Ducks: best source for info?

[Joerg Baumgartner]

After the Starbrow Rebellion, so sometime between 1613 an 1614. IIRC the reward was a year tax exemption, no cash.

[Niall]

Cheers!

[Jeff Richard]

There were multiple Duck Hunts. One is declared as late as 1618.

[Nick Brooke]

There is some superb, colourful, well-thought-through information about Ducks on Stewart Stansfield’s old Duxploitation blog. Given my enthusiasms, I’m particularly keen on his various Lunarised Duck quislings and auxiliaries (and gladiators, prostitutes, etc.) but there is also sensible deep thinking about Duck prisons, warfare, culture, etc.

[David Scott]

Niall, here’s the question you asked over in the MD forum, it’s now archived in the Wiki: http://www.glorantha.com/docs/duck-bounty/

[Newt Newport]

Fan author Stewart Stansfield did some wondrous articles for Ducks in Hearts in Glorantha issues 1-3.

[Simon Phipp]

Fan author?

Surely, Author.

[Stewart Stansfield]

Heh! I don’t mind, Simon: I think ‘fan author’ is entirely appropriate. But thanks!

I think it’s particularly apposite with regard to ducks. (What follows obviously isn’t addressed to Simon, but a few general thoughts.)

As has been expressed by a Gloranthaphiles here and elsewhere, a key element to ducks’ success is a sense of mystery and potential. They are lightly sketched in the earliest sources; a few evocative (and often contradictory) pointers and little else. That allows us to fill in the gaps with our own flights of fancy; or fervidly attempt to erase all mention.

Questions can be more interesting than answers.

***

Most of Glorantha used to be like this. So many questions inspired us to think, and to seek answers, whether in print or elsewhere. The answers can be fun and inspiring; and lead to interesting questions of their own. But some things are never quite the same.

For various reasons, ducks have largely defied this process. People have tried to forge a consensus in the past, but the ideas haven’t stuck. I like the way Moon Design has presented ducks very much. Brief. Simple. Evocative.

Can we go beyond that? Of course. Unofficial publications and contributions present an ideal way in which we can explore ideas in–essentially–parallel, without impinging upon a central theme, or seeking to add to the canon. And if someone comes up with a fun or novel idea? Sure, it may stick around.

But, as noted, the most concerted attempts to define ducks for posterity have failed. They sought to clarify and expand upon ducks’ place in Glorantha; the things that define them.

And this is the problem. Taken as a whole, ducks don’t exist at a single place, or even multiple places. Ducks aren’t one thing or another. They are inbetween.

Ducks are liminal.

***

Liminality is one of most potent and intriguing concepts in anthropology and mythology. It’s also, by its nature, one of the most difficult to convey; often impossible to express as a single state, but better related in terms of links to multiple states of being. Moment. Potential. Tension. Inertia.

The potential toward something–or several things–can be more powerful as an idea than actually being that thing and little else.

Why are ducks like this? Partly by design. The earliest depictions were clever; careful to invoke and ambiguity and not to define. Ducks’ divisiveness and discordancy encouraged publishers to be cautious over the years, straying little from the template, if they mentioned them at all.

But I think it is also by accident. Many fans and authors have expressed views on ducks over the years. Many of these have been contradictory. But though individual ideas may not have achieved universal acceptance, they’ve stuck around. Taken as a phenomenon, Glorantha’s ducks are an agglomeration of approaches over the years; some Gestalt that is neither one thing nor the other, but somewhere inbetween them all.

Ducks are liminal as a folk within Glorantha, existing between Man and Beast; between Life and Death. They embrace ambiguities which may not be liminal, but are close cousins. Are they birds cursed with flightlessness, or men cursed with duckform? Are they brave opponents of Delecti or craven products of his Stitched Zoo? Or both?

They are also inbetween as a feature of Gloranthan fandom and publishing, occupying a netherground between acceptance and derision, seriousness and farce, cynical satire and artless whimsy.

Unsurprisingly, this ambiguity isn’t easy to explore in the conventions of a 120-page role-playing splatbook. In the past, people have sought to cut away the contradictions and uncertainties, rather than embrace them. Mongoose’s book is an example in point. The attempts at a fan-produced DuckPak were, I’d suggest, another.

Take the above couplets I posted; strike out one word or phrase of your choice. Would the result be as interesting? I don’t think it would.

***

Sorry. That was quite a tangent. Don’t worry – all finished!

Wanted to write that down for a while now. Here seemed a good place. Better out than in. I think that’s where my thoughts stand on ducks in Glorantha at the moment. So they’ll probably change tomorrow. Talking like Rorschach. No idea why. Didn’t even have cold beans for lunch.

[Author]

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