Darius West

This is better than "Bored of the Rings" Pentallion, link included for comparison. Please keep going. I want to hear about how they don't deal with the Aldryami. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bored_of_the_Rings

And yet there is a Lokarnos Temple in Pavis in the main market area (Public Neighborhood P-4), and another one in the Sun Dome. Frankly, the Praxians attack other Praxian and foreigners without provocation if they see a credible opportunity, so I don't think outsiders pay much attention to their silly taboos. Are there horse riders living in Prax? Yes. Do the Praxians do much about this? No, try as they may. They haven't dislodged the Lunars, the Sun Domers, or the Pol Joni. Did Pavis go to all the trouble of domesticating Zebras to make peace with the Praxians? Yes. Did they sack Pavis anyhow? Yes. So can Praxians be reasoned with? No. So do we care about their taboos? No. So merchants just factor the risk of Praxian attack in to the pricing of the final item when they take it to market. What do Lokarnos worshippers do when Praxians show up and "complain" about the wagons? They circle the wagons and prepare for attacks. I suspect that their wagons also have a few spikes on them so that a rhino or bison can't simply headbutt one over without dying horribly. Praxian taboos are merely a pretext for an attack, the real reason is grubby profit from banditry. Based on their history, Praxians aren't "noble savages", for the most part they are religiously intolerant scumbags, thieves, slavers and murderers, and their level of morality is MUCH WORSE than that of a contemporary outlaw motorcycle gang while bearing some superficial similarities. Lokarnos worshipers would stick mainly to the Pavis road like everyone else, and will do so with the protection of the Lunars and Sun County. If the nomads come, (and they always do, regardless of what sort of animal you ride or cart you do or do not haul), then you come in strength with the main seasonal caravan, fight them, beat them soundly, complain to the Governor...again... raise your final price, and be done with it. The simple fact is that you can't build the scaffolding necessary for stone buildings without timber. I suspect that Mostali used bronze scaffolding, and sorcery back in the time of the old City, but today they will have to make do like everyone else. Do you seriously think that the Flintnail cult is called in to cast "Support" or the equivalent sorcery every day of construction? One of the rules is that the use of magic costs money. Money that most Pavisites don't have. Temples, fortifications, and official buildings (some at least) may be built in stone, but most people living in Pavis simply can't afford that, and the illustrations from Pavis supplements and maps support this. Most buildings in New Pavis are not stone but adobe, mud brick, cob, or wattle and daub, manufactured from the mud and reeds of the Zola Fel. You need timber for supports in mud based buildings or your supporting columns severely restrict your available inside space if you want a second story. Given the well established architectural style of New Pavis from the artwork, they are using timber. Consider the illustration on page 65 of River of Cradles, or all the support posts in Gimpy's on page 73, or the planked deck of the Temple Barge on 74. Shrubs will yield short lengths of wood suitable for axe handles, short hardwood bows, and arrows. Bone and horn are great materials for making composite bows, and even tolerable armor, but you can't get lances that way unless we want to retcon in some sort of amazing adhesive, that is better than boiled beast cartilage and actually strengthens the glued materials, like some modern "alchemical adhesives". Otherwise we are back to timber. Either way, you can't make a decent lance or spear without wood, and what do most Praxians take into battle? Spears and lances pretty much every time. Pikes if you are Agimori or a Sun Domer. And heirloom spears are fine, but what do you do when you have six sons and at least 3 of them need pikes, but you only have the one heirloom pike? Or when that pike breaks and your family don't know the repair spell? As population grows, you need more weapons. Strangely however the stonemasons are not building much in New Pavis, based on the illustrations and architectural style but spend most of their time trying to rebuild the Rubble apparently, if the cult write ups are to be accepted. Quite a few things are not strictly listed and written up in New Pavis that would be required to make the city viable. For example, we also don't have much of a write up about how Pavis supplies its population with fuel for their hearths for cooking, or where the stockpile of that fuel material is located. I would not argue for wood as the preferred material, but either dried reeds or dung chips. A city of 3-5,000 people would require a mighty big stockpile of fuel for their cooking fires. Where is it? Because that lack of fuel is a way bigger problem than the apparent lack of a Carpenter, given the number of undescribed buildings in Pavis. The fact is that Pavis is a fantasy city, and most GMs and players don't worry about where the fuel for the cooking fires comes from. As with going to a supermarket, the goods appear in the market and the problem is solved, and nobody asks where they came from... until they do, and nobody knows. I have closely researched each of a series of construction methods for stone, and various types of mud and clay, but inevitably they can't be done without timber, either inside as supports or roof beams or used as scaffolding. Without timber you wind up with multiple 2m thick clay support columns to support a second story, and buildings that look a lot more like Mos Eisley than New Pavis, Dwarf sorcery notwithstanding. Who can throw money away on Dwarf construction sorcery apart from Dwarves? Well, the Flintnail cult can earmark their spells for given work periods, but they are mainly beavering away on their own hidden projects, hence the premium price. If you aren't a big player, you won't pay for sorcery, unless Pavis cult membership nets you a massive discount. I suspect they could also get timber from the Stormwalks, even though Prax is in the rain shadow; probably one of the reasons Barbarian Town exists.

