Darius West

(1) Inevitably some criminals get caught. It's an occupational hazard. (2) The main trick of being a successful criminal is NOT leaving evidence. (3) But breaking the rules inevitably gets you more faster. If you chew your way through enough husbands, accruing property along the way you can become a major landholder and even become a candidate for Queen. (4) The sexes have a history of being blind to each other's faults. Plenty of people have found themselves in bad marriages until it was too late. Sorcery seems to have a certain lack of spells that are good for detecting intrigue and deception. (5) Clearly you have no concept of feeding a man a delicious high cholesterol diet then having him die "in bed" of a sex related coronary with a beautiful wife. Is it murder or a surfeit of affection? Many men would actively seek such a partner, I fear, even some who should know better. (6) By which I assume you mean the Platonic model of the "Philosopher King" ? (7) So who in fact owns these things? If there is a king and nobles, surely they draw an income from the things they administer. Even within the Church and Buddhism you find things held "in trust" by "folk without property" actually being a legal fiction at best, and these "religious princes" being extraordinarily corrupt, including priests with children who inherit their religious titles. The Loskalmi however require their children to know the duties of each caste before they rise to the next one, but a good education early in life can give a noble child an immense head start. Perhaps such rule bending dynasties can be regarded as another type of villain to discuss? (8) No, the wife is not the magistrate, but she will surely nag her husband to properly provide for her and their children, and that is how the criminal ball gets rolling (down hill), because nagging is the most effective method for getting your own way. A woman who is closely and intimately aware of her husband's business often gleans information that she can use to criminal "family advantage". She also has privy information that she can use to potentially parley into position for herself when she bumps the old coot off. Read some True Crime Lit; it is quite hair curling what women get up to; better than fiction, and much worse. (9) A single bad girl can be a terribly disruptive force, now imagine there are a few of them working together for mutual advancement, covering for each other, either through misguided loyalty, or perhaps some sort of pact, or even a longstanding lesbian relationship or two? Lenin always maintained he only needed 8 loyal men to change the world. Hitler used a similar notion of a core group of 8 people. What may start as harmless girlish pranks and petty intrigues may develop an altogether more horrible and criminal complexion with the right application of blackmail and coercion. You will never catch these sweet little serpents, and heaven help you if you do, because their plot to destroy you socially, legally and physically will already be coming to fruition well in advance of the discovery. It is often quite surprising how prescient female criminals have been (10) You make the mistake of thinking that the absence of a patriarchy would make a difference to the motivation of the femme fatale, or that women only behave in an anti-social fashion as a reaction to being dis-empowered by social institutions. You may be versed in feminist discourse, but you are no criminologist, and this assumption is actually pretty sexist on analysis, as it pre-supposes that women don't commit crimes without a reaction to an underlying social prejudice guiding their actions. I had a good friend, now sadly deceased, a dear little old lady who was an ex-detective and criminologist who took me under her wing and disabused me of such notions in fascinating and blood curdling detail some years ago. A social system may be benign, but ultimately, for some people, it is never benign enough for their liking unless they are in control. Gender politics has nothing to do with it; neither the will to power nor the instinct to do evil things for personal gain is limited to one gender or another. Worse still, all too frequently a man will "nobly" take the fall for the woman who emotionally manipulated him into committing crimes, in order to protect her. Very chivalric, but ultimately an empty and self destructive gesture of affection. Such suckers are abandoned for "greener pastures" very quickly, as just another stepping stone on the path. Just because a society is very just and fair, doesn't mean that everyone in it will be benign. A disturbing truth is that often the people who are best at catching sociopaths are other sociopaths. Certainly the best people at catching feminine wickedness are other women.

The notion of hereditary castes as a source of immortality does seem to follow wherever sorcery is practiced. Not just the Brithini and the Mostali, but the Vadeli too. I suspect this is all part of the whole "World Machine" way of looking at things. If everything is ordered and in its place, then there is perfect homeostasis and the system will work harmonically, and nothing will break. I don't know if there was any specific connection between Malkion and Mostal, but the outcomes bear similarity.

