Joerg

There are a few region-name endings all over Glorantha. -ela is the most common. It might be western or Theyalan in origin and is definitely used by Tradetalk. -os as in Brithos, Slontos, Teshnos, Ralios, Tiskos, Sentanos, Tinaros, Kimos, Teleos, Mirelos, Nolos, Pasos, Vralos - most of these are coastal lands (Ralios on Lake Felster) -ar as in Aggar, Jolar, Kothar, Talastar, Tastolar, Gardufar, Esvular, Volsaxar (not quite Sartar and Balazar, however, since this is also the persons' name form) -sor as in Tanisor, Mortasor, possibly only -or - then also Dorastor, Oranor, Orninior, in older sources sometimes Kralor -ia as in Peloria, Maniria. Esrolia, Ramalia, Wenelia, Kustria, Karia, Carnania, Gaskallia, Garbulia, Erigia, Brolia - often formed from a goddess' name, possibly a possessive form, but could be a takeover from a Latin form of making a place name -land as in Caladraland, Corolaland, Heortland, Orlanthland, Jorstland - obviously a composite with the English term. -ali as in Ditali, Estali - sounds more like a tribal nomiker than a region, like Enerali, Pendali, Enjoreli Regions may not always be known by their native names, but named by intrepid discoverers or traders.

I have, and yes, it is a different language to modern English, separated in time, but it also bears some similarity to the successor languages of its neighbors, the saxons and danes, which means that my German and Norwegian skill came in helpful. I have few problems reading Shakespeare (more context than linguistics), and only mild ones reading Chaucer. It still is a language with quite unknown vocabulary and shifts of meaning. My knowledge of Latin is somewhat useful when I encounter written Italian or Spanish, but lets me down when encountering spoken Spanish or Italian. Middle High German or ancient High German are about as hard to decipher as is Anglo-Saxon. The various forms of (modern) Frisian aren't much better, though. I did sit down and figured out a translation of Alfred's Anglo-Saxon Orosius for the voyages of Ottar and Wulfstan (for the Viking edition of Free INT. #7, about 20 years ago). I will admit that I cheated, using a Danish and a French translation to help me over some hard to decipher passages, but I returned to the Anglo-Saxon source for most of that transcription. I haven't tried to use old High German or Middle High German vocabulary in modern context. Part of the reason is the scarcity of the source material and my unfamiliarity with most of it. Another part is that most Middle High German is high medieval background rather than tribal. What I have seen of Wulfila's gothic bible was beyond any recognition, but the different alphabet is a major factor in that.

Actually, the burnt trolls aka Dark Trolls or Uzko have been hurt in their ability to attain other shapes of Darkness through their (Lamarckian-inherited) fire damage when Bijiif invaded Wonderhome. Uzuz are much more flexible in this regard. I wonder whether an Uzuz can address the Curse of Kin - the uzuz bear the curse of giving birth to the dark trolls rather than the mistress race. I don't think that uzuz give birth to trollkin (unless you count twin births of dark trolls). She somehow achieved the impossible and mastered fire, the source of the hurt of her kind, and made herself an avatar of Arachne Solara.

There will be multiple layers of truth here. King Drona and his boar sidekick Bakan indicate some kind of adoption (or additional manifestation) of an earth god as the founder of the Malkioni peasant caste, or vice versa. I associate the red color with a visit to the Underworld, if not an origin from it. I am thinking of Verithurusa and Shargash here, but there is another red planet, Artia, and two half-red ones in the Twinstars. It might be a Southpath phenomenon - all known Southpath objects are red. Nearby, blood-red Rausa surrounds herself with crimson/violet Luatha guarding the entry to the Underworld. The presence of a warrior/soldier caste indicates the presence or at least prescience of conflict. Is conflict unavoidable according to Logic, or is the Golden Age less innocent in certain phases of the cycles? Gods of Glorantha tells us of ancient conflicts between Elder Giants and True Dragons before even the memories of the Elder Races. The Annilla cult in Troll Gods tells about Annilla's giant king husband being killed. Since the result was her pregnancy and the rise of the Blue Moon, it isn't entirely clear that this happened before the Storm Age, at least the rise of the moon. Death before Death is a difficult topic for Godtime Glorantha. We don't have a real explanation why Umath didn't rise again after being slammed into the White Camp, or why other earliest entities disappeared after hostile encounters. There was some sort of proto-death. And the presence of a warrior caste in the early Golden Age indicates another such seemingly premature presence of conflict.

