Akhôrahil

The Lunars seem likely to have some rational process for their coinage? And this being Glorantha, there's always the possibility of Fire magic for your melting needs. A suitably bound Fire elemental could do all the silver melting the whole empire needs?

(nvm, didn't realize how late I had come in.)

Over time, they will be recalled and re-coined (and probably debased). But that will take a very long time.

We know from the rules how this works in Dragon Pass - "unless the owner is the herder (or has adolescent children), the owner needs a tenant herder, who traditionally gets half the surplus (and none of the losses if there is a failure or fumble with the Manage Household skill)." So the landowner gets a percentage, but is on the hook for his own managerial screwups. It also suggests that only the surplus is taxed, which is a bit hard to interpret, but perhaps means that it's the net income and not the gross that's taxed? This means that it's still a good idea to provide Bless Crops for your tenants (if at a lower rate than doing it for yourself).

I think they could say ”Lunar” (the currency) ”silver piece” (the type of coin), or probably a whole slew of different words (much like the pound can be a ”quid”).

I'm also not sure this is sufficient in itself - what the land and ox-team means is that you're fundamentally self-sufficient and not relying on anyone else. It's not just the weapons. KoS: " To qualify, a man must have a whole ox‑team and a plow, and he receives as much land as he can plow in two seasons: about 80 acres total. Carls are also expected to own a minimal set of military equipment, and use it to defend the community whenever the chief says to."

Ah, so tenant farmers still count as semi-free? In that case, I'm a little confused about the numbers from this thread (about 17%) and the sample clan in the RQG rulebook (about 40%), unless that clan is non-representative?

Two parts to this. First: "They have no land or herd assigned to them or their families but must work for some other household, or are itinerate labourers (stickpickers)" But tenants do have land assigned to them (it's just that they have a very high rent to pay). They don't work for others as laborers (they're assigned 80 acres which is a lot and won't leave much spare time, so this is unlike say Roman tenants that were assigned perhaps 10-20 acres and hence had a lot of extra time to do agricultural work with) Second: The math doesn't add up if you assume tenant = semi-free. If tenants count as semi-free, and there's maybe 17% semi-free, then they can't (by the discussion I had above) support more than maybe 3% Nobles. Further, the example clan in the RQG rules have about 40% tenants, that do support a decent amount of nobles (up to 8% there). There's also nothing strange about having tenants and "landowning" peasants in the same social class, while having a lower one for unlanded agricultural laborers - quite the opposite. Note that this set-up is a bit confusing though, as the RQG rulebook would have tenants at Poor standard of living and hence not Free (the old Carl/Cottar system) - this is why I think it's quite new, and it doesn't seem to quite mesh.

It's not, as there are also 120 "landowning" (yes, I know - I mean non-tenant) households. In this model, the makeup is 16/120/80, which makes sense to me. This about the ambiguity of the word "noble" here - as a social class, the members of these families are nobles, but that applies to spouses and children as well, so far fewer (like the 16 you suggest, and that I also wrote about) are the ones doing a noble-type job (chief, priest, thane, runelord). No, but as some would also have larger families (due to more funds and lower child mortality), this could potentially balance up. It's not like we have anything better to go by, so it's an assumption that seems meaningful to me. Also, see the argument about how Tenant no longer means not-fully-free, and instead tenants seem to be counted among the Free (the way they weren't with Carls) and only the truly landless poor are semi-free.

In the (probably simplified) model where every noble is supported by five tenants, by necessity the ratio of nobles to tenants can't be higher than one to five, so that puts a cap on things - you can only get more nobles by having more tenants. 10% nobility would also be a huge number (what do 80 nobles in a clan of 800 even do?). So I agree that the percentage of nobles is lower than 10%. In the extremely useful sample clan on p. 406 of the rulebook, 40% of the land (80 out of 200 hides) is worked by tenants, which puts a cap of 8% Nobles. If you have 80 tenant families, that could support up to 16 noble families (assuming same family size for simplicity), perhaps a bit less (the Chief runs at a higher cost, and this is also the funds that support professional warriors, so it's not all available to the personal consumption of nobles). Say 10-16 Noble households - this seems like a reasonable pool for manning religious and social leadership positions (a chief, a few priests, a few Rune Lords, some thanes, their families - and most members of the Inner Ring would be recruited from this very limited pool). Also, and I might be wrong here, but there seems to have been some shifting of the model about Free status? It used to be that you're a Carl if you you possess a hide of land (yesyes, it's not property, but the point is that you don't pay rent), a plow team and the equipment of a fyrdman, while you're a Cottar if you're a tenant (and then there are stickpickers and the like even below that). But the new model seems to include plenty of (even all?) tenants among the Free (presumably in the poorer section, but still), while Semi-free (as described by Jeff above) means that you're not assigned land (or herds) at all (even as a tenant), so that you're a stickpicker or a landless agricultural laborer? The semi-free status seems socially really useful in practice - in my game, the players scattered a significant bandit gang that was settled enough to have a fair number of women and children among them, and decided they shouldn't just scatter them in the hostile wilds of Benksland, and instead took them in in semi-free status.

