Joerg

As in keeping the Trickster inactive? There is no way one can talk about Eurmal and his lookalikes without innuendo.

The Vadeli of Jrustela are in league with the Mostali, even if that means they are going to lose some of their Orange Guild cities. But then those have been infiltrated by non-Vadeli recently, so maybe it is time for them to sell their shares to these newcomers and start anew somewhere else. (Who would murder Vadeli and then take over their business in a Vadeli-owned city? Kareeshtans?) The Vadeli are the merchants of war and destruction. They sell powerful, powerfully corrupting magics to the highest bidder. The vile magic used by the Seshnegi to destroy Hrelar Amali in the second century? Made and sold by the Vadeli. What do the Waertagi think of the Vadeli, or of the Vadeli using their own ships on the seas? In the Storm Age, the Waertagi were ready to attack any other naval power. The Vadeli remained connected to their Mostali allies by the Awesome Bridge while the Churkenos Sea lasted. The Waertagi served as naval transport service to the Brithini (or their predecessor empire of Zerendel), making good profits from that, and from supporting the war efforts. Perhaps enough that they didn't mind seeing the war continued. The Vadeli appear to be quite resigned to conquering a place, corrupting it, and then being thrown out after a while. They are immortal (or at least unaging), so these are minor setbacks if they escape alive (or resurrectable or otherwise recoverable), and probably part of a longer term plan or just an attempt to find a profit that may or may not work out. So who would win a naval battle, a strong Vadeli fleet or a Waertagi returnee fleet? The Waertagi are masters of the waves and can summon various types - ship eaters, harbor waves, etc. They used to bring merman allies to their fights, but the last merman they had allied with died out in the battle of Tanian's Victory. The Vadeli use hired help as meat shields, and they have magics that can corrupt and kill even the strongest manifestations of the seas' magical power. In the Storm Age, they and their Brithini foes tapped the Neliomi Sea of all its energy, leaving a lifeless stretch of mostly dead water between their islands and the mainland. The Breaking of the World (elsewhere known as the Implosion of the Spike) drowned their vast empire, killing all their slaves and probably enough of the slave masters that they played only a very minor role for the rest of the Gods War. They emerged into the dawn as a leaderless and apparently aimless. Hrestol served some time as their judge after he was exiled from both Seshneg and Brithos, and his son by his Brithini wife inherited the job. His grandson Aignor fathered the second branch of Serpent Kings of Seshnela. There are no records of the Waertagi actively fighting the Vadeli after the Dawn. And why should they have? The Brown Vadeli stick to their miserable islands or go fishing. The newly empowered Vadeli are an unknown to both the Brithini and the returned Waertagi. Those Waertagi who had sailed on Dormal-ships would be familiar with them, but the question is whether the returnees consider them as adults. Are the Waertagi interested in the dwarf project of reuniting Jrustela with Slon and Umathela? This branch of the Breaking of the World was the weakest, deflected to the side when it hit Magnetic Mountain, rather than creating another deep rift towards one corner of the Lozenge. The Seas never established a strong current along this rift. The only mermen directly affected by the raising of Somelz are the Malasp, ancient foes of the Ludoch of the neighboring (and for the time unaffected) Marthino Sea. There is no record of Malasp and Waertagi cooperating, but then there isn't any record of Malasp and Waertagi not cooperating. The Waertagi did sail the Churkenos Sea while it was there (helping evacuate Tadeniti to the Malkioni mainland, presumably at a price), but when the sea was gone after the land-raising, so were the Waertagi. It isn't quite clear whether the Vadeli evacuated those lands, or whether they were tolerated by the Mostali of the Somelz project. Oee future event which may harm the Vadeli badly is the upcoming flood. All Vadeli lands are coastal, and (other than on Curustus) in low-lying areas.

I didn't catch this earlier. Are the tenant farmers (cottars) included or excluded in the tribal militia?

I consider Shargash to be the regional variation, with Tolat being well known to the God Learners as a sort of ubiquitious opponent - through the Lopers, in Teshnos, in Pamaltela. Dara Happa appears to be ignorant of the Red Sword of Tolat. Somehow, Tolat is the twin of Annilla in the monomyth.

