Joerg

I did take a double-take at Suren being unavailable to Lodrili. My first impression of Suren is Surenslib, a deity (or spirit) no Dara Happan noble would ever pollute himself with.

Last thing I heard about Dwarf Knob is that while it is an interesting feature in the Chaparral, it is not an oasis (as in a spot of preserved fertility in the otherwise barren land), but as barren as the area next to it. If there is anything magically different there, it might be mostali in origin, but that doesn't usually promote fertility.

I was trying to get the newtling benefit from potentially being eaten during indenture, and the only thing I can see making up for loss of yet asexual individuals is draconic magic for brood protection. The dragonewts get helpers for whichever chores usually placed on the scouts, leaving the scouts more space for self-discovery. Child care is part of our primal programming, seated so deeply that we even care for creatures of other species displaying similar traits. Which is mercilessly exploited by the likes of Disney. Maturing through childhood and puberty is in a very big portion learning to manage your emotions and to apply consideration before impulse. And I find this an interesting parallel to the dragonewt conundrum, and to be honest one I just stumbled over, so I am still trying to get grips on this. Most of the time, they play at defending their cities and clutches of eggs. Their caretakers (including the dragonet aka Inhuman King) have taken measures to teach the neighbors the folly and Darwinian misstep of tampering with dragonewt nests. Yes. And note who fought (the adults), and who was protected (the hatchlings). I have come to consider the mobile forms of the dragonewts not as hatched from the egg, but as emanations of the egg, similar to Dream Dragons. The real dragonewt never leaves the egg, only its emanations do. Hence they have a very strong urge to protect their origin. A dragonewt whose egg gets destroyed may continue to exist, but it is a pointless existence, much like an undead. Like I stated above, I don't think of the end of a mobile stage as a death, and the appearance of the improved model as a rebirth. It is the new OS, with the hard-/wetware adapted to its new purpose. In my (definitely not 100% correct) parallel crested 'newts or scouts are the equivalent of Kindergarten, beaked newts are primary school, tailed priests are now entry level high school and winged priests get to grips with their puberty. That's referring to their emotional development, not any other abilities. Come on. People who have not even heard of dragonewts are irrelevant for this discussion. That affects mainly the Pelorians, who had conflicting emotions towards the 'newts anyway. The pro-newt Heortlings fled from the True Golden Horde, and found refuge in the Kingdom of Night. Their contingent sent to the aid of the 'newts may have been wiped out by the advancing horde along with the 'newt bodies that they aided. I don't think that there are many Heortlings south of Dragon Pass whose ancestors were eaten by the dragons. Those who lost ancestors to this war lost them to the True Golden Horde. When the dragons finally struck, the Golden Horde had reached modern Sun Dome County, making sure not to leave any live Heortlings in their back. The way the dragons did end the Golden Horde did strike fear even in those whose folk had fought that ruthless band of murderers, abusers and pillagers, but I see that more like the Cold War trauma of the Overkill going off any day now. There was one moment of "treason", when the (aberrant) draconic elite of the EWF was eliminated over night. Now, few of the Heortlings whose ancestors survived the Dragonkill would confess to their specific ancestors having been betrayed. It is a bit like admitting that you had dedicated Nazis as ancestors. (Trust me, I know how _that_ feels.) They are alien, have hardly understood powers, and they don't accept the Great Message of the Goddess. What is there not to demonize? Yes. And I say that even Tailed Priests are still pre-pubertary in their development, or just entering the great final re-wiring of both brain and personality. I don't know about 7-year old future monks in Japanese Buddhism, which is why I chose the Himalaya example. The Aztecs already provide a lot to the material culture of the 'newts. I don't see much how Aztec culture really maps on 'newt proto-culture. The Aztecs were a highly productive agricultural society, something absolutely alien to the 'newts. The Buddhism parallels work inasfar they require a detachment from the material world. I don't see that in any Aztec parallel. I see more Lord of the Flies than Mary Poppins in the dragonewt upbringing. A heavy side portion of Peter Pan. But, like I said, this is a recent insight. Still trying to work it out. I am considering myself to be rather divided in terms of interconnections already, and empathically challenged. I feel that makes me less qualified to learn a language with empathic components. I did learn quite a few languages, but in a way that wouldn't aid me with Auld Wyrmish. It was a huge and for a while fascinating ant farm. Then the ants got uppity, got things wrong, and even tried to interfere with the dragonewts' own progression, so the ant farm had to go. Good thing that they had an arrangement for getting rid of those pests from early on in this game. The EWF proper lasted how many years? Hunting and Waltzing bands started in the 590ies, and roused the curiosity of the 'newts. By 650, they had pet humans who sort of approached an understanding of the games the dragonewts played, and these humans had a strife with other humans which lasted for about a century, before they established themselves as the leaders of the local humans, and began to contribute to the dragon dream in new, colorful and for a while interesting ways. Think an introduction of psychedelic images, movies and music. How long did that last in human culture? Dragonewt culture moves slower by a factor of about 100. So, between 750 and 1020 there were humans who did dragonewt things, in somewhat different and for a while fascinating ways, providing some creature comforts to the 'newts, expanding the range of their dream (their Peter Pan realm) greatly. They tempted the 'newts into establishing new nests. I do wonder where these nests came from. Were they taken out of existing nests and transplanted elsewhere, or did new dragonewt eggs get created to populate the EWF lands? And when those new nests (and the irreplaceable eggs therein) were destroyed, how did that change the dragonewt perspective (and the dragonewts' caretakers' perspectives) of the benefits of the EWF? Considering the difference between the Kralorelan and the Kerofinelan dragonewts, the Kralorelan ones claim to have weathered the Gods War in Strength, whereas the Kerofinelan ones did so in weakness. It is well established that the Kerofinelan ones participated in I Fought We Won, which might be seen as weakness. It is also a fact that dinosaurs are common where the Kerofinelan nests are, but are rather rare or even unknown in Kralorela. It is possible that the 'newts might have hoped to return the victims of weakness - the dinosaurs - into the dragon path through their EWF experiment. They did get all manner of creatures put onto a dragon path, but reclaiming dinos may have been a failure. But yes, 400 years observing humans is what passes for a game for creatures whose life-span is basically unlimited while they refrain from maturing into an adult. Another Peter Pan element here...

