Joerg

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?

The passions from character creation cover a very small section of a character's possible motivations, but they load significant amounts of percentage on these items. Great, so I end up hating the Lunars 80%, perhaps "Love family" 60%, and I might have "Loyalty chosen leader 20%". Sure, this doesn't stop me from roleplaying the character as a loyal bodyguard who manages to keep a seething calm while his leader negotiates with an emissary of Fazzur to my leader, but I often feel it hinders the character concept. There is nothing to stop me from house-ruling this, of course. No. If anything, I am complaining that there are passions missing from events of the character's life, like "like/loathe in-laws" or "specific in-law". Basically, a character might have a relationship map (like the ones mentioned in the Dramatic Interaction Master Class video from Kraken) which more or less generates a strong feeling or two with each individual and group they may belong to, and create a minor passion out of those as opportunity offers itself. Not at all. For every incantation of the passion to act in favor of the PC, the GM has the opportunity to "coerce" some reaction out of the character leading to possibly less wise courses of action (in the unlikely case you have players whose characters act sensibly), or to use the passions as some form of "idea roll" (aka lesser Divination). Passions and otherwise statted personal relationships are one of the core things tested in heroquesting. Quite often a heroquesting challenge is of a moral, ethical or personal nature. How many heroes have had to satisfy the crone they encountered on the boundary between this world and a more magical realm, whether sexually or doing other stuff that might go against their nature or personality? How often does their reaction to a plea of an otherwise insignificant encounter alter their magic or add another trump card in their sleeves later on, or otherwise aggravates a station on that quest? Tough personal choices, and possibly a character transformation from making that choice, are the stuff heroquests are about. When does the quester give up personality to become another imitation godling, and when does he stick to his human self rather than minimax for better magical oomph? A lot of the personal heroquesting experience is covered by "Dramatic Interaction", and the currency RQG has to offer towards this are passions and to a lesser extent runes. (HQ offers relationship abilities which cover a broader range of stuff and are somewhat easier to use.) But then this is a bit contradictory to my complaint that I look at the RQG character sheet to find documented dozens of things my character sucks at. I prefer character sheets and supplementary sheets that enable the characters rather than those that limit them. It isn't quite as bad as the madness that overcomes the Redshirt of the Week in Scalzi's Redshirts, and I think it may have come from playing with a group of minimaxing power players stress-testing both game system and setting in Greg's games that needed some formula to enable the use of some classic mythical plots. "My character has a geas against eating bird meat, there is no way she would accept a soup from any stranger!" This. Especially for heavily scripted "this world" heroquests where your fellow clan or cult members act up for the opposition wearing ancient masks. Where your heroquest surprise might be that you can see your fellow clansperson supposed to wear that mask sit dazedly in the background while the entity represented by the mask confronts the quester. Heroquests aren't exactly an all reflective experience, or in other words, they tend to be very agile and physical forms of meditation and possibly austerities. Genre-savviness by the characters may be helpful at times, and at times it may lead to deleterious decisions. The old problem of managing internal dialogue in a roleplaying session, as opposed to fiction, or the silver screen with the option for flashbacks. Yes. It isn't just about becoming more like the mythical figure whose path you trod, it is also to sharpen or blunt certain parts of your character's personality. A heroquest should result in some personal meaning for the character, not just some magical power or a decisive weakening of an enemy. Again, this might be expressed ruleswise as gaining a passion or relationship, or altering an existing one. The use of the Power Runes as opposed pairs always adding up to 100 is a game construct whose math I hate. The traits in Pendragon doing the same were a feature there that always appeared buggy to me, too, but then my Pendragon experiences were few and long times between. (When I discovered Fantasy literature, half the material I could lay my hand on initially were Arthurian pastiches (rather than Tolkien pastiches), and it soured the Arthurian genre somewhat for my. Seeing Richard Gere as chromium Lancelot killed off much of my remaining enthusiasm, and not even Monty Python managed to salvage much.) I only played the earlier version, 3 years ago, which had a much different prequel/preparation, but the activities available after successfully entering the Lunar ritual remain what the map of the Gloranthan night sky, Copper Tablet 7 and the description in King of Sartar frame - a bunch of Orlanthi questers representing Orlanth's Ring walking the spiral path of Umath (tracing the week of ascension that Orlanth's Ring inscribes onto the sky as the sky dome rotates beyond it), and this leads them past certain constellations and possibly planets which as a rule do their best to hinder the questers unless they have brought a mythical reason for the Lunar dancers not to do so. It is pretty much a fight against the clock, as the rite will be completed at Dawn. Leaving the path isn't really an option - the genius of the quest is to use all the magic the Lunars poured into this rite for their well-calculated alteration in the stellar mechanics. The questers themselves shouldn't be exactly clear what they are going to release (other than finally liberating Orlanth), except maybe for Minaryth and Orlaront. A good synopsis. If you don't want to make a roll, make a trade? Give up on some of your preliminary mythical ammo to clear that stage? We discussed this briefly in the vaulted cellar of the Schloss where Ian had run his scenario. As there is a prequel quest which gives the players the opportunity to collect such ammo, this was a consideration. But then player behavior would be different depending on whether they regard the quest as a last breath resistance they never expecterd to return from, or whether they expect to have enough of a margin to win this quest that they might actually wish to retain that power for themselves, their temple, or some other community after their victory (or as an existential insurance for their personal support group in case of a major failure). (This is harkening back to the Dragonrise quest discussion, really.) In one of the Kraken panels, Jeff voiced a similar concern about the Battle skill, and how he intends to change the RQG version from a way to decide the outcome of a battle into what the character experiences through the battle are going to be. It really depends how you set up the Dragonrise event. If you make this the culminating final and desperate move of the characters as the means to somehow avert the destruction of everything they had run through, and give them the heads up that return from that quest is unlikely, the outcome of the quest might as well be a massive failure. The dragon might fail to rise, the Lunars might slay it (at the cost of their temple and army?), stars might plummet, a chaos rift might rise instead... If this event is the final episode of the campaign, there is no need to stick to canon. Well formulated ones.

