Joerg

Now that could be said to be trolling.😉

Taking a look at Revealed Mythologies, I stumbled over the first appearance of Ignorance in Vithelan context as a power wielded by Martalak the Sorcerer Sheradpara, p.73. One amusing tidbit here is that Martalak released the power of Ignorance as a naked bird flying towards Vith. (Amusing to me, that is, with me looking into the possible connections between the Ratite Empire and the Kingdom of Ignorance.) The Guide names Sekever (the antigod leader for Kralorela, Teshnos, and possibly Vormain) the Black Sun (p.476). It does so in the history section of the East Isles, though - not the place you would naturally look for information on the Kingdom of Ignorance. So, is Basko identical to Sekever? Is one of them chaotic?

It almost worked out like that conversation by TV, didn't it?

I think I said so...

Who is supposed to get such references

While I played a bit in the neighbrhood of Wilmskirk, I never got around to developing the city itself beyond a couple of kinsmen for my party's rural PCs, and an attempt at writing a short novel about an urban Sartarite from Wilmskirk. Still, here's what I expect to find in less common temples: One thing I expect to find in Wilmskirk is a small Aeolian "ghetto", or at least a place where Aeolian immigrants following the call of Wilms worship. Wilmskirk was the first crafting center in Sartar, and may still be famous for the workmanship of its artisans and crafters. (Jonstown has its library, Duck Point has its river port, and Svenstown has the Praxian trade.) When Sartar founded the place, the next city down the road was Smithstone, a similar crafting center in the southern part of Volsaxar. The road then parted towards Karse (then a defunct overseas port which mainly lived off its fishing and boat-building for the coastal folk, thanks to its forested hinterland) and Jansholm on the north end of the Heortland royal highway. Karse still was a logical port for western goods carried over the Mirrorsea Bay from Rhigos, but Jansholm was as well positioned for this kind of small cargo ship. The Quivini tribes had no such urban center - Clearwine and Runegate were what went for metropole regions in those days. There were established caravan trails, but no real roads. Hardly anybody traded with the ducks for anything but vegetables. Wilmskirk sits atop the junction of both southward trade routes - the Volsaxi caravan route from Smithstone, and the extension of the River route between Duck Point and Nochet (in the time of Sartar a city just recovering from five centuries of absence of international trade - effectively, Nochet was an oversized version of a library and hospital town and a major earth temple with a wildly overgrown burial field slowly conquering formerly inhabited areas when Bruvala of House Norinel came to power.) This means that it has a very central role for the Issaries cult. It also served as the poster city for the other Quivini tribes - look how easily the Balmyr, Sambari, Locaem and Kultain could access crafted goods of higher quality than your clan or even tribal crafters could produce. Some of those through trade, but a lot more from Wilmskirk artisans who followed Wilm's call in Kethaela to seek new opportunities in this fortified outpost in the Kerofinelan wilds. In a way, Wilmskirk was to Dragon Pass what Hedeby was to Viking Scandinavia. And Hedeby made its king rich with all the Scandinavian demand for the products of its craftfolk. If you wanted glass or metal objects for prices that didn't have 20 road tolls calculated in, Hedeby was the place to go. And going via Hedaby to the North Sea you could even avoid the Øresund tribute of the Lodbrok dynasty by staying west of Sealand without braving the deadly west coast of Juteland which had few safe harbors to weather a storm, and lots of shipwrecks to underline the danger. Wilmskirk brought all those urban goodies right into Quiviniland. Maybe it didn't attract the best craft masters from Heortland or Esrolia, but if one was the second or third best master of a craft in his Kethaelan home city, one could become the unrivaled master in Wilmskirk, with a generous start (housing, a plot of land in the city) provided. (Only to realize upon arrival that the runners-up from other cities may have had the same idea, and that while there was no established master of the masters here, there were quite a few people with a chance for that claim.) The later cities of Sartar may have bled away some of these crafters, but by that time locally taught artisans could move into those workshops, keeping the local productivity up. Having a first selection at more exotic material from the south to work with ensured another advantage over artisans in other Sartarite cities. Swenstown might exceed Wilmskirk's reputation in leather working and horn crafting (e.g. combs and superior looms) due to superior access to Praxian materials, and Jonstown might have the advantage in crafts that can profit from the library, but Wilmskirk has the temple to Wilms, patron of the craftsfolk in Sartar. I expect there to be temples to Gustbran and Minlister with sufficient attendance to work as a permanent temple, and a loom temple. There will be a Humakti hiring hall for caravan guards, and probably a Yelmalian one for horse archers in that role, too. There will be a temple to the sun horse with shrines for Redalda and her husband and the animal healer aspect of Ernalda. Orlanth is bound to have a city temple with shrines to his crafter heroes or subcults (especially Orstan the Carpenter), even if there may be a sacred hill outside of the city for confederation-wide services. There is bound to be a sciptorium of Lhankor Mhy, though probably not any significant library. Possibly a satellite of the Derensev Great Library to the south. The river gods might find some worship in the propitiary shrine to Chorms. The Lunar occupation will have brought a Seven Mothers Temple, but it isn't clear whether that could have survived. The Wilmskirk mayor sat on Kallyr's Sartar High Council in the Flesh Man role in 1613, which indicates at least some disagreement with the effects of the Lunar occupation here. The dissolution of the Kultain in 1619 will have affected the land ownership inside the city. I expect the Lunars to have confiscated all Kultain claims to land inside the city. The Firebull rebellion among the Sambari may have had similar consequences, leaving maybe a quarter of the land within the city without any resident of the city who had a title to it, and the tenants who rented those houses from the new Lunar owners in a weird situation. I suppose that the Lunar confiscations were confiscated by the Mayor, for the city, but that may have stirred the avarice of the three tribal kings remaining on the city ring, and that of the guilds.

