Darius West

11 hours ago, Squaredeal Sten said:

In a sub-episode in The Seven Tailed Wolf, there is a reference to trade with the Dragonewts.  Around Tink as I recall. But not exclusively there.

What would Dragonewts have that humans want?

What would humans have that Dragonewts want?

I'm thinking that dragonewts don't wear clothes so won't want cloth.  They use obsidian blades so won't have as much use for bronze as the other intelligent races do.  

They hunt and eat, so food is OK.  

Their motivations are hard fior people to understand.  So ?? What can you imagine they will trade for?

Now what do they have that humans want?  Obsidian makes very sharp knapped blades, but they also have the disadvantages of other knapped blades in accord with W&E.   

Magic?  The dracgon magic in the Bestiary doesn't refer to enchantment but they do enchant, shown by the Dragonewt roads.  What  would they produce?

You are making some interesting assumptions here Sten, and that's fine, but much will depend on your GM and their interpretation of dragonewts I suspect.  For my money I would bring a few things to your attention.

1) Many dragonewts are kind of incompetent.  You say they hunt and eat food, but there are those who are too dumb to have figured out the necessity of eating to stay alive (or don't like how it feels), and so they are born and run around for a while, then run out of energy and die of starvation, believing this to be normal as it is what they have done a thousands times before, and then they go back to their egg, having failed for the umpteenth time to progress on the Path.  Remember that all the competent dragonewts have already become dragons, and the present remainder are the "bottom of the class".

2)It is perhaps a good idea to think of the dragonewts as a large monastic community (or perhaps a big "funny farm").  There is literally only 1 breeding individual in the entire society as far as humans know, and this breeding involves the production of eggs.  Are they eggs as we understand them though?  Likely not.  

The dragon path doesn't emphasize technology, but internal development.  They use obsidian and dragon bone because this is what they know, and what they have, not because it is the only thing they use.  Dragonewts are not Amish, they just don't have a part of their path that involves bronze working, but the EWF definitely had bronze weapons and armor.  Dragonewts are mistrustful of things they don't know or understand, like bronze, but the good will of the trader who is prepared to take the time to show them the value of such things may go a long way to securing a sale.

3)  You suggest that dragonewts have no use for cloth, but there is an exception; Bags, in fact containers of all kinds.  Off topic for a moment, consider, given its odd dragonewt rune configuration, it is possible that wheelbarrows may actually be a dragonewt invention adopted by humans.   The thing about dragonewt bodies is that they don't come with pockets, and increased carrying capacity is something they will rapidly adopt when taught.  In fact items like pots, pans, blankets, scissors, lamps, tinderboxes, needles, thread, hammers etc. will be demanded if the trader is able to explain their use to the dragonewts.  The dragonewts will likely completely misinterpret the lesson of course, but these are a people who make 3 wheeled carts because they can't get their heads around the use of a 4th wheel.  Of course this monastic community may see these tools as unreliable fripperies from Path ignorant humans, but that isn't necessarily the case, as items that help you live will be important in those early stages of Path development.  Even dragonewts need to meet those crucial Maslow's Pyramid needs to progress on the Path, they are often just too dumb to see it, but they reincarnate.

4) Everyone thinks that dragonewts are these amazing mystical beings with weird magic, and they are, but they are also often highly stupid and impractical, as they literally don't care if they live or die.  They CAN enchant things, but humans who haven't had the brain splitting operation cannot understand or use their magic, and when humans have that operation they often find that their right hand no longer knows what their left hand is doing in a literal sense, due to the splitting of the right and left hemispheres of the brain IRL.  This is a minor taste of what life as a dragonewt is like; consider it.

5) Different dragonewt communities are likely to trade in different ways.  Obviously the Dragon's Eye uses Tink (Trade Think village), and there will be official human language experts there to do the trading on behalf of DE City and the Inhuman King (Queen?  Egg laying?).   Trade is often likely to be less formal if possible at all when you encounter parties of dragonewts.  After all, do they even understand what trade is yet?  It is likely that each dragonewt city has some idea of how to trade in place, but the whos, whats, whys, and wherefores are going to be at issue.  Will they place high importance on trade and have a senior caste dragonewt who is intelligent involved, or will they leave matters in the hand of a crested dragonewt because such materialism is unimportant? 

6) Don't make the dragonewts a complete pack on nonces.  They do understand coinage as it is part of the lessons of the Humans 101 meditation course.  They know that acquisition of resources is something desirable, and so they will seek to acquire coin, but may not really fully grasp the concept of spending, hence the legendary greed of Dream Dragons.

