Jex

Well, I mean... it's not a Duck village. It's a backwater village at the edge of the Upland Marsh, but the Marshedge clan is part of the Lismelder tribe; they're human. They have close ties to the Durulz, to the extent there are a handful of them living among them (which is why I thought it would work to have a Duck as one of the pregens), but the vast majority of the village's inhabitants are (Theyalan) humans. Just to be clear, I'd only intended for one of the pregen characters to be a Duck, and that character won't be a sorcerer, for the reasons discussed earlier. The Humakti sorcerer my previous post was about is human.

Thanks for the useful notes. The reason I gave her a Lunar mentor rather than a Sartarite was because I gather sorcerers are quite rare among Sartarites except in the cult of Lhankor Mhy, and per CoG:L Lhankor Mhy cultists only teach sorcery to those initiated into that cult—it might be possible to come up with some justification for why one might make an exception, but having the tutor be a Lunar seemed to require less of a stretch. (And the Lunar occupation is recent enough that there would still likely plenty of Lunars around in nearby areas). I was planning on using the Philosopher background for her; the idea was that the tutoring started when she was quite young, and she only took up the sword later. I haven't started statting her up yet, but I'll definitely keep the points in your post in mind when I do.

This character is supposed to be a young starting pregen, so a concept like an aged Humakti who took up sorcery in semi-retirement doesn't really work for it, I'm afraid... that could certainly be an interesting character, but not for these purposes. And while I see the point that a Duck could in theory practice sorcery in secret, I'm not keen on one of the pregens being a character who is going against their people's beliefs and would be killed messily if their secret ever came out. Again, that could be an interesting character, and as a GM I'd probably allow it if a player wanted to roleplay that, but it's a bit... precarious for a pregen. (By the same token, this character isn't supposed to be a powerful sorcerer with an extensive selection of spells, just a starting character with sorcerous abilities on par with Sorala from the Starter Set.) Anyway, though, I have come up with a possible backstory for a Humakti sorcerer character, though I'm still relatively new to RuneQuest and Glorantha so if anyone with more experience with Glorantha sees anything in this backstory that doesn't make sense or wouldn't work, please let me know: ==== Salwar Alfgar's Daughter is the oldest daughter of Alfgar Grimblade, (then-)chief of the Marshedge Clan. Although Alfgar was a doughty warrior, Salwar from a young age was curious and bookish, seemingly more interested in learning about the world than in taking up the sword. Alfgar was somewhat disappointed that his daughter would apparently not be following in his footsteps, but nevertheless he loved her and wanted to support her—though he wasn't sure how. Then, while Salwar was still quite young, an aged and learned Lunar deserter arrived in Marshedge begging asylum. He claimed to be a Sartar sympathizer who had betrayed his Lunar compatriots, and who hoped to settle in the village of Marshedge, far enough from any major trade routes that it was unlikely he would be sought here by Lunar forces looking for vengeance. Alfgar mistrusted him at first, but a Detect Truth spell confirmed the Lunar's veracity, so the chief agreed to let him stay. To make him useful, Alfgar hired him to tutor his knowledge-hungry daughter—provided, of course, that he promised to stick to teaching only objective facts about nature and the world, and not try to fill her head with nonsense about the Lunar Way. The Lunar agreed [if I do go with this backstory I suppose I should give this character a name, but I haven't yet], and Salwar took well to her lessons. But then one day her tutor happened to mention that he knew sorcery—and Salwar was immediately fascinated, and begged him to teach her these powers. The Lunar tutor demurred, fearing that her father might disapprove, but in the face of her unrelenting importunement he finally gave in and agreed to teach her some sorcery, as long as she didn't tell her father. Here, too, she proved an able student, and surprised him with how quickly she picked up the basics. When Salwar came of age, however, she wanted to do her part to help protect her besieged community—and she decided to learn the way of the sword after all, and join the cult of Humakt. Her father was surprised, but certainly pleased, and supported her daughter's choice. Yet she did not forget the sorcery she had been taught. The Lunar who taught her has since died of old age, and she has no easy source to learn new techniques or spells—but that's something to be worked out in role-playing. (Her father, too, is dead by now, having been slain by Delicti's zombies—a common occupational hazard for Marshedge cheftains.) She is still as curious as she ever was, and still interested in knowledge and learning—but she uses that knowledge in her fight against the Upland Marsh and the forces of the Necromancer. ==== Anyway, all of that is tentative and still subject to change. I'm also undecided as to how open she is about her practice of sorcery—whether she managed to keep her studies hidden from her father until his death, and still practices it only in secret, or whether he discovered what she was doing very early on but didn't have a problem with it as long as she used it for good ends. (Or wait, maybe he discovered what she was doing and made a deal with her that he'd allow her to continue her sorcery studies as long as she also started to learn combat skills, and that's how she found out she actually did have a talent for and interest in combat after all? Hmm...)

Ah. The Smoking Ruin is another book I just bought recently (as part of the same order as the Cults of Glorantha books, in fact) but haven't made time to read yet... I'll take a look at that. Thanks.

I hadn't thought of it that way, but okay, given that I guess the fact that Humakt doesn't forbid sorcery may not be that surprising. But I'd still suppose it would require somewhat unusual circumstances for a Sartarite Humakti to learn sorcery, especially one in a rural tribe like the Lismelder. I think I may have a way to explain it for this character, though.

Oh, wait, that's interesting... according to the table @Jens linked, Humakt, perhaps surprisingly, does not forbid sorcerer initiates. Hm. I don't see that confirmed (or denied) in Cults of RuneQuest: Lightbringers (the table references page 105 of that book, but having looked over that page I see no mention of sorcery there), but if that's true... I was already planning on having one of the pregens be a Humakti, and a Humakti who knows sorcery might be fun, although it might require a creative backstory to justify it... (Hm, I've got some possible ideas...)

Yeah, that's what I'm currently leaning toward; I think that could work well and could be a fun character. The only thing that's giving me a little pause is that there's already a Fool NPC in the Marshedge adventure, and I'm a little worried about maybe seeming to put... a bit too much spotlight on Eurmal. A little Fool can go a long way. But the NPC in question isn't a major character of the adventure (in fact, depending on how thoroughly the PCs investigate, they may never find out he's an initiate of Eurmal), and isn't a member of the Marshedge clan (he's a Tarsh exile who only recently arrived in the area), so maybe this isn't a problem. EDIT: And after looking over the Eurmal subcults in The Lightbringers, I'm not actually sure that the Fool is the best match for the NPC in question anyway. The Rogue subcult might be a better fit for him... although I'm not sure; he definitely does have aspects of the Fool as well...

Ooh... it's been a while since I read all the way through Roleplaying in Glorantha, and I'd forgotten about the Philosopher occupation—good catch! No Orlanthi gods other than Lhankor Mhy are listed in the Cults entry, but the book says those are just the "cults commonly associated with that occupation" (emphasis added), so that doesn't mean they're off limits to other cults. With a suitable backstory, I could see that occupation working for either an Issaries or a Eurmal cultist... hm. A scholarly fool could be an amusingly contradictory character... and the fact that trickster clowns are given a lot of latitude to violate social and sacred norms could help explain why a normally sorcery-intolerant Duck might put up with a companion who used sorcery, if that companion was a Clown... Hmm... I recently got the Lightbringers book (and the other gods books that have been released so far), but haven't had a chance to thoroughly peruse it yet; maybe I'll at least read through the sections on Eurmal and Issaries and see if any of the subcults spark any ideas...

