M Helsdon

3 hours ago, Jeff said:

The most important documents on Gloranthan warfare are the following:

• Dragon Pass wargame (old and new versions)
• Armies and Enemies of the Hero Wars (unpublished)
• Redline History of the Lunar Empire
• Wyrms Footnotes 15

The only source I haven't used, Jeff, (too much history, not enough military content) is the Redline History.

4 hours ago, Martin said:

I have sent this to you

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.

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?

On ‎4‎/‎1‎/‎2016 at 7:13 PM, Kränted Powers said:

Here the drawing style makes the simple outfit look cool.

 

 

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.

Thank you all: that's very useful.

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?

Esrolian house with basement and storage cellars. Family crypt/shrine in upper left corner. Cistern under the central courtyard.

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.

17 hours ago, Mankcam said:

Wow!. Yes you are both correct - I have always assumed that Elkoi had been inspired by Tiryns, but after checking the map the layout of Elkoi is almost exactly the same as Tiryns. No wonder I felt the cities of Balazar have 'Mycenaean flavour!'

Many illustrations don't show it, but subsequent archaeology has shown that many Mycenaean citadels had significant urban areas outside the walls.

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.

9 hours ago, Paid a bod yn dwp said:

Lots to like here. The shop front, and small apartments make sense. high up small windows and roof terrace are characterful pavic/sartarite details. Have to say Glorantha is really coming alive for me again, after a long hiatus.  These discussions, details,  combined with the Sartar webcomic are really establishing the ancient mythical Glorantha again in my mind. Very cool thanks.

Please bear in mind that my sketches are not canonical.

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.

2 hours ago, g33k said:

Also:  in at least some supplements, I understand, Dwarves have guns of some description.  Is that muzzle-load, breach-load, or...?  Personal weapons (rifles, pistols) or only canon/artillery pieces, or both?   Etc...

 

Flintlock muskets; the Dwarf of Dwarf Mine has cannon.

2 hours ago, g33k said:

So. the Dwarves invented "iron" -- not "discovered" it as an ore, but "invented" it; presumably, a Heroquest (or more than one) was involved.  Any details (and in which book(s)) as to the process for creating iron in Glorantha?

 

It's a secret of Dwarf alchemy, made more mysterious by the fact that iron is also mined.

2 hours ago, g33k said:

What other "mytho-tech" do Dwarves possess that others don't (or at least, that Dwarves created, even if the "secret" has spread)?

 

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.

1 hour ago, Iskallor said:

I shall try and pay for my 2 pt strength training in Pavis with a herd of 20 meat Bison next time I'm there, should work until I try and drive them up stairs into the training room.

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 hours ago, Joerg said:

We have the strange (and anachronistic - for a Bronze Age environment) situation of having a coin-based economy in cities like Pavis or Boldhome, also applied to gamist concepts like paying the trainers in classic RQ, and the attempt to depict a non-monetary economy that still has some appeal to players who like to measure their wealth, whether in coins or in other measures of exchange.

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.

3 hours ago, Joerg said:

Two facets of the Irish heroic age have made it into the Orlanthi canon. Cattle as currency (not mentioned in any sources on continental practices - the iceland saga instances of wergeld which we assume to have carried over from the continental Norse use bags of silver measured by weight instead) and the wergeld catalogue (which basically adds a price tag to Old Testament's "an eye for an eye").

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.

56 minutes ago, Jon Hunter said:

I think the northern European look and influence, was firmly there from King of Satar, King of Dragon pass and early Heroquest Stuff.

What we are now seeing is a change of emphasis and vision, which isn't wrong, but it is a change.

However in my opinion commercial games need both consistency and accessibility, i'm not sure current vision is giving either. 

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.

56 minutes ago, Jon Hunter said:

If you looking at introducing games to new younger players we may be getting a little esoteric. 

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.

