Joerg

Noted...

What Harald/ @jajagappa said. RQ2 had dwarves in Pavis and in Griffin Mountain. Both are connected to Greatway, where the dwarves are Individualist and Openhandist-leaning, just on the border of the Nidan definition of dwarven apostasy, and more often than not well beyond orthodoxy. Both these products were screwed into the setting of Glorantha after their conception, and came with standard elves and dwarves of the early eighties products. Compare e.g. Midkemia for a rpg setting with some substance. Also compare the Judges Guild dwarves, probably the biggest dwarven supplement that there was from the RQ2 era (those very nice dungeon floorplan cutouts etc.). All of these were for a Generic Fantasy RuneQuest, but will have entered many a gaming group's Gloranthan experience as they were available supplements of high gaming value, and available for the system. But they never were Gloranthan from their conception, and they would fit nicely into Midkemia. The Flintnail cult is an example how to make a round plug fill a square hole through invention of myths. The Balazar dwarf encounters are somewhat similar, with less effort being spent on their mythical background. Openhanded, Individualist heretics (what other dwarves would leave their lairs?) that would have been evicted or recycled as apostates if coming from Nida, and probably just barely tolerated in Greatway as incorrigible heretics.

The ur-Theyalan culture is really a hodge-podge of different cultures stessing their common attributes (including the Elder Races of Dragon Pass). Kethaela has six distinct human cultures (if you count the Kitori as human) on an area of maybe three Heartland satrapies. Many hill barbarians have but a rudimentary culture. Local costume is dictated by way of life, climate and habitat. Farming with ox-drawn plows, herding cattle and sheep, raiding neighbors.. . so you say that the Old Irish, the Thracians and Vedic India were the same culture? It takes a dedicated linguist to make out the similarities of elements of their language. The Neolithic Revolution was a radical change similar to the Theyalan missionaries.

If I may be so heretical, our one source that the Devil reappears every 600 years is a disreputable sage's attribution of a quote to Argrath in "Argrath and the Devil". It does have a nice periodicity roughly in synch with the ends of the Ages, but that's all that speaks for it.. Besides, the date for the re-appearance of the Devil appears very much off. Gbaji appeared when? In 375 when Nysalor was hatched/Arkat was born? Earlier, when the Pseudocosmic Egg was found? Let's play with 375. 975 has no special events in either EWF or Middle Sea Empire, and 1575 saw Tarkalor becoming King of Dragon Pass. The Red Goddess was born in 1220, and she re-appeared from the Underworld on the Crimson Bat in 1235 after her self-confessed confrontation/union with the Devil. This would date the Second Age appearance of the Devil to 635, roughly the appearance of the Abiding Book, and the Dawn Age appearance to 35 ST, the arrival of the cult of Humakt in Prax (at the Block). Is that the cycle we are looking for? Or let's assume that Argrath was self-absorbed enough to make his personal confrontation with the Lunar Empire his arrival of the Devil. That would be some time after his Lightbringer's Quest and his defeat of Sheng, when things become vague. Say 1650. That gives us 450 and 1050 to deal with. But hey, 450 and 1050 are the years of the solution of the troubles of the previous ages, not the appearance of the big ultimate trouble. No, this text is the confused report of a sage who writes down a heroic hyperbole. Taking it too seriously will lead us on very thin ice.

Which only means that such knowledge will be preserved in the Restricted sections of the library (and it should be fairly easy to re-theme that other Knizia boardgame for Chaosium to be set in a Sairdite LM/IO library in Mirin's Cross, or Tarshite near the Reaching Moon Temple east of Furthest).

The Slavewall regiment is Orlanthi in culture, though not in worship. The vast majority of Lunars in Tarsh are Orlanthi clansmen who worship the Seven Mothers or a specific aspect of them rather than Orlanth, and who worship Ernalda just like the Sartarites or the Esrolians do. While you find less Ernalda worshipers in a military unit, they all are quite close to the hills, in case of Slavewall literally (less true for northern Tarsh which lies in the vast fluvial plain). Only the Hendriki and their descendants have ancestral obligations to let thralls go free, most Heortlings and definitely most Orlanthi have no such compunctions and will take captives in battle or raiding and bring them home to do low status work (or ransom them back). Hendriki descendants seem to be over-represented in the make-up of Sartarite clans - this special attraction to liberty may have been a selection criterion when Heortlanders packed up after Belintar took over. Kethaelan Heortland has maybe 20-50% Hendriki-descended clans, with the clans that fell under Aventus' foreigner laws making up the rest.