So I'm still working out a set of seven pregens for my Marshedge adventure; I want to cover all the major bases (shaman, sorcerer, etc.) while not getting too close conceptually to the pregens in the RuneQuest starter set. Given the close relationship between the Lismelder Tribe (and the Marshedge clan in particular) and the Durulz, I wanted to make one of the pregens a Duck, and I was leaning toward making the Duck a Lhankor Mhy cultist, mostly I admit because I am amused by the thought of a Duck wearing a fake beard over its bill. But I checked Duckpac, and while it confirms that Ducks can and do worship Lhankor Mhy, it also says that sorcery is anathema to Ducks and any Durulz found to be practicing sorcery, even a Lhankor Mhy cultist, would be put to death. So, okay, that doesn't mean that I can't have a Lhankor-Mhy-worshipping Duck as one of my pregens, fake beard and all, but it does mean that that character can't be a sorcerer. Which means if I want to have a sorcerer among the pregens, and don't want to double up and have two pregen characters in the same cult, then I'd have to have a sorcerer who doesn't worship Lhankor Mhy, which... seemed like a potential problem, since I wasn't sure any Orlanthis other than Lhankor Mhy cultists practiced sorcery. I considered swapping things around and putting the Duck character in a different cult (even if it meant missing out on that bearded bill); I considered maybe even having a Lunar sorcerer character who had for some reason settled in the Marshedge territory. But then I was reading through old forum posts and ran across the following Ooh, now that's promising! I'm not sure I want to have a Chalana Arroy or Eurmal cultist as one of the pregens, but an Issaries cultist who practices sorcery could be a great fit, if that's a possible thing. But I'm not sure where else to find more information about this. Lhankor Mhy cultists can be taught sorcery in their temples; where would an Issaries cultist learn it? Being disciples of the god of trade, would they somehow trade for it, maybe getting Lhankor Mhy cultists to teach them sorcery by offering them something in return? How plausible is it that there would be a sorcery-using Issaries cultist among a backwater clan like the Marshedge? EDIT: On second thought, maybe it could be interesting to have a trickster pregen (especially since it would further distance these pregens from those in the Starter Set, which do include an Issaries cultist). I'll have to think about that. But then a similar question stands... where would a Eurmal cultist learn sorcery?

Hrm. I did not know that. That's something else I want to try to avoid contradicting, then... obviously as he was a gamemaster of the original Greydog campaign, I'd consider anything he wrote about the matter to be canon for all practical purposes. Of course, again, what I'm working on is focusing on the Marshedge clan, and the Greydogs play no part in the adventure, so really the only part that might end up in conflict is the overview of the Lismelder Tribe I'm including in the Marshedge sourcebook, which is a relatively small part of the work as a whole. I don't know; maybe I should stop worrying quite so much about potential contradictions right now, focus on getting things done, and then make any necessary changes after the fact if I discover I've gotten something wrong...

Huh. So Skalfi Blackblade is not only the chief of the Greydogs, but the Lismelder king after Harvald, then? OK, thanks, that's definitely good to know; based on that earlier post, I'd had Branduan Greatblade as the current Lismelder king in my writeup, but I'll change that. Is there any information about Skalfi Blackblade anywhere? Also, do you happen to know if there's any canon information for the current chieftains of the other Lismelder clans? I know who the chiefs of each clan were in 1610 according to TotRM 18, but given the time that's passed I'd suppose many of them had died or retired. I'd kind of assumed it probably hadn't been canonically specified who the current chiefs were of each clan in 1625 and I'd made my own determinations about the current clan chiefs, but if there are canonical answers I'll alter my descriptions accordingly.

Ah, thanks very much! That's very helpful. And thanks also for the information about the chief, although... now I'm a bit confused; this seems to contradict a post by @Nick Brooke from a few years ago: It seems... challenging for Branduan Greatblade to become king of the Lismelder tribe in 1625 if he was killed in 1624. Was Nick Brooke mistaken? Or was Branduan Greatblade brought back to life? Or were there two Branduan Greatblades? Or is there something I'm misunderstanding? And if Branduan Greatblade didn't succeed Harvald the Hairy as king of the Lismelder tribe, who did?

