Eff

1 hour ago, Erol of Backford said:

So what would be smuggled and what specifically would be from Vormain?

Slaves and silver going east, silk, lacquerware, porcelain, tea, spices, incense, medicines, rice wine going west. (sounds like the old silk road to me) Where is the silver coming from, the Lunar Empire?

From Saresangk, gold and lapis lazuli going both directions to pay for slaves and goods...

Are these places large enough to keep Pentian Nomads from destroying them? Wouldn't the Nomads be the biggest threat to any caravan passing east-west?

Would the Nomad leaders be paid tribute by each caravan?

What protects a caravan? How large are they on average to make such a long journey? Makes me think of those on the south continent and that they are huge due to safety in numbers...

If we go by historical examples, horse nomads generally aren't hostile to the existence of settled or urban communities (except where there's active encroachment or colonies being set up) but prefer to keep them under their dominion. So I think that sedentary farmers around the Hot Lake or even in the major river valleys are perfectly plausible, just like the Oasis People further south. 

In turn, how you might do it is to say that individual nomadic polities control particular good rest points, and caravans are free to make use of these points so long as they pay- or in other words, by giving up a portion of their goods to a central authority that can then spread them out as they please. In turn, these leads to the possibility of rival polities on the prairies advertising their own particular routes to prospective caravaneers, which is a charming possibility for play- picking between the different options and interacting with nomadic salespeople. 

Some additional thoughts about trade- if you want to use the old "godbone" motif, Pent is fairly close to where major struggles took place in the Gods War, it seems entirely believable that there are whole skeletons of bronze or gold or lead (or even pure silver, once you're close enough to the Blue Moon Plateau) scattered about, perhaps far from anywhere people normally go- but ready for the picking if you're willing to risk it. Or people selling stories of a big claim for their own purposes. 

Beyond all of that, Pentans may trade to a limited extent with the Altinelan demigods that live far to the north of the middle world, and in turn people in Kralorela and Chen Durel may well try to buy them via proxy. 

9 minutes ago, metcalph said:

An in-glorantha answer might look like this.  Yelmalio is associated with the faraway Sky which has been separated from the Earth by Storm.  To bring themselves closer to the Light, the Yelmalion must use Truth, not in the sense of factual knowledge, but in austere knowledge of mystical wisdom.   The real question is not why Yelmalio is weaker than Orlanth but why Yelamlio is weaker than Humakt.  Death, sadly, is stronger than Light.

That's not really an in-Glorantha answer, that's an out-of-Glorantha answer- Yelmalio worshipers are weak materially because the concept that Yelmalio represents is weak materially in the Gloranthan context. Mystic practice won't preserve your life against those things which might try to end it. Which is a perfectly fine answer to go with. (The weirder, loopier take on this might be that with Death as separation, Yelmalio is weaker than Humakt because embracing Humakt-Death-separation is part of mystic austerity... but that's not as good for explaining specific Yelmalio rules that aren't directly associated with Humakt.)

2 hours ago, Richard S. said:

I think the biggest disconnect is that Yelmalio is primarily a Light god whose worshipers just happen to be soldiers, but we expect him to be primarily a soldier god whose worshipers just happen to use Light magic.

I don't think that distinction means all that much on its own. For one thing, the standard sets of elemental associations from broader culture only apply infrequently in Glorantha- Fire is associated with being cool and dispassionate, Earth is associated with being cunning- and for another thing, the determination of what makes a "Light god" in Glorantha- ascetic, sex-repulsed- is plainly derived from the development of Yelmalio in the early period of Gloranthan gaming. I think it is just as valid to say "Yelmalio is a Light god, so Yelmalio should have a Rune spell that fires lasers that are mechanically similar to the Lightning spell in damage," or "Yelmalio is a Light god associated with birds, so Yelmalio spirits are likely angelic and angels famously form a heavenly army that smites people, Yelmalio should have relevant Rune magic to this." 

Answers entirely from within the "setting canon" are not especially meaningful to anyone who isn't already invested in the canon, and they also can't really explain why Yelmalio being a Light god means that Yelmalio worshipers are significantly more restricted in the boons from their god than Orlanth worshipers are. To do that, you have to step outside the setting and talk about the meaning or connections of this decision or that one. 

14 minutes ago, Ali the Helering said:

Sorry guys, but December 25th was the festal day of Sol Invictus. 

Since the mid-8th century there has been some discussion as to whether Christianity appropriated it, but no actual evidence for it.

There is an huge problem with 25th as Jesus' birthday as recorded in the Gospels, though.  No shepherds in their right minds 'abide in the fields' with their flocks in late December in the Judean hills.

