Joerg

All I remember was a Glorantha kickstart, as follow up to the RQ quickstart. It might be interesting to see one suitable for all three official systems.

Seeing this, I sort of get the urge to have my next CoC session in the 1920ies like a silent movie, making all kinds of lip movement, then holding up a text tablet.

The mountains of Jord may not get much extra history, but their origin story (shorn off the Hungry Plateau by the Earth Walker named Gerendetho) does offer a few other links besides dwarves, krarshtkids and Sheng's occupation. From the scale of geography moved around by the myth, this is comparable to the Footprint or seeding Kero Fin (both performed by the Walker named Larnste), or Argan Argar's leveling of Veskarthan's great mountain north of Choralinthor into the Shadow Plateau (never quite specifying where all that stuff went). "Before Dark" is quite an ambiguous term, that could be read like Predark (the Orlanthi term for ancient Chaos, as opposed to Chaos since the Unholy Trio), "before the Darkness Age" (i.e. Storm Age or earlier in Godtime), or "The Dark That Was Before", which is what feels most on track with what Jakaleel stands for. Possibly Subere or even deeper.

I wasn't thinking of solids, but of liquids. There are few cultures which don't brew or ferment some special drink, and if it takes big pots to ferment stuff, this would be an activity for oasis dwellers rather than migratory Doraddi. Oh, I'd bet. But for a migratory family, they would be made for easy transportation, while at the oases they could be way bigger - too heavy too lift when full. Dried beans, or peas, or similar - no grains grow on the veldt. But still similar purpose. I don't think it is about everyone having chairs, but about everyone living a sedentary life rather than roaming the veldt, with all their belongings hanging from the pole between two of the wandering people. Carrying along a chair is quite the extra burden. It might be a prestigious burden to share, but I doubt there can be many such status symbols while between camps. I was thinking of that RQ3 image of the Doraddi chief, which clearly showed a low wooden bank or stool, with the chief sitting cross-legged atop. If you have such an item, you don't leave it at the camp site, and then it doesn't quite matter whether your next camp site has such a natural feature a person of status might use or not. There will be camp sites without such features, but the dignity of the chief still demands his elevated seat. At least that's what I expect. Tishamto quite likely had quite a few varieties of furniture, but none of these were usable for a migratory life. But then the "Pamaltelan culture develops backwards" sort of breaks down with the earliest Pamaltelan cultural myths, which are pretty much on spot for a hunter/gatherer/horticulturalist society on the move. That doesn't stop me from assuming some form of peak "civilization" for Tishamto and then a continuous regress to a more original way of life, though.

So is a broken off chair leg of whichever material, or any other impromptu item used in a fight (glass shards, for instance). You could hide a functional weapon inside a rubber foam weapon. As the organizer of an event, there cannot be perfect security. Sometimes I ask myself why doesn't US legislation create laws that allow unreasonable litigation to be litigated...

True, but given the other David's observation of Darkness shamans and Jakaleel's obvious underworld connections, what school of shamanism did she come from? Horse nomad? Uz-related? Wendarian? Some other?

True, but so is the Artmali material culture. I regard the origins of Fonrit as a merger of the Tishamto and Kungatu cultures, much like Eastern Rome inheriting from both the Hellenistic and its Etruscan-descended original Roman influences. One might argue that Kungatu was set up in imitation of Tishamto, or vice versa, but I expect a distinct Veldaran inheritance for Kungatu. To keep these thoughts on topic for this thread: Both these places (and quite likely all Golden Age civilizations) would have had artifacts and magics that no longer work now the cities with their societies are defunct, or whose function is severely limited by what contextual powering (through rites, sacrifices, whatever) is available.

