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dumuzid

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Everything posted by dumuzid

  1. So the Mask of the Red Emperor called Argenteus pays for the several debacles the Lunar Empire faces in the later 1620s with his life. Per this post on the Well of Daliath, he's succeeded by 'Kazkurtum.' I have some dim understanding that this is the new Red Emperor installed by Great Sister after sacrificing Argenteus in the Hon-Eel Rites, and that he's regarded as 'false' or 'artificial' after his reign. I'm guessing he wasn't called Kazkurtum while he was in office, given the connotations of the name. The only direct reference to this fellow that I know of is on page 750 of the Guide to Glorantha, where Ethilrist describes him as "the poor sacrifice Jar-eel and Great Sister had raised to power." What I hope to learn is as much detail as I can about this Kazkurtum: how much is known about them before their elevation, or about the sacrificial rite that installed him, or about why he's so poorly regarded in later years. Any insights or direction towards appropriate literary sources will be profoundly welcome. I'm curious about all this because the campaign I'm currently running is going to be in the Lunar Heartlands around the time Argenteus is supposed to go, but I'm not sure where to find more information about the event beyond the Guide, currently my only real source on events post-1625. Anything I can learn about this subject will help me portray the intersection of this particular note in Lunar Imperial history with the Quest for the Bones of Artmal that my campaign is mainly concerned with, so any new information will be greatly appreciated.
  2. stealing the treasure there is probably setting up some future Chaos-fighting champion to face their part in the Eternal Battle without an appropriate gift that's likely to have some unpleasant consequences later
  3. The Agimori cultural weapons are essentially the Zulu military array after Shaka's reforms (assegais for throwing, iklwa for stabbing, shield), plus the shortsword and pike. They might've brought all those weapon traditions with them from Pamaltela (Vangono the Spear breathes three different fires; they have three different kinds of spear), or they might've learned the pike from the sun templars of the Bright Empire in the First Age, or the later Prax Sun Dome; either way, it's a natural tool to cope with the other nomads of the Wastes as non-riders
  4. Yeah, I don't disagree, as the rest of my post describes.
  5. Their Bestiary write-up doesn't describe Agimori tactics, but it gives them equal facility with pikes, spears and javelins, and only slightly less skill with shortswords (probably more like big fighting knives to them, but shortswords to standard humans). I wouldn't expect that their fighting style is pike-based, but that pikes are one of several weapons they use as part of a multi-weapon and multi-formation fighting style. Pikes will be great protection against charges from the light- through medium-sized Praxian riding beasts, as much because many beasts simply won't charge a readied pike wall as because of the stopping power of a pike braced against a charge. The pike hedge grows riskier in proportion to the size and toughness of the riding beast though. Bracing a pike against a charging rhino or bison is putting a whole lot of faith in your ability to physically stop the oncoming beast and rider, even for an Agimori warrior, which is why I expect they'd favor looser formations with shield, spear and javelin ready against the heavy mounts. Similarly, relying on pike formations on the open plains is going to fail miserably against the mounted archers the sable, impala, ostrich and other peoples can field, but by adopting loose formations and skirmishing with their javelins from behind the protection of their large shields the Agimori could stand up to them much more effectively than most infantry fighters.
  6. Gerra seems to prefer you start off with less terminal self-harm, but it's certainly getting into the Black Pyramid spirit
  7. I'd expect Mostali to trade for minerals not readily available around a particular group's facilities: copper is relatively plentiful in Prax, for instance, on account of all the Earth gods who died in the Earthfall, but but gold and tin are probably much rarer. They also like to acquire biological resources they can't produce in-house: they use the muscle power of drayage animals to power some machines, scaling all the way up to using harnessed dinosaurs to power some truly gigantic projects. Raw materials to make their mysterious canned dwarf food, new organic inputs must take some of the pressure off their recycling systems. Some mostali settlements have human residents who are assumed to be slaves by outsiders, but the truth of that is anyone's guess. Such dwarf groups would probably trade for things to sustain their human populations more efficiently, and they might trade goods for human captives. Most places they hold these exchanges are called some various on 'Bad Deal' by the local humans, so I wouldn't expect a great exchange rate, but if you can offer them something they can't mine or produce themselves that they need or at least can use, there may be opportunities for exchange.
