Brian Duguid

This doesn't answer your question but does include an image and some further information. It's associated only with the Hiia Swordsman sub-cult.

The first bit in #37 is missing a link to the Starter Set review update, I believe.

Joerg, getting a bit off topic, but I'm interested in anything you find on this for my Hsunchen book. I have Heroes #4 (Telmor and Hykim/Mikyh cult write-ups, 1984) as the first appearance of "Hsunchen", in advance of the following year's Gods of Glorantha. The Hykim/Mikyh cult write-up there also uses the Hykimi term, to indicate cults derived from the beast ancestors, with Hsunchen as a term for the associated cultures or ethnicity. Not that there's a clear difference between the two, of course!

At least for the Uncolings, who (believe they) are reindeer who can take human form, I think a big part of any explanation is that they are not mostly in human form. Indeed, there's very little advantage to changing into human form in their environment.

They will be in Cults of Glorantha for the five peoples that covers (Basmoli, Mraloti, Pralori, Rathori and Telmori): not all of those are exactly what I'd expect, based on the preview I've seen. I'll have a think about the other tribes for my Hsunchen book (currently just central and western Genertela, I may include Kralorela as well if I have the energy).

I hope you don't mind if I steal some of this 🙂

A Pralori shaman is illustrated with a drum in GtG, of course. Bearwalkers on Jonstown Compendium doesn't mention it for the Rathori. In The Coming Storm, the Telmori shamans are said to "wear necklaces of bones", but it's not clear if that is their gift from Horned Man. The Telmori shaman Jogar Sog has some rather special drums, but he is Ituvanu so operating outside the core Telmori tradition. Until reading this post, I hadn't even considered it for the Hsunchen book that I'm writing 🙂

Where is this said? Maybe related, probably not, but in the Book of Heortling Mythology (pg 109) the Uncolings gave "sacrifice to monsters and demons to help them survive and fight against the Vingkotlings", during the Great Darkness. Hsunchen fans may note the similarity to Guide to Glorantha (pg 693) where in the same period the Basmoli also gave "sacrifice to monsters and demons to help them survive". Something weird in Hsunchen prehistory, there.

Guide to Glorantha, text box on page 230:

The White Bear Empire feels especially odd to me. How ever many Hsunchen tribes it did or did not unite, it controlled a huge amount of territory (1450 ST map in GtG), including the lands of almost all the non-Rathoti Fronelan Hsunchen (the exception being the Rinkoni, who now live on the southern edges of Fronela). It was aided by the green elves. They actively invaded Loskalm in 1443. Why? What did it offer a people who abjure civilisation and agriculture and who survive by hunting and foraging? What was in it for the elves?

Best place to ask that one is the Jonstown Compendium Creator's Circle group over on Facebook. There are a few fonts that are popular and/or match what is used in official Chaosium RQG publications (I've just stuck a load of Atlantis Grunge into the headers on the book I'm working on), and cost for a license is generally not excessive.

The Uncolings believe they are reindeer who can assume human form. I find it difficult to see why they'd believe that if it weren't true. I think the simplest explanation for why the Uncolings don't produce "big power" is because they're reindeer - it's not relevant to their concerns. More generally I think Hsunchen should/must have very different motivations to other humans, making things like the Eleven Beasts Alliance and White Bear Empire genuine aberrations in search of a proper explanation.

This is why I prefer "DEX SR modifier". Weapon SR is never reduced. Melee SR is normally Weapon SR + DEX SR modifier + SIZ SR modifier. Saying that the "DEX SR modifier" is reduced by 1 except not below 0 then covers both melee and missile attacks.

So long as you don't treat "reload my bow" as a physical action, because that stay at 5 SR even with Mobility.

Thanks @Scotty, and I completely agree that's how I'd interpret it - to avoid giving excessive advantages to characters with a DEX SR modifier of 0. But it's not 100% clear from the spell description that this is how it's intended to be read, because of the use of the term "strike rank" to mean two different things in the game. This is perfectly illustrated: But it doesn't say anything about DEX SR, it says "their strike rank", which can be read as allowing a reduction to the actual SR an action occurs on e.g. DEX SR 0, unprepared bow, normally fires on SR5, which becomes SR4 if the Mobility spell description is read in a different way. I think the word "their" is being asked to do way too much work 🙂. A relatively simple clarification (for people like me who evidently read far too much into this) would be "and reduces their DEX strike rank by 1, but not below 0".

