Gods of stone

[French Desperate WindChild]

I am pretty sure that in a polytheistic culture you find god / demigod / subcult / hero / ...  you prey (obtaining or not blessing and magic) for everything known by the culture. The only absence would be for weird foreign activity (in that culture) but, after been adopted, this activity will be assigned to a god too (after all, there is a god of sorcery even in orlanthi culture now)

Of course it seems impossible to me for chaosium (or anyone else) to list every thing, every one, every where. the focus must be done to the play.

Sometimes I discover some gods I found from "nowhere" in some posts by official or glorantha lore masters.

The main issue I see is this lore is given but already lost for the next generation (one month later) but I don't know how to solve this problem. (I know there are some publication like arcane lore, etc.. but they are hard to use as source of knowledge by some of glorantha fans)

That's for me the fate / curse of glorantha, more than chaos, more than eurmal tricks, more than rules unbalance / inconsitency, this world is so great than everyone expects the higher level of description for what is important to him/her, sometimes for play, sometimes for lore.

 

 

[Akhôrahil]

14 hours ago, Manu said:

I realized that in the Glorantha I know, there is no god of stone (Earth, yes stone no) : Miner, mountains, hard rock, quarrymen,....

A part of that is that Stone - Mostal's brother - is dead, killed by elves during the Gods' War.

[David Scott]

15 hours ago, Manu said:

I realized that in the Glorantha I know, there is no god of stone (Earth, yes stone no) : Miner, mountains, hard rock, quarrymen,....

And I can easily imagine that when you build a big city, especially in a magical world like Glorantha, they use magic to do it. But which God is helping to do it.

This is an interesting question and has been mentioned previously, Stone is now a dead god and so can't be worshipped. If you want assistance in mining stone, I think you'd get no support from the dead god, so it's down to the tools you use. If you want direct help, Mostal, apostate dwarfs and sorcery are the obvious things to me. For treasures within the Earth, that's Asrelia or her equivalents. Sartar has dwarf magic for the Dragon Pass region, there's Flintnail for Pavis (along with Pavis sorcery). Tool-wise, as has been mentioned, Gusbran for the craft fires' many guises (tools, lime, etc). Outside of cities, there's likely little actual masonry work.

Chimneys which would need masonry don't seem to appear until Roman times, so are outside of the scope of Bronze age Glorantha. Underground the dwarfs likely use chimney systems but wouldn't look like anything we would understand as such (sorcerously controlled bound air elementals, for example).

How recent is the newest masonry work in Glorantha. How active are masons in building new stuff? Are they more involved in maintenance and patching than building?

[Tindalos]

34 minutes ago, David Scott said:

Chimneys which would need masonry don't seem to appear until Roman times, so are outside of the scope of Bronze age Glorantha. Underground the dwarfs likely use chimney systems but wouldn't look like anything we would understand as such (sorcerously controlled bound air elementals, for example).

We do have some examples of dwarven chimney work, in the Haunted Ruins. They're pretty much straight holes up from the ruins, heading through to the surface.

Another example of chimney work is Miskander's Tower, which may suggest that the secret of chimneys was stolen from the dwarves.

[Bohemond]

10 hours ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

That's all well and good, but we know that Heortlings have had cities for centuries, both in Hendrikiland and in Kerofinela itself. Orlanthland had cities. Hendrikiland had cities. Orlanthi were the prime drivers of urbanization in Dorastor and in Prax (and Ralian and Fronelan Orlanthi have also urbanized independently), and founded and pushed for urban consolidation in southern Peloria as well, where notable urban centres existed even before Lunar expansion (and probably had for centuries, though I am not an expert on the nitty gritty chronology there), and this is not even taking into account their neighboring Esrolians who, despite cultural differences, have mingled with Heortlings enough geographically, politically and culturally (Colymar supposedly claims to be from Esrolia, but was culturally Hendriki, and the whole marriage unions and Adjustment Wars and Heortling sections in Nochet, and Esrolian architectural and artistic styles dominating in all of Kethaela and Kerofinala, etc. show that there's no magical line between the two groups) and is literally the most densely populated place in the whole world, with its single largest city since the Opening, and an urban civilization going back to the Green Age. 

My point is: it's complicated. IMHO, Orlanthi society is not predicated upon urban organization, but Orlanthi have a long, long history of building and organizing towns. However turbulent they might be.

I was looking specifically at the Sartarites, not Heortlings in general. The Sartarites lost touch with some deities when they migrated (at least in KoDP and Six Ages, that's a risk of migration), and it makes sense that the gods of more urbanized activities would have been much more hard for them to maintain relationships with. By the time Sartar came, city life was out of living memory for them (barring the occasional supernaturally long-lived migrant). Why continue to worship a god (or an aspect of a god) who doesn't provide a service your culture needs? The Roman were incredibly conservatives about such things and continued performing rituals they no longer understood, but the Sartarites are more change-prone, and jettisoning rituals and cult relationships they don't have a use for would make sense for them. 

[Joerg]

14 hours ago, Manu said:

I realized that in the Glorantha I know, there is no god of stone (Earth, yes stone no) : Miner, mountains, hard rock, quarrymen,....

There are gods of the near underground. In Dara Happa that's Lodril, in the Holy Country Veskarthen or Caladra have been cited.

Veskarthen is a craft god and architect's god, too - he created the Obsidian Palace when chained by Argan Argar.

14 hours ago, Manu said:

And I can easily imagine that when you build a big city, especially in a magical world like Glorantha, they use magic to do it. But which God is helping to do it.

Sorcery. A lot about architecture and mining is knowledge, and Lhankor Mhy has that (or indeed all) knowledge, and the sorcery to do this. Whether his temples have it, or how much of that they have, is another question.

Dowsing for minerals or metal nuggets (the common form of metal mining in Glorantha, except by the dwarves who know about smelting - transmuting ores into metals, not liquidifying metal, that's melting, something completely different, which may nonetheless occur under smelting conditions) can use knowledge, too (read Georg Agricola's 16th century books on mining), or you could use detection magic - both the province of LM; or divination to an underground deity (Asrelia, Esrola, Veskarthen, Caladra, local mountain deities... or LM who knows what they know).

Most Neolithic, Copper- and Bronze Age mining I found reports on used methods well known from Gold washing. Dig up the dirt, separate off the stuff you don't want with the aid of local water and motion, then collect your finds. Depending on the size of the nuggets or bone splinters you find, you can melt the stuff (losing much of the special properties of gods' bones) or weld them together (retaining quite a bit of that) for your next step. Both these processes are the province of Gustbran, although Lhankor Mhy sorcery may be as helpful. Apostate Copper and Bronze Mostali have their own knowledge which even Lhankor Mhy may not be privy of, or not allowed to share.

12 hours ago, Richard S. said:

This brings up another question I've been wondering: where are the mines? Maybe it's talked about in the guide and I just missed it, but where does all the metal come from and who mines it?

Wherever deities were maimed or killed in the Gods War you have a chance to find splinters of Gods' Bones. Dead Volcanoes are a good source for brass, usually without much of a god's bone structure, but fine for normal implements. These are the main exception where you want to go underground for your metal mining.

Most deposits will be secondary deposits as the "motherlodes" (body parts, corpses) were ravaged in the Gods War, and the detritus distributed by the forces of erosion (Storm and Water, mainly, with corroding Darkness doing prep work) and tectonics (whatever made the earth shake).
Sedimentation will have played a role, but I tend to think of it more like sea entities creating or excreting Mother-of-Pearl-like layers of sediment over or inside detritus than conventional sedimentation. The latter only started after Sky River Titan called on the rivers of the world to change course and to lend their collective energies to Magasta's whirlpool, after the implosion of the Spike (caused by: High King Elf - Zzabur - the invading Chaos horde - name your foe, possibly some other not from this list).

 

11 hours ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

In Revealed Mythologies, Mostal is separated from Latsom. While Mostal is in some way seen as a world-maker and active agent, Latsom is seen as a kind of personification of stone (and possibly all the Earth, but seemingly primarily stone). Latsom is also seen as Mostal's brother. 

