Eff

2 minutes ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

I was loosely of the impression that the Trader Princes themselves (and their families) were basically Talars (possibly self-styled, but who is going to dispute that?), and they ruled over Orlanthi commoners in lieu of Horali and Dronari. 

I'll admit, I had not considered how the Solanthi and Ditali confederations played into the urbanized trader towns. I hadn't considered that there was a continuity between them, I always got the impression that they were separate entities, at least politically (ie. the Solanthi and Ditali were more hinterland "rubes", if you will, compared to the caravan-aligned trader city-states, but that they at least were independent of the Princes). But I could be way off here. 

 

Well, the Guide doesn't describe any kind of political boundary- the cities are subsumed within the tribal confederations. And a city can't exist without a hinterland providing it with things, generally speaking, so there has to be some kind of relationship between the Orlanthi tribes and the cities. But the Trader Princes themselves are not described as taking much direct action compared to the Orlanthi confederations as a group, which suggests that such a relationship involves some kind of political integration. 

I have had thoughts about the Pralori percolating for a while, and as an extension of that, some things that I considered for Maniria in general (based almost entirely on the Guide).

- I suspect that as a long-term consequence of the Goddess Switch and Slontos rolling over that most Manirian cultures have strange relationships with the Earth. We have, in the Guide, the Legros people around Tallcastle who live in accordance with Aldryami ways. I also thought that Maniria would be a good place to have slash-and-char agriculture, as a way to improve soil with poor fertility (and thus providing a very real and material reason for Ditali and Solanthi to be swayed by what few Lunar missionaries would have reached so far- perhaps they have their own version of the Hon-eel rites...) 

- The Solanthi and Ditali are political unions of multiple tribes. However, they are described in the Guide as confederations rather than kingdoms. Greymane is also described as a warlord, not a king, and we know that the two titles can be translated identically. The Trader Princes are also described in the Guide as still somewhat recognizably Malkioni, which suggests that they have hereditary control of the cities, contrary to standard Orlanthi practice which sees the city as deriving its legitimacy from the tribes that contribute to it, plus the Ring of the urbanites themselves. 

- My interpretation of this: the basic political alliance that emerged out of the Manirian Road was that the confederations agreed, as long as the flow of goods along the road continued, to accept that they would always elect one of the Trader Princes to be overall "prince" of the confederation, while retaining the traditional candidacy qualifications for "king"/"warlord", with the two positions somewhat more equal than in, say, the Heortling or Talastari mode. The Opening and the Road drying up disrupted this balance and led to the warlord becoming more prominent again, and thus enabling Greymane's rise. 

- To overanalyze the little information we have about Greymane, he is consistently described as having "retired to his favorite wife's farm," which is an interesting turn of phrase. To build a castle in the air from this, let's presume that the "Entruli belt" shares in matrilineal and matrilocal clan structures, like Esrolians, without having the patron-client structures of Esrolia. Instead, Greymane's ability to marshal Ditali and Solanthi is because he's both- married into multiple different clans across the two confederations and thus providing a kin-based linkage. Even if his sons had survived Pennel Ford (I think the consensus is that they didn't, or at best the pro-Lunar one retreated northwards with other Lunars and is now a guest in Tarsh and soon to be dead or a guest in Mirin's Cross) they would have had a hard time maintaining Greymane's fleeting empire without his network of marriages. 

- This is mostly the past. What does the future hold? Seshnelans. At some point, whether it's Guilmarn or the Great Talar of the West, there's almost certainly going to be Malkioni probing eastwards across Maniria. There's also nothing in the Argrathsaga about them reaching anywhere in Argrath's domains, so let's presume that they didn't. What turns them back? Ramalia erupting like a burst pimple? The Pralori once again pitting the power of the Serpent Beasts against Malkioni logic (assuming that they're not preserving some critical bit of information about the worship of Seshna Likita that the Great Talar of the West will need to successfully copulate with her)? A grand barbarian alliance with the New Coast? And then, of course, apres ceux, le deluge. 

9 hours ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

I don't think that's right. The more obvious Esrolia analogue in Peloria is Oria, Lodril's wife, and mother of plants and animals and goddess of agriculture. 

If Dendara is any Earth deity, I can't easily couple her with any other than Ernalda, tbh, although she's clearly a more "neutered" (power-wise) version. 

That being said, I kinda love the idea that she's actually Heler(a), even if there might not be much canonically for that.

