Joerg

I have similar reservations about the masks of the Emperor following Takenegi's disappearance. There will be no 100% identity in any of these take-overs, and the original person will shine through at times. But there will be demonstrable identity. Maybe it is a state of being stuck in heroforming, and maybe there will be waves or cycles of stronger presence of Being Arkat. There might be confusion with Arkat's closest (undisclosed) companions who underwent the Troll Rebirth with him, too. If you read the description of the ritual, there were seven participants, and seven instances where one participant failed, but Arkat performed flawlessly. How much was the Arkat retrieved from Hell the original Arkat, anyway? With every heroquesting experience, a person changes its self. How do you measure identity against that?

I don't think that the Red Emperor counts. While the new masks bear strong resemblance to one of the new members of the Egi, and that person's family may be granted more favor than prior to their member's ascension to the Egi and providing the face, the new body is likely to have features of other Egi as well. But then, I think a similar change in body happened when the first (and only) Takenegi took over much resemblance with Doskalos. About the rebirths of the Great Sister I cannot say much. She is supposed to be made up of all the portions lacking in the Emperor, but I cannot find any evidence that she changed her mortal shell every time the Emperor did. I think the five future Arkats in Ralios fall into this category. One day a power-hunting hero or noble, the other day one of the Arkats. GilamDestau, the western mask of Shang-Hsa MhNbC, apparently did a "reincarnate in your newborn son" stunt as acting Kralori emperor. Forang Farosh is more of a victim as a cursed spirit in his new body. Sorana Tor in Tarsh might be such a case, too.

Getting a grip on the Lunars is hard, as they work only in connection with the multitude of Pelorian local cultures and pantheons. They have followed everywhere where Dara Happan administrators supervise the population, which is pretty much all lowland Peloria. A rather complete set of stories about the Red Goddess, her mortal experience, her big quests, her enemies, and her successors in Peloria might be a good start, and given that there are several novellas or stories by Greg that have been circulated to very small audiences or read at conventions, that should be possible. I realize that few of those stories will be finalized, but I would be fine reading what is there in sidebars next to more factual descriptions of the Goddess, her religion, and her foes. Presenting mystical world view in a way that allows people to grasp it and play it is a lot harder, as the preceding discussion in this thread shows. To directly worship the Red Goddess you must be mystically awakened, "sevened" in their own terms, "illuminated" in Cults of Terror terminology. Providing spell lists and cyclical magic effects is not that big a deal, but conveying what the deeper Lunar mythology wants to bring about is almost as bad as trying to predict dragonewt behavior. For instance, how much is the Lunar Empire instrumental or necessary for the goals of the Goddess? Has it already fulfilled its purpose? There are devout worshippers of the Goddess and her pantheon outside of the Empire who have little track with the Red Emperor and his decrees.That might mean that they are missing out on something important, but it might also mean that those living inside the Empire might miss out on important insights those non-imperial Lunar worshippers might have. There are other manuscripts, like stuff about the Lunar army, with adventures you may experience should you have joined. Even without the subcultitis of the Hero Wars era, stuff like this will have to deal with regimental deities, homeland customs of the place of origin for the unit, etc. The Champions of the Red Moon supplement was a valiant attempt to give some impression of interlocking interests of an association in the Empire. But again, too many subcults, too many obscure and not really player friendly groups, and no real direction where a campaign inside that structure could go. And of course no information on the setting where all of these branches would be active. That supplement had a massive information overload, too many characters to follow - easily more than the number @Ian Cooper kept in his Red Cow campaign. But any realistic campaign anywhere near the Silver Shadow would easily have more than 120 major families with agendas of their own, networks of alliances, etc. Keeping track of those requires a mind like Varys from Game of Thrones. Since that publication, the Guide now offers some local detail for the Empire, possibly doubling or tripling the overview the old Genertela Box offered. But each city mentioned in the Guide will have administrators from powerful families from the Tripolis or Glamour, locally powerful families at odds with one another, devout lunatic agitators igoring the politics (and getting snuffed ever now and then, and easily replaced), trade networks, crime, and other local color. I would love to see one or two of these places elaborated and given a sandbox campaign, but one such project takes several years of work by a single creator, and maybe half that if a group of five coordinates their efforts. A work by any more far-flung committee like Champions of the Red Moon won't provide enough cohesion. The Stafford Library is not really forthcoming with directly playable stuff about Peloria. The Glorious ReAscent ends with the Battle of Argentium Thri'ile in the Dawn Age, and complicates the "unified Yelm" cult that we had for RQ3. But then that syncretic cult write-up always felt to me like it described an ideal composite cult that wasn't reality anywhere Yelm or one of his cognates were worshipped. The Fortunate Succcession offers a catalog of rulers with a few deeds and events of their reigns - useful historical background, few of which translates into gaming sessions unless you play Dara Happa Stirs in a Second Age campaign. (And try getting the EWF right for that...) The Entekosiad is the most confusing of the works that deal with Peloria. It offers local myths and history, but fails to provide a coherent overview. We get to know some of the local cultures in the western half of the Empire, and the quest of Valare Addi, which is either too mystical or too scholarly to spawn a game (and look who states that), and set in the first or second wane, in the past. Some of the unpublished stuff by Greg is even more confusing. Personally, I would like an official supplement for Lunar Tarsh, which has enough advanced Lunar culture in Furthest to offer a glimpse of what goes on further north, and two very Lunar factions (around Fazzur and Pharandros) badly at odds with one another and with a number of powerful players from the Heartlands (like Tatius). This should keep things relatable. Putting the Paulis Longvale narrative from Cults of Terror into a campaign sandbox would be another interesting approach from the fringes. So, getting into the Lunars is problematic if you want to go right into the middle of them, unless you are willing to make up things as you go and to know that you will be contradicted by canon on more than 75% of your creation.

Elmal definitely is worshipped as one of the rival suitors for Esrola, with Heler being his rival. In Nochet a deity named Harono might be worshipped instead. At least used to be worshipped. Magasta will be worshipped by the coastal folk, many of whom are culturally Pelaskite, although probably having adopted some features of the neighboring Esrolians into their culture. But then there is little point for inland folk to worship any sea deities, except at sites like Ezel (or Hrelar Amali in Ralios).

The date of his birth coincides with the rebirth of Teelo Estara, so that makes him and Teelo Estara the connected pair. There was no Red Emperor at AgartuSay's birth. So basically, the pair of Red Emperor and Great Sister together are Sheng's Other. I'll refer you to the Yelm myth of discovering the existence of his Other. I'll have to check where this was, might have been the Basko Black Sun story, might have been in GRoY, or might have been in the RQ3 full cult write-up. Now who is the God Learner here? We have the story about Yelm's Other, which happens to be his shadow. Nysalor's "at the edge of light" also mentioned a shadow. Bad wording here. "Once apotheosized"? Or "once transcended beyond the Ultimate", which quite evidently neither Sheng nor Rufelza are, yet. By the time she rises into the Middle Air, she has won her fight for a place in the Cosmos. That's what Castle Blue was all about. And no, Owning a Rune is not Being a Rune. You may have an Other as a Great Deity. It doesn't have to be another Great Deity. Usually it is revealed to you in a struggle. Rashorana is a Lunar deity version of Rashoran. Rashoran is the original teacher of illumination, according to Cults of Terror, and known in Orlanthi circles. Apotheosized to the Other Side... IMO clear evidence that he is there. Out of contact, but that's different from dead and gone. There was no Arkat on the Other Side prior to his apotheosis. Ever since, there is. Or, in other words, in the timelessness of the Other Side there was an Arkat, but unreachable for denizens of the Middle World before his apotheosis. Sorcerous magics usually don't rely on an Other Side presence other than the Grimoire node (the energy channel to these spells). Five times, last I checked. Yeah, I'll go for other, too. Still the fact remains that AgartuSay was triggered by Teelo Estara. That she may have passed this on to her physical representations in the Middle World is something else, so I don't mean to contradict the status quo which (semi-correctly) mentions the Red Emperor only.

That's what the Guide says. On the other hand, AgartuSay was born in the moment that Teelo Estara entered the Surface World, very much like Arkat and Nysalor. To me that indicates that he is the shadow at least of Teelo Estara's office - which may have gone over to Takenegi. If so, Takenegi is only the third embodiment of that office, following Teelo Estara and Doskalos. I wonder about the physical continuity between Doskalos (who died at Castle Blue) and Takenegi, too - the History of the First Wane tells us that the Red Emperor left his son Vakthan in charge of Carmania, after troubles in the first years of the Wane. Who exactly is the father of Vakthan? And how old was Doskalos in 1247? At best barely over 20, so how old could a son of his have been? Nowadays we know about the Egi, a small group of individuals on the Red Moon jointly creating the mask of the Emperor, and Vakthan's father could have been any one of them besides Doskalos. But not her Shadow. Rashoran(a) is the overarching concept of which Nysalor - and by necessity Arkat - are expressions. Until their reunion on top of the tower in the City of Miracles, neither of them was complete. The way I understand it, each of them lived in a separate reality, perceiving the other as Gbaji. Only the being that returned from that battle was complete, and no longer separated by Gbaji, the need for different realities gone. What is your source for that? The God Learners may have cut off ways leading to Arkat on the Other Side, but they were never able to erase him. The beef between Orlanth and Rufelza/Sedenya is rulership of the Middle Sky, aka Middle Air.

