mfbrandi

The lose your fetch and stored POW for misbehaviour thing goes back at least to RQ2 (see RQ Classic p. 46), but back then the fetch was not intrinsic — an awakened part of the shaman — but a spirit summoned and allied (ibid. p. 44). The split-the-difference position would be that if no tribe or cult provided the shaman with their fetch (summoned it for them) or a sinecure, then they wouldn’t get to take it away in the case of dereliction (as there would be no tribal/cult duties to neglect but no tribal/cult benefits, either). Presumably, it would be a brave wannabe shaman who’d teach themself and summon their own potential fetch, so there is still the question of loyalty to one’s teacher, but I don’t think players would bridle at that. Of course teacher and pupil might fall out and the teacher try to remove the pupil’s fetch and stored POW, but it might be fun to play that through, rather than making it an automatic loss for the pupil — “I was but a learner, now I am the master.”

A scouse newtling with a moustache?

This is a guess, but a pavis is “a large shield for protecting the entire body” getting its name from the town of Pavia — 22 miles from Milan — and the factory making the support garments (a kind of protection for the body) is “just outside of Milan,” so maybe it is an Italian joke or just a toponym (“pavese” Englished). So maybe there is a — meta/designer-level, not Gloranthan — joke in the naming of the Gloranthan city: if the city wall was built from a giant stone corpse, rather than the large shield protecting the entire body, the large body is the shield protecting the entire city? I don’t know — just riffing.

It is not so much different complexity of source image as the effect you want. If you make all the white in an image transparent (the first — colour to alpha — method), then every bit of an image that is “partially white” (e.g. grey, but much more) will be partially transparent. Like this: Whereas the second — fuzzy select (magic wand) — method only makes the selected area transparent. So you may find uses for both or only one, depending on the exact effect you need.

The GIMP is your friend. I am sure you can manage to open the JPG in GIMP and then export the file as a PNG. The bit you have to be careful with is the background colour to alpha (transparency). Here is a quick summary of two ways to do it. Note that they give different results (as should be clear below), but you can use the simpler one if the image is going onto a white background. Use the ‘fuzzy select’ method if the image is being placed over a texture or colour and you don’t want any show-through. The graphic should be clear, but if you have any questions, fire away. Have fun!

You can definitely do a white to alpha conversion in GIMP and then export as PNG. If you are not having any joy with Oracle and Andre’s suggestions, send me a few images with your requirements, and I’ll have a go. You don’t have to commit to sending me any PDFs. It should be easy to document a workflow that’ll let you do it yourself for free. I will go and play with some stuff now.

The farmer as cynic philosopher. Hidden depths — disguised as shallowness — are what one would expect from Lodril? Probably. But presumably, Argrath–Alexander is not such a fan in his Gloranthan incarnation. 😉

Back to the duality of concepts of Cosmos and Chaos. We can maybe find some rough correspondences in Hinduism (see Wendy Doniger’s ‘Saguna and Nirguna Images of the Deity’ in On Hinduism): SAGUNA : having form, existence, qualities NIRGUNA : lacking form, existence, qualities° Doniger has the notion of a temple which is saguna (detailed, colourful, mind-blowing, worldly) in its external expression but increasingly nirguna as you move into its heart (the innermost shrine or ‘womb house’): [O]ne encounters the simplest of images in the garbha-griha … sometimes a small icon completely mummified in layers of cloth, a sinister image but one without qualities, nirguna … And although one has moved from a large physical space (the outer boundary of the temple) to a small physical space (the small cave, cool and dark, reeking of bat urine), the feeling is that one has been moving outward all the time, spiritually, into larger and larger spaces, until one encounters in the still centre the nirguna image that is the totality of the universe. — ibid, p. 155 The Lunars are totally gonna have that, right? (The headbanging, hardcore Voidjockeys may demur.) Join me in the cave for pass-the-parcel with a blue potato? ——————————————————————————————— EDIT 2023-12-05: Doniger’s introduction to the Penguin Hindu Myths doesn’t necessarily sit too well with what I say here, so she shouldn’t be taken as agreeing with my take on Chaos. As if anyone would think that, anyway! ——————————————————————————————— ° There are things which exist but lack form: the sea, a gorp, that dress you wore last night. Even an aniconic nirguna icon of a deity exists.

