From: RuneQuest-Request@Glorantha.Holland.Sun.COM (RQ Digest Maintainer) To: RuneQuest@Glorantha.Holland.Sun.COM (Daily automated RQ-Digest) Subject: RuneQuest Daily, Wed, 22 Sep 1993, part 3 Reply-To: RuneQuest@Glorantha.Holland.Sun.COM (RuneQuest Daily) Sender: RuneQuest-Request@Glorantha.Holland.Sun.COM Precedence: junk 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: glidedw@sfsuvax1.sfsu.edu (Donald Wilton) Subject: Gleanings of Obvious Knowledge, statement one: Message-ID:Date: 21 Sep 93 09:00:06 GMT X-RQ-ID: 1778 Lord Sagon, Sorcerer of Lost Brythos, older than your god (certainly): It seems that those of you who pester my apprentice Donald have failed to understand the true meaning of "god cults." Cults exist to both exacerbate and try to heal the difficulty of the initiate and common people, in dealing with the natural result of the prevalence of Magick. Gods don't exist as people, but as expressions of natural forces and the fearful or ecstatic desires of the masses. Spirits occur in a natural fashion, and evolve intelligence, in a spirit fashion, having nothing to do with our definition of intelligence. This enables them to provide a focus for our desires, when we give them the means to deal with magic, power and fulfilling our desires, they do so. ZZZabur may have the means to tell you whether or not the spirits develope into something other than initial parasites. I feel that this explains the loss of Brythos, and where it went. If so, it would explain the Power required to move that land. Initiates of cults are getting what they want, rather than perceiving reality. Gods are powerful spirits, who grew out of vain desire, for what on Brythos, we called "the impossible free lunch, for somebody always pays for it." You can't have your religion cake, and eat it, while simply expecting no price, for the emergence of another cake. The responsibility of Power is lost on those who have Dieties. This explains the damage of chaos, those who give nothing of their effort, and take. I enjoyed instructing those of you who have failed to understand in the past. I realizet hat you may take time to adjust, but that's been true of the simple folk, of cultures as diverse as the Lunar, to the Orlanthi. I know that given suffient data, we'll all agree on the reality of the nonentities of the gods, and the future remains bright! Invisible God Who? --------------------- From: glidedw@sfsuvax1.sfsu.edu (Donald Wilton) Subject: Re: RuneQuest Daily, Tue, 21 Sep 1993, part 1 Message-ID: Date: 21 Sep 93 09:35:51 GMT X-RQ-ID: 1779 Lord Sagon, Sorcerer of Lost Brythos, older than your god, (certainly): Selling enchantlments form the simple folks makes great economic and magical sense. doing so relieves them of the burden of magical, and therefor political power. since sorcery is the only expression of existence consistent with the evidence, reducing the capability of spirit worshippers, makes good tactical sense. Buy from them at every opportunity. You will often find Shamans who will sell items of incomparable value, for mere gold. A shaman will live with very little in the way of cultural refinements, costing no more than 5 gold pennies per year. This means that each one can be convinced for the cost of a single Whell, to sell a permanent enchantment in an object, of a Spirit of Power, averaging 15 MP. This is a good buy. We as sorcerers never sell enchantments. Enchantments created by sorcery do not require the continuing existence of the caster, which alone explains the continued attacks on private property, byt the thieving elements of the Ralian culture. If I leave my house, some busybody, with no value for privacy, private property or self reliance, will come and steal my enchantments, often for mere matrerial gain. I will have to hire some of those disreputable scum soon to retrieve a small object. I don't know why anybody would want to take my Palsy 15, 39, 8, Multispell 12 gem. do they know how to use it? No, they do not. I have only used it on the average Chalana Aroy, to keep them from setting up one of their noisy hospitals 3 times in the last 25 years. Do I not have the right to peace and quiet? I can sell healing as cheaply as they do, and I don't require noises to nonexistent spirit things, to do it. Bother then damn lot of them all. I'd been saving the 500 gold Wheels for other things. I ask all of you new apprentices if you think I should mention that they'll raid a hospital of this annnoying female? I think not. Getting rid of this Healer pest seems good enough, and I'm sure that they'll rejoice to gain greater knowledge of reality in the bargain. I will provide all of you with the usual spells needed to deal with the nasty odds and ends who guard these noxious places. I have the means and the power to give you a Damage Boosting 8, Duration 15, and a spell resistance 9, Duration 14. This should give you the means to accomplish the task. payment can include other spells, if you provide MP for it. Given the possible socially (but no doubt temporary) stigma from the uneducated, I can give damage resistance 20, Duration 21. This