From: alex (alex@dcs.gla.ac.uk)
Date: Sun 19 Jun 1994 - 19:46:43 EEST
Barron Chugg:
> Anyway, I was wondering if I had missed an obvious Lunar Trickster.
Poor Lunars borrow, great Lunars steal. Note the Empire already has a Trickster figure in Rakenveg, and may also have a "healed" version of Eurmal (or simply import the cult in some places).
Nick Brooke:
> The Glorious Reascent's account of Dara Happan myth is non-God Learned (it
> pre-dates the God Learners) and was never assimilated into the monomyth, as
> the God Learners never got to Peloria (cf. the Secrets Book appendix: "The
> Pelorian mystical geography was almost virgin territory since the area was
> never actively part of the God Learner's conspiracy"). So it hasn't been
> shoehorned/pruned into the Monomyth.
The Big Picture of Dara Happan mythology certainly was squished into the monomyth, as a quick glance at GoG will confirm. Partly, of course, the Theyalans helped do the GLers dirty work for them, by identifying some Solar entities with parts of their own myths, and indubitably their view colours the monomythised version.
> As Sandy said yesterday, to cope with weird and different mythologies the
> God Learners spawned splinter groups.
I think this confuses cause and effect. (Big problem in the godplane, as we've seen...) The empire splintered, I'm sure, for reasons of excessive distance, politics, and greed, not Scientific and Artistic Differences. One unified empire would eventually have produced a Bigger and Better monomyth to explain _everything_, I'm quite sure.
> > Why the Sow Mother, and not (male) Mralot? Or are both worshipped?
> They're the same person, Joerg: Hsunchen androgyny.
Nickly God Learnerism? C'mon, Nick, you have to Denounce your heresy before we can help you with it...
> BTW, the "Esrolian Humakti" from MOB's Lottery Swords are more a product of
> the cosmopolitan urban Holy Country culture than a reflection of what goes
> on out in the sticks, IMHO.
Seems a feeble complaint to me, since Esrolia _is_ the most cosmopolitan, urban part of the Holy Country.
> I get sad when people say they feel "a bit Nicked"
> whenever I open my big mouth, but there's sweet F.A. I can do about it [...]
It's probably a sort of left-handed compliment, Nick, that your musings are so often taken as being authorative (if deluded, I suppose, if they're being complained about). It is, however, symptomatic of the wider phemonenon of someone asserting some position, and everyone else trying to guess whether he or she means According to Zee Roolz/Greg Sez/By Obvious Extrapolation/ In My Campaign/I Thought This Up Ten Minutes Ago. I'd suggest that everyone attempts to label their opinings thusly, by their own rating of its Lhankor Mhy Truth Grade Rating, but I bet this would go the way of John Hughes' "level" declarations, and I'm not sure I could be bothered myself. If we consider everything to default to I Thought This Up Ten Minutes Ago, though, the least friction will probably occur.
> [...] short of shutting up. And that's not an option I'd consider...
Well, that's all right, then.
> Bryan posited:
> > And it could be that the Lunars really have no idea that Orlanth is
> > worshipped in Ralios and points distant. They may know that "a storm
> > god" is worshipped there, but little else.
> And, so far as their theory goes, they could be right (Or was Odin really
> Mercury all along?). Against the vocal God Learner majority on this list, I
> think there are far more differences between various Ruling Storm Gods than
> the spelling of their name.
Shurely shome mishtake, "As part of the vocal God Learner majority", no? I seem to recall the first (and second) human to complete the LBQ being domiciled in Ralios, so if he was deluded in his belief he was worshipping Orlanth, gimme s'more of that delusion, man.
> BTW, as a name for "the Ralian form of Orlanth"
> I've used "Orlando", which has several pleasant associations: berserking,
> amorous insanity, chivalry, Ariosto, orange cats.
That works for me. Indeed, I have a Cunning Plan for which this'll be handy... Shame about the connotations of that place in the free-fire zone of the New World, though.
> The trad. Ralian form of elective confederate kingship looks significantly
> different to the more hereditary type we see in Sartar, to my (optimistic)
> eye.
This is probably just a "larger scale" variety of the elective, confederate kingship that Sartarite tribes have. No big deal.
> Orlanth Rex would be King of the Gods for different reasons in Ralios,
> and far more easily ousted by dissent among his followers.
Orlanth Rex is also, apparently, the god of elected positions such as tribal king, and thane.
> Extension to language is one more logical
> step along the same path. And we *know* the Lunars designed and built an
> efficient and stylish new language for their Empire.
Yeah, but we have reason to doubt that it's one in which the concept "Chaos is Evil" is inexpressible, seeing as this would be, well, a practical impossibility. (Short of abolishing the necessary linguistic constructs to denote either of the concepts, or of predicative assertion. This is a language people actually _learn_, and _use_, after all, unlike Newspeak even in fiction.)
> It doesn't have to work: Ingsoc's Newspeak didn't; Pao's languages didn't;
> even the Ascians' little red book didn't. You don't have to use it: there's
> nothing "official" about the suggestion at all. It's just one of my ideas.
> If it upsets or revolts you, please ignore it. (Or, better still: tell us
> something else interesting about New Pelorian).
I liked someone's (David Gadbois'?) idea of "distfix" qualifiers in New Pelorian, but like Nick's Newsquawk idea, I think it's a bit much to create out of whole cloth. After all, New Pelorian is known to be substantially similar to Dara Happan, and the Pelorian Hick languages. One way I can imagine such constructions being used is as linguistic metaphors for Lunar Balance; for example the Dara Happan words for "good" and "evil" might be prefixed and suffixed respectively to the given root, to indicate "partaining to moral issues" (or by subtle Newsquawk implication, either "good", or "evil", according to context and implication).
Alex.
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