Joerg

Maybe because all sky-related entities have fathers, even if there may be no mother. Argan Argar's cult in RQ2 Trollpak present him as first god of Darkness born on the surface to Xentha, who was among those who fled Hell when dead Yelm descended - possibly before he even reached Wonderhome. If AA was another parthenogenetic child of Nakala, we would be talking about ZZ, AA and XU as triplets. Instead, ZZ and XU are the manifestation of the original Twins with the Darkness rune. AA is a wisp of Darkness either losing his Cold in the curious spirits event or never inheriting it from his mother Xentha when manifesting on the surface. AA becomes something like Darkfore, the helpful Darkness entity roaming the surface world, helping peoples to survive. And possibly, like Lightfore, he collects other identities to become the one remaining guardian of his element.

Only one step away from the party returning with the still smoking boot of their friend who happened to coincide with the fireball tossed to the resurrector to do their stuff. Now imagine someone else with the other, likewise smoking boot doing the same with another resurrector, asking for six rune points to be spent, Heal Body and Resurrection. Suddenly that spirit combat with the spiritual part of that resurrectee becomes a tug-of-war...

Unrelated to Argan Argar, but another case of a deity looping into eras of Godtime "before" its birth is Mastakos. (Crossposting this from rpg.net) The myth of Orlanth descending to drink from the Well of Daliath would be connected to how the Spike implodes and both the Seas and a cone of air rush after to plug the rift in the world. I usually regard the implosion of the Spike as the start of the Greater Darkness, which puts a lot of the initial Chaos invasions in the Lesser Darkness aka Late Storm Age or Late Vingkotling Age. Despite that, we find Orlanth riding Mastakos' chariot happily during the post-Flood Storm Age while the Spike still stood strong. Likewise Magasta and Brastalos would only meet and unite in the plugging of the Void. Prior to that, Magasta pretty much hid in the Well of Daliath like this myth says Mastakos did - only when the Earth Cube broke into four shards, with the Doom Currents rushing into those breaks, did Magasta emerge and take priority before his siblings Manthi and Natea. Brastalos had been there since Umath made way for the world storm, she is the eye of the Hurricane which moves around from the center of the Surface World (where she was born) far out into the West in her annual cycle, bringing Outer World storm strength upon the East Isles. Her westernmost passage seems to be out on Sramak's River. That would have given her occasion to meet Lorion, Magasta's nephew. Mastakos is hardly the only deity whose myths loop willy-nilly through the Ages. His story is that of the charioteer acquired by Orlanth when he underwent the trial of the Baths of Nelat and took a drink from the Well of Daliath. And this story is strong enough that the archetypical charioteer of Orlanth in other stories is identified with this child of Magasta and Brastalos. When Orlanth had an archetypical Movement Deity as his charioteer during his exploits in Ages of the Godtime that still had the Spike, there is a possibility that whom we don't mention might be another, more important deity, who happens to be Orlanth's maternal grandfather - Larnste, the celestial court god of Movement and Change, including shapechanging, and likely not recognizable as that deity. King of Sartar lists Uleria as the only Celestial Court Power deity who survived the Destruction of the Spike, but speculates about Larnste also having escaped that cataclysm by changing himself into someone or something else. And after the Spike imploded, Orlanth follows the path of Brastalos (the core of the World Storm which he inherited from Umath), and finds his Cousin/Nephew at the bottom of that well. We certainly have the place and the opportunity, and a correlated Godtime event is as good as we get for time. Why is this a dumb theory? Because it argues from wishing to find a logical sequence in any of this Godtime stuff, which I keep telling myself is possible if you say good-bye to one-on-one identifications of the masks a deity archetype wears in the myths (often played by a mortal wearing a corresponding mask in the holy passion plays about that myth that we call This World Heroquests). I have a visualization of Godtime stories as looping lines around a central Spike, following the trail of a single protagonist with a general progress from Creation to the end of the Greater Darkness, although the trail may go up and down a couple of times while surrounding the central Spike. These lines enter the realms of Events, which may be simplified as separate story lines intersecting or joining in an archetypical story. That would be a story with an architecture told again and again with different protagonists and antagonists, with some stories even acknowledging an "earlier" form. Stories told by humans to humans only need to have enough internal consistence for that one story to steer around its major plotholes, it doesn't have to conform with all other stories about that protagonist and her companions that are around to be capital t Truth by simile. Myths are there to give a good story explaining why the world is as it is, or how it changed from a world we know that was into what came after. So we have the disappearance of the embodiment of order, purpose and fixed shape in the center of the world, the Spike, and the two fluid elements of the surface world rusing into that void. The result is the marriage of the Eye of the Storm with the Whirlpool that becomes the Homeward Ocean, and an unprecedented access for Storm to the deepest and secret parts of the seas. That access comes with some cost and trials - whether in the myth about Orlanth retrieving Mastakos only by suffering the searing Baths of Nelat, or in the studies in self-discipline aka Perfect Stillness Kahar has to undergo to become a viable suitor for Harantara. And we have the archetype of the charioteer with the movement rune. We get Ronance the Earth Charioteer, we get Lightfore the charioteer of the true, inaccessible sun, an entity of unlimited movement until the Bridling of Kargzant event, we get the storm charioteer Varnaval with his chariot drawn by ordeeds, and now we find a water deity with a wheeled chariot drawn by sheep in the depths of the ocean. Wheels. In the churning depths of the oceans. Sure, where else? Or we might have the Mover and Changer, giving his translocation to the various environments, required to entrap the Void replacing the Spike by giving Magasta's Pool that rotational energy, but now released back into the crumbling world to enable other movement, like the (highly necessary) Westfaring. Where we have an annual re-enactment of the Westfaring by the movement of the Doldrums in the weather patterns of the world. Brastalos being in two places at once, the doldrums and that column of air going down into Magasta's Whirlpool. Different angles to look at these stories.

