From: RuneQuest-Request@Glorantha.Holland.Sun.COM (RQ Digest Maintainer) To: RuneQuest@Glorantha.Holland.Sun.COM (Daily automated RQ-Digest) Subject: RuneQuest Daily, Fri, 22 Oct 1993, part 2 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: sandyp@idcube.idsoftware.com (Sandy Petersen) Subject: re: RuneQuest Daily Message-ID: <9310212327.AA00714@idcube.idsoftware.com> Date: 21 Oct 93 13:27:21 GMT X-RQ-ID: 2078 Another lengthy, I hope not too contentious, article. Everything is considered to be my own opinion only. re: Geoff Gunner & Humakt I seem to have struck some kind of nerve here. Geoff, why are you so opposed to having lots of Humakti in the Orlanth culture? I can't remember anything in the history of the region denying Humakt's importance. Here is mine own opinion. Humakt severed his ties with Orlanth. I absolutely deny that this implies that all Humakti must sever all former blood ties! It does mean that there's a special cult ritual to do it -- they also do it for non-Humakti that want to "divorce" their kin. Just because Orlanth murdered a king and stole his throne doesn't mean all Orlanthi must do this. No doubt Humakti are expected to give at least lip service to the cult doctrine that Honor is more important than Kinship, and this produces some ambiguity for Humakti in the Orlanth culture. But a test of that doctrine is quite rare -- when do Honor and Kinship conflict for the average Humakti? Only when asked to do something dishonorable by a clan leader, and the clan leaders, not being idiots, rarely test their Humakti this way. Even a Humakti still belongs to his clan, his family, and his tribe.In Glorantha, just like Earth, cultural obligations can always override cult obligations. On occasion this leads to conflict. Angst & roleplaying are produced. Orlanth is an extremely warlike culture. The U.S.A., another warlike culture, supports about 1% of its population as full-time warriors today. During the VIetnam War, we supported about 2%. During WWII, we supported about 9%. In the Civil War, it was even higher (especially if you were a Confederate). The Orlanthi are in a constant state of war as real as WWII was for the U.S.A. I feel you are in error worrying about having 5% of the Orlanthi population being non-producers. About 10% of Sartar's population live in cities. All city-dwellers are effectively non-producers. In addition, many rural clansmen are non-producers, at least insofar as they make no food or goods. Healers, clan leaders, wise men, bards all fall into this category. The Orlanthi of Sartar are not a subsistence economy. Every male Orlanthi is, technically, a warrior, though most also farm or herd. Humakti are full-time warriors, but this does not prevent them from owning land any more it did than a medieval knight, nor does it prevent their family from supporting them. In return, the Humakti protect and defend their society/clan/homestead militarily. Consider the many options: every tribal king has full-time warrior retainers, loyal to him. Some are Orlanthi. Some are Storm Bulls. Some are Humakti. Every city has an armed force, not only militia, but a full-time city guard. In the good old days, the Prince of Sartar maintained a standing army of his own as well. In addition, mercenary bands hire themselves out to the highest bidder (as on Earth during the 30 years war). Some of these bands are Humakti, and they are popular because they usually won't betray their clients. Finally, despite the organized family and clan structure of Orlanthi, there are plenty of Orlanthi who have lost family and/or clan connections. Entire clans were be wiped out or outlawed during the early Lunar occupation. Some of these clanless folk are just outlaws, but others are more like what the japanese called "Ronin". And some of these people become Humakti. I do agree that the more primitive the Orlanthi, the rarer Humakt is. Humakt is a comparatively civilized deity, most at home in the large tribes and cities, which are also places that Storm Bull is less acceptable. Humakti is also more common among the North Sartar tribes, where the traditional culture is weaker. Sartar is quite a civilized place, compared to most Orlanthi lands. In Ralios or the western frontiers of the Lunar Empire (Brolia being the worst case), the Orlanthi are REAL barbarians. Of course, the Sartarites are not as civilized as the Heortlings, which have even more Humakti per capita. Minlister has a huge following if you count lay members. Eurmal is an important guy mythically, but as you state, not in the culture. I believe that Storm Bulls are in fact not more common than Humakti. A murderous