It is an easy mistake to make.
>What I was
>getting at is that there are a nice variety of Northern/theist cultures with
>different origin stories. It would be nice if there were multiple
>Western/sorcerous ones too.
There may be multiple human(ish) sorcerous cultures, but we only really have one account of them, Zzaburs, really.
> Gloranthan cultures all seem to have founding
>stories that explain all of the other cultures that they interact with. I
>would be surprised if the peoples of the West were different in that
>regard. I expect that the fact that there there wasn't/aren't is more due to
>a lack of attention given to Western Glorantha by the writers (mainly Greg)
>than an intentional feature. Or maybe he deliberately made them that way to
>express his disapproval of that mindset. <shrug>
I'd love to see a Vadeli and Waertagi version of Zzaburs account, especially Vadeli.
Loads of stuff about what an insufferable self-promoting arrogant fool Zzabur is, about why the Vadeli were forced to slaughter everybody and eat their souls for very reasonable reasons, and so on.
>For Glorantha, our (out of game) sources on the peoples of the west are few
>and (in game) generally come from one admittedly authoritative source -
>Zabbur. That said, I think there is room for a lot of variance to have
>developed as events forced people to move around and react to external
>forces.
A big factor is that the history of the West has many episodes of people determinedly stamping out those variations. The many different accounts of Malkions death have now been all but unified etc. It would be nice if we actually had some of the original, varying, accounts to compare, or the few surviving ones such as the Atroxic Book of Betrayal and Murder. There is presumably a whole mythic basis for Irensavalism that differs significantly too?
>The Vadeli are an extreme example. They were Malkioni once upon a time but
>have drifted pretty far from where they started. I don't see why there can't
>have been many Malkioni sub-cultures that have developed in their own
>direction. I actually think there was enough time for multiple branches of
>the Vadeli culture to arise, although I have seen no evidence of it.
It may simply be that multiple versions arose, and got wiped out (and around 95% of Vadeli seem to have been). Was the Vadeli culture of Endernef (their empire in Danmalastan) different to the culture of their empire in Oabil in Pamaltela? Probably, but as both are now destroyed, we may never find out.
(neither seems likely to be very pleasant, certainly).
>There
>where also probably remnants of the other original Malkioni peoples like the
>Kachasti and Tadiniti who moved, mixed with other people, learned new
>truths, etc. Most of these peoples probably died out as their lands were
>absorbed by the Mostali, conquered by Vadeli, sunk beneath the ocean, etc.
I agree.
Cheers
David
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