Leingod

Plus he was already marked out for special things since his initiation (at least if we take the webcomic as canon), given that he managed to get through all of the optional stations of the initiation quest when very few can even complete the first.

The old world's gotta die to make room for the new world. As for whether the new one is better than the old...? Eh. Hail Harshax!

What's Eurmal, his "lucky" rabbit's foot?

Basically, there are two types of sovereignty over a tribe: The Storm way and the Earth way. Do you rule in the manner of Orlanth, or in the manner of Ernalda? The likes of Leika or Kallyr are vingans, and so you could call them "female kings," in the sense that they use the rites of Orlanth Rex and rule in that fashion, not those of Ernalda/Orendana the Earth Queen. If the prospective Maboder queen is an initiate or devotee of Ernalda rather than Orlanth or Vinga, then she would take what are called the "Orendanae Rites." We don't actually know what exactly they entail; at most we can guess that it's in some way inspired from the story of Orendara told in Esrolia: The Land of 10,000 Goddesses, though almost certainly not so anti-Orlanth Rex among the Sartarites: Presumably you undertake some kind of test to prove your right to rule by the inheritance of sovereignty from the Earth, and likely not by (direct) violent means (like how an Orlanthi candidate would just go out and win a victory against some enemy) but by doing some service like making an enemy into an ally or getting your followers to put aside some harmful feud or something like that.

They likely saw it in some form, given how important a cosmic event this is and how big the dragon in question was. It depends a lot on where the Lunars originated from. If they're from places like Tarsh, Sylila, Holay, etc., then they probably share Orlanthi identity, even if they adopted the worship of the Red Goddess and the Moon pantheon. If they're from parts further north, places that don't really have Orlanthi roots, then while you could go as far back as Darhudan(a) a.k.a. Daka Fal you'd probably be better off doing this syncretic thing where they recognize kinship as the children of the Great Earth Goddess, whether she be called Ernalda or Oria or something else. If they're from Sylila, Holay, or Tarsh, though, you could extend the Berenethtelli connection, since modern Sylila is where the Berenethtelli lived in the Storm Age and IIRC the reigning Queen of Holay reigns from a Horse Throne and has explicit associations with Redayle (or is at least implied to). Not sure about specifically "Lunar" touches (rather than, say, Lunar Tarshite ones), other than some elements of Pelorian fashion, maybe the growing of rice or something, depending on whether the environment can support that? I'm definitely not the one to ask about it. Though maybe if they're Dara Happans they can claim some descent from lost Nivorah, the Golden Age city of Reladivus (one of Yelm's eight sons), who also had some implied connection with Redayle. Then again, I have a certain bias for pretty much all the assorted "Horse People" of Glorantha, so maybe I'm just looking for any excuse to put them everywhere at this point. Comparing myths and gods and such to see where the stories might line up and have traits in common, explore those connections through speaking to gods and ancestors, or even through a Heroquest if they feel really confident that they'll find the answer they're looking for on the path they're embarking on and won't crash and burn on the way (an experimental Heroquest is not something to embark on lightly, and not something your average magician can pull off).

