Joerg

45 minutes ago, Eff said:

So let's think mythologically. What does it mean that the Devil is under the Block for Praxians?

The whereabouts of a deity are a bit less meaningful with the concept of Pluripresence that Greg enumerated (possibly in too much detail to be playable outside of a board game) in his hero plane/heroquesting notes in Arcane Lore.

What it means is that there is a guaranteed presence of the Devil under the Block, right next to their most holy land around the Paps, and that there is an unending supply of chaotic emanations in the Devil's Marsh, up to Cacodemon and the Devil's Hand.

Mythologically it means that they occupy Ground Zero of the Gods War, the place that ended the Greater Darkness. Between the Block and the Eternal Battle, only Magasta's Pool is a similarly big remainder of the Gods War.

More than mythologically, the presence affects their society (created by Waha).

The (Praxian) Waha leadership is more or less dependent on these Chaos emanations. Without proven defeat of Chaos in the Devil's Marsh, you cannot be a proper Khan of Waha (although I think that killing Chaos in the Krjalki Bog might be an acceptable alternative). (Waha cultists who are dedicated butchers in Orlanthi society are rather unlikely to become khans, but they might have cult shamans to stand in leading cult rites.)

Followers of the Storm Bull are guarding the Block as a sacred duty, one of the safer postings you can have as a berserk. Chasing the Eternal Battle or guarding the Footprint might see more attrition.

Most other Praxians might be relieved if that presence could be changed into an extermination, although that might have ecological consequences that might destroy their cultural premise. Such changes have fallen on earlier emigrations from Prax, with bison participants at Argentium Thri'ile in the Dawn Age (the big victory over the Horse Warlords of Dara Happa) becoming a fairly acculturated nobility in their new homes in Sylila. Their Sable compatriots managed to keep their culture alive in the isolation on Hungry Plateau, although even they became fairly urban.

The Morokanth regard the border of the wetlands of the Devil's Marsh as their ancestral grazing - they managed to survive into the Gray Age there, closest of the still extant tribes.

They say that the devil is in the details (so this is not completely off-topic), but this debate about defining Buddhism should move to the Tavern or private exchanges.

13 hours ago, Tatterdemalion Fox said:

Anyone else hearing Ring der Nibelungen when seeing this portrait?

3 hours ago, Garrik said:

There's the key question of what roles men have in Esrolia. All good threads overflow and meander, so let's look into this.

Nowhere is it stated that Esrolian males couldn't have cult agency and important roles. They are not political leaders, and they are loyal to and protective of their matriarchs. But men are initiates and priests of the male gods and assume the power such persons and institutions have, especially locally. Surely there are men among the renowned Esrolian heroes, for example architects and crafters. Which could tie into irrigation systems and aqueducts. (Were the Nochet aqueducts Belintar's invention? Or from the time of Panaxles the Architect?)

Yes, males have important roles in Esrolia beyond siring children on the women. They obviously have a lot less agency in the cults of the mother and grandmother, but as obviously they are important in the cults of the husband protectors, and in the providers - Barntar for farmers, Orlanth for herders. They have equal opportunity as sages, crafters, traders, and they tend to provide greater numbers to the military (although not necessarily in military leadership).

According to Harald Smith's Nochet material, the two aqueducts named after Panaxles and Sestarto would date back to the Silver Age when they were one of several features in their contests.

3 hours ago, Garrik said:

Even if women govern the land and negotiate about its use, men can easily find roles in the business. This isn't a society without men, or with subjugated men, or a caste society where men would be totally excluded from certain professions. Everywhere there are men, and they have their roles and rights, even if women run the society at large.

So I don't support the idea that a male (person, cult) couldn't have important agency in everyday Esrolia. But the male god/aspect who's mostly active in these everyday activities is of course Barntar.

The main male god in civilized rural activities, yes, and I don't really see much of a role for Vinga Plowwoman in Esrolia. (There are cases of women taking on traditionally male lives e.g. in Albania who become males in almost all aspects - there were some discussions about these in the big Vinga upset about 14 years ago. I don't think any tradition like that would have formed in Esrolia.)

For less civilized activities like herding (sheep), there is Orlanth, also the god of banditry and other such disruptive pastimes.

In urban activities, Lhankor Mhy might be more important, but despite the requirement to wear beards the cult is far from male-only.

3 hours ago, Garrik said:

The Engizi cult (RQG, pp. 75, 292) clearly is river-centric, movement-centric, and in no way tied to agriculture. I'm not saying that it should. I'm asking if a male water god & his followers could have agency in irrigating and draining the fields, or designing and upkeeping the aqueducts. I think they could. It's a minor and seasonal role for sure, but where water rises from Lyksos-Engizi and flows back into him, the cult surely has agency, at the very least a ritual role.

Maintenance of aqueducts and keeping the flow clean definitely falls into the specifics of Engizi. Harald Smith's play-by-forum Nochet campaign had an episode in one of the baths of Nochet where a current of Engizi had to be propitiated, but that entire game had a minor House in Nochet whose speciality was aqueduct and sewer upkeep in its center. Other than the river god, the knowledge god played a role in the supervision and design of the facilities.

