Joerg

True, her getting envious puts her into Umath's camp (and possibly into Umath's Camp, too, and into stories like about the Imperial Gazellet). But her feeding off Death and becoming a corruption of the clean separation of Humakt clearly puts that part of her career into the Storm Age, when Yelm was in Hell. Even though the Golden Age supposedly was an utopia, there was a goddess of Healing already, but Kargan Tor also was there guarding a Power that wasn't fully realized. And I keep remaining surprised how early in the Dara Happan timeline of the Golden Age Umath was born. Unfortunately they don't give a date for his invasion of the Sky (as far as I remember).

A suggested correction by @M Helsdon made me look up Mallia mythology, and it isn't all that clear-cut when she stopped being an entity of dark fertility and immunity to disease and when she became the source of diseases. Cults of Terror (and Cults Compendium) presents Mallia as the corrupted member of the Unholy Trio and sort of suggests that this had always been the case. Cult Compendium p.255: This is clearly Mallia after Death had entered the world. Everything stated here is correct for her career during the Lesser and Greater Darkness. But when did she surface, or what did she do in the Golden Age? The best source I found so far is Heortling Mythology, which support's Martin's suggested changes to the text (p.103): So her path to mistress of Disease preceded her joining the Unholy Trio. Here's a snippet from the Yelm cult which is a bit problematic to place in the Gods Age: (source Cult Compendium p.243) This suggests that Mallia walked the surface world before Yelm was slain, or that this deed of Antirius went over to the parent cult.

This Mallia mythology deserves a deeper look. Overall, I am with @M Helsdon's suggestions, but I'll start a separate thread on the subject.

No, definitely not. There is some crossover in the Pol-Joni tribe, and there are followers of both Orlanth and Waha especially in the Bison tribe, but that's about it. But New Pavis initially included Praxians in its citizenry, until some unpleasantness led to them being complimented outside of Dorasar's walled city, to Badside. Farmer's Quarter took over the ground their tents had covered before, IIRC.

I think that the "three strictly separate worlds" doctrine caused much harm to the way the Heortlings were portrayed. "It's dreadful spirit magic, we cannot defend against that" is a common theme in King of Dragon Pass when a shaman goes against the clan. There may be such clans, but I don't think that they are the norm. Unlike Hero Wars or HeroQuest, in RuneQuest it was considered normal for an Orlanthi to go to a shaman rather than traveling to a more distant temple for learning a spirit spell. These friendly or at least approachable shamans must be around somewhere, and not all of them will be without family ties to this world. There will be clans who have shaman members, and if they keep to the wilder parts of the tula, that still makes them no different from hunters or herdsmen. What does it take to cast an Axis Mundi, and how does the caster renew those points from their rune pool? Is it a zero sum game, with the added opportunity for a POW gain roll? Does the caster have to be a full shaman? If you have the Axis Mundi, it serves as the conduit that the shaman-fetch connection provides otherwise. An unguarded conduit will allow random access for all kinds of hostile spirits, but the Axis Mundi should filter the eligible spirits down to ancestors of the participants of the rite. If those include hostile spirits, having a shaman or similar spirit defenses at the ready is a good idea, but otherwise a retired hearth mistress should be able to perform such services, and have libation offerings or similar for notoriously ill-mannered ancestors. Do the Brithini ascribe to animism? I think that their doctrine says that there is (tappable) energy in everything, and that animists and theists make the mistake to endow these energies with personalities that don't have any business in that place, leading to strange feedback loops enslaving themselves to the idols they made. A sorcerer with his mystic vision active will be able to observe a spirit or soul leaving a body, as a pattern or potential of (tappable) energy shifting its state of embodiment. In the case of multiple souls, the sorcerer may observe this pattern unravel into subpatterns moving on to certain runes, possibly only after a seven day grace period when the pattern can be restored. Brithini sorcerers know how to re-implant such a pattern into a body once it has been repaired of the damage that caused the pattern to leave in the first place. They might know ways to stabilize a pattern to keep it from deteriorating while preparing the actual resurrection. Still, the Brithini procedure is subject to losses and risks, and doesn't always succeed completely, or at all. I would be interested in Brithini observations of how such a pattern enters Solace and disperses there - there should be such observations. Hrestoli sects believe in reincarnation. They should have similar access to observation of deaths and what happens afterwards, although I am not sure they possess the resurrection spells of the Brithini any more. Froalar's sorcerers probably still had that knowledge, but repeated foreign overlordship may have led to losses in the body of knowledge of the Malkioni sorcerers.

