- In WorldofGlorantha_at_yahoogroups.com, "Roderick and Ellen
Robertson" <rjremr@...> wrote:
>
>
> I find that an awful lot of people try to make Lozonge-wide myths
out of
> local phenomenon. All ogres worship Cacodemon; all red-aspected
warrior (or
> even non-warrior) women are Vingan. Etc., etc, ad nauseum.
>
> Glorantha is still a big place, and cultures can have aspects that
appear
> related, but that developed in parrallel with absolutely no God-Time
> relation, no cross-cultural fertilization, no stealing of myths. (They
> *can* still have related myths, of course, or stolen ones)
>
......
>
> Gloranthans, shake of the ancient chains of RQ2 & 3 Theistic
Oppression!
> Revel in your chance to create gods out of the whole cloth! All you
have to
> lose is a narrow world view! Long Live the Revolution!
>
Amen, reverend Roderick!
I was actually having a conversation along almost these exact lines
with Jeff last night, so I was thinking about this on the way to work
this morning. So I'm going to jump in with some extra points.
- We generally know about the 'greatest' (as in farthest reaching,
most fundamental, followed by the splashiest heroes)
gods/spirits/saints. But lots of places will have their local
equivalents.
- The more localized versions are usually going to be more constrained
than the better known versions. They don't have quite as broad
ranging powers, not as many sub-cults, are missing some key abilities,
have their magic in a less convenient form, are mis-applied worship,
or something. If they were equivalently broad and powerful as their
better known brethren, well, they'd be better known in most cases.
- Doburdan is a great example. Of course within what is now the lunar
empire there are storms, and a being associated with them. But that
does not mean they worship Orlanth! After all, Orlanth's myths only
have him heading far north to fight the Bad Emperor, not as storm god.
He has storm powers, but not as varied as Orlanths, and hence also
not as focussed. This means that a focussed follower of a storm
related Orlanth sub-cult is probably better at that function than a
Doburdan follower, but yet Doburdan has some nifty powers and is very
gameable.
- To use a more indirect comparison, it is like african rice and asian
rice. African (red) rice does not achieve the same yields that asian
rice does, and the hull is harder to remove, so in most cases it has
been displaced by asian rice. However it has millenia of adaptation
to local west african environments, and is much more resilient in
those environments than is asian rice. So it is still grown by some
farmers, because they trust in it to be there for them no matter what.
In other words, up with localized worship!
-Bryan
Received on Thu 12 Jul 2007 - 06:36:23 EEST