Sir_Godspeed

Quick question: Does iron rust away in Glorantha like in RW?

On 3/15/2022 at 8:29 PM, Atlantean said:

I am not exaggerating when I say reading through your creation offered me an epiphany regarding the ritual overlay intrinsic in RQ approach to magic. It has always been the strongest part of the game but you have succeeded in making explicit what was before only implicit. So many examples from my game fit paradigms you described (e.g magic road or cult initiation). I included a piece done by Mae (character in the game) reflecting a Magic Road that may be turning up often now that I understand what we did. Our game setting is Bronze Age Wales but the concepts translate well.

Getting some ElfQuest vibes from that, which can only be a good thing.

On 3/15/2022 at 12:40 PM, JRE said:

I would say that Griffins / Griffons or hippogriffs are easier in Glorantha than Shedu / Lammasu or human headed sphynxes (a hieracosphinx is functionally a wingless griffin), adue to the opposition of the Man and Beast runes. That is not to say they cannot exist, but that either they are unnatural (such as the remade in Beast Valley), or they need a good story, such as Ironhoof. 

I also think that is one of the reasons why the existing beastmen are considered strange in a world full of mythic creatures.

We can well suppose the EWF remakers were looking for some previous age hybrids when they started their "experiments", and that is what you could find in Genert's garden, but I would limit most human / animal hybrids to Hsunchen myths and cultures, who do not see the difference between Beast and Human in the same way. 

I'm wondering if some of the really ancient chimeric forms are less of a combination of man-beast runes, but "living fossils" from an age before the Man and Beast runes diverged. I realize that this probably does not fit with how thing work in RuneQuest, but cosmologically at least it seems to make some form of sense, given just how little the gods give a toss about that particular divide, and how the Green Age seems to flaunt it as well. A similar observation can be made on how the Beast Rune seems to have diverged (or devolved) from the Dragon Rune.

So in short, it's not necessarily that these creatures are "unnatural" to Glorantha, it's more that they're a remnant from a previous, archaic runic ecosystem, if you will.

The binominal names come from Anaxial's Roster, don't they? Is that intended to have a God Learner narrator? Anaxial is a Dara Happan emperor, after all.
(I have not read it, only seen references and excerpts)

46 minutes ago, Akhôrahil said:

Latin tends to be God-Learnerite. That's where the Latin names of monsters come from, right?

The binominal names for monsters seem really immersion-breaking for me. The Lunar Empire has a bunch of characters with Latinate names, and Lunar/Dara Happan versions of names seem to approach more Latinate forms (eg. "Orlanth" vs. "Orlanatus"), so giving God Learners Latin as well just seems... weird. Especially since the Pelorian cultures and mythos were some of the things the God Learners never really managed to peer into properly due to geographical and geopolitical problems (ie. Rockwoods and the EWF). All that aside, binominalism just doesn't *feel* like the kind of a thing an Iron Age bestiary would contain, but that's more a personal take, I admit. 

That being said, I don't remember the God Learners having all that much Latin to them. The Seshnelan Francophone names get adjusted Jrustelan forms that are clearly non-RW-like, for example. 

On 3/19/2022 at 8:05 AM, EricW said:

What I find fascinating is the element of genuine value in such rituals. 

A number of medicines in use today are based on folk remedies, like aspirin is a modified version of a chemical found in willow tree bark. Chewing on willow bark provides genuine pain relief.

The ancients also had other remarkable skills, for example the people who built the pyramids knew their trade.

Even people who sited a seasonal camp would have examined important factors - the defensibility of the site, access to water and food.

Obviously in Glorantha its all a bit easier - you ask a greater being to employ superhuman intelligence to figure it all out for you. Or do you?

Some great feats of engineering, like the Tunnel of Eupalinos, comes to mind.

As for foundation myths, you can't go wrong with the eagle landing on a cactus to denote the spot of Tenochtitlan. Good stuff.

If I remember correctly, during a thread on labnguages a while back, @Jeff made a comment about not wanting the Orlanthi languages to just be based on Indo-European languages if they were ever actually developed as a conlang, which pretty heavily points to that, no, there isn't any specific RW basis for the languages in Glorantha. 

Now, with that being said, New Pelorian ends up being represented as Latin or Dog Latin a lot of the time, and Sartarite/Orlanthi names borrow quite a bit from Anglo-Saxon or Germanic (among other things, I must emphasize), and of course Kralorela just has a bunch of RW Chinese in it, I think. I think it's pretty clear that these are just "representations" though. Something akin to how Tolkien pretended that he merely translated the Big Red Book of Westmarch from the fictitious language of Westron. Presumably New Pelorian, in-universe is nothing like Latin, but adding "-us" to stuff gets across a certain vibe to us players so there it stays.

EDIT: I originally went on a tangent about cladistics, ignoring the quoted poster's point not really relating specifically to phylogenetics, so I decided to delete it since it didn't add anything of value to the conversation.

To attempt to salvage this spot: I think it's interesting that Glorantha offers us an "evolutionary tree" that takes intelligent design at face value, where gods can be said to "steal" and "borrow" and get "inspired" by the creations of other gods. Maybe Triolina saw some land animals and thought "aw man, lungs are cool, let's do something with that", or Gata saw a bird with feathers and thought "that's sick, imma put some of those on my lumbering behemoths" or whatever.

Basically, while thinking in terms of gods as ancestors of animals is probably the most common analogy, it can be a bit limiting and forcing us into thinking of these binary unions. I think we could fruitfully think of the gods as literal MAKERS of them too, which opens up for more indirect influences and more numerous "ancestors" (throuples and quadrouples and who knows). Gata and Hykim AND Aether, for example. Triolina AND Umath AND Hykim. 

Or you know, not. I'm just spitballing.
 

To add to the point above about symbolic language: In classical usage, a "myriad" meant specifically the number 10,000. Now it's generally used to simply mean any large, but unquantifiable or nonspecific number. I imagine that this kind of how 10k is used in Esrolia. "More goddesses than you can imagine!"

19 minutes ago, Ian Absentia said:

There are some serious epistemological discussions to be had on this topic, including the implication of a de facto Celestial Bureaucracy charged with application, review, and stamped approval.

I rather prefer the perspective that cosmos is emergentic.

3 hours ago, Ian Absentia said:

Interpretations have varied.  But if innovation and free will are precluded by the Cosmic Compromise, I'm throwing in with the Red Goddess in a way that I've never done before.

Let the Dogs Herd!

!i!

No one said you can't innovate, but it seems like most innovations are retroactively legitimized by reference to myths. 

Did the innovation or myth come first? Yes.

29 minutes ago, Ian Absentia said:

Are all mundane events in Glorantha now manifestations of myth?

!i!

Weren't they always? And the other way around?

5 hours ago, jajagappa said:

Maybe the "wife" IS the World Machine...  (and the World Machine by another name is Grower).

Well, this leads into another Dumb Theory (but also probably not that much:)

Grower and Maker were always the same. People just forgot.

53 minutes ago, Eff said:

The elemental associations of animal phyla are primarily adoptive. Hykim/Mikyh plays out every iterative possibility from the base draconic form, producing a great many forms of animal life that live and many that die, but as dragons they are not equipped to actually care for their offspring. So the elemental courts divide up animals based on simple associations- Darkness takes invertebrates, Water takes fishes, Fire takes birds, Air takes mammals- but reptiles, cladistically undefinable as monophyletic, are adopted by Earth because of their multiplicity of origin, and then the animals that nobody wants to deal with, the bats, the foxes, possibly the hummingbirds if you believe Lives of Sedenya, the moonlight butterflies, etc. are all handed off to Moon, who graciously adopts them and their rambunctious ways. 

A different way to phrase the above is, I think, that Hykim/Mikyh treat each element as a "biome" rather than an explicit parental figure. Something to diversify "into" rather than "with". 

1 hour ago, Eff said:

(This is perhaps extensible to plants as well, though slorifings appear to include both the haploid-dominant mosses, ferns, liverworts, and hornworts and the fungi/bacteria hybrid lichens, suggesting they may be a kind of pure Plant Rune family unassociated elementally...)

For my on-and-off-again Northern Pent project, I posited a hypothetical "non-vascular plant" Elf (mosses, liverwort, etc.) that are separate from Aldryami, but like other Plant People tend to be drawn to Aldrya and Aldryami where they can. I thought they would mostly take the form of Will-o-Wisps or Sprites, which sorta goes well with the whole peat bog imagery, etc. 

On another note, it still bugs me a little how ALL sea life is given the same "monophyletic" mother in Triolina. It just feels... weirdly shallow, I guess?
EDIT: I guess it just mirrors Ernalda/Gata.

5 hours ago, jajagappa said:

Or, Maran in her serpentine form entangled the Earth Dragon (or the Inhuman King), and their offspring were the dinosaurs.  Those dragonewts whose meditations subsequently lead them along the path of the Earth Dragon may in turn become ensnared by the wiles of Maran and become (next incarnation) dinosaurs too.

