Draconic Orlanth

[Richard S.]

The form rune stuff isn't based on biology, it's something to do with human spirits iirc.

In any case, technically speaking all humans do have a bit of every form rune, and every rune in general (grandfather mortal was made from a little bit of everything, after all). It's just that the forms that aren't beast or man aren't strong enough to manifest in any significant way.

I imagine if someone did gain another form rune, in runequest terms, it'd join beast and man to make a trifecta to split 100% between rather than it being a separate score. Except Chaos. Chaos breaks the rules.

[metcalph]

On 1/18/2023 at 7:14 PM, Erol of Backford said:

Godunya’s guards are not dragonewts, but are mortal men whose devotion and dedication allows them to assume the form of dragons. So they have only the man rune but could have the dragon rune when they assume dragon form.

They could also use the Illusion Rune from Thalurzni Mikaday (borrowing from Zhaungzi's parable of the Butterfly Dream).  They use a rune spell (like Argan Argar's Become Other) to spend time as a Dragonewt or a Human (if a 'newt) and use the resulting transformation to acquire mystical awareness and achieve illumination.  

Edited January 19, 2023 by metcalph

[Erol of Backford]

Do intelligent wyms speak Aldu Wyrmish? Even water wyms?

[Richard S.]

Yep. That's why it's the Empire of the Wyrm's Friends - they're the ones who started teaching it to humans.

[davecake]

On 1/18/2023 at 10:48 PM, Darius West said:

Sorry to go all Godlearner on you, but all creatures in Glorantha have a little bit of all the runes.  Runes are like atoms in Glorantha. 

From your conception of what God Learners might believe, you can make up whatever metaphysical answer you want (though I assume the God Learners would mostly be arguing about such things from a theoretical perspective, and their only answers to questions about Draconic magic would be wildly disputed). Though the above assertion makes about as much sense to me as ‘all animals are a little bit Plant, and all Plants a bit animal’, which is just the same logic applied to different Form Runes and would seem to be the sort of statement that simply generalises to the point of practical meaninglessness. 
 

But as I’ve said pretty repeatedly in this discussion - almost always when people talk about someone ‘having’ a Rune, they mean in some practical, magically applicable, way that is in practice a game system dependent use. 
 

The question of whether some trace rune could be detected with a theoretical supersensitive laboratory rune-o-scope seems a different question, and not one to which I can see there being a useful answer. 

[davecake]

On 1/19/2023 at 2:23 AM, Richard S. said:

technically speaking all humans do have a bit of every form rune

I don’t think this is even technically true for the majority of humans (are humans part Plant?). I’d be interested to see a source. 

[davecake]

On 1/18/2023 at 5:33 PM, radmonger said:

As are the dragon rune and the dragonewt rune.

Indeed.

On 1/18/2023 at 5:33 PM, radmonger said:

I don't think it is explicitly stated anywhere, but Dragonewt may reasonably be considered a hybrid rune of Man and Dragon,

Not only has it not been explicitly stated anywhere, it would be introducing the concept of a hybrid Form Rune, which also doesn’t seem to exist (a creature that seems to have two aspects of two Form runes (eg an Elf or a Baboon) just seems to have two Form Runes). So I don’t think so - though it’s interesting to know if magisaurs, wyrms, etc are considered to have the Dragonewt rune, and if the Dragonewt rune correlates to the ability to Speak Auld Wyrmish fluently and/naturally, and whether surgically altered humans count (which might just be a game system abstraction call). 
 

On 1/18/2023 at 5:33 PM, radmonger said:

Trade is a hybrid of Mobility and Harmony. This allows a rune cult that has that rune to teach magic that would otherwise require both runes, as many Issaries spells do

My current expectation is that the Trade rune won’t really be meaningful in RQG, just an artifact of the Issaries cult understanding of the world. And Issaries traders will have separate Harmony and Movement runes. But it might change. It’s the only ‘hybrid’ Power rune, and the only real hybrid rune in the game, and I think Jeff would rather it wasn’t part of any game system. 
 

On 1/18/2023 at 5:33 PM, radmonger said:

Godunya's guards develop Beast into Dragon. By their RQIII rune spell list, they looks suspiciously like they are either descended from dragon hsunchen, or represent the god learner's idea of what dragon hsunchen would be.

By Godunya’s Guards here, assuming the Path of Immanent Mastery - the Guide definitely treats them as the same, though this is more ambiguous at other times. They are given the Man rune specifically in GoG, so I’d not say Beast (plus their method is the very human one of learning complex esoteric pseudo-intellectual babble). I agree it is magic descended from a God Learnerish understanding of dragon hsunchen. It’s notable though that the body transformed isn’t simply that of a dragonewt, but has some things in common with a dragonewt using Dragon magic, such as breathing fire and changing size. So though some would argue it’s a very flawed understanding of Dragon Magic, it might still be the correct rune (if it is indeed like the Dragon magic used by Dragonewts), the dragonewts would argue they are setting themselves back spiritually by using it, which they seek to do continuously for their entire lives). 