But do you appreciate to have antagonists and powerful NPC protagonists with plans, including plans already set into action or preparation, and their agendas? That's how I usually design my GMin, and how i try to present antagonists or encounters in scenarios for publication. I have a good idea about the antagonists' motivation, means, and activities up to that point, and then have them act out that way. Presenting a campaign is easiest by outlining the most likely course of events as the "official" timeline. As the author of a scenario or campaign, you can offer advice for alternate outcomes, and possibly alternative entry conditions for the next scenario in the campaign that help deal with unexpected outcomes. The Sartar Rising campaign booklets presented not so much concrete events (although the Battle of Iceland is one such), but it presented potential allies/rivals on the Sartarite side and a selection of antagonists on the Lunar side to give the narrator an idea how she could use these individuals and bands to drive the narrative forward. The Adventure Book with the GM screen and the Smoking Ruins focus on Queen Leika both as a patron and as an antagonist. From what Jeff and Robin had to say about the upcoming Pavis books, the PCs will get to interact with other veterans of Argrath's exploits (both recent ones since Pennel and the Circumnavigation on the side of Harrek) as potential allies or rivals, and the same with "native" leaders of Pavis (including uz and Praxians) Do you prefer a game where the Lunar Empire and its minions act randomly, without a greater plan? There is nothing to stop your GM (or you in that role) to ignore or alter the campaign outline and parts of a scenario. Unless the author of a scenario puts the railroading to an extreme, there are bound to be parts of any published scenario that remain unplayed in a single run-through, and quite possibly some even after several run-throughs if your GM runs the scenario for other groups, too (e.g. at conventions or game clubs). What Kallyr loses is her life, not the battle. Admittedly, it took extra effort of Leika to contain the damage done by the Lunar assassins/magicians to their Prince, but the hastily assembled Sartarite host does succeed in stopping the Tarshite regulars and Lunar magicians, dealing enough damage to the Lunars that they sit back for a couple of seasons, and take a different approach for their next attempt at invasion. Can you save Kallyr's life (e.g. through Divine Intervention)? Not impossible. King of Sartar allows for such an alternative timeline, seeing Kallyr go down against Harrek. If the Sartar campaign is modeled on King of Sartar, I suppose it will allow for ways to return to the main timeline. Argrath of Pavis can still gather the Aldachuri to his cause, marry the Feathered Horse Queen, and attend or even perform the re-lighting of the Flame of Sartar with Kallyr as Prince of Sartar. It is possible that you will have to re-write some of the "fluff text" and maybe postpone a scenario that relies on Kallyr having been killed irrecoverably. The way I approach published scenarios, they are a suggestion to the GM to be used or altered as she sees fit for her game. No planned scenario survives the first contact with the enemy (the player characters) unscathed. The Battle skill determines how your characters fare during the battle, not how your commanders fare during the battle, or how well the enemy commanders perform, or react to your activities. That's a weirdly defeatist attitude. What kind of publication do you want from Chaosium, then? Classical Dungeons? Unrelated problems to be solved by a wandering group of unaligned mercenaries? Tables to roll up encounters rather than a narrative?

Only the dragonewt species is a larval stage of True Dragonhood when it doesn't fall prey to entanglements that lead to magisaurs or dinosaurism. A dragonewt is by definition a transitional stage between egg and True Dragon. The dinosaur reference in the Guide is in the Dragons section rather than in the Dragonewts section. That section mentions successfully ascended dragonewts that participated in Godtime as True Dragons, like Genert's ally "All Eyes Open Except One" who had been born a dragonewt. The wyverns are a devolved expression of the draconic dream that has become a regular specis of the setting. It is possible that dream dragons like the one in the Colymar Adverntures book in the GM Screen package are capable of producing corporeal offspring, too. It isn't clear how, but the Second Council of the Theyalans did create the species of wyverns which are fairly similar in size and mental capacities to the dream dragons I have seen.

I don't think it was. We don't know how exactly Humakt and Eurmal entered the Underworld to take out Death. All we know is that Eurmal and Morty somehow tricked or avoided Bimbaros, the Porter of Hell. In Yelm's realm, the East was associated with Above, and the West with Below (Akuturos vs. Senthoros). The rising power of Dayzatar vs. the sinking power of Lodril. That suggests that these two cardinals were associated with those directions early on. The four jumper stars or planets or however you might want to classify their celestial bodies were active in the Golden Age, as far as I can tell - at least Kalikos in the north was there to push back the sky bowl that was ever so slowly tilting northward after Shargash had tossed Umath into the northern pillar, shattering it. Then there are the Storm Age planets - Black Dendara and Lokarnos, known as two of the three Sky Witches of Doraddi myth, who traveled on what would later be known as the Sun path even though the imperial sun god had only traveled the first half of that circuit. The path was well defined before the Dawn. My question is whether it was already well defined when Yelm stopped the previous cycles of day and night.

That could be the Guide, with dinosaurs descended from dragonewts p.79. Rather than "devolved", the lesser draconic species are all labeled "neotenic" instead.

In a "dream logic" form of questing, such anachronisms don't even have any friction to chafe, but when you start counting the generations of Vingkotlings to determine when a Star Tribe has formed, you have left that dream logic, and the anachronisms do chafe. Harmast's sythesized Westfaring visits locations which shouldn't be around as late in the Greater Darkness as the monomythically accepted departure of Orlanth from the hill of Vingkot Victorious. In that case, this may be pieces from a number of such journeys in various ages, sewn together to bridge gaps caused by chaotic annihilation of Cosmos and memories thereof. The Dara Happans provide the sequential analysis for what is going on in the sky, even assigning years and dates for Godtime events. Applying these to other Godtime events outside of the Dara Happan scope may very well be a fallacy, but there are some sequential forms of the monomyth which can be supported by this. Enjata Mo is KataMoripi aka Black Dendara, known to the Pelandans. Apparently the hell-bound form of Entekos, defining the full Sunpath then shared by Lokarnos (a new entity) aka Chermata, and possibly ignored by Veldara. The Plentonius document that numbers the stars in the sequence of their documentation in the Gray Age by the Starseers of Yuthuppa appears to have disappeared from the current (pdf) volumes of the Stafford Library.

Godtime is cyclical, and yet Godtime entities are usually associated with a certain cycle to be their "home Age". There are a number of glaring anachronisms, though. Vingkot suffers an uncurable Chaos wound in the Battle of Stormfall, several generations after his immolation which he underwent to escape the torture of remaining alive with that pain. Artmal aids Tolat in the Golden Age to overcome Umath before his mother's planet, his birthplace, has even been conceived, let alone risen. Veldara is conceived in Hell, by the dead sun god ("*Bijiif" in Revealed Mythologies) and Enjata Mo (black Dendara in Dara Happa, probably Kendamalar's wife in Doraddi and Artmali myth). Valare Addi pioneers a heroquesting technique named Chronoportation which enables a quester to do such anachronistic insertions from far more recent myths. I wonder whether this turned up as a gift and/or a curse in the Godtime.

