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, Tue, 07 Jun 1994, part 3 Sender: Henk.Langeveld@Holland.Sun.COM Content-Return: Prohibited Precedence: junk --------------------- From: jonas.schiott@vinga.hum.gu.se (Jonas Schiott) Subject: Re: David's Ralios. And a question. Message-ID: <9406061651.AA09219@vinga.hum.gu.se> Date: 6 Jun 94 20:01:02 GMT X-RQ-ID: 4397 >As I see it, Golden Bow=Jardan, the Grazer Warrior age group god, who's >also Yu-kargzant's son. I wouldn't expect this among the Galanini. >Something similar, maybe. Umm, I'm not up on all these weird solar deity names (haven't had time to look into GRoY yet), so I'm not entirely sure what you mean. What I was aiming at was the idea that since the western cavalrymen and knights moved in, the Galanini would have to think of something besides just having horses to keep their edge. Horse archery seems to fit the bill nicely. The exact mechanics we can leave for later. >But >you won't be seeing David/Jonas wars on this, I think either approach is >valid. Yeah. Just for the record: even though David has ripped off an amazing amount of stuff from us :-), we've gotten a few ideas from him as well. Chariots, for one. >>We've been thinking that _all_ Ralian horses are ponies. Well, relatively >>small and sturdy horses, at any rate. Native ones at least - the Safelster >>states will of course have imported breeding stock from the West. > >I agree. They're all like Celtic Ponies in Pendragon terms. The Galanini >are better breeders, and do have a horse large enough to be considered a >Charger, though this is exceptional. Safelstran states have larger horses >which are equivalent to Pendragon Chargers, and imported Destriers are not >unheard of. But they don't do well in the hills of the East Wilds. This is good. I like the idea that the Galanini have better (and bigger) horses - perhaps they've cross-bred the native strain with horses they've stolen (I mean _liberated_) from Safelster? The poster I was replying to (I think it was Joerg?) saw the difference as mustangs among the Galanini, icelandic ponies among the orlanthi: actually this isn't a bad idea either. The way I see it at the moment (liable to change in X seconds), the orlanthi use a smaller version of the Swedish draft horse, while the Galanini have something similar to the proposed mustangs. This was probably the _same_ horse to begin with, it's just that the orlanthi have bred for strength, the Galanini for speed. >But if Humakt was unknown, why would everyone know that Arkat betrayed >them? (The popularity of the cult may have plummeted after Arkat became a >troll and people decided Humakti weren't quite as honorable as their >reputation.) No, Humakt is (was) disliked _because_Arkat_was_a_Humakti_. The fact that he betrayed the cult naturally makes it look silly to boot. In our current draft, we just have two Humakt temples, one in Kilwin and one in Dorflik (a city in Safelster that we made up from whole cloth). There is one clan with a lot of Storm Bull worshippers in northeastern Delela (they're attracted by the rumours of Chaos in Karia). A completely unrelated question: Does anyone on this list know if the Tekumel mailing list is still active, and if so at what address? The one I tried was a year or so old, and it just bounced my query. ( Jonas Schiott ) ( Institutionen for Ide- och lardomshistoria ) ( Goteborgs Universitet ) --------------------- From: paul@phyast.pitt.edu Subject: Re: NewSpeak, Trickster Message-ID: <9406061928.AA28004@venus.phyast.pitt.edu.phyast.pitt.edu> Date: 6 Jun 94 19:28:14 GMT X-RQ-ID: 4398 Paul Reilly here, commenting on manipulating thoughts with the structure of the language. >The Russian language once >had the same word for "Red" and "Beautiful" (hence Red Square); something >similar would be really appropriate for the Lunar's tongue... maybe on an >obvious moral level, like Red equals Good, or maybe something more subtle...? Yes. Of course our own society would never stoop to such blackhearted manipulation of people through language. It's might white of us to even speak with people from other cultures, much less approve of them. There's something sinister, almost unmanly, about a society that uses the fabric of laguage to propagate cultural or religious prejudices. People who would stoop to such a thing have no Christian charity in their hearts. Etc. ad