Bell Digest v940302p3

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, Wed, 02 Mar 1994, part 3
Sender: Henk.Langeveld@Holland.Sun.COM
Content-Return: Prohibited
Precedence: junk


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From: joe@sartar.toppoint.de (Joerg Baumgartner)
Subject: Some answers
Message-ID: 
Date: 1 Mar 94 16:32:04 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 3210

Mike Dickison in X-RQ-ID: 3196

> I notice some interest in elves on the Daily. Here's a piece I've been
> working on, an only half-serious gonzo retake on the Aldryami by a lapsed biologist.
> It's really more of a reaction against Tolkien than anything else. I haven't
> seen the Elf Psychology piece, so I don't know how it fits. 

Good stuff, although the bland elves you fight aren't Tolkien's, but 
generic fantasy. Life would be easier if we used Aldryami, Mreli etc. 
more consistently, and dropthe term Elves.

Jean Durupt in X-RQ-ID: 3198

> I have a question concerning the unicorn riders of Prax.

> Are they the cult of Yelorna and their unicorns are intelligent

> Or,are they a standard tribe,since prehistoric Prax was 
> a great forest,the then intelligent unicorns would have lost
> to the humans during the survival covenant.

> Or there is a weirder explanation.

From what I remember from RQ Companion, the unicorns are not really their 
herd animals, but their steeds only. They certainly don't eat them any time.

Jean again in X-RQ-ID: 3200

> About the discussion of solar societies and storm societies.

> Orlanthi mythology tells us some interesting things of the past:

> -All the storm gods were outlawed by Yelm and exiled to the corner
> of the world.

Umath changed that.

> -A known outlaw (ie Orlanth) could go to the emperor's palace and
> challenge him to a personnal contest.

He most probably sneaked in. Think of Robin Hood's achievements.

> -This outlaw lost all the contest,yes even the combat contest since
> he did NOT demonstrate a better skill in wordmanship than Yelm in archery.
> It is nonetheless true that he won the dispute.

The Orlanthi say that he won, but the jury cheated. In this lat contest, 
they couldn't any more...

> -When Thed was raped, she obtained compensation but Ragnaglar was
> not punished.

He wasn't executed, which is contrary to the Orlanthi way, but he was 
exiled.

> My theory is that in fact some storm gods were not outlawed but that Yelm
> gave them a mission in the frontier of the empire.
> This mission did not please them so they revolted,and they did so not because
> their lord was unfair but because they wanted all the power without
> first proving themselves fit to rule.

What kind of mission would that be? Clean the sewers?

> About the birthright problem.
> I think that in the prosopedia of CoG, it is said that Lokarnos was
> born a peasant in the golden empire and that he acheived godhood thanks
> to his merits.

> For a people as fond as precedent as the Solars (ref Sandy), it is
> my opinion that your achievement count in a typical solar society,
> wether you are born a peasant or a noble.

Which is: if you're a good peasant, that's what I make of you. Lokarnos 
became the God of a menial task: carting.

> For the Sartar succession.
> Only a descendent of Sartar can be prince.
> The only difference with the solar way is that this person is not
> always the eldest son.

Only a descendant of Sartar (I think adoption is valid, look at Argrath) 
has the power to summon the founder's help via high power ancestor worship.
-- 
--  Joerg Baumgartner   joe@sartar.toppoint.de

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From: sandyp@idcube.idsoftware.com (Sandy Petersen)
Subject: re: RQ Daily
Message-ID: <9403011638.AA02444@idcube.idsoftware.com>
Date: 1 Mar 94 04:39:14 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 3211

Durupt Jean asks re: the Unicorn riders
>Are they the cult of Yelorna and their unicorns are intelligent?

This is what I've assumed. They can't be a "standard" tribe, because  
to ride a unicorn you gotta be a virgin. Since they can't reproduce  
themselves, all tribal members must be adoptees, probably mostly  
refugees from other tribes. I imagine they also purchase or steal  
promising female children from other tribes. 

	They can't herd or milk their unicorns since all unicorns are  
male, IMO. And no, I don't think they do anything nasty with their  
steeds -- after all, then they wouldn't be virgins any more. 

	Note that the cult of Yelorna possesses a useful spell which  
restores one to virgin status, if necessary. 

	The unicorns may be a prehistoric remnant of when Prax was a  
great forest. This implies that the Yelorna cult itself and the  
unicorn riders are actually fossils of the Golden Age. Though all the  
riders are Praxians, nowadays (hmmm -- I guess many of them could  
also be women escapees from the oasis folk). 


