Joerg

Is it in any way different from any other predator to prey relationship, like e.g. Orlanthi war clans or outlaw bands living on the tribute they can extort? Are there ways to propitiate Malia without becoming a carrier? There are non-magical ways to survive diseases. These don't grant you immunity or shelter from disability, but catching a low-intensity disease is nothing more than a temporal inconvenience, possibly leading to some unplanned recuperative "stat-training". Are Malia's infections (not as a carrier, but as a victim) stackable, or are they exclusive? The RQ rules construct of covert possession for diseases (as opposed to similar damage rules but different coping mechanisms for venoms) may be more than a rules artifact. Aren't broo immune already without sacrificing to Malia anyway? They transfer the disease by exposing their weapons and belongings to the disease, in addition to using their own bodies.

But I think it would be misleading, as much as comparing this to the gender-fluidity of the Sea Tribe. Androgeus is in many ways the antithesis of the unseparated utrum gender, she is conflicted about his sexual/gender nature all the time, as she shows by the use of his gendered pronouns. The gender changes might be hurtful and hateful experiences. When happening during a pregnancy, these experiences might warp the unborn child. A major function of Androgeus is to antagonize the world. Saving humans in the Greater Darkness can be seen as such, just like bringing suffering through the offspring. Limiting her offspring during Godtime to nine significant direct children, some of which spreading like plagues, is a bit astonishing, but works if some of them are the founders of difficult races. "Her children are too many to name" might indicate a much greater amount of fertile interactions during Time (as opposed to Godtime), too. He might possess a Green Age type of fertility overcoming normal boundaries of species with ease.

Misapplied Worship penalties. If it generates magic, it is working. (luckily a past problem.) Anti-Vaxination or anti-nuclear sentiments applied to all Orlanthi vs. sorcery. Fertile Crescent Bronze Age as a limitation to what goes - definitely untrue. Non-human PCs in mixed parties. Seriously, with all the potential for antagonism and cliches in the cult membership and ethnic background, what's the need? NPCs or sidekicks, no major problem. Babeester Gor cultists in the party. A non-chaotic subcult of Thed... nothing wrong with Earth Axe women, whether as hunters or as bodyguards, or people clad in trophies of vanquished foes, but I don't need this cult as played by too many (male) players. Random Geases. Inconvenient creatures: I guess the Jack O'Bear is high on my list, as are dragonsnails - but then I don't play anywhere near the Devil's Marsh, and I am happy to have entire Glorantha campaigns with no more Chaos than an occasional scorpionman raid.

Neither the trolls nor the merfolk are out to help humans, or aldryami. The Borklak trolls have plans for a giant vegetable and mushroom dinner - Winterwood just below the Glacier is an enormous lot of spruce wood that will be seasoned in the rising seas, and then lie defenseless as the waters retreat. Whatever the Seas are after for food is different from what the trolls want. That forest without defenders basically is a huge all you can eat buffet. I am still not much of a fan of this "limp water flooding". A decent flooding caused by the Seas should have active waters, able to form steep borders, or to cover slopes in a layer of water without running off downhill. What remains a bit unclear is whether the Borklak trolls were certain that the plug would work as expected - apparently they started the gnawing project long before the mermen joined from below. Did they intend the ice as a raft to invade other lands over sea? IMO there isn't much room for playing around with water management to keep the Chaos Void plugged. That is an active task and requires better than 99% of the Inner World currents contributing, mainly through the three Doom Currents. It is possible that establishing the Vortex required even more energy, which was sacrificed/transferred to Magasta by nearly all surface (and celestial) waters. I favor this model, of the Seas building up momentum, and then using this momentum to enter far across the dry lands, not as a limp puddle but as one extremely long (and slow) wave berg running across the dry lands, harvesting all the good stuff maliciously withheld from the seas, then retreating to share it with the All Waters.

