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, Fri, 02 Sep 1994, part 2 Sender: Henk.Langeveld@Holland.Sun.COM Content-Return: Prohibited Precedence: junk --------------------- From: 71163.1655@compuserve.com (Erich A. Schmidt) Subject: Ping. Message-ID: <940901181713_71163.1655_DHQ38-2@CompuServe.COM> Date: 1 Sep 94 18:17:14 GMT X-RQ-ID: 6000 I am currently writing (well, rewriting actually) a tournament scenario for RQ introduction for Dragon-Con '95. The rewriting bit is that originally it was for my own RQ plane and I am currently changing it to a Gloranthan melliu while in the process of changing states. The main character is a wronged farmer who it seems would be a priest of Barntar. So, as people are mulling over the status of Vinga's cult does anyone have suggestions for Barntar? I figure that he should give Bless Crops, Command Oxen, and Sanctify Brewing Kit or other appropriatly named spell. (Summon Brruuupt?) Command Oxen would work on one ox, or a properly yoked team. Any suggestions will be appreciated. Would the gentleman with the Vivamort/Thanatar cults (Ian?) please send me a copy. Herr Cheng, I will be asking for one of your Compendiums when I return to my NY address. It is so pleasurable to read Gibson with Vivaldi playing in the background. We've done enough with switching Peters and Davids, I think that we should make our own Greg.... Erich A. Schmidt --------------------- From: Akira19893@aol.com Subject: Resubscribe Message-ID: <9409011422.tn132947@aol.com> Date: 1 Sep 94 18:22:57 GMT X-RQ-ID: 6001 SUBSCRIBE list akira19893@aol.com --------------------- From: pheasant@cix.compulink.co.uk (Nick Eden) Subject: Molani Message-ID:Date: 1 Sep 94 19:54:44 GMT X-RQ-ID: 6002 In-Reply-To: <9409010716.AA11519@glorantha.Holland.Sun.COM> For the next issue of my fanzine I'm developing a Molani cult. The central idea is that she is a wonderful noble self sacrificing goddess who sacrificed her chastity to Yelm, her people's enemy, so that Yelm and Orlanth would have something in common. Naturally Yelm, being noble, recognises that she is a worthwhile member of the Storm gods and takes her as his wife instead of his concuibine. When her son is born Daga is a wonderful god, combining sun and clam air to make a harvest god, a corn king if you like. Orlanth, not being noble, is bitterly jeleous (if he hadn't been so arrogant he could have been the corn king himself) and steals all of Daga's fertility powers and gave them to Barntar and Heler, and finally locks his nephew up in a box and uses him as a bogey man. Naturally this isn't the way the story is traditionally told in Dragon Pass. This is the Molani that the Lunar missionaries tell the people about in captured lands. Up to the foundation of this cult, about 100-200 years ago, as a means of annoying the Orlanthi that the Lunars were competing with to the south, I don't think that Molani would have been worshiped in any way. Originally she's only a metaphor, but the nature of Glorantha is that metaphors sometimes acheive a live of their own. --------------------- From: igorlick@bnr.ca (ian i. gorlick) Subject: Vinga, Bless Earth, Hyenas Message-ID: <_7707_Thu_Sep__1_18:28:28_1994_@bnr.ca> Date: 1 Sep 94 14:28:00 GMT X-RQ-ID: 6003 THIS IS ALISON PLACE, NOT IAN GORLICK. Vinga: To Lewis Jardine (5943): Thank you for the compliments on Cloak of Snakes. I was petrified giving it, let me tell you! Although I agree with most of what you write about Vinga, I would picture her in a somewhat different light, of course. For instance, I don't think that Vinga would be scared to marry if she met a man who pleased her sufficiently. He would just have to take her as she is, with a propensity for independence, self-reliance and doing what she thinks fit for her. I am not sure what you think intuition is. I consider it to be a subconscious summation of cues that lead one to a sudden conclusion without puzzling out the intermediate steps. It can be overwhelmingly wrong, but it isn't connected with any ability to have offspring. Are you picturing fertility as including a fertile mind, one that brims over with ideas? If so, that is novel, and I shall have to think about it. To Bryan Maloney (5953): I don't know of any evidence that Vinga is Orlanth's daughter, and for you to play her as his sister sounds great. When I was trying to come up with an Orlanthi myth, I was using King of Sartar to give me ideas, and there was Kallyr Starbrow, a follower of Vinga. I knew that Kallyr tried the Lightbringer's Quest, which meant to me that Vinga had to be closely related to Orlanth. There were three other references to Vinga, all of them vague. This left me with a goddess who was undefined, except that she was followed by women who wished