>RRR sets the scene for the Elmal/Yelmalio gregging, but the real pain (oh
>the bwitter, twagic agony of it all) was that, according to KOS, Yelmalio
>was a **new** god, discovered/conjured/signed up for a four album deal by
>Mongroth around 1570. So what had the Praxian Sun Domers, so loving
>detailed by MOB the year previously in the (official, checked by Greg)
>'Sun County' been doing al this time? Smoking far too much hazia,
>apparently. Not to mention sundry elves since the greening, everyone
>Godquester and cultist who'd ever picniced on the Hill of Gold, etc. etc.
Actually, it wasn't half as bad as it was made out to be - though the sense of confusion at the time was very real. At the time, heads could be heard butting against walls from the wilds of Kensington to the mansions of Moonie Ponds. But KOS is inspired by Greg's decades wandering happily among the ruins of Arthurian literature, and it adopts a similar paradigm. It's supposedly written an incredibly long time after the events its described, and the sources it 'quotes' are muddled, contradictory, and lets face it, sometimes jest plain wrong. The Yelmalio report is a single document, and can happily be explained away as an Eurmali birthday present or the musings of a bored scribe locked away in the archives. Or the Hitler diaries, Donation of Constantine, Protocols of Zion, James ossuary or Iraqi imminent WMD threat of its time and place. In other words, it has as much credibility as you want it to have. For this reason, I don't think the incident is as disasterous a gregging as others sometimes make it out to be.
I also think it did us as a community a lot of good. It freed us from the confines of sourcebook literalism and encouraged us to take a game-centric view of the sources. it reminded us that *every* Gloranthan fact is someone's interpretation, and encouraged us to do what roleplayers do best, come up with group solutions to uncomfortable or game-frustrating facts and situations. You see it time and time and again: someone asks X, someone else quotes something to tell you why its wrong/impossible, and then five or six others offer alternatives and cunning plans that make sense, respect but don't worship the sources, and let you can have your Sun County roundcake and eat it too. The Yelmalio controversy, for all its confusion at the time, resulted in some incredible, hilarious new Sun County history and game seeds from MOB and Nick and Jane and other Sun County people.
And the good news on Gregging: Greg can ungregg his gregging, or regreg his ungregged gregging. In other words, he can change his change of mind or forget why he changed his mind in the first place. So who knows, maybe one day we will know a lot more about that Yelmalio document (in fact I think we will). Or about Sartar as an Issaries or Larnste heroquester. Or about whether Orlanth is *really* the brother of the Red Goddess, making the Hero Wars basically just a bad case of sibling rivalry.
Just hang on to your sun hat. :)
Cheers
John
>
>
>The Elmal gregging occured in King of Sartar, where Elmal was introduced as
>the Sun God of the Heortlings - right after Sun County was produced by
>Avalon hill, which detailed the Praxian Sun Dome temple and the cult of
>Yelmalio there. Before that, we really knew only of Yelm and Yelmalio as Sun
>Gods (We may have known of Kargzant, the penatan Sun God, I can't rightly
>recall, but the main-stream sun cults were the two "Y" gods). ever since
>Cults of Prax, yelmailo had been the only sun god worshipped by Runequest
>characters (Yelm was described as unattainable).
>
>RR
>It is by my order and for the good of the state that the bearer of this has
>done what he has done.
>- Richelieu
>
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Matthew Cole" <matthew.cole_at_...>
>To: <HeroQuest-RPG_at_yahoogroups.com>
>Sent: Wednesday, February 11, 2004 5:29 PM
>Subject: RE: Re: cultural weapons?
>
>
> > Roderick wrote:
> > "Yelmalio/Elmal gregging is usually cited as the most egregious one."
> >
> >
> >
> > http://www.egregious.net/
> >
> > Spiritual renewal through moaning for those outside the herd :)
> >
> > (this is not a dig!)
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > Yahoo! Groups Links
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
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>Yahoo! Groups Links
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