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    Canonfire :: View topic - Where is Greyspace's Mars?
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    Where is Greyspace's Mars?
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    Apprentice Greytalker

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    Wed Apr 09, 2014 7:21 am  
    Where is Greyspace's Mars?

    We all know that there was a gate to Mars (Barsoom?) under Castle Greyhawk, and certain PCs adventured there.

    However, Greyspace doesn't seem to have a red, terrestrial planet. Am I missing something, or did early 1990s TSR just fail to follow the events of Gary's early games?

    Given Greyspace seems to conflict with earlier canon, should it be dismissed out of hand?
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    Wed Apr 09, 2014 8:57 am  

    Why would you assume that the Barsoom to which there was a gate beneath Castle Greyhawk has to be in the same solar system (or crystal sphere) as Oerth?

    Indeed, if it's actually a gate to the actual Barsoom of the ERB books, it would by definition have to be in a different solar system, since Barsoom is in Earth's solar system.

    Joe / GG
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    Wed Apr 09, 2014 11:36 am  
    Re: Where is Greyspace's Mars?

    Raphael wrote:
    Am I missing something, or did early 1990s TSR just fail to follow the events of Gary's early games?

    Given Greyspace seems to conflict with earlier canon, should it be dismissed out of hand?

    With the exception of Five Shall Be One, all late-Eighties/early-Nineties TSR products conflict with earlier canon. If you're bothered by that, check out Gygax's Greyhawk on the Dragonsfoot forums.
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    Wed Apr 09, 2014 12:29 pm  

    I note that Castle Zagyg: The Upper Works featured the Barsoom/Mars gate on Level One of the dungeon.
    GreySage

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    Wed Apr 09, 2014 11:44 pm  

    I made Barsoom into a moon of Gnibile.

    Of course, in the original campaign it wasn't a portal. Erac's Cousin astral projected to Barsoom after seeing it in the sky, the same way John Carter got there. (link).
    Master Greytalker

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    Thu Apr 10, 2014 10:31 am  
    Re: Where is Greyspace's Mars?

    vestcoat wrote:
    Raphael wrote:
    Am I missing something, or did early 1990s TSR just fail to follow the events of Gary's early games?

    Given Greyspace seems to conflict with earlier canon, should it be dismissed out of hand?

    With the exception of Five Shall Be One, all late-Eighties/early-Nineties TSR products conflict with earlier canon. If you're bothered by that, check out Gygax's Greyhawk on the Dragonsfoot forums.

    Just for sake of clarification ... when we're referring to "earlier canon" here, we're referring to Gary's personal home game of Greyhawk, right? Not the published version?
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    Thu Apr 10, 2014 10:51 am  

    Quote:
    Why would you assume that the Barsoom to which there was a gate beneath Castle Greyhawk has to be in the same solar system (or crystal sphere) as Oerth?


    Quote:
    One of Erac's Cousin's more memorable adventures occurred after he spotted a strange red star in the night sky. He drifted off to sleep thinking of the strange star and when he awoke he discovered he had been transported to Mars.


    Quote:
    Of course, in the original campaign it wasn't a portal. Erac's Cousin astral projected to Barsoom after seeing it in the sky, the same way John Carter got there.


    It sounds like Barsoom is indeed in Greyspace if Erac's Cousin could see it in the night sky of Oerth.

    I didn't mind Spelljammer but I don't know how good a fit it is for Greyhawk. I mean, how can spelljamming be reconciled with the non-spelljamming crashed spaceship in Expedition to the Barrier Peaks?

    I personally prefer to have Greyspace be an actual solar system.
    Master Greytalker

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    Thu Apr 10, 2014 11:32 am  

    Raphael wrote:
    It sounds like Barsoom is indeed in Greyspace if Erac's Cousin could see it in the night sky of Oerth.

    I didn't mind Spelljammer but I don't know how good a fit it is for Greyhawk. I mean, how can spelljamming be reconciled with the non-spelljamming crashed spaceship in Expedition to the Barrier Peaks?

    I personally prefer to have Greyspace be an actual solar system.

