Ladygolem

Fire in Earth - birds(and horses) and reptiles - dinosaurs (theropods especially) would make sense if they weren't already claimed by Maran Gor, terrestrial birds as you said... Ratites already have some kind of symbolism wrt "the Ratite Empire" which I know absolutely nothing about. Demi-birds seem more like non-avian theropods through a 21st century lens, but perhaps fictional mythological significance doesn't need to be scientifically up-to-date. Moa, kiwi, emu, ostriches and terrorbirds could still work. Kakapo are flightless parrots with a penchant for mischief and destruction, could be appropriate! You also have semi-flightless birds - do chickens/cocks have any deity associations? Penguins are obviously water-related, so no. Certain types of owls make their nests in burrows. Hope any of this is helpful?

While possible, I think it's limiting to assume all martial arts must necessarily be Kralori in origin. As long as human beings have been fighting each other, there have been formalised methods and techniques for doing so, armed or unarmed. I see no reason why Seshneg and Kralori schools couldn't have contact and influenced each other during this period, however. But simply having fantasy China be the place where all martial arts are invented seems reductive.

It definitely can, though (in this example) no Gustbran temple would expect you to put them ahead of your primary responsibilities to Veskarthen. The Lowfires, in particular, are far more worshipped as sub-cults of related deities like Lodril or Ernaldathan as full cults in their own right (with the possible exception of Oakfed shamans in Prax). Of course, if you want there to be a conflict of interest, go for it! It would definitely make for some interesting character dynamics/ drama.

Yeah, more or less! It's kind of like you're borrowing a small portion of another god's power in return for including them in your main worship. So if you're a Veskarthen initiate who's sub-initiated into Gustbran, you only get maybe one or two Gustbran spells, in return for not having to fulfil the full responsibilities of a Gustbran initiate. Someone fully dedicated to Gustbran however would get his entire repertoire of spells and have the opportunity to advance to (whatever the higher ranks of Gustbran worship are). Said Gustbran initiate could even sub-initiate into Veskarthen, and thus gain a single particular spell from him in turn. Basically, it's a system that allows you to "multiclass" to a limited extent, without running yourself ragged with multiple full initiations.

The Lowfires are either spirit traditions or subcults of other gods in most of their write-ups, so not only is it possible but in fact the most likely mode of their worship. In HQ terms, the easiest way to handle it would be to have Lodril as your cult, and any Lowfires as Spirit Charms, possibly as breakout abilities from the Lodril cult, or Fire/Sky rune, or something else (Spirit Rune?) How does the game handle Waha charms? Might be a decent guideline.

It's treason, then....

https://zzabursbrownbook.blogspot.com/2015/05/veskarthan.html Here's another Veskarth(a)n write-up. Not quite as in-depth maybe, however it seems to be written with HQ in mind, rather that RQ:G.

While there isn't much in the way of official canon material on Caladraland, @RHW wrote up cult descriptions for the chief volcano god Veskarthen (who may or may not be Caladralander Lodril) and Caladra and Aurelion, twin deities of Earth And Fire In Harmony here on the forum. I'll link them below, maybe you or your player might find them useful. EDIT: Please don't ask me to explain the Palpatine

This is from Tales of the Reaching Moon #6, published 1991. I'm uncertain how "canonical" it's considered nowadays, so take this info with a grain of salt.

All the more reason to have a discipline of non-lethal combat, focused on avoiding damage and taking opponents down quickly. Something similar to judo, where you use your opponent's weight to pin them to the ground.

An explanation for Seshnegi unarmed martial arts could be the noble caste's (talars, iiirc?) prohibition against carrying weapons. I know in some places they get around this by using "scepters" and "crowns" that have been modified over time into maces and chakrams respectively without ever "counting" as weapons. But in other place, or in parallel to this practice, the nobility could practice unarmed martial arts as a way of getting around this prohibition, or simply as a sport or meditation technique (to build discipline and self-control). I can see some nobles seeing the practice of using the aforementioned scepters and crowns as cheating, and against the spirit of the Abiding Book, thus training unarmed instead.

