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AlexS

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AlexS last won the day on May 27 2023

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  • RPG Biography
    Standard-issue 80s RQ2 veteran, now rediscovering the setting with the help of those who kept the flame alive and an exciting new generation of Gloranthaphiles. Currently diving deeper into Gloranthan lore while also branching out into Pendragon.
  • Current games
    Playing in a Kethaela campaign using RQG, GM for a Pendragon campaign mashing up Starter Set material with original scenarios.
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    England / Brazil
  • Blurb
    Social scientist working in international development, passionate about history as well as culture, keen to go with the fantasy flow but inclined to be nerdy about things like clan politics and city government because of my day job.

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  1. AlexS

    Kitori Warbands

    Good question! ‘The Holy Country’ included the Sixth of Heortland, so the Bee People could be quite nearby in the forested uplands of Hendrikar, to the south of the Troll Woods. However, I think it would be more MGF to locate the Bee People in an odd corner of Esrolia - for example, the Delainan Hills / Ianian Forest around Ezel, an area which is famed for its magical plants and thus could include Vale of Flowers type oversized blooms with magical nectar that enables the local bees to grow to giant sizes. That way, Wasp Riders on their way to raid bee nests in the Ianian Forest could provide a fun unexpected encounter for adventurers who are travelling through the peaceful North Esrolian heartland. Imagine this setup: the party has been ambling along a well-maintained Esrolian road for a day or so on its way from Nochet to the famous Knowledge Temple of Sylthi. They have met the odd Irillo Hundred patrol, and maybe some Old Earth Alliance soldiery heading towards the fighting around the Red Earth strongholds of the Malthin Valley, but otherwise nothing but toiling peasants, prosperous merchants and the occasional Earth Priestess being carried from one ceremony to another. They have probably packed away their armour, unstrung their bows, etc. and gone into ‘social interaction / diplomacy / politics mode’ rather than ‘wilderness travel / combat readiness mode’. Suddenly, there is an ominous buzzing all around them, shrill war cries ring out accompanied by a hail of slingstones from above, and they have to scramble to ready themselves in short order to deal with a proper ‘wilderness monster encounter’ type fight, while at the same time trying to control their mounts’ panic at being dive-bombed in broad daylight by ferocious giant insects…
  2. AlexS

    Kitori Warbands

    I certainly wouldn’t rule out Kitori raiding! In our Glorantha there is actually a whole Kitori cultural tradition (‘Isalling Kitori’) dedicated to taking the ‘Path of the Wasp’ and joining with the Wasp Riders (who are not Kitori, but closely allied and linked through worship of Gorakiki-Wasp) to attack nearby Heortling settlements. In our campaign this was traditionally a fringe vocation followed by a relatively small number of young Kitori, but many more have come to follow this path in recent years. In the past some might have taken the ‘Path of the Wasp’ as a permanent choice after being called by Zorak Zoran or Gorakiki upon initiation rather than Argan Argar, while some others saw it as a temporary (ephebos/koryos style) experience to be lived between clan initiation and cult initiation. However, the intensified persecution of the Kitori that followed the rise of King Broyan’s Volsaxing Confederacy has produced many more angry and bereaved Kitori youth, leading to a rapid growth in the Isalling tradition – and thus in the frequency of Kitori / Wasp Rider raids in Northern Heortland and Southern Sartar. The Isalling Kitori are part of an overview of cultural traditions in Kethaela, Prax and Dragon Pass on which we’re currently working, which should reach the JC eventually. Here is our working summary of different Kitori cultural traditions: As you can see, we see the Kitori as a fragmented people, whose cultural traditions have moved in different directions after their disastrous defeat at the hands of Tarkalor Trollkiller and Monrogh Lantern. This is very much how we imagine the Dehor Kitori, who do not raid their neighbours but can be implacable enemies when attacked. That’s true - except that in 1625 their neighbours are also in bad shape. Broyan is dead and his Volsaxing Confederacy has been reduced to a few squabbling