Joerg

So the westerners equate Enjata Mo with Nakala rather than with "Black Dendara"? (Or vice versa, the Doraddi equated Nakala with Enjata Mo?) And when and how did Nakala acquire the power over tides? Do the Artmali know this, or only selected heroes? There is a problem with this style of documents, however valuable they are in showing the development of Gloranthan myth - they usually come in context with a set of stories. The names used in the direct quote are used by the Dawn Age Seshnegi, except for Ehilm who is at times named Yelm, and hence have been used in Jrusteli myth exploration (I can't recall having seen "Senalfe" before.). It is similar to learning that in hyperborean Thule, Jove was a son of Mercury, who was their chief god, and that Apollo was maimed by Cerberus. There is also the subject of previous generations of the Silver Age gods (Zeus, his five siblings, and their children) or the Aesir, both with a descent from elemental giants. I haven't seen anything like this in the Roman pantheon which appears to be mostly a reflection of the Greek one otherwise, and I have a feeling that both the Titanomachy and the "three brothers" motif for Odin may have been later, intellectually deducted additions to the pantheon. Glorantha came with the concept of a Celestial Court early on, but diversified greatly between different stories written by Greg, usually with some parallels and lots of differences. All this "native names" stuff like having numerous names supposedly from an in-culture mythic cycle becomes a bit burdensome at times. The Pamaltelan section offers the names of Veldara and Serartmale for the blue moon goddess. Veldara obviously shares the root with Veldang, the blue-skinned human race that appeared in the Storm Age in the southern continent descending from blue planets. Serartmale might be little more than "mother of Artmal". Is either an Artmali term, or is this a Doraddi term? Do the trolls really know Annilla, or do they have a different name for the goddess of the Blue Moon, and what about the Pelorian Lesilla?

Dullblade is a good spell for Chalana Arroy healers wishing to prevent damage but unwilling to defend sleeping opponents from fanaticized party members.

For the Carpenter, there is Orstan, a subcult of Orlanth. He introduced the saw to the Orlanthi when he created Orstan's Pass across the Dragonspine, nowadays in Grazer territory. Durev is the more handyman of all crafts but master of none in particular.

An identity of Dendara and Entekos is more or less true - it isn't bi-directional, but Dendara and Entekos share a lot of myths. Entekos has myths unknown for Dendara. The real quest of Valare was IMO to prove an identity of Entekos with the Red Goddess. That was a major failure. But then, there is no clear identification for She Who Waits.

I can see that. To me, the introduction of Shargash was as disturbing when I had known about Tolat previously. The absence of any mention of Moskalf for the 31 day planet elsewhere known as Dendara or Entekos makes me wonder what the context of that name was in Elder Secrets. I have said it elsewhere, but the Sourcebook does provide an update to the Gods and Goddesses of Glorantha series published in Wyrm's Footnotes, a fairly early document quite rich in God Learner syncretism. This look back doesn't contribute much to the current perception of Glorantha, agreed. The Yelmalio - Elmal confusion was expanded with Antirius as a god of the Hill of Gold, and Kargzant and Shargash added to the solar confusion. The weirdness of coexistence of Ehilm and Yelm in the Lightbringers' Quest was there even before King of Sartar, and never properly resolved. The Umath story has been revealed only slowly. We knew Thunder Delta as the place where Umath crashed down before disappearing from Golden Age myth but we didn't know his foe. Jagrekriand was just a foe of Orlanth and Mastakos on the earliest Lightbringers' Quest. Umath's invasion into the sky precipitated sky gods (and storm gods) in the Underworld. The eight planetary sons mostly disappear, and only a few rise again from Hell. The concept of Underworld planets starts here IMO.

Tolat is the name of the god as he was introduced to the Gloranthan body of lore, both in the unpublished western stories (notably Avalor's story) and in published material. Shargash is a weird afterthought in the first of a series of unfinished works outlining certain hitherto under-explored cultures. Genertela Box gave us Alkor as the god of Alkoth, alongside Raiba for Raibanth (later amended to Raibamus to fulfil rules about Dara Happan name suffixes). Tolat was there in the Star Lore (Elder Secrets) and in Teshnos (Genertela Box), but the story of Umath's fight in the sky was yet untold. Published details about the Loper People were always vague. To be honest, I fail to see a problem. The essay lists celestial deities by the name they are best known for. The Orlanthi don't know much about Shargash, but they hate Jagrekriand with a passion, a red god with a red blade occupying the biggest of the Southpath planets. In Western star lore, the planet has always been named Tolat. It was the twin of Annilla, goddess of the Blue Moon, a fragment of which crashed down in Loskalm. Both these twins were born in the Underworld and fought their way into the sky. For some reason, Zaranistangi and Artmali, who worshipped this deity as their war god, agreed with the naming. There is of course a possibility of the Vadeli channeling that name over to them, but the Zaranistangi don't appear to have been in contact with those slavers. For me, the much bigger problem in the Sourcebook text on Tolat is the myth of Tolat defeating Umath with the help of Artmal to avenge his father, the dead sun. The Dara Happan chronology presented by Plentonius (without knowing the Orlanthi perspective) agrees with the Orlanthi disappearance of Umath well before the Sun Emperor was slain by Orlanth. (And Jar-eel's narrative of the sunslayer rebels includes Tolat in that group of rebels... not Dara Happan Shargash, though, a god of clubs rather than a red sword. In Orlanthi myth, Jagrekriand comes without accoutrements other than his red skin. The Orlanthi cult of Vorthan in Fronela depicts the lord of the Red Planet as black-skinned demon with a red jewel in his brow rather than red-skinned - not that dissimilar from Zorak Zoran or Shadzor, or Arkat.) In the Orlanthi myth, it was the crippling of Umath which led Orlanth to challenge the Sun Emperor, and ultimately slay him. This Tolat and Artmal myth apparently dealt with the other Umath, locally known as Desero's deity Baraku. (Who may identify as Vadrus. We have another case of unclear distinction between Vadrus and Umath WRT the slaying of Faralinthor.)

I don't really think that the Praxian Beast Riders and the Vingkotlings had much contact in the times when Tada still ruled those lands. The neighbors were the Tada-shi, a culture practicing horticulture, possibly not unlike the Doraddi, and not the Animal Nomads (no idea whether they were riding already back then). The nomads may have had ancestral grazings near the Vingkotlings, but the term Nomads does imply that they roamed significantly (and not just transhumant). Plus a good portion of that land was submerged by the Aroka standing wave covering the eastern Rockwoods and parts of Balazar (roughly Elkoi) before joining the Oslira Sea covering Dara Happa. Waha was contacted around 35 ST. He was born in the Greater Darkness and in all likelihood had never met Tada. The Tada-shi he met had degenerated into the Oasis Folk, a people so subdued that I am not entirely certain they have registered the changes brought by the Dawn. At this time, the Heortling tribes and the Esrolvuli had already been established for generations, out of previously Vingkotling groups. As pastoralists long before the Praxians had become pastoralists, they would have had pre-existing rites for butchery. Possiibly none that let the slaughtered beast resurrect the next dawn, but magically proven. Waha did not invent the Peaceful Cut. Foundchild had introduced it, as a universal hunter secret. Waha applied this to the herd kin of the Animal Nomad tribes. Was Waha's Peaceful Cut more powerful than the Heortling magics? And did the few Theyalan missionaries that married into say the Hagolings bring all manner of minor deities and practices with them, or did they take over whatever they awakened from the Terror of the Great Night?

You would be astonished about certain types of polished jewelry from Sweden, using elk matter. (Elk as in alces alces.)

No, look at the Plentonic dating in the introduction. Umath born in 40k YS, Murharzarm crowned in 50k YS, Umath clashing with the planets 70k YS. The Shadzorings of the Greater Darkness failed to show around the Anarchy Year, and the inhabitants of Alkoth appeared all human afterwards, IIRC. Interesting take. I'll need some time considering this.

