DrGoth

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And thank you (sincerely) for the wording there - "Lunar Empire". As I'm sure Jeff knows, the Lunar Empire and the Lunar way are not the same thing.

Like all the souls and gods that would still be around if a certain Storm God hadn't done a boo-boo on the Sun? If we're going to be serious here: yep the Crimson Bat is an abomination yep, bringing it into the world was a bad thing Will the Lunars eventually regret it? IMHO (YGWV) yep, for sure. They may even try to make up for it. There's often a parallel drawn between Orlanth and Sedenya. Consider if the story of Glorantha had only been told just up until after the start of the Lesser Darkness. if that was the case, maybe everyone would think of Orlanth as the worst thing in the world. "Man, that guy killed the *Sun*. Now, that's an abomination. Even his own brother ghosted him". Orlanth's story has been told. We're in the middle of Sedenya's. I know which I find more interesting.

I'm sure there's an even better one 😉

I think it would be very brave missionary that tried to draw any such equivalencies.

I can buy a lot of the reasoning here, but I'm not convinced about the Issaries analogy "Gatekeeper". "Night watchman". That's more a guard than a guide. I struggle to see Danfive in any of the LB roles. The closest I can come is Eurmal - both are held on a leash.

Some day they'll break, though, some day.... Wanders off muttering about the stories of the Celestial Court just before the chaos hordes exploded the Spike...

Cardboard cutouts are 2-dimensional. How many of us are closer to one?

I agree with what others have said. I also don't think that's a good example, depending on what role the Lunar took. If they followed the healing aspect of the seven mothers, Chalana Arroy might not be too much of a stretch. Jakaleel for Ginna Jar? Etyries for Issaries? Of course, they'd need to know the myth to be able act appropriately. But if a Lunar tried to be Orlanth, that's ... harder. But still not impossible. What the God Learners did was much the same. It comes back to knowledge (which the God Learners had) and respect (which they didn't). But they got away with just knowledge for along time. So you need to know the myth and if the fit isn't good it's very, very risky.

Exactly. I'm not even sure many (or any) Gloranthan cultures would have the concept of "banned substance". Highly taxed, sure. Confiscated, maybe. But I don't think real world bronze or iron age cultures thought about things in terms of 'banned substance'.

Thanks all. I think there are some areas open to interpretation. Which is great. One of the things I love about Glorantha is that we have things like this, where not everything is cut and dried. I think that would be terribly limiting. In the real world there aren't definitive answers to everything. Why should Glorantha be any different? I'd even make an argument that it should be less so in Glorantha. Not because it's fictional but because it's magic. The following is my speculation and not meant to be definitive. YGWV Pre the Red Goddess, and probably going back into the first age, Yelmic religion/Dara Happa regarded Verithurus as male. That's clearly the depiction on the God's Wall. That's saying nothing about what Verithurus actually was in the God's Age, just what the Yelmic interpretation was, post Dawn, Pre-Lunar. It fits with the patriarchal (really, misogynistic) bent of the Solar religion. They would have been quite comfortable to say "All the planets under Yelm were male". That's not saying anything about what the author of the copper tablets meant. Just how the Dara Happans interpreted them, backed up the God's Wall. Then along comes the Red Goddess who says "I'm Sedenya. And Verithurusa as well. Mernita? That was always me being the deity of that city. Look, I'm there in your myths. Cope." We're always reminded (correctly) that there isn't a separate Yelmic religion in the Lunar Empire. It's integrated. So they've accepted what the Goddess says - willingly or not. I'm sure it helps that the Red Goddess is a child of Yelm. So now when they go look at the God's Wall, what sort of mental gymnastics do they do? I'm sure it varies. Some would probably go "Well, the God's Wall isn't quite right. That's the Goddess there. Weren't they stupid to draw her as a man?" Others would go "The Goddess is ever changing. Of course she could be a man sometimes. Weren't they limited to think that's all she was?" I'm sure some try very hard not to think about it. Others "Gods wall, smods wall. I just listen to the Goddess". And others will go "I'm sure Yelm will reveal just what all this means." But all of that shows that the Yelmic religion has changed (and isn't that what the Red Goddess does?). The Lunar religion has attacked its very foundations and it will likely never be the same again. And I have to say I'm in favour of anything that undermines the Yelmic smug, and very limited, view of the world. As to what really happened in the God Time. Well, I have my own views on that, too. But this isn't the thread for that.