The City of Wonders probably is a good place to start the heroquest for that magic. I wonder how these dykes work in controlling the waters - do they simply have to have enough elevation to keep the waters at bay (pun not intended), or do they form a defensive bulwark from which the Storm Powers which kept the Vingkotling lands free of the Flood in the Gods War can be invoked, regardless how high the wall of water before them? With champions of the besieged dry spots regularly challenging champions of the encroaching waters, re-enacting powerful deeds of the Thrinbarris or Trembling Shore? The Building Wall Battle certainly helped to stop the Red Tide. @jajagappa has interesting ideas about the dam-building along the Lyksos River in Nochet during the Closing after the Devastation of the Vent, reclaiming the northeastern quarter of the city from the swamplands, with rites that required significant numbers of men participating as the dyke's defence line, being interred in the bulwark in the progress. If water can loom several meters above the dry ground, why shouldn't a dry bulwark keep water much higher than the crown of the dyke in check if backed by suitable magic and sacrifices? But this approach will work only if the invading water is spreading like some goo over the land, measuring its advance not in meters of elevation but in miles of dry land swallowed by the wave front. Water more like an invasive species than like liquid levels rising. Keeping that huge floe of ice afloat on its way into the Homeward ocean could be a major effort to the Sea Tribe. The southwestern seas are way too shallow, and with the Somelz land raising underway on behalf of the Mostali probably would mean that this ice would be beached there. Meltoff could be significant, and still leave an ice sheet a quarter mile high (most if it below the water). The Denestlazam Doom Current will be the perfect carrier for this ice sheet, but it will first have to be maneuvered out of the Neliomi current to avoid it hitting Brithos or the New or Red Vadeli Islands. (While that collection might knock a few of those islands off the map, it would slow the ice to a halt, and require extra effort to get afloat again. Which might explain the 20 year delay between calfing and arriving at Magasta's Pool. When the ice floe reaches the Pool it might stretch as a wedge from Teleos all the way to the north of the Jrusteli Islands, and from Kumanku and Loral to about halfway the distance between the Iron City and the Threestep Isles. The Doom Currents happen mostly deep inside the Earth Cube - they are bottomless chasms, all the way through the Earth Cube to the Underworld Sea below. This necessarily means that there are huge vertical slits entering into the Maelstrom, providing huge jets of water for hundreds of miles downward feeding the Maelstrom from Sramak's River. Even if the ice floe is a mile deep in the water, its effect on this flow is minimal. Not negligible, but minimal. The sink cannot be completely blocked - like a shower sink with clotted hair and similar debris, the downward current may be slowed a bit. There is no way to maneuver a big enough ice floe intact to top off the pool while carrying it across the shallower entrance to the Homeward Ocean. The amounts of water churned through on a single day should be immense. Have you ever seen the Saltstraumen in Norway at maximum speed? Seeing a rusty freighter rush through at better than 50 mile per hour is quite impressive. The Doom Currents should have similar speed, but much greater diameter. Saltstraumen manages 0.4 cubic kilometers in six hours through two openings each about 150 m wide and maybe 100 m deep, with hardly any flow for the first and last of these hours. For a continuous throughput at high speed, 0.1 cubic kilometers an hour for that 0.015 square kilometer slit should be about right. Now let's guesstimate the "slits" of the three (or four) doom currents raging through the breaks in the earth cube. Let's say these are at least 10 miles wide and go all the way from the surface down to the underbelly of the earth, but let's only use the top half of those currents. That's 10*3000 square miles throughput area for each slit, or 16*4800 square kilometers. That's about 1,200 cubic kilometers per Doom Current and hour, or 90,000 cubic kilometers a day for three doom currents feeding the Maelstrom. A mile deep ice floe will hinder only a small fraction of that water. Let's say 1 mile depth * 10 mile width of the Doom Current *3 for the three surface Doom Currents, or a factor of 1000 less than the total. Still, this is 90 cubic kilometers a day. For a quick guesstimate, let's assume that the Homeward Ocean and adjacent shores cover an area of 3000*3000 square kilometers, a convenient 9 million square kilometers. 90 km³ / 9,000,000 km² results in 1/10,000 km a day, or 10 cm a day blockage. Maybe allow for a factor of 10 to include other surface currents, or ten times broader channels of the Doom Currents on the surface, then we get a rise of a meter a day once the floe blocks all three surface currents. One year in position would cause a 1000 foot rise in water level, David's first map. However, as soon as the warm waters of the other two Doom Currents are added, the ice floe will start melting rapidly. Maybe over the course of two years, giving a maximum static sea rise of David's second map. Ok - a hydrostatic plug/inhibitor might cause such a flood. It doesn't offer as good countermeasure efforts as the plug-less approach, though. Less MGF. Agreed. Unless these barriers also create a bubble of air above, Erenplose-style. Maybe it would be easier to create a Fish Road nexus where both surface dwellers and water breathers can coexist. Also one of Belintar's lost magics.

Two problems here. The tide follows the rise and fall of the Blue Moon. To resist the fall of the Blue Moon would take as much energy as to rush in with increased amounts of water. Then there is the scope. The tide goes out twice, rarely thrice per week. What is peak tidal change in Glorantha? 2, 3 meters? That means you would need 100 tides to reach the 1000 foot line, more than two years of slowly rising water. If you make the rise a meter a day ignoring tidal modulations, it still takes an entire year to reach that line. I think you want to convey something like the events of the first Mandrenke, where the storm prevented the flood from retreating, only to pile up the next tide on top of the already too high flood. Only without the storm, but still with powerful waves crashing in on the land. Probably no active support of rains either. The initial days would be horrible enough with just the speed of normal tides piling up. The second day after the waters exceeding normal high water marks would already flood a third of fertile Esrolia, almost all of the Rightarm isles, and swallow at least half of coastal cities like Nochet or Karse. To reach the foot of Kero Fin would probably start to flood the Shadow Plateau, and drown most peaks of the Caladran chain. The gap at Too Far will be penetrated and cause a torrent to flow into the Pelorian side unless the flood has risen there, too. In Prax, only Tada's Tumulus, the Block, the ridge and the horn mountains would remain above the water, between a few islands of the Storm Mountains and Vulture Country. But then I don't think that elevation maps are that relevant to describe Gloranthan flood zones. Areas regularly flooded after the snow melt will be prone to be flooded by this event regarless of elevation, because of affinity. The water will spread like a couverture (chocolate icing) with a front not unlike the videos of the seasonal floodings we saw in the thread on Praxian serpents, or alternatively like the pictures of the recent decades' big tsunamis in Thailand and Japan. Deceptively low, but full of energy, and unlike those events in our world to remain for several seasons. Places like Whitewall would not be flooded because of ancient resistance to the advancing waves, getting a front of breakers running up the slopes but retreating again. Esrolia will look a lot like lowland Pakistan in the recent years monsoon floods, only without the water retreating. Riding this out in boats, rafts or even arks might be one approach. As long as you don't try to get anywhere and don't run out of supplies, sailing shouldn't be a problem (assuming that we still are post-Closing). Supplies will be a problem, though, unless you have magically full baskets and pots, or have a well-prepared ark. Another approach might see ancient Earthshakers awakened below cities, wading through the foaming floods towards higher (and dryer) ground, or dragons below awakened for the same purpose. The Syphon is likely to swell to a huge tendril or bulge of water ending in a new vortex where the waters proceed into the Foulblood Void, possibly defeating it for good. (At least until someone awakens Chaos there again.)

