Peter mentions Arkat summoning Silver Age heroes from Caladraland and Esrolia. Does this mean that Arkat visited the Vent and Necropolis in Esrolia (which is one place where Vogarth did something)? Wouldn't he have summoned Heort on Arrowtop Mountain (cf Lawstaff Quest)?
> I think by summoning
> heroes, Arkat is dependant on the _local_ mythic geography rather
> than using the heroes of a culture.
Yes. And why couldn't this have been outside of the modern, restricted territory of Heortland? The Dragonkill War surely changed not just the mundane but also the mythic geography a lot...
>>If you ask Shannon Appel, Heortland was a Chaos Waste prior to
>>Hendriki settlement
> Prax is a Chaos Waste yet people live there.
No Orlanthi people, though.
IMO most of modern Heortland was moderately to heavily forested prior to increased Hendriki occupation.
> I'm even of the opinion that the People of God Forgot were Orlanthi
Most of them, yes. Probably one of the Vingkotling Star Tribes.
> whose demigod founder disappeared when the Print erupted.
Do you mean the volcanic eruption (Lodril's spear thrust into Krarsht)? Or a later chaos eruption?
If the first, this is somewhat problematic, since the entire Footprint myth seems to predate the Lesser Darkness (or at least takes place in its initial phase).
> They then fled to the valley of
> Refuge and from there colonized the Isles with their enforced Atheism.
Add in the Ingareen founders of the Silver Age survivor nation, and I'm happy with this history.
Peter and I argue about the influence the God Learner centres of Lylket and Locsil could have had over Hendrikiland (Jadnor is south, in the border region betweeen Caladraland and Rightarm Isles).
Peter seems to imply that the God Learners conquered all of Hendrikiland for a century or so, whereas I think that the Jrusteli cities served as magical bases to start experiments from, but not as administrative centres of Heortland. Locsil may have become the "religious centre" of God Forgot (even though I believe that that would be Casino Town, where Esrolia as mistress of Luck is revered by the gamblers), but Talar Hold would have remained the seat of government.
Lylket lies right next to Karse, south and below the Shadow Plateau, and seems to have been the God Learner centre for troll studies. (Its ruins are shown on the RQ2 map of Dragon Pass.)
IMO the God Learners didn't dominate the land by military force before the Machine War broke out in earnest, but instead corrupted the land around them with their experiments. Peter asks:
> What's the difference between the end result of slow corruption
> and domination?
Slow corruption remains a lot longer than short term domination. Compare the influence of eastern mystery cults in Rome to the Ostrogoth domination. The Ostrogoths were forgotten as soon as they had been ousted, the mystery cults entered Christian customs.
>>To address your question: None of the Sartarite warriors are called
>>knights. This indicates that they didn't share the Malkioni influence
>>when they emigrated.
> Or that the position of knights was created after they left.
However, the "Sartarite nobles" fight as moderately heavy cavalry in Dragon Pass. IMO an inheritance from Arkat's knight companions, watered down but handed down over the ages.
> Given that the Heortlanders bend over backwards to ensure the
> Knights are one of the free classes, there seems to be very
> little difference between the Knight and the Thane.
A thane is a land-owning noble, whereas a knight is a landless mounted warrior in the service of nobles and "chieftains" (chief thanes). Sartarite housecarls may be mounted, too, but not necessarily so. IMO Heortland too knows professional footman warriors, and retains the term weaponthane for those in service to a lord.
>>Let me see if I understand Peter's approach: The Hendriki took in all
>>the refugees after the fall of the EWF and integrated them in their
>>somewhat feudal system. Then, when Belintar crops up almost 300 years
>>later, the old people remember the good old time and ditch the traces
>>of Malkionism, and march off into Dragon Pass. At some unknown date,
>>the Hendriki tribe falls apart into four separate tribes, all feudal.
> Roughly correct. I don't think the Hendriki would have allowed
> refugees to maintain their old tribal loyalties when they migrated
> in. I also think the division of the Hendriki into four tribes
> comes as a result of Belintar's reforms and this also accounts
> for the knighthood.