comes form another of my enchantments gained from another sorcerer, who alas, made the mistake of trusting a religoid. Mistakes pile up in the real world. --------------------- From: glidedw@sfsuvax1.sfsu.edu (Donald Wilton) Subject: God learner heresy of sorcery Message-ID: Date: 21 Sep 93 10:00:04 GMT X-RQ-ID: 1780 Lord Sagon, Sorcerer of Lost Brythos, older than your god (certainly): The God Learner heresy, lay not in seeing all of the silly religions for what they are, but rather in thier use of them. GL made use of the power in wateful manners, taking without making any distinction between the useless existence of dieties, and the natural self regenerating flows of magic. The destruction of the natural flows, creates the illusion of large amounts of power, while reducing the amount of mana available for a long term basis. While with my immortality spell I can live out the time of low magic, I prefer the alternative. While immortality will get you through times of low mana, it's no fun when surrounded by these vain barbarians. --------------------- From: glidedw@sfsuvax1.sfsu.edu (Donald Wilton) Subject: Re: RuneQuest Daily, Tue, 21 Sep 1993, part 3 Message-ID: Date: 21 Sep 93 10:09:20 GMT X-RQ-ID: 1781 Lord Sagon, Sorcerer of Lost Brythos, older than your god (certainly): yes, we can take shaman souls into a matrix. So what? You have to assume that we want to! If I do that, then I have to want access to spirit spells, and inherent in my existence, my view of the world, is a disdain for spirits. I can't convert the shaman to sanity, and the presence of his spirit in my personal aura, could affect how I think. If I wanted spirit spells cast, I'd be crazy. If I want MP, I use a POW spirit I have caught. What use do we have for capturing shamans? Pretty soon, a party of adventurers shows up, and life gets annoying. Why would I want that? --------------------- From: pete@slough.mit.edu (Pete c/o Tom Yates) Subject: Secret of the God Learners Message-ID: <9309220135.AA21530@Sun.COM> Date: 22 Sep 93 01:39:29 GMT X-RQ-ID: 1782 Since the secret of the God Learners seems to have been a topic during my involuntary absence from the Net... I was always under the impression that the secret of the God Learners was that they played RuneQuest. After all, don't they possess "RuneQuest sight"? 8^>} -->Pete ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Peter Maranci Malden, Massachusetts pete@slough.mit.edu or rune@trystero.com or rune@ace.com "If you don't want to kiss Duke Munchkin's ass, you can pretty much kiss your own goodbye." -- Traditional NERO saying (spurious). 8^>} --------------------- From: ddunham@radiomail.net (David Dunham , via RadioMail) Subject: Re: Reactionary Orlanthi Message-ID: <199309220202.AA08192@radiomail.net> Date: 22 Sep 93 02:02:53 GMT X-RQ-ID: 1783 >From: gal502@cscgpo.anu.edu.au (Graeme A Lindsell) >The Tales of [Orlanth's] actions >during time show him (and the priests who 'interpret his actions) as >essentially reactionary: all innovations (Gbaji, the God Learners, the >EWS, the Lunars) are evil. This seems very odd for a god whose attributes >include rebellion and change. > > My question: is this reactionary stance real, or have other innovations >by the Orlanthi during time been accepted into his mythology ie by >Heroquesting? Sartar and Argrath were both masters of the Change rune... E.g. Sartar welded tribes into cities, Argrath welded them into armies capable of fighting the Lunars. --------------------- From: jjm@zycor.lgc.com (johnjmedway) Subject: talk dat trademan talk Message-ID: <9309220511.AA03754@hp0.zycor.lgc.com> Date: 22 Sep 93 05:11:44 GMT X-RQ-ID: 1784 >> From: jacobus@sonata.cc.purdue.edu >> Subject: TradeTalk >> X-RQ-ID: 1700 >> >> I treat Tradetalk as a pidgin, which is DIFFERENT from one large region to >> another. For example, there is a Tradetalk of Prax/Wastes, which is based >> on Pavic. This TradeTalk is mostly used to communicate between the various >> Praxian tribes (who all speak different languages) and the river valley folk. The regional Tradetalk sounds quite fine, but if it is an Issares creation, which they deliberately spread, there should be significant common threads between regions ( like French French, Haitian French, Fr. Guayana French, whatever the hell cajuns speak, etc. ). Maybe tradetalk skill should be halved if in another region? >> However, Trade Talk is very limited in scope.... Agreed. This is a quick and dirty language for merchants, not emissaries and ambassadors. >> From: davidc@cs.uwa.edu.au (David Cake) >> Subject: Tradetalk >> X-RQ-ID: 1753 >> >> Well, if Issaries/Tradetalk is really a God-Learner innovation, then it >> probably spread everywhere they did - for a start every major coastal city in >> Glorantha. But it's probably gone native/evolved separately since way back then, especially where the Closing and/or Syndics Ban has cut off areas for hundreds of years. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- | john_medway@zycor.lgc.com | Landmark Graphics Corp | 512.292.2325 | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------