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Date: Tue, 28 Sep 93 17:30:33 +0100
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Subject: RuneQuest Daily, 28 Sep 1993, part 4 (evening edition)
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From: joe@sartar.toppoint.de (Joerg Baumgartner)
Subject: Languages, Spirit Plane, God Learners, Nomad Gods, etc.
Message-ID: 
Date: 28 Sep 93 13:49:06 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 1846

I fear it's another whole part for me. But I can't keep my keyboard 
shut...

Bryan Maloney writes in X-RQ-ID: 1826

>People in Glorantha are automatically "initiated" into the religion at a given  
>age.  Now, stupid, ignorant God Learners would only be able to see this as  
>being initiated into the religion of a single deity who is identified as the  
>cheif of a pantheon.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  The truth is  
>that the person initates into the RELIGION, not a particular deity.

My sentiment, too. Still I'd like to see more than a "Yelm the 
Youth"-like initiation among Orlanthi, i.e. a more sincere relation to 
the cult(s).

There are some problems, though: Which God would be asked for divine 
intervention, or be addressed in short spiritual calls for help or 
blessing?
In Thieves World, the Ilsigi characters such as hanse Shadowspawn call 
on Eshi in affairs of love, on Shalpa in affairs of stealth, and on Ils 
in situations where combat occurs. They are initiated into the 
religion. There are several examples of divine intervention, answered 
be the appropriate deity.
Do we want to copy this approach for Gloranthan cults?

[interesting example for a change from Orlanth to Humakt deleted]

With the initiation (or rather exititation) ritual, the former Orlanthi 
will lose all former Rune Magic (or gain it on a one-use basis, even if 
you play with reusable divine magic for initiates). I wouldn't be this 
harsh with less drastic changes in religion.

Interesting side-note: Would a Humakti be allowed to inherit a stead or 
similar from Orlanthi parents?

And as general question: Does Humakt allow parallel initiation at all? 
Even though Orlanth or Daka Fal seem appropriate second choices, they 
are family, exactly the ties Humakt severed.

(In a private discussion I recently heard that Humakt may be a quite 
recently developed separate cult, i.e. third age, maybe 2nd age to 
allow for Yanafal's apostasy. Humakt was the fifth (or rather first) 
weapon of Orlanth, the sword. This became an object of worship for the 
weaponthanes, and in an attempt parallel to the Elmal/Yelmalio 
transformation they headed for a separate deity of death.
This is still a rumour, and highly GLish, too, but you know how those 
things come true.)

Nick Brooke in X-RQ-ID: 1827

>CULTIC PROGRESSION

>> The problem with the current system is there is no motive to make
>> such a change. Should your sacrificed rune-spells for one god 
>> change to those of the next?

>Yes. Another plus for the *excellent* RunePower system! 

I agree to the Yes, but I don't see the necessity of the RunePower 
system. (I still think Heal Body is not the equivalent to three Bless 
Crops, and needs a pilgrimage to a temple of certain size, or a shrine 
with a fitting legend to it. The RunePower system allows for too much 
Powergaming, IMO.)

>The motive is that 
>it's silly for a grandmother to have little girls' Rune spells left over: 
>she ought not to be able to access them any longer. Voria cultists grow up, 
>and become Ernalda cultists. Earth worshippers who are traumatised change 
>to Babeester Gor or Maran Gor: they don't take their Bless Crops etc. 
>spells with them.

The easy way would be to change them into associate magic. The hard way 
could look like this:

I'd propose a Rite of Passage ceremony, in which the former cult 
identity dies, and the new one is born. The change from Voria to a 
Grain Goddess comes with a ceremony at the time of the first bleeding, 
wheereafter the girl is capable of conception. Possible transfer to 
Ernalda is conducted either at the marriage ceremony, or at the first 
child-birth (Grain Goddess membership may be kept life-long, I'd 
suggest). Transfer from Ernalda to Asrelia, now there's a transfer no 
woman of our time would celebrate. There is a physical indication for 
this, but that is less apparent than the above.
Which are the spells you'd need to transform? The Voria write-up says 
that the Voria (special, I'd suppose) rune spells become one use upon 
change to another cult, but these are available only to the adult 
virgin priestesses anyway. (Note that an adult female choosing the path 
of Voria leaves the path of fertility and reproduction. Wouldn't the 
runes dust and stasis fit better than earth and fertility?)
Instead of making them one-use, I'd exchange Flowers for bless Crops, 
Invigorate for Restore Health (either STR or CON), and Speak with Small 
Animals either with Eiritha's Speak with Heard Beast, or with Command 
Swine or similar (for equal point value).
The Change from Ernalda to Asrelia doesn't imply any necessary spell 
losses/changes. Ernalda has surprisingly little direct Fertility 
spells. One might argue that Bless Crops must be changed into Hide 
Wealth, but I really see no incentive.
(Asrelia's other aspect, wealth, seems to encompass the trader aspect 
Harst, or Spare Grain, almost better than Issaries, and could be the 
reason for male initiates into her cult.)

