At 06:53 AM 3/9/2006, Lee wrote:

>Has anyone done any writing on the mysterious ehrshegh "Golden Light,"
>formerly the regent of Treucht? Or her temples and possible
>clerics? I have a
>PC who might be wandering that way, and I thought I should ask if
>anything has
>been done already.

I haven`t done anything personally with that character, but there was
some discussion of the nature of her church since it is a combined
worship of Ruornil and Erik. It generally goes against the grain of
the BR domain level to have temples that are dedicated to more than
one god, though there`s no particular reason why that must be the
case that I can come up with. It seems like the easiest solution to
have the priests of that temple be more or less evenly split between
the two gods rather than try to create a whole new hybridized
character class--though I`ve never been much opposed to doing that
where necessary.... In this case, though, the church itself appears
to worship both simultaneously as distinct gods, not create a new
doctrine based on aspects of either. That being the case splitting
the clergy into two classes seems more appropriate than having a new
class to reflect what is, essentially, a sharing rather than an accumulation.

As for the Golden Light herself, I haven`t worked on that character
but a casual look at her character levels will show that she`s an
awful powerful figure in the "low level" BR setting. W13/Pr15 is
pretty buff. If I were going to write that character up straight
she`d probably end up with about 35 character levels or so since I
prefer to portray ersheghlien transformation with a character class
and something like that would probably take about six levels (at a
guess.) In a 3e conversion that makes for a pretty tough NPC.

Whether she is a priest of Erik or Ruornil (or some hybrid) is up for
grabs, but I`m personally inclined to make her more dedicated to Erik
since her wizard levels already account for a dedication to
Ruornil. It should be noted, however, that in 2e there could be only
one 15th level "grand druid" in a world at a time. It`s entirely
possible that Hap was meant to be such a character. It is, after
all, hard to imagine a better candidate.... Of course, BR "druids"
need not abide by the 2e structure of druidic hierarchy. There is,
in fact, nothing that I recall in the BR materials that indicates
that they do have such a hierarchy. It`s just an interesting note
that might inform how the character is portrayed in one way or another.

It seems to me that as an ershegh the Golden Light`s transformation
is somewhat anti-Ruornil. That is, he is the god of night and the
moon. A priest of his would embody something less... sunny, if you
catch my drift. A wizard who venerates Ruornil, however, would have
less trouble transforming into a glowing thing. Thus embracing
Ruornil`s magical aspect, and combining his role as a nature/source
god while generally ignoring his moon/night emphasis.

Gary