for a warrior's life, and therefore I tried a coming-of-age story about her. Now that I have started thinking of her in this way, I probably shan't stop, but unless someone else with more information than either of us can point to something in print, neither of us is wrong. If you do have anything more on her than that, or you have written stuff, I would very much like an e-mail on it. Likewise to Lewis. Bless Earth To Bryan again: Also, you play a more bitter Genertela than I do. I don't know where it is written that crops in Genertela will fail without this spell. If it is official, and not just the assumption of various subscribers that Genert's death doomed the whole of Genertela, could you please cite the reference? We play that Prax and the Wastes, where Genert's Garden used to be, may have been that badly affected, but not the rest of the continent. While I agree that crops fail often there because it is a marginal land, I don't think that they are doomed to failure without Bless Crops. I think of this spell as a prudent insurance policy. The given area is quite generous, considering that it is calculated in time. A day-long rune spell is quite something, as I think that the spell implies that it can only be cast while doing the day's plowing (or something similar). No, I'm not trying to force anyone to figure out all the stuff that I mentioned in that posting (5909), but anyone who is curious, (and many people were discussing it) might actually like to know one place to check some of this out. As for being anally retentive (I think that I was included in that), you should see the habitual state of my house! A pedantic and didactic hairsplitter, yes (like many on this daily), but not a neat freak! My mother still lives in hope, though. To reply to Alex Ferguson (5956), our festival ended up on Aldrya's day in a roundabout way. Ian mixed up Bless Crops, or Bless Earth, or whatever it's called, with Sunripen, which must be cast on that day. I think that I'd still keep it there, if possible, because Voria=virginity as well as spring, and that just isn't what we want from our crops and flocks! I'm sure that there is another festival for Voria, too, but much less lewd. Hyaenas: in reply to Loren Miller (5947) and Pam Carlson (5949) Actually, Loren, it was Alison Place who wrote. My husband put a more definite disclaimer than usual on that message, because he didn't want anyone to think that he has strange dreams like that! However, your point about broo is well taken. I have thought of them more as a bastard tribe of Prax because they are sentient (they are occasionally hired or sought as allies in the intertribal strife), but many are probably closer to fixed-INT animals, and they are definitely way above the nuisance level. Concerning other, smaller, carnivores, I assume that there are plenty, including all the ones you mention, Pam. I particularly like meerkats, myself, since I've seen them on TV and watched them in the zoo. Hyaenas are actually viverroids, themselves. Your comment about their evolution sent me to one of my favourite references, Mammal Evolution: An Illustrated Guide, by Savage and Long (honestly!). It seems that among the carnivores the canids are on one branch, along with bears, raccoons and eared seals, while hyaenas, civets and mongooses, and the cats come off another, with Viverridae being the sister group to Hyaenidae. Sorry about the pedantry, but taxonomy is something that really interests me. As for really big raptors, I don't think so. There are the condors of Condor Crag, which are large enough to bear a human, but they aren't predatory. One of the Borderlands scenarios involved climbing one of the crags to grab some eggs. It seems that one of the tribal rulers in Balazar was jealous of his Yelmalion neighbour's huge hawks. These he had found while heroquesting, so I don't think that they are available anywhere else. I like the sound of your white bison trek. By the time your fellows find AND free him, will they all be greybeards? It sounds as if you could spin this out forever. bye, Alison --------------------- From: gadbois@cs.utexas.edu (David Gadbois) Subject: The Dara Happan Monomyth Message-ID: <19940901222952.1.GADBOIS@CLIO.MCC.COM> Date: 1 Sep 94 12:29:00 GMT X-RQ-ID: 6004 From: SMITHH@A1.MGH.HARVARD.EDU (Harald Smith 617 726-2172) Date: 31 Aug 94 05:28:00 GMT X-RQ-ID: 5973 But if the tripolis had a unified mythos already, why would this be needed? So...my thought is that the tripolis did not have a unified mythos, that each city and its surrounding area had its own unique mythos that Plentonius merged together. Wow, that makes a lot of sense. It's just the sort of trick Greg would pull, too. Another piece of possibly supporting