Joerg

It is worth when they observe this practiced by Praxians in human shape, or on the Pavis meat market. Making a body disappear in Pavis is easy, as long as you don't sell any tattooed skin. Herdman vellum might be a sought after writing material - some of Zzabur's most magical books use similar material. Maybe inscribed by a tattooist while the herdman still was alive? Hard to turn a tattooed skin into a palimpsest, or to forge that. (But then Zzabur's most potent grimoires are likely written on Vadeli hide treated in a similar way as Waertagi dragonship hide - alive, for certain values of alive, possibly with some of the life force of the fromer wearer still imbued in the material.) This has been hotly debated a number of times earlier, and the various implications have been discussed, too. Just search for "Morokanth AND diet" in the forum search for a number of quite relevant posts. We all would have seen birds crawling over herd beasts - especially rhinos - picking at pests crawling in their furs or skin folds. I wonder whether there are such birds in Prax and the Wastes - it has a very limited ecology, almost as if someone built one from scratch by importing the minimum required amount of species into a space habitat. I wonder whether herd men are naturally grooming not just one another, but also pretty much any other type of herd beast, as well as their Morokanth masters, for tasty little snacks. As such, other Praxians might actually want to have a few of these captive beasts among their herds for better herd health.

Sorry, Ringworld Glorantha would be a Sunstop variety. Ringworld doesn't know sunrises and sunsets. Neither would the firmament work... The Gloranthan firmament is viewed like from a planet's pole, while the Gloranthan planets and the sun are moving as viewed from an equatorial position on an (approximately spherical) planet. The observable sun only works as a planetary object.

It might be a reason to worship Oakfed for fertility, although fire farming really is the province of Gustbran rather than Oakfed. The Hidden Greens are (or at least used to be) something else, pieces of the Compromise not as readily accessible to the Surface World dwellers as the rest of the world, possibly hiding in folds of Arachne Solara's Web. New lands may appear or become accessible at times - the Thaw of the Syndics' Ban might be such a case if the change in the Fronelan maps from the God Learner maps (and the Dawn and Second Age maps in Trollpak) to the modern maps was caused by such an event rather than just using a sub-optimal base topography for the earlier maps. The Karandoli clan might have moved into such a hidden valley. Their disappearance is fairly weird. (The disappearance of their rivals, the Jenstali, appears to be a case of assassinations until the clan dissolved. With the perps hiding outside of accessible Sartar, not even the in-laws were able to hinder them.)

Redalda/Redaylde instead of (or alongside with) Hyalor might be an option for horse breeders, too. "One of the Red Women." Isbarn the goose girl apparently manages all manner of domestic fowl. Other than her, Mahome might be a source of poultry magic. Mammalian beasts should really be Storm beasts rather than associated to the Earth. Yes, they do draw sustenance from the earth, but so do poultry etc. There are no (more) domestic reptiles other than snakes or geckos for pest control. No iguanas kept for meat, or tortoises for soup. Weirdly enough, the concept of nursing with milk or a similar secretion appears to predate even the Golden Age, at least in the humanoid appearance. Even without rule 34. Triolina is equipped for nursing, at least in the imagery Kalin Kadiev provided us with. (Merfolk don't appear to craft any depictions.)

Rhinos aren't ruminants, but rather closer related to tapirs and equines as perissodactyla. Thus they only have one stomach, as opposed to the ruminants' four. Whales are or at least used to be ruminants... Praxian rhinos appear to be closet to the Indian variant than the two African ones. Indian rhinos appear to be opportunistic grazers (like African white rhinos) rather than browsers (like African black rhinos or tapirs), from what I could find. The African White Rhinos (also grazers rather than browsers) were said to be the "most social of all rhinos" - probably tolerating other rhinos in 10 m distance, or something like that. Praxian one-horned rhinos apparently are more social than that in allowing their riders to form rather closed charges with maybe a meter between the charging steeds. We already have two browser species among the Praxian quadrupeds with the high llamas and the morokanth. I don't see the point to have the rhinos push into that already quite overcrowded ecological niche if they can be opportunistic grazers. Still preferring greens to yellowed stalks, but able to take in the main growth of the chaparral. Do the Beast Riders practice fire farming to get at these fresh greens? Other than the impalas (ironically the tribe with the fire association), few Praxian quadrupeds thrive on dried out grass. Fire farming would open the earth for new, lusher growth, at least while there is enough water.

