Joerg

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.

The concurrent worship of these deities with the Invisible God, with the wizards overseeing these rites taking hold of a significant portion of the sacrificed magic (points). Which might result in henotheist shrines requiring a larger crowd or more intense worship to remain active than normal ones.

Shargash starts from the eastern gate on Voria's day, making his 28 day cycle half a week delayed from that of Orlanth's Ring which starts on Windsday of the second week of Sacred Time, after the Underworld portion of the Lightbringers' Quest in the Orlanthi celebration of Sacred Time ends. Shargash explicitely stays in the Underworld during Sacred Time, avoiding a change in his rhythm between odd and even numbered years. No idea about the rising times of any other planet than Lightfore.

Kudos for getting the rotation of the sky dome right (around the spring equinox). In the sunset movie, is that Mastakos following the sunset on the Sunpath? And is that smaller bronze blot above the moon supposed to be Stormgate? I first mistook it for the Bronze Planet, but that would mean he would have strayed too far north. Instead, I guess we see him south of Theya, next to another red planet which might be Artia. While the Southpath starts slightly to the north of the Gates of Dawn, it terminates significantly to the south on the western sky. So short after Sacred Time, Shargash should linger near the Gates of Dawn for a bit, but possibly almost on the Sunpath, and even north of it on the first day of the year.

