Akhôrahil

You can also avoid the problem of having to pay 140% of your income by making sure you don't have any, The Producers-style. Time is more of an issue.

Ooh, this will be an instant buy for me. My PCs already had a brief sojourn there that went surprisingly well (they did it in winter).

This is certainly possible, but at the moment, it's anybody's guess if the liberation will last, and it will doubtlessly be war-torn for a while either way. And if you just want to fight Lunars, there are ample opportunities closer at hand. Traditionalists might even find Talastar a more appealing place - no toying with draconic magics here, and the new king is cleaning house of the appeasers without being some kind of Illum— oh damnit!

There’s that, but there’s not just that. The Silmarillion was edited to be coherent and non-contradictory, but in the process became oddly incomplete in places (the story of Eärendil is supposed to be one of the ”big three”, but was never written) as well as fairly narratively unsound. In later writings, Tolkien wanted to push that Middle-Earth was the pre-history of our world, and attempted to get rid of the flat world and the myths of the Sun and Moon. What’s the nature of orcs? We’re never given a proper explanation, because Tolkien couldn’t work it out for himself. The Athrabeth makes us question the story of elves and men we got elsewhere. Just how high-tech were the Númenoreans - did they really have flying ships and rocketry? And so on.

Interestingly, Tolkien looks less unitary the more of his work-in-progress stuff you read. What comes down to us is a bunch of often contradictory material, a corpus that shifts over time and where attempting to reconstruct the "real" Middle-Earth becomes a lot like reconstructing "real" ancient history out of conflicting, fragmentary sources. I don't know the state of Arkat's Saga, but is it significantly more unfinished and fragmentary than the Tolkien texts and fragments you get in History of Middle-Earth?

I would argue Lovecraft here as well.

Yes, it's easy to see how the situation could be shaky - the Pure Horse People have the military power, but they're becoming increasingly reliant on extracting resources from a more "productive" class (the whole Pure Horse thing only works because they found this economic workaround). The rise of the FHQ could be interpreted as a first step here, combining the political/economic power from the Vendref with the magical power of Earth as opposed to Sun. It's a contradiction that can't easily be overcome. The Pure Horse People must be feeling very itchy, realizing what might happen if a foreign Orlanthi power marched in and attempted to raise their Vendref kin in a war of liberation. "Marry the FHQ to be King of Dragon Pass" could even be seen as a self-defence mechanism, ensuring an alliance with whatever Orlanthi power is dominant at the time. I would be very interested to learn how the struggle played out, though - this being Glorantha, there may not even be any sharp lines between political/economic/magical struggles. You could have a magical challenge and a Vendref sit-in.

Bigtime power struggle where the FHQ came out on top. She's certainly more important now than the LSK. "Eneera Tor (born 1430, Feathered Horse Queen 1455 to 1535, Queen of Dragon Pass 1494 to 1535). Eneera was born around 1430 and emerged from the womb of the Earth Goddess around 1455 as the Feathered Horse Queen. For the next fifteen years she fought to assert her authority and in 1570 she crushed the king of Grazers. The next Sun King submitted to her (the version presented in Pure Horse People tales preserves as much dignity for the Sun King as is possible, but in truth he was humiliated and forced to acknowledge her as his suzerain).In 1594, Eneera Tor proved she was the incarnation of Sorana Tor (and thus the avatar of Kero Fin) when she married Prince Sartar and became the Queen of Dragon Pass." https://wellofdaliath.chaosium.com/feathered-horse-queen-dynasty/ It seems that her power rests on the twin but related pillars of being an incarnation of Kero Fin/embodiment of sovereign power in Dragon Pass, and the patron of the Vendref (who know they could have it a whole lot worse and actually have something to lose now).

My personal guess would be that the cult goes around selecting promising candidates, and that only then is there any weapons practice (weapon training can't possibly be legal among the general population). Enforcing severing makes sense to me as well, since you absolutely don't want your excellent killers to have any kinship with the oppressed population. Janissaries might not be a bad idea, although this would be very early ones who haven't grabbed the power yet.

Are there any examples of this working for actual slaves (as opposed to merely downtrodden peasants)? Besides, it's not something likely to work in the theistic parts of Glorantha...

This is a good point, especially in the context of "niceness" in this thread. You don't keep an entire people enslaved by being nice about it.

I get the impression that they run their own villages - this at least seems to be the implication of "The Other Side of the Dragon" in Sartar Rising. That plot could never work out otherwise.

With the strategic alliance with the FHQ that seems like it was a big part of propelling her to prominence. Basically "Hi, we can be your power base if you act a bit in our interests".

It seems like a situation where slaves managed to turn themselves into serfs, with limited but not non-existent rights?

I’m inclined to agree - it’s only natural that the cult uses power to benefit itself over other ones. The other cults should be lucky it isn’t a monopoly!

Something I believe will be good about the Starter Set is that often, things look harder before you actually get going. But the Starter Set already has characters, a setting and some adventuring to be done, and once they're through that, you're already rolling and will have a much easier time to just keep going than if you have to set everything up from start. You don't have to read up on everything, only what the PCs are about to do next, you have already established a what kinds of stats enemies tend to have, some of the flavor and player information is already in place, they know some people now (possibly with enemies as well)...

I really like that book and Storm Tribe!

Or in Aggar/Talastar/Anadikki/Brolia. But that has little bearing on whether chimneys are necessary. They're a surprisingly late development.

Also according to Thunder Rebels, 'A stead is relatively easy to build — all you need is a "a great tree, a good god, and a bloodline for a day.”'

You're exactly correct. "Chimneys are rare, for stead ‘hearth maidens’ (minor wind daimones) control stray drafts and spiral smoke from the fire up into the rafters, where it is spun into tiny rainbow-sheened balls of ash." —Thunder Rebels

It was the standard large home in Scandinavia for thousands of years. This is how iron and viking age long-houses work as well.

Lots of bronze age houses don't. The smoke needs to ventilate somehow, but a chimney isn't necessary. Note how in this one, the smoke goes out sideways, with an overhang to stop the rain. Note how the word for this, a vindauga ("wind-eye"), is the source of the word "window". Chimneys are high-tech stuff brought to Sartar by the Lunars, I believe.

A lot of historical big-game hunting is wounding the animal and then tracking/chasing it down afterwards, so you wouldn't have to get an outright kill.

Loose thoughts: 1. If you're at least a Lay Member of a cult running the market, perhaps any market fees may go towards your cult cost percentage, and hence don't need to be tracked separately from cult expenditure? (Note that the 20% land cost to temple for farms does count towards Orlanth/Ernalda cult expenditures.) 2. Possibly market fees only need to be tracked separately from tolls when it's not inside a walled town or city where you pay the tolls instead and then have market access? 3. If neither, perhaps 1% of goods brought? Although it seems that this gets negotiated on a per-case basis - the market would be ruled by supply and demand the same way anything else is. Almost full already? Expect that last spot to cost you!

Perhaps another (weak, admittedly) reasoning by analogy - if you run a farm, you owe 20% of income to Orlanth & Ernalda (assuming Dragon Pass Orlanthi). Perhaps 20% of income to the City God and city leadership (probably much the same thing) in the case of commercial housing? This would be a combination of general city tax and the cost of the land, but maybe one can be sorted out from the other in some other way?