>The Basmoli of Prax are lions. They have cats eyes, vestigial
>manes and pronounced incisors.
Sorry, there are no kzinti in MY Glorantha. And, I predict, in the official Glorantha of future publications. The Basmoli wear their hair to resemble manes, and maybe sharpen their incisors. And it's true that the Basmoli have lions' souls, the Rathori have bears' souls, etc. But to mundane senses, they look like humans.
David Cake says:
>The Basmoli culture is not large enough or sophisticated enough
>to support significant religious diversity, IMHO.
I don't have a dog in this fight, but it seems to me that you have MORE religious diversity in an oral culture than in a literate one. As Greg Stafford explained at Convulsion,
"And, you know, I've heard it, I've read it said that Homer was responsible for killing the Greek religion. Up until then, there were many Zeuses, many Hermes. There was one Zeus; the fact is that you worship him as a thunder god, you worship him as the oak god, and I worship him as the wolf god, and it's still Zeus! We understand this, he's the... blah blah, he's a ruler, he has these powers, you know, and my wolf god can make your oak tree leaves shake or the thunder come. But that's not important, I worship him as the wolf. And then Homer went and wrote down those beautiful Homeric poems, the Iliad and the Odyssey. Or, he didn't write them down; he made them up and other people wrote it down. So that afterwards, people would travel about and they'd say, 'Well, who do you worship?' And they'd say, 'Well, I worship Zeus the Werewolf.' (laughter) 'Cha, there's no such thing! Look, it says right here! He's the Thunderer!'"
(And you can get the rest of this discussion from the Convulsion organizers--watch this space for details.)
Scott Johnson (or maybe Jeff Richard) asks:
>1. What the hell is the Pharaoh? What is/was the nature of his
>power? etc...
Buy the RuneQuest-Con Compendium from David Cheng (if he has any left): drcheng_at_sales.stern.nyu.edu. It contains a discussion and several Lore Auction questions on the subject. Briefly, the Pharaoh was a heroquestor from the future. Your annual sacrifice theory was discussed by Nick Brooke, as a modification of the Year Kings.
Liked your bit on Tarsh. It goes in the permanent file.
End of Glorantha Digest V1 #35
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