mfbrandi

We seem to have lapsed into even one-note Harrek is more interesting than Argrath. What is going on?

Isn’t it Una who is harlequin-cool and Jerry just a washed-up sad clown failing every audition (the Deep Fix shambolic and out of tune)? The admirable monster — isn’t that Jerry’s mum? Can we see Harrek in his Pierrot outfit sobbing his heart out at the end of Brighton’s West Pier (post-ruin, I think)? Maybe we can get Liz Williams to do a tarot reading for him (although, presumably, she was on the Palace Pier). If we see Harrek as the self-pitying hero, doesn’t that go all the way back to Achilles, Odysseus, and Gilgamesh? The “hero script” has always been able to absorb that, hasn’t it? Achilles has his little moment of humanity when he gives back Hector’s body, but then he re-dons his polished bronze — which was only ever for show/plot shenanigans, not practical at all — and gets back on with Plan A: live fast and die young. He cannot deviate; no more can he peel off his own skin/psychological armour: it is just too tough. Gosh, I am a miserable bastard, today! Do you have a vision of the authentic Harrek trying to get out, or is the point that he wishes he had some authentic desires he could use as levers to prise open his carapace of rote violence but keeps coming up empty?

I was toying with Julian and Sandy, but I feared that in the end Harrek — the great butch omi — would be more like Robert de Niro in Stardust, and Allah preserve us from that!

Harrek as Jerry Cornelius? If he wants some authentic desires, I think I have a few left in stock. Only slightly shop-soiled. Almost certainly not stitched together in a sweat shop in the East End last week. Definitely not 3D-printed and artfully patinated. If he turns out to be all shell and no flesh, do we stuff him with masticated crabsticks and then peel back the armour?

Zorak Zoran without the good looks, boyish charm, and spiritual insight. It goes against the grain, of course, but I have to agree with Jeff: Harrek doesn’t have to build and operate a(n authoritarian) political machine, because he is a one-man one-monster reign of terror. IRL leaders are just ordinary humans: without the powers of bear gods, they need systems to hold power.

Anaxial’s Roster (a non-canon source, I guess, but a little exercise in dubious nostalgia) concurs: … and even attempts a definition of nature spirits (albeit a bit game-mechanically?): So one wonders whether satyrs can — atypically — roam freely. Presumably, they don’t go “pop!” when you kick them out of their specified grove. Bounce off an invisible barrier? I don’t know. (Basically, nature spirits seem to be spirits from the animist point of view — sorcerers get their own disjoint set of elementals, for example.) If animal spirits count (and they seem to), it helpfully lists some mostly male examples: Gorthak (p. 80) — male spirit bear Hrognar (p. 98) — male spirit wolf (pup of Telmor) Sakkareka (p. 93) — sabretooth cat spirits: both sexes? (Sakkar himself is male) Zerapralor (p. 62) — male spirit deer As we all know marriage is simple but sex is complicated (and gender I won’t address). Presumably, sexes of plant and fungal spirits track their bodies, so we can at least say that those spirits are not all simply female. Nymphs, including dryads — not simple tree spirits: “Individual tree spirits have no innate intelligence and no conscious interaction.” (p. 216) — seem to be a bit of an odd case. On the one hand: So one would expect a nymph talking to a satyr to take the form of a satyr — and thus to be in a male body — and for satyrs not normally attracted to other satyrs to find the nymph alluring in that form. What happens when a nymph speaks to a mixed-species group? I couldn’t hazard a guess. It is open to interpretation, I suppose, but I take it that this means that even if a suberiad took on a shape, texture, odour, and colour that the troll to which it is appearing would find attractive (in another troll), the overall impression would be of terrifying ugliness. It is all about glamour, not cosmetic surgery and fright masks, right? But on the other hand, of dryads (there are equivalents for other nymph types): Anthropocentric? Androcentric? “Tits out for the lads”? [Sighs. Shakes head. Weeps.]

They took a plough and plough'd him down, Put clods upon his head, And they hae sworn a solemn oath John Barleycorn was dead. Of course, both the Kouretes and (domesticated) grain gods make me want to ask: what is a nature spirit, anyway?

Interesting. Following the link behind the link: So gods/spirits in the wild, but acting on the wild with their invented bits of culture, not representing nature innocent of culture (or acting in reaction to culture)?

