Too late! Echoes of your P-Hârn already ripple along the fabric of Kelestia. The White Hand decontamination teams again have botched their job!

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«Fair is what we see, Fairer what we have perceived, Fairest what is still in veil.»
—Nicolaus Stenonius

Fear not, it won't be in the way. As the base of much of the kingdom's and region's industrial economy, it will get a lot of scrutiny and the things that Have To Be (in order to explain downstream situations) will be.
For example, Rethem exports brasswares regionally, so they have to come from somewhere. The metals are mined in the Menekai region, but are they worked there as well, or shipped to Techen for working? Once we know the Kingdom economy, we can establish the Techen economy, and from that we can establish the Menekai economy.
Most people don't give a rat's ass about the supply chain that leads to those exported brasswares, but if you run a campaign with some secret messages hidden inside exported Agrikan incense-burners (for example), it can come up as your PCs go tracking down the source fo the messages. It is very frustrating when your players leave the script, and this kind of information helps the GM to make plausible guesses in the heat of the campaign that will hold up later.
Nonetheless, there are surely already people using or planning to use the fanon Menekai in the year between now and when a canon Menekai is released. Rather than come up with something all-new and guaranteed incompatible with their plans, it would be nice to be as compatible as possible so as to minimize disruption to existing and planned campaigns.
Feel free to PM me with any special concerns about Menekai, especially if you plan to revise it with new numbers from your manor program.

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Heroes should be uncommon. They just happen to be the PCs.

They hide potatoes in the Agrikan incense-burners in my p-Harn, in case anyone's interested.

The project sounds great. Looking forward to it.

Thats exactly the reason they are banded from the mainland by Melderyn, its the spud incense that does things to people!!! It allows them to break down the veil and realise that they are all just pawns in some great cosmic game.

Any news on the new HQ? The last one was sent nearly six months ago.

Hi Aghori,

Good question. The authors are wondering too. I am going to let the cat out of the bag and reveal that CGI currently has not one, but TWO complete HQs in hand. We are working on a third.

You might send an e-mail to remind them that they have Harnic customers too

TTYL

Kerry Mould

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Well, my days of taking you seriously are certainly coming to a middle. - Mal, Firefly.

Done

Fancy that!
And just today I spoke with Tom and he said he is working on the next HQ, which he hopes to release by the end of the month. (April, wiseguys!)
(Yes, 2007!)
There are four parts to it:
1) Atlas Map L5 - covers the southern tail of the Sorkin Mountains to the north shore of Tontury Lake, and includes that steep bend in the Silver Way near Fana. With the recently-released K4 and K5 this maps about 3/4 of the Silver Way.
2) Silver Way - much discussed, long awaited
3) Written Works - a dramatic addition to the info in this under-utilized part of the HM Treasure section. This includes background and rules-type info on written works and then a bunch of examples including Genin's On Learning the Art, the Balefire Chronicles and other light classics.
4) Fyvria 7-12 - 6pp more Fyvrian spells, including some from the long-lost Grimoire of Bognor, included in the Written Works article.

Naturally all this is subject to change with the whims of the publishers. I did not mention the Written Works or the Fyvria expansion because they were the riskiest - two new article types that might not get approved. When I spoke with Tom he had read and approved both of them. He may yet make big changes, but at least the gross composition of the next HQ seems to be set.

The following HQ should include Atlas Map L4, which I think will be the last eastern map square for the foreseeable future. It will also include a Cats bestiary article from Rebecca (including some excellent surprises) and some more new article types that have to get the OK before I say anything more about them.
Even though the articles are almost ready for submission, I am not even going to mention them to CGI until they bill for HQ 11 because it would only distract them and they are slow enough already.
The good news is they should be able to turn HQ12 around in a month as well. HQ13 is another one made up of shorts while we churn away on Rethem and environs for HQ14-18.
And of course all the usual disclaimers apply regarding reading the future of CGI releases!

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Heroes should be uncommon. They just happen to be the PCs.

1. Is there any hope Harn Classics will actually be published or did this project die quietly?

2. Excellent news! This is the kind of background I long for. Please continue to explore other obscure and overlooked aspects of Harnic life! Articles like Innkeeper are among my favorites.

Greetings from Regensburg,
Andreas Hartmann

I am not in the loop on the HarnClassics project. If I learn anything, I will post it here.

I have a very good friend in Regensburg! I hope to visit there some day.

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Heroes should be uncommon. They just happen to be the PCs.

I have to echo Andreas on all counts.

Article on Written Works of Harn is an applaudable decision. HarnPage has long contained a dry list of "Harnic library cards", although with heavy stain of early interrupted fanon effort. But HRT describes many holy/apocryphal tales here and there, and the ones in Larani page for example, should be easily edited as a "Laranian Reader", or catechism. I hope that Written Works will present most relevant of these and link them into ecclesiastical history in plot-hooking way.

And sure, any further ideas concerning On Learning the Art, Balefire Chronicles, Gest of St. Ambrathas, Libram of the Pantheon, Sagas of Bjarri & co., conflicting conjectures of supposedly real Penultimate Tome and whatnot is welcome. There are so many writings glancingly mentioned in the canon that they certainly deserve to be collected into one place.

