The Orlanthi sun-god

(There is a later draft of this).

Greg Stafford asked an interesting and correct question over a decade ago, when asking about "who is the Orlanthi sun god?" - but the answer he got is one that caused a lot of confusion, until it was hammered into a compromise, such as this summary by Nick Brooke.

Unfortunately, I think Greg's answer was wrong in part. Elmal is the night watchman who stayed behind when Orlanth went on the LBQ - his aspects are twilight and the watch-fire. The reconciliation with Yelmalio as per Nick is an identification of the twilight aspects, which presumably rejected the contamination by the Lowfires that the watch-fire implies. Corollary - Elmali are able to use some minor fire magic appropriate to a night watchman's role, while Yelmalions are not. That aside, any deity that was around during the Great Darkness really, by definition, cannot be a sun god.

At about the same time that Greg dropped his bombshell, Neil's RQ game almost stumbled across the right answer, when the PCs stumbled across a remote Orlanthi tribe who partook of very austere ways like the Solar monks of the far northern Empire of long ago. Their Orlanth is, I think, much more likely to be the real Orlanthi sun-god.

The Orlanthi Sun-God is Orlanth in his aspect as the successful completer of the LBQ, Orlanth Lightbearer, or Orlanth Lucifer if you rather. Not the static Sun of the old sterile Emperor, but a sun that follows the storm spiral, around and around the world, sometimes to the north, sometimes to the south. And in the same way that the adventurer aspect of Orlanth has a separate name, so would this, the Orlanthi New Sun - and Ehilm sounds the most plausible name, but the cult of that name in HeroQuest is actually that of Elmal, the night watchman.

I shall have to think about what the appropriate keyword description would be for this.

Glorantha

As anyone who's read my RPG pages - and especially my background page - will know, I burned out on gaming about 8 years ago - and that I spend a lot of time on those pages talking about either variant D&D or Champions, but other systems are only mentioned in passing. This may make the entry below, about HeroQuest, a little cryptic.

I've had a love/hate relationship with RQ/Glorantha for going on 25 years now.

I first encountered Glorantha in the form of the original Nomad Gods game at the Wargames Soc. at college, and thought it a little bit silly - though by no means as bad as Greg Costikyan's humour in the SPI Swords and Sorcery game. It was a while later, when looking to other systems to find bits to plunder to fix D&D, that I picked up a copy of RQ2 (the new edition at £8, as opposed to the old one at £5, this being back in about '78). RQ2 had a lot of things that I thought made for an ideal game - individual skill ratings rather than blanket levels, fixed hit-points - but it didn't have a splashy magic system in that way that *D&D always has, so while I tried a few one-off sessions, and Karen even did her first bit of GMing c1980 with RQ set in a setting of her own, Glorantha languished as something I read fragments of in Cults of Prax, Trollpak, and Cults of Terror, but never did anything with.

And at that sort of time, we burned out on the genre, and we moved because I needed a job, and we started playing other games, mainly Champions. Meanwhile HeroQuest had gone from being a "source to be published" in the list at the back of the RQ2 rulebook, to an item in the Spring 1982 issue of the Chaosium Games catalogue in which promised it for that summer.

Time passed. RQ3 happened, and the combination of the dollar price hike, and the pound falling almost to parity meant that it cost 5 times what the previous edition did - £40 in 1985 money [by comparison, HeroQuest is priced at about £24 in 2003 money]. I did pick up the hideously expensive boxes of Gloranthan background (Gods of... , Genertela) and pored over them for arcane details.

By the late 80s, I was back in Cambridge and working at the same company as Neil. As the Champions game folded due to increasing dissatisfaction with the Hero System, he and I would spend hours going over the minutiae as revealed, especially the new scraps in a new fanzine, Tales of the Reaching Moon. I remember fascinating discussions about recherché topics like the implications of the RQ2 Prax map showing the burial mound of a prehistoric hero as the same specially large mountain pictogram as Kero Fin.

