M Helsdon

I should also add that I looked at some house plans for Mycenaean and Minoan houses. Also suspect that a cottar and half-carl's cottage is square, but laid out like a Steadholder's House, but without the barn.

Purely my interpretation (and I've made a few changes to Jeff's design) but taking the outline and a few other sources, I come up with the following: A Steadholder's House, or Longhouse. Private habitation and hearth to the left, barn to the right. A Chieftain's Hall, modified slightly to fit into the square template. The 'public' hearth below, with a raised platform to the right, and private partitioned rooms for guests and retainers; the chief's private hearth above, with the chief's quarters and those of his guard. The Chieftains Hall might also be the house of a wealthy farmer. Two twinned longhouses, sharing a common open yard. I doubt the actual layouts would be exactly similar. An 'Ernalda House' with the barns above, a central courtyard (though it might be a roofed space), the 'inner rooms' to the left, including a hearth, private rooms for the family fronted by a platform; the 'outer rooms' to the right, including a hearth and guest chamber. A variant 'Ernalda House' similar to the first, but with the outer hearth below and two other chambers for guests, retainers, etc. I've assumed that in the 'Ernalda Houses' retainers and lesser members of the family sleep in the inner hearth. The variant provides the guards or door keeper with a hearth and so might be more suitable for colder climes. Regarding heat, the animals in the barn will generate warmth, and the hearths will circulate heat for the private rooms.

May be of interest... https://www.lessingimages.com/search.asp?a=L&lc=202020204DBC&ln=Museum+fuer+Vorgeschichte%2C+Asparn%2FZaya%2C+Austria&p=1

No, The Coming Storm details the Cinsina and especially the Red Cow clan and their neighbors, so it provides a more detailed examination of some people and places mentioned in earlier books. Where there's any apparent discrepancies, regarding house design, I imagine those can be attributed to variation within a culture: pre-modern societies never presented the same monoculture in architecture we are used to.

The Coming Storm is fairly rich in depictions of Sartarites, and almost system free. Volume 2 will feature the adventures; Volume 1 has the history, locations and people. In addition to a Thracian/Dacian influence there's a fairly strong Mycenaean one as well.

They have illustrated overviews of various settlements, ranging from cities (though most Sartarite cities are more like towns) and villages.

Several are shown as semi-maps in Sartar:KoH (Boldhome, Swenstown, Wilmskirk) and Sartar Companion (Jonstown, Runegate) .

I don't believe I'm speaking out of turn when I say that Volume 1 of The Coming Storm has finished layout.

It depends very much what sort of world you are trying to emulate: if it has any equivalence to Bronze of Iron Age societies then cults and guild-like organizations will be a fact of life.

You may be considering the vestiges of Chaos named as the Pre-Dark, which were probably very different from modern Chaos. Glorantha is a tiny bubble of order within Chaos (an island of order is simply one of the many variations of chaos). Once it formed it evolved, the details of which vary depending on the metaphysical tradition you formed, going through an elemental progression and reaching a plateau of stability. There was a slow gradual leak of Chaos into Glorantha, but this was simply a raw material for the expansion and evolution of the cosmos. Then things went wrong, the order started to decay, and some of the entities within Glorantha invited Chaos in - on entering Glorantha much of that Chaos was also corrupted, as it was corrupted, so that it took on forms, personalties and the stability became unstable, with order diminishing. Only the victory in I Fought We Won and similar stands held Chaos back and the introduction of Time returned a semblance of order, replacing disintegration with entropy. But Chaos remains within Glorantha, and the portions which have being and intellect hate the restrictions that order places upon them. Where Chaos lingers it festers and grows. Most Gloranthans realize their deities contributed towards the near end of the world, which is why, for example, the Lightbringers' Quest is so important to the Orlanthi, and why their Sacred Time rituals invite Chaos into their rite - so that it can be defeated. The Red Moon is simply a step in the evolution towards the White Moon, as part of the resurrection of a moon goddess who died before Time.

Sartar: KoH and Sartar Companion remain key reference sources though only up to around 1621. The majority of the material remains valid, but of course the political situation is pretty fluid after that. The Coming Storm starts around the same time, but the campaign (in volume 2) runs on to the Dragonrise and beyond.

I don't know regarding their re-release, but they mostly predate the Guide to Glorantha when the move towards more accurate pictorial representations picked up speed. The HeroQuest: Glorantha includes a great deal of accurate art, as will The Coming Storm volume 1. The latter is HeroQuest, not RuneQuest, but presents a great deal of systemless background material as well as a wealth of accurate picture references.

