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Tell me about the Veldang and the quest for the Red Sword of Tolat


dumuzid

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2 hours ago, scott-martin said:

keep running the ball until it stops.

 

11 minutes ago, jajagappa said:

Fralari thus could reference the hsa tiger people as @scott-martin notes, but could also represent the Basmoli of Seshnela, which might provide the link to Fralos.  As it notes on Fralos in the Guide p.415 "Efforts by several different Rokari wizards to compel the lion-headed guardian ..."

I think I'm going to run with the idea of a very obscure link between the Blue Moon and this Seshnelan city, on the theory that Cathora was a high-status Basmoli woman whose family were integrated into the talar aristocracy some time in the First Age.  The city itself may prove to be founded over a site where one or several of Artmal's bones fell to earth after his defeat, drawn by sympathy to his wife's kin; the bone's spirit manifests as the lion-headed entity that demands only an unmarried woman of Cathora's line, the local talars, rule Fralos.

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16 minutes ago, dumuzid said:

I think I'm going to run with the idea of a very obscure link between the Blue Moon and this Seshnelan city, on the theory that Cathora was a high-status Basmoli woman whose family were integrated into the talar aristocracy some time in the First Age.  The city itself may prove to be founded over a site where one or several of Artmal's bones fell to earth after his defeat, drawn by sympathy to his wife's kin; the bone's spirit manifests as the lion-headed entity that demands only an unmarried woman of Cathora's line, the local talars, rule Fralos.

This is highly relevant to my current interests! Thank you.

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singer sing me a given

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Of whatever aluminum/silver alloy Artmal's bones would be made of, at any rate.

Addressing another element of the question: does anyone know biographical-level details about Gebel, the Teshnite hero who is forecast by the Guide to recover the Red Sword (or Hes-tur, or both) in cooperation with Gabaryanga?  Thus far I've learned that he is a great sea-voyager, and the fact of his quest and success, but without any of the whys or hows of that story.  Does anyone know of sources on his life before the Red Sword quest?

Gabaryanga is almost as obscure a figure in the materials I have available, but by rummaging the Guide I've learned this much of his antecedents: he originally came from Benestros, where he led a failed uprising in 1613 and fled to Jokotu, the City of the Free.  With Gebel I can't find even this level of sparse biographical material.

 

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29 minutes ago, dumuzid said:

does anyone know biographical-level details about Gebel, the Teshnite hero who is forecast by the Guide to recover the Red Sword

I don't think I've ever seen further details on Gebel.  However, the Kethaelan colony of Dosakayo is founded on Melib in 1589, and this establishes ongoing active trade between Melib and the Holy Country.  It's part of the trade that makes Nochet rich. 

Was Gebel a child with one Melibite parent and one Kethaelan parent?  If so, could have descent from Belintar himself. 

Or perhaps just a Melibite who apprenticed as a sailor to Kethaela and Nochet, and discovered/met the Blues of Fonrit in Nochet?  

Did he meet Argrath and Harrek in 1621?  Aid them in some part of their quest?  Or get inspired further by doing so?

Given the connection to Artmal subsequently, he has to have participated in rites to raise the Boat Planet in 1624.  What role did he play there?  Given the Red Sword quest, I would guess that he encountered Shargash in the Sky when Shargash tries to halt the boat planet's rise.  But... he may also have encountered Shargash and/or Annilla in Hell.  And perhaps swore an oath to regain the Red Sword there? (An oath upon the River Styx itself maybe???)

 

 

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41 minutes ago, dumuzid said:

Isn't the Sartarite role in all that detailed in one of the HeroQuest modules?

The Gathering Thunder HW/HQ1 book includes Kallyr's efforts to help raise the Boat Planet.  It was ok, but there were unsatisfying aspects to it.  Kallyr and company are only participants up into the Sky and to the Dragon Isles amidst the Celestial River.  I'd suspect that efforts by river cultists, etc. would be different, so it's not necessarily a complete Sartarite view.

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I don't suppose there's any description somewhere of what the Melibite and/or Teshnite contributions to raising the Boat Planet might have been?

