Joerg

From what I have seen of @jajagappa's play by forum HeroQuest games, keeping the number of rolls low allows for storytelling the rolls, while using cooperative narration in the build-up. As per the rules, the player(s) state their goal, then roll for it, with the narrator using a roll for the opposition. In play by post, that roll can be called from an engine, or the narrator can do the rolls with actual dice, or drawing numbered cards like the Glorantarot deck as randomizer and additional inspiration. The narrator offers the outcome of the opposed roll, giving the rolling player the chance to offer how a marginal defeat may be turned into a costly victory, or otherwise reveling in the narrative potential of the defeat. Other than simple contests, I think that group extended contests work reasonably well.

For my personal experience of mysteries or immersion in fiction in whichever media, I find that other than a temperament for the ritus I need quite some preparation to find the mood and flow, especially if I come in cold from a different flow/immersion. On the other hand, you don't usually cast your divine magic out of the blue, but in some form of crisis or escalation which would complement your magic. That's not to say that Humakti sword magic should be easier to cast after a melee round or two of actual swordplay, or at least meditative kata. The rules allow the latter. Just having discussed Babeester Gor, hatred might be less of an issue as a burning anger or rage. If Voria is the innocence of childhood, Babs might be the confrontation of puberty. Babeester Gor investigators seem to be quite popular extra concepts, even if such investigations end in blood and gore. Interesting point, but storytelling using voices (and be it animal sounds) would be quite ancient. How much are ritual masks a role you slip into, and how much are they system acting?

Possibly cheap mass-produced kaleidoscopes from Second Age God Forgot, not even requiring a visit to the Clanking Ruins to be dug up somewhere? Available as "no-price" participation rewards at Casino Town? Could be done on parchment or in stained glass.

