Brian Duguid

Your Marsupials May Vary, of course.

For anyone following QW here and not elsewhere, @Ian Cooper has been posting a couple of updates over on Mastodon. 19th Dec: 20th Dec: In other QW news, Shawn Carpenter (of the withdrawn QW product on Jonstown Compendium, Valley of Plenty) is playtesting a superhero version of QW, and recently shared this news, along with some art:

It might have been easier to simply name them something else if it wasn't the intention to evoke the significant features of the real-world analogue 😄. IMG, they are very definitely a pouched marsupial, the last (known) survivor of the Pouched Beasts, and the only one who successfully journeyed north from Pamaltela into Genertela. The Oppossum Hsunchen are included in The Children of Hykim, for what that's worth, with a background myth, pouch-related magic, and much more.

In the Guide (page 19), the Pralori are said to hunt opossums. I'm personally happy that they are the marsupial exception to the broader rule.

I do hope you mean human adventurers. Otherwise there's some weird stuff going on round your table 😲. But if it's causing anyone a problem, there's absolutely no need to change their existing game. Just rule it as YGWV.

Quick question / suggestion: could a human initiate to Flamal in a manner that doesn't require the Aldryami transformation, and become an elf-friend that way?

Love it! Half-way between Swamp Thing (in its gruesome horror period) and one of the shamanic initiation rites described in Eliade.

Version 1.2 of The Children of Hykim is now available on DriveThruRPG. The revised version includes one more tribe (the Gord-un gopher people), a new story, two art pieces increased to double-page spreads, and corrections and amendments to various sections. It also has an absolutely wonderful new cover by Kristi Jones. Existing customers will find the new version in their DTRPG library immediately. The book is also now available Print-on-Demand, in both Premium and Standard colour hardcover editions! If you like the book, please, please, please do leave a star rating and if possible a review!

I think the cults are compatible, for the reason given: Uleria was the mother of Shanassee, and is referred to in at least one place as the Grower. But I think she will be "seen" very differently by the Aldryami than by humans.

There is very brief speculation about the various lost marsupial tribes in the write-up for the Opossum Hsunchen in The Children of Hykim.

In addition to the Yak, Tiger and Deer people, Hsunchen of the East also features the Bat Folk (Pujaleg), they were added in an update. There's more eastern Hsunchen information in The Teshnos Companion, but I've not read that yet so I'm not sure what exactly, and it looks like it's only 5 pages out of 80+. I'd like to do further volumes of my own book but two books covering very similar material for Kralorela / Teshnos in different ways don't seem to be worthwhile especially given the small audience for topics away from the middle of Genertela anyway. Much the same would be true for Pamaltela, although it does have some fascinating Hsunchen tribes!

Hopefully this is nearly there. While waiting, here's how two copies of the POD look on a shelf. #WhichWayWillYouShelveIt?

That's my favourite quote with respect to Glorantha, to be honest. If it's not contradicting itself, it's not the Glorantha that got me interested in the first place. There is at least one such person depicted on the cover of the hopefully-imminent Print-on-Demand version, possibly more. And this desire to reintegrate their Beast / "Man" aspects is also discussed in that book, in the section on Hsunchen Heroquests on pages 124-126 (in the current edition - it will be on pages 132-135 for anyone reading this after the revised edition comes out).

I kind-of assume it was because ... 1970s.

It does not, sorry :-). The Children of Hykim ignores the RQ2 material and describes only the Telmori as having a cursed sub-set. I definitely wouldn't rule out others, I just had no particular reason to add them back in. The big question for me is: if there are other cursed lycanthropes, how were they cursed, by who, when, and why? The Nysalor / Talor story is huge. What's the equivalent for the Tusk Brothers, Tiger Sons etc? (And why are they all male?) These seem like strong possibilities, especially the Kingdom of War. Canonically, there's still a large group of Telmori "pure ones", who were never blessed by Nysalor, in Telmoria, Ralios. Transformation is not common in Hunter cults, in my view, it's specific to the likes of the Odaylans, who are a barely-disguised atavistic revival or survival of an original Rathori heritage. Their friendly relationship to the Storm tribe has left a non-animist distortion of their ancestral inheritance. Odayla gets Transform Self from the Lady of the Wild, who exemplifies this distortion by "othering" nature as "wilderness" rather than as home. Hsunchen cults get the spell from Mother Mammal or similar, an acceptance that they are still beasts, part of nature rather than apart from nature. I personally doubt that Sartarites would see Hsunchen transformations as automatically alarming. There is an existing clan (in Elkenvale) who consider themselves to be direct kin to the elk. And most well-educated Sartarites will be aware that Heort himself was one of the Deer Folk, descended from Doe Woman and others who could take deer form. Some will also have met or been told about Basmoli mercenaries. Well, the only example we know still exist in the RQ:G version of Glorantha are the Telmori werewolves. They have invulnerability to normal weaponry because that was the blessing specifically granted by Nysalor. It was never inherent to their ability to transform, which we can safely assume was just like that of other Hsunchen, and which will survive amongst the Pure Ones, who have no mythic / historical reason to have that invulnerability. In the case of the Telmori, all of these can be specifically traced to Nysalor's blessing / chaotic gift (the second point), or to Talor's curse (the first and last, and plausibly the third). There was therefore clearly a point in time when the Telmori had only some of these features, not the whole set. That raises interesting possibilities if the blessing / curse happened separately to boar-folk, bear-folk, tiger-folk or any others, or if it were to happen again.

