Joerg

@Ali the Helering They live where Genert's Garden used to be, We know that there are lots of things that have been forgotten about that place. These guys (or their parents) could for instance have sculpted the statues of the Plateau of Statues (I don't think they did), or have maintained Yamsur's light or Genert's Palace before the Chaos invasion. The people who would have known have mostly perished, or fled in a state of terror that made them forget their own identity, let alone that of a bunch of magicians at Orathorn. They could have hidden behind a Thorn Rose-like fence that only Sheng (or some of his Zolathi) could penetrate, to explain their inactivity throughout much of history. Or they are mystics themselves, and failed to avoid entanglement when facing HonEel and the Lunars, releasing a huge load of power that they accumulated on their unknown path to Liberation. Or the Night of Horrors _was_ one of their trials on that path, and the Lunars and Pentans simply were sucked into that horrific experience without proper preparation. The point is that they could be immensely capable magicians without having meddled with the world for all of history. The only magical entities that ever grew up in their neighborhood were the EWF (they sit right on one of the dragon wings for the dragon creation project), Sheng's empire, and then encroachment by the Lunar expansion. We have no tales whether they hid from the EWF or whether they joined (or otherwise participated in the weird mystical things that happened in the EWF). Their participation in the Night of Horrors may have been the tribute they had to pay to Sheng for their ongoing existence, never mind that Sheng was gone - an obligation that needed to be delivered to remain on the path of Liberation.

Actually, any surfeit of magic can cause a collapse of reality, whether chaotic or non-chaotic in nature. Both the Lunars and the Pentan hirelings fielded magic of near compromise-breaking dimensions, and when the two magics clashed, a rift in reality opened. Even illuminates could get lost in such an intrusion of the Void.

You seem to have missed the Prince of Sartar comic, which has seen rather few armored Orlanthi. The average carl family head probably has some armor, although hardly anything like the kind of armor a weaponthane would field. Other members of carl families probably make do with hard hats and some quilted cloth under leather, relying on their shields for armor (if any). A good alternative is woad, if the character is somewhat strong in magic. Spears are the typical weapon - affordable, and useful in other situations. Same goes for axes. Swords as we understand them are probably the province of nobles and weaponthanes, shorter blades like the seax or the Crocodile Dundee-style bowie knife would be more common (again serving for more purposes than just warfare). Weirdos might specialize on bows rather than slings. Slings are popular since they can convey Thunderstones and are cheap missile weapons to keep medium-sized predators away from the herds.

Sandy Petersen's Gods War boardgame, I think. The Kickstarter ought to start in very few months.

My campaigns rather had the problem that there wasn't enough advancement into the levels of competence I feel most comfortable when running a game. Specialisation wasn't a problem, either. The previous experience system even of RQ3 (modified by Vikings) allowed for professions that the people were identifying themselves by, like boat builder or carpenter (all of these with a mandatory background in farming, too). There is a limit how much a rather new Viking colony on Celtic shores can support single purpose characters, so having a somewhat broadened background seemed the right thing to do.

Paraphrasing Nick Brooke, there are three most difficult heroquests in Glorantha - the Lightbringers' Quest, the Red Goddess Quest, and I Fought We Won. All of them have a stage of utter defeat, with the LBQ's "Lost in Hell" stage maybe the least abject (and still utmost desperation). The quester has to face this defeat, his destruction, and then to go on.

To play an aldryami probably makes this to play a rootless elf or an emissary who has rootless tendencies. The closest thing to a HQ treatment of Aldryami I can recall was the cover of the Thieves Arm issue of the Unspoken Word, IIRC tied to a hero band inside that fanzine. There was an aldryami character in one of the hero bands in Masters of Luck and Death, too, IIRC with stats. There has to be some major reason to leave the forest and run around with humans. Perhaps having undergone an I Fought We Won heroquest (discussed here) from the aldryami perspective (and no, I have no idea what exactly Fwalfa Oakheart did) might create such a bond with non-aldryami. Given the age of your son, I would make this experience a character background info - you were trapped in this magical place, all alone, facing the big evil and destruction, and as you did so, you noticed these other people doing so too, so you left your beloved forest and joined them. In maybe a few more words, showing some of the pictures from the Prince of Sartar comic.

