Joerg

I don't think that pachyderms trained by the Teshnan fire worshipers are that easily scared by fire. The topology of Teshnos isn't that friendly for any grazing beasts, whether horses or Praxian beasts.

While I agree that both the Enerali and the Enjoreli are likely to be pastoralists rather than hunter-gatherers, and thus culturally not Hykimi/Hsunchen, I am a lot less convinced that they don't share the same ancestors as the shape-changing Hykimi all around them. There is a definite Bullbarian belt stretching from the Ozur Bay at least into Brolia, but I don't see that much evidence for Tawar being responsible for every single moo west of Kahar's Sea of Fog. Modern East Ralios have semi-nomadic cattle herders in Keanos and Saug, converts do Lightbringer ways some time in the Dawn Age, but possibly only later than the Enerali of Hrelar Amali. Would the ancestors of the people in Keanos and Saug have been cattle hykimi? Would they have been a splinter group of the Galanini not belonging to any of the four Enerali tribes? Would they have been immigrants from the Pelorian bull belt coming in through Karia? Possibly in the aftermath of the Battle of Eleven Beasts? Cattle sacrifice in Dara Happa may have only been introduced as the local gazzam faded into extinction. For all we know, the Dara Happan gazzam could have been giant Moas - Rinliddi with its ancient avilry is just around the river bend. Cattle shouldn't have been present prior to Umath's (and possibly Storm Bull's) birth. Elementally, mammals are beasts of Storm. But then, there are exceptions - the earliest humans predated the birth of Umath if the God Learners weren't completely wrong, and the ancestral Hsunchen beasts are claimed to have witnessed the birth of the universe at the deeds of Earthmaker. While the four standard beasts (of the Ancient Beasts Society in Ralios) all are somehow water-related, Otter was a mammal the last time I checked. The absence, then raising of the Nidan Mountains is a milestone in the history of the Hykimi in both Ralios and Fronela. I wonder whether there were two land goddesses before the Vadeli rebellion, or whether the two regions were united under a single goddess. With Seshna, they met a land goddess oriinally from the Enjoreli portion of Danmalastan, but probably uninhabited by any ancient Malkioni prior to the founding of Neleoswal, Frowal and the Arolanit city states (Laurmal et al). I am still somewhat hesitant to posit a rivalry between tectonic and plant goddesses of the land. In Hrestol's Saga Hrestol has a friendly and almost romantic encounter with a plant goddess (daughter of Jorestl, the forest lord of southern Seshneg) on his way to slaying Ifttala Likita, and prior to that he meets a diminutive crone who offers him a bite of one of the apples of Flamal, aka the fruit of Immortality, which elevates his status from mortal to (at least temporary) god-like status. Ifttala apparently doesn't know about this upgrade, or she would have used her dwarf bodyguard against Hrestol rather than daring him to thrust his sword at her, relying on her innate magic to protect herself from this upstart mortal. Both these benefactors of Hrestol are earth entities. In Hrestol's subsequent confrontation with an enraged and grief-struck Seshna, he receives no reply why that greater goddess had done nothing to prevent him from performing is assassination. I wonder whether that crone passing the Apple of Flamal to Hrestol may have been Seshna herself, in a disguise or different guise, compelled by some greater mythic cycles to aid and abet the death of her daughter. Both the great western forest and the bones of the land are what creates the notion of home for the western Hykimi. The Nidan uprising separates the northern Hykimi frm the southern ones. In both places, pastoralism and early agriculture create a people apart, possibly before the arrival of the Kachasti, possible triggered by contact with these Logicians. Seravus the Enchanter knows the secret of communicating with the Hykimi and their beasts, and he extends the magic of that secret to the livestock of the Vingkotlings in the prequel to the Plundering of Aron. This event occurs late enough in the Vingkotling era that the Nidan Uprising ought to be over and done with. There is this "shapechange into beast form" myth of the western hill barbarians in Anaxial's Roster. They are facing an evil sorcerer (or a nation of those). Identification of the evil Logicians remains hard - could have been any out of the Akemites of the Citadel of Brass, the Kachisti allies of Brithos, their Vadeli hostages (later overloards and slave masters), or the riverine Waertagi who create the Janube, Poralistor and Oronin rivers and the Sweet Sea and Lake Oronin. Myths about this are all over Entekosiad and in the Guide description of the origin of Sog City. Note the parallels between the creation of the Citadel of Brass in Sog and the origin of Lake Oronin and Castle Blue in Pelanda. The peoples who retain their Hykimi status past their encoutner with the Bright Empire don't seem to have either hostile or friendly myths about the Enchanter, at least not north of the Nidan range.