Congealed Shadow, from the Dehori shape-shifting of the Nightcult shapes? Perhaps trapped inside some stuff from the Calada&Aurelion cult, and/or the Gemborg Mostali? Might be an alternative to the Iron Sword left piercing the Only Old One that the Shadow Plateau trolls would shower with Cure Iron Burn magic between the annual visits of Belintar who would shove the sword back. I don't think that the destruction of the Obsidian Palace included the demise of the Only Old One.

Funny that: One of my more recent ideas for adventuring in the County of the Isles is the discovery and either underwater looting or salvaging of a Slontan fire-turtle-galley that (was) sunk during the approach to or after the attack on Durengard. Especially the fire-spouting apparatus will be of great interest not just to the dwarves. Less specificly, such a wreck might be found in the waters of the Poison Shore, too, if you don't want to leave Caladraland.

Apparently Fazzur hired the Wolf Pirates using Corflu as the staging ground. The "marines" forces may have included the same dragonewts we meet two years later on the Cradle.

Porting over from Axe Hall, where this blabbering has no relevance at all: mfbrandi and I were discussing the Obsidian Palace prior to 1318, and further down some ideas about Argan Argar. My current image of the Obsidian Palace is one of capillary glass tubes around the hollow of a central tube which has a spiral stairwell (possibly inside a spiralling tube of its own) with bubble-like chambers, opening out to balconies etc., at least for the first kilometers up. There is no lift for cargo or personnel, either you climb the stairwell, or you fly up on the outside, with the balconies as roosts. Darkness is not exactly known to be friendly to birds, while Lodril as Veskarthan is symbolized by a feathered serpent (or atlatl javelin), indicating quite some affinity to feathered life-forms. Which makes me wonder what kind of birds would roost on the flanks of the Shadow Plateau, and formerly on the outside of the spire? Xentha is a goddess of the sky, and may well have an affinity to birds of the night - owls, nightingales, ... maybe kiwis. And to bats. The Palace could have been a hang-out for pteranodons. Twiceborn fits somewhat. We never quite learn which sky god (if any) might be Argan Argar's father. His cult write-up tells us he was born (he took on substance other than Darkness) on the arrival at the surface. My best guess is that he remained a bodiless spirit and then took on his divine body walking the Surface World in the womb of Xentha. Which brings up questions about Xentha. It is no secret that the sky dome and the bowl of Darkness below meet at the edge of the world, somewhere around or in Sramak's River. There is an Underworld Sky which shows its firmament during the period of the greatest tilt of the Sky Dome, in the low northern sky (between the Gates of Dusk and Dawn) during the long winter nights, meaning that we get to see almost two thirds of the rim stars. That is a realm of Darkness, and gets visible only at night, but the stars there still shed light. (And then there's One Night Wish.) Xentha's realm extends all the way to Pole Star, except maybe for the hole where the tip of the Spike pierced the Dome, used as exit by the RIng of Orlanth aka the Sky Bear. Entekosiad has a passage about the White Empress that suggests that before the Sunstop of Brighteye Yelm there may have been a period of a rotating white and dark sun, Sedenya the Turner. If so, Xentha may already have been in the sky before the Brighteye usurpation. I'll stick to the elemental sequence in the self-construction of Mostal the clockwork snowball globe. First a bowl of Darkness around the base of the Spike (which may well have preceded the Darkness), then filled with (possible ever increasing) water (emitted by the Chaosium, quite possibly spilling out over the rim, creating a disk of water surface around the bowl from angular momentum, into infinity), then a cubic pearl manifesting as Creation