scott-martin

On 7/8/2019 at 4:42 PM, Joerg said:

there was a period of writing in which the Galanini were as Hsunchen as the Basmoli

I hope the mouth has improved! We've had a surgical procedure here in the house since so Arroin's vows on my mind.

Very little of the early material is dated beyond contextual tags like "when I had moved to California" or the occasional "1967" so making sense of the internal textual development will require a lot more work. My working model is that Seshnela evolved in something like chronological order and so he started with Hrestol and moved forward to "Argat," refining along the way as his understanding shifted. In effect this makes just about everything there one continuous draft with occasional cross outs as names migrate. In this model, the next full revision is probably the abortive Western Sorcerers effort of the terminal 1970s, followed by the Genertela Box. The north starts earlier and in more detail.

What we have in the earliest published draft is a world where the Pendalites are children of Hykim and the Eneralites are not. Galanin the horse god comes to Ralios fully formed (there's a pencilled "son of Pure Horse" in the margin) and takes his wife from the daughters of a separate land goddess. Basmolt [sic] is better documented as son of Fralar, son of Hykim, who raped a Jorestl dryad. Eneral marries a woman with strange lineage, daughter of both a Likite [sic, possibly the masculine form] and a Tilnta. Pendal has a strange encounter that is no joke:

Once, while still little, Pendal approached a horse, who was calmly grazing in a clearing. He was fascinated by the beast, but was also hungry. He approached the beast in kindness, though, but the animal sensed his hunger and in fear kicked out and knocked Pendal senseless. He awoke and cursed the beast so that even now none of the race may ride upon a horse. He awoke in the chamber of Ifttala, daughter of Seshna, who had seen him lying senseless and taken pity on him. This soon grew into love and they were married.

The juxtaposition of the horse encounter and the introduction to the daughter of Likita is unlikely to be two unrelated fragments stitched together. At that point the lion nation (who are definitely Hykimites here, or beast people) met the horse and became something like domesticated into the land goddess complex. He comes out of the forest, rejecting some aspects of what we would consider civilization. 

The Eneralites, on the other hand, appear to be migrating from the northeast through Otkorion. In these days there's a Lake Nradar infested with hostile triolini and the daughters of Telmor were already present. By the Great Darkness they had spread to what is now Arolanit as well as down to Tanisor, only rarely combining as any kind of political entity until much later. 

There was a third people already present in Tanisor at the dawn: the Pralorites, who apparently had some form of farming and were harried by "dehori" early on before a Pendalite incursion in 38 teaches them war. The Eneralites initially take the deer people's side but ultimately betray them and the Pralorites vanish from this phase of the Book of Enemies. 

The southern Eneralites then have what to us would be an intriguing violent encounter with "Vrimak, King of the Birds" before getting to work consolidating Tanisor before the Seshnegites finally take them over in the early 260s. Northern branches seem to ultimately get behind Dari. It's vague but this part of the world is a long way from the forest now so it's just nations in turmoil. 

Dari himself is something else at this stage, a prince of the then-matriarchal land of "Halikiv" where they know the secrets of metal because they honor Ormak Promalte, son of fire. These marry into the Vustrian branch of the Eneralites and by 265 are fighting Telmorites.

The timeline then jumps to "the year 1500," after the Closing, in an era when Seshnela has lost its overseas empire but moved into Ralios and Arolanit instead while your friend Yomili is fomenting civil war. Call it 990 ST. Amusingly this page is annotated with a tiny "good dates." There are still barbarians in Ralios at this time: the Galaninae, the Dangkae (friends of Halwal and also the Tamalites) and the Srotolinas. At this point in history they're really just barbarians and not animal nations, but it's interesting that the Dangan house of Vetag has dynastic claims from both Galanin and "Ehilm Promalte" and end up absorbed into Good Snodal's Realm.

(note to self: I suspect much of this material survives in the as-yet-undocumented Gospels of Malkion, much of which is evidently concerned with interactions with beasts or beast peoples)

(blasphemy: read Froalar for Fralar throughout and solve the Solution)

6 minutes ago, albinoboo said:

The rules had this thing were Gunda and Aelwrin would fall in love

I am not familiar with this rule but I love the narrative ambition behind it.

I always assumed that Gunda's Guilt was a factor of betraying the Queen who captured her. Her god (probably her mother's valkyrie god) might enforce severe penalties for breaking oaths, even if magically enforced. I'm sure people over the years have suggested that the Queen was deep on the vampiric path of Ecstatic Communion.

