Differences Between Yu-Kargzant and Yelm's Cults

[Richard S.]

Are there any major mechanical differences between the Yelm writeup in RQG and the Yelm cult as worshiped by the Dara Happans? Do they offer any different spells or have different requirements? At the least, I'd expect they that they wouldn't have the Golden Bow subcult and would have an Imperator subcult. What would the Imperator subcult look like in terms of requirements and magic provided?

[Jeff]

7 minutes ago, Richard S. said:

Are there any major mechanical differences between the Yelm writeup in RQG and the Yelm cult as worshiped by the Dara Happans? Do they offer any different spells or have different requirements? At the least, I'd expect they that they wouldn't have the Golden Bow subcult and would have an Imperator subcult. What would the Imperator subcult look like in terms of requirements and magic provided?

The Yelm writeup in RQG lacks the Yelm Imperator subcult, which changes things a lot. 

[Richard S.]

54 minutes ago, Jeff said:

The Yelm writeup in RQG lacks the Yelm Imperator subcult, which changes things a lot. 

I can see that, but what does the Imperator subcult offer worshippers?

[Jeff]

7 minutes ago, Richard S. said:

I can see that, but what does the Imperator subcult offer worshippers?

Bless Worshipers and Resurrect to begin with. Both of which are mighty spells. Plus command of the Sun Lords and Priests.

[davecake]

And the Dara Happan version has a LOT more associated cults. As there are quite a few great temples about, that means a very wide range of room magic is available. 

And notably the Imperators are quite Lunarized - in Dara Happa the Yelm hierachy is unified with the Lunar hierarchy at the upper levels. 

[Jeff]

10 minutes ago, davecake said:

And the Dara Happan version has a LOT more associated cults. As there are quite a few great temples about, that means a very wide range of room magic is available. 

And notably the Imperators are quite Lunarized - in Dara Happa the Yelm hierachy is unified with the Lunar hierarchy at the upper levels. 

And this is something a lot of people don't seem to get - the Yelm cult in the Lunar Empire is not anti-Lunar. It is yet another Lunar faction in the Lunar Empire. Yelm is Illuminated according to the Lunars and the Dara Happan cult agrees.

[davecake]

1 minute ago, Jeff said:

And this is something a lot of people don't seem to get - the Yelm cult in the Lunar Empire is not anti-Lunar. It is yet another Lunar faction in the Lunar Empire.

Yes, the Yelm cult in Dara Happa could be regarded as anti-Lunar at the time of Jannisor, but that was 350 years ago. 

OK, so it got a bit weird around the time of Sheng Seleris, when Sheng tried to turn the Yelm cult to him, and succeeded with some, but most of them hated him and hate him still.

[Sir_Godspeed]

56 minutes ago, Jeff said:

And this is something a lot of people don't seem to get

Can you honestly blame them? Not only is the Lunar Empire is a clusterf***** from a worldbuilding perspective, with successive layers of history on top of a mishmash quilt of pre-Lunar Pelorian cultures and smashing a patriarchal nobility that claims direct continuity for over a hundred thousand years together with a revolutionary semi-messianic, gender-"equal" mass-conversion religion - BUT Peloria/Lunar Heartland is and remains severely underdeveloped from an on-the-ground perspective, which is vital to engender "grokking", as it were.

Sorry if I come across as a bit grumpy, and it's not meant as an attack on the current Chaosium staff who've done a great job (the Redline History part of the Sourcebook helps a lot), but as a fairly recent convert, I deeply sympathize with trying to make sense of the Frankenstein-esque, self-contradicting descriptions of Peloria and the Solar/Lunar empires there.

[JonL]

I would expect Aniti-Lunar Dara Happans to frame themselves as Yelm cult  reformers/restorationists, just as those who overthrew Dara Happa on Horse or the Sun Dragon did.

Such are not in power within the state or cult at present, obviously, but their number is also unlikely to be zero.

