Joerg

Sharing soup recipes at the campfire? Or are you one of the Silver Horde with their diamond dentistry?

The best opportunity to get some is on the auctions or flea markets at Glorantha-conventions where some may be sold with the convention taking a share in the sales. Ebay requires constant alert not to miss an opportunity... The "buy them all" quest requires quite the monetary sacrifice. I managed to get the Wyrms Footnotes from issue 5, a legit collection of Tales (through subscription and the few reprint (xerox, ring-bound) releases of the first issues) back when supply still was plentiful. The juicy stuff from the Footprints has been expanded in official Chaosium products, now. The Sourcebook has Gods and Goddesses and a more complete Redline History of the Wanes than Footprints ever managed. The mishaps of the Temple of the Wooden Sword were spread out across Footnotes and APAZine contributions, and I haven't yet seen a complete reprint of those. A nice searchable pdf probably would sell moderatel well via the Vault. It gives a quite unexpected Actual Play of part of (?) Greg's Sartar campaign. On the whole, these are collectors' items rather than serious sources nowadays, with plenty of official material available. Some of the scenarios might be extracted for a collection, but quite a few of those authors have fallen out of communication range of the Tribe (the latest such breakdown being the closing of G+), so producing this legitimately is almost impossible. There will be the occasional sale of a significant collection, whether due to moves or more tragic circumstances.

Compared to the hardcover/pdf, the softcover version of King of Sartar had a few differences in Minaryth Blue's "Events of my life", especially for 1630: The softcover version also inserts three years with sacks of Bagnot before it places the Siege of Furthest in 1634 rather than 1632. As you can imagine, having Kallyr active in 1630 created a major headache concerning the mainstream timeline, especially the re-lighting of Sartar's Flame after the Battle of Sword Hill. However, the document doesn't mention any of this, and only attempts to explore the agenda of the author of Composite History of Dragon Pass, and why there are such recurrent discrepancies. The 1626 and 1629 appearances of Moirades remain in the CHDP of the hardcover, and the newly inserted Fazzur piece (a Tarshite source?) has Moirades active at Fazzur's refusal to return to the imperial cause (p.140, IMO the preparations for the Battle of Sword Hill). The Guide agrees with the Tarshite time-line, while all Sartarite sources have Moirades alive and active in 1626. 25 years ago we didn't have a definitive timeline for Moirades. The Guide cemented 1610 and gave us the cause of Moirades' disappearance, introducing his (and Jar-eel's) son Phargentes II. A name which makes the loyalties of the Phargantites in 1625 less clear - were they loyal to Pharandros or to his heroic half-brother by Jar-eel? At age 14 he would have displayed suitably heroic stature already.

Yes, I wrote that. As I state in the introduction, I wasn't able to attend the RQ convention in the US, which dates this to some time between 1994 and 1998, probably tending to the earlier cons. This may have been intended or used for the con booklet.

Yeah, big deal. Two locations come to mind: Altinela, a magical city on the edge of the Earth, with a bridge into heaven, and some Chaos monsters braving the beach often enough to keep the population on its toes, or that miraculous valley inhabited by peaceful broos. Which one is it? But seriously, it's just a week or two since T-Shirt weather. Who would don winter clothing while the sun still lifts above the horizon? I used to work north of the Glacier on the Arctic Circle, although east of the Atlantic.

Quod erat demonstrandum... Je regrette que je ne sais pas rêpondre comme ca, et je ne trouve pas toute les accents. If you already need a parka at this time of the year, where do you hibernate?

You're reading about the wrong barbarians, then. Whether Fafhrd or Conan or Cormac Mac Art or any old Viking serving in Miklagard, these guys were quick to adopt the local lingos when it augmented their access to the local feminity or traders But then, our Bill is only posing as a barbarian. He really is just another nerd stuck somewhere in the vicinity of the Arctic Circle. That's a habitat which breeds Glorantha fans and hard rock bands, and some multilingualism.

Both cases of blue bears are minor subspecies near glaciers. Another sub-species of the black bear unused in Glorantha is the fair-haired spirit bear of the west coast. Their name in the guide is "Orenoar" while the old source text https://www.glorantha.com/docs/hsunchen-peoples-of-genertela names them as Orenrar. Greg could have stumped us with a presence of the Cave Bear or the Short-nosed Bear rather than a blue (moon?) bear, too.