1 hour ago, Joerg said:

So, in short, there was a period of writing in which the Galanini were as Hsunchen as the Basmoli, and the Pendali were just a tribe of the Basmoli who had married into the theist land goddesses. There were tribes of elemental demons like the Likiti which may or may not have been humanoid and may or may not have practiced agriculture or at least horticulture, and may or may not have absorbed some of those Kachisti who escaped Vadeli enslavement after the Nidan eruption.

I would add para-Aldryami (paraldryami) and IMG para-Mostali (who may or may not become the Laderalites) along with possibly others. I'll be your search engine and will start with the western totem nations. It might take time. But I like having this lens in place.

The first detail that comes to mind is now we have a better sense of an archaic Pelorian diaspora as well so it's possible that horse nations can be triangulated back to a central disintegration of [King Griffon]. The loose thread that will get me through it is knowing that when the Basmolites met horse people the antipathy was instant and deep. The joke is that horse doesn't thrive in Pamaltela. The wonder is Ironhoof, son of the lady.

Broken Council is rare enough!

Great question. Not a theologian but wind patterns suggest clockwise coriolis, which is only possible if the "normal" Storm Rune starts from the center and spirals out. Sikkanos in Sea Season is the obvious recalcitrant power. When the rune flips you're going in.

29 minutes ago, jajagappa said:

Ah, poor Zzabur! What is to become of him when even his nose grows a rose?!

He can finally come back out here with his brothers and sister and participate in the world. We have to forgive that monster first though and that's my personal death rune to bear. Not today. Today the grudge continues. He started it when he murdered God. We're just defending ourselves.

10 minutes ago, jajagappa said:

Brithos is Pepperland? Now if only the dwarves of Slon would lend us their Yellow Submarine...

Lost Brithos, once the unearthly paradise, lately sunk and bluely. Four Beatles, four castes, four heirloom instruments. A little nowhere man. Yellow for talar magic. Save the world. Rub noses with the blue boss who hates us and maybe he'll come out in roses.
 

Strange fish to get there though, dragon teeth.
 

2 minutes ago, jajagappa said:

blame Zz-b-r.

Somebody spoke and I went into a dream. His work on the western corner undoubtedly birthed plenty of monsters, jungian shadows, echoes, ghost others . . . some "dragons" like the first children of HYKM/MKYH, some maybe not. Wonder if the sorcerers met the pel-mre on the margin and what they would've thought.

But then there's a lot we still don't know about dragon influences in the west. Serpent kings and likitae, sure, but what else? Did the blue meanies tame "dragons?" 

Come to think of it any culture that venerated Annilla in the form recorded by Thorloss in Troll Gods associated her with dragons as well as the Great Giants. Leaping Lorion, First and Oldest. 

 

2 hours ago, davecake said:

Though we have several reptilian mysteries in Pamaltela to consider:

Adding to list

• Who is Noruma really? 
• How does his/her shamanic system differ from the tantra of Kendamalar and other Pamaltelan magic?
• Who [were] the Amuron or Horned Snake People? [spell it backward or "left handed," sure, but then what?]
• Is the Hydra of Dragon Pass native to the southern continent?
• Who or what is the Flame Dragon Argrath calls from the second direction? Does Hunralki bring it?
• Are there Pamaltelan dinosaurs even in Sandy's lost world?
• Dinosaur hsunchen in Slon. How, why, who, huh?

6 hours ago, PhilHibbs said:

"Moving liquid" is not always "running water".

It's interesting, the mythic ecology of Gloranthan vampires and "running water" revolves around Styx, which is both first "river" and also the surface tension between hell and the later creation. The hatred of Styx ensures that Vivamort can't go home again easy. (He didn't mind, at least at first.) The inheritance of rivers is what unhinges his progeny. 

And of course rivers wash the world down the Whirlpool to be recycled. Waters flowing up on the land don't obey that principle, especially if the drain has been plugged and they have no place left to dump their collective poison. In that model, by the time the Flood gets to Delecti, it's unlikely to mess his people up unless specially sanctified in some way. On the other hand, if and when the plug finally melts and the waters rush back down to the heart of the world, some of them will push back through the Marsh and he could be in trouble.

"Vampires may cross or live in swamps and marshes with impunity," with many such wetlands feeling the taint of chaos and/or evil. We don't know a lot about Sea Chaos. One day we'll learn.

The subject of Earth hatred for vampires is also interesting. Cults of Terror gives Ty Kora Tek gravediggers holy shovels that do aggravated damage. Presumably that would be copper. But in general the vampire subsists by perverting Earth and infecting the fertile dirt itself with stasis and chaos.

The wooden nature of the stake is not explained in RuneQuest terms but there may be a hidden Aldrya betrayal here, or a ghost shadow of the murder of Flamal. This may also be a mask of the passion of Arroin or vice versa.

