Joerg

Then are Tolat and Annilla twins with different fathers? (Not unheard of in myth, e.g. Llew Llaw Gyffes and his elder brother by a sea demon.)

True, but to be targeted by a thrown weapon means that you can be attacked by a lot more than six opponents. What is the convention about multiple parries on a single strike rank? Personally, I would give hefty situational maluses on the second and third parry on the same strike rank, reflecting the supernatural speed you need to deflect more than one incoming attack in much less than a breath's time.

Not White. These three travel Events we're most likely tied to another cosmic scale event, like the moonrise. We don't have a date for these arrivals in any source AFAIK.

The proposal sounds a bit like a workaround for the "wear no armor in <location>" geas. I don't think that magic scales that way - your 10 inch weasel familiar takes the same amount of Protection MP as does your war bison.

Do the magic points that the sword trance was boosted with count for purposes of dispelling? I am inclined to rule that they don't. (As @Kloster pointed out, the MP regenerate regularly after having been spent.) The description of Extension also suggests that Extension is a separate spell from the one extended, although that may be over-interpreting this statement:

Watch out for the Crater Makers...

The Mongoose Second Age material may have been a playable variation of Glorantha, but was rarely close enough to canon. I had my moments of "how did they get this so wrong" over and over again when reading the Glorantha Second Age premise, starting with the book detailing Glorantha in the Second Age. The description of the EWF missed all the named characters prepared by Greg, but had a senile Vistikos Left-eye instead. (Which is about the same as having Friedrich Engels as the man in power in Soviet Russia...) Much of the material built on these false premises and made the errors worse. I didn't check out Blood of Orlanth for canonicity. If it was building on the material presented in Glorantha - the Second Age, it is hard to see how it could have anything to do with the Third Age material. For all his demigod status, there is a difference between enslaving say a nuclear scientist and being able to understand quantum mechanics and constructing a nuclear bomb by yourself. Ralzakark is steeped in chaotic knowledge, but hardly a student of the cosmic laws that enable sorcery. The operating system of Gloranthan magic broke down, and was replaced by something which allowed many a continuation of earlier stuff, but not the special cheats used by the God Learners. Removing the Zistor error from the World Machine may have been part of this, starting in 917 but coming to full effect with the Luatha intervention and subsequent upheavals only.

