Joerg

regions snipped. All Vadeli in Umathela and Fonrit appear to be urban populations, and looking at their history, most likely only in cities on the coast or on navigable rivers, or as hostages for good behavior (for some weird reasons, these guys appear to be mostly very young) in more secluded places.. The ancient Vadeli have had it with subsistence agriculture and fisheries for centuries, and the young generations has little ambitions in that direction, either (unless it promises a negative selection bias for disappearance due to unknown but accepted causes). Looks way too high to me. In Umathela and Fonrit the Vadeli had the advantage of information monopoly and possession of the Opening rites over the natives, and so they went there in a much larger wave than re-occupying niches in Western ports. In Genertela they are a parasite in a hostile terrain, whereas in Pamaltela they were a parasite in an unprepared terrain, giving them way higher growth rates.

Much of Umathela may be saved from the flood by the Mostali project kicking in at this time - possibly going somewhat faster than intended due to a collision between the ice and the northern edge of the cube. Parts of Fonrit might "benefit", too, and possibly parts of Kumanku as well. For the rest of Kumanku it is outrigger time, again. Same for Maslo. I suspect that Kimos has a good chance at staying above the sea level, with Gorger and Kimotan megasculpturing possibly sharing a rough upward trend to escape that water. If so, the Kimotans might recruit other Thinobutans coming as refugees for helpers in the struggle. Does Blue Moon worship help against the flood? Mernita's blue moon was shut down only after the founding of the Septopolis. As already mentioned, Tolat did help in Sechkaul, especially Melib, but that requires placement of his Red Sword.

The Gift Bearers originated in Umathela after the Closing had struck. How did they get to Genertela? Most Malkioneranists in Genertela (after the Machine War had ended) and branches thereof were hunted down by allies of Halwal, and a fair number of misguided Makanists got taken down, too. Halwal and Yomili met like particle and antiparticle, leaving behind lots of radiation at the Red Ruin. Argrath looks like he is following the path of Obduran who proved that you could be a great draconic thinker and an operational worshiper of Orlanth at the same time. One of Argrath's exotic (draconic?) powers in Dragon Pass is to negate the glowline effect in his own hex.

To me, "gooh .. gooh ... vaaaaarrrrrrr" sounds pretty much onomapoetic. For a guess who that monster was: Eurmal. One of the other ones.

You would use cave trolls for this. They regenerate. You need to offer them some food that is more nutritious than the surrounding rock, or the pit would enlarge to the point where the captive trolls can walk out.

I wouldn't have called such fragmentary surviving EWF abilities "schools". Whoever possessed these abilities in 1042 after the mass utuma of the draconic thinkers must have been just below the recognition level of being worthy of that utuma, however dragonewts and blue moon trolls may have allocated that, but might have developed the last missing bit of draconic insight some time after the utuma, and outside of the dragon dream that supported the magics. One immediate consequence of the mass utuma was the end of the dragon dream. Livestock and harvests that had become more draconic in the centuries of the dragon dream either succumbed to disease-like malfunctions or reverted to earlier forms. Middle Sea Empire tells us about two kinds of grain harvested in the center of the dragon dream: With the dragon dream ended, all the harvest in the fields was bound to mold away into a similar slime in 1042, causing foraging problems even for the vengeful raiders from Peloria, possibly explaining why they didn't remain to press more out more tribute of the survivors of the Mass Utuma. The subsequent lack of food will have depopulated Dragon Pass possibly even before the arrival of the raiders, with refugees flooding into the Hendriki kingdom and Esrolia, and possibly to Pavis. Pavis was far enough from Dragon Pass that the effects of the dragon dream were only mild, possibly not enough to support velt and kreet, and anyway we suspect at least some Pavisites to have practiced Green Age magics for food production. Apart from the abrupt change in life support, many magics were hampered, too. Imagine Lunar magics at permanent Black Moon or even less power - what use would it be in the day to day struggle for survival in or beneath the Rubble? Given the centuries between the Mass Utuma and the troll occupation, there is a possibility that some EWF rites and low-level surviving abilities may have become identity-defining elements of the particular group in question, much like a clan tattoo, and therefore preserved even when it gave no more other benefit than defining the social "us". Collecting and identifying these sounds like work for a few generations of Gray Sages, especially with the pollution brought in by new Pavisites after the Dragonewt's Dream. I am with you on the topics of the EWF Banner and the Dragonteeth Runners, but the Dragonrise was masterminded by Minaryth Purple and Orlaront Dragonfriend (who was said to have been ignorant of the Brown Dragon's existence prior to the rite). I agree - Garrath Sharpspear had a power base in and around Pavis. The White Bull Society is a huge resource, and the sedentary folk of Pavis knew him as one of their few holy men of Storm. Whether the marriage of Pavis to the pantheon had already taken place or still was about to be concluded may vary from campaign to campaign. There might be a holy child hidden away somewhere spawned by the union of a (male) Daughter of Pavis and the Lunar priestess who mothered it. If so, it might become a valuable future resource for Argrath, too, as he assimilates more and more Lunar followers and magics to his cause. Think Phoronestes of Tarsh.

