Joerg

We are still trying to find out about the nature of space, and concepts like Dark Matter and Dark Energy may provide inights and even future technologies that find ways to work around the limitations of Einsteinian space-time. Right now, they are reminiscent of the Ether postulated to carry radio waves. Like the concept of the Phlogiston theory, which got the order of magnitude of the mass of chemical energy wrong, but ultimately was vindicated with E=mC² or m=E/C², the properties of the yet unobserved space may provide a medium in space that a future drive might interact with. The alternative is a space-warping technology. Whether it takes something like the Alcubierre math using exotic matter with negative energy or something slightly less extreme like a circular near-singularity by slowing C (not in vacuum, but in the medium used) to walking speed and moving the medium at that speed while pumping it full of light, weird effects may be possible. We haven't gotten much closer to understanding gravity and whether there is a quantum "particle" describing the exchange. Also, there have been assumptions about physical limitations that have been overcome by engineering, like e.g. optical microscopes with resolutions better than the raw application of the Heisenberg relation suggested, by not directly looking. Within memory of our culture, which is at most 12,000 of our planet's rotations around the sun. And the planet might be a protected biodiversity habitat, or rather might have been one prior to our efforts during the last few centuries. When the park rangers return, they might be angry about the squatters. Assuming that it takes sublight speeds to travel from star to star, would you send such an expedition lasting centuries to watch primates fling their feces at one another?

They'd surely leave a memento for the Lunar army to find. It doesn't matter whether you notify the kin or the chosen leaders of a slain enemy. There is no known case of Sartarite rebels annihilating a Lunar army unit without leaving any trace of them to be found. And the army would have gone after an AWOL unit, if nothing else then for disciplinary reasons. It is arguable whether the deed was a breach of hospitality. Feeding someone in your own house implies some acceptance of hospitality duties. Any breach of hospitality is a major anathema unto the High Gods of Glorantha. On the other hand, quite likely no oaths of hospitality were exchanged. The vengeful ghost doesn't require any guilt of the perps. Making it a single entity is a weird design choice, and even weirder is the hit location table of the resulting antagonist. Not unprecedented (Cwim had a similarly useless hit location table in Elder Secrets), but counter-intuitive, especially when there are chariot rules in the rules. I ran the scenario and found it to provoke a situation with high TPK probability, which is a different issue. As written, it is afternoon when the party arrives, and as soon as it gets dark, the antagonist will come again. The player characters are as uninformed about the threat as the third victim, and are as likely to end up in the third victim's condition. Other than the three previous victims were badly mangled, the player characters have not a single clue about the nature of the attacker. That's fine for the horror genre, especially if you have no great attachment to the protagonists yet, and letting a few of them die just sets the atmosphere for the rest of the bunch. Doing this to Glorantha characters may be consequent, but a bit unusual - people entering Snake Pipe Hollow have a rough idea where they are going. An Antorling hamlet doesn't call deathtrap. Sneaky is one thing. Going against hospitality - even forcibly acquired hospitality - is going against the inner workings of Orlanthi society the same way as kinslaying. Hospitality laws are one of the universal constants of Glorantha. Once you feed a foreigner in your house (or even your enclosed area), you have accepted the role of the host. Sure, the "guest" had obeyed the laws of hospitality mostly in the breach, too, but that is not an excuse - compare the story of Arangorf's visit at Orlanth's stead (in King of Sartar) for how a host properly deals with a guest overreaching their welcome. Did the villagers have an urgent need to kill the rune lord while he was a guest, however un-welcome?

Was the killing declared to the kin of the slain? If not, it is secret murder. The charioteer and rider belonging to the Seven Mothers suggests that they were Provincials, too - in other words, Orlanthi. As long as you declare the slaying to the cult or kin of the deceased, it is honorable. Failing to do so is the Ipharan way, and stay away from those daughters of Vadrus. Whether poisoning two men and then pommeling them to death is something to be proud of (for anybody but a Trickster) is a different question, one I would answer in the negative. A lot, as far as my part time Orlanthi Lawspeaking experience tells me. You kill someone, you declare your deed, and rush off into exile or become a rebel bandit - fine. HIding the evidence (including the bodies, except for the plunder) and the deed is not honorable. Unlike the stain on the honor of the perps. Giving the bodies a non-burial more or less was a surefire way to awaken a vengeful ghost.

True, the Lunar College of Magic has experts from all paths of magic (except draconic). This was a battle against the Pentans, well known for their shamans and solar magic, which means that their own solar magicians and shamans would have been active neutralizing the Pentan magic. The Pentans know this, and brought the Orathorn sorcerers as their nasty surprise. The Lunar response would have been what?

