From: Nick Brooke (Nick_Brooke@compuserve.com)
Date: Tue 09 Sep 1997 - 11:00:17 EEST
_______
Stephen writes:
> My belief is that the dragonewts [on Teleos] are very similar to
> those in other parts of the world, and that they are more or less
> incomprehensible to the Teleosians.
Sandy came up with an interesting fact in Chicago last January: the
dragonewts on Teleos are born, live, die, and reborn just like those
you'd find anywhere else. The difference is, they *never* eat. Each
newt emerges from its egg, goes out into the world, gradually gets
weaker as time goes by, and eventually expires from hunger, emerging
again from its egg-nest after a brief resurrection.
The dragonewts think this is entirely normal, and have never even
experimented with eating. Why bother? (As an aside, perhaps they are
right -- or "more right" -- in that eating material sustenance could
be an entanglement with the material world, of the type all "proper"
dragonewts are meant to avoid. Perhaps they are reborn faster/better/
cheaper than those no-good dragonewts from Dragon Pass or Kralorela?)
Maybe this also explains (if we need an explanation) why there are,
per Stephen, no dinosaurs on Teleos, despite the known evolution of
dinosaurs from dragonewts (who are definitely present there). Or, if
you prefer, it might explain why the dinosaurs of Teleos are miniature,
per Peter's account. Or (per the old writeup, which I don't recall)
how the dragonewts can be reborn without needing an Inhuman King.
(Maybe they're post-monarchist republican dragonewts?? Just a thot).
While meandering around the subject, I saw Stephen's mythology of
Teleos back while we were assembling Tales #10-11, and am very sad
we couldn't print it in one or the other of the zines[*]: it's fine
stuff, and I hope he can fit it into Volume Water (or Volume Pamalt,
or Volume Teleos, or wherever) one of these years. One particularly
enjoyable thing was the centricism: the people of Teleos *know* their
island is the centre of the world, and was the only place not knocked
off-centre during the Darkness. So the seas, heavens, earth, etc. now
centre in other places, such that if you look at Teleos from any POV
other than the local one, it looks like it couldn't possibly be the
centre of anything. "Exactly," say the inhabitants...
He also had an albino tribe of "ghosts", ignored by all the other
mutually-despising peoples of Teleos. Good fun.
_____ _____
Simon and Peter like Orang-Utans. Read about Lord Monboddo, if you
can: a scientifically-inclined peer of the early nineteenth century
who believed Orang-Utans were humans bereft of the corrupting power
of speech. (Monboddo is in "Eccentric Lives and Peculiar Notions",
a fine book of lunacies collected together by John Michell).
::::
Nick
::::
[*] IIRC, it'd have gone in if we'd had any kind of cameo or scenario
material showing how the stuff could actually be used in gaming. Myths
alone butter no parsnips.
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