radmonger

1 hour ago, MagikarpHunter said:

having an as of now unmentioned in RQG force that exists outside of the militia.

Martin Helsdon's Armies and Enemies of Dragon Pass lists the following professional/mercenary regiments from  that area:

• Cinsina: Eleven Lights (Magical heavy cavalry)
• Culbrea: Headhunters (Heavy Cavalry)
• Malani: Tworidge Farms (Heavy Cavalry)

The Colymar nobility can field the equivalent of such a regiment of heavy cavalry. But I think the implication is that they actually not permanently in that form, and generally fight alongside the militia of their clan, rather than as a single detached force with its own patron deity or wyter.

The Colymar are at once the most traditional and most warlike of the clans. But they don't, even in the Argrath era, really have their own elite regiment. They just have the biggest and best militia.

Jeff's FB post on how the destruction of the Spike broke the ling between the moral and divine worlds prompted some thoughts on that probably belong in this thread.

While the Spike existed, travel to meet the gods was only marginally more difficult than travelling to meet the neighbors. With it shattered, that stopped. As Magasta's Pool replaced the Void, the Otherworld was saved from annihilation, but now split in two.

Using shamanism (and possibly also sorcery), there were now two ways of accessing magic. You could access the local spiriit world, below the divide, including the Underworld. Or you could use ancestor worship to establish a connection with someone who died before the Spike exploded. 

The latter is Daka Fall shamanism, and is the source of all Rune Cults. A shaman discorporates, and travels to a place in the God's world their ancestor visited. Once there, they know the way, and so can not only repeat the trip, but invite others. This is a spirit cult, which becomes a Rune Cult once shrines and other magical infrastructure are created. Rune cult initiation is an assisted and focused form of shamanic initiation. It allows travel to one spot in the Otherworld; hopefully one where there are a lot of useful magical secrets to be learnt.

This is why Theists say the God's World is timeless; they are not actually visiting it, but merely a magical memory or echo of the way it was at a particular time. Each new initiate starts from the same point,like a fresh player loading a save game file. They experience ;Orlanth steals the Sandals of Darkness', and now they have that ability.

If you wanted to reach the real God world, you need to physically plunge down Magasta's pool and survive But there is only one person in Glorantha who ever did that. And Jar-Eel killed him.

There's certainly room for a bunch of additional sorcerous techniques that manipulate heroquests, some even in ways that won't get your soul eaten by Gift Bringers.

But think the idea that you would need a bunch of extra skills to even perform heroquests seems like a mistake. RQ:G already has  Worship skill, Cult Lore, Rune affinities and passions. Plus some characters might even have certain skills at a higher rating than their deity; Sartar was probably a better stonemason than Orlanth...

Why is that not enough?

10 minutes ago, Joerg said:

where Esrolian and especially Nochet boys are sent to undergo such an experienc

Queen of Cities has adulthood start with a visit to the Other Side in the Grace Temple, followed by 2 to 3 years service in either the militia, a temple or apprenticeship.

3 hours ago, Joerg said:

Outlawry is a required experience for Orlanthi adulthood - the Koryonos gangs undergone by intitiees. This is a stage of transgression by the youths (including making sexual experiences despite not being adults yet).

I could see some Orlanthi-adjacent storm-worshipping societies actually having that form of Koryos tradition. But I think it is pretty clear that for actual Orlanthi, starting the adulthood initiation on the Other Side replaces having it in Other People's Territory.

Note that the Starfire Ridges are in Colymar territory; Vasana was on a 'boy scout' style camping and training trip, with the occasional cattle raid. Not off doing proto-imperialism.

There are a few hints that something more like  the RW-Koryos existed in Orlanthi history. In the Dawn Age, the Lightbringer culture was spread by 'missionaries'.  And at the earliest stage of that,  the Other Side could literally mean the other side of the river. This matches the way historians now think real-world proto-Indo European culture spread.

In the LightBringers book, an initiate of Yinkin must spend a year alone in 'the wilds'. My take that this, and other hunter cults,  is mostly a route to adulthood for those who 'failed' the ritual of the pits. As a hunter they will have full clan membership as a functional and useful person, albeit low status,

The way I see it, there are three categories of HQ:

• the ones your community knows about, and are already doing regularly.
• the one your community knows about, but consider too difficult and dangerous to do regularly.
• the ones noone knows about, and has no idea how difficult they are.

