Darius West

The Cruel Empire of Tsan Chan is probably best described as a magocracy built on strict discipline and encoded ritualism in the supplement. This adherence to the rules allows people who are otherwise quite mad to continue to function as part of society despite being mentally broken and "hollowed out". Loyalty is demanded unto death, and it reminds me of a combination of Traditional Tibetan Society, China under the CCP, The Empire of Man in Warhammer 40K, and the Dinner scene from "Roger of the Raj" in "Ripping Yarns". As to the part when mankind is "liberated" by the Great Old Ones, no doubt this is the false promise of power the GOO offer humanity. On the other hand, humanity has always been more of a threat when we work together rather than as atomized individuals who live in fear of each other. No matter how much sorcery you learn, will you ever learn more than Nyarlathotep or any of the other GOOs? Unlikely.

Yes, I bought that. Sadly I've never had a chance to use it for any CoC purpose. My players always found a reason not to go to the Plateau of Leng. Scaredy cats. Of course I blame myself for being a very sandbox-style Keeper who lets his players choose their own direction.

Fair enough. From what I read, the honey goes into the bread, and only indirectly into the beer, though I have had honey beer (I called it Quasimeado). Honey was seen as medicinal by the Sumerians, and is definitely an antiseptic, but is also something that yeast could feed on. You are quite correct. Barley self pollenates.

Hmmm... That sounds a lot like most investigators in CoC... And quite a few unhappy people deemed to have mental health problems irl now I think about it. Might there be a reason I shouldn't throw money at Mr. Price? How dire are his sins that he is deemed unfit to be paid for his writing? 🤔 Needless to say, thanks for the tip, I will see if I can find his work online somewhere.

Have a look at Bappir

Let's all toast klecser with a nice cold glass of cherry Kool-Aid 👍😁

I have been awaiting this news for a while now👍 I just don't enjoy reading PDFs.

Hi thom, let me slip into my Lhankor Mhy beard like an extra from the Life of Brian in the stoning scene here... Send my best regards to my fellow ancient RQ grognards. Okay, so they come from the more urban areas. Not a problem. Yes, they will potentially come from one of the clans of one of the Tribes in the area, but because they are living at a distance from their people's Tula, it is reasonable that perhaps the clan and tribe of their origin doesn't have as much claim on their loyalty as it otherwise might. This would be especially true if they were born and raised in the city, and perhaps only head out to the clan/tribal lands infrequently. They may well feel more loyalty to their City and its Ring than to the clan/tribe. Personally as a child of a migrant, my Ukranian babusia used to say that "when you migrate, you sacrifice your children to the new land". By this she meant that they will be raised in the new land with its values, not with the values of the Old Country. This is likely true of Sartarite children raised in a Sartarite city, rather than the lands of their Tribe and Clan. They will technically be (in this case) of the Cinsina Tribe and the Red Cow Clan, but these things are not an important part of their everyday life as they are urbanites. If they were migrants to the city, they may well keep their clan and tribal loyalty, and have an underdeveloped loyalty to the City. The thing about urban areas is that they tend to have BETTER Sacred Time ceremonies than those boondocks yokels can muster. Why? They will have bigger temples, with a more trans-tribal membership, and they will have more money. Their Sacred Time ceremonies will have bunting of brocade and rich fabrics rather than straw and flowers. Of course the City will be far less likely to sponsor Hero Quests too, as these will need to have the approval of the City Ring, and not prejudicially preference any of the clans or tribes specifically. Jeff raises a very valid point. Sartarite cities are generally located at a nexus between tribal lands, and existed to facilitate trade, and ended up creating a sense of nation where before there were only warring tribes and clans. The lands of your tribe and clan are not so far away if you are a city dweller, so how come you don't have a passion for them then? Well, there are potential reasons for this. Firstly, if you are potentially rubbing shoulders with members of "enemy" tribes and clans every day, in a non-hostile context due to the cosmopolitan nature of urban life, you may decide you personally don't hate them. This will go part way towards killing off your loyalty to the tribe/clan. Then there is the issue that while the clan/tribe may have representatives in their district of the city, that doesn't mean that you as an artisan are properly represented by them. The truth is, they may well be your landlord, and unless situations are unusual and the landlord is kind, this can be an unpleasant and exploitative relationship. Often the interests of the clan and tribe won't align with the characters' own commercial interests, and thus the tribal representative may not be someone you trust, or who actually speaks for you, but actually an unrepresentative person who "speaks for the yokels" in your character's opinion. Most societies experience an urban/rural divide that is very formative of the direction of their culture's long term growth. Finally, as an urbanite, you will likely muster with your city's militia in times of trouble and not with your clan or tribal fyrd. Who you fight and die alongside has a big role to play in where your loyalties lie.

