Sir_Godspeed

Are there any wild Pentan horses left? One would asume they would follow a general south-north migration pattern with the seasons, as Valind's winds come down in Storm and Dark season (iirc.). Then again, domesticated herds kept by the Pentans ought to do something similar.

Maybe they were mythically part of some kind of Earth dowry when Ernalda married Orlanth.

Damn, I can't believe I never even saw any of these. Not in a million years. I can only assume that the word for knife is "Snikt", then. Bub. EDIT: I guess the "Hu" could also be a reference to Bronze, ie. Hu-metal - but that's less of a pun and more circling back into worldbuilding.

Holy crap I never noticed that before.

I'm not a language professional, but whenever this topic has come up for Glorantha, there are a few caveats that always spring to mind for me: On a worldbuilding meta-level, we have some things to keep in mind. - Glorantha was not designed bottom-up to be linguistically coherent. This isn't a slight against it, of course, as very very few settings actually are (Middle-Earth and Tekumel come to mind, both made by literal language/philology professors), and also the central themes/focus of Glorantha are found elsewhere. - As a consequence of this, there is no true, consistent split between English stand-in words or morphemes and Theyalan as a constructed language. Ewample-wise, we have the "-ing" ending, which is a Germanic RW morpheme, but which is integrated into a number of otherwise Theyalan words. In terms borrowed from literature or drama, we have to question whether "ing" in this case is diegetic (it exists within the fictional world), or non-diegetic (it exists as a tool by the storyteller to make the fictional world seem more understandable to us). - Additionally, given the non-systematic origin of language in Glorantha, no matter what meaning we assign to Theyalan morphemes, we are almost inevitably bound to run into contradictions, or in other terms, paint us into a classificatory corner. Thankfully however, etymological changes and language borrowing is so varied and diverse that we can account for this to an extent (more on that later). In short - there are going to be exceptions to whatever rules we find, and while this might be annoying at first, it is probably for the best. On a diegetic (in-universe) level, we also have a number of issues. These are things that, frankly, we'll just have to live with, I think. They're good to keep in mind, but I'll admit that if they start hindering fun through indecision for example, you just got to toss them aside for a while. - Linguistic drift and evolution: languages change, and they don't change evenly. Even if we assume that the languages in the God Age were fixed and constant (they probably weren't), by the time of the "now" of Glorantha, Theyalan has undergone 1600 years of change, drift, interaction and all sorts of processes. I would argue that the Theyalan languages (since it is a family now) is possibly akin to something like the Romance languages. The literary tradition, distances, time scale and general interconnectedness is vaguely comparable, imho. - Fossilization: Some of the names of deities, places and people in Theyalan will probably give us an incorrect impression of the current state of the language, since they are likely to have "frozen" in place when they began being widely circulated in written or poetic form. It's certainly possible that the "Alda" in Ernalda means "woman" or "mother", but it's equally possible that it's hopelessly outdated and not recognizeable as such to a modern Sartarite. Possibly. The word "Frank" means free, but few of us are going to go around using the term like that. It's effectively fossilized, usually found only in proper names and stock phrases, such as "to be frank" (which also has drifted to mean something like "to be honest"). An example of this is Arkat vs. Argrath. They both supposedly mean literally the same, but Arkat seems to have frozen in its original form, whereas "Argrath" appears to have become more like a common noun, undergone evolution, and then become reapplied as a proper name/title. Unless of course Sartarites also call the original Arkat Argrath, which is possible, but is an issue for another time. - Homonyms &Homophones, and Synonyms: This is raised in the comment above with the "Eur" and "Ur" elements, but it's worth noting: just because elements look alike, or sound alike (even identical), that doesn't mean they mean the same, or are even related. A common thing in linguistics is for originally different-sounding words to drift closer until they at some point become homonyms/-phones. I've for example heard someone claim that Jesus was based on Egyptian solar deities because "son" and "sun" sound identical. In this case the spelling gives the different origins and meanings away, but that won't always be the case (f.ex. tree bark vs. dog bark). While the Jesus example is really stupid, it IS the kind of "mistake" we are fairly likely to do. On the flip side we have synonyms: just because one morpheme carries a meaning, doesn't mean another morpheme can't also have it. "Tar" might mean "high", but some other word might also mean the same. Perhaps with some very subtle difference, but close enough that they are interchangeable in some cases. This is one of our "outs" when trying to make sense of name-meanings, for example. - Loanwords & False friends, etc.: Not gonna spend a whole lot on this, but just to be clear: a good deal of modern Theyalan words are going to be loanwords, and as such, trying to pick them apart into morphemes (or roots, as the thread terms them) will yield unapplicable results. "Constitution" is the English word for a nation's fundamental legislative piece, however, the morpheme "cons" is not the English word for "fundamental", or what have you. That way lies madness. This also brings us to false friends: I don't know if Artmal is really a Thayalan word or not, but if it's a loanword, the "mal" does most likely not have the same meaning as in "Elmal". (Actually, since Six Ages shows Elmal coming from the Hyalorings, this means Elmal is also a loanword, which opens up an entirely new can of worms - one possibly showing that even Pelorian and Theyalan have common origins which muddies the water even more - for example in the cases of Ernalda vs. Nyalda, etc. Back-and-forth borrowing is a possibility, but we have no clue how to know). - There is a ton more, like tone and stress, poetic kennings vs. literal meaning, regional dialects existing on a continuum, and all that stuff, but that's going even further into worrying about things we don't really have no way of accounting for, so I'll stop here. Voriof/Voria =?= Young male/Young female. Allusions to spring and sexual immaturity/virginity, imho. "Vor" might mean something like "Youth" or "Immature/Virginal being".

