Nevermet

Trying to map up the army of goddesses in the early myths in the Entekosiad is an exercise in madness, and I sympathize with your efforts. Just to let you know, trying to map out and compare families trees to make a unified genealogy does not save one from madness.

"No, it's simple! You ju-" *Is punched by Santa Claus*

I honestly have no idea what the Monomyth thinks about Natha. But yeah, the Entekosiad is a real mess in part because of how gods are blurred. Turos is ViSaruDuran, the son of ViSaruDaran, and an internal aspect of ViSaruDaran. ...you can find this sort of embraced complication in real world polytheistic religions (Meso American cultures like the Aztec come to mind), but my God... it makes me want to drink.

Cool. I mean, it fits. The Spolites are rather obsessed with the underworld, and there are a lot of hints that they have experience with the undead, so I won't be terribly surprised if there are vampires running around. EDIT: the only question is whether the Legion is in Zern, Dezarpovo, or near Natha's Well.

Oh, it's an extremely aggravating text. Everyone has 2-4 names, the narrators are ALL unreliable, and its really unfinished ("you must tell me about Gartemirus & Natha! NOW!!!") And I agree that Urox is a bad ft for Bisos. One of my (gentle) criticisms of the Guide is that it sometimes feels like they wanted to simplify the mythology by removing unique, local gods. (or perhaps thats my twisted love of Maniria talking there)

I'm sorry - I never actually responded to your thought: The Uz of the Yolp Mountains would definitely have a lot of interaction with Spol. This is where The Ebon City would come from, and Mount Gestinus would likely be a shared holy site.

Oh, and another Bad God: Oh, also? Daak is Daxdarius. One is a thief in the night who ruined the House of Virtue and raped the virtuous queen. The other is a warlord who insists that the world is defined by war now, and the fall of the sky & sun proved his point and allowed him to become a High God (for a while) Saying that is a great way to get killed by a phalanx in Pelanda & Oronin

Oh, also? Daak is Daxdarius. EDIT: SOrry, wrong thread.

Oh, that sounds fun! Do you have a cite for that?

Greetings, new friend! The Aldryami come in because of two things: First, the city of Karresh (1) has had an Elven Garden since before the Dawn, (2) It has a pyramid to Derdromus the Pelandan Monster Man, and (3) it is the hometown of a Spolite Emperor who also ruled Dara Happa. Additionally, we know that ELves were VERY active in Pelanda early on: The maps in The Fortunate Succession show Pelanda as heavily reforested, and the Entekosiad documents Elves destroying at least one Pelandan city (Othens) during the Dawn Age. Meanwhile, the Uz were nowhere near Spol until Arkat helped them settle in the Yolps. The Spolites started going bad when they tried to graft Uz mythology in, and got a bit... ambitious. IMG, During the Bleak Times, human sacrifice created a sort of symbiosis between human & Aldryami communities: humans died in ways that kept plants alive without a sun, and the humans could then eat some of the harvest, using moon-sickles.

I have a lot odd thoughts about the Bad Gods of the Entekosiad. GanEstoro / Estoro / Ganesaturus IMG, GanEstoro is a version of Turos. He is "Gan Turos," associated with the Gan Hills. Both Turos and GanEstoro talk to worshippers through cracks in caves, and GanEstoro is called the God Who Gives and Takes, which suggests a capriciousness that would fit with how Yelmites talk about dirty dirty Lodril (who is Turos). GanEstoro is a version of Turos that supports human sacrfice. We know that some of the High Gods secretly kept getting human sacrifices after Idovanus / Idoman / Gartemirus banned the practice. The idea that a version of Turos that is associated with human sacrifice and the Gan Hills would explain the Spolites, a Northern Pelandan culture who are defined by their "enthusiasm" over human sacrifice. Ganestoro is known in Fronela as Ganestos, "an underground god... who stole the secrets of the dwarves" (P. 225) Based on this, I would argue that there is some sort of a relationship between Ganestos & the Third Eye Blue tribe of the Brass Mountains Yargan While I can understand a reading that sees King Blue and Yargan as different people, I equate them, along with Guide to Glorantha (P. 317) EVERYONE hates Yargan: Jernotius defeated him, Daxdarius overthrew him, Urvairinus the Conquerer dismembered him, and Bisos killed him and then resurrected him as the God of bountiful harvests. Given that Yargan has strong underworld & death associations in some stories, I'm not terribly surprised that death is a temporary inconvenience to him, and then he's redeemed as a god of harvests (which is kind of has an association to life & death) Yargan has a blue spear from the corner of sky. Between this, and Ganestos stealing the secret of iron from the Mostali, I would suggest that The Later Blue Peoples were Kachisti who worshipped Ladral / Lodril / Ganestos. The Kachisti were also allied with the Weartagi for a long time before the Dawn. Yargan's invasion was therefore a western invasion to "liberate" a version of Turos from the "tyranny" of earlier blue peoples who followed Listor, the Poralistors, and King Oronin. I realize this is a radically different understanding of them compared to what some people here have said. However, I think this fits the Entekosiad and the Guide to Glorantha, and it explains the Third Eye Blue Tribe.

