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, 16 May 1994, part 2
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From: Argrath@aol.com
Subject: Yelmalio's loose ends
Message-ID: <9405141649.tn105929@aol.com>
Date: 14 May 94 20:49:44 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 4013
New topic: cleaning up the Yelmalio problems
In the Gloranthan present (1610-1625), the Sun Dome Temples
of Dragon Pass and Prax have enthusiastically embraced the
teachings of Monrogh (or Monrough) about their god, whom they now call
Yelmalio. We know about them, and about the loyal Elmali. The elves of
central Genertela clearly worship a god whom all agree is the same as
Yelmalio, although the elves may have a
different name for him. The elves do not have any reason to
honor Monrogh, since they haven't made any changes to their
mythology recently. Thus, elves don't have the Lantern spell.
If you are an Elmal cultist, do me a favor and go and see if you
can get admitted at an elf Yelmalio temple. Once you resolve
that question, all the loose ends about elves will be tied up.
However, there are other Yelmalio worshipers around who need more explaining.
According to the cults distribution chart in Cults of Prax,
there are Yelmalians among the animal nomads. The Praxian
Yelmalians fall into three groups: the Waha style, the Zebra
style, and the Ostrich style. I ignore any 1% notations on the
chart as being too small to be viable. (When Orogurri the Bison
ruled Sun Dome, he brought all the Bison Yelmalians with him, and
they never returned to the plains.) The Pol Joni part of the
table is clearly outdated, and anyway all members have to worship
Orlanthi cults. Maybe there are Pol Joni Elmali?
The Waha style Yelmalians live among the Impala and Sable
tribes. Like almost all Praxians, they belong to a society in
which shamanistic worship was predominant until recent times.
Their ancestors worshiped Sun Hawk, the Praxian solar deity, and
other spirits of light. These include Morning Star, Evening
Star, and Oakfed. Many modern Yelmalians of the Impala and Sable
tribes belong to Praxian spirit cults of light. Among those two
tribes, light worshipers make up whole septs or even clans.
(Women of those clans, however, still worship Eiritha.)
The Waha style Yelmalio cult is like the version in Sun
County, with some exceptions. They do not honor Monrogh (or
learn the Lantern spell). They let shamans belong to the cult.
They have no Light Captains, Light Guards, Light Keepers, High
Priests, or Light Sons. (Light Sons may ride no animal but
horses, and Stephen Martin was right about the dual nature of
cults with two rune levels.) They sometimes worship at the Sun
Dome, but often do not. Their liturgy is in a Praxian style, and
they call their god by a name in Praxian which I leave someone
else to make up.
The Zebra Rider Yelmalians are closer to the Sun Dome model
than the Waha style Yelmalians are. Zebra initiates of the cult
mostly belong to certain families with ties to the Sun Dome.
They have accepted Monrogh and his revelation. They honor
Kuschile and Togtuvei, as they always have. They have no Light
Captains, Light Guards, Light Keepers, or High Priests. Light
Sons among them say, "Of course, zebras _are_ horses." They
worship at the Sun Dome whenever they are nearby on holy days.
Their liturgy is close to the Praxian Sun Dome's, and they now
call their lord Yelmalio, though they used to use the Praxian
name.
The Ostrich Riders have their own traditions, but the Sun
Dome cult has influenced them. This influence has been greatest
in the period since the Dragonkill War wiped out the tribe's
ruling caste (whom modern Ostrich Riders believe to have been
Yelm cultists). They do not know Monrogh or Kuschile, but do
have a spirit named Veng, patron of riding. They do not have
shamans in their cult, or join the Praxian spirit cults of light.
They have Light Sons who do not follow the "horse or walk" rule.
If pressed, they will insist that Ostriches are creatures of the
Sun and therefore proper mounts. (Sun Domers distrust Ostrich
Light Sons for this reason, and simply believe that they are
breaking a geas.) The Ostrich riders have no Light Captains,
Light Guides, Light Keepers, or High Priests. They have their
own liturgy and their own name for Yelmalio, which I also leave
to another to make up.
When foreigners ruled Sun Dome County, they brought their
foreign ways with them. Thus, the original Sun cult was melded
with Praxian Sun Hawk worship. However, most traces of this
melding have disappeared. Scholars can find one clue in the fact
that rural Sun Domers have wise women (shamans), whereas Dragon Pass Sun
Domers do not suffer witches to live. The two Sun Dome temples have
different liturgies, but this may be more due to long separation than to
Praxian influence.
