Joerg

Each ruling deity has been tricking their opponents at some occasion on their way to power. Orlanth using Death in a contest of weapons, Ernalda inciting the Dark Tribe to attack the assembled clans in the Making of the Storm Tribe (and tricking those Storm Boys and the Darkness folk), Yelm the White Goddess by refusing to give up judgement after dealing with a comparatively minor issue in her name, ... Trickster's image is shady because usually there are plenty of victims of his crimes. Stealing Fire from the gods may have been his only victim-less and altruistic deed - a mere copyright infringement breaking an unfair monopoly. That earned him the title "Eurmal Friend of Men" in the West. But then the gods are regarded as tricksters themselves by the Westerners, original rune-holding people having tricked mortals other than the Westerners into worshiping them. Pamalt is very much a positive trickster, with Bolongo combining all the evil aspects. Kadiola (a minor sea deity in Fonrit) might be the most beloved Trickster entity anywhere. The Trickster causes disruption or out-of-context situations to bamboozle and overcome his opponents. This disruption may be necessary to initiate change, but usually there are forces that lose from change. These forces are usually not amused. As to Stewart's leading question, do Tricksters worship Humakt? Not impossible - after all, he stole Death from them (we stole it first, that means it's ours!), and regained it even after they stole it back and gave it away. They can respect that. Ever now and then, Tricksters perform some meaningless cruelty. In case of bonded Tricksters, as retaliation for having been denied an earlier impulse. Like the time when Eurmal seduced and then killed the son of the Only Old One.

Probably yes. The ruler at Jon Barat is said to be a Brithini. His Ingareen followers may be Zzaburites without the benefit of being Brithini, but it is as possible that they just accept his leadership and go on with whatever it was they did before after losing the Machine God experiment.

Ah, yes, how could I forget the EWF dragon sun finally getting the Sun right and complete? Poor benighted Karvanyar dragged the empire back to its squalor, though.

Correct. Davu is mentioned in The Lives of Sedenya as one of her previous aspects/avatars/incarnations, and in GRoY as a special protective entity of the descendants of Avivath, the prophet of Antirius. At various points in Time (and previously the Gray Age), the solar worshipers arrived at a point where they said: "This is as much Sun as we have to work with, this is the Sun returned from the Underworld! Rejoice, and worship!" This started with Kargzant returning, or with Kargzant overcoming Shargash in the Sun Swirl. The Dawn brought forth a whole new quality of Sun, and was taken for the Sun released from the Underworld. Most non-Solar people let the story end there. At the end of the first century, an event happened in the sky that is the Bridling of Kargzant. It isn't entirely clear whether this affected the day sky with the sun disk/orb, or whether it affected the night sky with the most luminous object there, Lightfore. Shortly afterwards, Avivath the prophet emerged with his news from Antirius, and with the fearsome power of the Sunspear that the nomad worshipers of Kargzant apparently lacked. The battle of Alavan Argay removed the horse warlords as a political and magical power in the Dara Happan lowlands, and Khordavu could ascend to Emperorship using a more involved form of the rites. Some of that was new, like replacing some of the ancient regalia, some of it was old. Then came the Sunstop, and of course, that showed a yet more powerful form of the Sun. Which made even the emperors of the Khordavu dynasty acknowledge that there was more to their sun god than Avivath and Khordavu were able to give. That's the multiple (stationary) orbs theory, nicely depicted in the Copper Tablets in the Guide. The next universally observable celestial event was the rise of the Red Moon. Which may have been a modified rise of Entekos... hence the Entekosiad. It hasn't yet altered the power of the Sun, except politically.

A dead crystal has no (permanent) POW, and overcoming the POW of a spell target doesn't take that POW (permanent or temporary) away unless it is a Drain spell or attack. RQG doesn't require any attuning to dead/unpowered crystals (Adventure Book p. 122). Only powered crystals require this, and only one such crystal can be attuned by an entity at any time. There are no such limits for dead crystals. A cursory glance at RQ2 showed no different text. In other words, you had better cast a spell with them, or use them to power your control spell... As far as I understand, the only way to empty a crystal is by using the MP for some magic. (I wonder whether stored MP can be used in/as lay worship?) There doesn't seem to be any way to pool MP from various storages into a single one. The only way in is from an entity owning MP (not necessarily regenerating them) into the storage.

