Joerg

I have seen hot air friteuses that do "deep frying" without using molten high-temperature-resistant oils or fats. A steaker (a very hot infrared source placed in proximity to the meat) should work in zero g, too. So while you may not be able to fry or to use a wok, there are ways to barbecue in zero g. Use of an oven bag or an adapted Roman Pot might be possible, too - basically a sealed container or crucible in which the food (and possibly some atmosphere) is heated for cooking. That spinning ring is possible, but needs to be fairly wide to avoid nausea - at least when moving in and out. It also acts as a huge gyro resisting vector changes of that ship. And you might need at least one counter-rotating weight or gyro to avoid the non-rotational part of the ship being dragged into unwanted rotation.

Yes, AP may or would go up, too. Every "material property" expressed in a game value context can be improved. I don't really like defining yet another thing that player characters cannot do, aka introducing another skill, but I agree that working godsbone should be harder than normal redsmithing. In a way this is a secret knowledge, something that could be expressed as sorcery (something you know), much like alchemy. Should it be an independent skill? Could it be learned without redsmithing? Looking at Gadblad, the smith of the trolls, yes, bonesmithing can be applied without redsmithing or flame control, at least for lead. But then, this could simply be a replacement skill, darksmithing rather than redsmithing. Judging from the Gadblad precedence, you need to have an understanding of the rune of the metal that you are working. RQG offers percentile scores in those runes. These scores are also used in the Enchant Metal spells. So possibly the bonesmith needs to have undergone some quest to gain the knowledge (acquire the sorcerous element or death rune), but then use the lower of his personal score in that element (or Death) and his smithing ability in his attempts to work godsbone. Or maybe working godsbone only works when inspired by that element. Maybe there is a ritual inducing a Hammer Trance. Spending a few rune points for creating a lasting effect in an object should be an appropriate cost. The number of successful crafting rolls may depend on the size (i.e. number) of the pieces of Godsbone the smith uses in the project, plus one for every two or three failures, and a fumble indicates that the godsbone property got lost in the process. Working from a single large piece of godsbone is a lot easier than having to weld smaller pieces together, first. A smith might take extra rolls to retain more durability from the material, in which case the pieces of godsbone would have to be assigned some potency, with the potency defining the upper limit of extra features normal success can retain in the finished piece. All of this is just shooting ideas into the dark, using existing concepts in the game. Feel free to expand, change, or disregard.

Not familiar with these folks. Google shows me nada. 😕 Ifaldor is how it is spelled in the Xeotam dialogue. Born from the union of two Srvuali (single element deities), like Aerlit and Warera. Mortals. (Although Aerlit is technically a Burta already.)

To be honest, I haven't thought of this in monetary manner. As to stats, how do you price increased hit points or the ability to create lighter versions of weapons or pieces of armor than you would get from casting them? Because that's basically what I see as the advantages of having a bonesmith work with godsbones rather than with alloyed cast bronze. Now lighter equipment for the same hit points doesn't work for blades which don't have that fine grading, but might for helmets or cuirasses. More hit points are easy to implement. The more, the more expensive, I guess.

Takenegi himself was accepted through his descent from the Red Goddess. Via Verithurus that's a direct, male lineage. The nobility in the Empire post-Sheng is composed mostly of families who were founded or married into by children (usually daughters) of the Emperor. Any of these may have a short enough heritage to a previous mask. But that's all irrelevant as long as the New Mask still is the same man. It is sort of irregular for the same man to undertake the Ten Tests repeatedly, however. Did Sheng become the Dara Happan Emperor after his release from that Lunar Hell?

