These messages are the accumulation of the messages that were sent out on 
the Blue Room email list between May 1995 and June 2000.  A large portion 
of the information is directly from Professor M.A.R Barker. When the list 
members joined during the time the list was active, they agreed to refrain 
from sharing this data with non list members.  When the list ended, it was 
urged that the data be made available to non-list Tekumel fans, and it 
seemed like a good idea all around.

I only ask that if you download these digests, or have received them in 
some other way, please respect the agreements the list members made, and 
refrain from passing them around and instead point people to the Tekumel 
web site, www.tekumel.com so that they can download them for themselves, 
and see all the other material available on the Tekumel.com web site.

Many Thanks.
Chris Davis
Moderator:  Blue Room mailing list 

Creative Commons - Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 
CC BY-NC-ND

BLUE ROOM ARCHIVE -- VOLUME 21  [20 December 1997 - 3 January 1998]

601: The Origins of Sakbe and Ditlana
602: Current Events in Tsolyanu
603: Miscellaneous Replies
604: Mitlanyal Update
605: More on Vulcan
606: Semaphores continued
607: Sakbe and Ditlana continued
608: Cataclysm and Season's Greetings
609: Shen Language
610: Chlen
611: More on Technology
612: More on Ditlana
613: Telepathy
614: FAQ and Website Update
615: Gods (from Usenet)
616: Sakbe and Ditlana Reply
617: Shen Language Reply
618: More on Ditlana
619: More on Sakbe and Ditlana
620: Chlen Reply
621: More on Ditlana Reply
622: Miscellaneous Questions
623: Pocket Dimensions
624: Scribes
625: Yan Koryani Script
626: Mayan Language
627: Legion of Kaikama
628: Administrivia
629: Mitlanyal News
630: More on Ditlana


*******************************

//601

 [Moderator's Note:  Professor Barker responds to Matthew's question about   ]
[                   the origins of Sakbe and Ditlana.                       ]

[Further Note:  Today, I finished up two major Server upgrades.  This all   ]
[               started 2 weeks ago, and the first one went up last weekend,]
[               the second I finished cutting over today.  I just want you  ]
[               all to know how nutty it has been here.  My wife has been   ]
[               out of town on an emergency business trip.  We haven't done ]
[               any holiday shopping, our boxes of Christmas cards stand un-]
[               opened, and we still haven't bought presents for some of our]
[               out of town family members.  Those we have bought for, we   ]
[               haven't mailed yet.  I guess that my Brother in Australia is]
[               never gonna see his in time...  :)  In any case.  I have a  ]
[               restful couple of days, followed by vacation from 12/24 to  ]
[               1/2.  I'll try to slug through the backlog of messages I    ]
[               have accumulated.  Sorry for the long delay this time.  I am]
[               just exhausted, but I do find that handling the list is     ]
[               quite relaxing (when I manage to keep up).  :)

>[Moderator's Note:  Matthew Pook on the possible origin of Sakbe and Ditlana.]
>[                   Any more info, Professor?                                ]
>[                   Joe Saul notes in message 579, that he meant "lower      ]
>[                   classes" not "lower lasses" as appeared in the message.  ]
>
>Last night (04/11/97) there was an interesting programme on TV that
>[Moderator's Note:  In the US, we do Month/Day/Year, where just about every- ]
>[                   one else does Day/Month/Year.  As Matthew is from the UK,]
>[                   this means Nov 4, 1997.  I am not that far behind!  :)   ]
>explored the culture of the Maya (Central American culture at its height
>from about 400AD to 800AD) in light the work done on translating their
>heiroglyphs.
>
>The previous opinion of them had portrayed them as a scientifically
>advanced, peaceful people. The translations disproved this, showing them
>to be blood thirsty, constantly seeking to appease their gods with blood
>sacrifice.

The Maya did indeed have blood sacrifices, mostly to celebrate/commemorate
the ends of time periods and astronomical events. Great celebrations were
held in the major ritual sites, and captured important people were killed
or tormented and then put away to await more fun and games next year. The
Maya were not as urgent and lavish in their blood sacrifices as the later
Aztecs, however. At its height, I have read that about 20,000 persons were
sacrificed in Tenochtitlan every year.

In my humble opinion, the most unpleasant sacrifice among the Maya was the
drawing of blood by the Maya king from his own penis, using a piece of
sharp shell. He dripped this blood onto strips of paper, which were then
burned and thus "sent to the hods." His wife might run a cord sewn with
thorns through her own tongue. This beats even "belly-piercing!"

>One or two things struck me with regard to Tekumel. I may not be
>entirely accurate as I was tired and not taking notes ...
>
>1. Firstly was the ideas behind the symbol for life and their symbol of
>the cosmos. This was based upon their ideas of direction. Life came from
>the East, West was the source of death and so on. In one aspect of this
>symbol (which was cross shaped) was a road that ran from West to East,
>from death to life, what they called the 'road of life' or 'Sakbe'.

"Sakbe" is one Maya word that made it out to Tekumel and down through the
millennia. The Maya built raised stone causeways through their realm(s),
and somehow I picked up on this when I was no more than ten-twelve and
reading Ann Axtell Morris' "Digging in Yucatan" for the first time. Why
this word stuck is not clear. There are other Maya words and root-morphemes
in Tsolyani and the other Tekumelani languages (some of which are on The
Blue Room's website).

>You can imagine the bells going off in my head. Is this the source of
>the roads accross Tsolyanu? In name at least, if not format.

Yes. You have found me out.

>2. The programme also showed a royal palace/temple complex that had half
>of it torn away (literally cut in half) by a river. This exposed to the
>archaeologists how the top building had been built upon over another and
>so and so on, right back to the original temple/tomb. (Amazingly the
>actual founder of the city/culture and first of a dynasty was unearthed.
>It turns out that he was from central Mexico and a foreigner and was
>always portrayed with circular eye pieces - the source for the whole
>'Charriots of the Gods' idea ...)

This is the city of Copan in Honduras. It is a place of wonders. The idea
of Ditlana may have come from this, although at the time when I first
created Tekumel, there had been no work on many of the Maya cities, and
Ernest Thompson was still telling people that the Maya were peace-loving
stargazers, whose written language was not alphabetic and was wholly
indecipherable, except for dates. Thompson's theories have now proved
indefensible in many features, although he is still highly respected.

>Is this building over of tombs and the like, the souce of Ditlana?

Probably. I was also influenced by the Egyptians, mediaeval India, and
elsewhere in the ancient world.

>In light of these two questions, I wondered just how much this culture
>influenced that of Tekumel?
>
Quite a bit. Remember that the peoples who survived the Great Cataclysm
were Maya, Arabs, and a few other peoples, who dwelt where the eadioactive
poison-bearing winds did not blow. Later, the Maya studied their ancestors'
cultures and architecture, and copied various motifs and features. They
revived their pre-Christian religion and eventually redevloped technology,
at which time they met the Pe Choi, who asked, "What too you so long?"

Regards,

Phil
-----
Chris Davis      Moderator, The Blue Room        blueroom@prin.edu
The Blue Room's FTP site:  http://nexus.prin.edu  or  ftp://nexus.prin.edu
Available 24 hours a day, except when my PC is down, or unavailable.


//602

[Moderator's Note:  Dateline, Usenanu...  Bob Alberti (and the Professor)  ]
[                   have provided some info about the various goings on in ]
[                   the Tsolyani Empire.  I also spoke with the Professor  ]
[                   and he gave me some more details I have added to the   ]
[                   end of this post.                                      ]

> = Professor Barker's comments
  = Bob's comments

>I hope that Bob Alberti will elaborate on his posting to the newsgroup. I
>rarely look there myself, preferring the Blue Room. I would also prefer
>that correspondents write or copy messages to both places, if the posting
>has content for Tekumel fans. I never would have known that Bob had already
>broken the story except for a correspondent who excitedly telephoned me. I
>was rather hoping to break it myself on the Blue Room.

My only mention was made on Friday the 12th (i.e. nine days ago, not yesterday).
It read, in total, "Oh, by the way, Dhich'une is no longer Emperor."
At that time, the Thursday night gaming party had just been dropped off
on the Plane of the Buffalo, and I truly didn't know any more than that.
For all I knew, he was going to head back and reclaim the throne, and I
knew neither the date nor his successor.

>It is true: With Vimuhla's finest warriors pouring up out of the cellars of
>Avanthar, the Emperor decided to leave. With the aid of a sorceress, the
>Lady Sarvodaya Di'ela,

Oh ho!  I didn't know THAT.  I mean, I had guessed it was one of her ships,
but I didn't know she was actively assisting him in any way.

>he set off in one of her airships and transferred to
>another Plane, then on to still other Planes.

I comfort my self with the delusion that I at least inconvenienced him for
a few minutes...

>He thus lives,

(after a fashion...)

>together with
>some of his retainers, but the Imperium is no longer his. The Empire is now
>in a state of elation and wild flux. The capital is in the hands of
>Mirusiya and Taksuru. The latter has already announced that he will
>probably resign the Gold and work as Mirusiya's righthand man. Rereshqala
>has also stated that he wants only the prosperity of the Empire, and he is
>too old and sedentary to do much more. The saddest thing was the death of
>Prince Eselne -- lowly dysentary brought him down. Princess Ma'in is still
>in Tumissa, where she holds court and wishes she were younger and more in
>demand. There will be a Kolumejalim, of course, and there may be some
>surprises.

Here is what little I can add to that.  First off, Chris, make sure if the 
Professor wants to break something more formal than this redirected-private-
message that he has a chance to do so:  I don't want to upstage him!
[Moderator's Note:  Nope.  This was fine by him.                             ]

Our hapless group of low-circle adventurers travelled under the loving
guidance of experienced rapscallion Captain Harchar and his trusty sidekick
Swordswinger (his partner Staffswinger having met an unkind fate some months
before). We were cruising the oceans of the far side of Tekumel in a ship of
the Ancients, given into our bumbling care by some annoyed Wizards from the
College at the End of Time and certain Guardians of Ancient Places who had
wished too hasten our departure from their domain.

One of our party, a Sarku-worshippping crossbowman named Shemesh, had 
unbeknownst to the rest of us been granted certain favors and charges by
highly-placed representatives of his Worm Lord on this side of the globe.
So when we sailed into an amazing harbor, accessable only via a large
tunnel carved through a moutain's roots, Shemesh was in position to serve
his waiting masters.

He disembarked and returned later with the tallest Chima we had ever seen,
explaining that this worthy knew how to operate our Ship of the Ancients.
No sooner had the Chima touched the controls than the Ship vaulted into
the heavens, and for a day we roared along in air too thin to breathe.

When we descended the Chima was gone, and a hirstute human was commanding
the helm.  We descended by night, and were surprised to see a tall tower 
loom out of the darkness.  Peering over the side, we could see nothing
below the ship but darkness.  A gangway was extended from an opening
just beneath the corbelled roof of this tower, and a party of soldiers
quickly secured the main deck.  Our surprise at these activities was
increased when their torches lit the darkness sufficiently to reveal 
the gleam of blue and gold armor, and we heard our native Tsolyani being
spoken for the first time in months.  We were somewhere in Tsolyanu!

Then further persons boarded, some wearing purple robes which were not
those of the Temple of Hru'u, others gesticulating orders mutely.  Still,
I did not catch on, because I am thick.

Finally a young man boarded, accompanied by several elder gentlemen with
the air of wizardry about them.  Finally it dawned on me (it was already
noon for the rest of the party of course) who these people were!  They were 
the Emperor Himself, Dhich'une Tlakotani, as well as the wizards Vridekka,
and our sometime-Chima pilot Jayargo.

Certain things happened very quickly thereafter.  First we heard shouts
and cries from below, where now we could see distantly the torches of 
troops battling at what must be the base of the Golden Tower of Avanthar.

We were at first ignored by the guards, and one of our party managed to
sneak into the engine room with an Eye of Disjection and fired it into 
the engines.  When he woke up to find himself capable of still moving, the
Vimuhla worshipper picked up the Eye, crawled over to the gaping wound in
the side of the engine, stuck his arm inside, and fired it again.

Quick heal spells preserved Achumel's life, but we were locked in a cabin
as proof against further mischief while Lord Jayargo initiated repairs 
to the engine.  He was successful, and we did not smash into the ground.

Unfortunately, the guards then decided that they wanted some fun, and 
the two women in the party were directed by Shemesh into the galley and
there abused.  One woman sneaked away through the kitchen into the hold
with the aid of the brave Chef of Avanthe.  There she dug through the
miscellaneous cargo until she found a device which, when she activated
it, produced a grid of blue lines and incidentally shifted the ship
over to the Plane of the Buffalo.

The Plane of the Buffalo is a "nearby" plane to that of Tekumel (while it
may be "distant" in Inter-planar terms, it is a frequent first stop in
interplanar travel).  It is a dominion of the Silver Suits, servitors of
the Pariah Deities so-called for their full-body silver armor.  It is
comprised mainly of broad savannahs of golden grass traversed by mighty
"buffalo" (no real relation) about the size of a small Chlen.  These herds
can stretch from horizon to horizon and are inexorable in their stampedes.

Annoyed with us, the former Emperor ordered us put off about five Tsan
ahead of one such herd, and the ship departed.  We were, as the saying 
goes, screwed.  The depths of our screwedness can be illustrated by the
cheerful fact that at least it didn't matter that neither of the sorcerors
in the party had the Visitations of Other Planes spell necessary to escape
this plane, because spellcasting doesn't work there.

The party spent a nasty night dodging through a miles-wide herd of elephantine
buffalo in the darkness of a driving rainstorm.

The next day, as the straggling buffalo passed, another airship arrived and
we boarded.  It turned out that this was a nature-study tour from the domain
of the Silver Suits, out to observe the herd.  I'll skip much of what occured
here except to say that they were much more polite than a lot of Tsolyani
I've met, and after an exchange of sexual favors with the Captain of this
vessel, he agreed to detour long enough to drop us off at home.