    Well, it is an actual solar system. It's just that the universe is magical and different outside the bounds of the solar system than ours is.
    And there certainly could be a red "star" in the night sky. Although, it's just as certainly not the actual planet Mars found in Earth's solar system. Oerth always has been a completely different plane of reality than Earth. So, even if the people telling the stories of Erac's Cousin "said" Mars or Barsoom, those planets must've been alternate plane versions of the ones with which we are familiar.
    So, I don't know where they actually went, but, chances are, it's not actually the planet in [I]our[/I[ solar system.
    Though, the game being what it is, anyone can certainly have as much fun as they want, and call the planets whatever they like.
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    GreySage

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    Thu Apr 10, 2014 3:17 pm  

    Raphael wrote:
    It sounds like Barsoom is indeed in Greyspace if Erac's Cousin could see it in the night sky of Oerth.


    Keep in mind that Gary Gygax's original Greyhawk campaign isn't the published Greyhawk campaign. His original Oerth was very much a parallel Earth, and much closer to the real Earth than it ended up being. It had a China, for example. Not a Chinese-type area, not Kara-Tur, but a land called China on the other side of the world, accessible through a slide beneath Castle Greyhawk.

    It was described this way in The Dragon #1:

    In the infinity of cosmic probabilities there stretches an endless succession of earths, this one being but one of the possible realities. Those in close proximity to our world are but little different from it, but countless alternatives to history exist, and as these co-worlds become more removed from this plane of reality so their resemblance becomes removed. There are, then, worlds which are gloriously superior to ours, some which are horribly worse, but most are merely different in some way. Far from our probability line is a world called by its inhabitants Oerth. It is very similar to this earth in many ways, but it is also quite different...

    If the learned men of Oerth were able to tell you its geography they would say that in relation to our planet they are quite alike. Asia is a trifle smaller, Europe and North America a trifle larger — but the scientists (or rather philosophers) of Oerth are not able to explain this for two reasons: They neither know of the alternate worlds in Oerth’s probability line nor do they have any sure knowledge of Oerth’s geography outside their immediate areas. Likewise, Oerth has races similar in many respects to ours, and their migrations and distribution somewhat resemble those of our world, but their histories differ sharply from ours departing from our probability line some 2,500 years ago. Then the changes were but small, but over the intervening centuries the difference has grown so that there is now no resemblance between Oerth and Earth when the contemporary models are compared.

    Oerth is backward in terms of our planet. It is a dreaming world. Socially, culturally, technologically it is behind us. When the probability line split there were other changes than those of bore up under all an historical nature, and scientific laws differ also. What is fact on Earth may be fancy on Oerth and vice versa. So a strange blend of Medieval cultures exist in the known lands of Oerth, and what lies in the terra incognita of Africa or across the Western Ocean is the subject of much myth and supposition only. Ships which ply the waters venture not into such areas, and few are the souls hardy enough to dare expeditions east or south, for things as they are seem quite satisfactory as centuries of tradition prove.

    Those familiar with the Ærth setting that Gygax created will recognize that this description more resembles Ærth than Oerth. The Oerth we know doesn't have an Africa, an Asia, or a North and South America - not as such. The Oerth we know doesn't have the same races as Earth, or a history like Earth's until 2,500 years ago. Ærth does; it's basically a parallel Earth, with some continental differences, whose history split from ours when the Empire of Atlantis broke up.

    Gygax changed a lot of things about his campaign when he made the Folio because his original campaign was still ongoing and he didn't want to spoil things for his players. And other things changed because he combined it with elements of Rob Kuntz's campaign. Originally the adventures of Gary Gygax's player characters occurred on an entirely separate world of Kuntz's devising, the World of Kalibruhn.

    So be careful about interpreting information from the original Greyhawk campaign as "canon." It's as canon as you want it to be, naturally, but it's hard to criticize Jeff Grubb for not following information that never appeared, nor was intended to appear, in any published source. When Gygax finally published a version of Castle Greyhawk he made the passage to Barsoom into a magical gate which could in theory lead to any world in any solar system.

    That said, I think if Barsoom was a moon of Gnibile then it would satisfy the description of Erac's Cousin seeing a red star in the sky. There's plenty of room in Greyspace for more moons.