There is a strong precedent in the Seven Years Build-up the Carmanians did, sacrificing an entire army and the shah's own brother to get the magical benefit against the Dara Happans. Tatius does build up a grudge, and the besieged Heortlings take up his concept and run wild with it. Basically, Tatius provides magical support to Broyan in order to manifest Orlanth. While not exactly the same, he does use a Summons of Evil-like method to create the magical tension he requires for his über-rites. Sylilans are as qualified, and despite their often boorish ways they are reliable Heartlanders now. In Hendrikiland, I would expect. You don't place mercenaries where they may get too comfortable.

Basically, the siege would attract a veritable garrison city of units or at least meaningful detachments from all over the Heartlands. Hardly any provincials, though - Tatius wants professionals to participate in the siege. Fazzur originally used Tarshite and Cavalry Corps units for his rush to the sea, and he would have left a few of his slowest units behind with Jorkandros to keep Broyan and his Volsaxi army inside the old but (at least to Fazzur) insignificant mountaintop fortress of Whitewall. Broyan's army would be around 3000 men strong, initially, so the covering forces would have to match that, and then a bit. As long as Broyan stays behind the walls of Whitewall, Fazzur has free reign to occupy the rest of Volsaxiland and to take Karse, gaining him (and Tarsh) the long wanted foothold on the Mirrorsea Bay and thereby to the Homeward Ocean. The magicians under Tatius have a totally different agenda, they want to crush the last free king of the Orlanthi (that matter) and his temple city. That's why they send for the Bat, the usual WMD of the Lunar army. It failed only once, when a dragon rose to keep it from reaching Boldhome 17 years earlier. This time, no dragon interferes, so what could possibly go wrong? Indeed. Broyan does the impossible, the Bat is slain, and heads roll. Tatius assumes command of the siege, and what used to be a relaxed post becomes a series of militarily wasteful ceremonial attacks, sacrificing Lunar soldiers in the thousands for some magical build-up. And Tatius makes sure to let as many Imperial units or detachments thereof bleed on the white walls. So basically, it would be more noteworthy if a Heartland unit's standard is absent from the siege for its duration. Tarshite and other Provincial units draw garrison duty in Karse, Smithstone, and later on the New Malkonwal cities. Many of these wouldn't be in the Dragon Pass boardgame because of their presence at the New Lunar Temple dedication in 1625. The Native Furthest forces describe the Tarshite reserves, not its veteran front troops. Too many of those are loyal to Fazzur and probably hang back for part of the action, or participate as e.g. the Bush Children.

