Bohemond

The stuff in Enclosure really helps! Thanks!

What is the actual trade that Inora and Yelmalio enact? I know that the result of it is that sunlight reaches the Hill, but Inora's cold remains, but what is the deal in the myth? Also, what is Orlanth trying to accomplish? We know Yelmalio wants to reach the summit in order to speak with his father, but what's Orlanth's goal or motivation?

Thanks!--I'd forgotten that. It's not the actual myth, but it's a pretty clear framework.

I'm aware of what the quest involves, and as I said I have Arcane Lore. What I'm wondering is if someone else has actually published a full version of the myth itself somewhere. I'm looking at it from the Orlanth perspective and wondering if I have to write the text myself or if I can just steal it from someone.

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.

If you're looking for movies with a very Glorantha feel to them. I'd recommend 2001's Atanarjuat: the Fast Runner, which is based on an Inuit legend. The film just feels like the sort of story you'd heard told around a Praxian or Balazaring campfire, although the setting is the Arctic. Another very Gloranthan film is 2016's Mohenjo-Daro, which is set in the Indus Valley Civilization, and tells the story of an honest indigo farmer fighting to liberate Mohenjo-Daro from a tyrannical leader. While there's a lot of Bollywood song-and-dance silliness, they actually tried to be serious of historical accuracy with the limits of what little we actually know about the IVC and there's a subplot involving a priestess of the local river goddess. The hero is represents a very traditional way of life, quasi-xenophobic, resentful of a more sophisticated urbanized culture represents by the leader he needs to overthrown--in other words there's a lot you can mine for how a space like Dara Happa or even Sartar might feel.

Many thanks! Seems kind of odd that her enemy is just a variation of Kolat's, instead of being a distinct figure from the Earth tribe's myths. She represents a different shamanic tradition that Kolat, so it's strange that she has the same nemesis.

Since previous assaults on the fort failed, another possible issue that those who make the assault need an ally--perhaps Ulanin had an ally in his assault but that fact got left out of the version of the story everyone knows, so the PCs need to find a lost version of the myth that mentions the ally and then have to perform a question to get the help of that ally.

The Shaman traditions seem to always have a nemesis--The Horned God has the Bad Man, Kolat has Karjakan, etc. Does Serdrodosa have an equivalent opponent that she defeated but needs to keep defeating? For that matter, does Jakaleel the Witch have one?

I'm a fan of trying to get players out of the contemporary mindset as much as possible. In pre-modern societies, intention isn't generally a factor in judging the moral acceptability of an action (that concept only began to clearly emerge in the 12th century AD). With religious taboos and geases, early cultures tended to see them more as absolutes--either you've kept them or violated them. So as I see it, Chalanans absolutely cannot kill, for any reason, including saving the life of another person. It offends the goddess on a very profound level, no matter the cause. These cultures tended to be fascinated by situations where two taboos or geases were in conflict, because they create no-win situations. In Irish myth, the hero Cuchulainn has two geases: never eat dog meat and never refuse food. His enemies engineer his downfall by offering him dog meat to eat, because he's screwed--either he breaks one or the other, and his death follows not long after. Similarly, when Agamemnon wants to sail to Troy, the goddess Artemis is pissed at him and demands the sacrifice of his daughter. Human sacrifice is revolting to the Greeks, but so is defying the gods. He sacrifices Iphegenia (at least in some versions of the myth) and that helps set up the situation where his wife Klytemnestra will murder him after returning home. In early Germanic literature, women are sometimes trapped in a situation where their husband has killed their father/brother (or vice versa) and she must choose whether to support her marital family or her birth family, knowing that either choice creates sorrow for one but inaction creates sorrow for the other. In the Tanakh (the Old Testament), when David relocates the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem, the ox pulling the wagon stumbles a bit and the Ark threatens to slide off the wagon. Uzzah reaches out to steady it, and in so doing violates the prohibition against touching it; Yahweh strikes him dead, despite his good intention. Why is it useful to think in these terms? Because it creates more interesting role-playing, IMO. The Chalanan runs into a situation where they cannot kill the animal that is threatening to harm a child. How do they react? They can ignore the problem and let the child die, which might offend the goddess. They can save the child by harming the animal and definitely offend the goddess. Or they can try to find another option, such as risking their own life by throwing themselves in front of the animal. Or, if they harm the animal, they then have a complication where they have to figure out how to appease the goddess' anger, which manifests as the failure of all their healing magic. To me that's -way- more interesting than "the goddess will forgive me for breaking her rules because it's for a good cause." Putting two of the character's values in conflict generally produces nice chewy role-playing.

How did it go? I'm very interested to hear how you played it out.

Perhaps the Wild Healer's Chaotic Feature is that it is asexual, born without genitals, sterile, or in some other way free from the species' normal reproductive drive.

Sounds like Lunar blasphemy to me--compromising with chaos indeed!

No. Almost the only similarity beyond the name is the reference to the Edgeless Ring, which is apparently something Nallindia steals in the myth as its referenced in KoDP (and the fact that both are Vingan explorers).

