God-time remnants

[Nolzur]

Hi!
I'm new to glorantha and i've been reading and exploring stuff in the past month or so with great intrest.
I have a few questions about stuff from the god-time since i'm building a temple complex from the golden age, with emphasis on Lodril and maybe some lore on Dayzatar since i love their place in the pantheon even though they are not that relevant.

 

First question:is there any adventure out with strong elements of the golden age or god-time in it's evironment?What is it since i want to be prepared and i don't now if going megalithic or something more advanced like brick/terracotta/plaster.

Second: I sorely need some lore on Lodril, Dayzatar and such. I have something but not much and know nothing about where to look.

Third, and this is more like confusion on my part: in what sense did time not exist? I'm taking it as some kind of simultaneous happening of events in which maybe people from the golden age had already myths of the fall that did not "yet" happen. Also the lack of heroquesting rules is hurting me here since I really want to reveal some hidden lore that nobody alive would know through a "lost" hero quest obtained from legens of this ancient time, so if you know something, anything, about it please tell me.  

[Nick Brooke]

Hi, Nolzur: you probably want to read "The Glorious ReAscent of Yelm," by Greg Stafford. That's the hardcore Lodril+Dayzatar+Yelm stuff, straight from the source.

https://www.chaosium.com/the-glorious-reascent-of-yelm-pdf/

For Golden Age Dara Happan architecture, start out thinking Babylonian mud-brick ziggurats but add some magical WTF excesses. For instance, the Gods Wall is the imprint of a giant cylinder-seal; the city walls of Alkor are an unbroken ring of green jade (to get in, the city gates tunnel under the walls); the whole Dara Happan Empire used to be enclosed under a dome, built by mortals at the direction of their gods.

For "time not yet existing," see the Cults of Terror Cosmology, the Theogony chapter of the Glorantha Sourcebook, or for real-world exegesis The Myth of the Eternal Return by Mircea Eliade. Primal cosmogonic acts were being performed for the first time: gods were revealing what they could do, would do, would have to do forever after. The gods had free will before Time began; since Time, they've been locked into eternally repeating what they have always done, while history is determined by mortals. And you can find divine acts echoing "previous" divine acts, and things happening "before" they happened, in Godtime myths. (Simple example: Orlanth meets several Lightbringers for the first time on the Westfaring, but they also serve as his counsellors on myths of the Lightbringers' Ring from before the Great Darkness)  

For rediscovering lost lore through heroquesting: why ever not? That's exactly what the Seven Mothers (praise be upon them) did. Don't play any silly "time travel paradox" games, just accept that everything happened all at once and there's no causality, no way of determining strict relationships between myths except by exploring them in their own terms.

The lack of heroquesting rules shouldn't hurt you. Just tell a cool story. Your players, your readers, will forgive you. If you want guidelines, pick up the superb Six Seasons in Sartar from the Jonstown Compendium.

[Brian Duguid]

1 hour ago, Nolzur said:

Third, and this is more like confusion on my part: in what sense did time not exist? I'm taking it as some kind of simultaneous happening of events in which maybe people from the golden age had already myths of the fall that did not "yet" happen.

I'll bite on this one.

Think of Glorantha as like an atom. It is made up of protons, neutrons and electrons. And maybe there are also mesons, photons or muons floating around. Some of those sub-atomic composite particles are in turn made up of elementary particles such as quarks (six kinds), leptons (also six kinds), gauge bosons (twelve), and the Higgs boson. Some of those, like the gauge bosons can be thought of as forces which determine how other particles interact, like the gluon which binds quarks together.

We have information about the various components of the atom, and the rules by which they interact, and also some understanding of how they can be perceived differently by observers (wave-particle duality), and how observation of one aspect renders other aspects obscure (Heisenberg's uncertainty principle).

Godtime *is* the underlying reality and structure of the Gloranthan universe: everything which is in the mundane world is there because it is underlain by the Godtime. Just as electrons bind to protons, Yelm fights with Orlanth. Both describe or define fundamental "laws" of the universe. Both just exist, wished-into place, hanging together coherently. But I can only describe them to you by stringing words together, one after another, in sequence. And it would help you enormously if I can describe characteristics of (for example) the muon neutrino - it's size, shape, how it interacts with other particles. Just as it may help you to have Yelm described, and his interactions described through stories, the key medium of communication in a pre-literate society.