We arrived in Bey Su in the modern era, apparently only a couple of days
after we left.  This being interplanar travel, we could have arrived during
the reign of the Fishermen Kings, so we were all quite happy.  

We learned that the Emperor had been deposed on the 18th of Dohala, 2368,
by the allied forces of Prince Mirusiya and Prince Taksuru.  Prince Eselne
had apparently perished of a wasting illness during the summer of 2368,
having never quite recovered from wounds suffered earlier in the civil 
strife.  The popular mood was good, except in and around the temples and
clanhouses of those faithful to the deposed Emperor, some of which had
been destroyed by vengeful mobs.

The taking of the Golden Tower was an unbelievable achievement, unparalleled
in Tsolyani history.  Legendary general Karin Missum had been carried off 
the field, gravely wounded, and his condition remained unknown.

It is generally expected that Prince Mirusiya has or will soon declare himself
regent until such time as a Kolumejalim can be held.  He seems to have
arranged with his siblings that he shall be the only candidate, both 
Taksuru and Rereshqala pledging to renounce the Gold and work with the new
Emperor.  Princesses Ma'in and Aremala could not hope to prevail over 
Mirusiya, and of poor Prince Surundano nothing has been heard (although
several have suggested that the Imperial Heirs should pitch in and send
him a nice fruit basket.)  Prince Mridobu remains missing and assumed dead.

Eselne's former general Kettukal has retreated to Paya Gupa with his troops,
and is not expected to perpetuate the civil strife without an Imperial
sponsor.  The last holdouts of Prince Dhich'une's troops were defeated 
in Thri'il only recently.

The date is now 29 Dohala 2368, and all of Usenanu is preparing for a 
particularly festive Intercalary Day celebration.  The only lingering
doubts remain in the minds of our party, who are the only ones on Tekumel
(aside, one assumes, Mirusiya himself) who know that Prince Dhich'une 
remains alive (or whatever) and active, guarded and supported by the dread
allies who helped him seize the throne.

----------------
Some more news from conversations I have had with Phil over the last day or
so.  These are my impressions.  Don't attribute them to anyone else.  :)

Karin Missum has been moved down to Bey Su, and is under the care of the 
Healing Sorcerors there.  No word yet on his condition.  

Mirusiya is coldly grim about his victory.  He desperately wants Dhich'une's
head.  The awful part of this is that when there is a Kolumejalim, and if
someone hasn't killed Dhich'une, he would be able to participate.  According
to Tsolyani law, an heir cannot be kept from his right to participate.  But,
if this law was so strictly kept, how did Dhich'une keep all the others from
getting their fair chance Professor?

The princesses Main and Aremalla are pretty much out of the picture as Bob
stated.  Surundano is well, Surundano.   :)

Rereshqala will probably be the Hig Provost of the Chancery at Avanthar, (the 
job held by Chaimira hiSsanmirin during Hirkane's rule.

Taksuru will probably be given a special position, some type of Legate to
the Priesthoods.  Primarily to keep an Imperial eye closely on them.

Poor Eselne did pass to the Paradises via a bout of dysentary.

I asked about Mridobu, and the answers I got led me to the the following 
possible conclusions about Mridobu.
1.  He's dead.
2.  He's a Mrur or Shedra somewhere.
3.  He's been Mind Barred, or effectively lobotomized.

Phil led me to believe that he would be ineffective as a politician if, in 
fact, he was indeed alive.
-----


//603

[Moderator's Note:  The Professor comments on James Snead's message about ]
[                   technology.  He also comments on Tom Robertson's      ]
[                   message on the Cataclysm.  And finally, in time for   ]
[                   the Holidays, Bob Alberti provides a link to his web  ]
[                   site for the Holiday Classic, A Chitlasha Carol.      ]

>[Moderator's Note:  More technology on Tekumel from James Snead.            ]
>
>Another remark on technology and Tekumel; one element which should be
>emphasized here is the role of "prestige" in the adoption of technological
>items.  It has been demonstrated that chlen hide weapons are effective and
>cheap, while bronze is heavy and expensive; the desirability of bronze for
>certain parties seems to be more closely associated with the status of the
>weapons, perhaps since those in circulation are often of some antiquity.
>In a conservative tradition, such equipment would display a
>tangible association with noble traditions of the past, thereby increasing
>the status of its owner.  Bronze isn't "better", technologically speaking,
>but the prestige conferred by wielding an Engsvanyali sword would be
>coveted by those who could afford it.

Absolutely correct. Learning the traditions of "noble behaviour" makes up a
large portion of a Tekumelani child's upbringing. A printing press might be
more efficient, but this would spoil the calligraphers' productions and
lead to degeneration (it is thought). In India and Pakistan, to this very
day, most magazines, books and even newspapers are hand-calligraphed by
rooms full of scribes squatting with writing boards on their knees. Not
only does this produce some badly calligraphed texts, but the scribes tend
to die off quickly from ailments connected with crouching with the knees
drawn up for long periods while writing. Yet, ask anyone if a change is
wanted. Chances are the answer will be that type spoils the look of the
script. Some older people have difficulty reading a book printed in type,
too. In iran, most headlines seem to be calligraphed, while the articles
themselves are in type.

>There are numerous examples of this behavior in human prehistory.  Native
>American cultures in contact with euro-americans in the 18th and 19th
>centuries often designed clubs which looked like gun stocks; guns
>themselves were prestigous, and if you didn't have one, you might as well
>fight with something that looked like one.  Swords buried in bronze-age
>barrows in northern Europe were much harder to obtain than spears, and by
>placing them with the deceased owner were thus removed from use; the
>prestige they conferred was more valuable than their efficiency, since
>otherwise the leader might have passed it on to his descendants.

Bronze is indeed slightly more prestigious. Soft iron is still more
"noble," but it is steel (a metal found largely in the ruins of the Great
Ancients) that really brings out the oohs and aahs. A steel sword is a gift
that anybody will value -- try using such a blade as a bribe sometime, and
watch how fast your desires come true!

>Value is thus a culturally-relative term.  While efficiency is central
>to the euro-american ideal of progress, prestige is often of greater
>importance in non-european traditions, which the status-conscious
>societies of Tekumel more closely resemble.
>
>James Snead

Exactly, James. You have said pretty much what I would say on this,

Regards,
Phil
-----

Very interesting. Nobody really knows where any of the "lost planets" are
-- or how to get to them. Occasionally there is an accident, but otherwise
the "Skin of Reality" in our continuum remains too thick and impenetrable
for us todraw power from the Planes Beyond, much less open Nexus Points.

>My research has found a document that may pertain to the current discussion
>on the Cataclysm.  The document is in some strange unknown language with an
>attached summary in Ancient Tysolani quoted below:

[Moderator's Note:  The rest was deleted as it was the contents of Message   ]
[                   580 in full.                                             ]

Good stuff, Tom. I enjoyed this.

[Moderators Note:  It was pointed out to me by another reader that the scale ]
[                  mentioned by Tom would mean that there were millions (if  ]
[                  not more) planets in pocket universes.  I would have to   ]
[                  defer to the Professor on the number of planets that dis- ]
[                  appeared during the Cataclysm.  I would think that this   ]
[                  would be more appropriate confined to a region of space   ]
[                  rather than the whole galaxy.   A humble opinion.         ]

Regards,
Phil
--

The seasonal children's favorite "A Chitlasha Carol" returns for a limited
engagement at http://freenet.msp.mn.us/~alberti/chitlasha.html

Tickets are free, so stop by today!.
-----


//604

[Moderator's Note:  Bob Alberti gives us a Mitlanyal update and Paul Roser ]
[                   offers his opinion on the work (so do I).              ]

Two expirations are coming up for Mitlanyal!

First, TOME has until the end of this month to let me know whether or
not they are interested in publishing it.  If I don't hear from them by
the 6th of January I will send them a letter.

Second, I'm rapidly running out of copies of my pre-publication run
of Mitlanyal.  If you're interested in a copy of the pre-publication run
be sure to order it soon.  It's unlikely that a subsequent run will be
as inexpensive:  I shopped hard for a printer to make this copy affordable
and was not pleased with the final quality (one buyer lacked the final
two chapters, another was missing a page in Dra, and I found one copy 
lacking a front cover)  I'd probably have to shell out more for any
subsequent run, were I to produce one.

Again, if you're interested in ordering Mitlanyal, write to

   Bob Alberti
   2732 40th Ave. S.
   Mpls, MN 55406

Each copy is 210 comb-bound 8 1/2X11 pages with no art and 80# paper covers.
--

Paul Roser writes.

Just wanted to drop a quick note to the list about Bob Alberti's 
"Mitlanyal". I'm still working through it, but I, for one, definitely
feel it was worth the wait! There's an awful lot of info here, some of
which I was surprised to learn (for instance, that Lady Avanthe has
a masculine aspect). I want to publicly thank Bob for the work he has
put in to bring this to us, and hope everyone out there will join me 
in wishing him success in getting it published (I really want to see 
the final product - it's great without the pictures & maps, but should
be awesome with them!)

When I've finshed digesting all this info, I'm sure I'll have some
more questions/ideas to share with the list.

Regards,
Paul R.

--

I agree with everything Paul says.  Mitlanyal is a tremendous resource for 
Tekumel players.  One of the most interesting parts for me was the small 
mini-novels to illustrate some points.  The most chilling and interesting
of those little stories was the one about the priest of Hru'u.  WOW!  There
was just so little known to me about this temple.  The same could have been
said about numerous others.  Bob's book goes a long way to fix this.

Chris
-----


//605

[Moderator's Note:  Joe Saul and the Professor write about the Vulcan issue. ]

Joe Saul writes...
>        No, it's nothing that lengthy-- nor that specific. It's only six,
>maybe eight characters, and after close examination with EPT rules in hand,
>I'm starting to think that they're a Hyksos 'cartouche'-- a meaningless
>scrawl that LOOKS extremely authentic, at any rate...

Anybody with a frame grabber want to pull this off a video and make it
available to the masses?  (Yes, it would be legal to capture a still.)

Joe
--

The Professor writes..

>[Moderator's Note:  Gordon Neff continues about the Star Trek Vulcan temple, ]
>[                   and asks the Professor his opinions on the look and feel ]
>[                   of the Vulcan temple.                                    ]
>
>"Anybody write them down? I'm just curious. Maybe the designer tried to make
>a joke in English using Tsolyani characters?"

I have seen the moview, but I did not write the characters down -- didn't
even notice them until someone here mentioned them. I suspect they may have
been just Vulcan script, as devised by the moviemakers. Perhaps there was a
little impetus from Tekumel, perhaps not.

>        No, it's nothing that lengthy-- nor that specific. It's only six,
>maybe eight characters, and after close examination with EPT rules in hand,
>I'm starting to think that they're a Hyksos 'cartouche'-- a meaningless
>scrawl that LOOKS extremely authentic, at any rate...

This seems right.

>        In short, I've yet to make an exact match, but even the most casual
>inspection would ring a bell instantly-- as indeed it did. (Artistic
>license, undoubtedly. The script's appearance is part of the 'Tekumel
>look,' so the designer hummed a bar and faked the rest.)

>        But you DID see the movie? I'd have liked to have heard your first
>impressions of that concluding 'Vulcan Temple' scene. From the first
>establishing shot onwards was like the 'Swords and Glory' cover art
>recreated. I was utterly astounded.

I wish I had a better memory for movies. Some of my players can quote
plots, characters, etc. etc. just like a Hindu Pandit can quote the
Mahabharata. I even knew one fellow who could quote at will from anywhere
in "Monte Python and the Holy Grail," including the songs and all the
various parts! Me, I have to look inside my coat at the label to see what
my name is -- usually it is "Sears."

>        Finding an 'artist's conception' of Tsolyani script included in the
>package was just icing on the cake.
>
>--G.
>
>"I wrote away at once to the figure manufacturer -- and soon received a
>reply in *Tsolyani*! You can imagine the stunned shock...! It turned out
>that the figure-designer had a longstanding love for Tekumel."
>        Yes...? Imagine HIS shock, at first receiving your letter!
>        -- I can certainly imagine it, recalling my astounded delight here,
>the first time that you, The Man Himself, replied to a comment that I had
>made. Me. After twenty-two years, actual -response-, interaction-- had my
>Tactical Studies Rules book from 1975 abruptly spoken out loud I could have
>been no more floored.
>        (One advantage to this newsgroup: After all of that time, I finally
>know why the cover art on those 1975 EPT rules is signed 'P.B.' I'd have
>certainly never guessed 'Phil'...)

All my father's fault, really. He named me Phillip (Greek for "Lover of
Horses," although I have never made love to a horse in my life!). I never
had a middle name. In 1952 I joined the Islamic faith while in India, and I
have never looked back. There's no need to debate my (or anybody else's)
theology here, but many are curious as to why the "M. A. R." (for "Muhammad
Abd-al-Rahman") and why the "Phil." Hope this helps.

Regards,

Phil
-----


//606

[Moderator's Note:  Semaphores seems to be the topic of the month...  Here is ]
[                   an accumulation of numerous responses.                    ]

Edward Franks writes...

On Saturday, November 29, 1997 8:51 AM, The Blue Room Mailing List 
[SMTP:blueroom@prin.edu] wrote:
>>        It's the concept of 'cumulative error.' Despite all
>>        safeguards,
>>'best guesses' at ambiguity will snowball-- any message sent by
>>semaphore
>>telegraph will eventually deteriorate beyond comprehension. Simple
>>code
>>groups can forestall this, but suffer the hazard of correspondingly
>>massive
>>information loss-- was that number 116 or 110? The entire sense of
>>the
>>message may depend on which it was...
>
>Mm.  Historically, how bad a problem was this?  My guess is not
>terribly so --
>that people who use this system take the bandwidth hit and transmit
>relatively
>simple messages with a lot of effort rather than risking
>misinterpretation.

