Joerg

That means that someone could pretty much short out a powerful Detect just by having someone in front with a 1 point Countermagic. I would amend that to the boosting MP being used up by each Countermagic effect they encounter (plus one if it is the spirit magic spell). Thus a Detect boosted with 4 MP will shatter two Countermagic 1 or overcome two points of shield or two castings of berserk, and still go on unboosted until encountering the next Countermagic effect of any size, then dissipate. That does of course mean that your comrades' Countermagic effects will be the first to encounter your Detect... or you send out your familiar to cast it from a more convenient advanced observer position. Next question about the nature of say Detect Enemies: Is this a spell targeting only enemies, or is this a spell that targets everone in range to decide whether they are enemies or not? I am in favor of radial distance. Detect as written is not a directional spell.

Also remember that Spirit Magic requires a focus. In HeroQuest terms, Spirit Magic is something you have, and you take that away from enslaved individuals. Tattooed foci will be defacedd, material foci removed from their possessions. Tattooed enchantments won't fare any better. The ultimate seal is probably a ritual where the slave is offered limited freedom in exchange for joining a slave cult, with POW donation etc., at least in societies like Fonrit, or taking a vow backed by punitive sorcery (which would be the Vadeli method). Orlanthi thraldom is probably less severe. Lunar prisoners of war are likely to receive slave bracelets and/or collars until dispatched to their future owner, who then will demand a punishment-backed oath to be relieved of those magical shackles.

King of Sartar (1992) marked the first new Glorantha publication by Greg after a hiatus of at least five years, with Elder Secrets probably being the last Glorantha project Greg had worked on earlier. From what I learned, it may have been an encounter at Conjunction 1990 that re-kindled Greg's interest in his world again. The God Learner monomyth was presented as suspect already with RQ3 Gods of Glorantha, and the Genertela Box provided us with a glimpse of the Teshnan pantheon which presented the Solar pantheon in quite different trappings, with somewhat recognizable similarities and quite deep differences at the same time. Solf and Dara Happan Lodril are about as different as Elmal and Yelmalio. You have to keep in mind that (like the Lord of the Rings' Middle Earth) the published parts of Glorantha was just the tip of the iceberg, with most of its lore a lot deeper and never published. That's what makes a fantasy setting appealing, the presence of lore beyond the mere words you are reading or being told. I think that the God Learners got their first mentions quite early. The story about the thirteen city states of Jrustela probably was written before Cults of Prax was published. The story about the Sword of Tolat and of Avalor carrying it back to Fronela appears to be about as old. Greg's huge set of transparent paper master maps for Glorantha include all of western and central Genertela up to the Shan Shan mountains. In Greg's stories, the Battle of Tanian's Victory and the rise of the Middle Sea Empire must have been present already when he published Nomad Gods, and possibly even before White Bear and Red Moon was published. The first part of the list of the Kings of Seshnela which details the history of the God Learners was attached to the copy of Hrestol's Saga, which would have been written before White Bear and Red Moon by a few years. The first public mention of the God Learners might be the designer's notes for Cults of Prax that Greg published as a reaction to MAR Barker's review of that supplement. You will find that in Cults Compendium (the Moon Design reprint of Cults of Prax, Cults of Terror and a number of cults published in Different Worlds) on p.330. Then there is the one (or originally maybe two) page essay on the God Learners from Wyrm's Footprints, reprinted in Wyrm's Footnotes, and they receive mention in the first instalment of the Gods and Goddesses of Glorantha series in the same magazine, mentioned in issue 5's part two of Gods and Goddesses of Glorantha. That predates the publication of Cults of Prax. That appears to be the reasoning that led to Elmal's discovery. Elmal appears to have inherited Hyalor from Yamsur, the sun god of Genert's Garden, as does Yelmalio with the Kuschile archery skill. The story of Beren the Rider as founder of the Berennethtelli appears in the background of Harmast Barefoot, whose Lightbringer's Quest is part of the Arkat Saga Greg drew upon when he created White Bear and Red Moon as the first professional Glorantha publication. Beren's deity or ancestor was Hyalor, which made him a Hyaloring. No idea whether that solar ancestry had been pursued much farther - the boat people all over the coasts of Glorantha were the Diroti, the folk of Diros the Boat Builder/Founder.

If cast on a target..." - I read that "If Shield is cast on a target...", and not "if Dispel Magic is cast on a target..." Sort of my point: if Countermagic is not stackable with Shield, then the Shield will dissipate the Countermagic. The stackable thing goes in first, and bottom. The non-stackable thing gets crushed.

