Ghyll:Valley mice

Dibbeth upon this --Brother Arfrus 15:03, 18 October 2005 (EDT)

since I can't take the existing V phantom, I have to create one of my own.

Valley Mice

Sometimes also called valley mites, these nasty vermin are found everywhere throughout the valleys of the north.

It was once suggested that valleys were responsible for the mice, rather than that the mice were responsible for the valleys.

However, it is abundantly clear that these beasts dig into the ground and create holes all over the place. Then some poor horse or pachyderm stomps on it breaks a leg. And the ground there is crushed down another few inanits. Over time, this is how the valleys have come to be so deep and so numerous.

Valley mice also keep trees from growing by killing them at the roots. This is why lowland areas are generally devoid of trees. Valley mice are poor swimmers, and therefore swamplands and marshes are relatively free of their predations.

The intersection of the Evesque Valley and the Andelphracian River Valley is the lowest place in all of Ghyll. This area, which includes the Elminster Mire

While the two valleys do not explicitly cross each other, extending them geographically, they form a nexus point (which is not a turning point to other orthogonalities) which

It has been postulated that valley mice consume the earth they tunnel through and then somehow expel it into another orthogonality. No one has come up with a better explanation of why they produce no splak or other waste products. Furthermore, because of the unusual manner in which valley mice propogate, it is thought that they may have some internal mechanism that allows them to cross orthogonalities.

Valley Mice Propogation

Valley mice are only found in colonies. Singles or pairs of valley mice will decorporate.

Valley mice colonies were studied by Kmuppens' colleague Charles Clarke Grimdale (the grandfather of Johnny Lightning's robbery accomplice, Russell Grimdale).

As Grimdale found, valley mice undergo reorganization at local solar noon*. Three or four valley mice in a 9.888 nanit radius will be unaffected. But a valley mouse that is not within the radius of two or three other valley mice will decorporate. And a valley mouse that is within the radius of four or more others will also decorporate. Whether decorporation is the equivalent of death for valley mice, or whether they move to a different orthogonality, is unknown. Grimdale believed that there was a special property of the valley mice that would repel other mice if there were too many nearby. He also believed that this property caused small numbers of valley mice to be unable to retain their hold on this orthogonality which led to their noontime disappearance.

(*Of course, this allows very accurate clocks to be kept, even in caves or other locations that are inaccessible to daylight. When the valley mouse disappears, you know it's exactly solar noon. Horlog's mechanism is one of the simplest devices to take advantage of this property to start a clock when the lever becomes unbalanced by the valley mouse's disappearance.)

(9.888 nanits = 0.618 unanit)

Citations: Evesque Valley, Pachyderm, Charles Clarke Grimdale