scott-martin

6 hours ago, Steve said:

things strong with Earth

The ladies translate my "gravity" as "love" and say, of course there is love in Glorantha. Otherwise nothing would cohere and we would all drift alone. 

As usual I have no idea what they mean.

54 minutes ago, davecake said:

Aldryami being supplanted by Hsunchen

This is fertile ground since we know Falamal is a secret god of Hrelar Amali, maybe the central cult.

Aeelra Aldryama, Jorestl’s daughter,
ever lovely, shining white
in her forest dance when the world was young,
unmarried, and the prey of Basmalt.
She is the mother of Pendal.
- Song of the Children of Basmalt

Of course that's Jorestl. Kanthor apparently preferred to remain aloof from Pendali territory and there's also Dontri back on Brithos, but those aldryami backed Faralz against the "Vadeli" and may no longer be extant. (I would love it if they were the forest that relocated to Jrustela.)

Early chronologies indicate "burning of Kanthor's Forest" in 59 ST at the end of a two-year war between Damolsten and the Aldryami, by the way, so that particular forest seems to have gotten a whole lot worse before it got better. 

49 minutes ago, Joerg said:

I would really like to work on a project making such maps and lots of other thematic layers available as a digital application, possibly with pdf export options. However, that would be a full-time job of more than a man-year for getting that data together, never mind the application infrastructure.

Used up my likes. I strongly believe that the board game simulations mad visionaries like @KeithN and others have run over the years are the accelerated way to fill the gaps on regions where the notes at Chaosium are no longer extant or may have only been fragmentary anyway. If you reading this happen to be someone who has been involved with these, please let me know if you have records.

2 hours ago, Steve said:

Harmast hadn't tried some "modern" heroquesting

Love it. My sense of the barefoot womanizer is that he -- deliberately or otherwise -- practically (re)invented what we now call Orlanth worship from the scraps Loko hadn't managed to eradicate. This process undoubtedly took time and a lot of work we would call "heroquesting" before he had enough of the LBQ to try it. When Varmast initiated Barefoot he initiated a genius. Thank God.

10 minutes ago, jajagappa said:

What is beer but something infused with the life of the earth?  Without the grain, you'd just have water.

!! They have a weird call-and-response to that one they love shouting at me: what is cloth but time you can see? Without the knots we'd all go naked.

I have no idea what they get up to after I go to bed. More swan knighting later when I digest.

2 hours ago, jajagappa said:

the Societies of the Cloth have rooms/halls for such

Wow, those ladies can drink. 

The really wild performances seem to happen around the big fleece fairs later in the season when the girls are tired and looking for one last hurrah. Not as familiar with the linen parties but they seem a little more settled.

2 hours ago, Joerg said:

That's not quite the message I get, with all that durulz/goose stick going about.

No expert but my emergent take on the Goose Girl / Swan Woman complex is that she reflects the female equivalent of King of Dragon Pass aggregate mastery of the realm down there, possibly as an undocumented survival of something like the archaic "stork mother" they have in the northern lowlands or some local beast/hsunchen culture now lost.

We know the durulz venerate a transcendental goddess of "nature" at the Wild Temple. Maybe Imarja initiates recognize that goddess as their goddess too. In this scenario, I always assumed an orgiastic edge to stork mother (why SurEnslib gets such bad press at home) so this may look like chaos to establishment-minded people. 

Of course cults change so we would need to look at when people pivot into Imarja when the conventional Ernalda complex doesn't give them what they need and when they pivot away. Maybe chaos gets in there at various points but I think her nature has defeated that so far. Also while I like the idea of the Goose Girl (Die Gänsemagd) being autochthonous she might have come from afar . . . perhaps from the east riding an oracular horse named something like Falada. If and when the Feathered Horse Queen ever saw the mysteries in that temple I suspect she'd understand.

The problem of chaotic earth is interesting. If I were them down there I'd look toward the Print and then back to the greatest city in the world and start pondering who krarsht really was once.

3 hours ago, Joerg said:

Stations 6, 7: The Judge of the Dead, prior to the Bridge over the River of Swords. King of Sartar (p.59) has Janak and the bridge before you enter the Court of Silence. KoS p.72 suggests that Issaries negotiated the boat fare with Jeset the Ferryman instead, no bridge involved, but special knowledge of Lhankor Mhy involving the Elder Tree allowing the original questers to bypass the Court of Silence, it seems.

Great catch. I wonder if the quest forks early enough that someone could succeed with either a beard or a talker, but not necessarily both.

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.