warbands around Whitewall and a couple of other tribes that are in the process of being politically absorbed by Sartar (whose current rulers, unlike Prince Tarkalor, have no beef with the Kitori). The Yelmalions to the north lost key leaders in the Dragonrise and are generally under suspicion as collaborators after sending mercenary templars to fight with Fazzur in Heortland, the Hendriki to the south are preoccupied with the Kingdom of Jab, and the Esrolians to the west have traditionally friendly relations with the followers of Argan Argar. So now seems like a pretty good time to emerge from the Troll Woods and try to reunite the Shadowlands… In fact (to link this to the discussion about King Broyan’s death in another thread), in our campaign it was a Dehor Kitori shaman-priestess who summoned the demon that did for Broyan, seizing an opportunity to remove someone who as the uniter of the Volsaxings represented the biggest obstacle tin the path of a possible Kitori resurgence. She may have cooperated with Tatius to do the hit, but that would only have been a temporary alliance of convenience; the Kitori didn’t trust the Lunars (even though they appreciated the break from Volsaxing persecution that came with the Empire’s invasion of Northern Heortland) and already had all the motivation they need to strike at a leader who had united their tribal enemies. So, I think you could have a lot of fun with Kitori antagonists, whether they are wild Isalling raiders accompanied by crazy wasp-riders or careful Dehor plotters scheming to restore the Shadowlands to their former glory. Or, you could just have the party bump into a group of of the friendlier Loradaking Kitori (most of whom live in Esrolia but some of whom can be found in Heortland) while they are out and about escorting n Argan Argar caravan or on patrol as part of their Kimantoring military service – but be careful with any Darkness-hating adventurers who pick fights with anyone vaguely trollish, because then as @jajagappa says they might bring down the wrath of Obash Broos-Smasher upon the party!
  3. @Squaredeal Sten's question was specifically about the militia, so it's interesting that a lot of the (great) contributions here have actually been about military roles that go way beyond the Irillo Hundreds. I think there are actually two very different military contexts in play here, which relate to what in UK terms we might call the 'territorial army' and the 'professional army'. The two kinds of military march together when the whole of Esrolian society goes to war (like at Pennel Ford), but otherwise they have quite distinct social roles and associated socialisation processes – which also translates into differences in gendered patterns of military activity. When Esrolia mobilises for war, then along with the Irillo Hundred fyrd/militia the Queens will deploy specialist units associated with different War Gods, Husband Protectors and Noble Brothers (Axe Maiden followers of Babeester and Maran Gor, Humakti battalions, Orlanthi weaponthanes, Argan Argar Kimantorings, Yelmalion hoplites, etc.). @M Helsdon's Armies and Enemies of Dragon Pass does a great job of describing these units. Aside from female-gendered military specialist roles like the Axe Maidens, there are three high-visibility military roles played by Esrolian women in this kind of full-mobilisation situation. The first, as @radmonger has pointed out, is casting Bless Champion on chosen Wind Lords or Kimantorings. This is the classic Enferalda function common to Esrolians and Heortlings, which positions Ernalda as the source of inspiration and protection in battle. The second role (much more specific and in practice largely confined to Esrolia and Old Tarsh) is deploying an absolutely terrifying range of Earth magic – from channelling Ernalda's power to summon giant Talosi that can swallow whole cavalry wings to calling on Maran's Earthshaker magic to sunder the ground beneath an enemy phalanx's feet. The third role is actually being a physical presence on the front line. Esrolian 'warrior queens' don't have to be Vingans or Axe Maidens to 'lead from the font'; they can function almost like a living battle standard by deliberately breaking their society's gender norms, leaving the safety of the command tent and taking positions that expose them to risks and thereby spur the male (and Vingan, Axe Maiden etc.) fighters onto even greater efforts. Think Joan of Arc riding into the thick of battle against the English, or (at a more symbolic level) Queen Elizabeth I donning a breastplate for her Tilbury speech to the troops. So, while I agree with @Ynneadwraith and others that it makes sense for Esrolian