Jape_Vicho

8 minutes ago, jajagappa said:

Kargzant = Lightfore = Yelmalio = "little sun"

Yu-Kargzant = Yelm = the Sun God (per Glorious ReAscent, it literally means "Shining Overhead")

If you work your way through the Glorious ReAscent of Yelm, you'll also find that the "Yu-" prefix generally seems to mean "God" or "of God" (combined in words such as Yuthubars, city of God, and Yuthuppa, ship of God).  

Yeah one of those sources I don't have is that one, and it also scares me stupid bc I'm sure it will be too big for my little brain. I still don't understand why would the Grazers worship Kargzant as Yelm but the Pentans do not and instead worship a weaker version of him, but I guess the answer lies in the Glorious ReAscent. 

4 hours ago, Richard S. said:

One thing you should keep in mind is that there's both Kargzant and Yu-Kargzant. Kargzant is the little sun worshipped in Pent, Yu-Kargzant is Yelm as worshipped by the Pure Horse People (the Yelm described in RQG core). YK is Kargzant after he became the emperor at the dawning, while just Kargzant is still lightfore.

After giving this think some thought and seeing that as you said the Yelm cult on the CC is extremely similar to the one the Grazers have, yeah it makes sense that Yu-Kargzant is called and described as Yelm. His cults have basically the same structure and both are worshipped as the Sun (Elmal is also worshipped as the sun but he is neither independent nor is his cult structured like those ((maybe it was for a time when all the solar cult unrest happened in sartar?? Sounds interesting idk)) so it makes sense that he is not called Yelm) even though their mythologies and philosophies differ greatly.

What I don't get is that distinction between Kargzant with or without Yu-. The Guide does not mention it, and the Pentans are also described as having Sun cult which is basically the same as the one of the Grazers and Dara Happans. Having consulted all sources I have it looks like Yu-Kargzant is just a different name of Kargzant, product of the centuries of isolation of the Grazers from the rest of Pentans, and his philosophy, mythology and magics are basically the same. After all, why would the Pentans have lost the cult of Kargzant as Emperor having been in a much more solar-oriented environment that the Grazers who have spent centuries surrounded by storm and beast worshippers? 

7 hours ago, Rodney Dangerduck said:

Well, you are mistaken.  At least how I understand Yanafal.

Yanafal was a Humakti who dies, self ressurects, yet, by the power of some Sedenyic mumbo jumbo, and in honorable ceremony / duel with Humakt, maintains his Honor and becomes a God.

Unlike ZZ, Yanafal is not a hated enemy of Humakt.

Strange, I remember reading here both that YT defeated Humakt bc he was distracted by other enemies or YT let some of his allies into the sacred duel ground and thus it became an unjust fight and also that Humakti hate YT's guts bc they see them as dishonorable heretics. Must have either read wrong or read something that was wrong.

Anyway this makes much more sense bc Humakt is still an important war god in the Empire and how was that going to be if his and YT's cultists had such a bad relation? I have always wondered that but if what you say it's true then it makes perfect sense. 

5 hours ago, davecake said:

Yelmalio proves that ZZ has lost his full power over Death by living, by refusing to be killed by one who isn’t just. 

Funnily Yelmalio and Humakt are said to share a "friendly" or "healthy" rivalry, and that interpretation of the Hill of Gold really fits that relationship, with Yelmalio fighting against his friendly rival's great and cruel rival, it's kinda wholesome, I like it a lot. 

34 minutes ago, Rodney Dangerduck said:

Interesting, I can buy it.  By that same logic, Yanafal proves that Humakt has lost his full power over Death.

Interesting, the lunars may very well say so, but I'm curious of how could they tell it. If I'm not mistaken, Yanafal Tarnils "wins" bc he does things Humakt would not (being dishonorable), there were plenty dishonorable war gods in Glorantha prior to him though. 

On 1/17/2021 at 10:13 AM, Joerg said:

Perhaps muddying the waters, but if Yelmalio is Lightfore, then what are his myths about the activities of Kargzant in the Sky that seem to be the body of Lightfore myths? Kargzant originates as the southeastern of the Eight Planetary Sons of Yelm in the Copper Ledgers, and becomes mobile in the sky upon Umath's invasion, just like Shargash. Unlike Antirius, Kargzant wanders around in the sky, possibly without any fixed track until late in the First Century ST when Kargzant faces a deity in the shape of a Hill Barbarian warrior in the sky and gets bound to the Sunpath. Yuthuppan star lore claims that Kargzant too spent some time away from the sky dome, though it is not known whether in Hell or whether roaming the remains of the Surface World.