I wonder whether the ego is annihilated or vastly inflated in this moment of unity. Given that Illumination through riddles is a brute force approach, you may be right about it being crushed and deflated. But then, in that moment the distinction between nothing and everything isn't exactly made. The reputation for insanity need not be tied to mystical insights. The Mad Sultanate suggests that severe trauma through exposure to naked Chaos without gaining any insights will induce this state of mind, so a lot of the weirder illuminates may border on Mad Sultanate membership. Neither does the Madness spell induce any insights. Recreational use of the Befuddle spell is even less likely to produce insights... I do wonder about the absence of Arkat in this list, then (not even as Gbaji). Sheng is her shadow, so not included in her statement (yet), but Arkat and Nysalor really come as a pair, too. By excluding that shadow, this list doesn't really prove an all-encompassing unity, but a selection of precursors.

Yes it is, supposition that started from around 1994 when the interchangeability of brass and bronze was touted (by Nick Brooke, IIRC, apparently following work he did on Carmania with Greg - look where to find the Brass Mountains, and look whose myths are dominant for that region - Turos). Lodril himself may be of pure sky origin, his mountain sons like Quivin or his worker sons (presumably by Oria) are mixed sky and earth, to say the least. So what metal would you expect from their bones? Some kind of bronze. When did this crop up? Probably even before the Biirth of Umath, Plentonic dating gives Lodril's descent for 25,000 YT and Umath's birth for 40,000 YT. (But then, it is entirely possible to regard Lodril's descent as Aether's insemination of Gata, leading to the birth of Umath just 15k pre-Time years later.) It is quite likely that the Mostali encountered brass (volcanic bronze) in the deep in that long time before the birth of Umath. That would explain why they have a brass caste, but not a bronze caste. Where do we find this? All over the place, where storm and mountain champions as well as rank and file battled it out - if they used RuneQuest rules, lost limbs would have been plenty. Orlanth is the only son of Umath with a known fondness for mountains due to his mother, compare Stormwalk and Storm Bull's history there. Bertalor's Lo-metal would be better named after Lorion rather than Lodril, IMO. While volcanoes may produce floating pumice now and then, there is no logical or mythological connection between them and floating Sea Metal, whether in liquid or in solid form. We have a couple such problematic names from the Lunar battalia. The Steel Sword legion, for instance. Evidence for Gloranthan steel, or just another name for expensive dwarven iron used to equip an entire bodyguard unit? I go for "just another name". A lot of ancient terrestrial alloys are missing from Gloranthan canon, like pewter (tin and lead, what you would expect from the outer world where the sky bowl and the underworld sky bowl meet), arsenic copper, electrum (equal parts gold and silver, the first metal coinage) or the yellow and red varieties of 18 karat gold (white followed a lot later, Donaldson's Lord Foul cycle nonwithstanding). So wood-cuts are a thing in North Sartar? Or would that have to be made with rolling sigils?

Brass is the mixture of sky metal with earth metal that resulted from Lodril's descent. It is not a copper-zunc compound (in terrestrial actuality an alloy of two such compounds) in Glorantha, just bronze with a different mythic background. Lodril wasn't necessarily born that way, but became so through his fusion with his wrestling partner or environment, but his sons inherited that trait. There are the Brass Mountains in Carmania, the main source for bronze in the western half of the Empire.. Alphostius would be the bucket-maker, for transport of mud and sludge that defies transport in baskets (the common container for carrying excavated material), probably scooping up the sludge directly with the bucket. The Ten Sons and Servants are the irrigation workers for the Dara Happan rice fields. I don't think that they are dwarves, their diminuitive size indicates their lowly status.

Windmills: The ones at Old Wind aren't. Things may be different in Brithini colonies, e.g. in God Forgot.

The Lightbringers' Quest as we know it from Cults of Prax and King of Sartar is that of the Heortlings, which (due to Harmast being a Heortling) is often regarded as the original one. Other hill barbarians who were encountered by the Lightbringer missionaries in the first and second century had stories different from what the Heortlings knew. The Seven Mothers' Quest may have used such a variant, possibly with variant participants, too. The closest somewhat Orlanthi folk to Torang are the raccoon-totem people from Imther.

In my simulationist days I thought about abandoning the combat round almost entirely, using a point cost for movement and combat actions, inspired by the Gunslinger board game where you played action cards to indicate your action, which would be revealed as the ticker proceded, if I recall that correctly from about 30 years ago. Abandoning a planned action would cost some re-orientation time. Basically I had a dial on which these actions would have been placed. This would offer a great tactical game on a hex grid, which could be done using your roleplaying characters. It would be quite a pain for each and every combat, however.

In my understanding, Osentalka the Perfect One could exist only in the timelessness of the Sunstop. When the sun returned to its path chained by time, only Nysalor was left. (And Arkat, half a world away.) I doubt it. While Deezola, Teelo Norri and possibly Jakaleel are candidates for certain phases of the Lunar goddess, I cannot see Yanafal, Irrippi or Danfive in those roles. Deezola was the ruler of Torang, a Rinliddi city not that far from the Blue Moon Plateau under which ancient Mernita is supposed to be buried. I don't see any bird connections for any of the Seven Mothers, so Deezola and her cabal are likely to have followed some other main idea. A deeper Hell. Deep as Subere, at least, way deeper than former Wonderhome where Bijiif (Ashes of Yelm) resides. Orlanth's chariot gets attacked by Jagrekriand, the Heortling name for Shargash. This should be reflected in a Dara Happan myth where Shargash or one of his sons attacks the vehicle of Rebellus Terminus. Possibly during his invasion of the sky, in which case Lunar Chronoportation might rip both questers from Orlanth's invasion to Umath's invasion, which ended fatally for Umath. The first Lunar Emperor ruled until he was slain for the second or third time by Sheng Seleris (3rd or 4th wane), so he saw the expansion through the Conquering Daughter in the 2nd wane, and had opportunity to interact with the Orlanthi of the conquered provinces, or even beyond. I don't think that an infiltration would have been possible, or desirable. To become more like Orlanth, even temporarily, would be to become less of Moonson.

Basically, it is a question of climate and resources. Where it is too cold for wood and bast to rot away quickly, wooden vessels rule - basically anywhere with a decent winter. So no barrels in Teshnos (despite easy access to highest quality wood, but not durable bast), and limited use of them where potters using imported charcoal don't use up valuable timber that is required for housing. It takes barbarians in the woods to waste timber for highways through wetlands, roof cover, or containers. Like gem-cutters do for diamond, you can grind down these hard materials with these hard materials - autogenous milling. It does take lots of patience and persistence to do it to the artistic degree shown in Egyptian statuary. To stirr this stuff, you can use shoe-like pieces of wood attached to a handle, which need replacement frequently. I am a bit in two minds whether Mostali should have this technology. On one hand, it could be used to make Stone into tools that would use icky grown matter among surface dwellers. On the other hand, I think that Mostali stone cutting or shaping techniques might be so developed that they don't need to lathe anything. One thing I feel Mostali technology should do is to work without the use of wood. Mostali axe handles should be forged. Crossbows traded to humans do use wood, but that's because the bow is a non-Mostali invention adapted by the Mostali. Mostali textiles should shun plant or animal fibres (ot skins), too, wherever possible. Use of such stuff might be extravaganza, like the unexplained demand for parrot plumage in Jrustela. Mostali should really be unable to cure leather, but then what can they use for their bellows and protective gear? Spinning and weaving should be known to them, possibly using glass or mineral fibre or wire. I would hate to have this happen. The wine should arrive in leather skins, and possibly drunk from them. The beer should be served in the cauldron, which may be a huge piece of charred pottery. And the heroes should wear leather-wraps rather than sandals, if they wear shoes at all. If I wanted to play Greek heroes, I'd play some sort of Mythic Greece, or Mythic Egypt with Greek mercenaries. All of them would be of coastal origin. To me, hill barbarian culture is definitely "transalpine" when viewed from the Ancient world. There is no Mediterranean and even less of an Aegaean anywhere on Glorantha, transalpine hill folk border directly to Mesopotamian irrigation culture. Vaguely Hellenistic influences may be available from Pelanda, but in a purely continental way. The coasts are mainly on the oceans, like the east African coast, with similar conditions. Coastal cultures from the Ancient World or the Dark Ages always feel wrong for most of Glorantha. I think that coastal Orlanthi are nearly unknown in Kethaela - most of the coastal population outside of cities probably are really Pelaskite in origin, both in Heortland and in Esrolia, although there appear to be (urban) Esvulari dabbling in fishing parts of Choralinthor Bay, as do God Forgotten. I see a role for Orlanthi crew in whaling and seal hunting, however, following the mythic precedent of the Vadrudi. The Ludoch of the region may have divided feelings about that, since they are the product of those encounters. And merchants go whereever there are profits to be made, which explains Esrolian and Heortland-run merchant vessels. Most of these will still have a good portion of Pelaskite sailors, or even more exotic personnel hired in distant ports.