from the Chaosium accretes the solid inside the water, slowly pushing up the Spike until it breaks free of the surface of the sea - quite likely leaving some sheer vertical walls to the sides above the sea, too - and then the Underworld Sky inside the Darkness bowl built up by tin mostali to complete the set of upper shells, pivoting on the tip of the Spike. With these done and arranged, Mostal had finished creating himself and his metal-caste helpers. Affix a golden source of light in the upper Sky (or three?), and enjoy. But wait, one of those lights is sent diving down into the Earth, and just 30,000 completions of sets of 294 rotation (or however many days a year had before the Sunstop) of the inner dome (with some precession caught up, so actually one more or less) a new element surfaces, pushing the upper dome of its pivot (but still allowing it to revolve) and the earth cube down into the waters so that water can creep back up on the corners. The Mostali then construct 4 columns in the cardinals of the world to keep the elevated dome from tilting, and for another 40,000 sets of such circles the slightly damaged Mostal remains semi-functional. The sky is plasma if you want to assign the states of matter to the middle four of the Gloranthan elements. Darkness would be space (possibly a combination of Dark Energy and Dark Matter?), and Moon... possibly vacuum plasma emissions or Bose-Einstein state matter interference? Bah, as irrelevant as the idea of super-critical fluids when liquid and gaseous states become indistinguishable. Yelm doesn't have to be the first sun. Plentonius posits a quite enormous Age of Aether before that of Yelm in Glorious ReAscent. Sedenya the turning sun (not yet moon) is mentioned, might be his precursor on top of the Spike, a roving searchlight allowing for Darkness up there, so we get both a sun and a not-sun. And Xentha could be a super-conductive plasma absorbing all light emanating from Aether, or simply a light-bending space. The three curious spirits linger around the Chaosium when they encounter Aether in the preparation stage. ZZ becomes burnt (pre-empting the burning of Wonderhome, becoming the Dark Troll (burnt troll) prototype) but learns that Fire can be stolen, or more likely already steals it but becomes unable to use it until Lightfore unlocks it, AA gains immunity to Heat and Lowfires (giving up Cold?) which allows him to wrestle Lodril, XU gains insight. The Dismemberment of Yelm doesn't make the Surface World fall into Darkness immediately, yet it gives way for Xentha to protect the fleeing trolls. The God Learner overviews of how the world looks in the Mythical Maps section fail to account for Xentha until way too late.

Lots of pipes, activity like in a coffee machine with steam bubbles pushing liquids up in some of these, and drainage pipes downward. Argan Argar is the son of Xentha, the Night goddess (a sky entity), and the Obsidian Palace used to be a stairway into her realm until Yelm smashed the top bit at the Dawn.

IIRC, the coders were on the excavation site at Feroda when the Cradle showed up, bringing their wyverns to the final battle at Corflu. HQ Pavis GTA has a test run for the wedding as one of its special encounters (p.266f) as of 1621. It should happen before the WIndstop, or after the flooding (i.e. after Earth Season 1622) as the Windstop is not the time to conduct that kind of festival. Add one to both year numbers: Dark/Death/Wind 1621 to Earth/Disorder/Clay 1622, nearly 32 weeks. When it ends, the cataclysmic flooding of the Zola Fel follows. With the water (and probably wells and cisterns) contaminated, a plague might follow. There are a lot fewer pirates around between the end of the Cradle scenario 1621 and the Battle of Pennel Ford 1624 due to Harrek taking most of the Wolf Pirate ships on his circumnavigation. That doesn't mean none, but Argrath will lead his Wolf Pirate followers in an assault on Corflu after Harrek's debauchery in Nochet comes to a zenith. You should definitely check out this thread:

I'm a chemist IRL and have thus some ideas about what tar is - a mixture of hydrocarbons and other stuff soluble in such such as waxes and resins, solidifying at or below room temperature (depending on the actual composition) but a sticky liquid when moderately heated. Pitch (which can be distilled or cooked from both fossile carbon and from trees or tree bark) is a purified form of tar. The most famous tar pit in our world would probably be the La Brea tarpits in LA, which gives a quite high probability that something like that is what Greg envisioned when he put it there. This does leave the question why the stairwell from the Underworld to the top of the 1000 meter high plateau would now be plugged by such a substance, at least for the upper portion above sea level. Where does it come from? Was there this much wood and other material inside the Obsidian Palace above the ground that it got heated in the collapse, and then seeping in? The collapse of a black glass spire surpassing Kero Fin in height (the stairwell providing access to the Night Sky before the Dawn) would have shaken the land for quite a while. Waves upon waves of broken sections of the spire would crash onto its basement, pulverizing or even evaporating. 1318 must have become a cold year, with lots of dust lingering in the atmosphere, almost a repeat of the creation of the Stone Wood on the outlet of the Footprint. The entire plateau is likely to be riddled with caverns and tunnels. According to one source the Plateau was erected (or worked on) by Panaxles the Architect, a Silver Age hero. While I have little trouble to see a demigod like him erecting cyclopean city walls with the aid of dwarven constructs or giant workcrews, piling up a kilometer high mesa is something else, so I choose to read this that Panaxles worked on the interior and the access to the interior. (This may have included the tunnels that led below the site of Lylket, and the hidden gate to the underground port opening to the Choralinthor Bay, with great gates camouflaged as sheer rock walls.) Clouds of dust and molten obsidian droplets and later tar will have seeped into the non-collapsed tunnels around the impact site. What used to be the hub for connecting the various caverns now was one big and irrepairable obstacle (although I can imagine that Shadow Plateau food trollkin have been engaged in clearing the aftermath for the last centuries, gnawing and munching their way through the debris). There may be more tasty bits among this debris than there are on the surface of the plateau, making the trollkin population up there quite likely the most rebellious lot (or in other words, an infestation with only caloric value). We often tend to underestimate Godtime civilizations in Glorantha. The Feldichi artifacts found by the Second Council were the result of sufficiently advanced magic (as per the inversion of Clarke's theorem) and gave them access to incredible alchemy and magic. The edifice built by the chained Veskarthan/Lodril may have been advanced beyond our expectations, too, with not just filigrane and almost free-hanging spiral stairways to the sky, but also with balconies and floors with applications that would be filled through pipes driven by captured geysirs. There might have been a permanent coffee-machine hum in the palace from bubbles of gas pushing up columns of liquid in endless pipes. There may have been a heating and coolant system with Earthblood or brine. A bitch to repair when compromised, unless you had a ready resource of pitch to patch things up, so maybe that's how we get our tar.

That's correct. While the spire stood, it left most of the area of the plateau open. The spire of the Obsidian Palace reached all the way to the Sky Dome, but at the Dawn Yelm's passing collapsed the top floors. Plenty of material left for Belintar to bring down and pulverize 1318 years later. The origin of the tar still is a bit of a puzzle to me. It is not a substance I would associate with obsidian, or with a glass tower being shattered. I also wonder who would have used the upper stories in the Middle Air. The shadows above the plateau did not need it as they are still in place. Maybe it was just the stairwell for the Only Old One to be able to reach his grandmother Xentha. The Uz would mostly live in the kilometer-high stump of the plateau or below it, using mushroom farms acting as autotrophs while being fed and watered with volcanic spring liquid. Thinking of the stuff emerging from underwater Black Smokers and how that supports ecosystems of its own. It would have been like the collapses at 9/11, but with kilometer after kilometer rushing down and getting pulverized, and probably even melting and evaporating from the impact heat or releasing the heat that served to raise it up in the first place. It is remarkable that the spire did not topple and fall - if it had, remaining in one piece, it could have splashed across Magasta's Pool and almost to Pamaltela.

P.81 CoRQ2, I stumbled across this line following the WIR tbread on rpg.net,

For a moment, this had me think of the child of Arachne Solara as having a clockwork interior consisting of rimless wheel coins on pivots...

Sounds to me like we can read it almost uncoded in the Abiding Book, and with examples (the lineages of witnesses).

I agree - myths as shared between Gloranthans are re-tellings of a collection of personal experiences of interactions with said archetypes (deities, events, meaningful places...) which are real in Godtime but may be perceived differently depending on context, and often on personal previous encounters (having a heroquesting nemesis). The Monomyth presentation of Godtime has returned, the multitude of names has been dialed back a bit. That makes such statements about Nontraya/Vivamort possible again, creating a smaller web of entity-to-entity relationships (while still upholding the Shakespearian comedy of errors schtick that a boy in drag playing a girl in drag is unrecognizable to a character familiar with the boy in drag girl without camouflage). Daka Fal gets a much shorter stick than Flamal, a fellow Form Rune victim of Death. He is one of the Erasanchula (original rune source entities), but due to receiving Death has lost his Infinity. Oh yeah, DF gets to send Yelm into his ashen bed every night. Adding nanny duties with a petulant child to the abandonment in the Underworld. 🙂 GM found fulfilment with Uleria/TIlnta/Yothbedta in life, and is barred from that forever. Lets have a little sympathy for the Underworld clerk. All the Earth goddesses have shampoo days when they go to sleep rather than passing his throne. Kahar got the beautiful dragon woman just for sitting still, something DF is renowned for (usually depicted on his throne). Grandparent Mortal is Persephone abandoned.