On 1/18/2023 at 5:33 PM, radmonger said:

The EWF instead developed Man into Dragonewt, by surgery and ritual

I think it’s more like the the POIM tried to skip becoming Dragonewtlike and just approximate it (Auld Wyrmish is incomprehensible, Charismatic Wisdom is incomprehensible, close enough, right?) without going through the difficult in between step of becoming a different kind of being in base form - they take a shortcut to a dragon body, changing their form without changing their Form. 
But the EWF method changes the Form (at least as far as Auld Wyrmish goes, anyway) before trying for Dragon Magic. Godunyas method, which is the fundamental underpinning of what we might call orthodox Darudism, tries to harness Dragon magic directly by changing soul without changing the body, avoiding the confusion of both the POIM and the EWF - but is extraordinarily difficult, taking centuries and requiring huge magical effort. 
 

 

[davecake]

On 1/27/2023 at 9:33 AM, Erol of Backford said:

Do intelligent wyms speak Aldu Wyrmish? Even water wyms?

Explicitly yes to both in the bestiary. Wyrms are the only creatures that routinely both speak and write Auld Wyrmish (dragonewts very seldom have any written language skills). 

[Darius West]

1 hour ago, davecake said:

Though the above assertion makes about as much sense to me as ‘all animals are a little bit Plant, and all Plants a bit animal’. 

But all animals ARE ACTUALLY a little bit plant.  Animals, like humans, have stomach flora that is responsible for digestion. Plus many creatures digest plants and thus have plant runes being reintegrated within them as fuel for their bodies.

1 hour ago, davecake said:

t (though I assume the God Learners would mostly be arguing about such things from a theoretical perspective, and their only answers to questions about Draconic magic would be wildly disputed).

I am of the opinion that the Godlearners were never able to properly understand draconic mysteries as they had great trouble with Draconic mysticism and the application of the Dragonewt rune.  The best they ever managed on that score was the Path of Immanent Mastery.  This is a large part of why the EWF was able to stave off the Jrusteli Empire.

1 hour ago, davecake said:

Though the above assertion makes about as much sense to me as ‘all animals are a little bit Plant, and all Plants a bit animal’, which is just the same logic applied to different Form Runes and would seem to be the sort of statement that simply generalises to the point of practical meaninglessness. 

Remember also that all humans have integrated elemental runes that in RQG govern and modify their stats. Fire for Int, Air for Str, Earth for Con etc.   It's in the rules.  I like the idea that while certain runes predominate, that as with plenty of non-carbon atoms in our bodies, that humans have aggregations of specific runes in Glorantha, even if the man rune forms the shape of the human body and likely predominates as the main rune.  This is a great way of reconciling a bit of science into the system imo, if only on a basis that it is lost God Learner knowledge known only to a few specialized sages.

[davecake]

On 1/18/2023 at 6:49 PM, Eff said:

So  is denoted as a shape, and  has been a condition or modifier as recently as the Guide but may instead be a personal rune now, judging by the procedural rhetoric of smiley codes. 

 Is a Form, which isn’t the same as a shape, though loosely related. Man is associated with a specific loose shape, but Beast (for example) includes variety of different limb arrangements (which maybe the case here if it includes Wyrms, wyverns, etc). I’d still put  as a Condition Rune, partly because it’s fits nowhere else, and partly because that’s where most weird magic stuff goes. But we won’t really know how it fits into RQG until we see the relevant cult writeups I guess. 

On 1/18/2023 at 6:49 PM, Eff said:

What that would mean, taken directly and simply, is that  is something that can be applied to , , , , , presumably others, and also .

I don’t think that all those have to exist in any practical or extant form - I can’t think of any Draconic Plants - but more or less. We can find examples, or plausible examples, of some of them, such as the Amethyst Dragon of Greater Chaos, the Path of Immanent Mastery, the Dragon Hsunchen, etc. I think a dragonewt can be considered to always have the  and to have the  rune as it long as it has the ability to use Dragon Magic - ie is at least Beaked, and has not fallen off the Dragon path. But that could be approached differently in the rules (it might make more sense to denote human use of Dragonewt magic (such as the EWF) by the Dragonewt rune, and use the  rune differently). 

 

On 1/18/2023 at 6:49 PM, Eff said:

Now with that said, I find myself somewhat bemused by the thought that shapes are somehow absolutely mutually exclusive when humans have  as well, and if that's because of real-world biology, they should also have because of mitochondria, intestinal flora, etc.,  because they do have a latent potential to become a bodiless spirit... but that's the trouble of a game mechanic that ostensibly represents pure psychology getting tangled up in metaphysics.

I don’t think that form runes are strongly associated with shapes in the general case, only for Man (which is specifically noted a bunch of places). Beast and Plant vary widely, Dragonewts may or may not have wings (and if Wyrms and wyverns count, that’s a lot of variation), Spirit is more or less defined by not having a (permanent) shape, and Chaos is notoriously associated with vast variety of shapes, and gratuitous inconsistency of shape. 

 

On 1/18/2023 at 6:49 PM, Eff said:

that's the trouble of a game mechanic that ostensibly represents pure psychology getting tangled up in metaphysics.

 I personally think that the Man and Beast runes represented as Opposing Runes is a very messy concept that, while it initially works somewhat as a psychological concept, almost completely fails as a magical/metaphysical concept almost everywhere it gets used, and shows some pretty deep confusion. 

On 1/18/2023 at 9:30 PM, Joerg said:

It appears that the rune originated with Daruda.

The Guide says the original owner was the Cosmic Dragon, same as it says for the Dragonewt rune, thus making it legitimately draconic at least. Presumably two approaches to the same original power? So it predates Daruda, in the sense of deep mythic origins, but yes, Daruda seems to be its first appearance of it manifest as a separate power. 

[davecake]

30 minutes ago, Darius West said:

But all animals ARE ACTUALLY a little bit plant. 

My point is that, regardless of the abstract ultimate truth of such a statement (which like most such assertions, comes down to nitpicking definitions), by saying so you have:

1. rendered your use of the term essentially useless for facilitating any form of discussion 
2. and you have rendered your use of the term clearly different to the way in which essentially everyone else uses.

You’ve also used forms of argument to arrive there that are essentially counter to Gloranthan cosmology in its entirety (mitochondria? Runes are not distinct but always overlapping? Are you next going to explain how Darkness is just an absence of fire, how life requires oxygen, how metals are different elements? ) to essentially produce a private use of the terms. Like 👏👏👏 for intellectual maneuver, but is there an actual point achieved by this?

[Darius West]

6 minutes ago, davecake said:

My point is that, regardless of the abstract ultimate truth of such a statement (which like most such assertions, comes down to nitpicking definitions), by saying so you have:

1. rendered your use of the term essentially useless for facilitating any form of discussion

How?  The fact is our world is a complex place and so is Glorantha.  The Runes are never going to be able to explain it in their present form without some added complexity in the descriptive process, and yet we know that the Mostali, Feldichi and the God Learners did exactly that.

9 minutes ago, davecake said:

2. and you have rendered your use of the term clearly different to the way in which essentially everyone else uses.

Well, my glorantha will vary.  More importantly, allows ordinary phenomena to be explained by the runes in an objective fashion, which is lore friendly, because the Mostalie, Feldichi and the God Learners were able to do so.

12 minutes ago, davecake said:

You’ve also used forms of argument to arrive there that are essentially counter to Gloranthan cosmology in its entirety (mitochondria? 

That is your perspective davecake.  The fact is that the World Machine is every bit as much a part of Gloranthan cosmology as any other, and it is a neglected part too.  Glorantha has its own Science, and it is not contrary to the cosmology in any way.  It has always been there and I like to tease it out.  Glorantha is clearly quite similar to Earth in terms of human experience, but that would be impossible if Glorantha has no physics and chemistry, even if those disciplines rely on radically different runic processes rather than atomic ones.

18 minutes ago, davecake said:

Are you next going to explain how Darkness is just an absence of fire, how life requires oxygen, how metals are different elements? ) to essentially produce a private use of the terms. 

Why not?  I'm sure these are all things a Lhankor Mhy sage with a background in the Torvald Fragments would find fascinating.

Remember that while Glorantha has magic, it is a Low Fantasy world most of the time.  All science did was render many physical processes explicable, allowing for accurate predictions of how these processes would behave.  And for the most part, the physical processes of Glorantha are reliable and predictable, and the physical processes of the world behave much as they do in our own world.  Why would that be, unless processes that mimic our world were in play at some sort of default level?  Sure, magic can change things, but most Gloranthan magic is "Buff" magic, wherein someone's ability to do something improves.  Not much Gloranthan magic transforms materials or brings objects into existence.  As such we could choose to talk about all Gloranthan magic in terms of the Sorcery Technique runes without encountering many outliers.  I may even do something on Jonstown Compendium about this one day.

[French Desperate WindChild]

7 hours ago, Darius West said:

Animals, like humans, have stomach flora that is responsible for digestion. Plus many creatures digest plants and thus have plant runes being reintegrated within them as fuel for their bodies.

to say that, you based your demonstration  on some assumptions :

a) there are stomach flora in glorantha like IRL

b) runes are physical elements, like atoms / molecules / what you want IRL

 

but is there any proof of that ?

and what if :

a) first being bodies are made of clay

b) life is the result of the transformation of this clay by the use of the power of runes

c) sentience, communication, etc... is the result of another use of the power of runes

d) pregnency is the result of a "sexual ceremony" magic, where two bodies share some intimity

e) everything which is not described in the gloranthan background is the result of use of the power of runes.

 

do my assumption propose a more bronze age flavor ?

Why what is not explained in glorantha books should be explained by what actual science explain in our world ? 

 

 

Edited February 7, 2023 by French Desperate WindChild

[Eff]

12 hours ago, davecake said:

 Is a Form, which isn’t the same as a shape, though loosely related. Man is associated with a specific loose shape, but Beast (for example) includes variety of different limb arrangements (which maybe the case here if it includes Wyrms, wyverns, etc). I’d still put  as a Condition Rune, partly because it’s fits nowhere else, and partly because that’s where most weird magic stuff goes. But we won’t really know how it fits into RQG until we see the relevant cult writeups I guess. 