I don't think that such a flood should rise in significantly less than six weeks, either. Just having the tides pile up (only two a week, at average) might take too long to get the flood up into Dragon Pass. It doesn't have to be Jeff's five mile wide wave riding up the rivers, but just getting the waters leave their beds and crawl inland like a huge gorp might be a different kind of flood than the storm-driven waves we experience on our coasts. In fact, when a storm drives the waves, it usually drives them away from dry land in Glorantha. Storm floods are a bit of an oxymoron when you look at Orlanth's history/myths with the seas. On the other hand, torrential rains are entirely in character for Orlanth, but I don't really see Storm involved in any uphill floods, only downhill ones.

Much as I find David's map illustrating a flooding by passive waters helpful, I don't think that that model is really sustainable. A huge and long lasting tidal wave could creep onto selected coasts and drown anything in its path, while still climbing upwards some slopes, and leaving low lying areas to the left and right empty. This isn't powerless rainwater filling a puddle. This is water connected to the heart of the seas. I don't think that it is possible to plug the Maelstrom with a single sheet of ice. It is possible to inhibit the flow, however, like hairballs in the shower outflow. The maelstrom is fed first and foremost by the three (or maybe four) Doom Currents that rage in from Sramak's River through the bottomless chasms between the fragments of the Lozenge. The turbulence encountered by ships crossing them on the surface is just a byplay of the huge currents churning in the deeps, all the way down to the bottom of the Lozenge (is it really a cube, or just a flat square tile?). So why call in all the rivers from the Surface World? Not for the water they are carrying, but for the energy (or food) they collected from the Dry World, to aid keeping the Chaotic Void replacing the sub-basement of the Spike sealed out of the Universe. This isn't the first case of such energy transfer, compare for example Worcha's Raging Sea. So, what effect could that sheet of ice have on the Maelstrom? Hardly any on the activity in the rifts of the seas. Only the surface currents would be affected (and they, too can simply dive below this sheet). But in a way, this ice sheet is Food, or energy, to the seas. Not only will the trapped water be released, it will also carry the energies of the northern dry lands, and this excess energy could e.g. allow the rivers to reverse their flow while the ice is being consumed, or another directed standing wave creep over selected lands (and possibly mountains) regardless of elevation.

Thanks for reminding me that whenever people act against common sense, there may be a ritual component to their activity. (Unless they are drunk or drugged, which may happen outside of rituals, too.) In addition to geese it will be raining archers and paddlers as the dugout canoes capsize. Using one as a canoe is tricky enough - it takes a lot of cooperation and some skill to avoid capsizing in a dugout, much worse than in a flat-bottomed canoe. I have some experience shooting my bow from a modern (fiberglass) canoe without capsizing it, but on those events I witnessed a few canoes capsizing when the archers moved their center of mass too high. A Norwegian coworker and hunter told me a couple of stories about hunting from the canoe and how the kick of a hunting rifle is sufficient to turn his canoe if not shot along the keel. (His canoe, which I had the opportunity to try out on the fjord, had a keel, making it a little less stable and quite a bit faster.) Releasing the arrow will shift your center of mass first slightly backward, then towards your left fist (assuming you are a right-handed archer). That creates quite a rocking movement. The higher your upper body is, the worse will be the balance of the platform you are standing on. When I paddled a dugout canoe (at Hjemsted Oldtidspark, one of several excellent Danish historical parks for their Roman Iron Age) it was quite an effort for me and my colleague just to avoid capsizing. Picking up any speed or maneuvering (turning the boat) had to be done very carefully, because full use of the paddle threatened to unbalance the boat. Much worse than even the keeled canoe I mentioned above.

Depends on the number of people you need to lead down to the water and up again at a time, and the water level in the cistern. After the monsoon, it should be topped off. Depending on the water level, you can have 8 queues (at the level depicted) up to three or four times that many. These places were also used as climatized sitting area, where lots of stairs create lots of seats.

You would need quite a bit more of a wall against that flood - according to King of Sartar it sends the Korthanings fleeing into Solthoni Valley, in southern Tarsh/the Grazelands. That's more than 2000 feet, the same general elevation as the Heortland Plateau, Duck Point or Wilmskirk,. A Manarlarvus-like dome or a "bubble of air" solution like at Erenplose might be less demanding. That's only pertinent if it is a passive flood, however - an active flood could rise above the flat land in a jellyfish-like bulge, as happened to the Rockwoods in the Flood Age (Early Storm Age), and a "tidal wave" could sweep hundreds of miles inland if backed by sufficient power. Orlanth has a pretty good track record dealing with active waters, but I have no idea how good much his storms will do against a "blocked drain" effect. Maybe the "easiest" way to deal with this would be to take over one of the Firebergs and collide it with that ice.