[Tindalos]

11 minutes ago, JonL said:

I would expect Aniti-Lunar Dara Happans to frame themselves as Yelm cult  reformers/restorationists, just as those who overthrew Dara Happa on Horse or the Sun Dragon did.

Such are not in power within the state or cult at present, obviously, but their number is also unlikely to be zero.

The problem is that a lot of them will still be relatives to the Red Emperor, since he's had a lot of influence over the years. Anyone who would make a good Solar Emperor's also got that whole family connection to worry about.

[Qizilbashwoman]

42 minutes ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

Can you honestly blame them? Not only is the Lunar Empire is a clusterf***** from a worldbuilding perspective, with successive layers of history on top of a mishmash quilt of pre-Lunar Pelorian cultures and smashing a patriarchal nobility that claims direct continuity for over a hundred thousand years together with a revolutionary semi-messianic, gender-"equal" mass-conversion religion - BUT Peloria/Lunar Heartland is and remains severely underdeveloped from an on-the-ground perspective, which is vital to engender "grokking", as it were.

Sorry if I come across as a bit grumpy, and it's not meant as an attack on the current Chaosium staff who've done a great job (the Redline History part of the Sourcebook helps a lot), but as a fairly recent convert, I deeply sympathize with trying to make sense of the Frankenstein-esque, self-contradicting descriptions of Peloria and the Solar/Lunar empires there.

It might lack detail but it's the most realistic empire in the setting. The Lunar Empire is basically no different than Iraq after the initial Muslim conquest; it's a combination of implausible nonsense and black box. If you sold it as an RPG setting people would mock it.

Also, much like in Iraq, the claims of the Solars to endless rule from pure descent from the Sun is propaganda. Not entirely, because Glorantha, but it's a mishmash of empires from distinct ethnicities and with distinct solar deities conquering each other and seizing the Mandate of Heaven. The Solar histories we have are literal propaganda works written to glorify specific emperors.

Edited December 18, 2019 by Qizilbashwoman

[g33k]

28 minutes ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

Can you honestly blame them? Not only is the Lunar Empire is a clusterf***** from a worldbuilding perspective, with successive layers of history on top of a mishmash quilt of pre-Lunar Pelorian cultures and smashing a patriarchal nobility that claims direct continuity for over a hundred thousand years together with a revolutionary semi-messianic, gender-"equal" mass-conversion religion - BUT Peloria/Lunar Heartland is and remains severely underdeveloped from an on-the-ground perspective, which is vital to engender "grokking", as it were.

Sorry if I come across as a bit grumpy, and it's not meant as an attack on the current Chaosium staff who've done a great job (the Redline History part of the Sourcebook helps a lot), but as a fairly recent convert, I deeply sympathize with trying to make sense of the Frankenstein-esque, self-contradicting descriptions of Peloria and the Solar/Lunar empires there.

On the one hand, I agree and sympathize.

On the other hand -- and brace yourself, this may look like a criticism but 100% is NOT -- you're almost completely wrong about this.

What the whole clusterf*** actually looks like is... the messy, contradictory, top-down AND bottom-up (not to mention stuff coming in sideways) sort of goulash that comes from real-world history.  It's bullshit, which is fertilizer, which yields rich crops.  It's good because it's so messy.

The place where I think you're NOT wrong -- not at ALL -- is that there isn't enough "on the ground" perspective.  Specifically, we KNOW about all these historical/cultural/mythical trends and groups in the Lunar Empire, and they look like they will yield a really diverse suite of characters, motivations, Passions, etc etc etc.  But if we want to create an Adventurer from there, we can choose between the "Lunar Tarsh" background, and... um...

No, it doesn't distill nicely into a short-phrase bullet-point so you can summarize a character; a "Lunar Noble" can mean any of several very different things, actually.  And really -- REALLY -- from the RPG perspective (and let's stop admiring the extraordinary pseudo sociology/anthropology/mythology/etc for a second, and recall the entire point of this is a RPG, as a storytelling engine) that build-out as playable PC is what matters most.