Also, an exorbitant price is fully appropriate, since the dwarves have more in stock than the entire region combined. Sure, you're paying way more for (to take a previous example) enough gold to cover the Sun Dome Temple roof than the market price for weight, but to get that amount of gold elsewhere would require buying the entire output of every single gold mine in Dragon Pass for decades!

Don't they prefer the term Sami nowadays?

A bit of a different kind of recommendation, but I've been playing a bit of Mount & Blade Bannerlord lately and while it's not very Gloranthan in tone or story (or frankly all that good, but I digress) one thing I did appreciate was the first person battle simulations. It's very good at conveying the scale and chaos of battle. Ordered ranks and formations quickly devolve into a dozen different fronts and skirmishes. One time I was able to beat an army of nomad horse archers three times my size by having my infantry form a circular shield wall atop a hill with my archers firing from inside it, along with an elite unit of glaive-wielding mercenaries ready to cut down any fool that managed to break through. Another time I found myself duelling one of the enemy's commanders personally on horseback. Our melee had us drift away from the battle into the nearby woods, where my advantage of mobility was curtailed, and my steed was swiftly cut down. We circled each other in the snow, trading blows, until I barely scraped through a victory with a lucky swipe to his head. As I stumbled bleeding back out of the forest, I was treated just in time to a grand view of our cavalry smashing through their ranks in agrand charge. It was breathtaking. Movies and books can offer cinematic, tailored narrative, but the dynamic improvised nature of the videogame leads to a unique experience, only bested by a thrilling session of a TTRPG! One other thing in particular that surprised me was how huge battles feel even with relatively small armies; an army of 500 sounds pitiful on paper but chills the spine all the same when you see it crest a hill in the distance. I used to find visualising bronze age warfare difficult - spoiled by the ostentatious battle scenes in movies like Lord of the Rings or Krzyżacy / The Knights of the Teutonic Order (which used 15,000 extras and who knows how many horses in the climactic Battle of Grunwald!), it was hard to imagine the smaller scales and populations at play in the period. Bannerlord gave me a much clearer picture of what that looks like. As a reward for getting through this rambling post, here's the clip of the aforementioned battle from The Knights of the Teutonic Order. Fun fact: the scene is filmed on the location of the historical battlefield! Another fun fact: said battlefield is estimated to be the single largest horse graveyard in human history 💀

YOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO this rules!!! so hard!!!! hell yeah!!!!!!!

It's by Simon Roy, as I just said. Other artists working on the project are Farel Dalrymple and Giannis Milonogiannis, whose contributions are equally amazing.

Ooh, I'll have to check the Noah comic out. I loved what I saw of the first like, third? half? of the movie, but it gets pretty grisly in the typical Darren Aronofsky fashion and I have a weak stomach for things like "animal dismemberment". I can deal with it in comic form, however. The tone of the movie is really, really compelling - I have high hopes for the comic! Speaking of comics, Prophet by, uh, Brandon Graham. I feel weird recommending something by such a nasty dude so I'll just focus on praising the incredible art by many talented artists, especially that by Simon Roy (who's done a ton of illustration for RQ:G and Six Ages, in fact!)

An actual answer: the videogame Caves of Qud is really good at evoking the sort of mystical mythological world we associate with Glorantha, but in a post-post-post-post apocalyptic retrofuturistic quasi-biblical Levant. To quote the Steam store page: The writing is excellent , the story weird and compelling. Everything has a faction allegiance and can be allied with, from apes, crabs and robots to the Consortium of Phyta, the Cult of the Coiled Lamb and the Seekers of the Sightless Way. Even if you don't like roguelikes I heartily recommend giving it a try!

This album cover. EDIT: Come to think of it, there are a lot of stoner/doom metal albums (both songs and covers) that work. I don't want to swamp the thread with them, though.