We haven't seen much of an in-depth description of Orlanthi outside of Dragon Pass or Talastar. The Talastari are quite similar to the Dragon Pass - they battled it out a millennium ago, and for a while Lokamayadon's ways dominated all the Orlanthi in the Bright Empire until Harmast "returned" the ways of Heort (as he knew them). Basically that's reformation and counter-reformation. A strong unification occurred in the early Dawn Age when Theyalan missionaries brought their ways and their addresses to the gods to all the Hill Barbarians, creating a greater unity than there had been as the consequence of immigrating pastoral clans or conversion of beast folk in the Storm Age. Later there have been numerous waves of obligatory doctrines like Lokamayadon's Greater Storm or Obduran's Dragonfriend, not to mention God Learner meddling in Slontos and Umathela (and possibly Fronela), and strong counter reformations like Harmast or Alakoring that spread out among the hill barbarians. Such religious indoctrination/renewal does help to create some continuity while maintaining local identities. That said, for most of the last 600 years, no internal re-definitions of the Orlanthi religion have shown up, and the struggle with lunarized Orlanthi vs. traditionalists is mostly limited to those regions described in depth. The Sylilans were Orlanthi following Odayla in his guise as the Star Bear. Does this offer enough variation to you? The Yelmalian Sun Dome Temples in Saird basically are Orlanthi in culture - compare them to the Germanic descended Limitati of the Roman Empire. The Harandings are (or were) boar worshipping Orlanthi. Greymane's tribe retain Basmoli/Pendali features integrated in their Orlanthi ways. The Ralian Orlanthi are infused with strong Arkat or anti-Arkat stances (depending when and where you ask). Some of them may still think that Nysalor's Bright Empire was the best thing that ever happened to them. Fronelan Orlanthi might be worshipping Vorthan as their war god, the god of the Red Planet that is anathema in the name of Jagrekriand or Shargash to the Dragon Pass Orlanthi. Then there is the question of Orlanthi with foreign overlords. Such as the Lunars, the Jonatings, the Trader Princes, the Safelstran city states. As an afterthought, add the Kingdom of Night followed by Belintar's Holy Country for the core region of Kethaela.

Harald (aka @jajagappa) gave you the full set of relevant research finds. I have forced the I Fought We Won myth to only one group of desperate lightbringers in the course of the first crazy run of Rise of Ralios - basically they faced a situation where all the world had gone badly wrong. Arkat had returned five times, and all of them far from the solution to their problems that they had envisioned, even the one they themselves had brought back. So they went onto a Lightbringers Quest another time, and received Nysalor for their troubles, and were pleased with that outcome of a slightly shortened Red Goddess Quest as they had a light to counter the encroaching forces of Darkness. Then the Arkats gathered to meet Argin Terror and the Chaos he brought, and the world of the lightbringers threatened to break apart, so they went on the I Fought We Won quest, and found the strength to face Chaos and avert the destruction. The main reward of the I Fought We Won quest is an unshakeable resolve to save what you value from utter destruction. The most corrosive effects of Chaos are dampened - you still suffer in body and soul, but that won't stop your efforts to stand up to it and fight it back. This is almost a mystical power of refutation, but not from exclusion of the trappings of the world, but from inclusion of all of Creation. This can be paired with the practice of illumination which lets you step back a bit from involvement with the world, a most powerful combination if you are ready to meddle with powerful magics better left alone - this is what Argrath and his warlocks are doing. There is another aspect to I Fought We Won - you find unexpected allies fighting the same foe as you do, independent from you and your own community, and there is a chance that you can join forces with them afterwards, leading to the benefits that allowed the victory of the Unity Battle where mortals and demigods managed to defeat the Chaos Horde that had won several battles against the great gods. In facing the big evil alone, they will make contact with other foes of that big evil, and they will recognize fellow absolvents of that quest, and be able to ally with them. One trouble with making this a group experience is the personal nature of the I Fought We Won experience as per the initiation experience described by Harald, which is why I suggested to land the players in roles alien to their culture - basically making them cultural heroes for other peoples of Glorantha (like mostali, aldryami, very different humans) and giving them access to (at least one use) of those peoples' magics. A character cast in a mostali version of I Fought We Won might receive gifts from Isidilian like giant jolanti or the loan of the Cannon Cult for a battle. A character finding himself as protector of the forests may receive aldryami growth magics. A character perceiving the I Fought We Won through the Zzabur perspective might get access to sorcery. All of these are just vague ideas - about as vague as the (highly chaotic, from a referee point of view) outcome of the 1995 Rise of Ralios freeform.

