Joerg

To be honest, as a GM I am dubious about every adventurer riding a hippogriff after a couple of years. Probably with one Balastor's Axe and one Windsword in the party, too... Buckbeak should be the exception, not the expectation. One thing that hasn't been addressed in either Pegasus Plateau or the Bestiary is the upkeep of a hippogriff. While some hunting may be possible, in exchange for forming a bond with a human, the hippogriff will expect access to herd beasts. Mounted aerial combat and chase scenes probably deserve as much attention as riding and driving a chariot, not just for hippogriffs, but also for Sun Hawks, Sky Bulls, Wyverns, Pteranodons and the occasional friendly wyrm.

Thogsarm Hill is the major giant remains in that region, stemming from the liberation of Pavis by the Arrowsmith dynasty.

Treat Poison is really treating a poisoning, a body's reaction to exposure to a substance which doesn't kill immediately but may accumulate damage over time. Yes, substances will differ in their vectors, their target organs, and their temporal behavior. But in the end, it is about the body that has been exposed. The presence of broad-band antidotes made by the alchemists far surpasses any toxicology our struggling doctors and scientists have to deal with. It has that in common with the super-acids and other such substances that GMs inflict on the player characters. But then much traditional medicine works on the basis of myth rather than knowledge, and thus has to be quite powerful in Glorantha.

The smart substance would have been ink...

While the explicit mention is absent, the general purpose of a female fertility spirit tied to a feature able to take on a physical form, able to bear children from a broad range of fathers, and possibly without any father fertilizing her, is met by dryads. I think that their humanoid bodies (for varying degrees of resemblance to Treebeard) are emanations from their tree, which is their real body, and which is where the growth of any offspring happens. Green elf and brown elf females give birth to a sizable nut through a birth canal. It is possible that a dryad about to give birth takes on humanoid form to give birth to the equivalent fruit when fertilized by a male brown or yellow elf. No idea whether the dryad can simply disembody leaving the ripe fruit behind, which then would be planted next to the tree for its final development before entering the mobile stage. A non-aldryami father (e.g. a minotaur, satyr, or human) may result in offspring receiving a live birth, or ripening in a special kind of fruit or outgrowth of the tree.. I think that a dryad would be born from either parthenogenesis or possibly pollination (of her tree?) by a Great Tree. IMO the tree would create an organ serving as the womb, resembling a gallnut but inside the barch. Whenever the dryad manifests, she will show signs of pregnancy. Brown elf offspring could be either male or female, IMO. I am not sure that a brown elf pregnancy would be exclusive for a dryad, either - she might have several children fruits in the making. If a mortal father wanted to sire a dryad, I am not sure whether he would survive the mating. That would go for aldryami sires, too. Satyrs mating with dryads would need to use magic to prevent the dryad from discorporating. But then, a satyr's advances may be magical in nature already.

yeah, better stick with dryads

If the Mirrorsea Bay maintains about 20°C year around, how did the Windstop work out on its shores and islands? Would that warm water cause a steady fog shrouding the bay?