Vingans can be chiefs, and to be honest, there is no problem with officiating for Orlanth whether your gender is male or vingan. But female or nandan Ernaldans can be chief, too, and so can any number of other cultists who are not eligible for officiating at regular Orlanth services. This means that the clan needs to have an established priest of Orlanth anyway. So basically, in a poor clan the chieftain is not elected, but pre-determined to be whoever is the priest? "Priest" including God Talkers, in this case. So the chief dies in battle, and the clan has no priest of Orlanth any more? For a marginal and poor clan, lets consider the Varmandi - a war clan, needing to raid to fend off starvation, with barely the minimum 500 people. No problem with that. Initiate, not God Talker. Let's take the small clan with a single God Talker of Orlanth who doubles as chief, dying in battle. His replacement is the Ernalda God Talker initiating to Orendana. The clan is left without a single God Talker to perform the sacrifices. Sure, any initiate can step up and try to serve in a role two sizes too big for him. I would demand initiation to Orlanth Dar with accepting the burden of Chieftainhood. But letting a mere initiate with a single rune point to Orlanth preside over the Storm rites of the clan, possibly without much of a runic affinity? Not happening in my Glorantha. The chief is automatically a god-talker for Orlanth (if not Orendana or Elmal Anatyr). But that doesn't make him the god-talker to Orlanth by choice.

I thought I would have to argue about it, but instead I'll just quote the rules from the Shield spell: (p.339) So, in other words, the sequence to stack Countermagic with Shield is cast Shield first, then add Countermagic. If the shield is too weak, the Countermagic prevents it from taking effect. If it is strong enough, the pre-existing Countermagic is gone. The other way around, the Countermagic needs to be one point stronger than twice the rune points in the Shield (not counting Extension). The description of the Countermagic spell, p.259 Normally, a single point of Countermagic will stop any two points of incoming magic, then dissipate. Theoretically that's a one rune point spell. However, if a one point rune spell takes 2 points of Countermagic, then the math is off. 2 points of Countermagic stop up to 3 points of incoming magic. Halve that... ok, in favor of the player character, that's 2 points. On an NPC, it takes 3 points, because of rounding down? And what if it is a friendly character protected thus, round up or round down? When facing Disrupts, or when given Healing? Ok, screw halving, let's just double the rune point again. A quadrupled rune point takes 3 points of Countermagic, and 2 of them even seven points. I don't think that's intended. So why exactly does it take two points of Countermagic to counter a single point rune spell?

