Joerg

To be honest, part of my description in my first reply to this thread was based on my experiences in Nordland, specifically the Vestfjord beach of Steigen peninsula which has about a mile of lowland before a steep rise (lacking the upland plateau, but having more than its share of boulders and smaller rubble that must have fallen down some time after the last glaciation. Much of the geology of the Caledonian orogenesis which has shaped the Norwegian coastal range is completely wrong for Heortland, of course. The Heortland coast wasn't glacially shaped (odds are that significant parts of the uplands were, though, by smaller glaciers extending down from the Storm and Quivin mountains). Thryk the Ice Giant and his hollri friends in action. Chances are that the west-facing cliffs were initially cut out by the Blue Dragon River invading Kethaela (and later Dara Happa). The subsequent Thrinbarri struggles during the Flood may have pushed the cliff line back to the current position, or maybe one or a few of the assaults of Worcha did reach this far in. All of that was before the good relationship between Faralinthor and Esrola, if those God Learner maps are to be trusted (and I have reasons to doubt the veracity of the sequence of the watery invasions as shown in the Guide - remember that those maps are an in-world document compiled by the God Learners who had limited understanding of the region's pre-history). The bedrock of the entire region consists of layers of sedimentary rock (sandstone, chalk, dolomite) IMO formed when the Earth Cube still was submerged in the Seas, like world-scale mother of pearl. That would explain the fossils of marine organisms found e.g. in the caves of Snake Pipe Hollow. Interspersed with this are the volcanic and tectonic rises caused by the two mountain fathers, Larnste and Veskarthan. Veskarthan appears to have found rather variated types of rock deep down in the earth, with Shadow Plateau being a very "sour" (silica-rich) type of volcanic rock while other places like Quivin appear to be basic basalt (silica-poor). Larnste had mountain seeds and the force of his foot. Exactly where I come from. I added loess because of the huge dry glaciation of the Vingkotling Age with lots of wind-pushed small debris ending up further south. Lowland Tarsh and Saird are blessed by various thickness of loess soil, too. Earth and Storm pulling fertility from the hostile advance of Valind's Glacier. Yep. The estuaries are river gorges, possibly formed by meltoff from the local glaciation when those rivers were waking up mightily. The island of Jansholm may well be a lump of basalt, marble or other much harder rock that the Solthi failed to wash away that easily. For the Bullflood rapids not to have migrated further backwards within history, there must be a very calm stretch somewhere above those rapids where the detritus carried down from the Storm Mountains gets a chance to sediment. Real world examples for steady state waterfalls with very little erosion thanks to a sedimentation basin include the Niagara falls and the Rhine falls at Schaffhausen. Such a calm zone will of course have a mythical reason - a conflict between the bullflood and one of the local deities (likely a storm brother, or a son of the bull). Thanks for pointing that out. My next best real world parallel after the Vestfjord coast was the coast at Gibraltar when the last (pure) Neanderthals faded out in that region about 30,000 years ago.

Common usage of Clearwine by three of the original clans of the Colymar certainly makes more sense than exploding the size of the Ernaldori clan. The Ernaldori might still be the landlords, but the other clans may have some rights and title to parts of the oppidum. With this, it could also be possible to have tribal herds in summer pasture, with herders and herds from multiple clans forming up a herd and a herdguard to rival Praxian dimensions. It does take quite a bit of trust and/or very good marking of the beasts, but it would be a way to use the fringes of Prax more securely than with the forces of a clan alone. The three royal keeps built by Saronil for his sons south of the Creek might be such places, too. Certain industries might be shared by neighboring clans, too - e.g. permanent fish traps or game traps (for migrating herds of wild animals). Right of passage between disjunct portions of claimed territory may be long established, but feuds and vagaries may cause clans to re-negotiate these. KoDP has something similar for longer range raids, when a neutral clan in between may ask for a tribute for the raiding host to pass through.