What really baffles me of the fact that Kargzant is Lightfore, and therefore a version Yelmalio, is why his cult is called Yelm (and describes as being so) in RQG. I get not calling it Yelmalio as the cult itself is really different but not only he is different to Yelm in his nature (bc Kargzant is a part of him) but the nomad Kargzant cult is extremely different to the Dara Happan Yelm one, which is the "standard" or "prestige" cult for that god. I mean I understand it's a design choice but really messes with you if you try to understand Yelmic deep lore (which I'm far from understanding yet). 

10 hours ago, Eff said:

The perhaps cynical take here is that there are many initiates when the point is to emphasize how common magic is in Glorantha and how directly people experience the numinous in everyday life there, and there are few initiates when people start thinking about what a society where a substantial fraction of people over the age of sixteen could throw lightning would look like and whether that's consistent with the antiquity feel Glorantha aims for. So the overall answer I have is that there are just enough initiates for most people in central Genertela to have experienced Godtime, the Eternal Return, etc. without there being a society where random people on the street could summon up a gale from a light breeze if they wanted. 

Small-v vingans or capital-V Vingans? In the latter case, Vinga is now a warrior lodge cult of (what I firmly believe to be) stereotypical jocks who call people "dork" and punch them in the arm affectionately a lot, etc. etc.

In the former case, well, that gets into some thorny, troublesome territory, potentially a full labyrinth of pronouns and gender definitions and all that. So I'm not surprised that official Chaosium material hasn't given us many, if any, direct examples of vingan/nandan/helering/non-gendered human characters. But it's a "not surprised" with a rueful shake of the head.

I don't really get the difference you make between them. The pre-gen character Vasana for exemple is clearly stated to be member of Vinga Adventurous for exemple. What I draw from recent material is that females can be perfectly initiated into Orlanth Adventurous, and men in Ernalda, and the Vingan and Nandans are not just initiates of the non typical gender but a specialized order inside the cult, who are subjected to a certain set of rites, customs, and so on, and are much more "devoted" to the cults than your run of the mill sartarites.

It's very tricky and recent sources (at leat to my interpretation) show contradictions. Lets visit some of the recent adventures for RQ:RPiG sall we? (I will not make spoilers about the stories)

First, every single person who lives in Apple Lane (GM Screen Pack) is initiated to something and most are also lay members of other cult. There are other people who live in hamlets aroud the village who have no stats and thus we cannot know if they are initiated or not.

In Cattle Raid (GM Screen Pack) we are given a group of young herders. They are all on their teens or early 20s, and have all been initiated into Orlanth adventurous (yes, even the women! Shouldn't they be vingans? Idk). They seem to have been initiated not long ago, around 16, a couple of years later of their adulthood, which usually comes aroud 14.

By this facts, you might think that all sartarites start a series of adulthood rites depending on their prefered roles and cult, which start at 14 with clan-related adulthood ceremonies and end at their 20s when they are fully initiated (have 3 rune points by game terms, which seems to be the "basic" initiate status).

BUTT then you go and read the adventures on the Pegasus Plateau book, and everything gets turned aroud. When the typical NPCs of the Greyrock clan is described with a stat table, they are Barntar lay members! So a majority of the people of the clan are not actually initiated into anything, and this pattern repeats when some average praxians appear in Pairing Stones, they are lay members of Eiritha (at least one of them is clearly stated to be a man btw). But the locals of Renekot's Hope do seem to be always initiated OTOH, which is even weirder.

So are all sartarites initiated? Are they not? How many? In RQ:RPiG terms it's impossible to tell, as sources seem to contradict eachother. 

How does it work in MG? I make orlanthi society more stratified than it seems to be in canon. Carls are almost always initiated, while cottars and other lower status classes like stickpickers are mostly not initiated, this is bc for initiating you have to make sacrifices, you have to donate possessions to the temple, and to leave you family for some time in order to learn the secrects, and many cottar families simply can't afford this anytime. No one is going to literally stop them if they have the resources, and many poor carl families may find themselves in the same situation, but that which I have described earlier is the average situation, and the logical consequence of the societal norms of the heortlings . Slaves are not allowed to initiate to anything, as they are not part of the clan (I do not do the canon thrall thing where children of slaves are adopted, in MG a thrall can be freed if the owner family wishes so, and it's pretty common, but if they don't he and every children he or she is allowed to have is going to be a slave too).

