Grazeland adventures

[soltakss]

On 4/23/2023 at 9:46 PM, Squaredeal Sten said:

If the Grazelanders actually do worship their horses then that takes care of one type of mobile shrine.  Hard to interpret in terms of RQ mechanics though.  Would the king stallion be or host a Wyter?   

The king stallion, or queen mare would be a wyter for most clans.

[Squaredeal Sten]

On 4/25/2023 at 12:07 PM, hipsterinspace said:

From the RQG core book, p. 114:

The vendref are not always complacent serfs, and sometimes serve their overlords as warriors or join invading armies, and have even moved en masse to a new location... The Pure Horse People must be careful how they treat the vendref, and their rule is far lighter than that of a slave and its owner.

From the next page, regarding the Feathered Horse Queen:

She is guarded by fanatical Humakti from the Hiia Swordsman subcult.

The Humakti Vendref, as referenced in the Well of Daliath link I posted upthread, follow Hiia Swordsman, a hero of Humakt who joined with the Feathered Horse Queen to serve her during her "revolution". The subcult who take their name from him remain the personal guardians of the Feathered Horse Queen, who serves as the protector of the Vendref as well as the queen of her people. This seems to be the most up to date reference for how their society actually fits together. The article even mentions that the Vendref have Orlanth Adventurous among them, again tied to the Feathered Horse Queen.

That is a major revision.  You're right. it's there.  At this point we need a paste-in revision to the guide.

Edited April 26, 2023 by Squaredeal Sten
Spelling / typing

[Squaredeal Sten]

This does raise the question of what armed Vendref look like.  No horsemen for sure.  I would think their default weapon and battle skill level is lower than Sartarites because of past history.  

 

[David Scott]

1 hour ago, Squaredeal Sten said:

That is a major revision.  You're right. it's there.  At this point we need a past-in revision to the guide.

Remember the Guide is a view of Glorantha from 30000 feet (enough of an outline of the culture), what you are referencing in RQG is the view from a 1000 feet (enough to play someone from the culture). If some one writes a Grazer pack, it's going to have even more additional info as it's at ground level (enough to play inside the culture). If you feel you need to add this into the guide, just add it as a note in the PDF. No revisions are needed, as it's degrees of information.

For example, we've know about Hiia Swordsman since 1991, but Hiia is not in the Guide, but in RQG as he's more relevant close up.

[Squaredeal Sten]

On 4/23/2023 at 10:48 PM, RandomNumber said:

There is a thread on Grazelander-Esrolian tensions in the 'Wine and Wild Horses' scenario outline in Velhara's Mirror in the JC.  This is a Beast Valley campaign, but the Grazelanders are one of the factions.

There is indeed.  It postulates Esrolian attempts to settle grazing land.  It names a PHP clan, which makes two of their six for which I have names.

It is very short on dialogue and cultural habits, too bad.

 

Edited April 26, 2023 by Squaredeal Sten
Spelling / typing

[Squaredeal Sten]

So sure enough, my Adventurers bounced off the Smoking ruin and decided to go to Queen's post.  I think they will be disappointed in looking for a Lhankor Mhy temple there.  A shrine is more like it for a ton of about 1,000.  I suppose the community of traders will have some scribes, and maybe some upwardly mobile  lay followers will join in to support a shrine.  Will the Vendref have a significant number of LM?  Not in the outlying farming steads. 

Do the Venderef operate as clans?  I would think so, after all they are culturally Orlanthi.  (Ancestors more from Tarsh than from Sartar, though.)  Do we know the names of any of those clans?

With 18,000 Vendref in the Grazelands does that mean 6,000 in each of the areas in and around the three towns?.  IMHO  fewer, and more Vendef in the farther-flung valleys growing grain for the farther-flung Pure Horse People.

With the references i have so far, there are six PHP clans [from the Guide, I believe] - which gives them around 3,000 members each - and I know the names of

- the Four Gifts clan in the northwest of Grazer territory but winter at Queen's post.  The gifts are explained p.71 of Smoking Ruin.