Well, you _could_ have each part of the relay repeat the message back 
as a type of 'autocheck'.  That is, Relay 7 sends the coded message on 
to Relay 8, which then sends it back to Relay 7 to verify it was 
received properly..  Once Relay 7 gets the 'All Correct, Send It On' 
signal they do just that.

Also, the code groups could be sent in small chunks of five, with 
verification done at the end of each chunk of five.

Cumbersome?  Yes, but it is still faster than a man on foot, 
especially if you use the semaphores for specific types of messages, 
that is, "Send Legion x up the river." instead of trying to use the 
semaphores like a telegraph or telephone.

--
Dwight Grosso writes...

All this discussion over semaphores being viable or not jogged an idea in my
head. All the pros and cons concerning semaphors, the fact that couriers can
be ambushed, and the telepathic network in the priesthoods aside, why
couldn't secret messages be magically implanted and carried? I imagine that
some of these probably are, especially amongst the various secret societies,
OAL, and some mages. 

It seems that a message could be "installed" in some knowing or unknowing
agent. The system would probably be similar in nature to what the white
instruction globe did to Harsan in Man of Gold. In this way it acts as a
concealed message in an object, such as hollowed out staff or something,
except it can't reveal itself. That is to say, it won't, and can't reveal
itself until it is ready to because of a preset condition or counter spell.
Furthermore it wouldn't show up as anything other than an aura, or whatever
to the trained observer. "Oh sure Omel, he's got some kind of spell on him,
but what is it?"

The only people of "cracking" such a hidden message would be those priests
who deal with such magic, or a mage who delved into similar studies. While
we're on the subject, why not use corpses as delivery agents? I'm sure the
temples of Sarku do something like that... except they're not telling anyone
about it. I don't think anyone would stop a corpse that was being delivered
to a clan house far away, as long as there weren't obvious signs of plague or
something. Just some morbid thoughts on the question at hand.

Sincerely,
Dwight Grosso
--

Leonard Erickson writes...

>>ps. speaking of codes, I assume that the list is aware of the fact that
>>Tsolyani has a "code page" in the "official unofficial" Unicode
>>registry? I can dig up the URL and post the code assignments if anyone
>>is interested.
>
> I'm interested. Please send it to me, either via the list or to
> aliasan@mindspring.com.

I can't find the URL, so I'll have to do some more digging, but here's
the file:

                         ENGSVANYLI: U+E100 - U+E14F
                                       
Proposal 1996-05-20; revision 1997-02-16
   
This script was invented by M. A. R. Barker as a playing aid for the
Empire of the Petal Throne series of games, along with the Tsolyni
language. Further details can be found in The Tsolyni Language, parts
1 and 2, published by Adventure Games Inc., 871 Edgerton Street, Saint
Paul, Minnesota 55101-4119 USA (+1 612 776-6089). A rather rough font
can be found at http://www.io.com/pub/tekumel/tsolyani.zip.
   
The Engsvanyli script was used for writing the ancient Engsvanyli
language, and has been extended for representing a number of modern
languages, most notably Tsolyni, where it replaced the "monumental"
form of the Bednlljan syllabary in the reign of the forty-fifth Seal
Emperor.
   
The Engsvanyli script is cursive, even in its printed form. Like the
Arabic script, in the calligraphic tradition, the same letter may be
written in different forms depending on how it joins with its
neighbours. Word-medial and word-final vowels are written as
diacritics above or below the consonant which they follow in speech;
word-initial vowels, which are written as letters, never join with
their neighbours. The script is written from right to left excepting
numbers, which are written from left to right.
 
Encoding Principles

The alphabet of the Tsolyni language is well-defined. Each letter in
encoded only once, regardless of the different presentation forms it
can assume. Independent vowels are encoded as letters; the combining
vowel signs are separately encoded, in the way that Brahmic scripts
are encoded.
   
The Non-joiner and the Joiner

The Unicode standard provides two user-selectable zero-width
formatting codes: U+200C ZERO WIDTH NON-JOINER and U+200D ZERO WIDTH
JOINER. The use of a non-joiner between two letters prevents them from
attaching to each other when rendered. Each letter assumes the correct
form, while the context analysis algorithm stays perfectly regular.

Engsvanyli Vowels

Vowels in the Engsvanyli script appear as independent letters only if
they begin a word; otherwise, they are rendered as diacritics applied
to the preceding consonant. The occurrence of a non-initial
Engsvanyli vowel constitutes an assertion that the character is
intended to be applied via some process to the consonantal character
that precedes it in the text stream, the base character. The Unicode
standard does not specify a sequence order in case of multiple marks
applied to the same Engsvanyli base character, since there is no
possible ambiguity of interpretation. (Deterministic sorting could be
affected, but not other operations.)

Encoding Structure

The Engsvanyli block is divided into the following ranges:

     U+E100 -> U+E128        Engsvanyli letters
     U+E129 -> U+E12E        Engsvanyli punctuation
     U+E12F                  Engsvanyli non-spacing consonant doubler
     U+E130 -> U+E138        Engsvanyli vowel signs
     U+E139 -> U+E13E        Currently unassigned
     U+E13F                  Engsvanyli supplementary letter
     U+E140 -> U+E14E        Engsvanyli digits and numbers
     U+E14F                  Currently unassigned

   
_________________________________________________________________
   
U+E100  ENGSVANYALI LETTER P
U+E101  ENGSVANYALI LETTER B
U+E102  ENGSVANYALI LETTER M
U+E103  ENGSVANYALI LETTER F
U+E104  ENGSVANYALI LETTER V
U+E105  ENGSVANYALI LETTER W
U+E106  ENGSVANYALI LETTER T
U+E107  ENGSVANYALI LETTER D
U+E108  ENGSVANYALI LETTER N
U+E109  ENGSVANYALI LETTER TH
U+E10A  ENGSVANYALI LETTER DH
U+E10B  ENGSVANYALI LETTER CH
U+E10C  ENGSVANYALI LETTER J
U+E10D  ENGSVANYALI LETTER Y
U+E10E  ENGSVANYALI LETTER K
U+E10F  ENGSVANYALI LETTER G
U+E110  ENGSVANYALI LETTER KH
U+E111  ENGSVANYALI LETTER GH
U+E112  ENGSVANYALI LETTER Q
U+E113  ENGSVANYALI LETTER H
U+E114  ENGSVANYALI LETTER NG
U+E115  ENGSVANYALI LETTER GLOTTAL STOP
U+E116  ENGSVANYALI LETTER TS
U+E117  ENGSVANYALI LETTER TL
U+E118  ENGSVANYALI LETTER S
U+E119  ENGSVANYALI LETTER SH
U+E11A  ENGSVANYALI LETTER Z
U+E11B  ENGSVANYALI LETTER ZH
U+E11C  ENGSVANYALI LETTER SS
U+E11D  ENGSVANYALI LETTER R
U+E11E  ENGSVANYALI LETTER L
U+E11F  ENGSVANYALI LETTER HL
U+E120  ENGSVANYALI LETTER I
U+E121  ENGSVANYALI LETTER A
U+E122  ENGSVANYALI LETTER O
U+E123  ENGSVANYALI LETTER U
U+E124  ENGSVANYALI LETTER UE
U+E125  ENGSVANYALI LETTER E
U+E126  ENGSVANYALI LETTER AU
U+E127  ENGSVANYALI LETTER AI
U+E128  ENGSVANYALI LETTER OI
U+E129  ENGSVANYALI QUOTATION MARK
U+E12A  ENGSVANYALI COMMA
U+E12B  ENGSVANYALI FULL STOP
U+E12C  ENGSVANYALI QUESTION MARK
U+E12D  ENGSVANYALI FRACTION SLASH
U+E12E  ENGSVANYALI CONSONANT DOUBLER
U+E12F  (This position shall not be used)
U+E130  ENGSVANYALI VOWEL SIGN I
U+E131  ENGSVANYALI VOWEL SIGN A
U+E132  ENGSVANYALI VOWEL SIGN O
U+E133  ENGSVANYALI VOWEL SIGN U
U+E134  ENGSVANYALI VOWEL SIGN Y
U+E135  ENGSVANYALI VOWEL SIGN E
U+E136  ENGSVANYALI VOWEL SIGN AU
U+E137  ENGSVANYALI VOWEL SIGN AI
U+E138  ENGSVANYALI VOWEL SIGN OI
U+E139  (This position shall not be used)
U+E13A  (This position shall not be used)
U+E13B  (This position shall not be used)
U+E13C  (This position shall not be used)
U+E13D  (This position shall not be used)
U+E13E  (This position shall not be used)
U+E13F  ENGSVANYALI LETTER LL
U+E140  ENGSVANYALI DIGIT ZERO
U+E141  ENGSVANYALI DIGIT ONE
U+E142  ENGSVANYALI DIGIT TWO
U+E143  ENGSVANYALI DIGIT THREE
U+E144  ENGSVANYALI DIGIT FOUR
U+E145  ENGSVANYALI DIGIT FIVE
U+E146  ENGSVANYALI DIGIT SIX
U+E147  ENGSVANYALI DIGIT SEVEN
U+E148  ENGSVANYALI DIGIT EIGHT
U+E149  ENGSVANYALI DIGIT NINE
U+E14A  ENGSVANYALI NUMBER TEN
U+E14B  ENGSVANYALI NUMBER ONE HUNDRED
U+E14C  ENGSVANYALI NUMBER ONE THOUSAND
U+E14D  ENGSVANYALI NUMBER TEN THOUSAND
U+E14E  ENGSVANYALI NUMBER ONE MILLION
U+E14F  (This position shall not be used)

[INLINE]
_________________________________________________________________
   
Pictures of Engsvanyli characters from The Tsolyni Language:
  * Page 126
  * Page 127
  * Page 128
       
   
_________________________________________________________________
   
Based on a proposal by Christian Carey (ccarey@CapAccess.org)
_________________________________________________________________
   
Return to the ConScript Unicode Registry.
_________________________________________________________________
   
   
Further information about the CSUR is available from:
John Cowan, cowan@ccil.org or Michael Everson, everson@indigo.ie
Updated 1997-02-16

-- 
Leonard Erickson (aka Shadow)
shadow@krypton.rain.com        <--preferred
leonard@qiclab.scn.rain.com     <--last resort
--
Chaz Tompkins writes...

It is *very* hard to stand outside of your own culture to see some of
the more important differences between human societies.  As a
professional archaeologist/anthropologist I have to constantly remind
myself of this.  

When excavating a 2000 year old pithouse alongside a dry river bed in
Southern Arizona, I am forced to construct (imagine?) the connections
between the remains in my  hands and some sort of coherent human
activity.  "Hmmm, a circular pattern of fine, cryptocrystaline blades
just outside the northern edge of the structure....ritual pattern
marking a water source for the family unit?"  

Then I look at the ethnographic literature: someone was chipping stone
with a lap blanket in the shade on a summer day.  Shook it off and ...

Or, to the contrary of our western utilitarian bias: Evidence from cave
sites in Tasmania (Aust.) that late Pleistocene and early Holocene
populations enjoyed the abundant marine foods of the region.....and
ethnographic evidence that at contact all such foods were taboo even
under severe hardship.  Moreover, the aborigines there had lost even the
rudimentary seafaring skills that got them to the continent from SE Asia
*40,000* years before.

The Gestalt is hard to adequately express, but it is for me the most
intriging aspects of the Professor's glass: there are many ways to be
human and it doesn't just boil down to cracking your eggs on the big or
little end.  Both Darwinism (social and otherise) and Progress are a
western social construct.  They are no more "Real" and immutable than
the "Great Chain of Being" of the Middle Ages.  

As a bit of sugar for one's industrial-progressive engine consider that
humans--with a physical and mental birthright **indistiguishable** from
your own--have been successfully habitating this planet for over 100,000
years.  But, with all our prowess of metal and might, how different are
we from Mayan kings who demonstrated the calendrical ascendancy of
Jaguar over Eagle?

--
Peter Timko writes...

I cannot believe that I actually am getting involved in this 
semaphore discussion, but two things in Phil's message (#600) I can 
respond to quickly without wasting anyone's time -- now, now, be 
kind. :)

First, in answer to the question of Roman legionary 
communication: to the best of my knowledge the Romans didn't develop 
a semaphore system per se, but by at least the early Imperial era 
there was a set of 10-12 commands (with a few additions made 
according to terrain and the ingenuity of specific generals or 
tribunes) relayed to forces in battle by the buccinators. Indeed, 
this type of quick communication was among the things that helped the 
legions so much against the man-for-man more powerful Gauls.

Second, Phil, your contention about the difficulty of determining 
which form of a letter to use in a semaphore system actully doesn't 
seem to be much of a problem, if my knowledge of Arabic is any guide 
to Tsolyani. The page headers in my trusty old Hans-Wehr dictionary 
just put the basic single form of the letter for the root beginning 
and ending each page. [MEGO THIS AT WILL] The form of the letter `ayn 
in the respective roots Taw(back)-`Ayn-Ba, Jim-Mim-`Ayn and `Ayn-Shin-
Ra appears the same in the header even though it would be written 
differently in each of the three words. As with Arabic newspapers 
today, few include the diacritical marks of vowels unless to indicate 
the proper pronuciation of a foreign name -- are there not lazy 
Tsolyani scribes who get away with scimping on diacritical vowels yet 
whose messages are still understood? Certainly I can read the 
occasional correspondence I get in Arabic which lacks diacritical 
vowelings. In essence, the problem would seem to be more akin to that 
encountered by morse code; i.e., whoever reads the message has to 
figure out where one word stops and another begins, and so which 
form of the letter to write in transcription. While this is easier 
with written vowels, lack of them shouldn't be insurmountable.

Of course, this says nothing to the cultural ideals many have 
already brought up. I see no reason why the Tsolyanu or any other of 
the five empires would invent a sempahore system. I just see fewer 
reasons why they could not. Respectfully,

Peter (Sakhr) Timko
--

Gordon Neff writes...

