Joerg

Godunya's career is told in Revealed Mythologies, minus the belt buckle saleseman bit. He joined what he called a monastery as one of the paupers, got the permission to meditate, and soon even the masters of the monastery came to observe his techniques and to learn from him.

Pavis:GtA has the rubble maps throughout its history. Given the multicultural nature of the city, the various groups would have found solutions for their own folk, accessible from where they lived. Beats sending them your children, as has been part of Arkat's Command/the Kitori tribute when the other traditional payments couldn't be met. (Sorry, couldn't resist...) Something like this (though in less detail) was my intention, yes. I did mention catacombs as an alternative because unlike in the Real World, the Big Rubble survivors didn't usually get to rebuild their houses every few generations, providing new space for the next generations of corpses. Then there is the nutritional value of the corpses. Eating them directly would be yucky in the extreme, but eating the carrion eaters - especially in the shape of oversized maggots like of the troll domesticated giant insects - would be a less appalling though still quite unpleasant way of survival. An alternative would be bone-houses that were part of the temple districts. The quality of grave goods would correlate to the wealth and health of the city. After the wall breaks, you would see a distinct loss of quality, and the Dragonkill would have ended all influx of Kerofinelan items, after a sudden loss of new draconic items eighty years earlier.

Holy Country development was reported to be under way, without telling us for which system. Return to the seas. Martin Hawley's Men of the Seas was a good first step to expand the horizons at least to the ports of call, with occasional forays into the hinterland, almost Traveler-style. Wolf Pirates. With or without Harrek. Apart from the Yggite homelands off Winterwood, they have islands in western Seshnela, northern Jrustela and on the Threesteps archipelago south of Kethaela. Ralios is under-used in official publications, too. As much Orlanthi action as you may need, plus all the city states, lake navies, neo-Arkati and more or less orthodox Malkioni you may want to encounter or vanquish. And you could strike into Seshnela down the Tanier River. Peloria is a bigger bid. Saird would be a logical next step northwards, but even Tarsh could do with more official attention. The Dara Happan heartlands might be interesting for a Jar-eel-centered campaign involving the White Moon developments, and then the drastic changes in the Empire. In order to illustrate those changes, we would need to get to know the situation before the changes, though. All these backgrounds are part of the Argrath Saga, so they might address ongoing Orlanthi campaigns as well as new starts in more or less exotic locales. Kralorela could be approached from the Lunar Empire, from Genert's Wastes, or over the Seas. Each approach would lead your external explorers into a different initial environment. This could be done in the form of chained scenarios rather than a detailed setting book. A native Kralori campaign would be a challenge, and offers as much variety as a "native Lunar" campaign in some corner of Peloria in terms of local influences to choose from. I am not sure how much interest there would be for this kind of campaign before introducing the setting through scenarios for characters with more conventional backgrounds. The same goes for much of the rest of Glorantha, really, so a naval setting might open these areas for gaming. Other styles of gaming might be explored - for instance the fate of a few bloodlines to stand against the same immortal foe again and again, through the ages. A set of ancestral abilities developed in earlier encounters with this foe could be re-incarnated while the exact origin of the new set of players may vary wildly. A Heortling family might survive only in the descendants of some unfortunate slave of Praxians, and return mounted on whichever tribal beast.

The tomb robbers are after imperial age grave goods rather than the poor grave goods of recent settlers and exiles. As for the human inhabitants of Pavis, their funerary customs will vary by origin. I suppose that the survivors of the Rubble had house burials, in the floor of their houses, or in catacombs. Big funerary pyres or exposure to birds would have equaled exposure to trolls (which does help getting rid of the corpse, but also of the grieving survivors). They would have refrained from eating the corpses directly, but in harsh times I could imagine them foraging on the insects feasting on their dead. Some might have sent their dead to the trolls as tribute. The Sartarite-descended males would have to import fuel for funerary pyres, or else join their females in earth burials. No idea where that would be, but given the flintnail cult specialty in quarrying and mining, catacombs are a possibility under New Pavis, too. Sun Domers face the same problems as Sartarites with regard to fuel. Given their access to salt, they might practice mummification, instead, and possibly a delayed cremation of the mummy (which provides much of its own fuel). Exposure to the vultures (creatures of fire, if not actual fire) might be another possibility before giving the bones a burial. Riverfolk will probably have boat burials, returning their dead to the river. Nomad-descended Pavisites might take their dead to the chaparral to perform whichever rites their former tribes had, returning them to Eiritha one way or the other.. Resident Lunars such as the Patroma family will have secured their own burial arrangements, as much in keeping with the customs of their old homelands as possible, but in the city. Lunar officials sent here as part of their duty might have their mortal remains sent back to their homelands. Lunar soldiers dying in the course of their duties (and retrieved by their comrades) would be subject to regimental burial customs.

when fighting a troll with siz and str of 30 each any strike should threaten to be deadly, IMO. This troll would be 3,5 meters or twelve feet tall.