- the Green Crown Clan "who rule from Rich Post and range out over the Vostebain and Yinkin Hills." [from Velhara's Mirror] Penralton, is chief.

- Possibly Laughing Dog clan north Seven Fouls Valley, per Smoking Ruin page 69, though its ethnicity is not identified.

 

Edited May 6, 2023 by Squaredeal Sten
Clarification. Overcoming spell check.

[jajagappa]

16 hours ago, Squaredeal Sten said:

With the references i have so far, there are six PHP clans [from the Guide, I believe]

If you were to use HQ Voices, then you'd get the Hoof-dancer, Sun Bow, and Sky Ring Clans. 

[Squaredeal Sten]

4 hours ago, jajagappa said:

If you were to use HQ Voices, then you'd get the Hoof-dancer, Sun Bow, and Sky Ring Clans. 

Thanks!  I couldn't have gotten it otherwise.  A lot of the links on that site are dead now.  

(EDIT) I had read a few other "What the __ says" pieces, didn't even know this one existed.  But  I did find the Grazer one in one of the Heroquest Voices downloads from the Well of Daliath.  

it's great!  Given how little window there is into Grazer life - though some of it is probably contrary to implied canon now.  For instance the Vendref gods' list is suspect, I don't know what to make of "Kenkacho the Loyal Slave " but suspect he won't be in the forthcoming Cults of Runequest books.

The platform burial part in "What the Grazer shaman says" looks interesting, implies a larger Native American component of the Grazers than I had previously thought. 

It is interesting that the age groups of each sex may also be spirit cults.

 

 

Edited May 7, 2023 by Squaredeal Sten
The whole 2nd half marked EDIT

[Nick Brooke]

The Gloranthan Voices collection is here:

https://wellofdaliath.chaosium.com/home/catalogue/publishers/issaries/fiction-reference/heroquest-voices/what-the-priests-say-and-what-my-father-told-me/

Scroll down the page and click on the Download button.

This was a project I managed for Issaries, Inc. back in 2003, when the HeroQuest RPG came out (big red book), to complete the set of What My Father Told Me and What The Priest Says narratives for every homeland in that book (and a bunch of Elder Races to boot). Many had been published previously, most notably in the Red, Orange and Elder Secrets boxes for RQ3, but a bunch of authors (including Greg Stafford) worked to revise those and complete the set. They are not canonical, but they're unlikely to be that far out, except in weird-edge cases (e.g. what Jeff did to Greg's Malkioni West).

Many of the RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha homelands are represented:

• Sartar (they were called "Heortlings" back in HeroQuestWorldWars days, in order to be more obscure)
• Esrolia
• Prax (specifically the Bison Tribe, but with tweaks this would cover other human Great Nations pretty well; the Orange Box version was for Sables)
• Grazelands (just the horsey-bois, this one ignores vendref and the FHQ so it's a bit antiquarian and narrow-minded, but obviously so was your Father)
• Lunar Tarsh

So you're only missing Old Tarshites; there were bits and bobs about them in an old Unspoken Word book, which has been unavailable for decades. (If you need to improvise, Dad is like a bitterly resentful Lunar Tarshite loser crossed with a Sartarite rebel, while the Priestess is a more blood-for-the-blood-goddess, skulls-for-the-skull-throne version of what Esrolian or Sartarite Earth Priestesses would say).

The other Voices in the set are:

• Dara Happa
• Doraddi (from the Pamaltelan plains)
• Dwarf
• Elf
• Esvulari (i.e. the Aeolians from Heortland)
• Kralorela
• Ludoch (Mermen)
• Puma People
• Rathori
• Seshnegi
• Teshnos
• Troll

[AlexS]

On 5/6/2023 at 1:07 AM, Squaredeal Sten said:

Do the Venderef operate as clans?  I would think so, after all they are culturally Orlanthi.  (Ancestors more from Tarsh than from Sartar, though.)  Do we know the names of any of those clans?

For me the best take on both the Grazer Clans and the vendref is still the one envisaged by David 'Six Ages' Dunham. His old website is still live here; it includes summary background, some lore snippets and a list of 40 clans. 

