dumuzid

The answer to the first part is an unanswered question that depends entirely on the degree of connection between Archidomedes the Undying and that unnamed imperial governor, a point I've consulted the tribe on before to no decisive result. At least one God Learner may have been in charge in Kareeshtu during every subsequent historical period other than potentially the Vadeli Imperium. The second part does not necessarily follow the first for a society with the magical sophistication to keep a Vadeli slave population, either. It's already pretty well established in the Guide and other sources that there was considerable religious synthesis between Jrusteli Malkionism and Fonritian Ompalam worship, to the extent that much of Fonrit came to view Ompalam and the Invisible God as synonymous and still does. In that context one of the first projects I'd expect, say, the post-imperial janns of Afadjann to pursue when they had the leisure, given what Jeff has written, is commissioning their own synthetic Abiding Book through the pens and surviving documents of their newly captive Jrusteli slaves, like a sort of evil Septuagint. Specifically, a new version of the Abiding Book that incorporates what might be called the Revelation of Ompalam.

At least one God Learner, the unnamed imperial governor of Kareeshtu in Fonrit, revolted from the empire before it fully collapsed. How well did such reconstruction efforts go there?

Archidomedes, the tyrant of Golden Kareeshtu, probably has a copy or two he could spare for the right price.

Even installations like this can be quite valuable to the enterprising adventurer. When my players raided the capital of Vadeli Oabil as part of the heroquest Desero's Horde they ransacked the mansions of the Blue Vadeli, broke open the mosaics and sculptures containing bound gods and spirits, and gained great boons for freeing them. Every enemy god and spirit Belintar imprisoned in the structure of his capital could become a new friend to the Wolf Pirates, or at least might provide a fine Otherworld ransom for their freedom.

I have a question about the Telmori that's been bugging me for the last week or two. Per the blurb on p. 397 of the Guide to Glorantha, 'Hsunchen Peoples of Ralios,' the Telmori people are divided into two broad categories: those who were cursed to undergo uncontrolled transformations on Wildday by Talor the Laughing Warrior (the 'Cursed'), and those who weren't ('the Pure Ones'). The same section of text says that while the majority of Dorastan and Sartarite Telmori are Cursed, the majority of Telmori in Telmoria are Pure. It's that last bit of demographic information that raises my question. I understand why the Dorastan and Sartarite Telmori are mostly Cursed, they were on the front lines of the Gbaji Wars. It's sensible for them to have been hit hard by Talor's curse. Telmoria though, in northern Ralios, is sandwiched between two major fronts of the Gbaji Wars: Ralios, where the City of Wolves once stood, and Fronela. Per p. 129 of the Guide, the Telmori of Fronela were driven from that land by Talor the Laughing Warrior personally--and Fronela is just on the other side of the White Teeth Mountains from Fronela. Geographically, I'd expect the bulk of the refugee Telmori packs from both those war zones to make their way to Telmoria, and given the circumstances that made them flee in the first place I'd expect most of those refugees to be Cursed. How, then, is there a Pure majority in Telmoria? I can think of some answers, but they're only theories and extrapolations. Perhaps the fleeing Telmori suffered terrible casualties, leaving them vastly outnumbered by Telmori who stayed in the old homeland and never participated directly in the Gbaji Wars. Maybe the peculiar circumstances of Talor's victory in Fronela (dying, then returning through Harmast Barefoot's 2nd Lighbringers Quest) included an element of clemency towards the Telmori packs who fled to Telmoria that relieved them of the Curse, which was not extended to the packs that stuck it out with the Bright Empire in Dorastor and Dragon Pass. That's just speculation on my part though. I am only left further puzzled by the brief write-up of Telmoria on p. 393 of the guide, which begins: "The forested homeland of the Telmori, a Hsunchen wolf-people who were cursed ten centuries ago by Talor the Laughing Warrior. Since then, they all turn into wolves every seven days." No mention of a Pure/Cursed dichotomy at all. Does anyone have a definite idea of why there are so many more Pure than Cursed Telmori in Telmoria? Does the idea of a division between Pure and Cursed even obtain in the current, 'official' understanding of the setting?

It's not something a campaign's villain would use on their own, but one option for a broo heroquest is the Cleansed One story: He was a broo who became aware of the horror inherent to the broo condition, and sought to drown himself in the Zola Fel river to end his existence. Rather than drown him, Zola Fel gave the broo the ability to walk on the riverbed and breath water. The broo followed the river to the sea, and somewhere out in the deeps he was purged of his Chaos taint by the powers of Water. He is now a demigod of the Zola Fel, and incarnates the river's power to oppose Chaos. If your heroes can help bring about an existential crisis in this broo villain, the Cleansed One offers them the potential for healing and redemption.

