mfbrandi

Except that it is OK for a player to be more “enlightened” (even though most uz hate the expression) than their human character.

So — per the Prosopaedia — they have similar constituencies: [W]idely worshiped by the peasantry — Gerendetho, p.45 God of peasants and … the personification of the common man. — Lodril, p. 78 [H]is worshipers are … the working people of the plains. — Pamalt, p. 97 So if we view Pamaltela as hot and tropical — with a daily but not an annual solar cycle — we would see Pamalt as “really” a solar/fire deity, but the ruler of and the life of the earth. This fits with both Pamalt and being sons of and with Genert being the old (northern) sun. Thus Pamaltela gets cast — by Pamalt worshippers, at least — as a continent in which the pre-Time patriarchy was not overthrown? Was it that the earth in the south was not chafing under her son’s rule (Lodril being a son/husband relatively easy to live with) or that he had acquired enough and to keep his seat of power? Or perhaps the earth was cautiously experimenting with counter-coups — easy does it: one continent at a time. In Genertela, was the rivalry between “brothers” and for the »cough« “affection” of their mother spontaneous, or was she trying to shrug off the rule of fire by beguiling an element of much bluster but little intellect? I wonder how that is working out for her: perhaps Old Windychops makes a better summer husband (when he is largely absent) than the new-but-not-necessarily-improved sun, giving Ernalda more power for part of the year, but at the cost — perhaps no cost at all! — of spending the winter underground, where it is nice and cosy, sharing a hearth with a fiery son/husband. Perhaps the climate experiment is working out. Perhaps it is just as well that Orlanth is notoriously unable to tell when his “wife” is missing. Or — as always with these top-of-the-head rambles — not.

I danced in the morning when the world was young I danced in the moon and the stars and the sun — Sydney Carter (to the tune of “Simple Gifts”) SC bridges any gap between CW’s dancer and another. How do the Mostali feel about a dwarf symbolising spritual ignorance? Williams, the Golden Dawn et al, and Shiva (the dreadlocked mystic) all seem to point in one direction, and the RG dances like that, too. I like to think the Arkat–Nysalor showdown was a dance-off.

Depends on your tolerance for Christian fantasists — with “attitudes of the time” as we say — so don’t consider the mention as an unqualified recommendation, but I dare say Greg was aware of him and his dancing gold figures. @scott-martin is a better source of information than I will ever be. CW was an influence on M. John Harrison, apparently.

Whenever you mention the Gold Wheel Dancers, I think of the Thoth tarot. And there is always Charles the Inkling with his golden dancing Major Arcana. It is the sort of thing that can be as bonkers as you want it to be … not that it necessarily should be completely gonzo.

“So I am the postman? Cool!” “No, sorry, you are the (regrettably bloodstained) letter.”

It does (Scenario One), but I reckon it is also possible for there to be entirely independent cults of a deity not funnelled through a “unifying” übercult (Scenario Two). No?

IMHO, this is often a good way to look at myths, but — again, IMHO — I don’t think we should think of it as poor history or worse science. The point isn’t to look for true causes, rather it is to look for a satisfying story that “fits” the current facts: the right myth is the one that makes people think yes, that is why!° But the feeling of satisfaction is no measure of truth — no way to do science or history. Myth is none the worse for that. People in ancient cultures may not have had history and science as we understand them, but they weren’t idiots, and I find it hard to believe they used myth as a half-arsed drop-in replacement, though smarter people than me — there are billions — have disagreed. (Some like to say that myths are true but don’t give the facts, but that leaves us with having to swallow p & ¬p, due to contradictory “true” myths. It is only a game, so let’s not try to rewrite logic just because “truth” is a prestigious word.) ——————————————————————————— ° If this seems like it is stolen from Wittgenstein on psychoanalysis (he didn’t consider Freud to be doing science), well …