This is clashing a bit with my understanding that the Hsunchen are among the earliest adopters/emanation of the Man Rune, although the Four Tribes of Mountain People erecting their camps in the cardinals may be contenders (however much that myth is something that happened). But then, those mountain people would have been demigods anyway. Humanity comes from various sources, according to e.g. Entekosiad. Included are the Made People, like the Dara Happans or the Agimori (both the southern Doraddi and the coastal Thinobutans), but also wildly diverging other origins, like the Suvarian hatching from divine eggs, humans born from trees, or simply later generation demigods with dwindling divinity. The Hsunchen appear to have been the oldest adopters. To me, it looks like the ancestral beast witnesses took on the man shape and had children that way. Humans meeting other humans apparently breed with one another - who would have thought that paleo-genetics would find evidence for interbreeding of quite diverse hominid branches. Scientists have cause to infer a number of ghost populations that we cannot associate with even fragmentary fossil evidence. Such basic urges will be reflected in myth. And hence, there will have been human-shaped Hsunchen interacting with other human-shaped people, and there may have been mixed offspring. Which brings me to verbal or otherwise conceptual communication. Hsunchen beasts and humans of a single origin can exchange concepts and information quite freely. Communication between Hsunchen of different origins may have been harder, possibly limited to pure physicality. At least, before the Kachisti entered the picture. I wonder how much the building of temples and cities can be something understood by the beasts. Living in and with such structures is a different thing, but actually constructing these? There are beasts that burrow, or build nests, and those might be more pre-disposed to start building up structures. The Rathori have actual houses and still retain their beast-features easily. Many other hsunchen might not even have tents or lean-to huts covered with leaves or branches. Nothing about this would stop the human-shaped beasts from erecting totemic markings for their territory. This is a lot less common for migratory species, but the great Serengeti trail of zebras and wildebeest is only weakly conserved in what remains of Genert's Garden. Cattle will have practiced transhumance before they attracted human companions. We know of the reindeer wanderings in northern Fronela, and the sea turtles of the various Sofali have such annual wanderings, too. The Hsunchen humans share a paleolithic material culture, possibly mesolithic. That is pretty regardless of what kinds of beast they are associated with. Stone-knapping, fire-control and the curing of hides are pretty universal. Weapons are eagerly adopted from neighboring peoples if they prove useful for that lifestyle. Monkey see, monkey do. But it doesn't have to be the beasts or the humans who direct the development of the temple cities. The spirits and deities of the place may provide the blueprints. In case of the western Hykimi, the collective name Serpent Beast Brotherhood points at the Earth spirits and deities as potential providers of the know-how for creating edifices at holy places, Then there is the other effect that Godtime "technology" often was less craftmanship and more sympathetic magic. When you built a boat, it was more the general concept of a boat, with a watertight hull only an initial consideration (dugout-technology) but easily overlooked when that basic dugout was epanded to become a hull made of composite material. There will have been Godtime boat constructs that kept out water by defining a boundary and the water not daring to cross that border. The temple cities may have consisted of similarly threadbare technology made functional through will and worship. But when the Kachisti came, these constructs would still tell them that the builders were people, and worth trying to talk to, And once they had a language to convey concepts outside of interaction with their natural environment and their spirits, the Kachisti could have demonstrated and communicated their ways of building learned from the Kadeniti. like the Praxian herd Protectresses. This makes "raid" preceding the counter-raid at Aron sound like something a pastoralist culture would have done. The text in Heortling Mythology makes it clear that they created and used a gap in the mountains that humans (other than the fliers of the Nardain Society) could not use. Someplace north of Arrowmound, east of Dorastor, IMO.

Well, sky was in control of Pamaltela, northern Genertela, the Sky, the Gates of Dawn and the southern oceans, happily coexisting with Chaos nests. Orlanth had been routed into hell, sitting opposite of the Castle of Lead and the assembled host of Darkness that was poised to overrun the surface world soon. Apart from the rift in the center of the world, not too different from the enlightened rule of Nysalor, I suppose.

