Joerg

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)

Truestone, Adamantium, Dragonbone, Moonstone (blue/red), Godsbones, Crystals of the Gods (congealed divine blood), Falangian Diamonds, Organstones harvested from the remains of the Faceless Statue Soot/lamp black is another source. Otherwise, the Caladra and Aurelion cult might be the source for this. More like a practical one - you can use your favorite magical metal like the everyday metal without (many of) the drawbacks of that material. (Weight remains.) I don't know about myths for that, but people making such talismans is quite likely. Identifying the source of the bone might be tricky without Lhankor Mhy magic, though. The Mostali probably use the same elemental succession as their theory of the material world as the theists and sorcerers. If you look at their castes, they have Stone as the primary matter, and diversify Sky into three subclasses (so that besides Tin there are Brass, Silver and Gold). Iron and Diamond (from Clay) are additions that most orthodox Mostali accept, but there are Octamonists, e.g. in Teshnos. If the Brithini and related magical traditions are about extracting magic from the world and turning it into energies, Mostali are about turning magical energies into (improved, enlivened) matter. Their automatons or artificial creatures are alive, and so is the world machine - just not in a biological sense (of "Growth").

It might be a problrm of lacking the organs to create sound, or to perceive it, so spirit speech may be a different form of communication, using a different medium carrier.

It is possible that this was the case in English history. In German, the two terms are completely different words (brass translates as "Messing", while bronze even uses the same spelling as the English terms). There are godsbones with special properties which make them suited to be po unded into long blades, and there are those which aren't. Alloyed bronze cannot replicate godsbone structure unless you have a mostali shaping it for half a year or so...

Metals appear to pretty resistant and contrary to Chaos, as creating the Copper Sands from the bones of a significant part of his followers were a means to cover the retreat of other, weaker allies from the disaster of Godsfall. I don't think there are Chaos metals. Lots of runes are without their own metals. I would expect that smelting chaos-infested raw material to yield any useful material for shaping. But the thing Chaos does well is make things amorphous and become tentacles. Now a metal tentacle with a handle might be an interesting weapon if moving on its own, but how do you keep it from attacking the wielder?

No. Actually, this story is told between the lines of the God Learner monomyth, the stuff about the elemental deities in the Sourcebook. To my knowledge I am the first to point out the fairly obvious in that clear terms, though. Having had a few opportunities to share myth-making moments with Greg on some of the Tentacles, I think that an interpretation like this one was fairly obvious to Greg, too. (A bit like the scene in The Naked Gun where the protagonists shoos away the spectators from the burning fireworks store - "Nothing to see here!") Read the Sourcebook before even touching Glorious ReAscent with a ten foot pole. The presentation of the major players in the Sourcebook is the basis for all the variant and then dissenting Gloranthan mythology people like me get so excited about. Conventional wisdom is that Lodril is a phallic deity, as much the channel for the ejaculate as the good stuff himself. Cue spear myths, picking up the "lost spear" after his castrating loss against Argan Argar, to cause an eruption when the spear pins down that monster - all in the Footprint myth, e.g. in the Guide. Lodril is part of Gods of Fire chapter of the Sourcebook, and while his brother Yelm steals the limelight, I would say that Lodril is easily as important as Yelm. In his many losses as much as in his triumphs. Castle Blue lives on the lingering magic of his cognate/incarnation Turos (or other names) that died there when Oronin invaded. As Turos, he was part of the local Celestial Court, the shaper of civilisation (without giving up his lusty nature). In the ReAscent, his ten sons and servants (including two daughters) from Oria do the work under supervision of his new son Take a couple of big swigs from the Sourcebook. It has all the big names - the longer the story for an entry, the more important the deity. No, Lodril's origin is as one of the three intellectual aspects of the pure flame of Aether. He only gets earthy with his dive or plunge into the Earth. The temporal coincidence with the insemination of the Earth was one thing that apparently needed to be pointed out for my story to be made clear. Gloranthan myth inserts a generation each in these conflicts, compared to the Greek ones. Aether passes on his duties as overseer of the Sky Age (pretty much the Golden Age) to the trio of his sons. Umath gets shattered upon seeking confrontation with Yelm, and it is his sons who go all Kronos against his half-brothers. Yes, that article doesn't really go for Mostali metal lore. I feel inclined to give the Mostali the doubt of knowing a bit more about it than a Seshnegi henotheist, though. IMO Lo-metal for solid sea metal makes a lot more sense if Lo comes from Lorion rather than Lodril, but then I have said so for a quarter of a century. Yes. You don't unmix by adding the pure stuff. As a chemist discussing dilution, I often use the example of a pot of coffee in a glass pot from a classical coffee machine, and let people make the thought experiment to pour off half the content, then add water. Repeat say five times. Will the content of the pot still be brownish? For those who say "that's clear enough", I let them repeat the thought experiment with sewage. Every celestial representation might give access to Silver, as Silver is the metal of the stars and planets. Orlanth has the ring. I simply assumed that electrum is alloyed from gold and silver, and that there are no electrum bones to be found anywhere. Same for pewter. I wasn't suggesting two atoms with 8 protons and neutrons each forming a sigma bond and half a pi bond, resulting in something that resembles a bi-radical, but rather I took a look at the name of the gas, which is drawn from its observed property. "Oxy" means sharp, which chemists have used for "acid" (another word originally meaning sharp, as in blade), as per element-oxygen-hydrogen molecules making water taste sour. (German language uses the same term for "acid", "acidity" and "sourness"...) Living, soulful air, and dead air. Not that much soul, Eurmal! The creation of (oxidic) patina is something I connect with Sea rather than Storm. The creation of (anoxic, sulphidic) stain with Darkness. Both Sea and Darkness are hungry elements, though the natures of their respective hungers differ. So does the corrosion they leave behind. IMO Gloranthan mining (by surface dwellers) and subsequent separation of metal flitters from rock has a lot in common with (ancient) gold panning, with actual vleeces used to trap small nuggets in the run-off. My approach is to identify the attacker and then taking some real world chemistry to associate with the result. Only very indirectly, Orlanth "rescuing" Ernalda from her concubinate. Umath never challenged his father (except when he interrupted the parental coitus). When he went challenging his half-brother, he was thrown to the ground by the southern planet, then was taken apart in Hell (possibly when mating with Verithurusa). No, this is a multi-generation vendetta. At the same event, a human-shaped muscular male (of quite advanced physicality for a new-born) places his shoulders against his father and lifts him away from is mother. Birth simultaneous to coitus - don't start imagining that. (too late...) IMO they didn't. They followed the runic sequence, and then the runic specialisations of the sons of Aether, and thought they were done with the metals.Then added Death by stealing that concept (and afterwards jealously guarding that theft). Possibly a last breath transformation of dying Stone when the mostali multiplied Death? Iron rather than Adamantium. They are Clay Mostali, after all. Their fellow tool, the Spike, was the Law Rune. Stasis depicts the upper half of the world machine.