There is a map (presumably also based on work by David Dunham) that shows the locations of the different clans (bearing in mind that they are semi-nomadic and so migrate seasonally to different pastures). The map isn't on his site but Ludo and Joerg (the God Learners) reproduce it here.

David Dunham suggests that the clans include roughly the same number of vendref and Pure Horse People, though the vendref have their own clan structures. In the background materials on which my co-authors and I are working we have called these tied-to-the-land / tied-to-a-Grazer-clan farmers 'Clan Vendref'. This is to differentiate them from 'Queen's Vendref', who are the free inhabitants of the towns (who owe loyalty not to a Grazer Clan but to the Feathered Horse Queen, and many of whom belong to the Hiaa Swordsman cult, as well as other 'service provider' cults like Lhankhor Mhy and Issaries).

We also classify the people of Longhome (from the 'Hidden Valley' section of The Smoking Ruin) as 'Queen's Vendref' since they seem to have avoided sharing their valley with a Grazer Clan but are described as paying tribute to the Grazers in general and being loyal to the Feathered Horse Queen.

The Grazelands Homeland description in RQG suggests that there are no vendref in High Meadow, so we treat the Grazer Clans of that area (the Pathfinder, Bronze Hoof and Corona Clans, according to the map) as even more traditionalist than the rest of the Pure Horse People, and possibly less happy with the power now exercised by the Feathered Horse Queen.

It seems clear that there is a single 'Pure Horse Tribe' but there's a good deal of uncertainty about how that tribe is divided up into clans. One way to reconcile David Dunham's 40 Grazer Clans with the 'dozen clans' mentioned in RQG is to assume that the different grazing territories (of which are are around a dozen, if we go by the named areas on the map) are jointly held by several different clans (between two and six, depending on the size of the area) who jointly manage the pastures and acknowledge a single 'over-clan' chief while mostly managing their own affairs (akin to the Sartarite 'tribal confederation' structure).

Because we're working with a region-territory-locality hierarchy for organising our descriptions of different Homeland areas, we've suggested that the Grazelands are divided into three regions, each centred on one of the towns (Queen's Post, North Post and Rich Post), and each region consists of 3-5 areas (basically the major valleys and ranges/trails named on the map) that could function as the territories of these dozen or so 'over-clans'.

This may seem a bit complicated, but it's a way to envisage a less politically fragmented structure for the Pure Horse Tribe that respects the logic of the hills-and-valleys landscape and still lets us use all David Dunham's cool clan names!

[Squaredeal Sten]

On 5/7/2023 at 7:20 AM, AlexS said:

For me the best take on both the Grazer Clans and the vendref is still the one envisaged by David 'Six Ages' Dunham. His old website is still live here; it includes summary background, some lore snippets and a list of 40 clans. 

There is a map (presumably also based on work by David Dunham) that shows the locations of the different clans (bearing in mind that they are semi-nomadic and so migrate seasonally to different pastures). The map isn't on his site but Ludo and Joerg (the God Learners) reproduce it here.

David Dunham suggests that the clans include roughly the same number of vendref and Pure Horse People, though the vendref have their own clan structures. In the background materials on which my co-authors and I are working we have called these tied-to-the-land / tied-to-a-Grazer-clan farmers 'Clan Vendref'. This is to differentiate them from 'Queen's Vendref', who are the free inhabitants of the towns (who owe loyalty not to a Grazer Clan but to the Feathered Horse Queen, and many of whom belong to the Hiaa Swordsman cult, as well as other 'service provider' cults like Lhankhor Mhy and Issaries).

We also classify the people of Longhome (from the 'Hidden Valley' section of The Smoking Ruin) as 'Queen's Vendref' since they seem to have avoided sharing their valley with a Grazer Clan but are described as paying tribute to the Grazers in general and being loyal to the Feathered Horse Queen.

The Grazelands Homeland description in RQG suggests that there are no vendref in High Meadow, so we treat the Grazer Clans of that area (the Pathfinder, Bronze Hoof and Corona Clans, according to the map) as even more traditionalist than the rest of the Pure Horse People, and possibly less happy with the power now exercised by the Feathered Horse Queen.

