Encyclopedia of Science and History
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

GABBYROOM is a small yellow fungus, discovered in 10010 by Guanerius ("Gabby") Guaneri, that grows in the tropical Vyrican forests. It was discovered in 10027 (by the Iron Fist League) that Gabbyrooms provide the material component for the Thunderclap spell. By some unknown mechanism, Gabbyrooms have recently extended their range and began to be located in the Chinmin province with an extensive population near Forsythia.

GAILINIA is a large island located in the south part of the Eastern Ocean. It has been the traditional home of sea elves (southern sections) and high elves (northern sections) for thousands of years. Dark elves used to live on the island until they were subjected to slavery by the other races; they rebelled and fled to nearby Syllabus Island after the Elvish Uncivil War. Gailinia is crossed by the Gailinian Range of mountains; on either side of the mountains are deep deciduous forests. The unforested areas of Gailinia are primarily arable grassland, though the best farmland lies on the northern coast, especially in the river delta. The major cities of Gailinia are Carthage, Slavale, and Upanishad.

GALENA (pop. 18,900) is a dwarvish mining town on Allotrope that monopolizes the world's production of sulfur and is the largest producer of lead. Galena was founded in the 7000's by migrating dwarves. It is primarily occupied now by surface dwarves.

GALILEI, GALILEO (9390-9440) was the greatest scientist of his millenium. He was a deep gnome of the southern Sprines, the son of a professional lute-player/amateur mathematician. Galileo was an outstanding in every respect save discipline and respect for the conservative teachers of his time. He adopted the dialogue form of arguments and a made a name for himself as a single- handed champion of intellectual freedom, taking on all those who "think that are glorious intellect should be enslaved to that of some other man." Galileo skipped out on the medical career his father had planned for him and followed him love of experiment into a life of poverty and destitution. His big break came in 9415 when he found that glass, when ground into various curves, would bring distant images into focus. Further study allowed the construction the first telescope, a rough device, but when that allowed the publication of The Four Moons, a collection of drawings and speculations as to the origin and nature of the globes. The book caught the attention of Ghenjar who asked for proof of the scientist's discovery, and then rewarded him with an annual stipend that exceeded many of his generals. Galileo lived in bliss until his liberal nature and philosophical/physical researches led him doubt the wisdom and power of the traditional gnomish pentapantheon. This could be interepreted as a stab at Ghenjar's imperial plans. Ghenjar was reluctant to punish his foremost academic, but as Galileo became more insistent, Ghenjar was forced to rescind his upport after long talks with the recalcitrant scientist failed to dull his words. Ghenjar buried their friendship a few years later when he sentenced Galileo to never write another book nor to leave his local neighborhood. This was in part because two other noted scientists began to show signs of brilliance at this time; Ghenjar invited both of them to his court. Galileo died broken and penniless, his wife having left him upon their ostrication by society. A young friend, Andrew Scoon, smuggled out two unfinished manuscripts and made plans to publish them and oversee their distribution, but he was caught. The manuscripts were thought lost until one of the originals was found in a dark archive, discovered in 9872 by Ephor Fraserkhorn. The whereabouts of the second manuscript is unknown although, notes in the second volume indicate that it was a mathematical treatise postulating a quantitative description of the motions of the moons.

GATEWAY ISLAND is the easternmost island of the Footprint Archipelago. It lies north of Pavimentum and west of Desolate Island. Gateway Island is roughly circular and approximately seven miles in diameter. It is volcanic in origin, but thickly foliated like most of the eastern islands of the archipelago. Gateway is not thought to have ever been inhabited, though it has served as a safe haven for merchants and fishermen caught out at sea. Gateway is known to possess several unique species of ferns and birds; other claims to fame have yet to be discovered. Gateway is claimed jointly by the Council of Pavimentum by administered by the Coast Guard of Mickelgarth. The channel between Gateway Island and Desolate Island is of greater-than-average depth and provides a convenient point for whalers to cross the Archipelago.

GAUSSIAN (pop. 3,500) is a high elven farming and trading town on the eastern coast of Gailinia. Gaussian is known for its small agricultural engineering college (enrollment 50) and its town bell, forged in 9500 by townspeople who sought to destroy a fleet of pirates that was terrorizing the coast. The bell was rung whenever ships appeared--observers on small off-shore islands relayed messages inward--and the town militia hastily assembled. The defense was a success and the town was freed of tyranny until Duke Perrier, the water baron, took over the town in the late 9600's. As the fortunes of the Perrier family fell in 9715-9720, the town regained its independence and began the slow process of rising to prominence.

