Bell Digest v940907p2

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To: RuneQuest@Glorantha.Holland.Sun.COM (Daily automated RQ-Digest)
Reply-To: RuneQuest@Glorantha.Holland.Sun.COM (RuneQuest Daily)
Subject: RuneQuest Daily, Wed, 07 Sep 1994, part 2
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From: CHEN190@csc.canterbury.ac.nz (Peter Metcalfe, CAPE Canty)
Subject: The Blue Wizard vents his spleen...
Message-ID: <01HGT7MT5L6QFGVYV5@csc.canterbury.ac.nz>
Date: 7 Sep 94 12:20:17 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 6074

Big Posting today even without Henk's slipups.

Nils Weinander 
==============

>>worshipping their avatars (Ehilm in KoL, Murharzarm in Dara Happa, Victorious 
>>Zenith in Bliss in Ignorance and perhaps Solf in Teshnos - Nils?).
                                           ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

>Actually it's Somash, Solf is the Teshnans debased version of Lodril.
>Anyway, it's a nice idea, which would explain why there are so many sun
>gods with so many names. I think I'll use it from now, and add Yang Long/
>Yang Ti in my version of Kralorela.

Mel culpae!  I always keep getting the two confused!  Who are Yang Long/Yang Ti
and where do they come from?

>OK, that's plausible, but back to the wind children of Storm walk mountains.
>They have feathered wings like a bird, yet they are storm creatures. Is there
>some wind child mythology which explains whence they came?

Blasphemous crossbreed of men and sylph is all I know.  Probably a Dara Happan
Source. 

Martin wrote

>I said:
>>>Gigantism is common on islands.  Dunno anything about the 
>>>Shetlands--maybe the first settlers wiped out any gigantic
>>>fauna, as the Maori did to the Moa.   

>Peter ("Not Whitelaw") Metcalfe replied
>>I hate to be a pedant here.  

>     Come clean: you love it.

Alright, I attend Pedants anonymous meetings...

>>The Moa we show to naive foreigners the great big one died out 
>>some time before the Maoris came.  The ones that the maoris 
>>exterminated were somewhat smaller and you would have been 
>>lucky if it reached your shoulder.  

>     If that's what you Kiwis think lucky is, what's unlucky?

Swimming the Cook Strait and meeting a 10m long squid.

>>Also take back your vile implication that islands of New Zealand
>>is comparable to the Shetlands.  The two main islands are more 
>>on the scale of the British isles and much more pleasant. 

>    No, no, I was just rummaging around my brain for an example
>of a gigantic form of an animal on an island that I could cite
>with some authoritativeness (apparently not much, though).  There
>were also gigantic fauna on some Mediterranean islands in like
>the second millennium B.C., but since I can't remember where I
>read about them, I didn't mention them the first go-round.  The
>best-known example of island gigantism is probably the tortoises
>of the Galapagos Islands.  The Galapagos also have a giant marine
>iguana (there's a lovely book called _The Flight of the Iguana_
>the cover of which shows Charles Darwin tossing a frightened-
>looking iguana into the water; these animals have no terrestrial
>predators, so they always swim directly back to shore, where Darwin stood,
>ready to toss them back in again; ah, Science).

Note all these examples are *cold blooded animals* like the dragons that
inhabit the Komodos.  Discover did an excellent treatment on why this was so
some time back.  I doubt that Warm blooded animals would exhibit gigantism on a
small windswept island.  Otherwise Falklands Sheep would be the size of wooly
mammoths...

>     As for the "much more pleasant" bit, I wouldn't know.  I'd
>like to get there some day and have a look, possibly when the
>fascists complete their takeover of the U.S. government.  (What's
>your political refugee policy?)

Immigration are a bunch of Arseholes, I'm afraid.  If you land in New Zealand
without a passport and or visa and claim asylum, they try and send you back
thinking you're another immigrant wannabe.  Best bet is to have useful skills
or lots of money.

Nick Brookes (my old nemesis)

>____________________
>The Golden Metcalfe:

Shouldn't that be the Blue Peter?