Hopefully, in time, they'll build-out that part of the setting sufficient to make virtually any "Lunar" character-concept PC'able.  I think we're getting more about Nochet (and Holy Country?) before that, though.  Chaosium doesn't have it even on the "further out..." product-list, IIRC... though I'm pretty sure they've talked about wanting/intending to do it.

So yes, it IS a clusterf*** ... and that's a good thing!  The only problem with the Lunars, at this point, is that for all the f***ing there are remarkably few orgasms playable-PC-backgrounds.

 

[Joerg]

2 hours ago, davecake said:

Yes, the Yelm cult in Dara Happa could be regarded as anti-Lunar at the time of Jannisor, but that was 350 years ago. 

Glorantha has a history of Old Day Traditionalists being suppressed by the newest hot stuff, and then re-surfacing as that hot stuff begins fraying at the edges.

 

2 hours ago, davecake said:

OK, so it got a bit weird around the time of Sheng Seleris, when Sheng tried to turn the Yelm cult to him, and succeeded with some, but most of them hated him and hate him still.

Rather that those who bet their houses to go along with Sheng lost that bet after Sheng's unlucky loss at Kitor.

I wonder how foreign oppressors manage to be worse than the native Yelmic nobility and their terrible ways for their less privileged subjects and "minorities". Whether the Heortlings, the Spolites, the EWF, the Carmanians, or the Pentans, always some sort of "grassroot" movement comes along and deals with these nasty foreigners, only to leave the population again in abject poverty and squalor while their lords amass luxuries and the good life.

But then, it is no different from a population voting in the interest of the 0.001 % rather than their own...

[Joerg]

1 hour ago, g33k said:

Ohat the whole clusterf*** actually looks like is... the messy, contradictory, top-down AND bottom-up (not to mention stuff coming in sideways) sort of goulash that comes from real-world history.  It's bullshit, which is fertilizer, which yields rich crops.  It's good because it's so messy.

One thing we tend to forget is that people living there have little concept of their history other than what the priestess and the overseer tell them about it.

There are few groups in Peloria that don't remember ancestors who ruled over the known world and take immense pride from that while going through their squalid oppression, selling off their children for the next meal. (Ok, at least not as the next meal...)

 

1 hour ago, g33k said:

The place where I think you're NOT wrong -- not at ALL -- is that there isn't enough "on the ground" perspective. 

Roleplaying in an empire tends to give you this problem. You can start your campaign in squalor and rigid hierarchies, but where do you take it from there? Even the path of Lunar illumination and spiritual freedom doesn't get anywhere - whenever it does, the Red Emperor sends some daughter to squash any such upstart notion.

And you don't get to play the occupation forces any more since the Dragonrise. Gone are the good old days when Imperials from disparate backgrounds had Sartarites and Heortlanders to oppress while gaming out their little rivalries and aiming to make it big with those newly acquired goodies looted from the dirty (and formerly unfairly wealthy) barbarians. Why, they even had stuff from the Empire! Proof that they looted the Empire first, it is only just to bring this stuff and other such things back home.

Playing something like Wehrmacht REMFs in occupied Paris in Nochet was a thing for Imperials to do.

But not all is lost. There are bound to be veterans from the Lunar occupation who had returned before the Temple dedication that summoned that dragon, and those guys might be called back to retake what was lost, or at least prepare such an action.

 

1 hour ago, g33k said:

Specifically, we KNOW about all these historical/cultural/mythical trends and groups in the Lunar Empire, and they look like they will yield a really diverse suite of characters, motivations, Passions, etc etc etc.  But if we want to create an Adventurer from there, we can choose between the "Lunar Tarsh" background, and... um...

and Cults of Prax. Even though RuneQuest finally has arrived in Sartar (unless you count Apple Lane, Snake Pipe Hollow and Haunted Ruins), it is Sartar in tatters.

 

1 hour ago, g33k said:

No, it doesn't distill nicely into a short-phrase bullet-point so you can summarize a character; a "Lunar Noble" can mean any of several very different things, actually.  And really -- REALLY -- from the RPG perspective (and let's stop admiring the extraordinary pseudo sociology/anthropology/mythology/etc for a second, and recall the entire point of this is a RPG, as a storytelling engine) that build-out as playable PC is what matters most.

