John Biles

The Lunar Empire was Big and Rich and they were not. This no doubt lead to some cultural influence in the area closest to Tarsh and facilitated the whole Yelmalio cult rising thing.

Why do the Vadeli not have any Talars?

Some suggestions, just out of my imagination: They favor tile roofs with overlapping tiles which evoke dragon scales. Further, the most important buildings are shaped like the Beast Rune, since that's also the Dragon rune. Peasant buildings are much like 3rd age Dragon Pass but with draconic imagery painted on them. Buildings favor the color of whatever dragon lives closest.

So is Joy a long-term state? My understanding was that Joy of the Heart was something experienced through Hrestoli practices but which wasn't a permanent state. (I also saw it as being more like a kind of state of, well, joy and being indefagitable)

Keep in mind that PCs get the Escalation Die and their foes do not. 13th Age is set up so the PCs get hammered early in the fight, then do extra hammering later in the fight. IF you use the array rule, you get 17, 15, 14, 13, 12, 10 to spread on stats. Let's say you raise the first two to 19 and 17. Strength 19, Wisdom 17, Con 14, Dex 13., Intelligence 12, Charisma 10. The middle stat of Con/Wisdom/Dex is Con, for a +2. Heavy Armor + Shield + 2 = 18 AC. Which is about as good as a first level char can get due to how the bonuses work. But to quote the rulebook: But Humakt is the god of Death and you’ve noticed that he seems more interested in you slaying his enemies than getting through battles in one piece.

IF you assume the Kingdom of War and Loksalm basically were both reduced to impotence by their war, an easy Lunar conquest seems plausible to me.

HSKH has a map of all the Geo's Inns and a sidebar on their origins and purpose as a refuge for Sartarites. There are 16 on the map and a 17th in Pavis, IIRC. Ahh yes, New Pavis Geo's is on pages 200-1 of Pavis: Gateway to Adventure, and gives more detail on the interior of the inns. And briefly discusses the Geo Hospitality Cult (which just has the Communications rune)

The Glowline doesn't provide permanent Full Moon; it provides Permanent Half Moon, stabilizing Lunar fluctuations which Sheng had exploited. And it doesn't suppress other powers. Given Oraya is not thickly settled and Sheng is, well, Sheng, it's not surprising that he could roll over Oraya like a nightmare tide.

Rokar is an Old Testament style prophet, who goes into the wilderness and comes out sharp as a razor to tell you that you suck and must change your ways or die. Rokar is a logical response to the God-Learners' tendency to say that their will was the whole of the law. Going buck wild = apocalypse. For all his flaws, the Rokari are never going to try and turn everyone in Genertla into one big dragon or sink entire continents or try to wipe out all humans.

Two thoughts: 1. Rokar probably Heroquested to answer some of his questions about what to cut and what not. 2. He likely asked 'Did this lead to God-Learner abuses, like participating in pagan rites?' If so, he sliced it. Removing anything that would justify theistic or animistic practices.

It won't enable you to throw Sunspears on Earth, though. The Rokari use of older concepts is rather like a game of telephone. But the founding moment of the Rokari was Rokar purging the God-Learner holy text to try to purify it to avoid the sins of the God-Learners.

I don't think the goal of the Rokari church is to move to full Brithini practice. The Rokari believe in Solace, which is the goal of the entire system - obey caste law, know eternal bliss after death. The Brithini believe death = erasure, which is why they desperately cling to life in a screwed up world, until they accidentally eat cheesecake, break caste, and die. Further, the ruling elite of Seshnela is all about war and conquest and that's *suicidally stupid* in the Brithini system, because war = a risk of ceasing to exist forever. Whereas, going into battle is part of the job of Talars in Seshnela. So the Rokari are doing it wrong, but in Glorantha, if enough people do it wrong together, it becomes right for them.

I think the Guide is a little bit verballly sloppy when it talks about the Beast Societies. These societies are made up of *Horali*, though each Regiment is pledged to some Talar. And this likely reflects a differing understanding of what exactly Solace is.

Some thoughts on Seshnela: First off, I think it's important to think about the Rokari religion - basically, it says 'stay in your lane and play by these rules for a short human lifespan and then you will spend *eternity* in bliss with the Creator.' That's a pretty hefty prize at the end of your fifty-seventy years of life (assuming you don't die in the first ten years of your life). Different castes see this differently (a peasant basically imagines it being like Heaven or the pure land; a zzabur imagines it as Nirvana), but it's important to see this from the viewpoint of a believer. The degree to which we would call that viewpoint religious instead of sorcerous ranges by caste; the higher the caste, the more philosophical it is instead of religious. Thus, peasants will pray to the Invisible God for help even if it doesn't really do anything and see themselves as being prepared for a heaven. The religious instincts of the horali are focused around their warrior societies. Talars aid certain zzabur ceremonies which aid their territories but basically assume being a good ruler is enough, as they measure goodness. And the Zzabur practice mental disciplines they think will prepare them for Solace. Further, while the Rokari religion is oppressive in the sense of - we are the only legal religion - it isn't Puritanism. Rokari don't reject 'joy', they reject 'Joy'. Which is to say that Joy is a state of union with the divine in the world of the living which brings bliss and spiritual assurance. The Rokari see that as ludicrous. But Rokari have friends, fall in love, throw festivals, get married, love their children, etc. Even peasants, who have it roughest. Further, I have to imagine there is intense competition for status *inside* castes. We already know there are Dukes who are bigger and more important than other Talar. Horali need junior officers and NCOs. Dronars would have things like mayors and town councillors and guild heads and ranks of artisanship. Zzaburs no doubt compete to show who can qualify for various special titles through self-discipline, mastering schools of magic, etc. Also, keep in mind this is like pre-Charlemagne, Post-Roman Europe in the sense that this is a state built by barbarians aping an older civilization. There should be caste practices they are doing wrong because they don't understand the context or where they go overboard. Each caste has a traditional blessing for dinner which must be done before eating, but they don't actually understand what it says. The Beast societies for Warriors have codes which partly make sense, but also have things like commanding them to sacrifice three virgin doves at a certain location once a year and they do it but don't know *why*. Talars are not allowed to eat fish and land animals at the same meal. Why? Because the Sharp Abiding Book says so and Rokar purged the section that explained why. Outsiders are useful because they can break the caste rules *for you* without any blowback to you. The Sharp Abiding Book may forbid you to take up arms against anyone within four blood degrees of you, but Hanzel the Orlanthi can kill your stupid cousin for you. (A major use for outside adventurers is to do things that break caste rules or which are overly dangerous.)

13th Age Glorantha has a Trickster class which is basically set up on the model that the Trickster's actons blow up in his or her face, but then buff some other party member or provide them a benny. Feckless Strike is where the Trickster attacks with a stuffed doll or a sex toy or a bag of coffee; the attacks do no damage but add to the damage done by the next PC to hit it. Abject Failure - you roll the dice twice on an action, taking the worst result, but giving the better result to an ally later. Fortunate Collision lets the Trickster get beat up in place of their ally. And so on. I did Tricksters in my ongoing series of Glorantha stories as essentially compelled to cause chaos and they either have to do frequent small things to bleed it off, or they can hold it in for a time, but then they do something *really* dumb to make up for it.

Those are pretty templates - where did you get them? The Commander should have some kind of leader ability - maybe when he hits someone with his pistol, other Dwarves get a temporary bonus to hit the target.

The Empire of Wyrm Friends started out as a religious movement exploring Draconic mysticism. As typically happens in Glorantha with any kind of mysticism, they managed to take the train to crazy town, while simultaneously becoming too entangled in the mundane world to achieve true Draconic enlightenment. They began corrupting the Orlanthi religion and taking over the Orlanthi lands and trying to missionize/conquer/mutate their neighbors. They took over Dara Happa for a while; the leader of the Golden Dragon Society passed the Ten Tests and became Emperor until a new one rose and killed him. By that point, the EWF was riding the crazy train and trying to carry out a plan to turn about half of Genertla into a giant dragon. This would have killed a LOT of people. Eventually, the Dragonnewts realized the EWF was beyond saving and wiped it out. The EWF operated on a pyramid scheme; the more people you had converted, the more power you got. People they converted fed some power to you. This let top dog EWF people do huge things.

Patron/Client relations fill the need for 'noblesse oblige;, to essentially soften Dara Happan rule by giving everyone someone they can turn to for help.

