Joerg

These non-binary terms are like learning a new language from a completely different culture. (At times I find it easier to understand Japanese honorifics - and I don't speak Japanese.) Looking up the definition, I don't think I am with you on the definition, although I follow your "hates their femininity". There can no identity between Thed and Rashoran. Thed was a disciple, one of the last disciples Rashoran had. (Rashorana is used only for the aspect of Sedenya. Rashoran is not the male form of the name, that would be Rashoranus or Rashoranum.) And Thed participated in killing Rashoran, and it wasn't a suicide. Then she repeated her rape experience out of willful malice and calculation. My point is that broos perceived as "males" are de facto parthenogenically reproducing females with an ovipositor. The broos differently sexed are the other sex. Basically, they are the useless males of the species. The gender and sex of her rapist husband. Does anybody wonder why Thed hates them and denies them her magic? Thed's children use the transmasc and transfemine pronouns. Thed herself is denied that. They are breeding diseases. Also a form of creating life by your will, but a lot less personal. At least I have yet to develop any parental instinct to anything I grow in a Petri dish.

The protagonists, or their rivals? Or is your GMing style and/or the troupe's playing style so contrary that you name the player characters the antagonists?

I have played them as herbivores, too. The crew of our YT1300 transporter had managed to garner a cargo transfer from the rebel alliance, to move a dozen extreme terrain one man mobile units from a layover on Tatooine to a distant rebel base. Easy credity, right? The poor things had been stranded on Tatooine for a few days already, using up their native food and shedding fur like champions to deal with the environment as their previous transport had suffered a life support system breakdown. (Fur in the air scrubbers...) Upon discovering the nature of the transport units and their needs, the crew was desperate to scrounge up some plant matter on the desert planet, and their botanist turned data and sensor operator managed to acquire a few containers of salad just running out of "best before" date. Food problem solved? Our intrepid crew didn't think the fur would be much of a problem (after all, their YT1300 had come with a Wokiee engineer, too, so removing fur from the air filters was a routine job), and managed to cool down the vessel to a cozy minus 20 degrees - until the Tauntauns were brought in, whose added warmth kept the cargo hold/mess area just above freezing. After take-off, the tauntauns started to enjoy their salad. Unfortunately, their digestive system was overcharged by the stuff, or possibly the parts which weren't exactly fresh any more were to blame. They developed a case of diarrhea. Halfway into the trip, the atmospheric scrubbers capitulated against the stench of tauntaun diarrhea, and the crew had to make an emergency stop at a space habitat to exchange scrubbers and atmosphere (and biodegradables). Unfortunately, the owners of the (rebellion-friendly) habitat were germaphobes, and insisted on complete decontamination of all organisms on board other than crew and passengers. After faking some papers granting the transport units the status of "military personnel", the euthanazing of the tauntauns could be avoided, and the rest of the trip was without any new problems (the diarrhea and the stench persisted, though...). The episode remained in the campaign log as a shitty job. I wonder why? Visually, the tauntauns remind me of bipedal llamas with some sort of rams horns flanking the face. Those horns appear to be a feature of the Hoth makrofauna that managed to adapt to the planet's iced-over surface. Alan Dean Foster's Icerigger trilogy gives a somewhat plausible excuse for such makrofauna persisting on an ice ball. Apparently, Foster was involved with some story-telling about Hoth, but given his output of "novels to the movie" in those years (not at all limited to SF), no special qualification might have been necessary.

