Joerg

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".

River of Cradles comes in several parts. It contains reprinted material from Borderlands and Pavis, the RQ3 long cult write-ups of the Lightbringers and Zola Fel, and the Troubled Waters campaign. Reprinting the stuff that comes from the RQ2 publications would be similar to including another full cult write-up of Kyger Litor. I don't know whether the rights to the Troubled Waters scenario lie with Ken Rolston or with Avalon Hill (and in the latter case, whether they were part of the RuneQuest license that they or their successor dropped afterwards). It would make a nice bundle with Shadows on the Borderlands, or possibly also Strangers in Prax.1 If I understood the plans correctly, Sun County might experience a make-over to fit the new timeline requirements. MOB has been sharing some of the developments since the Cradle incident. The return to the draconic/traditionalist schisma between Belvani and Vega provides good story potential. Argrath's Pavis doesn't get much spotlight after 1624. It might become something like the heroquesting academy for his warlocks, though, with all the possibilites offered by the Big Rubble. (One might even go a bit Harry Potter, there...) I think a RQ3 Classics book "Scenarios in Prax" combining Troubled Waters, the two books "Shadows on the Borderland" and "Strangers in Prax" and possibly those scenario bits from Sun County not reused in an updated version would be a nifty book to have. That leaves mainly Dorastor. The Dorastor history is included in the Guide, leaving only the monster collection, the gazetteer of Dorastor and the Riskland campaign unavailable. Toss in Lords of Terror (and maybe the Lightbringer cults from River of Cradles and Ernalda from the DeLuxe Box), and you get a full book, too. That leaves some not yet re-hashed bits from Genertela Box, Gods of Glorantha, Elder Secrets, the Gloranthan Bestiary, the De Luxe box, Missing Lands, and possibly Monster Coliseum for a general RQ3 Glorantha catch-up, and either RQ2 or RQ3 Trollpak and associated material (Troll Gods, Into the Troll Realms, Sazdorf,) to be returned. I would be happy if the maybe 60 pages of extra material in the RQ3 version were added to the RQ2 reprint. The excellent campaign that was adapted for both Vikings and Land of Ninja is worth saving, too. Maybe as the core material for the general Glorantha catch-up. (The Vikings campaign is the closest I ever came to GM published RQ scenarios.) All of that needs editing manpower that should not be withdrawn from the RQG line, though.

All illumination means some rapport with Chaos. As for Imarja, she is almost all-encompassing (stopping only at Kodig and his kin, it seems), and would have wed the Earth Queen to anyone. Possibly Nontraya as well, but definitely to Chaos if Chaos had come. I think that the cotery of Imarjan Grandmothers and the Earth cult at Ezel aren't always pulling in the same direction, and the same might be true for the relationship between Great Ernalda and Imarja. There is a great deal of overlap, but the Venn diagram shows exclusive areas for either. Nontraya doesn't show up in connection to Imarja, for instance. (And there is still that funky conspiracy theory that Imarja is a re-incarnating keet sage hiding out in the durulz population of the region, leading the biggest city and most populous land of the region by the no(o)se. A possibly fallen sage.) Nontraya is still a bit puzzling. In some sense he is Vivamort, the deity who preferred Undeath to Annihilation, but there is no evidence that he fulfills any of the classical vampire tropes. Not that drinking human blood would be raising much of an eyebrow in Esrolia, after all Babeester Gor does encourage this. Nontraya is quite similar to the Death that came to Prax and got tricked by Tada burying Eiritha.

Ziggurats were the rage all over Dragon Pass, if you look at the Ivory Plinth or Wasp Nest.

While this is true for basically all Heortlings, it doesn't matter to the Kitori. We get an impression of the nature of the Kitori tribute with the Darklord Krengen Bik who rules-lawyers the amount of some extinct type of grass seeds into a mountain of barley seeds in History of the Heortling People p.72. Other forms of that tribute involve kin of the king. That made me chuckle. Yes, take that as a morality tale...

