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M Helsdon

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Everything posted by M Helsdon

  1. M Helsdon
    Hmm, Wanes 1-5 start here... http://www.glorantha.com/docs/hle-1wane/ I believe I retyped Wane 0 in 2013?
  2. M Helsdon
    I have the basic text of Wanes 0-5, and the brief paragraphs on Wane 6 and 7 (retyped one of the Wanes for Jeff a few years ago but I don't know if it is on the site).
  3. M Helsdon
    The only source I haven't used, Jeff, (too much history, not enough military content) is the Redline History.
  4. M Helsdon
    Thank you! Very useful. I'm trying to gather all the (reasonably) canonical material I can about Gloranthan Warfare. So far this includes the Dragon Pass boardgame, Cults of Prax, Wyrms Footnotes, Guide to Glorantha, HeroQuest: Glorantha, Pavis:GtA, Sartar:KoH, The Coming Storm, the Moon Design website, and a couple of online essays by Sandy Petersen. Plus a few things of my own. About eighty pages so far. So thank you, again.
  5. M Helsdon
    According to a search on the web, there used to be an article about the history of the Dara Happa available. It seems to have vanished. Does anyone have a copy they could send me?
  6. M Helsdon
    It may be 'cool' (though the style and anatomy is a bit awry) but it screams generic fantasy, with no underlying cultural context. If she were better drawn and her costume was a little more realistic, with a better pose, then it might be okay as an RQ illustration. Regarding the depiction of foreign cultures, there's a distinct line between cheesecake and realism. If you are depicting Inanna's descent to the Underworld and her confrontation with Ereshkigal after the keepers of the gates have gradually stripped her of her jewels and clothing, then her nudity is entirely appropriate; if you are depicting Sumerian priests and priestesses in procession to give offerings at the temple, then their nudity is appropriate; if you are depicting the Vestal Virgins giving their sacrifices, then nudity is not... Similarly, if you are illustrating Conan meeting Zenobia in the dungeons in 'Hour of the Dragon' then presenting her naked is contrary to the text. For that matter, in the majority of Howard's fiction Conan was well armed and armored, and well clothed (and not in a bearskin) but you wouldn't know it from most of the illustrations.
  7. M Helsdon
    Thank you all: that's very useful.
  8. M Helsdon
    The Dara Happans are obsessed with the number ten and consider it and its multiples to be the perfect number. There were once ten fabled Dara Happa elite regiments known as the Stonewall Phalanxes. All were active since the time of the Gods War. Most of the Stonewall Phalanxes worship Polaris as their founder. They are each guarded by a star up in the Celestial City, one of the officers of Polaris. The Basalt Phalanx of the city of Iothaka rebelled against Emperor Erzanestyu in the early Second Age. Both the regiment and the city were destroyed, leaving only haunted ruins. The Beryl Phalanx of the city of Darleep has special magic for fighting against the Ram People of Talastar and Brolia. It now serves in the Heartland Corps of the Lunar Army. The Granite Phalanx of Melsorkorth has special magic for fighting against trolls. It now serves in the Heartland Corps of the Lunar Army. The Jasper Phalanx of Kalvostos. This phalanx defeated the Bird People of Rinliddi for the Dara Happan Empire. It has special magic for fighting against the people of First Blessed. It now serves in the Heartland Corps of the Lunar Army. The Marble Phalanx of Mesavos has special magic for fighting against Darkness. It now serves in the Heartland Corps of the Lunar Army. The Quartz Phalanx of the city of Katchpidi conquered Rinliddi for Emperor Urvairinus in the Gods War. The phalanx was entirely consumed by the Crimson Bat at the First Battle of Chaos. Now, I know there are some (possibly non-canonical) sources for the missing four Stonewall Phalanxes, but is there any canonical source?
  9. M Helsdon
    Esrolian house with basement and storage cellars. Family crypt/shrine in upper left corner. Cistern under the central courtyard.
  10. M Helsdon
    Realized there was an important omission: the cellars. By including the cellars, the 'Ernalda House' becomes virtually a cube. I imagine the water table level in Pavis would determine how many houses could have a cellar, but the Pavis boxed set suggests there's a fair amount of underground excavation, and perhaps the Flintnail cult can waterproof cellars.
  11. M Helsdon
    Many illustrations don't show it, but subsequent archaeology has shown that many Mycenaean citadels had significant urban areas outside the walls.
  12. M Helsdon
    The problem is that although the Orlanthi may look similar to Celts, Anglo-Saxons, Picts, Vikings etc. all too often that similarity is taken as being the same as, meaning that inappropriate cultural beliefs, behaviors, architecture, art and so on are taken as being Orlanthi. And of course even those real-world templates are based on assumptions and short-hand descriptions which can be wildly misleading.
  13. M Helsdon
    Please bear in mind that my sketches are not canonical.
  14. M Helsdon
    Two Pavis variants of an 'Ernalda House'. The first is a grand residence of an important and wealthy family; the second has been partitioned into two residences and a shop at the front, and a number of cramped apartments at the rear. The shop has access to the courtyard, and uses it as storage and an extension to the living quarters on the upper floor.
  15. M Helsdon
    Flintlock muskets; the Dwarf of Dwarf Mine has cannon. It's a secret of Dwarf alchemy, made more mysterious by the fact that iron is also mined. Disorder mini-kegs, steam tech and dwarf constructs such as Jolanti (stone servants) and Nilmergs, semi-intelligent servitors. They have some, gremlins and gobblers, which are programmed to seek out and destroy any substances (such as gun-powder) that dwarves consider they have the intellectual property rights for. Whilst humans have purchased (at great cost) or stolen Dwarf secrets, it is apparent that most of their techno-magic are unknown to humans.
  16. M Helsdon
    Even if the culture isn't familiar with a supply-and-demand economy, if the market is literally glutted with money-on-the-hoof, its worth will reduce. Metal tends to have a more stable value because it is less common, and has numerous uses, in addition to being a unit of monetary exchange. (In the real world the political and military stature of the Athenian state went into a sharp decline after its silver mines started to run out.)
  17. M Helsdon
    The first minted coins appeared around 700BC in the Iron Age, but given that coinage in Glorantha seems to have been invented by the dwarves, who have firearms, and numerous other pieces of high level techno-magical devices, it's a relatively minor anachronism... From a gaming point of view it simplifies having to carry around lumps of trade metal. And of course money-on-the-hoof doesn't have a fixed value but can go up and down in value, especially by time of year: after the winter live animals will be more valuable.
  18. M Helsdon
    The activity of cattle raiding has a long tradition - it wasn't just practiced by the Old Irish, but appears in the Mahabharatha and in the Homeric Hymn to Hermes : 'Born with the dawning, at mid-day he played on the lyre, and in the evening he stole the cattle of far-shooting Apollo on the fourth day of the month; for on that day queenly Maia bare him.' Cattle as currency is similarly fairly universal, including in some modern cultures. Whilst the term wergeld is Northern European, the concept is far older: many of the penalties for crime in the Law Codes of Hammurabi, for example, were fines (when it wasn't just death). I fear you are seeing things as Northern European when they were far more universal activities - for that matter, some cultures continue to engage in cattle raiding, and they aren't Celts. Relatively recently a cattle-raid in east Africa left several hundred people dead.