I get the impression that the author got that mixed up, regarding the black as the most magical time. Also the phrase "a full black moon rising" raised the suspicion that the author is new to Glorantha. It might be excused that this is when a full week's worth of moonglow has been stored by the Rattling Wind. For the final publication, this should be amended. It was secret murder. In Orlanthi culture there is nothing wrong with a manslaughter if you own up to your deed, but secret murder is a different issue. Yes, even if the three perpretators had gone into voluntary exile, the people inhabiting hamlet would have been slain or enslaved, and the rest of the clan would have suffered badly, too, but that doesn't change the fact that the trio acted dishonorably. For a modern parallel, it is like a hit and run after causing a lethal traffic accident.

There are some things about the visibility and ritual of sorcery that I might have liked to expand upon. Perhaps visuals like glowing letters in the medium inscripted by the sorcerer, like those long shutter time photographs, allowing the opposing sorcerer B to start an inscription (and incantation) to counter whatever sorcerer A is brewing up. There are at least two cases of sorcerous duels resulting in world-rending side effects - the duel of Yomili and Halwal at the Red Ruins in Tanisor, and the Night of Horrors which squared off Lunar regimental sorcery against Orathorn regimental sorcery. This is about huge spells interrupted or turned away into twisted magical energies, completely going out of control. The sorcery system I would like to see should have something like this. But then, there is a lot work to be done on Malkionism from the writings in Revealed Mythologies and Middle Sea Empire that require considerable re-interpretation and re-phrasing (at the very least) while at the same time keeping that history of Glorantha intact (after all, that is what the situation in the Guide grew from).

The rules as presented tell us to choose a special rune spell at each sacrifice for a rune point, without putting an upper limit for variable spells like Shield other than the rune points available. I have effectively played RQ with rune point pools since the mid nineties as a house rule, with a more rigid approach - like if you want to have Shield 6, you had better cough up 6 POW for Shield at some time - and if you want to have Flight, too, then you have a rune point pool of 9 or more points, minus any points spent on one-use spells. Making the common spells free of learning charge might go with this, or not. But then, where I came from was RQ3 which had RAW only one-use spells for initiates. @PhilHibbs brings up Guided Teleport, and I am inclined to limit that to places where you sacrificed POW for a rune point, establishing the uplink, but with the upper rune point limit RQG imposes, that might be impractical (unless you are a rune lord frequently using DI, burning off rune points from your pool).

This market segment is well-served by Mythras, whether by Mythras Imperative, the basic rules or by some of the more specialized spin-offs. And it is a market segment that Chaosium is currently leaving to The Design Mechanism and the rest of "the Competition" like Revolution D100 or OpenQuest. Yes, Mythras is different from the BGB BRP. But it isn't that different. The BGB is a package of modular rules that can be added to several basic systems, like Elric!/Magic World or RuneQuest 2. Speaking as a DIY type, the space operatic setting I keep laying aside doesn't need more rules on the character level, but less, although I am more inclined to go to the D100 way rather than HeroQuest/Questworld for my own gaming, keeping a safe distance from descendants of D&D. (Scenario creation for others is way easier for HeroQuest...) DIY folk come with a setting, looking for tools. What hooked me to Glorantha wasn't the system, it was King of Sartar. What hooked me to RQ was the BRP mechanics and the RQ3 Vikings Box as a tool for my Viking-themed setting. King of Dragon Pass and Six Ages: Ride like the Wind are pretty good alternative entryways to Glorantha. Sandy's Gods War is another possible alternative entry to Glorantha, and besides RQG there is HQG and 13G. Proselytizing Glorantha is mainly done on the individual level, and by exposing people to the glamourous visual stuff we can hold up now. And that discussion is led elsewhere. Cthulhu as a setting isn't really my genre, and neither are conventional supers. Urban fantasy is a playground that can be done with Cthulhu, but the 1920ies focus of the Cthulhu series makes for a different kind of fantasy, Pulp. WIth Cthulhu as optional add-on. The main war is to be fought on the US market - the various non-US markets all have their own cultures and special competitors. Outside of the US, Chaosium and its native language licensees are big players - I wonder what the numbers are for Chaosium's three fulfilment centers, in terms of percentage of the total sales of the English language editions. Speaking of foreign language markets, the licensees face significant competition by Chaosium for the money of the fans of Chaosium's systems, and to a lesser extent vice versa. I usually only acquire the translated editions to be able to understand players used to German language editions. (And - apart from the German language website that I lost to a spam injection and inflexible customer service by my hoster, almost all my writing happens in English, too.) D&D still is strong over here, as people consume the same streaming media here that they do in the US, but local growths have their tenacious grip on the hobby, too. German Cthulhu has seen lots of original material set in Germany, and there are systems using homebrew D100 for SF, dark SF, private investigators (both Victorian and Pulp Era) and weirder things. From what I can see from French or Spanish language markets, the situation there is similar, and the Nordic countries had BRP as their local language alternative to D&D in the eighties, and their mainstream has built on those roots.

While Kerofinela was wiped clear by two successive events less than 80 years apart, there was Kethaela which kept the records pretty much unbroken. Sure, both God Learners and EWF invaded northern Esrolia aka Kotor, and infected Nochet, but this infection also makes Nochet a conservatory for their lore. Sure, Nochet too was hit by the 1050 cataclysm, and retracted into a shadow of its former self, but it wasn't the only place of lore conservation. Of the Lhankor Mhy Great Libraries some always remained functional. (And then there is the possibility of L-Space, possibly as a weird survival of the Hero Wars rpg period essence planes.) Halwal made sure that God Learner documentation survived (as enemy secrets essential for their destruction) in Fronela and Ralios. His mutual annihilation with Yomili did take a lot of the most advanced secrets with them, yes. But those aren't all there is to setting yourself up as a God Learner heroquester or an "orthodox" Malkioni ultra-sorcerer. There are plenty God Learner methods that were inefficient and wasteful, due to their inexperience with the mythic fabric they tampered with. Arkati-schooled heroquesters were likely a lot more efficient than their God Learner counterparts. Belintar's Tournaments of the Masters of Luck and Death and the Lunar Dart Competitions are as much training grounds for badass questers as the Kralori camp Sheng Seleris emerged from.

Sure. Though the close term product queue is well known, and GaGoG is around the corner, too.

Does this require such a statement? The hunters are after ducks. If they wanted to hunt reasonable, rational folks, they'd hunt Thanatari or Storm Bulls.

Was I that unclear? A character should have a pool of 2 previous rune points if he wants to gain a 3-point rune spell for a single point of POW. Basically, no character should be encouraged to sacrifice for a spell he cannot cast for lack of rune points. That's like teaching someone a weapon he lacks the STR or DEX to use (which would somewhat easily be remedied by spirit spells, at least for nine melee rounds). The demand that he has 2 unused rune points at the time of acquiring the spell would have been for a test run (for reusable spells, at least) with subsequent regaining of the rune points invested (and yes, e.g. Zorak Zoran might wish to have a test run for Seal Wound in one of his rites - big difference if the recipient is the next meal or sacrifice, too). But given the time spent for acquiring that spell, replenishing those rune points may be a side effect of being taught the spell. At least for cults with weekly holy days (and there is always Godsday for a default occasion). The reasoning behind this is that both player and character gain the insight of what the spell does (and what it doesn't do) by casting it once under controlled conditions. Rune Magic is what you are, and becoming the deity for that moment or that quarter hour is an experience one ought to have made. (This does open some cans of worms if people initiated to more than one deity or having traded for a spell from a yet different deity activate rune spells from various sources. Does this confuse their mythical identification?)

Sort of. Back in those days, third hand publishers like Judges Guild or Complete Dungeon Masters (e.g. https://rpggeek.com/rpgitem/46468/halls-dwarven-kings) took up the slack, statted for "both" popular game systems (RQ and ADHD). A system receiving attention by additional publishers signals strength. The Jonstown Compendium provides a legal platform allowing RQG modules without the legal uncertainty of the mid eighties.

Yes, although I wouldn't allow to sacrifice for a multi-point spell unless the character has enough rune points to cast that spell after offering 1 POW. If you are aiming to be a slightly nastier GM, you might demand that those runepoints have to be unused, too.

So the beasts gain the full set of clan/regimental and cult tattoos? Only half-joking. Pets receive tattoos in their ears for identification, but that is visible on closer examination only. Some alchemical treatment leaving the fur discolored in a specific area might exist - the typical "white strain in the beard due to an old shaving mishap" effect (or at least that's what those aging beard wearers claim). A strong enough vitriol will leave burn marks on the skin, coming to think of this. If it is a weaker vitriol, heating it up can make up for causticity. Likewise, caustic ashes may leave chemical scarring.

