Joerg

The deeper secret here is that the Kitori aren't really Kyger Litor trolls (although they certainly can take their shape, and more often than not do) and aren't subject to the Curse of Kin. They actually can and do have human agriculture and farming, if in a very primitive and darkness-centered way, as it is only one of several of their mainstays. Collecting tribute was of course their main source of income and to some extend also food, in exchange for messenger and peacekeeper duties.

Did it? I don't see sod-wall longhouses anywhere in that game, nor are the horses period-appropriate pony-sized. Early 80s art uses Republican Greek Hoplite style. That's a millennium removed from their bronze Age, which coincidentally is about the same temporal distance between early Viking Age and the start of the Roman Iron Age which follows their own Bronze Age. And neither attire nor housing style changed much from the Roman Iron Age to Viking Age. If you believe Snorri Sturlason's Heimskringla, the Aesir-worshipping Ynglings (ancestors of the Norwegin kings) followed the route of the Corded Ware culture (which I still remember as "Battle Axe" culture) from Anatolia through the general neighborhood of Thrace (aka lower Danubian plains) into Scandinavia. Snorri didn't know about the Corded Ware culture, but there must have been some tribal memory of having hailed from far away. Those linguists' hobby horses aren't worth much. Asia Minor would be spot on for Snorri's story, but Thor is spelled and pronounced "Tor" in Anglian place names dedicated to the thunderer, without any "th" (while other local sites like thing-places clearly have the "th" spelling).

Speaking from a Praxian beast rider perspective, if you are approaching any type of herd, it is going to be owned by you. Prior ownership claims might be an obstacle, little more.

Pentan-bred cattle will and does thrive on the plains. Derek Pol Joni made a point of stealing a Pentan bull frpm the Opili nation, affiliates of Sheng who ruled over parts of Saird and the Arcos Valley at the time, to start his nomadic herds. Goats prosper about anywhere. They might even succeed in southern Pamaltela. Goats, sheep and pigs are not really suited for mounted herders, though, getting where your mounts don't. They are slow, but so are herdmen, so they may very well last a while as snacks on legs. Ragtag raided herds are rarely bred by their beast rider owners - it would take ownership of slaves from appropriate tribes (or foreigners) to provide the fertility magic for them to breed under Eiritha's domain (there are hints towards this in Biturian's story). It would take a very odd raider to manage this, some sort of Beast Rider equivalent to Gringle. Horses are a cultural problem more than a cult problem. As non-ruminants, they are at a disadvantage, but so are herdmen. I wonder whether donkeys would be a problem. Mules aren't (but they don't breed, reducing the impact). Tusker boars are another type of foreign mount which might be abducted into Prax. These mean-spirited beasts probably are just food on legs, nobody would want them to thrive. Troll insect herds should be able to support invading darkmen, and could be raided. Morokanth might be able to stick with them, mixing them into their herdman herds. Then there are dinosaurs. The Dragon Pass/Nomad Gods rules state quite clearly that Brontosaurs are capable of supporting a huge army in the chaparral. The other types of dinos might require support, but then Bolo Lizards don't.