A very valid assumption. Now, which period Heortlings do you mean? (Sorry...) Pre-Lokamayadon/Harmast we have the Dawn survivors, who join forces with all the other Unity Council folk, then split over the God Project. Then we have the Harmast successors, freshly aware of the composite Lightbringers Quest re-created by Harmast, to complement their world-reaffirmation through the I Fought We Won mystery, taken over by the Old Day traditionalist opponents of the dragon ways (although non-militant as far as the Hendriki tribe and their subjects were concerned, much different from the southern Pelorians). They have their Larnstings establishing new rules. Post-Dragonkill adaptation of Alakoring's Rex cult brings another new perspective, possibly overriding the Larnsting sensibilities that linger in the Hendriki. Then the Taliban fanatics rather risking annihilation in Dragon Pass than doctrinal pollution under Belintar's governor-kings. And finally we have the Lunar occupation era resistance fighters taking their very own anti-Chaos spin. Each of these groups would project a different life reality on their myths, and discover new interpretations of old stories. The flame is the separating agent, releasing the immortal portion to godhead. This is not really different from Orlanth undergoing the Flames of Ehilm in the court of Maggotliege in the Underworld, a purification of those things that hold his divinity back. Returning to anthropology influenced by a recent meeting with an Archaeology professor with ties to Hedeby and the Roman Iron Age for the Cimbrian peninsula, I wonder how common cremation was over the various phases of the Orlanthi, and what role body burials play in those cultural phases. Vingkot avoided body burial, but he was immolated alive rather than cremated. Brolarulf's Immolation may have changed the Orlanthi view of immolations. To be fair, the imperial godhead was granted to them while alive, the burial cremations sort of promoted them to Elder Statesman status among the divinities. Our western mind-set might be a bit at a loss to accept that a human like you and me can be a divine being at the same time, or at least when divinity is called for. I guess that my polytheistic Germanic ancestor had no problems with such a superposition, and I get the impression that the Japanese concept of a living deity (e.g. residing in the Tenno) is pretty much the same thing. That may be a projection of the Brolarulf immolation on the descendance of Vingkot. You have a point in Irillo being a part of the Nochet side of the story, and may be rather an unknown in the Heortling perspective of this myth. However, the warlord role doesn't really matter much in the Heortling perspective - they would be concerned with Rastagar and his Queen of Nochet, and post-Finelvanth that story may be loaded differently than before the Adjustment Wars. I feel that Rastagar gets plenty undeserved flak due to his queen consorting with Chaos. The side of Imarja that nobody likes to acknowledge, but which is definitely an integral part of her. Oh, I am with you there. Imarja expresses Ana Gor on a regular basis. The story as told in Esrolia Land of 10k Goddesses has Irillo return from Rastagar's last battle post-mortem, which is not necessarily a problem at this stage of the Greater Darkness. Might be a possibility. My main problem with this interpretation is the lack of reported disagreement or disrespect between Broyan and his Queen of Nochet Samastina. Broyan's fault is his sacrifice of the City of Wonders - something few Heortlings would grieve for - but what got him was a breach of the Kitori Tribute, not even his fault but that of his predecessors. Vingkotling kings play at the highest stakes, but a tragic ending is far from guaranteed, just look at Yarandros of Tarsh or Sartar of Dragon Pass.

Two kings and a queen is a timeless classic. (Need I mention Eleanore of Aquitaine? Helen of Sparta/Troy? Although the first myth that comes to my mind with a queen and a bull will remain the myth of the minotaur.) One problem I have with the Irish myths is that they come from a culture that is primarily pastoralist, hardly agriculturalist, giving their cattle a much greater importance than even the responsibility to draw the plow that they had in Vedic (and later) India. The Irish diet in the Roman Iron Age was mainly based on milk and butter, and hardly on grain, according to the research I did on them in the last millennium. But then the Hendriki are probably the Heortling tribe which comes closest to this not necessarily sedentary life-style. A possibility, but surely a lot less archaic than the Orlanthland period. That theme of the thwarted wife is re-iterated in Finelvanth's conflict with his Nochet wife for the pre-Belintar range of the Third Age. No rival "love" or male power source, but all the parameters for the Sword and Helm conflict in the Modern Age. Urox is (like Pelandan Bisos) the death-overcoming self-sacrificial bull. But there are myths tieing both Orlanth and Vingkot to the bull, as its tamer and harnesser. I like your approach, which probably ignores the aspects I like to consider - how the life circumstances of a people will affect their myths (and vice versa). Adultery by the wife isn't the norm in Orlanthi morality tales - compare the failings of Finelvanth. I wonder whether the Orlanthi have some concept like a "year divorce" as a reversal to a "year marriage" - a sabbatical from a marriage which might be under duress. Actually, the Kitori are willing to sit by as long as both parties don't slack in their tribute contributions or call them to intercede.

