Jeff

And the main trade route between Nochet and Sartar was screwed up for about a decade. By 1628 it starts to stabilise and by 1630 it is about as secure as it has ever been.

Post-the Opening? Almost all goods of Teshnite or Kralorelan origin that makes it to the rich rulers of Peloria came through Sartar - and the Sartarites get the first claim on whatever goes through.

This map shows the original flow of the Creek-Stream River (in red) through to Karse. But Belintar dammed the river when he made the Lead Hills and then dug a deep ditch (shades of Paul Bunyan) for it to link up with the Lyksos River. Prior to the Dragonkill, the banks of Creek-Stream River were the most densely populated areas in Dragon Pass, and the trolls cooperated with the rulers. Now they are inhabited by Beast People, zombies, dragonewts, and dwarfs - and the trolls of the Shadow Plateau are no longer under anyone's direction.

This is perhaps easiest with reference to a map. As you can see, river traffic first needs to get to the Dammed Marsh north of the Shadow Plateau. That's troll country. Then you need to follow the New River, which is the north bank is Esrolian, but the south bank is troll, at least until you get to the Building Wall. Back in the Second Age, much of the Creek-Stream River was considered to be "difficult or impossible due to the general lay of the land" - I doubt that is changed. Barges did travel up and down the river - I suspect back then the rulers were able to built towpaths, so the barges were towed by oxen or even dinosaurs!

No doubt the Lunar invasion of the Holy Country was bad for business. What had been the safest leg of any journey became the worst, with trolls imposing new tolls, bandits, and even scorpion men. The Lunars were not numerous enough to patrol the roads, and much of their army was bogged down in siege warfare or garrison duties.

As an aside, there is nothing "new" to the Lunar Empire. Lunar Society has been around for almost four centuries, and Dara Happan aristocratic resistance was broken three and a half century ago. For more than a century, that Dara Happan aristocracy is almost entirely Lunarized. So although there are no doubt many families that insist that they are Old Traditionalists and proudly insist that their women refuse to initiate a divorce, legally all a woman needs to do is join the dominant cult in the Lunar Empire, that just happens to be the main pillar of the empire, and is headed by the Red Emperor himself.

The Creek Stream River drops some 700 meters in around 300 km between Duck Point and Nochet - much of it in territory controlled by Beast People or Trolls. That's not nearly as easy as the nice straight roads of Sartar, protected by a nice friendly Orlanthi Prince. That nice friendly Orlanthi Prince of course charges tolls. But the only "monopoly" granted is to Issaries, who gets to oversee all markets.

Vinga is viewed as another aspect or incarnation of Orlanth because 1. her cult is only found in connection with the Orlanth cult, 2. she's Orlanth Adventurous in terms of her deeds and actions, and 3. her only parent is Orlanth.

As an aside I think a good case can be made that Orlanth Adventurous is a patron of romantic love. Along with Uleria. Maybe that is why the Dara Happans depict Orlanth and Uleria together.

Clans and kinship groups make alliances with other kinship groups. You might only be a free farmer with the Orlmarth clan, but an alliance with an Ernaldori family can provide additional support, allies, protection, legal assistance, access to temples, wealth, etc. As we learned in the Seattle Farmers games, those free farmer families are every bit as political as the noble kinship groups. And they need allies even more. Earthly concepts of "love" and "loyalty" apply of course, but for most ancient cultures marriage is a fundamentally social and group activity. Romantic love leading to marriage of course happens - and Orlanth Adventurous certainly encourages that more than say Ernalda, Yelmalio, Yelm, etc - but that is not the norm. The norm is to have a marriage to another kinship group that has been arranged by or at least in consultation with your kin.

In general, the legal/magical framework for marriage is going to be driven by the cults involved. So for most of the Orlanthi, Ernalda is going to establish the framework for marriage. That puts the woman at the center, creates year marriages and requires that the husband and wife (and their kin) make tangible promises to each other (husband to provide protection and aid, wife to provide blessings of life and support). Remember that marriage is largely a matter of social responsibility. The goal and focus of all marriages was intended to be reproduction and/or political alliances. Orlanth's big contribution is to add honor to the mix and sets this as the rules for his big and sprawling network of companions, kin, and followers. Neither god expects life-making powers to be exclusive to marriage - and men and women can take lovers or concubines (or even additional spouses) as long as they can still do what they promised to do. Noble often take more than one spouse. Divorce can be initiated by either party, but there may be legal consequences of divorce (property, kin relationship, etc) rather than just letting the year expire. In Dara Happa, Yelm establishes the rules. The marriage is negotiated between the between a man and his future wife's family. Dendara sets the woman's expectations - she is to serve her husband, provide him with support and love. Yelm demands that the husband treat his wife justly and loyally. A husband may take more than one wife but must provide each with support and love. There is no divorce without cause, and that cause needs to be accepted by the gods - usually it is because a husband is abusive or a wife unfaithful. In the Pelorian farming villages, Lodril and Oria set the rules. Lunar citizens (members of Lunar cults) can marry and divorce as they see fit - at least within the Lunar Empire. If a husband and wife cannot live together, instead of leading a miserable life and harboring more jealousy, anger and hatred, they should have the liberty to separate and live peacefully. There may be legal ramifications of property and kinship groups, but ultimately marriage is a civil law matter.

