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 ARCHIVES -- VOLUME 3 61 More on Starting Characters Reply 62 More on Magic and Languages 63 More on Magic and Languages 64 More on Magic and Languages 65 More on Magic and Languages 66 Announcements 67 The Barrier Pylons 68 The Barrier Pylons Response 69 Followup on Starting Characters and Miscellaneous 70 Hostile Races, Chlen Hide, Magic and Languages 71 Hostile Races, Chlen Hide, Magic and Languages Reply 72 Hostile Races, Chlen Hide, Magic and Languages Followup 73 Visualizing Tekumel 74 More on Hostile Races, etc 75 More on Hostile Races 76 Pariah Hereseology Revisited Part 1 77 Pariah Hereseology Revisited Part 2 78 NPCs 79 More Pariah Hereseology 80 More Pariah and Stabilty vs. Change 81 Sealed Cities 82 Newcomers Guide to Tekumel 83 More Pariah Silliness 84 More Newcomers Guide 85 More Sealed Cities 86 More Newcomers Guide 87 More Newcomers Guide 88 Anyone going to Gencon 89 More Newcomers Guide 90 Some Questions ********************************* //61 [Moderator's Note: Professor Barker responds to Darryl's More on Starting ] [ Characters message. ] Darryl, hello! I, too, wish there were a basic book on Tsolyani culture. For some years we did have the "Sourcebook," but it is out of print, I understand. TOME may still have a few copies of vols. I and II; but vol. 3 was never printed. Those who need the first two vols. can write or call TOME and see if any are left. The "Sourcebook," however, is not entirely what you want. A simpler, easier, and less compendious work would be useful to players. The introductory book to the "Adventures on Tekumel" series (the "character roll-up" book) is the nearest thing there is now, followed by the solitaire adventures, which give lots of background while players are working through the adventures and getting themselves killed. Someday, somehow, perhaps we will get a better introductory book. >INMO, you can be swamped by the detail, especially if you play cold (like >i did), as not only the world is different,but the moral, social and >political norms _are_ alien. Playing a member of a high clan is also >hard, as you have social and political responsibilities which you must >honor without becoming a social outcast (or worse). This is all true. All one can do is -- as with any new culture -- read whatever you can find. Play as you see fit, and don't worry too much about "correctness" or "authenticity" at first. This comes from experience, just as learning to live in a village in India would be utterly alien at first and then become familiar, until you finally achieved near-total immersion. >Reading through the EPT rules, the just off the boat is a good concept >(and as the Professor said, Rome made a habit of appointing barbarians as >generals at al), but here you miss out on what Tekumel offers, rich >social and political interaction. (Plus i must add, how would barbarian >get to join a decent clan?). Barbarians can eventually be accepted into the clans -- not Sea Blue or GoldenSunburst, perhaps, but good, sensible, respectable clans that will use the talents of these new members intelligently. "Outside blood" is thus not publicly valued, but privately it is seen as very useful. Most of my players did manage to get into clans, some quite high. Public acts (serving the Imperium as a military officer, becoming a valued priest or scholar, making money in a good business, making lavish gifts to the clan, marrying one of the clan's offspring, making friends with important clansmen, etc. -- all are ways to get yourself into one of these "closed" societies. I am sure our historian colleagues can provide details about the careers of late-Roman officials, generals, and even Emperors, who started out at the bottom of society and worked their way up. Good luck. ----- Chris Davis Moderator, The Blue Room blueroom@prin.edu //62 [Moderator's Note: Alex Stojanovic responds to David Bailey's article on ] [ language and magic (I must confess that I was worried ] [ that our biggest language maven this side of the Prof- ] [ essor had not responded) :) Please see the note near ] [ the end of this message for comment to this article. ] >More-over, there was something _really_ important about the languages >that were spoken on Tekumel. All human languages might come from a root >language, but this is not of any consequence. Hmm, I'm not so sure about this. If a Chomskian universal grammar does exist (and I am willing to entertain this notion), embedded in our brain structure, then finding the "root language" might indeed prove interesting and informative. Not a root language like Sanscrit or a proto-Sino-tibetan, but a language mechanism embedded in the neurobiology of the brain. Analysis of such a "language" might have some interesting side-effects. One