Joerg

So it is not fair to compare Einar or Paris to Musashi? The perormance was heavily dependent on the bodkin arrow, too. I don''t know the effective damage to arrows fired ratio at Crecy or Agincourt, but it cannot have been that high, and many of the effective hits will have been on the horses (which provide the much bigger and less armored target area). Military archery is comparable to clout archery - any body hit is random luck, due to the time of flight of the arrow. Having a second arrow in the air before the first one impacts is entirely possible. Demanding to hit an individual moving target under those conditions requires heroic abilities and not just mere mastery. Taking damage in an armored hit zone doesn't necessarily mean penetration of said armor, btw. A non-special will cause concussion in armored parts or a graze in unprotected parts. Bows were fitted to the individual size and strength of the user. Training can make you master a heavier bow, but at some point the brute strength required will lower accuracy even with the first few shots. The strenuous training is necessary to be able to keep firing the bow after the first dozen arrows. I experienced this kind of lack of training with my mere 80 lbs flatbow in the second half of a clout tournament. Sending flemish crossbowmen home before the battle, maximally unfavourable ground for a lance charge, spiked posts yadda yadda - more fatal casualties were inflicted by the mallets used to drive in the stakes than by arrow wounds at Agincourt. Having dabbled with archery and kendo just towards low levels of proficiency, I feel you underestimate the effort needed to become a master swordsman. A major factor there is to be good enough to avoid being hit, which is a lot easier for archers keeping out of the range of enemy weapons.

Aren't you forgetting about spells like Shield or Protection? But that's why Rune Levels like iron armor so much... I'd allow dodge and parry against slow missiles if not yet in melee. Against faster missiles (slingshot, blowgun darts or arrows) you can increase the difficulty for the missiler. Sorry, but the effectiveness of Paris as an archer before Troy was at least the level of the mythical longbow. The good news - hardly anyone in Glorantha gets to shoot a Longbow of Steel Piercing. The self bow doesn't really differ from the longbow in any way, though, and self bows made from yew with 6 foot staves and a draw weight of more than 80 lbs were found in Viking digs, centuries before the English used the weapon as field artillery. Olav Tryggvason's Saga has Einar Tambarskjelve fire a bow that might put the bows of Agincourt to shame. The crazy amount of time and skill is the same that makes the difference between a sword fighter who wouldn't amputate himself with the first dozen strikes and a sword master.

Those racial hostilities are inherent in the nine worlds of Yggdrasil. The point is that there are no Khazad or Quendi in Glorantha. There are (clay) Mostali and Vronkali, Mreli, and Embyli instead. If a Glorantha-noob is Middle-Earth literate, tell him that the aldryami are about human-sized ents. For Noldor, use Brithini or Luatha (if you want to use the Brithini for Numenorans instead - a role also fine for the Jrusteli). RQ3 Vikings had an aldryami race, too - the Woodwives. Slavic myth has a similar race subservient to or descended from the Leshy, the great forest spirit, and Vikings and Baltic Slavs had a lot of contact and intermarriages. And it had elves, the alfar, which come in two varieties - followers of Freyr from Alfheim, or deified ancient folk (a parallel to the Vingkotling kings and founders).

Acting as Eurmal - in that case mythically quite appropriate to do the unthinkable. This might work to have been his iniitiation... and he had better find a shrine for "remove body part" quickly. Did your player read up on Eurmal? It is fairly easy to be cast into that role, but it is nearly impossible to get out of it again. Why did your group go into the Lawstaff Quest as the Lightbringers? Normally, Orlanth is an NPC in this quest, with the Quester following the steps of Heort. Coming as the Lightbringers here doesn't really bring any advantage. I guess the group is saddled with this incarnation of Eurmal for the rest of their quest, and much higher resistance.

I suppose that the players including the spirit talker are Sartarite Orlanthi rather than Praxian allies to the tribe. How did the player(s) end up in power over the two geldees? Did they accept their surrender in the battle against Gagarth's horde, or did they overwhelm them in a non-lethal way that did not involve any consent by the two? Accepting a surrender is a variant of hospitality vows, really. Whover accepts the surrender is the host of the people who vow to submit to his captivity. Usually for a promise of ransom - if that promise isn't kept, all bets are open. The Lawstaff quest is all about honoring vows. If this action goes againt the vows of the captor, the entire benefit of the quest may be forfeited, and possibly this quest may be polluted for generations. Does the spirit talker have a specific spirit contact that might incite him to follow this course? A vengeful ghost? And why go for the crown jewels. What kind of history do the heroes or their dependents have with Darsten's bullies?

Yes. That was one of their secrets. The God Learners are something like the opposite of mystics. They did so through experiment and reductionist analysis followed by optmistic over-generalization rather than through a holistic approach. While their basic methods like the Runequest Sight lasted, the method yielded results, although it also caused collateral effects. So they analyzed the collateral effects and minimized those as much as they could. Like eliminating the mythical antibodies called up by their meddling rather than modify their meddling.

