Scorus

8 hours ago, Joerg said:

Any personal, face-to-face followers of Orgorvale (and Ulanin) would date back to the Vingkotling Age.

Any cult recognizable to modern Orlanthi would have used the methods introduced by Hantrafal, who was presumably a contemporary of Heort in the Silver Age.

Do we know the circumstances of Orgorvale's burial? There are know cases where a burial doesn't just mean corporeal death but an ascension to guardianhood, like Sartar entering his brazier. Given Orgorvale's past role as such a guardian, could she have undergone such a transforming rite rather than a normal burial?

It is entirely possible (and fairly normal) for people who died of natural causes (if you include warfare and other such grisly ends) to become guardian entities after their death. Even circumstances like the Night of Horrors haven't stopped the Hon-eel cult from manifesting.

Another source for these spirits could be temple spirits summoned and bound in the Dawn Age and possibly the earliest days of the Kingdom of Orlanthland. These could include notable descendants of Orgorvale summoned by their descendants.

Or they may be the spirits of the defenders of the temple against the EWF take-over, sworn to defend the temple even after their deaths (likely dragonfire incinerations or similar).

Any spirit will appreciate the chance to have a physical presence and to receive worship. Some of them may be available as allied spirits to rune masters of Orgorvale.

The legend is that the gods themselves created the tomb, including the hill that the tomb sits atop of, to hold Orgorvale. She certainlly took the guardian role that you speak of. This matches my thoughts on who the inhabitants are.

Any other thoughts on what they would want? I'm thinking that some would want worshippers, others would want to be freed. What other options?

There are over 100 spirits tied to urns in the Queen's Tomb. They will attack anyone who touches their urn, except an Orgorvale cultist. So there is obviously a loyalty there.

As my players start the cult and prepare the tomb for pilgrims, I'm wondering who they are, what they want, and what my players can do with them. My assumptions/thoughts:

1) I'm assuming that anyone buried there would have been important, or at least friends or relatives to the royal family?

2) I'm assuming that they died after Orgorvale and during her reign as the area's goddess (wyter?), so during the Dawn/First Age? I'm assuming they are all human.

3) I'm assuming Ulanin is NOT there. There may be a very few military people there, but I'm assuming it is more royalty, chiefs, counselors, courtiers?

So what do spirits like that want? Do they want ancestors to come worship them? Do they want to be freed? Do they want...what?

Any thoughts/ideas would be much appreciated!

32 minutes ago, Brootse said:

My guess is that it's for game balance reasons.

Waitresses must be much more aggressive in your game.

Yeah, the books are all over the place on this one. Most anyone conversant in English will define "someone that has been initiated into a cult" as being an Initiate of a cult!

If few are initiated, then why are all the NPCs in the RQG publications initiates? In GA, Vareena, the 21 year old waitress in the small village of Apple Lane, is an initiate. Her father the livery man is an initiate. Arnalda the tenant farmer is an initiate. Her 16 year old daughter is an initiate. All of the Varmandi herders are initiates. I'm not seeing a named, human lay member in any of GA, Pegasus Plateau, or Smoking Ruin.

The cults themselves seem to back up the fact that initiation is not common by charging 20L to become an initiate, the equivalent of a year's salary for most people. All the people listed in the last paragraph are among the poorest professions and yet 100% of them are initiates.

Could Jeff just come here and answer this one? It really does make a difference in our games whether 30% or 100% of adults have rune magic!

Vistera was killed in the Dragonrise (some believe she was the true summoner/awakener of the dragon). Samastina and Vistera's successor Inkarne Reaches All are the big names.

I don't think "divorce from children" or "fosterage" is the right term. These are usually not marriages for life and children do not belong to the parents in the same way that we think of. They will be physically separated from them if they go marry into a different household/bloodline/clan, but the children are not just being brought up by the parents once weaned. This adds to the fluidity of relationships, status, and class.

