Eff

1 hour ago, None said:

Tis part I'm very surprised about. I was under the impreession (one that, granted, almost only comes from King of Dragon Pass) that the Feathered Horse Queen never was in the contest or in a position to lose but the one the orlanthi prince had to prove himself to. That it was her descision whether he was worthy of becoming the King of Dragon Pass.

 

makes me have to ask. What is the the official stance one the Great Compromise? Doeas it just mean the gods can't directly (i.e. personally) work upon things or stomp around inside Time as I belive. Or does it mean they're literally frozen, unable to move as much as a finger or even notice anything outside of motals calling upon them. Essentially trapped as an existence of the "past" where they're constantly always and simultaniously doing and being eveyrthing that was before Time and nothing else. Beacause in the later case they might as well not exist as consious or even sentient forces.

1) In my opinion only- there's a primal power which represents sovereignty over Dragon Pass, which manifests itself in various forms. Becoming King of Dragon Pass involves a mystical contest that has several parts to it- first, you have to prove that you're even worthy to contend with that power, which is the wooing contest itself. But once you're married, then you face a challenge where the primal power attempts to demand parts of you in exchange for access to the sovereignty she grants. 

So Ironhoof weds the Lady of the Wild, though this is described in a much rougher fashion in King of Sartar, and then struggles with her and ends up losing his ability to produce male children, at a minimum (this of course may also be a shorthand or an inadequate description of a more profound transformation). Arim the Pauper weds Sorana Tor, and she demands from him the acceptance of human sacrifice in Tarsh, it seems. Or something related to that- certainly the firm belief that Tarshite rulers had a fixed term before being sacrificed has to come from somewhere in King of Sartar. 

At this point, the Feathered Horse Queens become mortal incarnations of Dragon Pass's sovereignty. Sartar then marries the first one and contends with her and manages to win all the contests, and so he loses nothing to Dragon Pass and remains wholly himself. He is probably the only one to do so. Tarkalor and Moirades also become KoDP but I don't care to speculate on what they lost to Dragon Pass (it is curious that Jar-Eel challenges the FHQ that married Moirades and apparently either killed her or "liberated" her in the same fashion she does Moirades...)

Argrath also becomes King of Dragon Pass at some point, but the sources there are confused and I prefer it that way. 

2) This is also only my opinion, but we know that Waha can both act directly and be changed by things in the mortal world- he wrestles with Pavis, and then swears to leave Pavis's city alone when he loses, leading to the resurrection of Jaldon Goldentooth as a Praxian hero who can work against Pavis. And Waha is certainly worshiped as a god. So at least some divinities can act in the material world without violating the Compromise (without getting into my theories about the Red Goddess and Castle Blue) and we know, for example, that Orlanth loses three stars from his ring over the course of history and then has them restored during the Dragonrise. 

You could interpret these things as various forms of magic interfering with people's ability to access transcendent, eternal forces, sure. But that's also not a position that most Gloranthans would have, so I don't look at it as a fruitful one to adopt. 

My interpretation of the Compromise and Gods War is informed by the frequent note that the stations of a Heroquest may be passed through in any order. Since that is the case, my working theory is that the strange behavior of time and space on the Other Side is due to limited perceptions- a mortal cannot see the totality of anything there, beyond perhaps the most trivial things like (some) blades of grass, so they can only move on a path where they see a limited slice of that thing, which doesn't have to match their previous understanding of that thing, either. Which is how gods at different points of their own existence can interact, and why if you try to reenact the story of Orlanth and Aroka sometimes you have to fight Aroka before you see any hint of Daga. Of course, ritual community Heroquests don't usually have this happen, so perhaps having more perspectives attempting to make sense of the Gods War forces it into an intermediate ground between them? 

21 minutes ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

I've heard suggestions that (in Peloria), Shargash was slash-and-burn agriculture, while Lodril is the fire god of wet rice agriculture, which replaced it. His association with ash and burning certainly makes this likely.

I'm not sure what happened to Shargash's Celestial rune, if anything; He's a mystery to me as the Death Celestial. I always thought He was the Sun at night, because He is the Sun god in the Underworld, but I don't think anyone agrees with me.

I would be inclined to think that because Shargash seems unfitting for rice and more fitting for swidden, if not for the issue that Shargash is tied to the Rice Goddess Biselenslib and Lodril is not, and Shargash is also seen as wedded to the Oslira and Lodril isn't. Lodril is also associated with plows and plowing. Which is confounding, but stranger things have happened in the real world, of course. 