Given the practice of sacrificial year- or seven-year-kings among some Orlanthi, adding the powers of Vingkot to this health hazard doesn't change much. It may be a coincidence that Broyan is killed in the seventh year after his coronation as King of Whitewall. I guess that was me speculating about the "distant battle" that Rastagar and Irillo were drawn to as followers of Orlanth. When Orlanth met the army of the Luatha on the shores of Luathela, he summoned the Ring of the Vingkotlings. Battling Luatha is quite heroic if you look at their description in the Seshnela section of the Guide, so the battle will have been bloody on both sides. Godtime chronology isn't always reliable. Parts of the Westfaring visited places that should not have been present that late in the Vingkotling Age. But on the other hand, we know that the Westfaring used by Harmast was a reconstructed myth, grabbing stories from all over the Heortling tribes, so maybe the mis-dated stations that modern questers following Harmast's path visit are actually from earlier myths. It is possible that Parntor founding the Deer Tribe occurred during the reign of Rastagar. After Rastagar, there was no king they could have been messengers for. In that case, his (presumed) son Darntor (irritatingly named a son of Andarn) could very well have been a young participant of the Ring of the Vingkotlings battle. The flexibility of Godtime or Godtime sequence is also visible in the "50 generations of Deer Folk" remembered by the Speakers of the Deer Folk. That list possibly bears a strong similarity to the temporal sequence of the list of Sacred Kings recited by Dag in King of Sartar. The opponents of the Ralian battle are called the Lesser Kajabori, so they might be a remnant force of that earlier conflict. I prefer to have all the nine Vingkotling tribes to predate Rastagar inheriting the kingship over Nochet and the Vingkotlings as a whole. Lastralgor was the older brother of Jorganos, and the remnants of his tribe were the kernels of the first two star tribes (through marriages with the daughters of Lastralgor's half-nieces from the Winter Tribe kings). In a way, all Godtime battles can be reduced to the One Battle, happening again and again and again, where faces and names may vary, but the fact that people step up and kill (or just dismember) one another remains. Calling it the Hill of Orlanth Victorious before the victory has been achieved would be presumptious, wouldn't it? YGDV, at least from mine. The Orlanthi have a very bad habit to slander heroes with unlucky outcomes posthumously. Arkat or Rastagar got demonized by surviving political enemies. It is far from rare that both sides in a conflict among Orlanthi act as proxies for Orlanth. The Lawstaff quest is an example for a situation where two Orlanthi need to decide which one of them is more Orlanth (and thereby just) than the other. That Esrolia year king/sacrificial king business is connected to the Silver Age hero Kalops, significantly after Rastagar's demise. And it is not like the Imarkans appear to believe that males can act as vessels of sovereignty anyway. The runic opposite of Disorder is Harmony, not order. Combining the notions of fire and Trickster is a concept I like, though. Whoah. Nice God-Learning. Everybody has a claim on Queen Earth - that's her role in the Cosmos. Older chthonic ghost cult - the cosmos still is in its downward spiral, things are getting worse and worse. Some few local improvements were brought early in the Storm Age, like Orlanth beating back the invading seas, liberating much of Esrolia and Arstola. So, yes, there might have been a worse period in the story of Ezel, with the Earth Queen absent in servitude to the Emperor, and an opportunity for a darker expression of the Earth, but that was before the second application of Death (and separation of body and spirit). I disagree strongly. Irillo is about not being a Vingkot ruler, but the good underhusband/champion, leaving the rulership to the queen where the Imarjans say it belongs. Stepping up as a Vingkotling king had Hendira in hives (see her scene in Samastina's chapter in Prince of Sartar). Samastina cooperating with the Vingkotling over-king is an affront to the Imarjans of Nochet and Esrolia, and a risky gamble on Samastina's part, a ride on a blade. IMO the concept of Vingkotling kingship is contrary to the sacrificial kingship. Compare the upset Yarandros of Tarsh caused when he claimed Vingkotling kingship rather than the Sacred Marriage sovereignty. The concept probably grew after Rastagar's demise. But MGMV, and it definitely varies from yours. The entire concept of sacrifice (at least among the Heortlings) was introduced by Hantrafal, who appears to be a contemporary of Heort. (Dara Happan Buserian - literally "sacrificer of cows/bulls" - may have preceded that, but we're talking Heortlings here.) Huh? Are you talking about human sacrifice here? There is another problem about killing folk during the Greater Darkness - they stayed around, despite being dead. It took the Silver Age heroes to separate the Dead from the Living and to designate them to Underworld places. Immolation like Sartar's is a means of trans-substantiating rather than preparing a dead body for the afterlife as in cremation. Involuntary immolation like Brolarulf Burnt-Poet's is different, and that special instance had no component of sacrifice, not even to call down a death-curse on Lokamayadon. Heort's Laws confirm the practices introduced by Hantrafal, free from the Ana Gor practices that are maintained by the Dark Earth cults of Imarja and Maran. Vingkot was immortal, which made his suffering from the Chaos Wound so unbearable. Vingkot chose to leave the world of the living, following Yelm on the Path of the Dead. There is a problem with the timing of the battle in which Vingkot received that wound if you try to force the Gods War into a coherent timeline. I stopped trying. Of course Storm is the Merger of Earth and Fire, unlike all the other elements before it. But I don't think that postulating an inner other element for each element is helpful. If you look at the cosmology, the Earth Cube is surrounded by Darkness, separated through water, on all sides but the surface, where this is only true in the night. What a great heterodox story. Really. And there should be magic availabe from following this path, even though I regard it as Alternate Facts, and therefore exremely hard to perform as a heroquest. Eurmal is the thief of fire, never its owner. A lot less so than his all-too strong connection to Death, much to the regret of pretty much everybody. Orlanth finding Eurmal, saving him from the persecution of thecity on the Black Isle of Introspection, is the least sequential station of the Westfaring. I find it quite possible that this is a much earlier myth that was inserted here by Harmast for lack of knowledge of a better timed myth (that would actually propel him further westward). The atrocities of the Hidden Kings aren't much different from other survival efforts in the Greater Darkness. Is the ritual bear hunt of the bear shapeshifting worshippers (of Rathor or Odayla, to name just two such cults) cannibalism? The nature of the beasts that the Hidden Kings shifted to may have been more controversial than the fact that they took carnivorous shape. IIRC there were wolves involved, a no-go for Orlanthi (with the exception of Humakt). (This may have been a factor in hindering the ascension of Salinarg for his choice of wife, repeating the sin of Onelisin with a desendant of hers and Ostling.) A lot of your assumptions are really long shots. Nonetheless, the entire story is fascinating. I just cannot get far enough out of my bubble to buy it for my Glorantha.

There was a speculation that "Baron Sanuel" might be a title granted to Mularik Ironeye. Lacking the preview of the Glorantha introduction that is to accompany the 13G book, I cannot say more about that. I find that unlikely. The Locaem became a tribe of Sartar after Sartar founded the Wilmskirk confederation. If they had still been in contact with other Volsaxi tribes, they would have been as likely to remain in the Volsaxi tribe (which had an independence from the Overseer of Heortland on and off). Who but the Mostali claims that this is the case? The link between Gustbran and the Mostali appears to have weakened since the old "Gods of Fire" article in Wyrm's Footnotes/Footprints. Even then, Gustbran may have been more the impersonal elemental forge fire from among the Lowfires than the human-like god who wields the hammer. Storm Tribe names him as a son of Vestkarthen exiled for trying something new. I may be wrong here, but to me the Volsaxi appear as a continuation of the Hendriki tribe rather than one of the Foreigner tribes defined by Aventus' Laws (see History of the Heortling Peoples), and the Hendriki are pretty much the most archetypal storm Orlanthi among the Heortlings that I can think of. Volsax is listed as one of the Orlanthi heroes in Heortling Mythology (p.185), active in the Dawn Age. IMO he founded a sub-tribe of the Hendriki Tribe. Dreven may have been a river worshipper, or the river deity or demigod of a group of Orlanthi worshippers. All of that significantly after the Dawn, so "Dureving" should not be applicable any more than Vingkotling - all the Orlanthi (in the stricter sense) in the region were Heortlings. There may have been non-Heortling Theyalan (a scholarly term for culturally, but not cultic Orlanthi) fisherfolk, these are attested as one of the foreigner tribes subject to the foreigner laws - kin to the Pelaskites of Karse and the Rightarms. Geo was a companion of Sartar, and his cult later adopted the Sanchali Tribe (which was a remnant of the precursor of the Cinsina, according to The Coming Storm). His origin is as unclear as that of Wilms or Ostling Four Wolves (the other two named companions of Sartar). None of these details have been confirmed or contradicted in publications (or maps) since, but I think that this info might have come from the crowd-sourcing for that gazetteer. While it gives the in-Glorantha document "History of the Heortling Peoples" as a source, that data is not included in the Stafford library publication to that name. Those Irish parallels were all the rage in the Orlanthi discussions of the 90ies in the digest. I never cease to wonder why the anglophone concept of Celts is so firmly tied to that island outlier of the Celts and not to their core area around the northern flank of the Alps, or their expansion along the northern Mediterranean. Anyway, Karstanstead is described as a royal Volsaxi stead by the time of Hardrard the Green, so Karstan would have lived significantly earlier than Hardrard, possibly as early as the early Imperial Age, long before the Volsaxi could claim the inheritance of the Hendriki kings.

