soltakss

The Pain Centaurs were described in King of Sartar, together with a different origin story of the Grazelanders (Pure Horse Tribe under the Black Net), both are probably true.

I see some Beast men as being EWF experiments to recreate lost races, others as being the result of heroQuests bringing back those lost races from before Time, others as remnants of the lost races and others as just always having been there.

Take you pick as to which is which.

On 12/16/2016 at 3:09 AM, g33k said:

Can't carpet-bomb them when they're rampaging through the Pentagon, or Manhattan's downtown.

Oh yes you can! 

On 12/15/2016 at 2:03 PM, Zit said:

What about Darkness creatures from the Underworld ? Or did they all flee as Yelm went to hell ?

The Underworld itself is not part of Hell. Only that part of the Underworld beyond the River Styx counts as Hell.

Having said that, Wonderhome seems to have been in Hell. However, the original trolls had never crossed over the Styx, as they had been born in Wonderhome, so they do not count as having died. 

Trolls who die go back to Wonderhome where they can sit and eat all day, bathing in darkness, unless they are very bad and are sent to the Sky where their flesh burns for all eternity.

18 hours ago, Jeff said:

One thing that I am increasingly convinced about is the odd similarities between the shaman and the Hero. Both exist in both this world and the world of the Divine and/or the Dead. Both typically know secret paths out of the Realm of the Dead, and how to avoid being consumed by the Celestial beings. 

In my Glorantha, Shamans know the ways to the Land of the Dead and to the Sky World and other places, so each journey to another realm is, in effect, a mini-HeroQuest.

On 12/17/2016 at 11:09 AM, Darius West said:

I am saying that such a ruling makes little to no sense, and that there are precedents within the collected lore that seem to contradict this notion as being as iron clad as many seem to think it is.  On close inspection, you will find that the notion of always being "dead" if you are in the underworld introduces a series of logical contradictions which I have outlined previously.

Of course it does. The mere fact that you can travel to the Land of the Dead and return it, in itself, a logical contradiction.

You are dead as the mere act of passing over the River Styx makes you dead. The dead pass over the River Styx, the living do not.

On 12/17/2016 at 11:09 AM, Darius West said:

The primary contradiction is this...

There is a MAJOR difference between (a) entity who is killed by another entity and sent to the underworld, and (b) one who goes there as part of a hero quest, entering the underworld while still alive.  (a) is involuntary, (b) is voluntary.  If (a) happens you are stuck unless someone does (b) to get you out.  Of course things can go wrong during (b) and they might become actually dead and therefore unable to return, but they are NOT otherwise actually dead...

For how can you be dead if you are not separate from your body?  It flies in the face of what has been established by spells like resurrection and sever spirit, not to mention cults like Daka Fal to say that a person who has not been separated from their body is dead, even if they ARE in the underworld, except as some spurious theoretical and factually incorrect "ritual notion of death attached to entering the underworld", developed by cult theologists but having no practical bearing on what actually happens. 

Of course there is a difference. 

Someone could be a willing sacrifice, making (a) voluntary.

Someone could be dragged into a heroQuest to Hell, making (b) involuntary.

If you are on a HeroQuest and are trapped in Hell, that makes you dead. Someone needs to come to Hell and bring you back, otherwise you are trapped in Hell forever. The fact that you might have a body makes very little difference when hell hounds are chasing you.

Some HeroQuests allow for the spirit to go on a HeroQuest, leaving the body there. Would that make you happier? Personally, I prefer the whole-body heroQuesting, where you physically travel to the Realms.

What about a shaman? They discorporate and become ghosts, are they dead by your definition?

On 12/17/2016 at 11:09 AM, Darius West said:

There is also as more precedent for LIVE mortal heroes of various Earth mythologies within the underworld as there is for them being notionally "dead", especially if we are drawing from the Greek, Celtic, and Norse traditions, which are the main mythological traditions on which most heroquesting is based.

Heroes that go to the Land of the Dead and return are living when they return. Very little mythology discusses their status while in the Land of the Dead. Persephone dwells both in the Land of the Dead and the Land of the Living, spending part of the year in both, but she is dead when she is in Hades. 

On 12/17/2016 at 11:09 AM, Darius West said:

To make the ruling "you are always dead in the underworld" dogmatically "part of the canon" is rigid and absurdist fundamentalism, and also, when you look at it in practical terms, unworkable, as it creates more problems than it solves.  It is certain that SOME cultures assume that you are dead within the underworld even when you were alive going in, but there is "no way in hell" they ALL think that, and the ones that do probably have major gods who died.

It actually creates no problems at all.

I have run and played in many HeroQuests where the participants have been to Hell and returned. The fact that they are technically dead having crossed the Styx makes absolutely no difference to them. One of my PCs became pregnant when in Hell after she met an elf there, the fact that the elf was actually dead made no difference whatsoever as it was a magical act.

