Sir_Godspeed

Missle Root sounds like a tongue-in-cheek play on, or adaptation of, Mistletoe. The European mistletoe has seen some traditional medical usage, apparently to alleviate headaches and arthritis, and possibly to help with blood circulation. I don't have the qualifications to say whether any of this actually works, though - but seems like it would be applicable to Glorantha.

This inevitably draws us back to the question that I posed a while ago: when an Orlanthi looks up at the sun disk overhead, does he identify it with Elmal, or the (Bad Emperor) Yelm? It just seems kinda silly to me to print all these books where they say that the sun god of the Orlanthi is Elmal, but having this be massively misleading if he's actually only a god of the night-time Lightfore.

I'm not entirely sure if that's the right angle to go at it... I'll have to do this some other day, but I have some thoughts about how the God Learners appear to have transplanted the geography of Golden Age Dara Happa onto their mythographical "map" of the Golden Age Earth Cube in its entirety. The Footstool of Yelm aligned with the spike, the directional colored cities/camps of Peloria become directional colored camps of the cube furthermore aligned with oddities in Time (Luathela, Vithalash, etc.) as well as the Four Worlds model (North for theistic, east for mystic, etc.). In that perspective, Yelm hovering above Raibanth might be have been interpreted by the God Learners as some unspecified solar entity hovering above the Spike. The Dara Happans never, to my knowledge, even acknowledge the existence of a spike at the centre of everything. To them, the Decapolis is the centre of the cosmos, with the Footstool and Shaft of Light in its centre, and (possibly) Yuthubars above, where Ezelvestay and the Glorantay have retreated beyond, iirc. My impression is that the God Learners - probably via their contact with the Theyalans - took that quite literally and applied a VERY LOCAL Pelorian cosmology onto their attempt at a "global" (lozengal) cosmology. It's like a game of Chinese whispers: DH: Yelm sat at the centre of the world above the ten cities. Theyalan: Uh, huh, the Sun-Emperor sat at the centre of the world. The centre of the world, which is close to Dini and the Spike. God Learner: Ah, so the Sun sat at the centre of the world above the Spike. The filtering through the Theyalan-Pelorian syncretism of the First Age makes this even harder to untangle (due to Harono possibly being the "original" bad Emperor that Orlanth, or possibly some version of Vingkot, competed with), but, well, yeah, something's amiss, in my opinion. Peloria having a local cosmology of itself that is essentially a fractal version of the God Learner's vision of Glorantha as a whole - to the point where "Empire of Brilliance" (or some equivalent) can be applied to both the area immediately around the spike and the area immediately around the decapolis - stinks of retroactive syncretism to me. This also ties into the near-maddening geographical whiplash you get in Orlanthi mythology when the Bad Emperor's Court is sometimes located inside the Spike, and sometimes to the north of Vingkotling lands. The God Learners may have thought it was best to just slap those locations together for convenience's sake. Of course, the question is - if so, what does that *mean*? Because they all appear to work for Heroquesting.

That's a fair criticism of most of modern Western scholarship on social dynamics up until the 70s-80s, or so, from my impressions. A lot has been done since then, but I assume very unevenly in different disciplines, and even less has permeated into popular science/culture.

Most of the sources I've seen derive it via Old French "Serjeant" to Latin "Servire", ie. servant.

If you want to play it safe, here are some suggestions: 1. Civic and military titles not differentiated. Example: Chieftain, king, Elder, etc. 2. Generic titles for leadership with no fixed hierarchy and applied ad hoc. Example: Chief, Warleader, etc. 3. In organized militaries: titles after number of men lead. Example: Tenman, Hundredman (RW title that pops up among Greeks, Romans and even in Old Norse), thousand-man, etc. For added flavor: play with the number system (in a base-six system units based on power of six would be applied instead of powers of ten - so "thirtysixman", or "two-hundred-and-sixteen-man". 4. Title based on royal or imperial favor. Example: Constable, Marshal (both derived from the king's stablemaster which merged with a commander of cavalry), Sergeant (literally servant), Cup-bearer, Sandal-bearer, etc. (used as titles of honor in Pharaonic Egypt, and like later Europe, often not applied literally, but implying a close personal confidence from the sovereign, which extends to leading military campaigns). Not sure how many of these apply in Glorantha.

This is all good, but what is the airspeed velocity of an African swallow?

While I get your point, Hippgriffs were straight up invented by artists and poets in the 16-1700s, yet are an integral part of pseudo-Babylonian Dara Happa, so it's not unprecedented.

Ralios has a wide number of different noble titles, a bit of a hogepodge, borrowed from Orlanthi and Western alike, but the most notable local title is Archon, which is also controversial due to its association with the Stygian Empire. That being said, it's the title of an office of the leader, rather than a "rank", iirc. I assume "Talar" in general serves as a "noble rank" in the West. More specifically... they still use Dukes and Counts and Barons despite being "de-Medievalized", right?

Now that is an intriguing thought.

