Joerg

I don't think so - the myth behind this spell is most likely the Four Magical Weapons myth, with Huraya's Scarf of Mist being the "weapon" activated by this spell. This doesn't hide you on a clear day, or in a big room, but it will be quite effective in an evironment that already is fogged up or inside of low-hanging clouds. You need dark spaces for Darkwalk (the Sandals of Darkness spell) to be efficient. You need misty spaces for the Scarf of Mist to do more than tp make aimed shots impossible.

Don't use those, they are part of the Aldryami reforestation conspiracy. And in Prax, that means Redwood trees springing to adult size over night...

I guess the US legal opinion matters because rpgs are mainly a US market business. If you are operating in/from a different country, it might be worth it to check the local laws and jurisdiction, too. There are legal systems that rely first and foremost on what the Legislative puts out and takes case by case decisions of the Judicative only as supporting guidelines.

Does the article say which author's Culbrea tribe this was? I have first seen the Gwandor in Ingo Tschinke's (and friends') version of Jonstown, but I think that the Culbri first came to my attention as part of Martin Laurie's Gwandor saga.

Lots of trading opportunities in Sun County then. Whale vomit, skunk essence...

If a Sartarite chieftain can have Yelmite Grazer scum among his weaponthanes, there is little to stop them from keeping proven companions from the Lunar occupation who acted as interlocutors then on their retainer. Maybe no longer in the seat of honor. I don't think that there is any wide-spread fear of illuminates being present among the clans. And with Argrath's Magical Union, those illuminates could be our illuminates. Lunars will be measured against their behavior during the Occupation. I doubt that Char Un survivors are likely to be integrated into any party, except perhaps among Pol Joni (who have a tradition of taking in mounted outlaws of dubious provenance) or some progressive traditionalist Grazer chief, and an asshole Dara Happan bureaucrat/cleptocrat like Jotoran Longsword won't find many who would vouch for him. Fazzur was quite ruthless, and there are numerous communities that bear a more personal grudge against him, first and foremost the durulz and the kin of Hofstaring, but many will remember him as a hard but usually fair governor who rarely was petty like the Assiday ones (Euglyptus and Tatius). My occupation stories had reasonable (Sairdite, Tarshite) and asshole (Dara Happan) occupation forces, with some fraternizing done by those of Theyalan background and ruthless exploitation and enslavement by those from stratified cultures. Gbaji has been overcome longer ago than the Mongol Khakhans have left Europe and the Islamic World alone. Lunar Chaos in Sartar so far is mainly their Crimson Bat, and that special Hell that Hofstaring shares with Sheng, plus the unspeakable sacrifices at the new Lunar Temple that became dragon fodder. The Lunars had no need to hide behind illuminated agents, as they had plenty willing collaborators from among the natives. If anyone was suspect, it was Blackmor.

Who is going to raid, and in what degree of escalation? Tusk Riders or trolls are bad news for the captives. Ransoming those back will be hard. Dragonewts are extremely problematic, too, although they will more likely take beasts than people. Wolf Pirates do take ransoms, but contacting them on Threestep Isles takes some time. Praxians are easier. Sartarite outlaws will do the hostage game, for short term gains, if they don't mean to stay in the vicinity. So will stray remnant Lunar survivors taking their time fighting their way back to their units or just fighting for continued survival. The neighboring clan will avoid to slay people unless there is already a huge amount of due weregeld between the clans. Looking forward to that. And no, I wasn't upset at all - I just had a similar discussion about a topic I am about to tackle.

Welcome in the shark tank! You've chosen a heavily loaded topic for your debut. Talking about slavery from the point of view of the slave-hunter or slave trader is quite uncomfortable for a big subset of this community. Nevertheless, slavery in all shades is part of the setting, and like with Cults of Terror, even if these slavers are only used as antagonists, one may want to have an idea how they rationalize their business. And business it is, unless you are just rounding up sacrifices for unspeakable rites like feeding the Crimson Bat or the Ivory Plinth, or sending military to Delecti's Tower. Depiction of children as victims of slavery, torture or undeath has always elicited very mixed reactions. The Wildling naval evacuation scene in Game of Thrones has one previously badass Wildling mother/fighter weep helplessly as she is shred to pieces by undead (enslaved, too) children, which did cause some upset. In normal raids, the main settlement where most of the young and most of the infirm elders are to be expected rarely is the target for a neighborhood raid. Any attack on those is an escalation that would only occur in the later stage of a feud bent on mutual destruction. Isolated steads and smaller hamlets are at a greater risk, but most raiding will aim at herds and herdsmen, or isolated steads. If your clan does keep thralls, you'll be looking for people who can actually do work, rather than take along people who cause work. That means your slave-catchers have little interest in children under the age of 8 or old and handicapped people (unless they have easily identifiable valuable skills). Slave-catchers from outside of your culture (i.e. not bound to your systems of weregeld like Fonritians, Lunars, Praxians or Wolf Pirates in Orlanthi lands) may not hesitate to slay or helplessly abandon any unprofitable victim, with the possible exception of infants that keep their mothers available as wet-nurses. They will know and use ransom, as people to be ransomed back by their kin often bring a better price and are easier to maintain. They will still have to work for their upkeep in some way, if only serving as a source of entertainment for their captors in case of high status people with little practical skill the captors want to see put into action. Ransom prisoners are similar to the political hostages, but don't get that amount of acculturation and indoctrination that the political cases get. Once someone has spent resources other than outfitting a slave-catching raid (which usually yields some plunder to pay for its initial investment), a slave has become a commodity subject to economical considerations. Child slaves taken in a raid can be put to simple manual labor - Sartarite children taken by Praxians will be tasked with gathering dung for the campfires, sent to take away offal, and do other dirty or low status work that doesn't require any expertise. Slaves may be commanded into sexual services, or permanently prevented from participating in such, but most Gloranthan cultures have taboos against sex with underage children. Some solve those by providing coming of age rites for slave children just old enough. Those rites may have little compassion and may include some mutilation, but then so do many coming of age rites for their owners as well (circumcision is such a rite in the real world, and there are other, less permanent initiatory tortures that prepare the way from childhood to adulthood). Once declared adult, former child slaves become eligible for the same demands that adult slaves have to suffer. It depends on the culture whether the status as slave is given to children born of female slaves or not, usually regardless of who fathered the children. Praxians and Pentans accept children born to their camps as free, regardless of who was their mother, but that has the down side that most adult males that they take and keep as slaves may be castrated to make sure that they don't sire any future nomads. The acceptance of the Vendref as a self-replicating pool of unfree or semi-free walker population was a major struggle for the former Pure Horse Tribe of Prax and split off several clans refusing to follow the Feathered Horse Queen, preferring the leadership of Derek Pol Joni instead. (Another such group disappeared through Esrolia into more western lands.) The Beast Riders prey on beast riders from different tribes as slaves, or ransom them back. Those whose folk cannot ransom captives back often end up being sold away from Prax. Oasis folk appears to be treated differently - few (if any) will be taken along as walker slaves, as they are too valuable keeping the gardens at the Oases productive. While a Beast Rider clan remains in residence, the Oasis Folk are effectively included into the clan's slave force. I would guess that the average Oasis Folk people will have had about 60% beast riders among their male ancestors. There might be very few male Tada-shi lineages hidden among them. As the Beast Riders will have to move on when the pasture outside of the oasis has been grazed into exhaustion, children born to Oasis Folk women remain bound to the oasis, and few Beast Rider fathers will ever learn about their offspring, and even fewer will acknowledge any. The Zola Fel river folk are less protected in this regard. If caught away from the shelter of water, they are going to face the rest of their lives in ground man slavery, as few river folk have the means to ransom back captives from the Praxians. Newtling bachelors on the other hand appear to be unpopular as slaves for the Beast Riders - while they can cross the chaparral on accumulated reserves in their tails, they need to retreat into wetlands regularly to remain healthy and active. Sartarites in Praxian captivity usually depend on their kin to ransom them, but if the ransom is too low, they will face permanent slavery in the chaparral - assuming that they manage to stay alive under those hard conditions with a sparse diet alien to them. The Covenant puts a rather diffuse but harsh limit on how many malnourished extra eaters the herds (mainly the ones raided from other tribes) can support. Too many grounder slaves are a liability, but luckily they can be traded away. Fonritian slavery is an offshoot of the Malkioni caste system as introduced and practiced by the Vadeli, then adopted by the Garangordites. They are in the business of breeding slaves. The Lunars have introduced a huge population of foreign slaves into the tiered Dara Happan society which already had unfree by birth tiers of population, I think that they breed slaves, too. Agriculture has many unpleasant jobs already children can perform, similar to the cotton plantations of the lower Mississippi, and apparently the sugarcane farming in the Caribbean made this economic model of exploitation feasible and preferable over the African slave imports, too. They would have worked with enslaved natives, but most of the natives went into extinction as victims of the new epidemics brought by their conquerors. Dara Happa appears to have had a constant import of slaves from e.g. the upper Arcos valley, which suggests that their slave population was regularly depleted by exhaustion and lack of procreation, even with the low tiers of Dara Happan population regularly selling off their supernumerary semi-free children out of toddler-hood into full slavery. The RQG annual economics rules show how bleak the chances of unfree offspring are in years of bad harvests or similar calamities, even in places like Esrolia. Kitori and Lunars used to take child slaves from the Heortlings - the Kitori in penalty tribute, the Lunars similarly as penalty for rebellion or tax evasion. Lowland Tarsh, Lowland Saird and Sylila probably practice hereditary slavery in their plantations, much like the Esrolians. It isn't quite clear whether certain neighboring cultures outside of Dara Happa or the Pentans sell supernumerary children (or young adults) into slavery "by their own choice" or as tribute rather than being subject to slave-catching raids. Selling such former kin not only earns a reprieve from oppression but might actually help feed or clothe the rest of the family. Most Heortlings will keep slaves. Only the Hendriki-descended clans in Sartar and Heortland won't. I wonder whether the Vendref keep slaves - some of them have become quite affluent and would be able to purchase them, but do their Grazer overlords allow this? Among those Heortlings who keep slaves, how many will have traditions of selling some of their kin into slavery? The Shadow Tribute and its expansion as Arkat's Command had this provision as a penalty, with the added penalty that these slaves had to be from the noble bloodlines, and the lack of certainty that these slaves wouldn't end up eaten by trolls. But are there any traditions of (elected) chiefs designating formerly free members of their clan for slavery just for economic advantage? The autocratic Esrolian grandmothers have that power. A Lunarized or Solar clan chief might have, too.