I am willing to bet that there are sheep and cattle who could trace their lineage to Orlanth himself, and that's not meant as a joke about sodomy among the hill barbarians (at least not originally). There are a number of myths in which the otherwise humanoid deities took on beast shape, and in all likelihood mingled with other beasts of that shape and produced offspring. Look at the types of clouds myth which has Orlanth fathering the cloud hawks on Heler (as Tarhelera). Dragonewt entanglement is one typical cause for dinosaurism, and there is a good chance that Maran could be an attractive entanglement for certain types of 'newts. It is possible that dinosaurism is endemic to the Dragon Pass population, and virtually unknown to the Kralori 'newts. Or to the Teleosan ones. It is possible that the presence of a strong draconic dream may reduce the dangers of entanglement for the 'newts, which may be why they tolerated the EWF antics for as long as they did. According to Sandy Petersen, any dragonewts still in dragonewt shape are the slackers of their species. This is even more true for the victims of dinosaurism. Dragonewts themselves are the hatchlings from eggs laid by immature dragons (or at least one immature Mother of Many who produced thousands of neotenic offspring). While dragonewts are mostly immortal as long as their egg remains intact, destroying that egg is a way to kill an individual for good, and apparently that happened to thousands of Pelorian 'newts in the build-up to the Dragonkill War. The 'newts in Ralios, the Elder Wilds and Dragon Pass escaped that destruction.

A stranger marked with a huge death rune covering much of his face approaches the Varmandi village and demands "Come forth, Vargast Vargastson of the Vargasting bloodline, and answer for your crimes in a honest one-on-one duel!" More than a dozen Varmandi emerge from the fort.

True, I was a victim to that myself when I was one of three Jörgs in my class in high school - however, out of a pool of more than 10,000 people sending their kids to that high school. Taking the average age pyramid, the 25 year-olds (give and take two years to make it an initiation group) will be about 40 people, males and females, making that 20 males. Sure, there could be two Vargasts or three in that group - although then they would be known by their distinctive nick-names, by which their followers would address them, too. (Even my teachers addressed me as "Baumi"...) What was the name of the fourth son of Vingkot? His (soon defunct) tribe is known as the Lastralgortelli, but his birth name was Janard, not Lastralgor. That's the power of nicknames.

Duplicate post.

There are 450 Varmandi in total. How many 25 year-old Vargasts who are leaders do you expect in that clan?

Also works with calcinated limestone - if you add some oil and a couple of logs above, you can start a fire that way. The run-off is rather caustic, however, and can turn you into soap. Well, precipitated chalk soap, but you wouldn't appreciate the difference much. Another possibility is to use powdered calcinated zeolith. Same effect, less clumping, and lower reconstitution temperatures.