Should we continue this thread or read the other?

There's a lot of cool stuff from China. I'm not very knowledgeable about it, but my eyes went wide when I saw the phrase "rhino hide armor", which was apparently fairly common at one point.

Narratively, and mythically, this is one of those things that is impossible until they are possible. Rules break for protagonists, as it were. It's just a matter of how.

I have a hard time following the various Malkioni denominations as well, they all sorta meld together, especially since they keep reusing names, and some of those names are outdated. As I understand it, the point Joerg made was that the Sedalpists have a range of unique influences due to their unique location in Umathela. I thought you were going to suggest something analogous to the Olympic games there for a second.

I have the same issue. I might be coming around to accepting how this are presented now, but I'm not sure. I am still influenced by the Germanic-Celtic-looking Orlanthi, and while the Mycenaean look does have a number of similarities (and there are elements of Hallstatt worked into them as well), there are things I have a (possibly irrational) fondness for, like pants/hose, or sloped rather than flat roofs. At least in Dragon Pass. But my impression of Glorantha has changed astronomically since I joined this forum just a few months ago, so it's not like any of my impressions are set in stone. I have a lot of sympathy for the people who've been running campaigns for years and years, and been involved in the setting for decades - even if radical changes are probably a staple of the hobby by now, and personal tailoring IS welcomed.

I'm not a historian or archaeologist, so I might get some things wrong here - but this is my best guess: There are various archeological cultures (ie. based around similar artifacts left behind, rather than any knowledge of how they viewed themselves) delineated in Europe at that time, but not a lot is known about them. The Corded Ware and Beaker cultures are perhaps the most contemporary with the civilizations you mention. The Corded Ware is associated with pre-proto-Germanic Indo-Europeans, I think, but I'm not sure about the Corded Ware (pre-proto-Celtic? proto-Italo-Celtic? Not Indo-European at all?). There are also a number of central European cultures which replace each other in turn: Unetice, Tumulus, Urnfeld and then the Hallstatt culture. But the development of metalworking in central/nothern Europe is slower to develop than in the Mediterranean/near east. On the other hand, it lasts longer. By the time of Hallstatt - well, I could be wrong, but they certainly look advanced enough to be comparable to anything the Hittites or Egyptians could put out, even if it is 600-1000 years later or so (and they are contemporary with early classical Greece, iirc.). Hallstatt straddles the Bronze-Iron Age divide, and after a while becomes the (Iron Age) La Tene culture, which is pretty much pre-Roman (Celtic) Gauls (as well as much of the rest of central Europe). As far as I know, all of these were sedentary, but the earliest ones might've practiced transhumance, or slash-and-burn agriculture, I don't know (I'm not implying the archeologists don'w know, I just don't know off the top off my head). What we do know is that the Nordic Bronze Age (and thus I *assume* other parts of non-Mediterranean Europe) had relatively centralized communities. There were fairly large farm compounds, chieftains and kings built large mounds, there were huge hoards of grave good, etc. Later, in the Iron Age, things become more decentralized and there are fewer prestige construction projects for a while, until the Middle Ages. This is generally seen as a consequence of the necessity for a centralized trade and manufacturing system for bronze, versus the opportunity for more local production of iron. It's possible that this is too simplistic an explanation. tl;dr: There were probably quite a few sedentary people around during the classical Bronze Age of the large Levantine empires, but they lagged behind in size, urbanization, and state development. They also did not leave any writing behind. The ones we have are generally associated more with the Orlanthi than the Pelorians, even if that makes the aesthetics and landscape a bit flipped, as it were. EDIT: It should probably be noted that Glorantha, regardless of temperature, also has a completely different resource-technology-basis than Bronze Age Europe, so there's a serious danger of staring oneself blind on history books when trying to make Glorantha feel cool and immersive.

I remember seeing someone present the theory that the lost White Elves were related to cacti and desert succulents. It was mostly to make the pun of "high" elves (because peyote), I think, and doesn't really fit with their mountaintop origins - but I admit I thought that associating them with "transcendental" hallucinogens was kinda clever.