The Guide to Glorantha explicitly equates Bisos and Urox in at least 1 place (p. 327), though they are distinguished elsewhere (p. 325). So, I suspect either interpretation is viable (though I personally prefer Bisos to be different from Urox, since Urox doesn't seem to have Bisos' leadership skills).

Hi! So, I'm about to play in an online game of RQH, where the pitch quickly states is a bunch of Adventurers from Carmania coming down to Dragon Pass. I decided to play a Spolite... and then realized I didn't know that much about Spolites other than "Scary Darkness People." So, primarily using the Entekosiad and Guide to Glorantha, I tried to get a handle on what the Spolite Religion entailed. I wrote up my version of Spolitism here, and I would love feedback or discussion. I may not be right, but I can explain my reasoning and how it relates to published materials in most cases. I tried to generally stay "inside" published setting information and not violate it too much. The biggest "bending" of canon I've done is equate Ganestoro with Lodril. I've also in general fallen in love with Pelanda and Carmania, so I suspect I will be interested in that corner of Glorantha more moving forward. Thanks!

Another idea: just as Gerra's Pyramid descends, so does the Black Mountain of GanEstaro and Vogestes. The Black Mountain, therefore, is not a mountain at all. It is, in fact, Natha's Well, the great bog of sacrifice.

Yup. She's the current incarnation of the Lunar Goddess. She was also a pre-existing goddess in both Pelanda & Dara Happa as an underworld goddess of balance and murder. Here's the entry from the God's Wall in GtG:

And it's also good to remember "Error" in whose eyes. The Entekosiad is blurry about it, but there are a lot of traditions layered on top of one another, and I suspect that some of them view Vogestes as more in error (Carmanian religion focused on dualism, the Jernotian Way and its rejection of human sacrifice), than others (Pelanda before the High Gods were established by Jernotia, the revival by Natha the Sacrificer during the Bleak Times, which I'm assuming is strongly related to Spolitism).

I like the idea of setting sun and black mountains... hmmm...

Yeah, reading the Entekosiad, I'm not 100% sure of any of the named characters being truly chaos beings, until you get down to the stories about Bisos. Mind you, there are definitely characters and events that make things worse, but they really don't seem to have as elaborated a notion of reality-destroying chaos as, say, the Orlanthi or the Praxians. That and death seemingly always existing whether or not people realized it, but that's a different thread.

That would explain the similarity between the name Estaro and and Turo - The God who Gives and Takes, vs the God of Power.

Ooooh, another alternative: Vogestes is not GanEstoro, but the Red King. In "Naveria and the Red King," the Balancer ritually kills the Red King in a giant clay pot shaped like a bull (E p. 76), and in "The Path of Addi," Natha sacrifices Vogestes "at Naveria's Court." (E. 83). This has a lot of interesting consequences, but (1) I get nervous that Natha is an imposition by the Lunars, and (2) there's still a concern over both GanEstoro and Vogestes having black mountains, and (3) The Red King seems ignorant that anyone lives west of his city, and all of Pelanda is west of his city. grr...

