Leingod

Not so much a theory as just a half-formed idea for both an alternate heroquest path and some identification of mythic items: The Lawstaff/Justice Staff is actually the same item as the spear called Justice that manifested itself for Elmal when his brothers attacked him, and which represented "the last bit of good in the Fire Tribe." Elmal presented this spear to Orlanth when he set out on the Lightbringer Quest, which was also when he and Orlanth exchanged shields. In other words, Orlanth obtained the Fire Tribe's power of (and command over) Justice, and with it the true divine right to rule, when he resolved to do the right thing and resurrect his enemy to save the world.

Anyway, Elmal giving Orlanth his spear and exchanging shields with him is effectively the Elmali version of the Hill of Gold story where Orlanth beats Yelmalio and takes his spear and shield. In places where the cults of Yelmalio is less hostile to that of Orlanth, I think these two stories are merged; when Yelmalio encounters Orlanth on his way to the Hill of Gold, Orlanth appears as an old enemy, but now a penitent one, who has resolved to risk death and worse to make right his biggest mistake (i.e. killing Yelm). Perhaps he's lost his weapon, or Yelmalio is somehow made aware that Orlanth will need Yelmalio's spear for his quest to succeed.

If Yelmalio refuses to offer his spear, Orlanth turns violent, beats him and takes both it and Yelmalio's shield, as in the "standard" version of the myth. If Yelmalio is willing to offer Orlanth his spear, Orlanth makes a vow of friendship and offers to exchange shields to seal it. If Yemalio refuses, nothing happens (though perhaps Orlanth gets a bit grumpy), and he'll lose the shield regardless in the next station. If he accepts, then Orlanth's shield will provide some benefit to Yelmalio before ultimately being lost as well. This probably makes some point about making a willing sacrifice of personal power for the greater good, and of being willing to aid even an enemy if their cause is truly just.

12 hours ago, Darius West said:

Note that it is Gawain who is behind the revelation of Lancelot and Guinevere's adultery

Wasn't that Mordred? Gawain doesn't seem to have been all that invested in the matter until Lancelot killed Gareth.

Also, for anyone wanting to do their own research, the term to look for is "onna-musha" or sometimes "onna-bugeisha." You can use the associated Wikipedia page as a starting point: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onna-musha

34 minutes ago, SirUkpyr said:

Erol - please, would you provide a source for your statement about women muskateers at the Battle of Shizugatake?

Mind you - the ashigaru arquebussers of Oda Nobunaga at the Battle of Nagashino was more than enough of an ego-cut!

Wikipedia cites the Bizen-han Bakumatsu Ishin Shidan, though the evidence is generally anecdotal rather than empirical; it's not improbable, though, as the claim is that this force was raised and led by Ikeda Sen; the Ikeda were influential due to their close ties to the Oda (her grandmother had been Oda Nobunaga's wetnurse, and her father was close in age to him and became one of his trusted commanders), and her husband at the time was the brother of Mori Ranmaru, one of the notable casualties of Mitsuhide's betrayal. If any woman were to have the influence and gumption to raise an all-woman unit in the wake of Nobunaga's death, someone like her would be a good choice to do it. Various sources, though likely coming from the Edo Period and thus being of dubious accuracy, also claim she fought in other battles of the period, including Yamazaki and even Sekigahara.

There are other accounts of both individual women of the warrior class taking up arms and fighting on the battlefield - I could name several - and a few other accounts of small units like that discussed above. Further, DNA evidence suggests that there was more of this going on than the records state, not less; tests on 105 bodies from the Battle of Senbon Matsubara (which happened in 1580) revealed that 35 of them were women. Tests elsewhere have given similar results, so in at least some battles as many as 30% of the active combatants may have been women.

As for Nagashino: It's very likely that massed volley fire wasn't used at that battle, actually. Certainly it was invented sometime before Hideyoshi's invasion of Korea, since Chinese and Korean sources discuss its use there, but there are several reasons to believe it wasn't actually in use at Nagashino (which I won't get into since we're getting off-topic again).

Well, I can't fault them for wanting to build their own worlds and games, but it's definitely a bummer nonetheless; I was really hoping to get to see more of their ideas about a Dundealos campaign.

6 hours ago, Alex said:

Status I can see, but which freedoms in particular?  Are we going to have warrior women in Phase 2, and pedestals and gilded cages in phase 4?  Or something more like the opposite?

"Freedoms" was probably the wrong word. I was thinking specifically of stuff like inheritance laws changing to the detriment of widows and such.