The old style Hrestoli concept of becoming a Man-of-All was to master (a skill of) another Caste. But then, in a caste society, doing another caste's thing will cost you Rightness. Does this mean that in order to become a Man-of-All, a candidate needs to build up a good measure of virtue, and then use that up in the pursuit of achieving Man-of-All status unless she joins the Cult of Hrestol?

The God Learners apparently forced their way into other people's heroquests, usurping magical places and sending something like a black ops or even invasion force through the veil into the Heroplane, with a "bridgehead and then expand" methodology. That may have made it hard for them to trigger the next events in a quest. While they probably will have read up on descriptions of the myths, at the very best they knew answers that worked before and offered those by rote rather than by strong identification. In another approach, they may have hired or pressed people from the appropriate cults into their teams, to provide some degree of the quester's identification. Part of the God Learners' arsenal seems to have been the assumption that things would go wrong in a step on the heroquest, and still to overpower any negative consequence to be had out of that. Under HW and HQ1 rules, the God Learners operated under "Alien World" modifiers. That was a pretty hefty penalty, possibly the equivalent of the suggested "sacrilege" difficulty.

Are Men-of-All initiates of the Hrestol Cult? Are initiates of the Hrestol Cult Men-of-All?

Interesting to see actual in-game benefits of belonging to a caste (and being a full initiate to the Church Cult of the Invisible God). Do the Rokari still neglect to initiate most of their worker caste members? Translating this linealist concept to the meritocratic Loskalmi system might prove to be interesting. Does a Loskalmi talar retain any caste benefits from the castes he mastered prior to that elevation?

Both the Brithini and the Seshnegi have a long history of somewhat cooperative co-existence with the Aldryami, respecting one another's realms. The Fronelan Malkioni might be slightly less friendly with the two great forests they are bracketed between, if the refusal of Loskalmi loggers in Winterwood is an indication thereof. Lady Gwelenor approached the elves of Gilboch and seems to have received the right to establish a human presence there as a petitioner rather than with overwhelming magical or military power. The Umathelan great forests were quite arrogant towards all humans in their lands, which may explain the great sorcery which incinerated 90% of the Vralos forest shortly after the Abiding Book had been revealed.

Is this Gringle Era Apple Lane? I think I recognized Piku's tent-like home.

The Barueli river and Laskal had cities before the Garangordites went to awaken Ompalam. Yes, the lands north of the Fense did not join that weird backward evolution trend of the Veldt. There is even a city in Laskal that has men-and-a-half. I am not quite sure what to make of the Ia Rathwi (Fortress People) and the (slave-holding) Exigers south of Laskal, described for Fonrit. They appear to be Doraddi similar to those of Laskal. I don't think so. The Thinokans are clearly outrigger people, but they are phenotypically different from the master lineages. Same for the Kumankans, Kimotans, Masloi, and the lost Loral population. The Outrigger people descended from Thinobutu are named Agimori, but are a different sub-type. That "inaccuracy" leaves us without information whether the people of Teleos have forgotten that they followed Pamalt north to fight Vovisibor, or whether they have forgotten that they fled from Thinobutu. They used to be pirates who harassed the Middle Sea Empire, but we don't know anything about the type of ships or boats they used. As far as I can make out, the people of the Barueli river valley and Banamba are of Doraddi origin, followers of Pamalt, or a Pamaltelan hero who led them beyond the Fense to fight Vovisibor or his leftover minions (such as the Vadeli). I remember discussing one such hero out of Tishamto. The only parts of Fonrit that were inhabited by descendants of the Doraddi are the Barueli river valley and Banamba. Afadjann, Kareeshtu, Tarahorn were Artmali lands before the Garangordites invaded. The Garangordites were so successful that they even enslaved their own people in Banamba and Barueli. They failed to do so with the Exigers, who appear to be a collection of strange martial cults in their mountain fastnesses - almost like various kung fu or sword art sects in China, in a steady state of conflict to hone their respective special combat modes. The Fonritian branch of the Artmali Empire appears to have been an expansion, at a time when the Vadeli of Chir and Poto may have been under pressure by the Brithini (prior to the Nidan uprising which turned the tables and established Endernef as the Churkenos Sea dried up when the Neliomi current had been tapped of all its energy by Brithini and Vadeli alike?). The extent of the Seas south of the Spike in the Gods Age is something that the God Learner maps don't seem to have gotten right. While I find it believable that the Churkenos Sea never cut through eastwards to make contact with the Sshorg seas, there is the current which ultimately sank Thinobutu and which established the Marthino Sea. The positions of Ulrana etc. that far from the modern coast of Pamaltela doesn't make any sense if you look at the history of the Thinokans, and doesn't explain the Kumankans at all. But back to Tishamto - how much like Egypt would those Doraddi cities have been? We have little to no idea how centralized the rulership was in urban Doraddi society. Was there a demigod Emperor like the Artmali had? Were there many temple cities, each with their own ruler (more like the Mesopotamian model)? Were there any palaces or other outstanding buildings, or were their cities as strangely egalitarian as the Mohenjo Daro/Harappa culture appears to have been?

