Greyhawk Content of the Coloring Album

[tzelios]

Please find an article of mine that you may find interesting www.canonfire.com/htmlnew/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=547&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0

[GRWelsh]

I enjoyed the article. Trying to use the Coloring Album as source material for the WORLD OF GREYHAWK is a good idea, as it was produced at around the time the FOLIO was made. But, as you have noted, not everything in the Coloring Album matches up perfectly...

Personally, I always pictured the adventurers riding out of Greyhawk City and up into the Cairn Hills, with the lich Grusyin being a long dead sorcerer who escaped the Rain of Colorless Fire, and came north to build his Tower Keep among the cairns and tombs of an even more ancient people, those who once dwelt on the Isles of Woe, before they sank...

You gotta love those Greg Irons drawings. Very evocative, even if he has the dwarves barefoot and the halflings wearing boots.

[tzelios]

Thanks for reading it!

From Greytalk correspondence Gygax once claimed that the city is Greyhawk, but this contradicts the pictures. In that old correspondence Gygax also claimed that the cleric of the Album is Serten, which of course is not true, due to difference in name (the cleric of the Album is called SerteRn), as well as difference in religion (the cleric of the Album is of St. Cuthbert, and not of Pholtus as is Serten). So I guess we can bypass his hastened view easily, given in accordance the fact that the pictures were given to him and he had to create a story “out of whole cloth” based on these pictures.

The city that you see in a picture of the Coloring Album is by a lake, and not by the banks of a river like Selintan. Also, if it was Greyhawk the whole story does not align to Greyhawk literature, since you can do nothing with the Kingdom of Good and the Dark One references of the Album. Additionally, another picture of the Album depicts Grusyin’s stronghold in a peak of forested hills area too dense to be Cairn Hills.

The innovation of the article is that the first establishment of ToEE is identified. It is Grusyin's stronghold! It is the place where the Orb of Golden Death was created!!!

If you believe I did a good job, please support the article with comments and votes.

Gygax liked the article, so after his permission I posted as comment our short interview bellow the article.

[GRWelsh]

tzelios said:

From Greytalk correspondence Gygax once claimed that the city is Greyhawk, but this contradicts the pictures... So I guess we can bypass his hastened view easily...

... said the rabbinical scholar to the myth-maker.

Not really. The way I look at it, EGG used some creative license, so Greyhawk was placed on the shores of the lake instead of a river, and Sertern was a cleric of St Cuthbert instead of Pholtus. The relationship of the "world" of the Coloring Album to the published game setting is similar to that of the Gord novels, Andre Norton's "Quag Keep," the "Gnome Cache" serial, the home campaign at Lake Geneva, etc.

[tzelios]

Master Gary is that you?

[tzelios]

All creation is Nothing my Master. I work for Nothing (((

But there must be some way to model All down, or not ... Wise was Godel, hm.

Why is there no part of Entropy made of pure Law and Goodness in your creation?

[tzelios]

Grashyewl said:

... said the rabbinical scholar to the myth-maker.

Not really. The way I look at it, EGG used some creative license, so Greyhawk was placed on the shores of the lake instead of a river, and Sertern was a cleric of St Cuthbert instead of Pholtus. The relationship of the "world" of the Coloring Album to the published game setting is similar to that of the Gord novels, Andre Norton's "Quag Keep," the "Gnome Cache" serial, the home campaign at Lake Geneva, etc.

OK man, you are not EGG. Are you Mona though? You must be some myth-maker, ain't you? So that your views are considered accordingly with your statements:)

This is the way you look at it. When two people talk together there must exist some goodwill, otherwise the discussion is pointless. I proved my goodwill, if you noticed by my above post:)

Regarding Serten/SerteRn, there exists mismatch in both name and religion, so by no means are the same person. Yap, I agree with you that EGG might have used any creative license to do similar things to what you mention above, but this is not the case now. Greyhawk in not referred in the Coloring Album at all. So I do not see how this creative license argument fits. Serten's death, the people residing this message board know quite well, died with a different way than the death of SerteRn in the Album.

[tzelios]

OK, Mr. Gary R. Welsh, nice to meet you! Stelios "Tzelios-Stelios!" Wind Dukes of Aaqa, Vaati, and all that. Amazing material you have created myth-maker. You have my true respect!

But I hope this is not necessary ergodicity or politics on your part. We are going to put down logic to explain All, eh?

[GRWelsh]

tzelios said:

But I hope this is not necessary ergodicity or politics on your part.

