General Confusion

Urox is a member of the Orlanthi pantheon, yes, but Uroxi are also disreputable, dangerous, and infamously violent. I definitely don't share the assumption that any such accusation is going to lead to any kind of presumption of guilt, and without a presumption of guilt. . . what exactly will the local leaders do? Are they going to detain somebody on a bare accusation? Again, how could they even prove guilt or innocence here? And if the accuser can't prove the accusation to the satisfaction of local leadership, what are the consequences to him? After all, someone wrongly accused of Chaos worship would be emphatically in the right, under Orlanthi justice, to demand compensation or even violent retaliation for their besmirched reputation. . . which means that allowing this to go on risks an outright battle erupting inside the town. My point here is just that when an accusation like this is tossed out, the situation is far from clear-cut and the potential consequences on all sides are significant. Which is, I think, an excellent in-universe reason why a lot of communities might work to avoid having the accusation made at all, unless there is some kind of clear, incontrovertible, and visible to non-Uroxi proof provided that they can use to wrap the situation up very quickly.

In a scenario like that I think the very first question is; why would the village elders believe the assertion of a strange Storm Bull cultist from a distant tribe? His statement is 'Due to a special sense that I have and none of you can confirm, I want you to kill this other person - who is my direct competitor in an important contest'. He can't provide any physical evidence (because the ogre looks perfectly human) and he has an obvious motivation to lie. And if they do go get another Storm Bull, well. . . first of all the second guy's Sense Chaos might not ping at all, and if it does the accused can easily argue that this is just a case of fellow initiates backing each other up. Storm Bulls operate in roving warbands that accept no higher authority; they're only one step above bandits. There's no proof. What are you gonna do, hang somebody just because two random foreign brutes say so? It's certainly a dramatic situation - and one that might lead to a trial by combat, or some kind of ritual challenge. But it's the furthest thing possible from foolproof, and it's definitely not enough to prevent Chaos worshippers from being inveigled into society.

The answer to all of this is 'Storm Bulls can't be trusted'. Yeah, the Storm Bulls claim that they can detect chaotic entities. But, uh. . . They can't prove it! Storm Bulls are violent, paranoid, selfish fanatics. When they come through they drink all the beer, break your furniture, insult people, get into fights - some of which end with death - and then just fuck off rather than deal with the consequences of any of that. They aren't part of normal society, they're dangerous bikers. And they don't even agree with each other half the time! You can't set up a 'scientific' scanning system using Storm Bulls. Let's say you put an actual ogre in front of twelve bullies; ok, two of them detect him as Chaotic (remember, Sense Chaos percentages tend to be pretty low in-game). The other ten don't. Now what? There's an argument among the bullies, which may well turn into a brawl. Half of them are drunk, or otherwise anesthetizing their PTSD.They probably kill the guy just to be sure, the two who decided he's Chaotic sure don't want to let him leave the room alive; then they search the body to find evidence that confirmed their impulse. They probably find something. Now replace the ogre with a totally normal, non- chaotic person. Same result! The odds of at least one of the bullies fumbling, getting a false positive, and declaring the victim chaotic in front of this incredibly hanging-inclined jury are fairly high. So now there's been a murder. And they probably can't find any physical evidence justifying it, this time. At this point, either the judicial powers of the Storm Bulls are removed or there is a pogrom that kills a whole bunch of people.

'Parrying' in RQ combat is, mechanically, not what practitioners of HEMA or kendo might think of as 'parrying'; it's blocking. There's no deflection mechanic except rolling a special or critical, and there's no distinction between blocking with a shield or with a weapon. You're just putting a solid object between your vulnerable flesh and an incoming weapon. So given that, I feel like it makes perfect sense for weapon HP to directly correlate with increased blocking ability; a sturdier, more resilient object absorbs more force. Divorcing damage absorption from weapon HP IMO just adds more complexity for little actual benefit; now there's another number they had to be tracked, that's all.

