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 3 Sender: Henk.Langeveld@Holland.Sun.COM Content-Return: Prohibited Precedence: junk --------------------- From: alex@dcs.gla.ac.uk (Alex Ferguson) Subject: More scathing replies. Message-ID: <9405151806.AA19573@keppel.dcs.gla.ac.uk> Date: 15 May 94 18:06:22 GMT X-RQ-ID: 4021 Nick Brooke, firmly encased in a Rune Metal Jacket: > Why oh why should Lodril get Enchant Aluminium? It's the metal of Water. > The only "wet" thing about Lodril is his flaming ejaculate (admittedly more > than Dayzatar or Yelm have ever possessed). What do you think Yelm was Sweetening the Good Wife with then, Aspartame? The phrase "dark horse" springs to mind... Dayzatar is obviously covered by the dictum that monks only ever do it out of habit. > I'm not sure the Western name does refer to Lo-dril; couldn't it be Lo-rion I like this, although it'd be better if lo-metal were blue, not red. Happily, I've already made this change, for reasons of purely personal idiosyncracy in my (non-)campaign. (Really, stern Gnydron in jolly bright red aluminium armour. Anodised, doubtless. <*schblert!*>) Gw'an, Greg, make my day... Sandy Petersen, and his famous stuff: > At least elves, in my campaign, are mainly active at night. Gotta soak up 'em rays during the day. > There must be some green elves present. This has always bothered me. Does this mean there is no pure-broadleaf forests in all of Glorantha? Or do these have some "hired gun" vronkali in any case? > And yes, they're inactive > for a season (unless they have magic or drugs to prevent it). Ah... Yelmalio-worshiping mreli staying vigilant during the death of the sun?Psychadelic brown elves with a wheelbarrow full of speed to last all winter? > I don't believe in the Pure Ones, personally. Anyone running > in my campaigns won't find any. Woo! Who hacked that into Dorastor, then? > >> For that matter, there are red-skinned entities that come from > >> the Red Moon, but are not necessarily related to the Red Vadeli. > Alex Ferguson asks: > >There are? Who, humans, the fabled Moon Elves, or...? > The Full Moon Legion (see Dragon Pass). Oh yeah. No legislating for demigods. Certainly nothing to do with the Vadeli. (*) (*) Unless they are. > I'm not sure what color the skin of the Moon Elves is. Colour them non-existant, I bet. > Maybe they're a new > version/crappy imitation (depending on whether you're pro- or > anti-lunar) of the *sob* extinct White Elves? Or maybe exactly the same thing, if they're associated with the equally fabled (though different tense) white moon. > At this point, I must again point out that I do not currently know of > anywhere in Glorantha that two groups of Aldryami are fighting one > another. There ought to be one, though. If only for my PCs to visit. Ballid/Erontree, I suspect. Could be happening all over, on a very small scale. Titanic struggle between the stand of birch and the oak copse. > >I find it difficult to imagine _all_ of Darktongue being instinctive. > That's only because you're human, and very little of your > language is instinctive. Hrmph! If you want another datapoint, whale song/language has been shown to vary quite widely, suggesting it's "cultural" rather than instinctive. True of orca and humpbacks, at any rate. I wonder if dolphin use echo- onomatopoeia? Serves me right for trying to be diplomatic: I do not believe all of Darktongue is instinctive. For this to true, each newborn ukzo or enlo would have _complete_ knowledge of the most subtle and abstract of trollish concepts. (No jokes, please.) Makes childhood rather redundant, really. It would also make their language very fixed over time, rather leading to the "What's Gaelic for `petro-ethylene cracker'?" syndrome, but moreso. I think the reason Darktongue is so (almost) universal is due to the strength and monolithicity of Uz culture and religion. "Great-great- great-great-granny Anga Kor _sez_ so, little troll boy." > While this is > purely a manner of terminology, I would prefer "clan" to be reserved > for more Orlanthi-like social structures. [...] (for one thing, the > Praxian clan is solely political; members need not be related to one > another). Not all members of a clan are actually related, though that's the polite fiction. (True, at least for Irish and Scots clans, and I'm sure for Orlanthi ones.) Obviously, they aren't as explicit about this as the Praxians are. > As this family grows, it becomes more and more clan-like, but I think > that at least among uncivilized trolls, when the common ancestress > dies, the "clan" breaks up into units, each adhering to their own > "oldest mother". I'm not so sure about this: even quite wild trolls have ancestor worship, which will tend to hold a clan/family together, other factors permitting. Sadly, wild trolls often live in such poor territory that the clan will become physically spread out to sustain themselves by forage, and hence may be unable to maintain unitary clan structures. > Over the years, I've become very interested in exotic cooking (which > is a bit of a problem nowadays, as it's hard to find East Asian or > Pakistani ingredients in Dallas). Must bring some punjabi massala chick peas to Eat At Geo's. Who me, pander to the BNNs? Yup. > I don't think it's just a climate thing (I've heard it opined > that "hot food is from hot lands") Not simply that, but since hot food tends to make one sweat, it's not a great idea when the temperature is sub-zero. Wasn't Peloria rather cold, before the Rusk-- Lunars started fiddling with the climate? > It strikes me that Peloria fits the mold -- tons of poor > folks eating mainly corn. Is Peloria really very monoculturous? I'm sure all sorts of grains are found in various places about Peloria, just as oats aren't the only thing grown in Sartar. (Thank Orlanth. Eat yer purridge, laudie.) If any place is obsessed with maize, I think it's the river-bottoms, Dara Happa proper. > I imagine many Sartarites find Pelorian food physically > difficult to eat, in the same way that many Americans cannot handle > spicy Mexican. Gives a whole new meaning to "showing contempt for Yelm". <*parp*> Alex. --------------------- From: alex@dcs.gla.ac.uk (Alex Ferguson) Subject: Pantheon Initiation: what the public Needs to Know. Message-ID: <9405151943.AA19695@keppel.dcs.gla.ac.uk> Date: 15 May 94 19:43:25 GMT X-RQ-ID: 4022 Joerg: > I wanted to stop writing about initiation. Oh, well, another Looong piece... Obviously we need a Pact of Silence or something. ;-) One of the reasons this topic Won't Die is that I'm having trouble seeing what it is that Joerg proposes for, or even _wants_ from, Pantheon Initiation. If we work out exactly where we differ, perhaps we can at least agree to differ/sulk quietly. I had asked: > > Are you counting "Orlanth" as one of the possible `free' "minor > > cult[s]", or is everyone effectively "in" Orlanth _and_ a "minor cult" > > _*and*_ a "pantheon initiate"? You didn't answer my question, Joerg. You want to keep the existing cult structure more-or-less intact, right? Hence you propose that a cultist may join more than one, getting exactly the stated benefits, but without the usual "penalties" in time and tithing. Am I correct so far? However, you seem to imply that "extra" cult memberships do require a POW sacrifice, at least. You don't state how many you may join before this becomes necessary. That's what I asked. Is it one, presumably Orlanth? Or is it Orlanth and one other? Or is it as many as you like? If you have concrete ideas about (dare I say it?) rules for pantheon worship, it'd be helpful for you to be more specific. > > If the first: Okay, I join my "free" cult . How does this differ > > from me being Initiated into under the RQ3 rules? I'm also a > > "pantheon initiate", but that just means I'm an associate of various > > cults, which I'm associated to anyway via . I stll think you should clarify what being a pantheon initiate/associate initiate, whatever, means, if it's beyond what I outline here. > [Tithing, temple duties] > > These aren't _penalties_, they are _consequences_. How do you plan on > > getting something for nothing in the magical ecology? > I don't. Then you need to make clear what limits there are on what cultic-type benefits you get for one cultic-type outlay. Constraints on powergaming based on tetchy priests and innocent farmers don't work very well if it's the priests and farmers doing the powergaming. > > But each cult, however unique it is, must worship _something_: something > > identifiable, and identifiable _with_, for a fairly clearly conceptualisable > > "purpose", not something hopelessly vague and open-ended like a "pantheon". > How about a cult worshipping Orlanth and his companions and friends, each > of them at the appropriate time, and for the appropriate benefit? Not a very well-defined group, and certainly not a small one. And even if this cult did exist, it would _not_ be simply the "sum of the parts". Not unless the time/tithing requirements were about 2000%, and the POW sacrifice in the region of two hundred. > > Anything more than seven is a committee. > A ring, to stick with Orlanthi nomenclature. A necklace, for Pamaltelans. None of the traditional "rings" are anything like the number of thingies in the whole pantheon. Lightbringer Ring, Brother's Ring, yes. Everyone- in-the-whole-Storm-Tribe Ring, I don't like at all. > > Are these time > > and tithing requirements just something imposed by wicked game designers, > > referees, and priests, or do they fulfill some game-world purpose? > There is _one_ religious tithe to the temple (community, parish, whatever) > I am initiated to. i.e. the equivalent of one GLised cult's worth, for which you seem to propose the initiate gets open-ended benefits from every cult in sight, as long as it isn't for evil, selfish, powergamingly adventurous purposes. > > How do you plan on telling the difference? If communities can get Free > > Lunches, why not us, I hear your players crying. > Easy. Don't do it for selfish reasons, but for the good of the community, > and you'll get preferred treatment. You're proposing that for the same amount of magic effort as with the cultic rules, the community gets a much greater, and possibly open-endedly greater, magical benefit. This is a Communal Free Lunch from my point of view. I think that sufficiently pious and committed initiates have fairly ready access to one-use RM (of their _own_ cult), if they really want it. The expendtiture is mainly theirs, not the officiating/supervising priest's. An a priori assumption that someone wanting a combat-oriented spell from their own god, the god of warriors in this, would be obnoxious interference on the priest's part, frankly. Note that having spells cast for you by a member of a cult, for which you obviously _do_ need to have the priest's active approval, is hardly an argument in favour of having to actually _join_ it. > Generally adventuring magic is frowned upon by village or town priests, > it upsets their magical ecology by abusing their ressources. This smacks more of referee-hosiery than magical ecology, for a god one of whose aspects is Adventurous. > This still cuts the financial benefit of the > village priest, but at least it leaves his spiritual account largely > unchanged. I think his spiritual account is already badly overdrawn, myself, from trying to maintain several sets priests on the ammount of commitment due to one single cult. > This the reason why I don't really like David Cheng's Rune Power system > for divine magic. It smacks too much of presacrificed DI (like for RQ2 > priests) to me. Personally, I like the idea behind the Rune Power system, though not the details. The distinction between DI and rune magic seems too artificial to me to be worth enshrining in The Rules, more than is unavoidable for playability reasons. The fact that DI is sometimes treated as a source of endless amusing abuses by players is, admittedly, one good reason for maintaining the distinction. Thinking of DI as postsacrificed rune magic, Alex. --------------------- From: alex@dcs.gla.ac.uk (Alex Ferguson) Subject: Orlanth Backslider. Message-ID: <9405151955.AA19712@keppel.dcs.gla.ac.uk> Date: 15 May 94 19:55:03 GMT X-RQ-ID: 4023 10% time, 10% tithing. This is giving us lots of grief. "Take two lots of time and tithing requirements into the shower? No, I just Pantheon'n'Go!" Let me do a quick take on this subject: Rampant God Learnerism. _All_ these cults, whatever local conditions, with very few exceptions, have the same mundane requirements? Not bloody likely. Note that when we get to see longforms, they sometimes turn out differently: frex, Humakt and the Seven Mothers both differ somewhat from the 10%/10% thing. Other cults might vary too, once we get the details, or at least be subject to some intra-cult variation. While not all cults are going to end up equal on a cost-benefit analysis, I think some are likely to be considered less important, even by their own worshipers, and accordingly require, or be afforded the luxury of, less in the way of material support. Look at the city god cult, say. Which brings me to: Cities. I've noted that city-dwellers are an irreverent lot. Weakened clan structure, competing demands on your religious energies, the (ahem) distractions of city life. Is it likely they are as zealous as their Thunder and Brimstone country cousins? Nup. I think where a community is less than bursting with religious zeal, the mundane requirements will tend to be less. This is likely to have knock-on effects, mind you, such as on the magical well-being and general effectiveness of the religion, but I won't go into that in detail. So what if I don't? How severe are the penalties likely to be