Guide to Glorantha Group Read Week 11 - God Forgot

[Joerg]

3 minutes ago, metcalph said:

I'm more inclined to think the God Forgotten don't grow food and other activities because it just seems wrong with how they are described ("are considered weirdly different by others in the world ").

They did at the Dawn. Besides, even if they harvested their olive trees using trained monkeys or squirrels or whatever, that still would be some form of agriculture.

Using slaves would be another way to keep oneself apart from agriculture while overseeing it, but a massive use of agricultural slaves is usually mentioned in the descriptions of the place.

3 minutes ago, metcalph said:

Following the example of Smith and Tinker (Guide p212 of Akem), I think Leonardo is of the Commoner Caste rather than being a Zzaburi.   

I tend to agree. However, the way you seem to picture their way of life below, this "Commoner Caste" of the God Forgotten sounds like rural Anglican Clergy natural philosophers.

3 minutes ago, metcalph said:

Rather than going out on their own to herd oxen to farm in the fields, the God Forgotten farmers are more inclined to craft golems from clay to do all the menial work.  Where would they get the clay?  By harvesting the sand and using alchemy.  The golems are of fleeting quality, have to be supervised and rarely last more than a season before falling to pieces or running amok.  Hence the God Forgotten spend their days making golems to do all the menial work required by their superiors.  

While this makes an interesting culture, it would provide such golems for military use, too, rather than a soldier caste armed with crossbows. The Mostali would file a patent complaint, too.

MOB has told us about the steambubble-driven Put-Put boats used by God Forgot sailors:

https://basicroleplaying.org/topic/6305-so-here-is-a-“where-would-i-set-this”-question/?do=findComment&comment=89759

giving interesting side-info like muttonbirds being harvested.

Personally, I am inclined to give the God Forgotten donkey breeding and donkey-powered mills and similar machinery as the default source of muscle power. Mules are pretty common among the Theyalans, so there had better be places where donkeys are common.

 

3 minutes ago, metcalph said:

Apart from the Magic Road ending at the Machine Ruins?  (Guide p254)

The God Forgot branch of Belintar's Rainbow Bridge? It ends on the big island (Kostern Island)  well before the Machine Ruins on Zistor Island.

3 minutes ago, metcalph said:

I fear you have become too focused on a dictionary definition of Purification and use that to rigidly dismiss other possibilities.  The Purification Rune was to reverse the process of Devolution to be closer to God (Middle Sea Empire p46).  It does not entail by that definition the removal impure bits through separation (that would be the Death Rune).  

Alchemical (and derived chemical) methods ought to be a valid description of materialist magic.

Separation can be a process of growth (from the right perspective) and doesn't  necessarily invoke the Death Rune. You can seed a crystal in a solution or melt and grow it. This growth separates the good bits from the environment by adding them to the individual. Sounds like Fertility magic to me. Separation through Accumulation.

3 minutes ago, metcalph said:

One can become closer to God through an general elevation of the spirit from a lower state to a higher one (which is why I mentioned the water corkscrew before).

 

 

I wonder what terminology the Malkioni would use instead of spirit or soul. Intellect? Understanding? Awareness?

 

3 minutes ago, metcalph said:

It is supported through the imagery of Belintar in the Prince of Sartar Webzine.  

Do you mean the "purple imp" halo with the single eye head wearing the Crown of Mastery, topped with three elements (Fire, Darkness, Water, Moon and Earth to the sides, and Storm in the iris? The human body bears the runes of Mastery, Luck and Death, as can be expected from a winner of the Tournament.

There is no explicit statement anywhere that the Sixths of the Holy Country correspond to the elements only. It is an obvious deduction for five of the sixths, and at first glance at the written evidence a non-sequitur for God Forgot.

3 minutes ago, metcalph said:

Even if the Zzaburi of God Forgot were to stubbornly insist that it is not an element, pretty much everybody else in the Holy Country who follows Belintar would treat it as an element.  

Treat Moon as an element... what does that mean? The Theyalan calendar has the elements, twice - as the five full eight week seasons, and as five of the seven days of the week. That is how the majority of people in Kethaela interact with the magic of the elements, unless they are specialist magicians.

In Kethaela, moon (or rather the Full Red Moon) is associated with Wildday, by chance one of the two non-elemental-named days of the week, so there is room for an elemental day of the week to dedicate to moon stuff, but not for an elemental season. Hence, moon is at best half an element in Theyalan understanding.

The God Forgotten aren't necessarily Theyalans - they may be a lost Malkioni colony instead. I don't know whether they were part of the Kingdom of Night or the Silver Age communication between the Survival Sites establishing the Shadow Tribute.

 

3 minutes ago, metcalph said:

Unless they were already acquainted with the Moon Rune and Belintar burrowed from their lore

In late Third Age Glorantha, we know the Moon Rune as a core rune. I wonder what the situation was prior to 1247. God Learner interactions with the Moon Rune were limited to the Blue Moon mostly - the Zaranistangi requiring sacrifices to the Blue Moon Goddess in Slontos, the Blue Moon as a fertility-supporting cult on Melib, and distorted knowledge about the Artmali empire from Umathela and Fonrit. Still, they knew it. They might have regarded it as a sub-rune of Fire, just like Light or Heat, or as an intermediary between Fire/Light and Darkness.

 

The post-Machine Wars God Forgotten culture was formed over 300 years before the ascension of the Red Goddess.

The Middle Sea Empire has an interesting observation about the Ingareens (p.47):

Quote

The local Ingareens, who had accepted the Abiding Book amids their Zzaburite neighbors, invited a band of Jrusteli missionaries to their lands on Kostern Island.

The Zzaburite neighbors presumably are those God Forgotten who did not convert to the Abiding Book.

The same source tells us how Kostern Island was special, magically:

Quote

Kostern and its environs were a region where the "everything" of the Everything World [i.e. "The World is made of Everything."] was unevenly mixed so that it was significantly sorcerous in origin

(This could be seen as irrelevant remnant of HQ1's strict separation of the three otherworlds dogma.) It continues:

Quote

It also sat upon what the Connectivists said was a larger Energy Grid that overlay the surface of Glorantha.

In the "three separate otherworlds" lingo, the materialist's view of the moon displays just such an energy grid to the magical senses.

Belintar made use of these grid lines, too, when he positioned Loon Island and the City of Wonders in the Mirrorsea Bay. Dragons appear to feed on these grid lines, too, like the site of the New Temple of the Reaching Moon in southeastern Sartar. Dragonewts built their roads along such grid lines.

Apart from the similarity of the energy grid lines, there isn't anything here only remotely suggesting a Moon connection to the activities in Locsil. The magical swords work(ed) only in the imbalanced world of Kostern Island:

Quote

One of the first accomplishments was the manufacture of mass produced magical items, starting with simple swords. They tended to work only in Kostern, so the empire did not benefit as hoped.

This does sound similar to "this magic only works at the Full Moon effect of the Glowline". But again, that is a very far-fetched similarity to anything Lunar.

 

Moon is also associated with mysteries. Applied to the artificers of God Forgot, I get a vague notion of freemasons' rites for a mystical nostrum.

 

5 hours ago, metcalph said:

In which case they would have been described as Brithini rulers lording it over a native population, rather than a population following the Brithini forms of life and government.

They are described as normal folk ruled by ageless rulers. Both their Talar and their "governor" are at least well over 300 years old. This doesn't seem to be true for the average Joe from God Forgot, though.

 

5 hours ago, metcalph said:

The Brithini do not have endogamous castes.   According to Greg, when a woman has children, the first son is a farmer, the second a fighter, the third a Talar and the fourth a Zzaburi.  Then the process starts over again.  

Yet their population appears to consist of more than 85% farmers. Most unaging Brithini females might not breed more than once or twice, so the numbers might be sustainable for them.

This model cannot be sustainable for mortals, though. You end up with a massive overpopulation of non-productive folk unless you suppress female reproduction or you have a means of ensuring female offspring so you get mainly first- and to a much lesser rate second-born sons. You'll still have to feed more administrators than magicians.

