>It's in Martin's postings that you'll find much of the 'personal' stuff: in
>recent posts it's people who've disagreed with him that've been called
>(among other things) humourless, squeamish and hypocrits, not to
>mention being told to go lock themselves in a box.
Hmm, your in danger of getting the cart before the horse here as I made those comments _after_ you had already blasted me for being "obscene". I am not in the habit of letting somebody repeatedly punch me in the face without on occasion hitting back. Whether under physical, verbal or textual attack I retaliate. If you don't like my retaliatory comments then don't start it in the first place. If someone headbutted you would you buy his complaints of poor sportsmaship after you broke his nose in return?????
>Martin's main beef (this time) seems to be that we think he was just
>deliberately trying to gross the Digest out, whereas he says he wasn't.
>[Glorantha Digest V3 #105]
> Martin: >>I wasn't trying to gross anybody out.
> David: >If you say so.
> >But it came across that way.
>Martin then proceeds to thunder righteously:
> Martin: >You could have asked me first before assuming. Another reason
> >why I was annoyed. Why assume the worst in people?
>Martin, I guess David assumed this based on comments *you* made a short time
>earlier; I certainly did:
>[A previous Glorantha Digest]
> A fan: >That is SICK!!
> Martin: >>Why thank you, one tries ones best.
>If that's not a clear indication, what is?
Well that isn't for a start. Actually Ian Gorlick said this who was not a "fan" as he didn't entirely agree with my comments. Plus what he said has been taken out of context. He actually said:
"That is SICK
Brilliant!"
Hence my reply. I would have thought the use of the royal "One" was enough to convince anyone that I was merely being daffy, not serious, an affliction I suffer from a lot.
Me
>I thought
>this was a digest devoted to discussing all things Gloranthan and to discussing
>ideas in a pure and unfettered way, free of personal feelings, free of
>political
>dogma, free of anything other than logical and fast paced debate.
David Cake
> ah, that would be the Brithini digest, but it is lost to the world
>with the rest of the Kingdom of Logic. A tragedy. Its Joy of the Heart, and
>Liberation of the Soul, and all that modern rubbish here.
Well said! Perhaps I'm wrong, perhaps all the abuse, rows, wars etc is good because at least it generates activity. Much is negative but some is good. My posting on the Blues may have shocked many folk but at least it caused a barrage of alternative and imaginative ideas. I resolve to take less offense in future, shit its just a game.
VADELI IMMORALITY? Peter Metcalfe made some great comments over the whole morality issue with the Vadeli. Some folk don't agree that such "evil" can exist but I think he hit the nail on the head when he said that they were amoral rather than immoral.
I think their practices are a deliberate attempt to attain power, possibly, as I said before, caused by competition with the Brithini.
The Brithini were extremely powerful in the first meetings between the two cultures. With their magics and war skills (now seriously outdated but then very good) they probably killed Vadeli by the cart load. Any race driven to near extinction will clutch at straws to survive and I think this is what the Vadeli did. The warped their own fertility and souls to give themselves power to fight back. Plainly the castes must have evolved over a considerable period of time and are (IMO) a crude copy of the Brithini that developed their own structures over many generations.
Therefore the whole ethos of Vadeli culture which lives of all the "evil" sides of human nature is actually, to them, the normal way of being. Personal suffering is a requisite for a Vadeli. They all endure it. Whatever they inflict on their victims they have suffered also.
They are not immoral in that they know what is moral and chose the opposite, they are incapable of being any other way and it is normal to them.
Of course, to an outsiders point of view this is rubbish. All cultures have the disturbing knack of believing themselves to be correct morally and I don't think there are any in Glorantha that think otherwise. To most cultures, particularily the human ones, the Vadeli are the epitomy of evil. In fact, they are likely to be _more_ upset at the Vadeli than the Trolls frex, even if the two races committed the same acts. The Trolls are monsters in appearance and so its understandable to most humans that they act this way cos, well, they're _monsters_. When a culture is assailed by the Vadeli the terror brought on by their presence must be increadible. They are so alien yet except for skin colour they could be "one of us".
Given this imagine the terror that could be unleashed on the world if they ever learned the existance of the White Vadeli......
Martin Laurie
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