Sramak's River extends well beyond the Luathan isles, effectively unlimited far. Just as size and distance lose their meaning in the outermost world, so does volume. There is also no telling how big the encapsulated Chaos Rift in the center of Magasta's Pool would be. Nobody has any idea how high the waters will rise, and the uplands that people from the coasts could flee to often aren't exactly fertile or habitable. The event will flood the richest agricultural areas for two agricultural seasons, and leave the soil badly diminished, and the wells and waterways all salted up. The overall situation will be very similar to being caught in the Real World tidal flats by the returning sea - at first you understimate the speed of the incoming water, then you'll be up to your hips or worse in water, and be battered by currents rushing in to take all the "food" out of the land. Melib might be an exception if they manage to retrieve the Red Sword.

The Vadeli in Umathela will be predominantly brown-skinned. There aren't any blue Vadeli on Glorantha (yet), thanks to the efforts of another immortal blue-skinned sorcerer. It looks like they have significant enclaves in the coastal cities. And while they have been defeated, they are still there, plotting the (not so) secret world domination. Being of Danmalastan stock, I expect them to rarely (if ever) exceed SIZ 16. As immortals, they will be likely to have trained their trainable stats to high values. Their core skills are likely in the master range. There are lots of children in the Vadeli enclaves, but you will be hard put to find any adolescents or young adults.

I don't quite agree, but that's because I have always regarded D&D as rather dull with its armor class. My own formative GMing experiences came from games where you had an attack roll, the opponent made a parry roll, and in case the parry failed he took full damage minus armor protection. My game actually had to kinds of hit points - steady life points that were derived from the stats and stayed the same, much like BRP, and endurance points which could be trained up by leveling up (training enough skills to manifest the experience points received in adventuring), and even if the parry or armor avoided hit point damage, endurance points would be lost, and a person left without endurance points was more or less prone. In this system, there were all manner of ways to have magical weapons, and the Bladesharp corresponded to a +1 to attack +1 to damage magic. Other possible combinations could be anything, so +0 +2 would be a sword only dealing magical damage but didn't aid to hit chance, and vice versa. Even negative points were possible, like a bulky sword with -2 to hit but +5 to damage. In my interpretation, the Bladesharp spell projects a sharpness even beyond its physical blade, making it easier to interact with whatever you were slashing at, and cutting a bit deeper. But then I guess "growing up" outside of the D&D ecology used to be rare in that early decade, and only caught on in the later eighties when the number of available and popular systems exploded.

Irensavalism aims at what the Zzaburite devolution names Ferbrith. Is that even the Rokari goal, or is their highest aspiration to become one with the One World? Talor was a Magus? Isn't that a bit of a role overload for a warrior-king? I think that he was a Liberator, not someone seeking apotheosis. The typical "why Chaos" or "why Evil" quandary of any single creator deity. Deities that just co-create don't have this kind of problem. Neither Talor nor Arkat essentially quested against Chaos. Talor defended against some very concrete threats, some of which were Chaotic, and he uttered a curse that turned the Telmori Chaotic blessing into something monstrous. I am not sure when he uttered that curse, but it looks to me like he did it after having broken their military might and having destroyed their sacred city. Anyway, while this curse certainly did damage the Telmori, it also furthered Chaos in Glorantha. But this Chaos, even with Talor's curse to aggravate the impact, did not stop the House of Sartar to bind their bloodline to the Telmori of Boldhome, with Terasarin's daughters marrying two of the Helkos Brothers (Helkos and Goram), and Salinarg marrying a Telmori woman of uncertain ancestry (possibly also including Kostajor or Ostling). It isn't quite clear whether Salinarg's children (heads of the Household of Death) were bearing the curse. There is no documentation whether Helkos or Goram had children from Terasarin's daughters, either. I don't see storm bull berserks raiding Dagori Inkarth to kill cave trolls, either. Is that "going soft on Chaos"? No mysticism involved. IMO the mystic is able to analyze the wrongness of Chaos, and to recognize the wrongful intrusion of the Void (or however you want to call the re-Creation outside of the World) into Creation, and how it annihilates Creation, starting with the chaotic being. Which does of course give us an interesting question: How does a cursed race like cave trolls or Telmori suffer that annihilation, or are they more or less immune to the immediate corruption of their taints? Are Telmori spirits that different from say Rathori ones (except for the animal shape)? Are they somehow lessened, or are they immune to both Nysalor's blessing and Talor's curse since they don't have bodies to transform? I will admit that Illumination or Enlightenment can lead to the Illuminated person to embrace or enhance Chaos. Talor surely did with his curse on the Telmori. Living in a country full of bull berserks, he never got accosted for being chaotic, which either means he managed to speak the curse without receiving any taint from that, or that he was secure from the Bull sense for Chaos through his enlightenment. What was it? Illumination is incomplete mystic insight for most illuminates.Quite a lot of them never surpass their first riddle. That's Children of the Forest or Yelm the Youth level of initiation into the mystic way. I have seen no evidence that an illuminated Orlanthi cannot send his Storm Soul to the Orlanthi afterlife. It will just be an incomplete bit of his former self, possibly less complete than that of a regular initiate of Orlanth. But then, what about a dual initate of say Orlanth and Elmal, or Orlanth and Lhankor Mhy. Malkioni afterlife - including the question how Hrestoli waiting for reincarnation spend it, and where - has been badly under-explored. Other than the seven day descent to Daka Fal, we don't know anything. Does the path of the Goddess intersect with that of Wakboth at any place? We know she encounters Blaskarth in the deepest underworld, and exposes her full (remaining) self to its embrace, to emerge "on the other side" of that embrace as the Red Goddess mounting the Crimson Bat. Teelo Estara interacts with Gbaji (and Rashorana) and Blaskarth, and with the Bat. That's the known amount of her chaotic ties.