Yes. My understanding of it is that December 25th arises from a belief in folk Judaism at the time that prophets died on the day of their conception, that the Crucifixion was believed among early Christians to have taken place on March 25th (or as they might have put it, six days before the kalends of Aprilis), and therefore that Jesus would have to have been born nine months later on December 25th, all of this somewhat separately from the tradition of the shepherds with their flock recorded in the Gospel of Luke. But I'll be damned if I could cite sources on that without a lot of work. 

(On top of all of this, December 25th is around when days begin to noticeably lengthen again after the winter solstice, so it's unsurprising that festivals like Saturnalia, the feast of Sol Invictus, Christmas, and the Germanic Yule all ended up taking place close to that date.)

2 hours ago, Rodney Dangerduck said:

No.  By quickly dispelling the spell.

Or perhaps by running away,which is a very reasonable option 

Yeah, dispelling as it exists in the game is frustrating because if it's applied "naturalistically" it breaks some of the commonest reasons for picking a particular cult- "princess play" (playing the role of a particular fictional character type for personal appeal) and wanting to play a character with a particular social role in the fictional society. So it relies on an implicit social contract that NPCs won't use it when it would be most useful for them to do so, without making any of that explicit. 

3 hours ago, Darius West said:

I should also point out that I really like Orlanth for being the only deity to actually admit he could be wrong about things.  Most deities are towering narcissists who never admit they have ever done anything wrong.  You won't hear Yelm admitting he's a narrow minded tyrant.  You won't see Magasta second guessing himself for being a cold blooded psychopath with a perverse fetish for giant monsters.  You'll never hear Zzabur admit that maybe he over-reacted a bit, or Ernalda thinking that perhaps she shouldn't be quite so loose, or maybe even Chalana Arroy thinking "Ya know, I really wish I could moider dat bum". Well, Orlanth can admit he's made a mistake, and that is why he is a great ruler.

This is assuredly more a function of Orlanth being the cult that has existed for the longest in Runequest and Glorantha's real-world history and receiving the largest quantity of fan attention and fleshing-out, rather than because there's something intrinsically different about Orlanth as compared to other gods. 

Orlanth is as we have made him, and Ernalda is as we have made her, and Magasta is as we have made them, and Yelm is as we have made him. Saying that Yelm exists without doubts as if that condemned him- no, Yelm only has the projected existence of a fictional character, one defined by reinterpretation by each group or even each player. 

Does Chalana Arroy ever contemplate violence? Who says she does or doesn't either way? Who's actually sat down and determined for all players and all groups that Chalana's pacifism isn't an active commitment, but instead a sign of her pigheaded refusal to kill people? 

Indeed, who can really claim to have spent enough time in Ernalda's head to say, "she's just the pantheon bicycle, nothing more"? Who has devoted the time and the energy to play with Ernalda to that degree, and on that interpersonal I-have-contended-with-God level? 

Orlanth = Sun Wukong
Eurmal = Zhu Bajie
Lhankor Mhy = Sha Wujing
Issaries = Prince Bai Long Ma
Chalana Arroy = Tang Sanzang
Flesh Man = Taizong Emperor
Ginna Jar = Avalokitesvara/Guan Yin

Wait, I don't think that's the right comparison!

In any case, I think that any one-to-one comparison between the 7M and Lightbringers is perhaps missing the point, in that the two quests are straightforwardly opposites of each other- one is to bring back the lost order, and the other is to smash the current order.

3 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

See also Oedipus.

Is the monomyth really the tale of the culture hero who does something for the people or is it a “me decade” story of “personal development”? I have problems with some myths of the redemption of the world by (any shuffling of) suffering, death, and rebirth. Some make a kind of sense: the sun dies every evening and is reborn every morning, and so the cycle of days is preserved — but really, perhaps, that is just an explanatory myth. Or in other myths, the god will suffer and we benefit, but the suffering doesn’t cause the benefit (e.g. Prometheus). Or the divine being or giant is dismembered to yield the parts to build the world (and so probably doesn’t come back). Those examples are all fine, but a bald “I suffered and died and returned, so the world is saved, so you better be grateful” doesn’t really cut it for me; it just seems decontextualized, a stranded myth fragment. (I don’t say this is what is going on in Christianity — I don’t know enough about it — but from the outside, it sometimes looks that way: as if only part of the myth has survived.) Wakboth — that retcon still grates — and Arachne Solara save the world; the others are bit players, and their suffering cannot make them more important.

