radmonger
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Posts posted by radmonger
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On 5/18/2023 at 7:59 PM, mfbrandi said:
I don’t know though: Red Goddess —> Orlanth seems the same kind of substitution as Etyries —> Issaries and Irrippi Ontor —> Lhankor Mhy, no?
Surely Danfive Xaron, the repentant murderer and bandit, is the natural substitute for Orlanth? Some versions of his writeup give him the air rune, though i think the current canonical runes are
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in my personal draft HQ rules, a simple rune affinity roll, and 1-3 RPs, lets you deal with any obstacle that the deity your are representing mythically did, in the manner in which they did so. You don't get to chose your tactics, or pick consequences; you just do what they did. How well it works depends on the roll. Hence cult lore is a very useful skill, in that it tells you what will happen if you choose this option.
if you are doing a simple reenactment quest, with a full complement of rune lords near the CHA cap for RP. this is the only resolution mechanism you need.
Things are rarely that clean and simple. which leaves several alternatives:
- substitute a different rune affinity, while representing the same god. Presumably this is how you get Orlanth Dragonfriend.
- substitute a different god, paying an extra toll in RP. The result is 'what they would have done, were they there'.
- use your own personal skills and powers
The more things go off-kilter as a result of doing these things, the more it is necessary to keep doubling down on them, as you are not doing a simple reenactment any more.
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59 minutes ago, Erol of Backford said:
I assume Sun Thanes are 90% farmer and 10% thane? Maybe that's a misprint...
i was using 'sun thane' to denote religion (yelmalio aka elmal), not role. 40 non-farming 'clan aristocracy', of whom ~20 are full-time patrollers and guards, makes complete sense.
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9 hours ago, g33k said:
They are changed... and they have no doubts as to the "reality" of their experiences.
The thing about that type of reality is that it literally is true that if they stop believing in it, it does go away. For example, if they disregard the moral precepts inherent to that experience to such a degree that they get kicked out of the cult, their Rune Magic becomes one use.
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8 hours ago, Erol of Backford said:
So what is the who, where, what ,when, how and why about the Enhyli!?
i assume the Enhyli is the clan jeff is talking about here;
https://wellofdaliath.chaosium.com/the-average-sartarite-clan/
Quote. But we get a handful of clans where there are 200 Yelmalio cultists and almost no Orlanth cultists. Such clans are largely concentrated around the Sun Dome Temple or Alda-Chur, but not all – there is one among the Colymar.
Note that by Yelmalio, he presumably means the Elmal subcult, aka Yelmalio the Sun Thane, that is supposed to be written up in the solar cults book (next year?)[1].
How things work in that clan, with 200 sun thanes and only 30 orlanthi farmers, is interesting. Are they still ritually obliged to have an orlanthi clan chieftan for all the Sun Thanes to be loyal to? Or is it enough for them to be loyal to the Colymar tribe as a whole? Do the clan militia fight alongside the thanes, as Kuschile horse archers, or do they fall back on spear and shield, the same as other clans? If the former, how does the Orlanthi egalitarian ethos adapt when the requirement to own your own weapon and armour to be a fully-adult citizen extends from 'spear and helm' to 'a string of cavalry horses'?
[1] current editorial policy seems to be to never refer to the same god by different names in English text, unless there is actual intended, in-Glorantha uncertainty or disagreement as to whether they are the same god[2]
[2] as in Arkat/Nysalor/Gbaji.
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On 5/2/2023 at 11:04 AM, DrGoth said:
I don't see it (either clan or tribal) as version of the pentathalon. This Glorantha. There will be a mystic/mythological component of it.
Note that the modern pentathlon pretty much is that kind of mythic reenactment.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_pentathlon :
QuoteAs the events of the ancient pentathlon were modeled after the skills of the ideal soldier to defend a fortification of that time, Coubertin created the contest to simulate the experience of a 19th-century cavalry soldier behind enemy lines: he must ride an unfamiliar horse, fight enemies with pistol and sword, swim, and run to return to his own soldiers.