armies to be directed by women at the Grand Strategy and Strategic levels of the Clausewitzian command hierarchy, I think their role in giving those armies their distinctive feel goes way beyond that. In this kind of full-mobilisation scenario, battles will be won or lost in clashes of individual heroes, professional military units and magical specialists. The militia are basically there to be used as cannon fodder (or literally as building materials, in the case of Belintar's strategy for defeating the Lunars). Outside of this scenario, however, the militia come into their own. They are engaged in guarding the city walls, patrolling the roads, chasing away predators, hunting down bandits etc., and this means that they are generally perceived as serving a worthwhile social function despite their relatively modest battlefield prowess. However, this function of the 'territorial army' is not primarily military – it is more about social control. Not just the general need of a community to control external threats like bandits and beasts, but the specific need of a matriarchal society to control an internal threat: the capacity for random violence of unattached young men. So what does this imply for the gender composition of Esrolia's militia units? @Jeff says that and I think that this is especially true as regards the gendered nature of the Irillo Hundreds. As Jeff tells it in articles like this one, Sartarite (Heortling) militia training starts with the ephebe-type experience of groups of young Orlanthi men and Vingans going off into the hills to learn survival skills and practice cattle raiding, while the young women and Nandani go to Ernalda's temple to learn about stuff like childbirth and healing. Because of their higher social status (compared to men) and the greater sophistication of their society (compared to the rural Orlanthi at least), young Esrolian women are likely have to learn a much larger range of negotiation, leadership and management skills than their Sartarite counterparts, as well as having the possibility to learn a more sophisticated range of crafting practices (which are often linked to social and political skills, as evidenced in the great material on 'Societies of the Cloth' in @jajagappa's version of Nochet). So what does Esrolian society do with all the young men while the young women are busy learning about weaving and politics as well as sex and healing? Allowing these young men and Vingans to hang out in groups on the fringes of society, indulging in a little light banditry and generally causing trouble, is not an option for a tightly-regulated and densely-populated society like Esrolia. The answer must be to send them off to drill with the local Irillo Hundred militia. There they get to dress up in armour and practice fighting, take lots of physical exercise, undergo hazing rituals, drinking competitions and other male bonding activities to their heart's content and generally express their unreconstructed masculinity (or Vingan identity – see this scene in Starship Troopers for an example of enthusiastic female participation in this kind of male-gendered military bonding ritual). This all happens under the watchful eye either of Axe Maidens or of Irillo, Vogarth, Orlanth or Argan Argar cultists who have been socialised into leading other men into battle not in independent heroic warband fashion but rather as part of a strategy directed by Queens and other politically important women. So, my answer to the original question would be that yes, Esrolian women do participate in the Irillo Hundred system – but those who are not Vingans or Axe Maidens are massively outnumbered by the male militiamen, because there are very strong social incentives to direct the majority of young men towards the militia, whereas young women have a much wider range of higher-status options to which they can dedicate this period of their social initiation.
  4. Thanks for the encouragement, @Darius West – we would love to get this material (which started as a resource for our Kethaela campaign) onto the JC, but it keeps growing more complex and ambitious, so first we need to get better at saying 'enough is enough' with the text development and focus on actually getting it into publishable shape! Ensuring that it gets into a state that is actually enjoyable to read rather than just publishing page after page of dense text also means we will need to find time to invest in a pretty substantial effort of layout, illustration, etc. Unfortunately, the creators on the JC keep setting the bar higher and higher when it comes to presentation as well as content, which is wonderful but can also be a bit intimidating!