If you want to facilitate such a marriage, sure, a formal adoption to another clan would be a possibility. In any event, the prospective couple should be from sufficiently distant bloodlines so that no trouble occurs. It ought to be feasible for the bride to join the bloodline of her maternal grandmother (assuming that her parents don't have an Esrolian marriage, in which case she might join the bloodline of the paternal grandfather). This would be a real bloodline, not just some adoption, and may take some negotiation (indebting the couple, their target bloodline, and their clan to the clan of that bloodline, or cancelling a debt owed to that clan - not a minor concession). There should be ways to divorce a clan (legally separating kinship) by joining a temple. Same thing again, one of the marriage partners comes to the target clan as a member of that temple, never mind that it is the birth clan. Then there is the chance of a holy marriage, as representants of the gods. Usually, these arrangements are short term and temporary, but there is no hard rule about how long such a temporary marriage can be extended, and it could be made basically open-ended. That might block any magic to be gained from that rite for the clan, however, so it shouldn't be made for a regular event. Heroquests allow a quester to attain a new identity, as you mentioned. A calamity like the Kings of Mercia lacking divine ancestry can be solved by heroquesting. Filial or ancestral recognition by a deity or hero is a common target for quests, and does generate a strong link to that entity. King Broyan proved his Vingkotling status through heroquesting, and inserted himself in the ancient royal lineage. Harmast Barefoot apparently did so accidentally on his initatory quest. Armed with such a new, heroic identity, a wedding with the clan makes magical sense and does provide a lasting benefit to the clan - all that is asked for from any such marriage contract. The downside is that once you have stepped on the hero's path, you will be drawn to it again and again. The upside for the clan is that they have a heroic problem-solver tied to the clan by multiple ties - even if the new identity is heroic, no one from the old bloodline will forget where the hero grew up. All we said above is that there is no conventional way to have to people from the same clan marrying one another. All of my suggestions solve this by altering one of the partners' kinship. If you want to introduce mild tragedy, you could have both prospective partners undergo such efforts without telling the other. The couple might end up applying for adoption to their birth clan.

"Shouldn't" doesn't indicate an active hunt against such documents, but these old WF issues were really low in distribution, have articles (reviews) on games nobody has seen in the wild for decades, and very little non WBRM Gloranthan material that hasn't been republished in either Chaosium's RQ Companion or Wyrm's Footprints. The originals are probably collectors' items beyond the means of ordinary gameers. I think there were about 12 pages or so of relevant WBRM counters and a few alternate combat resolution tables for the original game (which I studied only fleetingly, being quite content with the Corbett rules). I seem to recall that Keener Than was introduced in one of these issues, probably the one also featuring the first printing of "My History of the Black Horse Company" which mentions the character. Keener Than is part of the DP boardgame. I don't think that the Corbett rules were published anywhere prior to the re-release of WBRM as Dragon Pass by Chaosium. Those rules, and the gorgeous map with its William Church-style hex terrain inks on top of faction colors, are far more attractive than the old game. There is a variant of the rules on BoardGameGeek: https://boardgamegeek.com/filepage/88415/dragon-pass-complete-rules-revised and various other possibly useful files, too. I have a map and a unit roster for Shadows Dance, a half-game based on the map in RQ2 Trollpak (which scales to the DP map, and to the Griffin Mountain hexmap), but I don't have any scenarios or play experience. I did create a map using ASCII characters early in the days of needle printers reaching all the way from Gonn Orta's Pass to the Vent. With the Six Ages series, now one could create units for a game set in an interesting past on that map. I also discussed the mundane side of a Holy Country board (the promised "Mastes of Luck and Death" third instalment of the games that never happened) both in private with Stephen Martin (who had produced the conversion of Nomad Gods to the Corbett rules for Les Dieux Nomades) and publicly on the RQ-Daily and Glorantha Digest. All that hex map effort has of course been rendered moot by the hex grid offered in connection to the Guide maps if you scale them up accordingly and overlay them with a vector-graphic grid for better visibility (and possibly faction-tinted area overlays), but back in those days the 12 point printouts were nearly the same size as the DP hexes. Combining the games would mean to play events like the Battles of Moonbroth (1610, 1624) with some distinct goal, possibly playing the Pure Horse Folk battles with EWF assistance, Jaldon's Great Raid(s), or similar scenarios. Or to use DP and NG units to stage some battles in and around the Rubble on a purpose-made hexmap. Perhaps even a Cradle campaign, with unit sizes adapted to smaller scale conflicts. DP was my personal entryway to Glorantha, and it fit my faible for Celtic elements in roleplaying and fantasy, finding the continental Celts of the Noricum i(presumably ancestors of mine in the paternal line) again in the Orlanthi of Dragon Pass. Both my own major gameworlds developed during the first decade of my roleplaying had a heavy element of Celtic influences taken away from European geography and translated into my own late-migration/earliest feudal or Viking era settings on worlds with deep fantasy backgrounds. Lacking access to Cults of Prax or Cults of Terror, those settings compared well to what I could dig up on Glorantha during the pre-Renaissance RQ3 era. Even Trollpak encouraged me to expand my Viking period RQ3/BRP setting. Both these settings had distinctly non-European elements within close reach - alternate Mesoamericans, subcontinental jungles and deserts full of ruins, eastern-influenced cultures, and a take on a mammoth-breeding Siberian civilization strong in shamanism.

