Malin

I love this and I am stealing the hell out of it! Divert a river goddess to try to dilute the taint, but wouldn't it be better to speed things up and use all the gods and goddesses? Put them in a filter (net) and dump the devil in it and hope it all evens out. Whatever survives can be something new, reset the cycle and perform this mortal utuma where we have balanced both sides of our selves. That we first had to live through decades of horrors as we confronted our own best and worst inner decision doesn't matter. What does is the Right Action at the end. (I genuinely love Argrath as a character and myth, maybe I should change my name to Argrath Apologist)

I have always been of the opinion that if Wakboth is the moral evil of the mundane world within time and trapped there, then the Wakboth you meet on a heroquest is formed from your own inner evil, that little shade of darkness at the heart of every mortal. Or, he can be formed by the evils of opposing forces on the quest. In either case, it is the mortal heroquester that brings the fuel that becomes the devil with them. This is why some can call the Red Goddess, once mortal, the devil, while others call Argrath the same thing. Every mortal can be the devil, if given the opportunity.

Now I am just thinking of a "Damage Control" campaign like the old Marvel comic about the company that cleans up after superhero fights... The Hero Wars is pretty much that after all...

We have a chapter on music in our upcoming Sun County themed book, and I think it's my favorite one in the book.

Many find it a lot more interesting in working towards getting something (exciting social climber) than working to keep it (boring middle class).

I mean this is a world where horses are related to birds so....

Maybe because the abdomen/torso/neck/head (spine/chakras) is the anchor of the spirit and once that is cut/destroyed, the spirit has started to detach? A bit like a balloon whose string has been cut?

Wow that is absolutely AMAZING.

I did write a handout for my Babeester Gor PC which was based on the Six Paths Ernalda initiation, and how things were adjusted compared to the normal one in there. There are no stats, but it might give you some ideas on how this first initiation into the tribe (not becoming an actual initiate of the cult) might happen. BabeesterGorInitiation.docx

True that, we'll see what happens in the future!

Just the volume I need!

What are gods but greater spirits trapped by time?

And once again, this thread is why I love this forum. Stories are told, but how they are told and what they actually say, tell as much of the teller as the subject.

I would also point out that Ranaglar is probably the first victim of the cycle of abuse after having been tossed into the sex-pit by his uncles...

Sadly mine are going to be published in my Sun County book which is undergoing proofreading as we speak.

One of the underlying themes of my main RQ campaign is who tells the stories and what they tell of the ones who tell them. Right now, it is very much concerned with Yelmalio and Sun County, as one of the players is digging deep into heresies and forgotten/suppressed knowledge. But once the campaign moves beyond that, I do feel more strongly than ever that I want to pull Thed into the mix. This thread has given me too many ideas, and we have already sniffed around the Greater Darkness with the White Bull Heroquest. I do love the way that players can interact with Glorantha in a more tangible way, where there is no single Truth and every story has an origin. My players are already learning how to shape narratives with their choices around growing the White Bull cult, and I can't wait for the penny to drop when they realize that if they are doing this now, what happened back at Dawn with all the other stories they have learned as the Truth? This forum is so good at giving me ideas, I really love seeing everybody's take on things.

Very true that! I just look forward to seeing her wrestling with these facts, an illuminated Babeester Gor can get very interesting at times. She might come to the conclusion that she needs to hear Thed's side of the story first and not rely on the word of the violators... which will be an interesting heroquest, to say the least.

This discussion really made me wonder what the Babeester Gor cultist in my campaign would ever make of Thed, and whether it could ever be technically proven that she had been "of the earth."

Progress is made. Fluff on the right, rules on the left. On paper proofreading makes everything feel real.

Such a cool idea!!

I really do love the idea of "legendary weapons" heirlooms or magical items having their own ransom. Though I suppose if I was a bandit, I wouldn't keep anything that made me worry that whoever I had caught would be coming after me to get it back. Sure, I'll keep the pack animals, but that named steed with the expensive tack? Hmmm too risky.

Isn't that just a god-talker pretty much? Nothing says they can't get an allied spirit, just that it is rare.

