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, 25 Oct 1994, part 3 Sender: Henk.Langeveld@Holland.Sun.COM Content-Return: Prohibited Precedence: junk --------------------- From: sandyp@idcube.idsoftware.com (Sandy Petersen) Subject: Re: a pamalt myth, among other stuff Message-ID: <9410241753.AA22019@idcube.idsoftware.com> Date: 24 Oct 94 03:54:14 GMT X-RQ-ID: 6725 Joerg: >The Stinking forest and the Valley of Flowers are known aldryami >territory. Where are their counters? I adhere to the concept that even in forests that have lotsa aldryami, they wouldn't boast a "counter" in DP terms. Instead, the forests themselves would act as hostile terrain -- units moving through it would be attacked at 1:1 odds (or something) each turn. Even units that were adjacent to it might be attacked. I can't offhand think of any times in Gloranthan history that elves fielded what we could think of as a real army. Raiding parties, yes. >The Valley of Flowers and most of the northeastern corner of the DP >map have much more vegetation on the Dagori Inkarth map than shown >on the DP board. Dagori Inkarth is almost completely barren. A region of thin brush that would be considered clear terrain on the DP map is worth noting as "heavy vegetation" in Dagori Inkarth. I fear it's times for another Pamaltelan Myth. (As are most Gloranthan myths, I openly confess that this one is based on an Earthly tale.) While this myth is not directly about Pamalt, it is about one of his family. ARTMAL'S BATTLE WITH CRONISPER In the very old times, before Artmal was crippled in his pride, he strode across the earth and came to an oasis. There Cronisper sat, wrinkled and wise, working his pathetic plot of land. [Note: this is before Pamalt took power and let Cronisper live in his tent.] "Ho!" said Artmal. "I am ruler of all the land, all the water, and all the sunlight. Since your crops use my land, my water, and my sunlight, you must give me half of your crop." "This does not seem very fair," whined Cronisper. "I must do all the work, and you do nothing. But you get half of my labor." "Nonetheless!" said Artmal. "All the people from the North give of their labors to their rulers. So must you, too." [Note: this statement is clearly a dig at the northerners, who have taxes and kings, and probably was instituted about the time of the Six-Legged Empire.] "Well then, if I must I must," moaned Cronisper. "Which half of my crop do you want?" Artmal pondered, and then replied, "Give me the top half. Such is more fitting for the ruler of all he views." Just before the dry season, Artmal returned for his share of the crop. "What is this?" he asked. "What are all these green wisps?" "That is your share," said Cronisper. "I grew carrots. I have piled your greens up in that heap." Artmal glowered with rage at the wagonload of golden roots that Cronisper had accumulated, and, his voice acid with anger, said, "Next season, for my half, I wish to receive the bottom of the crop, NOT the top. You may take the top." Just before the dry season, Artmal returned for his share of the crop. "Where is my share?" he asked. "Out on the field," said Cronisper. "It was more convenient to leave it there for you." Artmal glared at the stubble and straw. "What did you grow?" "Barley," said Cronisper, pouring heaps of white grain into baskets for storage. "NEXT season," said Artmal. "I want to get both the tops AND the bottoms." "Alas," said Cronisper. "What then is to be MY share?" Artmal pondered. "You can have the middle." Just before the dry season, Artmal returned for his share of the crop. "What then is THIS?" he asked, filled with foreboding. "That is your share," said Cronisper. "The tops and the bottoms. This season, I grew mealies." [Mealies are a type of maize -- 'corn' to us Americans.] Ian Gorlick: >I am not convinced that your [speaking to Sven Sievrin] system will >be stable in the long run. Simple oppression as you describe it >leads to resentment and rebellion. Remember, the armies of Esrolia >are still predominately male staffed. Firstly, I see no evidence that the Esrolian system must be stable in the long run. I think that Gloranthan cultures are riddled with unstable, short-term, short-sighted societies. Second, "simple oppression" does NOT always lead to rebellion. You list as examples of such rebellion the Mamelukes and janissaries -- they rebelled, true enough, but then they themselves set up systems of oppression that lasted for centuries. So clearly you can be oppressed without being able particularly to rebel. For that matter, women are highly oppressed in many societies, and have been for centuries, yet THEY have rarely been able to manage a rebellion. You have a good point about the armies being largely composed of men. So the question arises, how DO they keep their armies under control. Well, I suspect that this is quite possibly another reason that their armies are notoriously incompetent -- another way of trying to keep them under