While Hearthmother covers almost the entirety of motherhood, wifehood etc., she is lacking in earth magic apart from maybe minor plant magic (though nowhere near Bless Crops). I wonder whether Earth Witch has a role to play in this regard. The absence of metal weapons is especially weird as the Votanki (and the citadel dwellers) are the only humans the Greatway dwarves deign to trade with. What but metal items would it be that dwarves trade away? Mostali flint knapping ought to be no better than Votanki flint knapping. One answer would be that the Votanki make regular offerings of metal items to their ancestors or some other such power, but the pantheon listed above doesn't really look like it has a deity specifically receptive to this kind of sacrifice.

Sure. But going after scientists with a conscience like Oppenheimer was purely and simply fascist. And somehow the Russians managed to do it better this time, infiltrating the White House. Calling him a patriot doesn't make old Joe any less of a monster on par with Eichmann. Or demand to be worshiped as a god (although he did accept this when offered by the Egyptian priesthood). Whereas the Trade Federation oligarchy led by the Kochs has kept your paycheck stable while exploding the cost, indenturing the population of the USA abusing the very pension fonds that were supposed to create social security for them. They suborned the Bible Belt Taliban by allowing them to throw the first stone against any dissidents to their "pro-life" indoctrination, and use them to destroy any trace of trust in science or provable facts. Different methods, same outcome. There appears to be a strong form of speciesism in the Empire, too - or why are the only non-human people of influence Sith? The imperial army and fleet is completely human, and not for a sensible reason as the police force in Farscape.

I have never been quite clear about the extent to which local enforcers of the Empire were licensed to graft (or rather, to put extra strain in addition to the dues to the Empire) on their little pocket of it. "He came as a poor man to a rich province, he left a poor province as a rich man" (paraphrasing Velleius Paterculus' verdict on Varus' term as governor of Syria) Killing the messenger syndrome and venting your frust on henchmen "too inept to perform the perfectly reasonable impossible task" appears to be a part of US work ethics, as per "The Apprentice", and to make an institution more evil than your day to day workplace it seems one has to go over the top with this in fiction. You might want to add McCarthy's reign of terror in the USA to this list - another senseless decimation of the most innovative minds of their time. Or the current Hire and Fire disaster in Pennsylvania Avenue.

One way to simulate a big dent in the resource ability is to impose a flaw based on the expenditure that may need to be bought down or quested against to regain full control over the ability.

