Clans of the Pure Horse Tribe

[AlexS]

@Squaredeal Sten started an interesting thread over on the RQ Forum about how to run the Grazelands as an adventure location, which included thinking through not just the vendref/Pure Horse People relationship but the actual clan structure of the Pure Horse Tribe itself.

I've been doing some thinking about the makeup of the Grazelands recently, for a project with a couple of co-authors on identifying the different territories and cultures of Dragon Pass at a more granular level than the RQG Homeland/Region/Culture view. Since a big inspiration is David Dunham's old Grazelands site (which is still live here if you don't already know it) and he lists 40 Pure Horse clans (and says there may be 41 in all), this raised the issue of how to reconcile his vision (and all the great clan names and locations that he came up with) with the fact that the RQG Homeland entry for the Grazelands tells us there are 'a dozen' PHP clans and Jeff has emphasised that there is just one Pure Horse Tribe.

After thinking a lot about it I reckon the answer is that the Pure Horse Tribe has some 'mid-level' structures within it that are analogous to the Runegate Triaty within the Colymar Tribe in Sartar: a grouping of clans who share a territory, do some cultural/religious stuff together and intermarry but are not actually a tribe in their own right.

This would make sense in terms of demographics, because with 18k people (according to Jeff's figures) the Pure Horse Tribe is pretty big – way bigger than any Sartarite tribe (though probably comparable to some Praxian tribes). If it has 40 or 41 clans (as David Dunham proposes) they will average 400-450 people, which seems pretty reasonable for semi-nomadic pastoralists. However, organising 41 clans politically into a single tribe is a tall order, which implies a need for some kind of intermediate chiefly role, possibly linked only to war and other major events (including religious ones like a big heroquest, which might be led by a kind of mini-FHQ who is Chief Priestess for that group of clans).

It also makes sense in terms of geography/ecology: the Grazelands consists of multiple ranges of hills dividing up valleys that vary in size, and though some (Golden Horse Valley, Hiaa's Valley, Maregraze Vale) are quite big, we know that Pure Horse People move seasonally with their herds (presumably to higher pastures in Sea, Fire & Earth Seasons and lower ones for the rest of the year) so in practice they need to share both the valleys and the hills. Having some kind of 'big valley / major range of hills' level structure bringing together the clans who share that territory would make this a lot easier.

I think it also makes sense in terms of anthropology, but I could do with some input here as I'm not an anthropologist – just a social scientist who happens to work with quite a lot of anthropologists as part of my day job (unfortunately they tend to be specialists in the anthropology of the rainforest peoples of Lowland South America, not that of the horse-riding pastoralist/hunters of the Great Plains or the Eurasian Steppe).

The key issue is exogamy – marrying people from a clan that is different from your own. If PHP are exogamous then a triaty structure makes sense: three clans can exchange brides/grooms in a way that cements the alliance while keeping bloodlines distinct. Do we think that ancient Scythians (apparently the principal RW historical analogue for PHP) were exogamous? What about the First Nations of the Great Plains, or Mongolian pastoralists?

And do we have RW analogues (historical or contemporary) for this kind of 'over-clan' structure? Or do we just call it a 'clan' (e.g. 'Hiaa's Valley Clan') and use another term for what David Dunham describes as clans (for example, he locates the 'Arrow Cloud', 'Sun Ring' and 'Spirit Luminous' clans in the Hiaa's Valley area, where it might make sense for them to form either a single clan or a triaty).

What about 'phratries'? That is a term I've come across in material referring to the Sable Tribe of Prax though I'm not sure what the difference is between a phratry and a clan (maybe @David Scott can help here).

Another term I've heard Amazonian anthropologist colleagues use is 'sib', but again I don't know what makes a sib different from a clan - maybe it is more like a 'bloodline', which is a term that Ian Cooper uses to good effect when talking about different identities within the Red Cow Clan in The Coming Storm.

Anyway, calling all anthropologists - any thoughts on appropriate bloodline/sib/phratry/clan/triaty structures for the Pure Horse Tribe would be very welcome!