The first is just where Rune magic comes from. You can play these out, but it will be just a cameo or interlude.

The second is the classic KoDP HQ, Kallyr's LBQ, etc. This means getting the power and support to be the ones selected to try what everyone in your community thinks probably can't be done. This is the kind of thing that can be the focus of a long term campaign.

So in a lot of ways the most interesting and playable hind of HQ is the third. The ones that involves local or exotic gods, interactions between gods who are neither associates or major enemies, and so on. Stories you discover (i.e. make up).

These can be as easy or difficult as the GM wants. PCs can be pulled into them, discover a scroll or rumor, or take the initiative to ransack a library to see what they find on a given topic. They travel to a dangerous location, fight or otherwise deal with guardians, gather clues to understand what is going on, and make choices.

If what they do counts as some form of success, they get a magical reward. This will normally be on the same scale as other Rune magic; a single use of a 1 to 5 point Rune spell or enchantment. This can be one their cults won't normally get, or made using the spell creation guidelines in the RBoM.

One use magic can be made reusable by founding a shrine, and be taught to others by sponsoring a priest or God Talker to tend that shrine. While there are epic magic rituals which have rewards on the scale of tens or hundreds of Rune points, this is the main way in which a personal HQ can change the world.  

A great magic can build a wall. A much lesser one can start the process of teaching people to build their own walls .

5 hours ago, Erol of Backford said:

Wouldn't that be the worst sort of dwarven heresy?

The heresy would be thinking this is a good idea, rather than a necessary but expedient workaround for a temporary malfunction. And that that 'malfunction' is not local to the current complex, but everyone else is experiencing the same thing.

https://discworld.fandom.com/wiki/Cheery_Littlebottom

24 minutes ago, Ynneadwraith said:

However, what Ali was pointing out is that from a culturally modern perspective we're almost singularly obsessed with whether something is individually practical (or, at least, we think we are).

By modern, I take it you mean post-Enlightenment?

The 7M is a specifically engineered cult designed to lead the member to illumination. Which means being an individual and forming your own moral and pragmatic judgements, in a very modern way.

This is very different from starting from 'I want to seek employment as a butcher', and being obliged to accept a whole bunch of ritual obligations on how you can live your life, including who you can marry.

It leads the initiate along that path by providing spells that are universally useful to a equal citizen.

1 hour ago, Malin said:

I am particularly interested in how communal seven mothers worship interacts with worship of a particular seven mother.

Common sense says that if you learn a single spell from a 7M temple, you are an initiate of the god represented by that spell. Future spells from the same temple count as coming from the associated cult. Future spells learnt from a dedicated temple just count as the normal case. Either way you have a single Rune Pool.

Basically, a 7M temple is just 7 shrines under a common roof. Priests of the Seven Mothers Cult are those employed at such a temple.  They get some extra common magic and _maybe_ a few extra Rune Spells.

No doubt the actual rules will be something more complex.

17 hours ago, Erol of Backford said:

When dwarves are made is it like an assembly line with parts, are they actually bionic, totally and do they use repair spells?

Once the were, and they would like you to think they still are. Every clay dwarves first memory is of coming out of a machine, and they could visit the personnel department any time they had a reason to. Only the Clay Dwarves know that the machine in that department is broken. And so, as a makeshift hack, initial conception takes place in utero. Some old Celestial Court magic (Transfer Pregnancy) is repurposed to perform the transfer to the development matrix appropriate to the required caste.

There is a natural spectrum from Orlanth LightBringer, King of the Gods to Barntar the Ploughman, to a farmer's guild that maintains a shrine to Barntar, to one that doesn't. In Glorantha, the latter will only exist in a society that has magical specialists who make the idea of a farmer learning a bit of magic a quaint relic.

The Lunar College of Agriculture is only embryonic, and by no means as famous as the more military colleges. So far, there is only the much-feared and derided potato to show for all the heroic research it has done. 

But still, the liberatory promise of the Seven Mothers is that you can become a free citizen with an independent spiritual life. You are not forced to adopt a particular world view, become a particular type of person, simply because society needs you to be a warrior, a mother or a plumber.

Mindblast is excellent non-lethal self defense, like a Lightning that never leaves you with a wergeld bill.

