The Carmanian nobility fight as cataphracts. Rather than have them be a thousand years behind in technology (I know, Glorantha doesn't advance much), I use cataphracts as the heavy knights for all the relevant cultures of Glorantha.
Iron age saw the emergence of Cavalry as the major offensive arm as opposed to chariots. Cataphracts are a good parallel to the knights of the latter days. Both men and horses vere armoured, and the cavalry was the most powerful unit on the battlefield.
With this approach the warbands of the Heortlings and the hoplites and sarissa phalanxes of the solars fit very nicely.
An important motivation in this is that the low tech feel is an important asset of Glorantha. The world is full of medieval and pseudo-medieal RPG:s, but very few set in earlier days.
While on the subject I also take a more orthodox approach to the castes in the West. Greg must have been pretty confused about the basic feodal structure when he started writing his Glorantha stories in the University. Even in modern Glorantha the nobility don't seem to have much to do with their traditional occupation, warfare. Nobility as a purely ruling class, and knights as a totally separete class seems very, very confused to me.
Nobility are the elite arm in warfare. Knights are nobles, and nobles are knights. Just the implications for population structure are staggering. If nobles just sit in manors and castles and rule folk, the world will start to get full of superfluous nobility (good food, lower child mortality, long lifespan because of nutrition and light workload). Nobility that doesn't earn it's keep in war is a very strange concept.
-Adept
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