Thinking about it a bit more to try to get this across, I would say that the creation of a clan history is essentially an exercise in storytelling both in and out of universe; it is the manufacture of a fictive shared history that binds everyone together in a shared identity as one people. You can see this with the story of the Red Cow clan's founding in the Red Cow Saga; they were a scattered refugee people, and many of the "deeds of their ancestors in God Time" that shape their practices and identity are in fact adopted values/history from their wyter, Many-Breath. The creation of a clan, then, is usually a practice in crafting what anthropologists call "invented traditions," of creating a shared story and tradition that ties everyone together as one people, that explains what decisions and traditions make them unique and set them apart from others and what values they hold most dearly. In general, most people only really know their personal ancestry from the last few generations; past that, it's mostly either vague or constrained to a few big names that, in all honestly, probably half the people in a given area could claim as an ancestor (by now, pretty much any Heortling probably had an ancestor who was descended from each and every Vingkotling tribe you could name, for example). This is why only the most recent or the most important of the ancestors are usually recognized by name and deed; the rest are usually just addressed as the unidentifiable collective of "the ancestors" when the rites are observed. No one can actually trace a direct and unbroken line all that far back with any certainty. So if the spirit of our community says that our clan is descended of the Berenethtelli, or the Liornvulli, or whoever, who's to say we aren't? That said, finding some common ancestry is something a new clan will likely try to do if possible, and given the magic that suffuses Glorantha, it's quite possible to go as far back as you need to. If the Glimmerstone Clan is formed from refugees of Sartarites, Lunars and Grazelanders, for example... Well, in the Sartar Companion, in the course of getting to the location where you can perform the Lawstaff Quest a Grazer Earth Priestess, Eneera, can be convinced to take you under her protection (followers of "Wingkolad," an enemy god, generally not being welcome deep in Grazer territory) and is curious about your party's ways, because spirits have given her visions that the peoples of Dragon Pass must find common ground and be unified "lest the coming Hero Wars kill us all." As such, throughout this journey Eneera will question the party on what sets the Sartarites apart from the Vendref, and will be fascinated by any in the party who worship Ernalda, as she'll recognize some of the prayers and names (the Grazers know their great Earth goddess as La-ungariant). Finally, once you get started on the Heroquest itself and are in the Gods World, Jarani Whitetop (a great-grandson of Vingkot) will feast the party and swap stories about their deeds and adventures. Most interestingly, when Eneera shows an interest in all this, Jarani recites for her the lineage of the Vingkotlings. He finishes his recitation by saying, "I recognize my grandfather's sister, Redayle, in you." This is, or rather can be interpreted as, divine confirmation of a connection and common ancestor shared between these two groups. Whatever the actual, literal truth of the matter may be, the truth as it actually matters to the clan and its magic is "Of old our peoples were one but split apart, but now we come together again and recognize each other as kin through our shared ancestors once more." Or something to that effect. The clan builds a constructed history and shared ancestry through the adaptation or even wholesale invention of myth to weave together a cohesive whole... or rather, they "reveal/discover" a lost one. And if they can conclusively prove this through a Heroquest? All the better and more binding.

Quite likely. Whether you call her Chalanna Arroy or Erissa, you probably don't need any special accessory to denote that you come in peace other than what you're wearing: Though I'm sure the Harmony Rune on the chest and trim doesn't hurt.

Where does it say any of that? Their write-up in SKoH only says: Which makes them sound like a more or less normal clan, War clan or no. The write-up in the Adventure Book of the GameMaster Screen Pack for RQG, similarly, doesn't portray them as a warrior society that's just called a clan for some reason: An especially "tough" clan, but still a clan going by this write-up.

I would absolutely love a QW Jane Austin novel campaign.

I personally see it as more that they're a clan that's formed around a warrior society. The Black Spear is central to the clan, but food needs to be grown, houses need to be built, etc. Which could very well lead to tensions when the people supporting the warriors' sacred lifestyle feel underappreciated and taken for granted.

I meant "bloodline" in the sense of "a sub-set of the clan recognizes a shared ancestor and so consider themselves more closely related to each other than to more distant members of the clan," which is basically just adding extra layers to the extended family model of the clan. The individual will have many ancestors and relatives who aren't of their clan, and obviously they will be recognized as kin by them. All clan are kin, but not all kin are clan. Your clan's ancestors are your ancestors, but so are other ancestors who aren't of your clan. Family is complicated, you know? Orlanthi society in general is kind of predicated on trying to delicately balance between two not-always-but-often opposing forces: the needs of the community and the free will of the individual. This traces back to their very founding, because the Orlanthi as a people are considered to have truly begun when Orlanth married Ernalda, not because Orlanth was now a king, but because Orlanth is too much of an individual (that is, too self-centered) to be the sole culture-maker. EDIT: Basically, yeah, it's both. Legally and magically, as part of a clan you are related to everyone else in that clan. As an individual, both legally and magically, you have kin outside of that clan as well. This can, and does, get both complicated and hard to reconcile, which is the kind of stuff great sagas are made of.

