Joerg

That belongs to the "How does your Glorantha vary" thread rather than here. The Lightbringer myth was always (in Gloranthan history) fundamental to the role of Orlanth within Time. Harmast set up a script stringing together a series of myths which may or may not have been part of the Godtime experience, but have been since his return with Arkat. I would like to know Kargzant's Hill of Gold myth. Apparently he is Lightfore, so he should have it. (And old Praxian Sun Daughter, too... or "why do these scuptures deep in the Paps show Yelmalio as a woman?")

Elk

In that case, resonably modern France would have been an influence on Glorantha, too, if you look at some player character names in the Wooden Sword environment. Viking influences are strong behind the RQ1/2 magic systems, as per the preview pages of https://www.chaosium.com/the-stafford-house-campaign-pdf/

In my games, ordinary activities may have mythical resonance that could pull people into other peoples' heroquests. This is in some part modeled after Biturian Varosh's Zorak Zoran encounter, something he might rightly blame Rurik Runespear for (again). Invoking circumstantial bonuses for casting rune magic is a form of heroquesting (or alternatively, creating a minor variant of the Proximate Holy Realm, which isn't much different). Traveling along those fine roads in Sartar, or on the Daughter's Road in the Lunar Provinces is a heroquest-adjacent activity. Interesting rules implication there - passions are one type of abilities routinely used in heroquesting, as well as in performing arts. (Or in Trickster pranks.) (while picking on word meanings: "trivial" used to mean "logical, well ordered and well presented". Can't have that with heroquesting, can we? Or does that make us god learners?) I don't think that I would have any myth where Orlanth buys the milk. Stealing the milk, sure - if only as a sidekick of Yinkin - but the only stories I can think of where Orlanth ever got close to paying something was the story of Aedin's Wall and the compensation offer to Thed for Ragnaglar's misdeeds. Maybe respect to Yelm in Hell.

Get creative with your adulthood initiation, like e.g. Ingolf or Argrath, or those and you know why people should stop HeroQuesting. What good did Harmast bring from his heroquests? Arkat's Command, enslaving the Heortlings to troll tribute, and the Telmori curse which would hit them in the Third Age.

Most of the time, the cloud cover will obscure the view of and from the peak of Kero Fin. Even when you see the sun directly through a gap in the clouds. Yelmalio's golden Sun Dome will be obscured by the blue sky at day and by Xentha's cloak at night.

Pun intended? And "equally ineffable" is the same as "equally effable". Also quite effable, otherwise we wouldn't be able to discuss any of this. Glorantha is an overarching myth composed of multitudes of more specific myths. The truth of myths is found in their resonance with the audience, the recipients. H..as canon changed, or do we have different canons depending on publication period? There are people out there who swear that Glorantha is not complete without rune priests of Humakt and rune lords of Issaries, Chalana Arroy or Daka Fal. There probably are even players of White Bear and Red Moon or Dragon Pass or Oriflam's Le Guerre des Heroes who know a lot about Argrath and Sartar but who have never heard about Orlanth or Ernalda. "current" is an interesting qualifier. From the outside, even Gloranthan history has much in common with Gloranthan Godtime as the layered foundation of our narrative. While there might be a few names that could be correct answers for the question "who is the current prince" in 1627, the question about their personality and reputation has more answers than this forum has threads. Was Monrogh right? is a valid topic for disagreement, at least as much as whether a holy person of Lightfore should be allowed to wear women's clothing. You are welcome to live in a 1990 bliss where Yelmalio was an uncontested and cool deity that kicked ass, with only Yamsur casting some doubt on his uniqueness as the lesser sun, and maybe a nagging doubt who that Ehilm flame guy might have been. And without any idea that Yelmalio had anything to do with the planet Lightfore bathing nightly Glorantha in about as much light as our world's half moon. "Who should we worship" is a question that many players (and GMs) confuse with "Which cult should we initiate into". Most Gloranthan humans expect a list of names (or "The Invisible God") as the answer. Often with cult entities that are hostile to one another on the same list. "How shoud we worship entity X" is another important question - should it be propitiation to simply ward off that entity's displeasure, or should it be some form of devotion in the hope of magical aid? And should that magical aid be wielded by the individual worshiper or by a cult official on behalf of the worshipers?