Irrigation on the Lyksos seems a bit less likely to me, as it sits in the wind corridor into and out of Dragon Pass, with rain clouds funneled through here and probably regularly dropping some of their bounty, but if you want to play an irrigation and drainage themed game, go for it. Even in Dara Happa, the overseer for irrigation and drainage is the child of the river deity.

3 hours ago, Garrik said:

But I think you're right that Lyksos-Engizi is a bad fit for a farmer. It would make my character perhaps uniquely special, and require a lot of soul-searching and myth-spinning. Which would be great, but our game is on the more mundane, traditional-RQ side of the spectrum.

All of this said, my character in the end might look more towards Heler, because he has a powerful connection to the Air rune, some Water, and nothing special in Movement. The river aspect might remain as a connection to his grandfather and family traditions, and as a gateway to him finding the waters above.

Not everybody works in their calling. The main occupation in rural lands will be farmer, but not everybody will have specialist magic for that. Nor will every farmer need it, as a lot of that farming magic really is community magic, with Bless Crops provided by the goddesses. Plowing is just a seasonal agricultural activity, and other back-breaking work like harvesting or hay-making doesn't have any more specific magic from Barntar than other cults either. Being able to access associate magic from the land goddess might be more important.

Heler isn't much of a farming deity, either - they are more often associated with sheep and shepherding.

Engizi as Sky River Titan has a number of other (less often practiced) myths, including a paternal connection to Artmal and thereby an association to the (Blue) Moon which might be fun to discover.

15 hours ago, soltakss said:

How to win a water maiden.

Looking at those underwater musicians, I came to wonder what kind of instruments other than their own bodies would be usable for submarine musicians. We know whale songs and clicks, and most fish make quite a bit of sound underwater, too, some with their gas-filled buyoancy bladders, others by farting (not a joke).

Wind instruments like flute or conch shown in the video obviously would not work well submerged unless you eject a very sharp current of water, and drum membranes may have some problems, too. Strings would be dampened a lot when swinging against water, requiring great initial plucking, and might sound like strings on a guitar muted by softly laying a finger across.

Other than that, I found the blowing technique of the flutist protagonist interesting - mouth open, flute end between his teeth blocking half of the mouth, with the rest widening and closing to create different sounds.

5 hours ago, John Biles said:

Jaldon can trash your clan hold in King of Dragon Pass.

Jaldon is not a deity, but a re-appearing mortal hero (or if you aren't a Praxian, a mortal monster).

1 hour ago, theconfusingeel said:

So as far as I during history gods have no free will and are limited to doing whatever they did during the godtime, but there's various points in history whe the gods do something different:Nysalor fights Kyger Litor, Yelm has children with Hon-eel,Moonson has children with Gorgorma, Yanafal Tarnils fights Humakt(who was apperantly summoned, but how?)

These events either took place during a breach of the Compromise like the Battle of Night and Day, with the manifestation of Daysenerus (Yelmalio). Kyger Litor was present in a lesser aspect, the Black Eater.

Hon-eel got impregnated on the Other Side, witnessing the procession of the gods about to emerge from the Gates of Dawn.

Humans can interact with deities, and children can be born on the Other Side, in the timelessness of Godtime, or be born as demigods within Time from a mortal mother (or a mortal father carrying the pregnancy to term).

Given enough magical ambient energies or a very weak veil to the Other Side, such as Belintar's City of Wonders or Castle Blue, gods may walk the streets and interact with those mortals they recognize as worthy enough to recognize at all. Certain high holy day festivals, especially during Sacred Time, might have that effect, too.

Summoning a god requires quite a bit of magical energy to open the veil, and a very compelling summoner. In case of the Battle of Tanian's Victory, an obscure demigod child of Tanian was summoned by the God Learners and then negotiated with (or forced) to summon his parent's burning waters on behalf of the descendant.

The dedication rite for the Sartar Temple of the Reaching Moon was such an event, too, although most gods were merely heroformed by holy people of their cult. The High Priest of Shargash might have gone a little farther when he dragged his planet (which apparently was not involved in the sky dance (yet) to the dancers of Orlanth's Ring, attempting to turn their ascent into the failed invasion of the Upper Sky by Umath in order to challenge Yelm. The Shargash priest probably misjudged the intention of the dancers of the Ring, who instead aimed at producing the conjunction of the Dragon Head with the dragon constellation. While he managed to kill Minaryth, the prerequisites for the dragon summoning had been completed.

Summoning part of the power of a god is a fairly normal thing - it is Rune Magic.

Heroforming a god, a mortal or demigod repeating his feats in the mortal plane is a form of heroquesting which contracts this world with the Other Side.

Harrek stepping across the veil to kill and skin his ancestral bear god and bringing back his pelt is a major thing, something which probably was visible in the sky. At a guess, Harrek would have done so as Orlanth's RIng (also known as the Sky Bear) began to emerge from Stormgate.