Your character may have the ultimate hand-eye coordination and be able to play the harp, juggle with lab equipment while handling skin contact venoms, and he still may lack a sense of balance required for tap-dancing. Mine on the other hand is a teacher for tap dance who has put his entire career effort into mastering this one, narrow skill. He may not be the ultimate performer, but he may be an instructor who knows exactly how to learn this the hard way. Raw talent only brings you so far without serious and systematic effort, and may actually stand in the way of systematic effort as your character will have studied his own way which works up to a limit but then leaves no room for improvement.

Yeah, that... we stopped doing that after we were approached to contribute to the recycling of plastic packaging. Nowadays we use spider silk, from the depths of our dungeons... I fear that's unavoidable - it is very hard to record this without us hearing each other speak. And we aren't ready in any shape or form to do this as a live stream, yet. Who was that huckster who took your copper? Looks like I need a sharp stick and a lariat, now.

Old Pavis has quite a lot of influences that may not have been that evident - in People of Pavis (the 1997 freeform at Tentacles convention) I have seen Fleeter Nemm played as if he was a Sartarite, much to the chagrin of my Cyrilius Harmonius. Those were some heated sessions among the daughters (and son) of Pavis. Without consulting any sources, I would think that the city under the Arrowsmith Dynasty had a significant portion of Heortling ancestry from Orlanthland/the EWF (and likely not the most fanatic dragonfriends), possibly 35-50% of the population, with Zebra Folk (former Pure Horse folk) contributing 20-35%, Zola Fel River Folk, Oasis Folk, un-converted Pure Horse Folk and "God Learners" (people from anywhere in the Middle Sea Empire) being sizable minorities, and even back then Praxians who had become rootless, or who were part of the slave population that the Zebra Folk (as descendants of the Pure Horse People) would definitely have kept, and many of the Heortlings, too. Then there would have been Sairdite Sun Domers, and of course the Elder Races. I'll have a closer look at the historical maps of the Rubble in Pavis GTA to see whether there are any indications of other significant presences. There will have been some mixing of backgrounds as well as certain groups maintaining an ethnic purity. I'll try to detail a few of these as different motivations for the interested parties and rivalries, and the kind of heroquest they would like to derive from the hints in the Rubble. Praxians inside the city would have been the equivalent of Lunar collaborators in occupied Sartar to their fellow people of the Covenant. Still, Praxians and Pure Horse Folk fought side by side against Gerak Kag's troll invasion, failing to prevent the troll occupation. Neither side did that for the benefit of the surviving clan centers inside the Rubble. The period of the Seventeen Foes of Waha will have seen some exchange of enslaved captives, too, and possibly ensuing mixture of bloodlines. So while there won't have been any Eirithan beasts in the city of Old Pavis other than for the barbecue or stew pot, there is a possibility for Praxians unaffiliated with such beasts to have shared the walls, or some ancestry with the old families.