Did you know about the pyramids of the Netherlands? http://blog.koehntopp.info/index.php/2764-the-dutch-pyramids/

Given the confusion in the "Arkat the Liberator" text which has the deeds of Arkat (and Nysalor) attributed to Gbaji (which is quite correct according to my "mask between them" pet theory) and the deeds of Talor attributed to Arkat the Liberator, this might be just a continuation of that The Liberator in this text is recognisably Talor the Laughing Warrior rather than the Arkat that was returned in 420 by Harmast's first LBQ. That's why I wondered whether this description of the parentage might apply to Talor rather than Arkat. Both Talor and Gerlant have been called "son of Arkat", obscuring their parentage. It is quite possible that the author of this pamphlet was less informed than we are, but I find this adoption of Talor as "the Real Arkat" amusing.

The Old Man may well have been Harmast, or his knowing companion. I found the notion strange that Arkat had cleared Fronela of these perverted followers, but wasn't able to move towards Dorastor. To my knowledge, Arkat never has been in Fronela. If he had been, he would have led an army through Brolia into Dorastor, just like the Harmast/Talor combo ultimately did. Sweeping through like a hurricane sounds more like he left some significant ruins than like leaving a significant tumulus. But then, when Harald Hardrada burnt down Hedeby in 1050, he also left the Busdorf runestone next to the embers of that city, so why not a monument above a heap of ashes. Greatway had been part of the Unity Council, and was among those who gave birth to Osentalka. They continued to aid Nysalor in his struggles with Arkat, or how else would the Dara Happan general Derigonus Pistol have arrived at his unusual epithet (and presumably weapon)? (He probably had Nilmerg servicing this flintlock item for him.) I think that the Greatway Mostali sought a way to re-awaken Mostal or Stone through this cooperation. The Mostali don't blame the destruction of the Spike on Chaos - they blame High King Elf, armed with the Axe of Death (shaped like that from the Sword of Death by Mostal himself, which had previously killed Flamal when wielded by Zorak Zoran), instead. As they blame Umath for throwing the sky dome out of order before. I find it amusing that they call the land of volcanoes "Srvuela" when the volcanoes are as much a mixture of Fire and Earth as are the Storm Burtae. They are so in a Lamarckian way, however, inheriting a change that Lodril took upon himself when he wrestled that squirming thing deep in the earth. The last of the three tractises, titled "Arkat the Liberator", tells us the early history of Arkat in some detail. Using the name "Gbaji" for Arkat. One of those "King of Sartar" moments still inside the Guide to feed the über-geeks, hidden in one of the In-World documents. To me, this sounds as if this sword was the Flamesword, forged for the king (of Seshnela, i.e. Gerlant) who had the dream not to trust the god (Gbaji=Arkat), the same king who ordered the Mostali of Belstos to equip himself and his Men-of-All with iron. That Flamesword might have come from the citadel of Sog City, which arguably could be called Lodrilela. This text is really weird in places, though: So, after Arkat and Harmast departed, the Safelstrans banded together to attack Seshnela? I find no trace of this in the timelines. Sounds like a counterstrike from Dorastor, under the Dara Happans. This time with Nysaloreans as "followers of Gbaji"? Altogether, this sounds very much like Talor's march through Ralios and over Kartolin, rather than any activity of Arkat (aka Gbaji, who already had left for Srvuela). Altogether a very, very confused text. Or it describes the parentage of Talor (possibly through Harmast adopting him)? Maybe this is a general slur against people descended from the Dorastan settlers who encroached on the Vustrians and their Hykimi allies, then reinforced by Derigonus Pistol's counterstrike across Kartolin.

I originally read this as the local form of the enslavement of the Kachisti myth when the Nidan mountains rose up in the Gennerelan/Genertelan lands of the westerners. But revisiting this now, it may refer to the Kachisti "civilizing" the local Korioni and forcing them to submit to their urban order, even before they themselves (as well as their non-Danmalastan subjects) being enslaved by the Vadeli and their Mostali allies. As in the story of Lake Oronin, this change of managing sorcerers will not have mattered much to people already regarding the first civilizing efforts as demeaning and unnatural. Reminds me of the story of Emperor Friedrich I Barbarossa of Staufen sleeping the magical sleep of the Future King under Mt. Kyffhäuser. Sounds like a different story to me, and the justice item might be something else, too. It's off the Ralios maps, in the west of Guhan, not far from Baustin. Check Argan Argar Atlas p.27. IIRC Suranthir started out as an Orgethite zzabur who received a divine revelation on his (possibly still sorcerous) quest to the Top of the World.

It is sort of ironic that Entekosiad p.85 actually tells us that, while the place still is called the Descending Pyramid, it now is a four-tier step pyramid rising next to that original stairwell to the Underworld. But then the Entekosiad gives two numbers for the stairs on that pyramid, one as 295, the other as 514.5 (yes, half a step). Speaking of descending pyramids/ziggurats, there is one depicted in the copper tablets, or rather an inverted round tower. Strangely enough, this is shown to the southwest of Raibant rather than the northwest, where Pelanda lies.

