Are there gases in Glorantha ?

[PhilHibbs]

16 hours ago, Squaredeal Sten said:

Will a piston type pump work. for either air or water?  Or are all ships' pumps chain and bucket pumps, or are there simply none?

This one I wasn't as sure of, but then I remembered the aeolipile from Gods of Glorantha.

Setting that aside, anything that the ancient Greeks didn't know about is open for debate and might not be true in Glorantha.

But the Mostali have advanced pump and pressure technologies, so it is true. Or, it is true for them. Potentially one of many truths. If they heroquested to discover these things, then someone else might be able to heroquest to discover something else. That would not stop Mostali devices from working, but would enable something that might not be consistent with our understanding of fluid dynamics. Syphon and other reverse rivers could be examples of this.

[PhilHibbs]

12 minutes ago, PhilHibbs said:

A powerful enough Dispel Magic should be able to stop "gravity" from working, but it would have to be super huge and super carefully targeted because the magic is so ancient and powerful and subtle. Much easier to use a Fly or Telekinesis or Water Spout spell to locally supersede it. Bring in another behaviour, rather than cancelling a background one.

Or maybe not. Maybe not all magic can be dispelled, maybe not all magic is a spell. But I think this has gone far enough off topic to warrant a separate thread.

[Shiningbrow]

If there are different types of liquids and solids, then it would make sense that there are different types of gases. (granted, this is a logical fallacy, however logic doesn't seem to dictate anything here).

For solids, we have rocks and stones and basic soil, and wood, and glass, and metals, and animals, and plants, etc etc.

For liquids we have pure water, as well as blood, and I'm sure lots of other things my brain doesn't want to offer up to me right now. I'm avoiding things like beer and wine, as they're mostly water with other bits in it.

However... it's already been established as canon that the Gloranthan world's physics and chemistry is not the same as Earth's, with something as obvious as Godsbone (aka Bronze) being a natural substance, and quicksilver can be both a liquid and a solid at STP.

It sort of begs the question - if an earthling went to Glorantha with a steel knife, would it do double damage to uz and aldryami? would our silver be effective against lycanthopes?

[PhilHibbs]

37 minutes ago, Shiningbrow said:

It sort of begs the question - if an earthling went to Glorantha with a steel knife, would it do double damage to uz and aldryami? would our silver be effective against lycanthopes?

Are the two worlds even compatible? Our bodies are not made of runes. Gloranthan bodies are not made of molecules. Glorantha in its purest form is its own thing, standing alone and separate from other fantasy or real realms. So moving between realms is either impossible, or if it were possible you'd die or disintegrate on the way.

BORING! That answer sucks.

So the question then becomes, what happens when an entity crosses over from one to the other? Some automatic metamagical process would have to intervene in order to translate one to the other. Our body would be recreated in runic form, and anything that we carried with us would be converted into something that can exist in Glorantha. So yes, I think a steel knife would become Gloranthan enchanted iron, and silver would hurt magical creatures. But you could say that it's not the same knife or the same silver, it's been changed. Ask Dr. McCoy if you are still the same person, or if you've been disintegrated and replaced with a copy.

[Joerg]

16 hours ago, Squaredeal Sten said:

So are pneumatic and hydraulic mechanical effects visible in Glorantha? As examples,

Can you blow up a bladder as a balloon, as used to be done in the RW?

Sure you can. Bladder on a stick should be a classical (Eurmali) instrument.

The magical version is the Sack of Winds (employed on the Aroka Quest).

What you do is that you trap your breath in that balloon. The force it extends comes from the Air Rune as much as from the tightness of the bladder.

For an experiment, if you cast Steal Breath on the content of that bladder, how much would it deflate, though?

 

16 hours ago, Squaredeal Sten said:

Does a hand held fan work to cool your face?

Yes. A gentle nudge to your breath and any intruding wind or other air/gas.

 

16 hours ago, Squaredeal Sten said:

Can you suck up water or beer in a straw?

Yes. Possibly spiralling up, though, with a chance to tie this to Orlanth retrieving Mastakos, possibly on his visit to the baths of Nelat and Daliath's Pool of Wisdom. Or possibly related to Brastalos?

Twisters exist in Glorantha, too, including those pulling up water from lakes or the seas.

 

16 hours ago, Squaredeal Sten said:

Can you squirt water from a bladder, bag, or a piston-and- tube arrangement?

