What do the Avernites stuff their pillows with?

[Goldengirl]

There's at least some indication (A5, I want to say?) that some large monsters are magically occurring, therefor there are creatures who probably don't need food directly as nutrition. Do they exist off of naturally occurring magical fluctuations? Crystals? Pure hatred for Avernum? Who knows.

 

It also is my guess that a lot of the larger fauna feed off of smaller fauna, rather than big plants. So, the basic mushrooms, lichens, and mosses that we hear endless description of are still the base of the ecosystem.

[Hyena of Ice]

Oh, there's a point, how do they manage their flora when not active? They'd not want some noxious weed ruin all their stuff in the meantime.

A5 actually covers quite a bit of this. We are told that a few Vahnatai spinsters live until death by natural causes to maintain the equipment and such. They would be the ones who keep the wildlife from damaging the most essential infrastructure.

Beyond that, they don't. They deal with the overgrowth of both flora and fauna (along with the crumbling of their infrastructure) when they come out of hibernation, and it involves months/a few years of continuous backbreaking work.

 

Vahnatai lands. I'm almost certain that the meditation chambers in Egli have pillows in them for sitting purposes. It could be that the Vahnatai use the natural fibrous lichens for these.

Yes, there are floor cushions.

 

In Olgai, most bedrooms do display the usage of pillows.

I was going more based on the original two trilogies, as I haven't played past the demos of the remakes.

 

Actually, given how inhospitable the caves are as an environment, getting anything at all to grow is a minor miracle. I doubt there are many weeds to worry about.

In the Vahnatai lands, there are. The Vahanatai nation in the Northern Frontier is in a region of rich geothermal activity. Olgai is in an unusually lush area of Avernum. The natural Slith habitat is (by necessity) a region of rich geothermal activity and plentiful water heated by volcanic springs. So we see that the habitat of both species is similar if not the same-- the only difference is that the Vahnatai are indigenous to much, much deeper caverns than the Slith.

[ĐªгŦĦ Єяŋϊε]

Which does bring up the question of how old is vahanati society?

If they enter periods of hibernation every few hundred years for a few hundred years they could date back millennia fairly easy with their long lifespan.

Also how often do they hibernate?

[Thaluikhain]

Which does bring up the question of how old is vahanati society?

If they enter periods of hibernation every few hundred years for a few hundred years they could date back millennia fairly easy with their long lifespan.

Also how often do they hibernate?

 

Also, do they all hibernate at once or do different nations hibernate at different times? What triggers the hibernation, is it natural or a climatic thing or something?

 

And...do they not have any sentient enemies existing to take advantage of them hibernating?

[Lilith]

Also, do they all hibernate at once or do different nations hibernate at different times? What triggers the hibernation, is it natural or a climatic thing or something?

 

And...do they not have any sentient enemies existing to take advantage of them hibernating?

 

A lot of these questions are implicitly or explicitly answered in-game, in E/A2 in particular. Different groups Rest at different times, and they Rest when the available natural resources in their area are no longer enough to sustain their population. There don't seem to be any other widespread populations of intelligent species in their lands: there are a few drakes and demons but they mostly seem to keep to themselves. To further protect themselves, the Resting Vahnatai hide away in hard-to-reach caves and seal themselves up inside large crystals: even with those precautions, some of them die anyway when things go wrong.

[Zaego]

In Olgai, most bedrooms do display the usage of pillows.

I was going more based on the original two trilogies, as I haven't played past the demos of the remakes.

 

Now, this raises an interesting question. Should we consider the Remakes as the overriding canon because they are more recent; or should the Originals be the canon because they represent Jeff's original ideas; or should both Original Avernums and Remake Avernums be handled as their own separate canons? (Just like with Exile / Avernum discrepancies.)

[Slawbug]

In X1 and X2, for the most part, those discrepancies are easy enough to merge. Encyclopedia Ermariana, for example, took the policy that Exile refers to the geographical location itself, the caves, while Avernum refers specifically to the nation founded by Micah. It's a bit like the goblin/orc discrepancy in the Hobbit/LOTR.

 

As video games, you have visual as well as verbal elements, but the principle is the same. If it doesn't change the character of the things involved, you're simply looking at two different facets of the same thing, painted in a different style, as it were.

 

OTOH, A4-6 don't always feel like the same world as the first trilogy. The details mostly match up, but you sometimes get the feeling that the story took a wrong turn somewhere around Albuquerque. It's a bit more like the last chapter of Jane Eyre, or the last two seasons of Buffy, or the season of Community that they later hand-waved away with the explanation that "there was a gas leak that year" that made people do crazy things and then forget they happened. Canon, sure, but maybe there's another acceptable canon that stops before the crazy stuff.

 

And there are a few Exile/Avernum or EA/2nd remake discrepancies that can get bundled up in that. For example, the question of whether Solberg is a master mindduelist, or an incompetent demonological "expert"; or how hard it is to employ teleportation magic.