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From: 100270.337@CompuServe.COM (Nick Brooke)
Subject: What's in a Name?
Message-ID: <940303220122_100270.337_BHB65-1@CompuServe.COM>
Date: 3 Mar 94 22:01:22 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 3238
Mike Dickison wrote:
> Here's something that's been bugging me for years. Why do the Agimori
> (African analogue inhabitants of Pamaltela) and the Agimori (men-and-a-
> half, Praxian hunters) have the same name? Surely they can't be the same
> thing -- men-and-a-half are children of Lodril with fire-resistance and
> other special powers, whereas Pamaltelans are I believe just normal
> Gloranthans with darker skin. Aren't they?
Agreed. There's no problem: it's pure and simple racism. Intentional, I
hope. The name is the same, the people are the same, and they allegedly
share a common origin (there's an Agimori migration legend explaining how
they travelled from Pamaltela up to Prax during the Godtime). If it ever
came up in my own game, I'd ignore the "magic racial powers" and tone down
the superhuman stats given in published descriptions of the Prax Agimori
(from RoC, etc.), replacing them with cult special abilities (Rune spells
and spirit spells duplicating the observed effects. Of course, I wouldn't
necessarily tell the players that I'd done so.
In the highly unlikely event that a game of mine ever goes to Pamaltela,
they'd find the native inhabitants to be normal humans (perhaps with
slightly different stats, physique, etc.) and with a variety of local
religions, one of which "reproduced" the special abilities of the Praxian
Men-and-a-Half. Perhaps you could imagine the Praxian Agimori as being as
typical of their species/race as, say, the Kingdom of War are of humanity.
Sure, they display loads of "magical powers", but that doesn't mean they're
not normal people. So what if the Agimori call themselves "Children of
Lodril"? So are the Pelorian peasants; many Orlanthi are descended from
Orlanth (through Vingkot); et cetera. Creation myths differ, and these guys
(in Prax) are naturally seen as inhuman -- they're so very different from
other local peoples. (Check out the Glorantha Book in "G:CotHW"; says
something very similar about racism and skin colour).
I'd just get uncomfortable playing a game that shows the negroid race of
Glorantha as not truly human -- on a *mechanical* level. As you'll have
noticed by now, I have no problem assigning characters and cultures in
Glorantha attitudes that are at least as offensive as this; but I'd stop
short of writing such Master-Race theories into the rules.
On another tangent: the creator of the Agimori was Lodril. They are the
people of Pamalt. Pamalt has a mysterious "Power" Rune which nobody has
adequately explained (IMHO). Lodril is the god of the phallus. Blacks are
(in modern urban legends; extrapolate to mythology) said to be endowed with
extremely generous manhoods. I think this brief analysis has pulled several
disparate threads together, explains why they're called Men-and-a-Half even
though they're not nine feet tall, and (perhaps most importantly) allows us
to hypothesise about an additional Rune that may be possessed by the Lodril
subcult of the Invisible Spear...
> And a contribution to the etymology thread. Delecti of Upland Marsh
> must be from the Latin delict/um -i (n., offence or wrong).
More specifically, the Latin expression "corpus delicti" (a legal term,
meaning 'the proof that a wrong has been committed' or something like). The
guy is, after all, a walking corpse. (Or a sequence of walking corpses, if
you want me to be tediously pedantic).
> And pertaining to the Indus/Harappan observation that started this all
> off, who else has noticed that the ogre in MOB's Melisande's Hand
> scenario in Sun County is called Mohenjo Daro?
Probably nobody else . That character was called "Jarst Daro" in Sun
County. "Mohenjo Daro" was only for his original appearance in Tales #4.
I imagine this is the discerning editorial hand of Ken at work...
====
Nick
====
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