Joerg

Are these the same as the Deer Society headquartered in Finval, or is this suppose to be a different society? I am not sure I like the concept of entire warrior societies pledging loyalty to a single family. My original impression of warrior societies is that they remain outside of the affairs of the nobles, and that their members serve many different noble houses in their martial speciality. That is the role that the warrior societies of Prax play - they unite warriors from different tribes and clans, even if their loyalty belongs to their chiefs. A different degree of networking inside the culture. Each horali society would provide different tactical doctrines and magical options for detachments made up mainly by members of that society. My impression was that each noble would recruit warriors from different societies into his service, much like an Orlanthi chief or king would have Humakti, Orlanthi, Storm Bull and Elmali/Yelmalian housecarls, only in patrol strength or greater. Some warrior societies would provide cavalry (more than just the Horse society, they simply happen to have the best horse magics), and others (like the lion society) would provide infantry. IIRC the Basmoli had a mythical problem with horses and riding, although that didn't keep them from allying with horse-riding Enerali from Fornoar against the expanding Malkioni in the Dawn Age. From the description you give for the two societies, I would guess that the boar horali have an advantage when serving as heavy infantry on the attack, whereas the stag society sounds like they excel as skirmishers or scouts, possibly mounted. This doesn't mean that a boar society horali couldn't serve as cavalrist or that a stag society horali cannot fight in a shield wall. They just don't receive as many benefits from their society's magics compared to situations when they are employed in a role that fits their society's specialities. On a side note, I am happy and sort of amused to see the Capratis and Du Tumerine families from How the West Was One survive into this project. My How The West Was One character (castle coast bishop of "Neleoswal") was written as an opponent of Alex Ferguson's Capratis bishop of "Neleoswal", so this makes it somewhat personal.

I certainly enjoy the absence of moderation on this platform and most of the feedback I receive for my posts here. For me, this forum has become the main place for the Glorantha tribe to interact via the possibilities of the Internet. Google+ was great while it lasted, but despite the contributions there having been archived on Tapatalk, hardly anybody appears to peruse that archive, and no new posts have been there for a while. My own interests are fairly focussed (or narrow-minded). I don't have anything to add to any Pendragon discussion, but I like how Pendragon traffic has gone up in recent months - it is always nice to see that those parts of the hobby remain alive and kicking. I am not a great afficionado of the Cthulhu mythos and had my peak exposure with the Mythos trading card game. I am told I can be intimidating - in real life as well as online. It is physically quite hard for me to make myself small, and apparently the same when I use my keyboard. I don't hold back much with my opinions, but I try to take care not to attack people, only their statements. Can I calm you with the fact that I am on the record to only have exchanged blows with internet opponents that are taller than myself over internet discussions? (A single incident, an ironic event hosted by Heng Langeveld at Convulsion 1994 saw a good-natured duel between me and Alex Ferguson, with well-padded sticks brought by a professional nurse, the sticks a safe means of stress release for psychic patients. Henk was administrator of the RuneQuest Daily at the time.) So if you are under 2 meters tall, you're safe from physical harm. I have met many of the participants here in person on the European conventions. I haven't had any serious face-to-face difficulties with anybody here, the worst I have had was some light shepherding of somewhat over-inebriated folks. (Being potentially physically intimidating might be why the convention organizers let me handle those situations...) So, unlike your usual internet forum, this is a fairly well-connected group of people of flesh and blood that are interacting here (at least in the Glorantha portions of the forum I spend most my activities on), and a lot less anonymous than sites like rpg.net or even more anonymous social media channels. The world has changed around us in the past quarter century that we have had the chance to exchange our thoughts online. I don't think that anyone among us has changed significantly to being a less ethical person, but the internet around us has been degraded and abused by malignant or at least toxically selfish people or groups. All uf us live in the world that is affected by that, and we all adapt somehow to our environments. Not always to the better. Discussions of real world issues and especially hurt feelings tend to drive people into the defensive if they feel their dignity threatened. The dignity of a human being is inviolable. (First sentence of the German constitution.)

1994 was the year of my first forays into the Gloranthan west - I got to play a Castle Coast bishop in How The West Was One at Convulsion, and even before that I wrote up a short piece of scenario ideas for peasants in Rokari Seshnela (whch I should re-visit, and bring up to date), and I created a huge stink around my explorations of the Aeolian Church of Heortland on the Daily. I also complained that the term "knights" should really apply to people equipped like late Roman Empire heavy cavalry like Frankish clibanarii, East Roman (Thracian) cataphracts, or at most Carolingian or second Crusade European and Muslim knights. How The West Was One was hugely influential on all things Malkioni in subsequent fan works, and a good portion of Rise of Ralios (the original freeform of 1996 at the first RQ convention held at Castle Stahleck) was a continuation of several of the characters and many of the concepts of HTWW1 that MOB mentioned. When looking back to those years, I don't think that the "feudal" component was jarring against the current look and feel of Glorantha. Rokari heavy infantry Lords, men-at-arms, a clergy (that has become closer to Roman Catholic with the celibacy demand for Rokari wizards) and the vast majority of peasants and workers is as close to Plato's Republic as it is to say the Kingdom of Wessex. The main difficulty that I see with that older material is to get the churchy bits out. One might apply the "put it in the trash can and forget about it" approach that some people have been advocating, but that's not how Jeff has approached the Guide. Instead there is a maximum of salvage of Greg's Malkioni concepts and details, both from the Stafford Library (Revealed Mythologies, Missing Lands) and from Greg's unpublished fiction pieces with significant amounts of world building notes attached. The Five Actions of Devolution are an integral part of the Abiding Book and the religious outline it provides. There are way too many references to "church" in those Stafford Library books, however. We know (from RQG) that "Worship Invisible God" still is an important facet of the magical ecology of the Malkioni west, and that the sorcerers of the Rokari and the New Idealist Hrestoli hierarchies profit from the praxis, possibly in a way similar to how the Brithini and Vadeli profit from Tapping. The non-sorcerers among the Malkioni profit in turn from the magic the sorcerers receiving part of their worship energies cast on them, and all the rest goes into the (badly needed) cyclical renewal of the world. Crudely said, it's Worship Invisible God or Tapping, your choice, peasant. The Jrusteli city states are portrayed as a hotbed of ordinary citizens dabbling in philosophical pursuits, pretty much like the Athenian protagonists in Plato's dialogues. Almost like what the description of the Enrovalini tribe of the original six tribes of Danmalastan appears to promise, but exactly without that rigid specialisation that Plato let's Socrates demand in The Republic. Yes, everybody pursues his alloted role in society as a land owner, cobbler or trader, but when that allotted work is done, people assemble in public or in private houses to pursue the enlightenment and entertainment of logical debate. Theses are presented, dissected (sometimes in ways unbecoming of stately (i.e. polite in Greek, civil in Latin) behavior. Much of the time Socrates is a trickster in Plato's dialogues, probably a lot like Malkion or Hrestol were when they impacted the accepted wisdom of earlier revelations. What is remarkable about the poleis of Jrustela is that all that cogitating managed to get the zzaburi of the colonies to go along with the citizens. The sons of Nralar who left their father's neverending reign for new shores on Waertagi ships were Hrestoli, the same creed that Arkat adopted when he wouldn't leave Gbaji alone after the Brithini expeditionary force had done their job in defeating Grachamagacan, the (vampire) King of Tanisor and military backer of the Bright Empire missionaries who had spread the plague in Seshnela and Arolanit only they could heal. Born of the Talar caste, most of them likely underwent the studies to become men-of-all, and they seem to have encouraged all of their followers to start upon the same path once they had mastered the Tool of their own caste. To me it looks like popular participation in the pursuit of philosophical advancement was greater in Jrustela than it was in Siglat's Loskalm, perhaps at the cost of martial development after the Olodo and the timinits had been pacified and somewhat integrated and before the conflict with the Waertagi flared up. All the restless energy that had led to this colonisation turned inward and into the philosophical realm. In this context I wonder how much the One Mind is not just an expression of the One but also a kind of intellectual collective of the Malkioni (or Brithini) participating. What exactly happens in the Worship Invisible God rites? Yes, magic is transfered. But is there also a way that intellectual progress is shared? Thoughts and prayers (prayer standing in for magical energy)? Are these worship rites some form of upload, or some form of shared processing similar to the SETI distributed computing project (or, in a more Vadeli approach, the distributed Bitcoin mining on unwitting components of a compromised bot-net)? If thoughts are shared, or rather logical revelations of the past week, then maybe this build-up of memetic material may have shaped and altered the One Mind, at least from the shared platform of a philosophical school, managed by the officiating zzaburi. Where the Rokari might share their confession of sins, maybe the Hrestoli shared their confessions of insight. The effects may show in the magics available to the zzaburi maintaining these uploads. I am using the internet as descriptor for this shared body of memes, because everybody reading this will be using it. But literacy and prior to that oral tradition have also formed memetic bodies of information, the immaterial components of culture. Including language, including the process knowledge of technologies and not just the material components of those that archaeologists can unearth - mostly abandoned attempts or discarded or lost specimen, except where sacrificial or hidden hoards of undamaged goods have been found. The Logicians basically draw their identity from a memetic body of knowledge and processes. A tell-tale difference between Malkioni and Brithini is the rite of worshiping the Invisible God. While Zzabur is credited to have done his bit in the I Fought We Won battle that marked the turning point of the Greater Darkness (parallel to the Ritual of the Net in the Underworld), what are the Brithini contributions to the continued existence of Glorantha? Did the Worship Invisible God come as a consequence of the henotheist practices of Serpent King Seshnela, with the Malkioni wizards discovering that those services gave them a cleaner access to magic than the old Brithini practice of Tapping? Do Brithini zzaburi tap the world to stabilize it? And are the Enrovalini who remain on Brithos merely a form of cloud computing platforms for Zzabur? An inverse of the weird concept behind the original Matrix movie?

