mfbrandi

14 hours ago, John Biles said:

we now think Earth's Moon is the result of Proto-Earth being hit by a Mars-sized planet called Theya

And it just had to be called “Theya”, didn’t it?

We scholars of the present enlightened age — Hail Harshax! — are familiar with the idea that at the end of the so-called “Hero Wars” (preposterous notion!), there was a “Pelorian Apocalypse” and civilizational collapse marking the end of the Genertelan Late Bronze Age. Robert Drews was a noted popularizer of this “theory” …

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Yet, what if this wasn’t the case, and Drews’s map was inaccurate, and that over half of all destruction events he claimed … at the end of the LBA never happened at all, or at least not [then]? As it turns out, this is in fact the case, and Drews’s “Map of the Catastrophe” is a perfect example of how many destructions from this supposed “destruction horizon” were misdated, assumed, or simply invented out of nothing and are what we can call false destructions …

So, how bad is the problem? How many false destructions are there at the end of the LBA? If one goes through archaeological literature from the past 150 years, there are 148 sites with 153 destruction events ascribed to the end of the Late Bronze Age … However, of these, 94, or 61%, have either been misdated, assumed based on little evidence, or simply never happened at all …

Now, this should not give the impression that there was no destruction at the end of the LBA, as certainly sites … did suffer destruction. However, even here, of the 59 destruction events that did occur [then], not all were equal as some were major events while others barely affected the site, but this is a discussion for another time. — Millek the Sage

You are, of course, familiar with the hypothesis that the tale Argrath & the Devil records not a so-called “heroquest” (an “otherworld” shenanigan — all haziahead talk!) but the mass execution of cult leaders by a petulant tyrant — Hail Harshax, most reasonable of rulers! — supposedly allied to most of them.

Still, something happened in Peloria. Was there ever a red moon? If so, just how big was it? If it fell to earth, our presence to ponder the problem suggests it was of insignificant mass. A notion I have toyed with is that the boundaries of the postulated “Lunar Empire” were marked with large hydrogen-filled barrage balloons or observation dirigibles. (My colleagues say that I am fanciful to attribute such sophistication to little more than savages.)

Anyway, Harshax U. is mounting an expedition, so interested post-docs and ambitious graduate students should sign up below. Mules, tents, and archaeological tools will be provided. Bring own walking boots. No Lunies.

[Yes, this is 4th Age Glorantha as Call of Cthulhu Wakboth.]

29 minutes ago, jajagappa said:

IMO the issue is that Wonderhome is one of the Deep Hells and the Burning Hell is in the way.  But I can't find Jeff's post on the sequence of the 7 Hells at the moment to confirm the order.

It is OK, I will take it on trust. I was very conscious of handwaving just how “troll climbs out of the Underworld.” The post was just a bit of RuneFun™.

Although … until we invent one-way fire, isn’t that a barrier to getting into Wonderhome, too?

On 1/25/2023 at 6:01 AM, EricW said:

surely there are well trodden paths dead trolls could take which would return them to the surface world?

Ethilrist:
Black Horse Troop:

Kyger Litor:
Argan Argar: (and in a past life: )

————————————————————————

One would guess that AA was born more than once: once in the Dark/Underworld before the birth of Aether and then again to Xentha on the Surface. The deprecation of the Issaries rune is a shame, as it suggests: [a] AA as a reverse psychopomp, leading souls out of Hell; [b] if you want to get out of the Underworld, there is always a deal to be done.

Troll dies. Troll gets buried, burned, or eaten. Troll climbs out of the Underworld. Would any non-Uz notice that it was the same troll returned? It happens, but the racists cannot see it — and the funeral feast is a fine bit of misdirection.

Ethilrist is such a crashing bore that Uz have beaten his snout flat in a vain attempt to shut him up. Consequently, his features are so distinctive that: [a] his return from Hell is noticed; [b] he is often mistaken for a non-Uz with “special powers”.

On 1/27/2023 at 4:26 PM, Qizilbashwoman said:

skeeeetch

Apologies for my ignorance, but I don’t know this word. Four Es in a row makes me think it is a slang term. From context, it doesn’t seem quite to mean “not kosher” or “haram.”

The sound of fingernails on a blackboard — so, “jarring”?

