Joerg

First off a weird idea you gave me: Depending on the origin of dinosaurs, how do we know they always breed true? A converted dragonewt might give birth to species different from the one it adopted. The Maran Gor origin of dinosaurs is a relative newcomer to Gloranthan lore compared to the warrior dragonewt deviating from the path. The WBRM/Dragon Pass board game has a little bit of lore, including their potential to become Pterosaurs after cocooning up and getting a rebirth. (Much like Delenn did in Babylon 5, years after the lore was published.) When a scout dragonewt deviates, it becomes a Magisaur, which resembles a Hadrosaur - at least the magical ones from the boardgame which are (descended from?) mutated dragonewts (although warrior ones, as per the article in Wyrm's Footnotes 14). Do we have an idea how bird-like the dinos of Dragon Pass are with regard to forming a maternal bond with the first creature they see after hatching? (I wonder how the newborn ones manage to differentiate their litter mates from their mothers-to-be....) I thought this bonding ritual has been described for the Griffins of Griffin Mountain, another bird-equivalent in Glorantha, but upon checking it out it only says (p.219 Glorantha Classics)

Sandy Petersen agrees with the concept, while coming to the diametrically opposed conclusion: According to Sandy, it isn't that the animals lost the contest - the humans did. As a result, they got smart, and capable of understanding that the gruesome task of kiling and eating their four-legged kin for survival fell on them. The animals continue in a state of comparable bliss, stll able to thrive on the bounty of their ancestress. The sacrifice of the eaters made this possible. It doesn't really take pictures about herdman dairy production to point out that herd men are spared all the conscious trouble about butchering their fellow beings. And yes, the Morokanth cheated. The human ones. This might mean that the Morokanth eating flesh and that going against their nature may be a stronger sacrifice for the Morokanth than for the humans of the other (major) tribes. The one thing that clashes with this concept is that the Morokanth, out of all the major tribes of Prax, are the ones strongest in the element of Darkness, the devouring element. Darkness creatures are defined by their voracious appetite for just about everything. Including, or perhaps even especally, the meat of sentient creatures (which the herd beasts of Prax definitely are) and even sapient ones.

Herdman cheese is even worse, as you know how the rennet to make that cheese is won. This does open a can of worms for Praxian herd animals, though - has their lactation period been increased by the Covenant? All the domestic herd beasts used for dairy have been bred that way. Praxians use milk as part of their ritual diet (as in kumiss), and probably use it for normal meals, too. The vegetarian Morokanth dilemma is hardly as big as anybody makes it out to be. Morokanth ritually consume meat as (part of) their diet. So do all other Praxians. Eating has always been a communal ritual, surrounded by ritual activity. Communal eating even in our very secularized culture still has the blessing of the eaters at its beginning, although the thanksgving may have disappeared from such communal events. Part of playing in Glorantha can (in my games: should) be to expose the players to the mind-set of the characters. Bringing ritual and magic into what are mundane activities for us. We have some of these codified in the rules, like Peaceful Cut. There are other such rites, for plowing, sowing, harvesting. And there are rites for eating and drinking, including the libation to the gods, ancestors, and/or spirits of the place. Skip over them, and you may have interesting interactions. Observe them. and other interesting interactions may arise, like a local spirit/minor deity or an avatar thereof actually appearing to accept the offering, and possibly addressing the eaters/revelers. When it comes to Praxians, no matter the number of legs, they love fresh vegetables and fruit. They may have a lot less appreciation for processed grain (other than beer). Prax - even the chaparral - is covered by grasses, and those grasses will have seeds. The herd beasts at least will enjoy those seeds, but I don't think that the humans can afford to ignore this source of starch and protein when it is available. Praxian diet can be fairly wholesome and rich when in a good place (e.g. occupying an oasis), but it regularly also has periods of migration through barely survivable land with a much reduced diet, when everything that is edible will be eaten, unless it's taboo. Is eating grass a taboo for the "winners" of the Covenant? Does that extend to grass seeds? (If so, beer made by sedentary folk may still be fine, as you don't "eat" but drink it.) In this context, every meal has a ritual component, which may mean an opportunity or even obligation for the Morokanth to eat some meat. A bit like there are cultures which offer bread of some sort to every meal they prepare. Do Morokanth crave the consumption of meat? Do human Praxians? And is it muscle meat they value mst, or organ meat like liver?

