Post/Author/DateTime	Post
wriggleroot 10-06-04, 02:14 AM	i really like what eberron has done w/ the halflings of the talenta plains, and i especially like how they ride dinosaurs. however, i find it hard to believe that all of these dinosaurs have stayed on the plain. why isn't all of khorvaire filled w/ big Ds, or at least all of the wild territories like the eldeen reaches, q'barra, shadow marshes, etc...? any ideas? :confused:
stone_dog 10-06-04, 02:22 AM	Well, there may well be smaller dinos scattered about the continent, but keeping big ones in their place shouldn't be a problem. They have the Blad desert to contend with as well as lake Cyre and the Cyre river. They may not have any pressing need to migrate across natural barriers like that. Back in the day, the goblinoids of the Dhakhaani empire might have hunted the big ones almost to extinction throughout most of the continent. Certainly there are some left in Q'Barra though and I can imagine that Karrnath might have problems with stray herds of thunderherders or a Swordtooth Titan seeking out new hunting grounds. When it comes down to it though, dino populations depend entirely on the whims of the DM. There is enough room to have them in there if you want them, but plenty of reasons to handwave them away if you don't.
hiryuu 10-06-04, 04:05 AM	I dunno, maybe because the populations of animals elsewhere on the continent competes with them? Predator-prey relationships are nifty. You know in some places exotic wildlife takes over, but in others they don't because the environment's too different. Dinosaurs are very specialized animals (especially gettin' near the end of the Jurassic and Cretaceous), and that means that animals elsewhere may outcompete them. Birds are better on the ground than pterosaurs, big hunting cats and wolves already know their prey's tricks, and prey animals are excellent at making the most of their own land. Usually when exotic animals take over, they're small, rodent-like animals or such. I'd expect a compsognathus swarm has a chance, but I don't think they can beat out rats everywhere else for sheer breeding power.
CzarGarrett 10-06-04, 10:06 AM	It seems that the larger types aren't all to common on Khorvaire, especially compared to Argoenssen and Xen'drik. One has to think somewhat to real world. Something killed off the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. Ice ages killed off nearly all of the land-based ones who might have survived. In Eberron it didn't happen. So look to other real world stuff-->Humans hunted large animals (mammoths, camels, etc) in most areas to extinction. Why wouldn't Humans, Elves, Halflings, etc hunt and probably overhunt large dinosaurs? Plus, there were 2 massive purges of Khorvaire. The rise of the Hobgoblin Empire and the Daelkyr invasion. That's going to kill off a lot of excess stuff.
Just another user 10-06-04, 11:08 AM	The big ones are almost extint on Khorvaine, maybe save the occasional "loch ness" monster elasmosaur or the odd couple of lost valleys full of them. OTOH Xen'drik is full of the critters.