(Message rqd:10) Return-Path:Received: from Holland.Sun.COM (sunnl) by homeland.Holland.Sun.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1) id AA00569; Sat, 10 Jul 93 17:16:19 +0200 Received: from glorantha.Holland.Sun.COM by Holland.Sun.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1e) id AA10651; Sat, 10 Jul 93 17:16:01 +0200 Received: by glorantha.Holland.Sun.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1) id AA22924; Sat, 10 Jul 93 17:15:22 +0200 Date: Sat, 10 Jul 93 17:15:22 +0200 Message-Id: <9307101515.AA22924@glorantha.Holland.Sun.COM> From: RuneQuest-Request@Glorantha.Holland.Sun.COM (RQ Digest Maintainer) To: RuneQuest@Glorantha.Holland.Sun.COM (Daily automated RQ-Digest) Reply-To: RuneQuest@Glorantha.Holland.Sun.COM (RuneQuest Daily) Subject: RuneQuest Daily, Sat, 10 Jul 1993, part 2 Precedence: junk Status: O The RuneQuest Daily and RuneQuest Digest deal with the subjects of Avalon Hill's RPG and Greg Stafford's world of Glorantha. Send submissions and followup to "RuneQuest@Glorantha.Holland.Sun.COM", they will automatically be included in a next issue. Try to change the Subject: line from the default Re: RuneQuest Daily... on replying. Selected articles may also appear in a regular Digest. If you want to submit articles to the Digest only, contact the editor at RuneQuest-Digest-Editor@Glorantha.Holland.Sun.COM. Send enquiries and Subscription Requests to the editor: RuneQuest-Request@Glorantha.Holland.Sun.COM (Henk Langeveld) --------------------- From: joe@sartar.toppoint.de (Joerg Baumgartner) Subject: Re: RuneQuest Daily, Thu, 08 Jul 1993, part 1 Message-ID: Date: 9 Jul 93 22:40:51 GMT X-RQ-ID: 1252 Some feedback to my sacerdotal kings to be answered... ____________________________ Paul Reilly in X-RQ-ID: 1236 >>> I agree, though, that a lot of the cults have a strong element of ancestor worship. Yelm is an even more obvious example, his priesthood is restricted by bloodline to the old Yelm noble families, which are supposedly descended from Yelm! Obviously ancestor worship gone way overboard. <<< My impression, too. I alway felt that Yelm weakens himself by this practice, shooing away more creative and powerful minds to his associates. (BTW, I hold with the Fritz Leiber (and newly Terry Pratchett in "Small Gods") theory that a deity's power is depending on intensity and quantity of worship it receives, and apply it to Gloranthan deities, too. Opinions?) >>> We use some stuff adapted from Vikings as well. However, for Ygg's Islanders we use it pretty straight. <<< Also the Spirit Communication bit to learn spirit magic for Sacred Time? One problem I have with the equation Yggs Isles=Vikings is that all the neat cultural stuff for Vikings at home (like taxing the Reindeer-Hsunchen aka Lapps, trading, fishing) is hard to put in. The Winterwood is too overwhelming in the coastal area to allow much cultural interplay with less civilized peoples, which made Viking culture and lifestyle so rich. Are Ygg's Islands at least good fishing and whaling grounds? Would there be some trade with dried fish with some trade agency (e.g. the Vadeli) taking the place of the Hanse merchants? And how did the Islanders survive the closing, if they depended on seagoing fishing and whaling? I'm afraid that the parallel doesn't work out very neat in this special case. At least the end of the closing provides some reason for why an impoverished (because cut-off from trade) people takes to piracy and raiding. The Vikings were successful traders at the same time, providing all of Europe with furs and dried fish. How about Ygg's people? >>> >Arim the Pauper wooed >Sorana Tor, the Earth Priestess of Wintertop Sources? Is this all in KoS? <<< Yep. Page 117. ___________ Nick Brooke >>> Joerg said: Lots of really useful, true and insightful things about Orlanthi Kingship. Thanks a lot for tying this all together. I loved reading that piece of your mind, and am certain that you are mostly correct in what you surmise. Except for the rude bit about Temertain, of course, and some of the detail in what follows: <<< We beg thy forgiveness, Prince Temertain, but as a member of a truth rune cult thou ought to accept the fact that thy ties to Orlanth Rex, the cult of princes, leaveth something to want. While our humble scholar won't doubt the purity of thy bloodline, and is in fact impressed by thy achievements of keeping peace with the Lunars, thy scholarly interest hath done little with regard to thy sacerdotal offices as ruling heir of Sartar. >>> > Earth cults' sacrificial kingship: this is still practised in the > Earth-dominated regions of Esrolia, Exile Tarsh (at Wintertop) and > Grazeland (the latter apparantely including Imther and Holay, if > we can trust Greg Stafford's scholarly conclusion that Inkarne was > Feathered Horse Queen