dumuzid

Pleased to say that my group ran my homemade Wooing of Esrola heroquest this evening, as their community's main quest for Sacred Time of 1626-1627. The participants were my Argan Argar warrior, who is also priest for their community's wyter; the wyter himself; the community's Ernalda priestess; the community's trollkin chief, who became Argan Argar's Black Badge in the Gods Realm; the community's chief Maran Gor initiate; the community's chief Zong hunter, a Shadow Plateau dark troll like my character; and the community's chief green elf who became Flamal in the Gods Realm. It was a deliberately orthodox Other World run of the quest detailed here, in RQ:G, following each of the six stations with the intention of completing them in accordance with the myth. It was our first heroquest since the founding of the community, and we expected some turbulence; we didn't want to make it any more difficult or complicated than the myth already required. The main intervening force in the quest was deliberate interference by Lunar heroquesters. This was an expected threat after the failures of the 1625-1626 rites in Dragon Pass, when Kallyr Starbrow tried and failed to perform the Short Lightbringer's Quest under Lunar interference. Our group facilitated the insertion of several Arkati agents from the House of Black Arkat into the Gods Realm ahead of the Sacred Time rites to ensure our own counter-interference. We definitely encountered one Lunar quester journeying between stations 1 and 2 of the myth, when we encountered Arkat Kingtroll (one of the Arkati) engaged with a silver-masked Yanafal Tarnils. We drove Yanafal into a fissure opened by Maran Gor, and Arkat accompanied us on the rest of the journey, increasing our group to seven. We probably encountered another Lunar quester, or at least a relic of Lunar interference, at station 2: Esrola could not come out to meet us when we arrived in Esrolia, because Lodril had her under guard in their estate, commanded by a Star Captain. Instead of begging Argan Argar's mercy outside her home, Esrola complained to Ernalda (who, as Esrola's sister, was allowed into her confinement) of being kept inside by Lodril to protect her from her other banes, the water dragon and hail demons. Despite the added defense around Esrola the rest of the quest went according to plan. The hail demons were defeated and brought to terms, the dragon was put in a neck-lock of earth and forced to help flood Lodril out of his deep vaults in exchange for its freedom. Argan Argar sent Zong under a veil of shadow to steal Lodril's spear before they confronted him. Argan Argan condemned Lodril to servitude as punishment for confining Esrola against her will, and had him raise the Shadow Plateau and build Esrola's Throne and the Palace of Black Glass. My character closed the final station of the myth, the celebration in the Palace, with a hymn to Xentha, the Night, to bless those gathered in the Palace "and all those under Xentha's sky battling Chaos in this age," as a deliberate measure to boost the parallel quest of the Colymar tribe--while we were performing Wooing of Esrola, Leika Black-Spear was leading her people in Forming of the Storm Tribe, and we'd arranged to support each other back in Storm Season. The effects of the quest were pretty substantial. My character undertook the quest to empower the community's construction efforts, since it's a new community being built over ruins. The quest resulted in a major section of the ruins being magically, instantly rebuilt, more or less according to its original plan but rendered in obsidian. Canals my character pledged to the community's aldryami, and brand new farmsteads promised to its first Sartarite weaponthanes, were also instantly completed and rendered magically fertile. The Ernalda priestess primarily wanted POW gain from all this, and I think she jumped by 5 between the quest itself and her Sacred Time obligations. The community's wyter, which currently takes the form of a huge spider with serpent legs, gained INT and CHA as it remembered more of itself, and established that it's been present at the community's current site since its mythical first founding in the Storm Age. We don't know the exact outcome, but our contributions helped Leika achieve a Special Success despite Lunar meddling on the climactic effort of her Forming of the Storm Tribe attempt. Presumably we'll learn more about that in the next season. The wyter's participation in the quest was crucial. He laid Bless Champion on the whole departing heroquester band, which facilitated fun interactions like my Argan Argari and the Ernalda priestess benefiting from Charisma and Glamour throughout the quest, and managing predictably impressive results when they needed to cajole, persuade or intimidate. Contributions from the community before we entered the Gods Realm allowed the wyter to empower the questers yet still enter the quest fully charged. I'm looking forward to taking him on subsequent quests to power him up more deliberately.