>Simple code
>groups can forestall this, but suffer the hazard of correspondingly massive
>information loss-- was that number 116 or 110? The entire sense of the
>message may depend on which it was...

>Mm.  Historically, how bad a problem was this?  My guess is not terribly so
>that people who use this system take the bandwidth hit and transmit
>relatively
>simple messages with a lot of effort rather than risking misinterpretation.

'Not terribly so'? Actually, that very same, specific example put
Frederick the Great on the throne. '116' was Father Wolfe, a Jesuit, who
wrote to the Pope about how impressed he was by the candor and piety of
this young German prince... who had meant his long, detailed letter to go
to '110.'

Great oaks, and little acorns...


And in regards to Mr Leonard Erickson's admirable comments:


>Actually, you don't get *nearly* as much distortion, as with the party
>game because the message is sent one letter at a time. So while this
>could result in a word being mispelled between two stations, the
>structure of just about any language will result in the error being
>obvious in most cases. 

Picky, picky-- you got my point, hai?


>"Would anybody be interested in a Tsolyani semaphore code? I could
>probably draw one up once I dig up my copy of the alphabet.

>If you give me a letter frequency table for Tsolyani (ie a list of
>letters from most common to least common in 'normal' text) I could do
>up a 'morse code' also."

Yah, YOU could. The question is, would THEY? The very idea of
basing the complexity of your code formation on the -frequency- of the
alphabet, rather than its arbitrary position, was a matter of silent awe
when ol' Samuel trotted it out. No one had ever THOUGHT of that, before--
they were perfectly willing to bash out twenty-five dots for the letter
'Y.'

>BTW, I figured out the big disadvantage of semaphores and heliographs.
>Regardless of how hard you try to keep it secret, some people *will*
>know the code, even if they have to figure it out by recording the
>"code sequences" and then trying to compare them to likely message
>texts. So you have to accept the idea that at least some of your messages
>will
>be known. You *can* encrypt them, but that makes sending and receiving
>them harder (you can't rely on the operators being able to
>automatically correct simple errors from context (eg "Sakbe rofd" to
>"Sakbe road")

Welcome to Napoleonic Diplomacy 101! Allow me to introduce you to
the DeVigenere cipher, which remained unbroken for centuries due to the
extreme genius of its inventor. Also Rossignol, who lent his name to the
French name for 'skeleton key.'

You have, of your own intelligence, stumbled upon the Great Mother
Lode of cryptography, which drove and fueled international espionage until
the development of ORBITAL SATELLITES.

No lie. Congratulations.

(Let me tell you someday about the tens of thousands of dollars
-still- owed, as far as I know, to AT&T by the Federal Government, because
they had to use a 1798 diplomatic code in a 1917 trans-Atlantic telegram...
It was something like 1,100 four-number code groups. Every other official
cipher in use at the time had been compromised-- this was all they had
left.)


P.S. What the hell is an "'official unofficial' Unicode registry"?

--
Gordon further writes...

With no disrespect intended to any individuals, it's remarkable how
many people take examples or analogies for ACTUAL SITUATIONS.

While it is truly interesting to hear about the incidences of
eidetic recall among people without mechanical printing, using their
ability to demonstrate the absurdity of my ANALOGY is foolish. 'The concept
of cumulative error' was what I was illustrating, in a way I considered
understandable and simple. -Obviously- a circle of trained jongleurs
wouldn't lose a scrap of it, nor a hundred times over-- but that wasn't my
point...

(Nor was the way in which physical gunpowder itself might be used--
but there again, the resulting discussion was of interest in itself.)

Thomas Worthington sez that circled-message party game is called
'Chinese Whispers.' Really? I've never heard it named at all. Thanks.

To Mr Worthington's other comment, though, I am perforce less
charitable...

>cultures Samuel Morse never -heard- of. The flash of such titanic
>heliographs could be seen as far away as the horizon permitted.

| Indeed:- friend or foe for miles around could see your messages. Not 
| the sort of secretive communication the five empires like.

May I infer from this that you've never actually tried -using- a
signal mirror? A mirror, sir, reflects light from one direction to another,
single direction. (Assuming it's flat.) You could no more see such flashes,
were they not -aimed- at you, than you can employ your rear-view mirror,
where it is customarily installed, to inspect the rear bumper of your car.
(Of course, if you break it off, you may then hold it wherever you like, in
the manner of a dental mirror.)

If further illustration is needed, I will add that standard
military 'survival/signaling mirrors' have a HOLE in them, to facilitate
AIMING at one's rescuers...

I don't mean to be unkind, though it may sound so; this obviously
just didn't occur to you.       What DID, however, was the concept of heat
haze as an obscuring factor, and I applaud; that extremely plausible
difficulty did not occur to me at all. The only solution I can see is a
shorter interval between towers-- or such whopping huge flags, as tall as
the tower itself perhaps, of such violently contrasting colors that even
through heat-shimmer you can see which end is up, as it were.

I think the former is a more probable solution.

While on the subject: No, Professor, to the best of my knowledge
the Romans never used a systematic... er, system, of heliographs. I may be
wrong, but it seems to me that the first major use of signal mirrors for
military purposes involved 'trade mirrors,' as used by the Plains and
Western Indians during the Indian Wars. (That does seem unlikely... until
you consider the techniques of mass production required to simply -obtain-
that many mirrors to begin with. It might not have been possible before
then.) On the other hand, Tekumelani cultures are old enough that ANYthing
is going to be tried and worked out if it CAN be, eventually.

I dunno-- it's rather like your comment about the Romans inventing
the bicycle. Somehow, I can -see- these massive, towering signaling
platforms existing here. As I said, it fits the... flavor of the culture,
in some almost indefinable way.

As to Mr Simpson's Inca and his fresh, courier-delivered fish:  a)
that was, after all, a rather narrow country; 'the coast' was never all
THAT far away (relatively speaking), and  b) define 'fresh.' His definition
may vary from yours.

As to their being delivered from 'some hundreds of miles away
earlier that same day'... I'll have to get you to excuse me on -that- one.
I have a delicacy about pursuing the matter any further.

Gordon.
-----


//607

[Moderator's Note:  More discussion on the origins of Sakbe and Ditlana.    ]

John Smith writes...
>>Is this building over of tombs and the like, the souce of Ditlana?
> 
>Possibly, but I don't think so. As I recall, the practice of building
>new cities atop old ones is not singular to the Central or South
>American civilizations; several such sites have been found throughout
>the Middle East and Asia Minor. The most famous example of such a
>city is probably that of Troy, a series of nine cities (at least)
>built one atop the next.
> 
>In my opinion, there is no reason why building repeatedly on the
>same site should be a function of a particular culture. There are
>usually good reasons to stay in the same place, often involving
>advantageous location (ease of defense/transportation, proximity to
>water sources, ease of agriculture, and the like) or simple inertia
>(why pick up and move somewhere else when you can stay where you are
>and build again).

Very true, but herein lies the distinction: Ditlana involves the 
*deliberate* levelling and rebuilding of an entire city at once, whereas 
all those Troys were presumably destroyed by warfare (the /Illiad/ 
anyone?) or natural disaster and then rebuilt by survivors or another 
tribe altogether.  Another possibility is simply that over time the 
houses were rebuilt at a fairly constant rate so that every century or 
so you wind up with everything changed by accident as it were.  The 
Mayans certainly slapped new layers on their temples, and I think there 
is reason to believe that this was done at planned intervals, but this 
is just one structure at a time.

Off the top of my head I cannot recall any Ditlana-like occurrances in 
Earthly history.  Plenty of cities have been levelled:  the Romans did 
in Carthage and the Persians destroyed Babylon and sent the inhabitants 
off to different cities.  Plenty of cities have been built from scratch 
on master plans going back as far as Catal Huyuk in the Neolithic (if 
recent findings are correct.)  But even in this modern age, with all 
this urban renewal going on, I can't think of ANY city that has actually 
been ENTIRELY demolished and rebuilt on purpose.  If anybody does recall 
such a case I would like to hear about it (and reconstruction after 
carpet-bombing does not count!)  

The concept of any culture, let alone a non-industrial one, doing such a 
thing is astonishing.  I had at least one gamer say flat out to me that 
such a thing was impossible and unbelievable (it seemed to turn him off 
on Tekumel altogether-- his loss.)  I would not go that far, but I will 
admit the difficulty.

[Moderator's Note:  You know, it is funny when people look for silly reasons]
[                   to dislike Tekumel (or any game system).  I had one per-]
[                   son who didn't like Tekumel because the weather was so  ]
[                   oppressively hot (it was the height of summer).         ]
[                   Go Figure.                                              ]

However, I do have one theory that would make it feasable, namely the 
tremendous antiquity of civilisation on Tekumel.  Just their known 
history goes back five times our own.  I occurs to me that by the time 
the Bednalljans or Engsvanyali (I forget who began Ditlana but I think 
it was one of them) came on the scene their populations had spread as 
far as they could and had stabilised at the maximum sustainable level 
that there simply was no need or interest in founding brand new cities.  
No one was that interested in colonising the wilderness, so there was 
little expansion outside the "civilised" areas (with a few exceptions.)  
The upshot is that all the energy and money that the Empires would have 
spent on new cities was thus available to rebuild the existing ones in 
toto.  

BTW, on the Sakbe Road question, does anybody else realise that their 
dual commerce/military function exactly parallels the US Interstate 
Highway system?  The Interstates were originally begun in the Cold War 
as a troop transport system in case of invasion and only later were the 
economic benefits given priority.  Ever notice how much some of those 
400-series ring highways around cities look like defensive earthworks?  

Sometimes Tekumel is not so far away...

John
--

Erich Schneider writes...

A look at a good book on the Mayan civilization will reveal that, in
fact, there are quite a few Mayan sites that feature ceremonial
elevated stone causeways, and the Mayan (I forget the exact language,
there are many "Mayan" langauges) term for these causeways is "sacbe"
(plural "sacbeob"). It seems pretty clear to me that's where Prof.
Barker got the idea. And, as is stated, the Central Americans were
some of the few survivors of the Terran nuclear war (vide the
"Tamil-Arabic-Mayan argot" which was the common Terran language).

Erich Schneider  erich@csdl.tamu.edu  http://www.csdl.tamu.edu/~erich
-- 

Thomas Worthington writes...

I know this belongs on the newsgroup but the university no longer 
carries it. Anyway it is relevent to an earlier topic in the list.

Everyone get the December National Geographic. It covers much if the 
Maya material covered in the UK TV program that was mentioned a while 
back. It does not include a picture of the "cut away" temple, 
however. It does include a nice fold out panarama of a city, though.

Thomas Worthington
-----


//608

[Moderator's Note:  Professor Barker comments further on the Cataclysm topic. ]
[                   I thought that subject line had a cute ring to it. ;)     ]

>In India and Pakistan, to this very
>day, most magazines, books and even newspapers are hand-calligraphed by
>rooms full of scribes squatting with writing boards on their knees. Not
>only does this produce some badly calligraphed texts, but the scribes tend
>to die off quickly from ailments connected with crouching with the knees
>drawn up for long periods while writing. Yet, ask anyone if a change is
>wanted. Chances are the answer will be that type spoils the look of the
>script. Some older people have difficulty reading a book printed in type,
>too. In iran, most headlines seem to be calligraphed, while the articles
>themselves are in type.

I see I neglected to mention that the hand-calligraphed magazines and
newspapers are then reproduced by photo-lithography! They don't make one
copy for each reader, as my fuzzy prose suggests!

Moderators Note:  It was pointed out to me by another reader that the scale ]
>[                  mentioned by Tom would mean that there were millions (if  ]
>[                  not more) planets in pocket universes.  I would have to   ]
>[                  defer to the Professor on the number of planets that dis- ]
>[                  appeared during the Cataclysm.  I would think that this   ]
>[                  would be more appropriate confined to a region of space   ]
>[                  rather than the whole galaxy.   A humble opinion.         ]

The number of planets, suns, etc. etc. in an infinite universe cannot, of
course, be known. Whether the universe itself is indeed infinite also
cannot be known. Then add to our usual universe an infinity of other
Planes, and you end up with a headache! The sending of whole solar systems
into other Planes seems to have been deliberate, according to the scholars'
best opinions. There is thus no real likelihood of this occurring all
through space-time.

Since I never send Christmas cards (or Hanukkah or 'Id cards either) let me
wish you all the best of the holiday season! From Tekumel, may Lord
Hnalla's supernal crystal radiance -- or Lord Ksarul's intertwined indigo
glow -- fall upon you and expand your Skein of Destiny!

[Moderator's Note:  Same goes for me.  Happy Holiday season to everyone.     ]
[                   Thanks for contributing to the Blue Room.  Chris         ]

Regards,

Phil
-----


//609

[Moderator's Note:  Dwight Grosso asks about the language of the Shen.       ]
[                   There is a guy in Chicago looking for players.  If you   ]
[                   want to get in touch with him his name is Brian Murphy,  ]
[                   and you can reach him via wschall3472@ameritech.net.     ]
[                   I sent this to the list at large since Dwight asked for  ]
[                   all opinions, but please do reply Professor.             ]

While looking through the Tekumel sourcebook for information concerning
Shenyu, I relaized nothing had been said about what the Shen (or any of the
other nonhumans) do for a written language. I realize that the Shen can speak
the languages of men, and that  the reverse is not true.  From the
information in the sourcebook I gather the Shen are a very advanced race,
capable of engineering, complex computations, and the capacity to learn-and
learn very well at that! It seems that such a race would have a means of
written communication, but perhaps it is orally passed along. Of course, no
human could read such a language as it is not based on the same kind of voal
chord vibrations. I am curious though, if their culture follows an oral
tradition, what great epics are there? It stands to reason that the shen
would have great warrior based epics or something amongst the various egg
groups. Speaking of which, what are those various egg groups? Some of them
are mentioned in the various Armies volumes.  I'm sure  the answers are not
simple, but I look foreward to reading what anyone has to say on the subject.

