Runic Origins of Human Skin Color

[kaydet]

A month or two ago there was a discussion about the cover of the Glorantha Quickstart and its depiction of the Orlanthi heroes. At the risk of bringing up a touchy subject, I thought it might be interesting to discuss the rational origins of different skin tones in Glorantha -- which, like many other things, seem to derive from their runic makeup. Since creatures of the Man rune (in this case, humans) are composed of mixtures of all runes (with the exception of Moon (?)) it seems to me that an individual's skin color is a direct result of the predominant mixture of one or several runes. This theory is borne out by the discussion on blue peoples (see below) from the Glorantha website:

Quote

 [Of Waertagi:] They come in two colors, green or blue, depending upon the measure of the earth and water in their bodies.

I suggest the scheme below, but it is entirely conjectural. Are there other runes beyond the five elements which might play a role? If so, what are they and what would their effects be? We know that there are also red, yellow, purple, and orange peoples, but what are their origins?

Darkness -- black

Water -- blue

Earth -- green

Fire -- white

Air -- white/green?

Who Are the Blue Peoples?

[Brian McReynolds]

3 hours ago, kaydet said:

Who Are the Blue Peoples?

Amongst the Tribes of the Vingkotling and their descendants, the Helerings spring to mind.

The Coming storm has blue-skinned descendants of the original Helerings in certain familial blood-lines within the Cinsina tribe. (More than a few of them are Heler worshippers themselves.)

[kaydet]

@Brian McReynolds I was just linking to Greg's article, not actually asking "Who Are the Blue Peoples?"

[Brian McReynolds]

1 hour ago, kaydet said:

@Brian McReynolds I was just linking to Greg's article, not actually asking "Who Are the Blue Peoples?"

Sorry! That's what I get for coming on here when I'm really tired. :-D

[David Scott]

10 hours ago, kaydet said:

 (with the exception of Moon (?))

The moon rune has been in Glorantha in many places since before the Dawn. E.g. All the major tribes of Prax and many minor have the moon rune in their people. 

[kaydet]

@David Scott Then is the Moon strong enough in them to affect their physicality? Or is it more of a spiritual rather than a physical influence?

[David Scott]

2 minutes ago, kaydet said:

@David Scott Then is the Moon strong enough in them to affect their physicality? Or is it more of a spiritual rather than a physical influence?

In RQ Glorantha having The Moon as your Primary Rune gives you +2 to CHA or POW (secondary +1) so yes.

[kaydet]

@David Scott So you're saying that the Moon should have an effect on your appearance, analogous to Water, Earth, etc. as noted above?

[Martin]

4 minutes ago, kaydet said:

@David Scott So you're saying that the Moon should have an effect on your appearance, analogous to Water, Earth, etc. as noted above?

and your behaviour I would argue...like in the term "moon calf"

[David Scott]

I would say some yes. If it's your dominant rune, yes.

[kaydet]

What would it be, then? Red, blue, black, white? 

[David Scott]

8 minutes ago, kaydet said:

What would it be, then? Red, blue, black, white? 

yes

[g33k]

41 minutes ago, kaydet said:

@David Scott So you're saying that the Moon should have an effect on your appearance, analogous to Water, Earth, etc. as noted above?

"an affect on your appearance..." but not necessarily on your skin (tone/shade).

[M Helsdon]

Personally, I associate these colours with the elements... Note that where a colour is listed for different elements, it's manifestation isn't the same. Water blue is... watery, whilst Air blue is more like an electrical discharge, and Moon blue is something else again.

Rune		Color
Darkness		Black
Water		Blue
Earth		Green
Sky		Yellow, gold
	Fire	Red
	Light	Yellow
Air		Blue, orange
Moon		Red, silver, black, blue

[soltakss]

On 8/18/2017 at 10:34 PM, kaydet said:

A month or two ago there was a discussion about the cover of the Glorantha Quickstart and its depiction of the Orlanthi heroes. At the risk of bringing up a touchy subject, I thought it might be interesting to discuss the rational origins of different skin tones in Glorantha -- which, like many other things, seem to derive from their runic makeup. Since creatures of the Man rune (in this case, humans) are composed of mixtures of all runes (with the exception of Moon (?)) it seems to me that an individual's skin color is a direct result of the predominant mixture of one or several runes. This theory is borne out by the discussion on blue peoples (see below) from the Glorantha website:

I suggest the scheme below, but it is entirely conjectural. Are there other runes beyond the five elements which might play a role? If so, what are they and what would their effects be? We know that there are also red, yellow, purple, and orange peoples, but what are their origins?

