scott-martin

I like the pagan direction kings receiving the male -ela, in which case there's a lot more to Enjor than meets the eye. Maybe this is a vestige of the world the Pendalites [retaining my eccentric demonyms here for emphasis] knew before the colonists came and insisted that the land was female. Either way, Jonatela preserves it in the north/west.

Got to shout this out as one of your crowning career achievements. And there’s a reasonable number circulating.

Thanks for documenting these and so much more ... your pages on Before The Moon and Our Great Empire were in the background as I was thinking about this. The evolution of the 2007 “rainbow” edition can be better told by others but I can say it is rarer and more extensive than the one commissioned in 2015. Even so, I hope people grab when either inevitably comes up. That’s the spirit! The briefest of notes here since all are worth a lot more meditation because they matter to you: * Bertalor does marry and have a kid so there are either multiple people of that name or “metals of Acos” is juvenile production. I prefer the latter scenario but we will see when we get moving here. Maybe a Kings List readalong would be useful! Anyhow he ends up abdicating. * The pralorites are definitely extant early on and seem completely separate from the lion realm. There are sketch maps but I don’t recall any river names. Will check again when not buried in PowerPoint. * Yingar is of the line of Horal and has his wings. However the lineages are contradictory, reflecting either revision or controversy now largely lost. As with all of these, this is only a placeholder. I know he is mentioned in Hrestol Saga so people with that might jump in first. * Damol is my favorite! The “aerlit” identity is part of his controversial role in the history of the children of “malkion” since there are those who want to deprecate all local storm entities to nuisance status. The whole family is very strange. Sorry to tease but more ahead ... typing this on the phone before getting back to work.

That is the goal. While I'm assured my beard will turn green if I share en bloc (and odds are good one or more fellow collectors will just have me killed, I am pretty easy to find and they are resourceful people), there's no reason this side of the lozenge's evolution should remain locked up among a handful of people when other researchers could benefit us all.

So it's been a few years since the Guide kickstarter and we've all seen a lot of the Blank Lands around the lozenge pushed back. Maybe we could benefit from a little more information about what's in some of the rarer publications and, more importantly, what isn't in there. Sometimes the anxiety of influence is crippling. While it can be frustrating to know material is unavailable, it can be worse not to know whether it's available or not. With that in mind, I hope it's useful or diverting to describe the contents of the Roots of Glorantha series. I have to emphasize that everything said about these books is true. They are rougher than any volume in the Stafford Library and can vary widely from the 17th Century Glorantha we know today. Even when they are accurate, their insight pertains to the world as it was over a millennium past. The world has moved on. Some of this material was not even available for reference when it came time to fill in the Genertela box and what followed. Other texts were only grafted on later through the long process of reconsideration and revision. The core of what we have here is a more developed version of the so-called "Serpent Kings chronology" or the "Seshnegite Book of Kings" that incorporates Hrestol Saga with similar material filling out the royal history to shortly after Gerlant, along with bits that we would recognize from the early Imperial Age. It's a little Thomas Malory and a little Herodotus, concerned with the epic sweep of a civilization that starts small and fragile and ultimately assimilates or annihilates its neighbors. Mostly it's about the tragic fall of the Pendalites and the seeds of empire. Because the Seshnegites were remorselessly chauvinistic, the world beyond Tanisor is relegated to two loose collections of material, the "Book of Enemies" that discusses the Pendalites and Ralians and the "Book of Foreigners" providing very early notes on Slontos, Pamaltela, Brithos/Vadelos and the East. The overall effect is a high-level history and geography of the world the Seshnegites might have known before the Riddlers came, with a few additions to take us through the Gbaji period. There's also some short swords & sorcery fiction as a sample of what Greg was pursuing before the WBRM breakthrough as well as two versions of the tale of Damol, the later of which is quite extraordinary and I wish I'd had a chance to digest it earlier and tell him. It's like a fifth branch of the Mabinogion and could easily be published separately with relatively minor critical amendment. But if not, it's a side track from Thamor's reign so unless you're obsessed with religious politics in the first century you aren't missing out on anything. In general you aren't missing out on anything here unless you really need to know about the Dawn Age West before the early disasters set them on their current course. The world was different then. And while it's nice to see the seeds of many other parts of the lozenge, it's worth noting that this is before the WBRM map crowded in between the western jungle and the far east. There's nothing here about Central Genertela, no red goddess or storm god. All that came later and has evolved before your eyes. Genert lived there somewhere in the middle and he's always already gone, leaving a howling wilderness of nonhumans in his wreckage. There's also nearly nothing here about Fronela. We've talked about most of it here and there. While the Snodal / Jonat material does graft onto the end of the Seshnegite narrative, none of it is in the commercial edition, so you aren't missing anything in that direction either. You'll have to go elsewhere to check all the sources there. So rejoice. If you're obsessed with Seshnela in the dawn centuries, just ask. Otherwise, you're free of the need to covet these particular volumes, although they are pretty (Rick did astounding archival work) and if you see one come up on the secondary market it's worth at least making a play for it. And of course, endless other unpublished pages remain in the Chaosium archive and more are being recovered all the time, so we're never entirely free of the past. Now I cheerfully await correction from others who have encountered these books and have different opinions. THE ROOTS OF GLORANTHA (second state) Book I: The Encyclopedia of Glorantha (aka Seshnegi Book of Kings) Book II: The Reign of King Froalar (aka Hrestol Saga) Book III: The Reign of King Ylream Book IV: The Reign of King Thamor Book V: The Book of Jychan Book VI: The Reign of King Bertalor Book VII: The Vadeli Traider Book VIII: The Reigns of Kings Sonmalos, Mimtak, Bertia and Queen Annila Book IX: The reigns of Kings Gothimus and Torphing Book X: Genealogies of Seshnela Book XI: The Book of Enemies Book XII: The Book of Foreigners Book XIII: The Book of Gbaji Book XIV: Hero Tales Book XV: Aamor The Wanderer of Ralios Book XVI: Damiliol