8 hours ago, Garrik said:

Good gracious, @Joerg, did you have all that already written up, or have you been tracking (and side tracking) this reply to my humble question this whole evening? 😀

It will take a couple of evenings to try to palate that and find out ways how it could be brought into play. It's definitely high holy day stuff, or heroquest stuff. A Lankor Mhy answer to an initiate question.

Thank you!

The time signatures show that I put this out in less than two hours - away from my notes and my material, and doing other stuff like walking the dog in between. At times I need someone to ask the right questions to make me sit down and put my ideas through the keyboard.

As a matter of fact, I had vague notes about this as deep background for my planned Holy Country supplement. The strange matter of the death of the Faralinthor Sea and the orphaning of the Kethaelan rivers before the onset of the Greater Darkness, and the consequences for the rivers, the river folk and the merfolk of central Genertela have been troubling me.

If all rivers have a connection to the Heart of the Seas (as indicated by the River Horse cult), thena river's current doesn't end at a junction with a parent river or at an estuary, but it continues through the coastal seas into the oceans, and then into the One Sea below, Zaramaka's realm just outside of the Underworld.

Weak subterranean aquifer connections must count, too - after all, the River Horse also serves all the Praxian Oases. But the case of Faralinthor (who did not return after the Breaking of the World) seems to be different, and so I want myths, pilgrimages and heroquests to reflect that, both for riverine and coastal humans and for the local merfolk, as such things make encounters even if your party is only an innocent bystander to a heroquest like Biturian is in Rurik's Hill of Gold confrontation with the Zorak Zorani Death Lord on his way to Redwood Forest.

For a river survival quest into the Underground (not quite the Underworld, but into the Hero Planes) I figure you need to find (and trust) a deep eddy and dive into that, keep diving for an unholy time before emerging in an air bubble in a cave system, in order to have your Journey to the Center of the Earth adventure. Jules Verne and Arthur Conan Doyle (Lost World, not Sherlock Holmes) have laid all the groundwork, so you can simply grab the bestiary for the Monster of the Cave, plant a weird survivor group of humans or Elder Races (not necessarily extant any more, so you can go really wild there for Sense of Wonder), and have an episode on your trip. After undergoing blessings from your river god (and associated deities), possibly other cleansing rituals before doing the mini "Orlanth goes down Magasta's Pool" re-enactment that brings you into this realm of wonders. The rest is good old Pulp adventuring with your RuneQuest characters (or whichever game system you like).

When it comes to rites of riverine survival through the Great Drought of the Late Storm age and the revival after the Breaking of the World as a side effect of Magasta's great feat, Sky River Titan's self-sacrifice, and the "reversal of the river flows" (which only affected those rivers still connected to the Heart of the Seas and not really the hibernating ones of Kethaela) might be subject of less well-known river rites. Or if known, hidden in river marriage rites, like the Sun Domer one which in all likelihood was learned or taken over from the Zola Fel River Folk, possibly as propitiatory exchange for their irrigation practices which seem to have inherited Pelorian weeder heritage (the Lodrili Ten Sons and Servants, and the Foreman, son of Lodril and the river). (Little surprise there, as the Second Age Sun Dome Templar cult emerged from the Black Eel Weeder territory.)

Outside of this Sun Domer heritage, in the Heortling-descended portions of Saird and further south, there might have been human river folk ancestors of the Durulz, or at least precursors to Durulz rites reflecting earlier rites remembering and re-affirming riverine survival throught the Great Drought and into the bleak PTSD period of the Greater Darkness. The Durulz, and the Newtlings, and possibly some dragonewt or aldryami efforts, and probably some Styx Grotto rites of the Shadow Plateau.

Questing along such riverine survival/revival rites might pick up the fun weird underground bits of Jules Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth, with plenty Hollywood adaptations (and different approaches to reviving the archaic monsters of the deep) to loan from. Variations of this might almost write themselves, but maybe something along this line might be food for the Jonstown Compendium.

(Given my lack of Jonstown Compendium publications so far, I would need to team up with people to actually produce anything. Contact me if interested, or steal the idea as is.)

River deities tend to be associates of the surrounding land deities and agricultural deities, with fishing and wetland harvesting the fourth of the Provider cults (farmer, herder, hunter, fisher). River management and designating flooding areas (ideally overworked fallows benefitting from fresh silt carried in) will always be done in conjunction with the river priesthood, who will also exact propitiatory sacrifices of energy (the riverine tribute to uphold Magasta's Whirlpool, keeping the Chaos Rift in the center of the world contained).

Rivers rarely form borders between different (minor) land goddesses. The main exception to this are the peninsulas between deep river estuaries, but the further inland you come the more the borders will shift away from (changeable) river courses and towards watersheds dividing the river basins. Sooner or later, a (minor) land goddess will claim both shores of "her" river(s) and the surrounding foothills rather than regard the river as the shared border with her sister on the other side. The coastal division of the lesser land goddesses in Ships and Shores makes sense, but further inland the regional land goddesses will claim the entirety of the river basins. (Which is beyond the scope of that book, but a mythical map of inland Heortland may have the goddesses in quite different distributions than viewed from the coastline.)

