JonL

<Roll 1D6. Decrease SAN and increase %chance of Illumination by the same amount.>

I have some hope of picking up a spankin-new QW book or few at Gen Con, but Chaosium only floated a single session - which makes me think they're not confident of having it back from the printers by then. OTOH, the independent Lurking Fears crew has also offered some QW games and 3/4 have already sold out (including a non-Glorantha one). Hopefully Chaosium will notice the demand. I'm also not running or playing QW there this year, since I'm bringing my daughters, aged 11 & 13, and all the QW games are 13+. @Todd@Chaosium & I discussed programming a Chaosium youth-event track back before the plague. Perhaps we can revisit for next year now that things have stabilized to the point where any sort of planning makes sense.

One of the things I appreciate about Pendragon is the different eras giving richer support to varying game approaches. We warlorded it up in Uther & Anarchy periods, but our quests & errantry game was Tournament-era. That parallels where I'd start "An Argrath is YOU!" sort of play earlier, whereas you & Jason have done a great job setting up a solid Diomede-incubator environment with RQG's premises.

31 flavors, 🙂 I think it's ultimately about who is at your table and what kind of fun they're looking for. Even with the same crew, it can vary. Our weekly group has had two successful Pendragon campaigns. One was very much the "Prince Valiant" experience you're talking about, while the in the other we went full-on warlords. I remember them both quite fondly, though for very different reasons.

I was talking Gbaji Wars, not Hero Wars, but I like where your head's at. It's curious that He, Zzabur is absent from any of the Arkat/Nysalor tales. We don't get His take on the Sunstop or anything like that in Revealed Mythologies or Middle Sea Empire.

In my view, it's really a question of what you want your game to be about. If you want to play a game of "mugging baboons in the desert for their grieves" (as Laws likes to say), cattle raiding and feuding with the neighbors, Casablanca-ing around in Pavis, fighting a guerilla war against occupiers, taking "A-Team" jobs for various quest-givers, you're good to go. If you want to play a game where the PCs become the big wheels themselves, it's important to remember that Argrath and his companions are just another adventuring party, though perhaps with a head-start in the setting and time-frame presented in RQG. There's nothing they have done that your PCs cannot do, if that's what your game is meant to be about. White Bear - Red Moon and King of Sartar are what happens if your PCs were never born. If I were to run a Big Damn Hero Warriors campaign, Garrath Sharpsword would probably drown defending the Giants' Cradle, and leave the PCs with a key to an "If you are reading this, I am already dead... ...You must be the Liberator now." message. GAME ON! Rules-wise, others have given some great advice here already. You might also look at QuestWorlds for inspiration in how to frame conflicts more abstractly when you get into myth-o-logic territory. I'm not saying you need to use a whole different ruleset to get the job done, but some of those ideas around setting goals, means, and stakes then interpreting the results narratively can work just as well with a skill % or resistance table check.

It surprises me how little mention there is of Zzabur in the Gbaji Wars tales, given that there's an actual Brithini army in play early on.

I bet Praxian Charcouterie is amazing.

Now I'm imagining posting a sign that says, "Help Wanted: Infiltrator - Leave your resume in the commander's desk."

<gives them my tears>

Carry the sequence of events through though. The ones who were seduced by Pelorian ways, caught up in their own aggrandizement, coveted gold, rose in rebellion, all that - they marched off South and became the Sun Dome County Yelmalions. The remainder who did not march off to Vanntar would be those who were happy in their communities and families, dedicated to the realm; actually Loyal Thanes - that's who would be left in Sartar proper. After many decades since the schism, few living in the 1620's would remember when local Elmali were anything other than how they were described in the games. That matches the picture you gave us in SKoH & SC anyway, with 3k Yelmalions mostly at the Vanntar and Alda-Chur communities, and 2k Elmal+Redalda initiates a few hundred at Runegate and the rest scattered throughout the realm. You clearly prefer a different model now, but that doesn't make the old one wrong or a mistake in any objective sense. There's not some actual Glorantha out there you can compare the concepts against to be right or wrong. Chaosium's Gloranthas vary just like everyone else's, and that's healthy. If you don't want to write about distinct and culturally/regionally varying Little Sun interpretations any more, that's OK. I'll continue to miss that though, because I thought you did a great job on them. If we can put this Sun Horse out to pasture though, I'd love to hear more ideas anyone has about what the Sun traditions in Esrolia looked like before refugees from the Lunar occupation of Sartar and Sun Domers started flowing into Nochet.

That's far beyond what Making Gods details. Your descriptions of the depths of their perfidy have grown more lurid with each passing year. That's fine. You can change stuff as you see fit, a right you've earned many times over. It's fine for perspectives to evolve or to decide that you'd prefer a different approach. "Friendly Neighbourhood Paladins" though, while perhaps trite, is not at all out of step with how any of the previous 20 years worth of games treated them. This sort of "We've always been at war with East Asia." posture, along with "That thing you like is messed up and wrong." are part of what gets people's hackles rising when this comes up. It feels like in-house edition-warring.

