Tatterdemalion Fox

Color me disappointed. I mean, not just that the game didn't happen (and I wish I'd had time to sub in, since it was near the top of my list for games at the con), but that it looks like QW isn't getting any Gloranthan support. "QW Core + genre pack" was on my own shortlist of ways to run Glorantha in the future, as I'm most comfortable with narrative systems and I like QW's refinements to the base HQ system. Lacking a genre pack will make the barrier to entry for both myself and prospective players that much higher. This wouldn't sting as much if the official Gloranthan narrativist system wasn't already a year out of print when I started getting into this gorgeous setting. Sure, I've got a decent collection accumulating, but it's expensive and often a literal gamble. (I massively lucked out on getting Kingdom of Heroes, for example, and that was still over $150- and my owning it means that there's now one less copy circulating for someone else starting their journey.)

The Alda-chur Confederation has the Princeros; they were famous for "giant fighting," and were defeated by Harvar. Now they have to pay him humiliating tribute to atone for their resistance against him. Or the Tovtaros, which was once known as the "Source of Heroes," but had many feuds inflamed by Harvar's machinations. Since he stepped in and settled most of them, they owe him deeply- which was exactly his goal. (Or he convinced others to feud with the Tovtaros and then repeatedly passed judgment against them, forcing them to spend their wealth to settle these matters; the text is vague enough that either is possible.) Alone, meanwhile, has the Tres Tribe, which consists of refugees and political dissenters from Alda-chur who fled out to Alone to make a new tribe. I'll also note that Harvar's own tribe, the Vantaros, is known for being dominated by Yelmalio and Lunar cults, which makes the choice of which tribe to have as rivals very easy. My source here is Kingdom of Heroes, and while some of this might be updated or changed the next time we hear about Alda-chur and Alone properly, it's what I have to hand.

Not only is this a very fruitful line of thought to go down, I must point you towards one of the greatest “dancelike ceremonies” in all of the records we have: Tatius the Bright’s Great Lunar Transformation. (Page 40 of the Sourcebook or 126 of KoS.) ”Everyone had spent months in preparation and each celebrant had invoked one of the celestial powers with such success that anyone watching would easily have recognized any participant to be the proper star, planet, or other selected celestial body.” I’d also recommend listening to the Overture from Stravinsky’s Argrath Rex (1912) for inspiration.

One of the great tactical developments of the Lunar Empire has been the discovery that well-trained ritualists, even a small mobile band of them, are a significant force multiplier in Gloranthan conflicts. The adage that wars are won through logistics has an asterisk next to it in Glorantha: “and through ceremonies.” In that context, it’s quite coherent for the Daughter’s Army to not be a battlefield army and to still be deployed internally for the good of the people in a defensive capacity.

Great Sister is interesting in one (of several) sense in that she is yet another subtle, sensible feminine counterbalance to a more prominent masculine personality. Then again, I don't think Ernalda often maneuvers to have Orlanth assassinated for the good of political stability (...at least among the Heortlings, though I hear that sort of thing sometimes happens down south). A lot of my perspective on Deneskerva comes from her portrayal in Life of Moonson and Crimson King, and if you wanted to get a feel for her, perusing one of those two isn't too bad of an idea. (Though be warned that Crimson King is a doozy of a scenario intended to be run for folks who are clueless of the third act twist.) And I would lay down money on her appearing in Dark Side of the Moon when that finally comes out; she's a fertile character for exploration, particularly in the Origin Story, seeing the woman who would become Great Sister as a counterbalance to Doskalos Sword-in-the-Eye. I had a third paragraph in mind, then I had to walk away, and now I have lost it. Mm. Hopefully it comes back sooner rather than later.

When you call upon the magic of the Other Side, out beyond the confines of the Net, there is a moment when the worlds touch. (Not three worlds, before you cut me down where I stand; two is enough here.) There is a moment of bleed, where the sacred and the profane meet, and for a moment the Other Side is made recognizable through the world, and the Godtime is made manifest for that same moment inside of the Net. Sometimes this is visual (as we have seen in many pieces of art), but just as often it is olfactory (the sense most deeply tied to memory), and perhaps even more often it is auditory. As we know through the story of Yelm's Challenges, and our own experiences of contacting the gods, the world before the world was one where communication and music and dance were three strings of the same harp, a world where the gods would break out into poetry and song as an expression of their vital essences. This is why we use these methods to touch the Other Side ourselves. Those who have impressed themselves upon the Godtime and touched Infinity find that this bleed does not leave them; it ebbs and flows, but never entirely recedes. They are a nexus point where the world of the gods meets the world of men again, and signs and omens are endemic to their very nature; when they reveal their full glory, the world is painted in strange colors and haunted by strange songs. Which is so much to say that it is very easy to tell exactly when you are about to be killed by Jar-Eel the Razoress.

