Leingod

Or maybe that Eurmal's own insight into the cosmos is close enough to draconic understanding to allow him to impart some misleading false insights whose consequences will start small but become a big problem later.

3 hours ago, Martin Dick said:

Still his Fire powers were gone forever, but as all who follow him know, the price needs to be paid.

Since I'm replaying it for roughly the thousandth time, this puts me in mind of how Six Ages presents the myth of Hippogriff becoming Horse, with the loss of her wings, claws, and fangs ultimately being a shedding of unnecessary parts, allowing her to become who she needed to be so that she and the people who now depend on her could survive.

On 9/8/2021 at 6:49 PM, jajagappa said:

A significant factor, I believe, in this phenomenon is written text which often seems to "freeze" or codify myth to one "true" form or meaning.

So what you're saying is, Lhankor Mhy cultists have the exact same kind of arguments we're having right now, and everyone around them is just baffled at how hung up they get over it? Yeah, that sounds right.

42 minutes ago, Morien said:

(including the liege of the Father, if he is from almost anywhere south of the Wall and north of the Channel, except Estregales)

Unless of course your PK is from Glevum/Gloucestershire, since Eldol managed to fight his way out.

Very strict religious vegetarianism can and has existed even in the very distant past, so its presence in one of Glorantha's cults is hardly a modernist departure from reality. Jains have been very strict vegetarians for a very long time, and the general position on it has always been "Do no more harm than is strictly necessary for the sake of survival."

In the case of Jains, that includes the obvious avoidance of meat, but also of root vegetables (since harvesting them usually kills the plant, and also disturbs organisms in the soil, like insects and fungi), unfiltered water (they have a traditional way of filtering the water that's intended to return any tiny organisms back to the water), fungi and yeasts (since they grow in unclean places and so might accrue tiny organisms in them) and fermented foods or, for especially strict Jains, foods that have been stored overnight (for similar reasons as the one prior), just to name a few. And again, they've managed to make that work, even long before modern times where we have access to more and a greater variety of food than any other time in history. So the idea that it's "impossible" or "unrealistic" for Chalanna Arroy worshipers to have a vegetarian diet - one that is probably a fair bit less restrictive than that of Jains, since CA worshipers are probably allowed to eat things like stored or fermented food (since those are the work of magic in Glorantha rather than microorganisms) - doesn't really hold water IMO.

Now, obviously in a place like Prax it's not hard to imagine there may be a circumstance where a Healer is faced with breaking these strictures or starving to death; in that case, the nigh-universal answer religious scholars and authorities have had to this question has pretty much always been to break the stricture. Maybe you'll want to undergo some ritual cleansing or penance afterwards, but self-harm isn't considered better than harming others, and as mentioned above, the general position regarding religious vegetarianism has pretty much always been on minimizing harm as much as possible while keeping yourself alive, not "do no harm or die."

57 minutes ago, EricW said:

They’re all thieves and cause mindless property destruction if it amuses them.

I think of them as street hobos with dangerous magic. Barely tolerated, regarded with deep suspicion, but in Glorantha occasionally utterly essential, when normal paths to overcoming an enemy are closed.

I don’t think anyone would tolerate a large collection of tricksters under normal circumstances.

What if they manage a large enough worship group to count as a temple, giving them access to who knows how many dangerous trickster spells? Everyone remembers the infamous Sartar Teddybear Picnic.

Better to disperse them, by force, before there is any chance of that happening!

I mean, Tricksters are kind of self-policing in the "don't let too many gather" thing, most of the time. There just plain aren't that many at one time in the first place, as it's hardly a role in life people aspire to and choose to take up. And by their very nature they aren't good at working together and forming groups with each other. So even if the Sartarites didn't generally try to ensure they don't have more Tricksters in their midst than they feel a need for to maintain the benefits of having them, you probably wouldn't get much cooperation between them, especially long-term.