I guess I am most interested in the Hidden Paths of the Praxian Tradition. It does specifically say there are many other small societies. These would be the elements that would give individual clans their most distinctive aspects I think. As for dropping bachelor and warrior terms, really? I mean, clearly unmarried males in any tribal society form a distinct classification, and are especially important as a measure of how war ready a population is. A warrior is simply a term for someone who has an established skill at fighting. I would assume that a brave is a bachelor, but a married rider has lived long enough and raided hard enough to get a wife and is therefore a warrior. The notion of bachelor societies is another pretty much ubiquitous term across the nomad and tribal societies of Earth, especially among societies that have a warrior tradition and where the young men therefore need training in those skills. As for warrior societies, that is merely the more adult form of the same thing. I would imagine that the young men need to compete to earn the right to go from lay members to initiates in the Hidden Paths.

I am surprised that nobody mentions timber in the imports section for Pavis. In my New Pavis the Lokarnos Cult has a longstanding defacto monopoly on wood and timber imports that can't really be brought into the city in any size without wagons. Having given the matter some thought, New Pavis has big problems in this regard. While it is possible to build a house using adobe, wattle and daub, cob, or mud brick, it is very hard to do without timber. It is possible to use arches or slabs to build a second story in mud, but raising the slab will require a crane, and a crane will need to be made of timber. In an environment where space is at a premium, such as a walled city, timber is hard to do without. Making supporting walls from mud brick is certainly possible, but they need to be thick, and thickness is not desirable in this instance. Working in finished stone is possible of course, but without timber, even that becomes a headache of improvisation. One individual who notably breaks this mold is Barran the Monster Killer, who comes to Prax in search of timber of all things. Of course he doesn't stop on the River of Cradles but heads upstream to find Giant Boot timber for his new vessel. So we know that if you go into the Rockwoods there is timber there. Of course the Rockwoods are pretty dangerous, what with all the broos and trolls and avalanches. Now according to Glorantha Digest there are trees growing in the lower reaches of the Zola Fel. This would seem somewhat insufficient. Considering that most of the nomads use either lances or bows, and the Yelmalios and Agimori use pikes, there simply has to be a good local source of long timber fit for crafting such weapons. It is quite possible that there are plantations of trees specially grown and closely guarded for these purposes along the Zola Fel too. Now the use of timber poses issues for the Aldryami in the area, but obviously nobody is harvesting the Garden. As the Lokarnos cult is not sourcing its timber from Elf forests, the Aldyami probably don't overly care. Pulling any decent sized piece of timber out of the Rubble may be worth the time, as structural beams, and even complete boards would be valuable. In my New Pavis the supply of timber is a closely controlled resource and each consignment of timber has a fate determined well in advance of its arrival. The primary claimants for each cargo are the Lunar Authority who earmark a certain amount of timber for maintenance and fresh construction. Next is the Pavis Temple and Flintnail, who are responsible for maintaining existing buildings and earmark some materials for construction projects in the Rubble. Ultimately, most timber will go to the carpenter's guild, but supplies of wood also get earmarked for use in some boat building, when reeds won't do. Weapon hafts and items such as javelins and arrows will mainly be imported. All the major families, the Goldbreaths, the Eiskollis, the Garhounds etc all maintain carefully protected copses of trees, possibly something like red oak that puts on 2ft a year and is quite strong and grows to 40'-50'. Obviously New Pavis doesn't stockpile any form of wood for burning as fuel. For this they would rely on animals for dried dung chips and tallow for lamps. It is possible that dry reeds will also be used, especially for torches.

metcalph has the right of it imo.