Okay.  Now, since no one's ever heard of an official version of the life of Gebel, here's my taking a shot at it.

For my Glorantha's purposes Gebel was born some time in the 1580s, not in Melib, but in Atarpur in central Teshnos.  He was the illegitimate son of a noble-priest of Calyz high in the hierarchy of the city's temple complex to the Council of Five, and a Hsunchen slave woman of the Pujaleg people.  Gebel was not acknowledged by his biological father, but the terms of his mother's servitude did not legally enslave him, so he was trained for martially-inclined middle officialdom in his father's household and the Somash temple from a young age.  This training gave him the capacity to read elements of the famous Avalor Cube that rests in Atarpur, the marble sides of which chronicle the deeds of the half-Jrusteli High King in Tenshan, Old Melib (i.e. Zaranistangi) and Western script with golden characters as tall as a man.  He saw enough of himself in what he read of the story of Avalor, who was himself a Hsunchen half-caste, that he was inspired to plan flight from his father's house into a life of adventure.  Before his initiation to Somash and adult responsibilities he fled his father's house in the night, carrying only a small bag and his mother's well-wishes.  After several misadventures he found his way to Dosakayo on Melib, where he underwent initiation to Dormal and began an eventful career as a sailor.

Gebel had spent more of his life at sea than on land by the time he returned to Atarpur, with his new name and a captain's wealth, to purchase his mother's freedom.  After an eventful transaction he revisited the Cube of Avalor, and read far more of it's characters with the knowledge he'd picked up on the world's oceans.  He even used magic learned from his mother's distant Pamaltelan kin in Fonrit to briefly fly over the 40-foot-tall cube to read its uppermost face, and what he read there committed him to a series of oaths, ambitions and quests that made him a close ally of Harstar of the Sea, the de facto prince of Melib, in that leader's effort to help raise the Boat Planet.

For a year after the Melibite questers returned from the otherworld Gebel ventured to ruins, oracles and archives across Melib and wider Teshnos, seeking clues to what drove Avalor into the Wastes, and where he might have wound up.  When all signs pointed west past the Wastes, potentially far past, he readied his ship and crew with the blessing of Prince Harstar, to sail to the mouth of the Zola Fel and seek any place along its length where Avalor's path and the ancient river might've intersected, and failing that, to find confirmation of whatever route Avalor used that bypassed the river.  According to Gebel's findings this had been the goal of the fruitless 1250 expedition for the Red Sword led out of Teshnos by Selenteen of Alampish, but fierce opposition from the inland nomads kept their explorers and diviners from penetrating north of the South Bog.

Gebel hoped that diplomacy with the Lunar presence at Corflu could give his expedition peaceful access to the river, but he had not reckoned on the Liberation of Pavis savaging the northern Grantlands just weeks before he arrived in port.  In my Glorantha the Wolf Pirates left Kethaela without transporting Argrath's White Bull warriors to Corflu; the liberation traveled overland, freed Sun and Pavis counties, and raided deep into the Grantlands before withdrawing to their camps or Pavis for the Sacred Time rites.  By Sea Season 1626, Argrath's khans and captains are jockeying to see who can avoid being tasked with leading a host down the river to storm Corflu and reckon with its magical Watchdog, rather than joining the much-anticipated expedition into Dragon Pass.  Gebel unwittingly sailed into a Corflu that had abruptly become the beleaguered, overcrowded capital of the Lunar imperial rump in Prax, and found his ship summarily impounded by the Silver Shields at the docks, his cargo seized, his crew impressed, imprisoned or on the lamb in the swamps, and himself under house arrest as the 'guest' of the near-panicked Lunar authorities.  If he does not find some way to escape he's likely to remain imprisoned till Fire Season, when the White Bull's warriors follow the Zola Fel south.

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19 minutes ago, dumuzid said:

I don't suppose there's any description somewhere of what the Melibite and/or Teshnite contributions to raising the Boat Planet might have been?

You'll probably need to hunt through Revealed Mythology for stories of the East which include anything related to the sky river, boats, etc. Did the occupants of the original boat planet send aid down to Melib? Or free Melib from the sky? Something similar?  If so, then maybe something that came down needs to be brought back up by the boat planet and put back in place (a piece of the sky? a star?).

