I’ve always felt that when trying to give information about the here and now, it helps to have a little history.  Myrna has a history firmly written in the sand.  Perhaps I should describe a little of the process that has brought Myrna into being.

The first step was to create a pantheon of gods.  This was first done in the early 90’s and has been subject to administrative review every other year or so.  As it stands, the pantheon is rather diverse with an obvious void where the forces of evil are concerned.  I’m sure that will be fixed by the time the next review comes around.

Once the pantheon was in place, a mythology started to take shape.  As with the pantheon, it has seen many permutations.  Unlike the pantheon, it is still not firmly set down.  I don’t even have any notes on it anymore.  However, regardless of the fact that none of the clerics of Myrna can offer any explanation as to how they came into being they exist nonetheless.

Once the decision was made to move on, the physical traits of Myrna had to be determined.  Myrna is a spherical world that has one sun and two moons.  The moons started out with an interesting story, I think, but as yet have not become an issue that deserved development.  The moons are, in fact, the eyes of a celestial wolf.  The wolf doesn’t have a name, but is an enemy to one of the ancient gods.  He opens and closes his eyes one at a time, causing the moons to go through their phases in opposition to each other.  Therefore, both moons will never be full at the same time.  In fact, there is a story among the more traditional clerics that the two moons will be full only moments before the wolf swallows Myrna whole.

The planet itself is about the same size as Earth and has the same range of climates and terrain.  Its orbit around the sun is also about the same size and thus has the same seasons and calendar.  The Myrnan year is twelve months long.  Each month is four weeks.  Each week has seven days.  The days are Sunday through Saturday, and the months are the same as those in the World of Greyhawk.  I don’t have the names of those months at my disposal right at this moment.  They’ll be added later.  Further development of the calendar has never been a serious issue.

The countries of note are relatively few.  In fact, only six have been dealt with at any length at all.  Those countries are Whytehold, Muldavia, Gedron, Unterland, Here, and Abraxis.

Whytehold is a mountainous sub-arctic region.  Above ground, there is nothing but a few sparse gatherings of trees and a glacier or two.  However, whenever there has been an expedition launched to explore the region, it has met in failure.  No one that has entered has ever come out.  On the other hand, there are many Dwarves who claim to be from Whytehold.  When questioned about the explorers into their country, they always blame the cruel weather or wild animals.  When asked about their culture, they claim that their own clan is the most civilized and respectable of all Dwarven clans and all others are savage and vile.  They seem to have no opinion whatsoever of the Dwarves of Unterland.

Unterland is another country of Dwarves, but not nearly so hostile.  Unterland is a temperate mountain zone, much like the Rockies and is home to Dwarves, Gnomes, a few Humans and very few Elves.  This is the country I asked Hendo to build and is still one of my favorites.  He used his impressive cartographic skills in addition to his quirky, yet brilliant, sense of humor to develop a place that I foresee will be around for a very long time.

Here is the country I asked Goose to build.  Goose is a game master/player for whom I have a great deal of respect.  What he lacks in technical skill (and doesn’t lack much) he makes up in imagination.  He took the guidelines I gave him and created a land of wonder that only he can explain to completion.  Here is a land of magic-using Elves.  There are a few spots of Humans and Halflings here and there, but not in the numbers required to make them a minority.  I believe Goose’s logic (and I use that word loosely) in building Here is that magic makes all things possible, especially when it is wielded by the timeless hands of the Elves.
Muldavia and Gedron go together.  These two countries I built myself.  They don’t have Hendo’s sense of humor or Goose’s imagination, but they’re mine and nobody can take that away from me.  They started out as two kingdoms side by side that joined together to form a new nation of Muldavia, when there was a royal marriage between the ruling families.  There was a golden age for a number of years.  Then, one of the rulers decided that he wanted to be a Supreme Being.  He squandered the nation’s treasury to fund his study of the dark magical arts, turned himself into a Lich and proceeded to turn several of the land’s other rulers into more obedient forms of undead.

When dealing with Muldavia and Gedron, there is a special consideration.  Two timelines have already been developed when dealing with these two countries.  Those that are playing the ongoing e-mail game are experiencing the beginning of it.  The ruler of Muldavia is still completing his studies and has not become a Lich yet.  Way back when we all started the process of building Myrna, we started at the end of Muldavia and Gedron’s history.  For those playing the e-mail game, this means that in about 10-15 years of game time, a boy will be born that will grow up to become a paladin and lead his people to a new life on a piece of land east of Unterland.  This paladin and his people will form the new nation of Gedron and live in peace until war with Muldavia tears them apart.

Abraxis is the last of the countries to be developed.  In fact, it’s still not finished.  I started the e-mail game in early ’93 and didn’t even bother to decide which country it was in.  When the playing field needed to be broadened, the nation of Abraxis was born.  It is a predominantly Human nation with a large demi-human population.  Right now, the people and places are still in a state of flux because I tend to change, add and delete things wherever I need to, in favor of the ongoing campaign.
 

--CUTTER, aka Godd, the GM