But dead crystals... (and in RQ3, Magic Point Matrices) Has there ever been a ban to different individuals feeding one and the same crystal while it still contained "temporary POW" from someone else?

Pluripresence makes such shape considerations pretty much moot. Nobody complains that a dryad has two bodies - that of a nubile humanoid female, and that of a tree. (Other nymphs may have a meadow, a mountain, or a dark place as their other body.) The more powerful the entity, the more simultaneous presences it has. That makes killing gods - even temporarily - such a messy affair, like the Siege of Whitewall. Harrek and Belintar are examples of the tangible double presence of human body and divine presence for demigods (divine entities able to act more or less freely inside the Compromise). Check the Prince of Sartar comic for some great depictions. The God Learners probably had no conceptual problem with multiple expressions of one rune - that's what Zzabur told them, the sorcerer supreme who claims to be an expression of a First Entity (Erasanchula) while inhabiting the body of one of the sons of Malkion and Phlia the Tilnta. While Zzaburism is different from mainstream Malkioni philosophy, the roots are shared. The Hrestoli/Makanist philosophy that gave the rise to "God Learner" exploits like Tanian's Victory or the burning of Vralos contlinues to exist, although a variant philosophy based on a mutilated version of their holy book (strongly resembling the grimoires of the Malkionieranist God Learners who swapped, robbed or created theist deities) has taken over in Tanisor. The magical universities that taught sorcerers and men-of-all to invade and plunder myths systematically aren't run by the Malkioni any more. The Lunar Imperial College of Magic does similar stuff, but lacks the special power of the God Learners, using Illumination instead. The Sartar Magical Union is more an on-the-job training approach.

I never touched that rule, but then in all likelihood my RQ3 or RQG games hardly ever violated it either. (I have yet to play RQ2 RAW...) But then, create a sufficiently big magic point matrix, and that's your source. You can refill it from various sources. Besides INT (or nowadays CHA), available POW usually was the limiting factor for spellcasting. Even if you had a matrix or crystal, someone had to fill it, and my games didn't have spirit farms.

Yes. You can boost any kind of spell, with no upper limit for the extra magic points, but those points will only overcome countermagic and similar effects and won't add to the spell's intensity/effect. This is how I read the Countermagic effects: To get past a Shield 2, you need a spell of a total of 5 or more MP. To get past a Countermagic 4, you need 6 or more MP. That fuzzy extra MP is the weak bonus the spirit spell gives over the more "permanent" rune spell side effects, at the price of faltering in the face of the first spell strong enough to get through. The topic of stacking Countermagic on top of Shield or Berserk or similar spells with Countermagic side effects was discussed exhaustively (and not entirely conclusively) a good while ago.

A spirit (or ghost) bound into a beast or other such monster (like a zombie) becomes embodied. RQG has rules for that, and I suppose those were inherited from RQ2. A creature is not an object or a place. There is nothing to stop you from giving the object the ghost is bound into to the zombie, or even integrate it into its body, but then the ghost won't be bound into the body of the zombie but into that object. Creating a zombie takes quite a bit of magical effort and resources. Binding the ghost into a herd-man is a lot less effort and gives you that entity in a new (and possibly more strapping) body.

Basically, if it is your job to provide food or to increase the herd or to harvest grain, and you manage to outdo your plan target/reasonably expected outcome, you will be entitled to a share of that extra outcome. If you breed an especially fine bull, you will get priority stud rights (along with other peoples' priority rights, that is). Basically, when given a job by the chief or a similar authority, that job-giving authority is entitled to the loot or otherwise success of the task. A hunter sent to make meat for the clan will be expected to bring meat equivalent to the time he is away. Herders on the transhumant pastures are entitled to the milk or at least the whey from cheese-making, as there is no sensible way to bring that stuff back to the village. But then, it will have been figured into their foodstuff allocation for that time already. A free person can proclaim their own tasks, outside of "work for the clan", and call in favors to gain some support for this task (e.g. a steed, camp gear, armor, weapons). That way, the person acts as the task-giver, and has a claim to the profits, and a responsibility for the cost and risk of that undertaking. (Which may mean weregeld to be paid...)

