Manunancy

15 hours ago, soltakss said:

 

One of the things they did was to enliven his soul by sacrificing one thousand people and putting them into an earth-cube grave, ten by ten wide and ten deep. I was expecting all kinds of moral outrage but it very quickly became an exercise in logistics.

Who where the sacrificed ? Something on that scale feels fraught with risks, especially if the sacrificed didn't volunteer for the job.

In my opinion horses are far more likely - bisons and sables are from prax - which has a very different climate and terrain - savana opposed to Startar's wooded hills.

Binding a cult spirit into a regular bow wil grant about the same result, and save a big hassle in delaing with the aldryamis. Though i can imagine aldryamis giving tips, help and magic to lunar-aligned yelmalian. Which would later backfire in very nasty ways (maybe you bow exsuding a contact poison sap to kill it's wielder or the like) as a revenge for Rist and Erigia.

1 hour ago, radmonger said:

Should humans have something necessary to the repair of the world machine, Mostali don't really trade; they will simply take it.

 

I'd epxpect them to conduct at least a modicum of cost/benefit analysis - it doesn't take much of an human expert to know that just showing up and picking what you need may lead to troubles with the locals. Giving some trinkets and baubles can save ressources compared to sending Iron mostalis.

7 hours ago, DrGoth said:

with the Elmali tradition to the Far Place, even if the number of Elmali are down, I'm not sure about this?  Maybe they have a couple of horse types.  Larger ones for warfare or long distance travel, a pony type for getting around in the wilder areas?

For long distance travel, you probably don't want a big horse - they're les nimble and use more ressources. What you'd want is something more like a mongol pony : big enough to carry you and selected for resiliency and ability to forage well over speed and style. 

6 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

They sell goods, but they are not traders; how does that work? I am not saying this cannot be explained away, but it does cry out for amplification, no?

The same way that a sailors on a merchant ship that carries a bit of personnal cargo to sell when hitting port isn't a trader. Their main job is movign other's people's cargos - trade is a sideline to improve the income and tide things up when thre's not enough demand to fill the carts.

21 hours ago, svensson said:

The domes in desert architecture are there to collect heat and vent it upwards. It helps keep the ground floor cooler. Because of that, I could see domed roofs in Sun County in the desert. In a more verdant, temperate climate like Dragon Pass, maybe not.

domes and vaults are also a good way to get a rof that doesn"t use wood (beyond reusable scaffolding), that's nother desirable feature in a desert.

2 hours ago, David Scott said:

This is terrible. Most of the elements of the story are wrong. As for the other answers, I really hope that no one uses this as a basis for historical Glorantha.

Though it can make a good base for what a kralorelan sage or sheshnelan zzaburi might come up  with on the topic 🙂

Mfbrandi, i think thEre's a bit of misuderstanding with Professor Chaos : I interprets his comment as 'we should do better at explaining what Runequest and Glorantha are' - your reply feels like you took it as 'we shouLD eXPlain glorantha is better'

If you consider the element's wheel, a lead sheathing sounds better than a copper one : darkness is strong against water, and water is strong against Earth.

Asl ofor using magic, you're probably better of warding agasint Water with Darkness rather than Stasis since your ship needs to move...

2 hours ago, Erol of Backford said:

Who might guess what the daggers abilities are? The beauty and skill it has is impossible for these savages to do, and so this was either truly what they said-a thing made by the gods of old; or perhaps it is something imported from the Golden Empire, past the dragon lands. A gold and silver knife decorated in the style of the Golden Empire.

Is the Golden Empire past the dragon lands something made in the far east, possibly a dragon weapon? (exciting stuff) Maybe our Kralorelan PC finds an old document and quests to the west to find the long lost dagger/sword/whatever.

 

I'd think it is more likely to from Peloria, brought south through Dragon pass rather than from Kralorela (Dara Happa may very well qualify for a 'golden empire' title)

1 hour ago, Darius West said:

As to what caused the change-over from Bronze to Iron/Steel, ultimately steel holds an edge better, and can be reworked without being completely melted, unlike Bronze.  It was the Hittites on Earth who are credited with the widescale introduction of blast furnaces and iron working.  In Glorantha it is the Mostali, and some Westerners who serve as the main sources for iron.

In a period of collapsed internation trade, th raw materials for bronze get hard to get - I don't think there's many places with both copper and tin close by. Even if iron isn't as easy to produce, it's raw materials (iron ore and charcoal) are way easier to find close ot each other.

Which is quite the opposite from Glorantha where copper, tin or storm-god remnants bronze are all fairly common andevenly spread while iron is sourced only from the dwarves (as well as being a pain to work with compared to bronze, like in our world)

An ability that sounds quite aldryami to me woudl be coating the arrows with a poison - probably wiht an MP cost to fuel it. The aldryamis are quite fonds of poisons - the Poisonwood aldryamis in Dorastor are probably the most experts at that game, but I'd expect any forest worth it's leaves to be able to concoct unpleasant surprises for their ennemies.

Another point in favor of Yelmalio is that he has the Truth rune too.

But with Humakt being more a warrior cult and Yelmalio being more a soldier's cult, I'd expect him to get quite a hefty share of hazing and latrine/nightwatch/anything unpleasant duty to break him to the mold of 'team playing, not lonely heroics'. 

1 hour ago, Brian Duguid said:

But what would a Hsunchen hunter-gatherer do with Lightning? It's hardly relevant to their day-to-day concerns, any more than is a Howitzer to a member of an indigenous tribe in the Amazon. I think they can appreciate that others have powers they don't without caring about it very often.

Probably as an insurance in the odd case they bump into something seriously nasty - sur it's not something you're likely to need very often, but when you need it, you're quite happy to have it (of course flight, teleport or similar 'run away' spells work there too - but won't help you buddies much)

The problem is keeping the mariage wows - if those wows includes some free range options (things like main wife + concubines or possibly ulerian professionals), there's no oathbreaking. Which means from a mythical angle, no problem. And if the spouse is aware an ok with it, no dishonesty invloved so even less problems

But if the vows includes monogamy, then there's oathreaking - which is worse than mere dishonesty. And gives the betrayed party quite a bit of levereage against the straying one (even if it doesn't end in a 'volontary' offering to the Earth as a certain hendriki king in Esrolia....)

I'd think an amazon would be likely to have some troubles being allowed to worship at a Sun Dome Temple - they're all leaning toward patriarchy and distrust of foreigners (some more tha nothers).

On 7/27/2022 at 3:29 PM, jajagappa said:

What could possibly go wrong??? 

Whatever happen is very likely to be an illuminating experience (or experiment ?)....

11 hours ago, Joerg said:

That he shares his star with the old Malkioni identification for Eurmal Friend of Men doesn't make Eurmal a Star Captain (or at least I hope this isn't the case). 

though it's very possible for Eurmal to fake being one - if it gets him access to some food, booze or babe he fancies, he can do a lot of things, including some you'd thinki mpossible for him. Of course, once the plate, bottle or bed is empty he'll be back to his usal self in a heartbeat, but it can work for a while.

That's why I left hte question open ended - it may range from be a complete dragon-tainted fake that makes divination react as 'red alert, destroy that ASAP' to 'genuine stuff that needs only a bit of mythical cleanup to be as good a new'.

One campaign i played in included the assumption that the Sun Dragon, before being a EWF mystic, had been a Dara Happen emperor (I don't remember the name, but he basicially decided to go haring off in adventure with a limited entourage and disappeared some time brefore the EWF) - making him a true empreor and whatever reagalia he used the real deal - probably tainted but still genuine.

As a forewarning of things to come later, you may have a bit of relic mixup with EWF relics associated with the Sun Dragon - maybe even some itms from whatever imperial regalia he used to win Dara Happa's throne. How genuuine/faked/dragon -tainted can have heavy reperucssions later on.

The botched sunspear deals feels artficial and contrived. Fumbles happens, but happening at the worst moment and with a witness conveniently around to make the mess worse, that fees like a constructed 'you get screwed no matter what you do' situation that I think many players will take as heavy railroading.

When it comes to clearing their names, i'd think having a meeting on a neutra lground (say an Issaries market) and having someone the sun domers trusts casting detect truth or Truespeak and swear to Issaries that an unprovoked sunspear in the face got reflected in the official's face - and no he hasn't got hte faintest idea of why that sunspear was cast like that - should be enough to cleared of that particular wrongdoing.

Though if as i understand there were previous dodgy deals that go against Yelmalio's ideals I doubt a Yelmalio-based heroquest would bring rewards - and even work at all.

If I remember right the other land was unable to grow it's crops.

About the Dendara/Ernalda swap, since they're 'earth' and not 'land' godesses their mythic landscape isn't as affected by wordly locationm they were probably better able to cope with the effects. And so the God Learners decided that since that early experiment worked right, it would be a good idea to push the experiment farther - which didn't turn as expected...

In my opinion, some mythical oddities comes from Arachne Solara's nets - as she pulled the bits and parts of the world together, some anihilated mytholgocial bits were replaced with similar bits surviving from mostly destroyed myths. So even after the Compromise and with time going, there's still some frankenstein-style stitching to be found if you look closely enough.

Both are part of Us under the Godess's blessed light, what could go wrong ? Let's do it (maybe witha bit of entropic alchemy thrown in to fuel and lubricate the process)