I know that system does not equate to setting but we mostly want to know the setting to apply it to games and the fact that game sources seem to contradict does not help.

4 hours ago, Leingod said:

And in the context of the Great Winter, that's potentially where Valind finally makes himself useful (again, to the Heortling perspective), because Valind doesn't just give his followers powers to summon cold and snow, he gives them the power to survive or even fight off the powers of winter. They wouldn't exactly be making pockets of springtime or anything, but turning aside a blizzard or being able to go out and hunt or scavenge food while everyone else is shivering by the fire is still a lot. This makes them very helpful at this time, but (again, old material, might not be canon anymore) that also means the Lunars target them. Which leads to an interesting situation where the Valindi - who are traditionally consigned to the margins, if not living as actual outlaws - might suddenly both need to rely on a wider community to survive Lunar manhunts, and be treated with a lot more respect by people whose survival they helped ensure.

I love that idea, and we have to remember that the Great Winter's "winter" is not as in Valind's Ice Age, there are no glaciers or anything like that, but a more metaphorical winter, as it's a return of the Greater Darkness, an age that started when the chaotic forces defeated the Ice Tribe and shattered the Glacier, so Storm and Ice have a common enemy there. 

Valind would make an exellent cult for a bandit, in MG it's widespred between orlanthi bandits.

The Ouori walrus folk, a northern race of mermen, worship him too (the Guide pg. 105).

He is said to be worshipped through Fronela, partly propitiatorily, but also to summon his destroying powers (pg. 231). I imagine that by the northern Hsunchmen and by the Janubian and Nidan Orlanthi, though no temple to him is mentioned.

Also a people called Neechen live on the Glacier's edge and "fashion the ice into great monolyths towering towards the heavens", which sounds cool as fuck. They most definitely worship Valind and other ice deities, but sadly they are not mentioned further, so we don't really know anything about them.

From what the Guide says about Snodal's journey in the Glacier I would also say it's closer to a HeroPlane than to the middle world.

1 minute ago, metcalph said:

It could but who has access to enchant bronze in your glorantha?

I suppose that any Gustbran initiate. 

1 minute ago, jajagappa said:

Generally no.  You need the other enchanted Rune metals (e.g. silver, iron) to do the damage.  

By this you mean that enchanted bronze can't hurt the Telmori? Or that bronze can't be enchanted?

2 minutes ago, metcalph said:

What is this "enchanted bronze" that you speak of?  Who has it?

Can't bronze be enchanted like iron, copper, silver, etc.? 

4 minutes ago, metcalph said:

They are werewoilves whose opponents fight with mainly bronze weapons.

But enchanted bronze can hurt the Telmori right? 

I have always found surprising how the Wolfrunners manage to hold their ground that successfully and against so many enemies. 

First they arrive in the 1460s (probably from the woods south of Aggar? Or maybe Dorastor?) and defeat the Torkani, stealing their former land and forcing them to move close to the indigo mountains, that seems reasonable, it's a war mainly against a lone tribe, and one that had previously suffered another defeat, so they may have not recovered yet when the Telmori arrived. But then it seems that the Torkani, Malani, Culbrea, Maboder and Cisina, 5 tribes, form an alliance against them, yet the Telmori again win, holding their ground on an open war against all them until Sartar arrives and makes peace. Then when the Lunar Empire conquers Sartar in the early XVII century, the war starts again, prompted by the lunars. On this war, the Wolfrunners annihilate the Maboder, and contain the others, only being defeated by Jomes Wulf and his lunar mercenaries (who apparently occupy part of the former Maboder lands). 

How can they be so successful? They have neither metalworking nor horses, they draw their magical power from only one god (Telmor) and spirits, while the surrounding orlanthi have many gods and spirits at their disposal, most of who are far more powerful than Telmor. Have the so colled "allies" never really worked together? Are they really that good at guerrilla? If this is the case why do they lose against Wulf? Also they seem to be pretty populous for hunter-gatherers, 6800, in an area of similar size than the tribal lands of the Malani (8000) but lacking any type of urbanization. And does this figure (6800) include the direwolfs? Because if it doesn't you can double their population in regards of effective fighting force, and they could have a bigger army that any tribe, but how can they maintain it? 

Just wanted to know the forum's take on this bc I alone find it hard to create a believable narrative of this part of DP history. 

8 hours ago, Jeff said:

There are places in Glorantha where the magical geography facilitates bringing the God Time into the mundane world. In all of Sartar, the Lunars determined that this was a place of raw power, and not associated with any Orlanthi cult. A place of raw power, undefined (and unknown) by the local Orlanthi, the Lunars concluded they could use this place to transform Dragon Pass.

