Brian Duguid

Link:

https://www.facebook.com/ChaosiumInc/posts/448047843999474

What time zones are you in?

On 7/16/2022 at 8:45 PM, eknarfer said:

You have created an amazing labor of love with this book!

A review or rating would always be appreciated. Alternatively, are you happy if I quote the above on any future publicity?

12 hours ago, Frp said:

I'm loving the book. 

Must admit it's a bit embarrassing I never thought through some of effects the great sleep in Fronela.

Please do add a review and/or rating! 🙂

It took me some time to "wake up" to the effects of the Rathori sleep in Fronela, and it just got more interesting once I worked out how long ago most of the Rathori alive in 1625 must have been born. Some of that came from thinking about writing a "family history" section for character creation - that never made it into the book, though, too much work given how many tribes there are.

One puzzle that remains is what happens with all the other Rathorelan tribes during the same period. They don't all have totemic animals that hibernate. Did they expand into Rathori territory? I've touched on that (suggesting a reason why the White Bear became vulnerable to Harrek), but not tried to explain too much.

To celebrate recently reaching Copper Best Seller status, I have added bonus art content, a 13-page PDF containing the text used during art commissioning, sketches from the art development, and two of the larger illustrations at larger size so you can really appreciate the glorious detail from Kristi Jones!

The bonus content is available immediately to all previous and new purchasers.

If you have already bought and enjoyed the book - please consider leaving a star-rating and/or a review, it really makes a difference and helps the title succeed.

http://tiny.cc/TCoH

Thanks for Evan. For any further typos, feel free to pop them in a DM. I've fixed a few in the v1.1 file, and I'll fix any more when v1.2 is provided.

Just now, eknarfer said:

I did have one thing that jumped out, and that is a mention of the "Uthri" on page 130 as a possible member of the Eleven Beast Alliance, and there is no other information on them at all. Maybe there is none.

Good spot! They are mentioned in a source that I think has never been officially published. I put them in, and then took them back out; I must have missed that reference, I'll remove it in v1.1.

And thanks for the kind words 🙂

I have just published this book on Jonstown Compendium.

159 pages and just over 100,000 words on the Hsunchen totem animal peoples of Glorantha. Priced at $16.99.

This book is aimed at anyone who is interested in the Hsunchen. The Hsunchen inhabit the fringes of Gloranthan geography and include some of the most peculiar and fascinating peoples in this world. Because they mostly live far away from mainstream society they are often obscure and poorly documented, and perhaps rarely encountered in many RuneQuest games.

Twenty-one Hsunchen tribes living in the western and central parts of the continent of Genertela are described across the space of 158 pages, alongside extensive information regarding their culture, myth, technology, magic and more.

The book explains how to create a Hsunchen adventurer, gives tips on using them as adventurers or as non-player characters, ideas for high-level campaigns, and even information on Hsunchen Heroquesting!

Appendices provide the author's notes, answers to Hsunchen Q&A, a spells index, Hsunchen mega-list and more.

The tribes included are (in order of appearance): skunk, black owl, mammoth, badger, raccoon, bear, bobcat, wolverine, reindeer, yellow quill porcupine, moose, mountain goat, fallow deer, giant beaver, horse*, wolf, opossum, boar, elk, lion and puma*.

(*sure, debate if you want!).

I am hugely grateful to @Diana Probst, Kristi Jones, Robert Meyer and @M Helsdon for their art, and to various others on this forum and elsewhere who provided input or simply pointed me in the right direction. And of course to the Chaosium team for creating these opportunities for community authors and artists.

If you have any comments or corrections, feel free to send me a private message via this forum.

http://tiny.cc/TCoH

Thanks David, that ticks all the boxes for me.

Telmor would be the other cult in the Bestiary of interest to this, as it has shamans who are also Priests; although I guess theoretically you could have an Aldryami shaman who also qualified as a Wood Lord so would have both a fetch in the spirit plane and also an allied spirit in their elf bow.

Personally, I'm taking the view that Hsunchen shaman-priests *don't* get Allied Spirits, but that's essentially a house rule as these are (relatively) minor cults and shamanhood is powerful enough in those communities without matching the power level of a great deity like Kyger Litor.

Official clarification on that point would be welcome.

If you can edit your first post, there's an "eye" icon in the post editing toolbar which allows you hide text containing any spoilers for the scenario.

Edit: oops, saw you had it in the topic title, didn't see that when following a link to get here though.

Wow, that is superb!

I think a lot of this just hangs in what "rules" means. The big KL isn't a Queen sitting on a throne directing underlings. What she wants is defined through her cult - it literally tells her people how to behave. If they need more detail, the cult hierarchy is there to provide it.

1 hour ago, Nolzur said:

Third, and this is more like confusion on my part: in what sense did time not exist? I'm taking it as some kind of simultaneous happening of events in which maybe people from the golden age had already myths of the fall that did not "yet" happen.

I'll bite on this one.

Think of Glorantha as like an atom. It is made up of protons, neutrons and electrons. And maybe there are also mesons, photons or muons floating around. Some of those sub-atomic composite particles are in turn made up of elementary particles such as quarks (six kinds), leptons (also six kinds), gauge bosons (twelve), and the Higgs boson. Some of those, like the gauge bosons can be thought of as forces which determine how other particles interact, like the gluon which binds quarks together.

We have information about the various components of the atom, and the rules by which they interact, and also some understanding of how they can be perceived differently by observers (wave-particle duality), and how observation of one aspect renders other aspects obscure (Heisenberg's uncertainty principle).

Godtime *is* the underlying reality and structure of the Gloranthan universe: everything which is in the mundane world is there because it is underlain by the Godtime. Just as electrons bind to protons, Yelm fights with Orlanth. Both describe or define fundamental "laws" of the universe. Both just exist, wished-into place, hanging together coherently. But I can only describe them to you by stringing words together, one after another, in sequence. And it would help you enormously if I can describe characteristics of (for example) the muon neutrino - it's size, shape, how it interacts with other particles. Just as it may help you to have Yelm described, and his interactions described through stories, the key medium of communication in a pre-literate society.

I'm *not*, to be clear, suggesting that Glorantha works in a mechanistic way i.e. myth can be reduced to the interaction of elementary Runes. I'm just searching for a metaphor as to how we explain a reality that is ultimately imperceptible within the limitations of ourselves trapped within Time: visually and verbally.

So did Godtime actually happen simultaneously, because there was no Time? It doesn't matter: we can't describe it that way and make sense of it, because Gloranthans live within Time and (apart from Mystics and Dragons, maybe) have no way to deal with the Godtime other than to experience it sequentially - because everything in their experience is sequential.

Does any of that help?

All IMO, obviously.

14 minutes ago, JRE said:

It is interesting that there are some reptile hsunchen, but no snake hsunchen. 

Snake Hsunchen were one of several tribes of reptile Hsunchen mentioned in the Broken Council Guidebook, along with the lizard people, wyvern people, crocodile people, turtle people, and chameleon people.

The Guide to Glorantha has canonical snake Hsunchen in Errinoru, in Pamaltela, the Yaquma Anaconda people (page 544).

Revealed Mythologies has the Adder and the Anaconda as two of the sixteen Fiwan, or Old People, the original "Hsunchen" of Pamaltelan mythology (page 43).

None of these are likely to be chaotic, of course.

This is a thread that really begs for others to add here their own "weirdest things".

I vote for the Sedrali, half-human half-greyhound people, whose females have dog bodies with human heads, and whose males have human bodies with dog heads. Quite how the Sedrali reproduce is a mystery, and it really should remain so, please.

The Siwafu Army Ant people of the Errinoru Jungle are also pretty weird, "who can transform themselves into hundreds of thousands of flesh-eating ants".