Jaldon is part of the Sartarite order of battle in all of the Dragon Pass boardgame scenarios after the initial ones which fall into the time of the conquest of Pavis. (And so are the Wolf Runners who use the Lunar cycle for their combat strength, and who were generally assumed to be the Telmori rather than the Wolf Slayers.) But rather than seeing any mention of Jaldon leading Praxians, we get Argrath White Bull mentioned in a couple of cases, often acting differently from what a heir of Sartar would be expected to do. I recently revisited Wesley Quadros' and Martin Laurie's Gwandor Saga, which had four or five different Argraths vying for power. I take it from Prince of Sartar that the number has dwindled closer to one than half a dozen, although Bad Dream Enostar still seems to be canonical. After page 23, in the original violet paperback... ;-)

Grenades or explosive rounds, or high penetration rounds wearing away the cover, to make them give up a position. Secondary damage from splinters, ricochets or droplets of molten cover at near misses (about the same as disruption damage). Possibly a maneuver that combines covering fire by allies with a change in position. Offer both the carrot (you will improve your situation by changing position) and the stick (if you remain hiding here without someone else taking out that shooter, you'll be whittled away). Battle fog: whether it is blackpowder soot hanging in the air or smoke and ejecta from near misses with high energy ammo, both sight and breathing may be impaired when remaining in the same firing hole for too long. That's a disadvantage for the person hiding there - in a ballistic or line of sight firefight, knowing the position of the target eliminates the need for seeing the target (as long as the projectile or ray penetrates the smoke screen better than the visuals). Even more so for grenade launchers, or primitive autonomous drones delivering explosive payloads. If the players don't think of smoke grenades or strobe light grenades, have their opposition use them against them. They'll adapt. A well positioned sniper should be able to eliminate a number of mooks before being encircled in his nest. A duel of snipers probably isn't the stuff that makes a pen and paper rpg fight exciting, although it should be an intense experience for the player participating in that duel.