It's because the actual blood ties aren't actually that important; it's what anthropologists would call "fictive kinship," they're social ties of family stemming from shared residence, economic ties, and what's called "nurture kinship." They're exogamous because that's the easiest way to keep a family tree from becoming a family tumbleweed after several generations. The "reality" of your blood relation to any given member of the clan doesn't actually matter one whit for the most part. In addition, the clan is considered the basic legal unit of social organization (bloodlines are informal institutions and aren't recognized for legal purposes), and marriage is chiefly considered a way to create and maintain ties between clans, not individuals (the Orlanthi don't stigmatize sex between unmarried people, so you don't need marriage just to have babies), so there sort of just isn't really any legal basis or precedent for marrying within a clan. Though, yes, a certain level of sex within the clan is pretty much inevitable, and so long as they're sufficiently distant in actual relation it probably isn't treated as an issue.

They're all from Six Ages: Ride Like the Wind.

I mean, if the Lunars did what they did intentionally, then they're genocidal bastards who wiped out somewhere between a fifth and a sixth of the population of Sartar without batting an eye for power. If they didn't know what would happen, then they're a bunch of arrogant meddlers who aren't as smart as they think they are and got a lot of people killed because of it (which puts them in the same category of hubris as the God Learners). Neither paints a flattering picture, and we can argue whether the Lunars or Argrath are the lesser evil until the Fifth Age comes around, but I'm never going to consider the Lunars "the good guys" or anything close to it, and the Windstop is only a small part of the reason. EDIT: And let's not forget that, upon hearing of the deaths of both Orlanth and Ernalda within the Windstop, the Red Emperor's response was as follows: Oh yeah, that's how a benevolent and enlightened ruler reacts to learning that he's consigned large numbers of men, women, and children to die horrible deaths of cold and starvation to win his mommy a divine pissing contest. Definitely.

Well, you don't need to necessarily adopt a whole different cultural name just to get across that you have a deeper connection than most to a certain figure other than the "usual" ones. There are clans in Sartar that emphasize Ernalda (or even other gods, like Elmal or Argan Argar or, in the case of the Sylilans up north, Odayla) over Orlanth, but that doesn't mean they don't recognize the terms "Orlanthi" and "Heortling" as valid terms to describe themselves. You're considered Orlanthi if you believe that Orlanth is the king of the gods, even if Ernalda is the goddess you venerate and put in a position of leadership ritually. You're considered Heortlings if you accept the laws, rites, and secrets that Heort handed down as correct, even if the things your ancestors gained from Ivarne are more important to you. That's because these names aren't meant to be statements that you think Orlanth is more important than Ernalda or Heort is more important than Ivarne, they're just names that distinguish a wide cultural grouping under a shared name to get across that they hold similar religious and cultural beliefs in common with each other (like "Orlanth is king of the gods and Ernalda is queen," "Chaos is bad," "violence is always an option, but there is always another way," the secrets of the Star Heart and I Fought We Won, etc.). So you could absolutely have a clan that claims a deep, special connection with Ivarne that sets them apart from others, but they'd probably still be called "Heortlings," by other Heortlings if not by themselves. Other Orlanthi who know them might call them "Ivarnings" or "the Ivarne Clan/Ivarne's Clan" as a nickname or descriptor, though, like how the Konthasos are also called the Wine Clan (and are named after a daughter of Ernalda and Flamal to boot). These are very broad cultural/religious categories that can encompass a lot of individual differences quite comfortably.

In terms of published adventures, you could tweak something like "The Adventure of the Castle of Tears" from Blood & Lust (which itself is just a take on an adventure Tristram and Iseult had in their own stories). Or really anything in that vein, where the villain doesn't abduct your lady love, but she's still put in peril nonetheless by the evil custom of the castle or cursed land or wherever. There's also "The Adventure of the Sorceress Bride" in Forest Perilous, where it turns out the PK's wife is a secret pagan sorceress who transforms into a panther at night and causes trouble on his lands, though that might be a little mean to inflict on a player just because he rolled a high Love (Wife). On the other hand, if the transformation was actually a curse he has to break...