If we put Orlanth as saviour aside, how well does the story work as one of personal development? Is the reassembled Orlanth better than the old one? Is new Orlanth sadder but wiser, or just unbearably smug at having done “his” good deed? Or unbearably smug because new Orlanth is exactly like old Orlanth? I don’t know. I do know that Oedipus and Jocasta don’t skip off into the sunset hand in hand.

Well, the monomyth is a construction of psychology, and Orlanth's not quite a culture hero. 

But the fixing of the world only happens by breaking the looping structure. Once Orlanth's gone through the Baths of Nelat (in the KoS version) the third iteration of the loop closes. What happens next is something which violates the narrative logic of tyrannical uncles being overthrown by bloodthirsty nephews on behalf of suffering parents- the tyrannical uncle Yelm and the bloodthirsty nephew Orlanth are able to partially shuck their roles and become less tyrannical and less bloodthirsty. The bloodthirsty nephew Kajabor is thus able to be integrated into the universe (via an advanced kink scene) and the problem of the tyrannical uncle Orlanth is resolved with an explicitly temporal and not permanent peace- and this produces linear time. 

So what saves the world is the willingness of the participants in it to bend and compromise, and by this means they are able to produce a transformation of Kajabor/entropy, a rotation of that puzzle piece to fit into the patchwork jigsaw. Or- I Fought We Won is a recapitulation of the Lightbringers Quest and the Lightbringers Quest is a recapitulation of I Fought We Won. 

20 minutes ago, scott-martin said:

Under the right conditions, Trickster resolves into one of the masks or "parts" of the mature storm king. Under others, storm king disintegrates into one or more tricksters and maybe some other interesting derivatives. 

In an irony this evolutionary spiral is largely lost by the time we encounter imperial Sedenya, who suffers and recovers but the missionaries don't seem all that eager to talk about the ways she learns.

Orlanth, to Eurmal: "Well, well, well, if it isn't my old friend, the consequences of my actions."

But perhaps that's the key problem- the stable pathways for the many-faced Storm Guy seem total reintegration (the Vadrus complex) or disintegrative expulsion (Trickster is "bonded" to Orlanth, Orlanth takes responsibility for "his" actions, none of which are Orlanth's, and possibly even stronger externalizations of Eurmal*). The Moon is unstable, so instead we have a non-integrating dynamic which cannot be so easily ceremonialized, and which can only be approached through first splintering (or having a pre-existing splintering) and then moving in the same general directions. 

All of which sounds like utter moonspeak unless you're pretty well embedded! Perhaps it would help if Sedenya had a Ninshubur, or more precisely, if we could agree on which Ninshubur/sukkal between Etyries, Valare Addi, Charmain, etc. to use. 

*I can't help but think of the Storm Bull/Ragnaglar relationship here, though that would be an incredibly extreme externalization and act of automutilation. It's not surprising Argrath is a bull, but we're maybe lucky Arkat stayed well away. 

4 hours ago, scott-martin said:

Cut through a lot of bluster + blame and you've found the oldest form of Adventurous we have, one of my favorite candidates for "foundational myth" of modern Glorantha. I think what's different is that Adventurous moves past taking responsibility for his cosmic mistakes to focus on how he can fix the world he broke . . . call it less passively "sorry" and more active "atoning." He killed a guy. He made it right. Admittedly, the part in the middle is only implicit. You have to read between the emotional lines and a lot of storm botherers aren't interested in that.

A version of the god forced to take responsibility for the mistakes but not necessarily the solution might be found in modern institutional DX, the for-profit liberation industry that runs the imperial prison complex.

The key thing here for me is the irony of "took upon himself the task to right the wrongs which had brought such disaster about." Orlanth begins seemingly in ignorance of his own role in this catastrophe, but decides to fix the problems anyways. In the later King of Sartar formulation, this is more explicit while also less explicit- Orlanth begins his quest in the role of the storm king. He summons up winds and calls upon his human subjects to fight, he brings along Humakt and Babeester Gor and Lightning Boy and Mastakos and whoever embodies the Shield of Arran and Sandals of Darkness and Scarf of Mist. Even when he reaches the point of sunset and the gates of twilight, he still doesn't seem to understand just what he's in for, though it seems to beggar belief that he handed Humakt off to Rausa casually and was whistling aimlessly when she struck the fatal blow. Regardless, he still retains pieces of that self, and one by one (like with the rest of his comrades), they are all stripped away in the depths of death. 

