Thed, Broos and Satyrs

[Haimji]

From Cult of Chaos : "Before Time Prior to the Lesser Darkness, Thed was an important goddess. She was the wife of Ragnaglar, who later was called the Mad God, and their children were the broos, who then were untainted by chaos."

And about Satyrs, i can read in King of Satar :" They have the torso of men and the legs of a goat. "

So i m wondering : what if Satyrs were actually Thed's Children not tainted by chaos?

[Yelm's Light]

I have trouble believing that wouldn't be mentioned in this writeup:  http://www.glorantha.com/docs/thed/.  To wit:

"By Ragnaglar, Thed had many children — the broos, scourges of the world."

No mention of any other fathers, nor of satyrs among her many children.  (And nothing else I can find on the net or in CC either.)

But then, YGMV...

Edited October 4, 2016 by Yelm's Light

[Tindalos]

Interestingly King of Sartar has them described as Deermen (page 86), as does Sartar: Kingdom of Heroes.

My guess is that Satyrs, as embodied spirits of the masculine aspect of primeval nature, have a multitude of forms. Some resemble Deermen as in KoS and others, some are Goat-like (like the Roman fauns -- and rarely venture outside for fear of confusion), and some have a horse-like tail and ears like the original Satyrs of Greece were said to. Others could easily exist: The trottered and tusked Boar-Satyrs, who are sometimes confused for the Aramite Tusk Riders; the mighty-horned Bull-Satyrs who hang around the Minotaurs for companionship.

To the Satyrs, these distinctions would be meaningless. What does it matter if one of your fellows has horns, or hooves, or tusks? All that matters is they have wine to drink, grapes to eat, and nymphs to woo.

[Haimji]

10 hours ago, Yelm's Light said:

I have trouble believing that wouldn't be mentioned in this writeup:  http://www.glorantha.com/docs/thed/.  To wit:

"By Ragnaglar, Thed had many children — the broos, scourges of the world."

No mention of any other fathers, nor of satyrs among her many children.  (And nothing else I can find on the net or in CC either.)

But then, YGMV...

I guess Thed get her children before Ragnaglar raped her. So her first children are chaosless, goat-like because she was goddess of Goats. After, she became godess of Rape when Orlanth denies to her Justice for the crime Orlanth's brother did.

That's what i understand after reading "king of Satar" and "Cults of terror".

For Satyrs, they are descripted in RQ2 as goat-like people, upset when you call them "broo", that means they really are like Broos.

[Yelm's Light]

She's only mentioned in two places in KoS, one in a listing of Orlanthi deities and the other in the story of the 'trial' of Ragnaglar judged by Orlanth.  In neither place are any children noted except for Broos.

As for CoT, my copy of that has long since gone to oblivion in a garage flood, so all I have to go on is the (likely edited) version of it included in CC.  There is one mention of another child there which should have been obvious to me, but he's definitely not a satyr:  the Devil.

[Haimji]

In Anaxial's Roster : " Broo are humanoid, but have many animal features, especially those that derive from their mother. Ragnaglar, the broo ancestor, was goat-shaped …
… Thed, goddess of rape, is their favorite, for she was the mother of the first broo, after her violation by Ragnaglar, the Mad God. "

In KoS : " Orlanth’s brother Ragnaglar was so overcome with sexuality that he had no limits to what he would take as a partner, and he was so fecund that everything he mated with bore children. "

So, i really can imagine than Satyrs came from Ragnaglar, (not Thed, i apologies for my error, i didn't see Ragnaglar was goat-shaped) when he mated with another Goddess, (May be Mallia? She was a fertility goddess before) and after, he had Broos with Thed.

Is it possible? Something official can tell if i'm wrong? or not?

 

[Yelm's Light]

Nothing that I know of, but it really doesn't matter anyway.  If you want it, come up with a logical rationale for it (i.e. who the goddess is).

[M Helsdon]

Very few broo are actually goat-headed, because goats are rarely kept in Sartar and are even rarer in Prax. Instead, most have heads like those of their birth 'mother'. In contrast, Satyrs all have a set appearance as one of the many types of Beast Men. 

Some of the satyrs in Sartar are the result of the experiments by the EWF to recreate ancient creatures, but the rest are descendants of Velhara, the Lady of the Wild, a daughter of Kero Fin. As such, satyrs, like other Beast Men worship her and other nature goddesses. [See the Sartar Companion, Page 182.]

[Jeff]

Satyrs are not broo. They are not tainted by Chaos and have no connection to Thed.

[g33k]

On 10/4/2016 at 1:26 PM, M Helsdon said:

Very few broo are actually goat-headed, because goats are rarely kept in Sartar and are even rarer in Prax. Instead, most have heads like those of their birth 'mother'.

Ummmm ... except they are !   Very clearly, broos are a goat-headed species "by default."  From the RQClassic PDF sitting open on my desktop:  "Human-bodied and goat-headed, the broos (or goatkin) are tied irrevocably with the Rune of Chaos."

As you say, they vary from that default if a different animal than a goat is the mother; but that's the ONLY exception, and ONLY in the first generation.

Broo from a human mother are "default" goat-headed broo, and broo-on-broo mating always results in the goat-headed type (even if the mother wasn't goat-headed) -- excepting always that a Chaos Feature may override everything else...

So while there can be many broos who aren't goat-headed (and even some tribes where a majority or the entirety are not goat-headed), I have to hold that overall, across their multitudes, broos are "mostly" goat-headed.

I presume the divine ancestry "pushes" them back to type.

 

Edited October 5, 2016 by g33k
forgot about the Chaos!

[Pentallion]

I thought there was no such thing as broo on broo mating.  There being only males and they only mate with anything else that's not a broo.