I know iron was invented in the Storm Age to fight off elves and trolls, but is steel a refined/treated iron as it is in the real world, or a different material altogether? Was it invented at the same time or later? Sorry if this is too much of an aside.

Do they have actual steel?

I wouldn't use the term "naturally" here, necessarily, since I don't see the lactase-preservation mutation as being "unnatural", just more recent. But that aside, you make a good point. I think @RHW puts it fairly well.

It should also be noted that genetic lactose intolerance isn't necessarily an obstacle to keeping cattle and making dairy products. Most people on the Indian Subcontinent are lactose intolerant, for example, but they still consume a large amount of dairy products. Some of these, like ghee, are naturally lactose reduced. I didn't see a whole lot of actual milk-drinking while I was there - mostly cheeses and butter.

I was just making a little quip. That being said, however, in my Glorantha, the Aldryami definitely do not have any qualms about eating the dead remains of a fellow man-rune plant, or ground them up for fertilizer. I don't see them as harboring the same kind of individualized sentimentality as many human cultures have. But we've spoken about this before in the Aldryami thread a few weeks ago.

Figures they'd be into cannibalism.

Not to beat a dead horse from the architecture thread, but this does raise a lot of questions regarding the flat-topped, mud-brick houses we usually see associated with the Pelorians, and the virtual monopoly of skirts/tunics and sandals over trousers, hose, braies/braccae and so forth. I understand summers are dry and hot, but continental winters don't exactly lend themselves too well to pseudo-Sumerian lifestyles/aesthetics.

Ar there any broad cultures, or castes/classes that tend towards vegetarianism? I'm not necessarily talking about a Pelorian peasant whose diet is 90% rice, but more in terms of ideology. Another tangential question - are there widespread beliefs in any area that certain classes should not touch dead animals (with the possible exception of them as prepared food) or people, or be in places where people have died?

I could imagine that the Loskalmi have dietary restrictions based on allegorical understandings of animal behaviors as they pertain to virtues. This was a popular interpretation of the Hebrew dietary laws in the Middle Ages. Eating rabbit was unclean because they embodied the sin of promiscuity, for example. Insects crawled on the ground and so emobodied uncleanliness. Crawling sea animals emobodied, allegorically, sloth, while fish were active movers and thus fine to eat. Loskalmi, with their complicated relationship to the material world (not entirely rejecting it as bad, but looking inward to maintain discipline and self-control in order to not be corrupted by it), strike me as the kind of folks who could apply this kind of worldview to food. Lactose tolerance is an interesting point worth considering. I'm calling it here: the Orlanthi religion contains a way of giving converts lactose tolerance, because what kind of Orlanthi are you if you're not herding some kind of herd mammal and drinking their milk like there's no tomorrow? Not a proper one, I say! Eirithia/Uralda/Whoever will set your guts straight!

Had to read up on posca, thanks for making me aware of it. Very interesting stuff, and a useful detail for my own worldbuilding fun. I enjoy these down-to-earth details taken from history or ethnography. Like how the Nuer people use ash from their dimmed fireplaces to brush their teeth (which is useful, since it is finely granulated and mostly sterile, and since their fires are from cow dung, it is less abrasive than wood ash, apparently), or how some Melanesians have been known to assign a numeric value to each bodypart, which makes remembering arithmetic a lot easier (Sumerians did something similar for just their finger joints and knuckles). Just simple, everyday stuff that is great to put into a story to make it feel more fully realized. Anyway, I'm getting off track. Thanks.

I have no doubt. With so many perspectives on the same entities and events, and so many practices around them - which do you prioritize in order to give the reader something understandable, entertaining, yet still somewhat deep? It's a massive task, and I look forward to seeing it!

Good on you for mentioning Kumis, I was about to mention it and Kefir (although the alcohol content in the latter is practically irrelevant). I was also about to mention the existence of baked clay stills as far back as 1-200 AD in modern day Pakistan, so distilling was not entirely unknown. However, these methods did not produce the strength we usually associate with liquors today. Somewhere between a strong wine and a weak brandy, as it were. Still plenty to get drunk off though. The existence of stolen dwarven apparati also open up for this (Or, in my opinion - Openhandist Quicksilver Dwarves from Greatway who travel and are paid handsomely for their expertise, but guard it jealously, YGWW), as does spells provided by alcohol-related deities. Speaking of, what's the status on potatoes in Glorantha? Lastly, one of the reasons why alcoholic beverages are so widespread and were for much of history consumed daily and regularly, is partly because they help prevent diseases that could otherwise lurk in ordinary water. Are there any Gloranthan associations between "alcohol"-deities and, say, protection against diseases?

Yeah, my thought too. Umathela at least has some of these giant mammals.