I blame the Lightbringers' Quest. According to KoDP and the HQ clan generator process, Elmal was one of the few living deities entering the Gray Age from the Greater Darkness. The new hot thing was the consequence of Orlanth bringing back his enemy, the Evil Emperor (thankfully with authority over the world removed from that title). It wasn't Elmal. Lightfore the planet rose within memory of the Yuthuppan star seers in the Gray Age, as did Shargash. Plentonius calls the Greater Darkness the Dominion of Shargash, a thousand years YS. Towards the end of that, Jenarong aids Lightfore (who had somehow been saddled with Kargzant the star - not planet - from the Greater Darkness) against Shargash, with more than a century left in the "dominion of Shargash" as assigned by Plentonius. Elmal/Antirius became sedentary sun-disk entities for the period after Orlanth slew the Emperor, slowly cooling down and becoming dimmer. Elmal guarding the stead may have been his (sudden?) inability to move around freely. But then, none of the sons of Yelm had been born a dancer or wanderer. Their role in the Perfect Sky was to stand at readiness in the unchanging court of their evil emperor father, according to the Dara Happans. It took Umath's momentum to get them to move. The cult of Yelmalio offers a fairly good package for people going into the templar routine of a long-term mercenary whose regiments may be found on any side of a conflict but the dark one. This isn't exactly an adventuring position, though - templars join for a decade or two, if I remember the info in Pavis correctly. Any adventuring can only take place as part of an official assignment or in the sparse free time a full-time templar receives. Otherwise, this is a cushy position - it comes with a cult-sponsored assistant/lover/disciple, usually a young man, who helps don the armor. The templars accumulate quite a bit of pay with their temple, and assuming they survive their decades of service, they tend to retire wealthy. Their standard of living is that of a well-to-do free man, and while their time requirements may be like those of a priest, their daily life expenses are paid by the temple like for a priest. The Yelmalio horse archer is another archetype, and covered by Yelmalion Sun Dome Templars, too. Possibly the better choice for an adventuring Yelmalian, with the spear and gilt light armor only a backup for their primary duty as skirmisher and (when on party duty) marksman. And not at all what long-time players of Yelmalio under RQ2 expect. But then, the Humakti murder hobo making her daily life expenses drudging away as a caravan guard when not out there hunting undead or treasures guarded by them isn't exactly what RQG provides, either, and that most egregious munchkin device of a mobile temple in the shape of the Wooden Sword is so highly atypical that I wonder what people regard as the typical Humakti.

Does anybody have an explanation why Gramps Mortal's severed soul was drawn to Rausa's gate (and why was that gate and spiral stairway where it was)? What could have been the precedence? Consider the situation. It is the everlasting day of Brighteye Yelm, who sits motionlessly in the sky, or possibly swings back and forth a little as the Sky Dome that has been pushed up from its balanced rest on the Spike by Umath rocks along. Strictly speaking, Yelm has been drifting northward ever since Shargash crashed Umath into the northern (white) pillar. By the time Kalikos pushes back, Yelm may have been long dead. But Yelm hasn't ever moved the slightest bit into the east or the west. The survivors of his eight planetary sons have been on the move ever since Umath made them dance. Reladiva/Jernedea, Shargash and Verithurusa, possibly also Zaytenera. And there are stars on the Sky Dome - silver on gold? They do the rotation dance led by (yet unseen, because hidden above Yelm) Pole Star. We have no idea about the planetary movements in the Golden Age sky after Umath's invasion. And little information on how the planets and moons moved in the Storm Age, and which moving bodies there were. And all that is working from the assumption that the records of the Yuthuppan star seers are a) correct, b) universal, and c) complete. The tale of uz bliss in Wonderhome precludes any previous passage of fire or light entities other than Aether through the nether realms. It doesn't preclude the passage of sky entities, though. There is nothing wrong with reflective bodies passing through the Underworld on a "rise in the east, sink in the west" routine leading them through the sky dome hemisphere and possibly the Underworld sky hemisphere which is its (presumed) counterpiece in the Underworld, and observable at least at the solstices. But then, the precession of the Sky Dome pushes the same stars on the lower rim of the visible sky dome above the surface both in the summer and the winter solstices. If Yelm rises through Lorion on spring equinox, then Lorion will be present in the absolute south in the short summer nights when the lower rim stars make their appearance there, and in the north when the lower rim stars curve up even higher while the sky spills a lot of its liquid fire into the sea south of the Nargan. (Or I am wrong about the direction of the sky dome precession (which may be contrary to its actual nightly rotation), and Lorion dips low on the solstices rather than soaring high.) Anyway, something strong and inescapable drew the souls of the first two victims of True Death onto the Westfaring followed by the descending staircase. This is where Morty's intuition or secret knowledge ties in - Gramps Mortal accuses Morty of being greedy for captive souls. Yelm even puts the fear of the living daylight into the husk that used to be Morty and now is Vivamort. What was this draw, this railway? And how do the undead ignore it? Orlanth's Impests are not too different from a disease. I wonder whether Eurmal stole (or contracted) them from Malia, tamed them for amusement value and then was made to hand them over to Orlanth. Malia may have stumbled over somethiing unique to her diseases - multiplication by infection. A shaman sending a curse doesn't usually aim to introduce a point from which infection spreads but inserts a disease inside a designated victim. Do shamans have access to an array of non-infectious diseases, or has Malia's learning process with Morty led to all diseases to have the potential to become epidemic?

That's why I tried to use scales like the advance of the glacier or the sudden "melt" as the incursion of Chaos from the north annihilated the central axis of the ice sheet. And yes, all of the Ice Age predates the Greater Darkness. The Ice is shattered as a side effect of Zzabur's Great Blast which coincides with/aids the implosion of the Spike and the opening of the Chaos Rift. The Greater Darkness starts with the implosion of the Spike, or locally with one of the battles that brought Chaos a victory to get there (Earthfall). From what I have seen of Six Ages, the glaciers are stil on the advance, so the Greater Darkness hasn't come yet. The Vingkotling tribes have been shown as extremely territorial, with the Vingkotling founders' steads remaining the centers of the Heortling tribes in historical times. There was always some destruction of tribes going on, though.