1 hour ago, Eff said:

I mean, if you look at the myth in Storm Tribe, Doburdun is a headache Entekos had, produced by the Rebel Gods, and he went forth to thunder at them. Or, in other words, he's a part of the storm, specifically thunder-related, subordinate to the overall Storm god and born from them. By multiple definitions, he's a Thunder Brother. 

Except this requires one to believe that Orlanth = Entekos, which is something I don't think anyone has seriously tried to claim and magically prove in-universe. Some have tried to equate her with Dendara or later Sedenya, but I don't think even the God Learners, the champions of conflating very different deities based on their Runes, ever tried to claim Entekos as Orlanth and Doburdun as a Thunder Brother.

On 8/28/2021 at 4:13 AM, soltakss said:

It can do. After all, Doburdan is one of the Thunder Brothers.

Really? I've never seen that anywhere.

I wouldn't be surprised if there was or would be an attempt by some of the Esrolians to do that (or at least to support it) if they ever became aware of Doburdun, actually. Not even necessarily Red Earth ones, either; the Grandmothers in general usually seem to want to downplay and weaken Orlanth as much as they can without denying him entirely (since the plain fact is that he's too intricately bound up in Ernalda to do that without it affecting her, as the Windstop seemingly proves), so magically proving that he (or one of his aspects, which they can then try to make the main one in Esrolia) is basically Vogarth-Strong-Man-but-Storm-God sounds like an appealing prospect to a particularly ambitious house, especially when Broyan was going around being called the Last Vingkotling.

On 8/21/2021 at 8:01 PM, Bren said:

So for a Trickster "rules are made to be broken" and you can't break the rules if there really aren't any rules. I like it. 😀

Adding onto that further, the Illuminate believes that the rules simply don't matter/don't apply to them because of their deeper understanding. But if the rules didn't matter, there'd be no point in spending so much time breaking them, so obviously the Trickster thinks they matter even if they don't think the rules themselves are worth following.

The Illuminate has realized that the rules are illusory, changeable, and arbitrary, and so decides they're unimportant and chooses to ignore them; the Trickster has realized that the rules are illusory, changeable, and arbitrary, and feels compelled to show this to everyone; possibly out of simple Schadenfreude and amusement, but possibly also to try to compel others to rethink their blind obedience to these rules (and gods).

And now since it's on my mind still, some other notes on the various groups encountered or mentioned in the game and where they might have ended up.

The Ergeshites are almost certainly the Sidarsi or at least the ancestors thereof; they live in the same place and both are pastoral goatherds worshiping Sidar. So that's an easy one. Even easier are the Votanki, who are mostly going to keep doing their own thing until Balazar comes around (though stuff like a Votanki competing in a marriage contest in Dragon Pass in the First Age suggests there's a bit more going on there than you'd expect).

The Yanadlings, formed from survivors of the doomed Northern Riders who gave up theism entirely, are marked “Tunoralings” in the game files, which has been noted before in this thread. And although they're mainly associated with the Raccoon God worshiped by their Vanchite descendants, and that's what was focused on back then, the wiki also tells us they paid tribute to the Hyalorings and that they worshiped “Heliacal the Sun and Negalla the Green Woman” at a temple-village called Lolon by the Dawn. Which sure sounds an awful lot like they resumed the worship of at least two of their old gods, if with altered names. They were still hunter-gatherers, though. Maybe Heliacal and Negalla were actually syncretic deities, one combining elements of Elmal and Dostal and the other Nyalda and Inilla?

It seems likely to me that the Wheels will eventually become the Gamatae, or at least one of the groups that make up its origins. The Gamatae were essentially chariot-driving counterparts to the Hyalorong, after all, and they were very widespread; we aren't privy to tales of the Samnali exodus, but they've clearly scattered fairly widely already, since the ones inhabiting the valley don't originate from the Northern Wheel Kingdom. Most likely the various groups of both Gamatae and Hyalorong scattered throughout Peloria originate from these migrations that eventually coalesced into larger tribes/kingdoms. Maybe the Wheel kingdom that forms in some playthroughs is the birth of one such group?