And I would have been fine with an Axis Mundi popping up in the family hearth, with his spirit giving instructions how to establish this kind of connection from here onward, and how to deal with those decaying uncles and aunts that wouldn't leave. GM explicitely entered the Underworld, marking the path for Yelm, and then receiving first Yelm and later on more and more dead deities, such as Flamal, and countless mortals who behaved after receiving death. It was Nontraya (Vivamort) who led the rebellion of the dead. It was Nontraya's arrival in Prax that caused Tada to hide Eiritha beneath her hills. It was Nontraya who sent Ernalda into the "She Is Not Dead She Is Sleeping" burial. It was Nontraya who encountered Wakboth, and paid with his soul for continued existence, becoming Vivamort. Gagarth took over a sizable portion of Nontraya's dead for his Wild Hunt. Stlll, "Walking the World" has something shambling about it that "appears" doesn't necessarily connotate. It also makes his efforts a serial task rather than a divine act ab principio, similar to the Lightbringer missionaries who took two centuries before everyone they met had realized that the Dawn had happened. The Philosophers know Malkion the Sacrifice. From how the cult is written up, he received his appointment as Judge of the Dead from the gods when everyone else went on their merry way to the Gates of Dawn. And that without any hope for a Persephone to offer him company, due to the bloody Compromise. He might have welcomed Teelo Estara hoping that she might be it.

Yes - well aware of that practice, which is another support for my idea of grazing areas that regularly get flooded by largely waveless higher tides.

Pamalt (and his coterie of gods from his necklace) created the Agitorani from clay and other ingredients much like Yelm and his family created Men (including Murharzarm the Emperor) from clay and other ingredients. Nobody claims that Murharzarm is anything other than the son of Yelm. In Middle Sea Empire, Vimorn (one of the six Founders of Danmalastan) has three separate lineages of offspring (p.. These are the Viymorni mentioned in the Danmalastan texts in Revealed Mythology. This sounds like a creation process similar to that of the Agitorani or the Dara Happan ancestors. The third family is a bit metaphorical, but might be claiming ancestry for the other three Tribes of the Mountain People founding the Four Camps in the God Learner mythical maps: All of these serve to claim ancestral connections. Rather than looking at the Men-and-a-Half of Prax, I would field the (normal-sized, which means still taller than their Malkioni neighbors) Pithdaran Agimori as a successful case in point. They retained quite a bit of their ways but also added the Jrusteli ways to their culture and spirituality, which may have included worship of deities as larger-than-life ancestors. Their expedition would have been led by priests of Pamalt who then became part of their adopted zzaburi or talar caste.

The concept of Pluripresence is fairly clearly delineated in Arcane Lore (which is a bit of a notable exception in that otherwise rather opaque or arcane volume of the Stafford library). While Grandfather Mortal/Daka Fal might be classified as the Erasanchula (runic origin) of the Man form rune, his mythical reach is rather limited, and thereby also his pluripresence. Daka Fal became the deity of staying dead while maintaining a presence in the Spirit World. His primary presence is as the judge/receptionist of the Underworld in the Halls of Judgment, an inescapable waypoint when accessed from the Surface World on most routes, including not only the stairwell path behind the Gates of Dusk but also weird backdoors like Alkoth or the Koravaka necropolis in central Esrolia. His other important manifestation is as lord of the Axis Mundi through which people interact with their ancestors. That aspect has a nearly unlimited pluripresence wherever and whenever people interact with their ancestors. Giving him a (however metaphorical) corporeal existence in the sorry remains of the Surface World of the Living at the culmination of the Greater Darkness is quite a break from the two aforementioned manifestations to me. Unrelated to Daka Fal, but since you mentioned it and I started this thread: TLDR of the following spoilered blabbering: There is a progression of the Ages and a spiralling of lesser cycles throughout Godtime, then there is a discontinuity caused by the conception and later birth of time leading to the Snowball Glorantha with an orthogonal TIme vector into Entroy that cannot be inverted.