Yesterday I had my sister's family over for dinner, and her daughters saw and admired the "miniatures". While my sister is decidedly a reluctant board-gamer at best, my brother-in-law is a fairly eager boardgamer, and so is the elder of my two nieces, but thanks to the lure of the miniatures even my younger niece (who has a solid grounding in Harry Potter and Game of Thrones) was impressed with Chaos and was fairly excited to play that faction. The elder niece chose Darkness, my brother-in-law chose Storm, leaving me with Sky. I chose the three players board because Chaos doesn't really use up space. As the game went, the board was completely built over only at two occasions (and the Chaos Rift, which we didn't mend, cleared away three shrines a round). Using a rune, I boosted up my score of 33 to 35 to finish the game before the final Compromise round, as I was head-to-head with Chaos at that time. Thus the game ended with the counting of Victory Points in the fourth round, before resolving either the Chaos Rift or the Compromise. Storm was lagging behind at 26 or so, Darkness finished with 30 points. Chaos actually made it to 35 points, but my remaining runes pushed me one point ahead. Storm and Darknss lagged a little behind because of too few buildings early on, while Chaos had a wealth of Power throughout the game. (Her chaos nest was the last of the three enemy units collected by Darkness, which helped her harvest 8 POW for the nests every POW phase, as lack of space forced the rest of us to re-populate her nests). None of us played our gifts to the best effect. All the family are interested in playing again. Neither of my nieces had experience with risk but enjoyed the fighting. My younger niece compared the game to Settlers of Catan, mostly because it is a family go-to, and she enjoyed all the special abilities and the badassery of a horde of broos. I'll probably get to infect some of my elder nieces' classmates with the game, too. That target group already consists of tabletop roleplayers.

What's that revolt against Sartar? I don't think I've come across texts mentioning that. The Rising of Tarsh is the three player scenario in the Dragon Pass boardgame, with Androgeus serving as superhero and best friend of the Earth Twins, who lead an alliance of dragonewts, beastmen, Grazers. Wintertop and the Dwarf, too. Not in this game are Ethilrist and Cragspider and the minor independents (Puppeteers, Tusk Riders, Sun Domers, the dragons, Hydra, Traveling Stone, Delecti, Hungry Jack, the dinos. The objective is to hold your own capital and one of the other two capitals. (Wintertop, Boldhome, Furthest). Much like the other full games, there is no clear information whether this is a singular occurance or something that happened repeatedly.

Maybe his clergy.

And here I was expecting 30 silvers...

As someone who regularly drops huge word-counts on this and other forums, this happens to me a few times a week. The safer solution is indeed to use an external editor rather than the one provided by the browser in combination with the forum software. Point by point quotations get lost that way (I'm told that's a good thing), but formatting carries over, sometimes better than what the browser editors offer. Another possibility to "back up" your work so far temporarily is ctrl a ctrl c, placing a copy of your text in the copy-paste buffer.

The Red Emperor is Moonson, the male demigod aspect of the Red Goddess that was chosen as the emperor of the lands she had united through conquest and conversion. He is the Emperor of Dara Happa, qualified by undergoing the Ten Tests challenge. All masks of the Red Emperor so far had a previous existence as a human (or human demigod) male before they became emperor. But there is more to the emperor than just that human body. In a way, the Red Emperor is also the wyter of the Empire, and he has the Egi, a group of demigods/ascended people on the moon who contribute to his consciousness and magic. These Egi incarnate aspects of the Red Goddess. The Great Sister is a complement to the Red Emperor, the female demigod aspect of her, and presumably like Moonson contributed by a group of incarnated aspects of the Goddess on the moon. Each new mask of Moonson embodies a different agenda, and brings in a new personality. That doesn't have to mean that the old personalities disappear - unlike Belintar, we don't know where Moonson parks his former identities. Having all of them in your head all the time is bound to drive you deeper into Madness.

As a rule, I state my impressions. When I state something as established fact, I give sources, exposing them to being tested for canonicity. I altered my status line to drive that home. "I don't speak canon." So what is the purpose of having a tribe, then? I do get the impression that forming a tribal wyter is done with stability and unity as the goal. The stability of cooperation between the clans involved, and turning over significant amounts of the clans' capital (cattle, land) to the tribal temple to administer (even when in practice both land and cattle remain under the clan's care. There is nothing to stop two clans to form any form of military, political and/or economic alliance in ways other than a tribe. That depends on your scale, too... Other than the docks of Duck Point (which may or may not be in direct contact with the city), none of the cities in Sartar is in direct contact with a navigable waterway. Boat traffic up the Stream could reach a place near Wilmskirk, but there are (likely) rapids (i.e. portages) on the way, which may make the road from Duck Point the less laborious means of transport. I wonder how much divinations confirm common sense decisions (like building on a spot that doesn't get flooded regularly when the snow melts) and how much they override such considerations. The Sartar dynasty has a gift for urban planning and development. (It might be the wyter, the Flame of Sartar holding the apotheosized founder, guiding the builders). The city walls of all cities have been planted with area to spare inside. There is no known case of a city of Sartar spilling outside of its walls.