I don't think so. You rather awakened a few of the Old Ones. (No idea if any of the participants qualifies for Great Old One...)

This sounds a bit like the excess levels of success in dice pool systems. Do you figure this from the attack roll only, without any influence of the parry? Or does a parry skill roll use a similar, contrary effect? One might replace the damage roll entirely with this system. I think that you are in danger of replacing the entire damage allocation mechanic with this system. This doesn't have to be a bad thing. But you are in experimental terrain there, and I wouldn't inflict such a change into a campaign's continuity. On the other hand, you can neglect campaign continuity by tossing your players into a magical setting where these effects are limited to that environment and magics. Like a spell bestowed on them by the patron of a special quest into a neighboring realm with rules of its own, a pocket dimension or whatever. Make it clear to your players that this is a temporary or setting-specific effect, and test it out. If you are happy with the result, maybe the players can be enabled to carry the effect back to their normal setting - whether as a personal spell that needs activation, as a blessing that can be bestowed by a certain artifact, location or ritual, or as a permanent change to the normal setting.

That's where the marriage to the land comes in. This rite is important because it gives the humans the connection to the fertility of the land, to nurture and alter it. So yes, the quester for this fertility needs to overcome the resistance of the forces of the wild. He may have to chase the uncatchable deer, or he may have to fight his way through long stretches of thorny vines slashing back at him while arrows are fired at him from seemingly nowhere, or there might be giants that need to be cut down before proceding to the intended wife. And the husband will have to make sure that the marriage remains a happy one. Repeats of the wooing are absolutely required.

I don't recall whether I provided the link to Oliver Bernuetz' Mything Links page on G+, so here it is: http://www.oocities.org/bernuetz/mything/mything.html Basically a collection of links to web-published stories with Glorantha content, well researched, but probably suffering from links to expired pages.

The presence of herd men in the meat market doesn't herald morokanth presence - one can safely assume that most of the meat marketed in Badside was raided from other clans or tribes. IIRC the meat market is dominated by Sable Riders, through their good relationship with the occupation forces (at least while specific individuals haven't worn out that initial good-will). Other than the sable riders, badside will have nomad outlaws from any tribe, possibly forming occasional raiding bands bringing some meat from other clans and tribes, including sables. Given the Pavis need for meat, many an aging steed deemed uneatable by animal riders might get a decent price in Pavis. Nomads don't make sausages or similar obfuscations of meat provenance like pastries - Pavisites do. I would look at Badside for individuals from tribes other than the Sables, the Unicorns and the Zebras first. The history of Farmers' Quarter shows that the animal nomad citizens of the walled part of New Pavis are especially trustworthy (for dirty nomads). Speaking of Morokanth in Pavis - are there any among the Pol Joni? There will be a few in the warrior societies, like those led by a certain Sartarite swordmaster and wind lord.

I agree - just look at the "making a tribe" negotiations in the King of Dragon Pass computer game, and how the clans that you approach are presented. There are other ways to cattle breeding and bull taming, within the standard cult of Orlanth. The trick with the lariat and the stick was originally Orlanth's, asserting domination over his brother, the Storm Bull. And that bull knowledge came in extremely handy during a certain ceremony in that playtest game with Ian Cooper. Barntar cultists are able to plow more land than ordinary farmers - which can mean that they produce a huge surplus in barley, or, if the arable land is limited, that they free up a lot of people to pursue other forms of primary production. Plow any field is especially valuable when cultivating new fields - the Barntar magic will deal with remaining tree roots, small buried boulders and sub-soil ridges of bedrock in places with little soil coverage. Another use would be to cultivate near vertical hill-sides for vinyards or orchards. On ordinary, well-kept and level fields the secret is not that helpful. Herd diversity comes either from trading the offspring of price bulls (something most cattle breeders are somewhat reluctant to do), or from raiding. When it comes to Barntar herds, I would rather expect expert breeding selection for desirable traits - better meat, stronger oxen... (Better milk would be in the domain of Uralda rather than Barntar, IMO.)

