Joerg

Merfolk.

The lakes which make the lands of Ralia "Ralios" rather than Raliela or Ralorela do have their entities of the bodies of water. In the animistic world view, even the tinies puddle will have one, but those may be below recognition threshold. A river's headwaters are somehow different from regular lakes, as they have turned into springs after the heads of the rivers returned to Magasta's Pool. (Leaving aside problems with lland-locked basins like that brackish lake in eastern Pent.) They have ties to River Horse.

There is a lack of names, but we do have Salinarg's wife as one example of a female Telmori, even if we don't count Harsaltar's little sisters. Kostajor's son Helkos used to have three Telmori wives after losing his cousin/wife Eonislora, daughter of Terasarin to Lunar assassins. Transgressing the number of legs in procreation would be something I would reserve for the Other Side, not mundane procreation. Circumstances like those that produced Morag or Arkat. And Morag might be a good case study for what happens if magic meets "adventurous" out-of-species matings, even so closely related ones like Minotaurs. I don't think that Gbaji's gift to the Telmori was to breed true as shapeshifters. It was to establish the shape-shifting ability as a common trait. From what we know about Kostajor's Telmori descendants (and Salinarg's wife's descendants), the Telmori curse is dominant in reproduction.

What is mundane science but another word for understanding nature and imposing your will on it through knowledge - which is the definition of sorcery compared to the other magical systems. His Pedalcopter for instance requires an insight into the nature of Storm that equals a sorcerer's mastery of that rune. I thought that title went to the two individuals in Akem? The God Forgotten aren't Brithini, even though the individuals we know about appear to be extremely long-lived (the Talar, Belintar's sorcerer advisor, and as far as I can make out also Leonardo). They do copy some of the Brithini system, but how successful are they in that? Sorcerers will find other ways to ensure longevity. If Leonardo is a flawless dronar, that should mean he would be illiterate. I somehow have a problem to imagine a Leonardo who doesn't create lots of notes and doodles... or an Archimedes who doesn't. At least IMG, elaborate mechanisms or alchemical products are a form of sorcery. The Mostali appear to agree. If he was a Brithini and not just part of a society imitating the Brithini ways, I would accept that, but word of Jeff has it that while you can stop being a Brithini immortal, you cannot become one (as I understand, other than through birth to Brithini parents, reproducing under order of a Talar, and presumably with blessings by a Zzaburi). The God Forgotten (is that identical to Ingareens, or are those only a specific portion of the population) aren't actual Brithini. I doubt their 17 ancestors surviving the Gods War were.

The rider, or the mount? Or both?

Those bridges were clearly Belintar's creations, IMO. Look at Jeff's and Kalin's vision of the City of Wonders: http://www.princeofsartar.com/comic/29-the-city-of-wonders/ The terninal towers look like grown out of the ground, rather similar to the Obsidian Palace. That kind of magical construction has been demonstrated elsewhere, too, like the Pedastal (the Esrolian bridge terminus?) or later on the Building Wall.

That castle is bigger than I woluld imagine for Leonardo. I suppose any good sorcerer will want to inhabit a tower rather than a castle. But how much is Leonardo a sorcerer? Rather than a lab, I see him having a workshop where a few minions operate a bronze (or other metal) foundry, a carpenter's shop, a scriptorium with ink and parchment production, a library, and possibly a windmill or four. From what I have seen published or suggested for Leonardo's inventions, there are no spells involved in his creations, and that may be how he escapes Mostali ire despite his machine-leaning inventions. We know about his pedalcopter and a few "defensive" inventions. and he is bound to have patrons to whom he delivers semi-practical fulfillment of their requests as long as he can produce some unique solution. Although it is possible that his main sponsor was Belintar, who might have given him a stipend for following his intuition when inventing new stuff, in which case he might run into financial problems any season now, or at least more difficulties in providing material for his inventions. Leonardo is bound to have some luxuries in his residence, possibly including a water pump for his bath powered by the steps of visitors, an elevator to his observatory, mechanical calculators etc. I think that a visit to Leonardo's place might bear some similarities to a visit to Gonn Orta's castle, with Leonardo's maiordomo receiving the visitors, making deals or giving out missions much like Boshbisil does for Gonn Orta's castle.

