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, Tue, 10 May 1994, part 1
Sender: Henk.Langeveld@Holland.Sun.COM
Content-Return: Prohibited
Precedence: junk
X-RQ-ID: Intro
This is the RuneQuest Daily Bulletin, a mailing list on
the subjects of Avalon Hill's RPG and Greg Stafford's
world of Glorantha. It is sent out once per day in digest
format.
More details on the RuneQuest Daily and Digest can be found
after the last message in this digest.
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From: MOBTOTRM@vaxc.cc.monash.edu.au
Subject: Stranglers on Racks
Message-ID: <01HC5J5MI27I9A36EE@vaxc.cc.monash.edu.au>
Date: 10 May 94 09:40:15 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 3952
G'day Everyone!
______________________
More SiP Errata (sigh)
>Kuri here. I got my copy of SiP. Now I (and some Japanese RQers)
>have a question about Rune spells Restore Health.
>Princess Anderida has Restore Health spells through Spell Trading.
>RQ Magic book says "Restore Health (to characteristics): One-use".
^^^^^^^
>GoG says "This spell (Spell Trading) allows the priest to trade one
>use of any of his reusable Rune spells..."
^^^^^^^^
>RoC says Restore Health spells from C.A. are reusable to W.L. and W.V.
>Contradiction.
>How do you Avallon Hill RQ poeple think of this? Are you confused?
>Are there any Errata on the spells?
Great deductive work there Kuri! Yes, it does say in RoC that Wind Lords and
Storm Voices get associate cult magic reusably, and the spell from Chalana
Arroy is Restore Health , ergo, Restore Health spells must be reusable
by Chalana Arroy High Healers. However, I reached the same conclusion in a
much more mundane fashion: the precursors of these spells in RQ2 (Cure
Brain Fever, et al) were reusuable for Chalana Arroys so I just figured the
RQ3 version would be too. It doesn't state anywhere that they are not,
and now Kuri has given us some (pretty tenuous) evidence to support the
argument.
Anyway, to answer the SiP question, Anderida got her Restore Health spells
from spell trading with Chalana Arroy High Healers.
_____________________________________
Strangers in Prax: Even More Errata (sigh)
Peter J Whitelaw writes:
>I would like to commend all those involved with both publications on their
>quality. Lots of useful stuff. RQ/Gloranthaphiles must buy these !
Hey, thanks.
He then goes on to ask:
>MOB, after a quick read-through of the Coders may I offer these as possible
>errata?
> p.25 "Maculus' Sorcery Regimen: Every Season Maculus casts a Damge
>Resistance Intensity 13, Duration 13 on each of the other Coders except
Julan".
>However, the hit location diagram for Anderida shows no bracketed damage
>protection, just the 12 from her Cloak. Nose Ring's shows but 12 bracketed
>damage resistance, similarly Eslas'. Is this an oversight or am I unaware of
>some subtlety in the Sorcery rules?
Nah, you're right. For some reason Anderida didn't get the Damage Resistance
put in brackets. You can either change Nose Ring and Eslas to Damage
Resistance
13 or change Maculus to 12 - he can handle the MPs either way, and in any case,
as he finds this sort of work mechanical and demeaning, sometimes he might do
12 points and other times he might do 13. (This discrepancy must've come
about when we changed how Maculus protected the other Coders - I was originally
playing about with the Protective Circle spell, but Mike changed how the
spell worked and we switched back to plain old Damage Resistance).
>p.33 Eslas has "stiff leather" on her body and her Coder cloak is
>enchanted +8AP. But her hit location diagram shows 11 torso AP. Was it
>intended to be 10AP or is her "stiff" leather more like cuirboilli ?
She's got soft leather padding (1 AP) UNDER her stiff leather jerkin (2 AP).
>I would also like to apologise for such an embarrassing display of
pedantry .
You ain't got nothin' on the guys who translated Sun County into Japanese.
They got down to arguing about placement of commas!
>The Spoken Word.
>Previous to running Melisande's Hand I roughed a few notes out on this
>mysterious organisation. I don't know how much these dovetail with MOB's
ideas
>but I would like to offer them in the hope that someone might pull them to
>pieces and offer something better.
