Graeme P

From a quick look, The Coming Storm history (page 5 sidebar) indicates that for general history information for Sartar you should look at Sartar - Kingdom of Heroes. It's history info is generally more local in scope. The history in S:KoH is set out in fairly broad strokes though. For the period you nominated, the table on page 272 has: 1590 Tarsh is finally pacified - so arguably the impact on Sartar involves refugees, defending and reinforcing the border and perhaps supporting the Wintertop exiles around Kero Fin. 1591 Lunar invasion defeated by an alliance of Satrar and the Holy Country. 1602 Fall of Sartar 1605 Lunar invasion of the Holy Country. Building Wall battle. S:KoH has lots of details about locations and clan structures though, so that might be helpful if you have it. Going off-canon (at least I imagine it is no longer canon) the article 'Dragons Past 1' from Different Worlds #28 indicates that there is the annhilation of the Maboder under the fangs of the Telmori in 1606, followed by the reprisals of Jomes Wulf and the Lunars known as the Conquest of the Telmori in 1607. After 1602 there would have been Lunar agents seeking out and eliminating anyone who was a blood relation of the Sartar royal family. From memory,there was also the failed attempt by the Lunars to launch an invasion of Prax in 1608. The Lunars ended up having to give significant concessions to the priestesses of the Paps to be allowed to return alive. This indicates that there would have been a significant amoount of military activity in Sartar, both to pacify it and to launch invasions in 1605 and 1608.

In Pavis (page 70 of the Moon Design combined box sets), Broosta is a Daughter of Pavis and an associate of Lhankor Mhy. So that fits the outcome the above posts seem to have arrived at as a conclusion i.e. one rune level position can be held with the rank in a secondary cult being at a level just below that. However Ginkizzie is descrbed as a priest of both Flintnail (where he would be high priest I suspect) and of Pavis. The latter could be rationalised as being someone who is 700+ years old and able to do special things. Or you could take a view that city gods are relatively minor and so don't necesssarily use up so much of an individual's time and resources to prevent them from rising up the ranks in a larger cult. Either way, it is about the story you are telling in your game. If there is to be a moment of tension between the two roles where each cult is wanting the player to choose different sides then it can make for a key point in the story.

It has arrived in Australia at last. Waylaid by Vadrudi pirates, becalmed by Molanni misfits and almost taxed out existence by a Lunar Tax Demon, but somehow it has arrived. Fill your boots!

I'd argue there is a fair bit of disorder, but not much Chaos. Maybe after drinking the slab one might find themselves spending the night in the lock-up for exhibiting a bit of that disorder...

Thanks for the replies. I'm impressed with Joerg's knowledge levels, and was already indebted to soltakss because I have been using the stuff he did 15 years ago about a Pavis campaign timeline as a base of what happens when. Having the priests of a stasis rune cult knocked off via causing such precipitious movement seems likely to succeed only occasionally. I'm also struggling with it being a random reason for death as part of the family history of a character as it is such an unremarkable way to die (absent any foul play) - not enough excitement and gossip comes from a mere slip of the foot perhaps. As the Temple is dwarf-built, it would reflect very poorly on Ginkizzie if the Temple itself is unsafe. So I'm not wholly convinced. I can see that the appearance of Cyrilius in New Pavis would have hastened the Pavis priests towards bringing Fleeter Nemm in to have a younger priest and persuading Broosta to do her duty by the old families in Real City to support their faction and Fleeter's position pretty much as soon as they both quailifed (after a quick course of masonry classes?). That would have filled the ranks to a full set of seven priests allowing them to delay any new priests as being not needed. So Sor-Eel needed to create a vacany or two ... If the first vacancy was filled by Bilkar (a member of the Real City faction) and the priests had him ready to be promoted then the first old man priest might have been able to retire before he was removed. Logically, Sor-Eel is much more likely to have had a hand in creating the second vacancy (filled by Cyrillius if Joerg is right that he was appointed before Bendrath). So I think that the first old man might have either retired (if that was a thing) or been dealt with, the second most definitely met an unfortunate end and only the last of the three unknown elderly priests had an unremarkable death. And from the above I now have an order of events, of a sort. The above timeline makes Cyrilius senior to Bendrath. The two most likely priests that characters would deal with would be Bendrath and Fleeter; however Fleeter has a lot of responsibility and so Bendrath is more likely. This adds to any clandestine nature of any goings-on if Bendrath has to be careful about his responsibilites to all more senior priests.

I am going to be starting a game soon where the characters are from Real City. So the focus is more on what is going on in the Rubble and the Pavis cult than what is going in in Prax. Luckily I have access to Ian Thomson's excellent material (full speed ahead and damn the canon!) as well as the official stuff. in Pavs:GtA (page 368) it is stated: "At the beginning of the Lunar Occupation, there were five Priests of Pavis. All were old men." By the time of the Pavis Box (say 1617-1618) Benderri is described as an old man and all the other priests are much younger. I note I'm leaving Ginkizzie out of this - he could be seen as an old man but most people don't think of him as human. So what happened to the other old priests? They might have died of natural causes, but the Lunars might have ensured that there was a vacancy for Cyrilius Harmonious as well. As they were all old, I can't see them adventuring so any misadventure inthe Rubble would only have occurred in trips between Real City and New Pavis, or perhaps if they visited Mani's Fort. So I'm reaching out to the community to see if anyone has information or ideas. Given the characters will have grown up in Real City and would have been alive when all this happened it may be that they remember the events. Or one of the late priests was a much-loved relative ... or any other plot hook that can be included in their family histories. The second part of this is that all the other priests have been promoted since 1610. Cyrilius is the newest priest and was assisted into the position by the Lunars, so there was most likely a deliberate hiring rush of new priests before him so that there is an established hierarchy of younger, healthy and competent priests ahead of him. All of this makes his chances of becoming the Son of Pavis much more remote. So there would have been a flurry of five new Daughters of Pavis (say) in the years from 1610 to 1615. As before, looking for anyone with a greater knowledge than I (or even interesting ideas on how to have the past impact the game).

I approach this issue from a different perspective. Instead of 0hp being death, a character is unconscious up to a negative hp total of CON - 10. So a character with a CON of 14 would be unconscious in the 0 to -3HP range, but would be dead at -4HP. It has the realism of healthier characters being able to take more damage and still recover, whilst still keeping combat deadly (the critical success can still cause an instant-kill). I recognise that it might take some urgency out of the game which comes from a situation where is only a few strike ranks to heal a fallen comrade; however if the house rule is that a player does not say what their total negative HP number is then the other players do not know whether a player is unconcious or dead. And combat is already a part of the game with some tension and inherent danger.