Sounds like that exactly is the problem...

Now that makes me wonder - did Joe Knucklehead train that ability in real life?

Krakeneers are the regular (or first time) visitors of the Kraken convention. The Kraken is the "insider" convention usually held shortly before Essen Game Fair in a baroque chateau at the end of nowhere in Brandenburg, Germany, where about 90-100 long-time fans of Glorantha, Call of Cthulhu etc. meet for a long weekend of gaming and talking, and meeting quite famous game designers, Fabian Küchler is the organizer of that convention, which he started after organizing the Tentacles convention in Bacharach am Rhein. (Which was succeeded by the Eternal convention, in normal years at Whitsun,) Conventions like these are how many of us have been able to meet and game face-to-face.

Or you can pester those in the know at ImpCon3: https://discord.gg/WSPJ3zEB

"for a safe journey, bring our lunch." Could an ogre colony subsist on feral broos? Are there still grayskins in Dorastor, and if so, would those be acceptable ogre fodder? Herd men are out.

Missile weapons become a game changer when they become independent of physical force expended by the wielder - starting with cranked arbalests, and continued with gun powder. Recoil-less missile throwers would be the next separation between physical ability and the ability to kill, but teleoperated killing machines (starting with domesticated wolves) are another advance in that direction.

The middle dragon appears to be the Sun Dragon - look at all the regalia it is wearing. The main color is golden, and the blue matches that of the Dara Happan forces in the True Golden Horde. I like the depiction of the Obsidian Palace in that image.

That used to be the Aeolian style (in the HQ1 write-up)... Also, this is almost like an everlast-biscuit of a sacrifice. Almost 2000 years ago, and still keeps giving. Sermon of the Mount, in perpetuation. Then there is the "messenger to god" function, where the sacrifice gets shot first, then delivers the message. The other form also of the royal sacrifice, as per the Heimskringla.

Shargash is an underworld (Darkness) deity as much as he is a sky deity. But then there is Yelmalio with his Three Strikes of Anger, there are sacred gladiatoral games in Dara Happa, etc. With Yelm and Lodril, we have two more underworld deities, of course.

Orlanthi sacrifice involves feasting on the sacrificial animal. and possibly being sprinkled in the blood of that sacrifice. That makes human sacrifice somewhat weird. Is there ritual cannibalism involved?

I said so before, but IMO the dragonewt individual is the unborn dragon inside the egg. The dragonewt manifested by the egg is a material projection of the entity inside the egg rather than the individual itself, an analogon to a dream dragon. A remote sensing and sensating platform.

It might be worth noticing that the German word "Reich" or at least the related verb is a cognate of "to reach".