It is a matter of magical bonus through purity. I am in the "a spear by name" camp for the side arm of the Templars, and my latest thought was that just the spear tip is enough of a short, leaf-shaped sword that it would be usable as a side weapon, as well as a replacement should the original spear break off. The Greek-named Assegai was my first proposal. Daggers and lance points off the shaft for those with restrictive geasa. A bayonet in reverse, meant to be a spear point but usable without the shaft. Tolat has the Red Sword, but Shargash has clubs or maces (with skull motifs), not blades. Shargash is a lot closer to ZZ than Tolat. While Jar-eel's Liberation sermon shows Tolat with a red blade, I haven't seen any such item in Dara Happan depictions of the Red Planet god. I do wonder whether the Red Sword might be original sword still steeped in the blood of its first (or second) victim.

If you don't want to use Time as the extra dimension, you could use "Stepping" as in Sir Terry Pratchett's cooperation with Stephen Baxter to move to another, similar plane. There are a number of downsides for applying this to Glorantha. If the newts have this ability, the trigger for the Dragonkill would have been a non-event - just grab your eggs and go sideways. (You might come and argue that the eggs are rooted in this place only. Why would that be so? Ion storms and magnetic interference whenever the story demands that the Enterprise crew cannot beam directly?) Dragonewts do use roads that allow translocation along the dragonewt rune vectors. Apparently they are also able to used Godunya's bridges this way. I don't claim to know the mechanics for this kind of transfer, but the easiest way to explain permeable walls that don't just change their substance or substantiality would be a short range road effect like this. Possibly explicable by weird topological effects.

Sorry if that offended you. But... The full Babeester Gor stuff to me is the nightmare. There are other Axe women which often get mixed up with Babeester, but - at least in my Glorantha - these don't have the full spectrum of the nifty Babeester magics as they don''t buy into the more gruesome parts. This is similar to the Lead Cross Humakti, Eurmal the Kill-Eye, Orlanth Deathwielder. Individuals with such powers exist, have to exist to make the world run, and they will mutilate your life (as a Gloranthan) or your game (as a player of Glorantha) if you let them into your community. It is right there with the Cults of Terror in player hands. And she is welcome to do so, as is your campaign to accommodate such forms. My stance may be that of "not a real Scotsman" here. But then, when the "Onslaught" Humakti fiction appeared on the Digest and contaminated the Cult of Humakt, I decided to go with that, use it as the part of Humakt I didn't want to have part of in my campaign, and contrasted it with as borderline a version of Humakt that was sociable and almost completely based on the Truth rune with just the necessary Death connection to still be within Humakt. And after designing this paragon as the would be initiation patron of my character, I had him duel with Onslaught, and be killed, and my character shying away from the idea that he might join Humakt. True. The rulebook gives a number of shorthands, which also serve as templates for similar cults, with similar though not quite identical magic - see the bitter Elmal Yelmalio discussions. The longer write-up of Babeester may feature lots of unpleasant stuff that might you and your wife reconsider finding her a similar but not identical deity or aspect that you couldn't have learned from the rulebook. Then there is enlightenment and transitioning the cult (or at least a local portion of it) into a path different from those gruesome things. Something like Monrogh applied to other cults. But in the end, I stick to Peter Parker/Spiderman principle also in its reverse. If great power comes with great responsibilities, then some of the great powers provided by deities on the dark spectrum come with dark responsibilities, and for non-dark characters to have these breaks a balance. This may turn into Grimdark, and if you say that your game goes without that, all the power to you. I feel that a Grimdark lingering just beyond bad decisions of the main protagonists of the Gloranthan story is appropriate, and adds to the threat of doom that the Hero Wars ultimately are supposed to bring. Like you, I prefer my campaign not to be immersed with that, but the occasional dip or splash of that serves for presenting that threat. There is definitely a call for gaming in a lighter, less conflicted Glorantha, but picking the most conflicted cults to play out in that sort of contradicts that approach as far as I am concerned.