  8. The Men-and-a-Half can finally go home to Pamaltela once someone convinces them that they're needed to face the power of Ompalam in Fonrit.
  9. Yeah, if that's the case then somebody's gonna need to update the Bestiary entry on the Man-and-a-Half, homo sapiens agimori: "These are the Agimori, the Men-and-a-half, one of the ten independent tribes of Prax. Great hunters and deadly fighters in any land, they are considered by many to be the finest infantry of Glorantha." (RQ Bestiary, p. 48)
  10. Are there particular reasons Sheng Seleris and Garangordos missed the cut?
  11. In many places once ruled by the First Council, but especially in Esrolia, some humans even have trollish ancestry and could claim those frightful KL shaman-priestess-sorceresses as their ancestresses!
  12. @svensson Given the deliberate differences between your Elmal and Yelmalio/Antirius, I'm curious if there's any difference in the god and cult's relationship with Darkness, specifically the Surface Darkness powers. Elmal Guards the Stead intersects mythically with other Kethaelan Darkness Age myths like Heort's saga and the Unity Battle, and some of the big events in that complex from an Orlanthi perspective are the first offering of the Shadow Tribute to Ezkankekko, and their participation in his survivor network that becomes the Unity Army. Do you think there's any level of rapprochement between Elmal and Darkness, or at least Shadow?
  13. After running a year+ worth of campaign in Fronela I'd say the most surprising Sacred Time guests to a Praxian or Kethaelan traveler would be the cultists of Vorthan, the Fronelan god of the Red Planet. He's part of the Jonatelan royal cult complex, he has the fortress-temple Vorthan's Hill situated right in the heart of western Jonatela, elevated above the surrounding river valleys and clearly visible from across the region. Compared to Dragon Pass, where just about everyone but the Lunar Tarshites would consider Jagrekriand a chief cult enemy, or even Peloria, where Shargash is a recognized but rather tightly circumscribed and overseen cult with the Red Dancer of Power administering the Lunar Imperial Church from the Red Quarter of Alkoth, Vorthan seems to be powerful, influential and widespread in Fronela. Particularly in Jonatela and Junora, but I'd even expect some warrior lodges dedicated to him in Loskalm, particularly at Spada where King Sigur interred the Red Sword after the defeat of the God Learners.
  14. 'dichotomy' does more to invite good old-fashioned Unity Council Hegelianism, to me
  15. The only text I know of that gives a detailed version of the murder is a section of Revealed Mythologies written from a mainly Fonritian perspective, and it describes Jokotu as a 'traitor' for slaying Garangordos. The killing also gave Jokotu a posthumous place in the Necklace of Pamalt: he's considered the embodiment of Bolongo, the Pamaltelan Trickster. I think there's more tribute than sarcasm in the city's name, but the story can be interpreted many different ways. The Blue Moon is a big enough topic for its own thread. Suffice it to say that the Blue Moon's influence extends much farther than the Lunar Empire, goes back deep into the god time, and continues actively regardless of the 'new' Lunar tradition. The strongest cult to the Blue Moon within Time at the end of the Third Age is that of the Blue Moon Trolls, in their Plateau north of Peloria. The Blue Moon Trolls assisted the Empire at several crucial junctures, but in recent years have withdrawn that active support. They've played games like this before: at the end of the Second Age, they orchestrated the assassinations that collapsed the EWF with the Inhuman King of Dragon Pass. The Lunar Empire's Blue Moon assassins are a cadre of humans trained by the trolls on the Red Emperor's behalf to act as his agents. The Blue Moon is also worshipped by many humans in Melib off the coast of Teshnos, where she's recognized as the sister of Tolat. She's worshiped