I would guess that the oasis-dwelling Doraddi have huge containers in the ground. No idea whether those would be ceramics or simply clay-lined pits with conical covers. Having a garden that sits atop of a 2 meters thick layer of blue clay (almost ceramics-grade), I can attest to this material's water retention properties. But maybe such containers could be baked into terra cotta and glazed in situ, firing them from the inside, rather than building an oversized kiln, then digging an even larger hole to deposit them in the ground. Especially with having a fire god who might like to explore holes in the ground in the midst of their pantheon family. Gourds for nomadic Doraddi seem to be a good container of choice, given their rather low weight to content ratio. Which means that they would be grown either at seasonally visited gardens or at oases. How long does such a gourd last? Animal bladders (or stomachs, or intestines) are logical containers for hunters and pastoralists, too. (Cheese might have been discovered by storing milk in calf stomachs...) Like skins, they might require some outer container to prevent them from receiving too much pressure, but basket weaving is likely to be an ancient and quite ubiquitious art. Or they could be used as lining inside less perfect natural containers (e.g. defective gourds, or hollow branches). There is hardly any archaeological evidence of homo erectus activities in China, despite a fair amount of bone finds. There is the assumption that these hominids used bamboo-based tools rather than stone tools for their technology. Do we have a similar human culture in Glorantha? Bone and horn technology is better documented in archaeological finds (like e.g. the Ahrensburg reindeed hunter cultures), so we have a better idea what they used. Another random thought: Doraddi technological and social development has been described as progressing from technologically and "culturally" (as western people measure cultural achievements in huge organisations etc) developed society to their current hunter/gatherer/horticulturalist society. They have a few remaining tokens of such earlier culture, like the chairs for their chiefs - status symbols that take quite a bit of effort to carry along between camp/village sites in the absence of beasts of burden. I wonder what kind of artifacts you wouldn't normally associate with a hunter-gatherer culture they may have preserved in their culture. The Kresh knowledge about wheels appears to be one such item. And what could we possibly extrapolate for their Tishamto culture?

And not in an in-world document?

High Llama riders are the Praxian Beast Riders who spend most time out of the saddle, holding up fodder to their browser rather than grazer steeds, if that old description still holds true. With the recent discovery that herdmen do basically the same for their Morokanth masters, this might be no longer canonical, though, but if it still holds true, then the High Llama riders need an intrinsic magical ability rather than relying on a spell to get back onto the backs of their steeds. That, or some aid like a loop of leather hanging from the saddle providing a foothold. (Maybe a "rope" ladder for pregnant females...)

Let me put it this way - reading a Moorcock novel led one of the most gorgeous women I ever met to initiate a conversation with me while on Inish More of the Aran Isles in 1990 and a very enjoyable evening in the pub. I haven't had any such moments reading any other genre literature in the public since. Moorcock's Eternal Champion certainly was a big IP well into the nineties. I have the impression that the hype ebbed away with his later Elric novels, starting with The Fortress of the Pearl. My own involvement certainly did with the second of those books. So, with regard to the Moorcock fan-base, I think that it lost a lot of fanaticism in the nineties, and the Young Kingdoms and the rest of the multiverse got replaced by newer settings. The fans didn't go away, but they found new interests. As to the RPG, Stormbringer's concept of sacrificing souls to embody those demon powers into artefacts was a powerful idea for a magic system, and in perfect keeping with the decadence of the setting. It might have been the Melniboneans who caused Paul Jaquays to add a "decadent" fifth stage to the four culture types (which I first encountered in RQ3) in the fantasy edition of Central casting (primitive, nomad, barbarian, civilized). Empowering player characters to do so brought all kinds of dark and predatory morality into the game. The Elric! rules returning to the much tamer RQ battle magic were sort of a let-down for me with regard to magic, even though the presentation of the game system really was excellent.

The area extends inland quite a bit, and while the Pelaskites (plus River Folk) probably form the second-largest minority in Greater Nochet and play an important role in constructing and crewing the city's navy and trading fleet, they might be less protected than regular houses when it comes to their ties to the land they live on. (I wonder how much their burial traditions have been adapted to use of the Antones Estates.) However, I had the impression that the general neighborhood was one of - possibly overcrowded - insula-like multi-storied houses on both sides of the road before space was claimed for the Lunar temple, and I suspect that many of those would have been under the management of mid- to upper-tier houses of Nochet.