We know that Fazzur set up at least a logistical base at Karse after the conquest of 1619, and that may have served just fine for the conquest of New Malkonwal. I am not quite sure whether his Esrolian operation was to be a conquest or an acquisition through marriage. In the latter case, he would have brought a smaller but still sizeable force for projecting power against the Ditali and Solanthi (where Varstari son of Greymane has been in their pocket for a few years, whereas Hardral's connections to King Broyan cannot have paid off much since the siege of Whitewall reduced Broyan's influence). Karse has the best connection to Nochet by ship. I find it unlikely that Fazzur would move major troops through the Fish Roads or through Beast Valley, so any major troop movement would come through the Grazelands. For a mustering ground in this direction, Fazzur has the perfect HQ in Tarsh - his family holdings near Dunstop. The Building Wall is more of a geographic obstacle than a heavily patrolled border, and significant parts of the Esrolian North March lie beyond, e.g. around New Crystal City. Using his fast strike method, I am sure Fazzur could push south to hold the Building Wall before any significant Esrolian forces could be mustered, and bring in a bigger force from that bridgehead if he planned a takeover by force (unlikely though IMO). I would guess that those troops he didn't have to leave as occupation forces were requisitioned to support the siege of Whitewall, lacking anything better to do while Fazzur made his preparations for Esrolia.

Strictly linear Time did not exist. Time with mostly linear progress did exist, but had alternatives. We are talking about Godtime and Cyclical Time, and about Cause and Effect. Cyclical Time isn't completely gone from Glorantha. There is this ominous passage in King of Sartar: So, Glorantha works on the principle that certain events are going to recur in some form for each Age of History, and there are indications that a similar effect was in place in the Godtime, less and less innocent. The Golden Age myth is presented to us as if Yelm has always been the Emperor of the Universe. However, there are various sources that suggest that Yelm was only the last in a sequence of rulers of the Universe, among these Entekosiad and a Jonstown Compendium entry in RuneQuest Companion. These events are distant from the collective or individual memories of the people of Glorantha, though, and visiting such events is similar to Green Age heroquesting (as in "First of Events" heroquesting). IMO there are two different things named Green Age. One is the era when plants spread all over the earth, with life blooming up in over-abundance. Another name for this would be the Earth Age. Then there is the passage of the world from undefined into a definition through a First Action - first birther, first namer, first drinker, first deathdealer, etc. A lot of such events appear to be located in the Earth Age, but there are other events like the first mortal dying or the first god dying (rather than being dismembered beyond reconstitution) occur in the Golden or Storm Age. Likewise, even the Storm Age has serious innocence at its beginning, e.g. in the Veldang myth and history, and the troll myth and history in the surface world starts as naive and innocent. That said, human consciousness isn't prepared to remain intact in the older cycles. There are ways to prepare questers for those older cycles, but this same preparation makes them something different from human, possibly leaving their human existence as one of several options and/or manifestations. In a way the Orlanthi worshipers flying on their breaths to the Holy Mountains while leaving their bodies behind in the local rites are undergoing such a widening of their human existence into a however small and temporary divine existence. They leave their bodies behind, which may collapse, or which may continue to dance, bow or sing with the rest of the clan that acts as supporters of the rites. The mask bearers will most likely follow the ritual dances while the quester's consciousness drifts to Orlanth's Hall and beyond. But there was a quasi-history shared by communities, a joint travel along a set of sequences. Individuals may have detoured and touched other events, but that is natural if they got spatially separated from the rest of the community. Individuals may have missed certain events, too - this is similar to missing a few game sessions of your regular gaming group. Rather than living through the deterioration, these individuals' stories read mory like "one day, things had become a lot worse. ..." They are missing out on the memory, though not necessarily on the consequences for the rest of the communal experience. Storytelling uses non-linear techniques as well, e.g. through flashbacks, possibly nested or interwoven flashbacks. Heroquests or (for stories outside of Glorantha) time travel may alter the anchor position. A bit like that, yes. Most people are comfortable with projections that reduce the dimensions to a number they are comfortable to deal with. Partial understanding derived from such projections may further the approximation to the whole of the problem, especially if several different projections are used to analyze such a thing. That's why I said that an individual will use their own linear journey through a sequence of events as their measure. A big group of individuals whose paths are parallel for most of the way share a linear history. Other groups may have intersecting paths, possibly in different sequence before the birth of entropic Linear Time made that impossible. Skipping bits of Linear Time in the otherworld still is possible. The Pithdaran journey across the seas is such a case. They seem to have departed around 400 S.T. but arrived in Pithdaros only after the Battle of Tanian's Victory. If you are a video-gamer who can go back to saved games and branch off a new chain of events, you might have a first experience what a less stringent frame of time could look like. This is making time two-dimensional - even if you are pushed forward, you have different paths you can follow and possibly explore from an anchored position. If your activities modify the game setting, your anchor might not let you back on the original track. What I am saying is that IMO each individual, or individual manifestation of a greater entity, experienced Godtime as a sequence of events. The sequence needn't be the same sequence as for other individuals or manifestations of the same greater entity.

