mfbrandi

Eugène Marais peers into the soul of Glorantha’s great goddess:

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If Nature possesses a universal psyche, it is one far above the common and most impelling feelings of the human psyche. She certainly has never wept in sympathy, nor stretched a hand protectively over even the most beautiful or innocent of her creatures … Pitiless cruelty, torment, and destruction of the weak and innocent. The thief, the assassin, the blood stained robber, these are her favourites.

1 hour ago, Nick Brooke said:

There has to be an invisible sun
It gives its heat to everyone

6 minutes ago, Erol of Backford said:

To rebuild Genert you need hyena skins … Theoretically if enough parts of his body are brought back together, Genert can actually be resurrected but how many skins?

Be careful:

• Maybe you can bring Genert back, but do you really want to? What do you know for certain about him? What if he is not what you expect? (You find a blueprint for a superweapon; you don’t really understand how it works, but you think you see how the pieces fit together. What could possibly go wrong?)
• If you wave your magic wand over a big pile of old hyena skins, maybe you don’t get Genert but a Frankenstein’s hyena zombie god — “And he asked her, What is thy name? And she answered, saying, My name is Legion: for we are many.” Tasty!

SurEnslib escapes from the Lunar succession debate.

18 hours ago, Nick Brooke said:

Greg used to think … back when he obsessed about Heron … Goddesses, so the Weedy marshes of Darjiin are perhaps more in-scope.

Herons, like all archosaurs, are intrinsically cool, and my Darjiini informant has sent me this creation myth-cum-war story:

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Nakala, the infinite dark, was the firstborn of Chaos.

Then SurEnslib created herself,
and by her flight drew forth from the infinite dark both the Mother of Space and the liquid darkness of Styx. As SurEnslib flew lower, she caused Styx to birth Zaramaka, the infinite sea. By landing she ensured the presence of Ga, the first solid thing. Finally, SurEnslib sang into existence all the stars and planets — the many manifestations of Aether, the cosmic fire.

As her children began to burn, Nakala sought a weapon against watery SurEnslib and her fiery toys, so she punched a hole into the void, admitting the first of the monsters from beyond, Umath, the raging storm. Soon the stars were at a safe distance and the sun had been torn apart, but peace was not restored. No, the world’s troubles were just beginning.

But what of Sedenya?
Some say she was the last sung of SurEnslib’s heavenly baubles, and they point to her bootstrapping abilities as evidence of this. Some say that she must have crept into the cosmos in the wake of Umath, hiding among his children and plotting with them against the sun, and they cite her chaotic nature as proof. I … cannot say, but Mother Heron — She Who Rises in Brilliance — knows all things.

——————————————————————

(This is in part a gender-flip of Egyptian Bennu.)

So if we buy all this line-into-point revisionist iconography, maybe we can see where the toy Sun came from.

Where do you hide an “invisible” Moon? In the Sun, of course — albeit a shabby, second-rate Sun — because Orlanth wouldn’t kill another Sun after all the trouble with the last one, would he? Well, you never know, so best put up a decoy.

You didn’t think that chunk of levitated Earth was the Moon, did you? That dead rock! What are you, a hill barbarian with phobias about perfectly ordinary livestock?

Sedenya and Orlanth were true rebels against the OG Sun — as Satan against God.

But which of them has repented and has the plan to crack open the “Sky” and return the pocket-universe hell of Glorantha to the wider universe and proper planetary shape (or as some insist, leave us defenceless before the immensity of the Void)? We each of us know who we would like it to be, but it is so hard to tell those two rebels apart, sometimes. What was that you were saying about two Devils and all the confusion that caused?

But for now we wait. And we march. Beneath a dreadful banner we march. Beneath strange devices of the Sun and Moon.

One for the OP.

1. The living, dragon-scaled Beast …
2. also written like this …
3. now dead, cold, eviscerated, tits-up on the slab — leaving scientific Law
   — but that’s how you create a universe via utuma, ask any dragon.
    
4. So now we have this — who he? …
5. also written like this — so Genert …
6. now dead Earth.
    
7. Here the OG Sun (oracle bone script) …
8. later written like this (bronze script), so Fire–Sky …
9. and dead, cold, eviscerated Fire is Light
   — as any Elmali fool will tell you.