And what tells you that they don't want to fall onto the Heortland plateau then? Just curious. Shadow Plateau is the biggest eruption of Veskarthan in the region, IMO the one that created the Stone Wood. It is the ultimate wedding of skyfire to the deep earth as Veskarthan's feathered spear was thrust deep into the earth. I don't see anything intrinsically hostile here, not any more than at the Vent. Later on, Argan Argar wrestled with Veskarthan as he led his band of Uz up to the surface world. Argan Argar won, shore off the top of the phallic mountain with the spear, and made Veskarthan build a much more intricate structure, the Obsidian Palace. Afterwards, this became the birthplace of the Only Old One, first of the Kitori, the love child of surface Darkness and the fertile earth, and the future benevolent ruler of the region. There is only one thing that the Shadow Plateau defends against - the direct light from the sun high up in the sky. The shadows probably love it when the rain clouds join their effort. So what makes the Storm or Stormwalk Mountains, the chain from Sambari Pass to Bandori Valley, less of a rain magnet? The fight against Worcha is about the Trembling Shore, and may have left the cliffs marking the south of Prax and the Wastes, separating them from the belt of salt marshes extending almost all the way to Teshnos. That's a case of myth-appropriation (pun intended). Heler and Lorion/Engizi are distinct entities, and unlike Heler, Engizi never lost his roots in the Deep. I wonder whether Heler bears an enmity to the durulz - the reason for the war between the waters and the keets of Ganderland sounds pretty much like the separation of Heler from the Deep. The name is different, of course. Consulting Thunder Rebels, the major rainfall is brought by Ohorlanth. Heler is the somewhat unseasonable but agriculturally required Fire Season rain. A rainfall the Esrolian lowlands can easiliy do without, using irrigation. In other words, Heler's rains stop at the Vent and don't continue across Esrola's arms? Checking the maps starting at p.662 in the Guide, apart from Dark Season there is a constant "good wind" blowing in around the Vent up into the Marzeel Valley. Instead, we have Valind blizzards from the north. Storm Season has unpredictable storms from all directions, all bringing precipitation, except maybe the occasional Gagarth stuff clashing with the Quivin mountains. Easterly winds would be caused by the Urox storm, which will take over in the neighborhood to the Doldrums moving west in Earth Season. They may still drive clouds before them - clouds that got lost above the Wastes, and now get driven against the Storm Mountains. Not even the Oslir (the far end of the ancient primal river) can compare to the primal modern river. Malthin and Gorphing are fat, but tame and rather sluggish rivers, tapped for reservoirs and irrigation ditches along their length. They benefit more from the Mislari runoff than from western Caladraland, and not at all from eastern Caladraland around the Vent. Marzeel, Solthi, Bullflood and Minthos/Martof are agile rivers that have carved out the deep river gorges and widening estuaries of Heortland, both coming in from the Sea before Sky River Titan's fight with Korang the Slayer, and reversing their courses after that, but carrying out the stuff they carved towards the Deep even when they still were feeling their way up the Storm Mountains. If you want to say that they don't contribute much to the fertility of their land, that's probably true. I don't see them as any weaker than Sounder's River, though, and that's the river that keeps leeching away the chaotic regrowth of the Devil under the Block. Neither the Heortland rivers nor the Esrolian rivers were much of anything when Choralinthor was reduced to a puddle. Creek and Stream leapt down from the heavens when their brother had been wounded. The Creek may actually be fed by some clound split-off from the Skyfall in the Indigo Mountains, the Stream is rather far from Skyfall Lake. It may be related to the Chorms and have taken over its lower riverbed between modern Wilmskirk and the confluence now in the Upland Marsh. Last summer (when that description was more than apt and my lawn was a swamp) or this year (when the lawn had a mostly brown color)? I haven't spent that much time in Wales, but I am fairly familiar with rainfall in coastal Germany. Usually it isn't that wet in summer, moderately wet in spring, and shitty in late autumn and winter (which occasionally has snow rather than rain). Weather conditions in Sartar are warmer than what we get, though, judging from the dress we get for the Sartarites - possibly Provencal rather than Burgundy. Prax (when it isn't the Great Plains) probably resembles the Estremadura. Locally, the ditches may be used for draining the fields rather than irrigating them in the Heler summers. Caladraland never gets that dry, does it? The westerly winds that blow (not that strongly) towards the doldrums (which move across Magasta's Pool in Fire and Earth Season) are directly pushed towards the cliffs of northern Heortland in the maps on the pages 662-664. If the Gloranthan clouds resist rising up by dropping rain like they do in the real world, the cliff coast ought to be quite humid. Whether the fog forms is a different question, and also which fog. Huraya's Scarf of Mist is positive, while Iphara's murder fog is anything but positive. I wonder how much fog floating up from the water surface would be seen as a rebirth of Heler ('s children), and when such mist is regarded as fog, and when as low-hanging cloud. From wandering on Skye (the name meaning cloud-island), there is a difference to the thick stuff that crawled in on Lands End on my return (on bike) from that landmark (where I still had a nice view outward, and I wouldn't have wanted to miss that experience, either).