Personally, as a general rule of thumb, the way I'd handle it is that the more Romanized a part of Britain is, the more they've adopted Roman-style patriarchy and monopolization of arms. So the civitates where even common city-dwellers claim to be "Roman citizens" are the places least accepting of warrior women, then more generally any part of Britain that was subject to prolonged Roman rule and influence (i.e. most of modern England, including all of Logres), and so on. This will of course mean that those who oppose the idea will be able to argue that the practice is inherently barbaric and/or pagan, but even pagans in a place like Logres have likely grown unused to the idea of women warriors among themselves due to centuries of inevitable Roman influence in both culture and religion.

This isn't necessarily to pin the blame on Rome and Christianity or write pre-Christian Celtic paganism as idyllic and wonderful, though admittedly it's easy to read as that. It's just what I think is a good way to incorporate the stuff that's been discussed here in regards to women warriors among the Irish and Picts in particular but keep the phenomena something seen as relatively new and regarded with suspicion within the parts of Britain where most stories are likely to take place (and thus makes for good fodder for culture shock, either as knights go abroad or come from elsewhere).

You might write the rise in status and freedoms of women, only for it to start to degrade later into Arthur's reign, as just one of the many indications of the gradual decline of Arthur's reign, as Arthur and his realm start to stagger and totter under the weight of their own successes and their small failures and failings compound and start to come home to roost. You could even make it emblematic of Guenevere's failings in the way the fall of the realm is sometimes ascribed to Arthur's, as she becomes so consumed by things like the Courts of Love and her relationships with Arthur and Lancelot that she increasingly neglects the other aspects of womanly power that she once championed early on.

5 hours ago, Alex said:

In the special case of Eurmali, I can't help but think of the Tarot Hanged Man, dangling by a foot.  Can't even do that the same way as right-minded, clean-living folk!  Which as a punishment is either much more lenient, being non-fatal in the first instance...  or even worse.  Starve slowly to death, crows peck out your eyeballs.  At night, ice-weasels come...

From the Wikipedia page on the tarot card, this is apparently reflective of a relatively common method of execution in Italy back in the day:

Quote

A 1393 decree for Milan and Lombardy of the punishment for traitors: “Let him be drug [dragged] on a [wooden] plank at a horse’s tail to the place of execution, and there be suspended by one foot to the gallows, and be left there until he is dead. As long as he lives let him be given food and drink.”

Well, not every culture is going to make a spectacle out of public executions or have a very elaborate way of executing criminals, in the same way that not every culture mutilates or imprisons criminals. Sartarites and Praxians, IMO, are probably pretty casual when it comes to killing outsiders who commit crimes; just stab them dead, dump the body in a ditch somewhere, and go about your day.

There's also Garan the Low Star and Serias the Star Lover, founders of the Garanvulli. Presumably most of the Vingkotling tribes whose founding involves a foreigner marrying one of Vingkot's female descendants has some kind of love story attached to it, even if (IIRC) we only really know the details of the Garanvulli and Berenethtelli stories.

5 hours ago, Alex said:

And as you say, some decisions will be taken by the whole Inner Ring, or the Outer Ring, or the clan moot.  Pace your political efforts accordingly!

And even if they won't explicitly be putting things to a vote or otherwise officially putting the decision in the hands of the Inner or Outer Rings, it's at least a great way to put pressure on the clan chief to see things your way. Very few are going to be in such a secure position they won't at least hesitate to gainsay a big enough bloc of notable clansmen.

I personally prefer to use "Sir," probably because it's what Tamora Pierce used in the Tortall books, and those were my very first exposure to fantasy that focused on knights (lady or otherwise).

54 minutes ago, HeartQuintessence said:

What about Goddesses?

Dendara is often viewed as Ernalda's  overlord, Mistress., while Ernalda does all the work in  Yelm's realm (raising children, managing the house hold).

 

Is this an expectation of  Glorantha women, that the women in the house hold will defer to some kind of  'overmistress' and that is proper?

Cause in my one stint as a initate of Ernalda in a glorantha game,  Ernalda- took little shit from Yelm ( and never spoke with Dendara.. which does make me wonder, why Dendara isn't more featured in Ernalda's myths. They are both women, and yet  it seems that Dendara is forever just 'Yelm's trophy wife'. She's there to look pretty, bear his children and little more.

I would figure that any cult write up is gonna hopefully expand on her. But I am tired of the same old narritive of women in fiction being, demure, baby producing, housewives.