While I don't think that you don't boil a lobster accidentally, doing so with shrimps while evaporating salt water seems likely. From there to lobsters it is only a small transfer of knowledge.

Partan was a city-state on Lake Felster which was destroyed in revenge by Tinaros for sinking the fleet the count of Tinaros was on. It is part of the Argin Terror backstory. The ruins of the place are on an island in the eastern part of the lake, halfway between Tortun and Tiskos.

Genert's Garden was not a grain-growing agricultural society The land was a lush savannah with garden-like places, of which the oases are a weak reflection. I doubt that the Tada-Shi had plows. The fruits of the oases appear to be legumes and fruits and nuts from bushes and trees. Maybe some pseudo-cereals from flowering plants, like e.g, buckwheat. Any harvest looking like plains grass will likely have been used as pasture by whatever visiting nomad clan took temporary possession of the oasis. Tada was the God-King of Genert's Garden, a figure pretty similar to Pamalt in the Agimori myths. There would have been temple cities in Tada's realm, perhaps with the monkeys being one of the leading civilizations. We know the remnants of Monkey and Tada-shi architecture - step pyramids like Pimper's Block. If I had to suggest a terrestrial culture for the Tada-shi, I might be tending towards the Maya. With a much easier access to harvest and fertile earth than the elaborate measures the Maya took to use their sub-optimal lands. Probably without maize, but given that some of the original allies of Genert were the Elf Lords (mentioned as combatants in the Eternal Battle), not impossible - HonEel brought a forgotten cereal back, and Earthfall caused a lot of deities and their associated beasts and plants and cultures to be totally or almost forgotten.

A tribal moot provides lots of trading, and marriage feasts go a long way to feed the crowd, too, while being shouldered by the clans involved. For quite a few tribes, the confederated city may work as the staging area for a tribal moot, or rather a convenient mustering ground outside of said city where the city militia practice is held, too. In fact, such miliitia practices may be used to hold a tribal moot. Two birds with one stone. Marriages serve as a means to knit long-term relationships to other clans - usually to friendly clans you would want your daughters to live in, but also to hostile clans to end a conflict. The Coming Storm depicts the Cinsina as something almost like a Triaty in its early stages, with preferred Red Cow marriage partners inside the tribe (except for the Dolutha), and recently added clans taken over from the Culbrea. On the other hand, if you take an old Asrelia priestess and try to track her female offspring through the tribes, you are likely to find a dozen or more clans where these descendants would have moved. (One can assume that high-ranking daughters will be the victim of political and peace-bringing marriages more often than cottar daughters.) After considering this, I have come to the conclusion that when traveling through Sartar and approaching a clan territory, your characters would strive to remember which of the young women they grew up with or which they have seen marrying away since would live here, or to remember what women of one's clan may have been born here, and ask to contact those for an introduction into the clan and when asking for hospitality. Gossip from the birth clan or about a daughter married away is a well-established form of payment for hospitality received. There are cases where young men are married off into other clans. In Sartar this exoandry is a lot less usual than exogamy. Year marriages are a special case. At least one member of a couple undergoing a year marriage will leave a child with another clan. If the other parent later marries into another clan, none of the child's parents will be legally in charge of the child any more. Instead, the grandparents, or uncles and aunts. Visitors to other clans might thus bring news to a child from its parents. Whether that is welcome or not with the guardians of said child is yet another question. A tribal moot will allow such family reunions. A city confederation's great moot with militia training even more so.