The Plateau of Leng (PoL) is often mentioned in CoC and associated materials. It is a very mysterious place, where a number of Mythos beings are known to live. There is some conflict as to where it is exactly. Some people place it in the Dreamlands, while others place it in Tibet, Antarctica, South-East Asia, or potentially on other worlds entirely. I was personally surprised to discover an IRL Plateau of Leng in Switzerland (Lenk am Simmental), and featured it in a Mythos short story I wrote. We have also variously heard that ghouls, moon-beasts, the Emerald Lama, tcho-tchos and who-knows-what other horrors can be found there. When I am Keeper, I personally assume that the Plateau of Leng is a "gate nexus" of sorts, a place where a great many crossing points from one place to another intersect, and thus the mystery of the Plateau may lie not with... (see spoiler below to ruin the mystery, unless you are a Keeper of Arcane Lore, in which case hideous cosmic vistas await as your poor mind correlates these contents) but with It is also worth pointing out that the Cruel Empire of Tsan Chan will be born in the Himalayas in the lands around the Plateau in that period when humanity falls to the Great Old Ones at some point in the future. This inhuman bastion of humanity may well serve as the only reservation where humans remain during this unspeakable period, and who knows what will become of our species afterwards? It is odd however that the Plateau of Leng becomes the "final" refuge for humanity in this period. Does anyone else have tidbits of Plateau of Leng lore? Or want to chat about how they have used (or been subjected to) the PoL in their game?

The Long Winter, the Dragonrise, the withdrawal of the Lunars, as well as the arrival of the Wolf Pirates and Kallyr and her Sartarites will definitely make trade more dangerous. It is likely trade has been bad for years now. However, every leader in the area is going to want to get trade flowing again, even if they are bandits.

I think children become observers of the more public side of ceremonies, acting as de facto lay members. Cults will likely be welcoming of children who want to observe the public performances as that might be all that is needed to encourage their future recruitment. There are of course the child gods of Voria and Voriof, and Yelm the Youth and Teelo Norri and so forth. I think the mythology is "suckled in mother's milk" in Glorantha, and from the moment you are born there are mysteries you become part of. I think much like Christmas, there will be activities for children to participate in during Sacred Time. Orlanth might offer Sylph rides. Ernalda will offer sweet things to eat. Issaries will trade for toys. Lhankor Mhy will introduce educational games. Chalana Arroy will run a petting zoo of injured animals. There will be dances, songs, pretty ribbons and bunting, appeasing of spirits with offerings, animal rides, and so forth.

This is a really good point. The fact is, Chalana Arroy can give you a new set of testes, so what then becomes the neuter gender? This is another good point that begs the question of how Orlanthi culture decides what is neuter. There aren't too many female eunuchs, after all.🤔😉😅 Your point about trickster shamans is a point well made too. It occurs to me that maybe the Orlanthi neuter sex might primarily apply to species other than humans that have an actual neuter gender like dragonewts.

Agreed. The numbers of eunuchs in Orlanthi society is likely to be low, even in places where Maran Gor and Barbeester Gor are popular. On the other hand, what about people who are born with an obvious sex, but who feel no interest in sex? Or people who are determined to be infertile? Or people whose sex organs are obviously too malformed at birth to function? There are likely a number of other such categories and exceptions, and if the Heortlings are going to have a neuter sex, then it is likely going to need to be a larger rather than smaller as a category in order to be socially useful in the language imo.

Hmm... This makes the neuter sex somewhat problematic. Obviously they can enter physical maturity, but not sexual maturity. We also haven't quite established what the neuter sex actually means to Heortlings. There are no deities within the pantheon that are identifiably neuter afaik who would oversee such rites. As such, we have 2 questions to ask: 1. What do Heortlings qualify as a neuter person? (a) To whom does this extend? (b) To whom might it extend, but in fact does not? 2. Which deity oversees the rites for neuter people in Heortling society?

Mosaic hermaphrodites can also logically exist IRL with both sets of human sex organs in working condition. It involves the incomplete subsuming of a fraternal twin in utero. It is also the time honored term for what some people have now chosen to re-label "intersex". Like I said, if an hermaphroditic person wants me to use new term (with all its associated poverty of history and meaning, and potential for misunderstanding) for them, I will likely oblige at their request, but I won't change for people who aren't just to fit in with their odd preferences. I can't understand why someone wouldn't want to be a child of the two most powerful pantheistic divinities of ancient Greece anyhow. It's kind of awesome. Besides, Heortlanders don't recognize intersex people, they recognize hermaphrodites, look it up. And this is as it should be. Glorantha is a Bronze Age society where there is every chance that such a rare occurrence in their community would be considered unusual enough to be of divine importance.

If they ask me specifically not to call them that, I will likely oblige, unless they are rude about it, in which case I will double down. They also need to provide a decent alternative term, as intersex doesn't have a clear meaning if you stop to consider it and could easily be misinterpreted.

Well, they're wrong. This is the accepted scientific term and has been for hundreds of years. I intend to keep using the term. You don't hear about intersex fish for example, some species are hermaphroditic, well, so are some people.

So... Is this some sort of cult thing? I mean... I know Glorantha has lots of cults, and they're cool and all, but you know, is this like a "CULT" cult? Awkward question, I know...😅

You're correct, and the other two sexes are neuter and hermaphrodite. So when we say 'neuter', do we mean someone who was born without sex organs, or has had their sex organs destroyed, or simply doesn't have any sexual impulses, or someone who is infertile? The meaning here as it applies to the Heortling culture is unclear. As for hermaphrodites, stats tell us that 1 in 2000 people are born intersex, so, for a clan of 1000 people, that's about one ever 4 and a half generations (given a 15 year generational turn-around which is normal for a bronze age society). I think we can assume that the issue of hermaphrodites and their initiation would be sufficiently unusual that the Clan Ring would be able to take council with the individual and their kin and come to a suitable accommodation among the cults represented within the clan.

The logical answer is that the cult of Vinga holds Vingan puberty rites and the cult of Nandan holds Nandan puberty rites.

This is such a good idea. Kudos JRE! I love it. You've thoughtfully observed and used the lore and cleverly integrated two pretty divergent themes in a pretty inspired way. Should it ever come up, My Glorantha Will Vary to incorporate this. If it isn't canon it should be.

I don't think Gringle is in the same league as Gold-Gotti. Gold-Gotti is able to finance an entire regiment as well as running the finances for Argrath in the longer term.

Best answer imo.

I'm writing a Gloranthan fiction right now and am 200+pages in. The working title is "The Golden Phalange". It is a humorous adventure/murder mystery set in Prax around Pimper's Block and Hender's Ruins.

That is one pretty miniature. The detail is pretty great. I love the tattoos and those little shoelaces. Damn. Could they have done a clear sylph, or perhaps a white and grey one? That would be my only (largely irrelevant) gripe. Purely a matter of taste.