Sir_Godspeed

YEEEEES!

This is also great.

I like this idea! In absence of metal, the second one could also be substituted for the pottery kiln, for example.

It's interesting to see that the Lunars are exporters of silver, and not importers.

There's also the whole deal with the God Learners, who apply the Campbellian monomyth to Glorantha, and, uh, get absolutely bodied. As I understand it, that was basically Greg's in-universe criticism of the Monomyth. The monomyth is an analytical tool. A map, if you will. If you mistake it for the actual terrain, you're making a big mistake.

It's still very rare, comparably, but the Seshnelan mounted warrior elite seem to have enough to reliably equip them with a good deal of iron swords and armor, if probably not much else, and probably not all of them, iirc.

Ah, then I'm just easily manipulated! 😄

Apologies, but the title made me think of this: Please be responsible and keep your Gringle and Piku safe.

Orstan the Elder carved his son Durev out of wood and apparently made him alive. So there's that.

Drawing on some Hindu examples, like Devadasi and others, parents might "donate" a child to the temple as a form of sacrifice or gift, possibly with the unspoken understanding that they are not able to support them, but not necessarily. Additionally, a youth might have a spiritual experience that leads them to want to join a temple by themselves. Perhaps specifically to avoid marriage pressures, or simply for devotional reasons.

Hm. "Communicating with" as in "speaking to" or as in "employing a particular method"? Also, this suddenly made me wonder of one of the lost things used to make the net was the Moon (or an abstract "moon-ness"), in one or all of its incarnations. That could have... implications. I'm sure I'm not the first to think about that, though.

This might just be me, but sending children off to "adventure" and "the military" sound very much like RPG-answers, and not really very realistic, or at the very least common, options for a subsistence culture. There aren't a lot of professional, full-time soldiers in Glorantha. There are probably exceedingly fewer "professional adventurers" (whatever we mean by that). I think it's probably a lot more common to take the excess offspring and send them off to live with relatives or neighbors who can afford to keep them, wherein they might become proper foster children, or they might live as servants (in which case they lose status). They may also be sent off to live with a local bigwig, again, as servants in all likelihood. There's also the possibility that the parents might make arrangements for a youth to be sent off to some urban center to go into an apprenticeship, or indeed make a deal with the chief to have their child take over an old tenant plot or clear a new one, which again can entail loss of status, if the parents were Free. Marrying them off to a family normally below your status probably also happens. It's entirely possible that you can only afford a decent bride price/dowry for some of your kids, and that you prioritize them in order to preserve the status of the bloodline overall, while "sacrificing" the other siblings' status. Other options include donating a child to a temple, giving them a advance on their inheritance and sending them off with the best wishes and a vague plan (although this is indeed desperate), or sending them off to, well, beg, or indeed selling them off into slavery, prostitution or child marriage are all options we know occur in real life, and are done by the most abjectly poor, desperate families, but it does happen. Orlanthi culture is so collectivist that this would probably require much of the social fabric to have broken, and the social safety net to be virtually non-existent, but with numerous wars and famine, that's not unthinkable. Though whether you'd like to include that in a game is another topic entirely. Kitting your kid out with whatever arms and armor you can afford (possibly as an advance on their inheritance) and finding a mercenary contract for them (possibly as a trainee/servant for some more experienced mercenary or retainer) is of course possible for the more well-to-do families, but I'd hazard to say that this is a much less common option, and probably very circumstantial.

I supose you could assume Arlaten is an unreliable/ignorant narrator, but beyond that this does indeed seem theistic.

Given that many Malkionized Hsunchen have become specific warrior fellowships in Ralios, it's possible that a Rat Hsunchen group survived as an underground, subaltern thievery fellowship. Probably not a "cult" in the strictly theistic sense of the word, but if it's a closed-off group that has a close contact with an otherworldly patron entity the difference is mostly in game mechanics. This is up to you, of course, just mentioning that Ralios offers a ready pattern to emulate, if you so desire.

Could be animist Rat Hsunchen that were Malkionized.

Nice.

The widespread presence of (presumably Darkness-aligned) invertebrates on the early Earth cube is interesting. They predate the coming of trolls by, well, Ages (ba-dum-tsshh). If I'm just spitballing, my guess is that they came from the myriad of lifeforms that lived in the Sea, where presumably Darkness and Water mingle fairly freely? This happens to align with RW evolutionary history at least a little bit, which is convenient, but obviously not a requirement for Glorantha. Anyway, point is, Darkness is clearly not an alien element to the Surface, even in its earliest ages. Which I guess we already kinda knew, but it's neat nonetheless. Also I guess this opens up for pre-Troll Gorakiki (or rather, any applicable Darkness gods of invertebrates, Swems, Kopa, etc.) myths, though exactly who would tell them I don't know. Timinits? ELVES? But anyway, this also shows how early the Beast Rune is out there, I guess. Kinda funny that Beasts seem to proliferate before the Dragons, although I guess this might just be a case of perspective. Maybe the True Dragons were there already, but they didn't "descend" to the Earth (or take physical forms or whatever) until the Spike solidifies, but plants and beasts had no such requirements. Yelm and Lodril sharing the world (or sky, or both) as a codominium is interesting. The South's been all about Fire for longer than I'd thought. But then, what is 'south' in this respect? The old "Lodrilela" around Lodril's Mountain? Or as far south as the Nargan? *Was* he already a volcano god at this point? (Also, on a related note, did his descent into the Earth accelerate the "irregular" growth of the Earth cube given that he might add a certain tectonic dynamism to it? Fun to think about, if nothing else.) Of course, this is all just speculation on my part. The document appears to be God Learner theorization, which admittedly is usually fairly accurate as far as mythic applicability goes (as in "could we base a heroquest on this myth and have it work", or whatever), but obviously not necessarily entirely accurate or the only version of events that is mythically applicable. So just having a go for fun.

Yeah, that's basically what I was trying to get across.

Communication is the movement of ideas and impressions, for example.

Clarification: We're more or less informed that the high degree of cult membership is fairly unique to the Orlanthi, where most Pelorians, Ralians, Fronelans, etc. tend to be less active in cult life, more like lay members, generally. The Lunars are arguably a subversion of this, with the Seven Mothers mirroring the Lightbringers, for example, but they're a cultural minority in their own Empire, iirc. Basically all Aldryami join the cult of Aldrya, but according to @Jeff, the cult membership of other cults is comparatively low. The point about the Uz and Orlanthi having this high focus on lots of minor cults with a high degree of community participation in them, is not really my own, others have mentioned it in the past. It's tempting to see it as something that might've originated together, possibly in the Kingdom of Night at some point, but I'm just speculating. Granted, I don't know what exactly the nitty gritty numbers spell out, this is more of a general impression.

Once again it's worth noting how, despite everything, relatively similar the Troll idea of cult belonging is to the Orlanthi one. Main cultural patron cult joined by most adult members, with widespread joining of various other specialist cults. Which is not all that common for Aldryami or other Elder Races.

This is a cool idea, I like it a lot. For a Gardener it might be a digging stick, for example.

EVERY Aldryami has a bow? Talk about fantasy stereotyping. 😄

Farmers are generally warriors and warriors are generally farmers, barring the odd full-time warrior retainer, imho. I realize there are some who specialize more deeply (Barntari, etc.), but the whole peace clan - war clan thing sounds more like a game mechanic to me than a viable in-universe dichotomy, unless of course it's one that's more culturally symbolic than anything (but fantasy universes generally prefer to take symbolism and turn it into literal stuff, so I suppose there's that.).

This applies to skis too in some degree. In parts of Norway, alpine skiing was a quick, efficient way of reaching areas that would otherwise have required trudging through thigh-deep snow at a steep elevation. Hunting, of course, but also simply for communication and such as well. Social life does go on during winter as well. Midwinter sacrifices have to be organized, you might want to check up on relatives and friends, you might need to borrow a tool to mend something, or request help, etc, and of course winter fishing is a thing, so it might be practical to ski down the slope to the river or lake, and walk herringbone home afterwards. Beats stepping through the snow crust everytime. It also makes for some marvelously dramatic imagery.