scott-martin

As @Sir_Godspeed notes, consider Issaries. The haggler's mindset lends itself to seeing the world not so much in terms of "right" and "wrong" but in terms of relative "opportunity" and "challenge." Every system can be made more efficient working from the inputs (inventory to sell, supply chain, identifiable demand) to discover optimal pricing and make the trade happen. And then you move on to the next trade, carrying the transactional profit with you. Profit is portable. It's what you extract from the status quo that wasn't there before. The difference between it and the Tap is that you're theoretically adding value to the system, making it better than it was when you found it. Creating wealth. Introducing a lonely donkey to a mare and letting nature extend your carriage train. And then there's the spell trading network, which bends cult restrictions as long as you can find customers more greedy for exotic magic than they're afraid of taboo. The network is the future.

I think the Autarchy in its "stygian" aspect is still a great place to start. By the time it was over, there were a lot of troll forces baked into that framework. OOO and his Shadowlands seem to have transferred their role as HQ environment to the God Learner Empire while that lasted. Waertag- and other triolini-oriented cultures have largely been pushed into the historical background and are probably especially controversial in the doom of the Quinpolic League but the archaeology is there for those who look. The triolini have full Elder status for a reason not really appreciated right now. That will change.

Pikat Yaraboom Yolanela keeps trying.

These are great questions. I suspect that part of the process of what makes divine heritage "literal, non-metaphorical" is establishing that you were always already there in some form in the pre-time. This might mean questing back and recognizing yourself in the mythic landscape, then bringing back evidence. It might also mean having this done on your behalf. Those who disbelieve will simply discount the claim as metaphorical, as when people bicker over who Arkat's real father was. Ylream Serpent King was born in time to a bona fide goddess and IMG Damol really is the storm god's child. There are others. EDIT also people who become gods within time often leave dynasties behind, i.e., the line of Sartar, a man who became a god.

IMG there are a lot of deep earth mysteries at play throughout but it isn't up to me to strip Draupadi bare of her entire sari as it were. Other people can do that more constructively. Lodril's grudge is a good loose thread to pull on as well. And I love the bit about making important friends. Never know when you're going to wash up somewhere and have to start from scratch.

It has come to my attention that buried within the modern Pamalt complex is an entity known simply as "Arbennissaries," "Cronisper the Youth" or "south talking god." This conceals a deeper secret of Genertela that need not concern us yet.

Blue hype!

Definitely. But I suspect modern zzaburists avoid the subject, opting instead to focus on training young horalites to conform to the abstract traits large-scale sorcery can handle efficiently. Tales of caste confusion and caste discord (and non-standard castes) are probably the preserve of radical hrestolists. Hearing these stories can drive well trained horalites into confusion, rage, despair and otherwise render them useless and even dangerous to the sorcerous elite. I love them. What modern "strict observance" horalites (and dronars) probably get is a combination of received education from the sorcerers and caste-specific lore from caste elders. People are unlikely to get much sense from the former channel of the internal states required to "perform" or interact with the caste founders individual-to-individual. The intercessors are afraid of independent horal so keep it simple and sanitized. In their view, the working castes are just jobs for people to do, without any form of spiritual consolation. But that's depressing to play so IMG caste elders tell the trainees and apprentices something slightly different when the intercessor has gone on to the next village. This is where the abstract caste code can become more personalized and elements of potentially useful identification seep back in. This was a person. He was your ancestor. Learn from the way he did it and apply those lessons to your life. Under the right conditions this becomes something like an ascended master figure and your relationship gives you a sense of self the zzaburists don't really understand or know how to deal with. This is how Arkat happened. It used to happen all the time back on the island but they don't like to talk about that. And then there are women. I imagine this is much of what they then lump in with the larger category of demonology. If the dead are unreachable, who or what does ancestor worship or ascended master veneration contact? Clearly nothing they care to contemplate.

IMG very few people (if any) cultivate direct contacts with Horal these days. Some smart people say he's dead. I suspect "Horal Stories" (unlike "Dromal Stories" and the sagas of the children of Talar) are not commonly transmitted even in oral channels so his exploits aren't really conducive to magic. His history is not taught. Most everyday horalites don't fret about it and simply consider the caste founder as a kind of abstract exemplar. Their anecdotes and jokes are full of references to other figures. But there's a real opportunity here for people who want to read between the lines.

I uh walked right into that one. Yeah, all helerings have a "pastoral" orientation.

The helerings are the best. I had no idea you followed rugby. Or that you had a pastoral orientation!