Well, to go back to that multipartite model, Dendara is far more purely a tilnta goddess, and of course Tilnta herself is generally identified with Uleria, who if she has any elemental associations at all, are (indirect) Lunar and Solar ones. 

I think that, to drop into a more historicist/less mythical viewpoint for a moment, that Pelorian religion (as we have it today) and Kethaelan religion (as we have it today) have a broad difference in that Kethaelan religion fused together their various Earth goddesses into a single figure they called Ernalda (who was "originally" likely the likita-goddess of "Ernaldela", the drowned land beneath the sea) who wears all the various masks of the Earth in one, and in Peloria(n city-states) we have a firm split between the goddess who reigns over the actual process of planting crops and the goddess who reigns over the things which make us human (and in turn, the goddess who reigns over the unrestrained, suppressed urges within our selves- but among the Kethaelans this figure is split into at least two divinities and distanced from Ernalda directly). 

But that regnant divinity is also a source of sovereignty, which is very tricky within the Pelorian mode, so I think that "Raibanth Dendara" is largely presented to us as lacking in her Earth connections that are a bit more... earthy... because it became necessary to try and retrofit her as a celestial goddess. So Plentonius presents her almost as an emanation of Yelm, possibly attempting to recapitulate the parthenogenetic (or neaniagenetic, if you want to be strict about things) aspects of how Dayzatar reproduced. There's probably an "upland Dendara" or a modern "Pelandan Dendara" that has rites and practices that are a bit more earthly in their nature. (Clean-hand Dendara versus green-thumb Dendara.)

And of course, if Dendara is the sovereignty source, then the speculations about Yelm as a title become a lot more interesting...

47 minutes ago, scott-martin said:

"Clarify." I'm looking forward to that addition / refinement. One challenge facing the Eat "Prey" Love Hypothesis is its lack of gender sophistication or even a "room of her own." 

 

Well, I think that at a minimum the gor/kor/tor complex should be pulled out a bit. I think you could also pull out craft goddesses (though these are less well-defined in existing materials, overlapping in names with other goddesses) as a distinct category of their own. Perhaps these could be distinct vertices instead- the gorae as "Prey"+Shape, the craft goddesses as Love+Shape? Which gives us a fourth corner for the square, and a total of six vertices. It would be better if there were eight, for the numerology, but I remember a source which indicates that there are six daughters of Asrelia- the familiar Ernalda/Esrola/Maran trio, and then three others that I think are representative of the high crafts? (Pottery, weaving, ?) 

I believe @scott-martin has/had a working theory which divided Earth goddesses into likitae- goddesses of land/terrain, aldryae- goddesses of flora/plants, and tilntae- goddesses of social/material concepts. I find it attractive (I'd add at least one more minor category), but I'll leave it to him to clarify.

Apart from that, if we look at the "snake leg" iconography as suggestive of a Likita goddess, then as far as I know it's definitely associated with Ernalda. It's also associated with Genert and Pamalt, though it would be stretching things a bit to call them goddesses or to propose a distaff "Likitus". Looking at the Glorantha Sourcebook, the Esrolian iconography there doesn't produce any more likely Likitae via snake imagery, barring perhaps Ty Kora Tek's scarf.

3 hours ago, Darius West said:

Crucially when it comes to the White Moon, the issue is that they are pacifists who ultimately "kill for peace", and the moral absurdity of the act paralyzes the empire.  

Well, as Shargash says, "Death brings Life!" If you can't see how death and life are really the same thing, you just need a bit more illuminating exercise...

My thoughts on the White Moon Movement are fairly unformed and focused more on the everyday aspects of the White Moon than on the higher cosmology, but:

I see the White Moon Movement as existing in a position vis a vis the orthodox/orthopraxic Lunar Way as Pure Land Buddhism in Japan existed in relationship to the existing Japanese Buddhist traditions. The Pure Land movement emphasized the potential for anyone and everyone to achieve enlightenment through the direct intervention of the Buddha Amitabha without the absolute necessity of long decades of scholasticism as an ordained monk or nun. And as such, the White Moon as a whole emphasizes the potential to achieve the transcendent Sevening/"high enlightenment" (contra the "low enlightenment" of Rashoranic/Nysalorean/Yelmic Illumination) without the formal process of going before the Examiners. 

And so as a consequence, any and every crackpot idea that would ordinarily be Mindblasted out finds a home in the White Moon, so you have divergent traditions like Fiscal Anarchists alongside radical conscientious objectors and people who merely question the received wisdom that the White Moon won't rise until the light of the Red Moon shines over all of Glorantha, in turn leading to the (semi) familiar story where there's repression and crackdowns leading to a steady radicalization, a massive rebellion in the Heartlands right as Pent and Dragon Pass become major problems again, etc. etc. etc. (And then, IMHW, the White Moon's remnants after close to a decade of civil war backs Phargentes the Younger to the hilt, much as the equivalent Ikko-ikki remnants ended up backing Toyotomi Hideyoshi before dissolving.)

Of course, to wade into the muck of cosmology for a bit, the Seven prior Masks of Sedenya seem to represent a pair of cycles: the youth-maturity-old age (or innocence-compassion-grief) cycle of Red-Blue-Black of Verithurusa/Lesilla/Gerra, and the Blue-Red(and-Black?)-White cycle of Orogeria-Ulurda/Natha/Zaytenera, which appears to be a cycle of sensing, acting on what is sensed, then relaxing in the balance created by action. These are joined/mediated by the invisible/absent/clear Rashorana. So in that sense, the White Moon exists "outside of the text"- She is the peace that is disturbed by the beginning of the story, as it were, and the peace that is contained in the words "The End" or "And they all lived happily ever after."* As such, it is not possible to have the full White Moon of Peace truly rise, because if She does so, then that means Glorantha comes to a halt. (Now, of course, if She were to rise and set, wax and wane, as it were, then Glorantha/the metastory would be able to continue on, in the periods of the White Moon.) 

And this allows us to perhaps understand why Zaytenera is such a shadowy figure- absent from Her appointed city of Senthoros, only appearing in the Lives of Sedenya in the very first paragraph. She is less a person than a philosophical concept, or the idea of a person. And the White Sun that predates Brightface, perhaps, never really existed as an entity until the moment of Brightface's usurpation, created in that disjuncture as someone to usurp, as primordial consciousness forms. So in this light, the Lunar Empire's quest to bring the Lunar Way to every corner of Glorantha to make the White Moon rise is inherently quixotic (perhaps even deliberately so), an impossibility that can motivate the Lunar Empire to continue on infinitely, or an acknowledgement that all empires are temporal and fleeting and will pass. 

But maybe, to paraphrase Pink Floyd, there's no White Moon, really. As a matter of fact, the Moon is always White. 

*As such, the White Moon is white because She's an incarnation of the endpapers...

46 minutes ago, GAZZA said:

OK, cheers, but that raises a couple of (not strictly speaking related) questions. Doesn't apotheosis break the Compromise? (Although I guess Osentalka kind of started that off, and Sedenya could also be regarded as at least stretching it). Or is Pavis a "god" in the "extremely powerful Hero" sense, akin more to Harrek or the Razoress? (Though I realise that at some point the distinction between what used to be called a Superhero and a God is somewhat blurred, at best).

Is the Compromise not common knowledge to Gloranthans? Would it not be obvious that it couldn't have "really" been Waha but rather some Waha Heroquester (or whatever), such that recording that in the history books as being the actual god would be instantly seen as false? I have a copy of the Glorious Reascent of Yelm but I must confess I find it largely impenetrable (I don't find King of Sartar to be a very good read either, to be honest - and I'm sure that's on me, but still); however I understand that it suggests that Yelm worshippers have recorded history that goes back to the God Time and do not measure time in the same way (which is interesting, since Time itself wasn't supposed to exist before the Dawn, but I'm assuming there's a fair bit of poetic license involved in saying that the God Time was timeless).

Eh, I'm not even sure myself if I'm asking the right questions; perhaps this is a better question in the Ask Jeff forum.

Well, the Compromise certainly appears to have rather large loopholes. Things that definitely don't violate the Compromise:

- Ezkankekko walking around and doing things. 

- Praxians heroforming/incarnating Waha so frequently or so deeply they're described as him by historical sources.

- Belintar's deal where he uses a succession of mortals as his "horse" to act within Time.

- Being a True Dragon.

Things that have been accused of violating the Compromise but which don't seem to have definitely provoked divine intervention:

- Nysalor's creation.

- Zistor's creation.

- Sedenya's creation.

Things that definitely provoked divine intervention of some kind:

- The Battle of Night and Day.

- Something that happened in the final stages of the siege of the Clanking City. 