When was the road established? The Guide gives Castelain's (successful) offer of instituting the road for 1170. That's just after the final throes of the Adjustment wars (Finelvanth dies in 1168). We don't have any dates for the establishment of Porthomeka. It might well have fallen into the power vacuum left by the expelled Adjustment overlords (or their stepping down from power, but remaining, letting their mostly local wives take the reign). While all traders want to avoid requisition of their wares by one or the other side when entering contested lands, they often would gain acceptance by including the people nearby in their trading, so I don't think that they would avoid regions like Thonble, although maybe relegate them to a branch business from some other city on the main route. Caladraland has its own native lowlanders, mainly in Vinavale and around the Low Temple in Highvale, who were the target of the God Learner experimentators who instituted the twin cult of Caladra and Aurelion. Whether they have orchards, staggered horticulture like the people on the slopes of Mt. Kilimanjaro (no, not the other one), or do hack and slash cultivation with their digging sticks, they don't plow (or employ draft beasts for plows). It isn't clear whether they have any domesticated or semi-domesticated beasts besides fowl. Possibly some variant of guinea pigs or the Polynesian rat for gatherers' meat. While the Guide offers some ideas about diet and agricultural produce in other regions, there are no such details for Caladraland. The region appears to be strongly under-described, as is most of its history. Even if much of the Slontan influences are actively forgotten, there should be some notes in the libraries to illuminate that region's history.

@davecake makes a lot of sense with regard to what makes up elf forests. Yet still we have the Dawn Age ecological wars between green elf and brown elf dominated forests in Umathela, Jolar and Pent. (All regions untouched by the Lightbringers message of unity, but then there aren't any reports of elf wars in Teshnos or on the East Isles either.) Having lived near the northern tree border north of the Arctic Circle, it still makes me wonder what Winterwood looks like near the front of the Glacier. I cannot really imagine endless spruce woods there, but keep seeing rather short birches and pines battling the cold and famished beasts with little alternative for sustenance outside of berry season. If that holds true, then the arctic birches are part of the Winterwood ecology (or at least associated), even though they are deciduous. (As is the dwarf birch, betula nana, whose red leaves contribute in a major way to the Finnish Ruskea, a kind of Indian Summer of arctic tundra and open forest - no idea how that plays out in Alaska or Canada.) So, what is mythically more important, membership in an ecosystem, or going to the deep sleep in winter? It is not like the arctic pines get to do much photosynthesis during the frozen months, they just don't drop their needles all at once. (Both pine and spruce do litter their forest ground with needles.) Glorantha has a rather short history of winters, after the great mythical one when the glacier covered almost all of Genertela except for islands of resistance, whether on mountaintops, in enclaves encircled by ice, or under the Ice (like Manarlarvus' Dome). But that is only true if we accept the Golden Age as only one cycle. "Godtime is cyclical", we are told, but all the stories we have are just from the last cycle segment. Instead, we find cycles of build-up and cataclysm in Linear Time. Gloranthan stratigraphy e.g. in Snake Pipe Hollow suggests repeated periods of complete flooding and massive dry spells when the waters evaporated, and the fossils show that there was at least sea life when this happened. There may have been a Carbon-like domination by forest, too. (It appears that in our world that was a result of a long inability of organisms to digest lignin, making it an unrepeatable one-off event unless plants happen to develop a new such fixer for their cellulose fibres. In Glorantha, the earth cube's upper surface bobbing in and out of Sramak's River several times, or alternatively huge standing waves claiming that surface, would be enough of an extincion event to preserve some fossil wood, although I think that most greenery that gets flooded ends up as food for the sea entities. The Treetop isles connecting Kerofinela with one of the neighboring dry lands during the Flood probably only were the plants exhibiting the most resistance.) The demarkation line beween green and brown elves appears to be rather clearcut - hibernate in the winter, or find sleep in a day and night cycle. The Yellow elves stay awake for all of their life. That, and being an all male society ruled by the sedentary dryads, might contribute to their belligerence.

I already mentioned this once, but ancestor worship in Glorantha may be weirdly limited in exogamous (or in the Esrolian case, exoandrous) communities to those who died as a community member. Except when useful (Argrath claiming Sartar bloodline through Onelisin), maternal lineage appears to be mostly ignored in Heortling clans. Or do the Heortling women (and the Esrolian men) have different ancestor rites, enabling them to interact with blood ancestors from outside of the clan (Esrolian house) who normally don't have any ties to their clan (house) of marriage? How much does this extend to their hearth, and does it jump to the children of that hearth (regardless of their physical parentage) through the private rites of the hearth (or whatever Esrolian men and men in matrilocal clans have as a shadow society)? Malkioni customs are comparatively unknown. They are sticklers for male descendance, which suggests some strict control over the sex lives of their females, but there doesn't seem to be any prescription for marriage in the Abiding Book. Guilmarn the Fat has four wives and countless concubines, all of them of the (Rokari) Talar caste (or in case of exotic foreigner females without Rokari caste assignation, elevated to such status). At the same time, @Jeff mentioned in a discussion that marital fidelity is much less of an issue for Rokari women than selecting sex partners from the correct caste (her father's caste, at least her official father's caste). With concubinate, there will be children born outside of wedlock, or born into a marriage that doesn't include the father of the child. (There are or used to be practices where a concubine was placed in a marriage with some follower of the powerful man, often a marriage that may have consisted in a single cohabitation on occasion of the marriage of the often pregnant concubine, making sure that church or similar societal demands for wedlock were obeyed.) I wonder whether the concubinat is practiced by rich burgher Dronars in Seshnela, too, and possibly by high ranking Horal people. If there are places with rich farmers anywhere in Guilmarn's kingdom, those famers might have effective concubinat with serving girls, too. Arkat, the problem child and child prodigy: In one version of the story I heard, Arkat was placed in the Horal caste by virtue of his maternal grandfather being one. In another one, there was speculation that he wasn't the first (or indeed, second) birth of his mother, and should have been assigned to the Zzabur caste instead (which in that case would come as third child caste). Both stories agreed that Arkat spent his childhood years with the Children of the Forest of Aldrya. (Two Elf forests are named for Brithos in the published fragment in Revealed Mythologies, the same as in Hrestol's Saga.) The question is: how does such extramarital procreation affect ancestral ties? A formal adoption allows the adopted individual access to the community ancestors, but does it allow the community access to the blood ancestors of the individual in whichever magnitude? We don't even know for the Praxians, their ancestor units are tribal, combining all clans' ancestry (only leaving ancestors of slave women from other tribes or even non-Praxians like e.g. Teshnos whose children of their owners became full clan members). The baboon gift to Biturian illustrates that the Axis Mundi is mighty enough to allow access to ancestors of participants of the ritual even if they don't belong to the community that produced the Axis, but that might be reserved for extraordinarily powerful shamans (as the Baboons are famous for, even getting a shaman unit in the expanded unit line-up of the French Dieux Nomads edition). If contact can be made by any participant to all his blood ancestors, this form of ancestor worship is far superior in reach compared to the worship enabled at clan shrines.

Ok, so what brand of Hrestolism or what features of Hrestolism do you think were targeted by the Rightness crusaders?

No. Hrestolism never was a target of the Rightness crusaders - if anything, the entire God Learner movement is condemned as the logical outgrowth of Hrestoli Adventurism by the Rokari. All the Makanists were just another brand of Hrestoli. Admittedly different from Dawn Age Hrestoli, but not that different from Silver Empire (3rd century) Seshnela.

The image is coherent with the Orlanthi depiction of the hero, but the details make me wonder whether Arkat was dark-skinned, or whether his massive tattooing had altered his skin tone from reddish to black. Apart from the third eye, he looks a bit like the Painted Man (or better: Warded Man) of the Peter Brett Core series (which I happen to have finished just today).

I don't think that the Return to Rightness was as much a campaign against Seshnegi Henotheism and Ancestor Worship, it was a campaign against Hykimi Ancestor (i.e. Beast) Worship beyond the "allowed" parts of the battle orders (and even those could have been under scrutiny for a while). There were non-Seshnegi rulers, affiliated or allied with Arkat's Dark Empire, and that was an ignomy which had to be purged. Seshnela belonged to the Flamesword Dynasty, after all (never mind that there had been just three kings of that dynasty before the interregnum). The Seshnegi practices fell under similar scrutiny, and may have been curtailed, but it may have been a backslash of hatred for the beastmen who had usurped their sacred fatherland several times in history. (Again, never mind that they were at least as native as the Serpent King dynasty, not to mention the Froalar folk who had come from Brithos. There is something about not minding the natives that may be an inheritance from our world's Migration Age, whether the German expansion into the Slavic and Baltic areas, the displacement of American natives, or other such colonial highlights like the Antipodes.)

Yeah. So I give you a running house to house combat against trollkin in the Pavis Rubble, with ducking from javelineers or slingers sniping when leaving cover, and you need to re-cast your magic for every group of opponents you face. If you are lucky, your divine magic will last through two encounters. Let's be generous and let the magic spirit have enough juice for four castings of Bladesharp 4. Now which of these let's say eight combats do you want fight without the magic? Especially when there might be a Death Lord in one of the later combats?

Enchanters are people who tap themselves to create some item. For an item that is on as long as your magic spirit has MP, so you had better add an MP matrix to make sure it lasts beyond the first five seconds of a tribal moot, and a couple of POW spirits to refill it. On the bright side, the attuned wearer of the helmet might tap into the same MP reservoir. So you have to resheathe it every few dozen combat rounds? I would make the condition "make sure the spell is on when I intend to strike with the weapon." The Mindlink to sense the intent is usually implicit in a triggerable enchantment. Your solutions provide readiness, but no permanence. To have a single item a bit more reliably powered you need about 10 POW (and that's before armoring enchantment on the item so it doesn't get destroyed upon first contact with an enemy blow), and that still will run out of juice after very few hours. Some battles last significantly longer than that. So basically, your +4 broadsword had better eaten up about 15 POW to last beyond a few parries, and possibly on enchanted Rune Metal to give it further durability. And even then it won't last for eternity, although if you place the echantment in the grip of the sword, it might survive and gain a new blade. How long does it take a priest to regain those 15 POW? About three years, if every seasonal holy day provides a POW gain, and going without expanding his rune point pool (except from maybe a bit adventuring, and if that's the case, he will keep the item to himself). And you need at least acolyte rank to get that benefit, meaning a supporting group of better than 100 initiates. Or a couple of volunteers selling their own POW through extended Mindlink when performing the enchantment. RQ3 POW logistics are prohibitive against this kind of magical items.

Of the lowest order. Divine beasts. Or spirit beasts. Divinity is found all over Glorantha. Sometimes it concentrates in individuals, creating a godling, or an avatar of a greater being. And that's what I think these creatures are. A herd man reverted through the Waha magic inverting the fixed intelligence imposed by the Compact gains membership in the man side of the Praxian beast rider society. A herd men awakened by sorcery becomes a familiar or similar magical construct. And a herd man awakened by a deity or greater spirit becomes a servant of that entity, and gains some divinity. First, there's the Hsunchen point that beasts, especially their own totem, are people, too. There are numerous rites where beasts participate as active worshipers, not limited to Hsunchen - check the Ylream caption in the Guide, or the description of the Wild Temple rites. Beasts may have a collective divinity (similar to the Protectresses) that may empower some of their kind to act as a divine (or spirit) messenger, a divinity of the lowest kind. There may be humans touched this way, too. Usually we call them heroes, but when they come e.g. from the moon, we call them demigods.

The easy way to deal with this is to say that such individuals aren't mere mortals, but demigods. Their sapience is one of their demigod powers, and usually they have more, like the ability to curse those who don't respect their beast constituency.

For a project starting in Adari, the absence of the trolls is interesting (and ultimately fatal to his city).

So, then what is the Grandmother Mortal story? Husband underwent a terrible trick of Eurmal, and now old age takes all of us? Grandmother lay with Eurmal, still drunk with euphoria from retrieving this Death thing from under Subere's vigilance, and infected her with it, so that she made him persuade Humakt to show it to hubby, too? Are there versions where there is only a Grandmother Mortal? I note that the Kralori Mother of Mortals is Allgiver, who remains an immortal deity even after her mating with the WIld Man (as close to Grandfather Mortal as I can identify in Kralori myths, unless you place that role on Aptanace the Sage, the bringer of Civilization). In Doraddi myth, the first person to die is Dorad, a male, and source of the first Lineage Plant. The Agi aren't made as mated pairs or anything, and gender more or less is an accidental by-product of Kendamalar and Nyanka trying to outdo one another. In Thinobutan myth, Soli made 4 matched pairs of differently colored ancestors, who promptly went on to perform all permutations of colors and creating the 16 mixed tones of their second generation (which probably evened out to a continuum in later generations, unless you get a Mendelian distribution with mixes and throwbacks to the original coloration). Dara Happan myth has the original men made in concert by Yelm and six other deities, evading the trial and error stages Pamalt had prior to Kendamalar's involvement. Yelm claims the leading role, and I can see no Pamalt equivalent. Mortality comes to them when their god emperor Murharzarm dies. Other places have humans as the lesser children of original immortals. Including the Westerners, the Praxians, the Orlanthi (regardless of Darhudan), the Pelandans with their log carriers meeting the women's tribe, etc. Mortality comes when Humakt and Eurmal return with a power from the Darkest Below that changes a pre-existing Power Rune, or reveals a meaning not even its origin knew about. But that's the Theyalan myth, really. Outside of Theyalan influence, it comes when an ancestor undergoes Death (or worse, as in the case of 5th Action Malkion). Or the charming Pelandan myth about humans being kept away from the secret of immortality through shedding the skin (or current body), as practiced by dragonewts, spiders and certain other arthropods. Grandfather Mortal is a case of "It's our own fault, now we deal with it" Orlanthi myth. Most other myths mainly blame outside influences, Deathbringers. It was probably spread by the Theyalans and their successor, the Bright Empire. The Hsunchen tell how Telmor ate the sun. That's blaming the Death of the World to Telmor, but not necessarily the aging and passing away of the individual. But the Hsunchen also notice that Death claims beast and man alike. In the West, Zzabur (and others) sabotaging Malkion's Fifth Action is what leads to mortality (at first by cataclysm, but consequently by old age), unless the outcome is exactly what Malkion expected (from the description of that event, that is doubtful, though). So, is Malkion of the Fifth Action the western Grandfather Mortal?

