Re: Stephen Martin from Sérgio Mascarenhas on 1997-08-17 (Glorantha Digest Vol 05)

From: Sérgio Mascarenhas <sermasalmeida_at_mail.telepac.pt>
Date: Sun, 17 Aug 1997 20:06:50 +0100

Stephen Martin:
> The key is that Hunter deities are NOT element specific -- they are
> culture specific. Odayla is the Hunter Deity for Orlanthi peoples
I agree, notwithstanding cultures reflect the elemental orientations of their pantheons. An Orlanthi culture should reflect the element of storm and what it implies: in the present case that Orlanthi will value mammals differently from insects.
IMO insects would be considered unclean, disgusting and inapropriate to eat (what do europeans - and euro-americans I would bet - in RW think about eating insects?). You don't eat them you hunt them for sports porpose only. But since the only insects worth the effort live in troll lands, you can find better game there (I mean, Trolls...).

> and so he should be the Hunter Deity of the ducks, who are much closer to
> Orlanthi than to trolls, certainly Sergio will agree to that.
I also agree that ducks are more close to Orlanthi than to trolls. The important point is that being more close is not the same as being equal. IMO ducks don't have to be like humans. They may depart from the standard Orlanthi culture. My proposal is that one of the points where they depart is the hunter worship.

> for ducks are not generally hunters IMO, they are fishers
Duck hunters represent a small part of duck society and its most noticeable characteristic his that they worship a troll's god. Notice that this is important to ducks. Even if they are much closer to Orlanthi than to trolls that doesn't mean they don't have contact with trolls. I must repeat myself: most of the time in Glorantha history ducks had to live in a Dragon Pass where trolls were prevasive (remember that in the years 1100 / 1250 ducks 'were' the Orlanthi culture in DP). When they have to contact with trolls, they don't and can't expect the support of human Orlanthis to help them if things go wrong. Better to share something with trolls that will offer ducks at least a neutral stance from the darkness folk. The cult of Zong seems to me prefectly appropriate.

> But, as worshiped by those very few duck hunters (...), he (Odayla) would
provide spells for the
> type of prey they hunt. This _might_ include insects
Why would a god provide such odd and unnatural spells - unnatural in the sense that they contradict is nature ad orientations, in the present case storm and the creatures associated with storm - only to satisfy a very small and unrepresentative set of worshipers? How would human Odayla hunters react when confronted with such a situation? IMO it doesn't make sense. If we follow your line, why wouldn't Odayla teach command broo? or command gorp? These are really useful spells...

> but is more likely to include small birds (Duck cannibals, yeah!),
rodents, etc.
Sorry Stephen this is complete non-sense. Ducks are cannibals because they eat birds? Then humans are cannibals when they eat mammals, specialy monkeys (and some humans eat monkeys in the RW so I may assume they do it in Glorantha, maybe in Pamaltela).

> there is a local fishing god in the area, called Pelaskos (mentioned
in the Holy Country article in RuneQuest Companion). Tanks for the information. I'll have to review it.

Sergio Mascarenhas