Araslithos

[Erol of Backford]

Trying to set the stage for this PC, daughter of Araslithos to be attracted to and plot-wise active between Caladraland, Notchet, Sun Dome County, Heortland and the Big Rubble. its shaping up nicely but missing a few links/details related to the battles and potential shrines...

[soltakss]

19 hours ago, Erol of Backford said:

And wouldn't there also be a shrine to Tolat/Shargash at any Elmal/Yemalio/Lightfore temple as were they not brothers/half brothers?

Shargash was Yelmalio's big, rough, bully brother. I don't see Yelmalians as being particularly friendly to Shargash, no matter how the cults react.

Elmal cultists have probably not heard of Tolat, as Tolat is worshipped by the Trowjang Amazons and Elmal worshippers are, generally, far away.

Just because a deity is known by two names, they won't be known by both names everywhere.

 

[Akhôrahil]

3 hours ago, Erol of Backford said:

When is this battle and the others?

It's also known as the Battle of Auroch Hills in 1622 (Earth Season/Disorder Week/Clayday), and listed in the RQG rulebook (p. 40). It breaks the Windstop.

The Auroch/Aurochs Hills (spelling differs by product) stand between Sartar and Volsaxiland, NW of Whitewall.

The battle is described described in (presumably non-canonical) detail in Orlanth Is Dead.

3 hours ago, Erol of Backford said:

What are the archer pillars at the Aurochs Hills?

In OiD, 8-foot tall archers of the Fire Tribe manifest on top of the "Aurochs Cones" on the battlefield - I'm assuming this is it?

Edited July 29, 2022 by Akhôrahil

[Akhôrahil]

(double post)

Edited July 29, 2022 by Akhôrahil

[jajagappa]

5 hours ago, Erol of Backford said:

and the archer pillars in Aurochs Hills (Can anyone spot the hills for me, I cannot locate?)

The Auroch Hills are between the Sun Dome lands and Twotop Fort north of Whitewall.

[jajagappa]

2 hours ago, Akhôrahil said:

The battle is described described in (presumably non-canonical) detail in Orlanth Is Dead.

And part is described in the HQG core rulebook too.

[Erol of Backford]

Related to the culture, the Amazons almost seem privative with no industry and likely no real cities, besides the one on the map? Wouldn't they be more apt to use spears and self bows than swords and crossbows? Does anyone else find this odd? Yes I get it that they pirate from others but it wouldn't be the norm or so I am thinking...

Do the 8-foot tall archers of the Fire Tribe appear during the battle or have they been there?

Also with Arrowmound what is its significance besides Orlanth and Toldat maybe fighting there and where are any references besides the GtG?

[Akhôrahil]

11 minutes ago, Erol of Backford said:

Do the 8-foot tall archers of the Fire Tribe appear during the battle or have they been there?

They manifest during the battle and make a mess of some of the Orlanthi-side spellcasters. I believe they have been there all along but dormant.

Edited July 29, 2022 by Akhôrahil

[Eff]

18 hours ago, Erol of Backford said:

Related to the culture, the Amazons almost seem privative with no industry and likely no real cities, besides the one on the map? Wouldn't they be more apt to use spears and self bows than swords and crossbows? Does anyone else find this odd? Yes I get it that they pirate from others but it wouldn't be the norm or so I am thinking...

Do the 8-foot tall archers of the Fire Tribe appear during the battle or have they been there?

Also with Arrowmound what is its significance besides Orlanth and Toldat maybe fighting there and where are any references besides the GtG?

I think that they might have a fairly unusual social order with distributed manufacturing- unless they have some unnoted Mostali connections, they're one of the more technologically developed societies in Glorantha and it would be somewhat absurd for all of that to come from initial lucky raid. Or we can ignore the Amazonomachy art in the Guide and the prevalent crossbows there. 