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Another general question: does anyone have interesting ideas for places Artmal's bones might've come to rest in the Middle World after being defeated by 'the god of Desero' in the Gods War?

I've already pointed out Fralos in Seshnela, and I think the Blue Sable Altar northeast of Pavis will be another in the campaign I'm running.  Do any other sites of Blue Moon relevance stand out to the tribe as good places where the Moonson's bones might have come to rest?

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1 minute ago, dumuzid said:

Do any other sites of Blue Moon relevance stand out to the tribe as good places where the Moonson's bones might have come to rest?

The Blue Man Hills in Afadjann seem to be very likely.  A lot of Artmali ruins, relics, etc. all around.

Zamokil seems like another good candidate.

And I'd probably put some in the Sea of Fire since the original Artmal Empire was somewhere down there.

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  • 2 weeks later...

As established earlier in the thread, there's only ever been a little Blue Moon-affiliated rune magic in official publications.  That little is in Troll Gods, which has rules for the Blue Moon cult of the trolls in the Blue Moon Plateau, and it includes a spell provided to Annilla's cult by Artmal: Vesper.  I workshopped that spell with one of my players, who gm's a game of their own, and this is what we came up with:

Quote

 

Vesper
1 point
Self, temporal, stackable

This spell causes the caster to glow with a dull bloody red color.  This glow covers an area 3 yards in radius.  All friends of the caster within the glow may add 1 to their effective POW for calculating spirit combat damage and resistance tests.   It vanishes immediately if the friend leaves the area affected by the spell.  The first time the caster or a friend within the area are reduced to 0 magic points they instantly gain a number of MP equal to the effective POW points bestowed by the spell.
Each additional point in the spell can either increase the radius affected by 3 yards or add 1 to the effective POW increase.

 

 

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6 hours ago, dumuzid said:

As established earlier in the thread, there's only ever been a little Blue Moon-affiliated rune magic in official publications.  That little is in Troll Gods, which has rules for the Blue Moon cult of the trolls in the Blue Moon Plateau, and it includes a spell provided to Annilla's cult by Artmal: Vesper.  I workshopped that spell with one of my players, who gm's a game of their own, and this is what we came up with:

The main reason there is little magic is that the Blue Moon was broken. So only the only common Rune magic is

Quote

Command Cult Spirit, Divination, Find Enemy, Find (Substance), Soul Sight, and Warding, and the cult specials of Absorption, Dismiss Selene (all sizes), Invisibility, Summon Selene (all sizes), Vision.

6 hours ago, dumuzid said:

Vesper

Here's the RQG version from the upcoming GoG:

Quote

 

VESPER

Moon rune

1 Point Self, Temporal, Stackable

This spell causes the caster to glow with a dull bloody red color. This glow covers an area 10 meters in diameter. All friends of the caster within the glow may add +5% to their effective skill either in spirit combat or spell casting. It vanishes immediately if the friend leaves the area affected by the spell.

Each additional point in the spell can either increase the diameter affected by 10 meters or add another +5% to their skill.

 

There's nothing wrong with the version you worked out, carry on using it. See the difference as a regional / cult variation

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I don’t have access to my notes at the moment but I wrote a freeform called The Fortunate Strangulations in which Gebel and Garambyanga (so? I’m sleepy) we’re key figures. I also ran a campaign called the Seven Swords of Tolat where one of the pcs was Gebel and the others were followers of Tolat in other guises. Notably Red Tiger (represented by a Hsa Tiger Hsunchen Shaman) Bronze Treasure (a Praxian “Mountain Man” who lost his mount) Shargash (a lunar explorer) and the Fronelan version (a former Wolf Pirate captive), there were also a sacred sword dancer of Tolat and an Amazon musician who had of course been a lover of Tolat. Added to the mix was a Black Sun Wizard, who lied and pretended he worshipped Tolat another way.
The campaign was of the epic level, they fought in the defence of Melib, during the attack they entered the temple of the Red Sword to not only discover it had gone, but had done so long ago. They ventured first to Teshnos to try to find more information and were tricked into going to the Plateau of statues to find stolen knowledge from the Crystal skull, resulting in battles with Boggles and chaos. They were given cryptic clues and encounter Loper people who told them secrets. They aimed to travel west but were caught in storms, they were captured by Vormain pirates and forced to be assassins in a succession war. Again they learned secrets and travelled to several islands amongst the East Isles. They reached Teleos and again encountered Wolf Pirates, Harrek and Garath Swordsharp. from there to Maslo, then Laskal where they were captured by Vadeli, split up and sold as slaves to several Fonritan masters, eventually meeting Garambyanga... sadly that’s where things ended due to real life.

