Sir_Godspeed

Sounds like a fun adventure hook. (I am unfortunately all out of likes for today)

Well... sunlight literally makes plants grow... The orb might be asexual, but the rays might not be.

That is very much a contention against the Lunars, I believe, where the disagreement is over whether Sedenya is the reincarnation/restitution of numerous iterations of THE moon goddess, or whether she is - to be blunt about it - a Frankenstein's monster of a stitched-together deity.

Speculation: Electrum as a unification of silver and gold shows/symbolizes the connection between the Moons and the Suns as celestial bodies that exude light and may or may not serve as the patron of a Celestial society (the Solar decapolis in Peloria, possibly other polities elsewhere in Glorantha, who knows). Of course, this might hinge a bit on Yelorna being a lunar (small-l) deity, which she is not, soehh... Back to scratch? (EDIT: Also, the current LUnar deity, Sedenya, claims the Middle Air as her domain, not anywhere in the Sky, so that's another point against this idea).

A bit of a tangent, but doesn't the Guide say something about the Otherworlds and the Underworld really all being part of the same thing? I don't have my copy with me lately. Also, the idea of a setting based on the Gloranthan Underworld(s) sounds awesome, will check out. Honestly, I feel super-bad for the Uz. They just wanted to gnosh giblets back home in Wonderhome and wuzn't bothering none. Then kablam. Bloody surfacer godlings and their squabbles!

Heh, like Mostali pasteurizaton. Mosteulization. Hm. Will develop terminology further. Linguistic innovation submitted to Gold Caste representative for subsector D-5.

Perhaps not directly related to Gloranthan metallurgy, but this is made somewhat more complicated (or weird) by that Aether himself originally arose from Gata at some point prior to this. If I were a medieval European alchemist (or Chinese Taoist alchemist for that matter), I would've interpreted all of this as an elaborate metaphor for The Transition of Matter or something, however, since it doesn't form a neat circle, I doubt that's what it's going on here. This all just makes me wonder what was going on in the "airspace" prior to Umath separation the Firmament from the Fundament, as it were. Did Green Age and early Golden Age beings (including plants) need air? Did they have lungs? The Belintar excerpt from when he was an Aldryami mentioned the Sun and Earth and Water as aspects of grower - but not air. Also, how fiery was the underside of the firmament prior to the separation? Obviously, not a question that can be answered fully literal, since the Golden Age can barely be comprehended in any way that approaches literally, and the Green Age is even worse. Linear time didn't exist beyond specific narratives, it seems, and Space was probably also... "subjective". Making it quite literally Death Metal. Thank you thank you, I am glad to make the same joke I am sure the grognards have been making since the early eighties or something. (The does however mean that, unlike the other Mostali who are elementally derived, the Iron Mostali were derived from a metal based on a condition rune, right? What about true dwarves (ie. clay mostali), any hint on what they were derived from in a runic sense - aside from clay/organic matter?) That might be true, but earlier in the thread you presented the possibility that Gloranthan "brass" might simply be Lodrilite metal that acts pretty much as RW Bronze, so you've already made a solution for whatever metallurgic oddity this represents: Also, just personal opinion: What the heck is the point of having metals glossed as "bronze" and "copper" if you're not going to have the patina available for you as a writer, artist and Glorantha-user?

I might be wrong here, as my history knowledge is not super indepth. Greek city-states, primarily The "citizenry" being strictly speaking a relatively limited portion of the (male) population for the most part, who were landowners and farmers, but had slaves and possibly dependent freedmen* supporting them. Expected to be economically capable of mustering the equipment of a hoplite, and come to the defence of the polis, and partake in regular (possibly multiannual?) exercises or otherwise regular physical training. (*Who were citizens in neither Sparta or Athens or other city-states I've read about, though I might be off) If I'm off on this one, fair dues. But this is something I would see as "somewhere between a well-trained Fyrdsman (carl) and a (full-time) sword-thane" (sorry about the added parentheses, I had sort of assumed them when first writing the sentence above). I should also add that "trained from an early age" does not necessarily equate to "professional soldier", as Britain's longbowmen, or indeed Scandinavian vikings will attest to*. Depends on the level and intensity of training. (*At least if we believe some of the Icelandic sagas that relate wrestling and combat training from the tween ages or so).

I'm not sure if we're operating with the same useage of citizen-soldiery here, tbh.

Glorantha, despite the tagline, isn't a bronze age society though. Bronze isn't an alloy available only through vast regional trade networks and hoarded by the elites - it is a base metal, available to most people, thus making citizen-soldiery not only possible, but probably the norm. I posited that the Guardians would be somewhere between a particulatly well-equipped and well-trained Fyrd and Sword-Thanes. However, if the evidence points in another direction, I am happy to go with that. Clearly though, this does mean that it's not only guardians who receive physical and military training at an early age, as Loskalm will be in need of a levy-based military in times of crisis / Storm season.