So urbanization and slavery go hand in hand, and mistreatment of slaves too? The early copper smelters of Canaan with their wind-powered kilns don't appear to have been low status, and neither is there any evidence that the cypriots managed their mines with slaves. Likewise, the quarries in Egypt were managed and labored on by well-regarded and well-fed specialists, not slaves, and the tractor teams for the mud sleds at the actual building site were well-respected freeman workers (and specialists), too. Were these slaves worked to death? There is little evidence for the greek landholders to work their agricultural slaves to death, so why the mining slaves? As long as expert foremen and hewers ensure the security of the mine, yes. I was talking about removing huge amounts of collapsed structure to return to a cut off mother lode because disposable slaves disposed of themselves and months of labor and use of firewood in a careless or exhausted accident. That's not economical. Even in strip mining (e.g. for gold dust), miners avoid fruitless removal of dead rock because of the unpaid effort. From what I have seen from modern amateur gambler gold diggers, you may be right - they rarely appear to apply scientific methods to get some telemetry for the geology beneath them. During my stint in the mineral refining business in Norway, I also met a professional prospector, a proper mineralogist who entertained me with stories of his travels e.g. in the Andes looking out for signs of valuable mineral deposits while doing a survey on known pure quartz deposits around the refinery I worked for, where I served as translator (as a break from my normal lab duty in quality control). So these are Roman methods? The lesson I took from the history of the Roman Empire was that their conquests were pretty much were tied to getting control over native mining in neighboring "barbarian" realms. This was true for the conquests of the Macedons, Gallia, the Noricum, the Dacians, and probably other places in the Near East. Unless these slaves were cheaper than dogs or similar small husbandry, I don't quite see the profit in using up workforce you had to buy this way, when you could treat under-privileged plebeians in a similar inhuman way. Whenever the Germanic tribes took over a Roman province (other than Britannia), they usually installed themselves as a warrior nobility, leaving the old Roman methods for managing land and mines with armies of slaves mostly unchanged while assimilating to the language and the culture. Every economic endeavor that required some knowledge or networking was guilded in the Middle Ages. The methods observed and collected by Agricola are the summary of the last 300 years of mining, if not even longer. His illusrations and descriptions describe a status quo, not a future development. Even when captured in official warfare, those slaves don't come without an economical investment by the end user. Dorasar: Dorasar founded New Pavis in a period of aggressive mourning full of bitterness against the Grandmothers of Esroila, which would make his exposure to an Asrelia heroquest quite a strange. I seem to recall a text claiming that Salinarg was chosen as other members of the House of Sartar (Terasarin's children?) were in the Holy Country at the time, presumably involved in a Tournament of the Masters of Luck and Death. Possibly an early version of what ended up in King of Sartar, taken from one of the Son of Sartar installments. I am unsure how much hostility there was between Belintar and the House of Sartar. Certain individuals were frequent visitors in the Holy Country. Sarotar and Dorasar spent up to six years on and off in Nochet, and it looks like Dorasar contributed to the assassination conflict (Theyalan dart competition) with the house of Bruvala before setting off to return to the Big Rubble and found the city of New Pavis. Tarkalor's feud with the Kitori and his establishment of the Sun Domers just north of the Crossline, in Kitori territory, and his aid to the Volsaxi will have been seen as hostile. Several members of the house of Sartar were assassinated (by Lunars) in the Holy Country - Saraskos and his children in 1587, Terasarin's children at an unknown date (possibly 1603-1604). Temertain doesn't appear to have any surviving siblings or cousins, although it is likely that there were a few prior to the hunt for members of Sartar's family.