As a GM who has more than once now had characters voluntarily dump their own POW down to below 10 in order to stack up extra Rune Points, I don't think it's a problem at all. We had a guy running around with POW 7 for a little while - which meant, yes, he was horribly vulnerable to magic in theory, but because he had 8 RP he could just throw up Shield in any major conflict and make it prohibitively hard for anyone to actually bespell him. And he built that POW back up pretty damn quick; one in-game year later and he's at POW 12. Being low POW makes you really bad at doing magic in a time crunch, yes. IMO that's the game working as intended, for good reasons, and I don't feel any urge to lessen the penalties.

My understanding is that the Telmori just don't draw a moral distinction between two-legged people and four-legged people. If you kill a wolf brother. . . Well, you just killed this person's brother. Their family is probably gonna come after you. This obviously is a neat explanation for how all these wars and border conflicts between the Telmori and all the other Sartarite tribes occur; some farmer shoots a wolf and oops, that's a blood feud.

Most definitely. Any Storm Bull who has lived to be thirty is either blessed by the gods, or a cunning bastard with all the skills necessary to back up any boast they care to make.

IMG at least the 'barely human' thing is a very significant exaggeration. There is a point to be made about Storm Bull; he's a berserker god, yes, but he's not associated with the Disorder rune. In fact, he's a family man! Storm Bull mythically gave up his other lovers to be with Eiritha/Uralda. He fought the Devil in Prax in order to protect his family, and held his own only because they supported him. Storm Bull is a force of great violence and destruction, but that force is turned outwards in defense of something; it isn't random or absolutely uncontrollable. So at least IMG there are a few different manifestations of Storm Bull. The initiates of the cult are, certainly, bad houseguests; they tend to be violent, paranoid, usually suffering from PTSD, and prone to self-medicating with alcohol and hard drugs. But that describes a hell of a lot of people throughout history, certainly in a harsh environment like Prax, and it doesn't at all stop them (at least the ones who survive to get a bit older) from marrying and taking up a position more centered around defense of their family unit rather than actively hunting Chaos down. EDIT: Also IMG there are a fairly significant number of women and nonbinary people in the Praxian Storm Bull cult, because that's one of the major ways for nonconformist people to escape the strict gender binary of Waha/Eiritha dominated society. If you join the warbands, nobody cares what's in your pants as long as you can fight.

I believe it's simply a tweak in how the mechanics of the game interact with the lore. After all, there have always been shamans and sorcerers within Orlanthi society in various places; Kolati shamanic traditions, Lankhor Mhy sorcerers, draconic mystics, Chariot of Lightning henotheists, etc. So now those people can be mechanically accounted as 'initiates of Orlanth'; that's really the only change.

I like it! There's stuff about the Waertagi in the Guide to Glorantha if you have that; otherwise the brief synopsis is that within history they were a nomadic ocean-going culture who lived primarily on giant ships built out of dragon carcasses, and they controlled intercontinental sea travel for a long time until the God Learners broke their monopoly. They're mythically associated with the western Malkioni cultures - Waertag was a son of Malkion. The Waertagi obviously have a very strong association with water; they practice both theistic magic, including ancestor worship of Waertag and of various sea gods, and Malkioni-style sorcery.

Something to look at that could be thematically relevant; the Waertagi. They're an ethnic group descended from Waertag, a God Time hero/deity who was the son of a god and a mermaid. He built the first boats and was a famous slayer of Sea Dragons. Now the Waertagi mostly were wiped out in the Second Age by a one-two punch of the God Learners beating them badly in war and then the Closing sweeping the seas clean, but small numbers of them survived in a variety of coastal and island enclaves. Could be related to these island gods?

Even if you did want to use game rules as a framework (which probably isn't a great idea tbh) I don't think Rune magic is anything like that unlimited a resource. Let's say you have an Orlanthi clan of 1,000 people. Based on statements from the writers (such as this post from Jeff a couple years back) roughly 23% are full-fledged Ernalda initiates; so if that ratio holds we're looking at 230 Ernaldans. For a rural farming clan maybe it's 300 - I think in the last few years assumptions about the ratios of initiates have changed slightly, so we'll bump it up. Now, adventurers are specifically called out as exceptional people with exceptional resources - and generally have background full of unusual amounts of conflict and challenge - so probably those 300 Ernaldans have 1, maybe 2 RP each on average. Let's call it 2 for the sake of argument. So we're looking at ~600 RP of Ernaldan magic available, in theory, for our 1000-person clan. And in theory, these can be fully expended and refreshed every week, right? Well, no, not really, for a few reasons; 1. People fail Worship rolls. Sure, you can sacrifice MP, but depending on what else is going on they may either not have enough MP to sacrifice right at the moment - maybe the scythe broke and needed Repair, or a sheep got torn up by briars and needed a Heal - or they may feel the need to keep some back in case of emergency, or maybe they just have naturally mediocre POW and physically don't have enough. And these are subsistence farmers; glancing at the income rules, they definitely cannot afford to be sacrificing goods every week, or even every season unless the harvest last year was genuinely exceptional. 2. A holy day celebration, even a minor one, canonically takes all day. That's a major commitment of time and effort! On any given week I think it's very likely - basically guaranteed - that some fraction of the population, probably a large fraction, cannot or will not put down their work and go to the temple in order to join the full worship ceremony and regain Rune Points. 3. They probably don't ever want to be at 0 Rune Points. What if Timmy falls out of a tree and breaks his back? What if a wandering broo gets into the herd? What if your teenage son is goaded into a duel and takes a sucking chest wound? What if the neighboring clan that hates you stages a raid? There's a lot of situations in rural Orlanthi life where having just that 1 or 2 RP on hand for an emergency Heal Body or Regrow Limb might be hugely valuable on short notice. So many of those initiates are going to be reluctant to use their Rune Points 'efficiently', because full efficiency will create periods where they don't have any available, and people tend to be risk-avoidant. I think when you consider all these factors it becomes easy to say that Rune Magic, while definitely part of everyday life, is far from unlimited - and this also shows the value of maintaining a major temple like the Three Emeralds or etc., because those temples maintain a specialized body of priesthood who have a bunch of Rune Points each and do dedicate the time and money and effort, every week, to keep themselves topped up. So 20 assistant priestesses with 5 or 6 RP available each and every single week, rain or shine, can perform the magical work that otherwise might consume all the spare time and magic available from a couple of hundred rural farming initiates.

A big part of the moral complexity and interest of Glorantha is specifically the understanding that there are things that are considered 'evil' by many Gloranthan cultures which they still deal with sometimes. God - whether that god is Waha or Storm Bull or Yanafal Tarnils or Kyger Litor - is not leaning over your shoulder every hour of the day. Nobody is perfectly in tune with their cult, and the ones that come close are strange and dangerous people. Compromises get made, rules get broken, demons are propitiated, the devil's sword is taken up. This stuff is complicated. The Storm Khans doubtless make Rodney's argument. But clearly not every Waha Khan agrees, because some of them do hire broos. There's hair-splitting and sophistry involved in that, but since when have hair-splitting and sophistry been impossible for the social elite? If you're Khan of a clan then your job is to keep that clan healthy, wealthy, and intact - and if you think, for whatever reason, that negotiating with a gang of broos is an effective way to do that, you'll do it. Survival, after all, is Waha's first and greatest gift, and everything else is subordinate to it.

Condottieri like John Hawkwood, the man who famously double-crossed the Pope? Who was hired to take a city and then ransomed it to both sides before sacking it himself? Or maybe you mean mercenaries like the ones who sacked Magdeburg, committing one of the worst massacres of the Thirty Years War against orders and for no particular reason? Mercenaries were not reliable, and everybody knew that. Broo mercenaries, I think, are probably exactly as reliable as RL mercenaries; that is to say, they can definitely be trusted to take money, and they will hold to their agreements for exactly as long as it seems profitable, safe, and convenient for them to do so. As for the question of hiring chaotics bringing down divine retaliation - well, clearly not. It's been part of the setting since Nomad Gods, so forty years at this point. There's obviously some kind of a distinction drawn that allows for it. (Probably don't want the Storm Khans finding out until the battle's over, though.)