My views on this period differ a little (I've spiced this text richly with "IMO"s to avoid source demands):
IMO the old tribal loyalties of the immigrants were tiny anyway. They would have been adherents of the Alakoringite tribal organisation rather than the older, larger tribes of Heort, Lokamayadon and Harmast. In addition, they were refugees who had suffered losses recently, so IMO their tribes would have been about the size of Hendriki clans (who had had 100 years or more to recover from the Machine Wars). Which is one reason why I think that the clan/subclan scheme proposed earlier is possible.
IMO the Hendriki kept the best lands to themselves and settled the newcomers on the fringes or on less fertile parts of their lands - the upper foothills, the still somewhat devastated south, and the northern area harried by Troll Wood trolls and Footprint chaos. This geographical division formed the later alliances which led to the three non-Hendriki tribes of Heortland, as a reaction to the domination by the Hendriki.
IMO at the time of the immigration there were about 150,000 Hendriki in the land (stretching roughly from Smithstone to Duchamps), maintaining some stability of population, and they received about 80,000 refugees between 1042 and 1120. (There also were some 30,000 Pelaskite fisherfolk along the coast, and probably as large a number of non-Hendriki clanspeople in the upper Storm Mountains.)
The refugees' numbers multiplied a lot faster than the natives, so that around 1280 there still would have been around 150,000 Hendriki clanspeople, but around 200,000 non-Hendriki clanspeople. These second-class clans started to protest the Hendriki domination of politics, ressources, etc., and formed tribes or tribal federations of ca 70,000 members in order to get their rights and power.
The arrival of Ralian trader families in southern Heortland around 1250 (see Knight Fort origins debate) gave that region an economic boost, too. IMO it was around this time that the current concept of Heortlander knights developed among the Hendriki, who IMO had monopolized the lucrative trade to go through their hands only (easy, since they dominated the cities, which are located in the best lands).
Belintar's arrival finally sparked the lingering conflict to come into the open. I'm not entirely clear which party supported the OOO and which Belintar, but that's partly because Belintar's unspecified mythic stunt in Heortland changed the picture. At least after this stunt, the Aeolian Church supported Belintar.
First a civil and religious war ensued in Heortland. After this had resulted in the firm (re-) establishment of the Hendriki king and wide spread of the Aeolian Church in the Hendriki lands (Karse being resettled and held by dissidents who had the direct protection of the Pharaoh IMO), the veterans of this war went on and conquered the land-bound parts of God Forgot (Mt. Passant, Refuge). The castle in Refuge stems from this time (1350-1380).
What followed was a period of relative peace and stability under the rule of the Pharaoh. The martially inclined Heortlanders took part in the annual scorpion hunts, or served in the Pharaonic army in the north or the west, or with the Praxian Marchers.
After the foundation of the Kingdom of Sartar, a few enterprising merchants and craftspeople followed the invitation of Sartar to settle in his new cities. The Pharaoh disliked the course Sartar had taken, though, and for a time sponsored the Kitori raids on trade caravans from Sartar.
Northern Heortland remained under Kitori control until Tarkalor led an alliance of sun-worshippers and subject tribes in rebellion. After this, increased trade with Sartar provided new outlets for ambition.
When Dormal opened the oceans, the sea offered another outlet. In fact, this sellers market for military personnel weakened the Heortland feudal military somewhat by taking away the best warriors.
In 1605 the Lunar Tarshite commander Fazzur Wideread led an audacious cavalry raid through Volsaxi territory and took the Volsaxi city of Whitewall, advancing on Karse when he was called back after the main thrust of the invasion had been stopped at the Building Wall. Heortland had been caught unprepared.
Jose Ramos
>I will write, if only to avoid an all Joerg's special again.
Sorry, half of the stuff queued up in my box for two days. The Alex phenomenon.
End of The Glorantha Digest V5 #603
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