That would be the likeliest explanation, yes. And the Greeks were a lot more scandalized by the betrousered woman warriors than most of their contemporaries. I think so, too. I am less convinced about the horse gear, though. The term for saddle appears to be quite ancient - it is pretty much the same across Germanic, Slavic and Romanic languages, and Greek, so either it was known to our horse nomad (linguistic) ancestors of the Yamna in the Danubian plains already, or it was loaned from whichever horse-riding culture brought the notion to their successors. Gendering of urn burials has been shown to be quite inaccurate, and I get the impression that a weapon find automatically made a burial a male burial in archaeological reports of urn finds. Otherwise, it is rather conspicuous that there is lots of evidence for male burials in Anglia, but hardly any for female burials. We may be missing quite a few females buried with weapons. Whether they used them abroad or only in home defense is a different question - we don't have much in the way of written reports on the peoples outside of the Roman and Greek world. For the Greeks, female warriors stood against everything their culture told them about the relationship between males and females. The Romans appear to be cut from a similar cloth, or they appropriated this stance with the adoption of elements of the Greek culture. Etruscans might have been less strict, the family burials don't show significant status differences between fathers and mothers.

Take some orthopedic rubber instead, just enough that you have to work against a significant pull. Pointing an arm somewhere and pointing an arm somewhere while pulling back with some force are two very different propositions. Normally, archers "cheat" by locking the bow arm into the joints at the shoulder, reducing the amount of muscle activity to keep it stretched significantly (and removing a lot of instability resulting from muscle vibrations fighting to keep the force away). If shooting 120° to 150° backwards, I don't see any reason for disbelieve, either - that's just the rear part of the left broadside opening. Shooting directly backwards requires twisting your hips, and that should be impossible while keeping both on pressure to the horse flanks. I doubt there was much of the modern "draw the arrow to almost release point, then fine-tune the point into perfect alignment with the target" as there is in modern archery. Doing your shot in one flowing movement removes a lot of the mistakes that other approach forces on the archer. More likely one for war and a lighter one for hunting smaller game, or birds. Shooting the arrow fully through the target leads to annoying loss of arrows. Foot archery most likely happens only during looting or from behind defense works, and will in all likelihood use the war bow also used from horseback. I haven't tried a "behind the head anchor" thumb release with my bows, yet. I wonder whether they used thumb rings or the naked thumb. The angle between shoulder and arrow can be adjusted by your posture. For shooting uphill (on foot), I turn away from the target to a more closed posture, making it easier to keep the bow arm locked in the shoulder. For shooting downhill, I face the target, up to having the lower end of the bow between my legs for extreme downhill shots. Not sure I agree with the strength limit. I don't see huns or mongols switching bows when turning their horses around, and on their charge they started shooting at extreme bow range. If "no aiming" means "you cannot get a bonus for keeping the drawn bow on target", I agree. But it is a characteristic of instinctive shooting that you need something you target with your shot. Bow length is an issue that reduces the angle of the left broadside that you can release an arrow to. Some of this can be mitigated shooting forward by tilting the bow, but shooting backward that tilt would be counter-productive, but a good rider and decent (longbow) archer should be able to use his bow without additional penalty than for being on horseback in an angle between 15° forward and 150" backward (anti-clockwise).

Their means of arrival would be interesting. The route north of the Shadow Plateau seems the least likely, so they must have crossed Choralinthor Bay, either on ships, or using the Fish Road. I guess at least one clan/house should have a Fish Road migration in its history. Duh - that info has been under my nose. But it still doesn't tell us who their sponsors or patrons were (and are), and whether some emancipated themselves from former patrons, or moved upward in the pyramid of patron-client relations. Except in Trolltown? Burial by troll might be a form of post-mortal punishment, even if the bones are returned. Probably from quite far away, too. Meldektown has sort of an open border to the Antones Estates, so their goats are likely to be found intruding there. Pies in bread crust and pies in clay crust? Farmers from the north are dependent on water traffic, but that water traffic may bring their goods to markets that are far from the city gates. And in case of dairy or eggs, they might be at an advantage over the farmers having to take the overland approach. But then the fisherfolk are also a good source for seabird eggs. So who decided whether a plot may be built over? Modern Nochet has only one area inside the walls where there is open ground, and that is after Hendira and her Lunar allies razed a lot of the previous (presumably anything but well-to-do) quarter there. I wonder whether Hendira had precedents for uprooting a significant part of the population of the city by force and/or decree. Perhaps there was a recompensation program, with diminishing recompensation the longer the inhabitants held out. And I do wonder how the new landlords got rid of the buildings occupying their prospective temple grounds. Systematic "unbuilding", demonstration of Lunar siege engines, or how? How secure can a House be of the "ownership" of their estates? We hit upon the question of reclamation of burial ground in an earlier discussion - there is a map showing the Antones Estates encroaching the Argan Argar and Esrola temple. Basically local consensus-generating meetings for neighborhoods? So even the most destitute and anti-social elements will present a House-like front to the rest of the city. I wonder about that. Is Riverside all "slums"? I would have expected some quite respectable neighborhoods for boatfolk plying the riverine trade up to New Crystal City, including the main grain import of the city.

