Vormain.

From: Alex Ferguson <alex_at_dcs.gla.ac.uk>
Date: Tue, 7 Feb 95 23:08:00 GMT


David Cake shares my interest (and lack of information) in Vormain:
> I would love to see more info on Vormain. The main problem with it,
> is that while it was intended as a psuedo-Japan, a lot of the Japanese
> myth, and the magic rules from Land of Ninja, seems inappropriate.

I'm not sure this is true per se, but I hestitate to make it too exact a pseudologue, 'cos that'd be redundant, and Devin Cutler would almost certainly arise from his apparent net.death to berate me within an inch of my net.life for doing so.

One thing that does spring to mind is the language; the (very few) examples in the Prosepedia aren't very Japanese-conformant, and furthermore G:G states Imperial is related to the Kralori tongue, which Japanese isn't to Chinese. These can be respectively fixed and rationalised, though, if we want a nice sensible consanent-vowel- syllablic language.

> The Ki magic from LoN, in particular, seems more of a Kralorelan
> thing (I guess that they could both have it). Vormain according to the few
> small hints about it in the Prosopaedia seems to have a system of magic
> based upon colours, not much like Shinto animism at all.

This is very true. However, a feature of historical Japan is that a number of philosophically and theologically quite different religions managed to exist not only in the same country, but in the same people.

I suspect there is some sort of (at least vaguely) native animinist religion in Vormain, possibly overlaid with a more theistic and/or mystical religion, as well as the colour magic, which may be of a vaguely sorcerous nature, practised mainly by specialists with only a token religiophilosophical gloass.

Vormain is one of the dread speckled areas on the "sun-worship" chart, so if we were really unlucky, we could have a rerun on the Yelmalio/ Dendara/every other Sun worship thread on the subject. I'm sure Vormain animism has a sun "kami", at the least. An imported mysticism could also include sunnish elements, at least if from the also-speckled Kralorela, but I don't know how likely this is (Vormain is a lot harder to get to from Kralorela than Japan is from China), and frankly, most of the suggestions I've seen for Kralori sun worship have been vague, unsatisfactory, and/or thoroughgoingly God Learnerish, so I'm not a lot further on by this route.

Alex.


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