JanPospisil

This is my guess and I can't speak in any official capacity, but I'd say: iOS > PC (GoG and Steam combined) > Android Android is always the worst, because it's so easily piratable and full of shovelware. Steam is hard to break into these days, also too much shovelware. (plus the Steam port had issues) A surprising number of grognards prefer the old GoG version, but globally I don't think they make up too big a percentage of all players.

No platform info has been released yet.

Those are interesting! Huge-nippled barbarians aside, you can kind of tell he liked Frazetta. (look at Frazetta's ink drawings, and also at his signature..)

Can you post more of them? (if there are more)

Saw this on a HEMA forum and remembered this topic. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dH9176AdLFk

Speaking of Kalevala, if anyone hasn't watched "Jade Warrior" (Jadesoturi) yet, I highly recommend it. Not an objectively great film, but very interesting. The trailer you can find on Youtube is awful, so I recommend listening to a bit of the soundtrack: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5fVv1wdlNH4

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

This one is by Per "Perkan" Sjögren, also one of my favourites!

Glorantha attracted me by having things 13yo me would love (ducks, dinosaurs!) as well as things 30yo me loves (inspiration from real ancient cultures not often seen in games or fantasy art. I furiously looked into King of Dragon Pass after randomly seeing artwork from it online, clearly depicting horsemen drawn after the finds from Pazyryk burials.). And the fact there are points of view for almost every culture, showing the world from their own perspectives (happily embracing contradictions!), inspiring the players to do the same.

As you can guess from my painting, the Kushan riders in lamellar with their high collars are my favourite. The high collars especially are a neat detail, you can also see this in some earlier Chinese, contemporary Xiongnu, and later Korean armours. Also moustaches, fabulous moustaches everywhere. Here's Jeff's notes on Seshnelan art direction, some good links there: http://www.glorantha.com/docs/seshnela-art-direction/ THe illustrations in the Kushan Montvert book are not very good, but keep in mind there would've been more Indian looking troops as well:

Maces like these were fairly popular in the inspiration cultures - various steppe people and I also think the Hittites. I suspect they don't think of them as maces, but rather as blunt axes, since their piercing axe is quite close in shape. Some Sun riders also use horse-shaped whooping sticks for ritualized mock battles supposed to intimidate your enemy (or neighbour), displays of might by the warriors. The maces could be a battle version of those.

Nice, love the maces. Can say these seem to be very persistent designs in those parts of Glorantha (period-wise). (Grazelands and Zarkosites especially) Now, I realize I'm responding to old posts, but still: 1) Loskalmi swords in the Guide were indeed based on Chinese warring states period swords. (more amusingly - also on some fakes from that period, the perforated ornate scabbards I think were fake pieces I downloaded off eBay) 2) The longsword carried by the Western peacock warrior is an embellished version of what some experts call the Sarmatian type A sword. These things originally spread from China westwards, coinciding with the spread of the scabbard slide into the steppes. You can see them in various steppe depictions, also in older Parthian and Kushan art. As in the illustration, these would've been made of iron. The fittings could be bronze, gold, ivory, or maybe even jade. (this was the case in China, maybe they could be Kralorelan imports?) Examples: the Kanishka statue: (Kushans are a good visual reference point for the West, what with being a whole hodgepodge of cultures. (near-Chinese steppe people, North Indian and Greek and Scythian) And this relief of Nergal from Hatra: 3) Some new material - this could be a sword of a powerful Vingkotling Orlanthi. (notice the thunderbolt forming the handle)

And now it's lost to the world. A cautionary tale about data backup, or something.

Which one is that?

That wasn't in the art brief, so I think I was trying to make her look less human, giving her grippy root-feet.

I think the objections are not necessarily that it's wrong to show boobs, rather that it makes the elves too human. (while the Aldryami are established as very un-human) To me it seems like there's good history of Aldryami being very dangerous to humans in this aspect, like that scene in KoDP where the men of our clan sneak into the woods to have fun with a dryad, only to sprout vines and die several days later. It's like an alien organism adapting to fit into an environment inhabited by humans, while not actually trying to have pleasurable mating encounters with these creatures. It's a lure, or a mask.

The Great Tree is indeed the one in the back. It's a bit of a composition challenge to fit a 300 ft. tree in the frame with several other characters, so that it looks like it's overseeing the heroquest. Re:booby elves - this bit is from the art description, talking about a refence I got, not my illustration: It definitely sounds like it's meant to be sinister, creepy and deceiving towards humans, not purely frinedly or tittilating. For the dryad I was given reference of this Persian nymph, though her other attributes admittedly overtook this in the final artwork: http://rlv.zcache.com/persian_miniature_dancing_nymph_card-p137411603826032126b26lp_400.jpg

Some Dragonewts have various frills and protruding decorative bits that could've easily turned into feathers. And there's always magic if that was too evolution-y. In my mind there were tribes of intelligent feathered dinosaurs using tools and wearing furs during the Storm Age. Like this: Simon Roy's Dinosauroids

Oh, that sucks. I never noticed this! Looking at my initial sketch, it's the right way (I worked from a 3D model of the city), but in a few WIP phases I flipped the image and kept it mirrored. I think I must've liked the composition better that way. edit: Here's a sketch with Jeff's notes:

Could you please rephrase the question, I don't understand what you're asking.

Yeah, that one was primarily supposed to look like bull horns, functionality was secondary. Though at the time I was thinking of the falx and maybe African throwing axes.

I think the second from the left in group C is socketed.

I suspect that was a joke. The difference would lie in the lack or presence of "mystical practice", while both "swordspeople" and "martial mystics" could sometimes use swords. In a pop culture parallel - The Bride was a swordsperson, Pai Mei was a martial mystic. Or in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon - Jen Yu is a wandering swordsperson who will demolish your inn if you look at her funny, Li Mu Bai is a martial mystic who will make you tea and talk about not using swords to become the best at using swords. Basically - an armed wanderer could be all kinds of trouble, whereas a martial arts mystic is probably respectable. (even if potentially evil. Hey now, he might be an evil sorcerer who massacred our entire clan! But he spent decades studying that Empty Massacring Fist, you gotta respect that!)

For those wondering about western cavalry, the one I painted was somewhat based on Kushan or Bactrian cataphracts. The Western art had quite a bit of northern India in it, so we went for those Indian/Greek/Eastern overlaps. The art direction only said the warrior was from an animal worshipping society, and I was to pick one. For whatever reason (can't remember really, maybe it just seemed funny) I chose peacock. I think I liked the idea of the feathered helmet, but it also seemed like a cool and unusual animal for such a cult.

Dammit, Dan replied to the "questionable" axe before my registration on here went through. Well actually... Nah, he's right, it's definitely based on Luristan axes. I'll talk about the spear then: Yeah, it's pretty big. The thing is, there are spears from the bronze age that are that big. Like this (copper) beauty from Kfar Monash, 66 cm long, that's almost a sword: Now, it's really heavy (cca 2 kg, I think), so I don't think it was used for much combat. (even though someone really strong probably could've used it) That said, large weapons would be also a display of wealth and power, showing off how much metal you have. Like these spears of the Yayoi culture in Japan: (note the measurements at the bottom of the drawing) And lastly - big weapons also make sense if you're fighting unarmoured, or lightly armoured opponents. If you don't need to pierce armour, a wide/large blade makes a wider hole which bleeds a lot quicker, plus it increases your chance of hitting a major blood vessel. Here's a video demonstration of that: