Manunancy

I'd think a succesful thief cult is likely to be one who has some nasty sprits of reprisals to deal with snitches - if you are forced to initiate to the cult (rather than merely being a lay member) to join the gang, ratting them out ot the autorithies will certainly count as apostasy and bring whatever spirit of reprisal they have on your head. Sorcery can be more convenient but won't bring that sort of protection

With the daughter's inclination to tinkering, i think Irripi Ontor would be a good fit - and respectable enough to pass muster with her entourage. If there's a cult linked with respectable arts (scuplture, architecture, painting) it might be a good fit too, depnding if her creation leans more to the technical or artistic side. Donandar is too much linked with wandering riffraff perfomers to be acceptable - way too much odds to exposure to Glorantha's equivalent of 'sex, drugs and rock'n roll'

Depending on who the head belonged to, it has the bonus of drawing suspicion on Thanatar cultists. Who are a handy way to complicate resurection too - without the head AND the sprit, there's not much you can do for the victim... That could be a neat side business for a thanatar temple - maybe even a cover, passing htemselves of as a 'normal' assassin cult and making themselves usfeull in the local mover and shaker's feuds to gain influence and protection.

A subcult of Babesteer Gor or Maran Gor would seem the logical candidate for that - possibly with some Urox association for some extra anti-chaos magic.

'oops the image i commnted on got removed)

It may also be possible to acheive the deal through guile and/or stealth rather than brute force (going brute force against a giant doesn't strike me as a good idea - your name isn't Harrek the Berzerk. though you may end up being Harrek the Flat 🙂 )

I'd be wary of doing it with bits from a Chaos deity - though it's nothing a suitable dose of Illumination won't make OK. At least for the Iluminated. Unenlightned boors may differ.

A Krarsht assassin can be a very effective weapon against a Storm Bull berzerker : stay far enough that you don't trigger his 'sense chaos' until he get spassed-out drunk, then just neatly slice his throat while he can't fight back. Problem solved... Of course in an open confrontation, things won't look good - but if you feed some low-rank meat into the grinder, sneak around and hamstring/backstab/poison dart him, then rinse and repeat until he croaks off, you're golden. Unles you run out of minion before he runs out of health...

though tha tsort of "nope, you local god ist just really our foreign god with a coat of paint' approach with a big mystic push to force it true seems dangerously close to things like the Godess Switch. There might be some problems in the long term....

The bat as a defensive tool has a very big drawback : it's a dman effective weapon, but it's a seriously high-maintenance one - you can't keep it in one spot for long before you need to either move it to greener pastures or start to deplete your tax base and goddwill reserves. The Bat is more akin to an SSBM - the big expensive mass destruction weapon you bring out to smash the big and nasty problems. That makes it ill suited to a a guerilla war as the local will lay low until it's somewhere else, attack quickly and melt back in the background before the bat can be back. The bat can be only in one place at time.

An option for the western cities migh also be some sort of magical 'container' to store the magic (magic point, powers and the like) given by the population and keyed to let suitable zzaburis draw on that pool when they need to perform heavy-duty magics. Which avoids relying on some otherwordly entity that may have it's own volition and agenda.

Not that i know of - though in my opinion, as most glorathan tongues are derivative of the runic/elemental tongues (firespeech for dara happan/new pelorian, windspeech for sartarite/tarshite/heortian you should apply whatever equivalence you pick for teh 'base' tongue and work up from there.

If I remember right there's also some Zorak-zoran worshiping smiths that play that game too - though it might be that same group's way to gain some official standing with other trolls. Zorak Zoranis aren't peculiar when it comes to improving their fighting abilities. - if it's not chaotic and it works, it's fair game. forging soem cool war toys for other zorak-zoranis sounds like a good way to get a bunch of figthy friends in case of need.

I'd like to know the locations where those lead traces were found - I'd expect them to be in or near silver mining area - and in sentivie parts of the fortification such as a gathouse's murder holes rather than outer machilations. Basically in situations where the need for something really nasty justifies the cost - lead being 'premium' compared to 'regular' water

I'd think molten lead wasn't that common either - lead isn't cheap and you need a lot of combustible to melt it. the 'boiling stuff' of choice was simple water - and more often than not sewer water as it saves the defender's drinkable water. Sand has been used too in the 'nasty hot stuff that infiltrates under armor' role

I'd expect them to be somewhat discouraged and those who persist to be sent to either remote/insignificant posting like Corflu or to places wher the likely opponents are religious ennemies to keep them focused on that direction rather than looking back home or making firends with the local opposition. So they'll be kept well clear of Dragon Pass.

Humakt might not be actively opposed to Chaos just because it's Chaos - but considering the behavoir and mythical association of the Chaos divinities, he ends up quite violently opposed to most of them (with those involved with undeath espcially singled out)

Having a specialist doing the deed is in my opinion akin to sort of specialized scapegoat : he takes the blame and dishonor upon himself and in doing this protects the community from it. In Orlanthi culture, I'd say this kind of role is probably under Humakt's watch - on sevral levels : it's handling Death (check), It's a legitimate use (Truth) and finally wiht humakt being at a remove from the rest of the Storm Tribe, it keeps blame from flowing back to hte tirbe. It's also a little bit hypocritical, but that's hardly uncommon in Glorantha and far from the worst case of it....