Sir_Godspeed

Does it? I never thought avilry was particularly beyond the pale.

Fonrit is a very interesting place, especially in the context of Pamaltela not having been much in the spotlight ever, afaik. Wonder when it will be set. Oh well, a conversation for another topic.

Still wonder how they got to Ralios though. Wonder if there's some myth of crossing the Rockwoods, or if Hippogriff "fell" locally in different areas for different people. This is all well and good, but I can't shake the impression that dinosaurs are somehow related to the Dragons/Dragonewts... I thought I had it from the Guide (something about Dragonewts wavering off the path to Dragonhood sometime in the God Time), but maybe I have it from some outdated source, or even from a fan publication?

The conflict between Orlanth and Yelm is very heavily borrowed from Egyptian mythology. In (a common version of) Egyptian mythology, Osiris is born, and pushes away his father the Earth (Geb) and his mother the sky (Nut). He is later murdered by his jealous brother, Seth, the god of storms and the desert wasteland. After his death, his wife, Isis travels around collecting his bodyparts, puts him back together, and impregnates herself on his still-functioning penis. She conceives as son, Horus, the new god of the sky and sun, who avenges his father by defeating Seth and is proclaimed the new Pharaoh of Egypt. Osiris reigns in the Realm of the Dead. The parallels to Umath pushing Earth and Sky apart, Orlanth killing Yelm, and eventually helping to resurrect him are obvious, and very cool, I think!

This pretty much puts into words something I've had a vague feeling about for a while, nice to see it black on white. This does explain the Pure Horse concept, the odd origin story of Hippogriff-turned-Horse and the presence of several Horse-themed Solar deities. Moreover, it also explains why the Orlanthi and Praxians, despite being associated with herd-animals and pastoral lifestyles, are never seen together with horses in their origin myths. The absence of a hypothetical "Great Horse" (Or "Great Pony", as it were) descending from Dini along with the Great Ram, Cow, etc. fits nicely with this, and continues into how the horse only entered into Vingkotling culture once the marriage between Beren/Elmal, and Redalda was conducted, an act which also adopted into Vingkotling pantheon a friendly solar deity. Now, this all being said, it does raise a couple of questions: First off - What about the pony Hsunchen in Ralios? Where they actually Hsunchen? If they were, could they have been solar people that went "native" in or around Hrelar Amali? Or if not, could they still be tied to the solar aspects of Amali? An isolated Solar culture? Secondly, the gazzam/dinos. My last reading seemed to imply that these are cousin-species of the Dragonewts/dragons. Is there a connection between Celestial Beasts (birds, horses, etc.) with "Draconic Beasts" (dinosaurs... reptiles in general?). I mean, Hykim itself is identified with Korgatsu, the Cosmic Dragon and creator of the Beast Rune. And they all lay hard-shelled eggs, for what it's worth.

This is absolutely my impression as well, and I was actually considering making a thread on the use of Theyalan terminology as the closest we get to a "default" language in Glorantha in official publications. But yeah, I think you're pretty much right, and I think there are a few reasons for it. The first, and perhaps most obvious reason, is that it is because Kerofinela and Kethaela (Dragon Pass and the Holy Country), the Theyalan core area, are the most well-developed areas in Glorantha, both mythically, but also from a more mundane view, as it pertains to adventuring and roleplaying, therefore using the terms that are used in these areas to welcome new players makes sense. The same probably applies to a lesser degree to Peloria. The second, I think, is more in-universe, and a bit more subtle. The Theyalan core area was one of the first areas in Glorantha to initiate cross-cultural cooperation during the Dawn, and so they very early on had a surprisingly "cosmopolitan" culture, where exchanges between humans, trolls, elves, dwarves and even dragonewts and others created a terminology that was probably quite good at expressing a wide set of myths and ideas (In my personal experience, Heortling and Uz mythology/religion seem to be pretty well-integrated into each other. They're not the same by any stretch, but they also don't contradict each other to a large degree, and there is a focus on personal initiation into voluntary cults in both cultures). In fact, it seems that when the God Learners rolled around, they borrowed a number of Theyalan terms and concepts, from what I can tell. In the publications I've read, Pelorian terms are usually used whenever there is a hole in the Theyalan terminology, for example when referring to the rise of the Red Goddess, the internal politics of Dara Happa, and the particulars of the Celestial Realm. But in short, "omniscient narrator" texts in publications about Glorantha have a "Theyalan bias", as it were, from what I can tell. (I'm a bit of a newbie too.)

