Joerg

Or alternatively for an Issaries herald who otherwise specializes in the buy-back of Wolf Pirate hostages/slaves. This ought to be a quite thriving business model in Kethaela, and might be one of the shadier sources of wealth for Goldgotti. "Yes, the Wolf Pirates have taken hundreds of slaves, good man, but what about the books???" Note that there is a bunch of Wolf Pirates with fairly literate crews, including Mularik Ironeye. If Orstando or Harrek brought pet sorcerers to the Isles to outfit new vessels with "wolf" heads, the literate portion of the population might be as high as among coastal Theyalans. Given Harrek's background as Dart Competitor, there is a fair chance that our berserk superhero actually can pull a Clark Kent stunt putting on glasses (or a fake goatee) and retreating to read a scroll or similar. Having a few personal lectors reading them out for him is at least as likely, though.

Actually, this mention of the sheep of Nelat made me make a double-take. There is exactly one mention of this, Heortling Mythology. I wonder whether this is a "thinko" which confused the two brothers of Triolina, and really should read "Heler". I don't see any other evidence for a connection between Nelat and clouds or sheep other than Heler being his brother (in that case, are there Triolina clouds?). This might have been caused by the name of the ewe goddess Nevala which does sound and read a bit like Nelat. But then, it is also possible or even likely that someone noticed that possible confusion, and decided to leave it in for amusement value. We have a similar case in Dragon Pass: Land of Thunder, where the annual pilgrimage to Kjartan's pool is made by worshipers of Pelaskos (the open seas fisherman of the coast) rather than Poverri (the fisherman of rivers and sweetwater lakes). Assuming a Gray Age or older origin, the rite would have been interrupted with the Dragonkill in 1120, and probably have been re-instated only with Enjossi's salmon feat.

Go somewhere remote. Given the bottlenecks involved in releasing Glorantha publications, the chances to see anything official published on certain backwaters within your life-time aren't that high, as Chaosium has a number of priority targets lined up. Ralios appears to be rather off their radar at the moment, so the East Wilds appear to be a rather safe place to play around with Orlanthi stuff, far enough from that nasty Arkat business. Of course, if you want to interact with the Hero Wars, your campaign will necessarily touch upon stuff that Chaosium will produce eventually. Chaosium's toes are steel-capped - your campaign being different won't even register as an impact. But I think what you are really worried about is Chaosium's toes and attached heel trampling into your campaign area and contradicting your details. There are a few ways to deal with that. One is to ignore anything that contradicts your campaign. Don't use that particular part of that product. One way is to rewrite either side of the material (or both) to create a compromise that allows both Chaosium's continuity and your campaign's continuity to coexist - that's a lot of work, though. The easiest way is to start a different campaign using Chaosium's material should it impact your campaign, and rope in your old characters as modified NPCs or to give them a heroic ascension. They could become patron deity/allied spirit of your new characters if your players want to keep the carry-over. In MMORPG terms or insertion fiction terms, a cheat.

Do I have to imagine a white persian cat being stroked? D'Wargon D'Wargon or Womb Biter is the uz name for the demon swallowed by the Black Eater which wounded Korasting's womb, leading to the Curse of Kin. It may be a title, it may be a specific entity recognized by the Uz that only shares some aspects with Nysalor as understood in the Cults of Terror write-up. David Cake used the term in a 1996 post, well before Drastic: Darkness, so it must have been in the troll material earlier. RQ2 Trollpak uses Gbaji (never Nysalor) in its dirge about the Curse of Kin.

Tapping whom, or what? The Neliomi Sea was reduced to an almost still, insignificant puddle due to having been tapped by both Vadeli and Enro(l)valini (better known as Brithini) in the Late Storm Age (Guide p.692) I found it possible to make an ethically defensible statement on Tapping peasants saying "We must not forbid peasants to volunteer for Tapping to give the sorcerers the necessary power to save the community!" in the committee on Tapping at How The West Was One. Unfortunately, all the other committee members were too enmeshed in their respective ideologies to apply Logic to the problem, and no one from the openly tapping schools was even invited to that committee. Originally Tapping was not in any way Chaotic, but a necessary measure on part of the wizards to keep Change and Creation at manageable speeds. Like with pre-Death killings of beasts for food, on the next morning or at least at the next major rite, the killed individual beast would return to where it died, and likewise Tapped anything would regenerate from the ongoing stream of Creation. The Boristi sort of misunderstood this. The Galvosti (who tap non-Malkioni humans) are a Hrestoli group.

