That Chaosium seminar from Chimériades

[Joerg]

Nice panorama map, although now I see this, I want a 3D-model.

I do have to ask who is the god of masonry in the Heortling pantheon. Previously we had Orstan as carpenter responsible for house raising, but a structure like that requires quite a bit of different masornry and/or brick-making skill.

I think it is appropriate for the strong Esrolian influence in the Colymar history, but I hesitate to make the foothills of the Storm Mountains or most of the rest of the Quivini settlements such Pyrenean Visigoth era settlements. I'd be fine with something closer to the Nuragic civilization, which works fine when such sandstone is freely available, but normally I would expect timber to be the main building material for housing, at least for the frames, and much less say cypriotic tourist trap mountain village in appearance away from the river bottoms of Esrolia.

I would hate to have to drive the dairy cows kept close to the settlement in and out regularly, and also hate to use the rampart after such a drive. It lookys very much as if those people in Clearwine aren't cattle farmers but specialist vintners and grain farmers, with cattle and swine mainly kept away from the settlement, apart from a small number for direct use in the settlement.

[Paid a bod yn dwp]

30 minutes ago, Joerg said:

I think it is appropriate for the strong Esrolian influence in the Colymar history, but I hesitate to make the foothills of the Storm Mountains or most of the rest of the Quivini settlements such Pyrenean Visigoth era settlements. I'd be fine with something closer to the Nuragic civilization, which works fine when such sandstone is freely available, but normally I would expect timber to be the main building material for housing, at least for the frames, and much less say cypriotic tourist trap mountain village in appearance away from the river bottoms of Esrolia.

I'm no Gloranthan scholar, but I feel we have great foothold in Dragon Pass now with a sense of the *significant* large settlements building namely Boldhome and Clearwine. Both look marvellous and make sense of the relationship to Pavis & Sun County. Like Joerg mentions i'd too like to see how more remote Orlanthi settlements are conceptualised as well. I appreciate there may be differences, what would they be? How does the architecture compare? Will there be breadth of examples of Orlanthi settlements for Gm's to pick up and run with in the new RQG rulebook?

[styopa]

4 hours ago, Jeff said:

The Clearwine style of architecture is pretty common in Dragon Pass (especially the areas settled from Esrolia and Hendrikiland). It is modelled on the hill villages of Southern France, Italy or the Balkans (the artist actually lives in a hill village of about 1000 people) - and actually is appropriate for a city with about 1500 residents, that is also a significant religious/political center. 

100% this.

I've been in towns like this in northern Italy, I immediately recognized it too.

[goldenwheeldancer]

I'm much more into Trippy-Glorantha than Scholarly-Glorantha. Though I'd tolerate a bit of the latter because it creates a good backbone for the former to clench around.

[kaydet]

The walls of Clearwine were built by the EWF, after all, so I don't think the style indicates anything particularly Orlanthi, except insofar as the Orlanthi may have copied it after the resettlement.

[Mankcam]

WOW, I just found this thread and man I am impressed. Totally psyched up and ready for RQG now !!!

 

Edited May 12, 2018 by Mankcam

[jongjom]

59 minutes ago, Mankcam said:

Totally psyched up and ready for RQG now !!!

 

You should be.  

[Steve]

That artwork of Clearwine is amazing!

*faints*

*wakes up*

Shut up and take my money, Chaosium!

 

Edited May 12, 2018 by Steve

[simonh]

7 hours ago, kaydet said:

The walls of Clearwine were built by the EWF, after all, so I don't think the style indicates anything particularly Orlanthi, except insofar as the Orlanthi may have copied it after the resettlement.

I thought the EWF were largely Orlanthi, or at least Theyalan in origin, though being an Empire I'm sure it incorporated multiple cultural influences to some extent.

Simon Hibbs

Edited May 12, 2018 by simonh

[M Helsdon]

On ‎5‎/‎10‎/‎2018 at 11:00 PM, Tobbe-A said:

Hmm, quite Mycenaean/Near East Bronze Age. It's good to see some defensive gateways at last, with dedicated kill boxes.