Dryads are nymphs, so sampling a kiss might be the most common way of getting a taste of dryad. Closely followed by the whole number below 70. If the person taking the sample is of a darkness persuasion, there surely are other ways to sample the taste of a dryad. A troll probably would take a bite out of a dryad, without necessarily killing her before. Gorakiki Mosquito uses a sting to drink plant sap directly, but there are other methods to gain sap or resin from a living tree. Assuming that the humanoid presence of a dryad is similar to that of elves, there would be some fruity meat over wooden bones, and possibly peach- or plum-like skin. Depends on the season. Spring will be like blossoms, late autumn might be of ripe apples. A blossoming aldryami will reek of flowery perfume, possibly enough to cause severe allergic reactions to non-aldryami. A wounded aldryami may smell of sweet sap or resin. There may very well be an earthy or mulchy component to the aroma, too. Assuming we are talking about the humanoid part, I tend to think of aldryami meat as a fruity or nutty flavor, aldryami bones wooden, but - possibly depending on the season again - with a bast skin which might be rather sweet. I think that the dryad can choose how much like a human female and how much like a female ent (treant for D&D players) her body will be, and the taste will vary accordingly. Her tree body will taste of apple tree - barch, bast, leaves, fruits, wood... Aldryami eyes don't have pupils - which may mean they don't even have eye balls. The foliage may taste like leaves, possibly like salad or sprouts, possibly like moss. The taste of meat may vary with the amount of sap inside. Some bones might be hollow and have a fluffy marrow similar to elder or willow, and the outside of the bones will have bast layers. The birds and the bees... The mouth may have nectar glands, and the nether region might have something like nectar next to the stamen, too. Nymphs are able to sample the procreative juices of just about any possible partner and to shape some offspring thereof. Dryads might, too. Unless we are talking green elves, who cannot (or must not) procreate with dryads. Dryad offspring may be born as trees or other such plants, possibly undergoing a metamorphosis or requiring a finishing touch to become something else. Durev may very well be the offspring of Orstan the Elder and a dryad, and then liberated by his father's carving knife.

The heterodox Brithini (both on the mainland and in the outskirts of Brithela) had the concept of ascension, like e.g. for Yingar the messenger, a grandson of Malkion (son of Horal and Menena, uncle of Hrestol's wife), who apparently had become a celestial entity. Other ancestors like Talar had been killed in the Double Belligerent Assault, and don't appear to have been contacted by their descendants. I don't know whether the Vadeli venerate Vimorn, Vadela, or Vadel. I suppose they invoke the latter in their counterstrikes against the other Brithelans, like the Tadeniti who probably were blamed for the skinning of Vadel. Vadel was one of the first Brithelans to encounter shamans, and while they suffered some significant defeat creating soulless individuals, they also learned to contact and dominate those spirits. They might even enslave ancestral spirits, or provide bodies those spirits can dominantly possess.

Old Pavis was erected in EWF style, and the aerial view maps of Old Pavis in Pavis: Gateway to Adventure show some of those in low resolution. But then, Old Pavis has a lot in common with Karakorum, including the ruling class of (striped) horse warlords and the multicultural city quarters. There is one very nice illustration of EWF folk and some of their buildings in the opening sequence of the King of Dragon Pass game. The WIlliam Church drawing of the Dragon's Eye shows dragonewt architecture, but EWF architecture would have been influenced by that. The Smoking Ruins are mostly from the EWF era, with older periods of the city forming some of the rubble covering that scenario's maguffin. All the ruins were given a (low resolution) William Church treatment in the board of Dragon Pass (hence my pointing to his higher resolution drawing of Dragon's Eye).

So, basically the Foehn - an inversion weather that brings ultra clear air, heat, headaches and rage.