Griffin Mountain spells her name "Rigtaina", and actually gives her father as Foundchild, making her a quite minor figure. She is the interface to the Lady of the Wild who actually has all these functions and abilities, but Rigtaina herself comes across more like a boon companion of Artemis the Huntress. Obviously not doing the virgin track in her role as ancestress of the citadel lords. Some Lunars might be in the process of proving her identity or correlation with Orogeria, the rising Blue Moon part of Sedenya's cycle. Rigtaina is the Balazar version of Sorana Tor, with Balazar the Hero fulfilling a role similar to Arim the Pauper for the founding of Tarsh. Votanki the Founder (spelled Votanki in GM) is pretty similar to the Praxian Founders that manifest through the Cult of Waha, or at least his special rune magic is almost the same. He is the child of Hunter (Foundchild) and Hearth Mother. That does create a problem with Votank being known to the Dara Happans of the Gods Wall, unless we presume that Votanki is a reincarnation of Golden Age Votank/Ergesh. Interestingly, the Elder Wilds had their own Council of All Races which joined the Unity Council only in 78 ST. That council definitely included the Aldryami grove of Eston, probably the Votanki of Arau (Good Howl), and with some likelihood the dragonewts and uz of the further Elder Wilds. Whether the Greatway Dwarves were part of the Elder Wilds council isn't clear, but there don't appear to have been other dwarf sites anywhere east or south of the Elf Sea before entering Genert's Wastelands. The insistence of the Greatway dwarves to trade only with the lands to their north might be an indication that they originally belonged to the Elder Wilds Council and had not joined the Council of World Friends prior to 78 ST.

There are explicitely more than one read-headed woman deities among the Orlanthi, with Vinga and Redalda being the best known ones. I suppose there should be one version of the axe women that comes with the red hair, too - and if it is just the clotting blood in Babeester's tresses. There are un-gendered roles as Heortling cults. Traders, sages (despite the artificial beards, or perhaps because of them), entertainers, thieves/tricksters (althouth being unable to lose their penis is something of a loss for female tricksters), charioteers, and a number of moderately gendered ones - berserk, deathblade, pacifist healer. The 1 in 7 rule can be read in a number of ways, even if only applied to NPCs. Published RQG suggests that at least one in seven Sartarite women remain in their birth clan even in exogynous clans (like e.g. the Varmandi herdswomen). It suggests that up to one in seven people cultists of the elemental deity usually associated with male ot female gender has the opposite or a diverse gender - male, helering, neutral and nandan initiates of Ernalda, female, helering, neutral and vingan initiates of Orlanth. (Can there be vingan Ernalda or nandan Orlanth initiates?)

I am in favor of taxing transactions rather than wages. Especially in the finances sector - the profit from microsecond transactions betting against the bank's own customer by anticipating their buy or put orders (basically a form of insider trade) should be mainly going to the public. A similar concept should go into any form of rent, and possibly into excessive stock-piling (e.g. of virtual gold in the banks). There are monetary models which assume that money or some equivalent thereof is a value-losing commodity rather than a value-generating commodity unless invested. That's radically different from the interests of the modern day plutocrats controlling some of the most powerful democracies and autocracies via lobbyism or direct bribes, though, and will be extremely hard to put into practice past their minions among the representants. At least if your goal is to avoid a revolution and ethnic cleansing situation like the decapitation (both literally and metaphorically) of French nobility after 1789. Wages have long stopped to be the main contributor to the economy. A proper tax on "financial services" - especially the gambling portion of it - would encourage long term investments interested in company wealth rather than shareholder parasiticism. Labour as a resource will remain a scarcity. So are the material to work with, including energy while we remain unable to harvest a greater proportion of the fusion reaction eight light minutes away. Overcoming scarcity situations or creating a sustainable balance for these should be on our agendas. Some forms of scarcity are fairly impossible to overcome, like e.g. prime real estate. Distribution and usage thereof should be under scrutiny, though.

Orlanthi poetry should be staves. Here's an attempt at a skaldic rendition of the rune magic: King of Creation, Conqu‘ror of Skies, Thee I call, Thane, of Thunder and Storm, Grant me thy gift of the greatest of magics, Partake of my place, and pummel my foes. Be in my body and blast on our en‘mies, Enter me, Orlanth, in one-ness we act, Riding the Runes in righteous force, Mighty the magic, for mankind and god.

