In Our Glorantha We Have

[Erol of Backford]

I like the Theory's thread but am interested in what GM's do to make their Glorantha suit them that may not be canon. For example we have female Lhankor Mhy members wear beautiful veils in lieu of a false beards. As an example, this isn't necessarily a beautiful veil but you get the idea.

[pachristian]

I use the 'veils' idea as well. Lhankor Mhy temples demand the women wear beards, but (depending on the high priest) the definition of "beard" is pretty loose.

I treat the cult of the Storm Bull as a dumping ground for clan's troublemaking, anti-social members. A child who is disrespectful, gets into a lot of fights, and/or who is generally unwanted, gets "encouraged" to join the Storm Bull. The vague idea is that maybe the troublemaker will accomplish some good before he gets him/her -self killed. Followers of the Bull are kind of like your local tough gang. 

[Agentorange]

Vinga as a seperate Goddess in her own right - not exactly heretical as it was canon at one point, but isn't now.

Edited March 2, 2023 by Agentorange
typos and missed words

[Erol of Backford]

Bastard swords are still a thing for us (Go West) and they get half again the PC's damage bonus when used two-handed.

[g33k]

2 hours ago, Agentorange said:

Vinga as a seperate Goddess in her own right - not exactly heretical as is was canon at point, but isn't now.

IMG, different cultures consider Vinga to be:

• Orlanth's daughter
• Orlanth's sister
• Orlanth's feminine other-self
• Orlanth's boon adventuring-companion

All of them are "right" and can Heroquest to demonstrate their "rightness."

 

[Rodney Dangerduck]

3 hours ago, Agentorange said:

Vinga as a seperate Goddess in her own right - not exactly heretical as is was canon at point, but isn't now.

We believe this too.

I call it the Arian heresy.  🙂

[Erol of Backford]

Does anyone play it that Humakt is a woman? There are a bunch of Humakti that are women who are quite famous in Glorantha... I suppose any "god" could take whatever form they wished?

Edited March 3, 2023 by Erol of Backford

[g33k]

2 minutes ago, Erol of Backford said:

Does anyone play it that Humakt as a woman? There are a bunch of Humakti that are women who are quite famous in Glorantha... I suppose any "god" could take whatever form they wished?

I don't think "death" has any inherent gender.  Some cultures will see Humakt as male, some female; some may see an androgynous diety, or one that's genderfluid.

(that said, I don't recall a lot of such examples in Glorantha)

[g33k]

In my Glorantha, the Bolo-Lizard tribe is extremely variant from canon.

IMG, baby brontosauruses are bipedal and almost indistinguishable from BL's, becoming fully-quadrupedal as they grow.  Bolo clans move with Bronto herds.  They actually set up camps on the backs of the thunder-lizards, rigging family-sized pannier "huts," platforms, and howdah's.  Ropes, rope-ladders, and nets are all used to climb about the Bronto as they ride.  Lookouts climb brontos' necks to perch atop the heads.  They train young riders on the backs of the baby brontos, graduating to BL's as they approach adulthood.  The intermixing of BL's & riders with young bronto's & trainees means it can be really tough for outsiders to figure out the number of warriors.

Before he can become a Khan, a BL brave must make a pilgrimage to Shaker Temple, and gain the blessing of the High Priestess there.  Maran Gor priestesses are -- if not common -- far from unknown among the BL Tribe.  The cult (and its rune magic) is otherwise incredibly rare in Prax.

Bolo Lizards themselves have two color-schemes; one, a dappled/mottled hide that can be almost indistinguishable from the rocky outcroppings scattered across Prax & the Wastes (if they curl up so as to hide or distort a few characteristic BL shapes, they're really, REALLY hard to tell from a rock).  The other is a sandy/pebbled hide that looks much like the bare dunes, also hard to spot as anything but a wind-carved drift of sand.  BL riders make cloaks &c from BL hides, and benefit similarly.  More than one unwary "pursuer" has wandered haplessly into the very center of a BL ambush set up in "open" ground.  They are the premier ambushers of Prax (barring the Morokanth's advantages at night, and on the rare occasions there's water to hide in).
 

Edited March 2, 2023 by g33k

[mfbrandi]

2 hours ago, g33k said:

I don't think "death" has any inherent gender.  Some cultures will see Humakt as male, some female; some may see an androgynous deity, or one that's genderfluid.

If we don our heavy-duty monotheist hats for a minute, god isn’t one of a race of beings (not even potentially), so not sexed. So why gendered, even in a fluid or ambiguous way? Surely even some ostensibly polytheistic Gloranthans will say that all this talk of parents, children, and siblings — to which some might want to attach genders — is just a product of limited mortal minds attempting but inevitably failing to grasp the divine.