I don't think that clan wyters have an uplink to tribal or national wyters (except when the clan holds rites/sacrifices especially dedicated to the tribe or the nation). The clan wyter usually serves as the conduit of the sacrificed magic to whichever deity (or deities) the rite addresses. If you live in a city, you will attend rites where you sacrifice to the city wyter. When you visit a temple, you are expected to sacrifice some magic to the temple wyter. The tribal wyter is in the end just a special case of a temple wyter. As part of a hero band or war band, you will sacrifice to that band's wyter. The smaller your band, the bigger your sacrifice... Similar if you join a warrior society or similar secret society. A well socialized character may have half a dozen wyters he may give regular sacrifice. I am not entirely sure that a POW sacrifice is required to become a member of a ship's crew or a warband. Lay members who contribute magic are usually welcome.

There is also the question whether you haul your catch in to the village, or whether you stick it out in your hunting hideout (or possibly lodge) far away from your clan, and consume it over a week or two, or barter some of it away for a new supply of arrow-tips and glue from a settlement nearby that is not part of your clan. Hunters will turn their prey into pemmican or jerky or venison, and venison includes aging the meat for a while, giving them the opportunity to amass quite a bit of meat, hides, horn and special parts before making their trek back to the clan. You are aware that "elk-hunting" means red deer? But WRT moose hunting, don't you have to buy a license to shoot a moose first? But I am thankful to see a discussion on personal property and clan loans and how the individuals who leave "cash in" their previous efforts when they leave their former workplace to the clan - tilled fields, herds brought through the winter, hay, construction (house, outbuildings, fences...). For a real world example, what to people leaving a kibbuz get?

Binding a spirit renders it unable to initiate spirit combat. You'll have to release spirits in crystals or matrices, but you can do so giving them the command to do their job and return to the binding. It is possible to enchant a zombie to have spirit binding enchantments, but given the perishable nature of zombies, this doesn't strike me as a good strategy. A jolanti, on the other hand, would be fine. There is a creature similar to this on the Cradle - Blorn the Statue, animated by the spirit of Urrgh the Ugly.

Actually, the clans usually don't have a hall in the city, but their tribes have. Individuals from the clan will be living in the city, but their status in relation to the clan is vague as they can be at best semi-active in the worship of the clan wyter-centered rites. As one of the constituent tribes to the Jonstwn ring. The tribal hall will be the first place for any clansman or -woman of the Dolutha as well as the Red Cow to gravitate to, if only because they have no idea how and where to find those Cinsina from their own clans. Once a clanperson becomes a permanent resident of the city, she can join a guild (an urban clan based on occupation) or remain a follower of the tribe with the clan identity still at their birth/marriage clan, though represented through the tribe. If you live in the city, you miss most of the holy days of your clan as you are likely to attend the rites in your city. The role of the Sartarite tribe in the religious life of the clansfolk has never been described that well. The concept of the tribal Rex temple as a major economical force with a significant number of tenants in itself leaves the question whether those tenants are directly affiliated to the tribe and not to some clan, or whether the tribal tenants are external (royal) tenants distributed over the constituent clans of the tribe, or whether the tribal temple has no tenants but officers inside their respective clans with clan tenants to take care of their material needs. There is also the question what happens when a tribal king retires or dies. His personal retainers may be orphaned by this, requiring a new leader they can pledge their allegiance to, or they can follow their king (into retirement or death). The new king may wish to retain some of his predecessor's aides and officers, and will seek to replace others who have ties to the new king's opponents inside the tribe. Assuming that an individual or the individual with spouse and children decides to leave the clan for the tribal city, what property may the individual carry off to the city? How much is handing over a well-kept field or garden in terms of gaining some starting wealth to establish oneself in the city and its quite different economy? Do the city dwellers of a tribe count as direct followers of the tribal king`? Would they form a quasi-clan? What about tribal folk holding the manor or some other homes in Boldhome? What about some folk establishing themselves in Karse or Nochet?

