Sir_Godspeed

Just now, Qizilbashwoman said:

hahahahaha well for sure Elmal's lover/bestie is Heler, imagine if it turns out Yelm's wife Dendara is a mask of Heler/a

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.

Just now, Bill the barbarian said:

Grampa. what’s a penny?

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

Wait... could this tie into Heler?

1 hour ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

Is she real, or a weird kind of invention?

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:
 

53 minutes ago, Kloster said:

Ooooops.

oh no we did a racism.









(I'm joking)

1 hour ago, Kloster said:

Where in Switzerland: Geneva, Luzern, Lugano or St Moritz?

Probably depends on where in Sartar.

EDIT: double post, oops.
 

5 hours ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

ENTIRELY UNRELATEDLY, because the Sun Gods f*ck through a sheet when they aren't sworn to virginity, Turos being the exception

... is Molanni, "mother of Daga", somehow related to Entekos? Daga is paralleled by Yatelo the (deeply creepy) Hungry Sun in Six Ages. She is portrayed by Orlanthings as a woman in a submissive position. Is Molanni an Orlanthing interpretation of Yelm's Wife?

Here's Yatelo, because everyone loves pictures. Also pictured: Inilla the Gatherer God looking sad and Elmal officially looking "vexed". (Six Ages

I suggested something similar a while ago (great minds think alike), although I'm not sure if it's actually correct:
 

Quote

We're also told Vadrus fathered a daughter called Molanni, the goddess of Still Air. To me, this seemed like a way for the Orlanthi to account for Entekos, the goddess of "Good Air", who is an air deity of considerable age and notability in Pelanda and later, Peloria as a whole, but is seemingly entirely absent in the actual Air peoples' stories. This was strengthened by her being mentioned as a traitor. However, since she is mentioned by name in the Wedding Contest for Yelm, and contrasted with Dendara (the other possible Entekos-mask/equivalent) I'm not sure how plausible that is. I'm more tempted to see Entekos as a direct daughter of Umath now, but that's pure speculation on my part.
 

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.

33 minutes ago, Runeblogger said:

I need to ask: what does "Community" do?  

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.

4 hours ago, Akhôrahil said:

Or for Dragon Pass Orlanthi. My Talastar will have some rough weather, especially deep snows.

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.

21 minutes ago, Bill the barbarian said:

Hey!

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.

1 hour ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

Wasn't Elz Ast described as the city with the absolute worst weather in Glorantha somewhere? I remember reading about how it is like a pit of horrid mud swamps and Alaska mosquitos in the brief warm times and a frozen hellscape when it isn't.

And when the Lunars did their "respite from the cold" trick, it was "horrid mud swamps and Alaska mosquitos, now with malaria"

I believe it was compared to some midwestern or Canadian city in terms of temperature

Ah, found it. Quebec City, apparently.
 

4 hours ago, Brootse said:

Pic of the broo.

I think I own that 70s acid metal album.

37 minutes ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

there's also gern broo, which are even creepier

That's a mindscrew.

30 minutes ago, Jeff said:

But taking any ONE of those as your source for thinking about Orlanthi kingship is likely to end up with you swapping out Greg's material for a real world culture. I've fallen into that trap - heck, Greg fell into that trap many times. 

Oh, certainly, I was merely mentioning an example where the same title, translated, has been used in an hierarchical manner. I wasn't implying that irish kingship was, or should be considered, a direct parallel to Orlanthi kingship ideals.

And even if we were to nail down a specific mode of kingship(s) in Sartar, this is still just one instance of the concept of kingship among Orlanthi, which has and will continue to evolve both over time and space, as @Qizilbashwoman mentioned.

Theory is neat, real life is messy, and all that.

As a real world example of multiple tiers of kingship, I guess maybe Ireland (medieval or antique) might serve as a model. iirc, they had four or five recognized hierarchically ordered levels of kings. (This might of course be a clerical fiction for the purposes of making genealogies, but it's suffices for our use.) Not all of those used the same (modified) word though. Ard might be the most famous term, but the lesser ones used others.

I fully expect some Gaelo-philes to correct me and explain further indepth.

5 hours ago, Joerg said:

Wait a moment  - a mere tribal king can override a clan's (plowed/built over) land claims with a simple command? So a Rex king of the Colymar could have sent the Varmandi packing, and leaving behind the Thunder Oak which houses their wyter?

I can see such a command work with lands used by the clan - such as summer pasture or hunting grounds - but not with the area under control of the clan wyter.

It is (usually) not like a clan ever received its land from the (current) tribal king. In the Quivini lands, many clans entered on their own, taking a claim to some land, and integrating that land in their clan identity over the centuries. It is possible to sever a clan from a tribe, but not to sever the clan from its land without defeating it beyond recuperation.

(The Helvetii giving up their lands just like that, without a clear idea where they would settle next, always sounded quite suspicious to me. In case of the Germanic migrations, there appears to be archaeological evidence for the soil having been overworked severely.)

Since it's associated with Rex, then this might be an Alakoring-innovation, right? Which means it might originally have been deviced as some kind of emergency-power to deal with draconic-influenced clans or the like, then it just sort of got reproduced after that whole deal ended. Which might mean, by extension, that this is less "traditional" than a non-Rex tribal kingship, or "Paramount Chief", in which case then yes, he'd have no such specific authority over a clan's core settlement territory.

Just throwing ideas out there.

1 hour ago, jeffjerwin said:

Prince or princeps more or less corresponds to 'head, chief', 'numero uno'.

So does in-universe Dar, doesn't it? And, well, "chief" itself, if that term is still used anywhere.

I was mostly looking for in-universe explanations rather than real-world etymology. For example, Belintar is cited as having heavily used Western/Malkioni terminology in his restructuring of Kethaela, with military Dukes and so forth. Ralios retains the title Archon from the Stygian Empire, and the Lunar Empire refers to its constituent regions as satrapies as a result of borrowing Carmanian terminology.

I was wondering if such a process might've occured with "prince", as we don't seem to find many other Orlanthi Heortling "princes" in Kethaela or Kerofinela. (although we probably find some Malkionized Orlanthi/Henotheist princes in Maniria and maybe Ralios and Fronela. There's a Jonatelan principality that comes to mind).

It's not a huge issue either way, I'm just interested if any particular consideration had been given to it.

Is this considered an innovation in-universe, or did he borrow from previous traditions from somewhere?

(No worries if there isn't a set answer, just wondering if there any "canonical" consideration - given that other titles have been traced back as loans, ie. Archon, Duke, Sultan, Satrap etc.)