Do you know that the second person from the left may be pretty much how Viking girls (!) dressed in summer? There is a very nice "skirt" which consists of lots of tassles which used to be on display at Hedeby museum (their undergoing a rebuild right now). Tunics are documented as summer wear for these folk, too - they wouldn't add a cloak the way the person on the right does, though. The dresses are dresses, when all is said and done, and wouldn't be out of place anywhere. Orlanthi male summer dress may be unsuitable for publications... holy men with special relationship to the air around them can afford to go sky-clad year round without letting the cold attack them, but non-magical individuals may fall back to that option in Fire Season as an acceptable way to leave the house. A hat to ward off the glare of the sun still is much appreciated, like the guy in second position sports. There is ample evidence of historical Europeans dropping textiles, whether Greek gymnasts or Celtic warriors. Anglo-Saxons and Vikings weren't different. While we have few contemporary accounts, it took extra effort of the church to impose our "modern" prudish insistence on covering the body throughout Europe, whether applied to topless Venetian belles at the beach in the 16th century, common nudity in bath houses all over Europe, or shared steam baths further up north. I take that to be one style of Orlanthi housing, probably tied to the Axe Orlanthi, and not exactly optimized for colder climate. If anything, that style screams "Roman villa at the Limes" to me. Earth culture predates Storm culture. Esrolia Land of 10k Goddesses has stories about submission to Harono the local sun god which was ended (or replaced, if you ask the grandmothers) by the arrival of storm, and it asserts that their culture was still older than the sun god taking charge. This gives us all manner of traditions that may be inherited. Elmali might have favored round houses with the hearth in the center, and it might be the preferred style of Mahome in her role as hearth fire. Attire and housing are always adapted to function and the environment at the time a style develops. Since we are talking about Glorantha, runic shape matters, and has practical consequences, but building material and the conditions a bilding has to withstand matter a lot, too. Earth temples like to dig in deeply into the soil, but this is highly impractical if not impossible if you are living on a fluvial lowland with high ground water levels, like e.g. the Rhine or Nile deltas or the Bengal estuaries. If you want such an underground edifice there, you will first have to raise the mound you want to build it on (or raise the mound around your building, although that would be cheating - part of the point of such a temple is to dig into the earth). Orlanthi seating arrangements indicating status are incitive to have a single, long table, or a U-shaped arrangement of tables on occasions like weddings, which favor a long drinking hall. (The architectural challenges to build a square hall at such dimensions are considerable, too, whereas the A-frame with or without supporting walls has been in use since the Neolithicum - also among the farmer/hunters in the New World.)

@David Scott I guess you weren't aware that my old database was collaborative in design - all you had to do was to register as a user, and you could start participating, pending on moderation, or the admin could give you direct publication rights. Web forms to edit the database aren't much different from the web form I am using right now to communicate this. You seem to have missed the point of alphabetical lists as a quick lookup tool, too. A web interface would only ask for the parameters of the SQL search, and not ask for the fully articulated SQL statement. (I got that feature on request, though...) All the features that were discussed are already present in Charles' design, except for the additional tag for language and the generation of alphabetical look-up lists.

Let's just accept that Anglo-Saxons had not a very distinct look. Their dress and equipment would have been right at home with the contemporary slavs and other agricultural folk north of the Alps and along the Danube valley. Neither Anglo-Saxons nor (hornless) Vikings look very special, they are quite interchangeable with any warrior-farmer culture of that climate up to the steppes around the Ural. Their shield form is the most telling, give them a rectangular shield and an occasional Etruscan style helmet, and you get continental Celts from the Danube region, at least in winter.

Wikia won't give you a list, but you can create a re-direct for e.g. German translations to the English language article, and if Peter doesn't want foreign language on the main articles, there are the discussion pages for the entries which can have all the other stuff. For a simple list, something like a Google Docs spreadsheet would be the easiest way to collaborate. Just make it either a thread, or ask nicely for a translation-related subforum here. I seem to recall there already was one German language translation thread here, either in HQ or Glorantha, or otherwise in the old forums of glorantha.com . As to synonyms - those exist for the English terms as well. Wikia handles this via re-directs. My old database basically had an open--ended number of descriptors for the page they pointed to. Charles Corrigan did that old database structure. Now that my domain is able to run a MySQL database, I might just ask Charles to put the structure and whichever incarnation of the old database in chaosium.com survived up at my glorantha.de domain and use that for this purpose. The "name tag" could get a linked list with languages that use it. Once you are operating a database, alphabetic lists in whichever direction are easy to generate, and creating a form for that might even be within my own meagre SQL-fu. I would have to invest in few SSL certificates, though.

