metcalph

Under normal circumstances, Kuschile Archery seems like a weak-ass skill that makes no sense for your usual adventurers.  But Yelmalio is no ordinary cult.  10% of his initiates have a cult weapon skill of 90% which includes the bow.  So their starting best archers are 90% bow and 5% ride.  Normally They get Kuschile Archery at a base of 25% which is a huge improvement.

Instead of sucking at 5% archery every time they are on horseback, 25% of their arrows are at 90%.  So what if Kuschile Archery is a lousy skill to improve compared to ride?  All that matters to the Yelmalions, is that from fresh troops, they can muster half-decent mounted archers.  

1 hour ago, Dogboy said:

I meant that in that Pole Star, as a cult, is a lowlander war cult.

Not necessarily.  He's one of the Spirits of Above according to _Nomad Gods_ and the Grazers having come from Prax a few centuries ago would have known of him.  

1 hour ago, Dogboy said:

It's like this conversation, Yelmalio is known as Kargzant by early horse nomads.

He was worshipped by the early Horse Nomads.  The Pure Horse People worshipped a superior god as a result of something we donn't know and need not speculate about here.  Now consider the view of the Pure Horse People of Prax - you have two gods to worship for the same magic.  One is a Star at the Centre of the Nigh Sky while the other is a loser god of an inferior planet whose worshippers are well known to them as walkers and trash.  Being Pure Horse Folk, they would accept the god with high status.

If the Pure Horse folk were more cosmopolitan (I exclude the Zebra-riding weirdos with their bizarre bondage fetish*) then yes, they would accept Yelmalio.  But they didn't become so until the rise of the Pure Horse Queen at which point they were safely removed from Prax.

*Interestingly I note that the Zebra Tribe is 17% Yelmalio which is more than the Impala and second only to the Unicorn Riders.  

3 hours ago, Dogboy said:

But he is there. There is a very good reason why the Grazers would still worship Kargzant/Lightfore: because you have to protect your herds at night too. Yelm/Yu-Kargzant gets Catseye from Yelmalio/Kargzant/Lightfore. He wouldn't get that from a bunch of footsoldiers, he'd get it from the cult of nocturnal guardians.

They could worship Pole Star for that.

30 minutes ago, JRE said:

I agree that is how things were at Dawn and kept by strict conservatives like the Pure Horse, but I was explaining why we have so many uses for the name Kargzant, and the Guide to Glorantha (Vol. II, p. 247) shows this conflict between meanings of Kargzant.

The Dawn is about 1600 years ago and what people called the sun then isn't really material for RQ, dontcha think?

Based on a thred on the RQ forum.

Given that the Pure Horse left Pent in the Imperial Age, who or what are the Julin Marsk?

My theory is that they are the remnants of Dara Happan on Horse fled eastwards after their suppression by the Red Emperor.  Thus they would worship Yelm instead of Yu-Kargzant and their nomadic practices be deliberate adoptions of Pentan customs rather than age-old traditions.  They may even be the Fake Sun Horses mentioned in King of Sartar.

14 hours ago, Dogboy said:

If Kargzant=Yelmalio, and Yelmalio is the sun-horse, why isn't Yelmalio worshipped as such in the Grazelands? you'd assume they are very adept Kuschile archers. it makes me think that Yelmalio is Orlanth Adventurous, to Yelms' Orlanth Rex.

The Grazers already have their own archery deity - Jardan (aka Golden Bow or Yelm the Archer), whom they worship within the cult of Yu-Kargzant (Yelm of the Grazelands).

Kargzant is worshipped by those horse nomads who cannot worship Yu-Kargzant due to inferior lineage (ie most Pentans and perhaps the Char-Un).  

One could be a complete God-Learner and say that Jardan and Kargzant are the same god worshipped in different ways (one by savage horsemen and the other by smug horsemen).

59 minutes ago, davecake said:

I’m not quite sure how the Pentans conceptualise the difference - if Yu-Kargzant is Imperial Kargzant, is that Kargzant as Emperor, or the Emperor acknowledged by Kargzant, or are both names titles to the Pentans (like Rider, and Lord of Riders?).

The Imperial Sun is an epithet made by an outsider scribe and not one necessarily made by the Grazers themselves.  Yu has the sense of godhood about it rather than Emperor.  Hence Yu-Kargzant reads to me like God of Kargzant with time and custom turning the title into a proper name (cf Jupiter whose name is literally "Sky Father").

59 minutes ago, davecake said:

Though do some non-Pure Pentan tribes have a Yu-Kargzant minority? 

Most Pentan Sun worshippers are members of a specific tribe.  Whether other solar tribes have any is kinda beyond the scope of the forum.

25 minutes ago, FlamingCatOfDeath said:

I was reading through the Gloratha Sourcebook and I was perplexed by this line: “In Ralios, Arachne Solara was tied in her own net by an enemy bull-headed demigod.“ —page 139. Is this elaborated on somewhere? It seems like a very significant event and I would like to find out more about it.

The demigod was Garanian Auroch whom Ethilrist met in Hell (Dorastor: Land of Doom). We don't have much more detail including where he came from (Tawari? Pelanda? Ralios? Etc.)

2 hours ago, JRE said:

The Hyalorings call the sun Kargzant, the same as the Pentans and the Pure Horse People.

The sun is Yu-Kargzant.  Kargzant is Lightfore.  The Grazers can worshipped Yu-Kargzant because they have the lineage.  Most Pentans cannot. 

2 hours ago, JRE said:

The Dara Happans could not consider K. the equal of Yelm, so they equated him with Lightfore or the other gods of the Yellow Planet,

Kargzant was associated by the Pentans and Dara Happans alike with the Yellow Planet in the Great Darkness and Gray Age. He is qualitatively not the same as Yelm/Yu-Kargzant. 

6 hours ago, scott-martin said:

It strikes me that while ascended master cults are common lore, I don't actually know much about where and when they actually emerged or who maintained these structures as part of their ordinary spiritual landscape.

My guess (based on wot Jeff has said) is that many of them are worshipped as Ancestors in Seshnela.  Thus they would be open to the nobility who also regulate or prohibit their worship by the soliders and farmers.  The stuff about veneration is ignored by the Rokari (Wizards and Nobles) as a barbarous superstition - for them, the only criterion of whether somebody should be worshipped is ancestry.  That's why Hrestol's worship still persists in Seshnela even though his reputation is quite bad.  Because they are not venerated, they only provide spirit and rune magics.

So what would be classified as ascended master cults (if veneration was actually practiced) would be Gerlant, Arkat, Xemela, Hrestol, Froalar and Dormal (a bit tricky calling him an ancestor but the Zzaburi can always create legal fictions to justify the practice).

Since Halwal is worshipped in Loskalm, I think that in Seshnela, he, Argalis and Yomili are also followed in Seshnela with Theoblanc being a recent addition.  Instead of these being traditional rune cults, they would be more like schools of thought among the wizards with subtle spell effects that comes through practicing their philosophy.

7 minutes ago, Ironwall said:

So i had another question regarding wind children that doesn't warrant a separate thread. the Wind children worship Orlanth so do they in any way worship his wife Ernalda. 

I doubt it.  They are more likely to worship KeroFin for childbearing.

There are the Pure Ones of Ralios who never adopted Nysalor.  Everybody else still hates them.  I doubt that the Telmori of Sartar get eliminated by the Storm Bull people.  They might have done so in the past but the Telmori would have ganged up on the Storm Bullies on Full Moon nights a few decades ago with the result they they are not considered chaotic, merely tainted by its presence.   

The Telmori don't adopt outsiders easily.  For starters, they need to be a werewolf.  I'd say it will never happen but this is your game and so it can happen.

On 5/17/2022 at 12:05 AM, Darius West said:

Given the rules on RQG p234, how does one lose honor for ambushing?  Ambush isn't specifically mentioned as something you lose honor for doing, and it is hardly cowardice for a small number of Orlanthi to ambush a larger number of Lunars.  You can hardly call Lunars unarmed either, just because their weapons aren't drawn at the start of an ambush.  Nor can the lunars in any way be called guests or call upon hospitality for protection.  In short, there is no honor penalty within the rules as written that applies to ambushing from what I can tell.  Care to elaborate Jeff?  What haven't I understood?

I undersood Jeff to be talking about tactics such as killing prisoners rather than say, raining thunderstones on a lunar patrol that just crossed a river.

7 hours ago, icebrand said:

So, i want to dive deeper into my newest original creation, Jon Pol-Joni, an orlanthi hero who wields the six-string of storms.

What horse breed do the Pol Joni ride? I read something about it being seredae, is this true?

Whatever horses they can ride.  Most commonly this would be Darons and Sereds with a few skirmishers riding Galanas

7 hours ago, icebrand said:

How do you pick a warhorse then? (The average seredae cant carry a warrior into battle!)

Sereds have -1 speed for heavy cavalry so they can.  Galanas have -2 for heavy cavalry and are far better suited for chriot duty.

7 hours ago, icebrand said:

How does rustling praxian beasts work? Do the Pol Joni raid as the orlanthi do, or as the animal nomads do? How do animal nomads raid anyway? 

They are conversant with the Praxian customs about raiding and also the Orlanthi customs.  They would probably raid for livestock rather than steeds.

7 hours ago, icebrand said:

Also, i read Pol-Joni are buddies with the zebras and others, how come? Dont zebra riders consider horses taboo, and should avoid associating with?

