Ian Cooper

Perhaps. Remember Elmal has a myth about how he resurrects each Dawn without passing into the Underworld.

The 3rd Age Yelm cult worships the Sun up in the Sky, that crosses the heavens each day and returns to the Underworld. That Sun provides magic to his followers. But he cannot be found in the God Time, except as many wearers of the title "Emperor" translated as Yelm or Lightfore.

Another thought. We know that Elmal carries the torch, Kargzant has the Sun Disk on his back, in the Dawn explanations of the Sun. But what of Lightfore? I would guess that the early explanation is that Elmal or Kargzant carries the Sun across the Sky during the day, hands it over at the gates of Dusk, so that the Sun can enter the Underworld, proceeds across the Sky without the Sun i.e. the light is just Elmal or Kargzant, and then picks up the torch or Sun Disk again at the Gates of Dawn. That would explain why cultists associated Elmal and Kargzant more with Lightfore than the Solar Disk. At night, it's just them, so they ARE Lightfore, but during the day they are bearing the disk, they are not the disk itself. But a lot of Lightfore myths get merged into Yelm, not just Yelmalio. The whole Young God part of Yelm is just Kargzant. (BTW you can see the Young God in the Sky, it may happen in 11L and that is probably Lightfore)

This reminds me that I liked how Hero Wars had a lot of 'The Hero Wars are between....' box outs that described conflicts at the heart of the Hero Wars with the implication that you could shape the Fourth Age by deciding who won. "The Hero Wars are between the Many and the One," could be an interesting campaign pitching those who want to return to the Many Suns of the God Time against those who accept the Compromise and One Sun. Bringing back the Many Suns would break the Compromise and end the Age forging a new one. And given that the 'Moon Goddesses" were once "Suns", that the Artmali want their 'sun' back, your Elmali hero, determined to right the wrongs of the Compromise might be part of an interesting party 😄

Don't forget that in this era, few people travel away from hearth and kin. So a traveler is rare, outside of cities, where guilds hold more sway than clans and folks forget how Orlanth and Ernalda taught us to live with those we are bound to by ties of blood. If a traveler comes and you meet them, you offer them water, and then take them to the ring. The ring then decides what else to offer them. If you are a traveler, you can get water, but expect to go before the chief. The chief will want to know your business, but also hear news from the other places you have been and share their own. If you are a merchant or other regular visitor to the clan market, this meeting could be short, but if you are unknown you may get a grilling. Breaking hospitality is to be an oath-breaker and the gods will punish you in this life, and when you come to the Perjurer's Bridge on the Path of Silence when you die. You will be swept into the River of Swords for your lying tongue, and never reach the promised after-life of your deity. BTW every Earthly religion of this era codified hospitality and strong punishment for breaking it.

BTW, I don't think most Gloranthans know this. I am sure that some sages have it figured out, but I suspect it is a secret. Most Gloranthans believe the Bright Empire's truth: Yelm is the Sun and always has been. Yelmalio is the part of him that survived the darkness. The steadfast Elmal worshipers of the Sartar and the Holy Country may believe that Elmal carries the sun-torch for Orlanth and that Yelm and Yelmalio are deceits of the "Teller of Lies", Gbaji and his Bright Empire. [Ironically, the Elmali seem to have survived the prosecution of the Bright Empire under the protection of the Kingdom of Night] They are both wrong, in their own way.

So here is what I think Greg was getting at. In the GodTime there are Many Suns. We know many of them: Dayzatar, Lodril, Antirius, Shargash, Kargzant, Reladvius, Buserian, Dayzatar, etc. At times 10 of the Many Suns (a sacred number that of the Celesital Court, of Glorantha, and it holds the secret of Many acting as One, GRoY p.6) enjoyed authority over various cities of Dara Happa. Elmal seems to have been one of the Many Suns who defected to the Vingkotlings, perhaps as 6A has it, Reladivus. Yelm and Lightfore are titles. GRoY ins an in-world document and has been re-edited by Plentonius to hide this. But in the same way the Bible was edited to remove the Caananite gods, but references to El and Baal still creep through, so do references to the fact that these were just titles. Here is p.7 "The Three Brothers Four brothers could have been equal in light of the staff. They were called Dayzatar, Arraz, Yelm, and Lodril." How many brothers is it? 3 or 4? It's 3, Yelm is a title of one of the brothers (Arraz) at this point. But Plentonius did not edit the chapter title. [Greg was clear that GRoY was complete, this is not a typo]. GRoY helpfully tells us what GRoY means: "Yelm. Literally “Shining Overhead,” commonly “Emperor.” Gods Wall I." Once you understand this, GRoY is much clearer. It's a succession of deities who take the title Yelm, and after Orlanth kills Murharzarm, Lightfore (which just means "First among the Suns"). Arraz loses the title of Yelm when the Cosmic Dragon enters the Sky and he does not stop it for example. "It slowly pushed forward toward the City of God, and slowly forced Yelm to withdraw from the polluted world and up into the sky, to keep himself from being quenched by its passions. Innate Justice did this. Yelm rose into the sky. This change brought about a great fear in the gods, for the Pillar was now empty. The roiling, undisciplined waves of Nestentos lapped at the pillar. People cried out because they did not know what to do. At last Murharzarm, the son of Yelm and Dendara, strode forward and stood upon the Footstool." GRoY, p.11 It says 'Yelm' but this is Arraz, Plentonius has been at work. We know the Polaris and Ourania are at times 'Lightfore', in other words, leader of the Sky Gods. BUT AT THE DAWN THERE WERE ONLY TWO LIGHTS ON THE SUNPATH: One in the day, and one in the night. At the Great Compromise we didn't get a world of many suns: just a sun, a night sun, and then a lot of planets etc. And this caused a problem, for folks whose gods effectively 'dissappeared' with the Great Compromise. Their god was not a planet, so it must be associated with that sun disk. But their magic clearly tells them: your god is NOT ** the** Sun or **the** Lightfore, although you get some power from it. So they all explain this as their god "carrying the sun". Elmal's Torch, Kargzant bearing the Sun Disk on his back. When these cultures meet they discover: hey your sun magic works to do this, when ours does not, but ours works to do that. We all seem to have **parts** of the sun. So the Bright Empire tries to figure it out. They had the revelation that their many gods had become one: Kargzant, Elmal, Antirius, Murharzarm - they were all **the** Sun Disk! But the Sun Disk was not just another name for their god, but something new, a compromise of different visions of the ruler of the Sky. And that revelation, a vision of unity, led them to become illuminated and create Nysalor at the Sunstop. The Sunstop is the moment these folks appreciate that their gods are all part of the Sun, who they decide to call Yelm, the Emperor. Of course, not everyone wants to accept this. They could still travel back to the God Time on holy days and be Elmal etc. Lacking illumination, they found it difficult to comprehend. And that was the root of 1st Age Conflict. Later, Nysalor revealed that not **all** of their gods parts had merged to become Yelm, some 'leftover' parts had became Daysenarus who we now call Yelmalio. So in a sense part of your god is Yelm, part of your god is Yelmalio. You could follow either. Arguably, more parts of Elmal are Yelmalio than Yelm, but KoS tells us that many Elmal worshippers converted to Yelm. And their magic worked better! Because they were worshipping the post-Dawn entity, not the echoes of the former entity contained within it. Now, of course, if I go to the hero plane I can quest as Elmal, and still get magic from his rites. But I can do some (not all) of his stories as Yelmalio, and my magic works better. (His other stories may be part of Yelm, or just not part of the conjoined gods). So who is right? Is Elmal Yelmalio? Yes, since the Dawn, no Before. But can a Yelmalio worshipper do Elmal heroquests? Yes some? And some Antirius ones too, and some Kargzant ones. Is Elmal Yelm? Yes, also since the Dawn, no Before. But less of him became Yelm than Yelmalio Echoes of those Nysalorian associations still exist but the cults were shorn of much of that in the Second Age. The cult of Yelm was in 'hiding' in the Second and early Third Age and was revived by the Red Goddess, that is one of the story lines in Fortunate Succession. Yelm's return with the Red Goddess implies to me that Illumination may be part of his cult once again. I would not be surprised to see Illumination being a goal for those Yelmalio priests in their retirement towers, going blind from staring at the sun, though most may no longer know that is what they do.

Personal issues impacting one of the team, we now have new resource on it.

Oh, intriguing

For now they are what we have, so I would be pragmatic. And Greg was involved heavily in both of them. I would look at the Seven Mothers Cult write up in HQG, as well as the version in P:GtA if you have it to understand how Lunar Magic works. ILH-1 has been heavily superseded by The Guide. but might still give you inspiration. The material on the Lunar Way, Sevening etc in ILH-2 is all straight from Greg, and so ought to be reflected in new material. The main issue is the plethora of cults, there are way too many. Stick to the larger cults though and you may well get something playable out of it.

There is a document. We're just figuring out some logistical issues on it.