IF you want to run a Solar society without Lunar elements, you're going to have to go back to the Second or First Age. And even there, you have to find a period where the Dara Happans haven't been taken over by another culture, because the DH have spent a lot of history basically being someone else's flunky. Some comments from my own take on them which may not line up with other people's views or canon, but you might find them useful. Why did Dara Happans obey the Dragon Emperor *and* not like having a dragon Emperor? There's a central problem for the Solars, which has hosed them repeatedly. To be Emperor, you must pass the Ten Tests. In theory, this means the Emperor has Yelm's blessing. But a sufficiently mystically potent person (we're talking very high levels of power and/or heavily backed) can pass the tests even though they're no more Yelm's chosen one than I can eat the Red Moon. But passing the tests means blam, you're Emperor and no one can stop you. (Unless they can chop you to kibble, but anyone who can rig the Tests is not easily turned into kibble.) But the other part of it is that the EWF were a collection of split-tongued super-freak whackos who wanted to turn most of Genertla into a dragon. Imagine if Charles Manson was a howling tentacle beast but he managed to get the college of Cardinals to make him Pope. He's now Pope by the rules, but everyone knows howling tentacle Manson is not what you want as Pope. This central problem is how they ended up with Nysalor leading them to their death and how the Moonson controls them. How are the Dara Happans organized? The ideal is that each of the 10 holy cities controls a territory; every Dara Happan within that city's territory is under its authority. In theory, the Emperor appoints magistrates in each city which perform various duties and/or act as judges. There is a higher level of magistrates who form the central government under the Emperor. The Dara Happan upper class is divided into many individual, intermarried families, each typically associated with a specific city. In theory, this upper class remains the same lines of descent forever; in practice, there are always families self-destructing into poverty and others rising to the top, usually through marriages. (One family has status and needs money; the other has money and needs status). Every upper class family is officially the same in status - in practice, wealth and the offices you held or are still holding determine a pecking order. The lowest ranking nobles dwell out in the rural villages most of the time, instead of in the city proper. (Someone has to govern these people!) Everyone else is officially a peasant. Some of those 'peasants' are big, wealthy merchants who haven't found the chance to move up yet. Basically, anyone who doesn't be a noble for a living is part of this group, having more rights than outsiders, but less than the upper class. There is a definite social hiearchy but it has no legal existence. But some guy who owns a giant glazier shop is effectively higher status than Lucius the peasant farmer. Two major things bind society together - Associations and Patron/Client relations. Associations are formed by noble families to accomplish some kind of goal - they generally function rather like guilds, but they may also act like a political activist group, or serve to carry on some feud or contest. Patron/client relations may link two noble families, or a noble family and a peasant family or two peasant famiies. In practice, everyone in DH is part of a set of patron-client pyramids which spread down from the highest ranking officials. Patrons provide services and aid to their clients and clients support their patrons *and* provide a source of status. This is phrased as 'gifts', even if it's really more like 'rent'. So associations are horizontal, while patron/client is vertical. These practices overlap. So Julius the Orange, Origen, Marcus, Terrance, and Nigerius are Dara Happan nobles. They all have clients living in the rice belt along the Osilira. They form the Osilira Rice Farmer Association - their clients, who are tenant farmers, all pay their rent in rice, and the DH nobles use their Association to get a better price for their rice. They might have a feud with a rival Rice Farmer Association. Lucius the peasant farmer is one of Julius the Orange's clients; he pays 30% of his crop to Julius as a 'gift' which is actually rent. In return, when Broo invade the area, the ORFA hires mercenaries to kill the Broo. (And the ORFA 'shares' a plot of land with him for him to grow his crops.) How does Law Work? In theory, the written and unchanging laws of Yelm resolve every legal dispute. In practice, there's a lot of flex and authority in the hands of the judge. Past imperial decrees, judicial precedents, and the existence of varying schools of legal interpretation leaves judges with a lot of leeway to make up whatever sounds reasonable, within a system where crimes against your superiors is punished the most and against inferiors the least. Typically you can appeal from a rural court to an urban one, from an urban one to the city's high court and from that to the Emperor. Good luck there. How do Adventures work? PCs could be troubleshooters for an important DH noble or an association; in return for various benefits (like housing and food and gifts of money), they go deal with problems that require the usual violence of PCs. They also might be hired by a rural magistrate or an urban one for some suitable task. Caravans also need guards to protect them. Ruins from the God Time / Bright Empire / EWF all dot the landscape and are suitable for self-driven adventure to get loot

That does provide a consistent picture for Arkat and Ralzakark, who both rather pushed it.

