metcalph

The regiments were Yanafal Tarnils would be worshipped by the rank-and-file would IMO be lunar regiments in the Heartlands Corps and the Imperial Bodyguard.  

I also think it wise to draw a distinction between the god of the regiment and the gods of the warriors.  Most units in the Imperial Lunar Army worship Yanafal Tarnils in public services as a matter of discipline.  But the Yanafali officers would be the only people to gain effective magic from Yanafal Tarnils and the rank-and-file would look to other gods for their personal war magic.

As for the magic of the twin stars, by best guess is that they can use the moon rune as a trade/communication rune.  The only winkle is that they can use such magics to persuade the recipient to undertake harmful actions (ie Look at me and not my twin who is busy converting your allies to the Lunar Way.  Or Look at the newest converts to the Lunar Way and pay no attention whatsoever to the fact that I am now stabbing you from behind with a dagger).

I would interpret the runes of moon, movement and beast as an individual lancer will have at least one rune out of the three, are likely to have two and rarely all three.

Yanafal Tarnils is an officer's god not a god of general lunar warfare.  

The Lancers are more likely to worship the Twin Stars for Lunar Magics and Gerendetho for Spear Magics.  

There already is an Oakfed Spirit cult.  Oakfed's magics are given in Sartar Companion in the Kolat writeup.

The 6 Map Set of Genertela

The 24 map set

http://www.glorantha.com/docs/safelster-in-the-first-age/

is the best word on Ralian mythical variation among the Orlanthi.

But it seems Questworld was a bridge too far...

They are a Seshnelan order of magicians who were active against the Autarchy.  Their only mention is RQ3's Troll Gods.  They used the Astekel Horse to destroy all paths they could find to Stantham Well (where Arkat lived on the Heroplane).  They were succeeded by the God Learners.

It's not known whether they are still canonical (they are not mentioned in the Middle Sea Empire) and the article has tonal problems with it IMO.

As far as I understand it, the Orlanthi have a lot more variation than just the three groups you mention.  My understanding is:

Sairdites: a long-term entanglement with Dara Happan and other Pelorian Customs.  Currently wrestling with the Lunar Way.

Odayalans:  Bear Orlanthi.  Used to be prominent in Sylila.  Now a minority there.

TalastarI;  Different from the Heortlings in ways not yet understood.  As well as the lowlanders, they have to cope with incessant raids from Dorastor.

Ralians:  Descended from the Galanini.  Have to cope with Safelstran customs and the legacy of the Autarchy.

Fronelans:  A fair bit of Beast worship.  Politically dominated in many places by the Loskalmi and other Malkioni.  On the other hand, the aloof Malkioni rarely intervene in their spiritual affairs as they consider it backward superstition unworthy of their time.

Manirians:  Influenced by the Handrans, the Esrolians and the Trader Princes.

Umathelans:  Dominated in the west by the Elves.  Influenced in the east by the Sedalpists and the Fonritans. Hostile and vulnerable to Vadeli influences

My own theory is that Orathorn is a land of the dead that bubbled up to the surface but failed to erupt (unlike Hellcrack and Senbar).  The undead there are actually the dead people of Pent and the sorcerors are a Pentan shamanic group or somesorts.  During the Seleran Empire, vast tracks of Orathorn were created by Sheng Seleris for his stately pleasure domes which have not been looted yet.

Speaking of which, one of the bigger surprises I saw in the Guide was how close Orathorn was to Gonn Orta's pass.  It's so close that the adventurers in the Borderlands campaign could have made a wrong turning and stumbled upon it.  There's undoubtedly trade between Orathorn and Gonn Orta's castle...

The Red Overseer of the South embodies strength.  He will attack the heroes by kicking their ass.

The White Overseer of the North embodies wisdom.  He will reason with the heroes to convince them that their current course is unjust.

The Blue Overseer of the West embodies sovereignty.  He will command the heroes to submit before Yelm, confess their crimes and sacrifice themselves.