We're trespassing on the RQ Forum borders here, but: How do we know the ten cities of Dara Happa were inhabited by humans? Alkoth revealed itself in the Greater Darkness and well into the Dawn Age to have been the home of Shadzoring darkness demons that looked suspiciously like troll depictions of Zorak Zoran. Elempur, the southernmost of the seven cities of Anaxial was destroyed fairly early on without its inhabitants getting much narrative light. It also happens to be fairly close to the only site we know to have been inhabited by Gold Wheel Dancers, in Aggar. And I wouldn't be much surprised if the founders of Verapur in the north had been humanoid birds - possibly based on raptor birds - similar to the Parrot People of Forng in the East Isles. Also, how much bat was there in Mernita before a lot of blue moon debris crushed (most of) the place? Actually, that is a description that has never been made for any of the Kitori. As agents of the Only Old One, they come with a lead mask made to fit a troll skull, a black cloak, and a spear. The entire arrangement is assembled in a way that made it hard to guess what exactly hid behind that mask. But then his offspring might have burnt Korasting's womb, instead of Nysalor/D'Wargon.

Not in the official presentation. I can check the old Heroes of Wisdom data to see what Ingo Tschinke had for his RQ2/RQ3 write-up, but that has never been published and is strictly fan-work. Lots of it needs to be adapted to current info.

Once you are through with the three scenarios in the adventure book and the one from the quickstart, the adventure book does provide a Colymar Lands sandbox. The Guide does provide a finer mesh than the Genertela Box for most (but not all) of Glorantha - the East and the South have significant gaps.

Imperial magic. In RQ3, there is a rune spell "Coin Wheels" for the Lokarnos cult, and it may be a partial re-instating of the Gold Wheel Dancers of the Dawn Age (and earlier). It is possible that the mere presence of these coins conveys some form of authority and order. Wheels may be an antidote to anarchy.

That's not quite the case. Practically everybody worships Yelm in Dara Happa as a lay member, but only the elite can initiate to his cult. Apart from the birth privilege required to be initiated into the Cult of Yelm, IMO this isn't that different from most Pelorian deities. We are all used to the Orlanthi mode where everybody is initiated to a specific deity. For the vast majority of Pelorians, this is not the case. The majority of the Dara Happans has as limited insight to these truths as say the Orlanthi, as they are denied access to the cult secrets. There are more illuminates in the Empire than there are people privy to the secrets of the Sun Disk. The sun mystery is one of the ways the nobility conserves its superiority. The Buserian cult and other lesser priesthoods are strong in partial secrets, and a small fraction of the illuminated also has the insights into celestial lore to approach the secrets. To all the rest it is the awesomeness of imperial solar rule. The widespread direct Yelm worship among the horse riders is one of the reasons why horse rider rule in Peloria has been regarded as legitimate noble rule. While their "justice" wasn't exactly "measured", they certainly were qualified for the "from the above" part of the Solar concept of imperial authority. The Lunar Way and nobility derived from the Red Emperor side-steps this, both in access to the cult of Yelm and in access to the mysteries.

Alchemy? Alchemy requires base substances (although the RQ2/RQG rules only deal with the equivalent of baking mixtures that you buy from your temple or guild). If I had to do it in the real world, I would probably get iron sulfide (pyrite, or ochre subject to fouling mud) and roast it while cooling the exhaust, creating a reflux that would collect the liquid vitriol (aka sulphuric acid) and allow it to leach the roasted ferric ions, or by adding vitriol to freshly sedimented (then dried) ochre, then evaporate any excess liquid and recrystallize once or twice for purity (depending on how the ink turns out with less refined material). Ochre and bog iron are minerals that don't contain any metallic iron (though significantly more ionic ion than blood), and hence are harmless as food for uz or aldryami. I don't think that the Mostali produce their Death-Metal from this stuff - IMO they would use something like magnetite, heat it to red glow and then apply some arcane energies.