You successfully puzzled out my motive in asking! I was discussing Deezola last night and had a moment where I pulled out both Sourcebook and the Lunar Way to cross-reference.

Quick question for anyone who has the new printing. Gods of the Lunar Way, list of the Seven Mothers, pg. 148-149 in the first printing: which lunar phases are Deezola and Jakaleel associated with?

I am still disappointed that my schedule left me absolutely no time to fit in a RQG game anywhere. Thursday night I was meeting the Tribe, Friday morning I was shopping (and snatched up the very first copy of The Lunar Way on display, which I’m quite happy with), Friday afternoon I had to leave open for dinner with friends, Saturday was just the Jonstown Compendium booth and Home of the Bold, and then I had to scramble out of there Sunday morning. So getting to hear these reports does let me experience that side of the con vicariously, at least. So that this isn’t completely off-topic (and speaking of which, I’m surprised there was no Con Thread over in the Skull Inn for those of us who don’t use Facebook), I’ll add that Home of the Bold was a blast. It went by in a delightful blur of tense conversations, screaming matches in the street, observed attempts to break down Geo’s door, sacred Earth dances, and attempted seductions. Everyone who plays it this year is going to have a phenomenal time, and if you haven’t picked up the Rough Guide yet, run-don’t-walk to DTRPG. Anyway, here, have a bonus picture of what my shopping ended up procuring. Frankly, I’m itching for 2025 already.

It’s quite possible that not only is there one, but that it actually preceded Harmast’s progressive revelation of the grand Lightbringer’s Quest. Call it the Lifebringer’s Quest, perhaps. Set is a loyalist; it’s just that he’s Ra’s man through and through. Osiris’s wife, Isis, manipulates her husband onto the throne in the place of radiant solar Ra, and Set (tumultuous, violent, the god of the wilderness and the foreigner) overthrows the usurper by force. But he is still necessary to defend Ra’s sun barque as it travels through the underworld, and the one time he took a day off was the day that the monstrous serpent Apep managed to devour the barque, and so Set had to cut the snake’s belly open at the eleventh hour to save the cosmos. Elsewhere on these forums I have likened Orlanth to Set, and it’s very apt, but Shargash similarly shares many interesting traits with the god of the Red Land. Before heaven, Before earth, Before the waters, Before the dark, Nothing moved on nothing, Nothing entered into nothing. Before the gods, Before the runes, Before me, Before you, Nothing moved on nothing, Nothing entered into nothing. Look into my hand. What, do you not know that Death is in Life?