control. Certainly all the elite military forces of Esrolia are all-women organizations. Another way to keep the armies under control is to ensure that the officers are largely women. The men need a leader for a rebellion to be anything more than a local mutiny. Finally, all the magic is centered in the hands of the women. This is pretty important, when any rebellion is considered. T.J. Minas: >How do small cults survive? Remember, you can't be a priest unless >you have a congregation worshipping at your temple each year. First off, I think that lay members count towards your congregation -- maybe not at the 1:1 ratio of initiates, but they aren't _worthless_. Given this, any Lightbringer initiate (just about) can count as a lay member towards Lhankor Mhy, for instance. Second, different cults have different ways of boosting membership. Ancestor cults are the most obvious -- dead ancestors show up at the ceremonies, and boost membership. But Issaries also has the Spare Grain technique, in which all the local farmers are initiated so that they can get a better deal at the merchant, and they also show up for the HHD. Krarsht, another small cult, uses krarshtkids and krarshtides to boost temple quality for its miniscule human membership. Trickster shrines don't have real HHDs. Instead, _all_ the tricksters who've stopped by during the past year count towards the shrine's "membership". Third, members must make pilgrimages to shrines. All the CA healers with miles show up at the Pavis temple, and this is just part of the cult membership requirements. It's not that big a deal, since most CA healers are pretty nomadic anyway (they make house calls). You mention an Orlanth tribe in Sartar making use of Lunar help and being forced to allow a Seven Mothers shrine. Then you doubt it would get 100 members. You don't think that in an entire tribe, composed of maybe 10,000-20,000 people there would even be 100 Lunar initiates during the period of Lunar dominance? Or that Lunar traders and visitors and immigrants couldn't easily take up the slack? For that matter, I could see the Lunars shipping in 100 Seven Mothers folks into a little enclave just to keep the temple, if need be. >Bryan Maloney >I don't know why it's the case, but it seems that the vast majority >of attempts at portraying Gloranthan cultures with a different base >than our own seems to require that the culture be totalitarian and >oppressive. In the first place, most ancient cultures, by our standards, _were_ totally repressive. Glorantha is simply following the trend. For that matter, command economies were the norm everywhere until quite recently, and even now spread across huge swaths of the globe. Esrolia's been described as an oligarchy. While that doesn't _require_ oppression, it certainly permits it, and requires some level of control. The infighting and squabbles between the female factions also imply the existence of spies, private armies, and secret police. >Why must we assume that the only way for a culture that is different >from our own to survive be that it oppresses a large chunk of its >members? Could it possibly be that people might LIKE living >differently than we do? Cultural relativism at its worst. Esrolia is reasonably liberty-loving by Gloranthan standards. They're far more liberated than, say, Carmania, the Kingdom of Seshnela, most Fonrit city-states, Teshnos, or the Pent nomads. On the other hand, they're less liberated than the East Isles, the Doraddi, most Orlanthi, or most Safelster city-states. >Anyway, Esrolia is not some feminazi cartoon, by any means. This is quite true. All I will claim is that if a man from Heortland or Tanisor came to visit, he would leave with the opinion that men were heartily oppressed. This would be mirrored by the horror that an Esrolit woman would feel, should she visit a traditional Orlanthi area. --------------------- From: ABEAN@GEEL.DWT.CSIRO.AU (Andrew Bean) Subject: Temple rituals: Should the enemies be real or costumes? Message-ID: <941025162933.200d3c@GEEL.DWT.CSIRO.AU> Date: 26 Oct 94 02:29:33 GMT X-RQ-ID: 6733 I like the idea of the acquisition of rune magic and attendance at Holy days and Sacred Time requiring the participants to perform rituals aimed at recreating the feats of the the god(s) relevant to the situation. However it really bugs me when people start talking about the requirement of 1) having actual real "enemies" involved in this ritual as opposed to 2) some members of the cult dressing up as the bad guy and acting out the enemy role. The reasons I don't like 1) is that I actually played in a tournament many years ago where the group of adventurers in Pavis got captured by dwarves, stripped of their arms and armour and locked up in a shoddily built fortress that was in a large underground cave. The fortress had some bits and pieces of battered troll armour and weapons in it. A bunch of dwarf religious types came out into the cave (obviously this was RQ2 where we didn't