>From: Mikko Rintasaari <rintasaa_at_mail.student.oulu.fi>
>Greg's excellent Glorantha material tends to focus on the big stuff, myths
>and historical events. This is all fine and good, but somebody else need's
>to fill in the blanks.
>
>One of the blanks is race.
>
>Ok, it's not quite blank. We have a rather Aryan bunch in the Heortlings
>and the other "barbarian belt" orlanthi. Blondes and redheads abound, eyes
>of blue, green and gray. Easy image to grasp. Vikings, kelts and germanic
>tribes.
>
>But I for one don't like to see the rest of Genertela cast from the same
>mould. It's far more interesting, at least to me, to look for variance.
>West Europe is such a clishé in fantasy. Also there's a desperate need for
>some cultural basis to use on names. Made up "fantasy names" can get
>rather painful after a while.
Variations in humans (what in the RW we call race) exist in Glorantha, it's just they aren't regarded as significant when humans are only one of several different intelligent creatures. It certainly comes way down the list of importance after a person's social connections and religious views.
As an indication - Pamaltela is mainly negro, Kralorela chinese, Verenela indian, Pent asiatic nomad, Prax american indian. That leaves central and western genertela as european/middle eastern. While as you say Dara Happa is roughly greek and Heortlings roughly nordic/celt you also have Carmenia as roughly arabian and other Lunar provinces with no earthly counterpart. All this is covered, briefly, in "Glorantha, Introduction to the Hero Wars".
>The West of Glorantha is interesting. One is tempted to use the classic
>medieval setting as seen in Pendragon and Ars Magica, to name just a few.
Just about everything I've seen has treated the West as roughly Christian medieval europe but a lot of it is fan produced so how definitive it is I'm not sure. When Sorcerer Knights is published that should be a lot clearer.
-- Donald Oddy http://www.grove.demon.co.uk/ --__--__--
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