Making stuff to be different just to be different just distances people from
> the setting and makes it harder to describe,
Very much is made about how the mythology and gods are reflected in the mundane plane of Glorantha: and frequently on this list. It therefore seems entirely logical to me that a culture that is descended from the golden sun god and his demi-god children would be golden skin, fair-haired, haughty and snobbish. To find a need to equate a culture, even with some real-life analogues, to a particular earthly racial caste is to ignore the entire ethos of Glorantha. Despite the fact that Glorantha is a fictitious world its one that still functions to a set of rules. Those rules simply happen have a mythic source than a geo-physical one. Fair-haired, bronze-skinned Dara Happans is entirely logical (read Glorious ReAscent of Yelm for confirmation of that) and to have dark-haired, swarthy skinned Orlanthi (reflecting the dominance of the storm in their culture) equally so.
Real world analogues help you latch onto the basics of a culture; but what makes it come alive and FEEL different is in how the appearance is visualised by the people running and playing the game. When writing Dara Happa Stirs it helped me enormously to visualise Dara Happans as fair-haired and golden-skinned, and, in so doing, write characters and situations surrounding that. To have visualised straight Assyrians or their contemporaries would have been a handy short-cut but a lot less rewarding, certainly in terms of how I visualised and then wrote that book.
By all means have Scandinavian Orlanthi and Middle Eastern Dara Happans if that fits your game and comfort zone: Your Glorantha MUST Vary - but to say that 'Making stuff to be different just to be different just distances people from the setting and makes it harder to describe' isn't, from my point of view, true or, indeed, that difficult. There's plenty of clues and direct statement in lots of long-written Gloranthan lore; its just a case of digging it up and articulating it.
Sermon Ends.
2009/9/3 John Machin <orichalka_at_YF8ZDoqeF6LWGgifSqUpD82bwPOQjlk_XJPS86YMgsh1Y-gh1VbOOYRkVNe_cjrS6yaZaBR5WwrKAA.yahoo.invalid>
>
>
> 2009/9/4 valkoharja <rintasaa_at_1rQ77vOvlXWtm3rN8dzYBhQIWraXrHPubt7q1KZ_-uGt1md8KMFEQeU-IVn5FsGrvrgTtoTbFcuXixZX5g.yahoo.invalid <rintasaa%40paju.oulu.fi>>:
>
> > These people who are like Assyrians in many ways looking like Swedes adds
> a
> > totally unnecessery complication, and doesn't add anything. Other than
> "pale
> > sun worshippers, so people don't tan or burn on Glorantha?".
>
> Maybe there is no melanin in Glorantha?
> Maybe the people of the Sun do not burn, because the Fire in their
> souls knows as kin the Fire from the Sky?
>
> Water used to run uphill in Glorantha remember!
>
> --
> John Machin
> "Nothing is more beautiful than to know the All."
> - Athanasius Kircher, 'The Great Art of Knowledge'.
>
>
>
--
One day I feel I'm ahead of the wheel
And the next its rolling over me...
Rush - 'Far Cry'
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