Joerg

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...

Mostal wasn't present at the creation of the iron crucible, only the full array of the eight castes of the Mostali he had made. Iron was made when the World Machine had become dysfunctional, without direct input of the World Machine. The combined eight castes of the True Mostali created the Iron Mostali, a weaker copy of themselves, and the only ones who know how to work iron, and how to wield it in conflicts. They may have been able to create the metal, possibly at the price of Stone's life. Iron Mostali never were True Mostali, but they still are more magical than Clay Mostali of the iron caste. That means that Iron Mostali are already a lot more single-minded than True Mostali like Isidilian or Angarko. They weren't built for peace.

If you ask the LM sage selling that information, the answer would be an unmitigated yes, it would be something new and thus pretty awesome. A less intellectual-minded practitioner might regard much of that lore as window-dressing, but he might use certain hints useful for heroquesting. Lhankor Mhy research might find new ways to reduce spoilage aka scale. But then, this is really Gustbran's terrain. Humakt knows how to be a sword, and how to become one. To make a sword, you have to go for that obscure subcult. Which is Humakt, of course, but just one aspect, and it has to work in concert with Gustbran. No fire, no iron sword.

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. 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.

A: Practice, mostly. While there are Sword Sages, men and women whose swords are as sharp as their quills, most LM initiates are less familiar with what makes a sword good. They can read about balance, and draw diagrams, but in the end much of that will remain academic. Reading material and the floating sparks of a smithy's fire aren't natural cohabitants... reading a metalworking song yourself while pounding away on a piece of metal probably doesn't work. Having an assistent read the words aloud for you to repeat might be an option. But then, a smith's work"song" may be sung as the pattern of the hammer beats, and written work-songs are a mixture of rhythmic patterning and some useful info to memorize. Real World smiths have a "hammer language" for communication between master and wielder(s) of the sledge hammer at the anvil.

The Dominate case is this (from Dominate Humanoid, p.394): The strength of the spell as the active force in the resistance roll, the target's POW the passive force. No mention of the caster's POW. I grant you Drain Soul as a possible exception to this meta-rule, but it is the only exception I found. But then, Drain Soul is spirit combat by a slightly different means, and the spell might do nothing but initiate this soul-vs.-soul-wrestling that builds POW. Drain Soul might be a typical training method between sorcerers to build up their spiritual muscle. The weird "must have at least half as many MP as the subject's POW" might be to induce a minimum POW cost to attempt to dominate entities with low POW. A 2 point Dominate would give you a 20% chance to overcome a victim with 8 POW. Opponents with a POW of 18 or higher need more than half the opponent's POW in MP to have a chance at rolling on the resistance table at all. The extra phrasing is likely only to prevent munchkin from casting the minimal intensity spell repeatedly until it catches. That's what I meant to say. It does work on spirits without awareness, but far from exclusively so.

I do think that this is how it is written, it is how I read this to work. It lacks my statments above expressis verbis, and it might have saved some space in individual spell descriptions if presented as the general way sorcery spells work. The meta-rule for sorcery spells overcoming the resistance of the victims with the points in the spell has not been spelled out as such in the general description of sorcery, which makes my conclusion not necessary the way that the authors have intended sorcery to work. The spell works on spirits that don't have any awareness, so the answer does appear to pop up in the caster's mind. Probably in writing.

"The Chaotic victim" - this might be read as "the victim of a chaotic attack" rather than "the chaotic attacker victimized by this spell". A fun, mostly useless rune spell. Does it use the Moon Rune? It sounds like something that Yanafali serving in the more exotic units of the empire might want to have.

Overcoming resistance: Sorcery doesn't match the caster's POW with that of the spell target. Instead, the intensity of the spell is matched against the target's POW to determine whether the target is affected. Effectively, a sorcerous spell is a magical creature created by the sorcerer that attacks the spell's target, not very different from a Shade or Lune attacking a victim. In this case, it is a magical entity of interrogation, forcing out core secrets of the entity probed that way. The equivalent of a stressful interrogation by police detectives in a mirrored room. The basic cost of 3 MP may work on a bound spirit whose binding overcomes any of its resistance, but it won't work on spirit in the wild. The resistance must be broken first.