Dragonewts certainly have a different body structure from the Man Rune scheme which does appear to come with a bunch of emotions shared even with the Elder Races. Their brains probably would be different. Asexual newtling bachelors may enter dragonewt service as "slaves", or in other words for a term of indenture which may face them with potentially lethal out of context situations and with the promise of some dragonewt magic as their reward for the rest of their bachelorhood and possibly for their child-rearing time as sexual adults. (The latter is the only thing that makes some sort of slight sense in giving them a biological advantage from that risky indenture.) If they require such an operation to function as assistant scout dragonewts, we aren't told about it. A lot of human emotions are the biological consequence of providing child care. Dragonewts as individuals don't provide nest care, and even as a society they are more the recipients of nest care than caretakers themselves. A bunch of unfinished individuals who are given some chores according to their degree of maturity, but who mostly go about growing up, and taking their sweet, unlimited time to do that. A lot of what they do is pre-pubescent and pubescent paradoxical activity. Undoubtedly, our young children are full of emotions, overflowing with them, and puberty escalates that again. At a guess, so are dragonewts. Don't look much further for irrational behavior than this. The common conception of dragonewts as eternally wise and noble creatures. And not children at play, if as some sort of very junior monks in a Himalayan monastery. Dragonewt politics might share structure and interactions with self-organized youth groups before and in puberty. Actually, the brain split would appear to lower the human abilty for empathy, whereas Auld Wyrmish supposedly has empathical components. I don't think they care. Humans are a strange external factor in their games. Sometimes they can be fun, at other times they are annoying like hell.

That's the crux here, isn't it? We are discussing battle magic/spirit magic, off the cuff magical charms rather than sophisticated magic.

If the magic was always on, it would be technology rather than magic. That said, RQ2 offered the common rune spell extension, which was stackable without any real limit IIRC. (RQ3 notably did not offer this.) If you have enough rune points to burn, you could stack up a few weeks of always on combat magic. The question is whether it is worth the effort - if you can afford to maintain a priest doing nothing than keeping your Bladesharp 4 sword operational, you could afford an enchanted iron sword as well (which might be the recipient of this spell anyway), and live in a palatial manor with a few Ulerians to service you. (Now where did Gringle hide his palatial manor?)

So, for a glimpse of High Llama Eiritha, we should look at Elusu's story of the Cradle instead?

I said this before, but it bears repeating: IMO Godsbone brass or bronze is a natural laminate, with growth rings creating a layered effect that is impossible to achieve with just melting copper and tin. Godsbone needs to be hammered to retain those properties and cannot simply be cast into whichever shape you think is convenient to achieve. The mostali might actually have a process of damascening brass to a similar effect. They refer to the metal by the name derived from the volcano/mountain deities exclusively, regarding the birth of Umath as the disastrous destruction of their world machine, and while they are happy to work storm-originated godsbone, they won't refer to it as such. Chainmail requires access to rather thick wire of the metal in question. Now producing wire isn't foreign to Gloranthan metal artisans - gold, pewter, and probably copper and bronze as well are shaped into wires before leaving e.g. pearl-like ornaments melted onto a bigger piece of ornamental metal, like e.g. a cloak clasp or a belt buckle. Producing this wire is a time-intensive task, however, and requires at least a journeyman's skill. Producing enough thick wire for even a small piece of mail armor (maybe little more than a curtain to attach to a helmet to protect the neck) will take up quite a lot of reliable wire. But then there is another question when it comes to Gloranthan armor: does anyone but the iron mostali walk around in an impervious shell of metal, or is armor more a statement of protection, expanded by sympathetic magic to cover slightly more than it actually does? Does armor "magically" attract weapon hits? If so, plate greaves and what we would name "ceremonial" bits of metal plate worn on chest or abdomen would be a lot more effective than SCA experience would suggest.