This is starting to feel a bit like the"buy in your scenario feature" mechanism in FATE... I'll see whether I can manage to integrate the Cannibal Cult. Any other things I should weave into this? I'm still trying to make this usable both under Lunar and under Argrath's sovereignty. But keep in mind that the Old Pavisites had to eat whatever there was to be eaten during the Troll Occupation. While I don't think that they did outright cannibalism - some may have, as many Heortling ancestors may have during the Greater Darkness, and a few possibly even during the Windstop - I can see some desperate families harvesting bluebottle maggots from their dead. I wonder whether some of those posh old Pavisites (those with zebra fur on the trims of their robes) serve at family festivals or ancestral rites. "Grandma has that killer curry recipe - rubble runner in fermented beetle sauce." (And that's one of the harmless dishes.) Granted, it has been more than 85 years since the troll seal of the Rubble was broken by the Dragonewts Dream event, but some customs take more than three or four generations to disappear, and some never do.

Darksense doesn't use sound as in pressure waves in the air, it uses oscillations in the medium Darkness. Some of the sharp and well-defined wave patterns inside the oscillating Darkness may cause a weaker sound echo, but per se Darksense has nothing to do with hearing. A troll could be deafened but would still be able to darksense well, IMO. Darkwalk makes it impossible to detect a person using it via Darksense, which I take to mean that there is no jamming of Darksense (which could be easily located) but rather a transparency to that sense. The sound muffling effect might be similar to the sound generation that accompanies the use of Darksense.

If an orthodox Malkioni wizard (or sorcerer) acts as the chief priest of the wyter, the wyter POW won't be used to fuel rune magic on a one-use-but-add-1-point-to-affect-five-more-community-members basis, but I suppose a similar Multispell effect might be available to provide (potentially long-lasting) sorcerous blessings to several community members at once, for reduced cost. Alternatively, the wyter might offer a boost to the manipulation volume of the sorcerer beyond personal Free INT. In that way a minimally competent sorcerer (INT 14 or 15) might be able to produce fairly hefty spells without inscribing. That boost might be similar to that from a live crystal, and might cost the wyter MP or more. Orthodox Malkioni worship services allow the sorcerers to "tap" into the stream of magic points offered in veneration of the Invisible God (or whichever highest entity is involved in the rite).

Did we (or, as I was going first, I) fumble our (my) presentation? I'll try to expand and clarify my idea about these old Pavisite families, their interest in artifacts from their zebra and pure horse ancestry and possible rites from the Second Age on the blog of windwords.fm as a cameo. In any case, thanks for the feedback. Thanks! For the time being, you'll have to use episodes one and two on repeat to reach 24 hours, but we are working on our next installment. Everybody - we have a segment at the end of our podcasts where we read emails or other forms of messages that we received as letters. Those could be yours. You can use this thread (or elsewhere on this forum, or an email to tribe@windwords.fm ) to drop us a message. We won't use anything from this thread without your explicit agreement. So if you don't mind being mentioned in the podcast, let us know.

It sits proudly in the White Bear and Red Moon rules, p.47 (in glorious red letters on top of brown ink map on mostly white paper). (I guess Rick might be able to tell what edition my copy of the rules is from with these details... I only ever got the rule booklet, at Tentacles 98, and had it signed by Greg there and then.)

Over on rpg.net, I came across this post: https://forum.rpg.net/index.php?threads/fun-ive-been-drawing-monsters-write-them-up-in-your-game-of-choice.861321/ The first one probably has been outdone by the Black Eater of the Gods War kickstarter, but the others look like what you might find in the underbellies of many a setting.

As long as he doesn't bring a lariat... won't work on this beast. Seriously, there are quite a few notes that I didn't have time to touch onto in the podcast, that may form the kernel of some extra content.

There is no official RQG data for the Esvulari. There are numerous unofficial attempts to describe the Aeolians, starting with my own attempt from around 1994 for RQ3 (should be in the list archives att glorantha.steff.in) and David Hall's take on them for the How The West Was One freeform of 1994. The latest published rules stuff on them is the HQ1 link above. Jeff has given a few sneak peeks on how they work now, and at least to me the questions you and I asked still are waiting to get a definitive answer. But then, a series of Holy Country supplements is in the works, and the Aeolians are in close contact with God Forgot, so maybe MOB's project may shed some twilight on this. Yes, as you mention the lot of variations and allow for grey space in between. LM sorcery may be prohibited for non-Zzaburi Aeolians, or it may be a way for the other two castes to access it. Possibly both views are present in the Aeolian communities, possibly with whichever view predominant in rural parts of Esvular given opposition by the Nochet population. The small Wilmskirk contingent might be viewed as heretics by many of the other Aeolians. There is an urban diaspora in Heortling cities of Kethaela, possibly excluding Whitewall, where the Aeolians are a minority. Usually a thrifty and somewhat well-off minority. There are mixed communities with Heortlings and Aeolians as part of the same city or tribe. No idea whether there are mixed clans (other than urban guilds), though, and how the marriage restrictions for Aeolians can integrate into a Heortling clan, or Heortling egalitarianism into an Aeolian clan. All of these have great conflict and hence role-playing potential. Conflict in the sense of Robin Laws' Drama System, but nothing you couldn't model with two or three free passions for your RQG characters.

In that case, the way Hero Wars named the companions of an Orlanth devotee his four or six storms is one way to sneak supporting characters into a quest. "Let me be your sword/spear/shield/healing power, oh mighty hero!" And usually one test tailored for each of these companion roles, too. Those tests don't have to be dramatic. When Greg ran the Plundering of Aron at Tentacles some 16 years ago, or so, our group of Thunder Brother wanna-bees arrived at the Sivin Event, where aldryami ambush the party and the party is saved by the magic of Helamakt. I did play a Helamakt initiate, so I had my character step forward and say "I am Helamakt", and Greg took over describing the Sivin Feat, lightning and rainstorm that devastated the aldryami and their forest, didn't even let me roll for that, and just said, "that's what Helamakt does." Now if Greg had decided that rather than Aldryami, this ambush would have been gnomes attacking from below (the "heroquest surprise" that will alter one or several events away from your expectations), this feat would have had a much less certain outcome. There are heroquests where that have stations where in the original myth the quester is taking a loss or a wound - stations where your questers aren't expected to win. The myth about the Lightbringers has no story that Orlanth and his companions hack down their host, the Only Old One, and his retinue after Eurmal admits having killed the OOO's son. If you are playing a LBQ and your players decide for some reason that they won't be arrested here, so be it. The objective of the LBQ will most likely be lost, and lots of other consequences may grow from that. The supporters of the quest will suffer terrible backlashes, and Glorantha may be changed forever - at least locally.

That's very much a problem with the heroquests we know so far. While the protagonist in the heroquest (e.g. Orlanth vs. Aroka) may declare a number of companions to represent his weapons and items, taking on the role as part of the "Arming of ..." rite at the onset of that quest (for Aroka collecting the klanth, the sack of winds, probably the winds), these quests still remain very much a "one quester and their helpers" stuff rather than the Fellowship of the Ring. The Issaries/Lhankor Mhy (plus Urox) quest in King of Dragon Pass is a little closer to the concept of a party quest, and then there is the archetypal party quest, the Lightbringers' Quest (narrated, but not played out in King of Dragon Pass). The Seven Mothers Quest doesn't have a write-up, but would be a communal quest, too. There are two livestock raiding quests that have been written for unspecified numbers of questers - The Plundering of Aron, a joint venture of various Storm Brothers whose subcults were invented for Hero Wars (especially Finovan the Raider, Helamakt the Rainstorm and Desemborth the Thief), and the Red Cow Quest in The Coming Storm (for HeroQuest Glorantha). At the current state of publication, there are some sources like Heortling Mythology which gives you lots of myths of mythlets that could be quested, the quite arcane and obscure Arcane Lore which documents how Greg Stafford struggled with producing a working game system for heroquests, with a few more sample quests from early experiments, and the Hero Wars and HeroQuest material which has some info on questing, but not for RQ.

