scott-martin

Sassy! The turtle is my favorite pokemon. For me the key is that the Gloranthan "emic" (gloremic) is itself informed by centuries of in-setting intellectual efforts toward a true (gloretic) theory of religion and tragic rejections of those artificial abstractions. Right now (hobby year 1620-ish, publishing year 2016) the POV characters tend to be defensively and even a little stridently "traditionalist" while unwittingly revealing the latent structures of repressed innovation at every turn. It happens. I suspect that as the Hero Wars roll in and the timeline advances the in-setting magicians will have to wrestle with or reject the overdetermined nature of their theoretical understanding. Civilizations under extreme pressure get hot. Any better?

You'll find a generic "Runepower" as a placeholder in the list of rune spells (Classic version p. 65, original RQ2 p. 63) but it was never really developed in print beyond elemental summoning spells. Pity! Still, that may be corrected soon.

That Harmony connection is interesting but more ground would need to be prepared before our understanding of the cult can bear it!

Well I can rise to the level of distraction machine! Two to start out with: you mentioned somewhere (maybe the orange Glorantha box) that you regretted not reading the theory of religion books they assigned back at Beloit. I can relate. Do you remember which books they were or even which classes you were taking or who the professors were? Second one is easy and fun. Warding cubes. Was that a reference to Katherine Kurtz's Deryni books that snuck in, or were she and the RQ group working independently from a shared common inspiration? Thanks,

Love that. Their cousins might still be extant within northern temples as well, only completely unspeakable.

This raises the interesting and perhaps delicate question of the status and provenance of female Issaries in Esrolia. For me there's nothing shocking about a woman who moves her wheel into the Issaries workshop and bargains her own account. After all, it's just a quick hop from the Asrelia grandmotherly secret to Spare Grain and besides, the talking god is complex. But the mothers may have other opinions and in any event it's another thread.

Just to add a note to everyone else's tune: I suspect that Shargash was once very important in classical Dara Happan cremation rites but has since been suppressed for one reason or another. The question that follows is who in their society handles the bodies nowadays. In "new pelorian" or lunar households the rites are probably as culture-dependent as 7M indicates. The disposition of the body for them is almost an afterthought when you're concerned with the disposition of the soul.

Interesting. On the surface it is true, there is no active Market program among the Argan Argar at this time. We don't give them that spell. They come to us when they want to deal. As a result Issaries has no native competition throughout the Holy Country. The underworld rites are a matter of inner temple doctrine and not the open marketplace. The Market spell is not fungible at this level but perhaps this is where Spell Trading comes into its own, changing the terms of the discussion and opening all obstacles to free exchange. (This in itself conceals a Secret of how "reciprocal initiation" works in general.) Either way, since I'm here, I would suggest that much of the lay production in the "guilds" comes under the Issaries umbrella -- the urban Harsts source and manufacture their own packaging, associate Minlinsters and so on are always available to add value before resale, the tavern cult handles retail, etc.

I think this opens the door to the more pernicious old question of how you discover reciprocal initiation in play. If I come to a new jurisdiction where they don't recognize Goldentongue, I need to identify their local equivalent and convince their examiners to let me set up my shingle. This may involve a little lip service to their gods, certification, silver crosses palms, I swear not to handle state monopoly goods and respect local pricing, etc. I basically have to prove my magic and prove to them that I respect theirs. Once that happens, I was always already in -- their temple is compatible enough with mine that I can recover spells and sacrifice there, I was always compatible enough with them that they'll take me (even begrudgingly). Until that happens, they don't know me and will tend to deal with me like any other interloper trying to horn in on their action. It's probably similar for many of the other old "generic" cults, many of which perhaps not coincidentally have something like a professional or guild-like orientation. The local examiners are key.

Arlaten and his familiars back in Strangers in Prax are probably due a fresh coat of detail to conform to current views of post-RQ3 Rokari magic, but I always liked little Nailhead. In that book, we learned that the Rokari prefer animals or enchanted creatures as familiars -- dryads and griffins are mentioned as unusually dangerous but alluring options -- and that both artificial objects and disembodied spirits are considered unorthodox familiar forms at best. So at least at that time there were socially / philosophically accepted norms within familiar practice.

If you need an opposition, Spirit would be very interesting in some cultures. Plant becomes a different approach to mortality, individuality and time. Also you get a parallel to the Fertility/Death dyad that subsumes their magic in cultures where Power is more important than Form.

Hi Styropa -- There's a fan letter from MARB in Wyrms Footnotes 1 ("like my own game, it looks most formidable at first reading") so they were definitely aware of each other.

This is great, thanks. Do non-Earth women worship at the Paps? What spirits do the Impala women hold dear?