Zandru
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Donas of the Minor Families
Note: these gifts may not be the same as MZB referred to in her work. For this game, this is what goes.
Minor Houses
There are numerous minor laran, fixed to a variety of families. Some of the better known are…
MacArans
Their ability is to enter rapport with animals. They can use their senses, feel what they feel and influence their actions. There are MacArans all over Darkover.
Dellerays
The Dellerays are a highland family and their ability is handy up on the deadly crags and cliffs of their lands. They are pathfinders, they can find lost people and objects and never get lost themselves. They know if that snowpack is stable or about to avalanche, if that cave is deep or shallow and if that old stairway in the ruined keep can hold their weight. The Dellerays make excellent guides, if you can find one willing to leave their mountain fastness.
Leynier
The Leyniers, like the MacArans, can be found all over Darkover and like the major families, they have a special laran fixed to their bloodline. They have the gift of Glamor, which is the ability to cast images into the minds of others. Their gift works best with people who don't have trained minds but are responsive to rapport (i.e.; average Darkovans) tower trained telepaths and Terranans are more resistant. The Leyniers also have an older, rare gift; that of shapeshifting. Leyniers with this gift are able to take the form of an animal without concern for size, weight, or other 'scientific' restrictions. The theory was, back in the day when tower workers still did laran research, that mass was lost or gained from the Overworld. The shapeshifting gift is very rare now, partly because those who have it have a tendency to remain in animal form and abandon their human nature. Leynier Glamor doesn't work in mirrors and in the Days of Chaos, mirrors were prominently placed in entryways to prevent a Leynier spy from sneaking in.
For the Game: A Leynier player can choose either Glamor or shapeshifting, not both. Glamor can be cast in two different ways; the Leynier can alter the way they and anyone they are in direct, physical contact with, looks (including making them invisible) as long as the Leynier would be clearly seen by the targets. Leyniers can't cast a Glamor on someone in a different room who can't see the Leynier. So, if a Leynier with Glamor is holding the hand of a friend, they can make both look like different people, like a rock or whatever, to anyone who looks on them. Second, the Leynier can cast a Glamor on anyone they are in rapport with. Third, Leyniers can create imaginary objects, people etc - again the targets must be able to see the Leynier (not through a camera/video feed or even a mirror but with their eyes). In order to affect Terranans and trained Tower workers, the Leynier gift must be the character's primary gift. For shapeshifting, a Leynier must chose their heart animal - the only animal they can change into - and that will be the animal they shapeshift to for the rest of their life. It can be any *real* animal (not dragons, unicorns, etc) and the moderator can nix it if it's too bizarre for Darkover. Leyniers cannot shift to sentient beings (chieri etc). A Leynier animal is exactly like the real thing, from senses to abilities to reproductive function; a Leynier that becomes pregnant in animal form cannot shift back until the cub/kit/calf/foal is born.
Storn
This is a very old Darkovan family and often forgotten in the busy modern era. They have been living in their ancestral home, untroubled by the political winds, for generations. A sub-species or primitive tribe of creatures called the Forge Folk live on the Storn estates. The Sharra stone was stolen from the great alter of the forge folk and has since gone missing. The special Storn donas is that of firestarting. Those with the Storn gift can start, control and supress fires. Supposedly, those who have the Storn gift are particularly succeptible to the Sharra matrix.
For the Game: The Storn gift allows characters to cause paper, cloth, hair, fur, dry wood, dry grass and other fairly flamable stuff to suddenly burst into flame. Those with this gift can also snuff out fires - up to about the size of a bonfire. They can control fire (up to bonfire size), causeing it to leap high, take basic shapes, gutter low and even crawl across the ground. The fire must have fuel to continue burning, just like any other fire. Those with the Storn gift can also hold fire in their hands, or walk through it, without being burned.
Rockraven
This family is another of the hillfolk and their gift is, thankfully, mostly defunct. They were bred to call lightning, a gift that turns out to be fatal when fully expressed. In a lessor level, the Rockraven gift donas gives the ability to predict the weather up to a week in advance - and if you don't think that's important, you've never been trapped in a blizzard in the Kilgar hills! Fully developed the gift allows the user to call lightning from storms and direct their strikes. A massively destructive gift, the energons flare wildly in the users body when they call lightning and burns out their lifepoints, destroying body and mind. Even if the holder of the laran isn't intentionally calling lighting, nearby storms activate their gift, which increases the strength of the storm and also triggers the damage to their own pathways.
For the Game: No one should have this gift at its fullest level - not if you want your character to survive for any length of time. At the lower, playable level, characters with the Rockraven laran can predict the course of the weather around them as well as when and where lighting will strike when a storm is raging.
Last edited by Zandru, 10/25/2005, 10:08 am
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10/23/2005, 5:16 pm
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Piedro Aillard
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Re: Donas of the Minor Families
You might want to notify the visitors of your site that some of the things you mention there are not canon, that is, not mentioned in the works of MZB but are rather your own inventions.
