scott-martin

As usual, astounding. The parallel to the gendering of the Praxian Covenant is super interesting. Instead of the vague and cheerful "e pluribus unum" of IFWW success in a broken world requires specialization. Some are eaters. Some are eaten. Some are Eiritha. Some are the Bull. Those who arbitrate the distinctions are Daka and their visible portion is Waha. Maybe that's the model for the Kerofinelan hierogamy where two forces meet and one becomes "male" and the other "female." Authorities on the prehistory of Pairing Stone probably know a lot more about what happens when gender systems that evolved independently encounter each other. Meanwhile most of us spend a lot of time as barntar types even as adults, more like undifferentiated DH drones or hapless oasis people. Some become parents. Some become fighters or magic-users and those roles get gendered too. Waha teaches weapons and Eiritha teaches magic. People who know weapons are the "sons" and people who know magic are "daughters." The masculine is Death and the feminine is Fertility, more or less. There are special people who follow different routes to differentiation. There are also more intense forms, as when the Bull is too butch for normal people to even deal with. Depending on the specific historical expression of the compact a lot of this often gets mapped across elemental lines. The "earth" people mostly became girls and the "storm" people mostly take the boy pronoun. The "sky" dynamics are a little more esoteric given the vertical fixation there. "Water" is fluid. Expand into the complexities. When "earth" girls are an easy fit, the uppity earth is literally "moon." Storm and sun have their own dynamic. Dark is like a cremaster movie. Tapestries are magic only slower. Run it as a ritual enchantment, keep feeding points into it despite all obstacles + distractions and the weavework will start to move.

I'm reminded of Aristasian euphemisms here on something like earth . . . if I recall correctly, when a brunette loves a blonde (now we would say a Xena loves a Gabrielle) they track down a special bubble and after a mysterious and tastefully opiated procedure you get a daughter. Some primeval Gor complexes probably have relationships with someone like a Tolat so some or all of the girls would simply pass out at holy moments and wake up ready to carry the next generation forward. Others may have historically deteriorated into something like harpy or bagog reproduction, juicing captives when they want a daughter. Of course here in the terminal third age pissed-off girls are everywhere so it's easiest to just adopt. This is outstanding stuff. It suggests that to the extent to which Storm produced girls they didn't know how to do all this fertility stuff until encountering a culture that had specialized in that. Makes me think of Pippi Longstocking (Långstrump), for some reason . . . another kind of red-headed woman who aligns with Orlanth in the highlands but probably associated with the moon up north. The red-headed tax on the Pentans may be a way to feed that power into imperial channels rather than let it bloom in its own destabilizing directions. When the red-headed woman comes to your town, lock up your plans because all bets are off. I wonder what kind of hair Etyries had. Imagine if there was a lunar missionary cult that focused on Vinga instead, riding that figure like one of the mutant forms of Elmal. Red-headed woman girt with a sword, the short cut to illumination. Line up, ladies. It's the hera wars.

Yeah, this is definitely one of those places where the "ideal type" of elf-sun syncretism emerged as a model for others . . . and then failed. A lot I still don't know about where and when "Halamal" gets into the Dome complex. Balazar is a good place to look for how he makes like a tree and leaves.

Give her time to come back. Right now, the absence of an Aldrya ecology is a signal of how deep the Second Age collapse went . . . and the elves nurse grudges.

Every humakt with an allied spirit talks to the weapon and it answers. Many wind lords also, and other martial cults cultivate similar relationships with spears, scimitars and so on. Greg would have wanted at least one that could sing. I suddenly find myself not knowing what happens to a spirit-inhabited weapon when the human consort dies or leaves the cult . . . you can get heirlooms in this way if the spirit remains behind, but if the bond breaks, the animating intelligence returns home. I'm leaning toward saying there are storied weapons and weapon spirits and sometimes the spirits have a preference for certain durable residences. Whether an allied spirit or the wielder is the boss depends on the entities involved and the situation. Every marriage is different.

Nah, keep having fun! It's a good signal.

Sorry.

Greg was familiar with Eliade's The Sacred & The Profane, which some helpful angel has sampled HERE if you have already bought it or if you want to leaf through it before you buy. It's worth meditating on a few of the fragments: The myth relates a sacred history, that is, a primordial event that took place at the beginning of time, ab initio. But to relate a sacred history is equivalent to revealing a mystery. For the persons of the myth are not human beings; they are gods or culture heroes, and for this reason their gesta constitute mysteries; man could not know their acts if they were not revealed to him. The myth, then, is the history of what took place in illo tempore ["in that time," which for Eliade is broadly parallel to our "God Time"], the recital of what the gods or the semidivine beings did at the beginning of time. To tell a myth is to proclaim what happened ab origine. Once told, that is, revealed, the myth becomes apodictic truth; it establishes a truth that is absolute. "It is so because it is said that it is so," the Netsilik Eskimos declare to justify the validity of their sacred history and religious traditions. The myth proclaims the appearance of a new cosmic situation or of a primordial event. Hence it is always the recital of a creation; it tells how something was accomplished, began to be. It is for this reason that myth is up with ontology; it speaks only of realities, of really happened, of what was fully manifested. Obviously these realities are sacred realities, for it is the sacred that is pre-eminently the real. It is true that most of the situations assumed by religious man of the primitive societies and archaic civilizations have long since been left behind by history. But they have not vanished without a trace; they have contributed toward making us what we are today, and so, after all, they form part of our own history. What is essential is periodically to evoke the primordial event that established the present condition of humanity. Their whole religious life is a commemoration, a remembering. The memory reactualized by the rites (hence by reiterating the primordial murder) plays a decisive role; what happened in illo tempore must never be forgotten. The true sin is forgetting [. . . ] Personal memory is not involved; what matters is to remember the mythical event, the only event worth considering because the only creative event. It falls to the primordial myth to preserve true history, the history of the human condition; it is in the myth that the principles and paradigms for all conduct must be sought and recovered. ----- So what really happened? Whatever people tell you reveals the true history that matters. Who did it happen to? The people who we say were there. As Eliade says elsewhere in this book, "The many names of the gods designate one sole divinity and all religions express the same fundamental truth -- only the terminology varies."

Love it. One super easy suggestion would be to pick a favorite Carl Barks travel plot . . . maybe "Lost in the Andes" or "Race to the South Seas" or even "Serum to Codfish Cove" if you want to put your people in parkas . . . and repaint all the surfaces with what you see in Glorantha. Doesn't have to be hyper canonical. Ducks see the world from a different angle anyway.

Good thoughts. What's interesting about the Kill is that people the Horde left at home survive and can propagate their cultural capital under new conditions. For some, that means being driven underground by opportunistic invasion from farther out. For others, the men at the top change but life goes on more or less unchanged. Maybe one or two end up liberated for a little while and their cultural capital blooms like cactus after a once-a-century rain. Either way, what's lost is the warrior lineages and whatever else got fed into the Dragonslayer complex. All those people and their adult succession die out simultaneously. Heirs too young to take along stay home where they never get initiated into the family lore. The people left behind are mostly women as well as weaklings, slaves, refuseniks, nerds and criminals. Their lore continues. Severed from the warrior population there are challenges and opportunities. Each of their societies evolves differently. Some die out anyway. Others contribute to the ones we know in the terminal Third Age situation. With the God Learners Doom (as well as the end of EWF) you have the decapitation scenario where the cultural commanding heights are wiped out and everyone else is left to make the best choices they can. Interestingly this also means women and other suppressed alternative mysteries have a chance to reach the surface like Uma Thurman punching out of her own grave in Kill Bill. Greg being Greg, most of them don't make it. Where elites were concentrated (Kerofinela, Jrustela, Seshnela, Slontos), even the mass population is wiped out and nothing but fragmentary archival material survives now. But on the periphery there was a chance. In the far northeast prairie country, a red light glimmers, a promise.

I wonder if it was presented in terms that would be more generous to legitimated "talars" . . . Rokar may have adjusted the caste obligations as part of his creed, allowing someone who would otherwise have remained a mere warlord to put down the sword and take up the scepter if not the scale. Lock in behaviors you want to encourage, lock out what you really don't like. And then by the Law, the talar is the only person who can tell the liturgists what to do. The tale of Bailifes' rise probably rivals that of the Pendragons for murder and opportunistic wizardry. Only this time the knights are exterminated.