Within a clan, I wouldn't see it so much as a formal contest as 'Everyone knows A is the best candidate. So B has better do something impressive if they want to be selected ahead of them'.
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5 hours ago, hipsterinspace said:
I mean, those sorcerous perspectives still recognize the gods as in some sense real, they just don’t recognize them as being worthy of worship.
I think what that that depends on the sorceror. Most sorcery-users in the dragon pass area happily mix theism and sorcery, as in 'Lhankor Mhy, grant me the wisdom to understand how to cast this spell'.
Other's think the real parts of gods are merely the 'runic power nodes', whatever they are. Everything else is merely a socially-constructed obstacle to understanding that true nature of reality.
In the real world, it was Philip K Dick said:
QuoteReality is that which, when you stop believing it, doesn't go away
Perhaps some Jrustelan God Learner said something similar, likely at an ironically appropriate moment. Or maybe they went with the quote commonly attributed to Karl Rove
QuoteWe're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out
Many contemporary atheist sorcerors, like the pseudo-Brithini of God Forgot, hold a position between those extremes. Gods are real, as individuals with intelligence and agency, as evidenced by the way they strategically coordinated to destroy the God Learners. They are not worthy of worship _because_ doing so tells you nothing about their nature, even how to avoid their wrath[2]. Sorcery is the only magical route to understanding the world as it is, as opposed to rearranging it into the form you prefer.
[1] whatever they are
[2] Jrustela had large populations of devout theists, none of whom were given advance warning of what the gods were up to.
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2 hours ago, g33k said:
And in RQ, where you could play as a Human, a Baboon, a Dark-Troll, a Duck, etc... none of which are "balanced" against each other.
This is an example of balance not applying between pcs; only someone outside the world can choose what race they are going to be, That argument doesn't apply to weapons; someone inside the world very much could choose to pick up one and not another. And if some weapons are strictly and straightforwardly better in rules terms, that makes those people not choosing to do so idiots.
Certainly no pc will ever choose the worse choice, so having stats for them is a waste of some significant fraction of your 16 pages...
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23 hours ago, Squaredeal Sten said:
I don't see any of the media - Print, film. video. Voice, or pantomime - as having a built in version of morality. Print can carry any moral message you want, from Hitler"s to Gandhi's. Yes I have heard " the medium is the message" but at best that is hyperbole. At worst, it is confusing framing.
Then I don't understand what you mean by the word 'morality'. You can write the sentence 'i don't have a morality, i just do the right thing'. But you would find it difficult to draw two cartoons, one in which one person was following their morality, and another in which they were doing what they thought was the right thing.
Back in the 70's, Normal Spinrad wrote a book[1] which was framed as written by an alternative history Hitler who emigrated to the USA and became a pulp sci-fi writer. In the book-within-a-book, Hitler's plans for WWII are presented as a sci-fi narrative, with evil Dominators serving as the literal puppet-masters of naiive Universalists. Luckily the heroic Argrath[2] has the will to do what, after the fact, everyone acknowledges was the right thing to do...
That's the same physical book, containing two diametrically opposed morals (Hitler was good in the inner book, and evil in the outer). It seems to me that it would be difficult to pull that trick off in a film; either you show the dominators as being literally evil mindsuckers, or an unfairly persecuted minority. if you managed it, it would be by tricks of perspective specific to the film media. These wouldn't apply to a hypothetical future media that was a 3D 360 perspective covering all senses, including pain. With interactive responses, driven by a chatbot, when you talked to the characters.
And it is the latter which mainstream theistic Gloranthans:
1. experience when they visit the other side.
2. have their local experts hold to be 'real'. At the very least at the level of documentary footage, not fiction. But also commonly as the true or higher plane of existence, of which the mundane world is a mere shadow.
3. has been proven and adapted, over several thousand years of history, to be effective guidance in leading a happy life while not getting your land sunk under the waves.
4 gets you superpowers.
Note that, for sorcerors and mostali, neither is true. They hold that the visual stimuli theistic initiates experience while interacting with runic power nodes are purely hallucinations, containing no information the participant didn't already know. Some mostali[3], would perhaps reluctantly admit that using the human visual cortex in that way, rather than relying on logical reasoning alone, is surprisingly effective.
