From: Nick Brooke (Nick_Brooke@compuserve.com)
Date: Fri 18 Jul 1997 - 08:49:44 EEST
____
> Immortality, or least the revivification of the soul, seem to be
Clay writes (nice to see you again, Clay!),
> an obvious influence from the Yelmic experience.
On the other hand, the Lunars would plausibly claim that two of their
primal Lunar Goddesses, Verithurusa and Lesilla, descended into Hell =
and came forth again *before* Yelm ever did. The Lunars obviously had
In your structure, the Only Old One might literally be the Pharaoh's
an influence on the Yelmic experience... :-)
"shadow". But reducing all of Glorantha's mythic diversity to a
limited set of common themes ("The ruler must have a Shadow", etc.)
would be a shame.
> I could not help but think that the Red Goddess (or more precisely,
> mortal Rufelza), was a God Learner (in intention, anyway) or con-
> structed herself using God Learner techniques. In short, the Goddess
> is a God Learner construct (???).
Plausible, but what does it gain us? There do appear to have be pre-
existing Lunar Goddesses in Peloria; mortal Rufelza (at least at first)
was embodied in a young girl, Teelo Norri, one of the "Mothers"; it's
well known that Pelorian myth was "virgin territory", untouched by the
God Learners to any significant extent; and that the ritual of the
Seven Mothers was a dire magical conspiracy.
Chris Gidlow's "Seleric Verses" (in Tales #16) may be to your taste.
FWIW, part of the thinking behind the Seleric Verses is the heretical
A parallel we've used is that, "The 'Seleric Verses' are as much about
turning a woman into the Moon, as 'Dune' was about turning a man into
a Sandworm". Your ideas are well worth contemplating, but I'd rather
do so on their own terms instead of labelling things "God Learner
constructs".
notion that the later Red Emperor, Doskalos, was present in the Year
Zero, as Doskalos, who assisted the Seven Mothers, became the lover
of Teelo Norri / Rufelza, and was subsequently the first terrestrial
ruler of the First Blessed sultanate ("some lover of the goddess, we
can't be bothered to name him", according to the official history).
If so, he could not literally have been the son of the Goddess. This
is why the Seleric Heresy had to be purged after Sheng, when the new
Emperor Magnificus (who *obviously* wasn't Takenegi) couldn't risk
having his right to rule questioned by such suggestions...
______
> Why would anyone want to participate in the Masters of Luck and
Steven is bugged:
> Death tourney? The big prize is that the Pharaoh gets to take over
> your body... I guess there are promises of spiritual rewards, but
> it sounds like a con game to me.
The winner's soul is liberated to a fully angelic existence of bliss,
> What happens to the losers? Since the contest has "Death" in its
IIRC. This being Glorantha, I'd imagine the Cult of the Man-God can
prove this to its members. Though of course the Brithini would be as
unimpressed as ever. If you're not a pious follower of the Pharaoh,
why on earth would you want to participate? (That is, it's as much a
"con game" as Storm Bull's promise to rescue his worshippers' souls
from Chaos after they're dead: the cult of the Bull is convinced that
this happens, even if they'd have a hard time proving it to anyone).
Not proven. The contest is presumably risky, but I doubt it's always
I'm quite fond of the idea that contestants in previous tournaments
It looks like MGF demands that, while contestants *can* die in a
fatal for non-winners. If we think about its original incarnation as
a multi-player boardgame, it's unlikely the victory conditions force
the winner to kill off all the losers: more likely the winner is the
first one to the central hex of the City of Wonders (or whatever).
might attempt to participate again, or alternatively (if this isn't
allowed) coach or train their successors to do better than they did.
But I don't recall any sources touching on this matter. It would be
a shame if a failed Tournament (like the ones held after the spirit-
ual dismemberment of Belintar) resulted in the virtual decapitation
of the Holy Country's most powerful and able leaders, too... and a
real campaign-fucker if all but one of your toughest NPC leaders had
to be retired whenever Pharaoh shuffles off his present mortal coil.
(Remember: hosting Belintar's spirit ages bodies unnaturally. Those
tournaments could be unpleasantly frequent).
Tournament of the Masters of Luck and Death, or kill each other off,
normally the losers would expect to survive -- whether or not they
are ever eligible to participate again. I can't see anything else
"working" for a Holy Country based campaign: the turnover of tough
heroquesters would be too high.
____
Alex wrote, responding to me:
>> He does want the movements of Lightfore through the constell-
>> ations to "spell out" nightly myths, and is probably upset
>> that, "scientifically" speaking (i.e. using an Ephemeris),
>> this doesn't happen very obviously.
> Doesn't it? I thought this happened using your model in a way =
> he was pretty keen on. After all, Lightfore _does_ go through
> different constellations on different nights, with Polaris being
> the only fixed point.
Correction. Greg would like to be able to say which constellations
Lightfore passes through, and in which order, on certain mythically
important nights of the year. Having a fixed model which can show
him this (and which would require tedious re-calibration to produce
a different, perhaps more desirable or more mythically-appropriate
result) doesn't seem to have thrilled him much. Though I agree, he
liked the way that the nightly path of Lightfore can be shown on-
screen using my model.
The Southpath presented even more problems...
Anyone wondering what we're waffling about can download the freeware
Gloranthan Ephemeris, a Visual Basic program for Windows PC's, from
my homepage.
::::
Nick <http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/Nick_Brooke/>
::::
------------------------------
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.7 : Fri 13 Jun 2003 - 19:51:20 EEST