Leingod

Plus in The Book of Heortling Mythology Barntar is described as so strong he once beat all the Thunder Brothers at arm-wrestling, and IIRC I've seen mentions elsewhere of Barntar being a good wrestler.

Looking over The Book of Heortling Mythology again, I notice the throwaway line about Beren(eth) and Reda(y)lda: "All of their daughters were the Red-Headed Women." This would normally be taken by the Orlanthi to refer either to Vinga or to Redalda (who is the only one of Vingkot's daughters who has any real description given to her, noting that she is red-haired), but it might instead be an artifact of Osara once being present among the Berennethtelli. Further evidence might be that it says that the stories of the Red-Headed Lodge of the Berennethtelli are "included" in the saga of House Vinga, the collection of tales about the Warrior Women of the Vingkotlings. Later Orlanthi who forgot about Osara might have just assumed that it was a local name for Vinga or something and just subsumed the tales of the Red-Headed Lodge into those of the Vingans.

Not so much "fake" and more that they were just philosophical constructs dreamed up by the God Learners to fit things more squarely into their view of the world, IIRC.

Isn't that Brastalos the No Wind?

Do you mean when Orlanth faced down Storm Bull for bullying Yinkin?

Culbrea Tribe: Alright, if you can leap over these bulls, you'll be our king. Hofstaring Treeleaper: 😏

I don't think there's actually any mention of Kero Fin anywhere in the game. It certainly isn't anywhere on the map. As for whether it can be seen, I don't know, is Saird/Holay close enough to Dragon Pass to see Kero Fin? Because that's where you are on the map.

No clue, though I like how it seems to have lightning bolts for pupils and its mouth and those things on the side of its "face" seem to have swirling designs that call to mind either whirlpools or winds. It certainly makes sense for them to figure into ritual worship for Storm worshipers. I bet when the kite-fights get really competitive people start bringing out magic to command the winds to mess up the competition or help their own kite slice through the enemy kites. I can just imagine a bunch of Windlords throwing around powerful magic and getting really intense and serious about flying kites to prove who holds the blessing of Orlanth. Heck, that's probably what the kite-fight between Orlanth and Kolat was; a competition between the two to determine which of them had the better mastery over the wind. Just handled by the two in a much more peaceful fashion than it would have been with, say, Vadrus or Storm Bull.

Kites were popular and important throughout the Polynesian diaspora, as far-off as New Zealand; these were made with cloth rather than paper. In Tahiti, they even used them to help propel their rafts. http://islandheritage.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/RNJ_12_2_Henry.pdf Just look up "Polynesian kites" and you can see some of the designs:

Oh, and there's also a tidbit from a loot table in the Runequest: Glorantha Quickstart adventure that describes a board game that apparently dates from the time of the EWF: Given that you can "remember" the rules I assume it's still played in the Third Age. I wouldn't be surprised if this wasn't some reference I'm not getting (I never really played a lot of board games growing up).

Just the one from the event itself, but yeah, it seems to run the gamut from pretty basic designs to stuff like what you see in the foreground here.

It actually explicitly states that they didn't drink milk at that time: Most likely the practice (and even ability) to drink animal milk was something the refugees from the Empire needed to develop independently to survive out in the wilderness. Which is probably why the Riders drink kumis (i.e. fermented horse milk) as their primary alcoholic beverage; kumis can be drunken even by people who are lactose-intolerant. They may have received the "kumis gift" from Gamari before Busenari and Uryarda gifted them the ability to drink milk. Well that makes me wonder if Sartar also has resinated wines: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retsina Although I could also see it as something more associated with the Tarsh Exiles.

One thing that's stuck with me from King of Dragon Pass for my portrayal of Orlanthi pastimes is kite-flying games and competitions, like this one: I think there's even a line somewhere that a kite-fight was how Orlanth convinced Kolat to join the Storm Tribe.

Doburdun, called Loyal Storm and Urnbudud (Mastinan for "Thundering" and a title shared with Orlanth, Vadrus and, oddly, Shargash) but that's just a Pelorian cult that is a subject of the Lunar Empire and isn't rebellious like that of Orlanth, not really what I would call a "Moon Wind." Plus, his names and titles and powers are already known to the Sartarites, so they'd just call him Doburdun.

