Joerg

The RQ2 rules were among the last RQ2 sources I managed to get my hands on. If you started with RQ3 in a non-English-speaking country, getting RQ2 material was quite the quest. Off my head, the one tin plunder item I can recall was a compass. It pointing towards (or away from) Magasta's Pool made it a useful tool for navigation, as you could get a true east-west bearing from the Sunpath, and knowing the direction of the Pool gave you a radiant from the Pool. Not quite all you need for triangulation, but quite good when you had one of those extraordinary mountains, or objects like the Skyfall, to get a bearing of (unless that object happened to be on the same radiant you were).

But then, according to Casanunda, the art lies in the chase...

Codices make bad use of valuable parchment - they use perfectly good writing surface to sew or even glue pages together! One version of codex I have seen recently was more of a box with parchment in a more or less uniform, box fitting size, a numbered loose pages collection. (I think the Wulfila bible - the silver letters on purple parchment - was collected like this.) Third century AD? Don't discount the use of clay tablets. While the Dara Happan skript isn't that well suited for cuneiform, using clay as a writing material should be possible. Orlanth is a wood-carver (among plenty other quite practical crafts), and may have learned a bit from his knowing companion. Never underestimate those barbarians! Rulers often require writing on official buildings - whether carved into rock or wood, or painted as fresco into the plaster, or laid as mosaic, or glazed into representative pottery. Or stamped on coins.

Kin are those who will stand up for you before the law, and who will take you in in times of need. This stranger who happens to share your father's blood will do neither for you. Is he kin? The case gets hairier when a sibling is married off to a different clan. While marriage moves the sibling from the birth clan to the marriage partner's affiliation, in case of a divorce that individual will revert back to the birth clan. But still, while the sibling is part of the other clan, and if your clan and that clan go heads to heads in a feud, slaying your sibling won't be kin-slaying. Phil Hibbs's Trickster character had the Orlanth initiate as his sidekick. While this feels slightly munckinny to me, it would be an option. Only Orlanth cultists have the mythical precedent to bond a trickster. Any other Orlanthi cult probably would be betrayed in no time short. Possible solution: dual initiation of one of the other characters to Orlanth. If Londra of Londros (a Sword of Humakt, and associate priestess of Orlanth) can do it, why not a character in your group? Enjossi leaping the Skyfall? That's quite a big bid for a mortal hero whose leaping feats were up the Stream river. The Creekstream River has no known cataracts between Duck Point and Nochet.

A library like that probably has lectoria where scrolls are taken to be read, or scriptoria where the reader first creates a copy of the passage he intends to use, returns the original, and then may use his copy for repeated reading and cross-referencing. Such excerpt copies with source citations may be added to the collection as well, and create a certain amount of redundance. Quite a few works by ancient authors are only known through such partial citations of their works by later authors. Library Use might be a social skill rather than a knowledge skill...

If you take Jeff's example, your character would have to learn seven skills (runes, techniques) and then to acquire a number of spells without any future skills. Any spell would use at least two such skills. Do Sorcerous Runes and Techniques in your proposal get experience checkboxes? If yes, which of the two or more skills you use for a spell will receive the check? And how do you plan to tell sorcerous rune mastery apart from your score in the runes? This bunch of question illustrates why the course taken by RQG has less design problems. RQG as is has one skill per spell. Even if you double the current number of sorcery spells through developments of your own, the number of spells a sorcerer will have memorized will be low, the number he has learned (and probably inscribed) will not be that much higher. A sorcerer with eight or nine spells will have to learn one or two skills more than the sample sorcerer from earlier. All of this said, I do think that grimoires should be a thing in RQG western sorcery. I don't quite know how, yet - possibly give a greater starting ability for spells from that grimoire. Possibly reducing one doubling penalty for an inferred technique or rune. Possibly allowing to infer an extra rune (from a short list of runes connected to the grimoire) if the character doesn't have that rune (yet).