GENUINE ART was an artistic movement in painting and sculpture, roughly stretching from 9975 to 10015. Genuine Art was practised throughout most of the world, included Pavimentum, Ilico, Vyrica, Allotrope, Symtheta, and Gailinia. Genuine Art prided itself on artistic quality and aesthetics stemming from representations of the real world. Beautiful subjects still dominated the artworks, but unbecoming people and places were also fit subject-matter for some artists. Genuine Artists preached the doctrines of accurate color reproduction, accurate shading, true-to-life anatomical details, and realistic proportions in their painting. Such art was much more difficult than the geometrism which had gone before, a fact which contributed to a sizable reduction in the working population of artists following the year 10000. Genuine Art flowed in modernism as artists became more taken away with the rapid technological progress of the world, though the style of Genuine Art remains important throughout the world, perhaps most notably in the conservative art schools of Marmarenda on Pavimentum which saw Genuine Art as the only true successor of neo-Lenivestiscism (neo-classicism) despite the intervening century of artistic innovation.

GEOMETRISM was a popular artistic movement from 9920 to about 9980. It was the dominant movement from 9935 to about 9970. Geometric paintings featured intricate patterns of lines, shapes, colors, and often optical illusions. M. C. Escher is often credited with the founding of this movement, especially for a single piece that shows how biological forms can subtly blend into purely geometric patterns--and then reappeare as they patterns coalesce in certain ways. Geometric paintings are often aesthetically pleasing through their artists' choices of color, symmetry, and arrangement. Geometrism gradually became less popular as original ideas became scarcer and scarcer. Perhaps as a response to its abstract nature, Genuine Art arose as the dominant artistic style of the next period.

GHENJAR (9389-9499) was a long-lived ruler of the deep gnomish nation in the 95th century. In his autobiography he makes it clear that the fourth gnomish resurfacing was conceived of and carrried out by himself with little help from his father, who, if we are to believe Ghenjar's account, was content to sit on his throne while eating lichens and watching captured dwarven strip dancers. Ghenjar deposed his father when he was 13 and replaced the heads of the army with his own men. By the time he was 15 he had taken sixty mines and five hundred prisoners from the unprepared lava gnomes. Beginning in 9410, when he was 21, he had his workers tunnel from their cities underneath the Sprines to the dwarvish cities above. He also worked out a temporary alliance with the elves in Gailinia. Working at night, under the cover of illusions, crack gnomish forces struck at every dwarvish stronghold, massacring many, and fighting battles with the remainder. Unfortunately, the small size of the deep gnomish military, made immediate conquest unattainable, and a lengthy war between the elves and Ghenjar's gnomes and the Sprinal Dwarves followed, a war that is now called the War of the Southern Sprines. Eventually, the victorious gnomes turned on their elvish allies and sunk their entire fleet by connecting their harbor to a gigantic underground reservoir--opening the bottom of the sea--and letting the navy be sucked into a vortex of death. Ghenjar spent ten years eliminating trolls, hobbits, humans, and other undesirables from the Sprines before expanding outward into present-day Pieschland, Iceland, and the Verteux. Despite his accomplishments on the battlefield, supposedly undefeated in 178 engagements, Ghenjar should be remembered for innovative agricultural, artistic, and industrial contributions that revolutionized gnomish civilization and all those in contact with it. He patronaged scientists, including Galileo Galilei as well. He pioneered terrace farming, free verse, and mass production. At the age of 100, his wife, Salibri, herself 28, died in childbirth. Distressed, Ghenjar took to a life of ascetic solitude and reflection. He was buried ten years later, but his coffin, dug-up one hundred years later as the gnomes fled from Iceland, was found to be empty. His real fate, and resting place, will probably never be known.

GLACIAL WAR (9522-9600) was a continuation of the Orc and Gnomish War that human settlers fought for almost eighty years following the establishment of Iceland. Despite Ghenjar's empire's resources, the lack of a strong leader and powerful magic research, tipped the scales in favor of the invading humans. The major battles of the war were fought near Parapanisades, in the Sprinal Tap, and in the glacier itself. Finally the gnomes, under magical fire and ice, were forced to retreat to the mountains, taking Ghenjar's coffin with them from his capital, Brobeneburgh (near modern-day Cryme).

