Bell Digest v931028p1

From: RuneQuest-Request@Glorantha.Holland.Sun.COM (RQ Digest Maintainer)
To: RuneQuest@Glorantha.Holland.Sun.COM (Daily automated RQ-Digest)
Reply-To: RuneQuest@Glorantha.Holland.Sun.COM (RuneQuest Daily)
Subject: RuneQuest Daily, Thu, 28 Oct 1993, part 1
Precedence: junk

X-RQ-ID: Intro

This is the RuneQuest Daily Bulletin, a mailing list on
the subjects of Avalon Hill's RPG and Greg Stafford's 
world of Glorantha.  It is sent out once per day in digest
format.

More details on the RuneQuest Daily and Digest can be found
after the last message in this digest.


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From: 100270.337@CompuServe.COM (Nick Brooke)
Subject: Baphomet!
Message-ID: <931025075841_100270.337_BHB42-1@CompuServe.COM>
Date: 25 Oct 93 07:58:41 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 2097

___________________
Colin Watson wrote:

Re:
>> If they [Templars] had divine magic they could recover it at any
>> Christian church.
,
> They never had *anything* remotely similar to RQ Divine Magic, so
> how can we say how things would have been if they did?

Yeah. From the Trial records, it seems they probably used something closer 
to Jon Quaife's Demonology...

__________________
Sam Phillips said:

> Anyway, my Varmandi stead has a Long house and another four or five
> stead-houses in the main settlement along with a tree house (I couldn't
> resist putting the bard up in it - sorry!)

Nothing to apologise for! In David Hall's Greydog games, I always see us as 
the "indomitable Sartarites". It works well, and lets players know how 
their characters should behave and see the world.

Hmm... a feline equivalent for Dogmatix?

> [Apple Lane]: How do the clans feel about the weirdo's who live there?

It's pretty clear that Apple Lane can only survive under the Peace of 
Sartar: take that away, and the Colymar would rise up from the south, the 
Malani descend from the north, and they both try to carry off all those 
(clanless) metalworkers, skill masters, and concubines for themselves.

As a clansman, I view Apple Lane the same way I'd view a great (but at 
present impossible) opportunity to cattle raid: "One of these years we'll 
take it, boys!"

> I want my young Orlanthi to have had little or no contact with the
> outside world (apart from other Colymar). Is this realistic?

Yes, if you like it that way. If you're a Gloranthan parent, would you want 
your kids to go talking to strangers?

________________
Graeme to Sandy:

> You imply that shamans have access to resurrection as well.

Of course shamans have access to resurrection! Pretty useless, else.
^^ ^^^^^^
Loads of shamanic journeys take you to the land of the dead to go searching 
for people and bringing them back to the world of the living. Sticking them 
back in their bodies is a tiny extra chore at the end of all that hassle.

Problem is (as always with RQ shamans) that most of the really interesting 
and useful things real-world shamans can do have been left out of the rules 
as "HeroQuests". (Which makes me wonder why shamans were left in at all, 
but there you go...). I suspect the "featureless grey" spirit plane is 
another casualty of this world-view (as if you start detailing another 
plane in a way that makes it interesting to go there, you're heroquesting 
already).

Game balance solution: shamans, priests and wizards (and sorcerers) can all 
do Resurrections. But it's a far more strenuous ritual undertaking than the 
existing RQ rules provide for (I agree it's not simple as it stands, but 
it's still a little prevalent), thus less common even for Chalana Arroy.

In my head, I don't believe in resurrections. Last time I was in a game 
where someone got messily killed (falling fifty yards from a giant desk), I 
successfully lobbied against scraping him off the floor into a barrel and 
carrying him down from the Plateau of Statues to the nearest Chalana Arroy 
temple: a complete waste of time, effort and money to bring him back. (So 
we left him drying in the sun for a week, per RQ2 CoP Yelmalio funerary 
rites, in case God wanted to intervene, then gave him a good burning).

Mind you, he had *fumbled* a Divine Intervention roll while falling. And I 
suppose a flat floor counts as a Zorak Zoran crushing weapon: that was a 
proper Yelmalion heroic death, IMHO.

