mfbrandi

I wonder why it is always pitched that way. We could have said that before Umath, you were OK if you lived under the earth, deep in the sea, or on the other side of the sky, but that otherwise you were screwed — no place for the bats, the deer, and so on. Air’s separating sky and earth could have been pitched as a great act of altruism (Shu is a god of peace). Has Orlanth — the wet, fiery, blustering, thieving murderer — “infected” Umath (who wanted to be more like Entekos)? Have the Orlanthi made air into storm, the better to suit their own culture? Or … ? 😉

Is this perhaps the crux of it? Ignorance is an absence — of true or right belief (attitude) — but impurities are a presence, although a wrong or undesirable — a disordered — presence. (A disease is a disorder.) In Cosmos, there is stuff, but it is rightly ordered stuff. Cosmogonists may cleave more to one question than the other (though I guess they needn’t): why is there “rightness” (order) rather than “wrongness” (disorder)? why is there something rather than nothing? Corresponding to these questions are competing notions of the “C” word: wrong or disordered existence no existence For ideological reasons, some (Maran Gorites, maybe) will not want to associate Chaos too closely with Disorder, but others (dragons, perhaps) will not want to equate it with the Void. So equivocation and confusion reign. (Both/and would upset even more factions.) When order is absent but stuff is present, you may get a tumour (a “chaotic feature”) or a “chaotic creature” (a “wrongness” in and of the world). But there is also “a hole in reality, a hole in existence … the absence of an underlying actuality.” Is a gap where there might have been stuff — “right” stuff — itself an example of wrongness, or is it just that the stuff arranged around the “hole” is disordered? If some examples of “reality failure” are wrong, should we conclude that they all are? If reality failed entirely, would that be the ultimate wrongness — although there would be nothing to be disordered?

Perhaps illuminated Yelm thinks that getting shanked by stupid, violent, uncultured, “demonic” Orlanth was the best thing that ever happened to him — he underwent spiritual development, and now he balances the powers of Life and Death. In the short term, getting stabbed sucked, but taking the long view, Yelm’s murder was part of the creation of the world we all know and love. Attitudes to Orlanth may be a bit like attitudes to Seth — if Seth hadn’t killed Osiris, Osiris wouldn’t have become ruler of the Underworld (a necessary part of the solar cycle). At some points, the Egyptians saw Seth as violent and unruly but necessary and a fighter against Apophis/Chaos, but later perhaps saw Seth as more and more like Apophis, an enemy of good order. Paralleling the slide in Glorantha from détente at the dawn to the Hero Wars at the end of the 3rd Age? (Going too far to see the RG as a bit like Isis — putting one over on the sun god, sometimes — and the Red Emperor as her son Horus?) I do wonder whether any of Humakt (Lord of Terror #1), Yelm, and Sedenya really think Chaos can be controlled or domesticated — perhaps they have just made their peace with what cannot be controlled or eradicated. People running the Empire might think they have Chaos (and various subject peoples) under their thumb, but it may be that the delusion of control is an occupational hazard for imperialists.

How about giant slarges? All female. Don’t mate. As reptiles, they might have an affinity for . Everybody loves a scaly 8' axe maiden, right? I have a feeling that Pamaltela might lack a Babeester Gor equivalent — if there was no winter/earth death, no birth of Babs from “dead” Ernalda–Faranar? — but they are individualistic and surely some would travel in search of exotic religious kicks.° I guess I like the idea of a reptilian axe maiden as she would be no more “unfeminine” than a “normal” giant slarge, from a human POV. ——————————————————— ° In contrast, Maran Gor–Famorde seems easy — and the dinosaur fetish will be BAU. Yes, I think slarges in these earth cults is unlikely to be canon, but that is OK.

Short answer: it is complicated.

