Ynneadwraith

I had this as a core aspect of my 'mayfly elves' idea. The idea being to inject a little bit more interest into Glorantha's elves by having them literally follow the cycle of the seasons. Being born in spring, growing strong during summer and then all dying off in winter (or the Gloranthan equivalents). People just don't notice because they can't tell one tree from the next, and think elves are just forgetful and need to be reminded who their friends are each year. Dryads survive through the generational cycle, and are tasked with imparting the knowledge of how to survive the world to the next generation. This sets up a sort of 'naive younger brother' relationship between elves and humans that's a novel way of playing them, and adds a bit more motive to elves than just 'forests good, must protect forests'. Anyway, the idea being that elves lost the ability to write when the Spike exploded. Mythically, as in they are just as incapable of writing as Ducks/Keets are at flying. This hampers their ability to pass on generational knowledge between years, down to whatever is easily teachable within a few months. It's possible for an individual elf to embark on a risky Heroquest to recover the secret of writing from the Spike (while it's exploding) and secret it away back to the present day, allowing them to pass on the information they possess. I'm going to say that these golden nuggets of information are inscribed on the trees that surround their seed-dryad, adding a little more weight to their violent reaction to the destruction of forests. Trees might grow back, but the hard-fought and priceless knowledge of generations can't. It's like the burning of the Library of Alexandria for them. This I love. Consider it encorporated into my Glorantha. Gives just enough of a hint about what happens when you follow the path of Draconic Illumination to spring off from (perhaps the birth of a dragonewt is what's lying at the end of a human draconic mystic's journey). Sprinkle in a little of the excellent 'failed dragon' idea from Elden Ring and you've got the beginnings of an awesome character path. Ok, this I have to hear the argument for...

Is that so? Depends how tightly magic is tied to chaos in Gloranthan metaphysics. It certainly wells up from the Chaosium, and rains down from the pinholes in the firmament. I'd say we don't know enough about chaos' function in the world machine to know for certain whether it has a role in it or not. Again, I wouldn't be so certain. The dwarves are patently clear that the world machine is thoroughly broken, and one of the missing pieces are likely to be the lunar goddesses. Just because we're familiar with the world we've grown up in, doesn't mean that's the way it's supposed to be. A fly born without wings doesn't know that it's meant to take to the sky. Fine for whom? For humans and Uz and elves I'm sure, but not so much for broo or scorpionmen or tusk riders (or anyone else who isn't on 'our' team). Whether this is a good or bad thing overall is largely dependent on how skewed the perspective on Gloranthan early history is...

Two things. Love the idea of Orlanth being a better model for Illumination than the Red Moon (but everyone being too tribalist to realise it). Also, the idea of Brightface never having seen a shadow in his life (because he's always the brightest light anywhere he goes) is a fascinating idea. I wonder what that would be symbolic of? Does he live in a world dominated by the MUM effect (that thing where people deliberately downplay bad news when relaying it at each step of a hierarchy)? What might that say of the Golden Age? Was it that golden at all, or did it only appear golden wherever Yelm looked...

I sense a 4th age Heroquest to resurrect the devil and bring magic back to the world coming...

I don't know, social pariah-dom can push people to desperate measures... I suppose you could handwave it as all troll babies start off as skinny little mewling things, but dark trolls fairly rapidly pack on the pounds, whereas trollkin stay neotenous into adulthood (a bit like we do). Picking out a dark troll from trollkin at birth could be a little like sexing chickens.

Another theory inspired by this comment on the Enlo Curse thread: My interpretation was that this is exactly the purpose of the Compromise...but it's nowhere near as ironclad as the gods say it is. 'Spider silk is stronger than steel' people say...neglecting to mention the fact you can snap it with your fingers. Perhaps the Compromise is nowhere near as strong as people think it is. What if, when the Lunars kill Orlanth and cause the Windstop...then all of that mythic stuff comes to bite them in the backside...that wasn't the Compromise reasserting itself. What if 'The Compromise reasserting itself' is just a post-hoc rationalisation of actions that real mortal people took to fix things. Isn't it comforting to think that the universe won't let you screw things up too badly? That someone else will sort out the mess you've caused? It's certainly much scarier to admit that you actually were inches away from irrevocable change, and only the desperate chance actions of a handful of people averted disaster. Reminds me of the climate change debate back when it was actually a debate. 'The world has heated before, and then cooled again of its own accord. We won't need to actually do anything.'

That could work, and I like the class system coming into play. I think I do like the idea that trollkin breed true though...unless something mythic happens. I wonder what the rest of the dark trolls would think if they've been heroquesting for generations to try and improve their births in any way (to no avail), only to have a trollkin successfully heroquest to birth a dark troll. Anyone seen Children of Men? Could make a good plotline for smuggling a trollkin mother and their dark troll baby through other (not so nice) dark trolls who want the mother and baby for their own purposes... My interpretation was that this is exactly the purpose of the Compromise...but it's nowhere near as ironclad as the gods say it is. 'Spider silk is stronger than steel' people say...neglecting to mention the fact you can snap it with your fingers.

Now this is what I was hoping for! Something to show that there are cultures in Glorantha that have the water in their bones (and not their non-human fishy ones). That plus the Water cults books should be a great combination!

When accused of being obtuse, the Mistress of the Game said "Oh, you can't see the Z-axis? Well, no wonder it doesn't make sense to you. Poor thing..."

Ooh I like the idea that the secrets the God Learners discovered in their deep heroquesting was the True Names of the gods/runes. I've got a bit of a vision of what paleolithic/neolithic Glorantha looked like that this fits nicely into (and would also fit well in this thread!). None of it is particularly new mind... The idea being that the Gloranthan paleolithic was populated by various different Hsunchen-like animal totem people in a sort of wild magic/spiritual environment, before a lot of the theistic mythic structures formed. Sartarites, for instance, may well be descendants of Alynx-totem people. There's some sort of Bull-complex between Prax and the Carmanian Bull-Shahs as well. The myths and stories of Godtime are all post-hoc rationalisations of real-world events (back when the real world and the spirit world weren't really separated). These events have been wallpapered over by thousands of years of mythic reinterpretation until we get the gods that we know in Glorantha today. So, the 'True Name' of gloranthan gods is less some incomprehensible daemonic jumble of letters, and more akin to knowing that the Night King was just a man who wants to go home. Deep within Orlanth lies a kernel of the first prehistoric man to create a bullroarer and call the storm, upon which all the later mythic architecture is hung. This is one of the Truths that the God Learners discovered. By calling out the childhood name of that long lost soul, they could speak to the very core of a God/Rune and convince it to do things that all the rest of the constructed personality would never even entertain. Perhaps that's why the Lunar Gods are that much more present. Nothing to do with being in or outside of the net of time (as anything more than an allegory), but simply because the Lunars knew who they were, and their gods still remember that too. End dumbest theory 😄

If it's all the same system, then sorcery makes the god produce magic involuntarily. Like whipping your hand back if someone pokes you with a cocktail stick. No wonder they don't like it! It's just plain rude...

Interesting. Was Grandfather Mortal murdered, or was he just fed up of Yelm's unchanging world and just wanted something interesting to happen for a change? Nah, I think destruction is a good way to describe it. We're just wannabe Nysaloreans 😄 You could claim that 'destruction' just means 'change', but that doesn't mean you're suddenly happy that someone has stamped on your sandcastle. Whether the new thing is better or worse than the old thing is a valid consideration (that I'm sure many riddlers dismiss as a prosaic practicality unworthy of serious consideration by enlightened minds). This, again, is a point I see Orlanthi and Lunars (the fanatical ones) disagreeing on. Lunars claiming that change is inevitable and thus a good thing, and Orlanthi saying 'but what you're changing things into is worse'. I quite like the idea of a Lunar who doesn't ascribe to the idea that Chaos is an innate part of the world to be welcomed. Perhaps, in conversation with the Orlanthi, they acknowledge that it's a purely destructive force, but argue that as it's here anyway we might as well use it. Sounds like a Tarshite way of thinking to me, intermediate between the two camps. I also quite like the idea that the Lunars are absolutely right about Chaos simply being the force of creation...but not really considering that what it's creating might be not be in their own best interests. A real 'Finally we've done it!........Oh god, what have we done' moment. Or even that the Lunars think they're right, but in reality they've colossaly misjudged things and Chaos does mean the destruction of everything without the creation of anything new. The whole Lunar conflict really thrives when no-one really knows quite what they're doing or how things actually work.

And here we see some of the irreconcilable differences between the Orlanthi and Lunar worldviews. Is Chaos a part of the world machine, or an outsider trying to wreck it? Mostal probably knew, but he's no longer answering my calls.

Perhaps, and you're entitled to have your own interpretation of events. I dare say your interpretation is the more popular one. Certainly among the Orlanthi at any rate. It's not how I see things, but then again I do like my Nysalorian riddles. Change often looks like destruction if we were fond of the thing that is being changed, and don't like what it is being changed into. Umath did destroy things. He destroyed the harmony that had existed in the world before his creation. He destroyed the unison between Sky and Earth. He wrought great destruction upon primitive Glorantha in his creation of a space for himself. Is that not a form of creation? Where once there were two things, now stands one thing that is something new. The unison of England and Scotland creates the United Kingdom. The unison of beans and toast creates Beans on Toast. The unison of tin and copper creates bronze. Was it? Do we know the Invisible God's intentions (if it was even them who did it!)? Do we even know what exists in the void beyond the Sky Dome? The Dragons do, but anyone who finds the answer to that question goes to join them before telling anyone else...

Is it though? Is not the Chaosium the fundamental well from which Glorantha springs? I think these things are not so different once you peer past the masks they wear... This does not necessarily make it true, simply a thing that people believe to be true. And yet, the sun shines to make crops grow (as it does in our world). The wind blows and brings the rain (as it does in our world). Why not have change that leads to ultimate stasis? Whether the mechanism is physical or mythic is neither here nor there. Having Chaos embody both is myth enough perhaps...

This I like. Hanlon's Razor: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. Would the Heroquest be impossible because the god is dead, or is the god dead because no-one remembers how to heroquest for them?

Perhaps, though I'm sure that's what Storm looked like to Earth and Sky when it didn't have a place in the world yet either. The opposite of what Glorantha looked like then, back when it was only Earth and Sky and nothing inbetween. Separation when all Glorantha had ever known is unison. And does not all change eventually lead to nothingness (heat death)? I'll concede that it's not exactly a view that would be popular in-universe (anywhere outside Lunar philosophy that is). Chaos as the ultimate Other is the Orlanthi viewpoint (and they would take that viewpoint wouldn't they, if Chaos is the Zeus to Orlanth's Kronos). Chaos as a fundamental component of the World Machine feels a lot more Lunar (that isn't to say correct, but not necessarily incorrect either).

Is there already a seasonal fertility myth that involves Orlanth descending into the underworld to resurrect Ernalda - Orpheus and Eurydice style? If not, that would make a great option for a bunch of Orlanthi living in the shadow of Valind's Glacier (or somewhere else suitably tundra-like and inhospitable). Perhaps their version of the myth keeps going wrong, and Orlanth can't resurrect Ernalda, leaving the ground cold and infertile as death. Perhaps they are waiting for a heroquester who is able to walk out of the Underworld without snatching a glance to see if Ernalda is following, and restore the lost life of the land.

