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, 20 Jan 1994, part 2 Content-Return: Prohibited Precedence: junk --------------------- From: sandyp@idcube.idsoftware.com (Sandy Petersen) Subject: re: RQ Daily Message-ID: <9401191631.AA01183@idcube.idsoftware.com> Date: 19 Jan 94 04:31:32 GMT X-RQ-ID: 2834 WOW! Great Con, Dave! Congratulations. No doubt other Digest writers will expend praise on RQ Con, so I'll stop with saying that Friday night's CoC seminar was the best I've ever seen. It was packed with people who had clever, incisive questions, and who were polite enough to laugh at all my jokes. Colin Watson sez: >I thought the Lunar anti-storm stance was the result of circumstance >(ie. the Orlanthi cause trouble for the Empire so the Lunars don't >like Orlanth) rather than general inclination. There's mythic reasons, too. Both sects vie for control of the Middle Air. Also, the Red Goddess specially chose Orlanth to be her enemy, of all the gods. In addition, the fact that most Lunar citizens are from an anti-Storm society probably exerts influence. Don't forget the Icebreaker cult -- the most overtly anti-Storm act they do.0 >Wouldn't Lunars exploit storm magic like any other type of magic if >they got the chance? No doubt. But they don't really have the opportunity. The only acceptable "storm" god is Molanni the traitress. The Lunar elemental gods (the Young Elementals) conspicuous lack any Air/Storm aspect. anti-archery spell: How about a ranged Ignite on the bowstrings? It would put the kibosh on firing any arrows. Even if the fire was put out right away, the string would be weakened and probably snap. BOWSLOW. This spell's name must be altered to SLOWDART. In my opinion. Dave Dunham asks: >Are real world arrows less effective than they are in the game? Are >shields or armor more effective against arrows? Shields are extraordinarily good vs. arrows. Even the samurai of Japan used shields against archers (only). In addition, I suspect massed arrow fire as you gallop by is less than accurate. One known defense against horse archers is to break up your formation -- the mass-target that they were aiming at is now no longer present and most of the arrows miss. The players in my own campaign soon learned to hold their shields in front of their vitals as extra armor whenever archers opposed them. The question is: what defeats horse archers? Historically, I believe the answer is fortifications and light or medium cavalry. Allan Henderson disagrees w/me re: Morokanth: >I believe that the Waha covenant will apply more stronly than >breaking it to be considered only a faux pas. In Borderlands there >is a description that morokanth put a herdman than may be a person >out to live on grass for a week if they thrive then they eat them, >if they don't then presumably they convert then to herd men and then >eat them. The important point is that they change them to herd men >first. The borderland write up of morocanth is very good. You have misread the point of the Borderlands test. It is NOT undergone to find out if a person is edible or not! The text clearly explains that the morokanth do this in order to detect spies posing as herd-men. If you wanted to make sure the morokanth knew that you were a real human, all you'd have to do is talk. Remember, the morokanth slave-herds are so slow-breeding that they can rarely actually eat their herds, so pretending to be a herd-man is a pretty safe way to conceal yourself amongst them (Morokanth speak Praxian, so you don't need to learn a new language). There is no statement in Borderlands that they "change them to herd men first". Turning captured spies into herd-men is a fine case of making the punishment fit the crime. "You posed as a herd-man. Fine, you can BE a herd-man!" Humans may also try to pretend to be herd-men when otherwise captured by the morokanth -- this way you're put in the pen with the herd, and presumably have a better chance of escaping than if the morokanth realize you're fully intelligent (in which case they take you as a normal slave, probably with a slave collar and all). > I doubt if any initiate or above in Waha would even consider a herd >man to be human, certainly no closer to human than an ogre is. Technically true, but they won't eat ogres. While herd-men aren't considered human by Waha's covenant, I think that eating them is rather distasteful to most Praxians, just as eating the "human parts" of a walktapus is distasteful to even decadent Lunars. No doubt certain Storm Bulls or