Sir_Godspeed

Well, there is some issue on whether Pamalt truly is the equivalent of Genert, or whether that is a God Learner interpretation made in the name of apparent symmetry and systematization. The Doraddi seem to hold other aspects than just that of the earth as his most important qualities (leadership, for one). Of course, that might've been true for Genert back in the day, too: he sure did attract a lot of followers. Genert's death, and a lack of a masculine Earth Husband does seem to explain, to some extent, why Ernalda/the Earth Goddess seems to be passed around like a prize trophy, though. Makes you wonder, if things had been different, if we'd seen an Earth King with Storm, Rain and Sun Wives. Who knows.

@Jeff When you say that the Vingkotlings built their fortresses/palaces in a circular fashion, is this meant in an elevated position, or also on flat areas? Was there a particular kind of architectural style (in terms of decoration/construction method) that was utilized, or was it more varied depending on local materials or styles? I am especially thinking about the Cyclopean buildings style, with large blocks of stone put together without mortar, versus styles that uses smaller stones (like Great Zimbabwe), or even bricks (bricks seem more like a Dara Happan thing , due to being associated with Mesopotamia, but I might be off on that one). For example, I know of this Russian Bronze Age/Late Neolithic settlement that has, while not spiral, at least a concentric circle pattern. Would this be too simple-looking for Vinkotling architecture? Or something like this? Is this more Vingkotling, or more Early Theyalan? - Just to be clear, I am not expecting specifics, necessarily, just sending out feelers to gauge the varying trends of complexity and simplicity as these civilizations rise and fall over the millennia. Lastly, I have this question - does the new art direction preclude the kind of wattle-and-daub/Iron Age longhouse-style Heortling settlements we see in King of Dragon Pass, for example? I quite like that style personally, and wouldn't mind it being a viable type outside of the walled citadels, but the new artwork of for example Apple Lane seems to indicate that even small settlements will look more "Mediterranean".

EDIT: Please pardon my response - I mistook this entire thread for being new, and not just the latest post. Feel free to ignore this. It does help make the Dwarves more sympathetic - something which I personally am certainly very much in need for, given that the current Mostali lore is... not hugely approachable (no offense to the writers, I just "need" some emotional resonance to be able to sympathise and root for a race, and I can do that for Aldryami, Uz, etc, but I struggle to do so for the Dwarfs as they currently are presented.) Aren't there some enslaved Dwarves in the Brass Mountains in Peloria - or am I mixing them up with the Third Eye Blue?

Silly Genert. 😏

Oh boy, if this discussion starts delving into the issues of Epistemology and Phenomenology as they pertain to the nature of "experience" and "knowledge" we're going to go into some deeply frustrating stuff, let me tell you.

Didn't we have a thread on this not too long ago? Someone made the argument that the giant baby on the cradle grew up to pilot the Boat Planet. Time being different in the Underworld. (That was entirely a "In My Glorantha"-moment, not a statement about "canon" events.)

Interesting. Is this based on a direct description, or extrapolation? On the one hand I can why the DHan would be more elaborate and ostentatious, due to DH's imperial pretenses and accumulated wealth - but on the other hand, Pelanda is famously the land of artists and artisans. Perhaps this just reflects a particularly naturalistic and minimalist style? Or is it a practical Carmanian influence?

True, but forks are a luxury item which have a very narrow purpose which can mostly be performed by other items. The same is not true for knives.

Or Pent. Possibly with the added meaning of "slave".

Most ritual specialists for most of human history, tbh. And not just because writing was unavailable. You pretty much provide the reasons for why memorizing and the monopoly of oral knowledge is important. Keep in mind: this is not about practicality. If the goal was simply to ascertain descent, then fine, but in practice these sorts of things are about so, so much more. Knowing grants power. In a dispute between lineages, the person with the knowledge will be given reverence in order to act as an arbitrator. Moreover, the lineage may contain secrets which only a few people should be privy to, magical secrets or otherwise. Additionally, it may in some cases be the mastery of the knowledge that grants one authority, rather than the other way around. There's also another issue, which has to do with flexibility and plasticity of knowledge. We all come from text-biased cultures, and we tend to priviliege the written word due to it being seen as more accurate and less prone to mutation (and thus inaccuracy). However, one of the problems of writing is that in the process of writing, one ossifies a specific version of events, and unless one accounts for all possible future potential scenarios, it's unlikely that the written account or version will be flexible enough. In an oral version, however, the ritual specialist, or arbitrator, can emphasise or deemphasise different aspects of their knowledge, based on their understand of the conflict in order to give a fair (or unfair!) opinion. That last point was something my professor dealt with in Papua Guinea.

Yes, but monopoly on knowledge is power. Don't underestimate someone's desire to keep their knowledge exclusive.

You could cut the "Greetings" altogether, I'd imagine. "Out and about, Kjarr?" "Aye, got business with the thane. Mare's about to foal." "Ah, well, Elmali ought to know, aye." Or just extremely casual stuff for people you'd see multiple times a day, even: "Kjarr." "Gerrick."

Even if you disallow horizons on the sea, there will still be horizons on land, due to, well, differences in elevation. There's also the issue of atmospheric disturbances.

I think we're over-stating the Air-Earth dichotomy in Orlanthi society and mindset. While it might work on a Runic and gamey sense, I doubt it strongly applies in your average cottar's daily life. It's true that the Earth is mostly feminine to the Orlanthi, but as the VAST majority of Orlanthi male spend the MAJORITY of their lives working the earth, it comes off as a bit weird to have working the earth be conceptually feminine, because it means that the main livelihood of most Orlanthi is "women's work". It would be as if receiving wages was a feminine thing in the capitalist world. I rather hold that the marriage of Ernalda and Orlanth opens up a more nuanced and mixed idea of what it means to be, well, human, both male and female. Barntar, close to the Earth, but not directly of it, applies a "tempered" Storm-masculinity to it, at least partially by taming the Wild Bull, and inventing the Barntar Plow (This is mythically important, imho, as previous Earth-culture agriculture was probably non-plow based, being horticultural in nature). Granted, I'm the sort of person who don't really care what rune a god has or hasn't, so I understand if someone else needs more clarity for the purposes of gaming.