What I would want at such a moment is a way to contact some ancestors so I can negotiate a new survival covenant. Luckily those tools are available locally but it means settlers can't really go home again. Which is a good epic to have. And if corn grows down there, what a miracle.

If OOO came from the darkness and blue Belintar washed in from the sea, I'm sure there are apocalyptic Esrolian factions trying to ensure that the next cycle gives birth to a green god. Whether they succeed or not, it makes good high-level plotline.

Love it. After all, they can only send you to Corflu once. After that, technically they have to send you somewhere else before they can send you back.

Love it. While we've mostly encountered pragmatic lunar perspectives on the Wastes, the early and uh seminal Red Moon in Prax hints at a more visionary and even apocalyptic response to the region's unique challenges and strategic resources. This probably becomes a more dominant chord with the pragmatists eaten or otherwise out of power. There's some spooky Old Moon stuff out there calling to people.

Hot stuff throughout! A little crazed elsewhere so still digesting the points. This bit can be a little simpler though. One of the historical constants of Glorantha is that New Forests come and go. Often they seem more expressive than instrumental . . . a method of communication that only incidentally looks like attempted biocide. Then when the forest has delivered its message the Takers move in to restore equilibrium. Feeders feed and eaters eat. Seeds get propagated and the worms with their funny hats reserve what they need for a next cycle somewhere. The green tide recedes again. On these terms, it's almost a ghost forest reprise, a fall harvest festival. A curtain call. Human society can roll with it and capture good things in its wake. We just have to get your Manirians there first.

This is highly relevant to my current interests! Thank you.

Headcanon now. I see Max von Sydow's daughter in the original Conan movie. But you remember nasty little Muriah, Queen Of The Broos, right?

I say make it happen. In context this refers to the carnivore totemic nation that dominated the southern Shan Shan in the era, probably hsa tiger people. But the delicate proximity between Froalar and Fralar has been noted before . . . keep running the ball until it stops. For example, I am struck for the first time how close Hykim meshes with Akem as east and west rhyme across the sun's daily path. I seem to recall a paracanonical history of this part of the world with some king names in the Four Scrolls of Revelation booklet but don't have my copy at hand right now to confirm.

It's been a long time since I looked at what I believe was PAMALT.txt (my local GTA files are on a machine in cold storage) but this is that. Would be nice if some of that could be released in some form when resources permit, maybe with textual glossing to add value. For really fertile game exploration I think the most important things the Teshnos-facing material can teach us is that far from being a sleepy land with no history and mostly passive borders this was a place of dynamic struggle and aspiration open to successive waves of migration. Artmal and Pamalt in the north can be more influential than God Learner chauvinists would like to believe. The east spawns its own heroes who then make an impact in the lands we know. There are blank spots in the history waiting to be filled in. And the Sword keeps getting lost or stolen by people who don't really know what it means. That's good gaming. I wonder where the name "Aamor" in the West comes from, maybe there's a different kind of blue gene lurking in those old families waiting to express itself. The last king of Eest might well have had two names, one he was born with and a royal one he assumed. Under the one, he passed out of history. Under the other, he entered the prophetic realm and his distant descendants are the fulfillment. EDIT As for Halwal, he got up to trouble for well over a century but we have a fairly firm end zone (kaboom) for any active cooperation with him personally. Avlor is still relatively young when he Leaves For The West so he could theoretically start his quest in 950 and wander for decades being a badass before making it into the far north before 980. Halwal is a classic player who will use the local talent that presents itself to achieve his strategic goals, so I think it's possible that Avlor might have met Jonat, for example. Either way, the Temple of War may be part of the general Halwalist neopagan revival. I don't know anything more about the kidnapping.

Last question first, I see a Red Sword made its way to the Temple of War in Spada, where it remains until found. This tells us a little about where Av(a)lor ends up. Archaic, fragmentary and unreliable accounts collected in the Seshnegite Book of Foreigners indicate that Avlor [sic] was the half-caste child of a hsunchen serving woman and a Seshnegite aristocrat who may or may not have been the last full-blooded colonial king of Eest, called Bamalam son of Ramal at one point. He was reportedly raised as a slave and escaped like Moses before ultimately liberating mainland Teshnos with the help of a magic sword called Trarlem. He then marries the ocean's daughter who is kidnapped as described in the Guide, leaving a precocious son to preside over the disintegration of the rebel coalition . . . without the sword, the people simply refused to remain united. A completely separate document describes a strange parthenogenetic system of greater and lesser Red Swords so it's possible Avlor was associated with multiple iterations. One in particular becomes the subject of a messianic movement among the northern Artmalites (loper people), passes through various hands and ultimately ends up with a Teshnite empire builder named Aamor, who ends up taking it to Ralios in an otherwise unrecorded and probably allegorical / fictitious continental migration. There, apparently, a local Artmalite population got their sword back and the blue moon stopped turning to shine forever full on that part of the world. Undoubtedly a prophetic narrative at best . . . but the deep lunar background is interesting in its own right.

I really like this turn in the thread because it raises the question of the scenarios people naturally gravitate toward when confronted with the possibility of a liberation of consciousness from normal constraints. The conceptual hurdle isn't so much "is this possible" or even "how is it done" but figuring out what to do with it. What kind of life you want to build. What kind of world. Where the natural supports and resistances emerge. How dynamic conflict happens or doesn't. What is no longer fun (maximum Glorantha fun) and what remains fun. "Power" and the will to power are interesting terms here. Classical Stafford Mystics renounce agency on the way out of the normal constraints that bind consciousness to society. They abandon active desire (money, success, fame, glamour) and simply surrender to the status quo. After all, they're told, all this is "spiritual materialism" and chasing a transitional object. Of course saying "no" is its own power move, a form of cheating. If the renunciate simply wants out of the world of power relations, the door is always cracked. But once you find that route, temptations are endless. Nobody's watching. You can get what you want now. God's away on business. I don't think we meet a lot of the people who really escape the web of time. They're gone and very few come back . . . the ones we know are the ones who come back because they had unfinished projects they wanted (desire) to pursue. In god's absence the world could be managed better in some way, maybe with a different mix of systems or an empire more or less. Or they're just hungry for something: swap a goddess because you can. Work a wonder. Make a gesture. Communicate something. Go back to the cell of power relations because it's a comforting fit. After all, it's your shape and size. The world feels like home. It's not really a dumb theory that Glorantha and all these world bubbles are a form of fly paper that attracts consciousness and all the characters are more or less stuck in their roles, recycling postures. But it passes the time. And when they find people playing on their level, the interactions might get ugly but it's better than drinking alone.

I like how at Nochet Knowledge Temple elf and dragonewt studies share a "department" in the form of the Green Sages. It would be wonderful if they look back to Castelain's work . . . or vice versa. Either way, their loyalties may well lie in the near west.

Striking how clearly it resembles the human head from this angle. I haven't seen it anywhere else.

The extinct "dragonewt" nation of the Elder Wilds were technically more-or-less flightless birds in communion with Rinliddi and proto-Kralorela. When Nysalor cursed the reptile nations the dragon who ate it lived in the east and that's how they get their scales there.

People interested in this can build out Divine Intervention a little as a hinge between ad hoc ("animist") petitions and routinized worship. Perhaps providing conditions sweeten the deal for a spirit and enhance success percentages. Then once you know what the entity likes, you simply offer it again.

Yes, I am still waiting for the dumb part.

