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, Mon, 21 Feb 1994, part 2
Sender: Henk.Langeveld@Holland.Sun.COM
Content-Return: Prohibited
Precedence: junk
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From: sandyp@idcube.idsoftware.com (Sandy Petersen)
Subject: re: RQ Daily
Message-ID: <9402191705.AA17634@idcube.idsoftware.com>
Date: 19 Feb 94 05:05:47 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 3137
Ralf Engels asks:
>Has anybody thought about coinage, mints and the process of minting
>on Glorantha?
With a few rare exceptions, like Lokarnos' COIN WHEELS, I think most
Gloranthan folks coin their money in the typical classic means. I
suspect that even most Wheels are minted, rather than generated
magically. In general, a coin is worth more than its value in raw
metal, because of the implication of purity (I suppose). This, of
course, varies from area to area.
Argan Argar priests are the only trolls who are supposed to
make bolgs, and I suspect they do it by striking them -- since trolls
are strong, dislike heat, and lead is soft, this would be
comparatively trivial for them.
Gloranthan coinage is generally pretty universal from place
to place (much like coins were in the good old days, when Americans
were happy to use Spanish dollars, English pounds, and Dutch guilders
all at the same time interchangeably). Moreover, it is generally
assumed that the actual value and weight of coins in many areas is
standardized. This is probably partly due to GM laziness, and partly
due to the God-Learner influence.
A silver lunar weighs 10 grams, making it about the weight of
an American dime. Clacks are also about 10 grams, with bolgs weighing
around 12-15 grams. Wheels weigh 20 grams. At least, these are the
"standard" sizes as found in parts of Dragon Pass.
>If most Gloranthan coins would be produced magically, they would
>probably be similar to our modern coins, i. e. same weight, shape,
>legend, picture.
I don't see why this follows.
>But it would be nearly impossible to " clip " these coins for gain
>or fake them.
Geez, modern coins are faked all the time. Not clipped so much, no.
But clipping wouldn't work anyway if the merchants approved coins by
weight rather than number.
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From: paul@phyast.pitt.edu (Paul Reilly)
Subject: Re: RuneQuest Daily, Sat, 19 Feb 1994, part 1
Message-ID: <9402192021.AA19673@minerva.phyast.pitt.edu>
Date: 19 Feb 94 20:21:19 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 3138
Haha! Paul Reilly here.
Ralf Engels writes:
>b) Could anyone be bothered to point out to me the " 3 Yelmalios " ( = Yel-
> malio, Elmal and ? ) and how they are related to each other ?
'?' = Antirius.
Most of the new information is found in Greg's works _King of Sartar_ and
_The_Glorious_Reascent_of_Yelm_.
Elmal is Orlanth's loyal thane; he is the Orlanthi sungod and keeps the
home fires burning (& keeps Ernalda company?) while Orlanth is off on the
Lighbringer's Quest. He definitely shares some mythology with Yelmalio.
The 'standard' Yelmalio written up in Cults of Prax and Sun County is
apparently the result of the teachings of Monrogh, the cult Founder and
prophet of Yelmalio. We used to think that he lived back in Godtime (before
KoS) but apparently he belongs to recent history instead.
There are many inconsistencies with this picture in older RQ material;
for example, other cults refer to the Godtime activities of Yelmalio. This
may represent real confusion on Glorantha as people get their collective
memories rewritten through Heroquesting, etc., or we on Earth may be the
only ones confused. Stay tuned for further writings from Greg, which
may clarify or further confuse the issue.
The Dara Happan "Yelmalio", Antirius, provided heat and light to Dara Happa
after the dismemberment of Yelm. He shares many attributes and myths with
Yelmalio, including being ambushed at the Hill of Gold, etc. It's possible
that Monrogh's vision included an essential identification between Antirius
and Elmal.
>Are there any officially printed genealogies of the gods
Yes, in hard-to-find old Wyrm's Footnotes, Heroes, etc. More info can
be found in King of Sartar and GRoY. I have some of this; if Sandy and
Greg fail to object and there is clamoring, I may do a post on it.
> I'd especially welcome a writeup of the solar pantheon, including the po-
You _have_ to get a GRoY. Since this is a currently in-print product, I
am reluctant to redistribute info from it; besides, retyping is tedious.