It seems clear that there is a single 'Pure Horse Tribe' but there's a good deal of uncertainty about how that tribe is divided up into clans. One way to reconcile David Dunham's 40 Grazer Clans with the 'dozen clans' mentioned in RQG is to assume that the different grazing territories (of which are are around a dozen, if we go by the named areas on the map) are jointly held by several different clans (between two and six, depending on the size of the area) who jointly manage the pastures and acknowledge a single 'over-clan' chief while mostly managing their own affairs (akin to the Sartarite 'tribal confederation' structure).

Because we're working with a region-territory-locality hierarchy for organising our descriptions of different Homeland areas, we've suggested that the Grazelands are divided into three regions, each centred on one of the towns (Queen's Post, North Post and Rich Post), and each region consists of 3-5 areas (basically the major valleys and ranges/trails named on the map) that could function as the territories of these dozen or so 'over-clans'.

This may seem a bit complicated, but it's a way to envisage a less politically fragmented structure for the Pure Horse Tribe that respects the logic of the hills-and-valleys landscape and still lets us use all David Dunham's cool clan names!

Thanks.  I will mine that too for atmosphere for Friday's game.

I don't know how to reconcile Dunham's 40 clans with the "six"figure I recall from the Guide. Except by assuming most are Vendref.  It does seem to me that each Grazer clan should have an annual sequence of grazing areas.  That is implied in the other material. 

With the density of the Grazers they must have some agreed on areas, because random movement just won't work, it would trigger conflict as they are channeled by the mountains. They would fall into intra tribal warfare, and there is no evidence of such conflict.

Too bad the grazer pack was never done.  RQG would benefit from a unifying vision of the Grazers, who are just as much neighbors to Sartar as Prax is.

Edited May 13, 2023 by Squaredeal Sten
still correcting typing errors

[AlexS]

1 hour ago, Squaredeal Sten said:

Thanks.  I will mone that too for atmosphere for Fridsy's game.

Great.

1 hour ago, Squaredeal Sten said:

I don't knowhow to reconcile Dunham's 40 clans with the "six"figure I recall from the Guide. Except by assuming most are Vendref.

Your question really got me thinking about the issue with having the Grazers as a single tribe, even though it make sense in terms of the lore (and appears to be current canon): there are just too many of them.

Jeff says that out of the 40k inhabitants of the Grazelands "Roughly 18,000 are Pure Horse People". That is 4-5 times as many people as an average Sartarite tribe, but we're talking about semi-nomadic pastoralists, which is not the kind of society that in the RW tends to support big tribal structures.

Dividing the 18k Grazers into 40 clans in line with David Dunham's work gives us 450 people per clan, which is smaller than the average Sartarite clan but not by much - and anyway as I said these are pastoralists not farmers so smaller clan sizes do make sense.

And I do think that all 40 (or 41 - he mentions an extra one presumably as a placeholder for HeroQuest-style 'make up the background for your adventurers' own clan' development) are actually Pure Horse clans, not vendref. The names he gives them ('Burning Hoofprint', 'Proud Colt', 'Sky Leap', 'Yellow Orb', etc.) are just too horsey and/or Sun & Sky related to be Tarshite or Esrolian (i.e. Earth-worshipping) vendref clan names.

However, 40 clans is a lot to keep track of if you're the kind of GM who likes to prep about about who is feuding with whom, who backed the Lunar-loving FHQ and who backed the Lunar-hating one, etc. David Dunham is the Uber-expert on that kind of clan-based gameplay (see KODP, Six Ages, etc.) and in his Grazelands material he only bothers to give four of the clans an actual named chief and to mention that three of them breed slightly different kinds of horses. Plus, if you're narrating journeys for an adventuring party, breaking the Grazelands into 40 different territories makes it just too bitty.