Not quite. Everone thinks they should be the ones to tell all the others to do it, and how to do it. The catalogue artifact in the Jonstown library is extraordinary. The other libraries have sequential inventaries at best, with the same item possibly listed under different titles (and probably different shelf/chamber positions, too) Inkmaking is a fairly involved process, whether for gall ink or for india ink. I have no idea where Gloranthans would get ferric vitriol from for gall ink, though. Craft shops probably line the library sites, or have soot kilns in charcoal producing areas (for india inc). How to make paper from wood pulp might be a dwarf gift designed to anger the aldryami. Especially if the pulp is directed to be made from elf bones. (For people speaking German it is somewhat ironic that Gloranthan elf bones are wooden, as the German term for ivory translates as elves' bone.) There ought to be some variant of "taoist" spell card magicians using exotic writing material from specific elf paper, monster hide etc. and likewise special inks somewhere in Glorantha (and copied in Fonrit and probably Maslo, as part of their avoidance of too powerful personal magics). Why not the Vadeli?

The entirety of the last few days worth of messages in this thread were material for the Glorantha forum, but unfortunately the normal mortal forum user has no way to move stuff from one forum to another. Branching off a new thread doesn't redirect replies to earlier posts in the original thread. In order to stay on topic with this upcoming RuneQuest publication: Does Lightfore get a cult in GaGoG, or is the planet mentioned shortly in "The Cult in the World" for both (young) Yelm and Yelmalio? Not that any mythic insights found now would have much of a chance making it into this manuscript.. Content editing will be restricted to checking correct attribution of subcults etc. compared to previously published lore. I don't think a guide to heroquesting in the Sky World together with a sandbox description of constellation denizens etc. has even been suggested as a product, yet...

Then let's close this part of the discussion - there are other things about Kralorela's dark underbelly that deserve attention. Basically, because for every monstrously murderous tyrant correctly identified as such there are half a dozen historical characters with effectively the same track records who are remembered as upstanding cultural heroes by their (victorious) side. I don't find an absolute monster that interesting. Sheng as the leader of a well-organized state with an eager bureaucracy combining the best features of Kralori and Dara Happan administration is more interesting to me than just another demon. If these bureaucrats are Eichmanns, so be it. There are a lot of things in Kralorela that are suspicious - like e.g. the license Boshi Bushi has for his aberrant (and doubtless monstrous, if perhaps slightly less murderous) practices just for being Godunya's loyal monster. Sheng's activities in Boshan show a purified, almost angelic AgartuSay as a wandering Sage, fully reformed. Was that prior to his Jolaty revelation? Was the Jolaty revelation something forced upon him in Boshan or after leaving? Sedenya (as the Red Goddess) has a friendly side and a demonic one. Sheng is her Other, yet all that we see in his biography is his demonic side, except for the Boshan impressions. We don't have any written sources from his miraculous activities among the Pentans and Praxians, or in Ignorance. Those in Kralorela were re-written, as were those in Peloria.

It is a licensed product, as Chaosium (or MoonDesign) owns the Glorantha intellectual property, and it is one of two Gloranthan boardgames currently in print (and one out of four ever professionally published). I am active on the BGG forum, so it isn't like I am starved for people to discuss this with. There tend to be quite a lot of competitive board gamers over there, though, with focus on gameplay and rules, which is why I thought one could have some armchair discussions on the Gloranthan details over here. (I had one weird reaction to me voicing a minor disagreement on Gloranthan details with Arthur Petersen along the lines how I could challenge authority... thankfully my notoriety had reached some of the other posters.)

And if it was 13G, if that character shows up in a Gloranthan game he should have that magic. Sorry, Jeff, but "This is a RuneQuest forum" doesn't make Hofstaring a tree-climber and abseiler, either. I chose my words carefully to indicate a single recipient of this feat. IIRC it was won as a reward for the "Seven Steps West" quest (from King of Sartar). You might not be too fond of the Sartar Rising story line, and to be honest, neither am I, but this shouldn't cut out all the Sartarite detail from it. The character I was talking about appears in the Sartar Rising! campaign for HW/HQ1: Javern Spithorn, originally the spear companion of Orngerin Thundercape, and the characters' lead to become followers of Kallyr, "Orlanth Is Dead" p.10, and more prominently in "Gathering Thunder" p.5, where the player characters get his help in a combat situation. An image of him is on p.49. It is a very special feat, probably gained on a heroquest. I recall a short article or story by Greg why Javern couldn't be resurrected because his feat spared him most of the Path of the Dead. Guided Teleport to a specific Outer World location works as a RQ spell. The Gate of Dusk is on Luathela, not in the Sky World, BTW.

Weirdly, Mastakos grants one of Kallyr's followers a feat "Sunset Leap" when the leap his planet does is from Sunset to Dawn Gate, and the march westwards is a swift but steady amble.