I wonder how much Eiritha's hagiography will have that pregnant human female and how much she will have cow's attributes, like an always-full udder. The Paps is where her sweet milk is given to her people. If anatomically correct (memories from watching the James Herriot veterinary stories...), her birthing orifice would be somewhat to the north and east. but IIRC Waha was born at the Paps and not back there.

Right now I get something like the message "female mystery is behind everything" which sort of devalues said female mysteries. In themselves they aren't stupid, but they start chains of barely rational decisions which definitely are. Both testosterone and menses-affected unreasonability bring back pubertarian decision-making to nominally adult persons, and giving in to such impulses can be stupid. There are other paths to mysticism. Yelmi/Dayzataran flame/fuel dualism. Reaching through Arachne Solara. Dragons. Vithelan ways. All unite polar opposites, and the gender vector is only one of many available.

Yeah, anything could be born. But I found it already quite an effort to suggest pregnant or breast-feeding heroines for a pilgrimage scenario. The descending pyramid in Spol has this, explicitely borrowed from meso-American nobility sacrifices (discussion with Greg at some Tentacles). Gifts and sacrifices - so a magician would transform parts of his body _permanently_ into magical powers. WIth no guarantee that the trade actually works every time. This does make for interesting magicians, and like I said, Spol might be a place practicing something like this. Kralori austerities might cost a limb or other portions of health, too. That, giving up an eye, a finger, half a foot, ears, teeth, fleshy parts of the nose, and all manner of piercings and scarifications. Could also be a weird and (but for a few hidden grimoires) forgotten Rubble survivor group (except that, in the long run, it didn't survive). Probably not something a gaming company would publish to the mass market, though.

