mfbrandi

Good question. Sorry for the delay — only now had a moment to pull out the SRD and have a quick look. May as well insert the section for reference: So the difference between expected XP and the hard limit is only 3 XP. Each ability — and we expect some ability to be involved in any contest defeat, right? — or flaw can only earn you 1 XP/session, so how quickly you accumulate XP would seem to be a matter of at least these five things: how varied the GM-posed challenges are how tough the GM-posed challenges are how varied the player/character approaches to the challenges are how many abilities and flaws characters have how abilities are structured The first tthree depend on play style and the last two on how the SRD is used to build a more determinate game (perhaps), but it is all a bit ‘how long is a piece of string?’ The last maybe needs a little explanation: a keyword is an ability and presumably if an XP is gained via a breakout (also an ability) of a keyword, then it can also be said the parent ability (the keyword) earned an XP. I don’t mean you get 2 XP (you just get one), but rather that you can’t get any more XP in the session from the other breakouts of the keyword else the keyword would have earned > 1 XP in the session. That would put a brake on accumulation of XP. I assume this is the way to read the SRD, as buying breakouts as character improvements is — I am guessing — not supposed to be purchasing opportunities for XP accumulation. However, just as we could have: Detective 15 • Deduction +5 • Hard Drinking +5 … Deduction and Hard Drinking could exist as standalone abilities and thus present a possible 2 XP/session. Which would make a difference. I can imagine structuring things so the sum of top-level abilities and flaws stands in a certain relationship to the XP/session ceiling: to get the maximum XP, you need to take a kicking across most of the range of your character. For example, characters might have 4 top-level abilities (keywords + standalone abilities) and 3 flaws for a 7:5 ratio. I dunno. I haven’t gone carefully over the whole SRD in search of an answer, so maybe I have missed some key advice from the authors. If so, my apologies. Have you tried asking @Ian Cooper for his wisdom on the matter? Say his name three times, and perhaps he will appear.

I like this: We are surely meant to think that Ralzakark keeps the skin of a hero to hand to wrap around pilgrims as they bleed out. He is a thoughtful and considerate monoceros, respectful of tradition. Whether the flayed hero is dead or merely stored in salt … well, it doesn’t bear thinking about.

The secret of the light within: We see the world through a half-silvered mirror, but deep within each of us there has always been a source of light. But don’t worry, be of good cheer: Xiola Umbar found the light switch. Click! That is why she is both the mistress of the secret of the light within and the provider of the solace of the dark deep within. Without Sister X, no true darkness. Locate your own switch, flick it, and join the ranks of the extinguished. Only then will you be able properly to see the world without, the only world there is. The refulgent are dazzled by their own reflected light and so remain in ignorance. They are ever the object of knowledge, never the knowing subject. Pity the Sun its brilliance. Light is not the enemy, but it must be appropriately positioned: on the far side of the mirror. Everything in its right place. If XU found the switch, what of her brother? You may think he ate the light bulb, munching hard on glass and metal. That is not quite right: he ripped the wiring out of the wall and traced through the grid back to the power station, then he swallowed the reactor core. But does he glow? He does not. Argan Argar examined the glass and concluded that there was money in aviator mirrorshades. If he had found his inner light switch, he would probably have replaced it with a dimmer with no true ‘off’ position.

Although, as illumination seems to work fine with (we are assured) Nysalor in bits, why go to all the trouble?

No, of course not, that is a preposterous idea. Next thing they’ll be saying that Chaos was used to bring back the Sun. Oh, wait. Bad example. Forget I said anything.

Utterly unsurprising, really. I mean we are still waiting for the far more important TV competition/LARP, One Man & His Alynx: go beyond herding cats and use your cat to herd sheep — and to keep those pesky goat people out of the sheep pens.

Then go for it. And think about how the elves need the dwarves, too. Reconcile opposites and put a finger up to the Glorantha stick-in-the-muds. It is the only humane thing to do. 😉 I haven’t checked, but I am sure that at the time I was thinking of the dwarves as a Stasis cult and that they took that really seriously. Moving parts are a design flaw — flying in the face of Wittgenstein’s discussion of the faulty roller design.