I think this was a case of Norinel 'marrying up' in the sense you're talking about. Norinel's now worshiped as Mother of the City at Nochet, but the myth that describes this marriage describes her at the time as what we'd recognize as the Queen of Nochet--more the face and voice of the city than its commander at first, the daughter/mother in the maiden-mother-crone progression, directed by her grandmothers to the 'one-night marriage' with Kimantor in order to give her children and secure new protectors for post-Vingkotling Esrolia. She's apotheosized now, but at the time she was a mortal heroine in a position analogous to Queen Samastina's in the late Third Age. Her mothers and grandmothers were women of Nochet--heroines of the Darkness, sure, but not demigods as such.

In addition to the joke David Scott just described, Argan Argar devised the written form of Darktongue, the troll language, and his cult guides troll caravans across the surface world. Argan Argar probably invented trollish maps, carved and gnawed onto stone and metal.

That's a fair point, but the naming was deliberate; in-character, this is a retelling of the Esrolian version of the myth for a primarily Sartarite and Tarshite audience. e: Given the themes and forces involved, there's an element of 'Argan Argar & co. symbolically castrating/domesticating each of Esrola's former lovers' to each of the bane stories. Read the right way, this is also a story about how Ernalda saw the effectiveness of the Dark Tribe during Orlanth's courtship, and turned one of her former suitors (Argan Argar) into the means of avenging Esrola on her disloyal lovers and giving her a match capable of stabilizing Kethaela.

In the next weekend or so I expect to have an opportunity to run a heroquest of the Wooing of Esrola. It's a relatively widely-referenced myth, and includes several pretty significant mythic events, but I can't find a more detailed version than the version from the Guide to Glorantha, p. 234: It's interesting, but pretty barebones. So I've gone and written a more detailed outline, at least enough to structure a full heroquest around. Love to hear some feedback, this may see use few days:

Just bought the booklet, really enjoyed it, would love to see an expansion on the spirit cult! Geiron's Greater Darkness myth is very evocative too, leads lots of other potential mythic pathways, great stuff.

I had a significant error in my post there, the scorpion god's name is Krolar; Kropa is the centipede goddess, Krolar's mother. The Krolar story comes from The Unspoken Word #04: The Trolls of Glorantha, p. 40.

I figured this was implicit in the way Darkwalk makes the user soundless. If something doesn't give off sound, it can't return an echo in Darksense. To perceive something under Darkwalk a troll would have to try to perceive the minute absences of return on other substances caused by their contact with the dark-walker: the places where the 'sandals' touch the earth and mute all sound, to use the myth.

The troll god of natural scorpions is Krolar. Krolar was born in the Storm Age; he and his divine twin/mate, the first female scorpion, awoke in the ashes of Hell after the dead Sun took up residence and drove the trolls out. The divine scorpions battled the chaos monster Bagog, which ate the female scorpion and took on some of its qualities. Krolar ventured onto the surface alone and eventually befriended Humakt, who taught the scorpion to wield Death with his tail. Krolar hunted down Bagog and slew the Chaos god in the Darkness with his new powers, but was wounded in the process--which has made his children since then smaller and weaker than his first spawn. Aranea the spider goddess probably has venom-magic too. I wonder what the Earth myth explaining the difference between venomous and constrictor snakes is.

You'd almost certainly see them popping up in Fonrit in some numbers should heroquesters manage to heal him and kick off the great revolt.

the first risk for a human entering a troll grog shop is how many of the liquors on offer will simply kill a human drinker. the second risk is that the trolls will give the human things they can safely drink, but trick them into drinking themselves to death, as a way of marinating 'from the inside out'

I can't find any good pictures online, but the spikes atop many Charleston historic houses' perimeter walls point inward, being intended solely to deter escape by slaves inside.

Also, and maybe it's just because I'm a historian from the American Southeast, but I can't help but draw comparisons between Fonritian society in the Antebellum South. So, for a perhaps unexpected influence on Fonritian architecture, might I suggest historic Charleston, South Carolina? The climate's just about right for Afadjann, and boy howdy did those slavers effectively substitute Ompalam for the Invisible God in their religious observances. A street of craft workshops, stone surfaced with plaster and painted in the cult colors of the Glorious One who presides over each trade. All stand in the shadow of a spired temple to Tenoarpesas the Golden One, who reclaimed the power of slavery. Urban mansions of the masirin, shielded from prying eyes by foliage, outer walls, and more fearsome unseen defenses. The iron spikes that encrust their perimeters were originally Vadeli architectural flourishes, and serve as the physical matrices binding each masirin household's protective demons and warding spells. Any slave who passes their influence without the leave of their master or other protection is certain to die a horrible death meant to demonstrate the futility of attempted escape to others. Viewed from the sea, temple spires stud the skyline of the metropolis Garguna, while the palace-estates of the masirin can spread over multiple city blocks. The city's extensive Vadeli Quarter (from which comes its ever-burning lamps and other marvels) helps make it one of the great markets of the world.