Maybe Joerg can get a copy and permission to recopy and redistribute with a
fee paid to Chaosium (or not), this seems more sensible than mailing endless
copies across the Atlantic. Greg? Joerg? Are you two reading this?
> A writeup of GOLDEN BOW's cult out there ?
I think there is an unofficial one.
>d) How do I lay my e-fingers on a RQ 4 Rules / Play - Test writeup ? ( Rules
I don't know if Oliver is still distributing them; write to him and ask,
perhaps. As far as I know, distribution is physical copies only, because
it is typeset already and to control redistribution.
>e) Can anybody donate me ignorant soul a version of the integral LBQ ? I mean
I don't know of one; if there is one I would like to see it. It may be
left deliberately vague to stimulate our creativity, or it may just not be
released. Most of the info on it is either in the Orlanth writeups or KoS.
>f) Has anybody thought about coinage, mints and the process of minting on Glo-
YES.
In our campaign, we were unsatified with "You need an unhistorical suitcase
full of silver to buy a horse" so we reconfigured our own moneys.
As far as I know, there was no coined money in the Godtime; trade was by
barter or in weighed specie. Coinage arose in the First Age, inspired by
the now-extinct (well, practically) Sun Wheel Dancers, a cylindrical-bodied
race. The Lokarnos cult was first to use coinage, the golden Wheel.
So far, all standard, right? Now into stuff I developed for our campaigns.
(You asked for it.) I have a file on this at home, but this is all off the
top of my head.
Note that I am giving general values here; I kept some notes on variations
in time and space of the value of specie and money.
Theyalan Coinage:
THe most common Theyalan coinage scheme is a product of copying the Dara
Happan idea of coinage combined with the old Theyalan system of weights and
measures. Local names and designs vary, but the relative values here may
be seen in widely distributed Theyalan kingdoms (tribes rarely mint coinage,
instead they use the coinage of their neighbors or simply barter & specie.)
To capture the 'homey' Theyalan flavor, I translated into English names:
Pound: Supposedly equal in value to the Theyalan 'pound' weight, one ENC (kg)
in silver. Nowadays a silver alloy rather than pure silver. After the big
Lunar silver mines opened, the price of silver fell until the canonical 1:20
ratio between the values of pure silver and gold has fallen considerably;
silver coin alloy (includes some copper) is valued at about 21:1 in gold.
Thus one gold 'pound' coin is worth 1.05 'silver' pounds. Confusing, most
people just ignore it and let the moneychangers make a profit. Let's call
the gold 'pound' a 'guinea' for convenience
Mark: A gold coin worth 1/3 of a gold 'guinea', 4 Royals.
Royal: Gold coinage worth 1/12 of a gold pound, canonically 20 pennies,
actually (when dealing with large sums) almost 21. Royals are sometimes
coined by the royal house, sometimes by the Lokarnos cult (in areas with
Lokarnos.) In the latter case they are also called Wheels. Both Wheels and
Marks are enchanted gold, protecting them from easy counterfitting. Enchanted
gold Wheels adorn the bezainted armor of High Wagon Priests. Note that with
Wheels now valued at 80 (82, actually) RQ3 pennies (see below) it is more
worth a priest's time to Coin Wheels. Probably stacking 2 Coin Wheels could
get you a Mark.
Shilling: 1/20 of a silver pound.
Penny: 1/12 of a shilling. 240 pennies in a silver pound
Farthing: 1/4 of a RQ3 'penny', the smallest silver coin. 960 pennies in
a silver
Tin: The Issaries cult produces tin pieces, value in between copper and
silver.
Clack: The copper coin, often minted by the Ernalda cult who traditionally
get 1/7th of all copper mine revenues as well as the harvest. (Copper is
the Earth metal. Again, this rule is from my campaign.) Clacks are often
square. In Esrolia, there are several denominations of copper coin.
Note that 1 golden guinea is about 1000 farthings, convenient for quick
calculation.
Lunar Coinage
>The Lunars use silver coins... : do they have ... COIN LUNAR(S) ?
No; this is not cost effective. My answer:
The great innovation of the Lunars was to alloy a small percentage of iron
in with their silver-copper alloy coins. This meant that illusion magic and
the like would not affect their coins, nor did they need Enchantment to
produce their coins. The exact formula of the alloy is a state secret.
