metcalph

Ygg is described in the Guide as the God of the Winter Wind (Guide p232).  Although he's described by the Orlanthi as being a son of Valind, I think it more likely that he's the native face of Valind among the Yggites (parallel examples being Veskarthen and Caladra).  As such, his runes would be storm and stasis (representing icy cold air).  

Other deities worshipped by the Yggites would be Nelarrina, a goddess of the Neliomi Sea (Guide p232) and other Vadrudi (Iphara, Gagarth, Molanni etc)

There's more material in the HeroQuest 1.0 book but that has been superseded by the Guide.

The big change is the de-emphasis of the Aeolians as a church.  Instead it would be a philosophy believed by the Wizards of Heortland.  The ordinary Heortlanders don't participate in the philosophy of their intellectuals and are quite happy to take their word for it on the existence of the Invisible God (in pretty much the same way you or I am prepared to accept an astronomer's statement about the Big Bang).  Unlike other Malkioni nations, the Wizards are quite happy with the common worship of the Gods.

As for the sorcery rules, well, the wizards and their acolytes use sorcery.  The best rules will probably come out in the upcoming RuneQuest: Glorantha

41 minutes ago, Iskallor said:

P92 of Pavis Gateway to adventure mentions the tent village of Far End. Where is it located, I can't find it on the map?

It's off the northern edge of the map on p92 and can be seen on the map on p56. 

6 hours ago, Joerg said:

While discussing sea currents under the heading of Prax might be a bit off-topic, the original invasion by Sshorg(a) the Blue Dragon aka Nestentos was first resolved by Vadrus, Valind's daddy, in a quest that served as the template for Orlanth's and Barntar's quests to combat Daga (a nephew of Valind, btw). (And Inora would be his aunt, rather than his daughter - unless Valind mated with grandma Kero Fin.)

I don't think Vadrus fought with Enshokons in Dragon Pass.  Rather I think he fought her in Fronela giving rise to the Janube.

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The trouble is - Sshorg(a)/Nestentos is the parent of Seolinthur, the ancestor of the rivers of Genert's Garden. Seolinthur (and its child Zola Fel) ran uphill in that mythic age, same as Sshorg. Anything preventing the spawning of Seolinthur would create mythical trouble of great dimension.

Sshorgs is a name that only occurs in Belintar's syncretic mythology and should be avoided in favour of Aroka.  While Nestentos can be identified as Aroka, I think that such an identification can only be made in Peloria after which the differences becomes too great.

The multiple schools being destroyed by Sheng was just something that I made up.  There's no canonical list of Teshnan mystical schools as far as I know (and the one in Glorantha: the Second Age is rather too cheesy for my liking).

On the subject of Teshnos, the sources are the Guide to Glorantha and Revealed Mythologies.  Teshnos' Gods are a variation of the High Gods of Vithela (who are themselves analogous to the Celestial Court).  There are nine deities of which five are openly worshipped (Guide p428) - the other four are celestial handmaidens and how they are worshipped is a mystery.  Tolat would make up the Tenth Deity, a disruptive force but one integral to the Cosmos.

As far as I know, the Pol Joni ride horses as a condition of tribal membership.  I assume one of their initiation rites is for a Praxian to slaughter their own steed and eat it without Peaceful Cut as a sign of their commitment to their new tribe.  

AFAIK the Twin Stars are celestial relics of the primal Twins (Maker and Grower in the Monomyth?  That's them twins).  They had faded in the Golden Age (they appear on the Gods Wall as the two midgets whom Plentonius amusingly calls Orlanth and Valind).  The Sables are one of the few people left in the world to actually have myths involving the Twin Stars.  Everybody else has forgotten them and attempts to find new myths have failed because no gloranthan really understood what the Twins are.  

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.