There exists a magic for wizards that resembles RQ2 Battle Magic. This is really a BRP topic, as BRP started out as RQ2 Gateway. Drakar och Demoner started out as a gateway RQ2 which looked at the skills divisible by 5%, and IIRC at some point did so, using a D20. Other than that, it introduced spells using the Battle Magic rules (you expend MP, "temporary POW" in RQ2-speak, to power spells). Spell effects are stronger than classic Battle magic. The RQ3 rework of Griffin Mountain presents the battle magic of the Greatway Dwarves as sorcery spells...

Guided Teleport into the Windstop won't work. Most other rune magic may work, but you'd be justified to impose a penalty on the rune magic while the Windstop lasts. Like after a failed inspiration roll. The weather patterns are disrupted all over Glorantha, and it cannot have been Tatius' intention to keep that up as it harmed his own resources back home, too. Letting the worst of the Wind Stop subside probably was part of his plan, and the battle of the Aurochs Hills may have coincided with a new phase in the startup effects of the temple.

Yes, but the role of carbon monoxide in smelting and carbonizing iron is a kind of chemistry that I wouldn't pursue in Glorantha. Metallurgical, I don't think that any Gloranthan humans should be that advanced. Not even the Third Eye Blue. Iron and steel being interchangeable terms: Sure. For precision, I'd have to roll out phase diagrams. The material we know as iron - even wrought iron - is an alloy of pure iron crystallites and cementite crystallite (Fe3C), with a variable amount of cementite. (Al)chemically pure iron has no carbon content at all, but that has few practical applications as its physical properties aren't much better than copper. But all of this is pertinent only to non-Gloranthan iron. If Gloranthan iron can be hardened, it won't be by carbon, but by Death. You don't want to harden iron while you are hammering it, though - you use heat to keep the hardness at bay. But then, the bonesmith uses well dosed amounts of heat when working godsbones, too. I was groaning at the Isengard foundries in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings here... and I agree that it is bad fantasy. True. Your average redsmith can cast a sword from bronze. He might even be able to weld cracks in bronze items, although not back to the original quality of the forged piece. He won't be able to work godsbone in the way that the godsbone qualities are retained. The bonesmith is a specialist in this. True, the redsmiths worship Gustbran just like the bonesmiths do, but they don't know all the secrets, all the work songs. I think that Inginew started out as a bonesmith when he learned the additional secrets of iron. The cult of Humakt adores iron, but it relies on bronze, and on superior, godsbone bronze, to make their oversized blades stable. Real World bronze alloy or brass cannot produce the greatswords used by the cult, only godsbone bronze can. This is why the Orlanthi sword-smiths have an edge over other sword-smiths, and why Orlanthi bonesmiths who have both the access to bronze godsbones and the knowledge and affinity to make them into blades are famed among Western as much as Pelorian warriors. There might be an Ulfberht somewhere in Dragon Pass. Possibly in the Grazelands? A Gustbran bonesmith won't know the secrets of iron, but he will be in an excellent starting position to investigate them, both through work at the anvil and through accessing the myths. A smith's heroquest may take his workshop along to the Other Side. As long as you can avoid the chemistry of it entering Glorantha. It is established that Gloranthan matter is not made up from atoms that follow quantum-mechanical rules, but from runic material. Especially metals. I have made a fairly deep dive into the metallurgy of swords - iron swords mostly, but also covering earlier metalworking - into the course material of the material sciences faculty of Kiel university. It helped that I have a full background in chemistry, but I think even with undergraduate chemistry knowledge one might be able to follow the material. The writing is occasionally whimsical, there are a few imprecisions in the chemistry outside of the author's speciality, and likewise in the archaeology outside of his speciality, but it tells you way more than you ever thought there was to know about the material science of swords. This doesn't make me an expert. I haven't done a single day of smithing in my life, and welded only with electrical arc. But I have done my diploma thesis in crystallography, which means I am trained to understand material from this inside out. What defines a metal? It is (usually) a ductile solid, and it is glossy. It remains glossy when melted (although that is hard to see in most cases because of surface oxidation, a mitigating factor in the glossiness of solid metals, too. Especially lead.) The dislocated electron cloud that makes metals glossy is not a topic that I would bring into Glorantha. Metal just is glossy, nobody asks why. Real World metal is made up from micro-crystals of the constituent compounds (often just the element) which are sintered together, forming irregular connections between the surface of the crystals. That fuzzy, not quite crystalline and glass-like structure that connects the solid cores of regular crystals is what is responsible for the physical properties of metal (other than the electric ones). I don't like to think that crystal structure has any place in Gloranthan metallurgy, though. Gloranthan metal is the essence of ductile hard matter (unless we are talking about the outlier Quicksilver).

