M Helsdon

10 hours ago, jajagappa said:

Yes, these are intended to be the local names familiar through Saird and the Lunar Provinces.  Part of a Saird book for HQG that's in development (and largely on hold until I get done with material on Nochet).

Here are some of them.  Bear in mind that these were built out post-Guide in discussion with Jeff, but have not gone through any further editing.

Interesting. Hmm, my attempt to write a history of Saird (and the Sun Dome Temples) appears to be premature and nugatory... 8-(

Peralam appears to translate as Hill of Gold according to GRoY, page 30. I also believe your Kemel the Dutiful served Heliacal the Sun based on the Dawn chapter in the Guide to Glorantha, and Heliacal seems to now be Yelmalio based on the entry for New Lolon.

1 hour ago, Kim said:

This is a ridiculous piece of territory that we must pretend has much more interesting civilizations, and many, many lesser entities, also must to give a flip about.

In The Guide to Glorantha, 23 pages out of 754 are specifically about Dragon Pass (several pages are maps). Perhaps another 25-30 pages provide material directly relating to Dragon Pass.

Your complaint seems to be about the coverage of the region in other published material, but that's hardly surprising because it was the focus of most of the Chaosium house campaigns, and the published world has its origins (in published form) in the board game most recently called... Dragon Pass.

It's also a fact that in the world, Dragon Pass is at the crossroads of a continent because it is virtually the only easy pass in a gigantic mountain range that bisects the continent. History is going to funnel through there, much as the Middle East of our world has been the crossroads between Europe, Asia and Africa - and what a lot of history comes from that...

In comparing Glorantha with Tékumel, I would also note that the Tékumel Sourcebook aside, virtually all the published Tékumel material relates to Tsolyánu or to Tsolyáni characters going elsewhere.

For example, the most recent Kickstarter...

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jeffdee/kurt-hills-fantasy-atlas/description

Deep in the heart of Tsolyánu...

1 hour ago, Kim said:

love the conflict around Dragon's Pass we've been given for decades, and their fantasies about being the crux of the cosmos, please respect them as valid beliefs about reality; love all the parts of the world where things just don't work that way; please continue to exist when stuff about Dragon's Pass still thinks it's significant.

The history of Glorantha is filled with events that different groups claim to have caused... Many of the events in or near Dragon Pass have parallel 'causes'. Within Glorantha, given the nature of the cosmos, local events often have non-local causes.

From Cults of Terror...

The Sunstop

The year 374 was critical for Glorantha. At that time many synchronous events of tremendous magnitude culminated to force an impossible act to occur.

In central Genertela, the great Genesis of the Perfect One reached a climax.

In Fronela, the wizards engaged in a thaumaturgical contest with a powerful heathen god, promising a great sign of their strength to destroy their foes.

In eastern Genertela, in the land of Kralorela, the latest of the Dragon Emperors meditated upon a potent symbol, whose consequence and inner working was unknown. Without realizing it or not caring about it, he called upon the Dragon's Eye to shine upon him.

In Pamaltela, a hundred thousand elves, led by their god of nature called Pamalt, sent their energies coursing through the world to call upon a good spirit to come to their jungle to help combat a virulent rot besetting their inner fibers.

Dragon Pass is mythically and universally a cause of local and non-local events because it's the primary site for Dragon Nests, and the home of a bunch of obscure Air Gods.

32 minutes ago, jajagappa said:

Btw, these are the names that Jeff and I identified as associated with a number of the Great Temples:

I'm using the names given in Pavis: GtA, augmented by the Guide. It's possible where the two lists differ, you are giving the local names?

Have added your names to my list - grrh, lost my reading glasses - having to sit way back from the screen.

32 minutes ago, jajagappa said:

I have some writeups for those that are situated within greater Saird.

Would be interested in seeing that, please.

42 minutes ago, TRose said:

 For example if two Darra Happa families are engaged in a Dart War can  a truce be declared and have both sides worship at the Local Temple before trying to kill each other in a polite civilized manner?

Yelmalio doesn't appear to be a Dara Happan deity in the 3rd Age, but a southern 'barbarian' one.

4 hours ago, Jeff said:

Other holy sites would include Sun Elf Hill in the Grazelands. There's a few others in the Old Woods and Arstola Forest, as well as at least one in Rist.

I knew of the former, but not the latter ones. What I'm interested in is where the name Tharkantus came from! The -us is a Dara Happan masculine ending, and -kantus appears in a few Dara Happan names, but the actual source of the name beyond Severinalus (and published material on him is slim) eludes me.

4 hours ago, Jeff said:

I wouldn't go down to the shrine level. Minor temples only exist where Yelmalio is the main god of a clan - which appears maybe twice in Sartar (maybe three times, but not much more than that). 

Yes - I'm not going to drill down further, as the map would become very cluttered in the few centres of Yelmalio worship. There are only four or five regions where the cult has a significant presence. I imagine that the range of the Yelorna cult in Ralios and Prax would increase the coverage, but neither appear to be large.

4 hours ago, Joerg said:

If you are going to include lesser temples, there should be one in Dinacoli tribal lands, too - the Dinacoli being one of the horse-riding Yelmalian tribes, and not that close to Alda-chur that they could share into that temple on a regular basis. (Besides, they used to be part of the Jonstown city ring.)

Only the significant ones.

4 hours ago, Joerg said:

Are you going to map the Yelmalio presence among the aldryami, too? Elf holy places used to be a go-to alternative for Yelmalians off to the west.

I only know of a few Halamalao sites. The intention was to map significant Yelmalio temples, and a few of the outlier shrines to give an impression of the centres of the cult.

What's really annoying me is I'm certain I read about Jaldon's Wrong River somewhere many years ago - before I owned anything other than Chaosium RQ books & boxed sets. Can I find the reference now? Nope.

1 hour ago, David Scott said:

Can anyone ( @Joerg, @metcalph, @M Helsdon to name but a few) point me towards a source for the name of this river. I'm working on Jaldon's history at the moment and am looking as to why this is so named. For those unfamiliar with it, the references are:

Gazetteer of Dragon Pass (extended PDF) Map on page 28

Sartar Rising tell us that

The Broken River is in A2 of the map.

Possibly named in the campaign mentioned in the Guide (and Kos) when in the early 15th century: 'Derik [Poljoni] needed no prompting to exact his vengeance upon the Praxian nomads after they treacherously invaded the Dundealos lands and pushed onward into Tarsh. Derik faced their leader, Jaldon Goldentooth, in battle and struck the mighty Hero down, but was wounded himself and lay unconscious for a month afterwards.'

See also Yarandros, KoS, page 98, who hires Animal Nomads, apparently including Jaldon, and fights 'the enemy Riding People [the Grazers?]' before raiding across the southern empire.

The only other historical time Jaldon might have been in that part of the world was as part of the Invincible Golden Horde.

A number of Gloranthan shields; the top four rows are grouped by Element (Moon, Air, Sun, Earth) whilst the lower two depict shields carried by members of various Pelorian regiments. Note that only a few regiments carry uniform shields.

13 minutes ago, Kim said:

As far as I can tell, this thin sad forum is all that passes for our fandom now.

https://plus.google.com/communities/102577244714186267235

17 hours ago, styopa said:

Meh, it's asserted to be so, but works nothing like that in practice.

There is, as far as any of the rules ever in RQ history as far as I know, no "spirit" that gives a sword +5% to hit and +1 damage (Bladesharp).  Spirits can deaden sound (Silence)?  I have to use a spirit (Spirit Binding spirit magic spell) to bind a spirit?  That's rather recursive.  And by the logic that these are all being done (in a hand-wavy way) "by spirits", then I could cast a Spirit Screen around my pile of gold and make it undetectable by Detect Gold?   No such mechanic has ever been implied?

The spirit in question is the spirit of the caster? It's the Conservation of POW Law, where expenditure of spirit buys limited (mostly external) effects. 8-)

1 hour ago, Joerg said:

Joraz Kyrem was the leader of a very unconventional group of Pure Horse people, willing to abandon their nomadic lifestyle for a previously undefendable area of summer fertile grazing in the Zola Fel valley. Most of the Pure Horse folk remained unchanged, sticking to the places now inhabited by the Pol Joni, where their horses could graze without problems. They persisted even after they lost the alliance of the Third Council and its dragons, and only were cast out when there was a new solar power in Prax which may have weakened their magic.

The Zebra Tribe/Pavis Survivors have been extant in Prax for centuries; the Pol-Joni are a recent arrival, and their limited range, in No Man's March, demonstrates how peripheral they are. The Pol-Joni are reliant upon Sartar for survival, and they've been hurting following the Lunar Occupation. The relatively large presence of Pol-Joni in the Sartar Free Army shows just how symbiotic their relationship with the Sartarites is - the latter have relied on them as a line of defence against Praxian incursions; the Pol-Joni have relied upon Sartar for their survival - easy access to metal, for example. The Pure Horse folk were eventually pushed out of Prax, which isn't too surprising given the long-standing conflict between Praxian and Pentan.

On ‎5‎/‎23‎/‎2016 at 5:02 AM, Kim said:

Sure, whatev.  The literalism of myth in Glorantha is great stuff, sure; my issues are that only very specific myths (by which I mean, very specific cultures) get treated as Myth with a capital 'M'. It seems to me that 90% of Glorantha as it stands now was created as a playground for Dragon Pass.

IMG, runes are an abstraction created by a certain intellectual tradition, very geographically and ethnically limited, which is now thankfully mostly extinct (so parochial and boring!) outside of a bunch of dedicated a**holes, i.e. the Orlanthi cultural zone.

Still calling our Pacific Northwest Gloranthing mess "Runequest" most of the time, regardless of the inaccuracy.

'Glorantha' started far from Dragon Pass, but Dragon Pass subsequently became knitted into Glorantha and overtook the original focus of what is now Fronela.

Runes are utterly universal to every culture of Glorantha: the basic building blocks of the very different mythic traditions.

31 minutes ago, g33k said:

Is there a definitive canonical description of just HOW anti-Horse the nomads are? 

