M Helsdon

These sketches are made using pen and ink, and then digital corrections and shading using Paint and Word (very primitive). The latest is a composite of three sketches: zebra, harness and rider. A very long time ago, I used to draw, but arthritis and lack of time meant that there are the first drawings I've made in about twenty or thirty years. Some of my very old stuff can be seen here: https://www.deviantart.com/atlancalli Below is the Zebra rider 'in context' - unfortunately the text about lancers is on the facing page. The armor is derived from Jan's illustration; I did deliberate making it striped black and white or 'chequerboard' but thought it might be too much. The Dacian style helmet seemed to fit - I experimented giving it a black-and-white crest and decided it didn't need it.

Latest teaser...

These sketches resulted from a review comment that there needed to be illustrations labelled to display the pieces of armour. I couldn't afford to pay a professional artist to do these, so had to sketch out a few. So the first four were drawn (the first four on the top line) but didn't really show a very wide variety. Then it was obvious that animal armour needed an illustration. A few more were drawn, and slotted into the Regional Warfare chapter, and then it was obvious that more were needed for the Battlefield chapter for the components of a shield-wall or phalanx... You see where this was going? Meanwhile, the smaller versions were used to illustrate the Army Lists. The whole project started from a chat at Dragonmeet two years ago, and has just... grown into a 300+ page document which now regularly crashes Word. Excerpts were due to appear in the next Wyrms Footnotes, but may have been dropped to reduce the page count.

Ssp Ankh - living image, has been suggested.

Just a teaser. There are two 'finished' versions of these sketches: one twice the size and one much larger, often with shading.

It's a teaser. Actual versions of the images appear either twice or four or five times that size. For context, here's a sample page. Note that the text has been altered. [Earlier images were removed after the antics of a non-uz troll nearly caused me to leave the forum.]

Here are the mini versions of sketches of various Gloranthan warriors/soldiers... [Note: the images are only roughly to the same scale, and reins and harness for mounts not the final version.]

Probably eaten - those that weren't killed or fled.

Mello Yello is currently held at the Sun County penal salt mines.

Baroshi, in addition to being a deity choice for the Eleven Lights, is, I suspect, a patron deity of the Snakepipe Dancers, another of the regiments of the Sartar Magical Union.

Many Iron Dwarves and iron constructs died in the Gods War. Their mass remains probably constitute the deposits of iron that are mined by humans. Dwarves, of course, either recycle or manufacture iron.

I'll just leave this here...

There's a bright new star high in the Sky Dome. I never met Greg, and only exchanged a very few emails with him, but his life and work have affected my life as they have so many others. He had what some call an old wise soul. Condolences to his family and friends.

The Guide says they have A river navy of sleek, oar-driven penteconters and biremes patrol the Four Rivers and their tributaries.

Bronze-covered shields were common in the Iron Age, and probably in some areas of the Bronze Age. There are certaining a few Bronze Age shields made of bronze, but only a few show any possible signs of use, as unlike iron, bronze objects could be relatively easily repaired. If used in combat, a solid bronze shield would take dents, certainly on the edges, and probably on the disk, as Bronze Age arrows and heavy javelins could damage and sometimes pierce such a shield, and axes and swords could damage it. So, yes, bronze shields are a possibility, but be warned that any with pretty decoration are impractical as the shapes will catch and guide piercing attacks, not deflect them. So if your characters want a shield like Achilles, let them, but with penalties for encumberance and the risk the shield will enhance their CHA at the cost of making them more vulnerable. Note also that many decorated Bronze Age bronze shields may have had a wooden or wicker backing which has not survived. In a bronze-covered shield, the bronze sheet was only one component in a shield also made of wood and probably leather. The Greek hoplite shield is a classic example. I suspect that in RQ:G, calling a shield wooden doesn't mean that it purely wood, but that the wood is the primary defensive layer. Many of the 'ceremonial' bronze shields are very thin, and would have been easily punctured. The Battersea Shield is very thin and would have had a wooden, wicker, or leather backing that could have provided real protection. Some woods would have been favored over others, for being lighter and more resilient. From my tome on Gloranthan warfare: Poplar or willow are more commonly used for shields than oak, ash or pine, because soft woods are pliable and tend to dent instead of split, also weighing significantly less than denser timber. Willow also contracts against a penetrating blade minimizing damage. However, heavier shields use oak for its strength but are covered with hide stretched over the front and back, doubled up to reinforce the rim. Oak can be hardened by baking.

