JanPospisil

Do you have a link to that, so we can compare?

I think the Alkothi you're reconstructing would've obviously changed since the SA period, but if you wanted to - we used some Mayan influence (skull shaped jade death whistles), they have bronze spiked maces or spears, bronze or jade lamellar in a vaguely Chinese/Siberian style, Assyrian-like bronze bucklers or domed round shields. Their warriors lengthen their skulls, to mimick demons, and the huge ones are actually called "demon men". The best image for inspiration would be the illustration for a battle with the Alkothi, though that one is not on the Wiki. (yet?) Also you can look at Shargash: http://sixages.wikia.com/wiki/File:Shargash.jpg

Not sure how relevant this could be for you, but there are some Alkothi shown in Six Ages.

This is the travelling stone scene in Six Ages:

BTW, if someone isn't a fan of the hopping vampires, because they're so goofy, I encourage you to watch "Tsui Hark's Vampire Hunters" and the more recent "Rigor Mortis". Hopping vampires can be great.

Yeah, I think so, or maybe the RuneQuest group. I tried to find it, but they post a lot. 😅

It was mentioned in a big post on FB, listing all the books that are being worked on.

So, you guys have noticed the recent announcement that a Kralorela book is in the works, right? (I have nothing to do with it, just saying.) Personally, I'd love for Kralorela to go back in Chinese history and use more of the really weird shit (visually and otherwise), that doesn't even sound Chinese to us westerners. Through a few interests of mine I only barely scratched the surface and it's so wonderful. (like the various connections to the northwestern horse riding nomadic cultures that influenced very early China a lot, the early shamanic aspects of the religion(s), or the absolutely bonkers ghost stories we have in many collections - not just "Strange Tales From a Chinese Studio", but books like "Garden of Marvels" that collect the less known ones.) And of course, since it's already the case that Kralorela draws from kung fu movies, I'd love to see more of that. But not the pastel-coloured CG wuxia with all the flying on bamboo in flowy silk dresses. No, the super violent batshit crazy late 80s, early 90s wuxia! Fewer idyllic rice paddies and more scorching deserts, or snowy heavenly mountains. Or evil mountains? There's a lot chaos stuff in these movies, which could fit into the whole Kingdom of Ignorance area, with its many chaos temples. (like in Zu Warriors From the Magic Mountain, the evil cultists doing a synchronized flag dance to welcome their prey always crack me up: (skip to 20:45) It'd also be fun to see something from a recent guilty pleasure of mine - Chinese grave robber movies/novels. Imagine Indiana Jones, or Lara Croft if they were Chinese, a lot weirder and oddly Lovecraftian.) (an example of a plot from one such movie: The heroes, an ancient family of grave robbers, are forced to open and explore a tomb in Mongolia by a rich western villain, who is searching for eternal life. Of course, the tomb holds an Indian priestess who long ago married a Chinese emperor and was actually infested with an alien fungus (sometimes it's a giant ginseng with tentacles - very Aldryami) that granted her immortality among other "magic". Flesh eating ants! Exploding blue fire bats! Many deadly traps! I'm kind of mixing a few movies together, but it's great. Horrible schlock, but great.)

Is it super tiny just for me?

I think it's been previously said it's (among a few others) taken from this Edward Lear poem:

If you considered the Indian influences in the Western cultures, you could look at : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalaripayattu and https://www.amazon.com/Shastra-Vidya-Ancient-Martial-Kshatriyas/ or more broadly: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_martial_arts

Simon also did a bunch of art for the new RuneQuest. (and is currently drawing some awesome concept art for the second chapter of Six Ages. ;P)

Yeah, I find the idea of crop deities being local less likely and functional. (obviously, local gods are a thing and there were historically local fertility deities. But I also quite like crop-specific deities, as such plant personification somehow feels more archaic maybe? If I were to choose, as I agree there is a bit of a contradiction there, I'd go with crop-specific deities. Or, crop specific global deities with local variations = "Oh, yeah, Pela, totally. We call her Palu here.". Or is that too Godlearnery? ) Basically, should a local area fertility goddess necessarily be a grain goddess? I can imagine her being seen more as a mother/leader/overseer of the smaller crop-specific grain goddesses, or even their local servant if we wanted to flip it and preserve the global crop deities as universally more important. (edit: It's possible I'm just seeing it as less practical and less neat from a systemic point of view - to have thousands of small local goddesses who are nearly identical, but their <barley/wheat/millet/oat...> vector has slightly different permutation of values. Guess it depends on how much Glorantha needs to be like the real world, which is undeniably messy, and how much it wants to be a game setting. ;))

Right, I caught those references, mostly. Why I originally asked this - I quite like the idea of Kralorela and would love to do something with it. (what exactly depends somewhat on my future schedule and also what possibilities are left open by the existing material) But of course, I wouldn't want to go against any established canon.