[Erol of Backford]

So all the industry is in the one city which is like made by the dwarves/or is advanced like theirs would be and it is utterly fantastic? If you have a source as to their being technologically developed please let me know. I assume its like the island of Themyscira?

I am thinking any PC from there will need to be like Wonder Woman though not as powerful. Linda must have been at some of these conventions back in the late 70's and influenced several people...

I am still leaning towards spears, swords and maybe maces but have not decided as of yet. Thank you Eff!

[Eff]

25 minutes ago, Erol of Backford said:

So all the industry is in the one city which is like made by the dwarves/or is advanced like theirs would be and it is utterly fantastic? If you have a source as to their being technologically developed please let me know. I assume its like the island of Themyscira?

I am thinking any PC from there will need to be like Wonder Woman though not as powerful. Linda must have been at some of these conventions back in the late 70's and influenced several people...

I am still leaning towards spears, swords and maybe maces but have not decided as of yet. Thank you Eff!

No, no, I mean that they spread out manufacturing across each individual village without much concentration or specialization. 

The presence of crossbows (hardly unknown in antiquity but rare) and their frequency in the one bit of art we have is my basis for thinking they're technologically developed. 

[scott-martin]

2 hours ago, Erol of Backford said:

I am thinking any PC from there will need to be like Wonder Woman though not as powerful. Linda must have been at some of these conventions back in the late 70's and influenced several people...

Go with the Wonder Woman analogue if that fits Your Glorantha. Lynda Carter is definitely a figure to conjure with and there's nothing wrong with them having either inherited or developed uncanny magical munitions indistinguishable from the finest dwarf engineering. In a pinch I like the distributed supply chain @Effmentions. It reminds me of the way intricate clockwork manufacture was outsourced to cottage workers in Switzerland. On their own, no part-time dairy farmer could ever build a mechanical bird. But with the right guidance and logistics, it happens almost naturally. I wouldn't be surprised if they have a lot of other marvels beyond the crossbows circulating in the jungle.

But the question of influence is interesting so I went down to the basement for a refresher course on what the Trowjang amazons were like in the earliest sources, back before Wonder Woman had reverted to a powerless catsuit karate model in order to compete directly with Diana Rigg. The island was named Eusbol back then and in a bit of trivia the inhabitants were of pamaltelan descent. Amazonism begins in a kind of reverse lysistrata in which the goddess (the god who becomes identified with Tolat has a twin sister, a virgin huntress, which makes the island something like Delos) kills the men and then the god consoles the now-thirsty ladies. In this early version they kill all their boy babies, which suggests that Arislithos is female (or excruciatingly crafty). 

From the tone, all of this transpired in Ancient Times such that we only remember men on the island from the earliest accounts. It has a shaggy dog Herodotan quality, but hey, amazons!

It would be interesting if some faction of the original Eusbol colonists actually brought the Artmal pantheon with them and so made some effort to associate the local twin children of Love and War with gods they knew, contributing to the cult of someone we now call Tolat but on the island his name was something like "Tawar." Also I like them having a complex relationship with the dwarves because why not.

[Erol of Backford]

1 hour ago, scott-martin said:

I wouldn't be surprised if they have a lot of other marvels beyond the crossbows circulating in the jungle.

With divine inspiration maybe they don't need the dwarves at all but I will think on that some more.

On the same note Toldat just decides there will be no male children. Sounds easy enough if he's a god...

1 hour ago, scott-martin said:

pamaltelan descent

Also I like this idea and will go with it. Almost screams Penthesilea and Memnon to me somehow? Are there old Gloranthan sources you might reference Mr. Martin?

 

[metcalph]

On 7/30/2022 at 9:16 AM, Erol of Backford said:

Related to the culture, the Amazons almost seem privative with no industry and likely no real cities, besides the one on the map? Wouldn't they be more apt to use spears and self bows than swords and crossbows? Does anyone else find this odd? Yes I get it that they pirate from others but it wouldn't be the norm or so I am thinking...

