Ali the Helering

1 hour ago, mfbrandi said:

And yet we have the story: “What’s the Fourth Age like?”; Greg points out the window.

I tend now to see the myth of how Glorantha thins through successive cycles of destruction as an aetiology of our world. I wouldn’t want everyone to agree with me — how dull that would be! — but maybe one day one person?

Oh, and treating theistic magic like a science providing lots of shiny tech tools, didn’t someone try that? Remind me how that worked out for them.

Don Cupitt, the non-Realist theologian (and my ethics tutor) demanded of religion that there be "No more pixie dust".

I think he and Greg would have got on well.

While no longer of the pantheon, Heler would seem likely given his repeated fights with Ui and his Ereltharol aspect.

56 minutes ago, Atgxtg said:

Another interesting bit about the family history of elves is that since elves are so long lived, an elven PC might actually have been at some great event years ago, rather than (or in addition to) one or more ancestors. Elrond was at the battle 3000 years ago, where Sauron was struck down.

I have toyed with the idea of character creation along the lines of Nephilim, so that elves gain specific skills at different points within the ages, dependent on the culture and society predominating at the time, and any changes in focus for the character.  

13 hours ago, Bill the barbarian said:

My, my, Ali... that is quite the long detailed post... too much coffee?🙂

 

My consultant leaned forward very urgently, and with great intensity assured me "You can never have too much caffeine!"

I know some doctors survive on it, and I always try to follow medical advice😊

8 hours ago, Shiningbrow said:

But, wouldn't they look really excited, because something has finally happened???

Yet, as players, haven't we all felt "Oh, not another f***ing quest against an f***ing Dark Lord"?

Of course, part of the issue with respect to Family Histories is that they record events that have a significant impact upon the PC.  It all depends on what you class as such a significant event.  The Clan Questionnaire made do with 32(?) questions to cover the entirety of Glorantha's myth and history impact on a clan. 

If you produce a Noldor Family History then you simply have to record the major events that would have impact on someone from their specific realm.  Remembering that for very long periods of time nothing happens that needs recording.  Which may be why so many elves look truly bored in the movies.😜

7 hours ago, Eff said:

Well, that and the the "serpents of the deep" or tannim, presumably cognate with other (frequently serpentine) watery monsters in neighboring mythologies, though Ltn/Lotan/Leviathan gets individualized in poetry. 

Sorry to be a pedant, but while the singular of "serpents of the deep" is tannin the plural is tanninim.  

Tannim has been translated a number of ways, including 'monster', 'dragon' and 'jackal'.  Such precision is what makes the Bible such a simple book to understand....

Just now, Bill the barbarian said:

A little Babylonian creation myth underlying the Talmudic creation myth. Cool. I know of a few other areas that the religions interact (Sargon/Moses, the floods) but that is just too cool. 

Since the excavation and translation of the Ugarit/Ras Shamra material the Bible has to be seen as part of a continuum of Mesopotamian-Levantine religious material.  Biblical literalists fail to take the Bible seriously.🤣🤪

38 minutes ago, Eff said:

Chaos in Glorantha really refers to a couple different things, out of universe. On one hand, there's the unformed or unsorted "existence before existence", the Kaos of Greek myth, the tehom of Genesis 2:2, the Ginnungagap of Snorri Sturluson, etc., which can also be translated as "void". On another hand, there's the transcendental "materialized ideology", the Chaos of Moorcock and Games Workshop, which is a kind of intangible or ethereal quality that causes icky mutations and typesetting that GoES LIke ThIs. On a third hand, there's the "moral tehom", Chaos as the source of evil in the world, which is Chaos as Poul Anderson used the term. 

It is also worth noting that tehom is cognate with Tiamet, and the portion of the Genesis 1 Creation narrative where 

6 And God said, ‘Let there be a dome in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.’ 7 So God made the dome and separated the waters that were under the dome from the waters that were above the dome. And it was so. 

can easily be understood as the splitting of the Chaos goddess in two, and the RW being created between those parts. This is directly referenced in the Enuma Elish Tablet IV verses 101 - 140.

2 hours ago, g33k said:

I still like the idea I met in 1981 -- the Lunars  themselves  caused it, trying to "consecrate" land that was, in fact, NOT "land" but "Dragon."

I suspect it's deliberately ambiguous in canon, so that YGMV and so that multiple stories can be simultaneously true.

I have always considered it to be an unintentional backfire of the ritual causing a sleeping dragon to awaken, indicating the Gloranthan Uncertainty Principle.

Is it a sleeping dragon; is it a range of hills; is it really, really angry at having its snooze interrupted?