But (and I really should finish my Shargash exegesis one of these days), I think that perhaps Biselenslib is/was the deity of rice harvesting and the process of constructing a paddy or ricefield, and Shargash is a more passive producer of fertility. Alternately, his firey agriculture is actually slash-and-char like was practiced in pre-Columbian Amazonia, though the last time I thought about slash-and-char in a Gloranthan context, I placed it in Wenelia as a means of "awakening a slumbering Earth" to tie it to its RW effect of soil enhancement and improvement. 

Shargash as he exists in current Pelorian culture is fundamentally a god like Thor, what Georges Dumezil would have called a "power god", a deity that uses the weapons of the natural world to destroy the enemies of order. But he's also a god representing something horrible, an intrusion of the polluted world of death into the living world, letting demons loose to mingle with living people, whose followers smear themselves with ashes, dirt, filth, etc. And then there's Tolat, the other prominent red planet god, who's more like Ishtar or Ugaritic Anat- a god associated with sex and violence. I think Shargash is similar. Or rather, Shargash is a god that represents the shadowy parts of people, the urge to commit violence, have sex, step in mud with your bare feet, engage in life outside the constrains of order. 

And to an extent in the GRoY, you can see Shargash as someone that's bound and released, held in place by the social strictures of Yelm or Antirius or Murharzarm's Justice, only freed when an enemy god shows up and disrupts that order. (And so when Antirius fails completely, Shargash is totally unrestrained, but then he's free to destroy the world to bring it into his Enclosure for later repair. Death brings Life!) 

So I think that Shargash and Shargashi generally are "contraries", in the sense that that term is used to describe people in North American societies who ritually do things against the grain in some fashion. Shargash is a fire, a Bird Soul, that doesn't think and engages in nearly mindless violence. (There's also something to be said about the differences between a spear as a phallus, so common in Glorantha, and a mace or club as one, but that's a bit deep in the weeds.) Shargash is the Sun of Hell, light that exists in a place of pure darkness. Shargash is associated with the realm of the digijelm but is also the greatest fighter against them in Pelorian beliefs. Shargash is a god of mindless violence and yet Alkoth's libraries are the best in Peloria.

As such, Shargash is intolerable but invaluable, able to adapt to any situation possible without forcing worthier gods to act in an unJust fashion. 

It's thus no surprise that Alkoth is one of the early supporters of Yelmgatha and the Red Goddess, but also no surprise that Shargash's worship isn't trusted by the Lunars, either- it's not like Shargash will stop being contrary just because Sedenya says so. (I would suspect Shargashi can be found eagerly supporting Fiscal Anarchists and other such White Moon notions.) 

I think this helps give Shargash a definable position that allows him to have specific myths of his own, make him disreputable in Peloria without being likable by anyone else, and also syncs fairly well with Tolat as one of the "moving gods" of Teshnos and immediate environs, while stil being definably different and distinct. 

41 minutes ago, None said:

Really? Oria is earth and I don't know which elemental rune Pela is but I still can't remeber any goddess other than Ernalda and Dendara (and Halisayan  who seem to be Kralorelian Dendara) having been presented as a 'goddes of women' as part of their core theme.

I also have trouble seeing Dendara as having the storm rune, especially as she existed before Umath and the storm rune.

Pela would also be earth (and plant, maybe?), she's the wheat goddess. Peloria is probably a conjunction, "Pela Oria"- wheat Oria, the land of wheat, contrasted with the riceland of the river bottoms and the barley/millet land of the true uplands. (This in turn leads me to suspect Shargash was the original agricultural god of the Dara Happans and Lodril was adopted from the wheat folk because he was more docile, more willing to segregate destructiveness into Monster Man).

Ernalda being a "women's goddess" is probably an artifact of the Orlanthi being very detailed and having such a fluid class structure that the prospect of a goddess for all (85% of) women is plausible, just like Orlanth is a men's god. 

Dara Happans and Pelandans and miscellaneous Lodrilli are more stratified, so they have at a minimum a division between peasant woman goddess Oria/Biselenslib and citizen woman goddess Dendara/Ourania, plus Gorgorma as an anti-ideal. 

In re Shargash and Six Ages: It's Elmal taunting him about lacking heat and so being unable to replace Yelm, but I think you could more easily interpret that as the "warmth portion" of the soul (and so Shargash is dead and can't keep people alive) or Riders taking some solace in the fact that their Sun is superior even if Alkothi can beat them up with ease. 

Shargash does have some interesting associations, especially with the Red Goddess (Verithurusa and Shargash are red planets deeply affected by Umath's passage) and Orlanth (Orlanth stole lightning from him, but he stole thunder from Orlanth, unless it was Umath, or perhaps it was a mutual exchange...). He also has a very interesting color scheme.