What do we lack for that?

Not so much the guidelines to create characters, IMO, but what we really lack is the playable background for these characters to act in. New Pavis was easy. Occupied Boldhome may have been workable.

Even royal Furthest gets harder. We know a few key players, disagree about a number of established institutions like the University of the Province and its curriculum and magician output, and have little idea about all the Heartlanders acting as agents for their houses or seeking opportunity on this semi-barbarian frontier.

A Tarshite inverse Borderlands campaign where Heartlanders are hired to bring culture and Imperial erudition to an ambitious but in the end rustic rich household might be fun, although stuff like the Five Eyes game would have to be inverted for these refined Imperials to shine... And then comes the Fazzurite rebellion, and the family may be pointed in either Fazzurite or Phargantite direction...

 

1 hour ago, g33k said:

Hopefully, in time, they'll build-out that part of the setting sufficient to make virtually any "Lunar" character-concept PC'able. 

Well, as a challenge, put forward a character concept, and look whether the community here can produce the background stuff.

 

 

[Qizilbashwoman]

3 hours ago, Joerg said:

Well, as a challenge, put forward a character concept, and look whether the community here can produce the background stuff.

honestly uh this kind of game is for things like thieves and rebels. the problem with the Empire is that gaming in settled areas is frankly not particularly interesting in Gloranthan terms. "May you live in interesting times" is a curse in real life but a blessing in tabletop gaming (with deliberate exceptions being "games we made to try to deliberately break a rulesystem" hacks like Powered by the Apocalypse being used to make A Cozy Den, where you play queer female naga trying to ensure the most domestic bliss possible in your shared overwinter lair).

The Empire would be fun to play during Sheng, as a White Moon peace terrorist, or as a shady underworld gang.

Edited December 18, 2019 by Qizilbashwoman

[Eff]

The fundamental "problem" with Glorantha is that it approaches too close to realism, in that its societies, its on-the-ground perspectives, are implicitly similar in complexity to real-world societies, rather than the abbreviations useful for gaming and playing. 

Imagine being a worldbuilder and facing the task of coming up with a Turos for each Pelandan city! Or filling out all 49 major epithets of Orlanth and Ernalda (let alone the possibility they have 294 minor ones...) But in the real world, every city-state in the Levant appears to have had an individual Ba'al and Asherah during the early Iron Age. I haven't counted the number of epithets Odin and Freyja have (nobody actually knows for sure given our corpus of skaldic poetry is a bit limited) but it's certainly well into the double digits. 

And of course, when we say we have a good understanding of Orlanthi or Praxians compared to Lunars in terms of daily life, we're comparing apples to oranges. We know most of what we know about the former in terms of rural agricultural life. We know much less about urban Sartarites in their daily lives, or about the Oasis People of Prax. (Granted, Pelorian rice farmers are also not likely to become adventurers conventionally...) 

That being said, having made some efforts at writing things set within a stable Lunar Empire, I think the big difficulty is that it demands a much more internally-focused genre playbook than most roleplaying games are able to deliver on, let alone deliver it while remaining just as capable of delivering things like Borderlands. The big inspirations I found myself relying on were things like paranoid fiction, spy and mystery novels, etc.

So if anyone has a good way to play out Six Days Of The Condor or Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy or Twin Peaks...

Which is why, getting back to the initial topic, the tack being taken of "The Big Sun and Little Sun cults are for most intents and purposes identical across cultures and we'll use the same names of Yelm and Yelmalio for them" is in many ways a blessing, in that there's an anchoring allowing you to use "Ehilm" and "Worlath" and "Humct" by putting out a handout that just says "this is what they call X here." Maybe if you're feeling bold, you might invent a subcult and a Rune spell associated with it.