What's wrong with pirating from others?  They are known as being rather successful pirates and it seems a rather huge leap to me that they wouldn't use whatever weapons they have plundered and are reliant on a hithertoo unseen military-industrial complex.  Or do you think the Pirates of the Carribean made their own ships and cast their own cannon?

[Erol of Backford]

Made me laugh, of course nothing wrong with pirates obtaining crossbows. Just didn't think the cultural norm would be biased so the entire population of 170k used them at an efficiency of a base 30% like they grew up with them. But it is possible that they happen across a entire shipload of crossbows once or twice a year so even the little girls are using them as the grow up. Amazons girls wouldn't play with rag dolls right? It just made me wonder, not a big deal was just was thinking self bows, spears/javelins and maces would be more along the lines of Toldat/Shargash. In the old RQ3 Player's Book a base 30% shows for crossbow, rapier and main gauche. I appreciate the input everyone!

[Eff]

2 hours ago, metcalph said:

What's wrong with pirating from others?  They are known as being rather successful pirates and it seems a rather huge leap to me that they wouldn't use whatever weapons they have plundered and are reliant on a hithertoo unseen military-industrial complex.  Or do you think the Pirates of the Carribean made their own ships and cast their own cannon?

Caribbean pirates were residents of a broader society which built ships and cast cannon, and then in turn they were mostly experienced in repairing and operating ships and cannon before becoming pirates. In this model, the Marazi are outsiders to the building of ocean-going ships and to the construction of crossbows, and it becomes a little incredible to assume that they got all of their ships and weapons by getting lucky with attacks by canoe or ambushing a lone ship beaching on Trowjang and then building from there without ever developing any kind of construction or engineering expertise. 

 

On top of all of this, warships in classical antiquity were specialized vessels that were very different from mercantile vessels, so we have to ask whether they got effective warships from getting lucky several times in a row. At this point, we may want to ask if Trowjang Tolat has the Luck Rune in his panoply. 

[Erol of Backford]

Double Post

Edited July 31, 2022 by Erol of Backford
Double Post

[metcalph]

4 hours ago, Eff said:

Caribbean pirates were residents of a broader society which built ships and cast cannon, and then in turn they were mostly experienced in repairing and operating ships and cannon before becoming pirates.

In other words, they didn't make the ships themselves.  

4 hours ago, Eff said:

In this model, the Marazi are outsiders to the building of ocean-going ships and to the construction of crossbows, and it becomes a little incredible to assume that they got all of their ships and weapons by getting lucky with attacks by canoe or ambushing a lone ship beaching on Trowjang and then building from there without ever developing any kind of construction or engineering expertise. 

A Holy Country Fleet sailed into the Suam Chow and suffered heavy losses.  Harstar of the South hired "several shiploads of Kethaelan survivors" (Guide p429) and with them conquered Melib three years later.   What precisely then is your objection to the Amazons acquiring ships in the same way (considering that Trowjang lies closer to Kralorela than the city of Gach in Teshnos)?  

Likewise the information about the Amazons accepting foreign women into their lands is well established but according to you, they must be forever outside any broader society and incapable of accepting female sailors from the Holy Country Fleet?  

 

4 hours ago, Eff said:

On top of all of this, warships in classical antiquity were specialized vessels that were very different from mercantile vessels, so we have to ask whether they got effective warships from getting lucky several times in a row. 

Warships were in the Holy Country Fleet (they used treaties, force and judicious evasion into deep waters to gain passage through Fethlon - Guide p144).  Besides the Opening evolution of shipbuilding was that the first Holy Country ships were triremes with other designs appearing later.   So all the ships in the Holy Country Fleet would have been of one design - the trireme - in the 1580s.

[Eff]

8 hours ago, metcalph said:

In other words, they didn't make the ships themselves.  