Is there? Think of German, with common multiple consonants when written in Latin script. German actually has one special character, the ß (looks like a beta, but really is a long or high s ligated with a z in Sütterlin cursive), but really should have more for common ones like st, sch, ch, pf. Much like Greek has special consonants for ps and gs and th. You could argue that phonetic script might be a way that surpasses those limitations, but reading a text in phonetic script is hard even if you have the leisure to pronounce every word. And while it is fairly easy for me to guess at written Italian, Spanish and to a lesser degree Portuguese and Romanian from my knowledge of Latin, if you wrote those languages phonetically rather than with the common root script, mutual intelligibility would drop a lot. But neither Theyalan nor Pelorian are really phonetic scripts applicable to one another. Frankish used to be a cousin language of Saxon, but the language spoken in the Neustrian kingdom of the Franks stopped using Frankish and adopted the vulgate Latin of their gallo-romanic subjects. Thus French has possibly as few Germanic influences as Finnish (a non-indogermanic language). I wonder whether it is possible to write New Pelorian in Theyalan script. While it should be possible to transliterate single words and names, there may be absences of valid transliterations for certain sounds. For comparison, try writing French with just the characters used by English, and no transliterating "sœur" as "soeur" - either use "seur" or "sour". No accents. Ca va? Now imagine that German and Scandinavian continued to use the Futhark rather than Karolingian cursive of Latin script, and your expectations of understanding the written language might meet your results above. That depends whether you allow people to use "silent reading". This is a fairly recent skill, and our modern day habit to read without at least mouthing the words under our breaths would be close to deviltry to the scribes of the past. From my personal experience, understanding the spoken word is a lot harder than understanding the written word, even if both are using near perfect execution. I am not sure what is harder, listening to heavily accented language or having to read cyphers like e.g. my cursive. My real world experience says that having a Latin transcript of a language makes understanding it easier for me. A phonetic transcription of Gaelic usually surprises me when I look at the way words are spelled, with vowels somehow echoed in further syllables that aren't even pronounced. Welsh is almost phonetic once you know the basic rules for how to pronounce certain letters or combinations of letters. A lot more so than English, at least. Once you start fiddling with the script you might as well use numeric encoding rather than letters. Greek letters are somewhat decypherable to me. Cyrillic letters are 80% clear to me, and 20% at best educated guesses. Aramaic: complete guesswork, and numeric encoding may actually make things easier for me. Hiragana and other such syllabic scripts (Egyptian hieroglyphs, Maya hieroglyphs) are completely alien to me. The Mayan custom not to repeat the same glyph for a syllable but to seek the greatest amount of variety for glyphs for basically the same sound might be something common to certain Gloranthan scripts. Pelandan ideograms might be going that way, but I expect Theyalan Elasa script to exhibit similar properties. And then goes on to say that Elasa script has a different vocabulary, relies on context, etc. - even if you were able to draw the "letters", would you be able to write the meanings when what you write is just a kenning of a code phrase? The Elasa script might come across as something similar to Cockney Rhyming Slang. I still think that you need to be a fully educated Lhankor Mhy initiate before you can even begin to understand the meaning behind Elasa script. It is like trying to make sense of old sonnets without any trace of knowledge about classical myth. "Pyramus and Thisbe?" How can one even start to guess at clandestine communication without the mythological background? "Ulfberht made this blade" is comparably easy stuff, made for use of dog-scratchings. Elasan script might use a phrase like "Tinted as the birds of sun-slayer's lost brother" (black) Few people apart from advanced sages have any use for the intricacies of Elasan script in daily life. We all do. A lot of the lore results from people poking at possible holes and then finding explanations. Sometimes by themselves, sometimes by asking the right leading questions of the official creators of the setting. Again, I am inclined to say we all do, even including professional linguists, as there are ten times more languages in the world than there are minutes in a day. Any game system will be a compromise between how the rules work and how the setting works, unless the rules for the setting have been determined by the game. Gloranthan lore has been accumulating in not so systematic ways, and authors for different rules systems have tried to place their preferred system's mark on how the setting is described or developed. My Glorantha still has the Issaries or Communication rune. Harmony and Change are just one approximation of this. I don't use the various subcult symbols much that were presented to us in Thunder Rebels. They may still be used in maps or magical rites (back to the Elasa script, here).

