dumuzid

Imagine what the Zzaburi would do with all that aluminum if they could get the bone's spirit to cooperate.

I think I'm going to run with the idea of a very obscure link between the Blue Moon and this Seshnelan city, on the theory that Cathora was a high-status Basmoli woman whose family were integrated into the talar aristocracy some time in the First Age. The city itself may prove to be founded over a site where one or several of Artmal's bones fell to earth after his defeat, drawn by sympathy to his wife's kin; the bone's spirit manifests as the lion-headed entity that demands only an unmarried woman of Cathora's line, the local talars, rule Fralos.

I like that placement to coincide with the mention of many standing Artmali ruins around Benestros in the Guide.

Another general question: the Guide says that Gabaryanga was originally a slave in Benestros, which is described as the breadbasket of Afadjann. I'm still getting my head around Pamaltelan geography, and try as I might I can't find Benestros on the Argan Argar Atlas sections covering Afadjann. Does anyone know where the place lies?

Interesting, and heavily contradictory to other sources in parts. The early section is more or less in line with other sources, if we read 'Chaos War' as the war for the Sky after Yelm's death. I recall the name 'Bredjeg' as the name for an enemy god of Artmal's in Revealed Mythology. The naming of Cathora's homeland among the 'Fralari nation' is new to me. The only thing I can find in the Guide that resembles that name is Fralos in Estaurenic County, Seshnela, a mid-sized city with a peculiar relationship to a guardian spirit descended from Nakala. Per the Blue Moon's theogony, something descended from Nakala could be a descendant of Anhilla/Veldara as well. Is there an Artmali spirit resident in the heart of old Imperial Seshnela, which reputedly resists all attempts by the Zzaburi to compel it sorcerously (or at least, all such attempts have ended disastrously)? Could it be the spirit of one of the Bones of Artmal, cast across the earth by 'the god of Desero' in the Gods War? The guardian requires that the leader of the city be a female of the talar caste--a stand-in for Cathora herself? This offers a personal name for the original Red Sword, which I've never seen before, along with proposing the red sword carried by the Armtali emperors and Zaranistangi kings was a parthenogenic offspring of the Sword of Tolat, not the sword itself. Which is a very interesting distinction, because I would expect that Artmal needs the elder sword to recover from his debilitation in the Sea of Fire, not the one he bequeathed to Yeetai. It doesn't take Zzabur to calculate that recovering Hes-tur could be instrumental on a greater quest to recover Klestor and bring it to Artmal. From 'The Sword of Yeetai' onward we start to diverge, even from the preceding section of text. The conflict in which Artmal received Klestor is called the 'war against Gbaji'. Does this refer to the struggle of the Sky Gods against assorted invaders in the Gods Age, or the First Age war against the Bright Empire? The second paragraph would seem to support the latter reading, and port the mythic history of the Artmali forward into the First Age S.T., during a time when the Guide claims that groups we know as the Artmali were living a post-urban tribal life in what becomes Fonrit or living as nomadic clans in Zamokil in far southern Pamaltela, while the Zaranistangi were a kingdom in modern Melib conducting loper expeditions throughout Genertela. According to the Guide the Zaranistangi lost the sword while fighting for the ill-fated Archons of the Stygian Empire against the rising Middle Sea Empire, putting them on the Arkat side of the Gbaji Wars if they participated directly at all, but I'd expect Shargashi/Tolati documents from within Time to be on the Nysalorean side of that divide. This text describes the fall of the old Artmali empire as if it happened within Time, and makes no direct mention of the Firefall that's so central to those events in Pamaltelan myth. It makes no distinction between Artmali and Zaranistangi as it traces Hes-tur's movement from Pamaltela to Melib. From the Zaranistangi settlement in Melib onward it spirals away from the Guide's version of history, with only limited contact by way of distantly similar names and vaguely similar patterns. By the time it reaches history in parallel with the Jrusteli dynasty in Melib this document's version has diverged from the Guide to the point that the pictures the two paint bear little resemblance. In-setting, it's the sort of document that only holds up in the absence of any other reliable sources on the subject, like the medieval legend of Prester John's India. Metatextually, I suspect it comes from a previous draft of Gloranthan, particularly Artmali and Zaranistangi, history. Nonetheless, there's some stuff worth mining and integrating into the modern version of the setting. I really like the potential for a Fralos connection to the Blue Moon, to offer the potential of Ordanal claiming descent from Cathora's family and deriving greater control of Hes-tur's powers than most through that connection.

