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, Mon, 14 Mar 1994, part 2
Sender: Henk.Langeveld@Holland.Sun.COM
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From: joe@sartar.toppoint.de (Joerg Baumgartner)
Subject: Beneath the Ice, and steaming Tundra
Message-ID:
Date: 13 Mar 94 10:43:58 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 3305
Just a quick speculation, before I'm off for a week.
Leafing through Tales 11, I found mention of a habitable land far in
the south of Pamaltela, and I wondered at once what the north of
Genertela will offer.
Altinela's existence is quite well known from Snodal's venture,
although I have little or no idea what it looks like. Nor whether t is
as cold as its position seems to indicate.
I have seen only one map showing features of Outer Glorantha, in the
RQ2 rulesbook. It shows Altinela at the west end of the Mountains of
the Sky, a range forming a circle segment presumaby parallel to the sky
dome further north, beyond Sramak's River. Between Altinela and the
White Sea and Neliomi Sea stretches Valind's Glacier (not shown on this
map, but most probably present).
We are told that Borklak's troll Queendom lies _on_ Valind's Glacier.
This might be true for the hunting tribes of Uzhim and Uzko, but I
would have expected that the crags _in_ the ice would be a much better
place of living for our darkness-loving friends. The instabilities of
flowing ice surely can be countered by Himile magics, can't they?
So, if the trolls have not totally invaded the land below the ice, what
kept them at bay? Aldryami living in forests below ice domes (like
Raymond Feist's Kelewan elves in "Silverthorn" and "A Darkness at
Sethanon")? The ideal broo civilisation envisioned by one seer,
mentioned in either the Nochet or Jonstown collectanea, which might
actually be possible, Broos who refused to follow Wakboth south from
Ragnaglar's Land (now Valind's Glacier) shown on the God-Time Uz Lore
maps, and living a life similar to that of the Praxian Unicorns?
Likewise, Valind's Winter Wastes east of the White Sea need not be
totally uninhabitable for human or other civilisations. There is no
reason why Lodril's Earthwarm powers couldn't produce a land of Geysirs
and steaming lakes in the endless tundra north of Pent, inhabited by
strange civilisations with no contact to southerners except hunting
Uzhim, or possibly with active contacts to the secretive Duchy of the
Blue Moon (in this case a possible stronghold of Veldang?).
These lands lie in Outer Glorantha. This means they are not accessible
for normal inhabitants of central Glorantha, but they might yet house
fairly normal (for Gloranthan standard, whichis quite strangee)
civilisations.
Anyone going to join my speculations about these "unofficial Blank
Lands"?
Joerg (shutting up until Saturday)
--
-- Joerg Baumgartner joe@sartar.toppoint.de
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From: alex@dcs.gla.ac.uk
Subject: Cult Structures Anonymous
Message-ID: <9403131956.AA17016@pebble.dcs.gla.ac.uk>
Date: 13 Mar 94 19:56:46 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 3306
Graeme Willoughby:
> 2/ Is there a long write up of the Seven Mothers anywhere or do I have
> to make up my own?
Only for RQ2. (CoP.)
> I want to give 7M rune lords re-usable rune magic (not given in
> Gods of Glorantha) similar in power to that which Wind Lords can obtain.
I beleive that WLs get (some) Divine Magic because they are the `priests'
of the Adventurous aspect. Or `well sorta', at least. This doesn't
apply to 7M Rune Lords, who appear to be the very God-Learnering epitome
of the Generic Rune Lord.
> Since
> the Red Goddes is beating Orlanth I feel that her Rune lords should be
> comparable in power.
That's not a sound argument: frex, Death Lords have _hideous_ amounts
of personal power, but Zorak Zoran isn't beating anyone, cosmologically
speaking, and is a pretty weak affair in terms of lozengal politics.
Also, 7M rune lords are not intended to be the heavy-hitters of the Lunar
powergaming community: see the some of the _other_ lunar cults for that...
> 3/ How easy is it for Rune Lords to become acolytes of their own cults?
> It's relatively easy for most Rune Lords to get the 10 points of Rune magic
> and the skills necessary for acolyte status - is this an expected
> progression or is it unusual?
Good question: there are clearly lots of pretexts for a ref. to deny such
a progression, but why would they want to? One could argue that this
is a direct descendant of the RQ2 status of `Rune Lord-Priest', for good
or for ill.
Harald Smith:
> Finally, at Castle Blue, King of Sartar indicates that Orlanth
> slays one of the Mothers, "She Who Waits". Is this true or not?
It was certainly my inference that this was the Mother the Orlanthi myth
was alluding to. Whether it is `true' or not is of course highly
debateable/imponderable/meaningless.
Martin Crim:
> I agree that the Catholic Church does not make a good analogy for the
> Orlanth pantheon (or anything else in Glorantha, for that matter). A better
> analogy is Greek/Roman polytheism, where a person worshiped different gods
> for different purposes.
There's nothing to prevent an Orlanthi joing more than one cult, or taking
part in the services any number of cults. It's kinda hard to go and cast
Soul Sight on an 500BC Peloponesian to tell if he was a lay member, Initiate
or one or more cults, or a Low Initiate of every cult the Greeks had ever
thought of, unfortunately.
> Another is early Hinduism, before the Bhakti
> movement. However, both of these analogies miss the mark because they don't
> have a central deity with associates. Zeus Pater/Jupiter/God the Father was
> the most important figure in the Greek and Roman pantheons, but Apollo was
> bigger than any Orlanth associate.