Tough questions, ranging from the high-valuting all the way to "give me something to roll!" then. Ok, let's assume we are taking the way spirit combat works in Dragon Pass (under the Corbett rules). The attacking spirits need to overcome the Magic Factor of the defending units, in stacked order. There are two types of defenders - those who can only resist by being too big to be eaten, with no Range Factor, and those with a Range Factor of zero or greater (and no spirit away on detached duty) that can bite back against the attacking spirits. Again, there is pretty much the choice between "too big to be eaten" or "yum". Having a Range Factor even of zero is rather exceptional, so your average tight formation unit is trying to be too big to be eaten. (For some weird reason, I get pictures of allosauri trying to hunt a diplocodus herd. Maybe not the worst visualization for this kind of combat. Wolves and bison work, too.) That's sort of the crux with these attacks - they ignore you as individual (in a bad way - if you encounter this spirit as an individual, you're toast) and only can be countered by keeping together. Imagine the unit holding fast, except for a bunch of new arrivals in the last rank who break away, and perish gruesomely to whatever visual effect the attacking spirit offers. To the unit as a whole, such peripheral loss is hardly noticeable. To the player character holding fast watching what failure to do so means it is a different story. I am trying to provide my inner visuals when writing about this. I have read a couple of fantasy books or series which deal with threats like this, classics like The Black Company which has individual demigod-like sorcerers rather than groups of magicians, but similar battlefield effects, the Thraxas series, or the big siege epics like Gemmel's Legend. Nick Brooke's rewrite of "And the Band Played Waltzing Mathilda", "And the Band Played March of the Goddess", helps to bring the Gallipoli horror to a magical assault, too. Basically, you have to be able to describe what is going on in this magical part of the battle. That's the nasty thing about magical strikes, artillery or air strikes on formations: very little. "Shields up" against a hail of arrows or slingstones makes sense. "Strengthen the Standard/the regimental god/wyter" is the weak magical analogy which I tried to simulate with that coordinated MP donation. That's the crux of it - your battle resolution system that allows to deal with units while keeping some personal experience for the character included in some formation or other. It won't do to handle a battle in combat rounds, unless you are doing the heroic stuff like champions' battle. As your character doesn't get the choice to go where you want him to go but where his unit goes, the entire battle experience is more a collection of impressions and occasional saving throws to allocate or reduce adverse effects. And I have yet to see a rpg that makes this a core activity of its combat mechanism and a gripping and interesting one too. You can provide some between action low level heroics by pulling back wounded comrades from the front line, or stepping up for some, but that gets rather long in the tooth pretty soon, too. If you want roleplaying fun, avoid set battles, or use them only as the backdrop for the activity between battles. Battles are the grandfathers of railroading and dicing orgies. So, each unit has a regimental deity. Preferably a fearsome fighting thing that stands up to face the attacking spirit. The joint action is to manifest it to intercept the spirit attack, and hope that the manifestation will survive the onslaught of the spirit. To give the players some agency, let them roll for this manifestation. All of them look through the eyes of their deity, all feel its extremities and (if present) weapons and armor. So what happens if it fails to deflect that onslaught? Total party kill should not be the result. A unit becomes a casualty when suffering deaths, injuries and defections, and the individuals in that unit each will face consequences like being stunned out of consciousness, suffering a debilitating wound, possibly dying if not rescued by comrades. The horrible, shell-shocked aftermath. Which just might be fun to play, every now and then. The results of fear- or madness-based magic on individual combats is pretty well documented. The sheer reality of a battle situation might be enough to have each character in a unit (and his neighboring comrades) roll against such effects as the battle looms. A certain percentage of lost hearts won't break the unit, too much of it and it will disperse. Dragon Pass is especially cruel when it comes to emissary duty to Delecti, the Hydra, or the Ivory Plinth. Losing an emissary unit on a failed alliance attempt feels somewhat unfair but not evil. Losing it on a success however... Wyrm's Footnotes told that story. For the spirit attack, I suggest a "champion's battle" between the unit deity representation and the attacking spirit. The spirit attack doesn't take all day, the sent spirits have a few rounds during which they either overwhelm the defenders, or if not, they must retreat. If they feel they, as individuals, can do better than their regimental deity buffed up with hundreds of magic points to ward off a spirit even bigger than that, it's their funeral. If they really can do it, what are they doing in a mundane formation? Maybe that's their designated role in the battle, to come to the forth when the spirits get rolling. That's the other problem there is with roleplaying magics - they tend to be short term use under duress effects, and ignore the long lasting, long to prepare and (let's face it) not very exciting crafting of spells. Stuff done in the "catch-up" time between heart-throbbing action. There are players who do enjoy this kind of "build and expand" for their characters, and the rules should cater to them. Give us "ritual spells" which explain why these easily thought of bypasses don't usually work. I'm not the designer, not even a designer. But this is a gaming itch that my rpg characters rarely if ever managed to scratch. Also because it causes work for the DM, hampers his narrative opportunities later on, and easily unleashes potentially overpowered stuff into a campaing, breaking the rules reality in an arms race to still be able to hurt the characters (whose players have a vested interest in making that impossible).

There aren't that many attendants at the Dorkath rites (the only occasion that many commoner women might approach Takenegi). Illumination is notorious for being a contagious meme, via riddles, so anything suggesting direct descent from the Emperor sounds really false. The Pelorian clan names are derived from the name of the founding hero(ine), sometimes a bit obscurely so. King of Sartar gives Kana-Telsor's parent as Valar-Telsor. I don't quite see how Valare Addi contributed to that clan-name, if she did at all, since Valar- is the personal bit of that name, and Telsor would be the first component of the clan designation.

For a close order infantry group, I would look for the skill used to keep formation. It could be a commander's skill, which means passive for the individual members of the file. The mantra is "hold the line", so anything that keeps the character and his neighbors in the line and lets them refrain from breaking formation is what supports the magic. So, let's say you feel like the superior soldier, but the guy to your left is the unfortunate combination of a bully and a coward, and the guy to your right suffers from PTSD. What do you do to keep not only your own position but also those two guys in position? That's your contribution to the magic. In a huge group dance, the individuals' dance skills would make up the rolls. Some sub-par performance might be adjusted for by superior success by others, retaining the overall impression of harmony. In RQ it is easy to force imperfections: just ask for a series of rolls. (not done in HQ...) Imagine a rite that demands that the 100 attendants all light a cigarette at the same time. Simple statistics will cause quite a few failures to light. The unlikely case of a perfect unison lighting of all 100 cigarettes probably gets a ritual bonus, but a certain number of failures is expected, and calculated for. If you want to have a simple mechanistic way, have them sacrifice a MP to the unit standard in unison, with a 95% chance of success (same as rune magic).