Jernotia is the archetype of walking in the other side's shoes, whichever issue may be concerned (although the issue with Daxdarius and Natha was a clear failure in this task). Rashoran was toted as the Last Born Deity, or last created deity. Of the Celestial Court, I would guess, since the lesser deities elsewhere kept multiplying. Jernotia on the other hand is one of the most ancient deities in their part of the world, and almost has the function of the local incarnation of Glorantha and/or the Spike. Rashoran may have been the coming of Vithelan mysticism to the Celestial Court of the Runes. The Vithelans had the mystic masters already from the beginning, every High God went to study with Oorduren for a bit, and many of the lesser beings of Eastern Myth like e.g. Kahar or Oorsu Sara had Oorduren or one of his disciples as their teachers (and ultimately another one as their nemesis, usually Mashunasan). Sure, the Lunars did some massive syncretizing. Both Jernotia and Natha - opponents in the Daxdarius myth - as parts of Sedenya. Both about balance, but in very different and incompatible ways. Rashoran is tied to the coming of Chaos (other than PreDark) to destroy the world, but also to overcome that destruction. Like Nysalor's, this was a teaching that cannot be conveyed as a meme. Rashoran may have been the bringer of paradox, or perhaps the bringer of the realisation of paradox. The last Green Age transition of the world before Entropy replaced Green Age.

Basically, it was Chris Lemens who played this run of Ian's playtesting who brought up the lack of meaningful choices in the (necessary) series of encounters the dancers would have to go through on their spiral path. The following thoughts are all mine. The Dragonrise is fairly well described in King of Sartar. It is also a one of a kind opportunity - miss this quest, and the entire future timeline of RQG has fallen to pieces. So, where is the player agency in this? Are you just going through the moves, and do all your achievements and pain account for nothing, just like those of Dr. Henry Jones Junior in Raiders of the Lost Ark? If you are playing a scenario like this with the option to fail, failing completely means that Your Glorantha Will Vary significantly. Nothing of the new material will be of use to you. Playing the scenario this open-ended basically means this is the climax of your campaign, and what follows will be a coda at best. That's fine if you signed up for this kind of "trilogy" of supplements. I would probably go for something limited like that with a game club campaign or online play. There is the possibility for a "fail, but" outcome. The dragon rises anyway, but it identifies the dancers of Orlanth's Ring as part of his previous torture, and takes out their communities. What remains of Sartar still gets liberated. This gets into the territory of the 13G assumption that everything has gone haywire. Does something like this as the "fail" outcome of the heroquest suffice as an irretrievable stake of the players, or are they still feeling that their failure had no consequences? If you are unafraid to do high stakes intervention with Sartar, you could of course let the Lunars win, and play that out. The Hero Wars with Orlanth already half defeated, Dragon Pass lost. Maybe Arkat needs to set it right? Truth to tell, I'd love to play in a campaign like that, but it would be Hell on wheels for the GM to manage. I'm less sure I would like to run that campaign, although doing the strategic game in the background would be interesting. On a less concrete topic, how to deal with other heroquests, which after all are quite scripted affairs? If you have played King of Dragon Pass, you will most likely have solved the intermediate stages of the Orlanth and Aroka quest differently at times, like your Vingan quester fighting the Night Woman and seducing some other darkness opponent. There are certain amounts of deviation tolerated by KoDP's narrative engine before you get cast out into the unknown places of the Hero Plane, from which you may succeed to return to a thoroughly f'***ed up clan. Facing a GM with some more flexibility than a narrative engine and steeped in some Glorantha lore, you might find yourself in a different mythical path rather than straying along, or you might have the ability to determine the place you got shoved to and pick up that quest. That won't necessarily solve your original problem (e.g. drought), but it might lend you some extraordinary magic to get you through that loss. There is the issue of the HeroQuest surprise, and the stage with the personal challenge for some (or each) of the questers. Ideally, this should be played out with passions defining the character, but those passions in RQG gained from the family history still are quite gamist and not very personal to the player. (I'm probably using the term "gamist" in a non-Forge way here...) I have problems with both RQG and HQG to create my Gloranthan character that feels real to me rather than an optimized for success action toy. One of these is the lack of a supporting cast of NPCs (ideally NPCs shared with other players' characters) one has built a relationship to.

Just to douse the embers with gasoline, the explanations in Darths&Droids helped my to answer "why Naboo" splendidly. BRPs Magic Point economy doesn't seem to model force abilities well. POW is more like a limit how much you can channel at any given time.