It was pointed out to me at some point that Dendara is the urban domestic wife; divorced from the fields and the pastures, she's been distanced from the production of food, leaving her only with things like childbirth and weaving, and in patriarchal Peloria her only uncontested authority is over the household servants (which Ernalda also has and embodies, in the form of her various aspects).

As for why she features in so few of Ernalda's myths, it's because she isn't of much interest to the Orlanthi who tell the myths we know of. The Orlanthi men certainly just see her as "Yelm's quiet trophy wife" and many of the women probably do, too. Even urbanized Orlanthi (including the Esrolians) just adapt Ernalda to their needs, because why wouldn't they? They have no built-in disdain of rural "peasantry" like the snobby Dara Happans do.

And Pelorian men would care to learn even less of Dendara's mysteries, because they're even more hard-line gender essentialist than the Orlanthi are. Even though the emergence of the Lunar Way has changed a lot, your average Pelorian man still likely doesn't learn much about the old "women's goddess."

1 hour ago, HeartQuintessence said:

Now they need not be  Vinga or Babesteer Gor or Maran Gor either... but I always feel weird htat there is such a strong.. dichotomy, of Earth women, and Air women.. we hardly hear of Fire, Water, or Darkness or Sky women..  of a female girl being born in Glorantha and lacking the sterotypical Earth rune, but perhaps a fire rune with fertility still strongly present. That should produce some interesting characters.

Just lets put aside the Orlanthi 'all' for a moment. lets talk about those women shouldn't always = Earth.

The more I thought about it the more it made me think a woman with Fire/Sky, Fertility, and Harmony- change the one rune from Earth to Fire/Sky and that should produce a completely different sort of girl.

She'd buck trends, and probably lack the associated 'firmness' of an earth aligned sister.

You can only really think that there are no women associated with Darkness if you're only thinking purely in terms of human women; the Uz are more matriarchal than the Esrolians! Though admittedly troll women are rarely sighted above-ground, but that's because they're too important for that. Scrabbling around in the Hurtplace is for expendables.

We could definitely do to have a light shone on the Dark Orlanthi, though (pun very much intended). I've always been interested in learning what human worship of Kyger Litor looks like, and Yrsa Nightbeam could be a very interesting counterpoint to all the other powerful women in Dragon Pass right now if she got to be more than just a name.

As for what happens when a woman doesn't have the Earth Rune, and instead has another Element? She joins an appropriate other cult, which may or may not have an Elemental Rune in it. It's really that simple. Fertility and Harmony, but some other Element? Good fit for Chalana Arroy. Humakt, Lhankor Mhy, Yelmalio... There are a literal multitude of deities who allow members of either gender, far more than those who are actually rigidly set on what gender you can be.

9 hours ago, Darius West said:

This is perhaps why the people of Sartar weren't simply rounded up and sold into slavery. 

There's probably something to that, since according to the Sartar Companion the rebellion and destruction of the Dundealos was deliberately engineered by the Lunars simply because Tatius the Bright wanted an excuse to take more slaves in order to build the Reaching Moon Temple on time, and he would have done the same to Wilmskirk had Fazzur not put his foot down and refused to allow it.

Keep in mind the opinion of the priestesses you're trying to convince to raise you up to that status in this particular temple matter, too. Unless Ernalda sends some omen that says it's acceptable or you have some kind of similar magical proof of your worthiness and the legitimacy of your achievement, trying to be "clever" with the basic requirements is probably a good way to get shown the door.

8 hours ago, Darius West said:

Raw ambition is also a thing.  It is an uncomfortable decision to make, but some Sartarites got pragmatic and decided to make the best of the occupation by towing the Lunar party line, thinking that the Lunars had won and it was futile to resist.  Kangharl saw the opportunity to cement his leadership, and to get not only Lunar support but a better deal for his tribe financially.  No magic involved.

I seem to recall S:KoH portrays it as essentially a mix of that and Kangharl being genuinely disillusioned with his peoples' traditional gods. In his mind, Orlanth has definitively lost, and the people just have to accept that if they don't want to be trodden underfoot by the victorious Lunar gods and empire.

2 hours ago, Bill the barbarian said:

I must be the only one to love ambiguity in canon? I feel that when sources disagree, therein be the realms of imagination! A tabula rasa, it’s your game, baby!

Huzzah!

I mean, ambiguity can be fun, but I think it's a bit much when the sources disagree/are mistaken on who was reigning as king one year before the start of a typical RQG campaign, because it lists some guy we've never heard of as somehow having been king simultaneously for Blackmor's entire reign. If your character comes from the Colymar (which is by far the most fleshed out tribe in Sartar, so not unlikely), they should know who the king was from 1615-1625, and any irregularity should be noted and pointed out for the players' benefit. This isn't an event from decades or centuries ago where it makes sense there would be some confusion.

