Joerg

Depends what you mean by "neither role"? A mythical role that is completely asexual - probably to the utter frustration of the Trickster in his Seductress aspect. While Humakt comes close, the consistent use of the male pronoun suggests that somewhere there dangles another kind of sword. Apart from the Orlanth and to a lesser degree Lhankor Mhy, the Lightbringers aren't very gendered. Eurmal seduces just about any encounter he feels like, whether the Underworld guardian Sinjota or the son of the Only Old One. The Issaries roles Harst, Garzeen and Goldentongue are presented as male, and only Etyries is presented as female. Garzeen even is sent on an impossible groom quest (which he apparently fails to complete, being the middle son). Chalana is the mother of Arroin. But their roles in society are open to either reproductive sex aspect and any gender. Any gender is different from neutral gender. I was wondering about that, hence my question. There must be such a myth and such a role, since the biological sex and the gender exists in Glorantha. I myth, therefore I am.

I wouldn't say "cannot", and instead say "mostly not". After all, Jeff said "Orlanthi would understand most Vinga cultists as "biological female"" (emphasis mine). Yes. There is no mention whether and how a hermaphrodite or a (born) neuter can join either Vinga or Nandan, or identify as their gender. Are there any temples to VInga? Maybe there is an all-(biologically)female warband with a Storm temple of their own somewhere in Glorantha, but I have no idea where to look for it. Not in Kheldon or Colymar lands despite their Vingan queens. A Nandan on a revenge trip might die her hair red. But that is approaching a Shakespeare actor (male, of course) playing a female character posing as her brother persuaded to wear drag. It takes a very attentive audience to keep track of this... Quests, interactions with Eurmal. Possibly an involuntary biological sex change or exchange halfway into the quest... But like I said, too many flips and flops and the point of being Vingan will be gone with the wind. In that case, the player should choose a biologically female character and munchkin away. The character may still grow her own moustache.

The same Yelmalian that finally bit it cut down or hacked apart two victims before turning his attention to Biturian. I don't think those two "happened to die". Biturian returned from the doorstep of death by the sacrifice of his ally windwhistler. But he may just have been a little over-enthusiastic in a friendly bout? A Yelmalian using a fire elemental? Yes, the cult description n Cult of Prax gives Light Priests access to small and medium salamanders. I'm baffled.

Are you commenting on the Pavis Survivors tribe out in the chaparral, or are you addressing the semi-sedenary lords of Zebra Fort here? I would never have assumed that a military unit carries along all the unique breeding stock of their mounts. While they are likely to have a herd of remounts and some supernumerary breeding studs along to keep them supplied with cavalry zebras, the military unit is a mercenary outfit rather than a tribe. The Zebra Riders are a weird mix of Pure Horse Folk traditions, inheritances of their time as warrior nobility of Old Pavis, and life as a Praxian tribe raiding herds from the Covenant and trading with the Pol Joni for their brood mares for cavalry zebras. During the Inhuman Occupation they may have made deals with the Marcher Barons for brood mares. Some of that might still be on-going, despite the much greater role the Pol Joni horses play in their breeding. Zebra Fort in Pavis has seen significant updates in its fortifications under Cyrilius Harmonius, and is a choice piece of real estate in the Rubble, with a good-sized population. Apart from the strong zebra rider inheritance shared by many Old Pavisites dating back to the Imperial Age, the inhabitants had almost three generations of Zebra Rider admixture (from a privileged/noble position), increasing zebra rider inheritance and identification even among those families that were sedentary inhabitants of Zebra Fort when Dorasar arrived. The Lunar invasion sent the Zebra Fort nobility tied to Olgkarth out of the Rubble/into hiding, but not the entirety of the local zebra breeders and their agricultural and horse breeder allies. At the time of Argrath's conquest, the resident horse breeders may have camouflaged their brood mares (and the occasional horse stallion to maintain those brood mare lines) with stripes to save them from Praxian zealots. We know from the Kraken seminar that key non-Lunar strongholds in the Rubble get new overlords selected by Argrath, with the example of a (female?) Alkothi holding the title (and apparently also the power) of the Real City. I find it unlikely to assume that Zebra Fort would escape such a fate, but there is a distinct possibility that there was a sufficiently influential Zebra Rider among the White Bull host who may have called dibs on that ancestral stronghold. Only Pavis: Gate to Adventure made it clear that Hargran the Dirty was a not random bandit from outside of the Zebra Tribe but a Zebra Tribe bandit who saw his chance to use the Lunars to return to his birthplace as a ruler. No - the name "Pavis Royal Guard" apparently originates with Hargran's claim to be the King of Old Pavis. The previous institution called themselves the "Pavis Survivors", and probably joined the nomadic branch of the Zebra Tribe during their exile, or the Pol Joni that their great-grandfathers hid amongst. IMO those of the PRG who value survival over previous (Lunar) ties agree to become part of Argrath's core followers. Whether Hargran still leads them is another question, but I am fairly convinced that many of the Lunar-friendly recruits to his Royal Guard now transfer that Royal Guard loyalty to the new King of Pavis. The non-native Zebra riders are likely to be among the unit that leaves. Any children they may have left at the fort grow up as members of the sedentary part of the Zebra Tribe. The Kyreming lineage of Opili's Fort possibly fell already to Joras Toran, or if some managed to survive hiding, the Kaggroka Clan will have eaten them later. The Real City receives an Alkothi female as overseer. Now there is an NPC waiting to be published...

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...