Sir_Godspeed

I'm not sure where exactly you can read about it, possibly in RQ:Glorantha, or maybe History of the Heortling Peoples (it has some Dawn Age stuff in it), but the general gist is that the Telmori accepted certain magical gifts from Nysalor, like becoming impervious to stone and bronze (iirc). Talor opposed Nysalor, and appear to have been able to curse them. Though the exact method is not known, as far as I know. I've seen some speculation that Talor was able to subvert the magical gifts that Nysalor gave to the Telmori and twist them into the curse but that's pure fan speculation as far as I can tell (if compelling).

Personally, I'd be wary of going overtly "science-esque" with this. I'm not sure if trying to list a bunch of diagnostic traits of boats in a spell is how things are done. Perhaps more fittingly, Zzabur may have reached for something like the Platonic ideal of a boat, rendering the sea hostile to that ideal, metaphysical "boatness". That's more Glorantha's style, I think. The spell knows. It just knows. Until it doesn't. I also agree that there are more factors at play. The Closing is one of things things I personally prefer to keep a mystery, but I obviously understand why people would want to untangle it. Aside from curiosity, it can help with plot points in RPs.

It might provide a chance to "demote" someone from freedom (carl) to semifreedom (cottar).

I've seen this error message happen multiple times the last couple of years, actually. I've always ignored it, assuming it's something on my end.

Well, I'm really just providing some personal views that might help solve the issue of the OP, but if that doesn't go well with your own views then no worries.

As I've seen from other threads here that have attempted to directly extrapolate RQ mechanics to wider society, we get some funky results, so I still think there's something to be said for "stuff's not as user-friendly as the games make out to be."

Because they're protagonists? That's a pretty common trope in writing. I'm not saying that's how you need to take it, but I at least consider all rulesets an attempt to make a more complex world "readable" for gaming, which means making stuff more reliable, more accessible to players, etc. than it might be in a more, eh, non-playable sense. You know, like hit points. I am fairly certain people in Glorantha do not LITERALLY have hit points (nor "points of worship" for that matter. That's game-system-speech.)

Also, it's entirely possible that healing is not as easy, plentiful or reliable in a literary sense as RQ rules might make it seem.

Possibly Pelmre or Gold Wheel Dancers, but we know so little of them that it's anyone's guess.

That'd be awesome.

You don't HAVE to do anything! 😅 But if you're looking for ideas... maybe something specifically for the Wastes? I know you had Praxians and some horsefolk in the Central Genertela book, though, so there might not be much left.

I keep flip-flopping between the one and the other, personally. I appreciate that it makes things easier to grok for people, and that it's definitely more user friendly, but on the other hand it's not as FUN I guess, and it doesn't quite take advantage of Glorantha's built-in mythic relativism, which few other fantasy settings have. /endmusings.

Maybe the pigs were just really rude 'n' junk.

I mean... humans do a good deal of those things too. Don't get me wrong - Uz are clearly designed to make players be uncomfortable with them at first, but there is also a clear intention for you to go beyond that and think "oh, I guess it makes sense from their perspective." In the same sense that Orlanthi slavery and brutality does, honestly. Or indeed the Lunars, a hurdle some fans never want to cross, as evidenced by hundreds of pages of very heated arguments on this site. I'll admit, the abuse of the trollkin is something that makes me particularly uncomfortable (parallels to RW abuse of the developmentally impaired come to mind too easily), but I can appreciate it as a worldbuilding element, and sometimes roleplaying messed up stuff, and complicated, flawed, even problematic beings is interesting. Anyway, I'll try not to bog Mythforger's thread down with too much polemics. I'm fine with different viewpoints on this one.

I don't think keeping the kids apart is going to make them less likely to get the hots for each other. If anything, that just makes them view each other less as relatives. IMHO having them work closely together from a very early age is equally likely to make them avoid courting, possibly some kind of Westermarck effect kinda deal (although admittedly it's not a universal concept). Ultimately it's going to come down to social pressure. If children are imprinted from an early age that their peers are no-no, then that is probably going to be internalized for most of them, whether they are "co-ed" or not, as it were. And as you mentioned, some level of deviation from the norm is inevitable. Although, that being said, "boys and girls" is a broad category. 7-9 year olds are a whole lot different from 14-16 year olds, after all. Lastly, we must be careful to avoid conflating sexual attraction and marriage. Heortlings are pretty chill with young adults fooling around and stuff, but marriage is serious business. "Sex is easy, marriage is hard". Marriage is about alliances, exchange of valuables, and establishing a new household, stuff that cannot be consituted on the grounds of horniness or romantic attraction alone, and the Orlanthi are obviously very aware of this.

I am aware of what Joy is, but it's interesting that I seemingly got two opposite explanations for how it functions. Maybe both apply. Transcedentalism is funny stuff.

Oh wow, yeah, it's a lot to take in. Some of this isn't too relevant for you if you want to play a straightforward, use-friendly campaign with other newcomers/non-lore-nerds, so I wouldn't worry too much about it. If you want a good primer on Glorantha lore, there is probably quite a lot in various RQ and HQ books, but the Glorantha Sourcebook is more purely lore/background. There is also the Stafford Library, which is a collection of Greg Stafford's more esoteric writings, including King of Sartar, the closest thing we have to an official Glorantha novel, afaik. As for your concrete questions: - People in Esrolia focus more on Ernalda than on Orlanth, and see their marriage more as the most significant among many. To them, Ernalda (and by extension Esrola, who is variously her sister or arguably another aspect of her) has many husbands and lovers, and these are collectively known as "Husband-Protectors". Ernalda is very desireable to the gods, so they constantly court her, and she gives them her love and gifts if they interest her. In return they also promise to protect her and her people. From an Esrolian point of view, they are essentially the mostly good, trustworthy (to an extent) male gods (aside from the ones that are Ernalda's sons, for the most part.). To put it incredibly bluntly, the Husband-Protectors are sort-of Ernalda's harem-slash-bodyguards. Again, sorta. - A heroquest is basically a ritual where mortals of today attempt to recreate a myth of something the gods did. This can be done in many different ways, with several different levels of seriousness. The most basic one is more or less making someone dress up as gods, and having them perform the myth like a theatre play. This is what happens during Sacred Time (end-of-year festivals). Then you can up the ante and instead have your heroes properly equipped with weapons, and go of for real on some journey to recreate the myth. And at the far end, you make them enter into the Otherworld through magical means and literally enter the myths as the gods themselves. This is pretty dangerous, and we don't have official rules of that yet (though @soltakss just released some fanmade ones over on drivethroughrpg, I believe. ) If you're familiar with Australian Aboriginal song-lines, that's more or less what a heroquest is. "God-larping" is less, uh, reverent explanation. The end result is basically that you strengthen your gods, your clan, and yourself, sometimes to the extent of altering the world, getting cool magic gear, spells, gifts, companions, or even becoming a capital-h Hero or demigod! The reverse is true if you fail, though. - The Fourth Age is an informal term, as far as I know, but the world does indeed continue after the Hero Wars. It is forever changed though. The only text that goes into this are some snippets from King of Sartar. I must emphasise however, that it's not something you need to really be concerned about, it's not some great plotline or new setting or anything, it's more a literary tool so as to make the retelling of the Hero Wars in that book appear fragmented and incomplete, a bit like modern historians trying to piece together ancient history, if that makes sense.

I'm pretty sure all sexual relations within a clan are considered the Heortling equivalent of incest. The clan, not the bloodline, is considered the exogamous unit (blood-relationship is largely irrelevant here). This would be scandalous, gross, and possibly a Chaotic act to them. There are some different ways to deal with this: - Both are censured heavily and exiled (outlawed?). Possible, but it would be a significant loss for the clan, and would quite possibly be very unpopular with the families of both of the lovers. - Censure and exile the one lover with the lower social status. This makes the more powerful family happy, which is the more important thing, politically. - Collectively "forget" who the father is, and prevent them from getting together again, and marry them off to separate partners. This stuff happens with taboo relationships in real life too. - Pull a sneaky move, and make an in-law clan adopt one of them, then have them marry each other formally exogamously. Will probably be controversial, but might be done if there is enough political clout to make it happen.

Have him eventually discover some kind of myth (ie. heroquest maybe) where Argan Argar, the god of Surface Darkness, worked with High King Elf to preserve the leftover forest by fighting under the remaining shadowy canopies or something. Others have proposed something similar (albeit happening in the 4th Age after the Hero Wars and not as a Gods War myth) and I think it has potential.

I wonder how Joy and other mysticism-esque disciplines align with the ultra-logic nature of Sorcery.

This is a decidedly un-Gloranthan answer, but it might just be numerical plausibility. A LOT of people live in Esrolia. (Also Dormal's personal rune affinity might've been Sea, but I get that your point was more on a cultural level, and I agree that it's one of those curveballs Glorantha has).

For an example of common cultural norms across denominations: during my stay in India, my Christian informants generally refused to eat beef (although most Indian states severely restrict beef production and consumption anyway, so it's a bit of a moot point) and pork as well. Only the more "radical" Christians (pentecostalists, generally) ate pork. Additionally, while @Qizilbashwoman's point about pigs being taboo, not bad, is a good one, I do think there's a tendency to want to justify religious taboos in pragmatic ways. At least one informant speculated out loud that the reason why Europeans and Americans had "so much cancer" was because we ate pork. And if I remember my Mary Douglas correctly, at least one medieval European scholar tried to map various sins onto the animals forbidden to Jews (rabbits were a symbol of promiscuity, bottom-feeders in water of sloth, etc. etc.) so as to make the dietary rules a kind of symbolic moral teaching. This is not to say that any of this is the original intent (it almost certainly isn't), but that people might be culturally motivated to heap on reasons for not engaging with said animal besides "God said so". Nowadays, you'll see a lot of people point out that pork suffers more from trichinosis (a parasite infection) or that pigs require more water which is problematic in a dry environment. Again, almost certainly not what the ancient Hebrew writers (or Yahweh) had in mind when they codified the dietary laws, but point is: referring to authority isn't always enough, some people might want more concrete or personally relevant answers. Perhaps some Sartarites think consuming goat products makes you more sexually aggressive, or maybe even impotent! (in a weird reversal of Ragnaglar's myths). Or maybe they just think goats smell especially bad, or the meat tastes gross. Maybe they don't, and will just say "oh, well, it's just not our way, Orlanth taught us that sheep and cattle are our loyal animals, so we honor him by upholding his ways," and that's that. On another note, eating horse is culturally taboo in parts of Europe, which in part seems to stem from Christian missionaries opposing pre-Christian (aka "pagan") rituals in which horse meat was eaten (iirc), so taboo definitely does not inherently mark an animal as "unclean", just... forbidden.

Not to mention the Chariot of Lightning Cult in Ralios, the Malkioni-ruled Orlanthi tribes and kingdoms in Fronela, and iirc the Henotheists in Old Carmania(?).

My earlier example of the sun wasn't just tongue-in-cheek. The Sun is an ongoing nuclear explosion that would absolutely skin this planet of every living cell if it was not kept at bay by a number of coincidences. It would boil the seas, scorch organic chemicals, and tear apart the very chemical bonds in our substance. In fact, it's not even an IF, it's a WHEN, because it WILL do this. Eventually. However, if it weren't for that slight sliver of its energy that passes through our magnetic fields and our atmosphere, life here would be impossible. It caused us. Obviously, Chaos as it manifests in beasts and thinking beings is more actively malicious than sunlight, and the necessity of sunlight is more overtly obvious to everyone than that of Chaos, but I don't think it's a terrible comparison otherwise.