Joerg

I have always considered the title "Prince" as the leader of a tribal confederation, whereas the King of Dragon Pass was a whole different beast. Sartar had a dynasty of Princes, two of which (so far) managed to become (Sacred) King of Dragon Pass by marrying the Feathered Horse Queen in a dragonewt-acknowledged contest. Saronil did marry a priestess of Sorana Tor, too, allowing for a lesser form of "sacred king" than his father, comparable to that of the Twin and Illaro dynasties (see below), but there is no such evidence for Jaronil, Jarosar, Terasarin, Salinarg or Temertain. All of these were Princes at best, not sacred kings. Harvar Ironfist was Prince of the Aldachuri - this means that the Pelorian Orlanthi who settled Tarsh share that concept. IIRC there were two such princes involved in the Tarsh civil war after Orios' death. The King of Tarsh received his title originally from the marriage to Sorana Tor. Arim received the title King of Dragon Pass, too. Arim's and Illaro's dynasties up to Pyjeeemsab were Sacred Kings through their marriage to (and descent from) Sorana Tor. So was Palashee. The Lunar Illaro dynasty lost much of that sacred aspect, and was instead justified by descent from Sorana Tor and Hon-eel (and Kana-Telsor, granddaughter of the Red Emperor and Valare Addi). The Hendriki King was the elected leader of a super-tribe - basically a Prince, with special authority due to the status of that super-tribe. Originally, there was an additional requirement for that King to have been trained as a Larnsti, but that dropped out of use around the time the Orlanthi ceased to elect/nominate a High King. Due to a very watered-down definition of "Larnsti" in certain Hero Wars publications, it was assumed that King Andrin (the Hendriki king resisting Belintar) was a Larnsti king.

The bear or Hunter rune is a fairly specialized non-core rune which concerns (you might have guessed it) bears and hunting, and magic which somehow fits this theme. The Fate rune is part of the core rune set, but is not really suitable for player characters. There are few deities which have this rune - Arachne Solara is named as its owner and doesn't really have direct worshipers, at least among humans. (The Wild Temple rites are dedicated to her.) There is no standard deity which grants magic tied to the Fate rune, it is more a rune for cosmic insight than for derived magics. One possible use might be prophecy.

Ralian elephants: I'd like to think that the Praxian Basmoli are pretty unique among the Hsunchen to lack their totemic beast.

I was thinking of various Earth Shakers, and possibly rhinos, too. Few elephants west of the Wastes (the Dawn Age Ralian ones presumed extinct), and few proboscids south of the Janube and Poralistor. Some Darkness creatures might qualify, too.

Urban Sartar was not described in Thunder Rebels, and while some of the cults in Storm Tribe would have tended to be urban rather than rural, little effort (and no description at all) was dedicated to the daily lives of urban Sartarites. So basically each full citizen has an allotment of meal tickets for grain, fish and meat, and probably a number of legumes, too. Do these come unprepared, or is it possible to go to the local baker rather than the granary to cash in that meal ticket (probably with some monetary fee accounting for the baker's work)? Do people cook at home at all? (What is the fire policy, especially in multy-storied buildings with wooden floors?) Another question is how the client system works in the cities. There is bound to be a concentration of rich free men and lesser nobles in the cities, and they will be able to take on non-citizens into their service. E.g. mercenary bodyguards, domestic servants, slaves. Then, what about the beggars and vagrants, aka recognized residents. Who is feeding them? The priesthood of the urban wyter? Turn up to the sacrifices, donate some of your magic, and be rewarded with some gruel or soup and scraps of the sacrificial meat? Sounds like a way to ensure rather powerful community magic and blessings. Honestly, not really. Life in the rural clans still went along the traditional lines, and while clan economy might have been adapted to producing surplus food for the cities, or for war clans to provide manpower for those mercenaries and royal guards, the traditional roles in the clan aren't likely to change that much. As far as I am concerned, these are terms that would be at home in the Roman Iron Age throughout the non-Celtic barbaricum, and probably carried over from the Nordic Bronze Age. By the time the Romans achieved literacy, they had already lost these systems to the patriciate, and few if any of those terms in Latin refer to their more archaic (Orlanthi-like) roles. They might be applicable to Esrolian culture. The Greek farmer-warrior doesn't turn up in Greek documents, again for lack of widespread literacy while this stratum still was at large. Old English is archaic English, and use of archaic terms in the koine of the Gloranthans will indicate archaic structures. You seem to fear confusion with Mallory's Arthurian fantasy (that never was historical). I agree that 12th-15th century vocabulary might be misleading. But then Shakespeare has nearly as many plays in archaic or classical settings as he has the history of English kings (representing their Norman French as verse and the coarse peasants' Middle English as prose contemporary to the writing). Little or nothing about farmer warriors, though. Most European farmer-warrior literature comes from Iceland. The Irish heroes are all nobles - typical Bronze Age or Iron Age demigods. Everywhere else, the self-sufficient farmer warrior was more or less the antithesis of the literate class. Only coastal Germany and the Netherlands maintained some of this past the Karolingian Age. There is a nice Northern German word for the equivalent of the cottar class: Inste (also Instermann, Instleute). While it was used well into the 19th century, it resulted in all likelihood from the Germanic Farmer Republic social structures that survived in some places throughout the feudal era from settlements structured almost identical to those prior to the earliest migrations (Cimbri, Teutones). One big difference I see between Sartar and Bronze Age lords is the absence of the god-kings. Apart from the Sartar Royal House with its palace in Boldhome, the probably best Bronze Age urban culture to parallel Sartar in terms of social strata as presented by architecture is the Indus Valley culture with its absence of a ruling class with its own districts. Or perhaps the Etruscan cities (although those were firmly Iron Age, as were the La Tene oppida which are good for the tribal towns like Runegate). Neither of these languages are available to us (there is a bitter debate about the language of Harappa and Mohenjo Daro, with Indian scholars being patriotically obliged to demand a Dravidian language despite lack of evidence, and no modern version of Etruscan surviving, and few indications for any related languages other than extinct Lemnian dialects).

