DrGoth

You do have a point - something has to control population growth.

Doesn't say too much about what they are like. None of the other Yelmalions - in Sartar or in Peloria - underwent the Solitude of Testing that Sun County in Prax did. I've always viewed them as like Sparta or Prussia. Remember the old saying "Every country has an army, except in Prussia, where the army has a country". So in some ways, maybe not too much different to the Cult in Prax ;-). I wonder if the big difference is, in Peloria, they are much more integrated. they know their place. Yelmalio is the Son of Yelm. People worship the Solar Pantheon. So maybe not less rigid (Solars I think re always rigid in their ways), but possibly less paranoid

True, but I hope such things are not population wide...

Monsters and magic yes, but children aren't going to be in the front line of Monster fighting. Even amongst the Orlanthi ;-). I suspect the plus to the dice roll is common enough to make the odds more favourable.

Don't know about detailing, but the best I can find outside of fanzines in a couple of paragraphs on p.255 of Sartar Kingdom of Heroes. There's a few other references in the book, but that's the largest piece. Not much, I admit.

What are your dreams? Your hopes? What do you want to see? What are you going to do? Okay, maybe most of the text has already been drafted, but still... Maybe Chaosium will see a really nifty idea here. You never know. And if some of our ideas more deserve to be in the "Your Dumbest Theory" thread, who cares? Me, I'm looking forward to the Lunar book for options to play Lunar characters. I'm really hoping to see some of the material from Lives of Sedenya integrated into that book.

Which is how I see a lot of Jalakeel shamans...

The sources give some information on this Guide to Glorantha (p.36) "Barley is the staple grain of the Orlanthi, supplemented by wheat and oats" Weapons and equipment (p.27) heavily implies flatbread is the common bread form. You can certainly make flatbread from barley https://rootsandwren.com/barley-honey-flat-breads/ Both wheat and barley were some of the earliest domesticated grains (roughly 10,000 years ago in the Middle east). https://factsanddetails.com/world/cat54/sub343/entry-6026.html According to this https://theecologist.org/2009/aug/25/know-your-oats-grow-your-own-grains Barley is easier to grow and doesn't require the same quality soil as wheat - which sounds to me about right for Sartar. I'd go with Squaredeal Sten and have risen bread as a delicacy. You could stretch that - as far as I know, yeast in breadmaking was first used by the Egyptians about 3500 years ago. But anything to emphasise this is not medieval is a good thing (tm). The guide also gives some other useful pointers. For the Orlanthi its says lamb is the most common meat (not chickens I ask? maybe it means red meat, as poultry is mentioned). "Beer is the staple beverage". Which probably means the common ale in Sartar is the thicker barley ale on p29 of weapons and equipment, not the thin Ale. I don't know about you but I can just imagine Orlanthi tribesmen muttering into their cups "Bloody Lunars, knew you could never trust anyone who drinks ale that thin, mutter, mutter, grumble." That's just the Orlanthi of course. For the Pelorians, in the Guide, (p41) we have "Rice, barley and maize are the staple grains". If you go back to one of the references above it says "wheat, rice, corn and sorghum evolved a common ancestor weed that grew 65 million years ago". Maybe that says something bout the Grain Goddesses?

The problem you've got is that is the period covered by Issaries publications in the early to mid 2000's and those have been, hmm, deprecated. Even Sartar, Kingdom of heroes, which deals with that period is not what it used to be. Now that the year zero of playing is 1625 I'm not sure when, if ever, we'll see much detail for 1620-1625. Would be nice though.

I don't see that a no place of nothingness can have forces, even impersonal ones. So I think your conception of the Void and mine may be different. But, like I said, I suspect the void can't be properly comprehended by mortals - including us.

It may be an empty nothingness, but it does seem to like to create - witness the young elementals.

Remember that RQ2 starting skill percentages are lower than RQG. That woudl be why the Creature of Chaos NPCs have the skill levels they do - they were scaled to oppose the adventurers of RQ2. As Shingingbrow says, I wouldn't expect too much discipline and organisation from them. I think maybe better then8-10 year olds. Just having to survive will have taught them a thing or two about co-ordination. But sophisticated tactics would be unusual. Swarming to overwhelm would be more the style I'd expect. Some standard tactics of softening up from the skirmishers, followed by a rush by initiates and maybe RLs. I suspect Scorpionmen rely on numbers and surprise (and their sting) more than anything else. Think of army ants.

