scott-martin

All these are good options for debate. Technically the extinct hreekeen (whale people) occupy an ambivalent position in post-HW canon much like the puma people. The waertagi may well have taken a leading role in their slaughter and then taken the conveniently open place.

I like the Masks of Gbaji Hypothesis but formally Ghani has been with us since Wyrms Footprints 4 . . . when Kana Poor was still known as "Kara-polor," before his name was amended for the Redline History. 

5 minutes ago, Dogboy said:

NB: It has to be pointed out that all of the Mostali depicted in this chapter are "heretics". Every. Single. One.

(Out of likes.) For me this is always the horror and the comfort of their civilization. At the end of the day, a whole bunch of dwarves -- maybe a majority, maybe leadership in one or more colonies, maybe everyone -- may turn out to be harboring some secret heresy in their fluid exchange units, hidden from the others. Would love to run a dwarf game some day on a Paranoia model. Everyone starts with a hobby, a heresy and for all I know a mutant power that they can never reveal for fear of extreme correction.

15 hours ago, Joerg said:

We are presented the eight planetary sons, Gods Wall 1.3 to 1.10.

How extraordinary it would be if this were an original document of the archaic celestial Yuthuban pantheon revealing divergences from the Raiba-centric system of the Wall. This may be the moment when relatively isolated "planets" were forced together above while down below their shadows ("cities") did likewise. (All out of likes for the day.)

All out of likes for the day again but yeah, the Man teaches that if you push the moment of incarnation -- this particular die roll, the rose of mysterious union, luck or death -- with enough conviction anyone can win all the money and give it back simultaneously. The awed silence in Casino Town. Real talars get it.

1 minute ago, Jeff said:

Who is to say that Casino Town isn't a repurposed prayer wheel? Punters place bets on what the combination generated by the wheel will be. That Belintar could see the pattern and successfully make a complete prediction says far more about him.

Love it. A lot we don't know about those people or why the Machine had to be built there on that wildly indefensible edge of empire.

May be a little far afield but as long as I insist that the Man Who Came In From The Sea used a different exploit (maybe something more like Run Lola Run instead of the brute force algo that mass-produces bladesharp matrices) I don't age as fast or trigger the storm bulls. 

I think I see a star going out, as it were. Sorry, buserians. 

Love it . . . no intent to jump on the physical chemistry model at all but most of my gods are clearly talking gods. I wouldn't be surprised if one of Zistor's rightfully unsung "achievements" was breaking the bank at Casino Town (runic monte carlo simulation / betting algorithms) . . . play the moment when all the rune wheels come up lucky, infinite payout. A different cheat from what Belintar would later pull off.

1 hour ago, Atgxtg said:

building blocks

Not to get overly uh literal but in this uh context I tend to think of the runes as the equivalent of a cosmic alphabet, semiotic characters that a clever person can interpret, arrange and rearrange to read and write reality. We all have a combination of runes in our personal "signature," as it were, a kind of true name. Runes in common open up cabbalistic correspondences for magicians to exploit. The great gods are themselves the stories around the letters. But then again, I spent a lot of time in the postmodern '80s.

I've always loved the notion that there's a vast unpublished epic around mer interactions with the West in particular, maybe tutelary relationships broadly similar to what other nascent human cultures achieved early on with the children of wood, stone and dark. Cosmology notwithstanding, that might be why they get "elder" status here. (And why Malkion is sometimes a wet god.) 

In that light, one thing that's interesting is that each of the major surviving kindreds has a specific set of coastal cultures it could have tutored in its specific spin on the Way of the Sea. The ouori, for example, range from the Brown Sea up the Banthe and then northwest into the Neliomi, so these are the people the ancient Brithini would have met on their shores -- the ludoch prefer warmer waters and at least in modern times the malasp are limited to the region south of the Banthe. Ludoch contacts would have influenced cultures across southern Genertela (including Teshnos), the islands (including Vith and Teleos) and around as far as the lands around the Loral Sea. Only the zabdamar thrive in the Kahar so that's the way the archaic Kralorelans negotiated their initial sea influences . . . and even the God Learners conceded that the zabdamar are weird.

In general the multiplication of aquatic races in RPG of this vintage seems due to the popularity of the Aquaman comic around that time, where every trench seemed to have its own mutant Atlantean successor civilization -- domed, open, helmeted, water-breathing, advanced, primitive to meet the needs of the unfolding story. By the time it gets to Steve Marsh who invented the locathah and the malasp-esque sahuagin in D&D to vary the standard merman/maid, for example, it's already assumed that you're going to need to fill a monster manual with aquatic versions of goblins, trolls, elves, everything. What's kind of surprising there is that Steve says he didn't invent the murthoi, who are otherwise really just a void in Gloranthan lore except for that bit in RM. Blue elves and sea trolls may be a Sandy thing, I've never asked.

1 hour ago, Dogboy said:

the picture on page 101, was originally meant to be a replacement for the D. Dobyski Troll Hunter image, used in the Zong write up in AH Troll Gods box, as part of Tales attempt to redo all the art.

Love those tough little . . . are those mutant enlo? Caption claims the jungle trolls escaped that nuisance so they must be midges, which is amazing and probably some kind of taboo to mention.

I confess to being perplexed over the years at how small trollkin are portrayed in absolute terms since their average SIZ in RQ was always 9-10, comparable to a full-grown human before modern diet. The weight lines up (GTG 93) but even at 3'6" they'd be eye-to-eye with a human 4-year-old and extremely heavy. 

On one hand, I love teeny enlo in the art so much that I mentally scale them down to SIZ 4-6 in order to support the pictures. But I also tend to brush off the description of how "puny" they are as a sidelong joke: a pathetic trollkin is really only as "tiny" as a typical adult human (also average SIZ 10) to a mighty dark troll. Again, taboos are probably in play around this.

Maybe the little enlo we see strutting around in their cute little mini outfits are mostly juveniles coddled like pets in troll families that haven't managed to have real children. I don't know where the adult ones go, but survivability is probably low.

Trivia: the midget slasher runs the exact same SIZ range (d6+6) but is generally a lot dumber than even a non-superior enlo.

4 hours ago, David Scott said:

coming up with Heroquests is easier than you think

Love it. Dangerous! Any time someone pauses and realizes, this is like that one time god did something similar, the walls around the worlds open out.

35 minutes ago, Joerg said:

feathered gazzam

Who were Vrimak and Hippoi really?

One general personal note on this chapter that your comments touch on: in general I'm actually a little let down by the scarcity of third age dragon influence outside the unique environment of the Pass itself. Granted part of this is the ruthless success of the dragonslayer cults of Peloria and Saird, but I'd love to hear more about survivals in the far west (possibly behind Serpent Beast or vanilla hykimite cultures) and of course the east as well as what we see in Pamaltela and Slon. In theory a dream dragon can manifest anywhere, which helps. More is welcome. 

4 minutes ago, Joerg said:

Dragonewt history covers only the history of Dragon Pass,

Used up all my likes again for the day but I'll be back. Like the aldryami color wars and other arcane lore, discerning and ambitious people could dig under the variant evolutionary choices the estranged dragonewt communities represent and come up with some vibrant insights. MGF implies that newts in those regions don't universally consider themselves inferior in their "barbarian" existence -- even if they're slowly dying out, their persistence demonstrates that the experience is valuable and the utuma is not yet ready.

For example, we may find that the Kralorelan community comes and goes. 

There may be an entire draconic alchemy -- or multiple alchemies -- built around dragonbone instead of the metals. 

5 hours ago, jrutila said:

Somehow I have always disliked the idea of Dinosaurs in Glorantha. It is mixing too much Earth's history in to the setting and I can't but think the Dino Riders. On top of that do Gloranthan dinosaurs now also have feathers as is current scientific consensus about Earth dinosaurs? Probably not because they are developed from Dragonewts (definitely no feathers).

Try calling them earthshakers or gazzam and see if that snaps better into place. As long as they're massive slow survivals from a primeval age, they can have any kind of blood, hips and plumage your imagination can concoct.

I like having them lumbering around the fringes because they prepare the player for how fragile the marvels of Glorantha really are. On our world there are no reptile giants. They died out long before we were born and all we get are the bones. But here on the lozenge we can still hope to see one, even on the fringes of the setting, in special contexts and sometimes with the sense that they're not going to survive the Hero Wars. It's bittersweet to get to see a member of a failing species cross the road. On the one hand, you got the experience. On the other, the sadness.

