Ormi Phengaria

On the other hand, we might think "well, northern Ralios isn't the Andes, either." But the Andes at what point in time? It would be a mistake to think that the agriculture of the late pre-Columbian Andes wasn't in a similarly highly developed and organized condition. I think we can reasonably say that northern Ralios isn't like the Tawantinsuyu and that they aren't making chuño, but having slightly higher access to starchy root vegetables than general is probably fine. I think maybe there are llamas there too, actually...

On 12/5/2023 at 4:40 PM, g33k said:

Huh.  Given that potatoes -- in the New World -- did not spread and "ruin" (render productive) the harsher environs, the way you feared they would in "areas like northern Fronela or the uplands of Ralios," I remain a bit mystified.   🫤

Yes, this is worth noting for worldbuilders. It wasn't the bare presence of the potato itself which transformed the staple agriculture of the Old World, but the combination of the potato alongside centuries of ongoing socioeconomic transformation and technological development. That includes the economic feasibility of four-crop rotation, the metallurgy leading to new plow designs capable of moving deep ground necessary to protect the plant from light, being able to afford to plow a field more than twice a year, water infrastructure, and enclosure of wastes. And even despite all of that, producing all of that food is only sensible if there is a market for it, which was its own ongoing revolution and transformation. Higher caloric output doesn't just produce more babies on its own before it can establish itself as a pattern of production.

5 hours ago, Erol of Backford said:

So reading White Elves are of the sun and related to Yelmalio but are not longer. Makes me wonder if they were somehow the same as Gold Wheel Dancers and or were related on possibly congregated before the Dawn?

Something about the third seed of Flamal and it going up Yelmalio, Yelmdrya was born, mother of all plants on the Sun, as well as their collective soul. The White Elves are still a part of Yelmdrya though they are now gone from the world.

The great and pure forests at the top of the spike were white?

Does anyone recall White Elves?

I think this is on the right track, though they are definitely not identical to the Gold Wheel Dancers. The more important connection shared by both is to the idea of the Silver People, to which the Gold Wheel Dancers might somehow be closer given that they sometimes shared the name.

3 hours ago, Hellhound Havoc said:

I have seen this claim numerous times, but only in these forums. I'd like to know where it originates from and if it's still canon.

It's hyperbole gesturing at something bigger. It's possible for a troll to be physically full and satiated, though it is a lot more difficult than it is for humans, even with the ability to eat and digest nearly anything. But with a full stomach one becomes aware of other, more subtle hungers, spiritual hungers. For trolls, all of these relate to creating more trolls, normatively, even their love of music. But this does not satiate. It only creates more hunger. It is a growing emptiness in the world in analogy of a stomach which demands more food the more you fill it. Ultimately, more trolls means less food for all trolls. That's a bit paradoxical, and I think very close to the heart of the nature of their curse by Gbaji.

12 hours ago, andyl said:

In the real world Coal has a few more uses (ignoring more modern chemical engineering).  Decorative jewelery, ornaments and figurines for example. People have even made furniture out of it.

Oh yes, that does bear mentioning-- deeper layers of lignite being hard jet, a mineraloid gemstone. Good thing to put fire spirits in!

Petroleum has a ludicrous number of uses outside of being refined into combustible fuels: construction, waterproofing, boat building, small crafts, medicine, etc. It's gasoline which is just an odd curiosity for several hundreds years after its discovery. Coal doesn't have any uses completely distinct from other fuel sources except that on occasion it is more plentiful and easier to exploit than wood.

1 hour ago, mfbrandi said:

Call them monsters, if you like, but remember that the worst monsters are fully human

Oh yes.

1 hour ago, mfbrandi said:

and with a little bad luck, we might have been as bad as them. (Perhaps we are, but just cannot see it.)

Oh. Oh no. This is the part where you cross the line from compassionate understanding which seeks to genuinely combat hate directly over to contrived apologia. Please resist doing so.

10 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

Surely, the thing only bites hard if Arjuna thinks that he has a moral duty to fight the war and a moral duty not to slaughter kin — and no way to square the two, no way to convert them into the common currency of weight and see which side of the balance goes down. Incommensurability can be a bitch, and sometimes every action (even refraining from acting) looks wrong, not simply horrible.

Yes, that they appear to be incommensurable is the problem. When he saw that he would have to fight his kin, he begins the discourse by questioning the necessity and value of his warrior duties. Proper action may not produce outcomes which are favourable to Arjuna of the Pandava, or in fact any individual being, yet it continues to be proper action, and continues to preserve the dharma. On its face, that doesn't seem very fair or even just, indeed it seems to subvert itself! And so it's not really about Arjuna's moral dilemma, it's an inquiry into the nature of all moral dilemmas, a kind of theodicy. The path of universal dharma (the warrior-ascetic) appears to differ from the path of self dharma (the householder), but this is illusory, they lead to the same place. The best path is to reconcile these and guard against illusion through personal devotion to Krishna. Perform proper action, but be equanimous about its outcome.

