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, Thu, 31 Mar 1994, part 2
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From: joe@sartar.toppoint.de (Joerg Baumgartner)
Subject: Lorens ball games
Message-ID:
Date: 30 Mar 94 12:30:39 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 3455
Loren J. Miller in X-RQ-ID: 3450
> joe@sartar.toppoint.de (Joerg Baumgartner) writes:
>> I've just been reading a few of Sprague de Camp's historical novels and
>> found a lot of references to the Persians playing polo. This brought me
>> to think about other ball games which might be played by certain
>> Gloranthan cultures.
> Hold it right there. Before you go any further we have to reserve polo
> for the Persia analogue in Glorantha. That would be Carmania.
I disagree, for one simple reason: The Carmanians are too recent (795 ST)
to have invented the game. Of course they demand they did, but the game is
much older.
>> Trollball is a game we all love, although putting it under ball games
>> is stretching the definition of ball a bit. However, this is the
>> equivalent for American Football, or Rugby.
> I think American Football has too many rules to be anything at all
> like Trollball. I don't know if Rugby has fewer rules. Somebody else?
To ignorant Europeans, who know football to be a game where hands aren't
involved, aka soccer, American Football seems to be the game where all
the rules are broken.
Anyway, the mere existence of blockers, passers and throwers makes this
game a football (American) clone. None of the other ball games I know of
(except possibly Rugby) have this feature.
The rules change from generation to generation. The US TV-companies even
asked the FIFA to change the soccer rules for the world championship in
the US... In Gloranthan terms this would be to ask Humakti to accept
Resurrection.
>> Polo would be a Pentan game, possibly as popular among High Llama
>> riders and Grazers.
> While the Pentans may have picked it up from the Carmanian horsemen
> and may play it in 1620 ST, much as cricket has migrated to India and
> South Africa in our own world, the Carmanians are very proud of their
> status as the inventors of the sport of kings, err, shahs. Of course
> the main draw for a Carmanian polo match is the impalement of
> criminals and/or foreigners preceeding the game.
I'll accept this as what the Carmanians tell us. They are the ones with
written sources, too. And those ancient inscriptions from Dawn Age Dara
Happa which show men and Emperors on horses clubbing with long sticks
at round objects (heads?) might well have been something else, or imprinted
during the Carmanian reign...
>> Tennis could be a Dara Happan pastime, wlthough with more
>> badminton-like rules - aim of the game would to keep the orb off the
>> ground, somewhat replaying the Antirius period of Godtime.
> Then why play tennis? Wouldn't they play volleyball instead? I think a
> game that encourages leaping high into the air and "spiking" your foes
> would be quite popular among Yelm worshippers.
Because I cannot imagine Dara Happan lords to soil their hands with
things that touch the earth. And tennis has the nice feature of the
"service" to have the ball brought into play by a servant. To me very
Dara Happan.
>> In this case, the Lodrili would play Hockey, where the ball touches the
>> ground.
> They'd play Football/Soccer I think. Save Hockey for people who live
> in a flat and icy land. How about Pent or the Kingdom of Ignorance for
> hockey? They could also play Lacrosse and/or a lacrosse/polo hybrid
> game that would be great fun.
Sigh. Divided by the common use of a language. Hockey is the gentlemen's
game Pakistani excel at, also quite popular in Britain, and with a few good
players around here in Germany, too. What you Americans understand by
hockey is the game played by ruffians skating over ice, wielding clubs
and sometimes hitting the flat piece of plastic when no opponents or
referees are around. The snow troll version of troll ball, played with
Hollri as pucks.
>> Any suggestions for assigning a baseball/cricket clone?
> Too modern for my taste. Maybe Brithos (cricket) and Loskalm
> (baseball) if you need someplace for it. Maybe we could introduce
> baseball as an aldryami game?
Dodgeball, as someone else proposed, might come close.
>> For Soccer I propose the Western culture. A game originally played
>> after the weekly service, with the city gate as goal.
> It doesn't seem right to me. I think that westerners race things
> obsessively. Dog racing, horse racing, turtle racing, foot races, etc.
