svensson

😁

A cenote [sen-oh-teh] is a terrain feature of Central America where the local limestone soaks up all available water. Because of this, there are no streams in the area because the water is collected in underground reservoirs. What often happens is the roof of a close-the-surface cenote is worn thin by time and erosion and will collapse into the cave underneath, creating an open well. That is why you have that lighting effect.

An amazing image came across my feed today Suytun Cenote, near Vallalodid, Yucatan, Mexico Anybody seeing an Uz or Water cult ceremony here?

And getting back to the point of the thread... Anybody seeing Sun County in these? A desert fortress town, CGI by Stephen Dove

Building on @Darius West's comment, Um, isn't corporatization bringing some of Cyberpunk future nihilism into our society now? And how much worse will it be for our children. As for Marx/Lenin/Stalin/Maoism's fears of capitalism, THEY wrecked their own environment just as badly as the capitalist West did theirs. The cleanup that Germany had to undertake in the former DDR after unification was mindblowing [unsecured nuclear reactor waste, for example] and the US paid for a lot of that cleanup [roughly 1/3 the total costs]. And there are entire cities in Russia and China that, were they in the West, would have been condemned and leveled as a hazmat site [Magnitogorsk, Russia for example]. So I think it's a misnomer to call the whole cyberpunk genre a nightmare of the Communists when it was the Communists that created a far nastier dystopia in their zones of control.

There's Buddhist v. Hindu v. Sikh violence today in India. Something we all need to remember is that extreme belief [in anything, but in this case religion] and violence go hand in hand. Groups of Humans are not all that different from the monkey troops we are descended from... we divide the world in to Us [my people] and Them [whoever the Hell those people are over there] and it is our instinct to compete with and dominate them, just as they are driven to dominate us. The world is filled with finite resources and the more I have, the less you get. Have your beliefs, but remember that the other guy has the right have his as well. And your vote counts for precisely the same amount that mine does.

Switching gears a little bit, this interesting article just popped up on my feed... "Eating Kosher in the Ancient World" https://getpocket.com/explore/item/what-archaeology-tells-us-about-the-ancient-history-of-eating-kosher

I've looked and have not found an MSRP for the God of Glorantha series of books. Has that been announced yet? If so, where can I find it and if not do we have an ETA on that information? The 'Minister of Finance' would like to know 😁

Your points are well-taken, Sol, but it must be said that most of your points are historically 'normal'. Hunger/Thirst, unemployment, population migration, a trapped underclass, etc. have all been conditions that have existed since forever. It should also be noted that more food and more clean water have been available than ever before, but population growth has exceeded those gains by a large margin. Add to this the politicization of want... where hunger and thirst are being used as methods of control... that we put a modern spin on it. It is the part where technology isn't solving the problems, it's contributing to them that we reach the 'dystopian' levels.

@mfbrandi I think when you get right down to it, most of the street-level believers of any faith are 'just plain folks'. They're grounded in the reality of holding jobs, raising kids, and figuring out what's for dinner. They're not involved in religious politics [theological or temporal] because their day to day lives keep them firmly grounded in the world of the possible. I know several Sikhs and Bahai'i that are very much like the Jains you describe, plus of course the local menu of Abrahamic faiths. It's when money and power get involved that almost every believer's Achilles heel get exposed and they turn into doctrinaire jerks.

This image, from wikipedia commons, just came up today and seems singularly appropriate to the discussion. Aerial top-down view of the Central Shrine of the Somapura Mahavari temple complex, Naogaon Bangladesh. World UNESCO site 1985

I'll have to take a look at that.

Interesting idea. Maybe, but if so that hasn't been revealed to us yet. But then, everybody's Glorantha is different than everybody else's.

Half-trolls [Pertereg] show up quite a bit in MERP sources and a lot of follow-on creators and interpreters kind of ran with that. MERP described them as smart as Uruk orcs [which were a different species of ork, not a tribal name] but larger, stronger, and not susceptible to sunlight like the Cave and Stone trolls were. Like the Uruks, these were wholly the invention of Sauron and not Morgoth.

I like to use photos to illustrate scenery for my faux-Atlantis game, especially to give a sense of technology and architecture. Some of the photos from my illustrations folder

There has always been a certain pendulum in the public perception of 'the future' that is reflected in that culture's art. Just look at some the letters written by monks at the turn of the Millennium in the late 900s and the similarities between those and and the media of 1990s. Since about 1990 or so, the average person in the G-8 nations [the people that produce the culture-influencing art, the people that run the internet, the people that are writing the historical record] feels that corporatization and technology are devaluing everything that makes us human, that for every advance in technological capability there are two steps backwards in our appreciation for literature, poetry, and art. People are worried that they'll be replaced by AI's and robots in almost every sphere of human endeavor, from art to sex. And no one with the power to effect things even seems to care. If it'll make them money, they'll do it and damn the consequences.