I would like to point out that a map projection like this doesn't really provided a size comparison as the higher reak world latitudes are effectively at a different scale than the lower ones. Glorantha doesn't suffer from that problem, but if you put the Genertela silhouette south of the US map, completely different size and distance comparisons would result.

There is always the outlet of retainership - you can become a companion of an important leader. I don't think that this kind of relationship is limited to warriors and tricksters, and Gringlestead actually shows us how even non-Heortlings like the Dostopikis family may become accepted members of the community. This relationship is a lot less stable than kinship, but while it lasts, the protection enjoyed by the retainer is functionally the same as clan membership. For me, the different role of the core family is what makes the real difference. The Heortlings are fairly likely to have patchwork families with those temporary marriages which may distrubute the offspring of an individual over several clans and bloodlines, in case of reciprocal temporary marriages even full siblings in the separate bloodlines of either parent. As a result, the child-parent relationship may not be with the birthing parent.

King of Dragon Pass allowed all of this during its gameplay, except transhumance and traditionally used upland (or plains) pasture. Both terrain conquests and clan splits could leave you with rather disjunct territory. Jointly formed villages/trading steads are a fairly new concept. There is no indication that this is something done on the tribal level, except perhaps for a place where tribal thanes move along with their immediate kin. With tribal membership a somewhat fluid institution, such centerd may be shrines or small temples used by more than one clan, or may be downgraded to an unremarkable single stead again.

