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Legend is certainly a very interesting system with many nice ideas, but it has inherited a couple of unclear rules and loose ends from MRQ II. We in- tended to use it for our Phalanos campaign, but after some debate - main- ly about details of the sorcery rules - we decided to use BRP instead.

When you increase the number of attacks per combat round you probably also have to increase the number of dodge and/or parry attempts per combat round, because otherwise you tend to get many attacks without any option to defend against them, which would make combat a lot more lethal than it already is. And if you introduce multiple attacks and multiple options to dodge and/or parry ba- sed on dexterity, all you probably get is a slower combat flow, but not a signifi- cantly different style or feel of the combat. So, as I see it, the added complexity would hardly result in a more interesting combat sequence, and there may well be other unintended consequences which could unbalance the game. Therefore I would hesitate to use such a house rule.

Short quotes of copyrighted material are legal if you mention where the quote is from.

Mongoose originally planned to call the game "Wayfarers", but there was already a roleplaying game with that name, so in the end the game was named "Legend".

Slow but impossible to stop ... it seems this leaves some poison with no known antidote as the best choice, but I doubt that this would make a good legend. Voluntarily stepping into a cauldron filled with boiling oil once was a suicide me- thod used in ancient China by scholars who disagreed with a ruler and wanted their death to become a symbol remembered for a long time, but although this is certainly most painful, it is a rather quick way to die. A famous Japanese example of this execution method would be Ishikawa Goemon: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ishikawa_Goemon

He cut remove one small piece of his body each day and feed it to the pigs, beginning with his toes, then his ears, his tongue, his family jewels, his eyes ... you get the idea, a slow and humiliating death "of a thousand cuts".

Just for the record, I am still working on this setting, although rather slowly because of the workload of my new job. Meanwhile I have (again) changed a couple of elements of the setting, and if I find the spare time to do so I will post a description of the setting in its current version (probably V. 2.1 ...) in the hopefully not so far future.

Oops - I was so buried under lots of work in my new job that I missed the return of BRP Central. Really nice to have it back, and many thanks to our Landlord.

Hello and most welcome to the forum.

Welcome to the forum. Fantasy is a very wide field, perhaps you could name or describe the type of fantasy you prefer ?

Actually, not at all. All the Gloranthan gods and their cults remain as published, although there may be some minor changes in the details, like for example the specific spells taught by a specific cult and such. As for Glorantha itself, nothing much is changed. This is true, and my problem here is less to come up with such mythic elements than to come up with a plausible way for the characters to discover these mythic elements. What I do not want is a deity to materialize in front of the characters and tell them the myth of Phalanos, this would seem a terribly bad way to handle it. What remains are things like old texts in Lhankor Mhy temples, dreams sent by deities, strange things discovered on Phala- nos and such, little pieces of a mosaic which when put together in the right way by the characters enable them to understand the mythological dimension of Phalanos.

Thank you both very much for your ideas.

Thank you very much. Phalanos is much like Mars, only bigger and with a denser, but not breathable atmosphere. Until now no life has been discovered on Phalanos, but this may well change one day. The magic masks are indeed just magic masks, I did not want to introduce a higher than ancient level of technology, and Glorantha has lots of strange magic anyway.

With Gloranthan scholars as key characters of the setting, I wonder how these sa- ges would think and come to their conclusions about the natural world – for exam- ple, whether a chain of reasoning like this one would be plausible, or over the top because there is too much „modern“ thinking in it ... „You see, it is impossible to light a fire on Phalanos, nothing at all will burn there, neither wood nor candles nor oil lamps. Thinking about fire, it requires air. It does not burn in the earth or under water, only when there is air, but it does not burn in the air of Phalanos. We did not detect any anti-fire magic there, so something else must be wrong with the air there. Now look, when you place a burning candle on a flat surface and put a glass over it, the candle will continue to burn for a little while, and then go out. And if you put a bigger glass over it, it will burn a little longer before it goes out. It seems to be something in our air which feeds the fire, the more air it has the longer the fire burns. Whatever it is, it is used up by the fire, and when the fire has used up all of it, it goes out. Perhaps the air of Phalanos does not have this something which feeds a fire, either because it was never there in the first place, or because some huge fire has used up all of it long ago. If this is true, the air of Phalanos is like the air in the glass on- ce the candle has gone out. It would be tempting to think that this is also the rea- son why we cannot breath the air of Phalanos, or why there are no plants and ani- mals on Phalanos, but right now this is still unfounded speculation.“ What do you think, plausible or not ?