Much like the new map of Jonstown, this map suggests a terraced mesa, with Korolstead occupying the westernmost ledge of a ridge. The way the ridges in the back are drawn suggests to me that those parts lie higher than the hilltop fort and overlook it in its entirety. Unless there is a sacred hilltop dedicated to Orlanth, why would that part of the plateau not be included in the old royal seat? The weirdly irregular shape of the fortifications must have made sense to the Vingkotling Age builders of the cyclopean walls. Could this layout have started as a glyph consisting of runic shapes put together, interlocking? The southern end might be reminiscent of a Communication rune. Already at the Dawn, this site harbored a population of a thousand. Korolstead became the royal stead of the Heortlings and may have retained that role until the Broken Council and then the Bright Empire conquered the region and took authority into the hands of its imperial delegate Palangio. After the Gbaji Wars, the high council of Orlanthland took over, and may have moved to the later council site. Still, Korolstead remained as an urban center in the EWF. From the description of the search for the scenario maguffin, even though the surviving structures or ruins thereof stem from the EWF, the settlement has formed a tell - a hillock made from several layers of construction and rubble atop one another, raising the area inside the walls over the surrounding plateau. The layers of rubble and accumulated soil are many meters high, possibly up to the level of the original, cyclopean walls built from those seamless polygonal rocks the Vingkotling era architecture boasted. The EWF collapsed when all the Dragonspeakers found (possibly limited) liberation in 1042, called by the dragonewts and aided by the Blue Moon cult. The site would have remained occupied well until the imminent arrival of the Invincibe Golden Horde, possibly repopulating after the famine and loss to abduction in the 1042 Pelorian raid by the Carmanians, Dara Happans and Sairdites. These 78 years, the last three or four generations of human occupation inside the former EWF architecture, after an iconoclastic mob of plunderers had gone after everything valuable or reminiscent of draconic worship, may have re-decorated the site with more traditional Orlanthi murals and statuary. If these stacked mesas are the norm for Dragon Pass geography, there are bound to be sub-basements and access tunnels like the entryway to the upper city of Jonstown at all these ancient hill forts. For a brook creating a waterfall emerging from the lower levels of the tell, there must be an aquifer collecting from a larger catchment area at higher ground, or an artesian well connected somehow to the upper slopes of the Skyreach Mountains, or tapping into some magical underground flow seeking to reach the surface no matter the elevation. The river coming from Axe Hall running down the side of Shadow Plateau and then joining the Lyksos is another such example. The presence of such a source of water could have been the reason for the Vingkotlings to choose this ledge over the mountain summit. Still, the absence of any construction further up and the wall facing the cliffs leading further up bug me a bit.

That chocolate is mentioned in the sambe breath as the genbenezeer, a "last of its kind" creature, in sauce. So where would this "food of the gods" (Greek: Theobroma) come from? At a guess, from Godtime. Or perhaps from plantations on the moon - we don't know anything about the climate on the moon. (It might even have red snow, or red clouds.) Cocoa trees are tropical and subtropical evergreens, which puts them into the care of Yellow Elves. That makes Teshnos or possibly Teleos or the East Isles the closest source in the surface world. But going back into the early Golden Age, Yellow Elf forest was found all around the lower slopes of the Spike and its foothills. Could Mernita or northern Peloria have been a place where cocoa was cultivated? The cold northwestern corner of the lozenge opposed to the hot southeastern corner appears to have been in place already in the early period of single mountains, with Mt. Enmal being cloaked in fire, and the Nargan Sea of Blue Flame. Could cocoa have been cultivated on Veldara's Blue Moon, and then in Artmali territory? In that case, cocoa beans could be a heroquest reward. Forget the Kalikos quest, the annual cocoa quest is where true magical influence lies!

The cookie-cutter +X/+X sword of D&D is simulated by RQ's Bladesharp spell, and the cheap way to get such a sword would be to bind a spirit able to cast and power that spell, plus an activation condition and a dead crystal usable by both the spirit and the owner of the sword. And yes, this contraption would be in the pommel. But then, the blade would not get the option to resist magic that a blade inhabited by an allied spirit would receive. RQ's Enchant Metal and inspired choice of material (e.g. silver or iron) will yield you a somewhat toughened sword able to hit (some) magical creatures. This would obviously be on the blade. RQ3's Strengthening Enchantment could up the blade's ability to take and parry damage - another thing on the blade. But while it is nice to protect your blade this way, why not protect your body instead, Sigurd's dragon-blood / Thetys'/Achilles' kettle-style? No need to parry, works against missiles etc... the only times when this could be disadvantageous would be if your character needs an appendectomy or a similarly invasive procedure. (But then, IIRC that procedure was by hit location, so maybe a mix of enhanced parrying facility and body improvement.) Long duration RQ sorcery offers a couple of options to increase damage or to avoid armor. Disadvantages: will evaporate, can be dispelled. (But then, a Dullblade can override enhancements, too, and similar debuffs are possible.) Humakti gifts (or the equivalent for your own setting) come with a cost, but the egregious munchkin player could create a semi-retired Humakti Sword sworn companion buffing up the sword and then loaning it permanently to the character. Possibly including the allied spirit of the Humakti? From a general magical perspective, I would rule that the blade (or at least the backbone of the blade, if you have a sword made from welded components) is the soul of the sword, and if that is broken, it requires the metallurgical equivalent of a resurrection rather than just a healing. The shattered blade of the north receives a new name after Elrond's smiths reforged it. (Why did they wait that long, though? Did they enjoy the Angmar situation?) Quite often, the "made by <famous bladesmith>" property is enough to make a sword magical. Repairs (beyond maintenance like re-sharpening and removing nicks and notches) done by anyone other than the original maker will take away that property, though. Some settings allow a master bladesmith to do maintenance which drastically improves the sword's performance. At least in Gloranthan RuneQuest, such a procedure would be indistinguishable from a long duration sorcery spell. WIth all that said, there is no reason to introduce materials into your setting which are intrinsically magical and allow the production of items with a permanent improved performance compared to your run-of-the-mill everyman's sword. (And the setting may well have run-of-the-mill materials allowing swords to interact with magic, too.) Real world diatribe: Metal is a weird material, anyway. While there are mono-crystalline metals (or semi-metals) which are used in technology, most metals are a mix of small areas of regular crystalline growth between interlacing snow-flake like outgrowths connecting these tiny crystallites with the neigbouring ones, sometimes resulting in a glass-like structure between the crystallites. All the components being metallic, the entire conglomerate then is surrounded by a shared band of electrons in a state similar to a plasma held in place by electrostatic interaction. Any major break of a metal object would require welding, and that will form a glass-like layer of the adjacent pieces of the shard, without regaining the layered structure the blade originally got from mechanical deformation. It would require a highly precise magic similar to neuro-surgery to re-connect those structural elements. (But then, a Heal 6 or a six point Heal Wound will re-attach a severed limb, restoring similarly fiddly details.) I can see how shards of the blade part of a broke sword might be re-attached to a new backbone, regaining the special edge properties that blade had before breaking, but that would be more in the nature of a graft than a repair. That new backbone may of course be made mostly of the recycled material of the original blade. Which may be how the shards of Narsil became Anduril.

The wyter of the Lunar Empire is bound into the Red Emperor, and reforms whenever the current mask and some of its constituents are replaced by new ones. (His spirit in the Dragon Pass boardgame might be the wyter?) Great Sister is another embodied wyter in (but not necessarily of) the Lunar Empire, possibly of the cult of the Red Goddess. Other Lunar demigods may represent subsets of the Empire or its population, e.g. the Red Dancer of Power for the merchants of the Empire.

Are the Hidden Greens (or Hidden Castles) tied to the Spirit World? I thought they were bits of the Hero Plane whose Surface World equivalent is only weakly woven into the fabric of Arachne Solara's Web.

So do the Quivini demibirds thrive on a diet of marmots? Pecking large chunks of muscle meat or intestines out of megafauna running away from them doesn't seem that plausible. The eligible megafauna includes dinosaurs, and that doesn't seem to be quite right. Juvenile dinos might be fair prey, though. Calves and sheep are about the right size as prey, too, as are human children. Would these birds be hunting as a pack? The habitat of demibirds appears to be wherever Genertelan dragonewts are (not sure about Kralorela or Teleos). As such, the specimen at Bird Site might be a semi-domesticated or feral population, similar to the mustang herds of the North American West. They don't show any signs of being sufficiently good climbers to be able to catch ibexes or chamois, although I could see them successfully hunting impala or gazellets in their natural habitat. The South American terror birds did not have that much choice from native megafauna (bison-sized upwards) to prey on prior to the Mesoamerican land bridge, or did they?