Slime deer cavalry is what I would assume, too. Maybe the riders have a contraption on their saddles to hold those boneless head sacks up? The political map of Dorastor shows 30K "other chaos" in the eastern part of Dorastor, and "at the head of a mob of chaos things" suggests that the stag riders were only a small but memorable part of the horde. The population numbers in the Guide ignore the Grayskins of the Mad Sultanate described in Dorastor: Land of Doom, but the Guide mentions the Tower of Lead (located in that area) as sometime palace of the Mad Sultan. The riders could be some less depraved or luckily chaos featured individuals from the Mad Sultan's horde. The rest of the horde could be a wide array of weird mutations, or possibly some of the earliest Pamaltelan chaos monsters transferred to Karia. The RQ3 Glorantha Bestiary had a few examples, like the charnjibber. It might be an early effect from the Chaos build-up in Karia, although I think it is a little too early for that.

But why does he teleport at dusk?

The one you address through your rites. A sorcerer might tell you that the magical energy comes through that god's runic interface with the Absolute, and the incomplete mastery of that rune may bar you from receiving the full range of that rune's magical expressions. IMO you can question the identity of the object of your rites only while heroquesting. The worship interface is set by your traditions. Altering the worship by changing the name may alter the response you receive, but there is a high likelihood to (start out to) receive a far weaker response than from your original rite without active heroquesting. Attending a rite of a god-talker or priest from another tradition will give you that tradition's results from that tradition's source. Yelm is very much a source of magic merged through countless heroquests. Reducing these to the constituent parts will require lots of heroquest experience along all those paths.

There's a slight flaw in this - it would presume a teleport from the Gate of Dusk to the Gate of Dawn (like Mastakos/Uleria/Emilla), as Lightfore exists through the western gate as Yelm enters from the east, and vice versa. Otherwise, nice idea. Does any of this "bearing the solar disk" require to make a night-time appearance in the sky? Kargzant is Reladivus is Elmal among the Eight Planetary Sons which are known to the Theyalans, too. Shargash and Verithurus(a) have their own stellar bodies in the sky. They both returned from the Underworld after the invasion of Umath. (I am unclear when, and in what shape, though.) The other five (and the two additional planets, plus Entekos/Dendara) probably aren't associated with Lightfore, either. But both the southeastern and the central orb (Reladivus/Kargzant and Antirius) are Lightfore - though possibly only as the result of the Sun Swirl which merged and separated out their identities.

A good traveler's tale, news from beyond the valley, some entertainment, the offer to carry news to distant kin will usually get you board and bet at a non-hostile clan as an individual or traveling in a small party. Mutual exchange of gifts is a high-risk game for status that can easily become vicious. That said, as a traveler claiming a high rank accommodation, you have to leave appropriate material gifts behind. This applies to traders or groups traveling in state, with pack beasts or vehicles to transport stuff, or accompanying a herd driven to the market. Promises and obligations are a currency, too. You can reciproke a gift (including basic hospitality) with a blessing or by accepting a quest or aiding your hosts in some problem. You can offer to plead your hosts' case with some authority you are going to meet, or one you have privileged access to. Including deities if you are a god-talker. Sacrificing some personal magic at the local shrine is another way to "repay" hospitality. Find a mixed party to travel in. If you are pledged to that party leader, that party leader will be held responsible for your actions, but reactions of the clan you trespass will be directed to that leader. Expect to be exempted from the better hospitality offers. Come as a negotiator. Even if your negotiation is as hopeless as Boris Johnson wanting to re-negotiate May's Brexit deal, you are still entering as a bona fide emissary, and if not your person or your clan then at least your mission is likely to be respected. Divert the patrols - let them hunt after a decoy trespasser, or sneak in while they are busy greeting a sufficiently important potential guest. Stick to the royal highway, and/or hire an escort trusted and respected by both you and the hostile clan. Bring an intercessor and gifts. "We offer you escort to leave our lands" might be a friendly way of telling people to get away from here. If there is a concrete grief between the two clans, the greeters might send intruders back home with a message from their chief or some other authority concerning that grief. "Don't bother us again until you have paid the outstanding weregeld for X/have returned that stolen item" etc. It is possible to make such a demand on an unreasonable claim. "Foul spawn of chaos..." is a rather harsh way of rejecting Lunar-affiliated people.

