Joerg

Might the same Daka Fal shaman also summon another distant ancestor with the opposite claim? Each of these would have been composed of different bloodlines, as people joined or left clans (which appears to happen quite a few times if you look e.g. at the Antorlings or the Karandoli, each of which include nobility from the original Colymar lineage at some time), so of course their ancestors would have varied. But then, bloodlines splitting into different branches and in-law ancestors creeping in bringing different values might be another way for the clan ancestors to vary over the centuries. Which are? That's basically how a free household turns into a semi-free household? I have been wondering how the difference in successfully producing progeny between the haves and the have-nots refills the vacancies among the have-nots in Heortling society. Debt slavery of the cattle loan kind looks like it is inheritable, unlike personal slavery due to being captured and sold or similar reasons. There appear to be entire civilizations (both historical Real World as well as Gloranthan) where raising and then selling surplus children is an accepted way of life. A good portion of the African slaves shipped across the Atlantic had been sold by their own chieftains to neighboring tribes, and then sold on to traders with contacts to the European-American buyers, moving them from a culturally accepted and acceptable form of slavery into one outside of their cultural context. This is about equivalent to a Fonritian trader buying slaves with exotic appearance say in Nochet, Corflu or the Threestep Isles for the delectation of his Karreeshtan customers (the Afadjanni have a readier source of Orlanthi/Western descended slaves in Umathela).

But to get back to women (and other issues of gender) in Glorantha: there are four biological sexes or plumbing variations in Glorantha, male plumbing (yes/no) and female plumbing (yes/no), and where both answers are yes, there are people able to manifest one or the other plumbing at a time, and those who have both all the time. This sums up the sexes of Man-rune creatures. When it comes to gender, to expressing these sexual roles through behavior and culture, I wonder whether the Hsunchen make gender that important to their lifestyle. Women bear children, men don't, but do they have much of a sex-based difference in job descriptions otherwise? There will be an additional (and probably stronger) influence of sex-specific behavior in their animal totem to their specific cultures, which might re-inforce some stronger division of labor and behavior, making men more likely to be warriors as that often resembles their animal totems' mating behavior. Any thoughts on this?

Shapeshifting became something not natural at some Green Age moment. So did a lot of other breaks from ancestral unity - gender, cognition, you name it. According to the Hykimi, cognition is a minor difference between Man-people and Beast-people, and while the value of what can be done with hands and wit have is improved chances at survival, when they become essential to the Man-people, they lose (most of) their connection to the Beast people side. I'll only be approaching this from the western Genertelan Hsunchen approach, as each of the major groupings of Hsunchen has a whole bunch of common development behind them. The northwestern ones have Kachisti Logician influence (and quite a lot of that), the northeastern ones have been subsumed by the dragons (which may be unfair to those of Teshnos), and the southern ones share history with the Doraddi humans. They all share the division into sexes, unlike their ancestral entities who manifest as both as the myth requires, being fertile with their alternative sex when parenting both the Man-people and the Beast-people of their kind. Some of the shamanic traditions still have a sex-transition (biological rather than/in addition to behavioral one) when awakening to the Spirit World (awakening their fetch). IMO there is a significant Kachisti ancestry in most of the Serpent Beast Brotherhood Hsunchen of Western Genertela - to the Man-people, that is. The God of the Silver Feet really is an important ancestor to the Man-people, will they or nil they, and because that is the case, the natural beast transformation of their ancestors may have become lost. Or they may have mingled with the primitive Hill Barbarian animal totem pastoralists, many of whom with their Founders and Protectresses are not that distinguishable from Serpent Beast People. And there are Man-people who have the Goddesses of the Land in their ancestry. Twin kin of the Man-people of the Hsunchen, but touched by the pernicious influence of culture, valuing the material culture more than appropriate, and thus leaving that unity with their beast ancestry. Three cultivating influences played on the Hsunchen, and whenever two or more of these come together, borderline human cultures come into being, often manifesting as permanent temple cities. The Serpent Beast Brotherhood acknowledges some Earth ancestry, it seems, but retains a better connection to the Beast-people side of their existence than their more pastoralist or more urban neighbors. There are at least three major groups in the region of the western Hsunchen who have very similar origin - the Enerali, Enjoreli, and the Pendali. The Enjoreli and the Enerali share Kachisti, pastoralist Hill People and Earth people influences to make their cultures too different from the Serpent Beast folk to share in that beast transition magic. The Pendali of Old Seshnela lack the pastoralist influence, and still share in that beast transition of the Serpent Beast folk, but then I have the suspicion that their Basmoli ancestry is rather of recent Godtime arrival in Seshnela, predating that of Froalar and Neleos by few generations. (At least that's what I have been proposing for more than twenty years now, Search for discussions about the Pendali in the Glorantha archives. Read the voices of the people I am reacting to if you don't want to deal with my own wafflings. The discussions of 2010 were full of valuable insights, as a quick trip into this history showed me, and had some rare direct input from Greg on these topics.

