Joerg

History shows that there is a very real possibility in Glorantha for a corrupt, self-serving priesthood or a cotery of hostile magicians to insert themselves between the worshiper and the deity. If you look at the description of (the storm souls of) the Orlanth-initiates flying to the nearest holy mountain and on to the feasting Hall of Orlanth, you will see how the interaction between the individual and the chief of chiefs goes - it is a personal audience, wherein the worshiper presents himself and his deeds, and asks for recognition and possibly a boon or two. That much is how the regular interaction between worshiper and deity goes. Then there are the moments when the worshiper becomes the deity, casting its rune spells, but those aren't much of an information gathering, and more of a re-affirmation of the deity's deeds in the Godtime that are reflected in that rune power spell. Finally, there is the interaction with officiating priests and god-talkers who perform divinations, summons of evil, or who initiate other heroquests. The weekly worship services performed by the priests and the donation of magic points in such rites don't include much of a dialogue with the deity. Now where in this model does the deity have direct contact with the worshiper? When the worshiper becomes the deity, there is of course a re-affirmation of the worshiper's compatibility, and upon occasion also the lack thereof, resulting in a failed attempt to work the deity's magic. And also in a much weaker way when the worshiper acts like the deity without relying on the rune magic. In the case of an initiate with a permanent gift and likewise permanent geas it could be argued that there is a permanent check on this relationship, or it could be argued that it is the consciousness of the worshiper (or his realization of an invocation of the gift or the breach of the geas) that alerts the deity. And that might be where Illumination and its effectiveness in warding off reprisals or even reports of malfeasance might come in. In the breach of a geas or the milder case of a breach of a virtue, the character removes himself a bit from the one-ness with the deity. Now this sounds like a passage out of a God Learner textbook how to deal with worshipers after you inserted yourself between the worshiper and the deity. The worshipers want a re-affirmation of the cosmos, or the rightness of the cosmos. That's what they worship for, what they sacrifice some of their personal magic for. And usually, they do so with the intecession of the officiating priests/godtalkers, and probably the clan or temple wyter. What the deity wants is a re-affirmation of the cosmos, and its role therein, through the reception of these gifts of personal magic from the World of Time. It isn't quite clear how a deity (or another being fully on the Other Side) perceives such interaction with the World of Time - possibly as an extra dimension (or a few) that provide the link to that energy. From this perspective, a sorcerer might perceive a worshiper as a pulsating line that erupts into energy transfers at regular intervals, and at some irregular spaces (times), too. Not quite correct. In the RuneQuest Glorantha rules, the mechanism for the measurement of the bond between the initiate and the cult object (usually a single deity and its aspects and servants, but other models exist, too) is the transfer of POW, generating Rune Points, and the transfer of magic points that establish and re-affirm the intersection of the World of Time and Godtime. HeroQuest Glorantha (which is as valid for simulating Glorantha as is RQG) knows neither POW nor Rune Points nor Magic Points, which means that these aren't Gloranthan currencies, but RuneQuest rules currencies. This makes a great course paper for a God Learner aiming to manipulate a group of worshipers of a deity he has learned to insert himself into. And like with the historical God Learners, it fails to account for deeper meanings only hinted at overt ritualistic activity. This is an applicable model for a partial description of the interactions between cultists and cult subjects, but it fails on so many levels that while factually accurate it is wrong at the same time. It continues in the God Learner mode. Now you have argued the world from the rules, you propose a change of those rules: Where does this come from? And isn't an almost unbreakable pact with Death already payment enough? Let me repeat: RuneQuest is one way to model Glorantha, but not the only official one. There are meta-rules to RuneQuest magic, and there are reports how Gloranthan magic affects Glorantha. The two are not identical.

and Yelm is crooked, and Orlanth goes in spirals.

As a story exposition, giving a character a geas means that at some point, the geas is going to be tested to the breaking point, and probably beyond. That's the point of this exercise. Accepting a geas is accepting certain doom. Struggling to prevent that doom for some time while contributing to the story arc is fine, but avoiding that doom at all cost is missing the point, as is letting the character having all the agency in avoiding that doom. If you are playing a Humakti, there are only two types of characters you can have in the middle run - dead or forsworn. In the long run, dead is of course the only option. But a geas is a case of Chekhov's Gun. You introduce it to a story in with the intention to use it.