Other than saving on the required magic points (and hence casting time) that come from the doublings, there is hardly any benefit from knowing more techniques than Command. As a sorcerer, you have the choice to be either fast and focussed or flexible and slow and MP-hungry. It also gets you Water and Darkness (at double cost, each), leaving out only Air and Moon. Personally, I would have left out at least one of those techniques, and taken a form rune instead (e.g. Man, Beast or Spirit), as Command alone already gives you all the other techniques at double cost. Switching the role of runes/techniques as binary flags and spells at skills to the inverse situation: Does this system still allow using inferred runes (i.e. neighboring elements, opposed powers) or techniques? If not, a sorcerer like this would quickly become a one trick pony. If it does, is the full skill applied to inferred runes/techniques, or is the skill halved for that? (MP still doubled?)

Just to hew into the same gap that Jeff already has chipped into this armor, the monomyth is the easy, GM- and player-friendly version of the Gloranthan myths. Saying "God A is God B" is always fraught with dangers if you expect it to apply to each and every aspect or expected reaction. Even variations in local worship of the same deity can cause different outcomes. When you change names and cultural context, the differences may grow. Neither really are good food for newbies, not even on the scholarly level. If you are willing to go the scholarly way, King of Sartar is the most rounded and finished of these works, is pertinent to the area of Dragon Pass, and will subversively introduce a distrust in the documentation of the world in the reader. There is some stuff in there that is only distracting from the use with roleplaying games, like all that Fourth Age speculation, but the rest is the material a Lhankor Mhy sage would encounter in his research, and hope to make some sense of. That's my main approach to the cult of LM, too. Sorcery is an option, not a necessity, unless you go as far as saying that all knowledge is sorcerous (which is pretty meaningless). "Experimental" heroquesting is in no way scientific. There is no way to make a heroquesting experience repeatable. There is a way to make different choices at certain expected stages of a quest. There may be unexpected victories in places where you aren't supposed to experience them, throwing your assumed knowledge of this mythical path off-balance, and possibly removing you, your quest, and your supporters' outcomes from the expected result. The classical example is the Yelmalian who managed to hold on to his fire powers and possibly his armor on the Hill of Gold quest, emerging as something different than the Yelmalio of Time. Illumination is sometimes presented as removing the quester from the emotional experience and his or her previously learned certainty and conviction. Not always, though (and that insight comes from the story of Valare Addi, which does make up a small portion of Entekosiad), as a new insight or conviction may only be as incomplete in understanding as previous information. (On the other hand, had Valare been a much more powerful heroquester, her conviction might have changed the Red Goddess into something a lot closer to Dendara, the Virtuous Wife. Genertela might have looked drastically different as a result.) The cults of Lhankor Mhy and Buserian aren't directly concerned with Illumination. They observe the history of Illumination mostly from the outside. There were sages that were illuminated, draconically enlightened, and possibly (in Buserian) also umbarically endarkened under Spolite influences, but none of that really affected the core deities or the cults as wholes. Almost as likely the hoarder, judge and rival might be sitting right in your own temple.

Did they have a broo in the party? The (rumored?) allosaur broo must have had an enterprising parent...

RuneQuest is a set of fantasy rules nowadays firmly married to Glorantha, but it had one previous incarnation which successfully carried over to other settings. Call of Cthulhu is a daughter systems of RuneQuest as a specific setting adaptation, and another wildly popular one used to be Stormbringer. HeroQuest is a completely different type of rpg, originally firmly married to Glorantha, although the third revision of the rules (the original was called Hero Wars, so this is taking about HQ2) was presented without a specific background attached (only to be followed up with HeroQuest Glorantha which was as firmly married to the setting as you can). HQ is a narrative system, often using a single opposed roll of dice to solve a scene that would use intense dice rolling in RQ and CoC. HQ is in no way limited to fantasy games. There is a German language scenario book which has modern spy, urban fantasy, historical and Gloranthan scenarios.

Single unit, otherwise nothing would stop Yelm from building a shrine and summoning two archers to release himself. Yes, whenever a temple is taken over or gets destroyed, a unit gets routed, and a unit killed when capturing or destroying a ziggurat. Absence of Chaos shortens the Chaos Rift phase. Otherwise it is possible to play without Chaos. Playing with Chaos creates a lot of free map space as Chaos prefers to parasite to existing buildings. Without Chaos, getting that many buildings onto the map may take some more military effort. That said, someone on BGG created a "Chaos robot" doing stuff for Chaos without intelligent player control.