Henosis with which emanation of Malkion, though? The Rokari deny all that new-fangled stuff introduced by Hrestol, such as Men-of-All, Ascended Masters, or Joy. And Solace is not Henosis. I would expect the Rokari theurgists to seek to achieve a more intellectual unity with the One Mind, possibly seeing the ecstatic effects as displayed by Talor as a distraction to be avoided. The Men-of-All learned sorcery because Hrestol finally managed to bring the insight across that the world is made of everything, and that he who stands against the troubles of the world needs to be experienced in everything. Achieving knighthood (to use the out-of-fashion term) does have some elements of spirituality, but in the end these serve to ascertain the loyalty of the new superman to the ruler and the ancestors (which used to be called the church). Et tu, David? Am I alone in thinking that Irensavalism is not identical and interchangeable with Siglat's and Gaiseron's New Hrestolism, but a compatible or at least acceptable variant? From the description of Loskalm I don't get the impression that the New Hrestoli regard the material world as the work of evil and to be shunned. Note that the Other Side as in hero plane is as much part of the material world as is the surface world. Even the First World is the product of the demiurge, with all its inhabitants.

Militarily, there is no comparison. The Romans perfected their militia, the legion, to maximum efficiency, and stuck to it as the backbone of their force. The Lunars have oodles of units of disparate origin, with disparate equipment and traditions. The Dara Happan muster has always had five different types of forces, Dara Happans proper and northwesterners, southwesterners, northeasterners and southeasterners. The exact directional forces did vary, but that fact sort of remained. The Stonewall phalanxes.have become the Southwestern direction, whereas cavalry has superseded avilry, both from the northeast. Even the stodgy Dara Happans did let their lesser folk go with the times. There are a few Lunar units in the Lunar Empire, e.g. the Dragoons - fervent followers of the Lunar Way who "inherited" Carmanian phalangite armor and horses after the First Battle of Chaos and applied them to their new style of mobile infantry/medium cavalry. The Steel Sword Legion might be another new application of Carmanian equipment, possibly taking cavalry armor and weaponry and making it an (effective) bodyguard and infantry unit. Carmania, the source of much of the immediate Lunar gear, is of course a fusion of Second Age Fronelan and Pelandan gear, with a fair bit of Bull Folk gear thrown in (though no more bull riders, sadly - though possibly the occasional bull-drawn chariot for some of their priesthood). The Seleric occupation may have brought in Kralori styles not so much in military gear as in civilian clothing, and ironically more likely to have been adopted by Lunar than by Dara Happan nobility.I wonder how many martial arts (as in weapon mastery of unusual weapons more than in unarmed styles) has survived from the Seleric incursion. While it would be a huge logistical feat to march regular Kralori foot through hundreds of miles of rather dry grassland, making this effort to import elite units made up from martial artists that would double as bodyguards of the bureaucrats imported would be a lot more manageable.

The Rokari do have their own forms of joy, at least for the 1% with a little trickle-down for their henchmen, but they don't have any means against Henosis. There are moments of experiencing transcendence, and there are moments of experiencing Joy of the Heart. It may be the case that a Rokari zzaburi might be unable to recognize Joy, certainly in others, possibly even in himself. The Battles of Asgolan Fields hold the answer for the areas outside of Rindland and Tanisor. Continued survival is a strong bonus. The Old (Hrestoli) Malkoni philosophy (named a church in the Middle Sea Empire commentary on the Seshnelan King List and Malkionism) persisted throughout the God Learner period. That's a totally different proposal of reincarnation when compared to the Hrestoli promise. That stands in stark contrast to the Brithini "dead is gone" and "Solace of the body" teachings which aren't worth much if you are aging. Old Seshnela (and the God Learners) had the Men of All and their adventurism which some blame for the God Learner mistakes, but if you look at who really did all the bad stuff, you find the sorcerous orders at the heart of it. Pilif the Magus may have been overcome by the imperial inheritance, but almost all the weird stuff was propagated by zzaburi. Only the conquest of Eest and Kralorela and possibly Fonrit and Jolar had seen Men-of-all in leading roles. Slontos was weird, but relied on Zistorite weirdness. Solace is not really an afterlife. At best its a peaceful end of your existence, something which Rokari society only makes look good for its lower 80% as it doesn't exactly make normal peasant life pleasant. Except that the philosophy which set Malkionism apart from Zzaburism - Hrestolism - does believe in reincarnation. The Rokari have suppressed that notion and other Hrestoli notions like men-of-all and Ascended Masters in a weird God Learner successor philosophy claiming to have broken with the God Learners while relying on their core document, the Sharp Abiding Book. There may have been in Danmalastan, before the Vadeli conquered most of it. The only text I have seen showing a glimpse of Brithos had (zzaburi caste) priestesses (and priests), but no sorceresses. The Priestess of Menena in Horalwal was the closest to a sorceress I have seen, and essentially she was the officiating Ancestor Worship and Ancestor Summoner. Xemela was the mother of Hrestol, and died before the Dawn. She never saw her son's revelations lead the Malkioni away from the ancestral Brithini ways. Malkionism by non-immortals was more or less established by Hrestol, or led to weirdness like God Forgot. That's the thing - Hrestoli castes were a lot less fluid than Siglat's new model kingdom. You were a member of your birth caste, or you became a Man (!) of all. I used to call this Linealist Hrestolism, and back in the RQ3 days the concept of the Men-of-All was called chivalry. Do they still? RQG p.389: Rune magic (or spells) covers both divine and sorcerous magic. There was no Hrestoli society prior to the Dawn. It was Brithini emigrants on the coasts of Genertela, following the old Zzabur's laws as good they could. Education of non-zzaburi was extremely limited outside of their caste requirements. Hrestol's Saga has a scene where a man-of-all manages to impress an unconventionally raised talar maiden from Brithos with his rudimentary star lore, knowledge that is more or less forbidden to her. That Tales "canon" has already been superseded. More than once. I'll spare the rest of the forum another tit for tat on your YGDV notions of the Void. Cults of Terror provided that look at the for pre-Creation entities Prime Mover, Silence, Primal Plasma, and the Void. Each is outside of normal mortal understanding and not survivable without preparation. None of them is Chaos.