Depending on your definition of Agimori, some of them may actually have skin so dark that it takes artificial color names to avoid the term black. The creation story of the Thinobutan "Agimori" (used in the same sense as "Dara Happan Warerans") has four couples in various earth shapes made out of clay by Soli, their creator spirit/god. One of these was black, the others were dark red, brown, and grey. (Revealed Mythologies p.65) I saw a documentation about culturally based ability to perceive different tones of color. There is a tribe in Ethiopia which can discern shades of green that look identical to Europeans but have difficulties discerning other colors which don't even perceive as the same shades. Reconstructed Proto-Indo-European has rather few color words, and the individual languages descended from that picked up not so many others over the years. Artists, fashionistas and car sales folk help themselves with names for pigments, applying naturally colored things to describe a shade of color, or imply more or less weird cultural connotations to describe tones of color. Outside of dyers', printers' and painters' precise jargon, natural language goes by with astonishingly few names for colors. The English 7-colored rainbow needs to draw in an imported pigment (indigo), and two of the mixed primary colors (orange and violet) are named after plants. If Glorantha really is a Bronze Age or early Iron Age world, it is ok to get by with a lot less names for colors than an artist's palette will offer. I beg to differ. Vingkot was the son of a mortal woman, of the On Jorri folk. Even if he inherited Orlanth's woad Lamarckian style, it would already have been diluted. I heard about a time when Orlanth favored the color red. His storm clouds are a dark grey with only a hint of blue. And Umath himself is said to have been brown, like or from the dust of his mother that he blew into the air. If we play the parental colors game, why not start with Orlanth? Orlanth may have been blue by choice - woad, tattoos, or by changes he underwent when wrestling with other deities. The bluish ice covering Kero Fin is the realm of Inora, Orlanth's cold half-sister. Her rock will have been the color of bedrock, weathered bedrock after her interaction with Umath. As mentioned above, starting with Vingkot himself. Vingkot's wives were the daughers of Tada, a presumably swarthy earth giant. Not much chance for even Vingkot's sons and daughters to have blue skin. This may even have been true for Orlanth. Weathered copper comes in the hues red, black, blue, and green. Rather than applying substractive color mixing here, let's discuss a different approach: Magically strong people provide a (fluorescent) glow, adding an elemental color sheen over otherwise fairly ordinary tones of skin. I remember fondly irritating the heck out of my fellow students by mixing (dark violet) potassium permanganate solution with yellow, green flourescing Fluorescein (left-overs from my A-level practical exercise), resulting in a deep chrome-green solution that turned colorless upon heating. I said fluorescing because I don't want magical folk to stand out glowing in the dark (unless they wield that magic actively), so it requires the presence of visibility (light) in order for these hues to shine. The German national colors are black, red and gold. In praxis, that "gold" is a full yellow with a hint of orange. (That said, 18 carat gold comes in the hues white, red, and yellow.) Less haughtily descended folk tend to have earthier and darker tones of skin. Other fire people favor a darker red hue, usually those with connections to the Underworld before Yelm's death, like Shargash and Lodril. Darkness humans may have the pale skin of goths. The copper roof green actually is a result of water and exhalation tainting the black pigment of copper oxide. Malachite (copper carbonate) is blue. I associate green water with algae growth, or life in general. As a coast dweller who gets out when the clouds are hanging in the sky and storms are roughing up the sea, I see shades of brown and grey. Most rivers will be brown, too. Hence merfolk (who appreciate the gifts of food earth gives to the seas) will favour these hues rather than the smurfy blue of Heler's cloud folk or the deeper Waertagi ink blue. It is more complicated than that. Malkion had numerous wives and produced children of numerous hues. Caste association by birth sequence is extremely ancient, and applies only to a single myth about Malkion the Founder. A myth that is rivaled by naming various goddesses as mothers for his variously colored sons. Vadeli and Malkioni castes are inherited from the father. Brithini castes may be determined by the birth sequence of the mother, but honestly, there is no way that 80%+ dronar caste can result from so many first births of the mother. Or is it children of the mother with a single father? Brithini exiles often are described as pale of skin. This is strong in the Fronelan Malkioni inheritance. The Tanisoran blood that makes the majority of modern Seshnegi ancestry is really of Enerali or Pendali descent, offering beastly shades of brown into the skin coloration. I agree - that's where the concept of the inner light or glow comes in handily. Or possibly several curses. The Teleans may have had some kind of Innsmouth effect during the Closing. They don't remember, and noone else who witnessed this (embyli or dragonewts) has told about it. They seem to be Doraddic (rather than Thinobutan) Agimori by ancestry, related to the Men-and-a-Half of Prax. Earth is a source of pure brown (and count the human origin stories on Glorantha which involve clay or mud). But brown is also the mongrel (burtae) color of Umath. I disagree with the "mediterranean/middle east" identification. Greater India is a good approximation for much of Genertela, more than just Teshnos (which has more of a "hinter India" vibe - Indonesia). Except for the Doraddi, all Gloranthan humans are parallel cases of "out of Africa" migrants, IMO.

