#Ernalda

[petterwass]

Runequest really said that Trans women are women and can join exclusively female priesthoods as long as they are bred first

(Priestesses of Ernalda must have born a healthy child to assume office)

So you know what to do...

[lyreofsheliak]

King of Dragon Pass heroquests: Uralda's Blessing.

[vintagerpg]

There is nothing “beginner” about The Smoking Ruin & Other Tales (2020). This book offers, the sort of BIG adventures I associate with classic RuneQuest. That isn’t to say they all shake the earth, but rather that they make you feel connected to a larger, more mysterious tapestry of existence, even if you are just poking around a cave or helping some traders. Much of that comes, in play, from preparation, so be prepared to prepare here.

The scenarios all involve the South Wilds of Sartar, a largely unsettled region now in flux as various parties take interest in it. The adventures act as a sort of playable sourcebook — by the end, players will feel like this is their backyard. The source material supports three adventures. The titular one is the longest and most elaborate, involving some important facets of Glorantha’s history (the initial goal is to find a lost temple that was the site of the wedding between the storm god Orlanth and the earth goddess Ernalda) but also gives the players the chance to right a long uncorrected wrong. The climax is a tricky one, requiring players to decide where they stand on a sensitive issue, with time, lives and the fulfillment of their initial quest all on the line. I think this quandary, which hearkens to a long-established theme in Glorantha of the self vs. the collective is super interesting and makes for an unusually emotional ending. On the other hand, I think it pulls against a lot of player expectation and might leave folks at the table feeling raw.

The other two adventures are equally great and probably less divisive. One involves rooting out raiders and saving one of the most otherworldly-seeming mages I’ve encountered in a long while — it also gives players a taste of HeroQuesting. The other is an unusual scenario in which they help elves establish a sanctuary, and it requires the characters return every season to defend it. This is such a unique premise, I’ll gladly forgive it for being so combat-heavy.

[eleemosynecdoche]

If Ernalda priestesses control all the land in human cultivation, why do they lack political power? I'm trying mightily to come up with an answer that isn't "because they have girl cooties". Can anyone help?

[petrifact]

Write Your First Adventure Lesson 3: The Call to Adventure

This lesson was all about expanding on the initial idea, and the associated activity was to describe (in as much or as little detail as you wanted) at least one person suggested by the idea (and who might be a character in the adventure), and at least one place suggested by the idea. Optionally, participants could also write down other elements that might be suggested by the idea, like monsters & elder races, temples & cults, etc. So here's what I wrote:

People suggested by the idea:

Well, there's the cult leader, of course, and the magician who provides the spirit. (Also the spirit itself, if that counts as a character. Ooh, maybe it's a spirit of a now-extinct type of Beast Person…) But let's see what other wild card characters there could be. Like, for instance…

A Trickster, a cultist of Eurmal. He's going along with the cult for sheer mischief factor, and could be another thorn in the PCs' sides… but if the PCs can convince him that the cult is truly harmful, they might actually be able to make him into a useful ally.

Oh, hey, also if the spirit is the ghost of an ancient Beast Person perhaps other Beast People have been attracted to the cult… that could be interesting…

Also, perhaps one of the cult members has become a zealot who, without the sanction of the cult leader, has taken his or her own initiative to murder those who seem to be enemies of the cult… hmm… (I had been thinking about the cult leader ordering murders of those who try to leave the cult, but it actually may be more interesting if they're being committed without the cult leader's blessing…)

A Place:

The cult temple, of course. But where is it located? Hm… I'll take a look at a map of Sartar and see if there are any communities that look potentially interesting but haven't been developed much.

Hm… the maps in the Starter Set show a town called Ten Spear conveniently far from any major roads but close to the Colymar tribal lands. (Technically it looks like it's in Lismelder territory, but eh, there can be reasons for PCs to go there.) Plus it's near the Upland Marsh, which gives an opportunity for a chaos attack event to spice things up (and give a chance for the PCs to fight some zombies or other undead, since otherwise this adventure is looking like it's going to be very heavy on the social end and light on combat). So okay. The cult temple is in Ten Spears.

For another location, maaaaaybe in the climax of the adventure the PCs actually venture into the Spirit World? Or maybe not; that might be a bit hard to pull off.

Other:

So naturally some of the local cults may not be happy about this new upstart cult in town, and may give aid to the PCs investigating it. This being in Colymar territory, there's bound to be at least a minor temple of Orlanth in Ten Spears, and maybe one to Ernalda as well (though that's likely folded into the Orlanthi temple). Also maybe a shrine to Storm Bull and/or Humakt could make sense.

