svensson

Historical note:

Civil War reenactor here. 'Quartermaster' is what is what we now call a 'Supply Chain Manager' in a corporate sense or 'Logistician' in a military sense. Specifically, it deals with every aspect of moving goods from their origin point to the end user.

In a 'horse and wagon' context it also includes not overloading the roads. Remember that all those animals pulling wagons need fodder... fodder the local animals also need... and travel significantly slower than marching troops. Also remember [and I can't emphasize this enough] most roads are only one wagon/wagon team wide. A 'road' is not a 'highway'. It can pass ONE wagon at time along it's width. What's more, after a time the ruts get so deep that it's nearly impossible to turn a wagon around.

As a side note, in those armies that are disciplined enough to march in formation [which the Lunar are, the Orlanthi most assuredly are not, and there are arguments for and against the Sun County falangists], the formation is usually 4 soldiers wide, the approximate width of one wagon.

Last thing: in a society that relies on direct taxation of goods rather than coin, Lokarnos is vitally important to get the taxed produce to the Sun Dome for distribution.

So, as everyone is pointing out, the focus of Lokarnos is about moving the taxed goods from point A to point B and managing the economy rather than the 'adventurer merchant' of Issaries/Etyries.

As a quick observation, isn't it interesting that most Sun Dome counties also have to appease or work with a River cult to some degree? They can't be utterly and completely isolationist or xenophobic or else the economy that Lokarnos is trying to manage nearly grinds to a halt.

17 hours ago, Darius West said:

Human beings have devised a great many ways of travelling upriver IRL without magic.  The Nile for example has a prevailing wind that blows upriver off the Mediterranean most days.  Towing via beasts has also long been an option.  One thing that most people don't know is that while the main current in the center of the river flows downstream, the sides of the river have eddies that actually circulate in the opposite direction and can facilitate up river travel, if you have a long enough boat to benefit (hence the length of keelboats).  You can brute force your way upriver, but this will require periodic beaching to recover one's strength.   It is odd the sort of trivia that GMs have to know...

And some rivers [the Nile, the Dnieper (where Slavs were using log canoes in Medieval times), the Amazon] were wide enough at stretches to even tack into the wind. And let's be honest, that's a pretty neat trick when you consider mud banks, snags and floating debris in a river.

The RQG rules allow someone initiating into the cult to choose whichever spell they wish when they sacrifice POW to establish the connection with the deity. Obviously, if the new initiate doesn't have the RP to cast said spell they simply can't cast it until they sacrifice POW to gain the RP to do so. But can someone initiating into a cult choose to sacrifice more than one point of POW in order to gain the RP to cast the spell?

I'm certain that the answer to this is in the RQG book somewhere, but I can't find it.

If a PC is a member of two subcults from the same deity and wishes to cast a spell provided only by one subcult, does the player have to track the RP for each subcult separately.

Example:

Broyan was initiated into Orlanth Adventurous as a teenager. Later he initiated into Orlanth Thunderous. According to the rules, he must sacrifice an additional point of POW to establish the mystical connection with that aspect of Orlanth. He wishes to cast Thunderbolt, a spell he has sacrificed for.

Does Broyan have to track RP for Adventurous and Thunderous separately?

Replying to the OP:

The spell as described has a more Rune spell feel to it. Appropriate runes being Air [because of the Strength aspect], Water [duh], and Movement [duh twice].

Mianshan [Mt. Mian] Temple, near Ji-Xiu, Shan-xi Province, PRC

2 hours ago, MOB said:

We have some irons in the Hollywood fire. The D&D movie becoming a huge popular success and start of a new fantasy franchise will certainly not hurt the chances of a RuneQuest movie/series one day.

Would it be too much to ask to have the hero be a Rhino Rider?

Yeah, probably. 😉

On 4/2/2023 at 7:42 AM, simonh said:

They're a kind of dumb idea, but as characters Ive seen them used pretty effectively in 5e. You can go a long way be re-skinning them, a player in one game had a Bard character, but played him as a sinister dark charisma powered psychic manipulator.

The problem with bards [besides the player that likes playing bards] is that the only thing they're good at is talking. If the player and the referee are both good at talking, it can be entertaining. In any other circumstance a bard is a spot in the party that could have been taken up with someone useful.

See also: Monks.

You've seen this before... you have 4 players at the table. Three players are smart enough to fill the needed roles... a tank, a healer, a dps guy. And then one clown decides he 'wants to  play something different'. So, now we have a bard or monk in the party. Every single thing they can do is done better by someone else on the team, so they're almost useful at most things but not really competent at anything.

This focus on the 'four food groups' is one of the reasons why I've totally abandoned class based systems altogether.

15 minutes ago, Baron Wulfraed said:

Dr. Who as villainous sorcerer? 😈  https://villains.fandom.com/wiki/Prince_Koura

With hopefully less fake Arab-ish.... 😁

Well, I caught the new DnD flick.

It wasn't bad. It had most of the tropes covered. The CGI wasn't too bad, although in some spots it was as bad as 47 Ronin. And it proves something d20 players have know since 3.0 came out: bards are useless. 😁

However, it DID really make me wish for a RuneQuest movie... You know, Troy with some Harryhausen thrown in doing Gloranthan themes... empowering Runes, Praxian beast nomads, and the rest of the stuff we love.

Getting back to the OP on this...

The answer is simple. Conflict sells tickets. Violence to resolve conflict sells more tickets. Simple solutions to complex problems [i.e. Our Hero shooting up just one building with only one bad guy responsible for The Whole Stinking Mess] sells even more tickets.

Society suddenly deciding to correct it's universal ills [a'la Star Trek] does not sell tickets.

What am I looking forward to?

In a word, 'everything'.

But clearing up some of the edition discrepancies will be nice too.

12 minutes ago, Nick Brooke said:

Ok, you do you. Have fun oppressing the natives!

I was just trying to stay consistent with how the Sky pantheon is portrayed. They seem to have a distinctly 'Old Testament' vibe to them.

Do we have a source on the retcon, or is that expected in the Dragon Pass sourcebook?

1 hour ago, Nick Brooke said:

As you point out, either relocation or expulsion would have been thematically-appropriate Bronze Age options, which @svensson passes over for some reason ("We have to enslave them or massacre them, there is no conceivable third way!").

I passed the expulsion solution by because the Yelmalion faith seems to be particularly vulnerable to theological doctrines that can lead to societal dead ends. For Sky pantheon worshipers, the world seems to be a very binary place: yes or no not maybe, enemy or ally not neutral.

The Yelmalio worldview doesn't easily allow for a third option for 'heathen Darkness worshipers'. Because the Kitori were from a diametrically opposed pantheon and then were conquered by the 'forces of Light and Right', the Sky pantheon viewpoint justifies the serfdom of engeshi for doctrinaire theological reasons. Light must defeat Darkness and constantly be seen to do so. To the Light Priests, the solution was either servitude or death.

And because of that, the Sun County of Amber Fields must constantly keep a standing army at home to keep engeshi subservient.

Well, I got WM 15 and I have to say that @Jeff's article is VERY interesting.

My concerns about chattel slavery are alleviated but Jeff's repeated use of the word 'serf'. Absolutely no disrespect is intended when I say that I'm assuming that Jeff knows the definitions [and most importantly the differences] between the terms 'slave', 'peasant' and 'serf'. A LOT of people confuse the terms and there are important legal distinctions.

- A peasant is anyone, free or bound, who works the land and is somewhat backward. It isn't that they're stupid, necessarily, but 'book-learnin' isn't part of their upbringing. On the other hand ask them about every trail, hillock, boulder, and dell within 5 miles of their home and they'll give you chapter and verse on how to get there, what lives there, the local folklore about the place, and what you'll find there in every conceivable weather.

- A serf is bound to the service of a landowner. They provide skilled labor in many trades including, farming, wood-copping, herding, veterinary, building, and carpentry. In exchange for their service they are provided with an equal share of the harvest [according to the acres they farm] after taxes, the protection of the landowner [both physical and legal], and have a specific 'place' in society. A serf is one of last people in a society to starve during a famine, for example, because the basis of property law entitles him to food even in famine. The urban poor have no such protections.

- A slave is actual property, no different from an ox or pig. They can be bought, sold, fed slop, beaten with impunity.

The Ergeshi are a conquered people and are not free, but the DO have rights of a sort and a specific place in society. They are not bought and sold and their families are not broken up for profit.

