness that draws them back to their mountains, but this may be the effect of a minor enchantment rather than just the usual sentimentality. As a guide lunar faeries gain 1 experience point in their Nostalgia trait for every week spent on Earth. When this trait reaches 5 they withdraw from company. When it reaches 6 they lose a long-term fatigue level and tire easily. At 8, they are bedridden and lose a fatigue level per week. When their Fatigue levels are exhausted, they enter a coma and lose one Body level per week. If they visit the Moon they recover rapidly from the physical effects of their nostalgia, but their Nostalgia score only decreases at the rate of one experience point per month. They cannot simply drop by for a visit to revive themselves.
Lucent faeries do not seem to display other supernatural powers, other than a capacity to travel by cloud between a particular mountain on Earth and a similar one on the Moon. This may be an almost mechanical process. The Prince, at the end of the story, returns to the Moon without apparent assistance. It may be that the Moon people keep a few clouds about on Earth in case their people need to get home in a hurry, or it may be that the Prince had some private method of travel arranged by his father-in-law. The clouds that permit travel between the planets are not used for other purposes; for example, when the old, old men arrive at the moon, they have to travel westward on foot. They do not use the cloud to fly to the west and then land it at their destination.
A second supernatural power might be in force about the lucent faeries. The Prince does not enter either the room of the old, old men or the city without an explicit invitation to do so. This may simply be because he is polite; he does not ask the Salvan king for permission to share the cave in which both shelter, and likewise, he also "pushed the attendant aside and burst in to the Princess' bedroom," although it is likely in this case that he has been invited there at some stage during their married life. However, it is possible that the capital of the Moon lacks guards because you simply cannot enter until someone asks you in.
It is possible that the version of the Moon that the Prince visits is a regio at the top of the mountain from which he and the very, very old men depart. It might also be a segment of Arcadia.
The Salvani are dwarfs who are an odd mix of forest fairy and subterranean dweller. Their king is never described as a dwarf, but he is about three feet high and has a long beard, so his race is likely not caste dimorphic. When looking for a new homeland, the king asks his neighbours for "a forest, a mountain or even a swamp in which to dwell," so it is unlikely that his people are entirely subterranean. The Salvans seem to be able to die in mining accidents, which is unusual for the species. Salvan blood is basically dwarf blood.
Salvan history indicates an invasion and a period of confinement in slavery. A scattering into wild places, then the foundation of a new kingdom, which draws back the disaporic people, follows. It is almost certainly not Wolff's intent to dwell on Biblical themes, and he wrote over half a century before the formation of Israel, but the parallel is interesting to the reader. The Salvans' Far Eastern kingdom is never named, nor are the invaders identified. Were the story being retold in the 1220 setting, a strong candidate for the invading power is the Mongol Horde. As described in The Dragon and the Bear, they are preceded by a wave of destructive spirits that annihilate the faerie realms of the lands into which the Horde advances.
The powers of the Salvani are ill defined. Their king says that they have done things much more difficult than make the mountains like the Moon in a single night. The Salvani seem particularly skilled at making magic thread, as demonstrated here and in the Rosegarten story. Dwarfs skilled at magic involving thread are known elsewhere; for example, the story of Rumplestiltskin is known, by various names, over much of Europe. They are also capable of some form of swift travel, because the King manages to round up all of his people in a couple of days. Oaths made to them seem binding.
The initial reluctance to allow the Salvans to settle in the country seems odd to the modern reader. Why prohibit it? The key reasons relate to population. Most Alpine lands are already populated to the full capacity of their ability to produce food. This means that newcomers would force out some of the human king's existing vassals - a theme reflected in Alpine tribunal population law. The dwarf's promise not to use meadowland or pastureland is made to reassure the king on this point. The second problem is that with a sparse population, the king may fear that the dwarfs will overthrow him. They give a binding promise to remain on the fringes of the kingdom. A third reason, that the invaders or exploitative king that they fled from might follow them to the Alps, is not discussed, but such villains might be useful for a campaign.
The Salvans might make useful allies or trade partners for a covenant. They have the ability to produce items and effects that are beyond Hermetic scope, and they have enemies that they cannot handle on their own. If running a retelling of the Salvan story, some Salvans are still enslaved in the mines of their exploitative neighbour, and some of their treasures probably remain hidden in their burned homeland. Even in a saga where the Salvan escape from slavery is a historical event, since they are a faerie people, Salvan slaves may need rescuing centuries afterward. The Salvans are, it has been shown, ready to make a deals with humans.
Lucent faeries seem to show their age far more than normal faeries. The men are described as "very, very old," and yet are able to make lengthy journeys by foot. The Princess is not described as looking very, very old, but it may simply be that she and the young Prince are of compatible age.
The Strong Lucent Blood Virtue (+2) gives a character a +3 bonus on aging rolls and the Faerie Sight Virtue. Characters do not gain the Faerie Eyes Virtue, but they are luminous, so they rarely need it. The character makes everything Near them slightly florescent. This light is sufficient to read by, and the character lacks the ability to suppress it. Clothing does not muffle this effect. For the purposes of magic resistance this is treated as a CrIg spell of tenth level.
Characters with this type of strong faerie blood gain the usual benefits of not rolling for aging until they turn fifty and being able to use longevity potions as though they were a Hermetic magus. These benefits are, however, slightly restricted in that although the characters do not age in the sense of losing statistics, apparent aging is not inhibited.
Strong Lucent Blood carries with it the threat of Nostalgia, but this is blunted by the influence of the human parent's blood, so that experience is gained at the rate of a point per month. Nostalgia may be lost on the Moon, in the Dolomites, or at any suitable alternative location at the rate of one point per week of stay.
These faeries do not seem to have any fear of iron, and their descendants suffer no discomfort from it, unless they select it as a Flaw.
Characters with the Lucent Blood Virtue (+1) gain +1 on all aging rolls, and may become luminous at will. They develop Nostalgia at the rate of a point per year and never actually die of it, although if they are unattended while in a coma death follows quickly from dehydration.
The Prince in this story has the bizarre ability to act as though he had four hands. He holds two objects, for example a sword and bouquet, and uses his hands to climb and grope about. A character with this virtue has the ability to act as if he never actually put down some objects that, obviously, he must have. In practice this means that the character can state, at any time, which possessions carried are in his hands. This does not cost the character an action. At the Storyguide's discretion, this can include objects that are probably on his mount. The character cannot use this ability in a way that is directly apparent to other characters; for example, if a guard has just searched the character for weapons, he cannot suddenly have a weapon.
Characters observing the character will generally not notice that he has this ability - he is not aware of it himself. The precise mechanism of this virtue may vary from character to character. Perhaps it is the effect of the presence of a friendly poltergeist? Maybe it is just that the skill of losing socks, keys and pens is reversed in him, so that his possessions are always in the first place he expects them to be.
The tapestry of moonlight is not, as far as can be deduced, an illusion. Those with Faerie Sight do not mention that the stones are actually black. Individual stones, when separated from the mountains, retain their whiteness. When churches are constructed from dolomitic stones, they do not darken.
Perhaps the Salvans merely transformed the stone from one type to another. This is the simplest and in some ways the least interesting solution.
However, there is something slightly otherworldly about the Dolomites. This otherworldliness first occurred when the King granted the remote regions of his land to a Faerie King as his demesne. It may be that the distant parts of the kingdom are not actually in the mortal world anymore - they are in a regio that is easy both to enter and to observe from a distance.
A third option is that the stones were originally white and something had made them black. What could have caused such widespread harm, and its accompanying aura of grief for sensitive fae, is unclear. To go back to The Fallen Angel for a moment, perhaps the mountains were blackened when one of the Fallen struck the Earth here on the way to Hell? Perhaps it was the site of a meteor strike that killed a lot of dinosaur-loving faeries? Perhaps it was the site of an ancient mystical battle that was so terrible that it caused the mountains to mourn, and, slow thinkers that they are, their spirits had not yet cast off their grief?
The Notalgia that afflicted the Princess now influences those who have lived in the Dolomites and left. The effect is a weak one, deflected by the humblest forms of magical protection, and causes the development of an experience point in Nostalgia every ten years. It is extremely rare for a human to die of homesickness, although it sometimes claims elderly people, tortured soldiers, or others who are susceptible to minor shocks.
The Prince seeks out wise men to find a way to travel to the Moon. Hermetic magi, as learned scholars, might be drawn into the story at this point. His key problem is not how to get to the Moon, it is that he is moonstruck. The Prince clearly has a Flaw, possibly Obsessed or Delusional (although in the story he has the rare fortune to discover that his Delusion is true). He is a lunatic in the most literal and gentle sense of the term.
It is possible that after the Prince falls asleep much of the rest of the legend is a dream, crafted by an unscrupulous mountain witch or spirit. Does he have much proof that he ever went to the Moon, beyond the presence of his beautiful wife? If this is the case, then does she have an alliance with the Salvan King? Given the similarity of the lucent faeries - old, old, little men - and the Salvans, is it possible that the Salvan species is extremely gender dimorphic? In the real world the edelweiss probably came from Asia - where the Salvans come from. Are the Moon folk just Salvani hiding out in Tibet?
If this is all pretence, then what is the objective, and how is it served by the reformation of the land? For example, this might be an invasion of a Dark Winter area by Dark Summer Faeries. They forge a treaty with the king - see Faeries for details - marry one of their own to the local heir, spread their signature flower over the place, then change the colour of the mountains as a mark of ascendancy.
The two elderly men who visited the Earth from the Moon might be courtiers to the King, his agents on the Earth. They might be private individuals, conducting interplanetary business. How far their network of contacts extends is unclear. They may be connected to the wise man of the court.
The Court of the King of the Moon contains a wise man who understands the effects of lunar life on Earth humans. Who were the poor humans who suffered blindness on the Moon? Who reported this and passed the information to the wise man? Is there a magical tradition on the Moon? What can lunar magi do on Earth?
It is possible that some of the Moon people are descended from the first humans whose blindness was reported to the Princess by the wise man of the court. These hybrids could stay on the Earth with comparatively little Nostalgia. Now that the Dolomites have been lunaformed, they can serve as a recreative space for the lunar people on Earth. This makes them the perfect staging ground for a lunar army.
Characters might consider moving to the Moon and founding a covenant there. How difficult this is depends on if this is actually the Moon, a regio, or an Aracadian realm. The key problem is the blinding luminescence, but simple preventative spells should be of some assistance there. If this is truly the surface of the Moon, the magic may work in a way unfamiliar to Earth-bound or even Arcadian-trained magicians.
The Moon is subject to a series of astrological influences that differ from those that irradiate the Earth. It is closer to the Sun, the planets, and the energies they emit, but is it further from the energies that surge from the core of the Earth. It is beyond the field of magical energy that most Hermetic magicians use to power their effects, but if one accepts the Stibbons doctrine, that magic is what makes everything hold together, then it must have a discrete magical field of its own. This field would aid and resist effects in ways unusual to those trained in the Earth's vis field.
It is possible that another Hermetic group has already colonized the Moon. A particularly unpleasant alternative, for example, is that druids settled it. Even if these druids are the unfortunates who were blinded by the Moon, their descendants will not look favorably on the arrival of magi from the Order.
When the Order finds out that there is a faerie-inhabited planet where the capital seems to have no guards, someone is going to suggest colonization by force. Player characters attempting this might, depending on what sort of stories you would like to tell, face the Armies of Endymion, described in a later chapter.
A series of plot hooks are given in the Salvan entry concerning the rescue of enslaved Salvani, the recovery of their nation's treasures, and the extracting of justice from their tormentors.
The conversion of the mountains is part of a contract between the two kings. If the Salvani are hunted to extinction, for example by Hermetic magi, the mountains might revert to their old state. When the tapestry of moonlight shatters, its pieces might be collectable. They would be made from spun moonlight, described above.
Certain powerful magi, then, may find a way to kill Salvani at a distance, perhaps by creating magic items that hunt the dwarfs. Other magi would rally to the defense of the faeries. Player characters in the area might be forced to choose sides.
Other retellings mentioned in this text are "Prince of the Dolomites" by Tomie de Paolo and "Travels in the Lost Kingdoms" by G. & M. Palmeri.
Text copyright © Timothy Ferguson 2004. Artwork copyright © Stephanie Pui-Mun Law 2004.