14 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

I wasn’t engaging with the first, only the second. As to whether I think it is supposed to be a justification of slaughter — I have no opinion on that. I only discussed it in those terms because Davecake said:

• If you read the Bhavagad Gita in context … you might find the idea of Arkat as … moral, and also a terrifyingly warlike killer more understandable.

I notice you elided the last sentence in my post, maybe considering it to be irrelevant. But what Krishna is doing in showing to Arjuna the Vishvarupa is not to go "I am God, remember that your concerns don't matter". It is to show Arjuna the entire universe. What he sees is truly terrible to him. He sees that no matter his personal actions or spiritual liberation, death and destruction and pain and fear are things which are just as much a part of his Lord as the sights of peace and preservation within Vishnu which he can bear.

14 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

It seems to me that personal liberation — moksha, or whatever — and morally right action are two different things.

That's correct, in all of these traditions as well as in Glorantha. What Arjuna discovered was the non-duality between himself and the universe. Whatever course he took would not separate him from Krishna. He already believed in the moral necessity of his war; what brought him distress is why this should even be the case, why any should be required to make the choice he had been putting off, between duty and kinship. His takeaway from the dialogue was that proper action preserves the dharma and his ultimate existence even as it destroys his own mortal existence, at least as he understood it.

Arkat is the same: he continued following his caste duties and his Justice even long after others seemed to observe him giving those things up. He had an insight much like Arjuna, in seeing that death and destruction and oblivion were a part of the universe. But this doesn't make those things good or even neutral on their face, for him or for anyone else. He was a mortal, with mortal concerns, who lived within the Middle World. And so he followed what he knew, what his heart told him, and what he learned.

I think you maybe need to stop thinking of Krishna as a person when trying to understand what meaning his revelations to Arjuna actually possess. If you maintain that reductive framework, it's not surprising you are going to reach an authoritarian conclusion. But you may as well call a boulder authoritarian in its refusal to move.

Arkat was always the Deceiver and Betrayer.

He deceived the Brithini into giving him command of their Horali in the Army of Law by his intimate knowledge of the enemy. He probably introduced the word gbaji into the Western languages. Then he moved past the Law.

He deceived the Seshnegi by first fighting against the krjalki, and then allying himself to them. He moved past humanity.

He deceived the rebel Theyalans by being necessary for the Dawn's return, and then bringing only Darkness. He moved past unity.

He deceived uz by proving himself uzuz, then turning inner light to fire and leaving no hope of solace. He moved past all boundaries.

He deceived chaos by first knowing it, and then becoming it. He stilled his movement.

Quote

"The words ‘chaos’ and ‘chaotic’ usually are misused and misapplied, adding to confusions.

 ...sometimes it seems that anything someone fears is called chaotic...

...Perhaps ‘chaotic’ really means ‘that which we do not understand....’

The condition [of Primal Chaos] is always passive and inert until acted upon by the gods."

-portion of a private letter from a Lhankor Mhy priest, ca. 1599 ST, translation by Greg Stafford

Now, you can read from this or surmise from many similar implications that the attitude most people take against chaos is primarily one of fear and incomprehension, avoidance, repulsion, a bigotry. That is true. Their consideration of chaos in this manner is also warranted; by and large chaos is evil and inimical to them and their lives. But then there is a third angle to this truth of ours, that chaos in and of itself is neither evil nor inimical to the cosmos.

So, altogether, that's: 1) chaos is real and fear of chaotics is warranted, 2) chaos in and of itself is the condition of what is unknown and apart from you and 3) these things apart from you which you do not understand are nonetheless as much a part of the universe as you are. If you bring these three things together, you might conclude that even the most awful creatures of chaos may be brought into your world and genuinely compromised with in a way which truly benefits everything. But you may also, with equal validity and coherence, conclude that chaos in and of itself is your real enemy.

The former is the perspective nominally offered by Nysalor, and the latter is the perspective nominally offered by Arkat. The Bright Empire brought people together, but its Illuminates kept the rifts between them from healing, and exploited them for their own ends. Arkat betrayed every cult he joined, and yet left lasting connections between them.

8 hours ago, Zac said:

• An Arkat will never accept the use of chaotic magic.

Just being sensible here unless you follow the Lunar Way. 🙂

Nonetheless, if they do use accept the use of chaotic magic, the only consequences for such are purely within the cult, if at all, by the nature of Illumination.

