Re: Accents, Hero plane from Jane Williams on 1997-04-13 (Glorantha Digest Vol 04)

From: Jane Williams <janewill_at_mail.nildram.co.uk>
Date: Sun, 13 Apr 1997 15:38:17 +0000

> Date: Sun, 13 Apr 1997 01:20:22 GMT
> From: owner-glorantha_at_erzo.org
> To: glorantha-digest_at_erzo.org
Hero Plane:
Joseph Troxell asks:
> Has anyone worked up any notions of what the Hero (and/or God) Plane(s)
> physically look like? For example (and I don't like this, but it's
> something to throw out), would the Gods Plane look like the mundane plane,
> only the gods would have big fortresses and mansions dotting the landscape?
I see it as looking like an idealised version of the mundane, when you're looking at the details (trees, paths, and so on). "Idealised" of course varying with the preconceptions of the quester. So Orlanth's Stead will look like an idealised chieftain's hall to a Sartarite, more like a fortified castle to a Heortlander, and like a miserable and primitive out-house to a Lunar. The larger scale geography I see as being infinitely variable, depending on the plot.

> What about the Heroplane? I figure the HQs of travel are something like
> being on a road. "Well, we can take the right path which goes to the
> Mundane plance and get to the Holy Country in 2 weeks, or take the left path
> that goes through the Dark Forest, around Spirit Lake, and past the Dark Tower."
I see the "paths" as being more to do with causality than roadways. "We can take the path where we sneak in and rescue the prisoner, or we could take the one where we challenge the leader to single combat". Having done that, you might then find that the physical pathway you can see leading away from the encounter goes to the right or to the left, but that's because you've just altered the plot, and the geography with it. Or think of some of those Malory stories: do you take the path marked "only for the best of knights", or the one marked: "humble and pious souls this way"? Left or right is irrelevant, it's the plot that matters.

> If the Hero (or actually, probably in this case the God)
> Plane has geography similiar to the Mundane plane, would I get Breath
> Air/Water by going down to the ocean, beating up the spirits and beings who
> know Breath Air/Water, and forcing them to teach it to me? That sounds
> reasonable to me, but if the Hero and God Planes don't look like the Mundane
> plane, it won't work.

Well, if you decide you're going to the sea, and you know that to go to the sea one goes West (because Orlanth did), then go west and you'll find the sea. In fact in the physical world going south might have been more useful, but that's by the way. It's what you "know" about the geography of the Heroplane that determines how it works. At least, that's how I see it.

And on accents:
> I remember another file as well, even older, which talked about which RW
> accents each of the elder races should have -- I assume this stuff was
> inspired by the work on the RQ movie script. I have no idea if it is by
> Greg, Sandy, Steve Perrin, Bill Dunn, or someone else.
But an American, presumably. Which gives problems like this:

> Elves:.... a... British... accent was proposed.
So elves speak more or less normally, do they? And was that Oxford, Yorkshire, Cockney, or what? That's the trouble with this kind of attempt, it only works if everyone sees the same accents the same way. Since each nationality has its own stereotypes about other nationalities, it only confuses the issue. I've got no idea which British accent was being referred to above, but they each have a very different stereotype associated with them, to me. So I've got no idea which of those stereotypes was being implied. Presumably the problem gets even worse for people whose first language is not English.

Jane Williams                     jane_at_williams.nildram.co.uk

http://homepages.nildram.co.uk/~janewill/gloranth/index.shtml