The God of the Silver Feet may have been the Kachisti ancestor. Where do I get this from? There is an overall agreement that both Issaries and Lhankor Mhy are from the West, or at the very least found in the west. Revealed Mythologies gives us the six tribes of Danmalastan, with three already well established players - Vadeli (formerly Vyimorni) vs. Brithini (formerly Enjoreli), with the Waertagi going to the seas, but there are three more - the builders (Kadeniti), the writers (Tadeniti), and the Speakers (Kachasti). It isn't a great leap of imagination to connect the Tadeniti with Lhankor Mhy, and from there another small step to compare the Kachasti Speaking Tour with something Issaries would do. The Vadeli love having their slave populations. The sundering of matter and energy in the Tadeniti may have been a special revenge they have had for the ones who invented the flensing of their ancestor Vadel to make Zzabur's Blue Book, Brown Book and Red Book. This is a magic doing with (living?) skin suspiciously close to what Thanatar does half-living heads. But the Vadeli didn't wipe out any of their other slave populations - they were happy to conquer the Kadeniti and the original city of the Malkioni. Of course, those refugee Tadeniti who had mingled with the Kadeniti after that first assault, and many a Kadeniti too will have fled from Zerendel to Brithos. Whether enslaved or assimilated. I posit that the temple cities of e.g. the Telmori were also built and inhabited by wolf people with Kachisti ancestry, and that many a wolf brother outside of those cities had such ancestry, too. On the other hand, this could be little more than a sinister claim that all the people of Western Genertela have Danmalastan ancestry, and are apostates whose claims to their land are inferior to those of the true Malkioni way. It certainly would aid Malkioni magical claims for the land.