In my vision of Gloranthan cosmology I see Chaos more as 'Unfettered Change'. The polar opposite of stasis. The reason people don't really like it is that, by and large, people don't like things suddenly changing into something else (like your arm, for instance). If this is the case, perhaps the reason being killed by Chaos seems to be more final than other forms of god-death is that it's not Death at all. It's Change. Into something wholly spiritually unrecognisable, and irreconcilable with what you were previously (that may also involve you becoming dead as well, but that's more of a side effect). Hence, also, how the Lunars were able to 'reconstruct' the Moon Gooddess (how accurately can be debated). If Chaos is Change, then you can't truly create something new without changing how the world is. Same goes for Nysalor (and, in my estimation, Umath).

Agreed. I see it as a sort of 'viewing different parts of the same elephant' thing. Or, potentially more accurately, the thing that old-school palaeontologists did when they were stitching together old skeletons: sometimes connecting the bones of one creature together to see some of its whole, but other times connecting together the bones of completely different creatures and getting a false vision of what the reality is. Ah, but doesn't that hinge on why Ragnaglar and Wakboth are unreachable. Is it because those gods are dead/trapped? Or is it because people have forgotten how to reach them (read: all the people who knew how to reach them have had their heads chopped off). How much of the dawn myths are intended to be interpreted as read, and how much are they intended to be allegorical? The reason this matters in a practical sense is that Ragnaglar and Wakboth may be unreachable theologically as the expertise to do so have been wiped clean from the lozenge. Perhaps, though, they are still lurking beneath the surface, stalking through the Spirit Realm, waiting for unlucky shamans to stumble into their trap. Perhaps, so long as a god is remembered in any facet (including as a character in other gods' myths), they are not truly dead and gone.

Definitely agreed, though food culture and agricultural practices can be very weird as well! Take Malta. Island slap-bang in the middle of the Med. Enormous maritime bounty to be had literally on their doorstep. Yet, for over a thousand years, the people of Malta focus almost entirely on terrestrial agriculture and hunting. Why this is I don't know, but I speculate that it's something to do with the cultural practices of the peoples who resettled Malta after its depopulation in the 9th Century. Perhaps they were from a mostly inland population with little relationship (or expertise) with maritime foodstuffs. Perhaps the seas were dominated by another cultural group, cutting them off from what would otherwise be a fantastic resource. Whatever the reason, traditional Maltese cuisine just doesn't use fish. Anything you find on the island these days is a product of Italian influence. You find a similar thing with some of the early neolithic cultures in Northern Europe, where they persisted for generations eating a millet based diet (poor sods) next to the veritable cornucopia of the North Sea. That's not to say all cultures (or even the majority of cultures) are like that. But it gives you latitude to add as much variety to Glorantha as you please. Want off-season fishermen-farmers, go ahead! Want a caste-like split of fishers and farmers (a la India), go ahead too! Want an ex-caste-like split of fishers and farmers where one or the other has gone extinct, go ahead for that as well!

Perhaps it's pigeons all the way down! Until one of them turns out to be a maneater, of course. Let's hope that doesn't happen to one of the players Jumanji-style!

Literal 'Gods in the Machine'. Boltzmann Brains coalescing from the swirling runic landscape. Agreed that the compromise doesn't limit their free will, just their ability to exercise it, which raises a point for the philosophers of course. If you have free will but no mechanism to act upon it, do you have free will at all? Of course, the gods are fortunate in that the way they act on their free will is through delivering magic to mortals. I never envisaged the system of magic in Glorantha as an impersonal one, where you sacrifice X to achieve Y and the God is simply a delivery mechanism. I'd always pictured it that the sacrifice is a way to persuade the God that you are acting to further their interests. It's more conversational than transactional. That's where gods are still able to exercise their free will. I've been mulling around how to operationalise that approach in game contexts, but I think having to justify how each spell you use further's Orlanth's cause* would get tiresome pretty quickly. Perhaps saving that for BIG MAGIC would work well. *note that Orlanth's cause isn't just 'make Orlanth a more powerful god'. It's tied to his domain. So 'make the world a stormier place' would also suffice.

Cue weird Olm-like blind albino cave-ludoch. Ludoch who have had a proportion of their Water rune replaced with Darkness.