Trading with dragonewts should be a bizarre WTF roleplaying experience, where unexpected things occur and meaning is somehow lost in translation.  The Buddhists have a saying "The master points to the full moon, but the student sees only the pointing finger", or, you buy a cat a scratching and climbing castle, but they only want to sit in the box it came in.  My advice?  Bring feathers.  Dragonewts seem to really love feathers, especially colored ones, even if they are just dyed.

8 hours ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

gingers are all posted into the Etyries Caravans

Given the number of gingers, those caravans could be many tens of thousands strong if that were a universal rule.  I suspect that it is mainly red headed slaves who wind up being bought and put in the caravans as a form of secret Etyries hero quest. YGWV.

In Lake Mead Nevada there is evidence of multiple murdered people found in the water, meaning that everyone in Las Vegas and even in surrounding states have become unwitting cannibals due to drinking the water which has minute fragments of the dead in them.  Truly these are the end times.

BTW, this is a really good forum topic Jajagapa.  Getting a bit more detail on events in the HC is useful in this "Post-Dragonrise" world.

6 hours ago, EricW said:

I've never got it straight, what exactly is preventing Belintar from returning, which hero questers can't fix? My understanding is JarEel did something bad, but it seems strange that no Vargast Redhand or Harmast Barefoot has appeared to set things right?

Belintar is at least in a Lunar Hell, but might well be bound in a crystal on Jar-Eel's necklace, or may be stuck in a time paradox, depending on your interpretation of events. 

12 hours ago, Scorus said:

What were the feelings in the immediate aftermath of this bold move by Leika? I imagine that some tribes were relieved that someone took the initiative to move things forward, in a very Orlanth manner, while others felt that she had overstepped her authority and perhaps even prevented Kallyr from coming back? What would have been the Boldhome Orlanth leadership's opinion? What factions/temples/races would have had extreme reactions to this, either pro or con?

Leika sees herself as Kallyr's logical replacement, so getting Kallyr raised from the dead is not on the cards.  Of course Leika did overstep her authority, and that is one of many reasons people will choose to side with Argrath.  

3 hours ago, Shiningbrow said:

Now that Vinga is canonically Orlanth as a woman (ptooohie! She'll always be a person in her own right in my mind!), is her worship outlawed in Pavis under the Lunar occupation, alongside that of Orlanth himself?

Vinga is definitely outlawed in New Pavis.  Red headed women belong with the Red Moon Goddess not as some second string "Thunder Brother" of the Storm Pantheon.  Plus the Lunars are not sexist, and are well aware that women can be plenty sneaky and dangerous as rebels.

On 8/14/2022 at 11:38 PM, PhilHibbs said:

I haven't decided how mean to be. I don't like being mean as a GM, but I don't want to be too lenient either.

The characters went to King Berevenenos's tomb and promised to send offerings at Sacred Time in return for his loot.

So far, two seasons later, they seem to have forgotten about their promise. Do I presume that this means that their characters have forgotten, or is it something that the characters are less likely to forget than the players?

I think realistically when they got back home with the loot, they would tell everyone what happened and the promise to send tribute would be mentioned. So I think it would be a bit harsh to say they forgot in-character.

Some GMs would just say "they forgot, they suffer, har-de-har". And if that's the way the group works, fine. I'm not sure my group works that way.

Cut the suckers a break.  It is likely many days since they made that promise, and people from Glorantha know better than to break a sworn oath.  I would make them roll INTx5 to "remember something important", by way of a reminder, then when one of them makes the roll, tell them what they have forgotten.  It then becomes their in-game moral choice as to what they do, rather than something they forgot to do as players that got them in trouble because the GM was mean.  RPGs are about trust and having fun, and seriously, this isn't something the characters would forget, but human players have lives to distract them.  That's my opinion at least.

15 hours ago, EricW said:

Maybe we're looking at this wrong. "... What the police did extract, came mainly from an immensely aged mestizo named Castro, who claimed to have sailed to strange ports and talked with undying leaders of the cult in the mountains of China. ..." - seems pretty structured to me.

Maybe when the GOO finally arise, the undying cult leaders simply come out of hiding, and become the aristocracy of the cruel empire, by guiding humanity into a structured pattern which allows people to co-exist with their new masters, at least until the monster food runs out. Perhaps CoC story gave us a glimpse of this cruel future.

The undying leaders gave instruction to Castro. Castro's group in turn preyed on the locals. But in time perhaps the locals would have come to an accommodation, where they provided sacrifices of their own free will, in return for Castro agreeing to be more socially sensitive about selecting sacrifices - like the villagers in “The Shadow over Innsmouth”.