Darkness -- black

Water -- blue

Earth -- green

Fire -- white

Air -- white/green?

Who Are the Blue Peoples?

Green is normally Earth, not Air.

Black is the Darkness element, but Agimori are descended from Lodril, who is associated with Heat or Fire.

Fire might be golden, or amber. 

Air, for me, is orange. As someone who is colour blind, people with god tans look orange to me, so this makes sense in my head.

 

[kaydet]

20 minutes ago, soltakss said:

Air, for me, is orange. As someone who is colour blind, people with god tans look orange to me, so this makes sense in my head.

Should not Air be a mixture of Earth and Fire?

[soltakss]

4 minutes ago, kaydet said:

Should not Air be a mixture of Earth and Fire?

Copper and Gold as metals, green and yellow as colours. So, what colour do you get when mixing green and yellow? Light green?

Air has always been orange, I have no idea why.

 

[M Helsdon]

33 minutes ago, soltakss said:

Air has always been orange, I have no idea why.

 

Probably because bronze is a similar colour, and bronze is the metal derived from the bones of Air Gods.

[Psullie]

On 8/19/2017 at 6:14 PM, David Scott said:

In RQ Glorantha having The Moon as your Primary Rune gives you +2 to CHA or POW (secondary +1) so yes.

I'm sure that once those who are lucky enough to be at Gen Con can add more to this statement, but the fact that in RQG your choice of Rune affiliation can impact on your characteristics sounds pretty cool to me.

[Jenx]

On 20.08.2017 г. at 9:13 PM, soltakss said:

Green is normally Earth, not Air.

Black is the Darkness element, but Agimori are descended from Lodril, who is associated with Heat or Fire.

Fire might be golden, or amber. 

Air, for me, is orange. As someone who is colour blind, people with god tans look orange to me, so this makes sense in my head.

Well first off - Agimori are not black. They're a dark brown skin. I think it's important to remember that in Glorantha, because in this setting if you say someone is black ,that means they actually have black skin. And if they're white, that means they are literally white. And so on.

Now, as for the topic of physical appearance (skin color in particular) relating to runes, it exists, though it's not entirely that simple. The Vingkotlings, for example, were originally Blue skinned.  Orlanth was blue, so was his son, and from there so were his children. Except most of his children were not divine, so they lost the blueness of their skin, becoming a sort of neutral shade of brown. So they countered that by marking their bodies with blue tattoos, in order to emulate their divine ancestors.

People strong in the Earth tend to have a pale green skin, the color of oxidized copper. The rest are usually, again, just a neutral shade of brown.

Fire/Sky people who are close to that element (see - Dara Happan noblemen) tend to have golden-looking skin (not yellow, it's important to note. Golden), light hair and light eyes. The further removed you are from it, the more your skin looks like a dirty yellow color instead.

Darkness people (trolls, that is), have skins that are various shades of black or grey. Some have tints of blue, purple or brown in them, but ultimately it's just grey-ish.

Water is associated with blue, and to a lesser extend, green (though a more turquoise shade of the color, not like the coppery one of Earth). See the Waertagi as an example of people who's appearance is strongly connected with the Water rune.

Mind you, this is relevant mostly around central Genertela. With the Brithini and the ancient peoples of Law, your skin color is directly related to your Caste. So your first child is born brown or gray, the second one is Red (or more likely a sort of pink), your third one is golden-skinned (see above) and your fourth one is Blue. Obviously, as modern day Malkioni have drifted away from the strict practices of their ancestors, to the point where they even age and die, these colors tend to be muted or entirely lost....with people being, you guessed it, a neutral shade of brown. More devout/Lawful Malkioni might still develop a tint of color though, which is probably going to be seen as a very important thing for an individual.

Then we also get into the various other peoples, like the colorful people from Teleos, who seem to be that colorful because of some kind of  a curse that Harrek breaks by stealing the Emerald Frog.