[g33k]

3 hours ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

honestly uh this kind of game is for things like thieves and rebels. the problem with the Empire is that gaming in settled areas is frankly not particularly interesting in Gloranthan terms. "May you live in interesting times" is a curse in real life but a blessing in tabletop gaming...

No, no.  I don't mean playing AS some impoverished street-rat, or toes-in-the-muck ricefarmer

But that's surely part of the background of SOME of the PC'able Lunars!

Sartarite PC's often come from farming -- or other prosaic and not-fun-to-RP -- backgrounds, after all.  Argrath seems to have gone from the sheep-pastures to his Initiation to killing some Lunars to exile and onward in VERY short order...

 

7 hours ago, Joerg said:

Well, as a challenge, put forward a character concept, and look whether the community here can produce the background stuff.

So, let's rise to @Joerg's challenge.  Let's try a Lunar PC concept...

Make them a commoner, at least in background.  They -- we -- come from the Oslir, fisher-folk for generations.  Make it the lower reaches of the river (far from Sartar, or Orlanthic Tarsh, or other RQG Homelands (we're not going to rely on the RQG core-book Family Tables (except maybe for a few world-shaking events like the Dragonrise?))).

What was happening in OUR culture, where OUR Adventurer grew up?  To our parents' generation, our grandparents?  Then... post-childhood, we got conscripted into the Imperial Legions (dunno what branch of service, yet).

We need a bunch of Family Background Tables for Oslir fisher-folk, and maybe for associated/related folk... are "wet farmers" part of the same tribe/clan/etc, the way farmers and herders in Sartar can be?  Etc...  Do we need to know -- does it make a difference -- WHERE on the Oslir we came from, other than "far from Orlanthi influences"?

Is there still Oslira-worship?  Or are these people Lodrili?  Or is this akin to the Ernalda/Orlanth relationship, a "blended family" culture?  Is Oslira now a "tame" goddess of the commoners, about endurance, acceptance, submission?  Or does hidden rebellion lurk amongst her worshipers (and if so, how will we make this NOT just be a retread of the whole Orlanth/Sartar "rebel" character-tropes & motivations & backstories?) ?   Is there gender-differentiation, e.g. priestess-only like Eiritha?  Finally, and most-importantly:  what (if anything) about Her makes Her an interesting deity for an Adventurer (PC or NPC), or in any way a "better" choice than just going with YASMI -- Yet Another Seven Mothers Initiate?

These are key questions, by-the-by...  To open up "the Lunar Empire" (not just Tarsh) as a PC background, they need to be addressed again and again and again.  About cultures and deities throughout the Empire... What makes this interesting for a PC's background?  What's different from other backgrounds of the Lunar Empire?  Is there lurking rebellion, and if so how does it differ from the same themes in Sartar?  Are there any (or many) Old Religions (besides some Yelm) that will be an interesting and viable alternative to YASMI?

Moving into Young-Adult-hood...  Yeah.  About that whole "being an Imperial Conscript" thing...  What's that like?  Do we branch the "Background" tables (got conscripted & got military training, and assigned to various military posts -vs- did not, stayed a homebody, or made their own way into some other lifepath)?  How do we figure that service?  Is it going to look like Traveller, a bit, with branches-of-service?  Or...?

===

There.

Mind you, I don't really feel the need to see this Adventurer realized; happy enough if it happens, of course!  BUT...

My point is:  even if the Grognardian Brain Trust here on BRPC comes up with everything to fully-realize this PC -- and I readily concede it as likely! -- the Lunar Empire remains a vast blackbox for most players... who cannot, after all, get GBT input on every non-Tarsh Lunar PC!!!

The Lunar Blackbox clearly contains some number of other Blackboxes; but how many?  And how different are they, one from another?  We have ONE of those sub-blackboxes, for Lunar Tarsh.  But there's clearly more, at least one for each Satrapy, and presumably one for each Province.

When will Chaosium open up the rest of those blackboxes?

 

[jajagappa]

12 minutes ago, g33k said:

But there's clearly more, at least one for each Satrapy, and presumably one for each Province.

Perhaps something like this? 🙂 A little snippet of something I have in the works.