This immediately casts the Making Gods essay, the first essay in the book following this introduction, as “wild speculations” and it should be read and evaluated against other sources and comments in this light. Take into consideration the nature of the other essays here. Forgetting Things and Vanstan's Ages of the World can be dated some time after the Battle of Heroes. I think that Hilliam was a Londario scribe, or a scribe in that temple of knowledge that Londario re-discovered. The only potential conflict is that the future count of Sun County accompanied Dorasar when he went to found New Pavis following the death of Sarotar, sent by Monrogh, from the Sun Dome temple at Vanntar. Apparently still in the reign of Saronil, which makes 1550 (or, with the alternate timeline in KoS, 1555) the latest date for Dorasar's project to be started. Troll Pak names encounters with Yelmalio, even in the context of the Tax Slaughter, and Balazar was a worshipper of Yelmalio when he prepared the way for his children to rule from their giant-built citadels. The Cult of Yelmalio in Cults of Prax describes the situation in Mo Baustra a few years after the Lunar conquest of Prax and Pavis. And the two boardgames have a total of four templar units and none of the horseman archers the fluff text talks about. That's the pre-1992 canon on the cult of Yelmalio. So mainly we get into a rush if we stick with the 1550 date for Dorasar receiving help from Monrogh. If any dates cause trouble, it is the Guide's 1579 date for the Sun Domers receiving Sun Dome County from King Tarkalor, although I find it a lot more likely that this was just the deed for the land, and that the fact had been established way earlier. The Guide also names 1560 for the liberation of Whitewall and the (final) victory over the Kitori. The first conquests for the Elmali in or near Vanntar must have predated that and the 1550 date. Also: where and for whom was this document composed. My guess is somewhere in the Far Place, or nearby. We get more detail about the Antesmia statue than about the extent of Saronil's reign. My guess: a Far Point clan. Possibly having some personal connection to Hilliam. When did Saronil have to muster his army? We know that he supported Palashee in 1538. Other than that, his reign appears to have been mainly peaceful. At a guess none beyond sharing their cult. According to the RQ-Con 1994 booklet, Monrogh had his vision when questioned by priests of Somash in Teshnos. Here's a short summary of Greg's text on (very) young Tarkalor's and Monrogh's travel across the Wastes by Nick Brooke (http://glorantha.temppeli.org/digest/gd3/1996.10/1562.html😞 Here's my speculative timeline for this. In 1539, the Dragonewts' Dream had opened the ancient seal on the Big Rubble, and given the heroic stature of Sartar's offspring already in very young years, I have little doubt that the sons and nephews of Saronil were among the first Heortlings who went there exploring and recovering artifacts, beaten only by intrepid Praxians. From throwaway comments in Dorasar's backstory, it looks like Dorasar was a youthful companion of his much older cousin Sarotar (probably not yet initiated, but being prepared for that), and it looks like Monrogh was among the companions of Tarkalor (who would have been rather recently initiated). I think it is likely that Tarkalor and Monrogh made a visit to the Sun Dome Temple at Mo Baustra, and that Tarkalor saw the depiction of an elephant there. Being eager to make a name for himself, he somehow convinced his companions to follow him across the Wastes to Teshnos. All of this was written in 1996, long before we learned of the 1250 Teshnan expedition into the Zola Fel Valley, where their colony lasted for a few generations. I have stated previously that I believe that a portion of those Teshnans found refuge among the farmers of Sun County, bringing some of their solar lore with them, and probably also that depiction of an elephant. (The alternative source for that depiction would have been the Rubble, brought there when Old Pavis was the best entrance to Dragon Pass for travelers wishing to avoid the conflicts in Kethaela.) Or was he troubled because the Sun Dome cult of the Provinces would have made his followers necessarily the subjects of the Emperor of Dara Happa (who also happened to be the Red Emperor)? As a companion of Tarkalor, odds are that he was not a great fan of the Lunar Empire. His dilemma may have been that while he wished to access all those nifty solar magics (including the superior training of the templars thanks to their exemption from agricultural duties), he needed a way to avoid Dara Happan overlordship. This actually doesn’t say anything about Elmal being a mask of Yelmalio. It indicates Monrogh brought a deity known among the elves and introduced him among humans. Sure this could be interpreted as Elmal is a mask of Yelmalio, and some other references point to that. But many other subsequent references indicate that it’s a new god “neither Yelm or Elmal.” This certainly doesn’t seem to give a definitive answer, even if we assume the scribe is reliable. I am wondering whether Monrogh managed to find out something about Yamsur. In the old Gods and Goddesses of Glorantha series, Hyalor (ancestor of Beren) is a follower of Yamsur, the sun god of Genert's Garden, and possibly the "Yelmalio" who turned away the approach of Gash and Gore twice. Unlike the Hill of Gold Yelmalio, Yamsur was slain by Chao at Earthfall, and is barely remembered. The description of this Yelmalio does fit Antirius, too. Somehow Monrogh managed to provide a Yelmalio with sufficiently imperial solar pedigree without necessitating submission to the Empire. Not that the Empire was an imminent threat when Monrogh converted the Elmali - Tarsh would be held by Saronil's foster brother Palashee until 1555. The Esrolian assassinations were a different threat. In this version of the story, it seems as if Yelmalio completely replaces Elmal as “the rest” of his worshipers joined the new cult. That's one way to read this. "the rest of the Elmal worshipers, all of whom wanted to join the new Sun religion." Not my interpretation, though. "The rest of those Elmal worshipers who wanted to join the new Sun religion" is how I would read this, leaving all the other Elmali back in their tribes - diminished in numbers, and probably importance, but still there. And "the first converts" does suggest that other converts followed, although that may be a nod towards the Far Place or the Praxian Sun Dome Temple that was taken over by Varthanis Brighthelm, with the Monrogh liturgy superseding previous practices more or less heavily influenced by Praxian and possibly Teshnan ways. Or only to those Elmal among these who had been sufficiently slighted by Saronil to refuse to follow his call to arms. Only Jarolar went to fortify Runegate with towers. Saronil did not, instead he built his belt of keeps named after his sons in a row east of Runegate. The discovery of Elmal sparked a fire and all the conflict that Monrogh's revelation was supposed to have repaired. The cult grew popular through Hero Wars and Heroquest, to the extent that its apparent disappearance now invokes reactions quite similar to those when it first surfaced. Lunar Tarsh, or Far Place Tarsh? Goldedge should already have had the Sairdite version. I take the 1579 date as the deed of independence to the Count rather than the acquisition of the lands. I am not entirely clear when and how the enslavement of the Ergeshi (former Kitori) in their human shape occurred, and how it is maintained, but I used that as a minor plot point for my pilgrimage scenario. Tarkalor's dates are somewhat problematic anyway. Terasarin is the older of Tarkalor's two sons, and has an adult son who marries a Far Place chieftainess. Saraskos has two at least young adult children when he dies trying to avenge his son in 1587, soon followed by his daughter trying to avenge father and brother. But Tarkalor's King of Dragon Pass marriage to the FHQ happens only in 1575, and Saraskos having two children with adult agency could not have happened within 12 years, unless another Illaro dynasty child prodigy stuff was going on. (As with Salinarg's children...) This means that Tarkalor had been a lover of the FHQ considerably earlier, possibly in the 1550ies or so already. Which might explain the delay between establishing Monrogh in Vanntar and liberating Whitewall (although some of that also is part of the Esrolian assasination conflict with Houses Norinel and Arkilia's suitors). I suspect that Tarkalor somehow joined the Night Jumpers while establishing Monrrogh, possibly around 1545. After Sarotar's death, he may have passed this secret on to his followers, enabling the assassinations of the Norinel queen and grandmother by homing in on their troll bodyguards. (In the Boardgame, the assassin units have the ability to "teleport" onto any stack on the board. Nightjumping or leaping down from a star would be a non-teleport way to show up anywhere unexpectedly. The presence of Sun Dome Temples predates the spread of Monrogh's synthesis. The surprise at the name Yelmalio is the one point where I am inclined to accept the caveat about the essay having been written in a scribe's study without consulting any field work or deeper research. This seems to indicate that the Lunars introduced the Yelmalio cult to Tarsh, but the timeline here again doesn’t seem to match up with the later sources about how Yelmalio was worshipped and when his worship came to Tarsh. Again, differing accounts make for a more complex and interesting fictional world, but it undermines the authority and accuracy of any one particular account. We know that there were quite a few Sun Dome temples active in the Provinces when Phargentes became Provincial Overseer in 1545. Phargentes died in 1579, so any "Imperial Lunar" activities towards the Yelmalio cult would have been handled by him. Phargentes doubled as King of (Lunar) Tarsh only in 1555, and it isn't clear whether the author would have referred to his activities as royal Tarshite or as Lunar.

Not exactly the shape of a seax, but here is a dagger from the Baltic region dating around the time of the collapse of the Mediterranean Bronze Age cultures: The blade is thin at the bottom and considerably thicker at the back. The accompanying explanation in German translates roughly thus: "Towards the end of the Stone Age, at the onset of the Bronze Age, the silex knappers successfully managed to reciprocate bronze daggers with flint (due to lack of available bronze). The result were the so-called fishtail daggers, mostly produced in northern Europe. Blade and handle made from a single piece of silex. The picture shows one such dagger (owned by a private collector from Cuxhaven, Germany). Even the seam from casting the bronze blade has been reproduced in the stone material. The dagger dates roughly into the supposed era of the Trojan War." Here is a blade from Norway with a more rounded back: https://digitaltmuseum.no/021026856692/flintdolk

That depends whether you casting Shield on yourself counts as an incoming spell or not. If Countermagic affects spells cast by yourself as well, do this in this sequence and you stand there without any kind of magical protection because the shield is negated by Countermagic, but the Countermagic is eliminated as well. If you can cast spells on yourself beneath that Countermagic, you're fine. Otherwise, cast the shield first, then a 4-point Countermagic 2 (because the Shield's Countermagic effect doesn't get destroyed when overcome. The spell description doesn't make an explicit exception for spells cast by yourself, so this is open to interpretation. Countermagic stacked total is 4. Even a 3-point spell would knock this down, and thus your two extra points go poof, only the shield effect remains. No effect on you, the spell gets countered before it could target a specific spell on you. 1 point of Dismiss boosted by 3 MP does the trick, as opposed to a 2 point Dispel Magic boosted with 4 MP. Dismiss 2 boosted with 1 MP will dismiss both Shield and Countermagic. Shield 1 stacked with Countermagic 4 would require 3 points of Dismiss without any boost because Countermagic works only at half strength against the already doubled points of the rune spell, so six incoming points vs.effectively four points of defense. Correct? Yes. Same for Berserk. Counter magic being only at half efficiency against rune spells is what worries me.

You're not alone with that. The Elmal/Yelmalio issue has been problematic for a while, after all the cult was strong in two of the three human settings published for RQ2 (Pavis/Rubble, Griffin Mountain), and the example character from the rules belonged to this cult. All of that is true. The impact of that document (and the listing of Elmal in the gods of the Orlanthi) was exacerbated by the almost contemporary and highly accaimed release of Sun County for RQ3, which re-iterated all the Yelmalio history from the Pavis Box and expanded on it. Due to the lack of Sartar/Orlanthi scenarios and background description until Hero Wars and Thunder Rebels, there was little opportunity to publish anything about Elmal. I would have to check whether Elmal was mentioned in the Riskland background in Dorastor - Land of Doom (Vinga was, weirdly, the other major upsetting revelation in KoS). Yes. King of Sartar returned to the origin of Glorantha - storytelling and weird exploration of myth and history. following heroic protagonists. At that time, two families of game systems existed for Gloantha - the RQ roleplaying game and the boardgames WBRM/Dragon Pass and Nomad Gods. I think it would be fairer to say that the roleplayer readers of the book had to grapple with the game systems. Greg's own grappling with game systems for Glorantha had gone into quite a different direction at that time, struggling with a concept for heroquesting which used elements of resource administration a few notches above what he had done for the Pendragon campaign game, and probably still leaning on the concepts that never made it into the game Masters of Luck and Death. Arcane Lore shows snippets of that game development. So, if KoS has to grapple with any game system, it would be with the heroquesting role-playing boardgame computer game Greg was struggling with. (After Hero Wars had come out, I had the chance to play in a game with Greg where he used reduced Hero Wars rules to simulate this combination of storytelling, resource management and heroic questing to great effect.) My impression of this document is rather that Greg wrote it for himself, to answer why it had taken him so long to recognize the need for a positively associated sun god for the hill barbarians. And unlike the RuneQuest community, Greg had been using local names and aspects of sun and storm deities forever. Ralian/Seshnelan Ehilm had been present as the test of Ehilm's Flames in the Lightbringers' Quest for as long as we have had that information, but Gods of Glorantha's Prosopaedia confusingly presented Ehilm only as a False God of the Westerners. My own discovery of Glorantha fell into this period. I had been playing RuneQuest 3rd edition for a couple of years, using a fantasy setting of my own inspired by the RQ3 Vikings box. A world that had a heroic/magical history/prehistory of ten thousand years of human (or humanoid) agency in a struggle of demigod beings much older than that, designed to make best use of all the inspirational creatures and cults delivered with that game system without taking them over directly. This means my first approach to Glorantha was that of a scavenger, although I had enjoyed the full panoply of Gloranthan weirdness in the Dragon Pass boardgame. Possibly with an Arkati ethos of approaching this world of myths with respect while taking its inspiration with me. My first encounter with the Vrok-Hawk riders of the sun-worshipping citadel in Votanki lands was through Griffin Island, not Griffin Mountain. I researched its pedigree through Uz Lore (Genertela Box had weirdly declared all the weath of Griffin Mountain as a blank land...), so I began the next hemicycle of putting Glorantha into and out of that setting in my research. The Griffin Island cult of Hilme for that citadel became a "many suns" revelation of my own. That is pretty simple to answer. The RuneQuest material we had on Sartar was extremely fragmentary. Genertela box offered a few paragraphs on the Varmandi clan in the Genertela Players' Book Sartarite "What my Father told me" - not the most representative of all the clans in Sartar. Apple Lane was our next best (and most misleading) glimpse into rural Sartar, just like the New Pavis material was our best glimpse into urban Sartar. King of Sartar presented the Orlanthi clan, their rites and lesser deities. It is only the second view at a typical Heortling clan. How could we have encountered Elmal in Pavis County or Gringlestead, or in the raider clan of the Varmandi? To me, King of Sartar also established clan level worship of Yelmalio in the "Tarshite"-speaking tribes of northern Sartar, including the Dinacoli. Now that's the big question. Monrogh Lantern was already established as a Yelmalio cult hero in Cults of Prax. The history of Pavis and Sun County makes it clear that Dorasar was accompanied by Sun Dome Templars, not Elmali. This gives us a very narrow window for the Elmal to Yelmalio conversion in Old Sartar. Fully subsumed in the places anything on that detail level had been published for. And yes, the insertion wasn't exactly perfect. Neither were the dates given for these events consistent. Nothing as bad as the CHDP mentions of Moirades after 1610, but the dates for the reigns of Jarolar, Jarosar and Tarkalor are a bit of "pick and choose your favorite". So yes, people - especially long time players of Yelmalian characters - felt like being tossed out into cold water. Here was Sun County, faithfully transporting all the RQ2 Yelmalio lore from the RQ2 rules examples, Cults of Prax and the Pavis box into the RQ3 era, with glorious scenarios and great local detail, and there was this trip into deeper story-telling. Elmal, the fire-owning horse and sun god of the Heortlings, and the loyal thane who kept guarding the stead in Orlanth's absence, refused to fade away. We can blame the third officially published game system for Glorantha, the King of Dragon Pass computer game, which helped popularize Elmal as part of the Heortling normal range of deities. Then came Thunder Rebels and Storm Tribe, approaching clan-based Heortlings for Hero Wars, and providing the Elmal canon that now is mourned. As far as I am concerned, all this Yelmalio stuff applies mainly to Sartar and to a lesser degree greater Tarsh. Neither the Elmali in the outback of Heortland nor Esrolia would have followed Monrogh en masse. And Yelmalio among the Praxian Beast Riders requires quite a bit of explanation or adaptation, too.

The cult of Dark (or Rex) is pretty much a cult with one initiate/priest with a clan or tribe as lay members. Given the gender-divided nature of the cults of Orlanth and Ernalda and the known (though not that common) case of female chiefs and kings, there can be no "if you are chief you are the clan priest of Orlanth" effect. As a result, I see the expressed need for a chief priest (or god talker) to Orlanth and to Ernalda besides the chief. There will be rites that demand the chief leading the sacrifice, and there will be rites demanding that the rite is led by the specialist priest, and there will be rites where some other quester will lead.

When metal became widely available. The same shape of the blade was present worked in flint deep into the Bronze Age, metal being a rare commodity in the region. In all directions? That strongly depends on the point of impact. I have seen flint blades (spear and arrow tips) with nicks from impacts on hard targets like bone when just the thin blade struck. Yes, any kind of glass - whether obsidian, opal, flint, or jade - has a tendency to break conchoidally, lacking the splittable layers of a crystal structure. This still allows the shape of the blade to account for mechanical stress, reducing the chance for breaking. In addition to knapping, heat treatment of the raw piece of mineral glass may provide additional tensile strength which may survive subsequent knapping. Do you know those glass bottles which you could use to hammer a nail into a piece of wood, which then will fall apart into a thousand shards if such a nail is dropped inside the bottle? Never under-estimate glasses. I surely struggled with them during work for my diploma thesis on silicates. Glorantha might know cast obsidian, with some control over cooling speeds, too. Given the magical associations, I would suggest Obsidian for spear tips rather than sword or axe blades. Klanth blade inlays are fine, though. Stormglass from lightning strikes is magically pre-destined to make sword blades. Dragonfire might even have produced glass with bronze metal backs in the Dragonkill, not by design, but by accident. A skilled knapper might be able to create a special weapon from such composite material.