And so he set up an RQ3 game bsed in a slightly variant Glorantha. I had problems stumbling over bits that had changed subtly since the previous edition; other players had problems with other bits of the system like the experience rolls (one Unicorn Woman had her most frequently used combat skills stick at ~45% while others went up to ~70% because the dice would hardly ever convert a skill check into a % increase). We all found that the restraints on spirit magic meant that the old standby of "Glue" (Healing 6) that made combat a survivable thing was no longer a plausible strategy. A belated change to Pendragon, to use the virtues and passions system as part of the cult attributes just made things worse - the movement rates and ranges meant that we had something like five times as many rounds to take damage from emplaced trollkin slingers when advancing from their extreme range to contact. [From this experience, I'm somewhat dubious about Pendragon's ability to truly emulate tha almost D&D-like combats in Malory.]

The game also suffered from the "tourist trap" tendency - with a detailed world, the temptation comes to play tour guide, and escort the PCs around all the interesting parts - so out lowly step and fetch PCs were sent hither and yon, until the game folded under cumulative dissatisfaction, and I ran some cathartic high level D&D to permit some righteous ass-kicking that the RQ had denied us.

With the '90s came the RQ-revival, spearheaded by a group that gave the appearance of seeking to play something between "Morris-dancing, the RPG" or "Iron John, the RPG". The Glorantha that came out of this was trapped in a Procrustean bed of unsatisfactory mechanics, and with revelations that changed the perception of the world - not essentially trivial things like the (Y)elmal(io) flap, but that the Sartar/Lunar conflict was a lot more German/Roman rather than Greek/Persian as the RQ2 art implied. Yes, Orlanth is meant to be Tiw, not Zeus, and the new vanguard had only contempt for the stuckist grognards who liked the old way better.

In the middle of this I burned out on gaming, and when Hero Wars came out, I couldn't even gather the energy to focus my eyes on Neil's copy. I knew I had reservations about what I heard about the system - important events getting handled in a quantum box, with abstract action points expended until the state collapses and you can tell what happened - like who got wounded and how much. Later on, I did buy Storm Tribe, another gods book, and without the damnable barbarian culture.

But this year, HeroQuest - I did like what I saw at Conjuration enough to look out Storm Tribe, if only to try and answer the question “who are all these strange gods that the demo game PCs were devotees of?” and then get a copy of HQ for my birthday. I'm still not sure about the system, the extended resolution in particular; and when I'm in a mood to worry about having too much arbitrary fiat power as GM at the totally free scope of attributes (like Over the Edge, but more so). The rules hacker in me starts to think about perhaps using something like the West End Games' StarWars D6 system, with a HQ keyword corresponding to an SW stat. But I was motivated to at least think about doing something.

Having been out of the loop for a while, I found much Gregging and counter-Gregging had gone on, but I think that Glorantha has reached a point where it has completed a metamorphosis, to a new understanding and a new system, unlike the very awkward state in the '90s when the New True Way and the uninspired changes that went into RQ3 mechanics tore in different directions. Now at last we have a mechanical exposition that supports, rather than thwarts the subjectivist approach.

For example, back in RQ2 days, there was the assumption that a warrior would be an Humakti, and there was the one-size-fits-all cult of Humakt; but in ST, Humakt is a seriously scary god that only dangerous weirdos follow (normal warriors would follow Orlanth sub-cults that no-one who hasn't been following Gloranthan events in detail for the last few years will have heard of, like Hedkoranth and Helamakt). In HQ, he's back to being a standard warrior god – but only for cultures neighbouring Sartar. This I interpret as being because the core Orlanthi culture has access to all the minor attributes/associates of Orlanth, which squeezes the other big gods out into the margins. A similar process seems to have taken place with Babeester Gor, with the Orlanthi having Vinga in the place that the Earth Avenger takes in related cultures who don't also have the Defender Storm.

