Eff

There is also the World Serpent in Hsunchen animistic traditions, which are themselves fairly populated with dragons in the upper hierarchy (Korgatsu, Hykimikyh). 

My overall theory is that dragonness is a state of being anyone, including gods, can be in, but that it's also one so withdrawn from material concerns that in surviving mythical cycles, the stories are ones of resisting or overcoming draconic temptations. 

Cutting out the Inner Dragon, as it were. (Or in Aroka's case, cutting out the inner raingod.)

And snakes have strong draconic connections because they share more parts of the original dragon bodyplan- sinuous form, scaled skin. 

In addition to the use of high heels and platforms to increase the height of zzaburi and help them conform to caste stereotype, among Rokari there's also the use of artificial fingernails and wigs to demonstrate a zzaburi's lack of involvement in the duties of a dronar or horal, and distinct, obvious makeup styles to clearly delinate their wizardry in any situation, and flamboyantly colorful clothing to proclaim the wealth of their talar and communities. 

The frequent sorcerous debate and backbiting often latches onto deficiencies in this presentation as points of attack. No one is quite sure where referring to one's own sorcerous school as an "island of fire" in the midst of ignorant darkness came from, though...

It's stated in the Guide that most people in the Provinces abandoned Orlanth for Barntar, but it's also been stated by Jeff Richard that Aggar sees a massive Orlanth-worshiper revolt in the immediate future. 

So perhaps one way to look at it is that the oppression of Sartar is a specifically contingent thing, with the desire to suppress this gadfly kingdom from the people up in Glamour coinciding with Tarshite fanatical devotion to the Seven Mothers, Red Goddess, and Hon-eel... and rivalry with Sartar, and then further coinciding with a grand magical identification of Rebellus Terminus with Sartar and Hendrikiland by Tatius the Bright and his brilliant plans to build an extra-special Temple of the Reaching Moon and fully crush Orlanthi rebelliousness in one fell swoop. 

And in the rest of the Provinces, official attitudes are much more relaxed towards Orlanth worship, and the process has been to push for appropriately submissive manifestations like Sky Bear and Barntar for official rites/state worship while leaving local/personal worship alone, producing a population that can credibly rise in the name of Orlanth following the death of Argenteus and lack of a new Mask. 

More broadly, I do think that this second half is what's common in the Lunar Empire. Personal worship is not especially cared about, but state rituals are altered, shifted, Lunarized. This is what would have been within the capacity of a historical state, this is consistent with how most of the Provinces were brought into the fold (Hwarin Dalthippa and Hon-eel providing entry points into local practice as state-critical heroine cults that provided a syncretizing influence and opened things up for the Lunar Provincial Church to win converts) and it also explains why most people don't care enough to do more than protest or complain or go bandit but then rebellions rock the Provinces after the loss of legitimate Lunar authority- the religious practice is Lunarized local religion, not a homogeneous Lunar religion, and without the Red Emperor to serve as a neutral arbiter, the attitude towards rule by lowlander Dara Happans becomes much more hostile. 

(One wonders where Jar-eel and Great Sister end up in these power struggles, and whether breakaway Provincial states still proclaim their loyalty to Moonson while tarring and feathering tax collectors...)

What does this Lunarized religion look like? 

Based on the prototype model (Tarsh) and what hints we get, I would assume that the process goes as follows: 

1. A hero-figure provides some great revelation about a locally important mythological figure, contextualizing their relationship to the Red Goddess. 

2. The hero-figure is incorporated into the rituals of that mythological figure. 

3. The rituals begin to shift as the Lunar Provincial Church teaches Lunar doctrines that allow the local people to have an understanding of what these revelations mean for how they should worship.

4. The rituals then develop outside of this guidance and become their own syncretic expansion of the Lunar Way.

5. The syncretic rituals around the hero-figure are imported back into the Heartlands. 

Fortunately or unfortunately, Jar-eel is pulled in too many directions to perform this process with Belintar or Sartar (or reveal that Heort was a sable antelope stag rather than a white-tailed or red-tailed deer). 

Overall, I don't think that spirits of reprisal are going to hit anyone switching from a Lightbringer cult to one of the Seven Mothers or Etyries. We know that at least some of these cults are not hostile to one another, and there's not really any reason to believe they're deeply incompatible unless you try to maintain worship of both and end up doing something that's taboo to one. Which is only really an issue for Yanafal and Humakt over Resurrection magic, as far as I can remember. 

Most gameplay relevant: Orlanth temples in Lunar areas outside of Dragon Pass look and act funny, have weird paintings, and insist he's going by a different name, but you can still get all your gameplay-relevant magic back there. 

12 minutes ago, Borygon said:

Wait, going further down this road, what prevents illuminate from obtaining 90% in all elemental runes and becoming avatar of Glorantha?

