Joerg

They have lots of minced meat dishes or fricassee? One "culinary" way to use the skill is to make spirit-enhanced cuts. Possibly giving magic point regeneration or similar?

The average Aramite may have done so as part of his initiation into adulthood, re-living the core myth of his culture. As to where it is writ, something that makes sense mythologically usually is true in Glorantha, and may just be waiting to be put into writing. A person born as an Aramite will already have the kinship to the Tusker boars from their parentage, and in all likelihood don't require the transplantation of tusks. The tusk implantation is part of the initiation rite for individuals not born as tusk riders, and giving them the magical essence of the tuskers. It appears to be pretty consensus that the Aramite culture started out as human boar riders, and that some surgical magical alteration turned them into something sufficiently non-human to have been spared by the Dragonkill. I challenge that they don't appear to have become very uz-like in the sense of descent from Kyger Litor. But then the Kitori - a sibling culture of humans turned into something tolerably non-human in the discernment of the Inhuman Occupation - are troll-like in shape, but only a fraction of them (if any) are trolls by descent.

Except that he was perfectly right in a lot of cases at the same time, too. Mythic reality is malleable, and while unchanging, the way and direction you approach it from will influence your perception. Blind men describing an elephant by touching parts of it.

Greg's direct involvement in editorial control may have been a lot smaller than people think. Quite often this was left in the hands of the line editor, also during the times of Issaries Inc. According to Sandy Petersen, Greg always was an ideas person in his creativity, putting out lots of ideas and not usually minding whether these ideas matched previous ideas - that was Sandy's role during his employment with Chaosium. Was it changed? We have the information that two out of three clans/families who know the secret of making moon boats were exterminated in Dart Competitions, creating a monopoly. There is a good probability that at least one of these families had a secret that involved reeds for a reed boat. As far as I have experienced Greg, yes, this image would in all likelihood have been heartily approved. There has been many a situation where Greg was visiting some exotic Convention site or picturesque nature nearby, looking at the landscape and proclaiming "this is how I think Sartar looks like", whether in Finland, the Rhine Valley, or other such locations. Probably referring to the spiritual/emotional reaction exposure to the landscape produced in him. There is hardly any documentation on the editorial process available from the Issaries Inc. period, except for private exchanges between the editors and authors or third party commentators, none of these publically available. There have been differences in vision and method of key authors and contributors from that time, too.

A very graphic description of the "or" in "obey my commands, or...." The rite of killing a boar in a magical way and to take its tusks for a trophy is at the heart of Aramite culture. These guys and gals aren't pork brothers in an Elfquest wolf rider sense. There is even a good chance that something similar to Bind Death would be going on in slaying the beast and accepting its spirit-loaded teeth as part of the new tusk rider. The spirit of the slain beast gets added to that of the human initiee to become the new tusk rider. The Ritual of Rebirth has donations (presumably from dead relatives of the sponsors). Arkat very likely emerged with dentition originating in Garazaf Hyloring's clan.

The Bloody Cut is a sacrificial technique, creating a maximum of magical use out of the death of the sacrifice, and (judging from the name) the maximum amount of blood squirting out of the still living body. Which isn't that different from many a temple's weekly sacrifices, to be honest. Using the blood of the sacrificed beasts for blessing the attendant crowd of worshipers is a fairly standard move in Theism, and makes sacrificial slaughtering different from economic slaughtering where the butcher is collecting all that red clotty stuff to turn into all kinds of quaint rural foodstuff turning many a modern urban person quite queasy. Ritual sacrifice of beasts (and in rarer cases, sentients) or (when it comes to worshipers) just letting blood in a spectacular way is at the core of many theist and even animist rites. It is something we don't emphasize in the artwork or the descriptions of the rites in order to avoid shitstorm backlashes - remember the "uproar" the sacrifice scene in RQG with Yanioth and the pig produced here? (Ok, half of that may have come from Yanioth sensibly wearing no top, reducing the cleaning bill.) The pain suffered by the sacrifice can be part of the rites of mainstream cults, too. Gladiatoral games (not necessarily to the death) are such a form of sacrifice, and they are held by many a cult, and not limited to decadent empires. Sure, the Bloody Cut is designed to trap the spirit of the sacrifice into the part of its body, and especially in the creation of a Ball of Tails via the Death Binding spell, which is just a variant on barbarian head-taking - something practiced outside of the cult of Thanatar, too (though usually using a slashing weapon rather than a garotte). The entire concept of trophy hunting is sympathetic magic creating a bond to the spirit of the slain beast/foe through the trophy, and to gain a magical benefit from having this trophy displayed. And usually not to the benefit of the source of the trophy. (Even saints' relics are a form of this.) The Tusk Riders and their Darkness cult present these normal ritual activities in an externalized and thereby demonized way, but in the end such activities are a normal part of theist sacrifice. There are some quite old discussions on head hunting on the digest which highlight how the Cults of Terror write-up of Thanatar externalizes and demonizes head-hunting (though not quite in these cultural anthropology terms), and that the practice is just a perversion of ordinary Orlanthi/Praxian/Pentan and even (or especially) civilized cultures' practices. Exhibiting bits of the mortal remains of foes, criminals etc. has a long history, and a hanged person's relics (if only a piece of the hemp/cross) have been used very much like saints' relics in folk magic since basically forever.

