From: Alex Ferguson (abf@interzone.ucc.ie)
Date: Sun 22 Jun 1997 - 04:26:54 EEST
Daniel McCluskey has a quick rant:
> WHY do Kyger Litor shrines teach Darksee???? I can't imagine a
> more useless spell for Trolls.
As others have said, it's not _totally_ useless, but it wouldn't have
been my first choice for a KL shrine spell, either. I'd guess that
so many KL shrines teach it is as it's seen as a "necessary compromise
with living in the hurtplace" type thing, rather than an ideal state
of affairs. In more favoured places, such as deep inside Dagori
Inkarth, other spells are more likely. (Though equally, so are
larger temples, so it may tend to be because the more marginal
places have the most need for it, and the most shrines.)
> Does anyone have an idea? I would be really interested in an
> inspired myth or explanation that would allow me to avoid directly
> contradicting published sources...
Personally, I don't think all this guff about The Spell Always Taught
at Shrines (or the whole standard list of associates and temple size
schtick in general) ought to be taken too seriously. I think that the
spell taught in a shrine is the one that the group it serves find the
most useful (or mythicly necessary), unless other factors intervene
such as a temple hierarchy who tell their local franchisees what they
dashed well _have_ to teach, what with it being the One True Way.
GoG does make this qualification explicit for some cults, but even if
it doesn't, I think one should feel free to assume a certain amount of
local variation. After all, just how much research do you think the
God Learner fiends who compiled GoG did inside the Castle of Lead?
I reckon much of the info in cult writeups is a Statistically Sound
Survey, based on those of our cultural anthropologists who came back
uneaten (or at least, is a generalisation which necessarily ignores
a lot of local variation). As a demonstration of the principle, note
than anywhere KL is worshipped as an associate in another temple,
there will be what's effectively a KL shrine, granting a spell (in
general) _other than_ Darksee.
Variagatedly,
Alex.
------------------------------
End of Glorantha Digest V4 #531
*******************************
RuneQuest is a trademark of Avalon Hill, and Glorantha is a trademark
of Chaosium. With the exception of previously copyrighted material,
unless specified otherwise all text in this digest is copyright by the
author or authors, with rights granted to copy for personal use, to
excerpt in reviews and replies, and to archive unchanged for
electronic retrieval.
Send electronic mail to Majordomo@erzo.org with "help" in the body of
the message for subscription information on this and other mailing
lists.
WWW at http://rider.wharton.upenn.edu/~loren/rolegame.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.7 : Fri 13 Jun 2003 - 17:01:45 EEST