Hey, so, uh, I haven't posted here in a while, but some time back I was posting quite a few questions about an adventure I was working on, set in the main village of the Marshedge clan. This turned out to be a much bigger job than I initially expected: When I first decided to write a RuneQuest adventure, I decided to set it among the Lismelder Tribe because at the time I thought it was an area close to the main locations detailed in the core rules but that itself had not received much previous development, so there wouldn't be much I would have to research. That turned out very much not to be the case; I discovered later that the Lismelder Tribe had been the subject of a long-running campaign by some future RuneQuest developers (centered on the Greydog clan), and had in fact received quite a lot of development in fanzines. (I know the fanzines may not be technically canon, but given that some of the material in those fanzines was later adapted into canon and that the writers of those articles later went on to develop official RuneQuest material, I figured it would probably be best to treat them as canon unless explicitly contradicted.) So I had to scrounge for a bunch of old fanzines and scour them for relevant material, and... well, like I said, it ended up being a lot more involved than I expected. (So why didn't I just pick a different location? Well, because by the time I realized how much had been developed about the Lismelder Tribe, I was far enough along with my project that I didn't want to relocate it, and besides if I did pick a different location, it was always possible that when I went to research that location I'd find it had a lot of previous development I'd have to read up on too.) Anyway, though, I'd kind of... reluctantly set that project aside for a while; I had a lot to deal with last year (I work in the entertainment industry, so I was hit by the SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes). But I'm finally picking it back up again and hoping I can maybe finish the damn thing in the last two months—it's been about two years now since I started it; I need to finally get it done. (Of course, now I'm a bit worried that something I write about the Lismelder or the Marshedge Tribe may be contradicted by the upcoming book on Sartar, but... eh, I guess we'll see.) All of which is preamble to the question this post was meant to be about, namely, as it says in the title: Who's the current master of the Greydog Inn? It's not at all important to the adventure itself, which, again, takes place in the main village of the Marshedge clan, and in which the Greydog Inn plays no part whatsoever. But along with the adventure I was planning to release a sourcebook on the Marshedge clan that also included a broader overview of the Lismelder Tribe as a whole. (As a matter of fact, the adventure itself has been done for a while (well, the text has; I haven't done the layout or illustrations); it's mostly this sourcebook I'm still working on.) And in that overview of the Lismelder Tribe, the Greydog Inn is listed among significant sites in the Lismelder lands, and gets a brief three-paragraph description, and in that three-paragraph description I want to mention the name of the master of the inn. It's a trivial detail as far as my project goes, but I want to try to get all the details right. The Greydog Inn gets a detailed description in Tales of the Reaching Moon #20, where it says that the inn's master is Bestaf Longbrewer. But it also says that he's "ready to retire, but has had a very difficult time choosing which of his two sons to endorse to the chief [as his replacement]"—and given that the material in TotRM is set in the year 1610, a decade and a half before the temporal setting of the current RuneQuest editions, I figured that he's probably retired by now. So, I was wondering... does anyone know if it was ever established in the old Greydog campaign or anywhere else just which of his sons he finally chose? If not, of course I can just make a decision myself (and if so I'm leaning toward his having settled on his second son, Hardy)... but if there was a canonical (or quasicanonical) answer I'd like to follow it. Like I said, as much as possible I want to get all the details right.

Hope I didn't come across as rudely shutting you down—it's not so much that I didn't want to continue the discussion; it's just that it seemed off topic for this thread and I was afraid we were annoying the other participants. If you want to continue the mathematical discussions, I'd be fine with doing so in the Alastor's Skull Inn forum, since that seems to be the more anything-goes, off-topic forum; I just was uncomfortable doing it here and derailing the thread. And speaking of not derailing the thread, I guess I should post something relevant here now, except that I'm still new enough to RuneQuest that I don't really know that I have any dumb theories interesting enough to be worth sharing yet, or rather that I probably do but I don't know enough to realize how dumb they are. But I'm almost done reading through the Guide to Glorantha, and I'm learning, and I'm sure soon I'll have no shortage of really stupid theories.

Apologies if I'm misunderstanding the question and this isn't helpful, but in case you weren't aware, the adventure "Defending Apple Lane" in the Adventure Book included with the RuneQuest Gamemaster Screen Pack involves an attack by a band of Tusk Riders, and has full statistics for all eight Tusk Riders and their mounts. It's not a squad sheet, but if you just need some Tusk Rider stat blocks, you can yoink those for use in your own adventure. There's also some advice about the Tusk Riders' combat tactics, though those are tailored to the specific scenario and may not be as useful for you.