    Quote:
    I didn't mind Spelljammer but I don't know how good a fit it is for Greyhawk. I mean, how can spelljamming be reconciled with the non-spelljamming crashed spaceship in Expedition to the Barrier Peaks?


    This is what the introduction to S3 Expedition to the Barrier Peaks says:

    Sometime else, a large exploration-colonization expedition of human origln was overtaken in the course of its journey by a deadly plague. In a vain effort to halt the spread of the virus, the modular sections of the vessel were sealed and then separated, each left to its own fate. The section concerned here was drawn through a black hole and spewed into the universe where the World of Greyhawk fantasy setting exists. Chance brought it to that very planet, and its computers and robotics brought it to an intact landing.

    A couple of points of emphasis:

    1. The Barrier Peaks ship is from another universe.

    2. Remember what Dragon Magazine #1 said about scientific laws differing on Oerth's probability line? He kept saying that in the Gord books and elsewhere. Here's Saga of Old City:

    Quote:
    "How do you explain technology?"

    Gord took a shot at that one. "It is a myth of the ignorant used to fool gullible folk and frighten children?"

    "Nonsense!" the elderly scholar retorted. "It is the counterpart of magic within the dimension of probability and works in inverse proportion to it."


    Oerth exists in a magical universe with different laws of nature. It's not a technological universe; in Gygax's thinking, magic and technology exist in inverse proportion. The more magical a universe is, the less technology will exist.

    So not only is Oerth's system not a place that has non-spelljamming ships native to it, but the laws of nature in Oerth's universe are such that non-spelljamming ships can't naturally develop. The Barrier Peaks crash is fundamentally an alien artifact, alien not only to the world but to the universe itself, built to operate through alien physics.

    And Greyspace made a place for it. In the "Additional Astronomicals" chapter, there's a description of a constellation of star-like objects called the Sisters. Those who travel through the Sisters are thrown elsewhen, perhaps another crystal sphere, perhaps to another time. In other words, it's transparently the sort of enigma one would expect technological spaceships from other universes to come in through. Imagine the ship plummeting toward the event horizon of a black hole only to experience a strange internal wrench, as if it were traveling through dimensions other than the three we know. Suddenly it reemerges through the Sisters, plummeting toward the center of the system, a blue and green world called Oerth.

    Greyspace isn't designed to be the sort of place one would expect to see the Barrier Peaks ship develop because that was never the intention of the module, or Gygax's intention for Oerth's universe.

    Greyspace also includes one other technological crossover from Gygax's classic campaign, the Starship Warden.

    Dragon #17 has the story of characters from Oerth being sucked into James Ward's Metamorphosis Alpha setting, which James Ward described this way:

    The design was the most ambitious ever attempted, the blueprints calling for an oval spheroid of tremendous size using a new metal alloy of tensile strength previously unknown.

    In Greyspace is an enigmatic object called the Habitat, which is described as an ellipsoid made of some dark blue-grey metal. It seems to exist partly in another universe. It's described as smaller than James Ward's description of the Starship Warden, but again, it's not entirely in Greyspace and space is warped around it.

    In any case, it seemed a nice tip of the hat to a classic campaign feature.

    Greyspace's chief flaw, in my estimation, is that it's only one third of a setting designed to be equal parts Krynnspace and Realmspace. It's very basic, with a sahuagin planet, an elf planet, an orc planet, a dragon planet, a merchant planet, an undead planet, and so on, without enough detail to run a campaign on any one world or even, as far as I'm concerned, in just that sphere. It's a simple design meant to show beginning Spelljammer gamers how to put together a planetary system, and shows (as Jeff Grubb initially designed it) little concern for Oerth's distinct mythos. It's not terribly interesting or Greyhawk-specific. That doesn't mean it can't be fixed (for example, by adding more moons to the strangely moonless gas giants and other worlds, by adding more history and more connections to Oerth itself), but you can be forgiven for not being deeply inspired by it as written.

    Roger E. Moore wrote quite a bit about possible connections between Greyspace and various classic Greyhawk modules in his essay "Gates in the World of Greyhawk" and in Polyhedron #112, #113, and #114.