I have never been anywhere near Monterey Bay or San Francisco, but from what I could google in images, I think I will continue to disagree. What I see from Point Reyes, maybe, although that too is more like a ridge reaching out to the sea shore, and not at all like a plateau. Where is the plateau above the cliffs? I still see the cliffs of Dover, but separated from the beach by a stretch of land as can be found on the Channel coast. Few if any rocky stretches of coast, instead beaches almost as far as you can look. When there is bedrock jutting out of the area, those are isolated, rounded heads of former volcanoes or rare ridges embedded in the mostly soft earth. Other seaside cliffs with plateaus above are e.g. the Cliffs of Mohare, or Helgoland. Both are way too red for my impression of Heortland, however. All of these cliffs lack the strip of coastal flats, but that's only a problem of current sea levels - 5000 years ago they had coastal plains. (Although Helgoland didn't have steep cliffs then, but was a rather large rocky landmass in the coastal plain.) Wetter than the Pacific coast north and south of San Francisco. Ok. Really? Too wet? I don't think so. Remember Bingista, the Good Wind? That would be a southerly or southwesterly wind from the confluence of the Rozgali and Solkathi currents coming in across the Rightarm Isles and rising against the Storm Mountains. People worship Heler not just where his arrival is guaranteed, but also where it is not that guaranteed and needs to be reinforced by sacrifice. IIRC someone placed a sacred place to Heler in the Heortland Plateau, in Storm Tribe. If I look at the clothing we are getting for the Sartarites who live six to eight degrees Celsius colder in the uplands (assuming the barometric height fomula is somehow reciprocated by a bundle of myths figuring Inora, the Middle Air pushing away the hot sky, etc.), and at the clothing (or lack thereof) suggested for the Rightarm Islanders who are more exposed to sea winds than anybody in the region, I don't see why the coastal strip of Heortland should be comparable to Viking or Baltic environments. Today must be the day that I argue weather patterns... The gap between Arrowmound and the Shadow Plateau is about 50 miles wide (along the Building Wall). The gap between the Backwind Marsh and the Storm Mountains is at least 80 miles wide, the plateau itself about 60 miles. Most of the western gap lies behind the rain barrier of the Caladraland chain, and especially its highest peak, the Vent. East of the Vent there are no significant elevations before you get to the Heortland cliff. A lot of the Dragon Pass rainfall is caused by the Skyfall and bits of it drifting off. The Gorphing and Malthin rivers are very low-lying, slow and wide rivers, not very alive, while the Marzeel, Solthi, Bullflood and Minthos/Martof rivers are fairly active rivers. While the catchment area for the Esrolian rivers is bigger, water retention in the area is much higher. The Storm Mountains offer snow melt which even feeds southeastern Prax and the Devil's Marsh reliably throughout the year - the Good Canal is in no way a seasonal waterway. I think that we can safely assume a healthy amount of rainfall in years of untampered weather. The drought encountered by Harmast Barefoot was caused by Lokamayadon chaining the Orlanth winds, a situation that has been named in the same breath as the Windstop. It affected Heortland and Esrolia around Nochet alike, from what I read of Greg's Harmast Saga chapters. Not quite the impression I get from the 924 travelogue of the land of the Hendriki, History of the Heortling Peoples p.62 (which also offers a quite verbose description of Leskos): A fast moving river, even if not really navigable for anything but river barges upwards of the rapids, and wide and deep enough for the Slontan turtle barges below it, doesn't indicate low rainfall to me. It rather reminds me of the conditions along the Norwegian coast. Likewise, Jansholm lies on a fortified island inside the Solthi River a fair bit inland of the estuary, again indicating a significant amount of water coming down from the Storm Hills. The brackish nature of the Syphon may of course be diluted by creeks draining into it, but given the extent of the Fish Road all the way to Backford, I would expect Triolini-friendly salt levels at least up to there. There is a possibility that the Syphon draws on the deeper, saltier underlayer of the bay rather than the surface waters which used to be dominated by the outflow of the Creekstream River, but nowadays are fed only by maybe a quarter of that amount still seeping through the Styx Grotto and whatever the Marzeel and Solthi contribute. The majority of the sweetwater overlay has moved to the Lyksos estuary since Belintar dug the New River. To be honest, I don't think that the Eternal Battle comes that close to the Storm Mountains very often, and the main Storm Bull Storm usually hovers around the ruins of Genert's Palace far out in the Wastes. The dry Urox winds also bring warm air, and that will cause thaws high up in the Storm Mountains, feeding the rivers, and Storm Season is fairly certain to replenish the snow cover up there. The Thunder Rebels seasonal storms cover Dragon Pass, and claim that the main rainfall brought by Ohorlanth comes in from the northwest. That humidity must have been picked up from far outside the Inner World, and carried high up through the Middle Air. The Heler Storms come in in Fire Season, with Earth Season being mostly dry. And that's where I suspect Bingista, the Good Wind that was suppressed by the Zistorites, to come in. The rain falling over Caladraland is rain not passing through the Building Wall gap. I figure that much of the Esrolian lowlands requires irrigation for much of the growing season, and that there are many reservoirs that get refilled by the seasonal rains on both sides of Sacred Time.

Given the proximity of arid steppe or outright desert and the riverine high civilizations in Mesopotamia, the proximity may have been a lot closer than you are stating here. I am fairly convinced that e.g. the Hyksos would have used steppe bows, and all my bets are off about the Yamna people. The yew self bows we are talking about were used continuously from the Ahrensburg reindeer hunters 9000 BC through the Vikings to the English at Crecy and Agincourt. The main technological advances were in the arrow tips. With the steppe bows, we seem assume that the Scythians, Sarmatians and the Huns used basically the same bows as the Seljuk and Ottoman Turks. The real question to me is, what does Joe Average have to sacrifice in terms of time and/or wealth accumulation to equip himself with such an item.

Spoken like a true Dara Happan or Rokari. Strangely, neither the Loskalmi nor the Lunars appear to worry much about these effects, they do embrace the alternative or meritocratic ways to rise to the top levels of society. Pre-Karolingian real world leaders had to prove their divine descent or nature in order to be accepted in their superior role. Gloranthan heroquesting offers exactly that kind of legitimation as a reward.

