Land of Thunder Kultain (and Balmyr) problems

From: joe_at_toppoint.de
Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2004 15:45:26 +0100 (CET)

Back from my family holydays in Bavaria, with Land of Thunder as my main
(and almost exclusive) lecture. There is a complete index in the making.

While I still think that this book is the one I have wanted for years, I have failed to reconcile a problem that we discussed in the Wilmskirk list shortly before the holydays: Where were the Kultain supposed to have had their tribal lands?

Land of Thunder comes with a nice Locaem Resettlement story around Skalvi the Good and his broken deal with the Raven, and claims all the lands between the Yelmalions of Vaantar and Kjartan's Pool for the Locaem
(Pegasus hills, Branlands, Branvale, Duran Hills, part of the Charandar
Hills, Richberry Vale, Chormsland, Sorang Vale). The statement is made that the Balmyr had been pushed _south_ of Wilmskirk when all the tribal maps I have seen so far (including the DP:LoT map on page 45) have put the Balmyr to the north of Wilmskirk, on the upper Stream. See also the references in the Enjossi saga about the Balmyr neighbours unable to draw benefits from The Stream in Jalk's Book. Instead, we find the Balmyr royal settlement of Halfort on the border to the Sylangi, about as far from Wilmskirk as you can get and still remain in Sartar. Previously described as Kultain territory.

Personally, I prefer the Balmyr to the northeast and southeast of Wilmskirk, having lost the lands west of the Chorms to the Locaem, and those further south to the Kultain (some of whose clans they included recently, taking back their ancestral lands). If Halfort is to have been the Balmyr royal seat for centuries, then it has to be located a lot further north - just west of the Sambari Firebull Clan tula, northwest of Wasp Nest. The place where Halfort is positioned now would be a believable Kultain royal seat.

This way the former Kultain lands would be roughly from the map position of Halfort to the exit of the Sorang Vale, now distributed between the Balmyr (two or three clans) and the Sylangi (the vast rest of the Kultain survivors).

I like the Locaem stories (who wrote them, btw?), but I think their claim on Richberry vale and Chormsland is overdoing their greatness.

Cheers,

Joerg

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End of Glorantha Digest