ZedAlpha

Also in our Glorantha, we'd had saltwater crocodile beastfolk in the Rightarm Islands. They were...mostly friendly to humans, so long as they got tribute of enough fish and nobody stole their Sacred Basking Rock, inscribed with the runes of their ancestors.

ah yes, Yelm Earth-Trousers, a Ralian hillfolk myth abut how Yelm The Bad Emperor declared women unnecessary. He then tried to steal Ernalda's clothes to claim power over the Earth Rune, and ended up just looking silly in the doing of it. A popular supporting character in the myth is the dim-witted Star Captain Padraig, who eggs Yelm on, before the two of them are given a swift lesson in how to respect women by the squirrelfolk warrior-hero Sand-Hair, so called because white-blonde hair is almost unheard of in Ralios and the Ralians had to think of a metaphor for what her fur looked like. It's a popular children's tale in Ralios, and is the source of many jokes about how squirrels are secretly mighty warriors and should be left alone. As a side effect, Ralios's squirrel population is one of the largest in Genertela, and many Eastern Wilds clans have a few populations of large, treat-seeking squirrels around their Earth temples a la the deer who congregate around that one Buddhist temple in Nara, Japan IRL.

I had thought that Babeester Gor worshippers had to be celibate and/or chaste?

Although, in addition to that--which kind of has precedent elsewhere in the setting with how a lot of Orlanthi don't really care about sexual orientation as we in the modern world would understand it--I think there's some events in King of Dragon Pass and Six Ages that reference Urox loving and possibly marrying Uralda. Makes sense, Storm Bull, Cow Mother. One of Uralda's powers is to have power over bulls and bullheaded (stubborn, wrathful) people. Maybe they get along fine? or maybe it's doomed? That sort of tragic touch to an otherwise loving marriage could be fun story-fodder, too...an Uroxi just got married, and the two clans involved are just counting down until it eventually explodes. Can the PCs help things work?

Apart from each other? Probably women who belong to other more martial cults. Honestly I just kind of assumed in my games that Uroxi were encouraged to find comfort in the arms of each other, because nobody else would have them.

...oh hell, yeah, that could definitely work, especially for a longer campaign. I don't know that this will be, but yeah! I've heard great things about it.

...and now i just wrote a google doc with about ~2,000 words of clan history across 9 questions. Between that and the (hopefully) brief overview of the setting I'll be handing the players this ought to get them invested. Hopefully lol.

That is absolutely a good approach that I think I'll go with. With that in mind, I think I'd just make it a sort of adjunct to the character and setting creation process and keep it to a few questions, maybe one or two, three tops per major era of the game: Golden Age, Storm Age, Darkness, Dawn, Holy Country, Grandparents' Day, Parents' Day, Now? Then as @alakoring suggested, using those answers to make a Fractal assembly of Aspects and Skills based on the answers to flesh out the PCs' clan. That could really work, and it could absolutely work with a minimum of having to lore dump, which could be daunting for new players who don't really know anything about Glorantha except that which I've been talking their ears off about for the past few weeks.

Fractal? I admit I'm new to running FATE as opposed to just playing it.

Yeah absolutely. I think that definitely tracks.

Also, honestly, having the history of the clan/region/country at least partially made up by the players really would be a fun thing to do. Especially if I just guide them and "yes, and" them while they do it

(those ideas are great, I was thinking about having the community and/or its troubles just being story aspects that can be tagged by everyone at all times)

Oh, that's a good idea. Both of those are. Now that I'm looking at my notes, I am in fact cribbing a ton from Secret of Cats; in particular this means mandating that a PC's strongest Rune be part of their High Concept, and that that rune is required to be their highest magical Skill. The sheer number of Runes is going to mean that making stunts for them is a bit loosey-goosey, but given that this is probably going to be a one(ish) shot adventure, improvising stunts and/or magical effects could work. I definitely like ensuring the divine rune restrictions--and I think about mandating one Aspect being religious affiliation, and allowing that to be separate from High Concept. So just as a rough example, Aspects for a hypothetical PC (based on one of the PCs from the last time I ran a HeroQuest game) could be: Prince K'Dud High Concept: Himbo Prince with Fiery Fists Trouble: Dumb As A Bag Of Hammers Religion: Lodril & The Lowfires Free Aspect: Master of Bronze Arms Style Free Aspect: Royal Blood And K'Dud's highest skills could be Body, then Fire, and so on.