Dwarf-made ones, for the most part. Sung dragonbone. Possibly bones of Umath after he was shattered in the ambush by Shargash from/in the Underworld.

Thanks, did so, but I really mean "sex" rather than "gender", as gender appears to be defined meaning behavior whereas sex means plumbing.

I posit that every non-octamonist dwarf colony will have the ability to smelt iron, and I suspect that they draw it out of dwindling remains of somewhat enlivened Stone. Belskan in Seshnela has a huge deposit of iron that somehow got transformed when there was less scarcity in that resource, and is sending it off into the world - quite likely as a dwarven plot to damage their ancient foes, aldryami and uz. Temperature only plays a role in casting the metal. Personally, I don't think that anybody but the mostali knows how to smelt metal (transmute the ores into the metal) by means of charcoal and fire (alone - there may be magics to separate metal out of sufficiently pure element, but they aren't chemistry). While humans are able to melt metal, and to alloy different metals, and even separate metals from one another, all of that applies to native metal mined as nuggets or actual pieces of godsbone. A (master) redsmith is a master of casting metal, and of hammering it further into shape and harden it thereby. Temperature (pyrotechology, mastery of fire) obviously plays a role in melting metal. (Keep in mind that melting metal means liquefying metal, while smelting metal means transforming the ore and extracting the resulting metal from all the other stuff like slag and ashes.) Human pyrotechnology is actually quite well developed, able to distil pitch, calcify chalk for whitewash and concrete, burn and glaze pottery, even melt minerals and salts into glass, or melt metals up to copper. It should not be sufficient to melt iron (in the sense of wrought iron - I don't think there is (extremely carbon-rich) cast iron or (quite carbon rich) crucible steel anywhere on Glorantha, or at least not outside of massive dwarf projects. No humans can melt metal, and IMO none can smelt it either. Luckily, for smithing iron, you don't have to melt it, and neither for smelting. You can work it by heating it up to a bright glow and then hammering it. You seem to be approaching this from the idea that godsbone metal and iron need to be melted to be worked by a bonesmith, and I think that the method for working iron is pretty identical to working godsbone without destroying the godsbone properties by melting (or even sintering) it away. So, as a bonesmith, working a bar of iron will be only slightly different from working a sufficiently sized piece of godsbone, and a master bonesmith would even be able to weld pieces of godsbone together, as an accomplished ironsmith would be able to weld pieces of iron into a rod (or model) that can be hammered (under heating) into the desired shapes. It would be possible to experiment with experience from smithing godsbone to hit upon the temperatures when iron can be worked by hammering. That's why I think that a bonesmith (which isn't necessarily the same as a redsmith) will not be unable to work with iron, and may be able to master it by gathering experience. Not iron tubes, I suppose - with brass (cast bronze) easily available, you can use it to produce high quality guns - from pistol and musket barrels all the way to Isidilian's Cannon Cult with its howitzers. It doesn't make sense to use iron where brass is performing equally well. I don't claim to be an expert either, although as a chemist by trade and diploma I am not that far remote from material science, plus I read up recently on blade metallurgy a lot. Your observations on metal are mostly in line with my impressions, although we differ in a few details. For instance, I don't think there is a qualitative difference between (wrought) Gloranthan iron and Gloranthan steel. That applies to casting metals, not to smithing them (by hammering). Historically, hammering native metal was the first method for metalworking, and remained so in many cultures for a long time. It took about two or three millennia to develop the first smelted metal. And then hammered the molten and cooled copper into shapes, rather than casting it. This is to say that mold-casting is a more advanced technology than hammering something into shape, but hammering something into shape is how you get tools out of native metal (aka pieces of godsbone) and out of iron - especially as one way to heat up an iron bar to smithing temperature is to bang on it with a hammer. Agreed to all of this, but you are overlooking "cold-hammering" and "hot-hammering", both useful methods for working copper just as much as for working iron - without melting the metal.

