Joerg

Venom probably is the property of Hykim and Mikyh, as at least some types of draconic creatures and lots of animals have that trait. For mineral poisons, look at Mostal (a way to fight the excesses of Grower), for fungal poisons, Mee Vorala, for herbal pesticides (with pests including beins of the Man Rune), Aldrya. Poisonous Gas is a part of the Devil, and may be Wakboth's Storm heritage. But then Lodril/Veskarthen does emit poisonous vapors, too.

You seem to be confident that your players aren't going to read this, @Gallowglass

Given that @RosenMcStern is in the business of publishing a mecha game for his in-house game Revolution D100, I think this will be unlikely.

@jajagappa In Nochet, the Aeolians are a segregated population, though, and not mixed in with the Dragon Pass Heortlings (who live near Orlanth's Hill). But then, maybe the city temple is the Aeolian thing, whereas the traditional Orlanthi holy place is a hilltop near the settlement. A place that will be visited by the Aeolians, too, at the very least as lay worshipers. (There will be a feast... it's a basic part of sacrifice.) I don't know whether the cute idea of using baked bread images of beasts in the Aeolian services still is up to date (the HQ1 write-up can still be found in the Well of Daliath). While that would make an Aeolian service visit as nourishing as the traditional Heortling one, it might be somewhat less of a draw, except for worshipers of Chalana Arroy who get to be part of the communion. And I cannot say whether there is any similarity to Corinthians 1 28, either. (Just for dietary restrictions, I am not talking about the general idea of "church" here.)

While not Aeolian, Sir Narib's company is a Malkioni group that we know has a wyter for sorcerers. I think that indicates that Malkioni sorcerers create and use wyters, too..

The cycle of Moonbroth Oasis is (or has become?) that of the Red Moon, though, and not (or no longer?) the cycle of the tides. Whether the cycle was different in earlier ages might be found in old travelogues. IIRC Labrygon (Lorenkargatan) may have visited before he came to Pavis in the EWF era. If the cycle changed, that would have happened in 1247, without anyone literate likely to have been in the neighborhood of the oasis. If the cycle was weekly before, why would anyone have tied that to the moon?

Or a sorcerer with access to moonstone from the Blue Moon fallout and a rare spell. Or an artifact from a giant's cradle.

I don't know whether you can just send a pet spirit or five to battle down a human and then cast Control Human. Of course, the human (or other embodied entity) would be unconscious for longer than the spell duration, so unless you are a shaman able to maintain a spirit magic spell indefinitely, there is no point in this kind of spell, really. The only magics in RQG that allow some form of control over humans or similar sentients are sorcery (Dominate Human), rune magic (e.g. Command Priests) or dominant possession by a spirit able to coordinate the anatomy of the victim. The Harmonize ability of Jack o'Bears is a lesser form of control. From a GM perspective, how much control should an NPC be able to get over a PC, and vice versa? This is an invitation to abuse others, or to instill some body horror on the player character victim (and potentially the player, triggering some personal fears).

You are missing the Loper people and their descendants in Teshnos, and probably countless coastal fisherfolk, whether Maslo or Kethaela, or the East Isles. Then there are the Elder Giants, who trace their ancestry to Annilla. As a goddess of secrets, it isn't that strange that her worship isn't that well known. Summoning Lunar elementals is a lot harder than summoning the ones from the five elements, as you need moon rock (or some other moon substance?) to manifest them. The Blue Moon left some fall-out, most of it next to Thunder Delta, but there's also a significant chunk in Fronela. For the Red Moon, the stuff is rarer as its worshipers need to visit the body of their goddess and take some of that back down to where it came from (although the Crater Makers might be spreading some in their battles).

Are you talking about some random demonic encounter with strong Lunar ties, or are you talking about one of the entities summoned (or constructed, as Duel at Dangerford) by Lunar magicians and possibly gone feral? The most famous of such entities was the Watchdog of Corflu which had been released into some temporary freedom of control when sent against the White Bull host in 1624. Things may accumulate in pools of moonlight, or they may creep into an otherwise innocent natural being, warping it into something dangerous, and possibly tainted with Chaos. That taint may be something like the Telmori taint, or it may be something aggressively infectious. Think Princess Mononoke.

