David Scott

I found a link to the 13th Age Glorantha pic: https://www.chaosium.com/blog/13th-age-in-glorantha-update-monkey-ruins/

As do all baboons, it's their ancestral homeland. The connection is that this is where Oakfed landed and destroyed the city and most of its inhabitants. Oakfed is the traditional enemy of of the baboons. This is a great twist, I've always thought that some baboon shaman would turn to Oakfed even though he's their cultural enemy. The baboons spend a lot of time keeping out those who would summon oakfed back into their city. In the Spirit World, the Monkey Ruins sit in the Fireground - an eternally burning area still alight from Oakfed's arrival. If you haven't seen it, check out the excellent picture of the baboons and Monkey Ruins on page 33 of 13th Age Glorantha.

The Guide page 446 covers most of what we know.

This actually how the herds in the Wastes survive, they are eating spirit plants still present on the land from Genert's Garden, this is part of the Covenant "mechanism".

It wasn't my decision to make them vegetarian, I'm just welcoming it to diversify the tribes.

With the separation into 2 clans, the High Khan/ tribal leader started to appear and so the Tasks of Waha started to become more important.

Sort of. Populations were very small, likewise herds. Most were living off their own herds. Raiding wasn't fully established. Almost immediately the Great herds moved out to their respective grazings, Bolo and ostrich headed out to the wastes. The others remained in the safety of the paps. The first chaos attacks occurred almost immediately from the marsh, storm bulls moved off to the block. Populations grew slowly by the time the First council arrived in 35, the Great tribes had only grown (net) by 50-60 individuals. I don't think raiding really became established until about 200 with each tribe's population nearing 1000, around this period, most will have formed 2 clans. Under the influence of the First Council, the Lightbringers were as important as Waha and Eiritha. It wasn't until the tribes began to move out beyond the Storm influence that Waha became fully established. The unicorn tribe also formed after 35, when the Council brought Yelorna with them.

It's worth looking at the populations at the Dawn, these were the "tribes" in Sacred Ground (see map in the Guide): Tribe/families/septs Bison 500/20/2 (Ancestral grazing present in Prax) High Llama 500/20/5 (Ancestral grazing present in Prax) Sable 500/20/ 7 Phratries (Ancestral grazing present in Prax) Morokanth 500/20/4 (Ancestral grazing present in Prax) Impala 500/20/3 ((Ancestral grazing lost, but move on to the Paps Grazing) Bolo 175/7/0 Ostrich 175/7/0 Rhino 75/3/0 (nearly die out in 1st Age) Nose Horn 25/1/0 (die out in 1st Age) Plains Elk 25/1/0 (die out in 1st Age) Long Nose 25/1/0 (die out in 1st Age) As you can see, all the Great Tribes were present. Great in that they have the largest populations. The populations being only clan sized.

I've moved the reply to @BWP about morokanth over here to avoid an off topic reply: I have to disagree. Once i was told that morokanth were vegetarians, I immediately started to look at the implications of this. Jeff said they'd eat meat 1 or 2 times a week which fitted in with normal meat consumption for the Bronze Age, meat wasn't eaten every day, Praxian nomads are obviously different. This gave a good opportunity to diversify the five great tribes of Prax as up to then they all function the same - raid eat meat raid. It was quite refreshing to look at a tribe which wouldn't follow this normal pattern, but still functioned within the same pattern as the other nomads. The idea of the morokanth cheating to beat the humans and be like everyone else, was easily replaced to be the morokanth cheated not to be like everyone else. And they clearly never cheated as they have the same Waha / Eiritha structure as other tribes - The Covenant was individually done for each tribe, with each having a slightly different version of it depending on their herd. The drawing lots was Waha holding two pieces of string in his fist. Separately each tribe drew a string and the short string lost, becoming the herder. The herders now had the responsibility for the now animals. The idea that the morokanth must still raid for meat for the herd-men is good twist and sets the scene for the other tribes problems with herd-men and outsiders perceptions. As before it makes no difference if you make the morokanth like the other tribes, it's easy to make them so. Future products such as the RuneQuest Bestiary will have them primarily as vegetarians. more info here: so in the diversification of the Great tribes, we have The bison are the standard to compare the other tribes against. The morokanth retain their vegetarianism. The sables don't have Storm Bull as the Father of their Founders. The impalas are the most numerous by far (roughly twice as many as any other tribe). The high llamas have an elemental connection much stronger than the other tribes'.