[metcalph]

I think comparisons with the Orlanthi are misleading because the Pure Horse People are Yelmic.  Authority and Power should flow from the above and not be rooted in some mandate from the masses vested in the Feathered Horse Queen.  At the very least, the King will appoint male relatives as Princes to oversee the far flung regions of his tribe.  Rather than copy from the Dara Happans, he would have Prince Pole Star, Prince Evening Star etc.

[mfbrandi]

11 hours ago, AlexS said:

What about 'phratries'? That is a term I've come across in material referring to the Sable Tribe of Prax though I'm not sure what the difference is between a phratry and a clan

Being sordidly practical — this is not at all scholarly, I’m afraid — one could just take a couple of snippets and run with them:

Quote

phratries — essentially groups of clans that share a mythical ancestor — characteristically use brother-brother and father-son links to represent what were once in fact relatively unstable political alliances.

Quote

By definition, phratries comprise groups of related clans and occur in sets of three or more

So you could divide your 41 clans into 11 groups of 3 and 2 groups of 4 — or something approximating that — according to what made sense politically and bind each cluster of 3 or 4 clans via mythical ancestors without worrying about whether there was an actual blood tie to establish each phratry — i.e. they can be mythical mythical ancestors!

“Phratry” does rather whiff of testosterone. I wonder how old the groupings of 3 or 4 clans are — maybe in the “good old days” each present-day clan was bigger (or part of a bigger parent clan) and none needed to cluster. In a post-FHQ world, perhaps the mythical ancestors are women and the imaginary lines of descent matrilineal?

Emphasis has changed (let us not use the “r” word, for once) between 2013 and 2023. Presumably, the Dendara —> Ernalda shift — “the Grazeland Pony Breeders of Dragon Pass … have changed their society dramatically since they left Pent in the Second Age, and now revere Ernalda” — is supposed to licence a turn away from the excesses of “Yelmic” patriarchy (which was presumably only ever enforced by men and not by the Sun itself). The sound politics of not splitting the Earth vote.

(I hear that without sufficient exogamy — ironically enough — your clans are likely to turn into broos. This may be Lunar propaganda.)

Edited May 8, 2023 by mfbrandi
fixed one link

[AlexS]

7 hours ago, metcalph said:

Authority and Power should flow from the above and not be rooted in some mandate from the masses vested in the Feathered Horse Queen.

Thanks @metcalph. I agree where war is concerned, since that still seems to be largely (if not exclusively) the preserve of the Luminous Stallion King. So when I posit 'some kind of intermediate chiefly role, possibly linked only to war' I think that's perfectly compatible with regional war-leaders appointed top-down by the LSK. Plus I really like the idea of them being given celestial titles like 'Prince Pole Star' and 'Prince Evening Star'.

7 hours ago, metcalph said:

Authority and Power should flow from the above and not be rooted in some mandate from the masses vested in the Feathered Horse Queen.

I don't entirely agree with this, though. The FHQ handily thrashed the LSK in a massive magical struggle 150 years ago, and that must give her descendants some authority within Pure Horse society rather than just the right to be served by the vendref masses.

She is still La-Ungariant even with all the Ernalda and Sorana Tor accretions, and I reckon that could make her 'mistress of the pastures' or something similarly land-based. This could give the FHQ the right to empower a 'Feathered Horse Princess' to lead big land-related rituals as Chief Priestess for a valley-scale group of clans (working alongside the Star Prince appointed by the LSK) whenever that is magically necessary for Pure Horse people (for example when the pastures need renewing after an extreme weather event like the Great Winter), not just doing the Ernalda thing for the dirt-shovelling vendref.

[AlexS]

1 hour ago, mfbrandi said:

Being sordidly practical

Hands up, I should have spent more time on Britannica.com before appealing for help from the tribe! That said, I couldn't actually find the phratry quotes at the link you shared – are they from Britannica?

