M Helsdon

In the Western Roman Empire Count indicated generically a military commander, and is roughly analogous to the Scandinavian jarl, Anglo-Saxon earl, Persian sirdar, Chinese bo, and Mongol noyan. Like duke, it is a useful way to denote a Gloranthan title without having to invent a word. Perhaps a Carmanian count has the title sirdar... In Gloranthan terms, a count holds military and/or administrative rank, as both Sun County in Sartar, and Sun Dome County in Prax are both ruled by a count. As Anglo-Saxon terminology is used to describe ranks in Sartar (thane etc.) earl might be more appropriate, but count works just as well. Sheriff might work for a smaller region, but is already present in Glorantha, and it too, is derived from Anglo-Saxon scirgerefa, a shire reeve.

Unofficial, but an article by Rick Meints in TotRM#19 refers to Falangian diamond prisms being used to see the future (page 21).

And by way of comparison, here's the Mission beside the frontage of a far grander temple, such as the one built at Elkoi. (The larger temple is not square but built in the hexastyle peripteral style.)

Not that different from the behavior of adventurers of any species... 8-)

This Seven Mothers Mission is located at Stonegate Fort in Sartar.

You ride into the Wastes, and see the Plateau of Statues...

Didn't a Wyrm's Footnotes article have corrections to the spell tactics?

And Charg, when it re-emerges...

Bisos the Bull God of Pelanda and Carmania?

Whilst there have to be sufficient strength to hold up the walls and floors, most ancient builders were constructed to a distinctly different set of priorities. Most ancient temples lacked all but a few sources of sunlight: mainly from the doorways, sometimes from window slits high on the walls, sometimes from interior courtyards, rarely from light wells. If you walk around any of the still standing Egyptian, Greek or Roman temples you will be struck by just how dark they are inside. Ancient houses tended to lack windows on the outer walls, at ground level, and sometimes above that because unless the windows were very narrow, they were a security risk; instead houses were built around an inner courtyard. The Minoan houses on Thera are an exception. The rich in Peloria and Esrolia might have access to glass, but are you going to put a glass window where it can be smashed by outsiders, or have it facing into private family courtyards? In Glorantha, things will run along religious lines. Darkness temples will be... dark; Air temples will be open to the sky; Light/Fire temples may rely upon fires for light, or, as is the case with Yelmalion Sun Domes, the outer shell will magically permit sunlight through; Earth temples are likely to be entirely enclosed, lit perhaps by torches or oil lamps; Water temples... might be outside or open to the weather. And of course the main temple building won't host all the worshippers: the inner sanctum will be the preserve of the priesthood, so ordinary worshippers will probably gather outside. Moon temples... I imagine that some have an open roof to permit the Red Moon to be seen, but others will be enclosed, as seems to be the case for the Seven Mothers temples that appear on canon maps.

The warrior in A is intended to provide scale - unfortunately whilst the originals are the same 'size', the forum resizes the uploaded pictures. Possibly there are narrow windows at the front, and perhaps skylights. The chambers on the ground floor don't have ceilings of the same height - the main chamber and the side shrines have tall ceilings, but the other rooms do not. The stairwells to the rear lead to the upper floor via about three flights of stairs (not all are shown). The greyed out area on the upper floor isn't a chamber but a narrow (at the edges) ceiling space only accessible for maintenance. There's a further set of stairs up to the chambers at the front of the building. I did start drawing a cut-away to show the stairs, but it became too messy. Am slowly creating more floor plans - this is the second. The first was of one of Saronil’s Towers. The next one may be of a Temple of Ernalda... Here are all images at the same scale.

My (non-canonical) interpretation of a Lunar temple to Hon-eel (exterior based upon an illustration by Kalin Kadiev) and interior floor plans.

And to further muddle the waters... One of several myths relating to Urox fathering the first bull-headed minotaur, has the mother as Orunatawara (a cow goddess – and note the similarity in name to Tawar).

There will be an expanded and updated version in the Glorantha Source Book.

Logistics. Any army in the field requires constant resupply: by foraging, plundering, supply depots or allies willing to provide supplies. Plundering, and even foraging will alienate people on the line of march, and there's the risk of ongoing ambuscade (a favorite tactic of Orlanthi and related peoples) and eventually open warfare. To gain and maintain supply would have either required conquest, or winning allies - both processes that would take a very long time. An army on the march needs supply depots every sixty miles or so, otherwise its effectiveness starts to reduce. A more recent example is Lunar expansion south, with major supply depots at Miren's Cross, Furthest, Alda-Chur... And by the time the Lunars reached Corflu and Nochet they were in an increasingly weak position, if their local allies disappeared. Arkat, and Talor, relied upon friendly peoples on the line of march, because their supply lines were either over extended or gradually withering away behind them. Arkat used the tactic of adopting the ways of the people closest to him in a position to supply his army: eventually becoming a Troll to be able to push into southern Peloria.

Scenes of violence...

Except that often even where the versions seem to relate to the same event, they are often contradictory. It is possible to say what different cultures believe to be the Truth, but it is not possible to uncover the actual Truth. In-world, this is apparent because the Goddess of Truth is now very distant and aloof from the mortal world. This is why I cited sources but didn't come to any conclusions when assessing Bull or Horse deities. There are some apparent connections, most of which suggest underlying complexities we can't resolve. And, if we could, it would make the world too black and white. Now, that certainty is necessary in roleplaying most player characters (unless they are Illuminated) but it doesn't reflect the 'real' world where well defined areas of doubt and uncertainty enhance the richness of the fictional world. There seem to be far fewer gods in Glorantha that might be assumed: Shargash and Tolat seem to be different (very different) aspects of the same entity, and of course some Dara Happans believe Orlanth is a version of Shargash... Most of the detailed mythic material we have relates to a fairly small geographic area for the core cultures, with a few outliers, which are often wildly divergent. And I suspect the core cultures are far less monolithic than they appear.

Perhaps, but The White Goddess is unlikely to reflect any ancient terrestrial culture. The baby cannot be recovered. Too much time and too much interference. The only things that can be studied with any pretense of accuracy are cultures in Time, before that, there's too much contradiction, which makes it just like terrestrial mythologies that are rarely as neat and tidy as often assumed. For example, there's an obvious correlation between Zeus, Teshub, Dyaus, Jupiter, etc. but when you burrow further down you find that the attributes of Zeus of one place are different to the Zeus of another place. This makes the mythology of Glorantha more satisfying because it isn't all delineated like most fictional mythologies.

Perhaps. Perhaps not. http://www.glorantha.com/docs/bluepeople/ I suspect that the imprint of God Time can be eroded by heroquesters and their beliefs. It is dubious whether all the cities correlate to Yelm's sons.

The Blue People of Peloria also include a variety of water entities, who were defeated by Bisos and others. I'd take everything of God Learner origin as suspect. It's a bit like trying to extrapolate terrestrial Greek Bronze Age religions from the Greek Myths: fraught with risk. This is best illustrated by the very erudite trickster Robert Graves who attempted to extract religion (and history) from the Greek Myths, eventually culminating in The White Goddess, which is a collection of speculation. For that matter, his Claudius novels are so popular some people take them as historical... The reputation of Livia Drusilla has forever been tarnished. 8-) We're basically in the same position for all pre-Dawn events - where the human populations at the Dawn were small and more concerned with surviving - and most were probably illiterate, so what ever stories they did tell each other are now buried under centuries of supposition. Take, for example, the Ten Cities of Dara Happan myth. As you've noted at least one is suspect, and the number of cities may simply be an expression of the dara Happan belief that ten is the perfect number (though why, then, did Yelm have eight 'sons'?)

No, he's a son of Urox / Storm Bull / Bisos... 8-) I'd take the quoted text with several pinches of salt...

From the material in the Guide, it seems likely that a large number of modern Orlanthi are descendants of Hsunchen peoples, especially in Ralios, Jonatela and western Peloria. There seem to be more Blue People than just the Vadeli or Veldang. Given what eventually happened to them, God Learner genealogies are all suspect, and potentially corrupted numerous myth cycles. The Monomyth is obviously a construction, and there are so many inconsistencies in it that it can only be taken as a broad and undetailed source. I know. This is why I attempted to draw out a potential genealogy from the in-world sources. True. But are Eiritha and Uralda masks of the same goddess, filtered via two different cultures, or are they sister deities?