The often toted "nordic" theme is a case of a ready set of hammers to screw in this lightbulb... The Alt Right are violent, use runes (e.g. Beast), aren't particularly literate, and worship Stormy Daniels with a prominent Trickster... Some have orange skin. Picts or it didn't happen? That blue pigment cabbage apparently invaded from Anatolia alongside agriculture, according to the German language Wikipedia. (English Wikipedia starts with woad in Britain... I begin to see the cultural problem.) Woad seems to act as an astringent, reducing the bleeding from minor cuts. Nordic people don't seem to have painted themselves with that stuff. The few weeks of summer are too short to develop a culture of wearing body paint, and the mosquitoes quell any urge to go sky-clad quickly. Funny, that - the myths about shield maidens appear to be as truthful as the reports on the amazons on the Black Sea. Nordic society appears to have had no taboo against females taking up arms, but there are about as many woman warriors in the Sagas as there are warrior princesses in Harem Nights or Mulan. It is funny, too, that the condemned source of patriarchalism - the Pontic Steppe horse riders - had warrior princess burials. With the tribal tats that Sartarites feature. Funnily, I froth from my lips about the "land-locked Myceneans" - that's damn close to land-locked Minoans or land-locked Polynesians. The Hittites don't evoke much in terms of "this is their signature look" - mostly nude guys with shields, or some non-descript partial armor. Three-man chariot teams, with driver, tank (shield-holder) and (presumably noble) missileer. Altogether a Dara Happan vibe for me. Transhumant herding and warrior farmers? I don't quite see that, although Anatolia has the topography for that. Cattle raids? So they only have the five Lightbringer cults, Humakt, and Ernalda? Maybe Yinkin and Yelmalio on the side? Already Odayla gets blurry at the borders...

The Amber Road I was talking about is the Copper Age or older route that provided amber from the cold north to places like Egypt. Probably the luxury good that gave the Myceneans something the Minoans and those beyond would desire. The Unetice folk of Nebra disk fame were intermediaries on this route, as were the Carpathian/Danubian folk who managed to maintain the continental Bronze trade when the Mediterranean and the Fertile Crescent underwent a total close-down of their trade routes. The salt trade is woefully under-developed in Glorantha, and drowned aldryami (to produce amber) are ubiquitious - all of the dry side of the cube was once covered by sprawling greenery, and two thirds of that are now submerged. But then the Spondilus trade into the continent or the production of Wampum in North America, or the Kauri shell all show a weird appreciation on mollusc-based wealth and luxuries throughout the world. What's up with that? The wonderful clichéed imagery of the Silk Road across the Steppes does of course combine Fantasy China with Fantasy Persia... Cultural appropriation and all that. Those are at least grown (and built) to exist in wave action. The Hittites with their strictly continental empire are one of the few Bronze Age cultures where we don't have to ignore their heavy reliance on naval trade and transport. Imagine Germany without Autobahn. Go, hit tights? That's sexual harrassment, man. The Hittites spoke a language related to Armenian or Iranian and whatever cultures were active on the Pontic Steppe at the time. Do we have any information on the Mitanni language? Their pattern of expansion and conquest suggests that they too came from the Pontic Steppe.

Literally, it means something like "grumbler" or "mutterer". Having been there since before the Breaking of the World is part of that, too, but the spirit of contrariness is implicit in the term

We are dealing with a world where the deities take an interest and push their favorite avatars into the limelight. Of course there will be a limit to elected positions. Tribal kings are elected by the tribal moot, a body more sizeable than most urban populations. The Grandmothers in Esrolia are a lot more civilized than the Sartarite kings and mayors, but they are savage despots and autocrats, elected only if the previous Grandmother passes away without having arranged her succession, and by a small gremium of eligible successors. Even Vingkotling dynasties relying on a descent from the Founder are voted into their job, by both the populace (through acclamation, or withholding that as a form of veto) and by the gods (see the rocky start of Salinarg's Princeship). On the contrary, Orlanthi exposure to this violence made them think up organizations like the Unity Council or the Ring of Orlanthland. There are Other Ways that are integral to Orlanthi society. Orlanth probably has married in a more diverse group of follwers to his camp than Ernalda ever had to her throne. It is Orlanth who brings in the Lightbringers, few of which have a working relationship with Ernalda. Both Elmal and Heler may have been wooing Ernalda before encountering and befriending Orlanth across a battlefield or duel ground, but Orlanth doesn't need any uxorial prompting to invite them to his tribe. That's what makes Yelm's and Malkion's regimes so much more civilized than Ernalda's queendom?

I fail to see "nordic" elements in the pass as much as I profess an almost complete absence of hints of Mediterranean things to be seen in the Pass. The only things that are necessarily part of Asia Minor in the Pass are coinage and alphabetic script. Everything else is window-dressing to countermand badly informed associations. Even Step Pyramids. The Silk Road is likely to be better known than the Amber Road or the various Salt Roads which describe the trade across Dragon Pass probably better. The greater Danube region offers just about everything in terms of archeological finds that defines their material culture and life-style. For environmental and additional cultural influences, pre-Columbian America offers a wealth of prospects, but the agriculture of Glorantha is decidedly Old World, and apart from the rice cultivation everywhere outside of the greater Pass region, there is nothing in Genertela that isn't found in Old Europe, too. Admittedly often brought by new waves of immigration or conquest. Primary production (i.e. how people feed themselves) is an essential driving force in the shape of their cultures. Ignoring those factors for a "rule of cool" might enrichen your personal game for a while, but I find that highly detrimental to the integrity of the setting. Sometimes, the over-reliance on the Mediterranean parallels is worse than North or Baltic Sea equivalents. Triremes as a navy using Dormal's Opening are about as sensible as Formula One cars for Uber taxis. The Homeward Ocean is about as clement as the Biscaya or the Pacific off California. If you can surf the waves, there is no way an Aegean trireme will be able to make more than a day trip into those waters, Ben Hur be damned.

"Blind Cave Oxen" is my association whenever I read some claim that this or that publication is to be no longer considered useful for extracting Glorantha information. Even some worst case personal interpretations and additions like in HW Glorantha-Introduction to the Hero Wars and Blood over Gold, or some of my own rather under-informed Aeolian writings. Glorantha has always been a work in progress, and progress comes with false starts which then need to be retroactively corrected or re-fitted. Some high and mighty disdain for fan-published or too loosely licensed publications may go too far. I wore the hat of a fact checker for Gloranthan canon for about a decade while I assembled a collection of sources and source quotes of the then far distributed lore. Unlike the overly dogmatic approach of the Glorantha Wikia which has seen a cleansing of articles that possibly beats the book burnings of the Third Reich, I think that a - suitably marked up - presentation of previous descriptions gives a much better service to all those people who stumble across some oldtimer's opinion informed on older sources or played campaigns. There are problems with every rules-set used for describing Glorantha, and with every publication made for it. (Just today I noticed two minor factual mistakes in the Guide, presumed to be our most sacrosanct document...) Then there are cases where people disregard the important maxim "parallels aren't", courtesy of Nick Brooke in the last decade of the last millennium. Just because Loskalm is described with terms paralleling Platon's Republic doesn't mean in any way that the state that evolve in the shelter of the Ban is a 1:1 carbon copy of the few sentences Platon puts into the mouths of Socrates and his opponents in the "Politeia" dialogues. (Platon fails to provide a concise and organized proposal for that ideal republic in those dialogues, preferring to guide and tease the readers in a similar way his protagonist Socrates does in the dialogues.) The biggest salvage job ticket that I see right now is the Malkioni material in pre-Guide publications. The new canon avoids terms like "church", "knight", "bishop", "saint". Except where those terms keep creeping back into the canon, or weren't completely excised. Both Revealed Mythologies and Middle Sea Empire spend a significant amount on their descriptions of the Malkioni on the development of the church. Even just a replacement of that term using a thesaurus will take a lot of work and insight, changing the reader's impression away from Late Roman or Dark Ages Christianity or more recent schisms. The Abiding Book is the magical equivalent to the political expediency that drove Irenaeus copy-editing of the gospels and that directed the Nicaean council. It avoids the person of a prophet hearing the whispers of the omnipotent god and writing them down in verses. Both these parallels point to the monotheistic world religions of our world and may cause similarly unwanted associations as do comparisons to Roman Iron Age, the Roman Empire, the East Roman Empire, Ireland, Anglo-Saxon Britain (including Arthurian), or China. (Not to mention the unforgivable crime of cultural appropriation...) Are there people out there intending to ruin your Glorantha experience? Possibly yes. But for all my occasional disagreements about presentation of facts by the current publishers of Glorantha these are people who put their livelihood into the survival of our shared hobby, and the last thing Jeff and the rest of the crew want is to alienate the Tribe.