Those are structural. They're long beams and posts integrated into the mudbrick construction to help bear and transfer loads. Similar construction methods used by the Pueblo people of southwestern North America don't use them as frequently, but you can see some jutting from the walls of buildings in this picture, where they're used to support the weight of roofs and second-story floors: The wooden beams are especially important for helping mud-brick structures survive earthquakes. In addition to those excellent Malian examples above, I'd suggest cross-referencing with the (sadly less intact) primarily stone architecture of Great Zimbabwe: (Side View) (Aerial)

I'm just having fun, but given their other associations it'd be interesting to see some ways to source magic from these Pelorian Underworld entities show up as associated spirits of Shargash, Yara Aranis etc. With the choice to avoid particularly parochial cults I assume a lot of the Esrolian goddesses and gods will have to wait for a Holy Country book or something similar, but did Dormal make the cut? I seem to recall him having temples as far afield as Fonrit.

Suppose we'll just have to wait for the Lunar Empire expansion to see what those souls on adamant pegs can do.

Well fair enough, he's been classed with Boztakang and Vaneekara as ancestor gods with few non-uz followers before. Makes uz nocturnal pirates that much less expected on the high seas, I suppose.

What about Jeset, the Ferrytroll of the Underworld?

Well sign me up for whenever that happens. Years ago I played an Elmal-worshiper in a FATE: Glorantha campaign who made it his Argrath-style life's quest to destroy Ompalam in the Hero Wars, and succeeded. I'd love to give it another shot in RQ:G.

Heat without light might not do anything for conventional sight, but I bet any warping of sound and echo caused by an area of sudden, severe temperature change around whatever's being heated would be pretty obvious to Darksense.

East of Wild Temple, South of Duck Point, square on the old trade road to Esrolia, lies Man Vill. It's not in the Guide, it's not on the Argan Argar Atlas, it's not in the Glorantha Sourcebook. I haven't read Smoking Ruin myself since I'm in an active campaign but my GM says they couldn't find a reference to it in there either. So what's up with Man Vill? What's going on there? There's probably something interesting to be said about the only human settlement of any significance on a direct line between Duck Point and the Shadow Plateau.

Well, there is one striking example of a Gloranthan pyramid: the Spike. But you're right, we even have both Mesopotamian-style ziggurats in the Ivory Plinth and certain Dara Happan structures, and Mesoamerican-style step pyramids in the Kingdom of Ignorance, but very few examples of smooth pyramids. If any Gloranthan societies were likely to build such structures I'd figure it'd be Malkioni ones, as physical representations of the Spike and the Law. I wonder if the Middle Sea Empire erected such pyramids, as statements and as geomantic foci, only to have them annihilated by the Luathans and the Closing. I'd go further, and suggest that the Vadeli might build pyramids too--but point down, as stone sailing or flying vessels built after the fashion of their mostali allies' stone ships. For the perversity of inverted Law and a representation of Law that moves. Such things have probably not been seen since the destruction of the Vadeli empires in the Darkness, but boy, when those suckers rise from Magasta's Pool we'll all know the Hero Wars are here.

