Western Hero Wars Status Quo

[Sir_Godspeed]

37 minutes ago, Richard S. said:

https://wellofdaliath.chaosium.com/home/gloranthan-documents/greg-sez/aldryas-own-story/

This at least lists them as children of Halamdrya, distinct from Aldrya's children.

Well, the only thing I can say is that the Guide mentions them quickly under the "True Elves" heading, along with the Fire Elf and Moon Elf headings.

[Eff]

22 hours ago, scott-martin said:

Froalar's heirs inherited the Seshna banner. The Talar Of The West carries an axe. As for fire, "give me fuel," Metallica says. Horrifying to some but morel, aspen and others have seen it all before.

Perhaps there's some redemption to be found in raining down Moonfire from the sky. Or perhaps it's a way to spread the moon-elf seeds and make sure they germinate properly...

[davecake]

On 5/25/2021 at 7:17 AM, Nevermet said:

Farms will be destroyed wholesale, and I am unsure the entire population will be able to pick up hunting & gathering fast enough. 

Of course, for the hsunchen all over Fronela especially, but also Ralios, who are already hunter-gatherers, and who generally hated agriculture clearing the forests, this will be awesome. 
The serpent-beasts rise again! 
(which potentially revives all sorts of exciting First Age conflicts, with ancient hsunchen spirits and super shamans back for their Millenia old vengeance on the people who drove them from their forest homes, etc)

[Joerg]

Elf forest isn't exactly welcoming for Hykimi, although there are precedents for some Hykimi to welcome Aldryami, especially in Rathorela.

Then there are some Hsunchen whose totem beasts aren't compatible with forest in general, like the Uncoling reindeer. (For those familiar with arctic "forest" inhabited by reindeer, note that Winterwood isn't anything like that, but instead like the endless spruce forest of southwestern Canada.)

 

The reforestation effort appears to cover more terrain than the Great Western Forest of the Golden Age. Peloria has seen an elf reforestation effort in the Second Age according to the Fortunate Succession, in the reign of Fenaldevu (614-621), the aldryami complaining about a breach of ancient pacts. That's within living memory of dryads (although most Pelorian ones would have been burned in Erigia and Rist).

Regardless whether there are moon elves in the moon forests or not, the Pelorian aldryami can be assumed to be quite hostile to the Lunar Dara Happan Empire.

 

It doesn't look like the Kingdom of War has much of an interior, although the siege of the Riverjoin territories seems to imply that the KoW is able to maintain a frontline separated from the exterior expansion. But then, the Janube river might remain somewhat open for water transport even if the aldryami take over all the terrain denuded of humanity.

With the powers of Maran Gor directed to forest growth rather than crops, the Loskalmi might be in for a surprise should they manage to annihilate a front segment of the Kingdom and then face an elf forest. But then, I would be surprised if there weren't any aldryami units fighting for Lord Death on a Horse.

 

Another possibility might be a heroquest redirect where any heroquest battle encounter anywhere on Glorantha would be attracted to a military obstacle of the Kingdom of War for the time of its existence.

[Joerg]

I wonder whether the Redwood of Dagori Inkarth has a chance at at least temporarily reclaiming lost territory in its environs.

We know that the border region unclaimed by either beastmen or Grazelanders will be targeted as the site of a new grove, but that appears to be a more natural process than the overnight trees that are in storage for Peloria and the lands south and/or west of that.

 

Vast fire magics are known to both Pentans (Erigia) and Lunars (Rist), and might be repeated. The (unabridged) Abiding Book also contains magical knowledge able to reduce a major elf forest to a sorry remnant, as was shown by Jrusteli in Vralos even before the Battle of Tanian's Victory.

[Akhôrahil]

I'm interested in the Hezel Darong thing and chaos in Karia, which I hear is going to be a huge deal? Apart from secret lore transmitted only to The Elect, do we we know anything about it apart from the textbox in Guide p. 395? 

[metcalph]

54 minutes ago, Akhôrahil said:

I'm interested in the Hezel Darong thing and chaos in Karia, which I hear is going to be a huge deal? Apart from secret lore transmitted only to The Elect, do we we know anything about it apart from the textbox in Guide p. 395? 