The Yellow Overseer of the East embodies insight.  He will become aware of a hidden flaw of the heroes and use it to shame the heroes.

Depending on how much God Learner wisdom the Lunars have absorbed, you could also give the Overseers powers from the directions (South - Sea of Flame, North - Glacial Attacks, West - Violent Emotions, East - Peace and Understanding).

Lastly their tools.  It is my impression that their tools are golden age re-interpretations of the fragments of the world body (see Jokbazi IV-25 on the Gods Wall).  The Ketstick is a Shape Portion, the Compass a rabbit's head/Bird portion, the Plumb Line an arrow head and so on.  The overseers originally bore the actual fragments of the first god and by the time of the golden age, these fragments had become understood as something that made sense in Golden Age Dara Happa.

1 hour ago, Joerg said:

 

 What function of Waha exactly does Gerendetho replace, and what functions still remain with Waha? If Gerendetho doesn't have the death/Covenant/butchery connections, then he takes over the caretaker of the land role. "Waha saves his sisters" doesn't mean much in Kostaddi, but Gerendetho's relation to the land does a lot. The Paps are a mythical place in a faraway land. The Kostaddi Sable people probably have another earth temple as their magical source of fertility, tied to Gerendetho and the local land goddess.

According to the RQ3 writeup of Waha (Tales #15), he is revered in Peloria and Fronela as a God of Butchers and Slaughterhouses (to wit, the Peaceful Cut).  

I don't see the need to invoke Gerendetho as caretaker of the Land among the Hungry Sable since Waha isn't a caretaker of the land by any definition.  Moreover since the Hungry Sables are nomadic, Gerendetho would be a men's god more than anything else.

I'm somewhat mystified by Gerendetho's main claim to mythic fame, the creation of the Hungry Plateau.  It seems an overly colossal bit of civil engineering for rather a petty dispute.  My guess is that the people of mythical kostaddi had some compulsion to level the mountains of the Plateau and plave their waste in what is now Jord.  Instead of one great mythic action, it was a longterm cultural effort which may be related to the city of Senthoros.

The best idea that I can come up with is that since the Sky and the Earth were seperated, Gerendetho decided to recreate the good old days by creating a new land closer to the Sky.  The Granite Men did not like this for obvious reasons but since the Gods War rendered the Hungry Plateau worthless, the feud with Granite Man is all that anybody can remember.

The closest rune that I can see for Genert's Rune would be the Power Rune (ie the one that Pamalt has) which is close to the spear that Gerendetho prominently bears on the Gods Wall.  Turos who is somewhat similar is given the Man Rune in Pavis: Gateway to Adventure.

6 minutes ago, soltakss said:

That's a shame, as it means that the other Praxians who helped drive out the Pure Horse People from peloria didn't get to settle on the Hungry Plateau and were not given a place in the area.

They were given places in the area.  It's just that they were rewarded with better places than the Hungry Plateau.  As per sidebar p313 of the Guide, the Sable Tribe was given Kostaddi while the Bison received Sylila and Vanch.  

Being given the Hungry Plateau as a reward would be kind of like giving invaders the local tip as a reward for seizing a city.  I think instead the Hungry Plateau was settled some time after the battle of Argentium Thi'rile by Sable overlords worried about the decline of their native traditions.

Xamalk's invasion of Luatha actually comes from Greg's notes about chaos which were printed in Tales of the Reaching Moon #8.  The notes survive in some form as part of Appendix F in the Guide (Baldrus the Black Reader of Nochet now Belstos!).  Xamalk was explicitly mentioned in an early draft of the Guide as destroying the land of Rombotongo (which in the published version is now Herespur).