There has already been a thread about this: and yes, the seas are going to enjoy a feast on the flooded areas, but they don't appear to prepare to stay, just going along with the troll plan. Magasta might be of two minds about this - blocking the drain means that containment of the Chaos Rift is weakened.

There do appear to be natives of the moon - e.g. moon elves of the forests that have been on the moon from the beginning. It isn't quite clear whether the cities and citadels on the moon were created along with the celestial body or whether they were built in the First Wane. It is quite clear that they are populated now, but whether by immigrants from Peloria or by people spending their Lunar afterlife there isn't clear either.

That's Tap INT, another proven method, yes.

Hmm. I mostly pulled this out of memory. The first description of the Tusk Riders is in the White Bear and Red Moon / Dragon Pass boardgame. Little about their history. The "history of Dragon Pass" section there conflated the Dawn Council and the EWF with its Third Council into one continuous history. Aram Soul of Udram as representative of the Unity Council, bearer of the Necklace of Kero Fin: Sourcebook p.130. Also Aram ya Udram, or Yu-Adariam in some of the oldest texts about him. Should also be in Dorastor, Land of Doom, and possibly mentioned in the Broken Council Guidebook. The Dawn Survival Sites list (Guide p.710, History of the Heortling Peoples) mentions Aram, but not his role in the council. There is also the description of the Ivory Plinth (with a William Church image) in an early Wyrm's Footprints, and (at least the picture and the poem) reprinted in the Guide p.185 Half Trolls: the skull diagram and explanatory texts in Troll Pak (both 2nd and 3rd edition) Half Trolls, and distribution all the way to Ralios: Borderlands Encounters. Afterwards, the Half Troll description was repeated in King of Sartar (CHDP: Inhuman Occupation, and IIRC also in Uz Lore, though in less detail). Basically, this seems to be entrenched as a firm belief by their neighbors, and most descendants of those neighbors who witnessed their transformation perished along with the EWF to the Pelorian invaders of 1042 and 1120 (and, in a smaller number, to the Dragonkill). Varankol the Mangler: History of the Heortling Peoples (for the Machine Wars) (and the Freeform character material for "Between the Dragon and the Blue Sea", written by among others by Jeff Richard, played by a friend of mine in the Tentacles run that saw me as Vamargic) Aram the Ancestor, and the fierce black demon he used is the bridle and/or whip with which he overcame Gouger. And I think I need to set this right: Gouger was an avenging demon sent by the Earth Goddess against impious or blasphemous (former) worshippers of hers. Aram killed it with the aid of the Darkness demon after Gouger had destroyed two cities (indicating that this rampage started even before Ernalda went to sleep, and probably was stopped shortly after she had gone). Gouger is the holy Earth avenger (Babeester wasn't born yet). Aram turned against the divine punishment sent by his own goddess, the fierce black demon being his weapon against the God Pig. There is no similarity between Gouger on his rampage and the worm-ridden Chaos-plagued boar spirit of Mononoke. Redeye of Pig Hollow is a minuscule version of Gouger. Gouger's rage was righteous and non-chaotic (though utterly destructive), an expression of Earth enraged.

I think you are reading this "Yes, but" in a purely negative way. From a narrator's perspective, this is a "Yes, you succeed, and I gain a plot hook from this." From the players' perspective, it is a victory with the knowledge that the villain still has an ace down his sleeve, or a replacement villain ready to plague them again in the future (think Boba Fett's identical progenitor, for instance, or - from the Wooden Sword chronicles - the Zorak Zoran rune lord killed by Urrrgh the Ugly's warhorse, and then again as a zombie).