I have been writing, mapping and drawing about these islands for quite a while now as my work load and mood swings allow, planning a release on Jonstown Compendium. The Isles already sort-of show up in my original Heortland notes in the person of Ashart, the warden of the isles, a subject of the Governor-King in Durengard and responsible for the coastal guard of Heortland (which I based in Leskos - a few biremes and "penteconters" able to run across the tidal flats during medium to high tide). My old Heortland campaign started in 1615 with the initiation of the characters, and thus started with Belintar still in control. The subsequent shifts in politics and occupation were the metaplot behind the campaign. I have taken a closer look at them now, for a while in communication with Bill Carley. While that cooperation has stopped, I prepared lots of background notes and have several local gazetteers for the individual islands in the making. One idea of mine about the Isles before Belintar's death was to treat them as the backyard of the City of Wonders, with villas of officials and other folk in the City providing a retreat from the Godworld atmosphere there, along with a place to grow fruit and other perishables that may be in more demand in Belintar's capital than even magically boosted vinyards and gardens could provide. In short, something of Suburbia for the City of Wonders. Factoid for my set-up: since a pirate prince has established rule over the isles, the raiding parties carrying off natives have ebbed down, and in 1621 a significant return of Threestep Island slaves taken captive from these isles as followers of the pirate prince who had a series of minor disagreements with Harrek and refused to participate in the Circumnavigation has swelled the population a bit above the numbers given in the Guide. Those numbers are the result of the massive pirate raids following the destruction of the Holy Country fleet, but already incessant raiding of coastal population since 1605 when the Threestep Isles were settled by Yggites (including Gold-Gotti, or a very similar Yggite if the Pavis books in the making give him a different backstory - Gold-Gotti does participate in the Circumnavigation and is not a regular at these isles). In my version, the six human-inhabited islands are quite distinct in character. Rather than making all of them very low marshy islands, I took a closer look at the vertical scale of the map in the Argan Argar Atlas, which says they don't protrude (significantly) above 1000 feet, or 330 meters. That doesn't mean that they need to be totally flat, and two of the islands in my version scrape at the 1000 feet mark and even exceed it in a few places too insignificant to show up in the AAA. From the north to the south: Sober Island (revealed to be two islands in the detail maps re-discovered by Jeff) is mainly inhabited by fisherfolk related to the fisherfolk in Karse and elsewhere on the Isles and the Heortland flats below the cliffs. The newly "discovered" second island is Sober Rock, a low dormant volcano whose flanks are home to a myriad of sea birds, and whose grottos have a birthing cave for a small population of plesiosaurs. The fisherfolk inhabit a major hamlet on the southwestern end of the island and a smaller hamlet on the southeastern end. The two hamlets have two different pods of Ludoch overseeing their fishing activities, and there is a third pod of Ludoch who claim certain fishing grounds as taboo to human fisherfolk. Total population somewhere around 250-350 individuals, depending on the sailing season and whether there were recent pirate raids. Products of Sober Island include preserved fish and stuff collected from the sea-birds - eggs, feathers, less savory substances of alchemical interest, and some of the yields of ocean fishing for big prey. Due to the distance from the City of Wonders, this island has some of the least influence from Belintar's capital. New Manor island (the name is my creation, inspired by the five-star shape which reminded me of Numenor) on the other hand is one of two islands with very strong connections to the City of Wonders. There used to be orchards and flower gardens around a number of manors belonging to rich folk from the city, with a population of dependent farmers/gardeners and overseers tending these, as well as two communities of fisherfolk overseeing three coves with deepwater access. When Harrek's Wolf Pirate fleet arrived, a lot of these orchard folk were evacuated to the City of Wonders, for all good it did them, leaving only a few of the gardener households on the islands (who afterwards suffered their strong share of abductions). There are also Heortling shepherds/farmers on the island, making use of the saltweed on the tidal flats at low tide. Both fisherfolk and shepherd households maintain marriage relations with the inhabitants of the coastal flats on the mainland who follow a similar lifestyle. The deepwater coves were discovered by the pirates as convenient places to resupply, provided they came to an agreement with the remaining islanders, who have since even gained modest prosperity by supplying the pirate ships, a bit like ordinary businesses doing moderately well near criminal biker gangs. (One of my historical parallels was the cordial relationship between the fisherfolk of East Frisia and Helgoland with the Likedeeler pirates harrassing the Hanseatic League.) Next come the two islands overseeing the Minthos Estuary and the deep water channel of the Bullflood estuary. Count's Harbor is the main settlement on the Isles, dominating the island at the confluence of the Bullflood and Minthos currents. (In Jeff's re-discovered maps, this is the only of the Isles which shows a settlement of between 400 and 800 inhabitants. With my recent history of immigrations, I opted to a development towards the upper range of that number.) Here we find a few Pelaskite overseas merchant ship owner cooperatives plying the trade with Dosakayo on Melib, the former arsenal and lesser repair yard of the coastal guard ships picking up supplies here, the count's office, and a bit of chandler-oriented crafting supplying whatever ships need replacement ropes, canvas, barrels, amphorae etc. Other than the locally owned trade, Count's Harbor used to act as the satellite station of Leskos. The Isle of Entry is the outer of these two islands, and the most developed so far. When I discussed residential villas of the early Roman Empire, the Villa of Tiberius on Capri was the logical go-to for inspiration, and Bill pointed out a certain superficial similarity between the outline of Capri (the Goat Island) and this island, so I looked up facts about Capri, liked what I found, and went the whole hog - with a number of alterations. Tiberius's villa became the palace of the Count. A few other villas (like the famous ones populating modern Capri) were assigned to various active and former dignitaries of the 1616 City of Wonders, including a former Caladraland ambassador to Melib whose research into the mysteries of Solf led to his replacement and drug-addled retirement to this island. First was to look for another beast than goats, as those aren't really popular with the nearby Theyalans. I settled on pigs instead, with the alternate name for Mralota being Entra, a goddess with strong ties to Kethaa. This also gives me a nice double meaning, as the island also oversees the Choralinthor traffic entering from the Troll Strait. This fact led me to have a Waertagi lighthouse on one of the 300 foot high cliffs overseeing the troll strait. And of course there is the Selenic Grotto, with a pulsating glow emitting from a submerged fragment of the Blue Moon. Finally, there is Kenstone Island, the only other island with a published official name to date. Mostly a low-lying exension of the Leftarm Vulari peninsula, this island has escaped erosion thanks to some volcanic rock towards the Troll Strait giving a slight elevation to the east. It has three settlements, one of Pelaskite fisherfolk, one of Esvulari farmers and fisherfolk, and a larger mixed settlement with the resident Aeolian talar family and their retainers plus Pelaskite fisherfolk. There is one settlement on the detail maps which I christened Count's Harbor, a name which can remain as a title when (or if) the gazetteer to the re-discovered maps becomes availale. Yes. Old fisherman families with ancestral ties to Karse, sharing in the fisherman rites and pilgrimages there, and coastal shepherder farmers with in-laws on the mainland. There are numerous families with (now former) ties to the City of Wonders on New Manor, Entry and Count's Harbor in my version, a considerable influx of Wolf Pirate dependants resettled from Threestep Isle, and a small but rapidly growing amount of Melibite in-laws of the captains of the locally owned merchant ships. Prior to 1605, population density would have been at a maximum before raiding for slaves by the Wolf Pirates started to be a major problem here as well as on the Rightarm and Leftarm Isles. Early on, an Issaries merchant from Count's Harbor started to serve as a go-between for ransoms of such captives with the Threestep Isles, with other rivals in nearby coastal towns, and even in his home town. Up to the defeat of Belintar's fleet in 1616, the population numbers may have been double what the numbers in the Guide show. None of the pirate crews, the rowers in the Heortland or Belintar's (successor) navies or on merchant ships are really counted in this headcount, either, although they can swell the population by up to one third (though a lot of both navy and merchantman personnel might winter on Melib rather than here). Yes to all, although most of the Ludoch mermen only use such caves as last resort hiding places, preferring to swim in the currents of their shoals and reefs. And more. Incomplete, but I guess you wanted to speculate about a Karse connection? Definitely there, as the main ancestral temple of the old fisherfolk families is located there, and some local trade goes to Karse, too (as does quite a bit of hiring of rowers or sailors). Whether the ruler of Karse has business on one or more of the Isles would be left to your campaign. Canonically, 1000' (300+ meters) is the cap when you look at the AAA maps. Entry and Sober Rock scratch at that mark, the rest tops out a lot lower. Entry has a pig myth about one of the plateau rocks wandering off, Sober Rock has a child of Veskarthan. (Capri is actually twice that high, but also a bit larger than entry. I started some 3D modeling in Sketchup, which gives about the impression I wanted from that island.) A bit of a mix, with the Channel coast another influence besides the Adria. Water temperatures vary greatly below the surface as ancient currents meet the river currents, joining them on their way back through Troll Strait. There are quite a few springs below the Mirrorsea, some hot and volcanic, others carrying the cold from the Troll Underworld, providing a plethora of variation of underwater habitats. There are wetlands broken with open pools of water on most of the islands (other than Entry and Sober Rock). Several beaches of the Isles are overgrown with reeds, a valuable building material for both human and newtling fisherfolk (if for different purposes). My version of the Choralinthor Bay has the biggest concentration of Newtlings around Frog Island, but has bachelor groups popping up almost everywhere. After 1613, in my version there are also quite a few durulz in the region, especially across the Marzeel estuary west of Karse. I have quite a few different scenario hooks or plot-lines under development.

