Joerg

Nysalor is rather clearly Rashoran reborn. Rashoran was killed by the Unholy Trio, but that doesn't prevent him from coming (or being brought) back as Gbaji. Yellmalio's encounter with Teller of Lies might have been with Rashoran or with Gbaji, or (as likely) with both. Unlike his procreator, Yelmalio is not known to have been illuminated. We don't know whether Gbaji had an in-world presence between the Dawn and the Sunstop. He might have experienced another rebirth. Or he might have led the Second Council to the Pseudocosmic Egg to facilitate his insertion between the new deity and its Shadow.

Many of these original inhabitants were deities, genii locorum, or their mortal offspring. Personally, I think that the claim that the dronar population of Brithela is descended from Malkion the way the three minority castes are is a bit weak. Revealed Mythologies p.25 has a summary of Greg's early world building for the Gloranthan west. It clearly marks the Vadeli (of the three colors brown, red and blue) as the indigenous humans of Brithela, and claims that the Malkioni are the result of Malkion (aka Engr) mating with a series of (local divinity) wives. I am spouting a lot of "In My Glorantha" nonsense below, which does make a certain sense to me. Read at your own risk. These people descended from Malkion would have become the Logicians, the people of the Kingdom of Logic.. IMO the majority of the indigenes of Brithela other than the Vadeli were the Dromali, dark-skinned children of Kala, given "Founders" by Malkion. They were the people of the soil, farmers, but also builders - a human culture of early agriculturalists and earth (ancestor) worshipers. King Drona, accompanied by Bakan the boar, and aided by Eurmal Friend of Men (and later Eurmal's son Yomat) left Brithela as the Logicians took the reign and spread his form of agriculture into the Hykimi lands of Fronela and Ralios (long before the Nidan range of mountains was raised). Drona may have been a son of Malkion and Kala, if not first-born then highest-born of the Dronari, and thus a king of the farmers when left alone by his half-brothers (Talar, Zzabur, Horal) born to Tilnta. The majority of the Logicians claim descent from Tilnta, the favored wife of Malkion who gave him many sets of male and female twin children, each pair becoming a married couple founding a dynasty. (This seems to be a typical start of a royal dynasty born of human and goddess - other such couples include Ylream and his sister Nebrola whose child became the second Serpent King of Fronela, or the twin children of Arim the Pauper and Sorana Tor founding the Twins dynasty of Tarsh. The founders of the Caladra&Aurelion cult used the same precedence.) They became the core of the Logician culture while being a small minority in terms of population compared to the vast majority of Dronar caste farmers and workers. The mothers of the six tribal founders of Danmalastan are left unclear, except in the case of Waertag, whose mother was a kinswoman of Warera, a Triolina tied to the Wartain tribe from which the Ludoch seem to have descended (even though nowadays the Neliomi waters don't have any Ludoch any more, but instead have a few types of Ouori). The story of Viymorn (who became the ancestor of the Vadeli royalty) is described separately from that of the other Founders, in the Stafford Library book Middle Sea Empire, also telling a history of Godtime Jrustela. In his case, we know that he founded three groups of descendants - demigod births (including Vadel) called The Seekers, Made Humans (the clay etc. method) to populate his lands, (all names not mentioned in any other text I have ever seen). and allegorical third set of cardinal directions (Middle Sea Empire p.6, which would make Vimorn himself South.) But TLDR: IMO there were a couple of chthonic peoples (claiming descent from local land goddesses like Vadela or Kala) in the West when the six tribes of nobility fathered by Malkion developed their philosophical/Logician specialities while upheld by the labor provided by the Chthonic class of Dronars, and apparently against the will of the children of Vadela except for Vimorn whose son Vadel became the founder of the Vadeli with his explpratory journeys outside of Danmalastan. Yes, but not necessarily in the same way as the Vadeli and Kachasti who happened to inhabit the inner border regions to the northern and southern triangles/continent. Basically, we have the northern expansion of the Kachasti that is known by the euphemism "Speaking Tour". They enter the same Hykimi lands previously colonized by King Frona, and might have gone there with the intention to make these escapees from the Logician oversight return to their fold. For a while, they succeeded, seeding the lands of Fronela, Ralios, and possibly Maniria with their Speakers among the Hykimi, and possibly bringing in Kadeniti city planners to provide the Hykimi with ancestral temple cities in the style of Göbekli Tepe. Their