Leingod

Huh. You know, between the way the clouds block out the sun and the rain, a full, proper Storm is in itself a synthesis of several elements. Gives me new perspective on why Orlanth's Storm Tribe has so many "foreign" gods being given a place in it.

I'm definitely more in the "trolls are loud" camp. That said, a lot of the noise trolls make might not be audible (or seem muted) to humans, but that's because trolls can hear things humans can't, and because they feel noise as much as they hear it. Which is probably why their instrument of choice for pretty much all occasions is the drums, and I imagine a troll's singing would sound to humans like a lot of low, reverberating rumbling that occasionally goes so low it doesn't even register to the ears but you still feel the bass. Which makes the war cries and songs of a rampaging horde of Zorak Zorani very unnerving even beyond the visuals they're attached to, but worshipers of Argan Argar and Xiola Umbar, on the other hand, have this very steady, soothing quality to their songs even if you can't hear them "properly." (Now I'm starting to think about "Crushing Noise" again, the child of Orlanth by Deloradella/Kyger Litor, who I asked about and one of the main suggestions is that it represents the sound of thunder; would it mean Crushing Noise is in a good mood if the thunder is "rolling" rather than "crashing"? Do the uz appreciate the sounds of a nice thunderstorm just as much as the Orlanthi do?)

Yeah, the mystery of Odayla's Bear Hunt is that the hunter and the hunted are united and connected by the hunt, and understand that they are in fact one being, not two. Odayla is the bear-hunter and the bear, so there's no "kinslaying" or anything of the sort going on. Now that I think of it, this facet of Odayla might by why the Odaylings of Sylila seemingly accepted Lunar sovereignty much more easily than other Orlanthi have elsewhere, even though they still reject much of the Lunar Empire's "civilizing" influence by retreating to the marginal lands to keep their old ways. The Odaylan mystery of "I am the hunter and the hunted" isn't all that hard to reconcile with "We are all us."

You could have it that Cadwy the Younger converting to Christianity is what "breaks" the magic of Summerland, turning it into the more-or-less normal (albeit still with some enchantment and higher-than-average fairy presence) place it is later on and forces Cadwy the Elder to finally die/leave this world. Sort of like the thing with the Forest Sauvage, where one of the possible reasons to reach its king is to force him to leave at the behest of the Archbishop.

Nah, you just have to not let yourself be intimidated or feel like you're beholden to the published material. One of the most important things to keep in mind is that Your Glorantha Will Vary (YGWV). Mining deep into the lore is something that you should do to get ideas for campaigns and storytelling (or just for personal enjoyment), so don't get too worked up if some detail comes up during play that you don't know the "correct" answer to. If you keep that in mind, you'll be fine.

Did he warn you that Glorantha lore is a deep, bottomless well of knowledge and wonder from which you shall never escape once you've plunged in? Because if not, he should have.

I mean, if we're going to just give it all away, may as well bring up Bundalini and his All-Skeleton Band. Bundalini and his All-Skeleton Band - Willing to perform at your venue of choice for an eminently reasonable fee, an opportunity that comes only once a generation! My favorite part of that is that his bodyless head and headless body were worshiped separately for centuries as Than and Atyar.

I mean, you gotta leave some surprises for people to discover on their own.

Oh, there's a lot of it to go around. There's Brangbane the Ghoul King, who's haunted by the spirits of all the women he killed for their fingers to make a magic soup and now holds court in the Woods of the Dead. The troll berserkers of Zorak Zoran, god of hatred, have their bodies raised as skeletons so they can keep killing even after they've died. There's Vivamort, a Chaos god and the first vampire, etc.

If it helps, they're hardcore worshipers of the local god of war and death who've fought a centuries-long war against the creeping influence of the undead sorcerer Delecti and his army of the unquiet dead.

Suffice to say that Glorantha is a setting that has grown very organically and from many sources over several decades. This is a blessing and/or a curse depending on who you ask.

I seem to recall it being said somewhere that people treat traveling musicians well because they might be Donandar himself.

That probably has something to do with the destruction of the Durevings during the Darkness. Apparently Orstan the Younger, a son of Durev, is the actual carpenter god these days. Ernalda is patroness to most of the crafts of the household performed by women, particularly weaving as mentioned above. Her household includes such godlings as Berlintha (who makes and mends clothes), Eninta (the Storm Tribe's midwife), Pella (goddess of pottery), and so on, though it's hard to say if these would be worshiped when divorced from the Storm Tribe context of the pursuits of the rural steadwife and would still be figured as patrons by, say, a tailor or potter (male or otherwise) living in a city. There's also Pelaskos and Poverri, who are patrons of fishermen of the sea and of rivers, respectively. The former is worshiped mostly in Maniria and the Rightarm Isles and is figured as the son of either Orlanth (probably by Heortling worshipers) or else as the son of Diros, a god of boats worshiped in the Rightarm Isles whom the Heortlings associate with the Boat Planet, so he might be the god involved in actually making fishing vessels, with Dormal (in addition to being much more recent) being specifically a ship-builder.