I don’t think that all those have to exist in any practical or extant form - I can’t think of any Draconic Plants - but more or less. We can find examples, or plausible examples, of some of them, such as the Amethyst Dragon of Greater Chaos, the Path of Immanent Mastery, the Dragon Hsunchen, etc. I think a dragonewt can be considered to always have the  and to have the  rune as it long as it has the ability to use Dragon Magic - ie is at least Beaked, and has not fallen off the Dragon path. But that could be approached differently in the rules (it might make more sense to denote human use of Dragonewt magic (such as the EWF) by the Dragonewt rune, and use the  rune differently). 

 

I don’t think that form runes are strongly associated with shapes in the general case, only for Man (which is specifically noted a bunch of places). Beast and Plant vary widely, Dragonewts may or may not have wings (and if Wyrms and wyverns count, that’s a lot of variation), Spirit is more or less defined by not having a (permanent) shape, and Chaos is notoriously associated with vast variety of shapes, and gratuitous inconsistency of shape. 

 

 I personally think that the Man and Beast runes represented as Opposing Runes is a very messy concept that, while it initially works somewhat as a psychological concept, almost completely fails as a magical/metaphysical concept almost everywhere it gets used, and shows some pretty deep confusion. 

The Guide says the original owner was the Cosmic Dragon, same as it says for the Dragonewt rune, thus making it legitimately draconic at least. Presumably two approaches to the same original power? So it predates Daruda, in the sense of deep mythic origins, but yes, Daruda seems to be its first appearance of it manifest as a separate power. 

I think that, on the contrary, form and shape are very closely related. Plants are things that look plantlike, beasts are things that look animal-like, spirits are things that you can't see, chaos things have inconsistent and mutable, even chaotic shapes. Dragonewt in this scheme probably refers to things that look "like dinosaurs", or "like dragons"- dragonewts, dinosaurs, magisaurs, wyrms, etc. Which would almost seem to make Dragon redundant, unless it's pointing to something that's not contingent on specific shapes.

[jajagappa]

4 hours ago, Eff said:

form and shape are very closely related.

I always like the Imarja lesson on this (Esrolia, p.24): “Grandmother, we are having an argument,” they said. “We cannot agree on what you look like.”

She asked them to describe her, and truly enough, none of them truly saw her.

“Here is what I will do,” she told them. “From now on I will appear to each of you and instruct you in a house that you have made. Each day I will come to one house to teach and share myself with you. The purpose of this is to know how to come to me, and make the true sacrifice, which is the sacrifice of Self and of Life. Then one day we will meet again, and have this conversation, and when you all three agree on what I look like then all will be well again.”

So they did this, and many of their people came to listen and speak and study and make sacrifices. The houses were the House of Shape, the House of Form and the House of Appearance.

 

[Darius West]

13 hours ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

to say that, you based your demonstration  on some assumptions : a) there are stomach flora in glorantha like IRL

If there is not, how do you account for the ability to digest food in Glorantha?

The fact is, Glorantha is based on Earth.  I like realism.  I like my players to get the sense that there are substantial similarities between Earth and Glorantha.  While there is a lot of "a wizard did it" in Glorantha, there are loads of physical systems that no deity is monitoring and without physical systems underpinning its reality Glorantha would be Chaos, and chaos.  The fact is, the God Learners were correct about far more than they were wrong about.

13 hours ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

to say that, you based your demonstration  on some assumptions :

b) runes are physical elements, like atoms / molecules / what you want IRL

On the contrary.  We don't have a periodic table of runes.  We do know however that various elements affect the man rune, such as if you have strong Fire Rune associations, you will get +2 Int etc.  Next, it is an obvious truth that living creatures in Glorantha eat plant runes and beast runes, and sometimes if they are bad they eat man runes and dragonewt runes etc.  Any description of the physical systems involved will need to account for these facts.

13 hours ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

but is there any proof of that ?

and what if :

a) first being bodies are made of clay

The first being bodies are clearly animated from multiple elemental runes.  That is implicit in the RQG runes.  Yes there is Earth in people, but that only governs Constitution.  Living things are complicated.

13 hours ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

b) life is the result of the transformation of this clay by the use of the power of runes

So... Life and Death Runes, Spirit Runes, are all in a Man Rune being's make-up.  Why not plant runes for stomach flora then?  It seems increasingly likely that living things are a microcosm of the Runes in Glorantha.  The runes are all there to some degree, and can go out of balance or have their arrangement disrupted by death runes "crossing" them out (pardon the pun).

13 hours ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

c) sentience, communication, etc... is the result of another use of the power of runes

Obviously this is references Harmony and Disorder, Truth and Illusion, etc.  Sentience seems to be tied primarily to the Fire Rune, hence its rules association with Intelligence.