So which — if any — of the following appeal?

• Sun decays into immaterial Light and the too-solid bones of the Earth
  — planets are the ash of stars.
• 7 != 8, [•] != (•), and Yelm is not the OG Sun
  — but altogether less substantial, less real, lacking gravitas.
• Fire is revivified Light
  — but the Earth is still dead.
• Bubble Glorantha under its dome was a hasty improvisation after the untimely death of the Sun
  — it wants to be a real planet, but needs must when the Devil Orlanth drives.

Do we want to square the circle? Was the early universe strange, or is Pocket Glorantha the outlier?

8 hours ago, Gallowglass said:

visit the time of the Vingkotlings in Heroquests? I would think that still makes them feel more relevant

8 hours ago, Richard S. said:

it's not time travel … they won't really interact with them as anything other than characters … You could take part in a play set in the time and place of your own distant ancestors and probably have about the same level of interaction

I am tempted to agree with you both:

• they will feel more connected to their supposed ancestors;
• what is seen, heard, smelled, tasted, and touched of their “ancestors” on the heroquest may be no more real than the events of a play, of fiction, of a trip.

I come back from my heroquest and now I can blow shit up, but that doesn’t mean the tale I have to tell is true, is history (remade) — nor that I have travelled back in time some way past the beginning of time.

But where would that leave the “reality” of the gods?

3 hours ago, Brian Duguid said:

Of course, there is an easier way into the Underworld than by heroquesting

Although, who is to say that slitting one’s own throat is not a good way to start a heroquest?

[Don’t try this at home, kids!]

29 minutes ago, Brian Duguid said:

Unless, of course you enter it on a troll or black elf heroquest, in which case it is a deep, dark, beautiful paradise which fills you with a sense of happiness and security?

Unless Yelm ruined it? Unless you can’t go Wonderhome again? Unless it was always broken and we just blame Yelm’s sojourn there?

Depends how optimistic a Darkness heroquester you are?

(Darkness = hunger, dissatisfaction. Light = illumination, rest. To be played with, twisted, and subverted … of course.)

10 minutes ago, DrGoth said:

Said player than proceeded to roll nothing higher than 3 on his characteristic dice

That was KL slapping him down for his impudence.

54 minutes ago, Puckohue said:

I don't worry. If there are published rules I don't like I change or ignore them.

Sure. I was just being sympathetic to Mr. Duguid.

I am not now and have never been a member of the Boy Scouts of America someone who thinks Chaosium has a duty to publish/refrain from publishing according to my whims. They should follow their own vision. I don’t get the whole GRR Martin fandom thing of ranting at the “content provider” to dance like a monkey on a chain. Why would one do that?

13 hours ago, Brian Duguid said:

Am I the only one who is very slightly dreading the publication of Heroquest rules?

No, you are not the only one:

• Not every important thing needs its own set of game mechanics.
• Heroquests should be able to get acid-trip strange, not just by-the-book odd.
• Heroquests should sometimes sneak up on the characters (and their players) — “When did the heroquest start?” “I don’t know, but we must have been in it a while.” — but if there is an obvious mechanical shift that could give the game away.
• If Chaosium makes a conceptual breakthrough and comes up with some genius new mechanic, will it suitable for all and only heroquests?
• Gloranthans speak of heroquests, but I suspect the things they speak of bear a family resemblance to each other rather than sharing some clearly defined essence.
• “Here are the rules of creative heroquesting — if your players think of something ‘outside the box’, it doesn’t work and it doesn’t count.”

But those are — of course — just worries, and I wouldn’t dignify them by calling them arguments against HQ rules. I may be wrong on every count.

However, it must be said that in general, I hope that each publication will open up readers’ imaginations by making them think of things not on the page, rather than shutting them down by providing yet more detail to be observed. I suspect that that gets harder and harder as publications pile up seemingly trying to define Glorantha. Better to be allusive and/or contradict the last thing said than try to present something consistent and complete?

Presumably, the notion of a heroquest is contested in-world, so do we want it nailed down at the meta, rules level? I don’t know.