Given Xamalk's lack of mention in Revealed Mythologies, I do not believe he has any important role to play in Vithelan mythology.  Any reference to Xamalk is I think a God Learnerism caused not by their explicit identification of Herespur as Xamalk or whatever (Attacking Vithela after being defeated on the other side of the world doesn't sound right to me mythically - it's like Storm Bull defeating Vovisibor beneath the block).  Rather the God Learners attempted to create a mythical Xamalki invasion of Vithela in order to wreck havoc on the Eastern Seas Empire and integrate the Parloth into the Monomyth.

Gathering Thunder does not complete the Sartar Rising campaign - a fourth book was intended to do this with the Dragon Rise.  What Gathering Thunder does have is a scenario about the raising of the Boat Planet, which isn't that great and has a number of issues with it (Issaries Inc was having problems at the time).  There are other scenarios but they do not seem to be intrinsic to the Sartar Rising campaign, ie they can be run as stand-alone.

My thinking on Caladra and Aurelion's magics.

Most people initiate to either Caladra (Lava) or Aurelion (Oil & Coal).  I'll leave aside the question of whether Aurelion's magics stem from the earth rune or the fire rune as his magic can be distinguished from Caladra's through the use of "an incomplete list of what Aurelion's initiates use his magic for".  By themselves, they are one rune cults.

Magics of the Harmony Rune can only be cast when an initiate of Caladra is paired with an initiate of Aurelion.  These are spells inherited from the God Learners

I think (contra the original cult-writeup) the pairing of initiates is the equivalent to marriage rather than a twin soul-mate.  An Caladran can marry/pair with an Aurelionite regardless of sex but a Caladran cannot marry another Caladran and so on for Aurelion.

I'm not so worried about the Fire in the Earth kerfuffle as as it sounds very Dara Happan.  Given that the people of Caladraland were supporters of Palangio, I would be very surprised if they didn't have some Dara Happan influences.

29 minutes ago, David Scott said:

@Tindalos, for HQG I rewrote the Peaceful Cut so that it resembled a more traditional real world shamanic song. In this context it's a ritual (and therefore fulfils the spell criteria). It has the Death rune in front of the description as it's categorised as a charm and so needs the rune defined, It's part of the tradition so never needs to be noted separately.

I think Peaceful Cut and Summon Borabo Nightmare should be best understood as ritual charms; in other words, the ritual is the charm through which the spirit can act or depart.  The spirit magician needs to observe a taboo for the ritual charm to work: Peaceful Cut - never create a ball of tails, Summon Tribal Founder - be a tribal khan, Summon Borabo Nightmare - never break a tribal taboo.

Rituals by theists are really a lower class of heroforming/feats.  Instead of being a devotee heroically expressing the feat, the worshippers painstakingly recreate the myth in order to bring about the feat.

19 minutes ago, Patrick said:

So did they participate in the sack of Sog, or where they operating independantly overseas at that time?

Apparently not.  Harrek joins the Wolf Pirates when they attack his ship of the coast of Seshnela.  I assume that he took the first boat out after he plundered Sog.

4 hours ago, Patrick said:

Yet I wonder - when did Harrek's men start being labelled "Wolfs"? They only became "Wolf Pirates" when at sea with the Yggites, I guess, hence after the sack of Sog, and the reason behind taking such a name for following a Bear guy is unclear to me. So, what about the time of the horde attaching Sog, and who was part of it? Any large bunch of Telmori? Is Wolf a traditional name in Fronela for "savage raiders", that very soon nicknamed Harrek's troop?

According to a Gregly article in Tales #10, the Wolf Pirates were founded by Orstando Blackwolf who fought the Loskalmi and led the Pirates to Three Steps before the Sack of Sog.

48 minutes ago, Joerg said:

 

I used the terms for the three systems recognized by the God Learners.

Yes, but you use it to identify cultures when it properly should be restricted to types of magic.  Describing the Praxian's magic as a mixture of rune and spirit magic is good.  Describing the Praxians as spirit worshippers is too broad a brush to be useful and perpetuates the worst of the Hero Wars/HeroQuest 1.0 schemata.