That's a situation similar to that of humans - there are humans whose ancestors were shaped from clay, there are humans whose ancestors were animal spirits, and there are humans whose ancestors were deities or demigods. Yet they all are considered the same species, and interbreed just fine. Maran had furred and feathered (or at least downy) shaker beasts, too. Size (and force of the footsteps) is what matters. They are the trollkin of dinosaurkind, then. But I don't see any scaled or feathered small dinos inhabiting known Glorantha (i.e. the Dragon Pass region). The demibird steeds of the 'newts are the smallest ground-dwelling dino-like critter I know about if you don't count Scout 'newts or their degenerate kin, the magisaurs. (BTW, are the trachodons of the DP boardgame truly dinosaurs, or are they ancient and huge magisaurs?) Only the dinos who have the size advantage over most of their predators are extant in the known parts of Glorantha. True, there are bound to be small, juvenile specimen of the large ones somewhere, but I don't see evidence for any saurians smaller than a demibird other than the magisaurus crested 'newts. The Pteranodons are presented in the Dragon Pass boardgame as an ascended reincarnation of the other types of dino. Basically, a dragon-descended dino can weave a cocoon around itself resembling a dragonewt egg, and emerge from that as a pteranodon. No idea whether there are pteranodons born to pteranodon parents in Dragon Pass - possibly yes. The Dragon Pass rules say this about Triceratops: "The Triceratops resulted from deliberate breeding and mutation of dragonewts and trachodons to form a beast well-suited for combat." Now the statements in that hoary source needn't be 100% canonical any more, but this indicates that cross-species breeding is possible for dinos, at least inside the dragon dream that also creates/enables the nest cities of the dragonewts and emanates from them. Other than the fact that Shaker's Temple is a functioning entry point into the dragonewt road running across it. This suggests a special arrangement between the temple and the Pass 'newts. The EWF only worked because of the shared experiences of the Unity Battle and I Fought We Won which linked all the survivors of the Greater Darkness in Dragon Pass to one another. (The Elder Wilds had a similar but separate all-species bonding, though.) There was a lot of draconic hybridization going on in the core lands of the EWF (as described in Middle Sea Empire), but I don't think that that was the origin of the dinosaur aberration of the Dragon Pass nest. (Are there any dinos on the Kralorelan islands that hold the dragonewt cities there? I don't think there are.) All other dragonewt nests west of the Shan Shan appear to be descended from the Dragon Pass one, except possibly for the Elder Wilds presence of nomadic 'newts. Both the Ralian and the Ryzel nests were transplanted there in historical times, Ryzel under Palangio in the Bright Empire, Ormsland under the EWF. (The Ormsland 'newts do seem to have rebirth abilities, even without their own Inhuman King. But that's another mystery.) There used to be dragonewt nests in Peloria, but those can be explained as resettlement after the Dawn. The prequel to the Dragonkill War eliminated all nests north of the Crossline. But then, Sandy representing the Solar Emperor as a dragon in The Gods War board-game may explain the gazzam used in Murharzarm's empire via the draconic route, although I like the idea of fluffy proto-birds covered in down shuffling along the Dara Happan river valleys better than the Flintstones meeting Mesopotamia. Anything feathered has some sort of sky connection...

Not sure about the process actually used in that product, but many kinds of calcinated (dehydrated) salt will heat up when coming into contact with water again. For presenting this effect I would probably use water-free calcium chloride as that has no toxic or even noxious components. You'll just have to adjust the amount of salt to the amount of heat you want. I don't think I'd want to carry that stuff up the gravity well at current rates (even if rocket stages can be re-used nowadays), but if you find a mineral source outside of our harsh gravity well, there is a lot less reason not to do this. Mars has an overabundance of chlorates, which could be made into chlorides and free oxygen, and the regolith has sufficient amounts of calcium to make this basic chemical. At 0.4 of our planet's gravities, getting that stuff upstairs is a lot easier once you have a base on Mars. Using Pavonis Mons, you could build a railgun to launch stuff into orbit without using any onboard fuel. But back to the critique that frying requires vertical density gradients to work properly. You could have a centrifugal frying pan, with teleoperated spatula etc. - probably a twinned set. I'd hate to do maintenance on that contraption, though. Even when you are using lotus-effect surfaces, the decrepitated hot fat and protein mix is a bitch to deal with. Laminated air flow might be able to control the fallout in addition to the centripetal force. You'll want a maximum of recycling in low-G space cuisine, too - that means effective cleaning of used fats. Distillation and extraction processes in the lab rely on gravity to separate stuff according to density. While centrifuges are a god-sent for accelerating separation of extracts, they are also a pain to operate, even more so if you have no gravity field to weigh your components in. That means your cook as well as your chemist in zero-G will need a robust centrifuge for weighing in stuff, or all such estimates need to be done based on volume. Such centrifuges likely need adjustable weights along their arms to prevent unbalanced mass creating destructive stress on the bearings of the centrifuge (and creating uncontrollable vibrations).

Genes of current populations, or genomes from ancient inhabitants of the region? How do you define Celtic, and how do you define Celtic blood? Irish? Hallstatt? Gallic? Ibero-Celtic? Apparently not Cymric or Aremorican.

Yes, finished the last book recently. Started out as mainly western European urban fantasy, but went on to incorporate lots of other local mythologies, possibly to the breaking point. The series has been completed, with the protagonist worse for the wear. The Tuatha de Danaan remain supporting characters throughout the series, including the Morrigan.