Of course the process is not 100% – it doesn't fix the (Y)elma(io) problem that really set the cat amongst the pigeons over a decade ago, and had been just about reconciled (provided you don't enquire too deeply into how the myths fitted together) – the ST version of Elmal as the Orlanthi sun-god doesn't really hang together as a myth (it singularly ignores who it was that the Orlanthi think was the object of the Lightbringer quest, or the fact that Yelmalio is the light of the sunless sky i.e. twilight). So far he's swept under the carpet in HQ, in favour of (St.) Ehilm (a Saint in Aeolian Esvulia (formerly Heortland)) - and we last heard of Ehilm as a western figure, the sorcerer who had become too entangled in solar powers, cognate to Yelm.

One thing that hasn't changed in HW, and by adoption, HQ, are the rather silly monsters, which hark me back to the first encounter with Nomad Gods. One thing that has improved a bit are the scenarios. I dismissed an early famous RQ scenario with this summary:

The adventurers are approached by a man seeking armed assistance. He explains that he has bought, for resale, a sacred item. The person who he'd bought it from had stolen it from a small nomad tribe, killing most of the adults in the process. When two of the survivors demanded its return from the man now seeking PC assistance, he had his assistant shoot one. He has now found out that they intend to return in force to recover their property, and is seeking help to defend his house and this item. – What do your characters do?

The scenarios in HQ are a bit better than this.

Shot down in the night

I had been expecting to report something about some tentative progress to maybe giving HeroQuest a try. So I started to sound out the group descended from my old Wednesday night players. Karen had dropped out when they moved on to Ars Magica, Ian left subsequently after "creative differences"; but shifting to a one Sunday afternoon a month format they'd picked up Phil Masters, and Sheila, and David Chart (but he's in Japan for a year so is out of the picture). I started by approaching Neil, who ran our last essay into Glorantha over a decade ago, and who now guides the saga. Was there surprise or even encouragement that I might be thinking of getting back into active practice of the hobby? Was there heck!

No, instead, I was met with a fairly sneering bit of style snobbery, which could be summarized as "We have discovered troupe-style play and it is the one true way." And I was cited an example of this superiority from the Saxum Caribetum saga. The covenant has discovered some tunnels affected by faery magic that give them a reliable one-way short-cut into the crypt of the cathedral at Nantes, several leagues away (but they've not figured out the rule for the way back, though some characters have lucked out). Apparently a very satisfying session was had when one of the magi - with the Blatant Gift, and an in-yer-face sigil - took the short-cut, arriving in the crypt just when Mass was being celebrated. Seeing a church full of worshippers, his reaction was not to lie low until later, but to cast invisibility on himself and exit through the crowd - with predictable results. Meanwhile a number of grogs wait in an ale house and make like Shakespearean low-lives.

Earlier, agreeing rules for gifts to and loans from the covenant library had become a long-running issue that occupied much of the early real-time months of play. Now I was told how another player (the quiet and unassertive one) helps by keeping a database with the community economic model including models of death and injuries as part of the working year - not just disease, but "industrial" accidents like crushed by falling tree when felling for lumber - and that they were all happy with playing their mediæval soap-opera.

From which I deduced three things. One, the first-cited player still hasn't gotten over playing self-destructive chaotics; two, the real benefit of eschewing the party is that he can no longer get everyone else into deep shit. And three, that I don't think I'm going to find any potential HeroQuest players there.

Looking to other likely victims - One gaming couple we know, but they have children of an age where they are no longer tucked up in bed soon after dinner, but cannot yet be left to fend for themselves for an evening. Or there's the different Wednesday night group which Karen has joined, the only one of whom I've played more than a very occasional convention pick-up game including is the ubiquitous Phil Masters. The others I don't know well enough to put names to faces, let alone idiosyncrasies in playing styles. Coming in as an outsider to GM definitely isn't the environment I'd want for an all-new all-different toe back into the gaming water in terms of system and interpretation of setting. Which rather puts the ki-bosh on the whole enterprise, really.