Edited December 19, 2019 by jajagappa

[Jeff]

2 hours ago, g33k said:

No, no.  I don't mean playing AS some impoverished street-rat, or toes-in-the-muck ricefarmer

But that's surely part of the background of SOME of the PC'able Lunars!

Sartarite PC's often come from farming -- or other prosaic and not-fun-to-RP -- backgrounds, after all.  Argrath seems to have gone from the sheep-pastures to his Initiation to killing some Lunars to exile and onward in VERY short order...

 

So, let's rise to @Joerg's challenge.  Let's try a Lunar PC concept...

Make them a commoner, at least in background.  They -- we -- come from the Oslir, fisher-folk for generations.  Make it the lower reaches of the river (far from Sartar, or Orlanthic Tarsh, or other RQG Homelands (we're not going to rely on the RQG core-book Family Tables (except maybe for a few world-shaking events like the Dragonrise?))).

What was happening in OUR culture, where OUR Adventurer grew up?  To our parents' generation, our grandparents?  Then... post-childhood, we got conscripted into the Imperial Legions (dunno what branch of service, yet).

We need a bunch of Family Background Tables for Oslir fisher-folk, and maybe for associated/related folk... are "wet farmers" part of the same tribe/clan/etc, the way farmers and herders in Sartar can be?  Etc...  Do we need to know -- does it make a difference -- WHERE on the Oslir we came from, other than "far from Orlanthi influences"?

Is there still Oslira-worship?  Or are these people Lodrili?  Or is this akin to the Ernalda/Orlanth relationship, a "blended family" culture?  Is Oslira now a "tame" goddess of the commoners, about endurance, acceptance, submission?  Or does hidden rebellion lurk amongst her worshipers (and if so, how will we make this NOT just be a retread of the whole Orlanth/Sartar "rebel" character-tropes & motivations & backstories?) ?   Is there gender-differentiation, e.g. priestess-only like Eiritha?  Finally, and most-importantly:  what (if anything) about Her makes Her an interesting deity for an Adventurer (PC or NPC), or in any way a "better" choice than just going with YASMI -- Yet Another Seven Mothers Initiate?

These are key questions, by-the-by...  To open up "the Lunar Empire" (not just Tarsh) as a PC background, they need to be addressed again and again and again.  About cultures and deities throughout the Empire... What makes this interesting for a PC's background?  What's different from other backgrounds of the Lunar Empire?  Is there lurking rebellion, and if so how does it differ from the same themes in Sartar?  Are there any (or many) Old Religions (besides some Yelm) that will be an interesting and viable alternative to YASMI?

Moving into Young-Adult-hood...  Yeah.  About that whole "being an Imperial Conscript" thing...  What's that like?  Do we branch the "Background" tables (got conscripted & got military training, and assigned to various military posts -vs- did not, stayed a homebody, or made their own way into some other lifepath)?  How do we figure that service?  Is it going to look like Traveller, a bit, with branches-of-service?  Or...?

===

There.

Mind you, I don't really feel the need to see this Adventurer realized; happy enough if it happens, of course!  BUT...

My point is:  even if the Grognardian Brain Trust here on BRPC comes up with everything to fully-realize this PC -- and I readily concede it as likely! -- the Lunar Empire remains a vast blackbox for most players... who cannot, after all, get GBT input on every non-Tarsh Lunar PC!!!

The Lunar Blackbox clearly contains some number of other Blackboxes; but how many?  And how different are they, one from another?  We have ONE of those sub-blackboxes, for Lunar Tarsh.  But there's clearly more, at least one for each Satrapy, and presumably one for each Province.

When will Chaosium open up the rest of those blackboxes?

 

The first thing that will be needed are the cults of the Lunar Heartlands - which fortunately will be coming out with the Cults Book. There are some 60,000 words on Lunar cults in the forthcoming book - that's about 96 pages. Plus Yelm, Dendara, Dayzatar, Gorgorma, Lodril, Polaris, Shargash, Envirinus, Oslira, and more.  That's been the missing part on any Lunar campaign - the actual cults.