The Zebras have no problem with horses and even ride a variant.  They are Pavisites rather than Animal Nomads.  The Animal Nomads consider horses unclean but have become accustomed to outsiders riding them.

5 hours ago, JonL said:

I was talking Gbaji Wars, not Hero Wars, but I like where your head's at.

It's curious that He, Zzabur is absent from any of the Arkat/Nysalor tales. We don't get His take on the Sunstop or anything like that in Revealed Mythologies or Middle Sea Empire. 

He's mentioned on the topic in the Guide sidebar p719

Quote

But later scholars
complained that Time
had been shortened by the
act [Sunstop - PHM], and that afterwards
the days were shorter,
and that men’s lives were
also shorter. Zzabur
himself concurred with
this judgment, but ended
his confirmation with a
moralistic note of warning
for men to be cautious
where they tread, and to
acknowledge the limits
of Time rather than
struggle against it.

1 hour ago, Tabor said:

So, question one: How exactly did Hrestol lay out how to achieve Joy, and am I correct in thinking that Joy was necessary to be a Man-of-All in his time?

Jeff probably will have a better answer (considering the material's largely unpublished), but Hrestol combined all the castes into himself to create an overload of philosophical forms that allowed him to attain a new state of awareness - Joy.  You can achieve Joy without combing castes but it is the mist sure route.

1 hour ago, Tabor said:

Question two: When exactly in the procession of castes do Loskalmi expect to experience Joy, if it can be expected at all?

When they become a Guardian (the rank above commoner).  Subsequent higher ranks are dependent on the Guardian having demonstrated his trustworthiness and shown that he has not fallen into Material Error.  

1 hour ago, Tabor said:

The wiki even calls them the Malkioni equivalent of heroes,

Depends on which Wiki you refer.  If it's my own writing then much of it was composed before the guide in order to make sense of the contradictory sources then proliferating about.

1 hour ago, Tabor said:

Which brings me to my third question: what separates an Ascended Master from a Man-of-All from someone who has experienced Joy?

Ascended Masters have created a new understanding of the Cosmos which benefits others.  They need not have experienced Joy (many sects with Ascended Masters think that Joy is a bad thing).  Fort example Rokar is an Ascended Master for his reformation of the Abiding Book.  This new understanding may be independent of any magic that the Ascended Master may teach.

41 minutes ago, Yinkin said:

Looking through SKoH I realise why I missed it: It does not seem to be on any of the pages in the index referencing the Dundealos, nor are their names themselves in the Index. Can you tell me what page it is on?
 

Control+F on a PDF often finds what the index omits.

Haradinora Dinorthsdottir's lament is given on page 314.

She is also mentioned on page 315 under the rising of the Dundealos.

1 hour ago, Yinkin said:

Is there anywhere described in more detail how this happens? What I have found is just that a Lunar Tax Collector violates the daugther of the Dundealos king and the tribe rises in response to this. Is the name of the king and their daughter given anywhere, for example?

Sartar: Kingdom of Heroes gives the King's name as Dinorth and his daughter as Haradinora.

1 hour ago, coffeemancer said:

wasnt there a battle irl where some army caught another army in a seamp and could have rained arrows at them risk free but the general refused such a dishonorable tactic? and once the enemy army came out of the swamp they crushed the honorable army

There may have been.  But what is the standard of honor is being used here?  Why would firing on army stuck in a swamp be dishonorable for the Orlanthi?  Does this mean that attacking somebody held in place by a Glue spell is dishonorable?  Or how about Befuddle?

16 hours ago, Scorus said:

An ambush is not a surprise attack?

That wasn't not the question but whether an ambush is dishonorable.  

44 minutes ago, Manu said:

Is there a anti-chaos cult in the Earth Pantheon? Or are they always counting on the husband part (Orlanth, Yelm, ...)

Babeester fought Chaos.  

11 minutes ago, Scorus said:

YGMV, but as per Jeff in the links above: The buildup and formation of battle lines is done with the full knowledge of the other side and no surprise attacks are made.

I'm not seeing any contradiction.  

Ambushes are not dishonorable.  Breaches of hospitality etc. are.  A Humakti may be forbidden by his god to be part of an ambush but that's his problem rather than a general view that ambushes are dishonorable.

2 hours ago, Ironwall said:

Is Elmal still going strong in Heartland or is there minor yelmalio sun domes we just don't hear about

There are numerous Sun Dome temples in the Lunar Provinces.  Elmal is not very strong there precisely because of these temples.

Further north in the Heartlands proper, the people are Pelorians, not Orlanthi.  There Anitius is recognized as part of Yelm.

44 minutes ago, g33k said:

 I haven't seen that acknowledgment; so far as I can see, @Soccercalle's claim stands (albeit contradicted by other readers).

He made a reaction to my first post.  Unless you have anything meaningful to say (instead of needlessly prolonging this tedious misunderstanding), I'm done here.