    Last edited by rasgon on Thu Apr 10, 2014 3:25 pm; edited 1 time in total
    GreySage

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    Thu Apr 10, 2014 3:18 pm  

    ...aaand, I got impatient and hit "submit" twice.
    Adept Greytalker

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    Thu Apr 10, 2014 5:30 pm  
    Re: Where is Greyspace's Mars?

    Icarus wrote:
    Just for sake of clarification ... when we're referring to "earlier canon" here, we're referring to Gary's personal home game of Greyhawk, right? Not the published version?


    No, virtually every single GH product from 1987-1994 conflicted in some way with an earlier publication.

    Off the top of my head:
    *City of Greyhawk - references WG7 Castle Greyhawk, descriptions of Mordenkainen and Bigby conflict with Dr#37.
    *Wars - ignored earlier invasion of Shield Lands, earlier death of Circle of Eight
    *Ivid - Archmage Serten
    *Sargent works - Provost of Veluna, humanoid tribal names
    *Castle Hart - conflicting history of the Horned Society
    *Greyhawk Ruins - Ring of Five members, ignored dungeon details in Gord books
    *Puppets - weeks-long journey from Narwell to Dyvers
    *Vecna Lives - Verbobonc vs. WG8 Verbobonc, Circle of Eight
    *Queen of the Spiders - reversed ToEE/Lolth timeline
    *Howl from the North - everything
    *Rose Estes - everything
    *Greyhawk Adventures - casual intervention by avatars

    Later products did much to reconcile these errors, but early-Nineties Greyhawk was a very confusing setting.
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    Fri Apr 11, 2014 11:23 am  

    rasgon wrote:
    ...Keep in mind that Gary Gygax's original Greyhawk campaign isn't the published Greyhawk campaign. His original Oerth was very much a parallel Earth, and much closer to the real Earth than it ended up being. It had a China, for example. Not a Chinese-type area, not Kara-Tur, but a land called China on the other side of the world, accessible through a slide beneath Castle Greyhawk...


    -EGG ("COL Playdoh") said this:

    http://www.dragonsfoot.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=50&t=19381&start=120

    "For certain the WoG product as published by TSR came into being about two or three months before the date of its prionting and sale...

    My personal Greyhawk world was a version of earth, but as many palyers were involved in the campaign, I did not want to use that as a base. the funny thing is that about a mopnth after the printer WoG was out I liked it better than what I was using, so for the most part my campaign play moved to Oerth, Oerik.

    Inspiration came from much rading, map making, writing of historical and game materials, and the necessity of producing something that would be lots of fun for everyone. Imagination and creative thpought then took over..."
    Master Greytalker

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    Sat Apr 12, 2014 7:39 pm  
    Re: Where is Greyspace's Mars?

    vestcoat wrote:
    Off the top of my head:
    *City of Greyhawk - references WG7 Castle Greyhawk, descriptions of Mordenkainen and Bigby conflict with Dr#37.
    *Wars - ignored earlier invasion of Shield Lands, earlier death of Circle of Eight
    *Ivid - Archmage Serten
    *Sargent works - Provost of Veluna, humanoid tribal names
    *Castle Hart - conflicting history of the Horned Society
    *Greyhawk Ruins - Ring of Five members, ignored dungeon details in Gord books
    *Puppets - weeks-long journey from Narwell to Dyvers
    *Vecna Lives - Verbobonc vs. WG8 Verbobonc, Circle of Eight
    *Queen of the Spiders - reversed ToEE/Lolth timeline
    *Howl from the North - everything
    *Rose Estes - everything
    *Greyhawk Adventures - casual intervention by avatars

    Later products did much to reconcile these errors, but early-Nineties Greyhawk was a very confusing setting.
    While there's some that don't surprise me at all, like the Gord novels, and the Estes novels (I haven't ever met many people who consider them canon), there's a few that I am am surprised by, like "Howl from the North". I didn't realize there were that many discrepancies. I mean, I know the *art* is way off-base, especially for Vatun (though I do love Ken Franks art, generally). But, is there any chance you can mention a few things that I might look into or read up on, since I seemed to have missed it (despite liking the module quite a bit)?
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    Sun Apr 13, 2014 12:58 pm  
    Re: Where is Greyspace's Mars?

