Argrath_at_aol.com in v1n073:
>(There has to be a better name
>than Sun County dialect or Scud: Sunny? S'Countite? Scite?
>Bart Simpson?)
Scouse? :-)
- ----
John.Hughes_at_anu.edu.au about the Dinacoli
More info on the Dinacoli would be greatly appreciated. My current campaign is set in Cinsina territory just after Starbrow's rebellion. There is, naturally, considerable ill-will towards the Dinacoli; so they are a topic of some interest. This is the first suggestion I have encountered that there was a tribal coup just at the outbreak of the rebellion. - --------
Peter Metcalfe commented about ploughs in v1 n075:
A ploughshare and coulter made of iron might be made lighter than a set made of bronze; however when you distribute that extra weight over a team of 4 to 8 oxen and consider that most of the weight is in the frame and the mouldboard, then I do not see any measurable increase in efficiency.
I have some other comments on the thread of iron ploughs:
I'm afraid that I do not see great advantage to using iron except that it may not need sharpening quite as often and it may wear a bit longer. (That is true for Glorantha, where iron is assumed to be much harder than bronze. I am not sure that this is the case on Terra.)
If iron is used for coulters and shares then it must be for magical and ritual reasons, not technological ones. I can't quite see the magical logic behind it. Iron is associated with death, ploughing should be associated with life.
I don't feel comfortable with the idea of iron ploughs, but I'm willing to be persuaded. Give me a better reason to believe in them, please.
- ----------------
Peter Metcalfe on Spanish urine:
Roman merchants may have discovered that spanish urine was superior purely by accident. Urine may have been imported from many sources as well as gathered locally. The spanish urine was empirically found to produce a better result. Aging and evaporation could easily explain this. Why not egyptian urine, you ask. I would expect that the egyptian product was of equal quality, but less available. Ships from egypt were engaged mostly in the grain trade.
Maybe there is someone in the medical field who could give some input on this issue. As far as I know, human piss is all about the same when it comes out. Diet and physiology don't make too much of a difference, the water soluble by-products of metabolism are much the same for all of us.
- -----------------------
Nick Brooke on lead-poisoning in Rome:
One of the more interesting speculations I have heard about lead-poisoning involves its tendency towards madness. The condition may have been widespread among the romans in the ancient world and among the British during the industrial revolution. Both powers went on to conquer empires. Some historians speculate that maybe you need to be a bit mad to conquer empires.
Now, what might this suggest about the Lunars?
- ------------------------------
One of the strengths of Griffin Mountain, as opposed to Griffin Island, was that there were no "baddies". The three great citadels had conflicting goals and methods, so there was conflict; but no-one could be simply labelled as the villain. If you insist upon finding bad guys, you would have to choose Halcyon var Enkorth and his assistants. Halcyon was a competent spy and politician, not a super-sorceror, and his job was to control the king of one of the citadels to protect the nearby lunar provinces from raids. Looked at in that light, even Halcyon isn't a clear-cut villain.
Powered by hypermail