Soccer seems to be an English invention. Racing seems to be a very English
pastime, too, especially dog and horse racing. I don't see why racing and
ball games should exclude each other.
>> The Orlanthi would play a thrown ball game, like handball, or a rough
>> version of basketball. There is the legend that the Storm Gods once
>> played ball with the Blue Moon...
> I think that Orlanthi play golf.
> :-)
> I'm not kidding either. Just imagine it, wandering in the hills of
> Sartar you hear the sound of a distant wailing that would only be
> described as melodic by a moose in heat, then hear a faint "fore,"
> then everthing goes black and you wake up with a big egg-shaped lump
> on your scalp and a bunch of tattooed and red-bearded barbarians with
> filthy kilts and funny shaped clubs staring at you.
Sartar, not Scotland, to cite one signature?
Well, I doubt that the standard Orlanthi farmer will chose this as his
pastime when there are crops to tend, cattle to milk, sheep to shear...
Nor would the Orlanthi housecarl, be he Humakti, Storm Bull or Orlanth
worshipper.
This leaves the highest class only, above the thane class, or the
outsider members of Orlanthi society, like Lhankor Mhy sages. Ok, make
it the hobby of some past Orlanthi king which caught,
or invent some colourful history like in "The Hobbit".
Of course, we all know that golf is a cult skill of Arroin.
--
-- Joerg Baumgartner joe@sartar.toppoint.de
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From: joe@sartar.toppoint.de (Joerg Baumgartner)
Subject: Hsunchen and Grazers, as usual
Message-ID:
Date: 30 Mar 94 12:32:01 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 3456
Martin Crim in X-RQ-ID: 3451
> joe@sartar.toppoint.de (Joerg Baumgartner) writes:
> "The cattle people could have been Urox' Hsunchen followers,
> their inclusion into Orlanth's kingdom seems logical. Swine are
> mentioned in KoS in the myth about Orlanth the Justice-Bringer."
> Urox/cattle people: There once was a cattle people, but their
> secrets became spread far and wide, and they disappeared. As for
> Urox, I believe his emergence as a separate cult is a second or
> third age development. The same with Humakt. Before that, they
> were just what we would call subcults of Orlanth.
This is God Learner talk (i.e., I like it). But all Storm deities are
subcults of Orlanth, or at least Umath, in a certain sense, as all Solar
cults are subcults of Aether, and his offspring and creations.
> For swine, see Mralot (mentioned as far back as Griffin Mountain as Mralota,
> a goddess).
The mae forms of Mralot, Gorakiki and a few other Hykimi deities appear
in the Jonstown Compendium in RQ Companion, in the same entry that states
Maran Gor as ancestor of dinosaurs (Earth Shakers).
However, in Dragon Pass the pig has an ancient association with Earth, read
e.g. the Cult of the Bloody Tusk in Elder Secrets.
> "Kargzant is almost as enigmatic. Plentonius makes him the Solar
> ruler who reigned before the Dawn."
> Kargzant the Rider is the name of a Yelmic cult or sub-cult,
> according to Stephen Martin's essay "The Cold Sun" in the RQ Con
> program guide. He makes the identification of several Yelmic
> cults with the stages of the Yelm cult as published in WW:
> Kargzant=Rider, Shargash=Warrior, Buserian=Priest/Elder,
> Murharzarm=Emperor. Of course, this in itself is probably a late
> development, or "rationalization" in the sense that
> anthropologists use the term.
The more I learn about the Solar pantheon, the less of Yelm the Emperor
I can find in horse nomad cult(ure)s. Plentonius is hardly a help, being
a fanatical foe of the horse people, so his (follower's) account of
the horse nomads' culture, history and religion can hardly be fair or
objective. Jenarong gets astonishingly good press, in this light.
However, the exodus from Nivorah seems to be one example of humans
converting to Animal Ways (i.e. taking features of Hykimi religion etc.)
which I suspected of the Praxian beast riders as well. This must have
been a quite common occurrance in the various stages of the Darkness,
since the animal ways were superior means of survival in the upheaval
of the Gods War(s).