There was a copper-using culture in the northern parts of the USA which used native copper nuggets from rich copper deposits for a few millennia. Now real world copper deposits are special because between the oxidic and the anoxic layers there is a layer where the oxidizing sulphide may release native copper, so those nuggets may even have been re-created after a higher deposite had been mined away. The oxidic ores are nice pigments or have been made into jewelry in quite a few early copper adopter cultures in the Real World. Extracting metal from ore is not a necessary element of Gloranthan metallurgy as known to humans. Nuggets are available because godsbones, shattered and ground up, will provide these. This is a postapocalyptic world, in which gods have walked and fallen that could leave footprints fifty miles across. The godsbones would have been commensurate in size. Theoretically, miners might find themselves in a tunnel where they have to remove petrified marrow two men high to discover that they are surrounded by Godsbone. Not quite. I suppose you are referring to harden steel by adding carbon, which does indeed require a very exact control over the quality of the fire, and temperature is just one of several components that have to be right, and that are related. Air flow and carbon content have an decisive impact here. Iron that you harden in a flame becomes steel. If your iron sword is to have areas with different material properties (ductility vs. hardness), you usually weld it together from rods with those properties. But a smith can take a carbon-rich steel and make it softer in an oxygenating flame, or harder in a hot reducing flame. Controlling the fire really is the art here. There is one specialized cult in Glorantha who controls all the hot fires used in manufacture, from baking via pottery to smithing and glass-making, and that is Gustbran, the Bonesmith, who works the bones of any dead gods. Smelting Real World iron with early Iron Age technology will result in a red hot spongy material full of slag and brittle iron. In order to get something in the vicinity of low quality wrought iron, smiths need to keep beating at it, re-heating it periodically, over better than a day. A deposit of dwarven scrap iron or bones on the other hand will have pieces that might be corroded, but which can be heated, hammered individually, then welded together, and pounded and re-heated until you cannot make out any more where the one piece ended and the other began before the welding. Still a lot less pounding than would be necessary to start with smelted iron. Except for iron age China, no Real World ancient culture melted the iron they used. Not even the famous crucible steel from India was liquid in any phase of its production. Smelting steel via the liquid iron is a very modern process. Smelting cast iron results in a very brittle and carbon rich material solidifying in puddles below your smelter which was largely unsuitable for smithing, unless you subjected it to a difficult and highly controlled process of heating it with oxygenating fire to drive out the carbon. The Chinese were the only iron-producing culture of antiquity that used this method. Less purity (more slag etc) just means you need more of the material as your losses will increase and you have to pound away at it much longer. If we are talking about a metal with the melting point of terrestrial wrought iron, that is. You are free to have cast steel swords in your fantasy game, with the metal pouring into open molds with an orange glow. Metallurgically, I have a couple of bad news for you if you do that, though. Iron needs to be heated above white glow to melt, unless heavily alloyed which may lower the melting point to just white glow. Having crucibles that work at this temperature exceeds normal pottery. Terracotta will melt at these conditions, too. Steel and iron are terms that are interchangeable. Iron mostali know many secrets of the metal that will result in products that cannot be reproduced by human blacksmiths without putting their soul (POW) into it, and part of the secret is that Mostali pour their soul into their work all the time. Almost all the Mostali caste-specific spells are bestowment spells, adding POW to a work to make it more stable. All other metals can be cast as liquids. If you have sufficiently intact pieces of godsbone, you will want to avoid that at all cost, however, as you will lose whatever special benefit the bone structure offers. Rods of iron have no such special properties unless they happen to be special dwarf crucible steel, but when worked by a human blacksmith, iron of whichever original quality will end up as slightly coaled up wrought iron. Not even the iron mostali know about alloyed steel (with anything but carbon as part of the wanted alloy). They will know about inferior iron that needs more wrighting (i.e. pounding and heating). Göbekli Tepe smiths produced an almost fist-sized maze head from a huge piece of native copper without resorting to heating. Hammering metal is a proven way to heat metal, and this is the craft secret of Gadblad, the troll smith. A trained smith can light a cigarette with a hammer, an anvil, and a bar of wrought iron with only a few beats of the hammer, producing red heat. A few beats more, and you can cauterize a wound with a nearly white hot piece of iron. A proficient iron smith or bone smith in Glorantha has to be very aware of the heat that he hammers into the metal he is working. Much like what you wrote about black heat iron hammering. Oh, I agree. One major difference other than that it cannot be melted (if it can, it's worthless) is that iron doesn't alloy with any of the other metals, not even with quicksilver, the one metal to dissolve them all. In that regard even Real World iron is a dead metal. But then, godsbone is sufficiently different from molten metal that it qualifies as a material with mythological and practical properties beyond some cast metal of the same type. All metal has mythological and practical properties. All of it is the result of Death, or at least separation, too. Bones of living gods are usually surrounded by godly flesh and unavailable as material for smithies. There are no known gods with iron bones. Humakt never lost a limb in his myths, and he might be the only deity whose bones may have undergone that transformation that happens in ancient clay iron dwarves. While diatribing about this, what about lodestones in Glorantha? Ferromagnetism doesn't really become noticeable in the absence of ferromagnetic metals. We know that the Magnetic Mountain of Jrustela attracted a lot of the debris from the collapse of the spike. Now the Curustus range of Jrustela is not made of Truestone, so it must have been the foothills of the Spike which were tossed there as consequence of the implosion (in case anyone should wonder, every implosion is necessarily followed by an explosion).

Storm Tribe has the HW/HQ1 subcultitis treatment, which has the advantage that each subcult is a heroquest in its own right. Including at least two ram subcults. But that's just Heler among the Orlanthi. Heler is also the maiden in distress for the Nestentos, Aroka and Barntar's Daga quest, and the bride in "Tat and Tol in the clouds" myth of both Orlanth and Yinkin. And then Heler has a bunch of ancient and more recent Sea Tribe myths, like being the only one able to access the dry side of the Earth when it had risen above the waters, like leading the invasion into the sky aiding Lorion and Veldara/Annilla, or being sundered from the Seas by Umath or Vadrus. And Heler just may have something to do with the planet Entekos. Whenever I hear "Tribe X is famous for" I wonder how a bunch of clans all are supposed to tick the same way, and the answer is obviously that they don't, but that there is one clan which is famous, maybe two clans who copy it, and the rest just being your average hill barbarians. If a tribe is famous for two things, then it has two prominent clans. Easy as that. Horse-breeders don't usually use hilltop pastures, so look at one of the valleys in Aranwyth territory for the horse breeder clan. And check the hill dwellers for cloud sheep clans (there might be more than one). Basically, take the Impala for sheep or goats but reduce speed and jump ability. Stats-wise, one herd animal is pretty much like the other. Some are a little heavier or taller, some may have additional abiities, but for sheep just go for the basics, and then add what Anaxial's Roster has to add as abilities for cloud animals like the cloud leopard. Cloudsheep can be demigod beasts, so have really high magic and other stats, or they can be little more than superior sheep. Sheep-raiders are uncommon among the Orlanthi - if you go raiding, you usually go after cattle, goods, or treasures. The cloudsheep might make a lesser treasure. If you want to have red cows like that Cinsina clan, you can either raid that clan, or you can learn their heroquest and do it for yourself. Whether another clan using your heroquest weakens the result of the quest or whether it strengthens it may be up to debate, or to be decided in every case separately.