I think that is more a case of "Some of Greg's maps of the early West". I made a sketchup-model trying to use that concept: Somehow, my idea of this is a set of equilateral rectangular triangles. Which is possible real world geometry as soon as you loan another dimension.

Water erodes, over time.

The landscape face on the moon idea reminds me of the amateur reconstruction of "Ecce Homo" anyway. Given the many different ways to look at the moon, would a static, unmoving moon contradict a rotating face? The Red Moon is an exercise in paradoxes.

Did this affect the nature of fully initiated Kitori, too?

Playing the Solo Adventure:

Once upon a time, I tried to simulate a black orbiter creating something resembling a half-occluded moon when seen from almost below... If Darinex is located at the down pole, then everybody looking at the moon from below will see more or less a half moon. At some distance from the moon, you will see all the way up to the Crown Mountains fencing off the top region of the moon, and two of the cardinal poles, unless you are due east/south/west/north of the Crater where you may see three at once. People perceive the structures on the Red Moon as jewels on Her face. The lower sea forms her mouth, with the down pole structure being a nose piercing IIRC. This tells me that the moon surface beyond the pole is meant to be seen when looking at Her from below. But then we know that people in Dragon Pass see a full moon on Wilddays, and a totally black one on Water and Clay days - not some red sheen peeking through underneath. Also symmetrical crescents on Freeze and Winds Days. There is no way to model this using straight light, and I don't have the programming skills to simulate bent light. But in the end, my efforts told me that the appearance of the moon as a roving searchlight have to be a magical effect. That leaves the nature of the shadow. And the moonglow. One old thesis of mine: The dark moon is when it gets real, manifesting real Darkness, the red glow is the absence of Darkness. It is eminently possible that the orbiter happens on the surface of the moon, or even below it. Possibly it isn't a shadow on the inside, but a reflector, pushing back the moonglow into the orb. Or the orbiter casts a cone of Darkness or Absorption onto the moon, neutralizing the Red Glow.

Separation of body and soul: sounds fairly similar to me. The release of Death from Subere's Hell made this rejoining a lot more difficult for most creatures The death stolen by Eurmal, Vivamort and Humakt may have been the border between the Void and Glorantha. The Void is endless potential, and the true Death managed to keep that on check. Previous Death did not sever all the potential of a creature, but true Death does. Peaceful Cut replays that Golden Age effect. Almost a Green Age effect. It is a rebirth or re-creation into a re-made body. Chalana Arroy's Resurrection is a replay of her experience of the Lightbringers' Quest. It requires a repaired body of the deceased, which is different from regaining a new instance of one's previous body.

Find a magical way to break the Carmanian Bull Shah conquest of their lands, which had become harder after the son of Cartavar the Conqueror succeeded in the Ten Tests and wielded celestial Dara Happan authority.

It is a state of temporary non-bodily existence that people usually call death. Such death was not unknown in the Golden Age - there were hunts, and prey was taken down, and eaten, and then songs would be sung, images painted or whatever, and the prey would return alive and hardly the worse for wear. Probably harder to hunt down that way the next time, unless the capture method was intrinsic to the prey. There was permanent destruction in the Golden Age. Umath was dismembered, and did not return (as a whole deity), except through his sons. Other troublesome deities and creatures had experienced the same, even at Umath's hands. The dragonewt nests were the results of a newborn but extremely promiscuous young dragon mating with any dragon that would recognize her, before attaining the maturity to lay true dragon eggs. Instead, these eggs hatched (or projected) scout dragonewts that would interact with their surroundings, take in experiences and then abandon those bodies through utuma, re-hatching from their egg in an advanced body holding an advanced mind. According to Sandy Petersen, all dragonewts were born even before the Golden Age. There were those who quickly rose to dragonhood, and beyond, leaving no egg behind after their transformation into dragonhood. These were the successful dragonewts of legend. And then there are those dragonewts whose advancement was less stellar. Some of these have been stuck in Full Priest meditation for centuries. Many more have not even left the scout stage. IMO it is possible that the EWF experiment helped a batch of dragonewts to advance that had previously struggled. After the EWF had gone on for a while, the benefits for the dragonewts were outweighed by the liability their attachment to the EWF brought, and so they staged the mass utuma of sufficiently but incompletely enlightened dragonfriends in 1042, possibly a final push bringing more of their own and some of their friends across that threshold. That huge dragon project? A folly that might have worked if their humans had managed to maintain control over their human subjects. In the end, it may have hampered dragonewt advancement.