By the way, since I mentioned the star charts and their differences, here you see the official Gloranthan star chart on the left and my Phalanos star chart (as it will be once Cassidor has drawn it) on the right - it will be up to the cha- racters to draw any conclusions from them or to ignore them and leave such stuff to the scholars:

The Order of Phalanos needs a couple of non-player character members, but as a very young order with a rather exotic agenda the number of members will probab- ly be rather low. I have decided that there will be a total of seven active members at the beginning of the campaign, and apart from the founders Siristor and Senda- ra they will be: Carrowin, a Rune Lady of Lhankor Mhy, the order's main contact with the cult and temple of Lhankor Mhy in Pavis. However, Carrowin often leaves Pavis on the cult's business and therefore rarely takes part in the order's activities. Cassidor, a sage of Irrippi Ontor, a skilled astronomer, who is planning to make detai- led star charts of the night sky of Phalanos in order to compare them with those of the night sky of Glorantha. Inganna, a young librarian who came to Pavis from the library at Jonstown in Sartar, she takes care of the order's notes, records, reports, documents and maps. Robasart, a redsmith and instrument maker from Pavis, he made the Gnomon and is busy with plans for other scholarly instruments for the order. Varkan, a young warrior and scout of the Zebra Tribe, the order's main explorer be- fore the involvement of the player characters.

Today was "Cartography Day", I have worked on some details of my map of the world Phalanos, designed a first draft of the map of the region of Phalanos the Gate leads to, and made a plan of the house Siristor and Sendara bought in New Pavis (Building D-36 on the northern Parade Way of the Downtown Quarter of New Pavis). I have also made some notes on the exploration of Phalanos. I want it to be more than just wandering around and mapping the terrain, so I looked up the methods the ancient scholars used to explore our real world - the Gnomon mentioned above is one example. The fact that Glorantha is described as a cube floating on water would make most of those methods impossible, so I decided that this is only the belief of Glorantha's inhabi- tants, while the truth is that Glorantha is just a normal spherical world with a normal sky above. This makes it possible for the Order of Phalanos to plan some rather ambiti- ous projects, like determining the size of the world Phalanos by measuring the size of one degree of latitude. My original idea was that Phalanos is much like Mars and has never developed any kind of life, but this seems a bit bland for a fantasy setting. The compromise I am currently thinking about is that this is still true, but that Phalanos has been visited and is still oc- casionally visited by creatures from Glorantha and other, still unknown worlds, and to make encounters of the characters with such visitors possible. I still intend to use this very sparingly, with most adventures involving other creatures taking place on Gloran- tha, but I want at least to keep that option.

The Phalanos setting would be another sandbox, with the characters' relations with the Order of Phalanos as the hook for their adventure options. For example, the or- der is most interested in the magic of the Frog Masks owned by the Cult of Zola Fel, a magic that might also be useful in the creation of new masks which protect explo- rers from the poisonous air of Phalanos, there is the building once owned by the Or- der of Otherworld Exploration in the ruined city of Feroda, which may still hold that order's library and other valuable items, and Glorantha offers many more ways to go on adventures for the Order of Phalanos. The introductory adventure would be a simple mission designed to bring the charac- ters into contact with the Order of Phalanos, to let them encounter the order's perso- nalities and to show them Glorantha, Pavis and Phalanos. The background of this adventure is Siristor's intention to build a gnomon on Phala- nos, a simple instrument used to determine the length of a day and of a year and the cardinal directions on Phalanos by measuring the movement of a shadow caused by Phalanos' sun. The pieces of this instrument, made of bronze, are too heavy for only two persons, so Sendara attempts to hire some strong people who can keep a secret to assist Siristor. These adventurers will go through the Gate together with Siristor and Sendara, and will protected against the world's poisonous air with the True Air spell, sufficient for the short time the work on the gnomon is expected to take. On Phalanos Sendara tells the characters to help Siristor to find a good location for a gnomon and to help him to put it up, while she goes „scouting“. Once she is out of the characters' sight she will use Teleport to visit a previously discovered site where Pha- lanite gems can be found with Detect (Phalanite), taking some bigger ones for the fi- nances of the order and a few small ones to have them studied by an alchemist and by a Mostali jeweller to learn more about Phalanos [a potential background for two small future sideline adventures]. Meanwhile Siristor and the adventurers will find a suitable location for the gnomon, but also the desiccated corpses of two people wearing the silvery masks used by the explorers of the Order of Otherworld Exploration. These two God Learners died here through starvation when the Gate back to Glorantha was closed during the destruc- tion of Feroda, but their now slightly mad spirits are still on Phalanos. What these spirits want most is a proper burial of their former bodies, and they will not hesitate to use their considerable powers to force the characters to do it. Unfortu- nately the encounter with the spirits will take some time, no matter how it develops, there is still the gnomon to be put up, the duration of the True Air spells will be en- ding soon, and it is a long way back to where the Gate leads back to Pavis ... If the characters handle the environmental challenges of Phalanos and the „spirit pro- blem“ well, they will have learned a little about what the order is doing and about Pha- lanos, they will be paid well and get a little more Status with the order, and they will be considered for a range of future missions, provided they are interested in working for or even joining the order. So far for a few first ideas, comments and ideas are welcome.

