From: Paul Reilly (paul@phyast.pitt.edu)
Date: Mon 11 Oct 1993 - 23:45:39 EET
Paul Reilly here.
I will have to write about the Spirit Plane later, it is too extensive for me to deal with right now. Suffice to say that I think people should go look up "Shamanism" in the library and check out some books which describe what shamans say about the spirit plane; it is not much like most of the descriptions I have seen either officially or on the list. (But there have been some very good ideas batted around on the list...)
I do tend to think that a fibre bundle is a fairly good model for the Gloranthan universe. The geometry of the bundle is complicated, but one slice through it is the mundane plane. Now find every fire on the mundane plane and mark the fibres at those points. Follow those fibres up to the 'God Plane' and you will find that they all run into Aether, the Source of Fire. MOre on this is there is interest...
Some comments on other things:
Clay luther writes:
>Maybe next week the Storm Bull player will throw away his axe and start
>wrestling everything he meets, subsequently pounding them with rocks and his
>bare hands???
This happened in our campaign, it was the origin of the Chaos Killing Rock, a mighty weapon of Bruce the Storm Bull. Ordinary weapons were too fragile to contain his Rage...
Actually this was a very special rock, it was a fragment of an iron-bearing rock which fell from the Sky World. It had a certain amount of 'heroic' potential which was channeled into Chaos killing by the way Bruce used it.
Respone to Mike Dawson (or is it Kirsten?) Protective Circle: This is a Sorcery spell that actually seems to have some connection to real-world medieval magic. Triangles were also popular. If you want to encourage circles make the circumference/perimeter of the figure protected depend on the Intensity, that way the maximum area that can be protected by a given Intensity is achieved if the figure is a circle. Interesting how parallel developments on different worlds might be motivated differently: on Earth we went from square to round towers because it was relatively easy to damage the corners of square towers with siege weapons and early cannon. On Glorantha it would be to make best use of defensive magic.
About physics on Glorantha: Obviously the underlying physics is quite different. I maintain that Glorantha's underlying reality is more on what we call the God Plane and that the surface appearance is derived.
I also think of GLorantha as a sort of self-maintaining dreamworld, as opposed to say Earth's Dreamlands which are constantly maintained from our Universe. Obviously Glorantha had a strong connection with Earth's Dreamlands at some point. Evidence for this includes the remarkable correspondence of flora, fauna, culture, geography, etc. Compare the myth of Aether and Umath with the Sumerian myth of Enlil and An. ( I should write a paper about this sometime)
Myths about dragons probably ran the other way - dragons live in the Void but use worlds such as Glorantha as nest sites to incubate their young. Worlds like ours are too rigid - Glorantha is a good nest site because it is far enough out in the Void to serve as a training ground for Void navigation. Young dragons learn to manipulate Gloranthan 'reality' at deeper and deeper levels, starting with the 'dragon magic' of dragonnewts and proceeding through the phenomena such as Dream Dragons. Even the full dragons of Glorantha are fledglings by true Dragon standards - compare the abilities of the dragons we see to those shown in the Dragonkill War. Once a dragon is able to project a 'dream' dragon equal to itself, it is ready to go off into the Void.
Humans can also manipulate the dream-fabric of Glorantha, either through massed will or individual striving. Thus cults and magic.
Sorcery depends on learning to 'leverage' your power by drawing on the
greater powers of the Universe. These have predictable patterns oof response,
forming the natural laws of Glorantha.
From: RuneQuest-Request@Glorantha.Holland.Sun.COM (RQ Digest Maintainer)
To: RuneQuest@Glorantha.Holland.Sun.COM (Daily automated RQ-Digest)
Subject: RuneQuest Daily, Wed, 13 Oct 1993, part 1
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