Yeah, I just looked up the relevant part in GtG. Yeah, I can see why that would be a good place to set a supplement. With the name, I meant this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lop_Nur

Lur Nop? :)) One of those names, eh?

What the title says - what are the best sources to read if one's interested in this part of Glorantha? Do we know if there's anything new (publication-wise) being planned around there?

I have to admit, as an artist I find it rarely helpful. For instance, I will get an art brief and it contains a term I haven't heard before. Or I'm about to illustrate a culture I haven't done before. I search for it on the wiki and most of the articles are just full of hyperlinks, without any actual descriptions, explanations or information content. Then clicking through deeper and deeper I travel down the branches of the tree and when I get to the end node, there's no or very little info there. There is some information stored in the structure of the wiki, but that's not easily parsed by human beings.

I drew a rather interesting concave shield as concept art for 6A, which ended up not used (it was on a very distant fringe of what we needed). It was meant for light manipulation magic. Hopefully I'll be able to show it after the game's released. (even if it doesn't appear anywhere in it :D)

I find that religious iconography is often like anime. (great sentence to be typing in the morning btw :D) It can be very stylized and characters are often distinguished only by their attributes like accessories or hairstyles and hats. And often the characters reflect parts of society and their fashion. If you look at 1st or 2nd century buddhist statues from northern India and Afghanistan, you'll see a whole lot of moustached dudes, because that was the noble fashion then. If you see a guy with a full beard who also carries a weird club or a stick, there's a very good chance of him being Vajrapani (Herakles). When it was time to draw the gods, we definitely looked at how the people worshipping them dress and groom themselves. (I think that'll be clearer once the game is out)

No idea. Maybe she was just used to it and the description in the art brief didn't mention it? Anyway, this particular difference does have a cultural explanation. (in Six Ages)

Orlanth in KODP wears a blue cloak: and the "reenactor" depicting Heler (?) is painted blue: You can also see that Orlanth here has a beard. If you look at recent depictions (in the sourcebook and 13th Age Glorantha), you can see he's got a moustache. What's that all about? Well...the artist is Michelle Lockamy who also did art for Six Ages. There just may be some continuity there. (if you watch the trailer that just came out...)

Apologies for butting in, but I don't see a thread about the actual book - Aside from the art, should I buy it if I already have the Guide? (sorry, I've not followed this much, not sure if there's new material in this)

It's about numbers, right? So a certain percentage of people will buy the game on Steam for 10 bucks. (the rest will pirate it) Same on iOS. A much much smaller percentage will buy it on Android, because that's too much money for the platform. So you can either make it cheaper, or not sell as many. (both options mean making less money) Now if you're already developing multiplatform from the get go, you might be ok with that. There are still some costs to shipping a game on multiple platforms, but it's more doable. If you have to port a game you started developing on a single platform to other platforms, it's going to be some work you have to do yourself, or hire someone to do for you. Both of those options cost a certain amount of money. If you expect the sales from that platform won't even cover those expenses (or they will, but barely), you probably choose to not port to that platform. You'll have to wait and see on release, or until David talks about it more. edit: For comparison of piracy on Android and iOS: Piracy rate of 90-95% on Android is the most commonly reported. Imagine that. Because people are stealing your game so much, you're FORCED to make it free. Still think this is a good and sustainable way for people to make and sell games?

Worst in the users/money ratio. I have both an iPad and an Android tablet (a gaming tablet actually), I love the openness of Android and love to play games on it. I fully understand why developers are hesitant to port their games on Android though - 1) rampant piracy 2) absolute floods of ad-riddled shovelware that's either free, or selling for pennies. Hard to sell a game with a 10 USD price on there. It's set in Glorantha. Both images show a single culture. (as do most, if not all the other bits of illustrations we ever showed) Here they are: Yep: This is titled "distant past" (and it is, for the same culture) (that's all of them, I think) Not this one, as the address implies, these are "Goose people". (hard to guoosse, I know. ;P) This is clearly a troll: As is this (though there's a person of Protagonist Culture in the background) This one is not the Protagonist Culture: