Joerg

Same as with a Humakti who knows a backdoor from Hell - he just visits the land of the Dead. Humakti can join a Lightbringers' Quest (in a supporting role, usually as Orlanth's Sword) and return from it without having violated this. Basically, a Humakti initiation has the same ritual pre-Death that is inflicted upon entering Alkoth, but unlike the Alkoth one it isn't reversible.

Only if he carries enough MP generators (or uses the "indirect tapping" of having his team-mates fill up phis MP matrices) to return to five to six time the human racial max in available magic points. Your average full manipulation spell takes about 30 MP if you infer only a single rune or technique.

Thou shalt not summon the Joerg? This probably was a union made in Godtime. The child of a broo not a broo? That takes some belief... but then, it is possible that Ralzakark served as the mother rather than as the father. I mean, why not? Her description in the guide names her parents, but not their role in her birth, and if any force in Glorantha is unpredictable, it should be Chaos. So Ralzakark goes off on a quest to give birth to an agent that would spread his thoughts and interests outside of Dorastor, and rather than finding Seseine a willing mother, he gets impregnated himself. Luckily there are enough of him to cover for him during the pregnancy. Passion is their weapon, but their nature is hunger. Ompalam enslaves them all. Liking him isn't on the table. Fearing and obeying him is all that is required. Seseine was already present among the Artmali deities of Chaos - she is one of the forces of corruption that Ompalam needed to gather up in his parody of Pamalt's Necklace. That's where her possible sea god origin makes sense. The Artmali are descendants of Lorion, the Celestial River. Seseine may have been kin that fell prey to the very powers she now embraces. Niiads have Illusion powers and inherit Fertility from Triolina. Seseine may have started from there. Who corrupted her? There are always the Vadeli.

But then, we have the myths how Orlanth stole Lightning (Boy) from Sky. The Middle Air is the Lower Sky, and Lightning and Thunderbolt are the resident expressions of fire in this realm. I am not certain whether Thunderbolt would have any light effects. Sound effects turned up to eleven, and probably lots of heat, but blinding light? No idea.

All of the writings in Drastic were based on material by Greg Stafford, but there was lots of speculation in those articles, too. I discussed a few of these prior to publication and may have injected a piece of speculation or two myself. Volume Sea never advanced beyond some initial deliberations.

Not in mine. Glorantha is a world of the ancient coin metals (including lead and quicksilver here), and some rare iron. Zinc wasn't known as an unalloyed metal until in the Modern Era. Zinc ore was well known, and its ability to produce brass when smelted (reduced with significant amounts of charcoal) with copper ores (both in oxide or carbonate form). Apart from reacting quickly with hydrochloric acid and thereby being able to create all manner of quite toxic fumes in the presence of As, Sn, Sb, Hg etc., zinc is used as ablative electrode on iron, plated by dipping into molten metallic zinc or electrolysis from zinc salts. The only Gloranthan use for zinc would be the alloy terrestrial brass. Good for making thin sheets of metal with a golden sheen, but mediocre stability. I am fine with Gloranthan chimes and trumpets made of gold, silver or bronze/copper-tin-brass. (And in case someone peeps up "I meant zinc oxide", I have no problem with this mineral existing in Glorantha. There is just no way to produce a metal from it.) You might point at Aluminum and that that's a metal that was unknown to the Ancients. Well, the Gloranthan Aluminum is unknown to modern chemists, too. It might be closer to Beryllium in terms of density than terrestrial Aluminium. In terms of chemistry, this metal is completely at ease submerged in salt water, showing no signs of corrosion. We don't know any metal or alloy with such properties. I think it is perfectly reasonable to assume that all metals in existence would have been mentioned somewhere. The Ancients knew the list of Gloranthan metals (minus aluminum). The inclusion of iron is already a concession away from the Bronze Age theme. The existence of alloys is known in general terms. Alloys may contain metallic or quasi-metallic components completely unknown as pure elements. It isn't clear how the alloyists understand such extra components - possibly like pigments that change an alloy's appearance. Apart from iron, each metal is associated with an element or a sub-element (in case of the sky metals). Why do elements manifest metals? That's a question for the Mostali. To be honest, I have no good idea. The True Mostali were behind the project that made iron, and I think they sacrificed/transmuted some living (or more likely, dying) Stone to make a copy of the material of the First Sword when it landed in their workshop. I am not sure Mostal would have approved of this reckless innovation. The Octamonists share that opinion.