If you have the Gods War "miniature" of Cwim, I am convinced that Dick is the female body...

Failure to keep the trollkin under the thumb of the Hellmother will lead to uppity individuals who may imagine themselves as the equal to trolls. Look at Neep Troll-Killer, or those of his spawn who are available as supporting mercenaries to a certain bunch of cave dwellers. (The feet on the other hands are a well-behaved trollkin, obedient to their mistress.)

Point blank shots with a bow are not so much absurd as they are bloody hard. The arrow undulates in wild ways when leaving the rest, and you need lots of weird experience to compensate for that. Not impossible, but hard.

In order to wear a polar bear, uzhim you eat all of the drippy stuff that you don't want to lug about. If you leave the pelt on the cap, you can wrap it around you, creating a cosy blanket. Since polar bears are hard to find nowadays, most uzhim make do with baby seals for that nice white fur cover. Requires a little more sewing, but works just fine.

First, she needs to get the metal for these. Bronze and silver blades can be cast. Melting and casting metal is a common skill for redsmiths, as is the preparation/construction of casting moulds. Godsbones need to be hammered into shape. It might be possible to make an item out of layered hammered godsbones to get more metal for a larger item, but that ought to require a significantly higher level of proficience. Iron usually comes as scrap taken of defeated enemy rune lords, or as rods purchased from the mostali. The Third Eye Blue sorcerer smiths are experts in welding together iron scrap into smithable rods. Your average Gustbran smith might not be able to do so, or may lose quite a bit of the precious material during the process. So, how many skills do you need in RQ? Having three different smithing skills for the three different metals looks like skill inflation to me. But then there might be a smithing skill and a complementary metal lore skill (or name it somewhat differently so that it can have check-boxes), which might be resolved in the same roll. In HQG, I would make the forging of a significant sword an extended contest, with multiple stages to accumulate successes to determine the quality of the outcome. For RQG, I would like to see a similar sequence of success rolls, much like a combat requires a series of rolls. The smith would have to overcome certain obstacles on the way. I am open to suggestions how to handle this in RQG (or any other prolonged crafting effort). If it is about knowledge, pay an exorbitant fee to some Lhankor Mhy researchers or teachers, or offer them some of your services. Apprentice to an accomplished master smith who knows the techniques. Overcome his distrust of you, prove your loyalty, and he may let you in to his experiences. If possible, rinse and repeat with other masters. Learn the guild magics. Ritual magics, based off Enchant Metal or similar. The Kalevala has a (quite long) song of iron, a magical formula meant for both forging blades, and for healing damage done by iron blades. In a perfect Gloranthan system, this would be a guild magic, a ritual, that requires some regular sacrifice of magic points over its duration. Plenty, I suppose. Find a trickster companion, and steal the secret from any target you like - the Sword Story has plenty of cases where copies of Death were made and stolen. Stealing Death from Humakt may be a quest to learn the (basic) secrets of smithing iron. Obviously, the Humakt cult doesn't like this. A quest to steal from the Mostali is possible. Live with the consequences. Steal the secret from the Third Eye Blue. The consequences may be fewer, but that quest might be harder to learn. Or you could do the original Sword story myth, descend into the deepest Hell and take Death out of Subere's Vault. That's a philosophical question. Can you learn to forge the essence of Death without getting tainted by it? Drop some percentage into Mineral Lore, Alchemy, and of course smithing, and research. Possibly use the rules for researching a sorcery spell. These temples know the master smiths you may want to apprentice to. Overcome the distrust of the master. Fulfil some of his challenges and requirements. Share the pains with the rest of the party.

