Joerg

3 hours ago, Darius West said:

I thought Annilla invariably drops from the crest of the Dome all the way down as a blue flash.  I'm sure I read it described that way somewhere?  Possibly in Elder Secrets?

All the way down means into the funnel of raging waters that form Magasta's Whirlpool. Brastalos' column of air ought to extend at least 500 miles below the surface of the Homeward Ocean. That allows Annilla to fall down far below the horizon without getting wet. Somewhere around that depth are the iron island and the island of no return, on the border between the world of the living and the world of the dead, both of which can observe her passing overhead, narrowing the funnel in her wake.

Ragnaglar is about violence and madness, leaving death and destruction in his wake, including his own.

Wakboth has the power of corruption and annihilation. When Thed cultists summon a void to annihilate things in, that's just a minor effect compared to what Wakboth can do.

Does Wakboth provide any magic to his followers? He might grant chaos features and temporarily continued existence in his presence. Lay worship of the Crimson Bat might be a cushy deal compared to this. Otherwise, he is a devourer of reality, just like Kajabor.

Returning Kajabor might be weird - his substance is part of Creation now, a main source of stuff for Arachne Solara's web. His presence or power might be to selectively wither and age targeted portions of Creation.

Jotimam may already have returned to the world, reflected by the Red Moon. At least that would handily explain the weekly tides.

2 hours ago, Darius West said:

Plasma has a horrible tendency to set plants and people on fire, hence plasma weapons.  Even the aurora would be extremely damaging to living tissue if you were caught in it.

As with everything, the poison effect comes from how you dose it. When I first met Andrew Bean he was researching the treatment of wool with low energy plasma to make the wool less itchy. If wool survives such a treatment, stuff that survives exposure to the bi-radical of oxygen will be able to cope, too. A sufficiently cool plasma can be little more than an irritant, about as bad as ozone in the air.

2 hours ago, Darius West said:

And what pray tell would that be?  Asbestos lung tissue?  It doesn't work.

Plasma can be hot to the touch, but needn't be able to transfer all that much energy. (That said, I used plasma to sinter silicates for my diploma thesis as one attempt to grow crystals.)

St. Elmo's Fire is a practical example of plasma that does not burn the matter it touches.

2 hours ago, Darius West said:

No creature would have ever developed lungs if they weren't breathing air for a very long time.

You are approaching this from evolutionary biology and chemistry. If you think of plasma as a tangible form of light and energy that life could take in before the birth of Air/Storm, as a part of the runic design of Man, Beast, Plant and even Dragonewt, then a paradigm shift would simply unlock a new functionality from parts already present.

Who knows, maybe there was (or still is) some form of organ or organelle able to interact with Moon that simply did not manifest in the majority of Glorantha?

2 hours ago, Darius West said:

I think the world machine is being formed piece by piece according to a plan, that starts with formations within darkness, then requires water, then earth, then fire.  It is a gradual assembly that requires diverse parts to work.  The Mostali seem to have lost control of the system when they over-pressurized the dome and allowed air into the system via a breach.  Was this deliberate or was it a system breaking down?

The Mostali appear to have been willing to stop the progression of elements with the arrival and then diversification of Sky - first Aether (Tin), then the three celestial sons Brass (Lodril), Gold (Yelm) and Silver (Dayzatar). Air was outside of their plans or blueprint, an aberration of sky infused into Earth.

2 hours ago, Darius West said:

Heat anything enough and it turns into gas, last time I checked (unless it has already reached a plasma state.

My experiments with high energy lasers had the unfortunate tendency to turn solid matter directly into plasma, which had several adverse effects.

2 hours ago, Darius West said:

Oops, I nearly missed this one.  Smoke is actually fire deprived of oxygen.

Smoke is flame matter exhausted as a consequence of oxygen deprivation or if cooled below combustion temperature (like the condensing vapor of candle stuff evaporating from the wick after you suppress the flame). It can be used to conserve meat or fish. I have yet to observe ham to combust spontaneously when unpacking it from whichever covering it had, or during the curing process. Same with the malt used for brewing or for whisky mash...

2 hours ago, Darius West said:

Contact with smoke in an airless room will burn you, because it is holding explosive energy that simply requires oxygen to be released.

Smoke is small solid particles suspended in the ambient (non-liquid) fluid - usually a gas. Pyroclastic smoke will fry you and leave something like the bodies in Pompei and Herculaneum behind. Low temperature smoke like that unfriendly tobacco consumer puffing in your direction is (mostly) harmless to your skin, less so to mucous membrane.

I suppose you are talking about smoke in a burning building. Even in that case, it is a "can burn you" - most injuries in burning buildings do come from contact with cooled down smoke, and the inhalation of accompanying gases like carbon monoxide and dioxide (or worse by-products). The hot smoke you have been told about probably has to do with the blowback-effect.

Entering a room filled with 200°C air is like putting your hand into the oven with the bread. While it is possible to grab a loaf with your fingers and pull it out with at worst minor burns, that takes speed so your exposure remains short. You should avoid inhaling air that hot as it will cook your mucous membrane. Steam is even worse as it will condense, transferring even more heat. But all of that has to do with heat transfer, not fire or flame.

Gloranthan elements are tangible to a certain degree, like Darkness, Aether's plasma, or moonglow. Magical or alchemical processes can harden and even solidify them, turning them into metals (which, btw, are solids (or liquids) containing plasmas).

Back to the question whether a partially realized cosmos makes sense: to a certain degree, yes, as long as it follows a master plan. Glorantha's master plan may well have been different from the Maker's. Or Grower's, for that matter. Maker apparently was surprised by Storm and rendered incapacitated.

Except for those under heroic leadership already in the Gray Age, the advent of Time was a release of Greater Darkness trauma that kept them in an almost zombie-like state of mind, repeating their survival methods over and over again even when the rebirth of the world of light made things easier - after all there also always was the rebirth of the world of darkness. Well into the second century the Lightbringer missionaries encountered groups of people who remained stuck in their trauma, like the Hagolings.

There were a number of such awakeners - they include the horse warlords of Peloria (for all the nastiness some of them still carried along), King Dan at Hrelar Amali, various groups of the Serpent Brotherhood among the Hykimi of the West, Waha in Prax, the Brithini, their colonies, and their Waertagi allies, and of course the surviving people of the Unity Battle and their Kingdom of Night with their participants in I Fought We Won and teh parallel unity alliance in the Elder Wilds.

22 minutes ago, Ynneadwraith said:

While I agree to a reasonable degree, it's worth considering that Sumerian and Akkadian societies of the time (and it seems most other fully formed early civilisations in the Fertile Crescent, and perhaps other Early European Farmer cultures) seem to have been unusually community focussed.

The cult of the individual as the center of the world doesn't seem to have been a good survival strategy. It may have been common with those who were as gods to their communities, though.

Our cult of the individual might be a result of the alienation in the industrial society, not just from the means of production as per Marx but also from the processes of primary production.

29 minutes ago, Ynneadwraith said:

For instance, by the time we get to our written Greek mythologies we do get individual actors petitioning individual gods for personal boons. I'm not sure I'd prescribe Odysseus a single shred of community spirit over his own self-interest. I suppose that's what you meant by 'depending on local culture'.

I think that Odysseus was convinced that his interests were those of his (Ithakan) community (except when under the influence of a supernatural beautiful woman). His hubris was to proclaim himself an equal to the gods.

7 hours ago, John Biles said:

Earth doesn't exist until darkness and water are already in place.  So the world machine comes into existence... before fire.

I have been working on and off on a mostali text for quite a while now. That text starts with the creation of Rock (and the Spike) before the Making of Darkness alongside the metal lead and the lead caste mostali (and in my story, the lead caste mostali are there before they build the Bowl of Darkness).

Another (even weirder) story has the Spike as a von-Neumann-probe injected into the Void to create a universe.

11 hours ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

I ask for a "cartesian" canon on any divinity not based on ~1624 gloranthan cults  or organizations but something only defined by the game designers.

Not sure anybody (Greg, Jeff, Sandy) is able to give that to you.