I have to say that I thought your cargo manifest was brilliantly detailed, I loved it. As a GM I am always struggling to come up with this sort of material on the fly, and sometimes you run out of ideas. Merchants are potentially very interesting characters but there are few GMs who seem willing to run games based around them, and in most games the merchant winds up playing second fiddle to some fool with a poleaxe. I think there is tremendous potential to develop a resource or supplement for running a merchant based game in Glorantha to help GMs who have no background in such things come to terms with how to do it. BTW, what sort of prices did you ultimately get for the various items? What sold? What didn't? Did the horrible smelly barbarians hurt Hongo? Would he return to Dragon Pass or was it a bust?

Yeah, shouldn't we be discussing this in a more rules based part of the forums? It is a separate topic to "trade and markets" at very least. I am happy to keep going, but not under this topic heading.

I am not accusing the Hrestoli of forcing women to marry. On the other hand, why assume that a woman is a better person based upon the caste of her birth? Shouldn't we judge the woman on the basis of her efforts and the content of her character in adversity as we would with a man? Typically women are mainly judged for their appearance. The women can marry outside and above their caste, and that means they can and will marry for advantage, not love, quietly and slowly poisoning or manipulating their husbands, accumulating property and position. Loskalm is the most Arthurian part of Glorantha, and in fact is in many ways better than Arthurian Britain. Arthurian Britain however had its problems. Morgana La Fay, Nimue, and Guinevere, all undermined and sabotaged that system for their own selfish ends. These meritocratic systems understand what to do with men in Loskalm and Arthurian Britain but have no idea how to handle the worst elements of female behavior, and in fact have left the door open for the women to behave very badly indeed, and that means a small proportion of the women will inevitably behave as badly as they can get away with, and the others will be "encouraged by their example". I have definitely read that in Loskalm the women are not restricted in caste in terms of their marriage and assume the caste of their husband. Perhaps I mis-remember that point? Regardless of what the ideal is, humans inevitably fall well short of it. I think that Orlanth and Ernalda have an open relationship, and they have both been untrue and made amends in typical Orlanthi fashion. Is Ernalda a conniving sycophant? Yeah, she is a bit, but Orlanth is often a violent blustering idiot. They also have redeeming features, and it is the redeeming features that make the world work. As to my motives in this, I am simply pointing out the most obvious weakness in the Loskalmi system. If I was a criminal, that is how I would exploit that system, and that is how criminals think. If I was creating a bad guy character in Loskalm and I wanted to succeed, I would choose an ambitious, greedy, attractive and sociopathic woman. I am aware that my ideas may be a bit controversial and may appear polemic, but I am trying to be objective and offer a different perspective that doesn't engage group think and thus promotes thought and discussion in an interesting direction. As for being a Lunar trickster, no, merely a cynic. Cherchez la femme.

Look, I know you guys like HQ. That is fine. Having played it, I think it is a system which fails to describe a working world and lends itself to abuse, and so I find it clumsy and I don't like it. If you want to discuss this further, that is fine but I don't think this is the right part of the forum to do it.

Where does it say what type of timber the giants use for the cradle? Does it actually specify what they use anywhere?

I am sure I read that Loskalmi women rise to the status of their husband without having to meet the caste restrictions. So they rise to the highest offices not by merit but by prostituting themselves into a good marriage and by the advantageous deaths of their husbands. This was a corrosive social problem in Sparta and most warrior societies. It isn't like a woman is restricted in her caste the way a man is. She doesn't have to start a peasant and work her way up the way a man does, she just has to marry well. Essentially women just need to choose a wealthy host to parasitize. Loskalm is a paradise for ambitious scheming women who can turn on the waterworks while caring for the ailing husband they are poisoning. Male advancement is quite difficult by comparison. It isn't as if noble girls of Loskalm become peasants as of turning 15 like the boys, and have to work their way up the ladder like boys, and can only marry within the class to which they have risen. Basically, Loskalm has a Hrestolic Church that rewards men for being good and women for being evil.

Thanks for that David Scott, I have misplaced my copy of Strangers in Prax atm.

My essential problem with HQ is the XP system. It provides too much skill advancement too quickly for players, which is fine if you are playing a superhero, but doesn't leave much room for most people who by the age of 25 may have a professional skill at 18 if they are lucky, another skill or two, maybe your cult affinity, at 15, a smattering at 10, and many more at 5. HQ lets you stack into cult feats and primary weapon in a way that RQ never did, leading to top heavy characters who have "professional skills" as warriors that they can superimpose onto things via the use of making up silly mythic feats on the fly. Want to boost your ability to spot things? Use the "Orlanth Peeps Through the Giant's Keyhole feat at 5W2 and add X points to your Warrior skill, because being alert is a warrior skill. Nothing says you can't take the "Jack of All Trades And Master of All Trades" skill at mastery as a beginning HQ character. You actually have to nerf the system to make it workable.

Sure, I can't see why giant boot timber wouldn't have magical properties. Baran the Monster Killer has a whole world of timber to choose from and he comes up the Zola Fel to get giant boot. I would say that it is a super hard wearing, long lasting premium hardwood, and if giants use it for their cradles and their boots, the trees are both huge and have some ties to giants like Tada and Genert as well as the usual Aldryami. Perhaps the giant boot tree is the product of mating between Giants and Aldryami deities in the Green Age?

So, to recap... The cradle timber is a possibility, but a good deal of it would have been used in the building of old Pavis, which is now rubble. Dorasor would have snaffled the rest of it to build New Pavis. Old timber is still recycled from the rubble. Settlements like Sun Dome, Garhound and Indagos probably have a few plantation stands of usable timber that they guard closely. These supply mainly local needs but timber does make its way to New Pavis too. The timber is likely transported by Lokarnos wagons because there aren't many credible alternatives. In difficult times these plantations may be the only source of timber. The Praxians probably harvest swamp cypress of the Zola Fel Bogs, or trees from the Stormwalk rainshadow or from Shadows Dance. They also buy timber for their needs at markets. It is possible that other settlements make use of swamp timber, but it is not enough and the risks of harvesting there are high. Something a vicious tribe can do, but settlers should avoid without a military escort. Plus, intense harvesting will quickly ruin the pitiful stands. Getting timber down from the Redwood forest in Shadows Dance is implausible because of the Leaping Place falls and the difficult political situation. Heroes can do it, but it is a major undertaking and basically not for mere mortals, so heroes won't make it an industry because there are easier ways to make a living than the hard labor of bronze age lumberjacking. Which leaves running regular Lokarnos wagons across Pavis with loads of timber under guard. It is a twenty day trip to New Pavis from Herongreen on the Pavis Road. There is a large Lokarnos temple in New Pavis to accommodate the trade. Damaged wagons can be collapsed and kept on other wagons. The shipment will be well protected, and will probably attract fellow travellers such as Issaries and Etyries merchants who group together for security, peeling off towards other oasis markets along the way. There is ample reason for the Lunars to want to increase this shipment, as they have huge plans for the settlement of the Zola Fel, but most importantly they want to turn Corflu into a major trading and military port (LOL). New Pavis carpenters are no doubt used to the delays in supply and to pre-ordering what they need. New Pavis carpenters will never be a large guild but they have an abnormal degree of influence due to the scarcity and necessity of their material. Allied trades such as weapon making, furniture making, coopers and shipbuilding are all in the Carpenters' Guild orbit. There is a good chance that the carpenters will belong to either the Orstan cult (Carpenter God of the Orlanthi) or a sun cult for the political and professional connections. It is unlikely that Orstevius worship has made its way to New Pavis. The Lokarnos cult now has an established reason for its large temple to exist in New Pavis, and the problem of where all the timber comes from is solved.

ROFL guidance councilor magic. Why is that so funny? I can see another problem. A successful society still faces material limits, and even the most ambitious and meritorious person can only rise as far as there are vacancies. There may be a thousand people who are qualified to be kings, but there will only ever be one king. Similarly, when the prosperous peasants breed prolifically as they do, if the resource base of the kingdom isn't expanding then the excess population will be making do with less of everything. If you are looking for what is wrong with Loskalm, and if you want to know where the corrosive element is, don't look to the caste system. There are a group of people with their own agenda who operate almost completely unobserved, barely recognized by the hierarchy, completely outside the system of caste. Worse still, the rules of Chivalry that says that this manipulative criminal class may not be interfered with in any way, and they will even find that it is easy to gain the assistance of warriors and knights if they play their cards right. These vicious opportunists are the secret masters of Loskalm. Their name? Women.

When is my Xmas present coming?