This figurine shows quite a few details for the rider who seems to be clad in leather scales with a short cape covering the shoulders and a conical cap which probably indicated her origin to the maker and the customer of the figurine, but the only piece of tack is the bridle and the bit for the horse. The horse is shown at the conventional leg constellation in art for a slow trot rather than in gallop. I wonder how much contact there could have been between the Etruscans and the horse riders. We know that the Etruscans kept a fleet of two-tiered "penteconters" (basically biremes) at the battle of Alalia, but their naval trade seems to have been on the Tyrrhenian and not into the Aegaean or the Black Sea where they could have encountered such horse folk. Considering the image of the elephants in that carving of an Elephant and Castle in Chester Cathedral, Coventry, unfamiliarity of the artist with the subject can produce quite an error (IIRC from my visit 38 years ago there is another one, even weirder, I think in the castle where Mary Stuart spent her last days). This artist or at least the person providing the art direction appears to have had some first hand exposure to such a rider (or at least a native depiction of one). I wonder where. This could be an image of a Galanini warrioress. The horse is sufficiently small, the armor indicates a less clement climate. All of this would apply to Pentans or Grazers, too, but I think they are too patriarchalic to put a bow into a woman's hands. The Galanini and the unicorn women are the only horse rider cultures that I can think of might allow such weaponry to women, and the armor would melt its wearer in Prax, so Ralios is where I would look.

