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, 18 Jul 1994, part 2
Sender: Henk.Langeveld@Holland.Sun.COM
Content-Return: Prohibited
Precedence: junk
---------------------
From: DevinC@aol.com
Subject: Re: RuneQuest Daily, Sat, 16 Jul 1994, part 1
Message-ID: <9407160516.tn494541@aol.com>
Date: 16 Jul 94 09:16:21 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 5182
Devin Cutler here:
Scott asks:
"Arg. Well, Joerg's Firshala example has prompted me to ask you all:
What have *you* done with Firshala?
I'm curious as to what your fertile little minds came up with in the
course of campaigning in the Elder Wilds. Feel free to reply by
E-mail if you don't wish to clutter up the daily."
The PC's found and freed Firshala and took her stone chips. They refused to
become her worshippers, however, wanting to remain loyal to their gods.
What was interesting was that the players kept forgetting that they had this
great DI available, and about half the party was captured or killed on two
occasions and the person with the stone chip would forget to use the stone
until it was too late. The other players really got on him about this, and
finally, the chip was used to good effect (I believe it helped free King Raus
of New Rone from possession by Muriah's spirit.
Regards,
Devin Cutler
devinc@aol.com
---------------------
From: joe@sartar.toppoint.de (Joerg Baumgartner)
Subject: Cheating access to spirit magic
Message-ID:
Date: 16 Jul 94 15:03:10 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 5183
> "Fine. To make the Control spell effective, you first have to bring the
> spirit in question to Zero MP, however. How it should initiate spirit
> combat in that condition is beyond me."
> Nope. Rememebr, I play that the Control Spirit spell allows one to initiate
> combat. I.e. it is cast at the commencement of spirit combat, and require
> sthat you beat the spirit down to zero MP before the Control Spell runs out.
You still don't get my point, it seems. Only the character who casts
Control Spirit can enter spirit combat with the summoned spell spirit.
This makes Control Spell Spirit the requisitive spell for learning any
spirit magic the cheating way - if you don't have it, no spirit combat
with the summoned entity.
Plus: I would only allow the summoning character to initiate spirit
combat via the control spell (a severe bending of existing rules in
itself), and the priest of your shrine already knows the spell; all
others don't know the spirit's true name.
> "They cannot do anything with the possessed body, and are as unhappy about
> this state as is the victim. Which is why they usually don't attack in
> spirit combat..."
> Amounts to the same thing pretty much.
The difference is that they possess the body, cannot even control the
most basic activites, and the body falls into catatonia.
--
-- Joerg Baumgartner joe@sartar.toppoint.de
---------------------
From: joe@sartar.toppoint.de (Joerg Baumgartner)
Subject: GMing Disease
Message-ID:
Date: 16 Jul 94 15:03:23 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 5184
[I said that to let diseased characters rest unmolested was a GM decision
to make disease harmless.]
> The problem with this approach is that experienced players can easily see
> through this.
> "Oh no, Reginald the Thief has caught Soul Waste. If we rest here, Devin will
> attack us with monsters or something."
> Your approach works the first time or two, then gets old.
How so? Rest is a standard situation for unbidden interaction with beasts
of all sorts - how often did you as GM attack the party resting for the
night? The longer the party remains stationary, the more likely all kind
of nasties will harrass them, beginning with ants and mosquitos
smelling a picknick, and building up so that after a while every hunter
worth his furs will notice their preence even without them using a fire.
Being "attacked" is the standard situation out in the wilds. Getting rest
is an exception, at least if tried over more than 8 hours.
> "Agreed, this is illogical. Simple fix: a succeeding roll just lessens
> severity of the disease by one level."
> Better fix: You roll once per day to shake off any and all diseases. Let's
> make a terminal disease live up to its name.
This still makes me one day shaking with fever, the next day as fit as
I'm going to become without magical intervention.
