From: Alex Ferguson (alex@dcs.gla.ac.uk)
Date: Mon 23 May 1994 - 00:52:04 EEST
Martin Crim:
> Gee, maybe I missed it because I've only been following the
> Joerg/Alex clash of titans since early March, but no one has
> mentioned the best counter-example yet to Alex's insistance on
> one god to a cult: the Tusk Riders. Their cult explicitly
> worships three different spirits.
Gah, what such insistance? Have I called for the Seven Mothers to be abolished? In any case, note that the Tusk Riders claim to worship one entity, it's merely them nasty GLers who did the cult writeup who say differently.
What I claim is that people don't worship (in a committed way, as opposed to in a "lay membership" fashion), all of a pantheon, or anything much like all. Rather, I think most people worship one god, or in some cases, a "tight group" of local significance. This is why I think the existing model of initiation is preferable to Joerg's.
> Alex "Quotation Marks Anonymous Founder" Ferguson objects to the
> use of the word selenium for the lunar rune metal. Might I ask
> that you please suggest a better term?
I merely pointed out that it connoted the wrong moon. What do you want, one that "sounds like" an earthly metal, one that suggests the Red Moon, or what? I use "Silver", myself, for "the lunar rune metal", though I found the idea of an "extra", specifically lunar metal being discovered/invented by crazed Pelorian metalurgists amusing. After all, who says the association between elements and metals is an absolutely fixed thing, rather than a product of habit and tradition?
> Alex also notes my cleverly-disguised element-rune connections,
> and says this should "only [be] the case for those cults which
> are 'advanced' enough to have a need for it, and magically
> significant enough to provide the capability." Yeah, that was
> kinda the idea. It seems clear to me that you don't have to be
> as advanced to use lead, since it has a lower melting point.
You did much the same with _every_ element, though, and Xiola Umbar isn't really high up the "need for" list, is she?
> Re: exarchs in steel plate
> I don't have any trouble with this, myself, given China's
> historical advantage in technology over the West.
Not in iron armour, they didn't. Anyway, I was quibbling with the cult, not the culture, as I said. Why would an exarch do his own enchanting, even if he really _did_ want iron armour?
Alex.
From: RuneQuest-Request@Glorantha.Holland.Sun.COM (RQ Digest Maintainer)
To: RuneQuest@Glorantha.Holland.Sun.COM (Daily automated RQ-Digest)
Reply-To: RuneQuest@Glorantha.Holland.Sun.COM (RuneQuest Daily)
Subject: RuneQuest Daily, Mon, 23 May 1994, part 3
Sender: Henk.Langeveld@Holland.Sun.COM
Content-Return: Prohibited
Precedence: junk
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.7 : Fri 10 Oct 2003 - 01:34:29 EEST