A bit ago I mentioned that there was some stuff I liked and some I didn't about the published stuff on Teshnos, and some that I just didn't understand.. I was asked to say what was bugging me and how I would change it. Let me start by saying:
a) I have not read the Stafford Library books or the Four Scrolls of Revelation.
b) I recognize the hard work and enormously greater creativity of the authors.
c) What I have read is Genertela: Crucible of the Hero Wars, HW: Glorantha, HQ Voices
Here are my thoughts:
- Teshnos general landscape. There seem be two different visions. Teshnos as a forested savanna (broken canopy, grasses) and Teshnos as a place where no place is more than a half mile from "unbroken jungle" and"half lost in jungle." I guess those two are not necessarily in conflict, but it seems that they are. In both cases, the east is dense Fethlon jungle and the mountains lose the trees, so there is enough variety of Simla and Angkor to both be there.
- HQ Voices has the speaker (a shop/store/emporium owner) mention his third wife. Is this an indication of polygamy or that he has had three wives? I didn't see any other info on polygamy, but its presence is alright. Just wasn't clear to me.
- This guy seems like he handles wealth, and anyone who could spend money in the way he describes what leisure time activities there are (a GREAT paragraph) handles wealth too.. But there's also the idea that first level teaching folks don't handle money and turn it all over to priests. That seems in conflict.
- The HW: Glorantha map doesn't have the cities on it that Genertela: Crucible of the Hero Wars did (like Gio or Dombain, unless I missed them) and does have Lur Nop in Teshnos. Rivers don't have names. I can make them up, but I wonder why they don't. Genertela: CotHW had population figures, but those have been tossed out in general.
- The teachings of Chal are key to society. There are at least 32 verses in the Book of Well-Being. Are the verses spelled out anywhere? I can make them up, though.
- Babadi - I thought the local dwarfs were Octomonist and avoid trade with surface folks? I guess I didn't understand the locals or Octomonism, or this has changed? As an aside, I'm sort of tired of some much tech being from dwarfs. But that's not a gripe with the Teshnos writeup.
- Kab Tolat Solf - the Solf folks seem crazily degenerate, but here is Solf in the name of a warrior god? I'm lost. And is this the same Tolat as that of the Amazons? Lost again.
8, Melib is visible from the mainland - it looks pretty far away on the maps. If it is still visible, then visible distances on the sea are very big. I know Glorantha is flat, but are the map distances obsolete?
9. Somash seems to be given a lot of aspects and attention from lots of different folks and Calyz demoted from the everyman's god to something less and Grandfather Mortal, maybe. Just a change, it seems, not a gripe, but I guess I liked it the other way. Maybe I never understood it.
- Chal: p. 41 of HQ Voices: "Chal the Wise, blessed of Great Somash-He is Life!-brought order to Teshnos after the evil of Sheng Seleris. He taught us the Truth of the world." But in other places, Chal predates Sheng and Sheng (for reasons probably written somewhere I haven't read or understood) wipes out other paths to enlightenment. Is it just that Chal's *teachings* brought order? Or that Chal came back, or is always reincarnated?
- "Slaves are forbidden" in HQ Voices - just in temple ceremonies, or is that meant to say that slavery is against Teshnan culture. I'm guessing slavery is OK, since we hear mention of Goonda chain gangs.
- Goonda sound cool. I think my crew and I would make them less drunks and less in chain gangs and more like King Louis or the baboons in Prax (at least the ones I saw in River of Cradles and Temple of Feroda). I cannot remember.
- The elephant picture is very cool. That colossal beast is way bigger than normal elephants (especially the ones which live in jungles), but it's a fantasy world.
- Thoskali - are these bat Hsunchen? A new bunch of folks outside the caste system that I missed? I think I have read that name before... I do like the day and night bat people who don't like each other.
15.. The idea of Teshnans inheriting all possessions, debts,marriage partners, and criminal guilt from past lives just seems like a big problem socially (maybe it isn't and maybe the authors know of real societies like this) but I'd toss it right away in a game. Or maybe that was just a way to say inherited karma or something. But I'd just toss it.
Anything else I don't like has been in the writeups forever and is just something I'd toss (mainly Harstar).
I like the idea of Teshnos as a setting as a sort of India and Vedic Hindu type setting and lots of what is out there is great.
Thanks.