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Actually I remember there is at least one other, and he is the one who steps outside the Dome and at some point rescues Lightfore: Dayzatar. So, let there be LIGHT! And the world reborn. That is the tale. It is sort of a reverse Hell. Instead of going to Hell, Hell comes to him and all that he loves is lost.

I have been curious about Heroquest/ Questworld, but when I hit registration your session was already filled up. so getting into it was not a choice for me. And there was only that one QW session. But all I read into it is that (1) QW is in pre publication limbo, so people didnt run more. Which is too bad because a number of people seem to have liked HQ. Perhaps Chaosium will publish QW before next con, so it doesn't slide into oblivion. (2) Chaosiumcon is not immune from a tendency to have eyes bigger than stomach at registration time. And although Tabletop.events has a mechanic for people to drop out and make their seats available, a lot of people don't actually do that. Perhaps some incentive (positive or negative) to play that game is appropriate. We might usefully discuss how to do that.

Whatever we are supposed to believe, it is too good a story not to embrace it. One of the “good guys” but outside the Compromise. A light that never goes out because not bound to time, perhaps? Perhaps all the “events preceding time” — the sequence without sequence — only precipitate out at the beginning of time; the Gods War as a sort of Schrödinger’s prehistory, with the advent of time as the opening of the box? It is only at the first sunrise that we can say that Yelm had “previously” been murdered. And Yelmalio is the anomaly — an outsider without being a thing of the Void. Give the poor sucker a break and let him be special; it is just so delightfully … generative! Or is it just me? I can see him staggering through multiple ragnaröks, ever more alienated, losing all cult, forgotten, becoming a Watcher figure bearing witness to the truth and the light. I am just an embittered old romantic, I guess. Of course, it is just a fairy story, a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

I ran my RQ scenario "A Road Out of Nowhere" again (also at last year's con), and again the PC's successfully got out of Nowhere, through the Twilight Woods, riddled with the Riddling Raven of the Crossroads, came through the Fog of Ignorance, and defeated the Lunar Heroquesters besieging the Ivory Tower of Knowledge! Also did a seminar on running Urban Campaigns in Nochet. I thought that went well and decent attendance for the first Saturday morning timeslot. Also was Count Leonidas of Darleep in HotB. But since they are running HotB again in a few months (at Continuum?), don't want to go spoiling for others who might be there.

We do have to separate out the Immortal/Mortal axis from Death. Gods (and dragons) are Immortal. They possess the Infinity Rune. Mortals do not. What does that imply? The gods do not Age and Die - they are not Finite. It's unclear what this distinction means before the coming of Death (or Aging?). Mortals as created beings where body and spirit are bound together (a collection of Runic bits and pieces), which then at some point disintegrate back to body and spirit. But with no Underworld calling, the spirit can perhaps reanimate and enter the body once more? And they do so until Grandfather Mortal is slain, and he sets the path to the Underworld and the permanent separation of the spirit from the animate body. The gods though may have different parts? They are not simply body and spirit and do not disintegrate. And if we investigate what they are, we find that they are Runes. They may be singletons, or a combination of two or three, or a subsequent "devolution" of those Runes. But they simply are (until they are not). Generally yes, with the exception of Aging until Death. This seems to be a unique Mortal thing. Yes, there is something else there. And I would guess this has to do with proximity to the power of the Runes. Their parts (let's call them Runes) are bound back together, and the Ritual of the Net is clearly part of what binds them back to the world. Yet curious that the Moon Goddess was not. She existed, she was slain and part of the Underworld, but seems to have been left out of the Net - at least until a group of mortals quested with broken parts and rewove her into the Net. And now she's in this weird Mortal/Immortal, Dying/Undying state. Generally, yes. But there are those (such as the god broken at the Skyfall Battle) who were lost permanently, even from the Gods World. The Void/Oblivion is an "ultimate" Death that takes you out of the picture/Net in your entirety. There are good gods too though that do not return such as Genert or Tada. Some places remain a Waste. Some are vanished (e.g. the Spike). Might you find memories of them in the Underworld? Likely. But there seems to be some point at which the god parts are too shattered to bind back together (or perhaps certain parts got added to some other god so are no longer available to put back together without disassembling some other deity?). The Ascension and subsequent Death of Belintar (or the Only Old One) are examples of gods that may be parts and if one takes away a part, resurrection/return is not possible. Those gods are now Dead. Unless we believe the tale that Yelmalio was the sole survivor. The one last light left upon the Hill of Gold waiting for the world to reassemble. (Of course, Lightfore, who is Yelmalio, and Kargzant, who is Yelmalio, do appear to die, so is Yelmalio simply the one fragment of many left Living?) But there's definitely something about the Parts of the God (or perhaps even the Parts of the Hero) which seems distinct from the parts of the Mortal.

