On 4/27/2016 at 11:27 AM, soltakss said:

I thought the Piscoi breathe water and the Cetoi breathe air.

 

Yeah, this is what one would naturally think, I believe. I've always felt it weird that this is not how it works, and that fish-mermen breathe air.

42 minutes ago, The God Learner said:

The Third-Hand Master told his student "On one hand, there's this. On the other hand, there's that."

The student was then illuminated.

"What is the sound of three hands clapping?"

Third-hand illumination has been proven to have serious health risks.

Yes, what happens to the Cult of Dormal following the return of the Boat Planet? Its one reason for existing used to be to provide the Opening ritual, but that quickly becomes meaningless (although you have to wonder who the first person to try to go at it with the Opening ritual after all this time is...). Does it try to reinvent itself? Coast on its existing status? Heroquest for new nautical powers to stay relevant? Whither away?

Similarly, farmers there might well find ways - self-defence only, naturally! - to use farming implements that absolutely do not count as weapons, honest.

5 hours ago, g33k said:

But the difference of techniques is key.  Early MMA, I was hearing all about "shoot-fighters" as dominant... but look at what happened when the Gracie family brought BJJ to the MMA field... they dominated for years, until other MMA fighers figured out how to adapt.

That was UFC 1 - it was basically designed to show off Gracie Jiu-Jitsu, which was successful because it was pretty much the only martial art anywhere that hadn't lost contact with the demands of actually working (on the streetfighting scene of Brazil) - the story of essentially every martial art out there in the real world (at least up to the creation of MMA, which might have gotten some to take notice - it's been said that martial arts have progressed more in the last 25 years than in all of history before it) is degeneration into pure style and very limited practical usefulness.

And maybe people don't want to go to the ground in a battlefield, but it sure happens anyway, especially when people load up on armor. This is why both Samurai combat and knightly combat include a hefty dollop of grappling - you may get to the ground by accident, you may throw yourself down on top of an opponent who's gone to the ground by accident, you may have lost your weapon and initiate grappling, or grappling might be the only way to get a weapon through armor. 

Most RPGs are kinda silly with 'martial arts' - a martial art is just a system of fighting, no more and no less, and there are basically zero reasons to have special rules for it outside of the regular fighting skills. Most 'martial arts' skills in RPGs are weaksauce remnants of Kung Fu movies. If MMA teaches us anything, it's that there aren't any uber-cool schools with secret masteries or hidden devastating techniques - there's just fighting, more or less successfully, and plenty of martial arts are kinda crap in practice (like how Kung Fu is essentially useless in MMA).

Of course, in Glorantha this might not hold, as a Martial Art could well be a tradition with magical components to it. But even in this case, it's the magic that makes it different, not any physical prowess used. Pankration, for instance, is just wrestling and striking.

On 10/13/2018 at 11:52 AM, Joerg said:

How so when we find silver hoards from say before the Anglo-Saxon exodus on Fyn or in Juteland? Silver by weight was the international currency north of the Holy Roman Empire until Scandinavian kings and trader cities started coining silver, too (about the time the Hanseatic League expanded into their territory). Significant portions of that silver (and some gold) were taken out of circulation in hoards or grave gifts.dge might be seen in the context of the amber trade, too.

This has its own interesting story, in that it's significantly Arab silver, which filtered through Scandinavia on its path to silver-poor Western Europe. 

(It's sometimes claimed that this flow of silver was a major part of getting Europe out of the Dark Ages and back into a money economy.)

6 minutes ago, David Scott said:

The PDF is cheap. 

Have it in print, just not with me. 🙂 And I'm certain I've seen people mention a connection between the Cradle and the raising of the Boat Planet, although not necessarily canonically so.

On 10/15/2018 at 12:54 PM, EricW said:

The cult of Eurmal Odorous has a strong affinity with cabbages and sprouts. Provides the Trickster "flight" spell. Eating cabbages or sprouts can increase duration. 

Clearly the source of the Secret Wind. It's no coincidence it's also called the "inner" wind, because it dwells within each of us. More in people with a stronger association to the Air rune, I'm sure.

Since we're in this thread already, what's the connection between the Cradle itself and the return of the Boat Planet? Is the Ship used for the Shipraising part of the Boat Planet quest the refurbished Cradle (at least symbolically)?

On 10/20/2018 at 8:25 PM, Sir_Godspeed said:

Is there any mutual contention on whether Arkat or Nysalor were Occluded rather than Enlightened?

I'm not sure occlusion is an objective state. It's more like "Occluded: Illuminated person I disapprove of in a specific way".

The thing about Orlanth is that unlike most of his brothers, he's not awful all the time (only some of it).

