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Is there already a seasonal fertility myth that involves Orlanth descending into the underworld to resurrect Ernalda - Orpheus and Eurydice style? If not, that would make a great option for a bunch of Orlanthi living in the shadow of Valind's Glacier (or somewhere else suitably tundra-like and inhospitable). Perhaps their version of the myth keeps going wrong, and Orlanth can't resurrect Ernalda, leaving the ground cold and infertile as death. Perhaps they are waiting for a heroquester who is able to walk out of the Underworld without snatching a glance to see if Ernalda is following, and restore the lost life of the land.

In my vision of Gloranthan cosmology I see Chaos more as 'Unfettered Change'. The polar opposite of stasis. The reason people don't really like it is that, by and large, people don't like things suddenly changing into something else (like your arm, for instance). If this is the case, perhaps the reason being killed by Chaos seems to be more final than other forms of god-death is that it's not Death at all. It's Change. Into something wholly spiritually unrecognisable, and irreconcilable with what you were previously (that may also involve you becoming dead as well, but that's more of a side effect). Hence, also, how the Lunars were able to 'reconstruct' the Moon Gooddess (how accurately can be debated). If Chaos is Change, then you can't truly create something new without changing how the world is. Same goes for Nysalor (and, in my estimation, Umath).

I'm sure it was in rpg.net, but I cannot find the posts. So, it can also be "in my head"... 😅

I played Died in the Wool, a scenario by the late Braeden Harpool, GM'ed by @Andrew Cowie, which was good fun, with a splended final trollball scene that Andrew had modified a little bit from the original. The scenario is available on the JC: https://legacy.drivethrurpg.com/product/419385/Died-in-the-Wool?affiliate_id=1107865, and as part of the collection: https://legacy.drivethrurpg.com/product/468235/RPG-Writer-Workshop-RuneQuest-Adventure-Collection?affiliate_id=1107865. I was also in Market Day, GM'ed by Terry Belles, a seemingly simple visit to Jonstown to sell an heirloom and buy trade goods, which was certainly not as simple as it seemed, and was also enjoyable. We were completely fooled by what was going on throughout most of it! My final RQ game was a session of RQ Classic, Family Dinner, run by @RQStaffan. This had a slow and fairly straightforward first half, ramping up into a properly thrilling climax with some very memorable foes. We greatly enjoyed the old-skool feel, especially with the chance to use now-deprecated spells like Harmonise. I was Old Herb in Home of the Bold - I didn't get the chance to tell any of my shaggy dog stories (not even my Shaggy God Story), but had come armed with plenty of bad Gloranthan jokes. It was indeed fairly hectic, with a huge amount going on that any one character (there were 50) could not possibly take in. Tremendous fun all round, tons of memorable moments, and I'm looking forward to hopefully playing it all over again in July at Continuum! As with the others, I'm avoiding saying too much to avoid spoilers. Perhaps @Divadllah will share the group photo and other details here.

There is no value in changing old rules if you dont replace them with something better.

Spun off from Gods and Death. Hmm … outside the Dome. On the “standard model”, Arachne Solara recreates the world using Chaos (pick your Devil), thus recapitulating the “original” creation of the world from Chaos (the Void). And the symbol of this is the sun rising — fiat lux. And “Arachne Solara” connotes both light and — in Glorantha-code — darkness, with darkness preceding light. Every beginning is the beginning. So the Dayzatar version is maybe just a switch of agent for (re-)creation conceived in the same way. “Going outside” is just another way of saying that the Void/Chaos is the source of the new world, as it always is and must be. Free jazz, baby! Clearly, the creation has no agent, so sub in anyone you like. But Yelmalio says, “Wasn’t me, governor.”

That’s fine. Never is fine, too. Thanks for the clarification.

Fixed

FYI @mfbrandi, the QW SRD was "pulled as a JC target" because bad actors coached people in ways they could abuse the clear intent of the Jonstown Compendium's rules by creating retroclones of unsupported games. ("You can publish material for Hero Wars and 1e HeroQuest on the JC, even though Chaosium told you not to do that, if you reimplement those rulesets using the QW SRD" -- bad idea.) QW community content sales are low, and there are hardly any QW products on the store, despite the lack of barriers to entry and the relative ease of writing statless scenarios. (I hate writing statblocks, but I publish for RuneQuest because that's where all the customers are.) Only one of them has made it to Electrum best-seller (the wonderful Valley of Plenty, once again available as a digital edition after a lengthy hiatus). This is how the market tells you that suppliers and customers aren't interested. If I were you, I wouldn't expect a HQG retrofit genre pack any time soon.