Guilds and guild-like organizations tended to be urban. Whilst there's nothing quite like the medieval guild organization in ancient Assyria or Babylon, there are strong indications of trade organizations, often tracing their origin to a 'trade-father', and people engaged in a particular trade often lived on the same streets or same area of town... Later in the Hellenistic world there were more guild-like organizations, especially for professions such as actors, doctors, weavers, dyers etc.

There are definitely guilds in modern Glorantha - see page 11 of the Sartar Companion which refers to the Guilder coin and the merchant guild of Jonstown. On these pages the merchant guild (mostly Issaries-based), Redsmiths Guild are mentioned, as well as the guilds of butchers, carpenters, leatherworkers, masons, weavers, and porters are all mentioned, as well as the Free Sages (Lhankor Mhy) who oversee the trades of scribes, alchemists, booksellers, parchment and ink makers. Similarly, Sartar: KoH makes mention of guilds of glass and leather guilds, and Pavis: GtA mentions Guild Elders, Guild Masters, Journeymen and their numbers (25 Elders, 120 Masters, 200 Journeymen, 50 guild wage-earners/junior apprentices). In addition to the Redsmith and Leather guilds, a jewelers guild, a merchants guild, a minstrels guild, riverman guild, stonemason's guild, weaponmasters guild are also mentioned.

The Wastelands are more desert chaparral, and Prax a semi-arid grassland than a prairie with thickly rooted grasses. It's unlikely that the resources to build sod houses are widely available in the vicinity of Pavis. Instead houses in Pavis utilize what is fairly available: adobe, stone, leather and reeds (from the River of Cradles).

There's a Return to Apple Lane in the HQ Sartar Companion. Whilst not based in RQ, it contains a great deal of background information, set around 1621? Drolan Swordsharp is still there, the thane of Apple Lane. You can download it here: http://www.glorantha.com/docs/return-to-apple-lane/

And with Harrek there's always the question: did he possess his god, or did his god possess him? Or are they symbiotes? Another 'sword & sorcery' hero who manipulates and uses organizations (he predates them all) is Karl Edward Wagner's Kane. Another writer who died too young.

There only ever was one Conan novel, before the pastiche writers got their hand on the property. Much of the widespread assumptions about Conan are derived from movies and comics. It's interesting that the Weird Tales covers painted when the stories were first published tended to show Conan in sensible armor and garb. Conan wasn't as brooding as Kull, but he's not the simple barbarian either, with his own brand of Howard's angst. Now some of the themes in the original Conan are dated, and there's the usual background racism of the period when Howard was writing, but Conan's greatest love, Belit, was a Semite and some of his most loyal followers were African. As for his youth: he was born on a battlefield and took part in the storming of an Aquilonian settlement in Cimmeria in his youth, and by the time he was a teenager was thieving in Zamora. He swore by Crom, but Crom wasn't the sort of deity to help out. No DI from Crom.

Conan had support during his career from a number of religious groups (especially Mitra) and Fafhrd became an acolyte of Issek the Jug (and both he and the Mouser enjoyed the patronage of certain magicians...) so none of them were totally cut off from cults and other groups. If you chose to be independent then you aren't going to be penalized other than by lacking the benefits (and responsibilities) a cult provides.

Cannibalism is one way to become a ghoul... cf the King of the Ghouls, Brangbane. Live human 'cattle' available for slaughter and consumption are more convenient than waiting for a battlefield or looking for corpses, especially when the predominant culture in Dragon Pass burns a high percentage of its dead, and buries the rest where they can be guarded. As ghouls have to devour a corpse a week or start to decay, meat on the 'hoof' is a necessity.

The ghouls are very 'proactive' - their society is a mockery of Orlanthi traditions, based on cattle, and cattle raiding - but their cattle, whom they keep in byres, are human.

The Professor reviewed Cults of Prax in the Gryphon #1 Summer 1980, and Greg responded in the same issue. Unfortunately the Cult Compendium only includes Greg's response, but the review is interesting.

A set of silhouettes I threw together when generating those used. Note: no impala in this line up; the horse is one of the larger breeds.

Only in as much as all birds are descended from dinosaurs. The demi-bird is closer to one of the Phorusrhacidae 'terror birds', and I used them as the basis of the silhouette in HeroQuest: Glorantha.

A picture paints a thousand words... Often little details in an illustration can provide many cues and clues to what is depicted.