As proven by the mass migration of Jrusteli God Learners from Umathela and Jrustela to Seshnela, when not even communication worked any more? Or is this idea just your dead horse that cannot get enough flogging? If I recall correctly, the chariot of Mastakos gets wracked on the first interesting step of the LBQ. Jagrekriand (aka Shargash) doesn't seem to want the Emperor back. Actually a fairly good example, as there was a total news blackout after some point of Varus's return voyage orchestrated by Arminius. (Herman? A character from the Munsters, but not a Cheruskan name...) But, as I said, they would have had these powers for themselves, too, and would have been able to communicate across the Closing. But that secret was lost... Lost to the Gift Carriers? True. In Jrusteli times, they had even heard about one another, though few had ever met someone from across the sea. Dormal's Opening did more for Pamaltelan presence on the Genertelan shores than the Jrusteli empire ever allowed. (Or the Waertagi before them.) Free Men of the Seas? Only if you belonged to the Middle Sea Empire, otherwise it's at best galley slave of the seas Now what is your source for this? We know that Mastakos is already picky in giving out his teleport spells to his chief Orlanth - Guided for Thunderous, unguided for Adventurous. Each of the Magasta temples has a shrine to Mastakos which grants Guided Teleport to whom? Under which version of the rules? (Which rules?) RQ, or HQ, or 13G?) From which write-up? Sounds a lot like "this is how my Glorantha works, so make sure yours works like that too." The God Learners worshipped Magasta, too, and his son Wachaza. Other than Tanian's Victory, the Middle Sea Empire cooperated with the seas rather than working against them. All seagoing folk were wiped off the seas, and the highway had become an impenetrable wall, sweeping all sea-goers off the coast, into huge piles of wreckage or worse. Very few very heroic exceptions existed, and are named in the history of the Middle Sea Empire. After the Closing had struck, there were no long range teleportation routes (and there is zilch evidence for such before). There were no re-usable heroquest roads to connect Pamaltela or Jrustela with one another or with Genertela. Three one-use Elder Race routes started the re-colonization of the remnants of Jrustela. It isn't clear how aware these Elder Races were of the whereabouts of their new homes. The most potent magicians and heroquesters Glorantha had seen were cut off from one another. Yet some obscure avenger sect happily bypassed all of this. Explain. Not true. There are HQ paths going almost everywhere, and back home again. There are very few "enter here and leave into the mundane world there" routes known - best known are the dragonewt roads, the Stormwalk path, Belintar's Bridges and his Fish Roads. So the Agimori of Prax regularly visit Jolar or the Nargan Desert? That's news to me. The Men-and-a-Half can go on a Heroquest Path connecting them to the Godtime places of their origin, but they have no way to leave Godtime for the Pamaltela of now. Nope. Indeed. Which shows how reliable these routes aren't. The God Learner Emperors and their greatest sorcerers knew that they had no exploits (left) to keep in contact with their empire. This postulated Jrusteli stargate (or however you want to call it) network never left any traces in the history of Glorantha. Unless it was the unspeakable secret destroyed by the Gift Carriers, this strongly points to the conclusion that there never was any such thing. But proving a negative is impossible. Pointing out the utter lack of canonical proof nonewithstanding. The name "Gift Carriers of the Sending Gods" does imply that the gods sending the carriers refrained from interacting directly. As opposed to the Orlanthi who annually offer worship to Chaos in the Sacred Time? There is no place or culture in Glorantha that doesn't stress the Compromise (or whichever convention they have for keeping their fragile quilt of a world patched together). There are many paths to self-annihilation, and few remain untested. So Illumination is what makes Dara Happans act like Orlanthi? Possible. This isn't my native language, and mine has such words (and worse) for that minion of Gbaji. An anonymous web post is hardly canonical. But hey, I have a website with some weird theories, too. My Glorantha domain was hacked and destroyed, though, which explains its downtime. This is the equivalent of a climate change denier's proof. Name a source in a Chaosium, Moondesign or Issaries Inc. print publication, please. Or does your Q.E.D. stand for "quod ego dixi"? And yet Greg produced dozens of pages describing all the different groups and methods of the Second Age Malkioni under the Middle Sea Empire. Unlike the Dragonspeakers, the God Learners have no such a specific extinction event. Other than parts of their lands drowning and barbarians taking the occasion for a revenge on the weakened remnants of the empire, there is no proof that all God Learners had been hunted down by the time the Red Moon rose. There is Bazkalia Oskor (Guide p.394), this Ralian bounty-hunter shaman whose career consisted of taking jobs on specific God Learners. She's still alive and active. That much is factual - the RuneQuest Sight used to give spectacularly useful insights, and then it became all worthless, as if some heroquest (or bunch of heroquests, independent from one another but culminating in that effect) changed that. I have named some suspects - the Luatha, Godunya... and who knows what the dwarves were up to with the remains of Locsil. No more state-sponsored heroquesting for trivial or academic purposes. Still sorcerers at large dominating vast areas of Malkioni and mixed populations, but no longer under a single empire. Loskalm and Tanisor are continuations of the God Learner activities, and to some extent, Ralios is, too. Tanisor follows Yomili's doctrine, refined and perverted by Rokar and his disciples, whereas Loskalm and Ralios build on Halwal's RuneQuested insights and newer influences, or older Arkati stuff not quite realized by Halwal in Ralios. Delecti was a sorcerer, or other such strange magician. He may have been Jrusteli-taught, just like Arminius was Roman-taught. They certainly weren't the only ones who made the difference. Halwal and Yomili obliterated one another, and probably the main portion of their foremost disciples as well, but elsewhere God Learner orders survived, e.g. in Kerantos in Jonatela, rescued from destruction and persecution by Jonat in exchange for aiding him to conquer (aka unify) Syanor. I object to your "I have a hammer, so the problem must be nails" approach. The RuneQuest Sight was one symptom of several that came up with the God Learners, at least with the Malkioneranists. Whether the Makanists (aka orthodox Malkioni, as in Rokari and pre-Ban Loskalmi non-Irensavalists) relied on it the same way is already dubious. Whether all Malkioneranists did, is debatable, too. The earliest God Learners who prepared the way for the Abiding Book did not have the RuneQuest Sight, and it isn't clear whether the sorcerers who burnt down much of Vralos about a decade later had it, either, but we call them God Learners. But then things have been called "EWF" long before dragonspeakers had any power in Orlanthland by "well informed" people of the "quod ego dixi" school of proof. ("What I said")

