Joerg

Probably more like a cult hero (of which deity? Orlanth, Drogarsi, Donandar, or Eurmal?) or a spirit cult entity, I suppose. Unless there also are gods of flutists, harpists, trumpeters, or kettle drum players, having one for this instrument seems to be over the top. Bagpipes are fairly omnipresent wherever supple leather bags or animal bladders can withstand the climate. Dual pipes without the bag attached were used by the Greek, held to the mouth by a string attached to both. Drone pipes aren't that hard to come up with, either. The instrument in Orlanth's musical contest with Yelm varies - the official version has the horn, IIRC, with Orlanth still somehow puffing his cheeks playing them.

Yes it does. The Creation Age dichotomy of Grower and Maker, carried on by the Aldryami and the Mostali, is one of the most ancient grievances. The trolls predated on this for quite a while before either party wizened up and included them in their attention to conflict. "Too much Growth" is a Mostali complaint. The Aldryami are fine with everything overgrown. The birth of Umath was outside of the Mostali blueprints. They probably had some provision for an inner fluid inside the Sky Dome, but that brute pushing down the Earth cube so that the waters could enter from the sides was outside of any parameters, as was unhinging the celestial bowl. I cannot tell whether the four pillars in the cardinal directions were part of the original plan or a reaction and improvised repair to Umath's birth lifting up the Sky Dome. Mostal was already derailed by that, and when Shargash's wrestling throw smashed Umath into the northen pillar, Mostal had lost coherence, leaving the eight castes of the Mostali rather clueless about the plans for the World Machine. Then things grew worse.

I have never associated the Spike with volcanic activity - IMO it is pretty much the antithesis of molten rock, even beyond the basalt core of certain types of inactive volcanoes. Stone is not crystal, but a conglomerate of crystallites, quasi-crystals, and glassy parts. Some rock actually is glass throughout. Stone (and Truestone) can show patterns of differently colored or textured components. According to the Mostali, the Spike was a tool of Mostal, presumably made from living Stone. For all its "world machine" appellations, Mostal is a maker of living things. The World Machine is a living thing. I don't see the Spike as the receptible of celestial seed sloshing around inside. Neither is the spike itself the result from the four worlds colliding, it's more like the cause of the collision. The Spike represents the one-ness of the universe. So do the lesser Spikes. And it looks like the axis mundi comes in pairs - one in the center, the other one on the extreme border. The one that gets lost is the one on the extreme border. The Mirrorsea Bay is a region of volcanic activity, but it doesn't come across as a caldera to me. There is a huge central volcano in Kethaela, but it has been beheaded (by spear strike), mitigating the explosion. The Shadow Plateau still has some geothermal activity, a long time tamed by the Obsidian Palace but now blubbering up in the Tarpit. Quivin and the Storm Mountain peaks are children of Vestkarthen, but none of them is known for fiery eruptions. Stormwalk is how we name the torso of the one whose head was wrestled off by the Storm Bull. The peak that imploded may have left the Threestep Isles as the last remnants of its foothills. That archipelago seems to mark the transition from the coastal seas (Rozgali, Solkathi) to the abysmal Homeward Sea circular current, fed by lesser currents (the rivers) as well as the Doom Currents raging through the breaks in the Earth Cube. These four rifts (the fourth obscured by the deflection it experienced encountering Mt. Thakarn, running off diagonally rather than vertically, causing the lands of Slon to slip outward) don't quite follow the (postulated) four colliding worlds, but then all four of these triangles There seems to be a rising power of the moon grounded in the Underworld, for now affecting the Seas and their tides. And there is plenty of Lunar fallout - whether the impact crater of Croesium or the shattered material of Blue Moon Plateau. There are rocky pieces of the Sky Dome (which some have described as a crystalline substance) which have impacted the Surface World, too Mt. Selon on the western end of the Mislari range, or Churanpur (possibly Trowjang). The female sky is rather under-represented in celestial lore, even though there are hints for a forcible take-over from a regime preceding the Eye in the Sky. There is Godtime stuff missing from Time. Not just stuff that was destroyed by Chaos in the Greater Darkness, but stuff that is hidden in folds outside of what the Web of Arachne Solara turned out as the Surface World. Rather than blaming the God Learners, how much has Theyalan syncretism contributed to a flatter perception of Glorantha? But hey, wrong thread. Now, it shouldn't really surprise us that Vistikos Left Eye had that funny feeling again, winding him up inside. Every time he touched upon the Dragon Dream, he had no idea where to begin, and was clearly overwhelmed by the emotions, to the point of forgetting any previous ones, lost to storm. So hey, it's got what it takes, so tell me, why can't this be EWF? About the same time the Gold Wheel Dancers disappeared from records of the Second Council, a new race joined the people of the Council - the Wyrms. There don't appear to have been any at the Dawn. We know the Battle Banner of the EWF, showing a short-legged dragon almost in the Ouroboros pose. What if the Gold Wheel really was the closed Ouroboros pose, and the Wyrms resulted from opening that loop?