Sure, when it is Nochet we are dealing with. I tried not to place this anywhere in Glorantha before deciding which culture would be best for having such edifices. I keep wondering how the rainwater for these cisterns is gathered. After all, you need a separate "sewer" system from that draining the streets if you plan to use the water as drinking or bathing water. Unless you design your sewer system with an in-built "flaw" of allowing only a limited throughput to go out through the sewer. A similar trick is used for mixed rainwater/wastewater sewers when faced with strong rain events. The first flow will clean out the pipes, washing all the sedimented dirt along the main sewer lines. Then, when more water enters the sewer than can be treated by the wastewater plant, there are special overflow buildings which allow the subsequent rainwater with negligible amounts of waste water to enter the river almost untreated (there will be a sedimentation basin). I don't think that the Nochet sewers will be used as the main disposal alley of nightsoil. Human and animal excrements will most likely be collected for fertilizer. Urine collection for tanneries, alchemical purposes etc. might be established, too. (Are there Out-Houses of Nochet?) But still, the roads will accrue quite a bit of "Food" for the seas that you wouldn't want in your drinking water, so a "flush first, then collect" architecture sounds reasonable to me. I still expect that the water will be stored in tall above-ground cisterns rather than in holes in the ground, simply to avoid contamination in strong rain events. The original step wells come from a culture familiar with irrigation, so they might have a similar approach, possibly using ditches and above-ground basins, to fill their reservoirs. I have to admit that I started writing about such a ritual before placing it in Nochet. So what are the weather patterns in the rain-shade of the Skyreach Mountains? Storm Season will deposit snow up in the mountains, but what will the valley between Skyreach/Mislari and the Caladran chain receive? How dry does it get in the valley bottom?

As a size 19 person according to that table (quite a long time for height, and now unfortunately for weight, too), I feel a bit left out. The lower size range doesn't allow for Roman Empire average sizes, but caters to Migration Age middle- and northern European sizes. Observations have shown a dietary effect on height that may account for 25 cm in a genetic group depending on a switch to a diet richer in meat (and possibly dairy). This does add to ancestral predispositions, creating populations with different means and standard deviation. SIZ is an abstraction that is used in ways that aren't part of the specification. In RQ3, SIZ did not convert well into Encumbrance when one wanted to carry a wounded ally out of a battle. Getting less specific would be better than given distinct ranges of concrete measurements.

On the topic of the coming flood, I think that Belintar provided for this. I think he had two plans to deal with this (apart from evacuating folk to high grounds). One plan was the tidal magic which raises the City of Wonders above the Choralinthor Sea. Why not think about this as an ongoing magic, adjusting itself to the water level? And I see the possibility that Belintar would have prepared "rescue sites" near other important holy centers of Kethaela. The other plan are the Fish Roads which allow air breathers to enter the waters. There are three entry points to these roads outside of the City of Wonders - Nochet, Backford, and Seapolis. Belintar could have ordered an exodus into these roads, and a pilgrimage beyond Deeper, to petition the Sea Gods to return the land. And then there is the escape by boats. That may have been one of his motivations to support the Dormal ventures. With Belintar gone, the plan of raising parts of the land probably cannot be done any more, although player heroes are more than welcome to quest the Tournament Grounds for this magic and apply it to their community. Or to quest for the Fish Road magic and make their place such a nexus, welcoming the invading waters.

