Brian Duguid

It took me a second to spot that the right-hand end of that graph is per quarter and to imagine what it would be like if the scale was consistent.

That'll teach me not to rely on a mis-typed word search rather than just flipping the book open! 😄

Here's another Prosopaedia trivia question. Who's missing? Jeff will have made his choices, and it all looks reasonable enough to me. But ... who is lacking an entry who you would like to have seen with their own entry, for whatever reason? Here are a handful that occurred to me (and I haven't finished reading yet): The Larnstings; the Luathans; Snodal; Srvuali; Varzor Kitor. I'm thinking mainly of entities that still have some canonical existence within RQG or other canon product. I'm not really interested in the Destors, Finovans etc. Who else is missing and why should they be there? I was surprised to see Damal in there. I'd really have liked to see Uncol, or whoever the Uncoling deity is.

According to the Prosopaedia, Jotimam was the name for the void left by the explosion of the Spike. Hence the short description as "the Empty Center" at https://wellofdaliath.chaosium.com/home/gloranthan-documents/prosopaedia/deities/j/jotimam/.

There was a Palmaltelan issue of Tales of the Reaching Moon, #11, but that's wildly non-canonical if you care about that. The Stafford Library book, Revealed Mythologies, is the next place to turn to after the Guide.

For the next two weeks, you can get the PDF version of The Children of Hykim for 25% off, in DriveThruRPG's Christmas in July sale. http://tiny.cc/TCoH

For a limited time only (two weeks), you can get the digital version of The Voralans for 15% off, in DriveThruRPG's Christmas in July Sale! http://tiny.cc/voralans

So, are you basically asking ... can there be honour among thieves? Page 234 of the RQG rulebook defines honour as "a personal code of dignity, integrity, and pride". Personal emphasises that it is to some degree judged separately from social codes of behaviour; it is a personal virtue that is evidenced through individual acts of behaviour. It is certainly not identical to morality or compassion. See the table of dishonorable acts on the same page: stealing from others is not inherently dishonorable, in the way that breaking an oath certainly is, because the latter is a breach of integrity. Humakti cause harm to others all the time, and not even in pursuit of some higher goal, when hired as mercenaries. Note also that even plundering a holy place of your own religion is a mere -5% dishonor, compared to breaking an oath at -25%. I'm not suggesting that Humaktis routinely get involved in acts that their society considers immoral. Any Lanbrili is also highly unlikely to satisfy Humakt's standards of honourable behaviour. A thief can never be entirely honest with the broader community they operate within. But amongst thieves, there can certainly be their own kind of honour, and perhaps the secret here is to find the overlap between any Lanbrili code of honour and the Humakti's code of honour. And one way to understand and define that overlap would be the making of an oath, to set clear expectations of all those concerned.

One interpretation is that they found a High Priestess of Ernalda sleeping, and that sufficient magic was present such that killing the Priestess also "killed" Ernalda, locally and temporarily. When the Hero Plane impinges sufficiently on the mundane world, the binary difference between person and their god may be erased. The killing is the culmination of a Lunar heroquest which summons both their own power and that of their enemies into a single place. Just one interpretation, of course. And it may not help with the heart in a rock bit :-).

I'm delighted to announce that my book about the Gloranthan black elves, The Voralans, is now available on Jonstown Compendium in Print on Demand. It's available in two versions, a standard colour softcover for $16.99, and a premium colour hardcover for $28.99. And, of course, you can still get it in PDF for $11.99. The black elves are walking, talking, magical mushroom humanoids, who have a lifelong telepathic link with one another. The book explains their biology, culture, psychology, technology and occupations (including character generation); mythology; and the cult of Mee Vorala. It also provides a black elf bestiary; fungal diseases; and fungi / fungal products. It is illustrated throughout with some genuinely amazing work from Lee O'Connor, Elizabeth Kirshtein, Dario Corallo, Simon Bray and Ludovic Chabant. http://tiny.cc/voralans

Well, I didn't hit ten five-star ratings yet, but never mind. To celebrate Silver best seller status I have uploaded a 27-page bonus PDF, which should be available now to anyone who has purchased the book. It contains preliminary art sketches, the original art specifications, and associated discussion. Inside the PDF you will find (amongst other things): The difficulties of using the RuneQuest SIZ scale to understand how tall black elves (and others) actually are Three sketches of types of black elves that didn't make it into the book for budget reasons A couple of "easter-egg" type details explaining things in the pictures that the artists didn't even tell me! The relationship between black elf weaponry and a dishwasher Big heads vs little heads - a (short) discussion etc As always, reviews and star ratings are greatly appreciated, if you enjoyed the book.