This is my second, and arguably more esoteric, question about GanEstoro. As I read through the Entekosiad this weekend, it occurred to me that while there was no stated link, GanEstoro and Vogestes were 2 entities with a shocking amount of overlap: Idovanus. Ganesaturus, often accepted as another name for GanEstoro, is the brother to Idovanus in Carmanian legend (GTG, p. 725). Vogestes is the brother of VioVanus, (p. 19) or Idoman in Pelandan legend. These two names are associated with Idovanus. Black Mountain. In the Legend of Idojartos (E p. 56), GanEstoro has a throne on a black mountain. In the legend of the Third Error, Vogestes builds a temple at a black mountain (E p. 32) Death. GanEstoro is associated with death & destruction, and Vogestes is instrumental in the error of believing that death is good and more is better (E p. 32) Spears. GanEstoro tries to kill Kenstrata with a "death dart" (E P. 62), and his primary worshipper Yargan wields the Blue Spear 45. Vogestes, meanwhile, is the Spearman, and he teaches men to paint their despair into their javelins (E p. 20) Sacrifices. GanEstoro demanded sacrifices (E p. 45), and Vogestes taught men to sacrifice (E p.20). At the same time, this is not a slam dunk association: Against Text. Valare, the author of the Entekosiad, loves telling us which names from ancient Pelandan myth equate to which gods in contemporary Carmania & Dara Happa. Not mentioning such an equation seems deeply odd. Yargan. The associations with Yargan are extremely tenuous. Yargan is from the West (or at least beyond the Sweet Sea), and is associated with Water. Vogestes has no associations with water, and he's indigenous to Pelanda. Also, claiming GanEstoro is Yargan's father because Yargan worships GanEstoro is a weak argument. Deception. Vogestes has no association with lies. Elemental Associations. Vogestes is the "Fire Magician" (E 41), while GanEstoro is the "cold master" (E 56) EDIT: Different Sacrifices. Forgot this one. GanEstoro demands sacrifices for himself, and Vogestes claims sacrifices make the world. So... what do people think?

Basically, what the subject says: Is GanEstoro, the Enemy God that appears in the Entekosiad, also known as Ganesatarus in Carmanian mythology, chaotic? I've read the Entekosiad and the Guide to Glorantha, and I'm not completely sure. I can imagine 2 answers: GanEstoro / Ganesatarus is chaotic. He embodies the Lie and evil, not just darkness. He is the opposite and sworn enemy of his brother, Idovanus. Given that Carmanian religion isn't about balancing the light and dark as much as the light defeating the dark, it makes sense that Ganesatarus is a truly hostile force to reality, and is therefore chaotic. GanEstoro / Ganesatarus is not chaotic. He is not referred to as chaotic in either GTG or Entekosiad, "merely" that he is associated with evil, darkness, deception, and matter. His opposition to Idovanus may have brought chaos into the world, but that's not the same thing as being chaotic. Also, the fact that Idovanus the Light and the Law is able to pardon and redeem Ganesatarus (GTG p. 725) suggests he is not chaotic. I'm fully aware that YGMV, but I wanted to see if either of these held more water, or was more the accepted viewpoint at the moment. Thanks!

I'm extremely interested in both of these. I hope to hear more.

All I meant was lets assume the wizard is from a wizard culture, as that is a simpler case for most of HQ chargen

Hi. I hope I'm posting in the right forum. I just wanted to double check my understanding of chargen in HQ2 as it exists after Pavis: Gateway to Adventure. As I understand things... All PCs start with runes, regardless of their culture or magic. PCs who practice rune magic may become an initiate of a deity, assuming their rating in the relevant rune is high enough. PCs who want to start using spirit magic don't need the Spirit Rune, though it'd probably a good idea. Instead, they are able to join a spirit society if their Tradition rating is 1w or higher, and they get that through their cultural keyword PCs who want to start using wizard magic don't need the Law Rune, though that's a path to spells if they're also an initiate of Lankhor Mhy. Instead, adepts start with a grimoire equal to their cultural keyword, and 4 spells. Assume for this one the PC is from a western culture. ...Is that accurate? Thanks!