Are broos people???

[Nick Brooke]

Again with the simplistic takes, the refusal to engage with complex material.

Knock yourself out, @icebrand, I'm done here.

[Eff]

1 minute ago, icebrand said:

Thed is most definitely NOT a rape survivor Thed is the assailant here, she conspired to bring forth chaos and end the world.

She demanded Orlanth recognize her as the goddess of rape.

She voluntarily teared the fabric of reality hoping to end all things.

Im sorry but shes one of the top most horrifying things in the whole setting, and her Broo followed her willingly

 

I mean, yeah, she is a survivor. That's just text. Ragnaglar violently assaulted her. Sorry, I don't like it either, but it's there.

[icebrand]

3 minutes ago, Nick Brooke said:

Again with the simplistic takes, the refusal to engage with complex material.

Knock yourself out, @icebrand, I'm done here.

So, disagreeing with you means my take is simplistic (unlike unsubstantiated claims that i fantasize with war crimes) sorry but I'm glad we are done here 👎

[icebrand]

5 minutes ago, Eff said:

I mean, yeah, she is a survivor. That's just text. Ragnaglar violently assaulted her. Sorry, I don't like it either, but it's there.

"The term survivor often refers to an individual who is going or has gone through the recovery process; additionally, this word is used when discussing the short- and long-term effects of sexual violence. Some people identify as a victim, while others identify as a survivor"

Becoming the goddess of rape and trying to destroy reality doesn't strike me as "recovery".

She's a rape victim, but considering her moral caliber and actions she's most definitely not a rape survivor... Like c'mon man, this is one of the most evil gods there is, she's worse than 90% of the chaos pantheon, she's not some tragic dude thats stuck in a cycle of abuse, she's a POS that willingly entered and continues the cycle, which gives her power.

[icebrand]

3 hours ago, Eff said:

Well, alternately, they could be just plain evil and poison things because it's in their nature, but frankly that's an unpleasant road to walk down for Glorantha and unless it becomes a statement in formal textual canon I'll stick with treating broo as having dissectable motivations and behaviors. 

It is a formal textual canon statement, check out RuneQuest: Glorantha Bestiary pg90.

[Alex]

37 minutes ago, icebrand said:

"The term survivor often refers to [...]

Variant bolding added.  I'm not sure it's useful to regard it as a term that has to be deemed by others to have been "earned", or that can on a similar basis can later be "lost".  Indeed, the very next sentence from the source you excerpted in mid-paragraph is "The best way to be respectful is to ask for their preference."  Quite a stretch to get there from "most definitely NOT" it seems to me.

37 minutes ago, icebrand said:

She's a rape victim, but considering her moral caliber and actions she's most definitely not a rape survivor... Like c'mon man, this is one of the most evil gods there is, she's worse than 90% of the chaos pantheon, she's not some tragic dude thats stuck in a cycle of abuse, she's a POS that willingly entered and continues the cycle, which gives her power.

You agree there's a cycle of abuse.   Canonically, it didn't start with her.  How is that functionally different?  Likewise, insisting that she's an irredeemably bad "victim" -- unto the infinityth generation -- not a "survivor" seems to me to be a fairly vague exercise in definism and dysphemism.

[Alex]

1 hour ago, icebrand said:

I just figured out they are not people (in the legal sense) because i don't see any culture punishing an individual that does wrong by a Broo. Like, you would get congratulations for stuff that would get you exiled/imprisoned/executed if you do that on humans; like, if you tell your thane you hunted down a Broo, and killed it with extreme violence while making it suffer as much as possible, i don't think you are getting reprimanded, more like the thane buys you dinner...

This is a little more precise than your OP, and I think helpfully so.  Can a Sartarite kill a Broo without legal consequence?  Sure, unless by some mischance they're members of a clan they have some formal relationship with.  Or it's during the Occupation, and the Broo is a Lunar citizen.  (Crucifixions all round.)  But the threshold there is "Outlaw" rather than "not a person".  Torture?  I imagine so, it's not a capital crime, and in the circumstances described clearly not being secret murder either.  If you're an Uroxi or a Uran, probably this is indeed seen as commendable.  Or at least, no one dares say otherwise to their face.  Apply a tick to "Hate Chaos", gloss over or glory in the details according to your table's established preferences and tolerances.

