From: Alex Ferguson (alex@dcs.gla.ac.uk)
Date: Tue 06 Sep 1994 - 05:31:57 EEST
Argrath@aol.com makes potshots, not contributions:
> Alex fumbles his Animal Lore roll in reply to Joerg's statement--
> >> What I mean is that the beasts of Ygg's isles are [moose]
> >Is this plausible for a bunch of small, isolated islands? Not
> >many Alces alces on the shetlands, are there?
> Gigantism is common on islands.
True, but fairly irrelevant. What we have(n't) here is a large, nomadic, herd-living animal, in a place on the tiny side, in a northerly and dismal enough place to be on the less-than-optimally-lush side. Furthermore, the issue is whether a given animal should be there in the first place, not whether the local version is of unusual size. If the adjoining bit of Fronela (I forget how far off-coast it is) has moose on it, then that's somewhat different.
> Dunno anything about the Shetlands
It's the place with the gigantic ponies.
> >Bryan J. Maloney asserts:
> >> First, Bless Earth is necessary to merely get a "normal" crop
> >>in Genertela.
> At the Gloranthan lore auction, Greg and Sandy said something
> pretty close to this.
Guess that gives about a 40% chance of "something close to this" being True, then.
Nick Eden:
> And its worth remembering that the flood myth turns up everywhere.
Should we also mention that Being Nailed to a Death Rune is also one of the Monomyth's Gateway steps of a HeroQuest?
> Fortuneately I'm not a Jung or Cambell acolyte. but I know
> a man who is....
Who, Greg? Partly, but let's not forget FGS is also a fully paid-up shamanist, and so actually Believes This Stuff (or some thereof).
Joerg on Vinga, and some cultic pot-shots of his own:
> With the myths, I always want a
> one true version for myself, and a malleable basic set to adapt for all
> the local variations.
What practicable difference is there between the "true" myths and the others? If it makes a difference, why would anyone go for the false ones? If it doesn't, why do you need to know?
> This is our inheritance from Cults of Prax, I'm afraid. CoP did the
> marvelous job of explaining both the local phenomena and some world-wide
> effects of the cults, in much more detail than we do now for Vinga, but
> it failed to say which bits were open to variation.
Given the appearance of the words "of Prax" on the cover, one might say all of it. Granted this is to simplify, as it tends to veer erratically between the local and the global in places.
> Also (Alex, reply in private, if at all!) the apparent fixation to one
> deity per cult seems to stem from this supplement.
What a shock. The first thing to describe cults in any detail is the source of their "fixation".
> The tendency to blame the fixed and uniform cult structure of CoP (and
> even RQ3) on the God Learners is just an attempt to incorporate this
> rules construct into the world. IMO it is misplaced for Prax, a God
> Learner forgotten place if there are any.
Prax is a pretty small place, though, certainly in terms of population, and cultural distinctiveness. Within a given Nation or Tribe, I'd be surprised if there was more variation per cult than the odd spell. Over a wider scope, it becomes much more questionable whether one cult writeup realistically serves for, say, Ralios and Prax.
> As to Vinga's identity: If you try to apply linguistics
She's a lighthouse?
> Vinga seems to be a likely candidate to be the (twin?) sister of Vingkot
Makes sense to me. Maybe KoS doesn't give her genealogy because she's "only" a hero, who established the Woman's Warrior Path among the early Orlanthi, rather than a Real God(TM).
> Look forward to our next meeting - this time archery. You had your
> chance in the contest of swords (well, clubs).
I'll bring my scoped Winchester.
> > the Monarch of the Glen, not majestic?
> Most of all, we lack the scenery here on the Cimbrian peninsula to
> make him look majestic.
Cimbrian, Cambrian, Cumbrian, is there a God Learner unification to be made here? They all seem to have red deer, too. Yup, granted you need the scenery to Pose against.
> Routinely entering the woods with bow and arrow
> (for archery tournaments only, hunting must be done with firearms in
> Germany) makes one think of it as prey rather than as a monarch, too.
Deer are hunted and indeed, culled, here too, but it doesn't unduly damage the perception.
Alex.
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