>> I think Naveria is actually the wife of Yelm.  Given that Dendara is the
>> bright face of the Earth brightened by Yelm (and Gorgorma is the dark
>> face - look at the moon for what I describing), Dendara would be the
>> daughter of Yelm and when Yelm married her in Naveria (IMO this explains
>> why the land goddess Naveria is seen as the marriage aspect of Dendara)
>> this would fit the myth.

>"Faces" of the Earth? Dendara as Yelm's daughter? What on Glorantha is this 
>man saying?

>Unless you are a devotee of the Max Muller school of myth-interpretation, 
>there's nothing explicitly "Solar" in the Red King's story. The popular 
>identification of the Red King with a (or *any*) Dara Happan emperor is a 
>figment of the Net. Find one who fits the myth.

I'm sorry.  I only heard about the red king myth on the net and nothing
indicated to me that he was red.  He sounded Solar so I assumed and...

>> I should really explain my earlier posting and state that my belief is
>> that the Dara Happan cult of Yelm is actually worshipping the Sun through
>> the paths of Murharzarm.

>Perhaps the Dara Happan for "Yelm Imperator" is "Yelm Murharzarm"?

Could be...

>> In many ways this begins to parallel all the stories of the creation of
>> man I have seen.  The Galanin are descended from Lofak, the Jenarong are
>> from Dara Happa whereas the Hyalorings are from Genert's wasted land.
>> Are there any other sources of horse that we don't know about?

>REALLY BIG warhorses arrived in Peloria with the Carmanians. These may have 
>been descended/bred/improved from original Galanini non-Solar equine stock. 
>Another of the Really Scary Things about Carmanian cavalry...

Persian analogies strike again.  Would the Gloranthan analogue of a Parting
shot (corrupted from Parthian shot) be a 'Carping shot'?

>{Positively Nysalorian theory of truth expounded}

>Confusing, eh? Then again, the inevitable plurality of Truth (even the 
>Truth Rune itself!) is described in one of the oldest Gloranthan myths, 
>"Uleria and the Boggles".

I prefer to go by the tried and true method of higher criticism and assume that
what they wrote was what they thought was truth and try and identify any 
distortion that may have occured and in the manuscript copies.

__Peter Metcalfe

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From: CHEN190@csc.canterbury.ac.nz (Peter Metcalfe, CAPE Canty)
Subject: ...and Joerg.
Message-ID: <01HGTAFJ0542FGVYV5@csc.canterbury.ac.nz>
Date: 7 Sep 94 13:40:18 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 6077

Joerg Writes
============
>> My attempts at exigesis make me think that Minaryths history is more acurate
>> than the history in the CHDP.  He was writing from year to year on the most
>> important thing that happened that year.

>Not necessarily. IMO he collected his memories and connected each event or 
>cluster of events to a date. In doing so, he might have associated events 
>that occured in one season to one entry, but events three seasons apart 
>can well be confused with events in separate years, especially if viewed 
>in hindsight.

He gets the pre 1625 dates that can be identified pretty well enough.

>> 2) Neither Moraides, Sartar nor Tarkalor were ever Kings of Dragon Pass.

>I have tried to convince Peter in private that this is nonsense, but 
>I'd appreciate some help by others doing so in private.

Pleading for reinforcements, Joerg?

>> 3) Illaro died in attempting to become the King of Dragon pass. As a result 
>>    in tarsh, Coitus interruptus is known as Illaroism.

>Illaro died as part of the seven-year-king ritual introduced by the 
>bloody earth cult of Old Tarsh. Their cult seems to combine worship 
>of Maran Gor and Kero Fin in that they use the destructive earth aspects 
>of Maran Gor in battle, yet they also receive fertility from this worship 
>through the sacrifice of their sacred kings _or their challengers_. 

Ovartien did not rule for a multiple of seven years and neither does Illaro
blacktooth.  Sorana Tor is incarnated in 1455 and Ilaro marries her.  He dies
15 years later.  Tastinum the only other person of the Ilaro dynasty to rule
precisely seven years, is stated as being killed by Telmori who do not worship
Maran Gor/Kero Fin or figure in any of her mythology.  