Interesting. Do you have a source for herd men retaining the Man Rune? Herd men do of course have all the physical attributes that are described by the Man Rune. More so than the Baboons of Prax, who do have the Man Rune (they are the example given in Biturian's Travels for Daka Fal worship, not human Praxians). And Morokanth have a claim to the Man Rune, too, by virtue of winning their contest. Are we discussing a weird Praxian anomaly, or does this in connection with the lost uz kin of Pamaltela mean that the humanoid body plan is not enough to grant the Man Rune? And what about the Newtlings? The Pelmre/Slarges (and possibly Lascerdans) and Jelmre are part of Pamalt's learning experience to make humans, and can be considered to have a limited connection to the Man Rune.

If that's what it takes to keep you on this trail, fine. I am still adamant that "Humanist" stands side to side with "Materialist" when we discuss the Westerners and their origin. The Mostali are the real Materialists, the Westerners really are Energeticists. Mind and Energy are laudable, Matter has to be suffered and dominated. I compare Seshnegi adopting Earth deities into their ways with the way the Waertagi adopted the Sea deities into theirs. Hrestolism is Caste Crime. What is the biggest beef the Zzaburi have with the Vadeli? That every Vadeli is a sorcerer, regardless of Caste. (And still immortal.) The Zzaburi somehow managed to wrestle a monopoly on sorcery (or at least the sorcery of spells) from the other Castes and to make that mandatory for the Right Conduct, and the Vadeli show that that's bogus. And (according to Hrestol's Saga) there is a somewhat autonomous community of Horali on Brithos that looks with interest on a warrior (Faralz) displaying (a degree of) mastery of spellcraft and bearing the title of a Talar (lord of one of the minor cities that used to be beset by the Pendali). Scott brought the Rokari into this discussion. While we get details how the Rokari interpret original Malkioni ways, I think that they get most details wrong. Neither the celibacy of the wizards nor the use of the talar caste as shock cavalry are in any way acceptable Brithini ways IMO. But that makes reconstruction of Grey Age and Dawn Age Malkionism from modern day Tanisor all but impossible. It probably needs more editing or at least footnoting than it has text now to bend it into current canon, but the basic plot stands. Description of the society of Dawn Frowal might need some de-Malloryzing. As far as I know, all those early writings were "distributed" to the four digit kickstarter supporters as a five or seven volume collection of unedited source documents. (My own copy of Hrestol's Saga was won at the 1994 oConvulsion auction for a commensurate price). Frowal does have families - Froalar's head sorcerer sends his son-in-law to accompany Hrestol onto his campaign against the Pendali which made him realize that he needs to strike at the Pendali bond to the land to enable the Malkioni to survive in that conflict. Froalar has one son and one daughter from Xemela at the Dawn. (If Ylream had any full siblings, sisters, remaining in the Temple, we aren't told about it anywhere.) Garzeen and his wooing of Fenela (mentioned in Cults of Prax) are absent from Hrestol's Saga, probably written later. But then, we don't get the full vita of Hrestol, just his quest to slay Ifftala, Froalar's quest to redeem his son, and Hrestol's visit of Brithos about a decade or two later. It breaks off with Hrestol's and Faralz' flight from Brithos after slaying the Talar of Brithos, a son of Hoalar. While not indicating primogeniture (Hrestol's absence would have disqualified him from being a ruler anyway), both Frowal and Brithos clearly have dynastic succession, indicating a belief in (or a reality of) ancestral power and virtue transfer harkening back to Talar son of Malkion. Part one of the Seshnelan King List is part of the document collection that is Hrestol's Saga, and that part has been published on the net, and presumably is canonical. The list of Pendali kings also included was taken into doubt by Greg, but at least to me that works out fine if the cities have non-Pendali folk under a Pendali dynasty. It is sort of weird that a lineage tied to the source of fertility in the land has such little procreation rate, although there are siblings lacking the serpent legs, at least in later generations. The last rulers of the Serpent King dynasty are ordinarily shaped humans, although descended from Hrestol's grandson who somehow Arkat's role in the Gbaji War still remains a Crusade, as far as I see it, and the Return to Rightness war probably does, too. A claim to a higher authority to go all out in war, strengthen the spirits of the combatants beyond normal human limits. While that is correct, there being something to connect to at all is IMO a success of the Compromise. Without it, all those otherworlds might be lost to the Void, impossible to connect to - the status quo of the Greater Darkness. If you had that much of an awareness at all. Learning that the Lightbringers did more than just spread a mode of worship was something of a game changer. The communities that have (ancestral) memories of the Gray Age are a minority. Many, like the Talastari (who are the documented case), have made no experiences or memories until their contact with the Lightbringers. It is as if their Man Rune was suspended.