Did you have any other particular "war crimes" in mind?  Or Gloranthan legal standards to judge them by?

2 hours ago, icebrand said:

then you'll have your GM (me)

Assumes facts not in evidence.  I think this discussion might be a little less heated if various parties (not just you, to be fair!) weren't preemptively pulling rank with the "it's my game and you're disinvited" trope, as several have pretty much done.  And bear in mind you started the thread, and explicitly as a question.  Don't be too surprised at getting answers.

2 hours ago, icebrand said:

Rape, disease, cannibalism are HARD NO and you will end up turning into monster

Two of those are Orlanthi capital crimes, one is not.  (Granted cannibalism has appeared in various "will fester chaos" checklists, but likely also forms part of human sacrifice, as occasionally practiced.  Then there's cases like herdman meat.  Ogre-grade cannibalism is presumably seen as an especially odious form of secret murder.)  Overall, I'm not quite clear where you're drawing the "war crime but fair game" and "HARD NO" boundary.

[Eff]

50 minutes ago, icebrand said:

It is a formal textual canon statement, check out RuneQuest: Glorantha Bestiary pg90.

Well, no, that section is from an in-universe perspective. It's not an objective statement from out of Glorantha that broos are definitely biologically compelled to make the world a worse place. And indeed, it's possible for broo to do things like altruistically heal people, so even if this biological compulsion exists, it textually cannot be overwhelmingly strong. Which is to say, in order to assert that broo are a direct threat to the cosmos beyond being an unstable ecological presence (itself rather questionable textually- how do they maintain themselves in a stable population, as is also asserted in the text, if that is the case?) you would need to explain away things like the Wild Healer.

[icebrand]

16 minutes ago, Alex said:

Did you have any other particular "war crimes" in mind?  Or Gloranthan legal standards to judge them by?

By war crime i mean:

- Intentionally killing civilians (unarmed broo in this case)

- killing prisoners or giving no quarter

- torture

- taking hostages

- destroying civilian infrastructure

- perfidy, rape, pillaging

- using child soldiers

- using magic of mass destruction / chemical warfare (dropping poison or acid in a dungeon room for example)

[Akhôrahil]

 

2 hours ago, icebrand said:

Also, don't Broo have the chaos rune as part of their being? It's one thing to cleanse someone who got tainted, another to cleanse someone who IS chaos, am i too far off ?

Presumably, a cleansed Broo is still a Broo, but can now resist the urges (and hopefully will). Becoming a non-Broo - like back to what original goat-people they were - seems like it would be far harder still.

[icebrand]

7 minutes ago, Eff said:

Well, no, that section is from an in-universe perspective. It's not an objective statement from out of Glorantha that broos are definitely biologically compelled to make the world a worse place. And indeed, it's possible for broo to do things like altruistically heal people, so even if this biological compulsion exists, it textually cannot be overwhelmingly strong. Which is to say, in order to assert that broo are a direct threat to the cosmos beyond being an unstable ecological presence (itself rather questionable textually- how do they maintain themselves in a stable population, as is also asserted in the text, if that is the case?) you would need to explain away things like the Wild Healer.

Is there a quote on the bestiary saying creatures descriptions are from an in universe perspective? If so, whose perspective is it?

I can't discuss the Broo healer because i only read a few name drops about it, I always assumed it was illuminated, and i like evidence to the contrary if not so.

And they maintain themselves by reproducing like crazy, and dont end the world is a broogasm because people from all cultures try to genocide them at every chance, as it says on the bestiary and earlier sources.

[icebrand]

4 minutes ago, Akhôrahil said:

 

Presumably, a cleansed Broo is still a Broo, but can now resist the urges (and hopefully will). Becoming a non-Broo - like back to what original goat-people they were - seems like it would be far harder still.

I strongly disagree. A Broo is a beast man with the chaos and beast runes. If you take out either it would no longer be a Broo.

Also, would you mind giving me a source for cleansing? How does it happen? Who does it? What's the cost? 

[Alex]

2 hours ago, icebrand said:

How does cleansing work? I vaguely remember reading about cleansing but you died in the process (may not be that way, read it a long ago).