Except Ernalda, of course. I'm not sure this is essential to the
discussion/debate/flamewar about Low Initiation, however, as I think the
existing rules are fairly okay for either `centralised' or `distributed'
panteons.
> Note that, in KoS, everyone in Boldhome worships Storm Bull on his high
> holy day, but they need an actual initiate to run the ceremony.
Why should this be taken as evidence in favour of Low Initiates? In fact,
if people take part who're `Full Initiates' of non-associates of Storm Bull,
it suggests this is `lay member' worship. Mind you, you seem to be suggesting
a form of `pantheon worship' even broader than Boris's.
> The best published example, though, is in Pavis: Threshold to Danger (or
> whatever its subtitle was), where the Orlanthi worshiped at the Ernalda
> temple while the Lunars had the Orlanth temple closed. That seems a pretty
> clear bit of evidence that people worship pantheons, not deities. The
> reference to "Barntar's cult" in the Orlanth write-up in WF (under Harmast
> Barefoot) supports this view.
Not at all, since both are associates. (There may in fact be a shrine to
Orlanth in the Ernalda temple.) Nowhere do I claim that theistic
Gloranthans only revere a single god, and thumb their noses at the rest of
their pantheon. What I'm claiming is that they are _Initiated_ into the
cult of one god (or more than one, individually), and don't worship `the
pantheon`, or some hopelessly vague such concept.
> If they try to powergame and get magics from every god in the
> pantheon, they can, but the manifestations of these magics will be less than
> that of a person who properly follows a path.
I don't think this should be possible, unless there is a local cult which
worships the given gods together. A whole pantheon seems to be such an
infeasibly large, amorphous and unwieldy thing for a given individual to
worship all of, or `cherry-pick', come to that.
> "Associate cult spells" are a compromise between the strict one-god way
> and pan-pantheonism.
It is, and I agree that there should be some room for flexibility in the
amount of cross-worship, spells etc., traded in an `association', rather than
having one Standard Glorantha Issue form which every cult has slaveishly.
> Efficacy of divine magic = piety x K.
This I agree with, but I don't see it as arguing for the above approach.
It'd also be a somewhat awkward basis for an actual set of _rules_ on
cult membership, though I'd be interested to see people's detailed ideas
on the subject.
Alex.
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From: MARTINCRIM@delphi.com
Subject: Hykimi cults
Message-ID: <01H9XK6S59DE9AN3S2@delphi.com>
Date: 13 Mar 94 12:42:19 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 3307
Subject: Hykimi cults & cultures
Throatwarbler Mangrove asked for Hykimi cults, so I sent him 22
of them. Anybody else interested should contact me directly; 18
pages of material is a bit much for the Digest.
--Martin Crim (argrath@aol.com)
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From: alex@dcs.gla.ac.uk
Subject: Inter-clan relations in Doraddi tribes.
Message-ID: <9403132301.AA05251@trinidad.dcs.gla.ac.uk>
Date: 13 Mar 94 23:01:53 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 3308
I much enjoyed John Hughes article in _Tales..._ #11 on kinship relations
and hope you are all either clutching your copies, or will get 'em soon,
so's the rest of this article makes (some kind of) sense.
However, the skins diagram (figure 4) is laid out a bit strangely, and is
very confusingly labelled (the rows and columns). I think the following
is what is intended, please someone correct me if I'm wrong...
Instamiru [*] Vol Ini HG/HT
Blood Bean HG/HT Squaa RR
Relationships are from the point of view of the starred [*] skin, and
are:- HG = Husband Giver, HT = Husband Taker, RR = Rivalry and Respect
(Dreaming partners).
Or in general: `adjacent' (on the diagram) clans are both husband givers
and takers, opposite ones are one's `dream managers'.
And how does this work with other numbers? (2, 4, and 8 skins tribes all
exist.) This is my guess:
2: Moonleaf [*] Sundew HG/HT/RR
(In this case no incest taboo applies. I'm a bit dubious about this one,
perhaps this is only found in the Right Hand Path tribes, ie. the
`non-dreamers'.)
8:
1 [*]
2 HG 3 HT
4 HG 5 HT
6 HG 7 HT
8 RR
Note that in this case, husband giver and husband taker skins are distinct,
which is my understanding of why there are two separate terms, when in the
4-skin (fnarr?) tribe they coincide. Now, if this were completely symmetric,
each clan would be 'RR' with the clan opposite, the three to its left would
be `HT', and the other three HG.
(For example, for skin 6: skins 1, 2 and 4 are husband takers, 3 is partner
and rival, 5, 7 and 8 are husband givers.)
Of course, it may be much less neat than this in practise:
1 [*]
2 F 3 HT
4 HG 5 E
6 HG 7 HT/HG
8 RR
Skin 2 is a 'friendly' clan, but no intermariage is allowed, due to having
much blood is common (either due to previous intermarriage, or the two skins
having been formed from a single skin being 'split' in historical times).
Skin 5 is an 'enemy' clan, for either political or ritual reasons.
Intermariage is forbidden by the elders of each skin, buy would not be
considered incest if it did occur.
Skin 7 is _both_ a giver and taker of husbands: perhaps 1 and 7 were once
part of a tribe of four clans, and the custom of mutual exchange of menfolk
has been retained after the subsequent enlargement.
So skin 1 may take husbands from 4, 6 and 7, and give them to skins 3 and 7.
This is fairly off the top of my head stuff, so feel free to deride or pick
holes at your collective leisure.
Alex.
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