wherever the Veldang people of Pamaltela live free, whether escaped slaves and their descendants or the nomads of Zamokil far to the south: they consider her their ultimate ancestress as the mother of Artmal, and their people's original homeworld. Finally there are the Zaranistangi, a people who mostly exist in the otherworlds but sometimes still return to the Middle World, usually with historically dramatic results. They claim descent from the Blue Moon by a different father than the Veldang, and are known as the Loper People for riding Loper Beasts (see the RQG Bestiary, there's even a picture). Their powers of teleportation allow them to move over the world faster than just about anyone. They tend to pop up in myth or history, perform some daring deeds of cavalry violence, then fade out again, only to re-emerge in the most unexpected places. Like the Blue Moon, worth their own thread to explore. There's a subplot in the Hero Wars explored in some older material called the Chaos Warp or Chaos Swap. Basically, as the Hero Wars escalate and Chaos irruptions bloom across Glorantha, the Chaotic tendencies in Genertela and Pamaltela will switch. Genertela will see the emergence of Pamaltela-style gigantic Chaos terrors, while Pamaltela will see its first hordes of Broo and similar beings since the Great Darkness. It takes the normal Chaos-fighters in both continents off-guard: tactics for battling swarms of broo and scorpion-men seeping out of the Footprint or Snakepipe Hollow are irrelevant against a Chaos kaiju, while in large parts of inland Pamaltela 'warfare' as such is regarded as something between preposterous foolishness and a terrible crime, leaving its people sorely unprepared for that kind of conflict. If Sandy Petersen's campaign ran into broos and ogres attacking a Kresh caravan, I expect he was playing with Chaos Warp ideas.
  16. Yeah, that was my reaction, it's why I'm now in the third real-world year of what's become a Red Sword & Bones of Artmal campaign. At the end of the first in-game year my players were given the choice of joining Argrath's march into Sartar or sailing off with Gebel and Gabaryanga, and they chose the latter. The Blue Moon offers both Invisibility and Absorption, incidentally. Garangordos was followed by seventeen Glorious Ones, who each took on a role from Pamalt's Necklace. One of them was Jokotu, Garangordos's steward. Just as the conquest of Fonrit was ending Jokotu murdered Garangordos, and was dismembered by the other Glorious Ones for it. The remaining Glorious Ones spread out to found the cities and kingdoms of Fonrit. So the descendants of the perverters are, essentially, the entire ruling stratum of Fonritian society, both those who actually descend biologically from the founders and those who have risen in their system from below or joined it from outside. Jokotu is also the name of the City of the Free, a mountain refuge for escaped slaves in southern Fonrit. The version of events in the Guide is that Gabaryanga's revolt is defeated in 1613, the same year as Kallyr's in Sartar. Afterwards he makes his way to Jokotu, where he dedicates himself to the Blue Moon. The next thing written about about his life is that some time in the 1620s he joins up with Gebel and the two go on a quest that recovers the Red Sword of Tolat, heals Artmal son of the Blue Moon, and grants them his tidal magic. Then Gabaryanga returns to Fonrit and begin the rebellion with the liberation of the city of Tarahorn. Pamaltela is notably dragon-free, I think one explanation for that is that Pamalt killed them all. The biggest monsters there are Chaos creatures like hydras. In Pamaltela they don't normally see man-sized Chaos manifestation like broo, ogres, man-scorpions etc. Instead, when Chaos creatures emerge they're single enormous monsters rather than armies, on the scale of Cwim or the Bat. If they get desperate enough the slavers may resort to trying to exploit those, or bring new ones into the world.