Working iron is different from working godsbone, which is different from working cast bronze. All of these involve pounding metal with a hammer, although cast (alloyed, or melted) bronze only gets a little hammering along the blade edges to make the metal a bit harder (but also a bit more brittle). Cast bronze blades can come with a ridge across the center of the blade, creating allmost a + -shaped diameter, allowing for somewhat longer blades and less risk of bending. Godsbone bronze comes with its natural growth lines which (at least in my Glorantha) work like layered (laminated) metal, giving the resulting blade greater tensile strength and making the brittle parts enclosed in way more ductile parts doesn't promote microfractures the way cast bronze does. I would give godsbone blades superior characteristics than for mass-produced alloyed bronze blades. In order to retain the layered structure of godsbone, some moderate heating of the blade in between the hammering is required. (IMG) Heating has to be done carefully - if the metal heats up to more than a barely perceptible dark reddish glow, the material starts to lose the growth ring structure and deteriorates into a cast bronze blade. There are smiths experimenting with coating rods of bronze with thin layers of tin, then dipping them into molten bronze, to imitate godsbone. At least aesthetically, blades hammered from such rods resemble godsbone blades. Some might also reach superior material properties. Working iron requires tempering the iron at way higher temperatures - heating the metal to a white glow that can only be handled with copper pliers/grippers/tongs (no idea which of these apply for smithing, sorry), bronze would melt upon contact. Bits of iron can be welded on to an existing rod, allowing the smith to layer on a little more material to make blades more durable. For making a blade out of silver, you need to temper the result. Silver rods are pretty soft and ductile, and can easily be hammered into the desired shape, but that softness makes unenchanted silver useless for the backbone of a blade. Godsbones of silver are a different kind of material (IMG) - harder, layered. It is possible to create short blades (say 5 inch) out of these without them bending even without enchanting the material. Enchanted silver uses the POW of the enchanters to stabilize the silver, resulting in blades that can cut most magical entities (unless they have very high armor ratings). Professional bladesmiths are able to fireplate bronze blades with silver, and exceptional ones will create runic inlays and coated blades on bronze and iron swords. There is no upper price limit for extraordinarily crafted blades, even if the material enhancement effects diminish. But runically inscribed blades may also respond better to magic - imagine a blade that gains 2 points of magical damage instead of 1 from a standard 1 point bladesharp spell. Possibly only for every fifth point of bladesharp, but still this would be a significant improvement. The best known cult for ironsmiths is Inginew, a hero or subcult of Humakt, but most cults have a few smiths they can contact for turning the iron their rune lords may acquire into weapons and armor, and who know to enchant the death metal. Gustbran smiths (the lowfire cult, possibly a subcult of a ruling deity, possibly of Veskarthan/Lodril, or an independent cult) know the hammering, might be able to learn the coating (although for this they need to cooperate with Lhankor Mhy metallurgists or alchemists knowledgeable about metals). Both LM and alchemists guilds might be able to provide the Enchantment rituals, but many war gods grant some enchant <metal>, too.

The uzhim used to use polar bear heads for caps, but somehow those beasts went extinct. Harrek is wearing the last (and first) of that kind now.

Troll snouts are quite spacious. Almost enough to warrant a saddle-cloth like covering. But I think sombreros will remain the go-to fashion for your dark traders.

That Ulerian again?