  19. M Helsdon
    I missed most of the early HeroWars/HeroQuest period so my Glorantha always reflected Luise Perrene's illustrations (which are more Classical Greece than Ancient Greece) and the better art of RQ3, so when I got back into Glorantha the more Northern European (and Mesopotamian) emphasis looked decidedly odd to me. I suspect that new/younger players won't be affected by the look, or the changes in depiction. They are all ancient cultures and the coverage of ancient cultures is pretty sparse in most education systems. Not a problem. I'm a heretic regarding some things Gloranthan. For instance, I found the Ernalda House idea a bit odd, so I decided to look at ancient houses (none quite match the layout, though there were a few palace complexes with the same sort of layout) and then try manipulating actual ancient house plans to fit. It wasn't hard to assume the houses built under a different ethos, imposing the Earth Rune, and so far as I can see, from playing with those architectural outlines, they seem to work. There's also an aspect to the Esrolian House I noticed whilst reading Esrolia: TLoTTG to gain extra information, which I won't mention here, that gives it even more mythic import than being based on an Earth Rune... However, I don't believe all houses in Dragon Pass and nearby are all exactly to the same style. The 'Northern European' longhouse was really a widespread template in the real world, and personally I suspect it is still widely present in Dragon Pass.
  20. M Helsdon
    I do have a copy of the book, and did use the archaeological house plans of Mycenaean and Minoan houses from elsewhere in my versions of Jeff's outlines. The main differences were the outer balconies, which don't appear to match the descriptions of Esrolian and Sartarite houses. Instead, I assumed these might be inward, facing the inner courtyard.
  21. M Helsdon
    This map by Colin Driver helps bring the scale of Esrolia, Heortland and Sartar into perspective. Given the major traderoute that runs through Sartar to Esrolia the regions aren't remote.
  22. M Helsdon
    Why should Dorasar be interested in Esrolian houses? Many of the houses built in New Pavis were built by Sartarites, using Sartarite traditions. Sartarites would know of their Heortland antecedents and their long shared history with Esrolia. Bear in mind that these cultures are close, both historically and geographically. I'm not entirely certain what you are suggesting. If you are interested in the history of architecture, you'll find that settlers tend to retain their traditions, adapted by the availability of building supplies, and local tradition. It's inevitable that Sartarites would transfer their styles and techniques as much as they were able to a new colony. Regarding houses well adapted to Prax, New Pavis was also settled by Sun Domers from Sun County who had been living in Prax for centuries. Old Pavis was a ruin (lots of ruins) and the bits still inhabited by humans in the Big Rubble such as the 'Real City' or Mani's Fort aren't overly impressive, architecturally, but the result of make do and mend for centuries. if you look at a map, you'll find that New Pavis is much smaller than Old Pavis, and its buildings appear to be far less grand than those in ruin.
  23. M Helsdon
    There are several different types of 'houses' in Pavis: they aren't all Sartarite. This is denoted not only by the different shapes in the map of Pavis but the materials used: adobe, stone, leather and reeds. Sartarite houses tend to be made of the first two. Dorasar wasn't sticking to an 'Esrolian plan', but a Sartarite one: the ancestors of the Sartarites moved north only a few centuries ago, and retain much of the material culture of their Heortland ancestors.
  24. M Helsdon
    All true, but the Sartarites learnt a great deal from the dwarves: Saronil learned from them how to build towers, though the dwarves ceased to aid him (and may have killed him) when he used their knowledge to build a temple to Orlanth; his son Jarolar continued his work and was known as the wall-builder. And then there's the cult of Flintnail in Pavis, which accepts human initiates. For that matter, some dwarf cities within mountains have dwarf-built cities on the surface which humans mistake for the entirety. Given the exploits of Sartar, and the building by Saronil and Jarolar, it seems the Sartarites did gain a level of engineering and masonry knowledge from the dwarves.
  25. M Helsdon
    The houses of New Pavis differ a little, as I understand it because of the difference in climate: less rainfall so flat roofs are more likely. I suspect Sartarite architecture isn't just influenced by Esrolian, but by the masonry work Sartar and his descendants obtained from the Mostali. Regarding variations in style elsewhere: I can't say. However, as always the availability of materials and the environment will be a factor. One thing: the rural houses aren't depicted with their surroundings: there are likely to be other barns, sheds and outbuildings, and in many parts of Sartar farmsteads cluster in steadfasts (heavily fortified villages) with twelve foot high ramparts as a defense against the Telmori.
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