The Guide also states it was made for Distan ("Ironbreaker, a dwarf-wrought sword made for one of the lieutenants of Arkat the Destroyer"), which makes no sense in that context, unless we reinterpret what "wrought" and "made" means here.

And presumably this:

Ironbreaker has among the most contradictory history out of anything in Glorantha. The Guide has it made for Arkat’s general Distan, but this completely contradicts D:LoD where Kulebras brings it down from Thunder Mountain and Varzor Kitor is a prominent wielder (which is a lot more awesome and needs to stay). Best compromise is probably that it was somehow altered or reforged for Distan.

Dual-Wield Ironbreaker and the Windsword? 🙂

No info. A PC seems like a good candidate?

I think social status is highly hereditary, but not completely so (as that would go against the tenets of Orlanthi society, which doesn't aim to achieve stasis). You wouldn't marry outside your social rank unless there was some particular reason for it, so it will tend to be self-perpetuating. But at the same time, successfully raiding, being heroic in war, doing something outstanding with magic or religion, and soo on certainly seems like the kinds of things that might elevate you. I could also imagine various situations where a cottar gains a better land right - for instance, the chief might say "if you clear that piece of land, you get it", and the population shortfall after the Windstop might improve the rights of peasants (as the Black Death did in Western Europe). A herder looks after other people's animals, but could potentially build up a personal herd until it provides enough wealth to qualify for Free/Carl and get formally elevated (in my game, we call this job "rancher" as opposed to "herder"). So I think we do have a hereditary underclass, but it's not fully ossified, and social mobility does exist (unlike in Dara Happan society, where it's at least supposed to be total). The same way, it's difficult to get into the Orlanthi nobility, which is also mostly hereditary (but at the same time, you could be proclaimed Thane of Apple Lane or be so good that they can't help but make you a priest). You do have that freedom... if you can manage it, somehow. Although I am reminded about the parody "I worship the God of Freedom, come buy my slaves" (from Six Ages, IIRC?). And a fair number of Orlanthi clans keep thralls, which would presumably be even worse but still practiced here and there. Thunder Rebels has more details about steads than any other publication, although some might not apply any longer (it has the incorrect number of oxen per plow, for instance). In my game, cottars mostly live in huts close to their fields, but move to the PC:s stead in winter (this is Talastar - the winters are rough), where it's much safer (I mean, it has PCs around for one thing!) and everyone's body heat helps. My rule of thumb is 50 people for a longhouse (that might be 10 x 50 m).

Sources differ. Paulis Longvale not only names the spells, but also the size (such as someone casting Xenoheal 4). This is probably excessive, though. I would assume the name of the spell at least often is used in-world. No need to not call a thunderbolt a Thunderbolt.

I don't think very, if we follow the 7M model. You don't just gain access to everything from the constituent cults. It's probably fine, but you get only the more generalized spells from each cult. No Lightning or Thunderbolt from Orlanth, for instance.

Agree. Detecting is good, but having a poor sense of self-preservation and being both willing and capable of fighting Chaos is also really important.

Seems reasonable. I could easily imagine something like this existing in for instance Seshnela, or even in the Lunar Empire if they want to downplay Orlanth while maintaining worship. Or in other places due to cultic or historical reasons.

Or a Seven Mothers cult to cover all the individual mothers... oh wait. Presumably, it would be possible to worship the Lightbringers collectively, but this Cult of the Lightbringers wouldn't have access to all the spells of the individual deities, much the way 7M don't. I could see such a thing existing in a place where Lightbringer worship was introduced but didn't fully take hold, and they retreated to a collective cult with wide but more shallow magic and myths.

About pictures, this one (Ossi Hiekkala) is lovely.

I think it does change the world - the Glorantha where initiates can cast a ton of Rune Magic yearly is different from the one where Initiates can only use Rune Magic in the direst of emergencies and Rune Magic is the job of the magical professionals. Similarly, the Glorantha of HQ is different from the one of RQG (just go into a Lhankor Mhy temple and check what runes he has if you doubt me).

Yeah, I mean, if over a thousand years of Mistress Race and Cragspider heroquesting hasn't the solved the Curse of Kin, it's not like starting PCs could do it...

This seems to be more about the nature of gods than about the Compromise. It likely applies to the other Chaos Gods as well, who never signed on to any compromise.