RE: Faceless Statue

From: Matthew Cole <matthew.cole_at_...>
Date: Fri, 26 Mar 2004 02:25:06 -0000


Thanks, everyone, for your input.

The reason for asking (now alright to reveal - the session has passed) is that I have a Jolanti in my story. In actual fact it (or rather, 'he' as is the case) is one of the Dringi, a 'changed' Jolanti.

In keeping with the spirit of this group, here's the (freely available) terms of reference defined:

Taken from http://www.glorantha.com/library/elder/dwarfs-jolanti.html Jolanti are dwarven constructs of varying sizes (ranging from man-size to giant-sized). They are normally humanoid in shape and have intelligence akin to that of dogs.

Dringi is the name for a certain large group of huge Jolanti who were freed from dwarven slavery by Gonn Orta when he levered off the top of a dwarf-infested mountain mountain in a place called Nida. Some of these liberated Jolanti encountered elves who befriended them and, to demonstrate superiority of Growing over Making, gifted them with fertility and intelligence.

The story goes that the Faceless Statue that helped Pavis build his city and fought in the Too-Tall Battle was a jolanti. Hence the question about size.

Just in case anyone's interested, here's something I've written, adding to that story about the Dringi and the elves. Its not polished or anything, I hope someone will find it useful....

"Previous to their conversion, the Jolanti didn't have what animists would call a spirit, what theists would call a soul or what sorcerers call essential essence. The Jolanti's makers did not see a reason to give their slaves a free essence and so designed and crafted something which in our world would be called an Operating System and which the old language called pro-gramm-ing. This was stored in a huge crystal (cut from those naturally occurring in the labyrinthine caves under Nida) located in the head cavity (I took poetic license and gifted my Jolanti with bronze skeletons; it fits with my story better).

The elves took pity on the Jolanti that were freed by Gonn Orta from Nida Mountain; they communed with Aldrya and grew a special kind of root plant called the Spirit Giving Root.
They convinced the Jolanti to lie face down in the fertile loam that lined their growing nursery and allow the Spirit Giving Root, or Radice to grow into their heads.

The Radice grew inside the skulls of the Jolanti and fused to the surface of their crystal brains, entering into a perfectly symbiotic relationship with the willing hosts. The front of the new Dringi's head, previously without feature or expression, had become a mass of tightly wound plant tendrils which the Dringi could form into it's first facial expressions."

I've been using "Jolan Ti" as pronunciation and "Drin Gi"; I feel it lends more depth.

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