When I die, I want to stay dead (fellow-players, take note). Please don't 
drag me back as a cripple in hock to the Healers' Temple...

___________
Sandy said:

> [The Red Goddess] does have a substitute air god available for would-be
> storm cultists (alas, I don't recall the name of the Lunar air god, but
> she is a female, nicknamed Calm Air).

The goddess of calm air is Molanni the Traitress, concubine of Yelm and 
mother of Daga, the god of Drought (who Barntar, among others, vanquished 
by rescuing Heler from the Blue Dragon).

I've heard her called "Orlanthia", or perhaps "Orlanthio", back in the days 
when Greg thought "Yelmalio" was a diminutive (and insulting) form of 
"Yelm" (i.e. before the Elmal schism was invented).

Nobody is going to get much running & shouting joy out of her worship.

On this "initiate of one god" business, I think the answer is that RQ 
doesn't yet provide a structure for the kind of hopping between cults in a 
pantheon that is likely to go on. The rules may well be there (is there a 
corner of some rulebook that says initiates = lay members of associates?), 
but they haven't been effectively brought to light. The "transition 
problem" we looked at earlier (Voria --> Ernalda --> Asrelia) is similar to 
this "pantheon problem".

When do you join Storm Bull? Is it at your coming-of-age ceremony? If so, 
you're never an Orlanth initiate (which seems odd to me). Or does it happen 
later? In which case, per RQ mechanics, that's another point of POW 
sacrificed. In Greg's ms. for "The Life of Harmast", it became clear that 
in a (literary) First Age Heortling initiation ritual, the kids go into it 
representing the Five Brothers and get "picked" for the cult most 
appropriate (i.e. going through the same tests, you could come out as 
Vadrus or Urox or Orlanth...); cf. "Initiation of Orlanth" in KoS.

I'm asking from the point of view of someone who isn't big, burly and 
brutish at age 15 (when Orlanth initiation can happen), but gets to be that 
way later on. (Of course, he could just be a big/burly/brutish Orlanth 
initiate, but cults usually attract stereotypes as Sandy's entertaining 
"Orlanthi Life" write-up shows).

Can I stress that I'm not powergaming here (and wanting to multi-cult 
myself into exhaustion and penury). I just wonder when and whether you can 
/shift/ your religious emphasis to devote yourself to a now-more-suitable 
member of the pantheon.

Or, to put it another way: I find it attractive that almost all Sartarites 
will be initiates of Orlanth and/or Ernalda, but it seems hard to penalise 
players for this by requiring Sartar Storm Bulls to sacrifice 2 POW in 
character generation for two separate initiations. I'm feeling around for 
another way they can participate in the communal religion (not just as lay 
members, now we're in RQ3 days when just about *everyone* is an initiate. 
Problem wouldn't have arisen in RQ2 when the initiates were more of a 
cultic elite, but times change and I like the new system).

> Is it just me, or have the RQ bulletins gotten significantly smaller  
> over the last week?

It's just you! Honest!

Henk, I'll be back on-line in the second week of November, after some 
vicious accountancy exams and a trip to Dublin. 'Til then, I'm writing (and 
thinking) for RQ on borrowed time, and ought not to be doing it at all.

Can't kick the habit.

====
Nick
====

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From: eosgg@raesp-farn.mod.uk (Geoff Gunner)
Subject: Sartar
Message-ID: <9310251131.AA26591@raesp-farn.mod.uk>
Date: 25 Oct 93 11:31:10 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 2098

re: Sam Phillips and lakes -
   Sam, Sartar / Dragon pass is high up - it's the pass through the rockwood
mountains.  You're not going to get many lakes in that sort of environment.
How about steads on rivers ?  Plenty of those.

re; Colin Watson ; Removing Chaos Taints.  In my hoary old 'Cults of Terror'
it states that a chaos taint is removable by divine intervention.  I can't
see your average chalana arroy rushing out to purify the world given that ...

re Sandy's 'in the stereotypical barbarian family ...' -YES !  This is how it 
should be - only can you translate that into specific game mechanics ?
For me, that's the most needed rule change - how to have a modular religion.
All (!) that would need to be defined is the relationship between each 'module'
(ie. religion), then you could use the existing cult writeups as they stand
(unless we have a TRUE hero out there who wants to do the whole lot in one
fell swoop !).  Hmmmmm ...
 