Very nice. There are numerous manifestations of Darkness ór Hell that might be added to individualize the "horses", and possibly wafts of Darkness emanating from them and alternating between other features and more horse-like ones. I wonder whether you have taken the "fight like cats with bite and claw" a bit too literal with the feet. Cats' feet are part of the "spring" mechanism that is the entire feline body, The text says they have fierce claws like a cat instead of hoves. Making them cat-pawed is perhaps a bit too cute. I wouldn't have them walk on the soles behind the claws like cats do. but rather sort of "knuckle" on the claws, leaving three-clawed knuckle imprints with two claws more mobile and not used to push the beast from the ground but to hook and rake opponents. Given their role as mounts, I don't think that diokos horses use the "rake victim with back claws while rolling on the ground" style much if at all. Pouncing a prey is somewhat hard with those stilt legs that makes them horse-like in appearance, too. Do these horses wear their eternal snarl, showing the entirety of their impressive fangs with their double-scissor-like dentition that may cause wounds similar to a raptor's beak, or do they have retractable lips that allow them to cover some of it under normal conditions? We know that these horses are carnivorous, and I guess that humanoids or similar ground-dwelling primates would be part of their natural prey, along with herd beasts like sheep. Not sure about how they would hunt larger herd beasts like cattle or bigger antelopes. Their attacks would probably still resemble those of rearing stallions, but with sharp raking claws rather than just blunt hooves, and the claws on the hind legs usable only on downed prey/foes. Diokos demons don't trample, they tear up. They probably hunt in packs, using coordinated chases to isolate prey, take it down, then tear it up in a spectacular and grisly way, not bothering to kill the prey when they tear out flesh and juicy innards. The remains of their feasts aren't tidy at all, and probably provide a good meal for whichever scavengers go after the carrion, but only when the black horses are safely away. Being underworld creatures, they probably feast on the fear and pain of their prey almost as much as on the bodily substance. When they have riders, the riders get to use lances and possibly missile weapons to increase the reach of the demon, and otherwise protect the neck, back and flanks of the team with hand weapons and shields as used by western mounted forces. On the battlefield, they may reduce their feeding frenzy to taking coup, a nice mouthful of enemy flesh (whether mount or humanoid) en passant, mutilating whichever downed meat there is with their claws. Getting them to act as disciplined cavalry force is a proof of the extraordinary leadership abilities Ethilrist possesses, but having learned the efficiency of these, the diokos demons have adopted them, battling with their more bestial instincts on an individual base.

Splinters simply mean you didn't chew well enough. And let's be honest, a species that cracks rock with its dentistry is in all likelihood fairly used to sharp and pointed stuff going down their gullet.

