Ask Jeff! Glorantha Lore questions

[Richard S.]

What's the connection between the Harshax and Belintar? I can't remember exactly where I heard this, but I believe Belintar was called "Belintar of the Harshax" in some book. Is the Harshax's kingdom perhaps what remains of the holy country in the fourth age?

[M Helsdon]

When did Gonn Orta create the High Llama Pass?

[Joerg]

Oops, wrong thread.

 

Building on @M Helsdon's question, wouldn't there have been a pre-existing pass across the Nidan Mountains in this place, based on the Ralios godtime myths and the mention of the Llama Hsunchen (who would probably have been converted under the Bright Empire), which would make naming the pass after them two centuries later a bit weird?

Edited May 6, 2020 by Joerg

[oomizuao]

Is there any information about disappeared city of the White Heart,

or the White Heart Revelations?

[MOB]

Sadly, due to the Covid-19 restrictions on large gatherings, Eternal Con couldn't go ahead last weekend. One of the most popular events at Eternal Con has always been the "Ask Jeff" seminar. People ask their questions about Chaosium, RuneQuest, Call of Cthulhu, Pendragon, ancient history, mythology, whatever, and Chaosium's Jeff Richard does his best to answer them. Jeff went to the castle anyway, and did his AMA on Twitch. And here it is!

 

 

[Crel]

I got to hang out for the Twitch stream, and it was good fun. Thanks to Chaosium & Jeff for doing this!

[g33k]

1 minute ago, Crel said:

I got to hang out for the Twitch stream, and it was good fun. Thanks to Chaosium & Jeff for doing this!

Congratulations!

Any startling, intriguing, or otherwise "standout" takeaways?

Any word on when the recording will be posted?

[Crel]

Just now, g33k said:

Any word on when the recording will be posted?

It's up in MOB's post .

[g33k]

Just now, Crel said:

It's up in MOB's post .

D'OH!

Didn't notice that was a livelink (wasn't that the same image used to promo the AMA session ahead of time???)

So, was that a fumble on a tech roll, or a notice roll?

[Runeblogger]

I'm looking forward to watching the White Bull campain online. 😀 But I wonder if it will contain spoilers... Maybe my GM won't let me see it after all!

OTOH, the Sartar Homeland book doesn't look too exciting. You could just direct your players to Sartar: Kingdom of Heroes for the same content, right?

[Jeff]

1 hour ago, Runeblogger said:

I'm looking forward to watching the White Bull campain online. 😀 But I wonder if it will contain spoilers... Maybe my GM won't let me see it after all!

OTOH, the Sartar Homeland book doesn't look too exciting. You could just direct your players to Sartar: Kingdom of Heroes for the same content, right?

Way more content, and way better put together. Clan and tribal economics and explanation, cults information, a complete gazetteer of Sartar at a greater level of detail (and far more useful information) than the old Dragon Pass gazetteer, etc. It explains Sartar far better than Sartar: Kingdom of Heroes did. And it is set now rather than during the Lunar Occupation. I am already finding my manuscript as my go to reference on Sartar.

[redmoongoddess]

(Note: I've not watched the entire stream through yet, so I apologize if most of these are already answered.)

How many pages will da new Sartar book be?

What non-Orlanthi culture do you think will be the first to get an supplement of their own?

Can you give us an idea of what the new Heroquesting rules will play like?

Do you think there'll be any "Masks Of Nyarlathotep" style multi-continent campaigns in the near or far future?

Just exactly how many years in advance do you think your current pipeline of published books extends out to?

Do you ever get breaks?

[Joerg]

7 hours ago, redmoongoddess said:

What non-Orlanthi culture do you think will be the first to get an supplement of their own?

Not mentioned in the session as far as I remember, but my bet would be trolls. There doesn't seem to be a campaign book for beast riders anywhere near completion, otherwise they would be a good guess. There was a rumour about a Grazelands setting, but the revised troll material has been toted for a few years now.