Most people in such a settlement - the villagers - would have been relatively sane, aside from the pain and loss of sacrificing a few of their number every month. Most of them would have had more sense than to go into the woods to spy on the cultists. The cultists in turn would have themselves been barking mad, but a functional form of insanity which allows them to co-exist with the normals, though there is no doubt who is in charge in that arrangement.

Welcome to the cruel empire.

Yeah, not bad and pretty close to what the Cruel Empire of Tsan Chan supplement suggested.  In the supplement, humanity's survivors initially fled underground to the ghoul tunnels, where they skirmished with the Serpent Men, before realizing that all 3 independent races were in the "same boat" vis the rise of C'thulhu.  They made their way underground with the Serpent Men largely taking the lead due to their sorcery.  They emerge on the Plateau of Leng, where they form their new "empire", and begin fortifying and preparing an economy and defenses, and shielding against the madness emanating from C'thulhu.  They drive off waves of attacks, and gradually produce a new ruling class made of humans who have interbred with the gods Wilbur Whately style, who have enough innate power to withstand the very worst that can be thrown against the Empire.  And they create a ritualized society where adherence to the Law before all else becomes a sanity substitute.

21 minutes ago, EricW said:

Or maybe the humans in the cruel empire are all utterly insane. Old Castro in the Lovecraft CoC story was able to be civil, answer questions and give coherent descriptions of cult activities, but as an active and knowledgable participant in awful sacrifices and rituals he was probably totally insane in game terms.

Ahh, here's the misunderstanding.  The Cruel Empire of Tsan Chan are NOT the mad mass of humanity.  They are the last viable human culture and civilization after the return of the GOO.  What they aren't is the madmen out there "killing in the name of something unpronounceable", which is not to suggest that the don't per se, but that they are rigid and structured about it, and not just a pack of random acts of disorganized sociopathic violence.

On 8/12/2022 at 12:30 AM, mfbrandi said:

Academia.edu is a useful and legitimate source of stuff likely of interest to some Gloranthaphiles.

This — from The Oxford Handbook of Cuneiform Culture — dropped into my inbox today:

    “Agriculture as Civilization: Sages, Farmers, and Barbarians”
     Frans Wiggermann

Even if that doesn’t fascinate, it quotes from a “Sumerian disputation”, Ewe and Wheat, which might find in-game use:

     The people of those distant days...(etc.)
 

It must be said that Ewe and Wheat does make a bit of an intellectual assumption about hunter-gatherers being a pack of lack-wits, which we know simply wasn't true, especially as they were responsible for Gobekli Tepe and other sites, even with only a hunting and gathering economy.

We also know that the adoption of agriculture had more to do with rising populations creating food pressure than any idea of a better lifestyle and more free time.  Most Hunter-gatherers would likely spend a tiny proportion of their day obtaining food in comparison to agriculturalists, who were all but state slaves if you stop and consider their back breaking labor and taxation to a largely uncaring central authoritarian government.  Of course everyone likes to imagine that they are better than other people, and so agriculturalists imagine slack-jawed hunter-gatherers who are little more than herd beasts.

Now lets consider this in relation to Glorantha.  Even in the Green Age, there is the assumption that humans and beasts were of similar intelligence.  The difference is that it is assumed that the beasts were smarter back then, not that humans were more stupid.  They stupefying of the animals comes later as a result of the Lesser and Greater Darkness, when certain gods are broken or enslaved or form covenants that stupefy their descendants.  Obviously by the Golden Age, agriculture is in full swing across Glorantha with Yelm ruling everything, but back then even the animals are not "herdman stupid".

I like the fact that “Agriculture as Civilization: Sages, Farmers, and Barbarians” deals with Oannes the Fish man, who according to legend brought agriculture and other blessings to humanity in ancient Sumer.  I first bumped into him while researching for Call of C'thulhu and said "jackpot!".  He's a lot like the goddesses Wheat and Ewe discussed in the Ewe and Wheat disputation you provided, and by that I mean he's a "culture hero"; a figure who comes and introduces a technology that changes everything.  It is interesting that Glorantha doesn't have a lot of immediately obvious culture heroes, but when you look a bit harder, they are there, you just have to read between the lines a little.

19 hours ago, PhilHibbs said:

Er... I don't know where you got that from. "Removing bad thoughts" is not the same as "killing".

