[soltakss]

Originally Posted by Puck

This bit sounds really good (I love the stilts part). I originally thought that the river folk would be a sort of gypsy or nomad living on their boats and trading with the Freelings or tree people at certain points. They would make yearly migrations from the ravines to the Sea. I had a couple stationary settlements on islands in the middle of the river. A couple of other ports would be places where the bough roads cross the waterways. The rivers were big and the tree people would need to come down to river level to be ferried or use boats of their own.

Have both, or more.

Seriously, how bug is the Green? It's got two massive rivers on the map, if that's what we are using. Why do they have to be the same?

Stilts for two reasons:
1. To keep the huts dry when the rivers flood.
2. Becuase then their houses are like the Forkings - they are like Tree People who don't actually live in the trees.

Have Freelings who live in the Trees and trade with the villagers along the river and also have nomads who travel along the river trading with both.

Don't forget that if the Tree People (and there needn't be just one type) have a taboo about touching the ground then they won't be able to swim and would need help to cross rivers. Imagine a boat with a long mast and no sail with Tree Folk clinging to the mast rather than having to touch the unclean boat, ground or river.

Originally Posted by Puck

Also, gartooth Trogod would be expert fisherman and sometimes trade and interact with men along the rivers. These seem more like the ones who would be digging into the mud in the bank though.

Don't take Mudgrubber too literally. Anyone who picks up roots and fungi from the ground or touches the ground would be a Mudgrubber. Sure, make gartooth Trogod into fishermen who trade with the river villagers, but make them spearmen who swim underwater and catch fish that way. I see the villagers as having quite a sophisticated way of catching fish with artificial shallow pools designed as fish traps and fish-breeding areas as well as nets from boats. They'd take a lot of theior food from the water but would also hunt near their villages, but they wouldn't go far into the Green, perhaps a couple of days.

Originally Posted by Puck

This is where I would like to propose something and see what people think. I would like to have a form of intelligent swamp or river ape based on the Swamp monkeys of the Congo. Something like this: Allen's Swamp Monkey - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia The problem is that they are an awful lot like Baboons of Runequest ( I always did like them …there was a wonderful picture on one of the worms footnotes magazines..).

Sounds good, but they'd have to be fairly far from human settlements otherwise the humans would kill them, unless they were taboo as well.

Originally Posted by Puck

I hate using anything that seems so swiped or so closely related to another game though. I would love to hear people opinions. Also how big should they be? The regular size or gorilla size or somewhere in between.

Have more than one. You've got more than one Goblin race, why not have more than one River Ape? I wouldn't make them carbon copies of real-life apes, though. Big, gentle Gorillas are one thing but big, aggressive killer apes are another. They could then occupy the Runner niche, or at least some of them could.

Originally Posted by Puck

In the past I have called them Mamprusi. They were always at enmity with the goblins because, not only do they like the same fishing holes, but monkeys were too intelligent and refused to make deals with the goblin Totemists or gods at the dawn of time. I had some vague ideas but I never wrote out the myth that detailed the deal between the animals and the Trogod.

That's a nice touch. Perhaps the Trogod stole something from them or upset their gods.