Who are you calling a Lunar? Dara Happan Yelmites expect a funeral pyre. Shargashi bring their dead into an Enlosure, which I picture as some sort of bonehouse. Lodrili might expect a burial or a pyre, preferably back home. Other ethnic contingents will have different customs - provincial Orlanthi, Thunder Delta Slingers, Char-un, Carmanians... Lunar cultists might have rites of their own, but I expect those to be variants of their homeland. For my scenario I had an undead assault on Whitewall, and to protect those corpses the Lunars did not intend to send against the walls there was a Shargashi enclosure - "walled off" with green cloth, and hefty magical wards - to avoid the corpses to rise with all the other, unprotected ones. I assumed that officers falling in a field controlled by the Lunars would be preserved as good as possible and then sent home for proper burial rites. There is possibly an entire specialized branch of the logisticians devoted to this. Luckily, the freight trains bringing food and equipment to the front tend to return with a much lighter load, so transport is easily secured. If you are unlucky enough to fall where the enemy keeps the field, or hasn't been chased away decisively, impromptu burials or burnings will be the way to deal with the corpses, if the slain are lucky. If they aren't... read Tacitus on what Germanicus found five years after the battle of the Teutoburg forest, and how he and his troops provided minimum dignity disposal of their mortal remains. Given the irrational hate of the Dara Happans vs. Orlanthi, I would expect them as victors to go further in the defiling of the corpses of slain Orlanthi. Using them in necromantic attacks would be a start. But then, this might be in the small print of Lunar soldiers' contracts, too - service beyond death, within reasonable terms. (In the Dragon Pass boardgame, whoever wants to ally Delecti or the Tusk Riders sends an army unit to be slaughtered. If sent to Delecti, this unit provides the first element of the Zombie chain. The Tusk Riders just torture them to death, and then probably feed them to their mounts.)

High roll wins is an inheritance from Pendragon, and with that heritage is almost certain to remain in RuneQuest. The statistics show that high roll wins gives a fairer distribution of results. Otherwise any success of a low skill participant will trump a normal success of a high skill participant. What are you going to do when it is player vs. player, whether as result from berserk rage or some other form of madness or mind control, or in a contest?

That's definitely wiki territory. The old Whitewall wiki did exactly this - everybody contributed what they felt like contributing, and then there was a mailing list (could have been a forum instead) where stuff was discussed. Good times... Sure. That's one of the beauties of a wiki - refs can contribute their campaign detail, and have other refs use it. A lame entry from a systematic can always be altered. There is an upper limit to believable bar establishments, though, and I think that the official ones in the Pavis books are quite close to that. Even so, a ref could always maintain a campaign log, campaign characters (at least their public info) and a "in my campaign" paragraph or separate page for the same person or place showing differences to the mainstream one in such a wiki. A lot can be done about regulars and one-time visitors in the existing bars, like the Griselda stories show.

While I am just an occasional contributor there, it is basically a free (advert-financed) service by Wikia which can have any subject. There ought to be a few administrator options, but basically there is just a wiki, and then there is lots of work to input the data. Peter is working on a wiki-based knowledge base on Glorantha, and works a lot with categories, trying to give systematics. I did a similar thing years ago using a database. Categories are fine, but you can operate a Wiki without that - if someone is a member of a group, link that group, and edit that group to link back to the newly described member. Especially for a project like New Pavis. In this case, I would go back to my old model of providing publication and page number for the sources. There aren't that many for New Pavis - HQ Pavis, RQ2 "Pavis and Big Rubble" (the Classics edition), Collected Griselda, and possibly King of Sartar, the Prince of Sartar webcomic and RQ3 River of Cradles. That's absolutely easy. What you are proposing is the same format the Sartar High Council Freeform provided, a public information and a secret page. The secret information would have to follow a systematic alteration from the public information, and repeat (and possibly highlight) the public information. And there is a high likelihood that the public contents of public and secret information pages are going to differ sooner rather than later. On Wikia, there is no way to hide the existance of the character secrets pages from the casual visitor within the same wiki. Running two wikis with duplicate data is a pain in the posterior. The database format I used for my old Glorantha index, built by @CharlesCorrigan, did handle separate levels of data access, but there one would have to find a way to hide secret inter-connections (not that hard), producing a dataset takes a lot more discipline than in a wiki, and all that combined might well deter collaborators. I might be able to host it on glorantha.de if someone does the database administration. My domain glorantha.de ostensibly can handle a wiki or two, but I would need time to set that up, and I have no idea what exactly the software provided by my ISP does. I need to finish the work on my house before I can sit down and get a wiki running there. I don't get a mapserver for the current account with my ISP, though. That might need a virtual server running specialized software. A cheap version with KML overlays as used by Google Maps and other javascript APIs might be possible, and might be edited in a rather simple database/php combination, but again, I would need quite a bit of time to get back into the matter to set up something like that.

You can always treat tech equipment like sidekicks or allies of the characters - a few defining characteristics, a few flaws (defining the limits of the equipment), and there you are. Tech equipment can be reasonably assumed to be of a similar level of sapience as a bound one-trick spirit or a steed.