One hint about the origin of Seseine could be the Guide p.566, which names Seseine the sister of Janfusu, a grandson of Serelazam (one of the doom currents, sibling of Sshorg, child of Togaro according to Missing Lands, and parent of Dinisso, who in turn parented Maslo, and (with Dashomo) Marthino). It might be possible that she has a water origin, although her runes of Fertility and Illusion don't show anything like that (Illusion might be shared with the Niiads, but those are the descendants of Heler and Triolina, ultimately Daliath and Framanthe). Since Marthino also is a child of Dashomo (i.e. there is a current from both Dashomo and Dinisso feeding Marthino), Seseine might be a child of Dashomo rather than Dinisso. Dashomo is fed by the Kereneth Sea currents, from the west. The bodies of the seas (like Togaro, Kereneth) are children of Framanthe and Sramak, and don't show up in the nice illustrated genealogy of the sea gods in the Sourcebook. The city of Janfusu lies on Dsunguya Island, facing the Inland Sea of Kareeshtu. It is suspiciously far away from the Serelazam doom current, which enters Magasta's Pool from the Northeast. Serelazam was the main Sea foe of Thinobutu, but neither Thinokans nor Kumankans are exactly close to Janfusu. I am thus mildly baffled how a grandchild of Serelazam has business founding a city on the Inland sea of Fonrit, and how it was a sibling of Seseine. Sea deity parentage is complicated. Manthi and Togaro are named as parents of Sshorg, but apart from Togaro we have no other confirmed parent for Serelazam.

That's less of an issue with documents that are separated into books/chapters and verses, usually numbered. Being able to reference single sentences or at most paragraphs consistently has made exchange of biblical quotes a matter of a name and a few numbers in order, regardless of the format or even languae of the edition you are referencing. Frex, Plato's Politeia (aka The Republic) has been split into various books in order to allow references. Of course, there are such texts where giving the edition is crucial. The sharpened Abiding Books (introduced by the Malkioneranists faithfully continued by the Rokari) differ greatly from the original. More so than e.g. the Wicked Bible (referenced in Good Omens) which left out three innocent letters (n, o and t) from "Thou shalt not commit adultery"...

Psst, you are trespassing on the secret plans of the miasmic hordes here! Back in 2000, Greg distributed a metaplot for the Hero Wars to prospective authors and content checkers. This had a really big and comparatively coordinated multi-pronged plan that had been started to be put in action. Multiple demigod-level agents of a new god would further the causes and lay the groundwork, with some initial efforts like the Kingdom of War and the Blood Sun to draw attention away from later plans. At its simplest it could be said to have shifted Chaos forces around, so that the old, proven ancestral methods to deal with the local Chaos would fail abysmally as entirely new foes with completely different powers and weaknesses descend on the hapless defenders. Broos and scorpionmen emerging from the Nargan Desert were part of this. There is an obvious logistical problem in ferrying ordinary Chaos critters from central Genertela to Pamaltela - you don't want them on your ships, and they are too bright to be stuck into cages. Full on slave bracelets and manacles might be enough in combination with iron shackles, but if you have such a critter as your slave, why let it go rather than let it earn its keep in the arena? Still, somehow the coordinators of the miasmic hordes have found means to populate their staging grounds for the upcoming Hero Wars with critters far outside of their normal ranges. There are broo gathering in the Nargan, and there are Pamaltelan monstrosities adapting to Karia. Yes, the far south is seeing them. Fonritian Chaos repeats the sins of the Artmali in the late Greater Darkness, which suffered a defeat at the fiery spears of warriors of Pamalt, Balumbasta and Vangono, or were drowned by the seas and their denizens. Northeastern and central northern Pamaltela has lingering Antigods of Vithelan origin, like the Gorgers of Kimos, and have been fought by the geoglyphs of their Thinobutan human foes - possibly on a much larger scale north of Fonrit. Broos thrive on herd beasts. There are rhino broo, but they are rather rare. It might take some greater effort to breed shoveltusker broo. Broo can propagate from human victims, of course. This produces rather classical goat-shaped broos. Why aren't there many in Fonrit? Possibly the magics of Ompalam or Darleester don't work against these broos. Gark the Calm already offers a way more docile alternative. Ogres may already be widespread. And a form of Malia aready is an ally of the Pujaleg Empire (Forest of Disease).