    Icarus wrote:

    there's a few that I am am surprised by, like "Howl from the North". I didn't realize there were that many discrepancies. I mean, I know the *art* is way off-base, especially for Vatun (though I do love Ken Franks art, generally). But, is there any chance you can mention a few things that I might look into or read up on, since I seemed to have missed it (despite liking the module quite a bit)?

    What do you like about WGS2? I'm genuinely curious.

    Howl From the North has the single most continuity errors outside of an Estes' novel. IMO, the module fails in all other respects as well (I actually have a five-page draft of all the things wrong with the module that I'll finish some day and post in the reviews section). Limiting myself to just the GH dependencies, here's a portion of my review:
    ----
    Throughout the adventure, Slade provides a number of strange and contradictory rumors: there’s an alliance between the Pale and the barbarians (15) while Pale soldiers travel to Stonefist to slaughter a Frost Barbarian caravan (31), Tehn hires “Rover assassins” to kill Stonefist leaders (30), etc. While a creative DM can integrate some of these ideas and dismiss others as wartime gossip, Slade's straightforward delivery suggests he's just picking nouns off the map.

    Lesser details are equally puzzling. There’s a barbarian chieftain’s “yurt” in Rookroost, parkas for sale in Kelten, a 12th level elven “bandit prince” sent by the Great Kingdom, and an ogre magi ambush.

    Some particularly outrageous tales indicate that Slade didn't even read Sargent’s introduction at the beginning of the module. The most notable example is when a scout claims that Ratik is preparing to attack the Frost Barbarians, the North Province, Stonefist, and the “whole eastern section of the continent” (15)! Apparently Sargent forgot to mention that little detail in our current events. Also, a Frost Barbarian messenger reports that Djekul has been sacked by forces from the Bone March and/or Great Kingdom (32). This is unlikely, because Sargent tells us on page six that Ratik and the Frost Barbarians have been on the offensive for over six years, they recently took control of the Loftwood, and are about to assault to Johnsport.

    Slade’s description of Kelten conflicts with both Sargent and the borders in the '83 set. Slade's Kelten seems to be an independent town populated by 1,000 nation-less barbarians with “a few refugees” from Stonefist (16). Back on page six, Sargent states that “Fruztii forces have now secured the pass south of the Hraak Forest and control the lands for 20 miles around.” This implies that they took the land from Stonefist. Kelten, falling just outside of the twenty-mile zone, should be an armed camp and hotbed of Stonefist resistance. According to Slade, it's a sleepy northern town with pampered barbarians staying in expensive inns.

    Game statistics also show nonexistent Greyhawk research: the power or deity worshiped by the twelve eighth-level priests (!) in Kabloona’s camp is never specified; armies from Stonefist, the Rovers, and barbarian lands are all a strange mix of LN and CN alignments; the population of Kelten is less than the figures cited in the ‘83 Glossography; apparently Iuz dwells on Tarterus and his human priesthood are frequently multiclass (?) fighter/clerics and cleric/mages.

    One last detail at the back of the book is the most damning evidence that Slade has no idea what he's writing about: he gives priests of Iuz detect poison[ at third level instead of change self. This tiny discrepancy in the game rules, combined with Iuz's new home on Tarterus and the lack of his signature grinning skull and priests' bloodstained white robes, leads us to one terrible conclusion: Slade didn't read ANY of the previously published sources on Iuz before writing a new description of the demigod. Not the original Dragon magazine article, not the '83 boxed set, not Greyhawk Adventures, not ToEE. Nothing. Zilch. An in-house TSR staff writer, not a freelancer like Sargent, did absolutely zero research. What a bastard.
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    Wed Apr 23, 2014 8:37 am  

    I'm still not a Greyspace Spelljammer fan, although some folks here have made some good arguments about placing Barsoom there (as a moon of one of the gas giants).

    As an alternative, however, I note that Frank Mentzer has stated (as per GHWiki) that Aquaria's sun is actually Tau Ceti, and the Earth year (if anyone actually knew it) was somewhere in the 2700s AD.