Ah, and something about the works of Tuzyn and Workol!

But regarding more immediately the topic Andreas pointed out:
However much I like the trend to produce exhaustive collection of "Castle, Vathran, Keep, Thran etc." articles, I have been pleased that there seems to exist similar line with Harnic professions. Sure, facts on medieval lifestyle are available elsewhere, but injecting that information to Harnic context makes it more exiting to bargain with that fellow inhabiting the residence #.
Product like HarnMaster Guilds, or HarnMaster Mangai would be nice to have, although the most obvious abbreviations are already reserved...

Written Works is structured in such a way as to offer both canon expansion and easy fanon possibilities. I'm very excited about it as I think it's one of the most innovative canon articles in years.

I too am excited about this article. I hope sincerely to see some more new innovations in the structuring of canon offerings.

The Fyvrian spells will likely be of use to one of my players as well, and of course as a GM, I am anxiously awaiting the silver way.

In fact, this makes me almost want to restart my subscription sooner rather than later.

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let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage. Otherwise you are making their destiny not brighter but darker. Lewis

Excellent! But...

Does this mean that we will not be seeing Map Square J4 within our lifetimes? This would be the one north of Olokand, including the keeps Baseta, Setrew, and Bidow. This is all that is needed to completely map Kaldor!

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"Your logic is flawless. But that doesn't mean you're right." - Tedd Good

Perhaps a future HQ will deal with the Fur Road and reasonably include J4.

One thing I'd like to see, and which seems easy enough to do, is once all the maps for a given kingdom are released, to have an "assembled" poster map of that kingdom released. Such a map might justify the addition of a few "wilderness" map squares on the borders to even out the overall appearance (L6 perhaps, in the case of a combined Kaldor/Azadmere poster map).

I kind of doubt this will happen, but I think it would be a good product. Like the basic map of Harn, it might draw people to the game.

This is a good idea! I hope Grant & Tom are listening.

Neil

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Uxbridge English Dictionary:
Iconography: Filthy Byzantine pictures

Here's what I know about a few recent points raised here:
Map J4/Fur Road - We started on a Fur Road article to continue the Silver Way idea hoping to eventually get all the trade routes in that format. But when it became clear that they would not get released until Tom had finished every map square through thich the trail passes, we abandoned that project. It may return some day, but waiting for all the map squares would take forever and delay evrything else. The fair citizens of western Harn have been neglected long enough already.

BUT - the general composition of an HQ is either 48pp text or 36pp text + 1 map square. The new small articles make it easier to churn out those odd corners and not just focus on the heart of any one kingdom. So all is not lost for J4, but it probably won't be this year. I will try to squeeze it in somehow, but to be honest it is hard to suggest working on J4 while delaying E7, possibly the single most important square on the atlas map and part of the Rethem project.

An assembled poster map is unlikely due to the expense of producing such a thing in color for a short print run. Dan forwarded the suggestion and the response was as I mentioned above, but he might make a map-pack for a region.

Written Works is also structured in such a way that it is infinitely expandable and fanon-friendly. If it is popular, then there will be more editions with more books. We intentionally left a few big titles to anchor the next release. In the meantime it should be easy to generate fanon versions to share.

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Heroes should be uncommon. They just happen to be the PCs.

Aha! I had missed one map in my calculations!
I forgot that K4 went out with Gardiren.
So the next HQ will include L5 with Silver Way, WW, and Fyvria 7-12.
The following one will have either L4 or J4, and the one after that will have either J4 or L4.
Then it's all Rethem all the time for a year or so. That leaves only lowly L6 undone for that supersquare.

As for Written Works - the draft they are working with includes (IIRC) 14 titles of written works, 1/page with a lot of information, and also variant versions, so you really get some 20+ written works in the article. Each one has hooks init to send PCs all over the place, plus their own intrinsic value. It is a good article with a lot of playability potential.

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Heroes should be uncommon. They just happen to be the PCs.

Thanks for the info.

As for the map squares I'm missing.... at least I have the old ones.

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"Your logic is flawless. But that doesn't mean you're right." - Tedd Good

I just something NEW would come out. Been to bloody long....

What's top of your list?

ANY THING HARNIC!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! PLEASE.

If my reckoning is right:
Gardiren was HQ10
HQ11 is the impending Silver Way/Written Works/Fyvria7-12/MapL5
HQ12 should follow soon after (in CGI time). This one, too, has some new types of articles, so I don't want to announce anything until CGI has seen them and not rejected them. But the articles are written and will be submitted as soon as HQ11 is in the mail (not sooner for fear of distracting them - they, like you, tend to be distracted by exciting new HarnStuff). A reasonable guess would be about 45 days after submission.
It is also likely that HQ13 will be ready for CGI by the time HQ12 is in the mail, so we will keep them flooded with HarnStuff until they escape into boardgame-world again.
Rethem is proceeding normally while these small articles are getting published. The small articles help to develop some neglected aspects of HarnWorld, and help to add fluidity to a production system that had become constipated by too steady a diet of rich stuff...

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Heroes should be uncommon. They just happen to be the PCs.

Mmm. I hope that metaphor doesn't extend to the output.

For those impatient for something new, my CC has been hit.