Sir_Godspeed

My note on how conflicts are handled at the lowest relevant structural levels was taken from Evans-Pritchard's account on how traditional conflict resolution occurs among the Nuer people in South Sudan, although the sources are from the 1920s-30s, so things might've changed since then While the Nuer lack the more formalized corporate clan structure that the Orlanthi have, they did have a system of "wergild" which involved members of ritually (but not politically) powerful third-party bloodlines/lineages intermediating and sacrificing cattle to end feuds, as did/do their neighbors, the Dinka people. Basically, as outlined by others above, less serious infractions are likely to be solved at the smallest possible scale, played by ear and relevant tradition, and with an attempt to keep most people happy, or at the very least keep the most powerful happy and things running smoothly. If the stakes are higher, people are probably going to try and activate their social capital by drawing in as many family and lineage members, and possibly ask for favors from close friends or patrons/clients. If these third party members fail to mediate the conflict, only then do I see the Clan Ring getting overly involved in an official capacity, but this is mostly speculation. All of this might of course be avoided provided the offended party is sufficiently intimated to shut up about the incidence. A cottar might refrain from making a ruckus on fear of being beaten up by the extended family of their carl patron, for example, over some grazing rights or misappropriated calfing or somesuch infringement. I'd assume stuff like that happens.

I like this take.

Bat wings work nicely, but unfortunately pterosaur wings are somewhat different, as they didn't have the extra digits between the index and arm. Basically, pterosaur wings hand only one bone going out (the rest being above the wing-membrane placing) if you will - making them look quite different from, and possible more awkward with a human head, than something bat-derived. The most aesthetically compatible look would probably be to look up some of the smaller pterosuaur species with chunker, less pointy heads and shorter necks. I'll add that it's possible that these "pteroharpies" aren't really harpies at all, but some kind of devolved dragon derivate, much like a lot of dinosaur and other reptilian species. And Pamaltela is lousy with those.

This was my initial thought too. It's generally convenient due to closer residential patterns, and arguably avoids disrupting social interaction. Some form of wergild might be possible as well. It's also possible that crimes are solved at the lowest structural level possible in most cases, so in other words, crimes inside a household is generally handled by the household head, crimes within a bloodlined is usually handled by the senior bloodline household head, and so on. This might only apply to less serious crimes though. One assumes secret murder would always include the Clan leadership, for example, as would other serious crimes like rape (including marital rape) or cattle theft (the latter admittedly being hard to pull off in an intra-clan context).

Probably not, but there are probably some hand grenades in there.

Europe is a big place, and material trends moved to different areas at different times - probably best to move beyond archaeological specificities if it's to be applied to Balazar/southern Peloria.

The two posts above pretty much cover it. They both also touch on the topic of evaluating "problematic" themes in fiction. Certain themes might be worse on paper than others, but when you take into account how they manifest in real life, something that's arguably less horrible on paper can become a lot more iffy for players to navigate. Compare, for example, the comparison between some evil dark lord who wants to kill everyone and end the universe, versus a society that has a race-based slavery system. Arguably the first one is the worst thing ever, but has no relevant bearing on real life, whereas the latter is something that occured within less than the last two centuries, and has tangible, verifiable ramifications down to this day. This isn't rocket science or anything, but it's good to keep in mind when worldbuilding, and to allay fears that "political correctness is going mad" or the like.

The source is Esrolia: Land of 10k Goddesses, and the "fortress" being referred to here is the Shadow Plateau (at least according to whoever is annotating the text, whether it be an in-universe commentator or an out-of-universe one). Based on that my assumption is that it most likely is an Uz deity. Norinel, Kimantor's wife and Queen of Nochet, also reigned during the Great Darkness, which means that a lot (if not most) gods were missing during this period. What I'm not certain about, however, is to what degree any Uz deities went missing (ie. went to the Underworld or were otherwise incapacitated or possibly even killed by Chaos) during the Greater Darkness. The Uz generally fared pretty well during this period, compared to everyone else. Kimantor is claimed to either be a son of (iirc) or an incarnation of the Only Old One. The OOO is a son of Esrolia and Argan Argar, although the Shadow Plateau was itself built by Lodril/Veskarthan. So, here's my initial guesses: 1. The Missing God was Argan Argar, and the armor fit Kimantor because he is the son/grandson of AA. 2. The missing god was Veskarthan, who was silent and broken, and the armor fit Kimantor because they are both tied to the Shadow Plateau. (The more I think about this, the less I think it's likely, to be honest. It doesn't fit thematically with anything in the story either.) At last I want to mention the possibility that it's simply a metaphor. Kimantor got the "clothes and weapons" in the sense that he assumed control over the powers of Shadow and Night. This, however, still doesn't quite answer who the missing god is, though it does heavily hint towards some kind of Darkness deity, Uz or otherwise.

I'm not sure I caught the problem, but I don't disagree with anything you said. It's meant to be monumental obviously, being a temple IRL, and either a temple or "ale hall"/palace in a Gloranthan context, as far as I imagined it. It's a prestige building, regardless. As I said, the idea would be for it to be based on historical construction forms/styles but scaled up (perhaps both for traditionalism and as a message). Anyway, just an idea.

Wikipedia had this reconstruction of a temple for the culture. I couldn't help think that it kind of looked like a scaled-up, plastered longhouse that maybe you could find in Kerofinela, if we presuppose that longhouses are a thing whether together with square compounds or not. I could imagine it as either an urbanized rural style, or something else. The ale hall of a particularly powerful clan, maybe.

Something that could be pretty amazing of done well is incorporate a lot of the ideas above, and after hours and hours of (real time) playing with a very Ernaldan mindset, forging alliances, calming foes, tricking opponents, indimidating rivals, etc., you offer a PC the chance to just clock a particularly annoying NPC the f**** out. WHAM. No one sees it coming. Total subversion of tropes. "What?! There's always another way!" the Ernaldan says with an expression daring anyone to criticize her, nursing bruised knuckles, in a rare moment of post-violence gratification. I dunno, the thought made me chuckle.

Ah, the more you use it to enhance your powers, the more it gains control over you. A very solid story trope!

Well, some clues can be taken from the stories that actually feature Ernalda herself. They are frequently based around cleverness, ingenuity, leadership and ensuring cooperation (ie. diplomacy by any other name). For a storyline to feel compelling, there needs to be a sense of consequence (if I fail, then...), and urgency (this can't wait, because...), and agency (What I need to do is...). And while this will probably need some work to work out the nitty gritty, I believe there doesn't have to be as large a difference between weaving a tapestry (or at least gaining the means/opportunity to do so) and going on an epic combat quest. Moana is frequently brought up here as a great example of something that fits the mold of a Gloranthan Heroquest, for example, but it's not often mentioned how female-centric it is as a narrative. The main character is a woman undergoing the transition from childhood to adulthood, the supporting/mentor character is a wise woman, and of course famously the villain turns out to a be a deeply wounded female entity that's lashing out in anguish, and in the end the solution to the problem turns out to be recognition, restitution and healing. Also there are some cool fights in there, which is fun, admittedly. You could probably add some other Disney princess movies to a list of female-centric narratives and adventures, like Frozen, although there's a lot to be learnt from Disney on how NOT to do things too. I'm also thinking of classical fairy tales from my own childhood, like White-Bear King Valemon, which, while I'm sure it's not some paragon of feminism, is predominantly a story of a girl going out to save her "Otherworld" boyfriend from an evil castle through her wits and magical gadgets gifted to her. Again, this doesn't go into the nitty gritty mechanics of gaming, but if you have a game that can simulate persuasion, trading, or say, riddling or puzzle-solving (through observational stats or through actual puzzles, what do I know), then this doesn't strike me as too different from simulating a fight. As for conssequences - don't always make Violence An Option. Or perhaps, make it decidedly the inferior one, if you want to put the Ernaldan perspective front and center (obviously, as stated above, a Vingan perspective does fine with fighting scenarios, but that's not really what we're looking at here). Did the PCs fail to convince the Giant to lend them the thread spun from a thing that no longer exist, and it burst out into a fight? Well, tough shit, because this isn't something you can just loot off his corpse. That string is gone now. You goofed up, time for plan B - whatever that is. I don't know - I might just be saying obvious things for seasoned game masters and developers as I did earlier in the thread - but I just don't think "mechanizing" things outside of combat has to be some totally other beast than mechanizing combat. Consequence, urgency, agency. That's how they pull off making the scene where the nerdy character deciphers a dead language, or draws up the designs for the device that will bring the heroes back home in movies cool. I think it can be done for weaving a tapestry too. Maybe work in the journey of gathering the materials as mentioned above, or make the weaving itself something that can go very, very wrong. Oops, you wove the sequence where Ernalda drives off the Gorgerlings incorrectly. Better pull out some tricks, because the God Time is going to reach out and mess with you. Or better yet: to weave the tapestry, you need to reenact the myths, mechanically-speaking. It shows understanding of them. Anyway, rambling off a bit now - but I trust it can be done, and can be done awesomely. EDIT: I guess it's worth adding that this mentality applies to pretty much any non-combatant. Want an epic Barntar quest? Have your Barntar pull feats of strength like build a wall separating two tulas in a limited time, take on a giant in a merry armwrestling competition to gain grazing rights around his hill-home, calm down a raging bull that's been bewitched, or whatever. He doesn't even need to fight, just do Barntar-y stuff, only awesomely. Same with whoever else.

Something with the Giants of the Eastern Rockwoods using some aspect of the land's fertility to keep off a Chaos invasion? Not supported by any textual evidence, and rather counter to how Genert's land (to the south) got invaded (unless Chaos went around rather than over - but then in all likelihood they went everywhere). As Qizilbashwoman said, the are may simply never have been agriculturally fertile. Perhaps for some Green Age idiosyncratically mythical reason. Maybe, again, the Giants or land goddess rejected the deliberate growing of crops when the Green Age turned to the Golden Age. Maybe it's some kind of atavistic holdout in that respect. I'm just speculating, really.

Now I can't stop imagining Gorites embarassedly asking Earth Priestesses about whether they might be "pergenat"

That's what I get for not investing in the actual RPG books.

I was just reading around, and there's so much about Ernalda's weaving, ie. her ability to provide, clothe, shelter, protect and arguably provide the markers of civilization and social stratification that you could play around with. It's not exactly combat magic, I guess, but there are interesting story hooks in there! Imagine Chaos (or maybe Sorcery) blasting an entire community's memories away, and as an Ernaldan you need to reestablish social norms, cast out offenders, set up magical defenses against further damages or whatever. I don't know - have some fun with the base concepts. The opposite could be true as well, of course - imagine a community that pisses off Ernalda (or an Ernaldan high priestess) and suddenly they find themselves unable to accept any kind of decision-making organization as they've been cursed by Ernalda denying them communality or something. I mean, you could obviously give her rock demons to smash stuff or whatever even if that's more of a Maran thing (another goddess that could do with some limelight in combat adventures I'd imagine), but even with the more "domestic" (actually societal) purview of Ernalda in mind, there are things that could be done.

In a temperate coastal context, I'm not sure how common it is to come across substantially-sized open areas that aren't just marshy floodplains. If trees grow in one area, and not in another, neighboring area, then there is some underlying reason for that. The simplest way to clear land will be burning. Then you need to clear the soil of rocks, which can be used for drystone walling or for house construction, or just lump them downhill or whatever. If it's marshy you need to dig drainage canals, etc. People living on steppes/prairies with temperate continental climates will have the opposite issue, where grasses are plentiful, but water for crops and thus also wood for construction will be scarce. I'm generalizing here, of course, there's a lot more climatic variety than this. ------ When I was in Tamil Nadu I got to take a closer look on an area that's extremely well-utilized agriculturally. The landscape in the deta-region is almost completely carved up into villages with farmland as far as the eye can see, with myriads of creeks and canals traversing it. This is a landscape that is very much maintained and densely populated, and one that I could vaguely imagine as similar to Esrolia. Even here, however, you find brushland, lines of trees dampening the wind between the different fields, lines of trees covering villages and estates from prying eyes, bringing shade and of course acting as orchards. You also find trees to bind up the soil along the erosion-prone creek-banks, and here and there you see larger groups of trees largely untouched for whatever reason (lumber for boatbuilding, as someone mentioned)- though I wouldn't call them forests. Anyway, I think most of us agree on that trees are a lot more spread out than your typical stylized fantasy map generally indicated - it's just interesting to see the logic behind graphical, stylized representations like maps.