So anti-horse that it was necessary for the ancient Pavisites to 'disguise' their horses as zebra.

3 hours ago, g33k said:

Yet I'm seeing the Green Age / Golden Age / Storm Age presented as entirely time-based and sequential.

That's because all the sources we have are written from the perspective of being within Time.

1 hour ago, Kim said:

But I do think that the extension of 'runes' into the literal and mechanical gamespace of Glorantha was awful.

Hmm, the Runes are both the underlying reality of Glorantha (which can be ignored in-game as much as the quantum world underlying our world can be ignored) and a set of symbols. As symbols they are a shorthand for certain characteristics and attributes, much as in our history alchemical symbolism was at one point understood as representing not only the nature of the world and the basis of personality. In some ways, as recorded in our language (phlegmatic, melancholic etc.) they still are... As such Runes are a bit more useful in sketching out personality and nature, than, say, AD&D Alignment, but in HQ and RQ the variety of Runes and the fact they are more influences, not hardwired rules governing behavior doesn't make them totally literal and mechanical. So far as I am aware, no system makes them so definitive?

I wouldn't be entirely surprised if the Runes model the ancient Four temperaments to a degree, given how Glorantha is a cosmos where the ancient beliefs are literally true, such as the Near Eastern flat Earth under a sky dome.

Melancholic Earth serious, introverted, cautious, suspicious 
Phlegmatic Water thoughtful, reasonable, calm, patient, caring, tolerant
Sanguine Air  lively, sociable, carefree, talkative, pleasure-seeking
Choleric Fire  excitable, impulsive, restless

25 minutes ago, Pentallion said:

Velakol Surestrike, from the Borderlands campaign, is described as having his favorite pastime as chariot racing with other Morokanth.  He has a four herdman team of matched pairs.

Very slow or very short races...

Note that one of Velakol's spells is Mobility...

3 hours ago, g33k said:

And that returns me to the joint ideas of a much bigger/stronger/faster Herd-Man... and to chariots.

Bear in mind that a human (and a herd-man)  can produce about 1.2 horsepower briefly and sustain about 0.1 horsepower almost indefinitely, a morokanth chariot pulled by herd-men is going to require twelve to twenty four herd-men to pull it, depending upon the load.

3 hours ago, g33k said:

Now let's turn to the magic... bronze "tread" over the wooden wheels, with Morokanth-footprints cast into the bronze... that only make as much impact as one walking Morokanth makes (no matter how much the chariot carries)?  Add a pair of Agimori-like Gern pulling; or a quad of them when speed is of the essence (raids/etc).  Maybe the Morokanth claim that their magical chariots criss-crossing the Wastes  is helping to "weave" additional protection and solidity into the land, rather than tear it up as "ordinary" wheels do...

3 hours ago, David Scott said:

I'm no expert on Bronze age chariots (perhaps @M Helsdon can help here), but I've seen the pictures with the two horses and the driver and spear user standing on the small chariot at the back. Looking through the info and formula, it wouldn't be unreasonable to say 3 humans = 1 horse for this case, and a morokanth is about three humans in weight. In my mind that means a single morokanth charioteer needs 9 herd-men to pull it. That seems a bit too complicated, given materials and harnessing etc. Also the wheels would damage an already fragile growing environment.

Real world Bronze Age chariots varied enormously in construction and weight. I suspect for a Morokanth 'chariot' a four-wheeled cart or an early Sumerian battlewagon drawn by onagers would be a better model. Even so, a human powered cart is going to be fairly slow, and I suspect you'd need a fairly large team of humans to pull it any distance.

In Glorantha, other than for ceremonial and ritual use, and chariot racing (which still seems to be canon in the Lunar Empire - not so sure about Nochet) chariots only seems to be used in warfare by the East Wilds Orlanthi (fairly light, drawn by small sturdy ponies) and the Pelorian Deretinic chariots, which are basically horse-drawn mobile battlefield artillery pieces. For the Morokanth, riding in a man-powered cart would be a status thing. 

On ‎5‎/‎13‎/‎2016 at 3:04 PM, Byll said:

Can anybody refer me to where there is a good RG / HQ write up of the Polaris or Polestar cult / tradition? 

There's about half a page about the cult of Polaris as a war god in Wyrms Footnotes 15.

6 hours ago, Byll said:

Can anybody refer me to where there is a good RG / HQ write up of the Polaris or Polestar cult / tradition? I have a reference in Trade Talk 14 that mentions Fire (light?) and Mastery runes and a 'Captain Souls' spell and the Rigsdal template in the non-canon HW1 Storm Tribe source book, but nothing more recent.

There's a non-canonical write up here:

http://www.nikkeffingham.com/runequest/polaris.htm

Polaris/Rigsdal features to a limited degree in the forthcoming The Coming Storm, in part because of Kallyr's relationship to the god. The Runes of Polaris seem to feature Light, Truth and possibly Stasis.

Looking around the latest map of Notchet I can't find the famous Hippodrome. There's a location named the Golden Racers, but no race track. Has the hippodrome been erased from official Nochet?