Joerg

Not all adventures need to invoke the combat rules or agility skills. Sure, your players of Humakt and Yelmalio initiates will cry "foul play", but they do hog quite a lot of spotlight in a normal session with combat. Ok, let them have a duel.

From this, I take that people who have only the "biologically male" flag activated cannot be Vingans, and that people who have only the "biologically female" flag activated cannot be Nandans. That still leaves the rare cases of people who have both (herm) or neither (ba, to use the terms of Bujold's Vorkosigan Saga) flag active. Either are androgynes, one sort doubly functional without any magic, the other doubly non-functional and requring magic to act reproductively in either role. Then we have the biological and social roles of "father" and "mother". Nandans can become biological mothers under the right (magical) circumstances, and can fill the social role easily. Vingans can take the social role of father or husband easily, but there are no myths of Vinga impregnating another woman. (Why not? Or is it "Not yet"?) Then we have sex-changing magic (looking at but not limited to Eurmal) or nature (Heler). Helering gender can take any social role except for neither. Is there any deity for the neither role? She doesn't have the mother role any more (where high ranking cultists have to sacrifice their baby boys)?

Of the sons of Yelm listed in the Cult Compendium write-up, Golden Bow feels the most like Kargzant, althouh Hastatus and Sagittus probably are Lightfore deities, too. Golden Bow and Sagittus even provide the same rune spell to their father. That write-up probably was produced in preparation for the RQ3 Gods of Glorantha box, and then skipped along with 24 other Rune Owner long cult write-ups for the short "mechanical facts only" version that was printed by AH. Many of the local deity names are still conforming to the Gods of Light nomenclature. We don't see Tolat/Jagrekriand either.

The Pavis Royal Guard moves on as an ace unit of the Sartar Free Army. Zebra Fort is complicated. Bereft of zebras (though not their riders) in the period of the Seventeen Foes of Waha already, the herds get re-vitalized when Dorasar picks up Olgkarth from among the Pol Joni. Then Olgkarth's descendants get driven out of Zebra Fort (and the Rubble) by the Lunars, and replace with Hargran the Dirty, although Cyrilius Hamonius keeps the Pavis Temple in touch with the fort, too. The attack on New Pavis did not include the Rubble, as far as I can make out. It is possible that Hargran (or Cyrilius) sat out the conquest in Zebra Fort (which had been fortified separately, and would have taken a significant force off the main target for conquest), and then offered his services to the victor.

Eurmali like to say this, too, and to them a fart never gets old.

Yes, Biturian's fight was to the death. It took his allied spirit's DI to keep him alive. And of course his opponent did bite it in the end. The other participant who did just the minimum necessary may have been accepting of his divorce, if we assume that this rite was required for the five years after divorce anyway. I am a bit puzzled by the description of that rite, anyway - "five men and women in a circle" - two men and three wives, or five Light Servants who were ordained five years earlier and had to undergo this rite whether they were accepting the divorce or not? The mythic precedence given in the cult description was that Umath caused a coitus interruptus for his parents Aether and Gata. There is a suspicious absence about any marriage of Yelmalio to Ernalda, although we have Elmal's marriage to Redalda, her horse-loving daughter. But that myth appears to be verboten for the Praxian Sun Domers. In Saird, it might be common.

The Goldedge Temple provides a part of the Tarshite regulars. Not all temples escape these stronger ties to kingdom or empire.

I recall seeing a list of the trickster aspects worshiped in the Slontos temple: Missing Lands p.35: Not that this answers any of @None's question in a useful way (as is appropriate in a Trickster thread). Both the Aldryami and the Mostali have an entire subspecies of Tricksters - the sprites, and the gremlins. (And gobblers, too - how could I forget about these?) No idea about the Triolini - too little has been written about them.

And here I thought the adstringent and bleach had done its job... and I tried so much not to spam this thread. But no, the barbarian won't let go. To get back on topic: Red Cow got an ogre problem. Poor clan, to be targeted by such monsters again and again - when and how did they earn that special enmity?