More to the point: an Eiritha priestess from the Oasis population or the sedentary Paps population. With the post of Most Reverend Mother held by a Sable queen (IIRC) and the Paps far away, he could have snuck across the Storm Mountains and have wooed an oasis priestess. Possibly Cam's Well or Pimper's Block. But the world of Vingkot is broken inside Time. There is no way a Vingkot king can do exactly like Vingkot, unless he manages to retrieve Tada. Basically, I read this as a wonderful character concept for a sage follower of Broyan (or later on Argrath, or any other hopeful founder of a Vingkotling dynasty) - research all those forgotten myths and suggest weird magical alliances. So basically, you have Broyan starting out as _a_ king of the Volsaxi before 1613, and becoming _the_ King of the Volsaxi sometime after Kallyr's revolt? The liberation of the Spirit of Freedom from Belintar was what allowed Broyan to revive the Hendriking kingship in more but in title. That's a different claim to overkingship than the Vingkot myths, the historical influence of the Larnsti instituting (mythical) change in Time rather than retreading Godtime myths. If you look at the heirs of the Larnsti kings of the Hendriki, they managed to avoid conquest by either Slontan God Learners or the EWF, although their area of influence dwindled significantly during the heyday of those empires. They remained a traditionalist spark that never was attempted to extinguish, unlike those southern Pelorians who were draconically subdued by (Isgang)Drang. This is blamed on the effects of Broyan acceding to the Sword and Helm (and the Kodigvari tattoo). I am not certain what exactly Orngerin attempted. He is a much under-characterized player, and while the timeframe when he would have been met by player characters has been put ten years into the past of the current products' "now", I would like to revisit the theme of my Heortland campaign which was set in the last years of the last governor king of Heortland. Cutting a lot of drama of 1619 short, with Broyan choosing to defend Whitewall rather than to disperse into the woods like the Hendriki of old did. The Windstop was created over Broyan's not quite dead yet body. The defense of Whitewall would have taxed his ability to create huge magical effects for the rest of that year. Several weeks after the Fall of Whitewall. However he and his companions managed the defense of Whitewall, they would not have come out of that struggle without a scratch. This is all the Hendriki "survival in obscure places" theme. What would be a major weakness to any other claimant to Vingkotling kingship - the lack of a seat of power to rule from, like e.g. Sartar's Boldhome - works in Broyan's favor as he re-lives the Hendriki origin. That's something that only the sage companion character I talked about earlier would have on his agenda while the king was moving from hideout to hideout. I am strongly reminded of a novel about King Sverre of Norway (one of the earliest Norwegian kings after those covered in Snorre's Heimskringla) which had him running around, creating the famous Birkebeiner event that still is remembered as a long range skiing competition. Which is very much to the point, given the conditions created by the Windfall. Wikipedia on King Sverre This is quite a good source of inspiration for a king having to face what Broyan did. Hmm. Grasping at mythical straws here? Roitina's dance relies on the presence of the gods and goddesses, after all what the Durevings suffer from is their displeasure, not their absence. The Arrowmound myth is pretty non-localized in ie in relation to the Vingkotling rulers. Jarani is a grandson or great-grandson of Jorganos, but his adventures may have taken place while Kodig was king, or after the demise of Rastagar - we simply don't know. So you want to make it personal, caused by the King, rather than an ironic back-lash from taking on an office with old debts nobody told him about, or debts that he thought he was above and beyond? Apart from the bogus date based on KoS, "Broyan's Hall" might be an Other Side hide-out, similar to e.g. the Karandoli hidden valley hinted at in Jalk's Book. That's a very Vingkot moment - Vingkot received his mortal wound in a battle long after his death/ascension.

Which sort of makes me wonder how much Chaosium or Steve Perrin are cut in to the Wildcards novels. Probably not, since concepts aren't copyrightable.

Having just read a treatise about recycling of textiles in my "research" feed from academia.edu, I wonder which groups in which cultures of Glorantha use patchwork textiles or furs for their clothes, and how much of it may have a ritual component - I can easily see Fronelan Hsunchen shamans to wear such patchwork pelts. Here's the link to the quite long academic treatise (hope it works without subscribing to their newsletter): Recycling of Textiles in Historic Contexts in Europe. Case Studies from 1500 BC till 1500 AD.