So here’s the thing: we have old Charlie Williams bobbling about between A E Waite and T S Eliot, and: Williams departs here from the quasi-unitarian theology of Many Dimensions, a novel built on Islamic lore. In this more Trinitarian work, which even devotes a scene to a choral performance of the Athanasian Creed, the Fool is specifically God the Redeemer, dancing with God the Creator — signified by the arcanum of the Juggler. — Barbara Newman, The Fool’s Dance: Finding the Still Point in The Greater Trumps So in CW’s world, card zero of the Major Arcana is JC without the beard. But this is where Eliot got “at the still point, there the dance is,” which already reminded me — if no one else — of someone dear to us all [spoiler]. Now: The Greater Trumps (1932) introduces the “original” Tarot pack (Williams knew its reviser A E Waite through the Order of the Golden Dawn) and a set of golden images corresponding to the Cards, all magically dancing except for the Fool — whose stillness, however, appears to a seer’s eyes as motion so rapid as to be omnipresence. — Dave Langford, The Encyclopedia of Fantasy So how would we inscribe all this in Gloranthan terms? Surely, . And if we consider that the Fool sits between the destruction of the old world and the creation of the new and is numbered zero, are we mad to think of and/or/as the Void (rather than, say, the scab)? So this is the plan, we take down that cross-shaped fellow looming over Rio and erect a statue of Krarsht the Redeemer, “a princess of the other world on her travels through this one.”° We can easily crowdfund 600 tonnes of concrete, right? Is this all just coincidence? An occult pursuit of a joke or a grudge? Perhaps the important distinction is not between Cosmos and Chaos but between will (the Magician) and surrender (the Fool). ——————————————————————— ° As Waite didn’t quite say in his Pictorial Key (p. 76).

If Androgeus is self-fertile, possibly both. Then everybody is happy, right? 😉

If we view Storm Bull as father and protector of the herds, he failed his beast children and the land. Under cover of Darkness and war, his son Waha staged a coup (aided by Tada, who buried Eiritha): where once the herds were free people, now they are slaves of their predators, the humans: Death was fooled, but since that time Eiritha may never again walk freely upon Prax … Neither parent god could return to the place where Waha taught. Instead people learned the worship of the daughters of Eiritha, called the Herd Protectresses, and of Waha, who knew the secrets of the Founding Spirits of the tribes. — Cults of Prax Classic, p. 27 So all the old guy can do now is sit in the Storm Hills and talk about back in the day when he killed his brother and kinda–sorta fought his nephew to a standstill. Accounts — it seems — vary: His unearthly task was awesome for even a god, but he succeeded and sent the Devil plummeting to death. — CoPC, p. 12 The effort nearly slew Storm Bull, and he could not finish off the helpless Devil. Storm Bull dragged himself from the still raging battle, and hid in the distant Storm Hills. — CoPC, p. 18 In the latter version, he could only summon the Block thanks to power supplied by Eiritha, but one wonders whether even that is wishful thinking and the collision of Devil and Spike fragment was simply a case of opposite poles attracting. However, if we allow that Storm Bull pinned a still-living Devil to the landscape, that fits nicely with this passage: Following the departure of light came the Greater Dark, when Fear and Death began openly seeking victims among the immortals. Heedless of the results of his aiding the forces he wished to conquer, the Storm Bull was headmost in combat, and introduced Death to his people when he slew vile Ragnaglar with his horns of iron. But even with such victories the god could not stop the devastation of the land caused by the coming of the Devil. — CoPC, p. 18 By reacting with fear and violence himself, Storm Bull ensures that they will be problems ever after for his people? The actions of the various Storm brothers bring about the world of Time, which world must include Death and Entropy ($5-dollar euphemism for Chaos) and does include an awful lot of fear. Again, the Devil is part of the landscape, now, and Storm Bull did that. Where the Devil is killed, the synthesis in the Underworld is facilitated; in the version where he is not, the synthesis can be seen in action by anyone getting too close to the Block. SB killing the Devil can be part of the Net myth, or his fighting the Devil to a standstill can be an alternative to it … or an echo of it. Orlanth kills Yelm; SB wounds Lodril. Truth-runed Dayzatar (loses Fire) and Humakt (loses Storm) are aloof. Parallel trios of brothers/fragments. Consider also this from The Book of Drastic Resolutions: 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 What then is the difference between the Storm Bull and his nephew, Wakboth? Both are last ditch measures taken by Cosmos to protect it from the Void? But the author of Drastic Resolutions was a lunatic, right? RIGHT? 😉 But maybe this is all Wahaist propaganda — think of the way Yelmites are happy to portray Lodril as an idiot dragging his dick through the dirt. In Prax, the new regime is happy for the old patriarch to be painted as no better than the psycho bikers who are steered toward the tattered remnant of his cult in the hope that their lives will at least be short — “Dorastor is that way. Go. Be glorious.” And maybe — just maybe — Waha is the son of Storm Bull and Eiritha only in the sense that he usurped them; it is a move to claim legitimacy. (But see also Oedipus and Laius — I have never liked the way Waha looks at Jocasta Eiritha. And would you ask a Zeus-worshipping society for a character reference for Cronus?) Enough witless — even by my low standards — rambling for one day. [All clod-hopping bold emphasis in quotes is mine.]

