Sir_Godspeed

1 hour ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

What do we know about life and gods in Jrustela before the weird Malkioni got there? I have Middle Sea Empires but it's just about the weird Pilgrim-analogues.

Timinits and Mostali were native to there. Not sure if there were any other humans there from before.

EDIT: Oh, the Olodo, from Slontos/Maniria. I'm unclear on whether they were already Malkioni when they arrived, or whether they were Theyalans or some other kind of people.

13 minutes ago, lordabdul said:

Maybe I'm misunderstanding what you mean, but it doesn't seem to me RQG really makes much of a distinction between spirits and deities rules-wise. IIRC RQG just describes spirit cults as the same way it describes Rune cults (although they say it would often be considered a sub-cult).

Rune magic is different from Spirit magic, isn't it? I'm not good on the actual rules, I've just noticed that discussing spirits versus deities is a topic that pops up with some regularity.

4 hours ago, Akhôrahil said:

A lot more focus on the sorcery and, in the case of Ralios, Arkatism?

(Also, at some point I would love to see how Ralian Orlanth-worship differs from Heortling.)

Well, we're veering a bit far from the original topic, but considering that Alakoring came from Surkorion, it seems reasonable to think that the Orlanth Rex cult has a longer story here.

Personally I think the antagonism between Storm & Sun / Orlanth & Yelm is less pronounced. Partly because of the Solar origin of some of the Ralians, but also because of the more important antagonism from the Westerners/Malkioni.

Getting a bit heated here, but it's probably worth keeping in mind that this is a game, and its purpose is to make the people playing it have a good time.

Inventing convoluted scenarios for how something can hypothetically go awry seems counter to this goal.

If keeping it simple and working with people one already know well is preferable, by all means. If using tools to make a group of strangers or loose acquaintances get into things more easily, why not?

Back when playing WoW, when interpersonal friction got too bad in a Guild, I left it and found a new one. Shit happens. Not every gaming group is meant to be. Who knows.

"Until" is a difficult term in the God Time. There are some myths that cannot easily be placed anywhere, and a lot which do not necessarily follow any specific sequence.

24 minutes ago, Joerg said:

To be fair, the Theyalan cultural ideas are among the most widespread in all of Glorantha - the Theyalans did a good job spreading these ideas all the way into Malkioni lands, and then the God Learners (the ones about non-Malkioni gods, not the ones perfecting the Malkioni creed) picked them up for their monomyth and carried them into regions where no Theyalan ever sailed before.

 There is no such wealth of lore on any other culture in Glorantha. The official Doraddi material gets less than 40 pages so far between the Guide and Revealed Mythologies, and while GaGoG might add as many again, that's about it. Jeff Okamoto's log of Sandy's RQ campaign gives an insight in where much of the original Pamaltela material came from, but much of that game is set in the mountain passes between Laskal and Jolar, a region that receives a few lines of text in the Guide, and is not typical for either neighboring culture. Other than Sandy's game and the stories about the Six-legged Empire, there was the Artmali epic which may never have been written up in any detail, and it isn't Doraddi, either. Doing a game in the East would have gone weird places, too...

This is all true, but not really the point. The point was to relativize the terms and categories we're presented with, so as to avoid presupposing the universal importance of these categories.

I am under no circumstance saying that the categories as they currently are are 'wrong' or 'bad' or that we should switch to some other viewpoint - just that they are what they are.

35 minutes ago, UristMcRol said:

Man ... Can we agree that talking about these issues is easier when you're bathing in acid? I barely survived the first time I read a post about it ... But shit, that some good stuff, and it's hard to stop investigating about it once you've started.

It's quite addictive, yeah! Never was one for chemical stimulants myself, but I spent a good deal of my teens in charismatic Christian circles, and I got to know religious ecstacy personally. I always found the sound-metaphor of cosmic influence to be a very apt one. And when I first read the "the Aurbis is a product of sensory deprivation of the Godhead" from Kirkbride (because of course it was Kirkbride, lol) it kinda blew my mind.
 

35 minutes ago, UristMcRol said:

At the end of the day, the main function of a myth, rather than expressing historical realities or facts written in stone, is to form a worldview, a system of feelings that allow believers to develop in the community or individually, added to the already known psychological and metaphorical functions (important the latter, but rarely useful for the average Joe). I believe that the more we relate the myth in Glorantha to the communities that live it, the closer we will be to enjoy its richness. Although, there is nothing wrong with wanting to simply fight on behalf of Orlanth and pee on Yelm's face, hahahahaha.

Absolutely. Malinowski wrote extensively on the importance of considering myths less as "flawed history" and more as "blueprints for being-in-the-world" (my terms, not his) already back in the 1910s. Well, less blueprints and more guidelines or ideals, but you get the jist.

And it is fun to just roleplay as an absolute fanatic or a salt-of-the-earth type of person sometimes. Keepin' it simple.

15 hours ago, davecake said:

In general I think that the distinction between a Great Spirit and a God (or the sorcerous or mystic equivalent) is more a matter of approach than an inherent property of an entity, but this is not well understood. But outside of heroquesters, you still need to walk an established path to approach an entity, so most entities seem to be clearly Gods or Spirits in practice, as their is only one established path. But there are spirit cults for many entities that can be conventionally worshipped, usually under a different name, and something these traditions acknowledge each other, Storm Bull and Urox is the most well known, and there are several entities that combine a more theist approach and shamanic paths in the one (Waha, Yu-Kargzant, etc). A Yelm Imperator member interacts with Yelm as a God, a Golden Bow shaman interacts with him as a Great Spirit, it's still Yelm. A Kaargs Son interacts with Kygor Litor as a Goddess, a Shaman-Priestess interacts with her as a Great Spirit, and an ancestor, as well. Similar logic for Aeolian sorcerous interaction with Heortling gods, and to a limited extent mystic interactions where appropriate. 

But the distinction between Gods and Great Spirits seems a real one to most Gloranthans. Often where the same entity is approached both ways, they are known by different names, and even when the commonalities are realised it is rationalised away (seeing one as a 'sibling' rather than the same being). And there are plenty of deities with thousands of years of tradition via one approach, and no history at all of the other, or it is confined to a sub-cult that is seen as a different entity (eg Earth Witch). 

I was never a believer in a harsh split between the Four Worlds myself - I am very glad that this has been backed away from.

Pretty much agree with everything you said - and I'd like to add that the stark/systemic distinction between God and Spirit seems to me to be at least in part a product of the Theyelan culture complex (ie. the cultural basis that both Dragon Pass/Keathelan Orlanthi, Praxians and arguably trolls and others draw from).

At least when reading Revealed Mythologies, alternate schemae are presented when reading from the point of view of Vithelans, Pamaltelans and Westerners. We are somewhat familiar with Western/Malkioni schemae due to them sort-of bleeding over into the greater Dragon Pass region somewhat (Burtae, etc.), but it is undeniably a system with some fundamental differences in viewing different entities.

This goes moreso for Pamaltelans (or at least the Doraddi). It can be argued that these are just different names for the spirit-god-other categories, but that's not the sense I got when reading it at least. So basically, these aren't just objective, "in-itself" differences, but differences in views and approaches and so forth.

I won't derail this mostly rules-based discussion further with esoterica, but the logical conclusion of the above points is basically that RQG rules are influenced by the fact that they are mostly based on Theyelan cultural ideas. If RQG had been based on a wealth of lore on the Doraddi in Pamaltela, I can only think that some mechanics would just have been different.

Whether the designers agree with this or not, I don't know, and perhaps I have just been bedazzled by fancy writing and poetic formulation and there is actually an objective classification underlying everything - but if there is, I don't quite see it, nor do I generally think Gloranthans do, and I'm not sure having it would make the world a more interesting one.

Not sure what the moral here is. Don't be afraid to go off the beaten path if it's interesting to you, I guess.

12 hours ago, davecake said:

I think this all foreshadowing of the corruption of Ragnaglar.

 

That was another suspicion of mine (although Ragnaglar was already corrupted by this time). While he is normally associated with goats, the antlers (and removal thereof in Six Ages) does speak to something about him - especially considering that he appears to have some kind of an antler-goathorn hybrid thing in the Gods War board game.

