scott-martin

That's part of it. You've met derrideans. A new scribe comes in with a system that promises to be more expansive, incorporating truth with illusion, reconciling fundamental oppositions. Love the rhetoric or hate the rhetoric: the motorcycle needs enough zen to get across the country somehow. The empire is the IO motorcycle. Across the water, Ompalam, for all its grossness, was the way they found to get through their particular problem. We naturally want to fight against it. It's the hero wars. I hope we win. I don't think I've ever seen the paperwork excommunicating the Brown Man. Wonder what his final flounce was.

"It's an allegory! All allegory! Where it veers from what you think is the Truth read other wise for inner clarity, what I call my _no prize_!" - Geleron Green For example one of the things that's interesting is the way cognate cults compete and consolidate within a society like species in an ecological niche or corporations today. Once upon a time a buserian sect emerged to amass Star Knowledge, at first with special tents and then towers. A sorcery man found his way to what was probably Vingkot country and set up shop. The Carmanians eventually evolve their own viziers from archaic Fronelan forms. When any of these vocations are working properly to process and apply information within the society, they tend to develop into parallel bureaucratic structures. The smartest ones naturally work hard to study each other, seeing a rich local source of lore to tap. The defensive ones tried to shut themselves off while proclaiming that their lore was the only good lore, foreign lore is inferior and a waste of time. But in other places the lore and the bureaucracies converge. Then in situations where none of the known lore is working for you, you go outside the box. The Brown Man drifted across as many schools as he could. None of them helped. He kept digging. A few centuries later, people who followed in his footsteps have largely replaced the buserians in imperial society (compete and consolidate) except in specialized and explicitly traditional contexts. Buserian had to retreat to make room for the new way that clearly did it better and which by the way the goddess adores. They have a different mix of knowledge tools up there, more star lore and a lot of that wild old henotheism that Syranthir brought in. The fractional truth calculus is brilliant in some applications and useless in others. But as they institutionalize, they ultimately just move into the old library spaces knowledge competitors leave behind. The bureaucracy recapitulates itself. Meet the new beard, functionally identical to the old beard even though it may be styled differently to fit the "head" or society it's attached to. Luckily they all hate outright Knowledge Theft, whatever that means for you.

The power of Up and Down (or rising water and falling water) seems to recur endlessly with them, from esoteric Heler (who also has Movement but probably plays only a limited role in triolini religion under that name) to the surface tension mysteries of Wachaza. Two forms of sa-metal. Maybe it's as "simple" as Lodril and Lorion doubling in an early cosmic cycle, not a conflict of Sky and Storm then but only falling and rising forces. In this model of course the third blue eye that negotiates between them signifies the alchemist.

Another fine avenue for translators to explore! But a little more seriously, orthodox triolini look first to Magasta for the metaphysical "soul arranger" or psychopomp function. Maybe one of his many epithets is the Flow, the cosmic force that pulls us all back to the hole in the heart of the world for purification and recirculation. Some might say gravity, धर्म or άνάγκη. (Maybe "love" also comes close.) Weirder triolini undoubtedly have weirder ideas involving the role of Daliath on the far end of the cycle. Magasta churns and flows but Daliath learns and flows, so to speak, giving water people a system to make sense of the otherwise murky patterns of Change. Of course there are textual cues that the entire Daliath complex is an alchemical allegory, deploying Change for higher goals. Exploring these waters might tickle your fancy.

Do not call up that which thou canst not put down. I guess I blew it. The Ralzakark material fails to completely conceal a very fluid sense of sexuality, given the nominal genders of the creature's spawn and their projected ritual roles. After all, a unicorn would have been involved at some point as "mother." The creature might also have impregnated and given birth to itself through a heroquest that we might consider a grotesque failure. "Their nature is hunger." I like that. Fertility turned sideways. All the nymph nations might well have Fertility, from the tilntae to the likitae and even the triolinae. Strikes me suddenly that Uleria is a blue goddess for a blue planet! As for Seseine's obedience to Ompalam, I remain unconvinced until I see it.

Many water entities have Movement. I'd even argue half seriously that the power is naturally associated with the element like Fertility and Earth . . . not a universal or necessary link (otherwise the existence of both runes would be redundant) but the relationship conceals inner truths in common. Storm in itself may actually compete with classic Movement as a kind of rival system, perhaps focused on Change instead. This might be the primeval "Larnste" philosophy that then passes to Orlanth (but significantly very few of his half-brothers) via direct inheritance from the mountain god. Orlanth then also acquires ownership of the mastakos(*) after defeating water at the Well of Wisdom, consolidating what we now consider the rune's two meanings. * A difficult term to translate. "Slippery consciousness" or "magic mirror" have both been proposed and rejected, along with, less seriously, "blue racer," "five-mile wheel," "stone of the philosophers" and (colloquially) "liberating mastery." Some scholars believe that the mastakos is not an entity but an attribute or even a heightened state those who drink from Daliath can command. Since most of these scholars are born triolini, their terminology may only apply as water-in-water and thus be untestable in normal terrestrial environments.

Sorry, Pamalt's necklace.