I would have interpreted "Stormwalk" as the poetic name for the spiraling ridge leading up to the flattened peak, resembling the ritual spiral walkways leading up the sacred hilltops used by the Orlanthi for their rites. You have one of those on Orlanth Hill in Nochet. While I started my interaction with RuneQuest translating the rules to German (before I knew there would be an official translation), I never felt comfortable translating place names or personal names. These translations can often change the voice in which a story is conveyed, the subtle double-entendres or additional associations I may have with the term in the original language. I did have my run-in with mis-translations during my term as the editor for the German RQ-fanzine Free INT, which was the club magazine of the Deutsche RuneQuest-Gesellschaft e.V. better known as Chaos Society (and for publishing Tradetalk, which started as the English language "best of" feature for Free INT). I do most of my Glorantha thinking in English. When I encounter translated versions, I judge them not so much for literal accuracy, but for capturing the spirit of the original version. And, if possible, its original verse scheme. "Broobasher" is a short, three syllable nomicker. To "bash" translates as "(er)schlagen, zerschmettern" (literally to beat/slay or to shatter) and results in a polysyllabic monstrosity in German that no silent menace-type of a bully would bother to wield. I have seen and admired the full translation the French have done to the Glorantha material. It creates its own kind of mood, which is appropriate to the setting, but it sounds completely different. (German translation efforts have remained sadly rudimentary. Most of the German deep fans use English, and English language terms when playing in German language - which might be at fault for not shearing off a better proportion from all those "The Dark Eye" players running around in our country.)

Uz may be masters of the dark, but elves are owning their environment. Intruding into an elf forest is the equivalent of raiding a high security installation where every item may start hostilities or at least provide the defenders with intelligence about the intruders. Encased in lead or chitin, the shock troups of the uz might be able to avoid most the poisonous thorns whipping at them without any humanoid aldryami in darksense sight, but actively entangling vines or roots are a different proposition. Especially when in the field of fire for their ridiculously effective elf bows. This effectively strips the uz off their trollkin support, maybe leaving them with a bunch of redshirt cave trolls that manage to regenerate as fast as those attacks sap their bodies. (Possibly literally, as their skins may sprout quick-growing plant life feeding on their bodies.) Humanoid aldryami as melee opponents are to normal elves as a fully magicked up Brithini Horali is to a normal Malkioni farmer - tanks with incredible support (including snipers out of the range of any troll magic). Such High King Elf combatants can go root to toe with ZZ berserks or Karrg's Sons, and shamanically they ought to be evenly matched most of the time, too. Uz can whittle down the fringes of elf forests by denuding them with hosts of trollkin and cave trolls, but the aldryami have and will use quick growth magics to counter such endeavors.

I still think that it is way better than lugging around a Heal 6 spirit spell which is pretty much impossible to obtain if you use the spirit summoning and spirit combat rules of RQ3. Unlimited (or limited only by the wound) conversion of magic points into hit points. I would allow the spell to stop dying at 1 strike rank, but the healing to take effect at however many magic points poured into the spell afterwards. But then my RQ3 campaign game had a lousy POW gain history. That didn't detract from our gaming experience, though, it just made for a gritty game despite the presence of magic. A game of exploration rather than high magics. If you come from a 1 point Divine Intervention spell as RQ2 had for priests, it sucks. But I never had those in my RQ experience, which is based on RQ3 and a playtest campaign in the 1990ies Adventures in Glorantha, and apart from Heal Body this was the best healing available on the market with spirit and divine magic. Sorcerous healing (didn't have that in my long running RQ3 campaign game, which was based on/started off the RQ3 Viking box and played out in its own setting, which had about as much setting notes than boxed AH Glorantha had) or Dragonewt Pre-Healing (didn't have that, either) may change that. I was the default GM in my two great campaign settings (one for a German game called Midgard, expanding snippets of their game world to a huge setting inheriting from various sources, and the other one RQ3 Vikings creating a world of its own, that time with "digital maps" created on an Atari ST) before I started playing on Glorantha in the mid-nineties. Both these settings allowed me to play as a player in spinoff-campaigns GMed by some of my players using that background. Most of my gaming experience as a player came from the "lets try this system for a short campaign" games in our regular rounds, or from convention gaming. At times I'm being a difficult player in those games, too, so it isn't just a "creator of the setting" effect.