So, I reckon that there must be some kind of intermediate clan-like structure that sits between the 41 clans and the one tribe. This is how we explain the reference in the RQG rulebook to there being 'a dozen clans' of Pure Horse people (which I guess means that the reference to there being six clans in the Guide or wherever has been superseded).

1 hour ago, Squaredeal Sten said:

WIith the density of the Grazers they must have some agreed on areas, because random movement just won't work, it would trigger conflict as they are channeled by the mountains. They would fall into intra tribal warfare, and there is no evidence of such conflict.

I very much agree. That's why I concluded that IMG the Pure Horse Tribe is divided into a dozen smaller groups (let's call them 'over-clans' for now), each of which is composed of between three and six 'mini-clans' who historically came together to agree on how best to share a large area (like one of the main valleys).

The 'mini-clans' that make up each 'over-clan' intermarry, do big religious ceremonies together and generally don't raid each other. They may have a Big Chief and a Big Priestess for the 'over-clan', but each 'mini-clan' has its own chief and priestess, and its warriors can go raiding in the next valley over without asking permission from the 'over-clan' chief, because for most purposes (managing the herd, organising raids, initiating the young people, etc.) they are a clan in their own right. It's just that when it comes to the really big stuff (mustering for war, dealing with a vendref rebellion or dinosaur incursion that affects the whole valley, running a major Sacred Time Heroquest, etc.) they all come together under the Big Chief and the Big Priestess of the 'over-clan'.

TLDR: the Pure Horse Tribe consists of a dozen big clans that are made up of smaller kinship-based groups, and for ease of reference we can call these smaller groups 'clans' and use some of the cool names (and cool locations on the map) that David Dunham made up for them two decades or more ago.

I did go full-on map-nerd and sketch out the likely territories of these 'over-clans', as well as assigning them to triaties (like the Runegate Hyaloring clans) so that the intermarrying would work, but this post is already too long and I have a feeling that it should have been in the 'Glorantha' forum not the RQ one anyway, so I'll take that stuff over there...

Enjoy your adventures in the Grazelands – and please keep us updated here with how the game goes!

Edited May 7, 2023 by AlexS

[Jeff]

18 hours ago, AlexS said:

Great.

Your question really got me thinking about the issue with having the Grazers as a single tribe, even though it make sense in terms of the lore (and appears to be current canon): there are just too many of them.

Jeff says that out of the 40k inhabitants of the Grazelands "Roughly 18,000 are Pure Horse People". That is 4-5 times as many people as an average Sartarite tribe, but we're talking about semi-nomadic pastoralists, which is not the kind of society that in the RW tends to support big tribal structures.

Dividing the 18k Grazers into 40 clans in line with David Dunham's work gives us 450 people per clan, which is smaller than the average Sartarite clan but not by much - and anyway as I said these are pastoralists not farmers so smaller clan sizes do make sense.

And I do think that all 40 (or 41 - he mentions an extra one presumably as a placeholder for HeroQuest-style 'make up the background for your adventurers' own clan' development) are actually Pure Horse clans, not vendref. The names he gives them ('Burning Hoofprint', 'Proud Colt', 'Sky Leap', 'Yellow Orb', etc.) are just too horsey and/or Sun & Sky related to be Tarshite or Esrolian (i.e. Earth-worshipping) vendref clan names.

However, 40 clans is a lot to keep track of if you're the kind of GM who likes to prep about about who is feuding with whom, who backed the Lunar-loving FHQ and who backed the Lunar-hating one, etc. David Dunham is the Uber-expert on that kind of clan-based gameplay (see KODP, Six Ages, etc.) and in his Grazelands material he only bothers to give four of the clans an actual named chief and to mention that three of them breed slightly different kinds of horses. Plus, if you're narrating journeys for an adventuring party, breaking the Grazelands into 40 different territories makes it just too bitty.

So, I reckon that there must be some kind of intermediate clan-like structure that sits between the 41 clans and the one tribe. This is how we explain the reference in the RQG rulebook to there being 'a dozen clans' of Pure Horse people (which I guess means that the reference to there being six clans in the Guide or wherever has been superseded).