I've been playing King of Dragon Pass for 20 years, and I got a sequence I've never gotten before (I love that the game still has surprises after that long)--I got Kallyr going on the Nallindia Trailblazer quest. The text gives the bare bones of the quest, but not the myth of it. I'm wondering if the myth has actually been written somewhere.

Yeah but that's a bit like a nun accompanying a bunch of bikers on their rampage across the country in case they need some help. It's hard to justify a CA accompanying a band of murderhobos. There are certainly ways to plan a campaign where a CA fits in, but a traditional group of kill em and take their stuff adventurers is a real stretch for a goddess devoted to pacifism.

I am currently running an HQ campaign with a Chalana PC. This can be somewhat challenging, because if played as written, the CA should be opposed to combat and should be seeking peaceful resolution to most conflicts. It can be a very interesting dynamic to have someone actively pushing back against the usual murderhobo style of play that dominates fantasy campaigning, but it can also be frustrating because it interferes with scenarios that emphasize violent conflict. One option would be to build the campaign around the CA as a peacemaker, with the other PCs as bodyguards or assistants. However, if you group really wants to do traditional murderhobo adventuring, my advice is to tell the CA player that your campaign probably isn't a good fit for that campaign.

Yeah, I was getting a huge Elfquest reference in her face.

It seems to me that tribal membership probably matters far less to most Sartarites than clan membership. The clan is a vital part of daily life for most Sartarites (the urban Sartarites might be a bit of an exception to this) and it influences them in all sorts of ways. The tribe, on the other hand, is a bit of an artificial construct that mostly helps different clans interact under problem circumstances. If you have a problem with another clan, you engage in raiding and feuding, and tribes just help keep that stuff to a manageable level. You participate in tribal activities once or twice a year at things like the tribal market, and you see the king or queen when they visit your tula, but if you're not an important person in your clan, you probably don't actually interact with the king or queen.

Here's a myth I just wrote based on that info. Jajagappa and the Sorcerers The Ruler of the Underworld summoned Jajagappa and told him “Ameshkurgos, the ruler of the Tower of Logic, has declared that he and his followers are above humanity and not answerable to Death. He has fought my other servants, who cannot kill them, and has put the Tower somewhere unknown and denies that they must come to my kingdom and be my subjects. This I will not permit. Go, my faithful servant, find them, and bring them to me for judgment.” Now Jajagappa has the scent of the living in his nose, and he began to track them across the world. The path took him through the Valley of the Black Hag, who told him that he had no place there and could not pass through her lands. But Jajagappa was undeterred and ignored her demands. She sent her servitors to destroy him, which were neither living nor dead but something else. But Jajagappa howled his howl and summoned his pack to him and they destroyed the servitors utterly. Japagappa fell upon the Black Hag and would have torn her soul from her body, but she said, “Wait! If you spare me, I will make you a net that will help you ensnare the souls of the dead.” Jajagappa agreed that this would be useful, and so she took some hair from her own head and wove him the Soul-Catching Net. He continued to track Ameshkurgos and found the Tower of Logic, which had been placed so high up that no mortal man could even see it, with its top in the Sky. But jajagappa climbed into the Sky and entered the Tower anyway. He fought the followers of Ameshkurgos and slew them and caught their souls in his net. Ameshkurgos had thought he was clever. He had taken his soul out of his body and put it in a jar. This meant that no one could kill him. So when he confronted Jajagappa, he laughed because he thought he could not be killed. But Jajagappa followed the scent of his soul to the jar and found it. He took the soul and threw it to his pack, which tore it apart utterly, destroying Ameshkurgos. Then he dragged the souls of the followers down to the Underworld and cast them before the Throne of the Dead and forced them to submit to the judgment that all the living must undergo.

Thanks for all the good info here! There's definitely some good stuff I can use.

Do you by any chance have a myth about Jajagappa that would a make a good quest? I need some non-Heortling quests for my upcoming Glorantha campaign LARP, so I'm looking around to see what I have to work with.

Are there any myths known about Doburdan, Jajagappa (the god, not the member of this forum), or Durbadath (the Pelorian lion god)?

The more I think about it, a successful Lunar assault on Karse seems very odd. How much naval experience do the Lunars actually have? They're a land empire with only one major coastal zone, so it seems unlikely that they have a lot of experience with naval combat. And their naval skills would mostly be suited to rivers and an inland sea, rather than the most roughly conditions of the Homeward Ocean, so whatever naval forces Karse had available to it would seem like they would have the upper hand in terms of the fighting conditions and experience. The Lunar navy can't have been very large, given the problem of trying to build ships in a region that has little lumber---how large a navy could the Empire build at Corflu? The Lunar army can't really get to Karse very easily, so their prowess at land combat doesn't help them. They're way far from the Glowline, so their magic is going to be hampered. They probably couldn't bring the Bat to bear, simply because they would have the trouble of feeding it on the way there. So how did the Lunars pull this off?

I guess I see moonbeams as being passenger vessels much more than cargo vessels. There can't been that many of them and they probably take a lot of magical resources. And warships take a lot of lumber.