nauseam... It's interesting to note that this goes on at a more subtle level of omission. For example, Americans are constantly bombarded with 'facts' from their news sources like '69% of people have sex before age 16" or "98% of people live in housholds with a television set" - `people` here meaning USA residents. Evil. ------------- Alex Ferguson writes, quoting John Hughes quoting Chaosium: >> "THE FIREBRINGER: many people agree that Trickster, in one form or another, >> stole fire from the darkness. Among the Pentans he was Raven, in Pamaltela he >> was Hare, and for the Theyalans he was a Lightbringer. " >While contrariwise, the Dara Happans certainly don't. I think that the DH might agree that Rakenveg, the carrot-headed Trickster, snuck in and stole Fire during the Darkness - FROM THEM. Note that this means that there is a flaming Carrot-headed god on Glorantha who is a Trickster. DOes anyone else read Dark Horse comics? Rakenveg would in this scenario offer spells like : DISTRACTION The caster pulls forth and shows some unusual but essentially ordinary object, calling attention to it: "Look! A bee head!" If the caster overcomes the POW of anyone within range of his voice and sight of the object, they must pay attention to it for one round, as per Xiola Umbar's Attract Attention... ------------ Eurmal is definitely a Murderer. No question. Who unleashed Death? It looks like Runegate is to small for my story. I am thinking of changing it to Alda-Chur or Bagnot. Would anyone with a 'proprietary' interest in either of those cities contact me (paul@minerva.phyast.pitt.edu). I am sure that someone ahs been backgrounding Alda-Chur. -Paul --------------------- From: CryptoMatt@aol.com Subject: Re: New Pelorian New Speak Message-ID: <9406062007.tn896552@aol.com> Date: 7 Jun 94 00:07:47 GMT X-RQ-ID: 4399 David Gadbois says in X-RQ-ID: 4385... >For example, New Pelorian should break all the linguistic rules we >know of. Have the language be highly inflectional (fewer words that >way) and make inflectional morphology be context-sensitive. To effect >this, have all the inflections be pairs of prefixes and suffixes that >are combined cross-serially. For example: > be- * -tan = sister of > na- * -stal = female > tapa- * -tar = Loyal to the Empire > lun = The Red Goddes >So: Tapanabeluntarstaltan is the New Pelorian name for the Great >Sister. Well... um... I think that if the Lunars tried to make this New Pelorian the required language of the state, they'd have a mass uprising. Not only would the subjugated people rise up in righteous anger against their linguistically twisted conquerors, but the Lunars wouldn't be able to respond because they would be so busy trying to inform their central authorities of the rebellion! The simple message, "Send reinforcements, the hill barbarians have revolted!", would take several pages of text to convey.On the other hand, New Pelorian New Speak does add certain twists to the nightmare of Lunar bureaucracy. You've got to have lots of people to push that much paper. ;-) -Matt Thale --------------------- From: DevinC@aol.com Subject: Re: RuneQuest Daily, Mon, 06 Jun 1994, part 1 Message-ID: <9406062042.tn898131@aol.com> Date: 7 Jun 94 00:42:26 GMT X-RQ-ID: 4400 Devin Cutler here: Alex writes (forcing me to keep this debate public): "Unfortunately for this argument, a "geas" doesn't mean a compulsion (outside of D&D), and certainly not a non-magical one. Then again, I'm not sure what the justification for the use of the term in Glorantha and Shadowrun to mean "magical restriction" is, either, since the word simply means "enchantment", according to my Gaelic dictionary." Semantics, shemantics! I really don't care much about the possible misuse of s single word when everyone knows what I meant...so I'll just admit complete D&Dism and go home on this one...OK? " Much more helpful. I don't see the cynical, syncretic worship of the Roman empire of that period as being much different from that of the Lunar empire we know and loathe. Or the Orlanthi from the pagan tribes of northwest europe. (In the general manner of their worship, not the cultly or theological particulars.)" Maybe this simply gets down to some a priori beliefs about divinity and people's potential reactions to divinity. I am working from two premises: 1) The gods on Glorantha are more active and manifest more often, more overtly (i.e. provably), and more repeatedly than any Earthly deities. When I say this last sentence, I do not mean "than any Earthly deities ever did in Terran mythology", I am saying "than any Earthly deities ever REALLY did in any sort of verifiable sense". Now, I suppose we are heading into dangerous territory (i.e. do Terran gods (or God) really exist), and this is a subject that I would like to avoid. 