Those came about through the illumination of Nysalor (or Gbaji, as far away from the source as they were). Both Heort and Vogarth Strongman had to deal with the minions of Nontraya, and the greater of these minions weren't easily laid to rest by separating the living from the dead. The Vampire kings of Tanisor were most likely Enerali by ancestry, but touched by Vadeli magic - the magics that had destroyed much of Hrelar Amali at the behest of a Seshnegi king. The Huan-to are vampiric in their abilities, too, but with their distinctive shapes hard to confuse with these undead. The encounter between Vadel's party and the intelligent energy complex (Middle Sea Empire p.5) which left part of Vadel's companions incomplete, bereft of a soul, but still ambulatory may have resulted in something hard to discern from vampires. Vadel went on to study these magics, and mastered them for himself, sharing with the Tadeniti and Zzabur. There is a chance that the devil Morty encountered wasn't even Wakboth but Vadel. Vampires are drainers, so they can have access to magic points even though they cannot produce any themselves. Most other drainers are discorporate. Vivamorti initiates don't suffer the side effects of the Tap spell the Brithini and the Vadeli love to use when drained by their masters. One might wonder whether these initiates have a better deal than the diminutive Brithini assistants in Halkomelem in Akem. That name is right next to Cacodemon and Mal(l)ia, EvilSpirit or TheBadOne. As evocative as some of the Gloranthan names can be, there are others that leave a lot to be desired. Not to mention misspelling that Latin - Sagittus has been seen with two "g" and only one "t", and the "Pharoah" is right next to the Storm Kahns (those latter might have been an intentional homage to Sheman Kahn, but I give that theory about a 50% chance). Having lost his name after exposure to the Devil sounds like part of his punishment. Still in the description of the Arolanit Brithini of the Seshnela chapter, nowadays in the Guide p.407, but a (pretty) identical text was in Genertela Book in the RQ3 box. Yes, the Tanisoran nobility may be a major seed for vampire lineages throughout the territory of the former Bright Empire. The Wastes probably create an impassable barrier, and on the far side, the Huan-to might fulfill the vampire role quite well. But, with the God Learner occupation, vampires may have entered overseas. There isn't much overt evidence for vampire activity in Seshnela or Fronela. But then, neither is there against such activity. I have come to regard the visit of Death in Prax as the presence of the former guardian of Death, who had retained a copy of the power of Humakt. The arrival of Humakt in Prax has been dated to 35 ST, which would make his earlier arrival as the death that Tada hid Eiritha from a bit weird. The encounter between Nontraya and Ernalda fits that imagery, though. Vivamort's backstory has Morty flee from Hell and hide with Malia for a while, who probably learned the secret of death from Morty, and the two of them found out how to pervert that power. Cults Compendium p.277 / Sourcebook p.125: Up to here Morty is a darkness being pretty much like Zorak Zoran, a subordinate Srvuali in the job of a guardian of secrets. Morty goes against his orders and his purpose. Yes, Eurmal was involved, but that doesn't absolve Morty of anything. Releasing death was something Morty wanted, even though none of the three really knew what they had unleashed. One thing I would expect from this origin is a somewhat trollish physiognomy for Morty. So Morty was actually something like a ruler of the place Death came from? This doesn't quite rhyme with Wonderhome being the destination of Bijiif Maggotliege and ruled by Kyger Litor. Both Morty and Humakt became gods of death - Humakt of dealing Death, Morty of receiving the dead. This receiving the dead has some similarity with the role of Nontraya in Esrolia. Funny how neither Eurmal nor Humakt nor Orlanth suffer from any similar curses. Does Nontraya? Or are the curses sent by Yelm one of the last acts of free will before the Compromise sealed him into Time? This rapport between these two spirits of Darkness is something few people have commented on, yet. How was Malia able to offer shelter to Morty? Looking at Malia's early myths, Heortling Mythology has perhaps the most positive description of this goddess: For some reason, Morty and Mallia entangled one another and made the other worse. Stalking the world for power sounds very much like what Nontraya did when he approached Ernalda and Eiritha. To me, this Morty is an entity from the deepest underworld who first learned about the secrets of Death alongside Eurmal, and then sought to use them selfishly for his own gain and power. The cult of Vivamort doesn't dwell much on what Morty did when he stalked the world, but the Tada-shi and the Esrolians have a tale to tell about Nontraya or Death entering their realms. As Morty was a darkness spirit in the deepest levels of Hell, I wonder whether the distinction between theist, sorcerous or animist origins is that important. The Talokan demon may be an alternative for Morty's original form (which definitely did not resemble that of a human). Vivamort gets a rapport with wolves and bats. And retains that with shadows. The one mention in the Guide (p708) lists Nontraya as a Chaos god. I am not sure whether I should agree with that. Not everything bad is chaotic, Heortling belief to the different left aside.

I posit that the Berennethtelli would have formed in the reign of Kodig, which would be around the reign of Urvairinus rather than Manarlarvus. If we identify the Ram People in Dara Happan myths with the Vingkotlings, then the destruction of Elempur was by the united raid of Kodig, Korol, Lastralgor and Jorganos, and the successful defense of Nivorah by Urvairinus was against the Lastragortelli. If we don't identify the Ram People with the Vingkotlings, then there is no way that the Six Ages prehistory results in the Berennethtelli tribe. Urvairinus conquest of the Iron Ram is essential to Manarlavus's doming of Dara Happa. This canon is necessary for the basic assumption of the Nivorah story. With the last of the summer and winter tribes formed before the first star tribes (Forosilvuli and Liornvuli) in the reign of Kodig, this leaves the founding of the Berennethtelli and the Orgovaltes in the reign of Vingkot. Hyaloring Vingkotlings would be an established fact by the time Nivorah is overrun by the glacier. BTW, the identification of Mirin's Cross with the site of Nivorah is presented in the Guide as "Imperial propaganda". Looking at the mention of Reladiva for Jillaro in Anaxial's Roster, I think that Jillaro is a better candidate for Nivorah, also if you want to leave the Black Eel River free of ice while Nivorah is overrun by the glacier. Finally, the Berennethtelli occupy a place in what would become the Provincial Kingdom of Aggar at the Dawn, not Holay. The story of Six Ages takes place in eastern Saird, away from Berennethtelli lands. IMO the Nivorah folk had contact and cultural and cultic exchange with pure horse people Hyaloring riders before the arrival of the glacier in front of Yuthuppa, and had learned riding and other stuff from the pure horse people. They retained their Buserian/Busenari cattle. As long as the primary material from Wyrm's Footnotes 9 or so (Gods of Fire) remains as counting at least as much. I have the game, but I haven't found time to start playing yet. But much like the game King of Dragon Pass didn't result in the Sartar dynasty creating a country that gets wealthy from road-building and trade, I don't expect Six Ages: Ride like the Storm to result in the creation of the Berennethtelli tribe, especially not if the game is on clan level like KoDP is. That means yes to all the local detail the game creates, and no to any changes to the story as presented in the sources other than added detail.