Before I delve into all this from Jeff, a general question: has anything like a Teshnos or Melib King List been written to anyone's knowledge?

GTA?

Thanks to those pointers I've found this much more in the Guide: And a search for Tryensaval and Halwal leads me to this: Tryensaval is also included in a list of Ascended Masters venerated by Malkioni who respect such things in the Third Age. So thirty years after Avalor/Avlor set off into the Wastelands, he or someone claiming to be him/named after him took part in Halwal, Tryensaval and Sigur's successful campaign to drive the God Learners from Fronela. I don't know enough about God Learner anagathic sorcery or alchemy, or Avalor's biography (to know how old he was when he departed Teshnos) to guess whether it was the man himself who got to Fronela, but he definitely had the (or 'a') Red Sword. No idea yet what became of him during the revolt, but now the Red Sword would seem to be housed in a temple to mean old pre-Malkioni storm and war gods (Humakt? Vadrudings? A version of Orlanth focused on his phase as the Death-bearer?). So, we know where the sword ends up! That's a big deal. Still plenty of questions though. What happened to Avalor on his long journey west? What happened to him at the end of the journey? Who was this 'ocean's daughter' that Avalor/Avlor journeyed across Genertela to rescue or avenge? Who were the kidnappers, that they could abscond with what sounds like a demigoddess across the face of a continent, or want to attempt such a scheme in the first place? And why did they kidnap her? Though I have a sneaking suspicion the culprits were God Learners from the imperial core. Ah, well, fair enough, I didn't really get into Glorantha until well after that kickstarter ended. If that is your source @scott-martin I'll appreciate whatever you're willing to share.

These seem important to the quest, where can I find these documents?

Can you expand on this? Why would this specifically work as a Blue Moon method to teach Illumination? I definitely agree that that is something she can teach, and has taught before.

Well, on the plus side, if there's no more detailed treatments extant I can flesh out my own Red Sword quest, in the middle world and the Otherworld. I have read and enjoyed that article: how widespread is the interpretation that the Third Eye Blue are descendants of a Zaranistangi offshoot who set off to find a new great magical weapon to replace the Red Sword? Anyway, turning to the Red Sword of Shargash. To the best of my understanding, the chain of transmission goes like this: Shargash gave the sword to his nephew Artmal Moonson in return for saving his life during the wars over the Sky World in the God Time. Later in the Gods War Artmal was dismembered by 'the god of Desero, Lord of the Horde,' who may or may not have been Orlanth. Desero and their horde were defeated by the Artmali hero Jarkaru, who led his people to refound the Artmali Empire at a new capital as a slave-taking, militaristic power. If Desero claimed the Red Sword after their god defeated Artmal, submerging him in the Sea of Fire before scattering his bones, as is certainly plausible, it seems Jarkaru reclaimed in defeating the horde. Some time during this second empire the Zaranistangi gained it from the Artmali, and kept it as the sacred weapon of their kings. I've read versions that call this a gift after the Zaranistangi saved the life of an Artmali emperor, and versions less flattering to the Zaranistangi. When the floods of Sshorg besieged the Zaranistangi homeland, Sechkaul, the Zaranistangi king Dengbalu stuck the sword in the earth and Tolat's hand reached down to draw it up, dragging the land above the waters rather than dislodging the sword. Red Sword Temples spread throughout the land, practicing human sacrifice in exchange for Tolat's continued protection. The Zaranistangi kings could still draw the Sword from its resting place and bear it to war. One such king bore the Sword to western Genertela, where he was defeated and slain by the rising God Learners and the sword taken. In 775 a Jrustelan man named Ordanal bore the sword back to Melib, replaced it in the original Red Sword Temple, and was acclaimed king of the land. His dynasty ruled there for almost two centuries. The last, King Avalor, managed to draw the Red Sword, but vanished with it into the Wastelands between Teshnos and Prax in pursuit of those who'd kidnapped his wife. With Avalor's disappearance the Red Sword falls off the map, to the best of my knowledge. Subsequent expeditions into the Wastes to retrieve the Red Sword or take up Avalor's trail have all failed. The Teshnite hero Gebel's current attempt, which succeeds according to the Guide, is the latest. Does anyone know more about the God Learner dynasty in Melib, or the fate of the last king, Avalor? Has there ever been any published material that deals with where the Red Sword ended up, or how Gebel finds it?