Love it. Truly badass. Let's get a little crazy when we should be populating our powerpoint. All of this is just IMG of course. I suspect that the 10% annualized ROC is just what we can reasonably charge for minimum risk activities: peddling penny candy to children, bankrolling other traders and providing liquidity to the Credit Network when we can't think of anything more interesting to do. The starting initiate has a little more than 600L in cash and carry so can reasonably generate Free standard of living indefinitely. Of course the magic happens when carry converts to cash and cash converts to carry. You are going to want to keep the capital rolling, finding cheap stuff to buy when you're flush and finding motivated shoppers when you want to cash out. I think a rule of 10 is easy accounting in a fantasy bronze age environment, so if I can easily source a thing for 9 clacks I'm going to charge the public 10, restock and keep the extra copper. Keep the money moving. Turn it more than once a year, it will compound. That's how you get big and start running into big problems like paying people. You can get too big for the local market. In that scenario, you need to fall back on the 10% yield on passive cash or take on something riskier and more ambitious like what Mr and Mrs Mith have built in Votankiland. They are easily richer than any two of the citadel kings put together (Treasure Factor 300) and they do it all on just four mules in every year and four mules out. At this point I wouldn't be surprised if most of the incoming cargo is stuff to furnish the trade mission and keep Skilfil and his women happy. Maybe they bring 30 Things of bronze military hardware, some medical supplies for the hospital, religious artifacts for the temple, but the rest is geegaws that only the citadel courts can really afford and even their demand is limited. As long as Skilfil is happy you can take your pick of another 40-50 Things of dwarf munitions back to Mother Sartar padded out with luxury furs, exotic artifacts for specialists and a few precious envelopes of the wildest elf shit they will share. He's earned his payout for the year and probably helped advance some personal philanthropic objectives besides. Once in a blue moon he goes up to confer with the giant. He loves it out here. In theory he can even run the bar at a loss as long as he keeps this route open, or simply retire by 40. Cool story. But we aren't all Joh Mith with what amounts to a monopoly of two thirds of the howling wilderness. Time is money so while he's waiting for that big once-a-year turn, he and his people are happy to keep shorter-term cash working in lower-return commodities. This is more where middle-level merchants can operate. Djimm has the Trilus trading post mostly covered: incentivize the local population to hand you stuff that's worth money, then offer them things they want so they give you the money back too. Junior merchants on any given caravan will trade their own shingles along the way while finding ways to earn their spot at the chuckwagon. Fancy ones will simply rent a piece of the overhead, which Mith appreciates. And unfortunately the route really only scales to four mules because otherwise he'd be running more in and out. Most of his money at this point is sunk into inventory at the bar. He wants to keep it working so he goes on the road a couple weeks a year. Within Balazar his markup is as simple as it gets: if I'm the only guy around who can reliably get it for you, I'm going to charge you roughly double it would cost back home. The only competition is capricious and a little arbitrary because they're government funded, but even with then, double wholesale is the base. (They'll go up to 5X list price in the right greedy mood. Seller's market.) This is the kind of return junior merchants on the caravan get . . . but it's a risky and annoying venture. You only get one turn a year and if your mule gets eaten or whatever, you've blown out your shot to make money that year. On the other hand, come into a string of luck and you end up running your own route. I think the breakpoints are interesting. Standard beginner merchant has to keep moving just to keep eating and it's risky business out there. Take that starting stake on a seasonal trading adventure and you can double it. Then pay your bills and try it again. When you've got 1200 L in play, you can hire a friend full time. Maybe this person runs the store back home or comes with you so you can do more dangerous runs. 1200 can turn into 1800, then 2400. And you can always just hire freelancers for seasonal work along the way. The funny thing is that someone who compulsively Bargains every transaction will end up losing money until skill level hits 80%. That's okay. God likes it when you simply charge list with standard markup. Don't get cute. This is where we explain the slight wobble between 1:9 and 10% profit, by the way. The merchant inevitably tries to get cute or has a twinge and ends up overpaying / undercharging. It's okay. I think this means a Free artisan can pay the bills producing about 540 L worth of wholesale product a year but that piece bears further reflection.

These theories need to get dumber. To celebrate my thousand-and-first post this one, for example, really just reverses the murder and disintegration of Yelm, which is a type of magic on my mind lately. Cut it into pieces, redeploy the pieces. Or find the pieces, put them back together . . . maybe in a new and personally more appealing form. It's a somewhat gruesome calculus in its nether reaches (think of entities like hydra with negative magic factors) but can be as simple and universal as the food song. Ralzakark is clearly having trouble rolling all his parts together, which is a good way to know the world hasn't ended yet. Maybe when he goes to the east and meets the black sun. This theory will also have to do better in order to earn "dumb" status.