>For a people as fond as precedent as the Solars (ref Sandy), it is
>my opinion that your achievement counts in a typical solar society,
>whether you are born a peasant or a noble.
This, too, is my belief. At least in a properly-run solar society. 


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From: SYS_RSH%AFDS@HOBBES.CCA.CR.ROCKWELL.COM (Scott Haney, AFDS770 Functional Test X2069)
Subject: Happy Little Elves
Message-ID: <01H9GGONZHFK8XE10B@HOBBES.CCA.CR.ROCKWELL.COM>
Date: 1 Mar 94 16:58:00 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 3212

>Trollpak transformed trolls from slavering orcs
>into a brutal but in its own way sophisticated alien race, and one that was
>great fun to role-play.

And thank the gods it did!

>An elf is a walking plant crammed into a human suit. To aldryami, it's them
>vs the animals. We might talk of a mindless person as a vegetable; elves
>call an overly independent and mobile aldryami an animal. The ecological
>terms producer and consumer are useful here. Plants are producers, the only
>things able to convert sunlight and raw materials into organic life.

This is good.  I think this is an excellent way of stating an elf's POV...and,
in fact, if you take local entropy into account, you would even have a good case
for extremely long lifespans, should you want them in your campaign.

>humans, trolls, dwarves and other animals are both destructive and dependent on
>the largesse of a plant kingdom that could do pretty well without them. 

Don't know that entirely buy into that one, though.  Seems that life (as we
know it, we're really talking about Glorantha) is interdependent...the animals
give back to the plants eventually, either by producing carbon dioxide, or even
by dying and providing fertilizer.  Some plant life could survive without animal
life, but the plant kingdom would be different without animals.  I think elves
would realize this, too, albeit grudgingly.

>For more details of aldryami cuisine, see the section on compost preparation
>in any good gardening guide.
hee hee hee!

>Because their bodies are
>made of wood and leaves, they are treated as flammable objects, and don't
>require MP vs MP rolls to be set alight with an Ignite spell.

Ooops!  This seems wrong.  The Ignite spell has roughly the same effect as a
disposable butane lighter.  Ever try to ignite a healthy tree or shrub with one
of those?  Unless there is a decent amount of tinder available (or the tree is
very dry and has dead branches on it, or you've doused it with some flammable
substance), the best you could hope for is to burn up
some leafy hair.  I doubt that an elf would ever be dry enough to ignite that
easily, as a dry elf wouldn't be able to move much...he'd be much too stiff.
Perhaps this happens to Brown elves in the winter, but an active elf?  hmmm.

>Sadly during the preparation of this
>manuscript Bryanthemos passed away in a freak accident in which she was
>struck 27 times by a falling tree.

No way.  Obviously suicide. :)

Scotty

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From: ANDERSJC@howdy.Princeton.EDU
Subject: Numismatics and other elements
Message-ID: <8A74B260F89@howdy.princeton.edu>
Date: 1 Mar 94 17:26:41 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 3213


This is being posted for Paul Anderson, on Janet Anderson's account:
On Coins:

    The current published Gloranthan data are, I believe, as follows [for gold 
and silver coinage]:
 
    Bar gold, unenchanted, is worth 600 L./ENC = 600 L./kg
    Bar silver, "     "  , is worth  50 L./ENC =  50 L./kg
    Coining doubles the value of raw metal. 
  
Hence the Lunar is 10 g., and the Wheel is 16.67 g; gold:silver::12:1.

    There are remarks which imply that this scale of values is only local; even 
that there might be an earth-cult region of Glorantha where copper would be 
most valued, with silver and gold second and third. This would permit 
Goldentongues to make fantastic profits, but then Goldentongues _should_ be 
able to make such profits, if they survive to do so. 

    I agree that 50% seignorage is high; I suspect there is mediaeval precedent 
for 25% or so. After all, coins _are_ more useful than an ingot of the same 
weight, for several reasons: Coins will (normally) be accepted by the authority 
that minted them, and therefore by anyone who expects to be dealing with that 
authority.  Coins come in small amounts, whereas bar silver, much less bar 
gold, is only useful for very large transactions. Coins are relatively easy to  
make change for.  You can spend them without a balance, an assayer, and an 
allowance for the assay sample.  