Latsom or Stone - the Mostali revere a prima materia that was "vibrantly alive" (if slowly so), matter infused with magical energy. The great bodies of True Dragons or Elder Giants may be similar to that, as is the matter of the Red and Blue Moons (whose special properties we know quite a bit about).

 

11 hours ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

When people talk about Stone dying to the Elves, it is likely that it's Latsom's death they are talking about. 

Grower drawing out the magical energy from the stone into soil, and from there into the plants, and sending High King Elf to end the Mostali reversing that process, axing the root of the Spike. This was after Death had introduced a balance of Life and Death that was closer to a zero-sum closed system than the previous age of freely available Creation.

 

11 hours ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

However, this is likely a human and theistic take on it all, as Mostali/Dwarves do not actually anthropomorphize Mostal as much as you'd think, with references in the Sourcebook, iirc, pointing out that to the Mostali, Mostal is less an ancestor and personage, and more a term for the collective systems and processes of all of Glorantha. He is the World Machine, ie. effectively cosmos. If it is a god, it is a Pantheos. (This might be worth discussing in its own thread, but that's my take on it). 

So, basically, the notion of a god of stone is often linked to Dwarves, yes, but this is a human notion, not a Dwarven one.

I agree that it is more a philosophical concept, but one with manifest material reality.

IMO most Mostali magic is the anti-thesis of Tap: Endow. They put magical energy into matter, and have leaned to direct the results they are getting from that. RQ simulates that by requiring permanend POW to cast many Mostali sorceries. Stone is the ideal result of matter endowed to its fill. And Adamant is taking that matter and putting it to a purpose.

 

9 hours ago, Bohemond said:

Rather than seeing this as part of Gustbran's work (which to me feels like a stretch, since mining and masonry aren't really tasks that require fire except incidentally to see), I think it's more likely that the Sartarites simply don't have any gods who do this.

Gustbran (or Thunder Rebels mentions of his less known brothers as aspect of Gustbran) is the god of pyrotechnology, including pottery, chalk-burning, large-scale baking, tempering of flint and similar for knapping, steam-treating lumber, and metalworking. Gadblad is a dark alternative for brute force metalworking. Humakt knows everything about honing a blade. Any knowledge-based craft will profit from at least Lhankor Mhy lay membership.

If you want to tunnel into rock or bring a hillside down, fire is your most effective tool - forget pick axes or chisels. Acids may add to that efficiency. The Iron Age mines in Iberia which led to the Romans removing an entire mountain and Hannibal's Crossing of the Alps a mountainside using fire and vinegar against limestone.

Calcinated limestone was used for Terrazzo floors in Göbekli Tepe (a pre-metal settlement except for a cold-hammered macehead of native copper), showcasing the importance of Gustbran (or maybe a lesser brother of his worshiped through his cult) for architecture.

Greg's notes on architecture in Glorantha also mention concrete, not just used by the dwarves but also by the Kadeniti builders of ancient Danmalastan. There are references to concrete in Entekosiad, too, indicating an exchange between the Turosi Pelandans and western knowledge. Turos/Lodril/Veskarthen is the provider of volcanic Pozzolan tuff that can be heated into cement.

Masons and miners (whether tunneling or secondary deposit mining) will want tools, too, another pointer towards Gustbran.

 

9 hours ago, Bohemond said:

Not every Glorantha society has a deity for every possible function, and as a result they are much better at some things than other things. Sartarites are pretty good at war and pretty good at cattle-raising, but kinda crappy at a lot of the things required for cities in part because they have gods for war and cattle-tending, but not for city-making. Sartar had to teach them even the concept of the city and it was such a stretch that it didn't really work very well. These are a people slowly making the transition to urban life, and in many ways they're not really ready for it yet. 

Orlanth, Argan Argar, Yelmalio, Veskarthan and Heler (or aspects/heroes of them) all are everyman deities in their respective cultures, usually wed to Ernalda or a daughter/sister of hers. All have crafts associated with them. Do you want to gold-plate something? Ask at a Sun Dome Temple. Want to construct a dome? Like a Sun Dome?

 

8 hours ago, Bohemond said:

Part of Sartar's work was to bring the (soon to be) Sartarites together by getting them to build cities. The strategy he chose is pretty odd. He got tribes to join into confederations, with each confederation maintaining a city. Then they had to figure out how to govern these weird communities that cut across clan and tribal boundaries, and they did it by creating a town ring, which was a new thing adapted from an old thing. He had to recruit wyters for the towns (Hauberk Jon, Wilm, and Swen) because the Sartarites had no deities who could naturally play that function for them.

I think you are approaching this from the wrong end. Sartar introduced the concept of a confederation not based on a single charismatic leader, but on a common interest or goal, manifest as a city where each member tribe had an equal say. The wyters for these confederations did not start out as their name-giving founders - these guys started out as the first chief priests of those wyters. Only after their deaths they were somehow merged with the previous wyter entity which was in all likelihood the genius loci of the respective city sites.

 

8 hours ago, Bohemond said:

The residents of these new communities don't quite fit into the normal clan and tribal communities--they're not really members of any of the clans or tribes--members of those tribes don't stay with kinsmen in the town, but instead stay at tribal halls maintained for them. KoDP (which I realize isn't canonical) presents the creation of the town as something new and weird and requiring a willingness to do something new.

The cities bring a new form of clan directly reporting to the confederation, the guild or guilds of the city. Guild citizens make up about 30-60% of the citizenship, depending on the investment of the surrounding tribes in terms of manpower to the city. The tribal contingents in a city form a quasi-clan, too, with a legal balancing act between birth (or marriage) clan and tribal manor as their legal backbone. These people become free tenants of the respective tribal temples, or more exactly, the city branch of these temples. Finally, the cities may be the seat of special temples (Lhankor Mhy, Chalana Arroy, Issaries, Humakt, Yelmalio) whose resident membership may result in citizenship, too.

A citizen of Jonstown could be a tribal citizen (but doesn't have to be), could be a guild citizen (and tribal, but that's not necessary or the rule), could be a special temple citizen, but should be at least one of these, and will be registered both with the city wyter as a whole and with his lower level citizenship wyters.

A clan-based or triaty-based small city like Clearwine or Runegate does not have a guild, but it does have temple citizenship as an alternative or addition to clan citizenship.

 

8 hours ago, Bohemond said:

To me, all of that looks like improvisation Sartar is doing. He's adapting and modifying existing concepts and practices because there's nothing there that directly corresponds to what he needs to make this new thing. The best the Sartarites have before him is tribal forts, which seem to be much simpler things than towns. Sartar's a Larnsting, so he's good at changing things to make new things. 

The word you are looking for is "Change". Sartar comes from Heortland, which has an unbroken history of cities and urban citizenship since the middle of the Dawn Age, with guilds, and Sartar was familiar with that, and his companion Wilms even more so. The ancestors of the Quivini may have known that concept, too, but there were six to eight generations between them leaving Kethaela and the coming of Sartar, leaving the majority of the Quivini with a profound ignorance on these forms of organisation.

 

8 hours ago, jajagappa said:

Given that Sartar brought in dwarfs to build Boldhome and probably the roads (I don't recall on the others), there's not a strong building culture here (unlike Esrolia). 

Wilmskirk was built without dwarven help (but with the help of Kethaelan friends of Wilms joining the tribal population of that city, bolstering its guild). Quarrying and masonry became the new way to wealth for many a stick-picker or cottar as the royal roads required maintenance, and the new roads and building projects of the Princes did so, too.

Saronil opened up an influx of Sairdite building traditions from urban Tarsh, and he befriended the dwarves there, too, learning about building of towers beyond the techniques already known to Wilms and his cult.

8 hours ago, jajagappa said:

Doesn't mean there isn't a god for this, but as you note Sartar does not necessarily require/need one, or might just call upon Barntar as a sort of Everyman.