I've moved the answer to a morokanth question by @MJ Sadique over here to avoid an off topic reply: The basics for Praxians is that you keep your own animals as a sign of wealth and live off those you've raided. If a raid goes well you likely have more animals than you can eat, so likely a small herd of animals not of your tribe exists within your clan. Marriage requirements are that you need other herd beasts to gift your mother-in-laws family, this not only proves your prowess, but provides the wedding feast. So most clans have at least a small number of other types of herd beasts. Invariably some were part of a milk herd and so will be milked. So in their ceremonies, morokanth eat or drink herd-man milk products and other herd's when available.

We've had gamers at our group who didn't understand this, so for reference: Total of the sides divided by the number of sides is the average. The sides on a D6 totalled 1+2+3+4+5+6 = 21 divided by the number of sides, 6 = 3.5 3.5 x 4 = 14 (don't get caught out by d3s 🙂)

Not vegan. They are vegetarians that ritually eat meat and milk products at least once a week. Vegan and vegetarian are different terms. No elves involved, if you’re at Gen Con go and ask Greg.

I’m always interested in real world examples of animism and shamanism. May I ask where this particular example comes from?

Stepping back to look at the bigger picture, having a universal translator doesn’t seem to fit the background of Glorantha for me. Looking at the latest language tree RQG page 172, the languages described all root back to an elemental source, there’s no universal root. If there was a candidate for magic, I suspect sorcery that incorporates the two source runes of the language and combines them. However large parts of my games are based on failed language rolls, I use language rolls all the time in my games. All the players in my game are scrabbling to get their tradetalk up. Even the issaries guy has fumbled his tradetalk roll. As for tradetalk being magical, I suspect using it is a form of worship of issaries, it’s use in the world is an embodiment of part of the god - likely his voice.

In real world animism and shamanism, addiction is caused by a spirit “intrusion”. A spirit becomes lodged in your body. It’s manifestation in the world is the desire to consume something that feeds it. It’s not possession, but a displacement/loss of one or more your own soul parts with the spirit occupying the missing part. It’s possible that more soul parts can be lost and the spirit to grow. The intrusion can be removed, but if the soul part isn’t returned, the empty space still exists and another intrusion can get back in, or the addiction returns. Most intrusions are illnesses, some are addictions. Based on that, in RQG it’s likely treated as a form of passion spirit. In HQG it’s a flaw.

If he's going to be a merchant, I'd adapt the issaries cult to represent it and change the rune spells to spells (be inventive). keep it simple. Merchants are the same the world over. No mastering runes, simple sorcery, they can use spirit magic. My next question is what cast are merchants? Merchant-prince ones are Noble, but shop keepers are likely Dronar.

Yes. At the moment they are going to be covered in the “Gods of Glorantha” supplement (no official release date). They will also be covered in any Praxian supplement. The last official write up of the basmoli was in the cult of Hykim & Mikyh in Heroes Magazine 1.4 (1984) This is being reworked for GoG. in the meantime you can easily fudge them by looking at the telmori in the bestiary. No chaotic stuff, change telmor to Basmol, wolf to lion. Praxian basmoli have no lions. Substitute the rune spells for keenclaw, strength of Basmol and transform head. If you have the Guide, there’s some historical info there, likewise the Nomad Gods rules. You might find this thread helpful

Are you meaning that one of your players will choose to be a philosopher and join what according to the Guide, is another school of Malkionism? Rather than one of the other occupations?

My follow on question is - does he care?

You may need to be more epic 🙂

Yes, this is what they pull up with the capstan, see GtG pages 88, 89, 90, 502.

Yes!, Jeff gave me permission to post it so here it is:

The guide tell us it’s half a mile each side and a mile tall, so not a cube. See the picture on page 411 of the Guide. Some of it is clearly below ground.

I haven’t looked exactly at that, the guide tells us it’s a mile tall, so that’s 5280 feet tall and it sits on the 1000 ft contour so at a rough guess there’s 3000 feet of it visible.

@Joerg, did you refer to Sun County when writing this? Although not widespread, Belvani has a respectable Singing skill at 66%. (page 14) Dance wasn't really a common skill in RQ3, but I think singing and dancing certainly form a ritual aspect to the society. Herding, well they are going to need this for their small sheep herds, pigs, ducks, impala and sable herds (page 8-9). page 6 Page 4