Re: Orlanth Chained: The Mystery

From: Guy Hoyle <ghoyle1_at_...>
Date: Thu, 21 Jun 2001 19:58:41 -0500


Hear, hear, John!

When I think of my first, relatively inept RuneQuest campaign (run sometime between 1979 and 1982), I sensed in Glorantha something unique. We pored over Cults of Prax and Terror, delved within Snakepipe Hollow, roved over Dragon Pass in Argrath's footsteps, and trod the Borderlands of the Nomad Gods. Though we never visited Griffin Mountain, it always loomed within reach. Heck, we even visited the Hellpits of Nightfang and Legendary Duck Tower.

It was a different world back then, dimly understood, yet familiar in a bronze-age way that is now sadly forgotten. My Glorantha was more Mycenaean-flavored than is the fashion today. Yet it is still my benchmark for quality, and I am more fascinated with Greg Stafford's world today than I was in college. I look forward more eagerly now to Sartar Rising, than I did all those years ago to the "Sartar Campaign" they spoke of. I have met and befriended some of the people who made Glorantha a place of magic to me back then, and have struck up friendships since then with those who kept the dream alive until it burst into flame once more.

It's been a rough passage, but I, for one, do not regret the hardships along the way.

Guy Hoyle

On 6/21/2001 at 11:23 AM John Hughes wrote:

>My personal perspective on the Chaining of Orlanth and similar
>confrontations:
>
>I remember vividly when I first bought RQ, back in 1981, sitting on a bus
>going back across town to uni, reading with growing awe and wonder about
>Argrath, the temple to the Reaching Moon, and the dragons unleashed
beneath
>it. There were just a few short tantalising sentences, but they converted
>me. Here was an rpg where storytelling mattered and myth was taken
>seriously. That was twenty years ago. Since then I've patrolled the
>borderlands of Prax, hijinxed in Pavis, created and destroyed a Sartarite
>king, saved Ironspike from a chaos army, discovered an enormous EWFish Maw
>beneath Dagori Inkarth, and spent several happy though rain-soaked years
>puttering around the wilder uplands of the Far Place, vaguely aware yet
>trying to deny that the Hurricane was soon upon us.
>
>Over the years, my knowledge of the coming Hero Wars has increased.
Another
>vivid memory is from October 1992, in the middle of a roleplaying
>convention
>I was running, curled up in my sleeping bag at 4 am, totally exhausted but
>breathless devouring the drafts of King of Sartar. Here was that Temple
>again, and Argrath, and the dragon. And here again was that sense of
wonder
>and awe, events that I'd anticipated (another dragon) and things that
>completely took me by surprise (Sheng!). And at the end of the book, a
>vision of a completely transformed and almost unrecognisable Glorantha
that
>I still don't think any of us really understand.
>
>Any transforming experience - be it a story, a world, a life - must begin
>with tearing down your expectations and previous understandings. We enter
>the Wasteland, the dark night, we shed our skin, we enter the belly of the
>whale. Old understandings are no longer adequate, we seek for new answers
>and new meanings, new ways of understanding a greater whole. This process
>can be painful, profoundly disorientating, destructive. From it comes a
new
>vision and a new wholeness.
>
>I expect, as a Gloranthan scholar, as a player, as a fellow journeyman, to
>be challenged and confounded and frustrated by the unfolding Hero Wars. In
>fact, I demand it. :) I expect (on every level) that obvious and long-held
>truths will be shown to be false, expected progressions to be subverted,
>and
>new mysteries and quandries to be presented with no immediate answers. My
>'gods' will die, and new gods in forms undreamt of will rise to replace
>them. A new world, a new sun, a new understanding is my hope for the
>journey's end, even it it take another decade or two. Through it all, my
>only point of reference and trust is the story and the storyteller.
>
>Cheers
>
>John
>
>_________________________________________
>nysalor_at_... John Hughes
>
>We demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty!
>
>- Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
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The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has limits. - Albert Einstein

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