You obviously have a big problem with the idea, so I would just ignore it if I were you. It would make no difference to canon and you can run your games exactly how you want. Everyone wins.

For me, all of the above is far too much detail. In a RQ/BRP/d100/Whatever game, all I want is a reasonable range of damage and a few extra stats, anything more is way too much, I don't even need different types of pistol, I am happy with small/medium.heavy and manual/semi/automatic, same for rifles and so on.

5 hours ago, Runeblogger said:

Is that really what English native speakers read in the Bolo-Lizard name?  

So is "Bolo" here a pun on bolas and bad marksmanship?

It is the name of a lizard. That is all it means to me. For me, it has no more meaning.

51 minutes ago, Vile said:

I am very keen on the term referee as opposed to anything-master. It brings to mind the fairness and impartiality the job entails, rather than the sort of despotic rule the worst kind of campaigns suffer under.

Referee is immediately confrontational as it brings to mind two competing sides where the referee must make a judgement. GM is better, in my opinion. In fact, I don't use narrator, Keeper or other terms when playing other games, I use GM for them all.

I think the healing is to stop the person dying again from the wounds. There is no point resurrecting someone who has been chopped in half unless you join the two halves together first.

On 12/13/2016 at 9:36 PM, g33k said:

What is the "modern military" doctrinal response to this sort of thing?

Cut off their supply lines and starve them to death. Carpet bomb them into submission. Let them run amok and kill some civilians then mop them up afterwards.

If the gate is two way, follow them through the gate and find out how the gates are being controlled, stop the gates from being opened, Better still, find out how the gates work and use them to gate into the Evil Empire.

On 12/14/2016 at 4:01 PM, David Scott said:

Me and lots of background reading, that's how I'm presenting it in the Prax book. Looking at the devolution of the Animist's world in Cults of Terror, you can see that the Primal Plasma gave rise to the runes, which included the spirit rune, but there was no separation at this point - It's called the First World, the Ultimate in Arcane Lore. So discorporate beings have existed since creation, it wasn't until the use of death that other beings could have their spirit/soul part separated from the rest of their being. The world was then filled with the living, the living who had had their bodies separated into two parts - a corporate part and discorporate part, and the beings who had always been discorporate. The discorporated living wanted their bodies back and there was no way to do this (this is a common theme real world animism and shamanism). set this against the backdrop of the Gods war and the Great Darkness and you have a mess. Daka Fal established how to tell the dead from the living and as a result was made Judge of the Dead at the Dawn. He established that the dead spirits go to their respective land of the dead, clearing the world of the confusion. The separation of the Middle world and spirit world at the dawn established the barrier between corporate living and the discorporate beings who weren't dead. Hence my use of "Clear separation".

Daka Fal separated the living from the Dead, within God Time. I believe he also separated those who had died from those who had never lived, so arranging the Halls of the Dead. I thought those happened before the Dawn.

Are 3D Printers any good for miniatures? I have heard that they are too blotchy for that. 

Making LARP jewellry would suit 3D printing, though.

I think they fought in IFWW.

However, how many of the Beast Folk were around in the Greater Darkness?

Centaurs have various origin stories that place their creation firmly after Time. There may have been Centaurs before Time, in which case Ironhoof would be their cultural hero, but I am not sure if he was born before Time.

Minotaurs definitely existed before Time as they are the descendents of Minotaurus, son of Storm Bull. I think they would have been tied to Storm Bull, but they are not Praxians in the sense of the Survival Covenant.

Ducks may have been around in the Greater Darkness, but some say they were brought from the God Time by the EWF, so wouldn't need to have survived the Greater Darkness.

Are Beast valley and the Wild Temple remnants of the Greater Darkness? I haven't a clue. None of the old maps that I have seen refer to them. They definitely existed after the Dragonkill as the Beast Folk found a refuge there. This means they might have existed during the EWF, but I haven't seen them on the maps. Ducks settled in the Upland Marsh after the Dragonkill, I assume, but where were they before that?

3 hours ago, Zit said:

Then this was not the rule as written. P. 60 of the RQ2 rulebook, "Stackable Rune Magic " : "As an example, if Ariella were to decide she needed another point of Shield to add to one she already cast...etc"

Well, well, well, clear as anything. I wonder why we did not play it like this in any of the RQ2 groups I played in.

37 minutes ago, M Helsdon said:

But after the Devil was buried under the Block...

It might have taken a while for the Devil to reach Hell.

However, Waha was born before the Dawn, so definitely still in God Time. 

