Brian Duguid

Pretty certain they can't speed it up: but it would be nice to know if it will have a PDF pre-release while we await printing and shipping. A tasty aperitif to keep the hungry masses at bay 🙂

Link to the Nochet map is on this page, for anyone unfamiliar with it: https://wellofdaliath.chaosium.com/home/catalogue/publishers/to-sort-categorise/nochet-city-of-queens/

I don't have a canonical answer, but I'd say if your body or your disembodied spirit goes to the Underworld, that's the basic Gloranthan definition of being dead. The Lightbringers die when they pass through the Gates of Dusk, and must confront the guardians of the dead there. The shaman who can self-resurrect is dead when her spirit goes to the underworld: she just knows secret pathways to avoid judgement and sneak back out to reunite her spirit with her body. But at no time does she have a "soul" in the underworld and a spirit anywhere else. In comparison, when she discorporates and her fetch guards her body, she is not dead, because her spirit is in the Spirit World, not the underworld. Following that logic, no, you can't have a soul that goes to the Underworld and a spirit that stays in the Middle World. Your disembodied self is indivisible.

By far and away the easiest thing to do here is just to change the cult for your own game. If you think it is unbalanced in the official version, just change it. What would you do if details of the cult had never been published? Whatever that is, do that.

Looking forward to the thread asking why Barntar has no spells relevant to traditional adventurers. Or Flamal. Or the Grain Goddesses. Or Voria. Or ... (checks list) ... (PS: that link was not the final list, there was at least one update shared earlier this year, so it's not a nice round number of 100 cults any more).

Well, that was my basic view anyway, and I've taken just that route 😆

There were certainly much bigger deer, like the Megaloceros giganteus or Cervalces latifrons, the latter weighed around 1000 kg! IMG deer of this size did exist in Glorantha, and can be found in the God World. Neither of these were especially closely related to reindeer, which is Rangifer tarandus in both the real world and in Glorantha, just highlighting the discrepancy. Naming the variant in W&E Rangifer giganteus might have better indicated a desire to consciously differ 🙂

Maybe that misunderstands my main issue. I'm not bothered that creatures in Glorantha differ from creatures in the real-world. High Llamas are fine with me, for example. My concern is not just that it doesn't match the real-world, but that the change to having ultra-war-deer in the game, vastly superior to the elk, may not have been well-considered. The values are not well-aligned with other deer and creatures within the game world (let alone with the real world), as is clear from the base damage figures which just don't sit within the general philosophy used to "design" all the creatures in the Bestiary. My concern is balance, not impossibility. There will be no ultra-war-deer in my game, anyway, at least not until someone heroquests to brink back the Gloranthan equivalent of the giant Irish Elk!

There are other aspects of the moose and reindeer in W&E that seem out-of-balance when compared to the other deer. The base damage for butt/gore attacks (2D6 for reindeer and 3D6 for moose) are hugely over-powered (compare the base damage of 1D8 for a mammoth's gore attack, or 1D10 for a rhino's horn), so that a moose does typical total damage of 7D6 for a butt attack (compare 1D8+5D6 for the mammoth, or 1D10+4D6 for the rhino). The base bite damage for the moose of 2D6 is higher than that for a lion or rhino (1D10), which seems absurd (although I've never been bitten by a moose, so perhaps they are more deadly than I imagine!) And for what are normally considered prey animals, most of the perception skills for the moose and reindeer are very low compared to their other deer cousins e.g. Listen 40% / Scan 35%, compared against Listen 75% / Scan 75% for the elk.

See pages 170-171 of Glorantha Bestiary for definitions of ghost and guardian spirit. The spell name and intent goes back to Cults of Prax days and hasn't changed, but maybe just think of it as Bind Guardian Spirit, if that helps? It would be good to have a myth. Ghosts (IMO) aren't undead as they are disembodied, no different to other disembodied spirits except for their origin; they are just the spirits of dead people stuck in the "wrong" place. The essence of the Humakti spell is that the volunteer remains dead but their spirit need not pass out of the world. Humakti may not be "called back" from the dead, but this is different; they have essentially been delayed in their journey to the Humakti underworld.