Belintar instituted a culture of heroquesting, in order to maintain his corporeal existance. This alone could be seen as taking up God Learning again. The Book of Belintar is a collection of the magics of this part of the world, and acts as a grimoire as much as as a guide to heroquesting opportunities. Arkat began mapping the Hero Planes, but Belintar put that map into writing and (limited) distribution. Belintar drew much of this information from the research the God Learners did through the Lhankor Mhy cult. The God Learner schools and monasteries were burnt or at least thoroughly purged, but the Knowledge temples remained mostly unpersecuted. It helped that the cult didn't participate in the experiments (other than as observers). Belintar instituted the Final Information Library, a place where all information was gathered in one place, ready for research. The knowledgy collected from this did not extend to the God Learner magics to alter the hero planes through their application of sorcery or other forbidden secrets. While there is no knowledte hidden from the Knowing God, not everything is researchable in his mundane libraries. His library in the God Realm/Essence Plane is a different proposal, but I suppose it takes a major quest through L-Space to get there. (L-Space being the essence-plane/hero-plane like non-euklidean extension all libraries share, according to Terry Pratchett's Diskworld. Some of the trips of The Librarian are close enough to sorcerous explorations of the Essence Planes to be useable for Glorantha.) Belintar's origin remains a mystery. He swam ashore almost 400 years after the Closing. Speculations abound. From Prince of Sartar we know that he was blue-skinned upon his arrival, and according to the Guide he was bronze-skinned as the ruler of Kethaela. Given that he died a couple of times during his ascension, and at one time was eaten, yet kept returning in the same body, changes of hue are a minor effect.

A bronze disk, leaf gold, that's all you need. And instructions how to interprete these. (You could go for stone circles, but those are hard to carry along when playing out of your house.) Instead of years of oral tradition, I'd be willing for a printed book with a modern, readable font for the text and whichever fancy logo for the name of the game.

The runes should have been in use at the Celestial Court - after all those deities are named as the original owners. The Theyalans are descended from the people (and deities) who made the Downland Migration from Dini, below the Celestial Court, and we know that e.g. Humakt was a regular guest at Kargan Tor's court. This makes it quite likely that the Vingkotlings used the runes, and the Heortlings as well. A primary use would of course be personal, clan and tribal tattoos. We know that the Berennethtelli tattoo worn by Harmast Barefoot mutated into the Kodigvari tattoo. This means that tribal tattoos were used by the Vingkotlings already (the Kodigvari never had the chance to become Heortlings). All of this points to a continuity of the use of the core runes among the Theyalans.

True. The Ernaldan Afterlife is partially in the Deep Earth, partially in the Storm Village in the Godworld. There is a shared Lodril/Oria underground afterlife, too. Not all hells are cold darkness, either. The former Wonderhome has become a hell of too bright light and searing ashes. This actually makes me wonder how Death is connected to the fertile Underworld realm of Wonderhome.

Everyone experienced linear time for each of their manifestations, but the sequence of events for many manifestations wasn't necessarily the same, nor was the redux when another manifestation reacted to experience of a manifestation in an event. It's a bit different when a Godtime entity got subsumed as a subcult or aspect by a deity greater than the first. Orlanth may be present in all of the Thunder Brothers. That doesn't mean that different Thunder Brothers shared the experience of the others.

Chapter Cosmology - the text is neither searchable nor indexed. p.149: Original owner. ditto either owned by, or Original owner Original owner.

Comments on the Rune diagrams: It is a pity that none of the text is searchable or indexed, even though it contains core information. For a revised edition, at least the index ought to be updated. (I typed in a text version of this for my personal use that I am willing to share for this purpose in case the original files are hidden in obscure storage.) Some of the text suffers from sloppy editing, too. On the other hand, the graphic presentation of the runes and possible interactions is great. The handwriting in the background makes it look like there is a decipherable text. For pages 146 and 147 I was trying to figure out whether this was an old original parchment in Old English or Latin, but the diagram on p. 148 has the black-inked Gloranthan runes in the vertical bar overlaid on the sepia- (or hawthorn bark-) inked text, with a correction or annotation of that text left of the bar between Mastery and Law, and again between Infinity and Magic, so I am inclined to assume that these are actual alchemical diagrams a couple centuries old. My usual gripe about the Power Runes of Illusion and Disorder hasn’t changed since I first read this in Gods of Glorantha after getting an overview over the deities of Prosopaedia: Eurmal should be the heir of Ratslaf for Disorder, and Illusion should go to Donandar. I have no real problem with Eurmal not giving a shit about “should” and usurping Illusion, but given the God Learner inability to come to terms with the Pamaltelan pantheon, I wonder why the only Pamaltelan deity appearing here (except for Pamalt representing his own rune) has to be Bolongo. Leaving that position open would have been acceptable, too, or giving it to the Boggles collectively. Knowledge about Bolongo came to the God Learners through the Pithdarans. This alley should have given them a good overview over the rest of the Pamalt Pantheon, but their ethnographers didn’t take the Agimori stories about their life in the Veldt seriously. Maybe I’ll go with this theory – the original Theyalan identification scheme did have Boggles, and a God Learner (in the Great Trickster temple in Slontos?) transcribed this wrongly as Bolongo. Mastakos is another rather minor deity when worshiped under that name – his role among the merfolk appears to have diminished after Orlanth took him to his own court (similar to Heler), and the Zaranistangi probably direct the most worship to his planet. (Uleria is rarely worshiped for having a planet.) But again, the God Learners failed to understand the Zaranistangi, and their reign over Melib resulted more from blind luck than from magical insight. I doubt that Zzabur’s writings have a list of current owners – it would have to be a revised, or self-revising, edition of one of his original six books so charmingly inscribed on the skins of vanquished foes. (Those peaceful Tadeniti might have been victimized (pp. 686, 689) for an excellent and moral reason, despite Vadeli and Mostali agency.) The hexagram of Forms lacks the long diagonals of the hexagon, which strangely leaves plant and spirit without direct connection. The lack of connection between Man and Dragonewt isn’t significant, and Chaos and Beast isn’t of major importance, but should be there anyway. Why is Hykim/Mikyh spelled “Korgatsu”? What do the Veldang and Zaranistangi have to say about moon as an element? Not quite for the Errata list: we get “Lorian” instead of Lorion. This alternate spelling occurs rather often, similar to Tanian/Tanien. Is the spelling of water deities as fluent as their sex and gender? Page 149 suggests specific magical connections between certain Condition runes, without giving any clues or providing insight for the why. The vertical bar in the center bears some similarity to the Spike above the Chaosium, but that is the only halfway sensible Gloranthan explanation I can come up with.