About as safe. There were a lot of innocent people killed in the flood, too, right? (And one feels for guilty people, too.) Well, I am old enough to remember when being an atheist child (in the UK) was a frustrating experience. If one could present an alternative religion as an excuse, one might grudgingly be let off being a Christian, but otherwise one was expected at least to pretend.° It could make one angry, cynical, and prone to overreaction. I have mellowed somewhat with age. (And I guess the young atheist’s experience varies over time and space. I don’t know what it is like for kids today.) ———————————————————— ° For example, in the 1970s, I was briefly a cub scout (family connections made it a convenient place to put me, though I was clearly unsuitable) and whilst being coached on making a promise to do my duty to god and the queen, I mentioned that I didn’t believe in the one and felt no allegiance to the other. The Akela (cub-scout leader) advised me to lie. He was a devout Christian — despite being called ‘Brian’ if we’re to stick to the Monty Python theme — and not a bad guy, but he clearly had no idea what else to say.

On the one hand, one wouldn’t want to give offence, but on the other: there is surely a long tradition of using bible stories in “popular entertainment” I don’t think Erol would have suggested it if his table would be offended at some point the players may realise that their characters are in a version of the plagues of Egypt story This last counts in favour of: lightly disguising the plagues keeping the number keeping the sequence When the penny drops, the players will form an idea of the stakes and — one hopes — take action to prevent the death of the firstborn. Of course, the death of the firstborn might be touchy for non-religious reasons, but it could be nerfed in case the players don’t prevent it (whether that should be telegraphed is a matter of judgement — Erol will likely know his players well enough). Isn’t the 10 plagues story about as “safe” as Noah’s ark? Glorantha has that (as well as stuff that I wouldn’t have done).

SIZ 4 soul waste ticks harvested — or escaped — from the Bat? I don’t know why, but I am imagining the place overrun by very small, very polite newtlings. Hordes of the things. Maybe some tribble-like reproduction gone haywire. They mean no harm, and they look up at you with big innocent eyes, but they are everywhere — how are they to be fed? And they are people, so you cannot just exterminate them like rats. Probably a terrible idea. Of course, maggots are great for cleaning wounds. Maybe some eccentric Arroin healers — or “Arroin healers,” to taste — suggest Chaos maggots as the cure for the festering condition plaguing the land. They are 100% right — if your diseased flesh has been eaten by Chaos, that is as sterile as a wound gets — but the cure has a non-zero chance of leaving a Chaos taint (because you have benefited from Chaos). Do you lose your leg to super-gangrene, or do you roll the dice for a Chaos taint? If the healers save the day, will there be a whole load of reflective survivors making illumination rolls in the near future? What kind of Chaos flies do the well-fed maggots become? Will Erica McAlister start a Chaos fly cult? (It is supposed to be clandestine, but she is so enthusiastic, she cannot help but attempt to recruit random strangers.)

“Dad” is firing blanks — a rumble made by an idiot, full of sound and fury signifying nothing?

Except in shops where everything comes in a plain brown wrapper. Free your ass … and your mind will follow. It is a harder road than Nysalor’s and Funkadelic’s. (Issaries thought it was “free your ass, and your mule will follow.” He is still protesting that the his is a great beast.)

One old take on Wakboth is that it did not come from outside: Wakboth is the Guise of the Devil — the insulation between the Devil and Glorantha. He was the ultimate scab formed by the world to protect itself from the invasion of chaos. — Lords of Terror, p.87 Doubtless never intended as gospel, but even if Thed and Ragnaglar are only figuratively its parents, that “theory” has a certain appeal, no? Can we add to the list of “chaos corrupted” all the gods twisted by their determination to fight chaos, even if many of them are not themselves chaotic? (“No” is an acceptable answer, too — one less thing to blame chaos for.)