Yes, assimilation was more common amongst First Age Hsunchen peoples than being wiped out. Although other bull-people(s) existed, we are told that the gods of the defeated Tawari were bound into the Bull Gate in Valsburg. GtG has the Tawari as "forced out of" their land; but also has the Eleven Beasts Alliance as "virtually exterminated". I have in my notes that "none of the Tawari remained alive", but checking back now I can't find a source that goes quite that far, so my vivid imagination may have been at work!

Either way, the destruction of the Tawari fits the normal legal definition of genocide, which includes the concept of cultural genocide; destruction of a group's culture through spiritual and cultural destruction. Imprisoning their very gods fit with that, and I'm using the term in a polemical sense anyway, to emphasise the victim status of the Hsunchen (including the Telmori) when confronted with other Gloranthan civilizations.

Getting more than a little off-topic 🙂

Canonically, I think all the Hsunchen are described as human, albeit "born with minor differences from other humans" (GtG).

There's a snippet of lore that appeared in Tales of the Reaching Moon #9 which reports a Brithini view that they were descendants from the "only true humans on Glorantha", and that almost all others were referred to as "animal-men", who had been taught to assume human form by, who else, the Brithini. There is a related division in Pamaltelan lore between the Old People (the Fiwan, a.k.a. Hsunchen), the "made" people like the Agi/mori, and other humans like the Artmali.

There's a positive spin, which is that the Hsunchen are the only humans who recognise they have an evolutionary origin, knowing that they **are** animals, while others are rightly or wrongly arguing that they are special / superior. The negative spin is that the Hsunchen are consciously dehumanised by others, along with anyone who may have that in their ancestry. Several Hsunchen tribes, like the Tawari bull-people, appear to have been the victims of genocide.

So I think that's all fine as a story element, just as is the racist treatment of the Telmori in Sartar. But I think it's best to stay conscious of it, especially when it's repeated in game material. And having the non-Chaotic Telmori also present in Sartar, as @Ludovic aka Lordabdul suggests, is one way to do that, because it disrupts the normal narrative and adds complexity.

Well, there's an argument that following Odayla is not so much a choice but a calling i.e. the only people who'd join already have bear blood in them, and that's what attracts them to the cult.

I would be careful with the terminology: the Hsunchen are still human. To say otherwise has dangerous overtones. It's just that they understand that they are also animals, and unlike most humans, they are able to contact / awaken / embody their animal "self". This is how to account for the occasional lion cub births amongst Western human communities; perhaps some of the relationships of the Martial Beast Societies to their martial beasts; and also the aspirations of the Ancient Beast Society to reawaken their beast selves.

Also note that Hsunchen can become non-Hsunchen, by practising non-Hsunchen magic, as has happened throughout Gloranthan history when various beast-folk have adopted foreign gods and assimilated into a broader culture. It would not be right to say that when they do so they "become human", just that they lose access to their animal totem.

38 minutes ago, Dogboy said:

Ooh, sounds intersting. Are they any good? I don't know the artist.

Anders Tonnberg's map is here:

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/376267/Dorastor-Map?affiliate_id=1107865

Dorastor also features on one of Mikael Mansen's maps:

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/390900/Talastar--Glorantha-area-maps?affiliate_id=1107865

Ah, I see from Dorastor: land of Doom that the Pure Ones never followed Nysalor so would have neither the invulnerability nor the involuntary shape-change. I'd be strongly inclined to make an adoptee a Pure One, partly because of the interesting opportunities for storyline that it creates.

5 hours ago, Akhôrahil said:

2. Adoption into the Telmori exists, I believe. You can't join the Cult of Telmor and you don't become a werewolf under any normal circumstances. However, there's good game fodder in the Ituvani, a caste of non-Telmor shamans that aggressively (and dangerously) bind hostile spirits and create magical tattoos, and that a non-Werewolf might potentially join. And HeroQuesting isn't a normal circumstance - "discovering" Telmori ancestry during a heroquest seems perfectly legitimate. 

Adoption into any Hsunchen tribe is theoretically possible. See Heroes magazine #4 which had the long RQ3 Hykim & Mikyh write-up:

Quote

"In order to be adopted into a Hsunchen cult, a candidate must reject all former ties into a civilized religion, sorcery, and non-Hykimi shamanism. He must also successfully roll under his POW x 3 and his Animal Lore skill. Success indicates that he is accepted as a Hsunchen, and a complex ritual and celebration is undergone, varying with the particular tribe".

Individual Hsunchen peoples will have more specific requirements than this, that's a generic template. Expect to have to perform some "great deeds" for the tribe as a starting point - adoption is not a casual thing. The usual rule of sacrificing one POW for a Rune Point would apply. I would rule that the successful adoptee awakens an animal soul during the rites and fully or partially changes form; therefore their first Rune magic must be one of the Transform spells.

Specifically for Telmor, the successful candidate may / should acquire their wolf companion during the process. There is more in the forthcoming Cults book, but I don't have permission to share and I'm not sure how much was in the convention previews.

I would personally rule that an adoptee into the Telmori tribe will not acquire the curse of weekly transformation - but what about Nysalor's blessing?

Did the Pure Ones acquire the invulnerability to normal weapons from Nysalor, or did they dodge the blessing as well as Talor's curse? My reading of GtG page 397 is that they have neither of these, as it says they are "similar to other Hsunchen".

On 5/19/2022 at 12:40 PM, jajagappa said:

This is the Lady of the Wild, and not just a Vingkotling deity.  Wherever the wilds exist (and they do return when civilizations fall), you can find her.  If there are still hunters and uninhabited spaces, you can find her.  The myths of Orogeria in Peloria (in Entekosiad) connect very closely with this figure.

She is noted on the Gods Wall (Guide p.677 in commentary on Thilla): Thilla does hold a branching root, but this is the antler of a deer, indicating Orogeria, the Great Huntress, Lady of the Wild, and Keeper of Life and Death. She is sometimes said to be the sister of Thilla and sometimes Ulurdra. The Lunars identify Orogeria as one of the ancient seven Moon goddesses and goddess of the Ascending Blue Moon. In vixen shape she taught her starving people to hunt with bows and to trap so they survived the darkness.

I'm still an explicit "no" on some of this. The Book of Heortling Mythology is deeply unreliable, but is clear that: "She is the mother and protector of all wild things, animals, and spirits of Dragon Pass. She is present in the primeval forests, hidden groves and valleys, streams and caves of Kerofinela." (My emphases). I have no problem with that being a Heortling perspective, and note the relationship to Orogeria.

But she's not, for example, a Hsunchen entity, I can't see any obvious analogue in the Korgatsu spirit tradition; she has no obvious analogue amongst the pantheons of the First Age Enerali; nor amongt the animal nomads. Her whole shtick is the lady of the "wild", which is only sensibly a meaningful term to the agricultural and urban societies. It comes directly from their sense of alienation from unspoilt nature, their having fallen from Eden / the Golden Age / etc. The people and beasts who actually live in what others call the "wilderness" just call it "home"; it's not an alien environment, and many primitive societies (IRL and I'm sure in Glorantha) don't see a clear dichotomy between themselves and nature. Especially the Hsunchen, who are deeply embedded in their environment and may not see themselves as separate from it, given their recognition that they are indeed animals.

So sure: I can see Velhara in many "wildernesses", but an entity who only really exists as a necessary reflection of civilised cultures. IMG there must be "wild" territories where she has no role.

On 5/17/2022 at 4:43 PM, Ludovic aka Lordabdul said:

It might be interesting to get a few JC authors together and write this, yeah

Maybe post it on the JC Creators group? I think if a couple of people were happy to coordinate it, there'd be no shortage of writers; obviously issues with royalties if there are too many but I'd cheerfully write a page for Hykim/Mikyh for free. Only 96 main cults to cover, of course 😉.

Very specifically a deity related to how "civilised" people encounter the wilderness; I think she's entirely unknown to the animist peoples of the wilds, like the Hsunchen, who have no such need to personify "wildness".