I know I am a grognard, no need to give you the permission to call me one. Still, the Four Worlds and their collision pre-existing the Shattering of the World make a better story to me. The fault lines of the Breaking of the World (the bottomless trenches of the Doom Currents) follow roughly the ancient borders of the pre-collision Four Worlds, with the southwestern trench slanted to the side rather than vertical, and about to be pulled shut by the Somelz project of the Mostali at the Capstan of Jrustela. So yes, the Shattering of the Spike undid some of the previous unification of the worlds. But it takes a whole lot of useful material e.g. in Revealed Mythologies but also elsewhere into the shredder to claim that there were no such separate realms beforehand. Too much of a retcon for me.

IMO that's because (a) Hyalor (and his comrade Kuschile) only came among the Nivorah refugees as a heroic teacher, possibly with a small band of followers from the Garden. Probably riding Goldeneye Hyal horses rather than the seredae of Gamara. From this small separate group, Beren's Elmali and the Vuranostrum kernel for the future Pure Horse Folk of Prax probably were splinter groups.

Orlanthi tribes in a city may be a bit closer to Jets vs. Sharks than they are to Capulets vs. Montagues, but West Side Story is Romeo and Juliet nonetheless. The tribal city confederations of Sartar create sufficient stability that there was just one case of Brexit - the Dinacoli left the Jonstown confederation in 1613 to join up with Alda-chur. The destruction of the Maboder in 1607, that of the Kultain 1619 and the replacement of the Dundealos by the Enstalos are the only other recorded changes in tribal composition of the cities in Sartar. Nochet with its Enfranchised Houses and the numerous lesser client houses and clients' client houses is just a slightly less egalitarian assortment of clans in tribes, with multiple clienthood possible if I take Harald's (aka @jajagappa) Nochet campaign notes on rpg-geek and surrounding discussions as an alpha-version of what the Nochet Book will bring. Tribalism inside cities, city-states or states with lots of bureaucratic deep state isn't anything unusual. Orlanthi cities have a mayor, the elected leader of the city ring (on which there usually are the tribal kings of the constituent tribes, the guild leader, and high priests of the most important temples in the city). Since the constituent tribes often prefer not to elect one of the other tribal kings, the guild representatives may get a greater share in mayorhod than the kings.