That does give a broo shaman the potential to contact ancestors from before the Turning, when they were only wild Fertility people rather than a parasitic Chaos species. assuming those pre-chaotic ancestors didn't drown themselves in oblivion out of shame long, long ago

Here's a little yuletime gift of homemade Gloranthan synthesis, another major secret from my version of Fronela: The Nature of the Kingdom of War The arrival of the Kingdom is the unintended result of three overlapping magical projects during the Syndics’ Ban: the Loskalmi effort to transform their land into the Kingdom of Logic by (among other methods) siphoning and expelling unwelcome spiritual influence; the joint project of the Arrolian Properties to free themselves from the Ban through the Lunar Way; and the effort of the Black Forest trolls to escape the Ban by traveling alive to the Underworld. All three succeeded. The interaction of these three great magical workings created a void at the heart of the Ban, a vacuum where the Black Forest Trolls’ stronghold once lay. Everything the Loskalmi separated themselves from rushed to fill the void, and those energies flowed up to the Red Moon and down to the Underworld through channels created by the labors of the other two parties. This combination of powers filtered into the Lunar Hells, where it opened a tiny crack in the realm of torment containing Sheng Seleris and his greatest followers. Though Sheng himself was far too vast and well-guarded a presence to slip free through that opening, it was enough to permit a few escapees: notably Lord Death On A Horse, a great chief of the Pentan Storm-worshipers, and his first wife Ezdene, arch priestess of the Seleran Empire’s war gods and daughter of Sheng Seleris. As the pair climbed the layers of hell, following thickening threads of mingled power, they liberated other similarly damned, cruel souls from their torments, and it was this rush of half-demons that first emerged upon an open, grassy plain in what was once the heart of the Black Forest. Lord Death, originally KorgaTuShen, was one of the first converts to the new doctrine brought among the Pentan tribes by Sheng Seleris: the great secret, “All Life is Slavery.” In seeking to reconcile this secret with the teachings of the Storm gods, Lord Death quested to the outer edges of existence and witnessed many of the same truths that exalted and tormented his master. In this fashion he gained direct experience of the Old East Wind of the Pentans, called Vadrus among Theyalans, and learned that the god he sought was not truly dead. According to the Revelation of KorgaTuShen, when the Old East Wind sought to gain mastery over Chaos he was not destroyed but brought into communion with the Supreme God, Jolaty, the personal god of Sheng Seleris. The East Wind made reverence and submission to Jolaty, and forfeited his ancient bellow to become the Silent Wind, the Overlord Wind that bows the minds of men and brings gods and nations low in suppliance. Armed with this revelation, Lord Death overmastered the chief priests of each of the Four Winds, gaining command of all their powers beneath the banner of the Silent Wind. His greatest deed in the journey out of Hell was a raid on the Pastures of Bijiif, during which he used Jolaty’s magic to enslave a small herd of the mythical Black Horses as mounts for his elite followers. Ezdene is a High Priestess of Jolaty, and her interactions with other cults are structured through Jolaty Understanding. She knows all gods to be the slaves of Jolaty, and she worships them through the glory of their submission to Him. Within the Kingdom of War the Jolaty cult is the ruling faith, administered by Ezdene and her disciples; Jolaty’s Secret is the guiding principle of the Kingdom, as it was of Sheng’s Empire. She believes their ultimate victory will come when even the Loskalmi have no choice but to admit that their Invisible God is Jolaty and they are His slaves. Ezdene was able to call up the Staff of Arinsor through the blood sacrifice of most of the captives taken in the burning of Finho, and now wields that artifact in her husband’s and Jolaty’s service.

The personal god of Sheng Seleris, Jolaty, and the ruling god of Fonrit, Ompalam the Chaos god of slavery, are the same thing.

May your end-of-year heroquests be full of Crits and Specials, not Fumbles and may Malia stay far away

there's room for multiples, he's a randy guy and she's infinitely fecund. i'm sure the caladralanders have all sorts of interesting stories about how Veskarthan fathered their local flora

i've always thought potatoes as a child of aldrya and lodril, and a staple crop of lodrilli peasants

At my table the 'canon' is that when Argrath led the Praxians into Dragon Pass in 1627 he found the Sartar brazier already lit--by Queen Leika of the Colymar, who had was freshly acclaimed Prince of Sartar. Argrath wrestled with himself, consulted his advisers, and in the end consented to a marriage alliance with Leika, making him the Prince-consort (or Princess) of Sartar.