GLACIER is general term for a ring of icebergs and ice that invests the world. As one sails outward th denisty and size of icebergs increase to a point where navigation by large ship is impossible. Beyond this a sheet of ice underneath the water is detectable. Further on the icebergs become attached to the underwater iceshelf and the system gives way to an endless mass of ice. Current explanations for the phenomena vary, but the most accepted one is given by Jameson P. Crue (UDC): "It appears that the density of ice increases within these polar regions...this causes it to sink to a depth where the sun cannot melt it. More ice forms (and sinks) during the winters than melts in the winter due to the high reflectivity of frozen water. This contributes to the existence of such a huge mass that seems to grow slowly every year." Why the density increases is unknown. Scientific inquiries aside, the glacier is very cold and uninhabitable, it remains a geographical enigma to the world's explorers and philosophers. Various expeditions have reported gigantic creatures, dragons, strange towns, odd weather, and other illusions. The bright whiteness of the surroundings tends to cause insanity and agoraphobia in new team members. The farthest anyone has yet advanced into the glacier seems to be about 300 miles, when the Lazered team traveled north from Parapanisades. Beyond that, nothing is known. Fanciful books, such as those by Vules Jerne, have theorized the existence of other inhabitable spots where the sun's heat has melted enough ice to form oceans. This term is the origin of the phrases "glazed out" and "glazed over," both meaning mentally withdrawn from reality.

GNOME see specific races.

GNOMISH WARNING was a document found on the body of a dead deep gnome near Chaucer in 9996. It read, in part:

    and sister, you know as well as I do, that we gnomes have been trampled underfoot since time began. We live underground and eat fungi that stunts our growth while selling out our future, the minerals we walk on and mine with our own sweat, to the conquerors in exchange for weapons and technologies which we use to conquer ourselves into submission. We must rise up against our collaborative leaders and suborn them. The future of the gnomes depends on our ability to see that our leaders are only leading us astray.

Neither the identity of the recipient nor the sender of the letter is known.

GOBLINS are very close relative of gnomes, in fact, were in not for their historically physical separation, they would commonly be known as a subrace. Goblins usually are 4'2" to 4'8" and are almost universally black haired, black-eyed, white to yellow skinned, and left-handed. Both sexes wear their hair long; cutting one's hair is a sign of shame: its regrowth indicates forgiveness by the gods. Goblins are believed to have been the earliest settlers of Vyrica; its inhospitability, though, led to their migration around the world. They have been involved in very few major wars and tend to be very isolationist, though the training regimen of their males produces fine soldiers and obedient citizens.

GORDON, GEORGE (9726-9764) was a deep gnomish romantic poet known for an adventurous, immoral, violent and incestuous life. He was despised by the conservative society he was born into and fled from it to immerse himself in the experience of living with the elves, the hobbits, the orcs, and the humans. Of all the cultures he sampled, he loved the orcs the most and thought that their true renaissance lay in shaking off the bounds of "death honor, book learning, religious shackles, and ethical fetters" during and following the fall of the second orcish empire. He was a dashing, handsome gnome (despite having clubfoot) who loved life, women, and adventure in equal amounts. He met his death on the slopes of Mt. Molill when his rope broke and he plunged 1,200 feet into a narrow crevice. To this day, the bodies of sixteen youngsters (all women) have been found who committed suicide by leaping from a rock outcropping near where the accident took place. The following poem, his most widely known, was dedicated to an elvish lover he was about to leave:

    So we'll go no more a-roving
So late into the night,
Though the heart be still as loving,
And the Moon be still as bright.

    
For the sword outwears the sheath,
And the soul wears out the breast,
And the heart must pause to breathe,
And Love itself have rest.

    
 Though the next was made for loving,
And the day returns to soon,
Yet we'll go no more a-roving
By the light of the moon.

GRAVESEND (pop. 21,000) is a large city on the continent of Pavimentum. It is renowned for its architecture and organization; one traveller put it: "It's the only place I don't need to make a map as I go." It is the home of the world-famous Excelsea Gravestone Company (named after the town was christened), whose unique headstones and poetic epitaphs are ordered by important people of every race. It is also home the famous Museum of Technology, the Museum of Ancient Religions, and the Order of the Petunia.

GREENWOOD (9989-10006) was a recent elvish poet who found popular, if not critical fame, for his two books: Poems about Adventurers and God We're Stupid! The first is a length anthology of poignant quips dealing with a set of good people who are symbollically preparing for life via the metaphor that the are training to "adventure" in terra incognita in order to discover artifacts and loot which they will take, a psychological allusion to "growing up" and being awarded privileges denied to children. The second book, an except from which follows, is pointed comedy, meant ridicule to those who do not think. The excerpted poem below uses a highly imaginitive situation, reminiscent of the subjects of his first opus, full of impossibilities and poetic license to achieve its effect:

    Grendel...
The word won't leave my mind.
He sits in my cerebrum like it was his stinking cave
By the goddamn river full of poisonous fish.
My mind is seiged with terror and cowardice;
arguments flash like blades.
Grendel...
Alright, dammit!  I'm going to kill it.
Without being able to think while I do it.

