jeffjerwin

46 minutes ago, davecake said:

The similarities between Glorantha and Skyrim are not coincidental of course, Ken Rolston being the big link.

Oh yeah! There's a puzzle canal in both (I have played Morrowind), for one...

28 minutes ago, Yelm's Light said:

Big Kelly Reilly fan here.  Something about those redheads; must be the Celt in me.

Actually, a lot of it reminded me more of Skyrim than Glorantha.

Go pagans!  Beat Romans!

I never played Skyrim, so there you go. The solstice preview shows runes tattooed on a druid's skull: 

And "we will not defeat these people by fighting their warriors; we will defeat them by fighting their gods..." followed by the line that follows.

I'm a Celt myself so this is all very self-indulgent of course.

I'd like this to be as good as it looks... The Solstice preview might even be more on point.

Anyone else planning on watching?

I want this. The Arkham and Lovecraft Country maps in the 7e edition might make nice posters as well...

35 minutes ago, Yelm's Light said:

Not an answer, because I can't think of any, but I chuckled at some of the dramatis personae:  'court reporters' Joseph Democritus and William Diogenes, the judge, the Right Honorable Sir Francis Lash, the Counsel for the Crown, Mr. Cunning, and the Counsel for the Defence, Mr. Serjeant Grin.

 Indeed. 17th-18th century satire has a lovely way with names - viz. Ben Jonson, though Dickens attempted to follow in that fine tradition.

A strange and perhaps lewd satire from 1777, regarding a witchcraft trial in the "Lunar Empire"...

https://books.google.com/books?id=2AVXAAAAcAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

(The real world subject was the castrati and their vogue in Opera). Still...

I vaguely recall that castration was practiced in our Lunar Empire. Is it found elsewhere?

Seaweed is eaten by many cultures around the real world, and comes in many varieties.

Or... you can always go with the Krusty Krabb.

The Aces & Eight supplement Judas Crossing is simply amazing. It's an incredibly detailed Western town and could make an excellent basis for a campaign (just add a Great Old One...)

http://www.kenzerco.com/product_info.php?products_id=683

I noticed this: http://www.glorantha.com/docs/kow/

It implies that the difference between 2nd and 3rd Age maps of Fronela (people may notice that Fronela changes shape when RQ2 changed to RQ3) is because the KoW was wedged in there. Is this still canon? It appears that the Third Age appearance of Fronela was retroactively applied to historical maps in the GoG...

34 minutes ago, Manu said:

Hi

 

We go on preparing our Aldryami campaign in Pamaltela. Any idea of possible passions we could propose to our player (except Hate Uz and the like)?

Love Sunlight

On 11 January 2018 at 11:45 AM, Grievous said:

though I usually wouldn't consider ballet to be very Gloranthan in feel

 

Interesting the first formal ballet, that of the Ballet Comique de la Reine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballet_Comique_de_la_Reine (1581) was conceived for Catherine de Medicis as an act of ritual magic, invoking the sorceress Circe and her powers in an attempt to end the French Wars of Religion/Civil War. The occult/hermetic strain in Henri III and his mother's regime was also fertile ground for the then Paris-dwelling Giordano Bruno, among others attracted to the "Art of Memory" and systems of geometric movement, music, and mathematics...

Hence ballet is one of the real world things that could conceivably reflect a Lunar theistic/sorcerous ritual magic, akin to the dancing magic army of the Great Sister.

Can it be ordered in the States?

2 hours ago, JanPospisil said:

Not sure I've seen that one, I thought the Hedeby garments were mostly dresses. (made from fabric)

Can't speak for any other parts of Glorantha, but there are definitely a few skirts like this in Six Ages. A book I've read by Elizabeth Wayland-Barber ("Women's Work") has an entire chapter on them, they are apparently still part of the traditional costume in (iirc) Macedonia.

Here's a rope skirt from the Egtved girl burial (14th century BCE):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egtved_Girl

 

Very much yes.

Elizabeth Wayland Barber suggests (in books I'm seemingly always also recommending, The Dancing Goddesses and Women's Work, as Jan mentions above) suggests that string and rope skirts were a pre-historic fertility dress developed as ritual wear for dancing, and that weaving developed as a technology as women developed more elaborate variations on the skirt, which seems to be a universal among Indo-Europeans (and people of North Africa and the Fertile Crescent as well).