Yes, there were different tiers of people in the Gods Age. Even the gods who became the Greater Gods of post-Compromise Glorantha offered prayer and worship to the Greater Gods of the Celestial Court, like Orlanth did when preparing for the Aroka Quest or the Lightbringers' Quest. Vingkot was a demigod born to a mortal mother, but became a god. His children were second generation demigods, typical for royal bloodlines. Tada wasn't quite a god or Garden giant, but the next best thing. His children (like the wives of Vingkot) were demigods or second generation demigods. Such divine bloodlines watered down over the generations, but extraordinary (heroic) individuals could and can refresh the divinity in such a lineage. Durev the Everyman of the Downland Migration is a case of people becoming gods. Heortling Mythology has an interesting, not quite clear paragraph on such people on p.39: By the power of their deeds, these people became deities of the Orlanthi, as aspects of Orlanth or Ernalda. One gets the impression that people grew old and retired to an existence like the afterlife modern Gloranthans achieve after being judged by Daka Fal. Godtime had the semblance of days, and in the Storm Age nights as well, years, and similar cycles. The Vingkotlings and Durevings certainly sowed their fields and reaped their harvests, and plowed them before and afterwards. They did so well into the Lesser Darkness, even though things deteriorated, harvests failed, etc.. Gods and even greater heroes have the power of pluripresence. They can manifest in different ways and places without disappearing in the other form. Mortals generally don't have this power. For the Yelmic Court, I suggest court proceedings as a means of keeping days and years. I cannot quite picture the Sun Horse as an unmoving object in the sky, so I see some perspective for Ehilm (father of Galanin), Kargzant/Reladivus and Elmal moving about in one of their manifestations, spreading their light unevenly over the lands. When Yelm still was up in the sky, the effect of this may have been negligible, but after he was replaced by the weaker Antirius, the whereabouts of these lesser suns mattered, and the further Glorantha slid towards the Greater Darkness, the more it mattered. In the East, a lesser manifestation of the sun seems to have remained in the sky, occasionally beset by Antigod schemes, but never lost. There was no way for Gloranthans to plan to walk between the Ages. Some did, like e.g. Vingkot, but not as a voluntary course, but because of their personal fate that meandered through these Godtime events in different sequences or manifestations. Hence Vingkot's deadly wounding in a battle that may have occurred outside of his reign - it may have affected a different manifestation, and the repercussions of that wounding may have affected the other manifestation out of linear sequence. It is clear that the king aspect acquired that wound and chose to undergo death, leaving his realm to his sons and sons-in-law. Godtime can be confusing in other ways, too. In some perceptions, the nine tribes of Vingkot's sons and daughters made up the entirety of his kingdom. In other perceptions, there were Great Tribes of Helerings and Durevings part of this kingdom, along with lesser folk who got adopted into clans or tribes of the Vingkotlings. It isn't quite clear when the first clans came into existence among the Vingkotlings. In a way, we assume they have always been there, but there is bound to be a "Green Age Moment" when the concept of clans was formed for subdivisions of the Vingkotlings. If you look at the Red Cow quest in The Eleven Lights, there is nothing to indicate that the Orgorvaltes under King Ulanin form anything like clans. It is the tribal king and his followers who ride against Bergilmer and his village of mountain giants.

Note that Illumination by Riddles or sudden, unprepared exposure to the Ultimate is different from meditating sages. Such "accidents" could happen on their invasions into myths. Their Arkati opposition certainly were active illuminates and possibly had means to imbue aspirants with this experience. Arkat doesn't strike me as the meditating type, though, and likely neither his followers. It isn't quite clear whether the Rightness Crusaders and their heroplane raider commandos ever managed to get knowledge how the Arkati prepared for this experience. Part of Halwal's failure to return Arkat may have been his lack of illumination. It is good that the God Learners did not pursue the path of failed mysticism to the extend Sheng Seleris did, or other major antigods.

The meeting atop or just below Larnste's Table occurred in 1613 (at age 49) and ended the Starbrow Rebellion, while the current year of the Guide is 1621 (age 57). Looking around my friends at this age, there is a distinct trend to rapid greying around this age (provided they still have enough hair to change color). For all his Lunar veneer, Fazzur is from a Heortling culture which praises male vanity, and may have dyed his hair earlier before going to a "wisdom of age" look after becoming governor.

