Joerg

I don't see why not. The Lightbringers are invader deities, after all, and while they may be tolerated for being useful, they still are weird foreign cults. The Praxians have no qualms about enslaving Eiritha initiates like Norayeep. Why should they have any qualms about enslaving some follower of a foreign cult from a hostile tribe? Morokanth are notorious for being slavers. Not putting a captive into shackles would be disappointing.

Strange, that. Socrates was noted as somewhat exceptional for going barefoot (accompanying his tattered clothes), while one of his comrades in applied philosophy and crafting was Simon the Shoe-maker.

While I cannot speak for the artist, the left leg is the leading leg for a right-handed fighter, with the right leg usually in behind, providing the forward momentum from the ankle. While RuneQuest targets both legs equally in its hit location table, in my experience with rubber sword duels the leading leg is a lot more prone to be hit by low swipes. Lindybeige's video on donning hoplite armor mentioned how greaves can cut into the top of your foot. I can understand why one might forgo that "pleasure" for the less exposed leg where your foot may angle up more. I keep wondering about mercenaries going into battle barefoot. From talking to re-enactors, I am familiar with the rather short lifespan of leather soles in rough terrain, but combat rarely happens on smooth sand or polished dojo/gym grounds. Thorny hedges are a common defensive line, and stepping into thorns on the ground can cripple you badly, especially when you don't have free hands or the leasure to remove them. The dropped equipment of downed enemies or comrades can be as bad, but then cuts in the soles tend to hurt a lot less than impales. She appears to be quite well off, with two javelins...

Arnbord shouldn't be able to claim the Karandoli clan membership either... King Ortossi disappeared during a hunt held by King Sartar in Telmori (or Sazdorf) lands, and his clan disappeared shortly after. New Pavis was founded only about 50 years later (or 75 years if you use the misleading date in the Pavis Box). Old Pavis opened up only 40 years after the disappearance of the Karandoli... The chief of the camp could have been anybody. The Lunar occupation of Pavis lasted only 14 years and a season or two. There is a possibility that Argrath revived the Karandoli clan, but then there is little evidence that he ever set foot in Pavis (new or old) after lighting the Flame of Sartar. The Colymar King List provides another clan name for a later king that nobody has heard of before... From what we know about Argrath's youth from the Prince of Sartar comic, he would have been initiated to the Orlmarth clan, as he herded sheep on the Starfire Ridges, and have been exiled within the same year. He lived on the stead of his uncle and aunt, who apparently were slain in that raid on the stead. Four female generations may have migrated quite a bit across the map. Onelisin belonged to the royal "clan", and her children may have been born to that, too. Minara was a cat witch as well, which indicates a potential lack of long term marriages, and possibly a short term marriage or two leaving a child to a local clan. Arene's thunder-beast feat may have happened just about anywhere. The Karandoli clan was destroyed at least twice, and reliably immediately after fielding a king of the Colymar. Since the second Karandoli king of the Colymar has a Black Spear heritage through Maniski Firebreath, it looks like the remaining Karandoli after their destruction in the Zarran War received original Colymar nobility and were reformed, unusually under the same name (unlike the Taraling clan and the Antorling clan, both of a triaty overcome by the Colymar and destroying one clan each of those triaties). Both the Taralings and the Antorlings received nobility from a Black Spear clan lineage. Argrath, of the lineage of Maniski Firebreath, gives him a Black Spear clan pedigree. That is quite different from "Son of Maniski, son of Orlgard", especially since Maniski Firebreath's father was "Kagradus, the son of Dorasor Durulz‑lover, son of Robasart, son of Anamorl who stood beside Colymar the Founder in battle." (p.175) "Maniski Two-Sight" is somehow a condensation of a patronym (Maniski) and his mother Yanioth's nom-de-guerre. That source also names his grandmother Arene as Argrath's mother. Or possibly Arene and Yanioth are sisters, and one is the foster parent, along with her husband, the ones slain by the Lunar raid. Minara was slightly older than Kostajor, who is still alive and whose sons still lead the Telmori - one those in Boldhome, the other the tribe in the hills. Kostajor's grandson is less than a dozen years younger than Argrath, but then he is from a later (tribal) marriage of Helkos (after losing his first wife, Terasarin's older daughter, a few years before the Fall of Boldhome in the Holy Country). Having two couples of parents of Argrath, siblings with their respective marriage partners, makes some limited sense. Having Karandoli clansfolk on a stead near the Starfire Ridges does less so. The Karandoli have a clearly separate migration history from the Black Spear clan, and arrived in their lands in the Brambleberry Hills after the Malani migration (i.e. with the Lysang, Namolding and the Antorling predecessor already in place). The fifth Colymar king welcomed the Hiordings as the first non-Black Spear clan into the tribe, the sixth Colymar king was of the Karandoli clan (which must have joined shortly after the Hiordings, and possibly the Jenstali who would have lived southeast of Apple Lane). The Varmandi tragedy must have been ongoing in those years, too, first losing their hold on the Greenstone Temple which they had re-awakened, then losing land to the Tree Triaty clans in Arfritha Vale. The "Kardarv and Jenestni" clans in Malani tribal tales likely are the Karandoli and Jenstali. The Brambleberry Hills are no longer under cultivation, and neither are the valleys to either side. Where is Eagles Mountain? Argrath boasts of the impossible pasture used by his great-great-grandfather Gordangar the Red on its flanks. Was this prior to the destruction of the Karandoli by the Jenstali intrigue/the hideaway of Venharl Ortossison, or during that time? One detail that has me a bit stumped is the factoid that Venharl the Climber was an associate of the Temple of the Wooden Sword's Eril Silksword, and the other two apparently companions of Leika during that time who received Venharl's clandestine help. According to other sources, Argrath's biological father fell at the siege of Boldhome, and his biological mother four years later. Londra's adventures started only around 1610 or so, two years before Argrath's inititiation. I suppose that the members of the Wooden Sword had been too young even for the Household of Death, and that Londra's Wooden Sword temple may have been an attempt to achieve similar fame. There is a chance that Argrath's father was a guard for the Household of Death. Could Venharl have been the adoptive father of Argrath, who was killed in the Lunar raid? Yanioth clearly used to live in the former Karandoli lands, as she hunted deer in Dog-Rat Valley. We don't know whether she did that prior to her marriage with Maniski or afterwards. We do know that Argrath was taken in by his uncle and aunt after her death in 1606.