I'd say someone set up a wiki and enter the known info, a few people grab a copy of RuneQuest Cities for populating the houses without purpose into some purpose, taking into account the number of known businesses. It is clear that we have several buildings housing more than one workshop or shop, so there is going to be a somewhat greater need for residences than in the usual Midkemia-Press-style city. Charakters get pages of their own, linking to places (not just houses, but also taverns, streets) where they could be encountered. And linking other characters. And families, clans, gangs, you name it - luckily a wiki is a lot more flexible than a database. OTOH a database might be needed for an interactive map. Published material can't be included other than the barest bones unless the site gets a go-ahead by Chaosium. Page references might have to replace copy and paste... We would need a city map we can use - ideally an interactive one. Even better with a 3D option (a lot of 3D work on New Pavis has already been done e.g. by Jane Williams in VRML - the elevations of New Pavis might need to get re-modeled, it is far less flat than in the walk-throughs I have seen). It is possible to bend Google Maps to the breaking point to achieve such a result, or we would need a mapserver. (I have been wanting one for Glorantha for the last 15 years or so. Starting with New Pavis might be a way to get it going.) One might even create an algorithm for moving people about in the city, in order to create a baseline crowd depending on the time of the day, with events and encounters worked in. Here is an example of a campaign wiki set in New Pavis: http://secrets-of-pavis.obsidianportal.com/ At the very least, you will get a mix of the City of Carse level information and a campaign wiki, but there are hardly any upper limits except participants' commitment.

A simple "Ignite" won't do for this, but you are right, at times magic will replace the work, or make an otherwise unskilled task a job for the magician. Smithing in Glorantha is a topic on its own. Over on the G+ Glorantha group the question has come up whether bronze greatswords and bastard swords are feasible: including a theory of mine why bonesmithing might be something else than just redsmithing. Sure - waste not, want not. I guess that those flintstone digs are minor sacred places not necessarily right next to the village. A local maintainer might trade the overburden or spoil to neighboring communities or even a regular trader for necessities at the site. My internal picture is that of the neolithic flintstone miles in Denmark: http://en.natmus.dk/historical-knowledge/denmark/prehistoric-period-until-1050-ad/the-neolithic-period/polished-axes-of-flint/flint-mining-a-risky-business/ Even so, the question remains whether the chalk serves ritual purposes, too. After all, it embodies the dead bodies of the slain sea entities in the Flood Era struggles when it doesn't trace further back to Faralinthor. Too bad these entities were mostly boneless... Mining for godbones could look very similar. Would there be stickpicker initiates of Hedkoranth or Gustbran making a meagre living out of providing raw materials for more qualified specialists? Speaking of everyday magic, and trying to return to the topic of money - what magics would be used in connection with money? Lokarnos' Coin Wheel magic and Argan Argar's Safe are a given, but of divine origin. Detection magics can be used to find counterfeit coins. What else?

Depending on your tool for simulating Glorantha, employing this kind of magic is a rather limited luxury. In RuneQuest terms, a rather small effect (1-point spell) lasts for a couple of minutes, but it takes you about two hours to regenerate the personal magical force you backed that spell with, unless you have spirit slaves or retainers doing this for you. It doesn't matter whether these RQ rules abstractions model Gloranthan reality within a 50% confidence interval or not, the assumption is that personal magic won't elevate you to a different level of technology unless you are a specialized magician with lots of infrastructure. There is another form of magic which RuneQuest models inadequately, if at all - communal blessings, resulting from the ritual activities of big communities. Such blessings can create ambient effects with much more impact to the work and life of the recipients. However, Glorantha is a damaged world. Except for a few (holy) places which survived the Greater Darkness relatively undamaged, most of it was dragged back from oblivion, and has been patched back together. Much of it requires the ambient blessings to function normally. This also goes for wilderness, with entities like hunting nymphs or the Lady of the WIlds rallying the forces of life to maintain these functions - not always on the level of the rites described for the Wild Temple in the Beast Man lands south of the Upland Marsh, but possibly similar. Prax and the Wastes are a special case, though - the damage there predates the general exposure to oblivion, and is much harsher. The balance of the magics of Glorantha and the destruction the magics have to counteract will result in significant differences from real world bronze age cultures. Some things may be more advanced, others may turn out as more primitive or bleak than expected. Location matters in these things, too, and so does Time.

Are you going to update the pdf in your shop as well?

