Joerg

The Purification Rune was Chaos, or could be turned into Chaos. Those other bits weren't just cut off, they were annihilated. Moon wasn't an element when the Zistorites experimented. It was a weird combination of stellar presence, blue glow, and tides. And, as far as the God Learners were concerned, teleportation. Veldara's blue Moon (people) was associated with one kind of purity: innocence. They got over it, discovering conflict, and finally Chaos, as their weaponry. The Prince of Sartar page above has the weird combination of a moon rune inside the way more prominent Man Rune that stands for God Forgot. Western culture is described by two adjectives in the Cults of Terror article basically repeated in the Godtime section of the Guide, and monotheist isn't one of them. These words are Materialist and Humanist. If I had to offer a core rune symbolizing the Materialist approach, I'd probably choose Law since it appears to be the significant sorcery component, and I have a very fitting one for the Humanist approach. This is what we find as the most prominent runes in the octogon of the powers inside that biggest circle representing the protector of God Forgot. The moonish head of the Man rune is shown as an aspect of the Man Rune. Quite natually, this aspect is what Jar-eel values, and takes home with her. Belintar arrived during the early Second Wane. The cosmos he described had the moons. The Otherworld which has his palace has a strong presence of the moon - three significant mountains towards the center, one blue when approached from Darkness and Sea, one white when approached from Earth, and one red when approached from Storm and Sky. The Elements all are arranged around the rim of the circular version of the Spiral Map. There also is the 3D version of the map, which has the shape of the water corkscrew, the symbol of the Zistorites. It is possible that the Zistorites recognized this shape of the Otherworld when they established their presence in Lylket and Locsil. The shape of the Limbo coincides nicely with another symbol of theirs, the scissors. You could have an impractical but symbolically powerful version of this with the loop and the outer borders of the scissor forming a circle. The astronomical calculator using gears was their third symbol. I doubt that it resembled the Wand of the Seven Phases of the Moon. It is possible that some copies of that device made it into Dara Happa, though, and were used by Kana Por. The Wand of the Seven Phases sounds to me like an instrument Kana Por would have made and used. It may have been crucial in the discovery of the Wanes. Afterwards, it may have been more of a curiosity item than a necessary magical implement.

The waters are well aware that all waters are a cycle. The Syphon searing away at the little void at the bottom of the Print doesn't mean that the water is lost, no more than the waters going down Magasta's Maelstrom are lost to the world. Even in Godtime, when the rivers still crept into the world, a significant portion of the flow must have been back into the ocean - a portion filled with the silt and other gooddies from the Earth, if not directly digestible by water creatures, then by lesser water creatures which in turn are edible. Internal currents running forward and back, that's how a Godtime river worked. (Are there any krill-filtering merfolk?) As far as I am concerned, Magasta's call was "bring forth all your force against the bad Chaos Void." Which is exactly what the Syphon already did.

The question is whether it is summer or winter when they change their shapes. Winter offers additional nutrition through cadavers of beasts succumbing to the cold, so spending this time in the omnivore shape might be better. Another time when it might be wise to take human shape is after shedding the antlers. Depends on how they are born. If they are born to beast shape mothers, they may well undergo the changes to human shape only for the times when a human shape is more advantageous. I suggested mating season for the time to wear the human shape in order to keep human and beast matings to a minimum (no more than among other Hsunchen). No reason why not. It isn't clear whether the Altinelan guardians against invading Chaos have any elemental association at all. The Serpent theme is also a tie to the Earth. The "civilized Hsunchen" (Pendali, Enerali, probably also Enjoreli) worshipped the land goddess, and trace their ancestry to her. Other than saying that these beasts aren't Hsunchen spirit beasts, I wouldn't want to walk this "separate worlds" dogma too far. The spirit beasts hunted by the Grotaron were called a sort of Mammoths, too. The Rathori do cover all bears except the Teshnan sun bear, but there has always been a Pelorian and Theyalan bear god in addition to the Rathori spirits. I am not quite sure what to make out of the Jonatings. Jonat himself was a bear worshiper and a storm worshiper, but if you look at the Orlanthi of Fronela, all you get is cattle i Enjorela, and then some cattle towards Charg and Brolia. Jonatela follows previous polities like the Hykimi Alliance (outside of the great woods north of the Danube) or Golaros. The Hykimi heritage of these people will be similarly Theyalanized as in Ralios, perhaps even without some identity outlet like the Ancient Beasts Society. Possibly the Hrimthurs? The name reminds me remotely of the Nenets reindeer people of Siberia, distant cousins of both the Sami and the Hungarians. All we know about the Neechen is that they are nomadic. Given the conditions they live in, they have hardly anything to gather, so they might be hunters or pastoralists. If pastoralists, they need some herd beasts that can survive under these conditions. Mammoths, reindeer and musk oxen are taken up by other peoples. Mastodons probably stick to the taiga rather than the turndra directly adjacent to the glacier. What else is there to hunt and eat? Birds come for the insects, but either are active only in summer. Lemmings are there for the taking. Hunting these doesn't quite encourage a nomadic lifestyle, though. Saiga antelopes might be a possibility as signature beasts.