The Basmoli migration to Genertela is amply mentioned in the Guide.  Hence I don't see the need to dispute it considering that other Pamaltelan groups (Men and a Half, Zaranistangi) have also made the journey.  Your point about different racial stocks can be easily be resolved by having the groups learn how to take human form _after_ their geographical separations.

The Enerali are not Hsunchen but Orlanthi.  The Enjoreli/Tawari are native born.

.

Just now, Joerg said:

Do the sages really qualify as "having sorcery"?

Under the strict three worlds model, a lot of the "mystical martial arts" stuff was considered to be sorcerous in nature.

The Sages use sorcery as an aid to their meditations.  The Monk's exposition of the Gods War (Mashunasan Tells Us - Revealed Mythologies p70-71) is little different in scope from the Malkioni studying the Gods to do sorcery.

The mystical martial arts was mystical in nature according to the only rules treatment (Hero Wars). Greg's great revelation about classifying magic according to type came much later (A spell is something that you know etc).

Just now, Joerg said:

Let's take a look at the Dawn Age domain of what would become the Hendriki, then, where we have Ingareen sorcerers alongside Esvulari blenders, Esrolvuli and other Heortling theism, and Kolating, Odaylan, Kyger Litor, Gorakiki and Praxian animism. What we find first and foremost is a division of magics into the elemental tribes or (in case of the Ingareens) exclusion of the elemental tribes (moon? what are you talking about?). There are mystical or transcendent religions, like Imarja or Velhara, that are subsumed in the Earth sovereignty.

Personally I would drop any mention about theism and animism in such analysis as it's reliant on outdated materials.  In particular:

The Kolatings aren't what you call a distinct culture but rather part of the Heortlings.  

The Odaylans are in Peloria in the Dawn Age.  Individual Odaylings will have ranged far and wide even to Kethaela but I think it a mistake to think of Odayla hunters as being an actual cultural presence in Kethaela.  Yinkin maybe but not Odayla.

Gorakiki would not be distinct from Kyger Litor and the main troll influence on nearby societies would by Argan Argar who gives rune magic.

I'm dubious as to whether Praxians could be analysed solely as animists considering that of the two described for HQ2/Glorantha, both Waha and Storm Bull have Rune Magic as well as spirits.

I don't recall any reference to Elemental Tribes among the Hendriki.  The Five Foreigner Tribes (History of the Heortling Peoples p65) may be elementally divided but since one of them is the Durevings, I feel the theory needs a wee bit more development before it can be regarded as fact.

For Imarja, I would prefer to describe her as a heroic bringer and teacher of Vithelan Wisdom rather than a mystical religion.  I doubt that Velhara the Lady of the Wild is worshipped as a mystical religion, instead she's a spirit representing that which cannot be tamed.

Just now, Joerg said:

The Theyalan missionaries who came from this culture were inclusive - they didn't stress differences with Hykimi practices when they encountered them, but sought similarities in their stories and the approach to the elemental forces while introducing their mode of sacrifice as a way of dealing with the changed rules of Time. Things like a clear distinction between the Living and the Dead were much closer to the problems of the magicians of the Dawn Age than a distinction of worship modes.

Assuming that you have shifted from the Hendriki to the Eleven Beasts Alliance of Fronela, I wouldn't describe the Theyalan missionaries as inclusive.  That would mean they were intending to incorporate Hykimi rituals into their own practices which doesn't sound right.  The Theyalan missionaries were teaching their own mysteries and I doubt there were any similar stories between them and the Hykimi (the Talastari who did have similar stories which the missionaries used had been Orlanthi in the Storm Age).

As to the wisdom that the Theyalan missionaries taught, I think it not about element forces but 1) Sacrifice to the Gods, 2) the I Fought We Won Secret and 3) Theyalan farming and other practices.  The distinctions between the Living and the Dead was, I think, a Gray Age concern (ie Daka Fal) rather than a Dawn Age One.