If it was me who had to give you this in mathematical terms, I would give you partial identity - estimates of overlap in the venn diagrams of mythical identity. If you wish, avatars or incarnations of an entity that add "personal myths" and substract irrelevant aspects.

And worse, you have myths (or feat-defining portions of myths) with roles filled by different entities leading to the same or a very similar outcome, like ripping the dragon apart to free the sweet water.

You have entities claiming hereditary connections or association by following a leader that other avatars or incarnations don't share, but that contribute greatly to the deity known by that name. You have entities claiming local or continental portions of landscape or other such natural phenomena (recurring storms, currents), possibly as their birthplace, and you may end up with a single deity like Orlanth claiming quite a few birthplaces. To Fronelan Orlanthi, Top of the World is the birthplace of Orlanth. In Umathela, that honor goes to a peak beyond Vralos. And we know about Kero Fin.

You have (a) Basmol slain by Tada in Prax while (a) Basmol happily produced demigod offspring in Seshnela (all the way into the Dawn Age), and Pamaltelan Basmoli unaware that their ancestral deity ever left the veldt or lost his skin.

You have Rathor claiming the constellation known as The Rebel to the Dara Happans and The Star Bear to the Odaylans and in Lunar myth, and as Orlanth's Ring to the Theyalans. You have both Mastakos and Uleria identified with the blue planet that passes overhead thrice a day/night cycle.

All of this points to Venn-diagram-like overlap of identifications.

The God Learners identified deities as the combination of runes through which they expressed their feats and magical nature. The nature of the runes or rather the spectrum of stuff associated with them is pretty well-defined. You can map the gods onto runes fairly reliably, although you might stumble on incarnations or avatars with one extra or different rune. You might encounter myths where two deities became one - such as Lodril wrestling with the Earth, changing his pure celestial nature into something almost like an Earth King (and certainly an Earth Walker).

11 hours ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

a kind of justice of the peace : So if Jmijie and Mastakos are the same, they are the same, not because any shallow analysis, just because it is the game designers decision. If you believe in a creator, you don't ask it to demonstrate if it choices are based on the best deeper analysis.

In my understanding of Glorantha, Jmijie and Mastakos certainly are not 100% the same. Both link to the same Mobility archetype, but eachof these deities is burdened with other identities - different experiences their incarnations/avatars suffered which define quite a few of their feats derived from Mobility. Jmijie has no ancestral connection to Magasta, Mastakos is not a bead in Pamalt's Necklace. And the archetypical movement deity behind them did not experience those events and probably doesn't exhibit any consequences of those.

Deities - or rather instances of deities - may encounter other instances of the same avatar in myth. Sometimes they merge, sometimes they diverge further from one another, making different decisions that lead to different experiences adding to the identity of that instance. Sometimes they have to end their existence to rejoin the archetype, and then sharing some or all their experiences with all the other instances, at other times they take on a variant identity of their own. Sometimes access to or even memory of a previous instance is lost, at other times two or more variants are available.

In other words, Jmijie and Mastakos might well share say 16 out of 22 chromosomes, but may carry difference from different parents giving birth to their incarnation. Or they are copies of the same basic AI, but learned from totally different datasets, developing two rather different AIs which still share their basic structure.

You can peel at both Jmijie and Mastakos (e.g. using the Bathe of Nelat as an agent) and might be left with identical material after deconstructing the deity and what made the deity what it is. (And then you might pull out your backup copy and apply the residues on it to reinforce that identity.)

Nothing of this is canon (unless I grasped bits of canon correctly and managed to reproduce them intelligibly). But this is the closest I can come to your idea of cartesian deities as multidimensional point clouds that have significant partial overlap.

5 minutes ago, g33k said:

But isn't there some mention that (at least some Uz) actually do cull from the top, trying to make sure successful leaders don't rise up & lead  a  bunch of Enlo to freedom?

Maybe that's one of the ways AA differs from other Uz:  liking & encouranging lots of "value" Trollkin...