2 hours ago, Godweyn said:

With this I already have three different versions... and there is my problem...
and I think I have seen at least two other images that are also different.

Wherever he goes, he has to lug around an unwieldy collection of hat boxes. It is hell getting in and out of cabs. That is why he looks so angry.

23 minutes ago, scott-martin said:

Carmanized

I first read that as Carmenized.

1 hour ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

This is essentially the position taken by the Wool Wearers

I always had a soft spot for the sufis, so I would say it was all that qawwali rubbing off on me, save for the fact that we all think that radical notions of free will are nonsense, right? (Or maybe the analytical philosophy rubbed off on me, too.)

10 hours ago, John Biles said:

The official position of the last 10 years seems to be that Ompalam *is* chaotic.

Well, that is what I thought, too, but it would be refreshing if there were a big reveal and (the god of) something all the players thought was evil turned out not to be chaotic.

If every mortal is a slave and ultimately all the chains lead back to Ompalam, one can imagine that forming a perfect triangle of law — giving us @Eff’s collapse of chaos and non-chaos, or . And maybe that’s what we would have gotten if it weren’t for the deprecation of the law rune.

But to me that seems to lean into chaos is whatever gives me a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach — and if something functionally identical doesn’t give me that feeling (because I am the one benefiting from it), then it is not chaotic, and it is fine. That probably has sound Gloranthan provenance, but I’d toss it in the bin marked “for satirical use only” or “sarcasm: handle with care.”

“Cosmos is inside — is everything good. Chaos is outside — is everything bad.”
“But look at this. It is pretty bad, and it definitely comes from the inside.”
“Well, OK, I will grant you that: it is rotten. But at least it doesn’t come from the outside.”

(Any suggestions that I have been tapping Suella Braverman’s phone …)

54 minutes ago, Eff said:

One of the genuinely fascinating things about Ompalam as a concept is that the "official" position is that Ompalam is not Chaotic, which carries a wide range of potential implications. But I have rarely seen anyone give this more than a passing nod before diving right into the older conception of Ompalam and slavery as Chaotic

I didn’t say slavery was chaotic. I never would. Blaming human evils on something supposedly definitively not us is ridiculous — and possibly some things worse than that.

I had never given Ompalam a thought till dumuzid brought the little charmer up. I know you know more Gloranthan lore than I ever will (or would ever care to) and that sometimes some odd runes pop up for a while on the Well of Daliath, but if the official position is now that Ompalam — never mind slavery, let us put that aside — is not chaotic, why is he being trailed as being such in the upcoming prosopædia? Who populates those tables? I could have saved myself the trouble of trying to “rescue” one of my people! 😉
 

4 hours ago, Joerg said:

There are the cosy and safe basements of the Castle(s) of Lead (built only after the exodus from Wonderhome) that survived even the implosion of the Spike.

I knew you wouldn’t let me down!

58 minutes ago, dumuzid said:

He doesn't send 'demons of slavery' out into the world, he simply supplies a concept, and leaves it to the greed of mortals to execute and proliferate it.

I think mortals are quite capable of dreaming up “every person is a slave, just try to be as near the top of the pyramid as possible” (and variations and addenda) all on their own, so in that respect, it doesn’t really matter whether there ever was an Ompalam — eaten by Wakboth or not. And if the gods due to be fed to Wakboth were to be spared, what would they do to end tyranny, slavery, and the rest? Approximately nothing, one imagines. Those evils are only “chaotic” when the other person or group is indulging in them.

Being anti-Ompalam seems too easy: “Slavery? Yes, we’re definitely against that.” But on the other hand, the Godlearner classification — god of degenerative administration, of evil centralization — makes Ompalam seem like the kind of thing the extreme right would rail against when they think that the centre is telling them, the self-defined out group, that they are not allowed to indulge in some unsavoury practice. So we all get to feel queasy, right?

I wonder if there is a way to redeem not slavery, but Ompalam. Ompalam as the god who teaches that free will is an illusion (or language gone on holiday)? Ompalam religious communities whose members all declare themselves to be slaves, but it turns out that ownership of each member of the community is equally distributed among the other members? For example, in a community {a, b, c}, a and b each own 50% of c, b and c each own 50% of a, and a and c each own 50% of b. Other patterns are possible. For example, rings: a owns b owns c owns a.

