Brian Duguid

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

Essentially: I form my mouth into the shape for "h", but the audio may not always pick that up because it sounds much like a soft breathing sound when followed by the "s" sound (or any non-vowel sound).

I think @Lordabdul was pronouncing it like the "hs" in Chinese more usually written "x" in pinyin, roughly as per https://resources.allsetlearning.com/chinese/pronunciation/The_"j"_"q"_and_"x"_sounds. I pronounce it as it's written: h-sun-chen. But allowing the initial "h" to be partially or fully elided. Further options (there are many!):

Not quite answering your question just yet, but Guide to Glorantha page 283 hints that a small number of Damali deer-folk are found "amongst the Pralori", so they could exist here as well. The Children of Hykim offers character generation rules for the Mraloti, Pralori, Caroni and Damali, and also for the opossum folk, who exist canonically but whose homeland is not canonically known. For the broader question, I think what matters is Homelands in terms of their function under the rule system. They are only functionally relevant to character generation, and to certain aspects of that topic: cultural stereotype; suggested occupations; religion / cult; local modifiers to skills / Runes; base passions; family history. Your split looks pretty reasonable on that front, although it may obscure some differences within each culture area. In Ramalia, you have both the Malkioni set of the ruling class, and the "oppressed populace". The latter worship Mralot and Zorak Zoran (? from memory), but are not proper Mraloti, so far as I can see. But differences like that are an issue anywhere, any possibly better dealt with through the occupations. City dwellers in Sartar may have quite different characteristics from the rural populace - but largely seen in the rules through through occupation and cult choice (scribe vs farmer, etc).

Two quick updates on this book: First, @Lordabdul and @Joerg's God Learners Podcast has a new episode available today featuring, er, me, discussing all things Hsunchen: And second, I'm in the final stages of preparing the Print on Demand edition of the book. Hopefully I'll be ordering the proof copy in the next few days, and assuming that is glitch-free, it will then go straight on sale. There will be several new pages of content, a refresh of some of the internal art, and a brilliant wraparound cover by Kristi Jones that I'm sharing here as a preview ...

Have a look at https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/409460/Somewhere-in-Glorantha?affiliate_id=1107865, which gives random location tables for all of Glorantha. The author, Mark Prier, put it together as part of a wider project to develop a set of charts etc for solo RQ play. It may therefore be worth getting in touch with him to see how far he has progressed with that.

I think this might be what you want: https://rqwiki.chaosium.com/glorantha/ If that's too long, then just tell them to stop reading when they've had enough, or direct them to the pages you think are most helpful.

Am I misreading Well of Daliath in this regard? Here it says DI requires a permanent loss of a Rune Point, as per the rulebook: https://wellofdaliath.chaosium.com/home/catalogue/publishers/chaosium/runequest-roleplaying-in-glorantha/cha4028-runequest-roleplaying-in-glorantha-qa-by-chapter/cha4028-runequest-roleplaying-in-glorantha-chapter-13-rune-cults/#ib-toc-anchor-1 Here it says no Rune Point is required (it refers to page 273, but it's page 272 in my copy): https://wellofdaliath.chaosium.com/home/catalogue/publishers/chaosium/runequest-roleplaying-in-glorantha/cha4028-runequest-roleplaying-in-glorantha-qa-by-chapter/cha4028-runequest-roleplaying-in-glorantha-chapter-13-rune-cults/#ib-toc-anchor-8 @David Scott?

I don't get why only cults with a strong martial (or hunting) element get Rune Lords full stop. It just seems odd to me that martial activities are privileged in this way, over, say Gustbran. I would appreciate hearing a clearer rationale for that.

1988, RQ3, the Glorantha/Genertela "orange box" set. Weirdly, Balazar was one such blank land.

This one is also here for those without FB: https://wellofdaliath.chaosium.com/the-cults-of-living-heroes-and-gods/

I reckon there is one group of Arkati meeting across the street. And another group meeting upstairs in the Kafl Leaf Inn next door. And yet another in the house on the other side. Each keeping an eye out on Arkat's Rest for any visiting foes, and completely unaware of each other.