That's actually the weirder scheme of a human AA merchant I used to play - acquire food caste trollkin and sift them for any talents that ended in there for being uppity, and use the rest in waste disposal (e.g. removing debris from mining by eating it, or even gnawing tunnels under supervision of foreman trollkin).

3 hours ago, Darius West said:

Just imagine the weirdness of a closed system world with no air. 

The space above the Earth (and its creatures) would be filled with plasma, the magical energies emerging from the Source adapted to Aether providing an ambient temperature. Flame is a condensated shape of that environment, as well as aurora effects.

3 hours ago, Darius West said:

the world is effectively a vacuum where nobody breathes. 

The creatures of the Green and Early Golden Age must have had some sort of respiratory system able to take in plasma and transmute matter into plasma. With Umath's birth Aether would have yielded that function to his son's new element.

Smoke as in dust levitating above the ground would have resulted from Lodril's impact. They would have crackled with lightning.

3 hours ago, Darius West said:

Is it any wonder the pressure build-up caused a rupture that let air in? 

For a pressure build-up, you need a compressible medium (like a gas or fluid). If you mean that this pressure built up in the belly of Gata, ok. That makes Umath the biggest fart in mythology, but essentially this air wanted to be let out rather than in. Alternatively, Gata may have sighed/coughed/sneezed.

2 hours ago, metcalph said:

I assume that at midnight, Mastakos is at its zenith so that makes it easier for people to divine its special movement.

That would mean you get to experience one full cycle in a summer night, and almost from Pole Star plus a full arch to Pole Star again in a winter night. On midsummer nights, Mastakos and Lightfore would (almost?) share the same period.

An anticyclical rhythm of Mastakos (passing Pole Star at noon) would mean that Mastakos emerges with Lightfore in a 16 hour midwinter night, and sinks with it on its next cycle.

What myths do the Dara Happans have about the meetings of Uleria and Lightfore, Uleria and Lokarnos and Uleria and Dendara?

35 minutes ago, Darius West said:

Does Anilla go "bloop" when she falls into Magasta's Pool?  If so, how far away can the bloop be heard?

IMG, Magasta's whirlpool is the center of the watery doughnut that is Sramak's River, with a massive vertical surface pushing back the Chaos Rift, closing it to the rest of the world. Annilla would touch down tangentially and probably rides a special current that takes her to the outside of the Gates of Dusk in about a day, to wait for the arrival of Lorion for her assisted ascent back to Pole Star. The splash might be audible only to the Chaos Rift.

12 hours ago, Rodney Dangerduck said:

If @French Desperate WindChild were a Gloranthan, then yes, following the God Learner playbook will fail spectacularly.

However, they are, I believe, an earthling, possibly from France, so they are free to use logic and "one truth" to analyze Glorantha.

YGWV and all, yes. Identifying Lodril as Shargash just because the southern Pamaltelans equate the red planet with their fire deity is as much bound to fail as to expect the Mastakos cult to provide Eratocomatose Lucidity just because the Dara Happans identify his planet with Uleria. That's what I meant with taking identifications too far.

47 minutes ago, g33k said:

One thing I don't see much of, above, is AA's whole Lodril/Spear/Trollkin thing.

That's a bit problematic myth-wise, as there were no trollkin in Godtime, and there don't seem to have been spear-wielding trolls in any of the Gods War conflicts.

The Kitori might reach back into the Silver Age (and thus attainable in Godtime), and they did carry spears in their office as Shadowlords (holding the Kingdom of Night aka the Theyalan Civilization) together. To trolls, the adoption of humans or trollkin as associat fighters might not make that much of a difference.

No idea whether I want to subscribe to the idea of selling spearkin regiments (or even squads). They are near the top of the crop, just a step below values, and giving those away wholesale will cull the wrong end of your trollkin population.

5 hours ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

I don’t know if I m a very weird gloranthaphile (and others are fine with all these « many and different truths ») or if there aare e a lot of people who , like me, would be happy to have some world design document, something telling « well you real world citizens, you know that the god the Gugu worship is in fact the god the Kiki worship. It’s « global » name is Juju and bla-bla-bla »

i don’t know if there would be more frustration for those who are happy today with the multi truths situation however

The God Learner playbook is for you, then. The identifications are useful for a shallow analysis, but they are bound to fail (spectacularly) if you take them too far.