As with head-taking, cannibalism or non-consensual intercourse (like Vadrudi "wife-taking"), it takes a cultural context of condemnation to make these acts chaotic. The Praxians know Chaos from non-Chaos, and while they fear the evil of the Cannibal Cult, they know it is not Chaos, unlike the Parts of the Devil or other Praxian horrors. Bee or wasp venom isn't chaotic. Neither is a natural scorpion's sting, or a wyvern's, or a manticore's, or a sting-ray's. A spider's poison basically is a digestive enzyme that liquefies its victim alive, enabling the spider to slurp up all the nutrients in the victim's body. Not chaotic, but truly a survival mechanism from Hell. I even need to be convinced that the poison attack of a scorpionman is any more chaotic than its bite or strike. It is not like they inject their victims with a miasma that corrodes them from inside, turning them into chaotic slime (gorpstuff). Although a sting like that would be a neat chaos feature. A krarshtkid's Pratzim is an icky, sticky substance, not something inherently chaotic. The creatures secreting the stuff are racially chaotic and may have chaos features, but Pratzim isn't one of those.

The Aeolians are one of many special cases among henotheist Malkioni. They have a variant caste system (strictly endogamous, no soldier/horali caste, no men-of-all but armed and armored talars and militarized other castes) which differs strongly from any Malkioni norm (God Learner Hrestolism, Rokarism, Loskalmi Idealist Hrestolism). Whether there is a presence of Storm Voices and Wind Lords among the Aeolians, and of what caste, is what we are trying to determine here. Normally, in a Malkioni society all sacral and magical activities are handled by the Zzabur caste, a caste which the Aeolians have. We also know that not all members of the Aeolian Zzabur caste (which has been described as endogamous) have the mental acuity required to become a sorcerer under RQG rules. Which leaves quite a lot of Aeolian Zzabur caste members with jobs other than sorcerer. Are these individuals priests? Rune Lords, even? Or are members of the other castes full initiates, or perhaps even rune levels in their theist cults? Now, we know that zzabur caste (sorcerers) handle all the supernatural in Malkioni societies - including the interaction with spirits and lesser deities. The lesser ones are simply dominated, the more powerful ones usually are contacted and bargained with - not unlike what a shaman does, except that the shaman goes where the spirits are whereas the sorcerer calls in the spirits and deities into his summoning circle (which may be at a holy spot of one of these slightly greater entities). The very act of summoning is of course an offering of magic to that entity, not entirely different from a sacrifice. We don't have any suggestion in the rules what happens to the large amount of magic (magic points) expended in a worship service. The wyter is likely to drink to its fill, but with a POW of up to 30 for a small community (50-100) or up to 66 for a huge community (>15,000) there is no way that the wyter can take all of it for itself. But then, that is not the point of the worship/sacrifice - either the magic is sent onward to the deity whose worship involved that wyter, or it is transformed into a blessing (or blessings) for the community or specific community items or members. (That would also cover curses sent against enemies.) There are known sorcerous spells (the Tap spells, and a few Rune Spells like Absorption) that allow a sorcerer (or rune magician) to accumulate more MP than his POW can hold, for the duration of that spell. Wyters may have an innate ability to a similar effect, but I haven't seen anything to that effect.

1 Corinthians 8, I meant. No idea why my German language source gave that weird numbering, or where the 2 entered. Journey to Damascus, maybe

The Cult of Vivamort was dropped from Lords of Terror because the sorcery for that cult wasn't quite decided at the time of reprinting the rest of Cults of Terror, IIRC. The vampire in is the only instance of a Vampire being statted out in RQ3, if I remember correctly. In his case, forgetfulness was the reason for absence of such magic, again IIRC.