When a similar query came up on FB, I suggested it is helpful to always think of DEX SR as "DEX SR modifier", SIZ SR as "SIZ SR modifier" and so on, to distinguish them clearly from Strike Ranks, which are determined by adding together SR modifiers and action SR "costs", but are not the same thing. What does it mean, for example, that Mobility "reduces their strike rank by 1"? In the bow/reloading example above, does that mean it changes the Strike Rank for an action by -1? Or that it reduces the combined DEX+SIZ SR modifiers by 1 (if so, what if they are already zero)? Or that it reduces the SR "cost" for the reload action by 1? These each may have a different result, depending on what actions are being attempted. For example, someone with a DEX SR modifier of 0 and a prepared arrow normally fires on SR 1, 6, and 11. Do they fire on 1, 5, and 9 if they use Mobility? Also for example, if the same character with an unprepared arrow normally fires on SR5 and 10, do they fire on SR4, 8 and 12 if they use Mobility?

Link to original FB post from Jeff: https://www.facebook.com/groups/RuneQuest/posts/2102523479923640/ Also here for those without FB: https://wellofdaliath.chaosium.com/home/catalogue/websites/facebook/2021-11-jeff-on-facebook/

For the Harmast / Bad Rain reference, see: In that, the Manthi Flints were used by Harmast to kill the Only Old One's son Angorsk Ig. In Sartar Kingdom of Heroes (pg 196) and Storm Tribe (pg 18) there are Manthi stones that wounded Zorak Zoran's "evil son".

You're only looking for sensible stuff, yes? So nothing like "Bless Pregnancy 321 (see also RBoM 18)"? Much more usefully, you'd have something like "Rune points xx, yy, zz (Starting Rune Points), aa, bb, cc (maximum number of Rune Points), dd, ee (Replenishing Rune Points)" and so on.

Some of the small cults at the back of the Lords of Terror would count as chaos spirit cults e.g. Vakalta, Sidana etc.

Paging @soltakss re the Dorastor books!

The only lycanthropes left in RQG are the "Cursed" Telmori (ignoring the Fox Women), who have only a superficial resemblance to what was in RQ2. RQ2 had the bearwalkers, tiger sons, tusk brothers, and wolf brothers. All four were Chaotic, and shared the same invulernability to bronze and natural weapons; and vulnerability to Rune metals, magic, and poison (if their hide is penetrated). In my copy of RQ2 that's on page 74. I think you have three basic possibilities. They are lycanthropic, as per RQ2. This is a curse that is inherited from one or both parents. But you could just as easily make it a curse obtained in some other way. The invulnerability is a significant power if you treat them as able to transform at will (as in RQ2), but the Chaotic taint balances that. In RQ2, these were intended as monsters, not as PCs. As mentioned by others, go the Odayla route. This is straightforward under the RQG rules, not overpowered, and culturally acceptable amongst Heortlings. No magical invulnerability. The "difficult" option is a Rathori Hsunchen, as rules for that aren't yet published under RQG (it will be in Cults of Glorantha). Spells will be generally similar to Odayla, except without access to all Common Rune Magic, and you could add in Hibernate from Red Book of Magic. I think they would be recognised as a weird flavour of Odayla amongst the Heortlings i.e. not an enemy. In addition to options mentioned by others, you could say this is some kind of "Hsunchen blood" having resurfaced for an unknown reason. This one is a bit of a stretch, in my view, as Rathori follow shamanic traditions and that's tricky unless you want to bring a focus on shamanism into your game. I'd suggest #2 is by far the simplest, and well-supported by the available rules material. If you went with the Hsunchen option, then there's tons of detail on the Rathori (in their native Fronelan context) in Bearwalkers on the Jonstown Compendium, while we await the new Cults book.