I made the decision to run The Rattling Wind on Saturday (against my usual style of taking a few character- or setting driven plot hooks and create a scenario from there). It is possible that my three decades of abstinence from running a published scenario as written is at fault, but I felt quite out of control of the game as the first encounter of the characters with the antagonist cut short my experience of GMing a duck player character. (The character's fumble on a dodge roll and the maximum number of damage dice rolled really created a mess of a duck burger.) My hopes for better diplomacy in the later part of the scenario were crushed along with that... It doesn't help if scenarios get rushed just to hit a deadline. Mongoose was good at keeping deadlines and publication schedules, but quality control suffered badly. The downloaded pdf has a number of kinks that some additional lectoring or playtesting might have caught. I recognize that the publication was under a similar deadline pressure. But yes, by all means we should have more convention-usable scenarios. Two or three scenes, sufficient fluff to get the game going, and advice to the GM how to employ the encounters. With regard to the number of scenes, the scenario hit the comfortable region, although the sense of urgency that arriving on the night of the next encounter brought cut short the players' chance to get to meet the Farfield NPC protagonists and their secrets.

Honestly, I think this is a call for way over-defining Glorantha. And this is a level of detail we don't even have for a culture like the western Slavs of northern Germany - just yesterday I spent a couple of hours at the Wall-Museum in Oldenburg/Holstein, among a couple of reconstructed Slavic houses, discussing minutia like Viking era weft or when flint blades fell out of general use (after seeing baltic flint as one of several trade goods displayed in a merchant's house). With both re-enactors and the director of the museum, a fully fledged archaeologist. Those discussions just showed how little we know in detail from that time. We know that Ötzi (the Ice Mummy) was tattooed. We see impressive tattoos in the TV series Vikings, but we don't have the slightest evidence for tattoos on Viking bodies. (Absence of condemnation for defigurating their skins by antagonistic monks surviving the trauma of a Viking raid and coming close enough to get a clear view of the raiders might support the absence of such tattoos, as the chroniclers didn't leave out much that would further demonize the Vikings. But then, we don't have evidence for the absence of tattoos in early medieval Saxons or Franks, either.) When it comes to branding horses, I wonder whether a bronze branding implement would survive more than a few heating cycles. A copper item might work better, as unalloyed copper shoul have a higher melting point. But there are no finds of such implements. There are Roman branding irons, but as the name suggests, this may be an Iron Age thing and not even applicable to Glorantha. But then, at least human skin doesn't require red hot metal to leave a permanent scar. An accident with the outside of a Bunsen burner (that never reaches even the lowest of red heat) left me with a distinctive reminder to be more careful around hot metal. If you cannot brand your beasts of burden, how can you mark them instead? Scarification might be an alternative - this is used for ornamental purposes by numerous African cultures on themselves. Tattooing is a distinct possibility. Both methods have the disadvantage that they take considerably longer than the single painful experience of contact with the branding iron, though. Ear notching is a custom of trolls to mark their trollkin. This is possible for herd beast livestock or steeds as well, but ears are easily separated or mutilated in cases of illicit ownership being hidden.

Yes, I don't regard the unchanging Brithini way as the definition of Malkionism, but instead the complete set of revelations by Malkion, all five actions and not just three or four. Hrestol is the founder of Malkionism, IMO. His teachings integrate the mortal experience into the ancient Malkioni ways, and led his people(s) into an imperfect world. He overcame Zzabur's nihilism. According to the Guide, Hrestoli believe in reincarnation, hence in an afterlife and a continuation of the soul(s? - they don't say how many). This is different from the "soulless Meldek" drivel that too many people (both Glorantha fans and backwoods uninformed hillfolk) bought hook, line and sinker Rokarism denies this continuation of the self, and goes against the mainstream of the Seshnegi orthodox creed prior to the Sinking. I am not entirely clear why Bailifes would have gone that unforgiving way of Rokar. It is not like the struggles of the late God Learner era were that present in the Tanier Valley of Bailifes' time. Bailifes was anything but a Seshnegi - a backwoods Fornoari duke on the border of Safelster with a big drive towards power. Calling the Tanier valley "Seshnela" doesn't really reflect its roots, either. While the majority of the noble families of the valley are from Old Seshnela and not from the Autarchy, I don't think that Bailifes had any such credit. (If there was any past ruler of Seshnela he could trace his ancestry from, my guess would be Thyerm or Grodlam, the foreign rulers of the interregnum before the Rightness Crusade). Bailifes was in desperate need of some minuscule measure of legitimacy, and he found that in making his blatant war of conquest by allying with the weird fundamentalist sect headed by Mardron that had an old bone to grind with both the heresies supported by Halwal and the orthodoxy defended by Yomili four centuries earlier, reminiscences of that conflict still glowing at the Red Ruins. Rokarism had about eight generations to make the population forget its Hrestoli/Makanist roots and more hopeful outlook. While that failed in Safelster (where the Bailifid rule was significantly shorter), at least Rindland and Tanisor proper should be properly demoralized into the faint promise of Solace.

