[Glorantha] Re: Theyalan Missionaries

[Jane Williams]

> That proves nothing. You can smack your lips all you like over 
> mushrooms, I'm still not eating them. You obviously made some deal 
> with the dead, in order to gain the power of eating the mushrooms 
> that sprout from dead trees.

One can only assume you have the luxury of better food supplies than the
average peasant towards the end of a standard RW winter.
 
> >to find ripe fruit, already knowing what
> >it looked like and that it was safe, they apparently needed magic
> 
> "They" of course means the missionaries. (No, I'm not being snide -- 

No, you're correcting what was presumably sloppy use of pronouns on my part
- sorry!


> they would be the ones who taught the Elmal verses they knew and 
> used.) This is Glorantha -- who WOULDN'T use magic if they could? 

The point I originally made and was corrected on.

And seeing it repeated like that makes me wonder about something else -
Elmal? That well-known god of orchards and gathering food? Huh? A link with
the idea of "sun ripens fruit", perhaps? "Here's one I've finished with".

> (Heck, I could use some magic to detect truly ripe fruit at the 
> supermarket.)

Shame you're a continent too far away for me to take you round a supermarket
(or an orchard) and point at things. It doesn't need magic, not even of the
"sufficiently advanced technology" type.

 
> I've got to ask Elise about some of the damaged cultures she's read 
> about. I think in our world, they don't last long -- a more 
> functional one can easily overwhelm them (as indeed the Hagolings 
> were).

Even if overwhelming them in a beneficial way, as this seems to have been.
It doesn't look as if much was lost of what culture they had, it got
absorbed. I got the impression those 42 verses had been built up from
previously absorbed damaged cultures.