I realize that there is a hardcore group of anthropowankers and ancient history fans among the people who write quite a lot of the Glorantha material. For me, this is part of what makes discussion of this imaginative world so interesting. Ever so often someone with expert knowledge peeps up and injects this into the meme pool from which we pull up our ideas about Glorantha. And I would like to think that even the most tedious nitpicking session may inspire occasional good ideas for distinctly typical Gloranthan scenarios or characters. Where did that happen to you? Tribalism can be strength when it comes to fighting extinction, but it may become a weakness when trying to expand. While I never got the feeling that Vikings had a different notion of property than we do, I never had the feeling that to them clan mattered much. Some of the most dramatic sagas are about warfare inside the family - not just royals, but even not-so-wealthy farmers like in Gisli Saga. I would have added Hollywood examples if I could think about them when I asked the question. The anachronisms in 10,000 BC are jarring when seen in a historical context for the New World, and neither the originality of the story nor the quality of its fight scenes stand out in a good way, but I think that flick might be a good intro how much of Glorantha works. The technologies seen in that flick are within Gloranthan abilities, often below them. Atlantis movies rarely find the sweet spot for Glorantha, all too often they drift into science fantasy. Sure. This is part of what I wanted to bring across - a Neolithic culture with sophisticated religious architecture and limited but proven access to bronze during the building phase of the capped ring is part of that "Bronze Age" definition. The British tin played an important role in the bronze industry on the continent and was used in the mediterranean area, too. The people who produced and traded it and the agricultural settlements in their wider backyard were part of the Bronze Age, regardless of their material culture. Stonehenge remained a ritual site well into the Roman era, and has been used as such in Christian times, even if you ignore neo-pagans using that site. Like with the Nebra disk, the original usage changed. Oetzi the ice mummy narrowly missed inclusion in Bronze Age types.

Arachne Solara, I would guess. The God Learners are known to over-generalize and to get local detail completely wrong. In addition to the names provided by Harald from Heortling Mythology, there is Tara in the myth where Ironhoof hunts here down.

You should make sure to say which Bronze Age you are talking about. There are different ones in archaeology, philosophy, myth etc. So, let's name a few Bronze Age cultures - the Tuatha de Danann/Daoin Sidhe, the Atlanteans (might be Golden or Silver Age), the Hallatatt proto-Celts, the Inca, the Sea People, the Aun-Jetitz (Unetice) folk who made the Nebra disk, the Hittites (who are famous for being early adapters of Iron), the Babylonians (first empire, not the Nebucadnezar one), the Stonehenge builders, the Egyptians at least up to Khadesh.. All the participants in the Iliad (and epecially the Trojans had lots of exotic allies), the Swedish boat buiilders whose rock carvings look like the Hjortspring boat, Harappa, the Vediic peoples. People will do that regardless. Kull of Atlantis or Conan the Cimmerian are conceptually Bronze Age heroes. When you name Myceneans, people will envision the Spartans from 300 if you are lucky, and Athenian full hauberks if you're unlucky. Iron weapons, armor, and shields. Still, this is how we picture the Pelorian phalanxes or the Sun Domers. (This is similar to Arthurian knights in 16th century chrome plated armor... the worst Sean Connery flick ever.) So, what is wrong with Anglo-Saxons or continental Celts, Etruscans or Hannibal's host? When it comes to weapons and armor, especially the RuneQuest folk are stuck in the "put on full body armor if you want to keep your limbs" mindset that makes them think of flexible armor like chainmail and disdain stuff like linothorax. Is that how Caligula reported the battles he participated in? Constantine the Great? That's myth or propaganda for you. Really. Roman Emperors have been depicted similarly. Older battles are like the battle at Tollense valley. I suppose you were autocorrected away from "Pharaoh smiting his enemies"... You get the very same reports from the middle ages and the second crusade. Friedrich Barbarossa, the German emperor who died on the overland journey, is remembered in a German poem with the highly politically incorrect verses: "Zur Rechten sah man, wie zur Linken, 'Nen halben Türken runtersinken." (To the right, as to the left, half a Turk fell, deftly cleft. Not a direct translation, but in the spirit of the rhyme).

Nochet has no sea (or river) walls to speak of, so grills on that side don't make any sense. The wall towards Orlanths Hill is mostly a cultural statement, or re-statement. My story has no problem passing through any of the Nochet city gates. It is approaching the House Norinel mausoleum and subterranean tombs which might require an alternative route. The party's purpose is even sufficiently legitimate not to aggravate any magical guardians, or even triggering their attention. The current leadership of House Norinel might beg to differ, but the ancestors wouldn't necessarily. Street and youth gangs I was thinking about house-sponsored or hall-transcending semi-acceptable gangs, similar to those in New Pavis. Do some bigger houses organize the streetwise of their clients in such gangs? Are these gangs an opportunity to bond with people from other houses before entering the militia or similar organisations? Perhaps before the adulthood rites? So basically, we have four distinct sources of drinking water for the city. Rainwater catchment for Sarli - they probably have special regulations for roof drainage, and a different system of sewage - and three major aqueducts/canals feeding Nochet - Sestarto's feeding the northwest and the center, Panaxles' feeding the center south of the Sacred City all the way to Dearno, and Korlhar's feeding the southernmost districts and Meldektown from a creek south of the Antones Estate. That means there are four major houses responsible for providing water, and a number of lesser houses/halls dependent of those, like Lorionaeo. As mentioned above, Sarli is likely to have a "clean sewer" system, possibly even above street level if rooftops are the main catchment areas. They will still have a cloaka sewer system, requiring a lot more maintenance than the constantly watered sewers elsewhere in the city. Elsewhere there will be a constant overflow of surplus water from the canals flushing the sewers. Trollkin might be active in the sewers. The dark provides a good environment for them, and their diminutive size might make them better reaching sites that need clearance than human Nochetites. They will probably end up in risky environments way more often than human maintenance folk on official missions. (Toshers run much higher risks than other humans, even when associated with official maintenance groups.) This map has a couple of updates compared to the pdf map on glorantha.com. Looking at the yellow band of dock area, how do I have to imagine this? Open quay- or beachside with a few lifting mechanisms, or a jumble of wooden sheds, warehouses and offices of customs and house officers tallying the goods?

