radmonger

Orlanth is the son of Umath, whose arrival is the beginning of the end of the Golden Age. So any Orlanth cultists trying to access anything before that will just find themselves ending the golden age earlier.

This is much less true for other cults, but every human cult, even Uleria, has a limit. Any events before that are never personally re-experienced by humans, only known of by second hand accounts from the eider races. Of those who share their stories, the one Theyalans tend to believe are the elves; hence their name for the age.

16 minutes ago, DrGoth said:

That's how the Seven Mothers initiates get their cult specific sacred time rituals.  But what do these clans do for all-clan sacred time rituals?

I wouldn't make the distinction. Being in the clan is being in the clan. if there were the numbers to be running multiple ceremonies at the same time (well, more than one per gender), you would be dealing with a city, and not a clan. 

So if the clan does _the lightbringers restore Yelm_ on one day, and the _seven mothers restore Rufelsa_ the next [1].  In one you may have a solo, in another you are just the chorus.  Maybe for some you are the symbolic opposition. an Orlanthi Rune Lord standing in for the Carmanian Emperor works at least as well as a British actor playing a Hollywood villain.

[1] if you think about it, it is insane how the Orlanthi make such a big deal about being responsible for bringing back the sun, but literally want to destroy the moon. 

I think there are three options, which will vary per-clan:

1. the lunar way is supported; there is a shrine to at least one lunar cult in the clan temple, and their initiates have their own place in the sacred time ceremonies.

2. the lunar way is tolerated: 7m initiates are dual-culted, pay two tithes, and have to travel to somehow fit in two sets of sacred time ceremonies.

3. the lunar way is persecuted: 7m initiates are foreigners in clan lands, and travel home for sacred time.

There could be a 4th option, but we won't mention it for reasons of the orlanthi remaining plausible good guys.

The second option is kind of unstable, once the external incentives to get ahead by following the lunar way got themselves eaten by dragons. So is the third, if the option of consolidating as a single territory is available.

Replace 'lunar' with 'solar' and you have the story of Elmal and Yelmalio.

4 hours ago, Darius West said:

My argument has always been that we need to highlight and preserve the different traditions of the Little Sun, and in its present form, the Yelmalio cult write-up is in danger of being very incomplete. 

The present write-up is barely more than a page long. most of which is rules and tables. It's not in danger of being incomplete, it could not possibly be anything other than incomplete. It also predates the red book of magic, which contains the details of some of the spells that Yelmalio has in Cults of Prax,  e.g. Vision.

it is hard to imagine the long form write-up in the cults book will not be better. It's just a pity the cults books are organised by pantheons rather than regions, as Sartarite Yelmalio, with it's Elmal subcult, is by far the most significant potential PC cult to currently lack a long form Runequest write-up.

1 hour ago, Eff said:

When Chaosium creative staff talk about Yelmalio, the assumption is that Yelmalio cultist characters, player or otherwise, are people with pikes who stand in a big square block of 16x16 or multiples of such.

Not literally the core rulebook, but certainly published by Chaosium:  Dazarim Crescentblade, one of the pregen characters from the starter set is a Yelmalian sable rider. He has no pike skill, fights with kopis and javelins, and knows the rune spell Sureshot.

1 hour ago, Darius West said:

(d) to highlight (c) consider the Ostrich Riders.  Their "Yelmalio" who we might call Khim, is inherited from the Rinliddi Bird Rider culture from Before Time.  Ostrich riders gain nothing by homogenizing into a Yelmalio hoplite culture, in fact they lose out in every conceivable way.  I mean Ostrich Riders even lose out on Kuschile Horse Archery, because they don't ride horses. 

To pick on this one, i really don't get what perspective you can have that could cause you to think that is the case.

Do you think the ostrich riders _literally_ follow the rq;g rules. so if the is only a short-form writeup if a cult in canon, everyone forgets the unpublished spells until the long form is out? Is that why the pdfs are now delayed until the print release, to miniseries the number of changes the long-suffering Gloranthans have to endure?