Rather than asking what rune spells are available, I am curious who is teaching these rune spells, and how are the sources of these rune spells paid? Daka Fal as presented in the LIghtbringers still is a cult which uses shamans to call in the ancestral spirits via Axis Mundi. Now shamans are pretty much the antithesis of Malkioni society in Genertela, they have always been presented as the one group of enemy magicians whose dark arts would summon spirits that the wizards aren't really equipped to deal with effectively, whether the Serpent Brotherhood or the White Bear Empire. There has been a schism in Hrestolism between Fronela and Seshnela since Hrestol's return from the Vadeli Isles and him establishing the kingdom of Loskalm in the third decade of History. Hrestol's teachings in Fronela were more advanced than the Seshnegi model, possibly imposing a greater responsibility on the men-of-all than the very adventurous Seshnegi ways that Arkat learned and perfected during his war against Gaalth, the prophet of Nieby/Nysalor in those lands. Both these ways received the impersonal revelation of the Abiding Book from Jrustela at the time the Return to RIghtness crusade began liberating Seshnela from foreign (Tanisoran, then mercenary) rule. The kingdom of Loskalm wasn't experiencing an existential crisis at the time (yet), and the Loskalmi would have time to study and absorb or critically reject or censor the bits of the Abiding book that would be new to their scripture. Monastic sorcerers seem to have been a God Learner innovation on Jrustela, quite likely the powerful New Order that was so powerful, imposed on Seshnela during the Return to Rightness Crusade, and in 1050 transplanted into Jonat's nascent kingdom in eastern Fronela. There is no indication how the Fronelan Hrestoli zzaburi were integrated into that society - they could very well have continued the hereditary Zzaburi caste which we also find among the Aeolians, and apparently also a significant amount of Old Seshnegi zzaburi as inherited by the Pithdarans just before the heyday of the New Order led by Pilif the Magus, brought to heel by Saval, the founder of the Middle Sea Empire. We know about the Brithini sorcerers inhabiting towers to aid them in collecting and maintaining the mana transferred to them by the other castes, aided by Kadeniti city-building feng-shui, but also working when built isolated from the humdrum of that civilization, possibly modeled on Malkion's Citadel of Thought. The archmage of Arolanit inhabits one such glorious tower, there are a few such towers documented in Safelster. (They also make a nifty game piece in the Gods War board game which has a game mechanic for such architecture strengthening the units of the Invisible God faction, at the cost of being incompatible with the temples used by all other non-chaotic factions and the Lunars.) Kadeniti-invented city planning later was spread by the Jrusteli and can be found wherever they (or the Carmanians propagating the pre-God Learner Fronelan version) influenced the (re-)building of planned cities. (Much like the urban planning of Hippodamos of Milet was found in barbarian Celtic Manching. Angkor Vat might have inherited his methods alongside the spread of the Heracles cult, too, but Mayan, Aztec and Inka urban planning would have to be a parallel evolution.) Ancient cities would have to be re-built fairly often as major disasters would destroy wide areas to the foundations, like earthquakes or major fires, or hostile conquerors and ambitious rulers wishing to leave a mark on history as well as architecture. The modern Kingdom of Seshnela really is the Kingdom of Tanisor claiming a continuation of the legitimacy of the peninsular Kingdom of Seshnela that was destroyed in 1049. The fact that some outlying areas in the lower Tanier Valley were exempt from the curse of transformation into beastman that the Luatha released on the core lands of peninsular Seshnela might be (somewhat maliciously) interpreted as the citizens of lower Tanisor not qualifying as Seshnegi, or it might simply mark the outer extent of their sorcery. (Pasos was hit by the sinking, the fate of the original inhabitants of this part of Seshnela is unclear. The Isles could have been re-settled after the cataclysm. The Tanisoran urge for expansion is documented in the acquisition of the island of Gilboch that the aldryami ceded to the Bailifide princess Gwelenor a few generations ago. The Rokari movement originated in Leplain, in a border region of Safelster. The majority of the natives are of Enerali or Hykimi (as in Old Beast Alliance) descent rather than of Brithini ancestry, with the exception of the nobility which had been marrying in adventurist men-of-all into old Fornoari nobility. (A noble heritage quite likely shared by one of the greatest kings of Seshnela, Gerlant Flamesword, although an age earlier.) Bailifes and his brothers in arms came from Rindland, the core region of Fornoar and the Autarchy. They might actually have lineages tracing back to the elder children of Nralar leaving their homeland to Jrustela, from conquerors forcibly marrying into Autarchy nobility which in turn may have followed Arkat from Seshnela or even Brithos and mingled with the native solar nobility for a veneer of inheritance of descent from the land goddess for their dynasties. The Earth Goddess of Rindland and Tanisor would be the Green Lady of Ralios rather than serpentine Seshna Likita, though. Seshna's serpent-legged descendants had expanded all the way into Nolos in the second century, conquering the territories of the two eastern Pendali tribes before their non-Serpent-legged successors lost them to the Pralori. While the Green Lady enjoys serpentine symbolism almost as much as Seshna, only Seshna is depicted with a serpentine tail rather than human legs among the land/grain goddesses. The Tanisorans clearly have (need for) a rice goddess alongside their spelt wheat goddess. They might have introduced Krala or Miyo from Kralorela during the Second age, or they might rely on Safa (the lake goddess) instead.

