Glorantha: Beginners Guide?

[metcalph]

There's a simple explanation for eating souls.  Just say the torments send the victims to the ultimate stage of the Lunar afterlife but that very few people  believe this.

[Sir_Godspeed]

7 minutes ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

to be fair she was pretty angry at her original divine form being sent to the Hells as a demon bat for "betraying" Yelm to the Rebel Gods, when in fact Yelm usurped her role as the Blue Sun in the Green Age and killed her and then enslaved all the women of Dara Happa...

 

Allegedly.

[Qizilbashwoman]

5 minutes ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

Allegedly.

I mean

Prince Lukarius shot the Blue Sun down in Yelmite theology, and in the Darsenite account of the Green Age, the Moon's rule was usurped by Brightface, who the Queen had appointed war chieftain. When hostile theologies agree... I'm inclined to at least listen to what they're saying.

Then we find the Moon appearing in a million demonised forms: a bat, a crone, a monster, etc.

Edited August 10, 2019 by Qizilbashwoman

[Runeblogger]

7 hours ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

to be fair she was pretty angry at her original divine form being sent to the Hells as a demon bat for "betraying" Yelm to the Rebel Gods, when in fact Yelm usurped her role as the Blue Sun in the Green Age and killed her and then enslaved all the women of Dara Happa...

...but your point about Chaos eating souls still stands.

Going a bit back to the OP, where can one read this myth?

[Joerg]

38 minutes ago, Runeblogger said:

Going a bit back to the OP, where can one read this myth?

Sedenya taking the shape of a bat - that's new to me. A nice idea, though. as far as I know, Annilla is allied with the bat goddess of the Blue Moon plateau, but it is a separate entity.

Jar-eel's Liberation quest for Beat-Pot shows Verithurusa and Artia (or whatever name the Bat would have in her cultural context) as separate entities. It also shows Tolat's involvement in the rebellion. (Somehow no Dara Happan finds the moral fortitude to point out Shargash's involvement... other than claiming Yelm's greater purpose for Shargash the Destroyer in the Greater Darkness. But if Yelm's destruction was a cosmological necessity like the subsequent destruction of the world by Shargash, why blame the other sword rebel?)

Most of that Blue Moon stuff has only been published in Drastic: Darkness, which used much of Greg's material available at the time, but wasn't official. Still, the troll-bats were MGF created by Greg, and used in a memorable improvised Hero Wars scenario that is among my most treasured Glorantha memories.

Blue Sun of the Green Age: another interpretation not really funded in published material. There was a White Sun prior to Brightface's usurpation, mentioned (very much in passing) in the Entekosiad which then turns to the Naveria story rather than exploring this bit further. I am convinced that the White Sun followed a Day-Night cycle, not necessarily by traversing the Sun Path though.

Verithurus being sent to Hell in the invasion of Umath is recorded in the Copper Tablets in the Guide and the Orlanthi take on that story in Heortling Mythology. The latest edition of Glorious ReAscent of Yelm has another slightly different take on that.

What happened to Verithurusa after Umath had been sent to Hell is undocumented, although The Lives of Sedenya suggests she met him there and had a child from that encounter that turned her red (as the event did to her brother Alkor). Verithurus re-appears as Guardian of Mernita with Blue Lesilla as his provider (i.e. wife) under Anaxial, putting both the Red and the Blue Moon into a single package.

Brightface's new order did remove women from all positions of power over men. Calling this a specific enslavement of just the women is a feminist point of view - he "enslaved" the entire world, including the Earth Walkers, and would have claimed the new-born Storm as well if Umath hadn't disrupted his perfect moment in time by dislocating the heavens frozen in eternal day.

 

[Sir_Godspeed]

The overall point is that this is a scenario (or scenarios, depending) that we have built from several different sources, and pretty esoteric ones at that. It's something that's really cool to find out once you dig into the material, but I'm not sure if it can be presented to newcomers as "this is what happened".