The JC's "In a Merry Green Vale" has an interesting character who has taken advantage of the opportunity to have children with a number of important men throughout the clan through one-year marriages, resulting in a powerful cadre of supporters who have inherited their fathers' lands and titles and all look to her as their mother.

4 hours ago, Joerg said:

That's upward mobility covered. Now how does downward mobility happen?

Things don't always work out as planned. Lots of things in a world like that will make people fall. A serious scandal can cripple the prospects of an entire extended family. People are outlawed. Some find the bottle or hazia. Others just have a string of bad luck or end up on the wrong side of some conflict. There are plenty of orphans, battle-wounded, Great Winter-wounded, etc. Their clans and bloodlines take care of them the best they can, but it is a hard life in Glorantha.

Dregs of Clearwine gives some good examples of how people can fall.

I seem to remember that Alebard led the Battalion on an ill-fated raid into Delecti territory that severely depleted their strength for some time. I don't remember the date. There is also the unexplained mention by Leika in GA that Tarndisi would not be receptive to her because of her support for the Wooden Sword. Given Alebard's relationship with the Wooden Sword and that he is an "Elf-friend", that is a bit confusing.

16 hours ago, Joerg said:

But social mobility between tenant status and free status in Heortling society is an interesting topic. And what does a free household with more adult offspring than jobs on the stead do? Send them off adventuring?

Given the recent battles and Great Winter, I don't think unemployment is a major issue in Sartar in the last 1620s. There are probably lots of apprenticeship opportunities for the children of free and poor families, and plenty of children filling the roles of deceased parents at an age younger than usual.

In general, nobles probably send their "excess" children to adventure, the military, or the priesthood. Free children go to military, temples, and apprentice in skilled trades. Poor children go into skilled and unskilled labor. And there are of course exceptions for each of these, especially among the more free-wheeling Orlanthi.

In my campaign, marriage is the main instrument of social mobility. The lower status spouse goes to live with the higher status spouse's family and clan, regardless of gender, and their children grow up at a higher status than their lower status spouse, potentially giving them more opportunities. But, as illustrated in the previous paragraph, a poor person's child might have opportunities to learn a skilled labor profession and a free person's child could prove themselves in the military or temple to become a landed thane or temple priest. Though somebody still has to be the clan shaman!

Interesting, and there is bound to be drama in such a large gathering. I don't know if the average tenant farmer would have something this large and elaborate, clans are big enough that there would have to be a number of these each year.

Which brings to mind the question of what is the wedding season? Weather would seem to preclude mid-to-late Dark and early Storm seasons. Planting and harvest would make Sea and Earth seasons challenging for such a large gathering? That leaves Fire, early Dark (if harvest is done and weather permits), and late Storm and Sacred Time?

As Orlanthi worshippers make up ca 75% of males and Ernaldans 75% of females outside the cities, according to Jeff, I think the default marriage would be Orlanth-Ernalda. While I think Uleria has a role to play in making happy marriages, I see Ernalda as the central figure. I think I would have the clan/town head Ernaldan Priestess be the default officiator of marriages. She brought the concept to Orlanth and the roles of her husbands in her myths are not entirely different from Orlanth's thanes.

2 hours ago, lordabdul said:

So for anybody who still cares, with 95% Worship, the average person would get to POW 16 at 10 years (with only 3 RPs... POW 15 with 5 RPs), but struggle to ever get to POW 18 (which is fine, not everybody wants to be a Rune Lord/Priest).

This reminds me that house rules make a big difference in the discussion. My comments are based on my game, where you only get a skill check in something if your roll would have succeeded without bonuses. So if you are at 35% worship but bonuses take you to 95%, then you are only going to get the skill check and POW roll if you roll under 35% (though you will get the greater rune point recovery, etc. based on the 95%). This reduces the number of POW gain rolls and the number of Worship skill checks (though several of my players use one of their four extra skills each season on it).

