OK, most people agree that I'm a weirdo, but I didn't know I'm _that_ weird. Wyrm's Friend?!? I thought I actually made sense every once in a while. :-) just in case.
Stephen Martin:
>The whole bit about
>the Kralori Empire ruling the entire land, and having a continuous and
>contiguous history since the Golden Age is objectively untrue. In fact,
>what little I have gleaned from Greg's writings is that the whole myth of
>the Kralori Empire was in fact created _by_ the God Learners of the False
>Dragon's Ring.
The fact that this is still unpublished stuff makes it easier for me to decide to ignore it. While it's as workable as any hypothesis, it is just too boring. I want my Glorantha to have grandeur and sense of wonder and a mythic feel. It has more of those if Kralorela in fact does have an unbroken history since the golden age, if the dragon emperors have ruled for ages, if Kralorela is an island of changelessness (well, in the basics at least) and ancient customs, if there were gods walking among men, demigod rulers and awesome heroes.
"The God Learners made it all up" is no fun.
So, here is a basic outline of the history of Kralorela in _my_ Glorantha:
The land which is now Kralorela was once inhabited by several Hsunchen tribes. Then, still in the golden age it was invaded by sky-worshippers from Vithela. These were moreadvanced, militarily and magically, so they swiftly subdued the Hsunchen except for the strongest tribe, the dragon people. The dragon people were more advanced, even urbanized.
The result was a land where the sky people and the dragon people merged. The first emperors (Metsyla and Shavaya) were sky people. Then with Daruda came a dragon revival. The result was the dragon-influenced Kralorelan way.
Thalurzni, who ruled during the Darkness is called the Balancer of Elements, and he is said to have commanded dragons to erect the Shan Shan. I extend this to say that he made pacts with elemental dragons who protected Kralorela during the Darkness: earth dragons creating the Shan Shan, sky dragons protecting from the minions of Tyram which ravaged the East Isles, sea dragons protecting from the nasties in Uralog's wake.
So, when Yelm rose again, Kralorela was less damaged than other places and most importantly had kept its culture intact.
The God Learners could defeat Yanoor because the Kralorelan way had also become anacronistic. They simply had no way to deal with an _innovative_ outside threat.
In that way, I think Kralorela has changed under Godunya. He has made subtle but important changes which have made his land and people more flexible and better equipped to deal with the world of the third age (even if they'd prefer not to). His grand bridges are in fact part of this plan.
I do agree that there is plenty of local variation within the dragon empire though. Just read the delightfully weird place descriptions in the Genertela book. However, I see this as local divergence during the milennia rather than caused by the fact that Kralorela was fractured in many small (hsunchen) states up until quite recently.
>Most of this is Dara Happan propaganda and/or myth -- you can't accept
>the _stories_ in The Fortunate Succession as gospel truth, unless you are
>Dara Happan.
Of course you can (or perhaps rather as slightly edited truth) if you like me want to preserve sense of wonder, awe and grandeur. It's just whether you prefer a historic/ evolutionary view or a mythic/flamboyant (for lack of a better word) one.
/IOGTR member
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