Just Hell, or also the magical/fantastic Underworlds in the upper region of the Earth Cube? Hell is another word for underworlds, a vast volume of space mostly occupied by solid earth or (deeper down) somewhat solid darkness. The named regions probably refer to vast cave complexes in the Underworld - think cheesy Hollywood interpretations of Jules Vernes' Journey to the Middle of the Earth, and you get some visuals for the less hostile ones, think Dante's Inferno for the more hostile ones. If Earth is even vaguely cube-shaped, then the Earth Cube alone is 4000 miles deep. That is, despite the really small surface area, as deep as the distance from the real world surface to its solid metal core. If you allow say fifty miles per "layer" of cave complexes, you get 800 levels of three-dimensionally networked cave systems before you even reach the river Styx (if this Greek goddess name still is used for the Gloranthan deity with the similar function). However, moving away from the Middle World makes distances fuzzy, so maybe you get only 200 such layers inside the Earth Cube where all manner of Underworld stuff may be located. The Deep Earth is both part of the Earth Otherworld where life retreats during Dark Season, and the fertile source of Life that Ernalda and the Land Goddesses share on the Surface world, and on the Sea-covered surfaces of the cube - including the four rifts created by the Implosion of the Spike (also known as Zzabur's Great Blast) and occupied by the Doom Currents. In other words, the Underworlds are an almost limitless expansion to the Gloranthan surface world, with possible interaction with lots of surface world deities, as visitors, husbands of the earths. The numbered Hells are a Dara Happan concept and describe something like layers in the Underworld, possibly limited to the surface area of Peloria. The four Hells named in Glorious ReAscent of Yelm are all associated with Lodril and the other Lodril-like deities (Turos, ViSaruDaran) named in Entekosiad. The first hell is just underground, and while there is no way for Yelm or any other celestial light to reach down here (except maybe for the Hell Crack), this part is not associated with Death. Dara Happans call it Dubgrulub. While usually dark, there may be sources of weak light down here. The Second Hell is known to the Dara Happans as Veskerelgat, and ruled by a son (or aspect) of Lodril (or Turos). This is the first level that may be reckoned as a realm of the dead. This and any lower levels may exist less and less within linear Time and more and more in Godtime, making them the equivalent of hero planes. The Third Hell is known to the Dara Happans is Voshtyagut, ruled by Deshlotralas, another son/aspect of Lodril whose name I take to be "Deep Lodril". The Fourth Hell known to the Dara Happans is Ershkintu, ruled by Deshkorgos the Monster Man, Lodril's Other. Other Hells and underworlds are known to the Dara Happans, starting with the Shadzoring Hell that connects to the Surface World at Alkoth, the Hellgate. Shadzor is the Hell aspect of Shargash, and the Shadzorings are a monstrous race of underworld demons that have taken on human shape, and haven't shown their true monster selves since around the time of the Battle of Argentium Thri'ile any more. The monster shape may resemble Deshkorgos or Zorak Zoran, or the description of Vorthan. And yes, there is a connection to the Red Planet, which is at home in the Underworld Sky and on the Southpath. But Alkoth isn't the only metropolis with its own entrance to the Underworld. Glamour sits on the edge of the Crater, possibly the biggest open entry to the Underworld. The inside of the Crater has a weird topology that defeats sanity unless you have (Lunar) illumination. My theory is that the surface of the Red Moon is a reflection of the inner surface of the Crater - whatever is on the Red Moon in the Sky is at the same time on the inside of the spherical hole in the Pelorian Earth. The Crown Mountains that mark the visible edge of the moon in the sky should have the same profile as the Crater walls, which I like to think of as a rugged sierra rather than a perfectly cirular rim. The Silver Shadow is the area of Peloria which also doubles as the surface of the moon, the missing upper pole, mirrored along the crater wall. Nochet has its own hellgate, the Blackmaw, now surrounded by the Antones Estates (the local necropolis) and guarded by a huge (though not necessarily that high) fortress named Watchtower, a part of Irillo's Wall. The Blackmaw already existed in the Green Age or early Golden Age (the map on p.27 has a Shadow rune, Darkness without Cold, the sub-rune of Darkness shared by Xentha, her son Argan Argar, and Moorgarki), but the need to guard it arose only with the release of Death from Subere's vault. Not included in these tiered hells is the realm/prison of Bijiif, the underworld abode of Yelm, formerly known as Wonderhome to the uz. I like to think that this underworld is exposed to the Underworld sky, a hemisphere of Darkness continuing the hemisphere of the Upper World. It lies on the Sunpath. The Underworld Sky is a two-dimensional realm of vast surface, and could have as many constellations and myths as the night sky. Due to the tilt of the Sun Dome, portions of the Underworld sky are visible on the southern and northern edge of the sky from the Middle World at the solstices respectively. The stars and planets on this rim area look no different from those in the celestial sky. If you think about it, the Jumper stars Theya, Rausa, Kalikos and the fourth, southern Jumper light up the upper quarter of this lower sky bowl half of the day, making this part of the Underworld a lot less dark or daunting than the rest. The eery light of Dead Yelm passes through each night. In the days, an underworld portion of Lightfore might continue the travel of the planetary body. The other planets all move across this hemisphere, too. Where the daylight sun is life-giving, the underworld sun might be vampiric, draining life-force of those unlucky enough to be exposed to it. Adventuring in the sky is a great opportunity for quite psychedelic stories. Adventuring in the Underworld Sky would be a continuation of that, with a darker tone, and possibly ever more nightmarish. IMO the Fifth Hell is a Dara Happan concept of those Hells that have no mythical interaction with Lodril or one of his cognates. This doesn't seem to include Yelm's/Bijiif's underworld abode. The Fifth Hells are often directly bordering on the Void, places of Chaos. The one where Sheng Seleris and Hofstaring were imprisoned may be an adjunct of that deepest place where Sedenya encountered/joined/is being lovingly devoured by Blaskarth, the personification of unfettered Chaos. There should be no limit to such hells. The various antigod races of the East probably have such demesnes, home to their antigod lords. The named Chaos deities, foes of the gods, probably have their little corners in such regions, too (with the possible exception of the Sky Terror which may have its special chaotic heaven instead). A diferent concept are the draconic Hells (or realms of testing) that are documented for Ingolf Dragonfriend's spiritual journey to dragonhood, and apparently previously traveled by Obduran the Flyer. These Hells are outermost worlds and exposed to the reality-defying forces of unlimited potential of the Void, but they needn't be underworlds. They are highly inimical to anything of Creation, and to maintain one's existence in the face of these influences requires very advanced degrees of (draconic) enlightenment. I sort of did already talking about the Underworld Sky and the draconic outer realms. What I left untouched are the basements of the Spike, extant only in Godtime as they were removed from reality in the Greater Darkness and replaced by the Chaos Rift, and then encapsuled by Magasta's Pool. This leaves me baffled. The most used exit are the Gates of Dawn. There are secret passages known to the native denizens of the Underworld that may emerge anywhere. Alkoth, the Darkmaw in Nochet, the Tarpit and below it the basements of the Obsidian Palace, the Castles of Lead in Dagori Inkarth and Halikiv (and probably elsewhere), and if you are a flying hell creature, possibly the Hell Crack. There are more one-way entrances to the Underworlds - the Gates of Dusk, Magasta's Pool, Hellcrack, which don't have any known means to escape. But then there are founts of hellish emanations, like Drospoly's pool, which are some sort of exit (the same way a birth canal is an exit). The underseas are a liquid hell. There are other similar places scattered over Glorantha. The Necropolis in Esrolia differs from Alkoth as it has no significant portion of living people interacting with the surface world - the Alkothi manage to emerge as living creatures when they leave the green wall. They also experience linear time while on the surface of that city. I don't have anything to add to the material in Enclosure 1. Shargash is one of my least favorite entities from Dara Happa, less even than Brightface who imprisoned Night for what the Dara Happans say 100,000 years. Dezarpovo in Spol, the Descending Pyramid, has similar issues. The descending pyramids in Chen Durel aka Ignorance may be man- or antigod-made artificial gateways linking to nasty underworlds, too, though not constantly functional. Presumably they can be activated by vast amounts of freshly shed lives and blood. The various power spots of the eastern Antigods are such places - Sortum north of the East Isles, Huan-to infested Senbar in northern Pent, the capital of the Andins in the East Isles. Others that we don't know about yet, or which are less obvious. In a way, the Castles of Lead are such places, too. IMO the Brass Citadel of Sog City (at least its basements) and Castle Blue are border sites to the Underworld, too. A different, volcanic Hell, between life and Death. Marginal on topic on the issue of Darkness and Death, the recent video of Sandy on Game Design brought up the weird dark/dead side of the Red Moon. Worth taking a look:

Yes, the scene is set in Noloswal and in the only sub-tropical region of all of Seshnela). There are beast-society horali everywhere, as some non-Malkioni magic significantly beats no magic at all. The headquarters of these societies (at least the published ones) are all in the north, though. Good catch.

Shouldn't that be un-enchanted iron? Enchanted iron is used by Rune Lords without any negative effect on their magic. A more "Malkioni"-feeling approach would be to have bound spirits cast these spells at the command of their owners. Commanding demons to do their bad stuff to designated targets is a well-honored tradition of Brithini and Malkioni. Brithini war sorcerers are champions at buffing their grunts sent into harm's way to a point where they don't have to resurrect them that often. Summoners have an array of elementals, demons and spirits to send against foes without stooping so low as to worship them. The mightier ones may be negotiated with (and may receive some form of sacrifice out of it), but that's no worship, not even propitiative, guv. There have been a number of conflicts that pitted mortal Malkioni magic and men-of-all against Brithini magic and horali, usually in and around Arolanit. In most cases, sufficient attrition made the Brithini waver enough to capitulate. Whenever the home island of Brithos was in danger, the Brithini magics proved to be disastrously effective. Ethical Malkioni sorcerers pale against sorcerers that tap more or less freely. Neither the Galvosti nor the Boristi gain as much clout out of their limited ranges of tapping targets when comparing to Vadeli or Brithini sorcerers who may walk around practically glowing from all the (possibly ongoing) tapping of basically everything. I don't quite understand the need to Tap people if you can tap impersonal forces of nature or their personifications at decent chances to overcome resistance. With one of several possible combinations of runes and techniques there are few Rune Spells that cannot be replicated by sorcery and enough magic points. The main problem is casting time. Narratively, there appears to be a great penalty if your magic interrupts a sorcerer's magical build-up, but the RQG rules don't quite account for such an occasion.

A little more than that - Bill joined in March 2017, which is roughly 850 days ago. Less posts here than Trump tweets in the same time, I guess. At least some of Bill's posts have the same gravitas... 😋

You need 50% in literacy to become an initiate. Becoming a lay member is the pre-requisite to receive these Read/Write lessons at all. Most future scribes are selected for aptitude at an age significantly before initiation and taken to a temple where they learn the skill. Not all such children will become initiates - the literate Apple Lane tenants in the Adventure Book of the Gamemaster Screen package that immigrated from Jonstown are such a case of drop-outs. A lot of mundane pursuits in Glorantha that RuneQuest handles with a skill role are magical in nature, like e.g. the Peaceful Cut which only requires an successful use of Butchery. Since my adventures often involve some spelunking for old documents (that need to be transcribed from architecture or sculptures that cannot be moved), I don't mind a certain amount of literacy in my party. Issaries cultists probably get literacy as associates of LM and use it in tallying. The Argan Argar cult has Read/Write Darktongue as a cult skill (RQG p.289) and a literacy requirement for rune priests of 80% in Darktongue, but it isn't clear whether this uses a native troll form of writing or one of the accessible Lhankor Mhy scripts.

