Eff

38 minutes ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

i wonder if Lunarite Death runes are curved in shape like a yatağan/kılıç

(Yanafal uses the kopis because He is a god who wants a sword that hits like an ax, but it's barely curved. The iconic curved swords of the Lunars are not the heavy infantry clobbering kopides, which were butchery tools adapted for war, but the skirmisher, light infantry, and cavalry swords with an actual crescent shape to them!)

A backronymic/folk etymology micromyth: Yanafali use curved blades because when Humakt tried to slay his apostate follower, his sword bent.

2 minutes ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

i mean you are absolutely correct.

i didn't count the Brithini because they aren't people by most standards of what "being people" means. I mean literally they are immortals because they're hacking the universe

There's a great old Glorantha Digest post, I think it was, where Brithini humor is discussed. They have weekly 15-minute humor breaks, where one of the seven approved jokes are told, and then very occasionally laughed at. One of the real kneeslappers is "Why did the chicken cross the road?" 

1 hour ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

then all women would menstruate at the same time and births would happen at the same time. it's kind of outside of the stuff we usually regulate in a game. ask a fertility priestess to help you catch,* or for a charm to prevent you knocking up every one you sleep with? sure. have all the Orlanthis menstruate on the same schedule? ugh maybe not.

 

*catch = get pregnant

I mean, maybe Brithini do. But Brithini cycles can be measured in the centuries in any case. 

1 hour ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

That Humakt hates undead but is neutral to Chaos is bizarre as all hell and feels really gamey. I first assume it had to do with some kind of thematic myopia (he's the god of death, cares only about doing that thing), but then we know his character is all about oaths and honor and stuff, so that doesn't quite cut it. 

There's obviously ways to explain this away - there always are - but it's weird.

I always took this as related to the statements that Humakt and Uleria were preeminent among the gods who listened to Rashoran and took heart rather than seeking annihilation. Certainly, Humakt's involvement in Sedenya's Godquest is quite ambiguous...

2 minutes ago, Bohemond said:

Yes, but would you drink it if it were manufactured with human blood instead of water? Remember, BG gets drunk on the -blood- of her enemies. For her cult, this is part of the 'sacred cannibalism' rituals. But the rest of Heortling society is very uncomfortable with this aspect of the Dark Earth. 

The black pudding and Blutwurst at Earth temple dinners just can't be beat, though!

Humakti don't go on rampages in and around Ezel, either, so there's clearly ways to have animate dead people that are at least grudgingly acceptable. I suppose the cheapest way out would be for a Lhankoring to engage in a lengthy disquisition about how ZZ zombies aren't actually undead because when they eat brains they're just empowering the Dark within themselves or peeling the Fire parts of the body out of people to feed their god's Fire within. 

3 hours ago, Joerg said:

A very nice story on the subject of separation, but I miss the essence of distilling - the transmutation of liquid to steam(fumes and back to liquid.

Steam is a well known effect in Glorantha - shamans use steam huts for their journeys, and the cleansing effect is used mundanely as well by many cultures. Steam is useful for straightening or bending wood along with the grain, a valuable technology for making spears, ships' planks and numerous other items.

Beer is heated, and overheating beer gives you intoxicating fumes - something certainly also used by shamans and other holy people going into trance. These fumes may collect on the outside of vessels filled with cold water, and licking your fingers after wiping such a vessel will give you the taste of liquor.

The principles of distillation are open to discovery by observation, and possible in the practices of holy people. And anything which creates intoxication will find its way into ritual use.

The secrets of booze come in two steps - that of fermentation, the making of wine, beer, kumiss, often a two-step fermentation starting with making the starch accessible and then producing the alcohol and the sparkling - and the separation of the booze from the water and solids.

Separation of liquids usually involves a phase change - or in Gloranthan terms, a transmutation to fumes (Air) or solids (Ice, Earth), rarely the method of extraction with immiscible fluids (oil and water). The use of Heat or Cold, powers associated with Fire and Darkness.

These methods are well known to perfumers, dyers, and herbalists and apothecaries. And of course alchemists.

 

The mystical goals of alchemy are paired with observations of material transmutation. The smelting of metal from ores is as much a mystery as is the condensation of fumes with the production of liquids and resins (including pitch) or the precipitation of crystals (including edible ones like sugar e.g. in honey or syrup, or salt) from liquids or even fumes (like salts of hartshorn).

This may very well be an animist procedure - with the spirit (in the sense of elemental spirits of a special kind) being summoned or called out of the original substance.

The ritual @Eff describes is a combination of such a summoning and a separation. As such, it is an interesting version of an alchemical technique. But I wouldn't call this distillation.

 

A myth about distillation is a myth about steam - the violent meeting of water - water separated or separating from the sea, a Heler theme - and the hot earth or liquid rock of Lodril/Veskarthen. And then a myth about how that released spirit condenses again.

The use of lead pans for the crystallization of salt from brines (greetings from Nelat) is an ancient technology, and there is bound to be a myth about this, too. With the myths about the animated Stone, there may be lesser myths or allegoric stories to explain these processes, trade secrets that are conserved in crafters' guilds and/or cults. Or in the knowledge cult.

With both Heler and Nelat involved in this, the mysteries of the weird secrets of liquids (including the weirdness of liquid Sea Metal) is a sorcerous approach to the seas. By people outside of the seas...

 

 

 

Well, in this case specifically, I decided to invoke the use of copper in stills in the real world, since I was concerned with an almost Malkionic "how does the intersection of Separation and Earth manifest itself beyond sacred guardianship"? 

1 minute ago, Bohemond said:

Yeah, but remember, in the myths, BG brews with human blood. 

Distillation isn't necessarily brewing! But here's a take on the origin of distilling:

Once, the earth was washed by the sea, warmed by the sky, caressed by the wind, and cooled by the dark.

There was a wedding happening. There were many weddings, in those days. Ernalda married Orlanth and that kicked off the whole thing. Elmal married Reydalda, and then Esrola married Elmal, and then Heler married them both. Vingkot married two wives, one bright and one dark, one warm and one cold. It was a wedding season. And whenever she felt like it, Ernalda would marry Orlanth again.

Weddings meant quite a lot, but among the most important things was making the Eight Known Drinks. No one could have a wedding without all eight. Eurmal had tried having one with only seven and he had had to be driven out of the tribe again. Vadrus had then been inspired, and had weddings with only five or sometimes six, and so those of his children he married off in that fashion had monsters for children of their own.

Minlister was the brewer of the Storm Tribe. No one was quite sure where he'd come from originally. Some said he was from the Dark. Some said he was a child of Elmal and Esrola. Some said he was made by Ernalda. Everyone wanted him as their friend, and many were the enemies of the Storm Tribe who sought to steal him away. As Humakt said one day, sharpening his sword, there truly was never a dull moment.

Today, though, Minlister was a bit drowsy as he brewed the Eight Known Drinks. His wonderful cauldron could brew anything with just water and Minlister's special touch, but, alas, he didn't bother to change out the amphorae as he made his batches. So when he was done, the wine was mixed with the wheat ale, the mead with the barley beer, the rice wine with the cider, and everything was plain and simply a mess. It is at this moment that Babeester came into the brewery.

Babeester was not overly fond of weddings, for she found them totally uninteresting in and of themselves and she was usually standing guard during them. But she was always appreciative of a good drink, and so she never complained about weddings. But she spent the preparations as well out of the way as possible. So she wandered in, looking simply to look and breathe in the lovely smell of drink brewing and breathing and aging. But as she went to the first amphora and inhaled, her nose wrinkled.

"Ah," she said, looking up to see where Minlister had been gnawing on his cauldron in a fury, "That's what's going on."

"I'll have to brew them all fresh!" Minlister cried, not really paying attention to her.

"Perhaps I can help," Babeester said.

"You?" Minlister asked, noticing her for the first time.

"I swear," Babeester said, "on the Styx that I will need none of your pottery and will do what I can entirely without your aid."