My God Learner self tells me that the origins of the Hsunchen might have
similar traits as the Grazer origin outlined below.
> (In the anthropological sense,
> "rationalization" refers to the post hoc explanations for ritual
> behavior which people "discover" when their religion is under
> pressure. This happened in front of anthropologists' noses in
> Bali in the 1950's.)
> "The Grazer deities could have been polluted by their long
> interaction (as Golden Horse People) with the EWF Theyalans and
> the Praxians, and later Ironhoof's Ritual of Rebirth, but on the
> other hand the tribe that came to Prax was the most conservative
> of all. "
> Yes, if you accept the earlier myth that the Grazers are
> descendants of the Pure Horse People, and not the later myth
> presented in KoS that they are descendants of centaurs who split.
> Greg seemed to revert to the earlier myth in one of his comments
> at the Lore Auction.
I see both of these myths as totally compatible. Here is why.
ATTENTION! GOD LEARNING AHEAD! SENSITIVE PEOPLE PLEASE SHUT YOUR EYES
WHILE READING ON! :-)
During EWF times, the EWF lords had invited the Pure Horse People into
Prax, to guard their border against the animal nomads.
Some time during the Third Council, a group of surgeon-sorcerers around
Delecti, the Remakers, began experimenting with man-animal hybrids. To
achieve this effect, they naturally chose humans who had affinity to the
animal in question. So they got Storm Bull/Urox worhippers as base material
for Minotaurs (with the promise to make them more like their god, which
seems to have been held ), probably Basmoli for manticores, now extinct
fox Hsunchen for Elurae, and Golden Horse people for centaurs. I won't rest
on the issue on whether these were volunteers, wrongdoers or slaves, but
this will have been the principle they worked upon. (The Tusk Riders may
stem from this period as well, although they might be older.)
However, the ancestors of the centaurs are extremely likely to have been
the Pentan horse riders which lived in the region.
After their demise, some wild or draconic magic allowed the beast people to
breed true, and today there is little difference between the Dragon Pass
Beast people and their cousins in southwest Seshnela. Maybe the form does
shape the being, after all.
However, the Battle of Alavan Argay, which ended the Golden Horse People's
presence in Prax under that name, occured in 1250 ST. The remnants of the
Horse people were the Zebra Riders of Pavis, which had separated from the
tribe at the founding of the Arrowsmith dynasty, the captives after Alavan
Argay, most of whom fled into the Black Net, to be pulled forth by Derik
Furman Pol Joni about 200 years later, and refugees which approached Dragon
Pass, still lying under the magic of the Inhuman Occupation. (Which did not
extend to the Pygmy Bee and Wasp Hsunchen, so it excluded only a certain
style of human life anyway.)
Ironhoof's people met the refugees, and remembered their origin. Since they
were allowed to live in Dragon Pass, why shouldn't their relatives?
But to fulfil the letter of the proscription of human life in Dragon Pass,
they had to be made into something slightly different from human. In the
ruins of the capital of Remakerela, known as Wild Temple, where the Beast
People annually meet to dance and ritually remake or unmake some of their
folk to assure continuing fertility, Ironhoof devised a ritual which allowed
the refugees to become Ex-centaurs. This probably involved the unmaking of
some centaurs into separate parts, man and horse, and as probably the
sacrifial (because incomplete, and unfunctional) transformation of some of
the refugees into centaurs. With this merging ritual, the former Golden
Horse people were "transformed" into the Grazer people, and herds.
(Sorry to intrude into your terrain, David...)
> "Do Pralori, Damali, Rathori, (extinct?) Galanini, Basmoli
> interbreed with their totem animals? Do Sofali turtle people mate
> with turtles? If so, do their women lay eggs?"
> Sandy said (in an earlier post, reprinted in Codex) that Basmoli
> sometimes give birth to lions, but these are always sterile.
I was aware of this. It seems that the general absence of lions in Prax
has weakened Basmoli magic there, so that this lion offspring is not
fertile any more. Sandy also wrote "Don't ask". Well, now we've come
this far, it might be time to disregard this request. Sandy?
