Re: Making Animals

From: Alex Ferguson <abf_at_cs.ucc.ie>
Date: Thu, 18 Jul 2002 18:39:06 +0100 (BST)

Peter Larsen:
> The creative powers of Glorantha seem to have been willing to
> cut corners when they could -- most of the "people" are pretty
> similar (the "person" or "man" rune at work, if you are GL-ish). So
> Uz and humans and Aldrayami and Mostali and all those other races
> look vaguely alike -- two arms, two legs, eyes, nose (more or less),
> etc. Imagine a spirit creates or becomes or causes the First Raccoon.
> It's got all those raccoon features -- quadruped, fur, a tail with
> rings, maybe that little mask -- and probably most of the raccoon
> behavior features -- washes its food, likes garbage cans, etc. Now,
> along comes some sort of god, who has an idea for a creature to
> create or become or cause. The god stumbles on the raccoon, and,
> because it matches most of what the god is thinking of, the god
> creates a "theist" raccoon.

"Pass me some Small Mammal Type 3 parts..." Sure, though in most cases each "party" seems likely to have myth variants to broadly similar effect. (The liturgists say they're all devolutions from the Raccoon Form Rune, the animists say some raccoons got duped by some manipulative god, etc.)

Perhaps to put it in GL terms, we might say that Forms are aspects of the Inner World, and thus inherently Mixed anyway. (Notwithstanding this, the animal as a whole may not _equally_ "mixed".)

> What does this mean on a daily basis? The animals, plants,
> etc that have prospered near theists tend to be "theist," if
> anything. Most everything will respond to any magic. Unless
> populations have been isolated, there are probably not too many
> "pure" species anymore; the copies have interbred and erased the
> differences between them.

Yep to all that.

--__--__--

Powered by hypermail