 

Quote

Do you think there'll be any "Masks Of Nyarlathotep" style multi-continent campaigns in the near or far future?

There was an attempt to make Harrek's Circumnavigation into a campaign you could participate in, but unfortunately @Loz seems to have dropped it after RQG parted ways from The Design Mechanism. What I have played (one scenario) and heard about playtesting sounded like a fun romp.

The Guide mentions the travels of Gebel, the blue Teshnan searching for the Sword of Tolat. He ends up enmeshed in Fonrit, but I can't tell whether he actually recovered the sword, or whether he may move onward. There is a good possibility for Kethaelan characters to accompany Gebel, given their presence in Dosakayo on Melib, just outside of mainland Teshnos. We are going to see at least a bit of that in the intermediate future. Likewise Harrek is going to return to Laskal, and people may accompany him.

The naval campaigns between the Waertagi and the Dormalites (spearheaded by the Wolf Pirates) are fairly continent-jumping, too, and can be written in such a way. The Borg Waertagi chasing a single ship or a small flotilla separated from the rest by a GM fiat event... sounds vaguely familiar.

 

 

[Frp]

On 6/4/2020 at 7:23 AM, MOB said:

Sadly, due to the Covid-19 restrictions on large gatherings, Eternal Con couldn't go ahead last weekend. One of the most popular events at Eternal Con has always been the "Ask Jeff" seminar. People ask their questions about Chaosium, RuneQuest, Call of Cthulhu, Pendragon, ancient history, mythology, whatever, and Chaosium's Jeff Richard does his best to answer them. Jeff went to the castle anyway, and did his AMA on Twitch. And here it is!

 

Thanks for doing this I enjoyed it. 

I do have one not exactly lore question though: if there's a Kralorela manuscript out there that's, close to, or ready to go to print why wait? I get that there might not be enough resources to work on more than one product at once, but if you're waiting to develop an audience we're here. I've wanted to see the edges, East, West & South of Glorantha filled in for more than 30 years.  

[Charles]

11 hours ago, Frp said:

if there's a Kralorela manuscript out there that's, close to, or ready to go to print why wait?

it depends on our definitions of manuscript and ready to go to print.

My understanding is that a manuscript is just the text (perhaps copy edited, probably not edited for Chaosium Canon). Ready to print includes art and layout, which are huge tasks in their own right, plus full editing of the manuscript (of course).

Other considerations  include the publishing pipeline and marketing. Many Gloranthaphiles have limited budget and might not be able to purchase all of several books published in close succession. It may make far better business sense for Chaosium to delay a specialist book that is ready in favour of a book with more general appeal that is 80% done. I have no idea of what is actually going on, so this latter comment is pure speculation with zero basis in fact or rumour.

Edited June 8, 2020 by Charles

[redmoongoddess]

12 hours ago, Frp said:

I do have one not exactly lore question though: if there's a Kralorela manuscript out there that's, close to, or ready to go to print why wait? 

A manuscript doesn't equal an finished product. For all we know it could be only half done. And not to mention these are gaming products. They always need to be play tested to judge if they'll actually work in the system. And they currently want to focus on the areas that are closer to Sartar first (I.E. Esrolia) so there's an logical reason why the players would go there in a pre-existing campaign, as supposed to being only really useful to people wanting to start an entirely new campaign. 

...But I do have to agree with you that waiting for the non-orlanthi/praxian areas to finally be fleshed out is going to be a fucking pain. May the new Sartar book's production cycle be speedy in comparison. May we not wait anymore than a year for it.

Edited June 8, 2020 by redmoongoddess

[g33k]

On 6/4/2020 at 11:54 PM, Joerg said:

Not mentioned in the session as far as I remember, but my bet would be trolls. There doesn't seem to be a campaign book for beast riders anywhere near completion, otherwise they would be a good guess. There was a rumour about a Grazelands setting, but the revised troll material has been toted for a few years now.