Making even the two Malkioni religions who claim orthodoxy rather than syncretism for their schools effectively henotheist, with standard spirit and rune magic dominating their lands, sort of cheapens the expectation everybody had from the Malkioni. One way to accelerate sorcerous casting might be a spell that needs to be multispelled with the target spell allowing delayed targeting and release of the magic, with duration applicable only to this multispelled component, defining its "best before" date. This would result in sorcerous magic that would be about as quick to release as theist rune magic, and with the same amount of time-intensive preparation. The Technique of such a spell would have to be Combine, and the other rune might be variable (Magic) or Stasis. There might be a desire for a limit how many points of spell can be held in such a way, but one might shamelessly steal that mechanic from the way Mythras deals with theist magic, although that makes this solution a lot less likely to become canonical. What name could such a spell have? Delayed Release, for starters. Good enough for a house rule, I think. The problem is to keep such a spell from spilling into the Dragon Pass region as common magic, especially with the presence of Sir Narib, Sir Mularik, Sir Ethilrist, and possibly the Army of Tomorrow that operated in the region during the Lunar occupation. What follows is my usual waffling about causes and history. Read (and comment) at risk of your sanity. Ascended Masters don't grant rune magic. And any form of worship other than that of the New Idealist Hrestoli is prohibited in Loskalm. Now I won't exclude the notion that while all animals are equal, some animals are more equal than others, but that doesn't rhyme with the New Idealist concept at all. Svenlos was a barbarian companion of both Snodal and Siglat, and notable in the fights against the barbarians both of the White Bear Empire under Black Hralf the Weasel and inside the area enclosed by the Ban. He certainly kept using and renewing barbarian magics while aiding Siglat, but then those laws may not have been empowered that early in Siglat's reign. But even as a hero cult, access to his magics would involve some form of worship, which is a big no-no in Loskalm. The Rokari of the originally Ralian land of Tanisor came to power with the aid of degenerate Fornoari, culturally appropriating Old Seshnela. Their hostility to the Arkati and henotheists of the rest of Ralios may be more of a political struggle than anything else. The warrior societies of the Bailifide kingdom are generally headquarted in the Ralian parts of the country - there are none headquartered in Nolos or the Quinpolic League, or in former Pendali lands in the south that were counted as part of Old Seshnela even though they survived un-drowned. IMO they are a sanctioned remnant of the Autarchy, or worse, the autarchy's old foes of the Serpent Brotherhood. While most of the beasts of these warrior societies appear in the Ylream picture in the Guide, there is not a single mention for these societies prior to the Bailifide take-over of "Seshnela". I have the impression that the societies are restricted to the soldier caste of the Rokari - there is no mention of the warrior society membership of any of the nobles, even though at least Mullium of Nolos is an accomplished military man. I have been told that my cynical view of the Rokari doesn't allow for true faith in their school. I don't doubt for a moment that there are individuals among the Rokari and even their watchers who act only from deep faith in their Rightness. Unlike the New Idealist Hrestoli, IMO the Rokari doctrine doesn't allow for self-reflection, their philosophy is one of externalizing and demonizing their foes. This approach has precedents in Seshnegi religious history. It doesn't make the Rokari any more likeable. Ironically, the inhabitants of "modern Seshnela" who are the most spiritually pure Malkioni are the Pithdaran of Pamaltelan descent, and possibly preserving some Pamaltelan magic that enables them to fight Gbaji. The Castle Coast inhabitants also are concerned with the purity of their religion. But then, purity is a poisoned term in Malkioni religious context. much like the swastika symbol is in European history. There is a purely sorcerous culture with fairly effective combat sorcery, or at least sorcery capable of mass destruction - the Brown Vadeli, whose magic (used by the Hrestoli king of Old Seshnela) destroyed Hrelar Amali. They aren't designed as player characters, though. Vadeli magics might include sorcerous spells immediately useful in battle (other than Tapping). They probably corrupt the users of such magic.

I vastly prefer this good-natured abuse of my person over that in the Malkioni society thread... Now where is my banana?

You're not the only one. It is very hard for me to reply to Peter's ideas without reacting to what feels to me like nastiness and unpleasant ad-hominem criticism. Peter portrays me as a liar, as unable to write readable text, as being needlessly precise while lack of mention of men-at-arms for other Third Age Malkioni is sold as solid fact that none such exist, and as devoid of any original thought. It is hard to stay civil. At times when I am too tired, the send button is hit before I can edit out snarky retorts. Those may be somewhat cathartic, but they don't belong on this forum, and I apologize for those. Please don't be deterred by such slips of decent behavior on my side. I won't let these reactions to my comments stop me from participating in this debate. I tried edit out all the controversial discussion with Peter, as he clearly stated that he is not interested in dialectics, but the forum only lets me delete the entire text.

