Sir_Godspeed

4 hours ago, David Scott said:

No, they were contacted by the Theylans in 35ST and integrated in into the First World Council. Their origin is the Garden of Gerert when Storm Bull and his sons came down from the Spike and married Eiritha and her daughters, giving rises to the Founders and Protectresses of the tribes. The Orlanthi connection is via Storm Bull. It was a two way cultural merging, the Praxians only numbered about 3k in 35ST and were still in Prax, not truly entering the Wastes until the start of the Second Age. Their major export (other than Praxians) was the Storm Bull cult, while they imported the Lightbringers, Humakt, and Yelorna. 

 

This is all true, but not what I adressed above.

15 hours ago, Alex said:

Interesting.  For me this either sounds like a super-loose take on what "effectively Orlanthi" entails (yay) or an ultra-monomythic interpretation of certain God Time events (boo).  But either way, 1600+ years is a loooooong time for marriage customs to vary rather a lot.

 

It basically means that the modern Praxian Beast Riders appear to be derived from the same God-Time origin as the original Orlanthi, being groups of Storm-worshipping, animal-herding pastoralists that migrated northwards from the Spike. They were perhaps like cousins of the Vingkotlings, to oversimplify things.

As you say, 1600 years is a long time, and they've evolved very differently in that period. The Beast Riders got the Survival Pact and integrated groups with no apparent Storm origin, etc. On the other hand, the Theyalans spread/converted groups across most of Central and Western Genertela, became mostly sedentary, and integrated their mythology into an overarching Orlanthi-Pelorian synthesis of sorts, which would later meld with Malkioni ideas to form the current Monomyth as we know it. At least that seems to be the gist of it.

This is not terribly relevant to the discussion, although what is more relevant might be the more or less constant cultural interaction between Prax and Dragon Pass, with lots of cultural exchange there, throughout Time.

11 hours ago, Martin Dick said:

(what is the collective noun for a group of herdmen - crowd? mob? bunch? - mob sounds good to me 😈 ),

Surely they'd be mobmen, then? 😛

I've also been curious about this. Following.

12 hours ago, EricW said:

Would the EWF Great Dragon project have broken the compromise? Likely. Trickster didn’t necessarily suggest the Great Dragon project but he gave mankind the tools to stuff up the world, by teaching them how to learn Auld Wormish.

 

Isn't the "Eurmal fooled people into speaking Auld Wyrmish" just a cultural stock explanation from the post-EWF Orlanthi? 

I'm not saying it's not true, in some sense, but we know there are other explanations (the Dragonewts planned it all along, rogue mystics acted on their own, a Kralorelan mystic was reborn in Dragon Pass and messed up) so I'm hesitant to take the Orlanthi explanation as absolute fact. It more seems like a way to basically say "The EWF was bad and the people leading it were delusional/mad". 

1 hour ago, Baron Wulfraed said:

Oh, the horror -- Aldryami captives kept for food, and captors casting a regrow spell on them after hacking off a limb for lunch...

 

There's a comic book called Coda where someone does something similar, though not for eating, but to harvest their body parts of magic essense, indefinitely.

On 10/29/2021 at 4:31 PM, Monty Lovering said:

I'm fine with character ideas as long as they are not basically treating the the non-human character as some kind of rubber suit with a zipper down the back. You want to be a troll? Play a troll. Etc..

Ironically, trolls are probably the most humanlike of all the Elder Races.

6 hours ago, Ironwall said:

The seven mothers didn't resurrect the moon but the moons unborn child by umath who took her mother's place

That's... that also explains why she has legitimate claims to ruling over the Middle Air!

3 hours ago, PhilHibbs said:

I would say that mostly, tattoos are applied the normal way. Magical appearance of tattoos during initiation would be taken as a great omen, and this might occasionally be faked.

Borrowing from the RW, the "mundane" application of tattoos might also be a magical act in itself. I'm sure this doesn't fit with how rules in RQ are set up, but I don't really see the two are necessarily opposed, unless you strictly define "magically applied tattoos" in a way that precludes a tattooist. 