Minlister shrugged. "Okay," he said. And he went to brew more batches, because he was unsure.

Babeester went and gathered some of her aunt's experiments with pottery, and then went and gathered odd bits of glasswork, and finally set to work. She poured in the mixed and muddled drinks, and swirled them about, and finally saw what was what within each, and then poured each into their own bowls. And then she threw out what was left. And in this way, she separated each, the essence of each of the Eight poured into its own container.

But when she was finished, she realized that what she had made was something new. There was far too little of the drinks to fill more than a single amphora, if that. She tasted one, the essence of rye beer, and ran shouting for Minlister.

The two of them tasted them all, and realized that they were good and strong, far too much so for anyone to drink like they would mead or wine. So they sealed them up, and only shared them out a little bit at a time, and diluted them strongly whenever they did. 

But Babeester continued to work with them, and discovered many secret drinks that she shared with no one, not even Minlister, which she used in her sacred work from that point on.

1 hour ago, Bill the barbarian said:

Well Kloster, in a manner of seeking we could say there are 40 moons err, months.

Clearly, Time is flawed. There should be 7x7 months in a Gloranthan year, for 343 days of Lunar bliss. That means we need an additional season, and another week of Sacred Time...

2 hours ago, scott-martin said:

I think we're all in roughly the same boat so let's goof around a little while we're waiting. 

The function of the Road now is probably to keep ur-metal from going directly into Harrek's war machine. Everything else is a sideshow to fill in the caravan slots and give partners on both ends a low-cost / slow-speed option. There's probably a lot of what we would call smuggling. The question is what if any contraband the Safestrans wouldn't want to go east.

Maybe the better question is what would be too dangerous to run through Pasos so close to LePlain's watchful and punishing eye: religious artifacts, "heretical" texts, the body of western magic going to join the cousins in the Holy Country. Ethilrist has buyers in the cities. So do God Forgot and those lunatics in Malkonwal, or they did back when they could afford it. Maybe there are things the Dwarf needs too and he hasn't figured out that the ships are back.

We also need to figure out where the slaves come into the western end on their way to the labor-starved Esrolian farms and dwarf mines, or just to Saltcastle. Ramalia really isn't on the way . . . more to the point, if Ramalia were the entrepot the Road would have been built to swing south of the hills. It's tempting to speculate about a breakdown somewhere farther west we don't know about yet that forced people into long-distance servitude. Captured Ralian barbarians? Impoverished urban dwellers enslaved and deported? When did it start? Why does it continue once population pressures eased and labor demand stabilized? It might have started as a refugee program in the wake of the luathan disasters that got institutionalized. Mother Esrola Needs Hands.

Either way, it's a triggery topic so it's probably controversial among the Traders so we can have sympathetic and unsympathetic factions. When shipping broke the business model it would have seeded a religious crisis (business = religion within "Ashara") that working for Greymane only distracted them from for a little while. Now that he's gone, they're busting out trying to figure out who they want to be and where they want to go.

The Pralorelans might covet a piece of the action beyond Highwater but I don't see them having a good shot at even taking Yolanda without serious help. Some of the Traders (especially around there) work for the forest. Castelain married an elf. It's how their trail stays cut through the Arstola . . . so far. The forest might ultimately prefer the elk people but I'm not so sure. Maybe they're conflicted too. Guilmarn covets it all because he's a jerk. He's in full One True King Of The West mode right now. Good luck out there.

Gini is everything. It's all about human resources in motion, people on the move.

SOME NOTES ON THE ROAD. Drom to Nochet is (very) roughly 700 miles if you go Highwater / Yolanda / Jaraz / Ferry / Yellowstone / Swartz / Saltcastle / Staton. At about 30 km a day (mule train) you can do it in about five weeks. There will be set Markets on the way where you can lay out your beads and shingle and get your points back.