I'm not normally very interested in rules minutiae, but this caught my eye because I developed my own stats for reindeer and moose for the work-in-progress Jonstown Compendium Book of Hsunchen. And then discovered that the stats in Weapons and Equipment are very different - and don't make much sense to me. I need to decide whether to adopt the W&E stats or stick with my own. (I may just stick with my own anyway to save people having to look stuff up in yet another book that they may or may not own). Here are some key stats for deer taken from W&E page 40 and from Gloranthan Bestiary page 143-144. I've listed the average stats in ascending order, not the die rolls, to make comparison easier. Weights are based on the table on page 9 of the Bestiary, which is intended for humanoids so should be taken as only a very rough guide. Black-tailed deer: STR 15-16, SIZ 15-16 (roughly 90kg) Elk: STR 26, SIZ 26 (roughly 250kg) Reindeer: STR 28-29, SIZ 32 (roughly 420kg) Moose: STR 34-35, SIZ 38 (roughly 500kg or more) Then here they are in "real-world order", using the mule deer as the analog for the black-tailed deer (because they share the same Latin/scientific name Odocoileus hemionus). These details are all from the very helpful website https://www.dimensions.com/collection/deer-cervidae. Mule deer: 1.09-1.68m long, 0.81-1.07m shoulder, 45-150kg Reindeer: 1.20-2.22m long, 0.85-1.40m shoulder, 60-320kg Elk/wapiti: 2.08-2.44m long, 1.22-1.70m shoulder, 147-500kg Moose: 2.80-3.05m long, 1.68-2.11m shoulder, 270-680kg Now, obviously, the Gloranthan creatures need not be exact analogs for their real-world counterparts. However, the Gloranthan deer have all been given scientific names that match or nearly match their real-world equivalents, suggesting that equivalence is at least a good starting point. The SIZ and STR stats for the reindeer in W&E seem to me to be way too high, making them into a riding rather than herding animal, with very different implications for the culture of their Hsunchen companions, the Uncolings. Given the accompanying text, using them as mounts seems to be intentional by the authors. However Guide to Glorantha only ever describes the reindeer people of Eol, Fronela and elsewhere as herders, never as riders. The Uncolings are specifically stated to be "foot nomads". Any other views?

Re-reading the Aranea cult descriptions from both RQ2 and RQ3 I think it's clear there is a differentiation between spiders and human/troll worshippers that is very different to the Hsunchen. Intelligent spiders are automatically initiates of Aranea. Humans and trolls are not, and "must pass the usual test". The aim of the Spider Masters is to "glorify" the spiders. There's absolutely no suggestion that they see each other as kin. The Gorakiki write-ups take the same approach. Contrast the Hsunchen cult of Telmor: both adult wolves and adult Telmori see themselves as kin, and both are automatically initiates of the Telmor cult. The same is true of every other Hsunchen cult we've seen described: outsiders may be adopted, but Hsunchen adult status is fundamentally a matter of identity, not of chosen worship. This is not to say there could not be trolls (or humans) who believe themselves to be kin to spiders, or to one of the Gorakiki insect species. There are references in the RQ2 Gorakiki cult to the insect-people of Pamaltela who worship Gorakiki as an ancestral being. In the RQ3 version it's clarified that this refers to the Timinits. In the RQ3 book, there is mention both of spider-Hsunchen and insect-worshipping Hsunchen, but I think both have been retconned out of existence unless the fire ant people of Pamaltela count.

Variation is definitely good, and I'm also keen to take culture myths and beliefs at face value, but I've not found much (if anything) in the current lore to support some of the options above. I have found plenty that backs up the "traditional" Hsunchen template and related myths. But there aren't any official stories (yet) of Hsunchen tribes who believe anything other than that they descended directly from animal ancestors. The Flari owl-folk may be an interesting counter-example (GtG: "humans who can turn into owls"), depending how you want to read it, and I'm certainly taking them to differ from other Hsunchen peoples in their nature. The Puma People of Heroquest: Roleplaying in Glorantha are another: explicitly stated not to be Hsunchen, yet they are evidently were-pumas who "work" in an almost identical way. It may be that the God Learnerism "Hsunchen" captures shapechangers who have arrived at a common Beast/Man juncture through different routes, but whose relationship to the various Beast sub-runes inevitably brings with it a common mythic underlay. I don't see ancestor cults as being a consistent focus to Hsunchen life, this being something that will vary. They generally revere their titular totem spirit (Mralota, Pralor etc) as their ultimate ancestor, but Hykimi/Mikyhi cults don't generally offer the ancestor-related magic associated with Daka Fal. Although, as always, there are exceptions. Good to see variant perspectives, in any case.

An obvious disadvantage of specialising is that as per Spirit Affinity (RQG page 362), opposed elemental spirits may be automatically hostile (perhaps acting as malign spirits, RQG page 342).

I'd say it's between whether they know that they are kin to their animals, or they don't. It's a question of identity more than of lineage or worship. Shamanism here is their path to self-discovery. I'm not sure that the difference between Rathor and Odayla is that of the centrality of their bear-relationship to their culture. I think it's more fundamental: the Rathori live amongst bears, because they believe they are bears. The Odaylans live on the edge of humanity, because the traditions of their theist cult are inseparable from that human society's broader mythology. Quite a few still extant: fish eagle, green heron, vultures, woodpeckers, fire wren, and (depending on your willingness to adopt older "canon") snow eagles. Extinct or mysterious examples include the Diving Loon Fiwan, the jungle hen people in Kralorela etc. Our view of the Hsunchen is conditioned by the western and central Genertelan experience. Not that I think any of this lot have any relationship to the ducks or keets, though, I do think they are something entirely separate, perhaps more like the baboons or Manirian otters in nature. The prevalence of mammal Hsunchen is one of my Q&A in the Book of Hsunchen. Not sure I want to spell out my answer on that one just yet, I may need to keep some reasons for people to buy the book when it comes out 😆 Maybe. Or perhaps related to the migration of (some) Fiwan north into the "snow lands" mentioned in Revealed Mythologies. That doesn't sound like a journey the reptile Hsunchen would have survived, it sounds like one for those beasts or beast-peoples who were warm-blooded.

I offer the thought that it could be the other way round: the people who are drawn to these two cults are the people whose Rathori or Rinkoni lineage resurfaces. I believe that Odayla and Yinkin are Heortling "perspectives" on the bear and bobcat/lynx entities (which are themselves personifications of Beast sub-runes, such as the bear rune ), embodying a range of different mythic truths about the same things. I may be reading too much into this, but observe that Pralor, Rathor, Telmor and Basmol will all be cults in the forthcoming Cults of Glorantha, but that only three of those have specific Rune spells in Red Book of Magic. Perhaps because the magic of Odayla and Rathor is identical? Assimilated, sure, but also discovered different truths that the Hsunchen did not. There are myths about Odayla and Yinkin which the Rathori and Rinkoni do not share, and would even reject. Like seeing different views of the same thing refracted through a series of cultural prisms. All good, but also note the Fiwan creation myths in Revealed Mythologies. In the beginning there were sixteen Fiwan peoples, and “they could take the shape of humans or animals” or “were both people and animals at the same time”. Several of the "founding" Fiwan peoples listed in that source are specific Hsunchen analogues: lion, frog, fish eagle, sun fish, eland, vulture, turtle, milk antelope, anaconda and fire wren; those are all Fiwan/Hsunchen peoples described in Guide to Glorantha. Two of the other original Fiwan (rhinoceros and otter) may have different analogues in later Gloranthan ages (Rascullu and the otters of Maniria). Revealed Mythologies even goes as far as to tell us that “the migrated Fiwan are the Genertelan Hsunchen”. So there are multiple "ideas" of the Hsunchen: the Fiwan myths from Pamaltela, the descent of the Hsunchen from Korgatsu in Kralorela, and the labelling by the Brithini of other humans as being in their eyes sub-human Hykimi in the West. All this is another section in the Book of Hsunchen, of course 😄. In Revealed Mythologies, we are told that the Fiwan went all over the world, some even living on the “Enemy Mountain” and in the snow lands. “If they ever took up worship or sorcery, they ceased to be Fiwan”. So this is a common perspective, and one also in evidence with all the post-Hsunchen peoples who took up agriculture e.g. the Enjoreli, Entruli, Pendali, Bemuri, Enerali, Redeli etc. Did they lose their "Hsunchen-ness" because of interbreeding, or because they broke their ancient taboos by enslaving beasts and breaking the skin of the Earth? I think it's more the latter. In the Book of Hsunchen, I've written up one tribe as having gone extinct and then been revived (several times) as evidence that anyone can be adopted into a Hsunchen people, that it need not be hereditary. In the forthcoming Cults of Glorantha, I believe it will give details of how people can be adopted into Hsunchen cults, by giving up ties to other religions, sorcery etc, and undergoing an adoption ritural (not always successful!) I've also included several ideas and campaign threads about how people can "discover" that they have Hsunchen inheritance, especially amongst the Martial Beast Societies (who practice a highly degraded form of Hsunchen rites), the Ancient Beast Societies (who explicitly aspire to it), and the Serpent Beast Masters (I'll keep some secrets about my non-canon thoughts there, if I may).

See Tales of the Reaching Moon #9, page 35, which has this: Whether this is just Brithini racism, and an attempt to deny their own origins, or is in some sense true, I offer no view.

OMG, what a topic! It seems lots of people have been pondering the same questions. Here are some of the headings from the dedicated Hsunchen Q&A section in the forthcoming Jonstown Compendium release, The Book of Hsunchen: Why do some Hsunchen eat their beast brothers, but not others? Why are all Hsunchen humans and not related non-human users of the Man rune e.g. trolls, elves, Triolini? Why are Hsunchen mostly mammals? What differentiates animals from people in Glorantha? What makes Hsunchen different from Praxians? What makes Hsunchen different from beastmen? What makes Hsunchen different from other shape-changers, such as fox-women? The draft book currently has six pages of answers to these and other questions. Here is the draft text answering the question heading up this thread: Any thoughts? Does the above make sense? I'll pick up on some other points in a separate reply.