Some minor points, all IMO:

I think Dendara is Air-associated, and Orlanthi understand her as Molanni or possibly Brastalos. 

My primary reasons, within a Gloranthan scope:

Earth and Water are both sources of spiritual pollution in Dara Happan mythology and culture, but Earth is more respectable than Water (Lodril wrestles Nendestos, even though he fails, etc.) and Ernalda's Earth was kept chained by the Emperor. This is agreed upon by Orlanthi and Hyalorong sources. So it would be strange for Yelm to then wed a Water deity. But we know that Entekos and Right Air are more refined than Earth and Water, and that Entekos and Dendara are closely related somehow. 

So Dendara brings rain because her Virtue is strong enough to control Water without pollution. 

Out of Gloranthan scope, this helps confound the gender-essentialist implications by making a Stormy personality a sign of refined femininity in Peloria and thus instead of Fire men and Earth women it's Fire men and Air/Storm women as the cultural ideals. It would be even better to develop cultures with Earthy masculinity, Firey femininity, etc., but this starts from common ground and has some reasonable support. 

A Fire personality type will be somewhat arbitrary given that the primary models we have are deities as diverse in behavior as Yelm, Dayzatar, Shargash, Lodril, Yelmalio, Elmal etc., only some of which can be explained by splitting Fire, Sky, Light, Heat, etc. (Six Ages slightly implies Shargash is a Light deity, after all.)

I think the implication overall is that Fire is about being rationalist in the sense of reason as opposed to Earth's empiricism or Moon's irrationalism/dreaminess. But that may be difficult to sustain, since it also appears to imply hierarchicality.

I have thoughts about the seeming ubiquity of Ernalda, but they're not quite developed yet.

On 10/7/2018 at 2:10 PM, Joerg said:

I wonder how they manage the distribution of this somewhat stale, superannuated grain - even if they get the vermin and mold situation under control by Asrelia magic, the quality of the grain goes down as it ages. Who is going to receive this second-rate grain when fresher harvests are brought in? Who oversees this process? How long can they store a grain harvest? How good will these seeds grow up after a catastrophic harvest failure like 1622?

By multi-years, I suppose you mean several times the annual consumption of grain in Nochet rather than several times the annual grain production around Nochet. Few if any Sartarite clans would have been able to afford that luxury under Lunar occupation.

I know that the German federal food reserve regularly sells off canned food approaching its expiration date when it is impractical to donate it directly, presumably to make place for fresh reserves. And the Crop Trust with its vault on Svalbard tries something similar with seed grain (possibly defying Monsanto with its activities).

Most grain, with the exception of certain varieties of maize, can be stored more or less indefinitely with techniques that would have been available to people in antiquity. The nutritional content worsens after a year and reaches its minimum after a few years, but long-term silage is certainly possible. The ease of doing so depends on the climate, of course, and in a humid climate like Kethaela silage would be more difficult to maintain- in arid climates one can simply dig out a pit and put a waterproof cap to seal it. But that is our world- it is entirely possible that grain is simply stored within Ty Kora Tek's dead earth and a ritual of its resurrection performed when the granary must be opened, allowing for long-term grain storage via mythical means/analogues.

Grain production per hectare in the later years of the Roman Republic varied from 269 kg to 1710 kg, sowing a consistent 135 kg of seed. Roman agricultural techniques, when using animal labor, required 1 family of approximately 6 people for every 20 hectares under cultivation. Meanwhile, grain imports into Rome during the early Empire are estimated to have provided 237 kg of grain per person annually, and so I will use that as an estimate for Nochet grain storage requirements. 

Limiting Nochet's food supply to North Esrolia, we have 400,000 rural residents. I will assume 90% of these are directly involved in agricultural production, giving us 360,000 people to work with, with 1.2 million hectares of land under cultivation. The lowest end of production is for North African areas, which is not consistent with descriptions of Esrolia. Using a still-conservative Greek production of 620 kg/ha, 744 million kg of grain would be produced every year. 120,633,000 kg of this would be eaten by the population of North Esrolia, leaving 623 million kg and change for animal feed, rural storage, trade, and urban silage. Nochet eats 23.7 million kg of grain every year. Assuming 90% of the uneaten grain goes to concerns other than that of urban granaries, there is still enough produced, at a frankly conservative estimate of productivity, to store two and a half years of grain for every year of average production for the citizens of Nochet. And this is without considering Esrolia as an economic unit, which should be generally true even given fractious politics. (Note that even using North African numbers, Esrolia is still a net grain exporter, but grain from other parts of Esrolia would be needed to fill the Nochet granaries, or North Esrolia would forgo some exports to make up for draws etc.)

