JonL

I also dont think they'd characterize Barntar-ish interactions with the land to be feminine, what with all the plowing, planting seeds, and so on.

Their ongoing practices may or may not be helping Dormal buoy the Boat Planet and keep the seas open for all, but you can bet they believe it to be so. That sort of sorcerous-veneration-nearly-indistinguishable-from-theism is also straight out of Belintar's playbook.

Shargash and Sedenya round out the ten city-suns.

As I understand it, the Opening ritual is itself sorcerous (Combine Water and Trade, I expect). It's something you know, and while Dormal's cult teaches it to members, people with no particular devotion to Dormal can learn it. As Dormal shared it with the Vadeli, it became something anyone willing to risk dealing with them could gain access to, for a price. And so on from there. I imagine Dormal's cult has other seafaring magics as well though, that are less widely shared. The cult itself is only semi-theistic. The Pavis and Flintnail cults are a good comparison. Orthodox Rokari may make a show of castigating excessive devotion to an Ascended Master ("Whatever his father's pretensions, Dormal was clearly a mortal."), but they like their sea traffic and so have every reason to not ask for a translation of those Esrolian prayers incantations or look too closely at "veneration" practices that happen out past the horizon.

My totally off-the-cuff impressions and wild-assed guesses: Pilots, navigators, and chaplains are all likely to be Dormal initiates, possibly captains depending on their background. I would expect organized fleets with institutional support like those of the Quinipolc League to have more. Most (non-Vadeli) sailors are lay members. Among the Vadeli, I expect more of them know the rites, as they care nothing for Dormal and the sanctity of cult secrets. Opening is just another useful tool to exploit. I would expect that an Opening lasts for a single crossing of open water. Either that or until you enter littoral waters that were accessible despite the Closing. Put into a port, approach a shoreline, move into an esutary, harbor, inland waters, etc. - the seas Close behind you.

Meanwhile, over in Ralios, the tale was told that Storm King and the Sun King vie for the hand of the Great Green Lady, but the Bad Emperor is Malkion. I have some thought that in assembling/discovering the full Lightbringer's Quest, Harmast Barefoot mixed elements from the Broken Council's syncretic "Great Compromise to Defeat Chaos" version, an earlier "Orlanth goes to the Underworld to recover Ernalda" "Lifebringer" version, and the Ralian "Green Lady sends Erulat to the Underworld to recover Ehilm." version and exploited the Ehlim ≈ Yelm ≈ Bad Emperor ≈ Malkion confusion to bring back his Malkioni hero to defeat Chaos.

I don't think Ian is suggesting that there was never a Yelm prior to the Bright Empire, but rather that Yelm as known in post-Bright Empire Glorantha is the product of a bit of deliberate ret-conning and amalgamation on the part of the Dara Happans to cement their then-current dynasty's Imperial Cult as the restoration of Yelm's Golden Age empire, papering over and partially subsuming the Antirius and Kargzant solar eras as well as the many city-state specific sun gods along the way.

Despite having been left behind by Apple as current iOS has gone 64-bit CPU only, my 7-year old 3rd gen iPad runs King of Dragon pass and Six Ages like a champ. Being stuck at iOS 9, you can get them for a song (relatively speaking), looks like 40£-90£ on ebay-UK depending on condition and memory. (I otherwise use it as a reader and ultra-portable SSH terminal - with a keyboard case.) Just a thought.

I took Yonesh the Cold Sun, who is "riddled with Storm runes," to be the same being known to the Heorlings as Yavor. As described in The Book of Heorling Mythology, Yavor was a Fire Tribe warrior battled Umath. It went poorly for him, and he had to douse his own fire in order to hide and escape being slain. Later, he was among those who fought alongside with Shargash/Jagekriand when the latter slew Umath. Yavor took his revenge by decapitating the slain storm King, and made lightning darts from his brains. Orlanth later avenges his father in-turn; decapitating Yavor, and making his great weapons Gutburner, Treeburner, and Stormspear from his body - casting his head aside in disdain. Later, when Elmal takes up his great vigil, Yavor's head recognizes his ersatz kinsman and becomes his deathly counselor. When Orlanth returns, he and Yavor reconcile and Yavor and accepts his role within the Storm Tribe.

VESTRANG WISEBEARD: It is fortunate that the world is a rectangular prism rather than a sphere, or this would be much more complicated.

Really Monrogh, the best way for you to help Tarkalor is to convert as many Loyal Thanes as possible into Sun Dome Templars, with you as their prophet. Don't worry about the ones who like their current lives and communities, they'll see the Light thanks to your leadership. The mercenary angle is a challenge, but replacing their loyalty to Chief & Clan with loyalty to you personally is the only way for this to work. Besides, you trust yourself to be a friend and ally to Tarkalor, right? Surely your successors will follow your righteous example, no matter how much gold an outside power might offer.

