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Platinum Best-Seller: A Rough Guide to Glamour


Nick Brooke

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33 minutes ago, Akhôrahil said:

Should we be thinking that he meant "pasha" when he went for "sultan"?

In the mid-nineties, Greg told me "satrap" was the word he'd meant to use all along, and that he'd mis-spoken when he called them "sultans." (But as far as I'm concerned, that was twenty years too late: they were sultans in WB&RM/Dragon Pass, and in the Orange Box, and by then I knew Satrap was a Carmanian loan-word for people the Pentans called Sultans).

From an MGF perspective, you already know the sort of things you'd expect to find in a Sultan's Palace; it's more of a reach for you to populate a Satrapal Court out of the blue.

And  that's why I use both words, interchangeably, in my own work, and enjoy tweaking the noses of the self-proclaimed novelty-chasing Hindu Hittite fetishists who only ever listen to acoustic Assyrian war-chants while gaming.

Edited by Nick Brooke
Infelicities
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19 hours ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

I imagine we're going to have this discussion about thanes in about twenty five years.

We've already had it, somewhere, I seem to remember.

For me, sultan and satrap are just words for the same thing. Pentians used Sultan, so when they ruled peloria in the First and Third Ages Sultans were the in thing. Carmanians used Satrap, so their terminology was good for a bit. The Lunars use Satrap as they don't like the Pentians, not one bit.

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

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28 minutes ago, soltakss said:

For me, sultan and satrap are just words for the same thing. Pentians used Sultan, so when they ruled peloria in the First and Third Ages Sultans were the in thing. Carmanians used Satrap, so their terminology was good for a bit. The Lunars use Satrap as they don't like the Pentians, not one bit.

But the Red Goddess herself said "Sultan"... and some Lunars don't like the Carmanians, not one bit.

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2 hours ago, Nick Brooke said:

But the Red Goddess herself said "Sultan"... and some Lunars don't like the Carmanians, not one bit.

Personally, I like the term Sultan.

Anyway, the Red Goddess loves Pentians, I am sure that one of Her Forms was Pentian, or might be shown to be Pentian. 

Does anyone like the Carmanians?

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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

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They put down the Spolites and the Dara Happans, so yes, they can't be all bad, even though they had a big part in ending the EWF. Too bad those Rinliddi rebels interfered with their glorious reign on the Oslir.

Or do you mean those turncoats led by Aronius Jaranthir? Phie on them.

Telling how it is excessive verbis

 

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37 minutes ago, jajagappa said:

Back in my old Imther campaign, one of my players ran a pair of Carmanian sorcerers - so he definitely liked the Carmanians! 

Conjoined? Cool character concept, I’m stealing it.

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38 minutes ago, jajagappa said:

Back in my old Imther campaign...

BTW, Harald, where was your awesome Cheeses of Imther article published back in the nineties?

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12 minutes ago, Nick Brooke said:

Conjoined? Cool character concept, I’m stealing it.

Not conjoined! 😉  I can't recall which "schools" he had them come from though I believe they were from two different ones.

But sounds like a cool idea (seem to recall a conjoined pair in the Dorastor book).

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6 minutes ago, jajagappa said:

Not conjoined! 😉  I can't recall which "schools" he had them come from though I believe they were from two different ones.

But sounds like a cool idea (seem to recall a conjoined pair in the Dorastor book).

There’s also a conjoined Sultan in the Guide to Glorantha, hurrah!

But a pair of conjoined twin Carmanian sorcerers, one good, one evil, is next-level stuff, and you are to be applauded for putting them in my brain. (Starts scribbling)

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I believe I actually read @Nick Brooke's account of the Carmanians before I got my hands on any of the Stafford library books, and so I definitely have a pretty positive view of the Carmanians! Their pseudo-Zoroastrian dualistic cosmology that ties together Western monotheistic sorcery and caste society with the polytheism of Peloria - both conceptually and geographically - feels like a bit of a stroke of genius. 

Plus, Persians are cool, cataphracts are cool, and having some literal mages (Magi) in Glorantha feels right.

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24 minutes ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

I believe I actually read @Nick Brooke's account of the Carmanians before I got my hands on any of the Stafford library books, and so I definitely have a pretty positive view of the Carmanians! Their pseudo-Zoroastrian dualistic cosmology that ties together Western monotheistic sorcery and caste society with the polytheism of Peloria - both conceptually and geographically - feels like a bit of a stroke of genius. 

Plus, Persians are cool, cataphracts are cool, and having some literal mages (Magi) in Glorantha feels right.

Why, thank you ever so much for saying so.

The motherlode is here, if anyone didn’t already know:

http://etyries.albionsoft.com/etyries.com/carmania/index.html

Edited by Nick Brooke
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On 3/17/2020 at 5:05 AM, Nick Brooke said:

From an MGF perspective, you already know the sort of things you'd expect to find in a Sultan's Palace; it's more of a reach for you to populate a Satrapal Court out of the blue.

The problem for me is that "Sultan" mostly conjures up certain images regarding the architecture, people, weather, and surrounding landscape that may or may not fit my vision of Peloria... but since I'm only going by whatever the Guide and later publications say, I haven't seen that term used for anything else than that one Mad Sultan guy. Although checking back now, I see that I missed the mention in GtG p298 about the Lunars adopting the term after Sheng Seleris' reign -- which I think was your retcon explanation in the first place.

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Ludovic aka Lordabdul -- read and listen to  The God Learners , the Gloranthan podcast, newsletter, & blog !

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6 minutes ago, lordabdul said:

Although checking back now, I see that I missed the mention in GtG p298 about the Lunars adopting the term after Sheng Seleris' reign -- which I think was your retcon explanation in the first place.

