M Helsdon

True, but you can't hide a True Dragon so close to the surface, and if it had subsequently buried itself at the site of the New Lunar Temple there would have been unmistakable dragon-sign. True Dragons seem to become part of the landscape by going to sleep and then becoming buried over Time.

The final decision is of course the authors', but I can't help but feel that the use of obscure slang is a little disingenuous? It slams the reader to a halt with the thought - what does that mean? Some people will 'get it', others won't.

Suspect it is humor using the obscure slang term mythory - a mixture of myth and history - with the prefix con-/com- meaning 'with,' 'together,' or 'in association.' However, as I'm not certain I raised the comment.

Perhaps, but the Guide - in an in-world unreliable text - says the dragon of the Dragonrise was previously unknown, and the Dragon of Jarn was known in 1622 ST. As the New Lunar Temple was being constructed in 1621 if not earlier, a True Dragon at the site or sneaking about at the surface might have been noticed? At the very least, given the devastation surrounding the dragon in 1622, it should have been spotted by any competent surveyor. I don't know the canon answer, which is why I raised the comment.

Page 12: The Prime Mover originates the Western humanist universe – might be - The Prime Mover originates in the Western humanist universe Page 12: and/or – suggest this form detracts from the style of the essay. Suggest instead use – and [General comment] Page 12: there is variation in giving Void, Silence, Prime Mover, Well capital letters. Suggest all instances should have a capital letter. Page 12: without consent from gods – suggest - without consent from the gods Page 13: Empire of Wyrms Friends – should be - Empire of the Wyrms Friends [General Comment: 4 instances in the document] Page 13: Empty void – might be – Empty Void Page 13: When meditations were complete – might be - When its meditations were complete Page 14: The True Dragons of Dragon Pass are: - the list is incomplete as the Guide refers to the Dragon of Jarn, preceding the Dragonrise. The number of known dragons in Dragon Pass should be five? Page 15: The Twins – this term might be used in the preceding Numerological Succession text box as it has no precedent. Page 15: Ratslaff – should be – Ratslaf Page 15: cults she was called – suggest present tense - cults she is called Page 16: Within the New Age called Time, the rulers of the old cosmos have no place – except Uleria? Might be worth an annotation? Page 17: Ratslaff – should be – Ratslaf Page 17: kept secret by the Dark Trolls – possibly by Mistress Race Trolls? Page 79: God War – should be – Gods War [1 instance of the former, 43 of the latter] Page 82: truestone – might be - Truestone Page 83: Ratslaff – should be - Ratslaf

One source would be those made outlaw. King of Sartar: Outlaws are those people who have been cast out of society, either because they have behaved without justice or honor, or have chosen to depart. Although sanctioned by the blessing of Orlanth, outlawry is a lonely, dismal, and often fatal way of life. An outlaw has been stripped of his obligatory connections to kin, chief, and tribe. He is utterly free, but has no social system to draw support from. If he is an outlaw, and hunted by enemies, he is usually doomed. Given that many of the Pol-Joni are either outlaws or the descendants of outlaws, outlawry isn't an automatic death sentence or exclusion from any other social group. It isn't hard to imagine outlaws forming their own 'criminal families' in urban centers, and Lanbril's cult provides a template for this.

This would be an example of an intentional omission. In real myths there are often things we can't define; one example in the Epic of Gilgamesh is the reference to Urshanabi's stone things - we have no idea what this refers to: there are various suggestions by modern scholars, but we don't know for certain and probably never will. As game background it acts as a possible hook that someone may expand upon one day.

Attended a talk on CoC which was very informative. There were preview copies of the Glorantha Sourcebook and the new RuneQuest on the table, in print books and a suitcase of hoary treasures (convention booklets, a few Wyrms Footnotes, Wyrms Footprints and old boxed sets and other things). Chaosium are very busy, and there are many interesting things lined up in the future. A few of the things we are reporting are intentional features, not bugs. However, I don't feel I can define what those are as my list isn't definitive, and I wouldn't wish to block a comment which may be valid. A comment is easy to reject, but if it isn't made it can't be assessed, and some comments that may seem to belong to the intentional class, might not... I wouldn't want to second guess the author. So I believe we should proceed as we are - though I may not make any comments for a day or two due to a lack of free time.

Attended Dragonmeet today. Had a chat with Jeff: the comments here are being assessed and many are being incorporated into the document.

If he was a Light Son then he would not be able to dress as a woman, so no skirt. 8-)

AD&D is a game; Glorantha is a world, based very definitely upon the rules of mythology you will encounter in numerous terrestrial mythologies, especially those of Ancient Greece, the Near East, and others. It isn't a matter of canon but of how the world is set out. You are welcome to play in your version of Glorantha, but don't confuse it with the canon of Glorantha. Contradictions are common in mythology... Sigh. No, that's how others perceive them, not how they perceive themselves. They died by entering the Gate to the Underworld, and were Dead until the Great Compromise changed the rules of a damaged and dying cosmos. Anyone who enters the Underworld is Dead, unless they can get out. I suspect there's a fundamental issue you are missing: Death doesn't mean inactive, decaying, but is a different state of being in Glorantha. The Underworld isn't the destination of all who die: being eated by a Chaos monster like the Crimson Bat expunges you from reality; the Brithini fear Death because they have no afterlife - the spark of life goes (somewhere) but individual identity vanishes. Not all of the dead stay in the Underworld or even go there. The Underworld only became the level of the Dead when Death was found hidden there and released into the world.