I think that that is a topic of the Hero Wars development in the Empire. There is an agent of the Black Sun active in the Imperial College of Magic, with ties to the world-wide Chaos conspiration and Send Valu. I have to admit that the Black Sun "mysticism" of Ignorance has left me rather uninspired. The most interesting bit about Basko is his mention in RQ Companion's Jonstown Compendium, as the first of three opponents of Yelm (followed by Molandro and Jokbazi). I have taken Molandro to have been the Earth Walker husband/protector of the White Queen. But then, these three opponents may really have been aspects of Yelm that he may have shed.

We know of a community of six (the Lightbringers) to manifest a wyter (Ginna Jar). Granted, they may have been slightly more magically powerful than humans, but the lower limit should be in this magnitude. I don't think that a marriage between two individuals suffices to create a wyter, but I'm willing to be convinced otherwise if there is a good explanation. (A harem? sure.)

I assumed that the Black Bear subspecies from North America was meant rather Tibetan brown bear species.

Yes, the spirit magic spell isn't suited to be used on embodied (unbound) creatures. It would be different if that creature has a previous condition so that it acts like a spirit in a Binding. Still not usable on an enemy horse, but possibly useful on an animal companion of yours. The RAW don't have such preparations, though.

There is also the priest's productivity to the temple to be taken into account. The temple has economic needs as well in order to be able to serve the community, and spell teaching provides some of the necessary wealth to perform the right rituals. Plenty of the sacrifices don't just demand a bullock, but specify the color of the sacrificial animals. That's some extra effort the breeders have to put in, increasing the economic value of these sacrificial beasts to match their increased magical value.

I wonder what is it with this "effectively nude but for greaves" look? Compare Vasana in RQG p.373. Same design of greaves, btw. The sandals as accoutrement have a myth to them. Do these greaves have one?

Sure, Lorion climbed into the Sky, from the lower edge (branching off Sramak's River), accompanied by the Blue Moon and aided by Heler, moving towards the Celestial Dragon which had already been bound in place if I recall the star lore correctly.