presence may have been similar to that of the Trader Princes in post-God Learner Maniria unt.il they got involved in the Vadeli War. The Kadeniti were the tribe of architects and civic engineers. They created the Perfect City, and then spread out to other Logician lands (and the Kachasti lands) to seed the perfect Logician cities enabling social order and maximized channeling of magical power to the sorcerers (or to the temples to the ancestral entities). So Kadeniti do expand, but only as enablers of the other tribes, not bringing their own domination but providing their infrastructure. And Tadeniti record-keeping pervades all the Logician activities, too, in a similar way. The Enrovalini - Zzabur's folk who own the island of Brithos - are the ones who don't do much of anything (but cogitating), which might be the most Logician activity, but also the least active behavior. Do they spread out? Well, there is Arolanit, the Rational land, and there is Sog City, both on the far side of the Neliomi Sea. Do they do anything there? Not really. Do they spread to God Forgot? No idea. IMO the technology was one of the causes of the differences between Vadel and Zzabur becoming a war. Zzabur does similar bad things to the couple Horal and Menena, but gets thwarted there. The emigration of King Drona may fall into this, too. The Vadeli were vilified and demonized by Zzabur (while providing him with his stationery of living hide), and at some point they embraced that identification, and embraced it for the power it gave them, a power that allowed them to overthrow the Logicians by subverting its virtues. I cannot say anything about the immortality of any Danmalastan natives other than the Enrovalini descendants on Brithos and their Tilnta-born nobility born outside of those tribes. The Brithini immortality derives to a large extent from expelling Malkion as he is on the brink of accepting Mortality in the Fifth Action. That Fifth Aciton might be a thing that might have gone painless and hopeful except that it was sabotaged, not just by Zzabur but possibly by the Vadeli and other forces as well, the latter potentially including the Westfaring Lightbringers. Demonizing and then sabotaging foes is a cheap trick played by Zzabur again and again. There are a few times when it misfires, but otherwise it has served him very well. Vadel was on to Zzabur's duplicity - he was an accomplice in tricking the Mostali out of the Energy Matrix artifact which the Logicians mass-produced in the lesser (bronze) edition from the original (iron) device. Expecting the same from Zzabur, Vadel offered the Mostali to catch Zzabur with his own tricks (while profiteering again), and the Mostali agreed to go after the bigger target, keeping Vadel and his folk as useful if unreliable accomplices. When Zzabur declared some of the actions of Vadel as anathema - including the expeditions to Bamatela which he himself had sponsored - and (as far as I understand the story) flensed Vadel and his brown and red co-noble of the Vadeli for his books, there was little to top the insult against the Vadeli. The Vadeli then went all out to prove the absurdity of Zzabur's interpretation of Malkion's rules by obeying them in the most contrary manner and still benefitting from the caste benefits. The Logicians were a bunch of supremacists. Possibly the worst kind, incorporating all the vile -isms and claiming something along the lines of manifest destination. The Malkioni mortals of the west are those who followed Malkion out of that supremacist trap into milder forms, dissidents against Zzabur, making his magic-gathering engine/society less effective, which led to the successive excision of all dissidents and polluted if doctrinally sound individuals (pushing the latter to Arolanit, it seems). Malkioni societies can be pretty awful towards non-Malkioni, and possibly worse to dissident Malkioni. There are three power groups inside the Malkioni who grab the power - the sorcerers following Zzabur's books of supremacy, the talars with their inherited ability to order the zzabur caste about despite being their servants, and the military with the men-of-all movement by Hrestol undoing all the great taming success the sorcerers had over the soldier caste, making them obedient followers of talars and zzaburi, only to be replaced by the super-caste of the men-of-all who inherited the military power and some sorcerous insight while recruiting a majority of the ruling talars to their way of doing things To some extent I agree with Rokar's criticism of the men-of-all involvement in the ruling of the realm, but the pyramid scheme putting the sorcerers back as the main recipients of society's benefits that is Rokarism strikes me as a pernicious fallacy repeating the God Learner mistakes rather than counteracting them as professed. Sorry about the rambling and referencing of (essentially) unpublished old Western material. This is what has shaped my impression and my deductions.