A Holy Country Fleet sailed into the Suam Chow and suffered heavy losses.  Harstar of the South hired "several shiploads of Kethaelan survivors" (Guide p429) and with them conquered Melib three years later.   What precisely then is your objection to the Amazons acquiring ships in the same way (considering that Trowjang lies closer to Kralorela than the city of Gach in Teshnos)?  

Likewise the information about the Amazons accepting foreign women into their lands is well established but according to you, they must be forever outside any broader society and incapable of accepting female sailors from the Holy Country Fleet?  

 

Warships were in the Holy Country Fleet (they used treaties, force and judicious evasion into deep waters to gain passage through Fethlon - Guide p144).  Besides the Opening evolution of shipbuilding was that the first Holy Country ships were triremes with other designs appearing later.   So all the ships in the Holy Country Fleet would have been of one design - the trireme - in the 1580s.

So... the answer is that the Marazi acquired sailors from Kethaelan refugees and remnants of the expeditionary force but at no point have developed any kind of capacity to construct ships on their own? Because if they were a closed society that would explain why they would remain unable to build ships after decades of interaction with the outside world, but instead they seemingly just don't adapt themselves to the new world in any way beyond this initial infusion of ships and sailors. 

This all feels extraordinarily convoluted as compared to "the Amazons have significant manufacturing capability and this is why they're a maritime power with crossbow-equipped marines on their warships."

[scott-martin]

14 hours ago, Erol of Backford said:

Are there old Gloranthan sources

I love these "Memnazons" too so maybe a little more detail from the Seshnegi Book of Foreigners (maybe 1967 so about five years before Sam Delany briefly wrote Wonder Woman) might trigger more inspiration.

In this era, Greg believed that Teshnos and the islands were colonized by an agimori people out of what becomes Maslo. Bits of this saga resurface in Revealed Mythologies and other places, but there's also evidence that a few pages have been lost here and there and need to be reconstructed. What we have paints a complex picture of cross-continental exchange of people and ideas in the early imperial era (one marginal note has the Teshnos enclave settled around 700 ST). They seem to have been pretty good people, capable when pushed into a fight but otherwise content to enrich themselves and their allies through trade.

One day, according to the primary account, the king and queen got in a big fight over concubines and the jealous queen bargained the "perpetual virginity" of all the "maidens" of the isle to the goddess. In return, the goddess killed all the dudes. A brief reference elsewhere claims that the women killed the dudes on their own against the backdrop of an intensification of the long struggle between regional tiger and turtle people. IMG both stories contain their truth and it's even possible that something like an amazon fever struck multiple colonies at various times in different circumstances as the imperial era unfurled. Some accounts forget about the god's warrior sister entirely, which might contain a secret in itself.

The god and the goddess only act together three times in the fragments we have: being born, establishing themselves on the island and then again when both of them ensure that the now-piratical women of the island only come back with female captives. After that, the goddess recedes a little from the narrative and the god, who previously "did nothing," emerges as the more famous figure. If you want to get deep here they remind me of nothing so much as the Brigitte Lin character(s) in Ashes Of Time, 慕容嫣／慕容燕 (murong yin and murong yang) and might even be a Mask of Androgeus. Araslithos probably has the knowing of such things to the extent to which she takes after classical gender sage Tiresias, and why not really. When someone gives you Gender Island you naturally want to collect gender things there.

But they do become pirates along with other dispossessed peoples around Fethlon and the islands. The failure of their sex raids might be how they remember the Closing, since this was the moment when the sea failed them and they needed a more exotic solution. The presence of foreign concubines suggests that they had a tradition of sex raiding before turning amazon, so this might simply be something they did on the island. Now that ships can go farther out again, Greg suggests that they are so hot to kill that they attach themselves to foreign wars just for the fun of it. If they didn't have good boats before, they have them now.