Meanwhile, some of the Southern and Eastern Riders will live on as one of the component groups of the Berenethtelli and the Ogorvaltes, respectively. Those left behind will probably become other Hyalorong groups. But what about the Western Riders? Well, I'm pretty ignorant about the western parts of Genertela, so I can't really venture a guess as to who, if anyone, they might be related to. Maybe they end up in Ralios? But it maybe makes more sense as a narrative for the Western Riders to be a group that doesn't survive to the Dawn as a coherent group or descendant group; Stelfor and Nameforgot were the chieftains who let Hyalor down when he needed them, and Stelfor seems to have refused to learn from Hyalor's advice and kept on being a violent asshole, so it'd be fitting for the Northern and Western Riders to be the ones who didn't make it.

I just found something interesting in the game's files: The Yeleni are marked as “Odayling.” I should also note that the Spirit Hills, just across from where they live across the Oslira, is marked as “Sylila” in those same files.

Now, obviously this might just refer to the fact that it's the land that will become Sylila and the home of the Odaylings, and there's actually no real continuity between the two groups. It's entirely possible, likely even, that the Yeleni just get killed off or absorbed into other groups and the Odaylings have little to no relation to them except inhabiting lands they once did.

On the other hand, it'd make for a good shake-up in the sequel for this pathetic, ragged group of weaklings you sometimes get the chance to bully mercilessly or throw a bone out of pity ends up becoming one of your more powerful and dangerous neighbors once the Great Darkness rolls around and they switch from following a Vulture to favoring a Bear.

There's a special treasure in Six Ages: Ride Like the Wind, which is a giant blue goat. The Blue Goat grants "luck and fertility" to a clan that it lives with, but more importantly for our purposes it "never dies and cannot be slain" (at least by mortals) and it "remembers the full history of the Ergeshite people." It's also noted that it doesn't speak aloud, but its spirit can talk to shamans.

BTW, the Ergeshites are marked "Zarkosites" in the game's files and are probably the Sidarsi (a Dawn Age group) or the ancestors thereof, since they live in the same place and are pastoral goatherds worshiping Sidar Goatfather. So this might mean the Blue Goat knows the full history of the Zarkosites.

Anyway, this emphasis on its recollection of history (which is even in its brief write-up as a Treasure and is the first thing mentioned, with the second being "blesses our goats." And remember this is Glorantha; if something takes priority above livestock, it's a big damn deal!) implies to me that the Blue Goat isn't just a passive spectator that happens to be immortal; it's an intelligent being with an agenda of its own and powers beyond the immediately obvious (if you try to steal it and fail, the goat easily wipes out your whole exploration team, even if you've got an actual Hero leading it), and some kind of interest in keeping the lore of its people safe.

So, this Blue Goat is "immortal and unkillable" and capable of intelligent thought. Which means it might have survived into the Third Age. And now, to outline the actual dumb theory (emphasis dumb) that brings me here: The goat is blue, knows ancient secrets, and goats are associated with Chaos by Orlanthi. There's a Blue Moon, whose goddess is associated with ancient secrets, and moons are associated with Chaos by Orlanthi. Ergo: The Blue Goat has some connection to the Moon Rune, and if it reappears it might have a role to play in the future of the Lunar Empire.

22 hours ago, SirUkpyr said:

Interestingly - the whole "Gawain as unproven knight" is the same aspect they focused on in the movie "Sword of the Valiant" - where Sean Connery plays the Green Knight.

LOVE Sean Connery's Green Knight.

It seems that interpreting the Green Knight story as happening fairly early during the time of the Round Table and with Gawain still young and somewhat untested is a rather popular modern take.

Yeah. Shamans usually live on the margins of society in Sartar, in the literal sense; they tend to spend much of their time away from the villages and cultivated fields when they don't have business there, and are seen as strange and sometimes suspicious but usually helpful and worth being nice to and treating fairly. They trade their services for whatever they need to support themselves, and (especially as an apprentice) might supplement that by hunting, stick-picking, etc. They're friendliest with, and most trusted by, other inhabitants of the boundaries between the "settled" and "wild" world, like hunters (I don't know about how this would be handled in RQG terms, but in HQG Odayla can even be worshiped as a spirit cult, under the name "Serkos").

