I'm sure that the Kralori took care to store certain types of knowledge on Truestone, plus I bet they had a whole cult set up like Fahrenheit 451, and that cult probably persists to this day. Of course, nowadays it's opposed to all forms of writing, and insists upon memorizing every bit of knowledge. Iconoclasts and book-burners, today, and I'm sure they're considered an enemy of the state and suppressed as much as possible.
Nils
>I don't know what a Kralorelan 'all' is percentage-wise, but in this
>case I'm pretty sure it's less than 100%. There are also writings
>which are a great deal harder to burn than those painted on paper
or >silk.
>What I'm saying is that trying hard as he might have, I don't think
>Shang-Hsa managed to destroy all previous records. As to whether
>Shang-Hsa was emperor at the sunstop, we have debated that before,
>so I'll not reopen that issue.
Well, Shang-Hsa may not have destroyed every single book, but I bet he certainly destroyed every single copy of _some_ books, and I'm also sure there's plenty of books writ after the Sunstop that purport to predate it, so who can tell what is left?
Also, though you didn't want to bring up the Emperor-at-the-Sunstop issue, I just wanted to say that IMO Shang-Hsa _was_ said Emperor, and not only that he was also Yanoor, once his third eye was opened. So there.
Jose Ramos
>At last, dwarfs are appearing in the Digest. Although IMHO they are
>not suited for PC play, they make some of the best NPCs. I mean,
>cold, remorseless, merciless, with enormous resources and weird
>magics. Hey, the perfect bad guys (like the Brithini, another
>favorite).
>However many of the things that appear on dwarfs do not take in
>account what I consider their main characteristic, magic as
>technology.
Jose goes on to suggest using 1 milliliter salamanders set into the dwarfs' matchlocks. Good idea. I submit that the following devices are fairly well-known amongst most dwarf societies.
David Graham
>Is there any references to scorpion man ecology/culture been
>published?
No, but scorpion men have a pretty primitive "culture". I do not think they have the power of writing, except for exceptional individuals (who write in the local human tongue, most likely), and their standard technique of passing on knowledge is through cannibalism, which sort of limits the number of dudes you can teach at a time.
Their "culture" is more of a biology than a culture. In the same way that various populations of chimpanzees share many things in common, so do the various populations of scorpion men.
>Finding to my cost with Scorpion Hall I've found that scorpion men
>can be rather tough opponents one on one. With their two attacks
>it's quite easy to lose a 70% PC against them. The only chink in
>their armour is scorpionmen have prety low power (at least in RQ2).
>Is there any cultural reason for this?
"Cultural"? No. They're tough in combat because they're big and strong, have excellent natural armor, and have two attacks, one quite deadly. They have low POW because that's their nature. Just as it is in human's nature to have a higher POW.
>The scorpionman culture seems to be on the losing side of conflicts
>persecuted quite sensibly for their cannibalistic tendancies.
The scorpionman culture
>Coupled with being driven to wilderness regions I would have thought
>that the 'weaker' members of the race would have lost in competition
>for scarce resources. Thereby leaving a 'new' improved higher
>'power' race, you know survival of the fitest and all that.
One final point. Using ecological evaluations, I believe it is quite clear that the scorpion man is a R-strategist creature. They breed rapidly, come to maturity swiftly, are highly opportunistic, and are able to spread with frightening speed when conditions are right. R-strategists are not necessarily common or numerous most of the time. They lurk in the background, waiting for a habitat to be disrupted. When this happens, the scorpion men multiply like crazy and spread over the countryside, devouring everything in their path over hundreds of acres.
So don't be too sanguine about the fact that scorpion men are generally a marginal species. If you walk into the deep woods or unplowed prairie, you don't see many dandelions (another R-strategist). But look at a disrupted habitat -- like your front lawn. Hmm. When things get worse -- like at the time of the Hero Wars? -- the scorpion folk will be everywhere.
>Were scorpionmen chaotic in the beginning?
I do not believe there _were_ any scorpion men in the beginning. There was only Bagog. She was not a scavenger god, as you appear to believe. She is a _converter_, transforming dead or moribund life into chaotic life. A sort of scavenging vampire. She started out with no native species to her, and as she ate whole cities and nations, she turned them into scorpion versions of herself. Thus, there were scorpion uz, scorpion mostali, scorpion aldryami, scorpion gold wheel dancers, etc. Most of these species were unable to function properly or survive for long, and only the scorpion men thrived and became a separate species. Of course, this does mean there are not occasional scorpion non-humans (anyone for ducks or minotaurs?) up in the hills, just that it is unlikely to find an entire village of same.
>Certainly it seems the scorpionmen race is chaotic out of
>neccessity now. With the low 'power' (maximum pow14 according to RQ2
rules) there's no way of 'attracting Bagog's attention'. Can't have
RL's and RP's without higher powers
Huh? The max POW 14 is by RQ III rules, too. If you use RQ III, then you don't need a high POW to become a priest or lord or shaman, so scorpion folk can do it -- of course, they're crappy ones, but they can do it. And they're hell on wheels in combat.
>Therfore, scorpion men have to take that risky path and play about
>with chaotic features with the hope of getting one that increases
>power.
I don't see it. Look at the stats. Typically a scorpion man has his POWx5 chance of a chaos feature (actually slightly higher, because some have two or more chaos features, if they roll high enough on the d100). This means that the average scorpion village has 35% of its population possessing a chaos feature (of course, it's more than that not only because some have multiple features, but also because some have gained extra features via rituals or Chaos Slime).