It's also the spot where you can find Pole Star (under his local name Rigsdal, if you insist). Basically, the top of Kero Fin is the summit of the universe viewed from the surrounding lands. It takes a celestial observation platform to recognize Kero Fin as the equivalent of the Footstool in Raibanth or other such local summits in the Decapolis of Murharzarm, as illustrated in the Copper Tablets (from tablet 5 onward as you get the Spike or Kero Fin perspective). The upper crown of Flamal at Hrelar Amali was a similar spot, occupied by Ehilm. And quite certainly Genert's Palace had a high spot occupied by Yamsur. We don't see the Storm Village inside Aedin's Wall any more in recent publications. I am quite fond of this Storm Realm outside of the normal layers of Godtime, and sort of parallel to the Spiral Map of Belintar.

Personally, I find the Elmal/Yelmalio "schism" or disagreements minor compared to the mix-up of Antirius and Reladivus/Kargzant (and whatever the world may have fogotten about Yamsur). The Bridling of Kargzant in the Dawn Age is a merger enforcing some sort of identity that wasn't there to begin with, creating a hybrid Lightfore. (Almost like a centaur - part man, part horse.)

Eaten is relative... Gorp will consume whatever they engulf, but is that eating? Sort of... Enlightenment usually means confrontation with the Absolute, which is distinct from Kajabor, found on the opposite end of the Cosmos, even though insights into that may come from meditations of the Void "below" everything. IMO a true ascension will consume the physical existence through the ascension rather than giving it over to entropy. Descent into Entropy (whether Kajabor, Wakboth or the threatened (but modified) Blaskarth experience/non-experience of the Red Goddess) deletes not just the current identity, but eliminates the victim from existence past and present (and future). A form of ongoing Hell, yes. Outwardly the victims have been claimed by Chaos, even though the process might be ongoing indeterminately for the victims. We don't get any first hand experiences, I suppose - a heroic escape from the Maw of the Bat will send the escapee through Hell, but not into Chaos. Krarsht may be the most "Eaten" of all these examples. And possibly the most "recoverable" of demises. I would not be astonished if Belintar underwent this once or twice in his career. One possible parallel for souls being eaten by the Bat might be objects ripped apart and "parking" in the accretion disk around a black hole, without any hope of escaping the attraction while still undergoing that destruction.

In my Glorantha, elemental water is isotonic, containing the same amount of salt as human (or merman) blood. Both freshwater and seawater are deviations of this norm. The dissolved minerals aren't just the Gloranthan equivalents of sodium chloride (rock salt as used by humans), but also chalk (calcium hydrogen carbonate) and other kations and anions (potassium, magnesium, lithium, sulphate, iodide) leading to all manner of marine sedimentation - limestone, red sandstone, salts, natron, gypsum. Isotonic elemental water is associated with Triolina, desalinated (rain) water is associated with Heler, brines are associated with Nelat (whose caustic baths are in all likelihood alkaline rather than acid, turning organic tissue into soaps). Heler is the Sea deity who tragically lost their connection to the Seas, leading to an enrichment of salts in the oceans. There are numerous variants of stories telling how a sea deity lost their ability to re-join the seas, e.g. the beginning of the Keet epic in Revealed Mythologies (where the sea deity has a totally different name). Yes, and there is more to it than just potability. What I meant is hostile to the Godtime rivers. Look what happened to Sshorga - backbone broken by Orlanth, enslaved by the Dara Happans, resurging in the Flood only to be diminished again by joint efforts of Orlanth and Valind. Other rivers had to overcome local resistance, often leaving battlegrounds behind. We don't know how many rivers were spawned and then overcome by foes, perhaps leaving a valley or a salt deposite behind, but their names forgotten. Rather than alien, the surface of the Dry Earth that escaped the Seas in the Green Age was alienated from the rightful feeding by the Seas. Many a Godtime river might have had a history as a current accessing the submerged Earth Cube from above prior to the Green Age, attempting to return to its old feeding grounds and encountering new and alien things refusing it entry or nourishment. The Flood era during the early to middle Storm Age returned many such currents to their old homes, but only for a short while.