  5. I've been doing some thinking about Customs recently, as I'm working with a couple of other people on a resource for supporting efforts to incorporate adventurers' cultural and homeland backgrounds into RQG gameplay in a richer and more satisfying way. We think there are two problems with Customs in the rules as written. The first problem is that RQG RAW seems to assume that your Customs are the same as your Culture, and while this might make sense for Sartarites whose ancestors came from Heortland (who will have 'Heortling' as their Customs as well as their Culture) it doesn't work for all groups – including the Dinacoli and other Tarshite speakers of Northern Sartar and the Far Point. We dealt with this by defining Customs as a combination of an adventurer's Cultural Tradition with the region where their community lives ('Cultural Tradition' is our term for a more specific regional variant of a general Culture like Heortling or Tarshite). Thus, for your Dinacoli characters we would use a Customs definition like "Northern Sartar Alakoring Tarshite" ("Alakoring Tarshite" is what we call the cultural tradition of people from a Tarshite cultural background who are not Lunarised but are also not as focused on Maran Gor worship as the Earth Tarshites; the term was inspired by Alakoring's Legacy by Alistair and Edan Jones, which is highly recommended if you are into developing clan backgrounds for your adventurers). It could be "Far Point Alakoring Tarshite" because the Dinacoli are now part of the Alda Chur Confederation of the Far Point, but since they belonged to the Jonstown Confederation for several generations before the Lunars forced them to join Alda Chur in 1613 I think "Northern Sartar" probably makes more sense in terms of accumulated cultural influences on their Customs. The second problem with RQG RAW for Customs is that the base skill of 25% seems way too low for an adventurer's knowledge of the Customs of their own community. It also doesn't make much sense for them to have no knowledge at all of other communities' Customs (cf "Adventurers start knowing their own Customs skill at 25%: all others start at 00%", RQG p. 176). We dealt with this by suggesting that the 25% should be used as a baseline when testing knowledge of the customs of other communities from the same general culture, but that for an adventurer's own cultural tradition (and even more so for their own clan) they should get bonuses to indicate a much higher level of cultural familiarity. This is similar to what @Richard S. is suggesting, but instead of using the rules on language skills as a comparator we used the RQG rulebook indication of Homeland Lore bonuses when the skill is being tested in relation to an adventurer's local area (cf +30% to Homeland Lore for "adventurer’s tribal center or clan village", RQG p. 179). Here is the example that we use to illustrate this in the book on which we're working: Example: Erantha the Fierce was born into the Marantaros Clan, a community whose Cultural Tradition is Earth Tarshite, and grew up in the clan’s lands in the Shakelands Region of Old Tarsh, so her Culture is Tarshite and the skill recorded on her character sheet is Customs (Shakelands Earth Tarshite). If she meets someone from her own Clan, there is a base chance of 60% that she will be able to refer successfully to their shared Customs (Marantaros Clan). If she meets someone from the neighbouring Hendarli Clan, whose Customs are also Shakelands Earth Tarshite, she will use her base Customs (Shakelands Earth Tarshite) skill level of 50%. If she meets someone from the Wild Bull Clan of the Princeros Tribe, who are also Earth Tarshites but who live in the Far Point region of Sartar, she will have a base 30% chance of successfully interpreting their Customs (Earth Tarshite). If she meets someone from the Orindori Clan of Dunstop, who are not Earth Tarshites but Lunar Tarshites, she will have a base 25% chance of using her knowledge of Customs (Tarshite). If she meets someone from the Orlmarth Clan of the Colymar Tribe in Sartar, who are Heortlings not Tarshites but belong to the same Orlanthi Culture Group as the Tarshites, she will have a base 10% chance of successfully using her knowledge of Customs (Orlanthi). We also concluded that there should be bonuses for understanding the Customs of communities from different cultural traditions who live in the same area, because adventurers will have grown up interacting with them (trading, raiding, attending festivals etc.). So, your adventurers would have some knowledge of the Heortling Customs of tribes who were their neighbours in the Jonstown Confederation (the Malani, Cinsina, Culbrea and Torkani), as well as of the Tarshite Customs of other tribes from the Alda Chur region. In the current draft of the book we suggest a base value of 20% for the Customs of people from the same region but a different Culture when they belong to a majority group (e.g. Heortlings from the Cinsina Tribe) and 10% when they belong to a minority group (e.g. Telmori from Northern Sartar). Hope this is useful as a general approach, even if you don't want to get into all the crunch of calculating a range of different Customs base skills!
  6. This is indeed a nice plot device, and one that already has a seed in the existing material on the River of Cradles. We have known ever since Borderlands that the Lunars resettled Carmanians in the Zola Fel Grantlands along with Redlanders and Talastarings. Jamie Revell's Eyes’ Rise builds on this and has a Carmanian (Kesianda of House Kelaritt) as village spokesperson for one of the surviving Grantlands settlements. Although she is a vizier-class sorcerer and thus not necessarily someone who would be involved in Bisos worship, the HQ Pavis volume makes it clear that there are farmers among the Carmanians forcibly resettled in Duke Raus' domain. They are described as "distinctly different" because "they do not worship the goddess Ernalda" (Pavis – Gateway to Adventure p. 72.), and also differ from the Redlanders who worship Lodril and Oria as their agricultural deities. So who do these Carmanian farmers worship? Bisos seems a pretty obvious contender, and one that would actually give them knowledge and magic that was useful for survival in Prax. In other words, they are not farmers in the Pelorian rice-cultivating sense but actually agro-pastoralists who manage cattle on their steads. While working on a project that tries to summarise the different cultural traditions found in Dragon Pass, Prax and Kethaela, my co-authors and I decided to lean into this by using Bisos worship as part of the rationale for the survival (at least until Argrath's arrival) of the Zola Fel Carmanians. I can see a nice storyline where PCs from the Western Reaches make contact with the surviving Carmanian Grantlanders and use the knowledge the survivors have acquired of Praxian Eiritha and Storm Bull worship to reintroduce a Bisos-Eses tradition of bull-based fertility magic to Prax.