Was wondering how exactly binding an elemental into an item works. I've read the rules a few times but I still don't think I have it completely right. First of all you'd need to sacrifice a point of characteristic POW, as the binding enchantment rune spell is not common rune magic (per the table on p.317). You now have access to the spell. I'm assuming you'd need to be able to summon the elemental. Summon elemental doesn't appear to be covered by the comment rune spell 'Summon cult spirit' as it turns up the list of special rune magic (cf. lists of special rune magic Ernalda, p. 293, Orlanth p.301, Seven Mothers, p. 303). Per 'Binding Enchantment' (p.321 and p.249) you'd need to sacrifice 3 pts of characteristic power, as elementals have three characteristics. I'm assuming you would summon the elemental first (so making that roll), and then (assuming success) make the binding enchantment roll. Do you need to roll for Command Elemental before the binding? Or does the binding take the place of the command? When you do roll for the binding, do you have to roll POW vs POW? Or just the spell success (I assume the former, but...) . If you use Ritual Practices, can you use that for the binding? My reading of the rules says no, as the summon spell would prevent you. You could use ritual Practices for the summon, but I doubt the elemental would stick around to do that. But this seems a bit odd to me, as the summon is likely to be easy (based off a Rune that's likely to be high) whereas the binding would be much harder, if it is a POW vs POW roll. Anyway, as you can see, there are some parts of this I'm not getting, so any help appreciated.

I agree. It is a no place with nothing in it. So accepting that and the quoting from the Sourcebook (p. 123, referring to the destruction of the Spike) "A great vacuum opened in the center of the world, from which stepped the gods of Chaos". That does not automatically mean they stepped from the void into Glorantha. It could mean they were created by the gaping hole in the world as expressions of chaos in Glorantha. I don't think Kajabor, Krajlk, etc had an existence in the void prior (and yes, using temporal terms in relation to the God's War is risky at best) to the Spike exploding.

You could simply have a Nysalorean NPC recite that word for word.

Indeed. Three very different views and I personally find it hard to say that the published material makes definitive choice between their 'rightness' (Personally I like the third but that's no secret). Mixing in with this is the inherent lack of change the Gods brought on themselves by agreeing to the Compromise. It's interesting to me to think about what that means for Sedenya. She had to get into the Compromise to regain her Godhood. She is definitely about change. is chaos the only way though that she could find. Has she found a loophole in the compromise? Isn't it just? I like to think it was deliberate on Greg's aprt.

It's at least related, and the possession thing was one of my least favourite parts of the original.

Fabulous discussion all. Something that occurs to me is: what angle do you want to consider this from? someone living in Glorantha? someone in our world studying Glorantha? someone in our world playing Glorantha? I don't think those are the only options and I don't think the results are the same. From my own perspective, I don't think there are definitive answers. Glorantha is not a (world/setting/take your pick) where everything can be conclusive placed into "them good" and "them bad" boxes. Subjectivity and ambiguity are at its heart. Why? One reason is to allow for player choice. YGMV. That doesn't work terribly well if too many things have answers. Another possible angle is, fundamentally, is chaos capable of being understood? At least for us humans (and Gloranthan humans aren't all that different to us, at base). My thinking is 'no', it can't be. There's value in trying, and possibly rewards for doing so (both inside and outside Glorantha), but it's a quest with no end (and I say 'goody' to that). In some ways this is mirrored in Glorantha between those who say an emphatic no to any chaos and those that draw the line elsewhere (and I do remember reading somewhere about many Lunar heroes making their name fighting chaos monsters). The ambiguity makes for a creative tension in which many different and differing stories can be told. And if you regard Glorantha primarily as a vehicle for story-telling, then I consider that a good thing.

Well, Alter Creature is a pretty drastic alteration, but nothing like removing a Chaos taint. It's also deeply bound up with the Praxian myths.

By being a lay member of Yanafal Tarnils?

I have an urge to write a speciality cult spirit spell of "clean teeth". Or maybe it's a one-use rune spell that gets enchanted into paste....

Sure that shouldn't be the other way around? 😉

"I find them very furry, o worshipper" <- seven words More seriously, I am very reluctant to give straight answers to anything but trivial divinations. Divination shouldn't be code for "can I look at the GMs notes, please?" Even more seriously, this is religion and spirituality we are talking about. The God will give the answer that they think best serves the worshipper, not what the worshipper thinks they need. It may be a direct answer, or may be something much more esoteric.

Why not? Whether you view the Telmori as inherently chaotic or not, it doesn't say anywhere that joining Humakt removes a chaos feature. An ogre joining Humakt still has all those chaos bits. So why would the Telmori transformation vanish?

Just remember that KoS is written from in an in-Glorantha perspective - with all the subjectivity, errors and downright lying such documents involve