As a rule, the Storm Age (starting Late Golden Age) human races are descendants of the gods rather than made races (think Praxians, Orlanthi, Veldang). Durev (who was carved out of wood by his father, Orstan the Elder, a native of Dini) is an exception to this rule. His wife Orane is presumably an entity similar to Sorana Tor. The Malkioni are born to the Erasanchula and their goddess mates, too. Maybe the gods were lesser in that era, maybe the new humans were rather demigods - while mortal, they still were quite powerful. I am not quite sure whether Arroin (who doesn't grant any magics) is a demigod receiving worship as a subcult, or whether he is just a godling. And what really is the difference? (There is of course Arroin's identification with Eron, the Aldryami spirit of the Good Waters, and ancestor of the Murthoi with Murthdrya, much like Halamalao is the ancestor of the Fire Elves/White Elves on top of the Spike. If Shannon Applecline's writings to that effect have drawn upon canonical unpublished info, or are considered canonized...)

Malia (the goddess of bad things, not the goddess of apples, to those of you with a minimal smattering of Latin - think "Saggitus" vs. "Sagittus") provides individual immunity, but no herd immunity. The individual becomes a carrier instead, and only a herd of carriers is safe on their own. Woe to anyone getting into contact with that herd, though. It is true, Malia is not a chaotic being in herself. She is a being of darkness, similar to Mee Vorala in a couple of aspects, but she, too, is responsible for combining moral evil with Chaos, creating the Devil - the worse of the pair of Great Deities of Chaos. Kajabor corrupted through his nature, but Wakboth corrupted for the sake of causing damage to whichever not-yet corrupted parts of the world there were. (That's why I am pretty certain that it was Kajabor who was corrupted into being the seed of Time rather than Wakboth - that entity lies being smashed and seared under the Block, with the waters of Sounders River bleaching away on its edges. It would be interesting to calculate the catchment area of rainwater going down the Good Canal to keep the cancerous growth of the Devil in check. But that''s a side issue.) Personally, I think that Chalana Arroy came from the Celestial Palace on top of the Spike, but she left early on in the Golden Age, spreading her Healing to those suffering from their Green Age moments. The Celestial Palace is associated with white, purifying flame, and bringing that into the suffering world is the role of Chalana. She may have visited and taught the White Camp first, though.

