Sir_Godspeed

Here's a random idea: the Shaker Temple needs terraces to grow food, kind of like Incan ones (purely made up by me right now). They use triceratopses to carry the rocks needed to build and maintain those terraces. Sort of an indirect influence way to include them in agriculture, but seemed more plausible to me.

Oh, that's a neat detail. Definitely possible that this hypothetically includes diamond-cutting or gemworking in a more general sense. Or some other city's hero did it.

It works as a title, since many titles in Glorantha are derived from English, Greek, Latin, etc. that readers will recognize and engage with according to widespread cultural associations (the use of dog Latin for Lunar names and titles, for example - while not a personal favorite - does effectively get the Imperial image across - the same applies for Aether). But as a proper name* it does "break the immersion" a bit, yeah. Even "Ether" (straight up English) would've been better, imho. (*Finding the difference between titles and proper names is, of course, not *really* possible, but I'm writing in general terms.)

I think what throws me off is how lifelike the bison looks.

The Glorantha Sourcebook has several family trees for important Dragon Pass Dynasties - if that is any help. You might've already scoured it.

The whole story of Malkion - as pseudo-Gnostic emanation from the All, or demigod prophet - always makes me uncertain about which story emerged first, which one is a refinement for philosophical purposes (the emanationist/devolution one seems a lot like this), or cultural integration into a theist worldview after the collapse of Zerendel and the Western Diaspora in the Darkness (the divine-ancestry Malkion sounds a lot like that - how Greeks would take abstract concepts and put them into divine family trees). Both may be true, of course. Different perspectives. Emphasis on different functions. And there are several more out there, clearly.

Makes sense. It makes for a more organic development of the region rather than a top-down, single-project kind of thing does. Oh, I agree. So many influences have been mixed and joined and innovated on in Western and Central Genertela (and even parts of Pamaltela), that it would be great to see something similar - eventually - done in the East. What caused me to address this topic to begin with, is how essentially the Rigvedic stuff, as well as Hellenic influences seems to have been applied to Central and Western Genertela. To me, that raised the issue of "well, okay, how to make Teshnos feel unique and interesting and not oddly identical to civilizations it doesn't really have a continuous association with?" Digging into the Dravidian styles and influences can help with that, as can Malay and Javanese/Balinese stuff as well. ----- I'm not sure if I misread some of the responses, but it seems to me that maybe the way I worded myself caused some consternation. Just to be clear: my question was intended more as "hey, the way Glorantha has been presented may cause an issue in giving the different regions their unique identity, as some well-developed regions borrow more broadly from the RW while others seem more regionally-rooted, any thoughts on this, from crew or fans?" and not "This is terrible! How do you fix Teshnos!"

Makes me wonder wonder about the origins of Grandfather Mortal. On the one hand, I suspect he's an after-the-fact anthropomorphization - but on the other hand, from a theistic view, he also acted as a conscious entity, sharing his form with those he came across, in some way or other.

And those are cool! But they do not really a culture make. And they do not really answer the question of how the presence of the Wastes, and different influences like for example the Artmali will probably create entirely different artstyles, architecture and clothing from Central-Western Genertela.

So, this is something that's been bubbling in the back of my head for a good while, and it's not some huge issue or anything, but I think it's worth considering - and I suspect the people who work on Glorantha have done so to some degree. Basically, it's this: there seems to have been over the last few years, (before my time, but still relatively recent) an increased usage of artstyles and iconography that is based on RW artstyles from the Indian subcontinent in cultures across Glorantha. We see multi-armed and dancing goddesses in Peloria as well as Esrola, we see North-Indian buildings styles in Seshnela, and we see Theyalan Orlanthi with a very Indra-looking Orlanth, and plenty of other Indian-styled things, including hats, clothes, and other items besides divine images. First off, I think that's very cool. Indian artstyles are just... well, they look visually very interesting, they help convey the sense that Glorantha is not medieval Europe, or indeed not even Classical Greece. You could also argue that there is some level of shared artistic language across Western-Central Genertela - with the Seshnelans apparently having used some kind of Indo-Greek imagery in their royal friezes. What it does, however, is raise the question about what Chaosium intends to do to make Teshnos stand out. To my knowledge, Teshnos is the closest we get to a Erschatz-India in Glorantha, which, while obviously no perfect match, is still more of a direct translation of a region into fantasy than the more well-developed and *highly* hybridized and innovated Central and Western Genertela. As much as Kralorela and Vormain suffer similar problems, they at least get to keep their Wuxias and coiling dragons and what have you to themselves to an extent. Teshnos seems like it won't really stand out in a meaningful degree. Any thoughts on what the plans are from the developers/writers/directors? And of course, from fellow fans, and long-time Glorantha enthusiasts who might know more about this than me? I know that some of the Teshnan islands, like the Amazon island and so on, might borrow more from Southeast-Asia, Malay krises (Teshnos seems to have these in the Guide as well), or maybe some Thair or Burmese styles - but that just leaves me wondering what the East Islands are going to do! As always, looking beyond the Real World is always a possibility, but it I think most people here think whatever the styles or imagery should be, it should be somewhat rooted in some kind of verisimillitude, even if not outright realism.