My first information about Lightfore was something along the line of "Dayzatar Adventurous", the agent of the upper brother sent into the world when the middle brother (Yelm) was gone after failing to recognize Orlanth earlier. This rhymes very well with Zaytenaras, the other planet in the constellation when Umath enters (not one of the eight). The low, tangible part of the Light Above. (GRoY also mentions Deshlotralas, the planet/little sun of Lodril/Turos, but that goes unmentioned in the Copper Tablets.) Whatever its origin, Lightfore became the rallying point for the forces of Light after the disintegration of the Imperial Sun (conflation). Any such rallying force like Antirius Yelmalio, Kargzant and even Elmal would find themselves associated with this. I do like my recent idea that Lightfore is (or carries) the immortal part of Yelm that does not go through the Underworld but reappears at the Gates of Dawn the moment Yelm passes through the Gates of Dusk, much like the Dara Happans describe the mechanism for Uleria in their description of Mastakos, but that is something that would have been established with the first sunset within Time, and did not necessarily happen this way in the Godtime. Unless you have the twin pair of Benign Yelm and Evil Yelm taking turns on the Sunpath, with only one personality up in the sky at any given time, and not always in the highest place of the dome (where it would have obscured Pole Star for good). (And a bit of Dawn Age Seshnegi star lore trivia, possibly or even probably no longer canon: Trying to impress his love interest, the middle daughter of the Duke of Horalwal, bride of the heir of Talar of Brithos by royal decree, and sister-in-law of Hrestol (and elder sister of the wife-to-be of Ylream), Sir Faralz identifies the Pole Star as the celestial representation of Eurmal the Firebringer and Friend of Men, with a corona of differently textured sky dome where once the Spike had pierced through. Faralz and his contemporaries refer to the sun as Yelm, not Ehilm.)

Elves can swell up and ripen, I suppose. Rather than getting fat, they might get sweet, storing sugar (or starch). They might even get over-ripe and alcoholic. If you are an uz, the sticks are edible (and fairly nourishing), too, and simply add to the texture. If you aren't an uz, what business do you have nibbling on elves?

There are spirit cults and general pantheism/ancestor worship. How do you rank Ancestor worshippers or general animists in your scheme of things? In my Glorantha, a significant portion of the lowest level of Orlanthi society is highly involved in magical pursuits - it is them who initiate into niche deities, which gives them a few days in the year when they are dressed up to step into the spotlight, get feasted, and get to be important. Sure, the stickpicker crone widow who knows the rites for Ana Gor isn't going to be popular, but she is an important magical member of the clan, and that will keep her fed and warm when the worst times come.

True, but he was revived. All that was missing were the heels of his boots, and he didn't die from the dragon, but in the combats that the questers had to survive. Minaryth's role was critical - he had to calculate the Path Umath / Orlanth's Ring would have taken across the constellations in a week when the dancers only moved along in a day's rhythm. When I played this in a pre-test game with/by Ian Cooper at Kraken two years ago (or is it three now?), Minaryth was lost when we encountered the Shargash / Red Planet representant who helpfully came to complete the Umath events of the Copper Tablets.

Nick's statement clearly refers to the personal experience of distance when traveling in one of these directions. Distances in the Outer World (which includes the Upper World aka Middle Air and Middle Sky, and the Underworld) become subjective. The height of mountains like Kero Fin or Top of the World enter such uncertain dimensions, too. Effects like parallax don't work on localized orbs hovering over the local ziggurat analogon (like e.g. the Crater or Mt. Kerofin). But there are similar effects available on the surface of Glorantha, like travel into the borders of the Ban which took several days of travel in and a few hours out. The original concept of the Hidden Greens (before they became dully the portions of Genert's Wastes explored by pioneer khans) and Hidden Castles and Valleys were more along the Mythago Wood metric, where such a feature could be traveled around in a few miles, but crossing it directly might take hundreds of miles. This weird non-Euklidian geometry in Glorantha would be a result of semi-realized shards of Godtime memory imperfectly woven into the Web of Arachne Solara. Different magical realities can play havoc with distances, too, like the perceived height of the Red Moon inside and outside the Glowline. Yes, the "down" or gravity vector on the Sky Dome is a matter of mythic preference. For most stars when regarded as fortresses in the sky, the local down vector is away from the Earth that would be observed overhead. For the Skyfall River, the down vector clearly points to Skyfall Lake.

"The Sky Dome is a perfect hemisphere 7000 miles across and 50 miles high."

To quote (or at least closely paraphrase) Nick Brooke: The Sky Dome is a perfect hemisphere 7000 miles across and 50 miles high. (reposted to the Illumination Riddle thread.)

There have been reports of Templar (!) regiments containing Humakti, and probably other cultists, too. Whether these are included in your question about the presence of Yelmalio initiates is another issue. As a rule, the Yelmalio temple communities have initiation rates like the Heortlings. That makes the cult Theyalan in culture.