No one owns themself. No one owns more slaves than anyone else. No cultist owns a non-cultist in whole or in part. No non-cultist owns a cultist in whole or in part: I mean, what cult would sell its members?

Ompalam mathematician–theologians argue over the optimum way to assign ownership — they call this discovering the divine order — but no one ever snarks or comes to blows. No one ever asserts their ownership rights over another, anyway, and often cultists have to consult the latest pamphlet to see just what arcane distribution has been agreed at synod. Whatever they last agreed on, that is the way it has always been and always will be — “We were just a little confused, that’s all. Now, do I own you this week, or is it the other way around? Cup of tea?” One thing is for sure, non-cult “slave owners” are definitely not doing it right, and one never sees them in the sweatier nightclubs.

Will something like this do to stay true to , , and without my Glorantha having to have an icky god of slavery in it? It still leaves plenty of room to satirise slavery and even to organise against it in-game. Kinkiness is sure to ensue, and I can easily imagine an Ompalam cell being the Gloranthan equivalent of Chip Delany’s Gorgik the Liberator.

Statutory declaration: MGHV.

2 hours ago, Revilo Divad Of Dyoll said:

Why would anyone voluntarily leave wonderhome to come back to the hurtplace?

I probably have this wrong — as per usual — but I always took it that after the Dawn, Yelm spent half his time in the Underworld and half floating above the Hurtplace. So the Wonderhome of eternal night is gone. Uz have been kicked out of the Garden of Eden Mee Vorala and cannot go back — it is just a burned-out wreck, these days. (You can’t go home, again … same river twice … yada yada.) The Uz really feel the bite burn of the Compromise.

Sure, the priestess may tell you that after you are dead if you behave, you will go somewhere dark and cold where there is plenty to eat, but then your parent told you that if you didn’t do your homework, the human under your bed would gobble you up … and you never did do your homework.

Also: unfinished business. Coming back from the dead/reincarnation is just haunting in solid form.

Still, lest this all sound too depressing for words, you may eventually learn the secret of the light within, chill out in your final life, and step off the wheel for good. Or just come back as a trollkin who doesn’t need shades and sunscreen.

Or something. Doubtless, someone will have a diagram showing clearly defined Underworld areas of permanent darkness and safety with all the dangerous exits clearly marked in Braille, but where is the fun in that? (There are still dark areas down there, but they are very much not safe — not for Uz, not for anybody.)

1 hour ago, Eff said:

Sartar itself feels like it must or ought to be unusual, since the Dragonkill obliterated most of the humanlike relationships to the terrain and then Sartar itself is the product of settlement, of attempting to transform or eliminate the relationships the "nonhumans" of Dragon Pass and the Pony Breeders had.

The way you tell it — or maybe this cup of tea is just too strong — it sounds like a set-up for Orlanthi exceptionalism and the recolonization of Dragon Pass as manifest destiny. If I shake my head, maybe it will go away. (I may still be stuck with Columbia as wyter of the USA, though, however wrong that is.)

1 hour ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

It's honestly impractical to have a million hearths doing the cooking and baking

It still is. It is all a capitalist plot: divide and rule sell microwave ovens. I have tried screaming this at passersby in Hyde Park, but will they listen? Still, come the revolution [mutter mutter] …

Must dash: those nice men with the loooong-sleeved jacket are coming.

6 hours ago, Nick Brooke said:

See also Ayukata’s MÖRK BOLG

Who wouldn’t love a game with that name? I shall choose to believe that “they fought against Chaos and overthrew Chaos with humankind” means that humankind was the tool used to overthrow chaos.

12 hours ago, radmonger said:

There is a risk of looking at Glorantha from Earth and saying that the only interesting things are the parts that are different. If you were Edward Said, you could call that Gloranticism. 

Exactly!

And it doesn’t just apply to cultural differences. It is the same mindset that thinks that a tyrannosaurus rex is more interesting than a jackdaw. Taller mountains! Bigger explosions! And where does that get us? Nowhere.

(I am not saying, of course, that invented strange things are less interesting than real familiar things just in virtue of being different, but they do tend to be thinner.)

24 minutes ago, scott-martin said:

Can Bless Crops be applied at any time of year?