So they would still live under Belintar's rulership, but not under that travesty of a king? Such clans would have been sceptical of Belintar's rulership, and the houses welcoming them most likely would at least have been willing to hedge a bet against Belintar's long-term success. So it might be interesting to see which houses those were, and whether they burnt their fingers. Given the cautiousness of Grandmothers, I suspect they would have made second tier houses in their client scheme take the risk, rather than expose themselves. I suppose that Hendrikiland and Sartarite origins aren't much differentiated in Nochet, and that they will likely have intermarried after a few generations to a degree that they have become a single subculture. (Renting out rooms to students from abroad shows me how notions of "home" broaden when you are living abroad.) So their presence may have started as guilds, possibly working their way up in status as they profited from their ties to the Quivini trade routes. But this arrival would be about six to eight generations after their ancestors left Heortland for Dragon Pass. Enough for the threat of Belintar to have become something abstract, with more pressing new troubles like beastmen, Telmori, Praxians or Grazers occupying their image of enmity. Such mercantile establishments would have been sponsored by the major mercantile Houses, possibly including Enfranchised ones. By taking a role in establishing new houses, their status would rise a lot even if those new houses didn't become direct clients. It would still be a risk, because when (not if) those newcomers misbehaved, it reflected badly on their sponsors. Grizzly Peak coincides with the boom of the Opening. While not a direct threat for the Principality, it opened up a huge opportunity. Even war clans could have been welcome, as the Melib venture provided plenty of occupation for mercenary work. Ok. I wonder about the urban diet, anyway. Given the presence of the fisherfolk, I expect a certain portion of protein to come in the shape of sea-food, whether clams, crabs, or fish. Geese appear to be an important factor in food, too, both for the eggs and for the meat. Pigs are another companion beast of Ernalda well suited for the city. Sheep and dairy on the other hand would be rather under-represented in the direct neighborhood of the city. Cattle less so since you need to breed oxen on a regular schedule to keep plowing the land and doing overland transportation. With the Antones Estates consuming most of the land directly adjacent to the city, farmers' markets require almost an entire day delivery to the city. The farmland north of the Lyksos may have shorter routes into the city than the farms to the west. This patron-client-subclient scheme probably defines Nochet society, only that obligations flow up to other houses, too, if I read your campaign correctly. Does this take the Aeolians south of the city and the fisherman communities into account? Both these communities appear to have an ongoing history of presence in the region. Either would have been bystanders in the Adjustment wars, possibly co-opted by one side or the other. I guess those are now subsumed in the "Sartarite" population of Nochet. So basically, the less prestigious houses (whether of native or Sartarite origin) live on leased land, and the land-owner has great influence over them? Makes sense. Any Orlanth temples besides Orlanth Hill will be sponsored by local houses, then? I was assuming that quite a few of the Sartarite houses would have male heads of the houses, but that those would be treated like master guildsmen rather than the equivalent of a house's "mother" when dealing with native houses. Sending female envoys/ring members would ease that a bit. But then it would be hard to be of Sartarite origin and a member of the polite society of Nochet at the same time, anyway. You would have to be quite rich or quite well related. Yes. That's why I started this thread. Basically a merger between a pre-existing house and a clan of Sartarite refugees. In the long run, possibly a slightly more respectable origin for the Sartarite house than starting with their Sartarite identity, separate from any Imarjan connection. So basically, a lot of my questions aim at these instances of "Clan {X}". Is there such a thing as "second storey houses" (clans, guilds, whatever) - independent factions too poor or too lacking in influence to have some claim on the soil of Nochet? So option 4 also hits our Clan {X}. Basically, a Sartarite Clan {X} would have to choose a patron from either an earlier establishment of Heortlings, a direct client-patron relationship to one of the houses in Nochet plus a hostility or two to houses that feel deprived of earlier privileges, or a significant loss of identity through a merger with an Esrolian House but resulting access to the Imarjan traditions. This looks a bit like there are quite a few newcomer clans who fail to make such connections, and who end up either as unrecognized communities or being absorbed by existing houses piecemeal. Unrecognized communities do include beggars, thieves, bandits, mercenaries, unaffiliated entertainers etc., but then I suppose those would have to face a similarly established counterpart of natives. The overseas communities would have been established post 1586, mainly by House Delaineos, I guess, although second tier houses of other Enfranchised Houses would have been "suggested" to invest in exotic clients, too. I expect that little of this will have gone to the established Sarli merchants for lack of influence in those quarters.

If you look at Voria's accoutrements, you will find innocent readiness for sex everywhere. Like her darker sister she is adorned by severed genitals, in her case of flowering plants. Where she has stepped, the bees and blossoms do it. Voria is all about the promise of fertility. Keep the trickstes chained and a good eye on the alynxes...

Conventionally, a Dragon Pass counter represents up to five hundred cavalry or up to one thousand foot. Magician units may have smaller bodyguard contingents, resulting in those lower combat factors. A Sartarite clan warband usually would be about 100 warriors, most of them not professionals. Those city militias bundle parts of those warbands, in elite cavalry units and ok infantry. The Free Army has a few units that are indentifiable as local warbands, notably the Colymar tribal warband (a rather weak cavalry unit) or the Two Ridge Fort temple of Humakt bolstered by local volunteers. But that's for the few scenarios in the Dragon Pass boardgame. You can reduce unit size as far as you like for smaller conflicts without changing the factors. The Siege of Dunstop scenario does just that. You might want to provide a more detailed hex map for those conflicts, and possibly a shorter turn than a full day if you do that. On the Dragon Pass board, the Battle of Dwernapple would be over maybe 10x10 hexes. You could give it a better treatment on a detail map with a turn covering an hour or two.

Yes, and Sartarites have made Nochet their biggest urban presence despite that problem. The death of Sarotar was followed by a number of violent deaths, probably including ancestresses of Hendira. Relationships between House Norinel and the Sartar dynasty were best described by "secret war". True. After the Opening, there was a well-established Sartarite presence in Nochet. That may have had to do with the death of Tarkalor at Grizzley Peak. Tarkalor was the last of the people involved in that secret war. Basically, over the course of fifty years, a Sartarite presence worth about five tribes has been established in Nochet. The later arrivals will have been sponsored or at least promoted by earlier arrivals, but how did the early arrivals find acceptance in this Grandmother-ruled city? I doubt it, unless there is a permanent Puppeteer presence in Nochet. The Puppeteers are a tribe unto themselves, a tightly knit group of entertainers and magicians. There is that possibility, although I think for Sartar a visit at Ezel would have been more important. Sartar was well versed with Heortland cities. And he may have been the first Larnsti in at least half a millennium to have left Hendrikiland. Not quite the beginning of the kingdom, but possibly the early reign of Saronil, and no more than one or two clans' population. Most likely merchants maintaining ties with their home city or clans, organized in a guild.

Those kinds of cross-marriages are behind my research, really... But about a quarter of Nochet is Sartarite in origin, and the Sartarites have either come in clans or guilds or have founded them here, and given them the appearance of Esrolian houses or guilds. I suppose that means that they send a female leader to deal with the powers in Nochet. Sartarite guilds and houses may be reckoned as unreliable and disorderly, lacking the absolute obedience a Grandmother can command. This lack of grandmothers may limit their participation in city decisions, but it helps maintaining a Heortling identity. I am trying to get something analogous to a clan questionnaire for the Sartarites in Nochet. When did they come into the city? That shows until when they participated in Sartar events, and when they started to participate in Nochet events. This may concentrate around major setbacks for Sartar, e.g. the aftermath of the Battle of Grizzley Peak, the invasion in the middle of Terasarin's reign, the troubles after Terasarin's Death leading up to the conquest of Sartar, the Starbrow Rebellion, or other more local events and rebellions. Did they come to Nochet at once, or did they spend some time in their tribal confederation city, and maybe form a new clan out of folk that didn't quite achieve what they wanted in say Jonstown or Wilmskirk? Were they sent by a city guild to provide representation in Nochet? Who sponsored their establishment? Does it have to be a Nochet House or Guild, or can it be a temple (Grace Temple or Orlanth Hill)? What other obligations did they have to enter? Do they maintain a tribe-like network, e.g. preferred marriage partners? How are their links to the Sartarite homeland?

If so, they get represented thrice: There's the Tarsh Exile hero unit, which is the twin children of Arim somehow returned (or re-incarnated/heroformed). The "Falling Hills" exotic ability has been assigned to the Earth Shakers unit rather than the hero unit. The Sartar Magical Union unit is a band of magicians with very weak bodyguards and a standard spirit without any exotic magic. But then there might be a tradition of Earth Twins born to the avatar of the Earth Mother and her King lover that predates Arim's wooing of Sorana Tor. The Cult of Caladra and Aurelion may have taken its "twins" theme from the fact that the God Learner project leaders were twins, but their success might be tied to resonance with older instances of Earth Twins. Like e.g. the children of Norinel and Kimantor. Thus, this unit's wyter needn't be exactly Arim's twins. Interestingly, the old (I would thing WBRM, from the typeface) army listing used as an illustration on http://www.glorantha.com/on-magical-battalions-in-the-hero-wars/ has marked the Sartar MU Earth Twins unit with a (T) which indicates that they (and the Warm Sisters, the Snake Pipe Dancers and the skirmish units Scouts and Bush Rangers as well as one each horse and foot city militia, but not the Thieves Arm) may join the Tarsh army. Still, there is some leeway for the Sartar Magical Union magicians using a different instance, or just the principle, as their wyter.