The attrition of Argrath's companions is perhaps most easily explained by the fact that the Lunars are very well-practiced at making sure their most annoying enemies stay dead once they've been killed, as seen with Hofstaring, Belintar, Sheng Seleris, etc. If it's just a matter of preparing a spell while he's got the resources of Sartar to draw on (since no matter how much harder resurrection actually is outside the context of a tabletop game, it would be setting the cap arbitrarily high if even the Prince of Sartar/King of Dragon Pass didn't command the resources to have it performed), Argrath would have to be both a sociopath and a self-defeating idiot to pass that up whenever one of his companions bit the dust, since none of them are exactly ordinary people that can easily be replaced. And if Argrath's that much of a wasteful idiot given the situation he's in, that doesn't exactly say good things about the Lunar Empire's collective competence, considering they ultimately lose to him. But on the other hand, if Argrath would have to embark on some major Heroquest that made the quest to free Hofstaring look like child's play because the Lunars are done with taking half-measures against these damn Sartarites? That'd be much easier to spin as Argrath not having the time and resources to devote to that in-between all the other stuff he has to do to fight the Lunars, and it fits the displayed magical competence and strategies the Lunars tend to show.

In fairness, there is a little of that, with random boons you might roll during certain years that can be things like "You made a friend among one of the Elder Races," and you're invited to flesh out who that friend is and how that happened, and so on.

Not to mention that even if you have the full story of how it's supposed to go, sometimes you'll come to where you expect one thing to happen a certain way and for whatever reason it doesn't; maybe this myth has been altered somehow by other Heroquesters in the intervening time, or the presence of one of your enemies drawn into the Heroquest has changed it, or etc. Even when you're walking on the most well-worn paths through the Gods World, a Heroquest is always at least somewhat uncertain ground.

A thread of conversation from rereading the “Women in Glorantha” thread was talk about mortality rates and demographics, basically a debate about whether or not all the various magical factors “balanced out” into something roughly synonymous with how things worked out in the RL Ancient World or not. I didn't want to speak up in that thread to revive an argument that was off-topic, so if you'll bear with me I'll give my thoughts on it here, instead. The argument for things more or less “balancing out” is, IMO, a flawed one, and at least IMG, the demographics and mortality rates would be different. I don't actually know nearly enough about demography to elucidate exactly how, but I'll at least try to explain why. On the one hand, in Glorantha, things like faith healing and other medical practices that IRL stem from superstitions, or at least from incorrect assumptions about how things work like, say, Miasma Theory, actually do work and are at least partly correct, there's going to be a lot less malpractice based on ignorance about how things actually work, because in Glorantha the metaphysics really do tend to line up with how people think they work as a result of their religious beliefs. Not that misdiagnoses and hucksterism and the like wouldn't be found aplenty, but that can only account for so much compared to, say, people genuinely believing that drinking liquor mixed with mineralized arsenic sulfide (a.k.a. “realgar wine”) was not only harmless but provided protection from disease, poison, and evil spirits, and making its consumption a traditional part of a yearly festival. Things like infections, which were the big killers historically because no one knew how that actually worked or what actually worked for preventing it, are things they do have some idea of how they work and how to effectively counter them. Think of how much of a game-changer the invention of penicillin was; even if Gloranthan methods of preventing or treating infection aren't even half as effective, that's still a huge deal in terms of figuring out what mortality rates and demographics look like. And on the other hand, the thing with expecting all the magical ways people can die – getting killed by trolls or Chaos monsters, or attacked by disease spirits and etc. – to balance that out is that these things do not simply add to the biggest killers of people IRL in the ancient world, but often replace them entirely (that is, there are not disease spirits in addition to the normal vectors for disease, and disease is the big historical killer in both war and peace, not guys with swords), and those, as I mentioned above, are things the people of Glorantha have a better understanding of and are better equipped to try to deal with than their RL counterparts were. I'm not sure I buy the argument that Gloranthan diseases are significantly more virulent, ubiquitous, and hard to fight than their RL counterparts just because they're caused by malevolent spirits, which they would have to be to have a similar death toll given that Gloranthans have actually effective ways of preventing and treating them. Plus, even if they would balance out in terms of just the overall numbers and proportions of total population, the time and manner of death between various age groups and along gender lines and etc. would almost have to look different, because - at least to me - it would beggar belief that with these factors taken in account, you'd still have more than a quarter of newborns not living to see their first year and almost half of all children born in all dying before they can reach adulthood, and somewhere between a fifth and a quarter of all adult women dying from complications in childbirth. For the factors in favor of Gloranthans being much less likely than our own ancestors to die from a minor wound getting infected, or to die in childbirth, or to die in infancy or childhood, or to be decimated by plagues they had no effective method of diagnosing or treating – that is, if you want the demographics and mortality rates to more or less line up with where they'd be if the Sartarites lived on Earth in the years BC, the stuff trying to kill them would have to be almost ludicrously deadly to compensate for all that, and I just don't see anything to suggest that in the stuff I've actually read. Again, I really don't know enough about how to factor all this stuff together to give any kind of coherent or meaningful idea of what the demographics and mortality rates would look like, but I really don't buy the argument that they'd look nearly identical to their closest RL counterparts in the rough time period Glorantha tends to go for in its setting. Of course, feel free to explain to me where you think I'm in error or where (unlikely, but possible) I'm spot-on. And if anyone can make some educated guesses about what, if my conclusions are correct, actual mortality rates and demographics would look like, that'd be just grand.