6 minutes ago, DrGoth said:

Of course, you could say Gloranthan days are 1.25 times the length of earth days, but that probably belongs in the "your dumbest theory" thread.

Well, that is my normal hang-out!

On 4/21/2023 at 12:46 PM, Evilroddy said:

A Gloranthan year is 294 days. A terrestrial year is 365.25 days. Thus … a 21 pre-generated character is about 17 years in age in terrestrial terms …

Gloranthan seconds, minutes, hours and days are the same as their terrestrial counterparts. Assuming that is true for a moment, then Gloranthan pre-generated characters seem awfully skilled and experiences for 17 year old teenagers

IIRC, in RQ3, Westerners had days of two 16 “hour” periods — i.e. 32-hour days if we say 1 Western “hour” = 1 Earth/IRL hour. (Even if that wasn’t the original intention, and I have no idea whether it was.)

• EARTH (actual): 365.25 days/year × 24 hours/day = 8,766 hours/year
• GLORANTHA (proposed): 294 days/year × 32 hours/day = 9,408 hours/year
• 1 Gloranthan year = 1.07 Earth years
• Starting “21” Pregen is 22.54 Earth years old

A 30-hour day would get you closer, but doesn’t have any textual support that I know of, and 32 — being a power of 2 — subdivides quite nicely (if not as well as 24).

This, it seems to me, is minimally disruptive, and if you are worried about daily travel times, fatigue is as much a factor as number of hours in the day, so you can — if you want — play it that there are about as many usable hours in the day, but with some hours in hand for “heroic efforts”. (Gloranthan animals are adapted to their longer day, but that doesn’t mean they have to be active for the same proportion of it as we are of ours.)

More time for telling stories round the campfire. Longer crepuscular periods giving humans and Uz more chance to avoid each other?

Just a thought.

1 hour ago, soltakss said:

That is odd, because the HeroQuesting pack that we brought out, How Humakt Learned to Grieve, did not sell particularly well

Maybe that is because — whatever its true, wonderful content — the title makes it sound a bit like this:

… or you know, an otherworld mission to deliver tissues to the therapist’s office.

Don’t get me wrong: done as a parody of Campbell, that would have me hooked, but Ragnaglar’s Breath sounds more on-brand.

55 minutes ago, soltakss said:

Clay Mostali (Dwarves) are definitely organic, being made with a healthy dollop of the Man Rune.

I am not going to disagree about the squishiness of Dwarves — I like the robots making their fleshy drones — but I am not sure about the reasoning. I quite like the idea of Daka Fal judging dead humanoid robots, especially if either [a] he is confused by them, or [b] there is a chrome-plated clicking & whirring avatar of DF to do the job.

20 minutes ago, Erol of Backford said:

Since we are so programmed to think of dwarves as real world Irish or Scottish

Are we though? ElvenQuest had a comedy dwarf with a Scottish accent — but I didn’t know that it was because it was a cliché till I came across the trope that it’s a trope — where are all these Scottish dwarves hiding? I guess I lead a very sheltered life: it is me in hiding, not the dwarves.

Is it really all Poul Anderson’s fault?

7 hours ago, Akhôrahil said:

The "multiple bodies (in serial or in parallel)" certainly does apply to Belintar and Ralzakark as well. As well as Arkat Reborn, I guess.

It is all done with time travel and matter transporters. The National Film Board of Canada had a cartoon about it, probably this one. See also Budrys’ Rogue Moon (The Death Machine) — now there’s a heroquest — and Derek Parfit’s classic Reasons and Persons. (And, you know, a million other things, including the madder bits of Heinlein and Gerrold.)

2 hours ago, Erol of Backford said:

I am reading the Sky Ship and its possible link to being a Golden Bow. I had read it was a shamanistic path somewhere

There has to be some punning going on here, right? Ostensibly bow as in archery, but in the context of a sky ship, the pointy end — from there hop from Golden Bow to Golden Bough:

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The king was the incarnation of a dying and reviving god, a solar deity who underwent a mystic marriage to a goddess of the Earth. He died at the harvest and was reincarnated in the spring. Frazer claims that this legend of rebirth was central to almost all of the world's mythologies. — Wikipedia

I tried to read The Golden Bough (abridged version) in my 20s, but I got bored and gave up. I blame Auntie Ludwig.