She writes (in the latter book), p.59: "In no case do the string skirts — whether Palaeolithic, Neolithic, or Bronze Age — provide for either warmth or modesty. In all cases they are worn by women. To solve the mystery of why they were maintained for so long, I think we must follow our eyes. Not only do the skirts hide nothing of importance, but if anything, they attract the eye to the precisely female sexual areas by framing them, presenting them, playing peekaboo with them..." The dancing exaggerates and confirms this pattern, of course.

The Dancing Goddesses also discusses the excessively long sleeves of Balkan and Slavic ritual women's wear as an approximation of geese or swan wings; compare the Swan maidens and similar figures in folklore, as well as the Vely among the South Slavs... 

I'd suggest that this reflects a primeval knowledge, in a Gloranthan context, of the Green Age, before most humans lost their feathers and beaks.

I strongly recommend Elizabeth Wayland Barber's Book The Dancing Goddesses - it's a scholarly treatment of the archaeology of dance and prehistoric and bronze-age religion... http://books.wwnorton.com/books/The-Dancing-Goddesses/

It details the "Goose Dance" as a fertility rite in Eastern and Southern Europe... which may not be a coincidence, given Stafford's studies into these matters.

Unfortunately Eric Rowe was the fellow at Wizard's Attic. I don't know for sure, but it is possible that his inactivity in Glorantha has to do with how that all went down. 

It's probably the seemingly inaccessible "Rodin Greenbeak’s Guide to Gloranthan Flora" mentioned here: 

https://myth-o-logic.org/glorantha/on-snakepipes-edge/flora-and-fauna/flora-fauna-of-the-far-place/

as being at the Berkley Soda FTP server...

The game's afoot (or at least the shrubbery!)

Eric Rowe wrote here: http://rpgreview.net/rqlists/rq-dailies/hl/v931020p1 (in 1993): "Now that I finally have caught up on these darn digests (took 4 weeks) I can let everyone know that if they wish a complete Guide to Gloranthan Flora they can e-mail me at rowe@soda.berkeley.edu or just ftp it from the archive site there. It lists all official and unofficial gloranthan plants currently published with only a few magazines not included yet..."

8 minutes ago, Yelm's Light said:

I recall another article 'written by' a wandering botanist that may have included some of those, but at this point I'm not sure where it is among my numerous RQ supplements and mags.  Missile Root and Irontree Pine ring a bell from that.  Does anybody have a clearer memory of it?

Perhaps it was by Rodin Greenbeak... I'm looking through TotRM

Here's an image of a model of a Berliet from 1917: 

Here's a map of the Bazoilles hospital:  

There are also some useful photographs, admittedly of poor quality, here: http://www.worldwar1.com/dbc/basehosp.htm

You've probably seen this comment by Eric Rowe: http://rpgreview.net/rqlists/rq-dailies/hl/v930406

"As to named plants in Glorantha, there are many, such as Red Clover, Missle Root, Kokolonni and IronTree Pine (All of which are found in Dragon Pass and were used to alleviate the acid itch plague until a cheaper dried cactus from prax was also found to work). The only herb known in great detail is Skullbush. I have managed to gather all the Gloranthan plants together in a compendium and may someday be convinced to type them all in and send them to the digest."

----

(Me:) RW Plants used to treat itching (besides aloe) include basil, chickweed, burdock root, juniper berries and leaves, peppermint, thyme, and witch hazel. Perhaps some can be matched up with the last three.

1 hour ago, jajagappa said:

Because the gods and spirits don't like having their magic wrested from them via arcane formulas!  They like you to make offerings to them, or bargains.  They get something in those exchanges.  When their magic is taken without anything in return, they think you're a thief.  And they send their minions out to hunt you down (or at least badmouth you).  

Now in the Aeolian case, Aeol must have come up with a mechanism that allowed the formulaic exercise of the magic in exchange for something.  Perhaps he found a way to let the magic used by the sorcerer (i.e. 'priest') channel back to the god.  And perhaps the same is true for LM and Pavis through whatever means they (or their worshippers) devised.

Zzabur, moreover, is one of the great enemies of Orlanth and is even depicted hunting down the last Vingkotlings...

Why does Zzabur hate Orlanth? (I mean, besides Orlanth being a "god" and claiming rule over the gods...)

The name Aeol - moreover - is obviously Aeolus (Gk., "quick") of Aeolia, the Greco-Roman sorcerer who lives on a floating island in the Mediterranean in the Odyssey. He was curiously later equated with the winds themselves, but originally simply had mastery of them - the famous "Bag of Winds" trick, which - in the form of the wind-knot is closely connected to witchcraft in European legend...

