M Helsdon

Here's a genuine ancient map centred on Babylon, and very Babylon-centric. The Bablylonians doubtless knew something of the lands further away, but.... I can imagine that many Gloranthan maps are similarly biased in their representation. More local maps are likely to be more accurate and more detailed.

Not canonical, but from my forthcoming Jonstown Compendium book on ships and seafaring: Maps: Actual nautical pictorial maps and charts are rare; helmsmen and navigators tend to keep their routes in their heads. In the forty years since the Opening few detailed charts have become common knowledge. Often maps are simply a representation of itineraries, not directions. The orientation of those charts varies. The God Learners determined that Magasta's Pool was the center of the world and the former location of the Spike. Therefore, maps should be centered on the Pool if possible; being from the West, they often placed the West at the top. Lhankor Mhy initiates typically place North at the top of a map, as Ernaldela was the blessed land to the north of the Spike and to do so favors the Earth Goddess, or else East, as the direction of the Dawn. Genuine surviving God Learner maps are exceedingly rare, and little more than curiosities: the coasts have changed catastrophically since their era, and with few exceptions their charts are at best misleading, and at worst, dangerously inaccurate. Kralorelan maps generally ignore everything west of the Twin Dragon Mountains as unworthy of interest.

The Guide to Glorantha, and.... https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/325525/men-of-the-west

The Black Galleys of the trolls of Jrustela are famous.

The term cat, even in this world, is used for predators who are not part of the cat family. Civets, genet cats, fossas, bearcats look like cats but aren't, and some sabre-toothed cats weren't cats.

There's a second elephant in the room. It's modern thinking that you can adjust and manipulate the environment (the God Learners thought the same thing....) and despite the presence of Iron Age technology, the mindset of the majority of Third Age humans is 'Bronze Age'. The rivers are feeling thinking entities, and you don't mess with them without a very great deal of effort. The Lunars have 'tamed' most of their rivers, exterminating the river dwellers, but whilst Belintar certainly created changes, he seems to have done so with at least a modicum of respect and cooperation. The Engizi needed a new path to the sea; the Runnel is probably overjoyed to go from a minor river to an adopted son of Engizi; the Lyksos is probably still a bit astonished and floods his banks more than he did. Re-engineering the river with canals and locks would likely need someone of Belintar's powers, and he chose not to do it. So trade up and downriver is limited to the special Duck boats, which need portage, and can't carry cargo in quantities comparable with the road caravans to and from Karse. There's a third elephant in the room. A sense of wonder. Can you imagine what the flow through the New River and the Runnel looks like? It will be spectacular. And you want to tame and circumvent it? We know there's a major trade route from Karse to Peloria; we know there's a very minor one from Nochet via the Grazelands or Duckpoint.... Isn't that enough?

The elephant in the room is that the New River feeds into the Runnel and the Lyksos, and these waterways have only been carrying the waters of the Engizi for barely two centuries. The Engizi drains almost the entire Dragon Pass basin, which is almost surrounded by mountain ranges, including the massive Rockwoods. Throughout the year, and especially after the thaw enormous quantities of water run into the Upland Marsh and then on into the Dammed Marsh, through the canyon Belintar dug for the New River, and then into the cascades and rapids of the Runnel. The name of the Runnel suggests that it was once a fairly small river, descending towards the lowlands, and now it carries most of the waters of one of the major rivers of southern Genertela. The massive quantities of water are going to make what was a white water stream into a raging torrent, even when the thaw is over. Add to this the erosion of the banks, there are not going to be stable towpaths or side canals This is a rough energetic waterway, constrained by the canyon walls of the New River. Most of the descent looks to be in the short length of the cataracts of the Runnel. There's going to be limited Duck river traffic, but even Ducks will struggle in places. With trolls to the south and Beasts to the north east, this is not the place for massive engineering works.

Good luck getting a boat loaded with cargo up or down these....

The Guide to Glorantha would be the best source at present.

They do, but the quantity of cargo carried in what are effectively small coracles cannot compete with a mule or wagon caravan by road. The big problem is geography as Jeff illustrates. If you look at the map, the descent is pretty wild in places, with a series of waterfalls, cataracts, and wild rapids along the Runnel River just north of the Building Wall and before the New River Gorge. The map in the Argan Argar Atlas shows at least five major cataracts, and there must be many more lesser ones. The Ducks and their boats can get down, but human craft not, I suspect. Going the other way, even the Ducks have to take their boats out of the water to portage them around the Runnel rapids and probably much further up the Engizi. The currents will be fierce and even for Ducks paddling up river, will be long, slow, and arduous. And, given the terrain, carrying boats past the rapids will be difficult, especially as the southern bank is troll country. Another factor is probably that this watercourse is geologically new. Belintar changed the course of the Engizi so that it now drains through the Lyksos, not the Marzeel, and that change is going to seriously affect the waterway.

In the Second Age, the Middle Sea Empire burned off much of the forest and claimed the eastern portions of the peninsulas, more or less in line with the great military bridge at Durengard. It is my suspicion that the earthworks define the border between the territory claimed by the empire and the native zone.

Possibly defensive 'limes' built by the Middle Sea Empire? Probably now slumped and eroded.

And it's valuable and informative, and often sends me off on a tangent on something I'm working on. Please continue!