There are things in the Guide that are missing from the Tales version of the Hrestoli, and there is this entire "not a church" business which relegated Ttrotsky's "Kingdom of the Flamesword" and "The Book of Glorious Joy" to Alternate Glorantha. The articles in Tales are also long in the tooth, based on yet different assumptions, and written before Revealed Mythologies and Middle Sea Empire revealed and refined these Malkioni concepts to that detail, although the authors had access to some of that material. While I agree that this is the best publication for RQ available, it hasn't taken in subsequent discoveries. Not the best article on the Wikia, combining a bit of factual statement with a description of bias in the definition: Very placative, a mission statement, but not really a definition. In your interpretation, this should read "Glorantha exists as a bubble in Chaos." Your cosmos is also very simplistic, basically a three-dimensional object in a three-dimensional environment. But the topology of Glorantha is not such an easy Cartesian or Polar Coordinate model with Chaos on the outside, or meaningful measurements of distance or size once you leave the Inner World. See below. Yes. Both bliss and Chaos and the raw stuff for Creation comes into the Cosmos through the Chaosium. IMO this is the most objective of all the views you quoted here. The Guide p.162 says that it is the source of Chaos monstrosities as well as raw, unformed stuff (i.e. the raw material for Creation). That deep down in the Underworld, monstrosities are the rule, not the exception, and most of them don't need Chaos to be monstrous. The Orlanthi have been instrumental in inficting these horrors as much as the mystics of other origins. Their god (and his father) started the Gods War. On the whole, you should have presented your text as "We Orlanthi (and Malkioni)" rather than in the third person. So Ouroboros was born from Bad, and so were the Dragons? The dragons come from bad, and they strive to rejoin the bad? Sounds like a biased outsider point of view rather than an internal meaning of that mythology. Failed mystics might associate the Void with good or evil. True mystics have experienced how meaningless those attributes are for the Void and what lies beyond. That's (the power of) Kajabor - the transition from Being to total Annihilation. The dissolution is Chaos. Whether whatever was affected joins the Void or not is not really a meaningful distinction. If the Void would obey simple Cartesian or polar coordinates, it wouldn't be the Void. Your cosmological model of Void or Chaos like a liquid into which the ball of the Cosmos is submerged is too simplistic. For a different model, consider the Void as a liquid and the Cosmos as a ball swimming on it, anchored down by the Chaosium, with an outer vague surface where stuff from the Void may creep up when not contained at the contact area. There are huge and horrible monsters down there, dealing with huge and horrible monsters coming up from that contact area. Disorder is strong down there, being the least susceptible to the massive onslaught of Chaos. Darkness and Dark Waters are preeminent down there, doing their jobs. Separation aka Death is constantly challenged by Chaos, and when it fails, the other forces might be able to deal with an incursion. Liberating Death from the contact area may have been the cause why Chaos had an easier time to creep in and up the outer, hardly defined realms of the world and to intrude to known strongholds of the Unholy Trio. But on the whole, you get a fuzzy, fractal semi-reality of Darkness, Sea, Storm and Sky beyond the Outer World as described shortly in the Guide. You don't get the Void, but the conditions out there are so weird that entering them unprepared and unprotected is lethal. What you don't get is the naked Void, only a view of it. On the far end of the bubble, you have the eternal source of energies, opposite of the source of raw matter (the Chaosium). All the true Otherworlds, whether the Hero Planes aka the cyclical Time parts that continue to exist parallel to the Inner World or the God Realms or the Essence Plane or the Spirit World all connect to that source and have permanence. Then there are (or used to be) Short Worlds, possibly temporary reality, which don't connect directly to the Absolute but which receive its energy indirectly via the Middle World. It is possible that much of Avanapdur's Realm was such. The Absolute may be an aspect of the Void, part of it, or reachable through it as well as through all the layers of Creation and pre-Creation. Confrontation with it or even only with its lesser, Immanent aspect is the existential crisis triggered by the Mystical Bolt. In my very limited understanding, the Absolute is part of the Void, too, but with a purpose, unlike the stuff that seeps in through the bottom. Dayzatar's realm lies at the edge of reality, but IMO not at the edge of the Void, and while it is about the furthest you can get from the Chaosium (at least of outermost Glorantha), it isn't necessarily any closer to the Ultimate than the e.g. heart of the Earth. Dualist in the sense of energy vs. matter, yes. Dualist in the sense that the Creator of the material world is evil - IMO generally not, not even in Loskalm: Irensavalism is a tolerated heresy rather than mainstream New Idealist Hrestolism, and a variant thereof is active in Carmania, more or less merged with the Lunar Way. Yes. Transcendent practices, not sorcerous practices. Meditation, or ecstatic communion, which is a phenomenon also known in branches of Christianity, which can be triggered by participation in the rites, by personal seeker quests/pilgrimages, by asceticism. The experience of the transcendent can result in an euphoria, and to be able to write a triumphant QED under pages of highly abstract calculations can, too. Siege engineering problems or civil engineering problems, or the exact calculation of the Southpath, possibly under the influence of substances which help focussing and doing calculations and supporting construction lines etc. purely in your mind may cause enough of a trance-like state of mind, entering the zone. Similar experiences can be made by musicians and composers, artists, lovers, etc. Joy is a term associated with positive feelings. A mere spell inducing both euphoria and a huge boost to whatever the recipient attempts to do. But then the Breaking of the World also was a mere spell of Zzabur's, and quite a few other world-moving feats were, too. In the materialist world-view of the Rokari, spells are an expression of the ultimate logic, one of the highest expressions of the one mind one can experience. Any Rokari who experiences Joy will be in a quandary. They can remain silent about their experience(s) and adhere to the forms and rites of Rokari philosophy by rote if not by persuasion, or they can exchange their elation from the experiences with like-minded folk, the old creed Malkioni lorded over by the Rokari watchers but still knowing how their Old Church faith valued such insights. At least in my Glorantha, the Rokari philosophy has a hard time to eradicate the promise of re-incarnation that the Hrestoli creeds offer, creating lots of hidden Old Church adherents wherever the Watchers aren't looking. In Pithdaros there are strong Hrestoli sentiments in probably only surface Rokari congregations, and the same likely goes for many of the provinces outside of Rindland and Tanisor. Do the Rokari have spells to dispel Joy (I doubt that), or do they just have spells to eliminate the heretic caught experiencing Joy? Simple Illumination doesn't let you refute physical damage, heaviness, or attack spells. It takes much deeper mystical practices to get to a point where weapons or offensive spells fail to interact with you.