The first draft of a list of the order's spells now looks like this: Low Magic Abacus Detect (Magic) Detect (Phalanite) Detect (Water) Farsee Heal Light Protection Repair Warmth High Magic Activate Gate Bird Move Breath Water Enchant Item Far Step Fluent Speech Perfect Memory Project Sight Sense Gate True Air To make it easier to distinguish between Low Magic and High Magic spells the names of the Low Magic spells consist of one word and the names of the High Magic spells consist of two words. I have renamed some of the High Magic spells, for example the Fly spell be- came Bird Move, Teleport became Far Step and Abjure (Air) now is True Air. I have still no idea how to handle Runes in my setting, but at least I have designed the Rune for Phalanos. I wanted it to be only remotely similar to the existing Runes, because it is no Gloranthan rune, but also not overly complex. The result is this:

A first basic description of the Order of Phalanos could perhaps look like this: Leaders: Siristor, Sendara Members: Mages, Scholars, Explorers, Craftspeople Duties: Study the magic of the Gate and explore the world Phalanos Skills: Craft (Cartography), Knowledge (Phalanos), Knowledge (Magic), Research, Survival (Phalanos) Low Magic: High Magic: Activate Gate Runes: Magic, Mobility, Phalanos Benefits: Training, Equipment Relations: Temple of Lhankhor Mhy in New Pavis The spells of the order are still missing, mainly because the details of the setting's magic system have not yet been decided. There will almost certainly be less magic than in a typical Gloranthan setting. The types of magic available to the characters will be Low Magic, which can be learned by almost everyone, High Magic, which requires the study of Knowledge (Magic), and Ritual Magic, an advanced and rare form of High Magic. I think that each spell will be treated like a separate skill, with a base chance equal to the character's Intelligence, and that spells can only be im- proved through experience, not through research or training. However, new spells can of course be created through research, provided the character has the Know- ledge (Magic) skill and spends a lot of time on research and experimentation. The role of the Runes in my version of Glorantha is also not yet clear, this is some- thing I still have to think more about. While I want the Runes in my setting, I have no good idea about their power and how it could be used by characters. Well, that's it so far. Comments and ideas would be as always most welcome.

The second core element of the setting are the founders and leaders of the Order of Phalanos. They should be somewhat mysterious, coming from a far and mostly unknown land where they had the opportunity to study the history and lore of the God Learners and to find the knowledge which enab- led them to discover the Gate of Phalanos in the ruins of Feroda. They ob- viously have to be magicians, and since this is an equal opportunity setting both genders should be represented. This gives us the mage Siristor and his sister Sendara, born somewhere in Seshnela in the far west of Genertela, probably into a minor noble family of the Malkioni faith which provided a good education and the wealth ne- cessary for the expedition to Feroda. I think that Siristor is in his early for- ties and Sendara his younger sister in her late thirties. To give them some- what different roles Siristor is the magician and scholar and Sendara an accomplished fighter with magical skills, he does the research while she protects him and leads the expeditions. Once these two had arrived in New Pavis and had bought their house in the city's Downtown quarter, they began to look for skilled people to help them to study the Gate and to explore Phalanos. This probably led Siristor to the temple of Lhankhor Mhy and Sendara to places where experienced adven- turers and explorers meet, and both also to some skilled craftsmen required to create the equipment needed for the expeditions to Phalanos. These con- tacts determined the membership of the small semi-secret Order of Phala- nos. Yes, this also seems to have a Gloranthan feeling, I think. The next step would be to detail the Order of Phalanos, and then to think about a few examples of the types of adventures sponsored by the order, most pro- bably missions to recover lost knowledge and magic on Glorathan and expeditions to explore the strange world of Phalanos.