The goss I heard many years ago, which may or may not be true, was that Hezel comes from Pamaltela, being part of a big bad plot for somebody else to become the Big God of Chaos.  As such, traditional ralian chaos fighting magics were to be wholly ineffectual against him.  But since he doesn't rate a mention in the Black Dragon Mountain Pictographs, Ethilrist's turgid prose etc, I've a feeling that the plot, if it still exists, was a damp squib.

 

[Joerg]

17 minutes ago, Akhôrahil said:

I'm interested in the Hezel Darong thing and chaos in Karia, which I hear is going to be a huge deal? Apart from secret lore transmitted only to The Elect, do we we know anything about it apart from the textbox in Guide p. 395? 

The "secret Lore transmitted only to the elect""was comprised of these two paragraphs and the information that there was a chaos monster swap going on, transplanting unique Pamaltelan Chaos creatures into Genertela, where only a few of those were known - Cwim, the Hand of the Devil - and mainly entire populations of human or beast sized chaos critters roam.

[Akhôrahil]

2 hours ago, Joerg said:

The "secret Lore transmitted only to the elect""was comprised of these two paragraphs and the information that there was a chaos monster swap going on, transplanting unique Pamaltelan Chaos creatures into Genertela, where only a few of those were known - Cwim, the Hand of the Devil - and mainly entire populations of human or beast sized chaos critters roam.

Oh, I thought it was a whole thing with chaos tendrils emerging from the inner earth to cause chaos eruptions in various places, a whole Karia vs. Dorastor chaos-on-chaos war, and so on. But since I only ever heard snippets, it might just have been what I tried to patch together from them.

Edited May 29, 2021 by Akhôrahil

[scott-martin]

Maybe something from the "master plot" (thinking of the tentacles in particular) can be salvaged for Karia by casting the Hezel Darong movement as independent "chaos synthesists" trying to collect and recombine all the known strains into some horrible project with the same universal scope of the original tentacle plot but with a workable regional impact.

Moboti Baru's shamanic orientation could be exotic by Central Genertelan standards, teaching us something about how chaos expresses in distant lands. For that matter, there's nothing that says Hezel Darong comes out of the Pelorian elites either. I wouldn't necessarily make either of them renegade Pamaltelans but they could carry an Artmal influence vast distances to balance a loper people / red sword renascence here. All it really takes is an imported charnjibber to create quite the ecological fable.

If I were a sufficiently crazed Lunar adept with chaotic inclinations I'd probably find a lot of interest in Vustria, which might contain the wreckage of multiple pre-Arkat civilizations as well as that isolated Sun Dome nearby. And if I'm simply too chaotic for the empire in the early Hero Wars phase to handle, I can always come back when they're ready for me.

[Akhôrahil]

1 hour ago, scott-martin said:

And if I'm simply too chaotic for the empire in the early Hero Wars phase to handle, I can always come back when they're ready for me.

Come to the Monster Empire (we have cookies!)

[Sir_Godspeed]

A bit of a tangent, but if that was what was planned to come from Pamaltela to Genertela, what was planned the other way? Harrek isn't Chaotic... Vadeli?

[jajagappa]

22 minutes ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

what was planned the other way?

Chaos hordes, IIRC.  Broo, scorpionmen, etc. - lots of chaos minions to flood across the lands.

[scott-martin]

28 minutes ago, jajagappa said:

Chaos hordes, IIRC.  Broo, scorpionmen, etc. - lots of chaos minions to flood across the lands.

Having a hard time finding that file to confirm but it's just as well. The Nargan plot is basically confirmed in the Guide now (tribal broo are alien to Pamaltela, setting up a Southern Hero Wars thread one of these days) and interestingly p. 731 suggests that we should start dating the trouble in Karia from the fall of Whitewall . . . if so, the "Western Hero Wars Status Quo" for the East Wilds is already disrupted.

[jajagappa]

11 hours ago, scott-martin said:

Having a hard time finding that file to confirm but it's just as well.

I'm not finding immediately either, but there are some related secrets of the Nargan plot in Sandy's Forgotten Secrets of Glorantha.  So, if you do set up the Southern Hero Wars thread, we'll have to add that in there.