Apart from a few mistakes about the current owners of Illusion and Disorder, these God Learner runic closeness assessment have not been disproven by experiment even though there have been powerful detractors attempting to do just that. The Monomyth is true to some extent, and abstracting it as runes has reduced the inherent errors even further. Ease of identification may suffer in such an environment, however. But approaching these truths from a local myth will bring you across the barrier and into the environment to work those local variations into the story for your benefit as a quester.

Clearly I have missed something here. What are your sources for this please? Revealed Mythologies p.17: Clearly I have missed something here. What are your sources for this please? This means that the ordinary worshipper can experience Joy. No wizardry training necessary, not even the Men-of-All kind. Xemela is ranked among the Ascended Masters. She was a queen, not a sorceress. That said, sorcerers (like e.g. Halwal) can achieve Henosis, even ascend, and draw on extraordinary power. But Joy wasn't required for that, as the Umathelan episode with the burning of most of Vralos in 654 shows when Jrusteli sorcerers armed with new insights from the Abiding Book all but destroyed that elven forest. In Glorantha, the Cosmos is the sky dome. There is no vacuum of space there. Beyond the sky dome is just chaos trying to get in and eat the world. As far as I know, there is no source stating this plainly. My Gloranthan cosmology differs: The Sky Dome comes in layers, and the one visible in blue throughout the day and in black throughout the night is just an inner shell, with several more layers to come. The far side of all the dome layers is Dayzatar's realm of contemplation, probably witnessing the emanations of the Void but infinitely distant from them. There is no entropy leaking in to Dayzatar's Realm except possibly where the Gods War may have left punctures, but given the fact that the Sky had been ably defended against Chaos by Orlanth, such wounds are unlikely. There is plasma out there, pure flame. Bright, but transparent. If you glide down this outer, plasma-enshrouded dome, you will drift down to where the endless outer River and the as endless outer Storm extend way beyond the limits of the outer dome and bowl of the world. This is a plane of immense currents and gales, way beyond imagination, and endlessly increasing. Possibly getting less and less tangible as the distance to the outer Dome goes. Huh? What possessed you to write that madness? Most mysticism involves a detachment from the world, and the ability to take an impartial view of what is going on, free from preconceptions grounded in entanglement with the world. (Venfornist inclusion gives a similar impartiality through integration of everything, IMO.) A sorcerer questing on the Essence "plane" will encounter ever more abstract concepts and interactions, will see flow diagrams overlaid with wave functions and logical framing parameters rather than concrete Creation. There should be such a meta-world of magic expressed in formulas too vast to be used by mortal or even demigod sorcerers as encountered, but the sorcerer will be able to come up with (much) lesser copies of these to subject to his own will. All quite groovy and possibly even psychedelic, but not at all what I expect Joy to confer. Nice quote, but from the Animism/Shamanism section. P.16 (the Sorcery section) offers a different definition, IMO way more pertinent to the discussion of Joy: And that's a Zzaburite perspective, not a Hrestoli or Rokari Malkioni one, describing the Invisible God. I think that the sorcerous description of the Ultimate and the Invisible God on p.16 explicitely says that this entity is not immanent. What is your source for "only chaos is transcendental of all the four realms"? And IMO you mix up the pre-creation stuff (e.g. Glorantha Sourcebook p.67, named as Prime Mover in the West, Silence by the Theists, Primal Plasma by the Animists and the Void by the Mystics) with Chaos which is that pre-Creation (aka Pre-Dark, as Darkness was the first element created) interacting with the Cosmos inside the Cosmos. Without interaction with the Cosmos, this "stuff" is not harmful in any way, but