People and beasts do pee in Glorantha. Piston-and-tube pumps or hydraulics might be known to the Mostali, but not necessarily. A similar technology is used by the Cannon Cult, though. And black powder weapons use that chemical pressure force, too.

 

16 hours ago, Squaredeal Sten said:

Does a blacksmith's bellows work to propel a jet of air, which causes a fire to blaze up?

Fanning a fire would be a thing, but the mythology behind that might take some development.

 

16 hours ago, Squaredeal Sten said:

If I fan a fire with my hat, will it blaze up?  If not, do Gloranthans have a harder time lighting fires than we did in the RW?

Fire going up when Air arrives: that's Umath's birth. The flames getting hotter? See above.

 

16 hours ago, Squaredeal Sten said:

If you invert a cup and lower it into a basin of water, then turn it upright. Will you observe an air bubble?

Yes. A famous bubble effect is the gift of Diendimos to the Troll Strait Ludoch.

 

 

16 hours ago, Squaredeal Sten said:

Will a piston type pump work. for either air or water?  Or are all ships' pumps chain and bucket pumps, or are there simply none?

Other than Mostali floating castles, no ships would have piston pumps. Advanced Kralori barges might have textile balls on a rope pulled through a tube-contraptions to deal with the bilge water.

Waertagi dragon ships might have some form of kidney sewer system to get rid of the bilge and sewage.

 

15 hours ago, David Scott said:

As Glorantha is made of Runes instead of atoms, I would imagine that air is made up of air runes. Impurities are caused by other Runes getting into mix. Humidity is water runes, haze Earth runes, etc.

Rather than swarms of isolated air runes, I would advocate for small groupings of runes to make up the different qualities of air and breath. Thus there might be life-bearing runic agglomerates that further breathing, and death-bearing or at least life-depleted runic agglomerates that are exhaled.

On the whole, a person's breath is a living thing, though, their personal wind surrounding them (permeating/permeated by other Air around them). Possibly including their olfactory aura, too.

 

15 hours ago, David Scott said:

I'd refer to the elemental rune progression to determine any broader cases, for example CON is a function of the Earth Rune, so in the elemental progression a poison would be water based, however depending on its source I'd look at that too.

Too simplistic, takes all the fun out of different recipes for poisons, and gives access to universal antidotes without the ingredient hunts.

 

15 hours ago, David Scott said:

There was a god Learner school devoted to this exploration of the Gloranthan microverse. They were rightly destroyed, but not for any abominable behaviour, it was that they imploded once they reached the age old debate of how many air runes can dance on the end of a pin.

It may have looked like an implosion, but I guess they joined the realm of their studies...

 

 

21 hours ago, JRE said:

It feels strange for me as a chemist, but in Glorantha all air is air, but like people, some air is stinky, some air is nice, and some is really toxic. But for the Gloranthans those are qualities of the air, not a matter of impurities or mixes. Though we all know still air will go bad more easily than moving air, as it will happen also with water. Fire will weaken the air, can even make it lifeless, and even taint it with dead earth as well (soot). Too much dead air can also kill you. 

Speaking as another chemist, my solution is to decouple quite a lot of properties from the matter and make it a power of ambient runes. Again, using the (weak) analogy of the Higgs Field for scientifically anchored folk and talking of auras and miasms for the crowd familiar with those medieval or esoteric concepts.

Soot as dead earth? Mostly burnt plant, I suppose, possibly with burnt beast or burnt man mixed in.

Just like air is mostly not made up by single atoms (less than 1% noble gases), I would advocate for runic complexes taking the role of molecules. Odors may take on some Man or Beast or Plant Form Rune, plus other elemental flavors as lesser addition. A single fire rune might influence a whole bunch of such air complexes (similar to the Higgs Boson) for the flavors.

Aboveground, air is also permeated with Light, as the Lower Air is simultaneously the Lowest Sky. The day/night cycle is not noticeably accompanied by a massive exchange of air, but over night the air bleeds Heat and acquires Cold, a process which is reversed in the day. I suppose the Heat is devoured by Night, while the Cold is burnt up by the sun.

It is somewhat weird that the sub-runes of Fire (Light, Heat) and Darkness (Cold, Shadow) are antagonists while the runes themselves are not. Rewriting physics to account for the opposing forces like Cold or Shadow shouldn't make that much of a difference.