might have an insight into the epistemic and cognitive constraints which seem to cut across cultures, time periods, and national boundaries. Case in point: probabilistic reasoning - most natural intuitions about probabiliy that people have are patently wrong -- ala the Gambler fallacy! Discovery of the neurological "root language" would shed light on the agent-formation mechanisms you mention later. One root language = one biological foundation for ALL thought formation. Now, certainly cultural "filtration" comes into the picture - and that is when the interesting discussion begins. >However, concious thought >is associated with certain language patterns, and some languages allow >the formation of better 'agents' than others. (As an example, Japanese >speakers are, apparently, often better at long division than romance >language speakers.) It is true on Tekumel that some languages allow >better access to magic than others, through their effect on the brain of >the user. What about the soul of the user? Tekumelani don't even have a concept of the brain like we do...if published information is accurate. Brain neurophysiology is not a /science/ practiced on Tekumel - regardless of what the Tinaliya might say. This is ONLY my opinion, however. Why wouldn't the languages afect the soul of the user? On language: I think one has to separate the performative from the syntactico-grammatical here. Obviously certain languages are more closely associated with "magic" on Tekumel - Duru'ob, Sunuz, Llyani, etc. But, and this is a personal opinion, the nature of these languages' attunement to magic/nexal energy manipulation lies at a much higher level then their syntax - it is embedded in the practices of their users - the performative dimension. Nothing makes them special in and of themselves. The sum total of the theological, scholarly, and literary components of the languages' users form the base upon which the sorcerous/magical scaffolding is erected. Example: The Priesthood of Ksarul "secret language"; the language is a cipher-based, ideographic system incorporating syntactic markers, phonological values, and a large repertoire of graphemes (2000+). It is close, in my limited knowledge, to the Mayan and Egyptian hieroglyphic systems of writing - which combined graphemes, phonetic signs, and classifiers/markers into one uniform writing system. The tongue's specialness comes from the extreme reticence that the Priesthood shows in teaching the language to anyone - since it is the preferred tongue for the communication of inner mysteries, secret doctrines, etc. Now, before we rush of to any rash conclusions about the spooky-juju-tenebrous qualities of the Ksarul-tongue, keep in mind that the real world correlates of this mysterious tongue are Old Church Slavonic, Koine Greek (New Testament Greek) and Latin. All of these languages were strictly controlled, in the sense that only the elite core of the societies had access to them. Their specialness came from the exclusivity of their usage by an elite - not from any depth grammar components. What percentage of the Mediaeval population of the Germanic states spoke/read/wrote Latin? Try about 0.01%. Yet this was the language of theology, philosophical inquiry (back when natural philosophy was what we today call science), alchemy, politics, and literature. That's probably about the same percentage of Tekumelani that know the Tongue of the Priesthood of Ksarul. Nothing special about the language per se (oops, a latinism) - except that it use/knowledge/dissemination is tightly controlled. What I think is more worthy of analysis is the emergence of traditions within the language communities - such Qabbalistic Theology out of Aramaic and Semitic traditions and, to draw this back to Tekumel, the emergence of heretical theological traditions out of the cultural, historical, and litarary traditions of the Khishan and Aom groups. >I intend to develop this theme along the lines that the secret languages of >Duruob, Ai Chi, Sunuz, and the Toungue of the Priest of Ksarul act like a >bit of a 'mental virus' and cause ideas and behaviours to take root in the >brain of the speaker. Question: Why the viral metaphor? All natural languages come with built-in epistemic and doxastic filters. Terence Parson has recently published a fascinating (but rather specialist) monograph on the event ontology of English. As opposed to languages such as Japanese, which are oriented around verbal constructions ([S]OV languages) (and hence place a stronger stress on the "successive" and temporal aspect of things), he poses a interesting analysis of English - and its built-in constraints toward viewing time, objects, relations. Tsolyani, Bednalljan, Saa Allaqyani would all be "viral" by your description - they all