Brian Duguid

The Caroni, goat Hsunchen, live in those mountains, but wouldn't seem likely to be described as "irritating sprites".

I've gone down a route similar to this for my JC Hsunchen book, and spent some time working on how to allow easier or longer-term transformation for certain peoples without affecting game balance. I've taken the view (and obviously it's non-canonical) that the Uncolings only have Transform Self magic, but it is "one-way" i.e. 3 Rune points to become human for a while, and 3 more Rune points to change back (6 points total compared to the 8 points for an hour in the standard Hsunchen cult description). For game balance, they switch between "natural" human and animal forms, not semi-divine or enhanced ones as is the case for other Hsunchen. As so often, there is a tension between the rules, which promote consistency, and the world, which may or may not be uniform. JC should be a place where it is fine to present alternative perspectives and we should not get hung up about that. We are very familiar with the Hsunchen which are broadly similar to humankind in scale (wolf, bear, lion, boar, elk etc), but once you acknowledge that there are Hsunchen whose totem beasts are fish, snakes, frogs, bats etc, I think it becomes much more obvious that there shouldn't be a one-size-fits-all approach.

And of course Ana Gor, who I think is still a "thing" i.e. will be in the forthcoming Prosopaedia.

Yet he was probably also the first person to author a multicultural role-playing game world where all the humans were from non-white cultures, where homosexuality was explicitly acceptable, and so on. The Amina Inloes paper is well worth a read: https://t.co/VHPHOVXzBL.

I guess he didn't write the back cover blurb on Serpent's Walk, but parts of it discuss the novel's depiction of a "struggle for a White world" taking place underground in the USA, with the heirs of the SS resurfacing "to challenge the democrats and Jews for the hearts and minds of White Americans". The book was published by National Vanguard Books - and, well, you can look them up, they were certainly more than solely anti-semitic. A little bit of googling finds the book "Conspiracy Theories in American History: an Encyclopaedia" (2003), in which the writer Ingrid Walker Fields attributed the true authorship of Serpent's Walk to the white supremacist William L Pierce, who wrote the notorious Turner Diaries for the same publisher. So notorious that Amazon stopped selling it in 2020. Unlike the UK's largest bookseller, Waterstones, who still offer for sale both the Turner Diaries and Serpents Walk, telling me via email yesterday (I paraphrase), "we are also a bookseller for anti-semites and white supremacists" (their actual words were "provide access to titles wherein the content may not align with every individual customer's beliefs"). I'm a little intrigued by the backstory to all this. The Tekumel Foundation have come out to acknowledge Barker's authorship, and to apologise for having swept it under the carpet for a period of time. But Barker's widow is a member of the Tekumel Foundation Board - seriously, did she not know??

Tales of the Reaching Moon #1. The article described by none other than Rick Meints in MIG II as "It started a bad trend". I like to think now that it was very much 33 years ahead of its time 😄

I was just reading this. WTF!

I always enjoy your additional interpretation of the information that has appeared recently. The Gloranthan art pieces did make me laugh though: we've come a long way from what may have been the first ever article on Gloranthan art, back in 1989! I'm still hopeful that there remains a place in Glorantha for Phil Neilson's charming artwork "Anchoritenus and the Grand Flagellation", I wish I had a good quality copy to share here!

Explanation from Rick here of why they can't/won't reprint the Glorantha Classics again:

Yep. Rick has explained elsewhere the amount of work required to convert the Moon Design Classics series from screen-readable PDF to print-suitable PDF, and that they won't be doing it given that 99% of the material is available in the original RQ Classics anyway. So @Ian Thomson should definitely make references to the originals. I'm not sure if Nick's Pavis books index will be of any assistance: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/299290/Tables-of-Contents--Pavis-Big-Rubble--River-of-Cradles&affiliate_id=1107865

I don't think anyone has mentioned this timely and relevant blog post yet: https://beer-with-teeth.games/updating-borderlands-i-mechanics/

As with anything on Jonstown Compendium, POD is only normally possible if each product passes 250 sales on PDF, and not guaranteed even then.