After "Lost Tribes of Prax No.6", Matthew Tudor's "The Spoken Word" is
one of my favourite articles in TALES OF THE REACHING MOON issue #1, which
came out way back in 1989. This might be a tad difficult for many people
to get their hands on now, but a Best of TALES #1-#4(+6) compilation is
planned for later this year and this article will be in it.
Peter, I'm sure your notes could easily fit in with the feel of
the original article.
>I had thought that the SW might be treated as a Spirit Cult within the Lunar
>pantheon into which agents might be 'initiated' when they are selected to join
>but have not yet got around to working on this.
This is indeed the case.
______
Heresy
Martin:
> Sure, the early
> Christians also argued about church governance, monastic
> practices, church-state relations, and the composition of the
> canon, but the different sects we know from history are known for
> their Trinitarian beliefs.
Jeorg:
>>If you look into the western remains of the Roman Empire, the greater
>>issues were e.g. the Pelagian heresy and the Easter debate.
Trinitarian beliefs were certainly at the heart of the East/West schism,
but I believe Jeorg is correct in stating other factors were also
important in the west.
As this sort of stuff provides the sort of colour which is can be helpful
when devising Malkioni heresies and creeds, I'll ramble on a
bit!:
The Easter debate! I remember reading about this in the Venerable Bead's
History of the English Church and People, a damn fine translation in
Penguin Classics. The Celtic Christian Church kept the faith going in
the British isles after the Romans baled out; but when the Roman Church
sent Augustine back a couple of hundred years later to reassert its
authority they disputed the date of Easter and, if I recall correctly,
how priests and monastics should have their hair cut (the Romans went
in for the bald spot tonsure; the Celts preferred to shave from the
forehead back). Strange how hairstyles could help keep two churches apart,
but there you are.
Bede also has a go "the British heresy" Pelagianism, calling it a "noxious
and abominable" teaching. He even quotes a jolly little verse about the
heretic Pelagius:
Against the great Augustine* see him crawl,
This wretched scribbler with his pen of gall!
In what black caverns was this snakeling bred
That from the dirt presumes to rear its ugly head?
Its food is grain that wave-washed Britain yeilds,
Or the rank pasture of Campanian fields.
*This ain't the same Augustine as went to tell the Brits how to cut
their hair correctly: the Augustine who raged energetically against
Pelagius was St Augustine of Hip
po, the one who was into predestination
and all that. Pelagius on the other hand , rejected the notion of
original sin and affirmed that man could obtain perfection by his own
efforts, unaided by the grace of God.
Hmmm, could we instead have a diatribe beginning,
"Against great Rokar see him crawl..."
Cheers
MOB
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From: JARDINE@RMCS.CRANFIELD.AC.UK
Subject: Wheels within Wheels
Message-ID: <9405091532.AA24790@Sun.COM>
Date: 9 May 94 13:03:00 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 3953
Ah Finally
A human (Loren Miller) begins to grasp the truely wonderful,
intricate nature of the World Machine. The machine has been damaged
but not destroyed. The wheels still exist and stamp their mark upon
the forces of entropy (Time) but some of the cogs are missing teeth
and some of the connecting rods are buckled causing the machine not
to run true. The imbalance in the forces of the world machine accounts
for the friction and decay which besets mechanisms in Glorantha.
When the World Machine is fixed friction will disappear and the
mechanism will not be subject to wear.
Of course this will also result in the removal of the influence
of growth which delights in disorder and friction, most animals even use
friction to generate entropy and warmth inside their bodies.
Wishing you a smoother friction-free future
Selwi True-Search Gold Mostali (work number 007 (octal))
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From: f6ri@midway.uchicago.edu (charles gregory fried)
Subject: Elf-breasts and metal
Message-ID:
Date: 9 May 94 15:11:21 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 3954
Greg Fried here.
On the great Elf-breast debate:
Count me in on the pro-breast faction. I agree that the man rune must have
some pretty strong morphological and ethological effects. One of these would
probably be some resemblance to human reproduction. I have never much
cottoned to the idea that elves reproduce by dancing around and shaking pollen
into the air. But, of course, elves are also defined by the plant
rune. Perhaps they do give birth to seeds rather than live young --
seeds which must be planted. But when the child is 'born' of this
seed, it may well still require nourishment.... And if we assume that
elves have sap instead of blood running in their veins, what else
would elven mammaries produce but.... maple syrup!