And then illuminates are those who can do #1, and so get #4, while believing #2. The trick is to not treat the mundane world as equivalently illusory and consequence-free, and so ending up running afoul of #3.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Iron_Dream
[2] translated as 'Feric Jaggar'. I suspect you can track the linguistic mutations from Sartarite to German.
[3] those who are full-on cyberpunk rather than merely steampunk
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10 hours ago, Erol of Backford said:
Why wouldn't worshipers of the same deity be able to acquire spells available to follw worshipers at another location?
Partly because clans are clannish. Being friendly to strangers means being open to trade and negotiation, not automatically sharing things the way you naturally would with kin. And, unlike cults, clans are normally exclusive; you can typically only be a full member of one at a time.
However, over the decades there would presumably be enough cases of people quietly leaving the clan[1] that that wouldn't be enough in the long term.
In King of Dragon Pass, knowledge of a magical secret doesn't give you routine access to its benefits; you need to not only build a shrine, but pay an annual toll, which you may or may not be able to afford sustainably[2]. In RQ:G, the temple size rules are presumably modelling the same concept, in a less player-facing way[3].
Either way, there is some underlying constraint of resources, worshippers and/or calendar days[4] that means providing access to a new spell or subcult implies, all things equal, dropping an existing one[4].
So city-based temples generally provide access to one or more mostly-standardized menus of spells that have proven themselves to be useful for city-dwelling Orlanthi. These are the by-the-book subcults, including the 4 weapons. This means city-based Orlanth temples not only mutually recognize each other's initiates, but recognize initiations performed by Orlanthi clans.
A subtle consequence of this is that, for consistencies sake, the signature spells of a clan or tribe should not be clearly better than those generally available. Maybe they are flat out not as powerful, or geographically restricted. Or maybe they require a less-common rune affinity, access to an uncommon resource, or are best used in combination with a particular skill.
The 4 spells that _Six Seasons in Sartar_ assign to the Haraborn all fit that pattern. 4 signature spells does seem high to me, but maybe that befits the the Haraborn's status as hard-core traditionalists, one step removed from Hsunchen, who practice a particularly dangerous form of ordeal-based adulthood initiation...
[1] formal exile, would, I think, would be backed by the rune spell that strips initiation status. But few clans would be rigorous about casting that on every single person who leaves, even if thought dead.
[2] add disclaimer about KoDP being set several hundred years before the RQ:G era, before the establishment of tribes, let alone cities. And also being a computer game.
[3] as they are not typically the people making those decisions.
[4] the 14 days of sacred time is a plausible bottleneck- given one congregation, you can only hold 1 full-congregation ceremony per day.
[5] One exception to this is that a newly-established full rune cult is likely to be actively on the look out for new myths and secrets, as they don't yet have a 'full spellbook' . This likely applies to the Dragon Pass cults of Odayla, Yinkin and, perhaps, Yelmalio. This often corresponds to adopting a new lifestyle in which the available spells will be materially useful.
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4 hours ago, mfbrandi said:
How do we get from the gods are real and I have met them to religions must come with moralities?
Dirty Harry, Harry Potter and Doctor Who are all as undeniably real to you or me as Gloranthan deities to a Gloranthan; you can visually experience their existence, optionally while intoxicated.
All express a morality; it is hard to see how any even partially coherent set of visually-presented stories could not do so. Text can hide the the things it doesn't want to show, even be ambiguous over whether an encounter is consensual. In visual media by default everyone has an expression at all times. If a face is hidden, that is a directorial choice that is usually pretty easily interpretable[1].
People commonly choose the visual media they follow based on it having a compatible morality[2].
Textual media is different; it is much more common for, say, someone to read a book from the POV of a serial killer when all the bad stuff that happens to the victims can be simply be left off the page.
[1] the exception is something like rashomon, which is specifically not a depiction of reality, but visualization of conflicting testimonies before a judge.
