Re: Uninformed thoughts

From: Loren Miller <loren_at_wharton.upenn.edu>
Date: Tue, 21 May 1996 16:32:27 EST


Chris Pearce writes:
> I get my info about Glorantha only from the list, which is kind of
> frustrating, since you loremasters tend to drop lots of historical info as
> asides.

I happen to know that you have played some Gloranthan scenarii on the player side of things, so that isn't quite accurate. Anyway... enuff of that and off to the fun stuff.

> ZZABUR
>
> He's a big sorceror, right? Anyway, I seem to recall reading somewhere that
> Greg described him as "as dangerous and ultimately meaningful as a lion"

ZZZabur was the first sorceror. He deduced sorcery by the use of perfect, flawless logic. He's also the son of Malkion, who is the big cheese in "Malkioni" religion. ZZZabur is also a right bastard and it would be better not to even mention his name because who knows what kind of enchantment he might have looking for such a thing. That's also why we use lots of ZZZ's when we write his name, so that it isn't quite his name.

He cast the closing to stop people from sailing to Brithos, and then he was working on a spell to destroy about half of Genertela, sinking it beneath the sea in the same way that Jrustela was destroyed, when Snodal saw the plans in ZZZZZabur's blue book and took action to stop it. The result was the Syndic's Ban.

How about modifying the ZZZZZabur statement to say that he is as dangerous and ultimately meaningful as Cwim and the Mother of Monsters having a Tea Party?

> THE GOD-LEARNERS
> Here's a thought. The God Learners were destroyed in part by Zzabur, and one
> of the things he really mucked with was communication spirits.

I think that ZZZZZZabur mucked with communication spirits later, and that was why Snodal and company offed the God of the Silver Feet (a western cousin of Issaries).

Z-man certainly helped fight the god learners, but I doubt that he used communication spirits more than anything else. He was righteously pissed when he saw how many innovations (spit) and new, stinking abominations (spit) the god learners invented. Tanian, the god of the burning oceans, was one of the worst examples of this tendency of the GLs. The GLs had lots of enemies though, so it isn't quite accurate to credit their destruction solely to ZzzZZZabur.

> Maybe, like Zzabur, the God Learners found a new way through the Heroplane
> that led to a new way of affecting Glorantha. Maybe this way had something
> to do with Communication spirits.

Didn't need it. They had RuneQuest Sight, which allowed them to see the runic/elemental structure of everything, thus giving them a foot up when it came to using sorcery on things.

> I think that communication spirits must be what really inspire tribal
> loremasters and storytellers with not only their gifts but also the stories
> themselves.

I don't think this is necessary. I dislike spell spirits in the first place, and to say that not only magic spells, but also songs and stories, are gifts from spirits and not the product of the human mind grates against my (admittedly modern) sensibilities.

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