The point is that if the contract included provisions for one or both of the partners to take additional partners, it wouldn't, by definition, be unfaithfulness.

Only if defined as such in the marriage contract, I imagine. And even then relations during a ritual might be exempt anyhow.

This made me think of the potential of Rat Hsunchen, and the potential for an urban-preferring Hsunchen group, which would be an interesting reversal of tropes, and which might require some creative explanation.

As I mentioned above, I get the impression that Gloranthan plateaus are too big to just be labeled table mountains, or mesas or what have you. They are significant stretches of land that are suddenly elevated above the rest, yet are not formed by meeting tectonic plates like Tibet or some alpine areas. It's like they are table mountains on steroids, pardon the silly phrase.

That's how I think of them in the context of this discussion, although like @The God Learner I also associate them with Earth and the lost Genert's Garden for some reason. It might be that their traces in the RW are statues, or it might be their monumental size or something, I'm not sure - but I could see them being essentially some kind of Demigod who acts as a protector of temples or holy sites, tests traveling mystics or initiates, and receive offerings for their work. This is within the context of the God Time, whether they'd still be extant in Time I don't know, but it doesn't sound outright implausible from what I know. More tie to their holy sites, maybe. What I don't quite see them as are straight-up lion-men (or men-lions). That just doesn't quite feel like it does these ancient beings justice, but this is all personal preference.

I guess what makes this a bit complicated is the sheer climb up to Dragon Pass, which from what little I know of concrete numbers, is A LOT higher than most examples of trafficked rivers in the ancient world I can think of from the RW (Mesopotamia, the Nile, Danube, Mississippi, etc.), which only really climb height-meters fairly far back into their drainage basins. Unless I'm wrong on that, which is possible.

I was also going to suggest barges being pulled by animals on land. This does depend a bit on the shoreline though, I guess. Staking is possible in shallower waters.

That's amazing. Not that American history isn't already quite mythologized (Both Washington and Lincoln have some very "folk-hero" and "culture hero" stories to them), but it usually has a distinct lack of straight up mythical monsters and deities (except the largely allegorical Columbia manifesting all that destiny over the place) which this text evidently rectifies. Now, someone please make this an actual, straight-faced manga. I will buy it. How will the bromance-rivalry between Benjamin "Big Boy" Franklin, and John Adams the Serpentslayer turn out?!

I'm not entirely sure about how the Esrolian politics works, but if they were sufficiently rich, they might've been able to bestow neighboring rulers with enough gifts for it to be natural (or desireable) for the others to recognize them as suzerains, Pacific Big Man-style. Not so much a bribe as a legitimate (and quite possibly widely popular) use of wealth. I assume that if this is true, then at some point the gift-tribute-relations were marginalized and gradually or possibly dramatically replaced by a more institutionalized form of paramount rulership.

This sounds plausible and reasonable. "Movement" might also be translated as related concepts, such as activity, change, etc. I suspect that veterans of Glorantha might have fairly definite understanding of specific runes, but from an outside perspective I don't personally see a problem with the "movement" name element also denoting something like "vitality, virility, energy," etc. (even if those concepts are denoted by different runes, at least in a modern post-God Learner era), depending on how ancient Theyalan-speakers viewed the interrelatedness of those concepts. My own RW name can for example be translated as both "full of life" and "sole inheritor" depending on which root one assumes it is derived from, and you have some bizarre cases in the RW, for example where "sinister" can mean both "left" and "evil", so you know... language is weird like that. Additionally, we don't know if these names were compound names that were compounded at a time when both were dynamic, ie. it might be that Sarl and Barn are much older names, and that "tar" was added to them much later as suffixes after the initial name had ceased to be thought of as a common word. It's not a great example, but Caesar started off as a nickname for someone with a scruffy beard, then became a family name, and later became in imperial title, and by that point few people could probably tell its original meaning. Poseidon initially meant Earthshaker, but was later transplanted to be a sea deity. Mars' etymology has a similar trajectory of transplanting from one context to another (shepherding to warfare in this case), by which point the original word-meanings were obscure and archaic. There was a linguistic revitalization movement in Scandinavia in the 1870s-1900s that produced a lot of new names from old names whose meanings were sometimes obscure, for example, by simply putting traditional suffixes on to already existing names, like "Oddvar" (a combination of "Odd" ("pointy end", a man's name) and "-var" (a phoneme whose meaning would not be readily understandable by modern speakers of any Scandinavian language, although originally meaning "warrior"). We might also have a case where people make compound names not necessarily because they have a deep meaning, but because they're selecting two positive traits they want to bestow upon a child, or combine two ancestors' names in one descendant, or just like them aesthetically - this is how you get a lot of the Old Norse names, for example. "Thorgeir" (Thor-Spear) isn't really a reference to some myth or entity, it's a combination of two positive attributes that are largely unrelated. Sartar might therefore not be "the rushing chief", but might just be "someone who is both energetic and elevated, and may those qualities bless them in life". I realize that much of what i'm doing here is mostly foggying up an attempt to dig into and find some sense in an area that doesn't have an answer, and I hope it's not taken as pointless contrarianism or needless overcomplication, I guess I just enjoy tossing out ideas and see where it might lead us.

Sorry, I thought that since you were deliberately comparing Sari-ng and Is-Sari-es that you intended to incorporate the i in both, which now that I look again, you evidently did not, as the i's were not italicized. My bad. I still don't know however, why you say that the Sar- element in Saring and Issaries are the same, but then don't include all the other Sar-names we have? (If my impression of your use of the word "there" is correct)

I'd be careful to compare Saring and Issaries. The "i" in the former is most likely not a part of the sar(i) element, but of the -ing element, as with Old Norse from which it is borrowed. As with Hendrik - Hendriking, Alakor - Alakoring, Arkat - Arkating, and so forth.

Heheh, that DOES sound like something the Lunars would say. Woah, this is new. I can see some connection with Shargash, given that he is also identified with Tolat, who is a moon god, but Reladivus/Kargzant, ie. one of the Little Suns? Damn, it, Glorantha, my search for easy answers foiled again! *shakes fist*

The prominence of plateaus in Glorantha is one thing that stands out to me. A lot of fantasy mapmakers have quirks, and this is in my opinion, Glorantha's. I'm still not sure if I like them, purely aesthetically as map elements, but hey, that's my personal issue. I don't really think you find them with such regularity and prominence in the RW, their presence is probably tied to mythic events that cannot be seen as entirely analogous to RW processes. For example, the Hungry Plateau is a former mountain range with the tops chopped off, the Blue Moon Plateau is the remnant of a crashed moon, and the Shadow Plateau may have been raised by Veskarthen/Lodril (or he just put up a palace on the top, I'm not sure what the myth says specifically). The Tibetan plateau is a result of massive plate tectonics pushing up a mountain ridge and the associated land behind, whereas stuff like the Norwegian western plateaus are much smaller, and the result of glacial erosion (and they are only "plateaus when seen from the western seaside, their eastern descent is much less steep). The other plateaus are also erosion-based, I believe, but mostly with water, not ice, probably mixed in with some volcanic activity, such as a basalt plug staying in place while the actual volcanic mountain around it is eroded away, leaving a steep top over a plain. What makes the Gloranthan plateaus exception, in my impression, is not only their number, but also their size. Nowhere near the Tibetan, of course, but also too large to be simple plugs or hard stone over a dried sea. They have this inbetweener size that is quite fascinating. Then again, I might be completely off, I'm not a geologist.

My impression was that Gerra was the Black Moon, but I'll admit that might just because she is associated with sorrow. This is news to me. Who are these individuals, aside from Nysalor and Estara?

I've become more skeptical to "frivolous" use of the Lightbringer quest as a narrative tool. A lot of the time it seems to be treated as "that resurrection ritual", whereas if you look at the context of the story itself, it is as much about recognizing one's own wrongs as well as putting nature back into balance. I guess this highlights something: how much can you really change about any heroquest before it ceases to be that heroquest, is there a fundamental essence to heroquests that cannot be altered, or is everything fair game? It sorta becomes a bit of a narrativistic "Ship of Theseus", how many details can you change before nothing is left of the original story? Does it still count? Is it simply enough to go into the underworld and resurrect someone? This issue can of course be applied to heroquests in general.

I've always assumed there was something to do with the Osentalka ritual in there too, although evidently no Sunstop (unless you count the raising of the Red Moon to be a kind of warped version of it).

Not to get overly technical and anthro-wanky, but we do have some interesting cosmologies of non-literate people in the RW. Eduardos Viveiro de Castro, a Brazilian social anthropologist specializing in Amazonian peoples, proposed a concept he called "Perspectivism" that is almost uncannily similar to the Gloranthan concept of common descent from the man rune/grandfather mortal, albeit with some major differences. He argued that among many Amazonian groups, society and "humanity" (or personhood) was actually seen as universal, but was essentially impossibly to recognize from different positions in the system. He cites a lot of myths I won't go into here, but basically the general gist of it is that animals are seen as having secret villages with their own chiefs/big men, lineages and shamans, as do plants, as do spirits and gods, and even inanimate matter like rocks and mountains, but they are "hidden" from normal human eyes. The only thing that really divides them is their different substance. This difference can be overcome by the shaman, who is able to transcend the boundaries through trance, or by taking a different body or body form, and can then visit the villages of the beasts, the plants, the gods, and speak with them as an intermediate, and relay it back to his own people. He contrasts this with western (Abrahamic) physical universalism, which was basically the assumption that everything is unified by having a physical body of gross, base matter, but divided by how God had assigned different spiritual/mental qualities to them, and given humans, uniquely, a soul. (I'm not saying that all these bodies were identical, but rather seen as being fundamentally similar in terms of decay, reproduction, etc.) There's a delightfully macabre anecdote about how, while the Spaniards would debate whether the Indians had a soul or whether they were animals, the natives themselves put Spanish corpes underwater to see if they rotted, in which case they were a human, or whether they didn't, in which case they were spirits. In summary, the westerners took a common body for granted, but were unsure about spiritual qualities, whereas the indigenous Amazonians took common spiritual qualities for granted, but were unsure about the qualities of the physical bodies of other groups. NOW - I know this was perhaps a bit tedious to read, but my point is really that a) attempts at universal scheme in an non-literate culture is possible, and b) in Glorantha, where several groups are unified by runic patterns across different elemental alignments, there can be serious differences while maintainting some base similiarities as well. The two aren't mutually exclusive. We can have the idea of a commonality through the Man rune, while still having them be more than just "people with long ears or tusks", as it were. It doesn't have to be an absence or presence of emotions, but a different register of emotions produced by a different set of priorities or triggers. So, the Aldryami might very well feel very strongly about their young, and they might care for them intensely, but perhaps not in a way humans are capable of comprehending, due to our different "perspective". In a sense, we are, by virtue of our bodies, spirit (or elemental constitution, or what you) barred from viewing them as they themselves do. It certainly seems that way from the Belintar snippet we have on the Aldryami. Here's a suggestion I have: given that young Aldryami (as in, the humanoid elves) need to be grown from a rooted plant, this would probably mean leaving the plant alone for long stretches at a time, because there really isn't that much to do about its growth all the time. No constant feedings, no keeping them warm, and so on. Perhaps elves would rather just check in every once in a while to make sure things are okay, much like hunter-gatherer people would do with fruit-bearing plants they casually cultivated along their hunting trails by removing competing plants or propping them up when they happened to walk by. Additionally, we might find that individual elven parents might not necessarily care especially passionately for their own offspring, but rather that keeping an eye out for these sapling-fetuses is a common task for all adult, mobile elves. When an elf eventually grows from its fruit-egg, it might not have any particular bond with its particular parents, and vice versa. Adult aldryami care for infant aldryami, as groups, not individuals. The loss of an individual is regrettable, even tragic, but not as personally devastating in the way it is for humans (arguably, premodern infant mortality rates does create some hardened attitudes among humans too). This opens for some interesting differences, where an elf might be puzzled as to why some children are cared for so well, while others languish in poverty, and would be absolutely horrified by the very *idea* of orphans or street urchins while there are seemingly so many adults around who could care for them. Favoritizing one's own biological offspring might be seen as outright lunacy by them, a perversion of the group-self's preservation instinct. Conversely, they might also be puzzled as to why humans complaining about too many mouths to feed won't just cull one of their young to reduce the problem, as it is the most practical solution that gives the group the least pain. It should preferably be avoided, but if it can't, there's no reason to agonize about it. This could also explain why elves would become so utterly furious at humans burning down or cutting down a grove, or a few acres of wood - because in some ways it is worse than killing any individual Aldryami - it is (potentially permanently) reducing their ability to reproduce. Aldryami population sizes are after all tied to forest sizes and density. Feel free to extrapolate about other aspects, such as cannibalism, willingness to self-sacrifice, life-priority (they might prioritize other living organisms higher than their own kin/type, depending on how well they contribute to the ecosystem), property rights, inheritance, etc. This is of course also a potentially interesting way to make a Plant rune-converted Aldrya worshipper seem alien enough to their companions, without making them utterly incomprehensible. Just some suggestions.

I really liked that publication, I forget where it's from, it might be an appendix to King of Sartar, where you have texts from different cultures where an elder explains their way of life to a younger member. It's a very nice way of getting into the mindset and worldview of those cultures.