Dwarf technology sold to humans may require significant amounts of coal or char-coal, a subtle Mostali plot to let the humans help them against the encroaching forces of Grower. Natural tar is but a convenience. Most mesolithic and neolithic cultures had quite advanced pyro-technology to distill tars and pitch from special wood or barch. Birch tar is one of the oldest man-made plastics, a very versatile material that requires quite a bit of sophistication to do right, and yet ubiquitious in the archaeological record. Charcoal is an essential resource in smelting metal from ores, and a great fuel for melting metal ingots for casting. Suitably aerated, it enables metal welding in the smithy, too, and good pottery requires temperatures beyond what wooden fires can provide. "mineral coal" varies in quality and usability. Graphite is the gold standard, almost pure carbon (or, in German, "coal-stuff", Kohlenstoff) with greater density but otherwise similar properties to high quality charcoal. Rock coal contains quite a bit of rocky material, and tends to contain sulphur, too, creating quite noxious fumes when burnt. Lignite is more or less petrified peat, still rather wet when unearthed, containing even more impurities, but may improve upon drying. Creating coke from natural coal may be unknown to Gloranthan humans (although the Third Eye Blue may have inherited that Mostali secret). Petrol as fuel will be primarily useful for light, as in oil lamps. While tallow, whey or ghee may serve as replacement, those are foods that may have other uses.

The week days and seasons complement the Monomyth and the magical conclusions drawn from that massive work of syncretism. Knowing the element of the day and the season, and the power rune of the week will give you an easy approximation on which magic may be especially powerful on a given day. There are other systems of magical correspondence that can be used instead, and elaborate schemes of horoscopes and other such techniques of (non rune magic) divination, but the Theyalan calendar is good enough for most ritual considerations.

Subjective distances are a thing in the Outer World of Glorantha, but a little less so in the Inner World. Still, I maintain that Glorantha has shrunk compared to Godtime prior to the Greater Darkness, except that the stuff lost to Chaos was also excised from Godtime, and the Glorantha we are able to interact with within History is a patchwork of shards of reality held together by spider silk smoothing out the transitions with the unlimited potential of the material the Father of TIme provided. Glorantha is a post-apocalyptic world, never mind the regularly recurring periods of cataclysms. Much has been diminished, while a lot of things have received a lot more definition than they might ever have had. The population growth in Glorantha reached a peak in the Second Age, especially in the Theyalan lands, but also in Peloria and the Western lands. When it comes to topography, I think that a wedge of hitherto unrecognized land may have been added to Fronela during the Syndics' Ban. IMG there are shards of reality that did not make it into the surface part of the web at the Dawn, held in the folds of the web like puzzle pieces that were left over after the image was completed with reconstruction at certain edges.

The Vithelan Chaos is largely home-made - the Antigods are the offspring of Vith and his dark wife Gebkeran, apparently a cosmic necessity for Vith to find the balance required to achieve enlightenment and access to the Ultimate. The term antigod is used in a flexible way and also includes all deities that entered the Vithelan sphere from the outside, starting with the Sea Gods, but also including Kahar (apparently a member of the Vadrudi host who wooed Harantara/Thrunhin Da rather than some Triolini demigoddesses), the Mostali of Light and Dark Mountain (Babadi, another stone or metal man), and the magic of the other three directions (brought home by the Sheradpara noble antigod sons who became the sorcerer, priest and shaman of the Vithelan court, well-regarded members of the pantheon after admitting their mistake and submitting to their father. A few other antigods became sort-of court-enabled respected deities. Kahar is one of these, after studying Perfect Stillness with one of the great mystics of the East. A home-grown one respected as a martial artist is Herespur despite his accomplicehood with Sekever and Avanapdur. The evil lords of Sortum are mainly descendants of Vith and Gebkeran, and there are e.g. the Arandinni adpara people who are descended from Sortum, underworld people in conflict with the nearby East Isles. It isn't quite clear where the Deep Ones of Nan Matol with their giant underwater walktapus originate - Sortum is a good guess, but this might as well be a remnant of Outer Chaos sent to sleep by one of the great sages.

Whenever Arkat looked at Nysalor, he perceived Gbaji. And that was Truth and correct. Whenever Nysalor looked at Arkat, he perceived Gbaji. And that was Truth and correct. Ralzakark has three shapes in the Guide - a unicorn-headed broo, a scorpion-armed broo, and a human shape that is just the front surface of a human. IMG this latter shape is a reflection of the nature of Gbaji. Thus, there always were three of them - Nysalor, his shadow Arkat, and the Deceiver between them, separating the two halves of the Perfect Being.