The Indo-Europeans share a lot with the Yelmic culture of Glorantha, with less patriarchal and less solar expressions notable exceptions. Some weak memory migration history corresponding to archaeological finds of the banded ceramics (formerly battle ax) material culture is narrated in Snorri's Heimskringla, and tells of the encounter of the migrating patriarchal folk (the Aesir) with an indigenous and apparently much less patriarchal group (the Vanir). They exchange hostages/cultural influences, then migrate onward. Some of the names used by Snorri are similar to those of antique travelogues into the barbarian lands (like Nerthus for the Kimbrian peninsula, resonating with Njörd). Whatever traditions were available to him must have reached at least a millennium back, possibly three. (Nobody complains about the Kalevala being collected at least a millennium after the earliest events in that mythic cycle, so what is the problem with Snorri?) It screams archaism and Anglo-Saxon to me. Starting with the spelling. It doesn't help that German has "Heim und Herd" (home and hearth), one of the many Germanic phrases poisoned by NS propaganda. (Also, there is the misogynistic "Heimchen am Herd", the homely and subservient wife at the cooking fire.) That would make the Orlanthi a Solar culture, really. The IE chief god tends to be celestial, and sun/sky worship is pretty much synonymous with Bronze Age culture pretty much everywhere. The Germanic/Norse pantheon is somewhat weird in having the Yogi/mystic as the chief deity and a great fondness for the Storm god. Dyaus-Pitar is Yelm in his various appearances. Ancient European chief gods include Zeus Pater, Dispater, Jupiter. Norse Tyr was the much reduced form of this sky deity. The Fertile Crescent had Bel/Baal (which somehow turns up in the Celtic pantheon, too), and the Iranians and Vedic Indians have precedence of the sky and light god, too. All early Bronze Age symbolism has the sun dominant. Acceptance of Storm as the most important of the gods is rather rare. Some storm accoutrements are really sky accoutrements, like lightning. No difference between Earth and Glorantha there. Rebellion against the giant precursor generation of the gods is a common theme in European myths, whether the titans or the original giant. The war against the giants as an ongoing or defining feat of the gods is another typical myth, whether in Ragnarök or in the Mahabarata. Mesopotamia has God-kings, or divine descended kings. If we want to look outside of the IE culture, the Canaanite hill folk which emerged after the Egyptian empire retreated to its core lands led by their biblical judges (including Samson) might be the best guess at the Orlanthi I can find. Almost all of the other cultures required proto-urban cooperation and administration to maintain their agriculture, like irrigation or other such communal water works. Where such massive communal works wasn't reqired beyond some shared holy places (henges and similar), a way more individualistic and small-unit organized culture dominated. Not even to the level of the ship-kings/city tyrants of the Iliad. Occasional leaders - possibly only exceptional ones - could muster warriors and weapon bearers in the hundreds. We have one evidence for such a battle, the Tollense crossing, with a southern army taken from all around southern Germany attacking native defenders (at least that's the story told by the chemistry of their teeth). Both sides were equipped with similar amounts of bronze and non-bronze (stone) weaponry. The attackers appear to have included mounted horsemen. If the defenders had horses, none appear to have perished in the battle. The casualties from this battle suggest a social structure rather similar to that of the Orlanthi, with free carls as part-time warriors, and a noble and specialist core of mounted warriors with superior equipment. Similar horsemanship in the Fertile crescent appears to have cropped up with the Iron Age, with chariots dominating earlier conflicts (contemporary to the battle of Tollense crossing, like Megiddo or Khadesh, and the invasion of the Sea Peoples). The only place where we can ascertain such cultures is north and west of the Fertile Crescent and the Aegaean. The protagonists of the Iliad are more similar to the sonse and sons-in-law of Vingkot, with divine birthright determining the right to kingship. With the Heortlings, traces of this divine birth-right are still there in potentia, but it doesn't play much of a role since the destruction of the Kodigvari by their own spouses. The Heortlings are a post-cataclysmic culture. The horse-nomads are, too, but they adopt the pre-cataclysmic greatness of their subjects, and become vulnerable through that as they simultaneously attempt to maintain their superior purity. The outcome of Argentium Thri'ile may not have been inevitable, but a horse warlord victory wouldn't have ended that war. Musing more about the Orlanthi, I have some difficulties identifying the emergence of the clan as the recognized unit of population. All the survival places in the Guide are tribal, not clan-based. There is little evidence of the clan as political unit in the conflicts between Rastalulf of the Berennethtelli and Lokamayadon. While Haradangian is presented as a chieftain, he is chieftain of the Berennethtelli. Rastalulf is at first a mere stead-master, after his service with the King of the Heortlings he is a chieftain. (Still no clans mentioned, though, only individual leaders and kin, and carl followers.) Population density appears to have been a lot lower than in modern Glorantha. Given the very small starting populations, not that surprising, really. By Harmast's time, population appears to have doubled or so compared to Rastalulf's time, despite Lokamayadon's iron grip on initiation and the connected losses. I still don't recall references to clans by other terms than their chiefs, though, but I may be overlooking them. By the time Orlanthland is founded, the clan may have taken on an identity beyond that of the immediate chieftain. Kinship rules no longer apply to the tribes, but to smaller subdivisions of the tribes. Marriage relationships get likewise downgraded. Taking wives from within one's own tribe becomes normal. Cities pop into existence, outside of Esrolia. Kings die without successors, and instead a hierarchy of priests fills all the council seats of the Heortlings (though apparently not with the non-Heortlings of Saird and further west). Only with the spread of the Alakoring Rex cult do we get Orlanthi business as usual.

You're right, in the Runnel River section that usually gets omitted in the text description (and obviously my memory). Enjossi's clan pretty much occupies the niche of the bear, and Salmon knows this, and still follows Enjossi. The Upland Marsh section of that quest should take place in the Underworld. Salmon enters a region of Death, and while he may un-die at the end of that passage, this part of the quest should be hellish, or Greater Darkness-evoking. I am still uneasy about the sky leap for the salmon, based on Enjossi's feat. Perhaps there was an EWF variant of the salmon with draconic traits that could attempt such a feat? Researching the local magic of Seapolis and the Grand Sea Exchange below the City of Wonders might be another way to enable Salmon to swim up the Skyfall. At the most extreme, one might try and extend the Fish Road from Nochet all the way to Skyfall Lake. (This would also create a nifty side-effect to deal with the upcoming ice-blocked flooding of the lowlands.) A similar fish road approach could be tried up the Marzeel and through Styx Grotto, creating the first of possibly three Underworld/Greater Darkness sections (the third being Snake Pipe Hollow).