Yes, for all marriages with a certain formality. One question that needs to be answered here is "what makes a person a cultist"? The Lhankor Mhy proviso only to marry another worshiper of Lhankor Mhy basically is a demand that the marriage partner can read (and possibly write). Last time I looked, Fleeter Nemm was not an initiate of LM, though happily married to Broosta, an initiate of LM. As a priest of Pavis, he is certainly literate. The "must only marry an earth cultist" scheme that made Vega Goldbreath the former wife of her sister Penta's husband on the other hand is using the much harsher definition that your Light Son's marriage partner needs to be an initiate of Earth. There is sex and even parenthood outside of marriage, but marriage brings quite a few advantages, even temporary marriage, which is why most people bother. But then there are steady (and sexual) partnerships outside of marriage. Especially like Sacred Brotherhood among warriors. As no offspring is likely to come of such relationships (usually, but not even biological gender - male, neuter - can be a safeguard against pregnancy if sufficient ambient fertility is present during the act), there is much less third party oversight of this. Sharing bed and (war band) shield wall with a warrior from a feuding clan will still be frowned upon and might lead to its own variant of Romeo and Juliet...

An intermediary measure might simply be a pdf of the rules with the Q&A inserted as comments. Doesn't help much with a printed version, though.

For maps you want to show to players, you either need a coded index, or you need various dumbed down versions of the map so that you don't show e.g. every secret door or passage. Dungeoneering 101... That said, one way I roped in my players for my campaigns always was through the use of the maps I had prepared in world-building. The style and production method varied, starting with pencils and colored crayon, moving over to monochrome computer-generated bitmaps colored with sharpies, over to very different maps. For one world I took cheap toy balls and painted them with thick layers of acrylic color to create a globus. It certainly helped to impress the players with the scale of the setting. Nowadays I tend to look for professional (real world) mapping tools (GIS) rather than for artistic fantasy map creators. I can always take a computer-generated map as template for a more artistic version with features re-drawn by hand to give them that manufactured quality without losing too much accuracy. Coupled with a height model, you can even create contours for aerial views like the cover of The Smoking Ruins. I used to use Google Sketchup for 3D-impressions of architecture and even entire cities while it still was free, but since that paywall I have been looking for fairly intuitive CAD software to do 3D-models. For presentation purposes, I would print them out faintly (or use them as template on a graphic tablet) and re-draw them manually. Haven't done any of this in the last few years, though, without a regular gaming group to referee.

Praxian steeds are stabled routinely in New Pavis, and all manner of Praxian beasts are always welcome to enter Badside. Of those that do enter Badside, few emerge intact, though. Stabling or corralling rhinos or high llamas may be a bit problematic, agreed. Can high llamas even pass under the city gates? The beast, not the rider, right? I remember a convention where I was faced with a similar quandary when one of the players showing up wanted to play a centaur and what I had prepared was a dungeon crawl with lots of climbing and narrow passages. Neither gives your nephew's character much in the way of manual dexterity or mobility in tight places. I think the only game I would handle this kind of stuff would be "Plüsch, Power und Plunder", a game where you play plushies leading a hidden life among modern humans. This kind of role removes a lot of agency from your nephew, or might stretch the belief of the fellow players (unless they all are the same age group).

Trolls usually cannot see or discern blue as a color. Your troll in woad might be rainbow-colored without noticing it...

Marrying out of your clan is guaranteed to give you a culture conflict. There are always virtues that you must re-learn - even if it is a marriage between two of the original Colymar clans, who theoretically once shared all of their ancestors when they followed the Black Spear into Dragon Pass. Basically, your ancestors are likely to be made up of everything, or at least a very large variety of cultural values. (There might be clans with a very limited number of ancestors, but you know what happens when you limit the number of ancestors a family has...) So the clan traditions are about which of the multitude of ancestors have the most say, and which have been confined. Not speaking of individual ancestors here (although individuals like Harmast Barefoot will certainly be remembered), but groups of ancestors. Going along with the Only Old One, or supporting the Tax Slaughter - this kind of watersheds. So how jarring is keeping people as property? There are numerous forms of treating people as property, and the semi-free status of tenants is the entry-way into this. In other words, there is no society which doesn't have parts of the population with limited self-determination. In most Sartarite clans, the unfree are basically indentured people who are unfree as the result of being caught in raids and not ransomed back, as being caught while outlawed (and not killed), or (rarely) as punishment for actions of theirs. The price of a slave is significantly lower than even a tenant's weregeld, which is why many slave-takers will gladly ransom back any captives that come their way to their origins, and there are famous intercessors who go to negotiate such payments with people any sane person would avoid like hell in order not to join the ranks of captured future slaves. The role of an unfree in Orlanthi society is significantly worse than that of a tenant. There will be no marriages arranged for unfree. They are effectively strangers living with the clan, as the law goes, although any children they give birth to (or more rarely beget) will be non-unfree. There is a pitfall in this "the children of a slave will be free". It means that slaves are expected to have sex. Now this is a basic human urge, and it can be done in a very friendly way like the episode of Vikings where Ragnar and Lasgertha invite their enslaved former monk into their marital bed, but there is of course the way more ugly side where an unfree is ordered to have sex without any regard about inclination or willingness. But with the very limited personhood, a slave has no right to say "No", only the slave's owners (usually plural) have that right. So, who actually owns a slave? Sad to say, but it is similar to the question who actually owns a cow, or a sheep. In the end, most of the property in a clan is owned by the clan and only "loaned" to be used by the assigned occupants. There is personal property, and there is odal property brought in to the clan by a bloodline and held by the bloodline, or by a branch of it. Most slaves will be owned by a stead/household. This means that the steadfolk share ownership of the unfree person, and that the right to order the slave around is hierarchically layered as is all decision making in the stead/household. And "stead" may well be a semi-free charcoal-burner's or miner's cottage. Being a slave to a more prestigious household might be desirable, but undesirable tasks are found in any kind of household, and usually the unfree will be set to take care of those. Still, an unfree person tasked with a job will have all that job's authority. In his smithy, Willandring the giant is the master, and assistants who push the bellows or bring in supplies have to listen to his orders, even if they may be free and of higher social status. Let's compare Esrolia. With their high percentage of slaves, the question is whether the children of slaves will be slaves or assigned to a semi-free status. How does an Esrolian become property? The Grandmother of an Esrolian House has absolute power over the house. She may have advisors, but she can tell them to shut the hell up, and go about her business as she sees fit. This goes to marriage arrangements. And in the lower tiers of social strata, being married away and being sold may be little different. So a grandmother might have the power to sell away members of her house, getting rid of uppity folk who dare have an opinion differing from hers, or having offended her in some other way. Higher status may protect initially, but the grandmother has always the option to lower the status of an individual or even a family branch (or bloodline) as she sees fit. (The chief of an Orlanthi clan has the same power, but his position is a lot less secure than that of a grandmother.) (The downside of the job security of a grandmother is that with only voluntary retirement or death as exit clause, involuntary death may be a common way to end the job. Assassination of grandmothers might be an accepted tool of politics, even intra-house politics.) Back to marrying into a clan with different traditions. The negotiators of a marriage will have made a fuzz about what applies to their valued clan member handed over to that new clan. Carefully, without insulting those differing customs. That's why many clans have traditional marriage partner clans - there all the differences in tradition are a) known factors and b) have been ever so slightly re-moulded with every import of wives or husbands from that clan bringing over their influences and prejudices. Your typical patrilocal clan will have the children raising overseen by senior generation wives who will have spent quite a while in that clan, but who are responsible to instill the basic ethics of the clan. Handing this over to people not born in the clan will shape the values of the next generation, and some day these next generation will have become ancestors of the clan. Bloodlines come with a set of ancestors, both specific individuals and groups (clustered around those individuals). Maternal descent does count a bit, and prestigious maternal descent counts a bit more. Slaves don't contribute to the ancestors, even if they leave their children in the clan. (And there is no indication that e.g. Argrath as a ground man among the Praxians left behind any offspring, but then male slaves among the Praxians may be prohibited from having children, if need be castrated.) Slaves still are supposed to worship, at least when they have cults that have some compatibiity with their owners' cults. And they are supposed to worship as lay members, I guess. Then, what about buying and selling slaves? It should be highly unusual (not to say impossible) to become a slave in your birth clan or the clan of your (most recent) marriage. But in times of economic need, surplus of workforce (when did this ever happen?) or famine, a slave will be sold, and possibly be moved away half a continent (there are thousands of uses the Lunar Empire finds for slaves) or an entire sea (Fonrit has a steady demand for exotic slaves). What about slaves running away? Are they treated as escaped property, or do they get treated like outlaws when encountered by third parties? There is no reason for even a Hendriki clan to offer hospitality to an escaped slave, except if they want to make a political statement to the (former) owners of that slave, or that slave has a proof of kinship with a (group of) clan member(s), if only some of the marriage partners. Escapees from Lunar owners bring their own political statement reasons for being accepted as guests (or being denied).