other individuals are happy to eat herd men, but the majority of Praxians are no more likely to eat a herd man than most American males would eat calf fries (testicles). Mind you, I'm not claiming that morokanth are outright man-eaters. For one thing, it's economically stupid to eat real humans, when they're so useful as slaves. And I bet that there are plenty of morokanth who regard it as a social faux pas to eat humans. I wouldn't be surprised if, for instance, Eiritha priestesses and maybe Waha khans were forbidden to ever eat real people (taboo). I'm just trying to point out that, IMO, the morokanth would have a rather cavalier attitude towards eating people. And I don't think my conception of morokanth thus boils down to "monsters without thumbs". Certainly the fact that trolls, ogres, and dragonewts eat people unifies these creatures as "monsters with thumbs". Trolls manage to have a highly complex society, and so can morokanth. In addition, the morokanth pose the fearful threat that they can actually make you not-human, turning you into a beast. By the way, I don't think morokanth would eat elves, dwarfs, or trolls -- just humans. CANNIBALISM IN GLORANTHA Here's my guess at a summary (using as many intelligent species as possible): Humans: rare, except Cannibal Cult and bad guys. It's clearly considered morally reprehensible for humans to eat humans, and my big book on the subject of anthropophagy points out that societies which permit it eventually degenerate (at first, they may only eat their own dead, or the hearts of honored enemies or something defensible, but ultimately they end up just plain cannibals). Trolls: it's obviously an integral part of troll psyche, culture, and society. But it doesn't earn them any friends. It's so widely-known that I suspect most people think of it as just a quirk of troll nature, and it doesn't earn the repugnance that a human eating a trollkin (say) would generate. Dwarfs & Elves: true, these guys eat one another (and trolls, too), but only at special ceremonies or else when it is unbeknownst to them (dwarf canned food). I wouldn't call them cannibals despite this obscure secret ritual. Morokanth: my opinions here are widely-known on the Digest. Broos: they might eat people, but I suspect they do this only in order to increase the pain and fear felt by their captive. They have other uses for prisoners, if they take 'em. Ogres & Giants: both like the taste of people. Scorpion Men: eat people primarily to gain magic power, not for food. Beast-men: I suspect only manticores and perhaps wild minotaurs eat other sentients on a regular basis. I don't see centaurs or satyrs doing it. Ducks: obvious non-human eaters Slarges: They might eat people, but most of them don't think of humans as sentient -- more the way people think of rabbits or wolves. Just something to be brushed out of the way as the slarges expand. Joerg Baumgartner sez: >The alarm function is more easily obtained by a permanent market >spell. A market spell is a bad way to alarm your walls. For one thing, it takes a LOT of Create Market spells to cover an entire town. In addition, if any of your soldiers draw their swords (or bows) to attack an incoming foe, they're toast (attacked by the spell, just like an enemy). David Gibbs asks: >does any "miscegenation" occur between the different types >of trolls? For instance, what would the off-spring of an Uzuz >father and an Uzko mother be -- guaranteed Uzko, or is there a >chance of an Uzuz child? Would this reduce or eliminate the >chance of Enlo children? What of vice-versa, Uzuz mother, >Uzko father? I feel that this is far less likely to happen, Uzuz mother and uzko father I think is as likely as the other way round. Uzuz are too rare to mate together very frequently, and the females are the rulers, not the males, so they'd get to pick their own mates, and may well take in a promising Karrg's Son or Death Lord for a night's reward. My own feelings are that uzuz mothers generally give birth to uzko children, regardless of the father, and uzko mothers w/uzuz fathers generally give birth to uzko children, too, or at worst a litter of superior trollkin. Uzuz births are catastrophically rare, only occur to uzuz mothers (except for Heroquest rituals?) and Divination generally reveals that there's going to be an uzuz a-coming months before it's arrival. I expect that numerous Xiola Umbar priestesses gather for the (difficult) birthing, and approve of the suggested scenario a week or two ago in which the