To: RuneQuest-Digest@Glorantha.Holland.Sun.COM From: RuneQuest-Request@Glorantha.Holland.Sun.COM Subject: RuneQuest Digest Volume 9, no 2 Reply-To: RuneQuest@Glorantha.Holland.Sun.COM (RuneQuest Daily Digest) Precedence: junk Sender: Henk.Langeveld@Holland.Sun.COM Replies to the Digest are routed to the editor. If you want to continue the discussion, followup to the RuneQuest daily: RuneQuest@Glorantha.Holland.Sun.COM Contents: Arganth - Trickster stuff [ed] Nick Brooke - Yaks and Books and Things That Go Bump - Lunar Cults & Founders Sam Phillips - General Rant. I Love RuneQuest.. Lewis Jardine - God Learners, Mythology and Us! Editorial: It's been silent for a while on the Digest. This is a selection of Gloranthan stuff [again]. I could probably collate 200k (around 8 issues of digest) about a recent discussion of sorcery. Is anyone interested? Is any of the current subscribers interested in digesting/summarising the dailies by theme? Current themes on the daily are: Glorantha, Sorcery, God Learners. Tell me what you'd like to see. [ed] indicates that I changed the title -- Henk Langeveld, Maintainer/Editor of the RuneQuest Digest and RuneQuest Daily Submissions for the Daily to:for the Digest: Subscriptions and questions: Me: Henk.Langeveld@Holland.Sun.COM -------------------- From: dickmj@postman.essex.ac.uk Subject: Trickster stuff [ed] Message-ID: <9305101339.AA01063@serdlc5> Date: 10 May 93 13:39:34 GMT Seen a lot of Trickster stuff floating around recently, so I thought I'd chuck in this spell which occurred to me the other night while we were playing (I'd had something to drink so I've got an excuse). New Trickster (Eurmal) spirit magic spell Eggs, Egghead, The yolk's on you 3pt, non-variable, temporal, passive This recreates the egg from the back of the head routine. The trickster reaches round behind the 'victim's' head, casts the spell (the words are 'ta-da' - nothing to do with the bloke who saved Ernalda) and an egg appears in his hand which he then reveals to the victim (hopefully) to his amazement. The one necessity for this spell is that, if the victim asks to see the egg (e.g to test if it's real) then the Trickster must (preferably with a flourish) break it over the victim's head, or in his face. So, although this can be a useful spell for distracting guards ,etc, there is a flipside which can place the caster in even more trouble. If ever the Trickster fails to do this then he develops a rotten egg smell. Hate to think what Eurmal would require him to do to get rid of it. In the campaign I'm running in Sartar (what an original locale), the p.c's are currently attending the Orlanthi High Holy day in an attempt to become initiates (one p.c failed to join Humakt when he told the examiner that, if he gave his word not to harm someone who later turned out to be an ogre, he would kill him when he discovered the truth). As this occasion tends to turn into a bank holiday (or bank Holyday) for most people, the Tricksters have turned up. The egg joke worked wonderfully on one character who got one right in the face (makes me wish I'd live-roleplayed it). So far the best thing the Trickster has done (apart from trying to steal the religious paraphenalia from the local temple to all deities) is to convince a Storm Kahn and his 40 braves (who had ridden all the way from Prax following a dream sent by the bull himself telling them about a large chaos presence in the region) that the chaos was actually a large group of gorp cunningly disguised as cow pats in a nearby field, and that the only way to destroy the chaos menance was to ... eat it (well he is a Trickster, and he figured that it may well sweeten the Storm Bulls' breath). Great spell 'lie'. So, you can imagine what one of the p.c's who wanted to become a lay member of Urox had to do to prove his sincerity. He's still picking the pieces of straw out of his teeth! Anyway, better get on with my revision. -When a man lies he murders a part of the world -Arganth From: 100270.337@CompuServe.COM (Nick Brooke) Subject: Yaks and Books and Things That Go Bump Message-ID: <930513082318_100270.337_BHB73-1@CompuServe.COM> Date: 13 May 93 08:23:18 GMT ____________________ Dave Pearson / Yaks: No Yaks in Prax . You need to cross the Great Wastes of Genert to find the Yak-Men of the Shan Shan Mountains. They're a Hsunchen people. Now, will someone tell me where I can find a musk-ox in Glorantha? Just mundane, nothing mystic... I'd go looking for them up towards Tastolar myself, but have any been sighted in North Pent? ____________________ Mike Dawson / Books: You mention some "systems that existed before the Dewey Decimal." Well, I heard from a librarian there that the Bodleian Library at Oxford *still* sorts its books by size. The only sensible way to do it, when you have a copy of almost everything in the English