Oh, you know. Some people have polished tiles to sit on and are willing to wait decades. Others are either less patient or for whatever reason exist in a transmission where shocks are the only levers of consciousness available. And then there are those who have access to the meditative systems but decide that what a particular student really needs is a sudden jolt or other random encounter (警策). "Better" is a work in progress. If nothing else it shuts the barbarians up for a little bit (couple centuries), letting you get back to what you really enjoy.

Previewing work before it's ready for prime time is a dumb move so why not here? The deep forest story of Peloria is a little more complicated than the time-lapse maps suggest. At the Dawn, Rist is unusually isolated, without a clear bond to any of the forest neighbors or regional survival compacts. The Riyestans are friends but don't really last long. The foundation of Berthestead points to elf vestiges down the Erenflarth but the forest has receded and the arrow bushes are growing wild for the harvest. A case can also be made for the practically provisional Arrowstone Vale culture as another ally or satellite of a once larger elf complex, maybe a joint project with a local dwarf nation. While everybody suffered in the Dark, the overall impression here is that Rist suffered a little more than others and the process of deforestation continues into Time. This probably cast a shadow on their particular psychology that shows up again in the God Project and afterward. I suspect that the specific tribulations remembered in "The Second Plantings" belong to this forest and its early struggles with the Fire Tribes. This becomes a personal challenge for Saratin Seomale, who brings the good news and loves the light above all else. Saratin Seomale is not a lifebringer from the council. Saratin Seomale is an awakener from the Greenwood to the West, which has a different survival compact and little history of hostile sky gods. The Greenwood has to be taught to fear fire and Saratin Seomale learns that lesson only at the end if ever. By the time the lifebringers come up, Rist is already there waiting for them and ultimately joins the World Council on its own terms. In 193, Rist blooms, wiping out what appears to be horse nomad territory up to what is now Doblia. Something unrecorded happens and the Greenwood and Elder Wilds forests expand shortly thereafter, producing FS Map 5. This gives the Khordavites a little breathing room and probably makes Dorastor feel even more enchanted as a beacon of coexistence in an otherwise hostile wood green empire. The council moves. Khordavu is crowned. We win Argentium Thri'ile. Starting around 325, the new growth collapses. Something is wrong. Maybe, as in Pamaltela, there's a rot somewhere in the fiber. Maybe they just overreached. And maybe people like Erraibdavu help. Pelandan records from this era have not been recovered so we don't know what they were like so far from the Entekosiad. My guess is that they were Saratin Seomale's friends. Either way, New Forest persists around Jernalf and the Brass Mountains through the Gbaji Wars. The Poisonthorn broods. The fact that the Army of Righteousness does not cleanse these forests suggests that either he couldn't do it or he saw no taint. We know Arkat had no friends in the Greenwood because he was denied northern passage, but he evidently saw no enemies either. He always gives elves a choice and evidently some chose right. And Rist endures for the time being. Around 500, the forest around the Brass Mountains tries again and spreads across modern Carmania, once again disrupting the historical record there and clearing the stage for the Spolite Empire to follow. Maybe someone there recognized that Arkat was no longer paying attention and decided to make their move. It doesn't take. Something terrible called THE ROT appears on the 550 map, which is helpfully subtitled "nonhuman wars." The Carmanian forest evaporates. There's also a battle in the Brass Mountains, "dwarves out." Spol rolls in. A conspiracy theorist might ponder whether this is some awful, awful rite engineered to birth some kind of karmic successor or ghost project. We know almost nothing about this forest, what it wanted or where it went. They might have originally been the vaguely sinister Old Ones beckoning from Map 6. They're almost certainly the forest that erupts in the reign of Elmharsnik. Note the simultaneous digijelm incursion. Rot Wood itself pops up in 700 north of the Brass Mountains. Again, it doesn't last. Something within the Spolite complex might maintain a sacred forest of shadows but it loses its separate elf identity in the birth of Carmania. This leaves Rist and peripherally Erigia in the region and they do not try to reforest again despite the post-Kill upheavals and opportunities. I don't think they can do it. They feel the season aging. Rist ultimately dies in one last efflorescence on behalf of ancient allies in the Erinfarth watershed. Rootless survivors take quickly to the hidden way of krjalk. Maybe they preserved it all along and nobody noticed. They are, of course, pretty pissed off.