And that's a great premise, based on a certain expectation being challenged. Only as unnatural as are unmarried able lads. Unmarried strapping lads are like having a price bull never brought to breed... at least in your own herd. As described in King of Sartar, marriage and/or responsible parenthood is a second step of adulthood in Orlanthi society, making you eligible for office. Your target community would usually place you in one of its households, or as a follower of one of its influential members if your status and abilities warrants that. Basically, the point of adoption is that you take on a role in your new community, with a primary set of contacts, and the rest just in the background.

In recent RuneQuest publications, we see almost exclusively female NPCs born in the clan they live in. Granted, quite a few are unmarried (another "unnatural" state to be in as an adult), but the seven types of Orlanthi marriage which leads to one marriage partner living in a clan other than their birth clan are hardly reflected. Take the sample characters Vasana and Yanioth. They both are Ernaldori clanswomen, through their mother. Did their mother only have Esrolian marriages? Temporary ones?

Except that the curved light theory of MOB's has become quite canonical. The surface may be flat, but light bends down when it emerges from the eye on its way to the object seen, and if it hits the ground, that's what you see instead of the object in a greater distance. Who would have made up such a theory of optics? Apparently some ancient Greeks had these vision rays emerging from the eyes. The curvature is pure Gloranthan bollocks, though. Longitude doesn't happen in Glorantha. Time of day is the same everywhere under the Sky Dome, as far as can be measured. At noon, the sun is more or less directly overhead, depending on the tilt of the sunpath and the sky dome a little further south or north. The sun rises due east, in the same constellation seen from anywhere on the surface world before its rise, faintly under the red glow of Theya, the Jumper star which precedes the sunrise. There is one stellar object that does change its position in the sky depending on where you watch it from - the Red Moon. That's because it is anchored on the Crater in Peloria. The planets of the Sunpath provide a precision clock if you know how to read them. Mastakos provides a steady 8 hour beat. Lightfore gets tardy in nichts when the sun gets fast in the day, and vice versa, and by comparing that tardiness to the steady beat of Mastakos you know the date. The stars of the sky dome do an almost 24 hours rotation from sunset to sunset, the slight precession repeating on the exact same date - another way the night sky offers a time-keeping element. Depending on the tilt, the rim stars may dip below ground, or rise above it. Precision measurement could use Stormgate, the Red Moon, the direction of Magasta's Pool using a magical compass, and the position of sunrise or sunset due east or west to do some triangulation that might allow an estimate of your coordinates on the surface. There are no henges or passage tombs where the sun rises along that one specific angle once a year in Glorantha. It's every day, or not ever. As a result, the south is not a preferred cardinal direction of sun cults (as it is in the northern hemisphere of our planet). The east probably is. There could be wells or light shafts that allow the sun to fill the entire bottom two dates in a year when the tilt of the Sunpath brings the sun into the correct angle.

At the very least, we know that no new Belintar has emerged. It isn't quite clear whether getting a new Belintar was the primary goal of the participants, though, as the reward was a god-like existence in that magical Holy Country parallel of the Tournament. If any of the tournaments had such a winner, good luck to them, but neither their bodies nor Belintar emerged from the tournament.

The date of the arrival of the Crimson Bat is given as 1621 in Orlanth is Dead - the RQG rules book gives the arrival of the Bat and Broyan's victory as 1620 in the previous experience. But then 1619 is given in HQ2 Sartar Companion and in The Eleven Lights. YGWV whichever of these dates you take for your game.