  7. They also served the Inca as mercenaries. I used to work with the Ashaninka people in Acre (there are a few villages on the Brazilian side of the border, though most Ashaninka live in Peru) and they have many myths about the God Inka and the technology (mostly bronze) with which he supplied their ancestors in exchange for military service. Ashaninka warriors probably provided the backbone of the units of Antis, the ‘cannibal bodyguards’ of Manco Inca who were so feared by the Spanish. Plenty of resemblance to the Orlanthi and other ‘barbarian’ warriors fighting in the Lunar Provincial Army (as brilliantly depicted by Martin Helsdon in Armies and Enemies)…
  8. I like these ideas a lot, @Hellhound Havoc, but then I’m a Brazilianist so I guess I would say that! Yes, it does – but if you read Pierre Clastres on the lowland peoples of South America (Societies Against the State) and James C. Scott on the hill peoples of Southeast Asia (The Art of Not Being Governed) you realise that the Orlanthi spirit of ‘no one can make you do anything’ is common to both, and placed in conscious opposition to those hierarchy-bound agricultural empires, whether they are ‘up there in the mountains’ or ‘down there in the valley’. The remains of very large-scale urban settlements in the Amazon have been being identified for decades, since long before the latest LIDAR evidence became available. Francisco de Orellana described very dense riverine populations along big stretches of the Solimões-Amazon waterway in the 1540s. In addition to highly productive agriculture (associated with soil improvement whose legacy includes the belts of ‘Amazonian black earth’ found throughout the region) they apparently farmed giant river turtles as their principal source of animal protein – maybe a model for a city of Sofali hsunchen turned turtle farmers somewhere in Kralorela or Pamaltela?
  9. Thanks @French Desperate WindChild for starting this thread and @Qizilbashwoman for sharing these insights. As I mentioned in another thread, I’ve been working with a couple of other authors on a resource book for incorporating cultural and place-based variation more fully into RQG character generation. This includes working on Gloranthan cultural understandings of sex and gender – but although one of my co-authors is involved in trans rights activism he does not himself identify as trans, so we are basically three cis het men trying to write about this. The book includes a guide to key terms, and I have pasted below the current draft of the entry on sexual and gender identity (also referenced in the section on social initiation, which we treat as separate from cult initiation). It is deliberately (a) simplified and (b) compatible with our understanding of ‘core RQG’ assumptions, which include the differentiation of sex and gender and the location of both within the framework of a fantasy Bronze Age theistic setting (i.e. one that is kin- and community-centric and leans heavily on mythically referenced socially ascribed gender stereotypes). However, it does try to make space for fluid as well as binary trans identities as well as ‘opting out of gender’ and delinking sexuality from gender roles. It would be great to know what people in this forum (particularly trans people) think about it. · Sexual and Gender Identity: the preferences and ways of behaving that societies ascribe to people who are differentiated in terms of sex (the reproductive biology with which they were born) and/or gender (the social and family roles that people assume in adult life). In Glorantha a person’s sexual and gender identity is usually described in terms of mythic archetypes, such as Heler and Jernotius for non-binary people in Dragon Pass and Peloria respectively. According to the core rulebook, in Dragon Pass, Prax and Kethaela the most common forms of sexual and gender identity are the Heortling ‘four sexes’ (shaped like a man, shaped like a woman, shaped like both and shaped like neither) and ‘six genders’ (Allfather, Allmother, Nandani, Vingan, Helering and agender). Neither sex nor gender determines a person’s sexuality (the people they desire as sexual and/or life partners), and same-sex / same-gender desire is commonly found among people of all genders in Orlanthi society (see RQG p. 80). For the Esrolia volume in the series we’ve also been experimenting with identifying characters’ gender (not sex) in terms of a greater variety of mythic archetypes linked to the dominant Earth Pantheon. This applies to ‘ways of being female’, e.g. having ‘Avenging Daughter’ or ‘Spring Maiden’ as gender descriptors even if that person doesn’t actually follow Babeester Gor or Voria. We also apply this approach to male gender identification, but in our Esrolia these ‘ways of being male’ are linked to family roles: Occasional Lover, Husband Protector, Noble Brother, Dutiful Son. Again, Orlanth Adventurous could be a gender identity