Usually went hand in hand with a climatic change or some other additional factor, otherwise the empire wouldn't have had the chance to grow that much. Soil exhaustion is a problem, as is over-use of water, and salinification of the soil where irrigation from aquifers is practiced. (Irrigation from melt-off of snow or artificially retained rainfall is a lot less prone to salinification.) The Norman concept of the Forest as a hunting preserve appears to be quite the exception, although the concept of the forest / wood / skog as an untamed wilderness appears to be inherent in the Germanic languages. Forest actually is derived from the Latin term for the Outside, also found in Forum, which indicates that this sentiment may be Indo-European rather than just Germanic. On the other hand, there is the ur-German sentiment of the (tall, moderately undergrown) beech forest as a kind of national womb that needs to be experienced on after-church hikes on Sundays. (Actually used to, in my youth in the seventies, though the weekly expedition into the forest has declined since. But then there are new developments, like forest Kindergarten where four-year-olds get dressed in waterproof padding to spend the entire day outside.) As to mapping forestation, I wonder whether the maps really should have a few layers of vegetation density, height of vegetation, or biomass. Svalbard is covered in large areas by birch forest - less than 2 or 3 inches high. On the other hand, the habitat of the Bengal tiger is riverine brush with more than man-high grass or reeds interspersed with trees. And my job often makes it necessary for me to cross or cut my way through areas of blackberry tangle, my epitome of a hostile plant environment (especially on hot humid days when the mosquitoes breeding in the nearby pond I need to get to enrich the air with protein).

Ancestral broo are the equivalent of the minotaur, at least in my Glorantha. I have yet to find evidence for female minotaurs, and think that minotaurs are pretty similar to unicorns and satyrs in their reproduction. This sort of begs the question where the ram people went - those with ovine heads, or at least rams horns and hooved feet. Or whether they were the foes of soon to be domed Dara Happa. (But then Ttrotsky argued on his synapsidae blog that sheep are just weird goats, and that antelopes are some goat-like intermediary between goats and bovines.) The biological term for something like this is "ovipositor" ("egg-planter", where the difference between egg and larva is negligible if all the egg is covered in is a membrane), and usually such an organ is attached to the female of the species. e The Pierson's Puppeteers of Niven's Known Space/Ringworld reproduced like that, with their true males fertilizing the quasi-male females who then parasitically impregnated a third non-sapient related species herded by them for that purpose (the equivalent of herd-men). The ancestral broos might have been similar to the Pierson's Puppeteers. In the Green Age world, this form of parasitism wasn't evil or lethal, and a similar externalized procreation is easily forgiven for species like unicorns or nymphs under Green Age conditions. Being eaten was a mere inconvenience, usually restored on the next morning. The other sex of the broos has no ability to give birth. Their refuge in the cult of Malia results from the association of Malia and Thed as part of the Unholy Trio. There is of course Ron Edward's take on Thed as goddess of rape, stressing the female perspective of being the rape victim without having (much of) the physical ability to retaliate in kind. One unfortunate side product of that article appears to have been the mis-understanding that only females would be endangered by exposition to broos. Marginalizing male-sexed victims of rape (especially trans-females). We usually refer to Thed as female, as mother of broos, but I am not that convinced that Thed had a defined gender, and it might have been the experience of Ragnaglar's crime that pushed her firmly into the female role. A forced arrest of gender in addition to an unwanted pregnancy, a pile of personal horrors. Ron Edward's article makes quite a few good observations how having this gruesome element in the game can be a necessary inconvenience for players raised in a "political correctness" environment that externalizes any contact with icky subjects. But then, such players should avoid the Underworld and Chaos, too, for those terrors can - and really should - be triggers of primal terror, too. There is no point in visiting a padded and tempered version of Hell. To get the curve back to the thread topic - the experience of the Star Heart is the confrontation with that terror. Cosmic as much as invasive personal. The Cult of Ernalda is an Underworld cult, too. Female initiation has quite a lot to cover, too, and might cover the experiences of sharp penetration (a benevolent cutting of the hymen, for instance, as in the Betan female adulthood rites described in "Memory" in the Barrayar SF novels by Lois McMaster Bujold - possibly an origin for the horribly distorted and perverted rite of female circumcision) and the experience of being eaten alive as part of the one-ness with the goddess. Robin Laws's Uralda quest in King of Dragon Pass has the trial of the biting things, and something similar might be part of the female initiation, too. I do wonder how much the (full) secret of the Star Heart differs from Illumination. Unlike the rage of Storm Bull it isn't an evasion, but a full confrontation, though not an immersion. The story in Prince of Sartar almost reads like what Nysalor did to the Black Eater.