P.S.: Does anybody have any idea what a Zaranistangi loper beast actually looked like? And are there any Zaranistangi left in the Middle World in the late Third Age?

I've decided to involve my RuneQuest players in the events of the Hero Wars surrounding the New Artmali Uprising in Fonrit. In my Glorantha the heroic blue rebel Gabaryanga, having heard through travelers' tales of the Teshnite explorer Gebel's quest to recover the long-lost Red Sword of Tolat, began a Magic Road quest to meet up with Gebel and join his expedition. After venturing alone through the otherworlds Gabaryanga arrived at the Pairing Stones in Prax during Sacred Time, and followed the line of the Zola Fell to find himself in New Pavis, where Argrath White Bull offered him guest rights without directly integrating him into the carefully choreographed Sacred Time ceremonies. Before he set out on his magical journey Gabaryanga learned that Gebel was last heard to have ventured into the Wastes between Prax and Teshnos. Gabaryanga seeks Argrath's support to lead an expedition (which the player characters may be a part of) into Vulture Country to find Gebel's explorers and help them find the fabled sword of the Red Planet. In the meantime, Gabaryanga is repaying the White Bull's hospitality by helping to facilitate Blue Moon magic (which one of the player characters, an Ernaldan durulz assistant shaman, participated in). I have access to the Guide to Glorantha and Revealed Mythologies, the best sources (to my knowledge) on the subjects of the Artmali, Pamaltela, Fonrit, the Sword of Tolat, and Gabaryanga's quest to restore Artmal in the Hero Wars. I'm aware that in 'canon' Gabaryanga and Gebel meet and collaborate on a great quest across the world and otherworlds to find Artmal at the Lake of Fire, heal him, and return him the sword Tolat gave him in the Gods Age. In canon these events precipitate the New Artmali slave rebellion in Fonrit, as a healed Artmal gives the Veldang slave population the power to undo Fonritian slavery magic and mount a serious bid to free themselves from a thousand years of Ompalam-empowered enslavement. In canon the initial success of the revolt fades as the Fonritian slavers indulge in worse and worse Chaotic magic, and Gabaryanga is seduced by Seseine Kallig, arch-priestess of the goddess of seduction, into delving into the Artmali's own Chaotic sorcerous past to keep the revolt alive. What I'd like to know more about, in order, are: 1) Any obvious sources, other than the Guide and Revealed Mythologies, on the subjects of the Veldang, Artmal, the Blue Moon, and Tolat worship in Teshnos. 2) Any more detailed accounts of the quest for the Red Sword and its outcome than what's printed in the Guide or Revealed Mythologies 3) RuneQuest mechanical resources for any of the above topics--rune cult write-ups for the Veldang version of Blue Moon worship, or the cults of Artmal or Tolat, would be great, for instance 4) In the absence of official published material on the above subjects, I'd be happy to hear commentary and speculation from the tribe regarding the quest for the Red Sword and the restoration of Artmal