Not sure if it's ever been spelled out in detail, but the RoC's Cleansed One's description says his is "not as deadly" as other Praxian methods.  So maybe that one is 99.99% fatal, and the others are 100% fatal -- could be read a number of ways.

2 hours ago, icebrand said:

Also, don't Broo have the chaos rune as part of their being? It's one thing to cleanse someone who got tainted, another to cleanse someone who IS chaos, am i too far off ?

Possibly.  OTOH it might be a little bleak to say that someone can deliberately commit some chaotic act, and then later be cleansed of it, but that the "original sin" of being born a Broo is utterly indelible.  As well as possibly "uncanonical" -- though of course YGWV, MGWV, in strange aeons even Canon itself WV.

Plus of course as well as the magical task of removing the taint/affinity, there's the social one of getting people to let you continue to live afterwards...

[icebrand]

50 minutes ago, Alex said:

You agree there's a cycle of abuse.   Canonically, it didn't start with her.  How is that functionally different?  Likewise, insisting that she's an irredeemably bad "victim" -- unto the infinityth generation -- not a "survivor" seems to me to be a fairly vague exercise in definism and dysphemism.

How is this functionally different... I'm sorry my english ain't good enough, let's try this; we have two women:

Amy is a normal person that gets raped. It sucks and this should never have happened, since it was bad and unfair.

Thed is a powerful goddess. She willingly cooperated with two other powerful gods to destroy reality. This destruction isn't a Thanos snap, but a horrible conflict where chaos devours everything. Yeah, she got raped either before or after... or in the middle of it. Who cares? If anything, she got off easy and is still a blight upon the world, unlike ragnalar and the devil.

 

 

[Alex]

2 hours ago, icebrand said:

By war crime i mean:

- Intentionally killing civilians (unarmed broo in this case)

- killing prisoners or giving no quarter

- torture

- taking hostages

- destroying civilian infrastructure

- perfidy, rape, pillaging

- using child soldiers

- using magic of mass destruction / chemical warfare (dropping poison or acid in a dungeon room for example)

I'm reasonably capable of googling what "war crime" means;  my question was about what you were proposing to be "fair game" for these purposes.  The "rape" example would be especially unfortunate in this context, for example.  After all, it's also on your "HARD NO" list, as well as the Orlanthi capital crimes, and things that'll spontaneously Taint the perp.

Actually, I'm back to being slightly in two minds about the "torture" example, too.  I'm not sure if Greg ever included it on any of his schedules of "%age chance of involuntary initiation to Chaos", but if one were so inclined, Ikadz definitely fits the bill...

Edited November 25, 2021 by Alex

[Akhôrahil]

13 minutes ago, icebrand said:

Also, would you mind giving me a source for cleansing? How does it happen? Who does it? What's the cost? 

Quick version with reference here: https://glorantha.fandom.com/wiki/Cleansed_One

The Simon Phipp interpretation here (so don't be surprised about his signature acid): http://www.soltakss.com/hquest03.html

[Alex]

2 hours ago, Beoferret said:

Quick question that has some bearing on this discussion. If broo are cleansed of Chaos taint, do they still reproduce the same way?

Good question.  If a somewhat horrifying one, but that's Situation Normal for this thread.  Rather comes with the territory.  I can think of a few possibilities:-

• Complete Chastity and Celibacy.
• Able to reproduce via (different) magic, in the manner of the Orlanthi and Ernaldan pantheon rune magics we've already seen.
• Turned all the way back to "regular" Beast People, vaguely like a Satyr (only not, as they both hotly insist).
• There are evidently different paths to Cleansing, so presumably they have different precise outcomes, and very possibly also different "depths" you can follow each quest to.

[Akhôrahil]

4 minutes ago, Alex said:

• There are evidently different paths to Cleansing, so presumably they have different precise outcomes, and very possibly also different "depths" you can follow each quest to.

I think this is good. You can become a different Gloranthan race through magic - just look at Arkat - but it's presumably more difficult that way.