I very much agree. That's why I concluded that IMG the Pure Horse Tribe is divided into a dozen smaller groups (let's call them 'over-clans' for now), each of which is composed of between three and six 'mini-clans' who historically came together to agree on how best to share a large area (like one of the main valleys).

The 'mini-clans' that make up each 'over-clan' intermarry, do big religious ceremonies together and generally don't raid each other. They may have a Big Chief and a Big Priestess for the 'over-clan', but each 'mini-clan' has its own chief and priestess, and its warriors can go raiding in the next valley over without asking permission from the 'over-clan' chief, because for most purposes (managing the herd, organising raids, initiating the young people, etc.) they are a clan in their own right. It's just that when it comes to the really big stuff (mustering for war, dealing with a vendref rebellion or dinosaur incursion that affects the whole valley, running a major Sacred Time Heroquest, etc.) they all come together under the Big Chief and the Big Priestess of the 'over-clan'.

TLDR: the Pure Horse Tribe consists of a dozen big clans that are made up of smaller kinship-based groups, and for ease of reference we can call these smaller groups 'clans' and use some of the cool names (and cool locations on the map) that David Dunham made up for them two decades or more ago.

I did go full-on map-nerd and sketch out the likely territories of these 'over-clans', as well as assigning them to triaties (like the Runegate Hyaloring clans) so that the intermarrying would work, but this post is already too long and I have a feeling that it should have been in the 'Glorantha' forum not the RQ one anyway, so I'll take that stuff over there...

Enjoy your adventures in the Grazelands – and please keep us updated here with how the game goes!

I posted some thoughts on PHP clans in the Glorantha forum. That seems more appropriate for this discussion than the RuneQuest forum (which is more about specifically RQ rules and mechanics).

[AlexS]

Hi @Jeff - I did say that

19 hours ago, AlexS said:

I have a feeling that it should have been in the 'Glorantha' forum not the RQ one anyway

So, it looks like my instinct to take the conversation to the Glorantha Forum was the right one, and thanks for sharing your thoughts on the thread I started there.

[Squaredeal Sten]

I found another fairly big difference between the new Grazeland material and old.  It is the Golden Bow:

RQiG page 308 in the Yelm section;  Note that Yelm in this book is a lot more Grazeland than Dara Happan- anyway, it presents Golden Bow as shamans only:  "Golden Bow {Shaman): . Requirements: any Yelm initiate who becomes a shaman qualifies for this status."  To summarize it, it gives Golden Bow members special Grazer oriented shamanic taboos (presumably instead of the standard taboos), and also gives access to one Rune spell (dismiss fire elemental).

 

Contrast this with Golden Bow in older material:

Heroquest Voices  / What the War chief told me; A good bow shooter is told someday he may qualify for the Brotherhood of the Golden Bow.  This sounds like a shooting club to me, not shamans.  Clearly there is a difference!  And in the second 'voice',  "What the Grazer Shaman Says", the Jardan the Warrior subcult  says "Jardan is also the patron of the Golden Bow society..." with no reference to shamanic business.

And  David Dunham's material on shamans does not have Golden Bow in it.  But his The Yu-kargazent pantheon entry for Jarden the warrior does refer to Golden bow: "The Brotherhood of the Golden Bow is an elite group of wariors.  among its twquiremtns are 90% with Bow and Ride Horse.

This seems to me to be a strong indication that David Dunham's material and Heroquest Voices material on the Grazers  is not going to be official / canon, and canon is going in a different direction.

:

[Squaredeal Sten]

Moderators, please feel free to move this thread to Glorantha as Jeff suggested. 

meanwhile i want to maintain it as a separate thread from the clans thread.  There is a lot more going on there than clans.

[Jeff]

28 minutes ago, Squaredeal Sten said:

I found another fairly big difference between the new Grazeland material and old.  It is the Golden Bow:

RQiG page 308 in the Yelm section;  Note that Yelm in this book is a lot more Grazeland than Dara Happan- anyway, it presents Golden Bow as shamans only:  "Golden Bow {Shaman): . Requirements: any Yelm initiate who becomes a shaman qualifies for this status."  To summarize it, it gives Golden Bow members special Grazer oriented shamanic taboos (presumably instead of the standard taboos), and also gives access to one Rune spell (dismiss fire elemental).