drunken Storm Bull is no more acceptable to the clan than a Humakti, regardless of theoretical blood ties. Read some Viking Sagas and see what they thought of Berserks -- bad dudes, disliked and feared, and only tolerated by their families because they were kin. I stick by my previous guess of 4-6% Humakti, with understanding that there is plenty of leeway for a gamemaster to alter this percentage as much as he sees fit, according to his own view of Glorantha. re: contradictions in Gloranthan history I believe that, for Greg S., Glorantha is becoming more literary and less a game, and so it is beginning to follow different natural laws. The chronology must now fulfill different needs than in the past. re: CA & Resurrection I still stick to the bottom line about this -- if you don't want Resurrection in your campaign, Glorantha provides you with plenty of excuses to restrict it. If you DO want resurrection, Glorantha provides it. re: Death Song I'm going to say a Bad Word here: Heroquest. I do NOT wish to open up a can of worms, but it has long been my opinion (and Greg's) that a HeroQuest is any activity in which the magical world becomes more "real" than the mundane world. There are many tiny quests, not even leaving the mundane plane, in which worshipers do rituals, possibly at special places or special times or both, and get special powers. Sometimes a Rune spell is needed to help this happen. Technically, every High Holy Day all the worshipers go on a small heroquest, and the priests, too - this is one reason for the POW gain. Every Humakti geas is a type of heroquest, as is the Humakt Oath spell. The Humakt divorce-your-kin ritual, mentioned earlier, is one of these. The death curse cast by the captive troll described in Trollpak (you remember, he was a prisoner of a Lankhor Mhy priest who was recording everything the troll ate) was also a mild heroquest-type effect. There is a known Humakti ritual (in published Gloranthan history) which resembles David's Death Song closely. Clearly David's mind works like a Gloranthan. In the ritual, one or more Humakti perform special oaths and swearings against a known enemy person. Then, they go after him, bolstered with special magic. Once they kill the chosen enemy, he cannot be resurrected. In return, all the Humakti who participated in the ritual die (normally by seemingly natural combat, but if they somehow escape this death, they die anyway -- usually by suicide). The more Humakti in the ritual, the more complete the destruction wrought. A group of fanatic Humakti did this ritual ca. 1625 vs. Temertain, the lunar puppet King of Sartar, and killed him and all his household. All the Humakti were killed in the fighting -- some on the way into the king's palace, some immediately afterwards. In Chaosium's house campaign, the PC Humakti were invited to participate in this ritual, but *sigh* they all wimped out, letting their friends do it instead.I wasn't at Chaosium then, but I'd like to think I'd have signed up. re: Riddles The vikings had some good riddles, too, some described in old Norse tales of riddle contests between Odin and giants or dwarfs. Some are crude by today's standards, but others aren't too bad. Frex ... 1) What beast's legs are higher than its belly? 2) Golden nails in the ground. 3) A circle fort without a door, contains a golden treasure. 4) A deadly monster of many shapes; one bite kills a man. 5) She has only one tooth, and she drinks only blood. 1 -- a spider 2 -- carrots 3 -- egg 4 -- poison 5 -- A dagger re: Graeme Lindsell Most sorcerers don't admit the survival of the body's spirit in any useful form after death. If the sorcerer is an atheist, he denies post-death survival, even the existence of a human spirit separate from the body. If he is religious, he claims that the soul vanishes from this plane (and the spirit world), ending up in Malkion's paradise, and no longer accessible to mortals. The sorcerers do have an equivalent to the resurrect spell, though. They have to do it pretty soon after death. The sorcerers explain that resurrection must be done soon because the body deteriorates, and becomes unfit for reanimation. The cult-worshiping Gloranthans, like Orlanthi and Lunars, explain that resurrection must be done soon because the spirit passes Beyond and becomes inaccessible -- also the body deteriorates. Some shamanistic types explain that resurrection must be done soon because the spirit deteriorates, gradually discarding the pieces of itself that were necessary when it had a body. Soon it becomes incapable of properly managing a body at all, except by possessing someone else's. Bye, all. Sandy Petersen