Category:The Broken Lands creatures: Difference between revisions

Tsoran's map

This category lists all creatures found in the The Broken Lands hunting area. The The Broken Lands hunting area is nearest to the town of Wehnimer's Landing. It is found on the Tsoran map WL-broken.

The Broken Lands

The portal to the Broken Lands is located in the Misty Chamber in the Monastery in the Lysierian Hills. There is a small puzzle to reach the chamber, and some training in Arcane Symbols (between 10-20 ranks) is required to be able to pass the portal. Entering the Sheruvian monastery requires an additional Perception check (about 24 ranks).

The Broken Lands is a mysterious otherworld often conflated with Lornon. While it is somewhat open to interpretation, many aspects of it seem to have tightly defined source material bases, and its nature is inconsistent with the lore for the moon of the Dark Gods at the time it was created. The proper given name was originally Man'ta Pn'Tairken, Iruaric for "The Home of Broken Lore", thematically the horrific price of forbidden knowledge.

(A) Geography

The immediate area surrounding the rune portal consists of several distinct sub-areas with their own historical meanings:

• Uthex Abode: The workshop and living space of Uthex Kathiasas.
• Sheruvian Monastery: Cult with a hidden trans-planar teleportation network.
• Jagged Plain: Boulder strewn wasteland with falling meteor and other hazards.
• Dark Grotto: Artifical web of caves tunneled out by magru.
• Huge Cavern: Essentially the Garden of Marlu.
• Dark Shrine: Ancient shrine of Marlu. Vruul repository.

(B) Hazards

The Jagged Plain is subject to random environmental hazards, as well as mana drain from the crystal dome at the center. The crystal forest and boiling mud surrounding the plain are implicitly intelligent, exotic alien life-forms, and most likely an integral part of the dome mechanism. There was a puzzle many years ago allowing characters to turn the dome off involving multiple spells.

Meteors

The Jagged Plain is where Uthex Kathiasas was killed by a meteor swarm. The fact that meteors still fall sometimes is likely supposed to be interpreted as a temporal anomaly.

You hear a loud rushing sound from the sky above you, and you look up just in time to see a huge chunk of rock hurtling toward you at incredible speed!  You try to dodge out of the way, but before you can move more than a few inches, the massive stone crashes into you, knocking you to the ground and causing serious injury!
   ... 10 points of damage!
   Bones in left arm crack.

Boiling Mud

The boiling sea of mud can erupt in the form of fountain geysers if you are standing right next to it. The Sheruvian monastery makes use of the thermal spring for its baths.

A huge geyser of boilng water and mud erupts from the sea of mud nearby!  Before you can react, a torrent of the steaming sludge comes raining down on you!
You are injured by the boiling hot sludge!
   ... 10 points of damage!
   Burst of flames to right leg burns skin bright red.

This will happen even in rooms not adjacent to the sea of mud. It may also hint that the mud is self-aware, the Hoard ability to phase transport itself hundreds of feet.

A torrent of thick sludge suddenly comes raining down on you!  After a brief moment of surprise, you realize that the stuff is boiling hot!
You are injured by the boiling hot sludge!
   ... 5 points of damage!
   Minor burns to right leg.  That hurts a bit.

(C) History

The Broken Lands was originally designed with the premise of elaborating upon the relationship between the Dark Gods and the cults of the Unlife. Its documentation was given a specific date, 6521 Second Era, which is significant to the surrounding region in the archaic Shadow World history. Other themes left implicit in it are its relationship with the Bandur Etrevion story, the surviving followers of the Empress Kadaena such as Lorgalis, and their role in the origin of the Dark Gods. It was called "another plane of existence" in the text, but its creatures are not extra-planar in the modern mechanics.

(1) Documents

The story of Uthex Kathiasas, the Temple of Darkness Poem, and the modified version of the Iruaric language glossary are archaic game documents. These are necessary for solving the puzzles.

• A Popular History of the Broken Lands
• Iruaric
• The Temple of Darkness Poem

(2) Lectures

This is a lecture series interpreting the Broken Lands and interrelating it with other stories and parts of the world. It involves massaging a lot of archaic history and subtextual analysis.

• The Broken Lands and ki-lin: Part 1: Uthex Kathiasas, Hooded Figures, The Broken Lands
• The Broken Lands and ki-lin: Part 2: The Entities of the Broken Lands
• The Broken Lands and ki-lin: Part 3: Shadow Valley, Castle Anwyn, The Red Forest

The Organic Path to Lo Thal Ta Shin and Dyar Trog

The organic path to figuring out Lo Thal Ta Shin as a player is thus...

You explore The Broken Lands and come across the relief that leads to lesser vruul. You look at the relief and see "Marlu lyxatis kort. Thro dyar K'mur." inscribed on it. This is the language Iruaric. Back before the de-ICEing this language was very common in GemStone and so you would likely be aware of it, and likely be able to realize it was Iruaric.

When The Broken Lands was released, it included additional documentation outside the game in the GEnie file library. This documentation included the Temple of Darkness Poem and an Iruaric glossary.

The next step would be to realize that you could translate the inscription: Marlu, Cruel Master. Guard the Dark Queen.

Upon reading the translation the next step would be to realize it was a part of the Temple of Darkness Poem and that it is missing the line: Spirit born of death.

Continuing upon this path of investigation you would translate that phrase into Iruaric: Lo Thal Ta Shin.

Zest testing the relief would show that "touch relief" did something special (compared to normal touch messaging).

Finally, perhaps remembering Kadaena Throk Farok (now something completely different with Shadow Bind My Soul) from the graveyard, you might speak Lo Thal Ta Shin openly while touching the relief, and voila, into the Dark Shrine you went.

To get back out you might end up touching the statue, "touch relief" being fresh on your mind, and see that it resulted in the same response as the relief. Somehow you might think to translate "Dark Cavern" (the room name where the relief is) into "Dyar Trog." You would then say it and poof, you have now exited the Dark Shrine.

Behind the Scenes

There were implicitly a couple of other creatures of the area, even though you cannot fight them. The crystal shards are an "other standard" extra-planar entity from Rolemaster called Crystyls, which shift between planes of existence and can exist in multiple places or planes simultaneously. In principle they are tremendous sources of information, if you were to communicate with them mentally. The sea of mud implicitly houses "other standard" extra-planar entities called Hoard, which were technically colonies of single-celled organisms, which would also move between planes of existence and were mutually self-aware. There may have been Traag, which were eaten by the magru. These would have resembled black panthers living in subterranean caverns with the ability to summon demons.

The Broken Lands seems to possess numerous allusions to "The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath" by H.P. Lovecraft, which was relevant to Purgatory and the design of The Graveyard. The lesser vruul reflect its "night-gaunts", which are undead in Rolemaster, though "nightwings" were analogous "other standard" entities who were soul devourers. It is narrowly referring to the Underworld of the Dreamlands, and perhaps a few other Lovecraft stories involving interdimensional dream projection. This is quite possibly the basis of consistency in its later extension being a monastery to the nightmare and madness god. It is implicitly a spin-off of the Bandur Etrevion story and related to Shadow Valley. The Dream-Quest itself, Shadow Valley, and Castle Anwyn were also apparently influenced by faerie mythology.