[Glorantha] Waertagi ships (and dragons)

From: Mikko Rintasaari <rintasaa>
Date: Wed Jun 28 14:00:52 2006

:I'm still curious about the Waertagi city ships, for instance. Are they
:the skins and skeletons of sea dragons, reworked as giant coracles, or
:simply carved as tunnels and chambers into the corpse.

Bones and hide construction sounds good to me, with the sea dragons lifeforce still bound to it to keep it together.

As for the "city ships" I don't think of them as kilometer long affairs with literal cities. I think of them as large ships that are brought together in calm weather to create the "city". I think there is such a people in the Earthsea books?

On a related subject:

---

The longer I've gamed with Glorantha, the more I have gotten troubled over the "twenty mile long dragon" thing. The way I run it is that the true dragons exist on several levels. The true, physical dragon, when it rouses itself from sleep is like a huge dream dragon. Tens of meters long, and nearly invulnerable, but a Lovecraftian horror that blots out the sky.

On another level it really does look big as a city, and can scourge a mile long swath of countryside as it flies over. That is mythic reality, projected into the mundane world. A Dragonslayer (like Alakoring) can undo the mental trick, and see himself as large as the dragon, or the dragon as small as him. The fight then becomes like the fight between a man and a dreamdragon, or a god and a true dragon.

The reason is in part because of gameplay reasons. I can't really even begin to narrate about dragons that are literally miles long, since in my own head any ideas of such creatures moving, or fighting an army, just seem rediculous. So when a truedragon fights an army, parhaps as a part of an army, it's a great and menacing dragon, and not a small mountain on the move. When it's "burninating the countryside" unopposed, it can be the wrath of the gods, and the only thing ordinary people can do is hide like mice from a hungry tiger.

        -Adept

Thinker, dreamer and adventurer Received on Wed 28 Jun 2006 - 13:20:44 EEST