At least, there is good reason to expect that we may find agreement. But let's do so in an appropriately named thread. Please do challenge those arguments if anything feels wrong to you - they might be flawed or hyperbolic. Every major Orlanthi hero brings in something weird and hitherto untried. Garundyer has weird associates too, at the very least that Iron Sage and his fire-breathing royal cousin, and possibly those weird henotheists from the Chariot of Lightning sect. He is going to cry havoc in Arkati/Tanisoran Safelster and seems to be able to have fun with the Kingdom of War, Emperor Takenegi Phargentes II, and the Chaos conspiracy in Karia. In the Second Age, the Orlanthi priesthood supported Great Living Heroes, starting with Hardrad Hardslaughter, but the concept was used both by traditionalists (Renvald Meldekbane) and dragonfriends (Varnakol the Mangler) against the God Learners. Orlmandan the Red was the leader of the Traditionalist priests who lost against Isgangdrang Dragonspeaker, who then instituted the entire Third Council as worshipped heroes (including Ingolf Dragonfriend whose magic did not really require such ballast). (Isgang)Drang lost against Alakoring, who committed suicide by mocking an aldryami hero. Garundyer comes from the same region as Alakoring. His hero powers so far appear to be of a martial nature, not yet designed to deal with a specific foe, but the catalogue of possible opponents is long, and starts with five Arkats (one of whom might be Argrath - that encounter might spawn Argrath's relationship with Ardinyar Kocholangsson). Who are the (capital h) Heroes of Orlanth? Let's start with (future) King Heort, scion of Korol's Vingkotling lineage, a wind shaman and shapeshifter. We might look at some of his contemporaries, like Vogarth Strong Man, Aram ya Udram, or his buddy Vathmai Entrulsson. Next are Lokamayadon and possibly Rastalulf. In comes Harmast Barefoot, and as supporting cast Makla Man of Ralios and Hendrik of the hidden folk near the Footprint. Next we have a couple of Darkness slayers, most notably Hardrast Hardslaughter. Then we get Obduran the Flyer, who proved that you could be both a true dragonfriend and an excellent Orlanthi. What follows is a weird period of Dragonfriends, a troll hero of Orlanth, a Tusker rider becoming the prototype Tusk Rider and a few more quite heroic foes of the Machine God, Alakoring Dragonbreaker initiated the doom of the EWF, alongside other non-Orlanthi heroes from Carmania and Dara Happa. The next major Orlanthi Hero seems to be Jannisor Moonchaser. Arim the Pauper and Sartar are heroic founders of their respective dynasties and kingdoms, starting traditions of heroic kings, occasionally verging on the capital H for hero. Yarandros Charge-Crazy possibly had the single most powerful Orlanthi kingdom of the Third Age up to the Dragonrise, extending his reign from the Cross Line separating him from Belintar's Holy Country all the way into Saird, but doesn't seem to have become King of Dragon Pass (and seems to have been slain in a rebellion led by the Colymar tribe). (The heirs of Jonat Bigbear and the rulers of Jorstland might wish to contest that claim.) According to Tarkalor, his older brother Sarotar could have changed the world but for Esrolian treachery. Garundyer is not one of those heroic kings (his king is one of his boon companions), much like Renvald Meldekbane or Jannisor Moonhater. Argrath does choose that king's path. Another Jannisor Moonhater, then. Advanced to the lip of the Red Moon, falling to treachery. And (of course) another Arkat - a different form of the same name, really. Or another Hendrik, leaving behind a cabal of strange magicians to carry forth his inheritance. Argrath collects almost as many stupid bad defeats as Jon Snow in the TV canon of Game of Thrones. His first sortie from Pavis killed off a majority of his initial White Bull followers. The utter defeat at Yoran sends him onto his Lightbringers' Quest as a desperate last-breath action. Interesting. What other routes could he have taken to fulfill his vow to take down the Red Moon? As a Khan of Khans, he might have stepped (pun not intended) into the stirrups of Sheng Seleris, rather than relying on the Orlanthi to topple the Red Moon. As the leader of a new Unity Council, he might have worked to unite humans and the Elder Races against the Chaos from the north, possibly starting in the Elder Wilds. As the victorious Arkat, he might have led Safelster first to regain Tanisor, then rounding up the Lunar Empire from the West. As a dragon mystic, he might have united Kralorela under him following the vacancy left behind by Godunya before striking at the Lunars, or he might have founded a new EWF using Belintar's more sustainable methods to create a Proximate Holy Realm. As some kind of Belintar Reborn (or resurrector of the Only Old One), he might have used the Holy Country as his initial power base, using Silver Age heroes. A true traditionalist Orlanthi society with traditionalist priests being happy would have temples at the top of a hierarchy of disjunct clans, none of that Rex nonsense. They abandoned that High King nonsense when Hardrad Hardslaughter ended the tyranny of the collectors of Arkat's Command tribute (an extension of the Kitori tribute, directing some of the income to Dagori Inkarth). Argrath defined himself from Lunar domination. Without that, his all encompassing passion would not have driven him. (Basically, that is the "what if" scenario if Palashee had not been killed by Phargentes after the destruction of most of the Lunar forces at Karnge Farm, but vice versa. Would the Eel-Ariash have sent a Sar-eel bride for Jarolar or Jarosar?) From my musings above, that could have been a "new Belintar" approach, an "improved EWF" approach, or a "New Unity Battle" one. Much of Argrath's lifepath might be seen as the Pit of Strangers segueing into the Ritual of the Net. Argrath travels the Pit of Strangers to excess with all his foreign companions, but that is really very much like a good Orlanthi. Exotic and strange friends are the hallmark of Orlanth's court, with Heler, (Y)Elmal(io)/Hyalor, his maternal siblings Quivin, Inora, Yinkin, and the Lightbringer weirdo types (including Eurmal!).

The Slontan experiments (and God Learner heroquesting other than sorcerous or man-of-all exploration of the new scriptures) started only after Arkat had been safely banished and his stars taken down. (Which begs the question where those stars would have been found in the sky.) It is a core Osentalka capability? Dismembering themselves into the two halves with reversed polarity of Arkat, Gbaji and Nysalor. (And I stand by that math...) And, after overcoming the zero/imaginary infinite Gbaji, severing of those parts that no longer served their purpose, like pouring all that accumulated Chaos on both sides of the separation between Arkat and Nysalor into Dorastor? Or do you mean what the God Learners inflicted on him post-apotheosis?