They did this by recreating the Perfect Sky in ceremony, reversing the As Above, So Below and using the power of the place to establish a correlation between what went on in the ceremony and what that meant in the heavens and God Time. This was a big ritual and Tatius carried some of the Emperor's power as he served as his Proxy in the rites.

A group of Orlanthi hero questers infiltrated the ceremony and appeared AT THE WRONG TIME. Orlanth's Ring emerged on the wrong day and time from the Stormgate and cut its way through the ceremony. The Lunars could not simply send troops to stop it without breaking the ceremony, they could not move outside of their roles without breaking the ceremony, and the Orlanthi were tougher than expected. They cut a spiral through the grounds, and stars fell from the heavens and planets were disrupted. 

Then when the Orlanthi got to where the Star Dragon's head would be, ALL HELL BROKE LOOSE. A True Dragon awakened. I do not think anyone planned this, except perhaps Orlaront Dragonfriend. The Dragon devoured the ceremony, the priests and heroes, and even several of the Orlanthi hero questers. It is known that Kallyr and the Sartarite leaders were horrified by this, although Argrath White Bull welcomed it and seemed to have some expectation of this or something like it (he had tried to attack the Temple grounds the previous season with his nomad army but was rebuffed at Hender's Ruins).

I always envisioned a giant open dragon mouth devouring the whole temple, as the dragon is said to measure several km. I wonder how did any of the orlanthi survive this, if they expected it they could have prepared some teleportation, but if they didn't I can't really imagine how did they avoid being eaten too.

2 hours ago, coffeemancer said:

we should probably look at Orlanth+Ernaldas wedding for an idea. As above so below.

It's an intuitive option, the problem is that the Ernalda-Orlanth early relations are a bit problematic, The Book of Heortling Mythology describes the marrige Ernalda as "needing a new protector" and both "falling in love" she because of his potential and he because of her beauty. I can't imagine sartarite people, specially women, being very happy if the marriage ritual went like that.

Consulting TBoHM I have found something that has surprised me. A goddess called Vela the Matchmaker apparently appears in some Heortling tales as "the power that brings lovers together", so this could be an alternative to Ernalda-Orlanth, but the surprising part is the next sentence: "it's not the wild and breathless love of the Demon Uleria that breaks apart everything it thouches". Never imagined that Heortlings think of Uleria as a Demon, she is the goddess of love and sex, which is not at all shunned in their customs, and there are lots of temples to her aroud Sartar. Even funnier because my current group lives next to an Uleria temple usually visited by one of the characters to, uhm, "take part on the rites", and because when I had to improvise a marrige rituals while running Six Seasons in Sartar, i told of an ulerian ritual, where the whole tribe gathered aroud all the people that wanted to get married that year, started chanting and dancing, swore loyalty and love to each other and ended in the lovers "consumating the marriage" in the grass, while the rest of the village danced and chanted around them.

Hilltops and tanglethorns hmm... Maybe if you come by it and it's on fire you can speak with Makan.

But on a serious note no I have no idea why it's there, maybe to make the surroundings of Hound Knob more full of things that the players (or the hound) can use in their advantage. Is there any aldryami deity associated with thorns? 

On the visual side, look up for and show them images of the orlanthi of Six Ages: Ride like the Wind. They are not Sartarites but Vingkotlings, an ancient orlanthi tribe from before Time, but they are very useful to imagine the southern Orlanthi. The dominance of blue, long coats almost poncho-like, the absence of pants, the particular beards and moustaches... those are all traits the Sartarite can be seen with too. The dark skin is also present. Looking for "Six ages Rams" (Ram People was how the orlanthi were know in other places for a lot of time, because of their preference to herd sheep over other animals like cow, goat or pig) in google images provides sufficient images.

The Grazelanders are very similar to the Riders in that game too: light skin and hair, scythian-like clothing, horses...

I also recommend looking up @KleiosCanvas on twitter, she does magnificent gloranthan art that helps visualize how the world looks.

I think I read somewhere it's because of the incessant war the elves fight with the Uz and Tusk riders there, that makes the forest ground to be always filled with rotting corpses. 

Brilliant storytelling. I love how the mostali speaks. 

14 minutes ago, David Scott said:

Use of masks of gods in Glorantha tends to be based on Joseph Campbell's works, Hero with the 1000 faces and the four volume masks of god. Although originally based on Jung's mask ideas, Campbell was a mythologist, not a therapist and so widened the ideas of the masks of gods.