How good are the suspensions of the passenger baskets? I imagine a pot-hole riddled ground in a chariot to be more distracting than the gait of a (led) riding animal (or a riding animal steered by another rider on the same beast). A howda would probably be even better, or a palanquin suspended between pairs of animals, assuming the same kind of suspension for the passenger platform as in a chariot. Can Warding be attached to chariot platforms? That would make a difference.

My thoughts, too. But basically a house's grandmother is an absolute tyrant and has the power to decide the status of any of her subjects, which may end up in serfdom for those who manage to displease her. Lesser houses may be required to provide slaves for their superior houses, whatever the means. One way to ensure this huge number of unfree people is to punish as many misdemeanors as possible with slavery. And if you add lese majesty to those crimes, it becomes quite easy to end up as property. One thing I wonder about is the status of the significant minority of Pelaskites living in Esrolia. Do they follow Rightarm Islander proportions, or are they possibly owned (or at least place-bound) as whole clans?

Is that the point of Illumination? No, it is just the munchkin's delightful side effect. There appear to be mystic powers available to advanced mystics that may obey similar rules as chaos gifts. Levitation is a typical power associated with advanced mystics, as is emanating a glow. Longevity and a much diminished need for bodily comforts (like sustenance) are other such known side effects. A true mystic can go on with hardly any food, sentient or not. But hedonism is an acceptable outcome of or path towards Illumination, too, if Emperor Argenteus is an acceptable example. Horned boys might be tied into this... Does Illumination protect from the deterioration that ogres face who don't consume sentient victims? I don't think so. An illuminated ogre may be able to make the conscious decision to make that choice, similar to the choice of the castrati broo cadre of Ralzakark to forego reproduction. Illumination can serve as a counter to biological and cultural automatisms, but I don't think that it cancels them outright. It isn't quite clear what exactly triggers the "Sense Chaos" ability of Storm Bull cultists, but whatever it is, even the most superficial Illumination appears to interfere with that. If you look at Oddi's complaint that he doesn't fall into the mindless rage of the Bull any more, it might be the same for a Chaotic - the mandatory rage at Creation has been mitigated. A person releasing Chaos will still trigger that Storm Bull sense, whether illuminated or not. We don't know whether Ralzakark was born as a broo, or whether he became one through his actions. The Wild Healer is THE exception of illuminate broos. It is the character concept for Rev Bem in Roddenberry's Andromeda series (including the physical mutation later in the series). And we don't know of any offspring of this individual. Illumination has been abused as a power-grabbing device, most notably by the Unholy Trio. Illumination as the core tenet of the Lunar religion is tied to Sedenya's (loving) acceptance of Chaos. As the core tenet of solar religions, Illumination appears to be a separation of the physical world as a means to approach the Ultimate.