Since this triggered quite a deviation from the thread about women in Gloranha, I quoted my leading statement here. Of the year so far, you mean? Easy to do, this early in the year... but thanks for the flowers. That would be one way to regard Hsunchen. Basmol "finding a wife" is a bit weird, Basmol is both Basmalt and Basmola, both genders in one. But then Basmol did find a wife, Ifftala, daughter of Seshna Likita, and mother of Pendal, the ancestor of the Pendali dynasty. Where did the other Pendali come from? Possibly lesser siblings of Pendal multiplying, possible lions awakening to their human shape and taking other daughters of the Land? Was Basmol satisfied with just a single female, or did he find lots of lesser wild women of the land to include into his pride? Even if we are talking about less than three thousand Malkioni at the Dawn in Seshnela, their complaint was that they (or at least their soldiers) were badly outnumbered by the Pendali. The "city states" of Frowal and Neleoswal actually had several small cities each, and so did the Pendali "kingdoms". And while the proportion of Malkioni soldiers will have been at best 10%, or about 300, the Pendali brought their lion nobility in much greater man- and lionpower. At the Dawn, any single Pendali kingdom was a strong match for either Malkioni state in military, and thanks to their descent from Seshna through Ifftala, also in magic. So what are your thoughts on the first witnesses of Earthmaker's work? Did this happen just south of the Spike, with the spirits wandering on both east and west of that obstacle, onto the northern continent? That would explain the gap that was filled by Genert's Garden, the Theyalans, and the Pelorians. But both Kachasti and Hykimi (to use the term that describes specifically the western Hsunchen of Genertela) appear as human bodies. The Humanist Logicians wouldn't talk to beasts. And the goddesses of the land appear as human bodies, too, and so do their descendants. Ifftala is a lot like Sorana Tor. The ideas manifested human bodies as part of the Third Action, then underwent Multiplication in the Fourth Action, so at least for the Kachasti element I am fairly confident that their ideas spread on human legs. I will grant you some doubt about the Hykimi, and there is always the method of marrying in to an existing earth people that usually takes on the culture of the groom, whether in ancient Brithos or in Genertela.

Or animals that shift into humans. All of that, at least for those of the Hsunchen who haven't been meddled with (like e.g. the Telmori). Lions have a roughly equal ratio of male to female births AFAIK. Not all males breed, and those who do may lose their patriarch's position after a rather short stint at the top. Few survive that. Plus there are lion prides where the males cooperate and hunt actively, like those prides that have specialized on hunting hippopotami in southern Africa. Not all lions thrive on antelopes and zebras. I have no idea about the European lions social structure, but it may have been a lot closer to that of tigers as there are not that many ways a huge apex predator can survive in a borealic environment, as the Cave Lion did, or in at best Mediterranean conditions like the European lions of the Bronze Age did. Definitely. The Rathori are a lot more gregarious than brown bears are even during salmon season, for instance. The Pralori form significantly armies even though male stags usually are as solitary maintainers of their herd of females as are African lions of their pride. The Telmori form tribes with alpha wolves, a behavior only observed with wolves in captivity, never in the wild (other than young adults sticking with their parents). And quite possibly the animals paired with the humans change their natural behavior, too. Has happened over and over again... the lure of human culture is significant, and the Orlanthi have the most compatible culture west of Genert's wastes. East of the wastes, both the Hsunchen and their relationship with the human culture is different. The Tawari bull riders may be the Hsunchen equivalent to the Enjoreli just like the Galanini look like a Hsunchen equivalent to the Enerali. And I posit that the Pendali are the civilized sibling culture of the real Basmoli, but unlike Enerali and Enjoreli retaining some of the power to shift shape. If only Odayla-like. There are more non-Hsunchen cultures not that different from Hsunchen. Yinkini don't really have shape-shifting any more, they only have partial transformation - but then so do Storm Bulls, and even subcults of Orlanth and Heler. But really, let's discuss this in a different thread.