An alarming portion of this community is of that generation, or only half a generation away from it. Our experience is that of a living and changing document, with freezes to an invariable state only a temporary thing.

Stone (the brother of Mostal, the Rock of all rocks) was killed, and you will find that rocks have much reduced spirit nowadays. More often than not, the spirit may be not about its material body, but about a collective entity (like a place) they belong to. I can see a definition that life requires a metabolism, an intake of fuel and "oxidizer" and exhalation and (possibly) giving off waste, or an intake of energy and nutrients with an exhalation and possibly generating waste. Does this have anything to do with generating magic? Is this different from an elemental occupying a portion of its element and regenerating magic points? Part of the events leading to the Dawn was heroes like King Heort separating the Living from the Dead, and e.g. Vogarth Strongman trapping the dead of Esrolia in Koravaka/Necropolis. Now these dead were ambulant and would exact force, and they might even have consumed food, if only out of being used to that. (Note that on the Esrolian day of the dead, offerings of food are integral to dealing with their annual visit.) Beside birth of all types, you might have to consider different types or expressions of death, both of minor and capital D death. "She is not dead but sleeping" - a state so like to Death that it fooled Nontraya and his host of the dead, and yet reversible. One of those intermediate states. How many of your body's atoms are the same as in your body of 25 years ago? An elemental may have a somewhat faster exchange of body matter. Yeah, the elemental might just take the spirit of its body mass with it when it returns to wherever it came from. Spirits within spirits, within spirits... Much like a dragonewt possessing an intact egg. If someone performs a Lightbringer's Quest with you as the reward, you will get a new body matching your sense of self. You'll become what Xeotam calls a Kaelith. Acrually, the Source of all energies uses entities possessing a quality that RuneQuest identifies as POW to imbue its magicsl energy onto Creation. POW generation is generally an autotroph process, with only some aberrations like sorcerers' Tapping or vampires' blood drain operating in a heterotroph function. Unless your Glorantha has an ecosystem of spirit entities feeding on other spirit entities. Bunny spirits taking energy from carrot spirits, and in return providing energy to wolf spirits. The same goes for living beings, according to most schools of Gloranthan metaphysics (as in Revealed Mythologies). The Ultimate or Source emits energies through runic channels that are accumulated by Life Force, which then can be expended, ultimately dissipating into the Void. The body no longer has the spirit, and the spirit no longer possesses the body. It only haunts it. Does the spirit regenerate MP if its MP had been depleted at the time of death? Apparently yes. Things lacking (any trace of) POW, things that have (been forced to) consume(d) their life force. Undead for instance. Things tapped to oblivion. Sometimes a shape may have a spirit if the material (e.g. metal) is largely devoid of it. Made things like mostali creations (Jolanti, Nilmergs/Gremlins, Gobblers) may count as living for some degrees of living. Dead crystals of the Gods are not alive by definition. Which is sort of the point of this thread. IMG spirits have ecologies of their own. Maybe not every single instance of a thing will have a spirit on its own, but regardless whether there are individual spirits or not, there will be collective spirits of such matter. I like the vision of Prax (and Genert's wastes) providing a spirit vegetation that the Eirithan herds feed upon alongside some less nutritious plant matter.

IIRC that's Ivex Devouring Dog.

