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From: Sandy Petersen (sandyp@idcube.idsoftware.com)
Date: Fri 06 May 1994 - 08:16:41 EEST


Jesper asks
>How common is the knowledge ABOUT the GL Secret? Not the secret
>itself but the knowledge that the secret ever existed, and brought
>down the God Learners. I've always thought that the Doom Guardians
>were quite efficient in not only eradicating the secret itself but
>also the knowledge about the secret.

        As I see it, there are three levels of knowledge of the GL secret. Or of course of any secret

        First, there is Primary Knowledge, at which the individual actually KNOWS the secret and can use it. This level, for the GLs, is now completely extinct. If anyone were to discover this, the Gift Carriers of the Sending Gods would come again. They're still active, you know. Just like the Closing is still active. It's just that the Gift Carriers haven't had anyone to pick on for a while.

        Second, there is Secondary Knowledge at which the individual knows WHAT THE SECRET WAS, but not how to do it. For instance, if the GL secret had been "How to extract purple dye from a sea snail", anyone who knew the preceding parenthesized phrase would know the secret at the Second Level. Anyone who could actually extract the dye would have it at Primary. Obviously, there's a lot of variation here in the Secondary level -- you might know only that the secret had something to do with colored dye, or you might know the exact species of sea snail.

        Third, there is Tertiary Knowledge, at which you know only that there _is_ a secret.

        When the Gift Carriers of the Sending Gods came, they expunged all of the Primary and Secondary knowers of the GL secret. Secondary carriers who were able to permanently forget their knowledge before the Gift Carriers came were able to survive.

        Today, no human has Primary or Secondary information on the GL secret. While Primary knowledge is impossible to obtain, I think that a band of dedicated PCs who worked hard could probably get Secondary knowledge. I don't think such knowledge would activate the Gift Carriers. But if the Gift Carriers were ever activated by the presence of a Primary source, they would then, after eliminating the Primary, move on to the Secondary sources. I also think that there are enough clues and entities knowing fragments of the secret to find out that the GL secret was (Secondary).

        I think that most Gloranthans who know the history of the God Learners have so-called Tertiary knowledge -- that the GL had a secret and were killed for it. In the same manner, most Doraddi know that Bolongo's Mask protects a great secret (Tertiary). A few very wise Doraddi know the secret (Secondary): that there is nothing behind the Mask, not even a god. And only a few of the most advanced cases of Bolongo tricksters know how to use that secret (Primary).

Alex Ferguson asks some questions about Pamaltela. Even though not directly to me, I'll naturally try to respond.

>Grigdom: brown/green.
>Other islands in archipeligo: brown? (Forest, no elves.)

        Jrustela is generally dominated by deciduous trees, though there are evergreens present, especially on the slopes of the dwarf mountain.

>Vralos: Exclusively brown, or brown/green?

        Enkloso and Vralos are the site of Aldrya's Woe, a race war between Brown and Green elf peoples in the First Age. In general, the Green elves lost, and are now much less common than Brown. However, the Green elves are still fairly prevalent in Enkloso, and dominate some parts. There is no residual hostility between the elf types and all now regret the war.

        Note that a "war" in which elves are involved is not fought anything like a human war. No regiments of elves go marching out with arrows to impale one another. Instead, the war is like a long series of one-on-one murders, poisonings, sowing of lethal plants, etc. Elf wars can last decades, even when being waged against other species (such as the human/elf war taking place in Onlaks today).

>Enkloso: why are there two large areas in the north-east marked as
>being free of both elves and trees? Are these areas human-occupied,
>or deforested by some natural phenomenon?

        Those are technically in Vralos, not Enkloso. I believe these are the remnants of the so-called "Season Wars" which, as I recall, are now mostly ended in Vralos, but still being fought in the area south of Tortrica. The Season Wars are wars which are partially ecological and partially military. On one side of the war are civilized humans, either Fonritians or coastal Malkioni. On the other side are the elves and their human allies (Orlanthi from the river bottoms). Despite the cleared areas, the elves are generally agreed as having "won" the Season Wars in the two regions to the west -- the humans there pay tribute and don't stray outside their boundaries.

>Where is the "border" between the jungles in the east, and the
>forest of the west? Perhaps there really isn't one, since the types
>of trees may be rather similar, there simply being a gradation in
>the climatic conditions.

        The "forest" in Dolorofey and Mondoro is rather sparse at times, and a lot of the land here is rather dry hilly uplands. Where the Laskal Jungle starts, it's pretty dense rain forest.

>Glorantha is absolutely, positively and with no doubt a Creationist
>world with _no_ evolutionary history as we 20th century "humans"
>know it. There is no point in classifying families in this manner.

        Except that, as I've said before, the classification system which we use today was developed and perfected by people who "lived" in what they firmly believed to be a Creationist world. The relationships and similarities between groups were still considered useful, and of predictive ability. I.e., useful for play.

        If we were to agree (for instance) that trolls are relatives of shrews, this may have useful implications for play. Likewise, if we instead agreed that trolls are man-shaped insects this, too, leads to interesting conclusions.

        And besides, who says Glorantha has no evolutionary history? I think that there is plenty of evidence for organic evolution throughout Glorantha. Look at the gradual development of trolls into beasties fit for the surface world or the previously-mentioned Aldrya's Woe of Pamaltela, which is really just a thinly-disguised ecological succession. The existence of evolution in Glorantha does NOT eliminate a role for magic, mythology, or Creation.

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