I have arrived at a geology resembling that of the Edinburgh coastal area, with sandy tidal flats interrupted by volcanic outgrowths and (along the southern coast somewhat shattered) limestone or deepfer layer bedrock further away from the sea. We know that the children of Veskarthan were involved with the orogenesis of the Storm Mountains (alongside Tada and Larnste), so having some of them popping up in the region would be logical. Not all children of of the big volcano reachse mountainhood. The bedrock parts are what was left by Worcha's onslaught, which did carry away a lot of bedrock from where we now find the only moderately deep Rozgali (and further west Solkathi) currents. Some of the missing land/bedrock may be blamed on the Breaking of the World or Chaos eating its way through towards the Spike (see the Slime area on the Trollpak map of the troll battles), but there is a huge ledge before you reach the chasms of the Doom Currents. Much of Kostern Island and Locsil has underground structures which are possible below the tidal line, but are easier to maintain while remaining above sea level, without the requirement to run huge water sorcery spells to keep from drowning. Leave that to the Mostali. But to me this makes cliffs of clay or of limestone (think Dover, Cape Arkona, or Bornholm) with inlets with dunes and lots of tidal flats around. And that continues up north towards Karse, and east beyond Corflu (there interrupted by the Zola Fel estuary).

By abandoning all notions of Orlanthi honor. It is fine to slay folk as long as you stand up for what you did. Secret murder is not that different from Kinstrife. Taking on an avenging alias, wearing masks and possibly the Bronze Age equivalent of spandex would be allowable, though. One famously masked organisation were the Kitori Shadowlords, who once upon a time included upstanding worshippers of Orlanth, before all that Tax Slaughter business. The Nochet Kimantorings still wear those lead masks. Taking on ritual masks and becoming the (presumably lesser) deity would be a form of heroquesting, with magical effects. This is entering warlock territory, though, and perps might find themselves volunteering/(volunteered to join the Sartar Magical Union. Kill and talk about it. Leave a tag if you are a warband/hero band. Lunars would appreciate a receipt, too. The plot-armored villain with a resurrection flatrate (or worse, knowing the backdoor from Hell that works even if anti-resurrection methods were applied) will have access to the ghosts of those of his guards who succumbed to the attack. Usually, ghosts will have some notion about who killed them. Those notions may of course be mistaken. Lhankor Mhy magics make hidden crime somewhat difficult. Their rates are prohibitively high, but that won't stop high status victims (or friends of victims).

Rock dwarfs use picks, it's their raison d'être. That said, there certainly are ways to use picks creatively so that you can use fire, water for quenching, or corrosive substances in order to make the rock pliant or crumble, like Hannibal or the Romans did. There may be huge drills, possibly Jolanti- or Nilmerg-operated/-powered. There may be use of explosives. Looking at the Pavis geology, the Flintnail Mostali have mostly to deal with sandstone, limestone and occasional layers of crumbly slate when they don't quarry the remains of the Faceless statue. There is not much in the way of solid bedrock unless you dig very deep. Are they pressed for time? If not, their indifference to aging won't hurry them up. They do have anti-insect measures, to counter the boring maggots fielded by the uz as much as the Krarshtkids. When it comes to eating rock, the Mostali harvest quite a bit for their cuisine, but unlike the uz, they consume it in processed form. The Flintnail dwarfs are masons on the surface, too, so if they can hew or cut some of the material into usable blocks, they will do so. I guess that they know how to liquefy rock (and to solidify it again), but doing so is a bit of an anathema, taking the Stasis out of Stone. Still one of their tools to deal with unwanted competition. Kept imprisoned to sic on intruding trolls? Possibly. Tamed? Not likely. And whoever would be in charge of that would be a borderline apostate.

Practically, the demand for crossbreeds (mules and "cavalry zebras") brings horse-breeders and breeders of other equines together. A low status Grazer family may do rather well selling inferior mares for crossbreeding. There are myths and heroquests about that. So the grandfather was possibly a by-blow of Dorasar (with a woman from Olgkarth's tribe?) who married a daughter of a Zebra Fort leader and may have engaged in breeding cavalry zebra crossbreeds. Paternal grandmother is, the maternal grandmother is likely back in Pent if she survived the slave-taking, and a horse nomad. There could be an adoptive Zebra Fort grandmother, though. The Grazers have suppressed the memory of Alavan Argay. Derik Pol Joni may have re-taught it to the dissident Grazers that joined his new Bastard tribe. The Pol Joni were the most likely source for horse mares for cross-breeding in Pavis.

Bringing back a lost beast seems to be a very standard heroic challenge. King Moirades for instance had to bring back a blue-colored bird back for the fourth FHQ, and we all know about the Aurochs challenge that Inkarne is going to put towards a certain king of Pavis. Enjossi's quest is famous, too. Would people be interested in adventures using this concept?

I'd rather see "throwing swords" than "sword arrows"... and I am not particularly keen on thrown swords, either.

The Tarpit is located atop the Shadow Plateau, a km or so above the surrounding lands, with potentially 400 subterranean levels still above sea level. How far does the Tar reach down? Does it fill only the former upper basement of Veskarthen's spire, or does it continue below sea level? How much were other uz (and Kitori) habitats in the Platea affected? There is also the weird information about the entirety of the Plateau not being a truncated volcano but an edifice erected by Panaxles the Architect. What does that tell us about the rock face, its material, etc.? Or did Panaxles do a stunt similar to those cappadocian cave cities?