What runes do worshipers of Arachne Solara use to cast their rune magic? Beast? Ironhoof has 95% each in Air, Movement (for Orlanth), Earth and Beast. Other AS-worshiping centaurs have Beast and Fertility, Koros has Air, Beast, Fertility, Movement. From this I would deduce that they cast their magic using the Beast rune, as that is the only one all of them have. And what is the point in giving Dappled Light zero rune points in Arachne Solara (p.66)?

An earth elemental can move the soil upward, though - just like a whirlpool will create waves that will lap upward of the water level and engulf items held into it. Unless you cast gnome-to-gargoyle, an earth elemental mustn't lose touch with the soil. This makes them inconvenient to use when you have snow cover or are standing on bedrock. Even if you have a large elemental at your beck, it cannot do much if the soil is a mere inch thick, so the first thing it may do is bring more soil. Stamped earth floors work fine for housing elementals. I guess they are used even for upper story floor cover in Esrolia, with soil-filled shafts somewhere in the house connecting that soil with the soil outside. They can push more soil beneath loose rocks, moving them up just like frost and water will do over the years (at least if you live in areas with glacial loam soils that have rocks of all sizes mixed in, sedimentary soils like river marshes or loess don't have this problem). Collecting rocks from loam soils before and after plowing is a common agricultural activity to these days, and the annual harvest of rocks from a regularly plowed field is about four or five rocks of several kg per the area a man with an ox plow could plow in half a day (2500 square meters, a quarter hectare, and whatever this translates to in obscure imperial measurements).

RQ3 used the current MP for "POW vs. POW" rolls, in spirit combat and in overcoming resistance to magic. While that made gaining a POW experience check a lot harder than the POW vs. POW rolls of RQG, it made magically exhausted super-characters easier to defeat. Basically, no character wanted to use current personal MP in an encounter until absolutely necessary, and magic point matrices were essential while rules for crystals weren't there, and then crystals were re-introduced four years after publication of the rules. This also made characters who had tapped or absorbed many magic points almost invulnerable to magical attacks that needed to overcome the target's MP. Both methods are compromises, neither are balanced in any way to create the (or at least my) narratively most desirable outcome. With the RQ3 rules, entities without a POW stat to generate MP were not a problem, as their MP were used anyway. In case of doubt, a summoner would endow such creatures with MP from the summoning ritual, or the creature would have to steal MP somehow. That makes Spirit Combat or its sorcerous cousin Drain Soul quite effective against such creatures.

Those numbers are the game values of the units in the old Dragon Pass boardgame. The revised rules for the game add the combat values of the first three full units (without brackets around the combat factor) and all the bracketed combat values above the fouth full units of a stack, the leadership bonus if any of the stack (the exclamation mark) for all other units in the stack, and then you roll a D6 to determine which fraction of this value is taken from the top of the enemy stack(s) as casualties. A roll of 1 causes one sixth of that total to be taken away, a roll of six causes the entire sum to be taken away. Only units who are fully covered by that damage are eliminated. Then the surviving defenders strike back, doubling their sum of the combat factor. Magic factor is similar, only the defenders against attacking spirits usually cannot strike back, and those that can don't receive defensive doubling. Chaotic magic is brutal - the negative number in the magic factor is the number of enemy units eliminated upon contact. Then there is exotic magic, each with its own rules. But yes, the super-heroes are unbalanced as hell, and the best way to take an enemy superhero is with Chaos magic or with two superheroes of your own. (The game has three of them in total). Exotic magic allows the superhero to eliminate it, but then the superhero can make her return roll. Spirit magic (using the magic factor of units who have a range factor) doesn't work on superheroes.

I can almost see "elven cloaks" aka LotR being made out of their wool, provided you don't treat it with dyes. They ought to be water-proof (or rather, water-dividing), good for hiding in twilight, even better in mist.