So, how do the God Forgot women live? Do they fill farmer roles by default? That way, you would get better than 5/8 of the population in productive roles, which might be just sustainable.

[David Scott]

4 hours ago, metcalph said:

The difference in colour of their moon magics

I don't believe that moon magics need to be coloured, in hand with i don't believe that any elemental rune needs a colour. I'd be interested in a western devolved mythology of how the colours came about. Ultimately the Moon rune has no colour or phases. these have been introduced or devolved from the pure element. I can see that the Blue Moon is some kind of child of the Moon & Water runes, the Red Moon, Water and Fire, etc. but I don't see world wide acceptance of this. The Praxian Moon rune has no colour, the Hungry Plateau Sable's Moon rune is now tinged with red. For a while now I've been looking at what Moon powers sans blue and red actually are. 

[scott-martin]

19 minutes ago, Joerg said:

This model cannot be sustainable for mortals, though. You end up with a massive overpopulation of non-productive folk unless you suppress female reproduction or you have a means of ensuring female offspring so you get mainly first- and to a much lesser rate second-born sons. You'll still have to feed more administrators than magicians.

This one is relatively simple: even one-child households are rare and excruciatingly few of their women will give birth more than 3-4 times within Time. [talk of "immortals" cut as irrelevant here] The earth witches undoubtedly have (or had) secret knowledge that would play into how and when they transition to "crone" status, etc.

Edited September 11, 2017 by scott-martin

[davecake]

5 hours ago, metcalph said:

  I'm not looking for unconditional acceptance of my theory, I'm looking for interesting interpretations so I can steal bits from them and use them to shore up my theory.

and frankly, I find your alternative theory is way too focussed on discarding interesting ideas that don't fit with your theory. The Purification rune as Moon makes the Zistorites less interesting, makes the Machine ruins less interesting, makes God Forgot less interesting, to me. Zistorites were unique and Interesting, and turning them into just another bunch of Lunar sorcerers is not. The same with Purification rune as Chaos too. Let Zistor be Zistor. 

i'm happy to say that maybe the Wand of Seven Phases is a result of experimentation with the Purification rune. Perhaps it was made of blue moon material, and turned red after Purification. 

But the interesting questions here are that we essentially know virtually nothing about God Forgot prior to the Second Age. Not that much after Steelfall either to be honest. So i'd rather not simply tie everything we know about God Forgot to Zistorites, but try to illuminate the centuries before and after that period. 

If we assume that the God forgot area is part of the lands that are recovered from the oceans in the Trembling Shore heroquest (note Vingkot is said to have fought the Worcha Rage at Whitewall, according to the map in Heortling History, implying that Whitewall was basically on the shore at that time), then the details of that give us some of the Godtime history of God Forgot. The description of that heroquest in Arcane Lore calls the movement power of the water Entika, it is the power that gives Worcha its ability to never be still, so it is essentially a name for the tidal power - and it is all concentrated in this region in Worcha, and then lost to the sea powers afterwards, diverted.

I think we can assume the Ingareens arrived as passengers on a waertagi dragonship. Perhaps they are stranded after the Waertagi are defeated by the Vingkotlings at Worchas rage, perhaps they arrive later. They are not Waertagi themselves (though they probably continue to deal with the Waertagi through the First age). They could be from New Malkonwal, but most of what we know about them implies they follow the Brithini way pretty closely, so maybe not. 

I like the idea that they learn more about the Blue Moon powers from the Zaranistangi in the First Age, if only because it explains where the Zaranistangi are between Sechaul and suddenly turning up in Slontos in the Second Age. 

5 hours ago, metcalph said:

1)  What do the God Forgottens think about the Moon Rune?  What do they use it for?

Tides and Secrets and hiding from their enemies (they made it through the Darkness by hiding), and subtle magic attacks, mostly. 

I know Joerg says tides don't matter in God Forgot, but I look at the map and think they could matter a lot. i'm sure there are lot of that marshland that is only accessible at low tide. And the accounts of the Machine Wars mention the tides and tidal flats very frequently. I think its very odd to say tidal powers are absent from there when the tides are mentioned so much. 