[g33k]

On 8/9/2019 at 3:51 AM, HeartQuintessence said:

But as I re read my RQ:Glorantha book. I ask myself, is hero quesand invitation going to be in another book? And  do the Eleven Lights stuff from Hero quest is that compatable? 

CS/11L are HQ books, a different game system.  It isn't "compatible" in a mechanical sense, but hacking on rules is a grand old to tradition, and I've seen more than one proposal that the HQG rules just be yoinked over to RQG to offer a "feels special, mechanically" mechanism for running heroquests in RQG.

I also know that more than one campaign is just building the RQG character sheets for all the CS/11L NPC's & other RQ-mechanical bits, and running those campaigns as RQG campaigns.

That said... yes there _IS_ a RQG Campaign/GM book coming, reportedly containing "native" heroquesting rules for RQG.  No ETA is announced.

[HeartQuintessence]

Thank you, And hopefully when that book comes out, along with the Gods & Goddess book, it will be better, and I shall by all of them!.

[g33k]

14 hours ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

to be fair she was pretty angry at her original divine form being sent to the Hells as a demon bat for "betraying" Yelm to the Rebel Gods, when in fact Yelm usurped her role as the Blue Sun in the Green Age and killed her and then enslaved all the women of Dara Happa...

...but your point about Chaos eating souls still stands.

Yeah, there's that other element of the Lunars that's really appealing for players... it has some really interesting, dynamic, female-centric myths and archetypes that are VERY different from the Orlanthi way.

I mean, sure... Vinga, yeah.  Gives Glorantha that whole Title IX (*) experience, eh?  Is she a bit of a Red-Headed Stepchild though, a "Diversity Hire"?  The "female Orlanth" dutifully trotted out to "disprove" Orlanthi sexism (because in SO many ways he is SUCH an asshole "bro" ) but ultimately... unconvincing?

And while Ernalda fulfills a needful archetype, there's more than a little bit of stereotyping and passivity there.  Earth Tribe has pretty much lost their identity in the "marriage" to Storm Tribe; look at the Language Trees on RQG p.172 (iirc) with a mighty tree for the Solars, a mighty tree for the Storm... and Ernalda, stuck off in a corner and j-u-s-t managing to influence one branch of Storm's language-tree.  Ernalda doesn't have her own Tree.  Ernalda.  Taste the irony (or I guess the coppery).

There's Babeester Gor, but she's a bit one-dimensionally Axe-y.  I guess you could say Maran Gor has a bit more depth to her.

But the Lunar Way has a depth and a richness and complexity that I just don't see the essentially masculine-POV Vingkotling descendants offering to a female perspective.

YGMV

 

 

(*) for non-USAians, "Title IX" is the amendment to our education code that requires girls to have the same sports/athletic opportunities that boys have.

[Qizilbashwoman]

58 minutes ago, g33k said:

But the Lunar Way has a depth and a richness and complexity that I just don't see the essentially masculine-POV Vingkotling descendants offering to a female perspective.

*  Outside Esrolia, who are (ex)-Vingkotlings - all their adult men died so they made a new people. However, Esrolian society also lacks gendered depth. Esrolia said "fuck men and their dumb ideas", but maintained a rejiggered division of genders. They created a new matrilineal and matriarchal society, but they made a deal with the Only Old One, "Kimantor", the son of Argan Argar and Esrola, to take the place of the male Vingkotling as the king of the Esrolings.

Basically, the Esrolian women replaced the ritual role of Orlanth's Air rune with the Darkness rune. Kimantor and his armies of Kitori (human and parahuman) and trolls replaced the missing Vingkotling men to raise the first generation of Esrolian men and train their warriors. If I remember correctly, the Esrolian military descended from this tradition are still called Kimantorings. Uz still live in Esrolia and its cities and rather than Issaries, the trade god of Esrolia is Argan Argar.