Fire, Darkness, and Moon would be one set of replacements for the three small Darknesses of the Illusion rune. The other three runes are less circular, but might work there, too, or the Y for Truth might be made from the remaining three elements. E.g. Earth in the center, surrounded by water, then Storm (or vice versa, depending on your message). Mobility-Stasis are the Powers pair which lends itself least for such schemes. Fertility-Death offers a capped eight-armed star or almost a black square, nearly as good as Truth as the negative of Illusion and vice versa in their hexagon, and Harmony-Disorder gives an almost black square when superimposed, too. One fun thing would be a series of opposing powers superpositions created by arranging another opposing powers superpositions which in turn get created from another opposed powers superposition - ideally five iterations so that the smallest and the largest are the same. Might work better as an animated gif, though.

Neither Sea nor Storm? Or are those in a future Triskele (Mobility)/Stasis superimposition?

Idle thought - do they keep an air bubble up using endless fart spells?

Heler is an important ancestor in the Sea Tribe, but also a lost ancestor, his connection to the heart of the sea severed (possibly several times). He lost his salt, completely, and much of his worshipper base among his descendents, the Triolini. Lightning Boy (or Yavor Lightning, if you want to use the names from Thunder Rebels) was a celestial martial deity who got conquered by Orlanth before getting a chance to shine in a(nother) major way. He may have participated as Shargash/Jagrekriand's missile in the encounter that brought down Umath. His brand of Aetheric energy is lost to the non-aeolic skies (the Fire Tribe) in the same way that Heler's waters are lost the seas. Shargash may still have thunder, but no lightning.

The food deliveries detailed in Griffin Mountain are for Boshbisil rather than Gonn Orta. I guess the two kids might get a share.

Use of soap requires water, in deserts or dry areas, which makes Dara Happa somewhat less suited for soap for personal hygiene much of the year, at least away from the river bottoms. In Prax, only the oases or the (mostly seasonal) rivers allow that luxury. Sending used lye soap down the Good Canal might actually be helpful to keep the Devil from growing, and the Storm Bull berserks at the Block might rinse themselves off with lye soap regularly.

I haven't seen any claiming to represent this city, even less so since Jeff made the above statement on Facebook. I am not quite clear how much NCC is the successor of Elmalvo, one of the first Esrolian cities to get into contact with the Adjustment Wars if I recall that correctly. (Not that there would be any authoritative maps on Elmalvo, either.) The local variant of Yelmalio does seem to imply some continuity from Elmalvo. Joh Mith's family and Dronlan's daughter create the rough temporal anchor to Apple Lane and Jonstown. Halcyon really gets back into the main storyline when Sor-eel gets relieved from his Pavis posting in time for the Windstop. (I wonder how many Pavisites or Praxians blame the Cradle incident for the Windstop...)

Given past experience with such a project, several thousand man-hours if done manually. The 2005 version had about 20k keywords. A data-mining application might be the manageable alternative. Canonicity can be assigned to the source rather than the entry, at least for starters. My old index did, at the request of Greg. Searchable pdfs have made this a lot less onerous, but require you to use the correctly spelled search entry, or a rather complicated search string. As a pdf? Unwieldy. As an app with a database? Then add a good entry description or possibly link directly to the pdf positions (with the option of adding the pdfs you bought to the database somehow, and assuming that all those pdfs are available for sale, at least as add-ons to the search tool), and you will have a useful product. Outside the scope of the Jonstown Compendium, and not pretty enough for the current presentation of Glorantha, though.