    Quote:
    New Empyrea originated as Frank Mentzer's Aquaria campaign (1975-present), though the name "Aquaria" isn't used in R1-4. After he came to work for TSR in January 1980, he gained the approval of Gary Gygax to set his campaign on Oerth across the Solnor Ocean from the Flanaess. Frank Mentzer also identified his campaign world's sun with the star Tau Ceti, set in approximately 2700 AD in Earth's dating system.


    If Aquaria is located on Oerth, does it thereby make Oerth a planet revolving around Tau Ceti?

    Furthermore, the original Metamorphosis Alpha book stated that the starship Warden left the Sol system in 2290 AD. That leaves 400 years or so for it to travel towards Tau Ceti and have the accident. In the 560s or 570s Neb Rentar and company were transported there from Castle Greyhawk.

    An artifact from the Warden is recovered in The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan.

    Is the starship Warden drifting out in Greyspace's Oort Cloud?

    Is the crash space ship in the Barrier Peaks actually a lander vehicle from Warden?

    How did the artifact from the Warden get to the Amedio Jungle? How many times have Earthmen visited Oerth?
    GreySage

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    Wed Apr 23, 2014 4:27 pm  

    Well, this is what A Guide to the World of Greyhawk Fantasy Setting (Gary Gygax, 1983) says about Oerth's planetary system:

    Quote:
    "The sun travels around Oerth in 364 days, visiting the 12 Lairs of the Zodiac in an appointed round which never varies... When both Mistress and Handmaiden are full, things of great portent are likely to occur, depending on the positions of the five wandering stars in the Lairs, naturally."


    Greyspace seems roughly based on this idea, with a geocentric system.

    On the other hand, Saga of Old City (Gary Gygax, 1985) gave a very different picture of Oerth's system. From Saga of Old City, pages 341-343:

    Quote:
    Then he took out the extensive array of gems that all but filled the box and arrayed them on a blanket.

    "Here," Curley Greenleaf said, placing down a huge sphere of uncut yellow corundum, "is the great globe of our sun. This emerald orb is Oerth, I think; that opal represents Luna, and the star-sapphire of smaller size stands for the blue disk of Celene," he continued, placing each piece in its correct relative position.

    "These various stones are the spheres which accompany our world in its circuit of the sun... These round diamonds are stars, and the little black opals are the various moons and other celestial bodies whirling and spinning their pathways through the system," he concluded, not bothering to specifically place each of the smaller pieces.

    ...the two young adventurers watched their husky associate carefully examine and separate the many-colored array into two smaller piles - diamonds, rubies, emeralds, sapphires, and so forth, even a large jacinth that Curley explained must represent the planet of Rao, greatest of the celestial spheres in the family to which Oerth belonged.


    So there's a bit of a debate among Greyhawk fans as to whether Curley Greenleaf, the druid who believes that Oerth's system is heliocentric, is a more reliable witness than the Savant-Sage (the in-character author of the Guide) or astrologers mentioned in the Guide (Selvor the Elder and Yestro Bilnigd), who evidently teach the geocentric cosmos that Jeff Grubb used in the Spelljammer boxed set.

    If we do try to reconcile the sources, I would identify the planet Rao with Edill, despite the fact that jacinths do not occur in the robin's-egg blue hue of that planet. This is because Edill is peaceful and more or less reasonable, like Rao, while the other gas giant, Gnibile, is tempestuous and toxic.

    Quote:
    I'm still not a Greyspace Spelljammer fan


    Well, Greyspace is admittedly not a terribly robust design. Most of the worlds don't have a lot going on in them. There's also the problem that Luna and Celene are presented in Spelljammer as both smaller and much, much further away than Earth's moon is from Earth, which would mean that they would only be visible as tiny dots from Oerth's surface. Obviously this needs to be fixed. This website (archive.org link), fixes the moon sizes and distances in order to model Oerth's tides.

    Quote:
    If Aquaria is located on Oerth, does it thereby make Oerth a planet revolving around Tau Ceti?


    In Frank Mentzer's campaign, yeah. As noted, Gary Gygax has Oerth existing in an alternate, more magical universe rather than sharing the stars of our own universe.

    As Mentzer himself said:

    "That said, it should be noted by purists that my campaign background and Gary's diverge as soon as you get off the planet, and my overall theme is an epic and multiversal struggle between magic and technology rather than the (comparatively provincial) intramural conflicts that formed the basis of the original Gygax/Arneson wargames. But for what it's worth, the Greyhawk/Aquaria cross-connections stand up reasonably well, as do the implied intercontinental activities of various notable characters, good and bad."

