jeffjerwin

The problem with all the First Men / Women being the same person is: is the same true of the first of every animal? Because that's hard to reconcile between the various mythologies. Also, Hsunchen may be human because they resemble humans, not because they are human, which means the potential to be human exists in every child of Hykim and Mikyh/Korgatsu... Murharzarm specifically is the "best man", not the original man, which suggests the other classes of Dara Happans were created separately, though his death still correlates to Grandfather Mortal's...

That I believe is a Trickster ability.

If Darleep has a connection to Lodril (http://glorantha.wikia.com/wiki/Darleep) - considering that the sacred precinct there is associated with Oria the Lover, Lodril's wife, then there are probably Lodrilli (i.e. phallic?) symbols on the city emblem. Oria, on the other hand, is connected to baskets, needles, and acorns.

Maybe so. They were fairly isolated linguistically - the Croatan and Roanoke people were the only Algonquins further south I know of. This suggests in Glorantha that the most exogamous people would be the valley peoples like the northern Tarshites and the clans that neighbor the Esrolians, and in Sartar those on major trade routes, like the Colymar, with the least being people like the Bacofi, the Torkani and Amad...

That's interesting, because my Pamunkey ancestors - an (southern) Algonquin group - seem to have had had incestuous uncle-niece if not brother-sister marriages within the ruling bloodline. It appears that this was because they were matrilineal and powerful men wanted to monopolize noble status.

Dune is "anthropological" and "ecological" and "political" sci-fi - it comes closest to Ursula Le Guin in its bent over anything else, with a frisson of James Blish's Cities in Flight or Asimov. While one could make a space-opera style game I think that would entirely miss the point. The flaw in his son's books is that they are cut-rate space opera. The whole Machine Crusade thing is so wrong. They are meant to be philosophical. The trouble with Dune as a RPG setting is there's a hearty focus on free will and its meaning and limits, and so I'd minimize dice, maybe even used a diceless ruleset.

We were trying hard to retrofit MERP into a more canonical form when the company went belly up (compare the Kinstrife and Southern Gondor books to what came before...). Of course, with my Lindon project I had to do a great deal of research. At one point I could haltingly write in Sindarin... MERP did have a dense amount of detail that could be revised and expanded. When the license went elsewhere it was interesting to compare Fenlon's maps to much sparser stuff that was in the later books. The One Ring/AIME material is just now starting to build up a functional level of detail for modeling something other than the Fellowship and the Hobbit.

I don't like (that may be an understatement) what Brian Herbert did to his father's work, so I'm not sure how that works. Of course if the core novel is the main point of reference, it's easier to ignore the subsequent heresy...

If one uses a faro deck or tarot deck for the sword fights, one could do a draw based on a tenth of one's % skill, with certain combos scoring higher... Hmm.

A wager system sounds very plausible. Certainly gambling and sword-fighting are two mainstays of these stories... I currently have for reference: En Garde Flashing Blades At Rapier's Points (good job, seneschal!) GURPS Swashbucklers Lace & Steel (which is really good) Alatriste Te Deum pour une massacre Mousquetaires et Sorcellerie [in Casus Belli hors-série 21]

N.B.: I think Orlanth Rex, that is Vingkot, Rastaglar, etc., is particularly vulnerable for a number of reasons. First, this is the part of Orlanth that is most contested by rivals. Second, Orlanth often survives by discarding this role: becoming Orlanth the Outlaw, the Lightbringer, etc. Third, 'being Orlanth Rex' forces a mortal man make to decisions that resonate in the Hero Plane - decisions that may lack the mythic solutions that exist for the more flexible Orlanth Adventurous. Few men, even the sons and grandsons of Orlanth, are fully up to the task.