When I was a kid, I first saw the fantasy maps in the Lord of the Rings, with its exquisite penmanship, and the stylized, pseudo-medieval icons symbolizing mountains, cities, forests, and so on. To my mind, however, I had a hard time imagining this landscape. If trees on the map indicated forests, then in my head, the rest of the map would be grasslands completely devoid of tree-cover, which seemed oddly barren for what was to a good extent fantasy-northwestern Europe This seemed utterly bizarre to me. I remember asking my dad about this, and he told me that the trees on the map only referred to particularly dense woodlands, and that indeed there were probably trees all around, just less so. I've thought about this a bit, as it's by now a tradition for many fantasy maps to dot in some woods here and there and name them, sometimes very deliberately, sometimes more for aesthetic purposes - but the question of "what about outside of the woods?" is something I always carry with me. And thus Glorantha. This is not necessarily a question solely about to what degree Gloranthan areas that aren't explicitly covered in trees on the maps have some tree cover on the ground as well (although some discussion on that is welcome - I remember reading or watching a video that said the Bronze Age saw the largest agricultural footprint in terms of square miles in the history of Britain, for example), but it's perhaps equally a question of what makes a forest with a big F, and what are just a bunch of trees just hanging about. Is there simply a density equation going on? Or is it mixed into mythical or political issues, such as the residence of woodland spirits, aldryami, forest-people who call that area their home. For example, maps often do not show woodlands around the Vent - yet woodlands would be necessary for large scale swidden agriculture to work, if I understand it correctly. Is Junora really that barren of dense woodlands? These are all just examples. As I said, this is as much a topic of cartography and symbolism as it is about Gloranthan geography as-is - though it is both. EDIT: And of course, this does vary between different kinds of maps, lest I come off as treating not only all fantasy-style maps, but also all Glorantha maps, with too broad strokes.

I'm not familiar with this concept/term, what is it from?

Damn, that's a very considerable population number - didn't expect to find something that big in the bronze age outside of the Near East (at least in the Euro-Mediterranean context). I have to admit, my first thought was Peloria, but outside the structured Dara Happan urban ideals, and maybe more into the more recently (re)settled areas to the east. Where would you place a configuration like this in Orlanthi areas? Does it fit in Kerofinela-Kethaela, or would it be more at home in, say, Vesmonstran or along the Janube? Also, apropos of nothing, that big open central space, is it for keeping animals overnight after pasture - or is it more purely a communal-ritual space (ie. law-hearings, moot-space, festival plain, etc. etc.)

Are there any known cases of sentient swords, or weapons with active spirits bound in them and the like in Glorantha? Shamans' paraphernalia sort of doesn't count. I mean, it does, but I'm already aware that shamans commonly bind spirits in various items they carry - if I've understood that correctly. Bonus points for that trope where the weapon is so strong-willed it starts leading the wielder, and not the other way around. I've always had a soft spot for that one.

Canyon, maybe?

Ah, yes, several Amazonian groups operate with concepts such as "Mothers of the Game", which are essentially the collective species of an entire species (or at least as far as the local group is concerned). This concept does have a lot in common with the totemic Hsunchen system in Glorantha, ie. with an archetype spirit named for each (socially relevant) species. Not exactly what the OP looked for, but pretty close, and as stated above, can probably be slightly modified so that different groupings have their own versions of this totemic spirit or what have you. And something that is pretty relevant for the "intelligence among animals"-question: several Amazonian groups absolutely believe that other species than humans have their own shamans. It's a fairly common theme of stories where a stranger visits the village, behaves strangely, leaves, and only afterwards to people realize it was the spirit-self of, say, a jaguar shaman, taking on a human form or something. All the more reason to keep the Mothers of the Game (ie. collective spirits) propitiated and happy.

Oh, I wasn't making a normative statement on whether it was bad or good - just doing myself a reality check. The General Motors for majority stockholders for example aren't exactly going to start handing out stocks without probably trying to overthrow any government or movement that would be a proponent of such a automatization-buy-out scheme.