The invasion of YarGan has him worshiping Estoro. (p.45) And yes, the text on p.46 says that YarGan was killed by the bull. The Bisos texts however make a distinction between the god YarGan (p.67) and the king of the people under the lake, ErvOronius (p.68), who is overcome by Bisos. But (my bad) in battle, at Yartos, and not in single combat. This (and subsequent good things happening to the people formerly ruled by ErvOronius) provoked an attack of the (differently, corpse) blue people "under the water", the DediZoraRu, under their leader IvinZoraRu. But then the footnote equals IvinZoraRu with YarGan again. I have always read this "Under the Water" as "Inside Castle Blue". So IvinZoraRu was an avatar or so of YarGanEstoro. The story of IdoJartos (p.56) has this son of Turos and Oria slay the dark god in the Black Mountain at the (temporary) loss of his own life, too, but due to his knowledge of the path into the Underworld, he was able to return, and afterwards act as the psychopomp. I think it might be useful to investigate Estoro/GanEstoro/Ganesatarus (and by implication in Fortunate Succession's Carmanian Sources Idovanus) in this context. For some reason, Valare never questions Estoro's appearance in the stories. There's also the possible parallel between Makan/Estoro and Idovanus/Irensavel to consider, given Syranthir's opposition to Arimadalla.

In that case, you really should get the pdf from Chaosium. At 5$ it is a steal... https://www.chaosium.com/dragon-pass-a-gazetteer-of-kerofinela-pdf/

p.86.

Gan appears to be part of "Ganesatarus", the "separate(d) one". The Vadeli demanded human sacrifice when they conquered coastal Pamaltela after the Opening. We know from the Tadeniti War that they had a magic to separate the energy from the body, and it is possible that the process of human sacrifice and accompanying propitiating worship served to power their magics. Many of them are demigods, or at most third generation offspring of deities. The earliest Malkioni were very much a dickfest with hardly any female among them. They made up for that by wedding or at least bedding nymphs of various kinds - Tilntae love nymphs, Niiad sea demigoddesses, Land goddesses and whatever else female manifestations in sufficiently human appearance came forth (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nymph for greek names of what you can think of). With the possible exception of Aldryami (i.e. dryads). It wouldn't have been much different if they had been a bunch of Satyrs discovering civilisation in its various aspects. Malkion himself set the pattern. We know of at least three wives - Phlia the Tilnta mother of Talar, Zzabur and Horal (and the two named daughters of Malkion, Menena and Eule), Kala the land goddess and mother of Drona(r), and a cousin of his mother who mothered Waertag. Then there are the other five ancestors of the six tribes of Danmalastan. If any of these tribal leaders acted as deities, the candidates would be Waertag, Tadenit, Vadel (rather than his father Vimorn), and Kachast. Of these, Kachast (who is most likely in the region) would be the least prone to cruelty. No, that wasn't YarGan, but his head worshiper, King Blue.

Sure. But then, our observations of their lifestyle can be projected on that of our mesolithic predecessors (or those displaced by our neolithic and then band ceramics predecessors). But then, the Doraddi had managed to go from cultivating lineage plants and hunting to building an urban civilisation depending on horticulture and presumably water management. It isn't clear whether that culture included metal working - while helpful, metalworking is not required to create or maintain an urban civilisation. What is required is transport of food and the presence of water.

You're wrong.

It isn't as much a pastiche as a weirdly unique social structure, one largely absent from all those urban maritime cultures we discuss, or if we take their mythical stories, all those "demgod rulers by divine ancestry" top-down societies that are exactly what Orlanthi society isn't (any more, we have left the Vingkotling Age far behind us). The ox-plow cattle-herder farmer-warrior republic is fairly unique to "Northern" Europe (we're talking about the Danubian valley and Illyrian mountains, which is latitude-wise as far from the southern shore of the Baltic as it is from Lampedusa). Neolithic farming methods that spread millennia before Bronze or the corded ware people remained feasible in continental Europe when agriculture in the Fertile Crescent suffered from climate change that made the crescent a lot less fertile and in consequence required bureaucratic administration of manpower and supplies for communal works beyond religious monuments. And let me repeat: the longhouse with indoor stabling is a neolithic farmer design for a climate that has real winters which need stabling of cattle and other lifestock. It was such a useful design that it fell out of use only with the arrival of motor-driven tractors. Pants or leggins were worn by chalcolithic wanderers like the Ötztal Ice Mummy. They were still worn by Hallstatt miners or Danish bog mummies from Republican Roman era. "Thane" is an English language archaism for a form of clan nobility, heavily used in the Scottish Play by that playwright who shaped the modern language so much. If you want to use or create archaic English-related terms, you will drift to Anglo-Saxon terms. You can go and use a foreign language, like English Latin (trust me, when spoken aloud it doesn't sound anything like a Romance language) or Greek. There is the weird non-sequitur that equals "Celt" with Gaels. Read the classics! Caesar, the Greek historians... none of them ever encountered Hibernians knowingly. But hey, if you find a culture of free farmer-warriors who are both transhumant pastoralists and grain farmers and form small republics as their dominant social order, point them out and show how they weren't really led by dynastic demigod kings, and use their cultural terms for these positions