Now, the final question might be - just why is it then that everyone, when not strongly associated with a particular color, tends to default to "sort of brown"? Well, there are probably lots of explanations. The obvious ones are being sunburned from staying outside too long, the fact that the Earth is, in many ways, the Mother of All so everyone defaults to brown because of it, and so on. The Out Of Setting reason, I theorize, is that simply put Glorantha is evocative of the cultures and peoples of the ancient Mediterranean and Middle East. and those people tended to be sort of brown, so everyone in Glorantha is as well.

[Joerg]

5 hours ago, Jenx said:

Well first off - Agimori are not black. They're a dark brown skin.

Depending on your definition of Agimori, some of them may actually have skin so dark that it takes artificial color names to avoid the term black.

The creation story of the Thinobutan "Agimori" (used in the same sense as "Dara Happan Warerans") has four couples in various earth shapes made out of clay by Soli, their creator spirit/god. One of these was black, the others were dark red, brown, and grey. (Revealed Mythologies p.65)

 

5 hours ago, Jenx said:

I think it's important to remember that in Glorantha, because in this setting if you say someone is black ,that means they actually have black skin. And if they're white, that means they are literally white. And so on.

I saw a documentation about culturally based ability to perceive different tones of color. There is a tribe in Ethiopia which can discern shades of green that look identical to Europeans but have difficulties discerning other colors which don't even perceive as the same shades.

Reconstructed Proto-Indo-European has rather few color words, and the individual languages descended from that picked up not so many others over the years. Artists, fashionistas and car sales folk help themselves with names for pigments, applying naturally colored things to describe a shade of color, or imply more or less weird cultural connotations to describe tones of color. Outside of dyers', printers' and painters' precise jargon, natural language goes by with astonishingly few names for colors. The English 7-colored rainbow needs to draw in an imported pigment (indigo), and two of the mixed primary colors (orange and violet) are named after plants.

If Glorantha really is a Bronze Age or early Iron Age world, it is ok to get by with a lot less names for colors than an artist's palette will offer.

 

5 hours ago, Jenx said:

Now, as for the topic of physical appearance (skin color in particular) relating to runes, it exists, though it's not entirely that simple. The Vingkotlings, for example, were originally Blue skinned. 

I beg to differ. Vingkot was the son of a mortal woman, of the On Jorri folk. Even if he inherited Orlanth's woad Lamarckian style, it would already have been diluted.

5 hours ago, Jenx said:

Orlanth was blue, so was his son, and from there so were his children.

I heard about a time when Orlanth favored the color red. His storm clouds are a dark grey with only a hint of blue. And Umath himself is said to have been brown, like or from the dust of his mother that he blew into the air.

If we play the parental colors game, why not start with Orlanth? Orlanth may have been blue by choice - woad, tattoos, or by changes he underwent when wrestling with other deities. The bluish ice covering Kero Fin is the realm of Inora, Orlanth's cold half-sister. Her rock will have been the color of bedrock, weathered bedrock after her interaction with Umath.

5 hours ago, Jenx said:

Except most of his children were not divine, so they lost the blueness of their skin, becoming a sort of neutral shade of brown.

As mentioned above, starting with Vingkot himself. Vingkot's wives were the daughers of Tada, a presumably swarthy earth giant. Not much chance for even Vingkot's sons and daughters to have blue skin.

5 hours ago, Jenx said:

So they countered that by marking their bodies with blue tattoos, in order to emulate their divine ancestors.

This may even have been true for Orlanth.

5 hours ago, Jenx said:

People strong in the Earth tend to have a pale green skin, the color of oxidized copper. The rest are usually, again, just a neutral shade of brown.

Weathered copper comes in the hues red, black, blue, and green.

Rather than applying substractive color mixing here, let's discuss a different approach: Magically strong people provide a (fluorescent) glow, adding an elemental color sheen over otherwise fairly ordinary tones of skin. I remember fondly irritating the heck out of my fellow students by mixing (dark violet) potassium permanganate solution with yellow, green flourescing Fluorescein (left-overs from my A-level practical exercise), resulting in a deep chrome-green solution that turned colorless upon heating.