PCs could encounter a trashed batch of powerful trolls in the last throes of defending an uzuz birth from a heroquest influx of chaos. re: Gonn Orta killing the Crimson Bat The risk here is that he can't sneak up on the bat (after all, he's 500' tall). Hence, a batch of Lunar priests casting Mindblast or similar bad spells might be able to incapacitate him before he could get within a km of the bat. It would be an interesting scenario to try to get him to the bat to kill it. Dave Dunham (forgetting RQ rules) sez: >I'm strongly leaning towards giving some shield value if the shield >owner does nothing but hold it up and try to block arrows. The rules state that you can hold a shield over part of your body and it acts as full add'tl armor for those portions. Bucklers defend the left arm only. Targets defend left arm and one other hit location. Kites defend left arm and two other adjacent hit location (in my campaign, usually chest and abdomen, or sometimes both legs). The extra 12-16 points for the shield renders arrows much less effective, which is in fact borne out by ancient battle reports. Nils Weinander asks: 1. Golden Mokato is specified as the centre of the second age Eastern Sea Empire which 'ruled half the seas', but according to various accounts of the world history the God Learners ruled the seas and coastal areas. In the east they even overthrew the Dragon Emperor of Kralorela for a while. I can't figure a good compromise for this. Suggestions? Mokato ruled all of the East Isles during the Second Age, and was able to defeat the God Learners in several campaigns fought in an attempt to invade the East Isles. The God Learners did conquer Kralorela, but were never able to overwhelm Mokato. Mokato's ships controlled the East Isles and were common in the central seas, fighting the Teleos pirates, trading with the Errinoru Elf Empire, and even dealing with the False Dragon Empire to the north. Perhaps "ruling" half the seas is a bit of an exaggeration, but they certainly controlled more of the ocean than any naval empire besides the God Learners. Perhaps because they were less villainous than any other of the Second Age Empires, the catastrophes of the age's end did not wipe out Mokato, but only destroyed its empire, leaving Mokato intact, but without imperial ambitions. Note by the way that the God Learners were by no means an organized empire. The Seshnegi, Jrusteli, False Dragon Empire, and Six-Legged Empire were all separate national entities, though all were ruled by God-Learners. 2. Does anyone have any information/ideas on Vormainian colour magic? Some of the Vormain gods are mentioned in the Proso- paedia in GoG, but what the colour magic is about is not explained. I have written up descriptions of the various color magics. Basically, they are a new type of magic, different from sorcery, divine, and spirit. My information is (of course) all tucked away in storage. 3. I didn't plan on using the island of Teleos, but I'm curious about the almost total lack of information. Is it a blank land? No. It has a long and colorful history. Alas, it hasn't been published. In the Second Age, it was the Pirate Island, which boasted a Pirate King, and did many terrible deeds, preying on the shipping of almost all nations, including the God Learners. The Closing naturally devastated the Pirates, and when the seas were opened again, Teleos had no more pirates. Instead, there are a number of different color-coded peoples living here (I can't recall whether there are five, or seven) ranging in skin tone from green, orange, purple, yellow, etc. Each lives in a different section of the island, and each hates all the other "tribes". Unfortunately for their antisocial desires, children are rarely the color of their parents. Thus, a Green may give birth to a Blue, Orange, Purple, etc. Off-colored children (the norm) are transported to their "proper" tribe for raising, and such exchanges are made regularly. All the tribes have certain stereotypic beliefs about the other tribes, and these are shared. For instance, all the non-Green tribes claim that the Greens eat live frogs. So far, the inhabitants of Teleos, while willing to trade, have been too distracted by their internal disharmony to reopen their ancient pirate activities. Andrew Bean sez: >I would like to reinforce in primitive socities staying at a >distance and peppering your opponents with bow fire is the work of >cowards or elves. Not so. Read THE HISTORY OF WARFARE by John Keegan. Mounted nomad