Yes, bringing in the real thing will increase the magic, so replacing the weird uncle who usually wears the Darkman mask with a cave troll or a trollkin might be helpful. But then, doing so raises the ante - read the Sun Dome section of Biturian's Travels on how this practice may backfire if taken too far. My example was closer to the Initiation of Argrath in Prince of Sartar. It is pretty clear that the Evil Uncles who fetch the boy are fellow clansmen. What happens during his deeper initiation, on the Other Side, is outside of what the clan prepared. The masks of the Evil Uncles are present for the victory feast, and then (ritually) leave. When it comes to dealing with Chaos, the Orlanthi use the Summons of Evil. Not sure they can do that inside a practice quest, though, but then undertaking a quest where there is a chaos foe to overcome might automatically summon an evil, and you had better have an effigy prepared for getting first animated, then destroyed. There is always a chance to summon ghosts much bigger than the ones you have been calling. Heroquesting is about identification with the protagonists of the myth. Performing as an antagonist is more like performing some form of choreography. Getting a beating or even a scar out of it is more than a possibility, but that's a form of sacrifice. Or perhaps a form of austerity. That's not really a phrase that is used in German language. Perhaps not even much of a concept, although there are concepts like Nibelungentreue (as steadfast and true to the oath as the Nibelungen warriors who died defending the Burgundians against Kriemhild's revenge) which capture this. Defending the bridge to allow the party to escape. Not quite being thrown to the lions, though. Being chosen as a sacrifice, volunteering to be the sacrifice, those are stron themes, but practice quests don't usually invoke Ana Gor. Not even when caprive enemies are tossed to the protagonist lions. That's why I brought up illumination as a possible "reward". While not exactly leaving your community, you may begin to see things from the other side. But then, something like this is already implied in many childrens' games of "us versus them" (say, cowboys and Indians, or "Räuber und Gendarm"). People do cosplay as Imperial Stormtroopers... That's actually something which needs to be asked: would those who take the masks of the antagonists be initiates of the cult worshiped in the rite, or would they be from allied cults, or non-initiates? How much personal magic do they have to bring into the rites? The community is supposed to provide some form of communal support to the rites. Elmal/Yelmalio worshipers form the ritual guard for rites of Orlanth or Ernalda, and worshipers of Orlanth return the favor when it comes to the Sun rites. Some may take the roles of the antagonists instead. That was one possible campaign idea, yes - a motley group of outsiders and never-do-wells trained in taking those antagonist roles. Some like those beat-up price boxers, essentially the stuntmen of the passion plays. Others magically aligned with certain antagonist roles, lending the strength of their identification to the "realism" of the rite (or of breaking the barrier to the Otherworld). Tricksters are known to facilitate such transit, but then, they are also known to cause more trouble than their aid may have been worth. I wonder whether such practice will lead to a conflict of interests, and thereby of identification. Taking the role of an antagonist you hate or fear may weaken your identification, and thereby weaken the rite. Better to send in someone with less conflicting persona, and possibly a runic affinity to some aspect of that mask.