I would guess it was Sedenya finding some way to create a Young Elemental for Storm or perhaps even birthing some kind of new Storm god or demon as part of its last, desperate attempt to keep the Red Moon in the sky by trying to turn Orlanth's element against him. But as far as I know the brief mention in King of Sartar is really all we have to go on, so it could be anything you want it to be, honestly. I think he means the "Moon Wind" mentioned as fighting for the Monster Empire during Moonfall in 1655, as described in King of Sartar. Not the Moon Winds of the Red Cow saga. EDIT:

Yeah, I was definitely thinking the justification would be something like that. I would say one good way to handle it might be that an Elmali might want to find "the truth" and so would go on the Heroquest where Elmal joins the Storm Tribe after wandering around doing stuff, and when they go off the beaten path they find themselves not at the Hill of Gold, but on the Sunpath, where they face the other Small Suns in the wake of Yelm's death, including Little Yelm/Yelmalio. Then like Elmal did he goes south on the Sunpath, which ends up leading him where he was "supposed" to be, facing Orlanth over a river crossing, or perhaps right at the doors of Orlanth's stead, where he's ready to test Orlanth and be tested in turn to see if he has what it takes to lead the people through the Darkness and restore order.

I've actually had an idea kind of like that, where a woman among the Sun Domers searches for her own revelation in the Gods World and reaches the Hill of Gold, where she stumbles upon the stations of something similar to "Nyalda's Bride Price," where Nyalda/Ernalda spurns Little Yelm/Yelmalio for trying to chain her in his palace and tells him "A wife is not a slave." The results of that, whatever they were, would almost be guaranteed to at least cause a real stir. I mean, I've expressed the sneaking suspicion before that two of the potential Three New Stars, Siwend and Saren, are in fact the gods known to the Hyalorings as Dostal and Samnal, respectively (in which case Inilla would also be Siwend's wife, Indeg). If the Three New Stars Heroquest could resurrect those gods, there would almost have to be others that could do the job, too. I bet if you resurrected Varnaval and Saren you could probably make some cool ritual where they compete in a chariot race with Mastakos to see who's the fastest (he said, because really he just wants an excuse to have huge Roman-style chariot races in Kethaelan cities). It'd be interesting if such a rediscovery of an old Hyaloring god coincided/bumped into an Elmali Heroquest currently ongoing, like if some Elmali is performing "Elmal Guards the Stead" and suddenly the red-haired daughter he didn't know he had is helping him fight the Chaos monsters with fiery arrows.

It really does. Thanks a ton!

So I looked through Greg Stafford's post on initiation for Orlanthi youths and... still don't really know how to handle it. Like, how does a child know which god in particular he wants to initiate into? Obviously most of them are just going to end up initiating to Orlanth in some form, but what about the rest? Does the young man just happen to manifest the right runes for a particular god over the course of it, or does there need to be some particular event during the rite that marks them out for that particular god? That is, do you just find out you've got a Water rune and then initiate to Heler because of that, or do you need some kind of encounter with Heler for that to happen in the first place? Then there's the fact that Kolat isn't even a god, but a spirit, and I haven't found anything that really describes in detail how and why Orlanthi men decide to take up the path to becoming a spirit-talker. Do they just manifest the Spirit rune and make the choice to pursue that path on their own afterwards, or does it actually come up during their initiation in some way, like they find some other way to handle the challenges that involves dealing with spirits in some way? So yeah, that just raised way more questions that I have no idea how to answer.

I think you mean Osara and Zarlen. And yeah, most likely they either died or just faded out of relevance entirely when the Hyalorings became Orlanthi; when Elmal stopped being the head of his own pantheon and just became Orlanth's Loyal Thane, a lot of his supporting cast probably just kind of dropped off in favor of the Storm gods already present over time. At most, perhaps they crop up as minor subcults now and again among Elmali clans, like a clan where they call the Thunder Brother renowned as an explorer Zarlen instead of Destor. But yeah, it really is unfortunate that a lot of the material in Ride Like the Wind isn't really very usable in campaigns set in Time unless you're willing to really overhaul your personal take on Glorantha for it and throw out a lot of the written material, likely up to and including the prevalence of Elmal worship in the first place in the Third Age, since as written the cult is basically on the outs in favor of Yelmalio anyway and you pretty much only have Runegate and a few scattered clans to play with if you want to have a place where these gods can have a place, since I can tell you right now that the Sun Domers have no place in their society for any red-haired warrior daughters and bright-tailed wandering sons. Any real Hyaloring revival is pretty much going to need to be entirely home-brewed, though it could certainly be a pretty epic series of experimental heroquests and adventures undertaken by, say, members of the Runegate Triaty looking for something to empower Elmal's flagging worship by diving deep into his past or something.

