Ali the Helering

The Guide is only a Guide.

Who is Elmal?

Elmal is the loyal thane, the sun on the mountains, the new hope that arises with the morning.  Yelm is a perversion, the Evil Emperor.  Yelmalio is the weak, pathetic kinsman, with neither fire nor horse magics.

Elmal is the true sun.  Destroyer of Chaos, withstander of underminers, the one who regains his power due to the love and tears of his followers.  He is mighty.  

We have been Gregged.  Blessed be the name of the Greg.

9 minutes ago, DrGoth said:

In 1627 the Elmali are still probably looking sheepish

Sheepish?  Helerings look sheepish, not Elmali...😁

In my Glorantha (largely shared with Tindalos) the deities are as per Hero Wars, converted to present powers etc as needed.  Subcults abound (see our Heort's Legacy and Alakoring's Legacy for examples) making, in our opinion, life not only more interesting but also closer to RW religions.  We also feel it tends towards MGF.

The Monomyth, while it works to a more or less limited degree, is not an accurate depiction of the ecology of the Gloranthan spiritual world.  

7 hours ago, radmonger said:

The real point is that geographically, mercia, cornwall and wales are all part of the same island, and so it is possible for them to have, or not have, that kind of conflict. If Mercia was instead located somewhere near Moldova then the nature of any possible conflict would be entirely different.

European Wars of Religion would indicate otherwise.

59 minutes ago, radmonger said:

That didn't end all conflict, but it is no longer an active source of political tension by 1625, any more than the UK is troubled by a Mercian separatist movement.

No, but Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland, even Cornwall have separatist movements.  You cannot discount generational memories.  As one Ulsterman said to me "We learn our hatred on our grandmothers' knee."

10 hours ago, Darius West said:

I  mean, if we follow the advice of the HQ rules we can invent "Orlanth goes to buy milk" myth, and send our children off on it every couple of days.

18 minutes ago, Bill the barbarian said:

Thanks, I can buy the inherently dangerous with the caveat of: Define inherently dangerous.

No, no, the milk, the horrid semi-solid and squamous cream that calls to mind the enormities of the unholy Necronomicon!  That accursed milkman of Black Pharaoh's Dairy....

1 hour ago, Jeff said:

others claim that means he became a Chaos monster (which is generally claimed to be false). What is certain is that Arkat emerged from Dorastor and established a peaceful empire in Ralios.

Or Nysalor emerged, escaped detection, and posed as Arkat in Ralios.  Light becoming Dark.

2 hours ago, Eff said:

Brithini never eat green beans outside of a casserole covered with breaded and fried bits of onion. 

This strikes me as ridiculously luxurious.  Beans?  Onion???

When I was studying Celtic Christianity (1993-6) I remember the lecturer saying that there was good evidence from phraseology in the liturgy and elements of iconography that indicated that Christianity reached Britain from Roman North Africa and was Orthodox rather than Catholic.

38 minutes ago, Akhôrahil said:

Also counter-cavalry.

Devastating when used on one chariot horse 

26 minutes ago, mfbrandi said:

the broos will give up all their malarkey and get brollies, bowlers, and jobs in the City?

Does Storm Bull see the moral difference between rape of the individual and the rape of a society?

Amen

No such thing as a free lunch😁

21 hours ago, g33k said:

I presume that was a report of disagreement with the objections voiced

.

Yep, but I was advised that he is a troll, and not to respond further

On 1/17/2023 at 6:05 PM, Bromo said:

I just picked up this and I am excited !!  I love settings that are set in Heroic eras in non European places.  And I scanned through the PDF (I also ordered a hardcopy) and it looks like it's going to be great !!  After reading it this is the kind of thing I would love to run !

Have you read any of this thread?

4 hours ago, svensson said:

But a lot of men have school boy crushes on actresses and singer

As do a lot of women, and a lot of men had crushes on men.

Probably similar to the klanth

Having once been (accidentally) stabbed in my hand with a freshly knapped flint knife, I can assure you that they are extremely sharp and are easily as capable of penetration as a metal blade.  Losing their edge isn't a problem though - just get a knapper to make a fresh edge.

1 hour ago, EricW said:

The first paragraph of "Call of Cthulhu" reads :- 

I'm guessing in the Cthulhu universe, an AI, with its superior ability to correlate and extract meaning from vast amounts of information, brings us a big step closer to that dread day of revelation ;-). 

If you haven't read the Laundry series by Stross I would recommend it.  The dangers of advanced computing.....

As an ordained Christian minister who has specialised in interfaith relations, I absolutely agree that religion is terribly dangerous - for the mental state of the believer and all too often the mental and physical health of those who don't share that belief.   

I have always liked Mark Twain's comment that "faith is believing what you know aitent so', since faith is implicitly irrational.  I think that I am in the only job where you are required to be irrational.  Indeed, a plagiarist too, since an excess of original thinking tends to get labeled as heresy!

Of course folk have always believed their own religions, and there were always some that rejected those religions.  It is worth remembering that atheism is not a new idea.  Psalm 14 opens with the assertion that "The fool says in his heart 'There is no god'".  In Glorantha terms I would suggest that it is perfectly possible to acknowledge the existence of powerful and dangerous beings, without deeming them worthy of worship.

36 minutes ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

to be fair, this was not unlike the general atmosphere of life in the ancient world, except nobody had incense. just look at our meatpacking plants - and no, i'm not a vegetarian (although I'm actually ALLERGIC to mammal protein, so birds it is). we just sequester it now.

Yup, it just annoys me when people attempt to sanitise the past.

4 minutes ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

if it wasn't, a recent reread of Genesis (a translation into Yiddish by the secularist poet Yehoyesh, d. 1927, for my Yiddish class) has reminded me that even the most familiar of scriptures is full of Lovecraftian monsters and even more monstrous actions. We just finished reading about Dinah (TW: SA) and the massacre that eliminated Shkhem's patrilineages.

Old time religion wasn't good for many! 

The Jerusalem Temple, for all its gold finery, will have stunk of a blend of the abattoir and the barbecue, mixed with the urine and faeces of frightened animals, all overlaid by massive amounts of incense.  Read without faith-glazed eyes and there are several mentions of human sacrifice within the worship of YHWH.  The enormities of mass slaughter run throughout much of the Tanakh.

3 hours ago, NurgleHH said:

I wonder if you as owner of a bookstore got all the stuff for reviews for free. Be honest if never read more nonsense like your post. Blaming the whole publisher and threaten with „I won’t buy“ because they not answered you is a very poor reaction from a member of this new cancel culture (behaving like three years old children). TDM are are great publisher and made a lot of good things. Minimizing their work to one release is very poor. And one person started a personal vendetta against them and in this impersonal times of internet you jump to it. Sorry, very poor. I won’t buy any more translation of you as reaction…

 

The reality is that 'cancel culture' along with 'woke' and 'politically correct' are slurs used to justify being arrogant and insensitive.  There is no excuse for sloppy research when so many up to date and better resources are available.  If you are going to publish a book about a culture, it is incumbent on you to make it accurate. 

6 hours ago, moonwolf8 said:

In Classical art, Ram-Bearing Hermes became a common icon of divine protection. The motif continued into the Christian centuries and, indeed, to this very day."

Indeed.  That is why Jesus used it when talking - it was a well known motif around the Eastern Med.