Spun off from Lodri Great Temple to avoid threadjacking. It is all just playing with the pieces, not the word from on high. Specifically, ZZ is the mother of Fire–Sky, XU the midwife, and AA maybe the “father” who looks away from the carnage in the birthing suite. The Natural Childbirth Trust had nothing to do with this one. ZZ we can suppose gave birth through his forehead/third eye — doubtless, some kind of drill was involved. This echoes the fatal trepanning of Chaos (Huntun) and the birth of virginal daddy’s girl Athena (Yelmalio) from the head of Zeus (storm god — see also Orlanth and good old “let there be light” Adonai). Thus the passion of Yelmalio and ZZ dare not speak its name not because it is homosexual but because it is a parent–child thing (Yelmalio as sun fragment). Arguably, it is also necrophilia, as ZZ surely did not survive giving birth to the sun/cosmos through a hole in his head (see also draconic utuma as the origin of all) — still for a(n un)dead guy, ZZ is pretty spry, and he assures me that he is absolutely fine (and I am not going to argue). In Glorantha, we sometimes have trouble keeping generations and siblings apart, even when they are concepts. We have a progression of Chaos —> Disorder —> Storm, but simultaneously a wish to collapse these. There is also the question of the relationship between Chaos and Darkness: they are both hungry, early, filled with potential, and an absence which we are tempted to characterize as a presence. Think of Chaos as a primal zero state that kicks out positive numbers and their corresponding negatives simultaneously. For the sake of argument (polarity surely doesn’t matter, though some may think it does), let us say that the positive numbers correspond to matter/cosmos and the negative to the anti-matter which threatens to destroy it (or be destroyed by it). Some may identify the “destructive force” with Darkness, others with Chaos; we put these labels on everything that is not Cosmos/positive, but that — say the illuminated, who have seen the beginning of things — is just a matter of perspective: positive schmositive. Say instead that in the beginning, Darkness and Chaos were indistinguishable and that Darkness only gained definition when the yawning absence of the Void gave birth to Cosmic Fire — one day, all will meet and cancel back down to Zero. If ZZ now presents as Darkness and Disorder, that is because he has released some of his Fire to create the universe, but one day he will swallow it/us all again and regain his balance as primal Chaos, utter Zero. (Then, we may suppose, by random fluctuation, the whole mistake will begin again.) In the meantime, remember that he is become Death, the destroyer of self, and thereby given Life to us all. Or some such psychedelic fever dream. Where does that leave windbag Orlanth? The charitable view is that Orlanth/Storm is ZZ/Chaos in disguise: in self-trepanning, he released Yelm/created the universe and the idea of him as an usurper of Yelm rather than his necessary complement and mother is a mistake. The legit Orlanth is Invisible Orlanth, who is everywhere and nowhere, baby. Or of course, he is just a Johnny-come-lately who has hi-jacked the regalia of the Ur-gods. As you will. And what of the relationship between ZZ the Zombie and Arachne Solara the Ghost? Surely, Cragspider the Firewitch must know … and that sounds like a cue for some prog rock.

Well of Daliath: Which seems a good enough bet. Of course, it is questionable whether the different “generations” of earth goddesses are really distinct entities. When Orlanth usurps the kingdom, he takes on the earth’s/Ernalda’s fiery children, too — Orlanatus the wicked step-father? Storm Tribe (p. 217) has Gustbran hiding in Mahome’s cloak, rather than inside Mahome, but perhaps that is a euphemism and his sister is his mother, too. Or perhaps the cloak in question is the cloak that Vinga wrapped around Mahome (Storm Tribe, p. 168) — in tough times, when the forge fire is out, the hearth fire still burns and the forge can be re-lit from it?

It is true that XU was furthest from the light of Aether and ZZ closest, but “Argan Argar turned his back from the view” and XU “blinked rapidly but remembered what she saw” (both Trollpak: Uz Lore, p. 5 sidebar), so physical distance isn’t the only factor — and we know that XU is the secret keeper and friend of Yelm, the middle brother. I am not trying to diss AA by saying he is ignorant: he makes it work for him. But you know, this is just the sound of my caffeinated brain freewheeling, so don’t pay it too much mind.

Yes, just so.

Or — maybe, just maybe — Dayzatar, Yelm, and Lodril are as little three deities as [insert triple of earth goddesses here] (as you can do it vertically or horizontally) and Argan Argar’s “superpower” is to overwhelm “heaven” by just not seeing the light. AA’s is the magical power of ignorance (or at least of turning away, which solars might say of Lodril, too); ZZ’s is the magical power of knowing too much (and his overheated acid-and-meth-fried brain is drawn to the deities of “cold light”); XU strikes a happy balance and is the friend of the middle brother/aspect.

Interesting: so officers come from within the basic count? So if each squad is six soldiers plus a squad leader, then a company is led by a “first among equals” from the squad leaders, not an extra “senior” officer (for a total of 50)?

Ooh, I like this! Do they have a positional system? With zero? With a “decimal” (adjust to suit base) point? Does it make any real sense to talk about base with Roman numerals? (I am just asking: it is clear fives and tens are important, but …) If we say “three-score years and ten”, are we breaking out of our base ten system, or is it just a colourful way of saying “3 × 20 + 10”? (See also “soixante-dix.”) Shepherds count sheep like this: yan (1), tan (2), tether (3), mether (4), pip (5), …, jigget (20). But they count “goats” like this: yan, tan, teher — run! I am going to guess that counting systems vary to suit the tasks and sophistication of the users. If no computers, no need to bother with low bases, right? But the Morokanth might have a binary thumb–no thumb system for magic.