In which case it would be informative how you now think HQG sorcery would have to be amended to make both games more aligned with one another. Just the basic concepts, not the gritty or verbose version, leave that to others if you have turned away from developing HQ further. The ease of players defining the world to their whim with the HQ rules probably is to blame for this extreme flexibility. HQ1 had the sorcerer go on a symbol-quest of almost Tron-like abstraction to gain the use of a grimoire, or to extract a new spell from it. HQ2 has single- or few-rune-grimoires (never mind the ancillary ones in spells from Combine) and techniques, instead. There are two somewhat demotivating issues with RQG sorcery - the nearly non-existant chance to succeed at a spell without adding multiples of the already long casting time to gain a somewhat decent chance at succeeding, and the need to spend all those extra magic points on derivative knowledge of runes or techniques. Grimoires could step in with both problems - a proper attunement to the mother grimoire of your spell might increase basic casting chance significantly (although you might require access to a written description or magical diagram of your spell), and it might reduce the "inferred rune/technique" penalty on MP use somewhat. RQG spells have the potential to cover every imaginable situations once you start writing your own (and have sufficiently crazy-huge pools of magic points at your hands). I see one problem there that after a time, sorcery may become a hammer that makes everything else the equivalent of nails. The runic limitation of the deities forbids this for theists even with maxed out runepower pools and ready uses or spell-traded ones on the side. With mastery of 2 elements and 4 powers, all you need are some forms and Command to cast just about any spell When it comes to paying eight-fold or worse MP cost, the Malkioni wizards officiating in Worship Invisible God may have those weekly or seasonal rites as a way to create an "ethical tapped MP" pool that might last until the next scheduled service of that rite.. Possibly with some degradation over time if that can be done without a pocket calculator or spreadsheet. What sources are you talking about here, David? Revealed Mythologies and Middle Sea Empire? Other tidbits of Greg's original Malkioni writings?

And that's the fundamental problem with these rules - modern Glorantha has no saints, only ascended masters, and those don't grant blessings or sorcerous cheats (as of our current knowledge). Sandy's rules will go pretty well with a RQ version of Ttrotsky's Book of Glorious Joy, but that relies on the monotheist cult with heroes model rather than on the current one. Exactly how the ancestor worship with mighty summons of ancestral interlocutors like Yingar or Menena is supposed to work I don't know, yet, but apparently this even happened among only slightly variant denizens of Brithos around 4 or 5 S.T.,, according to Hrestol's Saga. Are those systems really meant to mix? I didn't think so at the time, but then my game used the Jovanovic RQ4 AiG playtest rules. If we are to have some consistency with HeroQuest Glorantha, then the Malkioni sorcerer would be encouraged to attune to an (immaterial?) Grimoire that really rests on a cloud server in (the sorcerous portion of?) the Otherworld, although the sorcerer will have a partial transcript of his in physical edition (in order to avoid having to meditate his long range way into an abstract matrix to re-acquaint himself with a spell).

A separated aspect of Yelm is a mighty serpent. But then I don't think anybody needs to be convinced that Yelm is a dick. The discussion is mainly about how useful that fact is in interaction with goddesses. And "stick it where the sun doesn't shine" doesn't quite work for old Brightface... Even Yelmalio might have ontological problems with that one. I do think that there was some mystical separation from earlier urges for Yelm to become emperor of the (known) universe. The perfect emperor needs to remain aloof. Hence the imperfections, the incarnated aspects, like Murharzarm. Yelm became his own Antirius, only hot. Yelm as a sensation?