 

Edited May 12, 2018 by M Helsdon

[Paid a bod yn dwp]

@M Helsdon yes I clocked that kill box...Excuse my ignorance, where does all that wonderful information come from? Is that something you’re working on, is it *official* reference material? 

Edited May 12, 2018 by Paid a bod yn dwp

[styopa]

52 minutes ago, M Helsdon said:

Hmm, quite Mycenaean/Near East Bronze Age. It's good to see some defensive gateways at last, with dedicated kill boxes.

 

Plus the outworks beyond the fields - unusual for IRL but which in this context recognize the need for at least minor defenses against the everyday-roving-threats of Glorantha.  Your farmers need to be in the fields, not being eaten by a grue.

[M Helsdon]

Just now, Paid a bod yn dwp said:

@M Helsdon yes I clocked that kill box...Excuse my ignorance, where does all that wonderful information come from? Is that something your working on, is it *official* reference material? 

Something I've been working on for the past 18 months or so. Non-canonical, non-official, just using publically available sources, augmented by my knowledge of Bronze/Early Iron Age warfare.

[Paid a bod yn dwp]

2 minutes ago, M Helsdon said:

Something I've been working on for the past 18 months or so. Non-canonical, non-official, just using publically available sources, augmented by my knowledge of Bronze/Early Iron Age warfare.

Great stuff, thanks

[Joerg]

The division between RuneQuest and Glorantha threads is getting harder to maintain.

I started to write this yesterday as a new thread for the Glorantha subforum, but seeing the discussion continuing here, why bother.

1 minute ago, kaydet said:

The walls of Clearwine were built by the EWF, after all, so I don't think the style indicates anything particularly Orlanthi, except insofar as the Orlanthi may have copied it after the resettlement.

Brondagal (Clearwine) and most other Second Age urban centers in Dragon Pass and Saird were built by the people of Orlanthland in the aftermath of the Gbaji Wars and the emancipation of the troll tribute following the Tax Slaughter. The EWF movement started as a fringe mystical path in the distant outback when these places were expanding into the hill forts, and by the time they openly allowed draconic leaders these cities had been there for as long as the draconic movement had been around.

Even though the Heortlings had a post-apocalyptic start into the Imperial Age, they had come out of the Gbaji Wars as the winners, with the riches of Dara Happa brought in as tribute and reparation for all the suppression by Palangio. This meant riches, fresh impressions of their architecture and urban life-style from the short but lucrative occupation of Dara Happa, and a general desire to catch up on all the missed opportunities since the Battle of Night and Day.

The victory over the homeland of their hated occupator tyrant Palangio was cathartic. Think of the congressional observer forces in France after the collapse of the Napoleonic regime. It was time to start up bigger and better.

I wonder what know-how transfer occurred during the generation of the occupation of Dara Happa. Was it a transfer similar to the occupation of the Ruhr area after WW1?

But let's get to the core of it, what architectural influences were there.

Nearby Nochet and Old Karse both survived the Darkness within their cyclopean walls (although the population of Nochet eventually evacuated into the Obsidian Palace). Both were port cities, however, without the benefit of a natural elevation like e.g. Ililbervor.

Someone in pre-Darkness Kethaela obviously had the art of building cyclopean walls down pat, or neither Nochet nor Karse would have received them in time during the Storm Age.The Vingkotlings did have cyclopean walls on a number of their royal steads, but apparently not on all of them - Ulaninstead hasn't been reclaimed, nor has it been reported destroyed by dragonfire. If there had been such a wall system, someone would have mentioned that, I guess, even if only referencing a reason to avoid settling in that place. The Red Cow campaign has regular trips to Ulaninstead to maintain their herds, and while it doesn't go into details of that place, it appears unsettled yet not too cursed to avoid starting a ritual raid from there.

Ziggurat or otherwise step pyramid temples are common in both Theyalan and Pelorian cultures, and traces of them are found in a few Praxian places, too, possibly extending into Genert's Garden. These artificial mountains were built even on the flanks of real, overtowering mountains, like the Ivory Plinth just below the Greatway portion of the eastern Rockwoods, or the Wasp Nest just below the Storm Mountains, although both of these possibly only rather late, the Ivory Plinth possibly in the Silver Age.