12 minutes ago, Eff said:

 This is tangible, accessible divinity, but it is not a divinity which serves as a substitute for life. 

Any being who serves as a substitute for life is a parasite, not a divinity.

1 minute ago, mfbrandi said:

And we are back to “Jesus Take the Wheel” — he won’t, not unless you take it yourself. Sincere religion needn’t mean an embrace of hocus-pocus and suspensions of normal causality.

Except that it frequently does, to the detriment of all concerned.

You might trace religion to the 'Idea of the Holy' (Otto) or the Varieties of Religious Experience (James) or the Elementary forms of Religious Life (Durkheim) or whatever you like, but when all is said and done, all you have is a liberal European understanding of a worldwide phenomenon.  Faith is the thought that there is something bigger than ourselves that is worthy of trust, and has an absolute value - whether it is the Boy Scouts of America, Manchester United, the Large Hadron Collider or Brahma.

Greg was a shamanist, and encountered the other in quite different ways to Dara Happans or (most) Sartarites.  His Jrusteli Monomyth was the Campbellian Monomyth transported into Glorantha.  He came to realise that it failed as much in Glorantha as it did in California, which is why I greatly regret the over-simplification of the recent return to the Monomyth.  It isn't the commonality of religion which is important - that is a simple function of humanity - it is the variation from it, just as in the RW.

All faith is a function of irrationality, or as Sam Clemens (Mark Twain) put it "Faith is believing what you know ai'tent so".  Trying to pin religious faith down to a structuralist pattern is like trying to paint a cloud green.  It really doesn't - and can't - work that way.

On 9/27/2022 at 2:00 PM, JRE said:

Our Glorantha may vary, but many of my dwarves are actually cleanliness freaks and it is one of their concerns with the Outer world and its dirt, organic matter and bodily fluids. Bring rubber suits, antiseptic baths, gas maks... And ever clean clothes.

IMG they have been played as Borg.  Which is fine.  Until you get to 7 of 9......

1 hour ago, Agentorange said:

Here on earth the air we breathe is of course made up of a variety of gases, besides which you can get methane in mines ( firedamp ) and so on and so forth.

The origin of Glorantha is of course entirely mystical, which led me to wonder.....are there gases in Glorantha ?

Hard to see how a storm god would operate otherwise.

1 hour ago, Atgxtg said:

Kinda. Just what constitutes "magic" is hard to pin down in Tolkien. Much of what the Elves do is considered to be magic by the hobbits and men. So in game terms a elven cloak,boots  or rope might be treated as magical or not. A similar case exists for Elven and Numenorean weapons that are know to be more effective against creatures of the Enemy, such as Glmabring or Sting. Much of what is considered as magical are items that are superior at what they are supposed to do, but aren;t specfically as being magical in the text. So we have some wiggle room there. An effect thast works like Bladesharp might be magical or it might be the result of a highly skilled smith making good crafting rolls.

Game system wise, you might want to consider using a more generic version of RQ/BRP as you base system, as RQG is more deeply entwined with Glorantha that other BRP games. I think RQ3, Stormbringer/Elric/Magic World, or BRP would all be easier to adapt to Middle Earth. 

There is a degree to which this reminds me of - horror warning - Mongoose's method of looking at the mass production of magical blades BUT it might nonetheless make sense.  If you want a more interesting approach, I would refer you to Land of Ninja and the ki abilities of crafters.

12 hours ago, g33k said:

Anyone who denies (for example) the fundamentally idealized-English-pastoral allegory of the Shire is going to have a steep hill to climb.  Tolkien himself admitted there were many "Dwarves-as-Jews" parallels in his work.  Eru Iluvitar as Yahweh, Morgoth as Lucifer, Valar as archangels, Maiar as lesser angels... it's Christianity all the way down, young man!

As Bill observes, youth is a thing of the past - I've inhabited Middle Earth since '73 and Glorantha since '79.  Parallelism is not the same thing as allegory.  Allegory is used to conceal one idea within another.  As you note, Tolkien's parallelisms are as subtle as a kick in the head - and therefore not allegory, since nothing is being concealed.

He was a man of his era and upbringing in South Africa, with his fear of sallow, slant eyed orcs, black trolls with staring white eyes and those who overthrow 'rightful' authority.  His opinion of industrialisation and communal farming is obvious - his detestation was for burgeoning communism, not fascism. 

All of this, overlaid with the horror of the trenches as Bill says.  I have read LotR perhaps 38 - 40 times, but the implicit racism makes it harder each time.

