Gods and Goddesses of Glorantha

[Kloster]

There are several points in your post, my lord.

Of course, whatever system you use, items ( like your example) can and should have a name, that can or can not give hints on the capability of the item, and that can or can not be easily known. In fact, in your 2nd example, I would answer: 'Write Sword of Jaelik'!! The way to determine what it does changes from GM to GM, as several threads on this forum have already shown.

But I don't think artificial to hear a player having his player say:'I cast Bludgeon'. I'm not a CoC fan, so can not answer for that game, but for me, and for RQ specifically, it is not a problem and avoid having to ask what is the effect.

[Lordabdul]

3 minutes ago, Kloster said:

But I don't think artificial to hear a player having his player say:'I cast Bludgeon'.

To be clear in case I wasn't: I don't either. In fact, my players do that, although I do encourage them to add a little bit a flavour, just as I encourage them to describe what cool thing they're doing on their combat turn in a short sentence or two, instead of just saying "I roll to hit with my Shortsword" because that's dull after a while. I was mostly talking about the diagetic stuff: stuff NPCs say, or stuff they might read on a sign, for instance. So in my mind there's no such thing as a "1d8+2 damage sword" in the game world... this means you wouldn't see a sign on the blacksmith's shop that says "1d8+2 swords for sale! 10% off today!" (unless I'm running some kind of comedy fantasy game). Similarly, I wouldn't make NPCs talk in terms of "Bladesharp 5" either for spells, although the term "Bladesharp" (along with other fairly common terms like "Lightning" or "Bless the crops") might make it into the NPCs' vernacular (without the number prefixes and other gameplay bits). But hey, that's what I'd do in my game -- no judgment on other games if the players are having fun!

[Shiningbrow]

Perhaps 'Bludgeon' is just the shorthand version of "Zorak Zoran's greater bludgeon to bloody pulp" spell?

[Kloster]

3 hours ago, Shiningbrow said:

Perhaps 'Bludgeon' is just the shorthand version of "Zorak Zoran's greater bludgeon to bloody pulp" spell?

Good! Very good! May I borrow?

[Hzark10]

On 8/12/2019 at 7:42 AM, Joerg said:

Does Lightfore get a cult in GaGoG, or is the planet mentioned shortly in "The Cult in the World" for both (young) Yelm and Yelmalio?

It took a while for which I apoligize, but the short answer is "NO", Lightfore does not get a cult. He is mentioned in the text when it talks about the Dawn Ages and Yelm-worshipping horse nomads in central Peloria. They followed Lightfore until Yelm returned.

[davecake]

17 hours ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

ok wait, the Black Sun has sane worshippers, they're just Darkness folk. The Black Sun defeated the Chaos god Tien and forced him into two separate forms, Than and Atyar.

I was speaking from a Dara Happan perspective. Regardless of Chaos fighting, they do not consider most Darkness folk sane. 

17 hours ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

he might be bloodthirsty and a Darkness deity, but he's better than Zorak Zoran or Shargash.

Better than the Cruel God, who is the opposite of Justice (and a direct threat to it), but of course a crazy Darkness worshipper is far worse than Shargash worshipper, they may be crazy maniacs but they are crazy maniacs on the right side (unless you are from Darjiin). 

 

7 hours ago, Joerg said:

That's not quite the case. Practically everybody worships Yelm in Dara Happa as a lay member, but only the elite can initiate to his cult.

Depends how direct you think lay worship is. Semantic quibble. 

7 hours ago, Joerg said:

The majority of the Dara Happans has as limited insight to these truths as say the Orlanthi, as they are denied access to the cult secrets.

You clearly are not in the correct Dara Happan mindset, Joerg. Who cares what the lower classes know or think?

7 hours ago, Joerg said:

There are more illuminates in the Empire than there are people privy to the secrets of the Sun Disk. The sun mystery is one of the ways the nobility conserves its superiority.