Both of these types of edifices involve a great amount of masonry and quarrying, but we have seen no mention of either in any previous publication. The closest we get is the giant wall continuation between the Quivin Peaks and the Storm Mountains across Sambari Pass mentioned in Dragon Pass: Land of Doom.

You don't need masonry if you can use burnt bricks made from clay, but then you will need a brick-making industry with quite significant traces left in the landscape, too. The only place where I have seen such activity anywhere in a Gloranthan context is around the Aeolian exclave at Nochet. Building with burnt clay bricks requires the production of mortar, which means someone is calcinating chalky rock to produce the basic material for such mortar. Nothing of that has been reported in the Sartarite activities, either.

 This means we have been lacking such information up to now.

 

Going back to the roots of Gloranthan publishing, the boardgame White Bear and Red Moon established the lesser settlements of Sartar as stockades, indicated with wooden palisades (like you would expect from a Roman legionary camp or any bronze age or iron age culture north of the Alps), although we learn about walls and stone gates for Runegate, which only get re-inforced by the Sartar dynasty. Given the easy access to rock (unlike the great glacial plains of northern central Europe), access to slabs of stone is fairly easy throughout Sartar, except maybe near the Upland Marsh or in the Donalf Flats.

 

Baking clay bricks and calcinating chalky rock sounds exactly like the activities the lowfire husbands of Ernalda's handmaidens would do, so this is fine for Esrolian culture, and some of this will have carried over to the highland tribes of Kerofinela, too. Applying a chalk coating to a wattle-and-daub construction probably is common in Sartarite settlements, too, providing some water proofing and sealing the outer structure. (But then Orlanthi might favor homes that let in at least a selection of good winds...)

The Downland Migration mentions Orstan the Carpenter as the general provider of all kinds of construction, and he gets referenced by practically all other deities requiring a special item not made of metal. Durev raises the loom house by himself, or with the help of his maker Orstan the Elder, from wood.

 

Kethaela was exposed to western architecture, through the Ingareens and the Waertagi (who built drydocks in Nochet and Sog's Ruins using technology most likely borrowed from the Kadeniti). The Aeolians of Nochet appear to have taken over the brick-making business for Nochet. I wonder how their colony started. Did they get settled there to provide maintenance on the dry docks? But then the Esvulari don't leave any traces in the Silver Age or earlier.

Brick-making clay has somewhat different requirements than pottery clay, but either are gifts of the earth or the rivers (who robbed it from the earth). 

Quarrying might be associated with Vestkarthan rather than Ernalda. Typically, a mountain-side gets quarried rather than a deep hole in the ground, except for 

 

Brondagal was an Imperial Age hilltop settlement within the Orgovaltes territory, and not the central place of government or worship, although quite likely not unimportant, either. I don't think that it dates back to the Vingkotling Age, or if it did, it was little more than a fortified stead.

But it might have been started already in the Bright Empire, under the governorship of Palangio the Iron Vrok and a strong Pelorian influence, as may quite a few of the cities dotting the EWF era map. Given the extent of the Bright Empire, the architects responsible for the structure of the settlement might have been Dara Happan or Pelandan.

The segmented nature of the settlement feels quite untypical for the mostly egalitarian Heortling society, and I cannot really discern different building phases and expansions of the earliest settlement. But then we don't know anything but the name from the Imperial Age settlement of Brondagal, which may very well have been a place with Heortling land owners and not-quite Heortling minorities occupying one half of the lower levels.

The Colymar Book tells us that the Colymar clan cleansed the hill fort around 1325, after their settlement in the valley bottom was deemed undefensible against those potentially aggressive newcomer folk. Given that the old settlement had been burnt down in a raid, we must assume that it was primarily constructed from combustible materials like timber and thatch, and that whatever circumvallation it had wasn't to write home about.

