From: Nick Brooke (100270.337@CompuServe.COM)
Date: Sat 07 May 1994 - 10:34:36 EEST
Glad you liked the write-up, Alex!
I agree about Yelmic nobility lording it over racially-distinct Lodrili peasants: remember my Von Daniken pastiche ascribing their origins to two types of spaceship? One of the incidental joys of ancient history (sorry, Devin!) was discovering the Babylonian underclass were called 'blackheads' by all their various rulers...
I'm not sure I did Nick you with Carmanian Kshatriya: try using the three cities of the Tripolis as 'caste-functions', Priests (Yuthuppa), Noblemen (Raibanth) and Soldiers (Alkoth). Yuthuppan Astrologers and Augurs are like the real-world Chaldaeans and Etruscans rolled into one. Alkoth gets all the great Spartan customs and mannerisms, and Roman military discipline perhaps. Raibanth ain't what it used to be since Glamour was built next door...
Enjoyed Sandy's piece on old Yelmic nobility fallen into genteel decay. To find a Third Age role for them, I borrow from the Romans: the Dara Happan nobility work in my view of the Lunar Empire much as the Roman Republican Senatorial class did in the early Roman Empire. The channels of power have been redrawn to exclude them, with jumped-up nobodies (Commoners! Slaves!! Women!!!) holding 'new' offices in the bureaucracy which really runs the state, but the form of the old government is retained in many places, with trivial jobs that only Yelmic Nobles can be appointed to (often in the municipal government of Dara Happan cities!).
I am pretty sure there is a Lunar Imperial Senate, and similarly sure that it is essentially a useless body. Though they do get to wear neat togas...
I'm using a lot of 'parallels' here to get ideas across; sorry if anyone gets upset by this handy shorthand. Please, let's not have a "That idiot Nick says Lunars are Romans..." flaming session.
Sandy wrote:
> Mike Dickison says that trolls aren't insects (I agree) and elf women
> shouldn't have breasts because they're not mammals. He also feels
> that elves should be ugly as sin. A long-standing tradition on not
> only Glorantha but Earth is that the woods-inhabiting Faery should be
> inhumanly beautiful, or at least intriguing.
I think some elves -- the ones selected for it -- are inhumanly beautiful. Others look more like lurching things out of Mythago Wood. These don't get to meet people so often, and when they do they're mistaken for War Trees. Dan's pic of a Wenelian elf in Tales #9 is persuasive to me as an average. (Hey, back in RQ2 days the average elf had a human-perceived CHA of 4).
But then I also believe elves are more functionally specialised than the rules let on. So 'breeding' (pruning? gardening?) attractive, personable elves to meet the outside world would make lots of sense. And, of course, these would be the ones we meet most of the time.
> I think that elf women have breasts because they're a lot less
> interesting without them.
Agreed. Like duck teeth, really.
MOB asked:
> A question: when the renascent Vadeli arrived off the Pamaltelan sea-
> board 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 wonder if the Second Age Jrusteli Empire made quasi-genocidal attempts on the blueskins of Pamaltela for ancestral/religious reasons. Certainly they could have invoked a religious justification for any kind of oppression or brutality against the Veldang. And this cultural attitude would still be found in Third Age Umathela. IMHO, things that really bug the Brithini are likely to have been passed down to other Western cultures: hatred of the Vadeli is one of these. "Thou shalt not suffer a blueskin to live".
Cain and Abel? I meant to hybridise this some day with Abraham and Isaac, but forgot to do so in time for my last posting.
Is it possible for the Vadeli to use Hrestoli concepts of caste-mobility, and ascend through their 'species' caste-structure? I read one of Greg's Ancient Western Sources when I visited Chaosium in which Hrestol becomes "Judge of the Vadeli" after his exile from Seshneg; the Vadeli were not developed in this account at all, and Hrestol ruled them as a nice guy in the story. Me, I'd keep the title but change the tale...
Is the Pharaoh a Blue Vadeli??
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