It's a sacred act that changes someone's social status and ties them to the clan spirits and traditions. Pretty magic already.

Well deserved! Great stuff!

Orlanth and Heler in the Orlanthi Cloud Lore is pretty frisky. Theirs is decidedly a casual, non-exclusive love though.

Argan Argar and Esrola/The Only Old One and Queen Norinel.

Esrola and Faralinthor, I think?

Kahar and Harontoro in the East.

Possibly Aerlit and Warera (likely consensual, at the very least)

One thing I think should be noted is that Glorantha deals less in "romantic love" than something like LotR (which is steeped in it). This is probably by design. For most of history, marriages, even when intimate and amiable, were ultimately transactions to ensure safety, prosperity and alliance. This isn't to say people didn't fall in love, but it wasn't seen as directly related to a good marriage, which is predicated on other things than simply passion. As the Orlanthi say, "sex is easy, marriage is hard".

As long as concepts of masculinity and femininity exist, there are going to be archetypical/stereotypical qualities associated with them, but I think we should steer clear of prescribing some kind of essentialism. Better to provide different examples of how genders are performed that dip into one or more of the aforementioned qualities while also not fitting perfectly, you know, like human beings do. 

I watched the Dune movie about a month ago, the first trip to the cinema since 2019, and I fully agree with you. I absolutely loved it, and it does beg for a cinematic experience.

Probably depends on whoever's available and reliable. I wouldn't take any god's role in the myths as 100% prescriptive of contemporary behaviour in Sartarite culture.

One might adopt an entire bloodline, of course, but in the case of individual adoption, it probably involves establishing new family bonds. Perhaps your sponsors become your new, adopted parents, for example. Or perhaps the Chief takes the job. 

This is important because in a culture that often lacks abstracted laws, concrete family ties helps everyone understand how to relate to you, and what your obligations and privileges are. The exact degree to which it is done mostly as a formality or more personal is probably on a case by case basis, but you're probably going to have to prepare to treat your new parents with due filial respect, at least.

EDIT: I'm going by the experiences of a few fellow anthropology students. A couple went to Melanesia, where they were adopted into families, as this helped everyone know how to relate to them. This was not a painless process, at least one of them had a very mixed experience of the complex and demanding social tasks this involved, including babysitting her "nieces" and "nephews", and behaving submissively to her "father". Now, I'm not claiming Orlanthi are similar to RW Melanesians, but it's as good an angle as any to look at it from.

3 hours ago, scott-martin said:

For all you Fourth Age types: 

Since sorcery requires literacy, the Illiteracy Era may actually be apocalyptic blowback from Western Hero War developments playing out mostly off camera as far as Dragon Pass chroniclers were concerned. The beards may be forced to make surprising choices.

Zzabur is finally tired of these lesser simulacrums of true people running around using scraps from his writings to cause a ruckus. He decides to delete the Word Processor from the operating system.

8 hours ago, Ali the Helering said:

Very sorry, I wasn't intending it to be read that way.  Please put it down to a day spent in pain and poor judgement resulting.🤐

Sorry to hear you're in pain, best wishes for things to get better. 😞

3 hours ago, Ali the Helering said:

Badly written Tolkien Knock-offs?  Sooo much better than the Mostali.....

Eyh man, this thread is about people's preferences, let's not knock each others'.

Not sure how "canon" it is anymore, or ever was, but I definitely ignore the idea that the symbol of the EWF was, in-universe, literally the three Latin letters "E. W. F." fused together.

Speaking of Britain, has anyone here seen The Green Knight? I haven't seen it yet, but trailers really gave off this magical realism vibe and some of the imagery certain seemed to fit a Heroquest-y vibe. Though obviously, given the literal Arthurian story, maybe people will poo-poo this comparison and point to the more obvious similarity to Pendragon instead.

5 hours ago, simonh said:

There was a “Little Teshnos” district in my version of Karse, but many of the residents were actually Kralorelan, and a Kralorelan street magician was an incidental character but that’s about it. Mainly I just wanted to show that Karse is moderately cosmopolitan so I had incidental characters from various corners of Glorantha.