The change from the Light Earth to the Dark Earth (or Dust) Rune (or 
Dendara -> Gorgorma) surely implies loss of all fertility powers, i.e. 
all kind of healing and regeneration, Bless Crops. Strange enough, Heal 
Body remains available to Babeester Gor through Ernalda. I'd rather see 
only non babeesters cast Healing on the temple amazons.

The parallel of the generations of light earth and dark earth s rather 
weak, IMO, also because voluntary clinging to Voria is denial of 
fertility. (Yes, this is chauvinistic - the society we talk abot is 
so.)
Babeester Gor appeals to women of Ernalda age as much as to maidens 
(Grain Goddess stage in my example above). She has virtually nothing in 
common with Voria, and might as well be the oposite to the Grain 
Goddess. This means change Bless Crops and Regrow Limb for one of the 
axe spells.
Maran Gor has little to no mother aspect, rather a stepmother. exchange 
Bless Crops for Blast Earth, Command Snake/Swine for Command Gnome or 
one of the Earthquake spells.
Ty Kora Tek is the real Crone aspect. Her tie to Dust is rather 
arbitrary when one looks at her function: keeper of souls for a new 
cycle of life. This cult teaches the acceptance of being a crone. Ty 
Kora Tek is not the destructive deity as the younger dust goddesses 
are, she is harsh, but natural, and offers a new chance. Entry into 
this cult may come from any of the Light Earth cults. Change Bless 
Crops into Bless Grave, and that's it.

The change from Dark Earth to Light Earth is impossible.

>When you see a snapshot of a village, you don't ask how long the people 
>have filled the cultic/social roles they are portrayed in. You meet a 
>generous old Asrelian grandmother, a hag-like old Ty Kora Tek 
>corpse-scrubber, etc. without asking what they were up to ten years ago 
>when neither role was appropriate for them. But their character sheets bear 
>no traces of an earlier active cultic life. Consider Grey Azdala in 
>'Gaumata's Vision'. She wasn't always like that, but existing rules don't 
>show us how she could change to be that way.

My guess is that there are few women to leave Ernalda, doing this only 
when there is need for a new Ty Kora Tek representative. Asrelia has 
too many trade elements to be tied to age, and may very well appeal to 
shop- or storage-keepers. The traditional role of the old women as Daka 
Fal representatives must be taken into account, too (as described n the 
Vikings box).

>The 'problem' will emerge when more people adopt a Pendragon-esque sense of 
>time, playing family- or clan-based campaigns out over decades and 
>centuries rather than adventure-based ones over seasons and years (this, as 
>some of you may not know, has been one of Greg's pet projects). It would be 
>nice to have put some thought towards a solution...

And I'd like to see that game. It might even be played by email, if 
somebody wrote the rules (hint, hint).

>=== Nick invokes a MINARIAN MEMORY REMOVAL on the last paragraph ===
[on sorcery]

Sorry, Nick, you won't succeed unless you send out the knowledge 
assassins. And that would be the end of this list :-(

>Graeme said:
>> This means that literate people in the West do not write in their own
>> languages at all, but use Classical Brithini/Old Seshnegi/whatever it
>> is uniformly. Is the spoken version the language of the educated in the
>> West, replacing Tradetalk there?

>Yes. This is, of course, what happened in the "real" Middle Ages, and what 
>the Glorantha Book tells us:

>:  WESTERN: The tongues of the Malkioni-worshippers of Umathela and
>:  Genertela. All share the same written language, termed Western, 
>:  though the spoken languages differ. Hence, literate Westerners
>:  from any land can always communicate by writing.

>The extrapolation from this to having written Western 'Brithini' script as 
>the language of books, wizards, scholars, etc. is too easy and attractive 
>to miss. It would technically be possible to write in the vernacular (using 
>the Western alphabet to write in a 'debased' dialect), but this would 
>probably count as a sign of terrible heresy and ignorance.