Hyalorings come from wherever Yamsur was worshiped - and that's not Dara Happa or the Oslir Valley. Yamsur and his peoples were lost to history and mostly memory for their participation in the Battle of Earthfall. They were associates of Genert. It is possible that the mention of Yelmalio that turned the migration group of Gash and Gore westward was really Yamsur, allied with those new-fangled Brown Elves that suddenly appear on the maps as if they, too, were underworld spawn taking turns living on the surface world. We know that there were Hyaloring pure horse people in "Saird" (modern Sylila) at the Dawn, and that one of them - Vuranoste - became emperor a few years after the death of Jenarong's son Horse on Table. We also know that he overcame other horse riders - in all likelihood Nivorah-descended ones - in the course of his ascension to emperorhood. We know that Hyaloring horse people - no information whether "pure" or not - married into two of the Vingkotling tribes, the Summer tribe of the Orgovaltes following the example of the Winter Tribe of the Berennethtelli. (Now that in itself sounds a bit like an anachronism.) There is no mention of Kargzant in any of Plentonius' texts on ancient Dara Happa. Instead he has Reladivus (Gods Wall 1-4), the male form of the horse goddess Reladiva, as overseer over Nivorah since Murharzarm's time, and the mutilated, horse-headed underworld goddess Gamara as its nurturer. Other than the proximity of Vuranoste's group to Jillaro, I can find nothing that ties Hyalor, Hippogriff or Hippoi to the city of Nivorah. There is a certain mythic overlap between Gamara losing her arms (GRoY) to Hippogriff losing her wings, but then Gerra is losing her arms, too. (Gerra IV-16 and Gamara IV-18 are separated by Gorgorma on the Gods Wall.) Rashorana completes the "falling from the sky, mutilated" trio on the Gods Wall, less so in the stick figure version of GRoY, but in the Guide's version that was also the base for the colored pieces on the GM screen. Gamara has a halo of eight integral-shaped rays that she shares with Urengerum (III-17, of Elempur), Erissa (II-19) and (not in the stick-figures) Bijiif (IV-24). Given Urengerum's association with Elempur, this might be relevant for info about Saird. Apparently Six Ages treats all horse-related people and all Nivorah-related people as kin. For the purposes of this game, that makes sense, but in my opinion, There is a myth how Zarkosite goat herders encountered Kargzant, and learned to build and drive chariots in what looks like the post-glacial, from which Jenarong and other chariot emperors of Dara Happa stem. Measured with the activities of the Vingkotlings relative to the advance of the ice, the Berennethtelli appear to be in the picture long before the ice comes into their vicinity, in the early Vingkotling Age when Vingkot still was king. While there are people who want to dissociate the attack of the Ram People under Erlandus or Elemalus from the raid of the four sons of Vingkot that preceded the destruction of the Lastralgortelli, there is at least a reflection of events with Urvairinus victory over the Ram People that helped Manarlavus create a dome that withstood the advance of the glacier with the Iron Ram as their bowsprit parting the ice. And - if the merger of the Six Ages viewpoint people with the ram people is meant to lead to the creation of the Berennethtelli, then making a distinction between Ram People and Vingkotlings would be contradictory. The destruction of the Lastragortelli at the start of Kodig's reign ends the era of the formation of summer and winter tribes and starts the star tribe era of the Vingkotlings, leading to the Vingkotling tribes ending on -vuli, led by daughters of Kodig (the Liornvuli) and Korol (the Forosilvuli), both resident on Kordros Island in the heartlands of Tarsh. The Berennethtelli are established by this time, as are the Penentelli, Infithtelli, Vestantes and Orgovaltes. Berennethtelli and Orgovaltes have Hyaloring husband founders. This puts the marriage of Redaylde Vingkotsdaughter with Beren the Rider of the Hyalorings long before the Glacier gathered momentum, and even longer before Nivorah was threatened by it. To me, the secret of riding bled to (some of) the gamari people of or near Nivorah and led to them riding away from the city with their possessions on ox carts significantly after the Hyaloring weddings of the Berennethtelli and Orgovaltes. That makes Elmal a sky god, possibly Yamsur, or the brother of Yamsur and Yelorna, elsewhere named Yelmalio. When did Reladivus become the star/roving planet deity Kargzant? Did Reladivus become Kargzant at all? Was the super-imposition of Kargzant with Reladivus an acknowledgement of the conquest of the Lightfore planet by that star deity? The Sourcebook has Lightfore in the shape of Kargzant descend into the Underworld, and the remaining Sun Disk in the shape of Antirius faded away after having been swallowd by Manarlavus' Dome. In the shape of Elmal, the Sun Disk rested dimly atop Kero Fin, and in shape of Yelmalio Lightfore never entered the Underworld. Dayzatar descended from his perch in the upper sky only once, to rescue Lightfore. This can be tied to Plentonius' dates for the ascent of Kargzant (never acknowledged to have a previous existence in the Anaxial dynasty era) and the re-ascent of Shargash, and their battle in the sky known as the Sun Swirl during Jenarong's reign, weakening the Red Planet. Reladiva and Gamara - planetary daughter and overseer of Nivorah under Murharzarm, and Underworld fallen horse-headed sky goddess and nurturer of the city. There is no way that Reladiva is the daughter of Vingkot, but there is a strong suggestion that she might be Redalda, the horse-loving daughter of Ernalda (without any specified father, may well have been the sun horse). Vinkot's Winter Wife's daughter Redaylde is then an avatar of Redalda. Yamsur was the Charioteer of the Sun, or - according to Wyrm's Footprints p.61 - the general of the Army of Light for Yelm. Or whoever was the owner rather than leader of that army at the Battle of Earth Fall, where the devil slew this son of Yelm. Yamsur appears to be a Hill of Gold quester, he was wounded by Zorak Zoran "aided by many allies" which might translate to Orlanth and Inora (or avatars thereof), prior to his demise at Earthfall. The "who the heck was Lightfore" and the destruction of many memories about Yamsur sort of complement one another. The Tale of the Horse in the original Wyrm's Footnotes article on the Gods of Sky reprinted without direct edits in Wyrm's Footprints other than added side-bars names Hyalor as the descendant of Yamsur. Hippogriff too had been wounded by Zorak Zoran, and in addition by a "daughter of Kero Fin" (Maran Gor rather than Inora) and a son of Umath (Storm Bull rather than Orlanth) in what may have been her own Hill of Gold experience. This is one important piece of the old Gods of Sky article that is missing from the Sourcebook. I wonder why. Yamsur would have been a chariot god. Only his descendant Hyalor instituted horse riding among the solar people. (Eiritha beast riding may have preceded that.) What is Kargzant's presence in the Six Ages context? Is Elmal's role that of Lightfore, or that of the cooling remains of the Sun Disk? /