And if we want to go back further than Roman and Hellenistic fiction, then there's Story of Sinuhe, dating back to the Bronze Age.

It's more that few survived. The Metamorphoses of Apuleius is the only Roman novel to have survived; there were others (such as the fragmentary Satyricon), but we know little more than the names of the authors. Of course much of the Metamorphoses is based in myth and legend to a greater or lesser degree. In the sophisticated urban cultures of the Lunar Empire (especially), and Nochet similar works might exist.

<space>. yields a number. One previously identified: Page 137: draconic indifference . Page 150: trade routes with Sartar . ,; yields two, previously reported: Page 68: elf Fwalfa Oakheart,; Page 68: Speaking Wheel,; and There are a number of scanning errors such as this one, previously reported: Page 18: the Iynx-spirit - should be - the lynx-spirit Note that this isn't immediately obvious in some fonts. I've had a look for other common scanning errors where 1 replaces I or l or I are confused and found: Page 115: Parg llisi which looks almost fine until you change the font: Parg llisi. I believe this should be Parg Ilisi. This occurs four times on this page. This sort of error is very hard to spot in a pdf, especially in the font used in the document. Have spent an hour looking for others but haven't found any as yet. Another common scanning error is a confusion of 0 and O - haven't found any examples in this document as yet.

One tool (though not always fully foolproof) which will catch other things is to create an index, as this will identify variations in spelling. It does, however, take a great deal of effort, and this document is not yet in a state where creating an index seed would be productive. I'd need a Word version to create the seed.

Sigh. The people of Vanch are on the borders of two distinct cultures with very different value systems. That border has moved over them in one direction or the other throughout Time. It's a little like the historical friction between the Irish and 'Vikings' - both peoples had honour based cultures, but their concept of honour differed significantly, to such a degree that each considered the other to be lacking in honour, with inevitable results. There's an entire cult write-up in the Pavis boxed set. As that states, many gods of Sartar and Prax have thieving abilities, and Gods of Glorantha names a few thief cults (though not Lanbril). If they don't get out of the Underworld, they stay there as one of the dead. Trolls left the Underworld when the dead Sun arrived. They are no longer 'denizens of the underworld' when alive, but most go there when they die (to a region set aside where the Sun doesn't shine), or are reincarnated, or are sent to the Sky Realm if they are judged to be evil - their 'hell' is the Sky cults' 'heaven'. Graves and tombs are not in the Underworld. The Halls of the Dead are. Any deity in the Underworld is dead, at least part of the Time, even when they leave. In terrestrial mythology, numerous deities, often agricultural, are accounted dead in the myths part of the time. For example, Persephone, or the older Dumuzi, who was sacrificed by Inanna/Ishtar to be dead at least part of the time as her own 'get out of the Underworld' card. Death doesn't mean in those mythologies that the deity is literally dead and inactive, forever, because they can be active even when dead. In Gloranthan mythology, finding how to distinguish between the Living and Dead, and to separate them to inhabit their proper places is a widespread activity of ancient heroes and gods, and in some locations, the Dead are still a bit peeved at this and sometimes get out and about, if the proper rituals aren't observed. For that matter, in Glorantha Life and Death aren't the only axis, because there's the third state of Undeath which covers creatures like vampires and ghouls who are Dead but active in the realm of the Living. Everywhere in Glorantha is potentially dangerous. The Underworld has its own dangers; it is also dangerous to non-residents because although you may get in, you may not get out. There are times when it is normal for Orlanth's Ring not to be in the Sky. It has a fourteen day cycle, being in the Sky for seven of those days. The losers were either dismembered or utterly destroyed.

No, I am saying why they are pragmatic. The Lanbril 'cult' is not a unified cult. Lanbril is one of several thief gods. No, I referred to gods not native to the Underworld. If you are not native to the Underworld and go there, you are effectively dead, unless you can get out. They managed to get in, but getting out was far more difficult. They were in the Halls of the Dead - which means they were dead themselves. They are dead unless they can find a way out. Some Heroes get in and out of the Underworld several times, but if they fail once, they remain dead. After the fall of Whitewall, Orlanth was trapped in the Underworld: his stars did not follow their cycle. Neither Orlanth nor Yelmalio died at the Hill of Gold. You need to read The Guide to Glorantha, not MRQ supplements.