[g33k]

4 minutes ago, mfbrandi said:

If we don our heavy-duty monotheist hats for a minute, god isn’t one of a race of beings (not even potentially), so not sexed. So why gendered, even in a fluid or ambiguous way? Surely even some ostensibly polytheistic Gloranthans will say that all this talk of parents, children, and siblings — to which some might want to attach genders — is just a product of limited mortal minds attempting but inevitably failing to grasp the divine.

Fertility -- giving birth -- is inherently a "female" thing, notwithstanding nandans and vingans and seahorses and suchlike.  Likewise, all the "Grain Goddesses" are, well, goddesses.

I would go so far as to say that Glorantha may even have a Rune for such a thing, and a goddess who has a special identification with that rune.  😉 

There may be other particularly "sex-identified" Runes; but Death (in particular) strikes me as one that has no particular sex or gender inherent to it.  If we're being basically particular, or atomic.

[g33k]

Omnivorous Morokanthi.

None of this namby-pamby "mostly on Holy Days as a ritual obligation" bull-pucky.

They drew the short-straw in the Covenant of Eaters & Eaten.  Morokanth are Eaters, and herd-men are Eaten.

[Ironwall]

Kangaroo Praxians they cheated and stole the long-straw from the humans they were put up against before the covenant came into effect. They also worship Eurmal the hooligan as an ancestor. I added them for mad max references and to fill out the praxians tribes so their was one for each rune.

Edited March 3, 2023 by Ironwall

[mfbrandi]

9 hours ago, g33k said:

Fertility -- giving birth -- is inherently a "female" thing, notwithstanding nandans and vingans and seahorses and suchlike.  Likewise, all the "Grain Goddesses" are, well, goddesses.

If I understand you correctly — apologies if I don’t: I am prone to grabbing the wrong end of a completely different stick — you are saying that the sensibility of the writers of the setting is that fertility is a female thing, even though you can cite Gloranthan and IRL instances that complicate the case. Is that it? You are probably right. Perhaps, we can even go further: fertility is associated with the right kind of motherhood — if you are the mother of the Devil or disease, you forgo any fertility rune you might have had. This seems a little unfair: is the mother of amoebic dysentery any less a fertility goddess than say … I don’t know … the mother of leopards?

(Possibly, some earth/mother thinking leads to a book including the cult of the Bloody Tusk, Donandar, Flamal, Mostal, Pamalt, & Uleria being called “The Earth Goddesses”. Possibly not: “Earth, Fertility — but not necessarily both together — and Associates” doesn’t scream million seller.)

We do get some conventionally male deities with : Yelm, Lodril, and Flamal spring to mind. But, of course, Uleria gets to own it — although one fondly imagines life (and so reproduction) pre-dates sex. Interestingly(?), Pamalt doesn’t get , but “he” does get . Should we reconsider what it is to own a rune (e.g. it is just a worshipper perspective … or geographically limited) — I confess, I thought of the owner (unique for a given time) — or is it that Pamalt = Ernalda?

As this is a dissident thread — like Your Dumbest Theory — I was just beating the drum — lightly, I hope — for Gloranthans who scorn the gendering and sexing of the divine. Presumably, even canonical Mostali fall into this category (the World Machine is no Steely Dan). One would expect some Western monotheists would go for that, too, at least in variant Gloranthas.

[mfbrandi]

11 hours ago, g33k said:

Omnivorous Morokanthi.

Even as a vegetarian, I tend to agree. However, let us play devil’s advocate.

Clearly, the Survival Lottery was rigged in favour of the humans. Traditional reading is that the losers were altered to be able to survive on the poor plant food available, and possibly also the winners were altered to be able to eat meat. But what if the Lottery was not about changing physiologies to enable survival, but about legitimation and entrenchment of pre-existing human hegemony — humans who already enjoyed their post-Lottery diet? What a magical coup then, if the Morokanth were able to win their instance of the Lottery and create herd men. But altered digestion was never on offer — as Waha meant the omnivorous humans to win every time — so the Morokanth were stuck with their pre-Lottery diet, but they had escaped their status as food for humans.

So the Praxian humans grumble that the Morokanth cheated — true in the sense that they subverted Waha’s plan — but they cannot tell the whole story without revealing the rotten nature of the “covenant”. Maybe the humans have (conveniently and perhaps inevitably) forgotten what really happened. The Morokanth have not. Perhaps the “peaceful cut” is just a ritual to prevent righteously angry herd ghosts from taking entirely reasonable revenge on their butchers.

This leaves the question of intelligence: did the herds have their wits stolen by the humans/Waha, or did the Morokanth manage their miracle of escapology without “human-level” intelligence, gaining it in the process? How? Did they have help? From Trickster? Zorak Zoran (with herd men in truth vegetarian zombies)? Or did the already bright Morokanth sacrifice the wits of the herds (man & beast) to pull off their coup? Had Waha’s plan been for men to continue to eat intelligent beasts? Does this tell us anything about the real reason Eiritha was buried alive?