One of the truly great writers in my not-at-all-important opinion. I only heard of her because Moorcock dropped her name back when I was a teenager. Luckily for me most of her stuff came back into print in paperback in the 1980s thanks to the Women’s Press SF line. Sadly, mostly known in academia and by other writers — Michael Swanwick said she kept everyone else up to the mark — I sometimes fear. Not a lot of it is directly applicable to Glorantha, of course. Alyx has some sword & sorcery. Extra(ordinary) People has Vikings. And Chaos Died is psychedelic and gets its title from a great quote from Arthur Waley’s translation of Zhuangzi: The eye is a menace to clear sight, the ear is a menace to subtle hearing, the mind is a menace to wisdom, every organ of the senses is a menace to its own capacity … Fuss, the god of the Southern Ocean, and Fret, the god of the Northern Ocean, happened to meet once in the realm of Chaos, the god of the centre. Chaos treated them very handsomely and they discussed together what they could do to repay his kindness. They had noticed that, whereas everyone else had seven apertures, for sight, hearing, eating, breathing, and so on, Chaos had none. So they decided to make the experiment of boring holes in him. Every day they bored a hole, and on the seventh day, Chaos died. I can see peace-loving Nysalor riddlers and White Moonies telling that story — possibly against the Empire, but doubtless they would find other uses for it, too.

Although about a third of them are “mostly harmless,” and some are just common sense: never trust a thieving, murdering Orlanth worshipper celibacy in Fire Season, ’cos it is Too Darn Hot: According to the Kinsey Report, ev’ry average man you know Much prefers his lovey-dovey to court When the temperature is low But when the thermometer goes 'way up And the weather is sizzling hot Mr. Gob for his squab A marine for his queen A G.I. for his cutie-pie is not They are singing it in the ranks, I swear. And now they have reverse engineered that medicine bundle, there is even a valve trumpet solo.

My immediate thoughts were divergent: a giant in a rubber suit having the worst acid trip ever a dinosaur of very modest proportions — six feet long, tops — who warps space around her: cities are shrunk down to tiny size as she approaches — think Braniac and Kandor — and stomped by oh-so-delicate feet; after ゴジラ has passed, the landscape reverts to normal size, revealing the full horror Surely, we could fit the latter into Pamaltela.

I love this one. It does cry out for the players to be the Chaos heroquesters, of course. No fun otherwise. Keep the PC count very small and have it play out like Picnic on Paradise? Add to the hapless women some beyond useless trophy husbands who cannot even find their own arses, never mind wipe them?

Probably a hangover from the Cults of Prax wording for Yelmalio gifts — in RQ2, Farsee was a one-point spell (10× telescopic vision, switched on and off freely for four hours), not variable.

The Eurmali party line — according to the less-than-trustworthy clown who lives in my head: All reality is temporary so reality is just a thin skin of illusion — the veil of Maya — stretched over the Void Reality is permanent illusion but no illusion is permanent so nothing is real — there is only the Void Push any button to collect word salad I’m sorry, I did not recognise that input — Void! — Void! — Void! It is no wonder that some tricksters present as mentally ill — catatonic or in manic denial — but beware the ones who appear sane and anyone assuring you, “Trickster riddles and Nysalor riddles are quite, quite different.” I wonder which Gloranthan scripts — if any — distinguish between upper and lower case.

Bahubali … is said to have meditated motionless for a 12 years in a standing posture … during this time, climbing plants grew around his legs. After his 12 year of meditation, Bahubali is said to have attained omniscience — Wikipedia Possibly — only possibly! — the Jain story is a case of inversion of the Gloranthan trope: Bahubali has the fight first, doesn’t kill his brother, and then achieves “illumination” (moksha) at the end … as does his spared brother–enemy. In Glorantha, you get illuminated first, pick fights, and kill everybody … for some reason. Is this unfair? 😉

My rattly old brain seems to remember that Orlanth drank the Well of Daliath dry to get at Mastakos (who was at its bottom) — but I cannot remember where I read that — so perhaps Argrath used that bit of magic to impress GO by drinking half of a 40-foot bottle of wine. I dunno.