Dwarven steampunk, anyone?

You are correct in that a recent convert or someone just dipping a toe into the setting cannot be expected to put down 300 bucks for a first attempt. There has to be some form of strongly reduced package available. But then, you don't need the long cult write-ups to start to play. They sure are nice to have and they help you round out your character and the setting a lot better, but with a little rough edges and the bare-bones information in the (already not cheap) RQG basic book you are set up as a GM. The alternative you are suggesting here is the step onto the spiral of splat-books. New spells, new skills... The pdf option can make dipping your toe hurt a lot less, financially. You can upgrade to dead aldryami for your full immersion sensory input later when you have found out that a life without these books will be absolutely meaningless. For physical copies, this is correct. For electronic publications, the additional artwork is the only real overhead, and a certain artwork recycling from one cover (disturbed by whichever text and logos you need to place there) to interior artwork is not unheard-of. Having a great range of nice artwork for illustrative purposes is a good thing. And it may lead to a weapon-permit-required coffee table collection of Gloranthan artwork in the future to accompany the Guide hardcovers. Ideally with making-of, art direction, and the narratives depicted. Who wouldn't like to have such a book?

You'd have to discorporate first, so go find a techno-shaman to get you into the VR.

I took that into consideration, but have you heard about uz funerary feasts? The bandages and ointments would be treated as a form of breadcrumb coating and condiment.

I love how Prince Orontes makes a brilliant return to the spotlight. That may be worth forgetting about my plans to have him sent to Refuge in 1620, along with five Yanafali rune lord guards, earning the name of Prince Kitty-Cat while presiding over a lot of bad things, including the Wind Stop. Great job on the poetry, as usual. Also thank you very much for providing the rumors about Moirades still having a hand in the affairs of Tarsh. Much appreciated. Now how would you suggest to play this if in your game Fazzur's betrayal occurred on the evening before the Battle against Kallyr in 1625, as per canon?

Except that Darksense doesn't work with sound going through the medium air, but with "sound" going through elemental Darkness. Absence of Cold would modify the quality of Darkness that resonates with Darksense, so possibly yes. (Did Glorantha predict Dark Matter all those years ago?) From my experience, molten lead or pewter doesn't really radiate that much heat, but boy does it interact with surfaces upon longer exposure. But then, IMO Zorak Zoran stole fire, the whole combo. The power of Death (to the Underworld). Yelmalio barely managed to hold on to a pale light, and whatever heat he might have had was lost in his contest with Inora.

I fear I was not clear. In 2019, Sandy held another seminar starting as "Forgotten Secrets" at Kraken, but about halfway through it became a series of industry anecdotes instead. Before it came to that, however, Sandy had a go at the flipchart and sketched out the interior of Dorastor as we know it from the Guide or Dorastor: Land of Doom, and then drew another line for the Ralian flanks of the Rockwoods, and revealed a very large area between the slopes visible from Nangtali Plateau and those visible from Karia. And that is a region which is in flux, or only of temporary reality, or whatever. No two passages across Kartolin Pass cross the same type of territory. Unless it's a trap.

So the Lunar empire has swing states, too?