The whole story of the death of Yelm and his disintegration into parts, that are eventually re-united at the Dawn is known far outside the Yelm initiates. It is certainly known to the parts of Yelm cults, like Enverinus and Antirius, both of which allow non-nobles to initiate I am fairly sure. Many craftsmen are in the Enverinus cult. Knowing the story is very different to magically experiencing being the Sun - and we have no indication the story (or most of GROY) is a secret. 

7 hours ago, Joerg said:

The widespread direct Yelm worship among the horse riders is one of the reasons why horse rider rule in Peloria has been regarded as legitimate noble rule. While their "justice" wasn't exactly "measured", they certainly were qualified for the "from the above" part of the Solar concept of imperial authority.

Technically legitimate in some ways, technically illegitimate in others, certainly unlikely to be popular. But magically valid, as yes, Yu-Kargzant is Yelm. There is a lot more detail I could say here about the Yelm Imperator status within the Yelm cult, restricted to legitimate rulers and tightly controlled by the state (who now require Yelm Imperator initiates to be Red Goddess Initiates as well) - but it would really just be talking about the politicisation of the cult, I think, and a potential 'Jenarong' Emperor could reinstate it. 

 

[Shiningbrow]

11 hours ago, Kloster said:

Good! Very good! May I borrow?

Feel free

[Qizilbashwoman]

29 minutes ago, davecake said:

Regardless of Chaos fighting, they do not consider most Darkness folk sane. 

Oh, I wasn't clear.

What, uh, is the exact status of Shargash the Hell Sun here? He has the Sky-Death-Disorder runes in older works, but I'm not really clear what his... job, I guess, is. We have a lot of Masks of the Sun, so to speak: bad ones, like the Drought Sun, the patrons of the chariot-riding Gamatae and the horseback Hyalorong like Kargzant and Elmal, the symbols of authority and military might like the phalanx-kings Pole Star, Antirius and now Yelmalio; the ascetic Yelmalio.

But what's a Hell Sun? (Other than unpleasant, I mean.) We know he anciently took human sacrifice outside of his city; we know his city Alkoth is ritually, and the ancient centre literally, in the First Hell; we know he is a savage war god, not a god of order like Antirius, but something to be restrained until you want someone absolutely annihilated.

But I'm still not sure what a Hell Sun exactly is. He might be on the Big Charts but the Three Brothers in the Glorious Reascent of Yelm were Dayzatar, Arraz and Lodril... he wasn't a contender.

...

Also, the Guide to Glorantha identifies him as Tolat, full stop, but that's technically God Learnerism. I know my notes about the Blue Streak say:

Quote

Twin sister of Tolat, known to the Pelorians as Shargash, born after Yelm was slain from Kata Moripi (Black Dendara) or in Agimori myth, Enjata Mo, the first of the Sky Witches that rose after the greater sun disintegrated.

@Jeff, got any opinions on "is Tolat Shargash"? Or what a Hell Sun is, although I don't want to step on your new book's toes.

Edited August 16, 2019 by Qizilbashwoman

[davecake]

3 minutes ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

What, uh, is the exact status of Shargash the Hell Sun here?

Good question. You'll get different answers depending on who you ask. 

4 minutes ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

He has the Sky-Death-Disorder runes in older works, but I'm not really clear what his... job, I guess, is.

When the world is full of murderous killers, if it useful to have one on your side, would be roughly the Raibanth/Imperial point of view. 

5 minutes ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

But I'm still not sure what a Hell Sun exactly is. He might be on the Big Charts but the Three Brothers in the Glorious Reascent of Yelm were Dayzatar, Arraz and Lodril... he wasn't a contender.

Like most of the 'sons of Yelm', he is clearly not a contender for the pure power of Fire, but expresses a different aspect of the celestial power. I think he is referred to as a 'Sun' only in the sense that he briefly was the controlling power of the Sky Dome (when the Sun was in hell, and Shargash had cleared out most of other bodies) and there is often some ambiguity about planets being implicitly small suns in sources around that era. 