My immediate thought was that the head would be useless to the Thanatari because the Dragonewt reincarnated and "got away" - however, I don't really know the rules or precedence for this sort of thing. The opposite seems reasonable as well, I just liked the idea of evil cultists avoiding Dragonewts because not only are they hostile, they are also *weird* and useless.

You know, during my current work on my master's thesis, I spent a little while reading about everyday, casual greetings in the region I did work, which prompted me to look into it a bit more generally, just out of curiosity. Often, these "mundane greetings" meld a bit together with people's ideas of the public and private, "important" (in an everyday sense) activities and so on. Greetings might incorporate references to well-wishes or blessings, they might also incorporate queries that are almost formulaic. Small talk in a sense, but ingrained into a greeting, as it were, kind of like the ubiqutous "how are you?" So for example: "Greetings, Kjarr - seen the clouds today? / You noticed the easterly winds last night? / Did you catch the morning rain?" (I come from a place where the weather often changes, and the weather is our immediate focal point if no other topic is apparent. I imagine Orlanthi too would see weather as a natural, everyday topic to shoot the breeze about.) "Greetings, Kjarr - did you eat yet? / What's for dinner?" (This one might seem a bit off to some others, it certainly did to me - but in South India where I did my fieldwork, the weather stayed pretty much the same for weeks on end, and so talking about the weather everyday was a non-starter. Instead, their daily, polite icebreaker smalltalk was about whether you had eaten yet, and what you had eaten. It was as natural to them as mentioning the possibility of rain is to me. Maybe not entirely thematic to the Sartar people, but Esrolians, maybe?) "Greetings, Kjarr - coming or going? / Off somewhere? / Off the stead? / Out and about on the tula, eh? / Business with the thane?" (It's pretty common to idly inquire about everyday business. It's trivial enough to not be offensive, but interesting enough to keep local chatter going. Gossip is incredibly important in small-scale societies.)

Yeah, too many damn names, lol. Verapur was the main city-state of Rinliddi in the Golden and Storm Ages, and associated with the bird-deities like Avarnia , Vrimak (possibly) and Tholm, and may possibly have been the capital of the independent Ratite/Riskesting Empires or Rinliddi Dynasties of Peloria (it's a bit hard to say exactly what the political situation was). It was also the northernmost of the remaining Dara Happan cities immediately prior to the Glacial period, and it was the first one that got squashed. Acording to the Reascent, the Dara Happans said they had to evacuate/join the other city states in building the Roof to protect them from the glacier - but the Verapurans believed that they would be able to melt the glacier away as it neared in. They were wrong. That's probably why I mixed it with Nivorah - both got taken by the glacier - but Verapur was the first, and Nivorah was the last. Both rejected Imperial commandments as well. One is the city of birds, the other evidently a city of horses.

Derp, yeah, I got them mixed up. Nivorans, obviously.

That's sort of my point - performing gendered work is clearly very important to the idea of gender in Orlanthi society. Is it an absolute rule? No, but it's an important part of the equation.

Or, to turn it on its head, the sword is basically a flesh-axe.

I assume he meant Nandan instead of Barntar. The issue here is whether the Orlanthi consider "doing [gendered] work" as separate from "being [gender]". That's definitely not a given.

I'm definitely missing something here.

Yeah, I don't see any reason why they wouldn't be broos. Also, I'm not really sure if any of the deer-Hsunchen (Pralori, Uncolings, etc.) are known for shapeshifting, unlike the carnivorous Hsunchen (Pendali, Telmori, Rathori).

I'm bummed about that too - but then I'm one of those who'd like a bit of every race in every region to increase story hook potential.

I'm not sure if I can see Vezkarvez or Ezelveztay as incarnations of the Fire Rune itself - imho, they supersede (and precede) those concepts and strike me as more in line with Glorantha (the goddess), the Invisible God (in the sense of being a world-maker who stands above the separation of runes as separate, definite entities), the Draconic/Vithelan Ouroboros/the Cosmic Dragon, etc. etc. In short, they appear to be another entry into Greg's tendency to give his polytheistic mythologies a monistic anchor-point. It's a motif that repeats itself a lot, though not everywhere, in Glorantha. As for the rest - again, it's certainly possible, and I do love a good mythic conspiracy. However, I think this latest "summary", while very clean and straightforward, mimicks the "orthodox" Dara Happan propaganda (ie. the Reascent) a bit too much without taking into account the differing perspectives we have. In other words, it appears to me to be essentially a re-jiggering of some names and titles, but essentially the same narrative. I personally strongly doubt larger section of that narrative, partially due to not knowing how tampered with it was during the First Age Dara Happan reconstruction, but also due to the almost mind-boggingly complex and contradictive partial narratives we have from around the Pelorian basin that just doesn't fit into it, and which appear to be older than it. For example - both the Monomyth (or some Heortling myths, iirc) and Dara Happan myths seem to argue that the Emperor was a being who was "chosen/elected" or what have you, to lead and rule (and was apparently specifically made for this purpose). I'm skeptical of that, or rather, I'm skeptical that the apparent turn to centralized, patriarchal power was entirely legitimate. Something fishy went on there, as per the Entekosiad (or even the Vithelan myths, which depict Vith and his successors as less solar-centric, if indeed they even are solar entities).