Harmony is the peace-making rune, but the status of peace is equated with fertility, if you look at Orlanthi war and peace clans. Which is pretty much the point I wanted to make. If our church had allowed officiating women, none of those items would have ended up on the list of suspicious items. There is, but the same goes for all kind of phallic matters and magic. Every kind of hormone-induced stupidity is magical and/or holy in Glorantha. Possibly as unwelcome on a personal level, but integral part of the magic of life. Pregnancy and birth are the only secrets exclusive to females. and you need a bunch of immortal males to outlaw that and still survive. If you mean "let's trigger the war menses", let's not go there. We are hoping to expand our female player numbers, and that's how not to do it. Imagine a game that mandates "sure you can play a magician. When was your mage's castration, shortly after birth, or after his voice broke?"

There is the irony that the cockaignian nature of Golden Age makes all these pastimes rather meaningless. The food is there regardless. Only when things start to break down, these activities become mandatory, and some of this breakdown is tied to the gradual arrival of Storm Age troubles. I still think that the wyter approach, the manifestation of community unity as a spirit (or deity), describes this phenomenon better. But then that's a theory I have been suggesting for nearly 35 years now. You have never seen a Maori Haka, have you? A beautiful dance, and not at all peaceful. Anything can be demonized as a maleficium. The medieval church went for those things where its male and recently celibate priests had no foothold.

These formations are a magic unto themselves, and require extraordinary heroism to overcome. The scene where Arjunas's son fails to perform his father's formation breaking feat is probably the scene of the Vedas that comes to my mind first. I remember seeing a wonderfully choreographed movie sequence of the shields (never see the warriors behind them) closing in on the hapless would-be hero, ringing him in. A scene right from the most personal nightmare sequences. Basically, the formation of a "we" beyond many "I"s makes a huge difference also magically. Skirmisher units are usually magical lightweights because they lack such cohesion. Area effect mass destruction is the powerful exception in the Dragon Pass magical arsenal, and even there superheroes and dragons offer protection. These effects feed on those mass tactics and counter them. Other than such out of context scale magics, the formations form good defense or at least passive resistance.

They all are one. The bringer of illumination - whether Rashoran(a) or Jernotia/us or Metsyla - was androgyn, fluent, in-between, undefined or answering both definitions. And the deepest root of magic, Change, is presented as a male principle, and as father of Kero Fin. I got the impression that the usual Female Earth concept is "find a (better) champion to bleed for you" and receive that blood gratefully in sacrifice. And if displeased, send a huge monster (pig) and however gruesome, make its destroyer your new champion after having made your displeasure known. On the other hand, both Umath and Orlanth present the concept of the sanctity of their camp, the defense-worthiness, is named as their first "adult" deed. It doesn't go as far as to define defensive magic, though. The entire concept of conflict and war only gradually develops through various "end of Green Age" experiences, and generally involves men/male deities. Obviously present in the formation of the Golden Age, it fails to be traumatic back then. Things happen, but they fail to mar the participants, even if the losers disappear or find their roles turned over to the Underworld. In this sense, there is the paradox of using a Green Age style unity to form an otherworldly agent of destruction to release upon a battlefield on mostly defenseless troops. It does require some form of enlightenment to combine both innocent unity and aggressive intent.

While non-Gloranthan, I feel that the magic in David Gemmel's universe featuring novels like Legend is one of the few instances where literature has something coming close to the magic of the Dragon Pass magicians. Gemmel specifically has his warrior priests discorporate, then join up into an entity which exceeds the sums of the individuals. Their opponents are cruel horse warlords aided and at times controlled by ancient shaman mystics who forced the otherwise ultra-pacifist mystics into forming one such militant order, so there is quite a bit to loan for Sheng's guys there. The Dead of Dunharrow are a different phenomenon, otherworld entities without a controlling agency (the magician unit), and comparable to the Ancestors of the major tribes in Prax. Dead heroes that return to the aid of the living from whatever special Other SIde arrangement they have are a different proposal. Glorantha's capital H Hero status immortalizes a person's feats and to some extent the person even if the hero never made it to apotheosis and actual god(ling) status. If the Earth Twins of the Old Tarsh faction are indeed Arim's children, there is another case of such return, however they get divorced from their Earth Shakers magic, which rests with the priesthood unit of the same name. The proficiency of the Tarsh Exiles magicians is at least as high as that of the Sartarites, and the question is who taught them? Argrath gets the honor (or blame) for the Sartar Magical Union, and the Imperial College of Magic precedes that by centuries, being more or less uncountered except for the struggles with Sheng and his hordes. So, how much of those regimental-sized spirits is common in Kralorela? Do they have exarch units which act like the magicians in the SMU?