Harpies are another creature with human heads, although I don't know what their mythic origins are within Glorantha. The Sedrali give me the creeps every time I think of them 😆.

Some JC authors do two versions of their PDFs, one with a background watermark and one without. But both can be printed.

I agree, although obviously reindeer don't normally stockpile food. One of the things that GtG says about Hsunchen societies is that they reflect their totem animal's behaviours. So "herd-animal" Hsunchen have herd-like societies. What could that mean? For me it suggests they value group survival over the survival of individuals; and adopt a "safety-in-numbers" approach to conflict. It might be better for survival for a weaker member of the herd to be picked off by a predator if the stronger members can flee to safety. Self-defence with spears and bows is then a bonus to survival, not a substitute for use of antlers (which will mainly be used to resolve in-group conflict). I'll be working my way through Mircea Eliade's Shamanism just as soon as I'm done with Lewis-Williams and Pearce's Inside the Neolithic Mind. Both interesting in very different ways. A couple of good examples: Views may differ, but my view: first there were Plants, then there Beasts, then were Humans, each arising from the various Form Runes. Several canon sources suggest that at one time there were Hsunchen or Hsunchen-antecedents who could take both beast and human form; or for whom the exact form was ill-defined. Some Malkioni suggest that most of the world was like this, except themselves and a few other "true" humans (see the Xeotam Dialogues). In any case, there is an in-world mythic parallel to evolution from plant -> animal -> human. I see Hsunchen as simply the set of humans who never lost touch with the Beast rune; and all other humans as having lost it. It's therefore more than a game mechanic: it ties into their distaste for agriculture, and the known Gloranthan history where numerous beast peoples (Entruli, Pendali etc) became gradually civilised and sufficiently lost their Beast rune connection that they were no longer Hsunchen (some of this having already occurred pre-Dawn). Cults such as Yinkin and Odayla may be distortions or variations on Hsunchen Beast tradition. I think there's interesting insight here into what makes Hsunchen spirit practice different to other Gloranthan shamanic spirit traditions. All the animists have shamans and therefore all must recognise the Horned Man / Horned God. But the Hsunchen have a sense of ethnic purity that others do not, and although they can deal with many spirits, their beast relationship and magic is limited to their core ethnic cult / tradition (Rathor, Pralor etc). Hey, I've even written a section on Hsunchen character generation 🙂.

Maybe I will come round to the view that the Uncolings follow a similar Hsunchen culture to other tribes, you never know! I'd be interested in the ecological case: why would it be more plausible that 300,000 humans can survive in this space than that 300,000 reindeer could? I struggle with that one, even though I'm no fan of trying to justify Glorantha in conventional ecological terms. In writing about the Hsunchen, I've found I've had to think harder about shamanic and prehistoric culture more generally. Lots of background reading, which will take some time to wash through into the writing over coming months. Much of what David Scott has posted on BRP about how shamanism works in Glorantha has been especially helpful. I think I've exhausted this point, but I'll say it again because it remains at the heart of the possible divergence here. In my view, that's not what GtG says the Uncolings believe. "Have become humans" and "are able to turn into humans" are different. The former belief is straightforward and in line with general Hsunchen culture as described. However, the latter belief will be difficult to maintain if the evidence contradicts it on a daily basis. Read literally, it is not a belief about the people's essence in either the mundane or the spirit world, it is a belief about transformations that can take place in the present day. I'd be interested in any view that can more clearly articulate a case for the Uncolings being humans who believe they "are reindeer who just happen to be to turn into humans". Nothing I've seen yet in this thread really fits that, for me at least. I think there is an underlying issue with whether the game system (Hsunchen in human form who can turn into beasts, usually for a short time only) can support (or is determining) the game-world narrative. In GtG, the fundamental thing that unites the Hsunchen is not their transformation ability, it is that they "claim as ancestors and kinfolk" their beast companions. GtG is clear that the shamans guide their people to connect to their beast heritage and that many Hsunchen cannot fully transform. It says nothing about how long they transform for. I'm exploring the approach that the way the people works must make sense first; if the rules need tweaking to address that in any case, so be it. I struggle with the idea, for example, that the Ri-si woodpecker people or the (unnamed) Opossum folk partially transform into giant versions of their totem beasts. I think some of the Fiwan tribes of Pamaltela (the Sun Fish, Fire Wren, Frog and Fish Eagle peoples) also point towards a wider variety of animal relationships and transformations than is set out in the "template" cultural description.