Of course, these are unrealistic assumptions because of frictional concerns and the fact that a substantial proportion of this land will go to vegetable, fruit, and meat/dairy production as well, which cannot be so easily stored. But I suspect the "reality" is probably fairly similar regardless of the raw numbers- Esrolia is an astoundingly productive grain exporter, well able to maintain massive repositories of food in the event of sieges, compared to marginal areas like Dragon Pass or Prax, where the available land for cultivation is limited and of poor productivity. 

The Windstop would be a devastating event mostly in the need to kill and eat work animals for lack of feed, but based on the likely numbers involved, Esrolia wouldn't be facing mass starvation, unlike more marginal highland areas. However, the lack of exports and the drain of granaries and destruction of working livestock would weaken Esrolia in the long term, requiring a lengthy period of accumulation to recover, something the Hero Wars would not likely help with. 

16 hours ago, MJ Sadique said:

1/ Nope, this is not logical because indulgence and engagement is more in the Harmony Rune abilities. Fertility is associate with growth and Life Creation (Uleria) and Harmony is associate with healing and maintaining Life (Chalana). As state in the very excellent Reference : Runes.pdf on http://www.glorantha.com/docs/runes/

X Rune of Life
Meaning: Plenty, Giving, Love, Sex
This Rune symbolizes the Ancient Cup from which the whole world was poured at the dawn of creation. It is the symbol of growth and life. It is now manifested as Esrola the Uleria, sister of Great Ernalda.
Personality Traits: Generous, lustful
Incompatible with: Death

||| Harmony
Meaning: Unity, cooperation, healing
This Rune is said to represent the Divine Harp with which Order was separated from Chaos. It is quite ancient and revered throughout the world. She is the power of Healing and Community. She is now manifested as Chalana Arroy, the goddess of Healing.
Personality Traits: Forgiving, merciful, peaceful
Incompatible with: Disorder

2/ Not very sure of it because Life Rune is associate with Esrola Uleria, Goddess of religious prostitution : "She is worshipped only in Boldhome, Pavis and Apple Lane" (Source: Sartar: Kingdom of Heroes, http://glorantha.wikia.com/wiki/Esrola_Uleria)

 

These informations are establish For Orlanthi and people living in Dragon Pass and nearby SO the more Life you possess, the closer to Uleria you became...

Is Uleria chubby or more like Akerion sexy Initiate ?

!!! Y G M V !!!

Well, contrarily, Death as a power is understood not just as the end to life but as separation and austerity. So if we understand Life/Fertility as the opposing Power to Death, it must be the opposite of separation and austerity as well, which would mean joining, engagement, and indulgence. 

The Runequest: Role-playing In Glorantha book bears this out:

"To be strong with the Fertility Rune is 
to enjoy the pleasures of the flesh, most 
notably sexual desire. Such adventurers 
are generous and giving, often without personal commitment between the persons involved.
To be strong with the Death Rune is to separate oneself from the material world and seek to deny or even destroy the world of the senses. Such adventurers are relentless, ruthless, 
and ascetic, willing to deny others and themselves."

And these definitions are meant to reflect how the Powers act within individual people.

12 hours ago, Julian Lord said:

That's just her reputation, in Dragon Pass especially, but her primary Power is that of reproductive life in all its forms, so that whilst she certainly there in human obsessions about sex, she's also in the slow growth of the seeds, the multiplication of the fish and the frogspawn, and yes even in the destructive self-reproduction of the chaotic entities, but she is also in the life of every creature or entity, mortal or immortal, even the gods and the spirits, except for those of them that are dead or who are Death, and some few others perhaps whose Runic associations are characterised by absolute purity, such as Subere for instance.

As a goddess of the Celestial Court, she is present in every part of the Inner World at its most fundamental structures, as she is the very Life of Glorantha herself.

True Ulerian sex is intrinsically reproductive, but you're right that she's not particularly associated with childbirth.

Well, I mean, as the Sumerians had it, recreational sex and love are reproduction of social relationships... 😉

5 hours ago, Caras said:

Does high Fertility show in fysical appearence? Is a female character more curvaceus? Or are runic powers just inner strengths?

Bear in mind that Fertility/Life is more correlated with indulgence and engagement with the world than with sex directly. Uleria is understood as associated with love and recreational sex more than with childbirth. Ernalda's hall in the Underworld is a place of luxury, etc. 

So if there's any difference in body shapes, I would suggest general chubbiness more than anything, a physical reflection of the person's ability to enjoy the finer things in life, in line with Asrelia as the goddess of wealth etc. This also has the advantage of being gender-neutral (as opposed to having Fertility in male characters be expressed via oversized codpieces or loose-fitting pants and togas, etc.)

