Akhôrahil

We can also look at specific cases of what seem like gravity, and see that some of them have nothing to do with it. Rivers flow downhill, but that's just because they rushed to fill the void left by the spike, whereas once they flowed uphill instead, invading the land. Gravity doesn't enter into it one way or the other.

That's an old myth (and in our world, unlike Glorantha, that doesn't make it true) - the coriolis force has minimal impact.

This is fine - it meshes well with my idea that Glorantha has an absolute "down" direction. Being pulled towards the Chaosium works - being pulled towards the center of the Earth cube doesn't. The elements would then naturally sort themselves in the order of the strength with which they're pulled. Also, if Darkness likes to sort itself at the bottom, this explains why lead - the darkness metal - is so heavy. The pull downwards on it is stronger.

Gravity as we know it, as in being pulled towards the center of mass, clearly doesn't exist for any number of reasons. As for sorting into the natural place, if the human body is pulled towards the Earth cube, then people in the Underworld are upside-down, which would actually be pretty cool but is not supported in sources. Also, it's attested in multiple cases that you can fall into the Underworld through a sufficiently deep hole, which wouldn't really work if bodies just tried to find their natural place. Further, the Red Moon must have its own system of "gravity". There must surely be something like air resistance. Otherwise all kinds of strange things start to happen. As stated in the original thread, I believe there's a fundamental, cosmic "down" direction to Glorantha.

There clearly isn't any kind of regular gravity in Glorantha. For one thing, the heavy part of the world is a cube, and if gravity as we know it existed, then people at the edges of the upper face of the Earth cube would be pulled towards its center of mass, which would be at an angle and not straight down. The two most likely explanations are that there's a natural sorting of stuff in the universe, with Darkness at the bottom and Fire at the top, or that there's a natural "down" property to Glorantha, and of course things fall down – that's what "down" means.

The Red Moon makes for an interesting case, in that it is spherical and that its inhabitants walk around on the lower part without falling off (or so I assume?). So at the very least, it has it's own system of 'gravity' or 'down', separate from the rest of Glorantha. I'm sure some people would cry "Chaos!" at this upending of the natural order.

"Up" and "down" got separated in the Green Age?

In that case, gravity would be going in the reverse direction in the Underworld, and you wouldn't be able to fall into the Underworld, the way you definitely can (attested in more than one place). Aristotelian "gravity" would be nice, but doesn't really work. It can't just pull towards the center of the Earth cube - there must be some fundamental "down" to Glorantha.

Another way to say the same thing is that he created the 'correct' quest. It's probably far too simple to say that there's a correct path for the heroquest and your job is to discover it – instead, in the mess Lokomayadon had made of Orlanth-worship, Harmast created (or at the very least put together from disparate parts) a myth-cycle to quest within. To us, it looks just like what we think we know about Orlanth's own LBQ – but then, it would, wouldn't it, when everyone is working from how Harmast did it? We have no idea how pre-Harmast notions about the LBQ looked like or how they differed from the pattern he created.

I really like how the LBQ always brings back someone problematic and iffy, who might get the job done but where you may well regret it later. Yelm, Arkat, Sheng Seleris...

Possibly the first "modern" heroquest, as well. Harmast is the first one to substitute one station for another, correct (as the Baths of Nelat aren't really survivable)? "Arkat was the discoverer of modern Heroquesting. Heroquesting itself is ancient – since time immemorial intelligent Gloranthan beings had used rituals and ceremonies to contact deities and spirits. [...] This method of spiritual conquest and growth was known previously, but none had the knowledge and power to explore or exploit it"

Who is/was the God of the Silver Feet? Local version of Issaries?

You sure? That's not at all what the Guide states: "Another terrible secret was avenged by doom guardians calling themselves the Gift Carriers of the Sending Gods. Everyone who was privy to the Forbidden Secret, or who was kin to them, or who might have witnessed or heard about the secret, was hunted down and destroyed. So successful was their effort that no modern Gloranthan even knows what secret they extinguished" (This quote really reminds me of Keyser Söze: "He kills their kids, he kills their wives, he kills their parents and their parents’ friends. He burns down the houses they live in and the stores they work in, he kills people that owe them money. And like that he was gone. Underground. He becomes a myth, a spook story that criminals tell their kids at night.") I mean, it must be tens of thousands of people we're talking about here, if we include everyone who's kin, everyone who even heard of the Secret, and so on? A massacre throughout the Empire?