Worn by the Red Goddess?

The Wayback engine has this page/thread, too: http://web.archive.org/web/20190308220019/https://plus.google.com/108191783232173529938/posts/LNgSzzFXs9khttp://web.archive.org/web/20190308220019/https://plus.google.com/108191783232173529938/posts/LNgSzzFXs9k

Childbirth: Satyr children don't eat themselves out of their mothers. Lack of Chaos taint is another one. Physiognomy - Satyrs don't have beast heads, only beast legs and horns.

This might be how a Lascerdan looked. (Testing out my new graphics tablet) (Owes a lot to the Moschops image I posted early in this thread.)

Very little official has been published about the East Isles religions. People in the East Isles usually worship their island deities, but can also worship the deities of the Vithelan pantheon - otherwise, the Haragalan Tallships with their solar lenses would be hard to explain with the one rune spell their island deity offers. The people of Vormain worship their own pantheon of color-coded gods, the Kralori worship dragons and local deities, the Teshnans worship their fire pantheon, or Tolat, so somebody in the east must worship the Vithelan pantheon, and what remains are the East Islanders outside of Vormain. I don't think that her island's deity has been described anywhere. You are in better luck with her half-sister's (and rival's) island god. Tsankht is the pirate god of Vormain, a few archipelagos away. He shouldn't play much of a role this far south.

Sex change magic exists inside the Empire - e.g. Count Moralatap of the Anger in the West Reaches.

Having just binge-watched The Expanse seasons 3 and 4, the Behemoth (the OPA name for the Nauvoo when used as their flag-ship for investigating and ultimately entering the Ring) was spun up the first time in the braking field of the Ringspace. Much of the structure (like the drive cones, the bridge, and other sections) don't rotate and retain zero g. I haven't seen the Behemoth maneuver with the drum spinning. To get the drum spinning, Ashcroft used the same kind of salvage drones the Belters had used to flip the inert ship during their salvage operation. To stop it from spinning likely would use the same technology. But then, The Expanse is talking about spinning up Eros and Ceres, and getting that wrong both in the physics and in its representation on screen. About the only physics errors in the setting, if you can believe the Epstein drive efficiency. Another example for spun habitats are the Earth warships in Babylon 5, and the stations Babylon 4 and Babylon 5 themselves. Those warships stop the rotation of the habitat sections before battle... physics done right.

A (slightly belated) update on the fate of the Uhrwerk Verlag: The insolvency has been overcome, the company still exists, and has managed to fulfill or pass on most of its past obligations, and is tackling new projects. When and whether RuneQuest Glorantha in German may re-surface is yet unknown, though.

There is a way around that: use a controlled spirit and make it cast the spell binding the spirit in the trap. Spirits don't die of old age. Both Dominate and Summon spells in sorcery are active spells. With a strict reading of the rules, a sorcerer should be unable to have a guardian spirit acting independently on his behalf without something like a bargain, and he should never be able to have more than one spirit or other creature under his control at any time. But then Urvantan's Tower shows that this isn't the intended use of these spells. The Humakti spell of "Bind Ghost" doesn't appear to be dependent on the caster being alive. Undead spirit masters are a sort of loophole here, too. Thanatari Mad Head ghosts should definitely outlast the decapitation or other methods of demise of their makers.

Nah, that was just the effect of the pot. Could you please take your fumes elsewhere?

A different approach could be the use of combat remotes that can take that amount of heavy fire. Treat these friendly combat bots like allied spirits or elementals in RQ. It doesn't have to go all the way to Ice Pirates, though.

Where do you think did Marvin the Martian get his helmet from? But the Romans also had another way to prepare food that could be suited for zero-g - they would make pastries not only inside a bread crust, but put the sauce and meat and herbs inside a vessel of unfired clay and heat up that to get a nicely mushy broth with cooked parts inside. Doing these filled bread rolls would be another possibility. Ideally do them bite-sized, so you don't have to worry about the stuff in the interior escaping while biting off a bit. Using a 3D-printer for proteins and carbohydrates and flavor injections should be able to create this as synthesized food, too. The better models will provide texture, while the basic models only create some nutritious (possibly even healthy) but gastronomically bland food.

Maybe it is one 69 without two? (ducks)