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, 12 Sep 1994, part 2 Sender: Henk.Langeveld@Holland.Sun.COM Content-Return: Prohibited Precedence: junk --------------------- From: CHEN190@csc.canterbury.ac.nz (Peter Metcalfe, CAPE Canty) Subject: The Blue Wizard is not GRAY... Message-ID: <01HH0SJM0DKIFGXP55@csc.canterbury.ac.nz> Date: 12 Sep 94 22:34:05 GMT X-RQ-ID: 6159 Today in response to all those requests, I have decided to abstain from GRAY bashing... Mike Dickison writes _____ >This is my THIRD attempt to get this to the Daily (New >Zealand-Holland communications seem to be worse than ever, >though that hasn't hindered my compatriot the Blue Wizard). What's even more interesting is that my email goes to holland through the same Waikato varsity lines as you use. Perhaps I have a forbidden cantrip to enhance email transmission... Liked the story of kaxtorplose. Nils Writes _____ >I'll really try to stop writing about moose from now on. But >if I do find an angle to get some of them into the Dara >Happan mythos, then I could kill two birds with one stone >and combine two really annoying threads (according to an >increasing number of readers) into one completely meaning-less >megathread! :-) It just so happens that I have uncovered this remarkable passage in the GRAY in which 'the tall birds' appear to be an allusion to the Aleci who are well known as a tribe of Moose hsunchen and... [Awful scenes of violence as Blue Wizard escapes from a lynch mob] Simon hibbs writes ______ >>So if I believe that Yelmalio didn't really loses his fire >>powers at the hills of Gold, I can use Fireblade? To me this >>is simplistic. What also matters is what the enemy believes >>about the god and what actually happened to the God himself. >But in order to believe this, you need proof. You can get that >proof by going to the Hills of Gold, in the path of Yelmalio, >and defeating ZZ. This heroquest would assert your mythic >right to the fire powers. After all, believing something is >quite different from just thinking it. This really comes down between knowing what the mythical truth is and the method of finding the mythical truth. And given the hatred of most daily readers of God learnerism and the disdain they exhibit for hair splitting pedantry I must abstain from elucidating this point further. >>I must come out into the open and state my belief that at >>0 ST, the gods were frozen by the web. >But the 'godtime' exists outside of time, not merely 'before' >it. It exists in the Gloranthan 'here and now' just as much as >in the gloranthan past. It exists beyond a veil that can be >pierced through heroquesting. To a great extent, such >heroquesting has created the godtime we all know about. I must draw a distinction that I believe occurs here between the actual events and the mythic baggage carried on by the believers and gods in the here and now. After all if I were to change the mythic realm by proving Antirius equals Yelmalio, (:^)) and do it successfully so that no nation in Glorantha pratices Antirius worship, does the records reading Antirius spontaneously change to Yelmalio? Given that this is not the case, I suggest that the world myth from which we draw our heroquests is actually distinct from the events that occured long ago. The Gods as the price to pay for their existance froze their particpation of the God Time into the World myth and spend their time maintaining the world myth. It is this that you experience when you heroquest. You may heroquest at the hills of Gold and kick the crap out of Zorak Zoran. The majority of yelmalions fail because they are striving to emulate their god. the success of one in a personal quest does not effect the nature of the god whose failure biases other Yelmalions to fail at the HoG. The success of cultural heroquests I suspect depends on the free energy of the community that is available. For example, you proclaim a quest to bring justice to the Cold Sun that was denied him at the HoG and succeed so the your Yelmalions can get Sunspear. I say that you are in effect turning your community from the ways of Yelmalio and that you will punish the community in other ways. ie to maintain your myth that justice was brought to the Cold Sun, your community needs to expend free energy into maintaining that myth and might sacrifice some other myth (such as Yelmalios connection with the earth) in an effort maintain your beliefs. meanwhile other yelmalions who were not part of your quest go to the hills of Gold and still get the crap kicked out of them. >>[Elmal change to Yelmalio: bad effects?] >I am thinking about historical fusions of deities on earth. >Such as the Roman soldier's habit of identifying local deities >with Roman equivalents, for example the cult of Mithras/Mars. Which is what I was suggesting was the case with Antirius/Yelmalio/Elmal! You must remember that in many cases the RW cults often gained local color but had some identifiable source (ie the cult of Odin/Wotan etc). >>I do not accept this. The Gods were, the gods are. They >>have made themselves a permanent part of glorantha. >Will the real Yelmalio please stand up! I have difficulty >reconciling this with your next statement. See above for clarification. >BTW. What the hell is the Hill of Gold anyway. Is it a place, >or a metaphor? The most mythically troublesome place in Glorantha. It resides in Vanch. Beyond that i know nothing more. Sandy Writes _____ >TELEOS: fair game for someone to figure out. The humans here >are so weird that the animals have got to be as peculiar at >least as monotremes. I'd love to figure out Teleos except I know so little about it. >EAST ISLES: I've been doing a lot of work on the East Isles >with Nils W. and Greg F. One conclusion worth sharing even at >this early stage is that the Keets, while many are ducks, >represent a wide variety of sentient flightless bird life. >Mike's hoped-for dodos are clearly present in the East Isles. >The Keets also are native to no particular island, but dwell >amidst the humans. There are ducks, plovers, avocets, etc. And >of course my personal favorite, the flamingo-men. Oh God. Add to your list Keas (an alpine parrot which is fond of shiny stuff, such as watches, car aerials, cameras and scientific equipment), they can be a type of Nestorine Pirate (ha ha geddit? - Kea sp Nestor Notabilis, oh never mind). Presumably one isle of the East Isles is actually flying and inhabited by sentient cuckcoos which live in a democratic republic and everybody calls it Cloudcuckcooland? I would say more on this subject but my head is beginning to hurt... Andrew Raphael ______ >I'll second the New Zealand - Jrustela connection. I >suggested it myself a while ago, because of the timinits in >Jrustela & what I knew of NZ's insect life. Wetas, Waitomo >Cave, etc. Our wetas (big crockcroach lookalikes with a nasty bite and even bigger ones [about the size of your hand] which do not bite - thank goodness) are not that big! BTW speaking of Jrustela, has anybody noticed that a blue Vadeli is floating around the place (described in Elder secrets -scenarios -tinimits). I'm thinking that the Vadeli conquered Jrustela because they wished to try and raise the Sunken Vadeli lands. (The Cult of Aurelion has something to do with it). And somebody said they were extinct! On the subject Blue elves are shown on the Jolar map in ToTRM #11 p13 as being around in the Nargan. I'm fairly sure that these are not your average blue elfs and that MOB did not put them 'Sumware Orothere' as a joke. They seem to be related to the Artmali Empire. Can anybody tell me anything more? --Peter Metcalfe ---------------------