The gift/geas mechanism requires the initiate POW sacrifice, but isn't powered by it. The oath when taking the geas and the gift is an additional exchange between the worshiper and the deity (Humakt or Yelmalio). The gift is an additional presence of the deity as long as the worshiper behaves accordingly - something like a life-long quest, and in my opinion tied to the Truth Rune (as are most if not all magically powerful oaths). And yes, that's a different interpretation of the Truth Rune than that of a Lhankor Mhy Sage, who is after the intellectual truth rather than behavioral truthfulness. Deception goes against either of these, though. The cult initiation is not a simple oath (and neither just an elaborate one). It is an elaborate quest into the myths of your deity, an experience of the Other Side, that culminates in the transfer of part of your soul to the Other Side domain of the deity. It is an experience which shapes the future behavioral patterns of the worshiper. Accepting a gift and geas combination is an additional obligation provided by very few deities. This is a rite following the initiatory experience, and as many such rites will take place partially in the mundane world, partially on the Other Side. The RQG rules book doesn't offer much (if any) information on this topic. There is plenty Gloranthan lore out there that does, though. The game rules are not a complete description of the setting. Your argumentation comes across to me as the almost petulant demand that a car's user manual should provide you with a driver's license. The game rules of an rpg are never the final truth of the setting, but only a first approximation. They give you something to work with, something to build upon, but they don't provide you with universal official mastery of the setting. I assisted a friend today running the Cult of Chaos convention scenario set in Runegate at our regional general rpg convention in Hamburg. It was a Gloranthan experience with very little Gloranthan knowledge, trying to hold the learning curve not too steep. The players had no previous exposure to Glorantha and only cursory exposure to BRP, and they did struggle slightly with the data they were provided on the pregens from the Quickstart. Sitting by as an assistant rather than carrying the load of providing the story and the info dump allowed me to look at the interaction of the players with both the system and the consequences of the game world. The culture introduction was rather general, and the points of Orlanthi culture were once again somewhat lost. The players were experienced with other systems, had quite a bunch of roleplaying habits that weren't always helpful, but on occasion pointing this out was helpful to get the setting and the "gaming in society" a few steps closer. Fun was had, some seeds may have been sown.

Free Will is a concept for heroquesting. It is the power to make lasting additions to the Other Side, to establish a path or even a domain. The Great Compromise took this power from the Gods and put it to use to maintain what the Gods War and Greater Darkness left of Glorantha, which is why Orlanth cannot go and conquer some other power from some enemy or rival god any more. All the magical energy that comes from the gods is bound to their Godtime activities. The magic that is generated by the beings in the Middle World on the other hand is pluripotent - the magical activities of the people determine how this magic manifests. People do put a lot of magic into the cults. They do so to maintain the fragile existence of the world, and themselves in the world. There is no core rune that represents the concept of Free Will. But then there are other concepts which don't have a single rune, or which have multiple runes to describe them. I don't really see the need to have a specific rune for this. Why do you think that is necessary?

All Germans are Europeans, ergo all Europeans are Germans? Truth is a requirement, not a guarantee. Both this list and the paragraph each in the RQG rules are bare minimal information on the deities and their cults, and neither voluminous source had much space to detail either. The Sourcebook offers a rather short bit on the deities mentioned there, too, but the amount of detail on cults that is a trademark of RuneQuest goes way beyond such short paragraphs. Gods have a number of fields of expertise, depending on their mythos. The things stated in the RQG rules are correct, but the info on the deities is far from complete. Look at the magic granted by a deity to get an idea about its fields of expertise.

Both cults that provide gifts for geases in the basic rules have the truth rune. Do you think that's a coincidence? Looking at how this thread develops, I occasionally read the thread topic as "breaking gas"...

In Glorantha, "Secret" doesn't mean hush hush about the ability, but no clue about the how to gain and use the ability. Like e.g. the God Learner "In Plain Sight" secret "they could alter the myths". Arkat could switch myths mid-path, and the God Learners could establish such a switched path as the new standard. (Not that that was much different from what Harmast did.) So, yes, the cult of Humakt can re-use Sever Spirit, which makes it an expensive but sure-fire way to cause 3D6 general hit point damage on a failed resistance roll with the chance to end that fight immediately. Other cults which have to buy this as a one-use ability might hesitate to use this.