skipped. Ah, sorry, the hyperlink I provided got cut in the process of editing my text down. https://www.glorantha.com/docs/history-of-malkioni-thought-brithini-and-first-age/ I think this should be the source document for the development of modern Malkionism. Four Tools: the primary tools of the four castes of traditional Brithini (male) castes. These may be symbolic - mastering the crown or the sceptre as respective tools named for the talar or zzabur caste seems impractical, mastering the sword as the symbol of the horali caste seems quite appropriate without the symbolism, even though the spear or pike probably remains as the main tool of formation warfare, and whatever tool the worker caste or farmer caste would bring to the party. Or they may be four standardized skills a Hrestoli man-of-all has to master come ice or flood. In that case, the literacy to read the Book of Glorious Joy and to write their own name and simple orders might be the ability asked from a man of all as the sorcerous tool. Essence Soul: not nesessarily a leftover term from the Hero Wars/HQ1 era of the three world models. Something different than the five Orlanthi or seven Lunar souls. Possibly the intellect of the individual. Because I disagree with your definitions of those terms. Irensaval worship is not identical to the experience of Joy. All men-of-all , whether in Loskalm or Seshnela or Ralios or Maniria undergo the experience of Joy in a successful initiation. (Yes, there are men-of-all in Seshnela, though not in mainstream Rokarism.) The ability to cast a sorcerous spell through the use of a technique and a rune might be the proof. Tai Chi is a practice of meditative repetition of martial arts moves in slow motion that make sense in combat when performed at combat speeds but which doesn't prepare the practitioner to use them in combat. There are countless moves in Tai Chi which are fairly useless show elements, similar to sword-twirling. In other words, you force "hardened veterans" to learn a skill irrelevant for their continued service in the army. I said "Man-of-All". That means, a former guardian in the New Idealist Hrestolism of current Loskalm who underwent this acquisition of a sorcerous rune or technique through what you named "henosis" and which the rules you refer to call "intellectual union with the source of their magic". To express how they work in RQ rules (which I would do in the RuneQuest forum, not here on the Glorantha forum) I first need to present how they work in Glorantha. Your assumptions of gumptless magical practice as a spiritual exercise only is a strong disincentive to play Loskalmi New Idealist Hrestoli - it feels like the otherwise useless skill a practitioner of the Path of Immanent Mastery has to learn. Has anybody ever seen an immanent master player character in their RQ3 games? Perhaps we should start working out the details of Loskalmi society before we focus on Loskalmi Men-of-all. There is a very limited number of descriptions of Loskalm in the history of published Gloranthan writings: The Guide to Glorantha - mainly the Loskalm chapter, with the "Western Culture" chapter unhealthily focussed on the Rokari ways (which are atypical to anywhere outside of the KIngdom of Seshnela, the Quinpoli League and maybe Tiskos). The only source free of "churches" and "knights"... Jamie Revell's "Book of Glorious Joy" - explicitely non-canonical, a take on how Loskalm would look with churches and knights, based on the Hero Wars era official (as well as priviliged authors-only) material and written for use with HeroQuest 1st edition. Martin Hawley's two page write-up for naval Loskalm in "Men of the Sea" titled "Homeland: Ozur Bay" based on the HeroQuest 1 rules, also in significant parts post-canonical. Peter Metcalfe's description in "Introduction to the Hero Wars", explicitely post-canonical except for bits that may be salvaged. Written for use with the Hero Wars rules (HeroQuest zero edition, so to say). Character background in How The West Was One, the freeform written by David Hall and Nick Brooke, and the summary in the accompanying Sog City University Guidebook. Highly influentual, never canonical. Missing Lands has three paragraphs or so on the New Idealist Hrestoli Loskalmi Church. Nothing on the society. It is the source for the Medispection ritual Peter mentioned above. (Revealed Mythologies has nothing on Siglat's Loskalm.) Magazine articles, homepages and digest (or similar forum) contributions based on these aforementioned sources, none of them going into a comparable amount of detail. That's it. Our only canonical source is the Guide. It might be spiritually polluting, too. Given that already the requirement for joining the Loskalmi army is being a guardian, i.e. belonging to the "men and women who display appropriate spiritual virtue and ability" (Guide p.203) makes use of unvirtuous magics problematic. Giving them spirit magic of dubious origins or theist rune magics of even less virtuous origins doesn't quite rhyme with idealism. So your approach requires the Loskalmi army and society to define virtuous sources of spirit magic and rune magic for their guardians and men-of-all to use in the service of the community. So, rather than worry about how a New Idealst Hrestoli man-of-all acquires sorcery, how about describing how guardians and men-of-all (whether inside or outside of the military) access non-sorcerous magics, and whether and how that interferes with their intellectual union with the source of their sorcerous magic? Which rune then. Law? Infinity? Magic? (Guide, p.151) None of these are available through the character generation processes in RQG at the moment. Neither are they used in RQG sorcery (except for Magic, which is a place holder for "any rune" in the spell descriptions, but not among the runes you could master). The parental experience carry-over might be a way to establish a basic value in these runes, similar to how passions are acquired, which means you wouldn't have to re-write the entire character sheet. You would need a way to gain such a rune through play, however, if you want to play in Loskalm and have outsiders who "see the light" and want to join the New Idealist Hrestoli ways. But maybe the Man Rune might be the appropriate measure. The Malkioni are the Humanist faction as well as the Materialist one. The Man Rune stands for integration into society. So, then which percent range in which rune does a guardian need to become eligible as a man-of-all candidate, and what skill values? (Or should we put this discussion into the RuneQuest forum?) Are they initiates, or are they somewhat higher in the rune level ranks? One problem I have with making the 20,000 men-of-all in the Loskalmi army (and unknown numbers of men-of-all outside of the command structure of the army) all the way to the equivalent of rune lords is that this is an awful lot of rune levels. It also makes more than one third of the Loskalmi army have 90% or better combat skills, and all the rest at similar levels but lacking in one or two of the other cult skills. Does the Loskalmi army provide city guards and caravan escorts, or does Loskalm have another pool of trained fighters to fill these roles? I really don't know what you mean by costly here and my objection about literacy was that effective sorcery requires it. Regardless of whether you like it, making hardened warriors be skilled scribes at the same time sounds rather implausible. Yes, making every warrior a master of calligraphy would break my definition of plausibility, too. Costly as in a great amount of effort and time of the prospective men-of-all to spend on acquiring skills that have no military use. For some reasons, only guardians are called to serve in the army - the Loskalmi don't seem to have any use for the obedient but ignorant grunt that is so valued by the Steuben-derived military doctrine. While McNamara's Project 100,000 shows the folly of this approach in the Vietnam war, the intellectual and moral challenges for becoming a functional pike-man in the Thirty Years War or back in the earliest Bronze Age are way lower. Does Loskalm not have any middlingly virtuous men-at-arms? If not in the army, then maybe as caravan guards, or marines on commercial ships? So yes, our concerns are similar. You ask whether it is necessary to be able to read passingly well and to write a bit in order to join the army (rather than making your three crosses on the recruitment form), and I ask whether you have to be an upstanding citizen to be allowed to serve in the armed forces and whether a natural brawler in fear of his immediate superiors wouldn't be an asset in the military too. Breaking a soldier's identity and ethics in boot camp to re-build him or her into a functional killer doesn't seem to be the Loskalmi way. Breaking and rebuilding is a typical initiatory praxis - the symbolism of Christian baptism is death by drowning followed by a rebirth. College fraternities got this principle right when destroying their aspirants' human dignity, but this doesn't conform with our conception of an enlightened society. Does Plato or any of his successors have anything to say about this dilemma? What are you referring to here? That the Loskalmi female man-of-all presented in the image on p.50 in the Guide is neither equipped for nor described as the member of a large body of cavalry or infantry fighters on the battle-field, but rather as a solitary fighter ready to stand in as the champion for the normal people. (Very much unlike the Renaissance-armored knight that somehow made it into RQ3 Genertela Book which we all are trying so very hard to forget - in my case, I advocated for knights of 1300 years older traditions already in 1994, demanding East Roman cataphract rather than Reformation Age style of equipment.) The troops arrayed behind Meriatan and his sorcerer in Jan Pospisil's color plate on p.204 of the Guide are equipped for mass action combat - we only get a good look at the foot soldier in the front, though. So you don't think that the intellectual commitment to other magical practices hampers the intellectual unity with the source of sorcerous magics? If most Loskalmi combat magic comes from spirit and rune magics, who in the Loskalmi pyramid of meritocratic magical people does provide them? From the description in the Guide, normal people don't deal with powerful magics. If you are a guardian who may have the purpose to use such magic, you might be taught it. By whom? I would suggest that any such teacher not remaining from before the Ban would have to be a former Man-of-All at least - possibly higher - who then somehow went on to become a God-Talker or spirit master in order to be allowed and able to teach rune magic or spirit magic. The recipients ought to be Guardians - the 10% or 20% virtuous elite eligible for volunteer community service tasks, the non-idiots in the Classical Greek sense of the word (selfish one). (I am having some language/cultural context problems here. German language and culture has the concept of "Ehrenamt", which combines the concept of community service with the term "amt" for office - it describes people who take an office pro bono publico, without making it their core economic activity. There is a whole lot of context that the suggested translations "volunteer work" or "community service" don't even start to include. Such as a well-established culture of NGOs on every level of German culture, the so-called "Verein". I think that the Loskalm concept of Guardians is very similar to the German concept of "ehrenamtliches Engagement".) Yes. Obviously you need to devote a significant portion of your self-improvement on literacy if you want to be able to cast magic in a virtuous way. Note that a high reading ability doesn't make you a scribe. My hand-writing resembles a cypher more than legible text, and I suppose that quite a lot of secretive sorcerers may make a virtue out of this vice, too. That said, a low skill can and will be routinely boosted to tolerable success chances in non-combat situations through meditation and passions such as Loyalty Loskalmi Kingdom, Love Comrades (often in more than the platonic sense)/Loyalty to your unit, Hate Enemy. The entry level Man-of-All isn't supposed to be a master of magic, but to have learned the necessary basics. In the end, individual letters are just a mnenonic crutch to parse a sentence, and the average fluent reader doesn't parse single letters, but words or even sentences or paragraphs. Being well-acquainted with a text allows you to parse it at much higher efficiency than beginning to read it. Cheating the read skill by having memorized a text verbatim is common practice everywhere. It is also what makes editing a text you wrote yourself so hard. Gloranthan Western magic and philosophy is all about cognitive processes practiced by humans, so why not transfer our experience of cognitive processes - whether personal or scientific - to Gloranthan sorcery? A man-of-all being prepared to rise to the status of wizard does need to master her literacy. Perhaps even her calligraphy, at least when it comes to producing magically meaningful diagrams. But then, I don't think that the 20,000 men-of-all serving in the Loskalmi army are the entirety of all men-of-all in the 3.2 million population of Loskalm. The Men-of-All are living a state-sponsored life, or the life of mendicants, as they have given over all their worldly possessions to the state upon their initiation as Men-of-All. But that was basically an invitation for the state to equip them with whatever personal items they brought to that initiation when serving as men-of-all afterwards. While it is likely that there will be some ceremonial or educational loss of certain items brought to that initiation, the sponsors of that initiation are highly unlikely to strip an applicant of all their worldly belongings forever and reduce their available equipment to the clothes they wear and the sword they wield (as visible symbol of their status as man-of-all). The Men-of-all (of Loskalm) are described as "a mystical order of warrior monks", but I don't see monasteries in the descriptions of Loskalm and its cities to house them. Those of them in the army will be equipped by their battalions (or detachments thereof). There will be a role for men-off-all in Loskalmi culture outside of the military - as judges, healers, magistrates, teachers. A man-of-all serving in such caacity will receive housing, appropriate clothing and food as a stipend. As horse riding is a signature ability of men-of-all, the stipend will in all likelihood include stabling and fodder for the horse(s) assigned to the man-of-all. The clothing will include official, highly decorated garments in the style worn by Meriatan and his First Brother/wizard companion in the color plate of p.151 and utilitarian everyday clothing displaying their humility as in the drawing on p.50 (both in the Guide). Then there will be men-of-all on a spiritual quest. Unlikely during military service, although there may be a contingency for men-of-all in the Army to take a sabbatical provided there are other men-of-all able to fill in their numbers in the ranks. The necessary equipment may have to be earned through worker-caste work, or produced by the man-of-all herself as part of the quest. Access to the means of production and the materials may be provided by an official, or volunteered by a community or an individual controlling such means of productions (e.g. a loom, a smithy, a bakery, a dyer's workshop, a scriptorium). Going onto a quest will probably require a sponsor to start off with suitable starting equipment, and a mendicant approach that allows the questing man-of-all to access her provisions (food, replacement garments, etc.) from the community she visits. The quest may be a pilgrimage (on horse), or it may be a form of heroquesting. Some of these quests may be assigned by their superiors, others may be volunteered for (making finding a sponsor harder). All the upper levels of the Loskalmi state are basically living on and equipped with stipends from the state. At some level a state official (of man-of-all or higher rank) will make the decision to assign equipment, food, steed, and assistants to the officials and other men-of-all. I wouldn't go down that way. You'll regret introducing such exceptions from the rules when dealing with the Carmanians, the only other group of Loskalmi tradition men-of-all (although paired with Lunar and Jernotian mysticism and henotheism). The Loskalmi culture is ruled by the equivalent of Rune Levels. Their rulers are the equivalent to Rune Lord/Priests, their wizards are the (somewhat martially trained) equivalent to Rune Priests or (as First Brothers) Rune Lords, and their Men-of-All are somewhere between Initiate and "Assistant Rune Lord" level. The Guardians appear to be the equivalent of Initiates, or RQG starting characters, without any sorcery, but - provided we find some virtuous source for spirit and rune magic - not necessarily without magic at all. Another possible source for non-wizard magics would be expanding the principle behind the Rite of Opening available to non-sorcerers to a whole lot of other magics. Dormal's Rite of Opening doesn't require literacy, either. It is a way to get the results of a sorcerous spell through other means. Personally, I would prefer to see an approach like this for Guardian-level access to magic, and carried over to all those Men-of-All that don't aim to master Literacy and become wizards. It has the disadvantage that we would have to design it from scratch right now, as there is no hint in the published RQG how the rite of Opening is performed by non-sorcerers. Or at least there wasn't any such published hint prior to the GenCon sale of GaGoG preview books, which required special connections for overseas-non-attendees. So if anybody who has access to the GaGoG preview and its description how a non-sorcerer Opens the seas wants to chime in, you're welcome.