There are quite a few defeats of Orlanth in the mythology. Of course (as you note), 'defeat' is a relative term. Yelm defeated Orlanth in the Dancing Contest. Heler defeated Orlanth three times when was still with the Water Tribe. Erladivus, son of Jagrekriand, defeated Orlanth, though Orlanth-Vinga later defeated him in turn. The loss of Ragnaglar to chaos is a defeat. Orlanth's inability to gain Humakt/Humath's forgiveness is a major defeat and unresolved wound in the Storm Tribe. Orlanth became the Frozen Man on the Lightbringer's Quest (early? before he had companions), and was revived by Yinkin. This suggests a defeat by Darkness/Cold. Jagrekriand defeated Orlanth and destroyed Mastakos on the Lightbringer's Quest, though of course he did not kill him. And Vingkot hero-forming Orlanth defeated/and was defeated by Chaos Man. This is sometimes equated with Stormfall, the worst defeat of the Storm by Chaos. Rastalgar, of course, embodies Orlanth to a certain degree [like Vingkot his ancestor], and his catastrophe, the Sword and Helm War, saw the severance of an important part of Ernalda from Orlanth, that is, Esrolia. All of these are weaknesses (as well as processes of learning/strength) inherent in Orlanth. I am sure there are more. If one wants to cause permanent harm, of course, targeting Orlanth Rex [Orlanth-Vingkot-Rastaglar] seems to be the best means of doing it. Where Orlanth is unlike Yelm, who also saw many defeats and losses, is that Orlanth sees loss and failure as a lesson, and Yelm as an imperfection. This means that Orlanth is of all the Genertelan gods one of the best placed to recover even from an attack on the Hero Plane.

When the Orlanth (and Vinga) initiates are in their trace is probably where initiates of other gods stand guard around the sacred hilltop (along with various spirits): Elmal would be pretty useful there. Yinkin less so, since most Yinkin initiates are also Orlanth initiates. Who else? I can imagine this is a fraught moment if there are no other skilled warriors, though obviously the Earth cultists can raise up magical protections. Humakt seems problematic, since he specifically cut his ties to Orlanth, so protecting Orlanth and his 'clan' would require payment: it isn't done out of love or loyalty. Kolatings might be useful, as might Helerings. In the end this is a crucial role for Elmal, and when the cult is stripped away by the converts to Yelmalio, this might cause a significant vulnerability.

The fencing [autocorrect wanted me to write dancing, which is an interesting notion] rules are still being fiddled with... I really have two choices: abstracted and dice-based with a few special moves... or detailed with hidden moves, perhaps selected out of a hand of cards. If I use the latter, there would be opportunities for the defender to intuit (look at) the face-down hidden choices and thus respond with their own selection, rather than guess. However, this may be too much for a BRP-based game. If I go abstracted, we would end up with attack %, rules for strike rank, and lunge and riposte.

When I was taking a break from working on the contractual book I spent a little while consolidating my notes for this thing. 120 pages currently... I noticed that in Shadows of Yog-Sothoth that the earliest incarnation of the Silver Twilight was founded in 1657 in France (presumably Paris), and Anne de Chantraine was an early leader (Carl followed a decade or two later). The cult had to leave France for England at some point before the 1700s, and the Affair of the Poisons seems a very likely point for that to happen. So... besides D'Erlette's Ghoul cult, we have a hermetic-styled organization, possibly called the La pénombre argente...

Nyctalope has an 'e' at the end according to its accepted spelling: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/nyctalope

"best" can be used as a verb to mean beat: "to best someone"

Well, as I was in the midst of a legal battle over this very subject, I can say is the Tolkien Enterprises claimed to own all of the game rights to the books when this went down, and that the license for MERP came from them. I know that things may have been clarified since then. Since taking the license from ICE they gave it to another company, then a third. However the current LotR RPG licensee company (Cubicle 7) is doing an excellent job. Hopefully they can continue for a while yet.

It was never published because of a certain license being pulled. http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Lindon_(MERP)

PS. I did some work for Iron Crown. The Middle Earth license isn't even owned by the Tolkien estate. It was sold with the Bakshi animated picture right a long time ago. Tolkien Enterprises is the very definition of a rentier company - makes nothing - profits from charging exorbinate fees then pulls licenses seemingly at whim. Frankly, licensed (fiction/film) properties, while desired by a lot of the audience, are pretty much a quagmire for game companies.

Lyonesse has a BRP (I think) derived game coming out soon: http://thedesignmechanism.com/resources/Press_Releases/Lyonesse RPG Press Release.pdf

It seems like this subject is a bit obscure.

They may have to. As a personal aside, I identify pretty strongly with Elmal - we all have our favorite facets of Glorantha. I like guarding the camp and riding horses and the morning sun and campfires.

The Earth connection to Skovari (and his twin Skovara) is because they belong to the Earth pantheon - and Ernalda shared her Heal spirit magic with them. I suppose healing and dancing do have a connection, particularly in a shamanic sense.

Surviving isn't a matter of being innocent or unmarred, nor does being scarred or damaged reduce one's worth. Every entity that wasn't indelibly eaten by Entropy or warped by chaos survived and is worthy of protection.