scott-martin

I like the thea-sophical (theya-sophical?) note for raising the question of whether there were Goddess Learners circulating out of the Jrustelan academies and if so, where they went to ground. MGF as you point out, even if it was only a trouser role. For all we know "the historical Menena cult" is a political reconstruction engineered by some very smart and very brave witches and that's great. Ditto esoteric feminism in Esrolia and places like that. I suspect part of the friction between the Lunar Empire and Theyalan esoteric feminists is that while the Entekosiad and similar arguments are compelling, the conclusions aren't always comfortable. Old Tarsh violently rejected the Hon-Eel argument, etc. This provides a narrative opportunity for thea-logians to determine whether all "women's spirituality" converges or whether the girls can be as fractious as the dudes despite the reductive Earth Rune left over from Robert Graves. For me I love a world with as many women as possible and I adore variety but I have a hard time following more than one local land goddess at once. That said, she has a crowd of friends, all ages, attitudes, shapes and skin tones. Some of them get a little mixed up in my head because I'm not paying perfect attention. Others distinguish themselves constantly. The one who runs Zoria isn't the one who reigns in Nochet or even the one up in Cliffhome, for example. That's great. Thankfully "Orlanthi all" of them are obsessed with yarn, which is how the weaver goddess stays in the picture.

Heh. At some point sufficiently advanced Shield skill is indistinguishable from magic and frees up community POW for other things. "Why such consternation seeking spells," Belonni Mo Baustra asked. "A shield is eight clacks and your days are for training." And with that Farrar Drushkenee was enlightened. - Manual of Tactics

Also awesome. Will need to digest but who is Ralian Yelorna? Did she come West with the Riddlers or was she already there among the pony people?

She can be widowed endless times. Arguably she steals all the husbands sooner or later. IMG all the dead are her foster children and IMG she treats them with true grandmotherly kindness.

Everything after this is great but this early note is what brought my seat to full upright position. Could this be pronounced something like Orlanda, Orolanta or Eurlanta in the right corner of Saird, I wonder? A mother goddess of the sky or at the lowest Middle Air, a woman with her own portfolio that overlaps the god of Heortland. Did they ever find a father for Yelorna? Might he have been the masculine earth to combine with feminine air (again, inverting the elemental hierogamy we see in the south), for example? I wonder if you ever see esoteric representations of Orolanta in a fake beard. Obviously nobody wears pants in the low country or she'd have that going on too.

First, I see that three of the "rainbow" softcover first state Roots of Glorantha books went on eBay today (easy search) so let the competists shudder and the lustful sigh. Here in the Castle Coast where we drill every day for the war with the blue man that never comes I rarely get even an hour away from the screen so a deep dive through the archaic materials has been elusive. I apologize to those who have been counting on me to assimilate and translate the waking dream history they reflect. It will happen in our lifetime, more or less. But today I got that hour and a few broad notes strike me: A. The Lifebringers may not have been the only missionary civilization bringing a god from Central Genertela. By circa 100 a religion identifiable as "Yelm" is making inroads among the Pendalites, complete with chariots and archery. Imagine a dawn age where sons of the Sun are racing to spread their gospel ahead of the storm pantheon: the dark is over, make way for the day. Obviously given the dating this is not under the auspices of what becomes the Bright Empire under the god Nysalor, although "Yelm" may in fact come to other lands after the Sunstop. B. Seeing Damol in action gets me looking for "theyalan" storm people who evolved independently from the Heort / First Council and were only later attached to the god we call Orlanth. Wild brainless Damol is of course a son of "Aerlit" and so at least considered a brother to a historical Malkion who does not appear in these sources. If I were a gambler I'd bet a little money on aspects of Damol emerging in the "Malkion" legend that becomes useful at various times and places. C. The unassimilated Pendalite remnant devolves in diaspora into the miserable lion people we now know. The historical experience of some if not all other "hsunchen" nations may be similar. Meanwhile Pendal's curse forbidding his children to ride horseback can be rehabilitated as a way around contradictory information about which castes can ride: for converts with Pendalite blood, it's not a good idea. (Greg's hatred of the horse is once again on display here.) D. Triolini were also interbreeding with our nations in those days, creating hybrid peoples whose provenance is now lost to Time. This is likely where knowledge of the Sea enters land lore. The children of Waertag may or may not have succeeded in suppressing the results to pursue their putative monopoly. "Malkion," for example, is also a child of ocean on his mother's side. E. Arkat's War undoubtedly altered the mythic landscape of the West as much as it did in Central Genertela. New gods rise and old gods are suppressed. This means that, for example, these archaic materials may either reflect their redaction of history (and so are completely anti-canonical in the Hero Wars era, a fiction promulgated by the losers of history and preserved by eccentric dilettantes) or the history that prevailed before the Autarchy and its own collapse. Given the wealth of detail here I tentatively favor the latter case where it doesn't explicitly contradict objective sources. F. Before the totemic nations, the Elves. There were also darkness people early on who may or may not have been what we would call trolls. G. The archaic West became relatively rich with dead mythologies within a short period of time as nations were exterminated and their gods lost, converting their material apparatus into anonymous metal. Third Eye Blue may recall how some of this is done. The presence of Third Eye Blue in some phases of the Apple Lane experiment is interesting. H. I'm sure I'm at best wrong everywhere but this stuff can only be made meaningful to those who need it. When the war with the blue man comes we need every weapon from history we can find.

This is a fantastic strategic point. "Unfinished" has different connotations now for the fiction in particular. It might be the medications talking but your insight into current lord of the red planet as an underworld entity who traverses the sky got me wondering whether the Shargash rune is more accurately an upside-down inversion of Truth and Alkoth is a city where the bijiif still rules, "Dara Happa After Dark." No idea where that ends up though.

This is all exquisite. I like the Imtherite echo. Would he take the bat rune as his initial in Dara Happa or the foreign KH . . . or even CH? (This last probably unspeakable in various contexts and so bowdlerized to become Z/"Truth.")

I wonder if their masters feed them on a ghastly slurry rumored to contain "herd meat" and even the flesh of fallen tribal hostages. "Two-Feather Bob never came back from that raid but we found finger bones in the herd droppings that season." It sounds a little easy but restores the evidence behind the Tapir Tribe's bad reputation. They still survive on endemic "cannibalism," just not personally . . . the herds are the ones with a taste for bipedal fare. For all I know a Glorantha where this applies would have hidden structural parallels between herd culture and spontaneous outbreaks of ogrism. EDIT also this program of "new riders for renewed herds" is astounding. Although I suspect the Moro would complain bitterly to have their "mounts" taken away . . . what is a Praxian without a steed? Practically an animal again.

Yeah, this goes back to Dragon Pass: "A vacancy in the throne of the Pharoah to the south drew off many of Sartar's best swordsmen and seekers, and the Lunar Empire seized the opportunity to invade the kingdom and sack Boldhome."

Most exciting phrase of the week. Maybe that says too much about my week.

If anyone has completed the full Da Vinci Code analysis of the Wall's profundities this would be a good time for them to step forward. For me the Wall contains all the lapses and innovations of Time and so from a certain perspective reflects the moment of Umath as well as more conventional golden age that came before. This is the snapshot that shows us the hidden cracks that would later become the world. It's literally the primal scene from the Copper Plates told in a different language. Now at that moment you have a lot of people and forms that aren't necessarily important yet, people who will go on to become templates for creatures like bears or goats or lions. Within the golden age, nobody knows that bulls will become their own tribe. They just know Urox is the shape he is. Some people on the Wall become patrons of tribes. Others have not done so or their people died out. (Side note: a surprising number of Wall entities survive and have reproduced in one vestige or another. This isn't really a map of the world before it broke, only the pieces that come down to us.) Within the true Golden Age there may be a whole ecology of marvels that have since degenerated or gone extinct, flying horses and griffins, snakes of fire, predators and prey born when Earth and Sky were married. Before that, a whole ecology of marvels from Earth and Water, but they have their own empire and so the sea is still full. Mythologically I suspect the difference between mammals and birds is that real flight is mostly barred to the fleshy children of Umath (or Aerlit) and may actually be the condition of our bastard birthright. We breathe. We aspire to the heights and make great running leaps. We innovate also. This may be why a certain faction within the empire hates ducks as an embarrassment and a profound disappointment. They're almost birds but don't even have the dignity of being born in a proper egg.