[2] Although sometimes there is a lack of a full range of choices, at least away from the cosmopolitan heartlands of the Lunar empire.
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I'd imagine that 90% of the time, if a senior Ernalda priestess wants formal control of a clan, she casts 'bless champion' on the fittest and dumbest available young man.
Plenty of cults can fight, so a test of orlanthi prowess is going to involve some things other's can't do. You can create a classic pentathlon of something like:
- drinking a horn of ale
- ploughing a field
- climbing a mountain
- firing off a visible signal
- boasting of your prowess to the assembled wives of the clan
It's not _specifially_ set up so that only those with fly and lightning spells, under the influence of bless champion, are going to stand a chance. But doing things any other way is going to require either exotic magic, or cheating.
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6 hours ago, Darius West said:
More importantly, many if not all Tribal and Clan rings will include a Thunder Brother seat. It is part of the lore, and every clan or tribe of any size will incorporate the cult of at least one Thunder Brother, and while most may choose Elmal or Vinga, not all will or should.
i'd agree with this; the point is that does not make them a rune cult, any more than it makes Elmal a rune cult.
A rune cult is an organisation that follows the rq;g rules in the section of that name. It has dedicated temples and priests. it has it's own distinct initiation path, which teaches a range of magical secrets wide enough to satisfy someone who follows the cult exclusively. And it is either written up in the rq;g cults books, or is an unfortunate omission.
The existence of a rune cult generally requires the existence of a deity; the reverse is not true. It is not known how many more entities there are capable of supporting cult worship than cults, but it is likely several orders of magnitude. The RQ2 cult temple has a subsection 'reason for continued existence'. In no case is this filled out with 'it's a god, dummy'. Or indeed 'grants cool powers PCs will like'.
Almost all clans will have some unique Rune Spell that comes from some mythic figure. For Orlanthi clans, this is typically either a clan ancestor, a Thunder Brother, or one of Ernalda's innumerable relatives. If two clans share such a patron, chances are they are too far away to have even heard of each other. The people who learn that spell are inmates of Orlanth and/or Ernalda, who add it to the corresponding Rune Pool. When they worship Orlanth or Ernalda, and visit Orlanth's stead on the Other Side, they find that deity among Orlanth's thanes, Ernalda's handmaids, or perhaps just visiting.
They rarely share such clan secrets with outsiders, even those initiated to the same deities. So the however many hundred clans of dragon pass do not add a corresponding number of rune spells to the Orlanth cult writeup.
Sometimes such a deity is commonly known by another name, but still worshipped as a Thunder brother (Odayla, Yinkin, Yelmalio). In this case, the description of the other people who worship that deity in rune cult style will (or at least should) be written up as a rune cult. Sometimes the two are mythically linked together, with the full cult acknowledging that their deity did spend some part of the god time guarding Orlanth's halls, braiding Ernalda's hair, or whatever. in such cases, knowing the 'braid hair really well' spell may be taken as proof of initiation. They do not need to forge their own path to meet the deity on the Other Side; they simply accompany her when she leaves Ernalda's side to do her own thing[1].
In other cases this is mythically true, and so would work, but none has ever done it. Maybe the Dark Stranger your clan knows of is Argan Argar; maybe he isn't.
[1] it's not strictly necessary, but to be PC-friendly i would add a house rule that when transferring initiation between associated cults, with the mutual consent of both cults, only incompatible spells become one-use, rather than all.
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One exception is the Telmori, who follow Telmor not Orlanth and Ernalda.
One thing I think RQ;G rules are a bit unclear on is the mechanical integration of clans into the game rules. The setting is based on the vision of clans following the multi-diety Orlanthi religion you see in King of Dragon Pass and Hero Wars. The introductory section talks about clans as kinship groups, using real-world anthroplogy terms. But the actual rune magic rules are mostly taken straight from earlier editions, where the RQ2 writeup of Orlanth doesn't mention clans at all. Cults of Prax does, but only in the context of Waha ('Orlanth adventurous cannot have any major seats of power on a waha tribal council').