8 hours ago, Zac said:

• They never will deal fairly or honestly with any chaotic being or thing.

This seems to be edging towards non-Illuminated behaviour

Quite the contrary. To deal with known chaos by deception and underhandedness requires a more intimate, maybe even sympathetic, knowledge of what it is.

8 hours ago, Zac said:

• Now that their Heroquesting abilities have been dispersed through all cults, they aim only to destroy chaos, and will not rest till they have done so.

This seems directly at odds with one of the benefits of Illumination.

It's at odds with the benefit of the Secret Knowledge as understood by the majority of those who listened to and were Illuminated by Rashoran or Nysalor. But, looked at another way, one can seize upon the Secret Knowledge as a weapon, pointed in either direction. You no longer instinctively fear your enemies— but mere instinct is not the origin of all enmity.

4 hours ago, Jason Farrell said:

I tripped on this the first time myself but it's not actually an error because "they" here is a singular, not a plural. 

Time to trip up more: "singular they" is still grammatically plural in this usage, in English, and is so throughout the rest of that writeup.

p. 96, Heler, Mythos and History, first paragraph: "They accompanied Sshorg in her invasion of the land and was freed" -> "They accompanied Sshorg in her invasion of the land and were freed".

2 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

Gloranthans are very much capable of dreaming up Lovecraftian horrors and have already done it, no? Tentacles, ooze, and chaotic features for chaotic creatures.

If I remember right, I was once derided for raising the possibility of seriously contemplating the inner life of gorp. As it is on earth, human beings have denied the subjective depth of other humans, the very possibility of minds in animals (combining both in more than a century of dismissiveness towards Charles Henry Turner), and are today making panicked-yet-so-delicate semantic equivocations when presented with the idea of plant consciousness. Maybe we'll follow process-animism down into the mineral kingdom one day.

What this reminds me of is a commonly encountered guideline: "don't anthropomorphize your subjects." This may seem almost like a kind of reverence at first. Of course we shouldn't collapse everything into the human experience and umwelt! But what it really means is "don't erase the distinctions we still measure ourselves by". The mud and the slime, thick and heavy waters teeming with too much life, are said to be without life, pools of Mallia. No soil to be tilled, no cooling respite, and occupied in struggle those who have been driven into them over many millennia. Filled with monsters.

Do they have subjectivity?

15 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

That is possibly — only possibly — the most unGloranthan thing ever said: it has not been dreamed, told, seen, or inscribed, but nonetheless it is. Be careful on your heroquest: you know all the story variations, but the unknown unknowns are lurking out there and keen to impale you on spikes of objective reality.

On the contrary, it's perhaps the most Gloranthan sentiment one could come into alignment with. The world-view (self-awareness?) of the Goddess Herself! Subjective is not solipsistic. Trees fall in forests with no observers other than themselves; the spirits of the dead wood and the wind and the sound and the indentation in the earth all dissolve into Time as ephemera. The moment was never eternal, outside of itself. Our ability to speculate on the moment's nature might allow us to infer the formal episteme behind its meaning, but that doesn't make the moment real. Or unreal. We just have ourselves, things that are not ourselves, and the bridge between, which is perspective.

13 hours ago, Scorus said:

I'm afraid you'll need to explain this one to me like I'm five. 🙂  The Night ends and the Dawn begins before the Dawn?

In addition to what JRE and M Helsdon said: in the early First Age, the Dawn was often not considered a single discrete event, but more the magical insight that the world had been truly reborn. 0 ST was the year which became the agreed upon-dating, rather than being immediately incontrovertible. This year featured neither the return of light to the sky as was the measure of the Theyalans, nor the sun at last rising and setting upon Antirius' path, which was some time between 72 ST and 111 ST, and was the measure of the Dara Happans. The 0 ST compromise is the date the Dara Happans record as Kargzant's return to the sky as an irregular and erratic but definitely observable bright body; for the Heortlings this would be Elmal riding around the world, rekindling it.

23 hours ago, Zalain said:

please, need  clarification because we lost precious time in our last game discussing this (and we only can meet once a month). it drove me crazy. it DRIVES me crazy

Unfortunately, at this time the list of spirits of any rune cult is pretty much "just make it up." That's always going to be at least somewhat the case, though, and the Bestiary provides, in my experience, a good set of tools for making your own spirits. This shouldn't really be something that requires more than GM fiat (though your players preferring sorcery make more sense in light of it. They sound litigious!)

Or: the Earth Goddess wasn't necessarily Ernalda, was receiving propitiatory or bloody sacrifice which stopped, the settlements so smote weren't in Esrolia, and the gods were active (if not yet as strong as they would become) in the Silver Age, when this took place, as Aram ya-Udram was a Silver Age hero, i.e, known for his Silver Age heroism. And thus the Ivory Plinth is there at 0 ST, with the inscription detailing all of this, including how to receive the Earth's rich gifts for yourself.