Sincerely,
Dwight Grosso
-----


//610

[Moderator's Note: Nuno Flavio asks about the Chlen Beast.                  ]

Hi!

A thought stuck me the other day. The Tekumelians have domesticated an
animal that makes the elephant look like a puppy. Plus it's hide can be
treated  with chemicals to make a material as thick as bronze, so i assume
the "leather" in the living animal is pretty tough too.

[Moderator's Note:  Domesticated might be an inaccurate word here.  Chlen   ]
[                   are dangerous and hard to control.  It would be like    ]
[                   saying we have domesticated tigers.  Chlen are about the]
[                   size of an elephant.  Some are smaller, some larger, it ]
[                   depends on the breed.                                   ]

So my question is... why as no one ever remebered to use the Chlen in
warfare ?

The possibilities are enourmous, even a wild stampede of Chlen beasts must
be something to behold, the animals will flatten anything on their path,
and just imagine the number of soldiers it can carry, maybe a tower filled
with archers ?

[Moderator's Note:  The Professor will correct me if I am wrong.  It has    ]
[                   been tried, but the Chlen is a skittish beast.          ]
[                   They also easily frightened, and when the are frightened]
[                   they usually turn around to leave the battlefield, right]
[                   over your own troops.  If I was an infantryman, I'd     ]
[                   never follow a Chlen into battle, well, maybe from a    ]
[                   pretty good distance.                                   ]

Several ancient human cultures used the elephant as a mount, they were a
bit unprdectable but their effect on the moral of the foe would more than
make up to it.

We all know Tekumel is tradition-bound and innovations aren't especially
wellcome, but even so it's odd that the Chlen has been around for all this
time without ever beeing used. or maybe it has but the results were so
desastrous that the records of the battle(s) are now locked away in a deep
vault somewere in a forgotten temple of Karakan :)

[Moderator's Note:  The Professor may have some details, but it has been   ]
[                   tried, with less than stellar results.                 ]

Comments ?

P.S. - I hope i'm not making a crass error here, i'm writting this based
on what i've read about the Chlen and the it's descriptions. I've
never really seen a drawing of one.

>From a little country at the end of Europe

Nuno Flavio
-----


//611

[Moderator's Note:  James Eckman and Jim Chapin respond to the Technology on ]
[                   Tekumel thread.  Messages up throught 617 will be deliv- ]
[                   ered on autopilot.  When one finishes delivery, it spawns]
[                   delivery of the next.  If there are any problems I'll re-]
[                   send them.                                               ]

Reply to Gordon Neff:
As Westerner trained as an engineer, I am in total agreement with you. After
all maybe this is the beginning of the Tsolyanu Renaissance! However the
forces driving a given culture vary quite a bit among each other. As our
moderator pointed out vested interests might have a say. Also other factors
play a hand. 

In Europe starting with people like Agricola, Cellini, and other
artist/craftsmen/scribes, how-to manuals were written and distributed. I
can't imagine under the current regime that the guilds/clans would allow
this. This giving away of information is a pretty weird custom that's fairly
recent even in our Western society. I've worked with older carpenters and
machinists raised up in the apprentice tradition, who basically won't tell
you anything, it's a secret/mysterie(old spelling)! In China, they published
some of this information but this requires 5-10 years to learn how read (not
understanding, the basic ability to read) unlike English where some adults
have been taught to read in as little as 3 weeks. In addition, in China,
some learning/teachings were destroyed because the inventors were out of
favour with the Imperial Successor. We know at one time the Chinese worked
quite a bit on clocks, but almost all the information was destroyed by those
who followed on. (Sacrilege!) Western culture kept and transmitted data,
this is probably one requirement for large amounts of innovation.

Another difference is magic, a bright young man with a little magical
potential can learn things that make most primitive technologies look pretty
sad. Why work for a few decades trying to make a force projector of some
primitive type, when you can just cast a spell? Where do the bright people
go in Tsolyanu society? 

Vested interests have already been mentioned by our moderator.

Mysterys and secrets! I am sure there is innovation and invention going on
in Tsolyanu, but how much winds up in the vaults of Ksarul and others like
him! I used to have little techy widgets as treasure items (primitive
telescopes and the like). With 100s of little groups working away in secrecy
I'm sure there is duplication and the next generation often never gets the
benefit of this data. It would only take one generation of carelessness to
destroy the work of 500 years!

As for modifying the Professor's world, feel free, but I think a large
number of inventions in a short period of time would probably spoil the flavor:)
--
Jim Chapin writes...

>"Somehow I can hear
>Dinah Shore singing, "East is East, and West is West / And the wrong one I
>have chose..."

Wasn't that Bob Hope in Paleface?

Failure to develop continuous "scientific and technological progress"
doesn't require religious reasons.  Peter Green's great survey of the
Hellenistic world, "From Alexander to Actium,"  shows the many reasons
that no consistent pattern of scientific OR technological progress developed
in the relatively "rationalist" world of the Hellenes.  Indeed, in all of
human history, the only society that seems to have shown a continuous
pattern of technological advance is that of Western Europe -- and, by the
way, that pattern of development became obvious as early as the 10th & 11th
centuries!   Historians have not yet been able to figure out just why the
Medieval West was ALREADY a technological civilization par excellence, but
I do think the fact that such a civilization arose only once in human
history suggests that there is nothing particularly "natural" to humans about
the idea of continued progress.  It's just hard for us to realize that,
because we live in a society in which such a concept is indeed basic (and 
nowhere more than in the United States of America).  

And that doesn't even take into account the effect that the existence of
"magic" would have on the evolution of technology.  Indeed, I am sure that
all of us who play on Tekumel, like most of those in RPGs, cannot help
treating magic as technology, or, for that matter, treating the gaming
world we are in an essentially economistic, "mini-maxing" fashion that
comes naturally to 20th-century Americans, but would not be at all natural
either to our characters nor to the way they would "really" act or think.  This
is a case where gaming RULES of "experience points" or "levels" are necessary
to satisfy the PLAYERS but interfere severely with Role-Playing.

Jim Chapin
-----


//612

[Moderator's Note:  Peter Bismire responds to the thread on Ditlana.       ]

Matthew Pook said in 581:
>Is this building over of tombs and the like, the souce of Ditlana?

An interesting thought but I'd like to suggest another: recovery after
the Cataclysm(s). The destroyed cities and centres of the Ancients must
have had an attraction for the peoples of the Latter Times. As a source
of artifacts, parts, materials and shelter many would have been occupied
by squatters "mining" the resource. As these became organised (or
recovered some of the pre-Cataclysm organisation) adaptions of old
building to new uses would also have involved the clearing of sites as
populations grew and inconvenient rubble was removed.

After a period (a thousand years plus?) the sites were obviously
levelling out to make roads and access to the newer buildings easier. At
some stage this became a formalised process and Ditlana was truly born.

There is also a reason for it's continuity: flooding and the deposition
of new material on the plains. This has buried and "lost" Purdanim a
city where there was insufficient population and/or interest to continue
Ditlana.
-----


//613

[Moderator's Note:  Ian Atkinson explores the Telepathy net vs. Signalling    ]
[                   (that's right, semaphores!) thread.                       ]

The spells in the Gardasiyal are used by individual sorcerors for
individual activities.  In modern military terms the attack spells are
roughly equivalent to an individual soldier's weapons (Radiant Gaze = hand
grenade, etc).  For Imperial-scale activities involving legions, "military
sorcerors" are employed in teams to cast spells that are at least one
order of magnitude more potent, and which might be viewed as equivalent to
artillery in modern terms (with Demonology being the Tsolyani equivalent
of nuclear weapons).

I expect that the same is true for telepathy.  The Ascertainment spell
which transfers spoken messages over a 10-mile range is okay for
individuals and small groups (ie, player characters), but is probably not
used for important communications or along major "trunk routes" such as
linking Jakalla with Bey Su.  As has been pointed out, the Chinese whisper
effect would make Ascertainment useless for this job.  Instead, "military
telepaths" would be used for such activities.

[Moderator's Note:  I felt that the network of Telepaths used very specilli- ]
[                   lized spells.  Whether they be some variety of Temple    ]
[                   spell, or something known only to Sorcerors of the OAL.  ]
[                   Perhaps the Professor can clear this up?                 ]

If the mode of communication by military telepaths is visual rather than
auditory, bandwidth would cease to be a problem since messages can be sent
as quickly as they can be read (and prepared for transmission by clerks). 
Consider how rapidly people with photographic memory can learn and
regurgitate text, even if they don't understand it. 

The main bottle-neck would be at the receiving end, since one cannot write
or dictate as quickly as one can read.  Perhaps the military telepaths
parcel out bits of messages to people with lesser telepathic training who
in turn pass smaller bits on to people using the standard Ascertainment
spell in a branch network.  For each team of military telepaths there
might be several hundred secretaries, each taking dictation (is there a
Tsolyani equivalent for shorthand?) from a regular sorceror who has
plugged into the network by casting his Ascertainment spell.

Since humans with telepathic training are more portable than 20 yard tall
heliographs, a telepathic network has a flexibility similar to that of
radio.  The possibility of visual telepathic communication combined with
the quickness of pure thought could give bandwidth similar to that of
video.  Transmission rates could be further increased by High Calligraphy,
a means of compressing information which allows (as mentioned in Man of
Gold) the nuances of an entire language to be expressed in a single objet
d'art.  A form of computer-like activity could even be simulated by
linking in idiot savants for calculation and mnemonists for data storage. 

Arthur C. Clarke's famous remark that "any sufficiently advanced
technology is indistinguishable from magic" can be reversed: any
sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from high technology.

In the descriptions of Tekumel it is stated that the telepathic networks
don't extend across the oceans, and the 10-mile range of Ascertainment
explains why this is so.  If longer range military telepathy is possible
the telepathic isolation of places like Vra is inconsistent, unless we
posit that the oceans, or creatures within them, produce some sort of
telepathic "static".

This view of how the Empire's telepathic system works also explains how
the temples of Karakan and Vimhula don't have Ascertainment when the
ability to communicate is so essential to effective military action: those
temples do have telepaths, but only at the "military sorcery" level not at
the individual level.

Ian Atkinson.
-----


//614

[Moderator's Note:  Brett Slocum has updated his Tekumel FAQ.  Be sure to    ]
[                   visit his web site, which he has also updated.  There are]
[                   now numerous collaborative areas there.  I have also in- ]
[                   cluded a comment that Bob Alberti made to something I    ]
[                   wrote in the Status of the Empire message.  Rather than  ]
[                   include the whole FAQ, I am including the URL.  Brett, I ]
[                   did this for numerous reasons, but mainly because the use]
[                   of accents caused Tekumel to look like Tikumel.   :)     ]
Brett Slocum writes...

Tekumel Frequently Asked Questions

This document resides on the World Wide Web on Illuminati Online
(http://www.io.com/~slocum/tek_faq.html ).

Last update: 22-Dec-1997

If you have any suggestions for new FAQ questions, or if I made some 
mistakes, or if you feel some additional info would help a FAQ question, 
or if you want to write up a FAQ question, feel free to suggest/correct/
do it and send it to Brett Slocum (slocum@io.com).


Announcing an upgrade to my Tekumel web site, the oldest Tekumel web
site on the net. 

Find it at: http://www.io.com/~slocum/tekumel.html

Now including The Little House of Tranquil Dwelling chat
and Imperial Dispatches campaign description areas.

Also, information about Tekumel, FAQ, GURPS Tekumel rules, etc.

Check it out!
--

Bob Alberti writes...
At 02:49 PM 12/21/97 -0600, you wrote:
>possible conclusions about Mridobu.
>1.  He's dead.
>2.  He's a Mrur or Shedra somewhere.
>3.  He's been Mind Barred, or effectively lobotomized.
>
>he would be ineffective as a politician

I really don't see where this evaluation of his politicial potential
follows from your conclusions! :-)

[Moderator's Note: One of your funniest insights yet, Bob!                   ]
-----


//615

[Moderator's Note:  Bob Alberti forwards a conversation that took place on the]
[                   Tekumel newsgroup.  I compiled the 3 messages into 1.     ]

The following three messages are the "Gods discussion" mentioned earlier
in posts to the Blue Room.  Yes, it's true, the spam slacked off enough
to permit an actual dialogue in the newsgroup.  That, combined with 
Dhich'une's departure from the Golden Tower, mark this as a very special
Intercalary Season.  

If you've read these posts in the newsgroup, you can skip these messages.
If not, read on!

[Message 1]
>darkdwight@aol.com (DarkDwight) wrote:
>>It seems to me that our Western way of thinking still blurs the issue of good
>>and evil as it pertains to the gods of Tekumel. Were any of the war gods in
>>all the pantheons of earth particularly good? Perhaps not but they served a
>>vital role in society.>>Hmm... did they? 

Of course they did.  It's important to understand, these gods were a means to 
explain the world.  Now the fact that the explanation was used to justify bad 
acts is separate from their function as tools to explain.

>War gods made war more palatable to the human mind.

Yes.  And regardless of how you feel about war, the mind needs its 
explanations, and will fashion them from the data available.  This process is 
not bad per se, it's the exploitation of this process to justify bad things 
which is bad.  The process, being an innate characteristic of humanity, is 
neither good or bad.  We're pattern-matchers, it's part of how we survived the 
jungles.

>True, and this is the most horrific result of the marvelous human
>ability to complete patterns without sufficient data. Fabricating a
>superbeing to explain currently unexplainable phenomena and then
>ascribing humanlike motivations to it has caused more death and
>destruction than any other human force.

You're jumping several steps here.  Belief in deity is not a "cause" of 
atrocity.  Atrocity occurs when someone claims the power of the deity through 
divine privilege:  when someone "steps between" the believer and the focus of 
their belief.  When someone says, "I know better than you about the god."  
Then the priest says "The god said 'kill.'"