Most of this is reasonably familiar, but there are a few things that raised an eyebrow with me. For example, Yamsur is shown as separate from Yelm prior to the the latter's death in the Golden Age. I wonder why this is? Or am I overthinking it? Later on there's a mention of Dawn Era Praxians having a belief in a bird that carries the sun, and Yamsur "hovers" over Yelm (or, if we interpret it as a map - is located geographically north of it, possibly in Verapur?). Could this mean that there is some connection between Yamsur and Vrimak, the avian sun god and (possibly DH-propagandized after-the-fact) Portion of Yelm? But Yamsur is evidently dead, and Vrimak is not, so there has to be something more/else going on. I suppose it's possible that the Bird Empires of mythical Rinliddi spread Yamsur beliefs (or, to put it mythically, travelled with their god eastwards) to Genert's Garden - but I'm hesitant to just make stuff up to make things like this, possibly nothing more than a coincidence, fit. Another interesting aspect is that once "Little Yelm" appears after Yelm's death/disintegration, no differentiation between Yelmalio, Kargzant, Antirius and Elmal is made. This differention is only made later, during the first age of all things. I'm inclined to believe that this is mainly because this chart focuses primarily on the history of Yelmalio, and so prioritizes showing that deity's history above the others, merely slotting them once it serves the purpose of highlighting the developing of Yelmalio. I could be entirely wrong, however, since "Little Yelm's" position is equally that of Antirius (and Antirius and Yelmalio share a number of traits beyond simply being Little Suns) guarding Dara Happa. It is also interesting to see who identifies all the Little Suns as being one and the same. The figure looks superficially just like a stick-figure, but on further inspection is made up of runes. Mastery rune for the head? Infinity rune for legs? Runes aren't my strong suite, so someone else might get an identity from this. My guess is that it refers to some Gray Age Dara Happan Emperor (Jenarong? No, a later one, the one that founded the dynasty that drove away the horse nomads, probably), or could it even be Nysalor? And then we have both the Bright Empire and later on the EWF apparently strategically using Yelmalio to fortify its borders. I assume this plays into some mythic side of Yelmalio, and/or the cultural aspect of the Yelmalian temple-structure as being highly militaristic and suitable for such a purpose. There might be more going on, or rather, there probably almost certainly is. More hints towards Illumination being integral to Yelmalian/Cold sun traditions, perhaps, as both Empires were Illumination-seeking. Then, the last thing I'd like to comment on is how apparently the Praxians have given up a traditional view of the sun possibly based on the deceased Yamsur as a bird carrying the sun - with influences from the Sun Domers and Yelmalio (or his predecessor, I forget the names of the different Golden-Spearman-Cold-Sun-With-Militant-Temples deities). I take it that means that Modern Era Praxians default to viewing Yelmalio, or possibly Yelm as the sun in a daily, matter-of-factly way?

Is the paddock for public use (ie. grazing commons/overnight pasture for cattle safety) or for more exclusive animals (chief & thanes' horses/messengers horses)?

If you think in Real World Terms, the planet (or star) known as Lightfore is essentially the equivalent of our moon in terms of luminosity - therefore the nights are probably about the same as in the Real World. The difference is that Lightfore does not wax or wane, so it does not produce brightly lit full moon nights. The Red Moon itself does not seem to radiate a glow onto other objects as much as it simply it is up there, always visible except in its dark phases. Just my interpretation.

What's the periscope-looking thing?

I must admit I'm a bit disappointed to see the concept of Adoration moved from being a Doraddi-specific concept to a generalized approach to theism. Feels a bit like homogeneizing, and I liked how Revealed Mythologies gave the Doraddi their own view of spirits and magical beings (the focus on the necessity of a body, for example - which makes them a bit different from most other traditions), but oh well. There's plenty of time to develop them in the future.

This might be irrelevant to the issue of individual character stats and combat effectiveness, but if they are smaller, then they need less calories to survive, which either means they can live where other groups can't, or they can gain larger numbers - both of which can be leveraged as advantages in certain situations (firing with five relatively weak bows instead of three or four reasonable strong ones means that even if you can't penetrate the enemy's armor, you can cover another angle that they might not be able to protect.)

Gotta say I'm impressed with how you can take a (to me) seemingly random location and piece together a really fascinating and unique locale.

It was also, perhaps later on, associated with the pineal gland, as as a kind of biologization of mysticism during the Enlightenment in Europe (possibly after Buddhist texts were translated and made available to Europeans - but probably also associated with the Eye of Providence from Christian iconoraphy). In the RW, the only vertebrates with third eyes to my knowledge are lizards (squamata), who have a light-sensitive spot on the top of their head. While dragons and dragonewts are not lizards per se, it's an amusing coincidence that they are associated with mysticism and Illumination in Glorantha.

A Happy Sacred Time to you all!

Revealed Mythologies talk about a form of theism in Doraddi religious practices known as "Adoration", if I recall correctly. Essentially, while most Doraddi religious practices are shamanistic in practice, some hone in on one specific god and emulate the deity to the point where they essentially practice theism (I assume from a God Learner/Gamer perspective). Could these guys be something like that, with Pamalt? Or some crossover between Adoration and theism-based Illumination (similar to the Old Wind Orlanthi ascetics)?

Holy moley, that's MASSIVE.

The institutionalized necromancy is another interesting factor we could play with. What if it's not only used for the greenwater-navy's galleys? Is it a fate reserved for prisoners of war, or executed criminals - or do you have some weird system whereby descendants can send a recently deceased ancestor into "indentured servitude" to pay off debts or some minor stipend, with the corpse being disenchanted and returned to its crypt at the end of the service?

I believe he WAS describing how they got the one we have at the moment.

Damn, never quite realized how *huge* those High Llamas are. You need a rope ladder just to climb up on them!

I interpreted their braids/plaits as being from curly/wavy hair, also there seemed to be some emphasis on the lips (notice the guy in the back, where the lips are still outlined, an artistic choice I'm not sure would've been made for, say, a Scandinavian-looking fellow). All of this is anecdotal, of course, but these appear like deliberate artistic choices to me, meant to convey something more than simple tanness (like with the Mediterranean-basin-style Orlanthi)