- Something that happened shortly before the Battle of Castle Blue. 

Things that probably should violate the Compromise as most perspectives have it, but which don't/aren't marked out as a violation: 

- Tearing a hole in Glorantha so you can quickly zip from the bottom of the Underworld to a camp outside Torang (First Battle of Chaos)

- The Fourth Arrow of Light. 

There are probably others that I'm not recalling at this time. Of course, as @metcalph notes above, the Compromise isn't a document that you can read, it's an understanding that the universe is consciously maintained via willful effort that emphasizes refraining from actions, and different cultures will understand how that maintenance happens and what kind of divine restriction from action mirrors mortal codes of behavior in different ways.

So perhaps we might say that the effective text of the Compromise is an agreement to limit your interventions in the mortal world to acting via mortal means- you can possess a human, even for an extended length of time, you can even be walking around in the mortal world, as long as you act for most intents and purposes like a mortal- but two of the things which definitely "freed the gods to act" are physical incarnations of deities that seem to be somewhat more complete than standard heroforming- the Clanking City taking shape as Zistor, the Black Eater emerging at the Battle of Night and Day. So perhaps it's all about making sure nobody shows up in their full glory in the fragile Middle World. 

Edit: There is one particular consequence of this interpretation for how we understand the apotheosis of the Red Goddess and just what exactly She was between Her incarnation and Her Godquest, or perhaps even Her incarnation and the rise of the Red Moon. 

7 minutes ago, Nevermet said:

Agreed.

 

The more I think about what is "proven" regarding the mythological structure of Glorantha, the more a phrase from philosopher John Dewey comes to mind: less truth or proof and more "Warranted Assertability."  Have I done things that seem to give me permission to make a claim (aka "Does it Work?").

 

 

And of course another way to look at it is in instrumental/pragmatic terms (which is very historically appropriate for how traditional religions function/functioned). You can offer up "conclusive" proof, by taking down a couple Western scrolls and some Plentonius and so on and so forth, and laying out an impenetrable logical argument that Orlanth is necessarily an avatar of Sedenya. But until you can bring the storm with moon magic, the real storm, not the still and placid breezes of Entekos-Molanni, who's going to care except the scribes? (And of course, if/when you do bring your Moonstorm, that will definitely prompt a rather shocking, gusty rebuttal...)

On 4/27/2020 at 6:51 PM, Nevermet said:

The fact that they "proved" the Goddess is both Natha and Gerra is a neat trick for Pelandan religion.  I mean, I'm sure that there's much more than that, but that is a kinda mindfuck.

 

Also, given that, I'd imagine more than a few promoters of the Jernotian Way who had to be quickly removed from power as the region was lunarized.

 

EDIT: Also, i'm not entirely sure how "proving" God 1 = God 2 works, but I'd imagine some Spolites resisted the lunarization of Gerra (though not many, given they would have seen the Lunars as liberators against the Carmanians I suspect)

Well, in a certain sense, proving that a god is another god is as simple as pie. Just show that God 1 teaches secrets that only God 2 knows, that the rites of God 2 are revelatory for God 1. Of course, in another sense, if you want to make a pie from scratch, you must first create the universe...

Which is probably the best way to understand the Entekosiad- Valare Addi had a pie she wished to create: "Where did I go wrong when I said the Red Goddess was Dendara?" In order to make that pie, she ended up having to go back to the beginning of the universe. 

2 minutes ago, davecake said:

The temptation is very real. Just not everyone gives into it. 

Most people, when given the opportunity to 'power game', do not. Normal people don't try to become crime lords, live complex second lives of deception, commit acts of vicious cruelty for personal pleasure, and so on, regardless of the opportunity. Some do. But a minority. 

There is a good argument to be made that the bigger danger of Illumination isn't people who when they become Illuminated lose all morality and empathy and become some form of terrible monster without any form or morality. Or even the people who lose all connection to normal social expectations and conventional ideas of reality, and become more or less crazy.

The real danger could be those who remain fully connected to the real world implications of Illumination, have an ethical system that they maintain, are strongly motivated towards some seemingly moral and reasonable goal (though it might be a spiritual one) - and decide that using the abilities provided by Illumination are valid, useful, practical and ethical steps towards their major goals. Arkat, Nysalor, The Red Goddess, Argrath, probably even Sheng, etc are all this type of person in their own world view. 