I am not a rules expert (although possibly a rules lawyer). That disclaimer out of the way: This seems to be a typical course for a wyter quest - contact an ancestor of the (ancestrallly tied) group you want to make a wyter for, or contact a hero whose goals coincide with that of your hero band, and invite them into the wyter object. Not exactly a spirit binding operation, but somewhat parallel to that. Traveling the Godtime is both similar to and different from discorporating to travel the Spirit World, which is what shamans do to pick up spirits in order to manifest them somehow in the Mundane World. Discorporation doesn't usually allow you to bring spirit containers or other non-spirit items. Heroquesting on the other hand used to have a meta-rule that you cannot bring physical objects from the Hero Planes (targets of the Lightbringers' Quest aka Kaeliths being an exception, as forming their new body might be an acquired or innate ability of theirs). Many heroquest items are a kind of "contact relics" - physical objects created in the Mundane World to resemble the holy artifact, carried over into the heroquest to function as the original, and somehow retaining some of that ability upon the return. Under HQ1 and HQG rules, you would spend a hero point to cement such an item as an ability. I haven't watched Jeff's actual play videos to the extent that I could comment on whether or how much his playtest Heroquesting rules reflect that approach. Bringing back someone's ghost by associating the Godtime encounter with an actual possession of his carried into Godtime should be a viable binding method sidestepping enchantments. Of course, this will mean to face that person's opponents, ideally at the moment of his death. Otherwise,

Given my currently resurging research into tides, I wonder how the Boat Planet (on the visible side of the sky River) and the Blue Streak (on the outside of the Sky River, and parting ways from its ascending path starting at Lorion) interact, and whether the Boat Planet might add another influence on the tidal cycles. Do we know where on the Celestial River the Boat Planet will rise? On the Youth side (which seems to be in the East at Dawn on Voria's day), or on the Lorion side? WIll it travel with the Blue Streak, or against it? (Given the Waertag association, I would be in favor of traveling with the force behind the tides, but the Waertagi control over tidal waves gives other options, too.)

If you have it, The Gathering Thunder, part 3 of the Barbarian Adventures series of Hero Wars/ HeroQuest 1 scenarios, has the quest to return the Boat Planet as a central theme. The question "when exactly" is already hard for the question when exactly did it disappear, and did it disappear everywhere at the same time? Quoting the intro to the scenario (p.48 of the booklet): So already the disappearance is problematic. Zzabur presumably cast his great spell in 920 S.T., or at least that is when it took effect: (Guide p.139, boxed text): The disappearance of the planet started the wave-front (initially literally so, as the clutter in Ozur Bay showed) of the Closing spreading out over the seas of the Inner World of Glorantha. (We don't have any information how the Outer World may have been affected.) Generally, ships braving the Closing would have to fight fiercely with hostile entities and hostile conditions, but sufficiently sturdy ships with sufficiently heroic crews would be able to survive such voyages, although with a great risk of not making it. There is the famous last ship from Jrustela that reached Seshnela in 996 (Middle Sea Empire p.27f), and there is the entire fleet of Kralori ships that reached Vormain through Kahar's Sea of Fog despite the Closing (but which was destroyed by a mighty holy storm, something which reads like kamikaze in Japanese). The expansion of the Closing took 50 years to cover all of the inner Seas of Glorantha. Dormal's Opening journeys started in 1580, with the Boat Planet being raised in 1624. It is one of four planets raised in that year, with the three new planets in Orlanth's Ring the other ones. And Sartarite heroquesters are involved in all these raisings, although the Boat Planet heroquest in Gathering Thunder shows a multitude of participants on that ship carrying Dormal and Gonn Orta's daughter (from the Cradle scenario) into the Sky. The Eleven Lights quest would have seen concurrent heroquesting elsewhere in the world, both acting for and against this new phenomenon. My pdf of the Glorantha Sourcebook states (p.37) that the Boat Planet re-appears in Sea Season 1624, which is congruent with the story in Gathering Thunder, although it also says that it rises in 1625 (p.103). The Gathering Thunder scenario apparently starts some time in 1623 (p.:50 Minaryth Purple presages the New Lunar Temple ceremony as imminent in two years time). But then, on their return the participants learn about the assassination of Termertain by the Humakti led by Sarostip. Many of the assumptions in this story arc are clashing with the current canonical Glorantha, such as the inclusion of "Argrath Maniskison" as one of Kallyr's companions. It is still a rather grand approach at heroquesting into the Sky World, different in style from the journey of the Eleven Lights or the Dragonraise dancers (as GMed by Ian Cooper). The Eleven Lights Heroquest in the HQ2 book The Eleven Lights (p.115 onward) has Kallyr behind that celestial quest, too, taking place during the Windstop and helping to end it concurrently with Broyan's Battle of Iceland.