13 hours ago, Squaredeal Sten said:

No, completely wrong.  It was the healer, all right.  Who healed both his body (that was the easy part) and his mind (which was the YGMV part).  And then they summoned him for Leika.

Ahh... Okay then.  That is a FAR more interesting problem.  I thought this was another "Let's murder a critical hero" issue.  I haven't played this scenario, but the potential here is very interesting.

So, what counts as a bad thought in this instance becomes the issue with which we must grapple.  Send in the Thought Police?

Now something with a name like the "Board of Nails" sounds like a rather severe "spanking" tool.  A heavy duty spanking tool used on wayward adults not children but which is supposed to help them mend their ways.

Honestly idk what Argrath was doing with a damaged body, he can call on so much power it is a bit ridiculous, but nvm.  What is at stake here is his mind, and what happens when he is "made good" apparently.

It might actually be a good thing that this happened.  As an illuminate Argrath has likely been tempted to stray from conventional morality on many occasions as the pragmatics of a situation cause him to take the easy but potentially corrupt way out.  It happens to non-illuminates too, but such dilemmas are basically "illuminate cancer", that puts them on the slippery slope to Chaos.  So lets imagine what would have happened if Arkat had been hit with the Board of Nails.  Imagine if Arkat stopped betraying people for expedient reasons.  Well, his campaign against Nysalor may have taken far longer, and he likely wouldn't have transitioned into a Troll and then a chaos creature, but in all likelihood he would still have destroyed Nysalor, as that was his fated destiny by this time.  So let's imagine giving Argrath a healthy ethics refresher...  He will likely become somewhat less manipulative in his sexual relationships, and less prone to use skullduggery to solve issues of state, and will become more reasonable in his demands upon his subjects.  He may even be willing to grant certain enemies more mercy than was previously in his nature.

I would not pretend that Argrath is a moral exemplar by Orlanthi standards, but the Board of Nails might help push him in that direction, potentially making him more selfless.  On the other hand, if anyone thinks that Argrath is suddenly going to abandon Sartar and become a Chalana Arroy pacifist, well, within a system of Orlanthi morality, that would be evil, given his personal situation, not good.

16 hours ago, jajagappa said:

Well, as the OP noted, this was the Black Spear material, so Argrath is not exactly in normal state of mind, nor accompanied by any companions.

Still, he has at least 1 allied spirit to watch his back and heroic reaction speed, and Guided Teleport, plus any number of other answers to assassination.  Argrath has repeatedly defeated assassination attempts, his hatred for assassins is the only actual quote we have from him. I don't care how "out of it" he might be, he will still parry/riposte dead any damn healer in a heartbeat, or Thunderbolt them at SR1.

On 8/13/2022 at 12:38 PM, Squaredeal Sten said:

I just had a massive Your Glorantha May Vary (YGMV) event:

I was running Black Spear. and along about page 136, the party's healer used the Board of Nails (acquired about a RW year ago in a minor heroquest drawn from King of Dragon Pass, considerably earlier in my campaign)

So, lemme guess, you let the party healer (of all people) hit Argrath with the Board of Nails, and likely killed him or something, right?  You didn't let him use his hero powers to GTFO, with parry, dodge or Guided Teleport or any number of other potential saves.  You didn't have Argrath's Humakti bodyguards slaughter the healer for trying to assassinate their liege either I bet.  Here's a useful rule of thumb.  Heroes can't be killed except by other actual declared Heroes, or Superheroes, or by overwhelming numbers of mooks, or major league Chaos monsters like Cwim or the bat.  If you try to assassinate Argrath, he will avoid the blow like a Chanbara hero and decapitate the assassin, declaring "This is how we deal with assassins with no respect for life".

But hey, if you want your players to get away with murder, let them pay the price.  The Lunars regroup, crush the internally divided Sartarite clans, and roll over the Holy Country and Prax too.  Soon thereafter they use a hybrid Mostali ritual to raise the Block, there being no Stormbulls left to defend it, and Wakboth is freed because fundamentally the Lunars were always a Chaotic conspiracy to destroy the world, and Wakboth is the Sacred Utuma they have chosen to do it with.  Glorantha is destroyed in S.T. 1630 and there is no-one left alive to record it as the lozenge dissolves back into the cosmic chaos void like a popped soap bubble. 

4 hours ago, EricW said:

Perhaps thousands of years have provided a way to live with the mind wrenching fear. They might be insane from our POV, as per the prophecy in CoC. But it would be a very short lived empire if say kids couldn’t grow up into viable adults, whatever that would mean in such an age.