But people still have to buy that story.  It's simple ignorance and fear which 
are the cause of war. Even if there were no gods, there would still have been 
wars.  There would simply have been wars, and just as many wars, for the same 
real reasons, but with different justifications.>Presumably the

>Pariah Gods don't want the energy or don't particularly care for the
>quality of energy provided by humans. (Although they don't reject
>human worshippers)The humans are tools.  The end sought is nullity of else.
>One thing I've never understood was why these beings have such an
>interest in Tekumel? Does the unusual state of the timespace around
>Tekumel provide some intrinsic attraction?

That's part of the Big Secret, isn't it?  It may well be due to the fact that 
Tekumel is "it" for its particular Universe.  Divine attention is much more 
plausible when there's only one place where life exists in the universe.

>Or is it just that on
>Tekumel worship DOES provide some benefit to them, whereas elswhere it
>doesn't or doesn't as much?

The gods certainly seem to care that they be worshipped, and worshipped after 
particular fashions.  They seem to get SOMETHING from it...

>Are the Pariah Gods simply far less able to take advantage of this? 

No, the Pariah Gods have different goals.  This isn't accurate, but imagine if 
the multiverse, all of existence, were your sleeping bag.  Now you want to 
snuggle warmly into your cozy sleeping bag, but you find that it's full of hot 
little pinpricks of stars, and annoying buzzing and biting insects.  Worse, 
there are a bunch of other people trying to sleep in the same sleeping bag, 
and they seem to LIKE the pinpricks and the bugbites.  Wouldn't you like to 
eliminate all that and settle down to rest?  If one bug ate lots of the other 
bugs, wouldn't you be likely to employ that bug to eat a bunch of the others 
before you squashed it?  And wouldn't you want the other people, the other 
gods, OUT of your sleeping bag?

>(And does that mean Ksarul is "faking" it?
>If so why?) Or do the different races provide different qualities of
>benefit that the different gods are able to take advantage of to
>different degrees? (i.e. the inimical races provide tastier worship
>than humans to them)

I don't know about that, but it might explain why different species rarely 
cross over to worship the gods of other species, except as a formality in 
order to be part of the culture of a given locale.

Oh, by the way, Dhich'une is no longer Emperor.  But he's not dead.  Well, 
he's not any MORE dead.  To learn more, you'll have to subscribe to the Blue 
Room Mailing List if you don't already, at blueroom@nexus.prin.edu.
--

[Message 2]
faithkills@premier.net wrote:
>"Robin Jones" <bin@msbp.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>>"Joseph M. Saul" <jmsaul@us.itd.umich.edu> wrote
>>>...which is because the Pariah Gods and their worshippers supposedly want
>>>to kill and destroy *all* life on Tekumel...  (Well, maybe the One Other
>>>doesn't, but who knows?)

They don't so much want to kill and destroy, as they want to make "have never 
been," to nullify and omit.

>>Now this is one of those conundrums that has been bothering me. the One
>>Other helped the gods to imprison Ksarul but he is still regarded as a
>>Pariah God, why? Why isn't Ksarul regarded as a Pariah God?

The One Other helped because he could, and because the other gods let him.  
They used each other toward different ends.>> And what was

>>the point in imrisoning him when his devotees still hold so much power?

His devotees hold very little power in relationship to the gods.  It is 
instead a measure of how powerful he had grown that it took more than the 
other nine gods and their cohorts to imprison him, and that even imprisoned he 
continues to influence events.  He is not a Pariah Deity, I suspect, because 
while he strove for individual supremacy, he did not do so with the goal of 
the nullity of all things, including the other gods.  Maybe he'd have gotten 
around to that.  But he was fighting for dominance, not soleness.

>Presumably he was imprisoned for one of three reasons. <guesswork>
>1) They couldn't destroy him (only reasonable if no gods can be
>destroyed period, which there are hints both ways)

The Mitlanyal could not destroy him because he was a part of them, a part of 
the balance.  Destroying him would be like chopping off one's own foot, but 
worse.  Ksarul is part of the scheme of things -- without all twenty, you have 
imbalance.  The Stability gods won't go for that, and they opposed Ksarul most 
strongly.

>2) They didn't want to destroy him or might have need of him later...
>like perhaps in holding off the Pariah Gods or Vimuh'la later.

Yes, but they need him now.  He just has to be.

>3) He isn't really or totally imprisoned at all, and it was more or
>less a trick. Perhaps he's running around incognito as it were...:)

Well, that theory has been advanced on more than one occassion...

>>Why isn't his worship and/or any attempt to free imprisonment outlawed?

It was during the long religious battles that raged before the founding of the 
first empires.  But since Pavar revealed that the Mitlanyal are all part of 
the noble scheme of the world, Ksarul's position has been respected.

>Well I certainly wouldn't parade a Key around and expect not to be
>apprehended by _somebody_, probably the first group that could get
>there. As for laws, I don't think the Imperium really has any
>jurisdiction in the matter by the Concordat, but you can be sure you
>would get immediate, and probably terminal resistance were you to try.

Wards and Keys have power of their own, and are as dangerous to "parade 
around" as any other powerful thing.  Speaking strictly legally, however, 
everything in the Empire belongs to the Emperor.  If an you had a Plaque 
(sp?), a Ward, or a Key, the OAL would be knocking shortly.  The Temple of 
Ksarul being what it is, the person who arrived might very well be both a 
highly placed member of the OAL and also a highly-placed member of the Temple 
of Ksarul (more likely an agent for such a person).  The person would claim 
the Key in the name of the Emperor, who might or might not ever be notified of 
this action.  Were you cooperative and judged safe, you might receive a 
reward.  Were you uncooperative or deemed unsafe, you would probably be 
disappeared or at least mind-barred so that you would not recall ever having 
had such a thing.
--

[Message 3]
faithkills@premier.net wrote:
>I wasn't talking about Keys or Wards at this point but the legality or
>illegality of an attempt to free him of its own. By my understanding
>of the Concordat the Imperium is to stay out of matters between the
>Gods and their Temples. Of course this does require physical property
>and even if it didn't the Imperium would probably act anyway, but I
>doubt there is a law on any book forbidding the release of the Doomed
>Prince specifically and ideally accd to the Concordat there would be
>no basis for one.Well, who would have jurisdiction over a god?

These matters transcend mere law.  Most Tsolyani, even the most educated, 
consider the Wards and Keys mere mythology.  Nobody would seriously go off 
looking for a Ward or a Key.  Among those few whose skills and education suit 
them to understand that the Wards and Keys exist, matters of mere law are 
unimportant.  If one is to seek a Ward or Key to free the God, one will do so 
regardless of what a law might say.  Such a venture places one's very soul at 
great peril, and is a challenge to all the known gods -- at such a stage, law 
is irrelevant.

[Moderator's Note:  I must agree with Bob on Wards and Keys issue.  I thought]
[                   that there should be a secret society dedicated to the   ]
[                   recovery and use of the keys and wards.  I spoke with the]
[                   Professor at great length.  The gist of his response was ]
[                   that most Tekumelani (even the Ksarul hierarchy) just    ]
[                   wouldn't think to do it.  It is "God stuff" for lack of a]
[                   better term.  I considered running a campaign based on   ]
[                   this premise stretching 10 to 20+ real years, and maybe  ]
[                   centuries (or longer) of actual game time.  The Professor]
[                   hinted that if Ksarul was ever freed, horrible things    ]
[                   would happen.  He would not elaborate.                   ]

>why _Vimu'hla_ is not considered a Pariah God.
Vimuhla wants continued existence in his own fashion.  The Pariah Gods want 
everything to Never Have Been.  No flame, no intellect, no history, no time.
If the Pariah Gods win, the battle will have never even been fought.

>Vimu'hla and the Pariah Gods seem to be agents of
>"Law" in the extreme. Where the Stability Gods really do seem to want
>to maintain the status quo, or "Balance".

It is much more complicated than that, but the Tlokiriqaluyal and the 
Tlomitlanyal represent concepts closer to "Society versus the Individual" than 
"Law" or "Good" versus "Evil" or "Bad."

The Tlomitlanyal support the continuation of that which should be, proper and 
noble cycles of events, and the needs of society over the individual.

The Tlokiriqaluyal support the moment, the experience of self and now, and the 
achievement of the desires of the individual over the needs of society.
Vimuhla expresses the need of the individual for freedom and destruction, the 
experience of violent dissolution, the shattering of imposed order.  Ksarul 
expresses ambition, ego, the acquirement of power as a means to self 
aggrandizement within one's noble skein of destiny.

Sarku represents the dominance of self over time, the perpetuation of ego 
despite the limitations of age and the cycles of nature, and the continued 
witness of the self to Lord Hru'u's victory of never-ending change.

The Pariah Deities seek that this all not be, never have been, wasn't.
----


//616

[Moderator's Note:  The Professor replies to the Sakbe and Ditlana thread.   ]

Dear Chris and BlueRoomers,

>>Possibly, but I don't think so. As I recall, the practice of building
>>new cities atop old ones is not singular to the Central or South
>>American civilizations; several such sites have been found throughout
>>the Middle East and Asia Minor. The most famous example of such a
>>city is probably that of Troy, a series of nine cities (at least)
>>built one atop the next.
>>
>>In my opinion, there is no reason why building repeatedly on the
>>same site should be a function of a particular culture. There are
>>usually good reasons to stay in the same place, often involving
>>advantageous location (ease of defense/transportation, proximity to
>>water sources, ease of agriculture, and the like) or simple inertia
>>(why pick up and move somewhere else when you can stay where you are
>>and build again).
>
>Very true, but herein lies the distinction: Ditlana involves the
>*deliberate* levelling and rebuilding of an entire city at once, whereas
>all those Troys were presumably destroyed by warfare (the /Illiad/
>anyone?) or natural disaster and then rebuilt by survivors or another
>tribe altogether.  Another possibility is simply that over time the
>houses were rebuilt at a fairly constant rate so that every century or
>so you wind up with everything changed by accident as it were.  The
>Mayans certainly slapped new layers on their temples, and I think there
>is reason to believe that this was done at planned intervals, but this
>is just one structure at a time.

The Tekumelani took the concept of replacing one building and extended it
to most of a city (usually not suburbs or outlying districts, which may
have their own Ditlana). The stated goal is "purity in the eyes of the
Gods." This is especially valid in the case of Lord Hnalla's crystal-clear
radiance, but less so for other deities. Still, the Tlakotanis give
precedence to Lord Hnalla, and his priesthood is extremely powerful,
socially and politically.

>Off the top of my head I cannot recall any Ditlana-like occurrances in
>Earthly history.  Plenty of cities have been levelled:  the Romans did
>in Carthage and the Persians destroyed Babylon and sent the inhabitants
>off to different cities.  Plenty of cities have been built from scratch
>on master plans going back as far as Catal Huyuk in the Neolithic (if
>recent findings are correct.)  But even in this modern age, with all
>this urban renewal going on, I can't think of ANY city that has actually
>been ENTIRELY demolished and rebuilt on purpose.  If anybody does recall
>such a case I would like to hear about it (and reconstruction after
>carpet-bombing does not count!)

It may not be possible to provide an exact Terran counterpart, but the
extension of the Terran "renewal" concept to a larger scale, possible with
a large population and many skilled workers, should be do-able, if there is
societal and governmental support.

>The concept of any culture, let alone a non-industrial one, doing such a
>thing is astonishing.  I had at least one gamer say flat out to me that
>such a thing was impossible and unbelievable (it seemed to turn him off
>on Tekumel altogether-- his loss.)  I would not go that far, but I will
>admit the difficulty.

To each his own. Just think what he's missing! And think, too, of all the
equally astonishing features of our own Terran cultures that may initially
seem unbelievable to some folk! Pyramids, anyone? Plains of Nazca? Mount
Rushmore?

>[Moderator's Note:  You know, it is funny when people look for silly reasons]
>[                   to dislike Tekumel (or any game system).  I had one per-]
>[                   son who didn't like Tekumel because the weather was so  ]
>[                   oppressively hot (it was the height of summer).         ]
>[                   Go Figure.                                              ]

Get a priest of Hru'u to cast an ice spell on a bucket of water, then an
Avanthe priest to blow air over it -- you have simple airconditioning! Just
don't go traipsing down the road loaded down with 40-60 pounds of plate
armour! This is the real sticker for some players -- they always want to be
fully armed and armoured, even while out walking or in bed!

>However, I do have one theory that would make it feasable, namely the
>tremendous antiquity of civilisation on Tekumel.  Just their known
>history goes back five times our own.  I occurs to me that by the time
>the Bednalljans or Engsvanyali (I forget who began Ditlana but I think
>it was one of them) came on the scene their populations had spread as
>far as they could and had stabilised at the maximum sustainable level
>that there simply was no need or interest in founding brand new cities.
>No one was that interested in colonising the wilderness, so there was
>little expansion outside the "civilised" areas (with a few exceptions.)
>The upshot is that all the energy and money that the Empires would have
>spent on new cities was thus available to rebuild the existing ones in
>toto.

Very good. This is indeed part of it.

>BTW, on the Sakbe Road question, does anybody else realise that their
>dual commerce/military function exactly parallels the US Interstate
>Highway system?  The Interstates were originally begun in the Cold War
>as a troop transport system in case of invasion and only later were the
>economic benefits given priority.  Ever notice how much some of those
>400-series ring highways around cities look like defensive earthworks?
>
>Sometimes Tekumel is not so far away...

Hah! You figured out one of the reasons for the proliferation of Sakbe
roads around large population centres!

>John
>--
>
>Erich Schneider writes...
>
>A look at a good book on the Mayan civilization will reveal that, in
>fact, there are quite a few Mayan sites that feature ceremonial
>elevated stone causeways, and the Mayan (I forget the exact language,
>there are many "Mayan" langauges) term for these causeways is "sacbe"
>(plural "sacbeob"). It seems pretty clear to me that's where Prof.
>Barker got the idea. And, as is stated, the Central Americans were
>some of the few survivors of the Terran nuclear war (vide the
>"Tamil-Arabic-Mayan argot" which was the common Terran language).
>
>Erich Schneider  erich@csdl.tamu.edu  http://www.csdl.tamu.edu/~erich

Exactly. The "c" in "sacbe" is simply a "k" in pronunciation: "sakbe." The
"k" in the trasncription of most Mayan languages stands for a *glottalised*
"k," a sound English lacks. In modern transcription, a glottalised "k" is
written with a small raised comma over a "k" -- can't do it on this
keyboard.