I would think that the early Greek and Phoenician colonies around the Mediterranean would be fair comparisons with those of the Jrusteli around their Middle Sea, or with Kethaelan Dosakayo on Melib. The Gloranthan definition of a bank certainly is on par with the banks of the moneylenders and shopkeepers overturned in the Jerusalem temple by a certain carpenter from Galilea. Derivates and similar concepts of temporal or virtual reality might have plagued the East during Avanapdur's reign... only partially joking. Both Kerandaruth/Kralorela and Vormain appear to have sufficient levels of bureauracy and bookkeeping to be able to pull such stunts, and the greater maritime powers of the East Isles like Mokato might, too. Brithini and their descendants are very likely to have such institutions. We know of the presence of the Garzeen cult (or Garzeen himself) in Serpent King or pre-Dawn Seshnela, so the unified Issaries cult would be able to deal with anything the Westerners might throw at them in terms of financial constructs. Note that Garzeen merchants are almost by definition urban merchants, and highly unlikely to pollute savage hillfolk clans with such notions. Let me rephrase that. Garzeen merchants will be unlikely to explain their financial models to hillfolk clan customers, just outline the deals they can offer, take em or leave em. Peloria looks sufficiently sophisticated to have such a system, too - whether from cross-pollination with the West through the Issaries cult, through contact with Kralori administrators during Sheng's empire, or from developments of their own is waiting to be determined. The Pelandan city states might have had a precursor of Jrusteli banking as far back as Gartemirus' reign. Natha the Balancer might have been involved. I am fairly certain that there were no such practices until Argentium Thri'ile expelled most of the horse rider lords from Peloria. Fonrit is one of the heirs of Jrusteli methods, much like Belintar's Holy Country. The Esrolian Asrelian grandmothers might have had something like lending of valuables for interest already when they quarreled with Kodig and other bad men. That's about it with sufficiently urban civilisations and candidates for making money from money. I would not look to the Golden Age or earlier for this kind of intricacies. Even the Early Storm Age was too innocent to have to deal with such details. After all, the early ships of the Artmali or the Helerings were cloudy concepts imitated with a minimum amount of wood and canvas, rather than sophisticated riggings and keels. As the world got corrupted, more materialist and material solutions were in demand. Harst's spare grain economy shows a mixture of barter and exchange of favors, even in a rather rural environment. Activities like these are reflected in the moneylending business, regardless whether you pay in coin, cattle, or bags of salt.

I guess I shot most of my powder when writing this contribution to the Pavis project. I thought it was on topic to discuss this as part of the Pavis project. I don't think that it doubles as an altar to the Praxians, as the oases in the Nomad Gods boardgame do, unless you count its role as a marketplace. I guess that its market makes it at least temporarily the equivalent of a city. The permanent residents probably aren't sufficient, but then Duck Point is shown as a city as well. The speed with which the few Theyalans expanded is staggering anyway, but I guess that a backyard like Adari might have had to wait until the setbacks the Council experienced in Dara Happa may have caused settlers to brave the Praxian border, to the trolls. I think you might be onto something here, @scott-martin. Whovever moves into the neighborhood of Dagori Inkarth needs to be a trollfriend, or at least strong familiarity with Darkness. I don't see Kitori seeking the proximity to beast riders and elves, but the Aramite ancestors of the Tusk Riders - who still were humans in the Dawn Age - are good candidates to move there. They may have lost their pigs at some time, and thereby their connection to the rest of the Aramites. If so, one or the other side of its neighbors may have disagreed with having walls - I think the EWF period with the Pavis project is the most likely candidate that could have poured sufficient resources into that place, and the events triggered by Paragua could have been the end for any walls. From troll raids? I would have thought that Adari was a bit more in Praxian than in troll territory, but a position on the border makes sense, too. The identification of the Better Place as ancestral High Llama territory was my biggest discovery here. This doesn't mean that the human inhabitants fare any better. Most oases have a balance of occupying nomad groups, too. I know that Drastic used a lot of then unaccessible texts by Greg, and something like that text looks like an unchanged original statement. I don't quite see how the city could extort taxes from the nomads, unless it sent in trolls to do so. Those 300 permanent residents don't sound like a force the nomads would reckon with. The gang leader who controls the city would need a hefty gang in order to levy a tax from nomads. I did quibble with Stephen about quite a lot of details in Drastic Darkness at the time, but this didn't come up in our discussions.