[Grievous]

Yeah, can't wait for the Cults Book to open up some views into the Pelorian mind.

The thing with grokking the Solar-Lunar connection is that it does feel a little like squeezing a square peg in a round hole. So, the Sun rules everything, but uhh we're subservient to the Lunars? I don't see the problem of integrating the Lunars into the Solar worldview in its totality (it wouldn't be difficult to see Sedenya presenting an odd and even greatly influential Illuminated cult in the orbit of the Sun, offering freedoms and viewpoints previously unavailable), but what I see as the pre-eminence of the Moon seems difficult to reconcile. Sure, the Emperor is both a Yelmic Emperor and the Red Emperor, uniting the two strands. I'm even down with that, but Sedenya still seems oddly triumphant in comparison to Yelm otherwise. So, I do struggle with this a bit as well. 

[Tindalos]

43 minutes ago, Grievous said:

So, the Sun rules everything, but uhh we're subservient to the Lunars?

Because those Lunars are Solars.

The nobility in Dara Happa are still Yelmite nobles, they're just also followers of the Red Goddess because they descend from both.

[g33k]

12 hours ago, jajagappa said:

Perhaps something like this? 🙂 A little snippet of something I have in the works.

 

Something very, VERY much like that, yes...

Is this something coming soon-ish, to the Jonstown Compendium?  Or is it going the "full professional presentation" route via Chaosium?

 

7 hours ago, Jeff said:

The first thing that will be needed are the cults of the Lunar Heartlands - which fortunately will be coming out with the Cults Book. There are some 60,000 words on Lunar cults in the forthcoming book - that's about 96 pages. Plus Yelm, Dendara, Dayzatar, Gorgorma, Lodril, Polaris, Shargash, Envirinus, Oslira, and more.  That's been the missing part on any Lunar campaign - the actual cults.

You??!?

How did you get away from your writing desk????

 

TYVM, though!  One minor note:  I was specifically looking for the bits needed to create characters from all over the Empire.  There's a whole 'nother later needed to play a campaign set within the Empire itself, as opposed to some border region, or Lunars-in-DtagonPass-or-Prax...

Edited December 19, 2019 by g33k
hating the mobile-device editor!!!

[Jeff]

5 minutes ago, Grievous said:

Yeah, can't wait for the Cults Book to open up some views into the Pelorian mind.

The thing with grokking the Solar-Lunar connection is that it does feel a little like squeezing a square peg in a round hole. So, the Sun rules everything, but uhh we're subservient to the Lunars? I don't see the problem of integrating the Lunars into the Solar worldview in its totality (it wouldn't be difficult to see Sedenya presenting an odd and even greatly influential Illuminated cult in the orbit of the Sun, offering freedoms and viewpoints previously unavailable), but what I see as the pre-eminence of the Moon seems difficult to reconcile. Sure, the Emperor is both a Yelmic Emperor and the Red Emperor, uniting the two strands. I'm even down with that, but Sedenya still seems oddly triumphant in comparison to Yelm otherwise. So, I do struggle with this a bit as well. 

I think part of the problem is that on the forums people have focused on GRoY which is a compilation of texts from 14 centuries ago to understand the Yelm cult. But FS is actually the more useful text to understand how the Dara Happan Empire became the Lunar Empire. In the Eighth Wane, Plentonius is known to pedants and mythic investigators, but it reflects the perspective of the First Age Dara Happan Empire. The Lunar Empire of the Eighth Wane is the True Empire, with the Red Goddess having restored the Light of the Sun. Moonson rules as the Emperor and is blessed by Yelm. 

In short, one can see the Empire as the Empire of Sun and Moon. Or the Empire of the Sky. The Red Moon, Yelm the Sun, Shargash, Polaris, Dayzatar, Ourania - all are celestial deities.

Of course, its enemies all know it as the "Lunar Empire".

[Eff]

2 hours ago, Grievous said:

Yeah, can't wait for the Cults Book to open up some views into the Pelorian mind.