The major published agricultural river rite we have is the River Marriage of the Zola Fel Sun Domers between the naiad demigoddess Kinope and the Count of Sun County, described in MOB's RQ3 Renaissance masterpiece Sun County and picked up in his Sun County post-Cradle narrative on the Well of Daliath.

I would speculate that Kinope was the guardian of something like a river refuge cenote during the dry parts of the Late Storm Age, nursing a minor remnant current of Zola Fel through that period into the return of the Seas following the Breaking of the World.

Similar rites may have been part of the Esrolian and Heortling heritage in the Silver Age, with the rivers restored (although into a much lesser state of reversed current) and re-awakened.

The rain rites would be shared by the river folk traditions, after all the example set by Engizi made the re-awakened rivers dependent on rainfall run-off, underground water transport (whether as actual underground rivulets in chasms in the limestone karst beneath the loess or filtering through layers of glacial clay, marl, and sands) and mountaintop melt-off from perennial mountaintop glaciation in Inora's realm. The dragon fought by Barntar no longer represents the primal river Sshorg/Nestentos nor the invading sea Aroka, but rather the prevention of feeding the new type of river prototyped by Engizi/Lorion. It might no longer be blue itself, although it still captures the waters of Heler (including those stolen by Valind).

As a result, the Barntar variant of the Aroka myth might be set in a much bleaker post-Breaking of the World Late Vingkotling Age, with a much diminished homestead Barntar starts from and some more Greater Darkness opposition on his way to the dragon. The actual nature of the dragon might be less predictable than Aroka, although the Bag of Winds trick should still apply - somewhat. Barntar questers might be forced to be a lot more inventive than Orlanth cultists on the Aroka quest, possibly bringing agricultural and stead management technology into a more desperate struggle. There is a good chance that the dragon might have ice powers, the drought being caused by the refusal to release the water from the snows during the shortened agricultural season of the Late Vingkotling Age.

Reawakening the rivers through the Barntar dragonslaying quest might also result in replenishing the soil in a flooding as the result of that quest.

When it comes to interaction of rivers with agriculture, monomythically this begins with Sshorg(a) climbing onto land after the Birth of Umath. (Local myths may have had rivers crawling inland a lot earlier, and there may have been severed sea tendrils trapped inside the top surface of the Earth Cube as it pushed through the sea surface and up the Spike in the Green Age providing the source of some very early (Green Age) instances of rivers.)

The main agricultural deities of the "Orlanthi" (or rather Ernaldans) are Barntar and the Grain Goddesses. The Orlanthi are one of the few high cultures of Glorantha who don't cultivate some form of rice in the river marshes, but there are River Folk on almost all Genertelan rivers, with the Nogatendings fo the Black Eel the closest major group in Orlanthi lands. Such wet crop farmers may have been subsumed by the Vingkotling tribes - imagine a few of the obscure names that cropped up in the HQ clan generator questions as weeders adopted into riverine Vingkotling (later Heortling) tribes, with wet crop traditions retained in ancestral memory and probably recovered at some point after the Greater Darkness (quite likely already in the Grey Age/Silver Age as a slight advantage in the survival struggle).

The main Barntar myth against droughts is a pastiche of the Aroka / Nestentos dragonslaying to free the captured rains, not exactly an irrigation feat. Still, the Orlanthi and especially the Esrolians are dam builders - Vogarth the Strong Man for instance built a dam to isolate Koravaka (the great Necropolis in central Esrolia) in an artificial lake.

The riverine lowlands of Esrolia are densely settled, to an extent the World Building rules of RQ3 (and possibly some instance of Basic Roleplaying) compared to the Nile Delta, with no notable woodland commons between settlements (although allowing for wetland commons, probably with black alder or similar water-loving trees to provide at least some minimal source of fuel). I suppose a lot of the lowland fields are protected by low dams, which might be gradually sacrificed to floodings while keeping some of the harvest alive in dry basins. Overseeing which such lowland fields are to be flooded in emergencies, and compensated for the harvest losses by the Asrelian granaries, may be one origin of the authority of the Enfranchised Houses. Other than the strong matriarchal nature of the Houses, the non-centralistic organisation into small clans with distributed responsibility for enclosing land to keep it from being flooded and reclaiming catastrophically flooded areas bears great similarity to the Frisian design of their lowland coasts against the threat of their sinking land (as a late result from the disappearance of the glaciers), also with (in their case patriarchal) clans taking the leadership in such common projects.

All of this is assuming the Mesopotamian model of irrigation for wheat antecessors during the worst of Fire Season (Summer) rather than the Egyptian model of letting open land be flooded by the annual Nile floods, bringing in lots of new fertile mud and arranging the sowing and harvesting cycles according to the floods. I don't see any evidence for such annual gift of fertile soil by the rivers of Kethaela and Kerofinela, although there might be a myth of leaving such behind as an apology after some extreme thaws.

As far as I am concerned, the majority of the (somewhat mundane) fertility of central Genertela comes from the Loess, the gift of loose soil stolen by Orlanth from the abrasions of Valind's glacier and given to his wife and her daughters, captured in the rich grasses of their bodies. (Maybe the art direction for land goddesses should give them unshaven (or rather richly overgrown meadow) legs to account for this?)