"Elder Race" is a misnomer for "not-human sapient species", with a humanoid body plan an optional condition. Their lack of persecution by dragons after the Dragonkill War has led to the assumption that the (remaining) Aramites aren't human any more. We don't know whether there were Aramite humans remaining up to the Dragonkill War. Varankol the Mangler was the Great Living Hero of the Aramites, and in all likelihood the prototype tusked Tusk Rider. Whether uz or dehori parenthood or adoption played any role in this is unclear. Fact is that the Aramites at the Dawn were human in shape and biology, although already riding tusker boars and worshiping the Cult of the Bloody Tusk with the Darkness demon Aram had used to slay Gouger. Killing the God Beast Gouger did nothing to alienate Aram from Kero Fin (or the avatar of hers, Sorana Tor) at the Dawn, and Aram was considered civilized and peaceful enough to represent the humans on the Unity Council. The Aramite humans entered the Second Age without any recent population reversals. It is unclear whether they participated in the Battle of Night and Day and what their relationship to the Bright Empire may have been. Cross-breeding efforts are known from the magical society that enabled the birth of Pavis from an aldryami mother (it doesn't say anywhere which type of aldryami). Pavis was born around 800 ST. A dryad offering sexual service in Karse is documented for about 780 ST. Dragon Pass was rife with transformative magics - turning both crops and herds into draconic creatures. Some of these energies leaked into the Stitched Zoo project which re-created the Beastfolk from humans and other creatures. I think there is a significant likelihood that Varankol and his followers had the assistance of the Remakers of Remakerela in adopting their porcine appearance - a magical implantation of tusker boar tusks and a special blessing of the bound Darkness demon are a possible route from human tusker boar riders to tusked Tusk Riders without any Kyger Litor ancestry (unless the Darkness demon bound by Aram was an emanation of the Hellmother, which would raise other questions). That half-troll thingy... this comes from the God Learner systematic presentation of troll skulls in Troll Pak, and quite likely is a theory that originated in Lylket in the Second Age. It was repeated in the Borderlands encounter page without that in-world document context, though. The Tusk Riders are definitely not listed as a product of an attempt to undo the Curse of Kin, and that's the only agenda uz heroquesters have had since the Curse struck when it comes to transformative procreation. That leaves a rather short time window for troll ancestry to enter the Aramite population between the Dawn and the Battle of Night and Day. (Not by way of Aram, though - he would have brought in the divine ancestry provided by Kero Fin/Sorana Tor, as wearer of Kero Fin's Necklace.) We know that the Second Council did tamper with breeding projects, although we know few details. Seri-phy-Ranor is a Pavis-like mixed breed from the Second Council era, and the leg-less wyrms are blamed on (failed) Second Council attempts to open paths to dragonhood. After Argentium Thri'ile, the need for an alternative cavalry for the wars in Peloria had lessened significantly, and so would have troll willingness to contribute to a perversion like the making of Tusk Riders. This doesn't necessarily extend to cave trolls, but in that case, I would expect some residual Chaos taint in their descendants. (Come to think of this, Vamargic Eye-Necklace quite likely had such a chaotic taint, given his parentage, even if his birth as Great Troll may have canceled the regeneration ability. But that's a Second Age experiment, again, and in Kitori-controlled forests outside of the EWF.)

IMO the trick to acquire a new form rune in RQG is to become that new form. Welcome to the unexplored world of transformative heroquesting and/or mystical journeys beyond the limits of humanity. Gaining the Spirit Rune doesn't seem to be part of the agenda of the RQG Apprentice Shaman or even the Shaman who has awakened his Fetch. Becoming a ghost is likely to bestow the Spirit Rune, but quite likely at the cost of (use of) the Man Rune. A full Kitori in shadow form might possibly have a claim to the Spirit Rune, but that form still implies a physical presence in the mundane world, only a lot less tangible than troll or human shape. Becoming a plant (other than losing most of one's INT to e.g. Brain Fever) is probably impossible without a rebirth/reincarnation. Becoming a dragon requires a lengthy mystic journey and/or some mystical surgery. Ask Orlaront for an apprenticeship... Taking on the shape of a dragonewt via Immanent Mastery is easier, but does it really bestow the dragonewt rune? I doubt it. Chaos is not a form rune, but getting it is depressingly easy. Gaining Undeath takes only some assistance by magic, but again that is likely to suspend use of other form runes.