First off - I am a German who has been writing and thinking about Glorantha for more than 25 years now, and I hardly ever saw the need to translate those terms, or locations. I think about Glorantha in English, mostly... God Time is the magical realm that exists parallel to historical Glorantha, it is the full set of all the myths. Other terms for it are Cyclical Time, the Hero Planes, or simply the Otherworld. Geek alert on: The Gods' Age is a (large) subset of God Time. There was a mythical era before the conception of gods, and there was a Gray or Silver Age following the Greater Darkness that followed the rules of God Time only to some extent. Geek alert off. To the Orlanthi, those terms may be largely synonymous. To an eastern or draconic mystic, there might be a distinction which could be meaningful for early levels of mystical understanding. Malkioni westerners are treating the arrival of gods as a mistake in their creation myths which define their understanding of cyclical time and the hero planes. There might be a better set of German terms for these concepts if we sit down and discuss what these terms are meant to convey. Direct translations aren't always the best options.

The problem here is that if you put a party through a series of experiences, sooner or later all of the characters will have made the same kinds of experiences. Especially if these skills are ones that had no obvious champion in the party at the onset.

Little has been published about them - their main activity was their role in the Night of Horrors (or was it Nights of Horror? I always get confused about where to assign the piural). Sandy Petersen mentioned that he did some exploration and definition of these sorcerers in his games, and said he would consider writing that up. Failing that, we'd have to quiz him at Kraken's Secrets of Glorantha panel. They don't appear to be connected to any of the Westerner sorcerers, and I hesitate to make them an entirely unconnected group, so what about a group of exiles from the East studying the magical opportunities offered by the Hellcrack? Alchemy, the Pill of Immortality and other sorcerous achievements are documented for Kralorela and beyond.

Do you want to run this as an initiation scenario (initiation of the characters, or initiation of (former) dependents of the characters), or do you want your players to run the quest as a problem-solving approach? Casting the characters in supporting roles of an initiation quest might put them through the events of I Fought We Won in a non-Heort perspective (e.g. depending on which Bad Uncle they represented during the initiation rite of someone else).

Sorry, @David Scott, yes, I am slipping - I was thinking of the clashing of arms and magic, which hasn't happened. Waha's people do cross the Zola Fel regularly, and few are the cases where a khan is drowned by an angry floodwave. And if you look at the rivers monomyth, washing away bad chaos and closing rifts is thre most honorable thing a river can do. Although the Syphon gets some bad press for syphoning off some of the Creekstream River's waters to deal with the Foulblood void in the Footprint, Sky River Titan set the example, and the rivers of the world followed suit. Waha only helped the Good River to do the godly work.

IMO the HQ stats give you a guideline to create the RQ character (of whichever edition), and little more. The HQ abilities don't map to the RQ skill list, with the possible exception of combat skills. If you want to do the scrunchy ability conversion, take into account that the HQ ability is rolled against a difficulty as an opposed roll. An unmodified RQ skill of 30% may map to a HQ ability of 13 for normal difficulty (haven't done the math).

The oases are all manifestations of water spirits in the Wastes. They are holy places for all Waha-ites, and there is a lot of mutual respect. Waha visits the oases and does his things about the Protectresses and the altars. No overt hostility here. Then there are the water spirits we know from Nomad Gods - led by Zola Fel, including Dew Maiden and River Horse. I cannot recall any hostility between Waha and Zola Fel. The untamed serpents of the Wastes and also Prax are different. They are violent invaders, much like the Godtime waters of the second Flooding (which saw the creation of Worcha). They threaten herds and clans when they rush by. Violent invaders must be fought.

Chris, you're basically reliving the RQ3-based discussions on the RQ Daily some 20+ years ago. Lots of amends were suggested to get the priest out of his temple at least part of the time. I'll suggest a couple of those time-tested amendments: While the priest (or advanced other Divine Magic User) has to stay a full day in the temple, performing a series of rites at the right time at the right shrines, there is lots of other time during which he will do the priest's other jobs. Participating in high holy day sermons will regain a point of reusable divine/rune magic for any cult member. Leading a holy day service will give your priest a POW gain roll (and enough time to regain a point of that magic). Holding services with a sufficiently large audience (all of whom channel magic to the god through the service of the priest) will do so outside of holy days, too. Performing the Spell Teaching requires the priest to overcome the spell spirit's MP to initiate spirit combat with the supplicant - POW gain roll opportunity. There is a "down side" here, too - assume that a lot of that divine magic is cast on behalf of the cult, in the temple, not for personal gain. It is nice that the priest can shave off the spell regaining from his cult obligation time (which may have been 60 or 90% of his available time IIRC). And while I am expounding on the RQ3 improvement discussions of those years, let me introduce you to the concept of a pool of divine magic points that can be applied to any spell the priest has sacrificed POW for. But you are right - successful POW gain rolls were rare in my RQ3 campaign. Probably because we didn't use that much offensive magic where you had to overcome a target's magic points.