Language. Even with computer assistance, conveyor belts and the like, it still took an unreasonable amount of time to call up anything. Oh, but the *joy* of being the first person ever to cut the pages of a book that reached the library seventy-odd years ago! Yeah, I guess the real answer to Paul's plea -- "I thought those notes meant something" -- is that they did: but only to the sage who wrote them! (That said, the Jonstown and Nochet systems are remarkably coherent -- if it wasn't for the lovely write-up of "what went wrong" on Tales 4 p.7f, you might almost assume they worked!). Expanding from double entry bookkeeping, I have two further points. One is that it's damned difficult to get the hang of DEB -- I speak from experience. Making this method a cult secret for a magic-poor cult makes all kinds of sense. Anyone else trying to learn it will necessarily see and accept the virtues of Lunar Balance: does this give them a Nysalor Illumination % willy-nilly? The other is that, if Etyries has DEB, might not Irrippi Ontor have a coherent system for Library classification / referencing? Maybe a Gloranthan version of Dewey? Don't waste my time saying it's anachronistic: with my understanding of the Lunar Way and the things that become possible with state-run cults and loads of mobility through the Empire, this seems plausible to me. Again, Lankhor Mhy sages aren't going to chuck aside their tradition of independent research to jump on a Lunar bandwagon. Both DEB and DD would be innovative secrets that, in Mike's phrase, "don't run the whole world -- YET!" Like the Lunar Empire itself, really. _________________ Greg Fried / Lodril: I can't resist giving you the full Freudian works, so: The fiery male Sky Spear is flying above the fertile female Earth, when he looks down and sees a squidgy, hairy thing known as the Mother Mouth. So he plunges to earth to battle with her, but finds he is only able to defeat her when thrusts deep into a tunnel and explodes, mingling his essence with hers. After that he feels very lazy, and lies around in the Earth Womb for a while -- this is when his children Caladra and Aurelion are born. But whenever he gets excited, a huge bulge appears in the earth, then explodes, foaming with hot lava. And they call me sick! Yup, Stafford has confessed to this. If you get the White Wolf cult writeup, pay special attention to the Pelorian "Cult of the Invisible Underpants" (as we call it round here), a sad bunch of Iron John types, and the devastatingly macho spell of Lava Spear, which allows you to brandish your mighty weapon against your foes and rain hot gobbets of molten stuff upon them. Understandably, it's usually banned by the nobles -- and a good thing too! ____________________ Paul Reilly / Magic: I am loving your "Laws of Magic" examples. As I understand it, you are proposing that this kind of thing happens every time a spell is cast, not that there should be an extra set of game rules giving bonuses or penalties for clever ideas. Your Sorcerer-Artist was a particularly interesting concept. __________________________ Graeme Lindsell / Loskalm: Please recognise that I am playing Devil's Advocate here to some extent (well, someone has to, now the Pope's abolished it: seems he might have had interesting things to say about that fascist who ran Opus Dei and is now in line for beatification). That said, I *loved* your comments on Tuesday's Daily. Made me want to start singing patriotic songs: "Loskalm, Loskalm Uber Alles!" The point about the Hrestoli system requiring militarism for social advance had previously passed me by; I shall certainly be using it in invective, even if I'm not quite sure that it's the whole story (David Hall says he'd be happy as a peasant and not want to rise above his roots). Thanks too for your positive feedback on Humakt-as-Westerner. I try only to say things that are partially plausible. It's good to know other people think about them, and are sometimes convinced. Balm to the soul of the struggling author / Gloranthologist. _________________________ Bill Robertson / Argrath: What an excellent point -- the re-enactment of the Ritual of the Net leading to even less involvement by gods in the world of men (or vice versa). This looks like a True, Big Secret you've come up with here. A question it raises is, did this happen last time? Were the gods effectively "trapped in Arachne Solara's Web" at the end of Godtime? Seems plausible to me... And, once again, did Argrath know it would happen that way? He's probably met Cragspider at some point in his career, so he could well be better informed about these matters than the rest of us. ______________________ Adam from Aberystwyth: This is neat. You suggest say that pre-God Learner sorcery was nothing like the RQ3 stuff; that the GL's come up with all this manipulation business, which