I've been thinking lately on some stuff regarding Hyalor and Yamsur that I felt like getting off my chest by resurrecting this thread. Yamsur is typically known to us as the dead sun god of Genert's Garden, though in Six Ages it's actually noted that he's a wanderer who often went far afield, including to Nivorah, where he fathered Hyalor, though your clan actually doesn't know this and needs to discover it via Heroquest. Yamsur is presented by the Hyalorings as a feckless wanderer and a fair-weather friend, too flighty and inconstant to rely on. His son, Hyalor, is called among other things “Change-Maker,” and indeed all his most notable acts are acts of Change. He “saved Gamari by changing the rules that governed her existence,” and he “refashioned us [Riders] twice: when he saved Gamari and when he helped us flee Nivorah.” He always embraced both change and freedom, and his greatest gift was to teach people to Ride Like the Wind. Hyalor himself never admitted to being a god or demigod, even though your clan tells that when Samnal denied his divine blood Hyalor “held his tongue for the good of the city,” implying he did know that he wasn't fully human. Did he know Yamsur was his father, and if so, why did he never tell anyone? Would it have somehow been more problematic than his parentage being unknown (which was surely no small thing in a society as stratified and hierarchical as a Dara Happan city)? Did he resent Yamsur and not want to acknowledge him as his father? If so, this also adds a new dimension to the reasons for Hyalor's soothing and saving of Gamari: He would know better than anyone else the pain of being abandoned and let down by Splendid Yamsur, wouldn't he? And then there's this line in Gamari's Heroquest: “If she wanted a loyal sun to follow, Hyalor told her, she would find it not in Yamsur, but in his patron, Elmal.” Did Yamsur know about Hyalor's parentage? Gamari does, as it's from her you learn this fact, so you'd imagine that Yamsur would also know; did he not care? Did Elmal know? Whether he knew Yamsur was his father or not, Hyalor seems to be making clear here which of the two he considers worthy of their respect. Maybe Elmal, ever dutiful, took care of his nephew when his flighty brother couldn't or wouldn't do so. Heck, maybe Hyalor's rivalry with Samnal came about partly as a result of that? Samnal is always described as proud and haughty; I'm sure he wouldn't have taken kindly to this human bastard of unknown parentage that he was expected to treat like family. Are the Wheels so strident in denying Hyalor's divinity even long after his ascension due to Samnal's fear that he's Elmal's son? Regardless of the exact circumstances, it seems clear to me that Hyalor's great power and affinity for Change(/Freedom/Motion) was at least partly something he inherited from Yamsur, but that he proved a far more loyal and faithful sort than his father, whether or not Elmal's example or instruction had something to do with it. (Now I'm imagining that scene at the end of that one episode of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air with Will's dad, but with Will and Uncle Phil as Hyalor and Elmal)

That might just because the focus there is on Rigsdal as a sub-cult of Elmal, and perhaps Rigsdal is worshiped in other contexts that emphasize things like the dance. Maybe he can be approached through Orlanth in that way?

Couldn't he just as easily be a maternal cousin to explain that?

Another possible point in favor of the idea that Leodegrance is on the older side and had Guenevere later in life is that her cousin, who helps facilitate the False Guenevere episode, is a knight named Sir Bertholai, once called "the Red" but later "the Old," known as the best warrior in Cameliard despite his age. Now, the ages of the main players at any given time is often a bit sticky (it feels like pretty much everyone's a senior citizen come Camlann), but if Bertholai is "old" I personally would assume he's notably older than most of the "main cast" at Camelot, including his cousin. Admittedly, there are still any number of reasons for him to have been born so much earlier than Guenevere (he was the son of Leodegrance's older bastard brother, or of an older sister, or an older son who was disinherited, etc.), but it's equally easy to say that Leodegrance's sibling(s) just had kids at an early or normal age while Leodegrance had Guenevere later in life. Which also potentially makes his siring a girl by his seneschal's wife a little more understandable, if perhaps he was despairing of ever having a child of his own by his wife and sought comfort in the arms of another, with the irony that he'd literally just got done conceiving said child. Speaking of Guenevere's cousin(s), according to Mallory she's got two more, named Garaunt and Guy. The former of these seems very similar to "Geraint," called "Erec" by Chretien and who is otherwise absent in Mallory, so some think there's a connection there. Which is interesting, as Geraint is said to be a king of Dumnonia/Cornwall, while in the Book of Sires it comes about that Cameliard is formed from the Cornovii who remain behind rather than settle in Cornwall (which also means Guenevere might be a distant relative to Mark).

I'm not saying I want Arthur to just suddenly become a better warrior and/or general than Lot out of the blue and win because of that, to clarify. I mean I'd like more stuff along the lines of when Arthur fights Pellinore and then befriends him, which leads directly to Pellinore coming to his aid and killing Lot. Arthur still had outside help both in fighting Pellinore and then in battling Lot, but it all still came about as a result of Arthur's own actions and character.