Sure, but when we make deals with the Devil, do we tell ourselves “Old Nick is not so bad, when you get to know him,” or do we just think “I want this now, even if there is hell to pay later”? Self-deception enters not in thinking that the Devil is not the enemy, but in thinking that you can outsmart him or quibble your way out of damnation. “The broos will all die on the battlefield killing my enemies not theirs, so I am not really aiding Chaos.” Yeah, right! Remember also: “Now the player of the prospective multi-cult character must multiply first by his cult’s reaction to the potential new cult.” (CoT PDF, p. 89) So just to get going, you have to roll under: ((POW+CHA+(cash in lunars/100))/3)×[cult’s reaction to potential new cult] So the zero on the chart is there to tell you that you have a 0% chance of joining the “terror” cult if you are an initiate of Waha or Eiritha: you won’t get the home cult’s blessing. (Obviously doesn’t apply to Nysalor: you don’t try to join, it just happens to you.) A zero not a one, else rich Praxians could get their cult’s OK to join any Chaos cult, and I guess that didn’t sound very Orthodox Wahaism to the designers. So given that the zero is doing double duty, don’t be surprised that it doesn’t mean berserk attack without exception on all enemy cultists all the time. The Pope probably won’t say that it is fine for Catholics to join Islam, too — if they put enough in the collection plate — but that doesn’t amount to endorsing endless bloody crusade.

“Yelmalio is the Solar deity found where Yelm’s imperial rule does not reach. Associated with the planet Lightfore, his cult brings Light to the darkest frontiers, and he is found among the Lightbringer barbarians and the elves. He is known by many names, including Antirius, Elmal, and Kargzant.” — Jeff Richard “What happened at the Dawn? One version is that Antirius “chained” the Little Sun when the New Sun rose. The Yelm cult, as we understand it now, took a couple of centuries to take shape, as people discovered ways to draw magic from the New Sun.” — Jeff Richard —————————————————————————————————————————————————— So that is the official story, but we come to this thread to fold, spindle, and mutilate, right? Some favourite themes: Yelm != the OG Sun (as good as admitted in having a New Sun at the Dawn) Little Sun cults are fractious: two cults, three opinions Bringing back the OG Sun would be dangerous There is a very close bond between burning, undead, illuminated ZZ and cold, undying, illuminating YO “Lay down, stay down” is most certainly not the YOZZ motto The Sun is a dying and reincarnating god Pocket Glorantha, the bubble world The secret of the light within Here we may reign secure, and in my choice // To reign is worth ambition though in hell So the assassination of the OG Sun — with the aim of creating a pocket universe more easily dominated than the vastness of the real thing — was never meant to succeed fully: a truly dead Sun might reincarnate inside the dome, destroying the plotters’ power trip theme park. The plotters include Sedenya and Orlanth, who fight among themselves. That old drunk ham, Yelm, is brought in to play the New Sun and front the post-Dawn set-up. The New Solar Regime’s obsession with “the old days, when things were done right” is to cover for the fact everything was made up yesterday. Fear of Chaos and the Outside is the fear of the return of the repressed, the overthrown — its power hidden, for now, in Darkness. Yelmalio is kept alive and in chains as the last living fragment of the OG Sun. If Yelmalio were blown out, an illuminated vengeful OG Sun might be reborn. (Or perhaps — who knows? — reality would collapse entirely as Truth failed: game over.) Antirius != Yelmalio. Antirius is Yelmalio’s gaoler. But if Yelmalio is the last living representative of the Old Solar Regime, he is not the last active representative: undead Zorak Zoran — agonised, furious heat-without-light — doesn’t know when to give up. He will extinguish/illuminate his other half, and when they are reborn as one, how will they manifest? Will Sister Xiola — whose secret is her connection to the OG Sun; she merely pities stooge Yelm — be able to restrain them? Will they have any choice but to burn away Pocket Glorantha (Eurmal’s temporary reality ) entirely, rather than simply opening it up to the wider universe? So we begin to have some sympathy for poor confused Elmali who swear on their horses’ lives that they used to worship the Sun, although they have now had it proved to them that Elmal != Yelm. Some other Little Sun cults are flat-out “Yelmic” fronts. All are confused — why wouldn’t they be? Meanwhile XU is breeding UV-proofed trollkin in the hope that something can survive OG Sun Redux. And that is why Argan Argar — an older god than he seems — fought NSR Lodril? Perhaps, perhaps … Runic associations of the returned Sun? This is tempting:

You are probably right that it doesn’t hang together with what came before. But one makes shit up as one goes along and if one likes the beginning and the end but they don’t like each other — the serpent bites its own tail — one lazily goes the full Walt Whitman or just as lazily hides behind a blizzard of question marks. As for Trickster, if we regard that scamp as — like his pal Humakt and troubled Ragnaglar — storm-not-storm, as part of Orlanth Disintegrates (it wasn’t just the sun that went to pieces), I think you are onto something with: But that is not necessarily (just) a matter of ‘cognitive’ sense — what is true, well attested, or coherent — but a matter of what makes ‘moral’ sense or can be owned-up to without too much shame, guilt, or self-disgust. So death and the crazy idea of loosing it on the universe get hived off to the personality fragments of Humakt and Eurmal. If that is right — big if — that maybe goes some way to explaining why the Orlanth-shaped hole seems like something the Orlanthi might want to occupy. But if the Orlanthi want to grow up, they need to re-integrate Humakt, Eurmal, Ragnaglar, & company — not stopping short of the Devil. Yelm balancing life and death, and Sedenya balancing life and chaos seem at least to be talking the talk, but how many cultists walk the walk? Do we even know how? ————————————————————— NOTES (chaotically unanchored) 1. I say “Orlanth Disintegrates” but I suppose we shouldn’t give the old tosser priority. The line of descent is perhaps: —>—> A more charitable person than I might say that storm is at least a bit more together than disorder or chaos. 2. However dead one’s dragons seem, they may rise up at any time — at least while creation is ongoing.

It is no good, that subtitle has me flashing back to Doris Day. I swear she sang something like this:

To me, that is light runes held aloft — a little like these, perhaps: After the death of the OG sun, even — especially! — gardening requires Maker intervention. Don’t think of it as the plant rune, but as the grow light rune. We all have the crazed eyes of Bruce Dern, now.

Although I was — lazily, I admit — pointing to the Niger alternative of nurturing what’s still in the ground — neglected stumps and roots; seeds, too? — as a possible better bet than the brute force approach. Sun Domers split between patriarchal and elf-friend factions? Even the elves might have a split between blitzkrieg replanting and aiding natural recovery — they are both growing, right? (Even if one smacks of Mostal or Godlearnerism at its most crass.)

But won’t there be “traditionalist” Oakfed shamans who won’t be happy? (Or maybe they will: one day all this will be ours!) And if the Aldryami think it is good for the “flesh” men, won’t they be in two minds? Still, worth a try, eh?

Now this is a dumb theory: a poem about Nontraya and Ernalda: ———————————————————————————————— Gaunt, blind, lame, shorn of ears and tail; mangled, putrid, covered with worms; starved, wizened, wearing an alms bowl shard on his neck—a dog will still follow a bitch. Passion smites even those bereft of life. ———————————————————————————————— Bhartrihari, Shataka-traya, Prologue 2, trans. Barbara Stoller Miller ———————————————————————————————— Bet he was a bundle of laughs. At a dinner party, make sure you are sat nowhere near the poet.

Well, it is not gospel (and not mandated by me, either), but I will say that Issaries is the Guardian of Roads and has protective spells: create market, lock, and path watch.