3 hours ago, David Scott said:

(I mean who is ever going to admit they don't like fart jokes publicly when the clown is around)

Whoever they are, they just volunteered to be the victim of every single one for the next week.

Personally, it always seemed to me like Leika was never exactly friendly to the Lunars, but that she was willing to undercut Kallyr and back a pliable idiot for Prince out of simple personal ambition (and maybe just actual dislike of Kallyr), which happened to play into the Lunars' hands quite nicely. She might have been convinced that she could preserve her independence, or at least be given more latitude than the Lunars were actually willing to grant. IMO, the Lunars backed Kangharl to depose Leika because she was too proud and/or ambitious to accept the same deal Kangharl did.

16 minutes ago, Alex said:

Yeah, this has been much-discussed in the past, in threads on clan exogamy with such content as "wait, having sex with my tenth cousin -- or tenth 'cousin-in-law' of no known blood relation at all -- is incest, and I'll get the the full 'you're festering chaos and will now be put solemnly to death' treatment?!"  But there are inheritance and property laws in play, albeit not quite the stuff of eurofeudalism.  So if there's two clans, a kid and no marriage involved, you have a potential dispute as to whose inheritance and property practices apply.  (You might have a dispute even in endogamous 'irregular union', but more in the 'scolding from your relatives' range, and 'swift decision by the clan ring' at worst.)

I feel reasonably confident that in most cases, the default assumption is that the child is first and foremost the child of their mother, and will be raised as part of the mother's family. If the father wants to bring the child into his own clan, or bequeath things to him,  or if other circumstances put pressure on him, then it might get more complicated, but otherwise that's likely the go-to solution. Ernalda herself has many children whose fathers are either unknown or just don't matter enough to be mentioned (or just outright don't have a father).

Yeah, it's always seemed clear to me from my readings that, generally speaking, Heortlings don't much care what unmarried people get up to with each other, even if it results in a child. There are obvious exceptions, of course, but it's all obvious stuff, the usual suspects. People your clan hates, close relatives, bandits, Tricksters, etc. There isn't some strict, patriarchal inheritance law that makes it super important that you be the "legitimate" son of a given man to decide where all the property goes, after all.

It's almost like the Lunar have been making a bad habit of meddling with forces they don't understand or control nearly as well as they think they do until it backfires on them horribly, or something.

28 minutes ago, Akhôrahil said:

Could Zolan Zubar still exist as a minor worshiped god (apart from his role in the Kolat tradition), perhaps especially outside of more pure troll areas where Zorak Zoran has taken over? For something as big a deal in the Dawn Age, it seems sad to see him go completely.

Well, he isn't completely gone. As mentioned above at multiple points, Zolan Zubar survives as one of Kolat's Seven Winds (specifically "Below Me"), the core spirit society of the Kolating tradition, and thus is a being pretty much any Kolating spirit-talker is at least passingly familiar with.

The rightly-famous Borderlands book presents a scenario like this. The players need to re-provision at Hidden Green, but are stopped by nomads from four different tribes who say the oasis is already at capacity and if they are to use this place, one of the groups already present must leave. To decide who stays and who goes, the players compete in five contests (one for each group present, and one to be chosen by the players); if they can win three of them, then the defeated group with the fewest members has to leave. If they can't win at least three of the contests, then the players can't stay here, and they'll be attacked if they refuse to leave.

We might assume this is at least one way for an oasis to change hands between clans or tribes, but if the losing tribe refuses to accept the outcome, maybe on grounds of some unfairness, then it might escalate to actual battle outside of the oasis, where the rules against violence don't apply. I imagine that usually, those involved recognize that it's to everyone's benefit not to tempt violence within the oasis itself, even if that means vacating it for now, but there could still be some tense standoffs as people weigh their options and wonder how far the other is really willing to take this.

1 hour ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

The draconic left path is to avoid entanglement.

The Eurmalic path is to get entangled as much as bloody possible! 

Know thy enemy. 😛

Well, to clarify what I mean (because I'm being slightly serious when I say it), both agree that the world we see and experience is fundamentally an Illusion. The main difference - at least IMG - is that the draconic path is all about returning to the primordial "true" reality, while the trickster doesn't think things are any less meaningful just because they aren't the Truth, or at least that there isn't necessarily a real "Truth" to be found and so it's pointless to look for one.