I think it's striking how anti-cosmopolitan Glorantha seems at time. The First and Second councils seem doomed from the start. The Ban was just great for everyone not reliant on trade (you can build a utopia as long as you don't have foreigners around to muck things up), and the Closing seems to be mostly a Good Thing. Bad things come from attempts at multi-culturalism. All multi-national empires are corrupt. And let's not even get started on magical innovation inspired by contacts with other cultures, and magical systematizations derived from that! Seems the Doraddi have it right – don't try anything new or foreign!

We don't have an Arkat, but we sure have an Alakoring Dragonbreaker and all kinds of heroes on both sides. Early EWF and God-Leaners both are really cool. If they hadn't overreached so ridiculously, it wouldn't all have had to end in tears. I've never liked the Gift Carriers. Where are they supposed to have come from? How can we have super-important, super-powerful entities that aren't part of any previous mythology? This really looks like a direct, personal intervention by the gods to put things right, in just the way they aren't supposed to. Deus ex Machina (no, not Zistor!) solution to the whole God-Learner mess?

As this applies to all three ages: I find it weird how the Pentans are shown on the maps as living only in a slender band in Pent, following the caravan route. Surely there aren't vast stretches of uninhabited grasslands to the north and south, only a lower population density? I refuse to believe that the grasslands of southern Pent are less populated than the Wastelands, which are described as Praxian!

I had no idea that Prax was part of the Seleric Empire (or Balazar, for that matter). That must have gone over well with the Praxian nomads, being ruled by filthy horse-riders! Also, it's super impressive how the Lunars just smashed Sheng Seleris and his empire, given the relative sizes – not like in our world where some battles only put a break on things and then dynastic concerns screwed up further Mongol expansion.

Can we unpack what happens at the Sunstop? "first nothing happened, but then dark strands grew bolder in the sky, like huge loops of rope from the western edge of the world, and hooked over it tautly. Soon a great dark net was visible, straining to pull the Sun back to its path. Strands snapped and unearthly shadows were cast upon the world." This is the dwarves catching it and pulling it on its correct path again, correct? Although the net or web also brings Arachne Solara to mind. "Then a great dark spot rose into the sky upon the net. This huge bloated shadow flickered with a smoky glow. The shadow crept across the face of the Sun, blotting it out and making all the world cold for a moment." No idea. Is this Chaos? Osentalka getting his light by taking it from the sun? According to the Wiki, this is Artia. How do we know, and what does that signify? What's going _on_ here? "A snapping moment of terror pierced the world, then the dark sky-web vanished, and the edge of the Sun crept past the shadow. The shadow disappeared" I don't get this. It sounds as though the net snapped, but the sun still moved? Is this a partial success, then? Or did something happen? What happened with the shadow? "and the Sun brightened, but everyone thought it looked paler than it had before. Paler is more white white-ish, or as in less bright? "Some said it moved differently, too." This seems like something that could be easily checked against astronomical records in Dara Happa.

Page 94: "The Swarm". What else do we know about this, and why is it a big deal on a more than local scale? Compared to elven global (well... not "global" exactly, I guess...) reforestation and dwarven continent-pulling, it looks less dramatic at first glance.

“Most witches don’t believe in gods. They know that the gods exist, of course. They even deal with them occasionally. But they don’t believe in them. They know them too well. It would be like believing in the postman.” —Terry Pratchett

Does wood burn because it contains elemental Fire that's released as part of the burning (like phlogiston, or caloric), or because Fire brought to it starts to eat it to grow?

This sounds a lot like Democritus's atomic theory, which had the atoms as the smallest pieces of the elements, defined by their geometric shape. Fire atoms are D4:s, for instance. The question about whether matter is infinitely divisible or whether there are smallest units of elemental matter should arise in Glorantha as well, among people who have nothing more important to do.

The Ars Magica supplement Ancient Magics had one section on Adamic as the perfect language, working in a similar way, with bonuses if you you used it for spellcasting due to it perfectly referencing its objects. The great part was that no-one in the wizard community knows it, and three ways were suggested for the wizard who wanted to learn it: Linguistic reconstruction (more difficult than it might seem, as it would involve trips to a Mongol-ravaged Mesopotamia); learning it form (a reluctant and unpleasant) Cain, who obviously knows it and is still alive; and "heroquesting" the Garden of Eden (more technically, going to Sumeria and entering the Eden Regio, but it's essentially the same thing).

The Pavis dwarves are so ridiculously heretical that even other heretical dwarves would think it's excessive. I imagine the Pavis dwarves keep very silent about themselves to the others.

Seeing the runes in things (if not perhaps at the micro level) is what the God-Learners' RuneQuest Sight does, correct?