My absense, humanoid origins, Vatun, and cow

Priority: normal
Date sent: Mon, 3 Nov 1997 17:40:12 CST
Send reply to: The GREYtalk Discussion List
From: SCOTT CASPER
Organization: Dominican Univ., River Forest, IL
Subject: [GREYTALK] My absense, humanoid origins, Vatun, and cow
Originally to: greytalk@MIT.EDU
To: GREYTALK@MITVMA.MIT.EDU

Yes! I'm finally back! For those of you who didn't notice, I've been gone for a month. For the first week, I was working on mid-terms. The second week I was catching up with the first week. Since then, something was wrong with my e-mail and I wasn't able to send anything no matter what I did. I owe one or two personal e-mails I intend to get to in the next few days. Of course, there are those among you who, for bizarre reasons, found my guns and plumbing threads boring and probably wished I'd stay silent. Well, to that I say – TOUGH!

Since I've been sitting here quietly for the past month unable to comment, I'm way behind on all the current threads. I intend to throw my opinions once more into the cyber-wind soon enough, but for now I thought I'd just share some musings I've had. These ideas are way out there, and I'm not even sure I'll be using them yet. Still, I wanted to share them and see what people thought.

First off, my idea about humanoid origins was this. What if, way back after the Invoked Devastation, the hordelings didn't leave right away. Recent postings have argued about whether summoning has a time limit. What if the hordelings stayed, molested the Oerdians, and the product of these hordeling-human unions gradually produced the orcs, trolls, and kobolds we all know (and love) today?

Secondly, this occurred to me at about the same time. What if the Vatun disguise of Iuz's was not Iuz's idea? A lot of gods were probably happy with his incarceration under Castle Greyhawk. What if they schemed to check the demi-god again? Zagyg, Cuthbert, and maybe some other lesser gods or quasi-deities kidnapped Iuz, forced amnesia on him, and told him he was the lost god Vatun? They got the Suel gods to go along with this, and that is why divination never revealed the Vatun deception.

There is one other thing I could use comments on. I am still working on my Monster Manual revisions (to the exclusion of far too much), and I just recently got to my Cattle entry. Has anyone given any thought to what breeds of cow may be found in the Flanaess? Can someone from Europe give me some names of European breeds of cow?

So far, I have developed three varieties of cow. There is the common (2 HD) Flannish cow. There is the smaller (1 HD) Kettish (or elven) cow which is considered excellent livestock. Then there is the Ideish cow (3 HD) which is strong enough to pull wagons, plows, and can even be rode like a mount (borrowed from the comicbook BONE). Is “Ideish” the word you would use to describe something from Idee?

Scott “Volstagg” Casper
Have fun in Brazil, Erik! Never mind that you've left me with one less Call of Cthulu player!