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Tea in Glorantha


Joerg

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1 hour ago, g33k said:

Yeah, but I meant the whole thing where he was struggling to resist, but overcome by his Passion:Pedantry.  Such a clear portrayal of the new RQ mechanics!   😁

That said... it was of course said in snark, not seriously 😉 

 ... and this is probably enough of a mechanic-specific sidetrack for the world-centric subforum?   🙄

Thread derailment is an action of a trickster, so technically it's still world-centric. Well that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

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8 hours ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

It's this weird monolithic place with really terrible Western fake Chinese names. The rest of Glorantha just does its own thing but Kralorela refuses to just ... be Gloranthan and has terrible faux-Chinese names. It's really offputting and also ignores literally all of the rest of East and Southeast Asia for some kind of imaginary China that isn't even ACTUAL China.

Let's get some Sumer in the mix, let's throw in some actual historical fun with the Dongson culture and the Zhou rebellion against the Shang and the kingdom of Dali. Maybe also some aggressive counter-culture from the Blood Sun weirdos by southern groups who disagree with the narrative and give an existential threat.We got weird anti-Solar pantheon pushing in from the Naughty North against the teachings of draconic enlightenment. Maybe there are slaves and they don't wanna be slaves? We already have the poison cult ladies.

Let's also stick to names like Kralor rather than "suan chow", it's beyond grating in 2019 and into pretty much racist.

Agreed (although not sure about "racist". However, given the cure climate here, I'm sure Weibo would have a field day, and Globally Times would lap it up into a frenzy).

 

8 hours ago, g33k said:

I too would love to see Kralorela with much broader influences... including non-Asian influences!

I mean...
We can see Mongol and N.American influences (among others) in Prax.  We can see Norse and Vedic influences (among others) in Sartar.  BOTH have a healthy dose of Gloranthan Wierdness without much RW antecedent...

I hope for no less from a more-realized Kralorela!

 

Absolutely agree! 

With the main protagonists and antagonists, there are arguments about who it represents more...

Kralorela is wholesale and indisputablely some variant of an imagined China. 

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@albinoboo I can only applaud people who defend the use of "tea" for the tisanes of camellia sinensis. Imagine you enter a good restaurant, order a coffee and get served some hickory brew as a default...

Milk and tea: I am a high consumption tea barbarian rather than going through rituals which are basically methods to celebrate inferior qualities of tea by counter-acting the deficiencies of the tea or the water used to brew it with additives (as a chemist, I make sure that the extraction process is optimized, but that's a practicality in preparing the tea and not in serving it). East Frisian ritual doesn't obsess about MIF or TIF but starts with a lump of sugar, followed by the tea and finished with some cream carefully applied from the edge of the cup. Even with the at best mediocre quality of the East Frisian blend the tea remains clear there because of the extraordinarily soft (chalk-poor) water in the region.

About runners: they are clearly described as different from a mobile life stage of plants, rather some form of immune system of the communal entity of the plant species. Our lack of information about them and their reproduction/renewal simply was something that I noticed when accumulating the few mentions of tea in the Guide.

The Tree of Life origin for the tea cultivates of the Jrusteli is too good to be ignored IMG.

Guide p.568

Koros (small city in Laskal)

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 When  the  Aldryami conquered  Laskal  in  the  early  Second  Age, they  planted  a  Tree  of  Life  to  worship. Garangordos  defeated  the  Aldryami  and enslaved the Tree of Life, forcing it to grow a  nut  that  magically  enervates  and  revives when chewed or brewed into a tea – properly brewed, it can even revive the recently dead. The Tree of Life nut was greatly desired by the  God  Learners,  who  managed  to  grow lesser versions of the tree.

This text opens the possibility that the tea plant grown in Jrustela might be cultivars of the Tree of Life, although there is no nut involved in camellia sinensis harvest.

The Tree of Life nut makes it sound more like the coffee bean or cocoa bean (both being celebrated for being revigorating and animating).

 

Guide p.405

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 Tea  (introduced from  Jrustela  in  the  Second  Age)  is  a  drink of the upper castes – drunk for pleasure, but surrounded by ritual.

