>In some ways we are trying to be professional historians, but with two
>huge disadvanatges. One, few, if any of us, are trained historians (I'm
>not). Secondly, we do not have access to actual Gloranthan historical
>documents. Even things like KoS, the unfinished works and the Jonstown
>records are *copies*, not the actual original documents. So we can't
>examine the physical properties of the documents, which historians can use
>to aid their analysis of the text.
And would a professional historian do any better on finding out what happened, say during WWII, if the only records they had were popular films.
>I think this relates to what Jane was talking about with "core" and "GaG".
>If I'm to be honest though (and as I said I slip up) we have to accept
>that all Gloranthan documents (KoS, unfinished works, etc) have to be
>taken as subjective and unreliable, and can only ever be accepted as
>having degrees of accuracy (even though the degree can approach 100%, it
>will never reach it). That is, defintive information comes *only* from
>the works explicilty written as from a view point outside of Glorantha and
>with Greg's approval. Which essentially means the Issaries and Mongoose
>publications and those Choasium/AH ones which haven't been superceded.
Not even those. ST and TR are certainly written from a Heortling view point. In fact I can't think of *any* publication which even pretends to an outside view point. So it's reasonable to assume that TR & ST record Glorantha as the Heortlings see it. Now there can be variations in practices between different clans, that's explicitly mentioned somewhere. So I've no problems with the idea that some clans call Vingans "he" and others "she" or any of the other suggestions made recently. What I do have a problem with is replacing a blanket statement with its opposite and implying that it's an absolute rule.
-- Donald Oddy http://www.grove.demon.co.uk/
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