As that other thread seems to have become the broo mercenary thread (and good luck to it): Why are Orlanth and Orlanthism so baffling? Is this the not-so-secret decoder ring: Orlanth is not (a) god and was never meant to be (but is possibly Rushdie’s apocryphal(?) god-shaped hole) Orlanth is (give or take) us: mortals, humanity Yelm is god, any god, all gods Everything else is in Nietzsche’s greatest hits (no deep understanding required, just bop along) Freddy’s greatest hit was, of course, this: Whither is God? … I shall tell you. We have killed him — you and I. All of us are his murderers. But how did we do this? How could we drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there any up or down left? Are we not straying as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is not night continually closing in on us? … God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it? — The Gay Science, Section 125, trans. Walter Kaufmann So we mortals killed the sun/god — just as we will kill Tinkerbell: by ceasing to “believe” — and the Orlanthi struggle to “emulate Orlanth” is the struggle to become a god. And what form do the festivals of atonement take? Why, they recapitulate their original sin by murdering god over and over again, of course. How else to become a god than hack your way to the top of a pile of corpses? That is the joy of polytheism: plenty of fresh meat. But of course, there can be only one … at most. Thus Arkat–Argrath really is the perfect type of the Orlanthi hero, because — you know — Everything Must Go. The Orlanthi project is to step into the void where god used to be. — And if there were no void? I am sure they could clear some space with their machetes. — Orlanthism is the psychotic reaction to the void: they say Orlanth is not chaos, but we are Orlanth and our religious impulse, our Weltschmerz, is our chaotic feature. I say “we”, but we are not all Orlanthi: for some of us god was never alive, never present, so there was no Nietzschean anxiety, no void needing filling, no parricide to recapitulate or atone for (or we just cannot react in any way to the blood on our hands, though it is there all the same); for others, perhaps, god never died, is alive and well and living in Poughkeepsie (or so they say). At any rate, we self-identified non-Orlanthi say we are not trying to climb that blood-slippery pole to heaven — as if that were any guarantee of innocence! I said hits, plural: After Buddha was dead people showed his shadow for centuries afterwards in a cave, — an immense frightful shadow. God is dead: but as the human race is constituted, there will perhaps be caves for millenniums yet, in which people will show his shadow. — And we — we have still to overcome his shadow! — The Gay Science, “New Struggles” Is this a blueprint for Sedenya’s overcoming Gbaji/the shade of Nysalor? If so, is this a different move than the Orlanthi one? I mean, Teelo still climbed a pile of corpses toward “apotheosis”, and Jar-Eel is still climbing them one after another, no? If we, the people, are the Unholy Trio — hmm: [1] god is dead; [2] god is alive; [3] god, schmod — is the killing of Rashoran(a) the murder of god, too? Is the Devil god’s shadow, not a literal child of Thed? Is the murder of god/Rashoran(a) — freedom from fear, remember (“Macbeth does murder sleep”) — the cutting loose of god’s shadow, the “birth” of the Devil/cosmic anxiety/the Great Fear? But are we in god’s shadow or are we ourselves god’s shadow, the God-Killer, the Black Hole? As always, the Bronze Age is a blind, a distraction, an irrelevance, mummery — Gloranthan religion is a late phenomenon, and originating in the USA, perhaps too late: Eden regained can only ever be dust — the lesson of Genert’s Garden? But as it is all so simple, so pat, it must not be orthodoxy, not truth, but just a slick fantasy and just another dumb theory.

I suppose a Flesh Man cultist might be a shaman. Flesh Man himself, though, is maybe: innocence personified god made mortal flesh — if Malkion = Christ, not (as some turns of phrase suggest) the prophet, PBUH … which might suggest a Flesh Man–Teelo Norri equivalence.

So if we are casting the Lunars as communists, I guess an ever-reincarnating Lenin is the Red Emperor (the son), Trotsky is Nysalor (the holy ghost), and Marx is Sedenya (the father)??? I can’t see the Orlanthi as the Hayekian opposition, though, as I think you are spot on with this might-makes-right take on Orlanth. Does that make Orlanth Mussolini? I can see this parallel collapsing — Glorantha’s at the wrong stage of economic development — but collapsing gloriously! Who died? If Teelo = Sedenya, I see the point: she may be breathing and walking around, but pre-ritual, she is dead (post-ritual, she is halfway back). But if Teelo is some kind of host body for the Sedenya-parasite, the emergence of Sedenya doesn’t kill the host — Teelo isn’t John Hurt’s Kane to Sedenya’s parasitoid broo–alien. Right? Or maybe Teelo is just a kid who is conned/magicked into thinking she is a goddess on earth so she can lead a revolution. But DX does get the shitty end of the stick/sharp edge of the sickle, I think. Old non-canon stuff consigned to the occlusion of the third eye box:

This translation of the apotheosis of Pompey in Lucan’s Civil War (9.1-8): —————————————————————— But his soul did not lie dead in Egyptian embers. Nor did meager ash fetter his mighty shade: he soared from the bone-fire, leaving behind half-charred limbs and demeaning pyre both: he seeks the dome of the Thunderer Where black sky is pinned to star-laden poles, in the space that spreads between Earth and the looping moon, there halfway to godhood dwell souls uncorrupted by life, fitted by fiery Virtue to bear ether’s lowest limits: later, drawn up as Spirit they join eternal spheres. Never do those coffined in gold or interred with incense enter there! — Jane Wilson Joyce ——————————————————————

On the wearing out of signs. I saw this quoted disapprovingly in a book review — the reviewer didn’t like such blatant insertion into what purported to be a translation of the Argonautica of Valerius Flaccus: ————————————————————————————— No, this isn’t the famous Cyclops; this is the other, the son of Eilatus, king of somewhere or other. The names that once had meaning are wearing away to bare phonemes. Time’s passage is stupefying, and epics, if they delay, cannot prevent forever the ruin they ought to defy. We’re nearly done. — David Slavitt ————————————————————————————— I mean, that is some kind of genius, right? Should be a set text for Gloranthan fourth wall-breaking illuminates and tricksters and for wor(l)d-weary bards everywhere.

Well, they are a tragic, doomed people, no? Didn’t I read somewhere that broo numbers are declining and have been for some time? I doubt Ralzakark (or the Wild Healer) can save them. They are going the way of the T Rex. Being tough is no guarantee of survival.

I do love this, and it made me laugh out loud, but I am a card-carrying Orlanth skeptic … and I don’t even carry my Official Coward card in case being caught with it gets me into trouble. (Remember that in the current case, we are not considering how the 7M pulled off their “partially successful” quest but considering subbing Lunar worshippers into a primarily Lightbringer-worshipping group of mortals doing an LBQ recreation/LARP (or whatever you want to call it). That may make a difference — but maybe it doesn’t, and maybe we don’t care.) I guess we can see Danfive as a Raskolnikov, a murderer who undergoes a spiritual rebirth. Orlanth is a prideful murderer who kills to show — us, daddy Yelm, wife–mother Ernalda, or himself? — that he is a Napoleon, but I never bought the idea of him as penitent. He is more of a Norman Bates faking out the psychiatrists in his blanket. (Which may give another perspective on (stabby things in slap and a skirt) Vinga as a mask of Orlanth. And Nontraya? He is more interested in Ernalda when she is dead? Yuck!) Maybe Danfive sees himself as a miserable sinner, but surely Orlanth’s attitude is “I shook hands with Yelm; I brought back the sun; you have more reason than ever now to recognise me as king of the gods!” Orlanth may have been brought low on his quest, but did he bring back humility as a new trait to incorporate into his personality? Isn’t the big O still too much like pre-7M bandit Danfive? (Didn’t we do Orlanth Penitent a while back?) Danfive may not be an official Lunar psychopomp, but his name — Xaron = Charon — and his “friendship” with Jeset say otherwise. “Gatekeeper, Porter, and Night Watchman” position him as a liminal deity, too. So isn’t DX more of an Issaries figure? Issaries who is also a guardian. Runically, I think we can see the combo as a rough equivalent of — Moon is a dynamic, spinning balance, rather than something static. the two gods already have in common, and arguably (sez I) if Issaries is a psychopomp without a Death rune, comes close to being two combined: Issaries as secret owner of the Death rune? Always display the goods to best advantage; truth in advertising be damned.

Well, that is one of the delightful things about broos: whoever you are, you can probably find a broo that looks a bit like you. They are really doing their best to blend in, but does anyone thank them for it?

Also (per this) “without happiness,” “without comfort,” and “unpleasant” — even “not benevolent”? Any of those fit the character? (The feminine “Naima” definitely sometimes has the Name-Uh (rather than Na-Eem-Uh) pronunciation. I suspect that is true of the masculine, too, but I cannot vouch for that.) Always makes me think “without expensive hi-fi”.