Also the notion of the way the dragonewts deal with their overgrown, spiritually perverse and otherwise "damaged" cousins can be hilarious or heartbreaking depending on your dramatic needs. See how it feels if there are simply big dumb irritable reptile mutants hanging around the fringes of a dragonewt community. Nobody ever needs to use the word "triceratops."

EDIT plus this is a people cursed by Nysalor also, even though the tailed priests roll their eyes and click at the story

5 hours ago, Joerg said:

Here we are discussing the concept of walking and sapient plants, and what do we discuss? Boobs.

It's working. Resist their lures and snares. Stay focused.

But this is an aspect of the archaic religion Glorantha participates in. I've started grinding my way back through the unabridged Golden Bough for another project and before the first introductory chapter winds down we get lines like (paraphrasing a little at the end) "the custom of physically marrying men and women to trees is still practiced in India and other parts of the East. Why should it not have obtained in ancient Kanthor?"

Why not indeed?

5 hours ago, Joerg said:

Aldryami-human interface elves probably aren’t that appropriate, either, even if your standard fantasy cliché elf is a woodland defender.

I just keep in mind the notion that maybe 1/100000 of the vegetable intelligences -- the interface elves -- will ever encounter meat people under normal conditions. These are generally the ones who through some combination of training, aptitude, dysfunction and assigned burden have some sense of how we think and how to motivate us. As meat people myself I like these because they're easier for me personally to deal with.

The vast majority of vegetable intelligences rarely interact with us except at moments of ecological disaster. Most encounters are accidental -- vine-seeking shamans, lost children, estranged lovers, senile kings and other freaks of the human condition -- and rarely go well. These encounters can be as alien as people enjoy. Everybody gets what they want.

[lost forests will come back as we get into the history maps, "scrub" or dwarf elves will also come up later, reproduction is an enigma that may have changed Since Time via contact with various human cultures as you note regarding the Pendalites and centuries of sorcerous investigation]

5 hours ago, Joerg said:

I recall a text which had the Red Elves appear when Growing and Taking were achieving a balance. Was this a Shannon Appelcline text?

Probably. It may not have been his creation but he ran with it.

37 minutes ago, Oracle said:

The Trolls got their Trollpak (even two times, third version in development!). Will we ever see an Elfpak?

A lot of Shannon Appelcline's work on the never-completed Elfpak made it -- at least in spirit -- into the Mongoose Second Age "Elfs" supplement, as related in Hearts in Glorantha 2. I suspect a treatment as groundbreaking as the original Trollpak could eventually bloom on those roots if someone is willing to develop the ideas to a similar level.

The boobs are undoubtedly a facet of certain precious but secret phases of the forest seed dispersal cycle, "white bulges" and all. You want the reproductive bodies to be attractive and given time will cultivate a reasonable approximation of what the meat wants.

"Happy" Jack of Who fame always winds through my mind so there might be some clues to his origins in that song as well . . . the broken body lost in the lapping waters, leaving only the horrible gourd head to dream, grin and propagate. The "furry donkey" implies that his enemies were children of an ancestral Issaries figure. Cast Townsend and Moon (or Daltrey) as the bickering Ethilrist and Than and the adventure writes itself.

I also like the notion of the severed head being part of a larger chaos entity looking for some evil genius to stitch it back together like Atyar and Than. Maybe the bears are its seeds or runners. I wonder what happened to their heads when the pumpkin came in. 

 

8 hours ago, Akhôrahil said:

chaoticism goes hand in hand with decadence

I have given up all my likes so remind me to come back. Your first question about the centralization of magic revolves around the "disenchantment of the world" model of religious history that was popular in Greg's formative years. In this model, as societies become larger and more complex, what we would consider significant magic becomes another specialty for a narrow proportion of the population to pursue. These specialists tend to be close to the state for various reasons: they're valuable and need to be protected or controlled, their activities bring them personal power in themselves, their function is part of the state-making apparatus so there is no difference. For just about everyone else, encounters with magic become rare and extraordinary to the extent to which the specialists become integrated into the state. When the interests of the magicians and the state diverge, you're in for exciting times.

Now as for the link between chaos and decadence, Greg's innate suspicion of empire is probably the biggest factor. Throughout his career he's been on the side of disruption. Storm gods are his favorites and Sartar wins the war because in his heart complex systems tend to be inauthentic and unsustainable. At times like the hero wars era the seeds of the failure take many forms: bureaucratic stagnation, failure to initiate, decadence, strange and exotic pastimes. Participating in these systems carries significant rewards for some -- often the entrenched specialists near the core -- but in Glorantha this is rarely a long-term good deal for anyone. Sooner or later the machine stops. Most simply get ground in the gears. Others drop out to seek authenticity in the form of a personal relationship with "magic" outside the usual channels. Some find chaos and become part of the problem.
 

1 hour ago, Joerg said:

I really like how you make the Rokari wizards' celibacy an admission of their inadequate ancestry. I wonder how much they select their wizards in training for physical characteristics...

Thanks. Even my hatred for them observes a certain delicacy around their obvious intellectual failures. But it's interesting that if the ancestral "zzaburites" have such a Napoleon complex need to be taller for the magic to work, that sounds like a different original gene pool from the baseline Brithini type. Whether that's simply a separate bride of Malkion bringing height (and probably blueness) into the system or something more sinister in its complications, I don't want to read ahead.

(I've never seen a reference to the old Vadeli being low in SIZ and I seem to recall the Veldang are relatively tall, for what that's worth. Height might also come to signify facility with magic at a certain historical moment, possibly with tall wizards staging some sort of coup within the blue caste. Also we are dealing with a civilization singled out in the texts for turning "ancestor worship" or genealogy into a military science, so these questions are important.)

The notion of them swiping perfectly good children from the other castes because there's a chance they'll turn out taller is a good one. I think we tend to imagine them only picking the smartest kids but I see little evidence of that in their society. In some eras we know that zzabur have taken women, presumably selecting for actual magical talent there. 

Thanks also for bringing up the kshatriya -- as you are aware, some theories have posited that the vedic castes evolved separately and came together in a pattern of conquests, alliances and other amalgamations, so at various points in history the proto-kshatriya tribes in particular might formally outrank the proto-brahmin, for example. In this model, while each caste now plays a stereotyped professional role (priest, warrior, bourgeois, peasant), each had or could evolve an independent cultural apparatus that substitutes or compensates for the other castes if cooperation breaks down. I'm most familiar with the concept in modern arguments that the brahmin are effete parasites and the kshatriya with their muscular, chivalric ethos really know what's going on. I'd forgotten this earlier so maybe that makes the deep analogy to archaic Brithos a little more direct. 

Cutting a lot to avoid turning this into a drastic resolution (too late) but it's probably pretty easy to evaluate a population's physical drift from the classic Brithini type by prevalence of various skin tones as well as SIZ. I'd probably start in Sog. We know the percentage dice for that, at least. And as for your henotheists, definitely my idealists in the far north. One thing we can always agree on is that Tanisor is a serious pain.

1 hour ago, Joerg said:

the second sentence is wrong about the combat training as far as Malkioni in general are concerned

I read all this stuff as how an observant outsider in 1625 Seshnela (Tanisor) would describe local cultural norms -- the facts on the ground -- while including local explanations and accounts of alternative Western practices where they support or at least fill voids in that narrative. Obviously the chapter reflects the "all you malestini must listen" Brithinocentric puritanical party line coming down from Leplain because that's what the wizards say, but the narrator is good to let facts that don't fit the dogma remain unchallenged. Modern Seshegi talars engage in war all the time. At best, the historical "use of weapons" in the shape of regalia defies strict caste boundaries, and then you've got the cavalry (to satisfy some ghost of the old "knights on horseback" image?). 

These facts are gold because they trace some of the ways their society has deviated from the Brithini ideal Since Time and may yet do so again. Maybe at some point the Tanisorians ran out of "legitimate" talars and these are really the heirs of the old horal caste (*) doing the best they can. They aren't censured for fighting because the wizards know the truth, but as the local gentry they're also happy to make someone else do the fighting first, which is where the people with hykimite lineage get pressed into service. Or something like that. 

Anyhow, the point is that the rokarites are doing it wrong and I'm happy the text supports this reading.

(*) not "horalites" in this context -- these people were remarkably good with horses before they were absorbed into Western society and retain elements of that heritage, not that of the original Children of Horal from the sagas -- but I'm probably already in trouble for reading sideways.

16 minutes ago, Joerg said:

There is a difference between the Men-and-a-Half and the Doraddi - the absence of plant lineages. This may have to do with the decline of Ernalda, or it may be an indication that they left before Dorad experienced death.

They don't have grain goddesses down there so archaic lineage-defining interactions with the local "likita" might have been extremely different, now that you mention it. Faranar is not Nyanka, etc.