IMO most or all of the Hsunchen tribes will have a myth to explain why some of their tribe have 2-legs and some have 4-legs. There's an example in Jamie Revell's book on Jonstown Compendium, Bearwalkers, of this type of myth, and I've written at least one more for the Hsunchen book I'm working on. I think the Hsunchen will typically have myths only to explain the division within their own people, or other peoples they have close dealings with. I doubt they give much thought to the wider issue of animal/human separation: that stuff is for the God Learners. If they think about it at all, my view is they will view most or all non-Hsunchen humans to be "fallen" Hsunchen, who lost their beast connection by abandoning the Hsunchen way of life. There are echoes here of the expulsion from Eden, and of the real-world historical development from hunter/gatherer/animist -> agriculturalist/town-dweller/theist. The shift from animist to theist goes along with an externalisation of primary magical power: humans come to rely upon the magic of gods, mediated through a priesthood, rather than through direct contact with spirits and their own internal beast soul. There was an interesting text fragment (presented as a bit of Lhankor Mhy or similar lore) in Tales of the Reaching Moon #9, which I've copied below: This is only a Brithini claim, obviously. Perhaps they are also ultimately "out of animals" and in denial of the truth. However, see also page 75 of the Glorantha Sourcebook, if you have that, which has an in-world account of the view that: Actually, that's also online here. If you thing there is a grain of truth in either account, then what is clear is that "ordinary" humans are the oddity. Beasts, and beast-people, were the norm at one point in mythic development. For this one, we have the Glorantha Sourcebook again, page 87. This indicates that in the Green Age, the Form Runes were made in order: Dragonewt -> Plant -> Animal -> Man. This doesn't necessarily imply that the human form came "from" the animal form, but there's certainly a progression: humanoid races could not be created until after beasts were already present in the world. In my Hsunchen book I'm speculating further about this. Involving baboons, inevitably. I see this just as a game-book simplification, but you could tie this to Eff's suggestions above. Imagine that the Hsunchen still represent the "purist" example (albeit much compromised) of peoples who saw beast and human forms much like garments to put on or off. They know that their human members and beast members are the same people at heart. Their souls can incarnate into either body. If such a Hsunchen soul is found in the spirit world, as an animal spirit, why would it not have INT and CHA? It will need them if it is incarnated into human form in its next life. One view would be that they are retained when embodied (at birth) in animal form - just suppressed, or inaccessible, or frankly, still there, but the animal normally sees no need to express them. The aspects of the soul that are expressed depend on the natal form. I think it's important that these remain speculation, that there is no one answer to the question, but just a range of possibilities that might then emerge within individual myths and stories. Otherwise we're just back to the God Learners again. And that's never good.

I've left messages with all of the above via Facebook. If I get replies I'll pass them along, otherwise I've directed them towards this thread.

I think there is something deeper here, which I'm exploring in the Hsunchen book I'm writing, but it's cultural rather than specific to the shamans that form part of that culture. Hsunchen don't practice agriculture, even seeing it as taboo; there's a sense that they are defending a palaelolithic or mesolithic culture against the progress that the neolithic era brought. And there could be sound Gloranthan reasons for that: agriculture and temples evolve together, along with a transition from an animist to a theist culture, and all that goes along with that (obedience to priests and landowners, longer working hours, poorer health). This transition in the real-world is seen in Glorantha in the form of cultural change from the Basmoli to the Pendali, the Mraloti to the Entruli etc. Hsunchen shamans are therefore uncivilized because the conservative tendency in their peoples see civilization as a trap, which will dilute their magical heritage and their very culture. Those Hsunchen tribes who did become civilized generally assimilated theist pantheons and culture behaviours. That's specific to the Hsunchen culture, but several other Gloranthan cultures with significant animist aspects are also non-agricultural (and therefore uncivilized): the Praxian Waha tradition, the Golden Bow tradition amongst the Grazelanders, etc. There's absolutely no reason why a shaman can't live in a city (as pointed out earlier in the thread, if there's something weird in the neighbourhood, who ya gonna call?) But where they are fulfilling a social role as part of a wider culture, it will come down to the extent to which a theist culture (obedient in magical matters to a priesthood) can coexist with animisim (magic based on direct one-to-one experience with spirits, possibly less hierarchical).