davecake

I'm certainly not long limbed enough to even try, but my experience with using a quarterstaff (or the Chinese equivalent thereof, physically much the same but not necessarily culturally) is that almost all the standard strikes and blocks with a staff tend to rely on having two points of contact. A very long limbed and strong person could, I guess, use a staff more or less like a really long mace, but it would be a quite distinctly different style. A lot of staff fighting technique relies on the idea that can quickly switch which end of it you are using to strike, without at any point leaving yourself open by no keeping it between yourself and your opponent.

Yes, all their magic is accessible through their Death rune or Beast Rune. You could maybe say Aram is the source of some of their access to Common Rune magic if you wanted to, or that Aram was the first person to use Appease Earth to sacrifice to the God Pig, but he is clearly far less important than the other two. A Tusk Rider leader is a great villain in a game I am playing in. He uses the Sleep spell because he used Death Binding on a Chalana Arroy healer, and used it to capture my PC and then have her tortured almost to death using Seal Wound so she was incapacitated for most of a season with painful unhealable wounds. If you want a truly loathsome villain your players will hate, Tusk Riders work great.

I generally think of Vovisibor Filth-that-walks as a combination of Wakboth and Primal Chaos. A source of both chaotic beings and chaotic spirits, contactable only on the spirit plane now, sounds like it would work for what is left of it in the modern era, after Pamalt used the sky fire to burn its body to less than ash. Much like a spirit cult of Primal Chaos with many Chaos spirits. I don't think many humans would be do deranged as to intentionally worship it - maybe the occasional shaman who strayed where they shouldn't and was overwhelmed by it, going mad. Mostly the only beings who would intentionally contact it would be the broos and grayskins of the Nargan (whose influence has sometimes extended beyond). It seems too primal and malevolent even for corrupted Fonritians or Vadeli. Though Vovisibor is that only foe that truly challenged Pamalt so he could not face it directly, but was forced to use more drastic means and get cooperation of all of Necklace and other allies. So mythically, anyone that is entirely without morality and wants to oppose the power of Pamalt might find Vovisibor attractive - such as the ogre or lamia children of succubi mentioned above.

Thanks Jeff! Similar to my thoughts. Succubi and Seseine are clearly very closely linked. And absolutely the cult should have the power to create Lust passions - perhaps not just temporarily somehow, and perhaps a version of Arouse Passion that works only for Lust (and perhaps Greed and other related passions). Introducing the Passion mechanic into RQ has been such a great change, and it should be 'leaned into' at every opportunity, passions drive drama so well! Passion spirits of Lust (from the Bestiary) seem obviously linkable to Seseine as well. Which might be their mechanism for creating more lasting Lust passions. And just noting here the change from Succubi in RQ3, which were always sorcerers, and had to cast Dominate Human as a sorcery spell - it makes much more sense for them to have control over humans as an intrinsic power, and to be linked to the Seseine cult, perhaps with access to its divine magic. Though there may be Seseine related sorcery around as well, such as Dominate Succubus, the Vadeli influence gets in everywhere and perverts everything. Its long been my theory that the reason there are SO many more succubi in Pamaltela is originally because of the Vadeli Empire there, who discovered the existence of succubi and then would deliberately create them through ritual perverse sex rituals in order to use them as weapons against the Artmali particularly, and then the Artmali became corrupted in ways which further proliferated them. But that is deep background stuff that need not concern a modern game - apart from noting that succubi and the Seseine cult are perfect elements for Fonritian intrigue plots, and the Vadeli probably know more than you'd like about this stuff. Its also long been a sort of aphorism that in Pamaltela, Chaos creatures tend to more often manifest as powerful individuals rather than groups (though its a loose trend rather than any form of strict rule). I feel ogres in Pamaltela are more often the children of succubi, and usurping a position that should rightfully go to someone of true lineage and corrupting society through its influence, than the isolated cannibal bands more typical in Genertela.