While I haven't played the game yet, I am aware of the game's thrust, and I trust David Dunham and Robin Laws to create a game dealing with this possible turn of events. Nevertheless, I am rooting for Hyalor from Genert's Garden, son (or at least descendant) of Yamsur who took pity upon the broken remains of once proud Hippogriff and who broke her even further into his servant Hippoi. Now the Nivorah goddess Gamara is also a fallen sky creature whose wings had been clipped off, but there is no evidence for her having ever had a raptor's beak or claws, or appetite for meat. To me, she is an unwinged pegasus. The exiles of Nivorah IMO were all charioteers or walkers, and had no appetite for eating horse meat as their only domesticated herd beast meat. They were from a culture that sacrificed bulls (Buserian - sacrificer of bulls), which suggests that they herded them, and cows, and received most of their sustenance from that. Another aside: the husband of Orgovale Summer is Ulanin the Rider. There is a summer tribe with a long history of horse-riding, too. Beren and his Hyaloring folk came to the Vingkotlings from the north. There is a good chance that Ulanin and his Hyaloring folk came to the Vingkotlings from the east, through the Redwood savannah of Prax which only occasionally saw the herds and two-legs of Storm Bull and Eiritha who roamed the wide lands of Genert's Garden with their founders and protectresses. The people of Prax were sedentary gardeners and lion-hunters led by Tada, and the earth-tribe eastern kin of the Vingkotlings. When the Aroka Flood covered huge tracts of the Praxian savannah, the Tada-Shi of the Sleeping City were separated from the Garden and the roaming Beast Riders by that sea. Eiritha wasn't buried yet, and the waters of the Aroka Sea flowed freely around the Zola Fel river bed and in a huge arch above Dagori Inkarth and eastern Greatway towards the Elf Sea, the biggest remainder of that ancient body of water. As the flood retreated, Vingkot came to Orlanth's court, proved himself among the Thunder Brothers, and became king of the Orlanthi. He wooed Tada's twin daughters and fathered five sons and five daughters on them, which led to the founding of the nine tribes of the Vingkotlings - one royal tribe, three summer tribes and five winter tribes. Around this retreat of the seas, Hyalor must have befriended and transformed Hippoi, and his folk became riders of this former sky creature. The Golden Age was over, resources weren't as plentiful as they used to be, not even in the generous fertility of Genert's Garden, and so the horse riders and the beast riders began a rivalry. As the horse riders were not supported by Eiritha, they moved away from the garden, around the Rockwood Mountains. Redaylde met Beren and his fascinating new type of beast, fell in love with at least one them, and instituted the Foreigner Wedding among the Orlanthi. Her sister Orgoval(t)e Summer did the same with Ulanin. The other three sisters took other illustrous husbands - Goralf Brown, Kastwall Five, and Porscriptor the Cannibal. (He sounds like one of the walkers who may have worshiped Kargzant, and who brought forth so charming Jenarong dynasty emperors like "Eats Women" and "Eater of Flesh".) Some time later, Death (or its former underworld guardian) came into the Praxian savannah and threatened to claim Eiritha, so Tada hid her under the hill range that bears her name and shape. This is how the temple site of the Paps was founded. (The death that came to Prax is unlikely to have been Humakt or Eurmal. There is a possibility that Basmol was the carrier of Death rather than Nontraya, but I prefer the deity afterwards crippled into Vivamort to be the antagonist tricked by Tada. Unlike Telmor, Basmol doesn't have that much of a Death association.)

We do know that the Dara Happan script is alphabetic in nature. It resembles the Futhark in its association of deities and powers starting with those alphabetic characters. We know that ancient Pelandan uses ideograms different from the Dara Happan alphabetic signs listed in the Guide. They are at the very least syllabic in nature, possibly polysyllabic ("Enslib" for instance). We have nothing to indicate this. Instead, the nature of the "encoded" secret message in the Jonstown Compendium excerpts on trolls collected by Minaryth Purple suggest an alphabetic or at the very least syllabic nature of Theyalan script. There are two forms which are learned by lay members of the Knowing God, the Cat Scratchings and the Dog Scratchings. These are good for verbatim recordings of prose and poetry, with a north-south divide for popularity. The third ambiguous script is taught only to initiates of the Knowing God, not to mere lay worshipers. This latter one may be less of a language-oriented and more of a symbol-oriented form. And I suspect that this is the script from which written Auld Wyrmish is branching off. It is even more symbolic than the symbolic third script of the Grey Sages, and may exceed it in ambiguities, too. It would add draconic symbols, possibly linked to draconic urges like the ones leading to dinosaurism in dragonewts. Possibly indications of how to hold and/or fold one's wings while using the language, what or how to belch or exhale.