So, to summarize, there is no "Egypt as a whole" parallel anywhere in Glorantha, where we like to imagine pyramids, charioteer armies, temple cities and navies all in one go, forgetting that those elements may have been spaced as far from one another as the most recent ones are away from our time. Terry Pratchett summed up all those anachronistic elements when he had the Djelibeybians (the original pyramid builder culture on his Diskworld) judge their Tsortean imitators for their mish-mash of historical periods. One difference between Mesopotamia and the Nile Valley that was pointed out to me quite recently is that the network of canals and river arms in the lower Euphrates and Tigris valley made it pretty much impossible for a single city state to control all the water-borne traffic, which is why there was rarely a unified empire in Mesopotamia. While the Nile Delta offered more than one possible route, too, much of the Nile Valley was pretty narrow and easy to control for upper Egypt. In that regard, Dara Happa is mainly operating on a single waterway, and only Suvaria/Darjjiin comes with a network of inter-connected waterways. The Poralistor system was controlled by the riverine Waertagi, and the lower Arcos held Kestinliddi civilization together despite the neighboring bird or horse riders. The canal connecting the metropolis of Glamour to the Oslir River may be the most work-intensive artificial waterway in Glorantha, as it doesn't seem to have much of a natural current. That would mean that the Empire would be dredging that canal almost constantly, piling up mud which may be quite fertile if it serves as the main cloaca for Glamour. One major difference between Dara Happa and Egypt is the agriculture. Dara Happa grows rice in paddies, rather than wheat on fields that are allowed to fall dry after the seasonal floodings and only occasionally watered. While the grasslands can be used for wheat or oats cultivation, rather few of those are supplied with irrigation infrastructure. (Which incidentally kept the damage Sheng's re-purposing of dry farming areas for grassland on a local level rather than making it a wide-spread disaster. Sheng's henchmen had little interest to let their horses gain hoof rot among the rice paddies.) As for smooth-surface pyramids, these were only really built by the fourth to sixth dynasty, with a few imitations in the eighth dynasty. You'd have to go south to the Kushites for the continuation of pyramid construction. But then, the Dara Happan dynasties never practiced body burials, they went for cremation or exposure to birds. I think that Alkoth has bone houses, but Dara Happan nobility expects highly efficient cremation with at best small amounts of ash remaining for reverent disposal. There is no cult of the mummy in Dara Happa, and no requirement of an intact dead body for a functional rebirth anywhere in Glorantha except where atheist wizards are supposed to resurrect fresh dead bodies. Esrolian female burials come closest to this cult of the mummy. Which creates some problems, as their climate is really too humid for dry mummification. Bog mummification might work a lot better in their climate, but bog mummies are hard to build mausoleums for. The Nochet necropolis may have a better rainwater drainage system than the parts of the city inhabited by their descendants. The Necropolis in upriver central Esrolia doesn't have these problems - it is a place without life, possibly strong enough to halt even (biological, i.e. Darkness-being) decay. The use of the term "sarcophage" in Egyptian context is pretty much a mis-nomer, as the Greek word translates as "Flesh-Eater", a burial device that leaves only the bones of the dead body behind, the flesh presumably eaten by the container. The idea would have horrified the ancient Egyptians. The closest parallel for the Egyptian cult of the Godking as guide for the dead that I could find is in Kralorela, where the Emperor serves as the divine being conveying the waiting masses from the waiting place to their afterlife or to transcendence. The rest of Glorantha has way too direct contact to the non-manifest deities (i.e. without demigod avatars) who maintain the rebirth process. Maybe there are more Egyptian things to be found in Kralorela?

Sorry, but no - this book is a colection of the 2015 relevations, but this talk about the Dorastor map was held only in 2019.

Disclaimer: I have always been fascinated by the Zebra Tribe of Pavis. Joraz Khyrem is one of my personal heroes in Glorantha, along with Jorganos, Heort, Hendrik, Sartar, Sarotar and Tarkalor. And in the 1997 freeform People of Pavis I got to play Cyrilius Harmonius, the Daughter of Pavis stationed at Zebra Fort and spokesman for the zebra breeders in the cult (and a mason). Weird, my pdf has the game stats on p.156 of the bestiary. Note that p.157 gives more info, though. First mention ever of the zebra riders was in Nomad Gods (where they appear as the Pavis Survivors), but little detail is given about their mounts. The RQ2 rules mention the zebra (RQ Classic p.93), but don't discern between cavalry zebras and war zebras yet, either: Likewise, there is an astonishing number of zebra-riding rune levels in Runemasters, including a troll priestess of Kyger Litor (! Borderlands & Beyond, p.290-291) and a dark troll priest of Zorak Zoran, and last not least a "Female Dryad, Old Pavis rich noble with light cavalry experience. Age 28." (p.296) but no data on whether they ride war zebras or cavalry zebras. (At closer inspection, this mention of allied spirits in zebras appears to be a cut and paste error in Runemasters, as every rune priest appears to have one. Even funnier is "Rohir Oaklimb, Elf Human, A Sartar peasant." But still, it is amusing.) Starting with Pavis and Big Rubble, p.61-62, repeated verbatim in Pavis: Gateway to Adventure, p.42-43, but only truncated the boxed text in the RQG Bestiary, p.157, missing this bit: Anaxial's Roster only mentions the War Zebras ("Kyremings") and wild zebras. The RQG rules mention the striped equines a few times: Harmast's zebras in RQG (p.88) are described as "riding zebras", evading the classification. "Stats are not needed." Riding a zebra is the same skill as riding a horse, and the price tables know zebras in four categories: Meat (15L), Riding (70L), Cavalry (140L) and War (210L), without going into details whether the first two categories can breed or not, and whether the cavalry zebra is an infertile crossbreed or a semi-trained fertile war zebra. The meat zebra is a bit of a mystery here - probably a beast captured by other Praxian tribes in raids and no longer fit for riding or carrying burdens.