Nochet is another likely bet, IMHO; so is the revised Sun County.

David has done a helluva lotta work on Praxpak, but I've honestly got NO idea how close the "manuscript" itself is.  What he's shown, AFAIK, is mosly R&D and foundational materials, rather than text ready for the edit/art/layout process.

MOB has teaser'ed sections of text that honestly seem like they come from a "manuscript-like" document, so his may be very very close.

 

[redmoongoddess]

19 hours ago, g33k said:

Nochet is another likely bet, IMHO; so is the revised Sun County.

David has done a helluva lotta work on Praxpak, but I've honestly got NO idea how close the "manuscript" itself is.  What he's shown, AFAIK, is mosly R&D and foundational materials, rather than text ready for the edit/art/layout process.

MOB has teaser'ed sections of text that honestly seem like they come from a "manuscript-like" document, so his may be very very close.

 

While I am excited for it, I sorta count Nochet under the "Orlanthi" department since they're followers of Ernalda, and still worship Orlanth...as an dude who is just Ernalda's dumb husband. Where on the net are you getting these teases from? The OP should really be updated to include that sort of stuff.

[g33k]

1 hour ago, redmoongoddess said:

While I am excited for it, I sorta count Nochet under the "Orlanthi" department since they're followers of Ernalda, and still worship Orlanth...as an dude who is just Ernalda's dumb husband. Where on the net are you getting these teases from? The OP should really be updated to include that sort of stuff.

The main "party line" in Esrolia, I think, is that Orlanth is the "bad husband," feckless and wandering and never around when you really NEED him.  Hence the "husband-protector" tradition.

The OP (the post) is generally updated when (a) new news comes out and (b) the OP (the guy who wrote it originally) finds news-item-(a) & has time to re-edit the top-post.

 

David's PraxPak has some material here:
https://basicroleplaying.org/topic/4141-prax-and-the-thousand-questions-about-the-place

https://basicroleplaying.org/topic/4533-the-praxian-tradition/

MOB's stuff is more scattered on the forums.  He apparently has at least 50K words in his working draft; try this Google search:

• "The Great Winter and Time of Two Counts" site:basicroleplaying.org

That's the working title of the draft, and he often cites it when he quotes from it.

[redmoongoddess]

20 hours ago, redmoongoddess said:

While I am excited for it, I sorta count Nochet under the "Orlanthi" department since they're followers of Ernalda, and still worship Orlanth...as an dude who is just Ernalda's dumb husband. Where on the net are you getting these teases from? The OP should really be updated to include that sort of stuff.

lmao i thought i was posting in the "upcoming supplements" thread. Woops. And TY for da links, G33K!

[Sir_Godspeed]

40 minutes ago, redmoongoddess said:

just Ernalda's dumb husband

I mean, who isn't.

Edited June 10, 2020 by Sir_Godspeed

[Puckohue]

Why's the Pegaus Plateau not called Hippogriff Plateau?

[Glorion]

58 minutes ago, Puckohue said:

Why's the Pegaus Plateau not called Hippogriff Plateau?

My theory: it's where ZZ ripped off the wings of the pegasi, turning them into horses. Presumably there are still a few pegasi somewhere, but only a truly heroic pegasus would want to go there of all places!

[redmoongoddess]

I find it odd that he's not answered any questions for months.

[Hijabg]

Where are the white elves ? if they are still part of Yelmdrya, but are gone from this world, how can we contact them ?

Quote

The third seed of Flamal's seeds was lifted up to Yelmalio, Yelmdrya was born. Yelmdrya is the mother of all plants grown upon the Sun, as well as their collective soul. The White Elves are still a part of Yelmdrya though they are now gone from the world.

Greg Stafford, The World of Plants, in Rule One Magazine,  issue #9, http://www.ruleonemagazine.com/Iss9/WorldOfPlants.php