 

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  • 1 month later...

I've developed a scheme for the disposition of Artmal's skeleton.  Don't know if my players will ultimately choose to join Gabaryanga on the world-crossing quest to restore Artmal, but they encountered the resting place of his skull in Fire Season of 1626.  The following is material for an active RQG campaign, and is now a pretty solid blend of actual 'canon' from the Guide and other sources, and new or expanded ideas I've added.  

I decided to partition Artmal seven ways, Pelorian Lunar fashion, with the pieces falling thusly:

Legs - Shape - Physicality -  Jrustela (Eradinthanos).  These originally landed northeast of Jrustela in the open ocean, where they were a source of Movement and Tidal magic for the region's merfolk at the Dawn.  The bones were seized by Jrusteli wizards soon after the Battle of Tanian's Victory, but the Legbones of Artmal and their guardian spirit resisted all attempts at magical coercion while the God Learners reigned.  After the cataclysms, when the wilderness around Eradinthanos was settled by aldryami in the Third Age their dryads received powerful visions of Veldrya, the long-lost elf goddess of Blue Moon vegetation.  Since then the elves have kept careful guard around the God Learner ruins that still house the legbones, convinced that they play some mysterious role in the Reforesting to come.

Ribs - Warmth - Life force - Tarien (Sky Crater).  The Ribs of Artmal still rest in the crater where they fell to earth in the Storm Age.  Since the Dawn humans have come to the crater to learn the secrets of sacred battle-rage and swordsmanship (a very rare skill this far south in Pamaltela) from the Madman of the Crater, the spirit of the Ribs, whose deepest gifts allow his followers to draw shining swords of lurid purple jade from the crater walls.  With the Slarges increasing their pressure on the tribes neighboring Sky Crater the berserker cult of the Madman and the Ribs grows in importance and influence.  None of the warriors and magicians who now hear the Madman's whispers in their dreams have yet agreed to his offers of even greater secrets, in exchange for human sacrifice.

Hips - Beast - Fertility - Seshnela (Fralos).  This site has come up before in this thread, though I planned to rest different bones there earlier.  Artmal's hips landed in Seshnela, and now lie at the foundations of the talar ruling citadel of Fralos, a mid-sized city in Estaurenic, Seshnela.  The lion-headed spirit of the Hips is the guardian spirit of its city, and serves loyally so long as Fralos is ruled by an unmarried woman of the native talar dynasty.  Attempts by Malkioni wizards to compel the spirit to behave otherwise date back to the First Age, and have all falled.  No modern members of the ruling family know the full truth, that they descend through Dawn Age Basmoli nobility from Artmal's mythical wife Cathora (a daughter of Fralar, king of carnivores, and Sehna Likita).  The spirit of the Hips would probably accept a unmarried female ruler from any of the local Malkioni castes, or indeed an infidel, as long as they could trace their descent back to Cathora.

