From: RuneQuest-Request@Glorantha.Holland.Sun.COM (RQ Digest Maintainer) To: RuneQuest@Glorantha.Holland.Sun.COM (Daily automated RQ-Digest) Subject: RuneQuest Daily, Sat, 25 Sep 1993, part 1 Reply-To: RuneQuest@Glorantha.Holland.Sun.COM (RuneQuest Daily) Sender: RuneQuest-Request@Glorantha.Holland.Sun.COM Precedence: junk The RuneQuest Daily and RuneQuest Digest deal with the subjects of Avalon Hill's RPG and Greg Stafford's world of Glorantha. Send submissions and followup to "RuneQuest@Glorantha.Holland.Sun.COM", they will automatically be included in a next issue. Try to change the Subject: line from the default Re: RuneQuest Daily... on replying. Selected articles may also appear in a regular Digest. If you want to submit articles to the Digest only, contact the editor at RuneQuest-Digest-Editor@Glorantha.Holland.Sun.COM. Send enquiries and Subscription Requests to the editor: RuneQuest-Request@Glorantha.Holland.Sun.COM (Henk Langeveld) --------------------- From: 100270.337@CompuServe.COM (Nick Brooke) Subject: Lots of sense Message-ID: <930924071500_100270.337_BHB41-1@CompuServe.COM> Date: 24 Sep 93 07:15:00 GMT X-RQ-ID: 1814 Thom Baguley talks a lot of sense! I shal address myself to his letter. > Fascinating stuff on the daily lately ... Yup! ________ Issaries > My recollection of the God Learner connection (I forget which sources) > is that as one of their favourite cults they "seeded" it throughout > Glorantha. No mention of any major changes. We deduce the "major changes" from the parts of the Issaries cult that are pure game mechanics making little sense in the world: spell trading and universal tradetalk. You must remember that the God Learners were in effect RuneQuest powergamers who rewrote the rules to suit themselves: anything in the rules that shouldn't be part of Glorantha is a God Learner addition, and rightly despised as such. > That seems rather small potatoes for the God Learners. I suspect they > just needed a very widespread trade network to support their empire. That seems rather generous to the God Learners. I suspect any cult they used was "tampered with" to make it fit their needs better. > I suspect that Issaries was 'originally' (whatever that means in > Glorantha) mainly/only a barabarian communication god only partially > associated with trade. Yep: probably god of tribal ambassadors who carry the words of the Kings: vital social function whether you're trying to arrange a big raid, fend off a war, negotiate for hostages or ransoms or compensation, etc. > I also suspect that the GL 'favourites' may well have been less tampered > with than others. I disagree, purely on the evidence: Issaries and Lhankor Mhy look like game constructs and not genuine Orlanthi religions, and both have been described as God Learner favourites. Oh, on Lhankor Mhy: : This immortal poem is a dragonewt chant and prayer which relates the : creation of the world. The right-hand explanation are glosses to a : human version of the poem made by a western scholar (probably a god- : learner, hence a worshipper of Lankhor Mhy). ^^^^^ Source: WF14 p.14. _________ Tradetalk > How widespread is tradetalk? In Maniria I suspect that most traders and > many well travelled/educated people (a minority) speak a little of it. Enough to buy a meal or ask for simple directions to the nearest large town? > In any case it is definitely a very simple language with many regional > variations. Agreed, it should be. Probably, given 600 years since the downfall of the God Learners, it now is. But remember that it was allegedly a single language spoken (by some) across the whole Middle Sea Empire. Written Tradetalk? Probaably about as good as airport signs and McDonalds menus: you can do pictures of goods (about as well as you can draw), and prices, but you can't write letters to your family and friends in it. __________ HeroQuests > I think the description in KoS makes it pretty clear that HQs start > with ritual reenactment. This is the basis of most worship ceremonies. > It seems fairly obvious that these ceremonies are low-key heroquests > (though maybe not always so low-key e.g. during The Sacred Time). By > the way ... with this definition the Garhound Festival contest is also > a heroquest (and it can, reputedly, have very serious consequences for > the locality). Maybe, anytime a Stormbull sets out to kill a chaos > monster (or trap it under a big rock?) is also a heroquest... It seems > to be a question of degree. Yes. Everything you say above is true. Disagree about the big