> Greg Stafford answered a question about marsupial Hsunchen at the Lore
> Auction. For those of you who weren't there, or don't
> remember the answer, I recommend ordering a copy of the booklet
> which David Cheng is preparing, which will contain complete
> transcripts of the Lore Auction and Heroquest Seminar, as well as
> other goodies. It'll also show you the Grazelander comment I
> refer to above.
David, will you announce when and how this booklet will be available?
--
-- Joerg Baumgartner joe@sartar.toppoint.de
---------------------
From: sandyp@idcube.idsoftware.com (Sandy Petersen)
Subject: re: RQ daily
Message-ID: <9403301607.AA24751@idcube.idsoftware.com>
Date: 30 Mar 94 04:07:21 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 3457
Andre Fernandes mentions:
>there's been some gossip about interbreeding of different species.
>Don't Broos breed with ANYTHING? :)
You bet. The players in my campaign once encountered a broo
that was the offspring of its' father's mating with a tree. But even
that wasn't as nasty as the broo that had hybridized with a metal
stove. Unicorns can mate with virgin mares, zebras, and does.
Probably a few other things, too. And I am an adherent of the belief
that harpies mate alternately with human males and vultures (see,
Piers Anthony's good for something after all), if only because it
makes my players gag to think about it. ("Don't let them take you
alive!") There's also the fine case of Gloranthan goblins, which are
all male -- they mate with fertility nymphs only.
Let's see. There must be other fine cases. Breeding in
Glorantha certainly doesn't follow natural law. For that matter,
there are species in Glorantha that never breed at all -- Magisaurs,
for instance. And krarshtkids (IMO all krarshtkids come directly from
their awful mother by budding -- breeding would be contrary to the
nature of Krarsht).
Dave Dunham sez:
>most broos are goat-like has to do with how domestic animals are
>treated, and how far they tend to be from settlements. If the goats
>tend to stray up in the hills, they're more susceptible to broos
>than cattle.
In addition, goats are much less likely to be kept in barns
at night, and they also go feral more often. Naturally broos tend to
look like whatever creatures are most available in an area.
Nonetheless, I think that a "goatish" tendency is visible on occasion
even among broos that have not bred with goats for many many
generations (like Praxian broos, for instance). Although there are no
cloven-hoofed ungulates on the Pamaltelan savannah, I assume that
broos there often sport paired horns.
Before the influxion of Chaos, the broos, children of
Ragnaglar and Thed, presumably had a fixed shape. I think that that
"original broo" was horned, biped, and more-or-less capriform. Though
the many interbreedings and chaos taints have masked the original
broo form, it is still there as a root form. Of course, some breeding
lines of broos move further and further away from the original broo
form, possibly eventually becoming gorp, unique chaos monsters, or
other non-broo. The Slime broos from Dorastor are a fine example of
broos that are well on the devolutionary track away from true
broodom.
Martin sez:
>As for Urox, I believe his emergence as a separate cult is a second
>or third age development. The same with Humakt. Before that, they
>were just what we would call subcults of Orlanth.
My failure to concur with this is unfortunately un-backed up
by any evidence for the Bull. However, I submit that the tales of
Arkat and his betrayal provide strong evidence for Humakt being a
separate cult even at the dawn. Plus Humakt's own mythology, which
places great weight on being separate from Orlanth.
>Gosh, Sandy, you sound like you don't LIKE trolls.
I LOVE trolls. They're my bread and butter. But I don't want them to
be bowdlerized or weenified into shadows of their former selves. I
like gritty, hungry, violent trolls that make no apologies for the
fact that they ENJOY eating sentient life. "If you don't like it,
don't evolve to sentience." ;)
---------------------
From: Guy_Robinson.sbd-e@rx.xerox.com
Subject: Gloranthan Sports: Trade Posts
Message-ID: <_30-Mar-94_17:54:03_+1_.*.Guy_Robinson.sbd-e@rx.Xerox.com>
Date: 30 Mar 94 16:54:03 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 3458
While everyone is till reeling from Greg just saying no to RQ4
here is a Gloranthan sport: Trade Posts.
