The Vadeli are an extremely ancient and peculiar race. All their customs and lore, and most of their history, is pre-Dawn. One ought to expect them to be bizarre in lots of unintuitive ways, but naturally this doesn't mean cultural non-sequiturs ought to teem amongst them -- it should make a coherent whole.
>And the Brown Vadeli are not allowed to captain ships? It certainly
>seems that there are Brown Vadeli only ships.
Not in my writings there ain't. If other folks wish to have the Brown Vadeli doing this, 'tis none of my business. I only wish to point out that the Brown Vadeli existed throughout the First and Second Age, lived exclusively on islands, and yet were never heard of a bit in all that time. My explanation is that the Red Vadeli are both sailors and warriors, and that their relationship to the Brown is symbiotic -- the Brown can exist on their own, but combined with the Red, Vadeli efficacy is enhanced astronomically.
Remember that a "boat" is NOT the same as a "ship".
>I'm not sure I agree with >Joerg thats its wildly implausible -
wasn't the five >elements view of the world >a Western concept
originally?
Yes, it was. Or else it was an inherent part of the early world -- the Theyalans know about it, too. And even the Kralori accept the elements as part of their belief system (though they only really have four -- Storm, to them, is not a "true" element). Some elemental concepts of Glorantha.
AN INTERCULTURAL ELEMENT ESSAY First: only the Westerners, so far as I know, think of the "Elements" in the Greek manner; as building blocks of the universe of which all things are made. The West accept Five Elements. Moon, to them, is a Condition Rune.
The Theyalans believe that the elements are more like essential principles -- that they represent spiritual ideals more than crude physical matter. The personality of their gods is more readily associated with their element than their spells or cult structure. Theyalans who dwell near the Lunar Empire grudgingly accept Moon as an element.
The Pelorians don't seem to think much about elements at all, but when they do they appear to think of them as being organized into a scale from best to worst, roughly descending in order from SKY > EARTH > WATER > STORM > DARKNESS, rather than rating them all as equal-but-separate. The Lunar element stands apart from this system and if it were not for the insistance of Lunar Dogma, would probably still be considered no more than a Form Rune.
The Kralori accept four elements: leaving out Storm and Moon. Their elements are mystical conceits, imagined as thought experiments to explain the world's origin.
The East Islanders believe in a large number of physical principles, classified by Genertelan observers as elements and sub-elements. The thought of grouping together the different concepts of Light, Sky, Heat, Fire, Dawn, etc. into a single category is alien to them, and they have a real trouble grokking Genertelan philosophy. They not only accept the Lunar element, but recognize three basic types of Moon: Blue, White, and Black, plus sub-types of these. The Red Moon is a mystery -- most explain it as the God of another land far away; and this idea is close enough to reality that it doesn't really matter.
Sandy P.
Sandy P.
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