There have been the regular cataclysms in Genertela west of the Shan Shan, which have reset the clock at each turn of the Ages. I think there is a pattern of catching up towards something of a plateau of civilization, then a spurt aiming to a new magical hype, and then the most advanced cultures collapsing hard. Kralorela, Vormain and the East Isles appear to be more static, but at least Kralorela saw heavy outsider occupation in both the Second and the Third Age (Shang-Hsa mhNbC and Sheng Seleris - a curse in itself), so there too will have been efforts to make things right again. Terrestrial history isn't much different. Apart from Byzantium, the achievements of the Roman empire were forgotten as Germanic kingdoms inherited the western half of the empire, even though they let themselves be Romanized. Then most of these Germanic kingdoms fell to new invaders, or made it through just barely. The eastern Romans saw their territory gobbled up by the new religion spreading from Arabia, and to the ever-changing populations in the Danubian corridor. The Renaissance was aptly named such because people started to raise their cultural and material level back to somewhere first century Rome had been, and mostly through the (involuntary) transfer of knowledge from the Crusades. While Alfred of Wessex aimed at a cultivated society at his court, with learning and literacy highly esteemed, his successors had to struggle to keep something of that alive. The Karolingians gave up on curiousness after Charlemagne and destroyed collections of knowledge, then began warring among themselves, bringing the Karolingian upturn down again, splitting their territory between the formerly Roman and the formerly barbarian parts, and a contested or independent belt in between. So basically, there isn't always an upward development in material or intellectual culture. Achievements of former leading cultures don't get taken over without a break, and often that happened even just with dynastic changes or changes in orthodoxy, like the loss of the Library of Alexandria under the Byzantines. Islam needed about two centuries to discover the Greek literature they had conquered for their own high culture. I think that this is more of a declaration despite all the facts. Glorantha was a Bronze Age world, but not measured by the change in technology or metallurgy in Asia Minor and the eastern Mediterranean, but in e.g. the eastern Baltic Sea, or even the Inkas. Major Bronze Age cultures, in contact with more advanced technology, that's how I see Glorantha. And Ian's summary is similar. And Glorantha has no inland seas. The Middle Sea Empire sort of projected an inland sea environment, but that was just under three centuries and under high sea conditions, not two millennia like in the eastern Mediterranean. A colonial empire much closer to the Portuguese endeavors than to anything the Phoenicians did, with magic rather than gun powder. It is hard to find a parallel to the Jrusteli in ancient history. The Thirteen Colonies may be a nod to US history, but that's mainly where the parallels end. The rest of the Jrusteli history is closer to the successors of George Washington liberating Napoleonic England without having had to fight red-frocked Hessians in their colonies. In the ancient time, Carthage is the one case where a colony outshined its founding cities. Homer himself comes from one of those trench periods between high points of cultivation. The heroic age of Homer belongs to myth, not history. We look at the Romans differently because we have historical facts in addition to myths, and then had our myths destroyed by the church. The Arthurian cycle and the Charlemagne cycle are returns to myth and heroism little different from Homeric stories. The Henriad is too recent, but has more mythic than historical format. On the continent, the Stauffer emperors were made into mythical figures, too, with Barbarossa waiting to return under a magical mountain. Yes, all of this is mediaeval or late mediaeval stuff. And in many ways it is more primitive than Philipp's Macedonia prior to the conquest of Greece. Ok. Pseudo-mediaeval more often than not is not mediaeval, either, apart from archaic weaponry and armor, but more at home in the 17th century otherwise. Just like Game of Thrones is post-Renaissance, never mediaeval. And many other concepts in standard fantasy come directly from the Wild West, minus colts. In both cases, the most archaic of the influences is claimed as the theme of the settings, because the more modern audience will have a hard time to recognize anachronisms. Prax and Pavis owe their popularity to being a Wild West setting at heart, with a few twists. I still would go for Hallstatt, disregarding what happened south of the Alps. The Etruscans as a metal-exporting civilization don't have to work in iron with the abundance of bronze or brass that we find in Glorantha, and are otherwise a perfect fit for the material culture of e.g. urban Safelster and Tanisor. The premise for Dara Happa in the Gray Age is a bit like a faltering (or rather failed Mesopotamia conquered by various horse nomads. Normally we associate that with the Persians. Earth's history has no Alkoth Demon period. (If it had, it wouldn't have produced us...) But this Mesopotamia is set on a reverse-flow Mississippi, climate-wise. Much of Genertela makes sense as a "what if northern America had had rich access to Bronze since the glaciers went away." There are no ziggurats, there are copies of Toltec pyramids. And things build up from there. As the wind flies, distances may be short. River travel along the Oslir will create short distances, but for traffic from Darjiin to neighboring Doblian the riverine route through Erinflarth, Oslir, Poralistor and Esel might be faster than travel through or around the Yolp chain overland. Moonboats are about as common in the Empire as Zeppelins were in the thirties of last century. Outside of the Empire, traffic would suffer from the same multitude of territorial borders (i.e. clan and tribal borders) as did the inside of the Holy Roman empire. Instituting central authorities in the Quivin region and in the Grazelands was what opened Dragon Pass for trade volume after the collapse of the Twin Dynasty , and while Old Tarsh may have kept Dragon Pass passable, the conquests in Saird and Tarsh resisting that made traffic from Tarsh to the expanding Lunar Empire highly hazardous, and then Sheng created turmoil. I don't see Peloria as technologically advanced, at least not outside of their core competences like everything to do with irrigation. There is one famous and fabulous road in the Empire, or rather in its provinces - the Daughter's Road. A processional, cutting off a slight bend in the Oslir, thus providing no actual trade advantage, but a definite troop deployment advantage. The main access to Glamour is the canal to the Oslir River. I think that most Pelorian rivers have lost their souls and their deities, and are mainly sources for irrigation and water retention. I think the last major river magician was Lokamayadon's wife Erilindia. Pelanda used to be a source of technology and innovation - in the Golden and Storm Age. The Turos expression of the volcanic maker is probably the most civilized of the deep fire cultures (in their own right, under their own administration). With the adoption of Dara Happan bureaucracy (a side effect of irrigation mastery), they got better organized, but their innovation was stifled. The Carmanians, at least under the Lion Shahs, brought a new impulse from pre-God Learner Fronela by replacing the Dara Happan bureaucracy with their own. A bit comparable with the Caliphate of Cordoba, and the Bull Shahs doing to that culture what the Almohads did to Spanish enlightenment, a destruction from the change of management. There is of course a more ancient parallel which works as well for Carmania - the Zoroastrian reforms. While not exactly Bronze Age, they brought an ideological change, and unlike Akhenaten's attempt, this one lasted. But then, the "western" origin of Syranthir's folk makes their culture a bit like the Hellenistic succcessor states in Asia, only lacking the previous Alexandrine empire. I wonder how effective the cuneiform literature and literacy was for Mesopotamia and adjacent territories. The sheer volume of literature that survived thanks to this less perishable medium looks like it promoted a rather quick dissemination of ideas, or at least ideas the elite wanted to distribute. The most standard mantras could be mass-produced through rolling seals, a technology suggested as origin of the Gods Wall. So, if an idea is concise enough to fit onto a rolling seal, its dissemination would be fairly easy. True. And then there is the classic trope of the mutilated or chained genius. Leonardo the Scientist is probably the only such genius who enjoys free movement. Wayland's drama of crippling or Daidalos incarceration are the reason why technological advances are limited to a small elite. The Lhankor Mhy cult is a cult of learning, not a cult of teaching. Yes, their temples will gather knowledge, and share it with the powers that are sufficiently strong to make the sages give that knowledge away. There are branches of Lhankor Mhy that put knowledge to practical uses, like perfumers, alchemists, jewellers, glass-makers. The only canonical use of concrete by dwarves are their floating castles. When they have stationary rock to work with, they shun this poured pseudo-stone, and create places like the Boldhome pockets or the Boldhome Royal Palace. I tend to blame the invention of concrete on the Kadeniti, and the dwarf use of this is a rare instance of technology transfer from humans to dwarves. Glass (in the sense of glass-blowing) is attested for Syran, a place as far away from dwarven influence as you can get in Genertela. Yes, the lead caste of mostali does pipes and glass (or glazing), so they may have access to this technology, too. But terrestrial glass technology starts in the early Bronze Age. Glass blowing is a lot more recent, but Roman glasswork had everything that its successors could do until the industrial revolution. Ironically, the archaeological evidence for glassware is fairly small because (like bronze) glass is recyclable, unlike pottery. There appears to be something of a consensus that dwarf technology is no steampunk, and possibly only very limited clockwork-punk. I am fairly disappointed with "Mostali just use water elementals to keep their underground dwellings dry," however. For their greatest strongholds, they probably don't need to lift the water. It would be sufficient to open ways for it to disappear below, as there are always deeper underworlds capable of taking up the downflow. I do see a big opportunity to give the dwarves Roman style or Georg Agricola style waterworks, only underground. And possibly replacing wood construction with masonry or metal. The crossbow is one of the other few cases of a technology transfer to the Mostali, either from the Sky cultures or from the elves, and then adapted and improved with a vengeance. The original concept of the bow is alien to the Mostali. Its warfare use against them made them adopt and improve it, starting with adding the cross-piece, then adding leverage and in the end magazines for repeater crossbows. I wonder about chains as technology, whether to lock access to harbors or rivers (as documented for Nochet), as filigrane jewelry (another technology that sees lots of recycling, but fortunately gets preserved for archaeologists as grave goods), or even as translator for motion. Also about bucket chains that don't require any looped metal bits but can work with rope technology. Dormal's achievement was to re-discover technologies and then put them together in a novel way that the Imperial Age sailors failed to do in order to sidestep the Closing. The technological discoveries for high sea sailing other than the furthest East Isles and Waertagi traditions were made by the Free Men of the Seas who had an almost 50 year advantage over the other coastal populations noticing the sudden absence of the Waertagi interdict. It is my working theory that the Free Men of the Seas somehow managed to translate Godswar cloudship designs (Helerings, Artmali) to vessels crafted by more conventional means. The Umathelan colonies (planted with the aid of the Waertagi) IMO provided the ancient clues, and the Olodo storm worshippers who make up the Umathelan "Orlanthi" probably are of Helering/Helerite origin, having some of the myths that enabled the Free Men of the Seas to parse those Godswar events. But that's deep "Jörg's theories" territory, even though more than twenty years old. To be honest, I fail to see the big difference between Yelmic bureaucrats ordering Lodril magics to be performed by the Lodrili priesthood possibly against the preferences of those deities (creating an accumulation of displeasure which then erupts in the Lodrili rebellions) and sorcerers commanding Lodril magics to be performed by godlings without interaction of a priesthood, taking the rebellion into account in the magical effort. Clear glass will be high technology. Primitive glass blowers pipes might even be made by potters, and glass bottles would be luxury items. Like I said above, the Syran glass workers are canon. No barrels with metal hoops, but metal hoops aren't necessary, and any culture that fits planks to boats will fit planks to containers. In all likelihood, the containers birthed the boats. It is a wonder that you didn't add axles and wheels to this list. A culture that has fire drills, possibly driven with a bow-like actuator, has access to rotation for manufacture of various kinds. This makes me think of these technologies as the signature Golden Age technologies, e.g. for improving spear shafts and arrows. I prefer "swords and barefoot" epic, or Ötzi- (Ice-mummy) style hay-bolstered soft leather foot wrappings for winter. Sandals as in "military boots" may be quite high technology. Sandal-like footwear is attested for Yelm the Golden Age, however. I see a majority of the hillfolk inhabiting neolithic-style longhouses. Which remained in use (with slight additions of innovations) until early in the 20th century, and which were developed independently by native Americans when faced with similar climate, or by Papuans despite quite different climate (but the same problem of keeping the rain away). Visitors to Jutland should take a tour through the Hjemsted Iron Age center on the road to Römö. They have Roman Iron Age pre-Anglo-Saxon migration longhouse reconstructions, but also a neolithic longhouse reconstruction. The main difference is the length of the house and the amount of livestock kept inside. So, when your senses are tickled "this looks so Viking", that's because Viking architecture followed an absolutely archaic model. The houses in the oppidum of Manching were the same basic layout, but used standardized building material so that beams could be re-used when a house that was too worn was dismantled. Anglo-Saxon and Viking housing was much more primitive in this respect. And that is true for terrestrial history just as well, and makes the difference between beaker culture farmsteads, urnfield farmsteads and Anglo-Saxon farmsteads negligible.