There's probably a bifurcation between "Trader" Trader Princes who stay on the Road from end to end and Trader Prince "Princes" who maintain a particular town. I forget if Blood over Gold talks about this . . . the alternative of local Traders taking over the caravan across a particular segment and then handing it off at their limit is not nearly as fun. You want the romance of the long haul trucker here, brothers and sisters of the Road. "Geasa" similar to the ugly hyena business might also apply out here to force comfy people to light out for the territory when they roll bad. God is good.

Because the Road runs roughly parallel to the coast shipping has a huge edge in terms of speed. Under RQ3 rules you could move the same cargo from Alatan to Nochet in roughly a third of the time. (Looking at the coast raises the question of what exactly the League was exporting. I guess they'd get tea from the interior but the population centers of Tanisor that survive really aren't coastal.)

I like Ashara quite a bit but I am a perverse individual given to fancies of esoteric issarism. I'm torn. On the one hand, it's tempting to assume it's a post-Closing (post-apocalyptic) phenomenon when the sea routes stopped working and we needed to roll out a Road instead. But it's also interesting to treat it as a stubborn atavism within the Empire, a specialized network of relative traditionalists who preserved a strain of pre-imperial cultus that would otherwise have died out. It's really only a question for hobbyists. Now there are 3 new replies so signing out.
 

An immediate thought: the field traders running the caravans could very well be the relatives of the Trader Princes proper. I have never read Blood over Gold, though, lol, so I have no idea how validated my suspicions about the transformation of Malkioni life in Wenelia were in said previous vision. 

I would probably run with "Manirians never picked up the Alakoring reforms and their politics had the warlord/king as just one position among many until Greymane emerged", if only because that provides a nice third "traditionalist" faction to opposed the Young Lions. (Now if only we could conjure up a fourth and assign lionish representatives to each!)

23 minutes ago, scott-martin said:

Around here we call that "midori" but the ladies' visceral reaction to it is usually more of a shudder than a roar.

I actually made holiday-themed Moscow Mules with grenadine and Midori for festive coloration once for a party. They were... halfway a success. 

1 hour ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

"Spirit" is an alternate English term for liquor. Being bronze age, and liquor requiring distilling, the dwarves might be the only ones with the equipment to make concentrated enough alcohol for it to count (unless som secrets have leaked through Openhandism). 

At the end of the day it's just a pun.

It's actually currently debated whether distillation dates back to 3000 BCE or merely to 200 CE, but it's well within the range Glorantha draws on. Distillation of alcohol is not known until well into the Middle Ages, so I would definitely keep it a cultic secret that's only produced in small batches, outside the Mostali who presumably use it to clean things and drown out the horrors of seeing plants growing.

31 minutes ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

I am shocked to note that no one has mentioned Dwarven distilleries yet.

If we're talking about that kind of spirit, something that is a very My Glorantha Has Varied:

"The Babeester Gor cult preserves many secrets, many of which are entirely tedious and of no interest to anyone who is not part of the cult. However, one particular secret that they know is that of distillation. With the appropriate pottery, metal flasks, and/or glassware, any Axe Maiden can distill liquors. Generally, these are not available except in cities or in particularly wealthy temples, and the batches produced are small.

Liquors produced are fairly well divided between brandies, whiskies, cordials, and shochu/soju, though the last is relatively rare, as the Babeester Gor cult is almost absent in the rice-growing regions of Glorantha. These spirits are normally stored within the Earth temple itself and shared out for momentous occasions. Within the temple, they are more commonly used for temple orgies, high holy days, and to celebrate new priestesses.

In addition, the cult possesses the recipes necessary to distill special liquors with names like Fireball, Mad Dog, and Master Hunter. These potent drinks may be used to induce or enhance a berserk fury when drunk, and it is said that for an experienced Axe Sister even looking at a little flask of Master Hunter is enough to induce such a fury. It is said that these bear the same relationship to regular liquors as Widebrew does to beers and ales."

34 minutes ago, scott-martin said:

Maybe over the holidays we start putting some gini together on some of these homelands!

When this came up last year consensus was that the old man and the boys are all dead but I think something needs to survive from the Lion's organization into the RQG era simply to conserve that background for actual play. It would be a shame otherwise.

