A bit more on the KoW, I'm afraid, having put the LSD away.
Jonas Pope wrote (amongst other good things, Nick be damned):
>Or we could take David Cheng's suggestion, and assume
>that many aspects of life in the KoW are distorted versions of the culture
>that prevailed in the region before the Ban (Orlanthi? Hsunchen?) and
>'mutate' this template into a form that seems fitting.
This seems fine and I have no particular objections to David's approach, although your paranthetical question -- Orlanthi? Hsunchen? -- illustrates the core problem. Aside from occasional references to the Black Forest trolls, there's virtually no information on the area pre-Ban, though I suppose there might be something in Codex or TotRM that I don't have access to (I only have a copy of Codex v1n2, which is, oddly enough, the Fronela/Galastar special, but aside from some speculation on possible connections to the Unspeakable Name there isn't much on the KoW in it). Nick & David Hall's just-ftped Malkioni info, though containing plenty of speculation on the KoW from the POV of the various sects, does not include, frex, a sect that actually claims to have held sway in the Arnstor (?) region north of the Janube. They all seem to have stopped spreading in Dona. I have no idea, of course, whether or not this is simply a convenient blind spot on the part of the various sects to avoid being accused of complicity in the creation of the KoW. As the KoW, with its tapping, seems to have a sorcerous component in its background, I have no personal objection to the War Machine as the Invisible God made Visible.
>...there is an element to Mark's thesis that does seem anachronistic to
me--the idea
>that the fundamental threat the KoW poses to Loskalm is the possibility that
the
>strain of warfare may transform the Idealists into a doppelganger of their
enemies.
While I won't argue the point that this idea may be anachronistic, it certaintly strikes me as not only possible but likely. Sir Meriatan's "plan to engulf the whole of Fronela in a war to establish the supremacy of his kingdom and religion" strikes me as an excellent sign of an incipient War Machine growing in the upper ranks of the Loskalmi hierarchy, and Hrestoli Idealism will be put to the test the first time one of its cities is besieged and someone realizes that they don't have enough food to feed everyone crammed within its walls (think of the long-standing and utterly heartless medieval and Rennaissance traditions of herding the poor and the "useless" out the gates at pike- and sword-point to better the chances of those remaining to survive the blockade; the moment anyone in Loskalm even mentions it as an option, Idealism's self-delusions come crashing to the ground).
To Nick Brooke, off for the week:
First off, the first thing I do when I see the Ottoman Army coming is wonder how they take their coffee. The second thing I do is wonder where I can get myself a cicak. I have no particular problem with someone using the _visceral_ impressions of the Ottoman Army to help bolster their players' role-playing experience, but those impressions are, IMO, unhelpful from a GMs POV when trying to actually figure out the ultimate nature of the KoW. From that perspective, when you say "Ottoman Army", the first thing I do is indeed look up their organizational methods.
Nick writes:
>Our freeform game "How the West was One" is set in Sog City, faced with the
threat
>of imminent invasion by the Kingdom of War. The authors (David Hall, Kevin
Jacklin
>and myself) spent a fair wee while brainstorming, and discussing, and
corresponding
>with Those Who Know, to form a workable model of KoW operations for the
purposes
>of our game. The overwhelming impression we developed was that treating the
KoW as
>a 'reasonable' society would go utterly against the aims of its creators.
Ah well, an apparent Gregging (a first for me, I think; "yaay!"). What, pray tell, were the "aims of its creators"? Frankly, I'm beginning to think that they -- whoever they are -- didn't have the foggiest idea what they were doing when they came up with the KoW, other than coming up with an opponent for the Loskalmi that isn't the Lunar Empire. The KoW is in serious danger of just being a big cipher.
>Maybe I've had too strong a dose of Kubrick's dehumanisation films, esp.
>"Full Metal Jacket" -- a good modern soldier isn't meant to feel "love and
>laughter, pain and fear," and has these things drummed out of him in
training. Can we
>extrapolate this back to Glorantha, and consider the implications within the
>society of our archetypal War Machine?
I suppose we could, but as _Full Metal Jacket_ so aptly demonstrates, trying to dehumanize your soldiers doesn't make your soldiers any better, it just makes them more likely to frag their superiors. While the warriors of the KoW may be technically insane, they're having a damn good time IMO.
Just a few thoughts.
Mark
End of Glorantha Digest V2 #215
WWW material at http://hops.wharton.upenn.edu/~loren/rolegame.html
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