I don't think they need training. It's a relationship brought about by a magical covenant. In Sartar they need training. Horses aren't part of the Covenant, they need breaking and training. I wasn't referring to training the animals, but the riders and coordinating cavalry maneuvers. If the Praxian beast gets its basic training from the Covenant, the rider can concentrate on getting it to run in formation etc. Horses are tricky because they are (in Glorantha) carnivorous flyers reduced to running on the ground and feeding from grass and (if they can obtain them) grains. At least the Hyalor/Hippoi ones - the Galanin or western breeds might be different. They have no trouble interbreeding, though. In fact, I guess that hippogriff-descended horses should have been added to my list of naturally solitary beasts who have been forced into a gregarious herd lifestyle. (Or would you prefer to encounter herds of hippogriff hunting you and your lifestock?) Breeding the mundane horses out of the lineage appears to be non-trivial. Re: Unicorn procreation: I seem to (mis?)remember that unicorns would mate with virgin herd beasts suitable for riding - a Sable Antelope bears as much similarity to a unicorn as does a horse. (I admit that the other Praxian herd beasts - excluding herd men, but possibly including Morocanth - may look a lot sillier.) The offspring will be male and inherit the race of the father (one thing unicorns have in common with broos, although the mothers appear to contribute the shape to broo offspring). I have no idea whether a beast that has given birth to a unicorn can have more offspring - I would suggest not. The Green Age heroquest thing you suggest sounds fine. You don't tame a unicorn, you need to make The first contact to be allowed to ride it. The prospective rider needs to be pure to enter the riding/adoption heroquest. Just sending in a virgin girl won't tame the unicorn, probably wouldn't even get his interest. I guess it is about the sexual attraction that only works in a Green Age environment. There are bound to be entire libraries on the symbolism and esoterics of unicorns. I am not that fond of that approach, really. Once upon a time in Nomad Gods, we thought that all Praxian herd beasts were content to feed on the brown grass of the chaparral, but then we learned that that wasn't the case because those different herd beasts had urges and preferences that coincide with those of the real world animals (in case of bison, impala and sable antelope). I will grant you that the beasts and plains apes followed their founders down the slopes of the Spike into Genert's Garden, with plains apes and beasts having created a special ancestral bond through Protectress Eiritha and the Founder. The plains apes were creatures of storm: rowdy, randy and rough. And probably as bright as minotaurs (who may be regarded as a male-only race that retains the founder shape in the following generations, probably because of the non-involvement of Eiritha). (I like the notion that the eaters were cursed with increased intelligence by the outcome of the Covenant.) If we are to think magical fantasy world, then why the vegetarian Morocanth? What's wrong with meat eating tapirs feeding on the herd men who are fed a hay diet, in a magical fantasy world not real world animals? Mind you, I enjoy the implications of herd men meat from culling the herds used to feed the breeding herd men. We only got there because the plains apes don't have the ability to ruminate, even though the covenant magic could have given that to them. Some changes in behavior etc. are fine. Dropping most of the real world animal parallels for Praxian herd beasts (or alynxes before) will lead to alienation and a loss of suspense. Next thing we start to over-analyze why Gloranthan horses aren't, and how that manifests, and why you need to do the Hyalor quest in order to be able to ride even the least of them - while retaining real world facts that mules or cavalry zebras are sterile etc etc. I know that a lot of people are afraid to work real world insights (let alone science) into their myths, telling me they can't be bothered. I fail to see why. As long as the result is a myth that feels like an organic story that can be told in a sweat lounge or in a holy site, and not a rote "this is how we perceive things must be" snippet for completeness' sake, why not use the real world as inspiration? The ridicule for llama riders by other Praxians for their steeds' inability to feed themselves properly wasn't my idea, it is something I read, and I seem to remember Sandy's name attached to it. The picture I get from giraffes bending down to drink is that they spread their forelegs rather wide in order to reach down to the water - basically the equivalent of a push-up position, and probably not that comfortable. They also appear to need some time to return into a fleeing position. All the advantages they have are lost. I am quite dubious that Eiritha makes it that easy for the covenant beasts to get their food. IMO high llamas used to browse the trees of the Praxian savannah before the Oakfed fires, and still prefer to do so whenever they get the chance. The best browsing vegetation in the wastes is found along the rivers and wadis (aka serpents), possibly with wet ground, which is why the llama riders have the water rune as their tribal element. (Looking at the feet of their beasts, I doubt that they are well suited to wet ground.) The high llama tribe has a lot of advantages - an easy time for their herd beasts isn't one of them, though.