societies normally engaged in such archery to as great an extent as they possibly could. The hand-to-hand risk-yourself style of warfare, a.k.a. as the Western Way of War (a book titled this is also good) is rare, and was apparently invented by the ancient Greeks, a civilized people. It was independently invented at least three other times -- once by the Japanese, once by the Maoris of New Zealand (who used it to battle the invading British to a standstill), and again by the ancient Easter Islanders (who wiped out their entire society with it). Anyway, the point is that standing up and fighting "like a man" is not a primitive hold-over, but an invention which is apparently none too easy to figure out. The ancient Persians, Chinese, and nomad peoples didn't create it. Note that Keegan points out that other styles of warfare, like the nomad "shoot 'em and run away" can be effective against the Western style. W. R. Pearse requests: >MAG is presumably Pedhetl. But what is it used for? Everything >seems to use 'Magic Bonus'. I'm deeply confused about how the magic >system works. MAG = Pedhetl.In fact, I should have called it Pedhetl, and will do so from now on. It acts as RQ's Free INT. You cannot manipulate a spell for more points than your Pedhetl. Thus, if you have a Pedhetl of 6, you can cast a spell with Intensity 3, Duration 2, and Range 1. Or with Intensity 6 and naught else, or with Intensity 2 and Multispell 4, etc. so long as the totals add up to no more than 6. >Is sorcery the only type of magic in RQ/Tekmel? No. There are shamans, witches, and stuff out in the villages who have access to other magic, but I haven't bothered to figure them out. Probably I'd give them normal shamanic RQ magic, except that Barker himself doesn't seem to have much of an idea how an actual shaman works, so maybe a spirit-plane oriented guy is alien to Tekumel. >Magic Bonus - how can this be less than zero? (Character Generation >section 2). Easy. Have a crappy INT, POW, and DEX. >Character Generation section 4 - what is the sorcery stat? And what >is the INT+POW-20? The sorcery stat is a misprint I missed. It is Pedhetl, yet again. And INT+POW - 20 is the MAXIMUM that your Pedhetl can reach. Thus, if your INT is 18 and your POW is 21, you can someday achieve a Pedhetl of 19, assuming your starting Pedhetl (3d6-15) was positive. >Something is missing from the paragraph about speciality weapons >like the 'Whispering Death'. Sorry. >What starting spells do you have? Do you memorise chosen spells, >and if so is it INT related as in RQIII? You have whatever starting spells you want, assuming your POW's high enough. You do not memorize spells, nor do they subtract from your INT. Instead, you learn a spell by sacrificing a point of POW, which gives you the spell at a basic percentage. Then you must train, research, or get experience in that spell to get it to a skill level where you can cast it with a reasonable chance of success. Joerg Baumgartner wonders: >Do we know anything about the Galanini from Ralios except the few >tidbits in "Dorastor Land of Doom", Elder Secrets and King of >Sartar, and their god Ehilm? And what does a fire god have to do with Hsunchen worship of horses? Horses are the Beast of Fire. The Galanini date from the First Age, before the God Learners had carefully explicated that the Hsunchen were an early pre-pantheonic stage of development. Unaware that they were supposed to only worship their own horse god, as a primitive Hsunchen, the Galanini ignorantly worshiped related Sky gods as well. >Did anyone else stumble about the phrase that Orlanth bathed in the >Flame or Fire of Ehilm when proving his sincerity before Yelm in the >Lightbringers Quest? Ehilm, Worlath, and Humct are the old Ralios names for Yelm, Orlanth, and Humakt. When the God Learners spread Theyalan civilization world wide, the Theyalan names for these gods became the standards. Hence Orlanth is named Orlanth practically everywhere that he is worshiped, no matter what the native speaker's tongue. However, superstitious types in Ralios, confused by the names, still worship Ehilm & co., usually by bizarre ceremonies and false dogmas. True worshipers of Yelm think of Ehilm followers much the same way as the ancient Jews thought of the Samaritans, who followed the same faith as the Jews, but did not accept the Prophets, just the Law, and had weird primitive addenda to the Jewish way of life. The reference to the Fire of Ehilm in Hell is the scribe's unwillingness to alter the name of this