synonym for Occasional Lover, Orlanth Thunderous (or Argan Argar, Yelmalio et al. depending on the particular Esrolian cultural tradition) for Husband Protector, Irillo for Noble Brother and Barntar for Dutiful Son – but that doesn’t mean that people who are gender-identified in those ways actually belong to those cults. We’re not yet sure whether to keep this in the final version of the Esrolia book. On the one hand, it helps with world-building, and illustrates how a matriarchal society might impose ascriptive gender roles on men in the same way that our patriarchal societies impose roles on women. On the other, it might end up feeling too mechanical and gender-determinist to be enjoyable for players, even if we emphasise that these are ascribed social roles, not obligatory stereotypes for role-playing. Feedback welcome…
  10. This is the approach that my co-authors and I have taken in the 'Homelands and Cultures' resource book on which we are working. Every adult is assumed to be an Initiate of the Clan Wyter, but they are also assumed to be Lay Members of the cults of the three most important local deities. Of course, they might also be an Initiate of one of those deities – but even if they are not they will have basic familiarity with the cult, because in our view simply having the experience of participating in collective worship for the deities whose cults govern the clan's most important activities should make you a Lay Member of their cult. That is the logic we followed when we developed the idea of 'cultural traditions' that characterise different clans, making them more specific (and interesting) than the Homeland or Region-level 'Culture / Religion' characterisation that is in the RQG core rulebook. As @radmonger puts it: In order to operationalise this for character generation, for each cultural tradition we list three major deities (or magical traditions, in the case of shamanistic or sorcerous cultures) for which anyone who comes from a clan that has that tradition is assumed to have the basic 'lay member' level of cult lore. The first two on the list will generally be the main ones for the dominant pantheon (i.e. Orlanth and Ernalda for most Heortling cultural traditions), while the third is the one that sets the cultural tradition apart (e.g. Maran Gor for Earth Tarshites or Argan Argar for Dark Orlanthi). In other words, the leading deities of the pantheon tend to be 'cults that actually run clans', while the others listed for that specific cultural tradition are more indicative of the local specialisms (such as horse-breeding for clans that have Elmal as their third deity, or river navigation for those that have Engizi). This means that an adventurer from a clan with a strong Elmali (Light Orlanthi) influence, like the Enhyli clan of the Colymar or the Blue Jay clan of the Dundealos, will have a Lay Member level of Elmal cult knowledge even if they are an Initiate of Orlanth, as well as vice-versa. We also used the 'clan cultural traditions' idea to develop a rule of thumb for determining whether there is a temple or shrine for any given deity in an area. The assumptions are similar to those outlines by @Lordabdul above, but the rationale is linked to the specific cultural characteristics of the clans who live there. Doing this at the clan level also helps deal with the difficulty of working out how we actually use the Homeland level cult membership numbers that @Jeff has included in the Mythology volume for the Cults of RuneQuest series. Knowing that there are x thousand members of a cult in a particular Homeland doesn't help a GM decide whether or not there is actually a temple to that deity within a day's ride of wherever the party happens to be right now, but knowing whether or not the local clans follow a cultural tradition that venerates that deity should help the GM to make that call. In the 'Homelands' bit of our resource book, we list the main cultural traditions followed by clans that live in any given tribal (or city) territory. We then assume that in addition to the temples of the main 'cults that actually run clans' (Orlanth, Ernalda, etc.), if any of these cultural traditions has the god or goddess of a minor cult as one of its three named deities then they will have a temple. By default this will be located at the clan centre (hill fort, large village or whatever), but it could be at a particular holy site (sacred hill, riverbank, forest glade etc.) if that sounds more appropriate or MGF. We also list minor cultural traditions (often associated with settlers or specialists like merchants or crafters from outside the region) who are present in the territory, but assume that their deities will only have a shrine, unless we're talking about a major city like Furthest, Boldhome or Nochet. I agree with @Cassius on this, but I think that this rule of thumb gives a workaround for the default position that specialist or