    It may be possible to justify the rate of seignorage along these lines: 
Magic produces better coins, of divinely guaranteed fineness, and which will 
never interfere with spirit magic; therefore, at least for precious metals, 
Coining spells are the standard technique, and stamped coins are quite simply
counterfeits.   Coin Wheel does not produce one coin, but one coin/MP stacked 
with the spell. Thus one application will produce at most 20 Wheels. Of these, 
10 are the value of the bullion, and seven are fair value for a day of rest 
regaining the spell plus all the priest's MPs, leaving three or so for profit 
to be haggled over. 

    For comparison's sake, the basic Classical coins are the Athenian drachma 
(at 4.25 g. of silver) and the Roman denarius (just under 4 g. at the time of 
Augustus). These are at least as valuable as the RQ3 "penny"/Lunar - 1 drachma 
was a _good_ day's wage, 1/3 to 1/2 drachma a day's unskilled labor. No Greek 
coined gold (except for state emergencies) until Philip and Alexander; and the 
Romans did not until Sulla. The Romans coined bronze from the start; the Greeks 
did not.  The Lydians coined electrum.


    It is my impression that these mints would not, in general, coin bullion 
for passing citizens. These were offices of the State, or the Emperor, whose 
purpose was to produce the coins to pay the soldiers and expenses. The mints 
were run by junior magistrates, who bought ore and had the tribute and taxes 
melted down, and made coins, some of which paid their own salaries and paid - 
or paid for - the workmen.  

    Purity: Each Greek city coined its own money, each using its own weight for 
the drachma, which might or might not agree with somebody else's. Xenophon says 
that these coins were not useful at a distance from  their own states (except 
for those of the Athenians; but Athens was a naval power, and had a silver mine 
of its own).  Roman bronze coinage was, from very early, worth much more than 
the value of the metal. Roman silver and gold coins were 95% fine under the 
Republic and Augustus  (and again under Constantine); but starting with Nero 
the coins became progressively smaller and baser. In 210 A.D the denarius 
weighed 3 g., and 40% of that was copper. In 260, the denarii were silver-
washed copper bits. Nevertheless, people spent and hoarded them - we have the 
hoards.


On Elements:
    
    I always thought the days of the week were in _geographical_ order, reading 
upwards. Darkness under the world, on which the seas rest, then the depths of 
ocean, then the floating earth, then air, then high heaven. This is one reason 
I like the Lunar link with Wildday: "the Element ye knew not, which links 
Heaven to the high gods" etc.,etc,. The anti-Lunars will reply that what is  
beyond the defenses of heaven is outer Chaos, and this just proves that the 
Lunars are another Chaos-mask.
 
On Monasteries

Sandy says:
>I know that abbeys were real important in [Anglo-Saxon] England but have no 
>data on France or Spain...
    It is my impression that monasteries were more important in Anglo-Saxon 
England than in contemporary France or Germany [Spain being occupied by Islam]. 
The Continent had more bishops, and the bishops were more powerful. Also, the 
great abbeys in the North of England (Jarrow, Lindisfarne...) were founded by 
Irishmen, who had a different tradition, in which the monastery thrived as a 
new version of the clan. 






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From: paul@phyast.pitt.edu (Paul Reilly)
Subject: Re: RuneQuest Daily, Tue, 01 Mar 1994, part 1
Message-ID: <9403012047.AA05894@minerva.phyast.pitt.edu>
Date: 1 Mar 94 20:47:10 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 3214


  Paul Reilly here.

  I will try to say something coherent about Earth analogues, and the
uses and dangers thereof, this  weekend.  This is in response to an
ongoing discussiong on the RQ4 mailing list (which I may have started.)
The main point is that it is dangerous to assign a single 'closest
Earth analog' to a Gloranthan society; the RQ:AiG draft does this, assigning
the Orlanthi as  Celt-analogs, etc.  More later.

  alex@dcs.gla.ac.uk writes:
> Sandy:

> > > The Hrestoli wizards are unlikely to be so  
> > > stern, since all of them had to be farmers first, so still have wives 

  I'm not sure this follows; they might have to give up wives or might
not progress to Wizard if they do have them.  Possible either way.  Note
that celibacy (as I believe the Rokari require) might be a late development,
as it was in the Catholic Church.  Also amazing to me is the way in which
a relatively new ( < 1000 years old) doctrine like requiring celibacy for
priests can become a 'law of nature' to people like John Paul II.

>> Certainly not all, since caste membership is hereditary.

>Not amonst the Hrestoli, it isn't, though if they're immune to nepotism
>they'll be the only such society on either Glorantha or Earth.  It may the
>case that in the less robustly Idealist communities children of non-Farmers
>are whisked through the lower classes rather briskly, until they reach
>their `proper' station, but that's just the cynic in me talking.
  