[Now playing - Argent - Hold your head up]

Book — Ilium — by Dan Simmons

I just finished Dan Simmons' new book, Ilium - which starts out as a reworking of the Iliad, through the viewpoint of a classical scholar sent to observe the Trojan War from a post-human solar system, some 1500 years into the future, and gets both epochs increasingly involved with each other. It's neat, wide-screen epic stuff. Just a pity about his total flubbing of his arithmetic in the one point where he suddenly quotes exact numbers (the acceleration, journey time and distance covered in various phases of the moravecs' flight from Jupiter to Mars at opposition just doesn't cohere, even granting a generous allowance of slipped decimal points).

There is a bit of the rather hackneyed ignorant managed humans of the future in one of the plot threads, which I found boring and annoying, and not terribly original (I was reminded a bit of Raymond F. Jones' Renaissance), but don't let that spoil your enjoyment of the other threads. I'm eagerly awaiting the Odyssey that must follow.

That day again

Today is a beautiful crisp autumn morning, with high cloud, and the promise of a warm front coming over later. Dew turned all the spider webs to silver in the fields, unlike the dry, clear, high-pressure weather of that day two years ago, when we needed the blinds down in the meeting room where we were that afternoon, when the news came in.

Pretty soon after, I suggested what the obvious rebuild for the WTC ought to be - and it seems that I was not the only one thinking along those lines.

Night Watch

Today, the streetlights were still on at 06:30 - admittedly it was overcast and drizzling; but already the alarm goes off before the sun clears the rooftops across the road.

As the year turns...

Well, today is my 46^th birthday; and I'm greeted by the first fogs of the autumn - visibility about 4-5 car-lengths - at my normal going to work time. Not at all the sort of weather to want to bicycle in, even though it would have been starting to clear before I got to work, cutting in to the rapidly diminishing number of days in which I'll have the daylight to comfortably cycle to and from work in.

Film — Pirates of the Caribbean and Tomb Raider/Cradle of Life

Pirates of the Caribbean is a harmless piece of tosh, with Johnny Depp looking stoned throughout his totally over the top performance. Possibly a little too post-modernist and self-referential, but fun.

Tomb Raider/Cradle of Life was not so good.

The first movie was pretty much in the spirit of the game - Lara doing her thing essentially solo against opponents, with the occasional "cut-scene" for conversation. The second movie provided the underwater sequence missing from the first movie (still waiting for dinosaurs and rabid dogs in Italy), and the first sequence in the flooded temple certainly fitted in as hybrid of scenes from the first two games, the story thereafter had far too much of an even dodgier ex-boyfriend than the one that was the main flaw of the first movie. This turned it into just another action movie, for which the sight of Ms Jolie in that skin-tight wetsuit was not really a sufficient balance.

Theatre

Did the Stratford-upon-Avon thing at the Bank Holiday. The As you like it... was not very well done - a new director had the actors all shounting their lines (spit everywhere), and all on one note. I didn't like it, and after suffering through the first hour and a bit, left at the interval rather than sit through another couple of hours of it.

The Cymbelline was much better done, and interesting production of a minor play (another instance of the cross-dressing/missing relatives plot). Unfortunately timing wasn't right to see a performance of The Tamer Tamed, a contemporary riposte/sequel to The Taming of the Shrew.

The best is yet to be

About 21 years ago, towards the end of my research studentship, I decided to take off on my bike for an afternoon, and cycled from Cambridge, out along the Cherry Hinton road, and kept going, through Fulbourn, over the A11, and then decided that was far enough and I'd take the next turning to loop back. That was at Balsham, and the loop back to Linton brought me back on what was the A604. I remember noting how the rough paving (~20mm gravel, standing proud of the asphalt, to give good grip for tyres) sapped energy from my pedalling as I climbed out of Linton, and how I was desperately tired when I surmounted the Gogs and finally saw Cambridge laid out before me once again.