There shouldn't be any pdfs of those early issues. A couple of those units were included in the Dragon Pass boardgame using the combat resolution rules of Robert Corbett, which look a lot easier than the original combat resolution tables. I'll have to dig through my DP research notes (on paper) to give you an overview over the units covered. What combat resolution rules did you use?

While I subscribe to Ian's statement here, I will note that the oldest tribal map of Sartar I have seen used the White Bear and Red Moon hex map, assigned one clan per hex and drew outlines around continuous areas.

Fire in a library? What are you thinking?

Sure. But you might have to learn it outside of your library if the highest beards don't agree to teaching this even outside of the curriculum.

Or just a willingness to leave real world brain chemistry and the psychology created by that out of this thread.

Weather conditions influence quite a few magics available to Orlanth, Yelm(alio), Heler and others. It also is a significant modifier for travel, combat, climbing and other such activities. Dry spells (like the one recently suffered in northern Germany) often prompt heroes to undergo the Aroka Quest to banish Daga and bring back the rain.

A person strong in fertility has a healthy glow, which translates to secondary and tertiary features we associate with sexual attraction, like e.g. red lips. A person strong in death often will have a slightly cyanotic appearance, less full lips, and will wear scars with pride that a person strong in fertility may have healed away. Looking at the illustration, I can't help but wonder how the correlation between skin exposure and character advancement will continue...

The Orlanthi manage to balance this advantage with their notorious disunity. Even when they start some of the greatest projects in the history of Glorantha, like the God Project in Dorastor or the EWF, there are always die-hard dissidents willing to fight to the death and beyond to stop these from happening. Organisation beats individual prowess on the battlefield, and in the clash of cultures. Being able to recruit allies from the culture you're fighting (disunity) is a big plus, too, unless you ally to individuals like RW Arminius or Argrath.

Here are a few images to illustrate my text above. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischzaun#/media/File:Heringszaun_Kappeln2008.jpg The fish fence of Kappeln, in the Schlei "estuary" (the Schlei is a brackish fjord rather than a river, although a few small rivers or creeks drain into it.) Similar narrows can be found in a number of the estuaries of Heortland, making this a speciality of the local Pelaskite Orlanthi not found elsewhere around the Choralinthor Bay. The people inhabiting the tidal flats e.g. around the Vulari peninsula and the Rightarm and Leftarm archipelago might use fish gardens like this: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischzaun#/media/File:Fischgarten_Modell.jpg In case you think such constructs are too modern - there have been finds of Ertebølle (aka Køkkenmøddinger) mesolithic constructions similar to this in Denmark and Schleswig-Holstein, and those guys are a big influence on my idea of the Pelaskites, along with the separate fishing communities next to the cities that sprung up in the region, some of which still persist (like the Schleswig Holm, or the "city" of Arnis).