If we regard Anglo-Saxon as simply an archaic form of English, those terms simply denote an antiquated language. Antiquated compared to what, though? Would the Orlanthi use ancient Vingkotling or even earlier forms, possibly Storm Tongue ones, amidst their current dialect? And would they be aware of that?

The "merman" may well have been Terthinus, technically a Manthi sea god who rules the local Malasp and those before Umathela, or one of his lieutenants This is actually a subject for discussion: Do we know at which date the Syndic's Ban was executed? If it wasn't in winter, the single night might apply to the Rathori (although leaving a problem for all those who went through ordinary night time activities like hunting, outside of their shelters (if in winter, how did it affect those under the blessing of the Polar Bear God?). Did time freeze for the rest of the inhabitants of Rathorela? I know how my garden looks after a few weeks of neglect. Awakening after 95 or more years of slumber might have turned each of their huts into sleeping beauty palaces in terms of overgrowth. There are other Hsunchen types cohabitating with the Rathori, and there are aldryami refugees from Erigia. Did the Rathori sleep affect them, too? While on the subject of bears, I stumbled over Orenoar bears in Rathorela. p.233. I wonder whether the Celestial Court goddess of the Truth Power Rune has a business re-appearing as a Hsunchen bear spirit, if of a very obscure form. Glorantha Wikia has the blue bears as Orenrar. I wonder whether there is a Lunar connection to these, possibly to the Orogeria (recuperating blue without visible stellar equivalent) stage. (Real world blue bears appear to be a subspecies of black bears in North America, also known as Glacier Bear. Who would have guessed...)

Maps pp. 207, 213, 218 and 230 (but not 221) have Tastalar rather than Tastolar. That's a general map error, also in the AAA, and probably not easily fixed. I would advise against going the Surkorian route where apparently the mislabeling of the map was applied to the text, obscuring the Korioni tribal name element (which survives in Otkorion and Naskorion). (I'm mentioning this because the Surkorian label turns up in the map on p.225.)

Sorry, but not at dusk, but rather early in the morning. Spol lies west of the Crater, so you need Yelm rising into the eastern sky rather than sinking in the western sky to have a cast shadow reaching towards Spol. I think that the moon sits considerably north of the Sunpath, so that any shadow zone would be way far north, probably outside of human-inhabited places.

Reading on for next week's bit, I stumbled over King Drona(r) and his boar companion. So much for a western Earthking...