Huh? I'm not sure what you mean, there. And all I meant was that you can look at this stuff in different ways... as a "myth-maker" (i.e. from the creative point of view) or as the "rabbinical scholar" (i.e. from the textual analysis point of view). It's funny that you mentioned Erik Mona, too, because he once compared the way Greyhawk fans treat the modules and books to the way Talmudic scholars painstakingly analyze and discuss their scriptures.

My opinion comes from being familiar with some of those sources I mentioned earlier... the Gord books, the "Gnome Cache" stories EGG wrote in the early issues of THE DRAGON, the "Quag Keep" by Andre Norton, and stories from Gary's home campaign at Lake Geneva. What I meant by mentioning those sources is that if you try to reconcile them all -- with textual analysis -- into one, self-consistent setting it is not going to work. But in some sense, they are still all "Greyhawk" -- in the creative sense -- since they all come from the same root source of the writer's imagination.

So, if EGG said that the city in the Coloring Album is "Greyhawk" -- then it is! It doesn't really matter that the details don't match up perfectly with the published game setting, or Sertern's name is spelled differently, etc. It's just another incarnation of the same thing, changed to fit the needs of a given product. The Green Dragon Inn was one the players regularly went to in Greyhawk. Maybe Sertern and Ukeli were just cameos for Ernest and Luke, to show up in that product... who knows?

Still, I think it is great to use it for inspiration to write your own adventure or story around it. I'd love to see a version of the labyrinth below the lich's Tower Keep, whether in the Gnarley Forest or the Cairn Hills or wherever. With a beholder, Demogorgon and Tiamat in it, that's got to be a rough place.

[tzelios]

Grashyewl said:

Huh? I'm not sure what you mean, there.

I meant compulsory service, that you probably serve your employer or the people you have worked with and not the fan who wants to produce `reliable´ material for the rest of the fans. By reliable I mean material that is product of indisputable methods, like the textual analysis you've mentioned, and not arbitrary myth creation. The designer who works for the mental rights owner can and must use such myth-making methods to the end of creating (official) material. However, the only method left for the fan in order for his work to have the value of canonicity to the others is formal analysis combining text and art (cover and interior). For example, people in this site were discussing the number of EEGs on the cover art of the GDQ series, and accordingly were assessing ToEE material.

Grashyewl said:

My opinion comes from being familiar with some of those sources I mentioned earlier... the Gord books, the "Gnome Cache" stories EGG wrote in the early issues of THE DRAGON, the "Quag Keep" by Andre Norton, and stories from Gary's home campaign at Lake Geneva. What I meant by mentioning those sources is that if you try to reconcile them all -- with textual analysis -- into one, self-consistent setting it is not going to work.

If we were discussing real world then I would have agreed with you. But since the world is magical, it is possible that all sources are true, or at least most of them. Naturally, for such a process priority is the integration of Gygax material, like the Gord novels or, even easier the Coloring Album. I integrated the Coloring Album. More work will integrate the Gord novels. People in this board are investigating the age of Iuz and use the Gord novels as sources. Since the world is magical it is just a technicality to find the way to achieve this. The only reason that this did not happen already is mental rights disputes or inability of the designers, given that such a task is hard.

Grashyewl said:

So, if EGG said that the city in the Coloring Album is "Greyhawk" -- then it is! It doesn't really matter that the details don't match up perfectly with the published game setting, or Sertern's name is spelled differently, etc. It's just another incarnation of the same thing, changed to fit the needs of a given product.

I will submit to you a counter example. Gygax once said that the model for Iggwilv was Baba Jaga. Gygax once also said that the model for Iggwilv was the witch of Phojola. The two are different personage. Which one is true? What I mean is that oral word of the creator is important, but it should not always be taken so seriously. If I ask him again about the Coloring Album he might say a different thing about Serten. So we take into account the oral word of the creator only when it makes completely sense. After all, Erik Mona himself put into canonicity the fact that EGG material is amenable to being “contradictory, erroneous, or intentionally misleading” (LGJ#4 describing the Great Library and the special Yragerne section), even worse for his oral word.

Concluding my ramblings I would say that the mental right owner should do something about all these people that work really hard for the game, researching and trying to make a better Greyhawk.

[Merkholz]

What can Gary do? Apart from reminiscing the good old days he's probably prohibited from mentioning anything about AD&D and TSR products. Even if he was at liberty to speak his mind, what obligations does Gary have to the fanatical fans (like me) who are more or less bogged down in minutiae that Gary forgot about years ago? It's not his world anymore, do we really need to force Gary to give absolutions to ideas and material that he might not have allowed anywhere near his campaign?

M

[GT]

Wow! "Tres esoteric", this thread... ^__^