From: Nick Brooke (Nick_Brooke@compuserve.com)
Date: Tue 23 Sep 1997 - 20:56:47 EEST
___
Pam writes:
> ...this is NOT Gamura, the giant, rocket powered flying turtle of =
> the Japananese monster movie genre. We will have to fit Gamura into
> Glorantha somewhere, however, because he would make such a great
> foe for Trantalor...
Well, the Sofali Turtle People of Fethlon live near enough to the
(hypothetical) Island of the Unworthy Dragonewt Exiles (home to
giant fire-breathing mutant dinosaurs, etc.) that they might well
feel the need to "soup up" (pun intended) one of their totemic
spirits with some Solar/Volcanic weaponry obtained from nearby
Teshnos, purely in a spirit of self-defence...
And that's "Tarantulor", BTW, unless yours is the original Japanese
name for the Beast of the Spider Mountains. Sadly, the Sofali are a
long way from Cragspider's lands, but what can you do, eh?
___________
All this "orthodoxy" about Pent prompts me to remind everyone that
Pentan customs and manners have been horrendously warped since the
Nights of Horror. Some tribes worship spirits their ancestors never
dreamed of following: the Storm Tribes are only the best-known example
of this. Social roles have been similarly thrown into turmoil, as one
would expect in the wake of the catastrophic near-genocide wreaked on
the Pentans by Lunar chaos magics at that battle. Thus, while we know
where Pentans came from (Yu-Kargzant/Arandayla/La-Ungariant), the gods
of any particular clan or tribe these days cannot and should not solely
be extrapolated from this ancient and, perhaps, irrelevant history.
Note too that this means typical gender roles may well have been re-
assessed by many Pentan peoples: after all, for a generation after the
Nights of Horror there *were* almost no Pentan men of military age in
any of the horse nomad nations which participated in that conflict --
and histories suggest this was most if not all of the tribes of Pent.
I'd strongly advise against being straitjacketed by the published
sources on Pentan religion and culture. Deviations from the ancient
norm can be explained in terms of "What Happened in the Year of Many
Tears", "What Happened When Women Ruled the Clan", "What Happened
When The Strange Spirits Came", etc. Adaptation often meant survival:
sticking to the Old Ways is admirable, sometimes, but can also wipe
out the unfortunate.
Let's develop a properly patchworked and confusing Pent!
::::
Nick
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