E.g. God Forgot has a bunch of first hand witnesses of God Learner magic, like the advisor in the 1616 emergency meeting in the City of Wonders in Prince of Sartar. Akgarbash of Laurmal is a western wizard who is active in the Lunar Provinces. He is in all likelihood from Second Age Laurmal and may have somehow made his way to the City of 10,000 Magicians prior to the Mass Utuma of 1042. Honestly, with that level of ignorance displayed in these statements, terms like yoof or meldek are an intellectual challenge beyond the mental capabilities of such armchair "historians" among the uninformed. While this is a clear representation of the stereotypical crazy uncles who fall for populist autocrats who are currently on an evil upswing in our political realities, those people are a minority in our times. The inbred culture that you are presenting here doesn't value knowledge, and hence doesn't claim to have all knowledge of the world. They probably don't even know the names of the heroes whose steps they follow in their ritual Otherworld experiences (like initiation or Sacred Time) and only know them by features of the ritual masks used in those rites. No Hengall, a small chance that Orgovale or Ulanin are Yes, that's the Stickpicker's Lore. It has more such "truths". This is folklore, not knowledge. And your list of Bad People needs to accommodate monsters like Ethilrist, Jaldon, and changers of magic like Sartar or Hon-eel (depending on which side of the Dragonspine you are from). Yes, there is a new Theyalan movement in Peloria and Kerofinela. Syncretism is at the core of both Lunar and Orlanthi society. The first phase of friendly missionaries has encountered bitter resistance, and what we get now is the variety of pushes into the same direction as the Second Council. No need to invoke God Learners or the EWF. If you want to curse more recent culprits, there is Belintar. Possibly Dormal, too. Definitely Harrek and his tampering with his own deity. Broyan and his re-awakening of Vingkotling kingship. It is rather that those who make the decisions are ignorant of the history, or unwilling to listen to those of their advisors who know better. Rokar for instance has repeated the fallacy of the New Order. His successor Mardros actually managed to avoid Pilif's error, and Theoblanc has yet to make such a move.

Yes, that is a statement of faith. It's not like there could have been a complex spell driving that invisible hand... The Abiding Book appeared after a significant period of scripture collection, exegesis, discussion and de-selection in Jrustela, with widespread participation not limited to the zzabur caste. Producing a consensus document was a necessity, and by divine grace there appeared such a document confirming the previous process. Success! The Luathan Quake sank Seshnela. The catastrophes which hit the core lands of the Middle Sea Empire find a nice parallel in a set of big magical weapon-grade spells from the reign of Emperor Keramalos (AKA Kralas), 55th ruler in the Seshnela King List. (p.24) The Green Waves - developed to be used against the East Isles (and apparently successful, as the island of the allies of Mokato was drowned) was an unstoppable tidal wave that can drown an island. Pretty much what hit Jrustela. Slag Movement - causing the air to liquefy. Fairly similar to the Desolation of the Vent which turned over Slontos. Missing Lands talks about the God Learners deducing an Abinding Grimoire from the Abiding Book for sorcery purposes, with later additional popular grimoires for heroquesting. There was a Sharp Abiding Book used by the wizards of the Rightness Crusade - which sounds like those who spawned Pilif the Magus, who attempted to become King of Seshnela. Revealed Mythologies describes them thus (p.20): So the teachings from which Rokar drew are from Jrustela, and already present in the founding of the Middle Sea Empire. And it looks like a parallel if someone took the King James bible and concentrated on the Levites rather than the gospels... To me, Rokarism is a mockery of Malkionism.

Then you are applying the Glue wrongly - when the teeth are gnashing, fix them with Glue...

According to the map on the Ban in the Guide (p.201) neither Erontree nor Winterwood were affected by the Ban. Neither were Ygg's Isles. Adding ancient logging rights of the Yggites to this, I am not sure that the Yggites had a scarcit of lumber. Their islands are within sight of the mainland, making the sea voyage free of fear of the Closing.

That's a different question, really. Flintnail is usually refered to as a dwarf, not an Ancestral Mostali. But then, Isidilian (an Ancestral Mostali) is better known as the Dwarf of Dwarf Mine.

That's like saying that screwing together an Ikea shelf makes you a cabinet maker...

That's missing the topic by a couple of geographic miles, Mr. Barbarian. Acme is industrial production, not craft.