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, Wed, 02 Mar 1994, part 2 Sender: Henk.Langeveld@Holland.Sun.COM Content-Return: Prohibited Precedence: junk --------------------- From: alex@dcs.gla.ac.uk Subject: 'newts. Message-ID: <9403012250.AA14468@willis.dcs.gla.ac.uk> Date: 1 Mar 94 22:50:55 GMT X-RQ-ID: 3216 Sandy: > Someone (Alex Ferguson?) asks: [stuff] Nope. > However, Greg and I at one time concurred that dragonewts ARE > capable of breeding. They, of course, have five sexes, so breeding is > pretty slow (there only being one member of the fifth sex in all > Dragon Pass). I've wondered about this... Both `if' and `how', in fact. Firstly, I've assumed that "barbarian" 'newts can reproduce, somehow or other. This is predicated on the assumption that there are communities of them somewhere large enough to be self-sustaining, but not `orthodox' enough to undergo rebirth. Admittedly this is itself questionable, since I can't think of a single clearly documented case of this. How? Tricky. It'd take a helluva big dragonewt to birth a full-size dragonewt egg, which is what's necessary for to begin a full, orthodox, dragonewt life, complete with rebirths and such as necessary. This suggests: magical creation of an egg; birth to some other stage (mini-egg? dragonewtnewt?), which gives rise to an `proper' egg by some other route, and possibly intervening life-stage... My personal bet is that such reproduction is sufficiently weird as to _only_ happen in Deviant communities. After all, lust is theorised to be one of the Errors which cause 'newts to deviate. Now, if this is true, does this mean that _all_ dragonewts have been alive since the Dawn, including these scouts who keep going crazy and turning into brontosauri? Nope. After all, all we need for a new 'newt is an egg of an immature dragon. First, all the ones laid in the godtime won't necessarily have been hatched straight away, or come to that, hatched yet. Furthermore, some fresh clutches could be been laid since, most obviously in the aftermath of the Dragonkill wars, but conceivably whenever a young drake's fancy turns to lurve. Another issue is what sorts of dragonewt communities are possible. Between the extremes of Entirely Pure (Dragon's Eye, Ryzel, and one presumes Kralorela), Inhuman King, all four stages, reincarnation at your leisure, on the one hand, and rag-tag bands of last-chance, stuck in current stage, no reincarnation desperados, what possibilities are there? Without an Inhuman King, is _any_ rebirth possible? And without rebirth, is any progression in stages possible. If no and no, this suggests all groupings of dragonewts are of one of the above extremes. But if nothing else, the Ormsland dragonewts appear to be both self-sustaining, and heterodox, although at this point, my data and that of the _Gentertela Book_ runs out entirely. I'm tempted to come up with a clutch of different permutations of possible patterns of reproduction, rebirth, and stage progression in 'newt colonies, but I'm somewhat deterred by the fact that there _are_ only about eight dragonewt cities in all of Glorantha, of which perhaps only one is devient. (Two are known to be orthodox, another four seem likely to be.) Hence it becomes much less a matter of what variations _could_ exist, and more of what there happens to be. In particular: what goes on in Ormsland? (Sandy, All?) Perhaps Slarges are a possible model for deviant dragonewt reproduction. > They, of course, have five sexes Each stage is a distinct sex? Or is sex (quasi-)independant of stage? > (there only being one member of the fifth sex in all Dragon Pass). The Inhuman King? I thought he (other pronoun?) was necessary for the spiritual bits, not the wabbly ones. > >What stage has which traits? An old WF has a different version of this: at any rate, it does list traits to be `mastered' at each stage. This had a somewhat different flavour, though: each trait started out with completely `impulsive' behaviour in each trait, which were mastered by making them 'conscious'. I think the same trait-powered magic idea could be bolted onto that system. (Though certain aspects of Sandy's system make more sense, like a Trait only being `created' at a particular stage, thus avoiding newly reborn Warriors having the Traits to become a Ruler.) > NOTE: a scout mutates himself into a magisaur by getting too > interested "in spirit magic, sorcery, or (Ourouboros forbid!) rune > magic. Any scout that actually becomes an adept or acolyte is certain > to become a magisaur next incarnation Or just an initiate, even? Though maybe one could be `redeemed' by being Excommunicated before you die after being Initiated. > Dragonewts, on the other hand, start with 01 in every score. > Like humans, they cannot advance beyond a total of 100, but they > start out without personalities, and are trying to develop same. How would the `gap' be treated in play, though? If a trait role is called for, and neither of the pair turns up, how should this be