13 hours ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

d) pregnency is the result of a "sexual ceremony" magic, where two bodies share some intimity

They obviously bump Life Runes until they tap into the Infinity Rune and capture a Spirit Rune.  Mostali explain it in terms of a mortar grinding away in a pestle.

13 hours ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

e) everything which is not described in the gloranthan background is the result of use of the power of runes.

But these runes consistently produce outcomes that create physical systems which are very similar to Earth.  Even Gloranthan magic, which is mainly very "Buff" oriented magic could be explained to psychological effects like the placebo effect or confirmation bias, with the release of some colored light runes granting the individual the psychological permission they need to perform better.

13 hours ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

do my assumption propose a more bronze age flavor ?

 Not really FDWC.  The fact is the World Machine has always been part of Glorantha, by which I mean the mechanical physical systems that we associate and describe with disciplines like Physics and Chemistry on Earth, but unequivocally have their Gloranthan equivalencies such as Alchemy and the Lores.

The fact is, unless someone is casting a spell, Glorantha behaves much like Earth.  Also, many spells behave much like Earth were it not for the colored lights and spell effects.  This is hardly surprising, given that we want a world that is like Earth but with fantasy elements.  It takes many types of subatomic particles to create 102 types of atoms to build an Earth and its universe.  We don't have that many runes to play with, but we know that the outcome is very similar.

Edited February 8, 2023 by Darius West

[g33k]

7 minutes ago, Darius West said:

<SNIP>

YGWV in action!  😉

I disagree with (most of the elements of) what you've written; but you don't need my agreement to play as suits you, nor do I need your agreement to play as suits me.  And these are good things.  😁

[g33k]

16 minutes ago, Darius West said:

...  While there is a lot of "a wizard did it" in Glorantha, there are loads of physical systems that no deity is monitoring and without physical systems underpinning its reality Glorantha would be Chaos, and chaos.  The fact is, the God Learners were correct about far more than they were wrong about ...

I think this paragraph embodies the core of our differences.

In my view, the GL's were roughly correct -- on a sort of mechanical/engineering level.  But they didn't understand that their mechanical observations had fundamentally misled them to a mechanistic world-view, like Newton's.

However... Newton was 100% incorrect:  the universe runs on relativistic & quantum mechanisms (unless ours is just another, closer, close-approximation, with some as-yet-undiscovered science underpinning it).

So too the GL's.  Glorantha is alive, and She didn't like their machinations.

They got so far in their endeavors because they were right (as far as they went)... but a fundamental and fatal misunderstanding lay beneath everything they did.

[davecake]

8 hours ago, Eff said:

I think that, on the contrary, form and shape are very closely related. Plants are things that look plantlike, beasts are things that look animal-like,

So, an elephant and a snake are very closely related shapes? That look very similar? 

[French Desperate WindChild]

8 hours ago, Darius West said:

If there is not, how do you account for the ability to digest food in Glorantha?

in the same way that bronze age people explained it 🙂

or in other way, it is not important to me

and if one player ask me : "your character doesn't know. Will she ask this weird question to a priest ? is it a riddle ? etc...". Of course if the question is between player and gm I would answer "there is no answer in the books, imagine what you want, my position is magic / runes explains everything "

You may consider this answer as a poor answer but that is the only explanation able  to not be challenged by what is written

Spoiler

you are killed in the battle field, two months later you are able to come back from hell (so with another body as the first one is putrefied like irl) How could it be explained ?

 

8 hours ago, Darius West said:

The fact is, Glorantha is based on Earth.

but on what kind of base ? baboons are like baboons but they can speak with the same "shape" than irl, they seem they are less strong than irl (old discussion where the author then criticized the designers because it was not like irl) .

I consider only what is written as "fact", the rest is " Our Glorantha Is What We Want When it is Not Written" and "Our Glorantha Vary When What is Written is Not What We Like"

mmmm ... that could be my new moto ^^

 

 

8 hours ago, Darius West said:

I like realism.  I like my players to get the sense that there are substantial similarities between Earth and Glorantha.

yes you are right 🙂 you like what you want and noone should say you must like this and not that, I agree

 

8 hours ago, Darius West said:

The fact is,

no the facts you describe are only facts IF / WHEN people follow what you like 🙂  They have right of course; but it is not a fact for everyone. That's the only purpose of my message

In my glorantha the fact is, no problem

In glorantha the fact is,  mm I disagree 🙂

 

PS Note that i like a lot of your answers, it is not a personal / frontal assault, and I learn a lot of irl knowledges people share, but that doesn't prove, to me, anything about glorantha. It may explain, it may be an answer, one answer I would pick or not, but nothing obvious or fact

I just say that because my poor english.. I don't want any misinterpretation 😛

 

 

[radmonger]

41 minutes ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

The fact is, Glorantha is based on Earth.

Note that Gloranthan vampires react to the death rune in a similar way to traditional vampires do the cross. I think that shows Glorantha is based on myths and legends of earth, and not earth itself as understood by scientists.