Okay, time for an unpleasant question... We know that within Orlanthi culture a rapist is committing a chaotic act and in the process of turning into a broo, but there are a couple of times when the issue is more moot than that. Firstly, the issue of thralls. As thralls are property, they have no ability to give or refuse to give consent, but they are still human beings, so the rape of a thrall is a grey area. Clearly the disparity in status is a major issue. Secondly, rape as a result of a city falling to an enemy army has been a feature of warfare for as long as it has existed. We know this happens in Glorantha too from documents like the Dispatch of Fadabius and King of Sartar. Clearly this worship of Thed is acceptable to the chaos worshiping Lunars, who employ broos in their army, but what about for Sartarites and the non-chaotics? Glorantha is an immensely female dominated society in many ways, but if there were no rapes taking place, would a goddess like Gorgorma exist ? It is fair to say that the Dara Happans are very paternalistic, and Gorgorma is part of their pantheon not the Orlanthi pantheon admittedly. So what happens in Orlanthi culture when a girl is married off to a brutish and unsuitable husband who forces himself upon her, or is carried off by a "hero" who takes a fancy to her during a raid ? These questions appear in the King of Dragon Pass game and obviously each clan may have a different answer, but the "all Orlanthi 85%" rule probably applies to this question. In short, how do Orlanthi legally define rape and, more importantly when is it "not rape", and when (if ever) is rape acceptable or ignorable ?

Making trees grow faster is a function of the Aldryami deities. Most humans, Orlanthi and Lunars included, aren't elf friends, but to be fair, the Yelmalions are. I personally don't have a problem with the notion of the settlements around Pavis supplementing their fields with orchards and plantation stands of timber, except that given the absence of arable land in arid Prax, this would reduce their available land for crops, but would require irrigation just as crops do, hence I would suspect only the rich families like the Garhounds and Indagos etc would have the surplus land to accommodate trees, and would likely profit immensely from them. On the other hand, I am sure that all the usual Bless Crops, Sunripen and Rain spells would work well to encourage growth. With enough accelerate growth spells from Alrdya or Flamal you could get a harvestable tree in 4 years and a fully grown tree in 20 years, but that would add to the price of the timber considerably as such spells don't come cheaply. You don't spend 2000L on a spell that will enchant a tree whose timber will not sell for 2000L. This of course really begs the next question, which is, how much will the timber cost wholesale and retail in a Pavis market?

Glorantha is a lot like Earth. Glorantha is however a LOW fantasy world, and why use references like existing species if they have no similarity to real world examples? You want a Glorantha which is way more magical than it was ever meant to be. You seem to think that Hero Quests are a daily occurrence and that more than a tiny percentage of the total population does them. Most Gloranthans don't live in HeroQuest, they live in RuneQuest. They understand the world through mythology, they have a couple of spells, but most magic is completely out of their grasp. They don't stack a keyword feat onto a multi-mastered skill and make impossible things happen on a daily basis. If they want magical power they have to slowly and methodically work towards it. HQ is a super hero RPG set in Glorantha. You say Glorantha isn't Earth, but maybe it should be a bit more like the real world so that magic doesn't impoverish the game environment and the game experience ? A believable world requires consistency, if everything is just answered with magic and magic has no limits, then you might as well say that the Vadeli used sorcery to mind control everyone in the whole world, there is no free will anymore, game over. Face facts, the Vadeli have lived pretty well forever, they have mind control magics, so why haven't they mind controlled the whole sentient population of Glorantha? The answer? Magic has limits, and it SHOULD have limits.

1) I didn't rule out Mostali using wood. I even mentioned Alchemically modified timber. The real problem is the volume and burying it. 2) I have a feeling that the Mostali may be using more than one capstan and I am sure they are all very large. As for keeping water out of the space, with the correct alchemical treatment, they might have even stored the timber in the bottom of one of the quarries and weighed it down with rock. I am coming around to this idea, but there is a much better answer. We know that when Robcradle was founded it was a time of high giant cradle volume, with one cradle arriving every 5-15 years. This petered out a bit but didn't stop. We also know that Pavis himself robbed cradles. It is plausible that when the cradles were broken down, that the giant boot timber was stored. There is no mention of where Dorasor got his building materials for New Pavis, and I had assumed that the timber was imported from Sartar, but perhaps a good portion of it came from stored cradle parts?