The Humakti does indeed sever his ties to kin upon initiation, but that doesn't meant that his former kin cannot adopt him back into the clan after that initiation. I understand that this is pretty standard procedure in clans with high portions of Humakti, like the Two Ridge or the Greydogs. Probably the Varmandi, too. In case of the Lismelder, the Humakti are a necessary part of their life on the edge of the Upland Marsh. In case of the Varmandi and the Two Ridge Fort clans, the Humakti are part of the clan warband which is a lot larger than a normal (non-war) clan would support, and parts of which serve as mercenariy troops (not individually, but as a kin group). Typical postings are the Sartar royal bodyguard (opposite to the Telmori who form the other half of the royal bodyguard) or companions of tribal kings or high priests. That's as much as you'll get for a single clack.

The idea that yellow elves are tropical is what I don't really see. But then the dense spruce forest of Winterwood right next to the Glacier is something that doesn't rhyme with my experience of life next to a permanent Glacier, either (e.g. the Svartisen right on the arctic circle, with one branch reaching down almost all the way to the sea into Glomfjord). Yellow elves are aligned to non-deciduous broadleaf trees, brown elves to deciduous broadleaf trees. Green elves aren't necessarily tied to cold climate, and (at least from my experience) are likely to cohabit with dwarf birch elves (or runners) along the cold fringes of the Glacier. Spruce, fir or pine forests are different in character from broadleaf forests. Pine (and cypress) are the most likely to mingle with broadleaf trees. Yew is another borderline case, as is redwood, but both are clearly coniferous, and at least the Redwood in Prax and Umathela are associated with green elves. The most problematic coniferous tree is the larch, which is also deciduous. It might have hibernating green elves, or none at all. Vice versa there are a couple of deciduous trees which cohabitate with pine - birch and rowan in the subarctic and moderate regions. Large evergreen broadleaf bushes like rhododendron or laurel are yellow elf rather than either green or brown elf in nature, but they rarely grow to forest size with sufficiently high individual trees. There are Brown Elf type trees (like certain oaks) that aren't deciduous. That doesn't make them green elf trees, nor any elves associated with these green elves. Maybe insomniac brown elves... One way to test this is the question whether a tree has female elves associated with it. If so, it is not a yellow elf tree.

