Re: New Races of SJ, esp Giff

In a message dated 2000-10-01 4:31:19 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
scott_mccarroll@?????.com writes:

> My only problem with that is that without a native
>  means of powering a helm it is difficult to explain
>  what a race is doing in Arcane Space.  In my mind Giff
>  should have at least one reliable method of getting
>  into space on their own.

I can think of several possible solutions:

1) Some other spacefaring race found them, decided that they would
make great mercenaries, and then took them into space.  The rest is
history.

2) They got into space on their own via their own native Clerics.  However,
because these Clerics never succeeded in establishing churches in other
spheres, only their home sphere still produces Clerics.  Those who are
well removed from the Giff home sphere (including the mercenary Giff who
are usually encountered in a Spelljammer campaign) have no Clerics
among them.

3) The scariest possibility is that they got into space on their own via the
inspiration of native Bards.  The main problem they encountered when
dealing with other races is that Giff singing will drive those non-Giff who
do not flee in panic at the sound of it into a murderous rage -- it sounds
to non-Giff ears even worse than Vogon poetry.  Thus, the ancestors of
most Giff encountered nowadays were stranded well away from Giff
space when their Bards were murdered by rampaging mobs of non-Giff
with normal hearing.

Whatever the explanation, it is probably a good idea for the most
commonly encountered Giff mercenaries to be well removed from
their home sphere, as there don't seem to be a lot of Giff ships
roaming around in the best mapped parts of that universe.