Well, it really just depends on what you think makes the best worldbuilding sense as what they would have used for it. I lean towards vert antique because it's a suitably fine and impressive architectural material to make it no surprise they'd name the temple after its building material that also doesn't beggar believe for a Sartarite tribe to be able to collect enough to build a temple, and since it really has no other use than decoration (since I'd imagine copper isn't so plentiful and cheap that they can just make their biggest buildings out of material they'd get more value from extracting copper from and making it into enchanted axes for their temple defenders and such) and the word brings to mind Ernalda's connection with serpents on top of it all. Plus, mythically, serpentinite fits well with how in Glorantha Earth arises directly out of Water, given its properties and where it tends to form. Even if people in Glorantha won't necessarily know any of that, it's rather elegant from a meta standpoint.

If we relate it to the way the Elements are believed to derive from the Cosmic Dragon in the Dragonewt's cosmology, the reconciliation could come from them first recognizing their draconic nature, and then realizing that this means they are actually part of the same whole and their initial conflict was self-defeating and pointless as a result. Which is more or less just an elaboration of the lesson already inherent in the Compromise and so not a particularly hard sell if you can get people to accept those premises in the first place.

Looking through the stuff that can be classified as "greenstone," I think serpentinite is probably the most apropos, given the name, and it's also been used in art and architecture from ancient times. Though really, it doesn't even necessarily have to be all of one kind of stone. EDIT: It might, in fact, be verd antique, broken fragments of serpentinite mixed with other rocks that gives it a marble-like polish, like that used to form columns in the Hagia Sophia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verd_antique

Well, Fighters in 5e can now be gishes and so on without even needing to multiclass anymore (guess you could say they're finally catching up to RuneQuest in that regard 😉), so there's that. That said, IMO Humakt is actually much more analogous to a D&D Fighter in that he strikes me as more of the boring default "I swing sword good" guy than Orlanth. The boringness of playing an old-school D&D Fighter isn't - to me, at least - in the fact that he's considered the default kind of build choice, but in that he's the guy that, when everyone is at 15th level or whatever with lots of new and exciting powers to play around with that greatly expand their available options in any given situation, he's essentially just gotten incrementally better at killing things with a sword. And that's why I personally prefer Orlanth to Humakt, even if maybe the former is inferior in terms of raw combat potential to the latter (I really don't have enough experience or mechanical knowledge to say for sure). Because Orlanth's combat is all flying and thunderstones and summoning winds and throwing around lightning and stuff, whereas (to greatly oversimplify and exaggerate it, yes, but I'm just making a point here), the standard Humakti is down there just being Really Good At Swording Things Dead, with magic that makes him Even More Good At Swording Things Dead. For me, when it comes to combat, I want something with flair. And Orlanth's got plenty of that.