I am not asking for the reason (your use of the terms in the table makes it clear that these in-culture terms are hardly applicable to the Dara Happans, for instance, and likely not that applicable to the Esrolian, either), but for guidelines what terms to use in future publications (e.g. for the Jonstown Compendium). TR offers a plethora of ceremonial roles with "-thane" added, where the use of that element basically means "officer of the clan", often in a rather minor role that doesn't convey nobility, and prominence only in certain situations. I guess we ought to avoid those with regard to making Glorantha more accessible, at least without giving an explanation in current diction whenever we happen to fall back on such terms. There is a military consequence for the status of a household, too. Orlanthi custom makes a differentiation between plow-men/cow men and shared-plow households/sheep men, but almost all of this falls into the "common free" bracket, with some carls or clan-level lower "nobility" occupying the "wealthy free" bracket, and the semi-free population being counted among the sheep men, too. (Although the roles of pastoralism vs. plow-driven agriculture is inverted, a situation similar to the "ranchers vs. farmers" trope of the Old West, with the numbers of cattle owned matching that trope.)

Sending him out to become a foot-man (i.e. slave) of the Praxians is the next best thing they could do. A troublesome orphan sent into (lesser?) exile within weeks of his initiation to appease impending Lunar reprisals fulfils oh so many zero to hero tropes. If you are a fan of the original Midkemia trilogy, you can find lots of parallels between the early career of Argrath and Pug in "Magician: Apprentice".

Interesting conclusion from the (internally somewhat contradictory) statement on "Temple wealth" - a clan with 200 hides, a hide able to feed a tenant family of five with half its production (but add in an equal amount of food produced from livestock), would have between 50 and 70 hides assigned to the temple/nobility. I tend to regard the "wealthy free" portion of the population as carls with their own tenant households on their stead - of the two Elmali households I outlined in my Elmali Stead suggestions, the larger one would be wealthy free while the smaller one would common free. (The households work just as well if you replace "Elmal" by "Yelmalio horse-thane".)

Maybe think of it as "Cacode-mon" which can be cultivated into a full Devil form by its tamer?

I am carrying this over from the YGWV thread as this is about making our joint Glorantha writings more compatible with the canonical presentation rather than reveling in the grognardy of outdated terms and concepts. The neutral terms make this sound very much like absolutist feudalism to me (serfdom was abolished in Schleswig-Holstein only in 1804), but that may just be my German cultural background. A family background in serfdom was still a social issue two generations later in the Schleswig-Holstein uprising of 1848-1851. Are you advising us to talk about a rider nobility rather than horse thanes? I tried to find any clues to Sartarite social stratum in RQ2 era texts, but at least at a first glance I didn't manage to find any. As I started my career of looking at Orlanthi society using King of Sartar and the Pavis Box, the terms thrall, cottar, carl and thane are pretty much ingrained in my Orlanthi vocabulary. Thane already was part of the Genertela Box description of the Varmandi clan. Thunder Rebels may be the pinnacle of "antrhopowanking" and went over the top with its subcultitis, but it provided an atmospherically dense image of an archaic culture. In many ways too puritanic, but that's another issue. Expanding the potential range of free cottagers in circumstances mostly undistinguishable from semi-free status. The real question is about the upward mobility of the children of unfree or semi-free people. The Sartarite quota of 10 percent (as an average, rising up to 30 percent in some clans closer to the Esrolian model with a great number of clans closer to the Hendriki model) probably can be maintained without hereditary unfree status. Those unfree people who manage to raise children probably are in a tenant-like relationship anyway, with a mix of domestic and labor duties in the agricultural society. Do children of unfree and semi-free Theyalans in Sartarite and Hendriki society end up as semi-free tenants, or do they join the (poor) free common group? These numbers (taking those of Sartar or the Hendriki as a measure) map somewhat strangely on the distribution of stead-holder households (carls, plow-men) vs. cottager households with at best a share in a plow, which appears to divide the "Free Common" category about halfway. The high percentage of unfree and semi-free people in Esrolia indicates either hereditary serfdom or the power of the grandmothers to designate or sell anyone in their house to serfdom or a semi-free tenant position. Calculated from this break-down, Esrolia has more than half a million unfree inhabitants, and less than 700K free non-noble inhabitants with about 180K nobility of all heights.