"Someone remove those spider webs, or I cannot enter this room!" Player-called arachnophobia. Probably not worth a fate point, unless the party is fleeing from something bad. And in that case, the party suffers a disadvantage (or leaves the arachnophobe behind). At least, this is how I have seen and experienced fate points in play in FATE.

In my book, that was a stretch... and "summon nonexistent item from whole cloth" doesn't cover taking out enemy vision. Heortling warrior would have done the same trick with a lot less of a stretch. Flower Arrangement would... (Wait, did Janaral wear boots at all? Sandals are all the chique in the current depictions, unless people go barefoot.)

A relationship to a dead person might be fairly obsolete. "Companion of Kallyr" gets a lot less useful after the Battle of Queens.

Personally, I feel that the number of rune levels from the Colymar tribe is greater than the number of rune levels in the Colymar tribe. While the magically advanced folk are valuable resources to the tribe (and clans), they are more likely to be subject to exile (during the Lunar administration), and to be head-hunted by foreign leaders (like Argrath, Samastina, Fazzur...) A priest or lord in exile needs replacement, but will retain the rune level.

Yes. The one equivalent of gods bones our history had, and the amounts were minuscule, fit for godkings only. (A bit like the aluminium in the crown of Napoleon III - hihly valued for the rarity and the skill working it required, at the time.) Tin is the sky metal, not the metal of volcanon boy, or lightning. I have no idea what Lodril's metal would have been prior to his dive into the Earth, or whether he had one distinct from Aether's. The only bones we have are from after his dive. The early earth walkers or the men's tribe of the log didn't leave any bones behind until much later. All the variant Lodrils go asleep or explode as volcanoes. I don't see tin in any way related to Lightning. Up to tin, each metal is associated with one element. After tin, we get three celestial metals, one of which is an alloy (brass). Silver is a wide-spread celestial metal, and even Orlanth has a claim to it, as do the very numerous Star Captains, and the moons.

When asking about L-Space, the sorcery plane was indeed one of the concepts I considered. It doesn't have to be thundering Thesauri or Thursday Next-like book-jumping. Another thing to consider: most Lhankor Mhy documents come with blessings and curses. The library shelves must be full of some of the most gruesome curses uttered in Glorantha. Trespassing through L-Space might trigger quite a few of these.

Late Storm Age would make the Nidan range impassable unless the Psstorlists descend from Top of the World rather than the Spike. I agree that Daxdarius usurping his place on Mt. Jernotius would be late Storm Age, but then his early deeds were a whole lot earlier. My impression was that the hordes (and the Yolp range) appeared in or even before the Flood Age. The arrival of the Andams marked the change from Wendaria to Pelanda. I certainly don't allow even the possibility. The Third Eye Blue folk are goat herders and never appear as riders. Six Ages depicts them as dark-brown skinned, and I think they are closer to the mark with this incarnation of the game. As far as I am concerned, they are one of the many deeply brown-skinned people of Fronela, possibly related to King Drona (who landed at Dorsomon/eastern Norans, Loskalm (p. 206) and then migrated on to Baklene in Junora (p.215). His companion Eurmal Friend of Men may have had something to do with misplacing the dwarven metal secrets. In short, I am going for a Fronelan, possibly Brithos-related origin for TEB. Bonus question: how do you mark a blue eye on blue skin?