mfbrandi

On 3/1/2023 at 12:07 AM, Erol of Backford said:

Did Dwarves develop Velcro for Werebears?

So you can stick them safely on the wall and they will fall off when they change back to human form? 😉

11 hours ago, g33k said:

Omnivorous Morokanthi.

Even as a vegetarian, I tend to agree. However, let us play devil’s advocate.

Clearly, the Survival Lottery was rigged in favour of the humans. Traditional reading is that the losers were altered to be able to survive on the poor plant food available, and possibly also the winners were altered to be able to eat meat. But what if the Lottery was not about changing physiologies to enable survival, but about legitimation and entrenchment of pre-existing human hegemony — humans who already enjoyed their post-Lottery diet? What a magical coup then, if the Morokanth were able to win their instance of the Lottery and create herd men. But altered digestion was never on offer — as Waha meant the omnivorous humans to win every time — so the Morokanth were stuck with their pre-Lottery diet, but they had escaped their status as food for humans.

So the Praxian humans grumble that the Morokanth cheated — true in the sense that they subverted Waha’s plan — but they cannot tell the whole story without revealing the rotten nature of the “covenant”. Maybe the humans have (conveniently and perhaps inevitably) forgotten what really happened. The Morokanth have not. Perhaps the “peaceful cut” is just a ritual to prevent righteously angry herd ghosts from taking entirely reasonable revenge on their butchers.

This leaves the question of intelligence: did the herds have their wits stolen by the humans/Waha, or did the Morokanth manage their miracle of escapology without “human-level” intelligence, gaining it in the process? How? Did they have help? From Trickster? Zorak Zoran (with herd men in truth vegetarian zombies)? Or did the already bright Morokanth sacrifice the wits of the herds (man & beast) to pull off their coup? Had Waha’s plan been for men to continue to eat intelligent beasts? Does this tell us anything about the real reason Eiritha was buried alive?

I think we can make the vegetarian Morokanth story at least as dark as the omnivorous Morokanth story. No namby-pambiness required. In fact, I may even be won over by my inner Mephistophelean lawyer.

10 hours ago, Jeff said:

But fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me, Yelmalio is hostile towards the Red Goddess.

But that is what one would expect, no? The sun dies daily. The moon dies weekly. They know letting go and so have the possibility of illumination and rebirth. But the light god who cannot let go — cannot let death, darkness, and chaos in — is reduced to a wan light-without-heat. So we see why to some Yelmalio is admirably tenacious and to others pitiable — always the little sun.

9 hours ago, g33k said:

Fertility -- giving birth -- is inherently a "female" thing, notwithstanding nandans and vingans and seahorses and suchlike.  Likewise, all the "Grain Goddesses" are, well, goddesses.

If I understand you correctly — apologies if I don’t: I am prone to grabbing the wrong end of a completely different stick — you are saying that the sensibility of the writers of the setting is that fertility is a female thing, even though you can cite Gloranthan and IRL instances that complicate the case. Is that it? You are probably right. Perhaps, we can even go further: fertility is associated with the right kind of motherhood — if you are the mother of the Devil or disease, you forgo any fertility rune you might have had. This seems a little unfair: is the mother of amoebic dysentery any less a fertility goddess than say … I don’t know … the mother of leopards?

(Possibly, some earth/mother thinking leads to a book including the cult of the Bloody Tusk, Donandar, Flamal, Mostal, Pamalt, & Uleria being called “The Earth Goddesses”. Possibly not: “Earth, Fertility — but not necessarily both together — and Associates” doesn’t scream million seller.)

We do get some conventionally male deities with : Yelm, Lodril, and Flamal spring to mind. But, of course, Uleria gets to own it — although one fondly imagines life (and so reproduction) pre-dates sex. Interestingly(?), Pamalt doesn’t get , but “he” does get . Should we reconsider what it is to own a rune (e.g. it is just a worshipper perspective … or geographically limited) — I confess, I thought of the owner (unique for a given time) — or is it that Pamalt = Ernalda?

As this is a dissident thread — like Your Dumbest Theory — I was just beating the drum — lightly, I hope — for Gloranthans who scorn the gendering and sexing of the divine. Presumably, even canonical Mostali fall into this category (the World Machine is no Steely Dan). One would expect some Western monotheists would go for that, too, at least in variant Gloranthas.