My worst disintegration of a book ever was my first King of Sartar paperback. The second one holds up quite well, however... Of my Avalon Hill boxed sets, only the Cults Book of Gods of Glorantha and the Genertela Book have lost their covers. For some unexplicable reason, my copy of Daughters of Darkness is still quite pristine... no charring yet, either.

Craftsmanship still should play a major role. Nobody without a good idea of what is needed and how to do it will be able to shape a perfect brick just from wanting to shape the perfect brick. Inferior qualities in some of the requirements might be caught up with heavier use of magic, but applying the same amount of magic to good qualities will create a masterpiece beyond that. A brick to inspire an entire wall, so to say... I hinted at a similar possible problem in a text that ended up as a sidebar box in Men of the Seas, when replacement parts from foreign lands tied to alien magics would have to be integrated into the composite unity of your vessel.

That link only leads to any user's own file page, and then complains that the folders don't exist. You would need to make the content of that folder public, but if there are copyrighted sources rather than collections of quotes, that would cause legal problems. But then my Spanish is non-existent, and my Latin isn't what it used to be any more, either, so any activity other than skimming the text inferring the meaning from similar languages would be impossible to me.

So basically, every material object has a shadow existence on the spirit plane, independent from the density of a material but dependent of the strength of the spirit bits inside them. Is it "everything has spirit", as an alchemist or a tapper would say, or is it "everything has a spirit"? With my alchemist (materialist) way of approaching the amounts of spirit in objects and observations of spontaneous or induced manifestation of identity, are there ways (like Tapping) that could render objects spirit-dead? Would such items or material be shunned, could they be healed or re-awakened? The "Stabilize <material>" divine Mostal spells appear to imbue matter with magical energy. Tapping basically draws magic from its targets, so acts as the opposite way. As a rule, western sorcerers appear to frown upon frivolously enslaving energy to be the servant of matter, but when it comes to sorcerous architecture, they appear to use similar techniques, like e.g. for the Tower of Xud in Kustria. Basically I argue that made things are made for a purpose. Which might using an item for a different purpose than intended by the maker a bit harder than usage according to that purpose, at least if the maker clearly communicated that purpose in the making. So "spirit" does not exactly describe entities, or big spirits are collective entities of smaller spirits? And can those partial/contributing spirits be extracted (by sorcerers or shamans) from a captured spirit entity? Like, selectively tapped, or excised/exorcised? (trying to keep this discussion material...) I would agree that for any kind of ceramics the fire can be regarded by Gloranthans as just the final agent to draw out the water. Master ceramicists (whether brickmaker or potters) probably know better. Also there will be buildings like ziggurats to celestial deities where the fire aspect will be celebrated rather than ignored. Brick is fairly simple because once you draw the water out, all the rest is just mud and possibly more organic soil (like cow dung, or dinosaur dung for more monumental architecture - possibly more quake-proof, too). But mixing runes to describe substances is what alchemy is about. You could reduce the runes to simple aggregate states and define that everything tangible enough to stop a finger is solid (earth), that which isn't but will collect in a vessel is liquid (water), and so on for air an fire. Darkness is a bit of a difficulty for this classification, though, and moon is just temporary pretention of existence. The dwarf food recipe in Elder Secrets ("I think it is too brainy, containing too much gold") does seem to work on the basis of a balance of elements. I was thinking of ritual perception, but basically that is covered by your reply, too. So, no, the dome doesn't become transparent, but the sun becomes visible inside it. As far as I remember, the spell was introduced with Yelmalio, so yes, definitely there. (Cloud Clear and Cloud Call used to be led ad absurdum by the RQ3 POW economy, and their presence as standard spell for a shrine still makes me want to give up on the cult of Orlanth. As instantly retrievable spell during such a rite it doesn't lead to gross weakening of the initiates, so might be possible.)

I do wonder whether this is true down to the mud brick, unless "spirit" is also a description of latent magical potential. While the source of the clay certainly has its collective entity and had better be asked nicely (or commanded firmly, if you are of a sorcerous persuasion) to give you the material, I would think that a man-made object isn't immediately imbued with an anima, although there will be of course some latent essence, or space for it. A greater construction made of these bricks probably will be imbued with an identifiable spirit through the dedication rites, drawing on the spirit potential of the bricks (and other component parts). If each brick had an anima with an individual idea of purpose, it could be harder to form a collective out of that. But then the main purpose of a brick is to join with others into a collective, so maybe brick, tile or plank spirits are primed for giving up identity to a greater whole. I talked about purpose before - this is an idea what a construction made from many parts should do, a projection of object identity by the maker. Some of this goes into the making of a brick from clay and other material, and may get sealed by stamping and firing the brick (but then that fire is a component that is required to make the brick what it is). In that case, also through cloud cover? Probably should - the golden cupola moves the interior of the building close to the sky. Is the visibility open to all visitors of the interior (even intruding raiders of hostile deities), or is congregation membership required? I doubt there are many dragon-proof edifices in Glorantha...