This means that despite the rejection of Orlanth, the Esrolians at heart still only have warrior women like more orthodox Orlanthi do - Maran Gorites and other Earth Avengers - and men remain the warriors even if they are no longer the chieftains.

58 minutes ago, g33k said:

(*) for non-USAians, "Title IX" is the amendment to our education code that requires girls to have the same sports/athletic opportunities that boys have.

when they bother to enforce it, we should clarify

Edited August 10, 2019 by Qizilbashwoman

[jajagappa]

29 minutes ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

Basically, the Esrolian women replaced the ritual role of Orlanth's Air rune with the Darkness rune. Kimantor and his armies of Kitori (human and parahuman) and trolls replaced the missing Vingkotling men to raise the first generation of Esrolian men and train their warriors. If I remember correctly, the Esrolian military descended from this tradition are still called Kimantorings. Uz still live in Esrolia and its cities and rather than Issaries, the trade god of Esrolia is Argan Argar.

Esrolians are a largely Orlanthi/Heortling culture. Yes, the Grandmothers generally rule, and yes, a majority of clans follow matrilineal patterns, but ALL the husband-protectors are there, and Orlanth the most common. The "military" that goes off to fight outside the cities is collectively referred to as the Kimantorings, but those include the Noble Brothers, the Axe Maidens, etc.

Issaries is the god of trade - the Great Market of Nochet is his greatest temple in all Glorantha. Argan Argar is certainly present as well and there is regular trade with the uz, both those that reside in Esrolian cities (about 3k in Nochet out of 100k+, and concentrated in the Dark Warrens) and with the Shadow Plateau.

36 minutes ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

still only have warrior women like more orthodox Orlanthi do - Maran Gorites and other Earth Avengers - and men remain the warriors even if they are no longer the chieftains

Much like with the uz, the men are expendable.

[Joerg]

37 minutes ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

*  Outside Esrolia, who are (ex)-Vingkotlings - all their adult men died so they made a new people.

After most of them died on a martial adventure of their last king, the grandmothers and his wife made sure that he and his remaining comrades died, too. While Rastagar was anything but a good husband, this act accelerated the victory of Chaos.

37 minutes ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

However, Esrolian society also lacks gendered depth. Esrolia said "fuck men and their dumb ideas", but maintained a rejiggered division of genders. They created a new matrilineal and matriarchal society, but they made a deal with the Only Old One, "Kimantor", the son of Argan Argar and Esrola, to take the place of the male Vingkotling as the king of the Esrolings.

There are parts of Esrolia that got "adjusted" as the Hendriking kingdom was fastest to recover from the fall of the God Learners and the EWF, forcing a more patriarchal system on significant portions of Esrolia. The Grandmothers countered this, and regained some of the lost ground, but not all of it. Plus this weakened southern Esrolia to the extent that another group of patriarchal reformers, from Caladraland, established another much less matriarchal region known as Porthomeka.

In short, Esrolia is home to many variations of gender domination. Few of them healthy, none of them fully egalitarian, most of them somewhat functional and often problematic to modern sensibilities. (But that goes for the rest of Glorantha as well, only usually with stronger patriarchal domination. Holay may be a more pleasant environment.)

 

37 minutes ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

Basically, the Esrolian women replaced the ritual role of Orlanth's Air rune with the Darkness rune. Kimantor and his armies of Kitori (human and parahuman) and trolls replaced the missing Vingkotling men to raise the first generation of Esrolian men and train their warriors. If I remember correctly, the Esrolian military descended from this tradition are still called Kimantorings. Uz still live in Esrolia and its cities and rather than Issaries, the trade god of Esrolia is Argan Argar.

This is over-stating the fact. Kimantor was the main protector of Queen Norinel of Nochet and guided her city halfway through the Greater Darkness before evacuating it into Shadow Plateau. A few other hideouts in and around Esrolia survived the Greater Darkness, too, and the Silver Age and Dawn Age saw an eager expansion.