Chiming in as another archer, I want an option to lay covering fire with a bow - shoot fairly rapid fire. Carrying around a bundle of arrows is noisome if you are moving through difficult terrain. I never owned 48 arrows fit to any of my bows at any a single time. This full military load-out is three to four times the amount of ammo I carry into a field archery tournament of 30 targets, which may be 90 shots if it is round target archery, and anywhere between 30 and 90 shots if it is animal silhouettes or 3D targets. Creeping around potentially slippery territory, facing drops that will destroy your equipment even if you yourself come out of it fairly unscathed, maneuvering between low-hanging branches - those are things where carrying around a six foot longbow is a big inconvenience, and having to drag along 35 inch arrow containers (my draw length is at about 33 inch) anywhere on your body in addition to that bloody unwieldy and surprisingly fragile bow while struggling to keep your balance and not to get entangled anywhere are aspects of doing archery in such an environment which don't usually carry over into rpgs. I also had to take shots kneeling down to avoid entangling either my upper bow or my arrow flight path in low-hanging branches. I had one shot make contact about half-way to the target, sort of entangling a flexible branch, and heading off almost vertically into the terrain. For all I know, the arrow still is rotting somewhere out there. These things, and the difficulties of aiming at vertically removed targets (asymmetric ballistic curves) aside, for someone who knows his life expectation hangs on his proficiency with that bow, these matters are solveable. I have taken shots at trick targets moving roughly towards me, or running more or less orthogonally to my fire arc. Objects with constant or predictable speed and acceleration can be hit. Someone sprinting at you from 50 meters will face at least two somewhat aimed shots (and time to switch to a melee weapon), and unless he is very confident in his armor or shield might have some reservations at doing so.b' One fun shooting we did on our archery club range was one person shooting an apple on an arrow tip in a low speed arc and the other people trying to shoot that apple in flight. For a bunch of bloody amateurs, the results were fairly satisfactory. That's not something you do with your tournament quality arrows, though, and using air-braking fletching is advisable. 12 shots in a minute are quite manageable, with considerable aiming possibilities. You would want to do that behind a ditch and sharp stakes. Shooting into a melee isn't something I have done (obviously), but I have shot numerous "plus-minus" targets where hitting the "hostage target" meant a serious setback to your score. Aiming with bow and arrow is about as exact as aiming a rifle without having a rest for it. That kind of archery goes against instinctive archery, though, which is what you want to use when firing at someone or something coming at you at speed. Why would anybody shoot weak bows? It's a matter of physique. In many cultures, archery is regarded as a somewhat elegant social activity, and is performed by people who wouldn't go to battle with a bow. (They might go hunting from howdahs or ambush.) Even a weak ranged weapon is a lot better than having none at all, and if proficiency with it advances both social standing and survival chance, it is a good weapon for a non-fighter. Why would any fighter shoot a weak bow in a combat situation? I use a pretty weak bow (about 40lbs at full draught) for target archery. It performs well at the ranges that are offered in target archery, with the right set of light but durable arrows. To get to about the same range with wooden arrows and a longbow, I draw a bit over 70lbs, and lose out on precision, though not at all on impact. Archery pretty much has two very different forms of aiming. Horizontal aiming is a matter of the correct technique releasing the arrow, choosing the correct arrow strength for that draw length and power of the bow. Getting this right can be trained to quite some efficiency. That's before calculating in the effects of wind, though, especially if the wind conditions change on the flight path e.g. shooting across a ravine. Vertical aiming requires lots of experience, whether you do it instinctively or by calculation. Any vertical difference between you and your target will turn a symmetric ballistic curve into something quite different. Not knowing or misjudging the distance due to optical tricks like broken ground, open bodies of water, or massively different lighting of different parts of the flight path is a major factor. Fortunately, all of that matters a lot less if a six foot humanoid is running towards you, that gives you 4 foot of error margin on target - way more than an archery target allows you. The much higher ballistic curve of an arrow makes those mistakes a lot graver than for a high-speed missile with rather flat trajectory. I cannot really speak out of experience how mutilating arrow wounds are. Hunters will know about this, and adjust their arrow tips accordingly. Realistically, if an arrow lands a meaningful hit, it impales. How deeply is another question, but if it doesn't get stopped by armor or slowed by textiles, it will create a puncture wound, with the arrow tip stuck in the wound. (The shaft may be designed to break off a few inches behind the tip - IIRC they found this technology even with mesolithic arrows or javelins.) Everybody has had thorns penetrating obnoxiously into their flesh, making every use of the surrounding musculature painful and causing more damage (or undoing any clotting effect that the body may have exerted to the wound). While the object stays in, it slows blood loss unless it is yanked about. Adrenaline can be a game changer towards wounds. I have been on adrenaline highs a number of times which allowed me to ignore serious damage, whether strong compression of bones after an impact (I could see the ripples on the outer bones on the X-rays, even though nothing was broken, and I have since returned to my full size) or pain from bleeding wounds where significant (to me, at least) amounts of skin and other tissue were lost. It should be evidently possible to be doomed to die and yet fight on for quite a bit, so peppering that berserk running at you with a couple of arrows better had cause some functional damage. Him bleeding to death won't give you much satisfaction once he has dismembered you. So, what do I want arrows to be capable of? Taking out an opponent not in any form of berserk mode. While professional fighters probably have a higher proportion of people able to take damage, a majority of people hit by a missile will prefer to be out of combat if they have a choice. This goes for faceless minions as well as for non-combatant specialists picking a lock or removing some other obstacle for the muscle. In heroic mass combat, archers like Paris take considerable risk by entering the combat in rather poor armor, trading for mobility instead, but they also deal quite a lot of critical wounds from effectively point blank range before sauntering out of the way of friends of the target. Much like Marvel's Archer does, too - some of those maneuvers could come directly from the Iliad. In a way, bow and arrow behave pretty much like a 17th century rapier, with slightly longer reach. Anything Zorro inflicts on the Spanish troopers with his pig-sticker should be manageable for a nimble-footed archer dodging just out of range of their melee weapons. So, depending on the amount of swashbuckling your game allows, this type of archers should be put on an even footing. Archers as snipers are a different type of adventurer hero. Their impact on a melee should be just the same as for a modern sniper, just at a much lower distance. My favourite historical fictional character here is Einar Tambarskjelve, a companion of Olav Tryggvason on his last journey. Snorri Sturluson describes one of the most fascinating and epic archery duels in that chapter of his Heimskringla. In a narrative framing, this is the kind of spotlight a dedicated archer character wants. In a more gritty simulationist game, the effects of archery should allow this for combatants in high skill levels. For Einar or Paris to work in a D100 game, they would need an effective archery skill of roundabout 300% to achieve the number of impales that the stories credit them with. That means they need some way of "berserking" to get into this archery "zone", at will. Maybe this is a general issue with these games - they don't allow highly proficient characters to enter the "zone". Land of Ninja's Ki skills reflected this a bit, but the mechanic of applying this only to 100%+ skills was broken, IMO.