rock, though: that's too much like planning. Delivering the Orlanthi challenge "Wandering Sun, Jealous Uncle" (etc.) is a heroquest too. So is making a Lightbringers' Greeting, or a Council Circle. For another heroquest scenario, see Elder Races book p.111-116. I thought the Short Lightbringers' Pilgrimage in KoS made it plain that the whole of this magically-potent ritual is a costumed reenactment performed by the clan, not just the start of it. A simple reenactment becomes dangerous if anyone with a real grudge is involved as a 'friend' in the Quest, or if actual foes participate. Due to the nature of Gloranthan myth, the latter is more likely than it may seem. Remember that when Orlanthi make a circle and build a wicker man in the middle of it, they are reenacting the Summons of Evil myth (KoS p.81f); remember, too, Elder Races p.115: "The attacks each year do not necessarily have to be by the same type of foes. It may be dwarfs one year, trolls the next, and chaos things the third. Such effects are the nature of Gloranthan ritual and magic which necessarily draws its opponents from the world, but not always from the same part of the world." We see this vividly in the CHDP (KoS p.155): when Kallyr Starbrow attempts the Short Lightbringers' Pilgrimage (and remember, she's a famous hero- quester), "In the Conflict Phase, when normally a polluted icon is destroyed, a blindingly armed Lunar warrior appeared, halfway through her own sword-dance. The enemy was eventually killed, and the ceremony was finally finished, but the damage was done..." This "simple" LBQ uses the Summons of Evil myth to 'validate' destruction of a scarecrow in mythical terms, but thereby lays itself open to real foes taking advantage of the call. And, of course, the strength of the call in the Summons of Evil will depend on the strength of the summoning clan, and on what evils they have attracted the attention of, recently. ________________ Gloranthan Light > I seem to recall a Gloranthan rainbow reference somewhere, but can't > recall any details. Rainbow Girl is a Praxian spirit messenger who carried messages between Water and Light Gods, I believe. __________ Other Folk Sam Phillips seems to be talking about Mastakos Mover. And I agree with him about MOB's sailless Moon Boats. Ptoo! Nya! Simon Manning says, re: Western Tongues, "I think that the for the Brithini we should think in terms of Greek and not Latin, 'cos the Latins were duff at science, while the Greeks weren't half bad." Ptoo! I say, the Romans were damn' good at Law. The Brithini don't come up with new ideas any more: the Lunars do (so I give them Greek). The Lunars also have Nysalor philosophers Socratising all over Peloria. And, how many Greek-derived dialects can you think of to use in Seshnela, Ralios, Loskalm, etc. that will have the same colourful impact on the pseudo-mediaeval part of Glorantha as French, Italian, ur-Gothic? And besides, with Stafford's effortless Classicism, these two languages are mixed up all over the world. So Nya! And Ptoo! again. (But that's a nice try, Simon). And Cheers! to Ken for a polite response to my overly-lengthy reply on Faith. "The root of all Gloranthan religion is in the propitiation of spirits," eh? I'll think about this one, and get back to you. ==== Nick ==== --------------------- From: gal502@cscgpo.anu.edu.au (Graeme A Lindsell) Subject: Just some general replies... Message-ID: <9309240806.AA23159@cscgpo.anu.edu.au> Date: 24 Sep 93 18:07:17 GMT X-RQ-ID: 1815 Nick Brooke writes: >BTW, anyone else spot the "Year -150" date for the LBQ on KoS p.270 ? Yep. I don't think he has much evidence to back it up. I wonder if Greg is moving away from the concept of the Dawning as the start of everything. (Everything non-mythic, that is). Maybe he wants some spare Time :-) > OK, take Christianity from the mediaeval point of view. At the Dawning, > Year One, the Old Faith existed (Old Malkionism). Then some guy has a > vision of the Prophet and sets up a new religion which differs greatly from > the original caste-ridden, legalistic religion (Hrestolism). And several > hundred years after that there's a new and extreme form of dogmatic > monotheism on the world stage, which claims the same roots as the original > (Islam). Judaism/Early Christianity/Islam, sure. I would see Rokari/Hrestoli as less extreme: the one quote (What My Father Taught Me for Western soldier) has a Rokari calling Hrestoli "fanatics", not unbelievers. I wonder if the Jresteli destroyed so much of the different earlier faiths that the modern sects have essentially the same theology. One other major difference between the real world faiths and the Malkionists is that there is still a very significant polytheistic presence, whereas by (say) 1200 I believe the monotheists had all the Mediterrean countries - correct me if I'm wrong. There is still the element of "well we disagree on the fine points but we all believe in the _Real God_, not like those pagans" when there are a lot of pagans. > "I am not now, nor have I ever been, a God Learner" "I have here the names of fifty prominent God Learners high in the Orlanth Rex heirarchy." > Me, I say Western script is Latin. But the modern Western languages have > evolved from their pristine Classical Brithini roots. They now speak French This means that literate people in the West do not write in there own languages at all, but use Classical Brithini/Old Seshnegi/whatever it is uniformly. Is the spoken version the language of the educated in the West, replacing Tradetalk there? So do the Church use this in their litanies/casting spells, or is this an area of dispute between the sects? From earlier: > covered by any RuneQuest cult to date is the evolution through initiation > to "different gods" that must take place in many normal characters' lives: > from Voria to Ernalda to Asrelia for women, from a boys' god [Voriof?] to > Orlanth for men. Like Yelm, but with different gods for different stages. I wonder if the original Orlanthi progression may have been from "Voriaf" to Orlanth to Lhankhor Mhy, with the LM's being the "wise tribal elders", later being replaced by professional wise men as the Orlanthi became more civilized. The requirement that all sages wear beards would then be a survival from an all-male cult. > This obviously happens, but has never been mechanically described). The problem with the current system is there is no motive to make such a change. Should your sacrificed rune-spells for one god change to those of the next? Ken writes: > I would certainly celebrate an evolution of cults from wargaming mechanics to > Pendragon-style trait and passions mechanics. I'll join the party. David Dunham writes: >>From: gal502@cscgpo.anu.edu.au (Graeme A Lindsell) >> I think that the Western script may consist of pictograms built up of >>the various God Learner runes we're all so familiar with. >Yurk, another "runes are everything" theory of the sort I so dislike... I >think this one falls apart since there are so many more pictograms than >runes. It's a pity that there are only 26 words in the English language then. I see them using the runes as a symbolic alphabet to construct the pictograms. I don't think "runes are everything", but I think the Westerners might, given we're told they use them everywhere. Graeme Lindsell a.k.a gal502@huxley.anu.edu.au --------------------- From: s.manning@ic.ac.uk Subject: Re: Western Lightbringers? Message-ID: <9309241056.AA28529@milli> Date: 24 Sep 93 12:56:01 GMT X-RQ-ID: 1816 I'll keep it short, or I'll ramble again. I enjoyed Joerg Baumgartner (X-RQ-ID: 1811) entry and it is a good question; did Worlath slay Ehlim. I don't know, but with regards to the lightbringers, the published sources (CoT and Genertela) both make it clear that as far as the Malkioni are concerned the Sun (Ehlim) was repaired/restored by Zzabur. Joerg's mention of the Stygians, specifically the Aeolians, raises the interesting question about Stygian myths. Since they are really on the boundary between monotheism and ploytheism, the latter merely in the sense of many gods, their faith is really quite interesting. I'll stop there, or I'll lose my thread again, Simon Manning. P.S. Are the "mystery" religions in the Lunar Empire. The White Moon and Church of Immortality are mentioned, but the latter is not described in any detail, and are candidates, but are there any others? Also, what is the Church of Immortality? I'll really stop now. --------------------- From: COR_HVH@KUNRC1.URC.KUN.NL Subject: RQ-Con Message-ID: <01H3C00PPI9C988EPV@KUNRC1.URC.KUN.NL> Date: 24 Sep 93 15:26:00 GMT X-RQ-ID: 1817 A question not pertaining to Glorantha, but to the Real World (no tm as far as I am aware). I will be coming to RuneQuest Con in Januari and it seems kind of silly to take a transatlantic flight from Amsterdam to Baltimore, do the Con and fly right back. It would be nice to visit some other nearby places too, say between Washington and Boston. Are any of you interested/willing/stupid enough to put me up for a couple of days and show me the sights (and play