>--
>
>Thomas Worthington writes...
>
>I know this belongs on the newsgroup but the university no longer
>carries it. Anyway it is relevent to an earlier topic in the list.
>
>Everyone get the December National Geographic. It covers much if the
>Maya material covered in the UK TV program that was mentioned a while
>back. It does not include a picture of the "cut away" temple,
>however. It does include a nice fold out panarama of a city, though.
>
>Thomas Worthington

There are some older issues, too. One or two had full colour paintings of
life in the Maya world. Your library should have some of those. They
inspired me when I was developing Tekumel long ago.

Regards,

Phil
-----


//617

[Moderator's Note:  Professor Barker replies on the Shen language.         ]

>While looking through the Tekumel sourcebook for information concerning
>Shenyu, I relaized nothing had been said about what the Shen (or any of the
>other nonhumans) do for a written language. I realize that the Shen can speak
>the languages of men, and that  the reverse is not true.  From the
>information in the sourcebook I gather the Shen are a very advanced race,
>capable of engineering, complex computations, and the capacity to learn-and
>learn very well at that! It seems that such a race would have a means of
>written communication, but perhaps it is orally passed along. Of course, no
>human could read such a language as it is not based on the same kind of voal
>chord vibrations. I am curious though, if their culture follows an oral
>tradition, what great epics are there? It stands to reason that the shen
>would have great warrior based epics or something amongst the various egg
>groups. Speaking of which, what are those various egg groups? Some of them
>are mentioned in the various Armies volumes.  I'm sure  the answers are not
>simple, but I look foreward to reading what anyone has to say on the subject.
>
>Sincerely,
>Dwight Grosso

Yes, the Shen do have a written language. Humans can conceivably learn it
to read -- but not to pronounce since Shen speech organs are so different,
and there are several sounds that defy any human to produce. The grammar is
also complex, too, but the real confusion lies in cultural comprehension of
these reptile-like creatures. Some day I should produce a font for the Shen
syllabary just as a point of interest -- but that's a largish task!

The Shen can indeed perform all sorts of complex tasks, but at some point
they stop being just "humans in reptile suits" and take on their own
cultural identity. This is very hard to convey to those of you who have
never yet encountered a Shen.

Shen epics are supposed to be lengthy and interesting. A good epic is
filled, as the Shen themselves say, with suitable roaring, belching,
slavering, and dripping. The Shen have nothing against violence and blood,
and their literature is thus quite unsuitable for human children.

[Moderator's Note:  Hey, I grew up with those insanely violent cartoons, and ]
[                   still enjoy to this day a good game of Duke Nukem, or    ]
[                   Quake (have aspirations to buy Postal soon) but would    ]
[                   never dream of hurting another human (glad I was never   ]
[                   drafted).  What is my point?  Well, violence is not in-  ]
[                   herently bad for a child, as long as they are taught that]
[                   violence is not condoned except in the most dire circum- ]
[                   stances.  Of course this im MHO, and I have no kids. And ]
[                   this is wildly off topic and I apologize for that.   I   ]
[                   guess that I shouldn't let this through, but I couldn't  ]
[                   let that unsuitable thing go by unchallenged.  If there  ]
[                   are Shen in the world, Tekumelani children should know   ]
[                   something about their culture.  I think if the poor child]
[                   that was eaten by the Shen in that anecdote the Professor]
[                   related earlier had some inkling of Shen behavior, he    ]
[                   might not have been so easily been turned into an appe-  ]
[                   tizer.                                                   ]

Regards,

Phil
-----


//618

[Moderator's Note:  Ian Young offers up some more ideas about Ditlana.      ]

Peter Bismire considers one rationale to justify buried cities...

>There is also a reason for it's continuity: flooding and the deposition
>of new material on the plains. This has buried and lost Purdanim a
>city where there was insufficient population and/or interest to continue
>Ditlana.

Good point, but it has its geomorphological counter-point as well: Every
stream that deposits sediments that cover one area will be eroding material
from another.  Thus, for any river that covers any given significant
archeological site (as some people have suggested the Nile may have done in
Egypt), it perhaps as likely that stream meandering and incision will uncover
another (as has been the case in Copan, mentioned in previous posts).

Taking a good look at the map of Jakalla, and considering the antiquity
of the ruins that supposedly underlie its current surface, I find it highly
likely that the rivers to either side of the city have opened passages to its
Underworld on numerous occasions (besides those that the sewers themselves
present).  If I were an adventurous lad with a sword in hand and a lick of
rudimentary geological know-how, I'd be skirting the city's walls in a skiff,
looking for a convenient in-road.  Of course, that's not to say that any
passage I found wouldn't quickly end up in a dead-end.

Gone,
Ian Young
-----


//619

[Moderator's Note:  Leonard Erickson contributes some ideas to the Sakbe and ]
[                   Ditlana thread.                                          ]

>[Moderator's Note:  More discussion on the origins of Sakbe and Ditlana.    ]
>
>John Smith writes...
>>>Is this building over of tombs and the like, the souce of Ditlana?

>>Possibly, but I don't think so. As I recall, the practice of building
>>new cities atop old ones is not singular to the Central or South
>>American civilizations; several such sites have been found throughout
>>the Middle East and Asia Minor. The most famous example of such a
>>city is probably that of Troy, a series of nine cities (at least)
>>built one atop the next.

>>In my opinion, there is no reason why building repeatedly on the
>>same site should be a function of a particular culture. There are
>>usually good reasons to stay in the same place, often involving
>>advantageous location (ease of defense/transportation, proximity to
>>water sources, ease of agriculture, and the like) or simple inertia
>>(why pick up and move somewhere else when you can stay where you are
>>and build again).

>Very true, but herein lies the distinction: Ditlana involves the 
>*deliberate* levelling and rebuilding of an entire city at once, whereas 
>all those Troys were presumably destroyed by warfare (the /Illiad/ 
>anyone?) or natural disaster and then rebuilt by survivors or another 
>tribe altogether.  Another possibility is simply that over time the 
>houses were rebuilt at a fairly constant rate so that every century or 
>so you wind up with everything changed by accident as it were.  The 
>Mayans certainly slapped new layers on their temples, and I think there 
>is reason to believe that this was done at planned intervals, but this 
>is just one structure at a time.

>Off the top of my head I cannot recall any Ditlana-like occurrances in 
>Earthly history.  Plenty of cities have been levelled:  the Romans did 
>in Carthage and the Persians destroyed Babylon and sent the inhabitants 
>off to different cities.  Plenty of cities have been built from scratch 
>on master plans going back as far as Catal Huyuk in the Neolithic (if 
>recent findings are correct.)  But even in this modern age, with all 
>this urban renewal going on, I can't think of ANY city that has actually 
>been ENTIRELY demolished and rebuilt on purpose.  If anybody does recall 
>such a case I would like to hear about it (and reconstruction after 
>carpet-bombing does not count!)  

I'm fairly certain that (at least at one time) the opinion regarding
the Mayan cities *was* that they did the "tear down and rebuild" bit at
the start of each 52 year cycle,

-- 
Leonard Erickson (aka Shadow)
-----


//620

[Moderator's Note:  Professor Barker expands on the Chlen and its fitness for]
[                   use in battle.                                           ]

>Hi!

>A thought stuck me the other day. The Tekumelians have domesticated an
>animal that makes the elephant look like a puppy. Plus it's hide can be
>treated  with chemicals to make a material as thick as bronze, so i assume
>the "leather" in the living animal is pretty tough too.

>[Moderator's Note:  Domesticated might be an inaccurate word here.  Chlen   ]
>[                   are dangerous and hard to control.  It would be like    ]
>[                   saying we have domesticated tigers.  Chlen are about the]
>[                   size of an elephant.  Some are smaller, some larger, it ]
>[                   depends on the breed.                                   ]

>So my question is... why as no one ever remebered to use the Chlen in
>warfare ?

This has been tried not once but many times. The Bednalljans did it, the
Engsvanyali tried it, and in modern times the Mu'ugalavyani attempted to
breed a "domestic" Chlen that would not go on rampages right through their
own troops. They succeeded so well that their Chlen simply sat down on the
battlefield and went to sleep waiting for dinner! The creatures are
intractable when afraid: they are terrified of arrows, flashes and bangs of
magical spells, and the stench of blood and death.

>The possibilities are enourmous, even a wild stampede of Chlen beasts must
>be something to behold, the animals will flatten anything on their path,
>and just imagine the number of soldiers it can carry, maybe a tower filled
>with archers ?

Say goodbye to said archers!

>[Moderator's Note:  The Professor will correct me if I am wrong.  It has    ]
>[                   been tried, but the Chlen is a skittish beast.          ]
>[                   They also easily frightened, and when the are frightened]
>[                   they usually turn around to leave the battlefield, right]
>[                   over your own troops.  If I was an infantryman, I'd     ]
>[                   never follow a Chlen into battle, well, maybe from a    ]
>[                   pretty good distance.                                   ]

They even panic once in awhile while drawing carts on the Sakbe roads.

>Several ancient human cultures used the elephant as a mount, they were a
>bit unprdectable but their effect on the moral of the foe would more than
>make up to it.

An intelligent enemy would make all kinds of noise and fire missiles at the
beast's face.

>We all know Tekumel is tradition-bound and innovations aren't especially
>wellcome, but even so it's odd that the Chlen has been around for all this
>time without ever beeing used. or maybe it has but the results were so
>desastrous that the records of the battle(s) are now locked away in a deep
>vault somewere in a forgotten temple of Karakan :)
>
>[Moderator's Note:  The Professor may have some details, but it has been   ]
>[                   tried, with less than stellar results.                 ]
>
>Comments ?
>
>P.S. - I hope i'm not making a crass error here, i'm writting this based
>on what i've read about the Chlen and the it's descriptions. I've
>never really seen a drawing of one.

Get A copy of the Tekumel Bestiary, available from TOME. There's a Chlen
picture in there.

>>From a little country at the end of Europe
>
>Nuno Flavio

Regards,

Phil
-----


//621

[Moderator's Note:  Professor Barker replies to Peter's comments on Ditlana.  ]

>>Is this building over of tombs and the like, the souce of Ditlana?

>An interesting thought but I'd like to suggest another: recovery after
>the Cataclysm(s). The destroyed cities and centres of the Ancients must
>have had an attraction for the peoples of the Latter Times. As a source
>of artifacts, parts, materials and shelter many would have been occupied
>by squatters mining the resource. As these became organised (or
>recovered some of the pre-Cataclysm organisation) adaptions of old
>building to new uses would also have involved the clearing of sites as
>populations grew and inconvenient rubble was removed.

This is certainly part of it, although perhaps few Tekumelani would
recognise this as a reason. Ask any Tsolyani or Mu'ugalavyani (the two
modern nations most interested in Ditlana), and they'll tell you that
"purity in the eyes of the Gods" is the basis for this custom. When
cities grow old and crowded, stinking and disease-ridden, it's time for a
new city. Having built the old city on a convenient site -- harbour,
mountain pass, etc., very few cities can be completely moved to new
locales. So... build on top! Get rid of the old layer by simply burying it.

>After a period (a thousand years plus?) the sites were obviously
>levelling out to make roads and access to the newer buildings easier. At
>some stage this became a formalised process and Ditlana was truly born.

You may be right, although there are other factors.

>There is also a reason for its continuity: flooding and the deposition
>of new material on the plains. This has buried and lost Purdanim a
>city where there was insufficient population and/or interest to continue
>Ditlana.

Yes, flooding on the great Missuma Plain has also been a factor. Building a
city *higher* by setting it atop a platform of stone taken from a previous
incarnation of that city is a good way to get up above floods,
disease-ridden insects, etc. (Disease is more common on Tekumel than the
gamebooks imply. Player characters usually have access to "Heal" and
"Alleviation" spells, which on "real Tekumel" are not all that common and
are reserved for the wealthier classes.

Regards,

Phil
-----


//622

[Moderator's Note:  Edmund Metheny asks questions about the Chaigari        ]
[                   Protectorate and other areas of Tekumel.                ]

>I have been a fan of Tekumel for many years, and have just begun a campaign
>set in the city of Hekellu.  Since Hekellu is quite different than Jakalla,
>where my previous campaigns have been set, I have a few questions about the
>area.

>1)  What are the main exports of the Chaigari Protectorate?

Leather, wood (both lumber and fine woods for furnishings), blue-white
marble prized for facades of important buildings, rough cloth bags for
storage, pitch and other gums, red pigment for dyes, etc.

>2)  Is the Kanayugara river navigable around Hekellu?

A small craft with a draught no more than a cubit can navigate most of it.
Some places it is deeper, but in most locales it is shallow with a muddy
bottom and reeds, tangle-vines, and stink-plants. It is also home to a
smaller variety of Ghar, which make their lunch on passing mariners...

>3)  Which faction in the ongoing civil war is the current governer of the
>city supporting?

After hanging back and refusing to take sides for a long time, the
priesthood of Hekellu opted for Prince Rereshqala. Now that the war is at
last over (apparently), the clans, priethoods, and government institutions
have swung hard into Prince Mirusiya's camp.

>4)  What is the city itself like?  Any known "points of interest" in the
>area?

This is rather too large a topic to be addressed in short order. I do have
a hand-sketched map of Hekellu someplace. Perhaps one of my players can
scan it in and send it to you.  Help?

[Moderator's Note:  I can add it to the collection if someone up in Min-     ]
[                   neapolis can scan it and send it to me (of if someon can ]
[                   get me a photocopy, I can scan it myself.                ]

>5)  Is the Legion of the Many Legged Serpent still the only legion in the
>area, or have reinforcements been sent east?