They strike me as a cadet organisation for future Men-of-All. Their tasks include guarding the community from external foes as much as the maintenance of order and harmony, and the latter could well be in their worker-caste jobs. But then many a zzabur-caste or talar-caste jobs in conventional Malkioni schools may have had to be reassigned into newly made worker occupations. (Trade is often a talar-caste activity as it is about resource management and allocation, for instance.) And with the guardians in the Loskalmi military, infanterist appears to be a worker-caste occupation, too. Workers may include scriptorium aides (preparing writing materials like parchment or inks) and gaining their basics in writing (in addition to reading), or possibly processing alchemical materials from raw ones. Such careers might start a wizard career. But then, that career branch is supposedly only made after successful ascendance into the ranks of men-of-all. Only the Men-of-All are completely reliant on their community support, having surrendered all of their property to the Hrestoli community. (Upon acceptance, or throughout their career? ) This means to me that guardians don't rely that much on community support. To pick up the Four Tools of Dawn Age Hrestolism, a guardian candidate would be one who has mastered his Tool. The military has 15 guardians and 9 men-of-all for each First Brother (fighting wizard). But is the military the only place for guardians (and men-of-all) to appear in? But interesting as the New Idealists may be, I am more concerned with the normal they and the Rokari developed from. On both the less ideal corners of Rokari-dominated Malkionism and in the wayward niches re-discovered by Halwal in Ralions and Fronela. We have numbers for the Loskalmi military in active service - it is 55,000 "men", out of a population of 3.2 million. That's 1.72 percent. Allowing for veterans beyond active service and trainees about to enter the military, and a portion of civil contract fighting force like mercenary guards for travelers or police forces, the numbers hold that scrutiny.

A character knowing sorcery can be assumed to have undergone this kind of henosis at least once, possibly twice, upon learning his first technique and his first rune. Basically, this says in order to know sorcery (as more than an abstract concept you can read about in preparation) you have to have undergone this henosis. This is remarkably similar to the Founder Plane of HeroQuest 1 rules p.176. Zzaburist sorcerers equate this experience with Solace, and Rokari-schooled sorcerers probably do so, too. Anyway, I don't see why the Irensavalists would deviate that much from the Dawn Age True Hrestoli Way: The Four Tools are the tools of the four castes, and basically mean you need to raise one skill each from the Farmer, Warrior, Wizard and Ruler spectrum to mastery (does this mean 90% skill, as per rune lord, or a more modest 75% skill. (Rune Priest or God Talker skill requirements are as low as 50%. I would restrict the Rune Lord equivalence to the next level of New Hrestoli mastery, and not make every Man-of-all a rune lord equivalent. The uppermost echelons of the New Hrestoli would correspond to Rune Lord-Priests or some similarly overpowered theist status, perhaps cult hero. Definitely a mastery as heroquester.) This could mean maintenance of equipment or horse-care (worker, farmer). sword (warrior), reading and writing (wizard) and riding (noble - it is a form of a command skill, after all). Even among the Irensavalists, a Man-of-all is first and foremost a defender of their society. If sorcery is just a tool to achieve henosis, a sort of Tai Chi for the military arm of the Kingdom of Loskalm, then it does make sense to teach only a very esoteric combination of technique and rune. What rune would you suggest to a freshly consecrated Man-of-All of Irensavalist background? Stasis (as stand-in for Law)? But what if sorcerous practice is supposed to yield practical results in the Loskalmi army. What are the spells that the army would prefer its veterans to have? Not talking about short term spirit magic enhancements, but about sorcerous spells of some practical use. Upkeep spells like Mend Flesh or Preserve Item (should be a favorite in hygiene-obsessed Loskalm) might be wanted by at least a solid portion of the men-of-all, possibly depending on the order/branch they joined. Agreed. On the other hand, the old RQ3 rule that Loskalmi knights could only manipulate the intensity of sorcery spells under that system doesn't apply to RQG. A man-of-all may well be expected to maintain some minimum level of say Boon of Kargan Tor or Preserve Item on their equipment. By "rune affinities" I suppose you mean runic augments? How would you measure this worthiness? 50% success chance in this spell? And how would you formulate such a spell using Dispel as the technique? Your own conduct - this sounds like the Man Rune, or perhaps Truth or Harmony. Or (if paired with Dispel) the "opposite" trait of these (Beast, Disorder, Illusion). Cult Lore could include verbatim recital of the scriptures, but I don't see why you would saddle the guardians with a costly Tai Chi magic requirement and then balk at making them able to read. I like the concept of obligatory literacy in this neo-platonic setting. The Man-of-All is supposed to work well in coordinated mass action, but also as solo fighter. Your normal army member too thick or too unambitious to achieve sorcerous henosis may be trained mainly in coordinated mass action unless a specialist like a tracker/outrider/hunter. The literacy requirement might be as little as learning the text by rote and being able to trace it on the document with the index finger while reciting it. An actual writing skill might be overkill.