Fair enough. Who's the Nameless Man?

Since it's unpublished, can you share anything further about it?

any shrines to Arkat Kingtroll within the Palace of Black Glass were destroyed with it, but there would be more in the caverns beneath the Shadow Plateau. in 1600 the Darkness power in Esrolia is still very much subordinated to Belintar's system, and while I doubt the Black Arkat suffered the same level of circumscription as the Argan Argar/Ezkankekko complex after Belintar's conquest, among trolls Arkat is a figure tied intrinsically to troll power and sovereignty on the surface--not the sort of influence Belintar ever wanted to let run too freely, even when the Tournament of Luck and Death reincarnated him in a troll body.

Any game set in C/Karse during or after the mid-1620s could make make plenty of hay out of the Western refugees fleeing the conquests of King Guilmarn, for instance.

Is the lunar cycle's effect 'capped' at Half Moon within the Glowline, or does the power still peak at Full Moon?

Reviving this thread to ask a quick question: where does this given name for Lord Death, Selkorze, come from?

For the last few days I've been working out some definite answers to the big unanswered questions and ambiguities of Fronela, as pertains to the Red Sword quest. Many thanks to the various members of the tribe here who've indulged my questions about these dusty corners of Glorantha, without whom I would've had a much harder time working out this synthesis. The following constitutes a Major Secret of the region in the Glorantha of my campaign: Varganthar the Unconquerable, the Blue Knight, and Talor the Laughing Warrior Varganthar was the leader of a Zaranistangi warband that journeyed northwest from Melib in the First Age to investigate what became of the God Time colony founded by Piku, the father of the Third Eye Blue people. They found its ruins in Tastolar and the scattered Third Eye Blue and their Mostali renegade comrades living as mendicant smiths among the Eleven Beasts Alliance of the 400s ST. The Eleven Beasts were much humbled by then, defeated by the Second Council in 300, further weakened by the Brithini enslaving the gods of the Tawari people in the Bull Gate of Valsburg. Varganthar learned of the joint campaigns of Akem and Nida to destroy the Third Eye Blue and the dissident Mostali who took refuge with them; of the wars that pushed Malkioni civilization down the Janube river and the Ozur coasts; of hsunchen clans stripped of their spirits and reduced to slavery as ‘dronar’ beneath the Brithini. In honor of the refuge the Eleven Beasts gave his Third Eye Blue kin after the destruction of their homeland, Varganthar and his Zaranistangi swore alliance with the hsunchen against Akem and Nida. His followers raised the Blue Palace over the great fragment of the Blue Moon at Croesium as a southern locus for the long war to come. For a time Varganthar indeed seemed unconquerable. His Zaranistangi could appear wherever they cared to at will, coordinating the Eleven Beasts as never before and striking without warning at what the enemy considered secure targets. The Akemite settlements along the Janube were razed, their captured herds and hsunchen slaves freed. The hsunchen shamans named their Zaranistangi allies and their loper steeds the Twelfth Beast, sent by Hykim and Mikyh as the liberators of Frona’s children. The tide turned again with the advent of Talor the Laughing Warrior, who rallied the Malkioni to throw back the Eleven Beasts at the Siege of Valsburg, ensuring the continued imprisonment of the Tawari gods within the Bull Gate. As the struggle entered a new, desperate phase for the Fronelan Hykimi, more and more of the hsunchen looked from Varganthar to the Dorastan mystic Arinsor and his missionary Riddlers from the Empire of Light for the power to fight on. With the aid of great and terrible sacrifices Arinsor raised the Gate of Banir at what is now Timms; from there and Dilis Swamp emerged broos, scorpion men and far fouler things to harry the Akemites and their dwarf allies. Varganthar and Talor opposed each other in three battles; Talor slew him at last in the third, but was in turn laid low by the sorcery of Arinsor. When Harmast Barefoot undertook his Second Lightbringers Quest to bring the New Light of Talor reborn into the world, he served as the psychopomp that guided Talor’s shade to reconcile with Varganthar’s in Hell. When Harmast and Talor emerged from the Underworld at Hrelar Amali they bore the three Weapons of Talor, gifts from the gods of death and vengeance to bring a just end to the torments of Fronela: the Reckoner Cross, the Gorgon Smile, and the Howl Sting, which Talor distributed among his closest companions. In Talor’s absence the victorious Akemites had turned to brutal, uncompromising suppression of the defeated Fronelan hsunchen, while Arinsor abandoned the field to join the defense of Dorastor itself against the troll hosts of Arkat and Ezkankekko. Talor honored his accord with Varganthar by bringing the persecutions to an end, establishing recognized borders between the settled lands and the hsunchen nomads that even Nida respected, and endured until the Jrusteli Empire overthrew the first Kingdom of Loskalm. He and the Weapon-bearers hunted down the last of Arinsor’s monsters and set a watchful guard of warriors and spirits about the still-open Gate of Banir. With the Fronelan front of the Gbaji Wars concluded, Talor and Harmast led a coalition of the Fronelan peoples south to Dorastor for the final battles. In that apocalyptic struggle Talor slew Arinsor and seized his Staff of Bone, with which he and Harmast were able to seal the Gate of Banir at last. The pact between Talor and Varganthar in Hell grew into the founding magic of the new Kingdom of Loskalm, but the diligent work of the God Learners of later Frontem obliterated full knowledge of the deed outside of hsunchen oral history and the Talor apocrypha gathered by King Siglat much, much later. In modern Loskalm only High Watcher Gaiseron, Meriatan, and King Gundreken know the whole story; among Fronela’s hsunchen peoples, learning these secrets is an important element of the initiation trials into full shamanhood. The Elf King of Courtwood, the Brithini of Sog City, and most of the current ruling council of Nida all experienced these events personally, and their recollections vary according to their biases.