Possibly — only possibly — there is a bit of a vicious circle. One story (dismal): Chaosium thinks the people aren’t interested, so it is not interested, the PDF doesn’t come out when expected, and shiny new QW — as opposed to HQG — gets pulled as a JC target; the people think Chaosium isn’t interested, so in the unlikely event they were thinking of publishing for QW on the JC, they abandon the idea; USW. “[T]he fancy is overrun with wild dismal ideas, and terrified with a thousand hideous monsters of its own framing.” — JA Another story (happier for some): QW is pulled as a JC target because the QW release is being held back to sync with an HQG retrofit genre pack; this makes sense of the HQG-only JC policy (as on the face of it limiting people to an OOP/unsupported version of the rules is perverse). “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.” — J of N In all likelihood, both stories are completely wrong, but we have to have something to keep us amused while we wait to see how things turn out. Still, it is a shame people didn’t/couldn’t turn up when they said they would.

I'm most looking forward to Home of the Bold recaps.

Hard to answer this, as the myths include so much contradiction. But then they are myths, the truth is so far from reach for mortals and most gods that perhaps even they do not know..Truth is literally in the highest heavens now. This whole issue is something that has fascinated too. So in a game I am playing a Humakt, but instead of following the death path slavishly like most do, I am nudging my gm to explore the Humakt tie to the truth rune. Sure he has it as his mother owned it, but it’s an active rune for Humakt, so what does it mean when it’s so closely aligned to a god that holds the death rune? Feels like a future hero quest to discover and define for our Glorantha, loads of scope to explore. Sometimes answers are not needed, just the fun of seeking them.

What's death to a god? Or conversely, what's death to a mortal? Is it when the heart stops, or when a state of what we moderns call "brain death" sets in? Perhaps it's when the soul, spirit, or essence is separated from the body? Does toking up on hazia count as a... not a "little death", but perhaps a medium one? Maybe a descriptive definition would work better, at least until Chalana Arroy answers my emails. "You're dead when you're cut off from your body and can't return to it." Some things related to bodily trauma can cause this, as can a Humakti glaring at you really hard, and so can some diseases. And maybe metaphysically I can say that they change both parts as they separate, so that they can't be joined together on their own without a Resurrection spell that looks remarkably like a spirit possessing a corpse in the descriptions, or a shaman's ability to casually expand their selfhood to incorporate their fetch and other spirits they've integrated, or more arcane secrets and mystical powers. But there are problems with casually assuming dualism like this, where the "body" is separate from the "self". And that gets us back to gods. King of Sartar very somberly tells us that Wakboth smashed Orlanth into 48 pieces, but if he had smashed Orlanth into 49 pieces, that would have been it for Orlanth. It also gives us the story about Umath and Harana Ilor and Predark. This story takes place before death, so what the Predark monsters do instead is cut parts off of the gods, and if the parts stay detached for long enough, they become a different person that possibly doesn't want to be part of the original god anymore. Yelm shatters into six pieces, Tada falls apart into Grisly Portions, and when Umath is blown apart by Shargash, his sons leap up from where he fell, clutching his weapons. Poor old Jokbazi on the Gods Wall is just a collection of disparate pieces that don't add up into anything. Dragons also seem to explode into smaller pieces, some of them animate on their own, and friendly to the dragonslayer. (Who themself may well have shed that "s" shortly afterwards, though I doubt it gained a will of its own.) I propose that a dead god is simply a Humpty Dumpty- all the rex's horses and all the rex's men can't put Vadrus together again- and has been splintered into too many parts to be treated as a cohesive whole anymore. Or maybe parts that pull in different directions. After all, every god died in the Gods War. All of them were there for the Ritual of the Net. Maybe all the gods are an assemblage of these different parts that are at peace with one another, and which can break up or have other parts brought into the compact that defines them as "Yelmalio" or "Drosopoly". Vadrus is dead because the results of Vadrus being repeatedly fissioned off into smaller pieces are uninterested in working together to be Vadrus or are too small to do anything in response to sacrifices. But you could put them back together again, with some work, or a lot of work. What am I saying? As we all know, the Godtime is unchangeable except when it isn't. Don't ask about Five Arkats Returning.