I don’t mind either way. I think that Sandy still had Belintar as a time-traveller in 2014 or 2015 — IIRC, it is in one of the Kraken chapbooks — but by then, it didn’t matter what he thought. Even if in the end, time travel doesn’t make perfect sense, people have an idea of how to put a time-travel story together, so if some people want to deal with heroquesting and participating in the Godswar as a game of Snakes and Spiders (Leiber’s Change War) rather than learning a new set of concepts, I think that is fine.° I don’t want to tell other people how hard to work to have fun. Chaosium publishes the stuff, and each punter can do with it what they like. No degree in esoteric studies from the University of Gatekeeping is required, right? ———————————————————————— ° Possibly because I am quite slow on the uptake myself. I can cope with: [a] the Godswar explains the present world because it happened before it, so to participate you have to go back; [b] the Godswar is not part of history (it never happened: it is nowhere on the timeline), but by overdoing the psychedelics or askesis you can imaginatively visit the myths/stories of it (just as IRL, we can), and (unlike IRL) this can have concrete effects in the mundane world — hallucination-powered magic! But I never really understood the Guide’s notion of subjective reality. One day, maybe.

I haven’t read it, but there is Blue Moon, White Moon from John Wick: A one-encounter adventure you can use to springboard other adventures or add in between longer campaigns. A new Background: Blue Moon Assassin, including new spells and magic items. Only $0.99 (for 14 pages), so maybe worth a punt.

S P Somtow (Somtow Sucharitkul for those with long memories) stood the Trojan War on its head in The Shattered Horse. Depending on your particular kinks, it may put you off Helen and/or earth priestesses. Easier than The Golden Bough: Mary Renault’s Theseus books, The King Must Die & The Bull from the Sea. She also tackled Alexander the Great. And then, again, off at a tangent: Shorter than the Mahabharata: R K Narayan’s Gods, Demons, and Others. Good for super-powered ascetics. Hallucinated Glorantha: Amos Tutuola’s My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, or Dick’s The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, or … ?

There is some “Appendix N” stuff in RQ2 Classic and HeroQuest Glorantha, but I guess they are superseded by this: The Well of Daliath: Gloranthan Readings So, with the official reading list out of the way: From Nick Brooke (his Gloranthan Manifesto is free), you can take P G Wodehouse, Asterix, and Star Wars. Although Arthurian, I would say as a film to capture the weird religion aspect of Glorantha, you couldn’t go wrong with Éric Rohmer’s Perceval le Gallois. Genius! If you are a fan of Griselda, then Joanna Russ’s Alyx stories. She has finally made it into the Library of America — and not before time. For the anthropological feel, Ursula Le Guin’s Always Coming Home — it is huge, but it can be dipped into — and maybe some Michael Bishop. For “shamanism actually works”, Rachel Pollack’s Unquenchable Fire. Nnedi Okorafor’s YA Akata books. Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities and Cosmicomics. (Calvino may even have made it into some version of the official list.) Tanith Lee — esp. her Flat Earth stories. Suzy McKee Charnas’s Holdfast Chronicles. I am currently reading Geraldine Pinch’s Egyptian Mythology: a Guide to the Gods, Goddesses, and Traditions of Ancient Egypt, and it is setting all kinds of Gloranthan bells ringing for me. “Oh, so Orlanth is kinda like Seth!” If some of these suggestions seem a little eccentric, remember that Borges is on the official Chaosium list. (Also, I am a little eccentric.)

If you are going for the alternate timeline thing, the number of (potentially) available baboons can be multiplied by the number of timelines contacted, perhaps. That is the way to boost a ritual. Of course, Monkey Kingdom Redux is likely to be established in an alternate timeline. Do the PCs who have helped out stay in Baboon Shangri-La — as righteous “shaved ones”? — or do they return to their own version of Glorantha as it careers toward apocalypse? Responsibilities at home vs. well-earned rest in a monkey utopia. If you think about it too much, you may be in danger of illumination. Or perhaps the Trans-Temporal Baboon Imperium is spreading across the timelines, establishing permanent bases in multiple ages of many Gloranthas. Who knows? Not I.