I suppose no more than half the Sartarite tribes are predominantly Hendriki in outlook. The Sambari for instance have a long tradition as slave traders, and their position on the main pass to the east of the Quvin and Storm Mountains makes them a necessary intermediate for Praxian slave traders (who in turn may replenish their stock with captives from Praxian raids on Sartar). Thus, the Sambari are fairly likely to trade in (former fellow) Sartarites, both north and south. The northern Orlanthi may have the occasional clan opposed to taking slaves, but they have no equivalent of the Hendriki and their spirit of Freedom. Actually, the proportion of Hendriki clans may be lower in Heortland than it is in Sartar, as the theft of that Spirit of Freedom was a major motivation to pack up and leave Belintar's reign behind.

NO g33k WHAT I SAID WAS TURN UP YOUR HEARING AID! Would the younglings please cut down on the noise? There are grown-ups here who have to party hard tomorrow, and who need their beauty sleep!

Not really. In HQG or WF 15 (IIRC) there are the various types of Orlanthi (like Hendriki, Light Orlanthi, Axe Orlanthi) listed. When your players create a clan, they choose which of these they belong to. KoDP didn't know or make use of these terms, and neither did the HQ version of it. (HQ1, IIRC) There are a few clans where the answer "what kind of clan is this" is canonically known and the players have no such choice. The clans of the original Colymar Tribe (like the Orlmarth or Ernaldori) are all Hendriki in origin (i.e. no thralls), and the Red Cow are Axe Orlanthi and keep at least one very notable thrall, Willandring. The clan generator left the details known about the clan in the joint creation of the narrator and the players. Populating not just the clan ring and clan temple with NPCs and their inter-relationships is quite a bit of work, even with a system using so minimal NPC descriptions as HQ2/HQG. I have a couple more questions to add to the clan questionnaire and/or the player ancestral and personal deeds in the past. Like the question whether you were born as a member of your current clan, or whether you married in. What do you know about your siblings, parents, uncles/aunts, cousins in your household? From which clans did the marriage partners come, and what is your and your bloodline's relationship with these clans/in-laws, and can you name some? How extended is the family household, or the bloodline of several households in the clan? What neighboring clans are typical marriage partners, what may be factins of marriage partners from these clans, and how do they influence clan politics? I've been toying with the idea of producing such a story-teling approach to define a clan more closely for the Jonstown Compendium. Possibly throw in some flavors of clan generation, interweaving historical events with clan history, creating tribal and clan local history (using the old "Military Experience in Dragon Pass" for a start into that, but getting finer grained), and providing fairly well developed households to drop into a game for an array of more than one-dimensional people to interact with. But such an approach needs character portraits of some quality, and possibly house-plans and relationship maps, and contemporary layout and layout elements. Not quite above my paygrade, but rather ambitious and time-consuming for some of my "talents".

Thanks! That's a.... errr.... quite big errata to find so late after the publication of RQG Apparently it needed this discussion to make the authors and editors recognize the potential for misunderstanding. We discussed this a bit earlier in the thread IIRC, but yeah that's my interpretation too -- not only do you save on MP, you also save on Strike Ranks (although it's unclear if you still spend that one full melee round or not). I think it was a clarification by David Scott which made me arrive at this interpretation, and which made me rethink a possible inscribing strategy from the perspective of a player of a sorcerer. Hence my question (still unanswered) if you can inscribe spells that you only have inferred rune and/or technique at all, and if you can, whether 1 POW still equals 1 intensity (or range,, or duration) or only 1 MP in the spell.