Well, I don’t know about that. I should have been specific: soap production in northern Europe. The reason being that there was no literacy there. While there seem to have been a few Greek explorers, producing coordinates for Ptolemy to add to his geography, none seem to have left any records of soap production or washing habits of the northerners. Yes, the Mesopotamians (no idea which branch of them) left a recipe in writing. I am talking about the inevitablility of developing something similar to (liquid) soap when treating hides, and carrying that over to wool after having seen its results on pelts might not be that much of an innovation. I said something similar as the article you quoted, but I probably need to add a qualifier - there might be pottery used in the process with enough residues (chalk soaps, for instance) available to modern surface investigation that the archaeological record might actually deliver traces. Relying on the written record for crafts is bound to be a failure. Crafters don't usually sit down to write about what they are doing. It takes geeks with time on their hand to notice what they are doing and to write it down for other people who might be curious. Bleach and fat will produce free fatty acids, which are the agent in soaps. There are places where soda or potash occurs naturally. There are saline lakes which contain that kind of bleach. (Prax is going to have some, with all the white ash produced by Oakfed. Possibly in the Dead Place, though.) Tanners mix e.g. ash and animal brains to treat hides. Brains = fatty tissue, ash = alkaline pH. Instant soap.

Mythically, that's not quite what happened. Other than Creek-Stream River and a few others, a river's source is in the Deep Sea, and the Headwaters are as far as they went on their invasions of the dry lands. The Oslir river may be one of those few others, as Orlanth broke the back of Blue Dragon River, presumably by tossing another dragon's back across it after slaying Sh'harkarzeel. (Ripping apart Aroka may have been independent of that...) The Oslir re-oriented to reach its source through the White Sea. (In a way, Orlanth might be Oslira's father by Sshorga. Or at least her midwife.) Even during the Flood Age, her headwaters remained inside the dry portion between the two standing waves that united into her sea north of Saird. After the flood subsided, the goddess returned to her river bed. Then the glacier arrived, Oslira was captured inside Manarlarvus's dome, and released by Chaos. Then Sky River Titan ordered all rivers to direct their flow to the Chaos Void. All did as well as they could. Collecting the Helerian waters may have been the Godtime rivers' job all the time. While the rivers progressed (and thereby flowed) inland, I understand them as tendrils of waters flowing uphill on the outside and back into the seas on the inside. Sending the Helerian waters down into the seas may have been Engizi's command. Physically, the headwaters of a river inside Time is where the Helerian and Gatan waters leave the bosom of the earth to gather in a pool or rivulet, the headwaters which are the target of the River Horse. In case of the Oslir springs on the flanks of Arrowmound, I suggest that much of that water really is melt-off from the glaciers atop those mountains.

Praxians might actually have access to superior (re-crystallized) potash thanks to the depredations of Oakfed during the Great Darkness. Tallow is provided by butchering, the bottleneck might be the fuel and the vessels to boil the soap, although stones taken out of a dung fire would serve nicely.

Pragmatism over ostentation? Not really an Orlanthi virtue. Glorantha is post-apocalyptic world. Very little technological advancement needs to have been invented within time, although much may have been re-discovered. Soap is a rare case of a Germanic loan word for a technology entering the Latin sphere of influence. Pliny describes the different soaps of the Germans and the Celts depending on what ash they are using for unestering the fatty acids from the fats. Of course there are no earlier written sources for soap production, and the very nature of soap makes archaeological evidence difficult to find, too. The Norse devoted one weekday to the activity of bathing, or rather "laugar", which may mean bleaching with alkali or using soap. However, the Hallstatt textiles and the Scythian textiles that archaeology managed to produce all were brightly died. What reason do we have to assume that the Sumerians did this first when say the Tripolje-Cucuteni folk apparently had elaborate and colorful textiles (as witnessed by their ceramics) and were living in a climate where wool makes more sense than climate-optimum Mesopotamia? The art of leatherworking entered Europe before the African homo variant arrived. Neanderthal skin-scraping tools made from ribs are hardly different from late 19th century technology. This suggests that the knowledge about bleaching the skins would have been present, too, as other than Lady Gaga few people will be comfortable to run around in a dress of decomposing flesh that will attract predators and scavengers. Working wool would only be an afterthought for preparing furs. Paleolithic pyrotechnology is often under-estimated. The birch tar they used for glue as well as chewing gum is the result of a distillation process with well-regulated temperatures in the various zones of the fire pit. They were able to temper flint and similar knapping material for improved knapping. Surely they would have been able to provide ash for curing processes, with the tallow inside of the hides turning to soap. As a result, I wouldn't be surprised in the least to find cold climate hsunchen possessing a native soap equivalent.