My assumption for Heortland landscapes (except for the Storm Mountain range) is generally based on Britain, with the Choralinthor coast something like the Channel coast (say Brighton or Penzance) below the Cliffs of Dover, the islands something like the Channel islands, and the uplands with bits of the Salisbury plain, east Anglia, and further up Yorkshire. Aberdeen or Edinburgh don't really figure much, although some of the dormant volcanism of the Edinburgh area may be quite appropriate the closer you come to the Leftarm Isles (geology-wise, not climate- or ecology-wise). All of which follows are facts about my Glorantha that have accumulated over the last 24 years or so working on and off in that region. The coast is quite verdant, even though the fluvial plain silt of the sea-level areas are covered by debris fallen off the cliffs and form a region of detritus with properties of karst. The grazing on the rubble isn’t really suited for cattle IMG, but is fine for sheep. Choralinthor bay is only brackish (thanks to the Skyfall) and extremely calm, but I don’t see much in the way of dominant reed areas between the Marzeel estuary and the Martof estuary. Tidal action is a slow rise of water level over an average of a little over three days (but can be as little as one day and as much as six days), or twice a week, with slow, long tides rising a little higher up that than quick and short ones, and a rather dramatic rush of water out through Troll Strait when the Blue Moon plummets down Magasta’s Pool, with about 1.5 meters (5’) between high and low tide. This means that the tidal area is a lot more predictable than tidal areas on our planet. Lack of wave action means that salt-tolerant plants will have colonized the mud. This, too, makes excellent grazing for sheep. Occasional pockets of quicksand make this less suitable for cattle, again, although weeds harvested here are welcome winter fodder and salt-lick replacement for nearby cattle. Coastal strips without any indication of tidal flats in the map have rather narrow bands of littoral area, but enough to attract water birds like oystercatchers. Above these bands, low dunes have formed, stabilized by beachgrass, wild roses, and heather, giving way to meadows, occasional marshy areas in depressions, and more heather where dunes have migrated inland. Trees tend to be rather short, and bent by the wind. Stunted pine, birch, hawthorne, willow, black alder dominate the strip closest to the coast, without any outright forested area, though some nigh impenetrable brush (impenetrability aided by blackberry vines, gorse, and rose thickets). Cattle pasture and arable land vie or the same strips of the best soil, limiting either (since you need cattle for plowing). Seafood and sheep each contribute as much to the diet of the inhabitants down there as do farming and cattle-herding combined. A few areas are well suited for cabbage farming, much of which is traded for grain from the plateau. The river estuary shore doesn’t have the dunes, although the debris fallen down from the cliffs still applies for the innermost band of land. The Leskos promontory and the Solthi estuary have the best farmland, whereas the Syphon estuary with its reversed flow doesn’t really profit from the fertile upland soil (which makes the middle Syphon valley rather rich in soil). Fluvial deposits add fatter tones to a moderate but significant layer of loess carried here from the glaciation of Peloria. The Minthos estuary has only a rather narrow strip of arable land inside the debris belt, mainly fluvial sediment and less loess. South of the Minthos area the Vulari peninsula is flanked by large areas of tidal plain. The dry lands are farmed, the wetlands serve as sheep pasture and gathering area for both sea-birds and the Pelaskites inhabiting the island sitting on the entrance to the Troll Straits. The eastern wetlands which receive tidal waters from the Rozgali rather than the brackish Choralinthor waters (the tidal inflow happens in the depths of Troll Strait, providing a mostly separate, more salty layer of water in the depths of Choralinthor covered by the brackish water fed by all the rivers). The cliffs themselves are colonized by cave-dwelling sea-birds like tern, puffins on narrower ledges and even some gannets, boobies (the birds, stop being adolescent) or (flying) auks on wider ones, but not enough to warrant collection of guano except in small quantities (for dyeing or tanning). The banks of the estuaries and the bays next to them are frequented by schools of herring which lay their eggs here in Sea Season. The coastal folk have built arrays of permanent fish-traps in passages where schools are likely to pass through, and fisherfolk from elsewhere join the local fisherfolk when these migrations occur. Out on the bay, mackerels, haddock and cod can be netted following these herring migrations. These riches come in too early in the year to promote huge colonies of sea-birds – even if they start laying their eggs in late Storm Season, by the time their young need the most food, the plenty has gone again. Scenes like the feeding frenzy on the migration of sardines of South Africa are more likely south of Genert’s Wastes. The chalky cliffs offer access to high quality flint, some of which is even traded (transported as ballast to Corflu, from where it is carried into Prax) where not domestically used, but Shadow Plateau obsidian is plentiful and dominates the market for mineral blades west of the plains of Prax. Bog iron exists, but not as a mineral/metal resource, rather as a nuisance for farming whetre it forms near impenetrable layers of rock in sandy soil. Some of this is quarried and used for architecture. In some places, this is washed out as ochre, which does get traded as pigment. Around Vizel, Esvulari have built up an industry from producing caustic lime from the debris falling off the cliffs, using charcoal shipped down the Martof and Minthos rivers from the Storm Mountain foothills. In Storm Season, Pelaskite beachcombers will be on the lookout for nuggets of seametal and pieces of amber that may have been washed ashore by storms on the southern shores, though not inside the Troll Strait.

Javelins suitable to be cast with an atlatl are basically over-long arrows, and are at least as hard to get right as arrows with regard to stiffness/flexibility. Thrown spears already vibrate strongly (just watch the spear toss in an athletics meet). Spear-like objects accelerated from their back are even worse in this regard. Operating a bow and fletching your own arrow requires specialized woodcarving skills like turnery, but also familiarity with the behavior of the missile in flight.Application of flight feathers will stabilized flight, as will selection of the tip weight. Arrow and javelin tips can be mass-produced, and a skilled flint knapper or a redsmith with a mold can save you time for producing quality. You will require "glue"to affix tip and fletching, like birch pitch and/or sinews. You'll be interested in learning to dovetail the point-side piece of shaft to the flight shaft. Arrows hitting hard surfaces often split in the wood. By dovetailing the part holding the tip onto the flight shaft, you have a good chance that the split won't affect the flight shaft, so you just replace the piece at the tip. You also mentioned coppiced wood for shafts. Very true. While you can shoot arrows produced from planks by turnery, those shafts split way more easily along the grain, and an arrow hitting a target will easily exert forces which can cause such a split. The Vingkotlings had special bushes to grow arrows - check the Berthestead entry on p.6 of History of the Heortling Peoples. This sounds like something acquired from the Aldryami, but considering that even the Vingkotlings have such a resource for arrows when they are one of the cultures not usually thought of as archers, you can expect cultures well known for archery to use such methods too, like Dara Happans, Impala riders, and of course elves.