Earth has this as well. Storm simply doesn't grow up to get to the mature and elder stage, the eternal adolescent. Good question. Maintaining their nomad way of life means that they retain their nomad weaponry like bow and lance as major armament. I don't think that the Storm Pentans are in any way Pure Horse folk, they probably are more happily cattle herders and might take as much status out of cattle ownership as they do out of horse ownership. One thing I wonder about since learning more about the Yamnaya culture is how much the Pentan way of life is on the wheel. The historical pure horse tamers of the east of the Pontic Steppe appear to have sedentary riders hunting many and herding some horses. That model doesn't work for the Pentans. The Yamnaya were a folk living out of wagons, or carrying their mobile homes on wagons, drawn by oxen. Pure Horse Pentans obviously have no access to oxen, but might use the chariot harness for some wheeled lifting. But the Hyalorings were riders hating charioteers. I don't think that the tribe that was called to Prax and later became the Grazers brought a single wheeled vehicle to Prax. The Opili tribe on the other hand may have been living out of wagons. The age structure works with any kind of elemental association. It does place another element of stratification into their society, along with inherited nobility, but storm people elsewhere have this concept of nobility by being born into such a household, too. One difference in the Storm Tribes might be that their chiefs don't need the direct male line of descent from Kargzant. I guess it would be a policy decision whether to provide a re-write of the universal cult descriptions in terms of localized names, events and possibly myths of origin. I can understand that the proliferation of Kyger Litor write-ups might better be avoided in Chaosium's future, but on the other hand I see a real market for localized Orlanth write-ups.

Maybe it's a case of "now that that temple wing has my name on it, I probably had better make sure that that enemy leaves that wing standing. And possibly the rest of that temple, too..."

The venerable Nick Brooke had a story on his website about this dead emperor's cock... I am still stuck in the story that Hippoi and Gamara are similar but separate entities, and I am willing to downgrade the ancestress of the Sered horse breed (providing this still exists...) as a carnivorous winged horse without the eagle's claws on the fore-legs or the beak (but a ferocious dentition instead). Part of the reason is the apparent hatred between the Char-un Pure Horse people (who managed to breed a carnivorous stallion and a winged mare) and the hyal-riding Pure Horse Folk of Prax turned into Grazelanders. The Grazeland Goldeneye horses are a separate magical breed. The other reason that I like my Hippoi not from Dara Happa story is that it makes the Horse a creature of Genert's Garden, just not welcome in the Praxian covenant. Perhaps because it stopped eating meat?

Ralian Ehilm was very much a deity without any interference by the Malkioni for centuries. The Zzaburite concept of the False Gods was about runic powers fooling mortals (in the sense of "the Many") worshiping them as something beyond the runic power. For some reason, many of the Ralian deity names coincide with many of the Malkioni names for the runic powers. But that may be later feedback collected by the God Learners, and a set of names different from those known in Brithos.

One of these days you will have to pay the, Bill....

So, is this now a place to comment on things we only noticed now in the text? I was a bit astonished about the age groups assigned to the Backboy, Spearthane, Shield Thane and Sword Thane on p.23. Having 9-12 year old uninitiated kids in a combat environment strikes me as quite un-Orlanthi, even in the Backboy role. Hostile spirits have been part of Gloranthan warfare since the beginning of memory, and they never were that discriminating between combatants and non-combatants. Did you get these years from a mostly unpublished deep source, or does this come from our world's introduction of boys to warfare?

There are very few changes to the status quo that came without causing disorder - the formation of the Unity Council is about the only one I can think of from the cuff. Even the Lightbringer missionaries caused Disorder when they arrived in Entruliland or north of Saird. Eurmal is the Trickster who has a command over Illusion, forever tainting that rune, but that's a very special exception IMO. The original Trickster is Ratslaff, the Celestial Court's Duke of Disorder. Raven has Darkness magic. Hyaena may have Death Magic or even Harmony Magic instead. A trick is a trick. That's disorder. Pamalt tricked the Artmali (who were admittedly acting as assholes at the time). His defense against Desero's Horde (which was repeated by Hon Hoolbiktu against the Six-Legged Empire) was a worthy feat of Disorder, too, at least in my book. And the masterpiece of creating the Necklace which counteracted the destruction of his allies was played on Chaos, which makes it an upstanding action. Yet a use of a trick. Pamalt is notoriously dishonest. He tricked the sun god (Kendamalar?) to cooperating with Nyanka in order to create the Agimori by dishonest means. Or rather, in disorder. A change doesn't have to be a trick. Temporary reality may feel like a trick, and can be used as such, but there is nothing negative to it except that it may fade away. Illusion is a necessary part of the cosmos. I still think that Eurmal should be the heir of Disorder, with Illusion as his personal gift, and Donandar the heir of Illusion.

While some people claim in hindsight that the EWF was a huge trick, the Dragon Dream was a magical effect that took place during the EWF and which altered reality in Kerofinela into a somewhat surreal draconic environment, with geographical features, livestock and even grain taking on draconic aspects and appearance. This effect appears to have been created by common activities of the EWF humans and the dragonewts of the region. What it actually was or did is shrouded in mystery. Those who knew enough about it were terminated in 1042 in a mass utuma that transcended the magic of that project into something draconic that we don't know about. From one day to another, the Dragon's Dream was over, all the stuff affected to it returned to a normal world, and many of the draconic forms ceased to be viable and rotted away. Into this collapse of their magic and economy and bereft of all leaders, the common folk in the EWF became the victim of a joint Carmanian/Dara Happan/Sairdite raid and lost all of the financial means to buy replacement for the food shortage, and their libraries were raided or burnt down. This way, even secondary information on the EWF had become scarce. Little has been published, there are some remarks on the EWF in King of Sartar, there is a travelogue about the cities of the dragonfriends in Missing Lands which probably gives the most coherent contemporary description, and there is some more info in History of the Heortling Peoples and Heortling Mythology. Revealed Mythologies has a few sentences on Godunya meddling with the EWF. One big dragon project was the huge dragon that was to be awakened, with the Oslir providing its spine, the Rockwoods its wings and Choralinthor Bay its maw, the Vent its nostril... Before Greg wrote about Obduran the Flyer, this appears to have been one of the most prominent things that were known about the EWF, along with the story that "God Learners" recovered the secret of Auld Wyrmish near Nochet in 573 or so (on and a half centuries before the God Learners incorporated in Jrustela), and that Vistikos Left-eye started exploring draconic wisdom with his Hunting and Waltzing Bands, an ecstatic movement. The MRQ1 version of the EWF was written with just this information in mind... and failed to grasp what happened in the EWF, or what the Third Council had to do with the ring of Orlanthland. MRQ2 did some rewriting, but while the EWF-related stuff written by LOZ was true to the full set of EWF info provided by Greg, too much based on the very limited EWF info above had gone astray and permeated the other products of the Second Age Glorantha line. Coupled with very disappointing skeletal constructs as result of the Flesh Machine (ironic, isn't it?), too much was at best Gloranthish rather than Gloranthan, so I wouldn't advise anyone to read up on the Dragon Dream in the MRQ stuff even though it is set in that period. To pick up on the thread title again, every experiment that was overcome by resistance will be branded as "evil" and "a trick". Should the Lunar project to overcome Orlanth succeed, I bet a spare copy of RQ3 Sun County that scholars will write about how Orlanth was nothing but a fraud and an evil trickster. Likewise, should there come a more humane supreme sun god, then the aspect Yelm will be branded as an evil trickster who usurped the role of the sun, much like the Dara Happans blame Kargzant and the later Jenarong emperors as bad. "Son of Evil", anyone? Same thing for the Doraddi version of Pamalt once the Veldt has been re-forested. "A trickster impersonating our Earth King!" Or vice versa about the Aldryami version once the last aldryami jungle has been taken down north of the Fense. For the time being, both versions are worshiped and grant magic, much like the draconic and the non-/anti-draconic versions of Orlanth did during the EWF. For another example: The Brithini view Malkion the Sacrifice as a Trickster.

It is the Nysalorean scheme of having a separate magical condition than the rest of the world all over again. Or the Dragon Dream that covered Kerofinela during the EWF. The Glowline effect is the extension of the "natural" effect the Silver Shadow suffers/enjoys from the spill over the Crater Wall, creating the same magical influence of the moon as on the surface of the red orb above the Crater. The Reaching Moon extends this. The effect is to strengthen Lunar magic, not to weaken the mystical powers of the Zolathi. The horse eater works well enough against normal Pentans like e.g. the Opili tribe. Cart before the horse, here - when Kostaddi defected, Yara Aranis returned from the moon to challenge Sheng, who had evidently prepared for her to leave her temple. There are few battles that were fought inside a functional Glowline - Grizzley Peak is the only one fought by the Sartarites, for instance. The earlier battles in support of Palashee were fought while the Reaching Moon temple in Tarsh was deactivated. The Nights of Horror were fought right outside of the Torang temple's circumference, presumably when the Palbar temple had already been deactivated. The Glowline predates the death of Sheng considerably. Her mother is the Goddess (or demon) of the Tormented Death, a prisoner for"outlaws, rebels and captured sylphs" (which sounds like a Hell designed for Gagarth cultists). It isn't quite clear whether the Six-armed Goddess of Saird summoned against Sheng is the Goddess of the Tormented Death or her daughter Yara Aranis, or a version of both.