4 hours ago, Jeff said:

But Yelmalio is still there, ever weaker, ever dimmer, but never extinguished.

Hmm … is this a clue to the uptightness of Yelmalio? Never blown out might be a bad thing, especially from a Lunar/Nysalorean POV?

2 hours ago, g33k said:

I don't think "death" has any inherent gender.  Some cultures will see Humakt as male, some female; some may see an androgynous deity, or one that's genderfluid.

If we don our heavy-duty monotheist hats for a minute, god isn’t one of a race of beings (not even potentially), so not sexed. So why gendered, even in a fluid or ambiguous way? Surely even some ostensibly polytheistic Gloranthans will say that all this talk of parents, children, and siblings — to which some might want to attach genders — is just a product of limited mortal minds attempting but inevitably failing to grasp the divine.

40 minutes ago, Eff said:

Maybe we should understand this as a social phenomenon instead. After all, isn't it meant to be a method for shaping the initial interactions between members of different cults? But then we must ask "Which society?"

Absolutely.

I seem dimly to remember that back in the neolithic days of RQ2, one would occasionally get “these cults stand in this relation here but this other relation elsewhere”, but maybe my mind is playing tricks.

40 minutes ago, Jeff said:

They are the followers and tools of Orlanth.

  This reminded me of the discussion of Lodril in Sartar:

On 10/13/2022 at 5:05 PM, Jeff said:

Lodril … gets depicted as a fat red-faced drunken fool whose phallus drags on the ground

On 10/14/2022 at 10:09 PM, Nick Brooke said:

a picture of a diphallic Lodril shrine image in Citizens of the Lunar Empire.

Please, let no one heroquest for Orlanth’s tool belt.

12 minutes ago, Manunancy said:

I interprets his comment as 'we should do better at explaining what Runequest and Glorantha are'

You are right. My apologies to all.

11 hours ago, John Biles said:

Real world mysticism covers that same huge stretch, but we would benefit from having several different flavors of illumination.

Well, one might distinguish between means and ends or pay-offs. Meditation or self-mortification are examples of means. Experiencing union with god, the infinite, or the void — “union with god” for short — is one kind of pay-off. Gaining the ability to walk through fire or to strike an elephant dead with one finger is another kind of pay-off (and possibly valued only as means to further ends).

I read a book about Sufism a long time ago — title and author now forgotten — which said that the mystic pursues union with god in this world because they wouldn’t bet on there being another one. (Necessarily, I paraphrase. Helplessly, I ironise.) Combined with an experiential definition of union with god, this allowed for a mystical faith without ontological commitment. In game terms, this sits nicely with Nysalor being a dead god and mysticism not being an otherworld magic.

So by all means call those who seek or experience union with god “mystics”, and perhaps the experience of illumination comes in significantly different flavours — I am not the theology police: I am not qualified. And sure, there will be those who seek mystical experience as a means to an end (misguidedly or not, depending on the game world), but then there will be those who join the cult of Humakt because they want to learn Sever Spirit.

But just as the route to union with god needn’t take us through austerities (e.g. we were instead spontaneously illuminated by answering a riddle asked by a passing stranger), isn’t it the case that austerities (e.g. some forms of meditation, perhaps; self-mortification, certainly) need not lead to union with god (i.e. the mystical experience) but in a fantasy game, that is not to say they won’t lead to “yogic superpowers”. So if my practice of austerities: [a] is aimed at achieving superpowers; [b] is not supposed by me to lead to union with god; [c] does not in fact lead to union with god, am I a mystic? I might be a superpowered pain-in-the-arse nonetheless.

If I start aimed squarely at god, but I turn away in pursuit of superpowers, am I a failed mystic? Is a failed mystic a mystic? Is a forged banknote a banknote?

11 hours ago, John Biles said:

The difference between a Durulz and what?

Quote

Q: What is the difference between a duck?
A: One of its legs are both the same.

In the UK, that is the hoariest, most groanworthy of jokes. Or if you like, it is part of the venerable British corpus of Nysalor riddles. Don’t listen to people who claim that cricket or association soccerball is our national sport: everybody knows it is talking nonsense that we hold most dear.

3 hours ago, jajagappa said:

Of course, the Mostali in charge of the project forgot about the shadow, hence Gorgorma caught them completely by surprise

Well, if Dendara is a replacement — in true Stepford fashion — maybe, but if Dendara was a Mostali project from the get-go (I mean, let’s keep it light, people), then maybe Gorgorma is theirs, too. If you are going to lean into the misogynistic tropes, then call in Giger and fill your biomechanoid boots. Indeed, maybe Gorgorma was the main project and Dendara just cover or a bit of a sick joke on the side. The chess playing is the Mostali tipping us the wink that we are dealing with machines — or “machines”.

Next up: the Mostali Shaper–Mechanist civil war. With the Mechanists insisting that true Mostali are robots — all the while refusing to look at the poor saps calling themselves “elves” while bleeding all-too-human blood. Remember what who was inside Huey, Dewey, and Louie.

Are the “elder races” eradicated in the Fourth Age, or is there nothing like an apocalypse to make people cease larping and face facts? Not species but barriers — of costume and ideology — are eliminated. Forget Argrath’s Lord of the Swastika posturing (covering badly for having been had), it is people, rather than humankind who own the future.

Thinning as coming down, and it was quite a trip. “I saw their starved lips in the gloam, with horrid warning gapèd wide, and I awoke and found me here, on the cold hill’s side.” — JK

Quote

The faithful and beautiful wife of Emperor Yelm is the paragon of uxorial virtue. With magnificent pride and skill she commands her heaven-full of servants, and her sergeants carry out every task to prepare for the Emperor’s needs, yet Dendara still beams happily in the radiant presence of her husband. — WoD

Dendara is the patron deity of Stepford wives. Clearly, “she” is a Mostali construct. What are they up to?

19 hours ago, Professor Chaos said:

So maybe what we really need to do is explain what Runequest and Glorantha are like better?

Well, I don’t know about better …

What really is the function of multiple manuals of monsters in the games that do have them? I cannot see that there is a mechanical need for them, and if a GM wants to spring a surprise, they′ll homebrew something. But people like to look at the hideous pictures and glance over the stat blocks irrespective of whether they are ever going to use or encounter the beasties. And game publishers like to sell books; who can blame them? So — to an extent — they are coffee-table books for gamers. And that is fine.

Where other games have monsters, the RuneQuest–Glorantha complex has deities and their associated religions. And [cough!] soon, we will have ten more books dedicated to those. So we needn’t feel we’re missing out, but we probably shouldn’t feel superior, either.

13 hours ago, Erol of Backford said:

I think the voice/mouth/larynx of Nysalor is Speaking Wheel

But the body parts of Nysalor are just dead flesh with no special powers, right? Old canon leads us to think that, so it must be true … Umm, is there somewhere I can hide?

3 hours ago, Joerg said:

Sheng did reach his near-enlightenment through a century of torture austerities.

That is the trouble with “illumination” being required to cover a lot of ground. The extreme ascetic practicing austerities in search of “yogic superpowers” — more Kraft than Macht? — doesn’t necessarily have a lot in common with the person spontaneously achieving insight through accidental exposure to riddles/koans, no?

“I have undergone unimaginable torture; now I am a terrifying living weapon” — boring.

“So that is the difference between a Durulz; now maybe I can start to purge hatred and fear from my life” — shows promise.

1 hour ago, David Scott said:

Fortress of Doors?

https://wellofdaliath.chaosium.com/home/catalogue/publishers/d101-games/gloranthan-adventures/gloranthan-adventures-1-new-beginnings/

16 hours ago, Akhôrahil said:

Entropy and Time feel conceptually connected in a way that Evil and Time doesn't.

I guess some people just have a profoundly depressing view of the world.

13 hours ago, Joerg said:

14 hours ago, Darius West said:

Eating sentient folk is a chaotic act, regardless of how much contempt you hold ducks in.

You just declared the trolls of Glorantha as a chaotic species.

Standard Gloranthan hypocrisy: “I am blameless, you are transgressive, but they … they are chaotic.”