In some good news, The Voralans has reached a Silver best seller medal. I have some bonus content ready to share with everyone who has bought the book ... but it would be nice to get one more star rating and ideally another review first ... if anyone feels like being so kind!

Many thanks to @Crel who has done a very thoughtful and conscientious review of The Voralans on his website here: https://akhelas.com/2023/06/16/review-the-voralans/ He says some nice things about it, and I think fairly clearly "gets" where I was coming from ... The book is getting close to Silver seller status and hopefully I can share some bonus content soon ...

According to The Coming Storm, they take wolf form "as soon as the sun goes down on Wildday and remain a wolf until sunrise". That agrees with Dorastor: Land of Doom, which says "every Wildday night". As Sten says, there are no timezones in Glorantha, so Wildday night will be the same everywhere, from dusk to dawn. Canonically (from the Dorastor book), it's Wildday that governs, and the full Red Moon in Dragon Pass is just a coincidence. The curse was in place long before the Red Moon rose into the sky.

These are really good, and with some excellent artwork, which pushes them a bit further away from the Howard / Donald shape towards being more duck-like, which is good. They also give a good sense of the ducks as tragic as well as comic figures, especially with regard to the Duck Hunt. It's easy to find, but just in case ... http://tiny.cc/duckpac1

Do you mean the RQ2 battle magic spell Ironhand? I'd say that will definitely carry over. But it only lasts for 10 melee rounds i.e. two minutes, not 15 minutes, and it has a maximum benefit of +20% skill / +4 damage, so it's not great.

My copy arrived this morning. A gorgeous looking production, and a fantastic tribute not just to the indefatigable efforts of @Rick Meints but to all the creativity of the cast of thousands who appear in it.

As always @KungFuFenris @Crel @Jason Farrell and any others: your star ratings and reviews on DTRPG are appreciated almost more than gold itself!

Later in the book, a method is presented which could be used to deal with a black elf (or indeed anyone) who has come to know the unknowable.

The Voralans is now available in PDF. I must repeat my thanks to Ludo, Simon, Elizabeth, Dario and Lee for their excellent illustrations, and also to Nick Brooke for (as always) his helpful advice along the way. https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/439149/The-Voralans-RuneQuest?affiliate_id=1107865

If any AI imagery was used to inspire some of the art drawn for the book by the actual living, breathing organisms that I had chained to their art desks, then I'm not sharing it, not even in any "making of the art" that might be produced as supplementary content (in the unlikely event that more than a handful of people purchase the 'shroom book). I think most people know, but for clarity: AI art is forbidden by Chaosium not only in their own books, but also in what they allow under their community content programmes. (PS: I thought I should respond, but please let's not let this lovely publicity thread slip off topic into another AI imagery discussion.)

Here's another preview illustration from the book, again by @Leeoconnor. As well as Lee's contributions, there will be lots of great art by @DarioCorallo, Simon Bray, @Lordabdul and Elizabeth Kirshtein,. Dario's pieces are mostly used to illustrate short texts showing what other races and cultures think of the black elves. Simon's art illustrates the cult and mythos section, while Ludo (Lord Abdul) has contributed images for the voralan bestiary, and chapters on fungi / fungal products, and fungal diseases (yay!) Elizabeth has provided the family tree chart for the voralan deities, and one other piece. Fingers crossed that the book will still hopefully be available by the end of May.

There were three in Apple Lane (and in the RQ Starter Set). Five in Trollpak. A further three in Troll Gods. And there have been well over a dozen more in various Jonstown Compendium releases. I was going to include a big list in the book, but edited that out. If there's demand, I can edit it back in for an updated version!

Is Jorthan's Rescue old school enough? It's not a dungeon bash, but it did originally appear in White Dwarf! Of the Beer With Teeth material, Rocks Fall can be set pretty much anywhere and is short, straightforward and likely to be combat-oriented. Stone and Bone is also probably fairly easy to run (and can lead into some of their other scenarios). Both have classic RQ monsters. All the Sandheart books have a Praxian connection, with several similarities to things like Borderlands (sandbox setting with a range of scenarios that can be run independently or in sequence). At even bigger scale there are Ian Thomson's updated versions of his Pavis & Big Rubble Companion material, starting with City on the Edge of Forever. Plenty of scope to start a pretty epic Pavis-based campaign there. I'm sure there are plenty more: there's a whole load of more recent scenarios from "new" writers that I've not dug through properly yet. My strong recommendation would be to get the Jonstown Compendium Catalogue 2022, and the Jonstown Compendium Index 2023, as these give a great overview of the JC content, colour-coding it by the area they are located in, and with a helpful map of scenario locations.

Shawn Carpenter? He can be found on Mastodon: https://dice.camp/@Shawn