Sir_Godspeed

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.

I would be onboard with longhouses, but Chaosium seems to currently be going in a slightly different, more Mediterranean direction. My interpretation of multiple sub-dwellings of semi-free dependant tenant farmers (ooph, a mouthful) is based on the idea that the (idealized) distinction between free and semi-free is the ability to maintain a full oxen plow-team. This, imho, implies separate fields to plow, because if they had all been living in the same household, I am somewhat uncertain why they would divide the plots into different properties and divide access to the plow-team. A main dwelling of the free farmer, with multiple sub-dwellings of semi-free dependants makes more sense in this regard. The same also goes for the idea that another term used (in-universe) for semi-free Heortling farmers is "sheep-men", which for one, again refers to the lack of a complete oxen plow-team (to the best of my knowledge) but imho also to that they do still possess their own flocks of sheep which their graze on their own grazing ranges (the existence of commons will have to be discussion for another day). Lastly, there is also the term "cottar", which I am aware is being phased out as inaccurate, but if it still carries any weight, it does literally refer to a cottager or crofter, ie. a tenant farmer living on an outlying plot. As always, this is just my personal interpretation, and I should probably add that I have a feeling that Chaosium might also not be going in this direction. And I do like the longhouse, and also the mediterranean square courtyard-house so I'm not super-upset whatever solution works out. We should probably also keep in mind that it's not like any of these residential patterns necessarily exclude each other. There are bigger and smaller longhouses (and even an outlying semi-free family can still number enough to construct and maintain their own mini-longhouse, if we go by what I've read about Norwegian archaeology, although I don't know how it looks like in say, precolombian longhouse cultures or the Caucasus), and the shape and construction of dwellings is going to vary greatly on climate, access to building materials, surrounding dangers, and in Glorantha, construction myths. EDIT: Had a look through the linked article about Heortling housing from 2016, and clearly this topic is something that has been discussed at length several times.

As I understand it, God Learnerism is in a sense relativizing what various cultures hold as gospel, allowing people to radically question what are held to be profound truths. Suddenly your storm god isn't THE storm god, but just another expression of a pattern of interacting runic ideals. That kind of relativism is not very popular with people who hold those ideas to be the truth, and the truth to be the basis of their very existence and survival. Not AS relativizing as, say, certain forms of mysticism, I bet, but intolerably abstracting for your average theist or whoever. EDIT: For a real-life example, I grew up with some very devout relatives who found the idea that members of other religions could make just as strong a case that *their* religion was true to be patently absurd, and honestly pretty offensive. The idea that my relatives' god and the god of some other people might both be equally plausible was unthinkable. Basically, "relativizing" their own worldview and trying to see something from another religionist's point of view was not only undesireable, but practically impossible.

Yeah, the distinction between True/Ancestral Mostali and Clay Mostali/Dwarfs is really murky, especially in older material (assumedly because that hadn't been quite worked out yet). To the best of my knowledge (possibly gleamed from this very forum, or some kind of message thread elsewhere), Pavis' parentage was the product of some kind of movement that looked either to the World Friends' Council of the Dawn Age, and (possibly by extension) back into the Green Age. Something something refining the Man Rune. But then people here tell me that the Dwarfs don't have the man Rune (sounds like a game convention rather than actual worldbuilding sense, but who am I to say) so maybe that's overreaching Pavis' and his forebears motives.