A land that becomes sea bottom will still have something like a land goddess, but calling such a deity a grain goddess would be ludicrous. Yes, older or completely non-grain land goddesses persist, like Ketha, Kero Fin(Tara/Velhara or Eiritha. They may be overlaid by other grain or land goddesses, of different maternity, as Earth cycles through its generations. (There are, after all, myths of Asrelia that have her as the young child or the fertile mother.) Gata manifests physically as a giant block of Earth, and as a female goddess of the Celestial Court. These Celestial Court deities manifest as the prevalent life form. I can easily see an Early Sky Age when the deities in the palace atop the Spike manifested as avian deities. We are talking pre-Death shifts of Cycles here, so there won't be Death. There may be fragmentation, or transformation, of the deity of a land without much change to the extent of that land. We know that the lands changed through the cycles. The earliest surface manifestations of Gata were as sea bottom feeding the Ocean from within, with the Earth slowly rising up until it floated in a way that kept the upper face out of the water. These manifestations certainly are much different from the regional goddesses we are presented (Frona, Ralia, Pelora etc,) Imagining Gata just as a giant block of Earth is just touching one leg of the elephant. There is a whole lot more to the primal earth, before the differentiation. And there are different expressions of the Land Goddesses, and there are Grain Goddesses that double as Land Goddesses, and those that don't, and Land Goddesses without the slightest Grain association. Everything else are God Learner dogmatic schematics - true for certain, carefully defined parameters, and all bets are off when a real system rather than this idealized construct is encountered. This is the perfect example for a truth while remaining within certain parameters, and utter bollocks when it comes to other aspects. Yes, one can impose a certain identity, and one can work magic from that, but that identity has to be limited. I don't think the experiment would have been that much of a disaster later on if the two goddesses hadn't been switched but their territories each expanded to also include that of the other goddess. There are examples of hierarchical land goddesses contained in one or several over-lands like the major regions, but also like ancient, no longer current polities/cultures). Ketha is such a case. Something else to consider is the ancient war of the Giants and the Dragons, which we know almost nothing about. This is an example of an earliest cycle, maybe not the earliest cycle, but definitely ancient. At least part of the time, the Earth must have left the Ocean, although there may have been numerous "bobbins" with the Ocean flooding all over the cube and the cube shaking this off again and again. These bobbings disappeared when Sky stepped forth from its womb deep below Gata and claimed the universe above both Ocean and Land. Daruda is the bringer of dragonhood to Kralorelan history. Or Sekever, or Korgatsu. Neither Metsylä nor Shavayah were expressing themselves as dragons. Daruda did, confronting Sekever (and possibly Korgatsu( who did, too. The eastern Male Earth God/Earth King could be one of their high gods, gods identified as dragons only in Kralorela. Ladaral sits slap-dash in the correct position to have assimilated that earth male.

A lot of trickster faces are one trick ponies. And Yelm instituting his court rituals may have been a trick to impose this brand of stagnation. There is no change without the Trickster, that's an old adage for Glorantha. And Larnste certainly is regarded as a Trickster by stagnation-lovers, and he has a set of myths which tell how he brought change as solution to a problem in a completely un-anticipated way - like the separation of Genertela through the Rockwoods - plus he has a myth when his intervention backfires badly (the footprint myth). A ruler taking rule is a change. Since history is written by the victors, all these changes were changes to the better.