Both Avanapdur and Jogrampur showed that sufficiently powered propaganda would become tangible reality, although of a weaker kind that might not survive the test of permanence that exposure to the Ultimate provides. There is an entire clade of entities that would fade away or become transparent when exposed to near-ultimate, the Iradgenderi or the transient folk. But then, what are their characteristics? They get destroyed by unprepared exposure to the Void? Many entities do. They aren't shape permanent? Neither are Hsunchen, Sea entities, or Darkness entitiies. They are transient? Mystics teach that much of existence is transient. Back in the days of the Three Separate Worlds dogma, there was also the concept of Short Worlds, Otherworlds without a direct connection to the Absolute but leeching the power from adjacent places that do. (E.g. through worship or emotions.) These short worlds are real enough if you don't test them too rigorously, may exchange content with the material world (such as inhabitants) that is assumed non-transient. Avanapdur's Empire possibly was such a realm, contagious to the non-transient world, and in my personal opinion most of its transient content was pre-existing the creation of Avanapdur through the power of worship. The antigod Avanapdur just was the first to unite the disparate transient places into one realm. I think that living next to transient places, and even using them in your daily routine, wasn't anything of a great deal in Godtime. These transient places may have been placeholders for Creation still waiting to happen, and having a transient reality nearby probably was vastly preferable to having a Void of non-Being in its place. Dangerous entities would emerge from non-transient places just as much as from transient ones. Transient places change the rules - but so did the altered realities of the Bright Empire, the EWF dragon emanation, the Glowline, the Closing, or the fallout from the Syndics' Ban, and probably others. When Arachne Solara cast out her web, rather few of these transient places were rescued. Many had succumbed to Chaos and were lost by the contact, or had become so corrupt that they couldn't conform to the Compromise, another filter imposed on the post-Great Darkness material world.

I lived a year on Tysfjord... The Closing wasn't an issue for traveling from Winterwood to Ygg's Isles, but it cut off the islanders from their whaling and seal hunting grounds on the shelf ice. The Ban on the other hand did separate the mainland (which was part of Winterwood) from the archipelago. As far as I know, the isles weren't separated from one another by the Ban. They may not have been affected by it at all (though that wouldn't remove the border mist around Loskalm and Winterwood) as they might be reckoned not a part of Fronela but of the Neliomi Sea. Not during the Closing, when Winterwood was still freely accessible, but during the Ban when it ceased to be so. That's still three generations of no access to the hereditary logging grounds and mismanagement of the forests on the bigger islands. The Yggites on the smaller islands would have to find solutions that didn't require wood. I think that the Closing initially brought lasting malnutrition rather than starvation, with essentials taken from whale oil or seal blubber missing. The resources may have been stretched wisely, or used up at normal speed in Trumpian carelessness, but even so there was an end date where marginal sustainability was broken. Frankly, I am astonished that they still had goats to take on to their new colonies. For a Gloranthan setting a bit further north and a lot colder, I postulated a group of Vadrudi married to selkie shape shifter wives. I don't think that the Ouori have much of shape-shifting magic to make them any more attractive to even the most touch-starved young adult. The niiad ancestors did have all the shape-shifting magic they wanted. I suggested taking a look at the Bjarmen as described by Ottar, so we seem to be fairly close on this topic.

Babeester Gor is way more restricting than "play as a girl" - it is play as a virgin girl in gore. Think Carrie without the telekinesis. You're feared and shunned just for your cult membership, with a "respected" standing little better than that of a Trickster. That means severe reaction malus on human interaction (and by that I mean malus on dice rolls). People will address the character through its keeper, much like with bonded tricksters, for fear of "catching" whatever troubles made the individual take the Babs route. Most of the bad things about the Trickster, and few of the fun things (other than beer and ripping off other peoples' genitals). The player will have the disruptive element in the party, some ability to go scot free with behavior nobody else would be allowed without serious repercussions, and bringing a groan to the rest of the party for the Leroy Jenkins element of that. Depending on the patience or pain threshold of the rest of the party, be prepared to be the target of Sleep or Befuddle quite often in friendly fire. There will be times when you get released from the attic, but prepare to spend some quality time there counting your trophies.