2 hours ago, Jeff said:

Sartar is actually quite urbanized. 20% of Sartar's population lives in cities of 1000 or more people, which is actually about the same as North Esrolia. Somewhat less than half the urban population of Sartar lives in Boldhome. Boldhome is a LARGE city that commands the main trade route between Peloria and Kethaela - and between those lands and Prax. And Boldhome is famed for the architectural skill of its stonemasons.

Yes, Sartar is clan and tribal in basis. But then again, so was the urbane Abbasid Caliphate. What the Sartarite cities are NOT are medieval cities, that largely exist outside of the ideological framework of knight, cleric, and peasant. The Sartarite cities are tribal and cult centers, and Boldhome is the city of the sacred priest-king called the Prince of Sartar. During the 23 years of Lunar Occupation, the cities seemed like foreign territory to many Orlanthi, but after 1625, they return to being the center of cult and trade.

Sartar was a City-Builder after all. He created the City Rings to entice the rural Orlanthi into the cities and organised things so they weren't continually tearing each other's throats out.

On 12/4/2016 at 6:28 PM, Iskallor said:

I so feel like running that adventure again. 

I've run it twice. The second time had some changes, catapulting broos for example (some invisible, some "explodes on death") and using the Coders. Both times were fun.

On 12/7/2016 at 2:19 PM, Iskallor said:

So no night boozing in the bars of Pavis!!! No wonder folk rebelled to kick the Lunars out.

As mentioned, lock-ins are fine. Gimpy's has lock-ins all the time.

Also, some bars have tunnels that allow people to come and go unnoticed during the curfew. Many Old Pavis locations have tunnels allowing travel, from the Troll Occupation.

Kinda sucks from an adventuring point of view.

What? Adventurers who obey the curfew! They should hand in their Adventuring Membership immediately.

On 12/6/2016 at 6:45 AM, Iskallor said:

What time does the Lunar curfew in New Pavis start? Midnight?

I always have the curfew from Sundown to Sunup. That makes the twilight hours sufficiently vague for interesting encounters with patrolling guards.

On 12/5/2016 at 1:57 PM, Iskallor said:

Edit: I want the poster!

You can't have him!

On 12/3/2016 at 8:37 PM, Zit said:

Yes, it would be different. Shield, unlike battle magic spells, is "stackable". Subsequent casting just add to the existing. In your exemple, this result in a shield 3.

We never played that in RQ2. We always played that casting Shield 2 then Shield 1 would result in Shield 2. The only way to get Shield 3 would be to Mindlink with someone and use your own Shield 2 and their Shield 2 together to get Shield 3.

We always interpreted Stackable as being "Spells cast together at the same time".

On 12/7/2016 at 7:09 AM, Shub-Nullgurath said:

Link

To those of you who don't know what Discord is, it's basically everything that made IRC, Skype and TeamSpeak good rolled into one package. It's what all them hip cool kids are using nowadays instead of other chats.

I've set one up for Glorantha for smaller lore questions and the like.

Sounds a bit too modern for me, but thanks for setting it up. The more avenues into Glorantha the better.

On 12/5/2016 at 11:58 AM, Darius West said:

And who determines the canon?

Canon changes, What was canon 30 years ago might not be canon today. What is canon today might not be canon in 30 years time.

My approach is to read the sources, canonical or not, and take what I think is best and use that in my games.

Glorantha is still very much a living world. People write about Glorantha all the time. Some is canon, some is not, but it can all be used. Some writings end up as canon eventually.

When discussing Glorantha, some ideas are entrenched but are not canon. Some are canon but hardly ever used. It can be difficult when remembering something that isn't canon and using it in a discussion, but there are lots of people who would quickly point this out.

13 hours ago, M Helsdon said:

Apologies, but both Cults of Prax and HeroQuest Glorantha state that Waha was born at the end of the Gods War, after his father had slain the Devil and long after his mother was hidden beneath the earth.

Waha was born in the Grey Age and united Praxians under the Covenant, but this was still in God Time and still before the Compromise. 

On 12/6/2016 at 5:08 PM, JonL said:

Reading through Pavis: Gateway to Adventure, Waha sure seemed to get into a lot of tussles within Time during the 2nd Age. If the stories are to be taken literally, is that any different than when Orlanth steps into Time?. Surviving throughout the Great Darkness, Waha wasn't directly a party to the Great Compromise the way that that Yelm's Court and the Lightbringers were, though he somehow did team up with Arachne Solara/Grandmother Spider in drawing the world together in his-net/her-web (if that's not to much of a God-Learner syncreticism).

I think that where "Waha did something" it was probably a Khan Incarnating Waha, but where "Someone did something to Waha", it might have been a Hero making a direct attack on Waha.

Pavis tearing out Waha's hamstrings, then healing him at the Paps was probably a direct attack on the god Waha, in God Time, as a HeroQuest.