Fix INT & Death of Gods Conspiracy from Peter Linton Tracy on 1996-06-13 (Glorantha Digest Vol 02)

From: Peter Linton Tracy <937058_at_bud.cc.swin.edu.au>
Date: Thu, 13 Jun 1996 12:59:17 +1000 (EST)

I appologise for the length.

Martin Crim posted:

>> Ah-ha! But the Fix INT spell only works on those participating in the 
>> great comprimise, the Great Tribes of Waha. IMG it does NOT work on anyone 
>> but the Tribes themselves, for other humans are not part of the covenant!

> I don't see any MGF IYG (in your Glorantha's) limitation of the spell. I
> think that Praxian history argues rather strenuously against any pan-Praxian
> solidarity against the NLU's out there. (Anyhow, Zebra folk are Waha people.)

The Zebra are Waha folk, I stuffed up. No MGF? Max Game Fun or Munchkin Game Fun, there are plenty of other ways to get MGF other than putting powerful magic all over the place, but I do see your point. Politics for instance, particularly when dealing with solidarity (which rarely exists) in the tribes. Lots of inter-Tribal politics and conflict, their greatest magic (of stupidity) only works on each other, constant threat from Not-like-Us, etc. Sounds to me like Cold-War USA?! ;-)

> I ran into this problem in the very first RQ game I ran, the first
> Borderlands scenario, where the Morokanth were about to brainwipe an Agimor.
> I wasn't 100% sure that the Agimor were subject to the spell (the info
> available was kinda ambiguous, I thought at the time), but they had to be to
> make the scenario work. So I glossed over it.

I think a lot of stuff needs glossing over. Fix INT/Alter Creature does't work on Uz or Baboons in the scenario ("because they do not fall under the covenant of Waha"), but supposidly works on Agimori, Who I alwys viewed as non-human (men-and-a-half). BUT the Agimori apparently live under the covenant (see the scenario "...our punishment for such as these, who come under the Covenant of Waha, is to be made herd men.") and are thus affected! In this kind of scenario a good opportunity for a Perry Mason Lawspeaker exists, arguing finer details of the covenant... Mayhaps the spell is only "legal" to use on people under the Covenant, but might work on others anyway! Maybe the Covenant does cover all of Humanity, or maybe, like IMG, only on those descended from the Founders and Protectresses to whom Waha demonstrated the Covenant. What ever I agree MGF should be maximized.

Mike Cule:

> Jim Chapin remarks:

>> But note that all the Gods were not killed in the KOS episode... and there
>> seems to be nothing in Glorantha to prevent the apotheosis of many characters
>> into Gods to fill the "empty" slots....
>> A nice opportunity for fourth age Hero questers -- to become the new God 
>> of XXXX -- which is obviously why writing was rediscovered among other things.

>
> This seems the moment to bring up something that has been worrying me since I
> read KoS: Just who is Harshax? Or rather who are Harshax, since there seems
> to be a dynasty of them.
> And was the Hero Wars deliberately for their benefit?
> The reason I ask is that for me the creepiest bit of KoS is not when Argrath
> destroys the Gods but in the introduction when Harshax says:
>
> "We could not get rid of writing either, but now it is ours."
>
> Which implies that the Illiteracy Plauge and the destruction of Gloranthan
> civilisation was somebody's deliberate act.
> Which implies that in the Fourth Age one of the Secret Conspiracies of
> Glorantha has finally triumphed.... I think in the Fourth Age the Bad Guys
> Won.

Probably either Krarshti, Bluemooners, or the followers of that horrible Invisible God... Or worse still the Gbaji Economic Rationalists that are slowly destroying Australias Universities! ;-)

Bye

Peter Tracy

End of Glorantha Digest V2 #638

WWW material at http://hops.wharton.upenn.edu/~loren/rolegame.html