glorious infinite potential for Creation, Permutation etc. Only when forcefully impacting that what was created it becomes hyper-entropic Chaos. Chaos is the unpredictable interaction of that what lies beyond Creation with Creation in a destructive way, whereas such stuff as channeled through the Chaosium at the bottom of the Cosmos becomes directed Creation. You may well argue that this is an illuminated or otherwise detached point of view, and you would be right as this is what the God Learners (themselves having acquired their peculiar form of enlightenment) described the world as. For a full understanding, you might require the God Learner Nostrum in addition to the written text. Your over-simplification "it is all Chaos" is wrong IMO. Neither of these states of pre-Creation provides a beneficial environment for Gloranthan denizens, although dragons and similarly advanced mystics of other approaches might be able to negotiate these without damage to their selves. Exposure may very well appear like Chaos dissolving your self, but there are other (e.g. elemental) purification rites/quests like the Fire of Ehilm or the Baths of Nelat doing pretty much exactly this to the subject of these rites. The purification powers of the Seas boosted by the Rivers are even powerful enough to sear away that entropic agent of annihilation which has been sealed by Magasta's Whirlpool.

Politicized? A strange derogatory term in this context. And if you meet someone who met or killed a Riddler, kill them too - they might have become memetically infected. Afterwards, report for annihilation. Seriously, this "kill on sight" attitude towards Illumination or other forms of Enlightenment doesn't feel right in polytheistic Glorantha. There are evils that have nothing to do with Illumination or Chaos, and there are beings tragically afflicted by Chaos or Illumination whose words or actions may serve (unintentionally) as Riddles. When not blocking a path, devouring the witless who cannot solve the test, a sphinx may be an embodyment of teaching virtues of the entity they represent. At least that's what would make sphinxes of pharaohs somewhat sensible.

Getting an infinity rune has everything to do with standard mysticism. As far as I am concerned, only original core rune owners have the infinity rune. Current core rune owners (signified by a doubled rune) don't have quite achieved the direct link to the Ultimate yet. There's a catch here - you don't need to know sorcery to achieve Henosis with the Invisible God. That entity you reach henosis with is far beyond the Cosmos - it has (and provides) an outside view/insight of the Cosmos. Just as Illumination does through detachment and an approach to the Ultimate (one hopes). If this works for you, play that way. Talor has become the poster boy of Joy. Not sure what his foes called him, the giggling slayer? It was Hrestol who discovered Joy, and from that text in the Middle Sea Empire, probably during his time of acquainting himself with the everymen of Akem. Hrestoli sects believe in reincarnation - Brithini and Rokari (officially) don't. The mere consideration of reincarnation does contradict the complete dissolution of the soul/self upon death, doesn't it? I wonder whether this has to do with the prophet and is disciples experiencing Henosis. Getting an objective insight on the cycle of reincarnation? To my knowledge, Talor did not undergo any martyrdom after Harmast brought him back, although there is a possibility that what landed him in the Underworld was a martyrdom rather than simple death in (supernatural?) battle. Suggesting that it takes serving vessels to facilitate divine will sort of acknowledges an Adversary on similar level as the Invisible God (or else a very asshole attitude of that entity - which may be how the Irensavalists dissociated themselves from the Creator of Matter). I still think that both Illumination and Joy are insights first and side effects second. You get heated up on the side effects and design game rules around them without considering how and why insights received might cause such effects. Somewhere, somehow a power to curse an entire tribe of enemies (Talor) or an entire country (Arkat) appear to be side effects of either (possibly in conjunction with heroquesting).