The Darsenites were the place where the myth about the White Queens and the usurpation of Yelm Brightface survived the subsequent re-writing of history. They aren't quite Pelandan - Darsen lies significantly east of Mount Jernotius, which forms the border. That specific connection may have played a significant role in Teelo Estara (or did she change her name after Castle Blue?) choosing that region to raise up into the sky as her new celestial body. I am fairly certain that the area now encircled by the Crater used to be heavily populated agricultural land, and I don't recall reading anything about anyone being evacuated from the site. Did any of those people survive the transition into the Middle Air? Did they form the initial normal population of the cities on the moon? By this time, the Carmanians were run by the bull dynasty, and had better than 400 years of history of their syncretic culture, and had been subject to the Jernotian way, and Natha. They used to be the (or at least a) dominant Pelorian culture before the rivers invaded and the riverine metropolises flourished under Murharzarm. True, they were closer to Mt. Jernotius than to Mernita, but since the guardian deity of Mernita is given as Jernedeus and not Verithurus(a), both these places appear to look towards the same protector deity. About the only people not with a claim to putting down the Blue Moon were the Artmali, and even they may have accompanied Annilla's (second) plunge after her husband with their thoughts and prayers, provided the bleakness of the Greater Darkness had left them with any. There is another impact site in at Croesium (leaving a little crater, with the city in its center) in Pomons, in southern or rather eastern Loskalm, the former city of Varganthar (the Dawn Age enemy of Talor). Syranthir most surely had followers from around here when he fled after losing to Arimadalla, so the Carmanians may have been descended from both Blue Moon-related barbarians and from their Malkioni foes. There is rarely a point to bringing up old bad blood, it just happens. But old antagonisms would have existed between alongside the newer ones between all the groups involved. To the Dara Happan metropolites, no emperor is worse than an evil and bad emperor, but when a better candidate is in sight, even the Yelmic families there will change allegiances and oppose the incumbent. The incumbent that Deezola and her cabal rebelled against, Bisodakar, was a bull shah, descended from storm worshiping pastoralists (and it doesn't really matter whether from Enjoreli origins of soldiers accompanying Syranthir or from local natives from Vanstal and the Charg Hills, or both) rather than the more solar lion shahs (who had descended from a Dara Happan emperor marrying the daughter of Shah Nadar the Avenger (a Natha worshiper) to overcome the EWF. He (as most bull shahs) apparently was supported by the Spolite darkness worshipers who had some grudge against the Dara Happan solars (and vice versa). That said, Bisodakar's father was a lot more Dara Happan-friendly than his grandfather Cartavar, and had ascended to emperorhood by correctly taking the Ten Tests. It isn't quite clear to me how and why Bisodakar was such a bad foe to Rinliddi, other than establishing Carmanian authority and replacing local high nobility there. The author of the Zero Wane history is as baffled as I am.

Yes, and that's a good indication I should move this away from the thread titled "Beginner's Guide". Well past high time, really. Which I did, except for this tailing end which is extremely on-topic here: Not sure about such a list. Part of the fun of Glorantha is to pull out something jaw-dropping quite matter-of-factly, as something the characters already knew and are well aware of- Used to be 30,000 meters high, but then meters were shrunk to feet. Not that measures above 5 km height are reproducible, as the Middle Air plays already by Outer World rules. That, and its weekly cycle, is an absolute must. The weird path of the sun (effectively direct overhead, come summer or winter), variations of day length etc. aren't that important. There are a lot of things that are self-evident for Gloranthans which will come as Green Age realisation moments to the players and the GM. Maybe it is easier just to warn the players and the GM that such revelations may happen as they continue to explore the world. How Time works is an important underpinning of how Glorantha works, but honestly - how many people have made sense of the Cults of Prax statements about cyclical God Time at their first, or even at their twentieth reading of that text? It is one of those messages which are delivered but not realized. The important message is: Everything that once happened in myth happens right now in the hero planes, and can be visited by heroquesting, and will be happening there forever unless someone interferes with things men are not supposed to interfere with, like the God Learners once did large scale. There should be an elevator pitch of obvious Gloranthan awesomeness, and yes, Kero Fin (or Top of the World) probably turns up in "also running". "The earth is flat/a cube swimming in a bubble of reality inside a chaotic void" is a typical but in the end quite meaningless part of the elevator pitch. It does bring home that Glorantha isn't the rea world Earth, but that's as far as it goes during the first impressions. (Questions about turtles and elephants may come up at this stage...)