My group ran into a bit of a snag in these matters because I was playing an Esrolian Argan Argar dark troll and Sora, well, Yelmalio commanded her to be prejudiced towards Darkness beings at some point. It was a fun little reversal in-game. My first in-character impulse, on the game starting, was to amble over to the Issaries presence in Clearwine and make my introductions since there was no obvious Argan Argar presence in town--thankfully my character noted the Yelmalio accoutrements at her place before making the attempt. As a result, Sora's become one of the minor villains of the campaign. She's the player-characters most consistent political opponent among the Colymar, and her Yelmalian geas ensures she'll remain such no matter how good a friend to the Colymar my troll proves himself to be. My troll has been pretty successful at representing his essentially mercantile clan to other parties in Dragon Pass, which has ended up dovetailing with this point: There's a potential, unrealized trade route here as you note, running from Duck Point across the Creak Stream River, Beast Valley, the Feyghost Wood and the Orolmarn Hills, finally passing the Smoking Ruin to reach Hiaa's Valley and Grazelander country. My Argan Argari managed friendly interactions with the beastfolk and traversed the path of the potential trade route a few times on different excursions from Clearwine. Events of the campaign in 1626 culminated in a Unity Battle against the evil in the Smoking Ruins that ended the place's several curses, opening it for settlement for the first time in centuries. My Argan Argari proved himself a good enough friend to the people of Beast Valley that they now permit his clan to run insect caravans across their territory headed for Sartar or the Grazelands--his mercantile family from the Blackwell north of the Shadow Plateau accounts for a greater and greater share of the north-south overland traffic between Dragon Pass and Kethaela, and now holds a monopoly on the new east-west route with the support of Duck Point. Sora acted to sabotage this budding relationship between the Shadow Plateau trolls and Colymar by hiring Tarshites at loose ends to attack the bug caravans, hurting people and destroying property but not killing anyone. We put a stop to that (a Zorak Zorani ate one of the bandits, the only casualty of the affair) and took her to court over it. The biggest selling point for bug caravans over human-style commercial transport is that they don't really need or use roads, which has allowed the new trade relations to take shape without any great infrastructure projects to back them up. Traveling relatively lightly over the land has helped to keep the beastfolk happy with the arrangement as well.

Well, consider who tends to be a slave in Fonrit. There's the Veldang of course, the blue-skinned descendants of the mythic Artmali Empire who the Glorious Ones conquered, and whose descendants make up the bulk of the enslaved population in Fonrit afaik. They've lost most of their tangible connections to that past, but I think it's safe to assume any successful large-scale revolt would involve Veldang heroquesting to rebuild those connections. According to the Hero Wars prophecies in the Guide, something like this unfolds in the 1620s: a Veldang slave and a Teshnite adventurer successfully complete a heroquest to heal Artmal and gain his Blue Moon tidal magic. That Veldang adventurer leads an initially successful revolt that liberates the core of a New Artmali Empire before the slavers manage to regroup sufficiently to start retaking territory with the full force of Afadjann's typically horrific magic. When things grow sufficiently desperate the New Artmali join forces with probably the only other independent Veldang power in Fonrit: the Chaos-worshiping assassin cult of the demigoddess sorceress Seseine Kallig. Per the prophecy, both the Artmali and their slaver opponents descend deeper and deeper into Chaos magic, until their conflict gains the name The Demon Wars. The role of heroic characters in that mess could be to thwart Seseine Kallig and bring the Artmali revolution alternatives to delving into the same Chaotic powers as their enemies. Then there's truly foreign slaves: captured Umathelans, Genertelans, East Islanders etc., first-generation outlander slaves. They'd bring their own traditions, suppressed by the Fonritian noose-magic but waiting to be unleashed by whatever event brings on the revolt in the first place. If some of these foreigners proved the efficacy of their tradition by defeating the slavers' own champions, as Harrek the Berserk did in Laskal (not that he was ever enslaved, to my knowledge), or otherwise benefiting the revolution, that could lead to substantial conversion among freed slaves. Give people the freedom to choose, then present them with a really attractive option, and they're likely to pick it. Then there's all the rest of Fonrit's slaves, the Doraddi- and Veldang-descended Torab people. As Metcalph says, they're not living under an imposed yoke exactly: Fonritian culture is their culture, even if it means that 7 out of 10 Fonritians lead brutally truncated lives as enslaved manual labor. Ompalam's chains are sunk deep, and it would be a tremendous undertaking in both Glorantha and the Gods Realm to break them. Now I don't know much about the Middle Sea Empire's conquest of Fonrit specifically, but from what I understand of MSE imperial methodology their main strategy in trying to spiritually liberate Fonrit would've been to demonstrate how Fonrit's slavery-theism was just a local variation on traditions they'd seen all over the world, how all theistic myth really derives from a singular monomyth, etc. Which results in things like Fonritians conflating Ompalam and the Invisible God. The Middle Sea Empire tried to liberate Fonrit through absorption and integration, and that's just not how systems like Fonrit's die. No. To free the Torab people from their own spiritual slavery, they're gonna need something new, something to counter old Garangordos's aphorism that "existence is slavery." They need people within their society to stare their system in the eye and say "This has got to stop," and then those people have to gather the spiritual steel and the physical bronze to bring that system to an end by whatever means necessary. They need their own John Brown. Which, honestly, sounds like a hell of a pitch for a campaign.

Can you expand on this? In another thread even, if it's not germane to this one.