My “retcon explanation” will be printed in the Rough Guide to Glamour. I commend it to you.

 

12 minutes ago, lordabdul said:

The problem for me is that "Sultan" mostly conjures up certain images regarding the architecture, people, weather, and surrounding landscape that may or may not fit my vision of Peloria...

A blast from the past: Arabian Lunars (by me, from the Gloranthan Digest, posted on Christmas Eve 1997).

Arabian elements in the Lunar Way include (in no particular order):

Sultans and Scimitars and Crescents and Minarets and Muezzins and Prayer-Mats (facing Moonwards) and Harems and Houris and Eunuchs...

And the Lunar Way itself, a radical new faith bursting onto the world stage from a disregarded frontier, sweeping aside the tired remnants of ancient empires, establishing itself as the newly dominant religion across a vast swathe of territories within the lifetimes of its prophetic founders; building itself a capital city in the form of a perfect circle, near but not co-located with the ancient capital of the river-valley civilisation  which it co-opted; incorporating (from both choice and necessity) the former ruling structures and noble elites in its innovative system of rule; both destroyed and revitalised by the invasion of horse nomads from the great steppelands, eventually to sink into bloated decadence under corrupt and grasping rulers who can no longer live up to the austere ideals of the earlier Jihad -- meaning that, despite the continuing successes of missionary work among the barbarians of steppeland and mountain, religion in the very heartland itself (including the imperial capital and the Holy City where the cult was founded) turns in on itself in a morass of schisms, heresies, weird cults and purist splinter movements...

And, of course, the "spirit" of the Arabian Nights lives on in the Lunar Empire, where adventurous (or timorous) youths can head out into the weird and wonderful corners of the world, discovering strange marvels from bygone empires, and backward tribes and kingdoms that have never heard the Word of the Red Goddess, and astonishing trading opportunies where an entrepreneur  of spirit and inventiveness can make a fortune, only to return afterwards to the Bazaars and Souks of his home city with a tale to astonish the masses...

Yeah, I never have trouble seeing the Arabian aspects of the Lunar Empire.

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9 hours ago, Nick Brooke said:

My “retcon explanation” will be printed in the Rough Guide to Glamour. I commend it to you.

My money is ready to go, my mouse cursor is hovering restlessly over the DTRPG bookmark, my tablet is charged up, the PDF reader is loaded up!

9 hours ago, Nick Brooke said:

A blast from the past: Arabian Lunars (by me, from the Gloranthan Digest, posted on Christmas Eve 1997).
[...]
Yeah, I never have trouble seeing the Arabian aspects of the Lunar Empire.

Hah nice!

Still, I would have to think twice naming Lunar officials "sultans" without changing the whole thing to be more Arabian. "Moon" goes well with "1001 Nights", after all. First: renaming the Red Emperor into the "Crimson Caliph"... which is so catchy it might actually be the one main reason to do it. And we need a Grand Vizier somewhere -- I'm not sure who it would be (Jar-Eel?). Then change the weather in the Heartlands to be unusually warm, and the landscape to be more sandy: maybe the Red Moon (being an opponent of the Storm deities herself) adds to the historically local Sun gods' presence and worship, making it even warmer (and the Kalikos effort more efficient and year-round) -- or maybe it was always a Middle Eastern landscape and climate from the beginning (it fits well with the historical local Sun gods' presence). The Glowline might be as much about changing/extending the climate as it is about enhancing Lunar magic. Maybe it even mutates the vegetation over a few generations! And then it's a matter of adjusting all the architecture, changing the Roman-inspired names and armours/weapons into Middle Eastern ones, calling the Lunar currency "dinars", etc.

Edited by lordabdul

Ludovic aka Lordabdul -- read and listen to  The God Learners , the Gloranthan podcast, newsletter, & blog !

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3 hours ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

I'll be honest, there's some iffy underlying cultural prejudices there that I'd prefer to avoid. Especially since they're in conflict with the Orlanthi, a group that has frequently been portrayed as quasi-Germanic. 

My own Lunars are Hellenistic Greco-Romano-Persian-Arabian-Byzantine-Ottoman-French Revolutionary-Victorian-Soviet-Ingsoc types from Dune. (I may have missed a spot)

Fie on your pitiful "quasi-Germanic" as a reason to weaken that heady blend.

I agree it would be absurd to have solely Islamic Lunars. So don't ever do that.

Edited by Nick Brooke
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3 hours ago, Nick Brooke said:

Fie on your pitiful "quasi-Germanic" as a reason to weaken that heady blend.

 

Not entirely sure what you took offense to, but my comment was directed at loardabdul's points above. Turning the Lunar Empire into a Caliphate, especially one ruled by obese, corrupt Sultans with opulent courts and harems, that cavort with demons.. well, it's tapping into some long-standing negative stereotypes of real life Arabs that litter European and Western literature and cinema. 

As you say, if that influence is instead a part of a wider mix of cultural influences, and the Lunar Empire is presented in a more nuanced way, then those issues are remedied, though I am obviously not the authority on at what point they cease to be a problem or not. 

The point here isn't to waggle fingers at people and accuse them of being Morally Repugnant Bad People (tm) and to present myself as The Sole Grand Arbitrator of All That Is Woke (c), it's just to keep in mind that when we import tropes from the RW or literature, there can be some iffy baggage in there. I trust that is okay.

Edited by Sir_Godspeed
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19 minutes ago, Shiningbrow said:

Why not just come up with your own terms, instead of relying on earth history?

I actually did that in my old Imther material, but the downside is that you end up with a lot of explaining and reminding because it's just not common or familiar.

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