Depending on how you want to tell the Sword Story, Eurmal was alone and received the Sword, or brought the sword along and got it blessed with Death, or went down with Humakt Stormson, or the two of them and Nontraya conspired to get it out. Nontraya Vivamort watched the progress of Death from afar before leading the accumulating Dead back to the World of the Living, Eurmal had his laugh, Humakt embraced the new power, and jealously guarded it after he got it back (never mind all those copies). There is the Fronelan "Friend of Men" aspect for either Eurmal or his son Yomat. Eurmal is the Firebringer - the bringer of Death. Humakt severs his storm, which remains as/reunites with Orlanth. Maybe it was Orlanth all the way? There is of course a cosmic justice seeing Yelm Dismembered after Umath suffered the same fate at the hands of his opponent's son. And maybe applying the Sword to Yelm only re-united the two powers? From the troll perspective, the Three Curious Spirits did not break the containment of Death, but Eurmal carrying it out of Hell and allowing a part of dismembered Yelm to return did break the containment, and thus Wonderhome.

THe Light Within means Death Within to trolls. In a way, the Three Curious Spirits is a reflection of the Sword Story.

The size of the Faceless statue is given in relation to the Rubble Walls in the historical maps of Pavis in Pavis: Gateway to Adventure. Its body has ann outstretched arm on the western wall and its feet across the river. That's more in the mile high range, I would guess away from that data. The size of Thog (the giant who conquered the city of Pavis with Jolanti allies) is harder to pinpoint. There is a hill range in northern Prax called the Thogsarm Hills that is definitely longer than the entire expanse of the Rubble. The size of his Jolanti is unknown, but their bodies now are part of the wall, making it monolithic. The giants following Paragua to the battle of Robcradle carried the original slabs of rock enclosing the outline of Old Pavis. How big does a (lesser) giant have to be to carry a slab of rock 6m thick and covering quite an area? Gonn Orta's size when sitting in his castle is given in Griffin Mountain. IMO the size of Elder Giants and True Dragons depends on how much of their environment they choose to absorb into their body. Gonn Orta may also have a "mountain body", a peak in the Rockwoods near the Pass that is him as much as the humanoid body sitting in the castle is. The manifestation of Waha in the battle against Paragua's giants would have roughly matched the Faceless Statue, give or take a few dozen meters. Waha's digging size (and tool) may have been as gigantic when he created the Good Canal (and I wonder how Belintar manifested when he dug the New River).

