Jump to content

Heroic Lhankor Mhy Questions


Sub

Recommended Posts

13 hours ago, Sub said:

I might avoid concepts from the monomyth for now. I don't have The Glorious ReAscent of Yelm or The Entekosiad right now, although it sounds like it might be worth getting them soon. It might be a little too difficult for me as a Glorantha newbie to do the level of detail justice while also making it fun for my heroic Lhankor Mhy player to discover and engage with.

I'd suggest the opposite - just use the monomyth as presented in RQG and the Sourcebook. Consider that the basic LM working understanding of how mythology works. Ignore GRoY (most Dara Happens do) and ignore Entekosiad (virtually everyone does). They are historical curiosities - like Herodotus trying to make sense of the Enûma Eliš. It is interesting deep-background, but not necessary - even misleading.

In our games, LM gets dragged along all sorts of Orlanthi hero quests because he is so damn good at Knowing Things. The player doesn't need to know what the LM character knows - even the GM doesn't need to know it! That's what Skill roles and spell outcomes are for. In our game, the player with the least knowledge of Glorantha plays the LM sage and she's great. 

  • Like 2
  • Thanks 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

7 minutes ago, Jeff said:

I'd suggest the opposite - just use the monomyth as presented in RQG and the Sourcebook. Consider that the basic LM working understanding of how mythology works. Ignore GRoY (most Dara Happens do) and ignore Entekosiad (virtually everyone does). They are historical curiosities - like Herodotus trying to make sense of the Enûma Eliš. It is interesting deep-background, but not necessary - even misleading.

 

As I said earlier, Sub, set phasers on ignore when it comes to esoterica (the grognards don't mean to steer you  wrong, that is what they find fascinating and fair enough). No, confusion and loss of SAN lies in that direction. Simplicity when running RQ is your friend. Jeff is 100% correct to tell you to use the monomyth. It lacks the beauty and depth of the real thing but is a lot more wieldy.

Cheers

  • Like 1
  • Thanks 1

... remember, with a TARDIS, one is never late for breakfast!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, Bill the barbarian said:

As I said earlier, Sub, set phasers on ignore when it comes to esoterica (the grognards don't mean to steer you  wrong, that is what they find fascinating and fair enough). No, confusion and loss of SAN lies in that direction. Simplicity when running RQ is your friend. Jeff is 100% correct to tell you to use the monomyth. It lacks the beauty and depth of the real thing but is a lot more wieldy.

Cheers

This is why I suggested the Glorantha Sourcebook, as it lays out the pantheon, with PICTURES, of the five elemental pantheons plus the Lunar one and explains them succinctly. You don't need it, I guess? I guess. But you'd really understand the world of Glorantha better if you understood who the Orlanthi are and who their enemies are (i.e. the Lunars and their subjugated Solar allies). And there's no reason not to read about the uz ("trolls", the Darkness people).

This simplified monomyth pantheons is like six large gears that mesh together. It makes the hostility between Lunars and Orlanthi make theological sense.

Edited by Qizilbashwoman
  • Thanks 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 8/10/2019 at 6:22 PM, Sub said:

 

1. How hard would it be to index a Lhankor Mhy library? Would this be opposed by the sages?

2. What resources fuel or grow a library and what are some of the barriers to getting those resources? How does a library get its paper, scrolls, and materials? Are Lhankorings seeking tree pulp opposed by Aldryami, for example? Do they work heavily with Issaries traders, and what do they give in return?

3. Does a form of moveable type already exist somewhere in Glorantha? What would it take to use it or invent it?

4. Do Lhankorings such as the ones in Jonstown submit to chosen leaders when it comes to whether or not they expand or prosper?

5. How [in]accessible are some of the dangerous secrets in a library like Jonstown? Are certain secrets limited to devotees only, and can only some, or all, be bought at a price of money, or legendary treasure?

6. Do I, as a Lhankor Mhy cultist, need to be Illuminated in order to even consider messing around with God Learning, or other Gloranthan secrets?

A few responses here:

1. The Jonstown library has approximately 10,000 scrolls. Assume 250 scrolls per meter of shelving (8 "shelves" high), that's 40 meters of shelving. Maybe more. At Jonstown it probably goes 12 shelves high or higher to get all the scrolls into the Central Library. Each scroll is placed in a "box" with a bunch of other scrolls, that are related by subject matter. Each box and each scroll is tagged.