Hendrikar might be a Lunar creation, but Esvular most definitiely isn't - the tribe is called Esvulari in the Durengard Scroll. Yawn. Do the Heortlings care whether it obeyed Magasta? Hardly. Do they care that it keeps searing away the Chaos at the heart of the Footprint? Very much so. The presence of a Fish Road in this river suggests that the sea powers of the Holy Country are fine with the things as they are, too. So who is there to claim that it is evil? And why is Sounder's River, redirected by Waha to sear away at the Devil, not evil? I don't know of a case where giving the sea entities access to land has caused discontent. Mostly it only caused appetite for whichever food those lands had to offer.

Good question. Possibly some data now lost on old hard-drives, back when I discussed unpublished stoff on this topic. Prince of Sartar has God Forgot as the modified Man Rune, with the vertical bar in the head circle, so Man definitely is there in the description of that Sixth. My suggestion is that moon is common to all the Sixths, so it was there to be extracted. It doesn't have to have been a characteristic of that Sixth. The association of the Moon Rune with God Forgot's Man Rune would be a new discovery. This is similar to saying that the Gundestrup rulers were Celtic because they had that great cauldron. The Purification Rune may have been Chaos rather than Moon. Note that chaos lies adjacent to the Limbo in the Spiral Map. The Otherworld map has only three places of the moon - blue,, white and red. That map is a map of the God World equivalent of Kethaela rather than the hero plane that gets mapped as per the God Learner maps in the Guide. Purification - stripping unnecessary things off into the Limbo. Seems logical to me.

The Lunar Occupation of Heortland box (p.247) offers a new term for the Jondalaring tribal region (a term first published in Thunder Rebels, but apparently on the political map overlay for Heortland from earlier on): Hendrikar (in order to rhyme with Volsaxar, Gardufar and Esvular, I suppose). Comparing with the military structure of the Holy Country, it appears that -ar might be the local suffix for a duke's domain. Volsaxar doesn't have a duke, it is barely a regular part of the Holy Country. For Lunar occupation purposes, these areas may have different garrison locations, probably at the main cities. I wonder why Backford was the center of Belintar's cult in Heortland, and recipient of its bridge. The Fish Road up the Syphon does make sense, after all the Syphon does draw the brackish Choralinthor water up to wash away the ichor from the wound. Since the print doesn't get flooded, there appears to be a void or some Underworld entrance up there. The Fish Road map (p.254) shows the bridge pointing to Durengard instead.The Derensev entry mentions the efforts of the Kultain tribe sworn to its defense. However, according to Sartar Kingdom of Heroes p.229 the Kultain tribe was dissolved by the Lunars when they opposed the invasion of Heortland - that would have been in 1619 or 1620. Durengard is described as the main port of Heortland (p.254). Leskos is serving as port for Durengard (p.255). I don't think that Durengard will see much of sea travel. The Turtle Fire ships from God Forgot did travel upriver to assault the city (History of the Heortling People p.62), and presumably other ships can do so, too, but I think that a lot of the port business is handled by river barges that transship at Leskos. I will never understand why the most ancient of all chaos-fighting rivers, the Syphon River, is consistently describes as evil or chaotic. True, it continues flowing uphill from the Mirrorsea Bay, carrying the brackish water that results from the waters of the many rivers emptying into Choralinthor mixing with the waters of the Rozgali and Solkathi seas that meet south of Choralinthor. But it has a fish road, indicating that the water tribe has no problems with this river. The brackish quality of the water will actually be a replacement for salt licks for the local herds. I didn't expect the river gorge of the Syphon to be that low-lying, unlike the Bullflood river which is described as navigable up to Durengard. Quite likely this is a matter of map feature generalisation rather than a new map detail to obsess about, though.