I think your distribution of romanic languages on the west needs some 
correction. Languages are influenced by neighbouring languages, and 
this will be the case with the Western tongues as well. If Brithini is 
Latin, then Central Seshnelan is Italian (the one with least foreign 
influence). If I equate Theyalan with the Celtic/Germanic influence on 
the Romanic languages, then French and Provencale must be the languages 
of areas with high Theyalan population. Also the Darktongue influence 
for Ralios must be translated somehow, as must the Hsunchen influences 
and the obscure Ygg's Island influences.
If I take Theyalan for Celtic, Ygg's Islands for Nordic, Darktongue for 
Germanic and Hsunchen for Slavic influence, I get English as language 
for Loskalm and Fronela, French for Ralios (Frankish and Celtic 
influences in Latin made French), and Provencal for Nolos, Pasos and 
Malkioni Wenelia. Lost Slontos (ie Maniria) might be another English as 
well - lots of trollish and Theyalan influence, maybe also some kind of 
Raeto-Romanic.
I agree on Spanish as laguage for Umathela, there the influences are 
right.

All this IMO.

>> So do the Church use this in their litanies/casting spells, or is this
>> an area of dispute between the sects?

>Dispute it, please! I *hate* to see religious types agreeing (anyone for 
>CREDO??). It is inherently plausible, given the importance of written 
>materials for sorcerers, that they would cast as they read; likely, too, 
>that this is not uniform between all the various Colleges of Magic.

Dispute it, but not between sects, but between factions in the sects. 
Each hierarchy has its traditionalists (talking even privately in 
Brithini) and its progressives (writing vernacular).

>MONOTHEISTS

>Stuff and nonsense! The insidious threat of internal heresy is far more 
>dangerous to your established church than the blatant and not very active 
>external pagans. If disunited 'Malkionism' was under threat from pagans, 
>then perhaps you'd see that element. But at present they're still going 
>strong in their separate kingdoms, with only the KoW as a major threat to 
>(more or less united) Loskalmi Hrestolism.

The greatest (proven!) threat to Malkionism is the Lunar religion, 
which managed to take Carmania from the One Faith, according to some 
statements made during the glorious sorcery thread.

>GOD LEARNERS

>> "I have here the names of fifty prominent God Learners high in the
>> Orlanth Rex heirarchy."

>No surprises there. The Orlanth Rex cult was developed in late Second Age 
>Ralios. Late Second Age Ralios was a hotbed of God Learnerism. Draw your 
>own conclusions... 

And this after I proved that Kinghood was a clerical function, and that 
O.Rex was the natural organisation form for ths subcult! I see the 
O.Rex cult as joinable only by nobility (by legacy or merit), thus a 
closed society. To infiltrate this group, the GLs would have had to 
place agents among the Orlanthi which acted the chieftain for ages! 
(Unless my nagging doubt that Orlanth the Heroquester replaced Umath 
only in the second age is substantial...)

>Having the Spirit 
>World bear a direct correspondence with real world terrain is probably the 
>best way of presenting it -- far more interesting than the traditional
>"featureless grey blur" (which may be how characters without Spirit 
>Perception skills have perceived it in the past).

I am still somewhat reserved about this. The featureful Spirit Plane is 
rather the God Plane, where some mighty entity has morphogenetic (sp?) 
influence on its surroundings. The shamans surely know the short cuts 
into the realm of Wolf Spirit etc., and the borders are gradual, I'd 
expect.
The Rebirth myths for animal of Hunter cults like Waha and Foundchild, 
and similarly Aldrya's Food Song, imply that there has been some spirit 
recycling ever since death occured for the first time. Still there must 
be the constant creation of new life, i.e. spirits, since a lot fail 
rebirth (because of falling prey to the wrong predator, or similar). 
That's the reason why I hotly disagree with the melting away of the POW 
of spirits, and INT as well. For the other characteristics I like the 
model, too, especially for APP. I posted my views on this sometime in 
July, I think, could someone resend them to me? My computer suffered a 
Minarian hard disk failure a while ago.

>(If nobody worshipped 
>Frog Woman for a year, would she dissipate back into the background magic 
>of the Spirit Plane?).

Certainly not. Frog Woman is a powerful enough entity to form her own 
"God-Planish" froggy part of the Spirit Plane, and she has a multitude 
of unconscious worshipers - the frogs along the Zola Fel.

>The Orlanthi Greetings are surely HeroQuests: you meet someone as Orlanth 
>met a god, speak to them in the same words, and deal with them in the same 
>way as your God himself did before Time began. Saying "that's not powerful 
>enough" does not invalidate the theory. For a devout cultist, 'everyday 
>life' takes on mythic resonances: you don't *need* to go to the Hero Plane 
>to live as your god's representative in the world.