Lukarius' wife was Gerra, the last impure child of Old Dara Happa that Herustana took in after tricking Anaxial to eat an almost ripe fruit of the yarm tree that she had made edible by cooking it, thereby releasing him from his unsleeping watch at the helm. Gerra is of course the goddess of martyrdom worshiped at Dezarpovo, the descending pyramid, and the incarnation of the Lunar dying phase, and in a way she is also Gamara, the amputated mother (of horses). White Goddess, White Sun. The color blue for Annilla's moon is a result of Death entering the world, and her child being dead.

Carried over from the GaGoG thread: Sounds like ZZ is halfway towards the invention of elf paper. Next you need disciplined uz who only suck out the liquids and spit out the pulp into some cloth. The addition of troll saliva might make the product even more supple than the dwarven industrial process. But then, Gorakiki-worshiping uz can simply harvest paper from wasps' nests. With that and wax (tablets), Argan Argar merchants provide two major writing materials. The Wasp Riders of Wasp Nest probably trade some of their steeds' paper for metal objects, too.

What is the purpose of human society according to the various groups derived from Malkion's teachings? As we are talking about the descendants of the Kingdom of Logic, there must be one. And if humans are devolved from the primal runes, there must have been a purpose in this process of multiplication, or the Creator wouldn't have undergone the Fourth Action. This is dissimilar from the creation of the Clay Mostali who were required as replacement for attrition of True Mostali, there was no such attrition preceding the Fourth Action. The only attrition Zzabur describes among his fellow Erasanchula is their error of demanding/accepting worship, but for them to do so, there is a logical requirement of there to be potential worshipers - i.e. the Fourth Action. So rather than having Multiplication as an explanation of the world that is, what would be the purpose of the One Mind behind initiating Multiplication? It is Multiplication that creates society - many people doing more or less the same tasks in their contribution to the whole. Does society have a purpose on its own, or is it a vessel for the purpose of the individuals making up this society? So what is the logic behind the division in castes? There are two arguments that I can perceive may sound logical. The specialisation one is that by doing one task really well an individual's contribution to the whole can be much greater than that of jacks of all trades. But then the Danmalastan story with the six tribes already leads this ad absurdum with the six primary tasks for each tribe, and then the tribes having the four castes. One is about separation of powers. He whose responsibility is fighting, magic or making (including food) should not make decisions for all the others or all the others would be subject to that narrow perspective. Rinse and repeat for the other three caste duties, and then start worrying about what to do if the personal pronoun happens to be She. Castes are about Being, not about Knowing. As a measure of ancestry, they make partial sense as the descendants may draw on their ancestor's knowledge and powers through rites, but none of that was even on the horizon when Malkion assigned his three sons from Phlia the tilnta with the tasks of ruling, magic, and fighting, and the son from Kala with making. Presumably all in his stead. But then there is no way that all people who have a caste are direct descendants from Malkion. While being unaging would keep each of the original sons of Malkion fertile for Ages, we have contradicting information about his first generation offspring in Hrestol's Saga - Talar had twin sons, Froalar and Hoalar, who would be his heirs, with Froalar voluntarily leaving his father's city to avoid even the temptation to have a succession crisis and civil war. No idea whether the version in Hrestol's Saga which has Talar and Hoalar perish in the same Vadeli attack (sounds like the Double Belligerent Assault to me) still is in the history of Brithos. If so, the succession would have been a problem of redundance, as the original leader still was around and didn't need replacement. Alexandre Dumas' "Man with the Iron Mask" is probably the best known literary variant on this succession problem. Romulus and Remus don't quite count as their conflict occurs in the founding of The City, and they don't inherit anything. The original Malkioni society was pretty male. Other than Menena (daughter of Malkion and Phlia, according to Hrestol's Saga) we know one other daughter, Eule (same parentage), sister-wife to Talar. The ideal society appears to be The City. Up to a certain size, the city can hold all primary producers (farmers, fishers, herders, hunters) and sustain itself, but I don't get the vibe that The City was in any way participating in primary production, and instead was the home to the artisans of the Worker caste. One (perhaps intrinsic) problem with Malkioni society is that it was created for a race of (procreating) immortals. (That the immortality was fragile is something that came up only with the Fifth Action.) Malkionism is based on the teachings of Malkion the Prophet, the Founder, at the start of the Fourth Action. It does take the Fifth Action into account, but the society created by the Founder and Prophet was to regulate the business of the Fourth Action. Did the Prophet design that logical society already with an (unsabotaged) Fifth Action in his plans? When Hrestol received his revelation of Joy and for the Men of All (overcoming the strict caste laws of the original, immortal Malkioni) Death (and Malkioni old age) had been in the world for generations. In case of Hrestol, two generations - Hrestol probably experienced almost the entire Gray Age, which (according to Dara Happan and Heortling reckoning was well over a century - YS places the end of the Kazkurtum at 110,665 YS, 335 years before the Dawn). Despite that, he and his sister Fenela emerged as young people at the Dawn, and his father Froalar (son of Talar) was at best middle-aged in appearance. According to one source that I recently chanced upon, Hrestol may have had two (possibly elder) full brothers who died of the same disease that his mother Xemela ended with her sacrificial death.) It isn't quite clear how quickly the other Dawn witnesses aged with the advent of Time, as we only get the death dates for the Serpent Kings (who rather retire as soon as they can to join the divine existence of their mother/grandmother/great grandmother Seshna, and their male ancestors). Faralz and Yadmov are of Hrestol's age group and appear to remain active throughout the first 70 years of history or so. Hrestol, Faralz and Ylream had Brithini wives (the daughters of Duke Antalos of Horalwal, roughly third degree cousins of Hrestol, with only Ylream's wife born at or after the Dawn). Looking at the situation at the Dawn, I think that Hrestol regarded the civilisation of his homeland (Frowal, really) as he left it behind as a fairly well-managed state of human affairs, with the Pendali threat finally countered and his demigod half-brother left as successor to Froalar who had joined Seshna as sacred (serpent) king. The situation he found in his first seat of exile, Brithos, was sort-of tolerable until the Talar of Brithos desired the land and hand of his middle sister-in-law, but then Hrestol had managed to land a fairly cushy position as one of the twelve "enfeoffed" talars of Brithos through his marriage to the daughter of the Duke of Horalwal. The ensuing civil war caused by Faralz's "heroic" assassination of said Talar of Brithos at the last opportunity before the core wedding ceremony showed the flaws in the Brithini ways in a very ugly way. Hrestol's Saga unfortunately breaks off in the middle of how Hrestol and Faralz escape the island with their wives, and the paragraph in Middle Sea Empire p.33 only tells us matter-of-factly that Hrestol went on to become the Vadeli judge (another talar position, apparently) which his son of his Brithini marriage and his grandson (Aignor the Trader, father of the fourth Serpent King with Seshna) succeeded to. Finally, in Akem Hrestol sets out to organize a Malkioni society that comes close to his revelations and meditations. But he still departs from this, enters contemplation again, and encounters a Brithini patrol which captured him and led him to Sog City where he was martyred for his sacrilegious changes to the Malkioni ways of old. As a resume of his life, Hrestol adapted to various forms of Malkionism, left his imprint, and moved on when he found these lacking. When he was martyred, he was still searching for the perfect society, which means neither of those he left behind conformed with the perfect society of his revelation. All of these societies claimed for themselves to follow the true way of Malkion, and subsequent movements in Malkionism all built on Hrestol's influence, even the Brithini reforms shortly after the Dawn (mainly Zzabur's retirement from politics).

