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Non-Gloranthan Media That Reminds You Of Glorantha


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40 minutes ago, Ladygolem said:

so I'll just focus on praising the incredible art by many talented artists, especially that by Simon Roy (who's done a ton of illustration for RQ:G and Six Ages, in fact!)

Very nice art, reminds me of Metal Hurlant and Pilote from back in the day... especially Mœbius. Any idea who this artist is, Simon Roy maybe?

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... remember, with a TARDIS, one is never late for breakfast!

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3 minutes ago, Bill the barbarian said:

Very nice art, reminds me of Metal Hurlant and Pilote from back in the day... especially Mœbius. Any idea who this artist is, Simon Roy maybe?

It's by Simon Roy, as I just said. Other artists working on the project are Farel Dalrymple and Giannis Milonogiannis, whose contributions are equally amazing.

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Moana is practically a textbook hero quest.

Age of Bronze by Eric Shanower.

The various Conan stories; particularly Beyond the Black River.

A number of the Icelandic Sagas; my favorite is King Harald's Saga.

And, as a must-read, Geoffrey Bibby's amazing: Four Thousand Years Ago.

Edited by pachristian
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2 hours ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

And of course my perennial favorite, Morrowind, which is in part inspired by Glorantha (although you have to squint a little to see it.)

An immortal God King who lives in a magical city that floats in the sea and rules (along with other two god kings) a Holy Country? Now where have I heard that before... 😂

But seriously that's the only obvious inspiration I was able to pick out really, I'm sure there's more though, maybe less obvious.

Also I'm not a huge nerd of TES lore as I'm with Glorantha but I have a friend who is and for what he has told me I can say that if having a mindblowingly complex mythology is a signature of Glorantha, then TES copied that too because it's a huge mess (not in a bad way).

 

You have all sold me on Moana BTW. I always thought it had a cool design but nothing really drew me enough to sit and watch it but now knowing that it's so Gloranthan I will definitely see it soon. 

Edited by Jape_Vicho

:50-power-truth::50-sub-light::50-power-truth:

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Ummm, most a-historical Chinese movies....

Hero with Jet Li,

Mulan (any version),

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

 

The whole warriors / heroes fighting with various magics... One huge army verses an invading one, which can be defeated by a single person...  demons & spirits... 

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13 hours ago, Ali the Helering said:

and, of course, racist and misogynist, but who's counting? 

H.P. Lovecraft has also been accused of racism, yet I seem to recall someone produced a Call of Cthulhu game. 

At one stage of The Hour of the Dragon, Conan leads a slave rebellion, in which mostly black slaves rise up and overthrow their white overseers. The black slaves were Conan's friends from the olden days.

I'm not disputing there are scenes which could be interpreted as racist in Conan stories, but the slave rebellion and Conan's open friendship for black people in many of the stories suggests the author was not some one dimensional white supremacist.

Edited by EricW
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4 hours ago, EricW said:

H.P. Lovecraft has also been accused of racism, yet I seem to recall someone produced a Call of Cthulhu game. 

At one stage of The Hour of the Dragon, Conan leads a slave rebellion, in which mostly black slaves rise up and overthrow their white overseers. The black slaves were Conan's friends from the olden days.

I'm not disputing there are scenes which could be interpreted as racist in Conan stories, but the slave rebellion and Conan's open friendship for black people in many of the stories suggests the author was not some one dimensional white supremacist.

Lovecraft was an enormous racist, as was Howard.  That doesn't mean that their settings aren't interesting, but it does mean that I wouldn't praise either without qualification.  They were 'men of their time', and prey to the heinous attitude of that time.  Others rose far above it.

The slaves need Conan to lead the rebellion, not being capable of successfully rising unless lead by a white man!  Some blacks are depicted as 'grunting like apes' and 'bestial', while Asians are described as 'weak-willed'.

It is also worth checking which Conan stories are written by Howard, and which by others, since not all the authors have the same prejudice.

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14 minutes ago, Ali the Helering said:

Lovecraft was an enormous racist, as was Howard. 