The tradition of Looking For Soma goes back to the philologen and remains fractious. I like the "cocktail" hypothesis (see also Gods Wall II.23) and the recent "mushroom honey" angle is also interesting. Mysteries of Minlinster, secrets of the hive. Where the bee gorakiki went.

While the Falangian is an in joke for fans and might figure in long-term development revelations I wonder if it's simply the trade name of faceted stones or even decorative glass the dwarves sell us ignorant yokels.

Mulling archaic Teshnos and when the "naga" people vanish from history finally lights the bulb: "wareran" should be spelled "wareyan," as in Indo-Wareyan migrations. Lodril is of course half Old Norse "Lodh" (pendulous globe) and half English "low drill," with echoes of various Wagnerian fire / forge / volcano gods around the edges.

Thank God for small victories even if the large ones are elusive. EDIT one day we'll see all zzaburs separated from unity with their physical existence.

I think it was Rilke who called the man rune a historical compromise between hsunchen and mostali. I would love more tribal origin myths or at least a rich sense of where "warerans" begin and everyone else (maybe including "theyalans") leave off . . . not in terms of idealized genetic "types" (yikes) but simply the stories people tell about where they came from and why their neighbors are different.

I am not them but the short answer historically has been "go there and report back." Individual explorers and small teams have uncovered aspects of life on the lozenge that surprised even Greg. They'll have to do it again to bring the far corners up to what we now know about the center. For me there are sensitivity issues around doing a lot of publishing for Teshnos by the book as it now stands until that deep exploration happens. Lazy subcontinents and spice-laden air just don't cut it. If I were going there today I'd start with what's left behind after points west break off their Greco-Bactrian thing. The archaic materials touch on a people called the "nagas," which have obvious parallels to the history of India north and south. Go as far into the dravidian zone as you can. Start there. If you find that the border between them and the gigantic archipelago is porous, that's okay. Maybe they were talking to each other throughout Time and we just don't know yet how that conversation played out. I do like elephants and wavy knives though. What if Geertz's Bali had an entire subcontinent to spread across, rangdas and barongs all the way down.

Side question (aren't they all): does your Mirrorsea have amber or a similar unique trade commodity?

I don't really know where the line is between crystals (active or dead) and gem-quality rocks. One magician's focus may be another one's bling without attunement, cult preferences, etc. Some minerals are still palpably sacred to everyone who knows how to move POW points around. Others are just diamonds. And some in the middle are important to other people but we don't know why . . . "Falangian" diamonds as it were. We see this line blur in the old Pavis with the "diamond" that is also a power crystal whereas rock quartzes (known in real world fringe spirituality) don't carry a magical charge. There aren't a lot of diamonds or even gems in Pavis beyond the Raus hoard, which is ambiguously specified as "uncut." Is this a reminder to players that most Gloranthan gems aren't faceted or an in-setting acknowledgement that some diamonds are cut and others are not? Pavis is a strange city in a lot of ways. I would have expected MORE references to a crystal-working tradition there but the jewelers seem to be primarily goldsmiths and do their business off camera. Probably Mysteries of Flintnail. I really like the decadent dwarf "gem cutters." Given the symbolic role of diamond in their society this may have what we consider sexual undertones with cutters brought in to adjust the elite and paid extremely well to be discreet. And since the Diamond Mountain people reject iron, what are they really like?

What else is a life for?

Sad to say the McFeezy Trove confirms. Of course this will probably end up living with you some day.

Ironically Greg's "ex" would have been Cam's Well.

Issaries loves shellfish. Freshwater OK.

Good to see the West Marches namechecked here. People have run something similar in Balazar (the Griffin Mountain setting pack) and had a lot of fun. Maybe if we're lucky Greg's "Running A Gloranthan Campaign" from the reprint will get republished somewhere so you can see it easily.