13 hours ago, Joerg said:

You can argue that butchering sentients for eating is a transgressive behavior that may lead to Chaos when taken out of other mythical context.

Ah, yes, wrong mythical context — that is why I shouldn’t kill and eat you. 😉

18 hours ago, davecake said:

And Argrath … every 600 years there is a threat to the world, and now it is his turn.

Well, he may have set out to destroy the world, but accidentally, he saved it. We have to believe it was an accident, because he grates on us so.

3 hours ago, John Biles said:

That [Kajabor’s consumption to give birth to Time] is the standard mythology, as laid out in the Guide, volume 1.

But it got retconned, no?

On 2/21/2023 at 8:17 PM, Dr. Devici said:

people making their own content … are taking up the role of game designers, and are going to … break things, … and that's … OK.

This! (Apologies for the brutal edit.)

When I see people complaining that their favourite publisher hasn’t provided x (even when they really should have), I think that although FRP can seem a bit prog, it is just as much punk. DIY is (almost always) more fun than complaining, right?

12 hours ago, Akhôrahil said:

Cost of doing business … Should you attempt revenge?

Revenge? I wouldn’t recommend it. The SBs are hardly going to find an angry relative undermining or frightening. And they probably love a bit of vendetta. Before you know it you are them, and they have won — even in the unlikely event that you kill them. Especially in that event.

Cost of doing business? Well, there are likely a few random misfires, but more worrying is that the pattern of wrongful killings is unlikely to be all that random. Reflective individuals who call into question a life of fear, hatred, and killing are — I imagine — mostly not illuminates, but likely disproportionately victimised. And minor personal grudges will generate claims of cosmic threat, some of them even sincere.

It is said that the illuminated are hated because they may turn into supervillains, but I doubt it is the dark side people are truly worried about. It is the thought that all the bloodshed, hatred, and paranoia is unnecessary and can stop — that’s what scares people. Ever try explaining the sunk cost fallacy to an SB and a broo shaman as they were squaring off? How did it go?

Before you know it, the peaceniks start to despair of getting their fellows to see sense, and they start doing the mathematics: how many — and how few — people can we feed to the Bat and still see a worthwhile reduction in bigotry and bloodshed? Where on that curve do we want to sit? And that one tortured child in an Omelas basement — that is starting to look like a really good deal. Is this another manifestation of the dark side? Well, it doesn’t require illumination, self-deception, and bad arguments, but one suspects that these soured idealists would find it easy to talk to the Arkati. Although, some of them looking at the Arkati plan of perpetual pogrom might turn green and turn back.

Now to have these problems in a setting might be seen as a good thing — a very good thing. But to insist that reveling in a sempiternal bloodbath is the only choice that makes any sense, and that characters who think otherwise are to be slain out of hand, what does that say about us as players?

3 hours ago, Eff said:

And what Illumination does is remove a psychic prophylactic against recognizing the violence as violence. Because you can always displace the siccing of retributive spirits as the god's decision, not your own.

I always read the immunity to spirits of retribution as showing that those spirits were just the cop in the head. The unilluminated — the benighted, if we must — inflict “the god’s” vengeance on themselves. Understandably, the illuminated stop doing this.

But why do the benighted not see violence as violence? So they think a big god did it and ran away — violence is violence, and it doesn’t matter who the perpetrator is, does it? I am — as usual — missing something important.

4 hours ago, Eff said:

forgiveness is one of those things that people keep doing to each other

I have never really understood forgiveness, and I wouldn’t attempt it. That is not all bad, however: the flip side is that an action which harms me is just that — it is not a scandalous injustice or a blow against the cosmic order — without the fuel of self-righteous indignation, vendettas are impossible to take seriously and grudges tricky to keep going. 😉

1 hour ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

ok but then didn't the Spider (SWT) take it over and the Moon is (was) trying to take it from the Spider?

The anthropomorphic crowd think that the Spider–Cosmos and the Moon–Chaos are chasing each other around the Möbius loop of the infinity rune, each thinking to herself “my quarry is on the other side.”

The sage shakes her head, sees only the loop, and laughs at the folly of trying to distinguish Cosmos from Chaos.

Or, you know, something …