  17. Because Garangordos was the champion-on-earth of Ompalam, the god of slavery, whose cult words are 'Life is Slavery.' Everyone and everything in Fonrit is enslaved; if not to another mortal, then they're enslaved to a god. That's the position of many janns, the kings or regional rulers of Fonrit. Sadly, their magic is quite effective; Fonrit is one the the most magically sophisticated regions in Glorantha, partly because the rulers there have more extensive access to intact God Learner writings and artifacts than just about anywhere else on the lozenge. If any raw fecundity is lost by forcing the dryads to serve rather than convincing them to help, the reliability with which the janns can compel their service would make up for it as far as the slavers are concerned. Garangordos created Fonritian society in the Second Age by heroquesting the Necklace of Pamalt myth, the Pamaltelan equivalent of I-Fought-We-Won and the Lightbringers Saga combined, but perverted the myth to make it a story of establishing the chains of hierarchical authority in a slavery-based society rather than the voluntary association of friends and family under an elected chief that the Necklace originally represented. There's some evidence that the God Learners actively assisted in this program, as a sort of massive field experiment in modifying a culture's most fundamental myths. The simple answer to 'why enslave the dryads' is just "We (the Gargandites) are enslaving everything else around us, why stop at the trees?" Per the Guide, what's expected to happen is the escaped leader of a failed slave revolt in the 1610s, a Veldang man named Gabaryanga, is supposed to meet up with the Teshnan hero-sailor Gebel who helped bring the Boat Planet back into the sky in 1624. The two of them go on a lozenge-spanning quest to find the lost Red Sword of Tolat, sacred to both the people of Melib in Teshnos and the Veldang of Pamaltela, plus the Bones of Artmal, the ancestor god of the Veldang peoples, which were scattered across the worlds after the storm god Baraku (usually recognized as Orlanth by Genertelans) drowned Artmal in the Sea of Fire at the southern edge of the world. Eventually Gebel and Gabaryanga are supposed to return to Pamaltela, having restored the paths into the Artmali gods world that Garangordos and his followers fought to close or destroy during the founding of Fonrit. According to the Guide, the revolution sees initial success, but starts to unravel as the Fonritians resort to worse and worse Chaos magic as their desperation deepens, then the rebels begin delving into the same sources of power to fight back, turning the Hero Wars in Fonrit into the 'Demon Wars'. Of course a lot of the 'Prophecies of the Hero Wars' in the Guide depict pretty bad endings for much of the world, which it's usually the duty of your player characters to change or otherwise overcome. The return to Pamaltela of the Red Sword, which was either the sword of the Artmali Emperors or its child (there's a parthenogenic lineage of magical red swords descended from the original Sword of Tolat, long story), would be the main signal to the Pamaltelan jungle realms that the time for vengeance has come. Assuming its bearer could prove to the elves that they are indeed a new Artmali Emperor, the first since the Great Darkness.
  18. In My Glorantha the Veldang of northern Pamaltela had a similar relationship with their neighboring aldryami as has been achieved in Elamle. The Veldang lived on the coasts and the edges of the jungle, trading their produce for forest goods from the elves, steadfastly avoiding the ruins of the Artmali and Vadeli cities the elf jungles covered over after the Dawn. When Garangordos came to the land with his Glorious Ones and set to conquering the post-urban, pacifist Veldang, their elf neighbors interceded on their behalf. The first Veldang slave-soldiers of Garangordos were forced to fight the aldryami defenders of their still free kin. The aldryami burned in the fires of the Chained Sun of the Gargandites, but Garangordos had a worse fate in mind for the dryads and their shanassee trees. These trees still stand at the hearts of the oldest Fonritian cities, with their trunks wrapped in ceremonial iron chains. They and their dryads are the property of the cities' janns, their magic used to augment the fecundity of each city's agriculture. The power of the dryads makes the gardens of the janns some of the most magnificent in the world outside of free elf forests, but their use and enjoyment is of course confined to the slaver lords and their favorites. The other elf forests of Pamaltela are well aware of the fate of the Fonritian dryads. Though the different jungles of Pamaltela are as competitive as Aldryan forest-kingdoms anywhere else on Glorantha, one force that can unite them is their hatred for the Fonritian slavers. This has helped motivate their role in the Season Wars of Umathela, and may lead them to support the Veldang Revolution quite forcefully during the Hero Wars.