Thanks, I had known of the existence of Joseph Campbell but never read any of his works, knowing they had influence over Glorantha make me more eager to read them.

16 minutes ago, David Scott said:

Examples of masks of gods in Glorantha are Bisos and Storm Bull are masks of the Bull god. Neither are the bull god, but are similar enough to be recognised as a mask.

No, but Wakboth is a mask of the devil.

Sedenya is a mask of the Moon goddess, like all of the other moon goddesses.

Is she a mask of Nysalor. Maybe. She's definitely a mask of illumination, as is Rashoran, Rashorana, Nysalor, Gbaji.

Interesting, but could we say in the same line that both Urox and the "bull god" are maks of the Storm? Such as Orlanth, Vadrus, etc.?

If Wakboth is a mask of the devil it's then kajabor, to name another great chaos entity, another mask of it? Is the Devil then the concept of "the end of the World"?

Isn't this basically what the malkioni say? That the barbarians worship that which emanates from the runes, molding it to fit their imaginations?

3 minutes ago, Eff said:

And, indeed, according to the Life of Sedenya, She confronted the Devil partway through Her Godquest and was killed and tormented by him... or her, because the Devil was actually Taraltara, and actually Her, because Sedenya pulled off Taraltara's mask to reveal Her own face

So... We are all Us? 

24 minutes ago, Eff said:

Well, if She were a human being and nothing else, we might use the phrase "persona" instead. Jung defined the persona as a kind of mask over deeper individuality that both presents a specific social face and conceals the reality of the total entity. But Mask helps us get away from Jung's linearity of breakdown and recreation and emphasize that She wears each Mask as She pleases, or perhaps as we perceive Her. 

Then Wakboth is a mask of Sedenya, and not the other way around, right? Or is Sedenya not Her? This really is extremely complicated. 

28 minutes ago, Eff said:

So the Red Emperor adopts different Masks to accommodate different situations, but the entire Takenegi/Moonson/Doskalos/Rufus entity incorporates all those characteristics. 

Always saw it as the opposite, the individual Red Emperors were Egi, illuminate masters chosen by Sedenya, that descended upon the death of the previous Emperor and assumed the Mask of TakenEgi in turn to rule the Empire, and at the same time TakenEgi wears a mask of Murharzarm. This made sense to me because in the Gods Wall drawing for RQ TakenEgi is seen literally wearing a mask of an idealized Dara Happan ruler face, which to me indicates a façade of continuity over a reality of individuality. Also in the Glorantha Sourcebook the images of the Red Emperor and Murharzarm are the same but with different colorations. 

What is a "Mask" exactly? What does it mean to be a mask of other, or to wear a mask? In the linguistic sense, I don't find any sense to Sedenya using Wakboth as she being a mask of him. 

8 minutes ago, Eff said:

Trying to absorb vast quantities of information without having some kind of filtering or learning process is dangerous.

Then my death is certainly close and caused by Too Much Glorantha Reading. 

On 12/31/2020 at 5:59 PM, Joerg said:

For the Rokari, we know that only boys selected at a young age, with high intelligence, will get introduced into the zzabur caste and taught sorcery. It isn't known what happens to those who drop out. Perhaps dropping out is fatal, perhaps dropping out means a future in monastic isolation.

There are bound to be female sorceresses in Tanisor and Ralios, and also boys with the talent and the will to learn sorcery who did not get picked by the selection of the wizards. Some variant of Chalana Arroy teaching a restricted canon of non-aggressive sorcery may actually be tolerated by the Watchers, but possibly also strongly regulated and cloistered. I don't think that Lhankor Mhy would find such acceptance, not even in monastic isolation, given the kind of scholarship that led to the God Learners and which is anathema to Rokarism - no idea how they treat magic-adjacent guilds like e.g. alchemists. Naval sorcery is acceptable in the Quinpolic League, whether brought by Dormal, resurrected from Debaldan School documents, or acquired from the Waertagi. (The Rokari scene in the Guide shows at least one descendant of Waertagi among the bearers of the sedan.)

Would you mind sharing your views on other kinds of magic used in Seshnela other than Zzaburi sorcery (or point on the direction of sources that speak about the subject)? I'm very interested. 

For what I have interpreted, horali warrior societies probably would use spirit magic linked to their ancestral hsunchmen traditions. This could make their characters interesting and versatile (more than not using any magic anyway). But what about Talar? They are said to fight too, so it would be weird for them to be at a disadvantage over the horali, maybe they use a kind of sorcery too?