then creeps back into the Malkioni Churches as an alternative to the mainstream tradition. Note, though, that belief in the Invisible God predates the God Learners. While this is nifty, I'm not altogether sure about it. I'd thought that the only "pure sorcery" in Glorantha was that of the God Learners, that the divinely-inspired Wizardry of Seshnela and Loskalm was very different to the "Scientific Sorcery" of RQ3. Driven by piety, not knowledge. The original Cult of Arkat (state cult of the Stygian Empire) was shattered and wiped out by the God Learners. Some members of that cult apparently still survive on the Hero Plane as "shadow warriors" -- but I've not met one myself. There are any number of Arkati eschatological traditions in Safelster; the Troll sorcerers worship Black Arkat (in TG); etc. Part of the problem in identifying "THE Cult" derives from the "Five Arkats" thing: which of them was the Real Arkat? (i.e: the write-up at the back of CoT doesn't look much like a Troll's version). So: you asked "the Cult of Arkat: is there one?" My answer would be, "No. Far more than that." ==== NICK ==== "Violent disagreement is the last refuge of the incompetent." From: 100270.337@CompuServe.COM (Nick Brooke) Subject: Lunar Cults & Founders Message-ID: <930519184343_100270.337_BHB53-1@CompuServe.COM> Date: 19 May 93 18:43:44 GMT Jeff Okamoto writes: > Given the way the Lunar "cults" are set up, I really wonder if > the Seven Mothers would have modeled their spirits of retribution > after the "adopted" cult or not. > ... > It would be interesting to know what choices the Seven Mothers > had to make when they were deified -- did Duke Tarnils choose > his cult to emulate Humakt or did he have to do so? Seems an odd approach to solving the "Lunar problem". We know that, prior to their becoming gods, the Seven Mothers were just ordinary mortal cultists. We know a fair amount about two of their cults, a little about two more, and almost nothing about the other three. We know that Yanafal Tarnils was a Humakti. His cult has been briefly described as "Lunar Humakt", and every version I've seen (including a Chaosium draft) is based heavily on the familiar Humakt cult. We know that Irrippi Ontor was a Lankhor Mhy cultist. His cult is the Lunars' equivalent to Lhankor Mhy, and even shares Temple space with them at times. Again, we have a fairly exact correspondence. Queen Deezola was a "priestess of Arachne Solara" (whatever *that* means); her cult has Healing and Earth magics (plus poetry, of course). Jakaleel the Witch was "a priestess of Zorak Zoran from the Mountains of Jord"; her cult has terrifying Darkness magics. The other three (Teelo Norri, Danfive Xaron, and "She Who Waits") are peculiarly Lunar, and have remarkably inadequate, impotent, or inaccessible cults. I'm not going to use them in my theory until we know more. If you want an eristic argument, refute me with them... But it is noteworthy that, whenever we know the cultic origin of one of the Seven Mothers, the cult of that Mother is a fairly solid Lunar version of the original cult. I'd guess the Seven Mothers had already "made their choices" (in Jeff's phrase) *before* participating in the ritual that created the Red Goddess. They stole, used and abused the powers of their original cults. (Insert here any bits of the debate on spirits of retribution that tickle your fancy). In short, Yanafal's cult teaches Humakti secrets because those are the secrets that Yanafal knew. It would have been surprising if a deified Carmanian Humakti nobleman had instead taught people how to make the corn grow high, or walk on water, or conduct orchestral manoeuvres in the dark (etc...). Och, this looks like the right place for a *really nasty* theory that was doing the rounds here a year or two ago: The Seven Mothers are often compared to the Lightbringers: they undertake a quest to rescue a dead deity languishing in Hell, who when returned to the world becomes a heavenly body that visibly passes between Life and Death on a regular cycle. Famously, each of the Lightbringers failed to use their most important powers or virtues at some point on the Quest (cf. KoS p.86: "each of them had a moment of failure, when their best and proudest skills were seen to be naught"). What if the Seven Mothers went into the ritual that brought back the Red Goddess intending *cynically* to fail in the exercise of their cultic virtues? They deliberately betrayed their ideals in order to pass through the various challenges of the test. That would reinforce my suggestion that the spirits of retribution of their "original" cults have the knives out for them... (Not yet sure this is how it worked, but how's it grab you as a suggestion?) Pretty boring RQ Daily yesterday. David Cheng's suggestions look good: if you're going to keep Strike Ranks at all, that's