Yes, the Sambari are notable for not only keeping thralls, but for promoting trade with them. To me, this means that the Sambari founding clans weren't of Hendriki descent, but descended from some of the Foreigner People of Aventus' Laws, or otherwise from clans who successfully evaded the Dragonkill by fleeing southward. Whether a clan keeps thralls or not is rooted in the ancestors' collective memory. It is not really a tribal feature, unless the tribe's clans predominantly result from common ancestry, like the original five clans of the Colymar. There is little official information on the Sambari. Their tribal lands lie to the east of the Balmyr lands and were taken from the Torkani. They were allied with the Balmyr when the Locaem and Kultain entered Dragon Pass in the last wave of the Quivini immigration. The Firebull Clan of the Sambari launched a famous rebellion against the Lunar occupation (and may have been destroyed as a result). Depending on the society, the status of a slave or serf needn't mean abject misery, but it always implies limitations of liberties. There have been societies where slaves received better treatment than free paupers. Children of thralls are born as free but poor clansfolk - they are automatically of Cottar status. It isn't quite clear whether children taken in raids may be made thralls by their captors - there is one scene in King of Dragon Pass where a refugee core family can be taken in - among other choices, as thralls. In that case, the children of the arrivals get thrall status, too, although any children born to the family will be free clansfolk. We don't know about any precedents of chieftains being empowered to sell clan members into slavery, but we don't have evidence for the absence of such precedents, either. The Shadow Tribute has a provision to demand clansfolk as a (still rather mild) penalty for failure to pay the full amount of the tribute, so that may serve as a legal precedent. The demand to round up sacrifices for the Crimson Bat is another such precedent. Whether life as a tenant or a non-tenant stickpicker is better or worse than that of a thrall is another question. Thralls provide a labor force for jobs that are undignified or possibly harmful in the long term. Thralls with special abilities may find themselves in a tenant position, like Willandring the giant smith of the Red Cow clan. Thralls assigned to a thane's household may thrive on scraps which free tenants of the clan would envy. The clans that have lunarized clansfolk are faced with the decision whether to outlaw them after the Dragonkill or whether to keep them (and risk retribution from fanatical anti-Lunar rebels returning from exile/outlawry). What happens to Wulfsland is a chapter of Sartarite politics which hasn't been highlighted yet, but which definitely should be. I suppose that Ian Cooper has plans for the Red Cow Clan and their neighbors for the post-Dragonkill period, and that will involve the fate of Wulfsland and the Telmori tribe, but I have no idea whether this is anywhere near the publication queue of Chaosium. This is pertinent to the question of slavery as the Wulfsland veterans lord over a population of Maboder-born slaves or thralls. Jomes Wulf himself is a career officer of the Lunar Army, a commander of Peltasts from Aggar. His veterans may include a core of his peltasts who participated in the wolf conflict of 1607/1608. Eighteen years is ample time for them to go native, or to return to their hillman ways of their youth. It isn't quite clear whether Jomes had any land in reserve to take in veterans from his regiment who mustered out later than 1608, or whether than 1608 batch included mustered out veterans from other units than his peltasts. The year of the Dragonkill will have seen the first initiations of the second generation of Wulfslanders, and also a significant number of children fathered on Maboder widows who did not manage to become a de-facto wife of their new owners. This could be a fun campaign, actually - the heirs of Wulfsland, children of the Lunar veterans, struggling to find a place in the liberated Sartar. You'd start with very young characters, using a blend of Sartar and Tarsh events for parental involvement as per RQG character creation, and might end up as a new bodyguard unit of Argrath, or a Fazzurson, or as a Lunar strike team against the Sartarites. Or possibly all of these, with siblings undergoing different experiences. Anybody willing to tackle campaign concepts like this collectively? I miss the productive days of the Wilmskirk mailing list or the Whitewall project collaborations. That's a very Hendriki sentiment, and probably quite un-Orlanthi in and around Esrolia or the Lunar Provincial King- and Queendoms. There are quite likely dozens of stories how the Vingkotling kept thralls, or captured them on their raids - the list of refugees in the Flood Age names several sources of thrall populations. We don't have explicit myths of Orlanth taking thralls - yet. Argan Argar enthralled Veskarthan to build the Obsidian Palace for him. The places of human and troll conjoined survival had the human Dawn populations as slaves or thralls. All of this points at least towards Dark Orlanthi to have a long standing tradition of having slavery. The enslavement of the Kitori by Monrogh and his formerly Elmali followers indicates that the Light Orlanthi are anything but strangers to keeping thralls, too. The Berennethtelli as former Hyalorings are quite likely to have been thrall-takers, and the similarly descended Orgovaltes too. And I have little hope for the other three husband leaders of the original Vingkotling tribes (Goralf Brown, Kastwall Five and Porscriptor the Cannibal) to have been of more lenient origins, either.