treated? Under the Pendragon rules, the analogous situation is treated as `please yersel', but I'm not sure that'd be very appropriate here. Under the old WF rules, an inexperienced 'newt would tend to act randomly; alternatively, he might fail to act in either of the ways indicated by successful trait rolls, and just stand around looking mildly stupid. > If the Scout instead spends his time working on Noble's traits (such > as Honest/Dishonest or Vengeful/Forgiving) and masters them before > the Warrior traits, he might become a mutant. This is something that bothered me about the old rules, too: how can a character choose to work on a particular trait? Surely trait roles are pretty much dictated by roleplaying circumstances? At least insofar as which pair you get to work on. > On the other hand, a > dragonewt who has already degenerated past hope of proper rebirth > might use tons of dragon magic to keep himself alive, planning (after > the fight) to spend several years working his traits back up, without > having to die and be reborn as an inferior order of being. Sounds like a losing strategy to me: wouldn't be better for him to die gracefully, spend less time to get his stuff back up, and then wait to die again to be reborn back up a stage? Though this does raise the interesting question of whether dragonewts sometimes get `stuck' in a stage they are `over-qualified' for, simply because they haven't died at an opportune time to be reborn. > On the other hand, I play that once a dragonewt's paired > traits add up to 100, he cannot increase or alter them any more Perhaps this should be possible, a la Pendragon, if one of the pair is zero, though this strikes me as a very Undraconic state of affairs. Hands up those Warriors with a Brave of 125? Not so fast, Mr. Allosaurus. > Humans that use dragon magic start out with full colorful > human personalities, and gradually degenerate by use of dragon magic, > ultimately lessening their humanity. On the other hand, because they > start out with such high traits, they can use lots of good magic > right away. Indeed: sounds like humans are `better' at Dragon Magic than 'newts are! Obviously it should be very hard to obtain in these benighted post EWF times, and perhaps it should work differently, too: perhaps the `gap' is harder to get rid of for humans: or even permanent. > (unlike [Kralori] treatment of sorcery, which they exploit up the wazoo). At first pass, I took this as a reference to Godunya's magic, but checking the Genertela player's book, (unaligned?) sorcery as such is indeed endemic in Kralorela. Woo. Perhaps this explains the lesser importance of theistic cults in Kralorela, vis a vis Greg's Law of Cosmic Game Balance. (ie, you can't, on a cultural scale, get all the benefits of more than one `mode' of magic/religion at once.) > Anyway, that's how I do dragon magic. It has the advantage > that the dragonewts still act weird to the players, and yet I have > reasons why a dragonewt might use one magic and not another. It also > helps me know why a dragonewt may act really aggressively at one > time, and not at another. Of course, there's much much more to the > dragonewt persona than personality trait development. I'm glad to hear it. I really like Sandy's Effects, and the linking of them to personality traits, but I have reservations about the suggested means of trait progression. Furthermore, advancing a stage when the traits have become `very average' seems a little contrived. The WF idea, that of trying to go from `instinctive' to `conscious' traits seems like a more appealing notion of `mastering' a trait. As Sandy's suggestion stands, it seems in danger of causing a 'newt with "fairly average" traits actually acting in quite an extreme way, as it tries to bump up the fractionally lower of a given pair, which wouldn't be very sensible. Only a problem if you have idiotic dragonewts PCs, of course, which is a situation to be fervently abjured on (at least) two counts. > In addition, I play that dragonewts do not increase their > skills by experience in the course of a single life (getting only one > skill increase per life, as it were). I can see the thinking behind this, but it appears to have the effect of making it easier for incompetent types who keep getting killed, or the chronically suicidal (a mind boggling concept), to advance than the less mortality-prone. > And what passions pertain to becoming a dinosaur? > Triceratops: Lust > Carnosaur: greed, stinginess (as opposed to Generosity) > Stegosaurs: pride is my belief (as opposed to Humility). Is this because these are particularly `bad' traits to have at high values, or do similar dangers exist for _any_ trait which gets excessively high? Kuri: > Sandy's Personality Traits is very good. I hear he has a high Abstemious, but otherwise, I'm not so sure myself.