Well, as freeform HQ's go, that's actually a really good one, one of the better one's I've read come to think of it. It deals with God-Time myths, the 'Stafford-logic' of Glorantha, the malleability of Water as an element.... Yeah, that was good work.

@hipsterinspace Thanks for the link. That makes for interesting reading. The Q&A supports my contention that cleansing a being of Chaos is hugely difficult because it changes their basic nature at the most primal and basic levels. Though not entirely the way I originally conceived it.

I have absolutely no doubt that there are Chaos cultists, including Mallians, in New Pavis. I don't see them as a large group or organized enough to be of much harm, but they are present. With a charismatic and intelligent leader, they could really cause a lot of damage, what with the Lunar suppression of Urox/Storm Bull, but such a leader does not seem to have arisen yet.

Do you have a source for that, Sol? I'd be interested in reading that.

Well, I know that a beast raised to sentience by Alter Creature keeps their Beast Rune as their Form. I'd have to re-read the spell definition to find out what other Runes they might acquire and if those runes are influenced by the caster of the Alter Creature. For example, if a Lunar with a primary Moon Rune casts the spell, does the beast also gain the Moon Rune as well? And another curve ball is herd-men. They keep their Man Rune, obviously, but what others might they affiliate with if given intelligence? Earth maybe? My main point here is that no other magical procedures other than Cleansed One and KL Adoption Rite actually change a being FORM rune... the very basic nature of a being's concept of self. KL Adoptees certainly keep their Man Rune, but they see themselves as racially Uz forever afterwards. Alter Creature raises INT and CHA to sentient levels, but the recipient still maintains their basic Runic Form. But the 'Cleansed One ritual' can remove the Chaos Rune from a BROO. Now, I would suppose that such a broo would remain in the shape of a broo, but all Chaos advantages would be removed. They would probably remain a hermaphrodite [such people are wholly natural, after all]. But the broo's concept of itself as a being in Glorantha would be changed on a basic level.

I've been greatly enjoying the two installments of @Ian A. Thomson's Pavis 1619 series. There's a lot of interesting, quirky, and fun ideas in it that will probably become part of MGU. I have a question about it though.... I LIKE the shamanistic turn that the Zola Fel cult takes in the books but I'm wondering if the Cleansed One subcult is going to be addressed or was it purposely avoided? You have to admit that a subcult that can purge the Chaos taint from a worshiper would be a Pretty Big Freaking Deal [tm]. Insofar as I know, this is the ONLY ritual/HeroQuest/whatever can actually remove the Chaos Rune from someone's being, from their Form. The only other ritual that I know of that has similar power to so drastically alter a being's very nature is the Uz Adoption Rite of Kyger Litor.

IMGU, those points don't happen all at once. They happen at a 1 point per year rate up to the max of 4 free. My reasoning is this: - Humakt only has one source for spell-teaching, the Swords that lead the cult. There is no priestly or shamanic support for these tasks. And spell-teaching is a major activity for Swords, but that's in addition to running a mercenary hall, leading the temple company in battle, and skill training. - It requires the initiate to show a devotion to cult of Humakt, the Runic ideals of Death and Truth, and to the temple hierarchy. So the only way that a starting PC would get all 4 free points of Bladesharp AND the 5 additional points of Spirit magic is for the PC to have initiated into Humakt at age 15-16... Humakt being their first cult. [IMG, I allow PCs to initiate into a second cult at age 20 if they sacrifice the point of POW - - they get 1 RP in the second cult, but no other training or magical benefits until they've adventure for a year]

Given that much of Humakt's reason for existence [and an awful lot of his magic] deals with his Truth Rune, 'honesty' and 'honor' are closely intertwined in a Humakti context. Every deity in Glorantha knows when their worshipers of Initiate rank or better is being 'honest' with cult duties. If you go on a spending spree and buy unnecessary things the day before your cult tithe is due, it will adversely effect your relationship with the deity. There are many ways that this can play out in game. Perhaps it's a 'come to Orlanth' talking to by your local priest. Perhaps the PC is required to put in an extra week of cult service. Perhaps it's your next Rune spell casting becoming a one-use spell. Perhaps it's being briefly visited by the cult's spirit of reprisal. But if a PC makes a habit of being duplicitous with their cult they can expect to automatically fail any test of holiness to be promoted in the cult at the very minimum.

That was my intention for the rule. The idea was to air grievances in the open and reduce feuds. You're right to say that one of the aspects of secret murder is lying or not admitting your deeds, the holmgang rules were designed to recognize that Norse culture was a violent one, that some grievances could only be settled in blood, and that feuds and weregeld claims against a whole clan for the actions of one man were counter productive. By bringing those grievances out into the open and settling them in an open and witnessed manner, there was less likelihood of generational bad blood.