If that's good for your Glorantha, go for it. YGMV. Gravity isn't necessary when being heavy pulls something down. Arches are stable because they conform to the stasis rune? Fine, go with that. (Wouldn't it be more correct to say that gravity and phyiscs are God Learner orthodoxies?) The moon is the embodiment of balance between the heaviness of earth and dark and the upward trend of light. Look at its rune. Where else could it be? (Not: where else should it be - that's what the Hero Wars are for.) And it should be atmohemisphere, and the sun only goes around the Inner World, at an average speed of about 1000 miles per hour, much less in summer when it's strong, much faster in winter when it's weak. (Faster if you calculate its speed against the rotating sky dome which forces it to take a loopy detour.) There is plenty of sea and even some outlying land that is outside of its path. There is a hungry darkness at the bottom of the universe, drawing things towards it, and a worse hunger in the void beyond that. It is this pull which makes things heavy. Why is gold so heavy? First of all it is a metal, and metals are heavy. But yes, gold may well have used to be the lightest metal, but Yelm's stay in Hell in the Darkness would have changed that and lent a heaviness to the metal of light. So basically Gloranthan physics are more or less effects like Newtons laws explained by myths (note the plural, there may be multiple stories contributing to the status quo of the world). Something which Sir Isaac seems to have pursued himself in his later years with his studies of alchemy and manifestation of symbols. The magic in Glorantha isn't any more what it used to be in the early ages of the world. In Godtime, some material representation and a purpose backed by creative power were all that was needed for a technology. Those are the original tools of Mostal. They brought order and stability into a realm of phantastic possibilities, channeling those possibilities, narrowing them. In the early Golden Age, everything was moving towards an orderly cycle of repetition. A glorious state of motion bound to stasis was within reach. But then Umath was born (not made, and why should he have been made, as there was no space left for another element?) and new creativity was released, leading to new growth. In hindsight, it was a mistake to set up things to let a male sky rub against the female earth, without a lubricant and protective layer. Something new and unforeseen was sparked and grew inside the Earth, then burst forth and lifted the moving parts out of alignment. Other flaws which seemingly had been contained broke free, too, and there was no contingency plan for that, only plans for limited countermeasures, which the mostali activated. More damage reports came in, then the damage reporting system broke down. So yes, there used to be a Glorantha where will and purpose were enough to effect something. On occasion, glimpses of this become available to the Gloranthans, whether through the emanations of the Pseudocosmic Egg which changed Gloranthan reality within Nysalor's Bright Empire, breaking open the access to the Hero Planes by the God Learners, dreaming the Dragon Dream in the EWF, or emerging from destruction and Chaos like the Red Goddess. But these bursts of activity and creativity feed on the magic of the world, and leave a world behind that has to struggle ever harder to gain access to the magic of Godtime. That's why purpose and handwaving aren't enough any more. To address your initial comment again: It is not like the God Learners were big fans of gravity or physics. Not even the Zistorites with their Machine worship. They aimed to transcend those restrictions. For a while they succeeded.

Cogwheels translating horizontally rotating (quicksilver-powered) waterwheels into a vertically rotating representation of the Sky Dome (complete with a mechanism duplicating the tilt) are documented for Kuchawn, away from the eyes of any Mostali as the octamonist Babadi don't leave their mountain. Materials and technologies used for architecture and infrastructure: We know about poured concrete, opus caementitium, which will also allow mortar more durable than the usual (central-European) sand/calcinated chalk mixture. (But then, the durability of Portland cement concrete isn't quite what the bridge-builders of the 70ies thought it would be, either). There won't be steel-reinforced concrete for lack of steel and unsuitability of brass or bronze, although stabilizing the base of a dome with a chain inside the concrete might be known. The Sun Dome temples with their hemispherical domes take some fairly advanced architectural knowledge, and that knowledge must have been around already in the Dawn Age as the design was spread in the Gbaji Wars. We don't hear of such domes collapsing due to earthquakes, either (excepting unusual ones like Vestkarthan's shudder in 1050 which devastated most architecture in Maniria) or dragonfire capable of melting walls and armies to glass (see Glasswall). Rural or backwoods Sun Dome temples like the Dykene one are simple stone vaults, probably plastered and frescoed with a suitable yellow pigment. (Real world cadmium sulphide, for instance.) These domes would be quite massive, built in the usual way above a wooden support. The big ones like the two in Prax or the new one in Vanntar look like they approach the size of e.g. the Pantheon in Rome or precursors of the central dome of the Hagia Sophia. The Pantheon with its windowed concrete dome manages because of the tuff addition to the material, giving it an exceptional lightness. A stone construction like the Hagia Sophia, even on a smaller scale, requires significant buttressing, cleverly hidden in the Hagia Sophia in hemicircular side domes, but no such are shown in the map of the Sun Dome. There is always the possibility of a wooden construction, with gold foil inside, and possibly outside as well. Given a suitable preservation and climate, such wooden constructions can last for better than a millennium. When the roof beams of the Basilica in Trier finally were replaced, 1600 years had passed, and while single beams may have been replaced over time, the general construction last that long. However, in order to get that much lifetime, such a wooden dome needs to be double-shelled, with enough space in between for repair and maintenance crew to get to work, and to bring in replacement parts. There is a possibility that the Praxian domes and the one in Sartar are exceptional in their workmanship among the newer temples, and that they used dwarven architectural secrets - Flintnail cultists in Prax, and the inheritance of Saronil for Vanntar. The original ones from the Bright Empire may have used Greatway masons, too. (The Balazar citadel ones may have had dwarf support, too). But that leaves Domanand and its EWF era daughter temples elsewhere but Prax in a period when Greatway Openhandism was actively pursued and interdicted by the Nidan decamony. A precursor architecture to the Sun Domes would have been the Anaxial-Era Star Towers of Yuthuppa, that have star dome representations on their tops. The text tells us that they are hollow, but have spiralling staircases on the insides. I wonder whether they also have balconies and vertical compartmentalisation like Buserian's Frame. However, that frame is said to reflect the construction scheme of a horse nomad yurt, a culture which came into contact with Yuthuppa only under Jenarong. The biggest dome of all was of course Manarlavus' Dome covering "all of Dara Happa" (at least Raibanth, although the map claims that it covered Yuthuppa and Alkoth, too), protecting it from the advancing glacier. This was shaped like the hull of Anaxial's Ark, and built of bricks and stones (part of which were stolen by Darjiinians). But as a Godtime construction that did not survive into the ravages of Time, we can use it only as an ideal, not as an actual technology. It still is a contender for the greatest construction ever made by humans (and demigods). Cyclopean walls are a feature of Godtime Glorantha, and survived in a number of places into History - parts of the Nochet Wall and the wall of abandoned Old Karse are of this type, and this may have been used on Vingkotling fortifications like Whitewall, too. These could be like the mortarless can't-fit-a-blade-between masonry of the Inka at Macchu Picchu. Basements of Ziggurats in Kerofinela and Kethaela may use this, too. These might be the work of (elder) giants (or possibly Faceless-statue sized Jolanti) - giants as builders appear in Orlanthi myths, too (Aedin's Wall), and even Balazar's children went to giants for their archtecturally somewhat inferior citadels at the end of the Second Age (not the layout, but the workmanship). Malkioni masonry inherits from the Kadeniti (who might have been the inventors of concrete as used by humans), and from the Likita earth temple builders (which would be related to those of Hrelar Amali, Ezel and the Paps), but the Middle Sea Empire added technologies and more importantly styles from other cultures like Teshnos, Kralorela or Fonrit, and left this inheritage in those places plus Maniria, too. There are a number of metal buildings in Glorantha, all of them magical in origin - the brass citadel of Sogolotha Mambrola, the Silver Bridge of Glamour, the Iron Forts of Kralorela. Other divine/hero plane architecture in the Middle World included Akez Loradak, a huge spire shaped from volcanic glass, shattered in 1318, or Belintar's towers in the City of Wonders. The three dwarf-made pockets and the royal palace of Boldhome border on this, too - even when cutting from virgin stone, the dwarves must have stabilized naturally occurring fault lines in that rock with their magic. I would assume that the entrances to Greatway look fairly similar to the Boldhome Pockets. The entrance to Dwarf Mine is another such place. Godtime ruins or buildings may use other exotic material, like the postulated violet-cloud material used in the first landing site of the Artmali. Sculpted (as in sculpting putty) earth or rock would be frequent where earth cultures or Lodril-cognates were at work.

As I understand it, a wyter is an other side being that coordinates the community magic and that has a physical presence in its community. The Pavis Temple crystal could be said to be such a physical presence, but it might just as well only be the centerpiece of the congregational building, acting as a conduit to the Ohter Side. Being the source for a grimoire doesn't necessarily mean that Pavis exists in some sorcerous state only, or that he doesn't have any theist divine attributes. Pavis, Dormal and a few other non-Lunar apotheosized mortals are hard to categorize. If you compare Hauberk Jon, the wyter of Jonstown, you will find that he didn't undergo an apotheosis to leave the world of the living but died a natural death. Somehow his heroic soul could be contacted there, and be convinced to take over the duties of whichever entity was asked to perform this duty when the city was founded. It appears to be a pattern that a founder takes over the role of the community spirit after death or after apotheosis. For lesser entities, that is all that they are, but entities who have a greater magical potential might have roles beyond that of a wyter.