One unique entity can have pluripresence - it's a feature of powerful entities, and events. Sometimes they are shadows or projections, limited expressions of the whole. In fighting Gbaji, Arkat had to take on many aspects - starting out as a Child of the Forest (btw a typical origin for a pagan demigod from a union with a Malkioni woman entering Malkioni society, compare Damol), he took on the Horali caste, became Man-of-All, then champion of Orlanth and Humakt, then of Kyger Litor and Zorak Zoran, and for his final confrontation a Chaos monster as terrible as the one he was fighting. There is one aspect about Arkat that hit me only today - after shedding all his terrible aspects necessary to face off with Gbaji, Arkat settled down, not in a Talar's palace, a wizard's tower, a warrior's fortress, a mystic's mountaintop, but on a farm. The location of this farm has never been disclosed, and is probably a hotly contested item in Ralios. Settling down on a farm is a pretty Orlanthi thing to do. But there may be more significance to this - after fifty years of destructive warfare, Arkat spent fifty years of growing back the world.

I have encountered beer like that...

Gloranthan insight doesn't necessarily come from sitting in a circle around the grand master. Much more comes from setting out with an idea or plan, implementing it against the resistance of established stories, contesting with the champions of lore, and finding other questers picking up one's ideas. Pretty much like the story of Belintar. Actually, quite Mostali, blaming everything on uncontrolled and un-countered Growth.

Are the Seas and Chaos that different, then? Why is water so effective in searing away Chaos? Is it just a rival faction of destruction? The Vithelan myths indicate that. While Vithela has the offspring of Vith and Gebkeran as their home-grown antigods, the sea entities are a form of "not-us" antigods taking away their world. "The pressure of the Void" is a surprising concept. The Chaos Void we know is a vacuum, sucking in all that gets into touch.

Avalor left Teshnos in 950 ST as a well-established (greatest) king of God Learner Teshnos. Sigur became king in 980. Assuming that Avalor was around 30 - 40 years old when he left Teshnos, he would have been 60 - 70 years old at the overthrow of the Adalla dynasty of Fronelan God Learners, with at least 20 years of presence in the land. Avlor is called a foreigner. Now foreigners taking the crown of a Malkioni land have something of a tradition (like e.g. Gerlant). Avalor had presumably recovered his (presumably exotic) wife when he settled the sword in Spada. Would Sigur be Avalor? IMG probably not.

Those Hsunchen-like magics are mainly practiced by Darkness worshipers of uz or timinit persuasion. Aranea would be the beast ancestress of spiders, sister of Gorakiki and Bagog.

What would be their incentive to return the planet of Anaxial? Is that part of their preparations to put Phargentes the Younger through the Ten Tests? If so, would said worthy have been participating in the Boat Quest? At age 14, with that mother, he may very well have been ready for the challenge.