Why? The effect may be a little stronger than predicted by general relativity, but photons are attracted by masses, and beyond the Chaosium deep down under Glorantha there is the infinite mass of the Void. Maybe the correct answer is similar to the Copenhagen school about collapsing wave fronts when the uncertainty arc intersects with the distant surface. I remember the discussions whether sight is the collection of light dispersed by objects, or a property of rays emerging from the observer's eye, augmented by light, that touch the objects in view. If you look at the Gods Wall, the rays of sight appear to emerge from the emperor's eyes and are dispersed over the four rows of attendants. The main criticism about this model is of course that the flight of an arrow or a javelin - either a manifestation of light - has the inverse curve, but then people may argue that both arrow and javelin are made of fuel rather than flame, while sight clearly is an effect of flame, not fuel. Or something like that, there might be phlogiston and ether involved, too.

Reading David’s sources on tanning I started to wonder what kind of containers or vats the praxians woud use. Skulls, possibly with treated interior, make good chalices and crucibles for preparing agents, if you get them in decent size. Herdman skulls not only have a good volume but also offer a good material for tanning, a win-win situation. Gourds or skin-clad vessels won’t last long exposed to the tanning agents, but they might last long enough. Holes in the ground are fine if you can line them with some material to make them watertight, like clay, dung or sludge that you let seep into pereable soil. I think that quite a few curing and tanning processes (and definitely some pof the processes producing the agents from raw ingredients) are supposed to be anaerobiic, requiring at least good water coverage, though ideally a seal against air. Other tanning processes I have seen applied involved open vats and people stirring the hides with paddles. I guess that dugout trees can make good vats, but we are discussing Prax, where such resources would be rare. Sitill, master tanners might have traded for earthware vats or barrels. (Some aspects of my daytime job taking samples or making measurements “in the field” aren’t too far from handling tanning agents under primitive conditions, which is what has me wondering about such things.) The source on making sheephorn bows has resting periods for the sinew-backed bows on the rack for a couple of weeks before they become usable. As far as I know, such resting or aging processes benefits from constant, con trolled conditions. That means taking such unfinished bows on the move will be detrimental to their performance. There were a couple of other steps which suggestlonger resting oeriods than the average stay of e herd in a place to me. I guess that the Praxians have two distinct qualities of bows or similarly complex items they produce – quick and dirty for short-lived replacements for broken stuff, or carefully and slowly for superior quality worthy of a khan or distinguished warrior. If I interpret David correctly, then a bow isn't something you buy, but something you work for, at least among the Praxians. That's certainly true for fletchery, but may well extend to all other arms and armor of the Praxians, and probably to a good deal of equipment used by the Orlanthi as well, when you don't go for highest quality. In that regard, how much time otherwise available for training does go into the making of a composite bow? Is the value in lunars (minus raw materials, unless you work for getting these, too) comparable to the training time that amount of lunars would buy you?

You're confusing that with Lokarnos, aren't you? Minting coins with somewhat constant weight isn't all that hard, and you will find that coins from a not even so narrow time of production will be rather even. Beating the obverse (and later the reverse) into the coin with dice is a process without any significant loss of material, so as long as your raws are cast somewhat evenly, you can use those coins as weights. Trust in coin traditionally was limited. The Scandinavian markets adapted to coins only after decades of contact with the Hanseatic League, and money changers made many a coin just by collecting foreign coin and translating it into locally accepted specie (and vice versa), for a fee, assaying the degree of valuable metal in the foreign coins and looking out for counterfeits. Now the Bronze Age trade didn't know coinage, that's one of the many Iron Age anachronisms in Glorantha. But there were other means of payment, like salary, the distribution of packets of salt, or somewhat standardized oxhide ingots of copper or tin. Or certain sea-shells cut to beads of a certain size, on strings. If you want to give weights, maybe karat (number of carob tree seeds) might have been the better way than troy ounces.