Carried over from the Beginner's Box thread: Yes, and that's a good indication I should move this away from the thread titled "Beginner's Guide". Well past high time, really. I did create an index to all the Glorantha material available to me at the time in the nineties and kept working on it into the Heroquest 1 era, so if this may come across as slightly encyclopedic, it was at the time. We didn't have any electronic documents back then, "and we had to travel five miles uphill to school, and then eight miles uphill back home..." Most of the deities have too many mentions in the old sources, but this one remains memorable to me as the one opportunity I had to baffle Sandy Petersen with a piece of Gloranthan troll lore. Yes. They usually sported distinct celestial bodies, except for the Storm Age Blue Moon which was somewhat overcrouded. The Artmali disembarked, but Lesilla went down with most of it like a good ship's captain, while Annilla held those mystical energies aloft until she followed Lorion down Magasta's Pool. Also celestial bodies. I have seen a mention of Artia as a moon in some obscure document, which led me to the question "What makes a celestial body a moon?" Neither the RQ Daily nor the Lore Auction at Convulsion 1994 really resulted in a definitive answer. One thing they seem to hold in common is female or indeterminate sex,, though. (But then, for all the stories about Yelm's marriage contest, and his sons by Dendara or other goddesses and demi-goddesses,Yelm itself remains an asexual orb in the sky, remote from carnal interaction, and probably incapable of any. Kargzant, on the other hand is a stallion, and presumably hung like one, too.) That's one story from Dara Happa. Plentonius himself provides a much bowdlerized "imperial justice" version in his account of Lukarius' reign, though.. (GRoY p.24) When he lets Lukarius string his bow with his own umbilical, what he shoots down are boarders from the Styx ships (Kogag's boat trolls fleeing from Yelm Bijiif?). Other myths tell about the Storm Gods having a ball game with the blue moon. Sounds like the Blue Moon plateau is where one of them produced a touchdown that destroyed the ball. The Zaranistangi of Melib claim descent from Emilla, "a female incarnation of Mastakos" (duh, Sea Tribe, what would you expect?) (Guide p.433, and yes, when I give page numbers I usually look that stuff up.) But then, the Dara Happans think that that planet is female Uleria anyway, so even less of a surprise, except that she let her children crall all over her body. How much moon/Sedenya is there in Orlanth's charioteer? Is Jagrekriand smashing his chariot on the LBQ just ongoing sibling rivalry between the Red Planet and Blue Moon twins? Glorious ReAscent makes it even worse. Jernedeus is toted as another name of Verithurus, and Jernedeus is the orb in the sky (or above the ziggurat) guardian deity of Mernita while Lesilla is the nurturing goddess. A key lunar power is Madness, and at tumes like this it shows. Which may be insightful of Plentonius, or a weird relocation from Mount Jernotius, or Old Plentonius fusing those traditions into a single story. His master's family wyter Khor is named as one of the earlier names of Sedenya. ("It's so dreamy, times are fleeting, Madness takes its toll"...) 100% correct. And totally wrong. The Lunar Empire employs two aspects of the Blue Moon goddess in its magical ranks - the Assassins, and the Blue Moon School. Neither are subject to the phases of the Red Moon. There doesn't seem to be an dependence on the tides, though, either. Then there are the six classes of the Lunar College of Magic, which have become associated with the phases of the Red Moon, and certainly are subject to its cycles. Dara Happan peoples hate each other. Nothing new in that. Three of the four rebels in Jar-eel's presentation of the slaying of Yelm are Dara Happan entities - Verithurusa, Tolat Shargash, and (Artia?) the Bat. The Carmanians were the oppressive emperors of the day. The metropolises of riverine Dara Happa supported them while they were stron, then rebelled when it was clear the Carmanians were seriously challenged by this new power. Nothing new under the sun, happened before, happened again under Jannisor and Sheng Seleris, and will in all likelihood repeat under Sheng Seleris.

You won't find any mythology without something like this going on in the earliest generations, unless you introduce marriage material out of thin air. I'd say yes, there was air (not animated in any way, though), and there were lungs, but neither were realized until that first huge exhale that established Umath's presence between his parents. Itt is similar with the concept of the color blue - I don't suppose the wave lengths were different at Homer's time, or the receptors in the Retina, but some time shortly after the Ilia was composed terms for the color blue entered Greek writings, while Homer talked about the sea as being the color of wine (though not blood). When did Aether develop hemorrhoids? I believe that prior to the stasis of Brightface, there was a cycle of light and dark in the sky, on something like a diurnal basis. Only after Brightface's judgements and subsequent usurpation of the top post Night and Dark were expelled from the sky. But if that event also marks the initiation of tender contact between Aether and Gata, you might say that Sky got the hots for his mother/wife at this time, and the great Lodril release did little to cool him down. It took the interruption caused by the birth of Umath. It might take a Scandinavian experience for this awareness.... The Mostali had already run out of elements earlier on, and I note that the sequence of the elemental progression has Lead (Darkness) in second place, after Rock (with refined Truestone another metallic substance I failed to mention in my first response). Yes. Gloranthan brass is terrestrial bronze. Gloranthan (storm) bronze is different. The point from a geochemical perspective is that nuggets and even flitters of metallic godbone need to have survived about 10k terrestrial years in the ground and the soil. Now divine empowerment slowly fading away might be an excuse for that stuff not having rotted away. Deterioration of surfaces is of course not caused by air - in fact, exposure to Storm should make Bronze items brighten up rather than develop a patina. It is the corrosive/fermentative influence of Darkness which creates surface degradation. Plenty of that found in the soil and bedrock, though.

That was the RQ3 sample scenario and only tentatively placed halfway to Tink north of the Creek, IIRC. A Gateway scenario. The terminology is Gloranthan, I'll grant you that. I have yet to see real world brass (the zinc stuff) a) turn green from oxidation outside of moist soil and b) being used for mill fittings. Bronze rather than brass sounds more believable.

The blessings of modern times... I started my Glorantha index by typing on my trusty Atari ST. Using an ASCII editor. The Glorantha Wikia gives at least some of the sources where a name occurs. And if you come across a name you cannot find there (which may just be because of the version you have encountered might be spelled slightly differenty from the one used in the Wikia) just ask here. In case of doubt, invoke that @Joerg rune, or send me a message. Any eldrich side effects are the fault of the summoner, though. (See below...) Annilla's is one of the coolest cults in RQ3 Glorantha, and was published in the Troll Gods box. Goddess of secrets, and lots of name and myth dropping in that text. Trolls (especially those of the Blue Moon Plateau) worship her. If there is a Mistress of the Tides or a temple to the Tides, that's Annilla, too. Under the name of Veldara, she is the ancestress of all the Veldang, or Artmali. With husbands like Lorian (aka Sky River Titan) and the ancestor of the Elder Giants, she is well connected. The Sea Tides of Glorantha are one of the weirdest feature of the setting. The waters are attracted to the body of the Blue Moon, which ascends on the outside of the Sky Dome from the bottom of the World in the course of one to six days, not quite predictably, but on average twice a week. When the Blue Moon reaches the top of the Sky Dome (Pole Star's Gate), it plummets down into (and through) Magasta's Pool into the deepest underworld, to ascend again. The seas likewise drop in a matter of an hour, and as the result powerful tidal currents rush out of coastal waters and estuaries into the sea. Catching such a tidal start on a prepared ship may shorten a sea voyage by a day or two. I assume that the Blue Moon uses the course of the Celestial River for its rise, similar to the Boat Planet, but invisible to the world. Her plunge downwards is her following her husband, who was the first to heed Magasta's call for aid against the Chaos Rift. Do you have to know all this to play in the setting? No. You should learn about this when preparing a naval episode, though. As mentioned above, and as usual, don't hesitate to ask about anything that appears to be weird or just without any apparent context. Sometimes we'll share your bafflement, at most other times you may be swamped by stuff that may be irrelevant to your question. At times, a new weirdness may come up, and possibly make some unexpected sense.