evidence: Each of the Ten Tests apparently came from one of the original ten Dara Happan cities, indicating a much more federated empire than one is led to believe by Plentonius. It would also go a long way to explain the multiple flood myths and the confusion over which sun god is in the sky when. On the other hand, the Seshnegi at the Dawn did recognize Yelm as the Sun, which leads me to think that maybe Plentonius' multiplicity of suns is a ReAscent deconstruction to explain the lack of the sovereign aspect in post-Dawn Dara Happa. --David Gadbois --------------------- From: Argrath@aol.com Subject: Mostly Morokanth Message-ID: <9409012205.tn163372@aol.com> Date: 2 Sep 94 02:05:39 GMT X-RQ-ID: 6005 Re: Morokanth Thanks to all who replied on the subject of "How come the Morokanth aren't extinct?" I'd elaborate on a couple suggestions: Terrain. Prairie Dog warrens might prove a resort if better terrain is not available. I agree with Sandy that bogs and cliffs are good for the Morokanth & herdmen, even though they have to fight broos in the former and cliff toads and the occasional Ostrich Rider in the latter. Ian pointed out the advantages of rocky ground and prepared positions. I would hope that broken or rocky ground would be fairly common in Prax, so as to provide an amount of area which befits one of the Five Great Tribes. Shields. I think I'll save this for circumstances where the Morokanth expect to be in smooth terrain, such as with the slaver party several people seem to have encountered. Not all Morokanth can afford a bronze or even wooden shield, getting by with just a hide shield (rhino is best, but has to be bought) or a tanned herdman skin and bone shield (gives new meaning to "skin and bones," doesn't it?). A herdman normally carries this, and may even deploy it in battle. Limitations on Missiles. Sandy mentioned the historical facts from Western warfare, though a better analogy would be Mongol hordes or Plains Indians (who, in the movies, used a lot of arrows). Joerg mentioned the time & rarity factors in making arrows, both very valid points. Fear of Becoming a Herdman. Pam Carlson makes this very valid point. Digging. I would add to the suggestions of others that Morokanth, given no better options, dig trenches. They're fairly well equipped for that, and the herdmen might be trained to help. This provides cover from arrows and (equally important) obstacles for charging lancers. Dig a couple rows of trenches close together, plus a few little pits for stumbling into, and you deter charging foes. I found the ecological basis which Sandy Petersen provided convincing and fun. ---===--- Re: Praxian animals Another large predator is the lionbird, which I think I already uploaded to this forum. If not, let me know, and I'll send it. Or if I did, and anybody missed it, I'll send it by email. I vote for coyotes as the canids of the plains, partly because they're smart and fast-breeding and partly because they provide another trickster spirit (see below). Speaking of coyotes, I'd bet that Praxians like to have a few High Llamas around in their herds to protect the other animals--especially the impala and sable deer, which are prey for coyotes even when full-grown. As has been mentioned in various magazine and newspaper articles I've seen, llamas have no fear of coyotes (or wild dogs or bears, for that matter) and happily take charge of herds of sheep to protect them. ---===--- Re: native Praxian tricksters Jonas asks if there are any Trickster worshippers in Prax. Aside from Raven cultists, there are Hyena folks. I'd vote for a native Trickster tradition, simply on the basis of Maximum Gloranthan Fun and some (admittedly vague) idea of historical analogues. On the other hand, if one of the "trickster" traditions is of the backwards warriors--watch out! ---===--- Harald-- Bravo on your "heresy." Yelm is a composite, and his Glorious ReAscent is really the rise of a self-ruled Dara Happa with a unified mythos (most likely as a result of a unified cult). [Comment about a certain famous god of our world who is a composite from different traditions deleted in the interests of A) not getting flamed and B) not offending people.] --Martin --------------------- From: ddunham@radiomail.net (David Dunham) Subject: Hsunchen Message-ID: <199409020700.AA27122@radiomail.net> Date: 2 Sep 94 07:00:20 GMT X-RQ-ID: 6006 ian i. gorlick said >Moose hsunchen should be regarded as somewhat more excitable than Storm >Bull berserkers with even less concern for personal safety. This raises the question of whether hsunchen are just like their totems. I think not. They do bear many resemblences, but they are first and foremost people, and secondly omnivorous hunter-gatherers. Moose are neither.