Harald, you want to tell people about Khelmal?
Yours,
Martin
---------------------
From: Argrath@aol.com
Subject: Declaring victory, moving on
Message-ID: <9405141650.tn105938@aol.com>
Date: 14 May 94 20:50:05 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 4014
Re: Nick's Platonic Stygians
Now we're getting somewhere. Inspiration, not direct
transfers from analogues.
Re: Sandy's comments on the Trinity
Now I can declare victory. However, given Sandy's openness
to being convinced of the importance of trinities, let me add
that the Christian trinity is not like some other trinities.
Frinstance, the Hindus have had various trinities in different
periods of their history, and they were always independent gods
worshiped by different tribes or in different places, brought
together to serve a united social group. Brahma, Vishnu, and
Siva are the most recent three, and they are given complementary
roles in the mythology relating them (Creator, Sustainer, and
Destroyer). But if you has Sivists which is the greatest of the
three, you'll get a different answer than if you ask devotees of
either of the other two.
The Christian trinity has been interpreted in many different
ways, so it's difficult to generalize. But the themes have been:
whether Christ's nature is wholly divine, wholly human, or a mix;
whether the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father alone or from
the Father and the Son; whether the Christ is of the same,
similar, or different substance with the Father (see theme 1);
whether the three are one person or three; etc.
Thus, if you did get a trinity in some off-brand Stygianism,
it'd be more like the Hindu model than the Christian. "OK, we
worship Malkion, you guys worship Orlanth, and those guys worship
Mralot. Well, I had a vision last night that explained how
Orlanth and Mralot are really Malkion's sons, and incidentally it
explains why we get to be kings over you guys..."
Now, following Nick's lead, I can see arguments about the
nature of divinity, and so on. Some of the baser Stygians might
claim that their favored god is an incarnation, as opposed to
creation, of the IG. And since he (or she) works in the world,
the god is better than the IG, or perhaps even more powerful.
A bit of trivia: many so-called primitive religions have an
otiose high god. This has been used to argue for monotheism
being the original religion (following a Biblical line), contrary
to Frazer's too-easy Pantheism->Polytheism->Monotheism
[->Atheism] progression.
Joerg threatens: "Nothing hinted at Elmal, Rakenveg, Kargzant..."
Sorry, I'm not ready to be Joerged, and probably never will
get to the point where I would accept being Joerged. But I guess
if you can't defend your position from within published material,
you'll have to invent it.
I meant to comment on someone else's statement a few days
ago that one of two positions would turn out to be True, if Greg
Stafford ever focuses his attention on it. My comment was "No,
at least one of you will be wrong, and both of you could be."
That applies with equal force here, but we can only go on what we
have.
Re: Joerg's desperate rear-guard action (calling Marshall Ney...)
"Catch a non-Stygian venerating St. Paslac, or St. Arkat.
St. Rokar certainly is _not_ worshipped in Loskalm, and even less
at the Castle Coast."
I don't even need unpublished materials to refute this one.
From "What the Wizard Says" in GoG: "We Malkioni belong to many
different castes and sects, but all of us recognize the divinity
of a saint, no matter what sect he attained his sainthood
through." Malkionism just refuses to be warmed-over
Christianity, no matter how hard you try, Joerg.
Next: a new topic (finally)
--Martin
---------------------
From: paul@phyast.pitt.edu (Paul Reilly)
Subject: Re: Malkioni
Message-ID: <9405142243.AA16795@minerva.phyast.pitt.edu>
Date: 14 May 94 22:43:27 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 4015
Paul Reilly here.
Sandy writes:
> Jrustela was shattered and mostly sunk by the Waertagi
I thought the Closing of Zzabur rolled over the islands of Jrustela
and scraped them clean.
I do think that one can have a Glorantha in which the God Learners got
bad press, and were basically good. Kind of a horrible conspiracy theory
Glorantha.
On spicy food:
We have Praxian food as being very hot. The plants that survived had
to ward off Chaotic herbivores and insects and the like, producing plants that
seem inedible to most, whether tough, spicy, thorny, or actually poisonous.
Peloria thus picked up its taste for spicy food during the Animal Nomad
occupation.
> : the Malkioni Trinity.