In all fairness, D&D was rather late in providing a consistent setting. It started as a dungeon exploration game, a kind of tabletop Nethack. It did spawn a generic fantasy mishmash. The fantasy literature available in the mid-seventies and early eighties were the input to D&D. I was a voracious reader of fantasy literature in the early eighties, before I discovered roleplaying games. There were lots of different settings and styles around at the time, too much to deal with in this thread. If you look at Deities and Demigods, you find unabashed stats for just about any pantheon the authors had heard of. Nothing indicates a setting here. And while some of the D&D equipment weirdness seems to have sprung out of the Bayeux Tapestry (like clerics wielding maces and hammers), I don't get the feeling that the D&D games had anything to do with the middle ages. There was a fad of Arthurian-style fantasy about in those years. Some of it acceptable, other offerings meh. Coupling those with humanoid races like in Middle Earth and a magic system allegedly used by Jack Vance in a series of fantasy novels I have never had the chance to read resulted in the strange settings spawned by D&D. A few such settings did this kind of synthesis well - I am very partial towards Midkemia. Not the least for their quality roleplaying supplements, but also for the first dozen or so of novels by Feist. Non-medieval (and non-Arthurian) fantasy abounded then, and was used in the collages rather than syntheses that went for settings then. Sure. Cults of Prax is everything Deities and Demigods never was - a set of consistent pantheons represented by a few major cults, in conflicts with one another. Pavis and the Big Rubble is a well-thought out combination of urban adventuring and venturing into dungeons - not intricate leveled mega-traps, but way more plausible episodic locations. Troll Pak sold the history of Glorantha from an unexpected angle, while Cults of Terror gave a glimpse at the myths of Glorantha in context. Too bad I entered RQ only with RQ3, in the Games Workshop edition, and my old fascination of the Vikings. Given this approach, I have two rather different mind-realms for RQ and for Glorantha. I thought that the Celtic/Germanic spin on the Orlanthi was implied already in the Dragon Pass boardgame. They never were Vikings, sorry. Vikings have ships rather than cattle herds in the mountains. King of Sartar was what hauled me into Glorantha research. It had thanes. That meant pre-christianisation Anglo-Saxons to me - already land-bound. Argrath was Arminius and Alexander. The Red Emperor was Xerxes and Nero. Guilty as charged - the RQ combat experience was the SCA experience translated to paper and pencils. This has been discussed before. Guilds are an urban mixture of cults and clans/tribes along professions. Rome or Athens, Asia Minor. We got which cities from RQ2? Pavis, Elkoi, Trilus and Dykene. None of these medival, or medi-evil. And we got the place names of the Dragon Pass cities, and units with names which would lead our imagination astray. Sir Ethilrist, Sir Narib, Baron Sanuel. But also the Snake Pipe Dancers, the Free Philosophers, Tosti Runefriend, the Egg Lords. Goldgotti the Merchant Prince. City Militias - unheard of in the middle ages, common in Greek and Phoenician warfare. Phalanxes, but also dragoons. The Imperial College of Magic. Renaissance of course was aping the Classical Athens through the Hollywood-like distortion of Roman observers. RQ2 has this claim that Glorantha is a Bronze Age world, though. Right in its four page description or so of Glorantha. Having been in the middle of the discovery of Glorantha through those publications, I can say that Iron/Dark Age really was what drove those representations. And a good thing, too. Apart from the name of the metal and the methods producing the metal, Gloranthan material culture and warfare is Iron Age. With stirrups. Fun fact: farmers lived almost under the same material circumstances in the Neolithicum and in the Iron Age. The tools changed their source material, that's all. I am strongly against the mediterranean (and hence naval) influences, for the same reason I don't see Vikings as a valid source except for the wergeld usage. (That's where the Old Irish come in handily with written near-contemporary records, too.) I am fine with using the Philistines for a parallel. Best-known of the Sea Peoples (though not as such) through the old testament stories about David. I'm fine with the Makkabeans as a parallel, even though only an apocryphal biblical text, and against an opponent not really named. (Seleucids? What's that?) This is not limited to the design team, but common to the Gloranthan Tribe which formed via the Digests in the early nineties, held conventions all over the English-speaking world and produced fanzines dedicated to Glorantha and RuneQuest. I won't say that you had to be there to see why these designations turned out to be the least prejudice-loaded ones. (I disagree about the Assyrians, btw - lots of other Mesopotamians to choose from.) So, the design team speaks for a much broader group of people who supported Glorantha in much more difficult times. This spirit was what carried the acquisition of Chaosium, too. I will readily admit that the cross-pollination of the early nineties got me reading up on cultures I had hardly heard of before. Creating this kind of thirst for knowledge is one of the strengths of the setting for me. With that background, what do you associate with the term "Bronze Age"? For me, that's Nebra Disk, the Henge in Stonehenge, and the salt mine of Hallstatt. Seriously. But then I was reading books about archaeology of central Europe since years before I read Caesar (in Latin, at school). Triggered by a cousin who belongs to the Schliemann family and my fascination with Vikings. I could get started about the neolithic køkkenmødding culture (might possibly rather be mesolithic), and I would understand if I encountered head-scratches and question marks in the glances. Those guys lived within walking distance of my old school, though. When I say Celts, the Hallstatt people are my first association, followed by the La Tene conquerors of Rome under Brennus, and the Dying Galatans from Asia Minor. The Gauls of Asterix come later. The Welsh range about in the same region. Irish come a lot later to my mind, and get mixed up with Picts and Caledonians. The Tuatha de Danann are more prominent to me than Finn and the Fiana or Cu Chullain. But then, my grandfather immigrated to Germany from around Hallstatt. Family history for the win. I agree here. Given the influence of the Christian education, parallels from the Old Testament might be more accessible. Unfortunately, that means dealing with a culture presented as monotheistic.