[gefdreamsofthesea]

Some idiot clan member: we should stop sacrificing to dead gods they're draining our resources

Me, clutching my shrine to Ernalda like a plushie: no

[das-coven]

Esrolia, les prêtresses d’Ernalda

Ernalda est la Déesse Reine de la Terre, la déesse du sexe, des femmes, de l'agriculture, de la maternité et de la société. Son culte est extrêmement influent dans tous les pays Orlanthi, mais son centre culturel principal est en Esrolia. En conséquence, les prêtresses Ernalda d’Esrolia sont le modèle à suivre.

Cette prêtresse porte un corsage vert serré ouvert sous son nombril pour révéler ses seins. Les ourlets du corsage sont brodés selon des motifs géométriques combinant les runes de la Terre, de la Vie et de la Fertilité.

Elle porte une jupe plissée à volants et elle porte autour du cou un collier d'émeraudes. Elle porte des bracelets ornés de pierres précieuses.

Ses longs cheveux noirs ont été richement tressés et sont maintenus en place avec un bandeau décoré de perles. Elle porte des boucles d'oreilles en or et ses yeux sont maquillés de khôl et ses lèvres sont également maquillées de rouge. Elle pourrait porter un poignard en cuivre, utilisé pour effectuer des sacrifices d'animaux.

Cette prêtresse est nus pieds pour pouvoir entrer en contact direct avec la Terre.

Cette représentation trouve sont inspiration dans les images des femmes de Cnossos (culture minoenne)

[commander-ledi]

our team was invited by orlanth to some feast, and like my character was quiet for a bit, and then he just blurted out "hey orlanth. i have seen your dick." everyone knew exactly what he was talking about. orlanth was little embarrassed and stammered something about being young and stupid back then, and everyone else laughed. ernalda laughed so hard that she was probably struggling at staying in her chair.

basically as part of some hero quest our team ran into completely naked orlanth swinging humakt's sword around

[republictrooper]

Got into King of Dragon’s Pass cuz of some twitter buzz that’s been going around, and I like it. Figuring out who to put on my ring has been hard, but in an almost hilarious way? To the point it’s almost my favorite part of the game.

Like, trying to balance it out on who has skills at first seemed ok, but I would constantly get people saying like, hey, we need more varied worshippers of Gods on the team. Even if all my people were knowledgeable, I couldn’t use my magic well or get varied outlooks on events and stuff. 

So I started trying to switch more people in based less on skills and more on what gods I needed to fill out the ring.

So after my one Uralda worshipper died doing the Uralda Heroquest (I should have known she was getting too old, but my cows were hurting dangit), my only other Uralda worshipper was a young early-20s lady. I put her on the clan ring, but despite having excellent Animals and decent leadership she was a complete dud. She only gave general random jrpg town npc “People die if they are killed” type information, and when dragonnewts showed up on our land, she actively BEGGED to be taken off the ring because she didn’t want to deal with that. So I figured I’d be nice and do it, but she’s literally my ONLY Uralda worshipper. So I take her off and replace her with an Ernalda worshipper with decent animal skills as a hopefully adequate replacement. BUT I start seeing the downsides immediately. To start, I cant put as much magic into keeping my eternally on the brink of failing cattle herds alive. I can kind of keep them off the brink by trading with other tribes or asking for favors of cattle, but I generally seem to lose cattle every sacred time for a couple years. Then, I have some group of priestesses of Uralda come to my tribe and tell me I’m failing to respect her properly and my cattle will suffer if I do. So I end up spending tons of Goods to sacrifice to her AND putting my Uralda lady back on the tribe. 

So, Poor Uralda continues to not only give very basic info, but pretty much blames herself for everything that goes bad for the tribe because she thinks she gave bad info, and asks to be taken off the ring once again for a few things. I feel bad for her, but Uralda REALLY wants her on that ring, and I’ve already lost the game due to losing all my cattle once, so I’m not taking the risk again. She seems to finally be growing into the role a bit more since then, so I’m hopeful either she’ll blossom in her 30s, or I’ll get another Uralda worshipper so I can rotate the poor dear out and let her be a nice standard carl again.

Eurmal was the other one, if only because my trickster kept actually doing trickster stuff to other tribes and they kept demanding repayment, so I’d repay and take my trickster off the ring as punishment, only to have the other ring members talk about how much the ring could use a trickster, either for scapegoating or more Heroquest power. Finally that trickster died and I was without a trickster period for a few years, until a 20 year old lady worshipping Eurmal appeared in my list of ring members. I’ve put her on the ring because it could use more ladies and it’ll get the others to pipe down about needing a trickster, but she’s still way too young to give decent advice. Then again, I found the tricksters rarely did to begin with, so there’s that. And she hasn’t done anything as flagrantly horrible as the last trickster - yet. And regardless, my ring keeps telling me I NEED to do hero quests, so I need her for the extra point of magic in questing, if nothing else.