Lodril / Turos and his sons and daughters are the workers and crafters throughout Peloria. I am less certain about Veskarthen, although he did create the Obsidian Palace when chained by Argan Argar. In Pamaltela, Balumbasta appears to occupy a crafter role, too, although there may have been more when the Doraddi still had their urban culture at Tishamto. But then, there is a good chance for these specialist crafters to have been demigods. Perhaps even Agitorani. Orlanth the Everyman has his crafter aspects/sons/subcults/heroes/whatever. Orstan the Carpenter is the Dureving master craftsman, and continues to be attributed into Vingkotling times. Mostal may receive some worship or reveration by humans, even outside of Slon. E.g. among the masons of Sartar. (There is Flintnail of Pavis, of course.) Drona(r) and his offspring likely provide a similar role in Malkioni lore as founders of the jobs, along with Kadenit the Builder and Tadenit the Scribe for the white-collar crafts. Kralorela has the sons of Aptanace the Sage as occupational patron deities, and probably two or three independently emerged sets of occupation patrons from other regions than Hanjan and Wanzow, too. Minor occupational deities should be just the thing the people of Maslo might worship, as they shun worship of the greater entities. The mysterious craftsman and the incredible artificer are two mythical memes that find their expression in many a myth, sometimes combined in a single person (e.g. Wayland), sometimes kept apart. The Volcano god as smith or just maker of stone blades is fairly widespread in myths, too. Smelting metal from non-metallic ores is a mysterious process beyond the baking of clay in already elaborate kilns.

Yes, that is clear, and it is the only sensible course of action as a business. Otherwise you might end up on the other side of the muddle with copyright on Cthulhu mythos lore where quite a bit has originated from Chaosium sources and other companies might just take a licences to avoid problems, and nobody wants such a muddle for Glorantha. You didn't address my main concern: Will Chaosium produce a detailed description of Karse and/or Refuge in the foreseeable future? Or is it possible to leave any future product vague enough so that features of the City of Carse supplement don't contradict the new setting? Sure. I don't expect that a reprint of City of Carse with a Glorantha conversion guide licensed by MoonDesign is feasible, either, even if one had the license from Midkema Press. Those system-agnostic and setting-light products from the eighties were highly acclaimed at the time, and I still rate them very high in my personal list of best rpg supplements ever, and while there has been an OSR hype (that may have influenced maybe 10-15% of the customers in the hobby) What is the official stance on the description of Karse in Men of the Sea? On closer scrutiny, there are some references to establishments of City of Carse, mainly NPC names, that need to be done over. Using the layout of Caernarfon is not protected by any copyright laws - e.g. the Palladium Book of Weapons and Castles has Caernarfon city and castle with a street map almost identical to City of Carse. Because that's the documented extent of the city in the 1500s... (when that copperplate engraving of the city that Feist based his work on was produced). On a related subject, what's the deal with the Issaries priest Goldgotti from Nochet, scion of one of the Manirian Merchant Princes (as per Sourcebook p.44, and also Sartar Kingdom of Heroes p.159) and Gold Gotti the Wolf Pirate who participated in the Battle of Pennel Ford?

Yes, that has this information, IIRC. By making a map square 4 college block squares and alternating the pairing in every second column, you get the equivalent of a hex map. 1 1 X X 1 1 X X 1 1 2 2 1 1 2 2 3 3 2 2 3 3 2 2 3 3 4 4 3 3 4 4 (etc.) Anyway, a 25 km square will accommodate up to 25 agricultural settlements (of 50 adults) in square packaging, and almost 40 in trigonal packaging.

There are a couple of ways for demons to pay back their mortal supporters for sacrifice and worship. The demon familiar enters a form of contractual servitude. It uses its innate (magical) abilities to reward its "master"'s gifts. There is usually a reward clause for the demon in the contract, things like the soul of the contractor, or a firstborn child, or similar. The genie offers a limited form of rewards to its summoner. In the original story, for a major favor done. The demon cult works exactly like a spirit cult, only without shamans. Demonic deities are deities and may work through cults, or through propitiative sacrifice. Being deities doesn't necessarily protect them from coercion by powerful summoners.