Sorry AFK. Just as Jörg said. The thing about such gifts is that the original owner may someday reclaim them. When you heal the Halfbird, the eye will pop right out of the PC’s face and go “home”, right? (Principle of the conservation of magical items or something.)

“There is no difference between Chaos and Cosmos? Now, I have to kill everyone. I love my job!”

Sounds a bit Corum. Just needs the claw of the Halfbird to do a bit of summoning?

Of course — just trying to put an upper limit on it. 😉

Interesting … Jörg’s “bare arms” made me double-take, too, but it does match the source. If the original wasn’t a typo, presumably the idea is that swords will not be unsheathed — no naked blades — but that doesn’t work so well for other weapons. Not bearing — carrying — arms is more pacific, but is it ever going to happen? Everyone carries a knife (which can make a horrible mess), even if they park their spear or maul at the door, right? (Come to that, they might even legitimately bare it.) I don’t presume to know just what guests have to promise not to do with weapons.

Well … Comparative sizes of Quetzalcoatlus northropi (2.5 m tall at shoulder; 250 kg estimated mass); the author (1.75 m total height, 65 kg measured mass) and Giraffa camelopardalis (2.75 m tall at shoulder; measured mass 636–1395 kg). Scale bar represents 2 m. — Mark Witton, A new approach to determining pterosaur body mass and its implications for pterosaur flight Roughly speaking, the pterosaur is one quarter the mass of the giraffe — with no magic and fully fleshed, so “half” a flying-type creature might be quite light, even if fairly tall.

Well, I don’t know: what are the rules around accepting hospitality? If x, y, and z, the potential host has to offer it, but when does the potential guest have to accept (on pain of breaching the code)? The powerful don’t necessarily want to be de-fanged by becoming guests. If the tax collectors turn up with an army or the cops arrive looking for a suspect, what tools does the receiver of the unwelcome attention have to manoeuvre them into a safer — though doubtless not entirely safe — guest–host relationship?

Yes. In your example, we have a boastful guest who seems to have little but his boasts — so the host and the host’s other guests should probably tolerate and even indulge the annoying guest. If the PCs are the hosts, it becomes a test for them (and an entertainment for the players). It could be spun as “entertaining angels [gods] unawares” with possible rewards for imaginatively virtuous/compassionate PC hosts — dispensed by Odd, not Hordi? If inspiration strikes, you could have other NPCs to test other aspects of “good hosting.” Too Tricksterish? Quirky hosts: like the Green Knight? (Also a guest, of course.) I don’t mean to suggest you haven’t thought of all this already.