Dream Dragon carcasses fade away as a whole, whether leather, meat or bones. I think this is still canon. But yes, the dragonewts use True Dragon bone for their advanced weaponry as far as I know. It's not like it is a rare commodity in Dragon Pass, with the Dragonspine dividing the region. What is rare is the abiltiy to refine it through song (and probably also dance and irrational behavior). The EWF humans may have copied that from the dragonewts, but this knowledge was lost in 1042 in the mass utuma, alongside the full ability to understand and speak Auld Wyrmish.

So... Buggering might actually be involved... Dara Happan theology is quite obsessed with the stories of the three brothers (let's call them Lodril, Yelm, and Dayzatar) lining up below the Sky Dome early on, but then Lodril taking a dive down and Dayzatar removing himself upwards. There are a number of celestial metals. Gold, of course, for the sun. Silver, for the stars, and for the entities of the Celestial Court (including Uleria after whom that Gloranthan metallurgist named it), and Tin. Now, when Lodril dove down, he apparently took Tin with him. And he infused the formerly at best moderately warm body of the earth cube with his hot molten... seed. Because there is another story, untold by the Dara Happans if they can avoid it, and that is about Aether ejaculating into Gata. Apparently, that union took a whole lot of time. According to Dara Happan pre-Dawn reckoning, Lodril's descent occurred in10,000 YS. That's quite slow sex. The Pregnancy that followed took about 20,000 years (YS), with Umath's birth and the dislocation of the Sky Dome caused by it happening around 30,000 YS. (Those numbers are taken from Guide to Glorantha p.125, those in Glorious ReAscent of Yelm lack the birth of Umatum) I was talking about Brass before. Have you ever noticed that the Mostali don't have a Bronze caste? Their master alloyist and masters of heat are the Brass caste. Brass is the metal of Lodril. Tin in Copper. And IMO the magic spilled over, and created Umath. So maybe Tin is the spent remnants of Aether's hot seed. The white spots on the dress/skirt/cloak/blanket of Gata. Possibly glows under darklight. Nitpick: not that there are molecules involved in Bronze. This is one core point in which I disagree with the presentation of the metals of Glorantha. A lot of the "bronze" deposits are actually brass deposits, bones (or congealed remnants of liqufied bones) of the volcano/mountain gods which suffered a lot, among others by their storm cousins with similar bone structure. The volcanic children of Lodril all are of Lodril's Sky and of Earth. Lodril himself has taken on much Earth. Only Orlanth is the Mountain Storm. The rest of the storm gods raged at and battered against the mountains, with Stormwalk being one of the most mutilated victims. But also Darkness (Argan Argar) came and fought the volcanoes, and so did the sorcerers and their water allies in the northwest. Brass is found in mountainous regions. Yes, if the Gods War had a few battles fought with RuneQuest melee rules, then there would be heaps of hacked off storm god limbs strewn across the world, supplying vast amounts of bronze, too. In addition to all that brass. In my opinion, "storm bronze" should be restricted to bits of metal which have growth lines. This is a layered, effectively damascened bronze, a structure only growth can create. Not even the Mostali have been shown to have recreated that. This "storm bronze" can do things terrestrial bronze cannot, like being hammered into huge, two-handed sword blades which should be impossible for ancient terrestrial bronze working. Then there is brass, good for mass-produced cast metal objects. This behaves more or less exactly like terrestrial bronze, and not at all like the glittery terrestrial brass which contains no tin at all but about a third zinc (a metal unknown to the Gloranthans). Sure. Some of Aether's hot seed may be re-directed into a different lap, creating a deity of differently mixed elemental ancestry. Sounds like something a Eurmal quest might be about. That story fails to make sense to me. Two of Umath's sons married - Orlanth and Storm Bull - and both married an Earth Goddess. The rest didn't exactly marry their spouses. Did Humakt have any spouses or indeed lays other than that Brithini chick that mothered Arkat? The Triolini matings of the Vadrudi resulted in western humans and in the air-breathing lesser merfolk. And as for Ragnaglar... Again, this leaves me confused. Tin is the metal of the (spent?) Sky. Why should it suddenly have Storm attributes? Sure, I assume that Umath took all that magic of Aether into himself, and then he also divested of it generously in his matings with e.g. Mikyh the Beast Mother (Dragon), or with Kero Fin, Larnste's child from Gata (and hence his half-sister). We have no clear information who could have been the mother of Vadrus, Humakt or Ragnaglar. Heortling Mythology has Kero Fin as mother of the Storm Gods except for Kolat, but that makes the Storm Bull son of Mikyh story somewhat weird. It also puts way too much focus on Dragon Pass and not nearly enough on Top of the World mountain. But then, it is Heortling Mythology, not Orlanthi Mythology. Pewter is Sky and Darkness. Argan Argar, or his mother Xentha. Or perhaps they are Sky and Shadow, as neither of these two seems to be a Cold deity. Electrum (50% each silver and gold) is the terrestrial world's first coin alloy, from the middle Iron Age. (Not necessarily the first monetary exchange token, though.) Red (18 carat) Gold and Yellow (18 carat) Gold are similar, with 75% gold and 18% and 7% of the other two, respectively (18% copper for red gold, 18% silver for yellow gold). (White gold uses nickel, and platinum coating, and is not available in ancient technology, regardless of the Lord Foul novels.) Gods' bones are metallic. Dragons are in some sense peculiarly shaped gods. Why shouldn't their bones be metallic, or have the potential to have a quasi-metal made from them? Second Age Glorantha is in no way canonical, but I find the notion of "sung dragonbone" interesting enough to consider it for a weird outlier for Gloranthan metallurgy. Not that Berthalor, the Seshnegi author of the Metals of the Gods treatise, would have been exposed to any sung dragonbone. The Klanth is a (wooden?) club with obsidian, yes. But the dragonewt (samurai) great-sword, the Korff, is explicitely made of dragonbone, as is the sword-breaker Gami (also resembling well-loved Eastern martial arts weaponry). Humans don't produce either korff or gami, but the more primitive klanth is a ritual weapon of the Orlanthi, and features in the Aroka quest. Same here. I haven't found any positive evidence that copper or bronze gain that signature bluish green patina we love in copper roofs across European buildings, or indeed the patina of the Nebra Disk (after conservators had their way with the item dug out). But Gloranthan air is oxygen - the sharp-maker. The question is rather whether Gloranthan air has the equivalen of nitrogen, an inert substance that taken for itself would smother breath rather than sustain it. Good question. Iron was made without the direct participation of Mostal, but from the concerted efforts of all eight (types of) ancestral mostali. The Iron Crucible was the first attempt at mass production of Mostali. Iron Mostali aren't true mostali, but closer to other dwarven constructs in their mythical history. They make up the ninth caste. Mostal was in disrepair at the time, and Death had probably been released. The Sword Story has the original Sword (or a good copy) given to the mostali, who re-shaped it into an axe. This means that the mostali had Death in their smithy around that time, and may have used it (or copies of it) to make their new ninth caste.