@Qizilbashwoman - he looks kinda Wendigo-esque, doesn't he?

3 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

That's just it. Yes there are tools that give you some sort of system to try and avoid such occurrence, but the reality is we never really know if something is going to bother someone else or not. So you might wind up in a situation where an adventure suddenly becomes unplayable because some important element in it bothers somebody a lot more that you would have expected.The reverse holds true too. If playing at a game and disturbed by something, players should also try to understand that the GM wasn't aware of that, and wouldn't have run things they way they did had they known.  It someone was traumatized watching the Texas Chainsaw Massacre when they were a  child  they can't really fault Home Depot for putting one in their weekly flyer. And, if a player has issues with terms such as midgit and dwarf due to real word issues (maybe they or their parents were people of short statue) then they should probably think carefully and brace themselves before joining an FRPG where "actual" Dwarves and Halflings are running around. At least some of the responsibility falls on the offended in such cases. I mean if a person is deathly afraid of spiders and they decide to watch a movie titled Tarantula, well, it's nobody else's fault if they get upset.

Some of these examples are a bit jumbled, since for examples a shop's advertisement happens in public spaces, where other rules apply and most people generally accept that they don't necessarily having any control over what goes up (to a point). Some of the other examples, like the GM not being aware of a player's issues seems to not take into account that this entire thing is indeed about charting what people are and aren't okay with before playing.

I don't know how it is in the US, but back home here, the news tends to simply say "We would like to make viewers aware that the following report contains graphical images of a strong nature." So clearly there is a precedent for this sort of information to viewers and players.

At the end of the day, all of this is just meant to achieve informed consent on the part of every party involved, so that they DO know what they're going into. If someone DOES put on Tarantula after being warned, yes, it's their own fault, but then again maybe they could just be allowed to leave the room and come back once it's over? I did this when my friends decided to watch the Saw movies when we were teens (I'm not a fan of graphical gore), and it was never a problem.

Yes, there might be awkwardness, there might be personal friction, there might be understandings. Shit happens. Ideally, the group should have the tools to work through that.

5 hours ago, Darius West said:

It is worth pointing out that a "capital F" forest isn't what we think, it is in fact called a Wood.  The old definition is that one may "foray" through a "forest" (i.e. traverse with an armed band typically including mounted individuals) but not through a "wood" as the vegetation i simply too thick.  Today we use the terms forest and wood interchangeably, but they are in fact technical terms with separate meanings.  Sherwood  Forest seems like a redundant name (why wood + forest? Redundancy!) for example, but it actually referred to the track cut through the Wood, as the path allowed "foray".  That is why it formed a good ambush point for RH et al MM.

 

This seems like a particular Anglophone issue.

I saw the trailer for this a little while ago, and while I generally steer well away of Cage's stuff nowadays, this actually looks interesting.

My approach is generally that a spirit is negotiated with, while a god is worshipped. It's a matter of approach.

This also entails that the same entity may appear to be either spirit or deity depending on how they are approached - although since such approaches usually happen within established cultural norms and within mythological and belief-system contexts, generally speaking, people are unlikely to realize this, or perhaps even accept it as possible.

That's just my take on it though.

On 11/9/2019 at 11:35 AM, evangineer said:

The major challenge as I see it is that our current political economy means that the financial benefits of full automation will accrue solely to the owners of capital and the rest of us may find ourselves immiserated to Dickensian levels.

Arguably by design, however short-sighted.

Ah, so one of my hunches seem to have been on the right track.

I wonder if this story cited is different from the more commonly cited story of how Eurmal killed Grandfather Mortal. I wonder if he achieved Death through Earth Sacrifice (possibly one gone awry - ie. not resulting in resurrection or rebirth as it otherwise would have) in this version.

On the maps in the Book of Heortling Mythology, the Uncolings are shown living in what is left of Peloria under Chaos occupation, essentially. They are described as having made deals with "monsters and demons" to continue their survival. I can't quite tell whether this is a reference to Chaos demons, or just trolls and other underworld beings, like the Shadzorings or something similar.