But yes, Tolat is Shargash in the God Learner sense, and I don't think they are wrong about that one. The new book acknowledges this explicitly. 

[Sir_Godspeed]

Shargash is very interesting. I and others have toyed with the idea that he started off mainly as a god of slash-and-burn agriculture, but that's barely even conjectural and more of a neat idea. He did have multiple wives and he does have a Green king - but as I said, pure "that could be neat"-mode there.

In Time there is always the idea that Shargash is the Sun when it is in the Underworld, of course (that would've been the Egyptian take on it, as they integrated different sun gods by assigning them different times of day), but of course we have records of these guys going back to when the Sun just hang motionless at the top of the sky and didn't go anywhere, so that doesn't seem right (unless, of course, Shargash stems from the Green Age, before Brightface couped the cosmic crown and was possibly moving around).

Another thing that should be mentioned is that Shargash appears somewhat different before Death. He bangs his drums and dances fiercely, but is ultimately ineffectual against the blue dragon that would become Oslira, with Murharzam instead having to fix it. He does manage to wrestle Umath into smithereens though.

I suspect something went very, very wrong* with Shargash once Murharzam/Yelm/The Emperor died. As an instance of the "Tolat/Love-and-War/Red Planet"-deity, he's definitely leaned *hard* into war. It's possible that he wasn't always this way.

(*or very, very right. Tying into the "slash and burn" archetype above, perhaps Shargash saw his function in the aftermath of Yelm's death as the cleansing fire that would char the fallow, diseased field that was Emperorless Glorantha, to prepare a new seeding - ie. the Dawn. Very much poetic license on my part here).

His Solar title is one of thise relics of Dara Happan / Decapolis political influence on deific titles, I think. Titles like Moon and Sun are handed out more on basis of how a celestial body is tied to a city or religio-political function than necessarily any objective physical function (providing light, heat, being still or moving, etc.). As the celestial object associated with one of the cities of the Decapolis, he was named a Sun. In the aftermath of Yelm's death, his contest over (the inside of) the Sky dome also made him by definition a Little Sun, but that still doesn't tell us a whole lot, ultimately.

And this is without going too much into his association with the underworld, or his (curiously lacking) relationship with Tolat's twin sister, which seems to be such a big deal in most other mythologies. There's that rebellion story with him and... the goddess of Mernita, I think? But that's about it.

So yeah... odd guy. And I suspect a lot more complex than what has been let on (but that might just be wishful thinking).

Edited August 16, 2019 by Sir_Godspeed

[Qizilbashwoman]

1 hour ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

There's that rebellion story with him and... the goddess of Mernita, I think

Lesilla, who is the Blue Moon goddess, and therefore also the Blue Streak. The Entekosiad calls her mortal descendant Der Orios, and elsewhere it is said Lesilla incarnated as Cerulia, and it was she who was slain by Lukarius. Her daughter is the Great Sister of the Lunar Way, and allegedly Lukarius was her brother, suggesting that Monsoon might be Lukarius...

In the Entekosiad, Shargash is mentioned only once, I believe: he is called the Red God and it is in the story of how Der Orios appointed Brightface as war leader and he seized absolute rule, and we understand him to be Yelm taking over for the Blue Sun. The Glorious Re-Ascent affirms this, saying Shargash "even enclosed the light of Sedenya, the evil sun-goddess", although Plentonius is writing a bowdlerised and wildly atemporal narrative that says this happened after Shargash fought the Kargzantites and the Vingkotlings and their false sun god, Elmal.

