Brian Duguid

On 2/15/2020 at 3:22 AM, Sir_Godspeed said:

The 1620s are so jam-packed with events that I need to really read up on the timeline of events someday, as character are jumping all over the place constantly in my mind. Been a while since I read King of Sartar, but it is of course intentionally obtuse, so not sure how useful it is for this sort of thing.

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

23 hours ago, Garrik said:

Also, as there are and historically have been a lot of Hsunchen in western Genertela, do the Westerners and the Orlanthi have local terms for these?

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.

21 hours ago, metcalph said:

The Serpent Beast brotherhood who might have had common myths backed the wrong side in the Gbaji Wars and ended up destroyed. 

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

2 hours ago, Garrik said:

And still I have no problem with the Uncolings' animistic belief that they are reindeer in human form.

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.

9 minutes ago, JRE said:

The main advantage of the human form is hands, that in Glorantha means magic in addition to tools.

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".

15 minutes ago, Garrik said:

I don't find it odd at all. It's animistic belief.

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.

2 hours ago, JRE said:

However we should not extrapolate too much from the Real world. God learners (our supposedlu objective exterrnal observers in Glorantha) would say that yes, the Uncolings are humans in the hsunchen tradition. But the uncolings will say, and believe that they are reindeer that can take human form. As the human form has many advantages, they spend most of the time in that form. But they are reindeers. That creates a first critical dichotomy. Either they are cannibals, or they do not eat reindeers. That would be impossible in Earth, but in Glorantha it is perfectly possible Uncolings can survive on moss, lichens, tree bark and other foodstuffs not suitable for humans. That is why they can thrive where nobody else can, as other humans do in other parts of Glorantha.

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.

2 hours ago, Garrik said:

I know GtG 21 has this sentence: 'The Uncoling reindeer folk believe that they are reindeer who just happen to be able to turn into humans.' But that is not the only notion on the Uncolings. On the same page, referring to the GtG 20 illustrations, we can also read that 'The Uncolings live in a vast tundra region just below Valind's Glacier. They subsist almost entirely on their herds of reindeer, making use of the entire animal.' And the whole Hsunchen chapter clearly describes Stone Age hunter-gatherers, not animals who happen to take human form time to time. They have clothing and weapons and sophisticated tools, like drums. Yes, they have animal companions/brothers/totems. Doesn't make them animals.

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.

2 hours ago, Garrik said:

This is very haphazard world-creation. Clearly, northern Fronela and the Uncolings require a lot more development to make these ends meet. But making the Uncolings reindeer is a ridiculous and counterfactual solution to this problem.

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.

Perhaps @M Helsdon can comment on where the idea of Hiia using a turtleshell cuirass comes from, to see if that sheds any light on a relevant legend?

Note that in Storm Tribe, the Hiia Swordsman sub-cult just "decorate their shields and armor with shells".

This doesn't answer your question but does include an image and some further information. It's associated only with the Hiia Swordsman sub-cult.

The first bit in #37 is missing a link to the Starter Set review update, I believe.

15 hours ago, Joerg said:

Hykimi is the term for the beast totem peoples in Greg's early western writings - people of Hykim and Mikyh, the beast ancestors. I'd have to check when "Hsunchen" was first used. I haven't seen "Hykimi" in the RQ3 era products (except possibly in the Troll Pak reprint).

Joerg, getting a bit off topic, but I'm interested in anything you find on this for my Hsunchen book. I have Heroes #4 (Telmor and Hykim/Mikyh cult write-ups, 1984) as the first appearance of "Hsunchen", in advance of the following year's Gods of Glorantha. The Hykim/Mikyh cult write-up there also uses the Hykimi term, to indicate cults derived from the beast ancestors, with Hsunchen as a term for the associated cultures or ethnicity. Not that there's a clear difference between the two, of course!

1 hour ago, Garrik said:

Earlier, in another thread on this forum, Joerg discussed the population density of the north Fronelan Hsunchen people. Assuming they are mostly in human form, the population density, fitted in the hexes shown in the modern maps, is definitely not boreal neolithic hunter-gatherer. It's at least ten times denser, and considering the lack of rivers and lakes for good fishing, and the lack of sea for seal hunting, it could be a hundred times denser.

At least for the Uncolings, who (believe they) are reindeer who can take human form, I think a big part of any explanation is that they are not mostly in human form. Indeed, there's very little advantage to changing into human form in their environment. 

6 minutes ago, Ian Absentia said:

I pulled the Runic associations of Hsunchen totems off the cuff -- I'd enjoy seeing someone put more thought into them.

They will be in Cults of Glorantha for the five peoples that covers (Basmoli, Mraloti, Pralori, Rathori and Telmori): not all of those are exactly what I'd expect, based on the preview I've seen. I'll have a think about the other tribes for my Hsunchen book (currently just central and western Genertela, I may include Kralorela as well if I have the energy).