The Aeolian sect doesn't have a warrior/soldier caste, which means that all the (other three) Aeolian castes fight. That doesn't make their sorcerer warriors or warrior sorcerers men-of-all, as they neither are supposed to command nor to craft or grow food. Given that the sorcerer caste of the Aeolians is endogamous and makes up only about 5% of the 50,000 Esvulari that we know about (distributed over southern Heortland, northern God Forgot (Refuge) and the Choralinthor Bay coast (Nochet, Karse, presumably Rhigos and possibly Adjusted riverine cities in the Esrolian Mesopotamia) and maybe a few in Sartarite and other Heortland cities), we are speaking of a total zzaburi caste population of 2500 individuals, with perhaps slightly more than half of them able to do at least basic sorcery using a single technique and maybe one or two runes. Statistically, the INT 14-15 range population of Aeolian zzaburi if all of them are created with standard RQG random rolling of the dice and liberal use of the Fire Rune as their primary or at least secondary personal rune (they are Aeolians, so maybe the Storm rune as primary rune should prevail) makes half the characters rolling 12 (those with Fire Rune their highest rune) and basically all characters rolling 13 or higher on 2D6+6 capable of learning at least minimal sorcery. There is a 6 in 36 chance to roll a 6 on 2d6, half of which I assume to take Fire for their primary rune as sorcerer caste members, and a cumulative 21 in 36 chance to roll higher, which makes 47 out of 72 Aeolian zzabubri, or rounding to an easier number, two out of three Aeolian zzaburi caste members at least minimally trained sorcerers (with another 15 out of 72 zzaburi caste people with an INT of 13 able to get one rune and one technique in a possible later pursuit of sorcery, rounding (down this time) another fifth of the population with rudimentary sorcery skills who dropped out of the curriculum. (Unless there is a spell "Measure INT" that is cast on potential future sorcerers. It is possible that some people's Glorantha might have such a spell, but for mine I will assume that testing people's intelligence is not an exact science, and that people mentally unable to master a second rune after having mastered the first one (Magic?) and a technique will drop out of the sorcery curriculum with a "bachelor degree" and maybe able to cast "Attract Magic" and "Magic Point Enchantment" if they learned the Command technique or "Neutralize Magic" and "Drain Soul" if they learned the Dispel technique. (Command plus Magic also allows the spell Protective Circle, but I don't think that another sorcerer can use the frame of an allied sorcerer, unless a ritual and/or a mental communication spell enables them to invest into the same spell construct.) Only 10 out of 72 or one in seven Aeolian zzaburi caste member has no hope of ever learning any sorcery. Both the basic Command Magic and Dispel Magic practitioners are useful assistants, whether in the magical laboratory or in conflicts with other magicians. All Aeolian castes fight, but not every caste member fights. Let's suppose that one in three people has enough combat skills to participate in fights. That results in half the full Aeolian sorcerers (one third of the population) and a third of the minimally sorcerously gifted are eligible for warriors who know a little bit of sorcery. Maybe 900 individuals. That leaves about 100 warrior sorcerers of significant prowess in both weapons and sorcery optimized for use in combat (even i it is only of the Attract Magic or Neutralize Magic variety for 10 or 20 of these). Optimized for use in combat means making use of inscriptions to make these spells fire with as minimal delay as possible, and selecting combat effective spells mostly for those who have additional runes at their command. And probably at least 400 Aeolian sorcerers will know either Death or Fertility, enabling them to cast Boon of Kargan Tor and Ward Against Damage, or Accelerate Healing (if possibly at double cost and casting time). Enough to make them a commonly encountered type of Aeolian sorcerer, and a welcome addition to people who enjoy retainers to boost them magically.

I think so. Giving iron to some humans who then use it on aldryami or trolls does makes enough sense that at least some openhandist enclaves or the enclave sitting on an entire mountain of that stuff may pursue. The concept of iron may only have entered Glorantha when Eurmal and his accomplices (Humakt, Nontraya/Vivamort) released it from the Chaosium/Subere's Vault. It is possible that Disorder was the precursor to Death when it came to taking a Golden Age enitity out of the following mythical cycles. The knife used by Bolongo to kill Earthmaker, the red sword from Hell that dismembered Umath beyond recovery, but also Boztakang's power against Chaos may have their origin in that rune. Storm Bull and Zorak Zoran participate in that. But if Disorder had its own metal, we don't know about it. It is possible that those blades were not made of metal at all, but some other material. Stone comes to mind, possibly living Stone.