Think of this requirement before the (mitigation of) the Curse of Kin. What would that requirement have meant prior to the further corruption of the dark trolls? In a way, it makes attendance to funerary meals essential to Karrg's Sons. The requirement doesn't specify how much of the body of a kinsperson the rune lord needs to eat, or how fresh that body needs to be, or how close the kinship needs to be. Did a troll community that supported Karrg's Sons need to slaughter one of their number each season that saw no natural deaths? Or one of their number per Karrg's Son? We know that the Shadow Tribute demanded a sacrivice of the chief's kin as penalty for substandard tribute. Was such a tribute of kinsfolk a normal thing in pre-Nysalorean troll society?

Yes, the Kitori are a different race (at least, IMO a different species). The very same Kitori acted up all overlordly and oppressive just outside of living memory (the last people with a normal life span who may have first-hand memories of the Kitori wars are dying now). For comparison, the Kitori wars under not-yet Prince Tarkalor are as far in the past as the second world war is from our time. Most Heortlings do - the Hendriki are notable for not endorsing thraldom. You mean Big Government, the recipient of those outrageous tributes that would come as tributes in kin when bad times made regular payments difficult? The Kingdom of Night wasn't much of a centralized state when compared to Dara Happan emperorship, but it claimed quite a big portion of the production of the constituents - some of it for re-distribution, as forced trade, but quite a lot to maintain the tribute-collecting Kitori shape-shifter tribe. The Heortlings had a quite passionate exit from the Union headed by the Only Old One. The Hendriki maintained their independence from the Kingdom of Orlanthland by continued payment of at least some of those ancient obligations, and avoided being caught up directly in the EWF, as did Dark Esrolia, but the OOO wasn't that much of a help against the invaders/conquerors from Slontos. Yes, why would the GOP not receive the full support of the descendants of the slaves they liberated? Why don't the descendants of the Anglo-Saxons maintain free migration from their ancestral homelands into their current ones? And why are the once most ardent defenders of the Roman papacy in England no longer the model state of catholic christianity in Europe? Because of history going on. Good things happened from interaction with the Kitori, but bad things happened, too. After the Gbaji Wars, the Heortlings had to deal with unreasonable Shadowlords, and the Tax Slaughter was the quite justified reaction to accumulated cleptocratic oppression by those who wore the lead masks and dark cloaks of the Kitori. They also used foreign (Arkati) magics. Paying the Shadow Tribute never was popular. Nobody likes trade deals rammed down their throats, obligating them to let stuff into their communities that they have no real interest of receiving. Esrolia doesn't matter that much to Heortlings, except during the times they managed to rule parts of it (the Adjustment Wars that followed the collapse of the EWF and the Closing). And why should the tribe that betrayed the Vingkotling dynasty and destroyed the last great Chaos-foes in the Greater Darkness through foul murder invoke feelings of friendship with the descendants of the Vingkotling tribes? The Theyalans share some united history and culture, and Esrolia is about as populous as the sum of the Heortling tribes (including the Lunar Provinces of Heortling descent). The Quivini have a more recent reminder of the Esrolians being murderous to their heroic dynasties, with the death of Sarotar. They probably cheered at the news of successful assassinations of the queens and grandmother of Nochet. The Kitori wars fell into this period of enmity between Sartar and Esrolia. Every clan that had made the migration into Quiviniland had a story of having to pay a hefty tribute to be allowed through the Marzeel Valley. Tarkalor's involvement in suppressing the Kitori didn't result in any resentment by the Sartarite tribes, the general reaction would have been "serves them right."

Oh, there will be changes to older material. But they won't be arbitrary, but considered. I won't agree with all of those changes or interpretations, but then the same will have to be said in the opposite direction. And unless I manage to sit down and produce an epic campaign for RQG or some other system to rival the Great Argrath Campaign, I won't be in a position to demand changes in my direction. But yes, watch this space.

Which deity would you go to for contraception? Ernalda and the Dark Earth know about abortion, and they have curses of infertility, but those aren't easily lifted and probably cause lasting damage. Maran Gor carries boys all the way to birth... Uleria has magic promoting conception. Nursing and high-profile physical exertion (e.g. weapon-training) may reduce the chances of random, unplanned conception. Then there are always sheeps' intestines. Or exhausting yourself on your male partner before getting serious with your female one. Any drug-induced fertility suppression may permanently affect conception. There are going to be more and more calamity years in the course of the Hero Wars, and each calamity year will contribute to child death for years to come. Food shortages can seriously affect growth and immune system development (read: resistance to evil spirits) even if starvation is avoided if there is nutrition deficiency. I regard the numbers generated by the economy rules to include the aftereffects of calamity years. There still remains the question of the inevitable social downward spiral as the surplus noble children surviving their childhood don't find enough noble occupations to maintain their birth standards.

Elmal has not been deleted. The myths of Elmal are still there to be quested in, and there are Yelmalio worshipers who regularly access and use them. There have always been tribal Yelmalians in Sartar since the arrival of the Dinacoli. The Pelorian Orlanthi had been worshiping Yelmalio when they re-settled Dragon Pass, and only the Quivini and possibly a few Vendref may have worshiped Elmal inside the Pass. I used this fact for a scenario I wrote for the dragonewt issue of Free INT (the first of several fanzines and con booklets which used Dan Barker's great dragonewt image for a cover) and which was later translated for Tradetalk. There are tribal Yelmalians which can only dream of having slaves to work their fields for them. The appeal to Storm peoples is limited. They turn to their local sun worhshipers of whichever kind to impersonate their solar enemies from myth whenever they prepare a re-enactment (or This World heroquest), and they don't mind much which one they ritually beat up. They also often are pre-selected as home-guards rather than going forth to join in the taking of plunder, and only their role as horse-thanes may allow them to tag along. (They form the various horse archer units you find in the Sartar Free Army and probably also in the Cavalry Corps.) These necessary but rather thankless jobs haven't changed since Monrogh emancipated the Elmali. The horse archer (and light lancer) Yelmalian is as typical for the cult as are the phalangites, everywhere except in Prax where they don't have (enough) horses and make do with nomad allies. Kuschile Golden Bow is almost as present among the horse Orlanthi as he is among the Pentans or Grazers. Maintaining a horse requires quite a bit of resources, excluding your average cottar from this version of Yelmalio more than from the phalangites who may make do with a helmet, some Linothorax and a great shield.

For whom the bell tolls... (Or have you fallen asleep again in that rocking armchair of yours, old-timer?)

Even with dedicated healers, diseases will take a while before being recognized as more than a common cold or similar low threat threshold common spirit affliction - and these are bound to exist besides the bad Malian ones. There are other causes for death among children, among these malnutrition due to calamities. Calamities like the Fimbulwinter, which will have produced a batch of children with severe malnutrition for about a year, hence prone to other defects, or attractive to malign spirits of other sorts than Malian diseases.

And those temples will have shrines or better to Yelmalio in his Elmal role. And yes, where there are no major Yelmalio temples in the rural neighborhood, you will find a Yelmalio temple in a city. Probably a quite modest place, even though the typical worshipers of both Elmal and Yelmalio tend to be carls or thanes.

Leika, I suppose...

The moon is located in the Outer World of the Middle Air, where distances and parallaxes are misleading at least, and subjective much of the time. This does of course also apply to the Red Moon, but the description in p.727-729 of the Guide crowd the moon with forests and oceans. I don't think you would talk about an ocean much smaller than Lake Felster, which has 25 hexes from east to west, the Elf Sea with 17 hexes east to west, or the Sweet Sea with again about 25 hexes diameter. The Crater is 4 hexes in diameter (25 miles according to Guide p.318) with its peaks 2 to 3 miles high, and the reflection of the Crater forms the Crown Wall mountains on the moon, the limit of the moon surface visible from the surface world. Let's assume that the actual moon has about 2.5 times that diameter, in order to be able to talk about seas rather than lakes on the moon, so about 10 hexes in diameter (or just 30 hexes in circumference). I would expect the moon to sit several times its diameter above the ground. The silver bridge from the Imperial Palace to the moon is an impossible band into the sky.

Getting illuminated is more or less a matter of time after your first exposure to a riddle or a more direct eperience of the Ultimate. The question is whether achieving Illumination destroys your rationality, or whether you can continue as more or less the person you used to be.