Creating Pentan NPCs

[Joerg]

2 hours ago, Techpriest said:

Historically, steppe peoples like the Scythians were more than capable of doing their own forging and metal working - Scythian gold work was very high quality.

The same is true for the Mongols whose smiths outfitted their heavy cavalry.

The Starlight Wanderers came up with chariots (or recovered their Godtime knowledge of such) during the Gray Age, and that mobility plus the military advantage allowed them to reach a vast area throughout Peloria, establishing themselves as the new top stratum of Pelorian society. It was during their reign that the sun returned, but then the trolls and their barbarian allies intruded into their petty rivalries, and the Battle of Argentium Thri'ile weakened them enough that their subject people throughout Peloria rose in rebellion and killed all who could not escape. A death march through hostile country into the at best dimly remembered, mostly unknown grasslands in the east with badly reduced herds and even more reduced population started a time of survival away from those ingrates they had brought out of their Godswar trauma. The loss in kin and herds was about as bad as the Dragonkill War. Worse, the bearers of their cultural identity and their technology had been thinned out badly, leaving them once more with at best fragmentary tradition for specialized crafts.

3 hours ago, Techpriest said:

Just because they're steppe nomads doesn't mean they won't stay in an area for a while and mine easy to access resources, set up temporary forges, and so on. The amount of metal needed if they don't go heavy on the metal armor isn't actually that much. What do you need to work metal? A fire, tools, an anvil. A rock can be a decent enough anvil and the rest of the tools are movable by wagon easily enough. Remember, there's a whole god of the Solar pantheon dedicated to wagons, Lokarnos. He's also a trader god. 

Fire is about as limiting a factor out there in the grasslands as is raw metal. Forested areas are few and far between, and in order to cast bronze you need charcoal as fuel, and good ceramics for crucibles. There is a reason why smiths and metalworkers come across as alchemists or wizards in many myths - they do stuff that is contrary to everybody else's daily work, and culture.

Metalwork would need to go where there is fuel, as it eats up forests rather indiscriminately. The upper Arcos Valley does offer some forestation, as do parts of the Elder Wilds, but both come with those aldryami pests who take a dim view at people cutting down their kin to char it. Charcoal manufacture can expect disruptions.

On the plus side, native metal (i.e. pieces of metallic material rather than ores that need smelting) would be strewn across significant portions of the grasslands, as the people and deities of Genert's Garden would have been slaughtered rather indiscriminately in the detour the Chaos Horde had been forced to make to the Spike after the route through Dragon Pass had been denied to them in the Unity Battle. This ultimately led to Earthfall and Prax being invaded from the east rather than through Dragon Pass, but we are looking at Pent.

Famous conflicts include the rise and fall of the Ratite Empire, the advance of Valind's host with the Glacier, and the slaughter of Earth Walkers and lGenert's Garden folk also by Wakboth and his followers, plus the survival wars led by star captains who may have died there too. Plenty of gold, silver, copper and bronze godbone may have been deposited, and possibly transported along by the glacier and hidden beneath dirt, bones ground to nuggets or dust

How deep are the horse nomads going to dig, however, and how long can they stay in one place as their herds denude the grassland around the stands of trees where they char the firewood? How do they manage the flooding of their pit mines, both by rain and by ground water?

Lokarnos the Wagoner would have a very different role among the horse nomads. He is the god of the mobile camp rather than the trader. What goods do the horse nomads have to trade? Salts, metal, possibly resin, glue, flint. Luxuries for sacrifices and for the ostentation of priests and nobles, which means no export of gold or silver. Their hardy horses don't require grain fodder.

3 hours ago, Techpriest said:

As another note, the kopis was adopted by the Lunars partly because the Pentans were already using them - the Pentans have their own style of the weapon, which to me says that the Pentans are more than capable metal workers on their own.

The horse warlords had been in control of urban (and rural) civilization for several centuries both before and after the Dawn, giving them access and leisure to direct skilled crafters from the sedentary subject population to create such metal items for them. Then they were chased into the empty grasslands, with enough heirlooms carried by the surviving warriors to define their weaponry for generations to come.

Their successors from the sedentary Pelorian population would have picked up the weaponry of those of their former lords who they managed to genocide, and put those to use among themselves.

According to Armies and Enemies of Dragon Pass (both Greg's limited circulation original and Martin Helsdon's Jonstown Compendium bestseller based and expanded on that) the sedentary Pelorians retained some cavalry after beating the horse warlords, and probably also retaining the cavalry equipment introduced by the Hyalorings and adopted by the chariot folk as they adopted riding horses rather than chariots into battle.

In our world's Bronze Age, the people of the Pontic Steppe and the Ural introduced an improved breed of horses better suited to riding, a breed that quickly replaced the less domesticated breeds throughout Asia and Europe within a few centuries. In Glorantha, this was more a question of better rites and magic to make the steeds more accepting of the riders, and then to overcome their flight reactions in the chaos of battle.

[Ali the Helering]

With the discovery of Scythian blast furnaces in Central Asia it is now a matter of debate as to whether iron working spread from the steppes to China, rather than the traditionally held position of it being vice versa.

[g33k]

4 hours ago, Joerg said:

... Fire is about as limiting a factor out there in the grasslands as is raw metal. Forested areas are few and far between, and in order to cast bronze you need charcoal as fuel, and good ceramics for crucibles. There is a reason why smiths and metalworkers come across as alchemists or wizards in many myths - they do stuff that is contrary to everybody else's daily work, and culture ...

So, this brings up the "magitech" question, for me.
Are the Pentan's without fire-magic (or without strong-enough fire magic)?

What about sub'ing Elementals in for the wood?

[jajagappa]

2 hours ago, g33k said:

Are the Pentan's without fire-magic (or without strong-enough fire magic)?

Without? One word: Yelm! 

[David Scott]

I don't think this has been posted to this thread, it's effectively the Pentan Cult Distribution missing from Mythology (although not much on the Storm tribes).

https://wellofdaliath.chaosium.com/solar-pentans/

Here's the Cult Distribution as percentages

As it says, see the Guide (GtG 363-372)

Edited November 15, 2024 by David Scott

[Alex]

1 hour ago, David Scott said:

(although not much on the Storm tribes).

Perhaps this is the status quo ante given that's reputedly a relatively recent phenom.

[David Scott]

1 hour ago, Alex said:

Perhaps this is the status quo ante given that's reputedly a relatively recent phenom.

Not so much of the cult demographics. All of the current ten tribes (Solar and Storm) have been formed since 1506, so recent is the last 120 years (per GtG 363).

[Alex]

8 minutes ago, David Scott said:

Not so much of the cult demographics. All of the current ten tribes (Solar and Storm) have been formed since 1506, so recent is the last 120 years (per GtG 363).

Or it's only for the Solar ones?  Iunno, just guessing here.