Re-reading the guide and the sourcebook I was struck by the distinction between Verithurus(male) and Verithurusa(female). See, for example guide p. 114 and sourcebook p96. I know there has been discussion of this on this forum before, for example, that these are male and female aspects of the same deity, that 'son' is used very loosely in the copper tablets and even that the Red Goddess was made from parts of several dead deities, not one. But there are still some things about this that interest me. The sourcebook, on. p96, has the female Verithurusa in the Solar pantheon. The Red Goddess claims to be Verithurusa, so that makes sense in itself. But the Gods Wall definitively shows Verithurus as male. There are more aspects to the issue, if we step outside canon to the GRoY. Verithurus is identified there as the overseer of Mernita. But in the description of the reign of Lukarius, Sedenya is identified as the Goddess of Mernita. This could be interpreted as: a) Verithurus/Verithurusa has/had both male and female aspects b) Sedenya supplanted Verithurus as the deity of Mernita c) Verithurusa was always female and the Dara Happans just couldn't cope with a female planet so labelled it as male There's probably other explanations as well. There is one question that I really don't know how to answer though. The God's Wall is, as I understand it, the rock on which Dara Happan religious understanding is built. It shows Verithurus. But the sourcebook shows Verithurusa, which implies that is the accepted interpretation as of 1625. Is the contemporary (ie 1625) Dara Happan understanding that the Gods wall is wrong, and Verithurusa is female or that the deity has male and female aspects? Either answer is interesting to me. Because of what it says about how thoroughly the Lunars have penetrated Yelmic tradition. There is no way, at least to my understanding, that the pre-Lunar Yelmic religion would have tolerated either answer. They appear to me to be so patriarchal that, as shown in the guide, as far as they were concerned, all Yelm's sons where sons. None of them were 'sons'. So what is the explanation given in Dara Happa in 1625 as to the conflict between the God's Wall and the acceptance of Verithurusa? And what does that tell us about Lunar influence over Yelmic religion? Or am I wrong, and the pre-Lunar Dara Happans were quite comfortable with a deity with both male and female aspects? I find this hard to believe, but I could be wrong. As an aside, I think that if you accept a) or c) above, then Red Goddess is pretty clearly wholly or largely the child of Yelm who was the deity of Mernita. That of course makes her the daughter of Dendara, with all the interesting things that then involves.

From 30,000 feet it's hard to tell the difference between types of undead 😁

Have you checked the lengthy facebook thread on Elmal that's appeared in the past few days? https://www.facebook.com/groups/RuneQuest/posts/2537476249761692/

Of course he isn't. He's illuminated.