In the time since I last updated this thread there's been some changes in the player cast and a pretty significant stretch of ground is covered. The adventure has traveled west to Seshnela, found the second piece of Artmal (the hips), and the group sails into Fronela next week. I have some ideas to work out here, but for now I just want to share one of my favorite products of the game: This was made by the player of Arana Twice-Born, pixel art of all the player characters and several of the important NPCs. From left to right the groups are: former player characters; current player characters; important NPCs. I've mentioned in other threads that my adventurer group is extremely heterogenous, and I hope this gets the point across. The former player characters were: Philomena, an SIZ 3 Ernalda-worshiping assistant shaman duck; Talak Surfaceseeker, a Pavis Rock Caste clay mostali; and Sirma Rocksworn, a Yelmalio-worshiping Sable Rider. Talak and Sirma got married under the rites whereby Flintnail married a Daughter of Pavis towards the end of 1626, hence the unconventional deed names. The current player characters are: Zakrag Spinebiter, an Esrolian Dark Troll Gorakiki shaman whose fetch is growing into a swarm of intertwined insect spirits; Arana Twice-born of House Delaeos, Helering dancer and cousin to Queen Samastina, easily the most high-born of the player characters; Kakti Queenshield, who worships Yelmalio and Aldrya and is the custodian of one of the group's greatest treasures, a living blue moonflower bush; and Potov Kannason, a Lunar Tarshite philosopher who could've been a prodigy at the palace school turned against the empire after his father was sacrificed to the Crimson Bat. All but Zakrag spent 1626 serving Argrath Whitebull in the Eaglebrown Warlocks; Zakrag came to the quest for Artmal and the Red Sword from Queen Samastina's court. The selected non-player characters are: Sir Ogelwo, a Pithdaran man-of-all who was attached to their mission in Seshnela by Count Jahiz of Oradaros as a sort of cultural attache, to help keep them from making more trouble than intended on their trip up the Tanier River; Ulanor of House Delaeos, Arana's brother and bodyguard, worshiper of Orlanth Thunderous; Tara Bree, former Imperial Blue Moon Assassin and White Moon convert, Potov's childhood friend, from the excellent Jonstown adventure Blue Moon, White Moon (@John Wick); Gebel of Teshnos, captain of the group's Haragalan tallship, the Starfarer (that's Pujaleg tattooing covering his body); and finally Gabaryanga, the Veldang slave revolt leader, who has now taken the quest to restore Artmal further than any other Veldang since the Dawn. Next session the Starfarer sets sail from Rhis on the Castle Coast towards Southpoint, Loskalm. They have a message to deliver to Gaiseron, from the Talar of Arolanit: "the Nameless Man is abroad, the Staff of Arinsor is in mortal hands, and the Wolf's snout turns towards Sog's Gate. It is time for the Weapons of Talor to reunite." I'm sure it means only good things for their continuing journey, towards the Blue Moon Plateau...

Well I stand corrected.

It is though. The Gustbran cult provides the exception. e: Pegasus Plateau p. 56, Viborna the Gustbran initiate knows the rune magic Enchant (bronze).

Not necessarily so: the smith-priests of Gustbran can enchant bronze, and I would be very surprised if the Mostali and Third Eye Blue cannot manage the same.

IMG the Pelaskans have a small but active cult of the Blue Moon founded around a myth of Annila saving them from drowning in nothingness in the Greater Darkness.