Leingod

I always saw it as something she was pressured into doing because the Sartarites did not like the idea of leaving the guy who could potentially bring on another Dragonkill (in their minds) around, friend or not. Most likely, Kallyr had to exile him because the alternative was going to be attempts to assassinate him.

1. Any kind of unusual foodstuff (including things that wouldn't normally be considered foodstuffs) that the trolls don't normally have easy access to could be good. Trolls don't have the same kind of tastes as humans, so it could be just about anything you want them to be interested in. 2. Depends on what the trolls do out here. Maybe they've got some hallucinogenic mushrooms or something, or they've been hunting big game and have lots of exotic pelts because those are more useful than tasty and they might be convinced to trade them.

I dip into Mass Effect, where the krogan have a berserk state that's called "blood rage." Seems fitting as a term given they drink "blood beer" and there's a lot more blood imagery in general that Uroxi don't have.

Like I said: One of them has to make a fundamental change (or have it imposed upon them). Either Sedenya repudiates Chaos or Orlanth embraces it, but either way the two as they are now are irreconcilable.

Sounds like how a dwarf would conceive of the draconic worldview, or at least how they'd translate it to other dwarves (especially if dwarves don't usually dream and thus wouldn't understand that metaphor. Do they?).

Only his enemies that aren't Chaos. As stated by several others in this thread, Orlanth can make compromises, but not with Chaos. So one of them has to change on a fundamental level; either you have to somehow get Orlanth to embrace Chaos, or get Sedenya to repudiate it. The latter is what IMG the White Moon would represent, and which Orlanth could be reconciled with.

In that scenario, what seems most likely to me is that, unless the chief they're negotiating with gives them something personally, everything goes back to the clan they're negotiating for, and then that clan's chief is at liberty to gift them as reward for their services. The actual value of the gift will be commensurate for how good a job he thinks they did once they tell him how it went down; if he thinks they made a right hash of it or otherwise didn't produce the results he was expecting they might get nothing but a scolding or some largely symbolic token (like a single coin, for example), but if he thinks they did a good job he'll give them some nice gifts. Most likely the gifts would come from the chieftain himself rather than being taken from the diplomatic gifts, since it looks more generous for the chieftain to give his own gifts rather than immediately turn around and hand over something he's only just acquired. And as that's a gift, it probably isn't subject to tithing, even if the chieftain isn't also your cult's high priest.

The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was fooling people into thinking that he's a real, singular being rather than ever-present within man's own capacity for evil and propensity for self-destruction, I suppose.

Ah, so it is. Maybe that's Redalda's mother, then? She kind of looks like her, but the hair and tattoos are different and she looks a bit older, so that would make sense. And thank you! I really hope the next games give us some clue as to what ends up happening to Cenala, since she's never been mentioned anywhere else as far as I can tell. Maybe. Though now that I'm thinking about it, I'm actually starting to suspect that perhaps at least some of the other Vingkotling tribes actually followed much the same pattern as the future Berennethtelli do in this game: the son/daughter of Vingkot marries a foreigner who brings a new animal into the new tribe that becomes a key part of their way of life. After all, as given above, the Vestantes fight alongside bears (specifically you see a brown bear), and the foreign husband of Vestene was Goralf Brown. And while the Forosilvuli are a bit odd in that they're a Star Tribe, there's definitely something fitting in the epithet of Forosil Ferocious for a tribe whose associated animal is so aggressive that they're shown with two handlers holding them back from attacking you immediately, so I think there's something there, Star Captain or no. Though admittedly there isn't much I can see in the names "Porscriptor the Cannibal" or "Kastwall Five" that would indicate mammoths or antelope, respectively, but still.