These occasions are a great opportunity for the community to humiliate nominal members who would otherwise be susceptible to the allure of the enemy so many of these "insider antagonists" function something like ritual scapegoats . . . picked by the priest and set up to fail. When people actively volunteer, the motive is often sacrificial. They know they're probably going to lose, they want to lose and they'll try to lose. (We say "take it for the team." Not sure if nimm es für das Team has the same connotation of accepting an unpleasant burden for the greater good.) Someone who volunteers often tends to acquire dangerous experience of what it's like to be the enemy. This person becomes strange by community standards. Strange people become susceptible to the allure of strange cults. Do it too often, you end up either becoming the scapegoat or worse, winning the challenge and your (former) community loses the rite. In these scenarios, the enemy god can find ways to reward you. You get strong. Maybe that's your real goal. I would not "cast" real chaos or evil from inside the village because you have to go back to work with that person tomorrow morning and there are too many chances for something to go horribly wrong. Make an effigy or use an animal in a costume. Dip a trollkin in something stinky. They're expendable and unlikely to take the pantomime too far. You just need a warm body. I think volunteer antagonists recognize the dangers and don't enjoy participating often. You shouldn't do it every year. It's better to bring in at least a few relatively friendly outsiders now and then to give you a break and let you get back to the real work of worshipping your actual god once in awhile. You might not get anything out of it but the comfort that your performance made the difference between holding the rite and not holding it at all. Smart priests only let extremely well trusted people do this and will then keep close watch on you to make sure you aren't getting too attached to the role. Maybe you get a special private worship session before or after (probably after) to (a) renew your runes and heal you (b) welcome you back to the community. There might be bonuses on your next promotion roll if you give them a good show while signaling everyone that you don't actually believe the awful things you're saying. But often, priests are more desperate than smart and mistakes happen. I think in many areas a kind of professional itinerant scapegoat exists . . . local tricksters, Donandar without too much of a stretch. In these relationships you get paid and they should remind the local talent to go easy on you, or at least provide free healing. Last thought, playing the antagonist might be an essential step on the road to being able to train local protagonists. You might be a junior priest or the equivalent learning how to manage the rite from all sides. Some communities probably institutionalize this and the No. 2 at the shrine will get dragged into the bad guy role when no real enemies present themselves.

Well, it's a strange aeon. And these are gorgeous! I'll consult the Weirdbooks and I think I have that Dark Fantasy. Will edit in results.

I love this structure because broadly each one climaxes with a phase of the Kubler Ross mourning process.

The "bearded wind" worshipped by Lokamayadon survives in severely vestigial form in the cult of another bearded god whose name is pronounced something like "Loka May" and misspelled by just about everyone, especially those who prefer not to talk about it.

Care to name a few? I'm honestly curious because while the proto-SCA (for example) had a little overlap with Rusty Sporer's Knights of Baphomet, that was a Canadian thing. Grady's crew was remarkably insular in his final days, largely due to the Motta Affair and Bill's benign gatekeeping. This is not the scene my informants report. People like Llee Heflin who wanted access to De Arte went to London and came back with the goods they weren't getting at home. Eventually the PR changes but if someone else was blabbing IX material, I need to know who! If a rogue Solar Lodge manuscript got out, how did it travel? We can do this! I did not know about the Crowley vibe at Greyhaven!

Great Gnon now I have to!

Thanks all. Yeah, very pleased to see this page hiding in plain sight after months of asking people where they encountered the technique back in the day and getting a lot of puzzled shrugs. Those who came up after the Eighties can forget how scarce and mysterious some of these texts were back then, which is why this makes a great sort of trial run on something larger. All who coveted MMM as children can of course now get sets at reasonable prices while they last, or simply avail themselves of the electronic versions. Cavendish and fellow popularizers are due their share of data mining. As for the notion of a typhonian Call of Cthulhu, I guess we just have to keep watching the skies!

So we all know the Uleria spell reflects a divinatory technique promoted under that name by Aleister Crowley. Greg was in touch with a lot of deep cats, read widely and Chaosium publications have always been packed with in-jokes, so the nod and the wink make sense, right? But there's a problem. Unlike the public "Energised Enthusiasm" available to all, Crowley never published the technique or any description of it in his lifetime. It's still officially a secret teaching. The details only appear in manuscript instructions for very high level initiates (maybe 20 people worldwide in 1985 if you squint), and sub rosa in Kenneth Grant's Aleister Crowley and the Hidden God as well as a few bootleg publications. It's not the kind of thing you just have on the shelf and decide to incorporate into your game world. And while Greg was hip, the treatment of Lovecraft in Call of Cthulhu would probably have bent in a very different direction if he was conversant with Grant. Of course the technique circulated by word of mouth in the Bay Area as hardcore seekers made pilgrimages to Grant and brought back a book or two. The original bootlegs stem from this source and once it was in print it kept circulating around the fringes to this day. Was this Greg's milieu circa 1984-5? While some overlap is always possible (the original manuscript of the Book of the Law, for example, wending its way to the Change of Hobbit bookstore), you had to be pretty far inside to get this kind of word of mouth and I've yet to hear anyone from that crowd mention Greg hanging around. Nonetheless, the existence of the spell requires transmission from somewhere, right? Today I think I solved the case: Man, Myth & Magic, ladies and gentlemen. Ubiquitous desk reference into the 1980s and readily available to someone hunting spells for the courtesan of heaven. A little less heavy than the alternative hypothesis, but it fits the biographical data a lot better. Where did MMM get their information? Tantric scholar Benjamin Walker, who read Grant and bears further scrutiny.

