Bell Digest v940928p1

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, Wed, 28 Sep 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.

X-RQ-ID: index

6386: CHEN190 = (Peter Metcalfe, CAPE Canty)
 - Pamalt/Treneg?
6387: MOBTOTRM = MOBTOTRM@vaxc.cc.monash.edu.au
 - Porthomeka and the Merchant Princes of Nochet
6388: niwe = (Nils Weinander)
 - Secrets within secrets
6389: jonas.schiott = (Jonas Schiott)
 - Orlanthi Assassins and Forgetful Heroes and Etcetera
6390: joe = (Joerg Baumgartner)
 - Orlanth Earth-King?
6391: b_kondalski = (Brian J. Kondalski)
 - Truestone
6392: eurmal = (Stephen Watson)
 - Re: RuneQuest Daily, Tue, 27 Sep 1994, part 2
6393: DevinC = DevinC@aol.com
 - Re: Power Storing Enchantments
6394: jacobus = (Bryan J. Maloney)
 - MP matrices
6395: davidc = (David Cake)
 - Kitori
6396: MOBTOTRM = MOBTOTRM@vaxc.cc.monash.edu.au
 - Oriflam on e-mail?

---------------------

From: niwe@ppvku.ericsson.se (Nils Weinander)
Subject: Secrets within secrets
Message-ID: <9409271053.AA27516@ppvku.ericsson.se>
Date: 27 Sep 94 12:53:06 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 6388

About the GL secret:

Me:
> has someone ever heard Greg say _why_ he won't share the secret?

Sandy:
>	Yes. Greg has told me quite explicitly why he won't tell  
> anyone. I thought it was quite a good reason, too.

So, I guess that the reason is secret too?
_____

The great Pamaltelan debate:

I won't stick my head into this one, but I show my ignorance with a stupid
questions:

I have seen mention of creatures/people called 'the exigers' and 
'the Promalti'. Who/what are they?

/Nils W

---------------------

From: jonas.schiott@vinga.hum.gu.se (Jonas Schiott)
Subject: Orlanthi Assassins and Forgetful Heroes and Etcetera
Message-ID: <9409271338.AA02476@vinga.hum.gu.se>
Date: 27 Sep 94 15:38:43 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 6389

Peter Metcalfe -

>I have had a look at the digest for the Light of Subere and 
>really have only one nitpick.  The orlanthi clan chief speaks of 
>offical acts and suchlike which to my mind is unorlanthi.  It sounds
>too much like the western system of government instead of the 
>barbarized clan system.

I could pick nits in return and say that "official acts" are never
mentioned, but you're right: that is the _tone_ of the High Priest's
orders. My only excuse is that it's a holdover from the first version,
which took place in a 'near future' (1640 or thereabouts) when Delela had
become more unified and slightly westernized.

>IMO the King would instead be emphasizing the embaressing position Stein is
>causing and the need for secret murder to preserve the honour as he is
>obviously not right in the head.  This casts the dilemma in more orthodox
>orlanthi terms.

Good thinking.
_______________

Nick Brooke -

>The other thing you should know is that Styx water is like Lethe water in 
>classical mythology: if you touch it, you forget things.

Fair enough...

>This is why great 
>heroes are dipped in the Styx while they're still babies!

What, so they'll forget their embarassing first months of life? ;-)
________________

Michelle Ringo -

>Finally, the crystal was an 11 point crystal, at the
>          time it was the only one in the party.  In addition, I
>          thought that it took 11 points of power to create such a
>          crystal.

Chris Faber -

>In the Magic Book you will find that each point of POW used in the 
>enchantment allowes for the storage of one point of POW, therefore an 8pt
>POW Storage Enchantment will cost 8pts of permanment POW.

You need the RQ3 Errata. There you get 1D10 points of MP storage for each
point of POW, a much better deal. Under the old rule, nobody in their right
minds would make an MP matrix.
__________________

Dave Cordes -

>Question:  Since Eurmal is the trickster and according to everything I've
>read his followers are not bound to any laws.  Nor are they protected by any
>laws.  Is Eurmal then bound by the great comprimise?  or can he just ignore
>it as he seems to ignore any other constraits placed on him?

Doesn't look like it. At least when it comes to handing out Divine Magic he
seems to be under just as severe (if somewhat different) constraints as all
the other gods.