It wouldn't surprise me to learn that Wilms was an initiate of Lhankor Mhy rather than some specialized craft god.

There may be such a thing as specialized craft gods - spirit cults associated to the guild wyters, but connecting beyond individual city confederations. These may also be subcults of the deities mentioned above, or of Lhankor Mhy, meaning that you'll find a shrine and a god-talker or associate priest maintaining the shrine somewhere in the city.

8 hours ago, jajagappa said:

And that was one of the problems with HW/HQ1 in that they tried to come up with obscure little deities for each and every function.  

All of these names were really names or titles of the deity (or aspect) in question. The only problematic forms in Thunder Rebels are the Allfather/Allmother ones that have no RQG equivalent for such an aspect.

 

7 hours ago, lordabdul said:

I get the impression that most Orlanthi see rocks as just a part of the Earth, and that's why they don't have a cult or even much knowledge about how to do masonry. They pick up the rocks, they pile them up, they throw them at each other, they might even play music with them and other such uses, but it's still "magic" or "obscure awesome hero and/or dwarf knowledge" that someone might be able to *shape* the rocks into something else than what they were when they got picked up in the first place.

I get the impression that the ancestors of the Orlanthi (possibly the Tada-shi of the lands west of Prax) were accomplished masons and well-versed in polygonal irregular rock architecture requiring a shaping skill that was mostly lost during the Gods War. The Vingkotling Hill Forts, Karse, and significant parts of the Nochet Walls apparently use this earthquake-proof architecture and have withstood even Veskarthen's Desolation.

You'll find this kind of architecture in many a real world ancient building, usually accompanied by the adjective "cyclopean". Same in Glorantha.

In the real world, we can only marvel at such structures in meso-America, Inka structures, Polynesia, or the Old World. You'll find plenty of these in websites associated with Atlantis or similar pseudo-historical themes. Experimental archaeologists are still struggling to find ingenious ways to reproduce that kind of masonry.

In the Gloranthan Godtime, we have access to methods that may reach from singing to living matter (a lesser variation of the dwarven Adamant method I postulated above) to magical separation or similar. Indeed, the EWF architecture apparently was able to awaken draconic energies in matter and reproduce some of those Godtime skills, and certainly the EWF architecture added to the nigh-indestructible remains of Vingkotling and earlier architecture.

 

7 hours ago, lordabdul said:

Since the Orlanthi have known about that for a little while now (Sartar's roads and walled cities are not exactly new), and since the Orlanthi still haven't done much about it, I think we can assume that they are, indeed, the stupid conservative barbarians that they are, and that's possibly why the Lunars feel so justified in "civilizing" them.

Rural backwater hillbilly clans like the Varmandi, or purposely "primitive" ones like the Annmagarn whose life-style is adapted to the compact with the lady of the Colymar Wilds, Tarndisi, are quite remote from that. The clans with a presence in Clearwine are clearly exposed to Nochet-style masonry, and I suspect a good portion of the hereditary priestess families of the Clearwine temple hail from Esrolia since before the coming  of Sartar.

The Colymar are the biggest exception to the Sartarite tribes with their lack of city confederation membership. The Lismelder have the same status thanks to the Colymar insisting on honoring their pact with Tarndisi over the new offer of Sartar. Duck Point doesn't seem to have a confederation wyter other than the Duck tribal wyter (which they may not have had prior to the coming of Sartar, being an integrated part of Beast Valley instead).

The more remote tribes like the Torkani or the Dundealos may not interact with their cities that much, and be of similar sophistication as the rural Colymar in terms of architecture.

7 hours ago, lordabdul said:

Mind you, guys like Sartar might have kept all masonry knowledge (among other things) close to their chest in order to secure their legacy... it doesn't look so magic and awesome if you explain the trick to the masses.

The cult of Wilms also provides the necessary knowledge for the road workers of Sartar, distributed among the city confederations - possibly as a separate guild allowing also non-residents of the cities a membership. I have no idea how Jeff is going to mention the upkeep of the royal roads in the upcoming Jonstown description, and there may be no mention of this in that product (which is aimed at new GMs of RQG rather than old grognards).

7 hours ago, lordabdul said:

I think it was a fair consequence of some of the often overly-mythical aspects of Glorantha... for example, someone might say "a lot of diseases come from spirits". That's fine. But instead, we're told that no, *all* diseases come from spirits. Does this means there's no bacteria? If so, a whole bunch of stuff falls down and you need spirits to make cheese or something. That's how HW/HQ1 ended up with spirits and gods for making beer and alcohol AFAICT.

Sorcerers would call these spirits or natural principles associated with the elements.

Think of micro-organisms as colony entities that can be approached like spirits. That soothes my personal sciency cravings when dealing with these aspects of Glorantha. In case of doubt, ask me on Wind Words.

7 hours ago, lordabdul said:

Of course, there are many other and better ways to handle this particular problem, but I don't want to derail the thread... so I'll just say that one way to handle it is that deities don't have to map 1:1 to a thing we, as modern humans, know as "a thing". So for example, rock slides and avalanches might be Maran Gor, finding good rocks in the ground might be a quick prayer to (or even a "finding" spell from) Ernalda/your local Earth goddess, figuring out how to cut stone and pile them up (architecture-ish stuff) might be Lhankor Mhy cult secret that they reverse engineered from Mostali documents or whatever, and actually breaking the stones according to the plan might be, well, Maran Gor again maybe? Or Lhankhor Mhy sorcery? Or just nobody in particular: the sage just points at the drawing and says "hit here".

I think I did a recent rant elsethread that your cult needn't reflect your everyday occupation one on one. Rinse and repeat here.

7 hours ago, lordabdul said:

Yeah there's not much... I asked about it in the Gloranthan Lore thread, but it was ignored so I guess Jeff doesn't think it's interesting. You can actually tell it's not interesting to the main authors because AFAICT there's not a lot of mention about cutting people's resources in times of war -- even though I think resources and trade were a big factor (and sometimes a trigger) in many classical era wars and politics. Instead, the focus in Glorantha is almost always on alliances and magic and myths which, I guess is really what Glorantha is about. It's telling how the Lunars focus on expanding the Glowline and bringing about the Great Winter instead of, you know, taking control of the few mines that Sartarites rely on to build all their armour and weapons. Nope, when armies clash, nobody asks who built their shields, the same way (to quote Grant Morrison) nobody should ask who pumps the tires on the Batmobile...

I don't see much evidence for architectural magic taking up a major slot in the Great Argrath Campaign. We know from Argrath Saga that there will be a new type of temple built by the prince of that name, and that may become an assignment to player character followers of his. As the king of Pavis, he does have access to masons with two cults behind them, both sorcerous.

6 hours ago, Tindalos said:

Orlanth's had subcults since the earliest day devoted to items taken from other gods. What's the problem with having subcults devoted to Orlanth as a farmer or Carpenter?

One problem lay in the Thunder Rebels style to name that specialisation more prominently than the main cult of that cultist. "Initiate of Destor" rather than "Initiate of Orlanth, of the Adventurous subcult".

 

6 hours ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

That's all well and good, but we know that Heortlings have had cities for centuries, both in Hendrikiland and in Kerofinela itself. Orlanthland had cities.

And had them already going into the Gbaji Wars, I suppose. The Second Council or High Council of Genertela was already a fairly advanced civilization, and brought a wave of civilization and magical experimentation that has been retroactively confused with the EWF.

The wyrm species is a result of Second Council experimentation, well before the Osentalka project, and probably before the move to Dorastor, possibly concluded with magic found there. The cities were in all likelihood ruled by priests of their respective main temples, if you look at the composition of the Council of Orlanthland. These urban lords became loathe to bow to a High King after Arkat had liberated their lands, and when Hardros Hardslaughter liberated them from Arkat's Command for good, they made him a Great Living Hero (the object of a cult) rather than their High King.