  19. reading it, you can still see the seams where this algorithm has sutured different posts together, like the bit where it starts talking about the Red Emperor defeating the followers of Arkat like one of those old movie ransom notes with the letters cut from different magazines
  20. I think it marks the death of the 'innocence' of Chaos, if that makes sense Kajabor is closer to the original form of Chaos, the force that returns to the void all the stuff the Chaosium vomits into reality. Wakboth seems to be that same force corrupted by interaction with the world. Kajabor destroys without remorse or passion, just by being; Wakboth does things, horrible things, and he enjoys his business. Wakboth killing Kajabor is a way for him to try to destroy the way back to that older, less sadistic version of Chaos, and make his version the only one. Kajabor + Arachne Solara creating Time keeps Kajabor's form active in post-Gods War Glorantha, but it seems to me that Wakboth's form is the dominant one among actively Chaotic powers and beings within Time. Not even Chaos can truly go home again, outside maybe the gullet of a true dragon, because Wakboth burned it down out of greed and spite.
  21. In my group we usually play that an Ernaldan can chill a BG out of berserker, based on a line describing Ernalda doing just that from either Heortling Mythology or Esrolia: Land of 10k Goddesses.
  22. When my group played the Smoking Ruins adventure we managed to retrieve the mirror, but were defeated and driven from the ruins by Vamargic when we tried to confront him on our first visit. Rather than let that lie, we spent the rest of the in-game year traveling around southern Dragon Pass recruiting a Unity Army, doing a seasons long this-world heroquest of Only Old One, Heort et. al. gathering the last army of the living to fight Wakboth's Chaos horde. The coalition army we brought to the Smoking Ruins in Storm 1626 was composed of Colymar Orlanthi, Old Tarsh warrior women, Shadow Plateau dark trolls, the Lost Valley trollkin, Beast Valley beastfolk, and Clearwine aldryami. Vamargic mustered all his enslaved spirits and animated skeletons, and called in Tusk Rider allies too. Mounted Grazer warriors from the Four Gifts tribe arrived to help us without being asked, claiming that 'their ancestors told them to come help us fight.' The dragonewts did not send warriors, but a dream dragon did help supply the means to break the curses laid on the ruins. We won the battle, Vamargic and the trapped troll spirits were freed to enter the Underworld, and the peoples who'd come together to form the Unity Army each left behind some of their own to settle the place, instantly creating an extremely heterogenous new community with humans, trolls, elves, satyrs etc. all living side by side. The settlement we founded was not a direct continuation of Korolstead or the Koroltes Tribe, though the spirit of old Korol Kanderos did give us his blessing. In structure it was a lot more like a First Age Esrolian city-state, ruled by a city ring dominated by a husband-protector king in charge of security and an earth priestess in charge of most property. Our first Sacred Time community heroquest was The Wooing of Esrola, and successfully completing it magically prepared the valley floor for new agriculture and restored much of the physical ruins with new construction in obsidian. More and more self-consciously we were building the settlement into a little piece of Silver Age Esrolia, somehow revived in Third Age Dragon Pass. The first big diplomatic question of the first year after the founding was the new city's position versus the Grazelands. We resolved the issue through our king marrying one of the daughters of the neighboring Four Gifts tribe's chief, in a ceremony presided over by the Feathered Horse Queen herself at the Korolstead earth temple. The new city became an ally rather than a subject or tributary of the Grazelanders. To prove our worth as allies we went north with the FHQ's armies that summer to raid Tarsh. When the game ended in Fire 1628 our city was growing steadily with Sartarite and Esrolian immigrants, and seemed poised to become a major economic center at the juncture of multiple revived trade routes. We ended up playing a pivotal role in a version of the Battle of Heroes in the climax of the campaign, which ended with Fazzur becoming King of Tarsh while offering our king the Shadow Tribute, renewing the mythic pacts between the Heortlings and the Only Old one.
  23. I started this thread when I was in your player's position, you might find it useful. I can't recommend Esrolia: Land of 10,000 Goddesses more highly, either. The material on Kimantor and the Unity Battle ended up being a tremendous influence on how I play and run Argan Argar initiates and influences.
  24. Yeah, Ompalam is a Lord of Terror, slavery is a Chaotic act. Just like rape and murder are in Glorantha. That's not a Dumbest Theory, it's just what's in the Guide. If you want to run him otherwise, well, YGMV and MGF and all that. But you're working from a pretty radically different set of assumptions than the source material we're all riffing from.
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