The core element of such a setting would be the Gate to Phalanos. I would imagine it as a slightly weathered plate of light grey marble, the size of a gravestone, with the Magic rune, the Mobility rune and a third, otherwise unknown rune representing Phalanos engraved into it. The gate was probably found in 1611 ST in the ruined God Learner city of Feroda west of the mouth of the Zola Fel, in a building once owned by the Order of Otherworld Exploration, together with a wooden box which con- tained three scrolls written in the tongue and script of the Abiding Book, two masks and a leather bag. The first scroll was a description of the place on Phalanos that can be rea- ched through the Gate, the second scroll was a rather confusing speculati- on about the role of Phalanos in the mythology of the God Learners, and the third scroll contained the High Magic spell required to activate the Ga- te. The two undecorated masks were made of a very light silvery metal and covered the entire face of the wearer. Each mask enabled the person wea- ring it to survive the poisonous air of Phalanos. The magic used to create the masks is still not understood by the members of the Order of Phala- nos, and until now all attempts to create more masks have failed. The leather bag contained more than two dozen dark red gems of an un- known kind, brought back to Glorantha by the first explorers of Phalanos. The sale of most of these gems allowed the founders of the Order of Pha- lanos to buy the order's current home in the Downtown quarter of New Pavis. I think this should have a sufficiently Gloranthan feeling to connect the idea of the Phalanos setting with the world of Glorantha.

Over the last weeks I have spent quite a lot of time to read up on Glorantha, and now I wonder whether this would be a nice background world for my Order of Phalanos set- ting and campaign, too. It seems that some kind of gate to another plane or world created during the Second Age by God Learner sorcerers would be a good replacement for my current idea of the gate to the strange world of Phalanos, and that Pavis with its Lhankor Mhy temple and all its other interesting opportunities could be a good location for the semi-secret order with the aim to use the God Learner magic to explore Phalanos. Such a transfer of the setting from medieval Europe to Glorantha would also include a change of the system, from the Legend / MRQ 2 system I started the design with to a modified version of BRP, with a magic system better suited to the setting and especial- ly the characters' ability to enchant magic items for use on Phalanos. Glorantha would also make it easier to obtain suitable items instead of having to create them, there is more and more powerful magic in general and there are far more places where it can be found. Right now this are just some first thoughts, I am not yet sure whether I really want to work on this setting idea - but I think that it might be an interesting thing to do.

I have decided that the Lunar Empire already has enough border problems in Balazar, the Grazelands and Prax to switch to a defensive stance for a while, in order to digest what it has swallowed and to secure its new borders, so the Pharaoh of the Holy Country will not be assassinated and Karse will not be attacked in the foreseeable future of the setting. The Wolf Pirates will attack Kerumar Island in 1614 ST, soon after they have learned through their agents in Corflu that the island is again inhabited. Whi- le the pirates are superior in numbers, equipment and experience, the Keru sea magic should be sufficient to repel the attack, especially if the charac- ters managed to negotiate some kind of alliance with the Ludoch merpeople of the region. In the case that the Keru not only repel the attack, but also destroy a significant part of the pirates' fleet (unlikely, but not impossible), the Wolf Pirates will be defeated in their sea battle against the fleet of the Holy Country in 1616 ST and will cease to be a naval power for at least a decade or so. This would make trade voyages to the Holy Country possible for the Keru and thereby add another adventure region to the setting. The Lunar Empire's Grantlands along the Zola Fel will be organized and sett- led from 1615 ST on, beginning with the Weis Domain of Duke Raus. The no- mads from the Wastes will attempt to resist this, so there will be a perma- nent state of low intensity war along the Zola Fel between the Sun County and the mouth of the river at Corflu, as well as political and border conflicts between the various domains of the Grantlands. Add to this rebellions in Sar- tar and incursions of raiders from western Prax, and every voyage north be- tween Corflu and Pavis will be rather ... interesting. I have not yet decided what the major events or developments of 1616 ST will be, but I think it will again be something on Kerumar Island, preferably another contact with a new culture or species combined with something my- thological or magical. Some kind of magical visitor(s) from the Far East of Glorantha could be an idea to work on. Afterwards there will again be the constantly changing situation in the Zola Fel valley, perhaps in a combination with the exploration of some important ancient ruins, like those of the lost city of Feroda west of Corflu.

One element of the original setting which I will certainly have to change is the official Hero Wars timeline, I think I will mostly cut it off around about 1616 ST and delete the various adventures of Argrath and Harrek comple- tely, designing a new timeline based upon the needs of the campaign - no barbarian "liberations" of Pavis and Corflu in my setting, and also not such a high frequency of world changing events. I am not sure what the most important long term "historical trend" of my setting will be, but I think that I would prefer a continuing slow expansion of the Lunar Empire.