56 minutes ago, Jon Hunter said:

An opinion that is probably as popular as a fart in a space suits, but its mine.

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.

11 hours ago, Mankcam said:

Here is a picture of Mycenaean Warriors which appears more or less consistent with contemporary Orlanthi descriptions. Note some of the clothing styles, as well as the architecture in the background which seems to be along the lines of the building depictions that have been discussed above:

Here's a link to some info on Mycenaean men, some of which which I can see pertaining to the Orlanthi in many ways: http://helens-daughter.livejournal.com/10233.html

All this seems to be vaguely along the lines of my early impressions of Orlanthi during the late RQ2/early RQ3 period, before the more celtic, saxon, and norse influences were permeated through the late RQ3/HeroWars/HeroQuest 1 era of Gloranthan publications.

I do like what I see here

 

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.

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.

13 hours ago, Didier said:

Dorasar was Sarotar bound companion, right ? Did Sarotar traveled to Esrolia ? Did Dorastar followed him ? Did he saw esrolian houses ? Did he had enough knowledge in masonery to notice the strong likeness ?

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.

13 hours ago, Didier said:

By the way, he founded New Pavis, not New Boldhome. He did it with the help of Ginkizzie, the "son" of Flintnail and "grand son" of Pavis. A Gold Dwarf, a teacher and a keeper of lore. What could a Gold Dwarf have taught to a member of a sartarite family who was already familiar with some dwarven secrets about building. Well, plans of Old Pavis houses and the way to build them, maybe ? The kind of houses well adapted to Prax...

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.

40 minutes ago, Didier said:

Ok with that.

But Dorasar founded New Pavis with the help of Ginkizzie, and Olkgarth, and Ingilli... Why all those guys with all their own culture and own kind of house would have built sartarites-like houses ? And why Dorasar would have stick to an esrolian plan ? Because he was so fond of esrolians, especialy after the murder of his cousin... that cause him to self exile ??

Sorry, i can't buy that. I just can't buy that Pavis houses are nothing but a slighly different version of Sartar houses.

 

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.

41 minutes ago, Joerg said:

The problem with dwarf masonry is that they hardly ever build aboveground buildings - there is the Petra-like entrance to Dwarf Mine, and there are probably a few portals to Greatway. I can imagine stone dams to capture mountain creeks for water power, but that's about what I expect in above-ground building activities. Fortification walls are known and used, and raising them overnight (like the wall dividing the Boldhome valley from Killard Vale) might be a standard dwarf tactic for the rare instance of them fighting field battles.

Dwarves use quarried blocks of rock, but they also carve entire structures out of standing rock (like the Pockets in Boldhome), or they pour concrete. They even know to fuse rock from various sources into a monolithic structure like the Rubble Wall (containing the big slabs brought Paragua and friends, and much of the body of the Faceless Statue, one of the largest Jolanti ever).

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.

12 hours ago, Mankcam said:

I like really the flavour of the Orlanthi houses above. I am happy with these designs, and they certainly feel right for Esrolians, Sartarites, Tarshites, and New Pavisites. 

However I wonder if Orlanthi in other regions are into masonry to the same extent?

It strikes me that the Wenelian Orlanthi  (Ditali, Solanthi, Nimistori) may make more use of timber perhaps, given it is such a heavily wooded region The general layout would be similar, although I could easily see them having square timber houses in villages surrounded by wooden pallistrades.

I know this may not be canon, but I tend to envision the Wenelian Orlanthi having a few norse trappings mixed with Dacian, probably on account of Greymane reminding me of an old norse raider. 

I like how the Orlanthi are shaping up, 'The Coming Storm' sounds like it's gonna be pretty good

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.

Front elevation of three 'Ernalda Houses': Esrolian townhouse, Sartarite townhouse, Sartarite rural house.

1 hour ago, Jon Hunter said:

They don't its juts obvious when drawing stalls that bits for the cattle.

Oxen are cattle... usually castrated males.