Holy people may adopt their deities' colorations, whether via cosmetics or via heroquesting. As such, greenish females and bluish (light indigo, actually, i.e. woad) males are to be expected. According to Kalin Kadiev's depictions in Prince of Sartar, male and female tattoos vary in color. Originally, the participants in the Downland migration would have been a mix of various skin colors associated with Storm at the time, including red, but mainly orange and brown. Blue may have been in the mix (e.g. in participants with ancestors in the Celestial Palace), or it may have been a later addition. When they encountered the Earth Tribe, those folk would have been dark brown or olive (in all shades you associate with those fruits, including green), except where their husbands would have been from the fire tribe with golden (light brown) skin tones. Over a few generations, those color mixes would have evened out somewhat - compare the Malkioni of Seshnela with their Brithini neighbors of Arolanit. The Brithini with their selective breeding have maintained their ancestral coloration, the Malkioni (whose ancestresses included blue-skinned Menena) have slowly paled out compared to their neighbors. Things got more messed up when the blue-skinned Helerings joined the Orlanthi and sort-of disappeared among the clans and admixed either side. But then, the males of the Downland Migration had already started out as elemental mongrels (aka Burtae). There will be holy lineages with rather pure elemental ancestry in Esrolia, likely including the six great houses of Nochet, but even there outright green skin is more likely to be a product of a birth in the Otherworld than just ancestry. Pure elemental ancestry for Storm doesn't exist. Orlanth himself may have inherited a bluish tone of skin from his maternal grandfather Larnste, as his paternal grandfather Aether may not yet have had a blue association back then (unless the well-aired blue flame - the hottest you can get in the real world with atmospherically vented flames - was his color).

I find myself enjoying the ramblings course material of a professor at Kiel University which explores the material science and all the other "need-to-know" information on swords and metallurgy, and while Gloranthan iron has little to do with the material described in these lecture notes, the discourses about swords, history etc. are written in a somewhat wry and quite informative style. The text makes a point of connecting the art of making (and drinking) beer with the emergence of swords, for instance... and links to a scientific article on the earliest beer recipe written in proto-cuneiform, even older than the Gilgamesh epic. The material lacks of course the link to the Storm element that is special about Gloranthan swords. But the violence implication is in the text.

German Holy Roman Empire kings/emperors had Heinrich (=Henry), too, but if the count continues beyond 4 they didn't leave much impression on the history. German dynasties are a different matter - there is one noble family (Reuss) which named all its male descendants "Heinrich", but for some reason or other they don't appear to have numbered them.

Another such method is the growth of wall hedges between fields (both plowed ones and pasture), offering a natural fence, a source for pollarded or coppiced branches e.g. for basket-weaving or wattle and daub (or simply woven fences). It appears to be a north Germanic tradition which made its way from the Cimbrian peninsula to Anglia in Britain. You don't find many of these hedges south of the Elbe. Alleys with regularly spaced trees following both sides of the road are significantly more wide-spread. I remember that indicating forestation was one of the trickiest problems Colin Driver had to tackle when he created the maps for the Guide to Glorantha. (That, and stamping the tree symbols manually...) That's a general problem with these maps. Steppe is different from savannah or open woodlands (including some forms of Taiga or Arctic "forest"), and no such graduation of tree density is common in those maps. RQ3 Gamemasters Book has a great section on settlement structure, average least distance between settlements and what to expect between settlements. Half the closest distance between settlements everywhere but the most densely populated places (Nile Delta, Esrolia) would be (managed) wilderness for hunting, forest or hill pasture, lumber, etc.

