> Message: 1
> Date: Sun, 05 Jun 2005 18:17:06 -0000
> From: "Jeff Richard" <richaje_at_...>
> Subject: Kings of Heortland
>
>> "Accurate"? The word implies that there *is* a definitive version of
events,
>> to which this could be compared? But there isn't, is there? Hence the
>> original question?
> How about this - the backstory that Joerg and I came up with about ten
> years ago
Which is indeed the case. At that time I was playtesting RQ4 - Adventures in Glorantha, and produced the background for my gaming group (this Short LBQ stuff was intended and IIRC even played as a "get a look at HeroQuesting" scenario with - alas - as little decisive player input as the Cradle stuff). Jeff and I shared background notes and material since his group was visiting Heortland, too.
I did draw on every accessible and even inaccessible source on Heortland in compiling my notes, including short background notices from "How the West Was One" where I had discussed Aeolians and Stygians with Nick Brooke, early in 1994.
> will be extremely Gregged by any version that ever gets
> published. We've learned a lot since then - for instance, almost
> everything we wrote about the Volsaxi turns out to be incorrect.
Let's say almost every detail.
> The "King Owain" story is simply outside the parameters of what is
> likely to be in the definitive version of the events, and really
> doesn't fit what we've learned about Heortland in the last few years.
It clearly is a MGHV (has varied). Lots of the details are RQ specific, unworkable with the directions HeroQuest has taken. The syncretic Malkioni-Orlanthi religion of Aeolian Orlanthi I started in 1994 I have learned can be forged in the Hero Wars (guess one of my agendas...), but not as early as 1617.
> Another thing, after Andrin the Zombie King, the later Heortlending
> kings seem a pretty colorless lot. I've thought that they might well
> be a lot like the Merovingian kings after Clovis - more ceremonial
> than dynamic, with the Pharaoh as the true power in Heortland.
One exception, though - Hardrard the Green, Volsaxi counter-king who set up in Whitewall.
Jane Williams
>> The "King Owain" story is simply outside the parameters of what is
>> likely to be in the definitive version of the events, and really
>> doesn't fit what we've learned about Heortland in the last few years.
> They wouldn't have been rescuing the Pharoah, perhaps?
An Andrinic king might very well have tried. In my story, King "Owain" was an Aeolian - which is NOT the case in official Glorantha.
>> Another thing, after Andrin the Zombie King, the later Heortlending
>> kings seem a pretty colorless lot.
> So we're going to be swapping the colourful and heroic Owain for someone
> boring and colourless? This is a good idea how, exactly? Come, on at least
> swap him for someone equally fun!
Having refereed Owain, he didn't strike me as very colourful and memorable except for his disastrous demise. Not an Alfred of Wessex or Canute, maybe a Harold Godwinsson with legitimate claim to the throne.
Light Castle
> Well, if the name need be changed, fine. As for the story, I far prefer
> the "failed HQ" approach to his death. If the details are Gregged, fine,
> but it is too interesting an idea to just drop. Here is a chance for
> this person to keep the Holy Country together. He's a patriot even.
> And hell, why not link it with the Scorpion Men if you want? Maybe part
> of the Pharaoh's quest involved some kind of ritual battle with the
> Scorpion Men or a Queen. So in failing that part, he provides the
> magical boost for the Scorpion Men eruption. The health of the land is
> connected to the health of the king, and all that.
My story had Owain face unexpected Chaos from the Print - Krarsht and her spawn. I still think that's an appropriate choice, because it turns out that society in Heortland had been eaten from within...
> (Personally, I would love to see some detail on life in Heortland and
> the Heortland cities come out. The fact that it is effectively blank
> except for the northern hill tribes is extremely annoying.)
I'll have to add my (likewise obsolete, and unfinished to boot) town of Jaransbyrig to my website, then (as soon as I regain access - two more weeks...)
Jane Williams
> Joerg's site is still there, and covers just this. Some of the links seem
> to be a bit dodgy, but it's well worth a look.
> http://www.toppoint.de/~joe/homegl.html
Everybody, please note that that page saw its last substantial change or rework in 1998. I don't know how long I will keep that address. I will keep that content, and move it to my own domain (sartar.de) within a year, and add a retrofitted version of events if I get to it.
Lots of things have been invented about Heortland since. I need to accommodate them to keep the site meaningful for gaming in Heortland. Maybe I'll "wikify" parts of it.
Light Castle
> I'm hoping for a nice, ILH-sized book, with what life is like in the 4
> Earldoms and how they differ and are similar. What life is like in the
> cities as compared to the hills. Etc. etc.
In order for that to happen, start a group, or rather join kethaela.free.fr and coordinate the efforts. I don't see Issaries having the manpower or financial backing to produce a supplement in the campaign past. Kethaela after the Dragonrise might get attention - but only after the Dragonrise has been published.
> I've never felt I've gotten a good handle on it all. After all, Sartar
> was colonized from there, but the Sartarites had no Larnsti brotherhood,
They received their own line, in the person of the ONLY published 3rd Age worshipper of Larnste prior to "HW: Introduction to Glorantha" and his descendants.
> even though the reforms pushing them out had to have been part of (not
> the only) reason some of these groups left. So who are they and what do
> they mean to people, exactly? (We just saw this question asked, I'm not
> intending to rehash it.)
Excellent questions LC and I also discuss on the "City of Karse" wiki:
http://www.seedwiki.com/wiki/city_of_karse/city_of_karse.cfm
and follow the link to Heortling Culture.
That site being a wiki, feel free to fill in opinions and information. While the site is Karse-specific (and therefore about as representative for Hendreiki as New Pavis is for Sartar), we try to explain the mainstream culture and its deviations in the city.
> Down in the cities, are people as driven to initiate as they are up in
> the hills?
IMG they are. What they don't usually do in cities is concentrate, given the broad range of common magic available in cities.
> How Westernized was Heortland by the reforms? How do those
> two different systems mesh? Etc. Etc.
My non-canonical POV (current, not exactly reflected in my old website) is that some of the changes "Zombie"-King Andrin "introduced" were little more than acknowledgements of changes - like the shift of office names, e.g. from housecarl to knight. The stunt of turning chiefs into shire-reeves IMO involved a lot more, even though it has been argued that for some clans this mostly meant business as usual.
I think there is no definable border between Andrinic and traditional Heortling Hendreiki. The farther from the royal highway your people live the less Andrinic they will be. That's a rule of thumb, though - there will have been some migrations of clans following the civil war, leading to sharp contrasts between neighboring clans/shires. Think pacified vs. rebel Sartar.
In Esvular, the difference between Andrinic and Esvulari shires may become uncertain, too. IMG there is a sizeable portion of theist Hendreiki in Esvular (and there are Esvulari scattered in Karhend and on the rise in Gardufar). Maybe the proximity of God Forgot has a negative influence on theist concentration?
> I've made decisions on all this in my game, of course, but the fact that
> when HQ says "Heortlander" it really means Sartarite and northern hill
> Heortlander
And eastern hill Heortlander. The higher up you get in the Storm Mountains, the less "reformed" the clans will be. My Glorantha has culturally very primitive Heortlings living in the "unpassable" mountains, almost completely pastoralist and as likely to spend a winter on the Praxian side of the mountains if there are troubles in Heortland.
> and doesn't give you any idea of what the vast majority of
> other Heortlanders are like, is sometimes frustrating if you decide to
> have your campaign a little south of Sartar.
> Look, it's not like there isn't a similar comment to be made on
> virtually ALL of Glorantha. :) It's a combined frustration and
> opportunity that is one of the appeals of the place.
That's the price you pay for creative freedom... ;-)
Mark Galeotti
> FWIW, a piece I wrote on the Hendreiki, to complement the Esvulari
> overview in TT 12, will be out in a forthcoming UW. However, in the
> mean time I would recommend TT 12 to you: as well as an Esvulari piece
> by Greg and myself, it contains Simon Bray's excellent 'Caldvale
> Manor', which is a really nice exploration of Esvulari/Hendreiki
> relationships, drawn from our house campaign.
Now there's a publication in the line I'd love to see...
Jeff Richard replying to Jane:
>> So we're going to be swapping the colourful and heroic Owain for
>> someone
>> boring and colourless? This is a good idea how, exactly? Come, on
>> at least swap him for someone equally fun!