The date of Tarkalor's victory over the Kitori is given as 1560 on p.247 and as 1550 on p.259 (Volsaxiland). History of the Heortling Peoples isn't helpful, giving the date as 15**.

Classically, the rune for God Forgot was the Man Rune. I am not certain whether the Moon Rune was immanent in the God Forgot identity, or whether this was a connection "discovered" or engineered by Jar-eel, and I am fairly certain that this is a rather recent discovery. The weird Otherworld map from Arcane Lore which is assumed to have come from Belintar's Book has three Lunar mountains in its central area, and about one sixth of the circular map occupied by the Void. The name God Forgot implies a magical emptiness. Belintar's lifting of Loon Island demonstrates some mastery over the tides, which are a power associated with the Blue Moon. His original skin coloration encourages speculation that he may have had more such blue moon connections, and it is possible that the rise of the Red Moon was a prerequisite for his arrival in Kethaela. The disappearance of the Teshnan colony on the mouth of the Zola Fel falls into the time of his arrival, too.

p.240 This date, if associated with the first item in the paragraph, contradicts the timelines e.g. on p.141, 175 , 177. 1545 appears to be the date when the Provincial government is formed and Phargentes comes to power. “Rebellion in Tarsh” is too short. It should read “Seven years after the Rebellion in Tarsh” p.240 Clearly a transcription mistake here. 1445 to 1455 there was civil war in Tarsh, ending with Illaro becoming the Seven Years Sacred King (and twice overcoming his challenger/prospective successor). Palashee’s reign did not suffer from any uprisings. This paragraph should be dropped from this list, giving sufficient space to clarify the preceding statement. It is possible that Phargentes had to deal with other uprisings in the provinces before his brother could muster their forces against Palashee. If that was the case, Tarsh should be amended to “the Provinces”. I somehow doubt that, though – it would have reflected badly on Phargentes if his early years in office brought nothing but tax-devouring unrest in the Provinces his household had taken over (usurped) from the control of the family of Hwarin Dalthippa.

Really don't. The 13G character class Hellmother (available to female trolls only) isn't very far from how I perceive the activities of the Esrolian grandmothers. They are female versions of Al Pacino in The Godfather. The only positive thing about them is that they keep the violence in their conflicts rather limited. This doesn't always avoid collateral damage, but it allows the criminal network of grandmothers to maintain some order while exploiting everyone in their own house and even more so everyone outside of the house to maximize gain for their house. I find it quite symptomatic that the Adjustment Wars are initiated by the Hendriki, guided by the spirit of Freedom, and not just any old thrall-taking Orlanthi. The Hendriki aren't exactly altruistic outside of their own clans. The Foreigner Laws by Aventus are the reaction to non-Hendriki people encroaching on Hendriki lands and lifestyle. Sure. "My grandmother told me so, and my wife does so too." This is the conflict between matrilocality vs. patrilocality. Irillo is the willing accomplice for the bad wife. Perhaps her brother, perhaps her lover. The Esrolians have a different term for the "bad wife" - the "undutiful daughter". With uxorilocal marriage, the very concept of a bad wife is unthinkable, after all the wife is the member of the clan/house. However, the undutiful daughter is a common phenomenon in Esrolian stories and history. Norinel, Bruvala's daughters, and Samastina all are examples of this. They challenge the authority/dictature of the Imarjan grandmothers as badly as do the Bad Men of Esrolian history and myth.

