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, Sun, 30 Oct 1994, part 2
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From: Mike.Dickison@vuw.ac.nz
Subject: Lots on Esrolia
Message-ID: <199410290811.AA00348@rata.vuw.ac.nz>
Date: 30 Oct 94 09:11:25 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 6783
Henk - Please forward this lot.
This is some material on Esrolia that grew out of correspondence I'm having
with Erik. Perhaps other Daily reader could say what they think.
#### Weather ####
I think Esrolian weather must be ideally suited for grain production; if
anywhere in Glorantha has to be an ideal granery, this should be it. More
and more I like Nick's Egyptian flavour, with Egypt as the breadbasket of
the Mediterranean. But please could we not fall into the trap of doing
something "because the Egyptians did it"? I really don't like the extreme
Earth-analogues in some Gloranthan writing. At times people seem to be
searching furiously for the "real" identity of Ignorance, Carmania and so
on. I must admit my face fell when I got Genertela and saw the pictures of
a Hun, Knight, Chinese, Roman, and so on. So I'd like Esrolia to have hot
summers with heavy rainfall rather than rivers flooding!
#### Running Amok ####
I was reading about emotions in different cultures, and came across the
Malay work amok, used in English in the concept of "running amok". I think
that sometimes men in Esrolia might crack under the strain of living in a
maternal, benign, peaceful society and go wacko down the street with a big
axe before being chopped into little twitching chunks by the Avenging
Sisters. No doubt the locals shake their heads and say the poor fellow
"caught the wildfire".
This issue arose from our discussion on what to do with Lodril. I suggested
he's the patron of the Hearth minders, men who keep the oven soked, baked
bread and bricks, burn cow dung and so on. The Mahome and Gustbran aspects,
with the unreliable Oakfed aspect carefully purged.
#### Hairy Marching Militia ####
I think only a minority of the army is professional. Sandy points out that
their "counters won't stack", but some people seem to have interpreted this
as meaning that a variety of fighting groups are following different and
incompatible gods, and won't fight together. Firstly, I think the husband
gods are FAR more compatible in Esrolia than outside it. Rivalry and
religious antipathy between men would be stomped out by the powers that be,
because they make men less productive. The different religious factions in
the Earth Goddesses are a different story. In general, I think only the
powerful can afford to cultivate religious antipathy, and these normally
are CAUSED by political disputes over land or by xenophobia. So men's cults
that feud outside Esrolia get on fairly well within its borders ("The way
it should be", say the women. And they may well be right.)
Secondly, even if you do have religious rivalry, I don't think the standing
army would be big enough for there to be very many different fighting
guilds or brotherhoods. The women don't WANT lots of armed men lounging
around. Just a few to stand around and look nice in your villa, thanks. I
suspect that the possession of weapons by citizens is strictly regulated or
even banned. In my opinion, probably only Humakt and maybe Yelmalio
brotherhoods are actually trained warriors, and these are pretty useless as
we've established.
I think, after Nick Brooke, that most of the Esrolian army is rabble. Male
peasants or townsmen, the former with agricultural tools, the latter
perhaps with a little militia training in spear and sheild. I think the
rivalries come from competition between the militia of different cities
(who are almost certainly loyal to different queens), different
professions, different guild chapters (or whatever) in the same profession,
and even different extended families.
We know that in WWI men signed up in droves and formed units of guys from
the same town, same profession, and sometimes even from the same factory.
These units were very cohesive and sometimes fierce rivals. I think
Hendira's Bricklayers Militia probably hate the guts of the Pedastal
Plowmen. No doubt the queens encourage this, as it a) makes them turn up to
militia practice, where they probably march on parade for hours on end,
carrying long poles rather than nasty spears, b) instils patriotism for
their particular Queen, useful if civil war ever breaks out, and c)
increases the production of rival farmers, ditch diggers and so on ("Those
hairy bricklayers over the bridge will blush to see our production quotas,
boys!"). Hmm. Perhaps there's a yearly parade competition, in which the
winning militia get a meaningless trophy. No doubt thousands of men attend.
No doubt they wave capes of different colours and chant. No doubt hooligans
get their goolies removed by the police.
I think "hairy" is a term of abuse in Esrolia. It implies a boisterous,
loud, crude, undisciplined, unwashed and so on person. Applied mostly
between women, but latterly adopted by men since depilation became common.
So those bearded troublemakers who run around shouting in the streets are
probably dismissed as "just rowdy hairy men".
#### Sexist Porcine Male Bias ?!?!?!?!! #####
I think we find ourselves writing lots on men and how they work, are
controlled, and so on. But men are minor players in Esrolia. As Sandy put
it:
>>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.
So a good rule of thumb is that women in Esrolia are as important and
influential as men are in Heortland, and vice versa for men. So:
How many players, beginning a campaign in Heortland, would automatically
choose female characters?
How many women have you heard about that have featured or are featuring in
Heortland events?
In an adventure in Heortland involving, say, a trade caravan, an ambush,
dealing with a local village leader, and equipping a boat to travel to
Handra, how many women NPCs would be involved?
Now reverse all those questions for Esrolia. The answers should be about
the same.
I think we tend to unconsciously grant men too much importance, being
mostly men on the Daily and living in moderately patriarchal countries
(though we're far from sexixt pigs, as the well-considered debate generated
by Michelle Ringo's complaint a few months ago showed). In the last
question, I found myself thinking "Oh, but the traders will be Argan Argar
men, and the sailor Dormal men, and so on". But if that's so, who's keeping
house? Women seemed to have been kept inside pretty efficiently in Ancient
Greece and the Middle Ages, and that was when you could only have one wife
at a time! Any woman of influence will want to have several husbands, and
they will probably be homebodies while she's off travelling, meeting with
nobles, on pilgrimages, and so on. So perhaps most traders in Esrolia are
women, most sailors and so forth. The will be no shortage of single women,
what with this competition for husbands, and no societal restrictions on
tavelling and owning weapons or a ship. Sure, some men can enter these
professions too, but only through self-regulating brotherhoods. And sure,
some professions might be designated menial "men's work", like soldiering,
so the mirror image isn't perfect (though things should balance out - so if
men keep one "traditional" male job, women should keep one "traditional"
female one - childrearing is an obvious one; Esrolian society is probably
organised for the benefit of those having kids.)
I guess all I'm saying is that most of what we write should be about, and
most of the Esrolian PCs and NPCs encountered should be, women.
Incidentally, nobody seems to agree on whether it's Esrolian, Esrolite, or
Esrolit. Surely the former; cf Peloria/n, Carmania/n, not Pelorite or
Carmanit.
Cheers,
Mike
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