IIRC, the fungus “eats” the cicada’s reproductive apparatus — the back end of the cicada is just fungal spores on a stick, but the bug is so high it doesn’t notice — so only the fungus gets reproduced. Wolfhelm won’t live to look back and laugh about it … and now maybe you are infected, too. It definitely has Treehouse of Horror potential. 😉

Fungal infection is not always subtle, of course. Don’t take my word for it, ask a cicada. A cicada-infecting fungus produces drugs that make the insects literally mate their butts off. Massospora fungi make either a drug found in hallucinogenic mushrooms or an amphetamine found in khat leaves, plant pathologist Matthew Kasson of West Virginia University in Morgantown reported June 22 at the ASM Microbe 2019 meeting. The fungi may use psilocybin, which causes people to hallucinate, or the amphetamine cathinone to suppress cicadas’ appetites and keep the insects moving and mating even after they lose big chunks of their bodies. The finding marks the first time that researchers have discovered a fungus, other than mushrooms, producing psilocybin, and the first organism outside of plants to make an amphetamine. — Tina Hesman Saey, Science News (June 25, 2019)° I like to think of it as Mee Vorala thumbing her nose at Uleria. ————————————————————————————————————— ° See also the Guardian and Kew sites (and doubtless many more, but you get the idea).

Why do Gloranthans hate Chaos, and why are there crazily purposive illuminati? Well … After a while, though, we lost interest. And there were several players who explicitly said that “knowing that the dungeon was random” was kind of killing the experience for them. There’s a desire to believe that there is a design behind things even when there isn’t, and when your nose is rubbed in the fact that it’s just dice determining what you find, that definitely turns some players off. — L J Tankersley, The Alexandrian Cast this as character attitude to the world, not player attitude to the game. Cannot cope with the fact that meaning cannot be inscribed into the nature of the cosmos? To beat la nausée, invent a purpose and then chase it so hard that you forget you just made it up. Someone having a dig at existentialism? Stumbled across the quote above while thinking about an apology to @Erol of Backford for all the goats. Library research as depthcrawl (cheap till tomorrow). When the scrolls reach critical mass, doors open into unimagined stacks, and … The Stygian Library is a creepily genteel dungeon set in an infinite extradimensional library. Each expedition generates its route as it explores, resulting in new locations being discovered with every visit … It's a big spooky library full of dangerous knowledge, spiritual automata and ghost-fueled computers. All information conspires to the condition of Krarsht, as we had long suspected.

Couldn’t the PCs’ trip itself be the initiation? Navigation problems, temptations to abandon the trip part-way (straying from the path), opportunities to talk their way out of trouble, perhaps a chance to arbitrate a third-party dispute along the way, and temptations to soft-peddle or blurt the news (rather than doing it sensitively and fully) — it all sounds quite Issaries. Dress some of the incidents along the path in plausibly deniable supernatural drag. Have his companions see that look in his eye. If it is news of a recent death, you can maybe drag in Issaries’ psychopomp aspect — the would-be initiate (but no one else) seems to see the dead person walking with them? (If there is a chance to take some small package of trade goods to Clearwine on spec and offload it at a profit — but that is probably too on-the-nose if made much of.) The character doesn’t have to understand what is going on at the time, but when the trip is recounted to the father, one or both of them will understand, and the father will be able to put the finishing ritual touches to the experience (which touches, in themselves, will be unimportant to describe in detail). Probably, I am just being really dim, and you had already assumed all of that but needed more.

An aside, safely ignored:

Finally, the explanation of the awfulness of Orlanthi poetry: mean, lazy guests. You start by offering ten lyric odes; your host decides that is too poor a gift, so you offer nine, instead; by the time you have been haggled down to no poems, everyone is happy. If too much drink has been taken, politeness breaks down, and some kind of performance occurs — the horror! If you bid up, weapons seem to leap to hands. It is notable that the greatest gift is silence — the great dormant and impersonal force containing everything within it, the wonder of the universe. (Tricksters claim that Orlanthi poetry is less than nothing, formless beyond emptiness, but no Orlanthi listens to them. A Kralori visitor may raise an eyebrow or scowl.)