 

37 minutes ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

This means that despite the rejection of Orlanth, the Esrolians at heart still only have warrior women like more orthodox Orlanthi do - Maran Gorites and other Earth Avengers - and men remain the warriors even if they are no longer the chieftains.

when they bother to enforce it, we should clarify

Orlanth does remain the most important husband of Ernalda, and the most worry-some. Many others are known, by ancient and by modern names.

[scott-martin]

1 hour ago, jajagappa said:

Issaries is the god of trade - the Great Market of Nochet is his greatest temple in all Glorantha. Argan Argar is certainly present as well and there is regular trade with the uz, both those that reside in Esrolian cities (about 3k in Nochet out of 100k+, and concentrated in the Dark Warrens) and with the Shadow Plateau.

To be fair to our cousins in the Chain Gang while we are the current lease holders there are supposedly basements beneath Mother Market where he is represented with tusks, segmented eyes and a braided thread instead of the usual weighing scale. Of course if even if I had the grade to witness such a thing it would be above my grade to discuss in profane circumstances.

[LeadAsbestos]

The last several posts of this topic are exactly why a lot of folks think Glorantha cannot be played w/o encyclopedic knowledge of all the twists and turns. I've been playing in Glorantha for 30+ years, and I've never heard of half of what you are talking about!

[Joerg]

1 hour ago, LeadAsbestos said:

The last several posts of this topic are exactly why a lot of folks think Glorantha cannot be played w/o encyclopedic knowledge of all the twists and turns. I've been playing in Glorantha for 30+ years, and I've never heard of half of what you are talking about!

You don't need to know the story about how Finrod acquired Nargothrond to understand the hints at Beren's quest for Luthien in the Lord of the Rings, and the stuff we discussed above is of similar quality.

While there are surprising hints at these stories in quite old material, I would bet that at least half of the names and facts we were discussing about Nochet and Norinel didn't exist thirty years ago.

Esrolia was presented in the RuneQuest Companion and in the Military History of Dragon Pass in Different Worlds 28, roughly at the same time (1983?). Genertela box added a bit more detail, but boy was I surprised to learn e.g. of the Readjustment wars.

In the past 20 years, there have been a number of very friendly and creative cooperations between networked Glorantha fans to shape areas of Glorantha in terms of gameable background. For an extensive such exploration - mainly by French fans - check out http://kethaela.en.free.fr/

All of that creative work was done without that much official knowledge, and the campaign played by Philippe SIgaud and his friends before that background was epic, and very very Gloranthan. And (as of publication of the Guide) very un-canonical.

 

[jajagappa]

1 hour ago, LeadAsbestos said:

The last several posts of this topic are exactly why a lot of folks think Glorantha cannot be played w/o encyclopedic knowledge of all the twists and turns. I've been playing in Glorantha for 30+ years, and I've never heard of half of what you are talking about!

That's why I always suggest to people who want some freedom to just take some little segment and run with it. I had about two or three lines in Griffin Mountain that I used to develop my Imther campaign (plus some bits about the Lunar Empire and Jannisor and Hwarin the Conquering Daughter). You don't need esoteric knowledge to create a fun and lasting campaign.

[LeadAsbestos]

2 hours ago, jajagappa said:

That's why I always suggest to people who want some freedom to just take some little segment and run with it. I had about two or three lines in Griffin Mountain that I used to develop my Imther campaign (plus some bits about the Lunar Empire and Jannisor and Hwarin the Conquering Daughter). You don't need esoteric knowledge to create a fun and lasting campaign.

Exactly! I've had a great deal of fun over the years with my games even when the players knew very little about the setting and learned as they went. But I certainly understand how a newbie can become overwhelmed just reading the comments...

Edited August 18, 2019 by LeadAsbestos

[soltakss]

4 hours ago, LeadAsbestos said:

The last several posts of this topic are exactly why a lot of folks think Glorantha cannot be played w/o encyclopedic knowledge of all the twists and turns. I've been playing in Glorantha for 30+ years, and I've never heard of half of what you are talking about!