Talor ended the hostile mystics using his own mystical unity with Joy of the Heart, and the Arkati never bothered to expand into Fronela. It is possible that he stole some of their powers for his own (and his disciples'). Irensavalism was (and IMO still is) just one of several Hrestoli sects or subsects in and around Akem. In the West, that cleansing appears to have been done mostly by Halwal's efforts - only lands not cleansed by Halwal were drowned in the 1049/1050 cataclysms. The gods rising against the God Learners happened in Locsil. In Umathela, a mystic/gnostic and self-sacrificing sect played their part in ending the God Learners and their heroquester universities. Yes - there is a god of material order, and it stands opposed to attaining greater truths. Your point? Law was about devolution from Oneness. Expanding on these laws brought about lesser ordered and lesser magical conditions in the West. That's what Law (especially Zzabur's laws) achieved, and what Tomaris may have originally have preached against, making a spiritual exegesis out of Hrestol's experiences with the Brithini and the Vadeli. And yet that is what Malkion the Sacrifice achieved with the Fifth Action. Zzabur's interference with Fifth Action Malkion may be the Western version of the Unholy Trio myth, with Zzabur providing the moral evil component from his previous interactions with the Vadeli (and continuing in subsequent ones). The Jrusteli RuneQuest Sight appears to have been a product of a sorcerous reading of the Abiding Book, leading to extraordinary sorcerous power release in Umathela shortly after the revelation of the Abiding Book, and yet before Tanian's Victory. No direct Rashoranic involvement, yet another form of mystical insight able to release vast amounts of magic.

These appear to be just another variant of cherubim, not that different from the depicition of the two big ones in Solomon's Temple, probably catching up on the Kanaanite version of such protectors. Or she became better known as Rumplestiltskin in folk lore - the same unreasonable reaction to being found out.

Lodrilic/Veskarthan's volcanism inside Gloranthan earth is thoroughly different from our molten core "earth". The lava of Lodril and his children may all have their roots in a single, deep area of molten rock in the womb of Gata, from which Umath was fertilized and then gestated, but I think that they run upwards in veins (and possibly arteries) of molten rock. Lodril being who he is, that hot substance is likely to invade any cleft it can inside the body of Earth. enabling formation of igneous rocks and associated ore minerals in many places. That sounds very much like the winged serpent shape of Veskarthan's spear (form), the special javelin-sized arrow shot by atl-atls. Since you use the plural, possibly as some divine multimissile feat, possibly as a bunch of parallel veins (or arteries) shooting up.

I wonder when the green planet of the south (also a shade of bronze, after all) turned red, and I think it is upon contact with Umath (which may have scratched off all the patina off the planet). In other words, prior to Umath's invasion, there was no Shargash, but Alkor, the green god of the green city. That god went down and into the Underworld with Umath at the crash of Umath into the white pillar. That event triggered quite a lot of underworld experiences of deities of all kind - probably Eurmal's first visit to Subere and his initial meeting with Vivamort, or already Humakt's journey along with Eurmal, or both - each in a different cycle coinciding with the Umath+southern planet crash, with Humakt one of the parts ripped off Umath. Humath, Humat, Humct... There is a possibility that it was Humakt's kin severing that took Umath out of action in the Gods War. Alkor is a god of fertility, former (?) husband of Biselenslib, and (a) lord of the green city and its immediate environs. Shargash/Jagrekriand is the skinned version of that deity, reduced to cruelty, underworld affinity etc. Another of the four conspirators shown in Jar-eel's liberation sermon to Beatpot in Prince of Sartar would experience such a skinning in the final stages of the Gbaji Wars, being turned into even worse a demon than earlier (when not just being the other red planet of the Southpath). I wonder whether Black Entekos/KataMoripi/Enjata Mo was a southpath planet, too, and whether Chermata really was Lokarnos or rather the Twin Stars. That would group all the underworld-born planets on the Southpath, and the sky world-born ones on the Sunpath.

Entekosiad does provide the notion of Godtime being cyclical, unlike the linearized version of Plentonius describing Yelm's Sunstop, and the God Learners mistaking that state of stagnation as the extent of the Golden Age. Naveria and the Red King provides a model for cyclical male rulership during the likewise cyclical reigns of the White Queen mothering her successor self. If Plentonius is even only half right, then 60% of Yelm's reign (and more than 100% of Murharzarm's reign) occurred with conflict (aka Umath) present in the world. And that's just the cycle of Brighteye, unnaturally extended after usurping imperial power from the White Queen.

Serving Iron Mostali probably is the troll equivalent to fugu preparation.