Try Google Translate: https://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?depth=1&hl=en&prev=search&rurl=translate.google.com&sl=es&sp=nmt4&u=http://www.mastergollum.com/tanuki/blog/chaossehorm&xid=17259,15700023,15700186,15700191,15700256,15700259,15700262,15700265&usg=ALkJrhh-PjBDalG9eulhLvvLMJKh6hAcig I haven't made this work for the pdf yet, though, only for the introductory web pages. A nice feature is the original text you get on mouse-over. I like some of the mis-translations. Apprentices of the Gods for God Learners...

The analogy to Earth metals is tenuous, IMO. A few of the colors are off, and Gloranthan Aluminum/Quicksilver have little to no identity with the real world metals by that name. Gloranthan "brass" really is bronze. I use it for the mix of Ga-Metal and Ze-Metal that comes from volcanic deity bones or from mixing the metals (or refining the mixed ores). There is no Gloranthan Mithril or similar, unless you count dragonbone or (blue) moonglow transformed into a metallic form. The "Qa-Metal" of Drastic Darkness isn't canonical and might be an instance of this metallic form of moonglow (or selenic rock). Most Gloranthan writers are neither metal-workers nor material scientists and use real world metal analogs as their starting point. And those writers who have at least some background in material sciences get called out for boring readers when leaking some real world concepts over to Glorantha. What property would the metal of the pale sky have to offer? Tin is a bit like less magical silver. Useful in alloys (bronzes) in already small amounts. Pure tin is fairly rare as a material for cast items. Pure tin has been used for drinking vessels and plates (at least in the middle ages), but it doesn't survive longer periods at temperatures below 13°C without changing into a non-metallic, amorphous form that destroys any item thus afflicted. I guess that coastal Pamaltela could avoid such temperatures, so there might be some stuff there that could use enchanted tin. (Enchanted tin should be form-stable at any temperature). For Mostali, the sky metal seems to be the natural form of food packaging, whether as foil or as can. About as practical, but actually easier to cast and more durable than tin is pewter, an alloy of tin, lead, and optionally other semi-metals like antimon or arsenium. Once alloyed, the stuff is about as useful for food and drink in the real world as mercury-silver amalgam is as tooth filling. (But then, pewter vessels are a near optimal vector to kill people with acute lead poisoning as the forensic technician will have a hard time telling whether the lead is from the material or from stuff added to the food. Not really that useful for Gloranthan context, but might be something for Cthulhu or similar period games.) Tarnish and patina of metals: Tarnishing happens (Thanatari tarnish silver, irreversibly). Would a bronze item like the Nebra disk have as nice a green tarnish in Glorantha? Rust and hammer scale occur only in blacksmithing, and are nature's way to make iron gifts by the dwarves disappear over time. I don't know which Gloranthan cultures smelt metals from ores rather than bones, or which go and recycle patina.

So long as the literate are not Eurmali as well! You know, all the Lightbringers are mutually associate cults. The main problem with Eurmali students of literacy is that they might behave for long enough to actually learn reading and writing before you have an excuse to send them packing for some prank or the other. Next you get written pranks...

