Questions about Ygg, Yggites, and Wolf Pirates

[Joerg]

I still wonder about the 1616 fleet. Harrek had plundered Sog City in 1615. In 1617 he received the Ice Serpent on Ygg's Isles. But in 1616 he leads a wolf pirate fleet against the Holy Country. The Guide p.229 makes it sound like Harrek "settled down" on the Threestep Isles only two or three years after receiving the Ice Serpent.

His arrival in the Mirrorsea Bay in 1616 doesn't mean that he had already the Ice Serpent. There is a possibility that the 1616 raid was an intermezzo before he recruited the third emigration wave from Ygg's Isles, with a different fleet.

The colony on the Threestep Isles was established already in 1605, as part of the second emigration wave (the first one would have been the Vadeli-led one that settled Ginorth and Gothalos). It is likely that Harrek ended up there after taking sail in Sog, and before raiding the Choralinthor Bay and destroying Belintar's navy. That fleet would have absorbed a variety of vessels during the decade of its activity and would have been less uniform than the Yggite one he led to the islands a year or three later.

The Yggites first had the chance to inspect the Dormal shipwreck left on their coast, then they were recruited (and possibly partially equipped) by the Vadeli in the years following the Opening in the Neleomi Sea. A good number of them may have drowned in Vadeli service at the Battle of Oenriko Rocks.

[Sir_Godspeed]

3 hours ago, Jeff said:

It is now 1625. The fleet has gone around the world. 

"Original" threw me off.

[kalidor]

Does anyone know the Cult  compatibility chart for Ygg?

[Richard S.]

15 minutes ago, kalidor said:

Does anyone know the Cult  compatibility chart for Ygg?

Based on his likes & dislikes section, I think the hostile and enemy cults would be pretty similar to Orlanth's, though adding the Invisible God as at least hostile. Associated are Dormal, Orlanth, and Valind; and I'd say Friendly includes only Humakt, Storm Bull, and maybe Odayla. Everyone else is neutral.

Edited January 15 by Richard S.

[kalidor]

44 minutes ago, Richard S. said:

Based on his likes & dislikes section, I think the hostile and enemy cults would be pretty similar to Orlanth's, though adding the Invisible God as at least hostile. Associated are Dormal, Orlanth, and Valind; and I'd say Friendly includes only Humakt, Storm Bull, and maybe Odayla. Everyone else is neutral.

I have lightbringers book but there is not much info about this topic.

[Squaredeal Sten]

Thanks for resurrecting this fascinating topic.  Since the cult of Ygg has now been published in the Lightbringers book, I wish there was a sourcebook and/ or an adventure or two to flesh out the Wolf Pirates. 

I note Jeff's writing a year or two ago about the cults mix among the Pirates, so they include a lot of Orlanthi and other people from everywhere Harrek's circumnavigation touched.  I put some of that into Caravanserai.  But I am glad I did not need to touch on cultural aspects, because I was ignorant of everything Joerg wrote in this thread in 2019.  

Edited January 17 by Squaredeal Sten
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[Jeff]

32 minutes ago, Squaredeal Sten said:

Thanks for resurrecting this fascinating topic.  Since the cult of Ygg has now been published in the Lightbringers book, I wish there was a sourcebook and/ or an adventure or two to flesh out the Wolf Pirates. 

I note Jeff's writing a year or two ago about the cults mix among the Pirates, so they include a lot of Orlsnthi and other people from everywhere Harrek's circumnavigation touched.  I put some of that into Caravanserai.  But I am glad I did not need to touch on cultural aspects, because I was ignorant of everything Joerg wrote in this thread in 2019.  

Of which many parts are just plain incorrect. 

[Squaredeal Sten]

41 minutes ago, Jeff said:

Of which many parts are just plain incorrect. 

To me, this indicates a need for an "official" book on the Wolf Pirates & associated topics.  Or a couple of adventures plus background write-up. I realize that other people may not feel the same desire..  But with attention shifting toward  Esrolia and Heortland, more of us will be wanting that.

Edited January 15 by Squaredeal Sten
capitalization

[Jeff]

1 hour ago, Squaredeal Sten said:

To me, this indicates a need for an "official" book on the Wolf Pirates & associated topics.  Or a couple of adventures plus background write-up. I realize that other people may not feel the same desire..  But with attention shifting toward  Esrolia and Heortland, more of us will be wanting that.

