The core of GH canon is found in a a few pages at the start of the Folio boooklet: the timeline, the migration maps, the description of the history of the world including the Invoked Devastation and the Rain of Colourless Fire, the Sueloise and Oeridian migrations, etc.
The names of rulers weren't provided until the boxed set split the original booklet into two books and added those details (Glossography, p 17).
The names of streets in the City of GH weren't provided until the CoGH boxed set, which some people regard as silly and non-canonical in any event.
This is why I asked, upthread, what view you would take of someone who started with Grey Box FR, added details to the blank spots, and then stuck to those details either in ignorance or in disregard of subsequent publications. You said that would still count as a FR game.
Well, the vast bulk of details that you describe as "canon" were not part of the GH folio. Or even the boxed set. The Suel wizard Slerotin
may have created a tunnel through the Crystalmist mountains ("Although apocryphal, . . ." Glossography p 26; "ancient Suloise folklore", Glossography p 27). What happened to his body after he died? Where did he die? As far as the boxed set is concerned, who knows? So when I place Slerotin as a mummy in the catacombs of Hardby, reinterred from a pyramid in the Bright Desert, how is that a disreard of canon?
Here is the total lore on Hardby in the boxed set:
[T]he heir [of the Landgraf of the Selintan] was wed to the daughter of the Gynarch (Despotrix) of Hardby, a sorceress of no small repute. Their descendants ruled a growing domain . . . In 498 it [Greyhawk] was declared a free and independent city, ruling a territory from Hardby . . . to the Nyr Dyv . . . These holdings have been lost over the intervening decades . . . The Despotrix of Hardby now pays tribute to Greyhawk to avoid being absorbed into the growing city state once again . . . Portions of the [Wild Coast] have been under the control of . . . the Gynarch of Hardby . . . at various times. (pp 23, 25, 41 of the Boxed Set Guide to the WoG).
So when I give Hardby catacombs, how is that a disregard of canon? When I decide, as described above, that Slerotin's mummy has been interred there, how is that a disregard of canon? And if in another campaign I decide that Hardby has no catacombs, how is
that a disregard of canon either? Why do I have to fill in the blanks the same way every campaign?
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WotC thinks you can have Purple Dragon Knights in Krynn. You just have to relabel them Knights of Solamnia! So on this occasion I'll trust WotC over you.
The Knights of Holy Shielding are a chivalric and (obviously, given their name) religious order of knights. The folio doesn't tell us which god they serve (later books specify it as Heironeous; before I bought those books, as best I recall I had already specified it as St Cuthbert). What better way to give the Knights some mechanical heft, plus flesh out their rules and so forth, than to borrow the Oath and the Measure from Dragonlance Adventures?
What canon is that changing? How is fleshing out the details of a chivalric order by borrowing from one of the most mechanically and fictionally detailed mechanical orders in AD&D
altering, as opposed to fleshing out?
As far as the moons are concerned, everyone knows that they are called Celene (the handmaiden) and Luna. The presence of a third, invisible black moon doesn't contradict anything. The presence of wizards whose power is tied to the phases of the moon doesn't contradict anything. The folio glossography actually has a rather lengthy discussion (relative to its overall size) of astronomical phenomena; and there are at least two GH deities of stellar/astronomical phenomena (Celestian and Pholtus). So how do you possibly take it that it is stated, or implied, that Oerth contains no orders of moon-dependant mages?
Canon establishes two known moons. Two visible moons. Nothing says there can't be a third one, small and orbiting rapidly like a modern-day satellite about the earth.
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WoHS in my GH campaign aren't tied to Krynn moons. They're tied to GH moons. And in my GH game, also fairly obviously, magic
can come from moons. Why shouldn't it? Nothing says it can't, and the discussion of astronomy in the Glossography suggests that it can!
I'm quoting from p 4 of the larger book from the boxed set, because it is readier to hand than the folio booklet, but the text is identical:
The heavens are far more important and intersting [than lands beyond Oerik]. We must study the stars . . . When both Mistress [Luna] and Handmaiden [Celene] are full, things of great portent are likely to ocur . . .
To me, that strongly implies that the moons
do exert influence over events. By deciding, for one of my GH games, that that influence is channelled by an ancient Sueloise order of wizards who survive and flourish in the Great Kingdom (which has a high degree of Suel influence - see p 14 of the same book), I am adding but not contradicting anything. (Neither text nor theme - how are moon-channelling wizards of an ancient tradition
possibly at odds with GH's S&S theme?)
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I have no idea why you think pillars - which are nowhere mentioned in the core GH books - are more canonical than moons, which are called out as rather special and having an important astrological influence. But in my case I went for moons. Including adding one. I think a black, invisible moon is more interesting than pillars, myself.