The guardians struck me as citizen-soldiers. They might very well keep farming and/or crafting or whatever while being trained and even between exercises, deployment and wars or whatever. We don't really hear about that because as guardians, possibly because their other livelihood goes from being their main activity to be, at least conceptually, incidental. Just speculating. This all does come down to just how many guardians are. A pre-industrial civilization can't sustain a huge amount of non-productive individuals, so anything above 1-3 percent full-time soldiers seems very, very iffy. If it's a seasonal thing, however, there might be many, many more.

Fair dues.

Shargash is very interesting. I and others have toyed with the idea that he started off mainly as a god of slash-and-burn agriculture, but that's barely even conjectural and more of a neat idea. He did have multiple wives and he does have a Green king - but as I said, pure "that could be neat"-mode there. In Time there is always the idea that Shargash is the Sun when it is in the Underworld, of course (that would've been the Egyptian take on it, as they integrated different sun gods by assigning them different times of day), but of course we have records of these guys going back to when the Sun just hang motionless at the top of the sky and didn't go anywhere, so that doesn't seem right (unless, of course, Shargash stems from the Green Age, before Brightface couped the cosmic crown and was possibly moving around). Another thing that should be mentioned is that Shargash appears somewhat different before Death. He bangs his drums and dances fiercely, but is ultimately ineffectual against the blue dragon that would become Oslira, with Murharzam instead having to fix it. He does manage to wrestle Umath into smithereens though. I suspect something went very, very wrong* with Shargash once Murharzam/Yelm/The Emperor died. As an instance of the "Tolat/Love-and-War/Red Planet"-deity, he's definitely leaned *hard* into war. It's possible that he wasn't always this way. (*or very, very right. Tying into the "slash and burn" archetype above, perhaps Shargash saw his function in the aftermath of Yelm's death as the cleansing fire that would char the fallow, diseased field that was Emperorless Glorantha, to prepare a new seeding - ie. the Dawn. Very much poetic license on my part here). His Solar title is one of thise relics of Dara Happan / Decapolis political influence on deific titles, I think. Titles like Moon and Sun are handed out more on basis of how a celestial body is tied to a city or religio-political function than necessarily any objective physical function (providing light, heat, being still or moving, etc.). As the celestial object associated with one of the cities of the Decapolis, he was named a Sun. In the aftermath of Yelm's death, his contest over (the inside of) the Sky dome also made him by definition a Little Sun, but that still doesn't tell us a whole lot, ultimately. And this is without going too much into his association with the underworld, or his (curiously lacking) relationship with Tolat's twin sister, which seems to be such a big deal in most other mythologies. There's that rebellion story with him and... the goddess of Mernita, I think? But that's about it. So yeah... odd guy. And I suspect a lot more complex than what has been let on (but that might just be wishful thinking).

It's weird how we get sources that both say that the Brithini acknowledge the Invisible God, and apparently sources that say that the Brithini reject all "theism" whatsoever (or at least Zzabur seems to do so) and simply acknowledges the Laws.

Malkionism as presented in the literary sources of Glorantha seems based on RW emanationism, a concept used in some branches of Greek philosophy and Gnostic Christianity. Basically, it's based on an initial point in the Godhead/All/One/Mind, etc. (and its Greek-language equivalent, Monad/Nous, etc.). The basic premise is that this entity essentially encompasses everything. And by everything they mean more than the physical universe, the physical universe often being implied or explicitly said to be just a tiny part of something much greater. Somewhere along the line, there is either a necessity or a fault that causes the Godhead/One to "emanate" lesser, usually more specialized entities. These may or may not be anthropomorphized, who become actors within the created universe, or they act as its creators/upholder (or in some cases its impersonal natural laws). Sometimes these are helpful and act as the proper ways to come into contact with the higher powers, and other times they are trying to hide the truth from mortals. In the case of Malkionism, "theistic" Malkioni seem to treat the Invisible God as equivalent to the RW One/Godhead, a kind of "Over-god", somewhat similar to Glorantha/Arachne Solara in that they aren't just "mere" gods, they seem to stand above that, even. The Godhead is then believed to have emanated part of itself into the form of Malkion of some iteration, who then, according to need or opportunity, emanated in turn to - arguably - more and more concrete and anthropomorphized forms/functions as the God Time progresses, almost like some kind of matryoshka doll, or perhaps better yet, a ray of light passing through multiple panes of glass. That's my take on it at least. How or when specifically this belief came into being, and why the Brithini reject it is a mystery for me too, and for all I know Greg might never have quite figured it out - if indeed there is one objective series of events that caused this, and not some Gloranthan equivalent of Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle where you can never quite pinpoint sequentiality in the God Time acros multiple myths, because it's a state of being where multiple, mutually exclusive things can indeed occur. There is one thing though, that I feel like pointing out: the Sourcebook and Guide go out of their way to talk about how the Mostali don't actually believe in the World Machine and/or Mostal as a literal being, but rather use it as an anthropomorphization for the sake of convenience, when in reality they almost more like "non-theistic" pantheists ("system-ists", Gestalt-believers - take your pick). Considering all the other connections with the Mostali the ancient Malkioni have, I find it interesting that both the Malkioni and Mostali have seemingly undergone a development from purely abstraction (Brithini Laws, the World Machine as interacting systems) to more anthropomorphization (Malkion in his various incarnations as an expression of a higher power called the Invisible God, the World Machine as a personal being called Mostal). What's the connection here, and when/how did it occur? Is it purely coincidence? More a case of shared philosophical outlooks creating similar trajectories, or ongoing contact? Some deeper connection even? (I know the suggestion that the Real People and Mostali may have started off as something similar to each other has been suggested before.)