We also know from tGtG that a number of standing stones around Peloria were put up by some pre-Dawn culture, although I forget whether they're supposed to be a Green Age or Greater Darkness construction. If they're from the Greater Darkness, it seems to fit with the Uncolings putting them up for whatever reason, which I believe is referenced in tBoHM.

Lastly, we also have Six Ages, where - to avoid spoilers - proto-Uncolings/Reindeer people - live in the north, with some comments about no longer being able to utilize antlers in their sacred rituals due to some kind of evil entity interfering. There is also an emerging shamanistic society of antler-worshippers in your clan lands, who - eh - seem to have a connection to antlers and some really iffy weirdness going on, if you get what I mean.

In short - what's going on here? Is there some terrible secret between Chaos and the Uncolings? Some kind of alliance? Some fall from grance - or some pact they made to survive, or did they just quietly live under the radar as best they could as the world went to tatters?

EDIT: I'm using "Uncoling" quite indiscriminately here for the general category of reindeer-herders. I can't realistically know whether all the mentions are for the same people, or wether some are what we would call Hsunchen and others are just pastoralists or something.

In the Book of Heortling Mythology, under the entry of Sorana Tor (described there as the physical manifestation of Ana Gor, who is described as the goddess of human sacrifice, though elsewhere she is also described as a name for Maran Gor - these aren't mutually exclusive, I take it) - we find a comment by Sorana Tor referring to how the blood of someone named Haran Vor falling in the ground at her temple.

I haven't been able to find any references to this Haran Vor elsewhere (and neither for "Haranvor", which I thought might be a name).

My initial instinct was that it was some mythical Orlanthi king, or maybe an enemy of the Earth Goddesses, but then I considered whether it could be another name for Grandfather Mortal - increasing the significance of the death/sacrifice there.

Anyone know?

First off - I'm glad to see another Elder Scrolls fan on the forum, as it was also the reason why I looked up Glorantha (being cited by one of the ES creators as a major influence).

Secondly, I agree to a great extent with what you write - in the abstract. However, when we have discussions on these matters, we often approach the issues of divine identity and character from very different points of view. Some, particularly those who are in it more for the gaming aspect I suspect, prefer a straightforward literal view. Others, who are more into textual and meta-textual interpretation, treat the gods and their different names and identities as a sort of puzzle, game or rebus to solve, where one can find the truer identities that emerge from more completed images (much like the Monomyth of the God Learners), then we have those who have a more metaphysical approach, where identifying the overarching Runic archetypes, ideals and mechanisms by which the Gloranthan Cosmos turns and ticks is the goal, as it were. Your points falls, imho, comes from a different perspective, the more anthropological one, where deities and their identity is an expression of cultural self-reflection and self-validation ("Celebrations of the divine are celebrations of the community" as Durkheim might've said), and discussions on deities becomes necessarily particularistic and varies between rigid and malleable depending on whether believers are rigid or malleable (if that makes sense). Hell, I've even seen another perspective: the euhemeristic one, where people have posited that that Glorantha is no more or less magical than our real world, it's just that it's written from the point of view of its inhabitants, and so incorporates their beliefs.

Instead of user "perspectives", feel free to think of them as modes of interpretation or exegesis or whatever. Same thing in the end. We view and consider Glorantha differently.

I practice - as I'm sure you've noticed - most of us actually tend to shift between these perspectives depending on the discussion, premise, mood of the day, last text read, input from other posters, and so on. I certainly know I can't (and don't want to) stick to any of these perspectives completely. It's fun to feel out the terrain, as it were, with different senses. However, it does mean that we can, and perhaps tend to, talk a bit past each other, and perhaps misunderstand our respective premises and presuppositions - although I'd say people here are very good at incorporating and considering different perspectives in general, certainly moreso than most other fan communities I've been in.

