Sir_Godspeed

The Glorantha Sourcebook describes stars are fortress-openings in the firmament, each held by a Star Captain. This is obviousy only one of several perspectives, and one specific for the Gods War at least, but hey.

Not sure how relevant this is, but I just wanted to point out that we, the players and readers, are not Gloranthan.

In a universe like Glorantha, which incorporates pseudo-Platonic runic ideals, I think it's a fairly reasonably model.

It'd be interesting of some of the stars/planets that died when Umath disturbed the sky left nebulas behind, as remnants of supernovas. Doesn't have to make a huge amount of sense, astronomically, but would be fitting mythically, and looks cool. A mention of the Green/Golden Age Red Planet having a green ring around it would be pretty cool too.

Are you thinking of Aristoteles' usage of "kinds" in the Categories? I can see where you're coming from, but just to be clear - the way "kinds" is used by modern YEC (which, I am aware, is a modern movement) has to do specifically with trying to counter the abundance of evidence for speciation, and perhaps most clearly trying to deal with the limited space within Noah's ark as it is described in the old testament, when compared to the sheer, literal, volume of species of animals that exist today. It's essentially a type of classification that allows speciation within artificially constrained clades - so for example, you can have speciation within "cat-kind (lions, tigers, cheetahs, housecats, etc.)", but none of them will ever deviate from the basic cat-archetype that was present on the ark. It's nonsense, of course, and quackery of the highest order - HOWEVER, due to Glorantha running on evidently non-Darwinian evolutionary logic, and its phylogeny being radically different (f.ex. molluscs and insects being closer to each other due to shared darkness ancestry than insects and vertebrates, which would be more closely related in the RW), I think it's a model that would fit fairly well there (exceptional events notwithstanding).

With regards to speciation: as much as I dislike using the terminology of Young Earth Creationism, I could easily envision Glorantha working along a logic of "kinds", where there is a certain continuum along closely related animals (eg. big cats as one group, cloven cattle another, or bears another), which can interbreed internally pretty freely, but then a more steep division between more distantly related clades (ie. cloven cattle and goats/sheep). So brown bears and grizzly bears would be more of a case of subspecies and demes in RW lingo than true species, even where they would be different species in the RW. For example, turtles and tortoises comprise over 350 species in the RW, but in Glorantha they all seem to come under the totemic auspices of Sofal. I'd imagine that they could conceivably crossbreed due to this logic. I'd imagine "totemic orientation" is more important than any RW biochemical compatibility. Of course, Sofal might have many "sons" or "daughters" pertaining to the specific species, kind of like how the totem gods for lions and tigers are distinct, despite these falling together in my "kinds"-schema. Then again, I believe there is some kind of pseudo-Linnean system used in Anaxial's Roster that tosses that view aside, but I haven't read it yet, so I don't quite know. EDIT: Of course, there are evidently ways to get around reproductive limitations regardless of how things works biologically in Glorantha. The Praxians have that whole weird survival pact thing going on where apparently llamas and bison and impalas can all interbreed (albeit rarely), due to their shared ancestry/patronage/pact-membership, and gods and heroes getting on with "impossible" partners is kind of par for the course.

They vary in size and luminosity, but I believe they are about as visible as IRL, with certain exceptions, such the Lightfore (which is really more like a RW full moon, as far as I understand), and possibly The Red Planet (Shargash/Tolat), which is quite large. I agree with you though - it would be cool to have rings on some of them. Other celestial phenomena as well. If nothing else, then at least for flavor.

Chaos is a patriarchal conspiracy? I'm joking, mostly, but it's admittedly a known tactic in the RW: in order to maintain prestige and legitimacy of rule, a warrior elite needs some kind of enemy. If no such enemies are readily apparent, they can be made. I suppose you could argue that both Yelm/Brightface and Orlanth have done something similar in relation to their respective Earth-Life goddess counterparts at some point in history, though exactly how "conspiratorial" it is, as opposed to just being an arrangement most are satisfied with given difficult conditions, will probably vary on a case by case basis. As this thread touches on, Yelm might have an origin in somewhat more overt, intentional subversion of preceding hierarchies (this raises the question whether this applies to all Sun deities in general, or whether this is a peculiar Pelorian phenomenon - compare and contrast with Yamsur, Elmal, Vrimak, Ehilm, etc.).

Well, that's what a Lunar would say. I imagine plenty of others have different views on that tussle.