Anyone play or GM any particularly fun and/or interesting RQ sessions at this past Chaosium Con?

That's why I was asking. I've found other DnD worlds converted, thought I would see if there was another. Admittedly, it is a niche, and sometimes I feel like I'm the only nut in that niche...

I did a deep read of Mythras, but it was either buy a hardcopy of that, or stick with the hardcopy of BRP I have. I have one of those groups who have an easier time with print books instead of laptops and tablets at the table. I'll check into Classic Fantasy one way or another. That being said, I don't specifically need a "DnD-clone" version of BRP Spelljammer. In fact, I'd prefer to avoid that. One of the reasons I'm switching to BRP is because I am just so burned out with DnD. Besides, these days I aim for "spelljammer adjacent" anyway. Mostly I want the ships and high adventure without the weird crystal spheres, phlogiston, and helms that drain the spellcasters. I'd be happy if I could land somewhere near "Treasure Planet", but with magic. I'll tackle it eventually myself. I'm busy bridging CoC and Vaesen (Vaesen is too rules-light for us, and CoC is a familiar place to branch from).

Well, a couple of days ago, I asked this in the same thread as another (and got no answer there either). This being the second time ive asked, and am only just now getting an answer... Plus, i'm new here. I'm used to more active discussion. I didnt know there was a three or four day wait... I'm still feeling my way around this forum.

Those are probably, as Nick notes, from Armies & Enemies of Dragon Pass. The antelope rider is a member of the Headhunters regiment of the Sartar Free Army; the wasp rider is a Wasp Rider; the levitating man is a Stormwalker. There are more details in the book.

I'm spinning this off from the thread about Mahayana Buddhism the degree to which it's possible to interact with deities after they die, because, y'all, the relationship that the gods have with Death is something that's been fascinating me. (Particularly given where I ended up as regards the Skinning of Thed, which is a fragment I've only shared on the blog in my sig thus far.) Thesis 1: the gods can die like mortals can. This seems fairly self-evident at first glance: Yelm very famously gets Inigo Montoya'd by Orlanth and does not pass GO, does not collect $200, but goes straight to HELL until he can roll doubles. Vadrus gets torn apart and now it's useless to try to contact him inside of Time. The Devil is dead with only his ruby slippers and one hand sticking out from underneath the Square Mountain that dropped on his head. Many gods succumbed to Death after listening to Rashoran/a speak, though the bearers of Life and Death themselves were instead enlightened. (Perhaps if Orlanth had not learned how to save the world, and all the others too, Humakt would have been the last one left: left there waiting to blow out the candles, fold the quilts, and set Death as a crossbeam for the doors.) Once a god is dead, that's it, game over. Antithesis 1: but hold on, what about all the times that the gods die and that doesn't stop them? Orlanth freezes to death and Yinkin brings him back with his good good mlems (and that's not even acknowledging Wakboth shattering him into forty-eight pieces). Babeester Gor exsanguinates herself in order to drink her own blood. Tien gets his head lopped off and proceeds to kill Hrothmir and steal his head. It seems clear that the gods are not simply just people; they are capable of doing impossible things with their magic, and having a much looser relationship with Death seems to be one of them. Thesis 2: okay, fine, let's concede that a god dying doesn't seem to stop them to the degree that it would stop you or me. That's just because of the Ritual of the Net, obviously. When the gods turned their hands to the weaving of the world into the net which is named Time, they did so down in the underworld, so every god who was dead could weave themselves back into the pattern: Yelm returns in glory with Time as his cloak, Ernalda finds breath filling her lungs at her husband's kiss, Storm Bull trots back out with blood on his hooves and a smug look on his face, Shargash creates a conterminous zone and calls it Alkoth, so on and so forth. The gods of Chaos barely managed to squeak in holding the tassels, which is why they are losers and unquiet ghosts and suchlike. Antithesis 2: but hold on, even the gods that didn't make it back in have a presence in HeroQuests! Vadrus is still dead as the proverbial doornail, but it's not like there's a Vadrus-shaped hole in every story that he made an appearance in! When Vinga goes off to exterminate the enemy gods so thoroughly that not even their names survive, there's still an enemy to fight and not just "well, I'm at the space where the battle was supposed to happen, guess I'll have lunch and then wander back eventually." Rashoran/a comes back in cycles, and the Lunar goddesses are mended, and the line between the living and the dead seems very permeable. If you can kick Vadrus's ass while wandering outside of Time, you should be able to kick Ragnaglar's ass - or that of his son. Thesis 3: maybe it's because people believe that the Devil is trapped beneath the Block, and that Vadrus was shattered and nobody cares to try to put that asshole back together again, but all the good gods and goddesses were beloved enough that they were welcomed back into the world? And those awful things of Chaos crept in, too, because we need some sort of explanation for why Broos exist, and scorpion men, and other such things. Antithesis 3: you are treading perilous ground concerning the power of belief and its effects on the Hero Plane. Synthesis: still uncertain. I will need to prepare the proper rites and secure a copy of the Second Arkat Journal before I properly descend in search of the answer.

As Nick noted, this figure is associated with the Sartar Culbrea tribe in Martin's book. However, it's Heavy Cavalry riding a sable, so realistically you could have such a warrior come from any of the Sartar tribes without difficulty so just use the Sartar Homeland, Warrior/Heavy Cavalry occupation, and you'll be all set.

Not to mention the return of Notes from Nochet with all new content!

Updated again: A Rough Guide to Boldhome, by David Hall, Jeff Richard, Greg Stafford and Friends. The sourcebook for 1992’s freeform live action role-playing game Home of the Bold, reissued to support its Chaosium Con 2024 “Director’s Cut.” As with A Rough Guide to Glamour, the original 28-page player booklet (which contained Greg Stafford’s description of the city and recent Sartarite history: the Boldhome Documents) has been massively enhanced, with glorious new full-colour artwork and maps, fiction, a songbook, plus 19 pages of preview material from Chaosium’s forthcoming Sartar Book, making this an essential resource for any RuneQuest campaign set in Sartar. (81 pages for $9.95 in PDF or $15.95 standard colour softcover print-on-demand) Collector’s Note: two items from previous editions are not in this version: Dan Barker’s black and white cover art, and the short Rough Guide article by David Hall & Kevin Jacklin. Yurek Chodak’s one-page map of Dragon Pass has been replaced with a two-page map detailing Dragon Pass & Prax by Colin Driver, the cartographer of the Guide to Glorantha and Argan Argar Atlas, who also provides new maps of Genertela and the Tribes of Sartar. Walter Moore’s view of Boldhome, map of Boldhome and map of Geo’s Inns have been colourised, and the city description is revised and expanded. The 81-page book contains (inter alia) 26 pages by Greg Stafford (the Boldhome Documents, etc.), 18 pages by Jeff Richard (Sartar Book previews), and 7 pages of front matter.

If you want to distinguish between the two, you You could use Ryo or Bujutsu (Science or Study of War) for School and Budo (Way or Path of War) for the minor schools.

I think you're referring to the picture of one of Argrath's Headhunters from page 145 of @M Helsdon's magisterial tome The Armies and Enemies of Dragon Pass. He's a Sartarite warrior from the Culbrea tribe, according to Martin's account of the Headhunters (p.324), riding on a Sable Antelope (Note that it's not unusual for Sartarites to be mounted on "Praxian" riding animals, cf. poster-girl Vasana on her mighty bison). You can tell from his armour (a scale hauberk) that he's a heavy cavalryman, so RuneQuest character generation is straightforward. Stats for Sable Antelopes are in the Bestiary. Obviously you would be much better off playing as a Sable Rider from Prax, or even as an Antelope Lancer from the Hungry Plateau, because the Praxian Sable Tribe is universally acknowledged to be most the intelligent, handsome and forward-thinking tribe of Prax (by Sable Riders and their honest allies, at least), while the Hungry Plateau Antelope Lancers are an offshoot who greatly benefited from their principled conversion to the Lunar Way in the First Wane. (Other people call this the "Great Sable Betrayal," but they really ought to be more specific since it turns out the Sables have a tendency to betray their allies a lot, cf. Second Moonbroth).