ancient event. He recognizes Yelm as the true sun god, but the oldest texts call Orlanth's purge the Fire of Ehilm so, by gum, so will he. --------------------- From: alex@dcs.gla.ac.uk Subject: Invisible Orlanth, Yara Aranis, bonus (?) ramblings. Message-ID: <9401191022.AA03141@carcass.dcs.gla.ac.uk> Date: 19 Jan 94 10:22:55 GMT X-RQ-ID: 2828 > In the cult of Invisible Orlanth is Orlanth a prophet of the Invisible God > or an (invisible) representative of the Red Goddess or merely the breath > of the Invisible God? Or what? I don't think IO is a Lunar/Healed cult at all: I reckon it's entirely a Carmanian Thing. Now, I did ask Greg about this at Conjunction, and he said, if I recall correctly, and don't excessively paraphrase: What's this about Invisible Orlanth, then? "Sounded good, so I put it in there. Right. But what are these guys _on_? "They believe that Orlanth _is_ the Invisible God." If anyone asked what the Lunar authorities thought of this, I forget the answer entirely. I forget how sober any of us were... One thing I've been wondering about is whether this is a unique mode of worship, or if it has contempories and/or predecessors. For example, any bets on whether 1st/2nd age Carmania had Yelm/IG worship combined in this way? Specious analogies with Invictus Sol/Christ, anyone? Actually, that reminds me of a piece of Lunar fiction I started to write a while back: in regards which, does anyone have any datapoints on any of: At least one city of the DH tripolis, or at a pinch, some other solar city in Peloria which has been lunarised. The White Moon cult. ("But what are these guys _on_?") Lunar cult of justice. (No jokes from you unwashed barbarians, please.) Pelorian solar military cults. (i.e., not Elmal/Yelmalio.) The Dayzatar cult. Any subcults, particularly of a monastic bent. My alibi for when Nick Brooke is found beaten up at Convulsion after that Glasgow/Barbarians/Mr. Happy crack. It's true though, there are Primitive sun-worshipping cults in these parts: their crude ceremonies focus on totemic objects such as the UV SunBed, and the Cheap Package Holiday to Lanzarote Tickets. Other stuff I forget for the moment. Even if no-one has any hard info, I'd be interested to hear what the state of knowledge is: if I find out there's no data _whatsoever_ on something, at least that means I can't be Gregged before I start. ;-) Oh yeah, Yara Aranis. Well, if `Terrify Horse' is indeed a YA spell, this makes it pretty dead-cert that this person's schtick is Darkness. After all, `Fear', and `anti-Horse' both have this connotation, in RQ terms. Though to be picky this could be a) Black/dying moon darkness; Young Elemental darkness, or c) Darkness darkness. Don't laugh, there are prolly different words for each of these in Dara Happan, lord preserve us. But if YA arises from a _pre-lunar_ Pentan foe diety, c) seems the most likely. In any case, contrive other spells and manifestations accordingly. I humbly suggest. Cheers, Alex. --------------------- From: bauge@nucdec.chem.sunysb.edu (Eric Bauge) Subject: RQ-Con Message-ID: <9401191423.AA02446@nucdec.chem.sunysb.edu> Date: 19 Jan 94 04:23:53 GMT X-RQ-ID: 2829 I am back from RQ-Con, and it was really great! David Cheng did a great job. The organisation was very professional and we should all thank David for all the work and energy he has poured into this event. I think the best thing about this Con was meeting and playing with 150 outstanding role-players: the quality of a con is tightly tied of the quality of the people who attend, and at RQ-con I met nothing but great people. My personal highlight was "Bones of a nation": two GMs and a very "live action role playing"-like flavour, lots of role playing. The 2 GMs *AND* the other 6 players were very good role players. I enjoyed this event a lot. An other favorite was "Fear and loathing at the SuperTroll": I had tons of fun; the GM and the other players were a riot. The "Greg Stafford on Heroquesting" and "cultural exchange with Nick Brooke" were both quite illuminating. Thanks again to David Cheng for bringing all these great people in one place. Eric --------------------- From: pearse_w_r@bt-web.bt.co.uk (pearse_w_r) Subject: RQ/Tekumel Thanks Message-ID: <9401191426.AA21317@Sun.COM> Date: 19 Jan 94 14:25:57 GMT X-RQ-ID: 2830 Loren Miller kindly answered my questions about RQ/Tekumel. Thanks - I'll have another go and see how I get on. I'd like to hear 'war stories' about the RQ/Tekumel campaign run by Sandy Petersen... Thanks again Roger Pearse