The Triolini are to those sea monsters like dark trolls or trollkin are to Dehori and bigger Darkness demons - the lesser, mortal kin, limited in understanding. Many of those monsters are likely to be denizens of the middle depths or of the deep, perhaps even the underdeep, summoned to the surface to act as guardians of the interdict of the Closing. They are as far outside of the regular frame of reference of the air-breathing Triolini half-breeds as Phoenixes and Luxites are out of the frame of reference of urban or rural Dara Happans. They will know rites to appease or worship them, but they won't necessarily understand them, let alone be able to influence them. I see a possibilty that the triolini communicate with currents and even waves in a manner similar to the Aldryami communication with the Forest, or the Forest Song. It might be a communications by touch or pressure, possibly subliminal. This would sweep the merfolk up in activities of the waters more often than vice versa. If you look at the merkings like Terthinus or Ermanthver, these are Manthi rather than Triolini.

I would guess that these are primarily brick-makers' clay pits, given that pottery is a sacred craft for the earth goddessesDuck r rather than for meldek. Still, a lot of charcoal will be burnt for brick-making. What about the ducks? Duck river boats are the best (possibly only) means of transport through Beast Valley into Sartar. The Creekstream River is wider than the Rhine at Bacharach, yet flows at least as fast as the Rhine there. This will create almost whitewater conditions for at least part of the journey. Upriver traffic cannot use land-based draught teams, whether of humans, oxen, gazzam or other muscle power. Neither Grazers nor Centaurs are likely to tolerate such activity without merciless taxation and harrassment. Working against that mighty current sounds like an exercise in futility, too. However, there would be counter-currents created by eddies and similar effecgts, and these children of the river would be the perfect guides of the upriver journey, whether for Durulz reed boats or for a swimmer like Enjossi. I would guess that Enjossi's success re-establishing the salmon in the Stream would have enriched the Lyksos riverfolk, too. Salmon season (I suppose we are talking about pacific salmon here) would be a big event even for Nochet, let alone Riverside. So, is there a special place for the durulz in Nochet, or on the opposite bank of the Lyksos? I was a bit hesitant to suggest this, given all this "Bronze Age" vibe, but a mechanism like this can work without any force translation. Jrusteli might have introduced the water screw. I asked because of those reports about a population of 10k living in the Manila cementery. Having strict rules to keep their hovels out of the Antones Estates does make sense, though. I suppose that maintenance of the Estate is a major branch of Nochet economy. I have a couple of ideas about the Nochet necropolis activities I would like to test here. - Food and drink catering for funerary/sacrificial feasts in the necropolis: Sharing a meal with the family dead in the estates ought to be a regular Nochet activity. Especially the poorer inhabitants of Nochet might associate their devotions to the dead with days of good chow. - Scriptoria to leave written prayers for specific blessings with the ancestors. Possibly also shops renting out reusable clay tablets for standard requests. - Tents or baldachins for hire. - Transport of building materials and disposal of excavation material (probably going to Meldek Town for further use as building material). - Messenger services to keep in contact with city activities while on funerary feasts. This applies especially to the more powerful houses and halls. - Guard and carrier hiring places - probably around the city gates and the main inroads into the extates. - Sale of devotional gifts (most likely terracotta or similar pottery, or various types of shrouds) - possibly clothes rental or sale, if certain rites require some form of penitent dress-up. - Fortune-readers and spirit-talkers making a living from relaying the replies of the honoured dead. All of this could make the Estates a vibrant part of Nochet daily life rather than a forbidding presence of the dead. Unless in recent mourning, visits to the Estates could be a major factor in the spiritual well-being of the Nochetites, an enjoyable experience. The Estates by night could be a much different proposal. Guards and patrols will be necessary. Some of the clean-up and of the preparations for next day's business will fall into the twilight times, too. Then there is the Blackmaw. On the other hand, there is Rivertown more or less directly adjacent to the Estates. Panaxles' Canal lies at a considerable distance from the Estates, and there is a lot of (presumably open) town between the Canal and the Estates. How much has Rivertown grown in recent years, and who inhabits the area adjacent to the Estates? This area of Riverside is anything but on the side of the river. Poverrite activities don't make sense this far from the actual river. My guess is that we find a shantytown of recent immigrants here, less wealthy and less structured than the older established presence in Sarli. I cannot imagine a culture that leaves grave goods without some clandestine activity recovering some of those grave goods, but with the mindset of the Death Cult of Esrolia in general and Nochet in specific, I thought there had to be some only mildly distasteful way of doing this. The Nontraya episode of Esrolian pre-history probably is extremely relevant to the necropolis culture, too. My scenario is about an ancient foe of House Norinel that has been laid to unrest again and again, only to re-appear at the most unopportune times. The rites of the Earth priestess who married his slayer averted this threat to the House and all its clients for the last seventy years, but now it is rising again. Given the Ernaldan myths about caves and underground resting