See https://wellofdaliath.chaosium.com/home/gloranthan-documents/timeline-dragonpass/

I imagine Westerners may still call them Hykimi, and perhaps a few may even still refer to them as krjalki. But given the existence of the Martial Beast Societies, and the presence of the Ancient Beast Society in Safelster, there will be diverse names and opinions regarding the beast-peoples.

Noting that there remain Serpent Beast shamans amongst the Pralori, although unclear if this is a continuous tradition or a revival.

This is the core of where we're differing in opinion I think. That's explicitly not what it says they believe. They believe they are reindeer who are able to turn into humans. That's really very different. And it's contrasted in the text with the Flari, who believe they are humans who can turn into owls. It's not directly about who they think they are. It's about what they can transform into. Which in turn begs an assumption about the form they spend most of their time in.

I'm not sure that's entirely right. In RQG page 314, you can cast Rune magic by reciting an invocation "in the mind", there's no mention of hands or voice (and in any case, any intelligent beast can use Beastspeech). Page 247 requires "arcane sounds and phrases, subtle gestures" etc; which is also ok in beast form. Page 254 allows spirit magic to be cast without touching a focus. I totally agree that magic changes the way the whole culture should behave, chances of survival etc. I certainly see tool use as being the main reason why a beast Hsunchen would choose to adopt human form (or human Hsunchen would stay in their normal form), as well as easier communication with outsiders. And there may be limitations from their mythic history as well as choices made through pragmatism.

I think the way that different people can read the same Gloranthan material and come to very different conclusions is one of the strengths of the whole setting. I'm in favour of having more anomalies, contradiction, etc, and far less detail pinned down than is the trend in current products. When I see on other forums people asking "exactly what does this detail mean" I think they lose sight of the fact that Glorantha only comes alive when they apply their own ideas: it should never be about adherence to what's in some dusty tome. When I first played RQ2 in the mid-80s there were no dusty tomes, and making stuff up was essential to the fun. So I see reading and interpreting GtG and the other books (and I've done a *ton* of that for this project) as about defining a baseline, which inevitably results in a creative process when the gaps and contradictions in that baseline are brought into sharper focus. I'd be disappointed if my ideas just repeat anything that anyone can read within GtG, to be honest. I see the whole aim of JC as breaking away from that and helping people escape the sense of "one true Glorantha". As presented in the game, yes, most Hsunchen definitely need their shamans to reconnect with their animal "soul", and this is also true in what I'm writing. Most were once people who originated as beasts but at some point in prehistory learned to become human; later getting "stuck" in human form, and being able to take beast form only with difficulty (with each people having a difficult mythic explanation for why this happened). We know from lots of Gloranthan material that becoming civilized (adopting agriculture) made that even harder (e.g. the Mraloti / Entruli). In what I'm writing, there are only a very few Hsunchen tribes that depart from the standard template; and all for a specific reason associated either with their ecology or with something written in "canon". So: why do only the Uncolings, of the peoples mentioned in GtG, believe they are beasts, not humans? For me, that's the key thing that needs explaining. There are lots of real-world animist examples of peoples or their shamans who believed they had a close animal relationship, or could take beast form etc. There may be examples of those who see no spiritual separation between those animals and themselves. But the Uncoling belief is very specific: they "believe that they are reindeer who just happen to be able to turn into humans". "Just happen". "Turn into". I don't read that as people who think they have reindeer-spirits but are born and live in human form. It says instead they are "able to turn into" humans. I am taking that absolutely literally, yet being criticised for departing from canon 🙂. I think if we accept their belief is true (which we don't have to - that's my choice), then lots of other things follow which remind us that canon is incomplete and only ever telling a simplified summary of the story. And those things don't have to contradict them being hunters/gatherers when in human form. They do require me to depart from the standard Hsunchen Rune spell template, but I'm fine with that.