13 hours ago, Ian Absentia said:

I know that we're exploring the "typical" possibilities, though, so I'd suggest taking a page from the Runic affinities.  Just as Runes are commonly associated with certain elements, objects, and actions, so are Great animal spirits.  The drum is the cross-cultural call-to-center, the spiritual heartbeat, so any shaman of any culture might receive a drum.  A tradition following an animal spirit that parallels Movement or Air (e.g. Pralori, Uncoling, Qa Ying) might receive a flute; one similar with Earth or Fire (e.g., Rathori or Hsa) might receive a bullroarer; one tied to death (the Telmori?) might get a necklace of bones or teeth.

I hope you don't mind if I steal some of this 🙂

On 2/25/2022 at 10:02 PM, jajagappa said:

Each of the hsunchen cultures (e.g. Telmori, Basmoli, etc.) are likely different, but I don't believe anyone has documented at that level.

A Pralori shaman is illustrated with a drum in GtG, of course. Bearwalkers on Jonstown Compendium doesn't mention it for the Rathori. In The Coming Storm, the Telmori shamans are said to "wear necklaces of bones", but it's not clear if that is their gift from Horned Man. The Telmori shaman Jogar Sog has some rather special drums, but he is Ituvanu so operating outside the core Telmori tradition.

Until reading this post, I hadn't even considered it for the Hsunchen book that I'm writing 🙂

6 minutes ago, Garrik said:

Quote

During the Ice Age and post-Ice Age period of the Gods War, the reindeer people east of the Oslir had a pretty gruesome notoriety, hunting other humans for food (if not for themselves, then for their herds -- --.

Where is this said?

Maybe related, probably not, but in the Book of Heortling Mythology (pg 109) the Uncolings gave "sacrifice to monsters and demons to help them survive and fight against the Vingkotlings", during the Great Darkness. Hsunchen fans may note the similarity to Guide to Glorantha (pg 693) where in the same period the Basmoli also gave "sacrifice to monsters and demons to help them survive". Something weird in Hsunchen prehistory, there.

57 minutes ago, Garrik said:

Secondly, Winterwood was not part of the White Bear Empire. So apparently the elves of the Great Tree were NOT active in this pursuit. Are elves mentioned in the WBE and in the resulting war at all?

Guide to Glorantha, text box on page 230:

Quote

The White Bear could fight during winter and was often aided by green elves and an army of shamans.

The White Bear Empire feels especially odd to me. How ever many Hsunchen tribes it did or did not unite, it controlled a huge amount of territory (1450 ST map in GtG), including the lands of almost all the non-Rathoti Fronelan Hsunchen (the exception being the Rinkoni, who now live on the southern edges of Fronela). It was aided by the green elves. They actively invaded Loskalm in 1443. Why? What did it offer a people who abjure civilisation and agriculture and who survive by hunting and foraging? What was in it for the elves?

Best place to ask that one is the Jonstown Compendium Creator's Circle group over on Facebook. There are a few fonts that are popular and/or match what is used in official Chaosium RQG publications  (I've just stuck a load of Atlantis Grunge into the headers on the book I'm working on), and cost for a license is generally not excessive.

17 hours ago, Garrik said:

I'd be inclined to think that the Uncolings have been there all the time, from before the Dawn to the present. But on their own, they do not produce "big power" political organization. Possibly their 'ranger' lifestyle and the meekness of their companion animal doesn't lead into durable tribal organization that can claim and defend land.

The Uncolings believe they are reindeer who can assume human form. I find it difficult to see why they'd believe that if it weren't true. I think the simplest explanation for why the Uncolings don't produce "big power" is because they're reindeer - it's not relevant to their concerns. More generally I think Hsunchen should/must have very different motivations to other humans, making things like the Eleven Beasts Alliance and White Bear Empire genuine aberrations in search of a proper explanation.

1 hour ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

with using "DEX strike rank", you (or other) may have another issue: "does mobility reduce melee strike rank or only DEX strike rank ?"

you may say, "in this case, use weapon strike rank (melee or missile)" but weapon strike rank is "Each weapon has its own strike rank listed in the melee or missile weapon tables in the Combat chapter"

This is why I prefer "DEX SR modifier". Weapon SR is never reduced. Melee SR is normally Weapon SR + DEX SR modifier + SIZ SR modifier. Saying that the "DEX SR modifier" is reduced by 1 except not below 0 then covers both melee and missile attacks.

1 hour ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

maybe change the sentence by "mobility reduces any -physical- action's SR by 1 but not below 0" 😛

So long as you don't treat "reload my bow" as a physical action, because that stay at 5 SR even with Mobility.

Thanks @Scotty, and I completely agree that's how I'd interpret it - to avoid giving excessive advantages to characters with a DEX SR modifier of 0. But it's not 100% clear from the spell description that this is how it's intended to be read, because of the use of the term "strike rank" to mean two different things in the game. This is perfectly illustrated:

4 minutes ago, Scotty said:

To clarify "and reduces their strike rank by 1". So DEX SR4 will become DEX SR3, moving them up the table one step.

But it doesn't say anything about DEX SR, it says "their strike rank", which can be read as allowing a reduction to the actual SR an action occurs on e.g. DEX SR 0, unprepared bow, normally fires on SR5, which becomes SR4 if the Mobility spell description is read in a different way. I think the word "their" is being asked to do way too much work 🙂. A relatively simple clarification (for people like me who evidently read far too much into this) would be "and reduces their DEX strike rank by 1, but not below 0".