A "Glandis" is the correct name for a lead sling missile. Just found out today. So we no longer need to call them lame things like "pellets" or whatever. Glandis. Sounds cool. Next time you're out on a date and your girl (or guy) mistakenly refers to "sling pellets", you can smilingly correct them and no doubt she'll (or he'll) swoon into your arms. No need to thank me. All part of the service.
Pam Carlson
>Do satyrs have a special reason for their non-chaotic requirement
to >use other critters for procreation? Are they related to
unicorns?
Both satyrs and unicorns are symbols of maleness. Hence it is ludicrous to have a female member of either species. Since in Glorantha they are real critters, not just symbols, they need to have some way to reproduce, and if you can come up with a better one than "use other, but related, animals" I'm all for it.
>those horizontal tails ("flukes" in English), are found on three
>different land mammals... evolved ... independantly Says a whole
>lot about a genome's potential for change.
There is a basic difference in the way that mammals and reptiles are organized skeletally -- if you look at a mammal, when it bends its spinal column, it does so vertically -- think of a weasel, a housecat, or a squirrel -- when the animal scrunches up, it gets a little hunchback, and the typically mammalian "galumphing" trot is based on this back movement. Moving a mammalian spine in the horizontal plane is of course possible, but abnormal, and we don't do a lot of it.
Now consider a reptile -- a snake or lizard -- their spines move horizontally -- snakes slither sideways, lizards and crocodiles twist their bodies as they move -- they don't hunch up. Ditto for fish -- they twist their bodies sideways, too.
When mammals returned to the sea, it's only natural that their flukes should follow the direction of their main back muscles - -- up and down -- opposite from fish and reptiles. (Note that reptiles with tail fins have the fins going up and down, just like fish. Here I'm thinking of ichthyosaurs. geosaurs, and sea snakes.)
> Ysabbau = placoderms
>Eesh. Good call. Do the Ysabbau have armored plates in addition
to >their nasty, pointy teeth?
I don't recall what their skin armor is like, if they even have any. Perhaps they've lost much of their natural dermal armor in the evolution to intelligence. BUT ... this provides us with some dynamite ideas for what Ysabbau battle wear looks like!
Steve Stairs
>I think it would be interesting to have the 'mistress race broo' be
>a race of females analogous to satyrs. If you assume that the
entire >race was female, and was fertile with any 'man-rune'
creature, one can easily see parallels with the current broo
breeding cycle.
Holy Cow! This makes tons of sense in keeping with the fact that Thed was turned "inside out" when she gave birth to the Devil. Think about it ... the broos were turned inside-out, too! Wow I love this. It also makes lots of sense when she complains about being raped -- obviously female entities who must mate with other species males are highly vulnerable to rape.
Nick, this sounds like a great theory to me. How about you?
>But then again I liked the Mok Siang story so it can't be too bad.
Thanks. I was trying not only to tell a fun little story, but also to give an idea of just how the Kralori think of mermen, plus demonstrate a typical understated Kralori moral of how inaction is better than action.
>Are there Cetoi Hsunchen?
I believe there are not. I think that there _may_ have been such at one time, but they have long ago all been absorbed into the various merfolk.
Mark Mohrfield
>The mostali are related to the man-rune?
Of course they are. Just look at them.
>But in ESoG it says that dwarfs are not descended from Grandfather
>Mortal.
It lies, or at least, it doesn't tell the whole truth.
> If they are related to it, then how come they don't age? Then
again >now that I think about it, the Brithini must be related to
the man >rune and they don't age. Perhaps death by age is a result
of a >relationship to the beast (or in the case of elves, the plant)
rune. >But then what about that story about all mortals having to
die >because Grandfather Mortal died?
All mortals have to die because Grandfather Mortal died. The Brithini and Mostali are living a lie. Stick two inches of steel into a Mostali in the right place, and see what happens.
David Blizzard
>What is a Castle of Lead like? I imagine that there probably is a
>'normal' troll city surrounding them. Then there is the
outer/upper
>regions where a few, honored, non-uz may go that. Next are the
areas >where normal uz go. The next to last region would be where
the >ancient ones are. It probably is bordering on the Hero Plane.
>Finally, is the area that is actually the Hero Plane.
First off, there is only one Castle of Lead, no matter what lies humans tell. The castle has several entrances; not many, but several. A visitor would first encounter a tumbledown troll city, teeming with hideous insects, voracious trolls of all variety, filth, stench, and evil. Humans would not be welcome here, but it is possible that a _very_ well-known human might be tolerated, especially if he had powerful uz friends.
Inside the city is a enormous decaying heap -- a troll fortress, built to surround the Castle of Lead's Entrance. The fortress might be a mountain, riddled with troll tunnels and speckled with bulwarks, or it might be a huge slab-sided castle-like structure, with turrets and slingstone slots and gargoyles all a-grin. This fortress is stern and terrifying and normally only value trollkin are allowed inside. It teems with Death Lords, Dehore, screaming ghosts, spectral horrors, great trolls, vast warrens of loathly cave trolls, and worse. Humans entering the fortress normally do so only as prisoners, never to be seen again. Even humans who are good friends of the trolls generally conduct all their business from outside the walls. Who would want to enter a place that had brute cannibal Karrg's Sons as mere door guards? Urk.
Deep inside the maze of tunnels and rooms that make up the fortress is the secret entrance to the Castle of Lead. Going through this entrance means you are entering the Hero Plane. Soon you will encounter more mistress race trolls than you ever dreamed existed. But you will never tell anyone about it.
In reading back over this, it doesn't contradict what you said, David, saying largely the same things, but with a somewhat different angle. (Trolls are scary monsters.)
Nicky
>[tale of Psammetichus stricken]
>If it works in our world, why not in Glorantha?
Of course it might. I've heard this same tale, but about Frederick the Great, who supposedly did an experiment along these lines. His technique was to select an orphanage and order the women in charge never to speak to the children as they raised him, his hope being to find the original tongue of mankind. He suspected it would be Hebrew, but wanted this confirmed.
Sadly, the experiment was never completed. The children, being raised without anyone ever speaking to them, and what is worse, never cuddling them, never singing to them, touching them only to feed them and change their clothes, all pined away and died for lack of love.
End of Glorantha Digest V2 #90
WWW material at http://hops.wharton.upenn.edu/~loren/rolegame.html
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