This goes back to my point. What are the advantages, for a reindeer, of becoming human in that environment? Are there any? Sustenance in reindeer form is much simpler than in human form, where reindeer-meat is the likely main food source, and leads to attrition of the tribal population. Those 300,000 Uncolings in Fronela: I don't see how they can possibly survive in human form in that geographical area. But if we accept that they are reindeer who can become human, the explanation is simpler, as 300,000 reindeer could survive more easily. The cannibalism issue isn't limited to the Uncolings, as many Hsunchen kill their totem beasts either for food or skins or presumably normally both. The Rathori hunter illustrated in GtG wears a bearskin, and Telmor are depicted wearing wolf-skins. I'm interested in why that might be, and how it might differ between peoples, and what drives that - local ecological pressures? Differences in whether the totem animals is typically predator or prey? When you start getting to animals that are very different in nature of scale to the Hsunchen we've seen presented in detail (Pralori, Telmori, Rathori, Basmoli etc - although the last doesn't live alongside their totem beast, at least in Prax), then more questions start creeping in. As noted above, I'm interested in using over-literal interpretation of the sources as a springboard to explore possibilities; not to use it to define how things "must" work. It's entirely fair to note that the problem with literalism is that the sources are contradictory.

For context, I'm writing a Jonstown Compendium book about the Hsunchen. In that context, I'm interested in examining how different Hsunchen people can be, not just how similar. It's simply about keeping things interesting. And one of my strategies for that is "design in chains" i.e. to use constraints to spur creativity (a strategy borrowed from my professional life as an engineering designer). My specific constraint is, wherever possible, to take the published material at face value and assume that what it says is true. Given the contradictions in "canon", inevitably my Glorantha must vary. For the Uncolings, it is therefore true that they believe themselves to be reindeer who take human form. That's in GtG, it's inarguable given my own approach. It's also clear from GtG that the Hsunchen should not follow just one template: the same paragraph that distinguishes the view of the Uncolings also makes clear that other peoples view their totem beast relationship differently. The Flari are an interesting example, but that's for another time. I'm precisely interested in what that variety could be. I won't give too many spoilers for the book, but I can't see any explanation for the Uncoling belief other than that it is true. Imagine the opposite: Uncolings are born as humans, live as humans, and take reindeer form only occasionally (as per normal Hsunchen magic). Why then would they have this belief? Their belief implies that they are born as reindeer, and can become human. This is not incompatible with the idea that when in human form they subsist off their herds, or behave as hunters etc. But it leads to different conclusions about their transformation magic, which differ from the standard Hsunchen cult template. I've spelled out this whole rationale in more detail in the draft book, but I think it's very interesting to see how the Hsunchen may "work" given a different base assumption. And interesting more widely as there is often a contradiction between the way the human part of Hsunchen society operates in line with a paleolithic / mesolithic template, yet also considers its human and beast members to be the same "people". I think taking the "animal's-eye" view is much more interesting, certainly for my Glorantha. What would the Hsunchen culture write-up in GtG look like if it were not written from the perspective of the human members of each Hsunchen tribe? That's where my ideas for the Uncolings are going. To be entirely honest, I think it's a blind spot of previous authors, who put in the material about the Hsunchen seeing their human and beast members as a common tribe, without thinking through the implications. And then I got to this bit of your comment and wished I hadn't spent even five seconds writing the above. If you want to continue the discussion politely, that would be nice. But I won't be spending further time on it if you just want to describe others' contributions as ridiculous without first asking what their thinking is.

Also see Glorantha Sourcebook page 13, which doesn't explain why Hiia "made himself a breastplate of turtle-shell", but does at least refer to it.