Of course an awakened animal can speak whatever the appropriate language is. Humans and animals used to be the same after all. Auld Wyrmish is something else entirely!

I greatly enjoy people's different takes on this scene. I've played it out from several different perspectives - every time it just reinforces the sense of crisis.

Or maybe they don't have one to one correspondences. Or maybe those correspondences are changed by the actual experience.

Yes. And there are other paths to explore - so for example, we have Samastina who is reorienting the Esrolian Earth Religion around worship of the three stages of the goddess with the queen as the subject of worship (and male figures like Argrath, Harrek, Broyan, etc., representing various husband protectors). We have Argrath setting up his Kethaela hegemony alongside direct rule over northern Heortland (aka South Sartar). The Eldest Kin beneath the Shadow Plateau seek to once again make the Darkness respected across the former Shadowlands. We have thousands of people making quests across the Homeward Ocean to far off vistas.

No. Harshax is not Belintar returned. The whole idea of the 4th Age in KoS was a framing device so that Greg could present many old notes and Glorantha stories in a single book without having to edit them for consistency. It also let us look at Glorantha "as through a glass darkly", from a vantage where the "author" was uncertain what really happened. A step back - most of King of Sartar was written around 1981 or so, for what was going to be RQ books. The Comprehensive History of Dragon Pass was part of the Encyclopaedia Glorantha, the Report on the Orlanthi was going to be in the Sartar Campaign book, etc. But with Avalon Hill deal, Greg lost money any time he wrote anything for RQ3 and so Greg's Glorantha contributions largely went into his unfinished Arkat and then Harmast novels and projects like the Yuthuppa Book. I think it was David Hall who talked Greg into releasing a lot of this material as a book, so Greg cobbled together essays from many places, wrote a few additional bits and created King of Sartar. The 4th Age was a framing device that meant that contradictory material could be presented without concern. Also that's how much of actual history reads - surviving primary sources are often contradictory, later traditions add new material that changes the history, and the past becomes a collection of later tales mixed with often contradictory primary sources. One big complaint about the book was that Greg deliberately hid the ball even further, putting in dates drawn from stories from the late 1970s (originally Argrath's hero wars were going to take place over a century or so, but then that became Ark's Gbaji Wars) I then went through and very carefully edited the book to make it possible to discover the story we wanted to tell (which was a ton of work, because as I said above, the original book was edited to increase inconsistency). So the 2nd Edition is far more internally consistent. We kept the 4th Age framing device, even if by then we were tired of people treating the 4th Age as a defined setting.

Greg and I both were pretty emphatic that Belintar does not return. He's gone. There might be others who unify the lands around the Choralinthor (or at least try to), but they are not Belintar.

If only I had time to run one more RQ game. Consider me tempted.

There are few places where dragonewts trade with humans. One of those places is Trade Think Market near The Dragon's Eye. Trade Think Market Trade Think Market is one of the few places where humans may trade with dragonewts in safety. The Vanstach Clan of the Dinacoli claim monopoly, and trade foodstuffs to the dragonewts, especially black-eyed peas and beef from red cattle. The dragonewts do not seem to care about the Vanstachi claims and trade with any humans here.

David is correct. Kallyr's short reign ends in a terrible crisis for the newly liberated Kingdom of Sartar. With her gone, there was no heir that the tribal leaders could acclaim Prince. After her pyre is burned, the crisis just gets worse until it is obvious to all that the kingdom is doomed to be reconquered unless there is a new Prince of Sartar's blood. And so the tribes are desperate enough to acclaim an adventurer from Pavis who has the support of the Praxian tribes and many exiles.

To be honest, I would handwave it and not require a skill roll. Devise I would use for more complicated constructions.

Yeah, the Sartar Player's Guide has a section on townsfolk and tribes person.

There is another solution to this. I can stop posting in forums or otherwise commenting on what I am working on or provide sneak previews of art or other materials, if that causes so much consternation. We can promote and market these books the normal way - don't market it until we know when it is going to go to the printers (as we do with our sell sheets for distributors). I post stuff here because I enjoy doing it (and because I think most people on this forum enjoy that as well)- but I do not enjoy or appreciate demands for more information about publication schedules than any of our licensees or distributors ask for.

Yes. That Sourcebook section was written by me around 2014, maybe even earlier. It didn't quite sit right with me but Greg was fine with it, although he thought it didn't mesh with his original idea of the character - which he had written up around 1978 or so. Sadly that material, like so much of his late 1970s and early 1980s material, was presumed lost forever. So I ran with it, even though it didn't feel right. Flash forward a few years. A kindly benefactor found and returned Greg's lost notes. In there were detailed descriptions of every unit for WBRM, and Greg's descriptions of many minor figures, as well as troves of Gloranthan gold. Greg and I talked, and agreed Goldgotti should be what he was intended to be - a very successful Wolf Pirate (it also gave the game a unit of Wolf Pirates in addition to Harrek and Gunda). And so there it is.

One of the more interesting early maps is this political map of Central Genertela circa 410 ST. Note that Heortland (aka Dragon Pass and Esrolia), Saird, Delela, Slontos, and Saird are all marked as subjects. The Harandings and the Dwarfs are allies, as are Tandoor and Korion. Arolanit, the Enjorelli Tribes, Lankst, and Seshnela are all outside of the the High Council's domination, as are the Trolls.