Really? Well damn, that's news to me. Where is this from? E.g. Sourcebook p.120

That's a generation ship already, if only one extra generation. Unsupported solar sailors starting from a neutral orbital vector will take that much to get up to speed. That's where mirrors or solar-pumped lasers come into play, creating a significantly higher light pressure. What's your assumed life expectancy for Jim Hawkins? Stevensons protagonists were approaching ancient around fifty. Our intrepid space-farers might well expect to be in good working order well into their seventies (provided space doesn't offer wildly deleterious circumstances to life expectancy). Aided with implants, their internal repair service might well make a sixty year term of service just the prequel to your civilian career. (Another development completely missing from Traveller...) How spry do you need to be in a lowered G environment? The effects of low G on the human body aren't known yet (unlike the efects of prolonged zero G). Solar sailors would need to rely on rotational simulation of gravity, probably some bola solution for their habitats, or possibly an aquatic environment in zero G (hasn't been tried yet, but might stimulate body musculature better than simulated G). They'd still want some "down" time, e.g. when catching a cold. Poor Chris Hadfield proved that our coping mechanism with the sniffles results in extreme unhappiness in zero G. Nubile 20-year-olds, rather. You don't need that many men on a generation ship. Information can be transported on flight, so what you would want is a small crew of experienced teachers/trainers, a bunch of POs with a solid foundation, and a batch of cadets (and wonder boys/girls) to train on the way. Or you might bring a nursery. That's not that different from deciding to emigrate at that age in an time prior to widely available inter-continental flights (e.g. back in the sixties of last century). The time lag between video messages may be half a day at your furthest, so you aren't entirely out of the world. Hands up who has reached 40 years of happy or at least tolerable cohabitation with their high school sweetheart... The biological problem is that you spend all your fertile time in that tin-can, so you had better frozen a bunch of embryos or at least viable gametes before lift-off. They (or the commune that brought you up) might raise some of your kids in your stead. It's like making the trek across the great plains - you assume that to be a one-way trek. If you get to see the kin you left behind again, that's only because they may follow on your trail. You might (have to) create a sub-culture preparing such spacers, or have them develop organically from their ancestors' choices (like in C.J. Cherryh's space trader families).

Rashoran was a teacher of the Unholy Trio. Not sure it needed another dash... There hasn't been much musing about it, at least not on the internet. Most discussions I have seen were about the Osentalka project, not its main gadget. The Pseudocosmic Egg definitely contained Raw Creation, but encapsuled inside its protective shell. The unlimited potential of the Void is not entropic as long as it is kept away from ordered Creation, or only emerges under controlled circumstances (for limited amounts of control, like the tempestuous birth of Umath for instance). Good reasoning, and yes, that dip into the Ultimate may have earned her the raw creative power she needed to bring back to the world to raise her stellar body after cowing the opposition at Castle Blue. At a price, though.

The land of Balazar has a different relationship to the deities than the Orlanthi, a more Pelorian way with initiates less ubiquitious. Rigtaina is a quite minor hunting goddess or demigoddess and the source of sovereignty of the Land for Balazar. In this latter role she is comparable to Sorana Tor of Tarsh/Dragon Pass, of the Lady of the WIld. Regular sacrifices, no cult as such. The lack of the Earth Goddess cult in the Elder Wilds makes Hearthmother take on some of the roles of Ernalda without having all that magic. I would make her cult work analogous to Daka Fal, only with minor household and hearth spirits rather than with ancestors, and the hearth fire the equivalent of the Axis Mundi. I missed the mention of Mralota, the pig goddess worshiped by the citadel dwellers in a remotely Eirithan manner. Votank is somewhere between Waha and the tribal Founders of Prax, only without the greater drama of "blasted by the Devil".

The Pseudocosmic Egg found inside Feldichi ruins in Dorastor was the instrumental component to bring a new god into the world - a piece of primal Creation waiting to be made alive. In the end, the new deity turned out to be a continuation of Rashoran after it lost its moment of perfection. Arkat's birth was a side effect of Nysalor's birth (and possibly vice versa). Each of them was the necessary Other for their opposition. I still think that Gbaji was the bi-directional mask which separated the two - whoever looked at the other perceived Gbaji. Gbaji also was the border effect between the Nysalorean new reality and the Arkati old reality, a similar effect as the Glowline. The Seshnelan King List provides a few details about how the Nysalorean reality was about to be carried all the way to the Neliomi Sea in the south, and how it was an evil that had to be fought back by the Westerners, with the aid of Brithos. The Vampire Kings of Tanisor - proud ancestors of the current dynasty and religion there - had taken all the wrong lessons out of Illumination already when Arkat's host set out from Brithos and Arolanit. The turn to Chaos happened a lot earlier than Arkat's first demise. I rather think that everybody taking a closer look knows, but hesitates to acknowledge that truth. I see it as likely that parts of Nysalor and parts of Arkat died upon the Tower of the City of Miracles, and that the bi-directional mask Gbaji was ripped aside and torn to pieces in that struggle of two Chaos entities from their own volition. Somehow, an entity recognized as Arkat emerged from that duel, human in appearance again, who went on to curse the homeland of Nysalor into a weirder and more chaotic land than the map in the Guide leads you to believe (the Guide does comment that the map is highly inaccurate much of the time, and at Kraken Sandy told us how so). To get back on topic of this thread, discovering and/or establishing new connections between previously disparate entities or names/titles from different regions is an old use of the hero planes Godtime, and a technique discovered and applied already by the Lightbringer missionaries. The Gods War and the rampaging entropy of the Greater Darkness destroyed a lot of memories all the way into the Godtime, and all of that was pulled together again by the Web of Arachne Solara. Whole chunks of myths or Godtime stories (aka pre-history) had been annihilated, sometimes leaving vague references to minimally defined entities. Other chunks may have been gathered up in the web but never really reconnected (much) to the rest of the world (or Godtime), waiting to be found - usually by some happy accident, occasionally by systematic exploration. Yamsur, the sun god of Genert's Garden and ancestor of Hyalor, might be a prime example of such an entity. The previous sentence more or less sums up the entire knowledge we have about Yamsur.