(here is the Theoi entry: http://www.theoi.com/Titan/Aiolos.html)

So the RW Aeolus is associated with power over the divine winds, possibly by sorcery...

Could this Aeolian Orlanth be associated with the Great Darkness, when men forgot how to do sacrifices? After all, Heort was himself generally a shaman, not a theist, before the rites were rediscovered.

Edit: Perhaps this post should be moved to a new subject header: "Aeol and Orlanth"? Not sure how to do that.

1 minute ago, jajagappa said:

 

Tribe Y though takes a different approach.  They know that Kargzant is a greater spirit, and that Tribe X are fools to try to bargain with such a being.  They bring sacrifice to him, and in return Kargzant will come into them personally.  Perhaps you decide that this approach gives these magic users an advantage in a contest.  Or perhaps not.

 

Speaking hypothetically I think sometimes one kind of magic is more practical than another. What kinds of demands you can meet; how freely the power can be invoked. Are not spirits uncountable? Bargains are possible when the magic is a kind of exchange and trade (and thus for the shaman, there are many taboos, but no laws), but a spear with a part of Kargzant can be stolen... Whereas if an entity expects sacrifice, s/he may be jealous or fickle according to their nature... but there is nothing that can be stolen.

Interestingly enough, the gods themselves seem to treat each other's powers as bound spirits: else how else could Orlanth steal the Darkness Sandals; how else could Death be traded like a deadly bauble?

2 hours ago, Joerg said:

 

 

It should be possible to worship both Orlanth or Ernalda and Kyger Litor. It shouldn't be possible to worship both Shargash and Orlanth without illumination, and even with it it should be next to impossible, even though the magic systems are compatible.

 

This is of course what Hachrat Blowhard is (Orlanth + KL). Shargash / Jagrekriand is an ancient enemy, whereas KL was merely a rival (I suspect the Kitori describe Darkness Woman and Orlanth as lovers in a different spin on the "theft of the Darkness Sandles" story).

I am myself quite happy that Aldryami are all wood. I do love Ents too, so their strangeness doesn't bother me. I think the association was Elves = people of the wood. And there are many connections between trees and fairies in European myth - as much as water and wells and all that.

Because of the old kinship of Ernalda and Aldrya, though, they have useful parts to play in a humanocentric campaign. But while not as weird as dragonewts or as mechanical as dwarves, they can be rather mystical and strange.

When I was young and sad and scared I used to run into the woods behind my family's house, than ran on for miles, and find my favorite trees and watch the deer move cautiously by, find the pellets of owls, and dig in the ruins of old houses consumed by the forest. Sometimes I would stay all day. Whatever part of me that was supposed to be a savannah dweller seems to have been substituted with an arboreal creature. So the idea of ents or huldra seems quite appealing...

The old enemies of elves ought to be rot, and insects, and wildfire, and most of all, men with axes and fire. Shadow is sometimes quite part and parcel of the forest.

1 hour ago, Joerg said:

 

I wonder which mythology RQ3 Vikings inherited the hollow-backed wood wife aldryami from - might be related to the leshyi. The Vikings box alfar are something quite different from the aldryami, and rarely take physical form in the middle world.

 

(technically, "leaf-shaped ears" appear in Tolkien in his elves, but that's kind of obscure... see here: http://tolkien.slimy.com/essays/Ears.html. (I wrote Lindon (publication, unfortunately was cancelled because of the licensing issues...) for ICE, so, I guess I still remember some these little bits of trivia).

Edit: Chiefly, by "Tolkienesque" I mean tall and slender, rather than small and goblinish.

The hollow-backed Huldra-folk are part of Danish folklore.

Found this in Wyrm's Footnotes vol.11, no.3 (p.7):

"Vingkot the Victorious

Vingkot was the son of Orlanth's born in the Storm Age. He is often named as one of Orlanth's soldiers, usually as a housecarl. Vingkot married a daughter of Tada, king of a neighboring country, and with many children and followers lived amid the recently raised Stormwalk Mountains. Vingkot then expanded westward along the coast and into forests, and then northward where there were many wars with the (sun-worshipping) Dara Happans.

Vingkot was killed in fighting during the Darkness, but his body was returned and ceremoniously burned so his soul would forever be free and within the call of his descendants and followers."

This is one of the earliest mentions of the fellow in print - if not the earliest. It varies a bit from later canon. There's only one wife. Vingkot's stead is here in the Storm Hills, not in Dragon Pass itself.