Oho! Happy to know you all are still in it. Sorry to misremember . . . long couple of years. It sounds like you are discovering amazing things. Look how happy we all are to hear them! The middle question is easiest. From a pure experiential perspective, this is not a part of the world where sun worship emerges or thrives organically. It gets cold and cloudy. While the sun is a source of light and heat, for much of the year that can feel like a tentative proposition. The sun might not formally "die" every winter, but sometimes it's hard to be sure. We don't trust the sun as much as we do in balmy Peloria or Pent, let alone the East where the sun is always being born. When outsiders tell us that sometimes sickly light up in the sky rules the universe, we need to be convinced. Now we all know about the sun god who suffers. Where it gets complicated is that lists of the Rathori gods in the time of Jonat don't include any "sun" god at all. In his place there's a white "moon" who gives light and measures time but also participates in death. Depending on how weird you want your Glorantha to get, this might be the way they envision the cold sun up there in the far north. Maybe elements of that divergent religion made it into the local Sun Dome before the Ban and may even still be there. (But who ever knows with the Ban, you're free to throw out all history to suit you.) I don't think Monrogh got all the way up here, by the way. Whatever sun they remember in that particular Dome may come as a shock to the southerners and we can all look forward to new heresies and schisms. (This comes up because I think the original solar religion brought into Southbank was heterodox by Seventh Wane standards and while they think they have a "Yelm" there now, traces of the separate evolution will persist into the Hero Wars. But this is only here for you as a story hook if you get bored.) Now the last question, I think the Rathorites are about as ancient as it gets but they also recognize the sun as something that suffers and dies. Very few of the bear people have any experience of winter at all because they sleep through it. Only the White Bear knew the deep secrets of the dead sun and he himself is dead now, the wanderer took him away. (I hope your players have good luck with the cubs.) But the green elves who stay awake in the cold dark to guard the dens knew these things also. This is part of their "Yelmalio" mystery. Even in the south the elves of Rist, almost uniquely, seem to have abstained from getting in the Suffering God's face at the Hill of Gold. Maybe they even offered help.

How exciting! Please keep us posted as the campaign rolls on. The factional structure in particular sounds interesting. Thank you for prompting me to look here. The deep history of solar religion in Fronela turns out to be quite illuminating. In terms of your question, Cold Sun worshippers can always challenge the authority of Imperial Sun on theological grounds. Maybe the entity they worship in Southbank after the Ban isn't the same as the one they started with . . . or the one the people in the Dome recognize as their mythic overlord. In that scenario, the Dome can simply defer to the Golden Tyrant for pragmatic reasons but in the event of a real conflict of interest are free to defy him. Then the Tyrant's problem becomes how to overwhelm the upstarts with philosophical grandeur. Cold Sun can also develop real spiritual autonomy. While this rarely happens, this particular Dome's time under the Ban may have forced them onto an unusual maturation path . . . something like what happened to the isolated Dome in Prax in the Time of Testing. What's interesting is that in Fronela the Imperial Sun faces much more adverse environmental conditions than in the long Pelorian summer. He's a foreigner here, barely as bright on some days as a kind of auxiliary whitish "moon." Your players can exploit this if they're as creative as they sound, and if it makes your game more fun. Maybe a useful angle to explore would be emphasizing the "dying god" side of the Yelm story and then letting nature take its course. Yes, the god of Southbank, no matter how fiercely the Tyrant protests, is doomed. But younger, better and stronger things are liberated in his disintegration. The bear people will help. The sun god they grew up with is cold.

I believe the concept was introduced (in commercial print at least) in the Moorgaki cult writeup, Troll Gods 1988.

If not the actual Bouncer they're probably related. Esoteric mysteries of the tavern masters, provisioners of the Feast sacred & profane . . .

Accidental mutation damaged the egg. The nature of the damage may be a combination of ambition and impatience, depending on neck to tail ratio. I consider this not quite on thread because it is veering esoteric into other technologies of consciousness, but what the hell, we can get it back . . . . . . penitent parasaurolophus ultimately grow wings and become something like birds, in which form they are considered aspirational in some forms of Pelorian mysticism (but never Kralorela). When the Bright Empire with its fixation on "highness" came in, they took to the sky and were never seen again, except in memories, dreams, reflections. Maybe some day they will return.

Say more. I'm trying to collate that stuff with the Burning Man dinosaur camp materials.