> I do not believe that the Malkioni have any equivalent to the
>conventional Christian Trinity
I agree. I view their religion as more like the competing philosophies
of late antiquity than any 'religion' per se. There might be a God and
a _logos_, an intermediary spirit of some kind, doubt any basis for a Trinity.
How far back does the Hrestoli meritocracy go? I tend to view its
full and rigid form as a product of Loskalm under the Ban. Any ideas?
- Paul
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From: isaac@twics.com
Subject: Sorcery and Divine Magic
Message-ID: <0097E785.7FBBF4C0.16@tanuki.twics.com>
Date: 15 May 94 05:16:44 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 4016
---------------------
From: isaac@twics.com
Subject: Sorcery and Divine Magic
Message-ID: <0097E785.A2D14780.18@tanuki.twics.com>
Date: 15 May 94 05:17:43 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 4017
Hi everyone on the Digest! I'm a RQ gamer of some 15 years experience,
just cottoned on to the Digest on Internet. First things first - a big
thanks to everyone working and contributing to RQ today. The game seems
as vibrant and alive as it ever was... Cheers!
I've got a niggling question I'd like to throw out to everyone. Sorry
if it seems a blindingly obvious one. I'm a bit dim on some points.
It goes like this -
Sorcery and Divine Magic : just how incompatible are they? Ephemeral things
like the RQ rules (yeah... I know...) seem to suggest that it's impossible
to practise both at the same time, but what exactly is the nature of this
prohibition? Is it just a gaming mechanic, or is it something a character's
deity in general imposes? For example, what really is to stop, say, a Rune
Lord of Humakt from upping and enrolling at some Stygian college and picking
up some sorcery spells...?
I'm trying to run a campaign in Ralios, and the vagueness of Henotheism and
the Stygian cults is driving me spare. They seem to be able to mix and match
with alarming ease - or is that just my reading?
And, on a related point - Illumination. If restrictions on learning sorcery
are deity-imposed, then what does Illumination imply? If you can circumvent
your cult's Spirits of Retribution and disobey your God, can't your God
simply disown you anyway? Or is that too active an act for a God to make
within time? What I'm getting at is this: people like Arkat seemed to have
jumped from cult to cult. All well and good, but what happens to the spells
from the cult you just left? Can you keep using them reusably? Do they become
one-use? Do you lose them altogether?
Sorry if all the above has been answered a million times on the Digest - a bit
of clarification or just picking everyone's brains would make my conception
of the sorcery-divine magic relationship so much more comfortable... Thanks
for reading this far!
Cheers,
Gary Newton (Isaac@twics.com) , Tokyo.
---------------------
From: alex@dcs.gla.ac.uk (Alex Ferguson)
Subject: Mything the point.
Message-ID: <9405151537.AA19458@keppel.dcs.gla.ac.uk>
Date: 15 May 94 15:37:16 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 4018
> Re: Epistemology Corner
> Alex Ferguson asks, "But are _mythic_ events necessarily
> (objectively, factually) real, or could the heroplane itself
> contain, not just different interpretations of "the same events",
> but quite different, independant, even contradictory mythic
> events?"
> I find this quite humorous. You are asking, "But which is the
> REAL myth?"
I'm talking here about the nature of the _Heroplane_. That is, assuming
it has an "objective" existance, can it contain different "realities"?
In my model, different outcomes to Mythic Events, and/or different ways
of travelling between them. That my model explicitly allows for such
things might be construed as a hint.
It's hard to make a direct comparison with earthly myths, since you have
to do all the messy business of "identifying" the protagonists first of
all, before you even start discussing whether the myths agree.
> (itself a fairly amusing question) and then assuming
> that if there are contradictory myths, they cannot be true.
Absolutely not. You seem to think that my question was posed so
as to suggest a negative answer. Personally, I think the HP _does_
embody different `truths', but others have disagreed with this idea
before (Joerg, I believe), and I was hoping for reasoned comment on the
subject.
> Survey says--. In my Glorantha, at least, the
> contradictory myths in, frex, GoG are all perfectly true. I
> think this accords best with the way Glorantha has been
> presented. After all, the GodLearner attempt to construct a
> monomyth to explain everything and rationalize all differences
> was a mistake.
All the `contradictory' myths is GoG _are_ (part of) the God Learner
attempt to reconcile them. GoG is, all things considered, about the
most God Learnerish book in existance. If one took it as being
precisely true, you'd get a fairly nice, neat heroplane (at least under
the model I suggested). If you took the _original_ myths, and tried
to make them "agree", you'd have much the same problem as on Earth
(are the Emperor and Yelm "really" the same entity?) which the GLers
decided to "solve".