So as I've said in other threads lately, I'm probably going to be running a FATE Core game set in Caladraland sometime soon, and the player who's been the most interested has been talking about playing a game with a similar feel to Six Ages and King of Dragon Pass, with a heavy emphasis on being a part of a specific community and its history--or at least starting there and moving onto a more standard Big Fantasy Quest eventually. I kind of like this idea, but I'm stuck on how to generate family history and (more importantly), Clan history along the same lines of Six Ages and KoDP's famed new-game questionnaires. The difference between Heortling/Sartarite (and Hyaloring, for that matter) cultures and history--particularly given that Caladraland is described in several places as being "impenetrable" and largely immune to invasion thanks to its geography and volcano gods. That seems like it would take out a lot of the strife and warfare that fills up a lot of the family history generation tables seen in the RuneQuest books I've perused. I've got some bare ideas for what could go into a sort of questionnaire for the table, but nothing concrete enough to feel like it could actually work yet. Has anyone else done this for their own games? I'd be interested in seeing how it turned out.

And for the record, i was also mostly thinking less modern-day polyamory and more like...ritual prostitution and other random-people-having-sex-with-gods-style-rites and myths in the ancient world. The one that comes to mind is the scandal caused by Gilgamesh refusing to join Ishtar's bed. EDIT: That all being said, I could absolutely see a fun plot rearing its head for more community-oriented games where the PCs have to deal with the fallout from a messy divorce in their clan resulting from someone having to participate in a rite that their spouse really didn't like. The PCs would have to mediate between different factions in the clan who support the spouses (who probably didn't have that good of a marriage to begin with), and the ones who are messily trying to mediate already are probably just making things worse by focusing on the religious obligation instead of the actual emotions of the people involved. Fun soap-opera style plot.

Are you okay, @Nick Brooke? I might be being oversensitive and a tad paranoid, but something about how you're writing here makes it seem like this whole subject kinda struck a nerve.

i mean, depending on your spouse, they might be fine or even encouraging of it, especially if your spouse is the one reminding you of your religious obligation in the first place. Even in a monogamous-dominant society, people have never all been monogamous, whether or not their society (or religion, or both) would approve of it. Hell, Gloranthan societies and Orlanthi society in particular seems to offer more opportunities for open relationships to be societally sanctioned than you might think.

hm. According to Kolating shamanic traditions, wasps hate Broos, and wasp spirits can help shamans find and kill chaos monsters. Maybe they're just (mythologically speaking) Uroxi bees?! ....STORM BEE

Yeah, I saw that he was the god of sacrificial fires up there, very interesting. And yeah, he wouldn't be interested in stopping wildfires, so that's why I'd imagine you'd need shamans or priests to bargain/cajole/beg him to stop.

now I'm talking with the potential shaman player about all this, and they do like the idea of Oakfed and other fire spirits being the primary Caladralander spiritual contacts, given their reliance on slash-and-burn agriculture and the need to keep (artificial) wildfires under control. The fact that Caladra and Aurelion mess with the kinda-sorta-gender-essentialist feel of Earth and Fire magic as well, and how they share Earth and Fire between them might mean that the Earth Witch tradition could easily mix with the fire shamans too. So like... Caladralander shamans as weird wildfire alchemists that people are wary of, but recognize a societal need for? Gender-role muddling? Oakfed being seen as one of the useful lowfires in this land, as opposed to just the scary wildfire demon that he is in other countries? Practically all writes itself. I love it. Thanks, folks!

y'know I'm actually having a conversation with a possible player right now who's super dissatisfied about all bugs just being Goraikki's kids (they're very interested in entomology), and this thread is making me realize that if they're dissatisfied with Gloranthan canon, we can just make better canon. Time to make some honeybee and butterfly myths! And a story about cicadas!

Oh right, Oakfed! Completely forgot about them. Y'know, now that I think about it, a Caladralander spirit tradition that involves talking to the Lowfires and the various "minor" volcanos or volcanic hotspots around the peninsula could work, I think. Given that Caladra and Aurelion share their runes, Aurelion was probably a Solar/Fire Tribe god before the God Learners got to him, and there's an established official shamanic society that's part of Solar worship (unless I misremember some hasty far-too-late-at-night research on this since I made this thread), I could see that sort of being translated to the Volcano Twins' combined cult. Maybe Caladra and Aurelion have an associated sort-of-combined Lowfires/Earth Witch cult. The Warm Earth Society, maybe, to go with the Warm Earth Alliance? I don't know if I'm even being coherent right now and should probably sleep, but the idea is sticking with me.

Neat, thank you! From there I can probably come up with something that works for the player. They're Indigenous, and an actual like...doctoral-studying scholar of real world animistic and shamanic traditions across the world. For all that they like playing around with fantasy, they want this bit to at least feel authentic to them, so I think having an idea of what the fiction is trying to go for can help them out a lot with that.

Any concrete information on the Earth Witch and Kolat traditions I could look up?

see, I had been given to believe that godbone bronze was the only source of bronze.