Various - IIRC there are 2700 buildings at Talianki, with numbers tossed about between 7000 and 25,000. The current theory appears to think that 10,000 would have been the upper number, and geomagnetism doesn't exactly tell us whether the houses were used at the same time. I'm still trying to find more online sources for this in languages I can read. There appears to have been some custom of intentionally burning the wattle-and-daub houses down every 80 years or so, creating a slow rise of the excavation area while retaining the house position and orientation. Some of those houses had two stories. Archaeologists were stumped what caused the collapse of these communities, as the external factors like soil (this seems to be in the thick Loess soils of Ukraine) or vegetation don't seem to have changed significantly. A comparison of communal buildings (places for decision-making) appears to show a trend in centralization that excluded more and more of the population, presumably without introducing the concept of god-kings to maintain cohesion. There don't appear to be extraordinary individuals like the prince of Glauberg with his monumental burial mound. On the whole, to me this looks very much like an Orlanthi experiment in urbanisation that succeeded for a while, then disbanded again as it had become too big to survive.

Trying to hunt down tin mining and arsenic copper working souces, I happened on these nice images on Wikimedia from the Cucuteni-Tripyllia culture: n (and a sample of the raw geomagnetical data this reconstruction is based on, from a publication of Kiel university dealing with the downfall of this culture - possibly due to the lack of participation of the population in decision-making:) These appear to be sharing the division between an inner ring and an outer ring population, without any architectural indication that the outer ring population was less privileged than the inner ring.

I would make a case for separating elemental cults from cults only tied to Power (or Form) runes. There appears to be a gender bias in elemental orientation, with Earth hogging female roles after the loss of most male Earth deities, and Fire and Storm with a strong male bias with a few exceptions. Water and Darkness enjoy indetermination. Humakti are a lot less common than their numbers among player characters would suggest, and practically all female Humakti in canon are player characters. (The tales of the Household of Death sound like a campaign log, too, possibly played with WBRM rather than an rpg.) That said, Humakt recruits his initiates from those drawn to him by experiences of Death (personal or in close kin, and/or a deep desire to repay that in kind) which doesn't really discern between genders, as much as by the way of the blade. To become Humakti as a fighting woman is a significantly stronger step than to join Vinga, and is rivaled by Babeester Gor (or similar axe woman cults) which may draw a good number of potential female initiees away from the sword god. Depending on the prevalence of axe women, the cult of Humakt may have between 5 and 35% females in a given locale. The cult of Chalana Arroy is a Healer's calling beyond Ernalda or similar fertility/harmony cults, and with the lack of any elemental connection, has less of a cultural selection bias against males than Ernalda the Healer. Its stict pacifism still goes contrary to the notion that all males are potential warriors, but that is little different from the taboos e.g. a shaman takes on. The solar cults appear to have a strong selection bias against male Arroyans, and even among the Orlanthi few male Arroyans are named - possibly because of the voter's identification which demands martial gear for the males. Whether the job as a physician or surgeon of Arroin is less gender-prejudiced (or even in the opposite direction) is another question.

And the first page looks like a front cover.

There appears to be a page missing or too many? That's an odd number of pages.