 

Or, to put it in straightforward, in-universe terms, the Mad Sultan of Tork has committed a handful of murders and hangs out in Dorastor, the Red Goddess destroyed an empire and sits in the middle of the Middle Air.

18 hours ago, Bran the Brainless said:

We’ve all run games where someone wants to be different and run something potentially at odds with the rest of the players. A potential dilemma I have in a game which I’m running at the moment. 

My campaign is currently running in the few years before Dragonrise.  Relatively shortly, there are a few events that act to reinforce the Lunar hatred of Orlanthi. When Argrath and the nomads sack Pavis, sources generally describes the lack of mercy given to any Lunarites found within the city. Other commentaries within King of Sartar also seem very black and white, making it hard to creat an argument to a Lunar to ally with his enemies. There’s also the distinct lack of mercy shown to the Lunar forces at the Battle of Aurochs Hills and the Battle of Pennel Ford (although admittedly, these are very in keeping with Bronze Age warfare).

However, there are at least two notable exceptions I can find, of Lunars working with strange companions. The first is Harmast, the sample beginning character, who gives good reasons for his choice. The second is Paulis Longvale, a lunarite, but also cousin to a number of powerful Orlanthi, who helped them in their fight against the horrors of Dorastor.

So, what could be reasons for why a lunar character could potentially become a traitor to his culture and become sympathetic and even act directly against his religion/ nation?

Thanks for you thoughts. 

Well, after 1628 there's a decade or so in which there is no Red Emperor and the Lunar Empire is divided by a civil war between various claimants. So if you're enough of a Lunatic, one possible interpretation this is clearly a brief correction by Sedenya and she's telling you that the official attitudes towards the "barbarians" are incorrect, and that it's time for the cycle to turn around again. From on top, to the bottom, a character decides to humbly submit themself to an Orlanthi leader as another step on the Way. There are of course religious dissidents but those are, if not well-explored as such, certainly given a bit more flavor. Here's someone who, in the absence of one preeminent religious authority and the weakening of another (since Great Sister fails to maintain political unity within the Empire), attempts to maintain orthodoxy through the filtered preconceptions of their religion. 

Obviously, this is easier if they've been personally humbled or humiliated first. 

(This has some good roleplaying grist, too- you can have a character constantly catching themselves on being arrogant and condescending and trying to force apologies out, which can be psychologically interesting, comic relief, or a mood-lightening quirk. "Get illuminated, barbarian wine-drinker! Sorry, sorry, I'm trying to stop it...")

7 hours ago, Rodney Dangerduck said:

Nor do I want to play only "low level clan stuff".  Say our PCs go to battle of Queen's, and we all Crit our Battle rolls.  Does Kallyr still automatically lose?  Makes you wonder why you even bother.  🙂

Well, I'm pretty sympathetic to the Kallyrist position, personally, but I guess my thought is that the assumptions of both RuneQuest and HeroQuest play are that you start out as at best a local somebody and being in a position where your personal battle skills can change the outcome of the Battle of the Queens requires that you be at least important enough to be in Kallyr's bodyguard, or perhaps commanding an element of the Sartarite force. So in that sense, saving Kallyr on PC efforts alone is something where you'd want to be starting playing around the time of classic RuneQuest modules so that you can be famous enough to be in command and close up the ranks at the right moment to catch the teleporting assassins, when the Battle of the Queens hits. 

So I don't know if there's really a good solution without (first-party or third-party) materials that provide a means to create an "advanced start", or more (almost certainly third-party) materials that help produce a campaign that starts in, say, 1618 or 1620, or (definitely third-party) materials that provide a sense of "this is what could happen if things go another way". 

And of course, if Kallyr survives the Battle of the Queens, then perhaps we go to the timeline I personally interpreted from King of Sartar when I first read it, where Kallyr ends up highly dependent on Argrath White Bull and the Wolf Pirates, ends up dying in a suspicious string of circumstances involving Gunda and Harrek and Argrath, and then we have a situation which forks off but then returns fairly neatly back into the likely RQ Campaign timeline by 1630.  But I do think that the RQ Campaign timeline is helpful for constructing these alternate possibilities, so that you can say, "Well, if Kallyr is the Argrath of Sartar, then there's still X Y Z things happening around Sartar, how does she react to them," etc. 

1 minute ago, Richard S. said:

Where are you reading that it's a condition? AFAIK it's always been interpreted as a heatless subelement of sky/fire.