Madness is a deterrent, a threat that can sometimes scare those inured to mere death.

Regrow Limb means you don't have to 'gift' a years income to the White Ladies, or hoard your rune magic jealously in case of a medical emergency that may never come.

Reflection is a good counter to all the people you deal with who know Mindblast.

It's not really a cult for farmers or warriors, but for citizens, city dwellers. Albeit citizens of the lowest ranking and most provincial sort.

There has always been a bit of wierdness about the term 'Clay Mostali', as it is on a list of occupational castes but is also a description that applies almost all existing mostali.

The ancient 8 metals give you Octamonism, the two innovations of death-wielding and self-replication give you Decamonism, in the form of Iron and Clay dwarves,

I would say a True Clay Mostali made the first clay Mostali, who were of the full range of castes. Which includes the clay Clay Mostali, who manage the replication and repair of further clay Mostali of all castes. Their occupational skills and caste magic are rather similar to that of an Earth priestess; Stabilise Pregnancy and Repair Flesh.

This is presumably a secret the Mostali deem so shameful they have not permitted it to be disclosed in even the recent Earth Goddesses sourcebook. Which instead makes the unconvincing argument that Diamond, but somehow not True, is the 10th occupational caste.

7 hours ago, Erol of Backford said:

So the Travels of Biturian Varosh are a story of late stage capitalism? Wait, that can't be correct as there is no presence of generalized wage labor in Glorantha is there?

Late bronze age capitalism. The earliest known coins date to the very end of the bronze age, just before the Sea Pirates show up. Though of course any mismatch between Glorantha and historical Earth can hardly be called an anachronism.

Once you do have coinage, it is a small step to wage labour. You pay the Sun Dome Temple in wheels, and a file of guards show up. While they are working for you, their obligations to the temple are discharged by your payment. They still need food and board. Which you can provide directly, or just give them some guilders and have them sort themselves out.

Which they can do, because Sartar is largely a cash economy, at least outside and between clans. Of course, most people are working locally, for their own clan or temple, so don't generally get cash wages. A lot of cults say they will cover room and board, which covers the case where they are working for the cult, but not locally.

https://wellofdaliath.chaosium.com/sartars-transformation-of-the-economy/

The empire getting a cut of what a merchant sells is different from the empire owning everything in the wagon in the first place.

If Asrelia is temple state communism, Etyries might be regarded as mercantilism. 

In Glorantha, the temple state thing is mostly a Solar and Earth thing, via the cults of Lokarnos and Asrelia respectively. Lokarnos is the wagoneer who moves goods and wealth between kings and temples. They carry trade without themselves trading. Asrelia is the extrapolation of the collective clan granary to a scale where no-one can know everyone.

The Issaries cult has a more individualist perspective, perhaps representing Storm's obsession with freedom, perhaps a concession to playability, or perhaps a relic or the Middle Sea Empire. Or, likely, all three.

One of the Lunar innovations is bringing, in the form of Etyries, individualist trade to Dara Happan and Peloria.

I think the Trader Princes are more going in the other direction. They are traders who became so wealthy they owned a city, and could afford to hire Pralori mercenaries to control it. The relationshio between the version of Malkionism they follow, and the Issaries cult in general, probably has a lot of interesting things to be said about it.

Sartar was a Prince who traded. So why is he never described as a Trader Prince?

Throw away the strike rank tracker. Instead, create a pile of tokens, one for each foe faced. Put them in multiple groups if they are significantly differently positioned.

Each player takes turns grabbing one or more tokens. Go around the table from left to right,  starting with the biggest combat monster. Players are free to prearrange their seating order to help themselves out. They are considered to be engaged with each foe grabbed. This can be a melee or ranged engagement; for the latter, you will need to keep track of the distance, so arrange tokens appropriately

If there are no foes left, a player may give their own token to an ally.

if there are any enemy tokens left over, the gm then hands them out based on the logic of the situation and the tactics of the foes. if people have been too backwards in grabbing tokens, they may swarm the healer. Some foes may be unable to do that because of a strategic bottleneck. Noone can normally be engaged by more than 4 foes and basic tactics, like forming  a shield wall, reduce that limit.

You can optionally use a battlemat and miniatures to sanity check what makes sense here.