So anything believed by some group of humans at some point is fair game as any of

• the basis for how things really work 
• a system some group shapes the world into by force of magic
• a delusional mistake that hasn't yet caused an unrecoverable catastrophe

A lot of play is sorting out which is which. For example, the Lunars think they are the first, and Argrath would say they are the last. A detached western observer may well pick the middle option.

 

[Eff]

11 hours ago, davecake said:

So, an elephant and a snake are very closely related shapes? That look very similar? 

They're both characteristic shapes animals have. They even share some key relationships in their physical structure. If you're looking for a classification system divorced from our primary reality, it doesn't work, but Glorantha has never been so divorced and it's not worth acting as if it is. 

[radmonger]

is the unlife rune still canonical? if so, is it a condition or form? 

[Joerg]

11 hours ago, Darius West said:

If there is not, how do you account for the ability to digest food in Glorantha?

Digestion is one of the powers of Darkness. No need to involve Beast or Spirit, and even less so Plant.

Plant is the Gloranthan principle of generating life from energy taken from the surrounding, not at all digestion.

 

11 hours ago, Darius West said:

The fact is, Glorantha is based on Earth.  I like realism.  I like my players to get the sense that there are substantial similarities between Earth and Glorantha. 

There are substantial similarities, at least at first glance. The deeper you go into detail, the more the explanations and rules will vary.

I will try to address your concepts and ideas in concepts based on Earth, and to show how some of your uses of these are based on spurious applications.

 

11 hours ago, Darius West said:

While there is a lot of "a wizard did it" in Glorantha, there are loads of physical systems that no deity is monitoring and without physical systems underpinning its reality Glorantha would be Chaos, and chaos. 

There are a bunch of Gloranthan atheists that see the effects of a priori behavior aka Runes as directing such processes without any need for anthropomorphisations of these powers beyond their role for organizing things. That doesn't make these entities non-existent.

 

11 hours ago, Darius West said:

The fact is, the God Learners were correct about far more than they were wrong about.

And then they used some of those insights to change the universe, and that change caused other changes that made a lot of their insights useless and no longer applicable under the changed rules.

A popular God Learner method was to stretch hypotheses and support the falsifiable part by some form of Godtime propaganda, signposting and gaslighting and name all these other tactics. They planted those results in Godtime, blocking previously usable paths with that nonsense.

 

11 hours ago, Darius West said:

On the contrary.  We don't have a periodic table of runes. 

Of course not. We have pedigrees of runic expressions, some self-contained (what the Xeotam catalogue calls Srvuali) sequences of devolution, some cross-breeding (Burtae), occasionally resulting in derived further Srvuali differentiation.

There are various recipes by which deities or groups thereof created beings of the Man Rune, with the "made from clay, fire and other stuff" happening in a few cases (Pamalt and friends, Yelm and five high ranking followers, Vimorn (Middle Sea Empire, father of Vadel) on his own, Soli (of Thinobutu) on his own...

The ingredients vary, not all are simple expressions of the core runes but quite specialized derivations thereof.

 

11 hours ago, Darius West said:

We do know however that various elements affect the man rune, such as if you have strong Fire Rune associations, you will get +2 Int etc. 

You are confusing the limited application of the Gloranthan rune catalogue to one out of several rules systems with deep Gloranthan lore here. At the very most, this is anecdotal evidence.

 

 

11 hours ago, Darius West said:

Next, it is an obvious truth that living creatures in Glorantha eat plant runes and beast runes,

And minerals, and Water, and Air - see the treatise on troll diet in that Lhankor Mhy experiment in Troll Pak. Trolls are especially strong in Darkness (digestion) and have thus a wider range than other species. They don't consume fire or light.

 

11 hours ago, Darius West said:

and sometimes if they are bad they eat man runes and dragonewt runes etc.  Any description of the physical systems involved will need to account for these facts.

You don't eat the runes unless you are a gorp. You consume meat or plant matter that contains derivations of constituent runes.

Any digestion won't consume runic atoms, but re-arrange the runic associations. Inhaled air has strong Mobility/Change associations, which then are separated in the body to some degree. That separated Change will enter the body to enable digestion, with depleted Air exhaled. Water-breathing has the same mechanics, and this is applicable to all the other elements as well (with Earth relatively poor in Change/Motion, and only some derivations of primal Earth able to make up for that with Life/Fertility itself).

There are processes which may consume runic atoms, or remove all the runic traits - annihilation by Chaos (gorp can turn just about anything into more gorp), and possibly Tapping.

 

11 hours ago, Darius West said:

The first being bodies are clearly animated from multiple elemental runes. 

Inner World bodies only. And animation in itself is an expression of various Power runes.

 

11 hours ago, Darius West said:

That is implicit in the RQG runes.  Yes there is Earth in people, but that only governs Constitution.  Living things are complicated.

Utterly wrong, misreading a metric made for game rule conventions for a selection of games that have a concept like Constitution 3D6 (shared by RQG and 13G). There is no CON in Gloranthan reality. CON is a metric for other effects used in those games, nothing more. Same with hit points (locational or otherwise), POW and MP.