Does your player want to play an independent assassin or a killer in the service of an Esrolian house playing at high stakes politics (possibly as a vassal of one of the most powerful houses)? In either case, Orlanth might be a good choice, with spells like Darkwalk and Scarf of Mist. Orlanth is often seen as a sinister deity in Esrolia, and this character could take all the bad stuff they have to say about Orlanth (and Kodig) to heart and act upon that, though possibly under orders of his Grandmother (who will disavow him at some point in the future, possibly sending her other minions after him - that's what happened to Rastagar, the last Vingkotling king to rule over Esrolia).

There will be some time before that kind of information will become available, but the collective of us old hands might be able to cobble something together that resembles the Sartarite character creation. The character's grandparental and parental previous experience will do little to integrate it into the Dragon Pass-centered campaign, though, but it ought to be able to illustrate the difference of Glorantha. Ralios is a complex place, with lots of options and dark secrets. The grandparents may have been affected by the events that led to the birth of Argin Terror, and the parents would have had the chance to participate in the rise of Surantir's Chariot of Lightning movement and the Seshnegi conquests in Dangim. What kind of sorcerer does your player envision? The rules for Rokari sorcerers are in the RQG rules, but a Rokari might be harder to integrate into the Dragon Pass workings than a Chariot of Lightning adherent or an Arkati. The personal experience of the sorcerer might be tied up with the last stages of Argrath's Circumnavigation at Harrek's side, and she might have a character tied in with Argrath's warlocks as a result. Basically, some brain-storming and a crash course in Ralian events seems to be what you might be facing. Interested?

Yes. With the shape-shifting ability of the niiads, both Warera and Nelarinna may have appeared in the shape that became the pattern for the Ludoch, but it was one of several possible. I do wonder how much the Swan Maiden motif (sea deities frolicking in an unusual shape while their accoutrements of their normal shape are left aside, then discovered by the groom or rapist) is involved in these sea goddess matings. The story of Hiord bears great similarity to Wayland, but I have seen Chinese variants of such myth which didn't seem to inherit much from the Germanic story, so it could be a way more archaic myth behind this. Possibly one connected to the discoveries of Svante Pääbo's team of palaeo-geneticists. Thrunhin Da(Harantara appears to be an entity not directly descended from Triolina, possibly of the Manti lineage (as far as the Sea Tribe is concerned, never mind the eastern humans). Merfolk roleplaying doesn't seem to be that popular - the three-dimensional possibilities and the lack of two-dimensional dungeons might make immersion into the story harder for us land-lubbers. It would be interesting to see it done right.

Yes, in the wind shadows, there are bound to have been some effects of living on the fringe of a Great Forest. While those are great for ersatz-logging (as long as you aren't on the lookout for those perfectly bent trees to provide the ribs for your ships and are fine with straight trees only), if these patches are spruce forest, too, they don't have that much to offer as wild pasture. Not even for goats, a lot less so for reindeer. When I think of Ygg's Isles, my immediate models are the Vesteralen, with some Lofoten, Steigen and Hebrides tossed into that, but the forest changed to fit Winterwood. I have no familiarity with Vancouver Island and the coast there, but without the high coastal mountain chain, I don't expect that much of the cold rain forest effect there. The Maidstone Mountains are a lot further inland than the Rockies. The Svartisen probably bears some similarity to Valind's glacier, except that Valind's flanks are of ice rather than rock, apart from the wall of rubble and debris that it is pushing ahead. But you probably have to have been there on Polar Circle Norway and further north to appreciate these comments.

Barbarian nests are certainly lacking some qualities that are present in the full nests of Kralorela, Dragon Pass and Ryzel. The Ralian ones probably were once supported by the expanded dream that the EWF provided, and nowadays their rulers just manage to keep them from falling apart. The absence of a constant source of dream support might make these nests even more otherworldy, though - less stable, more prone to sudden shifts of perceived reality.

While I agree about those nations coming in from the deep, I do think that we are dealing with (possibly pre-Vadrudi rape) niiads rather than modern merfolk. The modern merfolk are descended from sisters of these ancestresses of humans, but the ancestresses weren't any kind of modern merfolk, and in all likelihood able to keep underwater indeterminately.