For certain limited purposes, an "identity" of Ernalda and Kero Fin or of Yelm and Yelmalio can be shown to be true IMO. Shared magic, shared myths (e.g. Lightfore tracing the events of the Young God in the Sky?). These make good cross-over points for experimental heroquesting, allowing a quester to shift their identification from one entity to the other without letting go of the accumulated magic, but afterwards the entities won't be as exchangeable any more. The identification game can be a major form of heroquesting wrestling, where a quester may pronounce a recognition of another quester different from the one that quester identifies with and draws his magic from. The fight against the strongman in Morden Defends the Camp has something like this. In the intercontinental comparison, you will find a lot of myths that are virtually identical - e.g. the making of the Agimori and that of the Dara Happans from clay - except for a few bits of local detail. But their context will have shifted, different roles get emphasized.

I don't trust the God Learner Maps for northern Pamaltela much. The Thinobutan diaspora started well before the sinking of Thinobutu. The first torrent may have been part of the rivers invading the land, but then the Thinobutan creation myth talks about an island raised from the Sea, which is either as late as the Storm Age (parallel to the arrival of the Artmali), or way way earlier when the Earth Cube first pierced the upper end of the Seas. The Man of Gold definitely sounds like a gold mostali. That doesn't mean anything for the origin of those humans. Aurelion's Breakwater is way too far north for any Pamaltelan or Slon connections, though - it is basically adjacent to Ernaldela, and if in the lowlands, a human population there may have been destroyed in the Solkathi flood. I don't have any solid evidence, but to me the Vaybeti Isles story takes place south of the line between the Gates of Dawn and Dusk, not north of it where Aurelion used to stand. Unless there are countless shards of myth that failed to be re-assembled in this area by the Web of Arachne Solara, and any continuous story would only be conjecture in that case.

I don't really see any indication for a Thinobutan ancestry in Caladraland (which would be the case if Vaybeti coincides with Kumanku). The human settlers in Jrustela had two language families - Olodo, from pre-Malkionized Slontos, and Seshnegi from Seshnela. Even with Telerio and Moray being Jrusteli in origin I don't see much of the western language creeping into the local language - possibly on par with Hanseatic German creeping into Finnish. If their priests had grimoires, those would have been written in Seshnegi. There doesn't seem to be evidence for earlier human habitation of Jrustela, except possibly as slaves of the Mostali. Those would have been Tadeniti, one of the six ancestral tribes of the Westerners (and possibly birthplace of Lhankor Mhy). Gives a whole new dimension to this "Son of Mostal" business. The other possible place of origin for the Vaybeti lands would be northern Slon. This is pre-Breaking of the World, so you have to imagine Slon still inhabiting the lands north of Umathela, as if the splinter that was cut off the world by the thwarted cut towards Magnetic Mountain was pulled back in place. The Elevens of Slon have similarly unclear ancestry - they might be a mixed slave population sold here by the Vadeli, or they may have been a genuinely native population of unknown ancestry. If anything of this points towards Caladraland, it would be quite a stretch, though. Who would have been the human worshipers of Aurelion? The shores around the Breakwater were among the first to be colonized by the Malkioni, without much contact with Olodo folk. Still, some Olodo, or more recent immigrants from (by then malkionized) Slontos may have brought some old Volcano worship with them. (Note the Slontos temple of halfway mentioned in the Cult of Caladra and Aurelion. Not mentioned anywhere in the Guide, though.)