There are the Elder Race senses of Darksense, Elfsense, and Earthsense. Chalana Arroy additionally has a tricorder:

Quote

An initiate of Chalana Arroy can identify the presence of disease in a person or thing, simply through concentration.

And Orlanth is the weather man:

Quote

Since they worship the King of the Storm gods, initiates of Orlanth can always tell when a change in the weather is coming. Wind Lords and Storm Voices can tell approximately what the weather will be one day in advance.

So there is quite a lot, actually!

13 minutes ago, mfbrandi said:

Or — inkeeping (more-or-less) with “modern elves are humans who think they are plants” — we could try (I am thinking out loud, so apologies to any biologists reading for the barbarisms to follow):

1. Haploid plant spores are inhaled by a “pure” human and start dividing to produce a haploid gametophyte within it
2. The human develops an urge to “return” to their true home, the forest — the human has the thoughts, not the plant growing within: the plant is not intelligent and has no thoughts of its own
3. In the forest, the human is “reborn” as an elf — this can be gruesome or not, to taste — still an animal, but their reproductive system has been “taken over” by their internal plant gametophyte
4. “Elf sex” transfers haploid plant gametes and may produce a purely plant zygote (in either or both of the elves, but not of either, genetically) which develops into a diploid sporophyte within the elf’s abdomen — the human elf is now hosting two plants, one haploid (gametophyte) and one diploid (sporophyte in its coconut stage)
5. The sporophyte (the coconut) is cut from or emerges from the elf’s abdomen — it doesn’t matter whether the human is XX or XY or … — the elf itself cannot reproduce sexually, but it hosts a plant which can
6. The sporophyte is planted, grows (it is photosynthetic, unlike the gametophyte stage), and eventually emits haploid spores (this time meiosis is required)
7. Go to step 1

Why should the broo have all the life-cycle fun? Deliberate infection with aldryami spores is very Invasion of the Bodysnatchers but with no giant pod to dispose of. No elf children in this model.

Wow, that really is dumb! No, I have in my possession rare, enviable and most expensive second-hand copies of Second Age Slontan documents on elves, and I assure you, the parchment is alive with descriptions of the sappy branches of Plant Men, the damp tree hollows of Plant Women, and even one account of young elves drinking from their mothers' swollen gnarls. This treasure can be yours, and just for you, I have even excised the marginalia (which was full of skepticism most hurtful to those of us of the Mammaltree school, anyway). I have also commissioned illuminations from a student artist in Wilmskirk of these processes of conception, only for the most curious minds, and those with enough silver!

Limited time offer, soon I away to seek the Vegetable Lamb of Pent!

People are always asking Eurmal: where did you get balls like that? And he just smiles mysteriously, in the way the gods do. I have for you today the answer: he stole them from Yelm while he was out hunting grey mice, which are by the way the Emperor's favourite food, but that wise-eye saw it happening and gave chase. Of course the two greatest balls dropped immediately, those being the Half-Pecked Eyeball and the Munificent Solar Rotundity which would later be turned into the Golden Platter Serving Roast Eagle when Eurmal the Shish Kebab made his most daring escape.

The rest he made off with in a giant sack, becoming the richest and therefore greatest man of all the world, up until the poorly-stitched sack tore and the Little Balls of Fire tumbled to the earth, imbuing the worthy and unworthy alike with that power of witnessing. One by one, he's slowly been plucking his treasures back from those who don't see their worth, and stockpiling them in a cave, the much superior technology of "hoarding" being invented after this grand heist and loss.

If the dwarfs got everyone on Glorantha to jump at the same time, the percussive maintenance would fix the World Machine. This was the actual reason for the Sunstop: Harmonious All-Cosmic Time for the Big Thwack. They just couldn't agree on where to put the Prime Meridian, and it all went to Hell.

In a very special part of the Underworld, if you untie a knot of winds, others will hear belching for miles around Dagori Inkarth.

There are no such things as Bad Dogs. Only Bad Gods.

Elves reproduce by internal fertilization. The females give birth to a coconut-sized hard seed which is planted in a secret place. The seed, carefully tended by the parents, sprouts a stalk and leaves, etc. and eventually produces a large fleshy fruit. The fruit enlarges in size. When it is ripe, the parents open it and within is a small elf child.

(It also, of course, defines Nysalor. The Riddle is the refined power of speaking around the ineffables of another until they can see the outlines and come to know them and accept them. And, as you suspect, some people do have their insecurities stoked by this, and lash back against what they perceive to be at best naivety, self-styled and false wisdom.)