As a Danfive Xaron initiate, you shouldn't expect to be able to renew your rune magic in Orlanth rites, even if DX walked a bit in Orlanth's underworld paths for the Seven Mothers heroquest.

14 hours ago, Memestream said:

Speaking of, I dug even deeper on AA and that only made things more nebulous.

The proper term to describe Argan Argar traders is "shady".

14 hours ago, Memestream said:

It seems his accomplishments are more or less all relative to trolls interacting with the surface and the races on it, plus the Lodril building the obsidian palace for him thing, at least as I've read so far. This makes me feel more comfortable representing his followers broadly and according to whatever would be the best fit for the narrative demand at hand in a way similar to how I handle followers of Issaries.

Argan Argar's activities through the Greater Darkness make him something like a Darkfore - an entity of Darkness providing aid to many struggling communities, and shelter in shadow. His are the secrets of the peaceful approach to other communities while carrying valuable stuff. Through his wife (Esrola/Asrelia) he has some access to the treasures in the ground.

11 minutes ago, David Scott said:

For reference GtG 647, [Mastakos] the Doraddi claim that this planet is the celestial home of Jmijie, the Wanderer. 

The Doraddi also claim that the Red Planet is the celestial home of Balumbasta, who we are told is a cognate for Lodril, even though they were in contact with the Artmali and Zaranistangi who identified that planet's deity with Tolat.

A shared planet doesn't mean identity. The Dara Happans identify the planet Mastakos as Uleria. The Zaranistangi of Melib might be the most correct with their identification as Emilla, a cult combining Mastakos and Annilla and some basic femal fertility pointing to Uleria.

4 minutes ago, Eff said:

Horse - the sun moves in a line, tirelessly.

Eagle - the sun is up in the air.

Lion - the sun is surrounded by a golden mane. 

All are conventionally regal or at least noble animals. The most interesting part to me is that there's myths of saving horses and killing lions all over Genertela. The ancient ones are no matter- I'm sure it won't surprise anyone to hear that Tada, Orlanth, and Oslira are in an exclusive club together.  But some are dated to clock-time. What did Hrestol do by skinning Penda? How is that related to the local experience of the Sun? 

I guess I get the solar horse connection for the Scythians and their Pontic Steppe ancestors, although the wind connection in poetic descriptions of the horse are strong, too.

In Glorantha, the wandering sun has been declared a mythical anomaly in light of the myth-defining Golden Age with its ongoing Sunstop. But I am tending more and more to regard that as a local experience of a sun-like orb above the central cultic place (temple of Harono, Kero Fin, the Footstool, Flamal's Tree at Hrelar Amali, or Yamsur's tower overlooking Eol) while there is another orb defining the Sunpath and the cycle of days (if only jumping back across the world, like Lightfore still does).

Myth is not only timeless, it also tends to happen Here (wherever here is), at least the good times of one's pantheon, and other people's Here will merge with yours as you encounter them on the Hero Plane.

In Greg's stories, I believe Hrestol never attacked Basmol directly - his counterstrike against the Pendali warlords that had besieged one of Froalar's lesser fortress-cities had been successful until his forces eager to strike down the fleeing Pendali were thwarted by Ifftala's earth magic. Hrestol was peeved out of reasonal proportions, underwent introspection until he received a book on mastering all the castes from his ancestor Malkion, and set out to achieve this in order to strike down that goddess that dared to ruin his triumphant slaughter of the lion-men. (Later on he had a beef with the bull men of Fronela, but I haven't seen much in the way of details about that episode.)

Greg did a short story about Basmol encountering the horse, and the horse fleeing in terror, cursing all of his descendants to be unable to ride horses. Which is a bit ironic considering that the Serpent King kingdom of Seshnela had about as many inhabitants from Pendali kingdoms (well, fortress temple city-states with outlying lesser strongholds) as they had descended from Brithini, and that a good portion of the human population of Seshnela in 1049 were turned into beastmen, with centaurs apparently the most common form.