I wonder which Ralian polity had the leisure to invade across Pralorela and all the way down to the Noshain River mouth - this is shortly after the destruction of Parthan. Although it could have been a powerful condottiere with something like a bribe to take his business that way rather than one of the Safelstran city states seeking imperial glory. The term "chivalrous" is inherited from RQ2 Companion, which provides most of the Holy Country text Jeff posted there verbatim, with a few systematic changes (like replacing Pharoah with God-King).

Saronil, the first-generation heir of Sartar, was raised at Shaker's Temple, alongside Palashee, and presumably found his wife (mother of Sarotar, Onelisin and Jarolar) there. It is the home of Sorana Tor, avatar of Kero Fin. Shaker's Temple also appears to be somewhat cosmopolitan - Saronil met the dwarves there who taught him secrets of wall-making and tower-building. We know that the dragonewts can use the temple as an entryway into their magical roads.

There is also some beef brewing up between the Telmori and a certain Argrath White Bull, resulting in henceforth the Wolf Runners being something very different from what the counter in Dragon Pass and the history of Sartar would make one expect. The dispersal of the Telmori tribe would open up old tribal territory of the Torkani, and open up the northern borders of the Aranwyth and Kheldon tribes, possibly encroaching on the Sazdorf clan. But, given the number of tribes involved, this may be stuff for the Sartar Book(s) rather than the Starter Box.

Speaking of the Starter Set: Jonstown has lost two confederation tribes, the Dinacoli and the Maboder. The Dinacoli left by their own decision. What did they give up in the city? Do they retain any former possessions in the city? How many Dinacoli tribesfolk remained after the tribe left the confederation? How did this affect their legal status, their housing situation? How many left? The Maboder possessions would likely have fallen to the Lunars, but with the Lunar occupation ended, who controls these now?

How important is tribal identity compared to clan identity? Joining an Orlanth Rex tribe costs the clan a whole lot of sovereignty and of control over resources. Clan temple possessions and tenants become tribal temple possessions and tenants. Giving up such privileges to a commonly held super-authority is hard - just look at where the European Union struggles to develop a common structure. Clans that suffer too many losses get degraded into bloodlines inside another clan. The Coming Storm shows how Maboder exiles who escaped enslavement by Jomes Wulf became a new Red Cow bloodline in recent history. Now, with the Lunar Empire's protection for the veterans turned stead-holders gone, what is going to happen in Wulfsland? Will the Maboder clans reform from those bloodlines, swelled with former Maboder slaves of the Lunars? Will they re-found the Maboder tribe, or will they join the Cinsina? I hope the Jonstown description in the Starter Set will address the status of Wulfsland in the city organizations. Did Jomes Wulf or the Provincial Government inherit the Maboder tribal manors in Jonstown or Boldhome? Who owns them now? What happens to an entity that agreed to become the wyter of a community when that community falls apart? Is the entity killed for good?

The EWF evidently found it useful to establish a Dream Dragon to absorb the sovereignty magic that was to be had from Orgorvale Vingkot's daughter. I can only assume that the dream dragon had a cult and significant amounts of worship while there were dragonspeakers living in those lands, growing those strange crops called velt and kreet, which were reported as their main, very nourishing crops (Middle Sea Empire p.50). When the mass utuma of 1042 stopped all the magics that enabled these crops, worship to the dream dragon probably stopped as well, or became rather meagre propitiation. The people who fled these lands (fleeing famine, or some sixty years later fleeing the unstoppable Invincible Golden Horde) may have remembered their lands as the lands of that dragon rather than Orgorvale and Ulanin, but the people they fled to had memories of the Hyalorings, and local myths about Ulanin, and likely his wife. (Or how else can we explain the Runegate Triarchy establishing themselves northwest of the Colymar clans?) The Coming Storm asserts some ancestral memories, or ancestors remembering things, for the Red Cow clan. Identifying the ruins of Ulaninstead (a tell or settlement hill, some barrows, maybe a few remnants of cyclopean architecture jutting out of the vegetation) doesn't seem to have been that hard. So the myths were kept alive, and at least some descendants made their way back to the Quivin hills. (The Red Cow clan is presented as thrall-taking Axe Orlanthi rather than Hendriki in custom.) Between their exodus and the return lay about 300 years, maybe only 220 or so. That's about the time that has gone into the land since the Cherokee eviction from their ancestral lands. What is their memory of the Cherokee Trail of Tears? And yes, the Cherokee don't preserve any memories about how they entered the southern Appalachian ranges Andrew Jackson and his successor expelled them from. The notes of an early 19th century ethnographer are all that researchers can work from. Fleeing ancestral lands or seeking a new home far away always comes with a certain break in continuity.