>> 4) Any idea that the Ilaro dynasty of Tarsh practiced a sacrifical reign of
>>    seven years is complete crap.  For an idea of what really happened, 
>>    calculate how old Marofdul must have been at the time of his fathers death.

>Since we have no date of birth, and marriage among Orlanthi occurs between 
>age 15 and age 20, Marofdul could have been just 18 years younger than his 
>father.

Sorana Tor was incarnated in 1455 in page 122 of KoS.  She then married Ilaro
Blacktooth.  Tastinum is stated as being an offspring of her thus being born in
1456 ST.  This means that he would have been of the marriagable age in 1470 ST
which places a limit (and quite a low one) on Marofduls age.

>> 5) Part six of the Argrath Saga is actually a fusion of two seperate phases. 
>>    One pulls down the Red Moon and the other is connected to another fragment 
>>    in the book.  Ask yourself this:  Why does Argrath send for help from the 
>>    six directions when His gods are already walking with him?

>To reenact the monster-slaying quest, in which the Storm gods always 
>summoned help from all directions.

But he gets heros from that when he has gods walking by his side...And also how
does Joerg fit in the *other* document then, given that Two difeerent
resolutions are described.

>> 6)The Feathered Queen of the Kerofini temple is not the same as the feathered
>>   horse queen.  To become King of Dragon Pass does not entail marrying them.

>Another bit of wild speculation I try to hammer out of Peter's mailings. 
>The Kero Fin temple would not have a _feathered_ queen. 

Page 127 of KoS under King Moraides

"Emboldened by his vision of his Kingdom, Moraides set out to improve it even
more by marrying the *Feathered Queen of the Kerrofini Temple*."

You were saying Joerg?

>Peter seems to 
>ignore p.113 of KoS, where it is stated that the leader of the Grazer 
>wives' cult (La-ungariant in her aspect as horse, i.e. Arandayla) went 
>deep into the earth and returned with powers alien to the Solar horse 
>people. 

given that deep into the earth carries connotactions of Sexual intercourse and
Lodrilism, this could have just been a slur cast by a chronicler which was
picked up and recited as fact.

p227 merely sees she dicovered her sisters.

>These powers were the powers of Kero Fin, whose avatar the 
>Feathered Horse Queen had become in her heroquest. The former avatar, 
>Sorana Tor, had been changed to Maran Gor and could no longer grant 
>the fertility of the kingdom after Hon-eel had stolen these powers for 
>the Lunars.

La-ungariant is the wife of the sun and she is associated with horses not earth
worship.  Furthermore if Sorana Tor or her successor is now the incarnation of
Maran Gor why then does Moraides manage to marry her?

>> 7)  Argrath had nothing to do with the Awakening of the Brown Dragon.

>>By Argrath, I mean Argrath Venharlson who later became Prince Argrath in 1631
>>ST.

>This includes two statements of Peter: the first statement he makes is 
>that Argrath wasn't one of the seven dancers. Given that Argrath has 
>a reputation to be a dragonfriend, and versed in EWF magics, he would be 
>a likely candidate to participate in this ritual. 

EWF magics, demonstrated by the summoning of wyverns at Corflu.  [Serious
sarcasm here to those who do not have the cradle adventure.]  The knowledge to
awaken the brown dragon was amply provided by Oralont Dragonman.  Why then is
Argarth not mentioned?

>As CHDP says, some of 
>them prayed (e.g. Minaryth Purple), some of them concentrated (Orlaront), 
>and some of them killed. Garrath Sharpsword of Pavis seems the ideal 
>candidate for the latter category.

So could plenty of other people.

>However, Peter goes even further and denies any friendly connection 
>between Argrath and both Minaryth and Orlaront prior to his enthronement. 
>Peter argues that Minaryth was known as a staunch supporter of Kallyr in 
>the 1613 rebellion, and that both Minaryth and Orlaront are mentioned 
>as Kallyr's companions in the 1625 short LBQ.

>IMO this only indicates that both Minaryth and Orlaront are good Sartarite 
>patriots who lend a hand to whoever tries to free the land.

Minaryth has never been cited as one of Argrath's companions in his quests.

