From: Alex Ferguson (alex@dcs.gla.ac.uk)
Date: Thu 15 Sep 1994 - 06:30:55 EEST
David "ennui" Hall grumbles:
> David Switch:
> Please hurry up with this. I want to switch with Dave Cake and get a cheap
> holiday in Australia!
Me too! Any closet Antipodean Alexes (Aleci?) game?
> Shargash/Entekos/Antirinausia:
> I hesitate to say this, but does anyone else out there find all of this
> endless analysis and investigation of the Glorious ReAscent obscure,
> over-complex, over-blown and completely irrelevant!
I agree that 90% of this thread is... of limited value. But see Sturgeon's Law. The discussion seems inevitable, though, given that it's almost the only first hand info we have on Dara Happa, and after all, GRAY was made available for (approximately) this purpose. And where better to discuss it? If the ovberwhelming answer ti this last is "Somewhere else!", then perhaps we can prevail upon a Technologically Advanced person to set up a GRAY-pendantry list.
> How can any of this waffle help me GM or play the damn game?
Straw man, since only a Complete Loonie (hi Nick?) would even attempt to play a game in Dara Happa (latter day or otherwise), since all the much need material is waiting to see print. When it does, mind, we'll have other things to argue about...
> Vinga:
> I think she has the Air, Mobility and Earth runes. She is a deity for
> Orlanthi women - but she is also Orlanth Adventuress.
Earth, schmearth. Why, given her fairly-widely-agreed-on lack of any earth powers? Do I detect a hidden assumption that all Girly Deities are associated with the earth?
> Note: I believe that
> women can't join the cult of Orlanth per se. [...]
> To get automatic access to almost
> all Orlanthi magic (and special Vingan magic) they must join Vinga.
I think I mostly agree with this. I imagine it varies quite a bit, though. Mortasor: "Women warriors?". "Conservative" clans in rural Sartar: it's assumed that each gender will follow the appropriate Path, and initiation into same is fairly on-the-nod (except in the _really_ conservative areas). If you want to follow the "wrong" path, you have more to prove; for warrior women, you do this by recapitulating Vinga's myth (whichever it is), and hence are in her cult. In most "cosmopolitan" areas, the resistance is less, and the distinction gets blurrier: there will be a Vinga shrine in the city temple, but women Orlanthi won't be as distinctive. In yet more liberal-thinking areas, the two cults might be Separate But Equal (not to say fairly similar). This might an idea promulgated in hitherto chauvinist Orlanthi lands (not Sartar, for obvious reasons) by the Lunars, in order to (free their sisters from subjugation/undermine Orlanthi social structure).
> This theory also leads me to think that she is not
> part of the Esrolian Earth pantheon - or only a very recent addition.
> Proving her to be a part of this pantheon would make a fun campaign!
I'm not sure what the Correct Esrolian attitude to Vinga might be: either she's well-regarded, since she demonstrates Anything You Can Do; or she ain't, since she encourages women to ape Macho Bull Shit behaviour, which doesn't have the same high social worth in Esrolia as elsewhere, so why bother? Doubtless the two (uneasily) coexist, in unknown proportions.
Alex.
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