(      Jonas Schiott                                   )
(      Institutionen for Ide- och lardomshistoria      )
(      Goteborgs Universitet                           )


---------------------

From: joe@sartar.toppoint.de (Joerg Baumgartner)
Subject: Orlanth Earth-King?
Message-ID: 
Date: 27 Sep 94 14:23:09 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 6390

Sandy Petersen in X-RQ-ID: 6380

Paul:
>>Genert was a from-below Earth God	Pamalt a (From Above?)  Fire  
>>God
Sandy:
>	Pamalt is not a fire god, IMO. Lodril is, and Pamalt is his  
> pal, and Vangono (a fire god) is also Pamalt's pal, but Pamalt is not  
> strongly associated with any element but the Earth -- he is King of  
> all the Gods, but he is also Father, Husband, and Son to the Earth  
> Gods, whose family he married into. 

By this rationalizing, Orlanth is the male ruling earth god of most of 
Genertela:

He is son of an earth goddess (Kero Fin), husband of Ernalda, prime earth 
deity of Glorantha, and he is father of if not Voria, then at least 
Barntar. The rest of his family has strong earth ties, too - beginning 
with his grandmother, his brother's (Storm Bull's) wife Eiritha and his 
grandmother (Hykim/Mikyh are children of a Dragon and the earth, according 
to WF6), his nephew Waha, ... Orlanth's children married into the earth 
tribes as well - Vingkot married Tada's daughter, Harand Boardick (from 
the Arrowmound Saga) clearly was of the earth-tribe of Orlanthi, and a 
grandson or so. Ok, Orlanth has a few Storm ties, just like Pamalt has 
a few fire ties...

Seriously, while I can accept that Pamalt has strong earth ties, he 
isn't _of_the_Earth_ as is Genert. A God Learner might notice that his 
parentage shows a strong parallel to that of Umath...


Paul:
PR>>>Genert was among the first to fight, Pamalt was among the last. 
Peter Metcalfe:
PM>>Hardly any inverse parallelism here.  Chaos came from the north  
PM>>where ragnaglar's lands were.
>	Peter, you missed the point here. When Chaos came to Genert's  
> land, he immediately mustered to battle it. When Chaos came to  
> Pamalt's land, he did not go until the very end, letting other gods  
> strive against Chaos first. 

Reason being that Pamalt was about as important then as Choralinthor 
was in Genertela. I suspect that Pamalt's Necklace is the Pamaltelan 
aspect of I Fought We Won.


PR>>>Genert stood alone. Pamalt used cooperation and leaned on his  
PR>>>friends.
PM>>hmm.  The Copper Warriors, The Sky Spears, the White Elves, the  
PM>>Golden People  and our own ancestors plus Yamsur, Tada and All Eyes  
PM>>Open But One.  Hardly what I call fighting on ones own.
SP>	None of these were gods, just peoples, heroes, etc.

Seolinthur was a god, at least. The battle is known as "the gods' last 
stand", btw, and it was an assembly of gods, among whom Genert wasn't 
the best or most prominent fighter.

> The difference here is perhaps not so much that Genert stood all alone,  
> but that Pamalt coordinated his separate beads into a Necklace and  
> thus all stood as one. This is an extremely important part of the  
> Pamalt myth, and there is really nothing like it in Genert's saga.  
> Yamsur, Tada, Orani, Genert all fought and died alone, though not far  
> off other folk were also fighting and dying alone. Pamalt's battles  
> were fought as a group, not many separate individual hopeless  
> struggles. Only the God with No Name and Artmal tried that particular  
> tactic, and only to demonstrate its ineffectual nature. 

Not exactly true. The main difference is that Pamalt gathered up the 
broken remains of other gods who had fought chaos before, and almost 
sacrificed them to sing them into his necklace.

Note that the obscure bit of Orlanth Argrathi in KoS does a very 
similar feat...


PM>>My belief is that the Emperor of the Green Age was Molandro
>	I cannot concur. Molandro, Keeper of the Earth, was not a  
> ruler, but a guardian entity. I don't think he ever ruled anything.

Well, the Orlanthi say that Yelm was meant to be a guardian only, too, 
but that he usurped a sovereignty not his to take, and that this caused 
the world to be almost destroyed.


PM>>Pamalt of unknown origins comes afterwards.  pamaltela is so called  
PM>>because the GL's thought he was the Southern equivalent of Genert
PM>>and they didn't know the name of the one who was before. 

>	This I agree with. Though there may not have been a "one who  
> was before", when the GL arrived Pamalt was obviously the Earth-King,  
> and so the GL assumption was obvious. 