That haircut is distinctive . . .

I forget who if anyone in Glorantha acknowledges Coyote as Trickster. Prax has Hyena and lisping Dara Happans have that wascally wabbit. Coyote is one Bad Dog so this might be a Sairdite story coexisting alongside Fox and Raccoon.

RUMOR TABLE Mularik is ostentatiously weird but remember he is also a cautionary tale. Reflect on his post-Argrath character drift and ultimate fate in King of Sartar. Whatever dark blood he was born with or acquired isn't intense enough for the iron in the eye to give him problems. While uz can theoretically breed with especially robust un-Adopted humans it is shameful to talk about. The question in reply tends to be "why would any sensible female (or self-respecting male if that isn't an oxymoron) want to do that?" Important to flip the nature/nurture discussion at all times: it's not exclusively elemental cultures producing compatible elemental people as much as how cultures created + sustained by elemental people naturally evolve along elemental lines. People without the right runes will leave, get kicked out or discover their own compatible lives in the uh shadow of the parent culture. The parent culture usually has mechanisms for absorbing elemental outcasts from elsewhere. (See also: troll adoption, "kitorism.") Ethilrist resembles fanfic because he is before the rules we have. This opens up other questions about how dreams work. Mularik comes from a different layer. Pavis was not spontaneous . . . his parents were married before they had him. It's unclear how long the marriage ceremony took, perhaps years or even generations but at least a little planning was involved. Probably at least as complicated as a modern Hindu wedding so you be the judge. Kyger Litor is big momma but her job is not to mate with anything. Her job is to mate with Man Rune. Trolls who forget that eventually get too far out to stay uz. BattleCats are cool but spend a lot of time being Cringer. I love Charles' line about how fear of the Doom Guardians is the universal constant in modern traditionalist Glorantha. The process of overcoming that taboo necessarily creates absolute weirdos. Some of them also get funky rule-breaking powers. Learning God Learner magic is "bad" because it challenges the entrenched authorities who got where they are in a more conventional way. They have a lot of ego wrapped up in doing everything in the right order. Some authorities enshrine God Learnerism as a useful scapegoat for discrediting everything they don't like. There are a lot of God Learnerisms.

I really like this one. I hear it all the time from everyone from my father-in-law to random kayakers: "The Navy invented boats so we wouldn't have to touch that awful stuff. If you want to get wet learn to swim."

If it ain't cooked, it's raw. Mostal is master and patron of all technologies, which we receive as innovation but it's just conservation to his people. I do not know if he is ever worshipped alongside Lodril or vice versa, whereby may hang a kind of enigma. There Are Those Who Believe that the sorcerer god of the West originally had leatherworking aspects or originated in that kind of craft function. Likewise Buserian as tent maker, etc. A primitive form of Issaries comes to the Storm Tribe as the tattoo artist but this is now barely a footnote. Dendara's textile monopoly in Dara Happa is probably politically fraught, especially when you get out into the countryside and the ten thousand Orias take over. Arachne Solara is obviously the queen of weavers while the scepter the goddess Glorantha carries in imperial art may actually be a distaff (or "addi"), concealing obvious mysteries. Some Lanbrils are not just artisans but tool makers.

That's the thing. They're never a priority for anyone important so they just stay unrehabilitated. But if someone wanted to elfquest them out I bet it would be wonderful.

Heh. The brothers will fight. Sisters more so. IMG modern Aramites are what we would consider a mess without a lot of hierarchical structure. Today's king bully (call him Jack) treats everyone else like furniture because he can and does kick their ass if they defy him. Persistent defiance has three outcomes: you escape to found a new gang, he kills you, you find out how to kick his ass and break his spirit permanently, one way or another. Jack has his coterie who amuse him in some way or are just tough enough to make suppressing them inconvenient or unsatisfying in some way. These medial figures get to torment those below them until you get to actual Piggy on the bottom. But Jack is superstitious enough to fear the Beast, their pig god in the depths of the stink. And the Beast talks to some people, often under duress, so you get a cycle where the most broken members occasionally scare the bullies at the top by presenting Words Of The Pig Who Must Be Obeyed. However this doesn't really make anyone happy. Someone very brave, very motivated and extremely tough could probably reach out to the suppressed "Ralph side" of the cult by subjugating a tusker / piggy and being nice to it, all the while fending off the usual casual violence endemic to Aramite life. Heal the god, drive off the demon, the nation will follow. But unless that person is captured and has no choice in the matter, I don't see that kind of heroic effort being made.

