A precise parallel, IMO, to the Orlanthi treatment of dogs vs. shadow cats.
Steve Stair
>It sounds like you see Bertie Wooster as the prototypical Dara
>Happan
This revelation came to me as a bolt of lightning. (Non-Wodehouse fans skip ahead a bit). Suddenly it's all clear. The typical clean-living, educated Lunar Woman -- Honoria Glossop! The dreaded Arm of Yara Aranis -- Aunt Agatha! The Lunar military leader - -- Sir Roderick! My typical PC's -- Bingo Little!
Pam
>I know - later dinosaurs were probably warm blooded, but this ain't
>Earth
To add some real-world stuff in. There's not much evidence that the plant-eating ornithischians were warm-blooded, and in fact there does exist some strong evidence that at least some of them were not (it is widely held that stegosaur back-plates were thermal heating systems, which would be unnecessary to a warm-blooded critter). The common modern point of view is that the larger dinosaurs didn't _need_ to be warmblooded, since they were so large they could maintain a high body temperature regardless of metabolism (anyone who actually wants details on this write me independently, I'm sure most folks don't care).
Anyway, the point is that a large ceratopsian would be troublesome to take care of in winter (even if it _was_ warmblooded - -- all that naked skin is going to lose heat). I don't picture the Pelorian gazzam as furry or feathered, so my assumption is that they must spend the winter in heated insulated barns. This may be another good reason that the average farmer can't own any, and also another reason why they aren't used on campaigns abroad.
Another reason they may be no good in foreign campaigns is that they probably can't easily be transported by riverboat, which is, I believe, the Lunar army's primary transport mode, at least to Dragon Pass and back.
ELF psychopomps: after some thought, I have concluded that elves have no psychopomp, and, really, no concept of an afterlife. Even when alive, I don't think that elves are self-aware in the human sense, but merely feel themselves to be part of a greater whole. The death or life of a single leaf is insignificant except insofar as it helps or hurts the whole tree. I.e., I don't think elves believe in a personal afterlife.
Alex F.
>Daka Fal is really just a Orlanthi/Praxian guy, in my view. Other
>areas may have similar beliefs, but by no means identical.
One of my beliefs is that there's no real point in Glorantha if it is utterly as screwed up as Earth, mythically speaking. I _do_ believe that there are some Gloranthan mystic facts that are cross-cultural, because they contain a nugget of reality in them. Not to say that, even in Glorantha, _all_ cultures agree on certain facts. Clearly, they don't.
But I believe that the acceptance of a Daka Fal-like entity as an afterlife entity is quite common in Glorantha, and very often, this entity is believed to be the first person to die. The Orlanthi and Praxians obviously call this guy Daka Fal.
>plenty of Orlanthi in Dragon Pass believe that you end up in what
>amounts to the troll afterlife.
>>Any thoughts on how Bad you have to be to end up this way?
I don't think the Orlanthi are organized enough to have figured out which crimes send you to Hell, and which crimes only get you a spiritual slap on the wrist. Except for a few, like kinslaying, oathbreaking, or hospitality-violation. In general, I'm sure the Orlanthi assume that "Everyone _I_ like, plus myself, are going to heaven. Those bastards that have injured me are going to be eaten by trolls. Serves them right."
Alex briefly asks where my evidence is for Roman Centurions being NCOs. Not to extend the discussion too far, but 'twas Hans Delbruck, 1920.
>I think the entire Lunar army is probably not much bigger than what
>is shown in the DRAGON PASS game.
>>I'm not sure about this. Isn't the empire supposed to be fighting
>>a war on about three fronts at this point?
At the time of the DRAGON PASS battles, I do not think that the Redlands have been seriously invaded yet, nor has the Ban lifted off Fronela. Certainly there's fighting in the Redlands, but most of the action there is (IMO) local stuff -- the equivalent of having the Lunar Army in the Dragon Pass game fight it out with only the Native Furthest Corps on their side.
>But is this really all the phalanges that the empire can muster?
>I'd have though there would be about a couple of dozen of this type
>of unit, though of doubtless highly variable quality.
The empire has swarms of phalanxes. It's just that most of them are local defense units (let's say it together: "like the Native Furthest Corps"). The empire can't afford to have a centralized mass army that is of "highly variable quality". It could not afford to move them quickly to threatened points, it could not afford to feed them (sadly, an unskilled, underequipped soldier costs as much to feed as a Sword of Yanafal Tarnils), and it could not afford to devastate the local areas it was assigned to by letting them eat up all the food. It just makes sense for you to have a small, skilled army.
I propose a (roll your CON x 10 or less to survive childbirth) concept as a general rule to not be followed in any case that the PCs life will actually be affected by a random roll instead of a GM musing.
Alex hates this: "I think this is waaaaaaaaaaaaay
>too (low) CON-sensitive. Assuming you waive the 5%-auto-fail, this
>would give chances of survival ranging between 100% and 30%" Then he
suggests a 20-CON roll.
NOTE: much use of hyperbole in insulting Alex's ideas in the following paragraphs. People unaware that Alex and I get along just fine may wish to skip these following slanderous remarks.
No way, Alex. Doctors in the good old days would often peg certain woman as very likely to die in childbirth -- _they_ didn't think such women had a (20-CON%) chance of death. They thought (and I agree) that some women were in dire danger, and others were not.
Note that Alex's (inferior) method of determining momma deaths leads to approximately 9.5% deaths. My own technique leads to 9.6% deaths. So in terms of total deaths for the society, we're exactly alike.
HOWEVER, your suggested rule has the grievous problem that it violates one of the top Three Official Game Design Rules, namely: "Thou Shalt Not Institute Any Piddly Differences". As a professional Game Designer this offends my nobler senses. You see, Alex's ill-thought-out rule turns a potentially interesting large difference into a puny "why roll for it" difference. A woman with CON 18 has only a 15% higher chance than a woman with a CON 3. Snooze. If you use my superior system, then a woman with a CON 3 will take game-significant actions -- seek special magic to aid her pregnancy, avoid pregnancy entirely, sublimate her interest in sex into something else, because she's too "delicate" for such things, etc. But if it's only 15%, while she might be worried about death in pregnancy, a normal-CON woman will be very nearly as worried as her. We don't get the interesting roleplaying opportunities. Nor do we get strapping peasant women with wide hips who can drop kids continually without fear of even temporary incapacitation, much less death.
Sorry Alex, you hit one of my buttons. I'll make it up to you someday.
End of Glorantha Digest V1 #179
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