minority cults like Odayla, Heler or Elmal are only ever present as subcults in 'mainstream Orlanthi' regions. If they are a major deity for a cultural tradition that has a significant presence in a region, then they should have a temple and function as a cult in their own right there. Thus, there are probably 'proper' Elmal temples in Runegate and Swenstown, given that they are the urban centres serving regions with a substantial presence of Light Orlanthi clans. Anywhere else there will only be an Elmal shrine in the Yelmalio temple, if that. You could use this approach to invent a 'Bear Tarshite' cultural tradition that is followed by a group of clans in some part of Old Tarsh (maybe their founding lineages were from Sylila?) and has Orlanth, Ernalda and Odayla as its three named deities. This mens that Odaylans travelling through these clans' territory would be likely to find a full temple where they could worship, rather than just a shrine within the Orlanth temple. However, if your deity is not listed for any of the cultural traditions present in that territory, then the assumption is that opportunities for worship will depend on getting to a regional centre (e.g. one of the confederation cities in Sartar) and using the shrine that should be present at the Great Temple of the deity with which they are associated or for which they are classified as a subservient cult. I also agree with this general approach for regions with no Great Temple (i.e. no large city or major non-city-based holy site like Heruvernalda, Maranaba or the Hill of Orlanth Victorious), but it is quite heavy to do that much world-building for regions that adventurers are just passing through and looking for somewhere to refresh Rune points, rather than those in which they are going to be based for a Season or more. If you know which cultural traditions are present in a region then it is much easier to do your world-building on the fly. If the region is not one where Jeff has already posted information about temples (which he has done for some of the Sartarite clans, as @Scotty has pointed out) then you can use resources like his clan distribution sketch maps to decide where there might be temples or shrines. For example, if you're looking for somewhere to place a shrine to Yinkin in the Dundealos lands, then the territory of the Wild Cats Clan sounds like a good bet. Anyway, that's our take based on where we're at with the 'cultural traditions' project – feedback and suggestions for improvement welcome!
  11. This is also true – I loved the maps (particularly the Swenstown one), but the one showing Dundealos clan territories also doesn’t match the Sartar clan distribution map that @Jeff has shared, which may be a problem for GMs wanting to incorporate this material into a Sartar campaign. Despite the very different graphic style, in the side by side comparison below you can see from the positions of roads, rivers and well-known sites (like the Hill of Poets and the Old Wind Temple) that Thomas Rey (the cartographer for Les Enfants de la Flamme) has used the same base that Jeff has used for the Sartar map on which he has been working with Matt Ryan. However, the clan boundaries are in completely different places, and some clan names have been changed while others have been swapped around. Different clan names can be explained away as local variations (there are plenty of examples in RQG canon of clans being known by more than one name), but putting the same named clan in two different places while also drawing the clan boundaries completely differently can be a problem if you’re trying to be as specific about who claims to rule which patch of Sartar as Chaosium seems to be in its current output. For example, if a party of adventurers is heading towards Jaldonkill Fort from Swenstown, when they enter Dundealos lands along the Ambush Trail are they going to be challenged by Entan Clan warriors who may insist on taking them to Entan Fort instead, or Blue Jay Clan warriors who may escort them directly to Jaldonkill Fort? If the GM is using the clan territories from Les Enfants de la Flamme but also wants to draw on the material from Valley of Plenty they are going to have a headache, because the Thomas Rey map locates the territory of the Blue Jays (Geais Bleus) right down on the edge of the Pol-Joni March whereas both the Carpenters and Jeff locate it at the heart of the Dundealos Valley. In short, the maps are another example of how Les Enfants de la Flamme is heavily YGWV in a way that simply wouldn’t happen within the English line of RQG products – despite the French Dundealos campaign being an officially licensed Chaosium product. Which makes me wonder if rather than forcing the Studio Deadcrows team to redo their brilliant work so that it fits better with Anglo sensibilities and current RQG canon, Chaosium might instead encourage them to release an English version via the JC?