What I meant to say, yes. If "priest" includes "Wind Lord", then maybe, although I can see both Storm Voice chief priest and Wind Lord first warrior defer to mere initiate politician/negotiator/poet etc, who may be initiate of another deity in addition to Orlanth, like Vasana's cousin Harmast. I don't see Vasana on the track to chieftainship, but I can see Harmast returning from the side of Argrath at some point and unhurriedly politely being given chieftainship a few years in the future, with the then chief quietly stepping down. The Red Cow chief at the beginning of the campaign is neither. Sure, there is Lunar occupation and suppression of the Cult of Orlanth going on, but still this cannot be entirely blamed to the Lunars. Yes, a chieftain is a form of a priest. Just not necessarily to either Orlanth or Ernalda. He is the guardian of the clan wyter, able to communicate directly. Chief and wyter play an instrumental role in managing the clan's portion of the magic of the worship services at any holy day celebrated by the clan, regardless which specialist priests officiates the rites of the deity celebrated.

A cottar is free to pack up and go elsewhere, the main difference towards a carl is what he will be tolerated to take along of the stead's wealth. Tenants are bound economically, given favors like cattle loans by their "landlords" of thane or carl rank. If they leave the clan, their most immediate kin will have to take on outstanding favor debts. They would have to leave barefoot, like Harmast. Reducing chieftainhood to clan priesthood is doing the clan structure a bit of a disservice, IMO. Yes, the clan chief is the priest of and single contact to the clan wyter, but that doesn't make him or her the chief sacrificer of his/her cult. Temple leaders are semi-hereditary (given the highly unfair advantage the priests' children get in observing rituals etc.), if only through marriage with equally privileged households in other clans in case of "wives".

In central Europe, these Fürstensitz central authorities appear quite lately, even though there must have been social and magical elites like the maker of the Nebra Disk long before. Settlement spacing of cultures like Unetice or Urnfield is very much like the Roman Iron Age barbaricum. You mean in the parts of the Danelaw settled by Norwegian settlers? Yes. Not that Angles or Jutes had been significantly more gregarious before they left the Cimbric peninsula, unless threatened by constant conflict. Without external threat, the first and second century AD saw lots of isolated steads or small groups of steads in Anglia. In the third and fourth century, few isolated steads remained active (according to the use of burial sites) while bigger centers accumulated much of the population. Grave goods give evidence through the wear on the weapons. The settlement distribution of Norwegian steads has remained relatively constant, if you allow for significant parts of more marginal farmland abandoned when the climate deteriorated, and reclaimed when it got milder again - at least in the Vesteraalen, on which I have data until the 17th century. Viking Age Norway and earlier did have King's seats - lots of them, and small ones - as small as Skrova (inland of the Lofoten) or nearby Steigen. Given the much harsher climate, communities had to stay smaller just to be able to make enough hay to get the lifestock through winter. Only the fishing communities around Vestfjord could make do with somewhat less land, and live by trading dried cod with the south, and even there the Halogalander steads were quite isolated. The coastal sami fisherfolk appear to have stuck together a bit more, relying on fishing and seasonal reindeer herds captured in permanent traps. Ottar, the trader visiting Alfred the Great of Wessex, probably only lacked divine descent to call himself a king, or he had given up on that submitting to Harald Finehair. Finehair's institution of hundreds that had to provide a ship for the royal fleet cannot have come out of nowhere, there must have been some small clan-like local organisation before, likely for a local thing or so. Travel between steads on boats was easier than overland travel, weather conditions permitting. Norwegian/Icelandic style settlement patterns require an absence of big armies and some alarm against Viking raiders. A shipload of raiders would still outnumber any number of defenders of a stead, which made fortifying these steads a luxury only chieftains (ship owners) could afford and crew. Retreat and ambush were the best bet to avoid significant loss to the raiders. Sartarite settlement patterns (to get back on topic) suggest a prevalence of fortified central settlements for a clan, with between 30 and 85% of the population living there, and in cases of temple sites like Clearwine, contingents of neighboring clansfolk, too. Looking at the Red Cow, about half of the clan population appears to inhabit the former giant hillfort, the rest spread out in steads and hamlets.

"Green glass" is a good description for jade. The Skyriver Titan descends to Dragon Pass myth is one of the very few somewhat positive Greater Darkness myths we have. Stone, brother of Mostal, had already died/fallen comatose when the Spike collapsed/imploded. Lorion/Engizi jumping down is nice for slaying Korang, but the real story is about Engizi not seeking to heal the wound in the sky but instead rushing onward to join Magasta in the struggle to encapsule the void left after the invading Chaos horde and the Celestial Court annihilated one another. Some remaining Storm god must have done the same above, and Darkness must have contributed from below, too, but first and foremost it was the Churner and the aid by almost all of the waters of the world whose ongoing struggle prevents that rift to expand again. Elsewhere, the world still got shattered and dissolved at the edges of the shards remaining, but without that feat, all of the world would have been sucked out into the Void, and end of story. Orlanth did manage to defeat the Sky/Middle Air invasion of Sky Terror before he set off on the Lightbringer's Quest. Reading the story in King of Sartar carefully, Korang's spear wasn't iron, but sharper than iron, able to cut through an adamantium helmet. Material like a horn of the devil or similar. It also was poisonous.