There is the Lunar New Year ceremony which complements the regular Sacred Time Lightbringers Quest re-enactments, including many Pelorian bits from before the birth of the Goddess. The freeform game titled "White Bear and Red Moon" (yes, excactly like that board game that started this all) was played a number of times at conventions, including twice in Germany with me attending (as Pikat Yaraboom and Beat-pot Aelwrin, respectively), and it has a suggested script for the characters to follow (the script also includes the Lightbringers side and a cosmic unity one). Getting this script published would be helpful.

While Tapatalk's Glorantha corner is mainly the archive of the activity of the much lamented Google Plus group for Glorantha, that still exists. The G+ group had a feature called "Where in Glorantha": https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/glorantha/where-in-glorantha-f2/ Edit: Looks like quite a few of the images were not archived.

Spirits are entities generating life force (magic). Depending on your Glorantha, they can be limited to the Spirit Plane, which is a huge realm including a "three-dimensional skin" that matches the Gloranthan Surface World (including the soil/bedrockj/waves beneath and the air above), or a whole lot of them can be manifest in the material world as properties of the material world. Corporeal things have spirits. Like e.g. trees, rocks, waves, geographic features, weather features, people. The question how you view your Glorantha is to decide whether the spirits have or are these things. Things may have a temporary existence only. This form of non-permanent reality is called "illusion", some of which can be generated by people using rune magic or sorcery. (And in a way sorcery spells are a non-permanent reality, too, constructs of the sorcerer's magic that have tangible reality.) Other non-permanent reality is called "manifestation", such as the effects of the "Visibility" ability that a wide range of spirits who are able to pierce the veil possess. True. Most corporeal things have undergone a series of Green Age revelations that force them to eat, sleep, have sex to procreate, and ultimately die. Not just plants, animals and people, but also rocks, soil, winds, waves... The archetypes of these things underwent mythical changes in Godtime. When I said "Green Age revelations", I don't mean exactly the age of the world when the dry land was mainly covered by plants, although that period of Godtime is home to a vast majority of irreversible changes to these archetypes. One of the last "Green Age revelations" was Grandfather Mortal accepting the power of capital D Death (as opposed to the temporary state of death that was common in the Golden Age, where/when your harvested root plant or your slain prey could be sung back within a single transition period (e.g. night, sleep period, date change, turn of the Sun Empress, you name it). The spirits of deciduous trees have died (gone hibernating in the halls of Ty Kora Tek) multiple times. That's small d dead, not capital D Dead, mostly. Again, this is difficult for hibernating entities, including Brown Elves. The rules of which game, though? While RuneQuest is the main vehicle for Glorantha again, other games have defined the reality of Glorantha in their terms, too. Starting with White Bear and Red Moon and Nomad Gods which have their own definitions of spirits, and for a significant time including HeroQuest which had spirit-housing talismans which were no enchantments but temporary homes for spirits volunteering to experience the Mundane World, created by animists who somehow helped provide these anchoring devices, possibly paying a virtual fee never specified in those rules. Then what about elementals? They are spirits, but have bodies. Your neighborhood dryad might disagree.