[Noita]

Here's another recent thread.

Edited October 6, 2016 by Iskallor

[M Helsdon]

9 hours ago, g33k said:

Broo from a human mother are "default" goat-headed broo, and broo-on-broo mating always results in the goat-headed type (even if the mother wasn't goat-headed) -- excepting always that a Chaos Feature may override everything else...

Broo-on-broo mating is unusual, because female broo are rare, and have a sense of self-preservation and so avoid being impregnated. Male broo-on-broo is also atypical, because it reduces the population of a tribe by replacing an adult with small and weak young. Both kinds of reproduction generally only occur when a powerful broo institutes a breeding program, and even then the results can be variable.

[g33k]

On 10/6/2016 at 0:45 AM, M Helsdon said:

Broo-on-broo mating is unusual, because female broo are rare, and have a sense of self-preservation and so avoid being impregnated. Male broo-on-broo is also atypical, because it reduces the population of a tribe by replacing an adult with small and weak young. Both kinds of reproduction generally only occur when a powerful broo institutes a breeding program, and even then the results can be variable.

I'm not sure why female broo would be any better at avoiding being impregnated than any other target of the male broo; indeed, if they hang out with other broo I expect they'd be more-likely (more-available) targets.

 

[TRose]

The black Goat is seldom mention and not much is known about him(Her?) except he is fertility God for the Broo .. Perhaps  the Black Goat has a spell or ability that will enable a female Broo to survive a Broobirth?  Non Broo would not know anything about this because who going to get close enough to a female Broo to discuss sex?

[M Helsdon]

2 hours ago, g33k said:

I'm not sure why female broo would be any better at avoiding being impregnated than any other target of the male broo; indeed, if they hang out with other broo I expect they'd be more-likely (more-available) targets.

They are usually quite tough, and most initiate into the cult of Mallia. Even male broo can catch diseases they are not immune to...

[M Helsdon]

1 hour ago, TRose said:

The black Goat is seldom mention and not much is known about him(Her?) except he is fertility God for the Broo .. Perhaps  the Black Goat has a spell or ability that will enable a female Broo to survive a Broobirth?  Non Broo would not know anything about this because who going to get close enough to a female Broo to discuss sex?

Sidana, the Black Goat, has several paragraphs in the AH 'Lords of Terror' page 86. She is the goddess of incest.

[davecake]

I think Satyrs have no connection to Thed or Chaos. 

I think its quite likely that they have some connections to pre-Chaos Ragnaglar, though, just as minotaurs have some connection to Storm Bull. 

It makes sense. Satyrs play wind instruments, as favoured by the air gods. They can create lust, and are associated with sexuality, as was Ragnaglar long before he became chaotic (such as the story of his initiation in the sex pit). 

But satyrs, just like minotaurs etc, are far more tied to their mother Velhara than their fathers. 

[soltakss]

On 10/13/2016 at 5:25 PM, g33k said:

I'm not sure why female broo would be any better at avoiding being impregnated than any other target of the male broo; indeed, if they hang out with other broo I expect they'd be more-likely (more-available) targets.

 

If a female broo has normal sex with a non-broo and becomes pregnant then the resulting broo-birth will chew its way out of her womb, resulting in death/infertility/both.

One of the female broos in some published supplement was infertile and therefore immune to normal broo-birth.

[soltakss]

On 10/13/2016 at 7:28 PM, M Helsdon said:

They are usually quite tough, and most initiate into the cult of Mallia. Even male broo can catch diseases they are not immune to...

Except that all broo are immune to disease.

[M Helsdon]

2 hours ago, soltakss said:

Except that all broo are immune to disease.

Quite possibly.

[g33k]

I believe that Mallia can create diseases that bypass or exceed the normal Broo "Immune to disease" feature .

OTOH, I would allow the Chaos Feature, "Immune to Divinely-powered One-Off's that bypass normal Immunities," too...  

Also the Chaos Feature of "Heals 20HP per round -- so fast, a broo-birth is no worse than any normal birth for a normal woman."

 

[soltakss]

4 hours ago, Darius West said:

Also, how much damage does a normal birth do?  1pt to the abdomen per hour until a CONx1 roll is made and the baby is born with a midwife present was my abstraction of the process.   Of course if the mother is on her own she is incapacitated and can't cast healing on herself.

I remember it as being 1D8, but my memory often fails me. I'd say 1D6+6, disemboweling most humans.

[g33k]

14 hours ago, Darius West said:

Also, how much damage does a normal birth do?  1pt to the abdomen per hour until a CONx1 roll is made and the baby is born with a midwife present was my abstraction of the process.   Of course if the mother is on her own she is incapacitated and can't cast healing on herself.

Normal births should probably do a total of 1d4-1 hp... plus fatigue!!!  Most women are really .t.i.r.e.d. afterwards!

Roll for "success:"  fumbles would roll as a critical for damage (max-damage plus rolled damage).  Historical records show some women working (at pretty strenuous tasks) up until the moment that they go into labor for 5-10 hours, and returning to those strenuous tasks the following day.  10hp to the abdomen, no armor???  Ain't NOBODY gonna go to strenuous tasks the next day after that!!!

Too many modern medical approaches treat pregnancy & delivery *AS* medical issues, forgetting that most births happen just fine with no complications.  Sure, having someone expert standing by "just in case" is a fine thing... but usually not needed!

Edited October 23, 2016 by g33k
cut irrelevant quoted bits

[M Helsdon]

4 hours ago, Darius West said:

I think that might be broo baby damage soltakss.  I was postulating how much damage normal birth does.  1d6+6 huh?  You must be very smart to be born with such a large head  

Normal birth for a broo is eating its way out...