I think we can make the vegetarian Morokanth story at least as dark as the omnivorous Morokanth story. No namby-pambiness required. In fact, I may even be won over by my inner Mephistophelean lawyer.

[Eff]

Fertility as gendered feminine is interesting because it's a kind of inversion of certain RW historical beliefs about reproduction- where there they understood women to contribute nothing to the child but a place for them to grow, here we have the semen as unrelated to fertility except perhaps as a food source for the embryo. Intriguing. 

[John Biles]

9 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

If I understand you correctly — apologies if I don’t: I am prone to grabbing the wrong end of a completely different stick — you are saying that the sensibility of the writers of the setting is that fertility is a female thing, even though you can cite Gloranthan and IRL instances that complicate the case. Is that it? You are probably right. Perhaps, we can even go further: fertility is associated with the right kind of motherhood — if you are the mother of the Devil or disease, you forgo any fertility rune you might have had. This seems a little unfair: is the mother of amoebic dysentery any less a fertility goddess than say … I don’t know … the mother of leopards?

Micro-organisms don't exist to cause disease; disease comes from spirits, which is a different rune.

 

[hipsterinspace]

9 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

This seems a little unfair: is the mother of amoebic dysentery any less a fertility goddess than say … I don’t know … the mother of leopards?

We know that the mother of all disease is Mallia, and that her runes are darkness and death (and for broo worshippers, chaos). She doesn’t bring life, she brings death and suffering. I don’t have a source on the mother of leopards, but we know father of lions, Basmol, also has the death rune, alongside beast.

[Eff]

7 minutes ago, John Biles said:

Micro-organisms don't exist to cause disease; disease comes from spirits, which is a different rune.

 

Are spirits not alive? 

[John Biles]

1 hour ago, Eff said:

Are spirits not alive? 

Not in the same way as corporeal things.  

[mfbrandi]

1 hour ago, hipsterinspace said:

She doesn’t bring life, she brings death and suffering.

Life for one is death for another. Even Ernalda has “a basket overflowing with edible fruits and meats”. Some of her children must — or at any rate do — die to feed others. If we are playing with @g33k’s idea of as (at least in part) motherhood, then why should the mother of disease not get her share of the rune? Sure, some of Mallia’s children kill to live and reproduce, but the same can be said of Ernalda’s children, no? And Yinkin doesn’t have the death rune, but cats kill to eat — they kill even when they don’t need to kill to eat.

[Eff]

13 minutes ago, John Biles said:

Not in the same way as corporeal things.  

Why not, apart from it being inconvenient for the argument? 

[hipsterinspace]

59 minutes ago, mfbrandi said:

Life for one is death for another. Even Ernalda has “a basket overflowing with edible fruits and meats”. Some of her children must — or at any rate do — die to feed others. If we are playing with @g33k’s idea of as (at least in part) motherhood, then why should the mother of disease not get her share of the rune? Sure, some of Mallia’s children kill to live and reproduce, but the same can be said of Ernalda’s children, no? And Yinkin doesn’t have the death rune, but cats kill to eat — they kill even when they don’t need to kill to eat.

I mean, if we’re going to the core of the fertility/life rune, Uleria is always there when something is born, always. That includes broo and scorpion men, elves and trolls, humans and animals. She is always there, and that is why she is and must be illuminated. Life is the force of creation, sometimes creation must take from something else to make something new.

The issue with Mallia is that she does not destroy to create, she creates to destroy. Her disease spirits proliferate by sapping the life force of mortals and turning them into one if they succumb. That is a meaningful distinction, and one that isn’t universal among even death rune gods. Tolat is maybe the best example of the inverse, he is a god of destruction, but he also a god of slash-and-burn agriculture in Teshnos. He teaches that death creates life, but that is far from a constant.

As for Yinkin, he is not just a killer, he’s also noted as a prolific seducer and the ancestor of many humans, not just domestic cats. Note that he doesn’t have the fertility rune either.

[French Desperate WindChild]

On 3/2/2023 at 9:37 PM, Erol of Backford said:

Does anyone play it that Humakt is a woman? There are a bunch of Humakti that are women who are quite famous in Glorantha... I suppose any "god" could take whatever form they wished?

Humakt is said brother of Orlanth

so I would say his « primary » form is male (and that s too what the pictures show)

however I imagine that gods are more bound by runes than mortals and less bound by physical form.

so in my opinion you may meet Humakt woman for some good reason( maybe the god wants to seduce someone who loves women for example) but his « standard » should be male

 

[French Desperate WindChild]

1 hour ago, Eff said:

Why not, apart from it being inconvenient for the argument? 

Some reasons I propose

they cannot die (or they already died)

their main home is not the mundane world and the mundane world is the world of living beings

that’s the rules (topic about the enchantment and bound spirits)

 

that doesn’t mean they can’t communicate , move, act, feel, think.

But without a body they are different from living