Coming back again to share stuff I figured out, whether anyone cares or not and even though a lot of you probably already figured at least some of this out. To start with, I'll note that much earlier in this thread I speculated that Dostal and Inilla are the gods later known in Heortling myth as Siwend and Indeg; honestly, the latter works much better than the former for this, as there's more resemblance in the name and not just their role. Plus there's the fact that baskets of berries are often mentioned whenever Inilla comes up, and Indeg is known to us solely because her Thorn Basket (which always had a handful of dried berries inside) was one of the Ten Vingkotling Treasures. But then I reread King of Sartar a while back and realized that Dostal is obviously the god worshiped as Dastal by the Grazers (whether the Pentans still know of him in the Third Age I can't really say). Not only are the names nearly identical, Dastal is not just a god of hunting, but is the god of "hunting, herding and learning" who is the patron of boys undergoing their rites of manhood. Dostal's major myth and Heroquest among the Riders is about how he uses a hunt to teach valuable life lessons to the four boys who will one day become the founders of the Four Clans. It's also interesting to note that in the dark times after the Grazers warred with Tarsh under Yarandros Charge-Crazy, you have a string of Luminous Stallion Kings named for Dastal (who are dismissed within the work as being of little historic note, their recorded deeds just taken as a sign of how far the Grazers had fallen from their prior heights), right up until Dastaldarin Avenger takes advantage of the Tarshite civil war. After that, though, no other Luminous Stallion King ever bears Dastal's name, just as none had before. Presumably, his lessons were no longer needed in a regal context after that low point. --- Moving away from that, another thing I finally managed to notice (and really should have earlier) thanks to other discussions where some of the artwork from this game was used, is that several of the Ram kingdoms have a very strong affiliation and association with a different kind of animal: The Infithtelli have domesticated mammoths, the Forosilvuli take sakkars (saber-toothed cats) into battle, the Vestantes do much the same with bears, and the Penentelli use their ordeed antelope to pull chariots. They also all have very different trends in dress and such, which was something I'd already noted in the past but is even more obvious now. Anyway, the "Kestaytelli" (as the Infithtelli call the clans that have settled in the Black Eel river valley) seem to lack a unique animal association of their own, unless you count the fact that they've doubled down hard on being "Rams," as exemplified by the chieftain of Redalda's clan: So I suppose it was only natural that they would join up with the Hyalorings and become Horse People as the Berennethtelli. (Also, two things to note: Some of those priestesses in that picture are actually the same ones who are going around collecting blessings after Redalda's birth and have visibly aged, which is a lovely detail. Second, can anyone identify that modified Air Rune being worn on the necklace? I know I've seen it before, but I can't quite place it)

I'm now imagining Orlanthi arm rings that are essentially charm bracelets.

So, through Christopher Bruce's Arthurian Name Dictionary, I learned that in Tennyson's Idylls of the King, there's some thing in it where Arthur and Lancelot discover a baby girl in an eagle's nest with a ruby necklace around her neck. She's named "Nestling" and given to Guenevere to raise, but dies in infancy, and later the necklace is given to Tristan for winning a tourney. Having not read Tennyson I'm not sure where that comes from or what its place is in the story, but an interesting possibility occurs to me, though I'm not yet sure where exactly I'd want to go with it. Eliwlod, Madoc's son and Arthur's nephew, became an eagle who prophecies his doom. What if Nestling is the daughter of Eliwlod, magically hatched from an eagle's egg as a human girl? You could even change the necklace into the ring that Uther had given to Madoc's mother (or the ring into a necklace, I guess). Of course, given how long it's been since Madoc's death, there might not be anyone at court who can recognize that heirloom for what it is and connect the dots. Again, not actually sure where I'd want to go with this idea in the context of a Pendragon campaign, but as soon as I read it the idea popped into my mind and I figured I'd share it anyway to see if anyone else might have something in mind. Maybe she inherits some of her father's magic and becomes a kind of court seer, or is the focus of a lot of politicking as basically the only girl related to Arthur who'll be eligible for marriage at some point, or she grows up seeing both Arthur and Lancelot as fathers and can be used to highlight the tragedy of the two coming to blows? Just spitballing.

In Sartar: King of Heroes, the way it's described is essentially that all the initiates who can will at least show up for a service, but only the priests and other devotees are going to actually make a whole day of it.

Which is probably part of why the typical "adventuring season" is about 3 weeks tops. Being part of a community means having a lot of obligations you need to meet, and more-or-less regular attendance on holy days is just one more.

Unless one of them is a presiding Rune Priest or something, yeah, they don't need to be there on every single holy day.