I'm spinning this off from the thread about Mahayana Buddhism the degree to which it's possible to interact with deities after they die, because, y'all, the relationship that the gods have with Death is something that's been fascinating me. (Particularly given where I ended up as regards the Skinning of Thed, which is a fragment I've only shared on the blog in my sig thus far.) Thesis 1: the gods can die like mortals can. This seems fairly self-evident at first glance: Yelm very famously gets Inigo Montoya'd by Orlanth and does not pass GO, does not collect $200, but goes straight to HELL until he can roll doubles. Vadrus gets torn apart and now it's useless to try to contact him inside of Time. The Devil is dead with only his ruby slippers and one hand sticking out from underneath the Square Mountain that dropped on his head. Many gods succumbed to Death after listening to Rashoran/a speak, though the bearers of Life and Death themselves were instead enlightened. (Perhaps if Orlanth had not learned how to save the world, and all the others too, Humakt would have been the last one left: left there waiting to blow out the candles, fold the quilts, and set Death as a crossbeam for the doors.) Once a god is dead, that's it, game over. Antithesis 1: but hold on, what about all the times that the gods die and that doesn't stop them? Orlanth freezes to death and Yinkin brings him back with his good good mlems (and that's not even acknowledging Wakboth shattering him into forty-eight pieces). Babeester Gor exsanguinates herself in order to drink her own blood. Tien gets his head lopped off and proceeds to kill Hrothmir and steal his head. It seems clear that the gods are not simply just people; they are capable of doing impossible things with their magic, and having a much looser relationship with Death seems to be one of them. Thesis 2: okay, fine, let's concede that a god dying doesn't seem to stop them to the degree that it would stop you or me. That's just because of the Ritual of the Net, obviously. When the gods turned their hands to the weaving of the world into the net which is named Time, they did so down in the underworld, so every god who was dead could weave themselves back into the pattern: Yelm returns in glory with Time as his cloak, Ernalda finds breath filling her lungs at her husband's kiss, Storm Bull trots back out with blood on his hooves and a smug look on his face, Shargash creates a conterminous zone and calls it Alkoth, so on and so forth. The gods of Chaos barely managed to squeak in holding the tassels, which is why they are losers and unquiet ghosts and suchlike. Antithesis 2: but hold on, even the gods that didn't make it back in have a presence in HeroQuests! Vadrus is still dead as the proverbial doornail, but it's not like there's a Vadrus-shaped hole in every story that he made an appearance in! When Vinga goes off to exterminate the enemy gods so thoroughly that not even their names survive, there's still an enemy to fight and not just "well, I'm at the space where the battle was supposed to happen, guess I'll have lunch and then wander back eventually." Rashoran/a comes back in cycles, and the Lunar goddesses are mended, and the line between the living and the dead seems very permeable. If you can kick Vadrus's ass while wandering outside of Time, you should be able to kick Ragnaglar's ass - or that of his son. Thesis 3: maybe it's because people believe that the Devil is trapped beneath the Block, and that Vadrus was shattered and nobody cares to try to put that asshole back together again, but all the good gods and goddesses were beloved enough that they were welcomed back into the world? And those awful things of Chaos crept in, too, because we need some sort of explanation for why Broos exist, and scorpion men, and other such things. Antithesis 3: you are treading perilous ground concerning the power of belief and its effects on the Hero Plane. Synthesis: still uncertain. I will need to prepare the proper rites and secure a copy of the Second Arkat Journal before I properly descend in search of the answer.

Of course, reading the Devil as the urge to say that the world does not deserve to exist lines up neatly with Teelo Estara facing up against him, dried red paint on her throat, and a life of poverty and fear and rootlessness stretching smaller and smaller behind her, and finding that she does not have a justification for any of it, after all. And then down she tumbles until she is caught by a net/web/shawl/goose’s neck. To say nothing of the Lives of Sedenya account. I’m rather open about my obvious bias for the Theists (or I’d like to think I am); They Are All Us, you might say. Perhaps all the idols should be smashed and the proletariat liberated from recursive self-defeating thought, but I’ll miss all those little shrines from my walking tour of southern Sartar. Especially that moment of looking up at a bronze statue of Sedenya and thinking: oh, so this is what you meant.

The Devil as an urge to flip over the board and wipe it clean. (Bear with me, even if you don’t have shades of Mordred in your Wakboth.) The urge of the Devil as entropic destruction and reveling in it, of reducing everything back down to nothing; if there has been good, let it be perverted and broken to show where it has never been justified, and if there is evil, let it be justification to speed up the dissolution. The great victory of Orlanth at the end of the world was in saying: the world is broken, but it is still worth saving. In rejecting the void-urge to give up, give in, and put away the chairs before turning off the lights. The Devil is everywhere in the whole broken manifested world, and still we live in it. And every year we tell the story of how the world and the gods were judged by the void, and how they bore up under that judgment and chose to live anyway, just like we do. And if Argrath isn’t stopped, eventually he’ll wipe the board clean, himself, or so one version of the story goes; he’ll declare that a world that contains the Red Moon and the gods that allowed his suffering are both unworthy in his eyes. And who will be left to say, again: the world is broken, but it is still worth saving? (And what is under the Block? Metal, like the corpse of any god, only this is metal that makes the world sick. Catch the more literate Storm Bulls putting up signs around the Marsh that say THIS IS NOT A PLACE OF HONOR! WHAT IS HERE IS DANGEROUS AND REPULSIVE TO US!) (I would have said petroleum, instead, but that’s claimed already.)