1 hour ago, mfbrandi said:

So you could divide your 41 clans into 11 groups of 3 and 2 groups of 4 — or something approximating that — according to what made sense politically and bind each cluster of 3 or 4 clans via mythical ancestors without worrying about whether there was an actual blood tie to establish each phratry

Fantastic, so it sounds like phratries are what I am looking for.

First, because (as you imply when you suggest '11 groups of 3') they can function as triaties, which not only helps with the exogamy thing (though it seems that moieties would do that as well) but also seems to work best scale-wise for most of the valley/range areas that I've been able to identify on various maps of the Grazelands (more on this later).

Second, because the shared mythic ancestor could not only help to explain why those three clans ended up sharing a valley/range of hills but could even function as a kind of uber-wyter invoked at time of war by the designated 'Star Prince' for the phratry (see suggestion from @metcalph above).

1 hour ago, mfbrandi said:

“Phratry” does rather whiff of testosterone.

And that, for me, is a plus where the Pure Horse people are concerned. They may have been forced by the FHQ to acknowledge Ernalda and tolerate the vendref being uppity and wearing swords, but when the good ol' boys of the Dawn Racer Clan gather round the campfire to explain to the young lads how they came to be sharing the Southvale with those weirdo cousins from the Silkmane Clan, the stories they tell are of male ancestors doing macho things – it's like a temporary patriarchal holiday from all the 'being told what to do by women' stuff that they have to deal with in the here and now. 

[David Scott]

10 hours ago, AlexS said:

What about 'phratries'? That is a term I've come across in material referring to the Sable Tribe of Prax though I'm not sure what the difference is between a phratry and a clan (maybe @David Scott can help here).

Phratries exist in the sables due to their being an extra step in their organisation. I'd ignore this for the Grazelanders as for it's a clear hierarchy, with a single tribe (like the Praxians and other PHP people). 

I'd make the clans a 1000 (like the Bison tribe), giving 18 clans. These can be split into septs and families. Septs are generally large powerful families within a clan, large extended bloodlines (you could call them houses, but that doesn't work for nomads IMO). I'd throw 2-5 of those into each clan, with the remainder made up of smaller families.

 

[AlexS]

Thanks for answering the call for help, @David Scott!

After what @mfbrandi shared I was getting keen on the phratries idea, so it would be good to know why the 'extra step in their organisation' that led the Sable Tribe to acquire them wouldn't be relevant for the Pure Horse Tribe as well.

20 minutes ago, David Scott said:

Septs are generally large powerful families within a clan, large extended bloodlines

That said, maybe bringing in septs does help with the practical challenge I was trying to tackle, which is arriving at an organisational structure for the Pure Horse Tribe that:

1. Includes 40-41 'clan-like' social structures that occupy pastoral territories marked on the old map that uses David Dunham's work;
2. Organises these 40-41 groups into 'a dozen' larger-scale social structures to fit with the RQG account of how many Grazer clans there are; and
3. Provides a rationale for this split-level organisation that makes sense in political, ecological and anthropological terms.

So, am I right in saying that we could tweak your proposed structure to say that the 41 septs of the Pure Horse Tribe together make up 12 clans averaging 1,500 people each – but ranging in practice from fewer than a thousand people in a small area like the Southvale to maybe 3k people for a big area like Golden Horse Valley?

If so, then can we keep David Dunham's 40 named clans and their identified locations, but instead of 'clans' in the Orlanthi sense we think of them as septs or 'large extended bloodlines' who come together (in groups of 3-6) to form the Clans that rule over the dozen medium-scale territories (areas of hill and valley) that together make up the Grazelands?

Edited May 8, 2023 by AlexS

[mfbrandi]

1 hour ago, AlexS said:

I couldn't actually find the phratry quotes at the link you shared – are they from Britannica?

Oops! My fault: I put the wrong link in. Fixed now, but here it is freestanding:

https://www.britannica.com/topic/phratry

[AlexS]

Great, thanks @mfbrandi.

So, according to Britannica, "By definition, phratries comprise groups of related clans and occur in sets of three or more". 

