From: Nick Brooke (Nick_Brooke@btinternet.com)
Date: Tue 04 Apr 2000 - 20:19:10 EEST
______
Martin writes:
> Heavy knights, as in those wearing better armour than the Carmanians -
> given that they were distant from the center of such armour developments,
> it seems likely that they were inferior in quality of armour by the time
> they made war upon them.
I'll agree that before Shah Nadar's expedition the Carmanians were out of
touch with the Middle Sea Empire and any improvements in armour they may
have come up with. I'll agree that they probably came home with some good
new kit and neat ideas.
However, Carmanians have always been famous for their heavy iron and brass
scale armour. Remember the Third Eye Blue connection, and the story of
Surandar:
Surandar was first to make the journey to the Mines of Kitor, and there
he offered up tribute (prised from Spol) to the three-eyed ruler and
his dwarfish slaves. In return, he received the first of the
brass-scaled
coats that would make Carmanian horsemen all but invincible in battle.
Armoured in this gift beyond price, Shah Surandar was many a time to
emerge unscathed from the thickest press of battle. He was only ever
wounded in war when he lifted his mask-visor to command his forces –
visitors to Carmania cannot but notice that all his statues are
disfigured
by facial scars.
ref: http://www.btinternet.com/~Nick_Brooke/Carmania/surandar.htm
Carmanians deployed heavy-armoured horsemen (relative to the rest of
Peloria) even before Nadar's expedition. They also had more iron than
neighbours, through the Third Eye Blue link.
I mentioned:
>> the obvious impact of "Dark" Stygian/Arkati and "Light" Talorian
influences
>> on the Malkionism of early Second Age Fronela ... where a lot of the
Carmanian
>> Duality is rooted.
Martin wrote:
Carmanos brought his codified dualistic White and Black laws to the
To pull a quick Metcalfe, that is the reason that when I invented Carmanian
Just so you know where I'm coming from.
> I would agree that there were dualistic edges to their thinking but
If we ignore the history of the Ten Thousand and assume they cast away all
> It was only _after_ the arrival of the prophet that the Viziers accepted
I think this is definitely wrong. Pre-God Learner Malkionism was a rather
The God Learners replaced this with a strong monotheism in which other gods
> It was only after Karmanos that ... the vulnerability of sorcery to the
So: what do you think we learned from Gbaji the Deceiver, Arkat the Traitor
Martin, I am writing at this length because you are striving to post-date
There is no point trying to pretend that Syranthir Forefront and his Army
> Agreed, they have a lot of sources, but the church was only formalised as
> dualistic by Karmanos after he came from the lake and much of his faith
was
> based on the Romanakrin wisdom which defined Idovanus.
Carmanians, true. But this does not mean that Carmanos stands outside any
and all pre-existing religious traditions. Any more than Ezekiel, Jonah,
Jesus or Mohammed emerged from a religious vacuum. The Akemites of Syranthir
Forefront would have recognised the fundamental religious opposition between
White and Black (Light and Darkness), and between Truth and Falsehood. This
is evident in view of their history (inc. Nysalor, Arkat, Talor and the God
Learners).
Dualism I wrote it up the way I did. To be told today that the back-story I
devised is no longer necessary because Carmanos the Lawgiver, Son of the
Lake, the founder of the Carmanian Dualist Church -- by my hand -- had a
religion which was "based on the Romanakrin wisdom which defined Idovanus"
(and which owed nothing to Fronelan Malkionism) is kinda offensive to my
sensibilities, after all the work I put in.
> Karmanos was the founder of the faith and the resulting interactions
> with the Pelandans, Spolites, DHs etc were more formative than Syranthir's
> experiences IMO.
their historic, religious and mythical baggage to replace it with something
Carmanos invented from whole cloth, maybe this is so. I think it is valuable
to look at the back-story to the Ten Thousand, not pretend that "Carmania"
sprung fully-formed from the pre-existing conditions in Second Age Pelanda.
> gods into the Idovanic system and clarified the nature of sorcery.
henotheistic faith, involving worship of many gods. (NB: this is an English
sentence, not a HW keyword. If you think I should have called it "a more
Stygian form of belief, including veneration of many Powers", then please
read it that way).
were "demons" whose attributes could be exploited by the faithful. (Caveat
as above). But the Carmanians did not take these God Learner ideas on board.
Syranthir's army included worshippers of many gods. The laws of Carmanos
showed the Magi how to determine if a god should receive worship. The need
to codify this increased because the Carmanians were now overlords of a land
with an unfamiliar mythic landscape. They had to sort out the new cast of
characters.
> Lie was revealed
and the filthy stinking Jrusteli God Learner heretics, if not that even the
apparently purest sorcerers can be vulnerable to or consumed by deceit?
things which I deliberately included in the Carmanian backstory. I don't
understand why you want Carmanian culture to begin as a blank slate, when
there is so much useful history, religion and myth to back it up from a
Western, Gbaji Wars perspective. The stuff is *there* -- I *put* it there --
and I do not see why it is being overlooked, belittled or discarded.
never existed. They did, and they brought ideas with them.
_______
Trotsky wrote:
> Greg's current vision of the realm through which Malkioni heroquest is
I would be happy to believe that grey and boring Malkioni have grey and
> incompatible with Nick's, in that he sees this place as flat, featureless,
> and almost totally devoid of living inhabitants (the odd abstract concept
> may wander past, and its these the Malkioni 'heroquester' tries to
control).
boring encounters on a grey and boring hero plane. I doubt, however, that
people will spend much time playing or writing about these experiences. I
have only ever tried to write descriptions of what colourful chivalrous
Malkioni heroquesters might encounter on the kind of interesting heroquests
people would actually want to play or read about. I am profoundly sorry if
this annoys lobbyists for a more grey and boring Glorantha.
I do not believe Greg's current vision (described above) is compatible with
Greg's previous accounts of the experiences of Western heroquesters, such as
Arkat and Snodal. I think mine works better. I'll stick with it until
something even better comes along.
:::: Email: <mailto:Nick_Brooke@btinternet.com>
Nick
:::: Website: <http://www.btinternet.com/~Nick_Brooke/>
------------------------------
End of The Glorantha Digest V7 #516
***********************************
To unsubscribe from the Glorantha Digest, send an "unsubscribe"
command to glorantha-digest-request@chaosium.com. Glorantha is a
Trademark of Issaries Inc. 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.
Official WWW at http://www.glorantha.com
Archives at http://www.kondalski.org/brian/Glorantha
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.7 : Fri 13 Jun 2003 - 21:14:32 EEST