The only son of Umath with a special relation to alynxes is Orlanth (who also has lions among the Solanthi and bears via Odayla). Humakt is associated with wolves. Storm Bull has no carnivore association at all, but his Praxians enjoy the company of Brother Dog. Vadrus is possibly the least pastoral of the brothers. (Ok, Humakt has no herd beast mentoned at all...) The Wild Hunt (at least in real world myths) traditionally has hounds.

Prior to the Windstop, the Pelaskites of Kethaela may have been a lot more open to the moon rune than their Orlanthi neighbors. Tatius scheme of the New Lunar Temple was a failure to crucial tenets of the Lunar Way, starting with "We All Are Us". It may have gelled with highly illuminated tenets, but it was a failure in winning the new subjects to the Lunar cause. What Tatius was about to instal was a regime similar to that of Sheng Seleris or the Spolites in Peloria. In a Glorantha where the Dragonrise quest is a failure, the activated New Lunar Temple would draw the Empire into a self-destruction that will make the Unholy Trio seem to be sane and well-reasoned.

You might get away with this in other settings, but over here you first have to endure the lectures why your idea of Scandinavian or Celtic types aren't...

It has become a shorthand for "I don't think you are approaching this canonically, but keep on talking, maybe I can re-align your ideas with my understanding of canon". This does come across as a grognard wording... Think of it as a protective spell against the gift-bringers of the Church of Canon. They tend to be grognards, and they need a language they can understand. Basically, there are a lot of grognards about, and they stem from different periods of sentimental memories. There are those who never forgave Chaosium that there was a newer edition than RQ2, there are grognards for the time when APA-Zines were the outlet for minutiae, there are grognards for the RQ3-Renaissance and the Fanzine culture accompanying it, there are grognards for the shared creativity that stemmed from the RQ-Daily and the successor Digests (raises hand here), there are grognards for the explosion of new deity names and subcults that ramped up in the nineties and erupted in Thunder Rebels subsequent HW/HQ1 products, etc. And rather than throwing out curmudgeonly rants every time, these grognards calm themselves with this four rune mantra - -Truth- -Storm- -Mastery- -Beast- It never was meant to bite. It was (and is) meant to bridle. The mantra is a coping mechanism. The dilemma that every IP holder for a fictional setting has is that the fans will want a) that all "facts" that they learned remain unshakeably true, b) that their hard won own conclusions from the facts remain unshaken, and c) that there is new material for them to peruse without harming a) or b). There are settings that have a slightly better track record for a) than Glorantha, and b) is a hopeless endeavor for the publisher as there will be opposing views among the fans. Point c) is the hard one - the bridle on the creativity of the producers of content. There is a form of community grognardism, too - the defense of fanon, wide-spread agreement on fan conclusions that were not measured against the collection of "facts" by the IP-holder. Now here is a problem that exists for Glorantha. There is no single well accessible collection of all the "facts" and sources for Glorantha. Jeff may hold the accumulated paper trail of official Gloranthan design in his vault in Berlin, and a huge load of digital data, but he has to dive into various sources for checking facts. Greg himself had accumulated some systematic development notes, but there were times when the (only) master copy for a place like Sartar or Tarsh had gone AWOL, and new material could not hold its ground against this lost access to canon. Then there are earlier starts at fiction or world-building which were later found to be not quite consistent with the development of the world. Ethilrist's mention of the Western Jungle is a very good example of this, as is the map of the Lunar Empire which has a central crater almost as wide as the coast line between Seshnela and Kralorela. Just because a source is no longer deemed canonical doesn't mean that its entire content has become "post-canonical" - that fallacy of e.g. the Glorantha Wikia is a huge waste. Salvaging does not feel very creative. Salvaging stuff into canon becomes problematic when the source is "stuff by Greg Stafford and the main author who pushed his pet theory of the week in that fanzine article" (or worse, Hero Wars or HQ1 official release). There have been a number of incidents where the dizzy heights of being main author or editor in chief of a crucial production have gone off on courses which were never intended. And as others would reference those sources for further input, the discrepancies multiply. The lack of time to do research and fact checking that the Mongoose RQ authors were subject to led to a presentation of Glorantha that varied very much already in its foundational documents. Some Hero Wars and HQ1 products suffered from injections of ego. Then there was a multitude of "false friends" (used in linguistics to describe words in another language that sound like something from your own, but have a quite different meaning), especially the entire "Malkioni Church" and "Medieval Malkionism" stuff. One tragic case for this is Jamie Revell's excellent work on "The Book of Glorious Joy" and "Kingdom of the Flame Sword", relying on the terminology that included "knight" and "church" and the look and feel of RQ3 Genertela Box for Loskalm and Tanisor ("Seshnela"). The latest victim is "we don't work derived from this licensed property which was placed in the Chaosium Glorantha campaign here as canonical any more". Details from the Chaosium campaign had "leaked" into the fanon, and had been picked up by creative enthusiasts. Chaosium did have the license to publish those settings at the time, creating a different legal situation from now (more than thirty years later), so it was quite natural for fans of Chaosium to trust the Chaosium sources as near-canonical. A similar victim are public cooperations of fans creating shared detail from their campaigns, influencing one another. And occasionally entering canon. Freeform games and myths share a few traits - they create intensive memories, and they include a lot of silliness. Freeforms have a history of influencing many peoples' Glorantha by planting memories from freeforming experiences, using the background of those freeform characters and their networking to enrichen peoples' pen-and-paper games, or subsequent freeforms. The Gloranthan freeforms have influenced a lot of games - especially when details were shared via the internet. Using those fan-created version of a networked background synchronized quite a few Glorantha campaigns. Thus we find names from Monty Python sketches blown up to near canonicity in shared fan background. And grognardism based on this. It was this community which held the Glorantha hobby alive throughout the years of no official gaming content. YG<M/W>V was meant to honor those communally exchanged and propagated creative works. I can understand that this kind of grognardism may grate if one doesn't have any sentimental ties to those periods in the real world history of Glorantha. If RQG or HQG or 13G is your first contact with the setting, you probably couldn't care less about decades-old fan-created material. And I guess by the time Jeff may pass on the standard to a future chief creative director, those experiences may be forgotten for good. For now, there are grognards about. With cherished memories (and cash to throw at the new offerings of Gloranthan goodness). Some of them may allow you to feed or pet them.