My RQ:G character illuminated towards the end of my group's last session. He'd had several brushes with dragonewts, a dream dragon, Argrath, and it all culminated in achieving Draconic enlightenment in a Storm Age dragonewt meditation chamber, during the Sacred Time of 1627-28. The same character underwent initiation to the direct cult of Arachne Solara during the same Sacred Time. How does Illumination change this character on a moral and interpersonal level? Before Illumination their personality was built around the interplay of the Darkness, Harmony and Movement runes, driven by devotion to Argan Argar, their family and their community in roughly that order. None of that went away with illumination. Realizing that all the world is a dream has so far simply meant that the character has a more profound respect for others, dissasociated elements of the one dreamer, sharing the one dream. He was an inveterate foe of Chaos before Illumination, not out of hate so much as pity and revulsion for what Chaos does to those it corrupts. Illumination would seem to have only intensified that pity, while lessening the revulsion, as the character comprehends how unnecessary the suffering of the Chaos-tainted is. Illumination has fundamentally changed the character's relationship with the gods. Now that he better understands the limitations their current mode of existence places on the gods, he is more willing to transgress strictures and taboos in order to succeed at higher-order goals. Those goals all revolve around advancing the health and prosperity of their community though, the character was not psychologically defined by a revenge quest before illumination, so the stripping away of cultural relativism has not, so far, resulted in their descending into sociopathy. Robert Caro once wrote that power itself doesn't corrupt, it simply reveals who a person was all along. If simply being freed from cultural taboos and divine retribution made Argrath, Sheng Seleris and other similar illuminates into monsters, that is probably a reflection of something in their personal characters rather than a quality intrinsic to illumination.

depends on the kind of spirit. some have their full CHA worth of spirit magic, some have only limited selections. what sort of being is it?

