metcalph

I think the Alien Combination Machine stems from the Machine City. An early myth about Lhankor Mhy have him being gifted the Marking Bones o it would be kind of odd if he was carrying advanced tech at the time.

These still exist. A good example is the cult of Flintnail in New Pavis in which the stonemason skills are cast using the Stonemason keyword.

There are no longer any Saints Blessings - Everybody just has spells (or states of being) derived from a Saint's philosophical discoveries. The chain of veneration still exists although it is no longer called veneration. Once could refer to spells derived from the Abiding Book as being a liturgy but I think the current thinking is to make everything part of general wizardly duties. In other words, the participants in the ceremony may or may not believe they are worshipping the Invisible God, it depends on what their wizards says. I guess that in the rural areas, the wizards tell the poplace that it is worship necessary for entry to Solace while in the more sophisticated urban regions, it's seen as magical taxation/tithing.

I think this misconstrues what a Malkioni School is. School is not used as a substitute for faith or creed but in the sense of a philosophical school. The only people who would be properly be said to belong to a school are the wizards. Everybody else are their supporters and retainers. The non-wizards may learn spells, they may believe in an Invisible God (or not) they may follow whatever philosophical guidance their wizard gives (Don't worship Saints! Don't worship Gods neither! And absolutely no spirits!!) but they leave the heavy duty of thinking about Big Stuff to the wizards. A Rokari merely means a follower of the Philosophical Tradition begun by Rokar. They will not primarily identify themselves as Rokari. They would be more likely to describe themselves as a man of Seshneg. If pressed, they might refer to themselves as a worshipper of the Invisible God Makan (while looking confusedly at the nearby wizard who just received a massive headache). If pressed to identify the schools of Malkionism, they would pump for the Malkioni (us), joyful degenerates (Hrestoli), dirty stinking pagans (Arkati) etc.

The Malkioni have been reverted to Greg's original vision of a society dominated by wizards rather than a pseudo-Christian Church. The medieval details in prior Gloranthan publications were the result of, I understand, severe time constraints in the making of the Genertela boxed set which required substantial filler and so the medieval material was just parachuted in. Subsequent publications just simply accepted it.

It's not clear that the counties belong to either Heortland or God Forgot. The map on p246 is for Malkonwal, not Heortland. I've a feeling that the Counties are responsible to the God-King directly rather than the KIng and Governor of Heortland. A stronger argument would be to note that the population sidebar lists 628K people in Heortland. Malkonwal has 300K, the Hendriki have 273K, the three counties 52K giving a total of 625K. Not conclusive as to the nature of the Marcher County people (the 5K of Refugee are still God Forgotten) but culturally Heortlander rather than God Forgotten seems a safer bet.

I think the Knight Fort in the Nomad Gods is an innovation to represent a starting place for the Holy Country and that the actual knight forts are further southwest off the map.

I think the reason there are no dragonewts in Pamaltela is that Bolongo killed the Dragon Langamul so all they have are spirits instead.