Harono is a sun emperor that turned up in Esrolia - Land of 10,000 Goddesses as a former ruler overcome by Storm. It isn't exactly clear whether he still receives any kind of worship, and how much what was known about him was subsumed in the shared Yelm cult under the Bright Empire. People often complain about the God Learners and their syncretic ways, but the Bright Empire took up where the First Council had left and sought and found commonalities between the ancient stories and myths of the various people it took under its umbrella, and had them share in similar myths. When it is stated that Peloria is virgin territory to God Learner influence, that is true for the God Learners proper. It is not true for the Theyalan cults and culture that was merged with the emerging sedentary Dara Happan one (after they had gotten rid off the horse warlords that had ruled them for four centuries (including some pre-Dawn Grey Age) at the Battle of Argentium Thri'ile. The Esrolian sky king Harono came to Nochet from Above in his desire to have a certain Lady Drero (of no other story?) for his queen, and sent warriors to bring her (without asking for consent or anything, it appears from the story. His first delegation is defeated by the resident war gods, but then he comes with the force of his people and overcomes their resistance. However, he is warded off from the city by an invisible barrier. In recognition of that magic, he just claims to be protector of the lands outside of the city. The Esrolians blame Kodig (who else?) to have brought in Orlanth to conquer the land and destroy the city after he had slain Harono in the battle for the land and the city. Ernalda intercedes, with the Taming of the Storm story unfolding. In Harmast's time, the city had a temple to Harono,, and he was recognized as the god of the Sun Disk that had been returned to the Sky by Ernalda (through her "Sleep of feigned Death" and instigation of the Ritual of the Net). That was half a century into the reign of the Bright Empire... so maybe my claims for unification by the Bright Empire were a bit overstated. The God Learners did learn about Pelorian Yelm from the Pure Horse Folk of Prax, allies of theirs in the capture of the Giant Cradles. Eucalyptus is a an evergreen broad-leaf tree (family), which would make it a yellow elf kind of tree. Vronkali are really about coniferes. I am not so sure about that. The stone age forest of mesolithic Europe was product of cultivation by controlled application of fire, much like the Australian outback was shaped by aboriginal fire-farming. There are plenty of healthy ecosystems which make do without this human interference with their density of growth. The ecosystems (with the same starting conditions) are quite different from what human hunter-gatherers made them. Undergrowth management probably was in the hand of megafauna rather than fire-using humans. The European forest was actually an invasive group of species from the south replacing the previous tundra, grass steppe, and taiga. It isn't quite clear whether it had a chance to invade without human involvement.

The sudden emergence of Brown Elves is one of the weirdest things to happen in Glorantha. Funny that especially you should say that, with the spirit of the Torch in the Redwood of Dagori Inkarth preserving just that kind of fire...

Do the Fonritians that make it to the Genertelan shores buy all their slaves, or do they raid for some of them, too? What about Alatan? Their pirate king was overcome in a joint naval action by the Quinpolic and Kethaelan navies, but certainly this didn't deter the good people of Alatan from outfitting new ships. What about the inverse piracy, wrecking and attacking ships on anchor? The latter is probably a merfolk or sea troll activity.

I knew I should have rephrased that.. Those are human _bird hsunchen_, not _humanoid bird_ hsunchen. I could add the extinct jungle hen people of Kralorela.

Like the Red Emperor and his mother goddess - a clear chaos deity, right? Think of Arkat, who (after becoming a troll to force his way into ever-more desparate Dorastor leaning on chaotic blessings) ultimately faced Nysalor (buffed up by chaos) with equivalent buffs, in all likelihood a chaos monster himself. (Zorak Zoran doesn't really mind cave troll-type Chaos. He hates enemy chaos. He hates enemies. He hates, period.) Arkat went on to rule the Autarchy aka Stygian Empire. Assuming he had taken on Chaos gifts for his final confrontation, do you think he would have been able to shed them as if they were nothing, or did he carry them for the rest of his life, until (and possibly through) apotheosis? Finally, Time has the Chaos rune. Yet it is fervently defended by the forces that undid the Sunstop.