If you sit year after year in your white household, reading books written by white men, telling stories of white men, and never go out to meet interesting diverse people that, other than the other white people living nearby, your reading stuff doesn´t help you becoming more open minded to other cultures and skin colors. 
When HPL traveled to some places, instead of just reading about them he became less and less of a racist. 

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On 2/7/2021 at 2:00 AM, pachristian said:

A number of the Icelandic Sagas; my favorite is King Harald's Saga.

Possibly, elements.  (though I have to mention Njal's and Egil's Sagas which are quite extraordinary.)

If we're in the North, then I think Beowulf (Seamus Heaney's translation is very good) is closer the mark, at least for me.  Also the Celtic myths, e.g. the Mabinogion.

But for me it more Mediterranean:

Iliad and Odyssey and Aeneid, The Greek Myths (Robert Graves) (no one's mentioned any of them, are they just way too obvious, or just not as obvious as I think) and the early bits of Livy.

The Epic of Gilgamesh feels very Gloranthan to me.

I've Lavinia by Ursula Le Guin on my to read list, precisely because I've heard very good things about it and it sounds very Glorantha.

Also the behaviour of the gods in American Gods (Neil Gaiman) is how I imagine the Gods of Glorantha.

Edited by Stephen L
That spelling thing
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Quote

It is also worth checking which Conan stories are written by Howard, and which by others, since not all the authors have the same prejudice.

Too bad, as Howard's stories are by far the best.

But I would say that applying (or not applying) modern sensibilities to other time writings are not the subject of this thread and would be better in a separate thread.

About recommendations, for adults only, in webcomic form, the Nart sagas are a series of tales originating from the North Caucasus. They form much of the basic mythology of the ethnic groups in the area, including Abazin, Abkhaz, Circassian, Ossetian, Karachay-Balkar, and to some extent Chechen-Ingush folklore.

Quote

The Narts are a mythic tribe of ancient heroes who appear in legends that date back to classical times.
These tales are full of absurd humor, outrageous stunts, bawdy sorceresses, weird gay stuff, talking horses, and so much more.

You can start the reading here:
https://narts.sylvanmigdal.com/?date=20171021

narts-logo.png

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On a similar line to Blood of Zeus, there's the recent animated series Onyx Equinox.

Shown on an anime streaming service of all things, it's set in Mesoamerica, with characters from different cultures (Mexica, Mayan, Zapotec, Totonac)

The combination of the supernatural being an acknowledged part of the world, deities as an important part of the story, and who need sacrifice, the quest to save humanity from destruction, and just the look into many different cultures with their art and design, makes this a potential source of Gloranthan inspiration.

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On 2/6/2021 at 6:35 AM, Bill the barbarian said:

Almost forgot. Might I suggest the Bhagavad Gita?  If this is not inappropriate these days.

That most epic of epics, the Mahabharat, including the Gita but magnificent in its wider vision, especially the TV version by the Chopras.

In film, also the magnificent Red Cliff.

The Niebelunglied, the Eddas, the academic works of Oliver Dickinson (as opposed to Griselda!), Chadwick and Ventris' Mycenaean Texts in Translation and beyond anything else in print Pritchard's unrivalled Ancient Near Eastern Texts.  (neither of the last two cheap, but now in paperback).  

Hrolf Kraki's Saga - the Norse version of Beowulf.

Edit - Never forget the Kojiki and Nihongi, not least for a very powerful picture of shamanistic-style relationships.

Edited by Ali the Helering
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I vaguely remember a pretty artsy, CGI-heavy mythology movie with a vaguely greek feel that, I think, had a down-to-earth, tragic framing narrative in black and white, but I can't for the life of me remember its title or director. The image that stuck in my head is a warrior being felled by about a 1000 arrows in the back, slowly sinking back and resting on the arrows like a kind of giant centipede.

Anyone seen it? Somehow, I associate it with Glorantha.

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A bit of a different kind of recommendation, but I've been playing a bit of Mount & Blade Bannerlord lately and while it's not very Gloranthan in tone or story (or frankly all that good, but I digress) one thing I did appreciate was the first person battle simulations. It's very good at conveying the scale and chaos of battle. Ordered ranks and formations quickly devolve into a dozen different fronts and skirmishes. One time I was able to beat an army of nomad horse archers three times my size by having my infantry form a circular shield wall atop a hill with my archers firing from inside it, along with an elite unit of glaive-wielding mercenaries ready to cut down any fool that managed to break through.