 

11 hours ago, Darius West said:

So... Life and Death Runes, Spirit Runes, are all in a Man Rune being's make-up. 

An Inner World Man Rune being. Ancestral Uzuz or Shanassae/Luxites in their respective original realms may lack some or most of the other elements, taking them up only as contaminations as they migrate into the Inner World.

And orthodox mystics find ways to relieve themselves from the dictates of these runes.

 

11 hours ago, Darius West said:

Why not plant runes for stomach flora then? 

You seem to be confused by the use of "flora". If that term is used in relation to plants, it describes the community of autotrophic multicellular and rarely single cell eucaryotes with chloroplasts. Lichen and corals may contain such as symbionts and might be counted among the flora in a wider sense.

The use of "flora" for intestinal zoonoses indicates little more than the hope for an absence of multicellular and most of the monocellular fauna. That term has been separated from anything in the plant definition space. There are no organisms succeeding at photosynthesis inside intestines.

What you are doing is that you apply a semantic definition space to a concept that doesn't apply in this context.

Stomach flora has nothing to do with cellulose-coated eucariotic life (which is as much as multicellular funghi have in common with multicellular plants to make sense for Mee Vorala). There are a few eucariotic single cell organisms in that "flora" like amoebas (which don't really contribute to the well-being of the host), but most of the constituent single cell organisms are non-eucariotic bacteria or protaeans, with a bunch of viruses in the biofilm added. There might be some yeasts there, but those are way better described by Darkness and Fertility than by Darkness and Plant.

 

 

11 hours ago, Darius West said:

It seems increasingly likely that living things are a microcosm of the Runes in Glorantha.  The runes are all there to some degree, and can go out of balance or have their arrangement disrupted by death runes "crossing" them out (pardon the pun).

Living things are complex systems of runic derivations associated with Life, and separation of Life from these derivations (the application of Death) will create liveless runic derivations.

Higher forms of Life tend to require Harmony but allow for localized Disorder. They apply Change and Motion but within mostly unchanging containment (Stasis). They rely on internal information (Truth) but will rewrite that to other appearances (Illusion). And they may contain localized, limited Death. (Such as teeth or mandibles, for instance.)

 

11 hours ago, Darius West said:

Obviously this is references Harmony and Disorder, Truth and Illusion, etc.  Sentience seems to be tied primarily to the Fire Rune, hence its rules association with Intelligence.

Sapience is tied to the Man Rune, too, otherwise Uzuz would be vegetables. It might be tied to other runes, too, like e.g. Reasoning or Knowledge (Law and/or Truth).

(Sentience is the capacity to feel or perceive stuff, a capacity that has been proven for practically the entire animal kingdom, and for specimen of other origins, too. In humans, much of this happens in the guts, the Darkness organ.)

The Fire rune is associated with Sight, and most Man Rune entities require Sight to interface with the world around them and to experience it, which makes it so important for purposes like Sorcery spells that need visual targeting and an understanding of correspondences. Other senses like Darksense can replace that requirement.

 

Procreation:

11 hours ago, Darius West said:

They obviously bump Life Runes until they tap into the Infinity Rune and capture a Spirit Rune.

Pretty much a non-sequitur here. While orgasm might be perceived as transcendental, and while there are tantric practices using orgasm as a meditative practice, transcendence is far from required for procreation. The mere act of ejaculation needn't be an orgasm but may still result in new Life forming. Infinity is nice to have, but far from required.

The gift of spirit or the rounding of the souls to a fetus probably does not happen at conception, otherwise the assigned spirit has a chance to leave the world again unborn. There might be a tentative uplink, but I think most Gloranthans regard birth or perhaps labor as finalizing the union of the spirit and the souls into the new individual.

 

11 hours ago, Darius West said:

But these runes consistently produce outcomes that create physical systems which are very similar to Earth. 

The interaction of the atomic runes produces these outcomes. The concept of "physical systems" is something you impose on the Gloranthan Inner World. There are without doubt highly complex interactions of all manner of forces that can be described as derivative of runes. A lot less will be as reproducable as an experiment on complex systems in our world (where we all know that already something as simple as chemistry may become irreproducable due to minuscule alterations of peripheral parameters).

 

11 hours ago, Darius West said:

Even Gloranthan magic, which is mainly very "Buff" oriented magic could be explained to psychological effects like the placebo effect or confirmation bias, with the release of some colored light runes granting the individual the psychological permission they need to perform better.

Psychological effects like Sunspear, Thunderbolt, Teleportation, Shake Earth, or Flight? Like Summon Elemental? Like Lightwall, Darkwall, Heal 6 reattachment of limbs, like Fireblade or Firearrow? Interesting...

 

11 hours ago, Darius West said:

 Not really FDWC.  The fact is the World Machine has always been part of Glorantha,

Which the God Learners (or more specifically, the Zistorites) recognized as a greater spheres mechanism that would power divinity, rather than as a tool to explain ordinary life.