It's an interesting thing that this seems accepted, as thats not how it normally works. Mere Death doesn't stop a god from being worshipped. Flamal, Yelm, Daka Fal, etc - all gods who were killed, and yet receive worship. It could also be said that Stone remains in the Underworld but where else would stone be but deep underground? Certainly worship on Stone might be cthonic, but there are plenty of those cults too. What does seem to have happened is that Stone has lost all connection Movement, and Life. There are deities associated with Earth and Life of course, and even associated with moving Earth (Maran Gor, Lodril, etc.). But Stasis is a very rare rune, very few adherents outside the Mostali. Of course, the Mostali seem able to access the magic of Stone, but only through sorcery (and Mostali make magic, which is closely related). But that proves nothing, really, Mostali would only use sorcery anyway. The more I think about it, the more it seems that there should be magic that calls on Stone accessible, it's just not very practical or interesting to most people except Mostali. What would such magic do? Make things made of stone stronger? Provide further knowledge of stone or minerals? Access spirits of stone? (that seems within the purview of Earth Witch at least) But little to encourage most to active worship. I think Stone is probably as contactable as any god that is dead and little worshipped, and there is just little interest in worshipping Stone or using the magic of Stone (except by the Mostali, who eschew worship - and this includes Flintnail (who still use Mostali sorcery despite their heretic status) and Pavis (who relies on the magic of Flintnail)). Presumably it could be contacted via heroquest back to the Lesser Darkness, but the Mostali would seem to have little interest in such a thing, and Alryami would surely oppose it. The idea of mineral beings so ancient that they predate the death of Stone, and are naturally moving living rocks, is an interesting one.

How much damage does a trolls bite attack do? Are there any rules covering it somewhere?

Yes, my impression too. It was my impression, and I discussed mysticism with Greg quite a lot at one point, was that Greg took mysticism very seriously, had read a great deal of it, and was very sympathetic to it. He also felt that many/most people known as mystics were not really doing mysticism, or were failing badly at it, both in Glorantha and in real life - and that the moral dangers of using mysticism to justify your actions was very real. The treatment of Illumination in Glorantha is intended to show this danger, but it is not intended to be a simplistic, one-sided, thing either. The story of how Greg's idea of Illumination was based on his personal experience of some people associated with the Berkeley household of Marion Zimmer Bradley and her husband Walter Breen has been told a few times. Greg and some of his friends (I believe Steve Perrin?) attended social gatherings there, and Bradley was a co-founder of the Society for Creative Anachronism, which is so central to early RuneQuest, and a major part of the local pagan community. Bradley and Breen were involved in practices from the Western Esoteric traditions that could be regarded as mystic, and having other things in common with Nysalor, such as symbolism of light and freedom - for example, Rosicrucianism, the teachings of Dion Fortune, and Aleister Crowleys OTO. They were also people who are now regarded as deeply corrupted with unpleasant secrets - Breen was a known child abuser even at the time, and it is very likely Greg would have heard about it at some point (it was certainly well known in Californian science fiction fandom in the 1960s), Bradley became publicly known as one after her death. It is not hard to see how the image of the corrupt mystic Nysalor could have arisen from that situation. But my impression was that Greg also was a keen student of texts such as the yoga sutras of Patanjali, which at one time he said was core to understanding Gloranthan mysticism, and took them very seriously. And it is worth remembering that the Bhavagad Gita is literally a dialogue with Krishna about the moral doubts of Arjuna, after which Arjuna engages in a war in which he kills hundreds, thousands, of people. The idea that mystics can be responsible for huge stacks of corpses did not start with Greg. Greg did not at all draw a strict line between fiction and games, and the real and profound. I think that great spiritual truths can be expressed and explored through fiction and games was something that he felt deeply and that was the reason why he lived the life he did. In some Lunar texts, such as the Life of Sedenya published in Rule One Magazine, we find the instructions that The earliest document I have from Greg about the deeper Lunar mythology was a few pages that Greg handed out to some people attending the first Australian RuneQuest Con (labelled Moon Myths #1, if anyone else still has it). Greg began it with that rule, the First rule of the Goddess, and obeying that rule the first page was autobiographical from the point of view of Greg Stafford. He describes his own first memory, 'kindling' and 'sevening'. In short, Greg describes himself as 'Illuminated' and talks about the guidance of the Goddess in his life, as well as references to his shamanic practice. Thats not to say that Greg may not have, especially at other points in his life, felt similar deep connections to other philosophies, including the Orlanthi. But he certainly felt a deep connection to the Lunar way and its underlying ideas, even while acknowledging its 'dark side'.