Sunrise where, however? Columbia/Hawaii, southern Mexico, or north of Nome? "Just like home" will mean different things.

Word of Greg from the late 90ies already was that the Pelorian-speaking Orlanthi had Yelmalio rather than Elmal, as tribal members. YGWV, of course... There is a question why the Elmali and the neighboring Yelmalions across the Creek did not compare notes earlier. Goldedge is a fricking Sun Dome Temple, with hoplite training etc., and the Bush Range used to be full of horse-archers using the Kuschile skill before their families relocated to the Alone territory. My current un-allocated lesser sun is Golden Bow. Surely a Lightfore-candidate, too.

IMO he is an adequate king and heir measured against extraordinary siblings and an extraordinary uncle of greater achievements. HIs grandfather ruled the entire Lunar Provinces and took back the kingdom of Tarsh almost single-handedly (which is almost a pun since he (permanently) lost an arm against Palashee), and his father was a premier Lunar magician of almost major heroic proportions. He may have issues. He certainly has followers urging him to do away with the dangerous influence Fazzur has over the traditional clans as head of the Orindori and effectively lord of much of southern Tarsh. If his population in Furthest is as Heartlander as Jeff's recent post on Facebook indicates, they may have encouraged him to employ Dart Competition methods to send Fazzur a message. Unfortunately, Fazzur's followers may be too provincial to regard these assassinations as a mere warning shot. Fazzur himself might be sufficiently acculturated to Imperial mores from his youth in Sylila that he understands the scope of these "warnings". His reaction - to abandon the battle at Dangerford, leaving the king's followers to botch up the job and take the losses - could be a valid Dart Competition move.

One established method is to marry in. (yElmalio) Or you follow a leader inside the clan, and then go native over time.

The area around Vanntar south of Sartar is Sun Dome County, while the Praxian one (which has two domes) is only Sun County. The Dragon Pass boardgame or the Sartar Tribal Map show the extent of Vanntar/Sun Dome County. I doubt that Lokarnos is anywhere as important in Vanntar as in Sun County. Issaries is the trading cult of all the traffic around Vanntar. Shrines are everywhere, for instance on the Sartar highways, but it would be strange if there was none in Vanntar, even if some other cult took over the Argan Argar market there that the Kitori would have had. Wyrm's Footnotes 15 has almost as much info as was published. Some detail is in the description of the Sun Dome file present at the Battle of Iceland in Orlanth is Dead. Sun Dome County sent mercenaries to whoever paid them. After the conquest of Boldhome, the Sartarites were out of funds. The Holy Country might have been able to afford them, but the 1605 invasion into Heortland met no significant resistance. What happens between Bluebird and Halcyon is pretty much up to your experience of Griffin Mountain. While Halcyon makes his re-appearance as successor of Sor-eel in Pavis, Bluebird doesn't get any further mention, but then he is just a scholar from New Crystal City on a personal quest of redemption, without the might of the Empire behind him.

You don't need to have blue skin to become gender-fluid or join the cult of Heler.

Combat as well as spirit combat has that rhythm of active role to affect your opponent, your opponent rolling for a counter, then possibly inflicting some sort of damage to the opponent, and your opponent attempting to do the same to you. Non-combat skills mostly just have a resolution, and possibly an opposed skill rolled, What is missing is that element of attrition or otherwise damage, but something like that can easily be lifted from QuestWorlds group contests. Dance-offs or similar challenges - especially in ritual context - would be a way to stage such contests, although there might be people who don't think that sing-offs like in Pitch Perfect are a little too cute for Glorantha. Or perhaps at least Hero Wars era Genertela. The problem that remains is what to do with encounters that are too hostile for such soft approaches. While running away often is an option, the slowest or worst positioned party member may easily be left behind as an offering for the hostiles. Redshirt day...

Given their use in a game of croquet, it doesn't look like flamingos (and by extension flamingo keets) need any additional head protection when impacting say hard wooden spheres.