The PCs have enlisted the aid of a master seamstress to tailor Glantri garb for disguises. Part of the reason I like 4E is that you don't just look up the specific spell for what you want and bam, you're done. It's true that there are magics for disguising yourself and allies, but they aren't automatically accessible and they aren't perfect. When you can't just magic every problem away, I feel like it leads to more interesting interactions. But, others may disagree.
The Princess Ark is going to take the PCs close to Glantri, to the pioneer town of Rennydale in Darokin. From there they will travel with a trade caravan into Erewan and be on their own as they sneak into the waste to the west.
Besides being in the way geographically, Erewan is a good place to introduce the PCs to Glantri. The leaders of Erewan are pretty benign, independent from Glantri politics, and sympathetic to the world outside their borders. The trade from Darokin should be welcome, since Erewan is on hard times and their strongest allies in Canolbarth have been wiped out. I don't think Erewan would be too suspicious of a bunch of caravaneers. But they're not going to spend too much time in Erewan, just enough to establish a bit of Glantri.
Even before the steampunk, Glantri is often represented as misty. Kingdom of Magic says "Fog commonly cloaks the mountains and hills, obscuring entire principalities for days at a time". If you add to this the clouds of steampunk industry, much of Glantri is probably well smogged, especially around the edges of major settlements.
The Red River is a great feature. The books describe it as being red with mud, but I imagine it's also pretty polluted. Efforts in Erewan to grow forests on the Red River could be focused on cleansing the water. As the PCs get farther into Glantri, they'll see a stark contrast between Erewan's care for the environment and the other principalities.
Communication through the mists of Glantri is done through towers that relay patterns of light in a sort of Morse code. This idea comes partly from Terry Pratchett's book Going Postal, which just recently had a television movie on Sky One with really great visuals for the Clacks (as they're called).
Radio waves might not be beyond the level of technology in steampunk Glantri. But they're crude, filled with interference and strange noises caused by the Radiance, like ghosts on the line. If I decide to use radio devices, it could have a very Silent Hill feel, which I think is appropriate.
I also plan to use a lot of howling wolves and rats scurrying from every crevice as atmosphere. As soon as the PCs leave Erewan they will also start to suffer Radiance sickness. This sickness is discussed more in Shadow Elves than Glantri, but I think it should definitely be in Glantri as well. The natives of Glantri are immune, but visitors will begin to get sick. After an extended rest, everyone who isn't protected loses 1 healing surge and can't regain healing surges until they leave the Radiance. This effectively limits trips into Glantri to a week at best, and only a couple of days if there's intense combat. Currently the bard is the only one protected, via the soul crystal gifted by his shadow elf/drow girlfriend. Between the fog and inability to heal, my players might draw some comparisons between Glantri and Eberron's Mournlands, but why not?
In places the PCs will see the lights of Glantri skyships prowling the skies, scouring the ground with searchlights. I can see these ships being sent to search the Great Crater for survivors, and the PCs may have a couple of close brushes with them, before they get to witness the power of Innocenti di Malapietra's death ray when he neatly disintegrates one.
I couldn't find an example of a Glantri skyship in my Champions of Mystara box (I may have lost a card or two), but I think the best fit for steampunk Glantri would be a zeppelin. It's steam-powered, it's German, it's distinctive!
More to come in the weeks ahead on steampunk Glantri, and ideas are as always much appreciated!