> "Again, GM decision to let the characters go off lightly. Why do you
> complain in the first hand, if you don't want to make disease a problem?"
> I complain because I don't want to have to go through these hoops and
> gyrations to make disease a thing of dread. Why attack the problem,
> indirectly by making the GM have to throw extra encounters, et al at the
> party? Just fix the disease rules. Simple.
I'm not talking about extra encounters, I'm talking about the difference
a normally annoying single jackal makes to a fit adventurer trying to get
sleep compared to a diseased character unable to fend off a nibble or two.
These harrassments happen all the time, but to the diseased they matter.
I simply think that CON*3 is the standard roll for disease recovery for
a normal disease, under normal conditions. If your players think otherwise
and try to rules lawyer you, don't let them, and play out how their
chances sink with every single horse-fly bite to CON*1. Afterwards,
they'll believe you with CON*3...
--
-- Joerg Baumgartner joe@sartar.toppoint.de
---------------------
From: joe@sartar.toppoint.de (Joerg Baumgartner)
Subject: Tarsh
Message-ID:
Date: 16 Jul 94 15:38:01 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 5186
Has anybody else experienced a serious lack of geographical information
on Lunar Tarsh and the other southern provinces?
As a prime example:
Where in Lunar Tarsh is the Sun Dome Temple located? I'd assume it is
off the map of the Dragon Pass game board.
The most likely position IMO would be where the Home of the Bold map of
Dragon Pass misplaced Filichet, i.e. about north of the centre of the
Hydra Mountains.
Filichet is found between the Oslir and the Black Eel River, apparently
not in contact to either. Not two maps agree about the course of these
two rivers in the northern end of the Dragon Pass region, I assume the
maps from Genertela Book to be the most true. The map of the Lunar
Empire from the 2nd Ed WBRM for instance shows the Oslir/Jaldon's Wrong
River to flow right through a mountain range, and the Genertela map
from G:G fails to show the Black Eel River almost completely, replacing
it by two obscure eastbound tributaries - one where the Black Eel River
should join the Oslir at Mirin's Cross, the other one south of
Filichet, where no river can be wthout crossing the Black Eel River, a
geographic feature not even Glorantha sports. I think the river was
intended as the tributary of the Black Eel River shown in Griffin
Mountain. Lacking the Black Eel River, it was erroneously made a
tributary of the Oslir.
Apart from Filichet and Mirin's Cross we know little about Holay.
Fyllich Kwan lies about half way between these two cities, and Eneal
lies on the Aggar bank of either the Oslir or its tributary coming from
Aggar.
Lunar Tarsh extends a bit further to the west north of the Hydra
Mountains, and to the northeast along the Black Eel River. I'd estimate
that only 60% of Lunar Tarshite territory is shown on the Dragon Pass
gameboard, but that the border to Holay is not too far from the
northeastern corner of the gameboard.
This leaves it to whoever undertakes the task to do something about
Tarsh to fill in lots of villages and towns, and other geographic
features as well.
Decent maps of the southern Lunar provinces are scarce in official
publications. The Dorastor map becomes very general east of Thubana,
and fails to show already Cafol in Sylila, which woulf be found about
at the wind rose. Massassakar in Aggar would be about at the position
of "Tobros" in the legend of the profile, would the map continue there.
The Autumn Mountains north of Aggar were left unnamed.
The mapboard of Dragon Pass shows only two stockades in Lunar Tarsh,
Copper Town northeast of the Hydra Hills and Borni's Landing (called
Gardini in the KoS map) on the Black Eel River. Sartar with its much
thinner populace (about a third of Tarsh) sports about a dozen
stockades...
Griffin Mountain provides us with another stockade on the border to
Balazar, Tarshford.
Does anybody have more details, official or about-to-become-official
versions preferred?