Is that an Official Change? IIRC the (Chaosium, not Mongoose) RuneQuest Companion (about to be reprinted) has an article on unicorns which details the breeding habits of unicorns. That's a bit like riding a stallion rather than a gelding - you get a much more aggressive mount, but it will act more on its other urges. For numerous reasons, some people still ride the stallions rather than a gelding. Your upcoming Prax book, I take it? I hope that the Praxian rhinos have better eye-sight than our rhinos, then. I suppose a good deal of their reputation for being irritable is their short-sightedness which makes them check out any potential source of danger pro-actively. No kicking out camp-fires, either... Will there still be such slight oddities like High Llama riders dismounting to hold up ground-hugging foliage to their steeds that we learned about some twenty years ago when Sandy joined the RQ Daily. So you say that a Praxian beast mounted cavalry would be easier to train than horse cavalry?

When discussing the Rhino tribe of Prax, I noticed that there are a number of beast folk forming human-shaped societies rather than their totemic beast's solitary life-style. For the Rhino Tribe of Prax, the problem is solved by the magic of Waha's covenant. According to @David Scott, by entering a Covenant herd the rhinos stop behaving like the solitary behemoths they are and become a flock of bad-tempered individuals tolerating others of their kind within looking distance (i.e. very close by). Which places all of the concerns of how the society adapts to the human/beast bond on the herds. How is herd leadership arranged? What about mating rights? Do you get bachelor herds for excess males and "queen cow"-led herds of females with a stud? Another difficult case are the Rathori. Bears are solitary beasts requiring quite a bit of territory to feed their bulk and get some fat for the winter. The only occasions that bears come together are salmon season or (in case of the non-Gloranthan Polar Bears) waiting for the sea to freeze over. If the Rathori pair up with bears that don't change into humans, they'll need lots of territory. Even the few people sharing a tent are way more social contact that a wild bear would tolerate. Both with Rathori and Telmori, the human organisations appear to institutionalize the pup groupings under a mother (bear) or a mated pair (wolves). (The old myth of wolf packs having alpha males and non-related adults accepting that leadership results from observations of an artificial pack in captivity.) Pup behavior allows adults to remain with their leaders instead of taking off on their own. The result of this behavior of wolves in our world was the domestic dog - with some selective breeding to adapt the dog to the human signals, which isn't required among the Telmori because they have learned the wolf signals. Still, a pack of non-man-shaped wolves accompanying a Telmori group will behave much different from feral wolves. A group of bears in Rathori company must be in it for the salmon, or whatever other goodies the humans have to offer. The human-beast bond with one specific totemic beast is another unusual relation. For most Praxians this is their personal mount, which may be awakened as an allied spirit by those strong enough in magic. Praxians, Pralori, Mraloti (?), Galanini and presumably the moose-, yak- and reindeer hsunchen form a rider-steed connection. (Thankfully the Telmori don't...) The steed benefits from an extra pair of eyes and weapons to defend it from predators. (Benefits for the riders should be obvious.) Communication between rider and steed is mostly tactile. A Sartarite riding a Praxian herd beast will have a lot less control over and communication with his steed than a Praxian riding his totemic beast - something of a problem for the mothers of the unicorn tribe, too - they get to ride the (step-?) mothers of their unicorns, or prospective heifers for mating. Makes me wonder how a "cattle" raid by unicorn riders works out - the unicorn stallion singles out a heifer, impregnates it, and makes it follow him to the waiting women who welcome it into their herd? Steeds (or beasts of burden) don't get to exhibit much of a feral beast's behavior while serving their humans. How much of a nomad's day is dedicated to letting his steed vent out it animal instincts, rolling in the dust (or mud), lazing around chewing cud or socializing with the other herd beasts? The Telmori brother bond between human and wolf is another highly artificial behavior. The Basmoli of Seshnela appear to have had a similar bond, so I would guess that the same pattern can be found with leopard, tiger or Andrewsarchus hsunchen. The term "brother" indicates a litter-mate relationship without any of the partners in a superior role, or a situation where yearling or older siblings take care of their cubs (which role division may flip back and forth between four-legs and two-legs depending on the challenge they face), at least with pack predators like wolves or lions. With tigers, it could be an emulation of the mate bond. I wonder what visiting a camp of wolverine hsunchen (after befriending at least one of them) would feel like.