You could plausibly put pretty much anyone from anywhere in Nochet as well, for anyone so inclined.

9 hours ago, Richard S. said:

It's 3am here we fucking go. First some assumptions to base this on that I think are correct enough:

1. Time in the otherworld doesn't correspond to mortal time, especially as you go deeper in.

2. Most souls get reincarnated after a stint in the underworld.

3. Argrath is very much an Arkat-like figure.

Now the theory: Argrath is a proper reincarnation of Arkat, and his rule gets progressively more batshit as time goes on since Arkat's self starts to impose on stuff, kinda like a certain spoilery thing in the Wheel of Time books. However, unlike that, there's no reconciliation and Argrath ends up giving Arkat the unhealable wound when they meet each other in the nonlinearness of the deep hero plane.

I think I've passed beyond dumb and into some uncharted territory off the edge of crazy town, but here it is anyways.

"I wouldn't mind having you in my head if you weren't so obviously insane."

It's a gendered archetype, definitely, one that's pretty widespread IRL as well. 

One thing that's worth digging into is distinguishing active vs. passive vis-a-vis violent vs. non-violent. Specifically, that we do not immediately qualify every event where someone performs a non-violent action as passive simply because they do not beat someone up. Chalana Array and Lhankor Mhy joining the Lightbringer Quest comes to mind, for example. Neither are archeypically violent (CA moreso, obviously). Both definitely very involved and proactive, though. 

I know there are examples of goddesses performing actions ("participating in things") in their own capacity and not primarily through or along with someone else (which, in fairness, happens a lot with Ernalda, because that's sorta her thing), such as Babeester or Maran Gor, Kyger Litor and obviously the Red Goddess or perhaps even Oslira to some degree, but listing these piecemeal might only serve to obscure rather than dispel the general trend of goddesses being less overtly proactive or involved than male gods.

I know this is something that's been discussed before, and it's also been brought up in relation to how RPGs often are kinda railroaded into simulating violence specifically rather than a wider range of human actions, possibly in this very thread. It's often easier for us as readers/gamers to recognize violent acts as innately active or noteworthy than other actions, even if that's not necessarily the case in Glorantha's canon, even. 

A bit rambly, I admit, but I guess what I mean overall is:

- There ARE examples of goddesses doing shit by and for themselves, but I think they are on average less likely to be explicitly violent acts and often therefore less easy to pinpoint and mentally make note of. 

- However, even with this isse of "apologetics", the criticism of goddesses more often having a supporting or "passive" role ("reactive" might be more accurate) stands true and this is something that can be rectified. 

- The theme of femininity in Glorantha strikes me as often one of social relations, which kinda makes less room for the kind of wild journeys and quests that the typical "heroic adventure" stories of gods and mortals are made of, but I admit this might be a bias of my reading. I know there are sample characters and many campaign characters who are women off doing stuff of their own accord, and there is likely some of that among the gods as well. Still, the themes of most of the feminine myths I can recall tend to be about establishing social relations (it's present in male god myths as well, because myths are often explanations for social customs or the like, but I'd argue it's less diagnostic for them.)

Dunno if this is a valuable contribution. It'd probably be more worthwhile for more women to speak together on what they take away from what's written. 

1 hour ago, Joerg said:

Do you mean their rather strict understanding of the north west as theist, the south west as animist, and the far west as sorcerous?

 

Revealed Mythologies, where most of my East Isles mythology knowledge comes from at least, is a product of an earlier era of Glorantha development, from what I understand. The strict division is one thing, although I'm sure there are other aspects as well. This is all to say that if we ever get a new source for it, I expect it to look quite different. 

That being said, East Isles myth, as it stands, divides the world into gods and antigods, an arrangement that is fairly unique, and it lacks a proper Darkness, once again fairly unusual. Additionally beings like Vith and probably others are only (imho) partial fits for their closest Monomyth equivalents. 

Anyway, I don't want to derail the thread, my point was just to try and add some examples of feminine Fire/Sky.