 

3 hours ago, M Helsdon said:

Hmm, quite Mycenaean/Near East Bronze Age. It's good to see some defensive gateways at last, with dedicated kill boxes.

I find myself thinking "quite successor states/Germanic conquered Roman Empire" in look and feel. E.g. Visigoth Gaul or Pontus. Or a smooth-walled version of the Whitewall map created during the Whitewall Wiki project.

For once, I find myself almost completely in agreement with Martin's elaborations on settlements and gate architecture in Sartar and surrounding lands.

I do wonder about over-spilled fortified towns developing into more sprawling cities. The 15th century Caernarfon map that was the basis for Midkemia Production's Carse shows such a situation, which I blamed in my usage of that map on the increased trade through the formerly forbidden Dragon Pass after Belintar suppressed the Volsaxi revolts, and then expanded by a shantytown harbor area borrowing from Bergen's Bryggen for the effects of the Opening. Despite the Edwardian origin of Caernarfon, the Clearwine image shows that the basic outline of Caernarfon castle might fit into a more archaic environment, with the mediaeval origin only apparent to people familiar with the Gwynedd city. Which means I see little reason to discard what I wrote up on that place for my gaming as MGMV.

Nochet with its riverside community and slum and the Aeolian exclave is another such case. Exclaves/satellite villages of slightly different ethnicity would be common especially in coastal and riverine Kethaela, with many fisherfolk or nonhumans (durulz, newtlings) living somewhat separated from the dominant human ethnicity.

[M Helsdon]

1 hour ago, Joerg said:

I find myself thinking "quite successor states/Germanic conquered Roman Empire" in look and feel. E.g. Visigoth Gaul or Pontus.

Perhaps you see what you want to see...

Personally, I can quite clearly see the resemblance to Bronze Age fortified citadels/cities. From Osprey and Peter Connolly, including the building of Mycenae... ;-)

 

Edited May 12, 2018 by M Helsdon

[M Helsdon]

My take on Whitewall...

[M Helsdon]

2 hours ago, Joerg said:

Both of these types of edifices involve a great amount of masonry and quarrying, but we have seen no mention of either in any previous publication.

Whilst it may no longer be canonical, the Dragon Pass - A Gazetteer of Kerofinela mentions Saruvan's Hills, quarried to build many royal projects, including the walls of Wilmskirk, Boldhome, and many royal roads.

Some guy called Joerg was involved in the book.

From another source, paraphrased: Clearwine lies within ancient walls built by a God Time demigod, so like many settlements in Dragon Pass it is ancient with many eras of construction, destruction, and rebuilding.

Edited May 12, 2018 by M Helsdon

[kaydet]

Never disputed that Clearwine is older than the EWF, but I thought it was pretty clearly stated that the walls were constructed by the dragonfriends. After all, it was Chief Colymar who purified them of their draconic taint.

[Richard S.]

6 minutes ago, kaydet said:

Never disputed that Clearwine is older than the EWF, but I thought it was pretty clearly stated that the walls were constructed by the dragonfriends. After all, it was Chief Colymar who purified them of their draconic taint.

Maybe they were just added on to by the EWF?

[kaydet]

@Richard S.Could be. I know that the draconic corruption was localized in the blue tiles that faced the walls. Perhaps that was all that was added by the EWF?

[Dragonsnail]

On 5/9/2018 at 6:26 PM, Dimbyd said:

No rolled maps will be produced by Chaosium- shipping costs to blame

Thanks for the great summary which I just quoted one line from above.

Regarding the maps, I understand selling maps are not financially viable. I hope we can get PDF companion books like the "Sartar Campaign Pack" PDF for HeroQuest. That PDF just contains the maps in high resolution, making it easier to fix prints of maps for private use. Maps in most PDF books are often compressed to much and get jpeg distorted text and details not suitable for printing. But the separate book with maps only have much higher resolution maps, and is suitable for printing.

As an example, the new Dragon Pass map in the RQG book looks great, it's just to low resolution to print in large size with good quality.

Edited July 14, 2018 by Dragonsnail