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WIth thanks to @RosenMcStern for reminding me about the canon cult this morning and @Rodney Dangerduck for being a victim of the cult.

What the F@#k!

Why the...

so what are we to do here..

Well mockery seems to be a possible thread theme... But let’s keep “thumper” and "ghandi" ready to mind when mocking. Be nice, nothing personal nothing about someones handle or avatar or opinion. No attacking designers. Just the rules...but a rule that has become canonical that just ruins the feng shui of our table... So how’s. about something canonical that is pissing ya off.
Nothing, what are ya a friggin saint? C’mon, use this area as therapy, or

How has canon changed that has make you swoon and propose marriage on a BRP central Topic thread, hmmm? And don’t fear treacle, be sweet, cause diabetes .Fuck tha haters, knowwhatImean? So how has canon impacted yer day.

How’s about something that is just canonical, Rosen and I were discussing Red Shirts, Canons and cults earlier and elsewhere and well this is a tavern, veer off canon and set yer course for the second star on the left and straight on to morning. and leave BRP for that matter. Star trek and  canon, is that a thing?

Possibly controversial, possibly therapeutic, with the above caveats and Thumper on yer shoulder... definitely yours... Let’s keep it nice so the admin does not need to shut it down.

cheers

Edited by Bill the barbarian
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... remember, with a TARDIS, one is never late for breakfast!

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"Blind Cave Oxen" is my association whenever I read some claim that this or that publication is to be no longer considered useful for extracting Glorantha information. Even some worst case personal interpretations and additions like in HW Glorantha-Introduction to the Hero Wars and Blood over Gold, or some of my own rather under-informed Aeolian writings.

Glorantha has always been a work in progress, and progress comes with false starts which then need to be retroactively corrected or re-fitted.

Some high and mighty disdain for fan-published or too loosely licensed publications may go too far. I wore the hat of a fact checker for Gloranthan canon for about a decade while I assembled a collection of sources and source quotes of the then far distributed lore. Unlike the overly dogmatic approach of the Glorantha Wikia which has seen a cleansing of articles that possibly beats the book burnings of the Third Reich, I think that a - suitably marked up - presentation of previous descriptions gives a much better service to all those people who stumble across some oldtimer's opinion informed on older sources or played campaigns.

There are problems with every rules-set used for describing Glorantha, and with every publication made for it. (Just today I noticed two minor factual mistakes in the Guide, presumed to be our most sacrosanct document...)

Then there are cases where people disregard the important maxim "parallels aren't", courtesy of Nick Brooke in the last decade of the last millennium. Just because Loskalm is described with terms paralleling Platon's Republic doesn't mean in any way that the state that evolve in the shelter of the Ban is a 1:1 carbon copy of the few sentences Platon puts into the mouths of Socrates and his opponents in the "Politeia" dialogues. (Platon fails to provide a concise and organized proposal for that ideal republic in those dialogues, preferring to guide and tease the readers in a similar way his protagonist Socrates does in the dialogues.)

 

The biggest salvage job ticket that I see right now is the Malkioni material in pre-Guide publications. The new canon avoids terms like "church", "knight", "bishop", "saint". Except where those terms keep creeping back into the canon, or weren't completely excised.

Both Revealed Mythologies and Middle Sea Empire spend a significant amount on their descriptions of the Malkioni on the development of the church. Even just a replacement of that term using a thesaurus will take a lot of work and insight, changing the reader's impression away from Late Roman or Dark Ages Christianity or more recent schisms.

The Abiding Book  is the magical equivalent to the political expediency that drove Irenaeus copy-editing of the gospels and that directed the Nicaean council. It avoids the person of a prophet hearing the whispers of the omnipotent god and writing them down in verses. Both these parallels point to the monotheistic world religions of our world and may cause similarly unwanted associations as do comparisons to Roman Iron Age, the Roman Empire, the East Roman Empire, Ireland, Anglo-Saxon Britain (including Arthurian), or China. (Not to mention the unforgivable crime of cultural appropriation...)

 

Are there people out there intending to ruin your Glorantha experience? Possibly yes. But for all my occasional disagreements about presentation of facts by the current publishers of Glorantha these are people who put their livelihood into the survival of our shared hobby, and the last thing Jeff and the rest of the crew want is to alienate the Tribe.

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Telling how it is excessive verbis

 

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42 minutes ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

Elmal is not Yelmalio, I'm bitter

Man is that a can o’ worms™. I am sure I started to see this in the 90s in one of the Digests. Is this correct oh wise and knowledgeable (and still not to demented to remember) Great Ones. There have been many bitter words and tears spent over this one.

 

14 minutes ago, Joerg said:

or some of my own rather under-informed Aeolian writings.

Nice, it takes effort to admit one’s contributions to the problem but as you so wisely continue....”Glorantha has always been a work in progress, and progress comes with false starts which then need to be retroactively corrected or re-fitted.”