Recently necessary disclaimer: This is not presented as fact, but as proposal for working out the background of Sartarite clans or houses in Nochet. A clan grows overcrowded in one of the city confederations in Sartar. What can they do? Prior to the city confederations, a clan would have sent off a splinter clan with some of the herds, seed grain, and the tools necessary to claim a new clan tula elsewhere. Rarely, they would have land to spare for the new clan, but more often that new clan would start over far from home. By the time of Sartar, most places suitable to start a new clan had been claimed. Occasionally a place on the border to some unpleasant neighbors would become available, like the Pol Joni establishment at Barbarian Town which opened some farmland south of the Dundealos, or the opening of Pavis County by Dorasar’s founding of New Pavis. But with the city confederations, there was another option. Even before reaching the critical population size, excess people could be shunted off to the cities, where the constituting tribes controlled plots or even housing. These folk would formally retain their clan identity, at least for a while, but they usually were too removed from clan activities to participate in the decision making. Over time, these folk could join the guilds, or possibly move on. Are there “urban nomadic” clans in Sartar, taking temporary residence in a place but moving on after a while? And over time, Sartarites began populating the Sarli district of Nochet. Some may have started as squatters, putting up camp on plots that weren’t inhabited (although quite likely someone would have used them as pastures or even gardens). Others may have looked for a sponsor, an established house in Nochet that would lease their ancient claim on some plots in the city to the newcomers, possibly defining a client relationship and imposing some of the civic duties tied to that plot, too. This might demand the formation of a house or a guild. Would such clans or guilds be Adjusted (Heortling-style mildly patriarchal) or Traditional Esrolian (i.e. mandatorily female-led)? Later (Lunar, but also internal) troubles might send entire clans (or what remained of them) packing from Sartar. How would a refugee clan establish itself in Sarli? Another question is how such a clan would feed itself. I get the impression that the granaries of Nochet are one very real power instrument in the hands of the Queens of Nochet, although failure to feed the city was a surefire symptom of not being fit to be Queen. How could a newcomer clan partake from that source, and how would that clan be expected to contribute? Does this require intercession of an Enfranchised House who would take the feeding upon their own responsibility, and who would define a se of demands to the new clients? I have some questions about the history of Sarli district, too. The presence of Orlanth Hill makes this a logical point for Adjusted clans, providing a priesthood to the temple that sin not so easily cowed by the demands of the Grandmothers. Such clans/houses will originaly have hailed from Heortland, or from a fusion of Adjustment warlords from Heortland with an Esrolian house. Following the conflict between Finelvanth and his wife, there probably wasn’t much sympathy for Adusted houses in Nochet. However, there was plenty of space available, especially in the neighborhood of Orlanth Hill which may have been a symbol of bad luck in Grandmother circles. Do the temples own land in Nochet (apart from their actual sites) where they can install clients without consulting any of the Enfranchised Houses? Does Orlanth Hill priesthood have claims for plots in Sarli?

Orlanth has several shields - at least the (presumably square) shield of Arran from his wife and the golden round shield (IIRC of justice) he wrestled from Yelmalio at the Hill of Gold. I would bet there is a myth about Wild Orlanth/Varanorlanth grabbing a bush or some slain beast's bones to parry every incoming blow, too. While I haven't seen anything of this repeated in later publications, the old Hero Wars hero write-up had a sword thane, a spear thane, a shield thane and a backboy to surround the Orlanth hero, so there are several candidates among the lesser god names (previously and since mostly and collectively the Thunder Brothers) that we were inundated with in Thunder Rebels that may step forth as embodiment of Orlanth's shield. I still like that concept, not in the least because it allows a weapontake rite to prepare an entire party for a heroquest which has been written as a solo experience, and to step up and perform a crucial and for this individual specific task. Maybe that's for training heroquests, but it may provide well choreographed first steps on the hero plane, and a first minor hero plane benefit for a character. And we know which groups will have exploited such easy rides to the hero planes for their own nefarious plots...

If such a shield could be used Captain America style as a heroic feat, it would be quite the terror weapon. Perhaps better reserved for a One Unique Thing. So, are there cross-shaped shields for Humakti, or do they make do with cross designs on the surface of their shields? Would rune-shaped shields be able to project the power of that rune? Light or fire rune shields are quite common, and have been imbued with light magic in the canon. There might be room for disorder-shaped shields in shield push matches, although that bears a risk of backfiring.