That he was *obviously* the earth king still escapes me. Seems rather 
that a GL was desperate to prove his theory of parallelism and took the 
least bad fit.

-- 
--  Joerg Baumgartner   joe@sartar.toppoint.de

---------------------

From: b_kondalski@vssi.trw.com (Brian J. Kondalski)
Subject: Truestone
Message-ID: <9409271533.AA29272@Sun.COM>
Date: 27 Sep 94 15:28:50 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 6391

All this talk about truestone has got me thinking about an interesting use of
truestone that I experienced.  An item that came out of the machine ruins was
able to use blank truestone to store skills.  That way a person who had this
device and had a "filled" truestone could learn the skill (like training, play
back mode of the device) that was in the truestone.  We found some filled
truestones with the device, but never really explored what would happen when
you tried to record onto a blank truestone.  At the time the campaign was
ending, an aged/dying Lhankor Mhy was going to place his knowledge into a blank
truestone to see what would happen.  But, alas, the campaign ended before we
got to try it out.

---------------------

From: eurmal@spuddy.UUCP (Stephen Watson)
Subject: Re: RuneQuest Daily, Tue, 27 Sep 1994, part 2
Message-ID: <9409271612.AA19689@spuddy>
Date: 27 Sep 94 16:12:41 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 6392


Two people have claimed that MP Matrix Enchantment gives 1 MP for 1 POW, which
is what the rules say, making it a worthless spell.  The errata however gives
1D10 MP per POW (avearge 5.5) making it useful (just about compulsary for
sorcerors).  Without the errata it was cheaper to make a (far more useful)
bound power spirit.


.: )( :.                             eurmal%spuddy.uucp@britain.eu.net

(Sorry about uninformative subject line, I've only got a VT220 emulator to
work through)

---------------------

From: DevinC@aol.com
Subject: Re: Power Storing Enchantments
Message-ID: <9409271821.tn15846@aol.com>
Date: 27 Sep 94 22:21:03 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 6393

Devin here

Chris writes:

" Your mistaken about the cost of creating a Power Storage Enchantment.
In the Magic Book you will find that each point of POW used in the 
enchantment allowes for the storage of one point of POW, therefore an 8pt
POW Storage Enchantment will cost 8pts of permanment POW."

Sorry Chris, but it is you who are mistaken. You need to get ahold of the RQ3
errata (all games must have errata...it's a law somewhere). That errata
states that each POW gets you D10 of MP storage.

Devin


---------------------

From: jacobus@sonata.cc.purdue.edu (Bryan J. Maloney)
Subject: MP matrices
Message-ID: <9409272239.AA26760@sonata.cc.purdue.edu>
Date: 27 Sep 94 12:39:14 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 6394


>   Your mistaken about the cost of creating a Power Storage Enchantment.
>In the Magic Book you will find that each point of POW used in the 
>enchantment allowes for the storage of one point of POW, therefore an 8pt
>POW Storage Enchantment will cost 8pts of permanment POW.  Now, depending
>on how you read the Gamemaster's Book, each point of a non-resuseable divine
>spell for a non-initate of the cult will cost 1000 lunars per point, but
>if read on, each point of an enchantment will run you 1500 lunars per point.
>To me this seems to suggest that divine enchantment are cheaper then those
>enchantments made by shamans and sorcerers. (any opinions?) As a side
>question does any one play crystals as being almost indestructible and more
>valuable the power storage enchantment?




Uh NO!

Get hold of the errata for RQ3.  They're avialable for FREE from Avalon Hill
and via FTP from ftp.csua.berkeley.edu.  According to the CORRECTED rule,
every point of POW in an MP storage matrix grants 1D10 MP storage.  That means,
on average, an 11-point matrix would cost around 2 POW and be worth no more
than 3,000L or so, depending on your Bargain skill.

The Magic Book is 100% wrong on this point.  The corrected rule is 1POW=1d10MP
in a Magic Point Matrix.


I will be willing to personally email a copy of the RQ3 errate to all and 
sundry who wish to request it of me, since the document is meant to be
distributed freely.


So, if you don't have FTP and would like a copy of the errata, let me know
and I'll send it to you.
-- 
A reasonable man adapts himself to his surroundings,
an unreasonable man expects the world to conform to his opinions.
Therefore, all progress is due to unreasonable men.
                               --Shaw

---------------------

From: davidc@cs.uwa.edu.au (David Cake)
Subject: Kitori
Message-ID: <199409280014.IAA22747@cs.uwa.oz.au>
Date: 28 Sep 94 16:26:19 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 6395

Replying to Alex, and sharing the conclusions of an interesting
conversation between Joerg and myself with the Daily.

