soltakss

It's a game mechanic. Bigger is better. By using two hands you can get more power behind the blow. Longer spears have longer, wider spear heads. They have more momentum, being heavier, so do more damage. Whatever the game Designers thought at the time. Because they are. Take your pick ...

He was married to Ernalda and voluntarily gave her up when Orlanth returned from saving the world. All of the Deities of Storm could be a Thunder Brother. That sounds similar to the myth of the birth of Urain, produced when Orlanth has a really bad headache and was in a foul mood.

“Drink that ooze and it will give you power to defeat the monster, it won't hurt you”. Lies work best if they contain an element of truth. For me, as a GM, I rarely use the letter of the law when using spells such as Lie. I much prefer to go with the spirit of the spell.

In my Glorantha, there is a Void with the Crater and those who are unprotected simply fall and end up in the Void where the Red Goddess found the Young Elementals. She is the only person to have returned from that Void and an unprepared Adventurer has no chance.

Longer spears have longer, wider spear heads. You could argue that they have more momentum, being heavier, so do more damage.

No, it means the Rune Lords successfully called for Divine Intervention and Yelmalio refused their call. It is a lesson that Divine Intervention does not always get answered, if you have done bad things. One Storm Bull PC in out RQ2 Campaign used Divine Intervention to escape from a Chaos Temple where the party were being smashed. Storm Bull put him back in the middle of the fight and cast Berserker on him for good measure. I also remember a Wind Lord using Divine Intervention to save his skin, leaving the fight. Soltak Stormspear was so incensed that he used Divine Intervention to bring his comrade back to the fight and Orlanth allowed it. Boy, the other chap was not happy at all.

You would have thought that the illuminati would use better grammar.

Maybe add a penalty for non-Rune Lords.

Yeah, why not?

That's other people, though. Other people turned out bad. Illuminates know that Illumination is personal for them. They don't really care what other Illuminates think, or do. The trouble starts when Illuminates band together into cults or organised societies. Then they have rules and people not following those rules are seen as bad. If they didn't have rules then no Illuminates would be seen as being bad. So, Eumali Illuminates could be one of the purest forms, as they don't follow rules either.

Up to you, really.

Illuminates know that there is no such thing as "come to the wrong conclusions". Lunars want a controlled, ritual illumination that fits their worldview, so see their Illuminates who do not reach that as failed, or Occluded. Some non-Illuminates see Illumination as Bright Side/Dark Side, but that is not really the case. Illumination is simply Illumination. anything more is simply a case of putting rules around Illuminates and Illumination, controlling how they behave and so on. Occlusion is the same, it is a way of controlling those Illuminates who have not followed the Lunar Way. I like that argument. Illumination makes people more open to persuasion.

and Non-Lunar Illuminates don't care about Occlusion. Sure, it might apply to them but it isn't a problem for them. Occlusion is simply that the Illuminate does not see the full Lunar Way, so has fallen short. For non-Lunars that is not an issue.

I have to scrub my mind clean now.

Ernaldela also covers some of the sunken lands to the south of Prax and the Holy Country.

Were they Earth Worshippers? Sure, Ernalda gets Bless Grave from Ty Kora Tek, but would people be able to afford a casting on every grave? Eiritha doesn't get Bless Grave. Is this Second Age Sartar, under the EWF? Maybe Ernalda wasn't worshipped any longer, so the magic wasn't available. Why would you cast Bless Grave on someone who had a good, peaceful life? After all, they are unlikely to return as ghosts, so why bother casting the spell for them? So, the queen, who would not normally have been expected to return as a ghost, does so because she is not worshipped or honoured. That makes sense. Maybe they were good ghosts, so could come back.

