However if one flips it over and sees the Knights of the Swallow as being like the neo-Nazi Teutonic Knights of Alexander Nevsky (as some people did earlier today -- and it is a possible Glorantha, though probably not my own first choice), then Lord Meriatan isn't the hero any more (though he might still be an honourable and ambiguous villain rather than a diabolical fiend).
So who is?
Perhaps for this reason I prefer Lord Meriatan as Alexander Nevsky, facing down the Kingdom of War.
Richard Hayes
/// Bravo, exactly my feelings, more eloquently put. This is what Loskalm is about.
Isn't one of the fascinating things about Glorantha that it has cultures which are complex and ambiguous enough to be campaign villains or heroes -- though the latter (and possibly also the former?) will probably be flawed and/or ambiguous, as well as heroic (or villainous). It is famously true of the Lunars -- often, but not always, an 'evil Empire' -- and some have made it true of Humakt. There is a certain amount which is unlovely about the Rokari, but I would nevertheless hesitate to say that they are evil.
/// Doubleplusgood.
Why not have a Loskalm which faces both ways too? Especially for a society which could be forgiven for seeing its fate in the early 17th Century ST as the horrible choice between preserving its ideology and preserving its physical existence?
/// Why not indeed ? Idealism, meet Hard Choices. So what are you going to do ?
Final thought -- who are the heroes of the tale in which the Loskalmi are Teutonic Knights in the Alexander Nevsky mould?
/// Lord Meriatan ?
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