In The Children of Hykim, I define the Black Arkati / Arkati Shadow Warriors as:

There's some useful information on the Arkati in Safelster in the Guide to Glorantha, although it's not clear to me whether any of that is relevant to Dragon Pass. Spoiler below for a recently published scenario from Chaosium:

It'll sell like hot cakes, but perhaps mostly to old grognards or to people who feel they missed out on being old grognards. I think it might sell like even hotter cakes if the page on DTRPG is "brightened up" a bit to say more about what the book contains; maybe get "Pavis" in the title; and be a bit clearer about what it is (massive refresh of out-of-print material); and how it relates to the core Pavis and Big Rubble books from RQ2. But after all this discussion it's great to finally see it on sale!

It's live now! https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/413853/City-on-the-Edge-of-Forever?affiliate_id=1107865

The Storytelling Collective's "Write Your First Adventure" programme is now inviting people to join their November 2022 cohort*, including lessons for potential Jonstown Compendium authors courtesy of @Nick Brooke. If anyone is in two minds about "attempting a Jonstown Compendium article", this is perhaps as good a time as you'll get! And if, like me, you don't finish within a month, I'm sure you'll still learn something valuable (I did, last time). https://www.storytellingcollective.com/courses/write-your-first-adventure-gen-nov2022 * They took my suggestion to stop calling them "winter" and "summer", I see!

Well there's the start of whole new sub-thread on Gloranthan tuning systems. About all we can be sure of is that nobody uses equal temperament, unless perhaps the mathematically and technologically inclined Mostali, who don't strike me as a very musical bunch. Uz tuning might be remarkably subtle given that Darksense must rely upon tremendous pitch sensitivity to be effective - some kind of weird microtonal tuning extending well into infrasonic or ultrasonic frequencies. Many other cultural tunings will be microtonal / just intonation variants determined by the limits of human vocal chords. Overtone singing feels to me to be inherently shamanic - the ability to generate and perceive two sonic realities simultaneously / tune into two vibrations at once.

Well, I like the idea of trolls using Darksense in some form of sonic meditations, perhaps led by a priestess or shaman of Xiola Umbar: using the sonic vibrations to help with healing, to cast out a demon, or to help enter the spirit world.

It's not mentioned explicitly here, but we do know the Black Spear's (canonical) Rune affinities: Air 95%, Darkness 85%, Mobility 100% (GM Screen Pack, Adventure Book, page 14). Its "Cuts Light" ability is also suggestive of the strong Darkness connection. Given that it can cast the True Spear Rune spell, you'd have to either assume it also has a high Death rune affinity, or it bypasses the requirement for normal Rune spell casting (I'd go for the latter, 100% casting chance upon itself).

It was previously announced as one of the Earth pantheon deities to receive a full write-up in the Cults book(s), but I guess we'll only know for sure when we hear more ...

The same is true for the PDF from Chaosium.com.

Well, that's what many of the answers in this thread are answering. But it's not the question you'll see as the title of the thread. I'm quite happy that "existence of" and "explanation of" can be answered separately.

It is described in the sources we have as "poison gas", in the same way as those sources refer to the existence of "natural gas" rather than "flammable air". I'm happy to take those sources (in both these cases, the Guide) as accurate descriptions of what exists in the world, even if the residents of the world may describe them differently. The myths may well tell us that poison gas "is" corrupted air, but that doesn't stop it being poison gas.

We know for a fact that there is poison gas, and we can conclude from this that there are gas-like substances which are neither solid nor liquid yet which expand to fill an available space. We know that most Gloranthan land animals can't breathe underwater, because their lungs fill with the wrong stuff ("drowning"), and that most Gloranthan water creatures can't breathe above water (for the same reason). We know there are volcanoes which emit "sulfurous fumes", and fumaroles that emit "poisonous gas". Poison gas clouds sometimes sweep north from the southern deserts of Pamaltela. We know that "natural gas" can be found underground in some places, associated with oil, although it's of no interest to most surface-dwellers (for an example, see the Fire Fens in Slon, where natural gas vents and burns). So yes: there are definitely gases in Glorantha. But we don't know if they always behave in the same manner as in the real world, and we certainly don't know if they are made of the same constituents.