I have no closer stakes in this region, really. If the Tres have mainly small splinter clans, these clans may have staked out enough land for a major clan each, which would explain the much lower population density. But then, they seem to sit between Amad and Tovtaros, so I don't think they had that much open land to claim. My version of common sense, at least. Three clan tribes aka triaties can be sub-entities of other tribes, like the Runegate triaty which now forms a subtribe of the Colymar, or the Tree Brothers triaty among the Malani. With just two clans, the clan who has the king has a subject clan. This isn't balanced or stable. With two non-royal clans, there is a balance. The Ernaldori are an urban clan, which might change the rules somewhat, and part of their number might be the tribal earth temple, an almost independent polity. No idea. Jeff turned up at Kraken this year with reproductions of those re-appeared originals and showed them off.

With the added twist that those savages really only enslaved "our Kachisti brethren". They have usurped the land from our kin. In the case of the Basmoli, that claim might even be somewhat fair. But then, for the Kachisti to go speaking to people, there had to be people wherever they went. If those were beast people, so be it. The Nidan uprising broke Kachisti culture, but it didn't destroy all of the Danmalastan inheritance. The six tribes all started out with their specialities, but the Brithini accumulated all the achievements of the six tribes, and by the time of the Vadeli uprising. Urban life and cultivated rural life with the benefit of building that the Kadeniti had brought to the Western culture had become the Brithini norm. The Polis was the cultural center, where the holy people knew things and distributed blessings based on thatt These temple-cities may very well have been a consequence of meeting the Kachisti, and later absorbing those who escaped the Vadeli. The Malkioni have an uncomfortable way of sub-humanizing the Hykimi. They might encounter the temple cities, (correctly) recognize Kadeniti achievements in city layout and architecture, and conclude (incorrectly) that these were places conquered from Danmalastani. While the Kachasti experience in the beast lands appears to have been without overwhelming hostility to the folk from Danmalastan, the reverse needn't be true - the Blue Meanie sorcerers of Wendaria may well have been Kachisti in the first wave, together with Janubian (and Sweet Sea) Waertagi. The Vadeli then overthrew the Kachisti, and much of YarGan may have been Vadeli evil. The Vingkotlings knew the beast tribes of the Great Western Forest, too, and they claim that these tribes were united under the Enchanter of Seravos, whose command over the Vingkotling lifestock led to the Plundering of Aron. The Plundering of Aron has the Vingkotlings fight elves and strange Face Guardians, but there are no fights against the beast folk in the Plundering of Aron. But then, we know that Dorastor had a thriving civilization right next to that of the Vingkotlings, but we have no Vingkotling stories of interacting with the Feldichi. Strange, isn't it? The western Hykimi don't have any Amuron or Korgatsu any more, do they? Or do the Pralori retain that ancient knowledge? The Pralori hegemony was huge - covering Tanisor as well as Slontos and (now drowned) Wenelia. The western Entruli had nothing to counter this, until the Vathmai brought Lightbringer magics to trump the Pralori shamans. The Dangans appear to have been unaffected by the Pralori. But then they controlled Hrelar Amali, the most holy site between Seshna's Temple and Ezel. The Entruli had no such powerful center of magic until they learned the Theyalan ways. The Hykimi resisted the Theyalan expansion bitterly before they gave in and aligned with the Bright Empire. We get the Battle of Eleven Beasts in eastern Fronela/western Peloria, and we get the Battle of Zebrawood, both decisive defeats of the Hykimi, forcing them to serve the Theyalans. Not that this prior history matters in any way to the Malkioni whose interaction with the Bright Empire is through