[French Desperate WindChild]

23 minutes ago, icebrand said:

By war crime i mean:

- Intentionally killing civilians (unarmed broo in this case)

- killing prisoners or giving no quarter

- torture

- taking hostages

- destroying civilian infrastructure

- perfidy, rape, pillaging

- using child soldiers

- using magic of mass destruction / chemical warfare (dropping poison or acid in a dungeon room for example)

this definition is a irl modern definition. a crime is something against the law, and judged by a court. a war crime must be judged by an international court

i m not sure there was such notion in ancient age (well i m pretty sure there was not)

there were practice one people would consider ignominous and the same practice would be accepted by another one

and for glorantha, I m pretty sure that are not "war crime"

- Intentionally killing civilians ==> purple bat, pavis plunder by praxians, pentian in dara happa

- killing prisonners or giving no quarters ==> slaves revolt in redlands, pavis plunder by praxians

- destroying civilian infrastructure ==> pentian in dara happa

- pillaging ==> standard way of war in all culture in dragon pass

- using child soldiers ==> what is a child ? at least you may use them for supporting warriors

- using magic of mass destruction ==> just the hero war

 

I think that the best way in glorantha is to follow Jeff's post about honour, shared by the different war gods (note that is not my favorite concept to have one honour definition for all the gloranthan people, I would prefer some opposition, but the canon is the canon, if I use something else, I will not share it as "the law")

 

[French Desperate WindChild]

9 minutes ago, Alex said:

Complete Chastity and Celibacy.

i think it is the only way, with in addition gaining the ... " eunuch status "

except if you succeed to :

3 minutes ago, Akhôrahil said:

You can become a different Gloranthan race through magic - just look at Arkat - but it's presumably more difficult that way.

just find a nice troll clan and accept to be eaten by them. seems to me very easy 😛

[Akhôrahil]

7 minutes ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

just find a nice troll clan and accept to be eaten by them. seems to me very easy 😛

You misspelled "scorpionmen".

It really works! 🙂

[Joerg]

2 hours ago, icebrand said:

So, assuming a regular pavis campaign, only the bad guys think broos are "persons" (does every lunar believe that? I doubt it strongly) and literally everyone else in the region thinks they aren't. 

Personhood and an urgent need to get rid of the menace aren't mutually exclusive, really.

Many a classic adventure offers a bounty on perpetrators, often to be proven by bringing in a grisly trophy (like an ear or a head).

Also, ritual foes can be killed with indemnity. Biturian Varosh witnesses Narmeed Whirlvishbane deliver some broo heads from the Devil's Marsh to his own wedding and raising, and in the Six Strikes of Anger rite in Sun County he assists the killing of a Yelmalio priest.

I stick to my previous stance that broos have the potential for personhood, but it takes nurture for the personhood to develop, and the person that develops is not very likely to be a pleasant person. But then, broos giving nurture aren't likely to imbue pleasantness.

 

On the issue of honorable battle - a majority of Humakti can be assumed to obey that code of honor to their best ability. But there is room for Humakti who only maintain the appearance of honorability, and there is room for Humakti publicly behaving in ways suggesting that they don't value the concepts of honor that much.

Sometimes a Humakti is pushed into anti-social and dishonorable behaviour by the weight of his geases - never trust or aid people from a certain cult or similar.

Non-Humakti hope to fulfill the lofty goals of the Humakti code of honor in battle and war, but many Orlaanth-initiates for instance may prefer to survive/succeed now and atone later, like their own deity did when Orlanth had Humakt's new weapon stolen for himself to use on the Emperor. Orlanth tries to be good, and goes a long way to set things as right again as he can, but he does wrong fairly often. It wouldn't be wrong to call him the Unholy Trio's inspiration or trigger to give birth to the Devil when he fails to ubhold his own justice, and him going to exile for that did not do anything to change the events that created the race of the broos.

And that's the deity. The worshippers are mortal humans (or humanoids), and have an even greater potential for failure.

Biturian has no qualms at all to team up against that particularly nasty Light Priest in the Six Blows of Anger ritual, and even less after only narrowly escaping death in an unfairly matched battle. He may be the equivalent of a noble in standing, but he is no warrior - when he fights, he fights for survival, his own and that of his protegees.

 

There are definite advantages to honorable battles - the survival rate is likely to be a lot higher than for an all-out battle. Sure, you may forfeit a large amount of wealth if you surrender, but even in such defeat there may be honorable reputation for you.

[simonh]

4 hours ago, Eff said:

Oaths with magical force exist all over Glorantha

...it's about whether it makes sense for it to be the case that massacring intelligent creatures on the basis that they have a tainted/polluted origin is something that not just Storm Bulls but every Gloranthan is cool with and potentially willing to participate in, minus pacifists who can't participate directly.

They exist but I doubt they are common. I've no problem believing they are available to a major magical community to hold a king to account. Typical frontier communities facing Broo is another matter.

It also absolutely does not make sense for every Gloranthan to be cool with that, in fact we know there are many Lunar Gloranthans definitely not cool with it.

4 hours ago, Eff said:

I mean, from the setting itself, they are not any kind of existential threat.

To who? If it's your family living in a frontier homestead, they are absolutely an existential risk. So it goes for almost anyone actually likely to encounter Broo. If you're having to deal with them at all, by definition you're not somewhere safe and are likely at personal existential risk.

4 hours ago, Eff said:

But to put this another way, I don't see anything in the sources which indicates broo have any less free will than humans do in Glorantha. We have the Wild Healer of the Rockwoods, of course. We have Ralzakark's Sword Broo. Neither seem to be Illuminated.

I think you said the Bestiary is an in-world source. I don't think that's correct and it makes it very clear they have overwhelming impulses and essentially no choice in their behaviour. This is the primary authoritative source we have and its crystal clear.

We don't actually know much about the wild healer of the rockwoods. As an illuminate it may well worship both Malia and Chalana Arroy for example. The Sword Broo just show that their behaviour can be confined within some limits for a time, probably under extreme coercion.

4 hours ago, Eff said:

Broo can also choose to embrace Mallia for relief from Thed.

According to the Bestiary all broo are automatically lay members of Malia (and Primal Chaos). I'm trying not to turn this into long lists of quotes from sources directly contradicting your statements about broo, so I'm trying to hit the high points, but I'm having to let a lot slide.

4 hours ago, Eff said:

And humans also get divinely punished if they leave the "pantheon" in the sources, so in that sense humans would also lack free will in Glorantha because of that constraint.

Humans can choose whether to join a pantheon or not, but that apparently is not the case with broo.

Now, we all know in Glorantha there are exceptions to the rules. Sure, maybe the healer of the rockwoods is such, but also maybe not as much as many seem to think. We don't really know (unless I'm missing sources, quite possible). Illumination is a slippery issue. It absolves no sins, restrains no actions, enables all sorts of contradictions.

The way I see it, broo are a pernicious ethical issue precisely because they are coerced by their nature. That doesn't really excuse exterminating them in the slightest. If they are coerced, as intelligent beings how can we condemn them for simply following that nature? The problem is in Glorantha, when actually facing broo, that attitude isn't a very practical one.

Edited November 25, 2021 by simonh

[simonh]

3 hours ago, icebrand said:

"The term survivor often refers to an individual who is going or has gone through the recovery process; additionally, this word is used when discussing the short- and long-term effects of sexual violence. Some people identify as a victim, while others identify as a survivor"

Becoming the goddess of rape and trying to destroy reality doesn't strike me as "recovery".

She's a rape victim, but considering her moral caliber and actions she's most definitely not a rape survivor... Like c'mon man, this is one of the most evil gods there is, she's worse than 90% of the chaos pantheon, she's not some tragic dude thats stuck in a cycle of abuse, she's a POS that willingly entered and continues the cycle, which gives her power.

 

So you think she's particularly morally responsible precisely because she never managed to recover from being abused?

You might want to think about that a bit.

Edited November 25, 2021 by simonh

[AndreJarosch]

13 minutes ago, simonh said:

So you think she's particularly morally responsible precisely because she never managed to recover from being abused?

Maybe the only way to "heal" the broo race whould be to help Thed to recover from being abused. When Orlanth/Yelm/??? apologises for what was done to her, she many find peace with her situation, and give amends to her children the broos by "healing" them to become just another species of beastmen. 
Unfortunately the gods are bound within time and can´t change anymore. 
So Thed can´t heal from her psychic wounds, and the broos stay chaos monsters. 

To change this, heal Thed and the broo race, would be an epic campaign for a group of PCs!


By the way: In my Glorantha broo are like the scorpion in "The scorpion and the frog" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scorpion_and_the_Frog). They are born chaos creatures, and can´t change their nature (Exceptions confirm the rules: White Healer of the Rock Woods.)

Edited November 25, 2021 by AndreJarosch