[Glorantha] Re: [HeroQuest-RPG] Theyalan Missionaries

[Jane Williams]

> > Only unfair if you take my remarks totally out of context 
> like that. We were
> > talking about being able to tell whether a certain fruit, 
> already known to
> > be edible, was currently ripe, when this particular type of 
> fruit was new to
> > you. In that context, it's the same skill.
> 
> However, I was questioning your assumption tht the context 
> was the same, which it is not.

In the context I was discussing, it was pretty close.

> > You're holding a fruit. You know
> > it's not poisonous. Going to eat it now, or wait till 
> tomorrow? Whether it's
> > hanging on a tree or you've picked it up off the shelf is 
> irrelevant.
> 
> But you have to know that the fruit is edible and safe, as you do in 
> the store.
> But these poor refugees in the Darkness did not know that the 
> fruit was edible
> or that it was safe to eat, or heck, didn't even know that it 
> might not eat them.

Yes, they did. Those nice missionaries had just told them, and (presumably)
proved it by eating some. But then to find ripe fruit, already knowing what
it looked like and that it was safe, they apparently needed magic. I queried
whether this didn't perhaps suggest that something odd was going on, since
most of us can do this without needing magic. And since then, you've
confirmed that yes, something odd was going on, there was indeed something
wrong with their mental capacity, in fact even worse than I'd thought.

> Well, sorry, not really. But this isn't the place for me to 
> explain the
> difference between soul and brain. If you don't understand 
> that, then there is no point in me explaining further.

Not the same - one is part of the other, and now we know it's "soul", we can
use the more specific term. Simple analogy: "brain" = whole PC. "Soul" =
important bit of software running on that PC. "Brain damage" = "my PC
doesn't work". "Soul damage"  = "Microsoft Word has been corrupted". And the
nice missionaries supply a patch to install to fix it. That analogy won't
stretch any further without breaking, I don't think, but it covers that far.