Bride Price; Horizon; 1 year = 1 year

From: David Dunham <dunham_at_pensee.com>
Date: Thu, 22 Feb 1996 23:25:01 -0800

One last comment about marrying the Lady in Feathers: I think bride price among the Grazers is normally measured in horses (I believe I determined it was something like 8 or 12 horses to marry a respectable girl). It's probably different for the FHQ, but I see no reason why it has to be measured in monetary wealth. Perhaps as part of the price she asked for every foal born in Tarsh that year. (Moirades could top this by sending not only the foals, but their mothers.) She could have asked him to perform some magic ritual; as king, he could have had the ritual performed in every temple in Tarsh. She could have asked for some famous outlaw; he could have also presented her with all his kin.

Given that the wealth of Tarsh was still attractive after Moirades' death [KoS.128], it hardly seems that Moirades impoverished the kingdom.

MOB wrote

>>Strangers in Prax has a nice section on pg 36 about the horizon on a flat
>>world and how this is basically the "indistinct band where sea and sky
>>become one" due to haze.
>
>As one of the original playtest/error-trappers for SiP I objected strenuously
>to this boxed section on the simple but essential grounds of MGF. It
>is more fun, in my opinion, to have Glorantha as a Flat world with a
>horizon, because it means we have to invent cheesily-pseudo-scientific
>reasons *why* this can be so.

You must mean meta-game fun, not maximum game fun, since inventing cheesy explanations for Gloranthan physics seldom has any impact on actual play. Most of the discussions in the Digest may be a fun way to show off our esoterica, but don't help me run a fun or even consistent game.

I actually prefer the explanation based on standard physics, because that's one less difference I have to deal with. Glorantha can be just like Earth but flat and with magic, instead of just like Earth, flat, with magic, and with laws of physics that are sometimes the same (I presume objects still fall down) and sometimes different (light bends). But then, I like my pizzas with extra toppings, not extra cheese.

Joerg wrote

>Remember that
>Gloranthan years are shorter than Terran years, thus a 13-year-old
>Gloranthan is roughly the biological equivalent to a 9-year-old Terran.

Your conclusion is false. Greg has said as recently as RQ Con Down Under that it's years that count -- a 13 year old Gloranthan is identical to a 13 year old Terran. Yes, they reach old each in fewer days -- but the same number of years. (From our perspective, Gloranthans live fast and die young. Feel free to come up with wacko theories about Gloranthans being a different species, or accelerated aging due to the Sunstop, but you don't have to convert, just compare years to years.)

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