I said fluorescing because I don't want magical folk to stand out glowing in the dark (unless they wield that magic actively), so it requires the presence of visibility (light) in order for these hues to shine.

5 hours ago, Jenx said:

Fire/Sky people who are close to that element (see - Dara Happan noblemen) tend to have golden-looking skin (not yellow, it's important to note. Golden), light hair and light eyes. The further removed you are from it, the more your skin looks like a dirty yellow color instead.

The German national colors are black, red and gold. In praxis, that "gold" is a full yellow with a hint of orange.

(That said, 18 carat gold comes in the hues white, red, and yellow.)

Less haughtily descended folk tend to have earthier and darker tones of skin. Other fire people favor a darker red hue, usually those with connections to the Underworld before Yelm's death, like Shargash and Lodril.

5 hours ago, Jenx said:

Darkness people (trolls, that is), have skins that are various shades of black or grey. Some have tints of blue, purple or brown in them, but ultimately it's just grey-ish.

Darkness humans may have the pale skin of goths.

5 hours ago, Jenx said:

Water is associated with blue, and to a lesser extend, green (though a more turquoise shade of the color, not like the coppery one of Earth). See the Waertagi as an example of people who's appearance is strongly connected with the Water rune.

The copper roof green actually is a result of water and exhalation tainting the black pigment of copper oxide. Malachite (copper carbonate) is blue.

I associate green water with algae growth, or life in general. As a coast dweller who gets out when the clouds are hanging in the sky and storms are roughing up the sea, I see shades of brown and grey. Most rivers will be brown, too. Hence merfolk (who appreciate the gifts  of food earth gives to the seas) will favour these hues rather than the smurfy blue of Heler's cloud folk or the deeper Waertagi ink blue.

 

5 hours ago, Jenx said:

Mind you, this is relevant mostly around central Genertela. With the Brithini and the ancient peoples of Law, your skin color is directly related to your Caste. So your first child is born brown or gray, the second one is Red (or more likely a sort of pink), your third one is golden-skinned (see above) and your fourth one is Blue.

It is more complicated than that. Malkion had numerous wives and produced children of numerous hues. Caste association by birth sequence is extremely ancient, and applies only to a single myth about Malkion the Founder. A myth that is rivaled by naming various goddesses as mothers for his variously colored sons.

Vadeli and Malkioni castes are inherited from the father. Brithini castes may be determined by the birth sequence of the mother, but honestly, there is no way that 80%+ dronar caste can result from so many first births of the mother. Or is it children of the mother with a single father?

 

5 hours ago, Jenx said:

Obviously, as modern day Malkioni have drifted away from the strict practices of their ancestors, to the point where they even age and die, these colors tend to be muted or entirely lost....with people being, you guessed it, a neutral shade of brown.

Brithini exiles often are described as pale of skin. This is strong in the Fronelan Malkioni inheritance. The Tanisoran blood that makes the majority of modern Seshnegi ancestry is really of Enerali or Pendali descent, offering beastly shades of brown into the skin coloration.

5 hours ago, Jenx said:

More devout/Lawful Malkioni might still develop a tint of color though, which is probably going to be seen as a very important thing for an individual.

I agree - that's where the concept of the inner light or glow comes in handily.

5 hours ago, Jenx said:

Then we also get into the various other peoples, like the colorful people from Teleos, who seem to be that colorful because of some kind of  a curse that Harrek breaks by stealing the Emerald Frog.

Or possibly several curses. The Teleans may  have had some kind of Innsmouth effect during the Closing. They don't remember, and noone else who witnessed this (embyli or dragonewts) has told about it. They seem to be Doraddic (rather than Thinobutan) Agimori by ancestry, related to the Men-and-a-Half of Prax.

5 hours ago, Jenx said:

Now, the final question might be - just why is it then that everyone, when not strongly associated with a particular color, tends to default to "sort of brown"? Well, there are probably lots of explanations. The obvious ones are being sunburned from staying outside too long, the fact that the Earth is, in many ways, the Mother of All so everyone defaults to brown because of it, and so on.

Earth is a source of pure brown (and count the human origin stories on Glorantha which involve clay or mud). But brown is also the mongrel (burtae) color of Umath.