I think much could be understood about this Nabuzel Ninequills if we had a clue about what was in the Red Book. Does it even have anything to do with Lunar Worship, given that it is a God Learner artifact? Next up, as Glamour is part of Dara Happa, and Dara Happa was EWF territory not God Learner territory, what has Nabuzel found exactly? I would guess it was part of an old EWF intelligence report concerning some sort of God Learner grimoire... unless the item came from Dorastor and the God Learner experiments there (heavens forfend !) So what is the Red Book ? A Grimoire of blood sacrifice and chaotic magic fresh from the collective id of the Vadeli ? Uleria's address book? or a Grimoires from an egalitarian Malkioni heresy that sought to abolish castes and property (like the Dolcinites or the Bretheren of the Free Spirit, sort of proto-Communists) ? Perhaps the Red Book is the fabled lab text that allowed the God Learners to create the Fire Bergs that broke the Waertagi ? It sounds to me like Nabuzel is a vicious opportunist, with just enough official clout to be properly dangerous. I imagine that the various relevant Lunar intelligence communities look on him with considerable consternation. He was quite probably a member of one or more such organization in some sort of analysis role. I imagine that they are sizing him up to check his influence before it grows too large, and potentially to steal his prize before he can land it. Nobody likes an interloper on their patch. I imagine that the enemies of the empire look on Nabuzel as being merely the latest form of cancer the Empire had infected them with, but I imagine they would be partial to his coin if the risks were not absurd. I imagine that there would be plenty who would view Nabuzel as this sort of target for Lunar internal scrutiny and would use him as a stalking horse to discover and liquidate or turn established Lunar spies in their communities. He's obviously trouble. I also really like Jon Hunter's contribution. A nuanced character is always better. However driven he may be, you need to humanize him. Even sociopaths have quirks and attitudes.

Damn, the link is broken for me.

What do we know about Praxian bachelor societies and warrior societies ? I mean we know a lot about Storm Bull, and a bit about Oakfed and the Three Feathered Rivals. I would imagine there must be a plethora of Praxian spirit cults that sub-initiate within and without clans. Glorantha: The Second Age: Pavis Rises on pages 91-96 details a simple system for randomizing ancestors, and I believe that Avalon Hill's Heroes ran a detailed article on the Ostrich riders that had a write up on their integration of Yelmalio as a warrior society, as well as a boomerang cult? Or has my memory failed me? We also know from Cults of Prax that Morak is the product of a secret Storm Bull mating ritual conducted by such a society, something that Norayeep oddly seemed a little ashamed of. On the other hand that suggests that young women join warrior societies too, meaning that Eiritha herd expertise is potentially available, and warrior societies probably have their own herds. It is also possible for Eiritha worshipers to join such societies looking for a husband if their prospects aren't wonderful with their clan.

So you see the process of becoming Khan as essentially a democratic process? It never even occurred to me that a Khan was elected. I always assumed that Khans were chosen through a more ritual and initiatory process; that clan members were keeping a mental note of who was the best leader, the best raider, the best defender of the herd, the one others might learn from. I assumed that Khans had to perform a series of difficult ordeals, quite apart from their formal Waha initiation, vision quests involving starvation and psychotropics, or more "A man called horse" style pain based initiations, part hazing, part heroquest. I thought that the child of a Khan gained a huge starting advantage by being around "power" and thus was more likely to inherit as would any noble, not to mention that they would be more likely to receive an advantageous marriage. Of course the Eiritha priestesses would want a fertile Khan who would listen to them, and who was an able leader and warrior too, and could play politics to get their candidate selected. In the case of 2 or more highly able candidates, no doubt there would be a series of trials by ordeal, or a short quest to determine the best candidate. I would guess however that on most occasions, the present Khan would simply name a successor, and if the successor didn't measure up then the clan would gradually drift into the ambit of another clan for a while before splitting off under another leader. Voting with their hooves if you will. I suppose an unpopular or incompetent choice might make people pack up and leave early. I would have thought that a quasi democratic process like wapentake might be fine to select who would lead a raid, but selecting a Khan would be a lot more of a top-down selection process by the clan religious hierarchy. To the original point however, I concur that peace would be the preferred norm within a Praxian Beast Tribe, unreservedly even. I mean of all the people who you can make war on, why your own relatives? Why your own tribe? On the other hand, I think human relations have a tendency towards fractiousness, and often the bitterest fights and rivalries are those within an organization or familial group. That is where prestige and power is handed out, and someone always winds up feeling slighted, someone always has an ambitious spouse who wants a bigger slice of the pie, someone is always bitter that they didn't get the girl or the boy or were the younger brother and nurse a resentment. I would suspect that a lot of what Waha does around the campfire of an evening in fact is trust building stories and methods to strengthen internal clan bonds and mitigate trouble before it occurs.