In the rites and this-world heroquests, members of the questing community will play the role of antagonists, like in a passion play. What happens to them, what do they get out of this? At the very least, this should be a full-scale worship service for them, even if they aren‘t initiated to the cult whose rites they are helping (or initiated into a cult at all). At least with regard to gaining a POW check. If these ritual helpers aren‘t initiated to the cult they are helping out, and are not in a position to renew (or acquire) associate magic from the cult, are there any other magical or non-magical benefits they get for getting beaten up, possibly to the point of requiring serious magical healing, or risking their lives? I mean, if someone stands in as Kaldar, the fighting guardian of the Gates of Dusk, the rites re-enacting a westfaring will certainly benefit from some reak blood being spilled when re-enacting that fight. So the stand-in might e.g. lose a tooth in the shuffle. What makes it worth standing in here? Usually, the opponents in the rites will be outright enemy gods. What effects does it have to become said enemy god? Even if all you do is wear a mask and follow some form of choreography? Does this give you any (Otherworld) insights? Does becoming the mask, or the entity depicted/summoned by the mask, create anything for the bearer? If it does, is that a feature, or is it a flaw? If you take on the role of say a member of the Unholy Trio, will that aid you in achieving illumination? May it make you susceptible or more knowledgeable about Chaos? What roleplaying and campaigning opportunities can there be in performing as enemies in a sacred rite? What was in it for the Morokanth acting as aggressors in the rite that Biturian Varosh participated in at the Paps? Did they know or expect that some part of the assault would be taken over by trolls, rather than others of their comrades in masks? Could some Gloranthans make something of a career of aiding heroquesters in the roles of their opponents?

Sorry about derailing this further from the Eternal Champion, although the games I own based on Moorcock licenses all have in common that they offer a somewhat less crunchy skill-based system than any incarnation of RuneQuest. Automatic success takes away the chance to get success ticks, which are the main selling point of the RuneQuest/BRP-system to me. (If I had wanted to play a game with experience points, I would never have started looking out for BRP...) Skill increase from prolonged activity involving that skill has been modeled in RQG, and might be used in some dialects of BRP games, too. RQG offers training (getting someone else to oversee your efforts for a gain in your skill of D6-1 or a flat 2 points (for chickens who don't trust dice probabilities), and "research" (or unsupervised training) for D6-2 points or 1 point flat. Each for a full season's worth of activity (RQ3 had it at hours commensurate to the current skill level). There are always narrative ways to avoid a game being totally derailed by bad die rolls, although BRP or RuneQuest scenarios often have a way of failing to mention such ways. "On a success on Spot Hidden, ..." implies that no such success doesn't let the entire subsequent scenario information enter your game, even though the party made an effort. I have seen this in quite recent offerings by Chaosium. BRP usually offers straight bonuses or maluses to skill rolls, but then chickens out when the bonus makes failure quite unlikely, offering an automatic success instead, rather than honoring the increased chance for a critical (or, if used, a special success). Critical (and special) success chance (and fumble chance) are calculated of the skill roll, all modifiers included. Skill doubling is usually avoided in percentile games, unless you bring in something like automatic success (foregoing the opportunity to get a spectacular success). One way to do this might be to use a D8 or a D6 instead of the D10 for the decimal die, but that leaves the result outside of the range for critical success or fumbles.

Other than an insurance scheme, I meant. Perhaps something similar to the cowpat bingo?

Dronlon was originally from the Ernaldori clan, if the data in HQ2 Sartar Companion still can be trusted. How did his daughter become a member of the Varmandi clan? Is that some sort of automatism for people initiated in Apple Lane, or was it her choice to step away from her father's influence? I wouldn't be surprised if one could find a whole century's worth or two of Varmandi-initiated individuals serving as mercenaries somewhere around Dragon Pass who aren't included in the population numbers given in e.g. the Colymar Adventure Book.

The Ramalians don't live within sight of the sea, and I suppose that means not within sight of the common high water mark. Very little has been done on the Ramalians - they are supposed to be one of the most evil countries in all of Genertela, with a ruthless and self-absorbed ruling class and hapless helots (alliteration resulting from trying to avoid the term serfs). Rather few parts of the southern coast of Genertely are actually inhabited. There almost seems to be a rule that there have to be offshore islands and/or deep bays or river estuaries for human habitation to exist on the Rozgali or Solkathi shores. This slow tidal cycle also affects animals with an amphibious life-style, like for instance seals leaving their young on sandbars or easy to climb rocky slopes, and it will affect the benthic organisms of the tidal zone. In the uppermost tidally affected zones, crabs and other walking sea creatures may reign, with most of the wriggly beasts resigning themselves to the places that don't regularly fall dry for more than 48 hours. Reliably dry salt marshes make for excellent pasture, doubling as salt licks. Running a salt garden with less reliable tides sounds problematic, too. You might need something more than shallow irrigation dykes to make sure that the sea doesn't take back the salt that you robbed of it. I wonder which cults will be running salt gardens. Orlanth, celebrating the victory of storm over sea? Does anybody use salt peat from tidal zones for salt production? It is almost a self-sustaining cycle, except that it consumes the very source of the industry - you burn the peat, using its heat to evaporate the lye you washed out of peat ashes, concentrating the salt content. Might be a God Forgot or Arolanit industry?

That's indeed a basic problem with those percentile systems. RQ used to illustrate proficiency levels for language just fine, with any skill above 30% allowing you to succeed quite well in a normal conversation. Maybe something like a task system, assigning some sort of competence gauge, would be a better way to do that. The current RQG annual stead management roll is the antithesis of such a use...

Speaking of tides in Glorantha - the sawtooth shape of the tidal cycle makes beaching your ship by pulling it just out of the water something you have to redo every few hours or so as the tide continues to rise, and then taking it to water again or be trapped on the highest part of the beach while the water plummets away, possibly with several ship lengths between your ship and the nearest channel. Being marooned on a sandy beach or a sandbar won't usually have damaged your ship's keel or hull. Withstanding the surf, breakers crashing into your ship while it still cannot move with them, is what causes a major portion of the ship-wrecks in tidal zones like much of the North Sea coast line. There are an estimated 5000 shipwrecks just off the coasts of Jutland (including Schleswig-Holstein), amounting to two shipwrecks a year. Nautical maps even had these: Quite the "Do you feel lucky?" message to navigators. I wonder whether Casino Town has a shipwreck lottery going on. Reaping the wild wind was very much a reliable business in those parts. The Waertagi had the perfect solution for this problem - they rode tidal waves they summoned, making both beaching and taking off again a painless maneuver. Hardly anyone got the chance to plunder a beached Waertagi ship prior to the Closing.

At least in my Glorantha, vampires come in the weirdest flavors. In Esrolia, the undead masters are more like revenants than blood-sucking cursed-by-Yelm victims of Wakboth, and more like the evil Death that comes to claim Ernalda (or, in the Praxian myth, Eiritha). Vivamort/Nontraya helps Eurmal steal the Unbreakable Sword, bringing true Death into the world, observes from the shadows, collects a host of the dead, leaves the Underworld at the Blackmaw at Nochet (or a similar location), goes after Ernalda (in Ezel?) and is thwarted, walks over to Prax where Tada has hidden Eiritha under her hills, and then strays further into Genert's Garden where he falls victim to Wakboth around the conflict of Earthfall. While Vivamort is the role model, he would have recruited lieutenants from the Dead unwilling to accept Daka Fal's judgement, and those may have multiplied their lineage of their very own death-defying necromancy. Delecti is a hero of Undeath, using a stolen Zorak Zoran secret (possibly stolen to the same extent that Zorak Zoran stole Fire from Yelmalio), but he is not at all a typical Vivamort rune-master. Neither are his Dancers in Darkness. Speaking of those ladies, those are the only predictable type of vampire I would use. Combining vampirism with knowledge of a tap spell might be something you want to avoid as a GM, unless you actually liked the Griffin Island incarnation of Halcyon var Enkorth. I wonder why Revenants aren't part of the genus Homo inanitas, like vivamorti, delectii or esurientem in the Bestiary. Did we ever get to see Mark Rein.Hagen's essay on vampires in Glorantha from the Guide to Glorantha kickstarter?

Defectives in general are fairly clear, but I was referring to this specific litter of defectives. Even though the longevity of the humans has been addressed, the kind of behavioral defect that led to the "parricide" has been described as something accrued over generations. Was the stock that friend of the protagonist worked on already that "infected"? Also, speaking of parricide - would that "stock" have been their own genetic info? Have people switched over to immortality because future generations would become anti-social?

I would speculate that the machines that can be found in the libraries are only interfaces to the real machine which is somewhere in the Godworld and/or the spell plane.

There are also the wooden causeways of Bronze and Iron Age Ireland and Central Europe which would preserve wagon ruts somewhat. Not quite applicable to Sun County, though.

"tends to be independent" doesn't mean there aren't guilds spanning several cities. Boldhome is one of the two cities with large enough Sartarite population to have guilds easily big enough to have wyters. Places like Swenstown and Wilmskirk may have at best two or three (master) practitioners of a single craft. Even with two journeymen and five apprentices each, and a marriage partner, some non-apprenticed children, and some dependent un-apprenticed siblings each these won't be enough to support a shrine. That makes it hard on journeymen who change masters a couple of times before finding a guild willing to let them take over a master's position, or more rarely to carve one out for themselves. They will carry the experience of various guilds, and keep a greater community alive. Having worked in several different cities might even be a requirement to become a master, even if you return to the place of your apprenticehood. In the case of redsmiths, there may be some guild members in nearby villages contributing to the guild. A good sized village like Garhound may well have a licenced journeyman redsmith or a quite poor and minor master providing for their short term needs.

RQ3 Sun County mentions the different axle lenght which makes the wheel ruts inside Sun County unsuitable for the standard Dragon Pass/Lunar wheel ruts. (p.9, under the heading of Trade) Do stone paved roads have standardized wheel ruts? I have seen a Celtic to Medieval dirt road in Bavaria cut through a hill slope extension in several separate man-made little valleys, but no trace of wheel ruts there. The main dirt road leading from Denmark towards the vicinity of Hamburg was about half a mile wide, except at the gate (or later gap) at Danneverk. A road paved in soft stone might well develop a more permanent impression of wheel ruts. (So does the ramp leading into my garage, tiled with s-shaped stones about 10 inch long. Those ruts are rather rounded in vertical profile, though, and a different axle length wouldn't be a problem.)

I don't think that's a requirement, either. A clan wyter has a connection to the children of the clan, probably after a formal presentation of the child to the clan and the wyter, but certainly without the infant sacrificing a point of POW. (A droplet of blood might be involved, though, or a piece of the umbilical, or...) But what exactly enables a wyter to target an individual as a member of its community?