the way to treat them. Though I'd prefer to see more magic cast in combat rather than less (as David wants): I think it's more reflexive / intuitive than you give credit for (except Sorcery, of course). Recommendation: a great book for all kinds of spirit magic in everyday use: "On Stranger Tides" by Tim Powers. Paul Reilly's contributions were as thoughtful as ever. Yeah, any *single* set of Elemental Oppositions will quickly run into trouble. The Pentagram had two sets, because the lines of Evolution showed you more tensions; as I said, though, I am not sold on it as a theory or a model of Gloranthan magical realities. Loved the Red Tapeworm!! ==== Nick ==== Dictum est antiqua sandalio mulier habitavit, Quae multos pueros habuit tum ut potuit nullum Quod faciundum erat cognoscere. Sic Domina Anser. From: S.Phillips@Glasgow.UK.AC Subject: General Rant. I Love RuneQuest.. Message-ID: <_2_Jun_93_17:26:08_A10042@UK.AC.GLA.VME> Date: 2 Jun 93 16:26:08 GMT Reply-To: J.Ditton@vme.glasgow.ac.uk Hello from Sam Phillips. Campaign Settings, RuneQuest, Glorantha, Gygax! & Love. ------------------------------------------------------- Our campaign has predominantly been based around Dragon Pass, Sartar, Prax & Pavis. We spent a short while in Balazaar but found it a bit on the grim side and so left. We started in Apple Lane over ten years ago. I played a Issaries Centaur Trader (We didn't realise how uncivilised they were then!). This caused a few problems when it came to getting lodgings etc. I spent a lot of nights in barns, days standing outside pubs, hours doing deals through shop windows, minutes before I was asked to leave as I was putting the locals off their beer. Still it was fun and it had its up-points (kicking the Johnstown Barracks doors in for one!). These were the salad days of Runequest II when all we had was a scrappy copy of the rule book, a treasured copy of Cults of Prax, the old pamphlet that was Apple Lane and a lot of photocopies of Harry's old GM's notes from when he played in Dublin the year before (Including his version of Johnstown -- with Y-shaped Lankhor Mhy temple). Trollpack hit us like a thermo-nuclear blast. And suddenly a new realism took us. We ditched a couple of power-players who we no longer saw eye-to-eye with and set off into Dagori-Inkarth. Many splendid adventures followed. With the arrival of borderlands we set off across Prax. To seek fame & fortune.. Pavis Pack, Big Rubble, all served to keep us in this neck of the woods. Then back to a grimmer more realistic Sartar where we became freedom fighters complete with a secret hide out. Then, our bought adventures all played out (or those that fitted with the campaign) and our GM a little tired of making his own storylines up (you can only play the Robin Hood scenario so many times before becoming thoroughly sick with it), we were badgered into heading to Balazaar. It meant new characters for most of us but it seemed about time we retired some of our big guns. Balazaar was grim though. It seemed to lack the colour and excitement of Prax and by now was a little old fashioned compared to what we had taken on board since. Thus the big guns came out of retirement, went into Snakepipe Hollow (finally) where they met their allied spirits and finally became RuneLords/Priests. Then back to Pavis where trouble was brewing. Then the Cradle adventure. Which we thought was *splendid*. The atmosphere especially captured some of the feelings that I hadn't felt since I first started playing or at least since playing Borderlands. Real tears of emotion were spilled by players over this - not seen since Dane was killed (Borderlands) - not counting player character deaths (few, actually, in 10yrs play). Then retirement again.. The big RQ void had returned. No new adventures, no new packs. Nuffin.. So we gave up Runequesting. And it was shelved for years while we took on new and wonderful games that had arisen only because of but had in many respects surpassed our humble RQ. Cthulu, Vikings, Twilight2000, StarWars, CyberPunk etc. We played them all - trying to regain some of the magic we had lost. We didn't. In fact none of them had the sheer charm and satisfaction of RQ. TW2000 was as grim as hell. 4 or 5 times as grim as Balazaar. Vikings was limited by the material. Call of Cthulu is held back by the subject matter too - you can't really get to know and love your characters as they will be bumped off soon, and there is also the big - 'what the hell are we doing' aspect of it - you pretend you don't know what you are investigating - but at the same time you can't walk away in disbelief (like anyone normal would) because it would ruin the game. So you walk in like headless chickens - see something horrid, then go mad and die. RQ has purpose. In RQ you can explore yourself as well as Glorantha. RQ cults