While aerial photos do lighten your mathematical work load quite a bit, they aren't maps yet, either. Even a perfectly vertical view of the ground will have perspective shortening away from the center, and elevations will mess up perceived distances even more. The most "natural" maps are three-dimensional models with exaggerated vertical features, and the ancient mapping tool creating such maps is the sand table, e.g. the Greek abax. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Abax_from_Darius_Vase.jpg Modeling a terrain and its features in sand, clay, or carving it from solits (wood, stone) "at scale" is an old endeavor. Creating a two-dimensional projetion is fairly advanced geometry, something that European 2D art only fully arrived at in the late rrenaissance. Friezes on the other hand were able to capture 3D impressions a lot earlier, e.g. Trajan's collumn or the scenes on the Pergamon altar. 2.5D representations can be more intuitive. If you look at early modern age semi-aerial views of cities you will find the use of false perspective, showing house block fronts that should be completely obscured as fully visible behind walls or other blocks. That said, you could chart an urban road by extending the vertical frontal view of the facades of the houses as continuation of the edge of the road for an accurate and useful map of that road, although you would have a hard time to connect two such maps at a road intersection without folding those facades up. Maps don't need to be to scale to be useful. Everybody knows how to navigate a subway net plan even though the stations may be marked in positions rather different from a to-scale map. Maps were made using this technique and adding angles from the position already in the middle of the 17th century, e.g. the Blaeu's atlas. Some of those maps are accurate to a few hundred meters,and it is possible to georeference them for use with modern accurate data. Our world's mapping is hampered by the requirement to use spherical geometry. Gloranthan mapping doesn't need to, removing one significant factor of inaccuracy in early to-scale maps. Ptolemy provides estimates for longitude and latitude for his map of the Old World. I don't know how he received his data from the hyperborean lands that his map mentions, but for a first approach for a global map this data is sufficient. Ptolemy, Hieron of Alexandria and Archimedes are about the upper technological level that can be achieved in Glorantha, often with mostali support (whether given or stolen). It is up to argument whether Da Vinci, Georg Agricola, Galileo or Kepler were significantly advanced over these classical heoes of technology, or whether the Baghdad prime of technology is too remote from them. Chiniese technology is off the charts of occidental and near oriental technology, and the fictional technology of the Vedas doesn't have to hide behind Arthur C. Clarke. The problem with Glorantha is that there are neither latitude nor longitude, and the polar nature of the sky dome doesn't give any good geometrical anchors in the firmament (for a given time). There is some tilt, but that is more useful for determining the date than for measuring the land. The main cardinals of east and west are nicely avaiable as the start and end of the Sunpath, with Mastakos and Lightfore offering three to five horizontal appearances in any clear night. The Red Moon, Stormgate and Zenith offer rare fixed positions above, although I cannot say whether Stormgate and Zenith are following the tilting of the Sky Dome or not. Above is a problem for geodesy, though, as the angular mistake is immense. Other landmarks were more useful. The Obsidian Palace used to be the highest object on Genertela unless you count the Skyfall. Kero Fin with its needle shape is visible from the sea on very clear days (which admittedly are rare in the region), otherwise you might still see a characeristically abnormal cloud formation around it. The Shadow Plateau and the Vent form immense navigational aids, reaching higher with the plume of smoke escaping the Vent and the wandering shadows above the plateau. Those over Dagori Inkarth are distributed over a larger area but may be useful as reference anyway. Bellintar's Rainbow Bridges would have been great navigational aids too. Star maps may have been around a lot longer than even the Nebra disk, and possibly more to scale. I think it is the cave paintings of Altamira that some researchers found to map nicely to the night sky of its time. If so, that predates the concept of writing by tens of thousands of years. Many pilgrims' maps were topological rather than topographical, fairly accurately connecting network nodes but giving next to no correlation away from the network lines. Linear maps from Chaucer's period, like the re-created one in the scenario of the Maelstrom rpg published by Penguin in the eighties, are the equivalent of the output of navigator apps. Maps and cadastral land registers weren't exactly complete aliens, even though documents like the Domesday Book appear to do well without any mapping. There are mesopotamian map representations on clay tablets noting down land area even if the representation isn't quite to scale. Numerical distance measurement suffered from a lack of standards. A greek stadium usually needs a city and possibly a period as a qualifier to be converted into SI measurements or funny stuff like miles (which require qualifiers, too, although for many mapping problems the difference between imperial and nautical miles can be negligible). The only Bronze Age documents available to us are clay tablets and inscriptions in stone. Whatever there may have been in embroidery or paint on wood or canvas is lost, as is most Papyrus kept outside of the desert climate (for instance the entirety of West Roman bureaucracy written on Papyrus is gone forever in the occidental climate, lasting less than a century in wet conditions). The oldest textiles other than mummy wrappings that we have found are from Kurgan burials, the biggest collection of BCE textiles may be the Hallstatt salt mine collection. Sand table maps would have been stationary and temporary in nature, too, much like wax carvings and engravings. Drum patterns aren't that well conserved, either. Wood carvings fare slightly better, bone carvings can last quite welll under certain conditions, but all these materials can and will be corroded over the time since BCE. Even rock carvings or sculpture. Thanks for that link. The Han dynasty silk maps (2nd century BCE) are said to have come from a long tradition of standardized symbolism, dating back far enough to be applicable. The 2nd century AD Roman city plan looks almost exactly like the house blocks depicted in the Pavis box. Only a minuscule fragment survived, but there is no reason to assume that this was a singular occurrence or a huge innovation at the time of its making, either. Architects and city planners would have used maps as representation of their projects. Possibly sand tables and to-scale models, as those would be able to document the progress of the project. Water management and irrigation require good geodesy for the third dimension. Flood management might do without. On the other hand, the Lhankor Mhy Reconstruction spell can be cast on a copy of a map to ascertain the identity with the original. Sometimes there may be rather ingenious ways to create maps from models, like Michelangelo using a wax model of the David partially submerged in water to whittle down the block of marble accordingly. Does anyone in Glorantha use the camera obscura? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camera_obscura#Prehistory_to_500_BCE:_Possible_inspiration_for_prehistoric_art_and_possible_use_in_religious_ceremonies,_gnomons How do you expect architects' plans to look like in Glorantha? The Kingdom of Sartar is famous for its architecture, often actively designed by the rulers themselves. Is there any reason to expect Jrusteli standards (also used in the EWF) to be any worse than that? How good is the Kadeniti tradition of urban planning? While they worked in solids and 3D, they were famous for planning not just the physical cities but also the sorcerous feng-shui and social interaction. I expedt Godtime Earth architecture (all those perfectly square ziggurats) with its cyclopean, often polygonal rock walls (resistent to earthquakes) to have had quite advanced planning and measuring magics if not technologies. Gloranthan geodesy is probably a form of ritual sorcery. No idea whether it requires the use of Magic Points (like the Opening rite for non-sorceer followers of Dormal does), or whether the architect "subcult" of the Pavis cult (included in the masons and quarry activities headed by Ginkizzie) has such methods. In fact, the Pavis history of charting the Rubble might rely on the urban planning done by the founder, and taught in his cult. The maps of New Pavis might be quite close reproductions of what can be found in the temple archives if I compare the Roman city planning map fragment. Whether the aerial views of Old Pavis in Pavis GTA could be in-world documents may be left for discussion. It certainly resembles 16th century "aerial mapping" of European cities similar ot the reconstruction of Caernarfon in Chaosium's City of Carse map. (THe original Midkemia Press product, or at least the pdf, lacks such a map.) But even the most to scale map still needs to be treated with the caveat that the map is not the territory. (Unless it is used as such on a virtual or real tabletop...)