I guess that leaves us with two ways of arriving at the desired destination of 12 'maxi-clans' that bring together a total of 41 'mini-clans':

1. 41 clans forming 12 phratries; or
2. 12 clans composed of 41 septs.

Any thoughts on which works better for the Pure Horse Tribe?

Edited May 8, 2023 by AlexS

[Squaredeal Sten]

Bear in mind that the existing literature has the PHP clans moving among different grazing areas on  seasonal basis.   Queen's post area one season  and far NW another, that is a paraphrase of what is written..   So it's not as if they stay in one place year around, and on that basis mapping them should be a different kind of exercise.  So I am not inclined to say the 41 clan map  matches that background.  

The Vendref will stay in place of course, farmers = sedentary.  You can make their clan map in the old way.  But note that all they seem to own is their fields, all the wild land is the PHP's to hunt.  The Grazers may tolerate keeping out if the Vendref fields, but

Drafting a monolog here:

"Let some ground man tell me where to hunt?  He'll be lucky if all I do is put him in his place."

So the Vendref territories won't abut each other most of the time.  They will be like islands in the sea of grazer territory = all unplowed  ground.

Edited May 8, 2023 by Squaredeal Sten
Typing

[jajagappa]

37 minutes ago, Squaredeal Sten said:

But note that all they seem to own is their fields

Bear in mind that following basic Sartarite or Esrolian ways, the Earth Queen "owns" the fields and determines who gets to work specific fields. In reality this may amount to a long-term "lease", but the FHQ will have the say in who works where.

[Squaredeal Sten]

6 hours ago, jajagappa said:

Bear in mind that following basic Sartarite or Esrolian ways, the Earth Queen "owns" the fields and determines who gets to work specific fields. In reality this may amount to a long-term "lease", but the FHQ will have the say in who works where.

Agreed.  I would presume that in form at least the Vendref do not give grain in tribute to the grazer clans. They give grain to the Feathered Horse Queen or her designated representatives

  The FHQ then gives it to the Grazer clans whose Earth priestesses just might be those designated representatives.  

As the Grazers will rely on grain to feed their horses as much as on grass, that gives the FHQ huge patronage power. 

Edited May 8, 2023 by Squaredeal Sten
typing / proofing.

[Jeff]

To start with, the Pure Horse People are not Orlanthi clans. Every Pure Horse person in Dragon Pass claims descent from the survivors of the Battle of Alavan Argay, and as Pure Horse People, they claim distant descent from Yelm. 

As we know there are about 18,000 Pure Horse People in Dragon Pass. They all belong to one tribal group - with Yelm Sun Lords as the tribal leaders, aided by Yelm Elders and Golden Bow shamans. The total number of these Yelm Rune Masters is probably somewhere around 100 - for convenience, let's say 60 Sun Lords, 25 Elders, and 15 shamans. The tribal king is the leader of the tribal Yelm cult.

We've got a whole bunch of extended kinship groups here, led by Elders. All of the Pure Horse people consider themselves noble, but there are of course kinship groups that are more or less powerful than the others. I suspect we have a number of traditional bands or clans, most of which date back to their acceptance by Ironhoof (so say around 1250). So let's say there are 9 clans, each with two elders, and then 7 tribal elders that serve the tribal king. That gets us to 25 Elders. Some clans have more Sun Lords than others, and we have the Golden Bow as a cross-kin or tribal magical society.

Now the women worship Ernalda and Hippoi and care for the horse herds. They marry into the patrilineal and patrilocal clans, perhaps bringing horses as a dowry. They raise children, care for the horses, prepare food, manage the households, etc. But as Ernalda cultists, the women also have the ear of the great Feathered Horse Queen, before who even the Elders must prostrate themselves. The Feathered Horse Queen is the indisputable ruler of the Grazelands. She is backed by the Humakt cult, the Lightbringer cults, her sisters at the Shakers Temple, and by the gods and spirits of Dragon Pass. 