But hey! Luckily there is unofficial material available, a three-page write-up within The Children of Hykim. This is basically the model that I took: that the Galanini are the surviving remnants of a female-led horse culture that was never "broken" by Hyalor, and hence never subjected to the patriarchal solar worship of the many other horse peoples.

I was hoping you wouldn't share that one, MOB 😴!

Kigh-ger lee-tor! 😁

Note that Aram ya-Udram himself was noted as a boar-rider, not as a boar-person. The "pure" Mraloti consider themselves to be boar in human form, as with most Hsunchen. Depending on the source you read, they have a god-ancestor called either Mralot or Mralota (the forthcoming Cults book(s) has been stated as featuring Mralota). One branch of the pre-Dawn Mraloti had become the Entruli, who seem to have been a more civilised lot compared to their "pure" Hsunchen kin. Aram ya-Udram aided the Vathmai to bring their Lightbringer culture to the Entruli, and to then unite them against common foes, such as the Pralori. Unless the Tusk Riders acknowledge themselves to have a boar soul descended from Mralota (and that seems very unlikely), then they are other. There are "degenerate" Mraloti living in Maniria who I believe have taken up some form of agriculture, as well as "pure" tribes. I'd expect them to recognise each other as kin, because they both presumably still recognise descent from Mralota. It's also worth noting that there are people in Ramalia who worship Zorak Zoran, and I do wonder whether that relates in any way to the Aram ya-Udram's involvement with a "darkness demon".

Yes, the boar Hsunchen are the Mraloti. Aram ya-Udram's relationship to them is unclear, but he'll surely have met them when he invaded their lands with Vathmai early in the Dawn Age.

Some more British fanzines that reportedly had RQ material, probably no space to list these but maybe to keep an eye out for: Dead Elf #2, 1985: "a new RQ cult for Ankylosaurus riders" - source, review in Demon's Drawl #10. Wolvesbane #2, 1985: "Chaos Chickens in Runequest" - source, review in Demon's Drawl #12. Runestone #6, 1985: "a large RQ scenario for Bill's excellent Norsequest idea" - source, review in Demon's Drawl #12. Obscurity Inc #5, 1985: "articles on RQ3 and Elfquest are strict rules discussion and alteration" - source, review in Demon's Drawl #12. Protoplasm #4, 1985: "this issue includes a scenario for undersea Runquest" - source, review in Demon's Drawl #13. Green Goblin #1, no date: "contains ... an RQ cult" - source, review in Imazine #11. Grimlord, no issue number or date: "includes a long cult for Runequest (set, from the Conan books, proving that even in RQ it is possible to produce a sword'n'sorcery mish-mash if you put your mind to it" - source, review in Imazine #11. One that definitely had a short Runequest article: Dear Whoever (no number, but #4 in a larger series), January 1988: Article "Let's Talk Primitive" (by me) on RQ magic, which drew a response from Greg Stafford himself in the letters page of the next issue, in June 1988.

@Rick Meints has some of them. There's a website here that shows the covers and contents: https://misershoard.com/index.html

Counter Chaos is probably in every Kyger Litor write-up ever published. So should be easy to find!

Chalana Arroy's son, Arroin, is known as Eron to the Aldryami. Arroin has previously been described as a non-magical healer - but Eron may not be.

I'm sure @eknarfer won't mind if I share here what he said on the 13th Age Discord group: