> On 9 Nov 2011, Joerg wrote:
> > > The architecture is Iron Age, even Roman Iron Age. Pelorians and God Learners both used the same type of concrete which enabled the Romans to produce all their prestigious buildings, never mind the facades of marble, natural stone or brick.
> There's no concrete in my Glorantha (even if the Romans had it). Any fancy building is either magically done, dwarf built or held up by the power of the mystics walled up inside it.
Applied sciences are materialist magic, aka sorcery, by definition... Roman concrete isn't comparable to modern day steel-reinforced concrete. When I first encountered the idea of concrete in either Gloranthan or classical Roman architecture, I was as unbelieving as most people reacting to this, but some research into the topic made this quite believable.
> Most roads in my Glorantha are unpaved,
That goes even for the Roman Empire. Military roads and magical roads are paved, with the Sartarite roads providing the magic of cooperation between the tribes rather than the magic of architecture or transportation.
> it takes a bit of organisation to have a paved system and they are not really needed. If someone builds a paved road, someone else usually is charged with maintaining it, you get turnpikes which are no fun for most people and avoided.
For the Sartar dynasty, the roads are one of the manifestations of intertribal cooperation. Charging the tribes to participate in the upkeep (under the leadership of the dynasty) made cooperation in other areas more palatable.
> Even in towns, I would suggest unpaved is the norm.
Rather than paved, I would expect cobbled roads for the main thoroughfares in cities (and possibly market towns on important highways). Planned cities with canalisation are likely to have some reinforcement on the major roads, too.
> Magically paved roads defy classification in our world as we don't have any. They are magic and other than that, we have no idea why they are so strong.
I opt to disagree. We do have materialist magic of a sort... I'd say our current society practices materialist magic on a daily basis.
> In my Glorantha, most people walk. In highly populated cities some paving will exist if only to keep to mud/dust down. I'm very aware of roman paving in cities, perhaps some in glorantha cities as well, but glorantha's not very big and you need population for projects like that.
It is amazing to see the Celtic oppidae of Manching or Kelheim with gargantuan fortifications, planned highways etc. on a relatively low population base. If a place has a source of income (i.e. food) other than agriculture done by themselves (e.g. riverine trade), an enormous amount of work can go into civic projects.
> Luckily the cyborgs were destroyed with most people thinking they were a bad idea. In a sense, Glorantha is like a successful Luddite revolution. Even I'm suspicious of what the dwarfs are really up to.
Which ones? Isidilian and his followers e.g. in Greatway have a different agenda from the Decamony. It is quite interesting that the dwarves pulling their stunt in the Iron Wars were sent by Isidilian...
> Stuff made from the bones of gods is tough, but not the same as earth metals. Bronze can be mined directly from the ground. Gloranthan iron is weird magic suppressing stuff.
Full agreement here. We call it bronze, but it is better stuff than what we experience in our world.
> Bronze nails certainly exist, but carpentry using pegs etc would be common.
Actually, excellent carpentry can do without any metal - the roof of Constantine's basilica in Trier was made without a single nail, and lasted into the 20th century. Our engineers didn't dare repeat that feat when a complete replacement finally was required.
> I would have bells magically made by secretive bronze smiths - gets rid of large casting. I'm suspicious about foundries existing.
There is a lot of interesting ambience in foundries, a hellish hotspot for mystical materialist rites and activities. Just like with mining and architecture, I see a magic that doesn't quite use spells but mechanical formulae. If these get drawn from Essence nodes and put into grimoires or formularies, so be it. Just because we tend to think of them as purely mundane, getting into these activities carries an amount of ritual and tradition even today that can be astonishing. We may be happy to explain that away when we aren't directly involved, and perhaps it takes some sensitizing from hanging around with this mythologist crew, but I see a lot of ritualized activity in craft and engineering that smacks of materialist magic.
I recall finding the RuneQuest Mostali sorcery extremely uncool with their "Stabilize X" spells. This is one thing that HeroQuest does better by allowing to put such activity into the magic keyword.
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