even more RQ than just during RQ-Con)? Hans van Halteren hvh@lett.kun.nl ---------------------------------------------------------------------- To a character on his way to certain death, due to the fact that he is currently falling off a very high cliff: "Quick, convert to Orlanth and ask for Divine Intervention!" ---------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------- From: eosgg@raesp-farn.mod.uk (Geoff Gunner) Subject: Whoops! Bit missed from my submission ... Message-ID: <9309241608.AA10583@raesp-farn.mod.uk> Date: 24 Sep 93 16:08:14 GMT X-RQ-ID: 1818 Sorry, folks - for those that care, I forgot on my modifications to the steading rules that the final number should be multiplied by the skill being used, so that's: Units of food = Hours worked x ( 3D10% + Method% + Land Fertility% ) x Skill %. Incidentally, method reflect the technology being used. It ranges from pointed stick through wooden-bladed plough (the name for which esapes me), through to metal plough. Degree of artificial fertiliser applied should be added. Have fun in decreasing the land's fertility as the years go by. Geoff. --------------------- From: JARDINE@RMCS.CRANFIELD.AC.UK Subject: Issaries, GLs and other Gods Message-ID: <9309241516.AA25432@Sun.COM> Date: 24 Sep 93 14:36:00 GMT X-RQ-ID: 1819 Ref: Is Issaries a GL construct (well I believe its true). Here is a funny little idea that occurred to me while I was browsing RQ books. 1) In the second age the Fronelian God of communication was assassinated by a group of Sorcerors, Shamans etc... This sounds like a bunch of GLs to me! 2) Why would a bunch of GLs target this god? Maybe it was not deliberate but one of the famous *side effects* caused by their incomplete understanding. 3) What were the GLs doing that might have affected a god of communication? Obviously they were doing some of their myth manipulation in this area. 4) What mythical manipulation do we suspect the GLs did in the area of communication? ISSARIES! Notes: The above speculations work independently of whether the assassination was deliberate or not. It could be that the Fronelan god of communication wouldhave blocked the spread, or development of the Issaries construct and had to be removed. This assassination is said to have caused the closing of the seas. The Closing lead to the demise of the Jrusteli empire of the middle sea. Thus, the GLs might have inadvertantly triggered their own demise with their meddling! Enjoy this heresy ----- Lewis ----- --------------------- From: watson@computing-science.aberdeen.ac.uk (Colin Watson) Subject: metal; intensity; Nature of the Spirit World Message-ID: <9309241508.AA12772@condor> Date: 24 Sep 93 15:08:21 GMT X-RQ-ID: 1820 Paul Reilly: Your restrictions on making armour with Form/Set metal seem very reasonable to me. Repairing armour is still rather easy if you can Form/Set it, but I guess this is no big problem. It would mean that repairs to armour would be cheaper (than in the Real World). _____ Neil Shilladay: Your modifications to sorcery Intensity seem fair enough if your players are happy with it. However, I find the potential problems with sorcery are usually derived from big Duration & Multispell rather than Intensity. Personally I don't have a problem when sorcerers "drop the opposition with one lucky roll" - everyone else gets the chance to be lucky (if they crit in melee etc.) - why shouldn't sorcerers? And if a starting sorcerer wants to blow all his MP on an Intensity 15 Damage Boosting, why not let him try? After all, the PCs are supposed to win *most* of the time. Aren't they? Well *aren't* they?? >SPIRIT COMBAT >I always allowed the casting of spells at visible spirits, such as Demoralize >or Befuddle, does anybody else do this ? Yes, I allow this too. Befuddle, especially, is a good spell to use on spirits (if you want to disengage). Demoralise might be good, depending on how the GM treats it: since the spirit isn't in melee, demoralise won't affect its chance to succeed in spirit combat; but it might scare the spirit into disengaging. Problem is, the spirits you most want to Befuddle/Demoralise are always the ones least likely to be affected... C'est la vie. :-( _____ Geoff Gunner: Excellent ideas about the spirit plane:- >And how do you visualise the spirit plane ? ... >think about what happens when, say, a bunny rabbit dies. Terry >Pratchett (why does the man have so many good ideas?) I think is near the mark >with his 'morphic resonance' - the spirit starts off with it's former shape, >slowly loosing it