Ho hum, back to work.  Another day, another digest ...

Geoff.

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From: awr0@aber.ac.uk (Adam Reynolds, 3rd Year and worried....)
Subject: A number of things
Message-ID: <9310251212.AA17499@deca>
Date: 25 Oct 93 12:12:35 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 2099

Who is going to Convulsions? I am definetely going and it would be interesting
to put faces to the people who use the digest.

On another note, sometime ago I went through all the old digest material 
and hunted round a number of ftp sites for material that, as I was leaving 
Uni, I would probably never be able to get my hands on again. This material 
was collated and documented into a POSTSCRIPT document or two....aqctually
6 documents totalling on close to 500 pages of material. 

Recently I compiled document number 6 based on which was morte of a 70 page
update, containing material both from the digest and from people who 
sent me stuff. The docuements are as follows:
RQNET2.ps -- material that has been recently gleened from the net
advent.ps -- Adventures that were placed in the digest and on the net
areas.ps  -- Collection of material to do with certain locations in Glorantha
cults.ps  -- I think this contains close to 40 cults
rules.ps  -- Alchemy rules and a few systems that people sent to the digest
tribes.ps -- Deceptive name, contains creatures and society descriptions

In these docs there is a section which contains stories etc but I can't
rememeber which one...probably tribes.ps.

I will eventually bring out RQNET3 but I need more material. I initially did 
this for my own use as I was leaving uni. I will not spend hours uuencoding
etc this material and sending it to people, but there is an alternative.

Would you believe I have placed all these docs on one disk. They have been 
lharced and the lharc.exe is also included on the disk. All you would have to 
do is find a PC attached to a Postscript printer and uncompress them. Then 
wait about 20 hours for it all to be printed. I am quite happy to send 
people this disk. I can buy disks for 80p + Envelope + Postage (UK) = roughly


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From: watson@computing-science.aberdeen.ac.uk (Colin Watson)
Subject: When is Truth Rune not?
Message-ID: <9310251222.AA17803@condor>
Date: 25 Oct 93 12:22:35 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 2100

Ok, I tried to slip this in casually:

>CW>You mention the three different views of the way Death/spirits/resurrection
>CW>works (ie sorcerers', priests', shamans' viewpoints). Which is nearest the
>CW>Truth in your opinion?

...but Henk picked it up:
____
Henk replied:
>Here's a Nysalor riddle: If you are convinced that a single truth about
>Gloranthan magic can be determined through reasoning, you obviously
>subscribe to a certain school already.  Which one?

Ah, perhaps I asked the wrong question. Maybe I should instead have asked:

  "How many Truths can *you* juggle?"

[Colin takes 3 Y-shaped symbols from his pocket and begins to juggle...]
On a good day I can juggle 3 for a while, dropping one or two every so often.
A skilled Truth-juggler could manage maybe 5 or 6, providing his attention is
not distracted by other things (eg. actually running a game of RQ).
But a newbie Truth-juggler is gonna be in for Big problems...

Me, I like to play RQ and forget about juggling Truths.
So one Truth is easiest for me.
I can add to it all I like and the juggling becomes no more difficult because
it's all one big Truth rune.

There's a riddle in there somewhere...

___
CW.

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From: brandon@caldonia.nlm.nih.gov (Brandon Brylawski)
Subject: Re: RuneQuest Daily, Mon, 25 Oct 1993, part 2
Message-ID: <9310251343.AA02303@caldonia.nlm.nih.gov>
Date: 25 Oct 93 13:43:09 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 2101

Colin Watson writes:
------

BTW, something I've been wondering: is it possible to remove the taint of
Chaos from a creature (without killing it)? I can imagine the Stormbull line
on this, but was wondering what Chalana Arroy thinks: she seems to vaunt the
idea that "all life is precious, but Chaos doesn't count". Why don't CAs
protect chaotics and try to cleanse them? Is this feasible?
-------

Where I came from, CAs definitely try to cleanse chaotics, with the proviso
that the chaotic must cooperate! Unfortunately, removing a chaos taint requires
very special magics, heroquests or the equivalent, as the taint must be 
removed with great force. I previously posted my ordeal with the river of gold 
that underlies Ythuppa, wherein my chaos taint was removed by having it burned
out of my flesh and spirit. The Chalana Arroy priestess involved was also
trying to raise a litter of Broo free from chaos.

