>> In my Glorantha, they are one example of evil; and then a bit more
>> so. Like a race of ghouls, they get strange powers through habits
>> disgusting to humans and Brithini.
<snip>
>Wow, lots of thanks for the clarifications Greg. Very useful. I had been
wondering about the Vadeli for some time.
>But now I'd love to hear a bit more about ghouls in Glorantha. What are
they? Are they humans cursed by cannibalism? Are they chaotic? Undead? Is it
like being an even lower sort of vampire?
> -Adept
Ghouls entered Glorantha with RQ1. They are constituents from the rich
Perrin tributary stream.
The standardized forms of ghouls, mummies, vampires, zombies etc. are pretty
much the "standard undead" host in gaming, largely shaped by the
homogenization of D&D. Thus these undead brought their corpse-eating,
bandaged lurching, blood-sucking, brain-eating baggage along too, some of
which is unrejectable.
So with ghouls, the essential character is eating dead people, or killing
them to eat--some sort of anthropophage.
This contributed to my perspective of "man-rune morality," which is the
theory that people are externally changed by their actions. What taboos are
universal among such persons? Well, we know rape turns people into broos,
which indicates the direction.
Humans (since all the elder races seem to eat their own kind) who eat their
own kind become ghouls, a race of sub/super humans with distincive
characteristics.
Are they an Elder Race? I don't know, there are a lot of little peoples existing everywhere, some of which seem to be extremely ancient.
--Greg
--
Greg Stafford
Game Designer
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
Powered by hypermail