There is a little bit about Daroria (?= Glorantha) in the Guide: See p. 314 & p. 316 Although, if you told me the second mention was a typo for “Oria” (ViTuros = Lodril), I would believe you. Perhaps a “deliberate mistake.“

Gloranthan Karaoke Yelm sings of — and for — his wayward daughter (well, we are all children of the sun): Beauty and madness to be praised ’Cause it is not easy to be brave To walk around in so much need To carry the weight of all that greed Dressed in stolen clothes she stands Cast iron and frail With her impossibly gentle hands And her blood-red fingernails Out of the fire and still smouldering She says “A woman must have everything” Shades of Scarlett Conquering She says “A woman must have everything”

We all succumb to entropy in the end. In his illuminated state, Yelm can surely make his peace with that — the Darkness held secrets and solace for him. In the meantime, he has his place of honour in the celebrated daily and annual cycles … and longer cycles, too. Only the delusional and the depressed think that the world of Time — in which every mechanism is wearing — is essentially wrong. Yelm has seen too much to be so childish. Perhaps the Mostali think that the original sin was setting the World Machine in motion at the very beginning of things — that the only way to have avoided running down would have been for nothing to have happened … ever. Perhaps. But the blueprint called for moving parts … Meanwhile, Yelm sings along with Joni: But now old friends are acting strange They shake their heads, they say I’ve changed Well something’s lost, but something’s gained In living every day (Although this is his secret favourite.)

Sure, I didn’t mean to deny that — one might expect those “pure” old fossils to be prone to angst and wallowing in self-pity as they wait in line at the STD clinic. The idea was that it might not be necessary to explain Vivamort, who we can — if we choose: I don’t want to force it on anyone — after your revelation see as the pre-Humakt state of death-not-quite-death, which to us — post-Humakt — looks odd and perverted. Application of Billy’s razor. Overtook? As in continued Arachne’s good work of reconciling opposites? Will the spider in the end eat the sun? Yelm looked very nervous when he saw Yara Aranis take down Sheng Seleris, and shuddered when he heard her remark, “And what are you, nomad, but a Loose-sun and a Fast-sun, too?” When the old lady is the spider, how do the children’s songs go? There was an old lady who swallowed the sun Perhaps it was fun To swallow the sun

This belongs in What Counts as Undead? — but they wouldn’t believe me. Vampires really should be lumped in with those superpowered yogis who take cultivating aversion to one’s own body as far down the left-hand path as it will go. Do we need a vampire/scary yogi checklist? mortification of the flesh — perfected magic powers and physical strength — check indifference to physical pain and social conventions — check polluting and dangerous — check sexual threat — check (we will avert our eyes from the varying methods of acquiring bodily fluids) militant — check (ascetic guerillas fighting the British Raj or Lunar vampire legion) a path to immortality — check “going after a kind of god one could find only by breaking away into madness and horror” — check° Of course, some people get bad PR, especially if it is written by Mahatma Guru Sri Paramahansa Shivaji. 😉 ————————————————— ° Wendy Doniger, “Assume the Position: The Fight Over the Body of Yoga” in On Hinduism (p. 118, article starts p. 116) The above cherry picks some of the lurid bits from the article’s account of the long, complex history of the various things called “yoga”.

More on Cosmos, Chaos, and the Void. WD traces the evolution of some ideas in scripture through time: The bow that Shiva uses is made of the Year, and his own shadow, the Night of Doomsday, is the bowstring, for Shiva himself is Time and Death. This is a myth of cosmic destruction by means of combining disparate elements, the mirror image of the myth of cosmic creation by means of dismemberment. To separate and put in order is to create, in this context; to cause oppositional pairs to unite, and thus to lose their separate identities, is to produce chaos and annihilation … Ultimately, however, the mythology resorts to the open-ended, ‘break-through-the-roof’ system in which it is, in fact, possible to cheat not only evil but death forever. The world to which the devotees of Shiva are translated now is an infinity of something, of the love of god, perhaps, in place of the infinity of nirvana or moksha, the Vedantic/Buddhist infinity of emptiness. — Wendy Doniger, ‘Death and Rebirth in Hinduism’ in On Hinduism, pp. 100–101

Excellent, but it does cast doubt on the deal with the Devil story. The “obvious” conclusion is that Kargan Tor’s problematic status as death-before-it-was-properly-death is the explanation of Vivamort’s “undead” condition: before Chaos reasserted itself in the world — Humakt as Lord of Terror — the vampiric state was the natural form of the dead (or the “dead”). There was always something fundamentally wrong with the universe, a half-heartedness, until Chaos and sweet oblivion came to tidy things up. Like Boulez on the problem of opera — ka-boom! 😉