So our clans might have around 2000 people on average, with some having more, and some having fewer. However these clans - or divisions (which is probably a better word) - are stable and Yelmic, with much greater stability than Orlanthi clans (but also far more ceremonial and far less dynamic). 

Now among the vendref farmer communities we have some 14-20 clans and village chieftains, and these follow the Orlanthi norms. They also accept the Feathered Horse Queen as their ruler, but are not part of the Pure Horse People tribe.

[AlexS]

Thanks @Jeff, very useful.

'Divisions' is a useful alternative to 'clans' that avoids sounding Orlanthi without going too hardcore with anthropological terminology like 'phratry' (though I do think phratries are cool, and we know they exist among the sable riders).

Plus, it keeps open the option of a smaller-scale kinship-based group within the division that could be called a clan, for the sake of convenience, or something like a 'bloodline' if we want to avoid the 'c' word altogether.

2 hours ago, Jeff said:

So let's say there are 9 clans, each with two elders

The 'extended kinship groups led by Elders' model seems like a good fit for groupings that are bigger than the 400ish people that would be in one of David Dunham's clans.

However, I'm assuming that your use of "let's say" means that this is a thought exercise not an actual account – or is the RQG statement that "the tribe is divided into a dozen clans" (p. 114) now superseded by this number of nine clans? Either works for me (though I did just go to a lot of trouble poring over maps to identify sensibly-sized territories in the Grazelands for 12 'super-clans', and if the actual number is nine I'll need to redo this!).

It would be good to have confirmation, though, as apart from working out the worshipper and Rune Level numbers for various deities this is important for assigning territories. I think a sensible PHP social structure needs to account for shared management of ecologically variable territories (aka hills and valleys) through which multiple horse-herds can move seasonally without the people herding them ending up getting into fights. And that may not be a male Elder's role, since as you say

2 hours ago, Jeff said:

the women worship Ernalda and Hippoi and care for the horse herds

...which sounds to me like a pasture-management role – and thus one that needs to be linked to the bits of the 'division' / 'clan' authority structure that aren't about war and Sun-worship. 

If I may, I'd like to add a quick Cult-related question: is Arandayla another name for Hippoi, or are we talking about different deities?

Cheers, Alex.

[mfbrandi]

2 hours ago, AlexS said:

is Arandayla another name for Hippoi, or are we talking about different deities?

That looks like a rabbit hole if ever I saw one. I am tempted to say all the horse goddesses are one, and that they are all the daughter of the Earth. However, we all know how the different generations — maiden, wife, crone (or sub other unflattering types, and maybe four rather than three) — can be phases of one goddess (IIRC, that goes all the way back to the original run of Wyrms Footnotes), so maybe, for example, Redalda (or Charai or …) is Ernalda’s daughter only in the sense that Vinga is Orlanth’s daughter. Although some say, “Only if you squint.”

Sooo … that would have the horse goddess as the Earth in her aspect of wife of the Sun. This makes a kind of sense: the personal glyph of La-Ungariant (Feathered Horse Queen) — per HQ1, p. 143 — is the same as that of Hippoi. La-Ungariant = daughter of Orest = Orest = Ernalda, which fits our modern notions of the FHQ and the wife of the Sun, right?

(And when Elmal was the rise-in-the-morning Sun — bad Elmal! — Earth daughter Redalda was married to him, according to the Orlanthi. One suspects Orlanth is easily convinced of paternity … and non-identity.)

But this is not from the horse’s mouth, this is just me tracing some connections, and if — whisper it — the “r” thing has happened at some point, then tracing connections through works of different vintages may well fail to yield canon.

[jajagappa]

3 hours ago, AlexS said:

a quick Cult-related question: is Arandayla another name for Hippoi, or are we talking about different deities?

For those of us who have the Prosopaedia already, that's quickly answered in the entry for Hippoi (p.56): "is the title for the Horse Goddess whether she is known as Arandayla, Gamara, or Redalyda."

[jajagappa]

9 minutes ago, mfbrandi said:

La-Ungariant =

The Prosopaedia notes that in DP, she is identified with Ernalda, while in Peloria with Dendara. She is the mistress of ceremonies and source of wealth and blessings. And she is sometimes depicted with the head of a horse (but is not noted as the Horse Goddess).

[Jeff]

36 minutes ago, jajagappa said:

The Prosopaedia notes that in DP, she is identified with Ernalda, while in Peloria with Dendara. She is the mistress of ceremonies and source of wealth and blessings. And she is sometimes depicted with the head of a horse (but is not noted as the Horse Goddess).

The Prosopaedia is damn handy!

[AlexS]

22 minutes ago, Jeff said:

The Prosopaedia is damn handy!

So I hear. I'm looking forward to being able to buy it – though I'm not sure which Chaosium distributor warehouse ships to Brazil, and if any of them do whether it works out as less than the cost of the actual book...

[mfbrandi]

8 hours ago, jajagappa said:

The Prosopaedia notes that in DP, [La-Ungariant] is identified with Ernalda, while in Peloria with Dendara … but is not noted as the Horse Goddess

I always imagine an Earth goddess standing before me now saying “I am Ernalda, not Dendara”, then covering her face with her hands, revealing it again, then saying “I am Dendara, not Ernalda” — she repeats this performance until I am entranced and muttering along, then I stagger off robot-stiff and stop passers by to  assure them “both goddesses deny it.” Soon, I am committed, of course. But I do have lovely soft walls, now.

Is Charai with her gymkhana rosette glyph not just the young girl aspect of La-Ungariant? But isn’t she horsey girl Redalda, too? And so the amazing collapsing Earth goddess seems to re-appear. I suspect men just cannot tell women apart and so fetish imaginary differences … but because they cannot tell them apart, imaginary differences between the same woman/Earth goddess.

Salient links (which is not to say that they agree with me):

https://wellofdaliath.chaosium.com/notes-on-redaylda-dendara-ernalda/

https://wellofdaliath.chaosium.com/notes-on-dendara/

[AlexS]

OK, following the helpful feedback from people here, I did some more thinking about Pure Horse People social groups and the way they might use the land, and came up with a table that organises the different clans from David Dunham's list into divisions (to use Jeff's term) that make sense in terms of territory (e.g. sharing a valley) and numbers (e.g. each division having at least three clans/bloodlines so they can form a triaty).

Grazer clans, territories and regions.pdf

I thought I'd share it in case anyone (like @Squaredeal Sten?) is running a campaign that includes the Grazelands and might find it useful to assign specific Pure Horse clans to the different valleys and ranges through which a party could end up travelling.

The structure in the table uses David Dunham's original names for the clans (or bloodlines) while also organising them into 12 different divisions (or phratries) which, as proposed by @Jeff in this thread, would be headed by an Elder appointed by the Luminous Stallion King (and probably a High Priestess appointed by the Feathered Horse Queen, who would also serve as the top Ernaldan priestess for the vendref of the division's territory).

I've included David Dunham's original notes in the table in case these are helpful for giving some variety to the Grazelands (e.g. describing the differences between the horses raised in each area) and for NPC generation (e.g. using names like 'Bandroste Brave Charge' and 'Hendaro No-Saddle' for the Elders with whom the party may have to negotiate when crossing a division's territory).

I've also suggested a regional breakdown that corresponds to the areas around the three main towns/trading posts (North Post, Queen's Post and Rich Post). Thinking about the differences between regions can help a GM to describe some specific aspects of the people a party may meet as they travel across the Grazelands. For example:

• The Northern Grazelands have much more Lunar influence (so there will be more Etyries merchants in North Post) and are probably also the main base of support for the Luminous Stallion King (who may or may not be the Sun Lord of the King Stallion clan of Maregraze Vale). The vendref there are Tarshite-speakers.