59 minutes ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

I suspect there is at least a *little* "familiarity bias" in this thread. Delecti is a kind of fan-favorite villain isn't he? Located in one of the most-detailed parts of Glorantha? With one of the longest histories of publication? So there's a tendency to overrate the importance/ability of those kinds of characters.

The Lord of the Marsh also has survivor bias on his side in that nobody's managed to kill him in at least 500 years, literally a third of the age of the world as we know it. Gods wink out of existence all the time. This particular magician has resisted all efforts so far, but then we can say that about Batman or me as well . . . or any player character who goes on to fight tomorrow. We all outlived Genert and that's a win.

One earmark of a god is that the remains retain something like independent "life" even after the larger entity has been lethally interrupted and even dismembered. You can recombine the chunks.

Silver Feet in Fronela, for example, was "murdered" but the best the conspiracy could really do was sever the connections between his mystic portions for a few generations, alienating peoples and lands from one another in the process. Arguably he is still dead but the connections were reestablished so the gap he left behind is filled. The band plays on.

The conspiracy also had direct otherworld support in the form of Altinela and its love. Motivate a few luatha, for example, to hit the Marsh and Delecti goes away like the smear he always was. Of course unintended consequences being what they are, a few motivated luatha are probably equally likely to expand the Marsh under the equivalent of new management so you'd need to really know what you want before sending the emissaries.

9 hours ago, Ochoa said:

I may end forced to redraw them for table use

I wonder if the art direction team at Chaosium would like to see those one of these days. No pressure or anything!

3 hours ago, Ian Absentia said:

!i!

Love it. My long rune list font deinstalled itself, am I looking at the Bat here?

23 minutes ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

from a design perspective

One angle is that I suspect they've taken on "converts" historically . . . both individuals and even whole societies . . . and sometimes the process just doesn't take. This would be a way to bring outsiders in, get a taste of their sad lifestyle and then for whatever reason get out again with a tale to tell. At some stage these would-be dwarves can be put to work as contractors or bounty hunters. It's a good test of their acculturation (maybe some big brain in the EL caste is trying to engineer human-dwarf hybrids as a more efficient exploit of ambient resources) and besides, it's not like they're all that good at anything else.

Of course Glorantha having the bias it does, 93% of these would-be "half dwarves" probably end up failing, going rogue, defecting, backsliding toward meat behaviors. It happens and the real dwarves never forget. But necessity or some other reason keeps them trying.

24 minutes ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

They seem to be intentionally created as an NPC race, and that makes me sad, as someone who loves the cliched Tolkienesque drinker-brawler-miner stereotype. 

Even if Greg Himself "disliked the Mostali," an enterprising heroquester should be able to get in there and loosen them up. The mere fact that we know about their historical heresies suggests that a much more diversified experience is possible even though propaganda out of Nida and/or Slon argues against it in the here and now. The dwarves are not necessarily united. The Hero Wars are for them too, even if those that emerge need to sacrifice just about everything that has supported them in the past.

39 minutes ago, Joerg said:

I wonder whether Greg was into Old English linguistics at that time

It's a great question. While I'm no expert in either folk Scandinavian or "Sartarite" magical social vocabulary it seems to evolve out of his sense of the bygth / thing / wapentake complex, only invested with something like independent operation. Since then, of course, the concept has developed within fandom over the years.

Early on he would have simply called the tutelary / patron an "advisory spirit" that can play a role in enterprises as well as private life. Harald Hardrada, for example, was the "advisory spirit" of Wyrd magazine while Corporal Zen looked out for the Chaosium. For all I know there's a word like "wyrd" in the terminology that embraces this as well as the totemic aspects.

Coincidentally recent archival discoveries have me reconsidering the details of his intellectual timeline . . . he was apparently still engaged with the Eddas in the '90s so there might be something in there feeding into King of Sartar. His immersion in the world of Burning Man "camp" culture could also have been a factor.

EDIT oh what I WANTED to say was that Malkionite City is amazing

19 hours ago, Bill the barbarian said:

What are Lares?

In Peloria I was always fond of the notion that magically important families have collective relationships with daimones as "guardian angels" and intercessors. You can get adopted into the bond. One exciting thing that drops out of this is that some of these angels would be classic sky entities (certamites / arrazites) while others might have archaic forest characteristics (shannass/ae), relieving a little pressure on the canon there. You can tell where a family ultimately came from by interviewing the daimon.

In general the vestiges of suppressed religions persist at the wyter level, for what that's worth.

On 6/7/2019 at 11:08 AM, Sir_Godspeed said:

Are there any known specific terms for these in cultures beside the Orlanthi?

