From: Sandy Petersen (sandyp@idcube.idsoftware.com)
Date: Thu 05 May 1994 - 07:55:57 EEST
MOB asks:
>A question: when the renascent Vadeli arrived off the Pamaltelan
>seaboard claiming they were gods (neato trick!), what did they think
>of the wretched Blueskins (Veldang) of Fonrit? Or are they the
>wrong shade of blue?
I'm sure that if there IS any connection between the Blue Vadeli and the blueskins, the Vadeli didn't dare mention it for fear that their new "worshipers" would realize that the Vadeli couldn't possibly be gods (if they're related to the Blues).
In general, I think there's a tendency to read too much into blue skin. Blue-skinned individuals show up again and again in Gloranthan history, and I'm not sure there's always a connection between them. There are the blue-skinned folk who overran Peloria in the God Time, there are the Artmali. there are the Blue Vadeli, and there is Heler (the blue-skinned rain god). No doubt it's not ALL coincidence, but though blue skin certainly seems impressive to an Earthling, I imagine few inhabitants of Pamaltela think twice about it. For that matter, there are red-skinned entities that come from the Red Moon, but are not necessarily related to the Red Vadeli.
The Blue Vadeli's skin tone might indicate a relationship to the Blue Moon. Or it might indicate a relationship to the sea gods. One intriguing point, though, is the fact that the Artmali Empire is REALLY old (pre-Yelm's demise) and so are the Vadeli. In addition, the Artmali seem to have been pretty much jerks (expelling all non-perfect folk out of their empire), and it's widely believed that the Vadeli are, too. Perhaps they are more closely related than previous study had led us to believe. In fact, perhaps the Brown, Red, and Blue Vadeli are NOT related to one another, but are three separately "evolved" races of man who joined together to form a single society of immortals.
Boris asks:
>how long is human gestation in Glorantha?
I'd say around 270 days, give or take a week or two. While it's clear that the human lifespen is less on Glorantha than Earth (a problem I attribute to the Sunstop, because All Time Changed after it), I don't think that gestation necessarily changed. It makes it simpler to calculate matters for PCs if biological functions are the same, despite the year length.
Rich Staats opines:
>So, the sorcerer, who may not have the spiritual relationship with
>the Earth/Nature the Orlanti does, would probably have a far better
>grasp on how the physical universe fits together.
This leads into the whole God Learner problem. They undoubtedly understood more about how the laws of Glorantha worked than anyone else before or after. But yet they didn't understand anything. The whole question boils down to: Who knows the forest better? The man who lives there, the talented man who paints its landscape in oils, or the man who lives a hundred leagues away and studies its ecological subsystems? I'm a science guy myself, but it's clear we can learn about something by moving in directions other than towards greater quantitative analysis.
>tree shrews' inclusion in the primates seems to depend on when you
>went to college.
Or WHERE you went to college. Incidentally, I have tried to avoid mentioning tree shrews at any time in my discussion of primates and trolls, because of the debate concerning their placement. I don't think trolls are related to tree shrews, but to the other kind. (And I mean "related" not in any sort of real sense at all other than in psychology and physiognomy.)
Pmichaels says:
>Makes me wonder if the (admittedly rare) troll Uleria worshipper
>would draw the more masochistic type of client
While I don't know if trolls "bite" during lovemaking or not, one of my characters (Mad Dog, a horseman from Erigia) visited the Uleria temple in Furthest in Greg's campaign and had an interesting experience. He was going along with another character who really liked elf women, and was boasting of the fact that there were several elf women in this temple. Mad Dog, always contrary, asked, "Do they have a troll?" Turned out they did. When Mad Dog was escorted into her room, she took one look at the little bandy-legged guy, grabbed him by the neck and picked him off the ground, said, "I know what YOU guys want." and batted him clear across the room! The rest of the evening I'll draw a veil over, only to say that in the morning, Mad Dog had two black eyes and several missing teeth. It was his first sexual experience. He wasn't sure if he liked it or not, but he's never experimented with sex again.
>I think you lost a lot of the duckish mystery.
I think you're reading too much into the ducks. I think they primarily exist at the Roleplaying level of Gloranthan Reality, which is why they have so little existence in the mythology or history. If you need to give them an impressive background, psychology, and mythology in order to feel comfortable with them, that's fine, but I'm perfectly happy without any duck "mystery" at all.
Dave Dunham corrects:
>While it's natural to link "chaos" and "swamp," Genertela Book says
>the Sodal Marsh is "now one of the richest regions of the region."
My mistake. Though it also does say that "rumors say that monsters exist there" and that only the ruling family knows the "Secret tracks" through the marsh. It's clear that the monsters don't issue forth from it anymore though.
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