• The Central Grazelands is the most diverse region, as it includes areas with a lot of vendref villages (Golden Horse Valley and Hiaa's Valley), an area where the Pure Horse people don't allow vendref to settle (High Meadow) and an area where the vendref run their own affairs without much day-to-day contact with Pure Horse people (Longhome), as well as Muse Roost (where there are no Pure Horse people and the vendref have to pay tribute instead to Sir Ethilrist and his Black Horse Troop). The vendref of this region are mostly Tarshite-speaking, with some Esrolian and Sartarite presence (so there will be more Issaries merchants in Queen's Post) and a lot of influence of the Hiaa Swordsman cult, as this is the heartland of the Feathered Horse Queen.

• The Southern Grazelands (the region on the other side of the Dragonspine from the rest of the Grazelands) has much more Esrolian influence (so there may be Argan Argar merchants as well as Issaries ones in Rich Post, though as Darkness worshippers they aren't likely to be very welcome among the Pure Horse people), and the vendref are Esolian-speaking rather than Tarshite-speaking. This region will have a lot more intense interaction with Ironhoof's people, as it borders Beast Valley as well as the North March of Esrolia.

Hope this is useful.

 

[AlexS]

In addition to the table, I thought it might be useful to share a couple of maps, showing the different division territories and exactly where they would be within the general Grazelands area.

These are the outlines of the different territories, produced by my co-author @Copper Coin (the one with the PhotoShop skills in our family!) from my rough sketches:

And this shows where the different territories sit in relation to references like Dragon Pass, Wintertop and Duck Point, to help in locating them on adventuring parties' possible routes:

To put the initial sketch together I spent a lot of time poring over the three not completely compatible maps which I think are all that we have for the Grazelands (at least until the Dragon Pass gazetteer is released): David Dunham's original one; Olivier Sanfilippo's one from The Smoking Ruin; and Colin Driver's one from the Guide/Argan Argar Atlas.

The original map (linked by the Godlearners here) is great, and includes useful things like trails as well as hills and valleys, but it uses labels rather than boundaries to locate the clans, which isn't very helpful since we know they move around (probably along a seasonal migration path within a defined area), and as discussed above it doesn't assign the clans to larger groupings at the scale at which they might come together to manage a valley or range and form a 'division' as indicated by Jeff.

The Smoking Ruin map is beautiful (like all Olivier Sanfilippo's maps) and includes some useful region names that are not in either of the other maps (like 'Stallion's Ridge' and 'Ten Ridges'), but it diverges unhelpfully from the Argan Argar Atlas in some crucial respects (including placing the label 'Solthon Valley' next to a completely different river).

The Guide / Argan Argar Atlas map is not very detailed and the images are too low-resolution to make zooming in work well (can Chaosium please give us high-res versions of the AA Atlas maps, even if only for the core RQG Homelands?). However, it is what we're supposed to use for things like JC publications and is the gold standard at least until the full Dragon Pass gazetteer map is finally released.

So, this territorial distribution represents a best guess based on the three sources, incorporating ideas from the Dunham and Sanfilippo maps but using the base of the AA Atlas.

Edited May 10, 2023 by AlexS

[David Scott]

2 hours ago, AlexS said:

The original map (linked by the Godlearners here)

Just for the record, David Dunham's site (@alakoring) still exists and hosts the original map on his Grazers page. (the Godearners link is to a web archive via via @Lordabdul) The link to the Glorantha site version of the map is here: https://wellofdaliath.chaosium.com/david-dunham-grazelands-map-2005/.

 

Edited May 10, 2023 by David Scott

[Squaredeal Sten]

20 minutes ago, David Scott said:

Just for the record, David Dunham's site (@alakoring) still exists and hosts the original map on his Grazers page. (the Godearners link is to a web archive via via.) The link to the Glorantha site version of the map is here: https://wellofdaliath.chaosium.com/david-dunham-grazelands-map-2005/

 

Many thanks for the link.  The written material is great and useful.

[Jeff]

I don't believe the Pure Horse People have such defined geographical boundaries. I am pretty sure the herds move around from year to year based on local conditions. The tribal king, aided by the Yelm Elders, allocate grazing lands to the various clans or bands, based on status, prestige, numbers, magical contests, dance competitions, whatever.