Guide p.414

Amnelon (on the southernmost tip of the western lowlands on the Tanier estuary in Nolos):

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The  Tea  Growers  dronar subcaste dominates the city’s affairs, although they are outwardly submissive to their rulers.

This area is a river estuary lowland and would be rather untypical for tea growing, but then the vinyards around Bordeaux don't conform to my expectation of wine being grown on south-facing hill sides either.

Guide p,421

Nolos:

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 Tea  is  widely  grown  in  the  eastern hills  near  Tarinwood

Noyelle:

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Tea  is  grown  in the western reaches of the province near the Prialor Forest.

While tea is listed among the export goods, I expect Seshnela an Safelster to be the main market for the local tea growers.Overseas customers might be in Nochet or Fronela. But then, tea might be associated with God Learner oppression in many lands, e.g. Loskalm.

With the great isolating events like the Closing or the Syndics Ban, many a custom based on international trade would have collapsed or moved over to ersatz materials (like malt or hickory "coffee" mentioned above). Re-establishing tGlorantha, and the Ban hasn't thawed completely yet in 1625.

Judging from the archaeological record, Bronze Age elites would have jumped on novelties to further their prestige as near-divine beings. This is countered by a deeply rooted conservativism, though, when it comes to beverages and similar less ostentatious ingredients (although there remains the big question mark about the tobacco leaves in Egyptian mummies).

 

On the whole, what is the thought about entire regions given over to a high degree of growing cash crops (such as wine, tea, kafl leaf, cotton, indigo, woad, or mulberry trees for silk production)? As a rule, Gloranthan agriculture is mostly just self-sufficient, able to feed a nearby city in addition to the local population. With such dedicated agricultural production the amount of people not growing food rises.

Tea harvest and processing is a fairly work-intensive process, and with three harvests a year and weeding and removal of sick or unwanted growth in between harvest times the people operating tea plantations have little time for anything but some subsistence gardening on the side, too little to feed themselves.(That goes for the munkey-trainers of Zon An, too).

 

 

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Telling how it is excessive verbis

 

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16 minutes ago, Joerg said:

On the whole, what is the thought about entire regions given over to a high degree of growing cash crops (such as wine, tea, kafl leaf, cotton, indigo, woad, or mulberry trees for silk production)? As a rule, Gloranthan agriculture is mostly just self-sufficient, able to feed a nearby city in addition to the local population. With such dedicated agricultural production the amount of people not growing food rises.

Tea harvest and processing is a fairly work-intensive process, and with three harvests a year and weeding and removal of sick or unwanted growth in between harvest times the people operating tea plantations have little time for anything but some subsistence gardening on the side, too little to feed themselves.(That goes for the munkey-trainers of Zon An, too).

Don't the magics of Glorantha change all of that?

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59 minutes ago, Shiningbrow said:

Don't the magics of Glorantha change all of that?

If you look at the population distribution in the maps, you will notice a 10% upper bound of urban population. While a good harvest can make a farmer easily produce enough for 2 more people, grain doesn't store forever, and there will be losses due to spoiling or vermin (and the stuff remaining adjacent to spoiled stored food won't be that appetizing, either).

There are bad harvests, there is total loss of a harvest due to war or disaster (e.g. floods, drought).

Magic doesn't summon food out of the blue (unless we are talking about really long-lastiing illusions which go all the way through the body... which, upon reflection, means that if you build muscle or organs on such illusory nutrients, you will suffer some body-loss when the magic expires. Ouch.)

There is magic to ensure a decent harvest as long as you provide the conditions for that. If your Sacred Time rites fail to bring back spring and summer, you cannot blame the Bless Crops rite. Same if you fail to keep marauders, wildfire or flooding away.

If you (wisely) put your magic into your cash crop, you bet on the market or contractual deliveries from food farmers for your sustenance. When those farmers are struggling, you (or your lord) might still be more able to buy what remains on the market (after the lords, wizards and soldiers have taken their share).

An industry like e.g. tea or wine will not just draw work force to the plantation, but also to the supply and delivery lines, packaging, etc.

Telling how it is excessive verbis

 

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