The lack of an existing cult to initiate the Illuminate properly.

The difficulties that would face any human being trying to twist their personality around in such a fashion that they're effectively compelled to behave cruelly, mercurially, pragmatically, rationally, passionately, and dreamily/irrationally whenever faced with the choice. 

The existence of Glorantha as a fringe character in existing myths, making it difficult to talk to her if you try and revive her cult by venturing onto the Hero Plane. 

Then you have the matter that Glorantha is dead and doesn't provide any magic, so there's not many gameplay effects from it...

As for RQG Passions, my immediate thought is that by default you'd pick up the new Loyalty Passion at 60% and lower your old Loyalty Passion some. At the very least, it should be below 80%, and if already lower than that... 10 points? Enough to keep the divided Loyalties on your sheet unless you take specific actions to alter them. 

Obviously, these are alterable by events. Truly burning your bridges could erase a Passion, while doing something to prove true loyalty as part of adoption should boost the new Passion. 

12 hours ago, Jape_Vicho said:

Do you think the other 3 inspirations are also connected to their respective moon phases? 

I think there aren't many connections if we're counting up (eg, what's Hon-eel's connection with Gerra?) but if we're counting down, then there are some substantial connections present:

1) Glamour/Zaytenera: a new beginning, a city emerging de novo. 

2) Yara Aranis/Natha: bring balance through violence, guardians of Hells.

3) Hon-eel/Orogeria-Ulurda: dualistic, gives birth to dawn and dusk together, brings life in the form of maize and death in the form of the Hon-eel Rites.

So a 5th Inspiration would have Gerra connections and *looks at the 8th Wane* that seems fairly plausible. And then there are "Seven Granddaughters of the Red Moon" at Moonfall, so perhaps things count all the way back down to zero.  

If I were using Doburdun for anything, I would just change the names in Hedkoranth or associated Thunder Brother myths. I think that works better for his highly specialized focus on thunder and service to a broader deity of storm/air. 

1 minute ago, Rodney Dangerduck said:

 

In our campaign, my PC gave a speech in Boldhome proposing the theory that Kallyr doesn't want to come back.  She is spent, in horrible pain, all of her family is dead, along with most of her boon companions.  Only some horrid Lovecraftian sorcerer would bring her back to this world.  Let her be.

"Let her rest in the halls of the All Father, with her friends and kin, in whose great company she shall know neither shame nor defeat."

I mean, I figure this is the case, and also that if you actually went and did this rather than going through a proper resurrection, she'd be a Sky Storm entity tethered awkwardly to a mortal body, so her blood would ignite on contact with air, lightning would occasionally crackle off of her, burning wings would burst out of her back or arms at random, she might even breathe fire... Fun for the whole family whenever she'd make an Orate roll!

6 hours ago, coffeemancer said:

so how would one go about rezzing someone like Kallyr who seems unreachable?

Go full Arkat. Figure out where she is, (probably in the Sky World), start exploring myths wantonly to locate the mythological connection that will take you directly to wherever she's at. (Easily enough, she's associated with Rigsdal and Sky Orlanth, time to start digging up star-related stories!) And then talk her into abandoning the existence she has achieved. And have a spare body hanging around she can climb into. 

Trivial stuff. 

3 hours ago, Joerg said:

Shouldn't that have waited for the seventh inspiration?

But then, the fourth phase may be the Full Moon. Or one of the dark ones. One of the extremes.

The three previous inspirations are not in any meaningful way the Red Goddess reborn again in mortal form, and while Jar-eel certainly aims to become that, I wonder whether she was conceived as such, or to some other goal.

What she has in common with Teelo Estara is her struggle against the evil of the empire in Peloria (though that was a lot more true for Hon-eel, her great-aunt/sister, and Yara Aranis before her). Only it is her daddy's empire this time. (But then, who is the daddy of Teelo?)

My thought is that Jar-eel's approach to embodying the concept of Harmony/Harana Ilor/the celestial harp is what makes her the living incarnation of the Red Goddess- she devotes so much of her existence to selfless behavior Sedenya can speak through her nearly freely because there's not much self to mask things. 

Of course, station 4 on the Sedenya train is Rashorana- illuminated wisdom, but the Moon disappears from the world for a bit. That seems alarmingly apropos. 

3 hours ago, g33k said:

That's when THEY are doing the raiding.

But when retributive forces come in the winter, to raid THEM during hibernation... are there really ENOUGH of the White Bear to break a fully-prepared battalion-level force or similar, come to chastise them for the above-mentioned raids...?  Particularly White Bear forces WITHOUT their hibernating brethren?

Hence my suggestion that the "select" brotherhood might not be as "selective" as one might think.

Do we have canonical numbers on this?

 

In order to move battalion-sized military forces around, you generally need roads and/or an elaborate system of supply depots. The former are in short supply in Rathorela and if you have the latter, you've already solved the Rathori problem. So in practical terms, actually breaking through to Rathori hibernating grounds would require a vast expenditure of resources and require you to fight the Uncolings and minor Hsunchen peoples too, since you'd be making moves which would potentially subjugate them. 

And if you're sending forces that could conceivably raid deep into Rathorela, they're small and loose enough that the 1-to-1 advantage Rathori have in fighting is likely to be decisive. 

12 hours ago, Arcadiagt5 said:

I have to admit that I'm still seeing a disconnect between “Babeester Gor are raving fanatic vengeance hounds all the time” and “Babeester Gor are the standing, and permanent, guard units for all Earth temples & protectors of the Earth priestesses”. 

I mean, my interpretation of the HW/HQ1 Babeester Gor cult is that the cultists are divinely sanctioned serial killers, which at least is more consistent- when they're not being psychologically driven to murder, they can do things like stand guard or even take up hobbies. 

My interpretation of the clan-bloodline split is that bloodlines are consanguine in the degree of immediate family and clans are consanguine in the degree of first cousins or so, as an analogy to modern American perceptions of incestuousness. (And presumably, relations between clans that are closely related, like parent and child clans or clans that have frequently intermarried in recent years, are another layer of consanguinity out.)

Of course, my assumption in writing and playing is that all background relationships are clan-exogamous and one which isn't is interesting enough to be in the foreground.

35 minutes ago, Jeff said:

Of course the Orlanthi have dogs. But they are worker animals, and considered less desirable than having an alynx. 

Goats are like pigs in many Muslim countries - religiously unclean. 

Does the goat taboo extend any further than eating their flesh? (Eg goat milk, goat cheese, cashmere and cashgora wool...)

Well, anyone who contributed to the Web was essential to it, for the Web wouldn't be the Web without their contribution. So our friend the Wicked Hydrophobe of the West can fairly claim credit there even as Dronar and Menena probably were the "weavers" from the Kingdom of Logic. 

As for what He, Zzabur had to do with the Spike exploding... Well, let us remember that the Malkioni are logical. If Zzabur cast a spell that led to the events that caused the Spike to explode, then he was the prime mover of the Spike's explosion, as a nearly ultimate cause. It is probably not a good idea to inquire as to what this spell was or what it was intended to do, however. 

The tagua palm trees (six species) produce a nut with a hard, white inner layer that's used as a natural substitute for ivory today. It's entirely possible they grow somewhere in Glorantha. (The Errinoru Jungle? Slon? The parts of Old Seshnela where humans are effectively forbidden? Or maybe as close and comfortable as Teshnos...) 

Tagua nuts are relatively small- about 3 inches/8 cm in diameter at the most. Of course, we can imagine that there are giant varieties as well, growing closer to the size of ordinary walrus tusks, perhaps. 

38 minutes ago, jajagappa said:

I'd guess King of Sartar as the point where that is first heavily used (The Book of the Orlanthi) and then Thunder Rebels where it becomes the prominently used term.

Yes!  I always figured it is the ritual ceremony when he became Prince of Sartar.

Presumably, the pantslessness is to remind everyone that the Ducks are an integral part of Sartar.

13 minutes ago, John Biles said:

 

Darkness was the first Element to emerge from Chaos because it espoused 'I AM', a scream of 'I exist and I am different'.

If we are all us, then the road by which the world dissolves back into Chaos is clear.  Without individuation, everyone dissolves back into the Red Goddess and the Red Goddess herself ceases to exist.

Basically, we're talking End of Evangelion, in Glorantha.

All of the children of the Man rune and everything else turn into red goo, are absorbed into the Red Godess and then we are all us in truth.

 

Well, thankfully Sedenya is not one, two, or zero. There's at least twenty of Her just off the top of my head. So as "Komm, süsser tod" starts playing and the Gloranthan Instrumentality Project comes to fruition, rest assured that there's still individuality and differentiation. We are all Us, but I am not You. 

Now, the merging into colorful goo, well, yes, there's that minor factor. 

The true Sedenyic victory is not Orlanth dead and Ernalda supine as Sedenya's footstool. Sedenya is Her own footstool. It's Orlanth and Ernalda recognizing that they too are parts of the Great Sedenya and simply expressions of Her thoughts, personalities collaborating within the scope of Her mind. But once this is accomplished, and all of the Otherworld moves in a Lunatic fashion, then there's no need for the Red Moon to hang in the sky anymore, for all the gods have become the Moon. 

Dara Happa being a rice-growing region in the upper parts of the continent, with historically cold winters, has always made me think of the greater Great Lakes region of North America in terms of what it's like visually. As such, this may be a picture of Rist before the Moonburn, or Erigia before the Skyburn (Hartwick Pines State Park in Michigan):

Some things to note that haven't been specifically covered:

There's also Red Dragon Valley/Ormsgone Valley, which is a group of about 10k people living in the gap between Black Horse County and Tarsh on that map. At that size, I assume they're multiple tribes, but they don't seem to have a centralized confederation or kingdom. Based on what little's been said about them and their geography, we can presume that the majority of the population are former Tarshites and vendref. Quite possibly they serve as a kind of marchland/demilitarized zone between Tarsh and the horse people to their south. (Perhaps some poetic centurion called the area "Little Redlands".) 

Wenelia- the Orlanthi people here are called Harandings and Entruli. Entru is a god, associated with pigs and with the goddess Ketha who gives her name to Kethaela. Harand, however, is a figure from the Lawstaff story, who rejects Orlanth's legal judgement and attempts to invoke the Law of Violence to steal land. It's possible that this is an exonym to emphasize the brutishness of the Wenelians, the "western barbarians". Harand is also called "Harand Boardick", so this may well be an endonym instead. 

Culturally, we should probably presume they're distinct from Heortlings in general like Esrolians are, in that they grew from a distinct population of people who were brought into the Theyalan sphere, but I don't think there's any clear signs of how distinct they are, beyond the Ditali people next door to Esrolia adopting Esrolian material culture and the Pelushi people doing the same with Caladralander material culture. 

4 minutes ago, Nick Brooke said:

Ancient & mediaeval historian here. I've constructed manuscript stemmas for some Gloranthan publications.

More than once I've contemplated extending the brief Documentary Source Hypothesis invoked in the discussion of the four Argrath's Sagas in King of Sartar to cover the entire book...

3 minutes ago, Nevermet said:

I'm getting a lot of laugh reacts, so to be clear: while I wrote the last post with a light tone, the skillsets for discussing Glorantha and doing an academic literature review are extremely similar.

I mean, I'm laughing because it's very true. I've pulled out John Day more than a few times when discussing or writing about Glorantha...

37 minutes ago, Darius West said:

Wakboth holds the chaos rune, ergo, Wakboth IS chaos.  You say Wakboth is not all Chaos, but how certain of that are you?  Do you doubt that Wakboth can call the creatures of chaos to leap into his mouth to sustain him, but obliyterate themselves in the process?  As to Wakboth liberating the creatures of Glorantha from their gross matter, well what about liberating minds from sanity, and for that matter, liberating those who exist into the blissful non-existence they knew before their birth?  In this sense the Crimson Bat is also a great liberator, but the teaching methods are a bit extreme, and you have to be a certain kind of mystic to appreciate the message.

A logical proof. 

Assume that if a god is described as holding a Rune, they are that Rune. 

1. Orlanth holds the Air Rune.

2. Barntar possesses the Air Rune.

3. Barntar is Orlanth.

4. Daga possesses the Air Rune. 

5. Daga is Orlanth. 

6. Barntar is Daga. 

Clearly, you are greatly Illuminated indeed. 

13 minutes ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

Guys the sun causes cancer and forest fires, the sun is evil, we must cancel the sun.

- the Rebel Gods, shortly before the Doom Conjunction and the death of Yelm.

I have to say that Glorantha has a certain inherent abstruseness to it that kind of foils any well-intentioned desire to make it more relatable. On the one hand, you have the "silly" elements, the Donald/Howard Duck people, the jack-o-bears, the chain restaurants, Casino Town and its one-armed bandits, the Paps. On the other hand, you have the "deep" elements. The expectation of intricate society created by the reality of intricate society in Sartar and Prax. The invocation of historical religious concepts and contemporary occult ones. The general sense that the entire setting is moving under your feet, that these broos, these trollkin, are here for reasons both historical and personal. It's two things that make Glorantha not always easy to enter (and neither of them has much to do with canon per se), but they also provide experiences that are fairly near to unique. Morrowind as opposed to Skyrim, as it were. 

That being said, my personal entry to Glorantha was picking up the orange Heroquest book one day in my FLGS back in college. It was well out of print. I picked it up, opened the book, read through the Homelands section with increasing interest, then hit the map of Genertela with "Five Arkats Return!" as a caption. I was hooked. So for me, it's about the totality of things, that you can have a setting where Debbie Harry as a goddess of celebrity and fame can coexist with the grim invocation of cyclical violence and abuse and entitlement of "Gaumata's Vision", and they make sense with one another. 

And to bring this back around to canon, canon is most meaningful to me when it provides the framework for attitudes and playfulness. If I know what Seshnegi talk about when they're making conversation, and I know they're supposed to be drawing heavily on Greek poleis and Vedic India, then I can include them in a game or a bit of creative writing with ease and hopefully bring them to life as reasonable approximations of people.