The thing I like least about the 'expected' shape of the fourth age, even more than the end of magic and the severing of people from the gods, is that the elder races seemingly die out by the time the Harshax are re-inventing the written word and trying to understand the Hero Wars. My favorite development in the RQ:G game in which I'm a player is the player characters' creation of a new Earth+Darkness complex in southern Dragon Pass, a place founded on Earth magic and protected by Darkness, which harmonizes and regulates the other elements in defense of the Earth. It's a community deliberately patterned on Silver Age Esrolia, home to a bewilderingly varied array of people (humans from several cultures, dark trolls and free trollkin, green elves, beastmen, the occasional duck) and dominated by the spiritual presences of Ernalda and Argan Argar. It unites powers and approaches that haven't been harmonized in quite this way since the First Age, before Nysalor and the Bright Empire. I've grown convinced that one of the reasons the Hero Wars go so badly out of control, and result in what seems to me such a terrible outcome (the end of magic and non-human sentience) is that Argrath takes on more roles from the Greater Darkness than he should, while lacking a few crucial ones entirely. In 1626 he's well-positioned to embody Storm Bull in the Darkness, the power that faces the Devil personally in the ultimate battle, but after kings Broyan and Kallyr each die while attempting to embody Orlanth he takes on their role too, and tries to be both the Storm King who cements the Compromise and the Storm Bull who meets the Devil horn to horn. Even if he weren't mythically straining himself already by trying to be both Orlanth Lightbringer and Storm Bull of the Eternal Battle, this formula for re-enacting the Greater Darkness and defeating the Devil lacks a key ingredient: the Unity Battle. The victory of Glorantha over Chaos in the Greater Darkness hung on at least three points: Orlanth's quest into the Underworld, Storm Bull's battle with the Devil in Prax, and the Unity Battle where the last remains of the mortal world gathered together against the last Chaos horde, fought it, and won. From what we know of the later Hero Wars, Argrath tries to add the Unity hero to his roles, bringing together an empire of Prax, Esrolia and Sartar to fight the Lunars over Tarsh and the southern provinces, but ultimately fails. The Red Emperor raises a victory stele in Boldhome, Argrath is forced to flee with his companions to Broyan's Hall in the Otherworld, and the only way he gets the Empire's boot off Sartar is by bringing Sheng Seleris back into the world. Sheng eats the Red Emperor, replaces him, and is replaced in turn by the apocalyptic Monster Empire, probably led by Ralzakark. As we know, Argrath's final moves in the Hero Wars are to complete Orlanth's Lightbringers Quest in a way that ends with garroting all the gods save possibly Eurmal, before he calls several True Dragons to rend the moon apart. The post-apocalyptic world is left to recover sans gods, sans magic, and apparently sans elder races, until the Devil comes swinging through in another 600 years. When you look at the state of the world now, I reckon the Devil probably, finally wins at the end of the 4th age. I think the first step towards thwarting that outcome is lightening Argrath's load. Obviously having his coterie of hero-companions wasn't enough, even when he delegates responsibilities to them they're still his responsibilities that he's delegating. There needs to be a Storm King, separate from Argrath, who'll abandon the mundane struggles of the Hero Wars to venture out on the Lightbringer's Quest with a few companions, as Orlanth did. There needs to be a Unity Hero to assemble and coordinate the Middle World struggle long after the Storm King departs on their quest. There needs to be a Storm Bull stomping the bounds of Prax, keeping the powers of the desert alive and in readiness to face the Devil himself in the final battle, after the Unity Army vanquishes his horde. For the Glorantha in which my group's game takes place the player characters have created a seat for the Unity struggle to begin again in earnest: a citadel founded on Earth and Darkness like the Only Old One's Palace of Black Glass, harmonizing the other elements around that foundation. That community's influence has helped Leika Black Spear of the Colymar ascend as the Prince of Sartar. In that Glorantha Argrath arrived in Boldhome to find the Sartar brazier already lit, and became the new Prince Leika's lover, then consort. We're still in the early stages of the Hero Wars in my group's Glorantha, and the big events of 1628 have yet to unfold, but that version of the setting seems to be on its way towards a very different formulation of the end of the age than what is assumed in King of Sartar. Hopefully this version results in a less drearily pessimistic Fourth Age, with trolls and elfs and dwarfs still running around because Aldrya, Kyger Litor and Mostal aren't lying strangled in Hell.

I'm not sure it's a given that animals have the same lifespans in Glorantha as on Earth, particularly not animals who've undergone some sort of initiation rite, as Telmori wolf-siblings presumably do. i like the recursive reincarnation idea though

We fall because the Chaosium that lies beneath Nakala, the Primal Darkness, calls us back towards nothingness. The womb of Nakala birthed other elements to put buoying Water and solid Earth between us and the maw of Chaos, so that there are things to keep us from falling through formless Darkness into oblivion.

He knows that just as Sedenya's emergence returned Arkat as Argrath to oppose the new god within Time, his full emergence would trigger the return in some form of his own ancient foe: the Only Old One, or possibly Kwaratch Kang.

Speaking only for myself, but since Spirit Magic rolls are simple pass/fail, with the only downside being forced to try again, and no new effects for a special or critical (or fumble), in my group we only actually roll for it when timing is a factor. we always roll for Rune Magic though, since its fumbles and criticals matter even outside of timing considerations.