I think this leaves some people thinking the Orlanthi practice separation of church and state, with parallel cult and clan hierarchies.
Wheras as I understand it, a clan is essentially a religious organisation. It encompasses:
- 1 to 3 small temples (normally just Orlanth and Ernalda, occasionally one other)
- 0 to 5 shrines (normally to Orlanth's brothers and Ernalda's kin)
- 0 to 3 organised relationships with larger organisations (tribe, city federation, kingdom)
A clan has a single wyter, as it is a single community. Temple wyters are more common in a city, where strangers can pass each other on the street without acknowledgement or challenge.
These are coordinated by a self-selecting 7 member Ring, and normally led by a chieftain who is strictly first-amongst equals. It would be possible for an initiate or priest of any clan cult to be the chieftan. But if a suitable rune lord was available and willing to take the position, the position of any current chieftan of lower cult rank would be very precarious, and they would likely just quit before they were pushed.
it is common for the single most influential ring member to be the senior priestess of ernalda; it is less common for them to be dominant enough to appoint whoever they want as war leader, and openly claim the title of chief.
i think it is possible, if unusual, for a clan to be led by a king, where he[1] invokes the powers of Orlanth Rex to rule by right, and select his own ring. But that is usually reserved for higher levels of organisation.
Initiation into a clan is normally by a hazardous adulthood ordeal which culminates in successful candidates ending up in Orlanth and Ernalda's Hall on the God plane. Men and women get there by different routes, but it is the same hall. Adoption into the clan involves a test equivalent to the standard cult initiation rules. Becoming a member by marriage requires a hardly-ever-dangerous ritual.
Within the context of the clan, all locally-worshipped deities are associated, even if they are not elsewhere. So initiation into a clan provides access to the magic of all temples and shrines (subject to the usual gender role restrictions). Most people attend most ceremonies. Clan initiates who make their worship roles find themselves in orlanth and ernalda's hall, in a pre-time Age corresponding to the day and season. There, they may meet, and learn from any deity residing or visiting there. Visiting dieties may say 'if you want to know more, come see me at my own home'. This would be the cue for an clan-supported apprenticeship in a city-based cult hospital, library or regiment.
In this way, someone can be initiated to an Orlanthi clan and worship Chalana Arroy or Yelmalio[2].
[1] including vingan versions of 'he'.
[2] though they would probably accept other people using his Sartarite name, 'Elmal'.
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1 hour ago, g33k said:
This appears to lead to the "use case" of somebody actively-parrying against high-velocity missiles (including bullets) coming at them from multiple directions.
That's not specific to multiple attackers; in reality a ballistic shield would be completely useless against a single guy shooting you in the back.
I don't thing BRP is intended to be the kind of game where you can closely parse the wording of the rules, apply them mechanically, and get a result that is either especially interesting or realistic. instead, it's a gm-driven simulationist game. The gm has to first understand what is going on, and then express that in rules terms. The mechanics are just there to allow players to get on the same page without having to read the gm's mind.
In some circumstances, actively parrying attacks is plausible, but takes a penalty for being outnumbered (but maybe not for the same person attacking twice). In other circumstances, taking cover behind your shield is plausible, and so works as stated, without any kind of outnumbering penalty. In other circumstances again, parrying is not plausible, so you don't get to roll.
A generic system that attempted to decide all that for the gm would need to take into account at least facing, weapon velocity, reaction time, distance, and surprise. And I suspect when you did all that math, you'd either get the correct answer you already know, or a wrong one that would just be annoying.
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Just now, Shiningbrow said:
I disagree with your first statement. Because of its very nature, it isn't just another scenario - it's a complete change of normalcy, and so the RQ rules don't apply,
Not that many of the RQ rules actually describe and model normalcy; there are no sections for 'gravity' or 'causality'.
when things work differently, you just need text saying 'Vingkot tells you you can fly now'. You don't work out how many points of extension and multispell there are in the Flight spell he casts, deciding that means he is over the CHA cap for a rune pool, and so concluding 'therefor we need a different game system'.
Which is not to say that there aren't rules or tables that would be useful, just that mostly it is going to be descriptive text.
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8 hours ago, Richard S. said:
Modern Orlanthi will probably be aware of the Vingkotlings as ancestors, but they won't really interact with them as anything other than characters in the myth being told.
Excepting a handful of academics, this a hell of a lot more than any modern american interacts with any legacy of Uruk.
https://www.joh.cam.ac.uk/babylonian-story-revenge-made-worlds-first-original-language-film
A minimal comparison would be with those ancient Greek plays that still sometimes get performed and even watched.
Myths of the vingkotlings are probably more like Shakespeare; from a different land, and clearly archaic, but many people know them.
And also, they give you superpowers,
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Heroquesting for a slightly better bow seems to me like one of those things that works in a computer game, but is not going to translate to tabletop very well.
Based on an aside from another thread about grazers 'worshipping their horses', the model I would use is:
- awakening an elf bow is a minor heroquest, akin to initiation. May or may not be run on-screen. This gets you access to a specific part of the Other Side, in this case the deep heart of your wood.
- adding a new power to an elf bow is a generally off-screen, low risk activity. It involves spending POW, and picking from the menu of options know to your community (i.e. the seeds and cutting available in the Other Side part of your elf woods). The 'power level' of such abilities is roughly equivalent to comparable Rune Magic, perhaps slightly higher to reflect the fact it is tied to the bow.
- a proper heroquest discovers, or steals, a new such ability. While you get it personally, the true consequence is that you have brought it back to part of the Other Side that is known and safe to your community. And assuming you tell them, they can do it too, as above.
In short Bow Magic is Rune Magic known by the bow. To an elf, a properly cultivated living bow spirit, inhabiting it's own body, always going to be infinitely preferable to the results of binding a dead spirit into a crafted body. They would probably regard the latter as akin to a zombie.
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Maybe the premise of needing heroquest rules is wrong.
A heroquest is just a scenario. The Spirit and God Planes are, when it comes down to it, just different locations for an scenario to be set in.
Neither RQ nor HWQW has ever had rules for creating scenarios. That's the job of the scenario author, who is sometimes also the GM. What is had had is regional and cultural sourcebooks that provide background information for scenario authors. That way different scenarios, written by different authors, mostly line up (with a few notable exceptions).
Now the other side is both infinitely large and fractally unmappable. The inside of Yelm's palace may contain a thousand time more rooms than would ever fit. One of those rooms may contain a garden that stretches for hundreds of miles. At at the far side of which is a building, which only appears on Windsday, and may only be entered by initiates of Aldrya. In a cellar of that building are steps that descend 100,000 flights...
So you are not going to a nice complete logical map, like Argan Argar's Atlas. So maybe what is really needed is a series of sourcebooks for aspects of, or perspectives on, the other side. Like the Spirit Lands, Storm Hills, Yelm's palace, the Underworld, ...
These sourcebooks would naturally include some sample scenarios to show how it is done, and the usual amount of new rules for in the form of skills or spells. But the fundamental goal is, if two people to read that book and independently write heroquests, both should feel like they belong in the same world.
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2 hours ago, Jason Farrell said:
Well.... not food! The current take on Mostali, they don't eat anything humans would recognize as food.
Should humans have something necessary to the repair of the world machine, Mostali don't really trade; they will simply take it.
Trade is for when they want some group of humans to have something, most commonly weapons. Openhandist Mostali colonies are those with access to a Gold-caste human-relations specialist. They will know that an exchange will be regarded less suspiciously than a gift. And an unfair exchange is the least suspicious of all.
Whatever they receive in exchange for their 'trade' is typically dumped somewhere out of the way before they get back to the colony.
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Brithini are moral paragons, and so, once they attain mastery of their caste skills, don't age at all.
Orlanthi age faster than the Earth norm. Draw your own conclusions as to how moral the worshipers of the god of murder actually are .
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14 minutes ago, Darius West said:
He is now worshipped by some Orlanthi who have abandoned Elmal.
