[Glorantha] Re: Orange hair signifies....?

Jane:
> While we're on trolls, it's been suggested to me that
> since darksense is low-frequency sonar (is it? sounds
> right, but I'm not sure),

I never bought this idea. Darkness is an element. Darkness is not merely the absence of light. Sound waves move through air. Darksense waves move through darkness, which is just as much an actual tangible substance as light, air, water, and earth. So, to me, the maximum possible limit of darksense would be wherever the darkness has been burnt away by the light. Underground or at night time, trolls might sense people coming towards them because of a flickering area of low darkness (surrounding a torch). In a dense forest, their sense would be speckled, as light breaks through from above, and somewhat attenuated due to reflected and filtered light. Out in the open plains, trolls' dark sense should be blind and they have to rely on other senses.

On the question of "what' darksense like to someone who has it," the answer ought to be something very alien. What I would use is based on the notion that darkness encloses. So, when a troll directs its darksense at an area, it forms a sphere that is weak at the edge, then contracts and becomes more powerful. On a 2-dimentional surface, it would look like a ripple going in reverse. The sense can be directed at spot, so long as the troll would be within it. The radius of the sphere depends on how strong the troll's darksense is. A trollkin's is about spitting range. A dark troll's should be competitive with human sight. An ancient mother race troll's might be miles and miles. (So that's how she knew we were coming.)

An interesting question is what qualities objects have to darksense. Vision:Color :: touch:texture :: taste:taste :: smell:odor :: darksense:??. Fortunately, all you have to do is make up a word and say that it has more or less of it. You can't explain blue to someone who has been blind since birth. Likewise, you can't explain the perceptions of darksense to a player who doesn't have it.

All IMG.

Chris Lemens Received on Mon 02 Jul 2007 - 21:16:56 EEST