Grain farming in the Eurasian Steppe? Pastoralism, no doubt. But grain farming away from the riverine urban-dominated areas? Something left to the equivalent of a Vendref population, AFAIK. (This would have been the case for the cossacks under Elisabeth the Great. Later on, farmers would join cossack uprisings, and possibly be acculturated.) Yes, there seems to have been a group of Yamnaya-related folk that made it pretty far east, the Tocharians. They inhabited oasis-cities, in all likelihood with some celestially descended overlord like most of the Yamnayan European Bronze Age descendants. The terms I really would like to see replaced most are Chief, (tribal) King and Clan. Chief is the least toxic of these, as it conjures images of Tecumseh or Sitting Bull. Or Winnetou. King gives me everything from Hamlet's dad and uncle to Louis XIV, and while I can live with Helsingborg, I can't with the Versailles images. (Kinglet gives me the Viking sea kings, but we mustn't think Viking, we mustn't...) And "clan" is something I used to associate with plaid kilts, at least until recent forms of criminal structures in Germany. At a stretch, the KKK comes into play, too. The German term "Sippe" has completely different connotations in my mindscape, and describes what Coming Storm calls a Bloodline. I could live with "hundred" for a clan, as in one hundred man-days behind the plow to feed the community, and also the average size of the warband owed to tribe or (federation) king. Tribe takes my mindscape to colonial confrontations of the 19th century, but that's ok. Spear-wielding Zulus threatening to overrun red-coated invaders are fine as my mental imagery for the Orlanthi goes. So do tribal names like Sioux or Apache (learned from Karl May). Nothing wrong with that (weirdly lensed) imagery, either. Hearth is another term that cries out "Anglo-Saxon" to me. Modern English has "fire-place". But then, I don't mind 4th and 5th century Anglo-Saxon, except for the boats.

The identity of Ralzakark is shrouded in mystery. I find it quite likely that he is in some respect an aspect of Ragnaglar. The illuminated one... And who knows in which role Ralzie quested when he confronted Seseine? The only accessible Vadruding would have been Ragnaglar.

Yelorna has been tied to horse-riding women before, like the Galaninae queens of Safelster (who may have aided the Second Council against the Horse Warlords). (I wonder what role the Berennethtelli and Orgorvaltes played in those conflicts. Not horsemen enough? Or just too few horsemen?) But if Elmal is Yelmalio, then why not have Redalda as Yelorna? There is little in Yelorna's mythos and history that is specific to unicorns.

Effeminated? In case of Ralzie, oh yes... and in the four-letter-word sense, too. I point you to the story of Janelosp, the niiad ancestress of the Gnydron who sex-changed her would-be rapist (and herself) and fathered the only water-breathing race of the mortal Triolini upon that Vadrudi. We haven't heard of her (the Vadrudi) since. (And I don't think that Brastalos is the answer.) Seseine has water connections, after all. So yes, Ralzakark possibly mothered Send Valu.

Good call? But my Schwyzerdütsch is at best passive only, despite my Alpine surname, and the Swiss undertitle their own German with high German on TV, so we'll need a pronunciation guide. I'll ask Philipp Glass at Tentacles for a list of Schwyzerdütsch terms for Thane, Carl, Cottar and Thrall, and whatever other "norman" terms people can think of that need de-anglisation.. 😋

That's why I inserted the "male" statement. An article on broo biology was among the first Gloranthan articles I handled as editor of the German Free INT fanzine in 1992. It talked about the injection of a broo larva rather than insemination. A different reading would be that Thed is a goddess of fertility, and that the non-fertile broos just don't fit her requirement. Broos without the ovipositor just cannot reproduce in the active way that she wrestled from her rape experience. Thed isn't the goddess of victims. There is no evidence of female broos displaying any udders. There is one (awful) illustration of a female with horns (and high heels) in the Games Workshop edition of RQ3, a homage to GW's very own Chaos settings which received a D100-game named Warhammer Fantasy a short while later (around the time they stopped licensing RQ3). Anyway, a SF version of broos able to impregnate hosts of any kind would have to use this kind of biology rather than normal sexual propagation. I don't quite recall how the Magog of Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda discriminated for hosts for their children, but it is well known that the writers for Gene Roddenberry include some quite knowledgeable Glorantha fans, so I am fairly certain that this concept was more than just inspired by the broos of Glorantha. Female broos would still exhibit broo features. Not necessarily all of them, but there are so many - goat legs and hooves, fur, goat heads, horns... There have been broos with a great deal of human features mixed into this. Could there be isolated cases that might have passed as humans? Possibly. As voluptuous females, though? Thus I brought up the idea of Ragnaglar Ralzie serving as the mother of Send Valu rather than the impregnator of Seseine.

No, since Harrek bound the White Bear spirit into his fur, the Rathori can no longer appeal to their common ancestor to grant them activity in hibernation time. While Harrek and the Bear share their presence, the White Bear Empire of Fronela cannot see a revival.