In standard Sartarite cities like Jonstown or Wilmskirk, guilds take the role of clans and temples when it comes to land ownership inside the city walls. I suppose that New Pavis doesn't differ much in this regard, although the Pavis Cult with its Second Age traditions will have had its say. That's one reason why I am talking about omnibus guilds. Looking at Wilmskirk, which is known for its many crafters and artisans, it is quite likely that those crafters and artisans are organized in something resembling a clan with occupational "bloodlines", where the various occupation speciality groups contribute to a guild ring which then fields a guild master (lika that Flatnose guy from Sartar High Council) for the city ring (or in that case, even the city rex aka mayor). Which means that Brygga Scissortongue, as the mayor, would have the Orlanth Rex cult behind her (at least when the Lunars don't suppress it). Guild may be another of these terms which have several definitions, depending on context, similar to tribes and subtribes. One definition could be "an organization which holds land in a Sartarite-chartered city". Such an organization certainly has enough members or followers to warrant a wyter. It may constitute of a number of different specializations or even non-related crafts. One definition could be "an organization which collects and teaches specific artisanal skills, spread out over a number of cities". The Swordmasters may be an adjunct to the local, regional or "national" (supra-tribal, e.g. Sartarite) temple of Humakt, and the Horsemasters an adjunct to Elmal (which Monrogh may or may not have carried over to Yelmalio, but certainly not to the Zola Fel Valley Sun Dome Temple which doesn't really have horses). Not every craftsman will be part of the Sartarite mother guilds - I would imagine that a majority of the tanners in Pavis have a Beast Nomad background. Same with butchers and other such nomad-adjacent skills. Question is, are they (forced to be) members of the local guild? People who don't identify as full initiates of a craft-associated cult can (and usually will) be active and quite permanent lay worshipers of those cults, and be eligible to be targeted by the wyter of that community. I'm on the record to have argued for some recognition of this lesser degree of inclusion into a cult or pantheon. Lay Member is different from Lay Worshiper - the latter can be on the spot, a one time participation, whereas Lay Member suggests a form of contribution which includes magical and quite likely also monetary sacrifice on a regular basis. In RQG's POW economy, demanding a POW sacrifice to join a wyter should at least be rewarded with a chance to regain POW from those worship services. (A similar argument can be done for Spirit Cult membership, or hero worship.) Or one can leave these POW donations and returns alone, and find some other measurable criterion for this increased form of belonging.

Do guilds work like clans (a local subset of people) or do they work as cults (people doing the same stuff as subgroups of distant communities)? "I am a member of the alchemist's guild" may make you welcome with other guild members in various places you visit. So, will a Pavisite alchemist be a member of the Pavisite Alchemist guild (in all likelihood way too small to form a wyter), or will that more be the Pavis chapter of the Kethaelan Guild of Alchemists, and associated to the local omnibus guild of tanners, dyers, perfumers and other businesses dealing with unpleasant substances?

How old is Tarndisi? Did she see the EWF and their draconic cult?

Without a blog post in your blog, I wasn't able to give you a like or a comment over there... Interesting story, with an interesting mix of tropes. The religious aspect might have profited from a little more attention. The reptids are a fairly fun take on that trope, though not feathered (as e.g. in the final volumes of Schlock Mercenary), closer to ILM's creations for Crichton's opus. The defectives are a bit of a mystery - are they the first generation of their specific experiment? But for the scope of a very short novella, enough ideas about the background crammed in. Interesting that you gave up on the cetaceans... Also, the society (or at least the protagonist) felt a bit like the Confederates.

Are they big enough to maintain one? And were they founded with one? Less populous guilds may act as adjuncts of an established temple - like the Knowledge Temple for a number of activities that require some measure of learning and literacy. Or adjacent trades unite into an omnibus guild to be able to maintain both a wyter and a scribe as their permanent secretary. An understrength community might lend magical support for their wyter from an established temple, making the wyter double as one of the temple spirits. I doubt that the swordmasters or horsemasters of Pavis have a local guild with a local wyter.

Without a priest, you need to interact on a more personal level. One way is the spirit cult route - a spirit cult may be a lot easier to establish. Graduating a spirit cult into a regular cult should be possible as the cult grows and takes on more "respectability". Getting acknowledgement by an established pantheon certainly helps - IMO that's why the cult of Pavis has been marrying into the Lunar Pantheon. Getting another nifty type of elemental to the arsenal is only a by-blow.