Start with the Guide and then go to the Ygg writeup. That gets you most of the way there. 

Beyond that you are dealing with pretty picayune details (Yggs' Islanders have goats or not, whether the Ygg Islands are like Norway or the Aleutians, etc). 

[kalidor]

7 hours ago, Jeff said:

Start with the Guide and then go to the Ygg writeup. That gets you most of the way there. 

Beyond that you are dealing with pretty picayune details (Yggs' Islanders have goats or not, whether the Ygg Islands are like Norway or the Aleutians, etc). 

Thanks Jeff. Any chance of seeing Cult compatibility charts for the lightbringers book? As a download at least.

[Ynneadwraith]

On 1/30/2019 at 4:48 PM, Sir_Godspeed said:

A Preliminary Idea of Yggite Beliefs Regarding Divine Matters (Using Theyalan-God Learner names):

Just want to say that I absolutely adore your take on the Ygglings' beliefs. It hits three major points I really want to see more of in Glorantha:

1. Parallel mythic structures that different cultures use to legitimise themselves within the world
2. More naval-focussed cultures
3. Influences from beyond the Mediterranean Bronze Age.

On the first point, it seems to me that the vast majority (f not all) cultures should have their own interpretation of mythic events to give themselves legitimacy. We may see a lot of the existing fluff as a heavily Theyalan/Pelorian-centric view of events, which I like, but to hammer that point home it's great to have alternative viewpoints as well. There's plenty of space for it with the myriad different cultures of Glorantha.

Some further options for influences:

Neolithic Scandinavian pitted ware culture.

Less for material culture or beliefs, but more for the persistence of a mesolithic hunter-gatherer lifestyle due to the high calorie output of the ocean. If we apply this to the Ygglings, we can sever the IMHO unnecessary ties to Land goddesses and have a near-fully ocean-focussed culture. Of course there will be land goddesses of the islands they'll need to appease, but it's not so much of an agricultural relationship. More securing tenant's rights, while subsistence comes from the sea.

With this I see no issue with wedding Ygg to a Sea goddess, despite him being born from the sea. Mythology (both real-world and Gloranthan) is chock full of oedipal connotations once you start connecting the dots properly. I doubt the Ygglings would see an issue. 'Oh yeah, well, it's a different Sea goddess. They're not that closely related'.

The Chukchi of far-eastern Siberia

For things like their warlike temperament, which fits well with the followers of Ygg, and their folklore.

Their folklore has some neat points of difference with the usual fare of Indo-European/Near Eastern influences. Could offer some interesting mythic inspiration. One of the things I liked quite a lot is their concept for how they got to where they were: humans were once mice, who were curious and mischievous and crawled into the mighty Raven Kutkh's nose. This made him sneeze, which sent them flying to all corners of the earth.

Could be a neat little myth for how the various Vadrudi came to be where they were (or even all the children of Storm). Perhaps they were crawling around Grandfather Vadrus, who sneezed and scattered them to the 6 corners of the lozenge.

Pirate cultures in real life

This one's more of a ramble, but there's a pervasive stereotype of cultures that engage in pirate activity that isn't quite true. It stems from most of our recorded history being written by cultures who were the victims of piracy: Rome and the Illyrians/Sicilians, England and the Norse etc.

The stereotype is that 'pirate' is a whole culture in itself, rather than an activity that a culture partakes in occasionally. You see it in the current conceptualisation of 'The Vikings' as a culture. It boils down an entire complex culture that occasionally partook in raiding into a culture that is nothing but raiding. You see the same thing applied to nomadic cultures, where their entire culture gets boiled down to 'there's a murderous horde from the steppe coming our way'.

To take 'The Vikings' as an example. The vast majority of the time, for the vast majority of the population, they were settled farmers. Of the ones who were naval, for the vast majority of the time they were riverine and North/Baltic sea traders. That's how they knew there were rich cities upriver to plunder in the first place. The same is true of pirates in the Bronze/early Iron Age Mediterranean. Most of the time they were shuttling goods from one stop to the next, with a little bit of piracy along the way if they were so inclined.

It's also important to note that none of the above stopped them from being phenomenally violent a lot of the time. The dichotomy between 'peaceful civilian' and 'violent warrior' was a lot less crystallised than it is in our modern schema of things.