If these are Heroquests, then we ought to think about a change of name. 
While I agree that the World-Changing PowerQuests ought to be the 
exception, everyday ceremonies are just this: ceremonies. When they 
reenact some mythical occurance, call them worship. (Anybody out there 
going to play Worship instead of Heroquest? :-)


Greg Fried in X-RQ-ID: 1829

>Don't have much time these days, but I just want to voice my loud YesYes! for
>Geoff and Colin's ideas about the spirit plane.  The idea that the realm of
>the spirits is one were the dead slowly lose their nature is one very close
>to the Greek conception of the Homeric era (and therefore a good bet for
>Glorantha!).  Take a look at Book XI of the Odyssey, when Odysseus communes
>with the dead in Hades...

THe dead without any allegiances, yes. They are a very small minority 
on Glorantha, though.

>I definitely think the two of you are right on this one, and something 
>along these lines has been my assumption for some
>time now.  Spirits can maintain their 'coherence' after death only by being
>worshiped (as in Daka Fal), or by being taken up into the retinue of a
>powerful god, or by preying on other spirits, or by serving a mortal being
>(usually a shaman) as a bound or allied spirit.  As I have said here before,
>I try to translate ALL game-mechanic spirits into spirits of one-living
>beings, and so give them at least SOME role-playing substance!

Theistic Glorantha lore says that a lot of animals are automatically 
initiated to the appropriate deity: spiders to Aranea, insects to 
Gorakiki, molluscs to swems, cats to Yinkin, birds to Vrimak or his 
offspring, fish to Golod, ... This means their spirits are transported 
into the appropriate realm after death, doesn't it?


Robert McArthur in X-RQ-ID: 1832 on Etyries & Genert

>I seem to remember reading that Corflu has no longer a permanent Ettyries(sp?)
>priest because the old feller went into the wastes.  Now, the reason that
>Issaries priests go anywhere near that untenable area is they have a piece of

>jackal skin that must, to keep a member of the cult, be returned to Genert
 ^^^^^^
>in the wastes.  The person doing so, and living, becomes a Desert Tracker

That's hyenas!

An interesting discussion I head this weekend yielded that Hyena, one 
of the Spirits of Prax, must be sort of a Trickster: appropriate spells 
would be Swallow (Hyena swallowed the parts of dismembered Genert), a 
variation of Group Laughter (the fascinating effect Hyena exerts on 
onlookers, and its strange laughter), and maybe even dismemberment. Did 
Genert dismember himself with the help of Hyena's Remove Body-part 
Spell befor letting himself Swallow by his favoured Trickster?

Is the Issaries God Learner construct of Desert Trackers an experiment 
of using the Issaries cult to resurrect Genert? In this case the 
responsibble GLs started a positive project, which would revivify large 
parts of Genertela. Who hindered them?

I think there are a lot of chapters to "The Empire of the Middle Seas 
and its Downfall by Civil War" waiting to be written!

(Yeah, I am a God Learner! Try and burn me, I mastered the Fire rune 
long ago :-)

>I think it's because Ettyries, to gain the spells and benefits of Issaries,
>had to go on a hero/god-quest and followed in Issaries footsteps for everything
>Issaries did.  Except that Ettyries was Illuminated while doing so.  Thus,
>every stricture except for those relating to chaos that Issaries has, Ettyries
>has.

Your Illumination reasoning doesn't work, why else could illuminated 
Humakti or Yelmalions ignore their geasa without negative consequences, 
which have nothing to do with chaos?

A possible explanation to this might be that while Etyries WAS 
illuminated, this priest wasn't, so that he has to follow the 
strictures his deity could ignore.


Robert McArthur in X-RQ-ID: 1833 on Nomad Gods: The Horned God

>In NG The Horned God has the stats 0-=!-8-*.  It can only attack magically.
>What is its magical size?  The = needs explaining...  In Dragon Pass, it
>meant the total of the CF of the units stacked with it.  I haven't had a
>chance to check RB&WM and see what it says there.  Any ideas anyone?

I'd say total the magic factor of the units it is stacked with.

Are there any more players of Nomad Gods out there? I just received 
more info on Nomad Gods, as well as the hex grid map of Balazar in 
Griffin Mountain (thanks again, Mike), and am feverishly contemplating 
the possibilities of a Balazaring Dragon Pass rules board game, or 
(like David Cheng) a Glorantha-wide board game. Is there anybody going 
to prepare ssomething for convulsion next year, maybe a joint venture?


I must stop now, else this can't be sent out by Henks machine as one 
part. Sorry again for the length, but I really wanted to say these 
things.

Joerg (ranting etc)

- -- 
- --  Joerg Baumgartner   joe@sartar.toppoint.de

------- End of Forwarded Message