Unlike in the isolation of the Zola Fel or among the extensive bogs of the Pelorian bowl, the weeder folk of the southern rivers seem to have merged with the Dureving-(and quite likely also Helering-) descended fisherfolk following Pelaskos and Poverri, absorbed in agricultural clans (like e.g. the river worshipping bloodline(s) in the Red Cow clan) or grouped with the fisherfolk who gain the majority of their sustenance out of the water, the wetlands and the intertidal of the Choralinthor Bay. They may have quite a few of "wet crops" that aren't quite cultivated but readily harvested wild plants, like "sea asparagus" in the salt flats of the Choralinthor, water cress, reed rhizomes or kelp - resources also managed and maintained by the newtlings of the region, in addition to "crawfish" crawlies that may end up in the soup.

(Given the information that the durulz may be one of the prerequisite re-engineered races of the EWF to achieve their Proximate Holy Realm effect for their core lands, I suspect that a population of Kerofinelan river folk provided the experimental stock for the Remakers to create the durulz imitation of keets, borrowing their dietary myths for the identity of their new species.)

You should get @jajagappa's input on Nochet waterways - Harald used to have his HeroQuest Glorantha Nochet campaign on RPGGeek, but it seems it disappeared since.

The Lyksos has been joined with the Engizi river by Belintar, and nowadays I expect the Engizi cult to be the main river cult even though it is the Lyksos bed the conjoined rivers share. Thanks to the Skyfall and several marshes, the Engizi river may have the most steady basic flow of all rivers in Genertela, but seasonal runoff from the south-eastern half of Dragon Pass will boost this current a lot in Sea Season.

Rainfall on the edge of Shadow Plateau might be quite reliable even in normally dry Fire Season, with evaporation from Choralinthor Bay blocked by the Plateau and likely to run off its cliffs.

I don't expect much in the way of tidal interference with the Lyksos bed, although the highest tides might be noticable upriver from Nochet (if only by the current having to push against the rising Choralinthor Bay). Esrolian water management might be mainly concerned with draining the fields, although I guess there will be reservoirs in the Mesopotamia upriver(s) from Rhigos to make up for unusual dry spells. Providing waterways to transport the harvest to the rivers and into Nochet on barges will be an important side benefit of this drainage system.

On the mythological side, the most famous marriage between Earth and Water would be that of Faralinthor and Esrola, overseen by Jolly Fat Man on the cover of the Prosopaedia (around 10 o'clock). Faralinthor was the surrogate parent of the rivers of Kethaela and Kerofinela after the Flooding of Ernaldela had receded in the Gods War, until he was dried out by a jealous (or just avaricious) Storm God.

Godtime rivers ran from the Heart of the Sea (beneath the then still intact) Earth Cube through the surface seas (mainly Togaro and his child Sshorg) into the lands surrounding the Spike, with the northwestern (Hudaran) seas initially stopped by Zzabur, rediriecting their energies to fight Ladaral the Fire Mountain, with the Tanier River possibly being fed via the Neliomi, but anything east of that by descendants of Togaro. The river heads would slowly creep inland, scooping up matter and energies, sedimenting digested stuff while sending the energies and nutrients into the seas, which replenished their currents.

The height of the Flood brought huge "rivers" - tendrils of sea creatingvast bulges even across all but the highest peaks of the Rockwood Mountains into Peloria, encircling Vingkots kingdom with two immense standing waves, huge walls of water encroaching on the lands defended by the Storm Brothers. This big flood was forced to retreat, until only Faralinthor's basin remained a sea between Jrustela and the Vithelan waters. Cut off from the Heart of the Seas, the rivers relied on Faralinthor to replenish their currents. The biggest river, Sshorg(a)/Oslir(a) had its back broken by the remains of Sh'harkarzeel, with the Marzeel River occupying its remaining river bed, and the cut-off northern portion of the river changing its direction, reconnecting to the Heart of the Seas via the White Sea.

(The Seolinthur River and its tributary Zola Fel might have retained their connection to the Sshorg River and the Heart of the Seas east of the eastern shores of Faralinthor.)

As the seas conquered during the flood fell dry, Faralinthor himself was cut off from the Heart of the Seas. As the Gods War proceeded, Faralinthor lost territory after territory, until finally only a mostly dried up salt lake remained, and possibly a few deep caverns or cenotes in higher regions beyond that salt flat. As a result, the rivers of Kethaela and Kerofinela dried up, retaining some hidden underground existence for much of the Late Storm Age.

There should be a couple of myths about rivers hiding in the bosom of the land, and possibly water-filled deep caves which might be pilgrimage sites for magically enhanced river folk (or the intelligent fish worshippers of the rivers). Choralinthor Bay, the funnel through which the rivers took their currents from Faralinthor, had become a few miserable puddles and some mud, inhabited by the followers of Amphobos (or Amphibos) worshipping Flesiska, and some allied humans (the later fisherfolk of western and southern Kethaela).