That's the Ban for you. But stick with your players in the sandbox and it will all be fine. (Probably the granddaddy of all is hidden behind fRONA herself before the rune arrangers buried him in "Frontem." Brother and sister, king and queen.)

Last night I was looking at ARNmORN in the light of dRONA but thought, "nah, this is just a mound of mashed potatoes." But since you were brave enough to speak up there was also syANOR here once. All these refractions of the primal patriarch, cut up and rearranged across history and then shuffled in the Ban.

You got me thinking that chow or "food" is the central mystery of Aldrya consciousness at least, so they all "sacrifice" for Food Song and it works like a simple ritual. Some eat food. Some make food. They all sing. For all I know some of them sing constantly, stopping only to sleep. The pivot from spell to skill is probably part of what differentiates us from them in the forest, at least potentially. Adult human adventurers rely more on their skills, which are a factor of lived experience in the world. As your society gets complicated (further from the forest) people become more specialized and maybe "butcher" becomes a job like "farmer" or "cook," where you can be better or worse than someone else. In Prax all responsible people learn how to kill a herd beast responsibly. Most of the forest children interact with the magical ecology differently. It's interesting to rethink the character sheet for a green game. Ironically making is expressed as skills so that's dwarves right there. Their highest skills converge with "sorcery."

One thing that's super interesting about them is that they've only been free of the Ban for about a decade . . . for generations their world was the plateau bounded by Kikina on the west and maybe Enneserah on the east. If you and your players aren't looking for epic plots, that's the only true history that matters. As far as they're concerned, history starts with Oran finding Frona back in the Dawn Age, gets hazy in the middle and now they have some new neighbors as well as some ancient ones who have returned. Of course if you're looking for something weirder, nobody outside this slice of Thaw remembers Oran. Instead they have different patriarch figures who also married the land. They might even have records of a completely different situation on the plateau . . . but now it's like Oran has always been there. The limits of his slice and the limits of his memory are more or less identical, so wherever he is worshipped is Oranor and vice versa. Practically this territory gives you some bull traces in the west and probably other influences as you move east. A surprising amount of mining. The pacts with the elves may be ancient if you like. They could also be new.

The key line for me is that the Hidden Kings in whose orbit he grew up "resorted to shapeshifting to survive," suggesting a return to totemic foundations late in the primeval Vingkot collapse. We see something similar in The Birth of Tragedy with its "immense gap which separated the Dionysian Greek from the Dionysian barbarian." Some are deer who become bipeds. Some are bipeds who become deer. The wheel spins. Of course the people of Heort are not unique in this experience and while many nations now seem settled I suspect not all have completed their journey. The Jonatings seem to have gotten bearier in certain historical periods even after more or less becoming a settled non-totemic culture. Basmolites, Praxians, Losk-alim, etc. All at their stages. There are also those who believe any historicity in Heort's legend should be read allegorically as part of the transition from shamanic to theistic consciousness but those who know usually find other things to talk about. Li'l boi here . . .

Love it. The one I use is a horizontal flip . . . north stays north but as usual with Greg in that period "there is no east nor west." Of course tectonic activity in both versions generates inland seas and islands.

Sing for the high countries at the edge of the sky. True confession, I can remember the day they first took me below a mile elevation because I got a nosebleed! This proves for the record you are not my dad unless "much" further north means Montrose instead of, like, Pocatello, which I guess is getting up to Talsardia. Thanks all. We live by the water now in order to pursue a different vector of freedom. (There seem to be a whole lot of prewar postcards of Colorado and other Rocky tourist destinations floating around online, I am no photo lawyer but suspect the older ones have lapsed. We get by here with Seashore . . . there must be a version of that that runs better on someone's system than GIMP.)