This is true, I definitely think they overplay their hand a bit regarding Uther's flaws as a person and a king, and I know at least some people here agree. Though I will say I think Uther serves a narrative purpose better by being, if not a terrible king, not a terribly just or fair one. It helps highlight Arthur's devotion to being Just if Uther took advantage of his kingly prerogatives to be very Arbitrary, focusing mostly on the advancement of himself and his favorites over actually serving the best interests of his subjects as a whole... But that only works if Uther is also portrayed convincingly as a mighty warrior and warlord who protects Britain from threats no one else can handle as well, and the number of times he needs Merlin or someone else to hold his hand makes it harder to buy that. Which is also my issue with a lot of Arthur's victories in the Boy King period, actually; it's hard to feel like Arthur is really coming into his own, growing into his role as a king and leader, and triumphing over incredible odds when at every turn Merlin is openly and repeatedly pulling out miracles left and right to make it all happen. But that's getting into a different topic. Moving back to Uther, I have this personal thing where I like to think the portrayals of the reigns of Uther and his brothers are reflective of how Arthur's been portrayed by various story-telling traditions, with Constans drawing from the French tradition where Arthur is good-natured but largely ineffectual (le roi fainéant), Aurelius Ambrosius drawing from Geoffrey of Monmouth's portrayal of Arthur as sort of a last gasp for Rome and empire, and Uther drawing from the Welsh tradition of a mighty warrior and war-chief before all else, who often quarrels with the church and treats his own court/warband as synonymous with Britain itself.

I always saw it as, anywhere between Earth and Sky that there's Air to breathe and you can feel wind on your skin? That's the Middle Air. Earth and Air are married, it only makes sense they're very close.

For some reason until around the Book of Sires I was somehow under the impression that Cador was Gorlois's brother, even though that would mean he wasn't actually related to Arthur by blood, just to Ygraine's daughters. Him being a maternal uncle through Ygraine makes a lot more sense, though it seems he missed out on all the magical inheritance implied in the Book of Sires (maybe it only goes through the female line?). Although that might be a good enough explanation about the age thing: Ygraine and her daughters all seem to age much more slowly than normal people, so why not Cador?

I'm actually really liking what I'm reading of Paladin so far, and I think there's a lot of stuff I'll want to try to port over to Pendragon (and vice versa if I ever get to do a Paladin game), but I'm having a bit of a real case of dissonance when it comes to how overtly medieval Paladin gets in the treatment of religion in particular. Like, Pendragon lets you play a pagan or other non-Christian if the GM okays it, any tension between Christians and non-Christians is mostly down to roleplay, and in most of the wars in Pendragon religion is, if it comes up, usually more a division/tension-builder that helps spark a war than a primary cause. And throughout most of the books I've read, Arthur's attempts to convert people to Christianity mostly consisted of setting up and protecting religious institutions to preach to them, mostly to the Picts. Then you get to Paladin, and participating in the slaughter or forced conversion of hundreds if not thousands for the heinous crime of not being Christian is now suddenly A Thing that the game as written seems to expect you to be doing when the chance arises, and - perhaps the real sticking point for me - both narrative and game mechanics will treat this as unquestionably noble and heroic and pat you on the back for. Which, as someone who is both a modern 21st century human and not a Christian, is not really something I can comfortably get behind. I can handle somewhat realistic portrayals of religious beliefs in a historical period, but I really can't bring myself to uncritically valorize them just because it's in keeping with the spirit of the source material. I think it might also be a tonal thing. Pendragon, to me, is always best when tinged with melancholy, and dwelling upon how often reality falls short of an ideal, how fleeting success is, how impossible perfection is, etc. It makes it easier for me to consider Arthur and Lancelot and the rest of that lot admirable and heroic even though in some ways they're all kind of total messes as time goes on. Meanwhile, even though a lot of the characters I'm looking at in Paladin seem just as flawed, but yet angels and saints and such are constantly leaping to their aid whenever they get in a rough spot, even when it's a problem of their own making. I think there's kind of a more triumphant tone in what I've read so far of Paladin that just rings a little hollow for me? I don't know, I'm rambling at this point, and I don't want to let it go unsaid that I've been poring over the book for hours at a time for the last few days ever since I got it, looking things up, getting ideas, etc., so I certainly don't want to give the impression that I haven't gotten a lot of value and enjoyment out of it, and I think there's a lot of stuff that could be used to great effect in Pendragon. Just not most of the religious stuff, at least for me (though a Patron Saint/Patron Deity thing to give a minor bonus might be cool, add a bit of extra flavor to the players' families...).

They're probably Gagarth's. In addition to his Wild Hunt already being known to have hounds in it, Gagarth (called "Chase-Everything" in the myth) is stated to have "sent ravening beasts to nip at Wandering Star's hooves."

Cool. I wonder if that plays into the Yanadlings' decision to abandon the worship of gods for spirits? Them being survivors of the North Clan and all.

Odayla is probably an even better example of that than Yinkin. And of course there's the fact that Raven is often believed to be a mask/guise/form/whatever of Eurmal/Trickster, but at least recognizably acts very much like a spirit in-game.