Jar-Eel, and perhaps her 'ally' Great Sister, clearly believe that the Emperor is not serving the Lunar Way. Jar-Eel is also literally the goddess incarnate. She tries to fix the Empire. She does not, immediately, appear to succeed. But Greg was clear in his intention, with exploring the Lunar Way, to eventually write something like King of Sartar, but from the Lunar point of view. He never finished that project, but I think he went a far way down it - and yes, I think he intended for the destruction of the Red Moon to be revealed as a spiritual victory that renews the world, and completes some of the goddesses grand project of spiritual liberation. We just don't know how that endgame plays out, how the last years of the Empire look like from their point of view.

Ah, Darius, always ready to tell us the Lunars are absolutely objectively wrong because they use spiritual arguments to justify terrible things, and that is why Argrath was absolutely right to justify his spiritual disagreements with them to kill several million inhabitants of Peloria, first by winter and famine, then by dropping the remains of a planet on them. If you take the viewpoint of any one Gloranthan culture as true, and their opposition as false, you will then find that according to those assumptions they are totally justified. But you can generally do it in reverse, and come to the opposite conclusion. It's harder to do for, say, Fonrit - and generally, for people from European cultures with less exposure to the traditions Greg classes as mystic to understand them. But its intentional that ever culture in Glorantha can see themselves as the good guys, albeit with some difficult compromises.

My own RQG campaign is set in Tarsh, and is about the tensions leading up to full civil war between followers of King Pharandros and followers of Fazzur Wideread. Argrath conquers Sartar by initially being drawn in to aid the Fazzurites (at that point led by his son Onjur the Poet).

Generally speaking, I agree that sorcery is intrinsically linguistic in nature, and probably extremely difficult or quite likely impossible without a written symbol system - and Greg certainly saw it as very strongly linked to writing. And it draws inspiration from a lot of IRL magical tradition that are closely linked to written forms, such as the Kabbalah, the magical sigils of Western European planetary magic and goetia, etc.

It seems fairly clear to me from the Middle Sea Empire, by far the best source we have on the God Learners, that the God Learners were quite intellectually diverse, with a lot of competing sects and factions, that often had quite different magical practices too. I don't think the mainstream faction, the Makanists, were generally Illuminated, but instead were pure sorcerers - and it was an extremist element within that tradition that was responsible for Zistor and the Clanking City. Another, very large but still minority, faction was the Malkioneranists, and they look to have followed a variant of Illumination, though one they understood poorly - but that did give them a lot of ability to explore, use, and plunder divine magic. Just don't look to find one single explanation of what God Learners did - they were a large, pluralist, empire, and a particularly notably intellectually diverse one.

I think to an extent, much heroquest magic is acquired by means outside the normal methods, and can break the normal rules somewhat, even if it seems similar to existing magic. For example, even in the very oldest HQ play, it was common for heroquests to allow the casting of Rune magic from outside ones cult - and I don't think even fairly strict Malkioni would consider acquiring rune magic this way a problem if it was done through direct interaction with, especially 'mastering', otherworldly entities, rather than worshipping them. Which isn't to say that sorcerous heroquests specificly to acquire sorcery isn't possible - but it more often looks like either very complex rituals or research, or deep exploration of the 'Essence plane' (essentially, prolonged scrying sessions).

That is why Transcendance is the goal of the Lunar Path. This insistence on being mere 'people' is what holds other back - once you have travelled the path of the goddess far enough that you may live with her on the moon, you will learn to surrender your mere human self and understand that, through your Seventh Soul, you are part of the transcendent divine soul. But don't worry about that now. The first step on the path is to know that her way will guide you though the many errors of mortality.

And IMG, these are Mostali artifacts originally, with very few others able to produce them, the main human source being one cult in Vormain, as in the guide - but its entirely possible that the Vadeli, who ran a slave empire in Pamaltela at a time when they were allied with the Mostali, know how, and may be another source of them. IMG it is quite common for Vadeli to bind spirits into spirit bindings that they can use for magic points as usual, and when they need more magic points for some reason just Tap POW on the bound spirit. They even do this to human souls on occasion (doubles as a handy way to make sure you have permanently disposed of an enemy, none of this Resurrection stuff). Is this your own speculation, or do you have a source? I certainly agree on the very high skills. It helps to be immortal. Well, yes and no. The Kingdom of War as a collective entity is ruthless and cruel, but the individual cults of war still retain their own customs, and plenty of them have traditions of eg personal warrior codes. Or a level of bloodthirstiness for its own sake that means they aren't always particularly smart about it. Or other variations. The Red Vadeli are not just always merciless, treacherous and cruel, they are all also smart and skilled at it - the KoW are not always smart, and nowhere near as skilled. To put it another way, the Red Vadeli are essentially all smart high functioning sociopaths. The KoW have a wider variation in psychology, and their sociopaths are often not smart or high functioning. Certainly. The Red Vadeli are only going to engage in field battle when they are clear they are going to win, though, and are incredibly tactically smart, so ambushes, 'blitzkrieg' tactics, commando raids, and such are common before they resort to a field battle. They will also happily subjugate others and use them for suicide tactics - back when they had the blue vadeli (I tend to associate the 'Energy separation' magic used by Chirg with the Blue Vadeli, as it doesn't seem to have appeared in the modern era), sucking the Energy from slaves to power spells and sending their zombie bodies to lead advances was likely a favourite tactic. sep That is a nice horrible inversion of the Xemela Transfer Damage healing spells. Nice idea, Joerg! For added emphasis, I bet they love to do it with the damage being transferred to those they have previously captured from the attackers own people. It works best when the attacking warriors can see the damage being transferred to the captured members of their own tribe, especially children. Yes. There are some caste restrictions the Vadeli can't easily dodge. They might be able to fight using 'tools' in some circumstances, but certainly they aren't able to be soldiers. I agree. And for obvious reasons, they do not go into the field commanded by Talars, so are less coordinated.

If you use the Mostali material in the Glorantha Bestiary treat their magic as being knowledge of all the Mostali magic with Stone in the name, and a few extra more conventional sorcery spells mostly about manipulating stone (because it is mean to only give PCs spells useful in large construction projects, and requiring POW every time you cast it), then you should be able wing the rest from either the HQ2 or RQ2 writeup.

A campaign frame in which all players are members, or associates, of a mercenary company is a good one. Many player groups tend to mostly be a bunch of mostly very combat effective types - but that isn't how it has to work anyway. Everyone should have a distinct role in the company, with only some being focussed on being effective warriors (including both your tough vanguard warriors, but also your snipers, scouts, commanders, etc) but also chaplains, healers, siege engineers, combat magicians, quartermasters, etc. Most of the company, obviously, are NPCs. While the plot is about battle, the campaign does not actually have to have that much fighting - especially if you run it using a system like HeroQuest, but you can also make a lot of the actual battles abstracted away with the Battle skill and Pendragon style battle rules. Your PCs tend to deal directly with other problems - treacherous employers, logistical challenges, dealing with weird things you encounter, changeable and dangerous politics, how to fight unusual foes, company members or allies with their own hidden agendas and mysterious pasts. All sorts of interesting personal stories - of camaraderie, vengeance, a search for peace, fanaticism vs pragmatism, etc - can unfold around the main narrative of survival as a group in a land at war. The most obvious literary inspiration here is The Black Company books, but there are many many sources. Ash, by Mary Gentle is another good one. And SO many historical or historical fiction sources to draw on. I would like to do this one in the Hero Wars West, probably starting in Seshnela or Nolos/Pasos, but ending up in Ralios bouncing around between various forces opposing the Seshnelan advance of Guilmarn the Fat. But a bit challenging with the current rules, and there are plenty of alternatives. A Humakti led regiment in Dragon Pass is one possibility - or go wild and have a campaign as the Black Horse Troop if you want to tell a more tragic and gothic story. It would be another way to do a Fronelan game, too, mercenaries trying to survive as their idealistic but somewhat naive Loskalm employers throw them against the Kingdom of War.

A Carmanian game, especially one around Spol anyway, cries out for a lot of gothic romance. The Edark legacies of the Spolite Empire and the excesses of the Bull Shahs are everywhere, including in the local manifestations of the Lunar Way (the masochistic mysticism of Gerra, and murderous Natha cult), and there are necromancers, Darkness witches, brutal thuggish warriors, etc all over the place. And then there are the vampires. Of course heroes will want to fight these ancient monsters - but the big complication (besides the obvious difficulties of killing a vampire who might be over a thousand years old and a skilled sorcerer) is that many of them have sworn to assist the Empire in maintaining its secret Vampire Legion! So the battle against the vampires must be secretive and without the support of the Empire (but perhaps often with the support of the terrified peasantry). Crib freely from stuff like Vampire: The Dark Ages or The Witcher if you want - but more importantly, gothic novels and vampire stories and scenery inspired by the gloomy forests and harsh mountains of Eastern Europe etc.