> Jane - this is a stylistic complaint that I have about a lot of
> fantasy writers. Writers tend to want to tie everything together,
> and give deep significance or heroic meaning to every historical
> event. I think that tendency needs to be tempered with a little
> literary discipline. The death of Orngerin probably would have been
> a complete non-event had (1) the Pharaoh been around to recognize a
> successor, and (2) there had not been an ambitious Seshnegi
> adventurer in the position to seize power.
I agree. Without Rikard, the situation would have been comparable to Tarsh after Orios disappeared in Tork and ended the Twins Dynasty.
> Without the Pharaoh, a normal event like the death of another
> nondescript Heortlending figurehead king becomes a major crisis and
> a trigger for the Hero Wars. What's wrong with that?
Note that a certain amount of heroism is included in the term "nondescript Heortlending figurehead king". The (Vingkotling-style dynastic) king I presented to my players had been late in fulfilling his dynastic duties. Peter's invention of "Larnsti-hood" as a royal requirement for the High King both before and after Zombie-Andrin blew that idea to pieces. Now the best "dynastic" element I can think of is some sort of "adoption emperor" parallel where a king designates a successor based on merits (within the eligible group). Having lasted for over 200 years, not a mean feat - the Roman emperors managed only four successive emperors using this method.
Jane Williams and Jeff:
>>> Nothing in particular, I suppose. It's just that something
>>> colourful and
>>> heroic is being lost, and that's always a shame.
>> But I don't think it was the right color or heroism.
> Maybe not there - but can't it be fitted in somewhere else? Surely
> someone, somewhere, must have gone to extraordinary lengths to
> try to get the Pharoah back? And failed horribly?
The 1616/17 Tournament of the Masters of Luck and Death was supposed to be such an event.
>>with about ten
>>years ago will be extremely Gregged by any version that ever gets
>>published.
> Which invalidates a suggestion about King Owain's death in what
> way?
Talking to Greg and being persuaded that this didn't happen in his Glorantha did that for me. Can't remember whether it was the story or just the oodles of misfitting details.
> Nothing about what has come out in print even goes so
> far as to that the King doesn't die as a heroic failure. So your
> canonical pronouncement on the topic is way out of line.
I wanted my players to be present when the shit hit the fan, so I wrote up that story. If you play post-1617, the details don't really matter. If you plan your player heroes to be involved, make up your own version. As a scenario, the story didn't work out that well.
Peter Metcalfe and Jeff
>> > Why not have King Orngerin (why the change from Owain?)
>>I came up with the name Owain for the last king in conversations with
>>Joerg over a decade ago.
> No. I heard the name Owain long before you showed up
> on the Digest (I'm under the impression that Joerg got
> it from the Sog City freeform).
Confirmed. Along with a couple of (retrospectively unfortunate) Monty Python names (like Guy de Loimbard).
However, Jeff and I had been in private contact for quite a while. Sharing campaign background does tend to explode your (non-spam) mail traffic. Some of our material definitely predates the Seattle Farmer Collective...
>>Greg was quite firm that the name was wrong.
> How so? When I wrote the Glorantha: Info and mentioned Owain
> in a draft, he never once said that the name was wrong.
Given the retrofit of Anglo-Saxon names, I can see the trend to de-Welsh that name. At least O(rnger)in is somewhat similar.
>>That might work. Then again, not everything needs to be linked
>>together. People can die awkwardly without there being a Lunar plot!
> Except there is a Lunar plot.
In the death of the Hendreiki king? Part of my story, yes - more or less his failure to pass the Lunar HeroQuest barrier.
> However, there might be some link between the Andrinic kings and the
> land (again, the Hendreiki kings are kings of people, the Andrinic
> kings are kings of places) that people were largely unaware of. Maybe
> by destroying the Andrinic kingdom (which Broyan and Rikard certainly
> do), they also destroyed the health of the Andrinic land. Food for
> thought - heck, that might even be a previously unknown consequence of
> the Andrinic reforms.
Maybe that's the benefit Belintar offered to Andrin for undergoing the drastic change of his people's customs - a closer connection to the Goddess of the Land for the Hendreiki kings. I used to wonder what (except being revived) may have convinced Andrin.
Back in 1994/1997 my working assumption was that the Hendreiki had Vingkotling royal lineages similar to the Sartar dynasty.
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