if you backslide on your commitments, whatever they turn out to be, exactly? Not very, I think. I doubt it even provokes the Orlanth Impests into action, unless you're obnoxious and blatant about it. The big disadvantage is going to be when you then turn up at the temple, looking for a spellcasting, training, to learn a spell, a political favour, a place to kip after an argument with the wife, anything you imagine you have coming to you in the "Benefits" column. So basically, it is possible, I think, to have a fairly religiously lax community without them looking like Agent Orange test subjects. Also, I think it's not implausible to be initiated to a "cultural" deity like Orlanth, and then essentially ignore the cult, except on the most important occassions. (Missing the High Holy Day would be a no-no.) This would mean you could then join the cult you _really_ wanted to with incurring additional "penalties", as such. Alex. --------------------- From: alex@dcs.gla.ac.uk (Alex Ferguson) Subject: New things for Joerg and I to argue about. Message-ID: <9405152122.AA19788@keppel.dcs.gla.ac.uk> Date: 15 May 94 21:22:15 GMT X-RQ-ID: 4024 Joerg: > Subject: Sonic abilities > Alex said > >There's also the small detail that echos are ultrasonic > So I think it's perfectly sensible to have darkspeech contain > onomatopoeia from sub- and suprasonic echoes darksense provides. My reputation for sarcasm preceedeth me: tongue in cheek tone aside, I wasn't suggesting this wasn't possible, or even likely. > Subject: Aeolian initiates > >> Additionally he took St. Dormal as a patron for his > >> sea voyages. I didn't charge extra POW sacrifice. > > Just how many cultic initiations does one get free on special offer with > > pantheon initiation currently, then? > Misunderstanding here. The young man in question is learning Aeolian > wizardry (elsewhere wrongly known as sorcery) as his magic, low magic only. I think the question is still valid, but I'll try to contain myself. (After all, sorcery is sometimes taught in cults, even theistic cults.) > This low magic he learns from both the pantheistic offers of the Aeolian > church This is a very confusing way to describe sorcery, which isn't even theistic in origin. > If he desires so, he may learn a bit divine magic - those > spells the deities involved grant to their associates I've pointed the problem with this out before: this isn't a well-defined set. _Every_ spell each spell gives to _every_ associate? > So is in a pure Grazer tribe (no adopted vendref) Yu-kargzant (not quite > Yelm, but close), and whatever the name in Pent may be, among the Pent > nomads. This is a good question, and one that might great influence my interpretation of Dara Happan (pre-/alleged) history. Kargzant? Yelm? > (Note that adoption into the Yelm cult is possible: Light Priests may > become Yelm the Elder members, their children may become Yelm initiates I don't think this method works in general, else (pre-Lunar) Dara Happa would be hip-deep in Yelm worshippes. In the unlikely event of Yelm the Sage members being allowed and able to procreate, I suspect their children "don't count" as Yelm candidates. > How else did Southbank change from "Yelmalio" to Yelm?) HeroQuest, n'stuff. > I didn't intend this as a component of our initiation debate, but I had > this as an actual problem to be solved in my campaign. Well, that was the context you brought up the example in... > He is an Aeolian initiate, which means he may worship at any sacred place of > the church, plus he will experience somewhat friendly reception at Orlanthi > and Lightbringer temples, if only as lay member. Shurely shome mishtake: sorceror, burn, kill? > He is an initiate of the church, first of all. Is this in the sense of theistic initiation, or more like wizardly apprenticeship? > If you want to press it into the one man - one cult scheme, I don't really: I've already said the structure you propose for a henotheistic cult (and a very sorcery-oriented one at that, it turns out) sounds perfectly decent. I just happen to have qualms about having such a church in Heortland, or of using a similar model elsewhere. > you might phrase it thus (set ick=100%): > "He is an initiate of the sorcery-using Issaries-subcult of Dormal." > This doesn't explain his Aeolian ties, and how he remains in the same > religion as his parents, and how he will share his afterlife with his > ancestors, though. I think this person's link to Issaries, or at least "the usual" Issaries, is fairly slight, so I wouldn't use the above description. As a general principle while