2) That assuming a person knows for a fact that a god exists and has direct effect on their lives/souls, that they would worship and revere such a god to a great extent. Now, certainly, supply and demand have a sort of effect in Glorantha. The supply of deities to worship in Glorantha is much greater than most of earths (monotheistic) religions. Therefore, I suppose Gloranthan worshippers can demand more of their gods than earthly worshippers can of their one Supreme Being, because if a Gloranthan doesn't like one god, he/she can simply worship another. In a Judeo/Christian mythos, you have no choice, it is worship THE GOD or burn in Hell. Also, while in Glorantha the relationship between god and worshipper is a two-way street (i.e. the god gains something from the worshippers and vice versa), Terran monotheistic religions are more of a one-way street. Id est, worship of God is less a trade (of POW for benefits) and more of a parental type situation (i.e. love is a major factor). The above two items might mitigate to some extent the devoutness of Gloranthans to their deities, but I still feel that this is far outweighed by the fact that: 1) Every Gloranthan knows that there is an afterlife. They know it for certain. How? They can regularly talk to their ancestors, they SEE spirits, etc. While many on Earth claim to believe in an afterlife, few can really claim to believe it with the kind of non-faith intellectual proof that Gloranthans have. Because there is an afterlife for certain, a lot of the uncertainty and doubt surrounding death is non-existent in Glorantha. IMO, when everyone KNOWS that heaven awaits them if they are devout, they are going to be much more eager to secure a place in that heaven. On Earth, many of us I propose are not as devout (as one of many reasons) because we are not sure what awaits us after death (if anything) so we tend to focus more on the here and now (i.e. we are more materialistc). 2) Once again, the same holds true for powers/spells/miracles. Yes, people in pre-Renaissance Earth sometimes believed they saw miracles. But I submit that such sightings of miracles was not universal (i.e. everyone didn't see miracles and evidence of the divine power on a daily basis). In Glorantha it is. I don't care how gullible and faith-full someone might be, hearing about a miracle second hand is not as effective as witnessing it firsthand or, better yet, performing it oneself. "They believed they did, in many cases." Not the entire population. I can't believe that more than 5% of the population ever believed that they saw a true and profound miracle. "What constitutes a miracle is a matter of interpretation." Of course it is, but when miracles are universally accepted as reality, their existence becomes more concrete and the divinity that performed the miracles becomes more real. " I don't think exact frequency is a particularly hot issue. Mass guided teleportations get pretty old when you've seen a few, anyway." True, but no matter how commonplace Guided Teleports get, everyone knows they come from Mastakos. No one on Glorantha believes the power comes from within. "Universality of magic is no argument for a level of faith, or uniformity of belief, in Glorantha unknown on earth." Then maybe we should agree to disagree on this point. I have given my argument for this above. "After all, Gloranthans know that people worshipping Bad Gods, and even no god at all, get magic, too." Why does the fact that Bad Gods give magic mitigate the devoutness of Gloranthans? Yes, Sorcerors get magic, but it is regarded as unholy and soul destroying. In any case, just because magic exists in a non-Divine form doesn't suddenly convince Gloranthans that their deities are impotent. "Spirit magic certainly isn't "evidence" of divinity of any sort, much less one who believes and promulgates his own GoG writeup chapter and verse. More like a kind of cultic Predecessor Worship." Yes, but spirit magic