Exactly: the Footprint and Snake Pipe Hollow are specifically marked as steep cliffs on the map of the Dragon Pass board game, as do the Heortland cliffs and the Shadow Plateau. All other territories marked as hills don't. The regions that have that steep slopes are marked as mountain hexes rather than hill hexes. This is a classical misreading of a map, mistaking the isohypses (height lines) for terrain features when they simply show where the rising country passes an arbitrarily chosen level of elevation.

In our recent episode of God Learners podcast, I use one of the three impromptu lore auction questions on just this topic. Check out the transcript, or listen to Jeff explaining how reality and an ideal society struggle to co-exist.

When I reference pdf page numbers, I look at the number printed on the page (or count onward from a nearby page which has a number printed on it), as the automatic page count of the pdf reader tends to disagree. That way page numbers are an accurate attribution.

The Vadeli feature as barbarian indigenes of Brithela (and even Brithos) in Greg's early stories. The later story about the Viymorni becoming the Vadeli may be as true. All of the Malkioni people became coastal with the second advance of the Seas (the Flood Age of the early Lesser Darkness as per the Mythology book). Of the six tribes of Danmalastan, the Tadeniti were the scribes, the Kadeniti the city builders and the Enrovalini the philosophers. None of these inclinations set them wandering, although the Vadeli (and Mostali) conquests sent them fleeing as refugees. The Tadeniti were the first to fall. Probably for a good reason, as they would be the ones who invented the flensing techniques that Zzabur employed to create his Vadeli-skinned books of knowledge and magic. Seeing their kin or ancestors being abused as book bindings, the Vadeli may have had good cause to attack the isolated Tadeniti with Mostali aid. While Tadeniti managed to flee to the Danmalastan mainland, their home island was overrun, and the enslaved or undead bodies of the Tadeniti served as workers for the Mostali as payment for their aid to the Vadeli. Emboldened by this success and their endeavors in Pamaltela, the Vadeli started their slave empire, vastly expanding their productivity as opposed to their slow-breeding immortal rivals. While they suffered setbacks like their initial assault on the Kachasti, again with Mostali assistance they staged a coup against the Kachasti domain in Fronela, Ralios and Seshnela, separating their realm by letting the Mostali raise the Nidan range between Tinsnip Mountain and Top of the World while tricking their PoW caretakers into spending all their magic for keeping the captives alive. This left the Danmalastan mainland as their last Logician foe, which then was overrun by the Double Belligerent Assault which killed the Logician leader Talar alongside his heir, leaving an infant successor at the mercy of his advisors as the defender of the realm. Other than the island of Brithos, the Logician lands fell under the Vadeli, who then began a siege on the last bastion of their old foe Zzabur, reckoning that nobody would be evil enough to destroy their own world just for revenge. They were proven wrong.

Western mythology often references the Old Gods of the Enerali (and apparently also in Fronela), like the Xeotam dialogue in the Sourcebook. How disparate western dealings with gods can be shows in the article on religion in Safelster. Malkioni ancestors include god-like Founders (such as Tadenit -> Lhankor Mhy and Kachast -> Issaries) or otherwise famous ancestors (e.g. Horal and Menena who had a struggle against Zzabur that Zzabur had to concede and somehow fails to recollect in Revealed Mythologies). They have countless tales about men-of-all questing and overcoming mythical opponents, or being gifted with some magical blessing in the process. Hrestoli Men-of-All have been accused of Adventurism, which led to the Rokari condemnation of non-wizard people engaging in potentially powerful magic. The Malkioni are quite aware of the genii locorum in their corner of the world. They usually interact somewhat favorably with the Aldryami, who do remember betrayals when they extended greater trust to the Malkioni, though (e.g. a mere 1550 years ago when one of their forest princesses was betrayed by her serpent king husband). Damsels encountering such local deities and bringing their demigod offspring into the lineages may have become fewer, but aren't completely unknown. The Lady Gwelenor of Gilboch might have defied that trope a little, but other than a few hints we don't know the story. (Seshnela section of the Guide)

Zzabur is the butterfly whose wing-beats cause typhoons in the East Isles...