5 hours ago, Jenx said:

The Out Of Setting reason, I theorize, is that simply put Glorantha is evocative of the cultures and peoples of the ancient Mediterranean and Middle East. and those people tended to be sort of brown, so everyone in Glorantha is as well.

I disagree with the "mediterranean/middle east" identification. Greater India is a good approximation for much of Genertela, more than just Teshnos (which has more of a "hinter India" vibe - Indonesia). Except for the Doraddi, all Gloranthan humans are parallel cases of "out of Africa" migrants, IMO.

[M Helsdon]

7 hours ago, Jenx said:

Now, the final question might be - just why is it then that everyone, when not strongly associated with a particular color, tends to default to "sort of brown"?

They don't. There are four human races in Glorantha, according to the Guide.

Race	Skin Colours
Agimori	Dark skinned
Veldang:	Blue skinned
Vithelan	Tan to pale brown
Wareran	Fair to olive-skinned

However, this isn't the entire variation, as in any 'race' people can have blue ancestors, and other skin tones are likely. Orlanthi can have green, grey and brown eyes, which sounds very terrestrial, but they can also have orange eyes...

[scott-martin]

33 minutes ago, Joerg said:

It is more complicated than that. Malkion had numerous wives and produced children of numerous hues. Caste association by birth sequence is extremely ancient, and applies only to a single myth about Malkion the Founder. A myth that is rivaled by naming various goddesses as mothers for his variously colored sons.

 

I still want to know where the "red people" who became the ancestral Horalites come from, mythologically and elementally. Do we talk about Malkion having a "red wife?" I doubt they are from the current moon, although there may be a Red Planet influence. It may be as simple as an archaic split between Fire (red) and Sky (gold) that more modern theory resolves.

Edited August 25, 2017 by scott-martin
fire-metal versus sky-metal

[Joerg]

2 hours ago, scott-martin said:

I still want to know where the "red people" who became the ancestral Horalites come from, mythologically and elementally. Do we talk about Malkion having a "red wife?" I doubt they are from the current moon, although there may be a Red Planet influence. It may be as simple as an archaic split between Fire (red) and Sky (gold) that more modern theory resolves.

There will be multiple layers of truth here.

King Drona and his boar sidekick Bakan indicate some kind of adoption (or additional manifestation) of an earth god as the founder of the Malkioni peasant caste, or vice versa.

I associate the red color with a visit to the Underworld, if not an origin from it. I am thinking of Verithurusa and Shargash here, but there is another red planet, Artia, and two half-red ones in the Twinstars. It might be a Southpath phenomenon - all known Southpath objects are red. Nearby, blood-red Rausa surrounds herself with crimson/violet Luatha guarding the entry to the Underworld.

The presence of a warrior/soldier caste indicates the presence or at least prescience of conflict. Is conflict unavoidable according to Logic, or is the Golden Age less innocent in certain phases of the cycles?

Gods of Glorantha tells us of ancient conflicts between Elder Giants and True Dragons before even the memories of the Elder Races.

The Annilla cult in Troll Gods tells about Annilla's giant king husband being killed. Since the result was her pregnancy and the rise of the Blue Moon, it isn't entirely clear that this happened before the Storm Age, at least the rise of the moon.

 

Death before Death is a difficult topic for Godtime Glorantha. We don't have a real explanation why Umath didn't rise again after being slammed into the White Camp, or why other earliest entities disappeared after hostile encounters. There was some sort of proto-death. And the presence of a warrior caste in the early Golden Age indicates another such seemingly premature presence of conflict.

 

[scott-martin]

Love it. All hinge on old controversies ("what did Kargan Tor really do?" "who were the early Ernaldites of Slontos?") so I'll sidestep them for now with a few more questions.

Other than the occasional Horalite throwback, the awful "red Vadeli," red-ochre Thinobutan ancestors and the Red Teleans, are there red people extant on the lozenge? 

Do orange (presumably a pure "storm" elemental type) people only appear in Teleos? 

Other than the horrific and hopefully extinct "yellow Vadeli," do the children of Talar have the golden complexion we associate with "Dara Happan warerans" today?

 

Edited August 25, 2017 by scott-martin