The cavalry zebra crossbreeds are officially infertile. There will be zebra folk riding with the Pol Joni, though, as breeding cavalry zebras is a lot easier among their horse herds than it is elsewhere in Prax, with the possible exception of Zebra Fort and the pens in Zebraside. There, the brood mares might be camouflaged with stripes, possibly from selective branding. See the earlier thread on Bronze Age branding of livestock... That makes the camouflage I suggested above somewhat easier. Given Harmast's zebras and Vasana's bison, I don't think that Sartarites would be picky about the coloration of their horses or sable antelopes.

Some few (near-) Goldeneyes from the Grazer clans that joined Derek, lots of Sered and a lot fewer Galana breeds otherwise. Derek was a companion of Yanasdros, King of Tarsh and most of Dragon Pass, and Yanasdros helped Derek raid the Opili Nation of Pentans (that's where he got the magical bull to sire the Pol Joni cattle herds adapted to the Chaparral) in recognition for Derek's aid in getting Yanasdros his Goldeneye steed. I doubt that any Pol Joni own Darons, or that Darons would be able to thrive away from oats and other agriculture-based fodder. When Dorasar set off to found New Pavis, he recruited Olgkarth's zebra folk from among the Pol Joni. The original war zebra breed of Joraz Khyrem would have been Pentan sered or hyal breeds brought by the Pure Horse Folk.

There is the city of the free in Fonrit, Jokotu, named after the Garangordite who took on the role of Bolongo and who ascended his brother through murder. Everybody who makes it there is eligible for citizenship and is no longer considered a slave. The leader of the Renewed Energastor movement hobbles through the land preaching a message of peace, fertility and liberation for the descendants of the Renewed. Now the Renewed still adhere to the slavocracy model of Fonrit, they just refrain from the worst excesses against their slaves as do the Oldsters. The Oldsters claim that brutally suppressing the slaves is what confirms the order of things and what thereby preserves the world. They are worried about the more lenient ways of the Renewed, and they are frightened about the power of Jokotu and whatever Veldang demons might be awakened. The events outlined in The Hero Wars Begin on p.562 justify those fears.

Clearwine is pretty much a cul-de-sac connected to the royal highway from Duck Point to Wilmskirk. North of it lie the Annmagarn lands and the Colymar Wilds which are meant to remain outside of civilization and urban culture - that's an ancient and powerful pact of this weirdo tribe. There a less direct route through the Antorling clan lands, which also has a secondary route through the Quivin Mountains towards Boldhome. Clearwine produces the beverage that gave it its commonly used name. That's its main claim to economic fame, as most of the agricultural production of the clans goes into their own needs, with only some surplus funneled off to the authorities. You don't really want to export grain by road, although you do deliver some by road to the nearest cities. Other than their own major settlements, in case of the southern Colymar lands, that would be Wilmskirk, in case of the northern Colymar lands this would be Jonstown, either able to transship goods to the capital. Clearwine might have a few crafters of local renown, but those would be overshadowed by the guilds in Wilmskirk and Boldhome. The main source of Colymar wealth is the size of the tribe, and its military and magical power. So what could be Sora's motivation? Other than respecting Leika as a leader in the past decade in Broyan's service. The Colymar are affluent, which means that their queen will be generous to her retainers. An Issaries trader is not just a simple pusher of wares, she is also a herald and diplomat, and handling wealth in connection to weregeld and political donations, both incoming and outgoing. This sort of trade on behalf of the most powerful tribal queen in the country is a source of high prestige, and a good portion of wealth trickling down to the honest merchant handling this. Sora is profiting from her position among Leika's followers, and already did profit before Leika was re-installed as queen of her tribe.