The actual nature of the topsoil of the Plateau prior to the destruction of the Obsidian Palace is not very clear, but we know that Varzor Kitor led his people of humans (and other species) accepting the Nightcult to the top of the plateau in the Silver Age and Dawn Age. Far from all the spouses or the other members of the Kitori tribe were shape-shifting Shadowlord - some shadow-lords even lived with their human kin in Orlanthi clans, like the hero Daramhy who destroyed many of the Arkating shadowlords in a vendetta for his slain wife (History of the Heortling Peoples, pages 40 and 72). Both the Kitori tribe back then on top of the Shadow Plateau and the modern ones inhabiting the Troll Woods would have included human earth worshipers (primarily Esrola as their adopted ancestress) with some horticulture and possibly some grain cultivation, too, while also subsisting on the trade and tribute they collec and distributed. They may have included some worshipers of Orlanth or Barntar, or possibly made use of the chained god Veskarthan (Lodril) for their agriculture. WIth Belintar's destruction of the Obsidian Palace, the surface dwellings of the Kitori tribe became untenable, but they still had vast tracts of land north of the Crossline where they could do their agriculture, and earn from the nascent trade across the Pass outside of Argan Argar caravans. Belintar might very well have offered some compensation for taking away the agricultural basis for Axe Hall, probably in shape of customary grain deliveries up the Plateau. Since his demise in 1616, the granaries up there might now run empty. Trollkin swarms only originated in the Second Age - Naxili Garang's questing to fight the Curse of Kin resulted in trollkin being born in litters, and becoming a staple of troll diet and society. (There were already sufficient numbers of trollkin in 562 (50 years before the quest succeeded) to make their defection from a battle against the light worshipers of Domanand a significant setback to the troll military, which suggests how much the Dark Troll population must have shrunk due to the Curse of Kin.)