Or alternatively for an Issaries herald who otherwise specializes in the buy-back of Wolf Pirate hostages/slaves. This ought to be a quite thriving business model in Kethaela, and might be one of the shadier sources of wealth for Goldgotti. "Yes, the Wolf Pirates have taken hundreds of slaves, good man, but what about the books???" Note that there is a bunch of Wolf Pirates with fairly literate crews, including Mularik Ironeye. If Orstando or Harrek brought pet sorcerers to the Isles to outfit new vessels with "wolf" heads, the literate portion of the population might be as high as among coastal Theyalans. Given Harrek's background as Dart Competitor, there is a fair chance that our berserk superhero actually can pull a Clark Kent stunt putting on glasses (or a fake goatee) and retreating to read a scroll or similar. Having a few personal lectors reading them out for him is at least as likely, though.

Actually, this mention of the sheep of Nelat made me make a double-take. There is exactly one mention of this, Heortling Mythology. I wonder whether this is a "thinko" which confused the two brothers of Triolina, and really should read "Heler". I don't see any other evidence for a connection between Nelat and clouds or sheep other than Heler being his brother (in that case, are there Triolina clouds?). This might have been caused by the name of the ewe goddess Nevala which does sound and read a bit like Nelat. But then, it is also possible or even likely that someone noticed that possible confusion, and decided to leave it in for amusement value. We have a similar case in Dragon Pass: Land of Thunder, where the annual pilgrimage to Kjartan's pool is made by worshipers of Pelaskos (the open seas fisherman of the coast) rather than Poverri (the fisherman of rivers and sweetwater lakes). Assuming a Gray Age or older origin, the rite would have been interrupted with the Dragonkill in 1120, and probably have been re-instated only with Enjossi's salmon feat.

Go somewhere remote. Given the bottlenecks involved in releasing Glorantha publications, the chances to see anything official published on certain backwaters within your life-time aren't that high, as Chaosium has a number of priority targets lined up. Ralios appears to be rather off their radar at the moment, so the East Wilds appear to be a rather safe place to play around with Orlanthi stuff, far enough from that nasty Arkat business. Of course, if you want to interact with the Hero Wars, your campaign will necessarily touch upon stuff that Chaosium will produce eventually. Chaosium's toes are steel-capped - your campaign being different won't even register as an impact. But I think what you are really worried about is Chaosium's toes and attached heel trampling into your campaign area and contradicting your details. There are a few ways to deal with that. One is to ignore anything that contradicts your campaign. Don't use that particular part of that product. One way is to rewrite either side of the material (or both) to create a compromise that allows both Chaosium's continuity and your campaign's continuity to coexist - that's a lot of work, though. The easiest way is to start a different campaign using Chaosium's material should it impact your campaign, and rope in your old characters as modified NPCs or to give them a heroic ascension. They could become patron deity/allied spirit of your new characters if your players want to keep the carry-over. In MMORPG terms or insertion fiction terms, a cheat.

Do I have to imagine a white persian cat being stroked? D'Wargon D'Wargon or Womb Biter is the uz name for the demon swallowed by the Black Eater which wounded Korasting's womb, leading to the Curse of Kin. It may be a title, it may be a specific entity recognized by the Uz that only shares some aspects with Nysalor as understood in the Cults of Terror write-up. David Cake used the term in a 1996 post, well before Drastic: Darkness, so it must have been in the troll material earlier. RQ2 Trollpak uses Gbaji (never Nysalor) in its dirge about the Curse of Kin.

Tapping whom, or what? The Neliomi Sea was reduced to an almost still, insignificant puddle due to having been tapped by both Vadeli and Enro(l)valini (better known as Brithini) in the Late Storm Age (Guide p.692) I found it possible to make an ethically defensible statement on Tapping peasants saying "We must not forbid peasants to volunteer for Tapping to give the sorcerers the necessary power to save the community!" in the committee on Tapping at How The West Was One. Unfortunately, all the other committee members were too enmeshed in their respective ideologies to apply Logic to the problem, and no one from the openly tapping schools was even invited to that committee. Originally Tapping was not in any way Chaotic, but a necessary measure on part of the wizards to keep Change and Creation at manageable speeds. Like with pre-Death killings of beasts for food, on the next morning or at least at the next major rite, the killed individual beast would return to where it died, and likewise Tapped anything would regenerate from the ongoing stream of Creation. The Boristi sort of misunderstood this. The Galvosti (who tap non-Malkioni humans) are a Hrestoli group.

We're trespassing on the RQ Forum borders here, but: How do we know the ten cities of Dara Happa were inhabited by humans? Alkoth revealed itself in the Greater Darkness and well into the Dawn Age to have been the home of Shadzoring darkness demons that looked suspiciously like troll depictions of Zorak Zoran. Elempur, the southernmost of the seven cities of Anaxial was destroyed fairly early on without its inhabitants getting much narrative light. It also happens to be fairly close to the only site we know to have been inhabited by Gold Wheel Dancers, in Aggar. And I wouldn't be much surprised if the founders of Verapur in the north had been humanoid birds - possibly based on raptor birds - similar to the Parrot People of Forng in the East Isles. Also, how much bat was there in Mernita before a lot of blue moon debris crushed (most of) the place? Actually, that is a description that has never been made for any of the Kitori. As agents of the Only Old One, they come with a lead mask made to fit a troll skull, a black cloak, and a spear. The entire arrangement is assembled in a way that made it hard to guess what exactly hid behind that mask. But then his offspring might have burnt Korasting's womb, instead of Nysalor/D'Wargon.

Not in the official presentation. I can check the old Heroes of Wisdom data to see what Ingo Tschinke had for his RQ2/RQ3 write-up, but that has never been published and is strictly fan-work. Lots of it needs to be adapted to current info.

Once you are through with the three scenarios in the adventure book and the one from the quickstart, the adventure book does provide a Colymar Lands sandbox. The Guide does provide a finer mesh than the Genertela Box for most (but not all) of Glorantha - the East and the South have significant gaps.