Quote

One day Zistor the Destroyer showed up, in person, to
help during the invasion of Esrolia. It was a huge monster,
made of gleaming metal and wires, which tore down the
walls of cities.

Has anyone drawn Orlanth vs. Zistor? Thunder God wrestling a magical Mecha ought to look pretty great...

Also, you get the impression in these myths that Ernalda knows exactly what she's doing. She's way smarter than her husband, after all. The world is a crummy place for women, but Ernalda knows how to navigate it.

Also, a slave's magic is likely to become pretty crappy without access to proper shrines and worship, one would imagine. 

And further, the Orlanthi are unusual in the amount of magic a regular joe has access to. Many cultures leave higher-level magic to the professionals.

Specialist cults would also have enslavement magic (perhaps most common in Fonrit). 

On 7/25/2018 at 6:11 PM, Bohemond said:

I want to play up the whole ogre problem among the Red Cows, and one obvious way to do that is for the ogres to seduce other members of their own clan, but if such activity was outrageous, they probably wouldn't do that. Also, strictly exogamous marriage means that PC Ernaldans have to leave the clan when they get married, which makes maintaining an adventuring group a bit trickier (although Esrolan marriage solves that problem). So I'm looking to see what people think about this issue. 

Once, it was stated that all sex within the clan counted as incestuous, but that seemed pretty danged unlikely to me, and I believe it's been rolled back to just the marriage part (and with merely sex within the bloodline or with other immediate kin counting as incest). So it probably makes more sense to have this ogre seduction come in the form of pre-marital sex or adultery (the latter highly frowned upon, of course, but kept secret for obvious reasons). The chaotic taint of adultery might even help to father more ogres.

On 8/25/2018 at 9:08 PM, M Helsdon said:

A bit like the real world, where there were numerous sun-gods and goddesses - a subset of just the European ones: Alaunus, Albina, Alectrona, Apollo, Aurora, Belenos, Dažbog, Eos, Helios, Hors, Neaera, Neto, Saulė, Sól, Sunna, Thesan, Usil.

8-)

I'm sure the God Learners would have proven that most of those were the same god.

Then switched two of the remaining ones for shit and giggles.

On 8/22/2018 at 5:57 PM, scott-martin said:

Love it [Lærd]. It's like a hinge (or henge) swinging between lords and lore.

It's cognate with "lore" and "learn".

Etymology Online: 

For a Swedish translation, I would use "Gudalärd", which would essentially back-translate into something like "Gods-Learned", "person knowing a lot about gods". I imagine German would support something like this.

I think the wiki is really useful for looking up a particular place or person or object, and being directed to the source.

It's not very useful as a stand-alone source of detailed information. That's just how it is.

On 7/4/2018 at 12:47 AM, Pentallion said:

Subatai worships the sky god, so Orlanth, but he's a tiny archer thief.  So I'm going with Impala rider who spent many years in Pavis.

"The Four Winds" say Pentan storm worship to me.

I love the Hellwood Hill of Gold version where at the end, Yelmalio turns Krjalki. 🙂

http://www.soltakss.com/hog1d.html

On 6/7/2018 at 5:18 AM, Joerg said:

The Kralori and the Lunars do practice rather bad austerities to prepare for mystical revelations

It's also canon that the Red Emperor's excessive, decadent parties can be sufficient to cause Illumination.

"Many came to the Party and most left as burnt out husks, shattered by the delights of spirit and flesh that were designed for the enjoyment of a demi-god and his kin. Yet for every dozen who used themselves up in this way, there emerged one who saw the world with new eyes. The extremity of the acts they’d partaken of had shocked their souls into an appreciation of the Goddess’ message and their own oneness with the Cosmos. They had become enlightened, illuminated, Seventhed by the power of their bodily experience."

http://www.glorantha.com/docs/does-the-emperor-party-or-not/

Or as Blake had it, "The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom."

My issue isn't about austerities or not, it's that Illumination seems to require a mystical, holistic experience of oneness with the cosmos, a disintegration of the Self – which isn't at all what God Learnerism is about as far as I can tell. I don't think God Learners saw themselves as one with the Cosmos - rather, they had a super impressive set of tools to poke and slice the Cosmos with.

On 6/3/2018 at 3:34 AM, metcalph said:

There are several schools of illumination. [...]

3)  God Learner wisdom. 

Is it canonical that God Learnerism is a form of illumination? If anything, it strikes me as the opposite of illumination. Illumination is the perception of the unity of existence, the simultaneous acceptance of opposites, a kind of holism if you like. God Learnerism, meanwhile, is one of the closest things we come to science in Glorantha. It's analytical and comes to its conclusions by means of understanding the components of stuff. It works by logic and reduction. If anything, I would expect God Learners to be less illuminated than the average man on the street.