I favor 'Crisis of Infinite Arkats'. Five cults in Ralios all manage to Heroform a different Arkat and each of them latches onto a different 'Gbaji' figure. I like your idea of how the cults broke the Godlearner lock and that's how it happens. I would add 'It's because Argath was trying to tap into Arkat Power'. Chaos Arkat fixates on Argath as his new Gbaji to go after. (Chaos Arkat should call himself Malal, but that's just me mixing game universes.) Stygian Arkat tries to rebuild the Stygian Empire and goes after whatever is in the way of that. Another Arkat decides the Rokari church is fundamentally corrupt and can't stop until it's wiped out. Kingtroll Arkat goes to Dragon Pass, teams up with Argath and urges him on to kill everyone in Peloria on general principles. Doies this mean a Kingtroll vs Chaos Arkati battle? Of course it does. The Fifth Arkat should take his Arkating into Fronela.

Volcanic rock crumbles into high quality soil. That's why their Earth god is a Volcano god.

The War on Ernalda The War on Ernalda has been carried out to various degrees of seriousness by the Mounts of the Moonson. The fertilizing power of water and the existence of other Earth goddesses has allowed the Empire to mount this war without wrecking themselves. The degree to which all Earth goddesses get condemned as Ernalda fronts varies over time. Catticus has both amplified the War on Ernalda proper, while being pretty lax about anyone who looks 95% like Ernalda but gives fealty to the Empire. Catticus blames Ernalda for the failure of Dragon Pass and points south to bend knee properly to the Empire, though his growing diffidence and depression means he has largely left the war to others while he composes songs about how Ernalda did him wrong. The War on Ernalda has gone on for so long that it has become an excuse for just about everything. Every Satrap invokes it to justify what they wanted to do anyway. It's most consistently followed in the South, where there are rumors of a plan to shut down Enalda's power entirely, though no one is sure how that could even work. The biggest rumor is that somehow Genert will be revived and take Ernalda's place. Others think she will be forced to marry Yelmalio and thus be forced to submit if not destroyed. Some Trolls talk about feeding her to Zorak Zoran. But no one else, including most Trolls, wants that. At its most basic, it involves breaking up organized worship of Ernalda. This has tended to lead to cults which are basically Ernalda under another name or to other Earth goddesses (who are arguably just masks of Ernalda or vice versa) taking her place, though the Empire has erratically tried to replace her with the Imperial pantheon. The Bureau of Righteous Thought has the Ernalda-Hunter Division, whose job it is to roust out Ernaldan heretics. The wise don't call them in as they tend to favor 'burn everything' as a solution. In recent years, the Empire has promoted Hon-Eeel worship as an alternative to Ernalda Worship. This grows more popular in the southern satrapies. Jar-Eel has eagerly promoted this and it's especially common in Tarsh. Efforts to impose this in Dragon Pass and the Holy Country have led to a lot of violence, though most Sartarite clans have elevated Mahome or one of Ernalda's other handmaidens in response. The Clearwine Temple officially serves Orendana the Queen, who is totally not Ernalda at all because she is blonde. Mahome is the most common choice to turn to, though. Because Ernalda is not the dominant goddess of Prax, the War on Ernalda has little impact there outside of Pavis. Save for the Genert Project. An issue for another post.

In King of Dragon Pass, the formation of Clans usually involves a fair amount of wheeling and dealing around obligations a clan will have to the tribe and vice versa. Tribal moots are when arguments/legal disputes/brawls break out over these. Things like Clan X has the right to run a tavern on each clan's lands. The ladies of the other clans are angry their husbands spend too much time/resources at said tavern and set it on fire Should the tribe fix the tavern? Require Clan X to fix it if they want it? Ban taverns? Priestesses of the Barley and Rye goddesses have gotten angry with each other over which grain is 'more important'. This needs to be settled. Every clan is obligated to grow Y amount of various herbs and give them to Clan Z; in return, Clan Z supplies the tribal moot with food. Clan H is refusing to give away herbs because someone in Clan Z punched the Clan H chief's brother. Now Clan Z won't feed anyone until this is settled. Clan T supplies a certain number of blankets to each clan each year in return for the other clans supplying them with X amount of wool. Clan B hands over really lousy wool and T refuses to give them blankets for this garbage. This needs settling. Just because I had sex with Bogodan of Clan X the night before my wedding doesn't make it adultery! I wasn't married yet! I'm sure the baby is yours! You can't divorce me over this! Traditionally, we trade sheep for wood with Tribe AA. But they claim Elves blighted the wood. Do we accept blighted wood or do we end the agreement?

I had thought Androgeus was not around until the Third Age, but I yield to your knowledge. Huh.