M Helsdon

The most likely ships to be met will be local triremes and biremes, tubs (merchant round ships of various sizes), nets (local plank-built fishing boats) and close to the coast fishermen in reed boats, log boats, rafts etc. Foreigners will include Wolf Pirate penteconters, and foreign traders, the most exotic being Vadeli biremes and Kralorelan djong.

The bay is known for his calm waters and light breezes throughout the year; many vessels are more reliant upon oars than sails – merchant ships might be towed by tug boats.

Numerous species of fish, tunny etc., salmon just prior to the breeding season, salt water crocodiles, and some river crocodiles, elamosauri. Mostly ludoch merfolk, newtlings, dolphins etc. Many seabirds and water fowl, bloodbirds, cranes.

2 hours ago, Martin said:

@Jeff mentioned that early in 1625

Some 10,000 Lunar soldiers are sent from the Heartland to reinforce Dragon Pass and aid in the consecration of the New Lunar Temple.

Does anyone know or care to speculate what regiments are sent as these reinforcements?

 

 

From the Heartland - no. We know that the Seven of Vistur, a magical unit, were devoured, as were Aggar wyvern riders; some companies of the Arrowstone and Mirinite Swords were also eaten.

On 9/25/2022 at 5:52 PM, Erol of Backford said:

Tobros Mountains as an example.

Tobros was the son of a goddess.... There are many types of giant in Glorantha, and at some point in the God Time the really big ones fought with the gods. Gonn Orta is perhaps a small and relatively young example of the type who become mountains. Tobros is a mountain range.

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.

45 minutes ago, Richard S. said:

Title. I'd think it'd be a good deal better than what our own ancient cartographers could make, thanks to organizations like Lhankor Mhy's cult and magic like Flight or Geomancy (and of course our map loving adventurers), but I haven't found any definite answers. Thanks!

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.

18 hours ago, Elcid321 said:

I don't know much about safelster. Any place where i might read more on it?

The Guide to Glorantha, and....

https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/325525/men-of-the-west

2 hours ago, Squaredeal Sten said:

Now that's in interesting point.  Why is it that the only place we have heard of Uz with boats is Crabtown?   

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.

5 hours ago, Joerg said:

The cataracts in the New River couldn't be shelves with high vertical drops, as Enjossi was able to lead the salmon up that route, so probably they are more like whitewater canoeiing challenges.

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

27 minutes ago, Squaredeal Sten said:

I have never seen much about new Crystal, Valadon, or Monros cities..

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

33 minutes ago, Squaredeal Sten said:

From other discussion i got the idea that the Ducks used to handle river traffic on this route, mostly using reed duck boats. 

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.

4 hours ago, Joerg said:

Defending in which direction, though? What makes that part of the plateau different from the rest?

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.

16 hours ago, Erol of Backford said:

Who, what, why, when and how was the sea wall created?

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

2 hours ago, Jeff said:

I post stuff here because I enjoy doing it (and because I think most people on this forum enjoy that as well)

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.

42 minutes ago, thom said:

1) As townsmen, could they/should they be members of the Red Cow clan, and the Cinsina tribe? I ask because the passion examples of craftsmen do not include clans.  I can work with either way, but I'm curious how y'all handled this situation - if it even occurred in your games.

My understanding is that they could, given the Red Cow and Cinsina's relationship with Jonstown. 

I assume they are Jonstownies?

44 minutes ago, thom said:

2) As townsmen, how would y'all have them participate in the Sacred Time rituals (especially if they're not clan members)?

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.

12 minutes ago, Bohemond said:

Is there a full, canonical (or semi-canonical) version of the Hill of Gold myth beyond the fragmentary details in Arcane Lore? There's Simon Phipps' version on his website, but I'm wondering if anyone else has a different or fuller text than that. 

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.

On 7/31/2022 at 6:25 PM, Rodney Dangerduck said:

We have him as a corrupt rich SOB merchant / quartermaster type high up in Argrath's entourage.  I didn't realize he was also (formerly?) a pirate.  Now my PC hates him even more.  🙂

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.

24 minutes ago, Scorus said:

So this is not a cult with its own temples and priests, just shrines in related temples? Similar to Mastakos or Arroin, then?

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

54 minutes ago, Scorus said:

I see Flamal on the list of cults included in the upcoming publication. Where and by whom is he worshipped? What kind of cult is it? I don't remember hearing a mention of a Flamal cult before and assumed that was because he was killed by Zorak Zoran in the God Time.

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