  12. Les Enfants de la Flamme is an ambitious campaign which tells a compelling story and does a powerfully evocative job of bringing to life the Dundealos lands and surrounding areas (including Swenstown and the Pol-Joni March) in the aftermath of the Dragonrise. Plus the art is great and the maps are superb. So why hasn’t Chaosium already put out an English edition? I think it may be because it is just too hardcore for the audiences RQG is seeking to attract in the Anglosphere. This is a volume that would need a content warning on pretty much every page if it were to be distributed to mainstream UK / US / Canadian / Australian / NZ audiences (I don’t know enough German, Scandinavian, Japanese or other non-Anglosphere gamers to be able to gauge whether they would be more comfortable with the content than the Anglos are likely to be). We Brits tend to say that the French are ‘sophisticated’, and while we usually mean it as a compliment that is not always the case – it sometimes means that we are uncomfortable with how comfortable they seem to be with stuff from which old-fashioned Anglo-Saxon Protestant sensibilities used to recoil, and which is guaranteed to send today’s sensitivity readers into overdrive. The campaign presents a scarred setting full of traumatised people, who risk falling prey to lurking evil and megalomaniac conspiracies. It is Bronze Age Grimdark with a heavy helping of Cthulhu. Instead of a simple road to reconstruction through honest toil, with perhaps a skirmish or two, the campaign requires the Dundealos survivors and the PCs who want to help them to make a series of brutally harsh moral and political choices while trying to survive the nefarious plots of some genuinely vile enemies. As a take on the setting it could hardly be more different from the Valley of Plenty series – though of course that series begins well before the full cruelty of the Lunar Occupation has been unleashed, and is likely to have to take a darker turn itself. Even then, I suspect that the grimmest moments of the Carpenters’ version of the Saga of the Jaldonkillers will not come close to what Gianni Vacca, Philippe Auribeau and Pierre Coppet have presented us with in Les Enfants de la Flamme. TLDR: the French Dundealos campaign is a tour de force, but don’t assume that simply buying the PDF (which you can do here) and running a Google-Translated version will make it an easy option for most Anglo gaming tables – the players are likely to need some serious conversations about lines, veils, triggers and content warnings before plunging into it.
  13. Thanks @Joerg, the La Brea tarpits connection does make sense. I was actually thinking of the Alberta Tar Sands, but Wikipedia has since educated me that ‘Tar Sands’ is a misnomer for ‘Oil Sands’, which are pure bitumen without the admixture of non-fossilised resin etc. So maybe the tar in the Tar Pit resulted from the fusion of Ezkankekko’s body (or his blood, if his actual death was elsewhere) with the Fireblood that Lodril had left in the fabric of his palace? Essence of the Dark Master and essence of the Enslaved Fire, forced into unity at the end by the terrible magical energies released by Belintar’s assault?
  14. Tar is a fossil fuel. Maybe it is congealed Fireblood, traces of Lodril’s essence left in the structure of the Palace of Black Glass by its builder and released by Belintar’s magic to destroy its structural integrity?
  15. Particularly Esrola, whose cult will presumably also be able to claim protection from any local Uz who worship Argan Argar. Even if we assume that the immediate vicinity of Axe Hall is too Death Rune-irradiated to support ‘normal’ farming (as opposed to all the fun stuff with mushrooms and corpses imagined by @Erol of Backford and @mfbrandi), the area round Esrolia’s throne is likely to have plenty of residual fertility, and is only a couple of kilometres away. Assuming that blood beer needs cereal mash as well as blood and water, I’d hazard a guess that the Axe Hall brewers get their barley from there. The supply could be payment in kind for BG protection of a handful of hardy Esrola-worshippers farming patches of topsoil around her throne, scraped free of obsidian dust as part of a ritual quest to restore its original fertility (sort of like a peasant version of the Kalikos expeditions but with dust storms instead of snow storms).
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