The other Friday, celebrating getting my top gear back (my bike was in for service/repair as top gear had become less and less reliable until I couldn't put any sort of force on it - plus getting a back carrier and mudguards with some decent clearance put on), I set out from town, through Cherry Hinton, up to Teversham, then Fulbourn, then up through the Wilbrahams to Six Mile Bottom, and thence down through Balsham to Linton. Feeling good, I carried on past down to Little Walden (with a stop for beer), to Saffron Walden (a sandwich break), then back through Littlebury, Barley and Fowlmere.

Sure the bike is better than the old one, yclept Death Trap, but the legs are that much older.

In similar vein, last Thursday, cycling home from town, I spotted another, and I think younger, cyclist ahead of me, halfway between me and the start of the junction crossing the M11, whom I passed at the junction (so he can only have been doing half the speed I was at our respective natural paces), and continued up the slope without bothering to change down for such a slight incline. With a massive rattling of gears, he stormed past me near the top, only to fall behind shortly thereafter. As we both turned off the main road, he passed me, but then slowed down so that carrying on at my steady pace, I overtook again. He then sat for a while where I could see him in my mirror, positioned to try and overtake; but eventually he gave up and fell behind, which gave me a little - albeit childish - pleasure at having broken his challenge.

Night Watch

Here's what I mean about getting dark at 20:30 at the end of August - 1st magnitude stars visible, or if cloudy, colour only in the deep blue of the sky. Just about enough light to navigate to the bottom of the garden, without the house lights being too bright for necessary dark adaptation.

Night Watch

Today, just after 9pm, the Summer Triangle was visible, and some lesser stars - about the 21:25 mark at the last entry.

By about 20:45, it was dark enough to want headlights, not just side-lights.

Nature notes

I went over to walk the first section of the Peddars Way today, to use up some annual leave. There were the first blackberries of the season ripe, to take the edge off my thirst, and a variety of butterflies - red admiral, peacock, a pale yellow. A bunch of young pheasants burst out of undergrowth ahead of me, and then ran off down the path, providing me with outriders for several tens of yards, before they finally got the idea of leaping into the cover beside the path.

The 1986 vintage HMSO guide I was using was clearly out of date - by the Thet, it warned that the path was narrow, slippery, and on the very bank of the river. When I got there, there was a comfortable wide plank raised walkway. Some lads were swimming in the reedy water, and blue and red damselflies flitted past.

The breckland scenery was quite similar to that of the Gévaudan, where I walked last year.

P.S. The 1986 vintage guide also neglected to note that the mobile 'phone reception is bad especially when you're walking along the path between two bits of the Army training range...

P.P.S. Also the Dog and Partridge pub is shut, and the inn-sign is fading and peeling, though the more obvious signage looks fairly fresh. The "Closed" plates on the door make the message clear, though.

The march of progress

It's not only just faster processors and bigger hard drives. A couple of years ago, I replaced my 1986-vintage bike with a new one, and was amazed by the added comfort of the ride with the alloy frame and suspension on the seat column. This summer I upgraded my sandals (hard leather and buckles Jesus-style jobs) of similar vintage for modern plastic ones with padded straps and velcro fastenings. Ah, comfort.

But you know it's progress when, like on Saturday, we picked up a mid-day snack at a Marks and Spencers food store near St. Pauls - a couple of wraps - 3 bean and sweet potato, and four cheese and sundried tomato - on the grounds that at the station, the best we'd have would be roast vegetable and brie sandwiches. Twenty years ago, ham, or cheese and pickle would be the best on offer, like as not, and even coronation chicken would be exotic.

I-Spy

We went on the London Eye during that trip. I would advise, if you want to go, to take a disabled friend. You manage to queue-jump most shamelessly, get cheap rate tickets, and a less crowded capsule!

It's surprisingly high - more than it looks. My own "flying dreams" tend to happen at ten(s) of meters at most. This was ten times higher - about 400 feet - enough to look over all the rooftops, and out to the hills to north and south. Well worth it, even if it is only 25 minutes.