About their phsyical culture and horticulture, looking a the master map of eastern Caladraland (mainly Esrolia and the Mirrorsea Bay) with the distinct absence of settlements which peppered e.g. Esrolia or Heortland) I wondered whether Papua new guinea with its millennia old horticulture and rather small clans or tribes even with distinct languages might be another model for the Caladralanders, united mainly by the Volcano priesthood. They haven't splintered into that many distinct languages and tribes as the Papuans as they had maybe 20 millennia to form their culture (if you count late Golden Age and Storm Age in millennia) whereas the settlement of New Guinea reaches back 50 millennia or more. Still, the forest horticulture and occasional harvest of a Sago palm tree might be an element in Caladrian everyday life. But then, the horticulture on the slopes of Mt Kilimanjaro might be another model for what goes on on the slopes of the Vent.

(I am posting this in Alastor's Skull Inn because it covers quite a few topics outside of my usual narrower focus on Glorantha and related stuff. Partly because I am unsure whether this would fit in its entirety into either the RQ, Glorantha or HQ forum.) Kraken Report 2019 Another Kraken has gone by, and another “What I did in my holidays” essay is in the making. I left work shortly after noon, slightly earlier than usual on a Friday and drove almost directly to the convention, arriving around 4 pm. I found out that my lodging was not on site but about 5 minutes driving from Schloss Neuhausen, so I set off to that place shortly after greeting a few people I had not seen for more than two years. The shortest route turned out to be a cobblestone track with a big bulge in the center of the road, big enough that I had a few hard bumps to the bottom of my car (thankfully without causing any leaks). On the return trip I tried the alternative route, only to be stopped at a fire brigade activity blocking the road to the Schloss, so back to the old-time road and creeping along to avoid too much movement in the suspension. (The weekend before I had been on a RuneQuest weekend in a guest house on a Rittergut halfway between Kiel and Lübeck, also with road blocks – there due to road works – making me travel even more disreputable roads, leaving my car looking like an offroader. Come to think of it, the last times I took the train to Essen Game Fair, both times Essen Central Station was blocked for traffic, and on the way to the last Eternal Con I visited I had to traverse North-Rhine Westfalia when there were 1300 km of traffic jams on the Autobahn there. That means whichever force tries to prevent me from going to a convention quickly left me off lightly this time.) Back at the convention I learned that there would be the beer tasting late that night. Yay, a beer tasting before I would have to drive back to my lodgings. The Schloss itself was heated quite strongly with the wood-burning stoves, luring people outside into the deceptively mild autumn air. While I didn’t manage to catch a fever this time like three years ago, I still caught a minor cold. Maybe some time I will learn how to dress for Kraken? On the plus side, the internet connection was almost too good for a convention, with hardly any delays putting up content here on BRP Central. One of the main attractions of visiting the Kraken is to talking with people you rarely meet in person, often over food in addition to drink, among them quite a few notables. This year had attendees from 19 countries, not all of which I was able to talk to or identify. Still, that’s about half the EU and a few adjacent and overseas territories (like Switzerland, Norway, the US and Iceland). I managed to talk to Robin Laws and Cat Tobin on Friday, had breakfast with Ken Rolston and Chris Lemens on Saturday discussing game ideas and local history, and found some time to chat with Sandy and Wendi Petersen between events. I also was selected as entertainer by Jeff’s and Claudia’s daughter Lara, failing to solve many a “math” problem (mostly ones that involved crossing the moat of the Schloss where it forms a creek, and occasionally getting up imaginary cliffs with the aid of two feeble sticks and “math”), and getting away with it by lifting her onto my shoulders. Another main attraction are the panels, even though you are able to witness these afterwards as Thoumy and Alienor once again recorded everything professionally. Being able to inject a question or two adds another level of immediacy. I’ll point out to the panels when they get online if nobody else happens to notice them. I did miss Ian’s Heroquest panel due to me getting lucky in the Horror Lottery (which dishes out seats in games with the guests of honor), and at least half of the Elmal vs. Yelmalio debate due to Lara occupying my time and shoulders, but with the assurance of being able to catch up on youtube that wasn’t that much of a sacrifice as it would have been otherwise. The Big Rubble panel with Jeff Richard and Robin Laws started the panels of the Kraken, and is already available on youtube. Watch that channel for further videos on the other panels, e.g. Jeff’s presentation of the (eight) master maps of core Glorantha, which will possibly come with split screen and stills of the maps added in post production. Core Glorantha grew by increments of A2 maps defining new territories, starting with Sartar and Tarsh, continued by Heortland and core Esrolia plus Mirrorsea Bay, and extended into the east as Prax and Dagori Inkarth. There are no master maps on this scale for Peloria (which would require dozens of such sheets), where just the eight sheets I mentioned above have about 1200 named locations with some population and even altitude data. Jeff described those lands as grasslands rather than densely populated agricultural land (making the claims made blaming Sheng’s minions for reducing Peloria to such a state a bit weird). But that’s for a different discussion, not for this convention report. I did manage to get a little gaming under my belt this year. As mentioned above, I got lucky in the Horror Lottery, and had a place in Ken Rolston’s Paranoia game, as assistant team leader of the only all-Infrared troubleshooter team in all of Alpha Complex, a team that had enjoyed an unprecedented 715 day-cycles of trouble-shooting without losing a single clone. After presenting my five things only I know about my character to Ken, I was told that I have way too many bad ideas (for him to exploit). But what’s so bad about being color-blind in Alpha Complex? Or being one of those emancipated AIs liberated by the AI Liberation Front that had itself incarnated as a citizen to further the goals of that secret society? Or already having been terminated once despite bearing the clone-number 1 (which turned out to be an extraordinary feat of foresight on my part)? We found out… Prominent points of the game were e.g. the statement that none of us had ever seen one of our team-mates psi ability (to block any photons) in action. (How could we have, as sight was shut down as no photons could move?) Or making Ken realize that the laser weapons (including that laser rifle with ultra-violet crystals that had somehow become our standard equipment on this mission holiday retreat) used photons, leading to an amusing case of sunburn and k.o. of said team-mate. Or flabberghasting the guards at the exit point to the “wilderness retreat” by confessing that our team had no team leader, only an assistant team leader, and that we weren’t on a mission. Good paranoid fun, interrupted by Ken’s recurring role as high priest of pancakes and judge in the re-run of the Pan Cake Cook-out between Risto and … (giving us a chance to catch some, too). I had a look at Sandy’s newest iteration of Orcs Must Die, combining toy soldiers and dinosaurs – every young geek’s wet dream. And that will allow Sandy to produce Dino miniatures. If he produces them to scale, they might even be useful for Glorantha gaming… I got to play with probably one of the last uses of Sandy’s prototype set of Hyperspace, as the delivery of the finished was delayed, under Sandy’s tutelage. A fun little game of space exploration and colonisation, somewhat asymmetric again but with a fairly sturdy general mechanism. My Mi-Go might have fared a little better hadn’t Sandy convinced me to end the game as he was to host another event. Playing those diverse species was fun, putting Hyperspace on my short “games to buy” list. As it turned out, there was no copy of Gods War at the convention except for the one that was still in my car from the previous weekend, so there was at least one game of Gods War – three people from France (including Gianni Vacca), two from Germany, with the Invisible God (Gianni) managing to overtake Chaos (me) by one point in the final reckoning, thanks to everybody ganging up on my Chaos nests in the last turn. I also managed to squeeze in a three-player game exploring the Restricted Library of Miscatonic University, which was quite fun with that number of players. Amid discussion of other forms of gaming (there are quite a few game designers and authors at the Kraken willing to talk shop not just with one another, but also with ambitious fans), I also had a short look (actually a rather badly shot video) at Gianni Vacca’s Hero Wars-themed boardgame “Last Faction Hero” which is played on a map based on a vertical cut through Glorantha from the gates of Dawn to Dusk, featuring the superheroes and some demigods of the Hero Wars as characters (Harrek, Jar-eel, Androgeus, Cragspider). Something I need to try out at one of the next conventions... I managed to witness the last stages of Ian Cooper’s Dragonrise scenario, of which I played an earlier version three years ago, and to sit in in an after-mission debrief discussing the problem of player-agency in a heavily scripted heroquest. Observing Ian’s dramatic presentation of the last stages of that event after a hard-won success by the players, I wonder whether I would be able to present the events half as well – certainly not speaking English. (Writing down stuff gives you a second chance for a first impression, performance simply doesn’t.) The successful outcome of the Dragonrise is pretty much the basis for the Glorantha presented in the current publications (for RQG and 13G, at least), which means that a failed quest would leave an ongoing HeroQuest campaign utterly stranded in a quite different Glorantha. If you want to play this quest with open-ended results, it would work best as the finale of a campaign. In case of failure, possibly with a coda not unlike Frodo’s return to the Shire. On the other hand, if you mean to play on after running this scenario and thus a success is more or less scripted, your agency would be similar to that of Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark (as pointed out by Amy in the Big Bang Theory). Food for thought, and possibly a thread or even panel of its own. I left the convention at 11 pm on Sunday, driving home. This time over quite wet roads, with another road block pushing me widely off course (with the aid of a navigation system). Still, I arrived at home in the middle of Monday night, managed to get up in time for work, and back home from work before sleeping like a log.