Trade Posts is a game traditionally played by members of the
Issaries cult when two cult sponsored caravans meet. It is
quite a spectacle, partially because of the fact that the
rules are so hard to understand ...
Essentially the game is about defending a symbollic Harmony
Rune adorned with bails which are said to represent the
influence of the Trade Rune but this is a very mute point.
Whatever the truth is these rods are refered to as Trade
Posts and from this the name of the game is derived.
Commonly the guards of each caravan compete with the priests
of Issaries acting as judges and generally making themselves
busy. As judges they speak only using a specialist dialect of
Tradespeak, which includes a rich variety of arm gestures.
The game centers around someone standing before the Trade Posts
and defendng them from a very hard ball with a wooden implement
not entirely dissimiliar to a bastard sword.
There is also a fair bit of running about and passing the ball
around as well although there is always a body of players
mysteriously not involved in these activities at any given time.
People say that if someone is patient enough to play Trade
Posts then they are patient enough to trade.
Next: the Etyries body-line series :-)
Regards
-- Guy Robinson --
---------------------
From: JARDINE@RMCS.CRANFIELD.AC.UK
Subject: GRoY?, Impala & Hunschen
Message-ID: <9403301741.AA29044@Sun.COM>
Date: 30 Mar 94 15:43:00 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 3459
GRoY:
We are all using the abreviation GRoY but if you look carefully
at the cover the abreviation should be GRAY! Now is this a clue
left by Greg to indicate that the document will really muddy the
waters instead of shedding light on mythology...
Impala:
A simple rule would be to subtract the SIZ/2 of the rider from
the distance the impala can jump in metres. NB if the impala
was a biped rather than a quadruped you would have to subtract
the SIZ of the rider. Note that the ENC divided by 6 should be
added to the SIZ which explains why the pygmy impala riders prefer
not to wear heavy armour.
Hunschen
There has been alot of discussion about hunschen mating habits.
One way in which hunschen could produce their totem animal as
offspring would be if both a man and woman used all the change
shape spells to *become* the animal and mated whilst in animal
form. The result of this union would be animal, not human.
This would explain why the Basmoli occassionally produce a lion.
I expect that the offspring still has some humaness which makes
it sterile, unless a heroquest is performed to fully convert it
into the totem animal. These offspring would be the result of
religious ceremonies (possibly where the participants got carried
away on hallucinogenic drugs).
-----
Lewis
-----
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From: jacobus@sonata.cc.purdue.edu (Bryan J. Maloney)
Subject: Peter Michaels's Ramblings
Message-ID: <9403302017.AA21404@sonata.cc.purdue.edu>
Date: 30 Mar 94 10:17:20 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 3460
I find what Peter has posted to be interesting, and worthy of further
investigation if not acceptance on the face of it (nothing is acceptable on
the face of it, by the way).
I just have one tiny little criticism: USE A RETURN KEY ONCE IN A WHILE!
If you restrict your lines to 79 characters or less, it will make it a great
deal easier for those of us who connect to the list via an ASCII terminal
and an un-augmented straight **NIX mailer interface to read them.
---------------------
From: sandyp@idcube.idsoftware.com (Sandy Petersen)
Subject: re: RQ Daily
Message-ID: <9403301613.AA24755@idcube.idsoftware.com>
Date: 30 Mar 94 04:13:37 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 3461
Here follows a short essay on gamemastering I sent to a friend
recently. Thought I'd share it. It's especially useful in a game
whose rules change as often as RQ, and in which the players (those
jerks) tend to have their own opinions.
I resort to one of three techniques when I am changing an old rule or
introducing a new one, and the players don't like the alteration to
their game.
1) Friendly persuasion. "Give it a chance. Once you see it in play,
it will grow on you." This ploy relies on the players' inertia for
success. After you've used the new rule for a while, the players are
generally too lazy to get you to change it back.
2) Bait and switch. "Remember, the monsters have to use this rule,
too." If the players are slow enough of wit, they may buy this
argument and let the change go in. The first few times
3) Capitulation. "Okay, okay. It was just a suggestion. We'll go back
to the old way." After all, it's their game, too. Besides, you can
try to introduce the changed rule again a few weeks later.