I agree -

Do we really need a strict answer to this? I mean that quite seriously. YGMV. YGWV. Some may take a very Urox approach "Chaos! Die!". Others may take something analogous to "Nuclear bombs bad, nuclear medicine good" view of it. Some may want a game where their players can work out which of those (or something else) it is. I have my own view on this. But really, that only matters in that it is my own view. Which I can implement in my games. All I ask is the freedom to do that. I remember what first drew me to Glorantha: it wasn't medieval Europe with wizards it was wonderfully deep it wasn't black and white It's the last of those that is relevant here. What I want is the freedom for each gaming group to decide for itself where they want the truth for their game to lie. I don't want someone telling me that the right way to play in the world is "Chaos is absolutely evil, no two ways about it. If you are playing any other way you are wrong." I also don't want someone telling me "The Lunars are absolutely right. Using chaos is the way to go. If you are playing any other way you are wrong." There are options, there are different takes. Even if I agree with one of the statements in the preceding paragraph (in the sense that that is how I want to portray it in my game) I don't want anyone saying that it is the "one true way to play in Glorantha"(tm). I think it was a wonderfully clever move that the descriptions of illumination on p 724 of the guide were presented as direct quotes from Gloranthan documents. I take it as they are not meant to be read as the objective truth. Space is left for your gaming group to explore, discover and define the truth for their Glorantha. Now, to indulge my own views for a moment. Is Nysalor Gbaji? Or was Arkat? Or, in the end, were they both Gbaji? And, whatever the answer there, were they always Gbaji or did they fall? Someone who was good can turn bad. Don't assume how someone ended up is how they always were.

My Mongoose stuff is packed away now, but surely the art can't be as bad as certain AH publications? There were a couple where it was truly appalling.

https://www.hellenicaworld.com/Greece/Technology/en/CityPlan.html And you should also check the little video on the wikipedia page for Persepolis

I disagree, although we're arguing about a three versions back take on initiates so.... I read that part of RQ3 differently. I started from the assumption that everybody in theist societies was an initiate, so obviously their children were and on it went, preserving everyone being an initiate. The time commitment I read as being the "well being a member of a Gloranthan religion does take time". Sacred time rites, holy days, etc. To take a real world analogy, do you know how often medieval Europeans went to church? It wasn't just Sundays.... "The lives of the people of the Middle Ages revolved around the Church. People, especially women, were known to attend church three to five times daily for prayer and at least once a week for services, confession, and acts of contrition for repentance." https://www.worldhistory.org/Medieval_Church/ Now, I know Medieval Christianity is not Gloranthan theism, but the precedent is there. So I read that RQ3 line as simply describing how part of how Theists in Glorantha live. For me, at least, everyone in a theist society gets initiated (except for whacked out wierdoes who you really shouldn't talk to).

Absolutely nothing or everything. What do you want your campaign to do? if your question is really "I want Ralzakark to not reconstrct Nysalor/Gbaji and I need an explanation for my players" then take one (or more) of the ones presented here. if you want to run a game why Ralzakark does do it, then go for it! Hell, maybe the one with the scorpion arm is the real Ralzakark and the white unicorn is Nysalor who is using Ralzakark's rep to hide himself while he rebuilds Dorastor.

Well, herdmen can throw rocks - which other herd animals cannot. So the analogy doesn't really hold.

I don't think it's cut and dried. To take a couple of examples. the worshipper decides when to cast the rune spell. The deity decides whether or not to answer the DI request. At least, if you take the random dice roll to be simulating the inscrutableness of the God's purpose. I refuse to believe it is purely random. Divinations are also ways for the God's to make their wishes known. How they answer is up to them. From what I can understand, the god's are more than ciphers. Look at Castle Blue, and the way it's described. When the compromise is threatened or bent, all bets are off and they can act. IN the Compromise they willingly gave up their freedom, but they can get it back. Of course, Glorantha is never that simple (something I love about it). Because the western view of the gods are merely the way simpletons (i.e., theists) understand impersonal forces is also true. Does that make the gods both the wearer and the trousers? Did I just ask a Nysalorean riddle?

Honestly, I thought this is how it always was - not a change. Personally (my Glorantha) I'd lean towards the all, not the most. Adulthood = initiation. Sure, you can be lay members of other cults. That wasn't news to me either. But it is good to have it confirmed if it was a question. It makes sense that a lot of people would be lay members. Initiates of smaller cults might be lay members of larger ones so they can take some part in the big ceremonies. Vice-versa for the occasional usefulness. "Yes, none of us are Issaries initiates but Djim here is a lay member. So we can totally trade here, right?"

Err, what? I thought most adults in theistic lands were initiates. Doesn't stop them being lay members of another cult.