Just now, Joerg said:

The Brithini emigrants of Frowal were faced with the Pendali Hykimi (what we now call hsunchen beast folk) and Likiti (serpent earth temple) magics. There was no notion that combination of Hykimi and Likiti ways would render the hsunchen mode of magic invalid even though the Likiti magic was rather similar to the Ralian Green Lady or Esrolian Ernalda. The Serpent Kings combined the earth magics and the Brithini sorcery without any hesitation but were hostile to the Hykimi beast magics - their magical efforts may have been behind the incompatibility we observe in modern Glorantha.

I would prefer to describe the Pendali as a fusion of Basmoli (who were Fiwan from Pamaltela rather than Hykimi) and Likiti cultures.  Yes, they could worship the earth without harming their Basmoli lion-worship traditions but a slight wrinkle to all this is that Basmol is Dead.

The Serpent Kings did not IMO combine worship of the Earth with Brithini sorcery as their Malkioni magic was Hrestoli in scope.  What they would have had was a majority of people worshipping Likita and related gods while the Hrestoli and wizards viewed themselves as having withdrawn from worship of these Gods to proper union with the Invisible God.  Only after the demise of the Serpent Kings were the actual Malkioni numerous enough to argue that everybody should be Malkioni.

I wouldn't describe the war with the Pendali as being rooted in hostility to Hykimi beast magics.  The Serpent Kings were hostile to the Pendali as they resisted their rule.  The Lion Society of Seshnela may have had its origins in friendly Basmoli willing to fight alongside the Seshnegi and their shape-changing practices evolved over the subsequent centuries to whatever they have now (both Rindland and Tanisor are described as semi-barbarian Guide p405 which sounds like something Rokari wizards approach by looking in the opposite direction).

4 hours ago, Patrick said:

1/ we know that casting spells, learnt from a Grimoire or as rote formula, normally requires to talk aloud (not sure, but I kind of imagine powerful Mages would be able to do without). Is holding a physical object i.e. the Grimoire or a talisman, still needed for this?

Originally sorcery could be done merely by thinking.  But now because of the degenerate state of the world, most people have to use applied magics (Kachasti - speaking, Tadeniti - reading, Kadeniti - objects etc) to perform sorcery.

3 hours ago, Joerg said:

Evidently yes - the Easterners don't seem to have any problems combining worship of the Parondpara with sorcerous spells for everyday magics.

I hardly think what was written for RQ3 Gods of Glorantha over twenty years ago is relevant to the Eastern Isles today.  All it may have been meant to indicate was that they had exotic magic not otherwise described.

The Eastern Islanders do have sorcery but it is hardly combined with the Island Gods.  There are three groups 1) the Sages, 2) the Valkaraians and 3) the low Sorcerors after Martalak.

3 hours ago, Joerg said:

The old HQ1 orthodoxy had it that until the Hero Wars, there was no mixing of magical modes - unless you were one of the defiant entities like Storm Bull, Eurmal, the troll gods, Chaos, the Lunars... the list grows long enough to ask why to make exceptions for the few "misapplied" modes.

Not to mention that it was originally the God Learners who first classified magic into one of three types (latest version Guide p135).  So what did Gloranthans think about magic before?

4 hours ago, aumshantih said:

I don't think these insights negate the Four World theory - quite the opposite in fact.   From the Book of Heortling Mythology, from the story "The Rival Worlds"

Unfortunately Jeff has since expressed misgivings about this particular myth.

4 hours ago, Patrick said:

And here we also find an oddity worth mentioning: the "Church of Ishara" (I presume we'd now rather call it a School), to which Trader Princes of Maniria belong. In other words: some of the Kachasti knowledge was preserved outside of the Storm Tribe (and maybe even some of the Kachasti zzaburi survived outside the Theyalan domination), and re-discovered or re-brought to historical attention by Caselain...

I don't think the Church of Ishara actually exists anymore.  It's not mentioned in the Guide and doesn't fit with the Trader Princes as they are currently depicted.