Where 'now' is the First Age, before Monrogh's revelation that it was possible to worship Yelmalio without abandoning Elmal, betraying Orlanth, or condoning the murder of Yelm. if some did so even before that, then logically many more will will afterwards. And canon says 'almost all'.
Gods fighting themselves is pretty normal deity behavior. Likely the specific aspect fought was one of those Darra Happan subcults merged into one of the ancestors of the Yelmalio cult in the early dawn age or before.
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3 hours ago, Akhôrahil said:
One of the things I can't quite wrap my head around is the difference between a Superhero and a Demigod.
A hero is hard to kill, and comes back when they die. A superhero, more so.
A god doesn't need to die to come back. So they can be in multiple places at once, as required to answer every worshiper simultaneously. A demigod has that power, but with restrictions and limitations. So preparing a new mask for Moonson is a much more elaborate and costly activity than sanctifying a shrine.
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8 minutes ago, hipsterinspace said:
and some Orlanthi have a significant minority of Yelmalio (as Yelmalio, not Elmal) worshippers within their clans.
Note that this needs two caveats:
1. RQ:G p 288, under 'name':
Local languages usually have some variant of a given spelling and pronunciation. this is the name by which the deity is best known (and not necessarily the name used by the deity's worshippers).
Elmal is Yelmalio, so 'Yelmalio, not Elmal' is not really a thing. They would be more likely to say something like 'I'm a true Elmali, initiated at the Vaarntar temple. Not one of those idiots from up at Runegate'.
2. the long form Yelmalio cult writeup will, as per jeff's posts here, include subcults that will not leave a Yelmalio member of an orlanthi tribe as a lone pikeman in a skirmish regiment.
Similarly, Sartarite member's of the butcher's guild, patron Waha, hardly ever get to lead raids of animal riding nomads. They are clearly following a subcult, whether or not an explicit subcult writeup exists.
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4 hours ago, Darius West said:
Well, first up, Elmal is listed as a Thunder Brother in the Stafford Library's "The Book of Heortling Mythology". The Thunder Brothers are all Orlanthi subcults.
So Elmali are Orlanthi. Orlanthi believe Orlanth killed Yelm[1]. Therefore...
4 hours ago, Darius West said:Yelmalio is not.
Yelmalio is a cult[2]. Elmal is a subcult of Yelmalio that does not appear in the short form writeup [3]. The association relationship applies between subcults[4]. So Elmal is the subcult of Yelmalio that is associated with Orlanth. This represents the final status quo of the God Time at the compromise[5], when Orlanth and Yelm were largely reconciled[6].
Sun Dome temples that follow the Monrogh Doctrine officially acknowledge all that, and so do most (but not quite all) Lightbringer clans.
[1] Do i need to give a textual cite for this?
[2] cite; rq;g main rulebook.
[3] jeff has stated on these forums that this will be the case in the file cults book.
[4] rq;g main rulebook, orlanth writeup.
[5] earlier, and at compromise breaks like 110 ST, things were considerably more complex. Elmal is far from the only Yelmalio subcult with its own name and incompletely-reconciled myths.
[6] this bit represents my opinion.
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Heroquesting companions
in Glorantha
Posted · Edited by radmonger
Good call. Etyries, the direct Lunar equivalent of Issaries, isn't one of the 7 mothers. So the thresholds and guardians that Issaries deals with in the original lbq have to be handled by someone else. So roles ends up being shuffled round, in much the way a World of Warcraft 5-person group has to adapt when the main healer is a druid instead of a cleric.
The prototypical Lightbringer tribal society has traders, chieftains, lawspeakers, tricksters and priestesses:
The Lunarised Lightbringers of Tarsh and northwards are instead organised around soldiers, secret police, the imperial bureaucracy, and the Emperor:
Healers (Chalana Arroy/Deezola) and shamans (Flesh Man/Jakaleel) are common to both societies. Also involved are:
The clash between the two societal myths itself has its origin in the mythical origins of Dragon Pass [3].
[1] https://www.marxist.com/technology-innovation-growtn-and-capitalism.htm
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/aug/08/red-plenty-francis-spufford
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rambo_III.