5 hours ago, metcalph said:

 What do they think of that Big Red Object in the Sky?  

it interesting but far away. And used by scary enemies..But they know some secrets. 

Maybe they, like the dwarves, regard it as proof of the success of some magical project. 

5 hours ago, metcalph said:

2)  How do the God Forgottens reconcile their Moon Rune faith with their Brithini lifestyle?

i don't think they have a Blue Moon faith, i think they approach Blue Moon powers through sorcerous means. 

5 hours ago, metcalph said:

Do only the Zzaburi practice it or do they teach it to anybody who wants to know?

i think if they taught it to just anybody, we would have known about it before now. And I see no reason why they would depart from the traditional extreme secrecy associated with Blue Moon. 

5 hours ago, metcalph said:

3)  How do the God Forgotten reconcile their worship of Belintar with their Brithini lifestyle?  Do they teach their wisdom to others?

I think they obey Belintar rather than worship. But it does make you wonder. There are a bunch of possible theories. Did Belintar prove he was a Talar? Did he really break the bank, at Casino Town and their Brithini lifestyle demands they honour the debt for some reason? Is the Talar compromised somehow? Was Belintar blue because he was an ancient Zzaburi? Who knows. What we do know is that the Talar of God Forgot has always supported Belintar, and his wizards predicted his appearance (which is quite something, as Belintar appears to have come as a complete surprise to everyone else). 

5 hours ago, metcalph said:

4)  What were the antecedents of their Moon Rune worship in the days of the Zistorites and before.

Where did I say worship? i do not think the Ingareens are secret theists. They are sorcerers. 

5 hours ago, metcalph said:

As for your suggestion that God Forgot is associated with the Moon because of the tides, one of Inolzi the Learned's three devices was the water corkscrew - a mechanical device for raising water from a lower place to a higher one.  It could also be used as a explanation for the origin of the tides (with some difficulty but then early astronomers had epicyles) and a metaphor for the elevation of the soul.

Thats certainly an interesting connection. I like it! A limited understanding of the tidal powers, but thats sorcerers for ya. 

 

 

 

[Joerg]

2 hours ago, davecake said:

and frankly, I find your alternative theory is way too focussed on discarding interesting ideas that don't fit with your theory. The Purification rune as Moon makes the Zistorites less interesting, makes the Machine ruins less interesting, makes God Forgot less interesting, to me. Zistorites were unique and Interesting, and turning them into just another bunch of Lunar sorcerers is not. The same with Purification rune as Chaos too. Let Zistor be Zistor. 

I don't care much for the Purification Rune, and I don't think that that was the only feature of Zistor. If Zistor really achieved godhead, he wouldn't have been that limited.

 

2 hours ago, davecake said:

But the interesting questions here are that we essentially know virtually nothing about God Forgot prior to the Second Age. Not that much after Steelfall either to be honest. So i'd rather not simply tie everything we know about God Forgot to Zistorites, but try to illuminate the centuries before and after that period. 

We have the bare bones of 200 survivors at Jon Barat aka Talar Hold at the Dawn, who multiplied into almost the current number of inhabitants of God Forgot by the time they were contacted by the Zistorites (790). The subsequent Machine Wars reduced the population significantly, but they recovered.

Anyway, they cannot have been reluctant in their procreation to square their number in 30 generations (calculated at 25 years).

2 hours ago, davecake said:

If we assume that the God forgot area is part of the lands that are recovered from the oceans in the Trembling Shore heroquest (note Vingkot is said to have fought the Worcha Rage at Whitewall, according to the map in Heortling History, implying that Whitewall was basically on the shore at that time), then the details of that give us some of the Godtime history of God Forgot. The description of that heroquest in Arcane Lore calls the movement power of the water Entika, it is the power that gives Worcha its ability to never be still, so it is essentially a name for the tidal power - and it is all concentrated in this region in Worcha, and then lost to the sea powers afterwards, diverted.

That's a different definition of "tidal" - the moon-independent Sog, the tidal wave. That's the active power of the sea. (Or it is the Tsunami. Apparently even the ancient Greeks knew the connection between earthquakes and floodwaves, since Poseidon is both lord over the seas and over earthquakes.)

