From: alex@dcs.gla.ac.uk
Date: Sat 11 Jun 1994 - 15:51:11 EEST
I alarm Mark S. c/o Tom Yates thusly:
> >On the third hand, note that Loskalm had clearly annexed part
> >of Junora long before anyone had even heard of the Kingdom of
> >War.
> Clearly!?! Could you please quote your sources?
G:G,CotHW:2. The description of the territory held by the Kingdom of Loskalm. The land linking the two Loskalmi penisuli is part of Junora.
"But!", I hear you all cry, "Junora isn't a unitary political entity, merely a geographical area, part of which is _naturally_ subject to the Kingdom of Loskalm!" Doubtless the very words of Sir Mertiam as the Order of the Swallow marched in.
(To add a bit of equivocation, I don't recall if N. and S. Loskalm were separated during the ban, so one might argue this was "counted" as part Loskalm when the ban began, so one could imagine it'd been held ever since the Kingdom invaded and annexed all of Junora (and most of the rest of the Janube valley) a long, long time ago.)
> I've only
> heard that: "Loskalm led in the exploration of the new Fronela
> ... Yet the kingdom has exhibited no imperial intent and has
> scrupulously respected the territorial claims of nearby lands."
Anyone care to run a book of the boundaries of Loskalm in the near future? ;-) (Junora will "apply for membership" of the Kingdom, the Kingdom of War will be annexed, the Janube city-states will be made "protectorates" to protect them from the Nasty Jonatings; speaking purely hypothetically.)
> Someone else says:
>>> There is no way to DI out if the execution is performed on Sacred
>>>Ground of a deity not of the character's creed.
> Alex responds:
> >Not true, actually.
Sandy ordains:
> Ever since RQ I, Divine Intervention has been forbidden when
> in ground holy to another god than your own. Chaosium's house
> campaign practiced this rule, and so did everyone I know. Why do you
> say, "Not true", Alex?
RQ3. Perhaps you should join the RQ2 Return to Rightness crusade, Sandy? ;-) In case there's a flame-war in the wind, I'm fairly agnostic about this rule, I'm just here to quibble.
Joerg:
> Where did the Lunars obtain their copy of Zzabur's Blue Book?
Wrote their own, I should think.
Devin Cutler:
> Also, I don't see the fact that Glorantha is filled
> with "religious fanatics" as a bad thing. In fact, it lends a great deal of
> fanatic tension to the whole. And it gets away from the D&Dism of "Yeah, I'm
> a cleric of XXXXX. Worship? What do you mean worship?"
It's getting a bit close to the converse D&Dism of Follow the Rules, or Your God Manifests and Splatters You, though. Certainly it's nice if characters are played to have the beliefs they "`historically'" should have. One could argue that's the whole point of having "provably real" magic in Glorantha; otherwise, all the latter day cynic players would spend all day arguing about whether Orlanth was real, whether someone's character being saved from death by the poison dart hitting this clan brooch instead of his throat was Divine Intervention or just a handy bit of luck. Whereas, Orlanthi, even without Reproducable Under Scientific Conditions magic to convince them, would just be appropriately and reverently thankful.
> "Not unlike the Malkioni, no?"
> The Malkioni are an ENTIRELY different case, and I have never had a problem
> with them as they are being portrayed.
To wit, that the Loskalmi are (un?)comfortably one of the most devout, not to say rabidly fanatic (but in a good way, Sandy <g>) of all Gloranthan societies? Glad to have you on board.
> Nevertheless, I submit that they do display whole magnitudes lower, since
> they do not witness healings on the order of, say, that healing spring
> written up in an early TOTRM (I think it was issue 3 or 4). Wounds do not
> close up at Lourdes in a matter of seconds as you watch.
[...]
"Instant Magical Healing? Hrm. Obviously just a version of Treat Wound speeded up by demonic pacts. His soul will be forfeit." Magic is a _fact_ _of_life_ in Glorantha, not (just) a symptom of theistic worship, much less of unquestioning, monolithic theistic faith.
> First of all, someone's bad is another person's good. If I worship Ragnalar,
> I am good if a rape people. So there is really no such thing as a Bad God.
That was rather the point of the Ironic Capitals, doncha know. If magic is an argument for faith, then it's an argument for "faith" in _everything_ which manifests magic, whether "evil" god, spirit, demon, sorceror, or whatever.
> "It does? Most afterlives aren't even (claimed to be) _in_ the spirit
> world"
Glad to be of service.
> I preasumed that the Cat Spirits and the Plant spirits,
> and the other Spirits mentioned in a Different Worlds article implied that
> most spirits were the deceased cult members serving their god by becoming
> allied.
Those are "shamanic type" afterlives. It's demonstrable that some form of spirit survives death (at least in such cults), and is contactable a la Daka Fal worship, but this doesn't seem like a cast iron guarantee of survival of the individual soul, or personality, to me. Could be just a form of psychic residue of the individual (and his magic, natch). Since shamanic cults are only loosely associated with particular gods, and obedience to their strictures, this is not a devoutness-inducing argument of much strength. You don't have to be a Good Plant to get to be a plant spirit, or at least, only in the mostali sense of the term.
Most theistic afterlives are on the Godplane, or Heroplane. You can go there (if you just happen to be a gut-renching powerful HeroQuester), but you'll have a hard time contacting and communicating with some particular individual there. Even if you do, Nick Brooke will tell you it was all entirely subjective when you get back, so who's to believe you? Mind you, if you performed a successful LBQ to _bring back_ someone from the dead, that'd be moderately impressive. But it's been done, what, three times? in Time, none of which were to resurrect some long-dead individual. (I think? Or was Talor a dead chap?)
> The simple fact that any schmo off of the street cannot walk up to an altar
> to Babeester Gor and get Axe Trance is a sign that a deity is involved.
It's a sign that Babeester Gor temple guards have Sharp Axes.
Alex.
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