Another time I found myself duelling one of the enemy's commanders personally on horseback.  Our melee had us drift away from the battle into the nearby woods, where my advantage of mobility was curtailed, and my steed was swiftly cut down. We circled each other in the snow, trading blows, until I barely scraped through a victory with a lucky swipe to his head. As I stumbled bleeding back out of the forest, I was treated just in time to a grand view of our cavalry smashing through their ranks in  agrand charge. It was breathtaking. Movies and books can offer cinematic, tailored narrative, but the dynamic improvised nature of the videogame leads to a unique experience, only bested by a thrilling session of a TTRPG!

One other thing in particular that surprised me was how huge battles feel even with relatively small armies; an army of 500 sounds pitiful on paper but chills the spine all the same when you see it crest a hill in the distance.  I used to find visualising bronze age warfare difficult - spoiled by the ostentatious battle scenes in movies like Lord of the Rings or Krzyżacy / The Knights of the Teutonic Order (which used 15,000 extras and who knows how many horses in the climactic Battle of Grunwald!), it was hard to imagine the smaller scales and populations at play in the period. Bannerlord gave me a much clearer picture of what that looks like.

As a reward for getting through this rambling post, here's the clip of the aforementioned battle from The Knights of the Teutonic Order. Fun fact: the scene is filmed on the location of the historical battlefield! Another fun fact: said battlefield is estimated to be the single largest horse graveyard in human history 💀

 

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2 hours ago, Ali the Helering said:

That most epic of epics, the Mahabharat, including the Gita but magnificent in its wider vision, especially the TV version by the Chopras.

 

There's Grant Morrison's 18 Days, which is a sci-fi-fantasy comic book retelling of the Mahabharata. I'd recommend the art book for main inspiration, since the art there is really impressive. The actual comic series based on the art book is a lot less flashy, which is understandable, but can be a bit of a let down. 

ac3b382322cd9181c8c7ae92_rw_1920.jpg

 

10 hours ago, Jape_Vicho said:

An immortal God King who lives in a magical city that floats in the sea and rules (along with other two god kings) a Holy Country? Now where have I heard that before... 😂

But seriously that's the only obvious inspiration I was able to pick out really, I'm sure there's more though, maybe less obvious.

Also I'm not a huge nerd of TES lore as I'm with Glorantha but I have a friend who is and for what he has told me I can say that if having a mindblowingly complex mythology is a signature of Glorantha, then TES copied that too because it's a huge mess (not in a bad way).

Yes, the layered esoteric lore is a definitely inspired by Glorantha. More directly, TES has its own version of the Compromise, although it's not presented as post-Apocalyptic the same way Glorantha is. 
More blatantly, one of those living gods is sometimes referred to as the Lord of the Middle Air (although he's no wind god, it's more of a symbolic thing), and the slogan "I AM AND I ARE ALL WE" pops up in some lore from outside the games, as a nod to the Lunars.
Something similar to Gloranthan Illumination appears as well, called CHIM (which in-universe is an archaic term for "Royalty", iirc), though you can also argue that both of these are inspired by real-life Buddhistic powers.
There's a few more, but that's enough right now. Ken Rolston is the guy who brought the Glorantha inspiration into Elder Scrolls, I think. Michael Kirkbride was the guy who really went deep down the esoteric rabbit hole in a Greg-ian fashion, though.

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47 minutes ago, Ladygolem said:
1 hour ago, soltakss said:

Pathfinder (The original Lapp version)

Don't they prefer the term Sami nowadays?

I have no idea.

 

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, Sir_Godspeed said:

There's Grant Morrison's 18 Days, which is a sci-fi-fantasy comic book retelling of the Mahabharata. I'd recommend the art book for main inspiration, since the art there is really impressive. The actual comic series based on the art book is a lot less flashy, which is understandable, but can be a bit of a let down. 

 

Gorgeous art all over this thread. Nice one Sir_Godspeed!

... remember, with a TARDIS, one is never late for breakfast!

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