The pig shape comes from the side view of the elevations of the island. This is a very rough experimental representation of the region in Sketchup with only Sober Rock and Enry modeled vertically: Entry has a saddle between the eastern and western tips of the islands, both of which have cliffs of significantly more than 200 meters (700') above average high water. The pigs in question would resemble the Turopolje pig (a highly endangered domestic pig race from Croatia that loves to swim and can actually dive to get to its food). These pigs should be popular all around the Choralinthor bay where there is brackish marshland too wet for sheep. The topography in the image above was taken from these detail maps. There need to be quite a few maps of the region showing the different situations at different tides, or at least a bathymetric representation of the Mirrorsea Bay to make that information available beyond the vague (and not very exact) hints at trenches and shallows in the AAA map of the bay. Jeff has provided the rough picture in this map which is lacking the fine structure of the naturally occurring drainage channels that allow the rather sudden ebb of the waters (although the falling tide is not much shorter than our world's ebbing tide, it is the incoming tide which comes in slow motion). The intertidal zone is where a lot of the life of both the fisherfolk and even the shepheds of the Isles happens. The area between Leskos, Entry, Sober Rock and the southern bank of the Syphon Estuary is one of the shallowest parts of the bay, much of which will fall dry regularly, and occasionally completely missing out a flood. There are salt-tolerant plants thriving in the calm of Choralinthor's area of influence which will provide good pasture for the hardy sheep of both the islanders and the dwellers of the coastal flats, allowing a short term transhumance before the flood slowly creeps back over the course of at least one day, but up to seven days from the last moment of high water. Such salt pasture is a godsent for ungulants. I have calculated possible tidal effects in a (yet very rough) spreadsheet on google docs taking into account the effects of the weekly tide reflecting the red phase of the Red Moon overlaid with the randomized Annilla tide of the Blue Streak. The inhabitants of Choralinthor Bay know the normal tides, and they have ancient experience with tidal waves (in-rushing bodies of water) such as used by the Waertagi, tsunami-like events sometimes caused by sorcery, sometimes caused by capricious currents branching off from the Doom Currents. The humans build their homes and work-places accordingly, and the marine inhabitants of Choralinthor Bay use their access to the intertidal zone to harvest their part of the dry lands. Apart from the sails, this final scene from the first season of Wheel of Time almost perfectly depicts the initial stage of a Waertagi raid on a coastal region: Already happened to the Quinpolic League, but soon a possibility on these shores.