    But sure, if you prefer Frank Mentzer's model, he revealed more information on that in this thread at the Piazza. There's a lot of stuff you might find interesting in that thread, including a history of the system and some details on another planet in the same system, Poseidon.

    Quote:
    In the course of Project Cetus (during Old Earth's 3rd millenium), Star Tau of the constellation of the whale produced two suitable planets. Ceti Tau 3 was colonized, and they named it Poseidon. But the 4th planet was home to life; its indigenous specie called it "Oerth". Due to philological roots, some believe it to have been settled by an earlier, unknown history of the original planet... perhaps the fabled Atlantis.

    When the Interregnum hit, Poseidon was left to sink or thrive on its own, unable to even visit their sister planet Oerth. But travelers from Oerth found THEM, using TransTek -- resources beyond Technology, unknown in Terran space -- which the Oeridians calmly described as 'magic'. (The source turned out to be the power differential at interplanar boundaries, but that wasn't discovered until Terra reawakened many years later.)

    Decades passed. Terra slowly rebuilt their civilization. Poseidon survived, barely... with the help of their 'teleporting' friends from the neighboring planet, who taught them the Old Ways that transcend the hubris of mortal Tek. But then the ship arrived, after slowly crawling the 70 trillion miles (as faster-than-light drives proved, sadly, to be pure fiction), and Poseidon's ties to Old Earth were reawakened.

    Decades continued to march by. Trans-Tek was deemed a possible Threat, and Oerth was placed under temporary Terran embargo while its cultures were discreetly examined. But another player -- the Centurians, who did not heed the wishes of man's homeland -- continued their activities in the system, though more covertly. Their Oerth base remains isolated from the aboriginal cultures, the settlers finding their way in this new land of gods and magic...

    Oceans away from the Centurian base, the hoomans of Oerth's primary civilized continent were headed for war. This prompted many of their offshoot races -- mostly olve and niz -- to migrate eastward across the great ocean, fleeing the devastation of hooman conflict. When they reached a new continent, they found their kinsmen had preceded them by centuries. And decades later, after the hoomans' wrath subsided, they came as well... pretending that it was they who had 'discovered' the place.


    One wrinkle is that in Frank Mentzer's campaign, Oerth moves to another realm or system in CY 556, in what he calls "the Day the Stars Changed." On that date, the gods move the planet to prevent the intrusion of technologists. So who knows where it is now. (Source).

    Quote:
    In the 560s or 570s Neb Rentar and company were transported there from Castle Greyhawk.


    Yes, but they used some magical means (a cursed scroll), so the Warden doesn't have to be in Greyspace/Tau Ceti.

    Quote:

    An artifact from the Warden is recovered in The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan.


    Perhaps, though Gary Gygax denied this. From Paul Stromberg's interview with him published in Oerth Journal #12:

    Quote:
    Q: "Is the crashed spaceship in S3 Expedition to the Barrier Peaks the Starship Warden from Metamorphosis Alpha?"

    A: "No. The size and the technology in this vehicle should make such speculation quite misplaced, in fact. The downed space ship if far too small, and its science quite different from that of the famed starship Warden."

    Q: "In module C1 Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan there is a clue that indicates the crashed spaceship in S3 Expedition to the Barrier Peaks may be the Warden II?"

    A: "The downed spacecraft wasn't really the Warden II either. Sorry. That [the obscure clue in module C1 by Harold Johnson and Jeff R. Leason] was somebody else writing, not me. The crashed space vessel was more like that dealt with in a SF book - whose title and author I have forgotten, but whose mutated inhabitants collected "ponics". (I think the name of the book was Starship, but I am not sure.)"

    Author's Note: The book is indeed Starship by Brian W. Aldiss, published in 1959. It is Aldiss' first novel and was released first in the U.K. as Non-Stop and later in the U.S. as Starship. The latter title, of course, gives away the best part of the book, one of the likely inspirations for Jim Ward's Metamorphosis Alpha in 1976.


    See also this thread.
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