  This is exactly the way we ran it in our Junoran campaign, although the
reformed Hrestoli Church in Loskalm was much stricter.  It was assumed
that a Baron's son would succeed him, but that he had to go back and do
a  couple of years in the various castes, rather like having the son of the
owner of a department store go and work in each department before being 
allowed to become Chairman of the Board.  One of the features of the
campaign was the conflict between the traditional Junoran culture and the
Loskalmi who wanted to 'reform' things, often against the will of the
people as well as the Barons...

>And didn't someone suggest
>that Rokari Wizards (may) take vows of chastity and celibacy?

  I certainly have said so at some point, and it's strongly implied in the
cultural writeup (What my Father Told Me) in the Seshnela section of the
Player's Book: Genertela.

  Will try to respond to excellent Aldryami posting later on.

 - Paul  

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From: paul@phyast.pitt.edu (Paul Reilly)
Subject: Re: RQ:AiG Runes: The vital few questions
Message-ID: <9403012100.AA06490@minerva.phyast.pitt.edu>
Date: 1 Mar 94 21:00:13 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 3215



  Paul Reilly here.

  SOrry to repost on the same subject, but I see no responses to my previous
post and I think this is an important subject.  I will also copy to the
Daily.

  RQ:AiG says that shamans and spirits are tied to various Runes, that spirit
Magic comes in Runic Categories, and that Cults have Runes.

  All over the world.

  If this is so, if spirits of cold in the frozen Valind Wastes are tied to
the Cold Rune, and spirits of Cold in the high Palakri Mountains (in
Pamaltela) are tied to the Cold Rune, and primitive broo shamans of the
Wastes are tied to the Chaos Rune, and the cult of Annilla among the 
Veldang of Zamokil is an expression of the Moon Rune, then, in my opinion,
the Runes are universal and cultural relativism is wrong.  I had thought
that the current of thought was running in the other direction, that the
Runes were ONE WAY of breaking down Ultimate Reality into its component
parts and analyzing it.

  Note that the one magic system that does NOT use Runes as its basis seems
to be Sorcery - the only system that has a unified cultural history
behind it which would make Runic affiliations plausible as a cultural bias
rather than a universal truth.  (Here I am rejecting the idea that Kralorelans
and other Easterners use the same sorcery system as the Wizards of the
West - I prefer Cults of Terror's eastern mystics to RQ3's Eastern Mishmash.)


  I find this bizarre and puzzling.  If cultural relativism holds, then I
could easily accept Runic Wizardry, since all Wizardry ultimately stems
from the Kingdom of Logic and they could have invented the Runes.  However,
if shamans of Prax who believe that the sun rises in Kralorela and sets in
Dragon Pass categorize spirits in the same Runic Categories as Uz shamans
and northern Uncoling shamans (who have never even heard of Prax) and 
Pamaltelan Veldt shamans (who think the edge of the world is the mountains
and jungles of the north and probably never HEARD of the God Learners) then
Runes ARE a universal constant of Glorantha, and the sorcerers should use
them too.

  So, any comments?

 - Paul

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From: ANDERSJC@howdy.Princeton.EDU
Subject: Esrolian myth?
Message-ID: <8AB2FCE23C8@howdy.princeton.edu>
Date: 1 Mar 94 21:20:18 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 3217


This is being posted for Paul Anderson, on Janet Anderson's account:
On Esrolian myth

    The following assumes that the human gestation period on Glorantha is about 
280 days which I have not seen expressly stated (although implied in 
_Glorantha_ II on Trowjang.  Btw, how many _Gloranthan_ years does it take till 
aging sets in?  
    I devised this prot-Esrolian myth-schema, explaining the year: The great 
Lady Ernalda/Esrola ("What do _ names_ matter in the True Place?") is fertile 
and swelling at the beginning of the year, burgeons during Earth season. Storm 
season is her labor, and the Young King is born at the start of Sacred Time.  
He marries her at the age of 14 and impregnates her, dying (according to most 
versions) after harvest.  

    The *boo*hiss* God Learners would have suppressed this - It doesn't fit the 
monomyth, and is female chauvinist, and therefore this all is now esoteric. The 
various tribes clans and queendoms of Esrolia and so forth would have no 
trouble recognizing Orlanth, Yelmalio, Yelm, etc. as the Young King, and this 
is the source of the GL version of Ernalda's myth. I suspect a variant of the 
myth was used during certain not-too-recent events in Dragon Pass.  

    Is it true that the Lunars plan to lengthen the year?