Journal of Runic Studies

[jajagappa]

2 hours ago, Lordabdul said:

I thought Soldier's Ferry was considered in Balazar but I admit I only glanced quickly at the Griffin Mountain map...

Technically after 1613-14, it is part of Holay (see the map in the Guide - Griffin Mountain map does not show the political borders).  However, it's really only connected to the rest of Holay via a tribute trail.  All the supplies passing through Soldier's Ferry to/from Elkoi are from/for Imther.

[Lordabdul]

The Journal of Runic Studies 82 is out! New Jonstown Compendium releases, and lots of annotations on Jeff's posts, such as Orlanth's sacred mountain, religion in Safelster, Orlanthi in Ralios, and more!

[Lordabdul]

The Journal of Runic Studies 83 is out! Open licenses, BRP discounts, the syndics ban, a rules-light bronze age fantasy game, neolithic proto-writing, Lunar concrete, beautiful broos, and more!

[Brian Duguid]

@Lordabdul - regarding the diagram of the Gloranthan cosmos, the original version is here, drawn by Mike Dawson from an original by Greg Stafford:

The layout and text is almost identical to the original, although more gods and underworld demons have been added.

[7Tigers]

4 hours ago, Lordabdul said:

The Journal of Runic Studies 83 is out! Open licenses, BRP discounts, the syndics ban, a rules-light bronze age fantasy game, neolithic proto-writing, Lunar concrete, beautiful broos, and more!

Notes: cosmology illustration from the Guide is by Eric Vanel.
Available on various products at
https://www.redbubble.com/people/chaosium/works/23279393-the-cosmology-of-glorantha

[Gallowglass]

I just want to say that I really appreciate Ludo’s willingness to look at Runequest with a critical eye, and offer perspectives from other rule systems! I’m definitely gonna check out Aaron Kings rules (their other games are great too).

[Lordabdul]

Thanks @Brian Duguid and @7Tigers!  I inserted a correction in the article and of course credited you two 😄  And thanks for the kind words @Gallowglass , it's always very much appreciated.

[Lordabdul]

The Journal of Runic Studies 84 is out! Bridgett's clandestine basement operation, rumours of RuneQuest releases, big overlaid maps of Glorantha, useless Lunar javelins, Augustus' lost legions, and more!

[Nick Brooke]

Re: the lost legions, the Netflix show Barbarians is all about them! And my notes on Tarndisi’s slaughter-grove in the back of The Duel at Dangerford were inspired by Joerg’s pagan ancestors’ excesses.

[Lordabdul]

22 hours ago, Nick Brooke said:

Re: the lost legions, the Netflix show Barbarians is all about them! And my notes on Tarndisi’s slaughter-grove in the back of The Duel at Dangerford were inspired by Joerg’s pagan ancestors’ excesses.

Oh good to know! Another show to add to the ever-growing pile 😄  Thanks!

[Joerg]

The Romans did not bother to try and conquer the Germanic people who didn't even have tribal seats of note. The Ubii of Cologne (who might have been Germanic-speaking) received a new model Roman colony (hence the city name) and lots of imperial citizens, some related to the emperor, without any native structures remaining. A lot like Lunar Furthest, except that the river was navigable upriver as well as downriver.

However, the Roman legions remained active deeper in the Germanic forests than Varus's expedition reached, as proven by the 2nd century battle of the Harzhorn, well east of the Weser confluence (of Fulda and Werra rivers) where Varus set up his summer camp.

There are a couple of nice German-language TV documentaries on these incidents (and the German Limes).

Why does Joerg speak German and not some vulgate Latin derivate?

As already mentioned on Facebook, both my grandfathers can trace their origins to regions that the Romans had acquisitioned from Celtic-speaking natives, the Noricum (nowadays Austria) and Gallia (wherever there the Huguenots who found refuge with the fluently French-speaking Brandenburg overlords of Prussia came from). The difference whether the migrating Germans adopted the Latin or Greek language or retained their barbarian dialects was more a question of whether there still was an operating Roman administration after their arrival or not. In most cases (even the Vandals), there was, but the Angles and Saxons had no such resource, and stuck to their barbarian lingo. It took another bunch of barbarians who lost their linguistic identity to the Franks who had lost theirs to infect England with an oddly harsh dialect of the French language for a while, later softened by their acquisition by marriage of large parts of the Languedoc. Only to re-discover their Germanic inheritance when they were sore losers of the 100 years war.

As for Germany, the Franks conquered those Germanic tribes who had taken possession of the lands behind the German Limes after the Roman administration had given up on them, and their lower Rhine dialect mixed with the Suebic holdouts to form the language of the barbarian half of the Frankish kingdom. When their Roman administration of Gaul fell apart for lack of papyrus to do bureaucracy on (and for general loss of the Mediterranean trade with what now were the Islamic lands), an obscure lineage from the barbarian part of the Frankish kingdom took over and removed the Meroving kings. Implementation of the Frankish inheritance laws then broke apart the Carolingian kingdom and separated France from Germany, with Lotharingia and later Burgundy an on-and-off buffer zone between the two.

 

On 1/24/2023 at 9:14 AM, Nick Brooke said:

my notes on Tarndisi’s slaughter-grove in the back of The Duel at Dangerford were inspired by Joerg’s pagan ancestors’ excesses.

You mean your ancestors' pagan excesses? At a guess your distant ancestors came from roughly where I live. Angles and Saxons among them, right? Or Danes and Northmen, possibly by the detour through coastal France? Hedeby is almost within sight from where I sit right now.

The peninsula here is named after the Cimbri, who were those first Germanic migrators to make the Romans wet their tunics when they had just overcome their Celtic trauma, until Marius came up with countermeasures. And the Langobards, Vandals and Goths started from not too far away, too...

 

Fun fact: while the 19th century Germans were all too willing to claim Hermann (as they like to call Arminius) for themselves, with dozens of local historians' wishful thinking placing the battle at their doorstep, it isn't exactly clear whether the Cheruscans were indeed speaking a Germanic language or perhaps one of the continental Celtic dialects. Or at least some intermediate dialect. Most of the Roman conquests in Germany were taken from Celtic speaking natives with only the lower Rhine and Frisia having resident Germanic speaking peoples. Arminius managed to unite clans from 200 miles around for his ambush warfare.

The Glauberg, about 200 km south of the Kalkriese, was a powerful Celtic Fürstensitz about 300-400 years before that battle, and Germanic tribes preferred to migrate all the way into Roman territory rather than from one damp forest to another. (Although Ariovist led a bunch of Germanic people into pre-Roman Gaul whose ancestors gave the Baltic Sea its Roman name, Mare Suebicum. Other people with that Suebi origin served as Caesar's auxilary cavalry when he faced Ariovist as well as in his earlier campaigns.)

 

[Lordabdul]

The Journal of Runic Studies 85 is out! A big update on the cults books, Escalation! art, Bud explains the Uz, RuneQuest sorcery, and more!