> Martin Crim: You seem to think Robert was "bashing" the U.S. with his comments
> about guns. Funny, I thot it was more "wondering admiration".
Or "envy", perhaps? You must all lead such *exciting* lives over there!
> Badgers are below the dignity of a serious hunter... Mythologically, the
> badger "lives on sleep and little else"... A badger's (abundant) fat is
> commonly used in medicine...
If there were such a beast as a "Hughes", I'd be laying into it now! But no self-respecting animal would display Our John's propensities. (Actually, in another species, "anthropowanking" would be a *very* interesting and maybe commercially viable trait. But I leave that one for the Vadeli to exploit).
Anyway, what's wrong with "living on sleep and little else"? If I could, I would. We're burrowing for you now, John...
> ideas of mine about the Basmoli and various other human peoples of south-
> western Glorantha (Ralios, Tanisor, Wenelia), like that they had some
> form of settled culture already prior to the Darkness, with monumental
> temple cities ... and with some sort of hereditary divine kingship ...
This is reinforced by the few things we know about First Age Telmoria: a "City of Wolves" allied to Nysalor's Bright Empire sounds not much like the vagabond Hsunchen we know today. I think the ur-Hsunchen in the West (the lion-kings of Seshnela, the wolf-kings of "Telmoria" (North Ralios, Syanor and the Nida Pass) had more "civilisation" back then, and lost it in part to Western assaults. On the other hand, the Westerners too were different at the Dawning to the cod-mediaeval types we see today: more indebted to (and interlocked with) the Brithini, and less distinctively "themselves".
Re: using Greg's old, unpublished notes ("Gloranthan Encyclopaedia", "Book of Kings", etc.), I tend to believe there's a *reason* why these haven't ever seen print. Certainly Greg's thinking has moved on a long way from the kind of stuff he wrote when he first discovered Glorantha; for myself, if something that was written before I was born still "rings true", I'll pick it up and run with it (e.g. the plot of "Hrestol's Saga"), but sadly all too often you can read through screeds of embarrassing sub-Conan [+] tosh (e.g. "Jonat's Saga") without learning anything useful, except that Greg is a far better writer now than he was at college. (Which is a Good Thing).
When writing Gloranthan background related to any old manuscript of Greg's I've had the good fortune to read, I put in anything that I *remember* and leave out reams of irrelevant detail (e.g. unpronounceable and unmemorable names) and confusing ideas-in-evolution (e.g. "Eurmal" being the original name for "Orlanth") which don't add much to our understanding. My History of Malkionism (cf. "How the West was One", Tales #13, "Rise of Ralios" and my homepage) was written partly this way: there are buzz-words and themes out of "The Book of Kings", "The Flame Kings Dynasty", etc. but no verbatim passages of old and unrevised text. And I also try to relate the old stuff to what we know about Glorantha *today*, especially in recently-published sources, changing old names and dating systems and historical facts to the now-accepted versions rather than adhering to something nobody else knows or uses.
By saying I use only what I remember, I *don't* mean that I work without manuscripts to hand: if I can read it, I will. But if something old has made *no* impression on me, I can't see the point in adhering to it. There is pedestrian hack-work in the waste-paper baskets of all great Masters of Fantasy which it's kinder *not* to bring to the light -- Christopher Tolkien please note!
(Sure, it's subjective: so's life!)
[+] NB: I *like* Howard's Conan stories. This isn't meant as an insult!
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