No, the two major planetary paths are below the Sky Dome that carries the stars, and below the blue sky that obscures the stars in the day. The stars are on the hemisphere layer that we usually recognize as the Sky Dome. The planetary paths form a hemisphere, or possibly an ellipsoid alternating in height with the seasons, that is occupied by these paths and little else. It might just be possible to measure the distance between the Gates of Dawn and the Gates of Dusk. Both are clearly inside the Sky Dome, as is a good portion of Sramak's River. The planets were inhabited by humans - at least the Blue Moon that rose in the Storm Age was, and the blue planet the Zaranistangi descended from (which may have been the planet identified as Mastakos or Uleria - it certainly is worshipped by the Zaranistangi of Melib). They were spheres (like the Red Moon - the orb model of stellar bodies) or disks inhabited on one side (the Sun Disk model toted in the Sun threads). The surface must have been about country-sized in case of the Veldang and the Zaranistangi, so maybe the area of Tarsh. But that applies only to the people on the surface of those planets, and doesn't necessarily translate into the diameter of the celestial object observed from the Middle World. Distances in the Outer World are prone to re-interpretation.

I was being modest.

Sure. And it was the result of Fronelan wizards summoning something big against the shaman alliance they faced, and of Emperor Yanoor meditating on a vexing problem, and numerous other actors outside of Dorastor.

Guided Teleport is great - it returns you to the temple where you sacrificed for the spell from anywhere in the Middle World. How does that get you across the ocean? Besides, these are spells that were part and parcel of the Jrusteli-trained heroquesters' arsenal. Don't you think that the people who designed the cult of Worlath and inflicted it on Umathelan tribes didn't have this knowledge? Magasta appears to be one of the guardians or even patrons of the Closing. Going to his temple to sidestep that sounds like something only Illuminates and God Learners would consider. The notion not just of continental divides but complete rifts through the cube (or lozenge) is anchored in the myth of the Breaking of the World. All true, but won't let you depart from a myth on a location other than where you entered it unless it is explicitely a heroquest road. Like I said, as fun and playable as such roads would be in a high level Gloranthan game, someone would have to establish them in the Hero Wars. The God Learners did not have them, or the separation between Jrustela and Seshnela would have been a non-issue. Entering Hell and emerging elsewhere - usually years later - has a number of precedents (like entering at the Gates of Dusk and emerging at the Gates of Dawn). Harmast for instance used the rescuees of his LBQs as the homing point for his return to the world. They all ran out of sand. Their caretakers were distracted by the stuff happening in the Sky. And a lot of other phenomena stopped in their tracks in awe and/or terror of the events unfolding. Yes, at least on the mortal end. I have no reports of generations going about their business of procreation and death under the neverending glare or blessing of the sun. We do know of a pregnancy that came to term during the Sunstop: Arkat's birth. But he was born as an infant, not as a young adult (or even an old man like Väinämöinen). The agricultural year continued mostly without big hiccups. No harvests were brought in prematurely, no herds had multiplied. People were held on the brink between life and death, making sustenance and defecation a non-concern. (Unless you were a Trickster or unlucky enough to start your No 2 business as the sun stopped in its tracks... which basically would have turned you into a Trickster with an epic feat.) Thanks for this unbiased and completely objective treatment of the issue, one that all parties in Glorantha would happily subscribe to. Which of the End of Second Age cataclysms marks that cycle? The 1049-1051 land shakings/sinkings starting in Seshnela and ending in Kralorela did not end the God Learner-spawned False Dragon Emperors there. The Dragonkill followed with a 70 year delay. The Machine War ended 130 years earlier than that date - longer than the Bright Empire lasted (only 75 years). The Birth of the Red Goddess in 1220 correlates with the rise of the Tharkantus cult in the Second Age, and little else. In their mythic reality, they were the select few that reacted correctly on the end of days, leaving the pitiful unbelievers who had hastened this ascension to linger in a world where B-rated actors and buffoonly real-estate swindlers would become leader of the land with the most powerful military. Peloria explicitely wasn't, protected by the Carmanian emigrants from Akem on the western front, by the re-awakened Ralzakark in Dorastor and by the EWF across Dragon Pass. The Kingdom of Night was able to play EWF and Slontans against one another, and while they did appear to suffer from the Goddess Switch (as did Slontos itself), they had kept the Zistorites in check long before any other major GL project faltered. Please state a canonical source that states that the Gift Bringers targeted the RuneQuest Sight. To quote from the Guide (p.138): We do know about the RuneQuest Sight. Which tells me quite clearly that this wasn't the secret targeted by the Gift Carriers. They might have become active on the demise of Zistor, which predates the Closing by at least a decade wherever it matters. In that case, a lot of terrible God Learner stuff is not what was targeted by these doom guardians. In short - the Gift Carriers did end one specific branch of God Learner Knowledge, and apparently they did so while the Middle Sea Empire still was at large. The Gift Carriers of the Sending Gods never hunted down the last God Learners. The Gift Bringers are not the same as the Mass Utuma of 1042 which ended the presence of Dragonspeakers (of any significant level) in Glorantha. A number of major actions changed the ways magic worked, probably starting with Zzabur's Closing, and certainly involving the Luatha rite ramming that spike into Seshnelan earth. Quite likely Godunya contributed to that, too. Magic which relied on the RuneQuest Sight failed. Much like all Orlanth magic failed in the Wind Stop, but then the actors were a much higher calibre than an upstart Yelmite Chaos worshipper with only part of one empire's magical resources at his hands. Consider this: by ship, before the Closing entered the Homeward Ocean. The Gift Carriers did not target all God Learners. And the secret they targeted is forgotten. This renders the rest of your argument quite futile. Your basic premise, that the RuneQuest Sight has anything to do with the Gift Carriers of the Sending Gods, is basically untenable. There is a good chance that the dire secret targeted was mostly restricted to one of the Umathelan universities, with only a few initiated people elsewhere. Another chance is a connection to the Six Legged Empire, which was destroyed just the year after the False Gods experiment in Umathela faltered (another good candidate for use of this secret). Why don't we know anything about Jogrampur but his name?