Leaving the lake means surviving the 600 feet drop into Snake Pipe Hollow, and then widening the Creek Stream River by 500% to get just enough depth for the dragonship to slither along. This would destroy some of the fordable portions of the River... A city-ship is at least half a hex long, and probably one sixth or so wide. The River is generously depicted as being about a tenth of a hex in width. The magic of a tidal wave usually has the entire sea to support it, still swamping much of the coast as it carries a city-ship out of the deep waters into a prepared drydock, or carrying it out again. Getting one out of the Skyfall Lake might be possible, but carrying it across the drop into Snake Pipe Hollow, and then all the way down to the Choralinthor Bay may use up more water than even the great Engizi River provides. At least if it is to be done in one step. I suspect that the harbor wave used by the Waertagi only works at high tide anyway, so there is a possibility that the semi-undead dragon carcass the city is built upon may come to rest a number of times, waiting for the next tidal cycle to summon a pitiful imitation of a tidal wave from the inland waters. This will be interesting to the denizens of Dragon's Eye, who might take exception at hauling a dragon carcass past their lands... Next interesting waystation will be the Upland Marsh. Does the Tidal Wave magic work in Delecti's realm? Beast Valley will be easy, but then we get to the Dammed Marsh. What will the city-ship do? Enter the way too narrow bad Belintar dug for the New River, and follow the Runnel and Lyksos River to crash into Orlanth's Hill at Nochet? Or find a great magic to cut through or bore through the Lead Hills blocking the passage of the Creek-Stream River, redirecting it into its old bed now upheld by the Marzeel River? Can the Waertagi summon the old Aroka Sea for long enough to flush the city ship from Skyfall Lake to Sog's Ruins? This would be similar to their feats on the Janube Sea (now river) and driving the Listor, Poral and Oronin rivers into Peloria and reaching the Thunder Delta. (They left their city ships at sea for that venture...)

Glorantha is a world where people living in Kethaela or having left Kethaela for Dragon Pass are traumatized by the Dragonkill generations ago, even though the number of humans eaten by dragons is mainly the evil enemies and maybe a few survivors of the defenders left alive by them. The real trauma of the dragonkill to the Orlanthi was that the refugees were not allowed to return to their ancestral lands once the Invincible Golden Horde found its deserved resting place as ashes or in dragon intestines. It is different for the Pelorian side - the Balazaring citadel kings descended from the hero have that decisive moment in their development when their rise to greater cultural heights was rudely interrupted by a greedy raid going completely haywire. Peloria lost a generation of able-bodied men to their greed and revanchism. Similar for those Praxians and Wenelians who entered the Pass in search for easy exotic plunder, but the losses in manpower were much more limited. The Hendriki lost a king and his personal warband in the defense of the Pass - possibly buying time for human refugees against the incoming Golden Horde. There may have been a few survivors to this last stand action that fell prey to dragonfire, but the majority of th Famous or exotic ancestors define people's identity in the real world. There are US Americans who take pride in tribal Amerind ancestry, or who point to the pilgrim fathers they claim to be descended from, or who identify as a European ethnicity they have never lived with, except for their expat community several generations removed. A prominent politician in Germany claims Charlemagne as his ancestor.

Mountain Lion is another word for cougar (puma concolor), a very different breed of cat than panthera leo. Like cheetahs, cougars have closer relations to house cats than to the majority of the large felines of the genus Panthera (lion, tiger, leopard, jaguar, etc.). In Gloranthan terms, cougars are not descended from Basmol. Alynxes may be closer relatives, although there doesn't appear to be a separate feline ancestor other than Fralar, the Hykimi god of carnivores whose descendants include bears and dogs and all the other side lines like mustelidae. It isn't quite clear when Gloranthan taxonomy introduces a common ancestor of a subgroup. Bears and antlered deer have such a shared ancestor as an intermediate step, but the Hykimi ancestors of alynxes, bobcats and lions are as close to one another as they are to the ancestors of weasles, otters, badgers, or hyenas.

