Nick on Werewolves
Me>> For my own reasons, I prefer to have about 1 in 7 Telmori of
>> Cursed tribes born as werewolves.
>The ones born on Wildday, presumably.
Truthfully, that thought never occurred to me. OK, since Peter Metcalfe brought it up, I'll spill the beans, and give my beliefs on the Telmori, based on discussions with Ken Rolston a few years ago.
I do not believe that werewolves are born among Cursed Tribes, except in very rare and magical occurrences. The same is true of Pure Tribes.
However, Peter mentioned that I had mentioned a third type of Tribe, which is called a Changed Tribe. Contrary to Peter's statement, these would be found in both Sartar and Dorastor, though they are a distinct minority in Dorastor. I think ALL of the Telmori in Sartar are from a Changed Tribe.
What is a Changed Tribe? Essentially, Sartar and Ostling were able to partially alleviate Talor's curse for the tribes which agreed to follow them and/or their way. Essentially, I think Talor's original curse said something like "One in Seven, you shall be wolves", meaning that one day in seven the entire tribe would become wolves.
Sartar and Ostling were able to change the curse so that the 1 in 7 was actually only 1 in 7 Telmori. Thus, the rest of the tribe is completely free of the Curse. They are not forced into were-form on the full moons, though they still bear the same taint of chaos as the Cursed Tribes.
The 1 in 7 Telmori who are born with the Curse are not just cursed to change into wolves on Wildday nights, but in fact are born as full werewolves. After all, the curse of all their people is concentrated within them, and so they gain greater power as well.
There are a lot of social effects of having 1 person in 7 being born as a werewolf, though most would probably not begin to change until puberty.
This is, IMO, the reason we have werewolves mentioned in RQ2, which was concentrated in Sartar, whereas later Telmor write-ups, being Genertela generic, did not mention them.
Few if any people in Glorantha even know that Changed Tribes exist -- they assume that the entire tribe is affected (and the tribes do nothing to change this belief), and must assume that the werewolves are just a fairly common aberration.
Finally, note that a fairly large percentage of the werewolves born to one of the Changed Tribes will never fit in with the tribe, and will basically leave sometime between age 14 and 20, never to return. These werewolves will tend to band together, and are the source of many of the acts which make the other Sartarites hate Telmori.
Of course, I also believe that Ostling Four-Wolf was actually a Balazaring hunter who was brought in by Sartar to lead the leader-less Telmori, so what do I know?
>Checking something: we agree that Telmori transform on Wildday,
>wherever they are, and it's "just bad luck" that in Dragon Pass,
>Wildday is the same as the Full Moon phase (though this ain't so
>elsewhere),
This is my understanding, yes.
>thus *locally* associating the Red Moon with vicious chaos beasties.
Yes?
Are you trying to get the Lunars off the hook, Nick? :)
Sandy adds:
>And IMO, the tales of Pure Telmori in the Dorastor Pack are a
>vile lie -- a sham intended to fool hapless adventurers into thinking
>that there are "good guys" somewhere within Dorastor.
:)
Sandy again:
>The EWF, not all leaders of which were draconized, believed that
>the entirety of the EWF's population would _become_ the great dragon.
>The priests and leaders would be its soul, the common people its flesh.
>Hence, everyone would be part of the harmonious whole. Not everyone
>would be an equally cool bit of the dragon of course -- the big toe is
>less prestigious than the eyeball, but all are part of the whole.
Ah, that makes more sense -- much more understandably put, not so much a return to the Golden Age as a movement to the Dragon Plane of Existence. And of course, my statements are quite accurate if applied to the people remaining who did not participate, and so are not part of the Great Dragon.
Sergio on goats
>I think that there is a common agreement by now that Orlanthi herd and
eat
>goat.
Although I said I was done talking about goats, I must disagree with this statement. If you add the word "some" before Orlanthi, and change "herd and eat" to "herd and/or eat", I think your statement is closer to reality.
Finally, I agree with Nils' statements about Kralorela -- in fact, I think it likely that to become an Exarch a Mandarin (or whatever) needs to have some sort of mastery of draconic powers. Without it, he would never be able to properly channel the energy he receives to Godunya.
BTW, does Nils or anyone else think there are intermediaries for this power between the people and the Exarchs? I sort of assumed that the "priests" of Godunya were the ones who received the initial worship/reverence, then passed this on to the exarchs themselves, then on to Gondunya.
Stephen Martin
ilium_at_juno.com
- -----------------------------------------------The Book of Drastic Resolutions
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