14 minutes ago, Joerg said:

Some high and mighty disdain for fan-published or too loosely licensed publications may go too far. I wore the hat of a fact checker for Gloranthan canon for about a decade while I assembled a collection of sources and source quotes of the then far distributed lore. Unlike the overly dogmatic approach of the Glorantha Wikia which has seen a cleansing of articles that possibly beats the book burnings of the Third Reich, I think that a - suitably marked up - presentation of previous descriptions gives a much better service to all those people who stumble across some oldtimer's opinion informed on older sources or played campaigns.

I am glad you weighed in with this, from the horses mouth as it were...

14 minutes ago, Joerg said:

Are there people out there intending to ruin your Glorantha experience? Possibly yes. But for all my occasional disagreements about presentation of facts by the current publishers of Glorantha these are people who put their livelihood into the survival of our shared hobby, and the last thing Jeff and the rest of the crew want is to alienate the Tribe.

Thumper sends many hearts! We have yet to hear from the beyond from Mahatma Gandhi.

Edited by Bill the barbarian
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... remember, with a TARDIS, one is never late for breakfast!

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34 minutes ago, Bill the barbarian said:

I’ll start, expanding canon to include asian themes in DP made my decade, losing the nordic theme smarts but, I might get over it or just home rule a few thangs.

I fail to see "nordic" elements in the pass as much as I profess an almost complete absence of hints of Mediterranean things to be seen in the Pass. The only things that are necessarily part of Asia Minor in the Pass are coinage and alphabetic script. Everything else is window-dressing to countermand badly informed associations. Even Step Pyramids.

The Silk Road is likely to be better known than the Amber Road or the various Salt Roads which describe the trade across Dragon Pass probably better.

The greater Danube region offers just about everything in terms of archeological finds that defines their material culture and life-style. For environmental and additional cultural influences, pre-Columbian America offers a wealth of prospects, but the agriculture of Glorantha is decidedly Old World, and apart from the rice cultivation everywhere outside of the greater Pass region, there is nothing in Genertela that isn't found in Old Europe, too. Admittedly often brought by new waves of immigration or conquest.

Primary production (i.e. how people feed themselves) is an essential driving force in the shape of their cultures. Ignoring those factors for a "rule of cool" might enrichen your personal game for a while, but I find that highly detrimental to the integrity of the setting.

 

Sometimes, the over-reliance on the Mediterranean parallels is worse than North or Baltic Sea equivalents. Triremes as a navy using Dormal's Opening are about as sensible as Formula One cars for Uber taxis. The Homeward Ocean is about as clement as the Biscaya or the Pacific off California. If you can surf the waves, there is no way an Aegean trireme will be able to make more than a day trip into those waters, Ben Hur be damned.

 

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Telling how it is excessive verbis

 

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22 minutes ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

Give us bread, give us bread, but give us Elmaaaaaaal

Do yourselves a favour and hit play on this—one of America's truly great men telling the tale of great americans, no matter what the immigration laws said!

Edited by Bill the barbarian

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

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I personally favour the view that there are local gods everywhere which have similarities, and cultures since the dawn have associated with each other.

So you have Karborn, Matu, Humat, Coalot, Umatum, and they're all local storm deities. The Theyalans and God Learners applied the name Orlanth to them, and each culture will accept that name, but treat anyone using it as an ignorant foreigner for using the inferior name. Each will have their own differences from the "main cult," because they all have different mythologies. Each Sacred Mountain of the Orlanthi culture indicates one particular home of these local gods, which either becomes the local home of Orlanth, or if they're different and useful enough to keep a separate role from Orlanth himself, become one of his kin. (Such as Urox and Kolat.)

In game, well... it depends on the players I guess, if they're not particularly interested in the differences then I'd just go with Orlanth or whatever as a standard name, but if they find that level of detail neat, then I'll play up the local cultural differences.

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3 hours ago, Joerg said:

The Silk Road is likely to be better known than the Amber Road or the various Salt Roads which describe the trade across Dragon Pass probably better.

Oh please Joerg You have got to start a thread exploring topics like this someday. The latter two places exist in Glorantha as opposed to their better know cousin the wonderful exotic, vibrant and adventure-soaked Silk Road of our world I am assuming (hopefully correctly). 

A Bricks and Bouquets Forum like this is the wrong place to unpack potentially deep subjects like those but man would I love to hear more about the two of ‘em and others of their ilk.

3 hours ago, Joerg said:

Triremes as a navy using Dormal's Opening are about as sensible as Formula One cars for Uber taxis

or Waertagi Dragon Ships...