come with built-in constraints on viewing/parsing the world - built over a "deep grammar" shared by all of the languages. Example: the language of politeness in Tsolyani through the strong definition of social status/role which is embedded in the pronomial system. Many languages lack this politeness feature (English, for one) or have it to a much smaller degree (/tu/ /usted/ in Spanish). It seems that the metaphor is inappropriate - since it fails to touch on the crucial dimension of the languages - their spoken/written usage in a cultural context. I am personally very interested in Sunuz, Duru'ob, and Zna'ye as linguistic vehicles for communication of Pariah Theology. I am troubled by your suggestion of mind control and inchoate manipulation. Why situate the level of control of speakers/believers of the Pariah Dieties to the "will" of these beings at the syntactic level? Or do you mean that the semantic component of the language(s) is what "sucks people in"? Is the control effectuated through the the parsing of a temporal event, through the constraint placed on expressing the temporal event, or is it through the semantic significance of the event taken in the context of the belief system? Or all three? Or something else? The viral metaphor says both too little and too much. What did you mean here? What is the level that the takeover/infection takes place - morpheme, lexeme, phoneme, utterance, sentence, dialogue, inference pattern?(Pick your favorite /-eme/) Doesn't the biological metaphor wear a little thin? Why not simply suppose that the worshippers of the Pariah Deities are completely and utterly sincere in their beliefs and that their languages do not incline them toward anything? Indeterminism, anyone? Instead of being "Zombies from the Stratosphere" (really mad movie reference) - with their minds controlled by a remote-control mutogenic depth grammer - couldn't the worshippers be true believers, complete with a real eschatology, teleology, and mythos. I think it is important to beware the propaganda of the Engvanyali Pantheon - with its limited (and limiting - to take a page from your book, Mr. Bailey) worldview. My point, convoluted though it is, is that all natural languages are "viral" in Mr. Bailey sense -- so why would that fact be so interesting in relation to the Pariah langauges? Also, Ai Che was not solely used as a secret argot - but as a natural language spoken in the northeast (if memory serves) - and the tones were not factal compression mechanisms -- at least on my reading. They are minimal opposition pairs for a supersegmental language. Saa Allaqyani, a modern descendent of Ai Che, has lost most of its tonal attributes -- without any necessary loss of "magic" potential by its speakers. Mayan hieroglyphics were/are not fractal (there is no self-similarity component or a recursive definition of meaning which can be encoded at all levels (morphemic to dialogic)) - they were simply formal semiotic (i.e. sign) mechanisms that relied on the previous knowledge/cultural context of the "reader" to produce most their meaning. The Mayan hieroglyphics are clearly generative - but not fractal (if I have any idea of what you mean by that term) - producing meaning in a historical and social context, but never have a meaning embedded in them. /Fractal/ is not simply just another word for recursive, as you well know. Meaning is produced through use of these conventionalised signs in a specific context.(to take a page from Mr. Wittgenstein). > This will also allow the >Pariah Gods to take control of their followers and use them as channels >when the time is ripe... (like leaving an open ip> gateway?). Only #THEY# >can know. >Can sentient beings compress speach, say using fractal algorithms, or is >this something that only a computer can do? Answer: No, they probably could not. Think about it! Our speech is a compression and repetition of sound. Most spoken languages have a very limited repetoire of phonological sounds - this is to ensure that the complexity of the transmission mechanism does not overwhelm the thought/meaning expressed. Whether it's an alphabet, syllabary, or whatever, the technology of language usage seems geared toward simplifying the communication protocols used to convey meaning. The recursion and embedding could not be maintained with any accuracy without enormous performance constraints (i.e. several weeks to decode a message compressed using a /fractal compression algorithm/. Believe me, you would never want to do this decompression in your head -- human beings just don't have the wetware to cope! If you still don't believe me, sit down with a paper and pencil and manually compress and then decompress a 24 bit TARGA file by hand using your favorite /fractal algorithm/. See you in twenty years.