There is possibly some truth to that, as both the Chaosium in the Underworld and the Source of all energies in the Ultimate appear to be indivisible. There is however the concept of the Collision of the Four Worlds. If there was a separation, it appears to have happened prior to the conception of the Four Quarters of the world. The strict dogma of the three separate otherworlds (and the lack of a separate otherworld for the fourth quarter unless you count the illusionary realm which is not a true otherworld) has been left behind only with the publication of the Guide to Glorantha. This sounds a bit like the Vithelan myth about the three noble antigods, the sorcerer, the priest, and the shaman, and how their desire to prove their value and power to (and against) their progenitor Vith misfired, both individually and as a team. This describes dragons - ancestral dragons - quite well. My own theory is that the incessant process of Creation overcrowded reality, pushing it against the seams of the Cosmos, which then began to fracture at the weaknesses. It is no surprise that the return of the Unholy Trio occurred at the seam where the sky dome was lifted above the underlying underworld "sky" bowl, and that the horde led by Wakboth came from the North where the impact of Umath had left ruin. That's where the seams were the weakest. Neither I Fought We Won nor the Compromise are universally accepted truths, although the latter was spread by the Theyalans and their successors in syncretism, the God Learners.

Now that's an uzuz... Heort is a scion of the White Deer (people), not some Pralori. Neither some just white on the ass deer, like that Purendii kid of Orogeria. While Heort was a shaman rather than some rune lord, and possibly a shape changer similar to his post-Sword and Helm Kodigvari cousins, I don't get the vibe of the Heortling deer being that massive. One might posit that the White Deer was a form of Zaytenara, the unsullied white planet outside of the Planetary Sons. The missing truth of the Lunar Way is hidden in the core of the Heortling way, and when the Seven Mothers revived the rest, they allowed the Void to take what they failed to bring up. That theory would gain some credibility if one were to find a few green elves further up the slopes of that peak, and possibly some weird colorless aldryami beyond that. Or someone has to bring some of those back from the Firebergs. The dislocation might have been the consequence of the Somelz project where the Mostali attempted an off-center restoration of the earliest Surface World. Teleos is Lost Thinobutu, abandoned, then re-populated by refugees from Gendara. The Kumankan lords of the Place of Cloth Trading in Purple lands may have failed to recognize that ancestral home as much as the Maslo lords of the Garlic Place in Yellow lands.

There aren't many children of Vadrus left, and those that are aren't known to cooperate well even with one another. The biggest group of Vadrudi names known to us are the ancestors of the Triolini merfolk. It is possible that Kahar was a Vadrudi, too, but then he wooed Harantara - a behavior quite atypical to any offspring of Vadrus, more of a Storm Bull or Orlanth-like style. Iphara, goddess of the murder fog, might be the closest ally to Gagarth. Molanni or her child don't really have anything to give or gain. Valind's get like Thryk might cooperate in raids. But overall, even his siblings are bad candidates for allies. That leaves creatures of the Hunt. Brangbane sounds like a like-minded spirit.

The Esvulari might originate on the Vulari peninsula, that hammer-shaped area of dry land jutting south below the cliffs, between the Gathering Marsh and the Other Marsh (as per the map labels on the road map of the Holy Country). Their survival site might be Jon Barat, shared with the Ingareens, who are a similar and totally different population. Does having endogamous castes give the Esvulari (or the Ingareens) a distinct phenotype (or several caste-specific ones)? They have a hereditary Zzabur caste, which probably provides the literate portion of the population. Since sorcery requires literacy, the two other castes don't have much chance at having the basics for sorcery. Their Talar caste would be a mix of heavy cavalry and diplomats and administrators, with their majority caste being the (free) Orlanthi everyman farmers and crafters serving in the militia and professional warriors. Aeolian fisherfolk are attested, too. Why? What goat deities would these herd beasts descended from? Ragnaglar and Thed (but forgotten)? In our world's biology, goats aren't that well defined, and sheep may be seen as a sub-group of caprine herd beasts. Antelopes occupy the continuum between caprine and bovine ungulants.