Syranthir Forefront - a heir of the Loskalmi tradition of Hrestol's second approach to the Men-of-All - did bring the lion-hunting to the Brass Mountains, which may or may not have had their native lion population at the time, but no associated native Pelandans. As mentioned before, I see some potential for lion-brotherhood warriors being part of Syranthir's 10,000, bringing their own lion associates for tests of royalty.

The skinning of (a) Basmol happened before Time, in Prax, and Hrestol was blissfully ignorant of that event (as was Seshnegi Basmol, who went about mating with a wayward Pendali noble daughter to sire the three "sorcerers" out in the woods who would then threaten (and cause the inhumation of) his (and Ifftala's) half-brother Ylream two decades later).

Did Orlanth ever confront Basmol? Greymane suggests that some Pendali descendants joined Orlanth, and identify a lion-shaped Orlanth as their ancestor. (But then Orlanth is both Dragonfriend and Dragonslayer, so why not the same for lions?)

It is rather weird to see Tada perform one of the (punitive) tasks of Heracles (the Nemeian one), as he is the well-approved descendant (?) of the friendly Earth Queen, and the helpful husband of his female cousins of the land, rather than the unwanted bastard of her hubby's. (Unless of course he is something like the ultimate mortal?)

8 minutes ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

so two versions ?! which is fine from a change rune perspective 🙂

Apart from the flaw that Plato built dungeons with monsters that would not fit through the entrances, the simile of the elephant in the cave discovered by blind explorers still works.

In my Glorantha, if you approach the mobility rune through Jmijie, you won't get any access to water-related magics (such as Proteus, a magic shared with Triolina), and you would think that wheeled vehicles are an enemy thing. Jmijie is a rather distinct aspect of the Rune, with myths about his own feats and gifts. Likewise, no Mastakos cultists could outrun a horse or hyena without strong application of magic, and keep up that speed for hours. Watery Mastakos is not a runner, he is a charioteer.

Neither Mastakos nor Jmijie share the Footprint myth, or suffered the subsequent limping. Fathering or seeding huge mountains is outside of their scope.

Neither would know the fast lanes of Ronance in Prax.

Masks and their myths matter. If the thing on your flag has been taught to you as a rabbit, you will have a harder time identifying it as a duck.

Now changing yourself is easier for folk of the Change Rune, and we are told that Larnste might have escaped the destruction of the Celestial Court by changing himself. If so, he has not changed back.

2 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

Birds are just a subset of dinosaurs. How do dragonewts stand in relation to dinosaurs? (OK, there is the Guide, pp. 79 & 80.)

According to the God Learners all animals are descended from the Energy Bird (the phoenix?) and/or the twin dragons Hykim and Mikyh. Gloranthan taxonomy and heredity may work differently from ours, though.

The stuff about the energy bird comes from the Brithini, BTW, although the sentiment might be shared by the Vrimak followers. There are various first flyers in the Brithini scheme, however, and a namesake of Vrimak comes as one of the ancestors of animal mobility (according to the Zzaburist taxonomy in Anaxial's Roster).

Dinosaurs in Glorantha are a subgroup of Earth Shakers. So were the Dara Happan gazzam.

Earth Shakers are (or were) the huge ambulatory beasts beloved by Maran Gor that came furred, feathered, scaled, and presumably with mucous skin as well. Their integumen suggests other elemental associations.

Dinosaurs resulting from aberrational behavior of warrior dragonewts should come in the scaled variety like their previous incarnations, just like the Magisaurs (who are failed scout dragonewts). Tailed priests start developing frills that might resemble certain types of feathers, but not the warriors. (And winged priests sport wings with skin between bones rather than feathered wings. I cannot exactly class them as either chiroptera or pterodactyls as these wings don't develop from hands.)

I am rather certain that neither Vrimak nor Avarnia have any dinos in their ancestry, and even more certain that there were no failed warrior dragonewts they would have called ancestors. The official God Learner stance might be Aether and Mikyh for Vrimak, although Vrimak also gets "born" or released as one of the portions of Yelm as the result of Rebellus Terminus slaying the Solar Emperor.