"Too many" is different from "none". The Dragon Pass dragonewts "survived in weakness" by joining forces with the humans and Elder Races of the Vingkotling region, as opposed to the dragonewts of Kralorela who "survived in strength" as subjects of the Kralori dragon emperors who kept being overcome by Sekever. Yes. Shaolin monks might be an analogy, pilgrims leaving their monastic environments to interact with the world in general and martial artists in particular. The world still serves as a whetstone at least for the earlier stages of dragonewt-hood, probably all the way up to the (Tailed) Priest stage. The closest description of what the path to true Dragonhood might look like would be looking at Ingolf Dragonfriend's almost successful path (taken twice) following the example of Obduran the Flyer, the most successful draconic mystic in the sources who not only became a True Dragon, but who even managed to ascend from True Dragonhood to the Absolute (in as little as three days). Obduran may not have been the only EWF mystic to achieve True Dragonhood, although some sources suggest that he was. He certainly was the only EWF mystic combining worship of Orlanth and the draconic truth to succeed in achieving True Dragonhood, but there were plenty more early mystics pursuing the paths of the Long Mountain Dragon School, one of the schools that eschewed the Short Cut paths other disciples of Obduran (like Isgangdrang) took for themselves. The total number of highly advanced draconic mystics over the development of the EWF is not known. Before Obduran "corrupts the Orlanth Ring with the Dragon Inside" in 725 ST, the dragonfriends were in opposition to the Ring of Orlanthland. That leaves the period since the first Hunting and Waltzing Bands of Vistikos Left-Eye in the late 1580ies to the conversion of the Kingdom of Orlanthland into the EWF by 775 - when Obduran retires from the Ring, and his disciples hold various posts on the ring) to the extermination of the last Old Day Traditionalists. After that, many of the EWF projects start to go wrong. (History of the Heortling Peoples p.41-51, Heortling Mythology p.137-139). Godunya leaves Kralorela around the time Emperor Yanoor is confounded by Gilam D'Estau's New Dragon Ring (in 768), and Shang-Hsa starts interacting with EWF leaders, inviting them to his temples (which may be how the Path of Immanent Mastery is found in both EWF history and modern Kralorela). (Revealed Mythologies p.106) Somehow, the Kralori dragonewts persist throughout Shang-Hsa's reign as False Dragon Emperor, which either means that Shang-Hsa did something not quite wrong, or that the role of the Kralori emperor in Kralori dragonewt society is overrated. The False Dragon Ring is finally deposed in 1054, twelve years after the Fall of the EWF dragonspeakers in the mass utuma. The EWF and Kralori approaches to dragonhood are somewhat relevant to dragonewts as they do not require regular intermediate utuma to achieve a higher stage of draconic insight. This might appeal to "barbarian dragonewt" populations like those in Ormsland or on Teleos without an Inhuman King of their own (unlike Dragon Pass and Ryzel) or a Dragon Emperor to fulfil a similar role. But it also offers a way to dragonhood for lesser draconic races/species like the wyrms, who appear to be a result of Dawn Age experimentation after the Unity Council moved to Dorastor, presumably with the dragonewts still involved or at the very least not actively opposed to that kind of magical experimentation. The original form of the wyrms remains unknown, but there aren't that many Unity Council members to choose from, and other than dragonewts or humans I don't see many other candidates curious enough to undergo such a radical transformation. There was a contemporary experiment which resulted in Seri-Phy-Ranor, a mixed descendant of Sun Wheel Dancers, Heortling Humans, and possibly other Elder Races, so we know that weird experimentation like this wasn't invented in Remakerela, but only picked up again. The Unity Battle and Council, whatever created the wyrms during the Second Council, the EWF and the entire draconic history of Kralorela point towards something like a fruitful interaction between dragonewts and humans, at least to some degree of success. The loss of all Pelorian dragonewt eggs (!) outside of the Elder Wilds and Dragon Pass appears to have been an acceptable exchange for the Dragonkill and the opportunity of subsequent human-free development in the Pass. Entanglement with Ironhoof, Arim and Sartar must have been acceptable, too. Whether something like the Dragonrise was intended by the dragonewts is unknown (though suspected). This leads me to ask how much of the dragonewt behavior is driven by the individual eggs and their emanations, and how much is driven by the collective emanation of the 'newts that also manifests their cities and their actions at large (like the Dragonewts Dream event).

I stumbled over this lecture which seems to be quite apropos for this thread:

The temples of the Reaching Moon impose a different magical reality inside their area of effect. They extend the weird overlap of Lunar surface effects with the mundane reality of Glorantha to the rather distant places where that interface of the Silver Shadow is nowhere near. Thus, "Reaching" has a possessive element for me.

All of these true, although point 6 might be overstated. The chance of meeting a dragonewt in two different stages might be rather low. Dragonewt progress rates have slowed down, according to Sandy Petersen, as the fast ones all became dragons long ago, and what is left of the (original) dragonewt population are the slow-pokes, many of them still in the Scout stage. Which is fine from an ecological point of view, since you cannot have all chieftains, you need a broad base of commoners or otherwise of external work force to maintain a civilization. Dragonewt cities might be best understood as monasteries, places mainly dedicated to spiritual advancement while providing some basic creature comforts allowing the pursuit of that advancement. A dragonewt is on a heroquest at all times. It will face moral challenges just like a human faces ritual challenges. And humans encountering a dragonewt will lack the context of the 'newt's questing to gauge its motivations. If it is a balance an individual newt seeks, it may have to act in diametically opposite ways to achieve the sweet spot of Right Action. Performing weird rites (like the one I cut) is another aspect of performing a heroquest.