Salinarg was sort of a left-over candidate as prince. With his Telmori (bodyguard?) wife, and from Eonistaran's side branch of the family rather than the main branch descended from Saronil, it is quite likely that Salinarg never even considered himself as prince material. The killings of members of the House of Sartar predate 1600-1602 by quite a bit. Terasarin's daughters (married to their Helkos Brothers cousins and bodyguards) and Saraskos' kids were assassinated during Terasarin's reign. The lists of offspring of the House of Sartar in King of Sartar and the Sourcebook is quite likely incomplete - it looks like neither Kallyr's father nor that son of Terasarin marrying into the Far Point tribes are included in the children of the rulers.

The Dinacoli identified with the trade road policy of the Princes and joined the Jonstown Confederation at one point, after rather long animosity with the tribes on the Creek. Later under Lunar occupation they switched their allegiance to Alda-chur. Prince Terasarin welcomed the Aldachuri in the principality, after previous major sacrifices on behalf of these tribes (like the death of Prince Jarolar covering the retreat of their militia). A son of the Prince married into the confederation. The Alone tribes got their city and rather secure refuge from Prince Terasarin. There is a good chance that Alone resembles a place like Swenstown more than a Tarshite city. What are the differences? The language spoken. The Dinacoli and the Far Point tribes had Yelmalio as their tribal sun and rider deity from the get-go. No Monroghian conversion there. They remember (fondly) their membership in Arim's (or rather Yarandros's) Kingdom of Tarsh, but never acknowledged the Illaro dynasty kings (including the Lunar dynasty) prior to the occupation.

Arkat was a child-soldier, badly underage in the company of these fledgeling Horali sent across the Neliomi Sea. Brithini commenters point out that the entire subsequent fascination with the false gods of mayflies and krjalki is little more than a child's inability to hold on to a thought.

These verses aren't that hard to come up with. Find a mythical motif, settle for a rhythm, and alliterate away: Umath ascending - Aether's abode, proud planets plunging - panicked and old. Jagrekriand standing - steadfast alone cruelly crashing - Storm King to a hold. Far north they went fighting - with fire and bolts white pillar toppled - painful the trip. Seduced below surface - siring a son forced to fight the ferocious - fire-born foe. Hell-spawned hostile - hospitality-breaker Jagrekriand wrestled - recovering raider Stormfather in shackles - smitten apart uncles find Umath's - underaged offspring.

Is this meant as an instance of YGWV? The illustrations I know have a six-armed goddess. There is a reference to a six-armed goddess wrestling Sheng, emerging two hands short, in Argrath Saga. I agree with the conclusion, though. Rune Magic is magic which makes the user be the deity, whether superficially or in a deeply meaningful (yet materially useless) mystical way. One point about improvisation: A Lunar cult will change in power along with a Lunar phase - the red week, or the less predictable Blue Streak. Or possibly some other cycle manifest in an obscure way. Even Yara Aranis, the goddess of the Glowline, is subject to the cycle.