I think that the active force of the seas is the same as the active force of the Godtime rivers - the force still immanent in the Syphon in order to fulfill his obligation to sear away the Chaos of the Footprint, or the force immanent in the Doom Currents.

Annilla's force affects the passive waters of the world. It probably affects the active waters, too, but those have much more force than to be limited to follow her dictate.

Do we know how exactly Orlanth won the service of Mastakos?

 

2 hours ago, davecake said:

I think we can assume the Ingareens arrived as passengers on a waertagi dragonship. Perhaps they are stranded after the Waertagi are defeated by the Vingkotlings at Worchas rage, perhaps they arrive later. They are not Waertagi themselves (though they probably continue to deal with the Waertagi through the First age). They could be from New Malkonwal, but most of what we know about them implies they follow the Brithini way pretty closely, so maybe not. 

Looking at the six original tribes of Danmalastan, there was one tribe of builders and makers - the Kadeniti. If the Ingareens all share this proficiency at artificing, having the original Ingareens as a shipload of Kadeniti refugees who somehow were blocked from entering Brithos and ended up in the Leftarm Isles.

For their survival, they - or at least their farmer caste - had to do lots of non-traditional activities in order to survive. Food-gathering isn't quite an acceptable Malkioni process.

 

2 hours ago, davecake said:

I like the idea that they learn more about the Blue Moon powers from the Zaranistangi in the First Age, if only because it explains where the Zaranistangi are between Sechaul and suddenly turning up in Slontos in the Second Age. 

Tides and Secrets and hiding from their enemies (they made it through the Darkness by hiding), and subtle magic attacks, mostly. 

 

2 hours ago, davecake said:

I know Joerg says tides don't matter in God Forgot, but I look at the map and think they could matter a lot.

Whoah. I didn't say that the tides don't matter in God Forgot. I said that the tides affect all of the Sixths, or at least their coastal regions. 

I liked @MOB's mention of muttonbirds and muttonbird oil as  - I had to look up the notion. Harvesting fledgeling seabirds for food or energy hasn't been done anywhere in Europe that I know of. While a seasonal activity similar to the slaughtering of white-furred seal babies, it probably is followed by a great communal effort to preserve the harvest by numerous means, including boiling the less desirable catch for tallowy fuel.

There was the question of the need of fertilizer or nutrients in Glorantha. Given the special nature of God Forgot, I think that that land has a bit less of the blessings that the other Sixths, and so all the non-edible leftovers of those chicks will provide nutrients for whichever crops are grown by the Ingareens (probably through the agency of their non-magical but highly philosophical inventions).

2 hours ago, davecake said:

i'm sure there are lot of that marshland that is only accessible at low tide. And the accounts of the Machine Wars mention the tides and tidal flats very frequently. I think its very odd to say tidal powers are absent from there when the tides are mentioned so much. 

The tidal powers are there, of course. They are there for the entire coastline of Kethaela, and all of the Sixths have a part of that coast line.

I said that the Pelaskites have a stronger dependence on the tides than the God Forgotten, which is why I don't think that the Lunar powers are localized in God Forgot, but if anywhere in the City of Wonders, affecting the whole of the Holy Country.

BTW, are the tidal powers about the water rising or sinking, or about the land rising out of the sea and diving in again? If the latter applies (not necessarily to the exclusion of the seas altering their height), Tolat and his sword are a factor in the tidal magics, too.

 

2 hours ago, davecake said:

i don't think they have a Blue Moon faith, i think they approach Blue Moon powers through sorcerous means. 

As they approach all the elements and powers, too.

 

 

2 hours ago, davecake said:

I think they obey Belintar rather than worship. But it does make you wonder. There are a bunch of possible theories. Did Belintar prove he was a Talar? Did he really break the bank, at Casino Town and their Brithini lifestyle demands they honour the debt for some reason?

As far as I know, Belintar demonstrating his mastery over Luck at Casino Town still is the story how he won the support of God Forgot. The only difference to the earlier ideas is that his breaking the bank never was just about money. People bet magics there much like they do in heroquest challenges, and Belintar is in for a cut of the procedings.