>
>David Cake:
>>         My conception of the Kitori is that they are really two tribes with
>> a very close alliance, a human Orlanthi tribe and a tribe of Uz. The
>> cornerstone of the alliance is the symbolic marriage between the Chief of
>> the Orlanthi, and the Queen of the Uz.
>
>I'd say rather that they were a single tribe, composed of a number of
>all-human, and some all-troll, clans.  Amounts to much the same thing,
>granted.  I think I got the impression from someplace that there are
>more humans than uz in the tribe, but I forget where.
>
I think that they started as two separate tribes allied, and the first
ceremonial marriage made them a single tribe "officially". Over the years
they are truly becoming a single tribe (and the King and Queen are careful
not to be seen to openly disagree, which would encourage the trolls and
humans to think of themselves as separate tribes). I agree that an
individual clan is either all troll or all human. I think that they also
think of the humans as owning the land in the day, and the trolls at night.

        I am glad that everyone agrees on the ceremonial marriage bit,
which I really like. Greg hints at it, but does not explicitly say it.

>I suspect that the Kitori may blur species distinction to the point of
>allowing the human tribesfolk to join Kyger Litor, though I'm not sure
>this would be all that common.  I feel sure their religion is some way
>off the Orlanthi norm.
>
        I think that it is off the Orlanthi norm by revering Argan Argar as
Ernalda's most important husband (at least among the humans).
        I definately disagree that humans are allowed to join KL, except in
the normal (excruciating) way. I think that blurring the species
distinction like that would be heresy to the KL cult, and that is not a
pleasant thing to contemplate.

>
>I'd say they were "Stygians", in that they have significant resources
>of sorcery knowledge, in the context of theist worship.  (Not in the sense
>of being an IG worship heresy.)  Though more will know rune magic than
>sorcery, I feel.  Presumably they are also "Arkati" in the sense of
>worshipping Arkat (rather than in the somewhat bogus RQ:AiG sense of
>"synonym for Stygian/henothesist").
>
        We feel that most Kitori are divine users, but there exists a
substantial minority of Arkati, a large proportion of whom (how large we
disagree on) are specialist sorcerers. Ie compared to a Western culture,
there are very few 'low sorcery' users, but a reasonable amount of
professional sorcerers. These sorcerers are Arkati, and are all at least
initiates in a troll divine cult as well. The Arkat cult is more of a
subculture of professional sorcerers than a widespread cult (Joerg and I
disagree on what proportion is sorcerer and what proportion is entourage,
though).

>>         A related question is where exactly is the temple of Black Arkat
>> (the human temple that teaches troll Arkati sorcery)? I think that it is
>> not within Kitori lands, though Kitori troll Arkati may accept some human
>> students.
>
>I would have said that it was, apart from the confusing assertion that
>_all_ its initiates are human.  I can't think why there should be two
>distinct lots of darkness-worshipping humans in Heortland, most of whose
>residents are "otherwise accounted for".  Most odd.
>

        I think that the House of Black Arkat is not within Kitori lands
(because if it was trolls would be admitted). I suspect that the House of
Black Arkat is a hold over from when trolls ruled Kethaela, or maybe from
Arkats time there, and it contains only humans because it is not near
trolls - ie not near the Troll Woods like the Kitori, and not bordering the
Shadow Plateau. 
        It exists much as many other small groups of dangerous religious
fanatics exist in Glorantha (though without the need for a large network of
initiates). Joerg and I both think that the House of Black Arkat may have a
distinctly martial bent (perhaps a distinct Zorak Zoran bent).
        Actually I would really like to know the exact location of the
Temple of Black Arkat, and what troll cults they also worship.
        Cheers
                Dave
>Alex.
>



---------------------

From: MOBTOTRM@vaxc.cc.monash.edu.au
Subject: Oriflam on e-mail?
Message-ID: <01HHNHM9PG6Q9N6TFJ@vaxc.cc.monash.edu.au>
Date: 29 Sep 94 02:30:39 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 6396

G'day,

Does anyone know if the French publishers of RQ and Tatou magazine are
on e-mail at all?  The company is called ORIFLAM.

Cheers

MOB