The odd Lhankor Mhy user of sorcery will have his rune magic in addition to his small selection of sorcery spells. The cult is involved in many a craft that relies on knowledge, too, and the post of a guild sorcerer may go along with that of the scribe for that guild. These guys aren't supposed to be versatile, so the sharp focus that RQG forces onto a character using sorcery is in keeping with my expectations. The literacy requirement makes every sorcerer a worshiper (though not necessarily initiate) of Lhankor Mhy. Even if western script should differ from the Theyalan scripts, as a knowable script it falls into the domain of the bearded one. Given the likelihood of a connection between Lhankor Mhy and Tadenit and the long productive relationship between the cult and the God Learners, I doubt there are any libraries of Lhankor Mhy that don't know and teach western script and at least one of their languages (possibly an ancient dialect). With the literacy requirement for Argan Argar cultists and the long reign of the Only Old One, a similar relationship for Darktongue may be assumed, allowing Arkati to remain unnoticed with some knowledge of both these non-native scripts. My expectation is not quite upheld when it comes to sorcerers providing for the needs of a less specialized congregation trading the magic they offer in the sorcerous Worship Invisible God for magical aid and protection. Not much of a problem if you have a small cabal of sorcerers from slightly different traditions which may have enough expertise to deal with an assortment of magical challenges, but problematic if one sorcerer and maybe his apprentices are all that you have within reasonable reach. I see a significant difference between the grimoire sorcerers that we encountered in Hero Wars through Questworlds Glorantha, where a sorcerer had access to a reasonable selection of spells associated with that grimoire and (over time) a few other spells acquired or developed on his own, independent from his original education, and the sorcerers created under the rules of RQG. The grimoires provided something similar to the common rune spells that are shared by (most) rune levels, narrower in scope, but still a selection of magics that a sorcerer had a reasonable access to.

Upon being declared outlaw and going into the wilderness or exile, you stop being kin - that's the point. The kinship group distances itself from the outlaw and any responsibility. Unless the outlaw belongs to one of the minority cults, she will lose her temple membership at the same stroke. Blood kinship may be a little thicker than legal kinship. But then, plenty of drama results from disputes inside a family. But then, Orlanth started his rulership career as a kinslayer. Only if they can do so without undue harm to themselves (beyond the normal risk at raiding). Praxians are as pragmatic. More likely, they would have keep scouts an eye on them while collecting a band of riders to deal with them.

Nobody is keeping people away from the Eucharism either.

It would be more correct to say that the people who settled the Far Place (and the Donalf Flats) were part of the same migrations as the people who settled what became Tarsh. The Far Walkers appear to have come as one rather cohesive group around a strong leader, taking possession of Alda-chur as soon as they arrived. The northern immigration has seen a lot less detail observation in King of Sartar, no big surprise given its topic. Arim making the preliminary contract with the powers of the land (centaur, grazer, dragonewt, Sorana Tor) for an unspecified number of people makes a difference. The formative event of the kingdom may have been the success at the Battle of Falling Hills, where Arim and the twins demonstrated their tie to the land. All of Dragon Pass served as occasional pasture by the then more nomadic Grazer people. While they have a prohibition against herding any other beasts, they clearly are allowed to hunt all manner of other beasts, and would have had a quite varying meat diet preying on the wildlife of the pass. Taking their toll from the annual Tusker migrations, going after deer, hunting small game through archery or possibly falconry. The Grazers refrained from raiding across the Crossline or Deathline until their presence had become common knowledge outside of Dragon Pass. They would have raided Orlanthi settlers in Dragon Pass (including all those groups who became Vendref under the Feathered Horse Queen), and did show up raiding the Quivini clans and tribes. There are many Vendref groups that come from the same migration that resulted in people becoming Tarshites. It is likely that any settlers west of the Dragonspine speak Tarshite, with immigrants from Esrolia ending up as Vendref in the southeastren Grazelands. Arim's influence seems to have ended at Sikithi Vale or otherwise roughly the southern extent of the Glowline or the Exile territory. Anybody going beyond that would be fair game for the Grazers to dominate. So who were the hopeful settlers who went beyond where Arim could guarantee their freedom?

The 1621/22 Great Winter bypasses Ralios, although it experiences highly unusual wind and weather patterrns. The disappearance of Orlanth's Ring can be noticed all over the world. The rise of the Proven Appearance of Arkat movement in Sentanos should be worked into that. The dates might have to be invented, though. The antics of the talar of Borin might be another entry. All of this centers mostly on Safelster, ignoring the barbarians around it. There should be some Garundyer and Aruzban Ironarm news.

Between the Catcher of Souls and some wannabe wizards, I would think that the threat situation would be inverted... Fixed, and I resisted Eurmal's suggestion of Papa Jagga as edit.