does prove that the spirit world exists, that an afterlife exists, etc. Furthermore, Cult Spirits would tend to be a manifestation fo a god's powers. But in any case, so what? Divine Magic in and of itself is enough to prove the Gloranthan deities' manifestations. "Well then, that's no reliability at all, since the god could answer on whatever basis he feels like at that non-moment, not necessarily the letter of cult entrance requirements. "Yeah, sure, let him in. Looks okay from here. Gotta run, playing full contact golf with Heler in half a non-hour." Few actually specify "non-chaotic" as such, anyway." Of course the god can answer any way he wants. But I was speaking "reliable" in the sense that reliable = what the god wants. Regards, Devin Cutler devinc@aol.com --------------------- From: 100270.337@CompuServe.COM (Nick Brooke) Subject: Newspeak Message-ID: <940607014902_100270.337_BHL31-1@CompuServe.COM> Date: 7 Jun 94 01:49:02 GMT X-RQ-ID: 4401 Hi, all! David Gadbois quoted the start of one of my favourite folk tales - Loyal to the Group of Seventeen's story from "Citadel of the Autarch". I *love* that series, and the tale is one of the highlights... Graeme asked: > While I like this idea, are the Lunars that sophisticated? Even with the > magic,they are Bronze age culture. And if they tried it, I doubt they > would have been totally successful, as regional dialects and jargon > appeared. Reread the appendix to 1984. The same applied to Ingsoc Newspeak. Lunar Newspeak is, of course, a long-term project. So is *everything* to do with the Lunar Way. Thinking in mortal lifespans is a waste of Time. For it to ultimately triumph, the Lunar Way will require many cycles of growth and death and rebirth. The Lunar Empire is merely the first of these; its final "destruction" by Argrath (inter alia) is the prelude to rebirth in a wholly different form. This has *always* been Lunar doctrine. So, "Newspeak" these days may be flawed and incomplete, but after a hundred generations or more it will have accomplished its aim. Of course, the Lunar state language is far less rigid/barren than those of Winston Smith or L2G17. In some ways, it is a reaction against the barren, sterile priestly tongue of old Dara Happa. Lunar calligraphy is beautiful: think of Arabic manuscripts; all those cursive flourishes, compared to the rigidity of a primitive (all-capital) alphabet... Nils gave us a fragment of Red Tiger's illuminated Kralori mysticism: MORE PLEASE! I loved it! Gary Newton expostulated: > "Hey! You can't do that! Everyone knows time travel in Glorantha is > impossible! It breaks the Compromise!" Yeah. But does it happen despite that?... While I dislike bringing what I feel are non-Gloranthan concepts (like time travel, parallel dimensions, genetics, etc.) into my world-view, if there's a good story to be told which uses them, I'd say "Go ahead: tell it!" We've probably "travelled through time" on HeroQuests before now without noticing it, and I'm sure other instances of the Great Compromise "breaking" spring to mind (both Waha and Cacodemon seem to have a loose grasp of its terms). Unlike some RQ-gurus, I do not feel the need to have a single system that explains everything (whether it be a Unified Gloranthan Theory, a Monomyth, a God Learner Secret, or whatever). I prefer taking the world as it comes. Many reputable sources have claimed Gloranthan time travel to be more-or- less possible, while I've experienced it (or something like) myself. So I tend not to be dogmatic on the subject. Alex: Carolyn Cherryh's haggis'n'kilts fantasy novel "Faerie in Shadow" translated "Geas" as "Necessity", which seemed to work well enough. A fun book, too, if you can stand cod Scots (better than the real thing...). > Is there a shrine to Where Did You Get that Sword, Eurmal? Put it Back > at Once! anywhere in the Barbarian Belt? If there wasn't before, there are probably a dozen now, this idea being so fine and all. B Hillesland: > More information in Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra (I'm just kidding > of course...) OTOH, why kid? Belief in Man (or Superman) as the Master Race or Apex of Creation seems straightforward enough for the formerly "humanist" West; I was pleased to see Mike Dawson following the same chain of thought wrt Arlaten the Magus in "Strangers in Prax". ==== Nick ==== ---------------------