I'm *not*, to be clear, suggesting that Glorantha works in a mechanistic way i.e. myth can be reduced to the interaction of elementary Runes. I'm just searching for a metaphor as to how we explain a reality that is ultimately imperceptible within the limitations of ourselves trapped within Time: visually and verbally.

So did Godtime actually happen simultaneously, because there was no Time? It doesn't matter: we can't describe it that way and make sense of it, because Gloranthans live within Time and (apart from Mystics and Dragons, maybe) have no way to deal with the Godtime other than to experience it sequentially - because everything in their experience is sequential.

Does any of that help?

All IMO, obviously.

[Joerg]

1 hour ago, Nolzur said:

Hi!
I'm new to glorantha and i've been reading and exploring stuff in the past month or so with great intrest.
I have a few questions about stuff from the god-time since i'm building a temple complex from the golden age, with emphasis on Lodril and maybe some lore on Dayzatar since i love their place in the pantheon even though they are not that relevant.

Neither Lodril nor Dayzatar were prominent in the Dragon Pass, but at least Lodril is found in Caladraland, a volcanic chain south of Esrolia, forming a barrier to the Solkathi Sea (part of the inner ocean of Glorantha). There are some sky temples in Esrolia, ziggurats similar to those described by @Nick Brooke above.
 

1 hour ago, Nolzur said:

First question:is there any adventure out with strong elements of the golden age or god-time in it's evironment?

What is it since i want to be prepared and i don't now if going megalithic or something more advanced like brick/terracotta/plaster.

Think Ishtar Gate for Dara Happa, with fired and glazed bricks at least for the surface of the walls.

Dayzatar is associated with the Star Seers of Yuthuppa (in Dara Happa, now in the Lunar Empire), who seem to have round, hollow towers with an internal frame structure similar to a yurt, used for observations of the rotating firmament.

 

If you are going for a Lodril holy place, underground complexes near lava flows are an option - cue Indiana Jones imagery, however unscientific that may be. Or Journey to the Center of the World. Caladraland has volcano temples, one on top of the Vent, near the caldera, another one in Vinavale, a lowland with geothermal as well as tectonic activity. But the cult is present in parts of Esrolia as well, possibly using their Golden Age earth temple style, like this illustration of the Paps (in Prax, but similar in style).

 

1 hour ago, Nolzur said:

Second: I sorely need some lore on Lodril, Dayzatar and such. I have something but not much and know nothing about where to look.

The best source for the cult write-up for Lodril right now would be the Cult Compendium in the Gloranthan Classics series. RuneQuest information for Dayzatar is currently out of print, although his spells are part of the Red Book of Magic. I'm away from my sources, so I cannot look those in their RQ3 incarnation up now.

The Sourcebook gives a good general description of both deities, but no RuneQuest data.

 

1 hour ago, Nolzur said:

Third, and this is more like confusion on my part: in what sense did time not exist? I'm taking it as some kind of simultaneous happening of events in which maybe people from the golden age had already myths of the fall that did not "yet" happen.

That's close to my impression, too. My current "projection" of Godtime is a layer of cycles around a central axis (resembling the Spike of Godtime) where any Godtime myth is a linear path through these layers, intersecting or interacting with certain major myths that are present or reflected in multiple layers or cycles. These paths may go down into earlier interactions or up into later ones, where they may meet and interact with other paths, at certain vertical myths/locations.

 

1 hour ago, Nolzur said:

Also the lack of heroquesting rules is hurting me here since I really want to reveal some hidden lore that nobody alive would know through a "lost" hero quest obtained from legens of this ancient time, so if you know something, anything, about it please tell me.  

Think of some deed a deity performed in Godtime, and other deities involved, whether as allies and supporters, or as opponents. As the quest is supposed to be lost, assign fragments of (one version of) what you think happened to the lore of some of those deities, so that your questers can prepare mythical fragments that may or may not lead to this event. Making up those bits is a bit work, but then you can lean back and have the players reconstruct a story out of these snippets, possibly including red herrings. After they have written your scenario for you, you are asked again to judge whether their approach will yield a useful effect or not, although that can take in how the dice roll...