And then it's only once Orlanth has sacrificed everything he got from killing Yelm that he reconstitutes himself and arrives in the halls of the dead gods. In a very important symbolic sense, what happens in the hall is simply recapitulating what has happened before- Orlanth, full of bluster at the start, is stripped down to nothing to prove his sincerity and willingness to sacrifice, and then rebuilds himself from that nothing. So I think that Orlanth Penitent is perhaps less salient than Orlanth the Fool (though mostly in Tarot terms). Orlanth's consciousness of his deeds comes as he strips himself of being Orlanth, and he comes back to himself as a recognition of his deeds to make good. There's certainly some psychological fruit to pluck there!

1 hour ago, AlHazred said:

The only one who canonically doesn't is Eurmal (of course). 

Or, taking it in a very different direction, Eurmal's starting point for the Lightbringers Quest is found in Revealed Mythologies under the section on "Malkion the Sacrifice". 

32 minutes ago, Akhôrahil said:

One paradox I always wonder about is this - if you’re questing the Hill of Gold as Yelmalio, you’re supposed to lose against Zorak Zoran, but you’re also supposed to give it your best (it’s not as if Yelmalio didn’t try to win, and intentionally losing doesn’t strike me as right). But giving it your best means that you could potentially win, which is not what’s supposed to happen.

How does this work out? Is it that if you go into it really trying your damndest to win, you’re displaying an incorrect mindset? That you can only win by spending spiritual-magical resources here that you shouldn’t spend? Or is it just something that sometimes happens - you do everything you should be doing, but sometimes things just don’t work out the way they should anyway?

It works like in Return of the Jedi, though more broken up. You throw away your weapons and armor and only then do you fight. Or, symbolically, you reject Zorak Zoran and what he represents. 

Now in actual play or personal experience, this probably looks different- you might "defeat" Zorak Zoran by giving up your heat, or you both beat each other beyond the point of moving around, and you crawl to the top of the hill, only to see the horde of critters ascending after you... but the main factor here is that you toss away, give up, or cede protection and weapons and even the signs of life rather than become like Orlanth, or like Inora, or like Zorak Zoran, and it is only then that you move into the domain of Arroin and High King Elf, who die and return. 

On 11/8/2022 at 9:26 AM, Stan Shinn said:

Looking at the SRD for QuestWorlds again, it looks like 'Flaw as an Ability' is disallowed:

What is not clear to me from the SRD is how mechanically "invokes your flaw to force you to act a certain way" would work. I'm guessing it's something like my 'Acting Against Your Flaw' description above where you roll to see if you can act against a Flaw.

So would succeeding on a Flaw roll mean you have to act according to it, or would that success mean you can act against it? I'm thinking only a Failure would mean you could act against it, since the higher a Flaw is rated means its harder it is to not act in accordance with it.

Section 2.7 lays this out in full detail, but there are two rules which this applies to.

First one of these concerns Flaws and tactics. What happens is that when you use a tactic that overtly contradicts your Flaw, you take a hindrance on the roll for that tactic, and if there's a dubious conflict there or you have an ability you can use to try and overcome that Flaw's effects, you can roll that out as a contest- your Flaw against base resistance. Degree of success determines the penalty you take from it- on a defeat, no penalty, the Flaw is overcome, on a victory, you take -5 and an additional -5 for each success you received. 

Second one comes into operation during general narration. If the Flaw is relevant to the ongoing story, and you choose to act in accordance with it, the GM "might impose a hindrance on further actions". But if you choose to resist it, it's a simple contest- find an Ability that can produce a credible tactic for resisting the Flaw, use the Flaw's rating as the resistance, victory allows you to overcome the flaw (and possibly take a penalty on a relevant Ability) and defeat means you succumb to the Flaw and the GM might impose a hindrance on further actions. 

So the answer is "it depends"- when the Flaw is interfering with a specific tactic, you're trying to roll over the Flaw. When the Flaw is interfering with actions outside of a specific contest, you're trying to roll under the Ability you're using to resist and overcome the Flaw. There's a minor rules hole here- when you spend Story Points on the first instance of Flaws, do they add successes to the "your" roll, the Flaw, or do they add successes to the resistance, the "GM" roll? But in any case, I think that these rules might be better served as a paired set of options that don't have to be used simultaneously, like a softer form of picking a Sequence type to use. 

I wouldn't allow the use of Flaws as if they were Abilities, because they're specifically something which works against the character when they're trying to overcome obstacles or answer questions, and they "mirror" your highest, second-highest, and lowest abilities (depending on how many you take). If a player wanted to describe something about their character that was sometimes a hindrance and sometimes a benefit, I would have them make a paired Ability and Flaw that reflected the same fact about their character. 

The one instance where I could see Flaws being usable as if they were Abilities might be in a PVP-heavy game where you could use your Flaws solely to put hindrances on another PC, but even then, that would be a fairly abstract rule that would demand the specific game carefully frame what could be used as a Flaw, I think. 

I think that broadly I would not allow Flaws that weren't relevant to the genre of the specific game- "Hideous Visage" should only be a Flaw if it's something that would consistently interfere with the character's ability to overcome obstacles and answer questions. It might be appropriate for a game where you need to interact with high-society intrigue where appearance might well be an essential part of getting people to listen to you, but I wouldn't say it's relevant to a superhero game generally. Somebody like the Thing or Chamber with angst about their unusual appearance should probably have that Flaw clarified to emphasize the psychological aspect- their hang-up about their appearance causes them internal problems more than external problems. 

1 hour ago, EricW said:

Was Orlanth ever a dragon? I would suggest the line between “discovered” myths and new myths is a little blurred.

There's at least one myth which, disconnected from obvious EWF influence, suggests that yes, he was at one point. What that says to me is that you can't just arbitrarily conjure things out of nowhere and nothing- the changes encounter inertia or resistance- because we don't really have an example of an entirely ex nihilo alteration like this. The closest might be Zistor and Zazistor, who... had to be constructed in the material world rather than via pure mythological manipulation. 

2 hours ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

there is something i don't know about the impact of heroquesting in the world

 

we know that with heroquesting you can bring some magic/relic from the gods plan, we know that you can "experiment" something different than what was teached in the temple

 

but... is there a possibility that an experience is impossible to live?

is the myth (aka what was done before time) frozen, and everything you can do during your heroquest was done during the myth ?

or is it possible to change the myth, to transform the "before time" ? when I say change the myth, I don't say "change what the cult teach, but really what happened ages ago"

 

Not sure my words are clear so let's go on a simple example^^

 

a community, powerful enough to do anything possible (the question is "what is possible"), decides to explore the hill of gold but wants yelmalio to keep his fire power. So day after day the heroquestors try to defeat ZZ.

 

then there are few possibilities :

1) you cannot change your god (not what you believe, but really your god).

if a lucky heroquestor succeed to defeat ZZ, that means that unvolontary (or not) the questor "merged" or "changed" yelmalio with another fire deity, keeping for him the fire (summon fire elemantal...) or for his community (fireblade...)

OR there is an aspect of Yelmalio's myth where Yelmalio was able to defeat ZZ and kept his fire. We, gloranthan, forgot it but a powerful heroquestor may discover this aspect of the myth, teach it and "update" the cult

in both cases the god and the myth don't change, it is your knowledge which changes

 

2) you can change / create your god : never Yelmalio did it in the myth, no aspects, no forgotten story, nothing: If you meet LM he will tell you "no that did not happen"

but if enough heroquestors succeed (by experimental heroquest), they change the gods plan /and a new yelmalio (not the same) is created, may be the new one doesn't replace the old one and two gods exist now... Are heroquestors able to "create" gods ?

 

not really successfull with the goddesses switch, but did the god learners "roll" a fumble (2 = they could succeed ) or just tried something impossible (1 = they had 0% chance to succeed) ?

 

from a play perspective, in all cases pc may gain some specific powers their gods don't have, unvolontary or volontary (arkatism or thing like that) and it can be explained by a "confusion" of deities more than an aspect of the deity the pc "played". So the point is not really what power a pc may gain,

but more to understand what is god plane/ heroquest

 

 

Here's how I interpret it, which is very much not how most people interpret it. This is not just non-canon, but arguably non-fanon as well: 

The gods are people and have the capacity and willingness to act. When you heroquest, you're not really replacing your god, you're following in their footsteps and doing what they once did to get a similar kind of outcome or benefit from it. Now, you're temporarily inhabiting their "space", you're doing the early stages of what Elder Scrolls calls "mantling", so there's a connection there, and that connection is why you can benefit, but there's still a distinction between you and the god you're following. 

So you could climb the Hill of Gold fifty or a hundred times and kick Zorak Zoran's butt each time, but that wouldn't change Yelmalio all by itself. It would probably push you further and further away from Yelmalio, because you're not getting the lesson Yelmalio's teaching. You would have to do more than that- you'd have to either bring vast quantities of force to bear to reshape Yelmalio the way you want him to be, which does well at getting people to stay quiescent (Nysalor) or lose parts of themselves (Kyger Litor), but not so well at getting people to actively do things, or you'd have to talk the god or gods in question into accepting this redefinition of themselves. I'd put the Goddess Switch into the latter category- the God Learners talked/browbeat the two goddesses into agreeing they were basically interchangeable, they swapped places, but then it turned out they weren't, and that they had different interests and thus offered different magic, and things went to hell. 

Or to put it another way, to get a god to change how they act (such as by granting new powers to people) you need to get their consent to keep doing it, just like with a person. And if you make use of abusive violence to extract or coerce their consent, then, like with a person, there are other forces which will object to this and take action against you. 

And to bring it back around to Yelmalio... the insight that Yelmalio had atop the Hill of Gold is a pretty important one to him, I think. Trying to get him to reject it would be like trying to get people to reject a core belief they hold about themselves. Not impossible, not very practical, either via humane or inhumane means. 

On 11/7/2022 at 6:46 PM, nabda said:

Let's continue the trend. I've been wanting to run a game set in the empire eventually, with lunar aligned players doing lunar things, so lets talk about the rural parts of the empire, away from the glitz of Glamour. Specifically more interested in social things for bringing an adventure into Lodrilli territory than esoterics and name games, but if conversation drifts towards that then whatever.

The Guide says that a Lodrilli farming village tends to be 2-5 extended families and that social success is measured by the amount of dependents you can maintain, but how extended are we talking here? What's a normal population for a village in the heartlands and how much land are they able to maintain? Are the vast majority of village folk farmers/herders as their primary trade, or is there a separation of duties such that some people are always responsible for certain other labors such as maintenance of irrigation channels or other tasks instead of direct farm work? Are taxes in kind collected at the village, or are they delivered?

Urban Dara Happa walls their cities, do the villages nearby also have that concern, or do the interconnected nature of their houses turn the entire village into a defensible point/holdfast? Do they prefer to build on hills for relative defensibility, or are their social/political concerns that lead them to build just anywhere? (I.E. "secure peasants are troublesome, tell them to tear it down and move down by the river."

So there's a distinction to make here between the rice farmers and the wheat farmers. Rice farming has some important sociological effects that are generally agreed to exist as a consequence of rice- tighter social norms around labor exchange. Everyone in the village has to help out their neighbors when called, and the consequences for failing to uphold this can be pretty dire. There's also the material aspect of maintaining an irrigation system for controlled flooding and draining of ricefields- this is a big, complicated thing which must be manipulated in complicated ways and which everyone has to work together on to keep it functioning. 

In exchange for all of this, rice is about four times as productive per land area used than wheat, or barley, or millet. One social effect- wheat villages and rice villages may well have stereotypes about each other- wheat villagers being seen as lazy, unhelpful, or gullible, rice villagers being seen as greedy, petty, or controlling. 

In the real world, maize is in between the two- more productive than wheat/barley/millet, less productive than rice. Maize also can grow on more marginal land than any of them, so one of the historical effects of the spread of maize was the expansion of cultivated land into rougher terrain. 

One of the possible social effects of this would be the introduction of maize farming into areas like Arir and Darsen that are uplands not noted for their fertility, which can be countered with the non-edaphic Hon-eel cult, which creates potential tensions there between the "new" farmers and the older hill people, but another aspect of this would be the presence of maize fields in wheat-and-barley villages on the "edge" of their territory and assigning them to particular family members as their responsibility. Is this a way to manage independently-minded people by giving them a space where they're freer and away from the suffocating center, or is it an insult, a kind of internal exile? Probably varies from household to household and village to village. 

Now the nature of the Guide Lodril-village is one where there are 50-100 people per extended family, which suggests that we aren't dealing with villages as we think of them. Mandan earth lodges were large enough to house 30-40 people, so we need something bigger. We need large compounds of several buildings. At that point, each extended family might well be a small village in itself, and any fortifications would be built into the compound rather than the village as a whole (particularly to store food). 

The Guide also does not suggest that this is a manorial economy where rural nobles oversee serf labor, so we're probably dealing here with the informal hierarchy of big-men, and each village might well have an appointed headman or headwoman who's the one who's responsible for interacting with the higher ranks of society, collecting taxes for delivery, and maintaining public infrastructure like roads. And these don't have to be the most powerful big-man or big-woman in the village, and indeed a lot of tension can come from situations where a headman has been appointed to cause problems for a local leader. 

All of this is of course speculation. One wild possibility- Lodrilli were actually formally freed by the Lunars as part of the liberation of Peloria from the Carmanians, and like the Han supplanting the well-field system with land markets and emphasizing the peasant freeholder, peasants in the Lunar Empire are free- but continually in danger of falling into indebtedness, tenancy, and wage labor. Which also is an area fruitful for creating tension- put a peasant family that's fallen on hard times and has to send most of the younger generation away to work as wage laborers and another peasant family that's looking to take their farmland and relieve their overpopulated compound right in the path of the PCs and watch some sparks fly. 

I feel hopeful about the vote tomorrow, as an American. I've already turned my ballot in (thank goodness for universal voting by mail), so I have one less worry there, too!

19 hours ago, Wolfhead said:

How would you model the shields from Dune? Just a normal Ability?

https://dune.fandom.com/wiki/Shield

Shields in Dune have two effects, story-wise: 

1) They emphasize the mismatch between the effete and decadent Imperium and the practical, hypermanly Fremen. 

2) They make most high technology ineffectual as a tool of violence. 

The former is really very dependent on the context of what you're doing with your game's setting- if you're not running the basic conflicts of Dune, that factor doesn't matter or may be reversed. But the latter is mostly relevant because it does have an immediately relevant effect on QW games- it limits the tactics that can be used in a situation where there are shields. Using an ability that involves guns, energy weapons, etc. when shields are in play would be ruled as out as a viable tactic for overcoming a story obstacle or answering a story question. 

So that's how I would model that kind of motif- this is something that shapes the viability of abilities and tactics, but is not an ability itself, though having or not having shield access may be part of particular occupation keywords or other abilities. 

6 minutes ago, Joerg said:

 

I fear you may be expecting too much from a low chromium admixture. While probably slightly less prone to corrode, these materials do take on corrosion. Especially when exposed to sweat or human tissue.

 

The  Iron Pillar of Delhi is probably the most interesting example of corrosion resistance from iron produced in antiquity, as due to the high phosphorus content of the finished product and its weather exposure it appears to have formed a natural iron phosphate coating on its surface. It's doubtful this was intentional, but it may be possible that the wood used for the smelting was chosen for its phosphorus content somehow, which in Gloranthan terms suggests the possibility of fuels used in forging and smelting passing properties on to the finished product. 

1 hour ago, mfbrandi said:

Thanks, Brian, I didn’t know it was mentioned as late as that. But it certainly appears earlier: the idea is laid out in WF #11 (1981), but some of the examples are of the why would you bother sort — “a riverford” [presumably, a river ford], “a Ralios river manor” — though “a horse nomad nation” is intriguing. I mean, one Ralios river manor is going to be much like another, no?

I suspect the intent was to tell people "there are places and people that you just have to make up the details for" and unfortunately this was not a good way to communicate that idea, in the end. 

3 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

I think one of the arms race theories of LBAC on Wikipedia mentioned mass-produced cast bronze weapons. My guess is that cast bronze is less brittle than cast iron (presumably, a cast iron sword would be suicide), but perhaps there is a metallurgist here who can squeak up.

 

 

Bronze alloys are overall more ductile than the high-carbon cast irons, and bronze weapons in the historical RW Bronze Age tended to be made via casting and then work-hardening the metal portions from a relatively high-tin alloy. Bronze armor tended to be made from a relatively low-tin alloy that would be cast into ingots and flattened into sheets and shaped from there. 

Bronze can't be tempered the way most steels and cast iron can, because quench-hardening requires the characteristics of the carbon-alloy crystalline structure. Instead, copper alloys and copper itself are annealed (heated to soften them and then cooled, which can be done via quenching for nonferrous alloys) and then work-hardened to reach the desired material properties. 

All of this is for real-world copper alloys- Gloranthan metals have been frequently said to be analogues rather than exact duplicates of the real metals, so if you want to have tempered bronze or wrought bronze you are of course free to. 

The Red Goddess disclaimed any connection with Dendara to Valare Addi because she got a glimpse of a certain document which equated Dendara with preservation and decided to get out ahead of anyone claiming that she was just the 9th avatar of Dendara, before the final, 10th Kalki/Chakravartin avatar who will arrive on a white horse to end the current Glorantha so that a new one can be created. 

Secondarily, Valare Addi misheard "Shakyamuni" terribly when Sedenya explained it all to her and started a brief dance craze on the Red Moon. 

12 minutes ago, mfbrandi said:

I refer your honour  to Exhibit A — which has Orlanth outside the universe, though they didn’t go there: it is just what they are.

As I — feebly! — grasp it, IG has at least two functions: (a) to be removed from Creation; (b) to be top god, above mere saints and burtae. So I made Yelm/top god the Inside and Orlanth the Outside. The One and the Zero. Then Orlanth’s blow against Yelm was reimagined as an act of mutual benefit, an opening of communication between Inside and Outside, rather than a murder. None of this would be accepted by orthodox Malkioni, Orlanthi, or Yelmies, of course; they would rightly say that it does violence to their subtle, beautiful, and true cosmologies.