My copy of SKoH says "Chaosium" on the spine, as far as that goes. 🤷🏼‍♀️ Yeah, things like moving from to the Guide + HQ2/G Rune rosters for the gods to the more limited RQG set have lots of subtle implications, but swapping Your Friendly Neighborhood Paladins for Mercenary Slaver Separatists is something of a hard swerve (to say nothing of erasing Redalda). The question I'm most interested in here is how the native Esrovuli Little Sun traditions and myths might differ from what you might find in either Vanntar or Rune Gate.

Really, the biggest hurdle here is knowing that Lanbril even exists in the first place. The second hardest part is finding Lanbril cultists. The third hardest part is recruiting (joining?) them rather than getting assassinated once they know that you know about them and were able to find them. After that, you're all good. (Karsht would be more than happy to help you infiltrate and degrade a hierarchical power structure, but you're better off getting whacked by Lanbrili.)

Tragically, they do neither. While Monrogh swore loyalty to Tarkalor personally, Sun Dome County did not become a vassal state of Sartar. Monrogh's successors then proved all too willing to take Dara Happan Wheels from the Lunars to make war on the communities their predecessors once defended.

Part of why the recent revision is a struggle for some folks is that while we are told that the Mo Bustra Sun Domers are unusual in many respects, few of the published descriptions we've gotten for other chapters have materially differed from their model. Things like their marriage rules, challenge requirements, mercenary bent, and Three Blows Struck in Anger seem to clash hard with being a part of a Heortling community. The contrast with the HQ-era Elmal cult that was very culturally specific to being a Little Sun follower within Heortling society is jarring. That was fine when the picture was rival sects dominant in different areas, but a Yelmalion next-door is hard to conceptualize. Hopefully further releases will ease this cognitive dissonance. As far as more diverse pictures of Sun Domers go, I'd love to learn more about that one in the far NW that's been chugging along in isolation since the Bright Empire days. Mo Bustra only thinks they were the isolated ones. 🙂

Glorantha: The Second Age and Blood of Orlanth from Mongoose's RQ line might be of some use.

Remember that we're talking about the Holy Country here. That's a fine sales pitch to a Heortlander of dudebro temperment, but would be nonsensical to Esrovuli who know Elmal and Heler vie for Esrola's hand each year and Orlanth is an unruly northerner to be tamed. The "son of the sun" angle is interesting to consider in a context far removed from Dara Happan culture. The tales presented in ELo10kG make no mention of Elmal's parentage and describe Yelmalio as the son of Nysalor. The Sun itself es either Elmal, Good King Harono, or Imarja's Egg, depending upon the context. One could imagine Elmal tales that arrived with the Vingkotling conquerors being incorporated into those of Harono's Sky People, but neither the Imarjan nor Ernaldan Dawn narratives have anything like the Heortlings or Dara Happan narratives. Harono is not restored or reborn with the Dawn. He is replaced, and Orlanth is not part of the solution.

(The first rule of Lanbril is that you don't talk about Lanbril.)

I'm thinking Yavor.

Sadly, the Mane 6 have not been able to unite since Discord invaded the Tournament of the Masters of Luck and Death. OK, which Pony corresponds to each Sixth of the Holy Country?

Each key unlocks a separate portion of the divided Sky-soul, to be rejoined when sufficient Harmony fills the world.

Whether one prefers the new model or the old is of course a matter of taste. For myself, I find differing cults reflecting different cultural perspectives and understandings on the gods to make for a richer and more interesting setting. Whether one sees "Elmal and Yelmalio are both the Little Sun." to be more like "Clark Kent and Kal-El are both Superman." or "Harlem and Greenwich Village are both Manhattan." - the ideas and understandings that go along with those different facets are not all completely interchangeable, despite the common substance. To the question at hand, I'm intrigued by how an Esrolian perspective might be different from either a Monroghist or traditional Sartarite one (whether one takes the current road on what that is, or the previous one). The various Orlanth cults vary in significant ways within a single culture. While sharing some common influences, Esrolia's myths and traditions are not the same as the Heortlanders or Sartarites. I'd expect their understandings of and relationship with the gods to vary accordingly. (Though I can also respect that page-count limitations are a thing.)

The Little Sun tradition of my homeland, where the rivers meet, uniting Sky and Harmony.

The only official Elmal-as-such writeups we've seen from Chaosium/Moon Design were for HeroQuest 2/G. Issaries era, there was also one in Storm Tribe for HW/HQ1. (The extent to which folks are fussy about the downgrade are a testament to their excellence.) There was also some supporting material about the cult-center in Runegate in the Sartar Companion. For a RQ writeup, should you find the current "just a Yelmalio subcult" approach unsatisfying, you'll need to go farther afield. Back to Balazar has a decent RQG-compatible fan version. Mongoose's Cults of Glorantha Vol I had a brief Elmal write-up, though it might not provide much value unless you were using MRQ/Mythras already. In any case, if you wanted to work out a native Esrolian Little Sun tradition rather than a Heortlander, Sartarite, or Sun Domer import, I'd expect to do some of your own work. The Nochet map shows "Yelmalio Temple" in the Little Vanntar neighborhood, "Elmal's Watch" and "Sunheart Hall" adjacent to one another in the Elmal's Town neighborhood. I'd also expect representation in the "Home of the Noble Husbands" and "Sky Temple" within the central temple/palace complex.