So basically this is author's privilege for setting some facts. And I should be the last Gloranthan scholar to get passionate about Prax and the Wastes... However, Jaldon is suspiciously absent from King of Sartar, which otherwise makes some use of the sequence of battles in the Dragon Pass boardgame. Instead, we get confronted with White Bull as an agent besides the new Prince of Sartar and King of Dragon Pass, so this is a subject that I have spent some effort on. This sounds a lot like the Champion of Waha in Stephen Martin's reworking of French Nomad Gods to the Corbett rules of Dragon Pass. The raider khan may very well have raided eastwards, into the former Zaranistangi kingdom beyond the Fever Trees. On the other hand, Waha never really raided - who was there to be raided? Unless you count his recovery of the Protectresses. All the other founders most likely did raid in their youths - they were Storm Tribe, then, yet unburdened by Orlanth's attempts at civilizing them. But Waha is the late-born son of the Bull, the champion of survival rather than the glorious raider. If Jaldon was Waha reborn, he would have been the best fit for the Paps Khan. This sounds more like he was born to the powers of Waha, but not to the spirit of Waha. He may have been the perfect vessel for the god. But he didn't quite let him in, and instead pursued weird other magics, magics that he already had at the breach of the Pavis Wall. I don't think that this magic was linked to Waha in any way. It might be connected to that Godtime child of Androgeus named Goldtooth. Once upon a time there was a discussion about spirit integration. This sounds like something similar, but on a much grander scale. So his curse kept him away from Alavan Argay, even though that battle happened almost on his doorstep? The phrasing was quite peculiar: "Born in a Bison tent." And, since he was eligible as khan, born to a khan of Waha. So this leaves the matter of the lineage of his mother. Where is his power place, really? The Plateau of Statues (which is unreachable for the Ghost Khan), or his cairn at Jaldon's Rest? I am not sure who built that cairn. While its depiction in the Dragon Pass boardgame bears a slight resemblance to my image of Tada's Tumulus (which is based on the tumulus of Seleucos, and possibly Queen Maeve's cairn above Sligo), it may as well have been built as a vessel of his curse, by the EWF. I wonder who he ran afoul of. Varnakol the Mangler should still have been up and around during Jaldon's raid, and those two facing off would have been an epic battle. Varnakol is the kind of guy who would pronounce such a curse, too. I am fairly convinced that Derik sort of merged with Jaldon during that struggle. Maybe not to the extent that Arkat emerged from the ruins of the City of Miracles, but in some way Derik conquered some of the magics of Jaldon, and while he lived, Jaldon did not rise again. Do you have any thoughts about Jaldon during the Seleric Empire?

There are few cults with both priests and lords, and probably still too many, mainly for backward compatibility. Assigning both a rune lord and a rune priest position to each and any cult (as per Rune Masters) was one of the features of RQ2 that was dropped in RQ3, and with some reason. Yelmalio should by any rights only have the rune lord position, but the priest position was probably retained because of the prominence of Yelmalio cultists from both tracks in popular publications like Pavis or Griffin Mountain. For Sun County, we have an amusing historical reason (Teshnos) for having both lords and priests, and the Sartar Sun Dome quite likely inherited those from the Praxian one. The cult in Balazar is a fringe organisation, and to be honest I don't have any idea how the Goldedge templars or the tribal Yelmalians in the Far Point distribute those duties. Then there are Orlanth and Yelm, Great Gods of the universe who combine various and possibly formerly independent traditions into a single cult. Horse nomad Yelm should have shamans rather than priests, and I don't think that urban Pelorian Yelm has many rune lords who aren't lords of their community, either. In case of Orlanth, apart from Adventurous, also the Rex subcult has a Rune Lord rather than a Rune Priest. All three postions (the third being the Storm Voice) have mixed responsibiities - the Four Magic Weapons quest sounds like something done by a rune lord, but is part of the Thunderous subcult. Karrg is presented as a subcult of Kyger Litor and the main outlet for an orthodox male troll. The uz don't have female lords, and they don't have male priests of Kyger Litor. Even the male shamans appear to be limited to allied deities (like Dehore) rather than to the Great Mother. Aldrya has High King Elf for the lord position. The Seven Mothers are a strange composite cult, inheriting the rune lord of Humakt via Yanafal and the earth priestess via Deezola. In RQ3, rune lords didn't necessarily get reusable divine magic, and initiates never did. Instead, the Acolyte was introduced as an intermediary stage, the part-time god-talker. And RQ2 Runelord/Priests (common in the high-powered games beyond initiate level played by the Chaosium house campaign) would become Rune Lord/Acolytes under RQ rules. When it became a general agreement that initiates should be able to regain their divine magic, although less often than specialists, one of the main limitations of rune lords was lifted. The other advantage of 1d10 divine intervention (rather than the RQ2 spell point type for priests) was lifted for some of the cults that had rune lords, and DI for priests was the same as for initiates (1d100), thus highly unlikely to succeed. (In all my years of playing RQ3, I only saw one successful initiate level DI, and that left the character at a POW of 3 for the rest of the campaign.) I am somewhat curious how the cult of Pavis is going to be presented for RQG. The HeroQuest 2 / HQG treatment has placed Pavis in the realm of sorcery. Still, there are one son and up to six daughters of Pavis making up the priesthood, and when Balastor's axe returns to the public, one champion (lord). So, how is WoD going to tackle this? Spells aren't much of a problem, How do you manage Divine Intervention?