Yes, I'm aware of it - but it lacks any mythological information so I haven't used it. Just a faint kinship as some chieftains could apparently turn into horses - which suggests to me a fading Hsunchen lineage. As an in-world document it may well be a later invention to explain the world 'as it is' and to discredit the Horse Barbarians as the rival Solar people - 'they may have ruled us at the Dawn but they were descended from rebels, and so had no legal basis for their rule' sort of thing. Ditto - potentially later invention, or faded memory. Yet we find references to Yelm's chariot... Indeed. I suspect that pretty much all pre-Dawn myths are as suspect as using Homer as an historical source for Bronze Age history - there are echoes and shadows of events in there but filtered by later invention. Yes, there's a distinction between Horse Goddesses and Horse-Riding Goddesses. True - but the similarity of names suggests the former might be related to the latter - as per your comment: The place is obviously named after El(e)malus, named by Shargash as King of the Vingkotlings. We are dealing with two cultural myths here. I hadn't considered that Elmalus/Elmal might be related to Hyalor/Beren... They have no idea where the Starlight Ancestors or the Hyalorings came from - though the map in TGROY shows them both deriving from Nivorah. In all cases, I was careful to relate to beliefs and traditions, not 'facts'. The only fact is that the only in-world sources are unreliable.

Apologies for the double post, but something I've posted on another thread may be relevant... or not. Long before Time, the ancient Bull God was named Tawar, Tafer, Tavar, or KefTavar, according to different traditions. There may also be a relationship with the infamous Tarjinian Bull, defeated by Talor the Laughing Warrior during the Gbaji Wars. In the northwest, the tribes of the bull-riding Tawari led the resistance against the small surviving Malkioni colonies after the Dawn. They ruled the other Enjoreli tribes, and worshipped a violent Storm God. Whilst perhaps not Hsunchen themselves, the Tawari were allied with and benefitted from the support of the Eleven Beasts Alliance of Hsunchen tribes in Fronela. The Enjoreli were defeated by the Malkioni colony of Isefwal in 220, and retreated back to their farms and pastures. Those that later threatened Akem were defeated by Talor of Loskalm in 450, being driven eastwards. Many of the surviving cattle-raising pastoralists were quick to embrace the Theyalan gods. The Enjoreli were distantly related to the legendary Enelvi, who were ruled by the divine Kereusi dynasty before Time in what is now Vanstal, south of the Sweet Sea. The first generation of this dynasty was fathered upon the goddess Esus by the Bull God KefTavar. Bisos was the younger brother of Kereus, and gave his name to the Bisosae, the People of Bisos. The Horned Bisosae Kings ruled before the Dawn. Bisos and Esus are the Bull God and Cow Goddess of Pelanda. The violent Bull God Bisos is variously identified with Urox and Storm Bull by Theyalans, whilst Esus is identified with Ernalda or her daughter Uralda. In ancient times the cult of Bisos involved bull dancing. The Bull Shahs of Carmania claimed their descent from the ancient Bull Lords of Vanstal. Urox the Storm Bull is a war god in the Orlanthi pantheon, and especially the fanatical berserk warrior against Chaos. According to God Learner genealogies he is the son of Umath and Mikyh the Beast Mother – though they never had access to Peloria, and so their claims may be spurious. (Indeed, Hykim and Mikyh may simply be placeholders in the deific genealogies when the God Learners were unable or uninterested in determining the beast god ancestor.) Urox himself fathered the first bull-headed minotaur upon a daughter of Uleria, or perhaps upon Velhara. The cow goddess of the Orlanthi is Uralda, a daughter of Ernalda, and Hykim. In the ancient lands of the Enjoreli in what is now Junora and Jonatela, the Bull God is not entirely submerged by the Theyalan culture. The Oranor tribal confederation in Junora worship Orlanth as the bull-riding chief of the gods. When Charg emerged from the Syndics Ban it was ruled by Bull Lords who worship Urox and other war gods of the Orlanthi pantheon. In Prax Eiritha the Herd Mother, daughter of Ernalda and Hykim, is the wife of Storm Bull, who is depicted with the head of the tribal herd beast. The White Bull spirit was prophesized to make peace between the Bison and Sable peoples and lead the Praxians to greatness by destroying the foreigners.

I wonder if there are still any bull-riders? They seem an obvious mount for Urox champions... In the Guide there's Krotnon Bullrider, a priest of Orlanth, and in The Coming Storm, Orkarl Bullrider.