Funny you should say that. @Joerg is there anything you'd like to say here? I always thought succubi were busted passion spirits and that passion spirits themselves are technically classed with the Tilntae so Seseine and her people would be fallen daughtersons of Uleria. I don't know if anyone bothers to mythify this . . . people who are extremely into succubus magic either (a) see no distinction between what they do and healthy eroto lucidity so it's all Uleria or (b) aren't into narrative anyway so their genealogy of sentiment isn't preserved. Seseine and Ompalam, on the other hand, may not like each other. They work together but it's not like they're friends. One thing that's interesting about the Necklace is how many of the relationships are people cheating on their official partners. That may be how Seseine gets in.

Aren't magisaurs just aberrant neoplatonic dragons? Or am I thinking of someone else?

Well you must know someone who went to Dartmouth, call them and they'll make the foreign money happen.

Love the Q&A. This does sound like a more universal form of "What The XXXX Says." How about a one-sheet for conventions, campaign handout and other promotional purposes, "What Everybody Knows." There's all these types of person, the world is flat and everything is inhabited by spirits if not alive. They will talk to you. Society used to work like such and such but things are changing fast. There's cool stuff that Everybody Knows about here, here and reportedly over here.

Sandy is convinced there are twisted dwarves in the Tunneled Hills working pitchblende. Given the mutagenic properties of their weapons it probably qualifies, if it exists.

That's profoundly good. You've captured an essential aspect of otherworld experience: the weird macaronic sliding quality between words and things, which in hell isolates us and in other places melts barriers. Uz consciousness. Eller höra danska.

This is really good. Or Aether spilled in the absence of copper just leaves tin deposits behind. Great alchemical thread. I knew a guy once who ran tests on captive dwarves (their cell door was unlocked but opened out, so he hung a big sign PULL TO EXIT over it and they never escaped) to figure out how their chow works. One group got genuine dwarf chow taken out of the can and slopped on a plate. The other group got tasty steak tartare on a similar plate. Final group got sawdust and some kind of nasty food-adjacent paste poured back in the can. They went for the canned paste every time and felt healthy and relatively cheerful afterward. Apparently something about the tin makes chow more satisfying, as though it catalyzes the nutrients. Like germinating or sprouting what would otherwise be inert material. I guess that's just how tin works. Rub it up against dead earth and you get brass and happy dwarves. But oh how they cried to get steak tartare unless it spent a little time in that can.

This is great because it defines a clear dilemma. Someone who attains legendary resources can circulate out there forever and have strange adventures (which really resolve into no adventures at all until they come back and have an impact on the Inner World) but most of us simply go down the whirlpool to the bottom sooner or later. In the former scenario you can remain yourself for a staggeringly long time, which is its own doom. Otherwise, with luck and friends in the right places, you can navigate back around and rejoin the world. Sea Chaos might grapple with this and we see the Waertagi make their choice in historical times. I'm no lunar technician but odds are good Natha Hell is the transition from dry hells to the wetter ones below, a kind of inheritance. Go down too far and it's neither wet nor dry.

Yeah, the TWIST! I think often about how efficiently the classic LARPs extended and deepened what was then relatively rudimentary canon. We know a lot more now about how the Council Broke, the Life of Moonson and the Fall of Boldhome and even the Rise of Ralios thanks to those experimental heroquests. That vision of Sog held up for a long time too, before it lapsed into its own extra-theological purgatory or limbo, where dreams go. Of course now the convention never ends and is open to everyone with a phone so similar experiments could open up these corners of the lozenge while Dragon Pass gets its love. Worth thinking about. They don't have to be authoritative or even lead anywhere, but every step into the territory helps. For me I'd be willing to entertain the idea that Malkion the Sacrifice is anti-zzaburist propaganda if it gets us closer to where we need to be.

One outside-the-box approach people have explored in the past is lavish use of (sorcerously) enchanted iron to really mess up enemy offensive magic and, depending on what emerges in the Game Master's Guide, cleave through magical defenses as well. Think of it as a balancing factor: if you're better warriors and they're potentially better magicians, bring iron to the party and eliminate their edge. Some people have also fiddled around with giving the fighting caste(s) inherent sense magic and dispel magic capabilities. A little too obviously a game balance mechanic, but it's out there. Maybe for especially pure MOA types. In general my fighters maintain a lot of personal spirit-based "battle" magic as long as they're in the field a lot (the law of Malkion I'm familiar with explicitly allows this) and if MOA adopt more sedentary lifestyles the slots get repurposed for sorcery. Other horalites never switch. Either way, the main playbook is probably a lot of shock and awe given the notorious cataphract tactics . . . load up on massive everything in advance, hit super hard, keep hitting until nobody hits back. They are some of the most fearsome warriors on the lozenge. If the other team is still around in five rounds, your sorcerers can send up the bomb. And if the other team runs away, you have a choice to chase or rearm so you can try again later. With the right spell support, the other team gets tired first. Of course if someone gets the drop on them they need dedicated sorcerers watching their back and shooting off a little something special so there's time to get the armor back on, but that can happen to anyone.