Go around the table from left to right, as before. Each pc in the engagement fights their opponents. Take the fastest strike rank of an engaged pc who has not acted, and that of their fastest opponent. There are 3 cases:

• they are beating their opponent by the SR required to do an action (such as cast a spell); they may do so if they wish, then act
• they are faster, but not that fast. They may they may act first, or delay to acting second, but take the action first.
• they are slower. They must act second. They may take an action after acting, if they have enough SR left over afterwards.

When a pc acts first, all foes roll and resolve after they do. The other way round if they are acting second. This is a simplification compared to completely tracking SR, but usually good enough.

Unengaged PCs may do anything that makes sense, subject to overall SR limits. This is the only way for archers to make more than one attack in a round.

Switching between engagements is an action with a situationally appropriate SR cost.
it may sound slightly complex, but only because i was being precise about many versus many engagements. Normally everything is 1:1, or at least with identical opponents

1 hour ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

what I understand or imagine (and what is the issue with cultural weapon skill in the creation process) is that children in the vast majority of case are already "gendered" because there is a correlation between body and gender (1).

i guess if you did a statistical survey of the Nochet polution, you might find adult ernaldans have 8% cultural spear skill instead of 10%, or some such. But there are approximately 4000 ways of improving the rules before they got to the point where adding extra accuracy there would be a reasonable priority.

By not gendered, i mean that there aren't Esrolian toy stores with aisles of pink and blue toys. Everyone plays the same games and wears the same clothes. Some parents will no doubt say of a daughter hitting her brother with a stick 'stop being such a little vingan'. Others will smile indulgently.

content warning for spoiler, on topic you can hopefully predict from context

Harald Smith's Nochet: Queen of Cities has an interesting variation on the adulthood initiation ordeal, which  may or not be local. Rather than two ordeals, two children go into the ordeal. two ypung adults come out[2]. The resulting transformation obeys some kind of gender symmetry rule; they are either a man and a woman, a vingan and a nandam, or some other similar combination.

Here the role of the Grandmothers is to pick the two children paired for the ordeal, who are commonly cousins. If is especially politically vital that a particular child turn out to a woman, the other cousin will already have a beard and chest hair. But pushing this too far leads only to tragedy. Noone comes out; the children are lost to the Otherworld.

1. starting with the idea of cutting the number of different spear skills to single digits[3]. 

2. the YA  novel  implicit here basically writes itself.

3 but you could add a rule  to drop a skill you have above base by 10% to gain say 5% elsewhere .

On 1/14/2024 at 9:46 PM, Squaredeal Sten said:

So what accounts for the Esrolian women having "cultural weapon skills"?  Not as cult skills, because  that is a different step in character creation.

To expand on my answer, because cultural skills represent not militia training, but mostly skills learnt in childhood. Playing games, listening to stories, and the local equivalent of Sunday school. And neither Sartar nor Esrolia treat children in a strongly gendered way; gender is gained upon initiation. And then, as in the real world, gender highly influences, but usually doesn't determine, occupation.  Which is wisely left to player choice not game system.

Of course, any actual 15 year old NPC would have some low level of occupation skills too, depending on their parents occupation. That detail is left out of the RQ;G rules;  i guess someone finally found a detail to fiddly to simulate 🙂

There is a subtle point to be made about the thelyalan gender system in that is, while not binary, seneray[1]. it claims to support all choices, but insists a choice must be made, Women, in particular are either fighters or mothers, Ernalda or Maran Gor. They can be Helerings who can change that choice, but once they have done so, they must follow that choice until it comes time to change back. 

The lunars break that system, as they break the pentad of elements. Jar Eel the Razoress is the 7th gender; capably of being simultaneously sexual and deadly. 

[1] i did have to look that up

17 hours ago, Ageha said:

This is a core pillar of all empire building in recorded history.

I think this is the key point Dara Happa never had to build an empire. It preceded the nomads and barbarians who split off from it.

All real world empires started small, and had to build to whatever size they ended up as. With Rome as the outlier, and they do genuinely have lot in common with the Lunars.

Dara Happa started out large, possibly even lozenge-wide. Its whole claim is to unique purity and longevity, though presumably the Kraloreans would disagree. Their whole deal is that if the lunars are able to conquer the world, the result would be stable and peaceful.

At least until Glorantha gets hit by another rogue planet...