It was that structure that was infiltrated by Obduran the Flyer around 750 (out of memory, look up the exact dates in the Guide or History of the Heortling Peoples or Heortling Mythology if you want).

6 hours ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

Hendrikiland had cities.

If you mean the Heortland plateau, yes. The Hendriki had two, maybe three cities: Ililbervor aka Whitewall, their sacred royal seat; Smithstone, their commercial center, and possibly Jansholm. Old Karse was a Pelaskite city with cyclopean walls with Heortling immigration, and New Karse was a Heortling city with a strong Pelaskite complement and (at least IMG) an appendix of wharves exclusively inhabited by the fisherfolk. The exact date of the move from Old Karse to New Karse is still under investigation.

Urban Heortland (most recently "Malkonwal") may have been created by immigrants from Dragon Pass, Esrolia, and Esvular as well as Pelaskites moving to their markets. Look at the Foreigner Laws of Aventus dealing with these non-Hendriki.

The Hendriki themselves seem to have been to the rest of Heortland what the Black Spear clan of the Colymar is to the rest of the tribe - a much less settled down, somewhat holier group with rather special magic that endowed them with special authority. This apartness with special magic and their unbroken allegiance to the Only Old One (despite the Tax Slaughter) appears to be the main reason why they did not suffer the fate of the Old Day Traditionalists in Aggar under the leadership of Isgangdrang.

6 hours ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

Orlanthi were the prime drivers of urbanization in Dorastor and in Prax (and Ralian and Fronelan Orlanthi have also urbanized independently), and founded and pushed for urban consolidation in southern Peloria as well, where notable urban centres existed even before Lunar expansion (and probably had for centuries, though I am not an expert on the nitty gritty chronology there), and this is not even taking into account their neighboring Esrolians who, despite cultural differences, have mingled with Heortlings enough geographically, politically and culturally (Colymar supposedly claims to be from Esrolia, but was culturally Hendriki, and the whole marriage unions and Adjustment Wars and Heortling sections in Nochet, and Esrolian architectural and artistic styles dominating in all of Kethaela and Kerofinala, etc. show that there's no magical line between the two groups) and is literally the most densely populated place in the whole world, with its single largest city since the Opening, and an urban civilization going back to the Green Age. 

The Tada-shi ancestresses of the Vingkotlings came from an urban civilization as well. The Oases of Prax are a sorry remnant, full of amnesia about their former greatness. Old Pavis borrowed from this tradition, AFAIK, and there may be more to unearth for intrepid heroquesters once Argrath is looking elsewhere.

6 hours ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

My point is: it's complicated. IMHO, Orlanthi society is not predicated upon urban organization, but Orlanthi have a long, long history of building and organizing towns. However turbulent they might be.

Orlanthi society may not be that urbanized, although the other main core groups of urban Orlanthi like the Enerali and the Enjoreli/Tawari apparently were in a similar way to the Vingkotlings and their Heortling descendants. The Skanthi and the Hendriki may be outliers of the Heortling norm.

Heck, the Entruli were urbanized - they had the magical city of Herilia, now trapped under the waves and known as Erenplose, under the Mournsea since long before the Dawn.

 

6 hours ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

As Jeff has pointed out quite a few times, we might like to think of Orlanthi as rustic, rural people, but they have a history of creating fortresses, towns and cities in lots of places. 

Probably half or more of the Heortlings, and possibly significantly more of other brands of Orlanthi, are hillbillies out in the hicks, without any urban sophistication or much of such contact. But that is true about every urban civilization in the high cultures of the Bronze Age, Iron Age, or classical period.

6 hours ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

EDIT: I should add, I don't disagree with the idea that Sartar was an innovator (all texts seem to agree there). It's just a little unclear what exactly he innovated *specifically*, and how that contrasts to other Orlanthi cities, historically.

I think he was an innovator of the Heortling and Hendriki traditions of the resettlers of Dragon Pass, and of course of the sacred Kingship of Dragon Pass, too.

 

6 hours ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

I think it's just a case of author interest/knowledge versus reader interest/knowledge

An author who knows a lot about lingustics will painstakingly worldbuild around etymologies, language families, sprachbund, etc. (Tolkien), and author who is interested in phenotypes, for example, might delve into population migrations and such (Tekumel has a bit of this, even if I realize it's potentially provocative, and he is more notable for linguistics as well), and an author who is interested in myths will paint their maps and inject their character motivations with mythic themes (ie. Greg). 

I see several posters in this forum who are *deeply* knowledgeable about all sorts of things, and Jeff has talked about how agriculture varies, the very real demographic and logistic constraints of the Lunar army, etc. so it's not like Glorantha is alien to material realism. It might just be that no one at Chaosium or otherwise have truly had the expertise/knowledge to get down and dirty with mining extraction and distribution: the manpower needed, the infrastructure required, maintenance costs, the fuel consumption, the price fluctuations, the trading networks, the tonnage consumption per year, etc. etc. 

This kind of topic does not look like it will sell to the RQG or even HQG mainstream audience of Gloranthaphiles. With the Jonstown Compendium and Martin Helsdon's glowing example of how such nerdy specialities may be served in a big way, there is nothing to stop anybody, or any group of collaborators (nudge, nudge, wink wink) from producing such material.

 

6 hours ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

This also applies to a potentially infinite number of topics that people might find interesting. 

Things like that can be rather sweet topics, if you listen to Ludo's (@lordabdul) contribution to Episode 3 of Wind Words (link in the signature).

 

 

6 hours ago, lordabdul said:

Similarly, the stories in Glorantha are about the relationship between mortals and deities, the clashing of cultures, magic, and so on -- not about resource management and distribution... until it is.

Greg Stafford demonstrated with that "Troll tribes of Blue Moon Plateau" improvised scenario all those years ago at Tentacles how resource management and mythical exploration can go hand in hand. @Jeff did a similar thing a few years ago with native Melibites facing reborn Zaranistangi demigods a little under four years ago at Kraken.

6 hours ago, lordabdul said:

Maybe we'll see something coming out of Chaosium on that topic, and so they'll have to think about how it works given everything that was published before... otherwise, maybe that's where your/my Glorantha varies because that's what we are interested in.

You can still build fortresses and towns and cities without using much masonry, though, no? Like, late-neolithic walls vs. late bronze age walls?

Depending on where you look, that is very true. Clay bricks - in sufficiently hot and dry places even unburnt ones - are a suitable replacement for masonry, and their standardized size may even be an advantage. You don't have quarries with suitable material everywhere.

There have been magnificent edifices build of wood, with chalked exterior, hardly distinguishable from masonry. These tend to leave a lot less in the way of archaeological evidence, unless there is a lucky (for the archaeologists, that is) catastrophe preserving some of that. The city of Biskupin is an example of a European Bronze Age community using such architecture.

Bronze Age with quite a lot of sophistication happened away from the Fertile Crescent, too. The Battle of Tollense Ford had a death toll greater than the total participants of many a battle in Anglo-Saxon England. This must have been a clash of empires. We have no idea where exactly those empires were located, but the invaders came from all over central and southern Germany according to their teeth. The same region the presumed architect of the later stage Stone Henge came from a millennium or so earlier. Talking about a feat of masonry there, though.

 

6 hours ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

Sure! I was more addressing the community organization aspect of it, to be honest. 

I believe there was a thread a way back that had art references for Orlanthi settlements from the Vingkotling to the modern age, and they included both cyclopean dry masonry and other techniques. 

Not sure how much the Valhalla pastiche of Aedin's Wall still is part of the canonical Heortling information, but there is a possibility that master builders were invited from elsewhere. Genert's Court would have been a potential source, or Tada's. Maybe even Tada himself - he died only on the onset of the Greater Darkness, after Earthfall, and may even have been an unacknowledged participant of the Unity Battle, without a people to remember him.

6 hours ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

Also, there's the Ernaldan square house, which is going to be the canonical basic template of Orlanthi steads going forward (although they already exist in artwork from Pavis), and those can be made in all sorts of ways, including wattle-and-daub, brick and mortar, logs and dry masonry. 