over time. Thus you have a spirit plane which looks like the >real one, but subtly distorted. Vision doesn't go too far (attenuated spirits >blocking out the view). I really like this idea. The more I think about it, the more it makes sense. From a game point of view you can look at it like this: When something living dies, its spirit discorporates. ie. it loses its SIZ but retains the rest of its attributes for while... All its remaining stats gradually deteriorate (at different rates). So it retains APP for a while - new spirits on the spirit plane have an appearance but no substance (SIZ). But the APP gradually deteriorates - I don't mean the spirit gets uglier, I mean its appearance gets less discernable. It also has STR, DEX & CON initially, but I imagine these deteriorate rapidly after death - in a matter of days these are reduced to nothing (hence your knackered stats after resurrection). They're fairly useless in the Spirit World anyway. POW disappears more slowly (say 1 POW per month?). Spirits who win Spirit Combat can increase POW and offset their ultimate dissolution. What happens to these points of attribute? They dissolve into MP which are added to the general pool of magic on the Spirit Plane. (I guess the Sorcery spell Tap works along this principle... except the sorcerer keeps the MP.) The pool of magic on the spirit plane is the source from which MP are recovered (by creatures with POW) after spells are cast etc. So what's the upshot of all this? What does the spirit plane look like? Well, it looks a bit like the "living part" of the mundane plane, only fuzzier. Spirits of recently dead vegetation will appear as vegetation. They'll remain fairly static 'cos they don't have the inclination (or INT) to bother moving around. They'll be surrounded by a haze of older vegetation (which is fading). Spirits of recently dead animals will look like living creatures. Initially they may even act like living animals - until they realise that they can't eat the grass (or each other). Each area of the mundane plane is mapped onto the Spirit World: The spirit plane around Jungles & Forests will be teaming with spirits (mostly non-hostile plant spirits (POW Spirits?) and animal spirits (INT Spirits?)). Around Deserts it will be virtually devoid of spirits. Cities, too, will be fairly thin on spirits (the life/death turnover doesn't match the rate in the countryside). A larger proportion of city-spirits will be intelligent (and potentially hostile). Hence Shamans don't like cities as a starting point for discorporation. When something dies on the mundane plane, its spirit spontaneously appears at the corresponding point in the spirit plane. (Maybe Ghoul spirits spot these new spirits arriving, and pop out into the mundane plane to possess the fresh corpse which is left behind?). (BTW I reckon plant spirits would have about 1 POW for every 5 years that they lived - so most plants have negligible POW; big old trees might have 100 POW). Well that's about it. What do you think? [Apologies if the above reads as incoherant gibberish. I had to get it all down before I lost the thought. Didn't realise ther was so much to say.] --- CW. --------------------- From: mstrong@cix.compulink.co.uk (Mike Strong) Subject: HeroQuests Message-ID:Date: 24 Sep 93 17:17:30 GMT X-RQ-ID: 1821 In-Reply-To: <9309240516.AA15320@glorantha.Holland.Sun.COM> Thom Baguley comments: >Maybe, anytime a Stormbull sets out to kill a chaos monster (or trap it >under a big rock?) is also a heroquest... It seems to be a question of >degree. Maybe, but in my opinion a genuine HeroQuest, by its very nature, ought to be the stuff of myth and legend. For example, most people know that the Yelmalion HeroQuest is to pay a quick visit to the Hill of Gold - but this is just the public side of it; the HeroQuester, wanted by the Lunars, will be trusted with some of the ultimate cult secrets, discover that his journey must be by way of Doraster, that the Lunars are withdrawing their regular forces from Sartar because of an unspecified threat from the north, that he faces a shadowy opponent who can easily penetrate the magical defenses of a Yelmalio temple, that he is, unwittingly, the subject of an ambiguous prophecy, that to save Prax and Sartar from destruction he must eventually help the Lunars, and that he must single-handedly destroy the awsome forces of evil that the Lunar armies cannot resist - even if it means sacrificing himself and/or his friends. Trapping a chaos monster under a rock just don't cut it... Mike