 

2 hours ago, davecake said:

Is the Talar compromised somehow? Was Belintar blue because he was an ancient Zzaburi? Who knows. What we do know is that the Talar of God Forgot has always supported Belintar, and his wizards predicted his appearance (which is quite something, as Belintar appears to have come as a complete surprise to everyone else).

"A man who is more than just a man will come and break the bank. This man will join the lands of Kethaela, and his child will break the curse." The fact that Belintar would swim in from the cursed (closed) seas needn't be mentioned.

 

2 hours ago, davecake said:

Where did I say worship? i do not think the Ingareens are secret theists. They are sorcerers. 

The Ingareens worshiping any deity feels contrary to their atheist origin story. It is fairly surprising that the inhabitants of Kostern did convert to Makanism or Malkioneranism. I wonder whether any of these converts survived the Machine Wars to produce offspring.

 

2 hours ago, davecake said:

Thats certainly an interesting connection. I like it! A limited understanding of the tidal powers, but thats sorcerers for ya. 

Let's assume for a moment that the Ingareens had an insight on the Zistorite symbols that the originators on Jrustela or in Slontos lacked, and that that was the reason why they did accept their Malkionieran teachings.

If the waterscrew is indeed their application of "tidal power" according to Annilla, then could it be the case that the scissors are a link to the land-raising tidal power of Tolat's Red Sword?

[metcalph]

18 hours ago, Joerg said:

Besides, even if they harvested their olive trees using trained monkeys or squirrels or whatever, that still would be some form of agriculture.

What olive trees?

18 hours ago, Joerg said:

However, the way you seem to picture their way of life below, this "Commoner Caste" of the God Forgotten sounds like rural Anglican Clergy natural philosophers.

More like magical artisans.

18 hours ago, Joerg said:

While this makes an interesting culture, it would provide such golems for military use, too, rather than a soldier caste armed with crossbows. 

I think the golems are too slow to be used militarily and the primarily duty of the Solider's caste is to put the rogue golems down.

18 hours ago, Joerg said:

The God Forgot branch of Belintar's Rainbow Bridge? It ends on the big island (Kostern Island)  well before the Machine Ruins on Zistor Island.

It travels to a spot within spitting distance of the Machine Ruins and not at more likely places such as Talar's Hold or Casino Town?  Mighty suspicious if you ask me.

 

18 hours ago, Joerg said:

I wonder what terminology the Malkioni would use instead of spirit or soul. Intellect? Understanding? Awareness?

Soul and spirit work fine,  the days of three separate terminologies are over.

18 hours ago, Joerg said:

There is no explicit statement anywhere that the Sixths of the Holy Country correspond to the elements only. It is an obvious deduction for five of the sixths, and at first glance at the written evidence a non-sequitur for God Forgot.

There is this:

Quote

Belintar left Nochet and traveled south until he got to a
rocky cliff that overlooked the Mirrorsea. He said, "here I
shall ascend to my city." A great six-sided column of stone
grew underneath him and lifted him up. The column was
topped with a six-headed capital, symbolizing the Sixths of
Kethaela, the Six Elements, Six Forms and the Six Beasts.

Esrolia: the Land of Ten Thousand Goddesses p53

 

18 hours ago, Joerg said:

They are described as normal folk ruled by ageless rulers. Both their Talar and their "governor" are at least well over 300 years old. This doesn't seem to be true for the average Joe from God Forgot, though.

Whatever the God Forgotten are, they are not described as normal folk.  They are described as living to the Brithini laws with immortals as rulers.  Now it may be that the commoners are not immortal (I don't have an opinion on this) but some form of extended lifespan seems warranted.

[Joerg]

10 minutes ago, metcalph said:

What olive trees?

I could ask "What golems?" since none are mentioned in the Guide. I mentioned olive trees as a possible form of agriculture earlier.

Why not? The climate is just good enough, it's not the best agricultural place in Kethaela, and this is a form of agriculture that doesn't require that intensive field work most of the year, and not too sophisticated either.

10 minutes ago, metcalph said:

More like magical artisans.

I think the golems are too slow to be used militarily and the primarily duty of the Solider's caste is to put the rogue golems down.