Of those possessing chaos features, around 6% get extra POW - -- half get +1d6 POW, a third get +2d6 POW, and 1/6 get +3d6 POW. This means that 1.05% of the scorpion population have a POW of 3d6, 0.7% have a 4d6 POW, and 0.35 have a 5d6 POW.
The 3d6 POW scorpion men are no better off than humans, but I'm sure they learn their share of magic. The 4d6 and 5d6 scorpion men, who between them make up a little over 1% of the total population, have an exceedingly high Max POW (28 or 35 respectively), and no doubt make effective priests, despite their low POW.
Scorpion folk might have slightly fewer priests than a human society, but they have 'em. One more point -- in any scorpion society, there is likely to be a certain percentage of individuals who were not naturally born scorpion folk, but were "converted" via the Ritual of Rebirth. These individuals generally have higher POW than the average scorpion man, and no doubt show up as priests and shamans with more than the usual frequency.
>Getting a scorpionwoman with power of 18 must be a real rare event
>indeed.
Well. the 5d6 scorpion men get a POW gain roll of 85% with a POW of 18, so they probably rocket up to that level pretty damn fast, especially considering their average starting POW is 17.5. The 4d6 scorpion men get a POW gain roll of "only" 50% at 18, but they only have 4 points to go from their average starting POW of 14.
And of course the majority of scorpion "converts" are experienced humans or other species, who have already worked their POW up a certain amount.
All things taken into consideration, I would assume that somewhere around 2% of the scorpion folk population are able to act as rune level personnel. Remember how much faster they can breed such individuals than humans -- it takes us 30-50 years to produce a runemaster, but a scorpion tribe in need can probably make one in a very short time. It only takes a year to reach full size and maturity, and all the tribe has to do is feed their old priest to a band of qualified youngsters. Hey presto! The young'uns have a head start on Rune mastery.
>Any number of the rank and file of the tribe would be sacrificed
to >protect a priestess so I just wouldn't mess with rune levels of
the >scorpion race.
Well, this is no doubt true.
>My what a good thesis subject for an adventurous grey sage out
>there, running around the wilderness observing scorpionmen and
>trying to avoid being eaten. Think of the fun cutting and pickling
>a scorpionman, would take ages, better be skilled at antidote
>making. Initiation into the Grey Sages would be assurred.
I agree somebody should try it. Maybe an Irrippi Ontor, who could undergo the fabulous Ritual of Rebirth without losing his membership in his cult? And then what a fabulous sage he'd be -- he could hang a satchel of books from his sting, and use his extra legs to climb high library shelves. Plus nobody would argue with his commentaries, at least not face to face.
TYPICAL SCORPION MAN ECOLOGY
Most of the time, scorpion men live in small independent
bands (typically with less than a dozen members) or in little
mountain villages (maybe a couple hundred scorpion folk per
village). The huge and unwieldy queens are generally found one per
village. The small rover bands of scorpion men in theory trace their
parentage back to a particular village, and they would return there
for festivals or breeding, if such appeared desirable.
Scorpion folk are omnivores. They can survive fine on plant food. However, they cannot thrive and breed without animal protein. In particular, the queen must have meat in order to lay eggs. Also, the young scorpion folk must have meat in order to grow. Since they grow to full size in less than a year, they are exceedingly voracious during this time, and the adults must supply a great deal of food all the time, forcing them to spend most of their time hunting, though there are generally some crude gardens of coarse vegetables near a village to feed the adults themselves.
In addition, the very nature of their being causes them to seek out sapient beings as captives. If the Queen wants to expand her regime, the Ritual of Rebirth can be used to add new minions. If she wishes for quality rather than quantity, then the Ritual of Devouring is at hand, to increase her scorpion folks' skills and wisdom.
Many scorpion villages have only a single rune level individual -- the Queen. Others boast two or three shamans to support the Queen. The queen must mate periodically to keep her internal supply of semen fresh. She lays football-sized eggs at regular intervals, and her appetite for protein is enormous. Typically, the scorpion "king" is devoured after mating. If the "king" has useful skills and knowledge, the queen devours him to enhance her own powers. If the "king" lacks such abilities, the queen devours him for a little extra protein to fund the eggs. Either way, it's bad for the king. The queen does not _have_ to eat him, and sometimes, when there's lots of food available, she will refrain from doing so.
The majority of scorpion folk hatched are male. The few females are of course potential rivals for eventual queenhood. The queen is not allowed to kill them however, except in the great ritual fights when a challenger demands the right to become the village's new queen.
The non-queen females _are_ capable of breeding, though they only lay one or two eggs at a time. They rarely bother to do this, since the queen is much more efficient at producing offspring, and sex just isn't all that important to a scorpion person.
Some readers may wonder why I refer to the "Ritual of Rebirth" as a handy and useful method of increasing the tribe's numbers. After all, it's a 3-point one-use spell. How often is _that_ available to the tribe. Well, look at it this way. To produce a useful human member of society takes about 15 years. How long does it take to save up 3 points of POW for a scorpion queen? A year? Two years? and it _instantly_ makes a skilled, intelligent, adaptable member of the tribe.
Note: the ritual fights of the tribe are handy tools to regularly increase the tribesmembers skills and POW. Take the Queen for instance. She can be challenged as often as once a year. If she wins, she gains abilities not only from experience, but also because of her devouring of the loser. If she loses, the tribe does not suffer, because the winner attains much of her impressive abilities, plus gets experience in the fight besides. It's a win-win situation, evolution-wise.
End of Glorantha Digest V2 #112
WWW material at http://hops.wharton.upenn.edu/~loren/rolegame.html
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