Edited August 16, 2019 by Qizilbashwoman

[Joerg]

2 hours ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

Lesilla, who is the Blue Moon goddess, and therefore also the Blue Streak. The Entekosiad calls her mortal descendant Der Orios, and elsewhere it is said Lesilla incarnated as Cerulia, and it was she who was slain by Lukarius. Her daughter is the Great Sister of the Lunar Way, and allegedly Lukarius was her brother, suggesting that Monsoon might be Lukarius...

Lukarius' wife was Gerra, the last impure child of Old Dara Happa that Herustana took in after tricking Anaxial to eat an almost ripe fruit of the yarm tree that she had made edible by cooking it, thereby releasing him from his unsleeping watch at the helm. Gerra is of course the goddess of martyrdom worshiped at Dezarpovo, the descending pyramid, and the incarnation of the Lunar dying phase, and in a way she is also Gamara, the amputated mother (of horses).

 

2 hours ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

In the Entekosiad, Shargash is mentioned only once, I believe: he is called the Red God and it is in the story of how Der Orios appointed Brightface as war leader and he seized absolute rule, and we understand him to be Yelm taking over for the Blue Sun.

White Goddess, White Sun. The color blue for Annilla's moon is a result of Death entering the world, and her child being dead.

 

[jajagappa]

8 hours ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

"is Tolat Shargash"

Yes, but as with Yu-kargzant and Yelm, the worship by differing groups varies.

8 hours ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

what a Hell Sun is

The God of War.  He is the Red Planet.  He is effectively Yelm's Enforcer.

 

[Qizilbashwoman]

3 hours ago, Joerg said:

Lukarius' wife was Gerra

and in a way she is also Gamara, the amputated mother (of horses)

the Entekosiad is really one of my favorite books. It's got some amazing stories in it, really resonant ones. The one about Gerra is literally one of my favorite, also because the Lunar revelation about her is "I met Arachne Solara and learned that although Life is Suffering, Suffering is not Life."

I missed the connexion with Gamara. The Entekosiad does have an unfinished section that describes her amputated body as the Roof of Manarlavus!

The old Lunar volume II book describes Gerra cultists:

Quote

When Lesilla was slain, she became Gerra, the mournful and tortured Black Moon. She did not abandon the world, even when it abandoned her, and went among the populace to teach them how to endure suffering.

Gerra’s followers can create glamours designed to cause or relieve suffering in the living or dead without them being considered stretches.

Common Strictures of the Gerra subcult include: Never ignore suffering, Obey Dara Happans, never forget what you have lost.

 

Edited August 16, 2019 by Qizilbashwoman

[soltakss]

12 hours ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

What, uh, is the exact status of Shargash the Hell Sun here? He has the Sky-Death-Disorder runes in older works, but I'm not really clear what his... job, I guess, is.

He is the Solar Bully Boy, the Thug, the Muscle, he is Death who slew Umath, he is the Red King, the Green King and the Black King, Lord of the Sky when The Emperor was away, the Earth when he could and the Underworld when he went there. 

[davecake]

On 8/16/2019 at 10:21 PM, Qizilbashwoman said:

the Entekosiad is really one of my favorite books. It's got some amazing stories in it, really resonant ones. The one about Gerra is literally one of my favorite, also because the Lunar revelation about her is "I met Arachne Solara and learned that although Life is Suffering, Suffering is not Life."

Me too. I still have a very vivid  memory of Greg saying “Life is suffering, but suffering is not Life” behind a primary school in Melbourne. 

[PhilHibbs]

On 8/13/2019 at 10:08 AM, Akhôrahil said:

As you can probably tell, I'm leaning strongly towards the Incomplete Modelling interpretation, but we probably can't go all the way there either.

Me too.

Quote

In a few cases, you really can tell what game you're in when you find yourself in Glorantha. What runes does Lhankor Mhy have? If it's Truth and Stasis, you're in RuneQuest, if it's Truth and Law, not-RQ (at least not RQ:G under the current rules).

Nope you lost me there. Regardless of RQ3, RQG, HQ, or 13G, Lhankor Mhy temples will have Truth and Law runes all over them. RQG just uses Stasis because of the simplistic runic model that it uses for human adventurers.