- puts on wargaming glasses to read the rules and what they actually say - Looking through the cult books, it looks like things vary quite a bit between the various Shaman paths. Some are very tied to tribe or cult, others looks like there might be choices. Take Waha for example. There it says: "Should they desire it" makes it sound to me that someone initiated to a shaman on Waha's path might choose not to become a rune priest. And if they didn't, it doesn't sound like they would have the same responsibilities as one? As seen, there is no fixed 90% time restriction there, I don't see why it would be impossible according to the rules for a Waha shaman to wander as long as they don't accept the rune priest position and becomes part of the clan hierarchy. And then we have Daka Fal: And here, we have an entirely different way of initiating and a complete focus on ancestor spirits. Here, it seems like the shaman themselves are the focus of their little cult, and it is up to them how powerful they can get. The spirits are their community they feed and are responsible for. In contrast, there is Pamalt: Who is very much the heart of the community with the 90% demand. No way out of it, you even automatically become one if you are a shaman already and joins the Pamalt cult. You do not operate outside society then. ---- I think those were the shaman paths that are described in the cult books, where we know more details about stuff. And then in the full book we have the sentences I think everyone focuses on: However, exactly what that is seems to vary. None of the currently described shaman paths are exactly the same. I have two shamans (well, one is still assistant) in two different campaigns. One is a Daka Fal follower, an outcast of his tribe, but literally carrying some of his ancestor's bones with him. His teacher is a spirit, and his main duty as a Shaman is to his ancestors and their memory, which also now means making some babies so the family line can continue... Summon Spirit teacher is a fun spell to stand in for a mentor until he manages to initiate fully. The other is from a Spirit Cult tradition, there the cult is the spirit cult, and it wants worship and to be spread. Making the cult grow is the main thing, and to do that he needs to travel and tell tales of the spirit, and try to get others to worship it. Takes up a lot of time, yes, but also makes a character that can, indeed must, travel. ---- As for Priests and God-Talkers, I can't see how a priest is very workable in a more globetrotting campaign; having adventures to faraway places now and then won't be hard (we need you to go to XXX and ascertain if it really is the holy relic YYY that has been found and bring it back if it is, or we need you to go and support this other temple for a few seasons because the ehad priestess is gravely sick and we suspect shenanigans), but I see being a priest means that you want a community-focused campaign at heart. If you want to be more free, god-talker is the way to go, almost the same benefits, and much more open to travel and adventure, the classic wandering preacher.

I'm not picking on you personally (I really am not), but this comment made me wonder about how people play. I never really imagined this might be a problem for a group at all. I am just so used to there being a dialogue between the group and gamemaster about what they want to do in a campaign, both from the first session of building a group of characters that will work together and where they might head off after that. In the groups I play, the players might want to experience Prax and would tell the GM, "Hey, it would be cool to go to Prax sometimes!" The GM would then be able to think and plan a hook to let that particular group go there that would fit the campaign. I got that wish a while ago: "Hey, we wanna go to the Plateau of Statues and do some treasure hunting!" This is a bit outside their normal militia duties, so I needed to come up with some good reasons, and a couple of sessions later, we were heading there. It's not like they were saying at the start of a session, "We're going to the Wastes today, so I will start packing." It feels like some people read the rules as a document forbidding them to do things rather than as one enabling them to do cool shit they might never have considered before. Maybe that's what we need a GM's guide for: to give people tips and examples on how to build something together and see limitations and bonds as adventure hooks and ideas rather than boundaries you can never color outside. And so many problems could be avoided by just building a group that will gel from the start (it doesn't have to be homogenous at all) and talk about what style you want to play. I never start a campaign without sending out a campaign premise to the players, especially if I've never played with them before, and they don't know Glorantha. I got some if people want to see what I am talking about, or perhaps that is a different thread. I guess it just struck me as strange that situations like this are seen as a problem.

Oh, I would have loved climbing to the level of being able to have even a single groupie! But yeah, adventuring back then truly felt like digging treasure to be able to afford some beer and bread at the end of the day after paying your taxes. Very salt of the earth, the lowest rung on the ladder type. Or perhaps our GM was just mean... (just kidding, we loved it).