I know - it's probably an error in the army list. One thing they aren't is a fyrd. This is based on the best information I can find (though the colors are my supposition and the change in shield size is my own assumption based on how they fight). Goldedge Foot Type Heavy Infantry Armor Lacquered Leather/Linen Weapons Sarissa, small phalangite shield Morale Regular 4 Patron Deity Yelmalio Notes Yelmalio cultists organized around their Sun Dome Temple. Magic Factor Low 3 Missile Factor 0 Melee Factor 3 Raised by the Goldedge Sun Dome Temple. Their helmet decorations are dyed yellow or orange. The regiment survived the Battle of the Auroch Hills in 1622 but took losses at the Battle of Dangerford in 1625.

One appears to be fairly new, the other re-consecrated. Both probably from a surviving temple to the north.

And some of the reviewers were commenting on mechanics (my last RQ game was back in 1986 so I didn't feel competent to do this), though my comments were about nine pages long....

Most Lunar 'marines' serve in the riverine fleet, so researching Roman riverine forces is probably more helpful than looking at sea warfare. Admittedly, some of the rivers in Peloria are massive, but Roman forces on the Rhine and Danube are likely to be a better fit. Lunar river forces are liable to be confronted by new experiences: tides; the fact that the open sea goes on into a distant haze - they'd be used to seeing both banks of the river most of the time; the water is salty; finding a safe haven in a storm is much more difficult.

There isn't a hierarchy of temples, and Tarsh has a history of enslaving Balazarings, so any trying to travel to a temple there are more likely to end up on the block at Slavewall... In fact, the various Great Temples are unlikely to be as monolithic as they might appear - we only have details of the one in Prax, and that's atypical in several ways.

Ever New Glory is a relatively new temple city, postdating the repopulation of Dragon Pass, founded after the conquest of Saird. Unlike Goldedge, it doesn't provide a regiment to the Tarsh Provincial Army. The latest canonical description lists their weapons as long spear and large shield, so they are probably phalangites, like the other Yelmalion regiments.

I believe I spent about sixty hours reading through the PDF when it became available for typo hunting and completed about 1.8 passes through the document in the timescale available before it went to print. Whilst there was some overlap between the four or five of us who were acting as typo hunters people inevitably saw and reported different things. There are multiple reasons for this, but the main being that different people see different things. I even converted it to Word 'manually' and did a spelling check as an extra pass, which caught a few things. Sadly, the bigger the document the less likely that all the typos will be spotted, unless you can do many more passes. Basically, the larger the project, the more errors will occur, simply because human authors are (shockingly) not perfect, and readers inevitably spot different things. My comments and jongjom's had some overlap, but no more than five or ten percent. I recall working through the RQ2 manuscript for Rick, and found quite a few typos there (some generated by scanning) but some old ones too - and I didn't find all of them. So, expecting a large four hundred page text to be error free is simply unrealistic. I am however, ready and eager to work through 'Gods of Glorantha' and anything else Jeff and Jason throw at me. I know I won't identify all the typos, but I'll do everything I can to find them. I fully understand jongjom's feelings, and I for one, would thank him for his work on RG:Q and other documents, and note that I look forward, if possible, to working with him again. Yes, we all probably read each others' comments, because it offers insight for additional things to look out for, in case there's a systemic error. Sometimes things were found because one person reported something, which gave another hunter an 'a-ha!' moment. In reviewing circles this is a phenomena often called the Phantom Inspector.

In the real world that would be a very bad idea...

Rhinos lack sweat glands and so can only regulate their body temperature by seeking out water and mud to help rid themselves of excess heat. Given the lack of water or wallowing places in Prax and the Wastelands, Gloranthan rhinos must have another means of thermoregulation. Perhaps they have sweat glands? In the Near East, barding was made such that it could be opened to permit the horse to sweat, when not expecting to be immediately in battle.

Certainly some sort of lord. His driver is also more heavily armored than most of the other drivers.