I was surprised when I read the slightly rephrased description of the role of Daka Fal during the Greater Darkness. The changes aren't that big compared to the text in Cults of Prax, but my impression of Daka Fal being a fixture in the Court of the Dead already when Orlanth and his companions arrived down there in Hell was shaken by the revised text. CoP says Cults of RuneQuest #2 The Lightbringers (CoRQ2) says Heortling Mythologies gives this credit to the Silver Age hero King Heort, a (Kolating?) shaman in his own right, the human victor at the battle of I Fought We Won at the transition from the Greater Darkness into the Silver Age. Now King Heort probably qualifies as the shared mythical ancestor of all Heortlings regardless of their actual lineage, which makes an identification as an incarnation of Daka Fal somewhat less upsetting. Heort was a shaman, which means he would have been in touch with spirits, much like Daka Fal provides this contact with the spirits. The old Cults of Prax version could very well have meant that shamans like Heort could have met the shamanic entity Daka Fal in the Spirit World (or that Daka Fal appeared in their dreams or before their Fetch as a sending) and have learned the secrets of separating the Living and the Dead from one another, and then to have carried this into (their respective bits of) the Surface World (and by sending the dead there, the Underworld). But the new version tells us otherwise. Or what was left of it after the Gods War, slowly re-knitting under the administrations of Arachne Solara, applying the very matter of Annihilation that she had devoured in the shape of the Devil that had been sent to Hell by his Devil counterpart to glue the remaining shards of reality back together into a single whole, into a continuous Surface, with missing pieces re-emerging from mostly forgotten memories or just from some necessity of context. The seams of the new world would provide a stage for all the necessary consequences of adjacent reality, and over Time accrete a history solidifyng their reality. Daka Fal is not only one of the Dead who need to enter the afterlife and remain there, he is the archetypical dead, and the one to receive all those who followed his path of mortality. He was there to receive the Lightbringers on their way to former Wonderhome where dead Yelm held court over all the other dead gods. That Daka Fal walked the world at the end of the Greater Darkness is just another indication how wrong and unrelatable the Greater Darkness was. Here we have the first Dead, walking about and really admonishing his (involuntary) followers to recognize their station and to go where they were welcome in their new stage of existence. Being dead is a stage of existence in Gloantha. It is different from complete annihilation (of any traces of self), or from transcendent ascendance to the Ultimate (the Source of all energies) through mysticism, to Liberation. The Dead are still a part of Glorantha, and in many cultures they make up a vaguely recognizable "body" of remains that may intrude into the world of the Living during their assigned holy day, like the procession of the Dead from the Nochet Necropolis into the city and the households of their descendants where they can demand the hospitality one has to give to visiting kin from afar. Most Gloranthans, including even the majority of the Malkioni with Hrestoli roots, believe (and experience) re-incarnation of the dead, of entering a place of waiting in the Underworld before entering life in the Surface World again as a newborn. It doesn't matter whether you assign Ty Kora Tek's halls of the weiting dead like the Theyalans or whether you regard re-incarnation as being swept along Yothbedta's stream like the Kralori. Daka Fal does not mind re-entry into Life, but until that time comes, the dead need to remain in their assigned place. To not do so means weakening the very cosmos that their rebirth would take place in.

You are aware that Wyverns are the products of wet dreams? These bat-winged, barbed tailed outsized chickens fit that bill in that "ILM adds a few reptiles to the original Star Wars trilogy" way. (Southern Genertelan) Dragons don't have feathers. Their neotenic form bears a name taken from the amphibian end of the reptile evolutionary kin. The poison-barbed tail end makes me wonder whether that might serve a dual purpose as reproductive organ in the charming parasitic wasp way.

Has Healer Valley ever been located somewhere on the Surface World?

I did consider to replace the goats with sheep, but that felt a bit cheap (no pun intended). I like the mythical grounding with Choralinthor's mother's Earth, and I wanted to avoid another Storm place, especially atop the Blue Moon/tidal place. Pigs belong to Ernalda wherever she shows up, much like earth serpents do. (And no, a serpent island did not work fr me.) Pigs also belong to Kethaa, the old goddess of Kethaela (the Holy Country). Maniria has the Entruli, some of which lived in Esrolia in the Silver and Dawn Age. Aram came from the southwest, too. Thunder Rebels named the sow goddess Entra, a female form of Entru (the name-giving founder of the Entruli tribes). My variation on the "ambling hill" myth of Mt. Passant, or on the Boldhome myth about the Thorgeir's Cow peak of the Quivin Mountains. Not original at all, but the shape of the island also reminds me of a special breed of domestic pig from my home area, Feel free to use this rudimentary summary in your campaign. I thought I'd use this opportunity to tease what I have come up with so far, but this is far from finished, even as partial releases focussing on single islands or even hamlets. I have a number of cameos written or at least outlined, but not RQ-ready. Not even quite HQG/Questworlds-ready. There are a lot of NPCs and sample PCs for the various factions that need work. Each of the islands will need mapping, as will the surrounding waters, and the encounter sites. And then there are illustrations to find or to create. Or at least graphical art direction. And someone keeping my written ramblings in check. I have Sober Rock on the northeast of Sober Island rather than its southwest, after discovering that the one island in the AAA and the Holy Country map is actually two islands separated by a rather narrow channel in the new map linked by David. Otherwise yes, that's how I started this exploration of the Isles. Sober Rock also is well situated as the location of my (German language) RQ3 scenario in Free INT #5, at least as it played out in my Heortland campaign. A RuneQuest dungeon crawl, really. Exploring the Choralinthor Bay around the isles - tidal flats, shallows and deeper trenches/currents is part of this project, too. The Sober Island bits contain some of my ideas about interaction with the Ludoch. I had not really linked the Strangers in Prax version of Ahab to the Choralinthor Bay. Getting a Gnydron into these shallows would be a major abduction, too - easier to use some Waertagi submersible as a fake monster. Not necessarily crewed by Waertagi (or at least not necessarily crewed by living aquatic Waertagi... which now is yet another scenario idea I want to insert). Wrong tribe of the halflings. Smeagol fits the durulz lifestyle quite well.