Ah, the Londario angle was what I missed in my recollection - I haven't touched these Fourth Age speculations for a long time, and I don't feel inclined to re-open those boxes of worms. A simple jump then. The library found by Londario would have been the inheritance of one of the libraries of Argrath's realm, which means access to material from the Royal Library where the non-spell aspects of these building techniques would have been documented. Then there was a debate about Saronil I had among others with Peter Metcalfe, prior to the publication of WF 15 IIRC, and whenever Peter and I manage not to disagree on something I tend to see that as an indication of Gloranthan factuality. Though not canon.

Gloranthan cultures aren't Mediterranean cultures. And your examples are middle Iron Age examples, not Bronze Age. Thus, your Kyrenia-type ship is irrelevant. The ship you describe is the size of a hanseatic cog, regardless of its underwater construction. The crew size and the crew duties are largely the same. And I have been on a rebuild of the Hanseatic cog found at Bremen, but I have not been on any reconstruction of Bronze Age ships, so I use that for a frame of reference. That Cog was about the size of the Gokstad ship, whch I have at least walked around, as I have done for the Kyrenia ship. Similar in size and presumably in cargo capacity. Speaking of Cyprus, the coastal conditions there haven't shown me anything I haven't seen in the Baltic or the leeward parts of the north sea. Your Esrolian merchantman. Grain being the prominent export item of Esrolia. Haven't we been discussing grain transport for the Lunar army, indeed for a city-sized siege force around Whitewall? Or river transport of grain down the Oslir? Grain trade is a fact of Gloranthan naval trade. Big surprise. There weren't any Romans or Phoenicians in the Bronze Age. Nor any Kyrenia type ships. What we have in the way of evidence is the Uluburun shipwreck from 1400 BC with its shell-first mortice-and-tenon hull, and similar Egyptian designs from the Red Sea. We don't have many archaeological evidence for the extent of naval activities west of the Aegaean prior to the Phoenicians, even though we assume that groups of the Sea Folk may have turned there. Shipwreck sites like the Salcombe, Devon find dating from roughly 900 BC are identified by the surviving items of cargo, without any material evidence for the vessel. There were Minoan boats, which we don't know much about except some wall paintings. Similar evidence for Sea Folk vessels, which gives us the weird bird dragons. Some better evidence for Egyptian vessels, both from models and from finds in a cave-like arsenal on the Red Sea, and some logistics apparently in papyrii. All the other stuff comes from about 1000 years after the local onset of the Iron Age. How do we know that? The Uluburun shipwreck did yield some remains of grain due to charring, suggesting that these came from preparing a meal, but otherwise nothing remained. Part of the Uluburun cargo corresponded to the official pharaonic gifts list that documented trade in the papyrii, but the rest of the cargo differed from those royal records, and whatever local records there may have been have been lost, as well as any other cargo the ship may have picked up along the way. Egypt wouldn't import grain any more than Esrolia would, but sent grain to the temple granaries. By ox cart, or over the Nile? Grain tends to be perishable, so the few finds at Uluburun are only thanks to charring. Storage solutions like baskets are little better preserved - finding even a fragment of baskets, ropes or textiles from a shipwreck is considered an archaeological miracle. Shelters, yes. Ports, no. The art direction may have used such reconstructions because there is darn little physical evidence and only very symbolic depictions outside of the model shios found in Egyptian tombs, but your insistence on Greek and Phoenician vessels goes way beyond what actually is said in the Guide. There is evidence for maritime trade on the Atlantic coast, but the oldest actual ship finds come from ship sacrifices in peat bogs (Hjortspring, Nydam) or from ship burials (Sutton Hoo, Oseberg, Gokstad) of the Iron Age. The earliest useful finds of ship parts in the western Mediterranean appear to stem from the first Punic War, but there can be little doubt that there was naval contact between the Baleares and the mainland prior to the arrival of the Phoenicians - the megalith builders didn't walk there. In fact, the various megalithic cultures are spread in patterns which suggest sea travel. Gloranthan naval history is much different. While there are contunuous coastal boating cultures like the Sofali or the Pelaskites, they did suffer serious loss of habitat in the Darkness era when the Faralinthor Sea disappeared, and Choralinthor was reduced to "a puddle".. It took the breaking of the Spke to return the seas tto the south of Genertela, and unless they managed to survive in what was left of Choralinthor and possibly a similar remnant site at Erenplose, the ancestors of the current population of Ludoch for Kethaela and the Mournsea. The Waertagi accompanied that return of the seas, and they claimed the open oceans for their own territroey. This left non-Waertagi naval activities restrained to coastal waters. Still, galleys for warfare like Penteconters or longships appear to have been developed already during the Waertagi domination, and possibly even before the Dawn. Finding evidence for trade ships in the myths is a lot harder. We assume that the Froalar exodus and similar crossings of the Neliomi happened on Waertagi vessels rather than a homegrown naval tradition, but these colonies shared their new lands with an indigenous population that may have indulged in fishing earlier. It is unclear whether there still were some of the western Sofali left when the Brithini colonnies were founded. The journey on turtleback in the Lightbringers' Journey west indicates that there would have been Sofali Diroti at some earlier point in the Godtime. Zzabur boasts to have vanquished three naval assaults - that of the Banthites who managed to occupy a Danmalastan peninsula on the Neliomi for some time, the Helerites of the Churkenos Sea, and the Beakies of the Solkathi torrent. We tend to identify the Churkenos Helerites with the Helerings that later made landfall in Maniria, where it came to the brothering of Orlanth and Heler rather than the set battle both sides expected. (Given the ubiquity of Heler aspects in earlier Orlanthi imths, like Vadrus vs. Enkoshons, I a inclined to qualify the above event with "aspects of Orlanth and Heler" who had not met in any way before.) These Helerites brought their cloud-originated naval tradition with them, and may have passed that on to the local fisherfolk, including the Pelaskites. As the magic faded, more material solutions replaced the magical concepts, and the Pelaskites turned to Orstan the carpenter for aid with their wooden vessels. Asking a carpenter to imitate a ship from a ship-buildign traditon that was unknown (rather than having become unworkable due to the deterioration of magic) is something which happened in terrestrial history. This is the origin story of the Hanseatic cogs, built in imitation of the Viking vessels but without access to their ship-building traditions and lore. The platiarism succeeded after several false starts, and later other designs were imitated by these master woodworkers who had by then acquired a ship-building tradition of their own. When the sources tell us about the expert boat makers of Karse, I cannot help comparing the story of (storm-born) Pelaskos and Orstan with the success story of the Hanseatic ship-builders. I would look at the background of Argos, the mythical builder of the Argo, too, but there appears to be much disagreement about his person, and whether the Argos of the Argo crew (who apparently was picked up along the journey, which would be strange for the builder of the ship - so no mythical precedent for this. The Hanseatic league's push to the sea is quite attractive in its parallel of a land-locked culture discovering naval trade from almost zero to dominating a sea. It is the best and oldest real world parallel I know for Dormal's Opening of the Seas. Yes, it happened significantly after the Bronze Age. But it happened emerging from a Dark Age. The Waertagi interdict to human (or uz, newtling or duck) high sea traffic reached all the way to Maslo (see the Edrenlin population) and Prax (Sog's Ruins, one of the few access points to the coast from the plateau), but doesn't seem to have extended to the East Isles or Kahar's Sea. Teleos and Teshnos are unclear. There is a similar such push to the sea with the victory of the Free Men of the Sea over the Waertagi/Triolini alliance at Tanian's Victory. Without Waertagi suppression, the upscaling of coastal designs for open seas trade became feasible. It is unclear whether the populations of Slontos or Kethaela took to high sea trade before the Middle Sea Empire took control. Given the lure of exotic stuff from Teshnos, there is a high likelihood that they did. The Free Men of the Sea produced a (radically?) new type of ship to battle the Waertagi. Without their cataclysmic summons of Tanien those ships would still have had no chance against the Waertagi navy, but apparently the vessels were fast enough and had good enough detection to avoid contact with Waertagi patrols or other (more peaceful) presence for their test runs to Umathela and back. Yet there is grain trade away from Esrolia and from Tarsh, and there is a miltary logistics network in the Lunar Empire directing grain transport to support the troops - using water ways. There is also the canal connecting Glamour with the Oslir river, providing a shipping route for grain and other foodstuff to that metropolis without any sufficient source of food nearby, requiring logistics comparable only to the pyramid building or feeding overpopulated places like Rome, Bagdad or Byzantium. Accept that grain transport on waterways is a reality in Glorantha, and look at historical examples how that was made to happen. Which does lead us to Roman grain transports from North Africa, or to Hanseatic grain deliveries in exchange for stockfish or furs. Hanseatic technology was hardly more advanced than Roman engineering, so either provides an idea how that would be done. I happen to have good access to details of Hanseatic grain transportations mentioning sailors' duties on a grain transport, but I don't have such sources for Roman grain transport. Do you? Until I see some, I will continue to use what the Hanseatics did and retrofit that to earlier transportation, too. It is not like the Hanseatic merchants invented the trade routes they used, they only went at it systematically and in greater volumes than earlier traders