That would be a good detail about them. It does go against Diamond Mountain being Octamonist, and extremely isolationist, though. Then again, maybe the Teshnans "misusing" or "stealing" the diamond cutting technology is part of what caused them to retreat.

Cracked did a video on ancient/early intoxicants a while back, in which they tried them out on themselves. The last they did was supposedly Soma, although the version of the video on Youtube does not mention which recipe they used (the original did, but I can't find it), it does, however, use some kind of (presumably psychedelic) mushroom. Not sure how authentic it is, but I know they *tried* to be authentic. The different people have very different reactions, which can be an amusing watch.

Maslo has always struck me as vaguely Mezoamerican (aside from Ignorance), and I could see cocoa being a major export from there. Possibly transplanted to Caladraland or Slontos, or even Teshnos during the Second Age.

Dark-skinned, I believe. There's some uncertainty on just how dark it was. Several documentaries chose to portray it as looking akin to sub-Saharan people (which is entirely possible, but not verified, afaik) - which caused a bit of a turd storm in certain parts of the Internet, because... *sigh* some people identify overly much with their skin genes.

If memory serves, they aren't really cities, but a mix of trading posts, vendref towns, and the place where ageing Grazers go to live out their last few years. Not sure on outsider living there, though. And then there's Muse Roost, sorta smack-dab in the middle of it (or a bit to the west, rather), who is definitely a "foreigner" in a wider sense, even he and his men have been there for quite a while now.

Not to poo-poo on Breath of the Wild, but in this day and age, open-world games are a dime-a-dozen. A nicely directed, semi-linear experience has a lot to offer, especially for those of us who don't have 2-300 hours of spare time just lying around. As far as I can tell, there are no details on the gameplay yet, and in my personal experience, speculating too much on these things almost always end in disappointment when the wonderful potential of imagination is inevitably reduced to a single reality, so I'll just see where this goes. I hope they focus on making the game, such as it will be, well-crafted rather than big, though.

I'm noticing the soldier does not have any footwear. Is there particular reason for that, or just for the sake of some variety?

Errinoran Terror Birds? Sabertooth something? Hell Pigs (less likely, but cool)? Enormous boa snakes? Lesser Hydras?

There are ways to accommodate a terminal -a both meaning femininty, as well as not, with reference to my points above. We might for example postulate a previous stage in Theyalan where there was a distinction between (stressed) terminal á, and (unstressed) terminal a. After several centuries, linguistic evolution caused them to merge, making them sound identical to modern-day speakers (at least those around Dragon Pass). This is purely a loose idea - but it's an example of how we can get ourselves out of seeming inconsistencies.

Both Solace (Rokari) and Joy (Hrestoli) have both struck me as similar to Hindu-Buddhist Nirvana/Nibbana. Perhaps the former more than the latter, but I don't know. Given the theistic focus of these two schools of Malkionism, Platonic henosis might be a better fit: unity and unification with the Absolute. Cessation of the self and its limitations and restrictions, in either case.

It's hard to see when the originals are alone - but this one is definitely a marked improvement. Great, deep inking/shading.

Does Prax have one or more rainy seasons? If so, one would expect to see herds expand during rainy seasons, and contract during the rest of the year, making competition more fierce during that time. Given that Prax is one of the most well-covered regions, I am fully expecting to get an explanation about why I am wrong, however.

The main canonical migration pattern I can think of is the annual Uncoling massing in Porent. The GtG emphasizes its importance for conducting mass magical rituals rather than ecological reasons, though admittedly, the two might very well be connected - perhaps the Uncolings rituals are to help keep the glacier at bay?

True, in proper Pseudo-Anglo-Saxon fashion. There's probably more going on there, though it was the most apparent I could think of.

It's a good one, though.