Embracing the pro-materialness of Maran/The Earth, etc. (Including, but not limited to, of course, enjoying food, enjoying sexual procreation, nurturing parent-child relations, passionate/vivacious/life-affirming cooperation and competition, and potentially theistic worship even blood sacrifice, depending on how you view dinos in Glorantha, I dunno.). A kind of affirmation of the here and now that the Draconic path could never accommodate, but which I imagine someone like Maran* and Earth in general is welcoming of.

Compare and contrast the overall "degradation" from the Dragon Rune to the Beast Rune and the whole Serpent Earth symbology. There's probably some Green Age parallels there. A degradation from the perspective of the Dragons, joyous actualization and diversification from the perspective of Earth. Or you know, something like that.

(*When she's not busy clobbering heads and being symbolically barren.)

10 hours ago, Ladygolem said:

There are two seemingly irreconcilable origin stories for dinosaurs.

One says that they are the children of Maran Gor, most of whom were wiped out by various foes in the Green Age turning her into the vengeful barren goddess she is today.

The other claims dinosaurs are dragonewts (or their descendants) who have failed in their quest for Rightness by becoming overly emotional and entangled in the material world, thus devolving into beasthood.

Are these stories compatible? Yes, I say, both can be true!

The dinosaurs we see today may not be the same as the quakebeasts of the Maran story. Those indeed were driven to extinction long ago. Maran Gor, in her role as "infertile mother", adopts those "failed" dragonewts into her family (for they remind her of her children, gone so long ago) and offers an alternate perspective - instead of failing to follow Draconic Law , they've transcended the need for it by embracing Disorder!

Now what dragonewt do we know who "glories in their rebellion" and lives quite nearby a region famed for its high dinosaur population (Trachodon Marsh)? New Wyrmish! While I doubt it's an initiate to Maran I do think there's some kind of connection here, and that dinosaurdom (dinohood?) may not be seen as undesirable to it and its' followers...

In conclusion:

I either made a post or a topic about this a while ago, and my personal interpretation of this was basically that the entanglement of the failed Dragonewts WAS becoming the children of Maran Gor. I don't know the exact mechanism, but I personally find that to be a neater overall explanation. 

This is the Dumb Theory thread though, so no point in discussing the topic too much. Also, your version provides an adventure hook mine doesn't, so that's a plus. 😄

I don't hate that idea!

Science is amazing.

4 hours ago, scott-martin said:

Orlanth is considered just another lowfire in the Lodril Belt.

Orlanth is clearly just a result of Lodril blowing from his earthen abode into the skies. 

56 minutes ago, Jeff said:

Mistress Race trolls are older than any of those as they resided in Wonderhome long before Yelm came.

 

You're right, I probably underestimate the time between when Grandfather Mortal gets yeeted into the underworld by the First Killing and when Yelm does.

8 hours ago, Jeff said:

All of the Elder Races claim to be before humans (remember Grandfather Mortal was more than just humanity). Most human myths agree.

It's a bit weird that this applies to trolls, though right?

I guess we might be making a distinction between mythical, immortal beings in the God Time who are superficially similar to humans, but later became distinct (Agi, for example), and "anatomically modern" mortals. 

Do we count Zzabur, Murharzarm and Vingkot as "humans" or merely as "mortals"?

I don't mind there being ambiguity here, by the way. If the answer is something along the lines of "it's complicated, but that's what most cultures believe" then fair enough.

It's interesting to me how the conflict of the "Elder Races" is played up so drastically, when humans in one form or another, have been around for much longer than, say, Trolls have. 

Partially, I understand that this is thematic. Non-human races are, well, non-human, and giving them their own internal dynamic just sorta feels right. Fae politics, as it were. Human are outsiders to this, albeit increasingly dominant.

Secondly, there is of course simply the explanation that while humans have been around for a long time, they either weren't terribly populous or weren't terribly involved in the matters of Dwarfs (this feels like a half-truth, certainly the Malkioni were involved heavily). 

Thirdly, I suppose it's possible that even the Dwarfs are letting the experiences of the First Age, when humans were a small minority among Elder Race majorities, color their perception of both now and the God Time. 

Fourth...ly..? There is of course the overall attitude. Humans are "merely" unreliable and unpredictable. The other Elder Races are *anthithetical*.

You could have a Heroquest where Ragnaglar passes his Initiation Test in the Sex Pit.

I'll leave what that entails to the imagination.

This is definitely above my pay grade, but it was interesting.