Sure. But then, that's the definition of geekdom, isn't it? But look at it in another way. This is Glorantha. We are expecting very high standards for this background, and we like having field days explaining apparent inconsistencies in the setting with myth or other such workarounds. Those aren't holes, they are plot hooks. Pigs are a way of turning the barely human consumable stuff growing around the citadels into meat that is reliably available. Over here, there are farmers herding their pigs between the future christmas trees for clearing the ground of weeds and other unwanted growth. A monoculture of firs doesn't really offer much in the way of human-compatible sustenance, but the pigs get by fine. The curse (or the blessing of the Wild) appears to prevent all forms of horticulture, but may be quite helpful for fire-farming, increasing the yield of both hunting and certain types of gathering (such as wild grains) if done in moderation. Around the citadels, fire farming would probably have to exceed moderation a lot, and lead to a devastation of those lands. Hence, a different method is required. I disagree. The Votanki are hunters and gatherers, and the citadel folk are, too, except for the swine herding. Yes, acorns and beech nuts are possible parts of a human diet, but fed to pigs they are a lot less unbalanced for the human consuming them. The pigs also gobble up earth worms, beetle larvae etc., few of which are welcome dietary components outside of famine. At least as far as urban life goes. Chicken would probably have a similar good conversion rate from fodder not fit for humans to human food, but I suspect that Balazar had some of the "eat no bird" geases when he quested for the pig mother to sustain his citadels. Apart from the pig herding, Balazar is a mesolithic culture. The citadel dwellers may not have been volunteers for the pig herding - Balazar will have recognized the problem of having to feed his templars (distributed over the citadels) by just relying on hunter-gatherers, a life-style that rarely produces surplus food for trade or tribute. Sure, pigs will "gather" all the edible stuff human hunter gatherers would focus on, but unless their human counterpart, their appetite isn't limited to that. I don't know about the Votanki, but pigs will cheerfully feed on insect life, roots and herbs that humans would eat in small amounts at best. As to conservation - stuffing cut-up or crushed meat into intestines (together with grease and unspeakable filler materials) with some salt and drying it (using smoke or just the air) must have been a tradition known to Balazar and the Mralota holy folk he brought from across the EWF heartlands. There may have been traders teaching their preferred conservation methods to the pig herders, too - happened with Hanseatic traders and herring fishers on the outskirts of the League (they did much of their herring fishing nearby themselves, as part of their lucrative fast period food delivery business, but they would buy additional supply from further north). In light of this possibility, there might be a small cooper industry in the citadels, using wicker for barrel hoops, and a significant salt trade to conserve the meat as one staple of the templar and citadel dweller diet. So why Balazar didn't opt for goat herding rather than pig herding? Possibly RQ2 anti-goat bias: with rampant broo trouble, one might want to reconsider that option. But then the usual prey of the Votanki is as prone to broo impregnation as are domestic goats in the forests. But then, pigs aren't safe from this threat either. Another reason to avoid goats might be that the Votanki experience with goat herders mey have been as slaves. Apart from the salt trade, there might also be a trade in ice to the citadels, or otherwise a major harvest of ice in Dark and Storm Season. Joh Mith's trade paths make more sense when you give him salt as one of his staple trade goods. Then there is of course the slave trade - possibly the main source of income for Balazar and his templars when he established his rule over the land. This would mean systematic slave-taking on the more distant Votanki tribes, possibly delegated to rival Votanki hearth groups, buying up captives from mutual raids as they were rounded up. After the Dragonkill, that commodity would have been even more valuable, and I don't see as significant a loss in warriors among the Votanki as there must have been in Carmania, Dara Happa and Saird or among Balazar's Templars.

https://www.sat1.de/tv/die-martina-hill-show/video/21-wo-ist-spike-clip

The Twilek dancer sacrificed at Jabba's court let those tentacles swirl, but I can't recall lany manipulation performed by those "limbs". But then, those things would be a puppeteer's nightmare, and any such manipulation would probably go the Davy Jones way. Having calamari for hair... do these extra limbs have their own brains, like octopuses do? This would also make Twilek mentally different from humans. Interbreeding with Twilek - could it be that the Twilek already are some form of hybrid species from interbreeding with or otherwise assimilating humans? Are those head tentacles a dominant trait?