You can see that's pretty different from the societal role shamans have among the Praxians; that difference in expectations can likely be milked for good culture clash and drama. Normally Praxians are considered dangerous foreigners, but in this case saving Apple Lane outweighs that, so that at least would be ameliorated a bit.

Also, I seem to recall Jeff has commented that Waha is actually given worship in Sartar as a patron of butchers due to his teaching the Peaceful Cut, though I don't really know where to find it. So hey, if your shaman is good at that and is looking for supplemental income, there are worse options than becoming the village butcher for a while.

2 hours ago, Joerg said:

Shield of Justice, IIRC.

Pretty sure Justice was the name of his spear, not his shield.

Unfortunately, there really hasn't been much material on Caledonia pre-Arthur; the North basically doesn't come up at all until Uther arranges northern marriages for his new step-daughters. Lot, Nentres, and Uriens practically spring up fully-formed in that moment for all we know of them and their home region. Anything else you'd have to stitch together. For the most part, you can just assume that the people in power c. 485 are the parents or grandparents of whomever's in charge c. 520. and work from there.

We do know, though, that King Carados of Escoce was born in 468 (and thus is a year younger than Lot, who was born in 467, which is actually surprisingly young). We also know his father's name: Galam. So Galam is probably king at this time in your campaign, but that's about all we can say about him.

We know more about Lot and Nentres. The two are both grandsons of one of Cunedda Wledig's many sons who all founded their own kingdoms in either Wales or Caledonia. Specifically, Lot's grandfather is Tybion and Nentres's is Herawd. Lot's father is named Cadlew, and Nentres's is named Clydog. Of Nentres's mother, we only know that her name is Druantia. Lot's mother is more interesting: Named Der-Ilei, she is described as a "Pict Princess of Orkney." Reminder that Orkney in Pendragon is this very weird, insular, creepy place that spends most of its time being ruled over by an enchantress. Perhaps that goes back much further back than you'd expect?

It's also interesting in that if we assume Nentres and Uriens are of a similar age as Lot, then for them to be regarded as strong and well-known kings by 494 - when Lot would be 27 - then all three took the throne at least a few years before that. Meaning they were all very young men - maybe even boys - when they became kings (which makes Lot's mockery of Arthur a funny bit of hypocrisy, always a plus in my book). If we add this assumption and the above one about Der-Ilei, it paints a very interesting picture of Lothian's court politics around the time of Lot's ascension.

For Uriens, you can just draw from his inspiration, Urien Rheged. In which case his father is this guy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynfarch_Oer

27 minutes ago, SDLeary said:

In the Gloranthan example, its Monrogh telling you that A is B, without any physical reinforcement. Hell, he could simply be bewitching you!

The revelation wasn't just Monrogh saying "Hey, Elmal isn't Yelm, he's Yelmalio." Monrogh's revelation was a magical one, a divine one. Remember that this is a world where gods exist and people have personal spiritual connections to them. If Monrogh's revelations weren't true (not necessarily the only truth, but still true), they wouldn't have bought it

That's how it works in Glorantha: The magic worked, so clearly the stories of the gods you learned the magic from are correct, as if everyone else's stories that gives them divine magic, even though they seem contradictory. Monrogh's revelation pinged as true to the Elmali, so that was now their magical reality; their choices were accept it or abandon the worship of Elmal entirely since they know knew him to be Yelmalio.

And you could make the "potential bewitchment" argument for literally anything else involving magic, so it isn't really a useful line of thinking.