EDIT FOR PRAX If the Genert and Pamalt systems were once congruent on this point I would not be surprised if the "Genertelan Nyanka" wasn't one of the parts that died on the northern side of the land bridge, forcing them to adopt new reproductive family structures or die out.

18 minutes ago, Joerg said:

Lodril answered the call to battle. He gathered the Agimori together and led them north and east to Vithela. After many adventures, a much-depleted nation crossed a now-vanished land bridge into Fethlon. They then turned west to Prax, to fight chaos in Lodril’s name

This is a great thread and this is the exposed gold. Whoever tells this story as being about "Lodrilites" might tell other stories about "Lodrili." Maybe they tried the plow already too and were drawn into the wars of the northern continent through contacts with neighboring civilizations. They may have diminished in the south and all the names have changed, but that's where it was before the last of their ways was absorbed into the Dara Happan underclass.

As for water and phallic deities (Pamalt the spear), this is probably another of those tantric references that haunt the lozenge. Before the lodril initiation their braves just know how to make it hot, or something.

My two clacks on the expansive art captions is that they're a good working compromise between (a) usability for vision-impaired fans who want an alternative text description of that big blank space in the layout and (b) a reasonable amount of extra detail and background "footnoting" the images for those who see the pictures. If both channels transmitted exactly the same information the picture would be redundant.

I wonder how many people would buy an annotated behind-the-scenes "Art of Glorantha" showing the process (assignment notes / "script," sketch, revision, production), talent interviews, rare unused / variant art pulled from various products that not every fan is going to own: the Guide, 13G, the Sourcebook, Prince of Sartar, etc. Maybe a glossy con fundraiser or something 

High praise indeed given the source. Maybe let's give the bloody rites of Arroin and other veggie tales their own thread when/if I ever get out of the office. 

She might well have stolen that Man Rune altogether, in which case Pavis Himself would be only a famous recent case. (Why are Green females designed to be so attractive to human males?) I hear you also on Sunripen . . . my fantasies of them casting it prophylactically on fields of ripening sprats like we immunize children may be a little broad, and either way it protects their bodies and not the more psychic forms of Gloranthan disease. 

Did forget one possible "consolation of Chalana" for them, though. Aldrya has no remedy against death. This is probably not a problem for most, but we probably see the occasional militant Evergreen get so spooked at the prospect of not coming back next spring that s/he takes the white robe to get close to resurrection. Maybe a few Browns as well. Either way, they're going to be, uh, on the nutty side.

1 minute ago, Darius West said:

Aldryami CAs

You got my attention. First thought there was "I know they have that weird 'special relationship' with Arroin, but what do they get out of the full Chalana that they can't get at home?"

Aldrya can Find Healing Plants through her independent Arroin connection -- dryads adore the wounded healer, which is probably a long Frazerian screed on the horizon in itself -- and is the source of Heal Body, which competes with CA (and Lunar) medicine in some ways. The tree goddess apparently also has independent access to Preserve Herbs, although the text is a little vague on this point. Sunripen prevents mold, rust and other "plant disease spirits" while discouraging vermin. (Naturally I imagine Miracle-Gro sells the secret now in extract form.)

So what does a well-rooted plant person _need_ from the white goddess? Plant disease spirits are a little controversial so maybe Sunripen only works in some circumstances, forcing an infected elf to seek alternative medicine. Maybe this is a kind of "war cult" for hygiene-driven types who hate vermin so much that they delve deep into the mysteries of cleansing . . . these would be militant "sweepers," driving all the bugs they don't like to the nearest troll territory in order to promote a healthier garden. Maybe new plant disease spirits are emerging that the old system can't deal with As The Hero Wars Begin.

And just maybe these people come into our hospitals offering friendship and weird plants as part of a long and sinister agenda to destabilize human healing institutions. (Yes, I did read a little Castaneda as a child and have relatives in Colorado to this day.)

Trivia: Heal Body is shared pretty widely among ("grain") goddesses but doesn't reach Eiritha until Pavis Himself spills the magic beans. This is of course a big deal in the pacts allowing the City to persist within Prax.

P.S. Arroin are happy to work with Humakt, especially when it comes to poison therapy. Even if that's just the Swords making sure the hospital stays open, there seems to be room there on the healers' side for pragmatic compromise.