2 hours ago, Jape_Vicho said:

But on a serious note no I have no idea why it's there, maybe to make the surroundings of Hound Knob more full of things that the players (or the hound) can use in their advantage. Is there any aldryami deity associated with thorns? 

I can see a lot of interesting possibilities for it, but was curious whether there was already something. Or if it was going to be expanded upon in the Sartar book or such. It looks like a placeholder that someone didn't get back to.

At the moment I'm thinking of it as an enclave of renegade Runners or some kind of chaos-tainted former Gardener. Though it also could have been the hiding place for the Black Spear when it was cast into the wilderness.

1 hour ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

After 10 years (glorantha time), should every PC be largely stronger than Ballista (we have the stat) ?   Able to challenge Ralzakark, the Red Emperor, Argrath ? crimson bat, ... Orlanth ?

Yes, this is an issue. In my game the players tended to start with low POW, so some of them still only have 3 rune points. But I have one, after only 7 seasons and 2 sacred times, who has 10! That means he has gotten to the point that he doesn't get them all back every season (I don't allow replenishing on associated cult holy days) and that is the only thing keeping him from tossing them around in a rather unbalancing fashion.

The NPCs tend to reflect a significant under-appreciation of how quickly POW will accumulate for an adventuring character! Perhaps there needs to be more things that one has to sacrifice POW for?

One of the sites listed in the Gamesmaster's Adventures is Thorn Top. The description solely says "Tanglethorns grow atop this hill at the edge of Tarndisi’s Grove."  A quick look at a few sources yielded nothing, is there anything else on this site from previous Glorantha publications or is this a mostly blank slate for GMs to fill in?

4 hours ago, Kloster said:

Yes, of course. NPCs are people too.

I think it is not enough. With 6 rolls per year, at least one should succeed. Even with only 3 rolls per year (if only for major worships), the POW gain should be at least 1 per year, and I think average Joe has not many other options to spend those POW. After 10 years, either they have a 18 POW or they have gain at least 5 RP.

The average Joe has very, very few opportunities to overcome someone's power, defeat a spirit, or spend 500L for POW training. They have one high holy day and the sacred time, and they have to make their Worship roll to get those opportunities, so 1 POW gain roll per year seems likely. So 3-5/decade seems reasonable.

Profession would affect this. A herder or hunter with binding might use it quite often. A warrior, thief, or bandit might have more opportunities. A fisherman might disrupt fish for a roll, if they have an extremely lenient GM.

Are there any resources (official or not) that give information on Sartarite/Orlanthi/Ernaldan weddings? Not marriages, but the actual wedding rituals, traditions, etc.

Am I correct that you only get one POW roll per season? So things like training POW or supervising services with a successful worship roll as priest do not add a second?

10 hours ago, Stephen L said:

I then applied that to, for example, the Colymar Map as @Scorus uses.  And got a surprisingly similar figure of 1cm = 2.2 km (surprising because I was after consistency not really accuracy - I'd be delighted if my Glorantha was only 20% off accurate, in more respects than map scale!)  

Have you noticed that the Colymar map and the optimized colymar map have differences? I assumed that the latter just had the clan lines drawn on the former, but that is not the case. The location of the Dragonewt plinth just west of Swanton comes to mind as one example.

A little on the diaspora. Some clans gave refuge to Durulz during the infamous duck hunt, so you will find anything from refugee camps to permanent villages around, depending on the time your game is set in. In some cases, the urulz have been incorporated into the clan, essentially as a new bloodline (albeit one that may not have all of the privileges). Hiording, Arnoring, and Marshedge would be good examples of this.

In the Hiording clan I put together, the Swan clan saw the Durulz as brethren and gave ca. 20 refuge and allowed to start their own stead near the end of the Swan River (which in my game is an actual river). That was basically marshland that the Durulz knew how to farm better than the humans. This proved critical to the clan's survival during the Great Winter as the effect on some water crops was not as severe as on land ones, though the humans didn't really acquire a taste for seaweed and algae! The Durulz now act as their own bloodline with an elder. The current lawgiver is a Humakt Durulz who sits on the Ring. Though there are certainly some in the clan who still resent their presence and correctly state that the Hiording gave up some of their historic status as a wealthy clan due to not taking advantage of the tax cut that came with the duck hunt on top of providing for the needs of the Durulz until they became self-sufficient.