--
-- Joerg Baumgartner joe@sartar.toppoint.de
---------------------
From: joe@sartar.toppoint.de (Joerg Baumgartner)
Subject: Re: Loskalmi and Time
Message-ID:
Date: 16 Jul 94 15:38:16 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 5187
Alex in X-RQ-ID: 5174
Ales asked where Hrestoli ruled over Orlanthi. I gave some examples.
> All "old" Hrestoli, which is _not_ what I asked about. "New" idealism
> dates from during the ban, so it's spread beyond Loskalm and Junora is
> likely to be very limited, to date. You referred to Loskalmi adventurers
> in the rest of Fronela, it was they I was inviting expoundment upon.
Ok. "Loskalm led in the exploration of new Fronela and its knights were
instrumental in the lifting of the Ban." This seems to indicate that the
Ban thawed where Loskalmi knights proceeded, i.e. Junora, Oranor and
Gharkor, to begin with, and Jonatela. Both Junora and Oranor have Orlanthi
peasantry, and Junora has been (force-?) converted to the new idealism on
the Loskalmi border at least. Jonatela has old-time Hrestolism paired with
Orlanthi peasantry, and this dichotomy will certainly one of the subjects
at HtWW1. I suggest we await the results of the Seventh Malkioni Council...
A>> There is? Who, the Jonatings? I'm not convinced they are "Hrestoli" in
A>> any sense other than not being Rokari.
>> See above, except for Wexten. The form of Hrestolism I call Linealist,
>> which dominated throughout 1st and 2nd Age Seshnela.
> I've no idea if your term is accept(ed|able), but at any rate, we certainly
> _do_ need to distinguish between these two forms, and not just call them
> both Hrestolism (as you blithely did in the original).
Both are Hrestolism, although the Loskalmi version might as well be
called Siglatism. Maybe we'll canonize Siglat at HtWW1?
Time:
J>> Yes, especially the moment at 0 YT. In Godtime.
A>> Eh, yeah, that's the "year" I'm talking about. Didn't I just say that?
>> Already in Godtime there were days. In my reply to Nils I speculated about
>> their nature.
> There were days before 0YS? I doubt it. No sun, no days, in my book. Call
> this excessive reductionism if you will. If you mean before 0 _ST_ (not
> the calander we were discussing, note); depends whom one asks. The DHans
> certainly reckon there were, but it's not clear that the Orlanthi do.
From the How Peace was Made myth: "The next day, when it was time to choose
whether or not to go back to the checkered battle, Orlanth did not."
(KoS p.73)
And this was after Orlanth had slain Yelm...
>> Plentonius has a whole bunch of Hill of Gold events...
> Including one where the Orb of Authority is lost, and one where it's found
> again, not obvious candidates for being identified as same original event.
Might have been one quest, with a temporal loss of the Orb. But likely
wasn't, I agree. Maybe the one-quest Hill of Gold myth is the artificial
one.
A>> Doesn't it worry you
A>> that this is entirely at odds with Theyalan beliefs on the matter, in
A>> using this as "evidence" of anything?
>> It isn't if you delve for the underlying hard info.
> The what? The hard info being, supposedly? Are you asserting that the
> Theyalans don't believe "Time began in 0ST, "before" that there was weird,
> acausal stuff", or merely that their belief can be "explained" away?
The God Time began his rule in 0 ST. Before there was time, also called the
Silver Age in Kethaelan myths, when the great heroes of the peoples like
King Heort fought for their survival, after I Fought We Won.
A>> Doesn't the GRAY history of that
A>> period look, in fact, like something of a flimsy tissue of guesswork and
A>> fabrication?
and
> Anyway, I was talking about the "timeline"
> of Yelm's (first) reign, which has nothing very specifically to do with
> the Dara Happan nation (as well as being not very specific), not GRAY as a
> whole.
The year numbers are fairly ludicruous, this much I agree. What I find
important is the fact that Plentonius says that time (not Time) began at
a certain stage in Godtime. I say he ignored the time befor the creation
of Aether from Ga; IMO Godtime time begins with the self-identification
of Styx and the subsequent birth of Zaramaka, if not with Nakala. Certainly
Larnste's meeting with the dragons at Kero Fin could have taken place
_before_ Yelm's rise, and the conflict between the dragons and Annilla's
giants did in all probability.
--
-- Joerg Baumgartner joe@sartar.toppoint.de
---------------------
From: Argrath@aol.com
Subject: Snappy subject line
Message-ID: <9407161216.tn500313@aol.com>
Date: 16 Jul 94 16:16:19 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 5188
Q: What's the difference between Rush Limbaugh and the
"Hindenburg"?
Barron Chugg:
>We already know that MPs have some flavor (if one person fills a
>power storing crystal, someone else cannot drain it), ...
Do we know this? From where? I prefer to keep people from doing
this by the method I suggested a few weeks back, where using
someone's own MP to cast a spell at them keeps them from getting
to resist it.
Devin Cutler says:
>'Tis only the beginning, dear Joerg :-)
This is dangerous, because I nearly fell out of my chair and hurt
myself when I fell asleep reading this blather from both of
y'all. Cut it out, already, or take it to private email, please.
A: One's a flaming Nazi gasbag. The other's a dirigible.
~BARL~!
--Martin
---------------------
From: paul@phyast.pitt.edu (Paul Reilly)
Subject: Re: There is trouble in the Forest
Message-ID: <9407161705.AA04923@minerva.phyast.pitt.edu>
Date: 16 Jul 94 17:05:23 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 5189
Paul Reilly here.
> Note that the Hellwood elves clearly abuse Aldrya cult
> strictures for the cult benefits, and are known to have burned large
> swatchs of woods -- about the worst crime possible to any elf. I see
> no reason that broos would be more benign than the krjalki.
Huh. When a swatch of forest is burned, some plants are harmed, others
reap various benefits. Fire is a natural part of the forest's life cycle.
Some plants breeding cycles are connected with fires (any more info on this,
anyone? Sandy?)
So I'd expect a conversation like this:
GL: What does Aldrya say about fires?
Oak Aldryami: Absolutely forbidden.
Sumac Aldryami: Of course, that's just what an Oakie WOULD say. Fire is
natural. If the Oakies suppress natural fires, it's our duty to compensate.
-----
I do picture the Hellwood elves as Sumacs and the like.
------
---------------------
From: jacobus@sonata.cc.purdue.edu (Bryan J. Maloney)
Subject: 4 4 4?
Message-ID: <9407161742.AA22807@sonata.cc.purdue.edu>
Date: 16 Jul 94 07:42:13 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 5190
"world champion" at what?
Number of Nobel Prizes awarded per year?
Lowest illiteracy rate?
Lowest infant mortality?
Lowest rate of poverty?
What incredibly important thing was being talked about, here?
---------------------
From: jacobus@sonata.cc.purdue.edu (Bryan J. Maloney)
Subject: Proof, non-proof, and sophistry
Message-ID: <9407161747.AA22839@sonata.cc.purdue.edu>
Date: 16 Jul 94 07:47:57 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 5191
Devin decides to completely evade a pointed question from me:
I asked can it be proven, 100%, objectively, that Orlanth micromanages his
religion?
Devin, since he knew he couldn't answer my question, merely asked if it
could be proven that he did not. This is a cheap, sleazy trick known as
"feebly attempting to shift burden of proof". Devin is maintaining that
Orlanth, and by implication all Gloranthan deities, micromanage their
cults. Since he made the assertion, the burden of proof lies upon him.
I NEVER stated that Orlanth does NOT micromanage his cult. I want proof
that he does. Devin made the statement "P=X". I did NOT make the statement
"P/=X". I made no assertion regarding cult micromanagement, thus, I have
no burden of proof. I was simply asking Devin to put up or shut up. Prove
to me that he is right about Orlanth and Gloranthan religion.