It happens.

Some people get really deep into Glorantha Lore and know all the minutiae. I used to be one, but then Glorantha became too big, so I stopped trying.

My tip - Ignore the things you don't know about. 

It's like the Lightbringer Quest. Everyone knows about that, Orlanth goes off with his Homies and goes to Hell to bring back the Sun and make everything better again. You can split it up into a number of Stations and most people who are deep into Glorantha know the Stations. But, each Station has Stations of their own, as each Station can be considered to be a HeroQuest by itself. Not everyone knows all the Stations of the Stations of the LBQ. Even worse, each Station of a Station can also be considered a HeroQuest and will have Stations of their own. Now, not many people will know about those. Some of the Stations will only be known by certain clans, bloodlines or HeroQuestors. So, do you really need to know that The Rock Soup was a Station on the Westfaring HeroQuest? No, and very few people will even have heard about it, as it is an Eurnal cult secret. Are you in any way a worse fan of Glorantha because you haven't heard about it? Of course not. Could you run the LBQ without it? Of course you can. 

So, knowing all about Verithurus, Kimantor, Kimantorings, Porthomeka and so on is all very well, but it is by no means essential to knowing about Glorantha. You just know a lot about a little bit of Glorantha.

Some people, however, know an awful lot about certain areas of Glorantha and some know an awful lot about a lot of areas of Glorantha, which is impressive. 

[Lordabdul]

On 8/18/2019 at 10:37 AM, soltakss said:

My tip - Ignore the things you don't know about. 

My (less useful) tip, if you have a whole bunch of RQ/HQ PDFs and Acrobat Pro: make an index and search whatever names are brought up.

It's often illuminating because, for instance, a name might have 1 hit in the Glorantha Sourcebook, demonstrating that book's little problem with gratuitous name-dropping. Other times you get some interesting hits all over the place, and you can see how something is used, in practice, in, say, Sartar Companion or something. And yet other times you mostly get hits in the "scholar" sections of the library (i.e. the "translated" Stafford Library books), in which case I often ignore it as "only for the advanced Gloranthaphiles".

It's still fun to do most of the times. For instance, @Joerg just mentioned Annilla, which I don't know at all, and I find this bit in GtG1 (p.97) where she's responsible (at least according to the Uz) for the ocean tides of Glorantha. That's kind of cool. You can drop that in an NPC dialogue in a game.

[Joerg]

2 hours ago, lordabdul said:

My (less useful) tip, if you have a whole bunch of RQ/HQ PDFs and Acrobat Pro: make an index and search whatever names are brought up.

The blessings of modern times... I started my Glorantha index by typing on my trusty Atari ST. Using an ASCII editor.

The Glorantha Wikia gives at least some of the sources where a name occurs. And if you come across a name you cannot find there (which may just be because of the version you have encountered might be spelled slightly differenty from the one used in the Wikia) just ask here. In case of doubt, invoke that @Joerg rune, or send me a message.

Any eldrich side effects are the fault of the summoner, though. (See below...)

2 hours ago, lordabdul said:

It's still fun to do most of the times. For instance, @Joerg just mentioned Annilla, which I don't know at all, and I find this bit in GtG1 (p.97) where she's responsible (at least according to the Uz) for the ocean tides of Glorantha. That's kind of cool. You can drop that in an NPC dialogue in a game.

Annilla's is one of the coolest cults in RQ3 Glorantha, and was published in the Troll Gods box. Goddess of secrets, and lots of name and myth dropping in that text.

Trolls (especially those of the Blue Moon Plateau) worship her. If there is a Mistress of the Tides or a temple to the Tides, that's Annilla, too. Under the name of Veldara, she is the ancestress of all the Veldang, or Artmali. With husbands like Lorian (aka Sky River Titan) and the ancestor of the Elder Giants, she is well connected.

