From: Nick Brooke (Nick_Brooke@compuserve.com)
Date: Fri 25 Apr 1997 - 10:27:36 EEST
_____
Trent has asked some *excellent* questions (i.e. ones I think I know the
answers to):
> I didn't realize how much the West was influenced by the GLs. I
> wonder what they did before the God Learners appeared... perhaps
> they used pure Brithian sorcery, or just their own homebrew.
> Actually, when _did_ Malkionism begin, anyway? From what I've read,
> Malkion seems to have been a GodTime hero, and the almost "athestic"
> attitude of the West would have been very hard to keep when you have
> gods running amuck all over Glorantha. Perhaps they weren't really
> like this until the GLs came?
What a perceptive fellow you are, Trent! These were questions and problems
I wrestled mightily with while writing up all the historical background for
our 80-player Malkioni church freeform, "How the West was One", three years
ago. A lot of the answers we came up with are now enshrined on my homepage:
<http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/Nick_Brooke/>
This includes a "Brief History of Malkionism" (from the Golden Age of Logic
through to the Downfall of the God Learners), and several less "finished"
articles exploring the differences between the Brithini, Malkioni,
Hrestoli, and scriptures of the various sects. These aren't "official"
(though I'm still waiting for anything better to come along, he said
modestly), but the Brief History has been published twice and translated
thrice (to my knowledge), and is probably my best work yet.
You'll also find a link there to the "Splintered Sects" collection: these
are write-ups of many of the Malkioni "heresies", mostly written by myself
and David Hall (with much-appreciated help from Greg Stafford and Sandy
Petersen, and with Web space and a Carmanian sect from Loren Miller),
giving outlines of the history, theology, beliefs and saints adhered to by
all of the major Western religions and several of the weirder ones. No RQ
rules, though...
Although issue #13 of "Tales of the Reaching Moon", our "Go West!" Special,
did include full RQ3 sect write-ups for the Holy Rokari Church of Seshnela
and the New Hrestoli Idealist Faith of Loskalm. As well as lots of other
yummy stuff (saints, crusades, Q&A with Greg & Sandy, and a lengthy
Malkioni-centric adventure set just south of Dragon Pass).
Which brings me neatly on to:
> Tales of the Reaching Moon: Okay, how do I subscribe to this?
Who you should contact depends where you live, as the tentacular clutches
of the Megacorp are world-spanning.
UK: David Hall <glorantha@compuserve.com>
USA: David Gadbois <gadbois@cs.utexas.edu>
Oz: Andrew Bean <zbraun@minyos.xx.rmit.edu.au>
Other: ask your local distributor for help. We have local
reps in many European countries, plus New Zealand and Japan.
Any of these good fellows can help you get a subscription to "Tales" (and
recent back issues), and will also do their best to sell you the other fine
products published by the Reaching Moon Megacorp and other Gloranthaphile
self-publishers around the lozenge.
> It sounds interesting, to say the least...
Ta!
> POW and one-use spells: ...one-use divine/rune magic seems almost
It's worse than that: the only initiates who would make it to Priest would
> I like what somebody said about the spell "coming back" on holy
> useless. It certainly couldn't be used with any regularity, or the
> caster's POW would drop to nothing fairly quickly.
be the ones who *never* invoked the Divine power of their god. (You need to
hold 10 *uncast* points of one-use rune magic to become a priest, by the
book). This gives us Storm Bull berserkers who've never cast Berserk,
Humakti afraid to use Truesword, and other daft anomalies.
> days, though; this makes the spell somewhat more useful.
Also makes High Holy Days more important and more magical. Important,
because you *have* to attend a big worship service if you want to get your
rune magic back. Magical, because in the weeks on both sides of a High Holy
Day, the god's worshippers will be tanked up with castable "one-use" rune
spells: before the HHD, they "might as well" cast any runepower they have
handy (as it'll all come back then anyway); after, they all have
full-strength magic until they start to cast it.
(That's the gist of my Tales #12 article, BTW, though David Cheng's piece
on RunePower in the same issue is also well worth reading if you can get
your hands on it).
______
Robert writes:
> I think (2c worth) that one of the "secrets" of the GL was that it
> took the Gods so $@#^& long to realise what was happening and to do
> something about it! The Gods were so harnessed by firstly the
> compromise (can't break that!)...
Especially if the GLs were doing all they could to *reinforce* the
Compromise through their monomyth. :-)
====
Nick
====
------------------------------
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.7 : Fri 13 Jun 2003 - 16:59:13 EEST