Parliamentary_archives.jpg

Now comes the tough part. A scroll itself consists of numerous sheets of parchment sewed together - this can be very long (a Torah scroll can be 40-75 meters long when full unrolled - that gets you the Pentateuch in one scroll). An individual scroll may consist of many unrelated chapters sewed together. So a scholar needs to know the contents of a scroll to know that the scroll "List of Animal Gods" (named after the title of the first chapter also includes several chapters on the history of the Shadowlands) and that collection of recipes from Nochet.

That's why at the Jonstown Library there is the great Catalog Wheel of Eonistaran - a wooden device like a broad water wheel. Each of the Wheel’s seven boards holds multiple scrolls containing a partial listing of the scrolls and codices within the Library’s collection. At least five different organizational systems coexist within these great scrolls; some are numbered, some are based on the first line, another based on a cryptic code, and so on. If a scholar cannot find what he is looking for in one scroll, he simply turns the wheel and looks in another scroll. Most scholars agree that the 120 volumes comprising Garangian Bronze-Gut’s Compendium of Persons Eminent in Every Branch of Learning with a List of their Writingsis more comprehensive (but far less practical) than Desosinderus the Librarian’s more concise Scheme of the Great Bookshelves.

2. Parchment comes from sheep. There are lots of sheep in Sartar. In Jonstown, the South Market is also called the Book Market, where scrolls and scraps of knowledge are exchanged with the scribes of the Jonstown Library. Here also sheep skins are bought and sold for parchment, ingredients for ink, and other tools used by scribes and sages.

3. No. Writing is an act of worship.

4. Lhankor Mhy libraries have a High Priest who is also the Chief Librarian. When a vacancy in the position of Chief Librarian occurs, the sages gather and choose a new Chief Librarian. The Chief Librarian has three subordinates that assist in running the library - the Chief Loremaster, the Provost of Apprentices, and the Chief Priest.

5. Chief Librarians are known to remove specific scrolls to be placed in Restricted Areas, where permission from the Chief Loremaster or the Chief Priest is necessary. Such actions are often vigorously protested by the other Sages, unless done secretively. There is rarely a place in the Library called the Restricted Area - this is more ad hoc. The scroll might simply be unlabelled and placed in an unrelated box, to the scroll is placed in a locked container with magical seals and wardings on it. 

In the Nochet Library (with more than 100,000 scrolls) the very knowledge of some Restricted Areas have been lost due to war, death, etc. 

6. Nope.

  • Like 5
  • Thanks 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

16 hours ago, Sub said:

You really weren't kidding!

I might avoid concepts from the monomyth for now.

Just to hew into the same gap that Jeff already has chipped into this armor, the monomyth is the easy, GM- and player-friendly version of the Gloranthan myths.

Saying "God A is God B" is always fraught with dangers if you expect it to apply to each and every aspect or expected reaction. Even variations in local worship of the same deity can cause different outcomes. When you change names and cultural context, the differences may grow.

16 hours ago, Sub said:

I don't have The Glorious ReAscent of Yelm or The Entekosiad right now, although it sounds like it might be worth getting them soon. It might be a little too difficult for me as a Glorantha newbie to do the level of detail justice while also making it fun for my heroic Lhankor Mhy player to discover and engage with.

Neither really are good food for newbies, not even on the scholarly level. If you are willing to go the scholarly way, King of Sartar is the most rounded and finished of these works, is pertinent to the area of Dragon Pass, and will subversively introduce a distrust in the documentation of the world in the reader. There is some stuff in there that is only distracting from the use with roleplaying games, like all that Fourth Age speculation, but the rest is the material a Lhankor Mhy sage would encounter in his research, and hope to make some sense of.

 

16 hours ago, Sub said:

Some of my original questions came from a picture of LM in theistic context. The scholar as an intelligent god from the other world who is capable of watching and judging my player, and, depending on his actions, grants him more or less command over his magic. This includes his ability to read, and really anything to do with the core Runes LM is approached through.

That's my main approach to the cult of LM, too. Sorcery is an option, not a necessity, unless you go as far as saying that all knowledge is sorcerous (which is pretty meaningless).

