Me: Thus, in an octomonist council which lacks a True Mostali
> >for one of the seats, the seat will simply be vacant.
P. Metcalfe:
> The True Mostali are very rare, rarer than the Diamondwarves IMO
> and nobody can make them anymore. If Diamond Mountain adopted that
> seating arrangement then at least 75% and possibly 100% of the
> council seats will be vacant even if they headhunted all the
> Conclaves in the World IMHO.
Hm, lessee, how many dwarven councils on the Nidan Decamony level are
there in the world? No more than ten, I think. That means you would
need at most 90 True Mostali to fill all places. I have no trouble
seeing there being say 45 TM in the world, and even less trouble
having 8 (or 6) of them in Diamond Mountain. All IMIHO.
>
> I don't think the Dwarves become more mineralic and machine-like
> physically as they reach Diamondwarf status although they certainly
> do so mentally. This gets around your objection of 'speeding up
> the process' IMO.
According to ES, Diamonddwarves get "mechanical" apparatus growing on
them (wedges, hammers, etc) and accquire other machine-like physical
abilities - this does not have to be interpreted as I did but the
interpretation is a valid one (IMUIHO, of course). Furthermore, the
Individualists said about Chark the Deliberator that he was so pious
that his body (or was it his bones?) turned to stone. Prospaedia, I
think.
Sven Erik Sieurin
(my full name - "Sven" means "young man" and "Erik", as Nils so
cleverly remarked, means something like "almighty ruler". Thus, as
the young almighty ruler I will take over when Nils passes away
(bwahhahahahah!). John Hughes is welcome to make a non warrior/king
heroquest out of it and try to make one of the powerwargamers that
populate the digest in his imagination play it, if he wishes. Good
luck, says I!)
PS. Regarding the subject line, this is of course the text of the
famous non-Gloranthan dwarven chant, "Gold". DS.