It appears on the Condition Rune tree of life diagram in the Guide, but so does Moon. (And the sub-elemental Runes don't appear on Zzabur's Sigil, either.)

One way of looking at the myth of Solar Storm becoming enlightened is that, if we accept that Solar Storm is another face of Shargash-Tolat-the God of the Red Planet, that this is also a Kralori myth. Where Dara Happa created a mythology around the binding and semi-willful submission of Shargash to the proper authority of Yelm/Murharzarm/Antirius, the Kralori version is one where Shargash is tamed via his enlightenment, which points to the differences between the cultures involved and how they conceive of ideal behavior. In turn, the Ignorant exist in a kind of discourse where they define themselves as contrary to Kralori enlightenment and so accept that their god, the Solar Storm, was enlightened and so failed, proving the limitations of worshiping the Sun. (And thus they turned to the cold, probably Sedenyic light of the Blood Sun and the colder light of Basko the Black Sun.)

But from another perspective, Shargash descended into the Underworld and came back out again. Of course he's enlightened. That's why he knows that Death brings Life. (Which is also the secret of the Blood Sun, and the Hon-eel maize rites, and perhaps the Goddess of the Reaching Moon...)

The real grenade to throw into any Elmal discussion would be to revive Voudisea the Lance Goddess from the Heroquest 1 Esrolia homeland. (Prospective Rune Magic: Lance, Lance 2, Automatically Catch Replacement Lances Tossed At You, Taunt Seshnegi?) 

My thoughts are that such artifacts are generally well beyond anyone's ability to pay for in movable wealth, and since land is not really available on an open market in most of Glorantha (it may not be available on an open market anywhere in Glorantha, really), the only things that can reasonably pay for such treasures are nominal debts that manifest as relations of tribute, clientage, patronage, etc. with the payment of tribute "officially" paying down the debt (and perhaps in some instances this does happen). Alternatively, they may be transferred as war indemnities or to pay off stunningly massive legal fees (eg if you were to successfully sue Daga for inflicting a drought on Dragon Pass or whatever, you might get a monstrously valuable treasure as recompense for damages).

1 hour ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

Exactly what I mean, but I speak only languages based on Roman Alphabet so... the next answer sounds different and could be adapted to glorantha (or at least Theyalan, pelorian read write are based on language)

Does that mean that I cannot learn how to sound each symbol without understanding what I pronounce ?

In Chinese, yeah, you wouldn't necessarily know how to pronounce a word just from reading it. In Arabic, though, you would learn what's called "Modern Standard Arabic" or "Literary Arabic" by linguists and "the purest Arabic" by Arabic speakers, and that does have an idealized sound for the characters (this is also easier because Arabic uses the script as an abjad, where vowel markings are infrequent, leaving some room to vary pronunciation). I don't really have a firm sense of which model is more appropriate for Theyalan scripts, the Western script, or the Dara Happan Sacred Alphabet and New Pelorian, but I will note that the Theyalan scripts are syllabaries and the DH Sacred Alphabet is a full alphabet, so none of them will look much like hanzi or Arabic script in practice. 

EDIT: Related to the above slight digression, one thought I have about New Pelorian specifically is that it makes use of something like furigana in Japanese- small-script DH Sacred Alphabet letters to spell out how to properly pronounce Pelandan ideograms, whether in a stylized cartouche like that used for names or just standing by themselves. This has its own little literary set of tricks associated with it- you could write "Sheng Seleris" and then indicate that it's to be pronounced as "Kazkurtum", eg. 

My immediate thought would be that the scripts versus the languages are intended to function like how Arabic or the Chinese languages do in the RW- there's a standard script that can be read by everyone who has learned it, but the individual spoken languages are divergent and not mutually intelligible. This seems somewhat reasonable, since written scripts are magical, there are cultic organizations that possess a level of control over writing (with the possible exception of the Lunar Empire), and at the very least there are several written scripts that are intended to evoke hanzi or hieroglyphics. This also has a useful effect- as long as you have two people with Read/Write in the same script, they can communicate regardless of the languages involved. 

As for Auld Wyrmish, remember that it's called that because it was taught to humans by wyrms. So my thought is that it's not "actually" dragonewtish speech as such, but rather contains verbal and somatic means to communicate concepts that in purely draconic speech require the use of scent glands or empathic activity. And since these means are not actually discernible by observing dragonewts, or indeed without having some kind of record that preserves how to perform them, there's an upper limit on how well you can speak Auld Wyrmish. Without getting tutored by Forang Farosh or doing some elaborate digging. 