Love it. "City God" does a lot of work in this collective effervescence context and the category might've been developed by some Jrustelan Weber or Durkheim back in their glory days.

In the West as it likes to represent itself, the caste types carry a lot of this collective magic, only so dilute that most people only interact with stories of Horal, for example, in the most abstract contexts. Most of the Founders who support the ancestral system of inheritance and the division of labor are either dead or alienated from everyday life. Intermediate ancestors have moved on. A lot of symbol-making energy (POW) is also invested in the authority of the local talars, the Prophet and ultimately the Creator, but by that point we're a little far from the clan wyter in terms of scale. 

To recover the magical compensations of the wyter, Westerners have historically developed various forms of intentional community-forming ritual and praxis: saint cults, magical schools, beast societies, knightly fellowships, craft leagues, city founders, trade unions, merchant networks, "guilds." You aren't necessarily born into these corporate entities, although it happens. Magical specialists may know how to interact with the mechanisms directly and deliberately, killing a god with silver feet, for example, or reintegrating the landscape as the ban recedes . . . after all, the Hero Wars Are Everywhere. 

Because I'm lazy my Western experimental theoreticians call these entities "egregora" but I can't speak for anyone else. You could just as easily name and represent them as "unicorns," which is interesting given previous interpretations of that magical animal as a sorcerous entity. (It also casts yet another light on Ralzakark.) I would like that but doubt it stretches far enough.

12 minutes ago, Joerg said:

The continued duck presence in Apple Lane is quite exceptional for a place of that size. (They might have a "monkeys on Gibraltar" problem there...)

Baited! My working hypothesis remains in place: old Gringle runs "Apple Lane" less as a working trading post (obviously) and more of a demonstration of a certain esoteric Weltanschauung, a microcosmic Pavis or other grand project. As such every monkey is curated or at least magically significant and every duck may be the one Gonn Orta wants.

On the other hand half the time I think Gringle and Quackjohn are at least de facto life partners so what do I know. That's between them. But may be relevant to this thread . . . on the original topic I think if a Vingan wants a baby there are ways. If she doesn't, there are ways.

On 5/24/2019 at 10:46 AM, jeffjerwin said:

a 'person' in Heort's Laws includes nonhuman persons (and there are several sentient peoples in Glorantha with these genders naturally) so long as they belong to Heortling culture and religion.

I always figured this made a space for the dragonewts as either simultaneous or serial hermaphrodites. A case can also be made for "bachelor" newtlings as neutrals if they had a prominent role within IFWW at the Dawn Age. Gold Wheel Dancers may never have been important numerically but I can think of ritual contexts where their "gender" classification would need to be spelled out within a mostly mammal society. "Mostalite" might also have functioned as a gender and/or sex at various points, especially early on when the world was new. They might've been the archetypal "neutrals" before their embarrassing secret got out.

In terms of desire and how it's expressed this is where things like extrapolating from Best Friend rules in WBRM can become super interesting. 

22 minutes ago, Joerg said:

why did he grow up among the Orlmarth and in those many places?

The "way with words" and cascade of sometimes factually incorrect or simply extraneous detail always makes me suspect this is a cipher document where the key has been lost. Of course this doesn't preclude any of the anecdotes from having at least symbolic importance . . . his itinerant and often fatherless boyhood feels authentic for an obscure prophetic figure, maybe one raised by a religiously atavistic mother or wanting to attribute magical significance to her life.

Blue may be a Matthias Stormberger figure. Which again doesn't preclude historical truth but forces us to take a slightly more cautious approach.

For all I know the entire Minaryth/a/ius complex is a complicated steganographic hoax. Who, what or where is Estkepo really? 

13 minutes ago, Bill the barbarian said:

I can see that, it seemed to be quite shamanistic,

There's a fanzine review he did around the era when WBRM was germinating that demonstrates his admittedly conflicted engagement with its totemic symbolism. Somebody remind me if I don't track it down when the world slows a little.

6 minutes ago, 7Tigers said:

Jessica Salmonson - Tomoe Gozen series

Huge shout out to JAS. Friend Of Greg.

One fiction title that doesn't come up much is Richard Adams' Shardik. Apparently made a big impression.

Lanbril in particular has a deep relationship to Man Rune in terms of his ambition. You don't need spirits, you don't need gods. Little people can take what they need. I think this is perfect and will be very interesting.

1 hour ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

The question "thea-sophists" of the Theyalan Earth Tradition are going to disagree vehemently on, probably, is what exactly the deeper nature of the The Goddess is, and what the limits of The Goddess is. This is an area very fertile for some great plot lines, where players are probably free to declare this or that as incorrect or correct. 

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