Other than the Alda-chur temple of Elmal mentioned in WF15, I can find no mention or evidence for any Tarshite tribe (Pelorian Orlanthi speaking tribe in Dragon Pass) having evidence of Elmal worship during the resettlement. Instead, I find evidence of a Yelmalio-temple in Goldedge as part of Arim's Kingdom of Tarsh in its founding phase, two centuries before the activities of Monrogh. And further Yelmalio temples north of the Death Line, see the map of Sun Dome Temples. Vanntar is the only Sun Dome temple site for which I have seen evidence of Elmal worship. Strictly speaking, they never had any contact with the Hendriki, whose greatest extent of influence did just reach into the Far Point, between the Mass Utuma of 1042 and the Dragonkill. (The local Heortlings there were a tributary kingdom of the Hendriki king.) Depending on how much survived of Second Age Alda-chur through the Dragonkill, the Far Place tribes may have found ruins of an Elmal temple with inscriptions spelling the name of the sun disk deity here as Elmal. They might even have switched their golden spearman cult appelation from Tharkantus to Elmal to benefit from the ancient temple spirits. I have no idea whether the Hendriki had significant numbers of worshipers of Elmal, or whether the Elmali south of the Crossline were mostly "foreigners" in the sense of Aventus's laws, either already before the fall of the EWF, or as new immigrants (read refugees) from the downfall of the EWF. There were plenty other Orlanthi than the Hendriki to prefer a friendly god of the Sun Disk over a slave of the Dara Happan hostile sun disk diminished to the Sun Dome and the horse planet. As the EWF lost its leaders in a single night, the countries to the north initiated a vast raid, sending plenty of people already hit hard by the failure of their draconic crops and draconic herds to flee for their survival, and the only direction to flee to was south (unless you count the city of Pavis). This will have affected people from as far north as Holay and Aggar, sending people from Second Age Saird into the lands south of the Crossline. (Everything north of the Crossline had benefitted strongly from the dragon dream, and suffered heavily when it ended abruptly). The advance of the True Golden Horde and its merciless pillaging ("foraging") of the northern Heortlings may have sent more people fleeing for their lives south into the Kingdom of Night before the Dragonkill. Those who remained in the path of that incredibly numerous horde will have had a survival rate below 50%, unless the horde sent back a stream of slaves rather than just slay whoever resisted (didn't part from their last food, all their seed, and all their herds). The genocide the Golden Horde did probably destroyed at least as many lives as were killed by the dragons, if not by direct violence then by starvation and exposure. That's the most recent statement on these tribes. 25 years ago, I was writing a scenario starting in Malani lands, involving Dinacoli raiders and in the end dragonewts near Dragon's Eye, and I confirmed a number of statements with Greg: the Dinacoli and other tribes formed from clans immigrating from north of the Deathline spoke Pelorian Orlanthi (aka Tarshite), and worshiped Yelmalio rather than Elmal. WF15 claims that the Far Point tribes worshiped Elmal, and were among the tribes whose Elmali were converted by the revelation of Monrogh more than three decades before they joined the Kingdom of Sartar. This needn't be true for the Dinacoli, whose tribal sun horse worshipers may have been worshiping the God of the Sun Dome Temples already when they entered the Donalf Flats - their migration was separate from that of the original Far Point tribes. WF15 says so - they were the easternmost march of the Kingdom of Tarsh. Their sun dome worship probably was overseen by the Goldedge Yelmalio temple that appears to have been set up under the Tarsh Twins, Arim's children, or even earlier under Arim himself. The Elmal cults of the Kingdom of Night and those north of the Death Line needn't have been identical. Those in the north had had exposure to the Sun Dome temples since the Bright Empire. In Esrolia, Elmal the Sun Disk is one of the sacred husbands of the earth. Yelmalio of the Sun Dome temples is not. More significantly, they (and all the other Heortling-speaking immigrants to the Pass) had been separated from Sun Dome templars and temples for centuries. Palangio and his phalangites were an evil memory in the Kingdom of Night. The new masters of Vanntar haven't done much to make their southern neighbors reconsider. Tharkantus was the name of Yelmalio in the Second Age, Dara Happan religionists originally of Daysenerus serving as mercenaries for the Council of Orlanthland against the early EWF mystics, then taking a neutral stance as the cult of Orlanth Dragonfriend first entered the Council of Orlanthland in the person of Obduran, then dominated it as Obduran's followers and imitators also achieved seats on that council, and after a while adopting the draconic creed and helping wipe out the Old Day Traditionalists for Isgangdrang. Then, in a miraculous about turn none of their phalanxes could have reproduced, they dropped all draconic trappings as the draconic leaders dropped dead, and became flunkies of Dara Happa, like Balazar. From comments on Griffin Mountain, really. GM was written long before Elmal had entered anybody's Glorantha, and only talks about Yelmalio, the same cult as in the Zola Fel Valley. There is a similarity in the end rhymes of the first two syllables of Kargzant and Tharkantus, but I cannot imagine how a k and a g-z could be phonetically related. Especially if it is Thar-Kantus and Karg-Zant. But even Kar-Gzant provides a labial sound rather than the throaty click of the k. I surmise that Elmal was the friendly Sun Disk in Orlanthland at day, and possibly Lightfore at night. But then, Yelm is the Dara Happan Sun Disk in the day, and in the night Young Yelm retraces his early battles in front of the starry sky. Elempur was the city of the bow, south or upriver of Nivorah. This is the closest any document discussing Antirius comes to pronouncing Elmal, other than naming Elemalus the king of the Vingkotlings in later struggles. Reladivus (the male form of Redalda) appears to be the name that comes from Nivorah, in the discussions on the Copper Tablets by the Dara Happans. That, or Kargzant. Where I have the impression that Kargzant was a walker deity from Garsting that somehow was adopted by charioteers who originated from Nivorah. Elmal is the name of the Hyalorings who joined the Vingkotlings while Vingkot was King, IMO before the Ram People were overcome by Urvairinus and their captured iron god was used to part the advancing glacier north of Yuthuppa. Nivorah was abandoned only when the glacier had advanced onto the top of the Dome that preserved the Tripolis. By that development, the Berennethtelli had long been established, as far as a comparison of the Heortling myths with the advance of the glacier suggests.

Heortland - the land of the Heortlings - used to include southern Saird. The Dragonkill then reduced it to the eastern Sixth of the Holy Country. Hendriki apartness and allegiance to the OOO kept them outside of the EWF's dragon dream, and unlike in Peloria, the traditionalists here didn't rise against the dragons in any threatening ways. But still, the Hendriki shared their lands with four types of foreigners, one of which were non-Hendriki from the Pass (and possibly beyond). Prior to the acceptance of the Orlanth Dragonfriend cultists in the Ring of Orlanthland, the urbanized Heortlings of Orlanthland may well have continued to pay homage to Elmal. Tharkantus was a Sairdite cult, but not a Heortling one.

Maran has always been the dark mother. The one who eats her boy babies, or similar stuff, but a mother nonetheless. She is a giver of fertility for battlegrounds - the bloodier the battle, the better the harvest. Life given for life taken. And that's of course a perfect hanger for Hon-eel's maize rites which work along the same principle. Asrelia is as infertile as TKT. That's what the crone is about. Babs is the maiden, and has no business bearing children, just like Voria doesn't. Maran on the other hand is the mother, and an infertile mother is something unworkable.

Some sort of underworld magic. Kralorela is rife with demons etc. living beneath or even in their cities. While the north has contact with the spawn of Kyger Litor, the rest of the country has its own underworld troubles. These zombies may very well be mildly chaotic. The Kralori appear to have a similar tolerance to low levels of Chaos as do the trolls themselves with their toleration of cave trolls and sea trolls. That's draconic enlightenment for you. I don't see mass creation of zombies as the work of shamans who reconnect a single spirit with its deceased body to create that undead. Too much magical effort for a rather disposable servant if you or your paying customer don't bear a grudge against that former individual. RQ3 had the concept of ghoul spirits possessing dead bodies, and maybe there is a different but similar kind of spirit hungry for living flesh or brains whose hunger can be shut down. Ghouls are a different class of undead, though, and in Kralorela they are created from victims of a huan-to's bite. Their hunger makes them unattractive for this kind of slavery.