Atlantasian Miscellany

Seeing as that John Holland's The Realms of Atlantasia weighs in at 545 pages, the number of topics that it does not satisfactorily explain is surprisingly large. Some of these topics are broad enough to accommodate one or more blog posts; however, the present post is a collection of those odd little items that cannot sustain an entire post on their own.

In his acknowledgments, Holland misspells the word “project.”

Page 52 introduces us to the term “Wrey-nger” (which, I hope to St. Cuthbert, is pronounced “ranger”); introduces, but does not explain. From what your humble host can deduce, a wrey-nger is a mage who forsakes his (or her) original school to learn new types of magic. It seems that wrey-ngers are not very popular; Holland suggests that wrey-ngers hide the fact that they cast spells. Per page 172, “You must learn to hide your casting, if possible, and blend in with a crowd.”

Barbarians regenerate one Life Point every two rounds, according to page 259. Atlantasia is all about realism.

Mindweavers are similar to mages; however, their magic is more along the lines of psychic abilities. There are three families of mindweavers: Brashear, Mantheran, and Wallershin (for reasons unexplained, Wallershin is sometimes spelled Widdershin). Everyone violently hates mindweavers. According to page 473, one of the 'cons' of being a mindweaver is that “everyone is trying to kill you!!!!!!!!!” That's a lot of exclamation points, so it must be important; however, I think that Holland is exaggerating somewhat. It seems that mindweavers don't hate one another (the different families intermarry). Also, mindweavers are allowed into Baba-Luna; “but they are kept a very close eye on,” according to page 573. People can't try to kill mindweavers in Baba-Luna, else they would be confronted with the unsurpassed efficiency of the war magi.* Anyway, why would a mindweaver admit to being such upon entry to Baba-Luna? Why are mindweavers hated so severely? Because of their mind powers? If their mind powers were so effective, wouldn't they have used those powers to make people not hate them? Really, when you think about it, the hatred towards them is evidence that they shouldn't be hated.

Page 67 says that 35% of all traveling merchant encounters are actually with mindweavers. As opposed to mere merchants, traveling merchants are (ironically) only encountered in cities. During the day, 10% of all random encounters within a city will be with 'normal' merchants as opposed to 11% with traveling merchants.

In cities, during the day, 20% of all dwarf encounters will be with evil dwarves (40% at night).  In the mountains (day or night), 30% of all dwarf encounters will be with evil dwarves.  I don't know what this says about dwarf sociology.  Gnomes (regardless of moral disposition) are absent from the random encounter charts except as a subset of pick-pockets.

It is (remotely) possible to encounter a 'dimensional army' on Atlantasia.  On page 65, Holland tells us to “roll for dimension,” but provides no means to interpret the result of such a roll.

*  Baba-Luna is the 'City of Diplomacy,' so naturally, the police force consists of war magi.