Brandon


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From: DScott@snail.demon.co.uk (David Scott)
Subject: RUNEDESK
Message-ID: <9310260725.aa22627@post.demon.co.uk>
Date: 26 Oct 93 07:26:03 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 2113

Hi all,

I have uploaded to Soda a neat little program for mac users called runedesk. It 
is a very neat character stat generator. It does HPs, Body locations, bonuses 
etc.

I hope that it maybe useful to someone out there.

It can be found at SODA.BERKELEY.EDU in /pub/runequest/programs, thanks to 
Shannon for putting it there.

David Scott

Sandwiches on the edge of time
DScott@Snail.demon.co.uk 158.152.16.30


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From: elric@indial1.io.com (Tom H Zunder)
Subject: Indo European Deities
Message-ID: 
Date: 25 Oct 93 04:13:22 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 2102

From: lip@s1.gov (Loren I. Petrich)
Newsgroups: sci.archaeology,soc.history,alt.pagan,sci.skeptic
Subject: Re: Question regarding the Goddess in Europe
Date: 18 Aug 1993 05:36:17 GMT

In article <24s344$jfv@truffula.fp.trw.com> erwin@trwacs.fp.trw.com (Harry Erwin) writes:
>Since we don't have much in the way of written records (or even symbolic
>materials) it's hard to treat the Goddess hypothesis as much more than
>speculation. The triune Goddess of the Celts (maiden, woman, crone) has
>connections to the third aspect of IE ideology, so much of what has been
>written in that area is speculative. There is good evidence that the PIE
>groups were patriarchal. 

	The most interesting groups in this connection are the
Neolithic and Minoan ones, who were pre-Indo-European.

	[for more on IE reconstructed culture, see J.P. Mallory's _In
Search of the Indo-Europeans_]

	About Indo-European ideology itself, it is possible to make a
fair number of inferences, both from language and from comparative
mythology. From the vocabulary that can be reconstructed, one can look
for words that are distinctive, rather than "universal" words like
those for numbers, body parts, natural phenomena, and so forth. Their
having a word for "snow", for instance (English "snow", German
"Schnee", Latin "nix, niv-", Greek "nix, niph-", Russian "sneg" < IE
*sneigwh-), means only that the early IE speakers lived somewhere
where it snows, which is a very large area. But words for horses
(Latin "equus", Greek "hippos", Sanskrit "as'va", Old English "eoh" <
IE *ekwos), and wheeled vehicles suggest that the early IE speakers
had horses and wheeled vehicles, the archeological record of which
might be used to set an earliest possible time of presence.

	From clues like this, Marija Gimbutas has proposed the
identification of the IE speakers with the Kurgan culture of South
Russia, which spread from there starting about 4000-3500 BCE. The
culture was named after the burial mounds of its chieftains, who often
had a lot of company in their tombs. The one who is presumably the
leader is always male, as far as has been found.

	Now for cultural deductions. There are a lot of words for a
husband's relatives, but not for a wife's relatives; the in-law
vocabulary suggests that women moved to their husbands, rather than
men to their wives. And there is also the name of a (presumably)
important deity:

	Old English: Tiu
	Old Norse: Tyr
	Latin: Jovis Pater (>Juppiter)
	Greek: Zeus Pater
	Sanskrit: Dyaus Pitar
	IE: *Dye:us P@te:r
	[@ = schwa, upside-down "e"]

	Literally, "Father Sky", perhaps the first Heavenly Father in
history. But he was almost certainly not alone, unlike a more familiar
one :-)

	Social structure? The historian Dume'zil has proposed a
tripartite scheme that is much like Plato's Republic:

	Kings and priests	[sovereign class]
	Soldiers		[forceful class]
	Common people		[productive class]

	This division of classes is rather widespread, and it appears
in such things as an ancient Iranian medical text that classifies
medicines as spell-medicines (sovereigns' territory), knife-medicines
(soldiers' territory), and herb-medicines (productive class's
territory). Some early Germanic tribes had three styles of executions:
hanging for sovereign-class offenses, beheading or bludgeoning for
forceful-class offenses, and drowning for productive-class offenses.