At best, you would use the Osprey book showing semi-naked guys with shields, clubs, spears and possibly a few signature weapons. You would take what we know about Neolithic cold weather farming (which apparently originated in the lower Danubian plains) and apply whatever canonical or semi-canonical ideas we have about Orlanthi agriculture and the society it breeds, and you would take a tradition of urban or proto-urban culture millennia old (interrupted by cataclysms, but recurring) and stir all of that into something that doesn't bear similarity to anything ever happening on this planet as a whole. Mykenaeans without ships... which affects a lot of their society. One might as well look to cold weather Aztecs with metal for the Pelorians. Riverine or mountain-based cultures work better. Unfortunately, the Bronze Age of the Carpathian basin or the lower Danubian has not left any famous literature behind. Terrestrial Bronze Age was mostly not postapocalyptic, except for the European plague that allowed for its spread into the Neolithic farmers' territory. If you look at the Pelorians, I am in agreement with your statement, as few Pelorians are tied to their gods as closely as the Theyalan peoples are. For the Theyalans and the actual Lunars, I will side with Jeff.

Somebody talking about me behind my back?

The Rokari have the distilled form of Malkionism as it was Created.

From how I was taught to handle a shinai, the two-handed grip is less about leverage and more about control, but then that style doesn't include wrestling and kicking with swords in between

King of Sartar mentions them in The First Ring among a great number of less privileged deities. This seems to imply to me that they did not stick around with the Celestial Court or the Yelmic Court, but went out into the world doing stuff instead, falling into the outsider category.

As far as I am concerned, a small person's bastard sword is a tall person's spatha, and a tall person's bastard sword is a small person's greatsword. Your typical viking long sword has a pommel which allows two-handed use once your shield has been hacked into kindling.

HeroQuest One names "saints" as one of several entities at home in the sorcery world, the essence planes, ... This is relevant for the Three Distinct Otherworlds model (or dogma) that Greg was adamant on having in those years. That model created quite the workload for Jamie Revell aka Ttrotsky when he wrote Anaxial's Roster, having to define some entities for each of these otherworlds, and having to distribute other, pre-existing entities into these three Otherworlds. The current dogma is back to naming these three (or four, if you include mysticism) approaches to magic perspectives, as of the foundational mention of these in Cults of Terror. The HeroQuest first edition rules are full of saints, in cases of henotheist churches like the Aeolians (as presented there) as variations of the standard deities.. Then there are the founders of a church, or very important church leades who receive veneration. (like Mardron alongside Rokar), and rulers with sufficient heroic or magical potential in their dual role as temporal and religious leaders may have joined those ranks, too. In HQ1, saints would have left behind scripture (often actually written by their disciples) from which liturgists would derive blessings, and wizards might derive spells. Mechanically/magically, these saints were the expressions of nodes (topological entities in the magical flows of the world, at least in essence perspective) in the saint plane, the essence realm beyond the spell plane which provides the magical framework for sorcery magics. (If I understand the intention of sorcery spells in RQG correctly, the spells are temporary entities fueled by the magic points poured into them, or against their degradation in terms of points spent on duration, that act on behalf of their creators, the sorcery users. A sorcery spell behaves very much like a spirit when it comes to overcoming a target's resistance - the MP in the spell are used on the resistance table, rather than the POW statistic of the caster, as is the case for spirit magic or divine rune magic.) Many of these concepts are discontinued in current canon, but the separation of babies from bathwater may have been too drastic, as I think there are plenty things in the bathwater that have enough virtues to live on - if not in official canon, then possibly in your on variant of Glorantha. In general, HeroQuest 1 and the Hero Wars books before that provided a forest where too many branches (subcults) were counted as trees, and where every feat of a deity became a named subcult entity. (Plus we got the Allfather and Allmother aspects of Orlanth and Ernalda which have disappeared already in HQ2/HQG.) Blessings derived from scripture based on the recorded deeds of a saint by liturgists and spells cast by orderlies have disappeared from canon (already in HQG or the Guide), and with these the needs for sorcerous patrons of most activities that define a majority of the lesser saints mentioned earlier in this thread. Grimoires are the sorcery containers in HQ2 and HQG. RQG doesn't have anything like the sorcery student that we saw in RQ3 any more - sorcerous practitioners able to learn sorcery spells and only the most basic manipulation skill of intensity, no range, no duration. The orderlies of HQ1 had a magical ability similar to apprentice sorcerers or part-time sorcerers (like RQG Lhankor Mhy cultists, or philosophers outside of that cult). Ascended Masters as presented in the Guide are mortals venerated for changes they brought. Many of these appear to have realized an error in their ways and then teaching or exemplifying a way out of those erroneous ways. Hrestol himself had at least three starts into new insights, the third of those cut short by his martyrdom, whereas most other ascended masters brought one, at most two such new directions or changes of their ways. (Halwal might have been one to change his ways after the liberation of Fronela, seeking a new way in the Arkati/Stygian path, but failing to re-unite the Arkat branches, so maybe a 1.5 alteration of his ways. Other masters may not even have completed their first approach.) School Founders are lumped in with Ascended Masters. In HQ1, this was explained by the School Grimoire, a collection of spells tied to that school, which wasn't just a book copied by all of the adherents of the school but also a collection of magical/energetic pathways across and vertically connecting the Essence Planes to their Saint Node. HQ2 has those grimoires, but doesn't refer to the nodes any more. Current canon aka RQG doesn't have any grimoires - not sure whether that is a "not yet" or a "not any more". All literacy (and hence reference to scripture) is subsumed in Lhankor Mhy and his associates and other shapes like Buserian (although the cult of Argan Argar as per the basic rules is as literate as that of LM, if only in Darktongue as its default). All writing is magical, even when hardly meaningful (as in graffiti carved into ancient ruins or balustrades of city walls or bridges). HQ1 scripture, or the reading of it, would have been a form of mental re-enactment of the saint's deeds (or really the saint's knowledge put into deeds) of similar magical importance as ritual re-enactments in a theist or animist worship rite. As such, some magical blessings were derived from such ritual activity. RQG offers passions instead. I suppose a passion "veneration of <Ascended Master>" might be the mechanical equivalent of those scriptures celebrated by liturgists (i.e. literate people reading those passages aloud, or reciting them from memory while holding the written text). Lesser patrons of a craft or similar might be done in a similar way.