After mentioning the RQ3 Gamemasters' Book, I guess it is best to point you there. The rules for densest human settlement, with only extra fertile regions like the Nile delta with its two harvests in a year as an example of denser settlement, can be applied. A 25 km hex field - 25 km to the side, or to the hex diagonal? Under optimal conditions, you can have a village practicing agriculture or horticulture with some animal husbandry on the side every five kilometers, and a trigonal pattern is the densest possible pattern you can get. This includes quite a bit of less cultivated land in between used as pasture, source for building wood and fuel. As soon as you add less productive conditions or a strong vertical component, forget about that trigonal pattern. Instead, you will get a pattern of such settlements stringed along traffic routes. For a barbarian culture as per RQ3/BGB, I would assume half the optimal density population of settlements. These can be concentrated in towns or even fortress cities if an easy mode of traffic (usually by water) is present. Primitive sedentary fisherfolk (like the Kjøkkenmøddinger of the Baltic Sea) may practice something quite similar to transhumance, with temporary settlements at the fish migration sites. I would reduce population density for such a culture to a third or less of optimal agricultural density, and of course limit it to rivers, lakes, wetlands with reliable stretches of open water, and sea shores. Purely hunter-gatherers are tricky to determine. Some follow the herd migrations, like the Ahrensburg reindeer hunter cultures (both the atlatl-user culture and its successor 2 millennia later using bows). They are on the brink of switching to a nomadic lifestyle, although the normal step towards nomadic cultures comes from agricultural cultures. As a rule, the population density of hunter-gatheres (and fisherfolk) is determined by the regenerative ability of their prey. Usually, prey and predators fall into mutual cycles of growth and reduction, but additional stress on the prey may lead to extinction first of the prey, then of the predators. New predators for isolated prey populations often lead to extinction of that prey within few generations, but so does loss of habitat.

In RQ and BRP terminology, neither "primitive" nor "barbarian" are meant as degrading usage. Sure, the terms aren't politically correct. But they describe an attitude to agriculture, technology, and political organisation that was laid out in the RuneQuest 3rd edition rules, and adopted widely. Primitive, Nomad, Barbarian and Civilized (where the latter is a bit of a condemnation - although Jennell Jacquay's old Central Casting supplements for creating more interesting characters added a fifth, even more condemning state, Decadent). The Guide has tried to keep those categories while desperately trying (and failing, IMO) to give better names. The definitions are in the Big Golden Book of BRP, inherited from RQ3, and they are quite clear, and, as mentioned, well established. Placing the question in this forum brings up that context. Your terms are about as undefined and useless - Jane Goodall's chimps are hunter-gatherers. What is a bronze-age settlement? There are regions of the world which never had a Bronze Age, but had urban iron age civilizations. What does "paleolithic" mean in Saskatchewan or Patagonia? Yes, European language carries an ugly colonial inheritance. Yes, descendants of these (and basically any) colonial overlords do deserve being reminded of what brought them into their comfortable existence, and own up their ancestral sins. And no, the cultural achievement of living languages should not be skewered by agendas. Censure is oppression. Jericho probably started out as Barbarian, as that is the cultural level for grain cultivation. The city is small enough to be a clan center in its origin, much like ancient Rome. And the Natufian culture is as much the odd man out as is the sedentary "nomad" culture of the Botai horse tamers in what became modern Kasachstan, relying heavily on the quite unique conditions provided in the Fertile Crescent initially.

That would make the exile mainly their fault, as opposed to swept along by a political development. The next such convenient event is the Firebull uprising among the Sambari and the dissolution of the Dundealos around 1618. Going into exile is a major cutting of ties, even if it is understood as "for the time the Lunars are here" - as far as people know, that could be a couple of generations.

Exiles because of their participation in the Starbrow Rebellion, or due to subsequent anti-Lunar activities? The Starbrow aftermath requires two years of narrative bridging. If your characters are Colymar, 1615 is a good year to go into exile in the wake of Blackmoor replacin Leika Ballista.

The death of our star and the merger with Andromeda might come roughly at the same time, and it is extremely unlikely that there will be creatures resembling us witnessing either event. The gradual increase of heat output of our primary is orders of magnitude slower than the runaway greenhouse effect that we appear willing to provoke. We are at the (apparently quite rare) cusp of spreading into our solar system and establish a presence away from our home planet. This appears to be one of the big filters that create the Fermi Paradox.

Thanks, Martin. That looks like it is verbatim from Cults of Terror, much like I expected.

Counting on the (five) fingers actually supports a base 12 counting system. Dozens, a gros... and weird intermediaries between base 10 and base 12, like the "large hundred" of 120.

Being able to create a state where the rules of physics are re-written might enable us to do some things we deem impossible right now. My hard-to-obtainium exotic matter for my warp drives is a tunnel of such near-singularities in ring-shape Bose Einstein condensates (Rb in carbon nanotubes) around a vessel with a certain velocity to separate the vessel from lateral space, creating a warp tunnel. This probably doesn't work in theoretical physics, and the physics I learned as a chemist don't even begin to enable me to do calculations on this idea. But they don't allow me to refute the possibility, either. And no, slowing the speed of light doesn't take the hard limit up. It only allows relativistic effects at much lower energies. Might slow down shipboard time, for instance.