 

21 hours ago, JRE said:

As for what happened before Umath, most people do not worry. You just did not need to breathe, as plants or fish do not need to breath. Animals and people came later.

As far as you can imply a concept of linearity on Godtime, not true. Animals and People existed in the Green Age, as did Fire, but Umath definitely did not. According to the Dara Happans (well, Plentonius), Umatum was conceived in 10,000 YS and born in 40,000 YS, and dismembered in 70,000 YS, all in the Golden Age.

 

But one aspect of the wonders of Godtime is the absence of worries, the stronger the farther you go back. Need a boat? Take a piece of bark and a large leaf, and you might be good, the symbol is what matters more than the material execution. Although that may break down somewhat in the presence of materialists like Mostali or Danmalastani. The HeroQuest challenge works on equipment, too - bring enough doubt and it may falter.

 

21 hours ago, JRE said:

If you travel there you may need some time to adapt, and you better have a strong element association to traverse the elements, but you will not need to breath. It was not invented yet.

The concept of drowning might have been born alongside Umath. IMG Umath did not just push the sky up, he also pushed the Earth Cube down, ramming it onto the Spike (creating the upper valleys from Earth that remained on the slope with no further to go down), while on the northwestern and southeastern edges the Seas found their way (back) to the top surface of the cube.

On the other hand, breathing was pre-invented, as beasts and land-animals would already have had lungs and noses. Hunting by scent already works in the medium of Darkness, and may have worked in the medium of Aether (Lower Sky), too.

There would have been no wind pollination without Umath, which means that flowering plants would have been older than grasses or pines. Pollination used to be the province of pixies alone, but insects and some smaller birds got in on that business.

 

[Joerg]

1 hour ago, PhilHibbs said:

Are the two worlds even compatible? Our bodies are not made of runes. Gloranthan bodies are not made of molecules. Glorantha in its purest form is its own thing, standing alone and separate from other fantasy or real realms. So moving between realms is either impossible, or if it were possible you'd die or disintegrate on the way.

BORING! That answer sucks.

Plus there is precedent, that Redbird priest who went to fetch Temertain... Maybe not from our world, but did not disintegrate (at least not before retrieving Temertain).

 

1 hour ago, PhilHibbs said:

So the question then becomes, what happens when an entity crosses over from one to the other?

The official stance seemed to be that anything like transmigration from outside of Glorantha is a bad idea. (That doesn't mean it doesn't happen... Dragons might have entered an existing cosmos through the Void, or possibly created it. Maybe a Copenhagen interpretation effect for them? While in the Void, if you take notice of something in that nowhere and nowhen, its potential will spring into existance, but rivalling potentials will wear it down. But that's going a bit too far afield...)

Traversing the quantum plasma of the Void might taint you with residual potentiality, aka Chaos (once contaminated with the matter of Gloranthan Creation).

Another way of entry might be through accidental interweavings of outer strands of the Web of Arachne Solara with strands from somewhere else, taking the "Hidden Castle"/"Hidden Green"/"unused folds in the web" - theory a little further.

 

1 hour ago, PhilHibbs said:

Some automatic metamagical process would have to intervene in order to translate one to the other. Our body would be recreated in runic form, and anything that we carried with us would be converted into something that can exist in Glorantha. So yes, I think a steel knife would become Gloranthan enchanted iron, and silver would hurt magical creatures.

Your body might be similar to that of a dragonewt, in that case - a projection of the runic properties (as rather permanent meat and blood) rather than the original. Your accoutrements would transform somehow, too. A cell phone might become a charm with a messenger spirit. Or possibly your allied spirit, depending on your real world dependence.

 

 

1 hour ago, PhilHibbs said:

But you could say that it's not the same knife or the same silver, it's been changed. Ask Dr. McCoy if you are still the same person, or if you've been disintegrated and replaced with a copy.

While we're in Star Trek mode, let's just say "holo-deck rules apply" and be done with that.

[Baron Wulfraed]

On 10/4/2022 at 12:00 PM, Squaredeal Sten said:

Will a piston type pump work. for either air or water?  Or are all ships' pumps chain and bucket pumps, or are there simply none?

For ship pumps, it may be bulky but an Archimedes screw design could be viable.

 

On another thought -- if one boils water it turns to steam... Is steam considered a gas (air)? Is boiling a form of transmutation?

Edited October 5, 2022 by Baron Wulfraed

[mfbrandi]

39 minutes ago, Baron Wulfraed said:

if one boils water it turns to steam... Is steam considered a gas (air)?