Lokamayadon's quest to reach the High Storm Tarumath may be the closest any quester may have come to achieve that. I don't think that the God Learners would have done much of that - they were after the runic attributes and powers of the deities and couldn't care less for their personalities or preferences. A few Storm Gods allowed themselves to be tamed, but usually for the promise of marital bliss (by Sea or Earth goddesses). Aerlit even sired the prophet of Logic, and Kahar achieved Stillness in his meditative quest to get the hand and body of Harantara. A number of "aspects of Sedenya" likely underwent some editing to do away with overly Yelmic traits, e.g. Davu. Mr. Bombastic, aka Lover Lover? More appropriate for Tolat on Trowjang. The Godunya Rune is manifested in his bridges, acting both as mundane bridges for his mortal subjects and as the Kralori version of Dragonewt Roads for the eastern 'Newts and sufficiently enlightened draconic sages. There doesn't seem to be a dragonewt-rune-like ensemble of structures in Kralorela, the three (big) dragonewt cities of the islands off the Genertelan Mainland don't align in any recognizable runic pattern (any more?), and we have no information whether they are connected by magical roads other than the Bridge reaching the northern one. There is no evidence for earlier dragon emperors having made use of this geographical pattern, and it is unclear whether Yanoor or Shang-Hsa MHNBC used the symbol. RQ3 Gods of Glorantha gave it to the Immanent Masters as well as to Godunya. Godunya had visited the EWF - possibly early enough to meet Obduran the Flyer. He fairly certainly visited and used the dragonewt roads of the Pass and was aware of their pattern. The Immanent Masters are attested for the EWF, and Isgangdrang's personal "accelerated dragon worship" appears to have been a variation thereof. The God Learners were familiar with dragonewts from Ryzel in Maniria (then Slontos). They probably knew the dragonewt rune, and Gilam D'Estau might have used his limited insight into the Dragonewt or even just the Beast rune to subvert Yanoor's empire. The Beast Rune was described as depicting a dragon's scale. (Even though it looks like Truth inside Law upside down.) That's Dara Happan society, or rather Yelmic society, which admittedly spread out over all of civilized Peloria, but Dendara appears to have played a role in Darsen and Pelanda outside of Yelmic context as well. The celestial wife of Yelm certainly goes well with Light and Harmony. Her planet (or orb) rose up from below - it isn't clear whether the other (city) orbs of Dara Happa (as shown in the Copper Tablets) rose from the city towers (much like Yelm did, helplessly, when Oslira came) or whether they descended from their father Yelm much like the Three Brothers (of Fire: Lodril, Yelm, Dayzatar) had done. It is known for subcult entities to change or add runes compared to the main deity. That doesn't mean they have no trace of the rune that they don't display, it just says that this runic association is not one of the primary ones. If he was acculturated at Genert's court, his conduct must have been pretty scandalous to those taking the Dara Happan court for their definition of civilized behavior. I think that his people were the original Hyalorings, the horse cavalry serving the Earth God. Possibly avilry and griffin riders, too. At some time, they must have offended the Founders of the Animal Nomads of the southern (core) part of Genert's Garden. Spurning Eiritha? This might even be behind Storm Bull's absence from the Battle of Earthfall. We never got an explanation for that. The enmity might have extended to Tada, or may have exempted him. Morphologically, I find it hard to derive the equilateral triangle from the square or vice versa. If you take four dragonewt runes and arrange them so that their bases fit into a square, a Godunya rune with an extra star inscribed would result, but that's the closest transformation geometry offers. Numerologically, you go from 3 sides 1 bar in the Dragonewt Rune to 4 sides 2 bars in the Godunya or Dragon Rune. The logical next steps would be 5 sides 3 bars (aka a Fate Rune inside a pentangon) and 6 sides 4 bars (or in other words an 8-ray asterisk - the symbol of Pole Star in the center of the firmament - inside a hexagon). That sequence could be part of the draconic devolution sequence, from Orxili (hexagon) to the Ancestral Dragons (pentagon) to the True Dragons (diamond) to the netenic dragons aka Dragonewts (triangle). Much like Moon and Chaos, too. When I waffled about subcults replacing runes of the superior deity, I thought that the subcults of an owner of a rune should always have that owned rune of the superior. Thus, no subcults or aspects of Ernalda without Earth, no subcults or aspects of Orlanth without Storm, no subcults or aspects of Yelm without Fire, none of Humakt without Death, none of Issaries without Communication...) Yamsur was there for Earthfall, and perished in that battle (and was lucky that his name is remembered). This doesn't leave much room for a previous martyrdom. What does Six Ages have to say about that martyrdom? I understand Six Ages to play before Earthfall, or at best having Earthfall some time during the storyline. The Glacier came before the invasion of Wakboth.