Your Lorion spell is the prerequisite for cre

10 minutes ago, metcalph said:

It travels to a spot within spitting distance of the Machine Ruins and not at more likely places such as Talar's Hold or Casino Town?  Mighty suspicious if you ask me.

Belintar uses the energy grid mentioned in The Middle Sea Empire for his bridges. The God Forgot radiate from the City of Wonders strikes land only on Kostern. It should follow the hex grid.

The "Heroquest road" from Cliffhome to Stormwalk Mountain that was used by the Redbird expedition that yielded Temertain, elongated to the south, should cross that grid line roughly at Locsil. The Praxian oases are located on similar lines, aka Ronance's Roads.

 

10 minutes ago, metcalph said:

Soul and spirit work fine,  the days of three separate terminologies are over.

 

Absence of Elemental identification.

10 minutes ago, metcalph said:

There is this:

Esrolia, land of 10,000 Goddesses. Repeated in the Pedestal box on p.257, so I stand corrected. I would like to see the God Forgot symbol, though - I would expect the split-head man rune rather than the unaccompanied Moon Rune.

 

10 minutes ago, metcalph said:

Whatever the God Forgotten are, they are not described as normal folk.  They are described as living to the Brithini laws with immortals as rulers.  Now it may be that the commoners are not immortal (I don't have an opinion on this) but some form of extended lifespan seems warranted.

Why? The Seshnegi and Akemites weren't blessed this way at the Dawn, either, even though they adhered to the Brithini mores before Hrestol's revelation.  Froalar and Hoalar didn't argue about Brithini lifestyle, but about who should rule them.

Marriages were part of the Seshnegi custom, though.

 

[Steve]

1 hour ago, Joerg said:

Belintar uses the energy grid mentioned in The Middle Sea Empire for his bridges. The God Forgot radiate from the City of Wonders strikes land only on Kostern. It should follow the hex grid.

Do you have a page reference for this (for The Middle Sea Empire), please? I'd just like to read this and it's annoying that the search doesn't work in the PDF (as previously posted about).

[David Scott]

3 hours ago, Steve said:

 I'd just like to read this and it's annoying that the search doesn't work in the PDF

 

I'll talk to rick about it

Edited September 12, 2017 by David Scott

[Steve]

4 hours ago, Steve said:

Do you have a page reference for this (for The Middle Sea Empire), please? I'd just like to read this and it's annoying that the search doesn't work in the PDF (as previously posted about).

 

1 hour ago, David Scott said:

 

I'll talk to rick about it

Sorry David, my bad. The Middle Sea Empire isn't one of the Stafford Library books where the search doesn't work. I'm very confused now because I just checked all my SL books and they all seem to be searchable. I can't remember if I re-downloaded them recently from Chaosium.com and so whether Rick perhaps already fixed the search (I can't remember which ones were broken). Or whether it wasn't the SL books at all. Or whether I dreamt the whole thing ...

 

Edited September 12, 2017 by Steve

[7Tigers]

For info, if you own a Adobe pdf creation module (from a commercial Adobe product) installed as a printer, there is a work around for the not searchable The Middle Sea Empire version: just open it and print it as a Adobe pdf.
=> Text is now searchable in created pdf.
Note: the non searchable The Middle Sea Empire version was the one bought on Glorantha.com

Edited September 12, 2017 by 7Tigers

[Charles]

On 11/09/2017 at 3:51 AM, metcalph said:

The Charles comment refers to the Hepherones' section in Arcane Lore.  It will also be in the Glorantha Sourcebook but Hepherones is now a Carmanian mystic of Ganbarri circa 1200.

This referred to MoLaD. At the time, I did not remember Arcane Lore as an alternative/better source.

[davecake]

Does anyone have the chaosium Thieves World, and have any ideas how one might use it in modern Glorantha? Or Carse, for that matter.

[jajagappa]

8 hours ago, davecake said:

Does anyone have the chaosium Thieves World, and have any ideas how one might use it in modern Glorantha? Or Carse, for that matter.

I have both.

Carse became Karse.  I think @Joerg used it extensively in his old campaigns?