Grandfather Mortal was the fertile father of many. Then he suffered Death, and never recovered from it. What was left after this transformation became Daka Fal, Judge of the Dead. IMO game balance reasons, first and foremost - everybody would do so, otherwise. Everybody worships their dead ancestors, except maybe for the Brithini who may hold them in high reverence but don't expend any magic towards whatever became of them when they died, or the Vadeli who might hold them in reverence or whose crooked ways might lead them to not do so. Even so, these groups have some veneration to their founders, at least the immortal parts of those (the embodied runes). Multiple initiations to different standard deities already bring quite a few other cans of worms, like which cult gets the main say for the individual's afterlife. Like an ugly divorce, only worse. For all its mechanical similarity to a regular cult, Daka Fal worshipers don't have any divine Other Side. Daka Fal is an entity of the Underworld, and with a link to the deep end of the Spirit World. If you look at the Orlanthi or Solar or Lunar concept of 5, 6 or 7 souls, there is (at best) one elemental portion of a soul tied to the deity in question. (Things get fuzzy with the weirdo powers only deities like the other Lightbringers, severed ones like Humakt, etc.) The spirit of such a dead would be different from the divinely connected part of the soul. That means that Axis Mundi shouldn't usually be a connection to the divinely granted magic of such an ancestor. Patron deities are weirdly possessive of the souls tied to them through initiation. An ancestral shaman would probably fit well into the Daka Fal structure, but might be too powerful as an individual spirit to be subject to the Axis Mundi rites. Shamans somehow transcend these definitions of initiation. Shamans of Kolat or Earth Witch don't usually initiate to any of the adjacent cults in the pantheon. Whether or how much initiation into a spirit cult counts against Daka Fal initiation is yet another question. Grazer (or Pentan) Yelmic shamanism is a form of ancestor worship. The same might be said about Waha. Hsunchen have their ancestral animal totem instead. Speculations about the Eastern or Pamaltelan shamanic traditions are outside of our current knowledge.