I created a simple spreadsheet to calculate the Gloranthan tides that allows estimates of Gloranthan tides depending on the weekday of the Blue Streak added to the influence of the weekly tide that is reflected in the phase of the Red Moon (as visible from Magasta's Pool/Dragon Pass). There are two parameters that can be played with for different models that you can play with. The first is the maximum amplitude for the weekly tidal cycle. This value gets multiplied with my estimates of the tidal amplitude of the day of the Lunar week (at the end of the table). The second parameter is the daily increase of the (isolated) Blue Streak tide. My simple approach is just to increase this by the same amount for every day the Blue Streak takes to climb up the Sky River. You start your tidal cycle by deciding on the weekday that had the last fall of the Blue Streak, then you roll 1 D6. Go to the Lunar day of your falling Blue Streak, roll 1D6 and just read the values for the day and go down to the line that shows the D6 result. At the end of the line you will find your next starting date. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1rUzCT-BO4Pi0bccGLyIc_y_faPiyhWY5zBWmQk3W06E/edit?usp=sharing Play around with the parameters. If the weekly cycle has a greater factor than the Blue Streak factor, you may end up with a slow outflow despite the Blue Streak still rising. As this has not been described yet, it looks like the Blue Streak factor should be greater than the Weekly Tide factor. And it is up to you what length unit you assign to the factors. Being used to SI units, I would run with meters. With factor 1 for the weekly cycle and factor 1.5 for the Blue Streak increase, you get a maximum amplitude of 10. If you make this meters, it corresponds to the tidal changes as mentioned in the scenario "The Sea Cave", if you make this feet, it gives you a tidal variation between average high tide and highest tide of about 4-5 feet, which would be similar to Jeff's difference between High Tide and Highest Tide for the Rightarm Isles (reaching the reeds or almost covering the reeds). But try for yourself. You can play with the weekly increases or the daily ones to get other variations, like non-linear increases for the Blue Streak, or making small differences for the weekly day heights (as fraction of 1) - ideally with a personal copy of this file.

These rivers were "normal rivers" in the Godtime, when they crawled inland, until Sky River Titan (Lorion, later aka Engizi) was wounded fighting Chaos, and sent his lifeblood to support Magasta's struggle to contain the Void inside the place where the Spike used to be prior to the Breaking of the World. Only from that moment onward did the rivers flow down to the seas. (Note that the Faralinthor sea south of Genertela had been dried up in the course of the Storm Age, quite some events after the Flood had been beaten back.)

Why do you think it is the skin that is enchanted, and not the entire limb/body? Taking the body apart will break the object the enchantment was cast upon. Best "re-use" would be a zombie or mummy bodyguard.

Plentonius calls the Gray Age the reign of Kargzant, the nomad name for a Lightfore identity, known to the urban Dara Happans as Reladivus, one of the eight planetary sons, the guardian of the south-east, and of Nivorah. The only Planetary Son who did not enter the Underworld when Umath broke the Perfect Sky. Orlanth slaying the Emperor caused Yelm to disintegrate, spawning Antirius as a separate entity, while Kargzant, Shargash and Verithurus(a) were still (or again) in the sky. Until the second appearance of Antirius at the Hill of Gold, both these entities populated the Storm Age. After the Dawn, there is a re-constituted sun in the sky, identified as Yelm and at the very least including Antirius. Then in 109 or 110 S.T. there is the Bridling of Kargzant, binding that nomad Lightfore entity to the (nightly) Sunpath. Only afterwards the entities Antirius and Kargzant are united in the same stellar body. That Bridling of Kargzant followed the Hyaloring reign over Dara Happa (Vuranoste and his non-emperor sons). What happened in this event? Part of this might be harkening back to Reladivus resenting the hell taint of his siblings Verithurus(a) and Shargash. It was the appearance of Lightfore Daysenerus at the Battle of Night and Day which broke the compromise at that event, with the Black Eater forming in reaction. It seems to have been a cult from the Arcos Valley, which seems to have quite a bit of Lightfore worship, both by nomads and by non-rider goat herders. The Daysenerus forces were part of the Dara Happan muster. Fighting Heortlings and trolls was right down the Dara Happan alley, even with the temporary cooperation with the Second Council in Dorastor the Breaking of the Council had re-kindled ancient hatred between these groups. Palangio was not the hero who manifested Daysenerus (that was the Dara Happan general Elmgatum who gave his life for this manifestation of the sun god of his Vanchite forces), but he accepted the manifested god and became its avatar, carrying the god all over the Bright Empire and ruling over the hostile barbarians (except in Fronela, although the cult did reach there). The Nysalorean acceptance of Chaos was not "sanctioned" by the cult, but much of that happened outside of their presence. Palangio overcame Arkat in Ralios without having to resort to employing Chaos, but with the previous foes of Arkat bringing in "cheats" like the Telmori gift or the false immortality of the Tanisoran Vampire Kings the cult's association with the Bright Empire was tainted in the perception of its foes.

Basically, different masks for a main cult can shift the cult relations mainly in favor of compatibility in exchange for some restrictions.