OK, let’s have a go. This is me improvising (on RQ2), not holy writ. Skeletons and zombies are just corpses controlled by necromancers — “dead creatures animated by Rune magic” (RQ2 Classic, p. 97) — they have no intelligence and the magician supplies the animating POW. As such they are only a petty insult to the Lord of Death, minor undead: the person or animal has been killed, but its body is still moving around. Surely, the Humakti’s beef is with the necromancer — the skeletons and zombies are just tools to be broken.° Vampires are different (Cults of Terror Classic) : The candidate dies. Vivamort then places the now-twisted spirit of the candidate back into the body … The candidate that reawakes is now a vampire … a disjointed soul in a dead body … his soul is no longer fully tied to the material plane. — p. 48 Vampires are not subject to disease, nor harmed by poisons or Blade Venom. — p. 49 warped souls in dead bodies — p. 50 So as with zombies and skeletons, the body is dead — killed and not resurrected — but the same soul animates it as before death, only now it is a twisted soul — one “wrongly” connected to the POW economy of Glorantha and its old body. It is still plausible to say of the vampire that its spirit and body are maintained separately, that the two are not properly joined, but the vampire has (or is) a soul — in contrast with skeletons and zombies. Any good? —————————————————————————————————— ° Zombies: “Dead beings animated by Rune magic. Like skeletons, the 1 point of POW they have is what motivates them and keeps them going … They are programmed or even directed by the mage who created them, but cannot motivate themselves” (RQ2 Classic, p. 102). Whether this is also true of the dupes of Gark, I couldn’t say.

Nontraya wasn’t intrinsically or necessarily Chaotic — in your language, they became corrupted; they weren’t born that way, and with better luck might not have ended up that way — but presumably before the deal with the Devil, they were not undead, either: [T]he Devil attacked him and wounded him. The wound would not heal, and his Power drained out through it to the void. Vivamort faced not just death, but annihilation from this Chaos wound … The Devil allowed him a hollow existence. Vivamort was cut off from the mystic unity of the world and from the universal flow of Power, and cast apart from both life and death. From that agreement onwards, Vivamort would need to drain life from others and to embrace Chaos. — CoT Classic, p. 45 This would seem to say that the Devil spared Vivamort annihilation by making him undead. This passage would seem to fit with the understanding of Chaos in which it may be essentially contested, but it is to be understood in terms of wrongness — vampiric flow of POW disrupts Cosmos — and absence — POW drains into the Void. I don’t say that this is a scientific understanding, but it would seem to suit Gloranthan ideology (which does not exist, of course … and asserting that it might is wrong). So perhaps the way to determine whether Undeath is “intrinsically chaotic” is to analyse it in terms of Cosmos-disrupting POW shenanigans, always with an eye out for POW draining into the Void, of course. Likely, this will be normative, moralistic, ideological finger-wagging, but in as much as it draws out assumptions about Cosmos/rightness/Maat, it may still be instructive. Gark — for example — lures people away from the circle of life/cycle of rebirth (and so away from possible spiritual development) by doing a bait and switch with illumination and eternal apathy; how does that sit with the “mystic unity of the world and … the universal flow of Power”? (Alternatively, ask me how I learned to stop worrying about wrongness and love the Void.) Of course, this sort of cod analysis is likely to lead to conclusions such as Tapping is Chaotic — but so it should, right? And even if we »proved« (Gloranthans love that word) that all was , we know that not all is , so Humakt (an agent of Entropy himself) needn’t treat them both the same.

Spun off from Power of the Air Gods: The X can be seen as sitting between the Life and Death runes as a modified form of either: —>X<—. Not dead, but not fertile, either. The O suggests who in Glorantha may have invented the rubber castrating ring. Wrestle with with care, wannabe patriarchs: you may find that the only way to have a daughter is to get out the dressing-up box. As to whether some Light gods have been getting high on their own supply … That sort of thing?

For typography, there is always: https://practicaltypography.com/