Range, Part 1
Ah, an old face for this universe 🙂 Mirflin made an appearance in our first graphic novel, and has long been known to many of the people who gamed in this universe back when this setting was an RPG game. He has kicked the asses of many people over the years, and it is best not to cross him (as many gamers over the years would agree).
Mirflin is a Tomte, or a Nisse. I based his appearance on a variation of the Norwegian myth. When I first heard about them as a little kid, they were described to me by my Swedish relatives (my grandfather being a native of the city of Gothenburg) as being around 3-4 foot tall, dark and very furry with cats eyes, and four fingers on each hand. Of course, the appearance varies depending on what region the tale tellers come from. 😉
Much of this comes from the same archeological basis that the Alfar (Hakon) and the Tereg (Trolls like Urzog) come from. They come from ideas put out by author and Finnish Paleontologist Björn Kirsten in his book Dance of the Tiger. In it, it was postulated that the stories of trolls were spawned by prehistoric encounters between Homo Sapiens and Neanderthal man. I took that a step further and postulated that the Alfarrin and the Tomte are now extinct human offshoots (kind of like the Homo Floresiensis are now).
In the world of Requiem they still remain, people like Marcus Vale, Vance Greylock, and Becky…plus a few half breeds like Cassie Greylock and the eastern ship captain Mary Donovan and Mirflin, of course. And there are others as well still out there, though they do keep to themselves as general rule. They have their own societies, and own civilizations.
I have sheep bones near tools and fire but no human bones in my garden. Does that prove the sheep made tools and fire? Following logic of nature.com it does.
Right now there are still only 1 or 2 specimens with tiny fragments of others oversold as “8 specimens” without qualification in major newspapers, eg new york times, national geographic, wall street journal.
Have you heard of http://www.amazon.com/Big-Brain-Origins-Future-Intelligence/dp/1403979782/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1203978190&sr=1-1
They had an excerpt of it in Discover back in Dec2008 http://discovermagazine.com/2009/the-brain-2/28-what-happened-to-hominids-who-were-smarter-than-us/article_view?b_start:int=0&-C=