Reading can be a form of entertainment in mostly illiterate societies, too, with a literate person reading aloud to a host of people listening. That's how the German language bible had its great impact during the Reformation. Most Gloranthan writing known to me has magical applications, even the tallying records of Issaries and related merchants. There will be fiction - the lad in the King of Sartar story about "follow chosen leader" has all the markings of a purely fictional character. Then again, Jogrampur of Umathela notoriety started out as a purely fictional construct, and ended up granting real, and surprising, magic when his followers rebelled against the local God Learners (even some years before the Machine War). But with enough consumers, fiction may end up shaping parts of the mythic reality. Telling disrespectable stories of popular heroes/villains is an ancient pastime, and will probably be as much a mainstay of Gloranthan prose and poem fiction as are the Greek gods in English poetry.

IMO, the dragonewt buildings in their cities aren't constructed, but dreamed up by their guardian dragon or dragonet, and maintained through the meditations of the ruler 'newts. They do resemble adobe constructions, but they aren't really, unless they fall out of the dream.

The mainland and the nearest islands were part of the endless spruce forest that is Winterwood. While the aldryami evidently tolerate or even encourage Yggite lumber-cutting on those fringes, I am less certain that they would have encouraged permanent human settlements there, even if their main primary production was turned towards the seas. Winterwood is nothing like say the Gudbrandsdal forest. It is spruce forest, dense, dark, and a huge monoculture with little in the way of undergrowth or clearings. The Norwegian concept of "Forest" is closer to "open low tree savannah" than anything that has to do with Aldryami. The closest European equivalent might be Schwarzwald, but for the epic size. This kind of forest is quite hostile to any type of hoofed ungulates, and definitely not a habitat of reindeer. The storm-plagued rocky archipelago offshore might be a lot closer to the Vesteralen in landscape, but probably (once) with patches of denser forest, too. (Possibly no longer since the Ban fell. Yggite material culture is likely to rely on wood for most production, and with access to the mainland cut off by the Ban, they would have ravaged their own tree stands beyond recognition.) Goats are in the canon - woolly ones, at that, though producing a coarse wool. This is part of their Vadrudi heritage. But there may be semi-domesticated reindeer as secondary herds. If so, then introduced from the mainland around Winterwood, possibly in times when northern Loskalm was anything but solidly Malkioni. Yggites riding reindeer comes dangerously close to Hitchhiker's Guide Vogons riding their own quadrupeds... Diet-wise, the Inuit or Siberian coastal arctic people might be the much better influence, but with Winterwood unnaturally persisting right below the Glacier, theirs is (or used to be) a culture with access to lots of wood useful for all manner of daily life applications, unlike the wood-starved material culture of the Inuit. Bone-derived, really - the material is quite distinct from deer antlers, e.g. useful for harpoons (which deer antlers definitely aren't). But then, whalebone (or other smaller leviathans of the Neliomi and Hudaro) may offer similar qualities. Neolithic probably fits the Yggite native culture. I don't think that they have much of a native smithing culture, being rather dependant on trade for metal items, but may be quite familiar with non-metal material to substitute that. The remains of the battle at Tollense Crossing have a mix of metal and stone spear- and arrow-tips. On the matter of wood scarcity (in pre-red coat Scotland, too) our ideas differ completely. I tried to argue that with Jeff, repeatedly, but Greg's source and vision for Winterwood basically is the great, endless expanse of spruce forest between the bison plains and Alaska - the territory the Alaska Highway construction workers had to battle during WW2. Old World concepts of vegetation often don't quite apply to Glorantha, even though its agriculture is thoroughly Old World.

A fairly mixed bunch of Fronelan warriors is likely to have helped Harrek plunder Sog City and may have accompanied him to the archipelago and then further south, accounting for a lot of variety for ships under his direct command (rather than Yggites following along). That wool would have to be goat wool, and unlikely to be of Angora quality. I wouldn't emphasize the use of semi-domestic reindeer - the coastal Finns (Sami) were boat people rather than nomads. They had reindeer traps to capture herds on their annual wanderings to the coasts, but didn't follow the beasts into the highlands. If these Sami came by without too much reliance on reindeer (which were found only on the largest of the Lofoten and Vesteralen islands), the Yggites who don't have any magical connections to these beasts probably can make do largely without them. Especially after a crisis that made them eat children, I don't expect herds of reindeer to have survived the isolation, although Loskalmi settlers might have re-established some. Seals on the other hand are sort of maternal kin to the Yggites, which wouldn't keep them from hunting and slaughtering them and wearing their furs.