Usually, we look at what happens to the cultures involved when the big bad things happen in Gloranthan history. (Godtime cataclysms are covered by the beast gods and spirits, but the Compromise limits the beast spirits too.) One known effect that required a hero to set right was the Salmon migration into the Stream after Belintars struggle with the Lead Serpent blocked the course of the Creekstream River, leaving the salmons without a route to their breeding grounds. Enjossi found a way to set this thing right through the New River/Runnel River/Lyksos River system. When touching on the turtle shell armor of the Hiia cult, I started to wonder about what happened to their beaches when Old Seshnela, Jrustela and Old Slontos sunk in the cataclysms ending the Second Age. Big sea turtles like the four species (yet) inhabiting our world's oceans would have relied on dry sandy beaches with good access to the "open" sea. For purposes of supplying the Hiia cult during the Closing, some spawning beaches may exist in the Isles, but they are hardly a major breeding ground. The Mournsea might offer better open seas access, but wouldn't qualify as a major breeding ground either unless the turtles adapted well to the sinkings of the God Learner lands (Jrustela, Old Seshnela, Slontos) within the last 600 years. With the Closing in place, I don't see how one of the two extant Sofali populations could have sent a hero to lead the beasts to replacements of the lost breeding grounds, but why not have one since the Opening? There appear to have been four populations of Sofali people (and associated great turtles) at some point in Godtime, but that assumes that there were seas where there are seas now, or otherwise a migration of the turtles and the associated Hsunchen towards the new beaches after the Implosion of the Spike. (And it isn't just sea turtles, all manner of sea life and coastal life forms would have had to colonize the newly created shores. Usually this would involve demigod entities, possibly beasts rather than sapient beings. Amphobos the Wanderer did something like this for the Newtlings and presumably other amphibians plus their habitat flora and fauna on the re-awakening of Choralinthor after the Breaking of the World established an approximation of the modern coast lines. IMG that's also when the Choralinthor ludoch reclaimed the caves of Diendimos at Deepest, immigrating from the Neliomi Sea. (Otherwise they would have come up the Sshorg river, with Vithelan ancestry and appearance rather than Wareran appearance.) Re-establishing a breeding ground could be done by a divine beast (effectively a demigod entity) whenever required. Sea turtles in particular would have been unaffected by the Closing, otherwise there would be no Sofali populations on the eastern corners of the Homeward Ocean, and that would include demigod beasts, too. The Syndics' Ban in Fronela brought similar problems to all manner of seasonally migratory beasts. Would these beasts have marched off into the mists of the borders, to re-appear out of these when the season was right? Or do all migratory species require questing to re-establish them after the Thaw? That would explain a demigod like Corostis Jumps-Like-Salmon, otherwise an almost Tom Bombadil-like entity.

I had the impression that Hiia was using locally sourced giant snapper turtles from the upper Oslir calm waters. The Vendref would have had to trade as hard for turtle shells as they would have for metal in order to outfit the Hiia cultists, and that doesn't really make sense.

Thanes? Sounds like some ugly hairy male stuff... Nobles are expected to be women of culture and their well-behaved male playthings. Of course you need hunters for the coarse stuff, ugly and hairy and possibly male and/or human. Absent the warrior rancher trope, there might be special guardians with their more or less tame monsters keeping the untamed ones in check, like that Babeester Gor cult temple guardian beast, or a Fay Wray type with her very own looming primate (Vogarth?).

Whoever enters Hell (a certain depth of the Underworld) is Dead to the Surface World while roaming there. At the same time, many areas (volumes, really) of the Underworld are teeming with life and fertility. Uz /Arthropod Wonderhome used to be such a region. The spawn of Drospoly and Varchulanga are as fecund as Triolina's descendants. The winter abode of the Brown Elves or Ernalda's Underworld Palace are hotbeds of Fertlity.

Quite explicitely I do not know, but all of this reduction is a reaction to the implementation of runes in RQG, and affects only that product line. Which unfortunately turns out to be the only Glorantha product line with some support, including the Jonstown Compendium. RQG already has inherited too many skills from its predecessors. Adding a few more non-core runes as requirements for fairly popular cults adds to this skill inflation - every skill you add to the game makes your characters more incompetent, and while RQG allows players to create one-dimensional combat or magic monsters, it is harder to create equally competent characters in other fields. Characters wanting to do something with lores and similar checkbox-less skills need a lot of GM fiat to make that happen, resulting in mediocre success rates. This is a kowtow rather than a nod to RQ2, and an almost grudging acknowledgement of RQ3 which was similarly bloated (in hindsight, back then that bloat was a selling feature vs. class and THACO). I suppose a majority of the Glorantha community is first and foremost interested in a game setting, which makes game artifacts invading the lore of the world not an issue for that purpose. Outside of that purpose, I don't see why game design considerations of a single should affect the lore of a multi-platform setting. The current canon is a RQG canon. YGWV if RQG is not your (only) approach to the setting. RQG is what makes sellling Glorantha commercially viable. Without a well-selling game system, neither fan products nor niche alternatives like 13G or (a more and more hypothetical) Questworlds Glorantha or board games won't see the light of day.