Merchants who handle a lot of coins often keep a 'touch-iron' handy, a
piece of unattuned iron on which they tap coins as they receive them. This
has a good chance of dispelling any illusory coinage, although mundane
counterfeiting is still profitable.
The coins are mechanically struck, similar to Roman coins. Dwarves may
produce some 'official' coinage of high quality. Lokarnos Wheels are in use.
Lead: Argan Argar produced the Bolg coinage in order to have official cult
money; bolgs are the latecomer in coinage. Bolgs are cold struck and are
often sloppy looking. They are rarely counterfeited (why bother).
Lead straight from the mines often includes a small percentage of silver (as
on Earth); opinions on this vary but the most common is that the Lead in
these mines is the bones of darkness gods who had eaten up some air or moon
gods. It is said that the dwarves used to 'purify' lead for the trolls and
did not tell them that the impurities were valuable silver; this was just
one of the many troll-dwarf misunderstandings of ancient times.
Copper: Esrolians have square copper coins, sometimes with a hole in the
center for stringing.
Apologies to anyone who finds this stuff boring; I actually have much more if
anyone is interested: Old Yelornan coinage, etc., Lo-metal coins of Caladraland
("This money is HOT!"), etc. Careful when you ask a question...
-------
I think it was Joerg who wrote:
>Western wizardry, which originated in the Kingdom of Logic. Eastern sorcery
I actually thought RQ3 Kralorelan "sorcery" was pretty much a cop-out.
I liked the presentation of the four common philosophies/systems of magic in
RQ2 Cults of Terror; the Easterners had their own 'mystical' mode of thinking
and magic, different in principle from the primitive, dive, and humanist
systems modelled in RQ3. My suspicion is that when it came time to write
rules for 'mystical' magic it was found that this was difficult to impossible
and they threw together the "Kralorelans don't have their own separate magic
system, they just use a combination of the other three" stuff as a pale
substitute. I could be wrong...
- Paul Reilly
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From: gharris@Jade.Tufts.EDU
Subject: Orlanth v. Yelm
Message-ID: <9402191535.aa17612@Jade.Tufts.EDU>
Date: 19 Feb 94 20:35:05 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 3139
In Friday's Daily, Sandy says that there are many known cases of
Yelm ruling in favor of an outsider in a dispute with one of his kin, and
that Orlanth would never do something like that.
What about the case (mentioned in King of Sartar) where Thed
demanded justice after being raped by Ragnaglar, one of Orlanth's kin?
Didn't Orlanth find in Thed's favor there, although it troubled him
greatly?
--
George W. Harris gharris@jade.tufts.edu
Dept. of Mathematics Tufts University
Days, I remember cities. Nights, I dream about a perfect place.
Days, I dive by the wreck. Nights, I swim in the blue lagoon.
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From: carlf@panix.com (Carl Fink)
Subject: Miscellany
Message-ID: <199402202158.AA11731@panix.com>
Date: 20 Feb 94 11:58:04 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 3140
Okay, several different things. For starters, people were speculating
on the Earth origins of Gloranthan words. Reading a book on Chinese
history the other day, I happened to notice that the Cantonese word for
"mountain" is "shan". So the Shan-Shan Mountains of Kralorela are the
"mountain-mountain mountains".
Sandy's defence of Yelmites is interesting -- he says that an ideal
Solar man would favor a stranger over family members, if the stranger is
in the right. He further alleges that no Orlanthi would ever do this.
Isn't it odd, then, that this is precisely the accusation of the Young
Gods against Yelm: that as latecomers no place was made for them, and
they were exiled from all the good parts of the world?
Just how much was Glorantha mixed up in the Greater Darkness? We all
know that "currently" Glorantha is a flat piece of Earth floating on
Sramak's River. I contend that it was once a globe like Earth. My
evidence? Well, look at Pamaltela and Peloria -- they were clearly once
contiguous. They're the only two places on Glorantha where Lodril is
considered the creator of humanity, and the only two places where Blue
men ruled in the God Time. Furthermore, Pelorian rivers run from South
to North -- clearly they were in the Southern Hemisphere of the previous
globe.
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