Skull - Bird - Intellect - Prax (Blue Sable Altar).  Artmal's Skull came to earth northeast of the headwaters of the Zola Fel.  Its resting place was a mesa that became a core sacred site of the earliest Sable Riders, a portion of whom renamed themselves the Blue Clan and dedicated themselves to the Skull and its spirit as an oracle.  The Blue Clan were extinct by the Dawn, and most of the deepest secrets of interacting with the Skull lost, though surviving Sable clans maintained the purity of the site and guarded it against mortal intrusion.  The spirit of the Skull appears as a crippled old Veldang man draped in soiled rags, who rests in the pooled mineral water of the salt-crystal caverns that now house the Skull deep beneath its mesa.  The Raging Serpent Path, a seasonal river that pours from the Blue Sable Altar, is in fact the water of the great Tanier River in Seshnela: the tears of Sesha Likita, shed for her fallen son-in-law and released onto the Praxian plains through the tidal influence of his birth mother, the Blue Moon.  Its magically-charged waters give rise to elemental and immaterial snake spirits, uniformly ornery entities lashing out in confusion at finding themselves transported from Seshnela to the Praxian plains.  The Impala Bone clan of Sable Riders specializes in hunting these tidal spirit-snakes.

Shadow - Dark Side - Figurative Shadow - Blue Moon Plateau.  The Shadow of Artmal fled to the greatest resting place of his mother's remains, the Blue Moon Plateau in Peloria.  Like his mother, the aspect of Artmal at the Blue Moon Plateau has been fed and shaped by its resident trolls since the Darkness.  The spirit of the Shadow of Artmal and Artal Argar, the Son of Mahaquata worshiped by the Blue Moon trolls, are interchangeable.  The spirit, usually depicted (and appearing) as a portly, bat-winged male troll wearing rich clothing and carrying a sheathed sword, is worshiped among the Blue Moon uz as the patron of explorers, warleaders, and statestrolls.  His cult provides unique skills and magic that greatly aid long-distance flight and navigation.  Probably the 'healthiest' of the parts of Artmal thanks to the trolls' worship, though the most different from its original form as a result.

Eyes - Sight - Awareness - Afadjann (Faladje).  The Eyes of Artmal fell to earth in land that was later settled by followers of Jarkaru, the Artmali hero who refounded the Artmali Empire after Artmal's defeat as an aggressive, colonial maritime empire.  The Artmali colonists wielded the Eyes as aids to scrying and oracular projects.  As the Storm Age worsened and the empire's patron deities died off, the Artmali used the Eyes to seek with increasing desperation for new sources and paths to power.  They were in active use when great Pamalt tilted the Sky Dome to rain heavenly fire on the core of Pamaltela's Chaos irruption, which included the heartlands of the corrupted Artmali Empire.  When colonists from the Vadeli Empire of Chir arrived to conquer the isolated Artmali, they found the Eyes unresponsive and their spirit nonexistent.  After the Vadeli Empire was destroyed in the Darkness only post-urban Veldang tribes lived in the adjacent wilderness, shunning the ruins.  When the expanding Gargandites conquered the region centuries after the Dawn they leveled the Artmali ruins to found Faladje atop them, destroyed what ghosts they could and bound the rest, and rediscovered the Eyes.  Centuries within Time had only allowed the spirit of the Eyes to recuperate to a whisper of power, and the Eyes themselves were still seared dark.  The first jann of Faladje sealed the Eyes away as something they could not use but might incite the Veldang slaves.  They rested in the royal vaults until the God Learners came, and the Eyes were rediscovered in an imperial audit.  The Western wizards were unable to establish any functional connection with the Eyes before the Six-Legged Empire they were part of collapsed, but the first post-imperial janns of Faladje were the beneficiaries of their research. The Eyes became scrying tools of Faladje's royal court, their crippled spirit enslaved to the will of each ruling jann in succession.  They were in active use the day the Red Moon rose to the north, and reflected the glint of her light through the otherworlds.  That caught the attention of an army of Zaranistangi, trapped in the God Time since their confrontation with Seshnelan wizards of the early Middle Sea Empire, freed at last with the Moon's rising.  The Zaranistangi traveled directly to Faladje, overthrew the ruling slavers, and led the liberated slaves in a war that ended only when Afadjanni heroquesters offered the Zaranistangi a priceless ransom in exchange for truce: the soul of Artmal, captured and enslaved by Garangordos himself a thousand years earlier in the quests that founded Fonritian civilization.  The Zaranistangi withdrew to their home realm in the God Time with Artmal's liberated soul, to wait till conditions in the Middle World allow their truce with the janns to expire.  When Faladje was reconquered its new slaver rulers found the Eyes only lightly filmed with darkness, and their once-enslaved spirit absent.  The new masirin of Faladje hid the Eyes in the deep vaults, lest they attract more dangerous otherworld cousins of the Veldang slaves.