 

Contrast this with Golden Bow in older material:

Heroquest Voices  / What the War chief told me; A good bow shooter is told someday he may qualify for the Brotherhood of the Golden Bow.  This sounds like a shooting club to me, not shamans.  Clearly there is a difference!  And in the second 'voice',  "What the Grazer Shaman Says", the Jardan the Warrior subcult  says "Jardan is also the patron of the Golden Bow society..." with no reference to shamanic business.

And  David Dunham's material on shamans does not have Golden Bow in it.  But his The Yu-kargazent pantheon entry for Jarden the warrior does refer to Golden bow: "The Brotherhood of the Golden Bow is an elite group of wariors.  among its twquiremtns are 90% with Bow and Ride Horse.

This seems to me to be a strong indication that David Dunham's material and Heroquest Voices material on the Grazers  is not going to be official / canon, and canon is going in a different direction.

:

It is not. And I played in David's game - but that is not the approach Greg and I took in RQG.  

[Erol of Backford]

On 4/23/2023 at 10:48 PM, RandomNumber said:

Wine and Wild Horses

Does anyone have a lnk to this? Thank you!

[Squaredeal Sten]

Now it is time fir me to get specific about Queen's Post.  What is there?

Per Jeff the three Grazelands towns have a total population of abut 4000.  So Queen's Post has about 1300-1400..

Of that 1/3 are children.  Say 400 because foreign traders and retired Grazers bias the age profile upward.

900-1000 adults.  Say 100'-200 retired Grazers, 100 + foreign traders, 700 or fewer  Vendref most of whom are "freed" whatever that means under the circumstances.  These figures are  computed by rectal extraction.🙂

There are: a market.  Crafters.  Shops.  Temples and shrines..  Some sort of town administration, maybe a retired Grazer is the FHQ's governor.  

Cults... High % of Issaries and Etyries. 40 each.   Lhankor Mhy - the necessary minimum, say 40 for traders and town and FHQ admin.  Humakt 50; The FHQ needs someone from whom to draw bodyguard, this is where they train newbies.  Chalana Arroy - maybe 10?  Other Seven Mothers. 300 because the historical Tarsh influence.  Orlanth and Barntar 300. Ernalda 300.  Gustbran 20: the Grazers need redsmiths.  That's 1000 so all these figures may be a shade high.

 Temples and shrines this implies: 

Minor temples Orlanth/ Barntar.  Ernalda, and Seven Mothereasonable?

The market has LM and Etyries shines at its ends but qualifies as a minor temple because of all the lay customers.  

A Yelm shrine for the retired Grazers, prosperous because support from the LSK and city governor.  Shrines for Humakt. IIssaries, Etyries, Sites for Lhankor Mhy, Chalana Arroy. Gustbran.

Does that look reasonable?

 

 

 

 

[Squaredeal Sten]

Queen's Post is supposed to be a "fortified settlement" according to the Guide.  So what will that look like?  The usual Orlanthi earthworks won't do, it won't feel fortified to any Grazer because their horses may gallop up the glacis, which like other earthworks will be at the natural angle of repose.  

To me this indicates the outer wall will be vertical: A brick. stone, or palisade wall. With the earthwork behind it to produce  a walkway and parapet,  and also to provide thickness.  Not tremendously tall, just tall enough that a horse will not jump it.  3 meters is more than any modern horse can jump.  So the shell wall 3m high, about a 5m thick earthwork at the base, 2m tall, allowing a 2m walkway on top. Making a 1m parapet.This will also reduce earthwork maintenance.  Maybe it will also have a ditch around it, probably the source of the earth in the earthwork.

You won't be able to see the footing benearh the wall.  I'd say thst is about a meter deep.

