Sir_Godspeed

I am genuinely more psyched for this than pretty much any triple-A release in the foreseeable future. Lovely art, excellent writing, new angles on Glorantha - from what I've seen from excerpts of the iOS version. Good times ahead!

I guess it's also worth mentioning that the term "Hsunchen" is a Second Age attempt by the God Learners to effectively categorize all the animal-totem/shape-changers they observed around their empire. If I remember correctly, it mighy even be a loanword from Kralorela, which in itself has done the mistake of classifying Wind Children as "Hsunchen" (the Guide goes out of its way to say they aren't), so it's not like the Westerners would've been immune to this sort of muckup themselves. Given the adoption of a foreign term, it's likely that the Westerners did not have an overarching umbrella term for animal totem people, perhaps previously dealing with them mostly on a case-by-case basis. However, the term "Hykimi" could be said to carry at least some of the same ideas, although its use by a confederation in the First Age might have made it impossible for the Westerners to dissasociate the term from the group defeated by Talor. Who knows. Basically, I agree that it's a bit more muddled than it's necessarily made out to be, both for mythical and historical reasons.

Let's say you're setting them up against each other so they achieve some kind of weird equilibrium. Either that or either cold or putrefaction has been sufficiently distanced from the other that they no longer work properly together.

Wow, I never knew! TIL too.

PREACH THE CONTROVERSY.

It would be amazing. I was about to say I ship them, but truth be told I could never ship anyone with Dara Happan Yelm, he's kind of a knob-end.

It's some kind of foreign money as far as I'm concerned.

Wait... could this tie into Heler?

If I had a penny for everytime that question has been asked about a Gloranthan deity... well, okay, it wouldn't massively affect my net worth, but I'd have a dime or a quarter, maybe, and that's, uh, that's something.

The Dara Happan tendency to "think mythology" in terms of planets always takes me a bit off guard, since I'm more used to the Theyalan tendency to more loosely classify by natural phenomenon/element. Not that the Orlanthi do not associate deities with planets, but the Dara Happans seem to use this as their guiding principle, which the Orlanthi are less prone to, if that makes sense. Just takes a while to grog.

I guess the lore discussion should be brought over here instead of cluttering up the main thread:

oh no we did a racism. (I'm joking)

Probably depends on where in Sartar.

EDIT: double post, oops.

I suggested something similar a while ago (great minds think alike), although I'm not sure if it's actually correct: There are other candidates for an Orlanthi version of Entekos as well, such as Serenha, who is said to have been born in the wake of Umath's travels (making her his literal wake air) and who later begat Kolat's breath spirits, I believe. Then there's Brastalos, the wife of Magasta, goddess of the doldrums. She is associated with a specific weather pattern out at sea by the Orlanthi, but she could conceivably take a very different form when understood by an inland civilization, imho. Overall: no idea.

Argues, mostly.

Stygia.... Fonrit, probably. Lots of slave-owning, tyrannical sorcerer-lords (or rune-casters, but whatever) in different city-states, with evil gods. The islands around Teshnos can probably serve as an arena for swashbuckling, jungle-based sword-and-sorcery adventures. Though, again, Fonrit can probably achieve some of the same. The Janube valley, while a lot colder, has the benefit of also being largely disorganized with a lot of different city states about. The same goes for Ralios (more temperate), which is famous of lots of secret societies, cults, skulduggery and high-stakes politicking mixed with magic conspiracies.

Oh, definitely.

Wait, first it was too cold to wear togas, and now it's too warm to wear togas? If it's any consolation, the Romans hated wearing togas themselves, and very nearly dropped the whole deal, if we are to believe some very irate speeches recorded during the - iirc - late Republican era. Traditionalism won through, though. (This is all assuming that Dara Happans even wear anything equivalent of a toga, and not just some other kind of robe. Others know better than me on this, I just go by the art references). I'm more interested in what our poor Lodrilite farmworkers put on during the cold months when the irrigation ditches freeze over and your (presumably) flat-roofed clay brick house gets covered in three feet of snow. Maybe some inspiration from northern China is in its place. Apart from the Gobi, I mean. I don't know.

You know what you did to Rome!

Guerilla advertising, I like it. *goes off to check it out*

Peloria being pretty cold in winter, and Dragon Pass relatively mild is probably one of those reasons why certain terminology associated with northern Europe is seen as misleading for the Orlanthi. The same goes for the wine vs. beer debate, with ale probably being more prevalent in Peloria, but since many people associate the Lunar Empire with the Roman Empire*, Ancient Sumar-Akkadia or the like, wine seems more "thematic", while ale-swigging Orlanthi also seems more "thematic" for many. (Classist wine vs. beer biases probably also come into play - consistently referring to the Orlanthi as "barbarians" in promotional material probably doesn't help). *Apparently pseudo-Latin terms for a continental temperated cvilization isn't seen as misleading, but that's neither here nor there.

I believe it was compared to some midwestern or Canadian city in terms of temperature Ah, found it. Quebec City, apparently.

I think I own that 70s acid metal album.

That's a mindscrew.