[Glorantha] Re: Glorantha Digest, Vol 12, Issue 289

[Joerg Baumgartner]

Mikko Rintasaari

> Joerg writes
> :We take nearly aurochs-sized highland cattle and modern horses as our
> :image of Gloranthan agriculture when even Charlemagne's cattle and horses
> :were somewhere between 50% and 70% the size of today's breeds. (Bone
> :findings don't lie...)

> We?

Creature stats, for instance - domestic cattle is large 5W, bison is large
10W. A zebra is large 20 and still larger than the cattle skeletons found
from Viking Age northern Europe.

> I definitely see the Sartarites riding small shaggy horses (like the
> viking age norwegian ponies)

> http://www.jaatalli.fi/laidun1.jpg

> And the shaggy highland cattle are not all that big.

Where I live they have a herd of highlands around the corner and a herd of
bisons 4 km away, and the size difference between bulls from either herd
is negligible. Cows are just a little bit smaller, fitting the stats I
quoted from Anaxial's Roster, above.


> I've also seen very conflicting views on the whole "horses getting bigger"
> arguments. Doesn't seem to be a universally accepted thing. Anyway, the
> only big horses I think about for Glorantha are those that are used by the
> cataphracts in the West (and Carmania).




> :When it comes to Gloranthan ships, we take 16th century Mediterranean as
> :our watermark...

> No way. I can't imagine why one would want to do that, when the bronze /
> early iron age offers such a wealth of sea traditions to draw on.

Early Iron Age sails were primitive, if present at all - the Anglo-Saxon
immigration occurred on boats like the Nydam boat, a clinker-built boat
for some 24 people without any sail or mast. (Still a technical
advancement over early Mediterranean wooden ships which were built shell
first, skeleton later.) Seaworthyness of Mediterranean galleys was
minimal, wind strengths of 6 Beaufort meant beaching or perdition.

Compare e.g. Wolf Pirate longboats, which are on par with 9th century
Viking Longships or contemporary Byzantine dromons.


> Foenecian, persian and greek navies for instance, and even the reed ships
> of ancient egypt. Much more interesting than yet another high medieval /
> early reneisance setting.

The largest bronze age fleets of record were the acheans at Troy (with
"10.000 ships") and the naval invasion of Egypt beaten back by some Ramses
(also around 1300 BC). Neither were strong on sails, riding out storms or
currents.

> See Mika Waltari's "Turms the Immortal" (hmm.. translated The Etruscean
> for some bizarre reason, I see) for some really inspirational scenes of
> sailing / naval warfare in the era.

Can't really say I was much inspired (although my grasp of Swedish for the
translation I have maybe wasn't that good at the time I read it). Neither
did Sprague de Camp's novels from ancient Persia and Egypt inspire me to
use that as an example for Gloranthan sailing.

On the other hand the first Hanseatic Cogs were built by carpenters with
several centuries of non-naval building tradition and some
not-too-detailed observation of Viking or Slav vessels, with a couple of
typical landlubber errors but also a number of new concepts and
improvements over the previous ship types. This strikes me as similar to
the situation both the first Jrusteli shipbuilders in defiance of the
Waertagi monopoly and the ship-builders after the Closing were faced with,
so that's the general model I would follow. (Both Jrusteli and
post-Closing shipbuilders had reports or even remnants of older
shipbuilding technology to assimilate, survivors of the Storm Age naval
conflicts like rare Artmali yachts encountered near Umathela (where the
Waertagi carried the Jrusteli) or Helering designs which may have survived
in coastal southern Genertela, downsized to fishing vessels.


Restricting Gloranthan shipbuilding to Bronze Age or pre-Roman
Mediterranean technology would be counter-intuitive to most narrators who
are way more familiar with the workings of the British navy in the
Napoleonic wars (thanks to C.S.Forester, the Bounty mutiny etc, or pirate
movies set in 17th century Caribbean). People expect multi-masted sailing
vessels, with rigging to climb in and fall down off durign naval battles.
People expect ships tacking into the wind.