> Re: peace between Air and Fire
> Uh, I think you ignored the point Peter made.
No, I disagreed with it, cum questioned its relevance. Peter said
"What if there were a mythic `truce' or mutual understanding between
Solar and Storm worshipers?" (pardon my paraphrase, Peter). I said
"There is".
Alex.
---------------------
From: alex@dcs.gla.ac.uk (Alex Ferguson)
Subject: One post, one soundbite.
Message-ID: <9405151612.AA19485@keppel.dcs.gla.ac.uk>
Date: 15 May 94 16:12:05 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 4019
> I'm trying to explain to Alex and those who agree with him why it is
> that I and a number of other people cringe at the "one cult, one god"
> concept.
Cringe if you must, but please, not at that particular sound-bite, which
seems to have arisen purely from Joerg "summarising" what I said. If you
really want me to utter an anti-pantheon slogan, what about "one cult,
fewer than 250 gods"?
> The plowman who also acts as the keeper of the grainary must join
> Barntar and Asrelia in addition to Orlanth in order to fulfil his cult
> and social duties.
I really don't see that that's true. If the community is so small (or
uninterested) that only 1/2 a person bothers worshipping Asrelia in any
specific, at all committed way, I think it's a bit optimistic to expect
vast quantities of effective Asrelia rune magic to flood in, whatever the
RQ:AiG (RIP) rules have to say about temple sizes. That this hypothetical
person would attend worship of both, say prayers to both, etc., I don't
doubt.
> The wandering killing machine only needs to join
> Humakt, or Urox, or Orlanth Adventurous.
Powergaming players isn't really my first worry, I was expressing the
concern that the "built-in safeguards" Joerg mentions to prevent it,
were of the "referee as local priest saying no" variety, there being
nothing _apparent_ in the mechanics of what's been proposed to prevent
someone joining, to use your example, all three of the above, at no
real extra cost, for benefits which shouldn't be scoffed at.
> Additionally, the tendency that RQ GMs and
> players have to design new, more interesting cults for adventurers as
> frameworks for newer and more bloodthirsty characters has aggravated
> this tendency, and made for a game where wandering killers have an
> easier time staying pious than stable farmers.
Well, this is really a problem of campaign focus (and publication focus,
if it fails to match up). I don't think there's an inherent bias in
the rules as such, though it might look that way if you compare farmers
with six separate jobs with the stereotypically monomaniac killer.
> Is that enough of a reason to change the "one cult, one god" paradigm?
Not until the cure is less fatal than the disease.
Alex.
---------------------
From: TRexHavoc@aol.com
Subject: Secrets
Message-ID: <9405151347.tn124410@aol.com>
Date: 15 May 94 17:47:32 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 4020
The Prospectus for Heroes of the King says that Minaryth Blue is not the same
as Minaryth Purple. But the most interesting part says:
"In general, magic requires more time than is apparent in RuneQuest.
Most personal magic casting requires a focus, spoken words, and gestures.
Even Rune Magic takes some time to prepare and cast, especially if the spell
requires or accompanies some ritual. Magic cannot be cast in secret.
"Battle Magic or Spirit Magic
"The average adult Sartarite clansman or woman has three or four spells
which are probably used everday. These are for things like starting fires,
hammering, or whatever repetitive work is likely to be usefully Enhanced.
Alternately, something which is usually likely to happen only occasionally or
quickly (such as shooting a deer) might have these normal enhancements.
These
spells are learned as a normal part of the culture, and are nearly always
successful when used.
"Most people have a set of secondary spells as well, which they are not
likely to need everyday. These are less likely to be successful, and are
usually applied with the work that is being done (such as using a healing
spell while binding a wound).
"Both of these types of spells are personal things, done for oneself
and
one's family or friends. They are learned upon or after initiation, and
within the Orlanthi clan most of these useful spells are known by at least a
few of the people. Use of any of these magics causes people to tire. These
spells are not always successful, nor ar they simply based on some statistic.
They work more quickly and efficiently when they are used often, and so a
Humakti's Bladesharp is probably more likely to work than an Elmali's. They
have effects which are visible to those who can see the magical energies of
the world, and possibly to others as well."