 

16 hours ago, Sub said:

Perhaps behaving like LM's theistic enemies would weaken my player's magic, whereas knowledge hoarding and secret-keeping might strengthen it. This is why I had questions about Illumination and such -- how does that picture of LM start to slip away when you start doing experimental heroquesting?

"Experimental" heroquesting is in no way scientific. There is no way to make a heroquesting experience repeatable. There is a way to make different choices at certain expected stages of a quest.

There may be unexpected victories in places where you aren't supposed to experience them, throwing your assumed knowledge of this mythical path off-balance, and possibly removing you, your quest, and your supporters' outcomes from the expected result. The classical example is the Yelmalian who managed to hold on to his fire powers and possibly his armor on the Hill of Gold quest, emerging as something different than the Yelmalio of Time.

Illumination is sometimes presented as removing the quester from the emotional experience and his or her previously learned certainty and conviction. Not always, though (and that insight comes from the story of Valare Addi, which does make up a small portion of Entekosiad), as a new insight or conviction may only be as incomplete in understanding as previous information.

(On the other hand, had Valare been a much more powerful heroquester, her conviction might have changed the Red Goddess into something a lot closer to Dendara, the Virtuous Wife. Genertela might have looked drastically different as a result.)

The cults of Lhankor Mhy and Buserian aren't directly concerned with Illumination. They observe the history of Illumination mostly from the outside. There were sages that were illuminated, draconically enlightened, and possibly (in Buserian) also umbarically endarkened under Spolite influences, but none of that really affected the core deities or the cults as wholes.

16 hours ago, Sub said:

Was the LM who was watching, judging and hoarding before just another heroquester, from an enemy faction of a distant, but still friendly temple?

Almost as likely the hoarder, judge and rival might be sitting right in your own temple.

  • Thanks 1

Telling how it is excessive verbis

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

6 hours ago, Jeff said:

Most scholars agree that the 120 volumes comprising Garangian Bronze-Gut’s Compendium of Persons Eminent in Every Branch of Learning with a List of their Writingsis more comprehensive (but far less practical) than Desosinderus the Librarian’s more concise Scheme of the Great Bookshelves.

And not every book mentioned in those 120 volumes is in the Library, and not even Garangian has read them all - sometimes he will have read of the existence of a book in a third party commentary, or it was cited by another, but he has never seen it. That’s one of things that makes it comprehensive.

And of course well known books are always being squirreled away, as Jeff says.

Finding a book in the index is one thing. It doesn’t mean you can find the book. 

But knowing the existence of Garangiums Compendium, Desosinderus’ Scheme as well, and knowing of the existence of Restricted Access caches and who might know about them, is all part of the Library Use skill. 

  • Like 2
  • Thanks 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

A library like that probably has lectoria where scrolls are taken to be read, or scriptoria where the reader first creates a copy of the passage he intends to use, returns the original, and then may use his copy for repeated reading and cross-referencing.

Such excerpt copies with source citations may be added to the collection as well, and create a certain amount of redundance. Quite a few works by ancient authors are only known through such partial citations of their works by later authors.

Library Use might be a social skill rather than a knowledge skill...

  • Like 2
  • Thanks 2

Telling how it is excessive verbis

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

14 minutes ago, Joerg said:

A library like that probably has lectoria where scrolls are taken to be read, or scriptoria where the reader first creates a copy of the passage he intends to use, returns the original, and then may use his copy for repeated reading and cross-referencing.

Such excerpt copies with source citations may be added to the collection as well, and create a certain amount of redundance. Quite a few works by ancient authors are only known through such partial citations of their works by later authors.

Library Use might be a social skill rather than a knowledge skill...

Do codices exist anywhere in Glorantha? I find it hard to believe the populist works of the Lunar Empire - the Entekosiad's many predecessors are said to be available in tremendous and cheap numbers for the use of travelers - are scrolls and not (poorly-made) sewn codices akin to a chapbook. They were first mentioned by Martial during the early Roman Empire so by the Third Age it's not unthinkable they might be in use for practical purposes - they probably were designed originally as notebooks and then the rich realised you could gift them as tiny stylish books of art and poetry that fit in a pocket. The Romans used to use wax notebooks that folded, but the wood frames tended to break and they were heavy.

These are going to be for trashy and populist works, of course. The Seven Mothers cult might have a codex but "real" Lunar Way cultists are still using scrolls, and of course the Solar deities all have scrolls.

(Orlanth doesn't read so I think we don't need to worry about the Storm Gods)

Edited by Qizilbashwoman
  • Like 1
  • Thanks 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 minutes ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

Do codices exist anywhere in Glorantha?

Of course they do. I have several copies of The Codex, for example.

  • Haha 4

Simon Phipp - Caldmore Chameleon - Wallowing in my elitism since 1982. Many Systems, One Family. Just a fanboy. 

www.soltakss.com/index.html

Jonstown Compendium author. Find my contributions here

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 minutes ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

Do codices exist anywhere in Glorantha? I find it hard to believe the populist works of the Lunar Empire - the Entekosiad's many predecessors are said to be available in tremendous and cheap numbers for the use of travelers - are scrolls and not (poorly-made) sewn codices akin to a chapbook.

Codices make bad use of valuable parchment - they use perfectly good writing surface to sew or even glue pages together!

One version of codex I have seen recently was more of a box with parchment in a more or less uniform, box fitting size, a numbered loose pages collection. (I think the Wulfila bible - the silver letters on purple parchment - was collected like this.)

4 minutes ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

They were first mentioned by Martial during the early Roman Empire so by the Third Age

Third century AD?

 

4 minutes ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

These are going to be for trashy and populist works, of course. The Seven Mothers cult might have a codex but "real" Lunar Way cultists are still using scrolls, and of course the Solar deities all have scrolls.

Don't discount the use of clay tablets. While the Dara Happan skript isn't that well suited for cuneiform, using clay as a writing material should be possible.

 

4 minutes ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

(Orlanth doesn't read so I think we don't need to worry about the Storm Gods)

Orlanth is a wood-carver (among plenty other quite practical crafts), and may have learned a bit from his knowing companion. Never underestimate those barbarians!

Rulers often require writing on official buildings - whether carved into rock or wood, or painted as fresco into the plaster, or laid as mosaic, or glazed into representative pottery. Or stamped on coins.

  • Like 1

Telling how it is excessive verbis

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

41 minutes ago, Joerg said:

Codices make bad use of valuable parchment - they use perfectly good writing surface to sew or even glue pages together!

Not if you fold and sew

41 minutes ago, Joerg said:

Third century AD?

No, I mean Martial was 1st CE but by the Third Age of Glorantha maybe someone in the Lunar Empire has innovated because handing out tiny scrolls is terrible. Just sew small sheets of folded parchment along the middle - or even more cheaply, do it Maya-style! - for the rich traveler's flippable-codex. Scrolls on the road are... awkward. The Seven Mothers push literacy and must have some super-cheap way to make prayer items to read for the unwashed. Single sheet of papyrus. For the rich, a thin codex.

  • Like 1
  • Thanks 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

51 minutes ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

No, I mean Martial was 1st CE but by the Third Age of Glorantha maybe someone in the Lunar Empire has innovated because handing out tiny scrolls is terrible. Just sew small sheets of folded parchment along the middle - or even more cheaply, do it Maya-style! - for the rich traveler's flippable-codex. Scrolls on the road are... awkward. The Seven Mothers push literacy and must have some super-cheap way to make prayer items to read for the unwashed. Single sheet of papyrus. For the rich, a thin codex.

Embroidered little devotional books with pictures are a great idea for pilgrims and others. Take a little linen, screen (or even weave in) a pattern and the Dendara / Ourania / Erissa sisters can do it for themselves without getting the priests bothered. (The Erissas can even write in flesh but that's another story.)

It remains to be told how exactly literacy was transmitted to women and other formerly deprecated people but Valere acquired an interest in archaic writing systems somewhere . . . probably from her sequestration. Then as the Way unfolds we get that great little throwaway about the Second Wane emergence of a literate middle class and a market for casual literature. A feminist scribal tradition working in textile would have been very interesting. Luckily enough, that stuff burns as easily as paper so we don't have to worry about too much of it surviving Sheng outside the great lunar archives.

Edited by scott-martin
pilgrim comics, bothering the priests, writing in flesh
  • Like 3

singer sing me a given

Link to comment
Share on other sites

12 hours ago, Jeff said:

I'd suggest the opposite - just use the monomyth as presented in RQG and the Sourcebook. Consider that the basic LM working understanding of how mythology works. Ignore GRoY (most Dara Happens do) and ignore Entekosiad (virtually everyone does). They are historical curiosities - like Herodotus trying to make sense of the Enûma Eliš. It is interesting deep-background, but not necessary - even misleading.

In our games, LM gets dragged along all sorts of Orlanthi hero quests because he is so damn good at Knowing Things. The player doesn't need to know what the LM character knows - even the GM doesn't need to know it! That's what Skill roles and spell outcomes are for. In our game, the player with the least knowledge of Glorantha plays the LM sage and she's great. 

I have to profoundly disagree on many levels. Follow FS (?) on Low Pelorian religion, since Greg favoured it himself. Treat the Monomyth as the God Learnerist perversion that it is. 

Herodotus studying the Enuma?  Hardly remote history, given the sources he would have available, and hardly irrelevant given how strongly the ideas within it influenced the countries he regarded as deadly threats. 

There is no need to know Gloranthan lore to play any knowledge priest (or similar), just a willingness to discover a new set of truths

  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Eh, the Monomyth builds so heavily on the Theyalan-Pelorian synthesis of the Bright Empire that while some of the more spurious and radical elements should be shorn off, I'm getting the feel that much of it has been effectively mainstreamed because it wasn't miles off from what was already the accepted versions in much of urban Ralios and Maniria (and parts of Peloria, although it's really hard to tell what). (Folkloric and "Small tradition"-style beliefs might toss the monomyth aside for more immediately relevant local powers though, as is common). 

Edited by Sir_Godspeed
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Greg and I both agreed that the monomyth is correct in basic structure, but it is often off in terms of details, and has plenty of local contradictions. It might interest you to know that GRoY and the Entekosiad were first written using the names from the monomyth. Then Greg would tweak it and localise it, and add new details. But you can always see the monomyth in the background if you know where to look. 

  • Like 1
  • Thanks 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

43 minutes ago, Jeff said:

Greg and I both agreed that the monomyth is correct in basic structure, but it is often off in terms of details, and has plenty of local contradictions. It might interest you to know that GRoY and the Entekosiad were first written using the names from the monomyth. Then Greg would tweak it and localise it, and add new details. But you can always see the monomyth in the background if you know where to look. 

now that's just mean

  • Haha 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, Jeff said:

Greg and I both agreed that the monomyth is correct in basic structure, but it is often off in terms of details, and has plenty of local contradictions. It might interest you to know that GRoY and the Entekosiad were first written using the names from the monomyth. Then Greg would tweak it and localise it, and add new details. But you can always see the monomyth in the background if you know where to look. 

As a Campbellian trained anthropologist his early reliance on the monomyth is both inevitable and obvious.  I found his later appreciation that variation matters at least as much as commonality very helpful, and am disinclined to revert to the monomyth structure.  MGDV.

For me the question is not whether the myth-structure and religion are over complicated; it is whether they are over-complicated enough!B)

  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, Ali the Helering said:

As a Campbellian trained anthropologist his early reliance on the monomyth is both inevitable and obvious.  I found his later appreciation that variation matters at least as much as commonality very helpful, and am disinclined to revert to the monomyth structure.  MGDV.

For me the question is not whether the myth-structure and religion are over complicated; it is whether they are over-complicated enough!B)

Yeah, but trying to piece them together is so fun, though. :lol:

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

6 hours ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

now that's just mean

It makes sense though.

It's like reading Herodotus' work we know Osiris is the same god as Dionysus.

So the first stage of the Entekosiad would presumably be similar to a book on Egyptian mythology where Dionysus is slain by his brother Typhon, and while Ceres goes to recover her husband's body parts, Dionysus' son Apollo fights Typhon to gain his birthright.

  • Thanks 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, Tindalos said:

It makes sense though.

It's like reading Herodotus' work we know Osiris is the same god as Dionysus.

So the first stage of the Entekosiad would presumably be similar to a book on Egyptian mythology where Dionysus is slain by his brother Typhon, and while Ceres goes to recover her husband's body parts, Dionysus' son Apollo fights Typhon to gain his birthright.

Well, no

It'd be that the underlying stories are the monomyth and we have to figure out how the story of De Iside et Osiride fits in and which deity is Orlanth :-/

 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...