were the best thing that ever happened to RPG's. They stopped RPG's from being Wargames and made them into ROLE playing games. No longer were you just striving for treasure. You had purpose. Then when it was time to move on to another character you could experiment with another way of life. In our first ever RQ game we had an Issaries and a Chalana Arroy as two of the key members of the party. We had just given up D&D and were craving for something like RQ. Something with FEELING. But now we are back on the RQ wagon. Things seem to have taken off again. RQ had returned to Glorantha and the feeling seems to be back in it. We still haven't had either Cults of Prax re-released or something of its quality and depth of feeling released but I feel it won't be long. Hopefully a Prax pack will do this. As far as I am concerned RQ isn't a game about stats and spells, strike ranks and weapon lengths. It is a ROLE playing game where what matters is the depth of background and role-play opportunities offered. Gods of Glorantha was great for GM's as was the other new RQ packs. The content was wide ranging, vague and contained a hell of a lot of info. But for players it was of little use. The cults in COP contains enough different Cults to suit players of all types from the power-monger to the peaceful-underdog. But what was needed was the cultures. They were hinted at but never filled out. TrollPack did this - For trolls. Another GM pack unfortunately being none of us were playing a troll at this time. But this is what we need. A troll pack for players about Gloranthan people. With descriptions of the towns, the tribes, the cultures. What you would know if you were a praxian or a sartarian. COP told us what you would believe but very little about who you are. Who ARE the Lunar?. What do they want?. Do I know about Giants, or elves?. How do I fear Chaos?. How do I respect a Storm Buller?. Where would I never go?. Who are the ordinary people who stay at home?. How unusual am I that I have left home and gone wandering?.. Do I know all the other cults listed in GoG? Do I know all about magic? The spells and their names? What do I wear?... etc. I would be nice, wouldn't it. But I am rambling. This started off as a little description of our campaign and has ended up as an outpouring of pent up emotion. -- You see I love RuneQuest. I loved it from the beginning. We had a trial separation but we soon realised that we needed each other. Yes, I know I slept around a bit - but I was looking for gratification - not love. I had love already. But now there is talk of a RQIV. And I have seen it. And yes It's quite good. In places it is very good. In places it isn't. But then so were RQII & RQIII. I appreciate the time that people have put into it. I rejoice that people still have such passion about RQ to be undertaking such a project. But do we need RQIV. Is it really desirable. Should we be writing new rules?. EXTRA RULES?. We have loads of rules already. Rules for nearly everything. We have shelves of rules we have never used. But we only have one battered old copy of Cults of prax. Please! - stop rewriting the Rules. I know they are not perfect. They never were. But in this search for better rules the beauty of RuneQuest has been forgotten. We need to sell RQ as a ROLE playing game. Something for the WarHammer generation to aspire to when they grow up and realise that White Dwarf was once a magazine in its own right and that Chaos parties with goatee heads weren't invented by Games Workshop. That Gygax! is a swear word in another language and ... You get my point. RQ is, I'm sure, in good hands - the Garhound contest is probably the BEST beginners' scenario I have ever seen. We introduced two new players with it. They learned the whole essence of RQ in a few game sessions. Brilliant. So if the new stuff continues in this vain we have no worries. Keep lovin' RuneQuest.. Sam Phillips. Not Scotland But Sartar. x From: JARDINE@RMCS.CRANFIELD.AC.UK Subject: God Learners, Mythology and Us! Message-ID: <9306151318.AA27765@Sun.COM> Date: 15 Jun 93 13:15:00 GMT Reference: X-RQ-ID: 1032 Who cares whether all the God Learner's disciples were wiped out? Because, we all know that some of them are alive now and using this net! Seriously do you realize that all of us interacting on this net is effectively a HeroQuest which is affecting the mythology of Glorantha by our collective decisions about the nature of things (especially with regards to sorcery and Malkioni society). MORAL:- If you desire a particular outcome it is imperative that you fight for it here on the Hero Plane, or you will lose it forever when AH or GS prints what we have decided. Of course you might be lucky and mythology might resent these God Learners interferring and reject them all. Selwi Jerandi -------------------- To be continued...