Joerg

I would expect the old tradition to provide a set of encounters for the region to be continued. Whether this means that one would have too many places to look up creature stats or whether something similar to the Red Book of Magic - a Brown Book of Creatures? - could catch up such creature stats for more convenient use. Jeff mentioned elsewhere that it would have ten or so minor cults, like (and including) Geo. It will show of the cosmopolitan side of Sartar, of its networking with traders from all over the world.

No. But there is a notable trend in the list of past chiefs or kings to come from such families, so I thought it worth mentioning the presence of such let's say reliable sources of management personnel. The Orlanthi admire personal heroics even on a very local level and will be ready to follow such an individual regardless of birth status or ancestry. Having such an ancestry (or being able to claim it) is a bonus. See Argrath.

The RQ3 sorcery rules were written for some form of adepthood that doesn't gel well with Gloranthan runes and which placed immense weight on the construct of a sorcerer's familiar, a concept quite alien to any depiction of Gloranthan sorcery, whether Brithini, Malkioni, or Lhankor Mhy. The techniques and runes don't quite make a syntax like the Ars Magica rules which may be somewhat related to RQ3 sorcery done more systematically.

This was a bit blurry. A person serving on the ring of the clan would be accorded some sway and respect, but needn't be a noble by status. Usually, you would want ring-members able to act as representatives of their cults in magical rites. Bringing someone with an actual say in the local council apparently provides a lot better magical identification than bringing in a lesser status specialist god-talker. Plenty of ring types have pre-defined magical roles for the ring members. Different rings will call for different specialisations, but then highly proficient individuals will be expected to be put on the ring even if they don't exactly fit the role whose seat they are taking. A catch 22 in Orlanthi personnel management... I think that a noble's household is expected to field at least one mounted warrior to the tribal forces, ideally several. In case of an elderly noble, those warrior duties may be carried out by his sons, daughters, nephews, or possibly adopted orphans or foster children in the absence of able-bodied children. How many of these fully kitted noble combatants come from a noble household is decided by the wealth backing that noble, the number of war-trained horses available, etc. A clan usually has a few households that provide candidates for chiefhood. I would expect them to be ready to step up to the duties of a mounted warrior even between holding such office, so the number of "almost-noble" households in a clan may be a little higher than just the households of the chief and the head priest(ess). Practically any level of Orlanthi social units above household has professional warriors without administrative duties but equipped as mounted fighters. These weapon-thanes don't quite have the noble status, and may actually be "garrisoned" at the household of the local nobles. As bodyguards, they are something like companions, and may even be called up to add their oaths to their leader's oath. Outside of bodyguard activities, they are military leaders. These warriors are usually personal followers of the local leaders. When the leadership changes hands or households, the warriors may remain with the household they served before (at presumably lower status), or they may swear to the new holder of the office. Since the office-holder trusts his weapon-thanes with his life, not every new office-holder will easily inherit the followers of their predecessor and possibly former (?) rival. That would lead to only one family being able to provide a replacement chief. I think there would typically three or four families geared up to take on the mantle of chieftain's household. That doesn't bar exceptional and heroic individuals from other backgrounds to ascend to chieftainhood, but they will have much less backup from a household used to deal with all the fall-out of chieftainhood like hosting important guests etc. But then the "temple" of a clan noble will provide much of the organisational support to the chieftain's household - officials who may almost be regarded as companions of the chief even when not holding any office on the ring. Thunder Rebels provided a sleuth of names for such functionaries loaning from terminology as used in Beowulf, channeling as ancient a form of the English language as possible. Hence "dishthane" or "horsethane". These wouldn't be actual nobles, but office-holders of some sort. Possibly temple ranks in the clan Storm or Earth temple.

There are stories about how Talar and his heir Hoalar (twin brother of Froalar) were killed by the Vadeli, probably in the Double Belligerent Assault. Hoalar's son Gresat inherited kingship, and held it at the dawn, according to the unpublished Hrestol's Saga. Horal himself (named Holar Swordbearer in that manuscript) was not present in the high council of Brithos, either, but his son wielded is sword. That makes me assume that Holar wasn't among the living any more, either. Also lost seem to be Menena (wife of a Horal) and Talar's wife Eule. No mention of Dronar or Dromal, but Zzabur appears to be the only surviving son of the Founder after the Dawn. Several of the demised ancestors can be reached through the agency of Yingar the Messenger or direct ancestor worship in Hrestol's Saga. Menena is summoned (and presumably incarnated in a descendant) in that story, ending a civil war on Brithos. "Hoalar" is of course another spelling dangerously close to Holar or Horal... keeping those Malkioni founders' names apart can be difficult.

As an intellectual form of magic, involving INT in a sorcerer's capacity may be pretty much unavoidable. I think I would have preferred if the sorcerer awakened an expanded mindscape as his "magical organ" analogous to the shaman's fetch. That "organ" may very well start with the individual's INT, and may very well open with storage for runes and techniques for INT-11. RQ3 weirdly expressed this organ as the adept's familiar(s), or (slightly less weirdly) as a sorcerer's mandala in RQ3 Land of Ninja. Hero Wars and HeroQuest used grimoires for sources of sorcery, and presumably a sorcerer would inscribe his own personal grimoire both physically on paper and in some magical mindscape which once upon a time was expressed as being in the sorcerous Spell Plane and Adept Plane. From how sorcery operates in RQG, it appears that a sorcerous spell is a magical entity produced by the formulaic spell used by the sorcerer and fed with the magic that the sorcerer pours into that entity. The sorcerer uses the runes and techniques in the spell to direct the magic (measured as MP) into the spell, and the better he knows the runes and techniques involved, the less magic he needs to pour into that entity. There is no consideration for an upper limit of his ability to pour magic (MP) into the spell, but somehow there is a cap for total manipulation of the spell based on his INT. That cap is a solid upper limit, no uncertainties, no straining the mental and magical muscles as the load of magic funneled into that entity becomes ever harder to control. Possibly going out of control, or going rogue when the charging of that entity gets rudely interrupted. That's a bit of a missed storytelling opportunity. Creating a magical organ by pushing POW into however that thing may be called (Inscription, for instance) is the old RQ catch-all mechanic, also used for a shaman's fetch, an rune magicians rune pool, apparently even for a hero's hero point pool. Yes, POW is the magical attribute, and it acts a bit like a resource. With regular POW increase rolls from worship rites or other such activity, an extremely lucky character may earn 18 12 POW a year if he makes his POW gain roll every season and rolls maximum POW every season. With less extreme luck, 8 4 points of POW gain a year may be realistic. Sorcerers burn up magic points worse than anything, so they need not just MP storages (crystals, enchantments) but regular donations (voluntary from worship rites or from donations to such storages, from bound spirits, or involuntary from Tapping). Almost makes me wonder whether "kissing the bishop's ring" is a rite to store one personal MP into the storage device of the wizard greeted that way.

Depends on the definition (and size) of the stead. A hamlet like Apple Lane or Farfield (of "Rattling WInd" fame) probably yes. Asborn's Stead (from what I know, a solitary wealthy farm) yes, because Asborn is a tribal thane anyway. Otherwise the place wouldn't necessarily warrant a thane.

Yelm? 😉

"My ransom is 250 Lunars - hale and sound. Rough me up, and down my price goes..." "Aw, we don't have 250 Lunars right now. How about you give him a good beating, and we get him back for 150 Lunars?"

What is the rule for Lhankor Mhy cult spells? "All Detection spells" is a pretty big bid to start with. How many are there? And then there are those Sages who use sorcery. Are they exempt from teaching spirit magic?

There are some apocryphal mentions of discord between Zzabur and (a) Horal, and Menena stepping in to restore peace? The Brithini don't really recognize ascended masters. Perhaps they regard the whole concept as some form of necromancy.

To date, we have seen only two mayors in print - Brygga Scissortongue of Pavis, and Garaystar Flatnose of Wilmskirk (described in Sartar High Council, in Wyrm*s Footnotes 7). Both under Lunar occupation, mostly limited to an administrative position inside the city, rather than as the marshal of the joint tribal militia for that city. It will be interesting to see how Joh Mith is tackling these rex duties in charge of the city militia.

Rokari tenets have one big bugbear - Hrestoli men-of-all and how they mess with the proper(ly submissive) society with their insight into what the Watchers do. Hrestolism was a movement of participation in religious matters. In Jrustela, there appears to have been a popular movement of interacting with the philosophy of Malkionism, and apparently a rather wide-spread literacy and insight into the basic tenets of the religion. IMO a side effect of the path to the state of the Man-of-All which would accept trainees from every caste. Rokarism seeks to undo many of the innovations brought by Hrestol and his disciples, and carried on by those God Learners who did not comply to the standards of the God Learner Rokar who had the audacity to use the Sharp Abiding Book - elsewhere described as the grimoire of the more destructive sect of God Learners - as the new holy scripture. Imagine a religion which has witnessed the magical writing of their holy book, and then some supposedly holy men editing that volume down to what they think is palatable. (And it is very hard not to compare this with other book religions and their editing and collating practices.) Hrestoli believe in reincarnation, according to the Guide. Rokarism just offers Solace upon the disentegration of the Self after Death, as does the Brithini creed. I am curious how this works out when all the castes except for the sorcerers practice some form of religion offering a notion of an afterlife. It may be the definition of the Self by the Malkioni which differs from the Theyalan concept of the soul(s). If Malkioni identity is focussed on the intellect and memories, then maybe those are lost upon death. Or at least upon rebirth. But then the Daka Fal ancestor worship allows descendants to exchange knowledge (or "possession of spirit magic" with their ancestors, and probably a (limited?) set of memories, too.

It was the (sample?) spell of the Stygian College of Magic in RQ3 Gods of Glorantha, a sect-exclusive spell.

It is typical how the names of the lower castes vary... Holar and Horal both are names that appear in the early Malkioni writings. One was used for the warrior caste, the other for a noble caste brother of Malkion who married his sister Menena. The Brithini call their warriors Horali. The unpublished fragmentary Hrestol's Saga has Horal as the grandfather of Hrestol's wife (from Brithos, during his exile there) and Holar as the Sword-bearer. Likewise there are two variants for the worker caste ancestor, Dromal and Dronar. With a King Drona in the Fronelan background, an earth king, I have come to the theory that there were twin brothers of the earth-born worker caste leaders, one of them settling for the Fourth Caste rule under the advice (never reign, no, sir) of Zzabur on Brithos, the other emigrating with his divine companions (Bakan the Boar, and Eurmal Friend of Men) to Fronela even before the Kachasti got there. But that's just an unsubstantiated theory, picking up the "twin sons sending one into a self-imposed exile" mythic motive of the west which may very well have repeated itself a number of times, as mythic motives tend to do. (The Storm Hero slays the dragon has at least three incarnations - Vadrus vs. Enkoshons, Orlanth vs. Aroka, Barntar vs. an unnamed version of Aroka.) For "original humans", the Malkioni (or at least their mythical leaders) have a pristine (if very mixed) divine ancestry. Malkion the Founder is the son of Aerlit Kolating, a storm god who flew with the Vadrudi host, inheriting from Sky and Earth, and Warera Triolina, a (grand?) daughter of King Wartain, a triolini mer-king of the Neliomi sea descended from one of the ten Tritons. Warera and Ludocha were abducted and married in the same mythic event, which makes the statement that Warera was a Ludoch a bit dubious, but not impossible. I personally see her as a niiad, the demigod ancestral race that made up the Triolini prior to the Vadrudi raid. Malkion married a number of goddesses to sire the caste founders and the tribal founders. Malkions sons Talar, Horal, Zzabur and Holar and his daughters Eule and Menena were born to the Tilnta (love nymph, love goddess) Phlia, the caste ancestor Dromal was born to the land or mountain goddess Kala (a mountain range on Brithos), and Waertag was born to a Wartain sea goddess (niiad or ludoch) named Jeleka. I have no idea what the canonical fate of the Horal-Holar duplicate is under canon. T (The Yggites are descended from a son of Valind and yet another Wartain sea goddess, making them something like close cousins of Malkion's descendants, but without all that logic etc.) Not a single descendant of Grandfather Mortal in this array, but then Malkion became (the avatar of) Grandfather Mortal in his Fifth Action.

What is the great deal there? Orlanth faced his own sister. Fortunately it wasn't kinstrife because she belonged to the Darkness Tribe.

Especially at cold temperatures. There are a number of pictures on p.2 of this pdf which look like some mythical creatures' work. Ancient penguins on Svalbard? https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rsta.2012.0357 Might be something for northern Fronela or North Pent? Or you can have it somewhere completely different, a remnant of the Gods War.

At most three generations, four if someone was ancient but still an active sailor in 1580 - the Opening happened 45 years ago, and for the first few voyages the magic was only 75% reliable (judging from Dormal's own record). Dormal's arrival apparently started a boom in ship-building rather than re-furbishing existing ships, at least to begin with, but then few places would have had workable ships for open sea voyages. Wooden ships come with a limited lifespan.

Definitely not all sorcery rituals, but at least IMG there are (going to be) craft magics that work this way (once I start defining such, which will probably wait for the starter box with info on Jonstown guilds). Such magics will be a jealously guarded nostrum, unlike the freely taught Open Seas ritual. Possibly requiring initiation (with POW sacrifice etc.) into a hero/spirit cult. Wrong tense: is going to make this all very clear. Hopefully by Xmas.

Except that winning the Hill of Gold is not an apotheosis. Or is it? You emerge as a demigod, perfectly bound into the role of the successful survivor of the Hill of Gold. You return to your people, who now have a solar guardian to put between themselves and any Chaos foe, and a great number of other foes. You aren't immune to damage, and may be dismembered or even eaten in whichever altercation you may have with enemies. You'll return next sunrise, healed, ready to engage again. The battle may have been lost in your absence.

Well, as the survivor of the Hill of Gold, you get stuck in a permanent Greater Darkness shape. You become indestructable and don't age any more. Do you still change?

Interesting conundrum - can you become an adult without belonging to a group that introduces you magically into adulthood? In case of this juvenile duck, I really wonder whether the ancestors will tolerate one of the beastmen who fought them a few generations ago as their own blood and kin - it may be tolerable to have them as followers or slaves, but as family? An initiation to the temple may work, though. Cult initiation is usually undergone after attaining adulthood, but there are cases of combined initiation. Usually the initiation is done by the clan, but having a non-human as a clan member might weaken the clan magic significantly. Having a cultist from another species in your temple is much less of a problem, and the temple can act in stead of a clan when it comes to legal representation. The clan Orlanth temple likely doubles as the legal representation of clan members, but it should be possible to separate cultist membership from kinship membership. There may be some other species clan membership that is mythically acceptable - sapient alynxes would be full clan members, I suppose.

The Ludoch of Choralinthor Bay and Deeper do worship or at least recognize Diendimos, their storm ancestor, who gave them the air-filled caves at Deeper. While there are plenty good reasons to sink a ship or to drive it onto a beach, for a heroquest there usually needs to be such an event inside Godtime. Let's look at possible sea-going ships in the Gods War. There are quite a few sea-going peoples in Godtime the Waertagi (usually somewhat allied to the merfolk) the Helerites/Helerings whose god/ancestor used to be a sea god before becoming separated from his element the Diroti - in one myth, the children of Sofala (in the West), attacked by the Seabird Army, defended by Orlanth once the Banthites - little is known about them, except for a temporary presence on the Nelomi Sea befoe being destroyed by Zzabur's Brithini the Artmali (who turned towards Chaos in the later part of the Gods War) the Outrigger folk inheriting the boating magic from a single Sendereven ship(crew visiting them in the time of need (surviving in Maslo, Thinokos, Kumanku (suppressed, but a sea-going group having taken slaves in Teshnos settling on Teleos) various East Islanders The Vadeli managed to cross the Churkenos Sea as well. The Homeward Ocean is fairly recent. The foothills of the Spike used to run out in Ernaldela, which was the southern part of Genertela. The Sshorg river invaded from the southeast, got tamed, and remained a river until the Storm Age, when the Flood covered vast parts of the dry lands - not necessarily filling up the low parts, as the seas covering the Rockwood Mountains east and west of Kerofinela were more like standing waves rising out of the dry lands. Kerofinela was defended by Orlanth, and even an all-in bet of the surrounding seas (creating Worcha, the Raging Sea, from their combined energies) failed to flood that place, After the defeat of Worcha, the seas receded, starting with the standing waves across the Rockwoods, until Faralinthor remained for quite a while. If there were any Ludoch (or other) merfolk in Faralinthor Sea, none would have survived the drying up at the hands of Vadrus, except perhaps a few individuals huddling with Choralinthor. IMO the Ludoch of Choralinthor Bay (and the Mournsea) are from the Neliomi Sea, the survivors of the Wartain mertribe, and cousins to the Yggites, Waertagi, and Malkioni. The western seas saw quite a few of those fleets mentioned above. I don't think there is any love lost between the Ludoch (as the original inhabitants of the Neliomi Sea) and the Brithini and Vadeli, as both these parties tapped almost all the life out of the Neliomi Sea in their wars. That behavior may well have led to the Ludoch attacking ships with such sorcerers on board. I don't think that the Waertagi ever tapped the Seas for magic - they would have turned against other elements first, I guess. But other ships with sorcerers on board (or even suspected of having sorcerers on board) would be perfectly good targets for re-enacting a defense against that Tapping. I am currently working on the Ludoch of the Choralinthor Bay as part of a project, and I postulated that Ludoch like the variety offered in the tidal zones, and that they don't say no to convenient grottos as refuges or hide-outs, or even holy places. Quite a few (tasty!) sea beings thrive on islands or rocks jutting out of the seas.

RQ Classic offers that for Rune Magic - you have Rune Power 1, 2 or 3, using the runes of the cult entity. Each rune point is worth 1D6 in damage. (Sever Spirit being an exception, but it's one use for anybody but Humakti.) Stackable spells are pretty much unlimited, most of these accept 1 point additions (even when the basic spell costs 3 rune points). The more points of the same rune, the stronger the limitations - you need at least 50% overcast to call a Thunderbolt, and you need direct sunlight for a Sunspear. The meta-system is there, feel free to play with it. You can name the various possible variations... which gives you the plethora of spells that there are.

Yes - and it is pretty much a one-of-a-kind artifact (regardless of the great number of Balazar's axes running around in player possession, and nowadays hippogriff steeds). Spirit magic is capped by CHA and by available MP (which is less of a problem with crystals or matrices). In order to make an enchantment, the enchanter needs to know that spirit spell at least at the level he enchants it. Having one spell at 6 or more pretty much takes up half of your spell potential (unless you raise your POW to species max, which lets you have three spells at 7 points. Few temples have access to spell spirits that powerful. Those which do have limited slots to use them for teaching (40 times a year). You can pay the standard fare, and wait for your inoculation, or you can over-pay and hope to get your shot earlier.