No Orlanth Rex even in Adjusted houses? After the Machine Wars, the Hendriki campaigned mightily in Esrolia and managed to dominate up to half of Esrolia in the Adjustment Wars which forced "standard Orlanthi" rules on the conquered cities, alhough leaving the Houses intact. A bit of a reprise of the Kodigvari system, although this time using the Rex kingship. While Nochet only accepted a Rex consort for their queen in the (almost) final settlement of the Adjustment Wars (forced by the temple of Ezel that condemned the resising houses' abuse of Ernaldan magics), less central places kept at least some of the adjustments even after the Hendriki king had been kicked out for good. The Adjustment struggles lasted for almost two centuries, with some of the initial conquests experiencing adjustment for that long. Part of the Adjusted territories were lost to form Porthomeka, with Caladran overlords rather than Heortlanders.

The essay states that Aram was friends with Vathmai, a tribal founder of the Entruli and a lover of the Silver Age Queen of Nochet (effectively the direct successor of Norinel who led her city folk into the Obsidian Palace, that queen led the return from the Shadow Plateau into the walls of Nochet). That makes him Entruli-adjacent, all right. The Dawn Survival sites talks about the Harandings at Mralothenyi, whose nobles (only) ride Tusker boars. As I tried to lay out in the Tusk Rider episode I suspect that Aram and his followers were nobles of the Harandings when he hunted down Gouger the God Pig. That may have happened in the Silver Age, but I think it might just as well have happened very shortly after the Dawn. Reasons: For Ernalda to send an avenging boar she needs to be active and worshipped again which (canonically) only happened within Time. The Silver Age is a gray area in this regard, no longer cyclical Godtime but not quite yet linear Time. The Entruli further west did anger deities including the land, creating the Mournsea shown on the Second Age map of Maniria. This transgression might be the one punished by sending out Gouger. However. these things happened a year or so after the Dawn. The problem with this rather elegant "Gouger immediately after the Dawn" concept is the Dawn Survival site of the Ivory Plinth proudly displaying the tusk of Gouger... But then, how exact are these "census at the dawn" dates?

The root (or tail) of all rivers is in the Styx. What is entering the Underworld at the Footprint is the head of the Syphon River, though... Which makes River Horse travel to the Syphon headwaters a bit otherworldly.

Ramalia doesn't allow any naval exchange - that's pretty much the point of their paranoia. True, Vadeli would feel right at home, but they need to enter overland, not by sea.

"The soul lingers..." I have been wondering about the concept of the multi-partite elemental souls (five for Orlanthi, six for Yelmites, seven for Lunars) plus the spirit available to Daka Fal, and how well these hold together without being tied to the body any more. There have been reconstruction quests where a (usually divine) entity's Other Side components get hunted down and re-assembled or re-integrated. Belintar's resurrection of Hendriki King Andrin might be such a case, with the Storm Soul modified or chained. (Separated from that Spirit of Freedom shown in the Prince of Sartar webcomic.) A expedited cremation rite with enough consumption of the dead body should make a Heal Body unfeasible, even if the remains from that are treated with respect by the hostile cremators. (Happened in my game when an ambush to capture a major villain went slightly astray, involving an accomplice of the player heroes among the Pavis priesthood...) Which again makes me wonder how much the recently afterlifed spiritual remains of the dead body experience its afterlife treatment. Is the usual practice to wait seven days before embalming or whatever the dead body, or do the mummification operators get to extract the brain stuff as soon as the body is declared dead? How much will such embalming traumatize the spirit, possibly creating a ghost?

Not sure whether I did the calculation - when it comes to RQ, I know my house-ruled RQ3, even though I nowadays run RQG - but the limit for sorcerous extension is how much POW you inscribed for that spell. Spending the POW on Enhance INT might be the munchkin's choice, as having that spell active allows you to cast any spell at high intensities, although the MP-saving feature of that method makes it attractive for any spell. Trouble is how to get all that POW. Which begs the question whether there is a POW-dampening sorcery for lowering your POW temporarily in order to succeed in the POW gain rolls... You'd have to spend at least a couple of weeks under that spell, though, but if you spend your time studying something else full time, that's not that much of a hardship. Same for other characteristics for self study, and possibly for skill ratings, too?