Another moon?

[JohannesH]

Is there an another moon besides the Red Moon? If not, was it totally dark at nights before the Red Moon rose? Anyway, everything must have reddish tint during the night.

[M Helsdon]

1 hour ago, JohannesH said:

Is there an another moon besides the Red Moon? If not, was it totally dark at nights before the Red Moon rose? Anyway, everything must have reddish tint during the night.

Not in Time, though there were earlier moons in the God Time. Many of the planets are quite bright (Lightfore and the Red Planet especially). The Red Moon of course has its own (invisible) moon which casts a shadow upon it, and smaller orbiters.

[Joerg]

There is another moon, the Blue Moon, but it is mostly invisible since it climbs into the sky on the outside of the visible sky dome before it plummets down from Pole Star through Magasta's Pool into the Underworld Sky. During that rather brief plummet, it can be seen as the Blue Streak. That plummet also starts the demi-weekly (though irregular) low tide, with a massive outflow of all the waters that had followed the Blue Moon's rise and climbed into coastal bays and estuaries.

As a source of light, this isn't worth mentioning.

 

Lightfore, the planet that runs the Sunpath antithetical to Yelm (short in summer nights as Yelm's day ride is in winter, and long in winter nights as Yelm's stately pass across the summer sky), has quite some luminosity, outshining each of our celestial night sky features except for our moon.

The biggest object in the Night Sky (apart from the Red Moon) is the Red Planet, associated with Shargash or Tolat, a southpath object with two weeks of visibility followed by two weeks in the Underworld. It isn't that bright, though.

 

Whether the Red Moon brightened up the sky significantly remains a matter of debate. I once described the moonglow as the absence of an absence of light.

[JohannesH]

So one can assume the nights are very very dark, especially during the Black Moon phase? Only stars shining. It’s easy to hide but painful to move silently (unless you are a troll).

[David Scott]

19 minutes ago, JohannesH said:

So one can assume the nights are very very dark, especially during the Black Moon phase? Only stars shining. It’s easy to hide but painful to move silently (unless you are a troll).

There is a whole chapter on the The Sky in the Guide to Glorantha. It opens with:

Quote

In the daytime the sky is ruled by Yelm, the Sun God, and shines bright blue; only rarely are planets or stars visible. When Yelm descends to the Underworld, out pours Xentha, Goddess of Night, with her resplendent cloak. The darkness is broken by thousands of tiny bright stars and punctuated by several prominent celestial bodies. Most visible among the celestial bodies are: the Red Moon; Shargash, a red planet; Lightfore, a yellow planet; Lorion, a constellation; and Orlanth’s Ring, a special celestial phenomenon.

I would assume that the darkness is similar to earth, so depends on a number of factors: Weather, landscape, moon phase, etc. Have a look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lux for some examples. I'd like to think that the Gloranthan equivalent of Airglow is caused by air spirits in the middle air. It's possible to have starlight bright enough to cast your shadow in areas of our world with no light pollution and clear air. So it's likely that the other Gloranthan planets would do the same, such as those mentioned above. The darkest is likely to be in Shadows Dance, on a Black Moon, overcast with heavy cloud. Where as on a full moon in the northern wastes under a clear sky in the summer, it's likely to be brightest. 

 

[Sir_Godspeed]

If you think in Real World Terms, the planet (or star) known as Lightfore is essentially the equivalent of our moon in terms of luminosity - therefore the nights are probably about the same as in the Real World. The difference is that Lightfore does not wax or wane, so it does not produce brightly lit full moon nights.

The Red Moon itself does not seem to radiate a glow onto other objects as much as it simply it is up there, always visible except in its dark phases.

Just my interpretation.