Yomili's acclamation as "Mouth of Hrestol" despite any known fondness for caste transgression backs this up. One could evidently be the pinnacle of what they considered "Hrestolite" in that era without resembling much of what we casually call "Hrestolite" today. The first questions that then emerge revolve around finding nomenclature that distinguishes historical usage (how people at any given time define schools) from the evolution of praxis. We ran into this recently together with Greg's cryptic "Loskalmites are not Malkioni" position. I am interested in seeing how "Hrestol" praxis changes, revives, is coopted and reconstructed in various times and places. Maybe there's something intrinsic that remains through all the changes. The Dawn Age hagiography is undoubtedly useful to some Gloranthans looking for a historical foundation. It's as close as we get, but even that, given its archaic and barely published nature, isn't much. Everything beyond that becomes precarious as the West rewrites itself for its own purposes. Perhaps we start there again. Someone else can start with Fronela as hotbed of modern Hrestol and see why that land developed differently, sometimes in line with one or more "Hrestolisms" and sometimes independently. And we can look at caste observance and triangulate from that perspective. In theory there's also the cult of the saints, although I suspect that's one of the first and deepest of the post-Hrestol accretions. (Once upon a time I did a lot of work on sufi transmission. This may be like that.) But what I know about Fronela is surprisingly thin. While people have worked with it, not much has really stuck. Akem is its own thing but the modern non-Sog population seems to propagate from the abduction of an otherwise undocumented daughter of Malkion by the "Redeli" bear people who vanish from the texts soon thereafter. By the end of the Dawn Age there are settlements of the blond Isefwalites before the Gbaji Wars sweep all that away to bring in the bull-riding Losk-alim allied with Talor. There's the Irensaval resistance to the God Learner invasion. (Isefwal / Irenswal?) Then in the wreckage of the God Learner era we see Jonat and other warlords build realms. And finally Snodal and his son purportedly represent the culmination of history. Any or all of these people can have relationships with various post-Hrestol forms or provide the foundation on which interpretations emerge. The caste-driven approach seems easier because the struggle there revolves around the desirable limits of caste mobility. Do we live in a casteless society where everyone can do anything? (Some texts argue that this was the reaction to Hrestol in the Dawn Age. It's also a funny D&D / RuneQuest joke.) Is the "engrion," the knight or MOA, a sixth caste separate from the others (they tried this once on Brithos in the early texts) or a state of being outside the castes? Or as in the Rokarite system, is caste behavior an ideal to be emulated in pursuit of morality if not immortality? Malkion had all the caste tools but was still a slave until he had enough hands to wield them all. And where are the pragmatic limits between the castes under historical pressure? The texts are full of sorcerers seeking rulership. I am more than half convinced that all the original talars have fallen and been replaced by people who misinterpret their archaic religious role. Warriors move up or down. Peasants come and go. Women are appreciated or not. (How about that Person rune?) "The varnas revolve," a vedic scholar might observe. Maybe good things will come out of Pithdaros. It's the Hero Wars.

My book has a page 408 in which "The Castle Coast preserves a Hrestoli school that is less rigid in its caste restrictions." As for Makan, the schools were convergent in the Imperial Age, when (p. 411) "Most famous is the Temple of Makan, the center of Hrestolism. Here new Men-of-All take their sacred oaths and enter the service." What happened between then and now to divorce Makan from Hrestol and eliminate MOA status is MGF. This is all good rehearsal of centuries of theological debate that should inform a God of the West book one day, heaven help us all.

Hot stuff! Reminds me of Swedenborg. "Since heaven, as a whole, resembles one man, and is, also, a Divine-spiritual man [maximus homo] in the greatest form, even with respect to shape, it necessarily has the same distinctions, as to members and parts, as man has, bearing similar names." It also opens up MGF tension in their system in that the more Loskalmite you become, the more alienated from the primordial Enjoreli / Eleven Beasts underpinnings of the region. They don't seem to have Beast Societies up there. Or if they do, it might be in a dramatically different form. In general I think Loskalm has some of the biggest magic left in the world imported from Altinela and elsewhere to support the idealistic population. Everyone eats and many have time to play as long as the magic holds up.

Jealous. A lot of great threads burbling right now, this one is now my favorite.

This one is always fun because even a mundane fleece will yield significant potash that can help you do other things. The more "golden" the better. Whatever Nelat's specially prepared flock sweats may also produce a lasting dye, tattoo ink, even make henna relatively stable. It's probably caustic to clear an acid bath.

In the fullness of time some monks have probably argued that thou shalt not love that which thou canst ruin, so tap it all and grow mighty. Those guys are jerks though.

Bring it all on, the shelleyan orphans, the frazier choruses, all the lonely eyesores the Rokarists forget to their sorrow.

A DARE. I seem to have an extra copy of Codex 2 (The Fronela Special) to send as a PRIZE to the person or team who concocts the best rhythm of the saints, public acclamation take all. Bonus for Madonna references or at least Hildegard von Bingen because I'm from the late '80s. But if revolves around the yacht rock that's good too. Or anything.