There was, there was not. 3.1: When I descended, I met there the Devil, named Wakboth. 3.2: He overthrew me, and then I overthrew him. 3.3: From his mouths rose the chant: MENE MENE TEKEL WAKBOTHSHIN. 3.4: And by MENE, he meant “I have numbered the days of your kingdoms and brought them to an end.” 3.5: And by TEKEL, he meant “You have been weighed and found wanting.” 3.6: And by WAKBOTHSHIN, he meant “Your kingdoms have been handed over to me to devour as I please.” 3.7: So to you, Death of Empires, I proclaim these words: MENE MENE TEKEL SEDENYASHIN. - Excerpt from the Castle Blue Sutra We have precedent: the way to the Spike and the Celestial Court is shut. No one can find their way back. (Now some, they find their way to the Court of the Emperor, and it certainly seems to be on some great mountain, but that cannot possibly be the Spike, now can it?) “Who cares for you?” said Teelo Estara, (she had grown to her full size by this time.) “You’re nothing but a pack of cards!”

I love these two pitches, but I am obligated by the Curse to add in two more much less serious explanations for “herding alynxes.” 1. All sheep have ancestral memories of Voriof being defeated by Yinkin “Murdermittens” Kerofinson, and are thus wary of getting on the bad side of even Sleepy Timtom. 2. All alynxes have access to the hitherto-unexplored “Herd Sheep” spirit magic. A small burst of spiritual power and the sheep all fall into line.

That’s a mid-sized herding alynx, and what a beaut. Big for a housealynx, mind you, and nowhere near how big the wild ones get. My grandfather said he once saw one as big as a bull, up among Quivin’s cedars, silent as Xentha as he padded from shadow to shadow— but surely that was a tall tale.

Let us hypothesize, for a moment, the existence of the legendary Dogs-and-a-Half. How could any normal dog be expected to keep up with God's People? Perhaps they died out; perhaps they went feral, becoming another peril of the Praxian plains; perhaps only a mighty deed justifies the rite to create one. Or perhaps Argrath found the secret again, and returned them to Prax like the Auroch to Sartar. One might draw a line from that hypothesis to the Skinning of the Wolves, afterwards. Only the mightiest hounds fight against Telmori brothers as equals. (Shall we name one Huan, and awaken him?) Not that any proper Sartarite has any truck with them, given Yinkin's Race Up The Tree, but Argrath's hardly proper anywhere he goes.

Wasn’t Valley of Plenty pulled from sale and then republished specifically to change it from HQG to QuestWorlds? Isn’t the QuestWorlds SRD the only legally available version of the rules previously known as HQG for anyone who didn’t manage to snap a copy up before the HeroQuest trademark was sold off? I understand the concerns about folks trying to recreate Hero Wars material, but restricting use of QuestWorlds sure seems like it’s saying: if you want to make anything narrativist for the JC, you’d better already be In The Club. On the third hand, for all we know, this is stalling before the proper QW release, at which point various FAQs will be updated. And what’s absolutely certain is that this is well in the realm of speculation by this point. (Bleakly funny: the directive to just buy the older HQ books, as “most of them are available in print and/or PDF format from Chaosium,” in that FAQ.) EDIT: Orlanth on a bicycle, this forum hates trying to copy/paste things on mobile. I apologize for the sudden change in font size there at the end.

Yes, the line itself does come across as confusing: perhaps it's gesturing towards campaign structures like The Company of the Dragon or Valley of Plenty? Not scenarios for Glorantha, precisely, but intended for others to use in making their own campaigns. After all, the whole Six Seasons trilogy is explicitly playable across any of the three Gloranthan systems (even poor orphaned 13th Age), and Valley of Plenty is a campaign framework for QuestWorlds now. Or it's just as simple as "oh, if you want an answer to this question, go to a different document which will tell you the answer, which is no."

Observation: the story of Tien and Hrothmir suggests that it is sometimes more difficult to kill a god than one might think. At the very least, some troublesome deities found awful ways to preserve their existence. Observation: though Than found himself a replacement for his head, it had a tendency to rot off his shoulders, and so it was needful for him to have it replaced regularly. Observation: the Broos, who cannot make things grow, are skilled at making use of every part of their prey, especially the skins, and have a one-sided adoration of their Mother. Conclusion: no, the Witch does not have two hands at the wrist, one brown and one red. Do not look any closer. Further Consideration: where did Hon-Eel learn the secret of the Husking Bee?

I was wondering when you’d show up! Welcome! I’d invite you to feast, but it is a dishonorable thing to make a man break his geasa. Instead, since you have more resources and experience than I do, let me ask: where do you think the association with Thed and goats came from, from a Doylist standpoint? It’s nowhere in evidence in Nomad Gods, and BoHM saves all of its goat imagery for Ragnaglar and Eurmal, but it’s a very popular fandom association despite that.

There was, there was not. When First Son was born, the Mother tossed him out the door and shut it after. First Son was strong, so he did not die. But soon he knew what Hunger was, so he stood on his legs and beat on the door. Mother, I’m hungry. Mother, give me my food. Mother, give me my house. And the door opened, and her hand came out, all sharp nails, and it went down his throat. She tore the Square Thing out of him then. Then she made her horn sign against him and shut the door after. And all the weeds around him drooped and died, and the ground under him became wet and bad for stacking. It was all shit, was what it was. But soon First Son became hungry for herd, so he took his strong hands and beat on the door. Mother, I’m hungry. Mother, give me my brothers. Mother, give me my friends. And the door opened, and her hand came out, all sharp nails, and it went down his throat. She tore the Three Line Thing out of him then. Then she made her horn sign against him and shut the door after. And First Son looked around at the shit, and he realized that it was all shit, was what it was. So for lack of anything to do, he sat in the shit and beat himself until he ached. Then he realized how very hungry he was, so he rammed his head against the door. Mother, I’m hungry! Mother, I want my wife! Mother, I want to fuck! And the door opened, and her hand came out, all sharp nails, and it went down his throat. She tore the Two Triangle Thing out of him then. Then she made her horn sign against him and shut the door after. Then First Son knew he was fucked. So he pissed on her door, to mark his return, and went out into the world of shit to find everything he was hungry for. But it was all shit, was what it was. He felt what was missing like stones in his stomach. (But before he left, a window opened, and a little round white face appeared there, and smiled. She spat on him, and told him it was her best of gifts. And it was.) In the Dark Places, the winds swept down upon First Son, and there were riding people singing on them; and instead of running away, First Son roared and screamed and stamped. He tore one riding person down and broke its back; he tore another down and broke its skull; he tore a third down and spat on it until its insides all came out, shit and blood and all. And that was the first time First Son laughed. Then he heard laughter back, and the chief of the riding people came down off his wind, and lifted his helmet with the goat horns high. This wind king demanded an account from First Son, who could fight so well and had the best of gifts to kill with. My mother she gave me no food or house. My mother she gave me no brother or friend. My mother she gave me no wife to fuck. She took my Three Things from me, with her nails all sharp, and did the horn sign against me. Fight for me against my enemies, then. Your bitch mother thinks she’s taken everything from you, but she doesn’t know the Skinning Song, or the Goatherder Song, or the Law of Victory. And as payment for fighting in his wars, Father Of Us gave First Son a herd of goats, and First Son was hungry no more. But Father Of Us taught First Brother the Betrayal Song, too, for singing against his enemies. Why was he surprised when we met Hole In The World? He taught us the Betrayal Song, after all, and the Skinning Song, too— And we were so happy that Mother had given us a brother, after all.

Allow me to clarify my own position on what is and is not in BoDR: Chaos. The last time that I heard the myth of Thed attempting to rape Orlanth, several months ago, I did what research I could to try to find its provenance. The end of the rabbit hole that I came to back then, somewhere in this forum, pointed towards BoDR as the source, and I had to content myself with that, seeing as that BoDR is effectively a dead link for me, inaccessible. I apologize for being indignant concerning that specifically, although my point as to the accessibility of the myth may yet still stand. We'll see. When I say that this is characteristic of the way you talk about Glorantha, please understand it as a compliment. This attempt to map out a theory of the Broo is, by turns, methodical and cynical, and I mean that as a compliment as well. A grounded cause-and-effect rooted in a magical biology that cannot be sustained when the world changes, misunderstood by the Heortlings who only go so far back as the accusation in the throne room to understand why their world is haunted by ravenous monsters looking to preserve, through atavistic instinct, their almost-forgotten golden age. These are good thoughts, worth rumination. And I thank you for the compliment. This I can see as a very controversial play performed in Boldhome after the Storm Bull cult has been all but exterminated in Sartar. Is it a resurfacing truth long suppressed by Uroxian orthodoxy and the threat of retaliation? Or is it an attempt to convince the rebellious Sartarites that the Storm Bullies were, in fact, worshiping a liar and a brute, and therefore should not be inconveniently mourned? So too, it leaves the motives of the Unholy Trio ambiguous, perfect for post-performance discussion. Are there circumstances in which the invocation of Chaos might morally be justified, o Heortlings? And if you will cry over Ragnaglar, who you have so often hated and spat upon, who else might you be willing to reconsider? They say the Seven Mothers' is open all night long, if you want to continue the conversation...

If that is not the case, I would be very interested in seeing this myth sourced.