Compare the thoughts of spiritual purity among the Unicorn Women, discussed in the thread "Prax and the many things...". Divine birth doesn't really have to go with concourse. For a Real World example, Heimdall had nine mothers - the waves. There are the ancestors of the made humans who have similar arrays of "parents". (In this regard, the Dara Happans are quite similar to the Agimori.

Autonomous drones are the same as a dancing sword or Thor's hammer - sidekicks or minions sent in to do damage on their own while the hero may strut or deflect enemy attacks. That sapient missile in Iain Banks' State of the Art with its autonomous sub-ammunitions is possibly the best-known SF version of such combat style. True, a combat like that is more like two shamans sending in spirits from their bindings in howling swarms than directly exchanging balls of fire pushing back and forth. Jim Butcher wrote a five-part fantasy series using pokemon-like spirits (on a bet). It still is doable in a fantasy setting when you name the items exchanged accordingly, so why shouldn't it work in a SF setting? (This is also disagreeing with a comment of Ty Franck at a Caltech panel about the science of The Expanse, claiming that there is no emotional involvement sending in a remote probe. If the probe has a controller totally immersed in the perceptions of the drone while inserting, the identification will be a lot higher than that of a car-lover with his vehicle, and the spectator/reader who was fed this direct sensory input will be as disoriented for a moment.) This is little different from wielding a tricorder or having a surround radar in your spaceship cockpit/helm. Yes, there is a danger that these gimmicks might be out-gimmicked, or even turned against the original owner. That's one good reason to ride them sensorically into battle, not relying on fully autonomous action. David Brin's Uplift War has the Terran defenders confuse enemy targeting systems by spreading the terran physiological signals (DNA) all over the native biome, among other things. Dealing with such technology in an asymmetric conflict has great plot potential.

Inora is one of the maternal siblings of Orlanth, alongside Quivin (and the lesser peaks nearby, fathered by Veskarthan), Yinkin (fathered by Fralar, the spirit of carnivorous beasts), and possibly Tara, Lady of the Wild (who, if she has a father, might have one from the Tree tribe). There doesn't appear to be a water tribe consort of Kero Fin, but both Orlanth and Yinkin have mated with Helera to father types of clouds that hang around her. Inora's father most likely is Himile. There may be some dragon offspring, depending on when exactly Orlanth interrupted Sh'hakarzeel's interaction with his mother. All of these maternal siblings of Orlanth also are grandchildren of Larnste and Gata. Kero Fin offers a local cohesion of deities from quite different and not necessarly on good terms with one another. While Umath offered hospitality to Veskarthan, they never had a formal treaty. In the Footprint myth, Orlanth and Veskarthan cooperate (with others) to limit the Predark in the Foulblood forest. Her father definitely comes from the North (or the Underworld). Whether she had anything to do with the White Pillar I don't know. Kalikos, the replacement pillar, is a sky god (or demigod, or both), and apparently unrelated to Zenfel (who according to Peter's Wikia was a planetary deity). So Arroin was a virgin birth, a parthogenic birth? Chalana Arroy predates Inora by an Age or two - she may have been the original Healer, setting that Green Age moment. Inora is of the Darkness pantheon, which entered the surface world when Umath crashed into Alkor, awakening Jagrekriand (Tolat) upon Alkor entering the Underworld. While the Spike had a white peak, that white was the fire of Halamalao and his forest rather than the icy cold of Inora. Inora won this brightness at the hill of Gold at the same time that Orlanth lost Death to Zorak Zoran. O

We know that Mularik was sailing with Harrek and Argrath at least part of the way. My old campaign had him in Heortland as a companion of Rikard until 1620.