Yes, I fully grant you that none of the is morally or ethically right in 2023 Earth. But in 1600ST Glorantha the only other option was to massacre the Kitori.

I'll look into WF 15, though I'm not a big fan of chattel slavery as practiced by the Lakadaimonians..

The other references I have read or own [including your own excellent Sandheart series]

3 minutes ago, DrGoth said:

Don't know about detailing, but the best I can find outside of fanzines in a couple of paragraphs on p.255 of Sartar Kingdom of Heroes. There's a few other references in the book, but that's the largest piece. Not much, I admit.

Yeah, just passing references but that's it.

I ask because Prax Sun County's harsh environment and isolation has made it a hard, stern, dare I say 'Islamic' or 'Arabic' styled state. Rigid social control has allowed the Praxian Yelmalions to survive, but I wonder where the rigidity of the cult ends and the society starts. Using my Islamic analogy again, it's difficult to separate the influences of Arabic culture, Bedouin culture, and the Muslim faith. All are inextricably linked. For that matter, good freaking luck separating Catholicism from Italian culture.

So I'd like to see what a Sun County without the deprivation of the desert and the constant assault by the nomads might look like. I'd like to see the original Yelmalio culture that's more in tune with the 'frontier defender of the Sky pantheon among the hill barbarians' description we've seen in the past. After all, the Sun County of Prax is a transplanted religion the furthest away from its foundations in Peloria.

Is there any information detailing the Sun County next to the Lismelder Tribe in Dragon Pass?

I've looked, but I haven't found any reference.

9 hours ago, Joerg said:

Actually, that's what makes me think of somewhere not Sun County, with many lesser celestial entities worshiped. In a Sun Dome county, I would not expect mundane buildings to imitate the sacred architecture. How many of us live in church-like houses?

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.

This is something I hope is addressed in Glorantha's future... how life is lived near Sun Dome Temples NOT in Prax. I'd like to see an article or Jonstown supplement detailing the Sun County neighboring the Lismelders at the edge of Sartar.

EDIT: Started a topic on the Sun County outside of Prax thing.

45 minutes ago, Ian A. Thomson said:

 

I read this entirely as a bold statement of faith in, and appreciation for, the series, couched in humorous style

Thank you 🙂

Ok, I'll use words...

I appreciate and look forward to further work. I had expected this to be a relatively short series, a trilogy or maybe 4 volumes. Ten was wholly unexpected!

To everyone involved with the project, my congratulations on delivering yet another way to see Glorantha... a way in which the boundaries of magical definition are a lot blurrier and cults do not always match casual definition.

😁

10 hours ago, Squaredeal Sten said:

That is pretty light to be desirable for Uz.  Looks like it is engineered to put sunlight on the center platform..  Do you have a concept for why the Uz would have a ceremony there?  Night only, originally to have been in the light of the Blue Moon?

A cenote [sen-oh-teh] is a terrain feature of Central America where the local limestone soaks up all available water. Because of this, there are no streams in the area because the water is collected in underground reservoirs. What often happens is the roof of a close-the-surface cenote is worn thin by time and erosion and will collapse into the cave underneath, creating an open well.

That is why you have that lighting effect.

An amazing image came across my feed today

Suytun Cenote, near Vallalodid, Yucatan, Mexico

Anybody seeing an Uz or Water cult ceremony here?

And getting back to the point of the thread...

Anybody seeing Sun County in these?

A desert fortress town, CGI by Stephen Dove

Building on @Darius West's comment,

Um, isn't corporatization bringing some of Cyberpunk future nihilism into our society now? And how much worse will it be for our children.

As for Marx/Lenin/Stalin/Maoism's fears of capitalism, THEY wrecked their own environment just as badly as the capitalist West did theirs. The cleanup that Germany had to undertake in the former DDR after unification was mindblowing [unsecured nuclear reactor waste, for example] and the US paid for a lot of that cleanup [roughly 1/3 the total costs]. And there are entire cities in Russia and China that, were they in the West, would have been condemned and leveled as a hazmat site [Magnitogorsk, Russia for example]. So I think it's a misnomer to call the whole cyberpunk genre a nightmare of the Communists when it was the Communists that created a far nastier dystopia in their zones of control.