That's Grandfather Mortal/Darhudan/Daka Fal, and the experience of Death. Don't confuse the deity with the rune. It takes Death to make Grandfather Mortal be about the mortal condition (which is, by the way, shared by the vast majority of beasts). Man and Beast share a lot of traits - forming family groups, getting offspring, a degree of nest care. Yet Man stands out from Beast by being sapient. (Which is sort of a problem with all those sapient beasts around like the fish cultists of Zola Fel, the talking fox in KoDP, and the Hsunchen disregard for the distinction in other regards than shape.) Then there are the potentially immortal people of the Brithini and the Vadeli, evading mortality (or rather the mortality that comes from old age) through a strict regimen. (Not unlike those likewise unaging eastern sages, although many of those stagnate in a state that would be horrendously old to Brithini or Vadeli.) There are philosophies that don't earn much more distinction than that. But it remains that Man in all its variations is supposed to be a creature of embodied intellect, of rational decisions, and of making experiences. Including Death. So the ancestral spirits of the Daka Fal cult have lost the Man Rune completely, trading it for the Spirit Rune? Then why are they different from say a plant spirit? Are uzuz mortal? We know that immortals are killable, Yelm proved that. Both Yelm and Daka Fal continued their existence in the Underworld. Daka Fal became Judge of the Dead.