The Sea Tides of Glorantha are one of the weirdest feature of the setting. The waters are attracted to the body of the Blue Moon, which ascends on the outside of the Sky Dome from the bottom of the World in the course of one to six days, not quite predictably, but on average twice a week. When the Blue Moon reaches the top of the Sky Dome (Pole Star's Gate), it plummets down into (and through) Magasta's Pool into the deepest underworld, to ascend again. The seas likewise drop in a matter of an hour, and as the result powerful tidal currents rush out of coastal waters and estuaries into the sea. Catching such a tidal start on a prepared ship may shorten a sea voyage by a day or two.

I assume that the Blue Moon uses the course of the Celestial River for its rise, similar to the Boat Planet, but invisible to the world. Her plunge downwards is her following her husband, who was the first to heed Magasta's call for aid against the Chaos Rift.

Do you have to know all this to play in the setting? No. You should learn about this when preparing a naval episode, though.

As mentioned above, and as usual, don't hesitate to ask about anything that appears to be weird or just without any apparent context. Sometimes we'll share your bafflement, at most other times you may be swamped by stuff that may be irrelevant to your question. At times, a new weirdness may come up, and possibly make some unexpected sense.

[Lordabdul]

4 hours ago, Joerg said:

Annilla's is one of the coolest cults in RQ3 Glorantha, and was published in the Troll Gods box.

Wooohoo you're citing your references now?   (I'm teasing but I guess most of the time you must be reciting from memory, which is why you don't mention the sources? It's super useful when you do mention them though!)

Now that I'm looking into this a bit more, I realise that the many suns of Glorantha don't have the monopoly on confusing multitudes... So for instance, there's also a whole bunch of moon goddesses. The "blue moon" is just one aspect of the moon in general -- we mostly know the moon as "Sedenya" just because that's how she was reborn in Time and that's how the Lunars call her now (mainly), but she had a whole bunch of names and faces before that. Ok, sure. But strangely enough, GtG (p648) doesn't list "Lesilla" as a name for the blue moon, even though that's the name GS (p147) uses when they talk about that time Dara Happan Emperor Lukarius shot her down from the sky and she crashed onto her own city of Mernita (he was pissed that they were worshipping something else than the proper sun god... that's how the Blue Moon Plateau was formed). The Dara Happans then figured the place was inhabited by the "demon" Annilla (GtG p346) so I guess everything is a matter of perspective... but from GtG (p674) it seems that, when Mernita was a thing, Lesilla/Annilla was called Verithurusa, and is more described like some kind of land goddess? (in GtG p95 she is "lord of the North"). And to add more confusion, Verithurusa is listed as one of the 7 moon goddesses of the Lunars, which also lists Lesilla. Is it me or does it look like the Lunars effectively appropriated a bunch of goddesses from previous cultures, declared those goddesses as different faces of the same moon goddess, and that's how they got more people to join their ranks? But wouldn't that have been a problem since Lesilla/Anilla/Verithurusa worshippers and Dara Happan people hate each other? Yet they must have fought together against the Carmelians, unless my timeline is wrong? (maybe the Lunars are just that good at negotiation?)

4 hours ago, Joerg said:

Do you have to know all this to play in the setting? No. You should learn about this when preparing a naval episode, though.

That's very true.... in this case. I think I mentioned this in the past but I would love a list of "N Things Your Players Absolutely Need To Know About Glorantha". Like, for instance, you need to know that there's a 10 km high needle of a mountain to the west, or that there's a red moon to the north-west that's just hanging, fixed, in the sky, all the time... it will be a lot harder to tell the players about it on game session #12, because they might object about not having known such an "obvious" thing before.