That is a VERY minor association for Ernalda. She's the goddess of Life, Sex, Earth, and Women, long before stuff like weaving. Weavers worship her, just as farmers and herders worship Orlanth. Did I say that Ernalda is limited to this role? Maybe I should have left out the "or" in the brackets. Orane herself is not limited to the weaving, but also quite cognate to Orendana in name and role. While the loom house does produce textiles, it also serves as the female special council on all levels of Orlanthi organisation. But I do think that Ernalda is the source of all textile technology. No idea what the Mostali use for their equipment (it shouldn't be anything relying on growth, really, so both plant fibre or animal integument of any kind should be out), but I don't see them weaving. Interlinked chain - possibly as the "Panzerkette" style interlinked meshes - might be more their style. Not exactly chainmail, not textile, but normal "clothing". (Quicksilver dwarves still need something more airtight.) Textile weaving is a logical step ahead from weaving baskets or papyrus mats, a technology probably also available to Hsunchen. As may be net-making.

Ernalda (or/as Durev's wife Orane) really is the goddess for all kinds of textile work - spinning the threads, weaving them on the loom, sewing and embroidering the raw textiles into luscious garments.

Strangely, when I look at the flint mines on Bornholm or the great salt mines of Dürrnberg or Hallstatt, I find evidence of well-nourished and well-off miners, and none of starved and sick slaves, in the burials. That's Bronze Age and early Iron Age. True, about half of the contemporary burials were burnt rather than body graves, destroying much of the evidence anthropologists can read from bone remains, but the burnt burials usually had the richer grave goods, which should be a point against malnutrition and mistreatment of the mine workers. There have been found no mass graves of malnutritioned bodies deformed by hard mining work anywhere in Europe prior to way more modern times. From what I have seen, most mining was done into the walls of the tunnels rather than on the floors, following the (more or less skewed) veins of ore in the rock. Again, this isn't the type of job you put disposable untrained folk that you don't mind being crushed when the rock layer above gives, if simply for the economic reason that getting the tunnel near the ore veins was a big ante up in man-hours and material that you didn't want to lose to ineptitude. Hauling out fallen dead rock rather than ore was a loss to the miners at all times. There were jobs that did not require much expertise, like crewing the treadmills, pushing or pulling carts full of ore or rock, and similar duties. Those were done by whoever was available - often the wives and children of the miners, and their husbandry like dogs, goats, donkeys or ponies. All of which would get eaten at the end of their terms of serviceability. Hew first, sort later? Hauling up all that dead rock for uncertain amounts of ore doesn't sound like a winning strategy. Sure, you could use mining as a penal or death camp, and get some money out of that. I don't have any data on who implemented this, and where. Usually prisoners were not given instruments to dig tunnels, possibly for their escape. They may have been put into sun-less oubliettes for long times, possibly the rests of their lives, but normally confinement was a penalty only given to people you expected to be released at some future point of time, or people too popular (or too closely related) to execute right away. Do you have chronologies for these kinds of activities? Like I said, the archaeological record north of the Alps for the Bronze Age appears to indicate a different situation, and likewise the establishment of German miners in early modern Age Norway etc. Georg Agricola's treatise on mining doesn't mention slave work or intentured work force, but it shows children and all manner of draft beasts. I am aware of slaves worked to their death e.g. in the first US gold rush east of the Rocky Mountains which saw lots of Native Americans enslaved and dying in the gold mines on their territories, or by totalitarian regimes in the 20th and 21st centuries (like the current Coltan mines in bandit-controlled parts of central Africa). The Western Pacific Railroad used up Chinese workers in tunnel building at similarly appalling rates as did Nazi Germany use up prisoners of war or civilian deportees to build those underground factories for the futile weapons of revenge. My own experiences in the industry were mostly above ground, concerned with separating processing the mineral destined for sale from unusable material. As for the history of mining, I did read some Roman sources (mostly concerning water-ways, but involving tunnels anyway) and of course Georg Agricola, and a bit about the migration of German miners to virgin territories in the early Modern Age. From what I learned, the underground work required a companionship otherwise only found in squads and platoons in the military. It is hard to instill such a spirit in disposable slaves. Dorasar had to renew all those alliances and concessions won by Pavis seven centuries earlier. He had been a trainee of Sarotar, the most heroic of the descendants of Sartar (in the words of Tarkalor, a contender for that acclamation) during his adventures in Esrolia, and IMO earlier than that in Pavis after news of the Dragonewts Dream event breaking the troll seals on the Rubble. Given the education as builders all dynastic heirs of Sartar apparently had to undergo, he would have been more than qualified to convince the Flintnail cult to cooperate. Some heroquesting lessons from Belintar's Holy Country may have been in the mix, too, possibly even a Tournament of the Masters of Luck and Death with a good minor victory and no critical loss to the winner.