discussing cult structures, I'm inclined to ignore claims of an afterlife: better filed under "cult propaganda". I don't follow what you mean about his ancestors, in any case. > > Due to the presence of the word "Saint" in front of each of the deities' > > names, I'm having increasing difficulty in imagining a Heortlander, of a > > culture still described as "Orlanthi", pronouncing them with a straight > > face. > First of all, all Hendriki are Heortlander, but not all Heortlander are > Hendriki. Well, I can't imagine _any_ Heortlander of "humble origins" doing so, I'm not clear whether you'd have only Hendriki doing so. > The Hendriki aren't really Orlanthi. We part company here, then. I'm sufficiently happy with my own (if only entirely personal) interpretation of the sources on this that I'm not going to argue about them. > Neither are all Sartarites, not even an Orlanthi-all (85%). I'm using "Orlanthi" here in the cultural sense, not to mean Orlanth cultist. As are you, in the above phrase. You say exactly the opposite elsewhere, though, modulo gender qualification: > All (85%) Orlanthi males are initiated to Orlanth (KoS p.245f). > Ducks I think most ducks worship Orlanth or Humakt, myself. > Telmori, Yelmalian Alda-churi tribes don't worship Orlanth. True. > > Given that they believe them to be divine, and distinct from > > "ordinary" saints, why confuse them with the use of the title? > > [...] Of course, where to draw the > > line between a manifest god and a (once) mortal Saint is another kettle > > of kumquats. > Now I fail to see the problem. Dormal is a deity, right? He was a human > once. Sartar is a deity. Arkat is one, he even has his own constellation. > [...] Where do you draw the line between a worshipped hero and a deity? There is no firm dividing line, I wasn't suggesting such. I _said_ this, for Saint Sir Orlanth's sakes. Indeed, it was you who brought up the idea of a "distinction" between "divine" and "mortal" saints. A Saint, in Earthly X.ian terms, and M.ioni terms, is basically a formula for saying "Just a man, but because he was so holy, we'll let you pray to him a bit." (Apologies to RCs in the audience for the paraphrase.) While some pagan deities have been co-opted as Saints, this is really a way of permitting their worship to continue, but implicitly denying their Godhead. > The Aeolians have a simple definition of Saint: an entity worshipped > by the church and its members. Okay, but to a theist, especially one who knows how the church in the west uses the term, this is likely to sound like "Not-a-real-god,-honest -guv Barntar". I think you're likely yo get away with this for heroes, but not for entities the populace sees as honest-to-god gods. > King Heort is an eighth generation descendant from Vingkot. Is he a human, > or a deity by birth? By achievement? He's a hero, if it matters. > Subject: Elmal's identities > >> (I'd still like to know by which name these people [the Solar hill > >> barbarians throughout southern Peloria and northern Dragon Pass], > >> outside of Lunar influence, know their solar deity.) > > Yelmalio where Alda-Churi missionaries have got to them, > Not Alda-Churi. Why ever not? It's a Yelmalio-worshipping area, and close to/in the area in question. I was _not_ suggesting it was the source of the cult. > I doubt they reached Dykene I'd be inclined to make Dykene Yelmalio-worshipping: I think missionaries could have reached there long since. Failing which one could always invoke HeroQuest-induced Revealed Truth. > and they certainly > didn't reach the Arrolian territories before the Thawing of the Ban. Nope. > > Elmal in the die-hard areas, and Antirius within the area of > > Dara Happan influence. > Antirius? I've been swayed to Shargash as the likely deity of the > 2nd Age Sun Dome Templars. Unlikely, given the importance of the Hill of Gold myth. At a stretch, this could have been "adopted" later, but... > Antirius was the sun within the Dara Happan > dome against the ice, and he died before the Dawn. The God of the Sun Dome > was the defender until the dawn, at least as I read his role from the > fragments of information available. Sun Dome, sun inside the DHan dome, these don't sound like irreconcilable concepts to me. Time is an intrinsicly hazy concept in the Moment, and also it's not impossible the two gods could have become partly conflated. > > Possibly some more we haven't heard of, even. > Those were the ones I asked for: die-hards in Aggar to Saird; Balazar; Elmal. > Southbank in Fronela... Antirius. Or any of the assorted solar types, at a stretch. Alex.