The "fluffy gazzam" model for Dara Happa is my personal interpretation, to make them fit into the celestial descent model of the initial solar peoples and companions for the celestial brothers.

The trade deities all have additional agendas.

Issaries is the Speaking God, of communication, and he also is the guide into the unknown, and the psychopomp (guide of dead souls) in the Underworld. Still, his cult mainly operates on the trading basis, with diplomacy and negotiation for ransom and Desert Tracking for lost pieces of Genert side hustles often requiring specialist. His role as patron of exchanging ransom might be underestimated.

Etyries was a "daughter of Issaries" - a mortal (possibly a demigoddess) who received enlightenment from Teelo Estara (the living, yet unascended Red Goddess) who set out on her own path of seeking insights, carrying the Issaries basics onward, and with the rise of the Red Moon her magics became subject to the Lunar cycle. (Do we know whether there were cyclical effects going on during Zero Wane?) Her special form of spell trading - trading the knowledge of spirit magic - becomes extra useful when applied by practitioners of the Red Goddess Lunar Magic of manipulating spirit magic.

According to Nick Brooke and friends, Etyries also revolutionized book-keeping and economical planning, especially in the Lunar Empire, but probably also contributing to the success of the Arrolian Lunars on the Janube River. There might be some slight parallels to the Kitori Shadowlords below.

Argan Argar might be the most martial of the trade deities - he is a spear fighter who overcame a Chaos foe (somewhere in Rinliddi IIRC, too). He was a Darkness god active on the surface world during the Storm Age and the Lesser and Greater Darkness, and his demigod son Ezkankekko throughout the Greater Darkness and the Gray Age, and Time.

Argan Argar is a protector, who set up the Shadow Plateau colony (originally in the Obsidian Palace built by Veskarthan/Lodril whom he chained) where he married Esrola, then active in Ralios (helping the Halikiv trolls) and Peloria (possibly in Yolp, helping them to deal with that local Lodril) and later on further north, probably contacting the Blue Moon Plateau. No idea how much of a presence his cult has in other troll communities (Tarmo, Errinoru Jungle, Borklak's Queendom under the Glacier, Jrustela).

The Only Old One set up a system of mutual protection and sharing of ever scarcer resources during the Greater Darkness and expanding that in the Gray Age, turning it to the way more optimistic SIlver Age in Kethaela, Kerofinela and Saird, as well as Halikiv, Yolp, Dagori Inkarth, and shortly after the Dawn also the Elder WIlds and probably Prax. The Argan Argar Shadowlords then were the Kitori, humans, trolls and other Theyalans willing to join the Nightcult and learning the shape-shifting of the Only Old One. They collected the Shadow Tribute and re-distributed that among the participants, distributing the small surplus productions of diverse nutrition improving everybody's nutrition, and providing a measure of protection to the participants in exchange for feeding the defenders. Tributaries falling behind in their contributions would face pressure to provide other forms of payment, but it was the Shadowlords who traveled the Chaos Wasteland between centers of survivals as the world began to reknit on Arachne Solara's web in the Silver Age.

If you look at the Dawn Survival Sites for central southern Genertela (in the appendices of the Guide, and an earlier version of that in History of the Heortling People), you will find various Elder Races protecting their own survival sites, plus a number of humans. The biggest group of humans were the Heortlings who survived in relative strength, the Esrolians who had survived hiding in the Obsidian Palace, and various other humans in Saird often only under direct protection of trolls, and sometimes called slaves of those trolls. Shadowlord protection doesn't come for free, but survival beats getting eaten or annihilated.

Players of these cults may take quite different roles, but they all share the use of the Harmony Rune for the communication magic. (This used to be the Issaries Rune aka Trade Rune, described as a combination of Mobility and Harmony, indicating the movement of information, ideas and goods, which was shared by the cults under RQ3 rules. RQG turned this back to the Cults of Prax catalogue of runes.)