Taking this over from the Man Rune discussion. Do you have to add any other runes that stand for intellect? Making that statement and not following it through feels like a cop-out, David, sorry. Some read it as a rune for cosmos, yes. But outside of the Malkioni, Law and intellect aren't necessarily connected. To the Orlanthi, the Law Rune denotes learned knowledge, or with the most xenophobic ones, evil sorcery. Man is what separates the sapient races (except the dragonewts) from beasts. That suggests that it does stand for sapience. I am not talking about the Malkioni in Seshnela, I am talking about serious dissonances between different population groups in Brithos. The Seshnegi did with Earth what the Waertagi had done with Sea, and the Waertagi are as welcome to Brithos as they always have been. They aren't counted among the Brithini any more, but that's what both Seshnegi and Brithini were fine with. Some other colonies (like Neleoswal) were less willing to follow the new ways initially, but when the Pendali threat turned around, they became part of Seshnela rather than an outpost away from the Brithini mainland. (Some of this is actively described in Hrestol's Saga.) Twin brothers, equally qualified to take on the succession, and their supporters ready to go all the way. Froalar chose exile in independence over weakening his people further by civil war. No idea when in the Gods War this happened - presumably after the Expulsion Walk. No, henotheism doesn't seem to play much into the internal differences in Brithos. Part of this is due to the leaders of the other castes being sidelined by Zzabur, with son of Hoalar (Froalar's brother, who was allowed to take up the throne of Talar unchallenged by Froalar's departure) a mere puppet and not a ruler like Froalar. Zzabur usurping the leadership in the West appears to have been an issue even before Hrestol invented the Men of All. Look at Sandy's choice of two different groups representing the Malkioni, sorcerers and "knights" (warriors). I'd need ro reread that part of Hrestol's Saga, but Hrestol visits the parts of Brithos where the Horali Duke rules either before or after Faraalz (a warrior caste companion who became a Man-of-All and later a Baron) slew the Brithini king, and there is mention of dissatisfaction by the Menenans. I say it is post Breaking of the World, and while it may not be an issue to you, it is to me. The Great Compromise which allows the parallel existance of the various Gods Ages to what remains of the World predates the Dawn by quite a bit. Effects of the Ritual of the Net and the Great Compromise were what allowed the Kingdom of Night to organize the surivors of Unity Battle and I Fought We Won into a patchwork community even before the Dawn, and it likely allowed Waha to start righting some of the wrongs in Prax. Most peoples who somehow survived outside of such civilizations probably were still caught in their traumatic nightmares, some well into the second century of History. It may be the Compromise which allowed use of the Axis Mundi. And I am curious how and when such practices started to work differently from cohabitation with the Dead. All ancestor worshipers agree that the ancestors they contact aren't the complete beings they used to be while living, but that they represent aspects (partial souls, or the spirit) of the ancestors, and usually they stay rather anonymous for the Orlanthi. Spirit society Daka Fali may contact ancestors with more individuality. Ancestor doesn't have to mean progenitor, either. Some sort of blood kinship is normal, but it can be a different branch of your ancestral tree than yours. But that's the case for the Orlanthi. Unless the ancestor was of heroic (or demigod) stature, usually he won't be called back as an individual, but as part of the community of ancestors. And if I look at the Ancestors units in Nomad Gods, the non-Daka Fali among the Beast Riders have as diffuse a relation to their ancestors as the Orlanthi, and only the specialized Daka Fali get to contact individual ancestors. As an individual, you mean, and not as present but not individually expressed amorphous member of the Ancestors? Every culture honors and sort of worships its ancestors. The Daka Fali (at least per RQ Cults of Prax and RQ3 Gods of Glorantha) require exclusivity to be able to contact individuals. And it is possible that these individuals need to have been Daka Fali, too - this wasn't detailed. But then there are the really ancient ancestors who died before there was a Daka Fali tradition using the Axis Mundi. I think that the Axis Mundi couldn't work as long as there was an open, bleeding void occupying the center of the world. Only when the maelstrom encapsulated the Void, the vertical connection to the Underworld that used to be Wonderhome became available. What's the Waertagi take on these things? Although with the Mermen facing a similar dissolution into the All Waters after Death, with loss of individuality, it is possible that they required the message of Solace as much as the orthodox Brithini. Still, the origin of the Brithini is a lot less pure than Zzaburism claims. Last thing I heard, first sons (of a Brithini mother) get to be a Dronar, second sons get to be Horali, third sons talari and fourth sons zzaburi. If that means from the same father, the ratio of the special castes diminishes a lot more. The parthenogenic Menenans are just an idea which came to mind when reading about these parthenogenic fish. I like weird scientific facts to inspire my Glorantha. I blame @scott-martin for planting such weird ideas about Menenans in my brain. The basic wolf pack/monkey pack/lion pride. There are of course plenty counter-examples in the animal kingdom, but our social structure in family groups really is not what makes us different from beasts. So Waha took the family structure from the Herd Men when they lost the contest? Doesn't look like that to me. Herd Man family structures are the same as for slaves - subject to disruption by the whims of the owners, but overall following the normal pattern. Daka Fal is all about summoning spirits of family members to share their magical possessions (remember this is animism, something you have) with their (expanded definition of) descendants. In RQ2 this meant access to Battle Magic spells that could be stowed in foci. In HQ it means charms holding spirits. And that's the Harmony bit of Pavis' rune magic. Nothing at all to do with the Man Rune. But ancestor worship comes in quite different flavors. The way the ancestor interaction is presented for the Heortlings is completely different from that of the Praxian Daka Fali. Heortlings worship the ancestor community. Daka Fali interact with specific spirits of ancestors. Hence the communal effects of the Heortling ancestor interaction. Daka Fali magic is mostly personal magic inherited from some ancestor (and quite likely each individual ancestor has only a limited store of magic they can leave to one descendant at a time. Only when uncle X dies or unlearns it, you get the chance to receive the healing spell inheritance of great-grandaunt Y. I think this is a Very Weird stance, and a clear indication that you are getting lost in abstractions and overthinking this (if parthenogenesis in fish had not already made this clear). Note that I said this in the context of discussing Westerner origins. It doesn't apply to Praxian Daka Fali. When it comes to Clan Ancestors as in King of Dragon Pass, I am not quite sure, really - many a mother (although a minority, unless your clan bears a special curse) may leave the clan after a temporal marriage runs out or after a divorce, leaving no ancestral imprint if the clan she dies in is the clan where she serves as an ancestress. (For Esrolian males, a similar situation might exist, so this case is not really a question of gender, but of defining who is clan/kin, and who is not (any more).) For the Westerners, this is an astonishingly valid question. And family structures on Brithos need looking into. Does this mean a Menenan woman that has had no children yet must choose a Dronar as father for her children until she bears a son, and then turn to a Horali (rinse and repeat for Talar and Zzabur caste)? Does this mean that a father may only have intercourse with a woman who has born the correct number of sons in order to claim her son as his heir? And can he have multiple heirs by having sons from various eligible women? The immortal Brithini don 't marry for life. Now, within Time, they appear to avoid getting children, too, although things may be different on Brithos if that island is somehow held outside of Time. Agreed. Except for magics like the pregnancy transfer offered by Xiola Umbar, it is usually in no doubt who the mother is. (But then mythology has this modern problem where a child can have multiple biological mothers already, e.g. the mothers of Heimdall.) But if you look at the Malkioni, I get the impression that male lineage is all that counts. There are maybe half a dozen historical Malkioni women mentioned in the Guide, and maybe a few more in the Seshnegi king lists. But then, Motherhood and maternal magics are the realm of the Fertility Rune. Males strong in this rune may be able to bless their partners with fertility, but they still cannot create new life on their own, unless they go to similar lengths as Orstan the Elder. A different version of the Sword Story? Earth mythology has its own judge and keeper of the Underworld, Asrelia's dark sister. Darhudana appears more like an afterthought, and might be an aspect of Ty Kora Tek. Female mysteries in Glorantha go as far as making the participation of males optional for procreation if done so on the Other Side. And then there are the in-betweens (Jernotia/us or Androgeus) or the shifters (Heler and his cultists).