Loskalm has a greater number of people with entry levels in sorcery than anywhere else, with the mandatory basic knowledge to be acquired by Guardians preparing for Man-of-All qualification. Ancestor worship (though maybe not with the exclusivity deal of Daka Fal initiation) would be wide-spread in Malkioni society, Whether this results in readily available battle magic is a different question, but it is a possiblity. Sorcerers' interaction with spirits and minor deities may not be so different from shamanic-led spirit cults.

The classical way to trap Bigfoot the GIant in Chaosium's Stomp! was to nail his sandals to the ground so he would topple over.

To add another brain's capacity to the user's. Or several.

Not much of a tool, but possibly useful for a coastal or maritime game:

In the end. everybody is interacting with elephant armor or ornaments - masks of a deeper truth. None of the anthropomorphic depictions are absolute truth, they are similes/parables. My "sorcerer's" understanding of these things are an archetype space intersecting with contextual spaces created by cult expectations and personal experiences of those who interact with the myth. God Learaner questers may have had mythical roles inflicted on them by the ongoing rites, without deeper understanding of these roles except for a very strong idea about the power or boon they would have entered the environment. This detachment from contextual space may have made their questing a lot harder as they would not have been able to enjoy the "easy" or "well-trodden" paths used by the cults without penalty, but it made them a heck more flexible. The Arkati way is to identify fully with the cult and ritual you enter the hero plane with, until you reach a crossroads that may require a different identification. These aren't exactly masks, but ways to change identification and context. Nothing of this applies to the Invisible God, though - there are traces of his deeds in Godtime, but there is no presence you can meet. This is similar to the how people experienced the Closing - you deal with the change, but you cannot reach the cause of the change.

I am very unhappy with the "isohypses (elevation lines) terrace" style of the maps. We are dealing with hill barbarians, not plateau barbarians.

As opposed to traveling and journeying within that structure, like going to the Battle of Stormfall from the start of the Vingkotling Age.

I would think that a lot of the mortal denizens of Godtime Glorantha would have been unaware of being in a landscape of myth. They would be hunting, tending their fields or rice paddies, guiding their herds, and bask in the presence of their deities as they sing their support. For players, this might still be Uncanny Valley writ large as the seed or ploy the goddess' body in their pursuit of the harvest. If they choose to perceive the goddess as humanoid - which can be great and evocative, but divinity might as well manifest as a fertile field, or a field that needs weeding or irrigation. There would be a sense of prgress in Godtime. Illlusionary time as per CoRQ Mythology - the individual narrative progress through the fabric of myth. And definitely a real experience of the cycles, accumulating cycles of harvest, cycles of sharing festivals or feasts with the deity, and individual progress through mortality. After all, these mortal ancestors of modern day Glorantha did live, multiply, and die.

The Book of Heortling Mythology offers comments to the Copper Tablets which identifies the southeastern son as Kargzant rather than Reladivus. Reladivus begins his wanderings 30k Yelmic years before the dissolution of said deity, interacting with a star field that did not exist prior to Umath's invasion.never once going to the Underworld. Sounds like Lightfore to me. These Starlight Wanderer spirits may well have been fallen stars rather than full-fledged Lightfore. We get figures like Argoom the Shadow Rider or Vettebbe allowing for less pleasant (former) celestial beings. Or possibly underworld stars fallen from a tilted sky dome.

If you use a Mi-Go brain container or two, why not?

None that I know of. There are a few categories of creatures - Erasanchula, Srvuali (or however that is spelled now), Maseren, Paseren, there are the names of Malkion in the Actions, and of the Invisible God, there are place names (usually name + wal for a Brithini/Malkioni founded place, name+ket for an Earth cult or Pendali-founded place, there is Damolsten for an alternative place name), and there are names of a range of Malkioni and Brithini. Greg's naming has always been onomapoetic rather than linguistically systematic. The Seshnelan King List is full of names.

Hold your horses there. Yelmalio is Reladivus Kargzant, one of the Eight Planetary Sons, who started his wanderings "corrupted by Umath", as per the Copper Tablets. Reladivus Kargzant and Antirius Yelmalio experienced a merger through the Bridling of Kargzant in 110 S.T:, as dutifully written down by Plentonius (who describes the failure of the sons of Vuranostum to keep Kargzant free).