[moonwolf8]

When I think of the West I think of Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur.  I traded my copy into 2nd and Charles because I couldn't stand Malory's repeated use of the phrase 'Such a Pity'.  Anyway, two things I would pick up from the book.  Morgan le Fae learned necromancy from a group of nuns, and the quest for the Grail.  

I like the idea of abbeys dedicated to St. Gark the Calm with zombie summoning, halberd wielding warrior nuns.  Please include that.

The Grail is usually depicted as a cup, but I think it has also been portrayed as a green stone that fell from heaven.  A green stone from heaven is of course kryptonite.  So a green stone that fell from heaven and will weaken Lord Death on a Horse so that he looses control of his troops and is vulnerable to mortal weapons.  

Of course the Dronars have magic.  They have common magic learned from Listening to the lives of the Saints and Participating in folk plays.  

Rokar's logic was flawed.  He cut out too much of the original text along with the supposed lies of the God Learners.  Following Rokar's logic will always lead one astray.  The Segurane massacre is proof that the Sharp Abiding Book is a work of Demonolatry. At least it's proof to any Malkioni who isn't Rokari.

After reading this thread I've come to think of King Guilmarn as a corpulent Ming the Merciless.  So we just need a Flash Gordon hero to unite the Lionmen, the Hawkmen, the Forest Kingdom, and the Blue Magic Kingdom to overthrow Guilmarn.  So, Lionmen - Pendali Were-lions; Blue Magic Kingdom - Artmali; Forest Kingdom - Tarinwood; Hawkmen - some other notable group of hsunchen.  Perhaps our Flash Gordon of the West will wield one of those Artmali Red Swords.

I expect pockets of Old Believer resistance to Rokarism. 

Barbarella as a source of inspiration took me by surprise.  I've seen the movie a couple of times and I used to have a copy of the graphic novel Barbarella and the Moon Child, but I never finished reading it.  If someone can develop either or both of those into a scenario I would love to see that.

Hermit Wizards tanging on triangles while meditating on The Abiding Book and The Lives of the Saints.  

I like the idea of a descendant of Hrestol marrying the fragments of Seshna Litita and reuniting the land of Seshnela.  I also like the idea of the goddess rolling over and drowning the Luatha. 

I don't see any reason for anyone else to turn to Demonolatry, that's a Rokari thing.  The rest of the nations and the old believers have the Cult of the Saints; Pagan gods; Hsunchen spirit practices; and Angels.  How about a little Angelolatry. 

In "witchcraft and sorcery of the Balkans" by Radomir Ristic it says that the common name for male witches (warlocks) in Serbia is Dragon Men.  I want to borrow this and make the warlocks of the West be tied to the dragonewt rune and the dragons dream.  Witches in turn are part Fairy and thus tied to the Plant rune and Aldrya's song.

 

 

 

[Sir_Godspeed]

14 hours ago, moonwolf8 said:

I want to borrow this and make the warlocks of the West be tied to the dragonewt rune and the dragons dream. 

That's pretty doable, actually, given the existence of the Serpent Beast Dancers in Ralios.

[moonwolf8]

I like the idea of God Learner Men of All.  I especially like the idea that as the Rokari purity patrols go out to correct everyone's behavior they accidentally release squads of God Learner Men of All that have been trapped in God Time since the collapse of the Middle Sea Empire.  For example: a village performs an annual folk play called St. Hrestol and the Blue Woman, in which St. Hrestol battles the drought serpent Daga and frees the Blue Woman.  The purity patrol suppresses the play therby freeing a squad of God Learner Men of All; causing a drought in the region, and bringing on attacks by fire breathing winged serpents known as Sera.  It turns out the villagers are descended from the supporters of a group of God Learner Hero Questers who were trying to replace Orlanth with St. Hrestol in the story of freeing Heler the rain goddess.

[Nevermet]

On 7/5/2021 at 7:28 PM, moonwolf8 said:

It turns out the villagers are descended from the supporters of a group of God Learner Hero Questers who were trying to replace Orlanth with St. Hrestol in the story of freeing Heler the rain goddess.

Exhibit #1,347 on why Maniria is just permanently screwed up thanks to the Godlearners

😉