I see a silhouette of a divine-sized earth cow. And I couldn't say whether the earth that forms the hills is not Eiritha's body but some random soil piled up upon her. (Soil of her body, the land, after all.) While wielding a spade is a surprisingly recurring theme in Praxian myth (Waha digging the Good Canal - an irrigation feat directly inherited from the Tada-shi), this myth works just as well with Tada just telling Eiritha where and how to lay down, and what to present to the approaching Death. She had distanced herself. Her daughters, the protectresses, were bridging this distance, and kept providing. But then I still need to be shown that the Beast Riders were the Praxian civilization that Tada defended. I still see them as roaming the entirety of the Garden in the wake of Storm Bull, rather than having any permanent ties to the lands where they happened to enter the Grey Age, which are now on the record as their ancestral grazings. When Tada buried Eiritha, the plains of Prax were a Redwood savannah - a lot more open than an elf forest, but teeming with all kinds of vegetation. The ancestors of the beast riders must have maneuvered a flora that was man high. (Having to cross a maize field today in order to get to a pond where I had to draw water for the lab makes me appreciate the enormous change the beast riders have undergone after the loss of that kind of ecosystem). Someone - possibly the Tada-shi - summoned Oakfed in the Great Darkness, whether as a weapon to burn away invading Chaos, or whether just as a desperate way to create warmth. The vegetation burned by this event may have been not so verdant any more. Yes, an iteration of the same myth, enough so that creative heroquesters could step over from the Ernalda version vs. Nontraya to the Eiritha version. But at the same time, a distinctly different myth, with different stakes, and a different antagonist. Possibly Basmol. I wonder whether any more specific memory about this Death remains in Beast Rider or Oasis Folk lore. Tada still being active precludes this story occurring in the Greater Darkness. This seems like a Lesser Darkness event to me. Definitely prior to Earthfall, and possibly another factor that weakened Genert. Land goddesses not remaining the same: Things change through the ages. Especially the beasts, but also the flora changes with the ages. All the bird-derived fauna of the Golden Age which replaced the reptilian fauna of the preceding Earth rulership mostly gave way to the mammalian storm fauna, and the accompanying plants changed with these elemental eras, too. Not all birds died out, but many did. Not all Sky Era plants died out, but many were replaced by Storm Era plants. And those were replaced or complemented with Darkness flora. Grain is a fairly new concept. Possibly introduced when Sky covered Earth. The Land goddesses we know for Genertela are associated with grain. Their precedessors, now covered by more recent soil and geological activity, may have been associated with completely different plants, possibly going back to early ones being associated with mosses, ferns and horsetails, or even earlier ones of sedentary submerged flora when earth was still rising up through the primal ocean. Godtime is Cyclical Time. Things are introduced, rule for a while, and fade out, or persist into the next cycle when the spotlight is stolen by a newly introduced theme. I don't see why Land Goddesses would be completely exempt from such developments. Of course you could argue that Seshna of the mosses is identical to Seshna of the grains. Or she could be a new generation of land goddess, a daughter of Ernalda rather than of Gata, and whichever Earth King (which doesn't necessarily have to mean earth god) fathering her. Regions could be joined togher by other developments, or split into new ones, e.g. when Larnste planted the Rockwood mountains, or when the embyli encroached Pamalt's Veldt and he stopped them with the Fensi mountain chain (Tarmo, Mari). When the Storm Mountains separated Prax from Kethaela. When the flood released the lands in possibly new borders. The topsoil changed, too. Eruptions spread volcanic ash. The advancing glacier produced loess. Tectonic quakes, whether through Maran's agency or through True Giants, may have tumbled through the upside of the land, and may have established a different face or goddess for roughly the same tract of land we have seen before. Dragons taking up substance from the land, or putting it down again when going to meditative sleep, is another source for sedimentary action in earlier cycles of the land. The Golden Age cycle of Yelm's Emperorship is only the latest such cycle. There were other Golden Age cycles before, interspersed with Green Age transitions. We discussed this a bit for Week 7 and 8, but with this Land Goddess business the topic comes up again. Pelora and Mani and Ralia were one land before Larnste seeded the Rockwoods. There was an east-west conflict that got solved by creating a north/south separation, doubling the conflict parties, which may have been Elder Races like Aldryami and Mostali conflicting, or even Eldest Races like dragons/dragonewts and Elder Giants. These changes may be seen as new generations of Land Goddesses or Earth Queens. The mother may be no longer identified with Ga/Gata but possibly with Asrelia or Ernalda, and the Earth King doesn't necessarily have to be Genert. Vestkarthen will do for Asrelia for parenting that cycle's replacement land goddesses. Not necessarily replacing all goddesses in any given cycle.

When he hid Eiritha from Death. He tricked Death. All ruling gods have a Trickster element to their myths. It is a necessary component. Here are a few examples: Yelm tricked the White Queen when he "solved her problem", ending up as the new ruler of the world. Orlanth went to become the surrogate husband of Ernalda during his exile under another name. Orlanth used Death in the contest of weapons rather than demonstrating prowess. Tada raised the Eiritha Hills to send Death away without bothering to check on Eiritha. And he didn't join Genert when Genert summoned all the forces of his Garden to fight the advancing Chaos Horde. Genert himself had his slain body eaten by Hyena, depriving Chaos of horribly mutating and subverting it. Pamalt created the Necklace in order to escape Vovisibor's power by cheating. At times, being a Trickster is necessary to maintain the world, or to move it to the next (st)age. And at times it doesn't do to give all of this to one of the professional trickstes (such as hyena, raven, the carrot god, or Eurmal).