Some planets first rose in the Darkness (Entekos and her children, Derdo (aka Lokarnos) and Vendara) but, as they spend time below the horizon died at some point during the Great Darkness. The only planet that didn't die was probably Mastakos, which is also associated with Uleria, (perhaps) the only surviving member of the Celestial Court. When a planet rises and falls in the modern sky, it is spending time traversing the Sky and then the Underworld, indicating that it died before Time.

The more likely answer is that Vanch is a mixture of Sun and Storm cultures, and those two cultures have very different attitudes to hierarchy and honour. Sun-worshippers consider Orlanthi to be rebels and thieves, because raiding is integral to their culture, whilst Storm-worshippers consider Sun-worshippers to be ruled by those who take but rarely bestow their wealth to their followers. (The two cultures have very different views, for example, on dividing up plunder in war - the Orlanthi have a relatively fair method of dividing spoil, whilst with Sun-worshippers the leader can take the lot, and only has to give out what they want to give out). Mix and merge those two traditions, and you end up with cultural practices which probably seem wrong to surrounding regions that are fully one or the other. All the Lightbringers went to the Underworld, which is the equivalent of death for those not native to the Underworld. The Sun Emperor was there because he was killed by Orlanth wielding Death. Many deities died, meaning that they are not permanently 'alive' which is why the Sun sets every day to spend time in the Underworld before rising to life again. Orlanth's Ring of stars rises in the sky and falls. There's a distinction between deities who never died, those who died, those who stayed dead - often because their parts were dismembered - and those that were utterly destroyed and can never come back. The Red Goddess is an example of a dismembered deity, who was put back together in Time, and so lives again.

It is well known that when reviewing something, if you find an error, you are less likely to find nearby errors. This holds for text or software code, and is one reason for employing multiple reviewers, because they won't all notice the same set of errors, and to employ multiple passes. It seems to occur because the human mind can usually only concentrate on one thing at a time, and when concentrating on investigating one error, others become almost 'greyed out': the probability of detecting something else in the same sentence or paragraph significantly reduces, sometimes the same page. However, employing multiple passes also results in diminishing returns, because two other factors come into play: seeing what you expect to see, and boredom, meaning that the reader skips over the material. It takes more effort to cover the same ground. This is also why authors often are the worst reviewers of their own work, because they know what they intended to write, even if they didn't actually write what they intended, but when they read it, they often can't detect anything wrong. Word blindness becomes a factor.

In the Great Darkness, Heort the Founder threw a rock at a dead otter fighting a live salmon and scared the ghost away; since that event, no otters are found in the Creekstream River or in Choralinthor Bay. This means there is a divide between western otters and those of the River of Cradles.

Page 6: called the power of Being – should be - called the Power of Being Page 6: power of Becoming – should be - Power of Becoming Page 7: their respective forms – should be - their respective Forms Page 7: the form of a beast – should be - the Form of a beast Page 7: though there are several Dragonewt Power cults, all modified by the Dragonewt Rune – is this still canonical? Page 8: rejected that as a separate magical – should be - rejected it as a separate magical Page 8: the power of Death – should be - the Power of Death Page 10: god-talkers – on the previous page has the form – god talkers Page 10: This document was written by the Carmanian mystic Hepherones of Ganbarri in the early Third Age, circa 1200. The insights are a remarkable synthesis of Carmanian dualism, humanism, and central Genertela pantheism. – Should be in italics. Page 10: Notbeing – possibly – Not-being – or – Not-Being

Members of the Cercopithecidae but not the genus Papio, so these can be discounted. Both large species or subspecies, and both might be used as a vague template, but Gloranthan intelligent Baboons are Papio Sapiens, a species with no terrestrial equivalent.

There are several files of Yelmalion Templars waiting outside to have a word with you... In the Great Darkness just about every deity suffered a humiliating defeat - at least all the ones who weren't utterly destroyed. Even Orlanth. The Hill of Gold is an important Yelmalion pilgrimage site, not just because of the opportunity to find crystalized pieces of their god's blood, but because it is a place where the Hill of Gold heroquest can be performed for various rewards, including defeating their god's enemies... It says: Fairly or unfairly, the Vanchites have a reputation as thieves. Whilst there are local variations, the Vanchites are a mixture of Orlanthi and Solar farming cultures dating back to the First Age. Given their geographic and historical position, on the ever shifting border between Solar and Storm empires, it is hardly surprising that the Vanchites are pragmatists.

General: various units of distance used in document: miles, kilometers (and km.). I believe the current standard are Imperial units. Page 3: and evil of Chaos – should be - and the evil of Chaos Page 3: They are 1. – suggest the use of semicolons instead of numbers. Page 3: Peloria, in the north-center – should be - Pelora, in the north-center Page 3: Genertela from Seshnela and Teshnos – should be - Genertela from Seshnela to Teshnos Page 4: by Brithini – might be - by the Brithini Page 4: Pelora has been home to many empires – might be - Peloria has been home to many empires Page 4: Far eastern, Kralora – should be - Far to the east, Kralora Page 4: West, past the lands of men, rolls the chill Western Sea, which has no bounds – and Slon?