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Can Orlanthi Ducks Fly?


Thaz

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8 hours ago, Runeblogger said:

I'd rule that the curse is they don't have wings to fly, so the Rune spell Flight allows them to fly as any other Orlanthi.

That's how I play it.

4 hours ago, Joerg said:

And then there's toss the duck...

And Duck Golf! Whack! Quack! Fore!

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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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14 hours ago, Runeblogger said:

I'd rule that the curse is they don't have wings to fly, so the Rune spell Flight allows them to fly as any other Orlanthi.

That's not the only cult that gives them that ability, there's also the Cannon cult.

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Just a reminder that the mythology of ducks has always been intentionally ambiguous. This will have consequences when trying to discuss this. People can obviously favour whichever stories they wish, but there is a difference between doing that and presenting that as a single, objective Truth to all.

It's worth rereading the passage in Borderlands, subsequently reprinted with minor alterations in River of Cradles:

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"Their origins are obscure, though some tales [emphasis mine] tell of them as an avian folk who forswore their allegiance to Yelm to follow Orlanth, and were denied the sky as punishment. It is true that the majority of ducks worship Orlanth or his kin or associated gods, such as Humakt, Heler, and Ernalda."

Borderlands (1982), Referee’s Handbook, p. 25.

Compare that with the original description from the first editions of RuneQuest and reprinted (with minor alteration) in the third edition:

Quote

"This is a race cursed by the gods during the Great Darkness for not joining them versus the forces of Chaos. It is unknown whether they were originally human and became feathered and web-footed, or originally ducks cursed with flightlessness and intelligence.

RuneQuest (2nd Edition; 1979), p. 79.

The current description in the RuneQuest Glorantha Bestiary combines these, taking the above two elements and adding material from Elder Secrets of Glorantha (1988; Elder Races Book 2, pp. 81–82) for good measure:

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Mythos and History: The origin of the ducks of Genertela is a mystery to outsiders. They claim to have once been the rulers of the world until their own sins and errors forced them into subservience to lesser races (elves, trolls, etc.) and, later, to humans. Others tell of them as an avian folk who forswore their allegiance to Yelm to follow Orlanth and were denied the sky as punishment. Most ducks worship Orlanth or his kin or associated gods, such as Humakt, Heler, and Ernalda.

It is unknown whether they were originally human and became feathered and web-footed, or originally ducks cursed with flightlessness and intelligence.

RuneQuest Glorantha Bestiary (2018), p. 31.

---------------

So, if people like the 'Borderlands paradigm' with regard to the Yelmic apostasy and curse, that's cool. But it's not the only story – and the consequences of other stories can be rather different. (Incidentally, the same ambiguity is also the case with keets, though their flightlessness monomyth in popular telling is probably even stronger.)

Edited by Stew Stansfield
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51 minutes ago, Stew Stansfield said:

during the Great Darkness for not joining them versus the forces of Chaos

Mighty Quackatoa, do you have record of duck people in Central Genertela before the Bright Empire and its demise?

There are curses and then there are curses.

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13 minutes ago, scott-martin said:

Mighty Quackatoa, do you have record of duck people in Central Genertela before the Bright Empire and its demise?

There are curses and then there are curses.

Not that I can recall, no?

I'm afraid I'm not quite sure what you mean by this, Scott? (Though that might be the lurgy.)

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37 minutes ago, Stew Stansfield said:

Not that I can recall, no?

I'm afraid I'm not quite sure what you mean by this, Scott? (Though that might be the lurgy.)

Whenever I see curses and chaos together lately I think of the Bright Empire . . . curse of kin, the Telmori curse, the mysterious "failed" dragonewt curse, Dorastor seeded with curses. Nations and tribes reshaped forever in the Dawn Age wars. So I think, when people talk about the ducks being cursed, when and how does that happen?

I would not be surprised if there was a noble bird nation once, not sufficiently hostile to Nysalor and brought low. They could fly. The curse took that away and the records of their glory were lost. Maybe they were allied with the heron worshippers of the swamp belt, maybe they were a "ratite" culture. Maybe the harpies fell more or less simultaneously. And if we learn how it happened, we're a step closer to repairing it.

But if anyone can disprove this hypothesis, it's you. Of course it could be just be the lurgy season. I hear a lot of gardens have gone to pollen this year.

Edited by scott-martin
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What's wong with the washed-here keets theory?

It fits the former "mighty Empire" of the Early Golden Age.

The curse may be the result of the voluntary sacrifice of the keets, affecting without adding any benefit to the Genertelan population."I didn't volunteer for nothing!"

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Telling how it is excessive verbis

 

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10 hours ago, Joerg said:

What's wong with the washed-here keets theory?

Yeah, now I can't help wondering if the lost remnants of the Vrimak Dynasty claimed they were from some prehistoric Ganderland and were punished for their ostentatious refusal to participate in the Dawn Wars. In that scenario others fled to the islands.

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3 hours ago, scott-martin said:

Yeah, now I can't help wondering if the lost remnants of the Vrimak Dynasty claimed they were from some prehistoric Ganderland and were punished for their ostentatious refusal to participate in the Dawn Wars. In that scenario others fled to the islands.

No no no )  - Keetela aka Ganderland is for webbed foot birds only. Herons might qualify (though not necessarily those of the Enslib goddesses, or the egrets of Esel River), but the parrot folk of Forng already don't, and neither Ratites nor Eagles will do.

I do have the impression that the early Golden Age had more (humanoid) bird people than humans, but somehow humans became dominant after a while.

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Telling how it is excessive verbis

 

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On 6/8/2020 at 3:05 AM, Stew Stansfield said:

or originally ducks cursed with flightlessness and intelligence.

What good would an unintelligent duck be at fighting Chaos? And, if it was unintelligent, how could it even make such a rational decision?

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Somewhere there is a myth about how Yelm visited the earth, looked up to see a flock of ducks flying overhead and was blinded by their filth, so cursed them.

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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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6 hours ago, Shiningbrow said:

What good would an unintelligent duck be at fighting Chaos? And, if it was unintelligent, how could it even make such a rational decision?

Better than one that didn't? (The idea of the smallest, basest creatures helping fight a great ill is a fairly common one in stories, and their agency is usually more a function of instinct and perceived morality than their capacity as rational actors.)

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On 6/8/2020 at 11:59 PM, Shiningbrow said:

What good would an unintelligent duck be at fighting Chaos?

In particularly bad stretches of the Greater Darkness the people of Nochet were saved by armies of unintelligent geese, the sacred animal of the elder Earth goddess Imarja

though anyone who's dealt with geese must concur that a whole army of them would be frightful, intelligent or no

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