 

3 hours ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

It's a hair of Hittite/Ugaritic influence IMHO, perhaps underlined by the Baal Thunderer mythic cycle that echoes the Orlanth themes

I really have to say the without the Hittite.Anatolia/Assyrian thang I lose my kinda celtic/nordic/barbarian thang entirely so I have to throw in with Qizilbashwoman here Joerg.

Go Hittites! Giver me an H, give me an i give me a (huh what’s this, an eye... no I said an I not an eye....), sigh...

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

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2 hours ago, Bill the barbarian said:

I really have to say the without the Hittite.Anatolia/Assyrian thang I lose my kinda celtic/nordic/barbarian thang entirely so I have to throw in with Qizilbashwoman here Joerg.

I mean just to be clear, the Hittites spoke a language related to English, not to the languages spoken elsewhere in the Middle East like Assyrian. They were like... reverse Lunar Sartarites, they were Sartarites who moved into Lunar territory

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1 hour ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

I mean just to be clear, the Hittites spoke a language related to English, not to the languages spoken elsewhere in the Middle East like Assyrian. They were like... reverse Lunar Sartarites, they were Sartarites who moved into Lunar territory

Close enough for the barbarians I know and will do quite nicely (Assyrian Hittite or any of the other bronze age denizens of Anatolia. for that matter would do fine)...

I am not sure just what this Lunar Sartar is that you mention.  After the fall of the provincial army and the rise of Kallyr Starbrow there is no Lunar Sartar remaining I believe.  Are you referring to Alda-chur (arguably Lunar Sartar since the Alda-churi tribe joined Sartar in the time of Prince Terasarin after the fall of Tarsh to the Lunar Empire and then fell to the Lunars in 1602 with the rest of Sartar). Harvar Ironfist took over and pulled what became the Alda-chur Overtribe out of occupied Sartar after the Rebellion of the Righteous  Wind and it became arguably an allied friend of the empire. I do not know if they return to Sartar after the Dragonrise.

It can’t be  Tarsh as Tarsh was never a member of Sartar’s creation.

Cheers

Edited by Bill the barbarian
missing word sure

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

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4 minutes ago, Bill the barbarian said:

Close enough for the barbarians I know and will do quite nicely (Assyrian Hittite or any of the other bronze age denizens of Anatolia. for that matter would do fine)...

I am not just what this Lunar Sartar is that you mention.  After the fall of the provincial army and the rise of Kallyr Starbrow there is no Lunar Sartar remaining I believe.  Are you referring to Alda-chur (arguably Lunar Sartar since the Alda-churi tribe joined Sartar in the time of Prince Terasarin after the fall of Tarsh to the Lunar Empire and then fell to the Lunars in 1602 with the rest of Sartar). Harvar Ironfist took over and pulled what became the Alda-chur Overtribe out of occupied Sartar after the Rebellion of the Righteous  Wind and it became arguably an allied friend of the empire. I do not know if they return to Sartar after the Dragonrise.

It can’t be  Tarsh as Tarsh was never a member of Sartar’s creation.

Cheers

ugh i meant tarsh sorry brain misfired

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I'm not a big fan of Kralorela or Vormain. Both of them tend to stick out aesthetically- Kralorela is very Ming (down to the point of facing a devastating invasion from the north after a political vacuum emerges, and then at this point I started drawing parallels to Sheng as the Yuan, Godunya's first reign as the Song, ShangHsa and the False Dragon's Ring as the Jin...) and Vormain is very early Edo/late Sengoku (the piracy is very pre-Edo, the isolation is very Edo/stereotypes of the Edo period) and while I'm certainly not opposed to heavily Chinese- and Japanese-influenced areas in Glorantha, I'd certainly prefer ones that looked a bit more in line with the feel of antiquity. 

Of course, then those become less immediately recognizable as Chinese-influenced or Japanese-influenced unless you've got a personal connection or are a big nerd. 

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Though a Lunar through and through, she is also a human being.

"I just read an article in The Economist by a guy who was riding around with the Sartar rebels, I mean Taliban," -Greg Stafford, January 7th, 2010

Eight Arms and the Mask

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27 minutes ago, Eff said:

I'm not a big fan of Kralorela or Vormain. Both of them tend to stick out aesthetically- Kralorela is very Ming (down to the point of facing a devastating invasion from the north after a political vacuum emerges, and then at this point I started drawing parallels to Sheng as the Yuan, Godunya's first reign as the Song, ShangHsa and the False Dragon's Ring as the Jin...) and Vormain is very early Edo/late Sengoku (the piracy is very pre-Edo, the isolation is very Edo/stereotypes of the Edo period) and while I'm certainly not opposed to heavily Chinese- and Japanese-influenced areas in Glorantha, I'd certainly prefer ones that looked a bit more in line with the feel of antiquity. 

Of course, then those become less immediately recognizable as Chinese-influenced or Japanese-influenced unless you've got a personal connection or are a big nerd. 