The Vadeli clearly don't restrict sorcery to only the Blue Vadeli sorcerers, but must be limited in sorcery in some ways. It is clear in the Guide that the Red and Brown Vadeli are expert sorcerers in their own right. The way I tend to handle it is the Red and Brown Vadeli somewhat restrict themselves to sorcery that is in theory related to their caste role. They also work on a general basis that the Vadeli follow caste law to the letter (it keeps them immortal), but if they find a way to work around its spirit they will do so with enthusiasm. They also get a bit of a free pass when dealing with magic that was encountered by the West after Zzaburs laws where created (what isn't forbidden is therefore permitted, goes Vadeli reasoning), while the Brithini (and those modern Malkioni that follow their reasoning, especially the Rokari) take the opposite tack - anything clearly outside Brithini thought is clearly wrong. For the Brown Vadeli, this means their sorcery includes sorcery to do with manipulating matter and crafts as crafts are Brown caste (so they can do a lot of sorcery manipulating physical matter), and so is dealing with the natural environment, sailing, animal husbandry (which becomes a facility with 'Command Monster' spells - they are particularly fond of bloodbirds, and various sea monsters), and to an extent trading (so they have some subtle manipulative magic). Red Vadili of course are soldiers - their sorcery is quite limited, but very focussed on war. They can enhance themselves, and hurt others. They also are the ones who deal with healing and simple defensive magic. They are perhaps the most limited sorcerers of the Vadeli - but because they are limited to just the most directly combat effective spells, no one really thinks of them that way. So they are inferior to Brithini Zzaburi, and so might seem magically lacking compared to fully enhanced Brithini Horali - but compared to pretty much anyone, are still ancient expert sorcerers. The Blue Vadeli, of course, would have a whole different, and very dangerous, focus on specifically quite magical things - otherworld beings and otherworld manipulation, manipulating and transforming the soul and the intellect, investigating the borders between life and death, and other things. The Red and Brown, while expert sorcerers, are fairly focussed on practical, physical and mundane world kind of magic. Two big other outs for the Vadeli. From the Viymorni they inherit a cross-caste focus on 'exploring' magic, the Telendarian school, which includes not just magic for travel but for stealthy reconnaisance, and stealing the secrets and magic of others. Also Tapping POW, which they learnt for fighting the spirit world when Viymorn first encountered it. The second is that many caste law restrictions specifically do not apply when on a ship, where there is a sort of maritime law, for various practical and historical (some involving Waertagi) reasons, so they can sneak around a few rules - this is why Vadeli leaders, in the modern era when they have no 'Talars' are usually admirals. So some marine magic seems reasonable. The Red Vadeli are also dangerous not because they can be expert sorcerers in military magic, but because they fight in a way that is intelligent and considered, but absolutely ruthless and without any concept of honour. Think of every vile tactic forbidden in civilised warfare, and the Red Vadeli are probably considering it. Traps, poison, disease, treachery, lies, threatening civilians, torture, etc. They also enjoy violence for its own sake, so will murder people in horrible ways for their own amusement.

Yeah, I like all of them. They are quite distinct.

You PCs are the retainers of a Lunar noble family. Your clan is involved in political struggle and Dart War with another clan. As part of the struggle, your family has lost control of their heartland territory, and instead been assigned to control a Lunar territory on the edge of Empire. But the Dart War follows you. (freely cribbing from Dune if you make it the Eastern Edge of Empire and maybe you end up fleeing into the desert and living among Pentans, but you could make it something quite different if you choose another frontier, such as dealing with the Arrolians and Charg. The RQ2 version would have been Sor-Eels entourage.)

There is a big running joke in my group from the 'Encounter table for Prax and the Wastes' in Shadows On The Borderlands for RQ3. The encounter table had 'ogres, masquerading as traders' as one entry. But not traders. So if you ever met traders, they were 100% ogres...

The Skulk is still spelt Skuk in 'The Skuk's Attacks'

Thank you. In future, would it be possible to put the revision number inside the file somewhere, besides in the file name ? (on the credit or copyright page for example)

Yes. This is not in the rules. Some people believe it, but there is no reason to think it is. Of course, if you want it as a house rule, go ahead.