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PS: Pure Horse shamanistic path in HQ Glorantha p. 139 — all of two sentences, I think.

11 hours ago, scott-martin said:

extending our horizons beyond the fields we know

Is this — inter alia — a John M. Ford reference (IASFM, July 1979)? Sneaky!

More Gloranthan karaoke.

Dusky, blonde Yelmalio likes to sing Moorcock’s “Veteran of the Psychic Wars”.

He knows how it looks (and that he has lousy pipes), but he has that glint in his brown eyes, and is perhaps thinking of his next step — the step that can only be taken when all weapons and armour have been laid aside. (Sedenya whispers, “Clothes, too.” ZZ, “And skin? Did I say that out loud? Sorry!”)

Zorak Zoran has the great white soul voice, of course, and knows the complete Hi Records repertoire of Al Green. Maybe it’s empathy over that pan of boiling grits. Maybe it’s just that he is full of fire. Some people are surprised to hear him sing “L–O–V–E (Love)” to his Only Yellowhair, but they should know better by now.

Do they have karaoke machines in Third-Age Genertela? Good question. I like to think the bar YO and ZZ frequent hires a newtling band, the Swampers. They are always on at ZZ to do “Take Me to the River”.

10 hours ago, Deepest_Lore said:

(again I'm new to the lore)

Don’t let that stop you making it your Glorantha. (We wouldn’t want to view Lovecraft’s world through Lovecraft’s eyes for very long.)

1 hour ago, DrGoth said:

there is no canon for what happens.  Just a vast range of possibilities.

Let us hope it stays that way — the “future” as a permanent blank land.

4 hours ago, Joerg said:

weird misinformation bits … official and consistent rules for HeroQuesting … Jonathan Tweet’s Over The Edge

Weird misinformation is good — “a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and rôleplayers and divines.”

Mention of Tweet and OtE makes me think that The Dragon’s Eye is the book I am waiting for and that OtE inspiration the sainted Bill may have all the heroquest rules we need:

4 hours ago, soltakss said:

like a Norman looking back at the events after the Romans left Britain and piecing together dates from the stories that people told

Sounds like a pitch for an RPG — what shall we call it? Oh, wait …

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I am his highness’s dog at Kew;
Pray tell me, sir, whose dog are you?

— Pope

The Orlanthi tell a tale of a dog who ran away from home to fawn on some windbag and hump his wife’s leg. It is funny because they seem to love him, and I thought the Orlanthi hated dogs.

Oh, it is not a dog, you say, but a god. Who wants a god with all the unattractive features of a dog? I don’t need to worship the top god, but I want one with some independence and self-respect. Loyalty, schmoyalty — give me a god who is complicated and has stories about Trade back in the day.

So what is it with Orlanthi and cats, then? Cats hate you. Cats shred the spines of your LPs. Cats piss on your friends’ trousers. Cats don’t understand loyalty. What is acceptable in a psychopathic ball of fur is unacceptable in a foreign god. Maybe they like cats because they remind them of their own family.

So it is just xenophobia, then — they like foreign gods to know their place? That cannot be it, because they seem actually to like him, not just the fact that he knows his place. So are we getting anywhere? Nowhere fast.

Maybe it is just that little e stands to Big O as they see themselves standing to Orlanth: they wouldn’t want to be O with all the stress of trashing/fixing the universe, all that guilt/responsibility — maybe the Orlanthi just want to sniff a few bottoms, get a pat on the head from the King of the gods, and maybe have a sly go on his wife’s leg. And if the miserable curs have to sleep in a kennel, they don’t see that as much of a price to pay.

(Remind me again why they don’t like dogs. Because they remind them of themselves, and they hate themselves? You couldn’t have mentioned this before?)

Meanwhile, chilly Y — like Bartleby — would prefer not to. Unlike Bartleby, this extends to dying, so he doesn’t. He is a cross-grained genius of perversity, and he probably plays the joanna like Cecil Taylor.