I agree that you need an idea how player characters can start off on a heroquest. You could do worse than leech off ideas from Jeff Richard's GMing in his White Bull campaign, on youtube. Nick's Jonstown Compendium oeuvre "The Black Spear" sends the players off on a heroquest, too, and also offers a number of ways to use RQG rules to decide stations of a HeroQuest. You could borrow Simon Phipp's concepts for heroquesting, also on Jonstown Compendium, or look at the suggestions in "Six Seasons in Sartar", the best-selling product on Jonstown Compendium, with lots of other useful GMing advice.

[Eff]

3 hours ago, Nolzur said:

Third, and this is more like confusion on my part: in what sense did time not exist? I'm taking it as some kind of simultaneous happening of events in which maybe people from the golden age had already myths of the fall that did not "yet" happen. Also the lack of heroquesting rules is hurting me here since I really want to reveal some hidden lore that nobody alive would know through a "lost" hero quest obtained from legens of this ancient time, so if you know something, anything, about it please tell me.  

My operating method- each individual myth or mythological cycle has a consistent internal temporal logic. Characters move through them in linear ways, time always proceeding forward. But when you compare different myths to one another, then there is no temporal logic. A mythological figure's personal timeline of events weaves back and forth like tangled hair or spaghetti, and sometimes moves backwards or sideways relative to myths. 

And the experience of these two things combines when you personally venture onto the Other Side and so you can proceed through a myth you know with the events in a different order, or you can gain some of your god's "knowledge" of things that will happen in the future because of the convolutions of the multiple timelines. And then after Time Begins TM, all the spaghetti is in order and everyone* moves through time in the same way and at the same rate. 

*Except when they might not, or explicitly don't. 

[Nick Brooke]

3 hours ago, Joerg said:

Nick's Jonstown Compendium oeuvre "The Black Spear" sends the players off on a heroquest, too,

Five, sir. A magic road, a temple incursion, a static power-up ritual, disrupting an enemy’s creative heroquest, and being lost in the Underworld.

[davecake]

9 hours ago, Nolzur said:

I really want to reveal some hidden lore that nobody alive would know through a "lost" hero quest obtained from legens of this ancient time, so if you know something, anything, about it please tell me.  

More or less, this is what Valare Addi does in the framing narrative of the Entekosiad, and the main narrative of the Entekosiad is that hidden lore (or at least, contains some hidden lore mixed in with better known lore). 

Handily, the Entekosiad also contains important retellings of Lodril core myths, once named as ViSaruDaran, once as Turos. 

With the Entekosiad and the Glorious Reascent of Yelm, they are quite difficult to read for someone only used to the more mainstream Gloranthan material, they present different myths, often different names for the gods, and show the myths before the God Learners assembled the monomyth, and before that the cultures met after the Dawn and tried to reconcile the myths. Sometimes you have to do some detective work to even work out what a particular myth is talking about. But it’s worth it, and there are lots of people in the community who would love to talk about it. 

Edited June 14, 2022 by davecake

[jajagappa]

9 hours ago, Nolzur said:

First question:is there any adventure out with strong elements of the golden age or god-time in it's evironment?What is it since i want to be prepared and i don't now if going megalithic or something more advanced like brick/terracotta/plaster.

Nick's already suggested, but for Golden Age go with a Babylonian-style vibe: great vibrant ziggurats, hanging gardens of Babylon, Tower of Babel, etc.  Colorful, painted, giant terracotta or stone figures and decorations; golden skinned gods and demigods; phoenixes, griffins, etc.; everything's on a grand scale.

9 hours ago, Nolzur said:

Third, and this is more like confusion on my part: in what sense did time not exist? I'm taking it as some kind of simultaneous happening of events in which maybe people from the golden age had already myths of the fall that did not "yet" happen. Also the lack of heroquesting rules is hurting me here since I really want to reveal some hidden lore that nobody alive would know through a "lost" hero quest obtained from legens of this ancient time, so if you know something, anything, about it please tell me. 

You might think of it as a series of recurring dreams.  Each time you dream, you get variants on the story: things happen in a different order, different figures appear, different places are experienced.  This is the world of myth, and while certain stories can have a "linearity" while experienced, and certain themes are emphasized in different "Ages", yet if you bring all the stories together there's a timelessness to it all and the linearity falls apart.

There's probably more "lost" myths, stories long forgotten, then those known.  It does not require ANY rules to come up with these.  You can ransack ideas from any mythology book or fairy tales to come up with a plausible "lost" myth.  The Glorious ReAscent of Yelm was noted above, but for instance, take the story of one of the Lost Cities.  What happened?  The wise and beneficient Son of the Sun received a mysterious golden box, but was told never to open it!  His spouse was too curious, and with whispered words from the Trickster, decided to sneak to it and open it up.  Out come demons!  And the great ziggurat is toppled.