I’m not a Chaosium staffer, but have some experience in publishing, and providing updating information about product release dates is not really practical until the product leaves the printer, and even then there can be delays. Creating a Jonstown Compendium project of any size gives you some perspective on the complexities… It’s a no win situation: if Chaosium don’t provide frequent scheduling updates some people will be unhappy; if Chaosium provides scheduling updates and fails to achieve them some people will be unhappy. There are internal and external factors. The external are easiest to describe: Printer queues – until recently there was a world shortage of paper and ink, and it is still ongoing to a degree. Some printers have gone bust, some have raised prices. Shipping – the price of moving product has increased enormously, and there are still delays. These include the shipments from the printer, and from the distribution sites. Internal – many factors I am unaware of, but the obvious ones are line editor time to review material, writing the material, interacting with authors, checking and playtesting it, getting the art direction done, getting the art from artists, layout, dealing with the printer etc. All this takes a variable amount of time – some projects may not survive the process. Many places along the development path where things can be delayed. Bear in mind that even for novelists there can be a year between handling the manuscript in, and the book appearing on shelves. Add in playtesting and artwork…. Which brings me to art direction. I was pleased to contribute some pieces of art direction to a recent book; most of the pieces of art are a page or less in size, but each piece of art direction took six to eight hours to do. This often involved finding six or more pages of reference material, because most artists aren’t overly familiar with the look and feel of the Bronze Age (or early Iron Age) and the more material you can offer, the easier the artist’s life is, the happier they’ll be, and the greater the chance of what you get back will be what you wanted. Multiply this for an RQ book, which is usually full of art…. So an updating status list looks to me to be impractical, and potentially misleading. The safest thing is to wait on the next product on the line – which I believe is the Cults book.

RPGQuest Enter a world of fearsome perils and challenges. Take on the role of Line Editor, Editor, Art Director, Layout Artist, Author or Artist, faced with deadlines, rogue authors and artists, conventions, printers, distributors, and shippers. Scenarios include: Global Pandemic, Logistics Nightmare, The Book with No Name. Uses the BRP system with the addition of SAN. Release date: To be confirmed.

My understanding is that they could, given the Red Cow and Cinsina's relationship with Jonstown. I assume they are Jonstownies? As clan and tribal members they could, but there might be Guild ceremonies they could attend instead.

This is the cover, by the inestimably talented Mark Smylie, of my current Jonstown Compendium project, which itself is in the (near) final stages of proofreading and art gathering. This is a nautical companion to The Armies and Enemies of Dragon Pass with a focus on seafaring - mercantile and military. A round ship is towed by tugboats towards the quays of Nochet. A patrolling triaconter exchanges news with her crew, as two merfolk also talk with a sailor. Beyond rises the temple of Issaries, with the Great Market before it, and behind lies the massive bulk of the Grace Temple. The temple of Dormal is off to one side, and a floating shrine used in festivities sits at anchor nearby. Personally, I believe that Mark has excelled himself. There's a huge amount of detail in this painting, much not easily seen at this scale, but it conveys the size and prestige of Nochet, the Queen of Cities. Many of the crew and passengers aboard the tub feature in their own illustrations, complete with character descriptions and stats, and many appear in the Periplus. Chaosium kindly shared a portion of the map of Nochet, which made this possible.

The fundamentals are that: At the Hill of Gold, Yelmalio was disarmed by Orlanth, fought Inora to a standstill, and was then ambushed by Zorak Zoran, who stole his fire powers. The Cold Sun fell and bled out his life-giving heat and power upon the Hill of Gold. His favored weapons of bow and sword fell also and were absorbed into the knowledge of the whole world. The various Sun Dome temples have more expansive versions, and the Hill of Gold is where Yelmalio is said to reside in his palace in the Otherworld.

Gold-Gotti is and was a Wolf Pirate, now leading his own large warband in Argrath's Free Army. Whilst very rich from plunder, he is not and never was a merchant.

This is an elven cult, with its own 'temples' deep in the forests; elsewhere probably shrines in associated temples.

Primarily by Elves, and indirectly through his children and especially his lovers, the Grain Goddesses.

I imagine that most of the Marzani live in small villages supported by slash-and-burn agriculture, and, on the coast, also fishing. These villages would be semi-permanent, until the land has to be left fallow, maybe moving every generation or so. There might, I suspect be temple and shrine schools, but no large library or university.

In an early Greg fragment I have seen, the Teshnans (Teshnos, Melib (called Melon), and Trowjang) are described as a mixture of Nagi and Hsunchen, and in his writings Nagi gradually became Agi, and later, this southern race became the blue-skinned Zaranistangi Loper People, who still have descendants on Melib (and perhaps Trowjang). The Zaranistangi seem to have brought their Blue Planet deities Annilla, Emilla, and their brother (?) the Red Planet deity Tolat to Melib and Trowjang. I forget where I read it - may have been a post by Jeff - but Melib is named for the first Zaranistangi chieftain/governor of the island.

For much of antiquity, certainly the Bronze Age, whilst there was a distinction between war longship and mercantile tub, most longships were dual-purpose, often single bank penteconters, trading, and raiding when an opportunity arose. Such vessels are not as technologically demanding as a multi-bank warship with a ram, and could well be of sewn construction, making them simpler to build. These are in some ways scaled up canoes, using oars instead of paddles, and the sort of ships I would expect in the waters around Teshnos. The Marzani could well make their own triaconters or penteconters, and be effective pirates in their home waters. The one illustration we have shows a unireme of this sort. Crossbows vary enormously, and whilst dwarven crossbows would require an industrial base, simpler ones would not. In our history, the Picts seem to have adopted them from the Romans, and could easily be made by anyone. An arcuballista is a possibility.

The attitude of Yelmalions vary from place to place; in some places the Little Sun is an enemy of Orlanth, others a rival, and others an ally. Shargash's cult is found in Peloria and parts of Saird, and Tolat's in Melib and Trowjang, but seems rare elsewhere. In the Holy Country he might have a shrine in some temples of Lodril.