We know from the Munchrooms mercenaries that a holy axe of Babeester Gor (basicaly a rune level in itself) has no problems at all to be wielded by a trollkin and to aid trollkin. It is quite probable that the Axe Hall community has a gang of trollkin at their beck and call, possibly even up to the level of spearkin, and that they may have used food trollkin to deal with some of the shards from the Obsidian Palace. I have no idea whether a shrine to the troll hero Tree Chopper might be appropriate at Axe Hall. Possibly yes. If so, the god-talker or shaman for this hero might be a troll or have troll associates managing some of the nearby trollkin. There is a good chance that the temple will keep pigs as sacrificial animals. While these pigs would be a temptation to roaming trollkin, the temptation might be a lot lower with Pig Dog guardians herding them, and the pigs might be of the Tusker variety. Pigs could be fed on mushrooms, giving the temple possible tie-ins with Voralans inside the Plateau. (Real world mushrooms aren't autotrophs, but the Gloranthan variety might actually take nourishment from ambient Darkness itself, possibly making it hungrier/stronger than it would be on its own.) Temple slave trollkin could be fed on wild trollkin trespassing the temple gardens. Which might be protected by earth elementals swallowing or at least immobilizing pesky intruders. The temple would need access to water (if only to have a valid brewing business for their blood beer). Luckily, there are streams and rivulets gathering on top of the plateau, which may be a lot less level than the name suggests.

TLDR: At a guess, a wyvern might want about a quarter of its Size in meat and/or innards a day. That's half an adult pig, or two or three marmots or rubble runners. Wyverns had their origins as emanations of dragons having sex dreams, a specialized form of dream dragons. Perhaps due to the sexual nature of their origin the wyverns continued to have sex, and their offspring have become a draconic species with rather normal bodies and appetites, unlike the dream dragons who seem to share the True Dragon trait of long periods of meditative hibernation without any need of physical sustenance. True Dragons control the energies and matter of the world around them, and can take sustenance from that. Greater draconic creatures might be able to do so to some extend, while still getting some visceral enjoyment and great sustenance out of actually devouring stuff. Wyverns (other than those generated from wet dreams) would be warm-blooded predators similar to say Utah-raptors in size, although possibly a bit less bulky. Their wings seem to use chiropteran (bat) anatomy rather than pterodactyl anatomy. I would expect them to glide on updrafts rather than actively creating lift by beating their wings most of the time, making the food intake of big birds like condors or albatroses a good yardstick. Wyverns are slightly more massive than griffins, somewhat less massive than sky bulls or wyverns. Giant Pteranodons seem to have the same stats except for the lack of a tail and different hit locations. Prey is picked up with the teeth, larger prey is stunned first with the tail. Their natural habitat seems to include high mountain slopes beyond the tree border, which makes hunting mountain goats (ibex, chamois) or large marmots a likely source of their natural sustenance. Over open plains like the Praxian chaparral, they would swoop onto smaller beasts like impalas or calves of some of the larger Eirithan beasts. Pigs would be a good alternative to the juicy marmots, but don't often venture out of tree cover. As food for domesticated wyverns, pigs might be ideal. Carrion would be another natual source for sustenance. As flying carnivores, wyverns would find dead beasts in a large area, and their size and armament allows them to fight off other beasts of prey, or even add them to their diet after their venomous sting takes effect. Wyvern venom would be a valuable commodity for alchemists. Production of venom comes with a physiological price. If the venom is used to turn prey into docile dishes, it should not be noxic when ingested, only when injected, or otherwise the wyvern should have some immunity to it. Other carrion-eaters might have tolerance, too. The Bestiary doesn't give suggestions about how many loads of venom a wyvern might be able to inject - a definite oversight when using wyverns as mounts.

Heler Cult: (p. 99) "sits low" and "sits high" doesn't quite work out with the mechanics of the sky dome tilt and rotation. In mid-summer, at midnight Lorion sits fairly high in the southern sky as the tilt of the Sun Path and thereby Polaris is either vertical or slightly to the north. In mid-winter at noon, unless you are a Yuthuppan Star Seer you don't get to see Lorion quite high in the northern sky because his light is outdone by that of Yelm, although you get to see the blue color that he carried into the sky. The tilt of the Sunpath and Polaris is considerably to the south, spilling the celestial fire into the Nargan and beyond, making the Sky Dome experience colder everywhere. As a result, objects on the low edge of the sky when they pass the two gates of Dawn and Dusk are elevated quite a bit on their daily pass through the northern sky. Unless of course I got the tilt of the sky diametrically wrong: both the wikia and this thread agree with my conclusions above, but further down in the thread Nick got second thoughts. Although looking at the second image Nick sent to my reply, the considerations above still seem to agree with my observations, and the text inherited from before anybody checked the mechanics (as presented in Elder Secrets) doesn't seem to have taken these mechanics into account.