	Corresponding to these three classes is three types of
deities:

Sovereign class: god of the bright shining sky
Forceful class: thunder god
Productive class: fertility deities, including a female figure and
twins on horseback

	The first two types are always male, while the third is
a mixed-sex grab bag.

	The Thunder God has an enemy, who is a snake-monster whom he
fights. This is deduced from the numerous stories of deities and
heroes battling snake-monsters.

	Not surprisingly, those deities interpreted as being pre-IE
break this tripartite mold. Example: the Greek Athena is a deity of
wisdom [sovereign], war [forceful], and olive trees and health
[productive].  And by IE standards, she is of the wrong sex for the
first two!

	She may have been a heritage of a pre-IE population in which
women could have important roles and which worshipped deities made in
the likeness of that; in later times she was pictured as something of
a Phyllis Schlafly figure who would present herself as an example of
-- 
/Loren Petrich, the Master Blaster
/lip@s1.gov






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From: GRAEME@SPVA.PHYSICS.IMPERIAL.AC.UK (Graeme Willoughby)
Subject: Sorcerers and Lunars
Message-ID: <9310251512.AA21217@Sun.COM>
Date: 25 Oct 93 15:02:00 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 2103

Hi All,


Has anyone ever played a successful Lunar or a sorcerer?  I've always liked the
Lunar Empire, but most scenarios or games that I've seen seem to be very anti
Lunar.  I am always reminded of the scene in "The Life of Brian" when the
revolutionaries are discussing "What have the Romans [read "Lunars"] done for
us?  Apart from build roads, increase trade, built aquaducts, brought peace to
the region ... that is".  I play in Geoff Gunnar's campaign which is set near
Ironspike in Satar under Lunar occupation, and, you guessed, it we are
oppressed Orlanthi trying to fight back without getting a Lunar garrison
stationed here.  In our case we are trying to settle an abandoned valley before
the Lunars get there.  Right at the beginning of the campaign we were offered
the chance to be Luanrs (I'm not sure how this would have turned out)  but only
I was interested and it would be *difficult* to introduce a Lunar now.    I
feel that Lunars are unpopular partly because there is so little information
about them.  In the Seven Mothers write up in Cults of Prax the Seven Mothers
aren't even named!  The only information I know about Yanafal Tarnil's cult (I
can't even remember how to spell his name) is that it's like Humakt but Sever
Spirit is one use and ressurection is possible!  The other
cults are similarly dealt with.  The Cult of the Red Goddess is virtually
meaningless except for a source of *nasty* NPCs and similarly the Cult of The
Bat is for NPCs only.  Has anyone got any detail about Lunar cults they can
point me to?  I have read a history of the Lunar Empire, and the Lunar part of
the Genertla book, but was looking for more about how Lunar adventuer types are
regarded.
                                                                               
In a similar vein - has anyone played a successful sorcerer?  Or even someone
who uses sorcery instead of battle magic and/or rune magic.  It seems that
Glorantha tends to gloss over sorcery.  Western culture is suppoesed to use
sorcery but has anyone thought about this in deatail?  As soon as an Hrestoli
knight becomes a sorcerer he effectively cannot increase his fighting skills
(presumably already over his DEX x3) so he's limited as a fighter and wont be
much of a sorcerer for quite some time.
In the Dorastor Skath & Skanth have sorcery - but they have more spells than
they have INT - there is no indication of any intellect spirits near-by and how 
do they manipulate their spells with no spare INT and ...
In short I feel that sorcery has been short changed in Glorantha.

Please tell me if I'm wrong - in this case I would be pleased to be so.  

Graeme Willoughby