I wonder what was so crippling. Might Waha's draconic self have been awakened? From what I was told, there was an uncle Jaldon who was a dental technician somewhere in the environment of the early Chaosium. A bit like Hannibal in Seleucid exile?

Or it is a partially recovered place of power built using just dry clay bricks, not burnt bricks. I am thinking of the huge clay brick pyramids of the Lambayeque, which now are deeply eroded hillocks. Early in the Golden Age, there was no erosion to fend off, so unburnt mud brick would have been a good idea for monumental buildings. The stone structure may be a later addition. The style reminds me of the Pavis temple in New Pavis, a half pyramid leaning to the wall rather than forming a complete pyramid in itself.

Durulz...

You know, the bad news is that there are plenty indications that you might be right about people being bird-like early on. Birds are of course creatures from the sky, much like horses and Pelorian gazzam. Being born in a nest or from an egg doesn't mean that you will emerge as a bird. Poor Leda laid two swan eggs after Zeus had added Castor and Helen to her already growing twins (by her husband) Polydeukos and Klytemnaestra. The Suvarians and the Alkothi peasantry both emerge from nests and clutches. The Orlanthi come way too late to participate in this, however, and if any old earth cults have had peope hatched in eggs, those eggs would have been laid by serpents. The Dureving roots might be argued to be the first humans that made Orlanth their protector, but I wouldn't grant them early Golden Age or Green Age heroquesting privileges. The Storm Tribe has Gustbran and his cousins/brothers who are married to various of Ernalda's handmaidens, and this ancient Fire and Earth tribe (IMO indigeneous from Kethaela) makes up much of the basic rank and file of the early Vingkotling tribes. They are part of Ernalda's dowry. Vingkot himself is the spawn of the On Jorri, a Sairdite people we know but little about. They appear to have been quite numerous before the troubles came, and proud enough to stand against Orlanth and the Storm Tribe for a while. When they learnt what opposing Orlanth meant for their health and wealth, Janeera Alone approached Orlanth, and the result was Vingkot, son of Orlanth, but not of Ernalda. The On Jorri might have been a disavowed Earth people - once of the kin of the Earthmother, but sent away for some unknown misdeed. There might be a weak echo of this in the term "Holaya's Bastard Daughters" in modern Saird. (@jajagappa?) This might of course have created a bit of a Hera-Herakles relationship between Ernalda and the Vingkot lineage. However, the Vingkotling wives generally have a flawless earth genealogy behind them - Vingkot himself married twin princesses of the Tada-shi, and his son Kodig married the Queen of Nochet. Rastagar has had avatars of the Earth Queen as female ancestors for four generations. (I wonder how much tribal intermarriage happened between the normal Vingkotling tribes, excluding the Kodigvari with their over-proportional numbers of pre-Orlanthi Manirian folk.) Kodig may have been not only Vingkot's eldest son, but also a re-incarnation of one of the ancient Bad Men of Nochet myths, part of their Green Age defining moments. Both Vingkot and Kodig are demigods powerful enough to be born or around several times in Godtime. A similar pluripresence might be behind the two Orstans of Heortling mythology. I don't see Vingkot ever at odds with Ezel or the Paps (or whichever holy place was there before Eiritha went into hiding). Also Kodig's problems are with Nochet, not with the Earth Mother. The Durulz are almost as badly cut off from their Golden Age roots as the Oasis Folk of Prax and the Wastes. It isn't quite clear what else they suffered after having been carried out of their ancestral lands by Solkathi. They may have a hidden caste of true memory bearers among them, but that knowledge (if it exists) is more strongly guarded than the sang real in the modern versions of the grail myth. So basically, what the Durulz tell is what they have picked up from their environment, naively re-interpreted to match their extremely mangled snippets of ancestral memory. There may be truth to be found, but you might have to give them a bag of letter-carved sticks to unlock that truth, and it might be the (wrong) answer to "what is six multiplied by eight".