To state the obvious, Ostrich riders worship  in their own way, with their own secrets and in a way compatible with their own language, lifestyle, infrastructure, organisation and politics. They would likely claim to have the oldest continuous worship tradition, and so be the baseline from which other takes deviate. They might plausibly be right. Certainly they would know secrets of avilry that are long lost to everyone else.

Perhaps there is a problem of names in the rules, in that a sub-cult carries the implication that it is hierarchically 'under' a rune cult, and so can only validly exist as part of the main cult writeup? Maybe a  term like 'compatible cult' would help. Describing Khim, Khelmal, Elmal, Yelmalio and co as compatible cults does seems much more natural, and avoids the implication that one is correct and the other wrong.

In any case, some form of cross-initiation is, in gameplay terms, clearly going to be necessary if you ever want to have an ostrich rider pc in anything other than an ostrich-rider only campaign.

1 hour ago, svensson said:

In WF15, @Jeff Richards portrays the County of Vanntar [the Sun Dome Temple in Dragon Pass] as also having given up the horse to focus on their Templar phalanxes.

The grazers have elite magical cavalry archers: the golden bow spirit  society, who fire flaming arrows.  They also rule over an underclass of vendref farmers. Such an underclass is going to be necessary given a primarily mounted military and restricted pasturelands.

The Vanntar Templars don't, because they are a relatively egalitarian society, much more in line with orlanthi cultural ideals. Everyone fights and everyone farms. They still use cavalry as scouts, which are even more important for a force that can rarely safely withdraw. Luckily that is the one military task Yelmalio magic is actually good at.

Elmal survives as a cultural tradition and identity amongst the tribal orlanthi because those who follow it can initiate and learn magic at the sun dome temples. if, at your adulthood initiation you are favoured by Elmal in orlanth's hall, the elders will direct you to serve a tour of duty with the Templars, likely as a cavalry scout. You will come back with the skills and experience required to hold a status as an Elmalthane.

Without that, there wouldn't be the numbers for Elmal to be anything more than just another thunder brother.

Note that the RQ:G stats for ironhoof (in smoking ruins are impressive (140% weapon skill, 9 pts armor, 3d6 damage bonus), but not in any way off-the-charts in terms of PC power. I think that represents a deliberate change from both earlier version of RQ and also heroquest/wars.

With his own personal retinue of 20 to 40 centaurs, he could charge the flank of any regular military unit of 500, and likely  rout it. But he is not going to be comic-book style personally killing armies, regardless of tactics and numbers.

https://www.quora.com/Why-is-Darth-Vader-so-feared

Light is just heat far away. Seperated by distance, you might say. Distance that was introduced when Umath inserted himself into the picture.

But the Mostali look deeper and say, it was the Grower who, in growing, made things bigger. That created a gap that Umath merely filled. Perhaps that in itself was merely an emergency repair to the damage the Grower wrought, putting  a small amount of newly-created stuff into vigorous motion to ward off the Void.

In any case, the Genertalan elf forests no longer entirely burn, save by hostile magic.

Perhaps, in Swenstown, there is a minor temple to the Watcher. This is associated with the Hawk Watch, a small unit of the Sartarite military that runs deep patrols into praxian territory scouting for nomad raids. 

Personally loyal to, and formally sponsored and supported by, the Prince (until recently Temertain, now Kallyr), watchers can come from any tribal background, though most are from the local horse-favouring tribes. The cult provides the best light cavalry training and magic outside the Grazelanders, but is too small to sponsor its own full dragon pass wargame counter.

The cult loses royal support shortly after Argrath takes over; he is quoted as saying 'if any nomads come, they are here because I called for them'.

Patrols are always small, sometimes solo, moving at night. By day, they hide and observe by use of the cult's trained hawks. These patrols take the patrollers away from normal city life for long periods, so most do not maintain any other cult ties they have, or marry while serving, except to another watcher.