Thieves World is Refuge, the odd city tucked below the Heortland plateau next to the tidal marshes of God Forgot.

I haven't looked at either in years to see how you would fit them in currently.  (In fact, only just relocated my Carse book about a month ago, tucked in with some old Tunnels and Trolls books.)

[soltakss]

On 9/21/2017 at 4:17 PM, davecake said:

Does anyone have the chaosium Thieves World, and have any ideas how one might use it in modern Glorantha? Or Carse, for that matter.

It could work OK. The cults would be local ones, of course, without any references to Gloranthan cults, but that is OK for a big city. You could fit it into a Gloranthan campaign fairly easily, I think.

[Joerg]

13 hours ago, davecake said:

Does anyone have the chaosium Thieves World, and have any ideas how one might use it in modern Glorantha? Or Carse, for that matter.

As @jajagappasaid, Carse for Karse and Thieves World for Refuge were placed in their respective places in Glorantha when playtested in Chaosium's house campaign decades ago, and left their imprint.

With the reduction of medieval elements, the layout of Karse is a little harder to retrofit than Refuge. Refuge always had this timeless oasis city charm similar to Pavis, and the illustrations in the French magazine article with their alterations to the layout of Refuge look useable to me.

Retrofitting the major characters of the Thieves World anthology into Gloranthan context might take more work. (In that regard Karse is somewhat easier.) With the last authority over the city in Brithini (sorcerers') hands, a laissez faire attitude similar to Sog City may be postulated for the rest of the city. The world-shattering magical contests of the middle of the original anthology can be ignored for the events of the Hero Wars to come, but plenty of the minor and less involved characters still ought to work and give you colorful NPCs you wouldn't have crafted yourself.

Making an ancient city out of the 14th century layout of Caernarfon (actually its 16th century layout, overspilling the original fortified town) will take some adjustment to building styles. Multi-storied houses would imitate the insulae of Nochet, but that might require a different layout for the houses.

Luckily, Karse is one of the newer cities in the eastern Holy Country. (Esrolian cities mostly date from after 1050, rebuilt after Veskarthan's quake.)

I still have most of the brainstorming I did with Laurent Castellucci aka Light Castle on a wiki about Karse and its history, and I also have an old project lying around creating Karse in Sketchup on the basis of a geocoded map of the city plan (from the German edition of the Chaosium product). In both cases, I would probably restart from scratch - having learned a bit more about creating terrain before populating it with houses, and getting up to date with the most recent descriptions.

Karse was the sample port detailed in Men of the Sea. I have no idea whether Martin Hawley still pursues his project, but I know that he had written quite a bit more about sailing the Gloranthan oceans than was published by Issaries.

 

I think that new Karse was built during the Closing, as a joint venture of Pelaskite emigrees from Old Karse and enterprising Esvulari wishing to establish themselves in the replacement port city.

Old Karse had a protector powerful enough to allow the city's survival during the Greater Darkness with just a modicum of memory blackout before joining the Kingdom of Night. While the Pelaskites weren't up to building the new stone fortifications for the city (that was the job of the Jrusteli architecture-trained Esvulari) they could persuade the protector to move with them to the new city. There was a magical marriage between the Esvulari leader (who would be referred to as baron) and a Pelaskite priestess, setting a pattern for future rulers (unless they came as conquerors). The Pelaskites provided a shipwright tradition and productive fishing to support the city, while the Esvulari provided skilled crafters on other fields like masonry or metal-working. Traders would move their business to the new, way more accessible port, providing the first Heortling element of the new city.

It isn't quite clear whether the new port was already present at the Dragonkill. I think it was, and that refugees before the Golden Horde flocked south, establishing a Heortling presence.

 

The report of Hrestol Arganitis in King of Sartar describes Old Karse IMO, but he describes the settlement on the left (eastern) bank of the River. He talks about the EWF rather than about Orlanthland, so I disagree with the date 700 and would put it forward half a century, after Obduran takes his seat on the council of Orlanthland and the wyrmfriends get the upper hand in Orlanthland. If New Karse is this old, the Esvulari element would be more recent than its foundation.