Griffin Mountain has a fair bit of info about giants, focussing on Gonn Orta and the area around his castle called Giant's Land. In the Guide this area is referred to as the Eleven Big Giant Mountains. They aren't called Giants because they're big, or because giants live on them (both incidentally true) but because they are dormant giants! One of the giants, Dolog, was a friend and companion of the Praxian demigod hero Tada, and fought at his side against chaos. At one point Tada is fighting a giant kaiju-sized chaos wolf called, if i remember correctly, Canis Chaos, and he can't win, so his pal Dolog does him a solid and sits on the wolf. Dolog is a mountain now, and the wolf is to this day trapped there, under his ass. It's incredible. Chaotic wolves still inhabit the area, and it's called Wolf's Peak now. Can't remember the exact source for this exact story but it's in one of the writeups for the Eleven Big Giant Mountains. There's also the Nine Good Giant Mountains, north of Prax near Dragon Pass, which are also dormant True Giants.

"Most Jolanti were destroyed during the Great Darkness, and their splendor is now long past. Instead of thousands of each type there are now only the small, human-sized Jolanti and a few of the exotic, giant stone beings remaining, such as the Faceless Statue which Pavis the Hero used to build his city." - from "Creating Jolanti", published in Different World #21, published 1998, by Michael Maloney and Greg Stafford. Not sure on the source material's canonicity - I was only able to find it via Wayback Machine on the old Well of Daliath website - but I've got at least one source. Anyway, Jolanti or not, the point remains that the walls/ruins of a city reassembling themselves into a giant statue man would be awesome as fuck, canon be damned! PS. Credit to @soltakss for the big archive of old Google Search results on his website, I wouldn't have been able to find the quote otherwise. Cheers, mate!

What's a kaiju war without some giant robots in the mix? Granted, the bronze age setting oes make that a little difficult, but there's still a bunch of options. There's the Watchdog of Corflu, a 70-meter tall animated statue that guards the mouth of the Zola Fel river in Prax. The neat part is that it's cobbled together from the remains of an even more ancient (humanoid statue) that must have been even bigger, since the Watchdog is basically a huge head with arms. Kind of a kaiju-sized Geodude. It's described in River of Cradles and is being used by the Lunars to attack the Cradle, but who knows what happens to it afterward? Also in the "giant animated statue" category are the Jolanti, which are basically Mostali (dwarf) built golems. Most nowadays are more or less troll-sized but there were some very, very big ones manufactured in the distant past. Gonn orta and the other giants fought a war with the dwarves to free the huge Jolanti*, which sort of wandered off into the world; later on the elves granted some true sentience. These are now known as Dringi, and they chill out in the elf forests, all overgrown in vegetation**, in contemplation of eons and all that. Having one or several of these wake up and march with the Aldryami would be a good way to add some Elder Race spice into the mix! The Faceless Statue, with the aid of which the original Pavis defeated the nomads and founded his eponymous city, might have been a wandering Jolanti or something even weirder. Its shattered remains now make up the walls of the Big Rubble, but who's to say if some kind of crazy magic couldn't put it back together? Not a giant robo, but Gonn Orta himself is more or less kaiju sized. He's an Issaries merchant nowadays, but he's been known to kick ass in the past. No reason he couldn't do so again. Griffin Mountain's write up of him even emphasises that he's been patiently waiting for centuries now, intently watching the horizon for someone or something. Perhaps he's been waiting for the Monster Wars this whole time? (Anyway, take a wild guess what my special interest is! 😉) * The giants saw themselves in the Jolanti, and as creatures of the Disorder rune giants cannot abide a master. Being condemned to eternal mindless servitude is a giant's worst nightmare. They must have felt pretty sorry for the guys - I think that's the only recorded case of the giants working together for a common cause as a unified whole. ** A testament to the victory of Growing over Making, the conflict between which is the source of the ancient enmity between elves and dwarves.

Exactly! Whether or not we personally agree with the actions of the characters is not really the point.

Right you are, confusion rescinded!

We're talking about fiction. The Lunars are not real, and they cannot get you. Seriously though, this has verged from trying to describe the structure and philosophy of Illumination, to passing value judgment on it. This is subjective, and something we'll never be able to agree on.