scott-martin

9 minutes ago, Joerg said:

Korang's spear wasn't iron, but sharper than iron, able to cut through an adamantium helmet.

The only reference to "Lodrilela" in the Guide, incidentally, is in the provenance of Ironbreaker.

19 minutes ago, jeffjerwin said:

Hard Earth = Stone = Mostal.

Who the heck was Mostal's dead brother Stone and why is there a Stability Rune anyway?

6 minutes ago, jeffjerwin said:

In the Caverns, a statue of Babeester Gor is described as made of copper with iron (!) armor over her.

This is extraordinary because Sky River Titan and Hard Earth are in love and Hard Earth gets a male pronoun.

Also the volcanic glass.

14 minutes ago, JonL said:

I joke, but also think this is legitimately a feature-not-a-bug. "Our nation has lost 6/7 of it's magic. Most of us still have ours though. Clearly, the right thing to do is draw as much of the nastiness down upon ourselves as possible, because every monster we fight is one we've spared someone else having to face while they're down." When the night is long and full of terrors, they decide to become human bug-zappers.

Shine on, guys!

13 minutes ago, daskindt said:

Clearly, we can’t change what Jeff is writing for the upcoming RuneQuest: Glorantha materials, but they are obviously deviating from the materials that have been published in the last couple decades. But there are increasingly two different Gloranthas emerging on this point: 1) HeroQuest Glorantha where both Elmal and Yelmalio exist and there is a rich Elmal mythology and culture which includes a hostile schism between the cults, and 2) RuneQuest Glorantha where only Yelmalio exists in a meaningful way and Elmal is a quaint name of a sub-cult of Yelmalio that is functionally identical whose contrary myths are being forgotton or ignored.

I wouldn't be surprised if Elmal changed . . . a lot . . . when Orlanth was dead and the old bonds were tested. And he hasn't finished changing yet. The story of those upheavals will finally give the solar brothers the epic they've always deserved. Who keeps the faith, who discovers new Truths, who throws it all away. 

Great WF article for someone or the right team!

47 minutes ago, jajagappa said:

I agree, and I also think the discussion in this thread emphasizes that.  This religious strife creates an interesting and different tension in-game, and I think the God Learner viewing loses something interesting in both myth and MGF.

The most successful questers will enforce their vision on the way the cult is expressed in the world. Love an Elmal, fight for that Elmal. Love a Yelmalio or some other little sun, fight for that god. MGF. Delve into his mysteries and promote a compelling argument. This cult in particular gives us plenty of examples of how willpower, courage, luck and insight can change history and maybe even canon here in the Hero Wars Era. While you're at it, go ahead and win him back his Fire, how miraculous and wonderful would that be?

5 minutes ago, jeffjerwin said:

Lake Oronin was formerly Mount Fire, a volcano. Turos, who dwelt there, was the 'inside portion' of ViSaruDaran, who is Veskarthan/Lodril.

There's our Pelorian Lodril, his mountain drowned! I guess either they remember that in Dara Happa or his children carried the lesson into town.

15 minutes ago, jajagappa said:

The Vithelans for one.  Vith=Aether.  Then all the Luxites - all the children of the Sky Dome who filled the heavens with light (or bathed and lived in the light of Aether).

I love the look to the east. The initial follow-up questions were "sure, but where was he called Aether and who in Glorantha needed to make that equation?" The first answer is pretty easy after all: Primolt is already present in Plentonius, or rather always already absent. He's the empty circle we now call Sky Rune or Light.

Bringing in the Luxites is interesting because I've often daydreamed about a rich Pelorian angelology with elaborate grimoires, magicians cloistered in unroofed towers, ecstatic contacts and so on. (The marriage of Lhankor may preserve some trace of this.) Whatever the Luxites believe, we probably know it by way of these angelic conversations. There may be a rich body of inspired poetic literature waiting to discover . . . the Brown Man himself may have been familiar with it.

34 minutes ago, jajagappa said:

But the fact is that the Fire did go Low and entered the Earth.  Lodril is there, in the Earth.  You either accept the reality and justify rulership over him by the Purity of the Light, or sever kinship with Fire/Lodril which you probably don't want to do.

The formula Plentonius knew is that Fire is Fire and Earth is not, so I think the tension you describe is not easy for Dara Happans to negotiate. After all Peloria doesn't seem to be volcanically active and so direct evidence of Fire In Earth would be limited, maybe even received or metaphorical compared to what they know to be true in places like Caladraland and the depths of the Obsidian Plateau. Lodril's fire is tantric (obscene), infernal (ruler of hell) or both.

Even Lodril has no mother. No good Dara Happan has found a compelling reason to give Aether a wife. Umath has a mother. Whoever his father was had a wife.

Given the evolving understanding of Dendara and Gorgorma as brides from the east it's interesting that Lodril is the one who "recommends" Dendara and introduces monogamy. If I didn't know better I'd almost wonder if Lodril and his people were themselves introduced into the mythology to fill a gap created by some other figure moving or to explain demographic changes like the absorption of Pelandans into the urban underclass. That's an old debate but even as a prodigal son (departing and then coming back in a subservient role) I wonder which feats officially attributed to him really belong to someone else, and vice versa.

17 minutes ago, Tindalos said:

The Esiti and the Enerali Nine Great Gods are/were their culture's equivalent of the cosmic court are also worshipped. (Or were in much of the Nine Great Gods case)

GREAT point! (All out of reacts.)

The extinct Feldichi culture is another hot prospect. The Dorastor book opens with the story I'd forgotten about how Pela and Genert were married, which suggests a previously under-examined interaction between the Entekosiad people and those who mourn the Earth King in the wastes or at least a migration. 

It's an interesting story because it's built around another of those stutters or "rhymes" that in our world tend to preserve multiple fragmentary versions of a text side by side. Pela marries. We know from elsewhere that her husband dies. A mythic generation later, Dorasta marries. He dies. Nobody will tell us who he was. History repeating? Or the same story with the names shuffled? There are a lot of taboos around Dorasta. Mysteries.

And Dorasta's son was another of those poisoned giants like Engizi. Are they found everywhere or only around certain types of sites? What do we know about the Korang culture ("city of slaves") and the relationship between Engizi and his spear-wielding earth champion lover? Does this help move anything forward?

 

4 hours ago, Joerg said:

After all is said and done, the Puppeteers aren't primary producers (though possibly have a side line of hunting and gathering to make ends meet), and need to perform for people able to feed them. Illusionary food will satisfy hunger, but not energy needs.

Hunting and waltzing at least. But I hear you . . . I always thought they simply drifted with the crowd but the recent notes on their persistence after the Kill raise interesting questions. Would not be surprised to see them early in the ruins to reclaim the easy magic.

The 13th Age writeup contains a few pregnant details. Apparently the Troupe (or its reputation at least) makes it up to Glamour, where presumably they have their pick of the world's illusions but the Red Emperor himself is occasionally a fan. And as for Donandar, "minor god who was formerly in the Puppeteer Troupe but left to try to find a way to deal with Chaos."

6 hours ago, Joerg said:

The elements of the Celestial Court never received direct worship.

I used to believe that but the density of Power entities in that "Ginijji civilization" reopened the file. Do we see that anywhere else? Should we see that in future pre-Dawn ruins now that the high-resolution "dungeon" style is ascendent again, or is this indeed something relatively limited to this arc of Genertela? In the former scenario, OK. The Celestial Court living abstractly in their Spike at the axis of the world is a universal but largely inaccessible myth. 

But the latter scenario is also interesting because it resolves other questions. Why do the Powers interact directly with certain elemental tribes (separating Asrelia from Umath or fathering mountains) and not others (no group of eight on the Wall but sometimes an octad )? Why is the formation of the Court in two distinct phases, with the Powers already set up in their binaries before Dame Darkness is introduced and in the most archaic versions we have ("from Tarsh," WF 7) taking an active role midwiving the elemental sequence? To me this suggests a slightly imperfect fusion of initially separated texts. Somebody's oldest memories capture a time when not even Darkness received direct worship and then their world changed. At Hrelar Amali, for example, the temples to Earth and Darkness (at least) needed to be added to the existing complex. Maybe other people started out within the elemental system and were introduced to the Powers at a specific moment that we can triangulate from the stories.

And we know that for the people of the southern Genertelan coast the Court lived to the south, in a land that no longer exists and maybe never did in a normal sense. (Probably not within History.) Where did they look from Hrelar Amali to see the ghost of the sacred mountain? (Did they even have a sacred mountain? is this "Top of the World?") Did the Genertites look west to the Tumulus and mysterious Kerofinela looming in the distance, or elsewhere? Did the people who built the Wall dream of mountains or did they build towers and think they were at the center of the world all along?

Was the original Emperor actually some lord of prehistoric Esrolia lost under the tides or preserved in fragmentary glory in the Ty Kora catacombs? 

[a whole lot more, just wedging the first crampon up the cliff]

7 hours ago, Joerg said:

Fire always was something to be stolen.

Yelmalio, Lodril. Savage "trolls" are the ones who quest for fire and only achieve it at specific moments. On the other hand the stealable gift of darkness is death.

Zorak steals fire. Argan steals fire. Xiola, as I recall, is relevant in the early Council of Friends but recedes to make way for other cults.

For a long time I've been fascinated by the (perhaps accidental) implication in the Broken Council Guidebook that the reason the Council Broke and the trolls rejected the project was because Dara Happa insisted that the new god would be a bright god that the dark could not accept. This is the central conflict in that place at that phase: not so much sky versus storm or anything else, but simple Day and Night. 

Elves have no darkness except for the mushroom people. Early Peloria had forests but the "civilized" IFWW trolls left it alone. The death of Flamal is when Ernalda and Xentha (Umbar?) come to Mrelar Amali. Eurmal kills Flamal, standing in for death who comes out of darkness. Is Eurmal a dark god? Is [H]uma[k]t[h]?

Lo-metal. Lo-dwarves. What happened to the Lodrilites? Did southern Lodril vanish (or get deported) except in volcanic strongholds? Was his other name Umath? Did northern Lodril vanish into the mountains and undifferentiated urban mob? Why are there so few records of vanished "dwarf" cultures? Who taught humanity the secrets of metal? Why is the third eye Blue, really?

7 hours ago, Joerg said:

Sramak's River

Why is Sea so estranged from the elemental cycle that consumes central Genertelan masculinity in particular? Who is Heler, really? Who is Mastakos, really? Is the watery Husband Protector still "Magasta?"

Malkion was a blue god like his most infamous son. Remember them in their origins, on the verge of an endless sea, tutored by triolini who were their cousins. 

"Sramak" was entrenched at Hrelar Amali before the Seshnegi arrived. Blue people in their glacier lakes, dreaming of reunion with the sea.

Air as child of land and sky. Moon as child of dark and sea. The lunar obsession with achieving a warm water port.

8 hours ago, Joerg said:

the rebellion of Brightface

Does a Monster Man ever win and it's just that the records are unspeakable? Is that Yelm's secret, that he was just a Lodril once on the rise to Dayzatar? No shame there, but he thinks it is.

What is the difference between Yelmalio the Youth and Yelmalio the Father? Do they even recognize a differentiation between the two family roles? (Not as easy a question as it might initially appear.) Was there ever a Yelmalio Rex? Now do Elmal.

8 hours ago, Joerg said:

The Lightbringer religions externalized Chaos.

I'm no longer sure. I know I Fought and We Won and I know the sun is alive again. Harmast and Arkat acting together write a hard stop on that era, whatever Loko  and company left behind. But like the visible seam in the Court between an eight- (or nine-) member Power pantheon and the separate elemental cycle, the weird insistence on "two devils, one moral and one not" never really added up to me. It reads like a syncretic situation, one civilization's memory of the Greater Darkness (again, dark even though the trolls all loudly insist that they are big chaos fighters, you betcha) reconciled with another that doesn't quite fit. 

What we know is that Arkat didn't bring the Thed story when he landed. He found it here. He might've had other strange stories about Malkion betrayed by his on begotten son but those stories didn't really translate and were soon left behind when he went native . . . and at home those stories of Why There Is Evil and How The World Fell have been effaced as profoundly unflattering to someone. 


 

51 minutes ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

sons of Aether. Yelm possibly by parthenogenesis (ie. Yelmic/DH emanationism) and Umath by interaction with Gata, making them sorta half-brothers. Which makes Yelm the uncle of Orlanth, in absolute genealogical terms, though not necessarily in an acknowledged or socially relevant manner.

Love this. (I am all out of reacts for the day but will come back.)

I wonder who in Glorantha originally worshipped Aether and claimed mythic priority over both the Emperor and "Rebellus Terminus." It's hard to have it both ways unless you've found a way to mitigate the sun/storm rivalry . . . if you're invested in solar purity there's no compelling reason to proclaim Primal Fire got low and down with earth and woman at all, and on the storm side I don't see a lot of incentive to tell the tale either. Since Yelm already has a disorderly little brother it's interesting to contemplate how they might've told it once among the Lodrilites back when there was a Lodrilela. They might actually be the ones who preserve the Dayzatar story where older brother abstracts himself right out of the big picture and leaves us down here with all the good things the world has to offer.

But I'm not remembering a story of how Lodril successfully revolted against older brother or a culture who would tell it. The Umath story comes closest and in that one he never gets his bride. All his sons are bastards and all her daughters are nebulous. Call him Lodril or Turim or Turos or whoever, little brother who knows his place gets a (V)oria. 

If I didn't know to avoid saying crazy things I'd consider whether Umath is another name for what turned the gold sky blue. Call him a dragon or primal water (mysteriously absent from the oedipal drama) or the crippled (castrated) Mastakos, his lust cracked the world. Little Brother Blue conquers the sky and pushes Oldest Brother beyond the world. Sometimes he wins and sometimes he loses. Little Brother Lo falls from heaven and is found by trolls and other riff raff. 

In the generations and cultures where Little Brother Blue wins he kills the sun. 

Was it Tolat who's sometimes red and sometimes blue? 

EDIT FOR YOUR EDIT: Personally I still don't know much about how non-Lightbringer religions account for the irruption of chaos. In Dara Happa it seems to be about insubordination, possibly motivated in part by lust but generally a symptom of cosmic degeneration -- perfection is unsustainable, stick around things will get worse. For the people where Little Brother Blue won, lust is the root cause. Other Brother refused to take no for an answer and that was sin. Maybe the archaic Elmaloids focus on the violence as ultimate transgression and you ultimately get rites like Hill of Gold where everybody takes their best shot. Among the Malkionites, their story is suppressed.

8 minutes ago, jeffjerwin said:

Duke = Latin 'warlord' = hence probably the same title, just translated differently?

Oh right, Kargan "Tor." But far be it from me to brake your stride or blur your vision. Focus is critical!

I went back to the map to see if there might be anything like a tour cycle and the original WBRM setup direction ("each of the Ruins except the Upland Marsh and also on the capitals") reveals a little chatter and maybe a fresh signal. Do we know why Furthest and Boldhome had to be built where they were in order to satisfy the puppet path hypothesis?

11 minutes ago, jeffjerwin said:

Sorana Tor.

She is a magnificent hot mess now. Do we know any other "Tors" besides Kyger (a stone outcropping or "lith") Lhy Tor? Either way I've been stealing minutes away from the office this week trying to figure out what happened to Arim's family, who had a personal relationship with earthshakers before their doom apparently scattered some north of the Kill. Arim, Aram, who's to say. 

The Duke is a controversial figure with his almost anti-canonical archaic title only seen now in places like the far West and the Blue Moon Plateau of all places. 

3 hours ago, Joerg said:

I suppose that Lodik started out as the pure flame of above, but then succumbed to earthy desire ending up as the fiery mountain father we all know. Still, there appears to be a different father/grandfather for Humat/Erulat, probably Zrethus, the blue sky (passing on the color blue to the storm god).