You would need a place with very irregular rainfall to warrant the effort to build such wells. I looked up the source for the image, which did mention the sanitary problems these cisterns had, so I wondered if we place such edifices in Glorantha, what kind of water entity would we want to invite into such a construction. These wells serve the dual purpose as reservoirs for drinking water and as facilities for ritual cleansing, with a third use as a refuge from too hot days. When we discussed the saltiness of the Gloranthan seas, I realized that elemental water doesn't want to be devoid of minerals or life (such as algae or minuscule crabs, or smaller life forms like amoebae which may be unknown but still present in Glorantha). Potability is not a concern of the water entity. Purity is a virtue of the waters, but that purity doesn't necessarily result in clear and potable water. A turbid river is a happy river, having accrued plenty of "Food" to carry back the the All Waters. Having sent most of its energies into Magasta's maelstrom, it has little energy left to separate its flows, and usually none to create the counterflows of clear, hungry water which allowed the Godtime rivers to invade the land. But rivers have their connection to the Sea, and in a way a river continues from its headwaters all the way into Magasta's Pool. At the very least, you could have cultists of Engizi at Deeper, below the exit of Choralinthor Bay. What about water entities without such (obvious) connections? When I look at the rivers and oases of western Prax, I cannot help but think of subterranean aquifers. The fact that the River Horse is able to jump from oasis to oasis sort of corroborates that subterranean connection - it shouldn't be able to jump into a man-made reservoir isolated from the All Waters. But there is another class of water entities, those of standing waters like lakes, bogs and even seas. If you look at the sea entities as presented in the Guide or the Missing Lands (which has a few more entities) you will notice strange names apparently without function, like the "wives" of Magasta or Lorion, Benara and Boveluru. What is the function of these? They are bodies of water, without any concern for movement or energy, but simply the presence of the water as making up a greater whole - collective entities that don't mind that their substance is shared by currents, fish or plants. Bays (like Choralinthor or Maslo), lakes and bogs are just like this, too. And so would a water entity fed only by the hungry waters of Heler, without any other connection to the All Waters - a water entity of a rainwater cistern. I described Heler's waters as clear and hungry. They will joyfully perform cleansing as to them it means feeding. However, this will accumulate a lot of food, which may make the body of water turbid and satiated. I think that all waters desire to share their food with the All Waters. They don't quite mind if they become muddy bogs as long as they convey those energies to the All Waters. The sediment may be dumped, it has lost the appeal as food for the Seas, but its energies remain. How does a water entity "feel" or think about being drunk or irrigating a field? In a way, it might welcome the opportunity to spread out its self. I think that a Gloranthan has a different notion of self than a typical European or American. For us, our sensations end at the membrane of our skin. Our "distance senses" of sight, hearing, smell and heat only register what interacts with that membrane. An Orlanthi (a person strong in the air rune) has awareness of the air around him - his breath. A person strong in Fire or Light will have an awareness wherever his sight falls, beyond just receiving a picture of what is going on in his field of sight. A person strong in the Earth rune will be in communion with the soil she touches beyond just that layer that has skin contact. Darkness probably gives a sense of space, of "thereness", in addition to whichever experiences material Darkness may give that our world has no equivalent of. And a person strong in the Water rune will be able to interact with the waters around them - feeling the raindrops before they even hit their bodies or the ground around them, and feeling them flow on. (Trying hard to keep ablutions out of this... I'll leave those to the Trickster-possessed.) So, any water that an entity strong in the water rune has "touched" (interacted with) will expand its perceptions or its self. Sharing a portion of its extended body will expand its presence, although only up to a point where its essence gets diminished. So, a cistern could of course be nothing but a container where water is collected. But a water temple as elaborate as such a step cistern will most certainly have a spirit/deity/essence inhabiting the water. It will quite likely have a conch near the bottom of that cistern where it can retreat in the case of extreme draught that might dry up the cistern. And once a year, preferably at the end of the dry spell, this conch will have to be removed from its resting place near the bottom of that well, and carried in a huge procession to the river or the sea, where it will share all the energies it has fed upon with the All Waters, and then return to its resting place. And as soon as the conch starts upon its annual pilgrimage, the priesthood will oversee a dredging of the mud and a scrubbing of the stairs. It is quite possible that the waters of this well or cistern will be declared taboo for a week or two, as the entity will need to rest from its journey, and make itself at home again. It is quite possible that the regulars of this cistern forego all use of untreated water (except for rain) for the two weeks of this taboo, and consume only (diluted) wine or thin beer during this recovery of the well. There will be no dip-bathing in this time (but other methods like steam-bathing and lathering the skin with oils will be available), but there may of course be rain-dancing. This does sound like a good Sea Season festival for the three rainwater cisterns around Grace Temple (Haraheler's, Harenalda's and Voriof's Catch), and set those immigrants apart from the rest of the Esrolian-descended people of Nochet. It will attract people sharing the festivities from other quarters, nonetheless, and the local houses will be expected to grant hospitality (and beverages) to the pilgrims who went to the cisterns performing their sacrifices there (carrying a small container of sediment or dirt from that cistern?) which they can show as a badge for getting a drink. If the festival is a moveable festival starting with the first rains of Sea Season, part of the worship service might be to carry water from the catchment areas for rainwater in that district up to the upper outer wall of the cistern, where there are Pythagorean cups that need to be filled by the worshipper. An attending acolyte will grant the token that allows the subsequent debauchery when the supplicant's cup has emptied itself. The baths using rainwater in this district might have such descending stairwells. They will probably have a funnel drainage at the bottom, too, which leads to a "mud well" where the sediment can be dredged up without disturbing the waters in the bath. I don't think the cisterns themselves will have these stairwell, though. All cisterns are likely to have some sediment collecting drainage. Those cisterns connected to the three aqueducts probably have a flow-through system, with height-adjustable exit pipes that drain from a certain water depth to take the muddier water from below out into the sewers.

Uz would say so, yes, but we have two cases of Orlanth winning over Chaos - when he cast down Tyram from the Skies, and a much lesser but significant to uz incident during the Westfaring when he sided with the wester Uz against the Lesser Kajabori. As a defener of the earth against Chaos he is notoriously useless, but maybe he realized how permissive his wife's kin was towards all kinds of suitors, even Chaos.

I have been using this term for pre-Rokari Hrestolism for ages, and I haven't seen a better term yet. Abiding Book Makanism doesn't quite appeal to me, and it misses the (non-Irensavalist) Hrestolism nature of the pre-Rokari Malkionism. The Loskalmi Idealist utopia is a weird aberration of Malkionism and has little in common with the Hrestolism that powered Seshnela since the third century. "Linealist" basically has everyone remaining in their caste (however that is decided, whether the caste of the parents or the Brithini was of assigning the caste based on birth order) unless they qualify for the title of a (wo)Man-of-all (castes), formerly also known as "knight". You inherit the caste of your parents (including the zzabur caste) rather than "rise through the castes", a concept starkly at odds with the Brithini claims about the equal worth of each caste. Hrestoli mysticism is based on the concept of Joy of the Heart rather than ascetic denial, which makes it a quite rare path when compared to the austerities and similar self-inflicted atrocities you find in other mystical schools. You cannot get rid of the Abiding Book - its Jrusteli authors picked elements from the prevailing philosophies when suggesting the text to the Hand of God. I won't say it was a scam, but it may have been the magical consequence of a huge body of philosophers creating a critical mass of sacred text that manifested itself. At the very least, some portions of the Abiding Book like the list of witnesses read very much like sponsored ads. RM p.17 on the last paragraph admits a greater human input to the document than the pious story usually sold to the masses. I remember discussions where people stated that Rokarism was the prevailing form of Malkionism outside of Fronela, and backed up claims that this went for Umathela as well. Fortunately this blatant disregard for the consequences of the Closing has disappeared. Still, this has left a vacuum of information about the Malkioni schools in Umathela. The Sedalpists cannot have taken over all of the Malki cities.

Personally I expect that variants of linealist Hrestoli Makanism (the pre-Rokari form of Malkionism in Seshnela and most of the Middle Sea Empire) still are prevalent in the Malki coast, forming the basis for schools similar to the Pasos Navigationalists. The information in Men of the Sea probably is too churchy for the current model of Malkionism, but it had alternatives to the weird Sedalpists which aren't applicable to mainstream, in the box at the bottom of p.35.

The Orlanthi of Umathela were brought there from Maniria or Slontos, some via Jrustela. They weren't exactly like the Heortling Orlanthi of Kerofinela, Kethaela and Saird, but they had received Theyalan missionaries and adapted their ways of worship etc. They may have found deities left behind by Desero's horde, though no humans or cattle. Desero's folk north of the Tarmo mountains would have lost their herds when the Mostali raised Somelz, and they would have been the first to be enslaved by the Vadeli of Chir/Oabil. It is possible that descendants of Desero's Horde are among the wretched human slave population of Slon. It is possible that the Mostali bought from the Vadeli, like they did when the Vadeli annihilated the Tadeniti. In that case, the population of Slon is going to be a weird mixture of Westerners, Storm worshippers, Agimori (both Doraddi and Thinobutan), Fiwan and Veldang, all bereft of any remnants of their original culture, magic, and identity, creating a melange of all Gloranthan human types except the Easterners. Uroxi aren't well suited for Pamaltelan Chaos - usually the creatures are few but immense, with the exception of the offspring of the Mother of Monsters. The Chaos corruption in Fonrit and the God Learner ruins is more subtle, and doesn't lend itself to maintain the storm khans like in the Praxian or Genertelan Orlanthi ecology. In the Storm Bull cult, you usually become Khan by killing a Chaos monster on your own, long before you become a hero able to slay huge emanations of Chaos. In Pamaltela, there may be Chaos worshippers one can slay with abandon, but that doesn't entitle a Storm Bull to become Khan. Yoranday might be a major exception with the Psychic Zoo and its Otherworld Monsters. If you look at the Prophecies of the Hero Wars, it doesn't look like Umathela has the luxury to fall upon Afadjann, and Afadjann has even less opportunity to deal with Cerngoth as it has to fight the Blues uprising initiated when the Zaranistangi hero Gebel joins forces with the Fonritian rebel Gabaryanga, who challenges the basis of Fonritian society by returning a nation of blues like Vontabu (sponsored by the Jrusteli, later conquered by them anyway). Enkloso is facing annihilation by dwarf machinations. The raising of Somelz is prepared by burning vast areas of forest, and the aldryami of Enkloso will rely heavily on their Umathelan allies to slow the Mostali destruction. The coastal cities might think they can sit by while the hill tribes bear the brunt of the conflict, but once Slon starts moving, it will wrap around the Malki coasts and create another front in the north. They might need to ally with Terthinus to counter that threat. In the meantime, they might receive visits by Vadeli or Waertagi to make their lives miserable, or of course increased demands by Terthinus and his Malasp.