I would argue for round huts (Fire or Heat rune) with conical tops, probably shingle rather than thatch so that brimstone can roll off. Possibly dry stone tuff walls. Possibly fairly large houses taking in an entire bloodline, with little privacy. I don't expect them to be very much like Heortlings, really (except in terms of initiation probability and how their sacrifices work). There is a possibility of them sharing some characteristics with the Lodrilites of Peloria in terms of village and family structure, with gender-segregated roles but rather little difference in political or domestic influence. From their rulership over Porthomeka, they might form groups of males settling down somewhere before entering a group marriage with wives they attract to their houses. Much like birds, the burden of personal ornamentation for partner choice might be resting on the males, who have to persuade a prospective wife (or several at once) as a group, being tested for ability as well as looks. This might lead to just a single generation and their offspring sharing a house, possibly with special communal huts for the elderly receiving support by their grandchildren when they come of age (to take them out of the parental mating group and in order to pass on some wisdom). (These ideas build on the tales of the log walkers in Entekosiad.) The huts of the elderly might be where the prospective new family fathers present their petition, trying to get women to follow them to their houses (as the final test of whether they are willing to take a meal inside, acknowledging the male group's ability to provide for their wives). Such houses may well have been in cycles of use and ruin for many generations, allowing the land around the huts to fall fallow for long enough to become viable for another generation. They probably have a tradition of unfree servants living under them, possibly extending to temporarily indentured nonhumans (e.g. gorillas or newtling bachelors). Their gardening might be on terraced platforms, with significant overgrowth on the ancient terraces (think Angkor Vat or eastern flank Andes Inka ruins). Those platforms may be left to overgrow for some time before the next slash-and-burn cycle. Growth from the ashes is the main concept in Caladralander horticulture, IMO - whether from slash-and-burn or from volcanic exhaust. A top layer of pumice might be added around well-developed sprouts to reduce the amount of weeds and to stabilize humidity in the soil. What kinds of harvest are likely for them? I think that peanuts might make up a significant part of their diet, fruit seeking shelter by diving into the earth. The latter seems appropriate for their mythology. Sweet potato or tapioca might be part of their main crop.

Can you edit posts made on your mobile devices later on on a regular computer? This is a real question - I found myself unable to edit some of my own posts after a while, whereas I was able to insert corrections to necroed posts at other times.

Griffin Mountain was way ahead of its time, IMO. And Jennell Jacquais also gave us a glimpse of deeper character development with the Central Casting products to provide deeper character backgrounds (in the mid-eighties), with concepts extremely close to those in the RQ3 Gamemasters Book as far as four of the five civilisatory groups are concerned. The Votanki are an offshoot of the Pelorian Culture detailed in the Guide, and they may not have profited from the Theyalan missionaries the way their Orlanthi neighbors (including the variant Orlanthi like the Sylilings, Imtherites and Vanchites) have. Likewise, the natives of Jarst and Garsting (also "Blank Lands" in RQ3 Genertela Box) are likely to be much less of participatory initiates and a lot more of congregational theists. What may be lacking are the ghosts of enemy deities - Pentan, EWF, even Alkoth and Second Council Heortling. Some of the tombs do provide them (Second Council trolls are present). Jeff and Robin talked about the Big Rubble sandbox and how it is a master class sandbox, but as sandboxes go, I rate Griffin Mountain a bit higher. What I would re-write are the mostali and aldryami encounters. The citadels - especially Dykene - are possibly the only Yelmalio cult even more backwards than the Praxian Sun Domers, for lack of rune levels to maintain cult lore after the Dragonkill. (The Praxian Sun Dome was affected, too, but maintained some form of literacy for at least a while). Exploring the roles of Yelmalio and Kargzant in the upper Arcos Valley might be another interesting side trip. Both are Lunar provinces, and probably have Durbaddath and Uryarda in more prominent roles, which sort of relates to the Votanki, and again doesn't. I would expect the Arcos Valley natives to have a way stronger earth cult. Possibly strange in a number of ways, even compared to Lodrilite Oria. But that's one of their marked differences to the Balazarings - both Votanki and Citadel Dwellers.

I don't. I'm ready to take the flak... Accidental drone release in my region might lead to some raised eyebrows... But seriously, take a look at the functionaries of the Empire. Some black-ops work is given to non-human mercenaries, and the majority of the Storm Troopers might be second generation clones (assuming that the first generation was fertile, which might be regarded as a design flaw, or otherwise a continued mail order after the Republic became the Empire). So, who are the main minions of the emperor?