Incidentally, 'The Rings of Power' made an interesting contribution to Tolkien's inner debate over an implicitly evil race, with Galadriel in disagreement with Adar over the origin of the orcs.  The two views were both espoused by him at different times, as he found himself torn between the absolute power of Eru Iluvatar and whether Morgoth could corrupt creatures before their birth.  JRRT's racial understanding isn't simply Christian, but Roman Catholic in particular, and it was interesting to see theological theory debated on prime-time TV.

13 hours ago, svensson said:

Well, remember that the Houses in Minas Tirith [which haven't even been founded yet - - Gondor doesn't exist until the very end of the Second Age] was as fallen an institution as any other in RotK. Gondor's colonists and Numenorean refugees were of a more physical 'practical' type than Arnor's. Arnoreans were more spiritual and mystical in temperament than Gondorians were, and therefore retained more magic and kept a stronger faith in the Valar.

As I wrote, it is some of the leaders who have magic - in the First, Second or Third Ages.  "The hands of the king are the hands of a healer" et al.  

This applied to Gondor and Arnor alike.

13 hours ago, svensson said:

Tolkien's analogy here is that wisdom and faith must... MUST... be combined with working physicality and the intelligent application of force for a people to prosper. Yes, Tolkien was an Imperialist in his own way. Not quite a 'Mountbatten' or 'Kipling' Imperialist, but a loyal subject of a strong and vibrant Crown nevertheless. Remember that the two key issues of his time were a] how to wisely rule the Empire and b] the defeat of fascism. These are the most important allegories and themes in his fiction.

While a lot of the FotR was written during the war years it wasn't edited and published published until 1954.  By then fascism had been - at least temporarily - defeated in most nations.

The Empire had lost India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Myanmar.  Nasser had overthrown the Egyptian government and was starting to threaten British interests in the Suez canal.  It was at war in Malaya and Kenya, with many other areas heading for independence.

Tolkien himself said that "I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done so since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence.", so it would be wise not to regard his writings as in any way allegorical.

There is, of course, the small issue of magic.  It is available to the Valar, the Maiar, and major leaders.  Besides that it is rare indeed.  Even the Houses of Healing in Minas Tirith seem more a herbalism and convalescence home, rather than a place of healing magics.

10 hours ago, Bill the barbarian said:

Just watched a film that addresses the same question about a couple of books with a little greater import than the RQ G core books... I know, I know... blasphemy... and speaking of which...

 

 

Errows in copy and piste have been around for awhile!
Not to mention retconning and out and out changing of text for the editor or proofer's own agenda or...

Dammit man, you surely aren't suggesting that it's anything other than the pure and undiluted murmurings of God straight into the grubby ears of a clerk?

As has been said, every word in the Bible is literally true.  It's when you start putting them together in sentences the trouble starts.....

24 minutes ago, Scornado said:

I was imprecise: I am happy that Uleria's seasonal holy day each season is a whole week.  What I am not sure of is whether Uleria has a HIGH Holy day ever (apart from Sacred Time).  I like the idea of different types of love on each day of the week though.

Hooray, hooray, it's the first of May, outdoor....

I don't think you should ever play them as dumb, but different.  They may not have the same values as you, but that is part of why they are beyond human understanding.

In the case of the iron-feathers trade suggested, my question would be "What do they need the feathers FOR?" accompanied by ominous eyebrow waggling.

1 hour ago, svensson said:

The last US President that held St. Bartlett's level of moral high ground was George Washington, and even his boots were a little muddy when it came to the French Revolution. I will certainly grant that TWW was what people think the operations of government ought to be, but then so was 'Mr. Smith Goes To Washington'.

If you don't get fed the theory, you don't see the divergence in reality.  I loved it as light comedy, but interesting as an educative device.

11 hours ago, svensson said:

Thinking of the UK House of Cards, I'm gonna have to watch that again. This time I need to pay attention to the forms of parliamentary government [who does what and is responsible to whom] rather than just the plotline and dialogue.

Unfortunately we don't have an equivalent to "The West Wing" with its excellent education in the Constitution and the practise of government.  Shame that Trump didn't watch it.....

3 hours ago, PhilHibbs said:

I doubt it, that would rightly raise furious ire from republicans, and moderate monarchists such as myself. If it's the right thing to do, then sure the government might well do it. But if it were in any way controversial, I feel that leaking the royal opinion would be counterproductive and that's one of the reasons they don't do it.

Cameron's careless leaking of the Queen's opinion on Scottish independence was a PR disaster.

Cameron described her as 'purring' with pleasure at the referendum's result.  It was the 'purring' that caused offence both to all Scots and to the Queen, who jested (to the leader of the Scottish Nationalists) that he deserved physical punishment (six of the best) for lying about her.  Few of us doubted that she would be happy with the result, however.