their beast people allies. The Telmori had two choices - become another Hill Barbarian people, or to play on their strength as lycanthropes and serve as a warrior branch. They chose to serve with their bestial magic, and Nysalor recognized the value of that gift, and gave it his blessing. This brings in the beast-walkers whose ability is described as chaotic (in RQ2). They aren't limited to wolves, but also have bears, pigs and tigers. I don't think that they all arose from the Bright Empire, but from deeper in the Godtime. What is going on here? Bringing in an Aldryama maternal line for the Basmoli is fairly outside of my previous picture. But I wonder whether Aldryama may be an earlier expression for the Lady of the Wild. In post-Luathan Old Seshnela, we have Beastfolk unlike any Hykimi, but like in Beast Valley, and they appear to be as much part of the Children of the Forest as are the ones in the Redwood of Morak's story. Vadela appears to be little different from Kala (the mother of Drona(r) and/AKA Dromal, the goddess of a hill or mountain range in Brithos). While you call them tectonic goddesses and they do have some earth-shaking magic, they also appear to be harvest goddesses. Tanisor is described as grasslands interspersed with savannah. There have always been aldryami forests, and the lands in between offered sufficient forestation to prevent these "absolute forests" from being isolated from one another. Grains are grasses, and grasses thrive on ground that is cleared by some agency - whether fire, grazing, or tectonic turning of the soil. Does the plow replace tectonic turning of the topsoil? Does the upturned soil form earth serpents? Maniria between Esrolia and Ramalia might be understood as Greater Arstola, really. There are the volcano chains, slowly petering out to the west (is C&A's Meetplace in the Wenelian Islands still canonical?), there are Orlanthi tribes with very archaic beast totems, including what must be refugee Basmoli among the Solanthi, and there are the Trader Princes, but all of them are guests. The Entruli appear to have a deeper connection to the land. Kaxtorplose managed to keep out Palangio for decades, and having this focus for resistance in his side proved to be the turning point in Palangio's failed defense against Arkat and his barbarian army. That may rather be the (or at least one) cause why proving that they were the same and interchangeable. Taking a closer look to Hrestol's Saga again, there is a stage of his quest where he awakens to find a crone who offers him one of the apples of Flamal, the fruit of immortality. The nature of this obscure helper is not disclosed, and after managing to take one bite from the apple, Hrestol is elevated to be like the gods, and can continue into Jorestl's Forest, where Ifttala has her lair. After Hrestol killed Ifttala, Seshna appears (claiming much the same powers as Ernalda does) and sends Hrestol's soul to Hell, where it is salvaged by Yingar the Messenger, but not brought into the afterlife to Malkion. That means that the Malkioni culture received definition not so much by the son of Storm and Sea but by Phlia, the Tilnta who gave birth to the upper three castes? I am always willing to discuss Danmalastan and Brithos weirdness, like the fact that there were four sons of Malkion and Phlia, but only three caste avatars, and the remaining brother the husband of Menena, of almost as noble rank as Talar himself. Are you hunting within Time, or are you hunting in the Late Golden Age? You'd be filthy rich if you could bottle that... But yes, Ernalda is as much an umbrella (or in this case, possibly bell skirt) goddess as is Yelm to the Planetary Suns. But she (or at least two the previous cycle incarnations) has been around for longer than Yelm. There are Orlanthi myths about how nubile Asrelia was destined for her half-brother Umath. This makes nubile Ernalda appear about the cycles/time when Umath crashes. Ernalda has been complicit in almost every empire ever. Including Chaos' reign of Terror. Only Nontraya, the jailer-turned-harbinger of Death, was refused her cooperation. That cost him his soul.

