Akhôrahil

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.

"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

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.

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.

Sheng Seleris went into a Lunar hell, for one. :-) Arkat built his own Otherside. I don't know what Argrath did, but I'm sure it was monomaniacal and fucked up.

The scale really does bring up some counter-intuitive things, though. At least to me, the Lunar Empire feels as as though it should be comparable to, say, the Persian or even the Roman empire. But going by the scale, it's about the size of, what, France (maybe a bit bigger)? Sure, it can still have the same relative power, as everything is smaller, but it still feels... kinda smallish.

Sure, but you didn't have a China, an India and an entire Steppes empire in the same space as well. Going by this map again, Kralorela is about California's size?

I've always thought it seriously weird how small Genertela is. It feels as though it should be the size of the Eurasian land mass, supporting large swathes of different lands, room for a semi-Mongol steppes empire, an ersatz-China, and so on, while in fact it's only about the size of the continental U.S.

An actual and common Swedish lullaby, "Mother Troll's Lullaby": If we assume that they're regular troll children, eleven is a remarkable number for any Uz mother.

It's probably just a matter of perspective, but I think the Hill of Gold is a pretty strong myth - not for pure war power, of course, but the point of it is survival and maintenance of purity, which isn't to be scoffed at either. I think it's safe to say that this is part of the way the cult keeps bouncing back from seeming extinction. I agree that Yelmalio has a deeper tradition and 'theology', as well as being more fundamentally ingrained in its own society.

Sufficiently large Sunspears - such as at Pennel Ford - could also count.

Does either have a stronger myth cycle, something that should also be relevant? The defining myths are surely Elmal Guards the Stead and The Hill of Gold, respectively. It would make sense that Yelmalio has stronger myth support, but I'm not sure. Both are really good at not getting killed. The Yelmalio cult comes and goes like no other, but I'm not sure whether that's a sign of strength or weakness. Most likely, neither and both – it gets knocked down, but it gets up again.

But flowery speech!

And the Plant rune, where you just stand about in the sunlight?

I must have expressed myself poorly – this isn't about misapplied worship or crossover practices. Rather, the three magical worlds are facts of Glorantha which are experienced by people; and magical systems, beliefs and practices are bound to reflect this to a significant extent. They will commonly work these magical facts into the belief structure and their practicies, and they are not the kinds of things that can be simply disregarded. Meanwhile, in our world, this is not all the case – magical and religious practices have no actual magical otherworlds to reflect, and therefore lack this underlying principle that Gloranthan systems tend toward. In our world, we can't sort beliefs and practices into how they reflect magical realities – anyone constructing a religion or practice here is limited only by his or her imagination, and any outcomes are merely social and psychological, unconnected to any magical reality. (For instance, in our mythologies and practices, "sorcery" certainly doesn't mean "the manipulation of impersonal magical forces through logical methods". It basically means "bad magic", the kind of things they do.) ((About misapplied worship – I'm not a fan of it, and was surprised about the importance it took on in Hero Wars. I think it can occasionally have a place when people are simply "doing it wrong" – if Bob Heortling tries to interact with a spirit the same way he would with a godling, sacrificing to it or emulating it, it's going to be at best inefficient. I would imagine that the Aoelians and Carmanians initially had difficulties trying to integrate new things into their systems. But with any developed magical practice, the entire point is that they have worked out what works even if there were initial difficulties, so no such practice would be "doing it wrong".))

Agree. Two shield-walls going up against each other – hoplites especially – is substantially a pushing match with low casualties. Once one side breaks, the carnage begins.

We should expect stricter lines of demarcation in Glorantha than in the real world. The Gloranthan practices work, and they reflect how the world actually works, so you can't just make up anything you like. Non-functional magic would be an even larger waste when the real thing is available. Meanwhile in the real world, none of this works, which means that no matter what you make up, it will fail to work equally well, and hence nothing 'enforces' such differences between practices.

I realize that I don't understand the Man rune. In one way, it's a rune that you can have on your character sheet the same way as any other. In another way, it's a rune that you have by definition as part of being human [substitute applicable race here]. So what does it mean to "have" the Man rune in game terms? That you don't merely have it in the standard way that everyone does, but enough to use it for magic? What would it even mean to have "more of the Man rune"?

Glorantha ought to have substantially lower casualties than during similar time periods in the real world - yes, a fair number of people get killed outright in battle, or left on the battlefield by the losing side, but wound treatment in Glorantha is vastly superior to anything in our world pre-modern age (and might even be better than current battlefield medicine), and disease deaths on campaign are at the very least a lot less common.

Which year(s) is this from?

Jack o' Bears. Not happening. Ever. It's a stupid idea in so many different ways all at once.

If we believe the Dorastor book (which we perhaps no longer should), they had what might best be described as technomagic. The PCs can find a flying machine operated with buttons and levers, and it does work.

I think this is an excellent point. The mystic (or the Illuminate) sees everything as one thing. The God Learner method is analysis, literally breaking things into smaller things and experiencing and understanding those instead. It's the exact opposite of the mystic's holistic approach. In our world, analysis is the vastly superior way of understanding things and the foundation of science and technology; in Glorantha, not necessarily as much...

"High INT, low WIS". :-)