EWF and bad language-games

From: Jeff Richard <jrichard_at_cnw.com>
Date: Wed, 29 Apr 1998 08:03:17 -0700


Peter and Joerg debate and debate and debate:
>>Yeah. So they hid only in Talastar? Nowhere else?
>My guess is that they were to be found in Southern Peloria and
>were disposessed of their old positions of power by the expanding
>EWF. They would not to be found in Dragon Pass proper as the
>adoption of draconic ways was popular and made with the consent
>of the leaders. Hence I do not think they will be found in
>Kethaela.

At what point in time are you talking about Peter? I think your statement would be correct in the 7th or 8th centuries, but equally I think it would be wrong in the 9th and 10th centuries. Although the adoption of draconic ways was made with the consent of the leaders (to be even more precise, the Heortling High Council was the assembly of political and religious leaders converted to the draconic path), these same leaders became very distant and remote (even inhuman) from their communities in later centuries. The difficulty in discussing the EWF (or any Gloranthan polity) is that different things are true about it at different times.

>Yeah but having grain grown for you is a good thing or else many nomads
>wouldn't be enslaving farmers both in glorantha and in the RW. The
>first age Hyalorings did become Emperors of Dara Happa.

At least historically, it seems that more important than having grain grown for you is the access to pasturage. Having access to the material wealth of settled populations is an added bonus that often leads to nomads becoming settled as well. For what it is worth, strictly speaking, the First Age Hyalorings did not become Emperors of Dara Happa - rather the descendents of the Hyalorings in Darjiin became Emperors of Dara Happa.

I am going to skip Richard's sapient worship thesis more or less because I find it to be largely an exercise in semantics and as far as I can tell, results from an imprecise use of language. As a philosophical pragmatist, I don't see how it is "useful" in explaining or interpreting Glorantha - the Glorantha my players interact in or the Glorantha that Greg and others have written about. Maybe it is useful for digest-eers, but at that point, who cares?

>Why would there be a storm so far from any Storm God worship?
>Why would there be a plague so far from any Disease Goddess worship?

Why would there be a [whatever] so far from [whatever]? I think the standard answer would be to collapse the question into "why would there be a [whatever]?" To the best of my knowledge, the major Gloranthan cultures do not ask the second question Richard posits.

Jeff


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