M Helsdon
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Thank you. Well, I have finished another sketch, after three attempts. This isn't as I'd like, but I lose fine control due to the flare-up. This noble should be riding a horse, but I decided to attempt to draw the articulated leg armor. I think that tomorrow I will attempt to do some needed illustrations that should be simpler.
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Regret there may not be many sketches in the next few weeks. My arthritis has gone active, possibly due to the change in the weather here, and spending so much time sitting and writing and drawing in the last few months. The current project I am working on will take longer to finish. I need about fourteen more sketches to illustrate it - one is partially done.
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Glorantha is a simulation running on the World Machine mainframe.
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Orlanthi societies are very mutable, according to location. Sartar, much of Vesmonstran around the Upper Tanier, and most of the Provincial Kingdoms are rich in resources, so tribal groupings are very likely. In other areas, especially those reliant solely on herding, and even more those who are basically hunter-gatherers with fairly basic horticulture, clans are likely, and some areas will be too poor for centralized clans. So you can find 'high kingdoms' composed of multiple tribes, tribes, clans, and family groups. All Orlanthi but varying in wealth and organization.
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The Sky as a Reflection of Glorantha (aka "the Sky Beyond Fire")
M Helsdon replied to Sir_Godspeed's topic in Glorantha
One aspect of ancient cultures, whether in the Near East, India, China or anywhere else, is that there was a belief that future events (and the will of the gods) are foretold in the sky, by the movement of the stars and planets. There was very much a belief that 'so above, so below'. In Glorantha, however, the gods can't predict the future, and most are locked into immutable roles by the Compromise. The Sky includes not only Sky and Solar entities, but other elements as well, and major gods who are not Solar or Sky gods. Shameless plug, but the implications are covered in some detail in Armies and Enemies of Dragon Pass because I wanted something akin to the roles of astrologers and fortune tellers, as they played a significant role in ancient Near East warfare. You only have to examine the Assyrian and Babylonian lists of events in the sky codified to events on Earth to see this. Events in the Sky are regular, taking a couple of centuries to cycle through; the interactions of stars and planets relive the myths of the gods, so when Orlanth's Ring encounters the Red Planet of Shargash, for example, there are implications for their worshipers below. The Dara Happans and the Kralorelans have centuries of records detailing the effects these mythic interactions have down on the surface, and this is potentially a very great advantage in any major magical activities, including war. Of course, this cycle isn't entirely predictable as events on the surface can cause planets and stars to appear or disappear, such as the disappearance and reappearance of the Boat Planet. The rise of the Red Moon is also a major variance in the Sky, and its occupation of the Middle Age, claimed by Orlanth, ensures there must be conflict down below between their mortal followers. So I put together a table of all the major powers in the Sky; of course creating an almanac was impractical, but the different periods of major planets, stars, and other bodies gives an indication of their influences below. -
Hopefully, if the gods are kind, a POD is coming. Hmm, that's probably down to my vocabulary... 8-( The index is fairly extensive.
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Sakkar is the God of Fear and the Hunter of Men. He had many battles in the God Time, and only the mightiest could defeat him, eventually driving him into the wilds so that his children are now rare. His temples are guarded by his children, and only let pass those whom he favors. He is the patron of the Doblian Dogeaters regiment. So... the most simple might be that the character discovers that one of his ancestors was of that regiment - either some time ago, or depending on their age, and the year, more recently when the regiment served in Sartar. It might be due to a relationship their family hid, or, if some generations ago, the details have been forgotten. But Sakkar hasn't, and sends one of his sakkar spirits to claim/adopt them. Or... the character has a reason to become a hunter of men, perhaps seeking revenge, and they encounter a sakkar or sakkar spirit who recognises their kinship of purpose. Perhaps they summon a spirit to aid them, and there is the soft padding of large paws outside...
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The picture is also in Armies & Enemies of Dragon Pass, with the kind permission of Chaosium.
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Entirely un-canonical, but in attempting to find a way of differentiating between Seshnelan and Ralian cataphracts, I tend to give the former face masks (with the conceit that they were originally adopted to counter Enerali horse archers who, confronted by heavily armored Seshnegi proto-cataphracts, would shoot them in the face as the only exposed area) and the latter 'spectacle helmets' (with the conceit that the style dates back to Arkat's assaults on Kartolin, when armor was often enhanced to counter missiles, so this serves to strengthen the helmet from dropped rocks). The Safelstran's armor is a mixture of Scythian, Parthian, and Sassanid, and... something else. The 'spectacles' aren't entirely un-canonical, because the Tournament King of Kustria owns a set of dwarven-made armor which includes brass spectacles, so I conjectured that they might be a Ralian style. The armour description in the Guide was, I suspect, based on the gift of pageant armor given to Henry VIII by the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I in 1511.
