mfbrandi

I don’t know, but I suspect that the handling of tricksters is still in flux. We are used to them being “crazy” and outside the law, but there is also a — more recent? — idea of them as a respected 1% of the community. 1% is a big chunk of the population: in my corner of the world, Buddhism only manages 0.5% nationally (and self-declared Pagans outnumber Jains 3 to 1), although, living in the capital, I get a skewed view of this — the non-Christian major world religions being overrepresented vs. the national picture. So maybe the bond (and other drastic “solutions”) will be for the hard cases in the future — those not so much touched as battered by Trickster — with plenty of Eurmali safely loose in the community. Of course, soon the Lightbringers book will make my speculation ridiculous.

But those are typical responses of cultists on cult business, right? Even then, they might be rote/ritualised or vary from place to place. It is mortal politics. They don’t necessarily indicate magical/mythical incompatibilities — or personal antipathy between player characters. And lions and tigers might fight like cats and … err, cats? — but maybe for my Las Vegas magic act that incompatibility doesn’t matter: either one would do (and I don’t need both). I just need something big and angry to put in a cage and make go poof! Right? (By which I mean I could be wrong, very wrong.)

I like to think the Lunies were playing a long game and using the windy one and his mates as lab rats for a trial run and to prepare the ground a little. Still waiting for the final(?) reveal.

Best film review title: Scanners writhe in pain. (Budrys riffs on Linebarger.)

I don’t know though: Red Goddess —> Orlanth seems the same kind of substitution as Etyries —> Issaries and Irrippi Ontor —> Lhankor Mhy, no? The windy one and the rotating one are both rebel gods who sorta–kinda overturn the old Solar order to build up their own parts. Sedenya and Orlanth are both supposed to be fire–sky descendants, aren’t they? And in each case, that claim seems like a bid for legitimacy. There is a whiff of the outside about the pair of them. They fight not because they are different but because they occupy the same niche — and there is always the narcissism of small differences. Now, where did I put my fag papers? I have a magical test to perform.

Only me — although I may be a dimensionless point styling it out. The rest of you have at least two dimensions.

One way of looking at it would be that the Lightbringers and the 7 Mothers have a lot in common in terms of heroquesting: bring back a shattered celestial god. And one might even argue that Sedenya — the changer — sits somewhere between Sky and Storm (or that there is uncertainty as to where She sits). So subbing an Irrippi Ontor PC for a Lhankor Mhy PC, for example — why not? (META: take care if the GM likes to drive wedges between party members.) And if one is bothering to rôleplay the quest, presumably it will go off piste to some degree, so creative casting and out-of-the-box thinking may be just what you need — and more extreme than one sage for another: “Normally, one would take an x cultist for this rôle, but if we are to manage to get off the well-worn path and bring back y, we may require the talents of a z worshipper; who can we trust?” (The heist aspect of heroquesting suggests Blades in the Dark. Allow flashback improv to allow the characters to get out of situations the players are unlikely to foresee (without a lot of boring planning)? Else, if the players have a painstakingly detailed plan/crib sheet and pull off the “heist”, it could be a bit anticlimactic.) Bend the myth, twist the myth, … break the myth! I mean:

When people say chaos creatures are tormented, I guess this is what they have in mind. Still, paint some stripes on it and the Transmaniacon MC Storm Bullies will leave it alone to dread its next egestion.

Is there a Morokanth secret lurking in that joke?

Indeed. We are all closer to cardboard cut-outs than Platonic forms.

Another in my occasional series of Gloranthan Karaoke. This one almost made it into Dr Goth’s thread, but better here. Rashoran/a–Sedenya (or whoever they are today) likes a bit of Van Morrison:

The more interpretations of Yelmalio, the merrier: Brighton antiques dealer, free jazz piano player, … In that spirit, this suggestion, which can be taken as lightly as you like: In the “my name is Legion” image, you don’t have to see YO as the possessor; he could be the unfortunate possessed, with each of his soldier worshippers — and maybe each non-worshipper soldier, too — one of the host of possessing demons chattering constantly in his head (“ — it’s a gift that soon turns sour”). His power/curse is to feel for the poor bloody infantry — he is a veteran of the psychic wars. YO is so hard to knock down and keep down because for as long as even a single soldier stands, he gets up again. So what happens when the last soldier dies? Is YO finally defeated, the light of truth blown out, or is it his Obi-Wan/Nysalor moment, granting liberation and peace to this most tormented of gods? (Don’t worry, the truth-functional “or” is inclusive.) But if this deserves air time, at all, it should be as only one interpretation among many. Let us keep the gods strange, hard to second-guess, and quite unlike their worshippers. An Ernaldan is not the earth. An Orlanth fanboy is not the storm. And so — arse about face — Yelmalio shouldn’t be simply a pikeman and/or conservative farmer just because his worshippers are. My tip for all the cultists out there: don’t worship god in your own image, leave the all-too-human gods to atheistic sarcasts like me. —————————————————— ASIDE: Forget Laconia for a minute — if a soldier has bought the farm, does that not make them a zombie farmer? Maybe it is not just YO his bad self that won’t stay down as long as one soldier stands. Next time you meet a Yelmalian farmer take a close look and give a surreptitious sniff. Another indication that where you find YO, ZZ is not far behind. It is only a matter of time before we all bow down to the Yin-Yang godhead of YOZZ. See? Demons. Everywhere you look: demons!

That sounds more Oakfed. A deity to keep well away from your wooden sword.

If it were me, Goonertela. That is why I am not allowed to name things. (My suggestion for Swanwick’s Darger and Surplus in Russia book was Gorky Bark. Oddly, he didn’t go for it.) Good luck with the new stuff.

Oh, yeah, we know that guy: Carmanian? Schmarmenian! Շահնուր Վաղինակ Ազնավուրեան

But perhaps Genertela is where they started out, or at least passed through on their way from Homer to Plato and Aristotle — and then the long trudge to Frege and Russell, and then …

Or just German. I always think of the crown of Mastery as one worn by the Devil — with prongs upon which to impale its Victims. As a perverted thing, Mastery does not have the expected M orientation but the inverted W. (I always like an it’s a dead one of those joke.) Or maybe you are just seeing my anarchistic tendencies leak out: mastery —> wastery —> wastefulness. (Vastery —> Vasterie takes us to another set of scrolls entirely.) The beast is constrained by some (per)version of law in the dragonscale rune, but in truth it has escaped from its cage — savage, wild, untamed — ask any Humakti broo, or any cold equation. No scribal error, then. (But disorder is not wrong, either: from Humaktsson to born-again ZZ troll is not such a step.) Is it in any way odd that while people and gods in Glorantha have “Gloranthan” names, I cannot name the runes in any Gloranthan language? I would probably just reach for the owner’s name. Not that one would want to go the full Klingon or Silmarillion. Right, better do some more real work!

Now that we have left canon behind (by dipping into TBoHM), we can ski even further off piste. Or perhaps not so far. Why are there so many little cold suns scattered about the place? Instead ask why dead, dismembered Nysalor–Gbaji is “present in all of the world”? (e.g. Lords of Terror, p. 8) What lights the sky when the sun is in the underworld? There is an obvious answer: the moon. If Yelmalio stole Elmal’s fire, how do we know Elmal got it back? If Arkat–Nysalor is one, so maybe is Zorak Zoran–Yelmalio (and maybe the same one): He kills himself, he steals fire from himself. Lunar deities embrace ‘contradiction’ and certainly can be light and dark both and play tricks with time.

There was a Dara Happan Sacred Alphabet Word document that used to do the rounds with the font file. For those that don’t have that — or The Fortunate Succession (buy here) — I present a PDF crib sheet so you can follow S-M — although if you are not as slow-witted as I am, you may not need it. dara happan alphabet 1.pdf Now the ball is in Scott-Martin’s court to provide an equivalent with his preferred pronunciations of the common-or-garden runes. The meanings you own multiple copies of the crib for. Then extreme silliness may ensue.

Yeah, I tried plotting that. Apparently, it is one of these:

Much as I love it, shouldn’t we perhaps move this symbol stuff to its own thread? If I get time tonight, I will try to do a cleaned up Dara Happan Sacred Font decoder ring as a PDF, so those without the font installed can see what is going on.

So Gbaji cannot be both dark Arkat who dissects Nysalor and the shiny chap getting chopped up? I weep the chilly — but sparkly — tears of the cold sun. (Still, Julian will be glad to hear he is not Sandy, after all.)

In case anyone is as dim as I am — almost certainly impossible — stands for M. For Magasta . I was going “W for water? S for sea? Z for Zaramaka ?” Finally, this afternoon, the penny dropped. Does anyone have the scoop on apparently multiple rune owners? Or on whether rune assignments are ordered or unordered? Ordered: where != , (, , ) != (, , ) != (, , ) Unordered: {, , } = {, , } = {, , } My money is on unordered — anything else would be a faff — but my money is usually on the wrong horse.