A bit weird. The genre cyberpunk is defined by "cyber" - i.e. more or less invasive human-technology interfaces - and punk - powerless rebellion against the establishment. It thrives on the effects that amoral powers have on the lives of the protagonists, and how the protagonists sidestep imposed limitations, breaking the rules (which may be law or just consumer licence). The Expanse offers a more modern dystopia for urban sprawls, with very few privileged people able to leave the planet (compared to the mass of planet-bound people). The portions of the books and the TV series playing on Earth are pretty spot on Cyberpunk in many of those regards, only the human-technology interface is the advanced smartphone rather than implants. The movie Blade Runner (specifically the dying monologue of the last surviving replicant) implies an amount of space travel equal to what the Expanse offers after the opening of the portals, without the protagonist ever having a remote chance to leave earth, and neither do any other humans. The UN habitats in the Expanse do offer "Basic", which may be a small cut above what Cyberpunk usually offers the hopeless, but it also offers hopelessness for those failing inside that system, or preferring to stay outside of it. To transcend the cyberpunk squalor of Earth Basic life, you need privilege. Every person outside of Earth's gravity well is privileged or descended from someone privileged in the past. Their current situation may have brought new and unforeseen difficulties and new forms of indenture and loss of privilege, but that reflects the Gold Rush equivalent of settling the Solar System. There is no real solution to the Cyberpunk dilemma other than "get privileged".

I don't doubt the immediate area being burnt while magic increases the fire, but I was talking about expanding the fire once that initial energy has been spent and a fire has been started. Heat transfer through an evaporating substance is quite tricky - I had a couple of dis-illusioning experiences with impact plasma of lasers on minerals. A well-fueled fire might dry out neighboring vegetation over time, but that creates a slow expansion of the fire. Sooner or later, the best heat a fire produces is a reddish-glowing piece of coal, which can explode away and drop into yet unburnt areas. You can test how well a fire spreads under such circumstances by taking a piece of burning charcoal or a hand-held gas burner and sear away the grass between the paving of your courtyard. Good luck getting a self-propagating fire there even in dry conditions.

No, pouring on liquid gold won't turn a green forest on fire instantly. Even if you manage to shock-dry a piece of green, living wood to catch flame, that flame will have to spend quite a lot of heat to dry the adjacent potential fuel, which then has to get evaporated, too, to feed the flame. Once the magical ignition is gone, the flame will propagate only as far as its heat can release fuel from the substrate, and that means to get rid of humidity first. Any evaporation will cool the flame, and without providing new fuel, the flame will quickly fade out. Glowing embers are similar. For a greater fire like currently in California, you need a prolonged period of drought that has pre-dried the available fuel. It is quite brown vegetation that is burning there, or if green, high on volatile organics that will promote fire and low on water content. The presence of fire entities like elementals may change that equation, otherwise it needs magic or innate ability to kindle the area again and again. In Gloranthan RQ, Oakfed is a greater spirit that can be summoned out of the bonfire and the well-aerated smithy. A fire like the one ravaging California is a full-blown Oakfed activity, an entity with blind hunger and a (random) will of its own.

Is Sky/Fire really about sharing secrets? I don't think so. Showing off privilege, yes, but sharing it? Lhankor Mhy is a consort of Light, and while his temples do share knowledge, they do so only for a hefty fee. Buserian and Irrippi Ontor work on pretty much the same premise.

except that seeing is fundamentally the sense of fire/light. Cats and owls simply make do with much less light than daytime "seers". Yelmalio has the ability as a spell, too.

Sky and Darkness, really, with Storm (for the mammal part) a distant third consideration. I was looking for blue sky entities, sky and water (other than Tanian). The Loper beasts obviously fit that bill, but what else?