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Latest. [The horse should be wearing more armor, but I decided to do something different for variety.]
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Thank you. Latest. [The horse should be wearing more armor, but I decided to do something different for variety.] Hmm. I think the horse's face needs more shading. Had a run in with a band of non-Uz trolls in a Glorantha Facebook group today.
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The Middle Ages term would be peytral, though those were usually of metal plate or thick leather or felt. Equine chest armor was very much older, also made of scale or lamellar. Peytral is probably the best descriptive term, if anachronistic.
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I don't believe the photograph was of an actress - and I have altered the nose and lips... and the shape of the face reflects what I drew, not the face I took the nose and lips from. Today: mount inked, scanned, and shaded. More shading done this this was posted, as my desktop screen gives better resolution than the laptop so I am able to smooth the shading.
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Thank you - but I'm more a mechanic - you are an artist. This sketch includes a cheat, only used a few times... Couldn't get the face to work until I used a photograph, tweaked, to get the mouth and nose right (read an article by a professional digital artist a while ago, where they described merging photographs into their work). Only resorted to that three or four times before... These sketches each take a day to three days of spare time: drawn with a fine pen on shiny paper (discovered it was possible to rub out the 'permanent' ink on the surface), then scanned, contrast and brightness adjusted using the facilities in Word, and then digitally modified and flesh tones added using Microsoft Paint. With this one I have had to do another set of edits tonight, as the image resolution on my laptop, which I usually work on, isn't as good as on my desktop, so the shading had to be smoothed out, and some pixels altered. Earlier today I reworked the Rinkoni as the face is too pale - extracted the face in Paint, pasted into Word, brightness reduced, contrast adjusted, and then edited back into the image using Paint. Engineering, not art.
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No. No. What these comments highlight, and I am not the only person receiving them, if that the expectations of fantasy artwork are now very high. If you look at games back in the 70s and 80s even professional games often had very different art in both quality and quantity to what is the norm today.
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Yes, though there are indications it was only used as parade armor. I gather that a number of JC contributors have received similar comments. Thanks. It happens - comments on layout, artwork etc. I have made some changes to the Snake horali, adding more shading to the face and evening out some of the other shading. This afternoon have roughed out a Safelstran mercenary cataphract (though the horse is only partially armored).
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Latest. Second attempt and I am not satisfied with it. A comment that has appeared several times on Armies & Enemies is that the art isn't up to Chaosium's standard, but I'm an amateur, and if I don't draw the sketches, there won't be any illustrations; this is making me very conscious of flaws.
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The southern fringes of Fronela, in the forests and foothills of the mountains. This hunter-warrior is wearing winter garb. His throwing spears have flaked stone heads; his other spear is bronze, either obtained in trade, or more likely as plunder.
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I am unashamedly using the cavalry pictures twice - once as full-sized illustrations, and once to illustrate the evolution of the Western cataphract. At least two more to do...
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Just roughing out the next two. Lion and Snake War Societies. The Lion should be on a horse, but these mounted sketches take up a lot of space (an infantry figure takes a day or two to finish; a cavalry figure two to four days... I am using pen and ink, and then making digital changes, mainly for skin tones). Am deliberating whether to give the Snake soldier crocodile armor, as I believe they are found in the Lower Tanier River.
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The bronze cuirass, scale skirt and lamellar limb armor is all derived from sources plus or minus two centuries of 0 AD, though some details may be later, with some added fantasy. The horse armor is bronze for the chamfron and criniere, and the barding is lacquered cuir boilli plates on a leather backing. Whilst this noble has a lance, cataphracts go back a long way. Most of the other cataphracts I have drawn are wearing face masks which are distinctly Persian, but for this one I decided he should be bare faced, as lions rarely loose arrows.
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One of my Western sketches in The Armies and Enemies of Dragon Pass sequel. This noble is equipped for lion hunting.
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Yes, in part. I always study canonical art and attempt to include aspects of it. In this case, the armor I drew is only partly Central Asian in character, as it mixes a bronze cuirass, scale skirt, and lamellar manica and leg armor (I used Jeff's Seshnelan art direction, which the artist above deviated from to use entirely Central Asian style armor - I have copy of a book where the cavalryman appears, in almost exactly the same pose he used, the only obvious difference being the crest he gave the horse...) One thing I wanted to make obvious in this case, is that although the rider is a Noble, and called a knight, he isn't a European medieval knight. In this case, the thigh-guard armor is in addition to the scale skirt and the tubed leg armor, so there isn't a gap, even if the thigh-guards weren't there - they provide additional protection where the rider would be vulnerable from attacks from a foe on foot. Additional: Not only human foes, but lions. Seshnelan nobles hunt lions.