Edited August 20, 2019 by lordabdul

[Qizilbashwoman]

2 hours ago, lordabdul said:

But wouldn't that have been a problem since Lesilla/Anilla/Verithurusa worshippers and Dara Happan people hate each other?

this is ... sort of oversimplifying things. the Darsenians are a pretty small Pelandran matriarchal society living in a very distant region and their wealthy and more powerful riverside kinfolk share their culture but are patriarchal. Some of their religious practices were expropriated by the Dara Happans before the Dawn and there's been 1600 years of adaptation and change. In that time, there's obviously been a lot of cultural adjustment.

They're much more likely to side with the Dara Happans against the Carmanians, who are Malkioni weirdos who share literally nothing with them.

[Lordabdul]

44 minutes ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

the Darsenians are a pretty small Pelandran matriarchal society living in a very distant region

Are you talking about the Darsenites? (they're nowhere near the Blue Moon plateau, I'm not sure what they have to do with anything). I can't see anything about "Darsenians" otherwise.

Either way, sure, there was some time between the two events, but it's probably hard to forget when those people dropped a whole planet onto your ancestors. I guess it depends on whether the political/religious leaders at any given time want to actually use that or not to gain or consolidate power. I guess the Carmanians were a bigger threat and so there was not point in bringing up old bad blood.

 

Edited August 20, 2019 by lordabdul

[Joerg]

1 hour ago, lordabdul said:

Wooohoo you're citing your references now?  

Yes, and that's a good indication I should move this away from the thread titled "Beginner's Guide". Well past high time, really.

Which I did, except for this tailing end which is extremely on-topic here:

1 hour ago, lordabdul said:

 I think I mentioned this in the past but I would love a list of "N Things Your Players Absolutely Need To Know About Glorantha".

Not sure about such a list. Part of the fun of Glorantha is to pull out something jaw-dropping quite matter-of-factly, as something the characters already knew and are well aware of-

1 hour ago, lordabdul said:

Like, for instance, you need to know that there's a 10 km high needle of a mountain to the west,

Used to be 30,000 meters high, but then meters were shrunk to feet. Not that measures above 5 km height are reproducible, as the Middle Air plays already by Outer World rules.

1 hour ago, lordabdul said:

or that there's a red moon to the north-west that's just hanging, fixed, in the sky, all the time...

That, and its weekly cycle, is an absolute must. The weird path of the sun (effectively direct overhead, come summer or winter), variations of day length etc. aren't that important.

1 hour ago, lordabdul said:

it will be a lot harder to tell the players about it on game session #12, because they might object about not having known such an "obvious" thing before.

There are a lot of things that are self-evident for Gloranthans which will come as Green Age realisation moments to the players and the GM. Maybe it is easier just to warn the players and the GM that such revelations may happen as they continue to explore the world.

How Time works is an important underpinning of how Glorantha works, but honestly - how many people have made sense of the Cults of Prax statements about cyclical God Time at their first, or even at their twentieth reading of that text? It is one of those messages which are delivered but not realized. The important message is: Everything that once happened in myth happens right now in the hero planes, and can be visited by heroquesting, and will be happening there forever unless someone interferes with things men are not supposed to interfere with, like the God Learners once did large scale.

There should be an elevator pitch of obvious Gloranthan awesomeness, and yes, Kero Fin (or Top of the World) probably turns up in "also running". "The earth is flat/a cube swimming in a bubble of reality inside a chaotic void" is a typical but in the end quite meaningless part of the elevator pitch. It does bring home that Glorantha isn't the rea world Earth, but that's as far as it goes during the first impressions. (Questions about turtles and elephants may come up at this stage...)

 

[Sir_Godspeed]

9 hours ago, lordabdul said:

Is it me or does it look like the Lunars effectively appropriated a bunch of goddesses from previous cultures, declared those goddesses as different faces of the same moon goddess, and that's how they got more people to join their ranks?

That is very much a contention against the Lunars, I believe, where the disagreement is over whether Sedenya is the reincarnation/restitution of numerous iterations of THE moon goddess, or whether she is - to be blunt about it - a Frankenstein's monster of a stitched-together deity.