I ran Chris Gidlow's freeform scenario Young Thrax (a Tarsh War prequel) for the first time in quite a while. The blurb: I didn't warn the players that it was also a Singalong, but they rose magnificently to the occasion. I sadly couldn't make it to Harald's seminar on Nochet, as I was setting up the community content store at the time. And I played as Prince Temertain in Home of the Bold, but since it's going to be run again in the UK and Australia I don't want to post any spoilers. The cast was energetic, the costumes were magnificent, the pace was hectic, and I was happy with my personal outcome. Ludo Chabant's stuffed hawk gave me the idea of turning my scholarly beard into a detachable Allied Spirit, which made for good puppeteering fun.

I think one of the key factors in Gods dying is that if Chaos kills you, you are far more likely to stay dead. Death is just another Rune to a God, which is why Yelm could be brought back once he stopped whining. Whereas Genert was busted up by Chaos. On Orlanth and Ernalda... This is a particularly large version of what a local Heroquest could do. If you bungle the Lightbringer's Quest, Orlanth may die and stay dead for *you*. Until you do it right. The Lunars did this to a large area, but Orlanth and Ernalda were *not dead outside the area*. If you were a Ralios Orlanthi, you could still draw on their blessings. Globallly killing Orlanth and Ernalda is probably impossible in Time, unless the whole planet teamed up to do it or Chaos was involved. Reviving Genert would require Lunar level resources most likely and you'd end up with something Genert-like. So now all of Prax becomes covered with belts of clover and grass and groves of fruit trees.

Great to see the upgrades to the Pendragon character sheet in Roll20 ahead of the Core book launch. 1. The Squire roll button is still bugged: No attribute was found for @{Dame Tamura|squire_squire_skill} 2. Could we please have the character name added to the dice roll templates? Thanks,

Seems to me that the Lunars killing Orlanth and Ernakda. however temporary it may be, is proof that a god CAN be killed in Time and not just in the Godtime. But it turns out to be more important that gods are creatures of myth as well as of Runes, and since myth is malleable in Time they can be un-killed too. The Compromise indicates a lot of inertia related to the gods IN TIME, so if they continue to do what they have always done, maybe that means living gods continue to live and dead gods continue to be dead. Orlanth's and Ernalda's revival may be the Compromise snapping back like a stretched rubber band. For game purposes that killing and return of Orlanth and Ernalda sets a very high estimated boundary for what you can do through heroquesting, and that may be most of what we need to know as players. The question of what gods are composed of is intriguing but not necessary for play, IMHO. As for whether, for example, you can heroquest to revive Genert, who is a casualty of the God's War as I understand: It strikes me that you probably cannot change the godtime in a major way unless you want to go the way of the God Learners. But if the Seven Mothers could assemble Sedenya through a heroquest and ceremony and raping and sacrificing a virgin ( a Chaotic act) , then why not Genert? Didn't it work with Sedenya? The answer seems to me to be that they synthesized a new goddess inside Time from fragments. and that though Sedenya may identify with one or more dead gods, she is not the same as that dead God. She is more a Frankenstein's monster, wth that touch of Chaos. So you could heroquest to reassemble Genert but it won't be te same Genert and it's a toss up whether Prax would really bloom again. Or when it blooms will it look more like Dorastor?

It's not that there's any "formal" wait-time. Just, as noted, most BRP discussion isn't as well-populated as many D&D ones are. Then D&D-adaptations are a specific minority of the BRP crowd. And a specific-world query is going to be a yet-smaller minority of that. So you need a bit of extra patience for relevant folks to loop back to the forum, read your query, maybe mull for a bit and/or go look up old notes, old links, etc. My experience is that core topics usually get same-day (sometimes next-day; sometimes same-hour) replies, but it stretches out a LOT for every "interest filter" applied.

CF is a very-slick re-implementation of D&D with BRP-esque classless/level-less/skill-centric rules. $30 rulebook - https://thedesignmechanism.com/classic-fantasy-imperative/ Free PDF - https://thedesignmechanism.com/classic-fantasy-imperative-pdf/ Out of Stock - https://www.nobleknight.com/P/2147433071/Monograph-0383---Classic-Fantasy (but at least you've got a lead...) But also: A nice solid "setting bible" bit of media like Treasure Planet? That's awesome! I'll be honest: I'd grab "Magic World" (which is a fantasy-specific subset of the BRP core) and maybe one of the related seafaring books (a Mythras one from TDM, the RQ one on the JC, a copy of Blood Tide (sadly OOP), etc). I'd take some notes as I re-watched my Bible a couple or three times. I'd sticky-note Magic World where it needs some extra bits ... sticky-note BRP core and/or my seafaring book (places where I'm getting those extra bits)... maybe work-out some details? But maybe not. And I'd call that my campaign. But, as noted: I'd ALSO go look at @inwils game(s) on YouTube, running an actual Spelljammer module via CF. (ETA - I just checked his profile -- he hasn't logged on here for years, and was never very prolific here, so my @Summons likely won't call him)

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. EDIT: And of course, it was all nonsense — see Nick Brooke’s comment below.

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?