In the original write-up (Heroes #6), Hykim/Mikyh are explicitly dragons, and also "the ancestors of all beasts". I interpret this as their being the personification of the Beast Rune i.e. the principle of animal form, descended from the Dragon form. They "mated" with various elements to produce the elemental beasts or their various ancestors (Sokazub, Jaskal etc), or with specific deities to originate birds, horses, cattle / hoofed animals etc. Some of these were through deities that gave birth to animal races (e.g. Eiritha), and indeed some were deities whose as the progenitor of further animals was secondary (Storm Bull). Their being the "owner" of the Beast rune is different from them being the ancestor of all beasts as clearly not all species in Glorantha are directly descended through a direct branching lineage from common ancestors; some were created in other ways, albeit still making use of Hykim/Mikyh's Beast Rune. As everyone knows, the Man Rune form then came about when gods looked at the finest of the beasts that had been created so far, the baboons, and used their form as the template for the Man Rune and all its various offshoots. This gives scope for hybrid man/beast creatures to have a range of origins: beasts who learned to take the new human form at will (the origins of the Hsunchen, and perhaps the Elurae), those who descended from a union of beast and human parents (beastmen, whether by EWF experimentation or mythic unions), unions of form from means other than mating (e.g. scorpionmen) etc. Hybrid beast/beast creatures similarly should be able to arise from all sorts of unions of species which have first been individuated.

Where is this stated, please?

From Well of Daliath, "Hykim and Mikyh are sometimes reputed to be the children of the earth and a dragon ... Hykim is usually shown as a draconic creature ..." It was deep within the Orggee Snake Caves that the dragons / pseudo-dragons Hykim and Mikyh gave birth to the world, in northern Vustria. The site remains sacred to the Serpent Beast shamans. Lake Felster was carved out of the earth by a war by the storm gods against the "Serpent-Beasts of Hykim", perhaps some echo of Orlanth vs Aroka further east. Snakes, serpents, ancestral dragons, children of the earth. Throughout the west, the Hsunchen are even named the Hykimi, emphasising the beast-people's ancient lineage back to their ancestral dragon. Perhaps any relationship to the Likitae or the Serpent Kings is merely coincidental, although note the presence at Ylream's ceremony (Guide page 409) of representatives of the Rathori, Alekki, Damali, Basmoli/Pendali, Tawari and others (playing fast and loose, yes). As the text below the picture says "The Serpent Kings ruled in a time when the difference between man and beast was not as great as it is now" - beep! Paging the Hykimi! Yes, none of that explains the conflict between the Serpent Kings and the Hykimi / Serpent Beast Alliance, I know, can't have everything. I think perhaps in the West here be dragons after all, it's just that dragons / serpents express differently in different places. cf. the East for further contrast.

Yes, I'm much less interested in the overall outcome hinted at by KoS than I am in the different factions and drivers that contribute towards it. And the animists always get pushed to the edge of our Gloranthan consciousness just as they get pushed to the edges of civilisation in game. I have a very high-level campaign outline sketched out for an attempted revival of the Serpent Beast Alliance, off the back of the resurgence of draconic powers in central Genertela, and whatever links there may be between dragons, serpents, and the various descendants of Hykim/Mikyh. Similarly I have a short outline for what the Hsunchen tribes are up to in Fronela, noting that for the northernmost Rathori in 1625, it has been only 5 waking years since the start of the Syndics Ban: the conflict between the White Bear Empire and Loskalm is something fresh in their minds, not ancient history. For some of the older Rathori, they will still see Loskalm very much as Snodal's realm. The Kingdom of Loskalm may see themselves fighting the Kingdom of War, but there will be other forces at play, especially once the terrain gets reforested and the Glacier moves. Getting a little away from Seshnela I guess, but there I have an underlying curiosity about serpents as a cross-cutting theme.

This is a perspective on the future of the theist cultures in Glorantha. What of the animists? Are they to be dismissed as theists-lite (big spirits considered to be the same as little gods); or is there a possibility that the future described in KoS is not about the loss of the deities, but about the elimination of human obedience to divine or priestly dictate? If it's the latter, there may be a space for the animist cultures to hold a different status in the brave new world.

This isn't quite what you've asked for but it might help for more urban dwellings - there are two supplements from Jonstown Compendium which are based explicitly on real archaeological floorplans: Rubble Redux: Insula of the Waning Moon and Rubble Redux: Insula of the Rising Sun. Citizens of the Lunar Empire is another one with floorplans, elevations etc, although I don't know if it is also based on archaeological research. @Chris Gidlow could perhaps comment.

That jumped straight to my mind, and I guess it would be worth Ian being aware of it anyway! FB link here for anyone who hasn't seen it: https://www.facebook.com/groups/RuneQuest/posts/2166768793499108/