How big will Queen's Post be?  I am thinking of something compact.  If the residents use two story houses, maybe 10 square meters per person or less.  Plus the market and temples.  Consider that the vendref are heavily taxed so will seldom live sumptuously.  So 1300-1400 people means about 16 000 to '20,000 square meters   A  rectangle 150x140 meters  to account for the wall itself.  Its perimeter of 580 meters will be defensible by the 500 adult male population.  

Will that seem cramped to tbe Grazers? Yes.

Will that stop a real army with scaling ladders? No.  For that I want 6 m walls at a minimum.

Towers projecting to cover the face of the wall with arrow shots? No. 

Edited May 12, 2023 by Squaredeal Sten
Adding detail, then checking spelling.

[RandomNumber]

17 hours ago, Erol of Backford said:

Does anyone have a lnk to this? Thank you!

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/399164/Velharas-Mirror?term=velhara

[AlexS]

Hi again @Squaredeal Sten – seems we have ended up in in the Glorantha Forum after all...

12 hours ago, Squaredeal Sten said:

Queen's Post is supposed to be a "fortified settlement" according to the Guide.  So what will that look like?

I'm not sure the fortifications need to be very imposing – certainly not the 'brooding hilltop castle' style of Ethilrist's base at Muse Roost further up the river from Queen's Post.

After all, the townspeople's main defences are (1) the formidable earth magic of the Feathered Horse Queen, which probably includes the odd earthquake spell borrowed from her spiritual sisters at the Shaker Temple, (2) several hundred fanatical vendref Humakti from the Hiaa Swordsman cult and (3) several thousand elite Pure Horse cavalry who can be mobilised if the FHQ gives the nod to the Luminous Stallion King.

That said, stone walls with a hint of Mostali masonry would fit well with the origin of Queen's Post (and the other trading stations in the Grazelands), since it was established when Sartar was married to the FHQ, as an extension of his long-distance trade network built around the tribal confederation cities (Jonstown, Wilmskirk, etc.) so its architecture will probably show some Sartarite influence.

Edited May 12, 2023 by AlexS

[AlexS]

12 hours ago, Squaredeal Sten said:

Minor temples Orlanth/ Barntar.  Ernalda, and Seven Mothereasonable?

The Ernalda temple should probably be a Major (or even Great) one given the magical role of the FHQ (Queen's Post is presumably her main base). Maybe a fairly modest upper level in the Grazer style (think Yurt-influenced architecture) as a nod to her La-Ungariant side, with a massive set of underground chambers in the more classic Sartar/Tarshite Ernaldan style (with echoes of Maran Gor, given that Sorana Tor's original home was in the Shaker Temple)?

The Seven Mothers temple may have been destroyed under the rule of Vistera, the Lunar-hating FHQ who took over when her predecessor was killed fighting for the Lunars in Esrolia in 1623. However, I think her successor (whose father was the King of Tarsh) may well have allowed the 7M missionaries back in.

Don't forget to include a sizeable Humakti barracks-temple, as this is probably the main centre of the Cult of Hiaa Swordsman.

[David Scott]

13 hours ago, Squaredeal Sten said:

Per Jeff the three Grazelands towns have a total population of abut 4000.  So Queen's Post has about 1300-1400..

The Guide gives each of the towns 1000 each. I'd use the excess for the transient populations (300 each)

[Squaredeal Sten]

Just now, David Scott said:

The Guide gives each of the towns 1000 each. I'd use the excess for the transient populations (300 each)

I am not sure who thst additional transient population would be.  The traders? No. Traders have been there since Sartar's original founding.  Recent war refugees?  I am in 1629 so any new refugees might be from Tarsh.  Problem is the Grazers dont want a horde of groundmen plowing up their grazing land, that is not the model of prosperity in their heads.  Grazekland would not welcome refugees.  And the Lunar Tarshites who are those  most likely to flee Argrzth would flee north not south.

 I was serious about excess births.  The new FHQ's fertility magic may just have been laid on a little thick.

But we may also have creeping urbanization. The towns having grown as a result of the boost in trade generated when war closed the Heortland road and shifted trade west to the Grazelands. ( Now it is shifting back, though. )   A mix of Vendref coming to work, and traders.