Maybe the Blue Dragon fathered "Humat" during the invasion of the sky. After all, he is a blue god and falling water fertilizes the parched earth.

Your developmental language is extremely interesting here. If the solar god progresses or regresses through initiatory stages (much like the goddess evolves from daughter to grandmother role) the classic Yelm-the-Youth through Yelm-the-Sage trajectory finds a home somewhere in Glorantha, even if that isn't in Hero Wars era Dara Happa. One of the archetypal conflicts for that people would then be whether the natural direction goes "up" from lowest/youngest (Yelm the Youth, maybe a Yelmalio figure or someone we don't know much about yet) through Lodril toward Dayzatar or "down" from highest/purest (Aethyr devolving to dirty old Lo).

You've also opened another of my eyes in terms of the LBQ being a journey across suns in search of the imperial one he killed. Eventually at the edge of the world there's no place left to keep searching except death itself. 

At one point storm and sun may have been brothers. We know they were romantic rivals. In that scenario it's an ur-Elmal who is murdered and restored through guilt . . . and the good news of his return is what the Light Bringers carried, back in the days when the storm brother truly felt sorry and then grateful.

16 minutes ago, jeffjerwin said:

Donandar defeated Kyger Litor

I guess that's a better way to frame it: how exactly did the Troupe itself persist within Dragon Pass through the Inhuman Occupation except through, among other strategies, being trolls? It beats the Delecti experience.

17 minutes ago, jeffjerwin said:

Puppeteers are performing a myth where the two lovers are separated by the Bright Emperor and the Green Dragon is about to ambush him

"Behind you!" Love it. I always thought the persistence of trolls within the Troupe was a little mysterious (other than as a framework for introducing shadow puppetry) but once again this thread outperforms. 

I need to digest a lot of this business as it relates to archaic "lowland storms," wife betrayal and so on. You're hot! 

5 hours ago, jeffjerwin said:

the Indigo Mountains are volcanic, like Empty Mountain. They are also riddled with caves.

The "Umath" Cave in active use within the Redstone Caverns was always a little enigmatic for me at least. 

2 hours ago, jajagappa said:

PelOria

Heck, GlorOranor

58 minutes ago, jeffjerwin said:

Turim the Giant

Tur-- what did you say his name was again, that foreign god who took our Oria?

48 minutes ago, jeffjerwin said:

Maran[a] as the girl-dancer

Top post of the season. Much of the exegesis of the Troupe's WBRM description focused on the identity of the "dainty princess" when we should've spent some time trying to find the "pig sty" she walked across on the way to liberation. Dancing girl, shaking earth, pig goddess. And from there it's just a stroll to the land where every goose girl is really a swan in disguise, or can be. 

48 minutes ago, jeffjerwin said:

Ora / [V]Oria

Even more exciting!

25 minutes ago, Ian Cooper said:

WBRM Glorantha is post Greg's discovery of fantasy, and co-evolving with gaming, not just a place for invented mythology.

This is huge. If RPG as a generative framework for fantasy hadn't come along, Greg would've had to invent something like it drawing on his other references. And the process naturally creates additional complexity that better emulates fact-based history -- old theories bend to accommodate new facts, new theories spawn additional research, etc. Facts are discovered in play all the time, especially the LARPs and next-generation board games.

11 hours ago, MHanretty said:

Not sure I can be of any help (I don't have any training in literary analysis or practical knowledge of relevant fields like comparative mythology and archaeology) but would certainly like to see more of what you're attempting. Is this project of yours completely fan-sourced or is Chaosium involved in some way? 

You cracked Pavic, for all we can tell you're the actual David Starling. But seriously, the experience of being new to "our hobby" and encountering it from this POV is the most valuable thing. While I don't see Chaosium getting involved here (they're incredibly busy and it blurs the hard work of canon in unpredictable ways), you never know . . . it's good marketing for King of Sartar as postmodern novel beyond mere game fiction tie-in. Good to cement Greg's achievement while he can still correct us when we're wrong + recall buried leads.

6 hours ago, Ian Cooper said:

My recollection is that the Lunar Empire, the Orlanthi and Dragon Pass pretty much don't exist prior to WBRM and were 'created' as background for that game. Is that your understanding, that although it might have drawn on some elements of his earlier writing, the genesis of the material was pretty much the background for that game?

That's my understanding too. While the archives can always disgorge something shocking that Greg didn't remember or couldn't find, from his recollection, the Hero Wars world was initially an effort to break away from the West and do something ab novo. Later bits of the old world crept back around the edges.

To me at least this is incredibly liberating because we can observe the development of everything from the game without much fear of obstruction from archaic Western sources that no longer exist much less interact perfectly with the world we have now. As far as I can tell just about everything that survives from the 1975-8 era made it out in the form of various Encyclopedia Glorantha drafts, etc. We Know Everything about the Red Goddess and Orlanth. Answering the remaining questions is up to us + our hobby.

7 hours ago, MHanretty said:

King of Sartar

Isn't it badass?😍

2 minutes ago, Joerg said:

Halwal

I know you love his career! Just for you I found a thing in the "Book of Enemies" under the larger heading of the Vetagi. This is set in a somewhat apocalyptic phase well removed from most of the other material from this era (as you know the Seshnela Kings List ends with Valothir in our ST 194) but the Closing is already a factor as the decline and then loss of overseas markets turns the Seshnegites toward inland conquests:

In 3892 [sic] Halwal the wizard settled in the lands of the Danga. He helped the tribe repel the mounted invaders from Galanin, defeating them. He then persuaded the tribes of the area to unite, and the did so. They then began a campaign to unite all of Ralios. In 3983 the united tribes met the Seshnegians in battle, driving them away and killing the king. The fighting continued under the next king, and the next king, Hisvok, launched a mighty campaign to crush the upstarts. Yomili the sorcerer accompanied the army and the two forces met on the plains of Elera. The wizards confronted each other and had both disappeared by the end of the battle.

And elsewhere, under a different dating system where the Luatha arrive in "1560":

The first nation to suffer from the expansion of the Galaninae was the nation of the Dangkae . . . the king, Vetag, had little control over his subjects even with the help of the exiled Seshnegi sorcerer Halwal [whose] plans of unifying the nations of Ralios into a single unified body of warriors without any people being dominant seemed about to be hopelessly destroyed. Unexpectedly ["1500"] he received help from the race of Tamali who had just been driven from their underground sanctuaries centering on the city of Pasos in Seshneg. The king Xem offered his assistance to his friend Halwal and the Tamali swooped upon the Galaninae encampment during the night, nearly destroying it.

A period of consolidation follows but by "1517" Halwal is actively engaged in averting civil war tearing the nascent "Kingdom of Ralios" apart. Then in "1536" the 19-year-old Queen Ingye attacks the Seshnegi:

For the first time Halwal marched to battle with the army at the head of the court magicians and priests. The armies of Seshneg and Ralios met outside the city of Basmol, and the fighting lasted from dawn until dusk when Halwal and Yomili came face to face. Ignoring their armies the sorcerers began a duel which lasted until late at night when all Power suddenly stopped from both the magicians. Their fate was unknown.

In terms of what caused the Closing, there are probably detailed notes from the era but I don't recall a reference to God Learners per se before WF 5, by which point several points of "Book of Enemies / Book of Foreigners" era geography confidently share the map with Peloria and Prax. There are apparently two contemporary pages on "The Jrustela" in the archive but I haven't seen them. That said, there's clearly a sense of "God Learners" before 1978 because as he says at the time their monomythology is already in the background for how he approaches the material.

Maybe it's worth something like a "Friends of David Starling" (KOS in joke) working group to comb the documents and plumb the origins of things in the pre-1978 timeline. I suspect it would parallel much of Greg's more recent effort to reconcile variant, fragmentary and often contradictory texts to uncover a synoptic Glorantha. On the other hand Chaosium Official is already doing this!