With Lanbril operating on the fringes of society, it is just as likely that they would bring in a misfit outsider shaman. Could be a Gorakiki worshipper, a renegade Damali from Pralorela, or a merman.

I didn't want to open a new thread, but I just read my ENWorld Weekly and found an announcement for Cults of Terror almost as if we had 1982: http://www.enworld.org/forum/content.php?4976-New-Hobby-Releases-In-Stores-PDF-Spotlight-19th-February-2018 (about halfway down the page)

Multiple arms, multiple selfs - the Norse depiction of Sleipnir as eight-legged horse may have had to do with the problem already present observing horse legs of fast moving horses in real time, and an extra fast horse may appear to have more legs. Deities break limits of ordinary mortals. Assigning them multiple body parts in artistic representations is one way to show this fact. Artistic representation needn't reflect reality. I strongly doubt that Siglat and his fighting companions faced the barbarians who had the bad luck to be enclosed in the same bit of Fronela that contained Loskalm sky-clad. Meriatan's get-up from his encounter with Congern is way more likely. Personally, I don't recognize the multiple head depictions as showing Arkat, but they might work out for me in a gif which shows these heads in sequence, merging from one to the next. But that's just my personal approach to visual media. I am fine with two entities in the same place, each one the halo of the other, but I couldn't pencil even a simple sketch of that concept. I might be able to use translucent layers of two separate images to approach that effect on the screen, however, and I might have an idea about two stained glass layers of either picture blending from one to the other depending on the color filter behind the two stains. And I guess some ingenious Gloranthan artists might have done similar things, or multi-layered mosaics using transparent crystals or pieces of glass to achieve such an effect. Basically, we are the children of an era with a multitude of visual media that we may find more appropriate to depict a concept. In some cases, that hunch may be right, in others, the limitations of low tech, low magic artwork might provide more honest depictions of the un-depictable. I liked the formalized depictions of the Orlanthi deities in Thunder Rebels and Storm Tribe as carved (and presumably painted) relief in wood. But that probably is too Slavic for the "Bronze Age vibe" meaning the temporally displaced Greek city state hoplite amor for the Ilias (about as in-period as the use of 15th century plate armor in that horrible Arthur flick with Sean Connery and Richard Gere, never mind that Mallory's ideas may have been close to that - my image of Arthur is Roman Iron Age, with some Roman leftovers). But then, while I seek deep immersion in my roleplaying, I am often quite detached from visual representations of the Other Side or the Godtime. Not to the level where one sees abstract power lines, or the primordial runes piercing whichever visual representation of gods and antagonsists are provided (or on how many levels). I might perceive a giant humanoid on a platform as one visual (and possibly physical) representation of a deity in Genert's Garden, to use the imagery David Scott suggested for interaction of less divine inhabitants of the Garden with the Greater Deities of Genert's court, but such manifestations are just one mask, and not necessarily the one representing the entity behind it best. So, how many arms does Orlanth have in bed with Ernalda? Two, and as many as necessary. Not to mention other parts of anatomy. Will this get depicted? Some weird shrine, guaranteed. Quite likely in an earth temple. In an official publication? Not likely, due to US censorship rules dictating the main market. One thing often overlooked about Godtime: This is when and where things get created. Establishing an extra arm or head in a situation is nothing impossible. A deity could lose its head, and keep it (although that would make the cult of Thanatar as presented a bit pointless, so not really). But the beheaded deity and the deity before the beheading are the same.