It's mentioned in the RQG book that every Clayday is a minor holy day for Ernalda. Other sources (I'm using Sartar: Kingdom of Heroes, but these and others are probably also stated elsewhere) state that every Windsday is a minor holy day of Orlanth, that every Wildday is a minor holy day for Chalanna Arroy, and Elmal (and thus Yelmalio) has every Fireday. Every day of Truth Week, on the other hand, seems to be a minor holy day for Lhankor Mhy (except for the last day of that week, which is the seasonal holy day), and Humakt does the same thing with Death Week. Presumably, most gods will follow one of those two patterns (either one day each week or one week out of the season), and in the absence of a source you should probably just go with whatever you think would make sense.

Well, this is in what will later become Saird, and the descriptions of Tarshites seems to imply to me that this just tends to be a thing with northern Orlanthi groups. Although, given that, IIRC, all the Vingkotling groups you can meet shave their chins (or maybe can't grow beards) and grow long mustaches like this, it might be that the practice (or even ability) to grow beards might actually be something the Orlanthi got from foreign groups like the Riders. I don't think it's ever implied they come from the west. The Ram clans who've settled around the Black Eel River have some kind of unspecified bad blood with the Infithtelli to the southeast, so I always thought they either migrated from that direction or are a splinter group (though in actual appearance they seem most similar to the Vestantes, now that I think about it. And actually, the Vestantes also have prominent chin tattoos). Incidentally, I love what the Infithtelli do with their hair. Though their whiskers aren't nearly so fine (perhaps that's why they hate the "Kestaytelli" so much? Mad envy at their flowing mustachios? 😉).

It's just a good place to put them from a design perspective, I think.

Aaaaannnd got it. Been looking forward to this one!

Plus there's Elmal's aspects as the Hearthguard, the steadfast protector of his home and family, and as Elmalhara, the warm sun that ripens the crops. There's the fact that Elmal is sometimes one of Esrola's husbands (and otherwise is Redalda's, and she's considered a daughter of Ernalda), so even if you don't have the angle of his service to Orlanth, it's not like he's suddenly bereft of mythic connections here. The myths they tell of Elmal in Esrolia are probably different, they might de-emphasize his loyalty to Orlanth and focus more on his loyalty to his wife and family (whoever that might be), but the core mythos of the loyal and protective sun god works fine.

Personally I don't mind the age thing; my own personal canon is that a side-effect of all the Faerie magic going around is that Arthur and Lancelot and other important characters age much more slowly and gracefully than they "should," much like both Ygraine and Guenevere are all but stated to do. So even though much of the big names are all very old men by the end, most of them still look middle-aged at worst, with Arthur himself looking old only at the peak of the Wasteland's influence but then reverting to looking in his mid-40s overnight. I feel like that adds to the idea of the Enchantment of Britain making time kind of wonky, since on the one hand society and technology advances at a breakneck pace, but on the other hand the more deeply involved in the grand narrative playing out you are, the less of an effect the flow of time actually has on you. Sort of heightening the feel that Arthur's reign is a period that's "outside" of the normal flow of history and events due to the influence of the Other Side being stronger than it's been in a very long time.

Maybe something like "King-Consort?" Keep the title, but make it clear that their "kingship" stems from their marriage and nothing else. Though personally I'm of the opinion that the Esrolians would do their level best to keep any of their men from ever being called a "king" of any stripe.

For one, I think there's something like 200+ clans in Sartar; doing that would leave the Lunars spread way too thin, especially when Tatius is having the bulk of his forces protect the construction of the temple. And the worst time you want your occupying force to be spread way too thin is when they're all simultaneously doing something that's going to piss off the locals mightily.

"The movement has sold out and became just another tool of The Man to bring us down. You are The Last DJs Lunars."

You could have the Lunars who took over Apple Lane be trying to make it (and probably several other nearby hamlets and villages) into the next Wulfsland. And I think the Black Oak Clan aren't canon anymore, but as a clan made up of collective Lunar sellouts, which may include kin, they could make a good stand-in for the Moon Winds or the Dolutha in terms of their role in the story. Alternatively, the latter could be filled by one of the Runegate clans (probably the Enhyl, since they share a common border with more Colymar clans than the Narri), though I think the likes of Selelmal the True would be a very different kind of antagonist than Ivar Quick-Step.