Urban Orlanthi concepts of property may need some alteration to the communist approach of the clans. I see a strong influence of Argan Argar and Asrelia here, too. Argan Argar has the special magic of a strongbox for safekeeping of wealth. His cult was overseeing the Kitori tax collectors in the Kingdom of Night, and we know that Belintar relied on Kitori tax collectors, too, at least towards the Volsaxi during their king-less time before Tarkalor's intervention. Asrelia is the keeper and distributor of the deep wealth. She is also the grandmother of the three earth goddesses. All of this cries out to her being the chief financial deity in Esrolia and the lands influenced by Esrolia. The Pavisite adventurer is in a quite unusual situation. He is taking a sabbatical from his clan duties (and benefits), and will only be able to rely on what he is carrying and what favors he is allowed to collect in the name of his clan (most likely none). He may be able to collect individual favors. If he accepts to follow a leader into the Rubble, the leader will judge the distribution of any plunder that the expedition makes. During the Lunar occupation, that will be after the Lunars have taken their pick from the loot, most likely without any compensation, if the party is lucky, with the recompensation for the Rubble exploration license. After that, it is the situation of the clan chieftain again, as I described earlier, although with a much smaller clientele. It gets worse if the adventurer has accepted equipment or provender from that leader. He bought in the company store. Let's assume he had a fair leader and receives some wealth. He may be able to spend it on necessities, or he may offer service to receive those necessities. If he offers service, he is in a retainer position, following a chieftain. If he pays for everything himself, he is free to go trading for better equipment. (Or he might take up that leader on his offer to receive that equipment before the next visit to the rubble, where such a hauberk can make the difference between a successful return or a sudden career as troll provender.) Your ordinary city-dweller is the real problem, though. He will probably belong to a household, or head his own household, with a wife, children, possibly other family members (just like a clan household). He may take in apprentices - adopting them into the household, either as temporary family members, or as retainers (much like Orlanthi nobility surround themselves with bodyguard and magician followers). The household will occupy some urban space - maybe just a few rooms, more likely a separate house, If only some rooms, they will be tenants of whichever landlords has rented the rooms to them. This doesn't necessarily mean that they become retainers of their landlord, although if they become retainers, their lord or leader is compelled to provide them with room and food. If the urban household is not a retainer of someone else, it will need some other form of legal representation. If the household performs some trade or craft, it will be able to join a guild which will take the role of the legal front towards other parties, but unlike a clan, a guild won't own the property of the household. The households or rather craft shops in the guild will guarantee bond for fellow guildspeople, but usually they won't handle dowries - those are left to the households. Urban households without the ability to enter a guild structure probably have to become retainers of some prominent lortd or household, or of one of the temples. Without some legal guarantor, city dwellers are left in a lawless limbo, but they may still form associations for mutual protection. Welcome to the world to urban gangs. Some might be something like a trade union, e.g. of dock workers, others will eke out a life as low entertainers, and finally there are criminal gangs.