places, I have the impression that the Esrolian necropolis will have a surface place where sacrifices and feasts are held, and a vast sub-basement area where the dead are resting most of the year. There will be guardians of various kinds - ghosts, rakshasa, snakes, but also Axe Sisters and possibly kimantorings. There could be iron traps to keep out trollkin. Still thinking about the Estates, I wonder what arrangements were made by the houses that left Nochet after the Devastation. They surely won't have gathered up the generations of their dead from the Estates. More likely they would have made regular pilgrimages re-burying a few years worth of their dead in their ancient sites, or more recent expansions thereof. A necropolis like the one I tried to describe above requires constant attention and maintenance. I wonder whether the houses that left Nochet left behind Halls which had the sole function of maintaining the necropolis assets, which were completely reliant on the agricultural production the houses established elsewhere. All of this deals with the consequences of the New River dug by Belintar. The area north of the Lyksos river, labeled Ferrytown in the pdf map. Raised as in Belintar used his magic to pull this bit of land up from the new riverbottom? Why so early? Long-term planning on reaping the trade tolls from the river trade? There couldn't have been much beyond the supplies from Arkat's Hold and New Crystal City. Further north, the North March had become raiding grounds for the Grazelanders. The Chain must be the biggest chunk of Sea Metal in Glorantha. A bronze chain wouldn't work - there is no way we could construct a taut chain across the width of the combine Lyksos and Creekstream River in a way that it prevents river traffic from "escaping" into the Mirrorsea Bay past Nochet customs. A sea-metal-chain would float atop the river (regardless of its significant bulge upwards in the middle, even if it just followed gravity and did not have strands of active water from the Sky River, the Steam, the Creek and the Lyksos in it, rushing towards Magasta's Pool. I think that the river is way too narrow along the length of the chain. At least half the water of the Creekstream River gets added to the Lyksos water, and while the Lyksos mouth may have been placid and lazy up to 1318, the new water flow should easily demand four times the width you allow it. For controlling the grain trade, the Lyksos is rather insignificant. 80% of the Esrolian grain will be transported past Rhigos. It is possible that Rhigos doesn't have much if any deepwater access, though, so transshipping across the Choralinthor Bay might be a necessity. Still, Nochet is the remotest possible port (apart from Karse) that could be used in this way. The City of Wonders would be the most logical place to transship the grain from flat-bottomed Mirrorsea craft to deep water vessels, but understandably Belintar has no great desire to have foreign magic interfering with his core residence. All of that is post-Opening history, though. This far back, grain exports wouldn't have been an issue. I'm curious - was this already filling up the former trench that had been bridged already in the Dawn Age? The bridge appears intact (although with the south end flooded) in the post-Devastation map. I am wondering about this need to reclaim Tershis. Certainly not because of population pressure. The river eating away chartered land, eroding the Charter itself might have been a relevant reason. Overall, this land reclamation from the rivers has lots of drama. Taming a river is harder than taming a coast line. I can only assume that the western and northern shores of Orlanth's Hill see regular re-enactments of the Thrinbarri or the Trembling Shore myths to avoid erosion. While the pre-Belintar maps show lots of marsh and wetlands, I would assume that there is a solid bedrock quite close to the surface here. Is there a particular reason why Sarli attracts all the immigrants from neighboring countries? The Esrolian March may have its greater influence of shepherder rather than farmer culture, but still is Esrolian in nature. Storm Hill is quite a distance away. I didn't expect this to become that game relevant, especially for your RPGGeek-game. I wonder whether there is an ancient rivalry between the wall-keepers (meaning the folk ritually and materially in charge of keeping up the wall) and the aqueduct keepers. After all, Sestarto's aqueduct crosses Panaxles' wall, according to an overlaying of the Harmast era map with your current map. I could see an argument for Deresagar being populated as soon as the non-reclaimers left, leaving behind a community of caretakers for the Estates, hopelessly overrun on Ancestors' Day while the houses and halls were in the diaspora. Once the walls of Kimantor's Citadel were re-erected, the sprawl of the estates into the city should have come to an end. Still, there must have been a "resettlement" of probably a thousand family tombs that encroached (and undermined) Kimantor's Citadel in order to get the walls and the Blackmaw Overwatch re-instated, with at a guess about 20,000 dead to be re-patriated elsewhere in the Estates, taking the sprawl eastward. I can only imagine that Belintar himself organized the exodus of these dead, who would have moved their mortal remains themselves to their new resting places. This must have been a busy Ancestors' Day. When was the Sacred City disowned and freed from normal habitation, re-dedicated to a temple complex? Possibly already by the time Bruvala became queen. There must be passages in the Charter of Nochet that allow annexion of Chartered Land for the purpose of temple building. The re-dedication of the Sacred City and the eviction from the Lunar Temple area must have used the same precedences (the relocation of the tombs from Kimantor's Citadel probably too). I wonder whether the evictees were forced (are going to be forced) into settling the land between Panaxles Canal and the Estates. Interesting, but snipped.