Going back on topic, I'm settling on this idea: There are Great and Minor Schools: Both Schools have an associated Learning skill, like, for example, "Doji Diplomat Learning" or "Matsu Berzerker Learning" Great Schools are heavily based on @Atgxtg. They have 7 associated skills. These Skills are benefit by faster learning, having a bonus equal to 1/5 of the Learning associated Skill to the Training Roll and a bonus equal to their Rank to the ammount of Experience they accrue on that skills. Even if a character is part of multiple schools that benefit the same Skill, they only benefit from the highest bonus. The Rank of the character represents how many Tecniques (Feats) they can learn. Equal to their Rank x 2. Characters increase Rank based on Classic Fantasy Mythras rules, using the Skills of the School: Rank 1 = 5 Skills at 50% Rank 2 = 5 Skills at 70% Rank 3 = 4 Skills at 90% Rank 4 = 3 Skills at 110% Rank 5 = 2 Skills at 130% Rank 6+ = 2 Skills at previous value +20% Additionaly to fulfill the requisites, the character needs to find a Master of their School or fulfill the requisites of the next Rank to completely fulfill their training in the new Rank and learn the new Techniques. Minor Schools represent single lines of Techniques like Martial Arts or Debate Styles. This depends only on their Learning + Single Skill. For example Mitzu-Do [Rokugan Aikido] would be Minor School. The requisites are more easy to fulfill in exchange for a more narrow focus, with each Rank giving access to one specific technique. Rank 1 = 2 Skills at 50% Rank 2 = 2 Skills at 60% Rank 3 = 2 Skills at 70% Rank 4 = 2 Skills at 80% Rank 5 = 2 Skills at 90% For people that know about Legend of the Five Rings [ @svensson ], Minor Schools are my approximation to the Paths in contrast to the Schools. But I will admit Minor Schools still don't convince me, but it can be my perfectionism kicking in.

...I speculated about doing so years (... erm, possibly decades...) ago, and more recently (a few years back) I started noodling away at a Sword & Planet-esque BRP thing with touches of Spelljammer (ships powered by a variant of the Rune magic in Advanced Sorcery / Bronze Grimoire), but that morphed in to its own thing, and switched systems to become AGE powered. Its odd - I can think of resources for Greyhawk, Dark Sun and Eberron using BRP (or Mythras) and as g33k says, "generic" D&D, but I don't recall ever seeing a specific Spelljammer adaptation.

That's a shame! But tends a bit to reinforce @Chaosium's scant resource-allocation to the QW project. It's not like the Chaosium-Con attendees will be generally unaware of the product-line; so it's not a matter of "lack of advertising" or the like. Attendees voted with their registrations, and their attendance. I do not doubt that there is some way to elevate the QW product-line in the market, attract new blood & new attention, etc etc etc. But in this "golden age" of rpg-productivity, it's increasingly hard (for which read "expensive") to stand out & gain that attention.

The Creek-Stream River is a weird one. I'm sure it gets some flooding, but it never dries up thanks to the Skyfall River. But let's just assume that there is a heavy discharge in Sea Season in Esrolia. I would imagine that there was an ancient flood control system that Belintar rebuilt and rescaled after he created the New River. So let's assume there is a good flood control/irrigation system in place. It might be getting creaky now, with Belintar being gone for a decade and several years of war. That sounds right to me. Worship Creek-Stream River/Lyksos to keep the god happy and keep the water clean and steady. This is going to matter a lot in Esrolia. Yep. Remember that the Heler cult is tightly incorporated into the Orlanth Thunderous cult. Creek-Stream River/Lykos is another form of Heler, but one tied to the seas. And all of these are tied into Ernalda and the Grain Goddesses. The coordination of these cults is likely complex and surprisingly harmonious. The end user, so to speak, is Ernalda and the Grain Goddesses. She has plenty of lovers, and needs them for fertility. Meanwhile, Orlanth Thunderous/Heler (Heler always works closely with Orlanth) control that rain function, but are associated with Ernalda and the Grain Goddess. And the river god controls the waters, but is connected with Heler and is associated with Ernalda and the Grain Goddesses. We end up with a triad of cults that work closely together. Does that help?

... Dude, you waited 19h (less than a DAY!) for replies. (FWIW -- I usually figure on a minimum of 3-4 days for specialty/oddity requests like this)