Gbaji is the evil that tells you that your ends justify your means because you are the best and only judge of what and who are important. Gbaji says not to worry where the road you are paving with your good intentions leads, you can surely handle it. Gbaji does not deceive others, Gbaji helps you deceive yourself to justify ruinous acts. Gbaji says, "Whatever problems freeing Sheng-Seleris might cause are worth it for the harm he'll do to the Lunars, and you can handle him in any case. You're the Liberator, you've got this." Gbaji is hubris.

Check out these expanded Flaw options I posted last year. A couple of them could help model this sort of thing.

"...every childless widow in Sartar died her hair red." I think that they don't drop Earth for Storm, they drop Life for Death. Note how much Death there is going on in the Storm Tribe Vinga write-up. I like Vinga with Air, Movement, and Death. Her followers can of course perform Making the Storm Tribe as Orlanth if they feel called to Mastery. (This is one of the reasons I prefer Vinga as distinct from Orlanth rather than "just" Orlanth incarnate.)

I figure they're animals like the dinos, but you know your group's tastes. Go with Maximum Game Fun.

I like to imagine an Asrelia sub-cult for prospectors and gamblers, approaching their Kindly Grandmother through the Luck rune, hoping she feels like spoiling them with treats that day, rather than making them do chores.

HQ2CR has a lot more "Here is how you put together the pieces to run various sorts of games." material than HQG does. HQG however is something of a refinement in the way it chooses what I find to be most of the best options that HQ2CR presents, but the context in which they are presented is Glorantha. If you're capable of abstracting from there, it may get the job done though. The only utterly Gloranthan mechanics in it are those that relate to runes/cults, and even those make for examples of what you might do with magic in other contexts.If you want print, HQG is your book for now. A successor to HQ2CR is coming in the form of QuestWorlds, which is a generic toolkit packaging of the rules with a lot of lessons-learned refinements along with goodies from Mythic Russia and Hero Wars included as options. While the QuestWorlds SRD is nearing completion, it will be some time yet before another a proper core-book with lots of examples and advice appears.

The references to Antirius's diminution all refer to becoming dimmer, but never any indication of being colder. He remains fiery to the end, when his body self-combusts as his spirit departs. Even thereafter Avivath wields Antirius's power to burn his enemies. None of it matters though, thus the pasive snark. It's the recourse of the hopeless.

Also in the Elmal-tastic Six Ages, that just came out last year, Elmal is not only fiery, but dunks on "Little Yelm" in a couple of the stories.

If she's already reigning as a Baroness in her own right, who's going to send her off to an abbey? If she's already sufficiently popular, strong-willed, and politically adroit to have retained the support of the former baron's vassals and avoided annexation by a neighbor or usurpation by some distanc cousin, she's probably already disposed of any hard-core chauvinists among her vassals who might otherwise be looking for an excuse to rebel. She's probably got champions lined up 5-deep itching to beat the crap out of any knave who would call her unfit to rule. Imagine someone walking up to Hen's Castle and saying that Grace O'Malley should be deposed and cloistered for taking lovers after her first husband died. He'd be lucky to avoid being from the battlements.

Seriously, I started this variant because once we figured out the optimal approach, we decisively won every single battle. The Winning Strategy for the Book of Battle: If you beat the intensity for the round, Push Deeper. If you don't beat it, Stand Against Two. If you end up overmatched in your melee opponent, fight defensively and move on. It will be a setback, but you wont be too wrecked to fight on. If you get a favorable melee match up, go for the extended melee in hopes of crushing the enemy unit and/or taking pri$oner$. Wreck the enemy camp when you get deep enough. If you are sufficiently advanced badasses, maybe go for the leader. Doesn't actually matter much for the scripted GPC battles though.

A lot depends on what your players are into and what position their PKs have in the realm. If they're an echille of Roderick's household knights, keeping the focus on their particular events makes sense. If they rise to being commanders in their own right though, it's a different matter. Even if the overall outcome lies upon the plot railroad, it can be a significant thing for players who to know what sort of losses each side took, especially if the PKs are lords with their own followers on the field. Some players will appreciate their decisions and Battle rolls having an impact on that.

You have the right of it there. And there's your continuing conflict. Bonus points if her parents have actually managed to arrange a marriage for her to a lord with a maimed leg or similar who would be amenable to minding the manor while she goes out a-knighting. Double bonus if said match got crippled while heroically saving Madoc's life in a battle. "The course of true love never did run smoothe."

I recall Stormbringer using (originating?) the Pendragon-style general HP + Major Wound Table concept. I never thought to compare its armor values, but it's probably worth a look.

Ivanhoe is a solid point of reference for Angevin-era heroic fiction, and actually does a pretty worthy job of highlighting conflicting loyalties, ideals vs practicality, tragically impossible loves, and the like. Also, calling out all five Norman champions at once in this scene is the stuff of epics. (Note Robin Hoode sliding into the cheering section as well.)