Maybe there's a previously unrecorded heir / pretender / regent situation to feed the inevitable power vacuum. Maybe the Wolf Pirates make people an offer they can't refuse and so their story feeds into that whirlwind of adventure. Depending on how the gini plays out there might be an incentive to use the remnant tribes to open or close the western routes. It's what I'd do if I had a motive.

 

My assumptions (I have had some thoughts on working towards a campaign/setting in Wenelia) is that there's a power vacuum that sees the Merchant Princes trying to reclaim their former preeminent position in the face of opposition from Handra and the New Coast, the Pralori expanding their influence eastward with Greymane gone, and then of course Arstola as the center of the Reforestation. And then you have Ramalia in waiting as a bomb ready to go off and the situations in Safelster and Seshnela ready to spill over. And then I realized that I was unsure if there was any kind of canonical look at the near future of Maniria. 

More or less as the title says. Does Greymane die at the Battle of the Pennel Ford? Do either or both of his sons survive? I assume Hardral's pro-Esrolian/Kethaelan faction is in the ascendancy afterwards, given that the Lunars are gone and won't be back until the 1640s or so. And in general, what's happening in Maniria, especially Wenelia, between the time of the Guide and the time of Runequest Glorantha? 

10 minutes ago, sufiazafran said:

Oh, and another question:

On page 205 of GtG says that Meriatan was king Gundreken's lover, so the question is simple: how does homosexuality play in Glorantha (specifically among Loskalmi, Jonatings and Janubians), and sex in public? Is there a topic about this already in the forum?

I have to ask because I've already played Zoria with my players once, and well, I imagine there are public displays of love and sex in Zoria, hetero or homosexual, but I don't really know how would a Loskalmi react to these, or an orlanthi, or a troll, or anyone else.

Can you help me?

Canonically, all Gloranthan cultures are accepting of homosexuality. What follows is mostly speculation/invention.

Sources are generally quiet on public sexuality, but as one of the main contrasts between Loskalm and Seshnela is that Loskalm is more restrained where the Seshnegi are more given to sensuality, I would suggest that Loskalmi probably hold sex and sexuality to be something of a private thing, not something to be expressed in public if you can avoid it. 

Jonatings, however, are culturally substantially much more Orlanthi. Orlanthi are canonically much more open to public displays of sexuality, but instead there's a distinction (expressed via the differentiation of both bed-marriages and love-marriages from regular marriages) between expressions of desire and expressions of love and expressions of social ties. 

I know very little about Janubians beyond the Arrolian Confederation. Lunars are fairly open to sexuality, but IIRC one of the Arrolian cities is ruled by Solar priests when it comes out of the Ban. They would probably be even more prim than the Loskalmi. 

In any case, Zoria, with its firm commitment to free love, would be deeply disorienting for Loskalmi, Orlanthi, and probably most human cultures (Lunars would attempt to embrace the disorientation as clearly leading them towards enlightenment) but for a variety of reasons. Trolls may or may not care. Uleria's city should definitely be strange to visit for anyone who's not one of her god-talkers, IMO. 

9 hours ago, metcalph said:

I don't think the Ascended Masters have anything to do with the teaching of spells as that's something that mundane gloranthans can do.  Rather what they teach should be aids to  Joy - ie emulate an Ascended Master sufficiently and achieve a bonus to the acquisition and manifestation of Joy.  

 

Hmmm. Is Joy as universal a goal for Malkioni as the Ascended Masters seem to be? (E.g. it's only Rokari and allied schools that largely reject it.)

4 minutes ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

Sorcery's been around long enough for secrets to have permeated out of the Zzaburite caste. An engineer's guild (or whatever's the Malkioni equivalent, if any) might have some very specific construction sorcery passed down through the ages, barely understood, but aped effectively enough for it to work. 

Dunno, that just seems more interesting to me that the alternative. I am not suggesting Malkioni engineers going around summoning catapults or raising castles overnight though.