 

11 hours ago, Darius West said:

by which I mean the mechanical physical systems that we associate and describe with disciplines like Physics and Chemistry on Earth,

The discipline of physics and chemistry are mainly observations that reduce complex interactions into separable simpler actions that may be tested in experiments. They can either predict very small, extremely narrowly defined circumstances or need to gloss over specifics for mere macroscopical observations (thermodynamics) of complex systems. While I may understand that the triggering voltage of a transistor allows the current from emitter to collector, I neither can give details on how these bands are formed using quantum mechanics, nor can I take a bunch of transistors and build a computer.

Our macroscopic predictions are based on methods similar to machine learning. Weather prediction used to be as much of an art as it is to produce a legible and sensible text on Chat GPT without using the actual text you want as a prompt.

 

11 hours ago, Darius West said:

but unequivocally have their Gloranthan equivalencies such as Alchemy and the Lores.

Lores are the (impractical) output of philosophy, bodies of knowledge that may help to get insights or make predictions.

Alchemy and sorcery both are applications of knowledge to create a range of expected results. They require among others the experience of the practitioner to arrive at the desired results.

 

11 hours ago, Darius West said:

The fact is, unless someone is casting a spell, Glorantha behaves much like Earth.

Except where it doesn't. The sun doesn't show up due south at noon, but more or less overhead, like it does only in the equatorial regions of our planet. Nobody would build windows looking southward to capture the most of the sun, sunward windows tend to look east or west.

The closest to our planet for a phenomenon like the Eternal Battle would be the huge storm on Jupiter creating the characteristic spot we know from very good telescopes or fly-by missions. Something like the Skyfall or the stationary Red Moon doesn't exist on our planet. The best approximation we get to Magasta's Pool might be the Moskenes-Straumen in between tides, so many orders of magnitude smaller and weaker.

The (no longer surviving) distinctive features of the Holy Country like the Obsidian Palace or Belintar's Rainbow Bridges are yet way beyond our technological means, and neither were the result of a spell, but of powerful mythical actions in the past.

Glorantha may resemble Earth somewhat as a first impression. Closer examination will bring up significant differences.

 

The same goes for Gloranthan societies. While they may have some elements in common with ancient societies (of which we have just guess-work and very few written sources), they will be pointedly different from our player experience living in modern (mostly western) societies.

 

11 hours ago, Darius West said:

  Also, many spells behave much like Earth were it not for the colored lights and spell effects.  This is hardly surprising, given that we want a world that is like Earth but with fantasy elements.  It takes many types of subatomic particles to create 102 types of atoms to build an Earth and its universe.  We don't have that many runes to play with, but we know that the outcome is very similar.

Your fallacy is to assume that runes work all the way like the "particle physics" of quantum mechanics which the majority of the Glorantha fans or players of RuneQuest may have heard about but which a very small minority of that group will truly understand.

Personally, I have a fairly good working insight on certain aspects of quantum mechanics thanks to my university diploma in chemistry, but don't ask me to explain how the Higgs Boson which has a mass of several magnitudes of typical baryons (protons, neutrons) provides most of the mass to each of these. And I would never presume to use those methods to describe complex systems from the bottom up without using healthy doses of "black box" refusals of explanation.

The outcomes look similar, but they need not be. The movement of the Syphon river is as different from Godtime Rivers previous to the Skyfall myth as are those of all other rivers. The latent ability to climb or rather crawl uphill into the lands may still be present in those "normal" rivers, and might be called forth by river boatmen on their upriver travels. Especially riverine Waertagi on the Janube, Oronin and Poralistor River system.

 

Do lightning rods work in Glorantha? As far as I can tell, only if they have been mythically or sorcerously primed to attract Orlanth's (or Shargash's) missiles to guide them past the neighboring objects into the Earth. Is there any such a myth? The closest I can think of are the fossilized lightning bolts arranged around Arrowmound, giving it its name. Otherwise, the behavior of lightnings may be closer to Neil Gaiman's "Stardust".

Can we bag winds? Gloranthans can. Our best efforts give us ventilators or jets that might be powered by wind power, but which work just as well with turbine electricity from steam created using oxidation of coal or heavy oil, or heat from nuclear fission. In Gloranthan terms, that different source of electricity would matter a lot...

 

And to give at least a nod to this thread's subject, draconic energies somehow sidestep normal runic associations, creating a magical realm (the Proximate Holy Realm) in which the rules are changed away from Inner World expectations. A similar realm falls over the world some time during the Sacred Time season (though probably not the entire fortnight as other calendars have equally valid but shorter periods of transition between years before the spring equinox).

[Joerg]

1 hour ago, radmonger said:

is the unlife rune still canonical? if so, is it a condition or form? 

No idea about canonicity. As a secondary rune, it will probably listed as a condition (aka "we don't know where to put this").

Hunger is a secondary rune that is shared by a few cults usually grouped in the Chaos pantheon. It isn't really part of the Cosmos other than through its association with Chaos and describes a specific form of annihilation of Creation.

Undeath is an unholy combination of the antagonistic Power pair of Life/Fertility and Death/Separation. It should be impossible (but then the same can be said for the Red Goddess, though not for the Moon rune she embodies).