If she's the Dame Darkness originally venerated at Hrelar Amali then this may be a later syncretism, a pregnant idea in itself . . . "adopting" the twins into the pantheon establishes a bond with the lopers among others. I am a bit irritated simply because the Annilla myth is the one (and only) to explain the weird lifting and dropping of the seas on the Gloranthan shores, never mind tidal waves. There is no daily rhythm that would support a Xentha involvement, and to my knowledge there hasn't been any motion for Nakala other than the statement "I Am". Giving birth to Zaramaka's waters through Styx and the basement of the Spike doesn't really warrant any tidal control. The tidal powers are clearly assigned to her daughter, who led or accompanied the rise of the waters into the Sky, and the sudden drop from those heights is in the Blue Moon myths. The drop into Magasta's Pool however is an anachronism which just doesn't fit into the past, as the Blue Moon fell onto the surface when the Spike was still intact. The transition from losing much of her body to going through the cycle of rising up on the River, then following her partner Lorion/Engizi but dropping down directly into Magasta's Pool, drawing in the Seas that had crept up on the lands, taking power from the formerly dry places to combat the Void. Somehow Annilla kept her pack with Lorion or had one with Magasta. So, the Moon may have been as instrumental in closing the Chaos Rift left behind by the Implosion of the Spike as the Rivers. But then the Pelorian Lunar cycle had long progressed past the Blue phase and even past the first of its black phases, which makes me wonder how much the tidal effect would be within the portfolio of Rufelza and even Sedenya any more.

The celestial lion, clawed, beaked and winged, and his bastard child which went hoofed rather than clawed on the hind legs. Griffins have life births, and never had anything else. Hippogriffs may have inherited eggs from their (unknown) mother. But then (according to the Godlearners) all animals have draconic ancestors, and dragons are known for laying eggs. I see a possibility that the egg-laying of the birds in the closer and farther sense may have been an inherited trait from dragonhood abandoned only by the majority of the mammals and select other species inside other groups. The common theme of celestial entities are feathers, not eggs. The feathered serpent incarnation of Veskarthan (the missile of his atlatl, of course some kind of spear) may be almost draconic, but the imperial Golden Dragon that inserted itself into the Dara Happan dynasties did not appear feathered in any way, as far as I can recall descriptions. It was just an accelerated human-born mystic, of course, and not a True Dragon, only the next best thing, a Great Dragon. Fur or scales may appear as a secondary feature without de-celestifying the entity. Beaks are very celestial, which (in addition to downy integument) may have made the Dara Happan gazzam celestial beasts, but most Luxites appear in winged Man Rune shape rather than as beaked Tengu or similar creatures. The humanoid griffin is another angelic form, as are various other four-limbed-plus-winged creatures.

What I find interesting is that when we hear about the Three Sky Witches, we get Black Dendara (KataMoripi/Enjata Mo) and her children Veldara/Serartmale(/Annilla?) and Chermata/Lokarnos, but not Tolat/Shargash rising from Hell. Black Dendara mated with Bijiif (dead Yelm/Kendamalar, down in Hell/Wonderhome) before bearing her children. I wonder whether Chermata has been mis-identified, or whether that was the resurgence of the fertile parts of the wargod of the sky. But then I am not that convinced that the southern Planetary Son has been red from the beginning, or whether his green origins have been forgotten. Whether red or green, the southern son did cause Umath to tumble down and crash into the White Pillar, with the southern son wrestling him all the way into the Underworld. None of the planetary sons re-emerged from the Underworld unchanged. The Green City became Hellgate, home of the Red God. Plentonius knew only the deeds of Shargash, and he fails to mention Alkor. Plentonius is likewise ignorant of anything preceding Brighteye except the mystical One. While his accounts are a millennium closer to what happened in the Storm Age, his ignorance is greater than that of subsequent explorers having the benefits of 1200 years of syncretic myths. All Dara Happans Know that Shargash has been the Red God of the South since memory begins, just as they Know that Yelm has been the one and only Emperor since Creation. It is part of their exceptionalism and hence the only Truth they will ever be prepared to face without Illumination allowing them to have other truths besides that Truth.

You don't need core wood or entire trees to produce charcoal. There is a reason why the charcoal burners are called "stickpickers" among the Heortlings. Aldryami gardening does involve quite a bit of pruning, of clearing out less desirable growth. Charcoal burning does provide a couple of side products, some of which may give fertility and life, while others might bring death, defoliation etc. as per Agent Orange. Which might even be desired by the Gardeners to provide some avenue of expulsion or of protection from wildfires. The Winterwood Aldryami even have logging agreements with the natives of Ygg's Islands (though not with the Loskalmi), which probably was instrumental in the Loskalmi takeover of Ygg's Isles after Dormal Thawed those parts of Fronela. Cutting off living parts to be disposed of, then regrowing them appears to be the Aldryami way, as also specified by the Limmer in Elamle. In both these cases, Gustbran is the Lowfire of choice - even for operating the pottery kiln, but then the trinity of the lowfires has the "secret" that each of them can be called from the others by one or two steps. Solar furnaces are a similar concept as wind mills - enslaving the deity to do human work. I would expect either in Fonrit, but not in Genertela. Fire called from the sun or the moon works well at destroying forests, but both such spells lack the fine-tuning you would want to heat metal in a reproducable way. I don't think so - the Brass caste of alloyists has the spells for heat regulation, possibly including from sources like volcanism. Copper dwarves are the creators of metal tools from the octagony metals. Iron mostali handle both the production and the use of iron, but may rely on brass dwarves to do their heating.