I think this is one of the key reasons why people venerate Ascended Masters. While they can't grant you magic directly, they can teach you pre-packaged spells that are the equivalents of the lesser spirit magic and Rune magic other people practice (this is where talars on horseback with flaming swords or ghastly giggling come from, IMO/IMG) and these can be used by you relatively freely and without violating caste restrictions necessarily (maybe if you're Brithini, but Brithini are all immortal and every dronar could conceivably be a full sorcerer by now). 

Obviously, the greater your logical connection to the Ascended Master the easier it is to commune with them for those lessons in practical magic. (One of the hidden secrets is that thanks to women's slightly greater degree of inter-caste mobility historically, technically anyone can claim descent from Talar, Zzabur, Horal, and Dronar if they need to...) 

The Rokari are definitely suspicious of this, but not so much as to actually crack down on it compared to the zzaburi gently steering the talars towards ancestor worship.

You could, if you were so inclined, recast Hrestolism versus non-Hrestolism as being an extended philosophical debate about whether empirical evidence or reasoning is more important in the development of a coherent philosophy. Of course, pragmatism would suggest that you not go full New Hrestol Idealism and require all the zzaburi to first have worked with their hands and fought with them too before they get around to the study of the laws of the Creator...

37 minutes ago, Bill the barbarian said:

Eating makes me think of teeth and teeth when it comes to Argrath of course brings to mind Dragon’s Teeth (or Jaldon Goldentooth/toothmaker). Any tie-in in Joerg, anyone, or am I stretching?

My thought would be Bad Dream Enostar and his vision of saving the people of Pavis by becoming eaters rather than eaten. This is probably not what's intended, of course.

10 minutes ago, Gallowglass said:

But isn’t the New Hrestoli movement also a similar reaction, just in a different direction? Their vile demiurge is called Makan, the God Learner name for the Invisible God. I think I get why the Rokari abhor Heroquesting, I should have left them out of it.

Well, New Hrestoli Idealism rejects Makanism and God Learnerism pretty thoroughly, while the Rokari are still using that early God Learner creation/discovery, the Abiding Book. So in that sense, Loskalmi can feel more confident they're safe from God Learning, because they've surely purged all the dangerous aspects, right? Right?

Of course, the real fireworks would come from mixing God Learning with an idealism that sees the material world as inherently corrupt. The original God Learners were, at least theoretically, simply trying to understand the world better. I'm certain plenty of Loskalmi have big ideas of what they'd replace the current world with...

40 minutes ago, Ali the Helering said:

IIRC the Kuschile subcult of Yelmalio (possibly no longer canon) taught the skill of horse archery.  Even if my memory is at fault, it is perfectly reasonable for there to be specific skills. 

Kuschile is still canon, but I think has been moved to "technically Kargzant" while remaining Yelmalio ruleswise? 

18 minutes ago, alakoring said:

Not going by the Seven Families of the Riders?

Well, the painting in question is so striking that it's the first thing that comes to mind, lol. 

1 hour ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

Going back to game-focused chat - what is the situation of the non-Tripolis cities of north-central/riverine ("Dara Happan") Peloria? Do we see cultural Dara Happans there, do we see Yelmic nobility, do we see cultural forms mainly based on Dara Happan traditions? 

Whenever we discuss Dara Happa I feel like my mind laser-focuses in on the Tripolis, but the scope cannot be this narrow, culturally, politically and religiously. 

Also: Are Dara Hapan full-citizens synonymous with the nobility, or do they make up two different classes?

Unfortunately I had a computer glitch before checking this all the way, but the vast majority of urban  Dara Happans live in the Tripolis, Elz Ast, and a handful of colony cities, it seems according to the Guide. The exception being Kostaddi, where the entire population is culturally Dara Happan. So I think that the Oslira valley itself is culturally Dara Happan to the hilt but that this vanishes very quickly outside those river banks.

At Sacred Time, every year, when the world is remade, the difference in time between Earth years and Gloranthan years is made up in an instant. This occurs, in Dragon Pass, at the part of the ceremony where people who believe blood has iron in it are ritually rebuked and cast out, to hearty boos.