The merchant occupation in RQG assumes that a character in the merchant occupation goes about echanging and transporting goods, making a slight profit out of each transaction, at least in the long run. The range of this activity varies - you have the local trade (Harst aka Spare Grain) who distributes surplus and exchanges cash crops for basic living requirements (e.g. for the orchard-tenders in Apple Lane), you have the caravanserai andlocal market managers who interact with the Spare Grain network to accumulate cash crops and to interface with the caravan merchants (the Garzeen subcult), and you have the caravan merchants who may travel into distant lands to acquire exotic goods and hard-to-get essentials and luxuries required in ceremony and diplomacy.

Among the sample characters, Harmast shows a follower of Issaries who gallivants about, with a reputation as a duelist, but honoring Issaries in his choice of the Pavic "mule" aka the cavalry zebras, mixed breeds between war zebras and horses similar to the original mules,

(The Zebra riders established by Joraz Kyrem using Issaries magics have become the diplomats among the tribes of Prax (although the ransoming of Praxian captives using Morokanth might be rivalling the zebra intermediaries).)

10 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

Or humanoids — primate-alikes — are a poor imitation of the original dinosaurian/avian bipedal body plan?

If you are not a shaved monkey, you might not think in terms of a – polarity.

There is a rune for the original draconic humanoid - the dragonewt rune. A body plan imitated by the Newtlings, also with a life cycle in different stages, although the details vary strongly. But the dragonewt rune does not include a bird existance. (Not even the demibird.)

I am not entirely clear whether live births or hatching from eggs would make a difference. IIRC, griffins hatch from eggs, while horses definitely don't - no idea about hippogriffs.

While Mastakos is a rather small cult and should be relatively unimportant, he is the current Owner of the Mobiity/Change rune, the heir of Larnste, and thereby entitled to some greater overall importance much like Humakt (heir of Kargan Tor) or Chalana Arroy (heiress of Harana Ilor, and a direct daughter of Glorantha). He has a powerful father, too, and inherits some of the more interesting water stuff.

The RQ3 version of Mastakos did not get Proteus (except possibly as associate magic from Triolina, not that I would recall that), that spell belonged to the ancestress of the (Triolini) merfolk. (There seem to have been other lineages from the Manthi.)

The Melibite version of Emilla (a half-merger with the Blue Moon goddess) might be at least as much fun to explore as Orlanth's charioteer (whom he liberated from an over-protective parent).

Weird idea of the day: could Manarlarvus's Dara Happa under the Dome have been a reflection of burnt-out Wonderhome? Effectively that Emperor took the remains of his realm and his sun god with him into a self-made Underworld away from the encroaching glacier.

Other than the gate to Ashliege's court guarded by King Gryphon and the Flame of Ehilm, what features do we know about the Underworld abode of the sun?

Does the former Wonderhome get relieved from the presence of Bijiif, or does Yelm's path step out of Time when reaching this far down, creating a permanent bleak day of Death down there?

Does the place experience the passing of Dendara and Lokarnos? (Dendara presumably yes, given the Sky Witches which include Lokarnos.)

25 minutes ago, Ynneadwraith said:

Actually this I'm less keen on. I think I prefer the idea that they both used to be bird-headed humanoids with now-lost animal bird-brothers. At some point, some magic went wonky and their bird-features got transferred from one lot to the other, creating Dara Happans and Keets.

While I see some fun in encountering Golden Age beaked descendants of Gazzamaritha (or Gazzameri?) following their fluffy shaker beasts in the still river-less Pelorian bowl (unless you count rivers of lava?), I like my beakheads in cities of solid golden light a little better, impossibly stacked (almost levitating) architecture, with gazzam overseen by fluffy hadrosaurian-headed workers doing fieldwork in the marshlands to create the rice environment.

Mastakos - while a portion of Larnste - has a very distinct parentage from Jmijie (another portion or evolution of Larnste, adapted to the lands of Pamalt's Necklace, but devoid of any watery nature). I would regard them (and other motion entities) more like siblings or cousins than as direct aspects of one another. Not that that would stop mutual use of Mobility/Change shrines.