The thing with grokking the Solar-Lunar connection is that it does feel a little like squeezing a square peg in a round hole. So, the Sun rules everything, but uhh we're subservient to the Lunars? I don't see the problem of integrating the Lunars into the Solar worldview in its totality (it wouldn't be difficult to see Sedenya presenting an odd and even greatly influential Illuminated cult in the orbit of the Sun, offering freedoms and viewpoints previously unavailable), but what I see as the pre-eminence of the Moon seems difficult to reconcile. Sure, the Emperor is both a Yelmic Emperor and the Red Emperor, uniting the two strands. I'm even down with that, but Sedenya still seems oddly triumphant in comparison to Yelm otherwise. So, I do struggle with this a bit as well. 

One note: the fact that we're getting our perspectives from people on the fringes of the Empire is a major factor in shaping how we understand the Lunar Way as it is practiced. The Moon seems preeminent because you have upwardly mobile provincials being dedicated and pious to win some favor and respect from the Heartlands, and the kind of people who have genuinely missionary zeal, and the kind of people who you put somewhere they can't do any harm, and the kind of people who have big ideas and need space in which to work them. 

But in practical terms, the Sedenya cult consists of weirdos with a mystical bent, the Seven Mothers are assorted weirdos (Jakaleel, Teelo, Danfive) or bureaucrats (Deezola, Irippi, Yanafal), Etyries is a merchant, Valare and Kana are even more cloistered weirdos, Hwarin and Hon-eel are Provincial cults... So in the domains of existence that are important to noble Pelorians, they are still as in charge as they have ever been, and Yelm clearly rules the universe, with his loyal daughter, Sedenya, showing recalcitrant people how to achieve peace with that fact. 

Of course, outsiders see the Moon ruling over the Sun, but who cares what they think, right? 

[JonL]

2 hours ago, Grievous said:

Yeah, can't wait for the Cults Book to open up some views into the Pelorian mind.

The thing with grokking the Solar-Lunar connection is that it does feel a little like squeezing a square peg in a round hole. So, the Sun rules everything, but uhh we're subservient to the Lunars? I don't see the problem of integrating the Lunars into the Solar worldview in its totality (it wouldn't be difficult to see Sedenya presenting an odd and even greatly influential Illuminated cult in the orbit of the Sun, offering freedoms and viewpoints previously unavailable), but what I see as the pre-eminence of the Moon seems difficult to reconcile. 

The Solar perspective also does not see a Moon as a different category of celestial object than a Sun. The Glorious Reascent of Yelm records Sedenya the Changer as the Sun of Mernitia, though an inferior and inconstant one compared to righteous Antirius. As recorded in the Fortunate Succession, when the Red Goddess is reborn in the Third Age, she acknowledges Yelmgatha as Imperial Sun and sovereign over the lands she had liberated from the Carmanians, and as Emperor he in turn confirms her name and proper place in the cosmos as Sedenya, granddaughter of Dayzatar.

 

2 hours ago, Grievous said:

Sure, the Emperor is both a Yelmic Emperor and the Red Emperor, uniting the two strands. I'm even down with that, but Sedenya still seems oddly triumphant in comparison to Yelm otherwise. So, I do struggle with this a bit as well. 

The Lunar Period isn't that different from the Kargzant, Antirius, Nysalor, or Sun Dragon periods, in that respect, or the foretold  Monster Empire to come. Being the Imperial Sun is as much a ritual status as it is an identity. 

From my own perspective, I don't see Kargzant and Yu-Kargzant as different beings. Those who acknowledge a deity other than the Sun Horse God as the Great Reigning Sun call the Sun Horse God "Kargzant" (or perhaps "Galanin," but let's not confuse things further) Those who know the Sun Horse God is the current Great Reigning Sun who returned light to the world after previous one was slain add the "Y'-" prefix. In completing the Ten Tests, Jenarong proved "Y'Kargzant" to be "Y'Elm"'s successor. 

Edited December 19, 2019 by JonL