Of course it isn't just newtlings and mosquitoes who like swamps. Chaos has a liking for swamps too; broos and dragon snails in particular. On the up side... no elves. Now as for flooding, and cutting trees, it can be done, but it is wasteful as you can't cut close to the base of the trunk, unless you can breathe underwater and are okay with chipping rather than felling trees with axes. Once the log is in the water and floating, the water will actually help with its transport as it becomes a defacto raft. I have looked into Cypress swamps in some detail now. The Zola Fel has about 25,000 hectares of bog, which contains cypress trees, . Cypress is adequately strong for weapons and just fine for building timber and other hardwood uses such as furniture etc. Cypresses, especially swamp cypresses grow reasonably quickly which is good news (they apparently produce "false rings" which throw out the usual dendrochronology methods if one is unaware). They reach maximum growth of about 40-50m after 200 years and can live 1000 years. The bad news is that while most forests produce between 12,300-15,000kg of wood per hectare, cypress swamps produce only 700kg or so per hectare, Given ongoing demand, the settlements of the Zola Fel would strip the bogs quite quickly. Otherwise this would be plausible.

To be completely fair, I am sure that Aldryami will "police" rogue trees, but they would always kill them using food song, obviously. Given how small the Garden is, I doubt they would be eager to give up any timber, given that their forest is their territory, and the trolls like eating wood. A situation of Aldryami wood trade might have been possible when the city was whole, but not in the Big Rubble period. As for just burying the wood, that is a lot of work. I suppose it could have been placed in workings within one of the quarries, but unless kept dry timber rots, and removing water is an ongoing problem for all mine works, even in a dwarf quarry. So yes, Mostali alchemical wood preservation techniques would have to be employed. On the other hand, the sheer volume of the timber necessary would be prohibitive to bury, even for Mostali. It would have to be a damn big hole, perhaps enough to bury a giant cradle, and that is a conservative estimate.

(1) Elves don't surrender trees, other than the ones that die of old age, willingly. Pavis would know and respect that because he was part elf. The notion of having his kin's forest die for not completing a deal with the Mostali, even the Flintnails seems unlikely. (2) Mostali don't have a hell of a lot of use for wood. That is sort of why the stockpile would exist. As for what they would trade if such an arrangement existed? Probably copper from the copper caves near Dwarf Knoll in Prax, which the Flintnails have close connection to. (3) Yes, I assumed they would store it underground. That in itself is not an answer. Where in the Big Rubble is safe enough that it wouldn't have been stolen? (4) In fact the Flintnails and the Aldryami in the Garden have nearly nothing to do with each other. The are both threatened by the Trolls, so they have at least that much in common. The Garden Aldryami are incredibly isolationist; that we do know. (5) I have assumed that New Pavis has been built using either mud brick, wattle and daub, cob, rammed earth or some combination of the above, based on the architectural style of the city from the illustrations. The primary building materials are dried reeds and mud. The PROBLEM is that ALL these methods still require a lot of timber in all the major supports, AND the creation of second story flooring AND in much of the construction method. You can build a mud building with 2 storys, but you get something that looks like Mos Eisley not Pavis, with huge arched support columns to support the second story. Wood is intrinsic to the construction style for Pavic architecture based on real world examples. If you own River of Cradles, have a look at the illustrations and you will see what I mean. If the answer was easy, I think we might have reached it already.

I got the link and I love it! It looks great.

Especially in "A Town Like Pavis".

So when a "log" appears in the birth canal is that considered to be a "mythic fistula" ? VOMIT WARNING!: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obstetric_fistula ...known in medieval times as a "sootikin" and completely misunderstood by commentators of the time. Perchance the River God will form these logs into the likeness of giant mice in accordance with folkloric sources?

Well, this stockpile would need a location, and the Mostali would need a compelling reason to provide their resource stockpile to Dorasor. Next... elves and dwarves living together in sin? Mass hysteria! That sort of arrangement might have worked while Pavis was a whole city, but I get the feeling that the Garden and the Flintnails don't love each other, so it seems a little unlikely that the harmony of the good old days will be enough. Also, what did the elves get out of the trade? Perhaps copper? Where would this increasingly large stockpile have been kept without being raided and carried off btw? The Rubble is a bad place, and timber is valuable. This also doesn't really account for New Pavis and the various settlements around it and their ongoing timber requirements. It certainly isn't an entirely bad idea, I just don't think you can have enough timber to construct a city sitting in storage in the Big Rubble for very long. It seems implausible to me. There certainly could have been some sort of Flintnail timber stockpile, but nowhere near as much as is suggested; too many interested parties with sticky fingers.