As far as I can make out from the maps in recent publications, it is only one canonical basic template, and the square enclosure with longhouse and outbuildings remains as a valid alternative. It is included in Martin Helsdon's other background book on JTC.

3 hours ago, lordabdul said:

Yeah, and wattle-and-daub, along with dry masonry, are fun mostly because they can optionally include the one thing every Orlanthi clan should have more of: cow dung.  It's used mixed with soil and straw and stuff for the daubing in the wattle-and-daub wooden houses, but it can also be used as heat insulation in dry masonry by just sticking it between the stones. In my ever-in-prep Far Place campaign I was thinking of having a stead where "cow dung" specialists live, as insulation is important in colder places. A family with stinky hands, but a very important job.

You can use that cow dung in clay plaster, too, if you don't have access to lots of calcinated limestone. That plaster can be applied to masonry, drystone walls, or blockhouses just as it can be applied to wattle-and-daub. It beats normal chalked walls in hot as well as temperate climate for indoors climate, as far as I experienced.

 

3 hours ago, Leingod said:

Well, I'm not super knowledgeable about the Holy Country in general, but Whitewall is the capital of the Volsaxi Confederation, yes?

Yes. Whitewall is one of the ancient Vingkotling hillforts - not as ancient as Korolstead or Ulaninstead, as the Star Captain Garan only appeared after Vingkot's death, nine generations into the descendants of Jorganos (which may be quite a few more generations of normal Vingkotlings without as powerful demigod bloodlines). The Garanvuli were one of the "urban" Heortling tribes at the Dawn, but they lost their leaders and much population holding out against the Footprint, despite Kitori assistance. By the time of the Battle of Night and Day, the Garanvuli tribe had disbanded. When Palangio came, there was no tribal king to punish for resistance against the Bright Empire, and Hendrik's hidden band escaped attention for most of the Bright Empire's occupation of Kethaela.

The Hendriki were the successors of the Garanvuli, centered on their holy vagrant kings who had the magics of Larnste, which did not lend itself to urban leadership. (Although Sartar, one of their tradition, managed to overcome that limitation, and others, too.) During the Gbaji Wars, their lands (or at least the less hidden fringes) were settled by refugees from all over the Heortling lands, and other neighbors, which is how their King Aventus came to acknowledge the situation using the Foreigner Laws.

3 hours ago, Leingod said:

It might be that Heortling cities are usually built to be (or used as) the center of power of a great king ruling over multiple tribes, not something that multiple tribes come together to build without surrendering their independence; city-building is probably not usually seen by the Heortlings as a way for several neighboring tribes to come together in burying old enmities and forging new alliances, which is how Sartar used it. It's also known that Sartar is the one who invented the City Ring and the position of Mayor, to give both every tribe and the city-dwellers a voice in how the city was run. And that further ties in with Sartar's novel use of city-building as a way to bind people together by giving them something they all had a stake in maintaining.

The position of mayor may very well be known in Heortland and Esrolia - it is the chief official of the city, an administrator and possibly head of the bureaucrats/scribes maintained by the city. With regard to the city militia, possibly as much a quartermaster as a warleader, with the ability to deputize either or even both these functions, IMO.

1 hour ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

I am pretty sure that in a polytheistic culture you find god / demigod / subcult / hero / ...  you pray (obtaining or not blessing and magic) for everything known by the culture. The only absence would be for weird foreign activity (in that culture) but, after been adopted, this activity will be assigned to a god too (after all, there is a god of sorcery even in orlanthi culture now)

Yes, you sacrifice to the deity for the task at hand. That needn't be the deity you are initiated to.

 

[Brootse]

19 hours ago, Manu said:

I realized that in the Glorantha I know, there is no god of stone (Earth, yes stone no) : Miner, mountains, hard rock, quarrymen,....

 

And I can easily imagine that when you build a big city, especially in a magical world like Glorantha, they use magic to do it. But which God is helping to do it.

 

 

Voria is the goddess of miners.

[Lordabdul]

Are we keeping track of Joerg's walls of text? I mean, this one might break the all-time records, no?  

4 hours ago, Joerg said:

There may be such a thing as specialized craft gods - spirit cults associated to the guild wyters, but connecting beyond individual city confederations. These may also be subcults of the deities mentioned above, or of Lhankor Mhy, meaning that you'll find a shrine and a god-talker or associate priest maintaining the shrine somewhere in the city.

Yeah there's potentially a bunch of spirit cults/hero cults/ancestor cults that let you do small offerings and prayers to a figure that is known to have some authority/specialty on some niche activity, and that might work well for worldbuilding and general roleplay fluff... but I'm not sure it works well in a gaming context, especially, say, RQG. This type of secondary figure doesn't have much presence, so the nearest shrine might be several days away from your stead. You might be a lay member because you visited that shrine several years ago while learning about your trade, but since then it's pretty much you by yourself in a corner of your stead in front of a homemade shrine or something, no?  More importantly, these practices wouldn't give out any game mechanics advantages? (except for having given you skill bonuses at character creation/when you visited that shrine years ago)

4 hours ago, Joerg said:

I get the impression that the ancestors of the Orlanthi (possibly the Tada-shi of the lands west of Prax) were accomplished masons and well-versed in polygonal irregular rock architecture requiring a shaping skill that was mostly lost during the Gods War. The Vingkotling Hill Forts, Karse, and significant parts of the Nochet Walls apparently use this earthquake-proof architecture and have withstood even Veskarthen's Desolation.

You'll find this kind of architecture in many a real world ancient building, usually accompanied by the adjective "cyclopean". Same in Glorantha.

Good point. I always figured these types of buildings dated back either to the God Time (i.e. it was really gods and giants helping build these things, and people never really knew how to do that themselves), or to things like the Unity Council or EWF (similar situation: it's lost knowledge because it was split among various factions and elder races). I should look back in the Guide to see if there's any information about these Holy Country cities and their walls...

4 hours ago, Joerg said:

The cult of Wilms also provides the necessary knowledge for the road workers of Sartar, distributed among the city confederations - possibly as a separate guild allowing also non-residents of the cities a membership. I have no idea how Jeff is going to mention the upkeep of the royal roads in the upcoming Jonstown description, and there may be no mention of this in that product (which is aimed at new GMs of RQG rather than old grognards).

I assume that the upcoming Starter Set is aimed at new RQG GMs, but not necessarily just at newbie GMs that are new to the hobby (although it should address that kind of audience too, of course). Even a newbie GMs might still want to know who's going to repair all that stuff after their player group has made a mess of everything  

One way handle that is to handle the Cult of Wilms as more of a guild wyter/spirit cult... (I think he's already a city wyter for Wilmskirk, but I'm talking about a craft guild wyter in addition to that). Many people might be interested in helping build and maintain cities and roads: Ernaldan priestesses who want to improve travels and transport to nearby fields or between Earth temples, Orlanth initiates who want to improve the defences of their community, Lhankor Mhy sages who are fascinated by architecture or engineering, etc... Wyters and spirit cults are orthogonal to Rune cults and allow diverse people to come together, and make it easier to separate people's activities from people's faiths and traditions. I guess this goes back to your other comments regarding how cult initiates are not (should not be) all stereotypes. I wonder if a certain podcast could explore all this in more depth...

4 hours ago, Joerg said:

Sorcerers would call these spirits or natural principles associated with the elements.

Think of micro-organisms as colony entities that can be approached like spirits. That soothes my personal sciency cravings when dealing with these aspects of Glorantha. In case of doubt, ask me on Wind Words.

I haven't thought about it for very long (as in: I haven't thought about this for more than a decade, like you might have ), but I think my current take on this is that you can have both: viruses and bacteria exist and do their thing, but they can also be manipulated through Mallia worship and spirit magic. This is similar to how taking care of your crops using the usual things (manure, water, sun, etc.) works both because of "Science!", but also because that's what the Earth goddess wants in order to help things grow from the soil. The same way quantum entities are both particles and waves in the real world, I guess.

Yay, another topic to discuss. As if we didn't have a giant list of possible topics already...  

4 hours ago, Joerg said:

One problem lay in the Thunder Rebels style to name that specialisation more prominently than the main cult of that cultist. "Initiate of Destor" rather than "Initiate of Orlanth, of the Adventurous subcult".

It's a problem in RQG where a sub-cult needs a write-up and spell lists and stuff, but it's a lot less of a problem in HW/HQ where it's really just a name, basically. You're still free to pick whatever appropriate traits fit the character concept, and after that it's all roleplay. Saying you're an initiate of Destor doesn't sound any more as a "problem" as saying you're an initiate of Vinga -- they're all subcults. This is potentially where the rule system may have an effect on the world or, at least, on YGMV.

4 hours ago, Joerg said:

Greg Stafford demonstrated with that "Troll tribes of Blue Moon Plateau" improvised scenario all those years ago at Tentacles how resource management and mythical exploration can go hand in hand. @Jeff did a similar thing a few years ago with native Melibites facing reborn Zaranistangi demigods a little under four years ago at Kraken.

I'm not familiar with those, I'll check them out, thanks!

I didn't quite say that you can't retrofit resource management into Glorantha though... there's still enough wiggle room (even after more than 40 years!) to fit a giant quarry somewhere, with a decent-sized mining settlement, political alliances, and a small detour from some Lunar armies in this or that season of this or that year to attack it and do whatever... all without making your Glorantha vary much. I'm just saying that the absence of this type of story from the metaplot or the published books shows that this isn't something the authors thought was interesting to tackle. Resource management warfare in Glorantha is primarily about the gods, their magic, and the reality-altering powers of the God Time. While real-world spycraft has to do with securing access to oil or whatever, spycraft in Glorantha has to do with access to Rune Magic. In some ways, propaganda operations and cultural overtaking is even more important in Glorantha, too -- trying to export rock'n'roll and Hollywood movies might have helped during the Cold War, but it's nowhere near as effective as when Lunars retrofit maize and solar deities into someone's culture through heroquesting. Mmmh... now I want to run a spy thriller in Glorantha...

4 hours ago, Joerg said:

Depending on where you look, that is very true. Clay bricks - in sufficiently hot and dry places even unburnt ones - are a suitable replacement for masonry, and their standardized size may even be an advantage. You don't have quarries with suitable material everywhere.

It really varies based on the local weather and landscape. Up around Alone, with the mountains nearby, there might be suitable places to build a quarry, but with the Indigo troll tribes nearby, it's not as easy and maybe not worth it.

 

Edited May 26, 2020 by lordabdul

[M Helsdon]

There's a fair bit about architecture in...

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/296535/The-Armies-and-Enemies-of-Dragon-Pass?src=hottest_filtered

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/297497/Temples--Towers?src=by_author_of_product

Armies and Enemies includes material on mining, both military, and to a lesser degree for materials

[Joerg]

6 minutes ago, lordabdul said:

Are we keeping track of Joerg's walls of text? I mean, this one might break the all-time records, no?  

No idea what you're talking about... 😇

6 minutes ago, lordabdul said:

Yeah there's potentially a bunch of spirit cults/hero cults/ancestor cults that let you do small offerings and prayers to a figure that is known to have some authority/specialty on some niche activity, and that might work well for worldbuilding and general roleplay fluff... but I'm not sure it works well in a gaming context, especially, say, RQG.

This type of secondary figure doesn't have much presence, so the nearest shrine might be several days away from your stead. You might be a lay member because you visited that shrine several years ago while learning about your trade, but since then it's pretty much you by yourself in a corner of your stead in front of a homemade shrine or something, no?  More importantly, these practices wouldn't give out any game mechanics advantages? (except for having given you skill bonuses at character creation/when you visited that shrine years ago)

While all the things you said there may be true, where is the problem in the gaming context? Accessing the resource takes a travel, so you and your friends go there, things happen, and you may get what you need.

There is nothing to stop anybody to purchase some votive images, cast Sanctify and perform a sacrifice. In Apple Lane, you even have a dedicated building for that.

 

6 minutes ago, lordabdul said:

Good point. I always figured these types of buildings dated back either to the God Time (i.e. it was really gods and giants helping build these things, and people never really knew how to do that themselves), or to things like the Unity Council or EWF (similar situation: it's lost knowledge because it was split among various factions and elder races). I should look back in the Guide to see if there's any information about these Holy Country cities and their walls...

The list of Dawn survival sites (around Dragon Pass) does mention Karse and Nochet and their wall status in the appendices of the Guide, and there is a draft version in History of the Heortling Peoples. Info on Nochet's fortifications throughout the ages is in Esrolia: Land of 10k Goddesses.

Giants or unspecified others as contract buildes (Aedin from Aedin's Wall, for instance, or the giant who connected the Storm Mountains with the Quivin peaks according to Dragon Pass:Land of Thunder, the Gazetteer for Kerofinela, or just boring Mostali) are a possibility. Are there any places where Lodril was not subdued in some form or another (by some name or another) and perform some great feat of construction?

6 minutes ago, lordabdul said:

I haven't thought about it for very long (as in: I haven't thought about this for more than a decade, like you might have ), but I think my current take on this is that you can have both: viruses and bacteria exist and do their thing, but they can also be manipulated through Mallia worship and spirit magic. This is similar to how taking care of your crops using the usual things (manure, water, sun, etc.) works both because of "Science!", but also because that's what the Earth goddess wants in order to help things grow from the soil. The same way quantum entities are both particles and waves in the real world, I guess.

If herds can have a wyter, then a sufficiently high number of germs or viruses to cause symptoms or to infect others can have a spirit of disease... Personally, I can do without microbes, and I am fine with miasmas, humours, chi balance and similar concepts from historical and traditional healing lore. Putrefaction is a Darkness power - a transformation through partial or complete consumption of the educt.

 

6 minutes ago, lordabdul said:

I'm not familiar with those, I'll check them out, thanks

Most info you will find on them will likely be me blathering about them here or on the digests. But I recall that there were community resource rules in HQ1, and I think those were what Jeff revisited when we played that Melib game at Kraken. Greg did it somewhat differently, he had us assign the tribal abilities to the tasks at hand. Feeding the tribe was always one of the top priorities, but there were other priorities, too, like digging up an ancient artifact. At one time I gamed the system, letting my Mistress Race (equivalent) grandmother quest to keep the tribe fed while sending all the other tribal abilities to chip away at an extended contest about digging IIRC.

I wish I could remember who sat in on that game with the Blue Moon trolls. I can name many of the players in the Melib game.

 

6 minutes ago, lordabdul said:

I didn't quite say that you can't retrofit resource management into Glorantha though... there's still enough wiggle room (even after more than 40 years!) to fit a giant quarry somewhere, with a decent-sized mining settlement, political alliances, and a small detour from some Lunar armies in this or that season of this or that year to attack it and do whatever... all without making your Glorantha vary much. I'm just saying that the absence of this type of story from the metaplot or the published books shows that this isn't something the authors thought was interesting to tackle. Resource management warfare in Glorantha is primarily about the gods, their magic, and the reality-altering powers of the God Time.

When it comes to metals, knowing where and how a deity died or lost a limb will point you towards a motherlode of godsbone... and if a deposit is depleted, you might quest to add another limb torn off in a certain battle, and may find that second deposit afterwards. Or you might rescue the body of a slain deity and deprive a rival or enemy of the resources mined from that deity's remains.

 

 

6 minutes ago, lordabdul said:

It really varies based on the local weather and landscape. Up around Alone, with the mountains nearby, there might be suitable places to build a quarry, but with the Indigo troll tribes nearby, it's not as easy and maybe not worth it.

As far as I can tell, most of northeastern Sartar has limestone as bedrock, which would be available at canyons or cliffsides for quarrying. Or you could mine for the rock - IIRC the Romans did mine for tuff rock, in some places under the cities.

[Lordabdul]

43 minutes ago, Joerg said:

While all the things you said there may be true, where is the problem in the gaming context? Accessing the resource takes a travel, so you and your friends go there, things happen, and you may get what you need.

There is nothing to stop anybody to purchase some votive images, cast Sanctify and perform a sacrifice. In Apple Lane, you even have a dedicated building for that.

No problem in the gaming context -- just trying to figure out how practical it is in-world. But mainly, I forgot that Sanctify was a Common Rune Magic spell in RQG so yeah I guess anybody can do that. In terms of game mechanics, the only thing you can justify is that your little shrine gives your 1 Rune Point once in a while I think?

[davecake]

On 5/26/2020 at 6:34 PM, David Scott said:

Stone is now a dead god and so can't be worshipped.

It's an interesting thing that this seems accepted, as thats not how it normally works. Mere Death doesn't stop a god from being worshipped. Flamal, Yelm, Daka Fal, etc - all gods who were killed, and yet receive worship. It could also be said that Stone remains in the Underworld but where else would stone be but deep underground?

Certainly worship on Stone might be cthonic, but there are plenty of those cults too. 

What does seem to have happened is that Stone has lost all connection Movement, and Life. There are deities associated with Earth and Life of course, and even associated with moving Earth (Maran Gor, Lodril, etc.). But Stasis is a very rare rune, very few adherents outside the Mostali. 

Of course, the Mostali seem able to access the magic of Stone, but only through sorcery (and Mostali make magic, which is closely related). But that proves nothing, really, Mostali would only use sorcery anyway. 

The more I think about it, the more it seems that there should be magic that calls on Stone accessible, it's just not very practical or interesting to most people except Mostali. What would such magic do? Make things made of stone stronger? Provide further knowledge of stone or minerals? Access spirits of stone? (that seems within the purview of Earth Witch at least) 

But little to encourage most to active worship. I think Stone is probably as contactable as any god that is dead and little worshipped, and there is just little interest in worshipping Stone or using the magic of Stone (except by the Mostali, who eschew worship - and this includes Flintnail (who still use Mostali sorcery despite their heretic status) and Pavis (who relies on the magic of Flintnail)). Presumably it could be contacted via heroquest back to the Lesser Darkness, but the Mostali would seem to have little interest in such a thing, and Alryami would surely oppose it. 

The idea of mineral beings so ancient that they predate the death of Stone, and are naturally moving living rocks, is an interesting one. 

 

[Joerg]

2 hours ago, davecake said:

It's an interesting thing that this seems accepted, as thats not how it normally works. Mere Death doesn't stop a god from being worshipped. Flamal, Yelm, Daka Fal, etc - all gods who were killed, and yet receive worship. It could also be said that Stone remains in the Underworld but where else would stone be but deep underground?

The Spike was the main body of Stone, and that imploded and left behind the Void in the center of the world. That's a Chaos death, similar to those of Yamsur, Seolinthur, or Hard Earth (in the Skyfall myth). None of these deities are worshiped.

The other dead gods you mentioned all have an Underworld presence. One might argue that Stone had that, by its very nature, but look at my thoughts on Gloranthan geology and mining. The majority of the body of Earth may be living soil, with rock only being the died-off scar tissue from exposure to other (hostile or at least overly demanding) elements, or the result of Lodril's offspring cooling down (also leaving rather dead material behind).

Mountains and their rocks can be the bodies of mountain gods, elder giants or true dragons, or can be integrated into those when those entities deign to animate them (again). This seems to be a matter of these entities extending their selves, forming their bodies. Gonn Orta is still a long way from getting there. Thog's arm, torn off by the magic of the Arrowsmith zebra folk, reverted to a geographical feature upon losing connection to the giant. A similar thing happened to the Lead Hills after Belintar had slain the monster. (Note that Belintar did not damage the Obsidian Palace himself, it was the death throeos of the sepent that crushed that edifice.)

The Mostali magics of endowing matter with magical power appear to be a similar concept.

If you look a the "Larnste sows the Rockwood moountains" myth, there may be lesser instances of Stone in those other mountains, which would explain the Mostali custom of seeking out mountains for their colonies.

Perhaps the "squirming thing" that Lodril wrestled was Stone? That merging would remove the original deity from easy worship access, too. Martaler in Gemborg may be on that.

[davecake]

10 minutes ago, Joerg said:

The Spike was the main body of Stone, and that imploded and left behind the Void in the center of the world.

Certainly not the only body of Stone. The Mostali myths have never referenced Stone as dying with the Spike, but always as dying due to the elves and so becoming cold and lifeless, long before the destruction of the Spike.

13 minutes ago, Joerg said:

That's a Chaos death, similar to those of Yamsur, Seolinthur, or Hard Earth (in the Skyfall myth). None of these deities are worshiped.

Thats an entirely separate myth about the death of Stone that you more or less just made up. It's not the same as the myths from, say, the Mostal writeup in The Glorantha Sourcebook, Elder Secrets, or any other source. 

And, in fact, rare but real fragments of the true living Stone are even findable. It's Truestone, no longer moving but retaining magical 'life'. So part of the body of Stone survives.  

27 minutes ago, Joerg said:

One might argue that Stone had that, by its very nature, but look at my thoughts on Gloranthan geology and mining.

Which do seem to ignore pretty much all common myths about Earth and mountains and rocks in favour of taking a single out of print Merman myth as fundamentally determining all Gloranthan geology, an eccentric and wildly speculative approach which I'm not going to take as particularly convincing. 

[Joerg]

2 hours ago, davecake said:

Certainly not the only body of Stone. The Mostali myths have never referenced Stone as dying with the Spike, but always as dying due to the elves and so becoming cold and lifeless, long before the destruction of the Spike.

They still accuse High King Elf of putting the axe to the base of the Spike.

But yes, they may accuse Grower of feeding on Stone. This reminds me of the spirit entities Sandy Petersen's Pamaltela campaign encountered, beings consisting only of magic points. Perhaps Stone was of a similar nature, brimming with (stored) magic, but unable to regenerate it.

The RQG rules for Truestone seem to imply a relationship like this between Truestone and magic.

2 hours ago, davecake said:

Thats an entirely separate myth about the death of Stone that you more or less just made up. It's not the same as the myths from, say, the Mostal writeup in The Glorantha Sourcebook, Elder Secrets, or any other source. 

The Spike is well-known to have been made of (True) Stone. What else do we know to have been made of that material?

Most of the Spike disappeared in that implosion, that had various culprits, including High King Elf, Zzabur, and of course the Chaos horde, and that left behind a gaping void of Chaos. The Spike disappeared into Chaos, that's nothing I made up. I do fess up on identifying Stone with the Spike - do you know another location where there was forest directly on Stone?

The Cosmic Mountain is present in all the four elements (and after the birth of Umath, all five), and a substance apart.

2 hours ago, davecake said:

And, in fact, rare but real fragments of the true living Stone are even findable. It's Truestone, no longer moving but retaining magical 'life'. So part of the body of Stone survives.  

A meagre fraction of what was once there. Including the Block, maybe the equivalent to a pinky bone of its former body - enough to provide the DNA to identify the entity, but not enough to reconstruct it. (Wait, that was one of the first Denisovans discovered...)

 

2 hours ago, davecake said:

Which do seem to ignore pretty much all common myths about Earth and mountains and rocks in favour of taking a single out of print Merman myth as fundamentally determining all Gloranthan geology, an eccentric and wildly speculative approach which I'm not going to take as particularly convincing. 

The sea deities are the only accessible ones that have witnessed the birth of Earth. Name another source I should look up, then.

All Earth myths that I know start with Earth being a dry realm. (Not a perfect absence of water, but not flooded.)

For the huge layers of sedimentary rock that covers most of dry Glorantha, you can either have a long history of mountains pushing up and then being eroded (and the war between Dragons and Elder Giants may provide a myth for that), or you can have sedimentation while submerged. (For limestone, the sedimentation has to happen when submerged...)

There is the problem with the God Learner maps showing the flat surface of the earth with the first mountains. These appear in the Golden Age, shortly before the first river(s) invade the dry lands. I think it would be bad style to postulate mountains before the first mountains, but you may of course have the fallen bodies of dragons and giants, ground to dust, from these early conflicts, and their blood acting as the liquid medium they sedimented in. But where do the sea creatures come from? Parasites living inside both dragons and giants? Add Earth Shakers as another possible source of mineral material after their death/dismemberment.

There is only one quite late period of flooding, followed by a single glaciation. Not much to derive geology from.

Even worse, Snake Pipe Hollow (which has hundreds of meters of lime stone sediments) was not affected by the Aroka Sea flood, or at best peripherically. The Condor Crags appear to have remained dry in the Flood, too - another limestone formation.

The "mother of pearl" hypothesis does give ample opportunity for such a crust to have formed.

Do you have a better proposal for when all those marine sediments formed on the surface of Kerofinela?

 

Ernalda's realm appears to be Earth, not rock. Earth elementals can operate in soil, will probably be able to deal with pebbles and larger pieces of rock in the soil, but are unable to operate in bedrock. Does this sound like bedrock is the domain of the fertile Earth?

At a guess, a cave sacred to Ernalda will have a layer of clay or similar as its bottom.

Clay appears to be the unmodified state of the Earth element. I'd expect to find that at the core of the Earth realm.

 

Most rock will be regarded as lifeless - no longer liquefied by Lodril's heat (or that of his lesser or local expressions), not

[davecake]

27 minutes ago, Joerg said:

Most of the Spike disappeared in that implosion, that had various culprits, including High King Elf, Zzabur, and of course the Chaos horde, and that left behind a gaping void of Chaos.

You are being sloppy to slip a theory between the cracks. Stone died in the Lesser Darkness, not with the destruction of the Spike. They are different events, widely separated in time and in their nature. I don't even know why you are trying to conflate them. 

 

29 minutes ago, Joerg said:

The sea deities are the only accessible ones that have witnessed the birth of Earth. Name another source I should look up, then.

You didn't just take an obscure out of print Sea myth never referenced since as the primary myth for understanding Earth, overriding Earth mythology, but then you wildly extrapolated it to create an eccentric private theory and then decided that overrides the only (multiply, in print) myths about only vaguely related stuff. And then mix and match it with geological theories in order to try to claim something not very well supported by either. Please just stop this line of argument. 

[Joerg]

5 hours ago, davecake said:

You are being sloppy to slip a theory between the cracks. Stone died in the Lesser Darkness, not with the destruction of the Spike.

Elder Secrets tells me otherwise (Elder Races Book p.6):

Quote

Death appeared, and the God War took a fatal tum.Elves slaughtered the Mostali, who marched innocently to their doom, still pathetically attempting to win contests with vinues or expert artisanship. High King Elf bore Death to the heart of the world, the Spike, and there shattered the central shaft of the World Machine. There died Stone and the Three Elders of the Mostali. 

The Spike has been named the linchpin of the World Machine earlier. I suppose "central shaft" is yet another term describing the Cosmic Mountain.

To me, this reads as a single event. The Spike is shattered at its base, Stone dies. Zzabur sends the Great Blast, the Spike shatters. Chaos invades the Cosmic Mountain, which implodes, and most of it gets swallowed by the Void. At the very least a congruence of events.

Mostal himself is broken earlier, at the birth of Umath. Stone, the Spike, Toolmaker and the Mostali persist, until the Spike implodes and takes the other ones with it.

 

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They are different events, widely separated in time and in their nature. I don't even know why you are trying to conflate them. 

What happens when a dead deity gets mostly annihilated by Chaos? It becomes unavailable for worship or anything like it. For every sleeping goddess of the land or the earth that got re-awakened, another may have been annihilated in that dormant or dead state.

What happens if the Net slips in the Ritual of the Net? The attending deities get annihilated.

 

Quote

You didn't just take an obscure out of print Sea myth never referenced since as the primary myth for understanding Earth, overriding Earth mythology, but then you wildly extrapolated it to create an eccentric private theory and then decided that overrides the only (multiply, in print) myths about only vaguely related stuff.

Which are?

What myths about the creation of the Earth Cube did I miss?

What is Earth mythology about the birth of Earth?

What is Earth mythology for the fact that rock is not fertile?

Why is it that Earth elementals can only pass through soil,, or only manifest inside soil, but noth through/in rock?

Do you have any myth that explains why rock does not give the bounty of Earth?

What myths have been overridden?

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And then mix and match it with geological theories in order to try to claim something not very well supported by either. Please just stop this line of argument. 

Please point me to any myths that you think I ignored or violated.

Myths are made to explain the status quo of the world. That includes its petrology and palaeontology (of the kind mentioned in Snake Pipe Hollow).

 

Viewed by someone with basic understanding in geology, The cliffs surrounding Snake Pipe Hollow shows a horizontal stratigraphy of various band of limestone, exhibiting different colors, with chalky exoskeletons of archaic sea life embedded in the sediment layers.

The Rockwoods themselves have not received any such description, but we know their orogeny from the myth about the birth of Kero Fin. These mountains rose from the dry land as Larnste sowed them - if you wish, as Larnste impregnated the fertile earth, if you wish, as he planted the mountain tree nuts. He inserted Change into the land, and the mountains rose, pushing aside or up the soil and bedrock that had covered that land before.

The orogeny of Blackorm Mountain nearby may be diffeent - it is known by various names, and each name has a myth to it. Thunder Rebels ties Blackorm Mountain to Orlanth's victory over Dargabon, the Storm Dragon. It is possible that the peaks at Cliffhome are the corpse of that dragon. The same dragon that Cragspider rescued from the Underworld and made her servant, the Black Dragon of Dragon Pass. If so, that orogeny does not disturb the limestone layers at Ginijji. Neither is there any evidence that they may have been caused by that dragonslaying.

The depression of the Hollow may be the consequence of the Maggot excavating there, and Sky River Titan jumping down here, possibly caving in that part. But to its side, the stratigraphy remains undisturbed, althouh tunneled.

 

The sediment is the result of a sequence or cycles of events, with different amounts of water salinity involved, or some other, possibly more oranic method of sedimenting this rock. There are no such events anywhere near this since the Land rose above the Sea. That makes the era of the Blue Age when Earth formed inside the Sea the best candidate for this arrangement for the surface structure.

The Sea myth about Bab, the Food Goddess, fits this story, if you compare the limestone layers to the lime (chalk) layers of a pearl, or of the Mother of Pearl material sedimented similarly. This isn't just cumbled rock, this is sand and similar ground particles cemented together with chalk And with other stuff added to the layers, like ochre (for the bright bands of color).

The facts are documented. There is a myth that helps explain the facts. What is the problem?

 

And more to the point, what alternatives can you offer?

 

[soltakss]

23 hours ago, Joerg said:

Elder Secrets tells me otherwise (Elder Races Book p.6):

Quote

Death appeared, and the God War took a fatal tum.Elves slaughtered the Mostali, who marched innocently to their doom, still pathetically attempting to win contests with vinues or expert artisanship. High King Elf bore Death to the heart of the world, the Spike, and there shattered the central shaft of the World Machine. There died Stone and the Three Elders of the Mostali. 

The Spike has been named the linchpin of the World Machine earlier. I suppose "central shaft" is yet another term describing the Cosmic Mountain.

To me, this reads as a single event. The Spike is shattered at its base, Stone dies. Zzabur sends the Great Blast, the Spike shatters. Chaos invades the Cosmic Mountain, which implodes, and most of it gets swallowed by the Void. At the very least a congruence of events.

That would imply that High King Elf was in the Spike when it was destroyed, but he is seen elsewhere afterwards.

For me, his attack on the Mostali and the Spike being destroyed are probably two distinct events.