like native Scandinavians (e.g. Ottar) or Frisians. Apart from feeding Rome or the fisherfolk of the cod grounds of Norway, grain and other food was usually exported processed rather than as raw grain. Probably half of the Hanseatic grain exports were in the shape of beer. We know of the waste product of soused herring aka matjes aka spekesild, the garum fish sauce, being traded in significant quantities in antiquity. The Uluburun shipwreck (the one which did provide findings of grain against all the odds of chemical decomposition) transported resin fermented from pistacias. Wine was traded in bulk quantities. I recently had the realisation that the trade with ostentatious luxuries was in no way a pampering to the elites but a flow of indispensible resources to support the magic of authority and identity of those communities. We might be closer to the economic necessities of the ancient world if we treat such exotic jewelry as their equivalent of microchips or other "essential" components for the upscale necessities of a population. That's where my Hanseatic sources come in handy. Dust explosions don't seem to have been a problem on the grain ships, rather the opposite: humidity and resulting moulding or germination was to be avoided, so the sailors' duties on a grain barge included a constant regime of shoveling the grain in the hold to get optimal aeration. Getting the balancing readjusted in the process was a side benefit, but shows that this was a task that needed some expertise, at least for the person overseeing it. It is quite surprising what areas of expertise there were in the old times. The handling of barrels especially up or down from cellars was a specialist profession, avoiding injuries or loss of barrels coming down uncontrolled. The German name for these people was "Schröter", and it became a quite common surname, see e.g. our last chancellor. I would expect a similar degree of experience and knowledge necessary for handling amphorae, but I don't know if there are any documentations of such. Hands up who hasn't read "Midshipman Hornblower"? That was a cargo of rice, though, which is a lot worse than wheat or peas in this regard. Duh. Yes, naval trade would be at a navigable shore, and not at the cliff directly below a palace site (unless someone put a quay there). No, that doesn't make sheltered beach elsewhere outside of the vicinity of palaces ports. And still relevant because it shows how trade is organized. It would have been possible to thread a path through existing Vendref hamlets collecting their production en route as an alternative, but Sartar's institution of trade posts gave the Grazer overlords some extra measure of control over their Vendref traders' activities. The road network in Sartar basically is the extension of the riverine trade route from Nochet or the access route to the port of Karse, so it is related to those ports - even in the time of the Closing. You are looking at it. I have been in constructive disagreement with Martin Hawley over his treatment of Pelaskite culture on the Choralinthor shores, as well as a few ongoing amiable differences with Jeff, and they are a subject that I have been writing about since before my old website on the Holy Country went online. A few of the phrasings of that website can be found in the Guide. I have had to reassess some of my assumptions for new directions that canon took, but my old core document for playing in Glorantha (besides King of Sartar and the Dragon Pass boardgame) was the Holy Country description in the RuneQuest Companion. I have seen numerous cases of new additions to canon veering away from that info and then swinging back into a more coherent picture. So forgive me if I don't look at Gloranthan canon as something static, especially when dealing with this area. I am waiting in both happy anticipation and a sense of dread for MOB's work on the Holy Country. Just consider: Seapolis is one of three places in Glorantha where the mermen can enter the dry land (Nochet and the City of Wonders being the other two, I don't see this happen in the Backford terminus of the Fish Roads.) Nobody is considering the Fish Roads as a trade route, although I think it would be quite hilarious to play out a cattle drive from Backford to Nochet on the bottom of the Mirrorsea Bay. Seapolis is the port for the Rightarm isles. Rightarm islanders own boats like other folk own pairs of shoes, but most of their dwellings are on small elevations above the giant crane-picked tidal flats of that peninsula/archipelago. There will be tidal rivulets providing sort of permanent boat access to their settlements' landing sites, but those are nothing that ships of seagoing size can reach. Seapolis is very much like Venice - a group of artificial and maybe a few natural islands on a reliable deep water canal in the middle of a muddy lagoon full of opportunities for all kinds of sea-food related activities. But unlike self-governing Venice, the Rightarmers are subjects of the Ludoch tribe surrounding their peninsula/archipelago, more so than their kinsfolk inhabiting coastal an estuary Esrolia and Heortland. Their representative in the City of Wonders is a mermaid, daughter of the Ludoch king, as of 1616. This makes their situation quite comparable to that of the Vendref factors who oversee the international trade through the Grazelands. Are there other spots on the Rightarm Isles with permanent deep water channels? Yes, a few, like e.g. Ironfort, but that place is a sealed city, without contact to the rest of the world, and the small fisherfolk community next to it doesn't have much worth trading. We have no information who sealed that city. We know that both mostali and uz have magics capable of sealing a place, but it may have been some other party involved in the Machine War, or it may have been the sorcerer population inside that put up those seals. All of that happened more than 700 years ago. The place is still sealed, but I doubt anyone but obscure scholars has an idea about what happened. (The scenario potential here is basically writing itself, isn't it? A locked treasure trove full of forbidden and forgotten magics like Pavis under troll domination before the Dragonewts Dream, only here you are getting the first picks like Saronil's sons and nephews most likely had in the Rubble.) There is one other good deepwater access at Zoo island, no human population given. If you want a monster island and cannot be bothered to sail around Magasta's Pool to Loral, look no farther than this place. I have postulated shipyard beaches away from Seapolis for my own campaign and character background, so yes, there will be other places that will attract the occasional cargo ship. Most likely these will be the home harbors of the original crew of those vessels, visited not for trade, but for layovers, repairs, and some family time. Small seaports next to major ones exist mainly for one reason: tarriff evasion, aka smuggling, possibly paired with harboring local pirates, or at least wreckers. Sailors on regular trade vessels often prefer to avoid such places. Quite a lot of them grew up in places like that and know exactly what happens to beached crew in the way of volunteer salvage parties, and they want nothing of that. And yes, these are the very same people that you meet on the trading sites who you trade and drink with, and share the local women with. Once a vessel turns into salvage, it becomes the prospective property of the locals, and the crew might be considered collateral damage or even additional trade goods. Communities of wreckers are highly competitive with their neighbors, as speed is of utmost importance in establishing a claim on the salvage. This goes as far as to the joke when one recently deceased member of a wrecker community finds paradise overpopulated by folk from the neighboring community and is not allowed to enter, he shouts out "shipwreck", and all of the dead people of the neighboring community rush out, providing lots of space in paradise. When I cited the loss numbers for the Jutland coast, at least the first third of that period will have included ships actively lured onto a dangerous beach. A change in this approach to sea salvage happened less than 150 years ago with the introduction of organisations like DGzRS, the German society for saving wrecked sailors, which recruited their crews from these very wrecker communities since they were the ones with the expert local knowledge. I cannot imagine that ancient coastal dwellers were any different from that. The Jutland coast was so dangerous because there were few safe spots between Esbjerg and Skagen, with the Limfjord and the Ringköbing Fjord the major exceptions, and neither offering a very safe entry once the storm has caught up with you. This tells me that there is a huge difference between what is desirable for a merchant vessel and what is available. The North Frisian islands further south offer some leeward positions, but they are the very homes of the wreckers I mentioned above. The Mirrorsea bay with its magically calm surface even under strong storms may be the safest water to be in case of bad weather. Your vessel may be driven onto the sands, but there will be no waves shattering your hull, so all you have to do is to avoid the rocky bits of the coastline while driven ashore. No such luck anywhere else on the southern Genertelan coast, which has a mythical past as the Trembling Shore that the waters are only too happy to re-enact. There is a certain likelihood that the presence of Eastern sages may neutralize the worst effects of a raging sea or even the Closing. The Teshnan expedition to the Zola Fel mouth made its way despite the Closing, and the Seleric expedition to Vormain only was caught up with all the symptoms of the Closing when they came into the zone of rival sages, possibly cancelling out the effect of Sheng's disciples. (And no, there are no sources for anything of this. All of this are my conclusions.) To me, your presentation is an Esrolian grain barge (barge denoting the flat bottom, grain the major bulk export of Esrolia - all of the other goods that were mentioned get imported to Esrolia). True - no Ormen lange (of Olav Tryggvason's fleet) or Byzantine dromon (roughly contemporary to those outsized long ships, of similar size, but with two decks of rowers) ec To use wise words already thrown at me on this forum, the problem is although the Genertelan ships may look similar to Mediterranean models that similar is taken as being the same as, meaning that inappropriate geography, sea behavior, construction methods and material are taken as being Gloranthan. Your proposal for Kethaelan triremes looks and feels like a copy and paste for Athenian triremes, down to the last details. This has no relation to Jeff's statement that the ship builders started out upscaling local boat building