Not quite - the Humakti hunt undead on a regular basis, and the winter giants are ancient foes of many clans in the region. Unfortunately neither would be specifically vulnerable to stuff made from rock (or architecture) melted in the Dragonkill.

Farming density in Heortling communities will rarely go to the limits of plowable land. There will often be patches of clearings which could be expanded with some work, or less-than-optimal-but-far-from-hopeless pieces of land that can be claimed for plowland. Pasture is a lot less critical and can be good only a few inches above the bedrock. But brush or woodland on terrritory claimed by the clan is not unused. There are berries and even branches that get gathered, healing herbs etc. which grow in such company and shading, pasture for poultry or pigs, bed stuffing, additional winter fodder, refuge for game that can be hunted or spirits to be placated, etc. Most folk with carl status couldn't support themselves any better than any cottar individual, they just happen to live in a carl household that tills land with a plow. Cottars (like e.g. young Harmast Barefoot in the Hendriki chapters of the Ten Women Well Loved draft) also grow vegetables and similar foodstuff in their garden plots. Thanks to Harmast's lovemaking rain magics, his cabbages were always well watered even though the land suffered a severe drought under Palangio's regime.

Obsidian or flint make astonishingly good short swords. The terms "Saxon" is derived from the stone-blade knife-sword that had been used in the region for millennia. Living in the original settlement region of the saxons, the flintstone we find here is from marine sediments of silica microalgae opal, fused into the glassy consistence of flint mainly under high pressure but not too high temperatures (given the surviving chalk structures e.g. of the belemnite cephalopods whose characteristic fossils are locally known as "Donnerkeil" (thunder wedge). The blade is obviously not made for parrying or clubbing, but for slashing and impaling. Other than obsidian or flint, the blade might also be made from lightning glass - fused and glassed silicate where a lightning struck. Such a blade would be highly appropriate to transmit magical damage in addition to stabbing and slashing. Using obsidian might be a carrier for fire or heat magics. Marine flintstone might be good against Chaos if it carries similar searing powers like the Sounders or Syphon rivers that sear and leech away at the Chaos at their destinations. Then there is dragonglass - also widely available in the Pass region. A blade like this would likely be a weapon dedicated to fight special foes.

If that is canonical I must have missed that - Mastakos/Uleria is the special planet that doesn't enter the Underworld, with a stable 8 hour cycle. If Lightfore does this, too, he becomes indistinguishable with the sun in the day, wth highly variant speed near the solstices and constant speed at the equinoxes. The Guide doesn't suggest this, but it would be an acceptable interpretation of observable facts for worshippers of a Lightfore deity.

Vanntar certainly was a holy spot for the little sun which would be why Palangio the Iron Vrok established his garrison temple to Daysenerus there in the Bright Empire. With that inheritance, I am fairly convinced that the Yelmalio Tharkantus sun domers of Domanand spread there in time for the Kotor conflicts of the EWF. Note that the success of the Tax Revolt hinged on the trolkin abandoning their post because of the White Healers brought there by the Yemalians, which means that whatever became out of the Daysenerus cult after Palangio's demise played a role in the rise of Orlanthland. The introduction of Elmal in King of Sartar created a thread on the RQ Daily and hot debates on conventions when King of Sartar came out shortly after Sun County, and did ceate a similar schism in the Glorantha tribe. That was a time when many a "RQ2-grognard" (aka people who loved the setting since at least the early eighties and had been playing their beoved RQ2 characters probably without a break since then, and never bothered to switch over to all of the new-fangled RQ3 stuff, or who had grudgingly adapted their old characters to the new system) who did like RQ3 Sun County felt backstabbed and went on for other pastures. IIRC it was Martin Crim who created a list of overdone topics on the Daily. The top three were the Elmal/Yelmalio debate then (when we knew next to nothing about Elmal), the "sobjectivity" debate (objective vs. subjective universe), and the great moose debate when Europeans outed themselves as reading "elk" as Alces alces rather than as wapiti red deer. The latter one led at least to amusing silliness. The other two were connected, and led to some bitterness. Probably since long before the discovery of Elmal... When we started to learn about Elmal, there certainly had not been a temple to a second little sun god in Boldhome. Greg's Many Suns revelation (which he gave one of the keynote short essays on in the Baltimore RQ-Con booklet) makes it look like this happened in play or when writing a Tarkalor narrative that never has been seen by the fans. Unlike Greg who had lots of variant pantheons and deities in his earlier writings about Glorantha, with many names for the sun, people who had been "brought up" with Wyrm's Footnotes "Gods and Goddesses of Glorantha" and Cults of Prax/Terror were used to the Jrusteli Monomyth as a single piece of monolithic truth, and probably never thought about e.g. the Teshnan solar pantheon as anything different from the unwieldy Cult of Yelm which described a religion practiced by neither Pentans nor Dara Happans as written. RQG successfully presents Yelm the Sunhorse for the Grazer pure horse folk, without attempting to model the Dara Happan society under the same heading. Perhaps even more so when you can associate faces of people you met at conventions with people departing from their former community over the little suns schism. It is quite a pity that the reworked King of Sartar did not expand this little germ by an account of Tarkalor's journey to Teshnos. That has been my impression since when I first encountered the sons and daughters of Vingkot. The only thing I am unclear about is how these folk became shadowcat people rather than dog people. There are a few significant differences. One is apparent size in the sky - our moon happens to appear to have the same diameter as the sun. I suppose that that is true for the Red Moon outside of the Glowline, too. Another is that our moon does share the day sky with the sun when it is at its darkest, all the way to eclipsing the sun. This gives a much livelier "moon chases sun" experience than the diametrical opposite of the sun and Lightfore. I wonder if there are heroquests or myths about Lightfore's journey across the Underworld sky. Or for any other periodical body that leaves the sky, like Orlanth's Ring between its exit from Pole Star's gate and its re-entry at Stormgate. Celestial bodies are associated with many deities, and deities may be associated with more than one celestial body or location, too. The travels of Lightfore paint the stories of Yelm the Youth onto the sky with its formations. Apart from the star seers of Yuthuppa, few people can perceive the stars in the sky when the sun is up, which makes me wonder about the Starspill in the Copper Tablets. Elmal's celestial presence is the sun that travels the Sunpath, but many of the Yelmalian rites are day rites, too, and look at the one sun for their magical support. Neither cult is impotent in the night (unlike Yelm), but I don't think that either cult cares much about whether light from Lightfore touches down or not. Day rites take in power from the sun, in night rites the cultist is the sun in the dark and radiates the light himself.