I studied Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, and Classical Chinese at Harvard and Peking University so I feel intense pain at every single fantasy pseudasia that ever has been made by Westerners. Because all of it is so unnecessary and skips the actually interesting parts (like ... Shang and Zhou myths are deeply wild, Korean religion is also very wild)

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11 minutes ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

I studied Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, and Classical Chinese at Harvard and Peking University so I feel intense pain at every single fantasy pseudasia that ever has been made by Westerners. Because all of it is so unnecessary and skips the actually interesting parts (like ... Shang and Zhou myths are deeply wild, Korean religion is also very wild)

I certainly don't have anywhere near your level of formal experience, but reading xianxia webnovels and my girlfriend's short stories and novellas certainly has me feeling cold at pseudasia too, haha.

Though a Lunar through and through, she is also a human being.

"I just read an article in The Economist by a guy who was riding around with the Sartar rebels, I mean Taliban," -Greg Stafford, January 7th, 2010

Eight Arms and the Mask

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4 hours ago, Bill the barbarian said:

Oh please Joerg You have got to start a thread exploring topics like this someday. The latter two places exist in Glorantha as opposed to their better know cousin the wonderful exotic, vibrant and adventure-soaked Silk Road of our world I am assuming (hopefully correctly). 

A Bricks and Bouquets Forum like this is the wrong place to unpack potentially deep subjects like those but man would I love to hear more about the two of ‘em and others of their ilk.

The Amber Road I was talking about is the Copper Age or older route that provided amber from the cold north to places like Egypt. Probably the luxury good that gave the Myceneans something the Minoans and those beyond would desire. The Unetice folk of Nebra disk fame were intermediaries on this route, as were the Carpathian/Danubian folk who managed to maintain the continental Bronze trade when the Mediterranean and the Fertile Crescent underwent a total close-down of their trade routes.

The salt trade is woefully under-developed in Glorantha, and drowned aldryami (to produce amber) are ubiquitious - all of the dry side of the cube was once covered by sprawling greenery, and two thirds of that are now submerged.

 

But then the Spondilus trade into the continent or the production of Wampum in North America, or the Kauri shell all show a weird appreciation on mollusc-based wealth and luxuries throughout the world. What's up with that?

 

The wonderful clichéed imagery of the Silk Road across the Steppes does of course combine Fantasy China with Fantasy Persia... Cultural appropriation and all that.

 

4 hours ago, Bill the barbarian said:

or Waertagi Dragon Ships...

Those are at least grown (and built) to exist in wave action.

4 hours ago, Bill the barbarian said:

I really have to say the without the Hittite.Anatolia/Assyrian thang I lose my kinda celtic/nordic/barbarian thang entirely so I have to throw in with Qizilbashwoman here Joerg.

The Hittites with their strictly continental empire are one of the few Bronze Age cultures where we don't have to ignore their heavy reliance on naval trade and transport.

Imagine Germany without Autobahn.

4 hours ago, Bill the barbarian said:

Go Hittites! Giver me an H, give me an i give me a (huh what’s this, an eye... no I said an I not an eye....), sigh...

Go, hit tights? That's sexual harrassment, man.

1 hour ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

I mean just to be clear, the Hittites spoke a language related to English, not to the languages spoken elsewhere in the Middle East like Assyrian. They were like... reverse Lunar Sartarites, they were Sartarites who moved into Lunar territory

The Hittites spoke a language related to Armenian or Iranian and whatever cultures were active on the Pontic Steppe at the time.

Do we have any information on the Mitanni language? Their pattern of expansion and conquest suggests that they too came from the Pontic Steppe.

 

 

Telling how it is excessive verbis

 

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6 minutes ago, Joerg said:

The Hittites spoke a language related to Armenian or Iranian and whatever cultures were active on the Pontic Steppe at the time.

Do we have any information on the Mitanni language? Their pattern of expansion and conquest suggests that they too came from the Pontic Steppe.

Bzzt. You are wrong. Hittite is a cousin to the entire rest of the Indo-European languages; technically, this stage is called Indo-Hittite. One branch is Hittite and its closely-related languages (like Luvian), notable for being the language of Troy, the other branch Indo-European. It is no closer to Armenian or the Iranian languages than it is to English.

Mitanni was Indic. But they were a real small diversion from the initial Indic exodus from the Steppes (the rest, obviously, crossed the Hindukush into India); they likely amounted to a very small group, perhaps a small Orlanthi tribe, whose technical skills in horsemanship and charioteering lead them to outsized importance for perhaps a hundred years. We have a few inscriptions with Indic terms, and then they disappear.

The Hittites and their kin and descendants, in comparison, were a gigantic monster of an ethnic group. They colonised part of the Mediterranean and might even be the origin of the Etruscans, previously thought to be a language isolate and now potentially related to Luvian as a colonial endeavor from the existing colonies in the Peleponnese.

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