But of course there's not really much reason to have this. Axe Maidens can be curvy too, etc. 

I suspect that in places where Orlanthi are ruled by other cultures the Issaries cult becomes involved in the collection of tax and tribute, since they know the arts of valuation and appraisal and can be trusted to be fair, to the disgust of everyone else involved. 

In Umathela they might well be more important because of the constant Sedalpist use of Orlanthi mercenaries, which would demand careful negotiation over pay, terms of service and so on, which would also bring in the "jurist" face of the Lhankor Mhy cult in recording precedent in forms Malkioni respect. 

I can't remember if Umathela grows Genertelan crops or not, but if it doesn't then the Ernalda cult will be extremely different in form, having to worship the goddesses of local grains rather than the more familiar Esra and Pelora and so on. You would also probably see a different emphasis for livestock magic given how unsuitable most of Pamaltela is for beasts of burden. If Umathelans practice swidden or horticulture more often than plowing, Barntar would probably be secondary to Orlanthcarl/Orlanth the Farmer as the farming god. 

The Babeester Gor cult probably would have issues operating in Sedalpist cities, so it might take a less bloodthirsty form or be almost as underground as the Ana Gor cult is in Dragon Pass. Or simply relatively confined to Earth temples maintained entirely in rural areas. 

2 hours ago, Leingod said:

Well, for one I've seen people arguing that the Orlanthi don't even need a "native" sun god and complaining about inserting one. Not that I really give that argument much credence; the sun is way too important for an agricultural society for your only sun god to be a guy you frequently characterize as "the Bad Emperor."

And that would be a cool idea for a character.

To be completely fair, the people of Ugarit at the end of the Bronze Age appear to have only worshipped the storm god Ba'al-Hoddu, the father god El, the mother goddess Asherah, and the warrior goddess Anat despite having a full panoply of deities from their surviving myths, including a benevolent sun goddess Shapash. And in a Mediterranean climate during antiquity, the grain fields would lie fallow during the summer and would be planted in the fall to be harvested in the spring, so you could see the Sun as generally hostile. So there's justifications for Elmal to be marginal in Heortling society, or at least less important than Heler, who's already mostly worshipped via Orlanth.

That's not particularly fun, speaking as another KoDP/HQ1-era entrant to Glorantha, but it is worth considering real-world variation on who's deemed worthy of active worship when looking at how to interpret Glorantha.

1 hour ago, jeffjerwin said:

That's interesting, because my Pamunkey ancestors - an (southern) Algonquin group - seem to have had had incestuous uncle-niece if not brother-sister marriages within the ruling bloodline. It appears that this was because they were matrilineal and powerful men wanted to monopolize noble status.

That is very interesting! I wonder to what extent the difference is due to the different social contexts- the sheer quantity of portages meant that the Great Lakes area was fairly fast to travel around, so exogamy might have been stronger because it was more possible to go from modern Detroit to modern Duluth to marry into a Lakotah family. 

Heortlings are also based on the Haudenosaunee/Iroquois specifically and intentionally and First Nations people of the Great Lakes watershed more generally. This is most obvious with how land and most valuable property is held communally by the clan (and also how land is used), but kinship structures also seem reminiscent. So, using the Northern Algonquian peoples with whom I am most familiar, and who neighbored the Haudenosaunee, the answer is that your entire clan is consanguine and intraclan marriages and sexual relationships are incestuous and thus illegal. 

Heortlings are actually stricter than these societies in that clans which are recently branched off are still consanguine to one another. 

That said, where does this leave bloodlines? Well, Heortlings do have a need to mark which people are nobles, thanes, carls, etc. within a clan, as opposed to the Algonquian/Iroquoian system with even less formal class structures. 

And the fact that many clans do have interwoven lands with only their central tula being contiguously their territory allows for enough social contact even before urbanization to allow for Heortlings to be sexually active without frequent incest. Of course, incest is not explicitly listed as unacceptable sexual behavior in the Runequest player's book, but that doesn't say much either way. 

Having recently spent some time thinking about how to square the hexagender quadrasexual Heortling society with the presented bigender marriage laws, I suspect that undermarriages are derived from clans expressing client status to one another and that "year-marriages" exist primarily for reasons of numerology to get a perfect, Lightbringerish seven types- it is historically normal for Heortling marriages to be defined as lasting a period of time as an expression of alliance or dominance between clans, and one of those is the contingent relationship of the year-marriage which may be cancelled or renewed at particular intervals, presumably based on how well the parties involved have been living up to their obligations.