There was a way, not to recreate the Golden Age, but a bright part of the Storm Age, that might've succeeded. According to old, old Tradetalk articles by Shannon Appel "with help from Greg Stafford," the goal at first was not to incarnate a new bright god, but an old, dark, good one: Argan Argar. In the context of the middle Unity Council, locked into wars with the sun-worshipers of the north, it makes a lot of sense. Argan Argar and Esrola together ruled a realm in what became Kethaela that was like the Kingdom of Night but moreso, a powerfully Harmonious and friendly neighbor to the south of Orlanth and Ernalda's domain that united a wide array of different peoples and cultures. The Kingdom of Night that Only Old One and Queen Norinel of Nochet founded in the Greater Darkness can be understood as a successor to Argan Argar and Esrola's domain, re-uniting the surviving fragments of the Storm Age Kethaelan Darkness-Earth kingdom after the departure of the gods and a long, desperate siege of the Palace of Black Glass by chaos monsters cut its constituent parts off from each other. The same articles that describe this mythic tangent, little known by the Third Age, also talk about the breaking of the Unity Council from the Shadow Plateau perspective. They describe Only Old One, the dragonewts, the Dragon Pass storm worshipers, and the others elements of the Unity Council that ultimately sided with Arkat in the Gbaji Wars, assenting to a project centered in Dorastor to summon Argan Argar into Time. If that had occurred, the known effects would've been a drastic increase in the ability of the Unity Council to harmonize and relate across cultural and species lines. Especially important, considering that the Council's main opposition by this point were the solar emperors of Dara Happa, was Argan Argar's unique ability among Darkness gods to endure and rebuke Sky powers without being burned himself. The Unity Council's ability to resist and overpower the sun magic of Dara Happa would've been greatly reinforced by all the mythic occasions when Argan Argar bested or negated the sky gods, along with their ability to coordinate the many and varied powers of the Unity Council's other elements. The unknown effects of incarnating a god into Time are another matter. Would bringing Argan Argar into the middle world have brought about a sort of Solar Arkat in the east, a First Age Sheng Seleris with the light of the Sun Dragon in his eyes, to counter a Darkness god walking Genertela? Would the Argan Argar thus summoned have been an Illuminated god, ultimately corrupted by Chaos like Nysalor and the Red Goddess? Who knows, it didn't happen that way. Things turned around in the north. The Dara Happan emperor made peace, even entered the Council, and the project already at work in Dorastor changed. I don't know whether the change came before or after the northern peace, but we know what it was a change to: the Argan Argar project radically re-oriented its emphasis, from bringing back the old shadow king to incarnating a new, bright god instead. Then, as we also all know, the Unity Council fractured into Light and Dark factions, and the Light threw down the Dark in the Battle of Night and Day, when the sun stopped and Nysalor was born at last. A lot of the how's and why's of the change are uncertain, at least in the sources available to me. I would speculate that the Dara Happans brought information or techniques to the Unity Council that were then integrated into the project and changed its course. I would also speculate further than the submission of Dara Happa might have been informed by omens of a rising Darkness power to the south, in order to defeat by co-optation what the solar emperors could not defeat through war and open magical opposition. I don't know enough about mid-late First Age Dara Happa to speculate on any finer details, but I agree with @Sir_Godspeed emphatically that an attempt to recreate the Golden Age, far more agreeable to the Dara Happans than a return to the Storm Age, could by definition only result in the breaking of the Unity Council, for the simple reason that in the age they were trying to bring back the trolls whose influence founded and sustained the Council were all still underground. My main question is who or what convinced the Dorastans to embrace the Solar approach despite their history of friendship with the Shadow Plateau and Dagori Inkarth. That's the root of the schism that broke the Council.

That was specific to "Harmast's Time," i.e. the era of the Gbaji Wars, when Argan Argar (embodied by Ezkankekko) was still the preeminent husband-protector of Ernalda in Esrolia. They were still calling Only Old One by his Greater Darkness name, Lord Victory Nightbrother, in the text. I would expect the public position of Orlanth to wax and wane with his acceptability as a husband-protector, which has increased drastically since then.

The Nightcult subcult of Argan Argar worship allows humans to take on troll form, and vice versa. In places where the Kingdom of Night was strong and people took Only Old One up on his offer to teach the inner secrets of Darkness, it's not unheard-of for human and troll genealogies to intersect.

Okay, what about another less than accessible goddess: Arachne Solara. Firewitch worships her, the Beast Valley folk worship her: what do they get from it?

Then, rather, a subcult of a more accessible god based around an Imarjan intervention in that god(dess)'s myths might offer Summon Geese?