It is the Outer World, and different rules apply there, as has been made clear by the description of Altinela (Guide p.158). The towering Mountains of the Sky are part of the same chain that appears to run along the shore of Sramak's River here. Their presence and size may depend on your mode of arrival. In my idea of Sramak's River, it (and possibly Orlanth's Storm, too) extend outward beyond the rim of the inner Sky Dome layer forever and ever in one mode of approach. This is an endless sea under a Chaos sky, with monsters usually reserved for the depths of Drospoly possible at any time. You need a legendary captain with a legendary ship with legendary provisions willing to get lost here... and you might chance on a different world, or not. Some of the western expeditions sent out by the Seshnegi might hang out here, shipwrecked on a floating monster or similar. But that's only one expression. Another approach brings you to the circular river at the lower rim of the sky, and towards that port where Lorian branches off upwards. And there might be journeys where you sail on the inside of that dome, with the world of Glorantha overhead, and others where you sail on the outside, with Glorantha appearing like an undeep under the surface of the river, and all locations mirrored. That's what I meant. But then, that path doesn't necessarily connect to the same destinations as the Path of Silence.

I am fine with that. Yes, you will have less internal rivalry by putting all your eggs into one basket. But it might make it easier for the entire regiment to abandon you at some future point, when a more mixed contingent of warriors with a little inter-service rivalry might have a slightly higher hurdle for mass desertion/breach of contract (not necessarily only caused by the regiment, but also by actions of the patron). Sure. You take what you can get, especially when it comes to relocating the regiment away from their homes and their kin. Did the Horali bring their wives and children, or is this a conflict assignement? How many warriors are in those regiments? 100? And how many horal caste dependents and dronar caste service specialists? The Du Tumerines and Capratis that came up in my games weren't so much nobles in exile but the Nochet factors for their talar caste trade houses, but if they have a different role in this edition of Nochet, fine with me. Once I start nagging for details, there is no stopping me. A few more general questions, unrelated to the Nochet situation: When in his career does a Rokari Horali join a warrior society? Does sponsoring by kin mean that horali from a single family will usually all be part of the same warrior society? Will brothers/uncles/inlaws end up in different societies? How do these regiments recruit replacements, or do they have rather a surplus of youths approaching adulthood? Do the societies play a role in horali marriage arrangements?

You don't need to know the story about how Finrod acquired Nargothrond to understand the hints at Beren's quest for Luthien in the Lord of the Rings, and the stuff we discussed above is of similar quality. While there are surprising hints at these stories in quite old material, I would bet that at least half of the names and facts we were discussing about Nochet and Norinel didn't exist thirty years ago. Esrolia was presented in the RuneQuest Companion and in the Military History of Dragon Pass in Different Worlds 28, roughly at the same time (1983?). Genertela box added a bit more detail, but boy was I surprised to learn e.g. of the Readjustment wars. In the past 20 years, there have been a number of very friendly and creative cooperations between networked Glorantha fans to shape areas of Glorantha in terms of gameable background. For an extensive such exploration - mainly by French fans - check out http://kethaela.en.free.fr/ All of that creative work was done without that much official knowledge, and the campaign played by Philippe SIgaud and his friends before that background was epic, and very very Gloranthan. And (as of publication of the Guide) very un-canonical.

Yes, I think that there are pure sorcerers among most Malkioni variants. The canonical description of the .Esvulari has their zzaburi use only sorcery while the talar caste and the commoner caste use Orlanthi magics through somewhat modified worship, for instance. Sorcerers have indirect access to the magic of spirits and deities - they can command those weak enough (or whose specific weaknesses they know to exploit), and they can form contracts with others. Clear quit pro quo, no afterlife options or other claims on your soul involved. The Vadeli are pretty much true sorcerers, with a wide array of (often blasphemously) enslaved deities and monsters at their beck for additional forms of magic. Not quite Brithini, but in all likelihood pure sorcerers are the sorcerers from God Forgot, like Carvak Zirian, the blue-skinned, centuries-old guy in Prince of Sartar. I don't really see the Loskalmi upper ranks having access to spirit and divine magics via theist means. Already guardianship should ask for spiritual purity. There should be the possibility to acquire such powers through (this world) heroquest gifts and heroquest challenges, though. Although then there is a danger similar to all halfway powerful Orlanthi heroquesters having a skybull or two as their flying steeds. That shouldn't be the case, at least not on the mundane plane. Do you mean the Rokari as a culture, or just the Rokari-trained sorcerers of their (non-reproducing) zzabur caste? From the history of Seshnela and the Middle Sea Empire, I think there was a strong non-theist period between 180 ST and about 800 ST. Yes, this includes the Battle of Tanian's Victory, a piece of sorcerous domination of deities. Pretty obscure ones, too. The burning of Vralos was done purely by sorcery, exploiting hitherto unknown possibilities discovered reading the Abiding Book. It isn't quite clear whether these new possibilities were reusable, though. The next magical elf forest fires we hear about in Gloranthan history are those of Erigia and Rist, long after the God Learner period, using different methods. But then, there is another possibility - that these spells consumed their casters. Few ambitious sorcerers would accept a deal like that. I have been thinking about other forms of sorcery than the systematic sorcery presented in the RQG rules. But nothing of the deeper understanding of the sorcerous techniques and the runic manipulations is required to use the Open Seas ritual for non-sorcerers, with exactly the same results as the sorcerous spell presented in the RQG rules. This Dormal cult ritual is common magic and can be used by anybody willing to learn it. The rules tell us that it is sorcerous in origin and nature, but that doesn't keep non-sorcerers from casting it for their ships. Is Open Seas the only example of sorcery taken from the systematic brilliance of sorcerers and worked into a clumy but still functional common magic? And if there is more of the same, would use of such sorcerous by nature magics satisfy our desire for an "untainted" culture of sorcerers? (Which is a bit strange to say from someone who initially argued for mixed users of sorcery and theist magics. Now we have them, we want the other thing...)