and queen of the latter countries). The Pharaoh abolished the old Year Sons' sacrificial kingship, taking the burden onto himself, when he founded the Holy Country. But the idea is still current, and may well come back now he's gone. (Unless they can find another male ruler who can die and return as the same person -- anyone else want to join the Red Earth faction?). <<< Well, you know how hard it is to abolish hundreds of years of religious practise. While officially I have little doubt that the Pharaoh officiates in all the major rites, there will be parallel rites in the smaller Queendoms. Since the Pharaoh is but one person, and there are lots of independent Queendoms, I suppose there will be at least some first blood versions of the rites in the less central Queendoms, and now and then first blood will be simultaneously last blood. Who can tell whether this was an accident? I remember some fiction about Boudicca where the rite of marriage (between the virgin harvest bride and the horned man) included a hunt of last years horned man who was brought down and had to receive a bleeding wound. In this book now and again the queens' daughters (future queens) took the part of the bride, and their bridegrooms were hunted to death, not fake death. I don't know how true in historical context this was, but at leasst it offers plastic reading for a rite like this. By the way, I think the Pharaoh's role in this originated with you, didn't it? I'm not so certain that he really dies in the rite, however nice the story about him and Jar-Eel is. While Belintar is known to have been killed several times during his fight with the Only Old One, I got the impressions that the tournaments of luck and death are held only all dozen or two dozens of years, not annually (as I'd imply if the Pharaoh were ritually slaughtered in the annual ceremony). Some clarification? >>> Old Tarsh is a *fascinating* case, and I occasionally distract myself by wondering about their religion. Has anyone worked on their "sacrificial Orlanth" cult? Presumably Ernalda / Maran Gor talks Orlanth into going on the LBQ, in their version of the myth... <<< There is the bit in Tales 6, which was partly rejected by Greg Stafford in a later letter. Still, there are some useful concepts in there. >>> You have misinterpreted Inkarne / FHQ's domains, conflating her post-Argrath expanded role as Queen of Dragon Pass with her pre-Argrath position as "dormant / potential sovereignty". The Grazelands don't stretch to Holay, and Argrath's child-bride from Holay was a different person from Inkarne. <<< You mean the collecting scholar (signing GS) has? I refer to the paragraph "The Grand Wedding" in the conclusion chapter, page 266. it ends one page later with "Thus we can conclude that Inkarne Long lived, Queen of Holay, Feathered Horse Queen, Sorana Tor, was the wife of Argrath." Everything Greg Stafford says is wrong? ;-) >>> > Synopsis: There is no mundane kingship in Orlanthi culture There should be no "mundane kingship" in *any* culture in Glorantha. In a magical world, Authority and Power are naturally interlinked. That's why there aren't any truly "mundane kingships" on Earth, either. "There's a divinity doth hedge a King", and all that jazz. <<< Out of curiosity: how do upstart selfmade kings like Richard the Tigerhearted or Harrek (in Pamaltela) fit in? As we've discussed in private, Richard the Tigerhearted, self-styled king of Malkonwal aka Hendrikiland, wouldn't care a damn for Orlanth/Ernalda fertility rites. What is his role? Even worse: could you imagine Harrek the Berserk carrying out fertility rites (other then Vashanka's Ten-Slaying in Thieves World)? ___________________________ Bob Luckin in X-RQ-ID: 1243 >>> The Orlanthi kingship idea is enticing. The question is, to what degree is it codified into the culture (via Orlanth Rex), and to what extent does it just work out that way because it feels instinctively right to them ? <<< I'd say it feels instinctively right because it has been codified into the culture before time, when Vingkot made the first Orlanthi kingdom. Unrelated to this: ____________________________ Loren Rosen in X-RQ-ID: 1241 >>> My two cents on the salt mines: forget geology, a mythological explanation for where and why the salt is there would be much more interesting. Besides, Glorantha wasn't formed by Earth-like geological processes, so why should the salt be in the same places? <<< In my experience mythology and geology work well together. And certain mechanisms like evaporation of liquids still apply, otherwise the alchemists would be hard put to refine any crystalline substance. But there's nothing wrong if the salty liquid that evaporated were the tears of Genert's wives and daughters after he was slain... -- -- Joerg Baumgartner joe@sartar.toppoint.de