>Peter Metcalfe suggested that tattooing was too unsubtle for the Kraloreans,
>I think on the contrary the combinations of creation, pain and the connections
>with initiations perfectly deep and meaningful, especially if you use
>invisible ink!
Invisible ink sounds a bit hackneyed to me. I've got no problem with the visible tattoos on lowlife Kralori thugs but I don't think the Mandarins and the mystics actually enhance their power by recourse to such things.
Mark Mohrfield:
Robert had written:
>>" Elves practice their own body-modifications, including
>>pruning and splicing, but those are the subject of a seperate article."
>IMO elves would regard such body-modifications as being Makings instead of
>Growings and consequently disdain the practice.
I think the Elves think of Making in the sense of Tool-use or Artifice rather than the practice of transplantation. Their Great Trees actually have a branch of every plant that grows in their forest which indicates that the practice is known to them. The example of the Elf-Friend Trader in Elder Secrets looks to me like an example of body-modification, although it was used as a punishment.
>If the theory about humans learning about tattoos from Dragonewts is
>correct, then the wizards who come from the City of 10,000 Magicians
>were "most of the sorcery throughout the Empire of Wyrms Friends was
>studied and assembled" probably practice it.
The humans may have learned a potent form of tattooing from the 'newts, but I have no firm idea what this might be. Given the newts' tendency towards body modification (cutting a tongue in half, removing the rightside of the brain, the multilation of the heifer in Elder Secrets), I think they eschew the ink (they can't write IIRC) and go for radical plastic surgery (ie implanted spikes, multilated body parts). Given the exoticness, I don't think any but the Wizards of the City of 10,000 magicians actually practice it nowadays.
End of Glorantha Digest V2 #462
WWW material at http://hops.wharton.upenn.edu/~loren/rolegame.html
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