People make 'deals with chaos' all the time. To Orlanthi, kinstrife is chaos - but it still happens. To the Dara Happans rebellion against the Emperor is chaos, but it definitely happens. Nobody in Glorantha can see Chaos rune values. Storm Bulls claim they can detect Chaos, but not everybody believes them - certainly not all the time. Most Gloranthans probably are not digging into highly specific philosophical divisions like we readers and fans do. From the perspective of people in Glorantha, chaos is bad because it's dangerous and likely to hurt them . . . But a lot of Gloranthans also feel that way about foreigners, and unfamiliar magic, and strange spirits/gods. So if a Khan can make a temporary truce or alliance with foreigners who don't follow Waha's ways (and are thus by definition ritually unclean, inferior, not real people, etc.) then why couldn't he, similarly, make a temporary truce or alliance with a gang of broos? Yeah, sure, broos are dangerous and unpleasant and can't be trusted. . . But many Praxians would also say the same of, for example, Kralorelans, or Pentans, or Lunars, or Sartarites. You make the deals you need to make so the tribe can prosper today, and then tomorrow if necessary you can change your mind.

My biggest suggestion for running a fight with a 'complex' enemy like a Rune Lord is to pre-program it. What I mean by that is, during your preparation before the session, sit down with your statblocks for the enemy Rune Lord and their allied spirit and their mooks, and sketch out their basic battle plan - the Rune Lord will cast this important spell round 1, the allied spirit will cast this other spell, the mooks will form a shield wall to guard their boss's flank, the NPC shaman will summon a spirit, etc. Give them maybe two or three rounds of this, and then actually roll it out yourself and note down who succeeds and fails at what. Those successes and failures, of course might shift what the 'plan' is; if your Death Lord is trying to cast Crush on his maul and fails his 90% Rune roll, maybe he tries again - or maybe he gives up in frustration and just charges in headlong, which forces his backup fighters to scramble to cover him. This does two things; first it makes running the fight faster, because for the first couple rounds you don't need to roll many dice, and second it allows for tactical blunders or triumphs to occur in a natural-feeling way, because how the battle goes will pivot unpredictably on how the PCs interact with the predefined 'battle plan'. After two or three rounds things will be well off the rails, but by that time probably the numbers have dropped some and the rest of the fight will be simpler to manage.

I personally can't see how Ritual Practices could apply to the combat with the Bad Man - the description on page 246 seems pretty clear that Ritual Practices are a way to modify a single roll ("The spell or magic skill the adventurer wishes to use is rolled for at the completion of the ritual, and any magic points or Rune points used in the spell are expended. If the roll succeeds, the spell is cast or the skill performed"), and the only place the issue is mentioned on pg. 355 is directly in conjunction with Spirit Dance to summon the fetch. It looks to me like RAW the only way to have a close-to-even chance to get anything from the Bad Man is to walk in with Spirit Combat already over 100% at baseline, and then get a critical success on an augment/inspiration.

The comparison he drew was to initiation into the Kyger Litor cult, which for non-Uz is difficult and dangerous; the modern rules according to the cult write-up in the bestiary require 50% or more in the Darkness rune, some skills, and then you have to pass a POWx3 roll or die. There's also the troll adoption rite to turn a non-troll into a troll entirely, which is even more risky (not to mention gruesome). So if we're using that as a basis, it would seem to suggest that initiating into Aldrya would be associated with gaining the Plant rune, which is assocated with Aldrya in the same way that Darkness is associated with Kyger Litor, at some level - and yeah, at high levels of Plant you're not an elf but you're also probably not a normal human anymore.

It seems to me that honor is being portrayed as primarily a 'warrior virtue' - something that's primarily (though obviously not entirely) important to dedicated professional fighters and the aristocracy, categories which have a lot of overlap. So I would think that for a lot of people the issue of whether an act is honorable or not is just. . . Secondary. Not very important, compared to the immediate requirements of survival and success. Having an Honor Passion presumably means that honor is to some degree very important to you; whether a rating is very high or not, just having any rating at all means you can potentially end up with very significant changes to your skills and mental state based on how your honor comes into play. If you don't have Honor as a Passion, you can't do that - and that means honor just isn't a driving force in your life. People criticizing you for 'dishonorable' actions probably doesn't hurt your feelings much, and I would imagine you don't stay up at night worrying about your Honor. Obviously other people might still form their own opinions of you, but it seems perfectly reasonable to me for a lot of people - at least in some cultures - to just not internalize formal Honor as a major part of their day-to-day life.