Nah! And a rain dance must be danced just before the rainy season starts. Any fool know that. My mad uncle Ludwig told me, so it must be right.

8 hours ago, Nick Brooke said:

Who says it isn't?

8 hours ago, Joerg said:

It is certainly beyond the ability of trollkin.

Hmm …

My first thought was Arkatian self-multiplication. Dull, dull, dull.

My second thought was that trollkin are the returned “heroic” dead trolls (and kin) who want to give it another go around. This has a nice mythic resonance: the curse of the kin is a recapitulation of the flight from Yelm, but they are returning as ever more light-adapted (or day–night cycle-adapted, really) creatures. I mean, it is by now a cliché that humans are just enlo changelings, right? But does a single “spirit” return as one or as many, as a litter? We cannot break the curse? We do not want to: it is how we take over.

I draw a veil over what “climbing out of Hell” looks like on this model. XU knows. XU always knows.

[It is late. I babble.]

24 minutes ago, Joerg said:

Hardly for free - at the very least, you have to listen to the sermon while the soup is dished out.

Well, your mention of Olav Dickin's Son almost tempted me to tambourines and Guys and Dolls, but I resisted. And my first thought was of Sikhs, not the Sally Army, anyway.

18 minutes ago, Joerg said:

And there will be ritual in the daily tasks, like sharing a meal (breaking the bread etc.), with blessings pronounced. Possibly reinforced by a MP or two by whoever leads "the congregation" in this.

Or — speaking on behalf of the (admittedly tiny) “creeping fourth age” faction — if all the magicians were to drop dead tomorrow, the world would continue to function much as it did before, and only ego says otherwise. Spending magic points while breaking bread is just showing off, and the true function of ritual is moral, educative, social, or political. But of course, this is just crazy talk.

Surely your local Seven Mothers temple has a kitchen that feeds all comers with tasty vegetarian food for free.

Hearts, minds, and bellies. (Besides, the Bat likes a bit of meat on its snacks.)

4 hours ago, Brian Duguid said:

So that was Greg’s vision in 1988, but no one would have been able to read that off of the RQ2 battle magic rules:

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Battle magic involves the forceful alteration of the fabric of reality by use of one’s POW. For this reason, battle magic spells, while powerful, are of short duration (usually two minutes) and drain a good deal of energy in the form of POW points from the user. However strong a mortal may be, he lacks the POW to make long lasting changes in the basic stuff of the Universe. — RQ2 Classic, p. 34

Ignite would be fine, and there is an appeal to small household magics that make permanent changes (and to spells with multiple uses/manifestations), but that vision of bladesharp as a knife-grinding magic and glue as a pot-fixing spell didn’t make it to the “first generation” rules. Was that just for wargame reasons, a change of mind, or … ?

[Apologies that this is a bit (old) rulesy, but it would have been mad to move it to another forum — and I think it does bear on the “is crafting spellcasting?” theme.]

1 hour ago, scott-martin said:

grubbing for pants that fit and clacks to pay the bar bill. After the communal heroquest, we roll the skills again. EGWV.

Ah, yes, Eeyore’s Glorantha would vary. From Tigger’s. But it exhibits great self-similarity: it is fractally dull.

We had an expression “cheer up, it may never happen”; unfortunately, it became weaponised, and we had to melt it down and bury it.

50 minutes ago, Joerg said:

So alchemy becomes a mundane skill? Or is surveying and measuring a major building project still an exercise in sorcery, or at least a very closely sorcery-adjacent activity … To me all of these notions sound very "Fourth Age", and not at all appropriate for the majority of urban Sartarites.

Didn’t “alchemy” (after a fashion) become a mundane skill, with your Isaac Newtons as transitional figures?

And if we cannot find rôles for all the gods after the transition, don’t even some — all? — IRL polytheisms have their monotheistic tendencies?

The Fourth Age creeps up on you, and looking back you are not quite sure when it began. You cannot find that neat, hard cut-off, but you make up the story of Argrath and the Devil, anyway.

31 minutes ago, scott-martin said:

prefer your vision but it requires different play and different description, let's make that happen! Is there a Glorantha that runs everything on spells with no skill checks? Is this . . . animism?

Now if only we had a universal mechanic that made every task look alike …