Martin Crim:
Thanks for your review of and thoughts on Gloranthan metals. I like
the idea that there be a moon metal, such as selenium. Personally, I
had always thought that silver was the metal of the WHITE moon, and
that the (red) lunars had arrogantly presumed to make it their own as
well, assuming that they naturally gather all things lunar to
themselves. This would mean that the Red Moon would have a metal
(selenium?) separate from that of the White Moon. Futher, it would
imply yet another metal for the Blue Moon ('blued' steel?!), and this
might stand as a reductio ad absurdum of my theory, since it seems
a bit excessive to multiply base metals by the number of moons.
What say you?
GF out.
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From: ddunham@radiomail.net (David Dunham)
Subject: Trolls; Initiation
Message-ID: <199405100533.AA23985@radiomail.net>
Date: 10 May 94 05:33:30 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 3955
Alex said
>There's also the small detail that echos are ultrasonic, while most of
>spoken Darktongue is in the human audible range (sensible, otherwise
>speach would confuse, and be confused by, Darksense sounds). Nothing
>a bit of hardwired fast fourier transform to do frequency shifting
>wouldn't fix, I'm sure.
I was speculating that, unlike humans, trolls might be able to detect
differences in phase.
On the subject of adult initiation: I ran across some of Greg's early
unpublished notes on the Orlanthi, which implies that adult initiation is
immediately followed by cult initiation (though there was some confusion
over whether this was true initiation or lay membership). I also hasten to
add that this was old stuff, and much of it has definitely been superseded
by King of Sartar.
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From: 100270.337@CompuServe.COM (Nick Brooke)
Subject: Rune Metal Jacket
Message-ID: <940510065110_100270.337_BHL20-1@CompuServe.COM>
Date: 10 May 94 06:51:11 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 3956
God's Teeth, but I hate working too hard.
_____________________
Martin's Metal Notes:
> There are some problems with the metal rules. For one thing,
> published sources keep changing the storm gods' and lunars'
> associated metals.
Too true!
I think of Silver as the metal of Uleria (cf. its Western name), thus of
universal peace and love. The Lunars adopted this wholesale to draw the
distinction between their Empire and the preceding Dara Happan (Gold) and
Carmanian (Iron) Empires. Of course, the Theyalan Council at the Dawning
was another time of universal peace and love, and this may explain the GoG
peculiar variant (Storm/Silver): makes some sense (though not much) from a
religious standpoint for the Lunars to usurp another aspect of the Storm
element. And makes sense for both Orlanthi and Lunars to get Enchant
Silver.
Why oh why should Lodril get Enchant Aluminium? It's the metal of Water.
The only "wet" thing about Lodril is his flaming ejaculate (admittedly more
than Dayzatar or Yelm have ever possessed). I'm not sure the Western name
does refer to Lo-dril; couldn't it be Lo-rion, perhaps, or someone else
entirely? Anyoldhow, itinerant Lodrili tinkers could usefully employ
Enchant Tin... ;-)
> Why does Lhankor Mhy get Enchant Iron? Does this make sense to anybody?
> For any cult to have gotten Enchant Iron, a hero of that cult must have
> gained the secrets of iron from the dwarfs
Lhankor Mhy is a good friend of dwarfs, masons, alchemists, etc. What's
more, he Knows a heck of a lot of stuff you wouldn't expect him to. But I'd
like to see a Sage-Smith ever putting this knowledge to use...
___________
Paul wrote:
> There has been much discussion of late on Initiation... If there is
> interest I can post something longer on this topic.
YES, PLEASE!
_____________________
Peter Whitelaw wrote:
> I had thought that the SW might be treated as a Spirit Cult within the
> Lunar pantheon into which agents might be 'initiated' when they are
> selected to join but have not yet got around to working on this.
Seems eminently sensible to me. That's how I'd treat Lunar organisations of
almost any size (department, regiment, empire) so as to get the theocratic
Empire's feel across. Like, I think Citizen of the Lunar Empire is the lay
member status in the Red Emperor's cult; anyone else like that? (This Q. is
especially aimed at the Equal of the Apostles, MOB). Or is it too much a
mechanical/literal interpretation of RuneQuest's flawed cult rules?
====
Nick
====
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