Good (and quite hard) questions. Keep them coming. Unhindered passage through clan territory is a form of hospitality, too, IMO. You don't have to stop your journey at every stead and sit down for a sip of water or to stay the night, but you will travel past lots of sisters and female cousins who married into the clans on your way, and it is good practice to at least talk to them, exchange news, etc. Hospitality can slow down your travel speed to a crawl if you have the leisure to do so. An urgent mission will allow you to promise to have those talks and sit-downs on your way back, or next time. Then there will be clans who invite you to discuss a case of unpaid debts or worse. This too falls under hospitality laws, and may not be brushed aside that easily without deepening the conflict potential. Officially, hospitality challenges are the duty of patrols and gate-keepers. Depending on lots of factors like your status, your mission, clan relations, personal relationships, etc. In practice, hunters, herders and outlying farmers will act on behalf of the clan or the officials on patrol, or lead you to those better equiped to deal with such interlopers. A local carl or thane will often be the highest instance of the clan leadership and make judgement about your requests if these aren't neative for the clan. Accepting hospitality is a sacred oath, and reneging on that has serious repercussions, political, personal, and magical. Refusing to grant (a degree of) hospitality is a political statement and may trigger repercussions. About traveling incognito, there is the ancient "you may call me X" routine that avoids outright lies. "I once climbed the slopes of Arrowmound on the Lawstaff path" is a valid declaration of your past, though a rather meaningless one. Such fractionary introduction won't grant you high quality hospitality, and may be sufficient grounds to deny even basic forms. Normally, your response to the name challenge should be able to include a declaration of the degree of hospitality you are willing to accept, but like I said above, sometimes there may be offers you cannot (or don't want to) reject. You can always make a plea for a greater duty, although with big names like Argrath or Leika these had better have as prominent or as magical backing. Duty should only be offered to those in a follower relationship. If your clan or your party of travelers has pledged allegiance to Argrath at some point, saying no gracefully is hard. If there is anything like a prescribed liturgy for these ritual exchanges, it has to be highly flexible to take into account different degrees of hostility and purpose prior to the hospitality negotiations/offers. There will be lots of "I bring greetings from ...", too, and you might use the originators of these greetings to establish your importance.

After most of them died on a martial adventure of their last king, the grandmothers and his wife made sure that he and his remaining comrades died, too. While Rastagar was anything but a good husband, this act accelerated the victory of Chaos. There are parts of Esrolia that got "adjusted" as the Hendriking kingdom was fastest to recover from the fall of the God Learners and the EWF, forcing a more patriarchal system on significant portions of Esrolia. The Grandmothers countered this, and regained some of the lost ground, but not all of it. Plus this weakened southern Esrolia to the extent that another group of patriarchal reformers, from Caladraland, established another much less matriarchal region known as Porthomeka. In short, Esrolia is home to many variations of gender domination. Few of them healthy, none of them fully egalitarian, most of them somewhat functional and often problematic to modern sensibilities. (But that goes for the rest of Glorantha as well, only usually with stronger patriarchal domination. Holay may be a more pleasant environment.) This is over-stating the fact. Kimantor was the main protector of Queen Norinel of Nochet and guided her city halfway through the Greater Darkness before evacuating it into Shadow Plateau. A few other hideouts in and around Esrolia survived the Greater Darkness, too, and the Silver Age and Dawn Age saw an eager expansion. Orlanth does remain the most important husband of Ernalda, and the most worry-some. Many others are known, by ancient and by modern names.