I was wondering whether this may have been a piece of Loper magic. While we now know that the Lopers never were a Praxian tribe (in the sense of even acknowledging Waha's Covenant), they have been perceived as another weird beast riding tribe in the past, possibly even by Greg. A powerful quester like Joraz Khyrem was able to adopt his horses into the Covenant by making them zebras. The even more powerful quester Jaldon sired a new beast on the Goddess, or brought back a forgotten one. But then, beware of the boggles that haunt some parts of the Tunneled Hills. Part of Jaldon's mystique might just be a Boggle gift. And his steed might, too. An even weirder idea might be that he did all those Bison tribe things while he (or a portion of him, possibly ripped off or budded by the Boggles) went to the east, and at some time returned and got re-integrated (by being eaten - tooth magics, and all). I would have expected his acquisition of Home way earlier, as an early signature move to Greatness. Do you have any unpublished sources for this late acquisition, or does this simply fit your conception of his timeline better? Have you given any consideration to a possible tie-in with Androgeus via the Goldtooth epithet/power? I am also quite disappointed to learn that for a while Jaldon was a regular khan of the Bison riders. I always thought of him as an oddball, not quite a power in the Praxian intertribal squabbles as presented in Nomad Gods, even if some of the contests may have been set up by him. In the old hex-based boardgames, Jaldon is the leader of the oddballs, and not of the standard Praxians. It is quite ironic that the Barbarian Horde in the Dragon Pass boardgame pairs Jaldon with the Pol Joni, anyway.

What about the years 907 - 922? Those 15 years (coinciding with the Machine Wars) will have seen his life in the tribe, or will have given him opportunities to "adventure" further east. We still don't know how he received his steed "Home", That reeks of personal quests rather than a mainstream life in the Bison tribe. I see some possibilities for Jaldon to have quested into Green Age myths to obtain that strange steed. The other possibility still is that he went into Teshnos, possibly picking up some Zaranistangi magics through raiding.

It's the text repeated verbatim from Pavis in the Moondesign Pavis Gateway to Adventure book, p.34. I have to admit that I didn't get the implication of Jaldon possibly receiving Eastern mystical training earlier, either. I was researching if the date or at least season for Jaldon's success against the Pavis wall was known.

Argrath has Jaldon by his side. Jaldon might have had a different special auspicious date to repeat his original breach of Pavis' wall. The text says that Jaldon disappeared into eastern Genertela, and returned as a crazed mystic. Did he enter God-Learner ruled Eest or Kralorela?

So, you can take "drive" up to 50% and have the same chance at driving a Sherman Tank, a Road Train, or a Tesla sports car, but when I get up to 51%, it makes a difference? Somehow my own driving experience (with none of the aforementioned models, but e.g. switching from gear box to automatic) were different. It felt more like being penalized for driving with an unfamiliar mode, a penalty that could be bought down. On the other hand, material matters. It makes a difference whether I shoot an ACE arrow or an aluminium tube arrow from my sports bow, both of which require choice of material tuned to the bow and my draw length. Mathematics skill is an interesting topic, too. While I made it through high school usually at the top of my class, I have an aptitude towards arithmetics and algebra but not really for non-numeric geometric construction or set theory. My university exposure to math was intense, but focussed on the math I would need in physics and chemistry., including calculus and statistics. So one could argue that I have a math skill appropriate to good high school knowledge, refined by specialization in university, but with known disadvantages in certain fields, and unknown disadvantages in other fields I haven't had deep encounters with yet. And how I perform in a certain situation may depend on which research tools are available to me, and how much I am left alone with what I recall from having learned explicitely, what I can cobble together from similar things I have done, and what I can deduct from given basics and applying to the problem before me. Not to mention general fitness, urgency, stress and other influences on my performance. Sometimes these factors may just be summed up in the randomization of a die roll. Sometimes the obvious eludes even the expert, at other times a first impression may be more spot on than any intense cogitation. If I roll up a modern character with the background "university diploma in chemistry", this will represent a skill set. Different people with this grade will have vasty different skil sets, through specialization, subjects dropped from the local curriculum, or extracurricular activity resulting in side knowledge. Do I get "Craft Glassblower" at entry levels because I learnt to bend glass tubes or blowing glass bulbs out of them using a Bunsen burner? Does knowledge about the structure and synthesis of certain pharmaceutical substances warrant any level in pharmacist, or does it call for the "Lore/Craft Chemist" skill at some situational penalty instead?