Sir_Godspeed

I'd mostly chalk it up to, again, the God Learners having an Orlanthi bias in how they came to understand and know theists. The God Learners - who are generally considered to be the makers of these runic lattices and explanation models - were geographically locked off from the Pelorians, and only much later in their conquests met with Pamaltelans and Vithelans, so their primary terminology for - for example - the Storm God tends to be drawn from Orlanthi neighbors, ie. Orlanth, even though they could hypothetically have used West Wind (Pentans), or Worlath (Ralios), and so on. Now, admittedly, I'd go further and argue that in fact deities like Entekos and Ygg also have an equal claim to "owning" the Storm Rune, but again, since the Orlanthi are spread out across a larger area, and have very influential myths and worship, tend to reinforce their own beliefs in their own areas. (I've argued that Doburdun, Entekos' thundering minion/attendant god, is really just a Pelorian version of Orlanth, but tamed and largely neutered, but others insist this is a completely different entitity. Impossible to say.) To put it differently - I doubt an Orlanthi cult could just strut onto Ygg's Isles and proclaim Orlanth's superiority over Ygg with magical supremacy. I know some others disagree with me here, but that's my take on it. I'm not a huge fan of "objective" assesments of "rune ownership", which again I think feels weirdly gamey. He appears as South Rage Wind to the Storm Pentans, and I strongly believe he was the primary god of ancient Fronelan Bull peoples (Tawari, etc.), of which modern Charg is perhaps the last remnant (and will soon be released with tons of Bull Barbarians bearing down on the Lunar Empire once the Thaw reaches it, at least that's the official line). There's some question as to whether he was ever incorporated into Pelandan/Orinini culture, since the Fronelan Bull People were defeated and eventually integrated there, but so far I think maybe the most likely candidate for that - Bisos - has been identified with either Waha (as an animal killer/sacrificer) or Lhankor Mhy/Buserian (or was it Issaries?) due to priestly duties. He might've been associated with the Bull People horde that invaded Pamaltela in God Time as well, but that's also a bit iffy, and at any rate they're not around anymore.

@Joerg can tell you more, but I believe the stories about Hrestol is the first stuff that was written for Glorantha - although it might not have been consciously connected to the "White Bear & Red Moon"-world at the time. I wouldn't know. This is entering a rather big debate on the "essentialism" of divine identity. For example, both Buserian and Lhankor Mhy are bearded scholar gods of their respective cultures, associated with writing and preservation of knowledge and social organization. But are they just different names for the same gods? Are they the different expressions of a shared runic or divine archetype? Are they completely separate entities doing similar jobs? This sort of thing is the source of a lot debates on Glorantha. We have similar stories for Tolat-Shargash, Urox-Storm Bull (almost everyone agrees this is the same, but rules wise they can be presented differently, which can confuse or frustrate some people), and more esoteric stuff like Lodril-Balumbasta-Veskarthan-Turos-ViSaruDaran-MonsterMan, Aether-TarnGatHa, Vith-Yelm, Govmeranen-Murharzam, some of which are generally accepted, others which might be based on in-universe confusion or just faulty reading by us, and of course the perennial thorn in many people's eyes: Elmal-Yelmalio(-Yelm). In many cases, I tend towards a mix of explanations that allow divine archetypes to reappear, but still allows them some particular identities, like the fingers on a hand all being part of a greater whole, while still being different in their own way. This brings us to the notion of "owning runes" which I personally feel is a very "gamey" concept that I've never been very happy with. The best I can say is that the scheme you find in the GtG over "rune-ownership" is that it's a God Learner attempt to chart Runic power and so on, and it's not really meant as a out-of-universe, objective document. A Fonritan or Vithelan would find it absolutely ridiculous, for example. But it might fit with a quick name swap which doesn't necessarily alter the underlying analysis. And yes, the Orlanthi are... diverse. Partly this is because of their very origin myth as being collected from the outcasts of many societies (something that both Umath and later to a larger degree Orlanth had as deliverate policies - hence the Clan Ring and Stranger Adoption as important social institutions), and partly because, well, there's a Orlanthi Player Character bias, so giving them many options is kind of a given. I can only assume that something similar can be done for Pelorians or Ralians down the line, hypothetically. I think it can be useful to think of these gods less as "the Orlanthi gods", and maybe more as "the Orlanthi notion of the Gods", if that makes sense. All fair points.

I would agree for Entekos (although I would argue that a better candidate is Serenha, as a direct descendant of Umath, Primal Air), but the connection between Entekos and Dendara is multifaceted, incomplete, and still mysterious. Not a bad idea. Again, not a bad idea. We might even have two feminine ideals: the Earth Lodrilite peasant women, and the Air Dara Happan urban citizen-women. Yeah, I'm not crazy about Runic behaviour determinism, it seems more like a storytelling straightjacket than a useful explanatory tool. I'm a bit surprised to see Shargash mentioned in relation to Light thought. I know Shargash is shown attempting to usurp the Sun Path in the game, but he is generally associated with literal fire (slash and burn agriculture), or the underworld. Interesting idea, and worth exploring further - though as all things, there's definitely an overlap here, what with Solar transcendental traditions in Nysalor or Yelmalio, or Earth mystic/irrational traditions in Earth Witch.

I feel like this is the version the in-universe people mostly believe, and perhaps the one the rules books give off, but I'm not a huge fan of what is essentially genetical predestination by a different name, personally.

There are some who will be ready to tell you that actually the West was developed first - but that was a very, very long time ago. And while plenty of places in Glorantha are surprisingly old in terms of real-world-development, it's pretty obvious that it's Central Genertela, and the Orlanthi in particular, who've been given the most attention, and that the setting to a large extent revolves around them and their plights and ambitions. This is perfectly fine, of course, and has given us a lot of wonderful material, but that doesn't mean we can't be hungry for similar details for other cultures, however voracious that might seem. I think a useful thing to consider is this: the reason there are so many gods for the Orlanthi is because the gods of the Orlanthi have been fairly exhaustively detailed (some might say overly so, what with the scaling back of subcults), and other pantheons are likely to have not only a similar amount of gods (or more), but also have many analogous deities. We can discuss whether these deities are the same under different names or not all day, but ultimately the point is that we tend to see the same archetypes appear and reappear around the map, as it were - we just don't necessarily have as much detail about how they and their worshippers work yet. But yeah - there's a lot of female grain goddesses and earth goddesses of female femininity of womanhood gallavanting about, and it can get a bit repetitive. The Old Norse and the polytheistic Japanese had female sun goddesses, and the Egyptians had several male earth fertility gods (Geb, Min), so it's okay to switch it up. To some extent, Flamal (the Seed Father) and Lodril (The Phallic Heat-in-Matter God) serve the purpose of (earth-adjacent) male fertility deities (and then there's Baroshi, who's a grain-based godling who might become important later on, but not so much right now), so there is some variety there, but imho there's room to play around with it more. Agreed, and I strongly suspect that a) there is a lot more to her than the patriarchal "public culture" of Dara Happa might let on, while also b) some of the more ancient roots of hers are suppressed. Just some personal impressions. There are likely to be more female deities associated with Dendara or Oria about, but probably not quite to the same martial extend as for the Orlanthi. The Orlanthi, while a gendered society, does value heroism to the point of deliberately making room for female fighter heroes, but the same isn't really true for urban Dara Happa, and rural Lodrilites don't seem too into violent heroism as a cultural ideal in general (though Turos in Pelanda does provide a more active Lodrilite ideal). We do have Gorgorma (sp?), who is sort-of-similar to the Orlanthi "Gor" goddesses, in that she is a goddess of female reprisal against male wrongdoers, but she's not quite the bruiser Babeester is, and not really the domineering matron Maran is, being some kind of hooded crone with a terrifying vagina dentata if I remember correctly (and I might be remembering this wildly wrong, it's been a while). Then again, even followers of Ty Kora Tek get to smash stuff if there's undead or vampires nearby, so you could probably write up something for a Gorgormite adventurer as well. We also have Yelorna, who is either the sister of, or the female aspect of Yelmalio, but I'm not sure if her cult is active in Peloria anymore, and even so, I feel like it's one of those weirdo cults that players love talking about, but that probably does not have a huge societal impact. And then we have the river-based goddesses like Oslira herself, and the Heron Goddess. They seem like they could be a bit more proactive and arguably adventurous - and even if we look away from trying to fit every deity into an adventuring-shaped hole, we can still probably argue that these goddesses are less prone to answer to male authority. We could talk more about local deities like the Darsenites, but I get the feel that this isn't quite what you're looking for - and in all honesty, this is one of the things I don't really like about Peloria, where you have all these mentions of local deities, but with not a huge amount of unifying traditions that you can draw on for storytelling, aside from the overarching "Yelm is the Emperor" trope. All in all - for female empowerment and agency, the Lunar religion acts as the enabling trope, I think. It upends or at least lessens a lot of gender-based restrictions, and allows women to reach for positions of power and freedom to a much larger degree than before, and to make this thematically important, pre-Lunar women of the Dara Happan heartland at least, arguably have to be oppressed, which means the same goes for those cults. (or if not oppressed, at least, uh, "domesticated", which arguably is just a euphemism anyway). And before I completely forget it in this rambling about Pelorian opportunities for adventuring women: I fully agree that more details on the "lived reality" (as anthropologists put it) of Dara Happan women would be great. Their daily chores, their rituals, their hopes and ambitions and their fears and worries. Do we see great public festivals celebrating Dendara, or are these domestic, private affairs? Does the Cult of Dendara act submissively, or is it in fact a gathering place for powerful women to make influential decisions behind the scenes? Do they hold important ritual statuses that make them inviolate? Does the cult provide some societal service like charity, shelter, some cosmically important ritual that must be performed every year, can the cult be used to bring other gods in line (maybe it's the only cult that can alleviate the wrath of Yelm or somesuch notion). Are there sub-sects that have entirely subversive ideals, or is it a factor of social conservatism and fiercely competitive with Lunar deities? Do men give thanks to Dendara before eating a meal, or before putting on new clothes, or are they required to ask a woman for permission to enter the house so as to preserve Virtue? Does she help with midwifery, or does she bless tools like needles and spindles, or can she keep disease away, or increase fertility (I know Oria can), does Dendara have agents of reprisal? Does Dara Happa have some kind of pseudo-medieval chivalry thing going on where men dedicate themselves to Dendara to uphold some kind of chastity ideals until they are married, or can Dara Happan women bare their breast in moments of outrageous protest to remind their men that they have acted unvirtuous against their women, like Roman women allegedly did? The answer to lots of this is probably "no", but I've got questions, and it's good to ask them at least. I don't want Dendara to be an Ernalda-clone though. I haven't been able to see this anywhere, so I wouldn't know. This is interesting though, since we don't really know where she came from. For all we know, Yelm emanated his own wife specifically for that purpose. (Warning: heresy). Not to worry! Mine is more long-winded, and I'm not even the worse one around here, so don't think about it.

Weekly sounds a bit disruptive to me. Speaking as someone who's seen this kind of thing before from video game developers, it can quickly devolve into people thinking that because a week was light on news nothing was done, which is a stupid attitude, but one you have to expect. You also have to make a member of staff do this, which of course will take away from their usual work tasks, and while not necessary a huge job, can get a bit involved if it involves having to get info from different teams and different departments working with different schedules, etc. If anything, a monthly newsletter (and a short one at that, like a blog or forum post or whatever, unless there's something to actually say in length) seems more appropriate, useful, doable. EDIT: Unless someone at Chaosium who actually knows their stuff disagrees. It's not like I have any practical experience on putting this together myself.

I have similar feelings on the matter, if it's any consolation. For the Emperor of the Universe, he does have a habit of being sidelined by other deities that take the limelight. Also, saying "the Storm and Solar pantheons have an ongoing rivalry" is more catchy than saying "the Storm and Solar pantheons have a rivarly, but they also settled some differences on a cosmic scale and abide by certain principles, until the Solar Pantheon was largely coopted by a Lunar pantheon that broke said principles and uh, now there's a Storm-Lunar rivalry with the Solar pantheon in tow". Okay, I'm exaggerating, but I'm thinking marketing, gosh darn it! This might very well be the point, but it does feel a little anticlimactic. Pent is the Great Genertelan Steppe. It's not an empire or state, just the wide plaines between Kralorelan and Peloria, where the horse nomads dwell. The horse nomads (Pentans) are divided into a number of tribes and tribal coalitions, and most of the hold Solar beliefs, with a strong, patriarchal Sun God in charge (usually named Kargzant, or Yu-Kargzant or whatever). The Grazers of Dragon Pass are descended from them. The people who are the Pentans in the Modern Age ruled Peloria at the Dawn, but were driven out by the Dara Happans and the Unity Council (Orlanthi+allies) allying. The Dara Happans and most modern Pelorians tend to present them as unjust invaders (and associate them with wanton murder and cannibalism) who were driven out, but if you look closer at the God Time events, the details seem to very strongly suggest that Pentans were in fact very much native to Peloria (people who escaped from the cities during various catastrophies when urban life collapsed). Since then, the Pentans have kind of been looking for ways to re-invade Peloria, and turn its fertile river valleys and irrigated fields back into grazing grounds for their horses. Sheng Seleris is the one who achieved this, for a while, and it's arguably relevant that Sheng Seleris also promoted a kind of mystic, self-torturous interpretation of Solar ideas which made him and his followers to extremely powerful, but extremely brutal, demigods. There's a minority of Pentans who worship a Storm Pantheon (the Four Winds, which includes analogues of Orlanth, Valind, Urox and Gagarth(?)), but I don't think they are politically too different from their Solar neighbors. Pentans also have a rivalry with the Beast Riders of Prax, mostly over grazing rights, and mythologically over the role of the horse. Praxians consider the horse unclean, while the Pentans consider the horse the best animal, and some Pentans go to the point of only herding horses and no other animals, whereas normally Pentans will herd cattle and (I think) goats or sheep. This rivalry is less mythologically potent than the rivalry with Peloria though, imho. I probably repeated stuff you already know, but I thought I'd lump it together for a handy quick overview in case you wanted to get a reasonable feel for them.

I like this a lot. There's a saying my anthropology supervisor used to say: "Culture works a bit like this: you can try to do whatever you want, but you can't *want* whatever you want." This is obviously a generalization, but main point still stands. Basically, kids in different cultures probably grow up with a fairly good idea of what the different runes entail personality-wise, and so upon initiation, it sort of becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Like Harry Potter and the Sorting Hat or whatever

I feel this as I'm still dabbling in some Glorantha-based lore ideas I've yet to finish. I've allowed myself to deviate from published canon where I want, but that doesn't mean it doesn't come with some trepidation to preserve the "feel" of Glorantha and to also tie it into published canon where I'd like.

That's fair, and I will not - but if the term "safe space" hasn't been uttered yet, with a sneering tone, in this thread yet by someone, then I'm positively surprised.

Who's the Lunar Emperor who according to Cragspider's reliefs conquers/defeats the Westerners in Fronela or wherever? Is that further down the line?

He isn't reborn in Phargentes the Younger? So Phargentes is a whole new Red Emperor without being - uh - THE Red Emperor? I'll admit, most of the "future" stuff is very hazy to me.

I meant Dendara there. I am not sure what her Runes are.

This article was quite interesting to me, and maybe it could inspire someone to give their adventure or description a bit more *snrk* flavor. https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/ancient-mesopotamian-tablet-cookbook Generally not too crazy, but interesting nonetheless. I'm not going to suggest where this fits, though Peloria is the obvious comparison - but Kethaela and Dragon Pass or even Seshnela and Ralios might all potentially be fitting places for these recipes, I dunno. EDIT: Also I'm imagining a wandering Lhankor Mhy Gourmet Scribe going around finding the best recipes for his masterpiece.

They're stealing good Orlanthi jobs. THE SHEER NERVE.

I'm a bit reticent to wade into a discussion that seems very person-based, since that can quick bring out some ugly sides of participants, but my current impression seems to be that Jeff - however much one might disagree with his creative direction - is working to present a version of Glorantha that does not need to be periodically retconned to make new stuff work. I could be wildly wrong.

No need - you're no worse than most other people here, myself included. I often find that I start my longer posts with one thing in mind and then at the end I realized I ended up with something else. Oh well. Do feel free to come back to continue it whenever! ^^

I'm not a huge fan of that myself either, and it's a criticism I've seen third-party reviewers mention. Fair points all around. The Earth Goddesses are a whole thing unto themselves, and they all sort of meld together on higher levels of abstraction while also preserving local specificities, so it can probably be both argued that Ernalda it at once universal and local. Anyway, to keep it focused: yes, Dendara is a bit of an enigma. I would recommend the Entekosiad, but with the caveat that it doesn't really explain anything in simple terms (it's very esoteric), and might just make you more confused at the end of it. As opposed to Oria, Dendara is a lot more of an (at least outwardly) submissive wife-figure, being an embodiment it seems, of uxoral piety - at least as far as upper-class/full-citizen Dara Happans are concerned. She is also associated with "Virtue" (a vague and wide-reaching concept in DH-focused literature, Yelm is also very much concerned with Virtue, although also with Justice), and with rainbows and apparently rain. I also seem to remember her being associated with weaving, which is similar to Ernalda. I forget what her Runes are, though I never got a strong "elemental" vibe off her. It feels like she could be Celestial, Chthonic or even Aquatic without it overly overshadowing her main attributes. And then there is the association with Entekos, the goddess of Airs, of course.

This isn't hugely relevant or important, but his goat-association might, as @Gallowglass mentioned, make its apperance in surefootedness and climbing - as this combines the goat-association with the more essential properties of being a mountain/Earth deity and a "walker" (in a literal sense of traversing land). Due to this, does anyone know if there are any Ibex or North American Mountain Goats in Genertela? It could be interesting to include them somehow. And if you really want horns as a spell effect... why not make them of literal stone? Inflexible, heavy - yes, but Rule of Cool is an argument in itself.

We have mostly the Kerofinelan Orlanthi perspective on this. The Pelorian Orlanthi appear to have a range of attitudes towards Dara Happa. And Dara Happa... well, they tend to be imperalist chauvinists so they seem to mostly hold a (culturally generalized) disdain for everyone. In response though: I can definitely imagine the Lunars, DHans and Carmanians getting various alliances and mercenary contracts with the different Orlanthi groups, and it swinging around almost indefinitely. If that is what you want, of course.

To be fair, that seems to be THE central theme of the entire setting. And I know that all sorts of Western pseudo-Arthurianism and other stuff exists, but ultimately it's about the Rebel-Tyrant conflict that rings through the ages in Central Genertela. Not that this should shackle you to follow it, of course. I think if the Lunar Empire had stayed mostly in eastern Peloria, with Rinliddi as its main seat, you might have a situation where also the Carmanian Empire (assuming it lost control of the Tripolis) would be a serious contender. This also means no Battle at Castle Blue, so Sedenya's position as a goddess would be severely fraught - and... would the Red Moon even exist? I guess you could write around by saying she uplifted herself some somewhere else, maybe outside Torang or something. She would be opposed by BOTH Orlanth and Yelm though. Then there's Sheng, whose story would be needing some reavulation of course. Maybe he only conquered the Lunar (Rinliddi) Empire before dying off, or maybe he conquered all three Pelorian Empires before dying off or maybe he went all-in for Kralorela.

Well, maintaining oaths apply in both cases, but you can have stuff like preserving dietary or clothing norms, for example, or refusing to help members of a lower class or caste, or refusing to touch women in certain ways, or refusing to enter the homes of certain groups, or insisting on carrying out certain rituals at certain times, etc, which aren't necessarily lotalty-adjacent practices. Besides, it's a tendency, not an absolute. Absolutely, and it's a lesson RW anthropology had to learn the hard way (and is still learning the hard way). Well, Dendara and Oria (I can't imagine that Oria's influence stop at the walls of the respective tripolis cities), but yes - they are both immensely important in the daily lives of not only half the population(!), but for virtually all children, arguably most elderly and most men as well, even if it might be indirect (although I suspect Lodrilite men at least have a pretty close relationship with Oria in the same sense Orlanthi men have with Ernalda - as queen (headwoman), mother, provider and wife-ideal, etc.)

Alternate histories of Glorantha are interesting. I've considered what would happened if Genert had survived a few times - though the result might've been so different that the setting would have been almost unrecognizeable (for one, a lot of the theistic conflicts of Genertela might have been curtailed by a powerful regional entity favoring cooperation and (relative) harmony - sort of like how Pamalt does it in the south).

Possibly a tendency to be preoccupied with avoiding cultural taboos. That seems likely for me, at least. And I'm not surprised that Pelorian women weren't mentioned. They - and most non-Orlanthi women in general - tend to get overshadowed by some "general-culture-by-way-of-masculine-ideals"-type of thing, not unlike the blindsports of RW anthropology up until fairly recently.

Well, I guess it's at least useful to have it all collected rather than have to dig through mountains of apocrypha from 40+ years of publishing.