Spells taught at the temple and its shrines include Cats Eye, Sun Bright, Command Hawk, Invigorate, Clear Sight, Shield, Heal Body, Fearless, and Vision. As a military organisation, it teaches no farming magic.

Cult Runes are . it has been noted by sages that the spells distinctive to this version of the cult require an affinity for the harmony rune, not usually focused on by other similar cults. As one noted sage said, the gods, by their nature, have mastery of many runes. The limitation of the human condition is that the full range of their prowess is rarely matched by those who seek to emulate them.

The stories taught by the cult to lay members are all about the exploits of heroic watchers in loyal service to the Prince.  The politically-loaded question of who the original Watcher was is rarely publicly spoken of to non-initiates. Veterans of the watch who leave the area find they can renew their magic at any shrine to Yelmalio, Elmal or any other Lightfore-cognates .

5 hours ago, metcalph said:

Orlanth doesn't even provide his fellow lightbringers with that many rune spells!

With a bit of minor rewording, it works perfectly as Orlanth the Rider; the regional variant of Orlanth as worshipped by clans where everyone rides horses every day, and so have light cavalry militia.

• Yelmalio (called Elmal) provides Cloud Clear (or maybe something more useful?)
• Hyalor provides Command [Horse],
• Foundchild provides Sureshot
• [tribal founder] provides Truespear. 

As stated above, this is the  Dundealos, Balkoth and Aranwyth tribes, and presumably also the Pol Joni. It doesn't seem likely to me that a clan could have it's militia, and hence most adult males, follow a foreign deity and still count as Orlanthi. A Grazer-style rulership over a farmer underclass seems much more likely. But maybe that's supposed to be a political dynamic that just hasn't actually exploded yet?

In 16xx, Boldhome was facing an epidemic of disorder and crime, driven by a ever-growing transient population of mercenaries, refugees and other consequences of Argrath's wars. The traditional Sartarite system whereby all adult citizens were expected to serve in defending the city was breaking down when the threat was not chaos or enemies at the gates, but drunken brawls and thievery. Many citizens resorted to paying someone  else to take their place on the night guard, Some of those who took that silver were men of low repute, and so contributed to the problem as much as solved it. 

After an unfortunate incident involving a visiting initiate of Babeestor Gor, the City Rex petitioned Argrath. He responded by dispatching one of his companions to deal with the issue. Their decision was to refound the ancient cult of Elmal as, in effect, the night watchmen's guild. Only qualified Elmal initiates would guard the streets at night, and all were required to swear oaths of loyalty and honesty.

The resulting force were known as the bullies, after Argrath. The cult of Elmal the night watchmen teaches Lantern, Catseye and two new spells discovered by creative heroquesting:

Testify,

1 point

self, temporal

The caster glows with a distinctive light. While under the effect, they may speak only the truth of events they have personally witnessed. They never forget details, or confuse speculation with reality. if what the caster saw was an illusion or trick, that is not automatically known, but may be  determined by careful questioning of the details.

 Endure Cold 

2 points

ritual, self, permanent, one use

The caster gains 2 points of protection against cold exposure, as per the rules for cold-weather clothing on p161 of RQ:G.

I'd be tempted to reframe this question as 'how could someone, for example a heroquesting pc,  refound the cult of Elmal such that it stuck around.this time?'

Spirits cults and shrine cults can run purely on the basis of 'this is cool magic noone else has'. Kallyr Starbrow has a star on her brow, and most people are impressed. But few copy her, because having a star on your brow doesn't really solve any problem any identifiable group of people has. Rune cults are big heavyweight social organisations, requiring at least tens of people working full time to maintain their existence. In a basically bronze age society, they need an reason for continued existence, an answer to the question 'why are we worshipping this cult and not another'? 

Existing successfull rune cults generally correspond to one of three things: a gender (Orlanth, Ernalda, Heler), an ethnicity (Telmor, Yinkin, Odayla) or a profession (Lhankhor Mhy, Chalana Arroy, Humakt, ...). All of those provide sufficient numbers of people who know a valid answer to the above question; 'because of who we are'.