technology to seagoing size. The Kingdom of Night and its successor the Holy Country may have had more than just small vessels even during the Closing. To my knowledge, Choralinthor Bay wasn't hit by a devastating sweeping front like Ozur Bay, so they would have had whatever fleet and trade vessels that were inside when the seas outside of Troll Strait became impassable, and given the attitude of the Beast Valley inhabitants to trespassing humans, the only useful connection between Heortland and Esrolia was across the bay, so a fleet of merchant ships and a few patrol vessels would have been kept in operation. Possibly more than just a few patrol craft during the Readjustment Wars. And then there is that hidden inlet to a semi-flooded grotto at the foot of Shadow plateau, hidden behind a layer of floating vegetation indistinguishable from the soggy marsh to either side, where a fleet of black troll galleys is preserved for a time of re-emergence. Or used ot be preserved - it is possible that upkeep has been neglected after the fall of Akez Loradak, that the entry passage has sanded up, or that it left subsequent to the Opening and now operates from Jruztela. Yes. The tides not only are fairly slow in the rising, they are extremely fast in the falling, faster even than our daily tides, creating Saltstraumen-like conditions in places like the Troll Strait upon exit. Never on the entry, however. Tidal beaching relies on the 12 hour rhythm of terrestrial lunar tides. Run in with a high tide, do your business during low tide, run out again with the next high tide. The change in water levels does most of the heavy lifting for you, at no charge. Waertagi used directed tidal waves for their beaching (or entry into dry docks). Those waves are not subject to the Annilla tides, but water entities of (second or third generation) divine calibre. Smaller than the Kyrenian ship you used for your model, then? That vessel has the capacity to carry the annual surplus produced by a 1000 inhabitant settlement in a single run, unless you add bulk cargo like grain for the overlord's granaries. Then maybe two such runs. Ports at rivermouths provide access to the output of many such settlements in their hinterland, however. Rhigos may be a metropolis of 25000 souls, but its river network brings in surplus from about 1.5 million souls - more than half of Esrolia, a good portion of Caladraland, all of Porthomeka, and most of Ditaliland. Nochet with the New River connecting to the Sartar road network and the Esrolian river ports as transshipping places for the Grazeland route into the Oslir Valley maybe fewer people whose surplus goes to Nochet, but in addition to that the lion's share of the speciality trade from Peloria (although Karse has quite a bit of that, too, if not by river any more). The other ports of Heortland are mainly access points to the local economy of their hinterland - worth 50,000 souls or so each, but a lot less lucrative. Seapolis is a place where ships returning from long, exotic journeys will lay over (or exchange crews) for some family time.Just enough of that lifestyle that the sailors itch to get the ocean under their keel again. That will give it a higher proportion of exotic overseas goods than you would expect from a tidal marsh dwelling folk of seafood gatherers. The premier port for things magical and exotic has been closed off since 1616. Nochet managed to scoop up much of that trade in addition to the amount that it already had thanks to its role as access point to the Pelorian market. The hanseatic cog was a fairly small ship. It had a higher board and deeper draft than Viking ships except the biggest Iceland merchants, but was shorter than most. The bigger designs of the later Hanseatic period were holks or caravels, some of which sported extra masts. Modern vernacular still calls them cogs because they were Hanseatic ships, but the shipwrights made those distinctions. But then, already Phoenician or polis Greek vessels are the oversized anachronism already. Minoan ships appear to have been well suited to sail major rivers. And I have serious doubts about the use of penteconters for the Troy venture or the Argo journey. A trentaconter like the one used by the experimental archaeologists would do. (Which brings us to Hjortspring boat size, to bring me back into my comfort zone of non-Mediterranean sailing with more hostile seas.) The use of triremes by the Kethaelan navies for overseas missions is jarring with everything that I would expect Dormal's cabal's research coming up with. Triremes are singularly ill suited for travel outside of the Aegaean waters, there is a reason why Romans and Phoenicians used biremes to claim the Mare Nostrum. The trireme is an oared ram designed to cripple enemy ships. A bireme allows some space for marines and necessities on patrol missions, even without the Roman invention of the Corvus to egalize their lack in seamanship. Your inclusion of bireme ships in the Kethaelan navy makes a lot of sense, but is in no way supported by the source material. Much like Dorestad on the Rhine estuary during the Frisian domination of the North Sea (following the lack of Saxon sea presence) or the beginnings of Bergen prior to Hanseatic arrival. Hedeby had a single wooden pier - hardly the only place where cargo would be loaded or offloaded, only the most convenient one. The Bergen piers were a slow development, picking up in speed as the warehouse space spread towards the former coast line, and ever deeper blockhouse-like supports for the planked pier along the bay were constructed, until finally there was Bryggen, an exclave part of the city run by foreign merchants riding high on the dried cod trade. So yes, a pier is what people associate with Bergen, but the initial establishment of the port as the major transshipping port between the Nordland sailors and the continental sailors had no such amenities (or any exclave rights). Of the Halogaland ports, only Skrova had something like piers - the island is shaped like a C, providing an interior anchorage next to steep rocks. Steigen has some of the most beautiful sand beaches I have visited, unfortunately in a climate that doesn't quite invite lazing on those beaches. So yes, I am perfectly aware that piers are luxury amenities. But so is tidal beaching, especially in tidal funnels like the Channel coast. Your Democratic Greece era naval constructions don't either. The ships need to be more archaic, and they don't have the Egyptian technology of Rhamesis era to inherit. Yes, the mention of triremes does steer us to an unpleasant anachronism. I find triremes to be an order of magnitude more anachronistic and problematic than Viking or Hanseatic era ships, not because of the year number associated, but because of the order of organisation involved. Already Harald Finehair's military reform that led him to commanding a fleet of about 100 long ships upon the rare occasion of a full muster is an order of magnitude too big. Agamemnon's nominal command over a bunch of individual fleets resembles the Great Viking Fleet that pestered Britan and France, the Mediterranean and even deep upriver cities in the 9th century has a volunteers for plunder structure with dozens of sea kings uniting under a council of more charismatic individuals among them is rather similar to the force described in the Ilias. The streamlined naval milita of Belintar along with a core of vessels constantly under direct command of his admiral is way more like Harald Finehair's model than Agamemnon's fleet, but not quite on the level of the Attic League. I would be way more willing to believe that with ships and tactics that allow somewhat less professionalism and more enthusiasm than triremes. I cannot picture the Alatan war fought with triremes. Armed merchantman/explorer vessels slightly less tubby than the grain barges, yes - these are the first years into the Opening, so everybody tries to stick as closely to the Dormal's original building plan as the building material allows. Given the use of naturally branching or twisted branches or trunks for ribs and bracing, no two wooden ships would be exact copies of one another. A shipwright's art was to combine and modify these naturally formed shapes into the sleekest lines possible with that material. Designing the ribs from what weird shaped lumber the foresters brought in was the real art. Straight logs would still be sought after for planking or masts, but the real supply bottleneck were the timbers for the ship skeleton, whether building ribs first or shell first. What is your reason for adopting the shell first approach for Kethaelan boat building? Yes, boat building, as in fisherman's skiffs or river boats. It is that art which is famed in Karse and other Pelaskite sites, and which was expanded into full-blown ships when it became clear that Dormal's prototype wasn't the only shape of vessel that would be able to do the Opening rites. Why would Orstan the Carpenter, a profession where you start with the frame and add planks or wattle and daub, go about building a boat shell first? Why would a design inherited from fancy cloud ships that would appear as big dugouts when in water (if the similar Artmali sailing history applies to the Helerites, too) result in a shell-first construction? While we need to look at a sleuth of archaic ships from various millennia of sailing with rather small ships from all over the world, we mustn't forget the mythical and then historical developments of sailing in Glorantha. And that may mean a breakdown by cultures and points of cross-pollination. There must be a reason why the Kethaelan fleet jumps from three-man fishing boats or 6-man trade or harvest boats to triremes, or there must have been some gradual development. Why triremes, and not the easier to build and coordinate biremes? Or if there was an intermediate step of biremes, when and why did those fall out of favor? Due to the Waertagi interdict and the Closing, we have two rather narrow windows where coastal Genertela was likely to develop and perfect bigger craft. In Kethaela, that period is even shorter because of the Slontan domination of the waterways for the second half of the 9th century with their weird specialized craft in addition to whatever native or Seshnelan standard architecture they used. Seshnelan sailors in turn inherited the innovations that the Free Men of the Seas had led into battle against the Waertagi. So I am asking what new designs were brought by the Free Men of the Seas, and what native designs did theiy have to work on? And what made Dormal's new construction so special that he couldn't just have modified one of the surviving Choralinthor Bay trade vessels? Even without a regular series of innovation, these two events which started their respective periods of high seas sailing are what shaped historical Gloranthan ship-building.