So, I'm going to be briefly discussing the Colymar Campaign outlined by Sartar: Kingdom of Heroes, most particularly the role played by Ernalsulva and how it relates to her mother. I generally like this campaign as written, but I have the issue that Ernalsulva feels a bit flat and uninteresting; she mostly plays the standard, passive role of Ernalda assigning Orlanth tasks to woo her, which strikes me as unlikely to drum up much investment from the players in helping one of them actually do the wooing without the Sword of Damocles that is the consequences of a failed Heroquest hanging over their heads. This stuck out in my mind from the beginning, that there isn't really much to establish Ernalsulva as a character the players want to help one of their own marry, or even for that player to want his character to marry her outside the potential benefits of doing so. It stuck out even more so on a reread thanks to stuff like the “Women in Glorantha” thread in the main Glorantha forum and talks about the difficulty of providing good storytelling and roleplay opportunities for Ernaldan adventurers and just in general feminine-centric cults that aren't centered around picking up a weapon and fighting right beside the men. Or are Chalanna Arroy, I guess. Anyway, Ernalsulva is the daughter of Entarios the Supporter, a famous devotee of “Ernalda of Greenstone” i.e. Enferalda, a.k.a. Ernalda-as-Backboy, who is Ernalda's strength and endurance made manifest to support her husband out in the field and even to grant him strength when he fights on her behalf. Entarios herself is famous for bringing triumph to every man she married, and it's mentioned that she's specifically groomed Ernalsulva to follow in her footsteps because champions will be needed for the Hero Wars. So then it clicked for me how to increase player investment in the marriage of Ernalsulva to one of the PCs, and also to provide some good roleplaying opportunities in the vein of a less passive take on Ernalda and what her worshipers can do even if they aren't dying their hair red and picking up a sword, and even outside of just being the healer. In the myth “The Swan's Burden,” Ernalda dons a disguise in becoming Enferalda, claiming she's merely sending one of her own attendants, so that she can support Orlanth without him knowing it's her; in the myth this is as a test of his faithfulness, by flirting with him the whole time. But in this case, it could be a great way to adapt the passive role of Ernalda in “How Orlanth Wooed Ernalda” into an active one; without Orlanth knowing it, Ernalda is helping her favored suitor prove his worth and without violating her proscribed role as the one being wooed by doing so “as someone else.” Plus it gives you room to make up any related lore associated with her you might want to devise. Now, there's the obvious problems with changing the adventure to accommodate Ernalsulva-as-Player-Character-disguised-as-someone-else. Obviously, not all players are going to be down with their characters being married to each other, just to start, especially if there's a deception involved if you try to keep it secret from all but Ernalsulva's player. It would probably be easier if you just presented the option to your players that Ernalsulva actually does just send an attendant/friend who's a worshiper of Enferalda, and that's one of the player characters (ideally any player that expresses interest in playing an Ernaldan character, of course). That player can be privy to more private scenes with Ernalsulva in-between the stations of the wooing quest, to give your players a bit more of a feel for Ernalsulva as a person (and for that reason I would say not to hide these scenes from the other players), without it being the GM just talking to himself for a while to establish characters while all the PCs aren't in the room, even if only one of them gets to actually be there in person. On the other hand, if your players are cool with it, I think that (while obviously quite dangerous in that you now have two characters in the party that the Heroquest is totally borked without), Ernalsulva actually tagging along as a PC could provide a lot of interesting new angles for the adventure. There's also some good potential for comedy or even drama if the players and/or the characters know who she is from the start, or at least figure it out partway through. Ernalsulva participating in her own wooing by donning the mask of Enferalda is essentially a bit of the mythic “cheating” that's going to become endemic as the Hero Wars go on, grafting one myth onto another to get the desired result, but as a result there's naturally a concern that it's unsure ground you're treading on. As a result, you might have someone (likely Entarios herself, who may either be totally against this idea or cautious but supportive of her daughter's outside-the-box thinking) provide a warning that if Ernalsulva “breaks character” as Enferalda “who is not Ernalda,” the consequences could potentially be dire, as it would constitute a sharp break from the myth as it's “supposed” to be told, whereas of course it's perfectly in keeping for Ernalda to manipulate things so that her husband gets the desired results without him knowing she was doing it and so is on more sound ground. Or, you know, just ask any players beforehand if they'd like to play a worshiper of pretty much any given Earth goddess who's part of the temple and have them be assigned to help on the quest by Ernalsulva on the sly to involve them with the rest of the party, if you want to get across the stuff above (i.e. fleshing out Ernalsulva and making her ultimate role in this adventure less passive) without necessarily playing into the Greenstone Temple's association with Enferalda. That's my “It's 2 in the morning and I can't sleep” thoughts, anyway. Let me know what you think of it!