One such cenote might have been at the Caves of Diendimos, nowadays a holy place of Air Beneath Water near Deeper, but during the Lesser Darkness a hideout of the seas against the ravages of less friendly storms. I cannot say whether some Ludoch held out there in extreme confinement, or whether there were heroic ancestors of one of the two Pelaskite tribes lending them aid.

The Breaking of the World, with the Implosion of the Spike, at the onset of the Greater Darkness actually brought a respite for the rivers, even though Engizi's example (the Skyfall myth) reversed their courses and took most of their vibrant energy away to contain the Chaos Rift where the Spike had been, creating Magasta's Whirlpool and the Homeward Ocean. Even though the rivers now collected what little water the rainfalls (or the meltoff of the Great Glacier) brought to them, they were re-connected to the Heart of the Seas, although only past the Chaos Rift encapsulated by the Doom Currents and their lesser helpers.

While the southern shore of Faralinthor's basin had perished along with the foothills of the Spike, much of its bottom survived the Breaking of the World and was taken over by the Rozgali and Solkathi currents which re-emerged from their underground hiding places as the Homeward Ocean reached them. The ancient river currents retook their courses there.

10 minutes ago, RedCrestedSlayer said:

Got it, so, my main question is if I wanted to start building from the ground up is that a way to do it for 'realistic' stats and then change it from there if these creatures don't conform to normal laws? i.e. if I make a SIZ 4 creature, they'd have something like STR 8 as an average?

Other that a creature should have at least a chance at lifting itself, you can assign much higher values independent of size. The typical giant ant retains not quite the proportional lifting capacity of an ordinary sized one, but will still lift itself and quite a load not because of physics but because of our expectations when encountering such a beast, despite the fact that its biology would not allow such a creature in current Earth's atmosphere at all.

It takes only four of Terry Pratchett's Mac Nac Feegles to lift a cow (each one at one hoof) and carry it away. Four ordinary humans would have a hard time even with a rather small modern cow. That would give these SIZ1 creatures a strength of around 2D6+6 or better.

Interesting to see an actual "deeds of Malkion" story rather than "he came, married and sired" which is what we have in the Brithos story in Revealed Mythologies.

Vadeli(tes) as slave takers - first time I see this come up in the context of early Malkioni stories (outside of the Six Tribes of Danmalastan narrative, which seems to be a lot younger). But then what we have there is mainly the Double Belligerent Assault which kills Talar and his son Hoalar, resulting in Gresat inheriting the royal seat of the first Talar of Brithos.

(BTW: I think of Brithos as the diminished island left after Zzabur flooded the majority of Brithela, if only of my deduced linguistics of Greg's place names with -ela meaning "land of" and -os meaning "coastal lands of".)

I am away from my sources, but I seem to recall that Gresat's Brithos was embraced by three forests, one of which may well have been Ontal's. In the story of the Brithos Civil War - triggert by the death of Gresat - between Menena's descendants of Horalwal and Zzabut's forces, Zzabur's forces somehow overcome the forest and invade the five castles of Horalwal from an unexpected direction.

The conflict is ended when the descendants of Menena (a lot more than the two named children, Yingar the messenger and Hrestol's father-in-law, and their offspring, two sons of Yingar and three daughters of the Duke of Horalwal, each inheriting one of the Horalwal satellite castles) summon their ancestress who then confronts her sibling Z(z)abur (again) confirming his disqualification from ruling the Brithini by caste law, leaving that role to talar Alos, a nephew of dead Gresat whose parents were lost to the Vadeli assault, too.

Neleos and Neliom: in Hrestol's Saga, Yadmov (the son of talar Neleos) claims that (unlike Frowal) Neleoswal is part of ancient Brithela rather than Seshnela, with the land bridge drowned by the Neliomi Sea. This might be a case of the sea taking the name of the drowned land.

1 hour ago, mfbrandi said:

If Malkion is air + water (storm), wouldn’t this just underline the Oedipal — or yet more intimate — nature of Orlanth’s rebellion?

If Malkion had slain Orlanth (Aerlit), oedipal. With the generational sequence inverted, Orlanth is slaying a wayward (and disinherited) son (or nephew, or cousin), as he did with Thryk. At worst, Orlanth is performing a partial suicide (something repeated with Dragonbreaker ending Dragonfriend), purging himself of Imperial Storm, but that would be quite far-fetched.

 

1 hour ago, mfbrandi said:

And isn’t there an Orlanthi motif of dragonslaying as utuma? And so we trudge on — through debatable (or at least dubious) lands — pushing toward Orlanth’s slaying himself to create the temporal world. And if we equivocate on father/self/son, we get something like God’s sacrificing his son to “save” the world.

Not even anything like hanging himself in the boughs of Yggdrasil to attain transcendent wisdom. This is more of an early refutation of an aspect of self on his way to ... redemption rather than transcendence. Not just for himself, but for his (inherited) element.

1 hour ago, mfbrandi said:

If Orlanth is always striving to be Top God, we expect IG–Blowhard mash-ups to emerge now and again.

Orlanth was on his ascendance to significance by challenging the Emperor and re-instating the Earth Queen. The myth of the Initiation of Orlanth sounds a bit off to me - sure, his brothers may have been ready for their trials, but Orlanth was just one of a number of local mountain winds when Umath was dismembered by Jagrekriand. Aerlit was more prominent in the Vadrudi host than the godling from Kero Fin, and he was a side character. But then so were the Storm ancestors of the Triolini, compared to the track of disruption and destruction left behind by Vadrus.

Orlanth slowly worked his way up, imitating his elder siblings (like repeating Vadrus' Nestentos feat against Aroka) and using ungodly trickery against his more powerful beastly brother. Rattle and war-dance vs. courtly procession may have been an unthinking, childish attempt, but for the contest of music Orlanth comes with subtlety unbecoming of a child of Umath. Almost as if he was a mortal on his way into the top of his pantheon.

  Over in Runeblogger's thread about the inspirations for some of the uniquely Gloranthan races we landed in the territory of nearly unpublished early Malkioni material by Greg, with a genealogical chart provided by Scott Martin. Rather than derail that topic further, I thought geekery about that stuff might be better off in a new thread.

10 hours ago, scott-martin said:

Phlia vanishes at the moment the vadelites emerge and her children also vanish from the narrative (or are transformed), which is suggestive.

As a Tilnta, she might not have been fit for conflict, but Malkion himself was born from the flight of the Vadrudi which was anything but not non-violent. Still, Aerlit and Warera united in love rather than conflict, so he might have been eligible as companion for a Love goddess.

The story about the disappearance (and even more transformation) of her children is new to me. The Serpent King history (and its full text excerpts Hrestol's Saga and its unfinished sequel Faralz and Hrestol on Brithos) name Phlia as mother of the Maklioni upper castes, with the Dronars separated out as children of Malkion and a land goddess (Kala, goddess of the hill or mountain range in southern Brithos which become the homeland of one of the three Vadeli tribes, and remain as islands after Zzabur broke the world).

Faralz' and Hrestol's Saga on Brithos has barbarian Vadeli raiders inhabiting wild parts of Brithos, and a cameo appearance of forest people just before the fragment cuts off.

11 hours ago, scott-martin said:

Phlia vanishes at the moment the vadelites emerge and her children also vanish from the narrative (or are transformed), which is suggestive. The children of Malkion have three mothers. The children of Vadel have three fathers.

Children of Vadela rather than the male explorer we encounter in Revealed Mythologies and Middle Sea Empire?

The early narratives about Seshnela and its inhabitants are written in a style that reminds me of the more magical quests of the extended Arthurian body of sagas, with a lot more interaction with deities and practically all main protagonists with divine ancestry no more than three generations away.

Winged hardly-dressed (female) humanoids were a staple in fantasy illustrations in the late sixties, and some of those appear in the early Wyrm's Footnotes and IIRC also in the APA Zines. I suppose that is sufficient grounds for inspiration.

The Waertagi receive explicit mention in the sea voyage of the father of Mimtak (the last serpent-legged king of Seshnela) to the east in the Serpent King history, and they show up again as foes of one of the first Hrestoli kings following the Serpent King dynasty. That text collection dates from around 1967.

Triolini appear in the surname of Warera Triolina but receive little direct mention in the land-bound adventures of Froalar's descendants.

10 hours ago, scott-martin said:

Yena is apparently an air wife in the way of the children of Aerlit. All four caste fathers and the caste mother are hers.

Air wives are rare in the extant Gloranthan myth - we have Brastalos (wife of Magasta) and Molanni (mistress of the Evil Emperor). Given the identification of the Evil Emperor as Malkion in Dawn Age western Genertela, this gives a possible identification of Yena Wambla...

Elsewhere (Hrestol's Saga genealogies, Serpent Kings history), the caste ancestors Talar, Zzabur, Menena and Holar (rather than Gwymir) are children of Phlia Tilnta, and Dronar is the child of Kala (not surnamed Likita, but a hill goddess of Brithela) rather than her husband. The marriage partners of Talar, Menena (and Neleos) are their twin siblings of the opposite sex - probably born as a couple destined to be wedded already from birth.

Other than Waertag (and presumably Vadel), none of the six tribal ancestors so prominent in Revealed Mythologies seem to be mentioned in these older texts.

6 minutes ago, Shiningbrow said:

Just a thought... why wouldn't the nice new Humakti Sword just DI (1D10 RPs) to get the big H (or D - Death) to transport the armour to them???

Humakt, being a god of combat, would likely comply by sending the new Sword directly to the item and its bearer.

Disclaimer: I am not really fond of Death Incarnated as a player character concept.

1 hour ago, mfbrandi said:

 

you cannot swallow Kajabor, you can only let Kajabor swallow you.

Arachne Solara begs to differ.

11 minutes ago, mfbrandi said:

EDIT: Although coming back with the Bat may make the “full victory” over chaos-as-evil ironic and make the “I am the Devil, now” reading tempting. Maybe.