Sometimes the most creative is the least creative, because no one else would pick it.

Name it Alynx (and Google "Big Jake", if needed).

I did a lot of work on this similar to you. My favorite was that some maps are in km, others in miles, and one scale just said 5! Wait, 5 what?!?!

I ended up doing a lot of measuring, taking a good average and then applying it to the map that I was using (colymar_clans_map_optimized) as my master. I ended up with 1 cm=2.67 km, but your mileage will quite literally vary!

And whatever you decide, you can expect that the next publication will wreck it all to the Underworld!

Just to report back for anyone interested. I generally followed the advice of @jajagappa.

I gave the player the option of staying put in hopes that someone would find them or exploring with their 20% Spirit Travel skill. As they are an adventurous sort who is not afraid of re-rolling their character, they went off in search of their body. Each hour they rolled their Spirit Travel, on a success they would find their way to their body. On a failure, they would roll their POWx4. If that is a success then they end up in a non-descript area in which there was only a 10% chance of there being a spirit interested in some kind of interaction. If they failed the POWx4, then they were drawn to a place of spiritual importance. I generated a table of 30 such places in a good sized range of Apple Lane (which I am sure I will use many times) including towns with temples, places with powerful spirits, powerful shamans, etc. and ranked them by a combination of distance and spirit activity (weighting the latter). Some were places where they could potentially find help, others were extremely dangerous.

The player had good luck, ending up where help was available and making the rolls and decisions necessary to take advantage of it. After a few trips to non-descript locations, they ended up in Runegate. The character is an Engizi worshipper and recognized the presence of water, engaged a water spirit there in Boatspeech and it summoned the naiad of the river who he had interacted with several times before. She helped him get back to Swanton where the clan shaman not only happened to be but was actually discorporate. She helped him back to Apple Lane, where the other players had brought his body back to.

The individual was discorporate for 6 hours, in all. Extended Discorporation is defined in the book as more than 6 hours, so there will be no significant effects. Though if anyone has ideas on relatively insignificant effects then I'm all ears. Thanks for the advice and help!

7 hours ago, Jeff said:

You all are welcome to do what you want with your Glorantha in your games, etc. But in forthcoming publications and licensed material, the rulers of Sartar are well-defined. And it is assumed there is a single leader named Argrath, assisted by many companions and friends, who led Sartar in the Hero Wars, just as there was a single leader named Alexander who, assisted by many companions and friends, led Macedon in the conquest of the Persian Empire.

Understood, but in my opinion the dictation of the future is a flaw of RQG. It is great for non-game publications such as King of Sartar and The Guide to Glorantha, but IMO an RPG is about letting the players impact and even decide the flow of future history in their game. A better strategy would be to define the world in 1625, seed it with multiple development possibilities, and set the GM and players loose on the world with no one walking around with a ruler for when they speak out against "canon". I am great with saying "there was a single leader named" but I think the impact on an RPG of changing that to the future tense is a negative one. Just my opinion.

I  have no intention to make the rule of Sartar necessarily hereditary! Nobody even knows who Sartar descended from but we are going to limit ourselves to those descended from him, the process that gave us the reigns of Temertain and Kallyr? I don't think so. Sartar's rule was so transformative that I can totally see his children following in his footsteps, especially since some of them were quite successful. But the notion that only the next distant relation can rule doesn't seem to be one that the relatively pragmatic tribes of Sartar would universally embrace.

The Argrath will reach the pinaccle based on their successes militarily and politically. I don't expect Leika to become the Argrath, but after taking command and winning the Battle of the Queens against the Lunars after Kallyr's death seems like it would give her some momentum with those tribes that are not already opposed to Colymar.