24 minutes ago, Eff said:

EDIT: I almost wrote a thing about how Babeester Gor is a sacred guardian of the Earth and prefaced it with "to be pedantic", but now that I think about it, I suspect that it's not actually that pedantic in terms of where Babeester Gor's violence is directed. After all, one's body is made of Earth, and if someone defiles another person's body, such as via sexual assault, then quite possibly that constitutes a defilement of sacred Earth and so Babeester Gor cultists engage in murderous violence against rapists generally, with this looking gendered because of the ways in which Gloranthan gender roles are similar to our own. But all this is a passing thought. 

Well, it's also because to the Orlanthi mind the concepts of "Earth" and "female-ness" are so intertwined as to be practically interchangeable in many contexts.

Could Firshala's cult operate outside of the Elder Wilds? Probably, since Praxian spirits like Oakfed are worshiped outside of Prax.

Could an Orlanth initiate join that cult as an initiate? I think so, if he's got the Rune Affinity for it; Firshala and Orlanth have never interacted, and so are probably considered Neutral to each other.

Could an Orlanth Rune Lord/Priest/God-Talker do it? I would say no, since IIRC you're not supposed to be dabbling in unrelated spirit cults after making that kind of commitment to a single god.

So IMO your character could become a Firshala initiate as an Orlanth initiate, but that means they can't become a Rune Lord without giving it up.

18 minutes ago, Joerg said:

That concept of subcults has been taken back a couple of notches. Ulanin still works as a hero cult of Orlanth, as much as he did for Elmal back in the days. (If his rider god wasn't Yamsur instead.) There is also the possibility to approach him via ancestor worship. Quite a lot of the Orlanthi in Heortland have Orgovaltes roots, as far as I can tell. Possibly as many as have Hendriki roots, or after centuries where inter-marriage could have happened, both.

Well, a lot of Sartarites probably claim Orgovaltes roots in particular because that ancient tribe lived in the area and thus there are a lot of ruins and sacred sites to them. It's a chicken-and-egg scenario as to whether they came to Sartar because of their ancestry or "discovered" this ancestry after coming to Sartar, either to protect themselves from ghosts or spirits associated with the Orgovaltes or claim benefits from them.

After all, unlike the Hendriki, the Orgovaltes were an ancient tribe that dissolved more than a thousand years ago. Just about anyone who lived in Heortland probably had at least one ancestor from that tribe if they went back far enough, and ditto for several, if not all, of the Vingkotling tribes. It's just a matter of what's magically relevant and thus emphasized in your myths and rites.

10 minutes ago, Jeremysbrain said:

Oh I know that and it could be the case of noncontiguous borders or exclave territory, but none of that is mentioned.  Nor is it mentioned which county these settlements are supposed to fall under.

Im just searching for the best way to reconcile the map with the text.  Exclave of Bastogne is probably the best explanation.

Well, it technically doesn't matter much anyway, since Aachen and IIRC at least a few of those other places are directly held by the king himself. For all intents and purposes, they aren't part of the duchy or the prince-bishopric, even if their territory happens to be inside the boundaries of one or the other.

1 hour ago, simonh said:

She can join the queue.

Forcing her way to the front past the other people who want a piece of Eurmal is likely the first station of the Heroquest.

Personally, I would just create a lay abbot for one of the abbeys (the named abbot could be demoted to the provost, who actually runs the place while the lay abbot just enjoys the benefits).

33 minutes ago, Jeremysbrain said:

Taking a closer look at the map and comparing it to the text I'm seeing more things that don't match up.  It lists Aachen, Chevremont, Herstal, and Jupille as all being part of the Duchy of Ardennes, but they appear on the map in the area described as being Prince-bishopric of Liege.

Well, a certain amount of ambiguity and confusion about borders and outliers and such - especially where church lands are concerned, given how many forged charters claiming this or that bit of land rightfully belonged to the local bishopric or monastery were made - is fitting for a game about feudalism.

37 minutes ago, yojimbo said:

From Wikipedia. Presumably, this fictional County of Salm covers the same region.

It probably doesn't, since Vielsalm is on the map as a part of the Abbey of Stavelot-Malmedy.