The legion went west to help in the siege of Avanthar, under the command of
the Ksarul prince, Taksuru. Most of its elements are still there, although
they'll be coming home right after the Kolumejalim. During the interim
there were only a few Cohorts in the city, plus Sakbe-road guards, city
police, etc. The breakup of the holy war under the Young Master kept the
tribes embroiled in their own battles, and they did not attack the city.

>Thanks!

Best regards,

Phil
-----


//623

[Moderator's Note:  Ian Yound asks some questions about he Pocket Dimensions ]
[                   that Tekumel and other Solar Systems were flung into.    ]
[                   Never heard of the term Sun-Shifter before Professor. :) ]

>As a new participant on this list, I hope I'll not be addressing topics
>that have already been discussed to death.  My question at the moment pertains
>to nature of the "pocket dimension" into which Tuleng and its accompanying
>planetary system were drawn.  More particularly, what I would like to know is,
>what was the fate of the *other* star systems that were pinched off into
>pocket
>dimensions?  I distinctly recall (though I know not from where) the allusion
>that the issue would be addressed in later Tekumel novels.  As said novels are
>not immediately forthcoming, may I ask for a bit of a teaser?  I'll rattle off
>a bit of a grocery list here:

Yes, we did cover some of this. Perhaps Joe Saul (who maintains the annals
of the Blue Room) can point you to specific messages. Wish I could complete
my novels, but after retirement and a heart attack, it is not easy. I may
still do one.

[Moderator's Note:  I can send you back messages Ian.  Let me know.  Chris   ]

>1) Was this calamity due to unforeseen scientific/technical side-effects (i.e.
>stresses caused by the 3-Light drive)?  Was it due to a weapon of some kind?
>Was it caused by "divine intervention" (i.e. the interdimensional beings that
>act as gods on Tekumel)?

It is rumoured (by the scientists of Humanspace) that the calamity was due
to a dimension-altering weapon. This would be along the lines of the
smaller and more portable "Interfogulators" that allow limited items to be
scrambled and sent to other Planes. Consult Lord Sanjesh hiKirisaya of the
city of Usenanu for details. He has a collection of Interfogulators going
back to the A3 model. He'd be very grateful if somebody could find him an
A2 or even the extremely rare A1.

The difference between the Interfogulator and the tremendously powerful
"sun-shifter" seems to be scale and intensity. The "sun-shifter" uses the
apparently infinite number of small "pocket Planes" and makes it next to
impossible to breach them or find one's way back. There is said to be at
least one clue to getting back to Humanspace again on various planets in
each pocket Dimension; my playing groups have tried to find this for 25
years, and no has come close.

 >2) If the result was due to divine intervention, are there similar "gods" on
>planets existing in other pocket dimensions?  Or, perhaps, do these *same*
>gods
>from Tekumel exist in more than one pocket dimension?

Your theory is as good as mine. Divine intervention is not necessary,
however; there are enough hostile and powerful species on Tekumel (and
other planets) to do the job.

>3) Do humans exist in other pocket dimensions?

Oh, yes. Also all kinds of creatures, some of which are quite horrid,
others beautiful, and some just ugly.

>4) When mages and priests of Tekumel draw upon the energies from "other planes
>of existence", are they in actuality drawin it from other pocket dimensions?

No, the priests of Belkhanu claim that *raw* power is drawn from the spaces
between the Planes. You can't get through the Bubble-skin of Reality just
to pull power out. You can *transfer* in or out with an appropriate nexus
point, but you can't communicate or utilise materials from another Plane
unless you go there and get them.

>Are the summoned beings merely other hapless creatures that exist on planets
>that have been trapped in similar pocket dimensions?  Can humans from Tekumel
>similarly be summoned to other planets in other pockets?

Some are indeed the descendants of trapped (I don't know about "hapless")
entities. Others are native to those Planes.

>5) Are the Mihalli, with their apparently inherent extra-dimensional powers,
>capable of escaping the pocket dimension in which Tekumel is enclosed?

They can, but they do not seem to have got past the Pylons, the great
barrier in other-dimensional space that blocks travel to Humanspace. They 
also do not seem to want to make such a voyage since this would deprive 
them of much of their power -- the "Skin of Reality" has to be quite thin 
for most magic to work, and our universe apparently has a skin like that 
of a bull Chlen!

>Ding-dang it, one last question regarding the pocket dimensions:
>
>6) Are the "gods" of Tekumel trapped within the pocket dimension as well?

No. They exist on a lot of Planes and even have a few outposts in
Humanspace. So it is said -- but then no one can rely too heavily on the
whispers the priests of Ksarul.

Regards,
Phil
-----


//624

[Moderator's Note:  Ian Atkinson asks about scribes and their use.          ]

>Is there a Tsolyani equivalent of shorthand?

>If not, how do secretaries take dictation?

>Surely it couldn't be that people (even nobles) all write their own
>letters.

Hardly any noble or upperrclass person writes his/her own letters. Scribes
abound. There is no equivalent of shorthand, but there is a cursive form of
the Tsolyani script that is used for "speed."

Scribes' take dictation the same way they have done throughout the ages --
slowly and with many mistakes until they become really skilled at their art.

Regards,
Phil
-----


//625

[Moderator's Note:  John Smith asks about the Yan Koryani script.         ]

>I was looking at the Yan Koryani script the other day and realised just
>how blocky, slow, and awkward it must be to write with a pen.  It really
>is more suited to printing than writing.  I seem to recall that it is
>supposed to resemble Llyani, which is supposedly based on the scripts of
>the Ancients, so this makes sence historically.

>All of which makes me wonder if there is a *cursive* form of Yan
>Koryani?  Even if Tekumelyani cultures are not very interested in
>economy of time and effort, it would seem to make sense that the scribes
>would have a "quick" form for taking dictation, memos, etc.  The scribal
>clans would probably keep the keys to this a secret, except maybe from
>the Surgeth.  Alternately, it could be that EVERY scribal clan, temple
>and secret service has it's own mutually-unintelligible shorthand!  This
>would help account for the difficulties the Baron has had uniting the
>country:  nobody can read anybody else's records.

>This is not without parallel.  Chinese had at least one shorthand used
>by scholars, and another used by court clerks to record testimony.  Both
>of these must be learned separately from the more formal characters of
>the regular script.

>True, as long as they are all writing down the same language
>decipherment would be relatively easy, but it would still be a headache.

>So, is there a cursive Yan Kor script?  If not, I may have to try my
>hand at making one, this sort of thing being a hobby of mine.

There is no "Yan Koryani shorthand" per se. The Yan Koryani do have a form
of their script used for handwriting, however. The letters are modified so
that just the crucial and distinguishing part of the letter-shape is
written: e.g. a little square box (or even an oval!) for a thick-walled
hollow square.

This is not a secret script but one that is taught in Yan Koryani schools.
The ciphers the Surgeth uses are different -- I'm told since I am not
permitted to learn them!

Regards,

Phil
-----


//626

[Moderator's Note:  The Professor is asked about the Mayan Language and its  ]
[                   survival through the Cataclysm to impact Tekumel.        ]

>From the history of Pre-Darkness Tekumel, the inclusion of Arabic and Tamil
>makes reasonable sense.  However, how in the world did a dead language like
>Mayan get thrown into the mix?  Mayan is fairly prominent as seen from such
>words as "sakbe" which is certainly from the Mayan word "sacbeob", which
>means a raised road. So why was a dead language resurrected?

Mayan is bot a "dead language," About half a million speak one or another
Maya language in Yucatan, Chiapas, Guatemala, and Honduras. I think my
estimate is really low. What *died* was the knowledge of writing the
glyphs: the Spaniards saw to that. Mayan languages continue to be spoken
and are on the rise today. By the time Armageddon is over and the radiation
levels are down, the Maya have spread all over Central America and Mexico.
They joined with the other mentioned ethnic groups from across the ocean to
build the Greatest Glory -- the one-world empire that eventually sent
missions to the planets and then to the stars.

Regards,
Phil
-----


//627

[Moderator's Note:  Eric Johnson-DeBauffre asks about the Legion of Kaikama  ]
[                   and the breakdown sexual preferences of the members.     ]

>Eric Johnson-DeBaufre asks the following

>Although I have been avidly following the interesting and frequently
>erudite posts to this group for a long time, this is my first personal
>contribution so please bear with me.

>Having recently received copies of the two S&G reprints, I immediately
>plunged into reading about the fascinating world that Professor Barker
>has created (or should I say "discovered"?).  While I knew about Tekumel's
>existence for a long time, my exposure to the details of the world was
>limited to my reading of the first novel, _Man of Gold_, and to lurking
>as a member of this group.  While this was and still is a satisfying way
>of enjoying Tekumel, I found myself wanting to know more about this rich
>and complex world, to explore some of its mysteries for myself rather than
>to receive all of my information second-hand.  So, I broke down and finally
>bought the first two books, the first of many such purchases I am sure.

>But on to my point.  While reading about Tekumelani (is that right?) sexual

[Moderator's Note:  Yes, you are right.                                      ]

>mores, I hit a bit of a snag that I am hoping someone can help me to resolve.
>In _Deeds of the Ever Glorious_, Prof. Barker, describing the Legion of
>Kaikama, writes that "its general, Lord Kaikama hi Mrachiyaku, of the White
>Stone Clan, is a brilliant young homosexual, and many of his staff officers
>are also of this sexual persuasion" (Deeds 57).  However, the first S&G book
>says that "the Tsolyani, who love to put things into neatly visible categories,
>even have army legions composed _solely_ of homosexuals: e.g., the Legion of
>Kaikama..." (69) [emphasis mine].

The second statement (the "solely" one) is a bit of an overstated
generality. Kaikama's staff is largely composed of homosexuals, but there
are many "straights" with him as well. I have a tendency to categorise
things into blacks-or-whites, yes-or-no, statements. His chief officers,
some of his junior officers, and the majority of his men and women soldiers
are indeed gay, but others are not. I can't give an exact percentage but
figure it is somewhere near 70-30.

>Does the statement in one or the other of these sources reflect a change in
>the Professor's understanding of the composition of the Legion of Kaikama,
>or is the statement in _Deeds_ meant to be read as expressing the point of
>view of a native Tsolyani who, while doing his level best to exhibit that
>meritorious Tsolyani ideal of tolerance, is nevertheless still captive to
>his own heterosexual leanings and thus incapable of admitting that an
>entire legion of homosexuals exists?

Neither. Just me being lazy and making a broad generality where more
thought was needed!

>Given the seriousness with which the Tsolyani embrace tolerance, I doubt
>that it's the latter, but can anyone help me out?  Thanks for listening.

>Eric Johnson-DeBaufre

Regards,
Phil
-----


//628

Greetings my friends.  I have been working during my vacation on the ftp site
a bit.  I have repackaged Engsvan hla Ganga as a PDF.  I have also done the
same with the Ksamanduish article.  The only one left to do is the Hnalla 
article.  I will tackle it later this week.  There are some serious font 
issues to contend with in that article.  The others articles had less serious
issues.  I have also recreated the Create a Religion article in bigger type,
and with a left margin, as one list member informed me that his printer 
chopped off the 1st character of every line.  It is now a 23 page article, 
and a bit easier on the eyes (because of the larger font).

I am in the process of converting all the 2.1 PDFs to 3.0 pdfs, for consis-
tency.  Be sure to upgrade your Acrobat Readers.

We'll soon have a new netbook on the site.  I just have to work out where the
shareware registrations will go.  The title is "The Tsolyani Primer" and was
written by Curtis Scott.  We have specific approval for this reprint from 
Curtis' wife, and we thank her for that.  It is a wonderful labor and would
be greatly missed if we could not have reprinted it.  It consists of 17 
lessons stressing basic Tsolyani Language.  It is a wonderful aid in learning 
to speak Tsolyani.  

A moment on the Netbook topic.  I maintain and monitor my ftp logs, and I 
know that people are downloading netbooks at a fairly regular pace.  The 
number of registrations has dried up to nothing.  (Joe, I just sent yours 
to the prof, so you should the cancelled check soon.)  I have had about 3 
registrations in the past 4 to 6 months.  If you have downloaded any net-
book and not registered, please do so.  I take none of the money.  It all
goes to the Professor.

It has been great for me to provide this service to all of you.  I had no
idea that there would be 260 people on the list.  We come from 15 countries.
Those countries are as follows:  Australia, Belgium, Canada, Finland, France,
Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, New Zealand, Portugal, Sweden, United
Kingdom, and United States.

Thanks for all your input over the years.

Chris
-----
Chris Davis      Moderator, The Blue Room        blueroom@prin.edu
The Blue Room's FTP site:  http://nexus.prin.edu  or  ftp://nexus.prin.edu
Available 24 hours a day, except when my PC is down, or unavailable.


//629

[Moderator's Note:  Some Mitlanyal news from Bob Alberti.  We'll have to see ]
[                   if a contract is forthcoming.  Let us know Bob.  Sorry   ]
[                   for the relative quiet these past few days.  Been in bed ]
[                   under the weather.  I hope to have the new netbook up    ]
[                   later today.                                             ]

Today TOME called and verbally expressed an intent to proceed with the
publication of Mitlanyal, probably in two volumes.  Of course, nothing is
firm until a letter of intent or contract is signed by all parties.  But I
thought this being the last day they had to decide, that readers would be
curious.  It looks like it's a "go."
-----


//630

[Moderator's Note:  James Eckman writes about Ditlana.  The Tsolyani Primer ]
[                   netbook is now up and available for downloading!        ]

As a form of small scale Ditlana, the Japanese rebuild the shrine at Ise on
a periodic basis as a form of ritual cleansing. I'm unfamilar with the Mayan
examples cited, but from my poor understanding of Mayan culture many of the
cities functioned primarily as centers of worship. Perhaps early Tsolyanu
post-holocaust cities were of a similar nature? 
-----