We might want to start with the published clan chiefs - Narmeed Whirlvishbane of the Singing Flower Bison clan comes to mind here. I'll admit that I am at best a transient in Prax, so I'll let people with actual experience of the place take over.

Population numbers are in the Guide (or the Genertela Box). 500 heads per clan is the number that has been used for most population calculations throughout these numbers, and probably applies universally wherever something like a clan can be identified. Whether those units actually stay together is yet another question. I guess that this is about the number you need for a genetically and culturally viable unit, give or take a factor between 0.25 and 4. (And the old chestnut who is counted among these numbers - children, slaves...) In Prax, this may be somewhat different due to different herd sizes (but then the ratio of herd beasts per owner does vary between the tribes, too, with far from all Rhino riders actually owning a tribal mount (if that ancient statement by Sandy still is official). Not that rhinos ever conformed to the term "herd beast" - they are about as gregarious as bears. Which leaves us in the strange situation that we have societies of humans forming communities that cannot conform with the life style of their totemic beasts. But that's probably better discussed in a separate thread.

I wonder how the Kralori view the dead remains of their mortal bodies. We know that Kralori war barges employ zombie rowers, but these may have been recruited from wrongdoers rather than levied from the general populace (of dead bodies). Does the Nochet enclave have a mandarin or minor exarch in charge of expediting the spirits to the waiting place, possibly through a bureaucratic audition(, and the corpses to the home country)? What other cultures present in Nochet may have strange adaptations to this procession of the dead?

Sending the dead back to their graves probably is a huge no-go - you can't show your disrespect much stronger short of destroying the walking corpses. And that on their holy day - when they have strong magic backing them. Warding the houses probably is done. Are there Malkioni dead among the procession? If so, restricted to the Aeolians, or also including Rokari or (linealist) Hrestoli? How would that interfere with the Malkioni concept of Solace? This touches on the question whether the Malkioni are soulless or not. (Which, given that the Theyalans regard the body as one of several partial souls, is a hard concept to withstand physical evidence...)

Both the Hungry Plateau and the Shadow Plateau were made by a spear-wielding god decapitating a mountain. It isn't known where the top of the Shadow Plateau went, though. In case of the Shadow Plateau, it was Veskarthen struggling to escape his bonds, and Argan Argar keeping him in those, forcing him to build the Obsidian Palace. (From the debris?) Gerendetho smashed an inhabited palace. As a walker, he wouldn't have had use for a permanent housing. Maybe this is an ancient struggle between nomadic ways and sedentary ones, at first going against the sedentary life (of Turos/Lodril). If that was the case, the choice of Gerendetho as a patron to maintain a nomadic way of life would be a very necessary role for the Sable tribe of Kostaddi. The creation of the Jord mountains probably was incidental. (There is one more myth in which the ruins of a smashed mountain were pushed aside to form a new chain of mountains - the ruins of the Spike pulled onto Jrustela by the Magnetic Mountain.) I don't see any evidence for the former mountain that became the Hungry Plateau having been quarried. Close to where I live, a single rock pierced the glacial deposits at Bad Segeberg, and on top of it a castle had been built - the Siegesburg. The castle was destroyed in the 30 Years War, and subsequently the rock (gypsum) was quarried for stuccato works all over the baroque northern Germany. The activity left only a stump of the rock just slightly above the roof line of the upper houses on that picture (and a hole that now is used as an amphitheater). All of this was done on a much smaller scale, but the point is that the material was used for building efforts. I don't recognise any such in Jord, and I don't think that the Krarshtkids are at fault there. All that we see in Jord is a jumble of rock that used to be the top of the Hungry Plateau. This is different from the giant slabs of stone that make up Sambari Pass between the Quivin Mountains and the Storm Mountains - here we had a giant building a wall to connect the two mountain ranges. No such effort is seen between Kostaddi and Imther. If we want to see the Jord Mountains as a defensive bulwark, against whom? Does it protect the goat herders of Jarst and Garsting against the Alkothi?