So, to inch a little closer to the point I'm making, perhaps the view we have of the Wolf Pirates (and the Ygglings more broadly) is that of the settled nations they have been raiding. We don't see, or hear, from the cultures that they ply their regular trade with.

Of course, it's fun to play at pirates so perhaps the Wolf Pirates should be left to their own devices a little, but for the rest of the Vadrudi it offers the potential of some much-needed nuance to their way of life.

[mfbrandi]

2 hours ago, Ynneadwraith said:

[I]t seems to me that the vast majority [of] cultures should have their own interpretation of mythic events to give themselves legitimacy. We may see a lot of the existing fluff as a heavily Theyalan/Pelorian-centric view of events, [but] it's great to have alternative viewpoints as well.

• different interpretations of mythic events
• alternative viewpoints

Yes and the alternate myths don’t even have to purport to report the same events. “We tell this story” doesn’t have to be extended to “we tell this story, which is basically the same as your story” or “we tell this story, which is the truth you were trying but failing to tell in your story.” When faced with “but what do you say about [insert questioner’s hobby horse here]?” sometimes just a baffled “we don’t tell any such story.” Some cultures who are not interested in wrestling for control of a monomyth.

• myths to give the teller or the teller’s culture legitimacy

Less of that, surely. Read this in the voice of a notorious insurrectionist and windbag:

• The Walen family are great
  because I am the smartest and most clever of all the puma people,
  who are the smartest and most clever people in the whole world.
  — HeroQuest Voices (ISS3001, 2003), p. 28

It is funny at most once, right? If every culture does it, it is boring. More cultures who don’t think that they are right and don’t think that they are great, please … IMHO. (Of course, Gloranthans of a questioning bent are likely to be suspected of being closet power gamers and squished like chaos bugs, so there is a selection pressure against a proper humility and openness.)

Should a myth open up the world or should it lock it down?

[Ynneadwraith]

1 hour ago, mfbrandi said:

Yes and the alternate myths don’t even have to purport to report the same events. “We tell this story” doesn’t have to be extended to “we tell this story, which is basically the same as your story” or “we tell this story, which is the truth you were trying but failing to tell in your story.”

Yep, I like that.

1 hour ago, mfbrandi said:

Some cultures who are not interested in wrestling for control of a monomyth.

Yes and some cultures have their own separate monomyth they're trying to wrest control of. I'm thinking about the various Sea/Water pantheons here who weren't all that much involved in the Sky/Air conflicts but surely have their own things they're interested in.

And cultures who have just accepted their lower station in the monomyth of others (e.g. Lodrili).

1 hour ago, mfbrandi said:

More cultures who don’t think that they are right and don’t think that they are great, please … IMHO.

The psychology of human in-group politics suggest that might be a rather forlorn hope, though there's something of degrees here. There's a wide real world precedent for holding up a foreign culture as an example to your own people saying 'look how good these people are at X. We could be a lot better at X if we were more like them' (regardless of how factually accurate that assessment actually is).

Not all cultures would source their legitimacy by claiming their gods' right to The Very Throne of the World. Perhaps their myths simply lend legitimacy to their ownership of their particular lands, or their way of life, or something similarly prosaic.

1 hour ago, mfbrandi said:

The Walen family are great

because I am the smartest and most clever of all the puma people,

who are the smartest and most clever people in the whole world.
— HeroQuest Voices (ISS3001, 2003), p. 28

While I agree that gets tiresome, for me it gets tiresome because they don't explain why they think they're the smartest and most clever people in the world. It's the different cultural viewpoints of what is right and wrong that fascinates me. What justifications they have for why their way is best (and why others are weird), and what that tells me about the way they think. The Deliberate Values Dissonance, or even Blue and Orange morality, of different groups of people, and what that might tell us about our own morals and values.

That's my personal interest though, so I understand if people aren't so hell-bent on injecting that into their Glorantha!

1 hour ago, mfbrandi said:

...so there is a selection pressure against a proper humility and openness.)

I'd suggest there might be. Not just from reactionary lynchings, but also from the mere presence of a culture claiming their divine Right to the Throne of the World. Once one bunch starts, you don't want yours to get left behind!

1 hour ago, mfbrandi said:

Should a myth open up the world?

Always.

I have a rule in my own worldbuilding that anything I add has to raise more questions than it answers. If I can't achieve that, it gets left a mystery. Otherwise midichlorians...

Edited January 16 by Ynneadwraith

[Darius West]

Are Wolf Pirates the Sea People of the Bronze Age Collapse for Glorantha?

[Ynneadwraith]

4 minutes ago, Darius West said:

Are Wolf Pirates the Sea People of the Bronze Age Collapse for Glorantha?

That runs slap bang into the difficult question of 'who even were the Sea Peoples of the Bronze Age Collapse'.

My current favourite interpretation is a colossal wave of mixed migration and warparties pushed along by a mix of societal and environmental collapse. So less a unified culture and more of a phenomenon resulting from environmental pressures, like the migrations pushed before the Huns or the Mongols.

How well does that fit with the societal environment surrounding the Wolf Pirates?

[Joerg]

1 hour ago, Darius West said:

Are Wolf Pirates the Sea People of the Bronze Age Collapse for Glorantha?

Optically, yes. The illustrations of Wolf Pirates have inexplicably copied Medinet Habu uniforms without offering any Gloranthan region where people in that dress would be at home, rather different from Medinet Habu or the treatment of neighboring traditional dress on the Gods Wall. Possibly in a desperate attempt to make things (Mediterranean) Bronze Age when everything on the seas but the main metal cries Roman Iron age.

In practice, the Closing was doing that catasstrophic interruption of international trade, and following the Opening, the Waertagi are going interrupt open sea traffic, aiming to re-instate their pre-God Learner monopoly and suppression of sea exploration.

[Ynneadwraith]

16 hours ago, Joerg said:

In practice, the Closing was doing that catasstrophic interruption of international trade, and following the Opening, the Waertagi are going interrupt open sea traffic, aiming to re-instate their pre-God Learner monopoly and suppression of sea exploration.

To be fair, the Closing does sound like a significant enough disaster to trade networks that might produce something like the Sea Peoples in the Bronze Age Collapse. Though it's unclear how significant the factors of 'collapse of trade networks' and 'environmental degradation' were in causing the migrations of people.

If the Sea Peoples were mostly refugees fleeing failing harvests towards lands they thought were plentiful, then the Closing probably wouldn't cause something similar.

If the Sea Peoples were mostly pissed off elite warriors whose power was being eroded by the cessation of trade, then it probably would.

Or some combination of both.

[Ian_W]

11 minutes ago, Ynneadwraith said:

To be fair, the Closing does sound like a significant enough disaster to trade networks that might produce something like the Sea Peoples in the Bronze Age Collapse. 

Almost by definition, the disaster to trade networks that was the Closing could not create Sea Peoples, because the sea was, well, Closed (and remained Closed until Dormal figured a work-around).

 

The end of the Second Age that was the Closing saw a bunch of Land Peoples become especially desperate and willing to do what they could with a red sword ... which presumably contributed to the mess at the end of the Second Age.

Edited January 18 by Ian_W
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[Sir_Godspeed]

2 hours ago, Ian_W said:

Almost by definition, the disaster to trade networks that was the Closing could not create Sea Peoples, because the sea was, well, Closed (and remained Closed until Dormal figured a work-around).

 

The end of the Second Age that was the Closing saw a bunch of Land Peoples become especially desperate and willing to do what they could with a red sword ... which presumably contributed to the mess at the end of the Second Age.

The Wolf Pirates are, if anything, the result of the BOOM in sea trade, and a realization of the potential wealth on foreign shores. 

[Jeff]

Several of you obsess too much about Bronze or Iron Age. Glorantha is Glorantha - its history and cultures are not our own. That being said, its primary metal IS bronze. And most bronze in Glorantha is made out of smelting tin and copper. Gloranthan bronze approximates our own - it is not iron as bronze.

Iron is rare. Few humans even know how to work it. Once worked it needs to be enchanted or it causes problems with magic, interaction with spirits, etc. 

But unlike our history, Glorantha has dwarfs, elves, dragonewts, immortal humans, and other beings all actively interacted with humanity. It is possible to go to the God of Something and learn from it. There is a God of Literacy, from which all writing is derived, there is God of Communication whose cult language is a second language for millions. And so on.