I've never really started out with an initiation before and don't really know how those typically play out except that it's a kind of spirit quest thing, so I'm afraid I don't really have any ideas to contribute to that. Especially since Kolat's a spirit and not a god, and I know even less about the typical procedure of an Orlanthi realizing he's meant to be a spirit-talker.

For whatever reason, the one-sentence mention of Broddi Strong-Kin's neglected youngest son (pg. 33 of The Coming Storm) really caught my eye, and I find myself wanting to make some use of him. I was wondering if anyone else's campaign (or campaign ideas) involve Jaraltyr in some capacity? Personally, I've got three major ideas for how to use (and interpret) Jaraltyr as an NPC (or perhaps even a PC!): 1. Jaraltyr the Shepherd – In a clan that's even more obsessed with cows than usual for Orlanthi, Jaraltyr is a chieftain's son who's still herding sheep. He's a young man without much ambition, loves to watch the clouds roll by and be alone with his thoughts (and sheep), is overall a fairly quiet but friendly guy, probably a bachelor. I'd probably make him a follower of Heler rather than Orlanth, and take the cue of Jaraltyr being a very staunch and loyal friend despite his reputation as a lazy dreamer who isn't that great in a fight. Might make for a good PC, as a sort of coming-of-age story of finding himself in the crucible of the Hero Wars and the Red Cow clan's struggles, perhaps especially so if the group picks Varnaval the Shepherd King as one of the Three New Stars. Even as an NPC, he'd at least be a decent option for a priest to recruit for the Eleven Lights (again, especially in the case that Varnaval is one of the Three New Stars). You could probably also emphasize a desire to earn his father's love and approval, with Broddi being the typical archetype of the father who expects his sons to fill a certain mold that Jaraltyr just isn't cut out for. 2. Jaraltyr the Shaman – I tend to associate “dreamers” with either shamans or prophets (or both!). In this interpretation Jaraltyr was probably always marked out as “strange” in some way; very quiet and reserved but with sometimes unsettling amounts of insight, probably on the small or scrawny side with relatively little interest in the typical manly pursuits of a Heortling tribe; nothing at all in the mold of the typical blustery Orlanthi man's man that his older brothers typify so well (and that Broddi himself also fit in his youth). Heortlings in general seem to not be very comfortable with spirit-talkers and shamans, recognizing them as useful but confining them to the margins of their society (which to be fair is where many of them tend to be). He might make for a good NPC to help give hints and insights to the PCs through his dreams and visions, or just a good option if a player wants to play a Kolating shaman (or more likely assistant/apprentice shaman) with strong ties to the Red Cow clan to explain why he's sticking around and going on adventures for them. Although... can a shaman become a priest of the Eleven Lights? I'm not sure how that would work, and that might be kind of a sticking point if one of them can't really join the namesake magical society. 3. Jaraltyr the Moon Wind – Probably an NPC-only option unless you're willing to have Moon Wind PCs in your run of Eleven Lights. This would essentially be taking Option #1 in a different direction, where Jaraltyr can become a more sympathetic face to the Moon Winds. The Sardalings, after all, are all in the Lunar pocket from the very start, so it's likely the players will be adversarial from the beginning to them, and IMO at least they're likely to lose all possible sympathy for Ustarna once she heals Wilandring the Giant to let him rampage around trying to kill them. Jaraltyr might make for a good NPC to establish early on (perhaps even as an early friend or ally of the PCs), perhaps playing up how desperate he is to earn his father's love and approval, which eventually leads to him turning to the Seven Mothers when they offer him the validation he isn't getting from his clan or family. It might be a good way to put a face and a coherent argument to the idea that the Red Cow has more problems than just the Lunar Occupation itself, and that their own attitudes might stand with some examination. It might also give some added nuance to the question of what to do with the Moon Winds afterward if there's a prominent (or even still friendly!) Moon Wind who didn't sell out the PCs or sic a giant on them.

Which is the best kind of lie to tell.

They might have turned to the worship of Tunoral after Raven (who is apparently a guise/aspect of Eurmal) left to go on the Lightbringers Quest with Orlanth. After all, a thieving Raven spirit, a thieving Raccoon god, not a big jump for them to make, right?

I mean, I can't imagine it would hurt to know, so why not?