Jeff sez:
> Population numbers are far greater in 1600 S.T. as in 100 S.T., but I am not sure that the best metal-work of 1600 S.T.
> is any more technologically advanced than that of 100 S.T.
To me, there's a link between this statement and the idea that there are an awful lot of cultures jammed into what we perceive as a pretty small place.
Glorantha has magic. We don't.
Gloranthan magic is pretty conservative in nature. The great compromise fixes an awful lot of things for all Time. When societies innovate greatly, the world seems to punish them. When this happens, the world loses a lot of magical "technology," but the concommitant fall in general level sof civilization means that mundane technology also gets lost. So, I see levels of technical ability in the most civilized part of the world as growing over time, until the end of the age, when it rapidly falls back to levels approaching those in the least civilized parts of the world.
The link here is that small cultures are difficult to eliminate. The Wuzuwuza tribe of Mikiamika mountain knows all the local spirits and daimons. You can certainly extract tribute from them, but don't expect them to change their way of life significantly, because the local otherworld entities would make life impossible for them. So when the big expansionist civilization inevitably falls, the locals just continue on with their way of doing things. And if they have any questions about the right way of doing things in their culture, they can summon the ancestors and ask them. Of course, you could kill all of the Wuzuwuza tribe, but it takes a lot of resources to get every last one of them, and you have to do it on their own home turf, with the local spirits helping them out.
This is part of what I take from the stories about the Lunars against the Heortlings. The Lunars had basically won the war and made the fatal mistake of trying to eliminate Orlanth and the last Heortling stronghold. The world responded. And then the Lunars had to fight on Heortling territory, where the Heortling knew the local magic better than the Lunars did. (See, e.g., Dragonrise.)
David sez:
> Any fancy building is ... held up by the power of the mystics walled up inside it.
+1
Chris
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]