So why did we decide to base the look of the Wolf Pirates on the Sea Peoples? In part because of some of Steve Swenstown's classic art. The Wolf Pirates have been around the Homeward Ocean for years, and have raided Teshnos, Teleos, Maslo, Laskal, and so on. Greg and I dug the look of the Sea Peoples, as well as various reconstructions of Aegean weapons and armor, and figured it is a good fit. Much much better than having them looking like the Norse. 

 

[Jeff]

On 1/16/2024 at 12:35 AM, kalidor said:

Thanks Jeff. Any chance of seeing Cult compatibility charts for the lightbringers book? As a download at least.

Just waiting for our web specialist to get the time to put them up on the website. Dan and I finished them long ago.

[g33k]

On 1/15/2024 at 3:40 PM, Jeff said:

... whether the Ygg Islands are like Norway or the Aleutians, etc). 

When you cite Norway & the Aleutians here, are you talking about the physical landscape?
Or something more human-centric?

[Joerg]

14 hours ago, g33k said:

When you cite Norway & the Aleutians here, are you talking about the physical landscape?
Or something more human-centric?

Jeff was actively distancing himself from such comparisons (for Ygg's islands, not the Three-Step Islands) and any such comparisons.

The islands off Washington or British Columbia are probably what we need to look for if we want real world comparisons at all. Or possibly off the San Francisco Bay area.

 

When I suggested the Vesteralen all those years back then I had just returned to Germany from northern Norway. I personally drew on such comparisons after having lived inland of the Lofoten and Vesteralen for a bit, finding a lot of local historical detail on surviving on a cold but reliably liquid sea quite inspiring - especially the pre-Viking elements of local history and pre-history, but also notes on pre-modern everyday life as fishermen and whalers before, during and after the Viking era, including the culture of the coastal "Finns" (Saami).

 

The Wolf Pirates started out as Yggite northmen leaving the service of the Vadeli, and those on Gothalos and Ginorth may retain more of that heritage than those who occupy the Threestep Isles.

 

The role of Yggite women hasn't been explored much outside of depictions of female wolf pirates (other than Gunda). Possibly largely irrelevant for the Three-Step Isles, YGWV.

[Ynneadwraith]

16 hours ago, Jeff said:

Several of you obsess too much about Bronze or Iron Age. Glorantha is Glorantha - its history and cultures are not our own.

While I absolutely get that Glorantha is very much its own thing (and should be viewed as such), that doesn't detract from the fact that the Bronze Age is really cool 😄 as far as I'm concerned, the more Bronze Age influences you can use (sensitively and where appropriate), the better.

I suppose it's a personal thing. I am phenomenally tired of your typical swords and sorcery fantasy. Of a medieval veneer plastered over a mishmash of renaissance and modernity. To me, the bronze-ageyness of Glorantha (coupled with the stunning magic system/cosmology, and the in-depth anthropologisty view of cultures) is a massive breath of fresh air. I suspect a lot of Glorantha's paying customers think the same (though I understand concessions to playability).

As a source of definitively 'non-DnD' inspiration, the bronze age is almost second to none.

16 hours ago, Jeff said:

Much much better than having them looking like the Norse. 

Yes absolutely! 'Vikings' as a cultural fad is getting a little tired now, which is a shame as behind the faddish perception there's some really fascinating social dynamics which are relevant for Orlanthi culture (their applications of laws, and their honour/feuding system especially).

It's also worth mentioning that norse =/= nordic bronze age (and norse especially =/= saami). The peoples of the nordic bronze age were tied to the broader Mediterranean milieu through the overland trade in Baltic amber, through places like the Terramare and Proto-villanovan (pre-Etruscan) cultures of northern Italy. There was a sort of mercenary-noble warrior complex that stretched from southern Scandinavia, through central Europe and Northern Italy, all the way to Mycenaean Greece. So you'd have a nordic warrior-noble attach themselves to an amber caravan and guard it along the route, either for a short distance or all the way to Greece (and vice versa, for all the cultures along the route). This created a sort of multi-cultural, multi-lingual, mercenary-warrior elite that controlled the trade through central Europe, with all sorts of cultural cross-pollination along the way.

Yes the Nordic Bronze Age peoples were also naval raiders, and they even had horned helmets, but they were very different from the typical 'viking' look.

All of that is a little beyond the point you were making of avoiding shoehorning vikings into Glorantha, but for me it illustrates yet another fascinating and unexpected dynamic in Bronze Age society that serves as great inspiration.

Edited January 20 by Ynneadwraith