Not an original idea: let beginning characters be relatively undefined — with skill points to spend in play to buy skills they “already know”? The party is planning its first burglary and someone pipes up with, “Didn’t I mention the fact that my aunt was a top cracksman and showed me how to deal with Mostali safes when I was still in nappies? Oh, well, now you know.” [Shifts some points from free to appropriate burglar skills on character sheet.] Generous GMs can add a few bonus skill points for a particularly entertaining bit of backstory to account for the skill — makes it more fun than someone has to spend some free skill points so we can open this safe. Spend wisely, as once they are gone … Surely, it would also work as buying break-outs to keywords.

But is she a weepy goddess, or is her compassion unsentimental and dry-eyed — tough love all the way? No one likes a sentimental illuminate, but we all love Sister Xiola of the Solar Secret.

Personally, I like it, and if you like it, you should do it. You might — only might, it is not compulsory — want to set yourself some ground rules if you want to stay fairly close to canonical Glorantha, as if I have it right (always a big if): heroquesting is not itself time travel you cannot time travel to the Godtime/Godswar (but you can heroquest to it) Belintar didn’t fall backwards through time (contra Sandy P) If Glorantha in 2023 doesn’t seem especially friendly to time travel and heroquesting doesn’t use it, there is a risk of things becoming a little kitchen sinky (an arbitrary pile-up of features), but: I am sure you have your own idea of heroquesting which you know how to mesh with time travel (if integration is required) You can always use the old dodge of “you can visit the past, but it is never the past of your timeline” (e.g. as in The Female Man) The alternate past dodge makes continuity easier, and it also allows you to avoid the question of whether time really began only 1600-odd years ago. You also have the option of the players entering a fully-functional city where there ought to be only a ruin and offering no explanation of how it came to be there (and later went away again). A ghost story doesn’t have to come with a lecture and explanatory diagrams. One way or another, it will fly. Have fun! 😉

And here that is in pictorial form:

Drops of Darkness — something like Styx water? Perhaps, being straight out of Darkness — in the same generation as Styx, who precedes Zaramaka — he has no water in him (not even Styx kinda-sorta-water). I have no tear ducts, and I must weep. Lacking this outlet, perhaps he feels painful stimuli more intensely, and that is why he is such a grouch. As to whether he “needs” to weep at the Hill of Gold, I suppose it depends on whether it is his encounter with foetal Aether seen from another angle, or whether it is just a distant echo of it. Fire will only catch him out once. How does one judge without time? If he is already scarred and hideous in the Hill of Gold myth, then he doesn’t feel the need to cry (or not any more than is normal for ZZ), and it is like taking candy from a baby — been there, done that, got the scorched T-shirt. But there is room to doubt that, of course. Collecting the tears of Zorak Zoran — that would be an experimental heroquest and a half. Would the Godtime be recognisable after that? Would a weeping ZZ learn self-pity (making him even worse) or compassion (possibly improving things, but possibly holding him back from vital pitiless action)? Would Water still have the same lineage after such virtuoso retconning? These questions are above my pay grade, but I suspect even XU’s compassion is a clear-eyed, tearless one, so tread very carefully. 😉

Is that right? Maybe it is. We do have the cup from which the world was poured: . If you protest that that is life, not resurrection, don’t we think Gloranthan history is on a loop from Chaos back round to Chaos und so weiter? Is Cosmos ever poured out for the first time? JC has his graal, but note that Shiva has a goblet drum —— symbolising creation (first sound). Because of the black spot on the drumhead — presumably of “tuning paste,” as on tabla — the damaru is when seen end on — fire being the symbol of destruction at the end of a cosmic cycle. (Shiva does have “proper” fire in a left hand, of course, but it is always nice to have the Gloranthan all-in-one economy option.)

What Sten says can be true even if sometimes what is brought back is physical — Arkat, Sheng, the Bat … all worryingly similar! — all it requires is that it is possible that what you bring back is wisdom. Probably, it is better if you bring back wisdom and not an item of power — better for your spiritual development and better for the safety of the people around you. 😉