But the warriors, the Humakt fighters, those dudes have been really amazing. 

First of all, they’re pretty much always fixated on war. Singlemindedly so. They always want you to max out war points and keep reserve magic to use while raiding. If you’re hanging on your main clan page, they want to raid. If you want to send out diplomats or traders, they say you’d get more loot from raiding. 9 time out of 10 if there’s a war-related problem, they want to send warriors or start a duel (On the other hand, if they say it's not a good idea to fight, it's at least a good sign you’ll lose).

And I definitely tend to go through my Humakt fighters the quickest. My first one inexplicably went berserk while defending the tribe from some Horse Nomads and got killed. My 2nd decided we were getting too soft, and murdered a bunch of nobles from a neighboring tribe to try to start a war, so I had to Outlaw her to appease them. The 3rd died in a duel to a duck (which he demanded I let him do). I HAD told them first blood only, in my defense, but the duck just killed him outright. The 4th finally seems like he might die or old age, but only because I did a lot of work to keep him safe and sated, including wounding a couple of my healer ring members keeping him safe when he got reckless in battle. Hopefully he doesn’t feel too bitter about dying in bed.

On the plus side, my main Ernalda lady has been absolutely amazing. She’s let me know exactly how many hunters to keep around, can usually tell if Bandits will be a problem on the roads for trading and diplomacy, can sniff out decent deals on cattle, almost always give the best advice on quests (Except that one time she wanted to parlay with a spirit and it turned out to be an evil spirit that sapped her strength), and eventually became my queen. Now if she could stay alive for 10 years and/or until I finally get a person who can defeat the Orlanth and Aroka heroquest, I’ll be in great shape. She did almost die once after being cursed by a dress that may have been sent by a rival tribe, but she survived it after I sacrificed to the healer goddess, and now she’s in her early 40s and pretty healthy, so I’m pretty confident I can win the short game with her.

Anyway, if you haven’t played it already, King of Dragon Pass is pretty alright, overall.

[tajuk-masygul]

The three lines of harmony in orlanthi runes script Overview : The Orlanthi exist in bronze age or early iron aged mixed agrarian pastoralists, one of the most popular player culture. The Orlanthi tattoo himself with symbol of magical marking (see picture above) on every parts of their body to describe their status, clan, religion. their worship a phanteon of gods headed by orlanth the storm, king and ernalda ( As the mother earth ) Source : Wiki and pendulum books

[lyreofsheliak]

King of Dragon Pass heroquests: The Making of the Storm Tribe

[eleemosynecdoche]

"as we all know, ernalda is a perv who inflates the tits of her worshipers, unlike sacred dendara, who prefers caking them up in a chaste fashion"

-Exclusive communique received from an anonymous source within the Lunar Empire with locks of flaming red hair and nails that are always trimmed perfectly

[gefdreamsofthesea]

Not to disagree with the creator of Glorantha but personally I feel like Nandan makes more sense as a trans man than a trans woman (apparently Nandan was updated in recent texts as a goddess and not a god) for these reasons:

1) in traditional Orlanthi society, men initiate into Orlanth's cult and women into Ernalda's cult

1a) exception: women can initiate into Vinga's cult and do everything as if they were part of Orlanth's cult

1b) Vinga is seen as both Orlanth's daughter but also as girl!Orlanth

2) You can only gain access to the Ernaldan priesthood by giving birth, people who are not women can obviously do this

3) If 1b is true for Orlanth then Nandan could easily be seen as boy!Ernalda

3) Outsiders often see Ernalda's cult as "that cult where boys do girly things" which would make perfect sense if the cult accepts trans men (note: there is thing that your role in society is part of your gender)

4) Accepting that Nandan is the masculine counterpart of Vinga makes way more sense than Nandan being a trans woman

5) Alternatively just scrap the "must give birth" requirement, keep everything else as is

6) There is apparently a thing where Nandan can make you pregnant even if you don't have the parts. No I don't know how it works, it's some god thing.

[das-coven]

Un tour en Esrolia

Un tour en Esrolia

Esrolia est l’un des Sixièmes (ou Sixtes) qui composent le Pays Saint, et c’est de loin le pays le plus prospère et le plus influent.

(more…)

[lyreofsheliak]

King of Dragon Pass: the Lightbringers' Quest

[lyreofsheliak]

King of Dragon Pass: victory sequence.