I don't see why people keep accusing Aldryami of cannibalism when uz (obviously), mostali (tinned) and certain humans practice cannibalism on their very own dead. While there are meat-eating aldryami outcasts, do those broken elves feast on elves? Do aldryami eat leaves or barch off other humanoid aldryami? Do they munch on their wooden bones? What aldryami eat is plant matter. That's the same as humans eating fish, crustaceans or jellyfish. Eating only regrowable parts of the plant that still live on without much detrimental effect is like consuming sweat (milk) or folicles, eating seeds of a plant is like eating eggs, eating pollen is equivalent to swallowing sperm. Would you count fellatio as canibalism? This may be like joining a circus or the army - you enter an ecosystem different from your own. It's like Bilbo joining the dwarves and Gandalf on their trip east, like the classical time traveler (say Connecticut Yankee at the Court of Arthur), like Gulliver picking up companions on his travels. Aldryami are fairly alien for sharing the same general body plan. But then so are shapeshifters (including Hsunchen, Kitori, were-creatures, Elurae, Swan Maidens). How much can aldryami integrate into human communal rituals? Often they might be observing what humans might just classify as social interactions as part of their ritual magic. Their almost complete reliance on spoken words and gestures for communication must feel like ritual blindfolding. Their greetings - not just the first contact interaction detailed in the Guide, but also between kinsfolk on everyday basis - may feel like what aldryami might do as prayer or mutual blessings, possibly more elaborate, possibly grossly truncated. The alienness pressing home can be in little things, like e..g. chlorinated tap-water for me, or the ubiquitious use of mint in English vegetable preserves. Sharing a cult doesn't necessarily mean sharing the same comfortably familiar liturgy. Often the disjoint may come from doing the same thing slightly differently, slightly off the ingrained expectations. Initially this can be the spice of the experience, but in the long term those "not quite right" ways may drive home that you are not in Kansas any more. It's something that expats and emigrants live with. How much would a brown elf Light Son engage in the riddle challenge with a human Wind Lord? How much would aldryami worshipping at Sartarite temples (like e.g. Greenstone or Clearwine) identify with the human communities there - the temple hierarchy, their clan, tribal or kingdom loyalties? Would an elf from Tarndisi's grove worshipping at a nearby human-run holy place identify in any way as a Sartarite? As a Colymar? I wonder whether joining High King Elf already marks a significant deviaition from normal Aldryami behavior. Green elves are diurnal creatures by their biology, but High King Elf initiates are the night guards of the forest, spending a significant portion of their active lives away from the nourishing light of Yelm when their metabolism really needs to go into shut-down. Brown elves are inclined to stay awake throughout spring, summer and autumn nights but need to hibernate around the winter solstice, which makes attending certain holy days a tad difficult. Gardening and pruning are activities that don't make the practitioners part of the Marching Aldryami as their main function,, although they will contribute as support.