Simson is to me from a Bronze Age environment, and David's confrontation with Goliath is beginning multiplication of Iron similar to the Iliad. The kings of Israel inherited Philistine iron mass production. The transition phases don't necessarily mean an immediate change of cultural outlook. The end of the Bronze Age ending Darkness might as well be timed to the distribution of alphabetic script beyond the priestly caste. The earliest kings of Israel would have fallen into this transition period, and are sufficiently within the broader stroke Bronze Age that Glorantha invokes. There are always two stories if both parties have historians. Rastagar's wife is the perfect Villainous Queen to those Orlanthi holding their Vingkotling ancestry in esteem, and the perfect heroine for the Grandmothers. Ancient times have few women in a ruler's role, and the more successful of them were either re-defined as males (Hatshepsut) or vilified by later patriarchalist chroniclers (who were almost exclusively male).

Blindly drawing straws or differently colored balls is a well established ancient means of deciding on e.g. decimation or winning an office.

True. Many an original antagonist of a myth needed to be replaced with a somewhat acceptable stand-in. Modern Glorantha is a patchwork of fragments - some of significant size, some of generally continuous even if only half of what was there before, and some fairly isolated ones just salvaged at all, leading to isolated appearances like Firshala in the Elder Wilds. The God Learner maps of the Godtime are educated guesses based on the modern topography as encountered by the God Learners. They remind me a bit of the cartographer Mejers's attempt at re-construction of the pre-Mandrenke North Frisian coast showing all the known places that had perished not only in the recent second Mandrenke, but also the one that destroyed Rungholt and about half of the former lands in that region. Theism as practiced within Time appears to have been invented in the Late Storm Age or the Grey Age, with a few distant (remnants of) gods granting their intercession for sacrifice. People had gods before - often as not so distant rulers interceding in person with their innate powers rather than as grantors of magic. According to the Heortlings, it was Hantrafal who worked out how to worship and sacrifice in a way that allowed a worshiper to manifest an innate power of the deity as magic. Given the context in which this became necessary, the number of deities available to grant such magic would have been extremely small. Orlanth was on his Lightbringer's Quest, and only rather independent manifestations may have been available for a magical effect. Still, such manifestations may have received worship and sacrifice and shared it with the greater cult entity that we know in the Second and Third Age. At the Dawn, there may have been a lot more deities that subsequently became mopped up in the major cults, as obscure subcults. Theyalan syncretism, then God Learner simplifications (forcibly imposed on Godtime) and occasional destruction of old knowledge results in cults that may be significantly different from what they had been before. Sometimes new cults crop up, like Orlanth Rex around 900 ST, and they are generally some form of the deity that has been lingering somewhere. Sedenya follows three centuries later, from even greater obscurity. There are portions of Godtime which remain largely untapped by the Surface World because the mortals forgot how to interact with these, but on occasion they may be re-discovered. Baroshi is a prime case of such. These are only peripherally the same event really. Rising up against the Emperor is something else than Umath creating the Middle Air. Breaking his chains - if there were any such chains, they would have been parts of the World machine. But then, the Emperor Umath was straining against may well have been Mostal. The Stafford Library tome Middle Sea Empire tells us a very different story. Their "analysis" followed uncharted raids into local, then regional holy sites, into random myths that were observed, without any context. That assumes that they had the inside perspective of worshipers of those deities. The description in Middle Sea Empire doesn't make that that likely. Yes, though usually through the perception of the community that launched them into the myth. You need either another inside perspective or some abstraction (RuneQuest Sight) to get past that "skin" of the mythic nodes you are traveling along. Stripping a piece of literature (like e.g. a Shakespeare play) of all context or translating all that context into memes is very similar to what the God Learners did for their understanding of Godtime. This allowed them to recognize reuse of memetic combinations which gave them entry leverage and patchworking interfaces to create new paths, and occasionally new bridging territory, possibly brought in from an unrelated myth. In a way vaguely reminiscent of CRISPR working on DNA.