Argrath is dead. Argrath remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we, murderers of all murderers, console ourselves? That which was the holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet possessed has bled to death under our knives. Who will wipe this blood off us? With what water could we purify ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we need to invent?

I am not demanding it, it is just that when David said: … and went on to give the 16-point plan which included being reborn as an elf, I took it he was speaking from advance knowledge of forthcoming official material. He did not state it there, but I assumed that the successful initiate would lose their beast rune and gain a plant rune. If I have any of that wrong, my apologies to all concerned.

Thanks for your comments, and I am more than happy to concede that: I may have gotten people’s attitudes to FRP magic wrong; I don’t understand real-life shamanism. However, it would seem crazy to apologise for saying that IRL shamans can tell the difference between: on the one hand, (what I would recognise as) murder and mutilation; and on the other, their own rituals (however ill-equipped I am to understand them). At this point, I should definitely shut up.

Which was my point — although made from the POV of an outsider/unbeliever. It sometimes seems to me that some people’s attitude to Glorantha goes a bit like this: In the real world, magic and religion are bad science (and so they don’t work); In Glorantha, the natural laws are different and — abracadabra! — bad science becomes good, magic works, and religion is true. Even as a lifelong infidel, this seems to me rather hard on real-world religion — as if it were “broken” and could be “fixed” by importing some natural laws and grimoires from the Lozenge. Surely, that is not right. Surely, the real world is exactly as “magical” as it needs to be, already. And if I don’t see the world in the same way religious people do, that is not because we disagree about physics and chemistry, is it? Dragging this back to the Aldrya initiation: I have no problem with it being hard for an animal to initiate to Aldrya; no problem with it requiring the animal to be transformed into a vegetable (even literally); if I am a little uncomfortable with the use of elements of real-world shamanism in the transformation, it is because the Gloranthan transformation looks to be very much about “the flesh, the inert matter” and so looks (to me) to be mocking real-world shamanism as bad science. I am not here to attack or defend real-world shamanism, religion, or magic(k), but I think treating it as bad science or pseudoscience is boring and lazy. “But in my elf game, I want to powertrip. I want to point my finger and call down the fire of the gods.” That is fine: go ahead. But the needs of our FRPs shouldn’t be allowed to distort how we see the nominally similar subject matter in the real world, should it?

But I take it that on the official “be more hardcore: get reborn as an elf” version of initiation to Aldrya, the character does end up with a plant rune … if they are alive at the end.

And that’s fine. All I was trying to say — ineptly, I guess — is that maybe when people rail against Argrath they are really reacting to a feeling of being railroaded and that is why they are quite so vehement about him. I have no interest in telling you what to write or other people how to play — that would be both rude and pointless.

That — that is what we want! I think the problem with Argrath is that he stands for the metaplot, for the future already written. For some people, that will chafe. Some will want to skip ahead to the “open” bit of the future post-Argrath. Doesn’t matter how brilliantly the metaplot and Argrath’s characterization are done, for some it will be a bore. Others not so much, and they will enjoy weaving around the story as it trickles down from above. Maybe sometimes that frustration gets expressed as attacks on Argrath’s character or effectiveness. It is not as if an Argrath who is more of a strongman is what we need, a Putin on steroids. Expressing a happiness with the metaplot (or the existence of a metaplot) as approval of Argrath as a person or as a hero would — IMVHO — equally miss the point.

So on the one hand anthropocentrism is a problem … … but on the other if the humans want to play the elf game, the vegetable people and their tree mother are jolly unsporting to make them go through such a demanding rebirth ritual. Why is that? It sounds like you are saying that humans must be allowed to take what they like from Aldryami culture and magic and that the Aldryami are not allowed to set the terms. 😉 Is it just that the proposed ritual makes a lot of us go “ick”? Is it that it seems to resonate uncomfortably with intrahuman matters IRL in which some of us would like to ditch biological determinism or essentialism? (I am not going to be prescriptive about real world attitudes, but matters can be complicated, surely.)

Thanks for your comments. My “something has gone terribly wrong” was about what would happen if a rogue real-life shaman took their rituals too literally and actually eviscerated the wannabe initiate (which is not something I am accusing IRL shamans of doing). Sorry if I didn’t make that clear. You are right, though, that I do wonder — nothing stronger than that — about how our attitudes to IRL magic should or just might affect our attitudes to FRP magic. Fantasy magic can seem like a branch of physics or engineering, getting a new spell like shopping for a smart bit of tech or visiting Q. If we are not on our guard, rationalized magic can be a bit dull. But on the other hand, gee-whiz sensawunda can be a crashing bore, too. It is tricky. But I am not arguing for making shamans less powerful or more mundane than other fantasy spellcasters … and anyway, no one should take too much notice of me.

Free choice isn’t the issue. If people’s choices are determined by the ironclad laws of historical materialism (or whatever), that is no reason to believe naïve theists will be less dangerous than reflective godlearners or illuminates, is it? However, it seems clear that I will remain in a minority of one, so I had better let it go.