“…The time would be easy to know, for then mankind would have become as the Great Old Ones; free and wild and beyond good and evil, with laws and morals thrown aside and all men shouting and killing and revelling in joy. Then the liberated Old Ones would teach them new ways to shout and kill and revel and enjoy themselves, and all the earth would flame with a holocaust of ecstasy and freedom.…”

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.

3 hours ago, John Biles said:

There used to be an amazing Miskatonic Repository work on the Cruel Empire of Tsan Chan, but it's no longer available, on drivethrurpg, anyway.

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.

1 hour ago, mfbrandi said:

Yeah, but that Wikipedia page just refers us back to the Anchor Brewing Co., so it cannot settle the question of whether the Anchor Brewing Co. was right to include honey in their recipe, can it? (I don’t think the people at the brewing company would pretend to be experts (“Sumeria”?) or that their beer was authentic, just that it was a fun thing to make — which is true.)

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).

1 hour ago, mfbrandi said:

My thought was that if honey was a luxury import and beer was a domestic staple, it was unlikely that honey was an ingredient for early Sumerian beer, but I am not going to pretend to know the truth in this matter.

Honey was seen as medicinal by the Sumerians, and is definitely an antiseptic, but is also something that yeast could feed on. 

1 hour ago, mfbrandi said:

Again, I wouldn’t swear to this, but I don’t think barley needs insects for pollination — which is not to say bees cannot pollinate barley — but check with a botanist.

  You are quite correct.  Barley self pollenates.

1 hour ago, EricW said:

more they have somehow made an accommodation with their horrible reality.

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.

7 hours ago, AlHazred said:

I liked Robert Price's interpretation of the monastery of Leng in "The Strange Doom of Enos Harker". I recommend checking it out if you can do so without throwing any money at Mr. Price.

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.

7 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

Do we buy honey in early Sumerian beer if (from the paper quoted in the original post) “Except in emergency situations, the import of foodstuffs was rare.

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.

On 8/4/2022 at 4:29 AM, thom said:

Ok Wisebeards, I've come for some advice...

Hi thom, let me slip into my Lhankor Mhy beard like an extra from the Life of Brian in the stoning scene here... 

On 8/4/2022 at 4:29 AM, thom said:

My 2 old-timers (i.e. 1979+ RQ2 players) convinced the 2 beginners to take the craftsmen background so they could all be townies (because we remember how much better the townsman background was compared to the peasant one BITD)😈.  I (as GM) have decided they're living in Red Cow; so...my questions are:

Send my best regards to my fellow ancient RQ grognards.

On 8/4/2022 at 4:29 AM, thom said:

1) As townsmen, could they/should they be members of the Red Cow clan, and the Cinsina tribe? I ask because the passion examples of craftsmen do not include clans.  I can work with either way, but I'm curious how y'all handled this situation - if it even occurred in your games.

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.

On 8/4/2022 at 4:29 AM, thom said:

2) As townsmen, how would y'all have them participate in the Sacred Time rituals (especially if they're not clan members)?

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.

On 8/10/2022 at 12:06 AM, Jeff said:

Remember the scale of things in Sartar. A city is rarely going to be more than a long day's trek away from any associated tribal settlement (and often just a few hours away). These are not Medieval English peasants, tied to the land, but free people used to moving around and traveling. The Lunar Occupation interfered with this, but it was the aberration, and besides it is over now.

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?

9 hours ago, scott-martin said:

IMG the early 1620s are superficially similar despite all the upheavals. Then Kallyr is actually bad for business by making it complicated (less pleasant if not actively illegal) to trade with Peloria through Boldhome while not replacing that established customer base with much of anything. No problem, everyone with a northern interest books a room in Queens Post instead and people, ideas, stuff and money keep flowing. Again, the customer base and the things you carry shifts from year to year. Some markets are getting cold. Others are too hot to handle. Red Earth in the south is simpatico with Red Moon in the north and they love to send each other lavish presents.

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.

9 hours ago, Cassius said:

I wonder what children do during Sacred Time in a typical Sartarite clan. Are they allowed to participate to the rituals ? Are they spectators, outside of the sacred area ? Do they stay "at home", the elders taking care of the younger ?

I would be surprised children were allowed to participate to the re-enactment of Myths. Can they even give magic points to the community ? (Do they even have magic points ?)

I read this thread and found it very useful about what happens during Sacred Time, the meaning of this season in the Gloranthan year, the rituals and the ceremonies performed day by day. In this thread, @Bohemond makes a wonderful suggestion related to children :

I ask this question because I want to tell my players the story of their childhood.

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.