1 hour ago, Bohemond said:

Looking at the Quest of the Red Goddess, something struck me. The goddess isn't just doing great deeds here--she seems to be performing a heroquest. So is she following some earlier mythic sequence? 

In the earlier stages, yeah, I think so. I think the later stages diverge very rapidly from any existing myth as she converges with Taraltara at the foot of the Chaosium, though. 

EDIT: More specifically, I think the "Big Guy" in the early parts of her Godquest is Umath and she's reenacting the existence of Verithurusa, but this time she attempts to resist becoming Lesilla and going through the whole cycle again. Which brings her to the moment of truth. 

1 hour ago, Bohemond said:

Thanks! That really helpful. So you don't think they try to quest the stories of the Seven Mothers? Does the fact that the 7M are Immortals but not exactly gods mean that their stories aren't questable? On the one hand, that makes a bit of sense, but on the other hand, we know that people quest events from the lives of heroes as well as gods. 

I think that when you're dealing with a hero that lived in Time you can only quest to where and how they shaped the Godtime. So you could reenact the quests the 7M did in the way the 7M specifically performed them or visit their moment of achieving immortality, but probably not reenact events before they gathered together as the 7M.

12 hours ago, Bohemond said:

I am slowly gearing up to run a Glorantha LARP and one of the things I need to wrestle with is Lunar heroquests. So what do we actually know about Lunar heroquests, apart from the fact that the Lunars are really good at it? I mean, do we know any of the myths they quest? Do they quest incidents in the lives of the Seven Mothers, for example? Or do they mostly do heroquests from the cultures they've conquered, repurposing those stories like the God Learners did? I want to have at least a couple quests available for Lunar PCs. 

Two thoughts:

1) specifically Lunar quests mostly revolve around incidents in the lives of Sedenya's recognized Masks. These are not evenly divided- the Rashorana quests are almost certainly rarer than Orogeria or Lesilla quests. These are also probably fragmentary in many places. 

2) Lunar heroquesting is also said to have been invented by Valare Addi, and what she did was perform a series of quests in different locations in an attempt to reconstruct the connections between them (this is also what the Seven Mothers appear to have done before their main quest to reassemble Sedenya). So the other face of Lunar heroquesting is about the process of discovering the presence of Sedenya in myth. This interweaves with the previous approach- if you want to discover a Verithurusa quest, you might quest to the Ten Tests and then diverge at the Test of the Hungry and follow Verithurusa around and try and discover more myths of her. 

The second one is most similar to Arkati questing, I think, but different in that Arkat more or less wandered to see where things went and Lunars generally have a good idea of where things go, they just have little idea of where to get there. 

And in the broad sense I feel that the second method of Lunar heroquesting is something that you can do for any god, and is an important part of the process of Lunarizing local religions- by proving that your local god has some Lunar connections, it's possible to assimilate them into the Lunar Way. (The most immediate example is the proof that Sedenya tamed the Star Bear, which allowed the Odalya worshippers of Sylila to become Lunar). 

45 minutes ago, g33k said:

Did/does Ralzakark pass the Ten Tests?

Or did that become obsolete with the Monster Empire?

Or are TPTB still dancing around the question of whether the Illuminated-Broo-Unicorn-Hero Monster Emperor was-or-was-not Ralzakark? 

Of course, by the point Ralzakark ascends the throne, reality is probably thin enough for it not to matter either way. He probably solves the Test of the Sharing Problem by conjuring gazzam out of his sleeves and running away before they dissolve into gorp, or something. 

Damn it, a double post. 

On 1/4/2020 at 8:25 AM, HeartQuintessence said:

So if the MoonSon is simply a Mask, why has the emperor never been female, if anyone can be chosen?

Also I know the Lunar Imperial Handbooks exist, but this all so interesting we need a new 'interior Lunar book' or two, to see what the Empire is like, from the inside, the culture and cults and expectations.

A friend of mine who's somewhat more of a casual fan read the description of Magnificus's rapidly-changing beard and concluded that the Red Emperors were actually all Red Empresses cross-dressing for the sake of appearances. Obviously not canonical, though there are some interesting aspects around the question of what constitutes an Inspiration of Moonson versus a regular child, the lack of any known masculine children of a Mask, etc., which might intimate the Red Emperor's masculinity is rather divergent in nature.