Having cities stay the same size while the area around them turns from densely populated farmland to scattered farms is also really weird. There is this quite long, but very indepth and interesting article on how Westeros population density and urbanization makes no sense which might be applicable here. It does cover quite a lot of other topics that aren't applicable to Glorantha (cultural diversity for example), but the rest is interesting, albeit perhaps a tad bombastic. https://medium.com/migration-issues/westeros-is-poorly-designed-3b01cf5cdcaf

As Joerg noted, there are a number of story hooks in the Guide. These are not very detailed, usually only a few lines with a few names, a looming or ongoing conflict, and some local places of interest, so I don't know how skilled a GM would need to be to chart scenarios and stat all of it, though. Examples: - Loskalm vs. Kingdom of War, with Akem and Jonatela in the balance. - Ongoing city-state rivalries in central Ralios. - Rising tensions between the Quinpolic League and the rest of Seshnela. - Maybe something in Talastar or even Brolia, especially with the coming thaw of Charg in mind. - The ongoing colonization in the Redlands, and the conflict between Storm- and Solar-worshippers among the Pentans. Some of these are probably going to be a lot more amenable to play that others, but these are some of the very, very general plot hooks/contexts in the vicinity of central Genertela I could think of (ie. not including the Wastes, the East or Pamaltela, or even the Jrustelan archipelago.). The Guide goes somewhat more in detail than this, but not by a whole massive lot.

Rokari have the Menena caste?

Don't all of them also address something along the lines of "what is the nature of the physical (which in this case includes energy) universe, and how does it relate to a higher power?" I know it can be said that *every* worldview deals with this to some extent, but at least from the material I've read, this question is where some major divisions have occured, from the Brithini ("there is no higher power except for the impersonal Law"), to the Irensalavists ("the physical universe is created by a corrupt Demiurge and so is inherently corrupt"), to the "orthodox" Rokari (Malkioneran? I can't keep up with all the denominational terms) ("the physical universe was made by Malkion in several stages, and ultimately Malkion sacrificed himself to preserve it.") Feel free to correct.

Ooooh.... 😮

I think the Rules Realist thing is why I could never get into Dungeons & Dragons lore. Reading about Giants and how their society worked only for some off-handed comment about them being able to throw a rock 300 yards but only once per day or something just instantly dissolves my immersion. It's probably also why I've so far almost exclusively stuck to the literary aspects of Glorantha. (Not that I begrudge anyone these descriptions, things should be made clear for players as it is a game, after all).

Gotcha. This should be pretty familiar for anyone who's played video games where a character from one game pops up in a spin-off series. Like how Arthas in Warcraft 3 and Arthas in World of Warcraft and Arthas in Hearthstone and Arthas in Heroes of the Storm are all clearly iterations of the same basic character, but adapted to different game genres, game engines and basic gameplay. I guess it can be more frustrating for a tabletop game/world because you don't have a CPU to think about all that stuff for you, so it's something you have to be actively, consciously aware of.

Somehow I knew this thread was going to turn into another Many Suns discussion. "Thread: Is rye bread common in Sartar" 15 pages later: "Yeah, but what about the Hill of Gold and Sunspear though? HUH? CHECKMATE ATHEISTS."

If it didn't before, it does now. That's definitely the kind of story a pigment-maker might tell their child or apprentice, imho.

If Orlanthi are anything like RW cultures that have written prose or epics about travellers and the guesting scenario, then they are probably pretty good at offering evasive, poetic non-lies to hide what they wish to keep secrets. (Some of these non-answers might even be codified through common cultural references. If you call yourself Wanderer in lieu of a name, the host might very well be aware that you are referencing a common story where Orlanth or Issaries or whoever is traveling incognito. It might be a bit of a wink-wink nudge-nudge moment, it might be taken as religiously auspicious, or you might be viewed as very suspicious.) "Who are you?" "I am called Herald, for I must bring news, and speedily." "Where are you going?" "Nowhere else I must go, but where the roads take me." Now, granted, this might be rude, but technically you haven't deceived anyone.