There was this minor incident called the Breaking of the World, aka the Implosion of the Spike, and the formation of a world-piercing void in the center of the Lozenge. The cube of Earth still is apart, and although the first repair effort to close up one of those rifts (the one that ripped the repair project Somelz apart) has started with the symbolic towing between Slon and the Capstone, the other rifts are still open. A lot of geography has disappeared just northeast of the -guya islands. The Somelz Repair Project demands that there is a rift below Jorkar's Sea, though unusually not a vertical rift like for the Denestlazam, Sedlazam and Seralazam oceans, but apparently deflected into a non-vertical gap. The sea bottom of the Swermela Sea is going to glide under Enkloso, which would overhang an underground ocean unknown to the land dwellers, and soon to be destroyed by the Mostali. Vralos might escape the Somelz plan, but Enkloso is going to see a major Elder Races war with human sepois on both sides. The Dark Trolls of Tarmo might join in just for the fun of it, as will Terthinus. It will be interesting to see whether the Pelmre/Slarge from southern Tarien will fight the Mostali or rather push the Agimori out of Tarien and southern Jolar, on top of whichever Genertelan chaotics emerging from the Nargar Desert. Kumanku should lie on the Pamaltelan "plate" (or better shard) rather than on the Somelz/Jrustela shard. I would expand Bandaku into some of the sea bottom of the Marthino and Dashomo Seas. Pamaltelan myth has Bandaku raised by Bolongo, but destroyed in the struggle between Pamalt and Vovisibor, and in some stories Pamalt taking credit for that. Hence I am not convinced about the role of Kanem Dar as the Little Spike of Pamaltela. I would rather locate the Bandaku peak off the -guya fingers. And? Finding a moon worshipping cult among wretched heirs of the Artmali Empire isn't that surprising. The "Leapers" bit does offer a taste of the Lopers, but no such creatures were reported. Now Gabaryanga operates in the name of the Blue Moon from Jokotu in Mondator. Using Tarahorn as staging ground for a blue "republic" in the style of Wontabu probably promises some old God Learner magics. Not enough, so that Seseine Kallig has little difficulty to sell her Chaos alliance to the desperate blues. Because it isn't affected by the Closing any more, and probably never was, except for the wavefront that preceded the spread of the Closing and may have created or deepened that body of water. Mental autocorrect running amok here - I meant Thinobutu. Yes. We agree on there being big deficits to God Learner knowledge, which is quite strange since they were extremely active in Umathela. But then they didn't seem to believe much in expeditions to those uncomfortable lands in the south, preferring armchair declarations of extinction. Bredjeg unmentioned elsewhere: Events in the Sky are among the few things most of the Gloranthan myths can agree upon. Shargash sort of disappears as a Sky Defender after his collision with Umath, instead ruling from below Alkoth, or roaming about as Tolat, emerging from the Underworld into the sky where and when he sees fit. I don't see evidence for planets rising and setting at a regular schedule (measured against the rotations of the starry sky) after Yelm's descent into Wonderhome. Orlanth's invasion sending the Emperor into the Underworld is shared by Pamaltelan myth. Kendamalar in Hell begets Chermata and Veldara on Enjata Mo, and Veldara serves as ersatz-sun for much of the Artmali Period. It would have been convenient to identify Tolat's sky invader with Orlanth or Umath, but there was no Artmal then if Veldara is indeed the child of Enjata Mo conceived in the Underworld. Before the rise of Enjata Mo and her two children, there could be no Artmal. Veldara and Lorion apparently rise as a team, coloring the sky blue. Did Tolat oppose this invasion? Then why would Artmal help Tolat fight his own father Lorion? So, no fun here. The only known victory of Orlanth against a major Chaos foe is his victory over Tyram in the (Middle?) Sky. (Apart from that, we get his fight against the Lesser Kajabori aiding Shankgaro (Uzlord of the West, which probably means Halikiv) during the Westfaring, and that's it. Otherwise he leads armies which lose and retreats in up to 48 parts.) This and the sequence of the major Chaos incursions place this conflict long after Artmal's dismemberment by the hands of Baraku. This leaves a very narrow window for Tolat to have fought Bredjeg and gaining aid from his nephew, or otherwise another nonsequential appearance of the semi-mortal son and ruler of a major contestant in the Gods War. Was there a storm reaction to Sea and Moon conquering the Sky Dome, or was Orlanth satisfied with having won the Middle Sky as his domain? And that places him two ages before the birth of Veldara, let alone Artmal, which was a consequence of Kendamalar sent to Hell and replaced by Vovisibor. Like I said, stellar invasions are world-wide events. They may have lesser reflections, like the double Kalikos appearance, once in the Umath smashes the Northern Pillar myth, and again in that Kalikos defrosts the Sky Dome myth of the Char-un. So, was Bredjeg a lesser reflection of Umath bowling nearly a celestial strike before ending up in the retrieval ditch? Or do we have an Artmal already in the Golden Age/Old People Period? Stellar events provide the shared timeline, remember? Orlanth not being mentioned in the relevant sections sort of proves my point - he had completed his conquest of the Middle Sky, and remained its uncontested ruler until Tyram showed up. (No idea which part of the Sky Tolat/Shargash/Jagrekriand roamed, but he never attempted to oust Orlanth, for all we know - their major showdown was at Arrowmound. Although Orlanth's Exile might be read as such an incident when you look at it from a Tolat perspective.) Again: Kendamalar the Sun Emperor is sent to Hell, for which the Doraddi blame Bolongo or the Five Evil Ones (add Sedenya7proto-Veldara, Tolat, Artia/Pujaleg, and Baraku/Orlanth. Enjata-Mo is his transformed widow, who emerges from the Underworld with her two children conceived from the cinders of the sun, Veldara and her twin. (Which should be Tolat rather than Lokarnos... so much for sky myths being somewhat universal.) Both Tolat and Veldara are former Planetary Sons of the Sun Emperor, sent to Hell and re-emerging. It would be convenient to have the Vadeli occupying Fonrit for some time during the ups and downs (phases) of the various Artmali empires, and I would enjoy a Vadeli meddling with the Thinobutans in addition to Artmali badassery and Adpara/Antigod devastations. Oabil was known to and feared by the Doraddi of the Veldt, too, which is why I think that a significant portion of Chir would have been south of the Fense. You wanted to plant Yeetai's earliest Artmali in Fonrit, which is what I found hard to justify according to all the mythical maps of the Spike or its lesser reflections. That's what I protested here. And Bandaku obviously had some population besides Bolongo. And besides the Vadeli immigrants and the aldryami. The uz could have come at any time, from below, but that exit should have disappeared along with Bandaku upon its collapse. Placing Afati in the Artmali ups and downs: In this approach Afati conquers, then leaves. Much like Sheng in Kralorela or Harrek in Laskal, or Arkat in Tanisor. He then establishes the Tishamto-descended Doraddi in Banamba and the break east of the Tarmo. After Afati leaves, Kungatu either reverts to its previous emperor (if that was Jarkartu away with his armada) or otherwise gets a new emperor, possibly from Artmali allies of Afati. Kungatu gets conquered or at least Possible. Do we have a clear, non contradictory source for that? The mysterious "story" synopsis explicity says "Afati's New Artmali" in the explanatory paragraph. Maybe settled here by a previous emperor of the Artmali, possibly enslaved by the Vadeli of Chir (and possibly liberated by Afati, and possibly taken over by Veldang out of Afati's army). Afati's conquest (or simply settlement?) of Laskal is followed by the successful invasion of Basmoli ("Seshnegi") and Thinokans leading to Thinokos. Where the Basmoli may have done the invading and the Thinokans doing the settling. The Doraddi from Tishamto would have to conquer the aldryami to settle in Banamba and south of that. I was pondering the possibility that the original Afati still was around, leading a hidden life as one of the people, and then emerging as a leader. Afati the Agitorani cannot have left a lineage plant, since as an Agitorani he wouldn't leave a lineage. The rest of the Tishamto are Doraddi with lineage plants. (Basically, the term Doraddi refers to the reception of lineage plants, and makes a useful difference to the "race" moniker "Agimori" which is about as accurate when applied to the Thinobutans as the use of "Wareran" for Pelorians.