According to the Redline History of the Lunar Empire, only the foes of the Red Goddess perceived her flying steed as the Crimson Bat. The faithful Lunars perceived a purple hummingbird as her steed instead.

Which is why I expect a lot less bat symbology and a lot more hummingbird symbology in Lunar temples serving the faithful.

48 minutes ago, mfbrandi said:

But if we want an explanatory theory, it needs to work for Wakboth, Ragnaglar, and certain other cult-not-currently-possible dead Chaos gods (but not Thed and Nysalor), as some Chaos heroquests do work — take a bow, Sedenya.

Against me with my pretend-Jeff hat on, I was reading HeroQuest Glorantha, yesterday, and that seems to suggest Sedenya did encounter Wakboth on her quest, even going so far as to have her say, “I defeated Wakboth and exchanged places with him” (p. 182).

(IIRC, Wyrm’s Footnotes #10 doesn’t identify the demon as Wakboth and has its defeat before she binds Gbaji — which makes sense, I think: dismiss/defeat your demons first, then push on to the emptiness of Nirvana.)

In "The Lives of Sedenya", this Chaos entity is not identified with the Devil, but rather with primordial Chaos. The coded script is fairly crucial to understanding the difference between say Vivamort accepting Chaos and the Red Goddess accepting or rather embracing Chaos. It also is different from how Arachne Solara embraces Chaos, although there are more similarities there than with Vivamort's conversion.

Wakboth is a convenient label for Moral Evil Chaos, and thereby a convenient label to pronounce a particular expression of Chaos as moral evil.

The Lunar Way recognizes the seduction into moral evil for those Illuminates who become Chaotic by choice, and the almost unfailing depravity that follows from non-Illuminates who become Chaotic by choice. The examples are plentiful - Parg Ilisi, Tatius the Bright, his Spolite replacement as Dean of the Imperial College...

Shamans can (and will) conduct propitiatory services to chaotic entities (like e.g. Thed) and even contract them for magical tasks without (necessarily) becoming chaotic themselves. The typical caveats about deals with the devil remain, and there is always a risk when approaching Chaos.

5 minutes ago, Ynneadwraith said:

Man borophagines are rad! Epicyon even means 'more than a dog'. Why stop at rhinoceros' when you could have rhinoceros-and-a-half as well?

Oh, anyone else looking for some other weird prehistoric animals to sandwich in somewhere should look at chalicotheres, entelodonts, early proto-whales like pakicetus, or thylacoleo the marsupial lion (or thylacosmilus for an animal that better fits that description, because thylacoleo just weird). Dinosaurs are cool and all, but prehistoric mammals are every bit as weird and cool.

Prehistoric mammals are what populate the Pamaltelan Veldt, too - and I did not specify the sizes of rhinos in the Veldt. There is a reason why the Six-Legged Empire hired designers from Remakerela to create the Rascullu rhino centaurs. "Ice Age 2" had plenty pleistocene critters which may have been extinct for millennia by the time humans entered their habitat zone.

14 hours ago, soltakss said:

flute and other gentle, refined instruments.

Flutes stop being grouped as gentle refined instruments if you have siblings practicing the recorder with at most a single wall in separation. Percussion can be less grating on the ear.

Yelmic music might well have been closely related to Mongolian throat singing since Jenarong took over the semi-abandoned metropolises and brought them civilization from the steppes in the Gray Age.

Murharzarm's dinotopia Dara Happa did have the harp as its signature instrument, possibly with synaesthesia effects of colors emitted when plucking the strings (after all the medium for music was the previous celestial plasma of Aether alongside that new-fangled Storm). Birdsong would provide colorful choirs.

Alkoth had its Underworld-originating drums, making the shadows answer the beats of the drummers, already whe Sshorga invaded the Good Land of the fluffy dinos and their birdheaded and early made-human tenders.

Anaxialian Dara Happa did continue the harp tradition, but may well have lost that synaesthesia quality. Flutes may have entered the picture as the birdsong of the dinos and other feathered entities like the sun horse got lost.

This does sound like a dog-and-a-half that could have been hunting rhinoceros in the Pamaltelan Veldt.

If I understand this approach correctly, you treat superior mundane manufacturing with the same system as magical, super/psionic or technological powers added to the item in order to determine its price, possibly with the inherent flaw of the weapon being unpowered.

A narrow area of power will allow a greater effect. A Vorpal Blade might increase the chance to land a decapitating blow in a number of ways - it could adjust the hit location probability, it could add penetration to neck strikes only, it could remove the usual penalty for an aimed blow to the neck, or (at exponential cost) a combination of these.

You don't seem to have planned rules for manufacture of such items, but to me this sounds like weapons made from (or at least including) powered materials (whether elemental essence, special celestial body material, Vis as in Ars Magica, or powers immanent to the creature the material was removed from) would aid in bestowing these powers and providing these might reduce the cost of manufacturing.

Scarcity (of materials or manufacturing opportunities) might affect price and immediate availability.

Do you have a concept how an item with several powers that don't or only partially stack would be priced/rated? Say a blade of superior manufacture that can have either a fire or a frost power, each of the three worth rank 2?