Seventh - Mystic - Soul - God Time (Coborandra).  After Artmal's defeat his Soul haunted the ancient palace of his son Yeetai, the first mortal emperor of the Artmali, on Pamaltela's far southern coast.  The broken god's Soul was treated as an inexpressibly honored, if invalid, guest of the emperors who followed Jarkaru, and Yeetai's Palace was maintained as a tomb and temple to the seventh part of Artmal while his descendants' empire lasted.  The Palace lay within Pamalt's Firefall, which scoured it of life and sundered its walls.  For the rest of the Darkness, and for centuries into Time, Artmal's Soul haunted those ruins at the edge of the Sea of Fire.  Travelers through the Nargan Desert sometimes heard the Soul's voice on the wind, accompanied by the strings of a kora, in songs that briefly made the Blue Moon visible to mortals on her journey through the sky.  Garangordos the Cruel, the founding hero of Fonrit, sought and battled Artmal's soul in one of many quests he carried out in the Middle World and otherworlds to create his new society.  He bound the soul in a casket of iron and lead that he forced his first enslaved Veldang warriors to carry into battle like a priest's litter.  With Artmal's Soul and Darleester the Noose both under his power, and incorporated into the society of magically-reinforced slavery he created with his hero band the Glorious Ones, Garangordos and his many successors were able to bind the descendants of the Artmali to the foundation of their society with chains that held fast through many worlds.  The casket lay among the treasures of the Great Temple of Garangordos in Garguna until the Zaranistangi invasion.  Like some other Blue Moon influences, the Zaranistangi were able to negate the hold of Fonritian slavery-enforcing magic over the Veldang, but on a repeatable and reliable basis never faced by the slavers before.  Fonritian civilization itself seemed on the verge of collapse, with Zaranistangi striking from nowhere at will and liberating Veldang slaves en masse, when a hero band seized the casket of Armtal's Soul from Garguna and offered it to the invaders--with the threat that should they be refused, the Afadjanni would open the casket themselves and cast Artmal's Soul into the maw of Chaos.  The Zaranistangi accepted a truce and rode from the Middle World with the casket in tow.  They opened it on the slopes of the Spike in Coborandra, their home within the Gods World.  The Seventh Part of Artmal rests as a guest among his cousins still, waiting for mortal Artmali to gather the rest of him together in the Sea of Fire, reunite him with his Red Sword, and restore him fully to his place among the gods.

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  • 2 months later...
12 minutes ago, dumuzid said:

I'm having trouble locating Jokotu, City of the Free, in the Argan Argar Atlas maps of Fonrit.  Can anyone point me in the right direction?

As the Guide p.569 notes: "Mondoro. Within it lie Barueli, Fanjosi, and Jokotu."

And see map p.570 where it is at the base of Zarygue Mountain:

image.png.d95c759017923b7fc84380d0b24c8e0f.png

or the map on p.567:

image.png.419b0ce40fed86f8654eb194343e2d04.png

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  • 1 month later...

In My Glorantha, in the Sea Seaon of 1626 Argrath White-Bull commissioned a great work of art and artifice from the Pavis Mostali: a living map of the lozenge wrought in silver, brass and quicksilver, kept up to date through interface with the deep earth spirits at the dwarves' command.  The table-sized version the Mostali delivered in Fire Season was just a copy of the grand map they manufactured for the project, but it fulfilled the terms of the contract nonetheless.  Yet it was not the only copy of this grand map that the Mostali created.  They prepared an even smaller version, the size of a writing tablet and reinforced for travel and hardship, encoded with data drawn from the shattered Intellect of Artmal which lies beneath the Blue Sable Altar.  That data was the original impact points and current positions of the six pieces of Artmal that remain within the Middle World in 1626.  This is that map:

Spoiler

1864338662_artmalmap.thumb.png.e232b23431c62043cfab546708d0abff.png

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16 hours ago, dumuzid said:

This is that map:

I always forget how far away Jrustela is from Genertela. 

Looking at the map, you would think that the God Learners' natural area of operations would be Pamaltela, with Genertela as a distant afterthought.

I suppose they did not forget their distant roots in the Genertelan West.

Edited by soltakss

Simon Phipp - Caldmore Chameleon - Wallowing in my elitism since 1982. Many Systems, One Family. Just a fanboy. 

www.soltakss.com/index.html

Jonstown Compendium author. Find my contributions here

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3 hours ago, soltakss said:

Looking at the map, you would think that their natural area of operations would be Pamaltela, with Genertela as a distant afterthought.

The one place it doesn't account for is Zamokil in far southeastern Pamaltela.  Many of the main ruins of the Artmal Empire are there, even if perhaps the fragments of Artmal are not. 

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26 minutes ago, jajagappa said:

The one place it doesn't account for is Zamokil in far southeastern Pamaltela.

Sorry, I was talking about the God Learners.

Simon Phipp - Caldmore Chameleon - Wallowing in my elitism since 1982. Many Systems, One Family. Just a fanboy. 

www.soltakss.com/index.html

Jonstown Compendium author. Find my contributions here

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1 hour ago, soltakss said:

Sorry, I was talking about the God Learners.

Ah, missed that bit!  Was thinking about the "distribution" of Artmal's parts.

But, yes, odd given Jrustela's closer proximity to Pamaltela.  And I seem to recall that currents at least at some times of the year favor southerly travel around the maelstrom.  Which must mean that Genertela has something that someone in Jrustela wants... and what occurs to me is that the dwarfs of Curustus want iron because they need it to build the great device to pull Slon back together.  So, "encourage" the God Learners to go north and bring iron south.  Perhaps Gods World heroquesting also helps the dwarfs to eliminate "blockages" there.  And when progress is sufficiently far along, remove the God Learners, Close the Seas, and let the great Slon Reconnection Project continue in secret.

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  • 5 months later...

Bumping this thread because one of my players has raised an interesting theory regarding the present circumstances of the Red Sword of the Zaranistangi.

We've established that the Red Sword brought by Ordanal to Melib in the Second Age, and taken from Melib into the Wastelands by Avalor in the twilight of the Middle Sea Empire, came to rest at the Temple of War in Spada, Loskalm, after the overthrow of the God Learners there.  The only account of this course of events that I or my player have access to is what's written in the Guide.  The Guide says in a few places that the revolt against the God Learners in Fronela was helmed by the great wizard Halwal, Tryensaval (named as an Ascended Master in a list that includes Halwal as well), Avlor (who may or may not be Avalor of Eest), and Sigur, who is crowned king of a restored Loskalm by Halwal at the end of the revolt.  Those four names are associated with the sucessful revolt that begins in 980, no others. 

However!  While Halwal and Tryensaval are always mentioned as leaders, they are only ever associated with Avlor or Sigur in the same sentence.  Avlor is called "the foreign Hero" in the guide, while Sigur's background is never mentioned, and they are never mentioned together.  it's always either "Halwal, Tryensaval and Avlor," or "Halwal, Tryensaval and Sigur."  My player's theory, based on this textual evidence, is straightforward: that Avalor/Avlor and Sigur are the same person.  They contend that Avalor assumed the new name and presumably other Loskalmi cultural trappings after the successful revolt as part of his ascension to the throne.  Presumably a part of this change was interring the Red Sword at Spada.  The cult of the god of the Red Planet is alive and well in Fronela under the name Vorthan; a pre-Malkioni Temple of War in the region would likely be at least partly dedicated to the Red God.  Avalor/Sigur sheathing the sword in the earth of the greatest temple to the Red God in his new kingdom also has a pleasing symmetry with the sword's journey east with Ordanal.

So, are there textual sources I'm not familiar with that support or disprove this theory?  In the absence of further evidence, I find it pretty compelling.  What does the tribe think: are Avalor and Sigur one and the same?

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