Or ransomed them back to their families where the families were affluent enough to do so. This continues to be a real world industry in connection to piracy. The Hjortspring boat doesn't use dowels to keep the planks together, but has them sewn together (with bast, another tree product often overlooked even though good bast has the same material properties as nylon). Ships built using this technology appear to have taken the rough sea more smoothly than the nailed variety, at least if King Sverre's laudatio for the sewn ships he received from the coastal "Finns" (Sami) was anything to go by. But then, he and his men may just have been happy to leave the long night of the northern Norwegian coast, even if the official line was something like "god var det i gammen" - we had a fine time in the earth hut. Considering the alternative - homeless in the Norwegian winter - that's basically believable. Not exactly. RQ3 still operated on a coin economy, distantly inheriting from Pavis, and more from Roman Empire (or West Rome successor state) sources. The confrontation between Vasana and the Wolf Pirates shows similar dress. Personally, I think this is taking the mediterranean Bronze Age theme way over the top. The feathered caps are nothing that a culture that experiences wet snow on a regular basis would consider wearing. The horned wicker helmets in the image below are cute, but service all the wrong Viking tropes. Partial and even complete nudity apparently was totally acceptable in Viking society when the summer caused temperatures otherwise only known from the sauna. If the Yggites share the Orlanthi immunity to wind chill, the amount of fur and clothing worn by them may be significantly closer to (uncanonical) Conanesque barbarian dress, too. I wonder if these feathered caps were inherited from the Vadeli who hired Yggite marines in droves, and probably equipped them, too. If the Wolf Pirate fleet depicted in Prince of Sartar has a tradition of Vadeli ships for mercenaries, I can make my peace with that. Or Alatan ship-building (the Three Step Isles don't have much of a ship-building tradition, but Alatan does).

Not lost, but hard to access and I can't be bothered to fix it at the time. Exactly. A treasure trove for this kind of conditions, really, even though it is Karolingian (or, in the region visited, very late Roman Iron Age). They also appear to be somewhat functional in parting the waves in a video I have seen. The replica I watched being built about 12 years ago gave the impression that those beams would take some impact way better than the sides, so they might be useful in ramming, too. Viking longships had limited ramming capability, too, but you had to be careful to target only very weak targets. IMO it is one of the last examples of the Atlantic wooden boats that prevailed throughout their Bronze Age and into the Roman Iron Age.

Already Umath laid the sources for a honorable barbarian society, with rules for hospitality (greeting Veskarthan as a stranger rather than as the half-brother the God Learner identifications would make him) etc. Vadrus was very much Umath's heir in this regard, the warrior king ruling through strength and intimidation. The Vadrudi raids were not exclusively for the fun of it, although that (possibly in a Kargan Tor measuring of strength style, as in Eddison's The Worm Ouroboros) may have been an important part for the participants. Getting lays as a reward through this means was nothing wrong to this bunch, which may somehow "explain" how their role in becoming the paternal ancestors of the merfolk tribes was not chaotic where Ragnaglar's rape of Thed was. There's always the culture of feasting, boasting, etc. All storm deities (with the exception of Humakt, at least after his role in wielding Death) started out as pastoralists. While there are a few carnivores associated with Storm gods (bears, alynxes, wolves), almost all kinds of herd mammals have some storm connection. (Possibly even some horses.) Hunting and fishing come with this, too. There will have been sisters (if not wives of equal standing) overseeing the food side of the equation, and possibly overseeing the booty wives and their work. Orlanth's sisters are mentioned for his Downland Migration from Dini, although they soon get overshadowed by the powerful wives picked up on the way (e.g. Orane, and finally Ernalda). Vadrus's sons may already have been softened by their mothers' influence. Other than Valind, none of them gets a recurring role in the Gods War soap opera, and (at least according to Orlanthi myth) Valind rose to prevalence among his brothers by showing his soft side to Orlanth at an opportune moment. Anaxial's Roster. Vadrus was the war leader of the Storm Tribe, and before Orlanth (and Ernalda) established kingship, the War Leader was the top guy. Some of that mentality will have survived in any Vadrudi-derived culture. Describing the Jonatings as similar to the Vadrudi strikes me as quite accurate.