JK>>>And abmbiguity is the name of the game in Glorantha, it seems. There
TI>> except Kingdom of War, Ignorance, Ramalia, Vadeli(Pang Tang?), and so
>>on.
>No. That was not what I said. What I said is that EACH regards
>themselves as heroes. The Kingdom of War are Doing Their Job. Ramalia
>is surviving as best it can.
>Just because WE think they are bad guys....
In the case of the guys mentioned by Terra Incognita, describing them as "Bad Guys" or "do not regard themselves as Heroes" is as close as one can get to an objective truth. Even Cults of Terror made the following point:
...you or I must obey the laws, because they are the laws; the chaotic must disobey the laws, because they are the laws. Since even the most powerful chaotic cannot defy all laws at once, they feel forever enslaved by all those checks on their freedom. The true chaotic, such as the two-headed dragonsnail, must be then both miserable on Glorantha and a menace to the societies of it, and a warrior does both the afflicted being and all of us a favor by killing it.
It would be hard to think of the "true chaotic" as regarding itself as a hero.
For the specific countries mentioned, the Kingdom of War does not think of itself as "doing its job". It's a far more horrible place, full of damned soldiers who recognize that fact, one way or another. They don't to die because they know for their crimes, only the worst hells will admit them. They can't run away because they _know_ Kingdom of War will eventually conquer the whole world and mete out cruel punishment to deserters. They can't rebel for discipline is so harsh as to prevent them from even thinking about it. So they keep fighting for War...
The Ignorants might have had a mystical purpose for their social practices but they have sunk so far that they've forgotten that highminded aim and are now needlessly nasty, brutish and short.
The Ramalians would be just fine (if rather boarish) if they weren't tyrannized by their Lords, refugees from sunken Slontos. Their lords sap the life and light from their subjects to perpetuate their own existance. I think they were God Learners who changed their spots into something completely different to avoid the Doom that was bumping off other God Learners left, right and centre. A triffle unfortunate that this transformation was into something horrible...
Vadeli are just plain evil and every Malkioni knows it. They eat their babies for immortality, procreate through incest, among all sorts of other disgusting crimes - although they have a different ethic than Pan Tangians. Only the facts that they are courteous and pleasant to deal with (well known to be a charade but so practiced as to be utterly convincing), their habit of committing crimes only if they can get away with it and their willingness to do jobs that nobody else wants, makes them tolerable in Malkioni society.
There are a few other evil folk around (not many) including one in Melib and the Gorgers of Kimos.
>The Lunars and trolls are quite
>sympathetic when you look at them from the 'other side.'
And there are quite a few gloranthan cultures that are quite unsympathetic from the 'other side'. But they are outnumbered vastly by gloranthans that look unsympathetic to outsiders but are quite nice folk.
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