That's an interesting idea - Yelm might have been on a clockwork track on the Sunpath (and so may have been other light objects which was broken when Umath lifted up the sky. But then, why did he choose noon for his birth? Any other time, and the sun may have ended up much lower on its path. (Unless the clockwork managed to bring the object up before losing its expected grip, or the transfer to the other half beyond the Spike, or whatever.) The Dara Happans tell us otherwise. Yelm rose higher into the Sky after Umath was born and the rivers invaded the topside of the world which had come into their reach again as Umath had pushed down the earth onto the Spike (creating its foothills?) and down into the sea. That is a known fact - the only witnessed Godtime move of Yelm on the Sunpath was down to the Gates of Dusk and into Wonderhome. Another convert... Pluripresence. Any greater deity can handle more than a handful of presences at a time. Even heroes can - Ralzakark has at least three. There may have been a night, but on the surface, it may have been illuminated by other bodies - e.g. the White Queens'. Pre-Godtime-Sunstop Golden Age surface nights could have been against a non- or less golden sky, with plenty of other bodies providing light - e.g. the lesser orbs above the cities. The Storm Age started with the (daytime?) sky turning blue (again. although now a different blue, not the blue flame of Aether, but the watery blue of Lorion - or did that start with the biirth of Umath?). Darkness followed, too. Returning to a day-night-cycle would have been a lesser darkness, too, right? There had been stars in the sky since Umath was repelled from entering the Celestial City, and quite a few original city orbs / Planetary sons (and daughters) of Yelm less. Lots of possibilities that somehow don't get to be experienced by the questers firmly bound into the syncretic myths that emerged from the Bright Empire.

And that's the stagnant age that Umath rebelled against, to re-instate the cyclic nature of Godtime... But then, maybe it is the conflation of the Emperor (who always is present above, in his city and/or palace high up) and the sun which causes these problems.

I rather wonder whether any planets other than the Twin Stars have orbiters/satellites of their own (discounting Orlanth's Ring here). The Red Moon has orbiters, IIRC, but other than casting the shadow (or un-casting it?) they are not visible to the uninitiated.