1 hour ago, Ageha said:

Dara Happa/Pelorians only control northern Peloria, not all of Peloria. Also, again, I am not discussing religions. I am discussing the culture. Pelorians do not have to worship Yelm just as Orlanthi do not have to worship Orlanth. 

If you are discussing culture instead of cult, then by what measure is say Nochet not a Dara Happan city? What aspects of material, non-magical culture do they lack that Dara Happan culture has?

The differences between Nochet and Yuthuppa are entirely that of cult and mythology. Nochet is ruled by Ernalda, queen of the Gods, former underwife of Yelm.  Yuthuppa is currently ruled by the Red Godess, Yelm's daughter. That's not independent centers of development of technology clashing, that is the result of political and religious conflict within one common framework.

To some degree, all known Genertalan cities are solar cities, they just express that nature differently. Dara Happa is just the place that does so by claiming close continuity to the mythical pre-time concept of Solar Empire. The cities that existed before their cavalry became nomads, and their peasants hunter gatherers.

I suspect  the key to the Esrolian way of war is their signature Rune spell Bless Champion. The key expectation of a war leader is that they have that cast on them. 

While it would rarely actually happen, there is an underlying power dynamic in a room that comes from 'if We Fight, I Win'. Normal war magic plus support from an earth priestess beats anyone who has only normal war magic[1]

This breaks down if the earth priestesses themselves are divided, as with Rhigos and Nochet.

This compares with:

1. classical (Manirian?) culture Orlanthi, where Lightning means anyone in the room can kill anyone else.

2. solar/pentan cultures, where Sunspear means those with legitimate authority can kill those without.

3. Malkioni society, where the Zzaburi perform a somewhat similar social role the the Esrolian earth priestesses. 

[1] hence the common expression in reference to Harrek the Berserk that he hits you so hard your Grandmother dies[2].

[2] This is  considered by military scholars to be an exaggeration. Documented cases involved only the death of the priestess actually performing the champion ritual, not the head of their house.

i think cultural weapons are supposed to be not so much explicit training as merely growing up in a society where people were carrying, sparring and talking about those kinds of weapons. Sort of how anyone who has watched american TV knows which end of a gun goes towards the enemy. But it seems like there is no modern concensus between youtube videos as to whether a spear should be used underhand or overhand.  

I guess it would perhaps work a bit better thematically if they replaced, rather than added to, the base skills.

Militia training is reflected in more the fact that most professions do get some level of weapon skills (e.g. farmer +15%, versus warrior +25).

As i understand it, the key thing about Esrolia is that only women really get to be _hereditary_ nobles; typically men would have to marry into a noble house to follow that profession.  

if you wanted the rules to reflect that vision, you could drop the rule about common magic being able to be cast by the highest rune a character has.

Instead, it is actually cast using the rune, as the Red Book of Magic lists it under. And then have the rating of the  rune be the value of the highest 'worship [deity]' skill a character has.

This means that only an experienced priest-type could reliably cast them routinely, on an unboosted roll, as instant spells. For everyone else, they will be ritual spells that require time and preparation. Which means taking at least a full combat round with no other actions. As heal wound is a spell, many full adults can heal someone up after combat, taking several minutes and most of their MP. Doing that in combat for a squad, while dodging spear thrusts, is a job for specialists.

For campaigns that start at the adulthood ordeal initiation, only the one special rune magic they get as reward from that heroquest is castable. The next few years after initiation are largely spent learning a worship skill that both makes that spell reusable and common spells accessible. 

1 hour ago, M Helsdon said:

In Glorantha, they are not, but this picture does not show the full 'realms' you assumed:

Obviously, the map shows not the actual state boundaries, but is a mytho-political statement from the perspective of an Esrolian noblewoman. Fronela is not actually ruled by an earth queen. But she found it useful to depict her that way, as an enemy of Ygg. 

Orlanth is not shown as ruling, but as an external threat, a peer of Gagarth. Slonta sleeps, and in her slumber, Graymane raids us. Kalikos is depicted as the same size as Valind, valiantly defending Pelora.

Teshna looks to her own defence. With no husband. she is as scrawny as a Vingan.

Belintar is absent. But does the prominence of Yelm imply the possibility of his resurrection too? 

Esrola half-rises, pondering how to deal with these threats.

This is clearly propaganda created on behalf of the Red Earth faction.