It's just that Argrath had the shit kicked out of him by tatius's demon which
makes me severely doubt that he particpated in the Brown Dragon Quest.
-- 
--  Joerg Baumgartner   joe@sartar.toppoint.de

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From: joe@sartar.toppoint.de (Joerg Baumgartner)
Subject: Trade notes
Message-ID: 
Date: 6 Sep 94 06:43:39 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 6068

Martin Crim comments & quibbles on Gerald's Trade Notes in X-RQ-ID: 6043

>      Take the Gemborg dwarves as an example.  Obviously, they're
> Openhandists, to be dealing with humans at all--or are they?. 

They are documented as the only part of the Decamony to maintain 
friendly ties to the declared apostates of Greatway and surrounding 
areas during the Second Council and Nysalor's reign in Kethaela. 
IMO this makes them quite openhanded for that era. Since dwarves are 
long-lived and stubborn, they still might be.

> They could pursue some other policy, not yet a heresy.  What do
> they want from humans, and why?



>      Gerald mentions trollish products at a couple of places. 

> Silk, I'd wager, though not as fine as the Kralorelan variety.

Spider silk, possibly, for ropes and working cloth (sails, God 
Forgot parachutes...)

> Gems, as one would expect
> from a subterranean race, and they would not value visually-
> beautiful gems as much as humans would.  Insect products aside
> from silk could include carapaces, honey, royal jelly, acids, ham
> beetles ("taste like chicken"), and paper (from wasps).  There
> are also fungus products, like the black elf potions.

I doubt that the trolls trade much foodstuff (gems included) away, 
except in exchange for more or tastier foodstuff. Troll-human trade seems 
to be a risky business to both sides involved, and Dagori Inkarth is as 
backwater for traders as is Prax. Adari and Pavis are the main trade 
centres for the whole region. Kethaela and Ralios might have more 
regular trade contacts. In the Lunar Empire, trade with trolls would 
occur more civilized, too. Ignorance probably buys trollkin regularly 
from Koromondol.

>      I think the Praxians export herd beasts, almost always those
> which have been captured in raids.

Plus the weakest of their own type of beast, to keep the herds healthy.

>      Maniria: is this really the third richest area in Genertela,
> ahead of Fronela and Seshnela?  Is that based on total GNP,
> median family wealth, or what?

If there is any unit able to measure wealth, it would be the Lunar 
"Taxable Wealth Before Exemptions", which would include nobles' property, 
privileges etc which usually aren't taxed. To compare populations, TWBE 
could be divided by head count, although there still is the question 
which heads to count. If the Lunar slave population or the Ramalian, 
Tanisoran, Jonatelan or Kingdom of War serfs are included in the population 
count, this average is lowered considerably.

>      Pent: do Pentans trade their sacred horses?  I don't think
> so.

Liek the Praxians, I think they'd be willing to part with the weaker 
specimen, to keep the breed pure. And like the Praxians they'd be 
more willing to trade raided beasts (probably after having used them 
for breeding).

> Kralorela: is Lokarnos big there?

He certainly has no trade monopoly, as the example of a certain 
trade buckles salesman shows.

> According to G:CHW,
> Kralorela follows the Eastern pantheon, which (according to GoG)
> does not include Lokarnos.  So their merchants do not have a cult
> to call their own, but that doesn't seem to be a big handicap.  

They can claim the current emperor as one of their number, so 
there is little need for a special deity. Godunya's bridges are 
a manifestation of his Communication aspect as well.

>      Altogether, not many comments on what was 26 pages of
> material when I printed it out.  It not only goes into the
> directory of permanently-saved items, it got printed out, hole-
> punched, and put into a notebook!  Many thanks, Gerald.

I can only add my voice to the chorus of praises.
-- 
--  Joerg Baumgartner   joe@sartar.toppoint.de

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From: henkl@aft-ms (Henk Langeveld - Sun Nederland)
Subject: oops...
Message-ID: <9409060718.AA19087@yelm.Holland.Sun.COM>
Date: 6 Sep 94 08:18:56 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 6069

> From RuneQuest-Request@glorantha Tue Sep  6 09:16 MET 1994
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