The God Learners, having conquered the Fonritian city states, equated Ompalam (the superior of all the enslaved gods of the country) as the obvious equivalent of their Invisible God, and the Fonritian practices as some form of henotheism. They never claimed that the Fonritians were in any way Malkioni. They got hung up on a few parallels and fantasized from there. (A bit like Arthur Evans did when he posited matriarchal Minoan culture and "reconstructed" parts of Knossos, or like Schliemann using a gold mask as "Mask of Agamemnon" that he replaced by the one known as such today when he found the second one which looked a lot more like his image of the heroic king than the first one his excavations had found in Mykene.) Fonritian culture is predominantly theist. And we don't talk about "churches" any more (except we read about them in Revealed Mythologies, which hasn't seen the necessary rewrite to become compatible with the basic assumptions of the Guide, and pre-RQ3 concepts of Malkionism). He is another face of the southern Earth King, possibly his opposite. Enforced obedience replaces voluntary cooperation. In many ways, Ompalam is the ugly face of Yelm. Uglier through his associates. Comparable to Sheng's Empire's Yelm cult, really. That's what the God Learners thought was what went on in Fonrit. And they appear to have been pretty confounded when the Fonritians rebelled against them to regain their previous pantheon. In other words, their analysts screwed up. I'll agree that Fonritian society is probably the most brutal form of humans ruling over humans, on par with the antigod race domains in the East, or with the mostali overlordship over their human slaves in Slon. Ramalia and Sheng's Empire have been similar, and Vadeli "Kongo" (Chir, Oabil) would have been as bad. The Thinobutan intermediate settlement areas were as bad, which is why they kept fleeing.

"The Veldang" is as ambiguous as "the Agimori" or "the Doraddi", referring to a racial group, a group of language speakers, or a local population (or several of these at once). Concurrent to the Dragon Pass campaign, Gebel and the rebel Gabaryanga establish the New Artmali Empire in Tarahorn, so the free blues will refer to themselves as Artmali again. The pre-history of northern Pamaltela is rather unclear. Revealed Mythologies repeats the "Elamle-Ata - Artmali conflict, and has "the Elamle" as the driving force which ejected Garangordos from his home in Laskal. We have a number of culprits willing to shoulder the blame. Lukarius of Dara Happa, Storm Gods (likely Vadrus), possibly even Tolat (her twin brother). The Chaos gods as culprits are mentioned in the short encyclopediac bit on p.66 of Revealed Mythology, but seriously - Chaos gods sending a slain deity only to the land of the dead (the land of her dad)? After Veldara had disappeared from the sky, the Artmali grew desperate, which may explain this bit from the Guide p.642: There appear to have been three major centers of Artmali culture - Zamokil, the Nargan Sea, and northwestern Pamaltela (the survival area of the Fonritian blues). The Firefall destroyed the Nargan Sea culture and population, but not the southeastern or the northwestern ones. The northwestern group (perhaps already under Jarkaru) conducted naval raids on the Thinobutans ("the Elamle"), as may have the Vadeli, or perhaps as servants of the Vadeli. Garangordos returned it. The later Artmali (later than Jarkaru) were desperate or desensitized enough to ally with the Chaos gods of northern Pamaltela, and while their original deities (Artmal, Veldara) certainly came out of the Gods War victorious (only Tolat sort of triumphed), they did survive it, unlike other cultures, if in an abject condition, and possibly suffering from the Greater Darkness trauma (not realizing the Dawn had come) well into the time when Garangordos conquered them. The "fake Malkioni church" is really the mis-interpretation of the God Learners rather than where Garangordos came from. Garangordos instituted a substituted Pamalt pantheon (through his own person and those of his siblings), in a theist rather than animist mode. Their description of Fonrit resembles what happened in Carmania at that time (but outside of God Learner reporting), but is pretty much fake news in Fonrit. Ompalam is a facet of Pamalt, or perhaps Pamalt's Other or antithesis. Theist rather than animist, enforcing cooperation rather than mediating it, domineering rather than yielding the first contest by principle. The "Elamle" who drove Garangordos, his mom and siblings out of their happy little town in Laskal send Garangordos down a route that resembles the early career of Sheng Seleris, only that Garangordos wasn't opposed by two of the most powerful empires of his time. Instead, he or his followers fell upon a traumatized population still dazed from their Gods War experience and probably not really realizing that the Great Darkness had ended. (And it doesn't look like Garangordos brought them any sense that it had...) "Around 500 ST" is not to mean at the start of the Second Age. It might have been as early as at the Sunstop, some people even have theorized that Garangordos did his thing just after the Dawn. It might have been well past the arrival of the Olodo in Umathela. Apart from the blues, the westernmost Thinobutan populations (Thinokos, and later on Kumanku) suffered enslavement by Ompalam. Whether the Thinokans were viewed as part of the Elamle who had done bad things to the Laskal population of northern (doraddic-descended) Agimori (as opposed to "racial Agimori" which describes all native Pamaltelan (and Slon, Teleos, Kumanku) humans except for the Veldang) or just as another hapless group easy to enslave isn't said anywhere. The God Learner Maps for the southern edge of the Spike are fairly dubious in their veracity. Endless yellow elf jungle from the Spike to the Fense Mountains? A navigable connection between the Helerian Sea and the seas around Thinobutu? Both at the same time?