That's all I want, some proof. If I see some compelling proof, then I'll
agree. Otherwise, it's just like arguing whether or not Papa Smurf likes
mint or strawberry leaves more in his tea.
---------------------
From: jacobus@sonata.cc.purdue.edu (Bryan J. Maloney)
Subject: Time in Glorantha
Message-ID: <9407161758.AA22878@sonata.cc.purdue.edu>
Date: 16 Jul 94 07:58:02 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 5192
I kind of get the impression that time is a localizeable set of phenomena
in Glorantha. This is to say, were one to head out into the Wastes for "many
seasons", it might not be too implausible to return to "civilization" and
have more "years" pass than one thought had passed. The situations might
be similar in Brithos and Teshnos. For all we know, Luatha might be
effectively timeless (so slow as to appear motionless without careful
observation).
---------------------
From: 100270.337@compuserve.com (Nick Brooke)
Subject: Pure Ones
Message-ID: <940716185501_100270.337_BHL73-1@CompuServe.COM>
Date: 16 Jul 94 18:55:01 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 5193
______
Andre:
> Well, if the Pure Ones aren't Telmori at all, what are they? Illuminated
> Telmori? That would be a nice explanation for being not cursed...
No, it'd be a flawed explanation, opening a can of worms. You see, when
Talor cursed the Telmori, it was because they were allied to Nysalor as a
nation, and using his Illuminated powers to enhance their wolfishness. So,
if Talor's Curse didn't work on the ones he was trying to punish (but gave
all the *innocent* Telmori a Chaos Taint), it'd be one of the Great Ironies
of Gloranthan History. It's never been signposted as such...
(Actually, it would work quite well. Wait until Wildday Sunset, or whatever
time the Curse hits, and then target all the ones still in human form with
SunSpears or LightLances or whatever destructive ranged magic Talor and his
friends could muster. Nah, too silly...).
_____
Bryan asked Devin a
> Question: What evidence is there that Orlanth personally manages every
> aspect of his cult?
None. There is evidence that in some regions the Orlanth "Cult" is divided
against itself. Cf. WF#13, "Orlanth Pantheon", coming soon in reprint from
the Reaching Moon Megacorp.
_______
Cullen:
> How about a full body baptism/bath arragement? I doubt those barbarians
> take regular baths.... I wonder if they have superstitions about taking
> the bath (of Nelat)?
Aha! At Sacred Time in Greydog Village, we do the Fires of Ehilm instead
(jumping over the bonfire); the chieftains gave up on annual hot baths a
long time ago (far too dangerous!). Cf. King of Sartar.
______
Joerg:
> I doubt he will listen into all conversation. According to the
compromise,
> he mustn't, carrying sound is something which happens, within his area
> of influence, but without his direct involvement.
Wind Words implies that he'll hear those sounds which are of particular
interest to him, and ignore the others. Greg's old suggestion for "passive
castings" of Wind Words remains highly tempting...
_____
Dave:
> I tend towards the idea that the Runes actual shapes are descended from
> Western, which is probably an ideographic writing form like Kanji
> (several different spoken languages share one written form, the only
> earth equivalent as far as I know being Kanji).
What about Latin? Which was the written form of French, Provencal, Italian
and Spanish (inter alia) until they developed their own scripts. I find it
more convenient to assume the language of Brithos is "equivalent to" pure
Classical Latin in everyday use; the other Western spoken tongues are then
like "degenerate" Romance languages, closely related to one another and to
the root language. And, like pre-Dante Italy, the language of the common
folk isn't written down (or would look to anyone like a grotesquely corrupt
form of proper writing); the Wise write in pure Brithini, the book-language
of the learned.
(One of my loose ideas is that a written form of Safelstran is gaining
ground in some Ralian city-states: knowledge can be written down in the
tongue of the people! A very dangerous novelty...)
Jrusteli taxonomic classifications are in Latin, and come from the West...
====
Nick
====