Shannnon Appelcline talks about how the previous experience of the elf forest may supersede the previous experience gained by actual ancestors in our interview at godlearners.com. We talk about some of the problems and solutions for playing aldryami in mixed groups, too.

In Fronela, Eurmal (or his son Yomat) is a promethean thief of fire and other civilizatory achievements from the gods, possibly including the secret of iron working for the Third Eye Blue people. This opposition to the (False?) Gods and their monopolies earned him (or his son) the title "Friend of Men". (The title "Friend of Women (as well as of Men)" as the seducer is another possible interpretation, there. It would be a rare lineage that was not interrupted by Eurmal or one of his worshippers, at least biologically, at some time. Part of the time passing on such civilizatory assets may have been a trick on the recipients, possibly breaking blissfully innocent Hsunchen folk away from the ways of their beast totems, condemning them to drudgery in agriculture.

A lot of the maps in Glorantha resemble the route plans generated by navigator apps, often with pictorial clues where to change course. "March until Peak A disappears behind Kero Fin (or aligns with the Dawn, or the Red Moon), and then turn towards the copse of extra high trees (follow the river bed, whatever)." Area maps and quite detailed descriptions on where to find (or place) border markers have been known in the ancient world. Natural features like obvious peaks may figure in these, but also watersheds (which are a lot more reliable and stable than rivers or shore lines). Ancient maps or way descriptions may refer to features that dont exist any more - the estuary at Sog's drydock in southern Prax (long since dired up), the guardian statue of Feroda (nowadays lumps of which walk about in Prax as the Watchdog of Corflu) the Obsidian Palace (destroyed in the final battle between Belintar and fhe Only Old One), or a river bend long sicne cut short by erosion. Sometimes anachronistic clues for directions might indicate that the chart you have purchased is a fake. At other times, the material or the language may hint at how this piece is a hoax, or that you need to apply a code to separate the real path information out of the misleading dross. Poetic simile is a good way to introduce some "crypto" into mapping or travelogues, too. Maps often tell the truth by lying about details. This can be honest generalization effects, where the symbology used on a map requires the misplacement of an important symbol in relation to its projected position, or it may be a politically or economicall motivated exaggeration of property claims or similar. The clan lands of e.g. the Orlevings and the Varmandi overlap by quite a bit of area, with the local earth temples not necessarily agreeing on all details.