Edited August 25, 2019 by PhilHibbs

[soltakss]

43 minutes ago, PhilHibbs said:

Nope you lost me there. Regardless of RQ3, RQG, HQ, or 13G, Lhankor Mhy temples will have Truth and Law runes all over them. RQG just uses Stasis because of the simplistic runic model that it uses for human adventurers.

RQ2 used Truth and Stasis, RQ3 used Truth and Law, RQG seems to have gone back to RQ2 for this.

Stasis is the accumulation of knowledge for knowledge's sake, the recording of king lists and tribal law, which is a very LM thing. 

Although LM is the Lawspeaker of the Storm Tribe, I have never seen him as being a paragon of Law. Having said that, his knowledge of Sorcery might come from Law, or even from Truth/Knowledge.

[Akhôrahil]

2 hours ago, PhilHibbs said:

Nope you lost me there. Regardless of RQ3, RQG, HQ, or 13G, Lhankor Mhy temples will have Truth and Law runes all over them. RQG just uses Stasis because of the simplistic runic model that it uses for human adventurers.

This is a particularly strong case of "imperfect modelling", then - under this argument Lhankor Mhy in RQG games doesn't really have Stasis and it's only a game construct. The Rules Realist position is the opposite. It does seem somewhat weird that the Stasis rune is actually the rune used and that a high Stasis rune is part of the qualification for certain positions. The Runes are stuff that exist in the world and by any stretch, a PC with a high value for the Status rune on the character sheet really does have a high Stasis rune in the game world (instead of having a strong Law rune that is merely dubiously modeled as a Stasis rune).

Edited August 25, 2019 by Akhôrahil

[Jeff]

2 hours ago, PhilHibbs said:

Me too.

Nope you lost me there. Regardless of RQ3, RQG, HQ, or 13G, Lhankor Mhy temples will have Truth and Law runes all over them. RQG just uses Stasis because of the simplistic runic model that it uses for human adventurers.

I'm afraid that it is the reverse. LM had Law in HQ because we pulled sorcery off the Law Rune under the HQ rules. Since we don't do that in RQG, LM can return to being Truth and Stasis. 

[Akhôrahil]

28 minutes ago, Jeff said:

I'm afraid that it is the reverse. LM had Law in HQ because we pulled sorcery off the Law Rune under the HQ rules. Since we don't do that in RQG, LM can return to being Truth and Stasis. 

Is this the first major retcon against what the Guide says?

(I don't have a horse in this race, but I would have thought that Stasis would just be a placeholder until either the GM Guide or the subject of this thread reintroduced the Law rune into the game. I'm fine either way, though. And glad to have it clarified early!)

Edited August 25, 2019 by Akhôrahil

[Jeff]

18 minutes ago, Akhôrahil said:

Is this the first major retcon against what the Guide says?

(I don't have a horse in this race, but I would have thought that Stasis would just be a placeholder until either the GM Guide or the subject of this thread reintroduced the Law rune into the game. I'm fine either way, though. And glad to have it clarified early!)

That's not exactly a major retcon - if it even is.. At the time I was writing the Guide the rules system I was working with was HQ, so the Guide runes matched HQ. Now we are using RQ, so some of the runes can align a little different.

[AndreJarosch]

Stasis and Law are not thaaaat different. 

[Shiningbrow]

So, you can't be a good little Orlanthi *and* Lhankor Mhy.... 

 

[Joerg]

Just now, Shiningbrow said:

So, you can't be a good little Orlanthi *and* Lhankor Mhy.... 

 

No problem there. You don't have to approach either via Change/Mobility or Stasis, there is Storm for Orlanth, and Truth for LM, and you can be strong in both.

Apparently, not even great Lhankor Mhy himself can clearly say whether his father is Acos or the Cosmic Mountain.