You can apply stretch penalties, if you need to. The major problem though is only if a player really starts stealing everyone else's limelight with their jack-of-all-trades skill. Otherwise, if you think about the heroes of fiction, like Star Wars, they seem to be able to use their narrow keywords in a lot of situations. Luke has Farmboy as a keyword but seems to be have breakouts for Blaster and Pilot underneath 🙂

I'm writing something up, that I will figure out how to publish, because we seem to have failed to explain some things well enough. You can do Basic Magic with any rune. For Greg this was what most folks had access to. It doesn't allow you to do anything you can't normally do, but it does let you become magically better at things you can do. This is the prayer to Barntar whilst you plough, the sword sharpening charm you use to in battle. RQ folks can think of it as most spirit/battle magic. So if you had a water rune you might know a prayer to hold your breath longer underwater, or a prayer to help your crops grow when you watered them, wrestle better etc. Being a Runemaster i.e. having a mastery in a rune is fairly exceptional. To understand this, we should distinguish between adulthood initiation and someone initiated into the deeper secrets of the religion. Most people are not initiates with access to supernatural effects. PCs are of course all exceptional people. So a PC well have a mastery in the spirit rune, but most folks don't. BTW although most basic magic seems to work like charms, Greg used to offer that it might be charm, a spell, or even rune magic -- just of the 'get better at doing something' over a supernatural ability.

Yeah, understood. It's something for me to pick up on in the new Core Book.

Dara Happa Stirs is a **great** piece of Gloranthan writing, and I heartily recommend it to all Glorantha fans, regardless of your preferred ruleset.

I know that @Jeff published some of these in the past, over at Glorantha.com. Such as: https://www.glorantha.com/docs/pelorian-art-direction/ https://www.glorantha.com/docs/look-gloranthan-cultures-part-3/ and https://www.glorantha.com/sketch-of-three-nobles/

I'm one of the authors. The community is great at helping out, but if you have any specific questions, then I am happy to respond.

This is the key, I think. HQG is what we expect someone to do with HQ: take the Core, then drop some rules and add a few new ones to better emulate your setting. It should still be recognizably the same, but its ok to vary a little. (Think of the way BRP often had slight differences between systems).

It's intriguing. The fundamental act of Gygaxian roleplaying is, IMO, I play my character based on my understanding of what they would do in the situation. Sometimes this is called Actor Stance. This equates, for me, very much to psychological storytelling. By contrast with sociological storytelling the conflict is more important than the characters, so I would expect to see a lot more Director stance, where the player makes decisions for their character based on what is best for revealing the themes of the story. I used to be big on director stance and shared narration, but of late I have grown colder on it, believing that Gygaxian model is fundamentally more enjoyable. That may make me a heretic but at some point I think that Director stance is too far into Shared Storytelling over Let's Pretend which ends up a different thing.

Yeah, the goal was to add APs back as an option but RPs are still the default

Well, it shouldn't really be out there yet. There is not a huge issue with you guys having it, but please don't promote it elsewhere, we are working hard to get this right before we go public with this

No. In the past we have had descriptions of Broo infecting material by defecating and urinating on it, and processes to decontaminate materials. If you can contaminate and decontaminate a material item, it is not solely spirit possession that provides disease. I would maintain that spirits tend to be the source of patient zero in an outbreak. in Hero Wars material Greg often suggested that the gods provide protection to their worshipers from disease, and I believe that this implies protection against hostile spirits. So your clan wyter, or local friendly godlings will try to protect against wild disease spirits. If this fails, perhaps because the community has offended the god, or perhaps because the disease spirit is too powerful, I think that a disease spirit can infect a patient zero. Of course contact with a broo or other diseased creature might lead to someone becoming infected and bringing disease into a community. The broo themselves gain their illness from voluntary infection by disease spirits, which does them no harm as they can only be carriers. Once that person is infected, if the disease is contagious, they will spread it by contact with bodily fluids. I think that lack of hygiene aids in the spread of an existing disease, but that the origin, the patient zero, was always infected with a spirit People resist this disease because they are healthy or weak as per RQG p.154. As per those rules, a person dying from disease would generate a new disease spirit. I think that the rules about hygiene are not obvious to most Gloranthans because it has no impact unless a patient zero, infected by a spirit causes an infection that then runs riot due to the lack of hygiene. I am sure that anyone with the Treat Disease skill is aware of the lack of hygiene issue in the spread of a disease.

PS This is a great comic to get you in the right mood: http://age-of-bronze.com/

I like to make the point that , IMO, much of the Thunder Rebels description of the Orlanthi riffed off Urnfield culture (start with the burial rites and work outwards) and is more interesting for that. I know that @Jeff doesn't see it that way. Either way though, the stories of the Age of Bronze are much more interesting than the Dark Ages as models for Glorantha.

Yeah the SRD will be clear that the outcome of the contest is focused on the result for the PCs and the GM interprets what it means for the resistance. If it is PC vs. PC is the only time that it must be symmetrical.