Cults of Terror and the Cult Compendium have Orlanth and Yelmalio as Neutral, both ways. That probably happened a long time ago, when most Elmali started worshipping Yelmalio. Is there is any proselytizing nowadays, it isn't going to be "Look, our god is wonderful, much better than yours, why don't you stop worshipping your god and start worshipping ours", instead it is probably going to be "Hey, your god is really cool, but we worship him as well, just under a different name, look at what we do, we teach you Light for free! Look at our bright and shiny temples. We can teach you other things about your god that you probably haven't heard about." Sure, that applies as well. However, Yelmalio has always been a god of the Borderlands, of outsiders, not of the Dara Happan heartland, so the Lunars don;t jave a lot of interest in him, except as a way to tame the Orlanthi. I agree that the occupation of Sartar forces some people down the "Us and Them" route, emphasising "Us" as opposed to "Them" and bad-mouthing "Them". However, Sartar and Tarsh are not that different. After all, Sartar was settled by clans from Tarsh as well as clans from the Holy Country, so many clans in northern Sartar have a natural affinity to Tarsh. Yelm the Elder did not require family descent, but I am not sure if that still applies. But, family descent could be shown to have been the case, due to a long-forgotten ancestor. It can do. After all, Doburdan is one of the Thunder Brothers. Under the Lunar occupation, I am sure that some Sartarites accepted Doburdan worship to fit in with the Lunars. Some could say that Doburdan is merely an aspect of Orlanth, in the same way that all of the Thunder Brothers are aspects of Orlanth. Yeah, that works. That way more Sartarites could worship him. Also, it gives Orlanth a place in Dara Happa.

I would apply that to anyone with a Rune Pool. DI on Devotion (Deity) works well. Currently, DI means that Initiates have a really poor chance of success, even with augments. That makes it rare but unsatisfactory. I like the idea of augmenting your roll with Runes or other Passions. However, what would be the mechanic of POW loss? For Initiates: On a Success, I would probably roll 1D20 On a Special success 1D12 On a Critical Success: 1D10 For Rune Lords: On a Success: 1D10 On a Special success 1D8 On a Critical Success: 1D6

That is how I do it when running Legend, Mythras or similar games. Your tens digit is your Critical chance, nice and simple. Probably better to simply knock off the last digit, though, as that is even easier for skills over 100% (Player: My skill is 130, but my tens digit is only 3. GM: But, your skill is 130, so your tens digit is 13. Player: That's not my tens digit, though, the 1 is my hundreds digit. GM: OK, just knock off the last digit. Player: Oh, yeah, that works.)

It is the same issue as someone playing in Middle Earth having read Lord of the Rings, playing Stormbringer having read the Elric books, or playing in Mythic Earth but knowing about the history. Some GMs like their Players to have a general idea of the background, others prefer their Players to know nothing about the background, so everything is a surprise. Personally, I would let the Players read Lovecraft and then completely mess with their minds by doing things differently.

Occlusion is a Lunar thing, in my opinion. Non-Lunar Illuminates don't suffer from occlusion.

What I normally do is to treat each part of the army as a unit and allocate stats to it. In a 2-way contest, I normally keep it simple and say Roll 1D6, on 1-X, Side A wins, X+1-6 Y wins. Then I give bonuses for magic etc. So, in your case, split the Orc army up into divisions, give the Player Town fryrds, or militias and go from there. Here's how I would do it: Normally, Orcs vs militia, Orcs win on 1-4, Militia win on 5-6. The Militia are defending a town, so it moves one to the left, 1-3/4-6. Orcs have sorcery, PCs have sorcery, so they cancel out. Orcs have Necromancers which moves it to 1-4/5-6. Orcs can create monsters which moves it to 1-5/6. Militia have better armour, which moves it back to 1-4/5-6. The Dragon is a unit by itself, so orcs win on 1, Dragon on 2-6. You can adjust the figures however you want. Victory means the opposing unit is damaged, routed or destroyed, each moves their chance of the next victory back by one, if they are moved from victory on a 6 then they are pretty much out of the battle. I have used this for a few Dark Age battles recently and it has worked reasonably well.

Also a Trickster, or Imp, who showed the God Learners how to HeroQuest. I wouldn't be surprised if a Trickster was the instigator of Castle Blue and the battle for the Clanking City, or even designed the Clanking City in the first place.

Horses for courses. Fighting undead means your spear is effectively useless, so you need something that works against them. Spears are good because they are quick and can impale. Other weapons have their own strengths. Limiting yourself to one weapon is exactly that, limiting. As a GM, I am happy for an Adventurer to start a combat using a different weapon, but I would question why they change weapons mid-combat, unless they had a good reason. So, starting with a 1H Spear, then dropping it and changing to a sword is iffy, but starting with a 1H Spear, then throwing it at another NPC and drawing a sword is fine.