The Holy Country section of the Guide has to outshine the presentation in RQ2 RuneQuest Companion, the catch-up book for the original Wyrm’s Footnotes magazine of 1983, combined with the Troll Pak, Genertela Box and Military Experience for Dragon Pass material pertaining to that region, the cult of Caladra and Aurelion, and a certain coverage in King of Sartar. There certainly was quite a bit of information available then, although hardly any information on the Second Age events (Kotor Wars, Machine Wars, conquests of coastal Kethaela), which was provided by the Stafford Library – Middle Sea Empire, History of the Heortling Peoples, Esrolia – Land of 10,000 Goddesses, and additional, then official stabs at coastal Kethaela in Men of the Sea and Masters of Luck and Death (the Heroquest 1 supplements on hero bands) and some detailed gazetteer in Dragon Pass – Land of Thunder for the northernmost edge of Heortland. Compared to official information on Sartar (other than the Sartar campaign collected in Wyrm’s Footprints), there was way more information on the Holy Country than on Dragon Pass before Hero Wars. We knew that the Orlanthi who migrated into the Quivini lands left similar folk back home in Heortland and Esrolia. For me, the Holy Country was my first dive into playing in Glorantha, aided by the fact that I learned that the Chaosium house campaign which playtested all the supplements published in a RuneQuest context had playtested the Midkemia city supplement City of Carse in Karse. I had a previous and intensive acquaintance playing in another universe’s version of Karse, so I felt right at home in the Gloranthan equivalent. My first efforts at web-publishing my Glorantha ideas led to a set of pages on the Holy Country which appears to have seeped into other peoples’ games, even though I provided little more than a gazetteer for the places shown on the Holy Country map from RQ Companion. Anyway, this section provides the current canon on my heart region of Genertela and thereby Glorantha. Ok, so what has changed to my old vision? p.234 My old website had white cliffs – a tip of the hat to my overall fascination with pre-christianized Anglo-Saxon England at the time, but also to Cape Arkona and the island of Rügen with its western slavic holiest site (at least after the destruction of Rethra). p.234 I think that Rastagar is the most maligned of all Orlanthi kings. More so than even Kodig, in Esrolian Grandmothers’ acid propaganda. The Grandmothers objected to Rastagar leading his army to a fight in a very distant place. I am fairly convinced that that distant place was the shore of Luathela, when Orlanth summoned the Ring of the Vingkotlings to aid him fight the Luatha. The Vingkotlings fought like demigods, but their foes were giant demigods. Still, the Vingkotlings were victorious, but the victory would have cost them dearly. Plus, their god had provided them sacred winds to travel there quickly, but after the battle he descended into the Underworld, onto the Path of the Dead, and he could no longer aid his warriors on their way back to their homes. Out of the Kodigvari party, Rastagar, Irillo and few others made it home from that crowning achievement of Vingkotling warfare. Ernalda was sleeping, and with her all the good sense of the Earth worshipers. Instead, the illumination provided by Imarja stripped the Grandmothers of all morality. They usurped Rastagar’s kingdom through Kinstrife, and then blamed the appearance of Nontraya on the seed of Kodig rather than on their own chaotic behavior. Rastagar was most fowlly murdered (sic), and he and his descendants demonized and cursed by the coven of chaos-ridden hags that sold what remained good for Underworld protectors (a benevolent one in the figure of Kimantor – still a terror to normal humans when coming at them enraged, and worse left undocumented). The scribes survived in the places ruled by the Grandmothers, any histories that could have told a different story didn’t. Fowl, goose-footed betrayal remained the main theme of Esrolian history. Palangio, Arkat, the Tharkantus cult, Slontos, the EWF, the Jrusteli, even Ezkankekko, all were betrayed by oath-breaking grandmothers, and I would bet that Jar-eel had received tutoring by some Enfranchised House of Esrolia as well for her dismembering of Belintar. The Spolites should have taken lessons… For all its fertility and bounty of life, Esrolia remains an outlet of infernal and morally deprived evil on the Orlanthi. The Only Old One and the Kitori and their nature was revealed to us less than ten years ago. Numerous theories on the nature of the Kitori had gone around before, and many of those could be framed as misunderstanding of the nature of the Kitori race by other Gloranthans. None of that info has made it into the Guide, though. The surviving Kitori are much reduced in numbers, but still a lot more numerous than say the Luatha of Seshnela, so I wonder why they were chosen to keep shrouded in Darkness. Arkat’s command, aka the Shadow (or Kitori) Tribute, may have been a scheme to recompense the troll fighters who followed him into Dorastor to fight the most vile Chaos without much hope of plunder, to participate in the rich tribute the leaders of Orlanthland collected from their short-lived control over Dara Happa. It wasn’t the fault of the trolls that the Orlanthi governors of Dara Happa failed to quench Ordanestyu’s rebellion. The history section of the Holy Country is a delight to read. An excellent synthesis of the RQ2 and RQ3 era information, King of Sartar, the Stafford Libary books (especially Middle Sea Empire and History of the Heortling Peoples with a smaller side order of Esrolia), and more recent events detailed in the Chaosium house campaign session reports which gave us the history of the Starbrow Rebellion published through obscure APA-zine outlets and in Wyrm's Footprints. Some of the local detail is left to the gazetteer sections, but the synthesis offers a good look at the greater picture.