In the canon works it is nowhere mentioned that the Dellerays had any specific Gift. Neither are the Storns nowhere mentioned to be pyrokinetics. Rather, in WINDS OF DARKOVER it is told that the Lord Storn had the ability to Overshadow people from afar. As Overshadowing is one of the laran Gifts (as listed in THE DARKOVER CONCORDANCE), it can be speculated that this might've been the Storn Gift, if indeed there ever was any specific one associated with that family.
As for other possible Gifts, in THE HEIRS OF HAMMERFELL the lady Erminie Leynier, wife of Duke Hammerfell, is shown to have the Gift of Glamor, that is, she can make people see things that aren't real, such as making invading soldiers see a herd of forest animals as an army of men. The Gift of Glamor might be the Leynier Gift. In the same novel, it is also mentioned that in the past, some Leyniers had the ability to shapeshift. The Shapeshifting might thus be an other option for the Leynier Gift.
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10/24/2005, 11:22 pm
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Aralynn Aillard
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Re: Donas of the Minor Families
What are the rules for these definitions, anyway? Just curious, are they supposed to come from the canon, or do they also include stuff that came from the anthologies? Not all of the Gifts, for both major and minor families, were ever fully defined in any of the canon. Obviously, or else we wouldn't be having this discussion.
I just think that, to get a better feeling about these definitions, maybe it might be better to also look at the anthologies edited by MZB, which at least most of us would have read and so we'd be familiar with the Gifts and how they've been used. Instead of making up totally new definitions, I mean. Besides, the anthologies were approved by MZB, since she allowed them to be published, so to some extent she must have agreed with the writers.
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10/25/2005, 5:09 am
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Piedro Aillard
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Re: Donas of the Minor Families
The ones I wrote about, Storn and Leynier, are mentioned in the novels WINDS OF DARKOVER and THE HEIRS OF HAMMERFELL, which are canon. Also the information about Aillard Gift I mentioned on the other thread should be considered canon as it comes from MZB's own mouth/pen/typewriter. The same goes with Elhalyn.
The other minor Gifts can be invented or picked up from the anthology stories, but I think that if there's anything written in the canon works that contradicts the anthologies, the RPG should stick with the canon. Otherwise all the Gifts might as well be re-invented and the game moved to some other planet.
As for the canonity or official status of the short stories published in the Darkover anthologies, MZB herself didn't consider any of them in any way official except for a choice few, such as the stories by Elisabeth Waters, some stories by Diana Paxson and the novelette "The Otherside of the Mirror" by Patricia Floss.
MZB surely accepted all the other stories as good stories and as such worth publishing, but she considered them taking place in some Alternate Universe Darkover, not in her own Darkover.
I assume that this RPG is supposed to take place in an Alternative Darkover which is as close to MZB's own Darkover as possible, so as long as there's some hints of what MZB herself was thinking of certain matters, they should be taken in serious consideration.
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10/25/2005, 5:29 am
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Zandru
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Re: Donas of the Minor Families
quote:
Piedro Aillard wrote:
In the canon works it is nowhere mentioned that the Dellerays had any specific Gift. Neither are the Storns nowhere mentioned to be pyrokinetics. Rather, in WINDS OF DARKOVER it is told that the Lord Storn had the ability to Overshadow people from afar. As Overshadowing is one of the laran Gifts (as listed in THE DARKOVER CONCORDANCE), it can be speculated that this might've been the Storn Gift, if indeed there ever was any specific one associated with that family.
As for other possible Gifts, in THE HEIRS OF HAMMERFELL the lady Erminie Leynier, wife of Duke Hammerfell, is shown to have the Gift of Glamor, that is, she can make people see things that aren't real, such as making invading soldiers see a herd of forest animals as an army of men. The Gift of Glamor might be the Leynier Gift. In the same novel, it is also mentioned that in the past, some Leyniers had the ability to shapeshift. The Shapeshifting might thus be an other option for the Leynier Gift.
Thanks for the info. I had thought, in Stormqueen!, there was a minor character (who died), who was able to find a path to safety for his bredu. This is where I got the information. I may change the Storn gift, I'll have to think on it - overshadowing is the kind of thing that seriously affects game balance.
I'll include the Leyniers.
Thansk for the FB. I always appreciate it, even if I don't always accept it.
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10/25/2005, 7:17 am
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Zandru
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Re: Donas of the Minor Families
There are no hard and fast 'rules'. MZB didn't allow an official RPG to be developed when she was alive so anyone who does so now has to make choices based on what they find interesting to play, what they think will best balance a game for the players and so on.
Most of the laran gifts are described to some extent in her major books; occasionally she contradicts herself (such as the issue about maps). Some gifts are described in passing, not at all or in anthologies by other writers; again it's up to the game designer to accept or reject those interpretations.
My goal in this game is to retain Darkover and how it feels, looks and works without allowing the game to become unbalanced. My reading focused mainly on core MZB books, rather than the anthologies, and on the Concordance, which I've since lost. So long as game balance is preserved (no one is too powerful, or too outside the feel of Darkover as I understand it), I'm fairly flexible.
As Piedro pointed out, most games are best described as slightly alternate universe Darkovers and different designers have different ideas of what makes a game 'Darkover'.
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10/25/2005, 9:08 am
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