I like elemental runes as corresponding to phases of matter (rather than chemical elements or compounds). I don’t think anybody else does.

The elemental runes as “atoms” approach would presumably have air as available in at least two phases (solid and gas — mocking elemental associations?), rather than having water runes transmute to air runes at boiling point — but its champions must give us the real lowdown.

[Joerg]

1 hour ago, Baron Wulfraed said:

On another thought -- if one boils water it turns to steam... Is steam considered a gas (air)? Is boiling a form of transmutation?

Does freezing water turn it into Earth? How much is the solidity of ice a property of Earth, and how much is it a property of Stasis? Cold is a factor anyway.

Steam is different - it is invisible while still gaseous, although you get to see the fog that results from steam cooling down into small droplets. On the other hand, the steam lodge is a common means in many cultures, with the evaporation of the water on the hot rocks as much part of the transformative experience as the droplets condensing on the bodies of the participants.

Now, is steam just Water (or Sea) runes taking up Heat? Then what about the residual salts (if you use hard or brackish water)? Is that solid also an aspect of Water and Heat?

 

The classical Greek elements are the four standard aggregate states of matter - solid, liquid, gas, plasma. Glorantha adds Darkness, for which we are offered "Space" as a real world physics parallel. (And let's not discuss Moon, which is a mystical thing and shouldn't have much of a parallel in conventional physics.)

However, we do recognize Water also as a chemical compound (or really, as a solution of minerals and even gases in "Fresh" or Helerian Water, and we still recognize ice as a special form of Water despite having lost its fluidity.

One way would be to regard ice and steam as sub-elements of water, but my theory of elemental Water is that it is roughly isotonic, sort of brackish but drinkable, and its two sub-varieties are the fresh waters of Heler and the brines of Nelat, both still liquids, rather than evaporated or frozen water.

So how do steam or ice retain the "Water Rune"-ness despite having lost the defining quality of being liquid (and wet).

(There are liquids which aren't wet to the touch, like oils. That is one way to tell such liquids apart from water.)

Then what about other typical liquids, like blood or milk? How much are these Water runes, and how much are they Life (Fertility) and Form runes (Man, Beast, Dragonewt, even Plant for blood from elves, unless that is purely sap)? Or possibly even other runes, like the elemental runes for the class of animals they belong to?

 

What kind of vapors (or aerosols) do we know in Glorantha?

There is smoke, the product of Fire consuming fuels (weirdly enough entering Air when the flame has too little of "active air" or the fuel has too much of Water).

There are fogs and mist, smallest droplets of water suspended in the air. There are  clouds, and there is rainfall, but those don't really have the quality of Air any more.

There are volcanic vapors, like those that give the Poison Shore south of the Vent its name. A different kind of smoke, with mineral admixture (in this world's chemistry, mainly sulfur components).

There are alcoholic vapors that form when heating wine or beer (pr mead, kumiss or cider), or well fermented fruits.

There is miasma rising up from carcasses or bogs where Dark fermentation releases these fumes. (Also happens in processes like making ripe cheese...)

And then there is Stale Air, often the result of chaotic interaction or Tapping.

[JRE]

Steam is water reacting to exposure to fire by repeating the invasion of the sky. As we do not have enough fire, it cannot reach too far and returns back down, as you can notice in your hearth or chimney over a boiling pot. I suspect cycles of evaporation and condensation (distillation) are part of Heler's sacred rites in dry areas, as it is the only way to get "pure" or rain water on demand, apart from magic.

That would make also Heler a possible source of distilled strong alcohol, by using that same equipment on alcoholic liquids. Firewater can well be one of the secrets wrested from the sky, at least for some Heleri. Joining with a beer brewer would justify giving some Orlanthi clans uisge beatha.

It is true I dislike linking the Gloranthan elements to states of matter, as we already have elemental association with metals, which are solid (with one partial exception). Most solids are earth, most liquids have varying amounts of water, and most gases have Air, but it is not only that. As happens in magic or in people, I prefer modifying runes, such as water and stasis giving ice and water and motion (provoked by Fire, but not containing Fire) steam. Stale air, whether by Fire, Tapping or enclosed areas, is worse to breath and can eventually stop sustaining life, but nobody is really concerned about oxygen levels, just that the Stasis / lack of Motion separates it from Orlanth's breath.

 

[French Desperate WindChild]

On 10/4/2022 at 10:16 AM, Brian Duguid said:

We know for a fact that there is poison gas,

Not exactly

we know that there is poisonous / corrupted / chaotic air

 

I think a easier way to ask « why this phenomenom » than « does what I know irl exist in glorantha »

Months ago I asked « why do things fall » and the answer was earth attracts everything 

asking « does gravity exist » was for me a non sense as we are not in a spheric world/universe

i m pretty sure that a earth Bronze Age person would have less issue with glorantha world than with our more or less uptodate universe knowledge

[Joerg]

1 hour ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

Not exactly

we know that there is poisonous / corrupted / chaotic air

Elemental Air is more than just molecules (small aggregates of mostly air runes) in a gaseous phase undergoing Brownian motion. The Orlanthi would talk about Storm rather than Air, anyway, and they might be more correct about the Gloranthan element, with some stale low-level Fire presence already availlable before Umath's birth. The Lower Sky never left when Umath claimed it as Lower Air.

The Devil's Marsh below the Block has Gas as one of the parts of the Devil.

 

1 hour ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

I think a easier way to ask « why this phenomenom » than « does what I know irl exist in glorantha »

 

 

1 hour ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

Months ago I asked « why do things fall » and the answer was earth attracts everything 

Darkness has some heaviness to it, too.

 

1 hour ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

asking « does gravity exist » was for me a non sense as we are not in a spheric world/universe

Spherical gravity apparently is part of Glorantha in the Sky World, with the Red Moon the biggest apparent object exerting that force. If you stand at the Down pole of the Red Moon, the surface world is visible overhead, around that blind spot that is the Crater.

 

1 hour ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

i m pretty sure that a earth Bronze Age person would have less issue with glorantha world than with our more or less uptodate universe knowledge

There are significant differences. Like northern hemisphere sun orientation going southward and Pole Star orientation going northward, where in Glorantha both are more or less directly overhead.

[Brian Duguid]

4 hours ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

we know that there is poisonous / corrupted / chaotic air

It is described in the sources we have as "poison gas", in the same way as those sources refer to the existence of "natural gas" rather than "flammable air". I'm happy to take those sources (in both these cases, the Guide) as accurate descriptions of what exists in the world, even if the residents of the world may describe them differently. The myths may well tell us that poison gas "is" corrupted air, but that doesn't stop it being poison gas. 

[Brian Duguid]

4 hours ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

I think a easier way to ask « why this phenomenom » than « does what I know irl exist in glorantha »

Well, that's what many of the answers in this thread are answering. But it's not the question you'll see as the title of the thread. I'm quite happy that "existence of" and "explanation of" can be answered separately.

[soltakss]

On 10/4/2022 at 7:14 AM, Agentorange said:

The origin of Glorantha is of course entirely mystical, which led me to wonder.....are there gases in Glorantha ?

Yes.

Tanglethicket burns to produce a poison gas. Stoorworms, Walktapi, Dream Dragons, and Maladors all have poison gas attacks.

 

[soltakss]

On 10/4/2022 at 8:57 AM, PhilHibbs said:

It behaves similarly to our air, but that raises an interesting question: why, when you get to the top of a mountain, closer to the "Middle Air" where Air should be most powerful, is the air thin and hard to breathe?

I have always played that the air there is really thick and hard to breathe in, or doesn't want to be breathed in.

 

[soltakss]

For me, much of Glorantha behaves like the real world, maybe for different reasons. So, winds can blow things over, water flows downhill (unless it magically flows uphill), water freezes and boils, and so on.

The theories why these things happen have more to do with very early science than modern-day science. However, life is too short for me to try to come up with any.

[PhilHibbs]

4 hours ago, Brian Duguid said:

It is described in the sources we have as "poison gas", in the same way as those sources refer to the existence of "natural gas" rather than "flammable air". I'm happy to take those sources... 

To me, that's just an artefact of translation into English.

Edited October 6, 2022 by PhilHibbs

[Revilo Divad Of Dyoll]

5 hours ago, soltakss said:

For me, much of Glorantha behaves like the real world, maybe for different reasons. So, winds can blow things over, water flows downhill (unless it magically flows uphill), water freezes and boils, and so on.

The theories why these things happen have more to do with very early science than modern-day science. However, life is too short for me to try to come up with any.

That is exactly how my Glorantha works as well.