I do not know, and cannot comment on, Greg's earliest stories about the West -- though I do vaguely recall knowing that Glorantha began with Prince Snodal, long before the White Bear and the Red Moon or the nomads and their gods.
IIRC the teaser-trailers for the West that were the adverts for the never-published Men of the West and the introduction to the "Humanist" Otherworld of the Gloranthan West referred to knights and wizards, but not to "churches" or monotheism(?).
The initial treatment of sorcery in (non-Gloranthan) Avalon Hill Runequest reflected this too. The "voice" of the sorceror was not monotheistic. The sorceror Nikolos seemed more like a humanist magician than a monotheist wizard. His Byzantine roots might, in retrospect, be a little light neoplatonism too.
FWIW I saw the high watermark of seeing the Gloranthan West in Medieval European terms as being during the "Runequest renaissance" of the 1990s:
- The references to Monotheism (rather than the earlier Humanism)
- Calling the Prime Mover the Invisible God,
- The ecclesiastical terminology;
- The Ecclesiastical Councils (Sure other religions had them too, but it is pretty clear what these were modelled on)
- The chivalry;
- The art direction of Genertela: Crucible of the Hero Wars, etc., etc .
- Tales of the Reaching Moon 12, which has cast a long shadow over my personal view of the West (but undeniably built on Genertela: Crucible of the Hero Wars too
I'm not sure MRQ's treatment of Fronela didn't retain some of the Medievalism too.
Ironically caste is one of the larger anomalies in this analogy -- the 4 - 5 castes of Malkionism at this time doesn't quite fit the three 'castes' of Medieval Europe (those who work, those who fight and those who pray). It doesn't quite fit Hinduism's main 4-5 castes either (that system separates merchants from labourers, has a caste of "untouchables", and places priests above Soldiers and Lords). To me the castes of medieval Japan (at least in the simplified form set out in Land of the Ninja), might possibly offer the closest analogy of all
For a while this was deliberate -- even if it was also the result of some Glorathanphiles playing too much Credo and/or Pendragon (but then if I remember correctly Greg also stated at this time that in some ways Pendragon was a prototype for Gloranthan Heroquesting, so this process was a two-way street).
This material was not just generic high fantasy. But then in one way or another I think a lot of the charm of Glorantha for us is that it always was rather more than generic high fantasy. The New West isn't generic either
Now the West seems to be going back to something more like the neo-platonist roots that might have grown to fruition in the late 1970s or early 1980s. Though maybe those who were really there have a different tale to tell -- and I for one would love to hear it ...
Richard Hayes
From: David Cake <dave_at_Cu0fqa_bW424JBLmT26cb-AwC0Co3cz1mcLC6Wj16YnHiTUVq7dl-K5mCH2HS1H4MerFDu6RUdvEnkKh8g.yahoo.invalid>
To: WorldofGlorantha_at_yahoogroups.com
Sent: Thursday, 8 December 2011, 19:04
Subject: Re: Quick Summary of Gloranthan Cultures Part Two: Westerners
On 09/12/2011, at 2:19 AM, Jeff wrote:
>>> But Seshnela has never left Glorantha! There has always been a
>>> "mediaeval" area of Glorantha which dominated the Western lands. Their
>>> entire mythology and magic were also different. However, I was not
>>> interested in portraying that at the time of RuneQuest's publishing,
>>> hence they have had little development.
>>
>> Interesting to have it so explicitly confirmed that the idea that Western Genertela is like medieval Europe, so explicitly denied at almost every turn in Jeff's post, clearly originates with Greg. This isn't intended as snark or criticism, rather as an interesting observation about how much our ideas about the West have evolved.
>
> If you read those stories Greg refers to them, they are *far* less medieval than you might assume. Greg knows an awful lot more about medieval Europe since writing Pendragon than before that. Frex, in the early stories about Seshnela (I got them all), the Seshnelans were clearly a polytheistic peoples (no Invisible God back then!) with lots of lines like this:
>
> "Uthal is born to a well-off Brithini family, his father being a priest of Humakt. Just as his brother joined the priesthood as soon as possible (Imtalor, priest of Bakan), Uthal follows his father and is ordained a priest of Humakt when he is sixteen, ascending quickly to become a full priest. He is initiated into the cult of Argat at seventeen, and the cults of Malkion and Britha when nineteen. Under his brother's prompting he also joins the priesthood of Bakan when twenty years old."
>
> Now maybe I am wrong, but that really does not sound like medieval Catholicism.
I never said Catholicism. Religion is just one aspect of life - other parts of it (eg armour, clothing) were always portrayed as quite similar to medieval Europe. The old RQ3 material on Western Genertela, for example, made if fairly clear that the Malkioni were not Catholics IMO - but did tend to portray the West as being like medieval Europe *apart* from religion.
While we are on the topic, the Western churches are still even now described using a lot of terminology suggestive of at least Christianity, if not Catholicism specifically (Saint, for example). The idea that they are Catholicish certainly didn't spring from nowhere.
Cheers
David
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