The older population numbers I have seen had 500 people per clan and Dragon Pass boardgame hex. Just superimpose the tribal map to the hexmap in the Guide and count the hexes. There should be no tribe with less than three clans. Clans shouldn't be much smaller than 450. The upper limit for clan size would be in the neighborhood of a thousand - more and too many voices are ignored. A clan with slaves could deduct the number of slaves from the critical maximum size. There was a year-long winter with famine and roaming Chaos in between. And S:KoH was written without access to the Master Maps of Dragon Pass.

The Galanini worship of Yelm does of course contradict Uz Lore by giving them the same full-on package of Yelm as the Grazers or the Pentans, including the horse-breaker. I would have expected at least that to be an un-necessary cult among the Galanini who are kin of their horses. No, I was simply worrying that there would have been a source I had overlooked in my own assessment of the situation. None of these texts makes a clear distinction between the shape-shifters and the rider people. All are Galanini in that they are descendants of Galanin, the Sun Horse. Eneral is. But likewise, nowhere is it stated that those who had the magical power to shapeshift into horses were part of the four tribes founded by the sons of Eneral, or descended from him. So, yes, there are different conclusions that we draw from this. It is fairly evident to me that none of the Enerali tribes had any magic to shift into horse-shape. They are riders or charioteers. The Galanini led by their queens are riders, but they have shape-shifting powers. This looks to me like a parallel as in the Pure Horse tribes of Pent and their cattle- and goat-herding majority tribes. The Lofak-Galanin story in KoS is in keeping with God Learner assumptions on Hykimi descent. Galanin is also son of Ehilm. No problem, so he is son of Lofak and Ehilm. Only that is a problem, as Hsunchen don't usually have elemental deities as parents. They tend to have pure descent from Hykim and Mikyh. We don't learn about Galanini shamans, but then even the Pentans have shamans, and they are definitely no Hsunchen. On the other hand, there are no real Hsunchen without their shamans. Real Hsunchen and especially those of the Serpent Brotherhood have them. The Enerali, Enjoreli and to a lesser extent the Pendali are kin of (potential) Hykimi who have adapted to a life that breaks Hsunchen habits and endorses too many of the blessings of civilization to remain true to the beast fathers. In all cases, there appear to be purer shape-shifting kin nearby, or within their culture. Whether the Enerali or Enjoreli are former Hykimi or former Storm pastoralists is hard to say. There are several groups of primarily bull-herding Orlanthi, some of which are converted Hykimi while others are pastoralists who immigrated from the Sacred Mountain with their herds. The Bisosae of Oroninela appear in the same context.

I already replied over there, where it is fit because of the matrilineality and all, and I agree that the question how much the Galanini were Hsunchen is peripheral to Scott's greater new look at the Hykimi. (Which makes my replies to Scott's comments glacially slow as I look up obscure reference etc...)

Great. I thrive on debate, and when it comes in this friendly tone, even more. Uz Lore, of RQ2 Troll Pak, p.14, mentions "horse-worshippers who were untainted by the light of Yelm" from Ralios as mercenaries at Argentium Thri'ile but doesn't call them Galanini or Enerali. I encountered the term Galanini a lot earlier than I first saw the term Enerali. P.373 in the Guide speaks of the clans of the Galanini being united by the resident priest-judges into the Dangan Confederation. But then, Eneral is a son of Galanin, a human son, whose four sons found the four tribes of Safelster in well established fashion. The Galanini as described in the Guide hint at their queens, and it is possible that they are the remnant of followers of a daughter or even sister of Eneral. Looking at the description of Lartuli, p.384, which is the seat of the Galanini Queens, this almost suggests a parallel matrilineal or even matriarchal tribal structure. I don't dispute that the Enerali are descendants of Galanin, and that the Galanini led by their queens are their kin, being descendants of Galanin himself. I do not find any positive evidence that the Galanini who have these Hsunchen-type magics are descendants of Eneral. Can you be certain that the Galanini are part of the Enerali by descent? Do you have a source explicitely saying so? Or is it possible that many Hsunchen-like Galanini also fell prey to the shiny magics the Lightbringers brought and joined their Enerali cousins? Same with me, and I have been at it since I read about the non-Yelm horse people of Ralios in Uz Lore. To me, they are some form of Pure Horse nobility among the majority of those who fell victim to agriculture and Theyalan ways. The cult of Yelorna might be related to Galana, the sun goddess of Nislan. (also p.384) The Theyalans infected all of the Enerali, but IMO not (or only barely) the Galanini. Galin has queens, but is an Enerali city. Helby is an Enerali city, but has a male ruler. Whatever forms of horse god worship there may have been in the Tanier Valley has long since been overwritten by the Seshnegi, and I don't expect to find much of it further up the Nidan River in Fornoar, either. Nislan offers the sun goddess Galana. A possible substitute. Yes. A sort of Yelorna light. No unicorns, but golden horses, a sun goddess (sister of the horse god?), warrior queens. Looking into this matrilineality or matriarchy makes this discussion right at home in this thread...