The discussion has drifted a bit off-topic in the New glorantha fan - where to start thread, discussing how the Orlanthi are presented and how Orlanthi cities are supposed to work rather than how to introduce Glorantha. There is no room for suburbs in the published map of Jonstown. Neighborhoods might work, but anything larger won't fit. None of the Sartarite cities have significant housing outside of their walls. Some have empty plots inside, used for gardening or pasture, and one city (Duck Point) has empty stone shells that can be easily fitted for habitation. Former Vingkotling strongholds like Clearwine 2 or Two-Ridge probably have more enclosed lands than the Sartar-founded cities, excepting Boldhome with its natural walls and branch valleys. It isn't clear whether these new cities included former tribal or clan seats and their population. Some fan histories of the Sartar cities like Ingo Tschinke's version of Jonstown worked from this assumption, but there is no evidence pointing in that direction. It would have elevated one tribe over the others, too, which would have been a bit antithetical to Sartar's intentions. Tribal involvement in the cities is undisputed, but the question remains whether and how the clans are involved. Just because another clan is in the same tribe as yours doesn't mean that you are on speaking terms with them, so why would you huddle with them in a place full of other folk? You will have more in common with fellow cultists or crafters than with those X clan folk. A clan shifting tribal allegiance might alter their city allegiance - the Lysang clan gained tribal access to Jonstown when they were separated from the Colymar, but they might still have folk with tenuous ties to their clan in Runegate or Clearwine. New tribal allegiance will alter their choice of major temples a bit - many specialist cultists spend some of their temple time during tribal moots - but many of those major temples are important beyond tribal borders. Take for instance the earth temple of Greenstone, in Malani lands, but important even in Colymar lands, who have earth specialists in the Ernaldori clan. Nochet with its lack of directly adjacent farmland and its role in the grain trade has mostly entirely urban clans, but elsewhere there are few cities that could support such populations. Rhigos probably does, Karse might given its lack of hinterland, but I doubt that many other cities in Kethaela are big enough to provide this. Kethaelan cities have ethnic quarters - coastal cities have Pelaskite communities, most cities have Esvulari who will tend to concentrate around their temples, and Esrolia might still have leftover Hendriki-style clans from the Adjustment Wars that keep to themselves rather than mingle with the matriarchs. Southern Esrolia has Porthomecans or Caladrans, and there may be a few God Forgot natives in major trading places, too. Argan Argar traders might be openly or secretly Kitori. But they also have ethnic majorities who won't be a monolithic organisational unit. In Kethaela, the cities are administrative seats that report to Belintar's representants for the Sixths, too, in addition to whichever local nobility survived the changes the Godking wrought upon the former Kingdom of Night. I made my peace with Apple Lane by referring to it as Gringlestead. That's what it is, really - the home base or retirement seat of an important heroquester and his exotic retainers. So Gringle accumulated a Third Eye Blue iron smith, an Ulerian entourage, and a bunch of Orlanthi followers taking care of basic needs of such a stead? Well done, old man, not quite on par with what Ethilrist collected, but still lots of creature comforts other leaders would love to have. Too bad he is saddled with a duck assistant/manservant, but not all heroquesting achievements can be beneficial. The organisation of Boldhome could be quite close to that of New Pavis, although I expect quite different housing in Boldhome due to its altitude and climate. (On the other hand, the description of Pavis mentions thatch roofs, so the flat roof architecture seen in many pictures of Pavis may be restricted to richer houses.) We know of tribal manors in Boldhome, basically steads. The map of Boldhome shows them to be surrounded by fields and pasture in their southern side branch of the valley. We know of the administrative buildings in the center of the city - Sartar's palace with the brazier, sitting on a ledge overlooking the fork of the valley. There are markets surrounded by merchant residences and storages, and there are crafters areas. The Boldhome pockets are pretty unique - about 20 years ago I postulated that Vizel might have similar cliff-hugging architecture, but excepting Vizel and possibly the Wintertop settlement there aren't any other Orlanthi cities enclosed by cliffs shown on the maps of Dragon Pass or Kethaela. The pockets will have a rather unique social structure, too. Their original inhabitants may have been cottars or stickpickers seeking a better life in the city than their less than generous clan leaders would have granted them, providing a source of unskilled labor. They may have been obliged to pay some lease to the princes, or perform some worship to provide magic for the royal building projects in lieu of a lease. Cities have a wyter, very much like other Orlanthi group efforts do. The city wyter is also known as city god, and somehow the nominal founders of those cities of Sartar - Wilms, Jon Hauberk, Swen Leapfoot, and possibly an unnamed durulz - have become the city protectors, possibly posthumously merging with the genius loci originally contacted by Sartar. The city god/wyter of Boldhome has never been defined. It is possible that the Flame of Sartar took over this role since 1520, but that leaves a quarter of a century when the city had a different protector, and there is no reason that this original protector has disappeared entirely. (The same goes for the earlier cities founded by Sartar.) King of Sartar tells us that Sartar performed a Westfaring to attract a wyter for his new kingdom, a Ginna Jar. This entity has never been named, but we don't have any descriptions of the city from Sartar's reign. The one in King of Sartar is dated to 1535, slap dash in the middle of Saronil's reign. (The Rough Guide to Boldhome that was produced for the Home of the Bold freeform provided a description for the time of the Lunar occupation around 1621.) The organisation of a city mayor and a city council resembles clan or tribal governing structures. The mayor appears to have quite different rights and obligations than a clan chief or tribal king, though. I don't think that Sartar himself was born as a city-dweller, but his companion Wilms most likely was. It was Wilms who established city structure and organisation in the Quivini lands, the later cities Jonstown, Swenstown and the partial failure Duck Point were modeled on his project in Wilmskirk. The original population of the cities - at least those of Wilmskirk and Jonstown - probably included a lot of refugees from clans that had lost their lands in the conflicts that the city confederation solved. In Wilmskirk that would have been former Balmyr and Sambari clans whose lands were taken by Locaem and Kultain clans, with the Balmyr suffering more losses than the Sambari. In Jonstown, a significant portion of the new settlers would have been survivors of clans that had been ravaged by the Telmori. I know less about Swenstown, but being neighbors to Praxians will have resulted in badly battered clans there, too. Hardly anyone moved into Duck Point, even though the Undead from the marshes exerted severe pressure on their neighbors. A few traders moved in to trade with the durulz boatmen, anyway, and while the city didn't prosper, these traders probably did. The Dragon Pass boardgame fields rather few tribal units, and those in the Sartar Free Army. The bulk of the Sartarite forces are described as city militias, and come in two qualities - mounted and foot, both of average quality. It is highly unlikely that these troops were urban citizens acting as militia. I read those troops as the forces that the tribes of a city confederation could field when summoned by the Princes, and split into temporary warbands led by appointees of the city council. The mayors don't appear to be military leaders by default. Apart from Brygga Scissortongue, the mayor of New Pavis, we only know two other mayors in official publications - Hauberk Jon, first mayor of Jonstown around 1485 who was a military leader, and Garaystar Flatnose, the mayor of Wilmskirk in 1613 (in the grandfather of all Glorantha Freeforms, Sartar High Council) who was the replacement for a mayor who fell afoul of the Lunar occupation officials, and not a military man at all. Both Brygga and Garaystar operate under Lunar occupation, though.

