Sir_Godspeed

I want to know more about the Caladralanders. Speculation/fanon is welcome, but please specify or else I might get confused. I mean, I know the basics: They are Orlanthi (but not Heortlings nor Esrolians), but they worship Veskarthan/Caladra, an Orlanthi analogue of Lodril, where the high priest of said cult commands a great deal of religious and temporal power. They practise slash-and-burn horticulture (no plows?), and they live in a (sub-tropic to) tropical environment. They are known to have practised human sacrifice, possibly only to captured enemies, I dunno. Do they call themselves Caladralanders, or something like Veskarthings? Or do they have their own founding hero a la Heort or even something like Imarja? I assume they have kings and clans and tribes like most other Orlanthi, but exactly what shape they take I don't know. I also don't quite know what shape their demographics take, ie. whether it's evenly spread out in minor settlements, whether they have any towns/cities of note, whether cultic sites house a lot of people on a permanent basis, etc. Honestly, just a bit more about them would be cool. I like being able to sit down and imagine "if I were a member of [culture x] what would be my goals in life, my concerns, etc." and while I feel I can do that to a pretty good degree for Heortlings and Esrolians, it's less clear for the Caladralanders (aside from the obvious "work the land, have full belly, cherish kinfolk, get lots of kids".)

Serious question: in real life we have various kinds of dice. Would casting lots or even using dice in-universe be a potential method for loot allocation?

My take on it, and knowing Greg only by reputation, the answer, depending on the period he was writing in, the mood that struck him, and the particular vision he followed at the time, the answer is most likely: Yes.

Beaco Quaracus is a reed-and-wood joiner genius, who can build anything from anything. As long as it's made from reed and boards, of course.

These options aren't necessarily mutually exclusive.

Yeah, relying on these social media networks for fan groups is dicey. Which reminds me that sooner or later Facebook is going to get shut down too. Probably later, but still. It's probably too optimistic to expect a return to specific fan forums like it used to be back in the noughties.

Good question. While Time is referred to as a god (the youngest god), I am not aware that it is worshipped anywhere by anyone, thus I'm not sure if they're capable of "striking back" as it were, like other deities have been known to do.

I wouldn't expect anyone to use this more than once, or every now and then very rarely, as a mood-setting example, or alternatively, used by the GM for a particularly powerful NPC to present some drama before a tough fight, maybe. It's a storytelling tool, and should be used as a tool to make a story - not a blunt requirement in the name of mechanics.

While I work on the Tragedy of Shargash and the Buraroxi Muskox People writeups (titles pending), here is a teensy thing that was inspired by a discussion in the RuneQuest forum a while ago: when you cast Rune spells during play, what does your character do? Do they literally just say "I cast [spell] for [x] number of Points of Worship"? I prefer to think no, so I came up with this generic prayer that a character (or player, for some extra immersion) could recite fairly quickly. May not fit with what anyone imagines this to be, but this is my take on it: Generic form (feel free to change): O, hear me [deity], [additional title]! Your most worshipful follower calls upon your divine grace for a boon! In this, my hour of need, I seek your [positive quality of deity] to aid me against my foes! Always have I kept your laws, and given unto you the worship that is yours, always have I remained virtuous in your eyes! Now, I call upon your [spell effect]! As once you did [quick summary of mythological story that associates deity and spell effect]! Protect your faithful, and I will bring you honor, always! Example: O, hear me Orlanth, King of Storms, Master of the Middle Airs! Your most worshipful follower calls upon your divine grace for a boon! In this, my hour of need, I seek your Mighty Breath to aid me against my foes! Always have I kept your laws, and given unto you the worship that is yours, always have I remained virtuous in your eyes! Now, I call upon you to Clear the Skies of Clouds, as once you did clear the skies for your sons, the Vingkotlings to protect them against hostile Cloud Raiders! Protect your faithful, and I will bring you honor, always! Hope this might be of use to someone.

THIS POST WAS MADE BY DUCK BANDIT GANG.😤😤😤☝️🦆 REAL BILL HOURS, WHO UP?🤑 (I regret nothing) Although I do preger "Bandit Ducks!" for the catchiness.

Ah, the Dragon-Drake.

That's a good point. If it's the Ducks who are the PCs, you can do well to do some genre-messing. Stuff that's very serious for other races might be silly for them. And conversely, stuff that's comical for other races is deadly serious for the Durulz.

The issue with retractively changing the past is that it may very well be possible, but considering that it's already happened, we cannot reliably verify that it.... happened. You know? For example, the unified Lunar goddess might always have existed, or we might have a case where Sedenyan Heroquesters managed to imprint their idea of a unified Lunar goddess backwards into Myth so strongly that she has now always existed. The same goes for Yelm. Was there always a Great Sun, or did someone manage to heroquest a Great Sun into being retroactively by mashing together the different mythologies of the Little Suns? In the end, of course, it doesn't matter for practical purposes. The apes have always ruled the planet. Humanity has always been their prey. How could it possibly ever have been differently?

Wait, are the PCs the bounty hunters or the Ducks? One minor niggle I have is why bounty hunters would pursue a small group of Ducks across Kethaela and out to sea and into Prax. Seems like it would be more profitable to call it quits and go back to Sartar and try and rustle up some other Ducks. Maybe you could have the Ducks running off with something particularly valuable to get the ball rolling - or maybe the Ducks start killing off some of the bounty hunters, which causes the bounty hunters to go into grudge-mode or something.

Population-wise, area-wise or both?

Sex is easy, marriage is hard. EDIT: I go off on a bit of a tangent, I hope you don't take this as an attack on your post. If I remember correctly, the average of marriage age in rural peasant societies in the early modern era (14-17th centuries) was about 27 for men, and 20-23 for women. This was not hugely different from the preceding Middle Ages, iirc. The Bronze age might've been different, but I suspect not. Part of the issue here is that there's a difference between reaching adulthood and working up the necessary acumen and resources to start one's own family. According to tradition, a child was made an adult at age 15 in Lutheran Norway, at which point they were eligible to take up apprenticeships, work at sea, or otherwise be gainfully employed, however they very, very rarely married at this age, because there were expectations to be fulfilled. The parents of the prospective bride, for example, if they were in somewhat good standing (ie. not desperate to marry off their daughter) would evaluate suitors' financial status, and older suitors obviously had a better chance there, and they would also scrutinize not only familial status, but the skills, reputation and achievements of the suitor himself. The would-be bride would also be a part of this, with more or less agency according to lots of different variables that I don't need to go into here. Long story short, many people, due to practical and financial concerns, didn't really have the opportunity to start families and procreate until sometime in their mid-twenties. While the example I am using is from the decidedly un-Gloranthan 16th/17th century Norway, to the best of my knowledge these basic dynamics have been pretty common through many eras and areas. The teenage marriages tend to be outliers from the very wealthy (dynastic alliances) or the very poor (child marriage is often a desperate attempt to reduce the burden at home, and ensuring some measure of support for the one married off. Harsh, but there are often few other choices). Early betrothals do pretty frequently occur though, but they might last several years as the families wait until the would-be-couple are deemed old enough and sustainable. There are some differences at play here though. Admittedly, the Orlanthi are a lot less stuck up about premarital sex than Lutheran Europeans (they remind me more of some Melanesian trends in courting I've read about, but that's really neither here nor there), although on the other hand they also have easier access to birth prevention that the aforementioned RW people (through magic and/or herbs, iirc - and of course, it's not like every sexual encounter is potentially childbringing, ie. oral, manual, etc.). Another difference is the collective housing and living of the Orlanthi. This might mean that there is less emphasis placed on the bridal couple's ability to support themselves before they are married, which might bring the marriage age down. On the other hand, Orlanthi society is a good deal more gender-egalitarian, so women might collectively and individually work to prevent marriages from occuring too early (due to health concerns as well as simply not wanting a character to enter her "Ernaldan" stage too early. "Let the girl live a little before she settles down, there's always time for childrearing later!" might be a common sentiment.) In summary, there are probably a number of factors that prevent Gloranthan "generations" (the time from birth to parenthood) being shorter than somewhere in the 20-25 ballpark. This is just my impression, as always.

Catastrophic mass-deaths make genealogy very difficult. My dad used to do a lot of genealogy research for our family, and the main tool for that were parish registers ("kirkebok"). They worked pretty well back to about the early-to-mid 1400s (ie. the tail end of the main Black Death epidemics) if I recall what he told me correctly, at which point they lack a great deal of names and dates are uncertain at best. In an oral society this effect might be even worse - especially when taking collective trauma, and even potential taboos into account. Oh, and of course, the deaths of key ritual experts (Lhankor Mhy scribes, nobles, other literates or other poets) would also create a kind of bottlenecking effect where the knowledge that is preserved comes mostly from those lineages that did not live in that area or participate in the invasion.

You're probably right. The interaction between and roles of the different Earth Great Goddesses is complex enough in and of itself, but probably even more byzantine in Esrolia and Nochet.

I read Esrolia: Land of 10k Goddesses a while ago, and there is a piece that talks about how Ernalda in Esrolia has a more limited role than elsewhere, as there are more named goddesses to cover some of things she does elsewhere, and so Esrolian Ernalda is often associated more simply with good fortune - are these priestesses dedicated to that version of Ernalda, or am I reading too much (or too little) into it? Also, I am quite fond of logistics, so that sounds fun.

I can't comment on whether Rokarism is a mockery of Malkionism (although I agree that they are quite unsympathetic, which they have in common with the Solar patriarchies, for instance), but it doesn't exactly feel that much worse than, say, the Brithini. Given that the Brithini explicitly severed their ties with Malkion during his exodus, I'm not sure if Brithinism counts here as defining what Malkionism is (altough they share the castes, runic worldview, sorcery and the urban principles).

Never implied they were "just" pre-Colombian, but they *originated* prior to European colonization. Unlike, for example, the equestrian prairie cultures.

We've been over this before, but didn't the Ban cut off their access to Erontree? They were reportedly eating their own children after all. Additionally, we don't really know what "logging rights" entail, specifically. Quotas, purpose, earmarking, etc.

My impression was that the original Abiding Book wrote itself out of thin air on Jrustela (I'm a bit unclear as to whether this is some snippet of surviving GL propaganda or whether it literally happened), and that the Rokari later went through it line by line and eliminated everything they deemed non-orthodox to create the Sharp Abiding Book. Maybe this happened twice, I don't know.

His Fire Rune is clearly very powerful.

I suggested those as possible building-styles for the Yggites, due to their relative lack of need for large amounts of lumber, protection against winds, and high degree of defensibility in a (presumably) pretty violent Vadrudian society - but you make a compelling case here as well.