This is an interesting version of the Holy Country text in the RQ2 Companion, amended by a few paragraphs from I think the Glorantha Book of the Genertela Box (which were picked up in the Guide). It has a lot less detail than the regional history in the Guide, which inherits quite a few facts from the Stafford Library books. Kotor as a land of cultural exchange is an interesting take, after earlier mentions (e.g. in the Seshnelan Kings List) only presented the region as the battleground (or perhaps staging area) of the magical conflict between the God Learners and the EWF. For two groups apparently that much at odds with each other, one has to wonder why the small stretch of Kotor has so much bigger importance than the rather long border shared in Ralios. That's easily remedied with an earlier paragraph quoted from Jeff's 2nd Age Kethaela section: This gives a certain build-up time for the people inhabiting the ruins of the dragonspeaker cities (falling apart where the dragon magic failed to uphold them) to pack the necessities and move south, out of the way. I wouldn't be surprised if this influx of new refugees flared up another revival of Aventus' foreigner laws in Hendrikiland. Interestingly, it seems that about half of the Quivini immigrants from the south were Hendriki rather than other type clans that moved out of Belintar's new regime. At least at the time of writing up the various types of Orlanthi clans in WF15, maintaining a clan memory of one's origins from before the Kingdom of Orlanthland appears to have been the norm. Given the migration history of the Vandals, I wouldn't be surprised if only half of the people who took over Libya under Geiserich had ancestors from the region of modern Poland. The pre-Dragonkill displacement of population from the Pass is quite similar to the re-settlement of Polish nationals from what would become the Ukraine SSR to the areas abandoned by German nationals following WW2. Many a family with a refugee or forcible resettlement background will know how some (often slightly toxic) memories and desires for what was lost will be inherited by future generations. Refugees as well as other migrants tend to cluster in the places that offer them shelter, and to create quite conservative communities to deal with the change that was brought onto them with the relocation. How many European-descended North Americans will identify by their immigrant ancestors' European homelands despite having hardly any experience of modern life in those places? Back to Glorantha, it is quite possible that the majority of the people in Malkonwal is descended from the Orgorvaltes, Koroltes, Stravuli, Liornvuli, Vestantes etc.. Aventus' Foreigner Laws show clearly that already at the start of the fifth century, there were many immigrants not descended from the Garanvuli (like Hendrik and his followers) but from the more northerly Heortling tribes populating the Heortland Plateau, people who (futilely) fled the Bright Empire after the Battle of Night and Day, and again when the dragonspeakers started to establish themselves on the ruling council of Orlanthland, turning it into the EWF. Quite a few will have opted out of Isgangdrang's persecution of Old Way Traditionalists in the EWF and have chosen to take religious refuge with their cousins under the rule of the Only Old One. The famine of 1042 (exacerbated by the opportunistic raid of the Sairdite/Dara Happan/Carmanian anti-dragon coalition) would have sent waves of refugees south, too, after the draconic crops and livestock deteriorated and became unsustainable when the Dragonspeakers experienced their collective utuma and their magic faded away. The 78 years after the disintegration of the EWF saw a few minor new tribes in the region, and also an expansion of the Hendriki hegemony all the way into what later was known as Old Sartar. Even so, the amount of manpower the Hendriki king took with him to make a stand against the Invincible Golden Horde was minimal, compared to the degree of mobilisation of the Pelorian invaders. The immense Horde must have bared the lands they traversed like locusts, sending yet another wave of desperate last-minute refugees before them, fleeing certain starvation as the only alternative to enslavement or painful death as the northerners were bent on retribution for (2 or 3, at most) centuries of draconic domination (ending a century or two earlier). The Hendriki remained the dominant tribe in Heortland, but I would be surprised if their numbers approached 40% of the total Orlanthi population after the Dragonkill. They had also experienced a significant drain of manpower in the Adustment Wars in Esrolia, probably more so than the non-Hendriki Heortlanders. By these calculations, I would expect about ever sixth clan or bloodline in the non-Hendriki population of Heortland to be descended from Orgorvale and Ulanin, and a higher proportion among the non-Hendriki clans and tribes migrating into the ancient homelands of the Orgorvaltes tribe to move into Quiviniland. Clans with Koroltes or Stravuli ancestry may have ended up as Vendref. Even if personal memories of ancient holdings or deeds may fade away, those same memories reinforced with the desires of the ancestors (whether as nameless group or as individual ancstor spirit guides)