So what happens when the Sables who have accepted the Red Moon meets the White Bull Sables? They sit down all chummy by the fireside and laugh about the vagueries of the deities like a bunch of old illuminates? Probably not. Politics is very pragmatic, and in many ways direct religion, and Waha is a very pragmatic deity. We know that warrior societies form and "bully" clans politically, as Jaldon did after his early and unsuccessful attacks on Pavis. I see it differently. Waha values strength, and raiding is a way of life. Different clans within a tribe may well have ongoing political differences, for example when Ansil Clan needs 25 head for a dowry and Flower Bison owes them 25 head but says they cannot afford to give them up because their herds are too small, Ansil takes the 25 in a raid as they are warlike and feel owed AND slighted, but this enrages Flower Bison who counter raid to get them back, starting a tit-for-tat feud and breaking. Similarly if a Khan wants to count coup against another Khan within his tribe, stealing from him shows that he is weak while the successful raider is strong. The real issue is the spilling of human blood in such raids. The raiders are probably obliged to disable but not kill their opponents, and when such a taboo is broken then an outlawry, death price, and reconciliation has a chance to occur. On the other hand sometimes these old wrongs have a long tradition, and even at tribal moots the other clans need to separate the problem members on opposite sides of the camping ground. Often warring clans form the political polarities within tribes, and the tribe itself serves as a means of mitigating the worst excesses of the conflict and stop it escalating. In King of Sartar for example, it is quite acceptable for feuding clans to be in the same tribe; the danger being that they can shift to another tribe and potentially cause a tribal war. That is no danger in Prax, as once an impala rider always an impala rider; clans don't switch beasts. As for female power stopping the feud, I think you will find that often it is the womenfolk driving the feud behind the scenes, especially if we are drawing on anthropological precedents from our world, like the Bedouins, the Berbers, the Mongols, the Tibetan herders, and the Plains tribes of North America.

Do Praxians raid other clans of their tribe? E.g. do Bison riders raid bison riders on occasion, or Ostrich riders raid their own? What are the consequences for such raids ? Do they signal a catastrophic upheaval within the clan or is such activity pretty ordinary?

ls it possible that while the entry #271,852 starts on page 30, that entry #271,852 goes for 3 or more pages, and the relevant text entry is on page 32? That way both entries are correct but using a marginally different notion of how to reference, as would be typical in any LM temple, and would generate endless academic arguments.

That is true only up to a point. As far as I am aware, the tusks were on top of a leather helmet, and broken teeth could be replaced. A bronze helmet by comparison could not be so easily repaired as it would require re-casting any broken piece from scratch. You can't just cold work bronze back into position, or even reforge it the way you do with iron. Bronze is a very unforgiving material. I am sure re-sewing a few broken tusks is a doddle by comparison.

How can you take no credit while being listed in the credits? If you are listed in the credits, you are probably allowed to take a little... As for the RQ6 hack, I already have a copy, but thx.

Only 40 or 50 pigs huh? Well if the tusks are too small you can't use them, so that would mean either keeping a boar alive for long enough to produce good tusks or buying the tusks from a hunter. RQ6 says that a regular pig costs 50 silver and a superior pig costs 150 silver. So pricing tusks, even at half the value of a "reasonable pig" still makes the price of the helmet 1250 silvers, but lets face facts, it is probably more expensive. This at least makes a tusk helmet around the price of a standard plated helmet costs (1400), and probably a lot more. It would probably weigh around the same amount too at a guess.

I don't know where you found that Baragie, I didn't know the Unofficial Elder Scrolls RPG existed. You have my profound thanks. BFF

When you think about it, a helmet made of boars' tusks represents a phenomenal amount of wealth. How many tusks does it take to make such a helmet? 500? 1000? Then divide by 2 and multiply by the price of a boar... Given the thickness of a boar's tusk and the weight of it, a helmet like that would also be worth a lot of AP, and might well have an intrinsic enchantment. Anyone want to write them up for the Plunder thread?

So, Ken Rolston worked on the Elder Scrolls, it has a big Romanesque but not Roman empire, it has rebellious barbarians, it has mechanistic dwarves who are extinct, (admittedly it has quasi Tolkien elves not vegetables with legs). It has a percentile system. I agree that Morrowind was the best. I loved Skyrim, but Morrowind was better. Now it's all over bar the shouting.

While guilds may superficially look like utterly medieval trade associations, in fact there have been similar associations since Sumer and they are common to pretty much every urban society. You even find guilds in Japan, Persia, Egypt, Rome, China, Thailand and India albeit with a few interesting cultural nuances. For example China's Tongs and Japan's yakuza syndicates began life as guilds, with the same religious connotations as the European guild's use of Patron Saints, except they were primarily Buddhist but became increasingly criminal in their orientation due to oppression from above, becoming proto-resistance movements. As Sartar's official coin is the "Guilder" it makes sense to have a system of urban guilds in the cities and towns and even into the countryside, probably set up with charters by king Sartar himself, to wisely protect the skill base and production of the Kingdom. Though I agree that the notion of a weapon master's guild is a bit far fetched. As for Sherruffs, initially I utterly hated the concept and saw it as transposing a US model onto a bronze age village when I read it, but after a while I began to see some merit in the idea. Orlanthi are at best a loose and voluntary confederation, and would take poorly to a heavy handed central authority handing down laws to them. As Sartar was smarter than that, the notion of the clans appointing a thane to fulfill the role of a royal law enforcer who doesn't interfere in inter-tribal or inter-clan warfare but maintains the peace and harmony between the clan who he effectively serves, and the Kingdom, is a pretty good compromise. To that end, 20 years ago I included Sherruffs (yep, complete with the mis-spelling) as an official part of the Kingdom of Sartar. My players were Tovtari who lived in a water stead about 2 miles from Ironspike, but Ironspike had a sherruff up until Sartar was conquered in 1602 (the game started in 1594 from memory). Sherruffs had to have the courage of Orlanth, the skill of Humakt, the wisdom of Lhankor Mhy and the golden tongue of Issaries. Even the clan kings deferred to them, and because they had to work together so often, many sherruffs colluded together to end clan feuds and sew notions of nationhood among their clans. The notion of a lone lawman isn't out of character with the Orlanthi way at all, though it does speak to an earlier time in RQ. I found and transcribed my old notes on Sherruffs today. Feel free to hate on it, the game was a long time ago. Please find the file attached below: Sherruffs.pdf

Yes totally. In fact tRSoT probably shouldn't even make an appearance. I was totally joking. Providing stats for the Red Sword of Tolat such a "Deities and Demigods" thing to do. But how about the unbreakable sword then huh? huh?

So who wants to stat up the Red Sword of Tolat? LOL

Synonyms for phratry include "stirp", and "stemma" which both indicate a single common ancestor forming the line. You could also adopt words from nomad cultures such as the Native Americans, Hungarians, Mongols etc.

So can I get some idea of the comparative sizes of these various divisions within the tribes and their purpose? E.g. what is the purpose of a sept, and how many people are in it? I agree with you that Phratry lacks poetry as a term, belonging in a turgid anthro lecture about kinship more than Prax. As I am not quite clear about how you affiliate with a phratry I can't offer any alternatives.

If you are looking for a 1920s Jazz sort of feel, but don't want to go with Jazz classics, an alternative is Postmodern Jukebox. Yeah, I just rickrolled you.

I love the Book of Enoch, it is completely hilarious. It goes into great detail about how the angels work the doors that allow the winds in and how the rain falls through a great sieve hidden behind the clouds. This world machine would be dear to any Mostali's heart, but we Godlearners merely smile politely, then giggle to each other about their failure to understand basic meteorological principles from behind our imported Kralorelan fans while sipping fizzy beverages made from exotic Dawn Isles fruit and herbs.