Darkness was the space that formed (and expanded) upon separation from the Void, and used to be everywhere before the other elements formed within. The fiery glowing sky dome may have been the afterglow of the conquest of whatever went there before. There may have been a period when there was only light where light was pointed or carried (by chariot, riding, ....). An earlier sun may have been rotating and directional, like the Red Moon (only white or golden). There is much that has been forgotten about Sedenya. Do you know where I could read this? This encounter is in a sidebar of the Uz Lore book of Troll Pak, both RQ2 and RQ3, ZZ gets badly burned and decides that this is a foe, AA gets close enough to learn the secret that allowed him to chain Veskarthan, and XU decides that this is "friendship from afar". The original list of the eastern emperors was one of many as interesting as cryptical few-liners from the Jonstown Compendium in RuneQuest Companion for RQ2. Names like TarnGatHa appeared only with Revealed Mythologies in the Hero Wars era, which is also the first time I have seen Vith without the land moniker Vithela. A certain sky connection makes all manner of sense for the place which has the Gates of Dawn. On the whole, the better eplanation would be that the God Learners tried to understand Vith as Aether, which got them no further than the westernmost East Isles.7 One thing that keeps baffling me is the untouchable continent of Vithalash, empty of humans, keets or antigod races. Seems like a waste to me. Greg's original Pamaltela was similar, the land beyond the elf forests populated by bomonoi rather than humans. Maybe Vithela just never experienced someone like Sandy who placed his campaign there? Vith is half bright half dark, much like the observable sky within time. So is Sedenya, the turning sun, the one who didn't claim to be the all-seeing eye, but only the turning eye in the sky that holds the balance. Not even much need for mysticism in this perception of the pre-Yelm sky, really. That is a delicious conspiracy, although it, together with the idea of a Aetheric "coup" does paint the Sky-rune beings in a very conceited and poor light (no pun intended). I'm wondering if there's something more complex to it. Yelm was a Lodril? In the sense of the ground-walking good-for-nothing fire deity/mage, yes. Fond of mountains, too, although not a maker of mountains from his inner heat. Ehilm, son of Lodik. The static Golden Age with its Sunstop state was just the new status quo that resulted from Brightface's putsch.

Saxon inheritance laws which designate a single heir to take over the entire farm isn't that different from this. The individual holds the farm for his bloodline.

They weren't enemies of Saronil and Jarosar but an underprivileged minority in Sartar which expressed their displeasure by denying a call to arms. That's not open rebellion, or treason. That's not how I read this at all. The guys who followed Monrogh had no strife with those who remained - doctrine varies somewhat from temple to temple. These warriors were treated as second class Orlanthi, and Monrogh gave them a chance to be lords in their own light. Tarkalor was the one who made the disgruntled Elmali listen to Monrogh in the first place. If he could put up with those ritual challenges, everyone else ought to have been able to, too. Purely based on what has been published before, I truly don't see how you can call this a retcon. Once more we are arguing about details which may make less sense when approached differently, like the 2003/2004 debate about the location of the Balmyr (after their "tribal center" Halfort was put right in the middle of the then victorious Locaem and Kultain tribes). Problematic details, not a retcon.

You could put this into a single table. I also note that your tables lack the "your ancestor died of other causes" option.