I'm not entirely sure what you're getting at. The tumblr-blog "jenxrodwell" is the official personal blog of Kalin Kadiev, artist at Chaosium, and artist of the Prince of Sartar webcomic. He appears to have put his art up there to promote the webcomic, as well as other drawings of his. I highly doubt Chaosium has a problem with this, for a myriad of reasons. The tumblr-blog "glorantha" reblogged these back when it was active. Reblogging is an automated process whereby material hosted on one blog is displayed on another as well, like Facebook sharing, Twitter retweeting. It's not actually copying. Whether they are the same I people behind the blogs I have no clue, but just wanted to clarify for people that none of this constitutes breach of copyright - unless Kalin Kadiev is contractually prohibited to display his own, otherwise publicly available art on his personal/professional art blog, like one does in a DeviantArt gallery, or an online portfolio website - which would seem like a ludicrously draconian contract to me.

The art from jenxrodwell was reblogged, which is tumblr's equivalent of, say, pressing the "share" button on Facebook. It was not stolen/pirated, if that's what people here are implying. Frankly, it doesn't surprise me much that there's so much art from the Prince of Sartar and jenxrodwell regardless of who ran the blog, since at the time there weren't exactly a huge amount of other, regular, art released of Glorantha (afaik).

I remember that! The Glorantha Tumblr was one of the first ways I got bite-sized lore info on Glorantha, back when I was first discovering the Prince of Sartar comic as well. It follows a kind of fandom-answering pattern that was popular on Tumblr a few years ago, with similar answering blogs dedicated to Lord of the Rings, or the Elder Scrolls, and so on.

While I'm following you pretty far, I'm just thinking about how the "High Sun" to Tarumath's "High Storm" was Daysenerus, not Yelm. How does one reconcile this?

True. But it bears reminding that the gods TRIED to destroy the Lunars and the Red Goddess at the battle of Castle Blue... and failed. Why would Gift Bringers or other things fare any better if the Lunars uncovered Runequest Sight?

Something to do with the Gamatae, perhaps? They're supposedly a different group from the Hyalorings, but I wouldn't be entirely surprised if one was ancestral to the other, or there was some intermingling at least. The Gamatae, having different dynasties ruling over different parts of Peloria at the Dawn (including Pelanda in the west), seems to imply warlikeness. But I'm just speculating.

It would probably be more useful to have some kind of short-range combatant there, armed with a slashing weapon - to drive off those who would try to take advantage of the rhino's (relatively) slow speed, and poor maneuverability.

Ah, straight from the source! Thanks for commenting. ^^

I've heard they don't take kindly to our types around them there parts.

Allegedly. I wouldn't say everything (we have a pretty substantial amount of evidence by now that something radical happened with regards to reinterpretation of local myths as cultures reconnected in the Dawn Age). But it's an interesting thought nonetheless, which is why I'm enjoying this thread.

This raises questions about the Red King and/or Vantestos. Could they be solar entities? Did the Protectors of Darsen-Naveria always have to be solar in nature? (I genuinely have no idea).

I just read the Glorantha Sourcebook section on Mostali, and it, like the Guide before it, is frustratingly vague about this. First off, a lot of the texts are, at least to my eye, quite poor at consistently differentiating the eight True Mostali from Clay Mostali (Dwarfs). Secondly, the illustrative images we get of the Mostali in the Guide show radically different bodies, but calls them (for example) "Iron Dwarf" and not "Iron Mostali" in the picture text, iirc., so it seems that even Clay Mostali will appear very, very different based on their caste, even if these differences are only approximations based on what the surviving Clay Mostali remember of their True Mostali forebears. The Sourcebook is also frustrating in that it insists that the Dwarfs are all of a single race ("unlike elves and trolls"), and then goes on to list all the different kinds of True Mostali, which at very least SEEMS contradictory, because it also clearly states that the original Mostali were all made through different processes from different sources, which kinda implies a kind of "racial" difference. All Clay Mostali (modern Dwarfs) left might be "of the same race" (though different castes, and if the illustrative images show modern dwarfs and not True Mostali, then certainly highly differentiated ones), which is fine, but they're not the only *Mostali* left. There are some True Mostali left as well. Why don't they count as "different races"? No idea. But yeah, this is all a bit of a sidetrack.

Oh boy, then you definitely just go thrown into the deep end. Welcome!

Are these stones very big? I remember that Peloria is filled with various megalithic structures, like dolmens or something similar - so it might be a nod towards that? No idea, to be honest.

Assuming that Gloranthan chitin behaves like RW chitin. Considering the size of Gorakiki bugs and the RW limitations of endoskeletons and spiracel-based breathing, there is definitely some fundamental differences in play somewhere.

I JUST read the water pantheon section in the Glorantha Sourcebook, and I believe Mastakos was mentioned there too, but I forget where.