It seems Yelmalio is what you get when you worship Lightfore as the male gender role model, Ernalda's husband. So to _get_ something different, you would have to _do_ something different.

As a professional cult, Elmal has never made much sense. He might be the favoured deity of the newly appointed thane, the one who is eager to be doing guard duty and unquestioning in their loyalty to the chief. But that's one guy, not a congregation.

There is a potential niche for 'loyal bodyguards of the rightful Prince'. Traditionally that has been the Telmori,  but slot that is going to be opening up soon. Canonically i think it is the humakti who take over, but maybe that's open to change?

Otherwise you have to get really wild. Elmali magic could likely support  a means of communication between cites, given suitably large towers and some way of transcoding messages as patterns of lights. Such a system would need full-time operators, with their own skills and secrets. Maybe that will finally provide Elmal with a proper social role, as patron deity of the royal corps of signallers:

https://discworld.fandom.com/wiki/Clacks#:~:text=The clacks in Terry Pratchett,Discworld's first telecommunications network.

Riffing off sanctify and bless champion

Bless Voyage,

water, movement, 2 point

ritual, duration (special), stackable

This blesses one small boat (up to 5m) and it's crew for one river voyage . The targets must be willing and present on the boat, and must participate in the ritual by chanting.

While this spell is active, any defensive spirit or Rune magic spell cast on a crew member will last for the duration of the voyage. This duration ends if any crew member takes any action not strictly necessary for the continuation of the voyage. This prevents defending themselves from attackers, or breaking the journey to portage across rapids or a waterfall. They may eat or drink, but must continue chanting while doing so.

Non-crew members may act normally. However, when a heavily-enchanted crew chooses to run a rapid, or even shoot a waterfall,  it is wise to be securely strapped to the boat.

Stacking this spell allows for larger boats to be affected.

I  see Lokarnos as more of a trucker than a trader. They carry big loads of stuff from here to there, in accordance with a deal or plan someone else has arranged.

They are always dealing with people outside their community, so they still need tradetalk to talk to people along the route, and bargain to haggle over the price of fodder and tolls. Some do use those skills and contacts to do a little dealing on the side, setting aside a small space in the wagon for goods they buy and sell with their own money.  This is always officially discouraged, and sometimes harshly punished.

As a result, many will make a show of refusing payment in common coinage for their services. Instead, golden wheels are gifted between the nobles or temples who wanted the goods delivered in the first place. As such wheels are sacred to Lokarnos, a divination will confirm the transfer took place, even if it was hundreds of miles away.

This has yet to develop into a full-scale distributed banking system, but the coffee-shops of Raibanth are abuzz with the possibilities...

part 3:contests

section 4 covers contests. i think the interpretation of this section is that contests come in 3 flavors;

4.1. [simple] contest: one player makes a single opposed roll, narrate results and consequences, using the tiebreak rule

4.2 group contest. Each player gets to make one roll against a single resistance. The number of successes are added together, outcome is based on the net success/failures as for a simple contest. The tie break rule is not used, presumably as it is not clear which player's  die roll would be used.

4.3 single-prize contest. Each contestant gets to make one roll against a single resistance. The number of successes are added together, outcome is based on the net successes/failures as for a simple contest. The tie break rule is used to pick a single winner.

Note that for any kind of contest, there are never multiple (mechanically represented) opponents, just players making opposed rolls against a single resistance. So if multiple players search for a team of assassins, some visually, some by listening, some using a magic 'sense assassin' ability, they all face the same base resistance. However, different bonuses and penalties may apply, as per s2.5. 

Key to this approach, I suspect, is to follow the advice to work backwards from the desired resistance to the situation that justifies that resistance. if 1 master assassins and 5 apprentices sounds right for a resistance of say 3m1, then that is how many there are. Defeating that resistance means finding all the assassins; getting more than a minimal success means capturing an appropriate number. before you roll, it is never mechanically stated whether you are facing the master or an apprentice. That is only determined afterwards. Facing the master is a good narrative justification for bad PC rolls. Capturing or killing him a good justification for an exceptional outcome.

Not stated in this section, but i think implicit in the section 2.6 rules, is that in a group contest a player may choose to not roll themselves, and instead augment someone else's roll. Of course, this hits the issue that even 3 pcs giving the minimum +5 each virtually assures victory against any resistance a player would normally have a chance against. section 2.6 acknowledges this, but says the solution is to use a group contest, which is where we are. So maybe there should just be a limit of 1 augment per player from any source? Or the base for augmenting should be lower than 5, so several people can do it without leaving  the narrow yellow zone of the table above. Or maybe it is can just be handled by imposing situational modifiers on anyone doing things that are mechanically legal, but implausible in fiction for more than one person to do.

For a single-prize contest, which typically represents something like a race, advice is given on what to do if the 'race wins'. I'm pretty sure that situation can be avoided by setting the resistance sufficiently low that it is deeply implausible that it wins. If the unlikely does happen, then it's ok to narrate an unlikely outcome. So if a resistance of 5 beats 8 runners with skills of 17 or more, then going by the tables above, that is something like a 0.000001% chance. Which is a number that corresponds to at least freak weather conditions, and maybe a broo attack or volcano erupting.

Lacking the tie break rule, a group contest with an even number of players will produce a high number of ties: nearly 50% for two PCs.

7 minutes ago, David Scott said:

Only in that fungi feed on decaying material: the fungi, consists of members who breed in the decay of life. Thriving on death, multiplying in corruption,

They aren't the source of decay.

In the real world, 'decay' literally means 'being consumed by fungus and bacteria'. Because, being dead, you no longer have an immune system. That would seem to map directly to a body no longer having a spirit in it, and so being unable to fight off things that would not normally be a problem. 

Note that mummies and other forms of corpse preparation are generally said to prevent decay;

https://www.si.edu/spotlight/ancient-egypt/mummies

Using special processes, the Egyptians removed all moisture from the body, leaving only a dried form that would not easily decay.

The glorantha bestiary doesn't have an entry for mummies, so it is not clear this works there. But I would have thought the whole deal with the Necropolis in Esrolia had the implication bodies suitably prepared would remain recognizable.

An infectious disease is a type of disease, so it is the domain of Malia. Some disease spirits have the power to reproduce, some don't.

Decay is the domain of Mee Vorala:

https://wellofdaliath.chaosium.com/home/gloranthan-documents/prosopaedia/deities/m/mee-vorala/

Note that not all things that can go wrong with a man-rune entity are diseases. Most of them are classified by Mostali clay-caste healers as runic imbalances, with one of the more common being an inappropriate manifestation of the death rune, commonly called a 'wound'.

So the gloranthan equivalent of a fungal infection like athlete's foot would be diagnosed as an unbalanced runic manifestation of darkness. Recommended treatment is by exposure to light, air, water, or, in extreme cases, fire.

part 2. tie breaks

The tie break mechanic is built into the description of the basic contest, although it is not actually used by some of the contest varieties. I find this perhaps a bit confusing; I think it really logically belongs in section 4.3, _Multiple Contestants, One Prize. 

Certainly in both reality and fiction, let alone sport, it is pretty normal for things to end inconclusively for now. In act 1, the villain shows up, fights with the heroes for a bit, and then departs unscathed. This works much more naturally if the dice say 'it was a draw' rather than the gm having to say 'you win, but nothing happens'.

Without any tie break rule, the chances of getting more success than the resistance are;

This is a lot less regular, with the effects of mastery boundaries evident.

part 1: basic mechanics

The fundamental mechanism driving questworlds is the opposed roll, called a 'contest'. The pc rolls d20 and tries to get under their skill, the gm rolls for a resistance which can be the skill of an npc.

A roll equal to the skill/resistance (so a 5% chance) is what other most systems call a critical, and is worth 2 regular successes.

Masteries (i.e. skill over 20 add extra successes.

In the simplest form of contest, victory is determined by whoever has the most successes; ties are broken by the higher dice roll. 

This produces a table of outcome probabilities:

The above table shows the probability of a skill of n (row number) immediately winning in a simple contest against a resistance given by the column number. Equal skill and resistance is highlighted in green. It is not .50 as there is a still a 5% chance of a tie for equal skill; when the same number is rolled on both dice.

Of note:

- an equal difference in skill always gives the same chance of winning, whether or not the difference crosses the master boundary.

- the band where there is a 20 to 80 % chance of a win, highlighted in yellow, is perhaps surprisingly narrow.; a modifier of +/-10 will usually move you outside it.

- you are guaranteed a win once you exceed the target number by two full masteries, as they need a critical to match your worst roll.

i think the Glorantha Sourcebook has the best in-print and in-canon description of recent dragon pass history.

https://www.chaosium.com/the-glorantha-sourcebook-hardcover/

12 hours ago, Shiningbrow said:

While true, that Special or Crit can still be nasty... and when you've got a dozen slingers firing, there's a reasonable chance to get a Special every round.

Which, excepting high-roll criticals to the head, will be pretty easy for a pc party to heal up from. Meanwhile  5 scorpion men were just taken out by arrow fire.

Their default mode of attack is an all-in swarm. Being an unusually competent scorpion man tactician is mostly about recognizing the cases where that is a bad idea. The response is more likely to be withdrawing than attacking in a cleverer way. Plenty of scorpion men are not competent, and will launch attacks that are almost certainly going to end in them being wiped out.

Scorpion men have one key tactical advantage, the extra attack. What that means is they are very deadly when they have numbers. If the PCs pick a defensible location where they can't be flanked and can heal their casualties, they probably won't lose anyone, and the fight will seem pretty easy. Any competent combatant in melee with one scorpion men will very likely win, because they will have better armour, magic, damage and skill. 

The same PC fighting 2 is in deep deep trouble; if they try to parry all 4 attacks, the last parry is at -90%. If they get surrounded and swarmed, then as soon as one PC goes down, the others will likely follow. Any time you stage a fight with scorpion men, remember that the stakes are a TPK.

Luckily, while scorpion men don't take ransom, they do normally take their captives alive back to the queen to be eaten. Assuming you don't want to continue the campaign with them in their new form,  this provides plenty of of opportunity to have someone rescue the PCs. if that someone is unfriendly, they would then be well within their rights to claim ransom. Otherwise, a favor will be owed.

2 hours ago, DrGoth said:

I don't think those are the only options and I don't think the results are the same.

Yeah, as i understand it:

• traditional solar cultures don't make a strong distinction  between disorder and chaos, except on a technical magical level. There is storm-flavored disorder and darkness-flavored disorder and chaos-favoured disorder, and all must be fought.
• orlanthi distinguish between disorder and chaos,. they claim you can get all the mythic benefits of creativity and change that the solars are seen as lacking from disorder, personified by the trickster Eurmal, rather than chaos. With the good parts removed, what remains is pure evil that must be fought.
• lunars mix  the solar perspective on the lack of distinction between chaos and disorder with the lightbringer views on the necessity of creativity and change. Which implies chaos contains some good as well as lots of bad. What and who should be fought becomes a matter of complex policy considerations that are rarely as simple as what anyone has tattooed on their forehead. 

it's an interesting point that the real-world company name Chaosium matches the lunar perspective of chaos.  

An alternative that's a bit smoother at the lower end is to base specials off pairs (11, 22, ...).

critical: success with an even 10s dice and digits dice of 1

special: success with a digits dice of 1 or 5.

fumble; failure with an even 10s dice and a digits dice of 0.

Zero math and within rounding errors of the rules-as-written result.

if you tone down criticals slightly, you can drop the stuff about the 10s dice and just go with ~10% chance of each.