Me:>> It would be wrong to look in Seshnelan history (since Dawn). You'd have to look at the Storm Age and the Darkness.
> That's no good because there's a reset of a sorts once the Great Darkness has ended and the Cosmos revived. There's no horde of evil ghosts created from mythical catastrophes.
Both the ones in the Wastes and those in Zamokil are exactly that. Firefall and Generts Fall both predate the Greater Darkness, and the ensuing starvation as well.
But then, starvation hit all of Glorantha.
>>> But it doesn't fit for Dawn Age Seshnela because at first there's hardly any population to begin with and also that the Seshnegi don't have the same problems. >> The population density of Prax and the Wastes at the Dawn was negligible while such angry ghosts "thrived", so this is not much of an argument against ghost-ridden places there.
Ghosts aren't about devastation (those of Yanoor originated in a land of plenty), but about personal death and a strong unfulfilled desire. Plenty of this available anywhere on Glorantha, prior to the Dawn Age.
>> Such parts could always be placed in the drowned southern part of the peninsula. Seshnela since the Dawn is quite well documented, Seshnela prior to the Dawn is pretty much a blank spot on the map, or if you prefer a forested spot.
> The Pendali lands is the Nolos river valley. I don't see any problem with hordes of evil ghosts there.
The Pendali lands (hunting range) were all of Seshnela, with the exclaves of Neleoswal, Frowal and Arolanit established on the admittedly neglected western shores. The Pendali cities did sit inland, often on rivers.
The Nolos River Valley is the estuary of the Tanier, far from the center of conflict until after the Serpent Kings.
>> Finally, there may have been unknown civilizations that left only a few haunted ruins no one heard much of, just like the Feldichi in Dorastor.
> A few haunted ruins does not create the hordes of evil ghosts that give rise to the cannibal cult solution, any ghosts can be resolved through conventional methods. What is required is large loss of life from a particularly bad calamity.
Eradicating a civilization would be regarded as such, from the perspective of the victims. The Lascerdan ghosts had to be summoned to wreak havoc on the Umathelans, but quite often all that is required to unleash a plague of ghosts is to slash a single seal warding them in. Given the kind of warfare Hrestol invented against the Pendali, one of the knights may have done just that on a quest.
All we know are the accounts of the Malkioni victors.
However, I'm inclined to make the Basmoli anthropophagy something different from the Praxian Cannibal Cult - a reversal to Hsunchen (Fiwan or Hykimi) ways, or a dark Earth rite tied to the Likiti.
If nothing else, feeding on captives makes a strong impression on the morale of any opposing army. Whether these get sacrificed and eaten Aztec-style (possible for any dark earth rite) or simply thrown to the lions and then shared with the human-shaped kin doesn't matter to the victimized side that gets to write the history later and doesn't share either rites.
Powered by hypermail