There is a special hell for punsters. See you all down there... Yes - I thought the question was framed in this Dara Happan context, as the fifth Hell is the one out of the Golden Age context of Dara Happan myth. Unlike Dante, I don't think there is a point in enumerating Hells, or circles thereof, at least not outside of very narrow cultural context. There are plenty, and quite a lot of them are not the destination for the dead of the surface world, but simply places that would be lethal for unprepared visitors (no matter whether that preparation was planned or accidental). The outer draconic realms where Ingolf learned his draconic manifestations aren't normal afterlives for mortals, for instance. The pits of the Initiation of Orlanth are hells of a kind. They are dungeons, in the medieval sense of the term, and like Dante's circles, they group the inmates by their crimes. In our real world myths, Hel(sheim) or Hades are lands of the dead, neither pleasant not unpleasant, often rather featureless waiting areas for some future participation in a catharsis or cataclysm (or both). The realm of Ty Kora Tek is such a place in Glorantha. (Now, it can be said that waiting in a featureless room in company you didn't ask for can be torture or hell. But then, time doesn't quite work like on the surface world, either.) But there are also Happy Hunting Grounds in the Underworld, places that the living want their souls to go to after death, like Ernalda's palace. Or, for the uz, an unburned Wonderhome/the intact womb of Hellmother. (GS: not Greg Stafford, but Gloranthan Sourcebook... took me a while.) I am somewhat disappointed that this approach has been toted as the default entry into Hell. Sure, it is the trail of the Lightbringers, following Yelm following Grandfather Mortal. But I'd hate to narrate all my underworld heroquests as "you follow the Lightbringers' path for the umpteenth time. After you crossed the River of Swords, ..." The underworld quest in Sartar:Kingdom of Heroes gives you three typical departure points into Hell and a number of alternatives, but all of them force you onto the path of the dead and to Daka Fal's court of judgement. That's fine for your first quest, of course, and tolerable for a second one. (So, how often do you expect your heroes to go to Hell and back? As often as it takes...) I am fine with the Path of the Dead to get into Hofstaring's Hell - while I would probably have left Hofstaring rotting down there until Argrath uses up all his companions to get there and release Sheng, this seems to be the way down there for non-Lunar questers. I mean, if you have a plot hook like the Darkmaw or the Dekko Crevice, or a backdoor into the basement of the Obsidian Palace through the Styx Grotto, why not have a good series of spelunking in your own and other people's myths on your way down? Sure, it takes quite some mythical background to be able to grab a piece of Gloranthan myth and twist it so you questers can enter it, getting side-tracked from the path they thought they could follow. The (admittedly goal-oriented rather than sand-boxy) quests into the Underworld make a big deal out of the questers getting lost in Hell and failing the quest as a result. Hell is a place you are supposed to get lost in. You cannot complete the Lightbringers' Quest without a complete clusterf*ck following the banquet in the Obsidian Palace and Eurmal's murder of the OOO's son. Sure, your party may have come prepared and may manage to avoid that specific death trap. You have two options for railroading here - "fate is unavoidable", either you cannot prevent the murder, or while you managed to prevent that murder, you advance to another situation that ends in a Lost In Hell situation - possibly worse to recover from, but granting a unique and new power - or you can ignore the next step (and the boons from that step, which are necessary later on in the quest). King of Dragon Pass has a nice series of episodes of Lost in Hell that at least give you a chance to retrieve your questers from a failed quest. I don't know whether the game offers a chance for a lost quester to chance back onto track, and I am fairly certain that it doesn't offer the opportunity to jump onto another quest. The engine behind the game is impressive enough to deal with such quests, and my approach to creative ways of losing the way and picking up a new one might require an unmanageable explosion of situations that need to be covered. Or a different approach, with a sandbox logic. You can book your cruises at Kogag boating, Path of Silence 114 b, right next to Jeset's ferry. You can place entire weird cultures and/or ecologies in the niches down there. Each to their own tastes - for instance the Hero Wars narrator book included an underworld encounter with a "shredder Saranakti" on p.162. There is an art of conveying the atmosphere without overtaxing the fellow players. Sandy Petersen's video on how to create a scary atmosphere gives good basic advice. Narrating Hell, nightmares, or cosmic horror really uses the same toolkit. (Make sure to watch the other videos, too... I can't believe how low the viewer numbers are.) Appealing to multiple senses in a sentence or two does wonders to set the atmosphere. HInting at further menace way beyond the capabilities of the party can be effective, too - like feeling the breath of an immense creature passing over you, in at first evenly rhythmic patterns, with increasing olfactory and acoustic components, then suddenly stopping or changin in intensity. (But then, there are players who take any such scene dressing as a personal challenge. Be prepared to deal with that.) In fact, some of the early RuneQuest heroquesting stories and certainly character descriptions like Hofstarings include stuff like known backdoors from Death/Hell, in keeping with the save rolls that the capital H heroes and superheroes receive in the Dragon Pass boardgame. But these may be just temporary visits, and not entire quests. As a whole, I think that the Outer Worlds of Glorantha, whether hells, heavens, the shores of Sramak's River, or the realms of clouds or the edges of the earth cube adjacent to the middle and deep seas, are heaps of unused Gloranthan potential.