Sir_Godspeed

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.

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.

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.)

Is Sartar's title of "Prince" (instead of, say, High King or the like) due to some Western influence?

Sure, go guns blazing - it's just from what I can tell, the linguistic situation in Central Genertela is more complex than any other conlang context I can think of.

It sounds a bit like a nightmare, to be honest. Not only are most of the languages not even remotely consistent, there is also the centuries and centuries of mutual loaning to consider. 😕

Yup! The 70s had a lot of amazing sci-fi/fantasy art.

A while back I considered making a thread on why Sartar seemed so powerful, able to punch radically above its weight, but some of the answers kind of stood out by themselves, as Jeff noted here. It tied into powerful regional magics (Feathered Queen marriages are no joke, and Sartar's approach seems almost Belintar-ish in how he's prepared to use the mythical landscape to his advantage), and it lay across an extremely important trade route. In effect, it was almost like a Afghani/Swiss/Kwarezmi Malian Empire kind of deal. While I still maintain that there probably is a bit of the old "Mary Suevilization" about the Sartarites (they're the long-time protagonists, after all, you grow fond of them), I feel reasonably satisfied, and Jeff's opening post has pretty much put this to rest. So thanks!

Are Heortling "longhouses" even canon anymore? Instead, what more recent artwork seems to display are Bronze Age Greek palace economies in the case of Clearwine, at least. Granted, Clearwine is bigger than your average Heortling stead (is stead non-canon now too? It's awfully Scando-britannic), but I'd suspect the layout is somewhat similar: large, square-ish buildings with a central courtyard. Unless Clearwine's pre-Dragonkill heritage makes it an architectural outlier. Esrolia is definitely cited as having central courtyards in older material (they make a big deal out of it in Esrolia, land of 10k Goddesses), but I dunno for the Hendriki/Heortlings. Regardless, I guess this doesn't have to be too much of a change. The Northern European longhouses (or similar structures from other regions across the world, like the Iriqois or Kamtchatkans) is loosely comparable to the Greek oikos - ie. it's a dwelling with a lot of focus on communal spaces where extended family groups and associated house servants and residing dependants join in the household chores and meals, for example. The central courtyard of the Mediterranean-style house takes, perhaps, roughly the role of the fireplace of the longhouse. Not exact parallels, but klos enuf. The only thing that somewhat bothers me is the flat roofs in a location where it rains cats and dogs, but that's not exactly a massive complaint. The timber-and-thatch houses in 13th Age artwork looks pretty longhouse-y though, so maybe I'm way off the mark. I'd kinda like to be. Wealthy, fortified steads have stone palaces, poorer settlements use timber, thatch and other nearby materials. I could quibble about the presence or absence of inner courtyards, but down that road lies really nitpickery I'd rather just wait out to see what Chaosium does, I think. So, uh, yeah. In summary: I hijacked your post to ponder a bit, and while I guess we don't know if the terminology still stands, the communality of the societies work either way.

I am now imagining the Twilight story, but with ogres.

I've got a similar impression. It's present in both worlds and that's just how it works. EDIT: Changed "10 km away" to "10 km up in the air", had a brain fart there.

Wrong thread, I think?

I've had arguments with Flat-Earthers about this sort of thing, and Akhorahil is, to the best of my knowledge, right. If you're a 1000 km. away from something, even a small hill will be able to cover the line of sight to something that's 10km high in the air. I would argue that both the Red Moon and Kero Fin are magical locuses, and therefore either pluripresent, or deviate from simple Eucledian geometry. It's sort of like in a video game where the objective marker is always visible even if you can't see the objective yet. And Kero Fin is of course in the Sky World because they Sky isn't even a part of the Inner World.

Choo choo!

Holy crap. That Sevening must be pretty reliable.

How many thousands are we talking about here?

If possible, making the text vector-based would help with avoiding graphical artifacting for a potential poster - but I know dick all about graphical design, so I wouldn't know how to do that, or even if I'm correct. Anyway, that dude looks pretty good for a "pittance" conscript. What the background on them?

I wouldn't know about how the rules are set up, but I guess that makes sense. Wouldn't it be possible to do some clever combining and syncretism, though?

Trolls have a good deal or mixed theism and shamanism, don't they? I guess Arkat Kingtroll would be the most plausible angle of approach.

Child tattoos might not be added until a child has survived a few years. I know of a number of cases were infants are not seen as having souls or a mind of their own until they reach a certain age, for example. It can be seen as psychological coping mechanism for infant mortality rates (I won't comment on whether it's effective or not). This absence of a soul/spirit (local emic terms apply) is also something that makes them extra vulnerable to spirit assaults, and hence is partially explaining the infant mortality rate to begin with). This is also why in some cultures a naming day (or one of several) is not shortly after birth, but at the time of the first teething, or after weaning, or other similar threshold. Fathers tattooing to mark their children reminded me of the (sometimes) Arab practice of taking on names after the (firstborn) child (kunya). "Umm Ali" (Ali's Mother), "Abu Mazen" (Mazen's Father). It's not that I expect Orlanthi to practice this, but the tattooing functions similarly. There are probably parallels in polynesian cultures (given the prevalence of genealogical significance in tatau), but I don't know any specific examples. Apropos of nothing, do bloodlines have their own tattoos, or only clans, btw?

Well, there's always the point about how rivers used to run up. It's one of those things that are good to mention to newbies so that they can prepare for the more seriously weird stuff. My favorite, however, which has less to do with how weird it is, and more to do with being a part of the discussion thread where someone finally put it in clear words, is this: in Glorantha, horses are taxonomically birds.* (*Sort of, being descendants of mutilated Hippogriff which was a beaked, feathered, winged sky-animal. Not a bird in the strictest sense, but close enough for me to find it to be a bit of a mindblowing revelation, and pretty funny).

No True Scotsman at work again. "I HAVE meditated upon the Ultimate, and I've decided I'm gonna punch the moon!" "No, that's not, like, REAL enlightenment!"

@EricW Your summary, and quote, seems a lot more in line with how I imagine illumination in Glorantha to be myself. Yes, obviously motivation is going to be subjective, but even so, I've noticed that whenever Chaos cultists or monsters are brought up together with Storm Bull PCs, there very often seems to be mentions that one or more of the Chaos folks could be Illuminated. This, at least to me, seems like a very gamey approach to the concept, with it being almost being treated just as a monster buff, as opposed to thinking about how that illumination would come about (it's not exactly a reliable process at the best of times - Sevening seems the most semi-reliable, and even that requires exceptional individuals), nor what it would do to a Chaos entity (would they even feel any attachment to their previous motivations and urges? Possibly, possibly not. Illumination changes you in ways that are impossible to predict.)