Dragonewt NPCs feature both in The Smoking Ruins and Pegasus Plateau, so you might want to take a look at how they are presented there. The dragonewt color plate in the Guide is taken from the potential dragonewt adventure outlined in Elder Secrets. Griffin Mountain had the dragonewt armor plot with the newt Inoi Sessele (sp?) hunting the person owning its previous incarnation's hide as an armor. When I wrote a scenario where dragonewts would confront the players (or vice versa), I presented them pretty much as a force of nature. (I think it was printed in an issue of Tradetalk, translated from the German Free INT first publication.)

Gonn Orta (outa) Godunya (that looks good on ya - talking about belt buckles) Corflu (erase that) Onomapoetics: Tada. (Ta-daaaa!) (also Tadashi Ehara, as in Tada-shi, the Golden Age people of Prax) Waha. (Waaa-haaa!) Backward spelling: Amuron (the horned serpent aka the transformed Creator spirit of Pamaltela) and Noruma (the primal shaman of Pamaltela), Hykim and Mikyh Real world references: Prax are the plains in Dr. Seuss, where the east- and west-going zaxes meet, and his writings also the source for the beast with the initials YBB, if my second hand knowledge serves me right. Not sure about the nimble hen. Nan Madol and Carmania are actual places in this world which correspond somewhat. Sandy placed a number of B-Movie titles in Ignorance. 10k maniacs, or so. Not to mention the myriad of people whose names feature on Gloranthan maps. The Perrin stones, William('s) Church, Bigglestone... Refuge is a translation of Sanctuary, the setting of Thieves World. Karse is another spelling of Carse. Rikard the Tiger-Hearted, king in the Holy Country? Outre, mer. (And Orlanth's Ring approaching the Spike in the Storm Age looks awfully like the Paramount logo...) So yes, Gloranthan naming conventions can be breaking the Fourth Wall or suspension of disbelief every once in a while. On the other hand, stuff that looks sounds familiar in the Roddenberry TV-verse has been lifted from Glorantha.

The Abiding Book presumably was written by the hand of god, and Rokar was his editor? That's quite different from the decision Irenaeus faced when selecting four gospels as canonical, condemning the rest to heterodoxy. These gospels were named after mortals who collected those anecdotes. It's like taking the 10 article slots of the original Credo card game, and reducing those to five or so. (Has the new edition been published yet?) Malkionism was effectively Hrestolism, although Hrestol reset his approach at least twice to get better. Seshnegi Malkionism was Hrestolism Mk1, and Fronelan Malkionism (other than Jonatelan/Junoran) is derived from his later teachings. Irensavalism apparently was proselytized by Tomastus, a disciple of the later (or possibly latest) approach Hrestol took. It is interesting that Hrestol's own offspring did not follow his teachings, but being raised on the Vadeli Isles might do that to young Malkioni. There is a weird parallel to the Malkioneranist Sharp Abiding Grimoire, derived from the Abiding Grimoire of the mainstream Makanists. Both Makanist Hrestolism and Malkioneranist Reconstructionalism were called "God Learners". The Makanists were the mainstream Malkioni. Their sorcerers maybe a little less so. Looking at the results of Rokar's reforms, it looks like he repudiates Makanism by embracing Malkioneranist methods. I wonder whether this is another case of something intended to aim at the clerics only and then spread into a popular movement, similar to the 95 theses Luther wrote in Latin to start a discussion inside the clergy. It seems to have been Watcher Mardron who allied with Bailifes the Hammer to dictate a radical reform of the caste system, abandoning the Zzabur caste and joining the Talar caste with the Men-of-All quasi-caste.

Rest assured that the quote about stuff not being on the sheet was from someone else here on the forum. I may be dancing around on a mountain in a thunderstorm wearing a metal armor, but I am not cursing Orlanth while doing so.