Continuing with Darius essay: Money usually comes when rulers or merchants start hiring mercenaries hailing from elsewhere. Since these individuals face quite a long way home, they require easily portable wealth. Most Orlanthi are happy to receive cattle, but beyond a certain amount and distance, portable wealth becomes preferable. Then there is wealth that is coupled with additional status. "See this arm-ring? King Tarkalor gave it to me after we defeated the Kitori at Vanntar." While this is generally true, there aren't many independent Orlanthi kingdoms that do so. Pre-Lunar Tarsh and pre-Lunar Sartar were among these, and the Hendriki kingdom and the Esrolian queendoms had sufficient independence from the Kingdom of Night to do so, too. When you look elsewhere, this sophistication doesn't often come without external command. The Lunar provinces all use the Lunar silver coin for transactions. Coin shortages can be produced artificially to increase the tax burden, cheapening the products of the subjects. Most kings create privileges to mints, with rather drastic fines if the products of the mint fail to meet the requirements. But again, this applies to few Orlanthi kings, but to many foreign rulers with Orlanthi subjects. The Orlanthi (and apparently the neighboring cultures as well) have a healthy respect for the integrity of monetary values. This suggests that the making of coins is a magical act of some power. While I am sure that there will be counterfeit coinage in circulation, those counterfeiters would have to be protected by a specialized magic to counteract that. Helpfully, the cults that support criminal activities may provide such countermagic. The EWF era coins produced by the Pavis Royal Mint are generally accepted as equal to Lunars or Sartarite guilders. All trading is subject to negotiations about what form of payment is acceptable. To members of a barter economy coins are either ornaments with barter value or otherwise a metal version of a letter of credit. Letters of credit are just a written form of the Orlanthi favor economy. The institution which does this is the clan, and every other organisation above that level. Casino Town is a well known banking enterprise. The exchange of foreign currencies and taking and giving loans in certain currencies, with certain dates and rates of repayment, exists at least in my version of the Holy Country. Not sure whether Belintar is to blame for this, or the Jrusteli, or even an earlier culprit (Garzeen?). Again, such a scheme can be subverted by creating artificial shortages of coinage (provided you have the capital to hoard such coinage). The temples of Issaries were subverted by the God Learners. Probably initially more for their spell trading magics than for their monetary influence, but I suspect Garzeen (who was active in Gray Age or Dawn Age Seshnela, if Cults of Prax is to be believed) does know the ins and outs of monetary transfers. Ownership of land is a matter of clan claims. During the Resettlement of Dragon Pass, the clans established their claims by positioning border markers blessed with their runes. Clan warfare can result in rearrangement of such borders. There appear to be different levels of land ownership by clans, too - high pastures for instance are claimed by the clans, but aren't necessarily part of the tula that is directly controlled by the wyter. City plots claimed by a clan are another such form of disjunct land claim. The hide is the Old English term for the area required to feed a farm. The German term is "Hufe". It may be accidental that the word for a flayed beast skin and a plot of land sound the same in modern English. The German term for the skin is "Haut". There is of course a real world myth connecting an ox hide with a plot of land - the founding of Carthage by Queen Dido, which consists of leading the term "hide" as in an ox skin ad absurdum. I doubt very much that the Old English authors of the Tribal Hideage or any of their forebears were familiar with that myth. I covered some of this in my previous reply about the concepts of property and possession in Orlanthi culture. There are tenancy relationships in Orlanthi clans, simply through the ownership of plows. Cottar households usually flock around carl households for this reason. They provide specialist services through cottage industries or otherwise unskilled labor in exchange for benefitting from the plows of those carls. How Orlanthi receive cottar, carl or thane status as inheritable household privileges is somewhat murky. Individual clan officers like godtalkers or master crafters will be reckoned above their native household status, but there must be some traditional way of establishing the greater status as inheritable. Possibly through providing such officers through several generations. True. The only instance where I can think of land being sold was during the Resettlement of Dragon Pass, where clans or households that were leaving for the Pass exchanged their claims to the land they used to manage for portable goods like herds. Other than that, I can see the land being traded away along with the clans in the post 1613 reorganisation of some of the Colymar clans by Lunar authority, and possibly by other external authorities elsewhere. Exchanging land for wealth is contrary to the nature of the Orlanthi. I am not aware of Orlanthi giving away land as a dowry. There is a variant of this in the sacred marriage between the king and a representative of the goddess of the land, but that's on a totally different level. I see most land exchanges rather as contractual confirmation of conquests. King of Sartar has the option of gifting a splinter clan with some of the clan lands, but that's about the only non-violent transfer of land that is recorded. Sartar's cities might be another such case, but this isn't documented.