Me and not-me

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From: argrath@aol.com
Date: Thu 14 Apr 1994 - 03:56:33 EEST


Joerg attributes comments about conversion to me. I don't recall who said them, but it weren't me. Nice try, pal--tried to pull one over on me, eh?

Joerg also says, apropos Humakt in Prax: "...If the army stayed there, so would have the cult, ..." 

     If a frog had wings...
     I dug out the reference I was thinking of, and find that it
refers to the Pol Joni (although they are not named), not the Pure Horse People. Mea culpa. The reference is the Pavis Common Knowledge book, page 12, where it states "They carried battle magics, and their magicians worshiped Rune gods, unlike the shamans of Prax." This was in the 1420's.

     Of course, this is late Third Age, and the reference is copyright 1983, so make of it what you will. I prefer to believe that the nomad cults developed in complexity from shaman-based to mobile-temple-based during the Second and Third Age.

>I don't see the Paps populace as the same nation as the Oasis
people. >To me they always had been close relatives of the beast riders, especially >since the Waha Khans regularly marry Eiritha priestesses, both of the >own herd, and of the Paps. Am I mistaken?

     Well, heck, don't ask me, I'm not official. I see the Paps residents as descended from common ancestors with the Oasis people (and Weis people), speaking much the same language, but much better off in material and spiritual wealth. Why? Because the nomads' ability to use violence against them is limited. There has been some cultural and literal intermarriage between the Paps residents and Oasis folk, as when Oasis slaves have been kidnapped at one place and allowed to settle down elsewhere. A nomad Khan might ritually marry an Eiritha priestess, thus confirming her status in the eyes of the nomads--although it's something I hadn't given any thought to--but he would never settle down, and she would never leave her home. So the cultural gap remains.

     Your point on the trolls gives a REASON for learning cult magic, but not much of a METHOD.

Alex `Maybe single quotes work?' Ferguson asks:
>Anyone have good guesses as to which aspects are associated with Bolongo? >
(Or come to that, with Eurmal, or with Rakenveg. I hereby bet my house > Firebringer is (most usually) a Eurmal
aspect...

     Chaosium has an unpublished Eurmal/Trickster write-up that gives the distributions of the various aspects. When they said "well-travelled" in GoG, they meant _really_well_travelled_. Some of the aspects are only worshiped in two regions of Glorantha. I don't want to get into trouble by saying more, but maybe Someone In Charge will publish this in some magazine ... Codex, maybe?

     BTW, all those Pamaltelan cults also exist, though unpublished.

Re: Population density

     Scientific American had an article some years ago about population densities in north European cultures before agriculture, and they were pretty close to the density achieved in agricultural societies. That's my model for the Rathori. Unfortunately, I don't remember the population/square mile from the article. I worked out the density for Heortland and Sartar once, and recall that Heortland's was about twice that of Sartar, but don't recall the exact figures.

David Dunham asks:
> What's the difference between the Stygian Heresy and the
Henotheistic >Church in Ralios? They're the same thing, depending on who's doing the >naming, right?

     Well, you might get a different answer from Nick or someone else, but my answer appears in the Church History in Codex #2. Subscribe today!

"And then I write
By morning, night,
And afternoon,
And pretty soon
My name in Dnepropretrovsk is cursed,
When he finds out I publish first!"

     --Tom Lehrer, "Lobachevsky"

--Martin

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