Just start with two or three ideas, and riff on those.  That's all that's needed. 🙂 

[Nick Brooke]

Look, I included a variant of Little Red Riding Hood crossed with Baba Yaga in Black Spear, because I found Greg's patriarchal-POV Verithurusa myth kinda icky (tl/dr: "What did she expect, going out dressed like that?") and wanted to get a Company of Wolves vibe for that encounter. Myths echo. Folklore inspires. Confusing your players is FUN!

I would shamelessly raid the Arabian Nights for Lunar heroquests.

[Nick Brooke]

11 hours ago, davecake said:

They present different myths, often different names for the gods, and show the myths before the God Learners assembled the monomyth, and before that the cultures met after the Dawn and tried to reconcile the myths. Sometimes you have to do some detective work to even work out what a particular myth is talking about. But it’s worth it, and there are lots of people in the community who would love to talk about it. 

See also Robert Graves' The Greek Myths. Get an edition with footnotes. Revel in them: Greg did. You're trying to work out what the religion-before-the-religion looked like, so the Hydra defeated by Heracles becomes a remnant of the Pelasgian snake-goddess cult, Moon Goddesses are usurped by Sun Gods and Thunder Gods all across the map, and multiple entities end up shoehorned into one cult with surprising antecedents and imagery.

[soltakss]

On 6/14/2022 at 2:45 PM, Nolzur said:

First question:is there any adventure out with strong elements of the golden age or god-time in it's evironment?

Spoiler

Snakepipe Hollow has a godtime remnant, as does Rainbow Mounds.

Spoilered for Bill.

I am not allowed to read most of the new material, in case our GM runs something from them, so I can't comment on the new RQG books.

[Nick Brooke]

On 6/14/2022 at 2:45 PM, Nolzur said:

First question: is there any adventure out with strong elements of the golden age or god-time in its evironment? What is it since i want to be prepared and i don't know if going megalithic or something more advanced like brick/terracotta/plaster.

The excellent Six Seasons in Sartar campaign by Andrew Logan Montgomery includes a girls' Ernaldan initiation heroquest with Golden Age elements. (See especially the section "Ernalda in the House of Abundance," pages 40-42). This is written from a Sartarite female perspective. Most heroquests include "elements of the god-time," but that doesn't mean they will provide actionable architectural details, it's always more "ambience" and "feel." For example, at the end of the boys' Orlanthi initiation, they arrive at Orlanth's Hall: "It looks like the hall of their own chieftain, but far, far larger and more grand."

If studying a particular detail of their Godtime environment really matters to an adventurer, they could be destined to become a great artist, or architect, or visionary. (Or a lunatic: we get plenty of those, too). If writing it all down in detail really matters to them, they'll likely end up with something that reads like a description of the Heavenly City of Jerusalem, or the construction details for Solomon's Temple or the Tower of Babel: gibberish, numbers, materials, relationships, but no strong sense of what it's like to be there, or what it all means. It's rather a materialist way to experience mythological truths, and one which Greg Stafford would have found lacking.

The Golden Age is perfection, order, stasis, light, obedience, submission. Nothing is permitted to be out of place; nothing wants to be out of place; everything is exactly where it ought to be, for ever, and accepts that this is right. There is no death or violence: "war" is sport, an athletic display; court rituals are perfectly choreographed, without blemish; everything ugly stays out of sight, as well it should. Mortals should feel small and insignificant, overawed by their environment. You can only make change in the Golden Age by intruding as an unwelcome disruptor, like Umath or Orlanth: and look what happened to them.

[JRE]

4 hours ago, Nick Brooke said:

The Golden Age is perfection, order, stasis, light, obedience, submission. Nothing is permitted to be out of place; nothing wants to be out of place; everything is exactly where it ought to be, for ever, and accepts that this is right. There is no death or violence: "war" is sport, an athletic display; court rituals are perfectly choreographed, without blemish; everything ugly stays out of sight, as well it should. Mortals should feel small and insignificant, overawed by their environment. You can only make change in the Golden Age by intruding as an unwelcome disruptor, like Umath or Orlanth: and look what happened to them.

Heaven