And one last thing. The story of the origin of the god twins is garbled a little with the story of the royal couple's big fight. Right now, I think the foreign concubine they fight over (the details are vague, sports fans) is how the twin gods get to the island in the first place. Her name is "Urela," not 50 words after Greg commits a bit of a freudian slip by referring to "Uleria" as goddess of War. Whoever she was and wherever she came from, I think she brought the strange magic with her that then transformed island life. Later identification with Tolat and the spread of red planet cults is then left to be discovered in play.

 

[Erol of Backford]

1 hour ago, scott-martin said:

the islands were colonized by an agimori people out of what becomes Maslo

I like this idea and will use it as I want the Amazons to be larger than human like the Agimori if not maybe slightly smaller. They were originally seafaring, along these lines so pirating fits very well. Thanks yet again for the additional info. Mr. Martain!

[M Helsdon]

15 hours ago, Eff said:

On top of all of this, warships in classical antiquity were specialized vessels that were very different from mercantile vessels, so we have to ask whether they got effective warships from getting lucky several times in a row. 

For much of antiquity, certainly the Bronze Age, whilst there was a distinction between war longship and mercantile tub, most longships were dual-purpose, often single bank penteconters, trading, and raiding when an opportunity arose. Such vessels are not as technologically demanding as a multi-bank warship with a ram, and could well be of sewn construction, making them simpler to build. These are in some ways scaled up canoes, using oars instead of paddles, and the sort of ships I would expect in the waters around Teshnos.

The Marzani could well make their own triaconters or penteconters, and be effective pirates in their home waters. The one illustration we have shows a unireme of this sort.

Crossbows vary enormously, and whilst dwarven crossbows would require an industrial base, simpler ones would not. In our history, the Picts seem to have adopted them from the Romans, and could easily be made by anyone. An arcuballista is a possibility.

 

Edited July 31, 2022 by M Helsdon

[M Helsdon]

In an early Greg fragment I have seen, the Teshnans (Teshnos, Melib (called Melon), and Trowjang) are described as a mixture of Nagi and Hsunchen, and in his writings Nagi gradually became Agi, and later, this southern race became the blue-skinned Zaranistangi Loper People, who still have descendants on Melib (and perhaps Trowjang). The Zaranistangi seem to have brought their Blue Planet deities Annilla, Emilla, and their brother (?) the Red Planet deity Tolat to Melib and Trowjang.

I forget where I read it - may have been a post by Jeff - but Melib is named for the first Zaranistangi chieftain/governor of the island.

Edited July 31, 2022 by M Helsdon

[Erol of Backford]

Thanks for the video! I'll assume they have copied crossbows from other cultures and make them in small villages easily enough.

The cross cultural and skin tone color potentials give many options for the Amazon characters, especially with the adoption and raiding thrown in. That frees things up a bit. I still do like the size increase of an Agmori influence...

So Araslithos is a sage and is familiar with many languages. The Marazi would be fluent in Trowjangi and have a ability in High Teshan and Melibic from Glorantha book in RQ3. What would 2~3 other languages spoken or known due to trade and or raiding? Tradetalk, Kralori, Aldryami (from the yellow elves on the nearby islands) would be possible but besides dragonewts/Auld Wyrmish would there be any other regional influence for languages?

I also assume there would be one large library or university in the City of Ecstasy. Local village schools would also have books? The AAA sows that Ecstasy is only permanently resided in by 500 or less. No other villages are shown on Trowjang. Would it be they are mostly nomadic and that family units move together frequently?

[M Helsdon]

17 minutes ago, Erol of Backford said:

I also assume there would be one large library or university in the City of Ecstasy. Local village schools would also have books? The AAA sows that Ecstasy is only permanently resided in by 500 or less. No other villages are shown on Trowjang. Would it be they are mostly nomadic and that family units move together frequently?

I imagine that most of the Marzani live in small villages supported by slash-and-burn agriculture, and, on the coast, also fishing. These villages would be semi-permanent, until the land has to be left fallow, maybe moving every generation or so.

There might, I suspect be temple and shrine schools, but no large library or university.