know dwarves don't have 'normal' religions) and told us we had "volunteered" to play out the part of trolls in a religious ceremony (since we were all they could find). We had to repel the attacks of the initiates who were taking part and recreating some dwarven myth and those of us who survived would be given back our arms and armour and set free. So we had dwarven initiates in full battle armour and armed to the teeth coming screaming up at us and attacking to kill whilst we frantically tried to repel them with our inadequate troll weaponry. We were intermediate adventurers of 50 - 75 % skill range and I suspect the dwarves were the same. I can't remember the outcome but I suspect we survived, having killed some dwarves (basically due to the interference of a third party) and continued on with the adventure. Now if this sort of thing happens for every important ritual in every religion think what happens when you scale this up to encompass all of Glorantha. Every theist will be kidnapping every other theist nearly every day somewhere in your geographical area to take part in a ritual. And if they can't find the actual enemy required they will make do with whatever is at hand (see Biturian Varosh, in CoP). E.g. down at the local trollhole the Kyger Liter priestess wakes up in the middle of the day swearing "What!! Another Orlanthi wants to steal my slippers again so they can get Darkwalk. They were here only 2 weeks ago!!". Where do you keep the broos your tribe needs to recreate the LBQ during the sacred time ritual? It also makes travelling extremely hazardous when the local temple finds: "Whoops we're all out of elves and trolls. Quick, nab those strangers. No-one around here will mind if they die." Also as occurred in the actual tournament I played and in CoP you have a reasonable chance of the people who are recreating the ritual for their temple's benefit actually being killed in the process. That is a lot wear and tear on your congregation. E.g. Hasn't Yelmalio suffered enough at the Hill of Gold without losing 1 in 3 priests every time the ritual commemerating his survival is performed (see CoP) (and I suspect it should be done at least once a year as part of the Yelmalio religious cycle). Option 2) was reinforced for me by my recent trip to Bali where I saw various Balinese dances, most of which have religious overtones and were originally temple dances. Here they change costume for different characters e.g. one dancer played a "good" helpful courtier at the beginning and then at the end came on again as the "evil" bird of omen that warned the prince of his upcoming death. According to my guide book, when the dances are performed as part of a temple ceremony (as opposed to being done for the tourists) the dancers are believed to actually be possessed by the relevant spirits and at the end the priests "cleanse" the dancers of any last vestiges of the possession using holy water and prayers. An important process. Would you still want to have vestiges of Wakboth poking around your body? This makes a lot more sense to me as the ceremony performed reinforces the groups religious beliefs and views of the world without having to grab some outsiders and force them into your stereotyped baddie role. Also for Rune magic acquisition your God did all the hard work to acquire the use of this 'power' during the God Time. Doing 'correct' worship is all that should be required to allow the worshipper the use of the spell e.g. by performing the appropriate ritual. This is of course a lot easier in a big temple with a High Priest giving guidance than alone in the wilderness. It is why people prefer to worship in temples together then alone in the "back of beyond". Now of course Hero Quests which are trying to produce a more permanent change in the fabric of reality than a 15 minute Rune magic spell do attract real enemies and having a Lunar Quester appearing in the middle of Kallyr's mini LBQ seems reasonable to me. Or having a Wind Lord steal something from a KL priestess in order to get the ability to use the DarkWalk spell whenever he wants or for extended durations, rather than just for the right to use the spell. However having a real enemy appear for every Orlanth tribe repeating the LBQ during their Sacred Time rituals seems too unreasonable. Even chaos creatures have their own rituals to do, and which probably have nothing to do with the human ritual anyway. Why should they want to leave their ceremonies to get killed in some human temple's ritual? So I would like to hear from people who have actually roleplayed options 1) or 2) successfully or unsuccessfully. I'm not really interested in other people's opinions as all the above is IMHO and I really want to know which option works best in "real roleplaying life (i.e. rolling dice around a table)" Thanks, Andrew PS I have put some terms in "" or '' because they will have fluid meanings depending on you or your characters POV. ---------------------