All the astrological/astronomical stuff and the stepping outside of the universe fits with the plundered Mithraism, too. (Though, again, not in-keeping with real Mithraism, whatever the hell that was like.)

And we all know what we find outside the universe … [cue spooky music]

Mmm. I think I would say that the functional role of the Invisible God in a Malkioni context is to distinguish between the demiurgic Malkion and the greater being that all Malkioni (including Brithini) agreed must have created the ultimately flawed Malkion. But of course in the Revealed Mythologies material, creation proceeds through the various manifestations of Malkion, all of whom have their own names, except for the initial progression from 1 -> 3 (Matter, Energy, Intellect). So in this Malkioni context the Invisible God is invisible because it predates any means of detecting its existence. 

And by the time that the Carmanians are engaged in their anabasis, the broad split over whether to understand the demiurge as good or evil is already taking place, and Syranthir's people are firmly on the Irensavelist/"evil demiurge" side, which they assign the name Makan (in response to the Makanist propositions of certain God Learner groups yada yada). Once they've developed their own religious identity, though, they reframe matters so that there's a good demiurge and a bad demiurge who are initially equals, and then the Revealed Mythologies Malkion the Seer/Sacrifice is reframed as a servant of the good demiurge. 

So I think that equating Yelm = Idovanus and Orlanth = Ganesataurus doesn't really work, because nobody else in Glorantha sees them as initially social equals/twin siblings, Yelm really isn't depicted in a demiurgic role of creating the material world, and of course, there's that whole Truth and Lies thing with Idovanus and Ganesataurus. I think that Lodril and Dayzatar are both better equations for Idovanus (Dayzatar probably somewhat better as a truth-associated deity and an abstract being of light, but Lodril does make things with his hands) and Ganesataurus, if you have to equate them with anybody, would probably be best-equated with Kazkurtum = Basko, a celestial entity of Darkness with the Illusion Rune, and so associated somewhat with lies and deception. Or with Trickster, if you want to make Trickster malevolent enough, and then the Yelm and Orlanth battle would be an example of the kind of lesser skirmishes between Truth and Lies where it may be unclear who's on what side, just enough to satisfy sun-worship and storm-worship and get the Light and Dark phases in. 

5 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

We (in playerland) know Invisible Orlanth by that name because the cult is some kind of Invisible God–Orlanth mash-up, but is there anything interesting to say from a Gloranthan point of view as to why Invisible Orlanth is invisible?

Here's another possible answer- "invisible" might mean, especially in the crossover zone of Carmania, something that's on the far side of the Sky Dome where you can't see it, like the Invisible God logically would be (being outside of the universe), and like Annilla, the invisibility-granting Blue Moon, definitely is. Invisible Orlanth's name may be derived from the behavior of the Broken Plant/Orlanth's Ring, and claiming that the regular emergence from Stormgate is because Orlanth moves on the far side of the sky, in the invisible realm, or this may be retrofitted onto the belief that Orlanth has encountered the Invisible God and thus stepped outside of the universe. 

What does this mean? Well, it implies some things about Annilla and the Blue Moon and those mysterious blue sorcery-users who were in Pelanda long before the Malkioni started colonizing and migrating, but it also suggests we can identify potential other "invisible" entities by looking for strangely-behaving planets and stars. This also may be the operating metaphor of the Lodril Invisible Spear secret society- even though Lodril has no visible presence in the heavens, he can affect them, just as peasant revolutionaries can affect elite politics. 

1 hour ago, Jeff said:

As you say, the idea of an almost purely abstract Prime Mover is not interesting to you. And yet, such abstract Prime Movers have been quite popular - at least among the intelligentsia - in many societies and many times. And since the zzaburi can wield magic and powerful magic at that, they must have something going for them.

Are you illiterate, my man? 

For the benefit of the audience, an edit: when I said "I" and "me" in the post Jeff is quoting, I was putting myself in the position of a Gloranthan- a Pelorian peasant, and then by comparison, a Malkioni/Rokari peasant. I thought that this was obvious, because I talked about "me" trying to avoid getting violently assaulted by a Shargashi. Shargashi do not exist. So when I talked about the Invisible God being not relevant to "me", I am not talking about myself, but the imaginary Rokari peasant woman. 

This is thus a frustrating reply to receive, because from my perspective, it seemed pretty obvious my post wasn't talking about my personal opinions of the Invisible God and was talking about peasant opinions, so talking about the intelligentsia of societies following philosophical, abstract entities was, from my perspective, completely ignoring the conversation and contents of the post.