Good point about that pool - it never gets explained, and then disappears. In a way, I trust that Golden Age map the least. It shows the height of the Solar Empire, corresponding to tablet five in the Copper Tablets. Male Earth has already been corrupted by Lodril's fire. So basically you say that the land goddesses precede the Brighteye putsch, and have remained stable until the Goddess Switch, and that all land goddesses north of the Spike are daughters of Genert. Which point in Godtime are we talking about - Yelm's reign? So basically the Paps was a place of exile after Tada had hidden Eiritha from the invading Death early in the Storm Age. I used to understand the formation of the Eiritha Hills as Eiritha retreating underground, providing her fertility blessings from hiding rather than from striding the Garden. Not a total loss of fertility, only a blessing at much greater distance. Talking about her grave makes this a yawn-inducing minor aspect of the "She is not dead, she is sleeping" Ernalda myth (which has a burial ceremony rather than hiding her away from Nontraya). I think this belittles Tada's role as good trickster. So basically all these temples were mere surface exits of Ernalda's (or her grandmother's) palace in the deep but living earth, analogous to the Castles of Lead? I know that the Age before the usurpation of Brightface wasn't exactly an age where individuality was important, but I prefer cycles of repeating myths with individual, identifiable deities over a gloopy porridge of divine principles establishing other principles. That's my problem with a near-universal Tada as well. BTW, Tada's actions are rather similar to Pamalt's activities. Is Pamalt Genert's equal, or is he the Tada (the good trickster) of the South? I might be stuck in the Collision of Worlds thinking with the four independent realms of Genertela, Danmalastan, Pamaltela and Vithela joining together to form Glorantha. That approach suffered from the "strictly separate Otherworlds" dogma, though. Kralorela could be part of Vithela in this context, like Teshnos and Teleos. Jrustela, Slon and Brithos are the surviving bits of Danmalastan, whereas Luathela is one of the strange outgrowths into Sramak's River, not quite part of the Earth. But then much of Vithalash and the huge islands of Memb and Forng are outside of the Earth Cube surface, too. I think of them as coral-like growth out of the sides of the Earth Cube. The Slorifing Marsh that is shown to have extended into the southern shore of Sramak's River probably never was solid land but an overlay of floating vegetation granting some foothold for humanoid inhabitants. A theist, a sorcerous, an animist and a mystical approach?

Orlanthi weapons by social rank: The rank of carl isn't limited to the head of the household, but applies also to the other adults of a household. (I am not so sure about the social rank of a thane here, though.) The household's wealth and weaponry thus gets divided among its contributors to warband and fyrd. Where did you get the rank of an eorl from? I used Anglo-Saxon terminology in my early explorations of Heortland, including the archaic form eorl, but that never was anything official. Apart from the place-name Eorlsbroch in History of the Heortling Peoples I couldn't find it in any Glorantha publication.

Eclipses in Glorantha are somewhat problematic because normal geometry like triangulation doesn't quite work. Theoretically, there ought to be a daily eclipse where the sun is hidden by the Red Moon, but it isn't clear where on the surface world this shadow would fall. It is possible that such an effect could occur in the northernmost bits of the earth square, or in the far distant north on Sramak's River. But then it isn't clear whether the Red Moon is big enough to cause more than a partial eclipse. Its apparent diameter and height are magical effects, with the Glowline interfering. It isn't entirely clear whether the diameter of the sun is constant over the year - the winter sun may be smaller or more distant than the summer sun. The Sunpath certainly tilts north and south, causing a more southerly eclipse belt in summer. There is a strange stellar body known for causing eclipses of lesser stellar bodies, the juggernaut. Again, it isn't clear whether it is big enough to blot out the sun. There is a myth about Telmor devouring the sun. Is there something like a stellar wolf?

Genert didn't just die, he was mauled by Chaos before disappearing himself. We can consider ourselves lucky that we know as much about Genert as we do (which is a lot more than we have about Yamsur or Seolinthur). Rebirth in the great rite - the ritual of the net? Genert of the Garden hid his remains so that they couldn't be tampered with - not by Wakboth, not by Arachne Solara, not while hyena hides his parts. What do we have to make out of the absence of Tada from the Battle of Earthfall? Especially if Tada is an integral manifestation of Genert's major power?

Taking this here because we're starting to draw on the rest of the Guide here: Ok. Define "continent" in the Golden Age, before Neliom invaded. Do we have a north/south divide only, or do we have a quartering of the world into the four magical principles? She is one of the land goddesses, so she is a daughter of Gata and the Earth King. I was asking whether that Earth King was Genert, or whether this was a similar case to Britha, who has no recognizable relation to either Genert or Pamalt. No disagreement here. And Britha likely is a daughter of the Earth King Erasanchula. The question is whether either Bamat or Genner are recognized as such, or whether some other deitiy might be pushed into a (possibly optional) father role, such as Flamal or Ladaral. Yes - that's why I think your argumentation is the interpretation of the Paps, maybe of Ezel, but not necessarily of the Temple in Old Seshnela. Again - what are the boundaries of that continent? I did allow the Gerendetho identification, with Gerendetho a non-Lodrilic deity. Turos is a Lodrilic deity. Probably a most refined one, minus much of the sloth, rebellion and lack of self-control. (Much, but far from all.) You managed to confuse me about Tada rather than clarify his role. I tend to see Tada as the (slightly) human avatar of the Earth King. Ok. Please get your point across in some better structure. There is an extensive Earth period that was disrupted by the usurpation of the Sky. Earth probably was the first element that produced a definitely male expression, the Earth Son/Earth King. While both Darkness and Sea produce sexual offspring, for Darkness Fatherhood is a new-fangled invention that entered their perception only after leaving Wonderhome, and the Seas have gender fluidity. The Earth Son is the first male only elemental deity. Still, the Earth Son appears to be less apart (separated) than Ganesatarus in the equivalent First Male story opposing Uleria. (Ganesatarus = Kargan Tor?), never quite leaving the embrace of the mother/wife. (Is that the role of Tada - activity outside of that embrace?) Another word for "an aspect of Genert". The Earth Walkers haven't left much of their myth, and too much of that has been transferred to Lodril-type deities. Gerendetho, I assume - or did they introduce an aspect of the goat-herding Earth Walker? The Earth King effect on fertility appears to be somewhat contradictory, too. If I look to Pamaltela, I find that the Veldt fails to support immigrant fauna worse than the dead ecology of Prax. The combination of dead Genert and hostile Eiritha is less harmful to horses than the lush vegetation of Pamaltela (I assume in addition to imported grain fodder). Genert died, but the area affected was limited to the area between the Shan Shan and the Rockwoods. Gerendetho's lands are fine, except for the plateau exposed when he beheaded the mountain that towered above the stump of the Hungry Plateau, creating a surface that had never had aspects of fertile earth but of solid stone. So basically Gerendethlia and the lands beyond never experienced the death of Genert.

This is the first time I see the term pteranosaur - when checking on google, it asked me whether I meant pterosaurs. I had been considering this for the errata thread. Dragon Pass had these critters as pteranodons, the mystical recovery of minimal draconic virtues for the fallen dragonewts. It is a pity that their transformation myth (spinning a cocoon, something like an ersatz-egg, to emerge as a flying entity) hasn't been in an official publication since Dragon Pass.

Ok, let's take Golden Age Ralios, where Flamal resided in Hrelar Amali. How much Genert will be felt? Let's take Seshnela, the western end of which technically was a piece of Danmalastan. How much did the early Storm Age Pendali feel the influence of Genert? Was Seshna a daughter of Genert, or a manifestation of old Danmalastan's earth, like Britha? We know that Vingkot married the daughters of Tada, so there was some nod to Genert in greater Kerofinela, although most of the sovereignty role was taken by the mountain goddess and her children rather than the earth goddess. Tada is applicable to the Garden, which stretches between Kerofinela and the Shan Shan, and further north between the Arcos Valley and the Shan Shan. The Earthwalkers of Peloria may be cognates of Genert, but Turos is a quite different provider of male blessing.

The maps in Genertela Box were notoriously off-scale, and the big foldout map had massive mistakes. My go-to maps for an overview of Genertela used to be the historical maps in Trollpak in the RQ3 era. I don't recall Seshnela having been made thicker. Anyway, Seshnela is mostly drowned, and the current Seshnela really is the kingdom of Tanisor - the first time in Seshnelan history that a barbarian Greatwood kingdom has Malkioni wizards on its side. Genert as the ruler of the continent - in a similar sense as Ezkankekko ruled the Kingdom of Night, or even without tribute? How much was Genert's presence felt in say Fronela, Seshnela, or Kerofinela? Did it affect Kralorela or Teshnos at all, or are these remnants of Vithela that just happen to lie adjacent to Genert's continent?

Checking up earlier usage of the plural form, I stumbled over a few more interesting otherworlds hinted at in Hero Wars - Introduction to Glorantha, such as the non-dead underworld deeper earth. I suppose that the clouds and entities living atop or within them might qualify as outer world/hero plane as well, as would the Firebergs.

Checking the backlog, I found use primarily of the plural form in Hero Wars Introduction to Glorantha and HeroQuest 1st Edition, but only singular Hero Plane in HQ Glorantha and Sartar Kingdom of Heroes (the only Moon Design books using this phrase). My explanation over on the other thread referred to the earlier usage as in HeroQuest 1, but that may have been a factor of the Separate Worlds dogma.

The Hero Plane is a collective term for the parallel Glorantha in which one experiences God Time. You speak of hero planes when it comes to wander between different sections of this Godtime (usually the Ages) when you have to overcome a boundary similar to that you need to overcome to enter Godtime in the first place.