No Aldryami great temples at all, unless you count the Great Trees. Yelm is obviously an important god to the Aldryami, as will be Keraun, the rain-bringer, and the deities of the land (Pamalt, Vrala, Enklosa, Ernalda/Faranor). The Umathelan tribes might be encouraged to worship both on behalf of the forest overlords, without necessarily initiating in significant numbers.

https://www.glorantha.com/gods-of-fonrit/ I think that text has been superseded by the Guide's section "Ompalam and the Sun", p.553. Fonrit is first and foremost a theist society. They do have sorcerers, independent ones (apart from their slave status), and the rulers sponsor their research. There will be lots of Vadeli sorcery about. The status of the fairly high numbers of Vadeli in the cities isn't quite clear. Are these slaves of the city rulers? I don't see the problem, really. Worlath or Orlanth reacts to obvious Chaos, and most of the Chaos deities of Fonrit are subtle and the Chaos doesn't really show in terms of writhing masses of tentacles or similar, and their evil is no worse than the non-Chaotic evils going on. While the Fonritians appear to be heavily marked (not by tattoos, but by ritual scarification), they don't appear to use the core runes like Theyalans do. The Chaos rune might be replaced by the symbol for the Noose, I suppose (which might look fairly similar, maybe upside down, or lacking one of the horns). The God Learners will have delighted in finding a deity of purification in Fonrit, and their observations there may have contributed to the Machine God research in the Clanking City. The Artmali slave population has a pre-history of allying with pretty much the same array of chaos gods.

In order to arrive at the court of Daka Fal, one has to pass the Perjurers' Bridge (e.g. The Eleven Lights p.122). Does this mean that someone who has perjured might have less than the seven days to reach judgement? (Being tossed into the River of Swords is a form of judgement...)

RQG Bestiary p.27, Associated Cults

Also by the aldryami.

The Kralori "Eagle Hsunchen" are mis-classified wind children. To my knowledge that is the only such case (at least where birds are involved). Rather than Hsunchen, the Durulz of Dragon Pass are classed as Beastfolk, like minotaurs, manticores etc. I don't think that either of the aviform populations of the East Isles are grouped with such entities, or even with one another.

Ducks may (or may not) have various different colorations, but I don't think they have races or subspecies - at best, these are family traits. There are no humanoid bird Hsunchen in published Glorantha. The keets are a (moderately) civilized species of aviform humanoids, with various subspecies replicating the features of different aquatic (webbed foot) birds. The East Isles population includes ducks, terns, flamingos... There is also another species of aviform humanoids in southeastern Vithela, the Parrot People of Forng. No direct relation to the keets. No other bird-headed humanoids are extant (except for the beast-headed inhabitants of Narkast in Jrustela), although Rinliddi/North Pent or Suvaria may have had some in the distant past (Early Golden Age or before)