Welcome, and no, this is the right place and the right format to undergo the test of Ehilm's Flame. The very act of reading is a form of worship of Lhankor Mhy. The secrets of literacy and writing are taught to the lay members of the cult, or inversely, whoever acquires these abilities does become a lay member of the cult. (Not necessarily in good standing, though.) This appears to aim at the history the Lhankor Mhy libraries have with the God Learners. The act of teaching literacy and writing may be seen as admitting the pupil to lay membership. The question is, who is qualified to admit someone else to lay membership? In the worst case, a lay member might teach another person some basics of reading and writing. So does this lay membership transmit through contagion? The Spirits of Reprisal are tasked to react to different crimes against knowledge, such as destruction of books (without proper replacement - creating a psalimpsest from a document a) reduced to illegibility and b) with all the pertinent information copied elsewhere is fine. Destroying a unique document meant for safe-keeping is a crime worthy of Reprisal. It would be a heck of a job. First, you need to create a catalogue, at least of all the documents you have indexed. This catalogue better had some sort of systematic by which the document can be located, and some enforcement that the document will be returned to the assigned place after being taken out to be read. Next, you need to create any form of systematic by which to categorize the document (or a subset of it). That is a never-ending process. For real-world implementations of Glorantha knowledge, I offer two examples. Peter Metcalfe has initiated the Glorantha Wiki, covering similar ground. Creating an entry is easy, assigning good categories that serve a systematic is a sysiphos task Peter has spent thousands of edits with. Jeff has dedicated a room in his flat in Berlin to house the Vault of Glorantha documents. Accessing that data requires a good memory, an insight in how the material was fit into the available space, and a lot of luck if it is one very specific piece of paper you are hunting for. In any case, a well-indexed document will create a greater amount of meta-documents (index cards) than its actual page count. While you're at it, make a copy of every document you indexed. The only way to keep them accessible, provided noone else has access. And that's the crux. Other library heroes will have pursued a similar strategy, and while this may have resulted in a certain redundance of such documents in your library, there will be documents which exist only in one of those partial indices, of which the original may be lost (or returned to the donor/owner who lent it to the library) or simply officially loaned to another sage. Ingo Tschinke wrote up the Jonstown library as a RQ2 setting, and used the work done for that in writing the 1995 freeform Heroes of Wisdom, recruiting me as co-author and co-referee. Lhankor Mhy temples are a sort of parent organisation to many advanced crafts that may pertain to the writing material. Typical writing materials include parchment, often from temple-owned livestock also used in sacrifices; papyrus (or similar woven/glued flat reed fibre prepared for writing) clay tablets (raw for quick notices, burnt in specialized kilns to preserve for posterity) murals, reliefs, rock carvings (writing in architecture) metal (sheets, coins, artifacts) wood and bone (carved/engraved) textiles (embroidered, crotcheted) and possibly knotwork possibly paper from linen or similar fibre. Wood pulp sounds like a fairly advanced technology. There will be lore-dependent industries surrounding major Lhankor Mhy temples, probably owned (at least partially) by the temple. But yes, trading for writing material produced elsewhere happens a lot. The concept of seals exists. In a way, these are movable type, only not fit for a printing press. But it is possible to use specific seals to print ownership details, curses or blessings into suitable material, all the way to coins. There are oil presses in Glorantha, though I doubt many (if any) use screw mechanics. Using wood cuts (or similar lithography) to produce form sheets appears to be an applied technology in Lunar bureaucracy. If they have to... Submission is always a reluctant process. Sages tend to be a proud bunch. Rather than deathtraps or magical seals, cyphers and kennings are a way to limit accessibility of a dangerous secret to those in possession of the correct keys and context. The most poetic writing style of the three LM scripts lends itself to the use of kennings and indirect references, allowing a writer to obfuscate his message to just about anybody without detailed instructions and context how to access this document. Locked vaults and curses as part of the document are used. If you manage to convince a person with full access to the location and the cypher of a document (you need to learn about in the first place), there will be ways to buy or bully your way to it. Learning about the existence and relevance of a document is 80% of the trick. Can you avoid getting illuminated when studying such stuff? And if it happens, is that such a bad thing? Limits to your knowledge probably are the worst obstacle, but can be overcome by learning. Learning weird and unnecessary stuff, too, like e.g. the theory of weaving, if you want to be able to contextualize a certain cypher using this specialized knowledge for kennings. Foreign languages, weird dialects... Written communication can work beyond first impressions, but basic knowledge may have to be extended to specialist knowledge to understand hidden meanings. Provided there is anything meaningful hidden in that piece of writing. Superstitions and arbitrary limits imposed by illiterati? Yes, these things happen. You need to awe them enough to take you serious, but not too much that they take you as indispensible for their goals. The dangers of applied anthropology just increase when you carry that pursuit to the gods and demons of the Other Side, but a ruin crawl has its own challenges, too. New technology: this will gain the attention of Mostali, regardless whether they were the source of the technology or just claim it for the World Machine. The Clanking City is full of such stuff, and even fuller of Mostali traps, old God Learner protection mechanisms and charred or otherwise brutalized remains of explorers trying to find them and figure them out. Pavis is a good place to plant a lead for a treasure/magic hunt that may send you all across the known world and on many a heroquest. If you are lucky (or unlucky), you might get Argrath as your sponsor. Someone suggested a campaign along these lines recently, "innocent" research leading to you in a project to create a new division in the Sartar Magical Union.