Actually, a lot information about the White Bear Empire was presented here in much clearer form and more detail than before. With all Rathori characters: when did he awaken? Was he present when Harrek killed the Polar Bear god, or did he emerge later? Black Hralf was put to rest in the 16 years between Snodal's return from Altinela and the Syndics' Ban. Fighting Black Hralf doesn't necessarily mean fighting the White Bear Empire - it could have been a battle or duel for leadership (or mating or salmon rights). Black Hralf appears to have remained "in power" when he was finally killed by Snodal, Arthen and Svenlos. Fral Angor "wasn't killed", which is equally high praise as Argrath not being killed when facing off Harrek. Or the classical Sidhe type elf lord, or Oberon. On the whole, the elf king sounds almost like a devotee of Orlanth. The dwarfen curse of the theft of iron may have been the cause of the Kingdom of War (and violent death). After all, Iron is the Death Metal (cue electric guitar solo). Dwarf magic may have caused the bearers of the secret of iron to become the harbingers of war. The Ralian non-Enerali/non-Pendali were similarly ruled by a coven of shamans of the Serpent Brotherhood. This appears to be the Hykimi equivalent to the Korgatsu dragon of the Shan Shan or the horned Serpent of the Pamaltelan Fiwan. As mentioned before, the Hykimi appear to be the least pure of the Hsunchen (unless you count Kralorela as the transformation of the Dragon Hsunchen - to be discussed today or tomorrow). This appears to be a nod to the magical prowess ascribed to the magicians of the Finns (the Norse word for the Sami) in the Nordic Sagas (and in the Kalevala). They would have been a source of magical power for the White Bear empire, whose magicians might be more of a physical presence reaching into or through the spirit world rather than shamans acting in long range rituals and powerful curses. I have no idea about the magical renown of the other fenno-ugric reindeer herders of the eastern linguistic branch (related to the Magyars rather than to Finns, Eesti, Sami and Permiacs), but they might have similar rites. Having experienced Lappland (at least coastal Lappland) in winter, I am inclined to give them some polar light related spirit powers especially powerful in the cold of winter. The Gloranthan sky has a weak polar light equivalent showing up in winter only, usually hiding in the upper rim of the Underworld sky beneath the waves, except for the deep of winter when the sky tilts the farthest south. I think that analogous to the Soul Wind the Praxian shamans summon in Nomad Gods, the Uncoling shamans may call Polar Lights forth to wander over the Glacier to the summoner. Given the ecology of the region they inhabit, they (especially the Uncolings) are ridiculously large. According to Wikipedia, there are currently about 2800 Sami engaged in reindeer herding, an estimated 10% of the total population. Even if you take into account that the coastal sami of Halogaland had been assimilated into the Norse population by the 16th century through taxation, christianisation and enforced use of the Norse language, that is less than 10% of the Uncoling population, and might have been double that before Kväner and Norse chipped away at their livelihoods. Compare the area roamed by the reindeer herds and herders. Scandinavia (as defined by combining Denmark, Norway and Sweden) has over 300,000 square miles, and if you exchange the southern, Norse inhabited lands for northern Finnland, Kola and Karelia, the range of the Sami peoples will have been similar. There is only one way the Uncolings can cope with their much much smaller range even in post-Ban Fronela - most of the 300,000 humans must spend most of their lives in animal shape. I would wager that your average Uncoling herd will be half animal-shaped human, half pure beast. No idea about cross-breeding, though - the Porent meetings might be the human rut season parallel to the reindeer rut, keeping the blood largely apart. Mister Raccoon sounds like the best candidate for this, although the Sunset Isles are quite a bit of way from Fronela. Unless coastal islands of Fronela are designated such. Woolly rhinos. No cave bears, or we would have Rathori equivalents. Bison. No animal predators other than bears and wolverines - out-competed by Hykimi hunter-gatherers and trolls.

How was animal migration affected by the Ban? Did the swallows return to their ancestral roosts after the Thaw? Sure. Exploiting symbolic associations may be a form of wizards' warfare. Can protective symbols become targeting help? I would say this is true for beneficial magic - those symbols may act as foci, and enhance the effect of the magic. But can hostile magic use these same symbols? Is it enough to know the symbols, or is it necessary to know some of the magical associations behind those symbols in order to use them as foci? While we don't know whether these different shades of blue are described by the same color words (I think it does, with qualifiers, rather than introducing a different word like "indigo" for the wizards' dark blue), I still think that this blue garment is a proud "we supply magic" badge of the Halkomelemites, a privilege. It makes sense for scrying artefacts to resemble eyes or eyeballs.

Jonat is a heroic founder whose magic serves to uphold ancient vows when the kingdom was founded. He brought monastic Seshnegi wizards to Kerantos, and also the wizard Ethirajan in High Fort. Talor is an ascended master venerated by Malkioni warriors, and might also have a hero cult among the Orlanthi whose ancestors followed him against Varganthar and to Dorastor. His state of Joy is a reasonable alternative to bull berserkgang in the face of Chaos and destruction.

The Great Trees aren't shown in the map, the plant runes simply denote elf populations. Erontree has only a single Great Tree - no idea of what kind. Do Great Trees have recognizable species (as found among normal trees) or cladistic associations at all?

Belintar employs uz in his military, too. I don't think that he would be depicted on an Earth Temple any more than Orlanth or some other military protector deity. Sarli district in Nochet is the home of non-Esrolian Orlanthi, many of whom have certain disagreements with the way Belintar took over Heortland. This might be true of the Ernaldan priesthood among them, too - accepting his overlordship as a fact, but grudgingly. (For a comparison I think of the NATO occupation forces in western Germany before the reunion. You wouldn't find their insignia on the German administration buildings during the time of limited sovereignty.) I'm not sure there was a Great Temple to Ernalda in the Sarli district before the Opening - at least not a functional one. The Devastation of the Vent leveled most buildings of Second Age Nochet. Facades of glazed bricks like those of the Ishtar gate would have fallen down and would require active restoration even when the walls survived that quake. The trolls appear to be females. I haven't heard about any female mercenary troll warriors, although troll priestesses and sorceresses are known to have served away from their homes.

I blame Kachisti pollution. Almost all the Hykimi (the Hsunchen of western Genertela) and especially the dominant cultures of the Pendali, Enerali and Enjoreli were city builders or at least lords over cities. Other Hykimi like the Telmori had at least temple cities with a small permanent occupation. Only Rathori and Pralori manage to form empires without giving up their Hsunchen existence, and I have the impression that this is only true for the northern Rathori, with Jonatela being the Theyalanized ones.

The descriptions give quite different impressions. p.202 The Rathori hhibernated during the Ban, avoiding losses or development. If the other Hsunchen and the Aldryami had the forests for themselves. If the forests and plants kept growing, any awakening Rathori would have to face Sleeping Beauty-like thickets of vegetation. There would be no way to get the impression that: (p.202) This indicates that their own lands didn't end up overgrown. Instead, Harrek noted that the planets had changed their positions drastically. (p.229) I suppose the most significant changes would have affected Lokarnos and Entekos, if the Awakening date was roughly the anniversary of the date when they went to sleep. p.231 offers the suspicion that it was the anniversary of the day they went to sleep: Most, not all. I wonder whether those who didn't sleep through the Ban multiplied like crazy while the rest stayed in hibernation, given the sudden surplus of resources (except for salmons?)? Were the non-sleepers devotees of the White Bear? If so, did Harrek slaying and binding the White Bear affect their ability to remain awake? All of this could have happened at once if Rathorela during the Ban was some kind of Hero Plane. And if this goes for Rathorela, why not for the rest of Fronela? But then, the Glowline is some sort of border for an alternate reality, too. This detail was already in Genertela Box and accompanied the longbow discussions for the 1993/4 project RuneQuest - Adventures in Glorantha. It was hard to miss back then if you cared about archery in RQ.

Ok, so the probe or at least its programming was damaged when it was sent out, looking for single biome planets? This reminds me of the rover probe from the animated movie Planet 51 which got obsessed with pebbles and ignored the humanoid population of the planet. Two other nice examples are from David Niven's Man-Kzin universe: We Made It, where a probe found the doldrum in the midst of planetary storms beyond human capacity to deal with, and Plateau, a surface maybe the size of a small island protruding from a Venus-density atmosphere forming the entire habitable surface of that world. Sure. Just: don't use single biome descriptors for the planet. If necessary, reserve them for native species' preferred habitat. It's the difference between a SF setting and a space fantasy. It doesn't cost a lot of word count, if at all.

Single biome worlds? A desert world (like Tattoine) without significant stretches of vegetation - e.g. in the waters - won't have a breathable atmosphere. The "waters" can be highly salinic lakes with cyanobacteria. A world with huge inland deserts and a thin coastal area with rich vegetation wouldn't be called a desert world. If the seas are inland seas supporting such coastal vegetation, that's what would be inhabited, rather than the deserts. Your occasional visitor wouldn't see the deserts except from orbit. I'd be willing to call such a world an oasis world. And what kind of desert? Cold desert, with thaws releasing some permafrost water into a tundra ecosystem? Sand desert? Salt desert? Karst desert with rich underground hydrosphere? What about this rewrite: "2143 GO A5 (Nurab) is an earthlike planet with 70% land mass and oceans with high salinity and heavy metal concentrations. Most of the landmass consists of arid inlands. The world is home to the species of the Jillok, a desert-inhabiting culture that avoids the coastal areas with its pathogenic spores." A few more words and excuses why the coastal areas remain uninhabited, and single biome world avoided. Other reasons not to live on the shores could be extreme tides, frequent tsunamis, etc.

Ok, back to Croesia, the moon goddess, where a small portion of the moon fell to earth in the Gods War, in Croesium. Croesium lies in inland Pomons, so there won't be any obvious worship of the tides. What was her connection to Varganthar? Were there any Veldang coming here? I wonder that the name persisted, and wasn't changed to Annilla. There must have been God Learners researching this deity. The Dara Happans place the fall of the Blue Moon in the War of the Many Suns, in the reign of Lukarius, after the flood receded, and before the Glacier swallowed up the lands of the north. Lukarius either shot her down with his bow (still strung with his umbilical?) or justiced it down, or Vadrus and other storm gods played ball with it, or... We don't get an Artmali perspective on the fall of the Blue Moon, or how that fits into their empires, or whether it affected them at all, given the continued presence of the Blue Streak. How much identity of Velhara and the Mernitan Sedenya was there? With the Blue Moon Plateau and Croesium we get two crash sites of the Blue Moon. There are bound to be others. Another strange entity is the Light Lady of Ramona, an immortal spirit dispensing wisdom. Sounds pretty much like the wife of Lhankor Mhy.

There was the governor of Heortland, Nitrams de Okechep, in History of the Heortling People. (Turns out that Pacheco is place near Concord...) Basically, this is a whimsy of Greg, interweaving his own experiences with the history of his creation. There are a couple such references, starting with the place names on the game boards of White Bear and Red Moon and Nomad Gods which are derived from friends and co-workers. While Wilms Church (later Wilmskirk), Jonstown and Swenstown don't even cause slight irritation and some names like the Pairing Stones commemorating Steve Perrin have been adapted so well nobody not privy to this information will recognize this, some names like "Christian's Bay" (due to the promise to name a feature after the firstborn of friends, not knowing that that name would be Christian) have been politely forgotten since.

In other words: "Lean back and think of England." I'd be willing to let you and the rest of the group enjoy the game. And I'd likely opt out. A good part of my fascination with SF lies in the S for Science. As a chemist, I don't claim to understand the intricacies of astrophysics. I'd be willing to go for a Space 1889 setting with ether between the planets. Just another gobbledigeek for Dark Matter or similar "we can't explain this behavior, so we invent some phlebotinium". It doesn't have to be hard SF. But it should allow pursuing experiments with the phlebotinium, pushing the envelope of technology or theory. I am not so good with the ugly sister of handwavium, the stuff called whocaresium. If you state that the setting is Star Wars or Star Trek, I know the amount of handwavium I have to expect. I know I have to deal with vitalism, laser weapons with tensile strength, muzzle speeds of arrows or the settings "stun" or "vaporize" and discrete fields with sharp edges and similar unobtainiums.

Actually, structural stability might be a reason to have the main thrusters aligned along a spine. More so if on-board gravity is exclusively generated by the acceleration and deceleration of the ship via its reaction drive, although those should also prevent structural warping from acceleration. A manned craft doesn't really need to survive more than 20 g acceleration. Robotic vessels are a different proposition. Fighter craft would fare better as remote-operated or at least remote-coached unmanned drones, allowing much higher accelerations. It is hard to jam point-to-point laser communication. Most settings assume the development of artificial shipboard gravity which may double as inertial dampeners so that much higher accelerations than survivable by unprotected bodies can be flown. Such a technology might lead to reactionless drive variants which might indeed create an acceleration and deceleration behavior similar to submarine movement through water. I have seen Dark Matter technobabbled into such a medium. Ether-sailing 2.0. Rail-gun-like external accelerators for ships might make spherical designs less effective or too bulky. Impact shielding is another factor - a spherical ship has a bigger catchment diameter than a needle-shaped ship, increasing the risk for microcollisions and resulting braking radiation even if the point armor absorbs the kinetic impact. Military ships want to minimize their effective diameter, too, unless they can tote near impregnable shields. An Alcubierre-like drive creating a warp-tunnel will favor short needles with rings holding the generators. Reaction-less drives might warrant a similar geometry. Shuttlecraft to enter under-developed planetary atmosphere, and space-lifts, ground-based landing-webs (as in Schmitz' Telsey Amberdon novels) or shuttleports for transfer on developed worlds are to be expected in a sensible setting. Habitable ecospheres will be more valuable than mineral extraction or factories, so those will be likely put into orbit or on uninhabitable worlds. Getting back to space suits, these should be weighed against avatar drones for hazardous environments. Operators could enter an immersive VR enhancing their identification with the avatar drones, and possible psychological damage when that avatar is damaged (keeping some sense of personal risk while operating these things).

So you would be a go-to person for reality checks when designing systems with orbital mechanics? I take a lot of inspiration for my nascent space setting from video games. Not necessarily things they get right, but things they get wrong for performance or interface reasons. Elite had little such problems, funny enough. It was games like Wing Commander (mainly Privateer, which didn't railroad your carrier craft from task to task), Freelancer or Egosoft's X series which mostly concentrate on fighter craft combat which ignore things like orbital rotation or which dictate arbitrary speed limits. Ship kills don't leave debris (too much effort for the graphic and physics engines), but there may be static clusters of debris as navigational obstacles. My first problem with most spaceship designs is their static main thruster. If I was flying a fighter craft with just survivable acceleration, I would want to be able to give maximum negative or lateral acceleration while keeping a target in the sights of my weaponry. Instead we are served fighter plane architecture with an aft main thruster and rigid or mostly rigid front guns/turrets. If my main weapon is a railgun using the length of my vessel, I want to keep that pointed to the target regardless of my maneuvering. The Firefly design had turret-mounted main thrusters. And that for an unarmed transporter. In my setting, I opt for an alcubierre-like warp drive for "conventional" space travel, assuming that a tubular near- singularity around the ship (achieved by slowing light speed in Bose-Einstein-Condensates, my take on "you need exotic matter") will be able to disconnect spacetime around the ship from that to its sides. This allows for an almost reactionless drive as seen in most of self-piloted (or group action) space games. If I had to establish a mining colony, I guess I would choose a young star with an aggregation disk that still holds gases and lots of smaller bodies, not yet in equilibrium. Sure, you won't find habitable worlds in this environment, but you will have an abundance of all the stuff that makes worlds habitable without having to deal with a gravity well.