GREER, GERMAINE (10005- ) is a young feminist gnomish author whose first book Take Another Look has an immediate success among women worldwide. Gm Greer is ardent supporter of legal equality for women, de facto equality for women in terms of governing positions, and elimination of gender-based jokes noting, "no educated person could find them funny." Gm Greer was born in Axon but now lives in Dun Cess though she travels quite extensively.

GRENDEL is the common name of a large, roughly anthropoid race of monsters living primarily along a fault-block cliff in Vyrica. They are known to be intelligent and family oriented as well as very protective of their possessions and offspring. It is for this reason that gang wars in larger cities have taken on the term of "Grendeling" for their expeditions. Various reports of Grendels using magic and/or weapons have gone unsubstantiated, as have rumors that each clan holds a tremendous amount of magical treasure collected from various sources over a lifetime of thousands of years. Geologists put the age of the cliff at 2,500 years, plus or minus 250 years. In fact, the Grendel's fearsome nature is subject to some debate, according to one expert in the field, "I think you're overestimating this Grendel thing." A pioneering study, completed in 10036 by Ludmilla Lermontov, an orcish biologist from Crimson Tide, indicated that Grendels were more intelligent than previously thought and had excellent command of tool-making, apparently possessed a complex language, and had developed an odd religion. They were more peaceable than expected, Ludmilla reported, but vicious when disturbed at what she considered to be religion rituals. She also noted the existence of a large hemispherical rock altar which was carried from place to place by two of the largest alpha-males. A further expedition is planned in late in 10037 to attempt serious communication with the creatures. The population of Grendels has remained constant within (large) statistical considerations over the past twenty-five years, though several Grendel homes have been vacated, their former occupants choosing to move in with others.

GRENDOPHOBIA is a rational fear of Grendels.

GRIGNARD RANGE is an mountainous region on the western arm of Allotrope covering about eighty squares miles. The peaks range in height from 4,000 to 7,000 feet, the highest being Mt. Taneer (9,250) and Mt. Strositi (9,480). The Grignard range is rich is precious metals, lead, and bauxite. It is mined most actively by Anthraco and the subterranean deep dwarves.

GRUYT STRAIT is a narrow body of water that separates the eastern end of the Uchebnik Peninsula from Pavimentum.

GUILD SYSTEM (journeyman, apprentice, training)

GUYL ISLAND (GEE-uhl) is a small, 20-mile island in the western ocean. It is best known for its resort town of Turin. In days of old Guyl has been an orcish settlement, a multi-racial trading post, an independent dukedom (human), an elvish commune, a gnomish colony, and a stopping off "peace zone" during the first wave of colonizations. All of this makes Guyl one of the greatest archaelogical zones in the world; a location complicated by frequent orcish raids and a number of unethical archaeologists who loot the sites and participate in illegal digs under the guise of vacationing hikers.

GYGAX, GARY (9975-) is a famous gnomish game designer. G Gary Gygax was responsible for the development of many popular games including Battle for Ilico, Dungeons and Dragons, and Orc Siege.

GYPSY ELF is a social division of the elvish race, confined primarily to the Northern Expanse in Ilico. The gypsy elvish culture is dictated by the climate and geological conditions the land provides. It is poor for farming and only adequate as far as raising livestock is concerned. Nonetheless gypsy elves pursue nomadic lives of raising cattle and goats for sale and consumption. They have no towns save two ports on the eastern ocean where commerce is effected. Gypsy elves are the tallest and most agile of all the social divisions of elves. They have darker skin (but not as dark as drow), brown to black hair, and, invariably, black eyes. More and more frequently gypsy elves are becoming malcontented with the lifestyle and moving to the industrial openings of Dun Cess or the marine jobs of Iceland. Racial tensions have made it hard for them to succeed in the staunchly conservative Pieschland mining communities and, until recently life in Dun Cess has been too rough for most. Gypsy elves have the highest suicide rate in the world; nearly one- tenth of them succeed in killing themselves before the age of twenty. Part of the reason for this--and for the disdain they receive from other races--is the complete lack of education (and linguistic nonconformity) gypsy elves are offered, or rather, not offered. There are no schools in the Northern Expanse and teachers are few and far between. Engineers and other technologically oriented people are completely absent and even shaman-type folk-wizards and rare. Gypsy elves also have the highest rate of alcoholism and drug dependency in the world (though the tribal orcs of Vyrica are close behind). Gypsy elves first settled in the Northern Expanse about one-thousand years ago when the foliage was denser and the animal selections infintely better. Frequent wars and overgrazing reduced the area to desert/grassland status and account for the groups's present poverty.