To my knowledge, that wing has not been built yet (and it is somewhat in doubt whether it ever will). For comparison: for hundreds of years, the building crane atop the unfinished towers of the Kölner Dom (the Cologne minster) was the trademark sight for that city. (I could name other, more recent ambitious building projects in Germany, but one of those - the Hamburg Elbphilharmonie - has recently and against expectations been finished and continues to please. Less such luck with big traffic infrastructure projects...) To show how badass he is? Seriously: the door of his home faces away from Suntown, which is how he and the Yelmalians like it. I guess that harkens back to better times when Humakti mostly were not-quite-dead-yet and contagious only when making contact with their blades or spells.

Not quite correct. Hero status is cheap, and can probably be reached in few years of intense torture and meditation, otherwise the numbers of his followers would have been limited to the few he was incarcerated with. It took Sheng 100 years to be offered complete liberation, at which time he chose the world instead, much like the antigods.. That's possibly a lesser form. Sheng would have tens of thousands adherents practicing this. Fewer rewards, but nifty shrug off enemy magic effects. IIRC the remaining disciples of Sheng were systematically hunted down and removed from the Surface World. NB: I don't think that the Lunar Prison Hell was anything the Kralori could have prepared him for, and unlike in his meditations, he pobably was pushed in along with his body, so that he had no anchor to return to. I guess that's what it takes to imprison a major mystic. Sheng was extremely gifted, so he may have proceded faster than others, but as said above, I think that Sheng had a sizeable army of Jolaty some 30 years after returning from his prison camp. He did install a regimen of overseen austerities, though, and without that oversight, a normal Pentan may very well have been slowed down to much less progress.

p.314 has a non-eel Pelorian noble with Ochlo-molari. While all the four official examples of the -eel family (Hon, Jar, Sor, Bor) have three letter personal designators, that's evidently not a necessity.

I think you will have to do separate lists for the different Pelorian populations. Non-Dara Happan Lodrili nobility (i.e. upstart Lunars) have the first part of the clan-name as a hyphenated suffix - Sor-eel. Both Dara Happan and Carmanian high nobility go by their given name, a title, and an epithet. You are supposed to know which noble family they belong to. (Aronius Jaranthir suggests that Jaranthir is an eponym, too, only one without translation provided.) Dara Happan naming conventions were discussed in a Lunar novel Greg read ages ago at a Convulsion I attended (94 or 98). A calling name, status (as a cardinal number), and IIRC another numeral. (The character in the novel was a female weeder, the lowest level of free Dara Happan nationality. IIRC a sixth.) Darjiinians just have a given name, no clan epithet, if the few examples I can correctly identify show the greater picture. Pelandans appear to make do with a single name, followed by their city (or the nearest city, which will probably add a (different?) suffix or prefix to the city name. Medium level Dara Happans also identify by their city. The rest will be nicknames like Caesar (baldhead), Cicero (chick-pea) or Flaccus (lop-ear), Blaatand (Bluetooth), or sometimes "the elder" (Cato), "the smaller/bigger" (Ajax in the Ilias). Or possibly awful puns sold as clever kennings. Individuals will amass such nicknames or war-names. Sometimes the descriptor will be clear text, sometimes it will be faux Pelorian (Jaranthir). Complications as with the Nac Mac Feegle of Diskworld shouldn't arise unless some namers get obnoxious ("Wee-but-not-as-wee-as-wee-wee-Donal-Donal"). Sometimes giving everybody the same name is a matter of family tradition ("Hermann Reuss", IIRC), which is as unhelpful to those around them. Even then, qualifiers like "the Sackville-Bagginses" may work around the issue. It may be a mark of distinction if a third person reference without too much context can be made with just one name element. I guess every Tatius in the Empire will hasten to add an epithet.