Basically, long story short, people come to this forum with different backgrounds, needs and intents, and that shapes the conversations. In such an environment, any attempt to establish a kind of consensus on how the underlying, fundamental "truth" of Glorantha works is neither really possible, nor, frankly, desireable. YGWV, after all. It also means that we will continue to debate, for example,  Elmal-Yelmalio until the (RW) Sun becomes a red giant and the oceans boil because every iteration has the potential to bring new perspective, even if a lot of it is repetition.  It's also worth mentioning that our different perspectives are shared by the in-universe sources we use. Some do indeed see the gods as literal people, others as metaphors, others as cultically-produced gestalt beings, and so forth - something that is a testament to just how cleverly Glorantha was designed, because Greg and his compatriots clearly knew their stuff, and also evolved as people over time.

So yeah, at a very abstracted level I agree that there probably is no "true" nature of the gods, but also, on the other hand, it's also fun to try to solve textual puzzles to find secret connections, and it's fun to just talk about that time Pamalt straight up dropped the sky on top of some Chaos fools because he's a badass like that.  

After such a measured and deep-cutting post, I hope you stick around to participate. And don't be intimidated. Depending on how long you've been lurking, you probably know that I'm pretty new here too, only really having been immersed in Glorantha since 2015 or so.

Now - let's talk about Tonal Architecture and how it relates to the Amaranth...

20 minutes ago, borbetomagnus said:

I know, but they were inexpensive (US$4.99 for a pack of two). They can also work for my western frontier games.

Oh, don't worry, I was just taking the piss out of us forum regulars here.

52 minutes ago, Ufnal said:

BTW, is buying the old HeroWars supplements for Sartarites useful for HQG Dragon Pass gaming? They are much more affordable, but AFAIK they are mostly about culture and religion, much of which has changed in the meantime?

Others here will know more about this, but I believe the most significant changes on the cultural side is a shift away from pseudo-Germanic/Gaelic feel of the Orlanthi and towards a mix of Bronze/Early Iron Age and Classic Antiquity terminology and aesthetics.

 

9 hours ago, Joerg said:

Even the stove broo's "mother" had openings their broo parent was using. (I don't recall whether the stove was supposed to be cast iron or copper, but this broo was reported by Sandy Petersen. To stay alive, the broo had to keep the fire in its belly running, leading to a rather vegetarian diet.)

Holes are easily made with spears or knives. The broo reproductive organ doesn't get an attack or a damage stat assigned in RQ, unless a Chaos Feature warrants such.

I think the point Qizil was making was about "holes" in the sense of natural bodily openings. Yes, they can and will make their own if need be.

4 minutes ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

Much of the Atlantic coast north of the humid swamps and south of the subarctic of North America was burnt with great regularity starting in prehistory. These routine fires left underbrush cleared but large trees healthy and killed parasites like ticks. New England was once like 15% wooded, an excellent environment for game hunting and agriculture; it is currently 90% wooded and fires, when they happen, are nightmarish.

It was also done to promote fruit- and berry-bearing plants, and when the Europeans landed, they wrote letters back on how God had blessed the land, and how the natives were just living in idyll - not realizing that this was the result of careful land management. But I get the impression you already know this.

19 minutes ago, EricW said:

arguably there are different regions which might obey different rules.

I'd say there almost certainly are.

30 minutes ago, borbetomagnus said:

These WizKids' Oxen can be used for Sartar cattle.

 

UM THOSE ARENT ACCURATE TO THE BREEDS FOUND IN DRAGON PASS AS PER RUNEQUEST GLORANTHA haha just kidding but could you imagine though? 😁

Great models! ^^

2 hours ago, soltakss said:

It's more a case of "Why bother?"

Sure, you could clear massive expanses of forest, but that would require a lot of effort and would destroy a good resource. If you couldn't plough the heavy soil, then why deforest? You would be better off hunting in the forest, using it for firewood and materials, as well as picking nuts/fruit/mushrooms/etc than clearing it for farming.

While not "massive stretches" the way we might think of them, the terra preta (black earth) of the Amazon basin, making up as much as perhaps 10% of the surface soil there, was made by deliberate forest burning for agriculture.

I also believe there are accounts of North American natives burning down stretches of forest in the wastern woodlands to provide grazing fields for horses after contact with Europeans.

Again, not really massive deforestation, but there are reasons to clear areas even outside of large scale manorial agriculture.