I beg to differ. If a deity's position is based on selfish behavior at the cost of others, that is a sign of disorder. If that leads to a new world order, the trick is still on-going. Yes, this is a fairly broad strike. And I am not saying that worshipers of Yelm or Orlanth are tricksters. I am saying that these gods have a Trickster aspect, and one that a Trickster cultist may have access to, somewhere. Possibly quite epic stuff - a Yelm Trickster might be able to create a Sunstop. In all likelihood at the price of an infernal web manifesting and tieing that Trickster to the Sun Disk for as long as Time continues, or at the price of being slain as the spell ends. The spell may have only a local effect, as it changes the nature of Time, and those outside of the affected area may remain unaware of that spell. Or to demonstrate the weakness of the new way. It is possible that successful rulers can amputate that Trickster, to be plagued by that piece of themselves as an external threat. In case of Mikaday, this might be how Sekever or his minions came into being. But it may just be an on-going trick, possibly accidentally frozen by the Compromise, possibly backfiring against the Trickster's evil plan. "Holy shit, this actually works? Now how do I get out of this? Help!"

Rootless PCs won't have much opportunity to profit from the economy rules or possibly even from the holy days rune point recovery rules unless they bought themselves into a local temple holding appropriate rites. But then, that's the benefit of being rootless hobos.

Andins are an Underworld (Sortum...) race come to the light of day. Presumably humanoid, with grotesque heads. Threatening dentistry and protruding or extra sets of toothed mandibles optional. But then, this applies to all underworld creatures depicted so far, including the Dara Happan hell lords and that one-shot underworld invaders in the Hero Wars Narrators Book scenario. But then, they (or just some of them) might just as well look and move like the Skeksis race from Jim Henson's "The Dark Crystal". There is no reason to assume that all Andins follow the same body or dentistry plan - there may well be tribes with quite distinct features, if you wish there to be. Some may even be attractive (at least until they open their mouths). One thing the Andins don't appear to be is matriarchal. But then, Zorak Zoran and Argan Argar are probably the two troll cults with the most human interaction. We do have imagery for the Huan-to (RQG-Bestiary) and the Gorgers (RQ3 Glorantha Bestiary), two antigod races coming from the same or a very similar source. The Gorgers do look like another type of lean trolls, the Huan-to certainly less so, but then their description has been quite different from uz, too.