Collecting an infinity rune power is pretty much how Illumination has been described. The experience of Joy appears to be similar in consequences, and is likewise attached to one-ness with something from beyond the World. Still yes, the Hrestoli pursuit of Joy is not identical to Rashoranic Illumination. It goes beyond the runic Oneness e.g. the Storm mystics of Old Wind Temple are pursuing, but it is the limited Infinity that comes from the doubled runes (as presented in RQ3). There is of course the fact that joining a cult (which is pre-requisite for getting access to its secrets) does form a spiritual entanglement which is disadvantageous for your spiritual progress. The problem about Nysalorean Rashoranic Illumination is its sudden experience, often without the necessary preparation, which may make the recipient unaware of any continued progress that is supposed to be made. Unlike the eastern paths which start through meditative practice, getting illuminated by a riddle without actively meditating is bound to create abuse. The Lunar Way seeks to provide a framework for Illumination to avoid random occlusion. The verdict is open whether its entire complex is just a more sophisticated form of occlusion. But the same must be said for Arkati enlightenment/endarkenment. Not inimical to what matters about you. As to evil, that is something that doesn't matter in the greater scheme of being cum not-being. It is something you want to avoid, as it brings all manner of additional temptations that interrupt your spiritual steps. The Crimson Bat is an ultra-hard austerity, and few if any have undergone it sufficiently prepared to overcome it. Releasing it on unprepared populations may be interpreted as a sign of occlusion. Releasing it on enemies of the Lunar Way as a lesson pour encourager les autres may be only borderline rather than outright occluded. The methods employed to spread the Glowline are another such case. Enough foes of the Lunar Empire are objectively evil, too, without being Chaotic. Glorantha herself is already a transcendent or at least transcending entity. She is the vehicle for lesser instances of herself - including mortals - ascending likewise, too. The void outside of Glorantha provides the means of cleansing the whole or part of the world of stuff that prevents ascension. Letting too much of that into the world of Time is damaging the world, but a balance of destruction and new creation can be struck - either to provide a constant "decay" that allows and actually furthers attempts at ascension as an incentive and an agent of purification, or even striking an equilibrium that brings enough new Creation into the world to replace what has been cleansed off, perfecting the way the world operates. You seem to think that I applaud or support everything the Lunar Way does. I don't. That is the job of Moony Madfolk like @Nick Brooke. But the Lunar Way appears to be a valid instrument to hasten spiritual development and ascension of individuals to transcendent states. Like I said above, the verdict is open whether those states do offer an ascension to the Ultimate, or whether they are similarly cul-de-sac aspirations like the hastened draconic ways of the Third Council - unless of course the 1042 demise of all Draconic Thinkers was indeed a mass ascension of all these draconized humans to a valid form of Dragonhood enriching the total draconic ascension scheme while ending the burden on the other draconic creatures pursuing their more traditional ways to reach Dragonhood and beyond. I don't claim to hold to the truth of illumination. I am trying to provide as rational a model of it as I can conceive and to measure all the stuff that has to do with the Gloranthan Ultimate with that. That involves not providing answers, but at best leading questions that enable you to ask the next question, and so on. If you want, making the path of Enlightenment use the scientific method. When you run out of questions to ask next, you hopefully have achieved Henosis with the Ultimate, or at least the transcendent truth of your choice stemming directly from it (e.g. Eastern Atrilith, or full unity with one of the Core Runes).

Nope. I had only two or three RQ player characters in my years of playing RQ, other than pre-created ones in convention scenarios. I had legions of NPCs created by me. I have used Dullblade coming from NPCs. It is targeting those sword-loving Humakti, making them into second rate Death Lord wannabes, or their unsufferable Orlanthi friends. As such, it makes a good spell for Yelmalians who want to cast their opponents in the role of darkness fiends, or from darkness foes wishing to even the field. Dullblade has one tactical advantage over Demoralize - it works without overcoming the targetted character's POW (may still have to overcome the POW of an allied spirit in the blade, though). You cast Dullblade only once, whereas you will have to cast Demoralize twice or more half the time. Hence a Dullblade 6 may be less magic point intensive than two boosted Demoralize (8 points in total) to overcome that Countermagic effect of the Berserk.

Coal would be remnants of the victims of the Green Age. We all know that the surface world used to be covered by forest in its entirety, according to Aldryami and Mostali myths (the Mostali claim that this happened against the plan). It isn't any more, mountains were raised by volcanism, tectonic giants, or dwarf activity. The spirits of these entities (and new bodies) would have appeared elsewhere, since there was no permanent death this early in the Creation of Glorantha. There were entities that failed to re-assemble after dismembering - Annilla's husband dismembered in the conflict with the dragons or Umath crashing into the White Camp are examples of this. I would expect Glorantha to have all stages of coal, from anthracite via stone coal and lignite down to peat. One possible problem with geological strata in Glorantha is the fact that the World of Time is just a drawn-together patchwork of shards of reality with some more or less plausible transition on the seams. Discontinuities might be common. I also wonder how much the Earth Cube was shattered. The four or so major shards of the cube are now separated by the oceanic rifts (one of which, the least vertical of them, is about to obliterated in the reconstruction of Somelz). But were the main land masses we know within Time all continuous during the Greater Darkness? How tattered was the Lozenge, and was that just on the surface, or all the way down?