> Humans that use dragon magic start out with full colorful >human personalities, and gradually degenerate by use of dragon magic, >ultimately lessening their humanity. > I think those who lose ALL humanity get nirvana. Krolari Monks seek > the True Way to nirvara. Dragon Magic is one of the ways. But nirvana > is far, farthest for some. Many monks lose their "humanity balance" and > go in mad, or even chaotic. Those who withstand the "humanity crisis" > and continue to seek her way can achieve nirvana. May be Godunya is the > one who got the True Way to Dragon. This is a Good Point. To rebang the old gong about Dragon and Human Philosophies being opposites, possibly gaining/losing traits is an imstance of this. >_God of Glorantha_ says Kraroli magicians use _Godunia Magic_. But, >_Godunia Magic_ is a Sorcery variant. I think this is more of a rules hack than an implication that Godunya's magic is `really' sorcery. If it is related to sorcery, in Gloranthan terms, can some tame God Learner tell me how? Sandy: > WARRIOR EFFECTS > TATTOO MATRIX (Indulgent): When the dragonewt graduates to another > stage of existence, all tattoos are lost. Shouldn't this be this case whenever the dragonewt is reborn, seeing as what himself and his skin are no longer actualy mutually attached, like? > UTUMA SKILL (Merciful): [...] If a dragonewt is ready to progress > to the next stage, it must not use this skill while killing itself. Is it `legitimate' for a 'newt commit suicide (not using this skill), specifically for the purpose of getting reborn as the subsequent stage? Or would that act endanger its chances in itself? > RULER EFFECTS > SUMMON DREAM DRAGON (Dishonorable): Success > forms a dream dragon within 60m of the user. Philosophical question: does this actually summon an existing Dream Dragon, or does it create a new one? I suppose to guarantee to be able to create a new dream dragon, one would make a lasagne with extra ricotta about the size of Rist, and feed it to a handy True dragon just before he kips out for the next Age or two. Alex. --------------------- From: MOBTOTRM@vaxc.cc.monash.edu.au Subject: The Crusades Message-ID: <01H9H56LCUOY8WYJU6@vaxc.cc.monash.edu.au> Date: 2 Mar 94 10:49:07 GMT X-RQ-ID: 3207 Sandy writes: >Joerg said a while ago in the Daily: >>Tell me of one religious war which did not end up as a landgrabbing >>venture. Sandy challenged this: >The most famous of all religious wars, the Crusades, neither started >nor ended up as a landgrabbing venture. They did manage to conquer a >tiny portion of the Holy Land, but it was intended as a liberation, >not as a conquest -- the vast majority of the Crusaders, after >fighting, returned home to the much more fertile territory of Europe. >Also, the later crusades and wars were attempts to save the Holy Land >from conquest by the saracens, not attempts to grab land for second >sons and greedy European warlords. I challenge Sandy, while cherishing his starry-eyed idealism: The above is, of course, almost total tosh. War of liberation, conquest, whatever you call it, the Crusades were a land-grabbing venture, from Crusade #1 in the late 11th through to #6. If Peter the Hermit, who instigated the First Crusade, was not motivated by the desire of land, many of his followers mixed their fanaticism to restore the Holy Places with a fervent desire for land and riches. Yes, while there were a number of great nobles who heeded for home after the fighting was done, many others were landless "second sons" and what Sandy calls "greedy European warlords". If they survived, they stayed. And rather than returning home after fighting, the "vast majority" of Crusaders in fact died on the way there (if I remember correctly, barely one in three of those on the First Crusade actually made it to the walls of Jerusalem). Those that did went on to conquer, founding the crusading states of Antioch, Tripoli, Edessa and Jerusalem (the "Outremer"). If it was truly a "war of liberation", the Crusader leaders should have restored the liberated (read: conquered) lands to the Byzantines, but they repudiated any such promises made to Emperor Alexius Comnenus during their stay in Constantinople (for a great contemporary account, see Pengiun Classics "The Alexiad of Anna Comnena", written by Alexius's daughter). The Fourth Crusade (1204) is probably one of the most outrageous land-grabbing exercises of all time. In a nutshell, the Crusaders arrive in Constantinople during a period of political instability, the perfidious Venetians (who made the Crusaders sack and occupy the Christian town of Zara as payment for their passage) convince them to say "Bugger going to Jerusalem", and they conquer the Byzantines, Christians like themselves, instead! It took the Byzantines 70 years to kick the Crusader freebooters out of their capital, and even as late as the mid-15th century there were still Frankish knights holding territory in the Morea, (the bottom bit of Greece). The best place to look at Byzantine treasures is in fact Venice, all plunder from 1204. A short and selective number of books to read on the subject (following a quick scan of my bookcase): Contemporary accounts: "The Alexiad" (see above), De Joinville "Chronicles of the 4th Crusade" (also available in Penguin Classics) History Books: Sir Steven Runciman "History of the Crusades", John Julius Norwich "History of Venice", Alfred Duggan "Story of the Crusades". Historical Fiction: Alfred Duggan "Knight with Armour" (young landless second son goes off on the First Crusade, and finds himself one of the 2/3rds scaling the walls at the end), Alfred Duggan (greedy European warlord goes off on the First Crusade and finds himself Prince of Antioch at the end), Alfred Duggan "Lord Geoffrey's Fancy" (about the "best knight" in La Morie) Map Book: The Penguin Atlas of Medieval History. Written with lots of dry and witty style, viz: "...the [Byzantine] Empire existed in a state of anti-climax for another quarter of a century, and when the expected end came it was as a stab in the back from the fourth Crusade (1204). The villains of this piece were not the ignorant Crusaders, who blindly cut the heart out of the dying Empire, but the Venetians, whose sly manipulations contrived the final perversion of the enterprise." ************ On another note, I now switch sides, disagree with Joerg... >>No conquering overlord could ever afford to wipe out the natives. ...and agree with Sandy >Alas, but also 'taint so. If the conquerors are moving in, rather >than "conquering", the natives are commonly shoved aside or >exterminated. The British in Australia, the American in America, the >Japanese in Hokkaido, and the Bantu in Africa all follow this >appalling pattern. The early settlers (who I would call Australian rather than "British" but never mind) did a very good of wiping out our land's indigenous population, more through disease, alcohol, neglect and mismanagement than through systematic extermination. In Tasmania however, there was a systematic program to eradicate the aborigines there (by dumping them on an island off-shore), and at one stage the European settlers tried to set up a line of men and dogs to sweep across a great part of the island to round any "strays" up. Only now are there serious attempts being made at aboriginal reconciliation, and since aborigines were first included in the Census (1971!!!) their population has been increasing (it's now about 1-2% of 17 million, I think). ************* Finally, Mike Dickison, I loved your "Happy Little Elves" piece. Did to the Aldryami what Elder Secrets did to the dwarves! And to Rich Staats: send your account of HotB to David Gadbois and he will include it in the write-up book of the events. I have finished Gordius's account (his defense speech at the Inquistorial Commission) and I'm certain it will get him off the hook! Cheers to all, MOB --------------------- From: SMITHH@mr.mgh.harvard.edu (Harald Smith 617 726-2172) Subject: Kargzant, Phases, Danfive Xaron Message-ID: <01H9GBS79UD2PMR6UZ@mr.mgh.harvard.edu> Date: 1 Mar 94 03:56:00 GMT X-RQ-ID: 3208 Hello Everyone! This is my first submission to the Daily as I finally have Internet access. I have been a long-time reader and have enjoyed many of the comments/ideas presented over the last year or so. I'm still catching up on my backlog (I'm about two weeks behind at the moment), so I hope I'm not bringing up dead or fully clarified issues. Kargzant-- In regards to the Kargzant discussion, there is a comment near the end of GRoY which indicates that (in the Dara Happan view), Kargzant is now the steed of Lightfore and would thus be part of the planet seen at night. This view is reinforced where it states that day and night were reversed after the nomads were driven out of Peloria. Would the Grazers have this same view, or would they think that Kargzant is still the orb in the sky? How about the Pentans? Do they still revere Kargzant or did they substitute Yelm worship when Kargzant was defeated? Phases-- I'm not a particular believer in the Black Sun creating a shadow on the moon. I could see this belief in the Kingdom of Ignorance where they worship Black Sun (see, he's finally appeared!) and by extension in Pent. My personal idea at present draws from GRoY. I think that the Crater is the Footstool of the Red Goddess upon which she sits, slowly turning. The light shines forth from her eyes as did the light of Yelm. Thus, where she doesn't look there is shadow just as Yelm's shadow was in the west where he couldn't see. I like the idea of the corona around the moon within the Glowline, but I think that it needs to synchronize the phase acorss the empire. Danfive Xaron-- In my long-running (seven years now) personal campaign set in Imther, Danive Xaron serves as jailer, executioner, and a number of other undesirable positions. My writeup has him bearing the runes of Fate and Spirit, as opposed to Law or Stasis. He does represent the last chance for an individual . If the individual succeeds or fails, it represents the fate of his spirit--survival or condemnation to Lunar hell. Enough for a first posting. --Harald Smith SMITHH@A1.MGH.HARVARD.EDU