Since this is the munchkinnery threat, take a look at Londra of Londros, Sword of Humakt and associate priest (God Talker) to Orlanth. Former high priest(ess) of the Wooden Sword. No, the other donors don't even have to be lay members to be able to donate POW. It is similar to using older editions' Mindlink to power such spells. But why use an enchantment if you have a way to get your hands on Truestone? If a traded spell is a delayed spell that you can regenerate the RP for once you handed it over, what is to stop two munchkins from the same cult trade their identical spells to have additional castings on call, over and over again? Spell trading is bad enough as it trades casting for casting, allowing you to pay a one Rune Point spell for a massive 8 point spell. Several times. Your Humakti could enter a duel with a handful castings of Sever Spirit traded for Sword Trance, and his full rune point pool (provided the recipients cast that spell at the next occasion if you use my interpretation that the rune points become available again once the spell has been used by the trading partner).

This does create slight time difference for the perception of the dawn and dusk depending on how much surface you have between yourself and the resepective gate, though - the sun has to rise quite a bit for your vision rays not to collide with the ocean surface. Same for other objects, like e.g. Mastakos/Uleria.

BTW, that rhymes to "irked" I'd give it a M. Yeah, you got the Joerg experience. Don't you hate it when multiple choice questions don't contain any right answers?

On the rumor scale, you earned a B for "basically true, but wrong in the specifics." I took some exception against "since the world broke" - while Umath's birth changed the workings of the World Machine and maybe broke Mostal, the world remained pretty much unbroken. Also, if the Copper Tablets are correct, the stars emerged at the same event Umath crashed into the northern pillar, which means that Pole Star never sat immobile in the top spot of the Sky Dome.

How are you going to get sunrises and sunsets on a Ringworld? Against a sky rotating on you once a day? Ringworld has eternal noon, switched off by the shades. The problems with the workings of the Gloranthan sky. For a normal space solution, you'd need to have a rotating flat surface always pointing towards Pole Star. That surface would have to orbit or be orbited by Yelm while keeping its orientation towards Pole Star. And the other Sunpath and southpath planets, too. Then you need a way to insert Orlanth's Ring on the same rotation speed as the surface, against the stars in the background. And you need a stationary Red Moon, and after 1624 a Boat Planet that follows the Celestial River (avoiding the celestial city, otherwise running up from Lorian and down on the opposite side, with a period I cannot recall having read in a canonical publication). Something like this cold be engineered, but not as part of a Ringworld. A Culture torus might have something like this as a gimmick. That's the nature of this list. But then, we aren't your players, and this isn't cutting into your facetime with your players. Yes, there is the Kalikos wobble in the Sky Dome axis which drags along all the stellar objects except the Red Moon (and possibly Zenith and Stormgate). The effect could be up to 17 degrees in either direction, IIRC. In a first approximation, that's directly overhead, you'd need to measure this against a perpendicular lead to see this. The incline is the same throughout the Inner World, whether you are in North Pent or the Nargan Desert. That means this doesn't help you with navigation, although it will tell you whether it is summer or winter regardless of temperatures. You will never experience a noon with the sun fairly low in the sky - Glorantha is a tropical world in this regard, regardless of climate. Well, "Zenith" is a different stellar body, and it is not in the highest point of the sky dome. Pole Star passes trough the highest point of the sky dome on the equinoxes in his slow wobble north- amd southward. It has started to wobble since Umath lifted the Sky Dome off its hinge on the Spike, but the real wobble started when Jagrekriand smashed Umath into the northern Pillar, starting a northward tilt that was reversed by Kalikos at some point, then went into the other direction until the Skyspill into the Nargan put the balance the other way. Or something like that. In the Grey Age/Silver Age, the sky wobbled like this above the patchwork ruins of the Gods War, and continued to do so with the birth of Time. Over the course of a year, the sky dome makes either 293 or 295 rotations around Pole Star, approximately one per night, but with an annually repeating precession. Edit: Since Glorantha is a goddess, I expect the usual curvaceous illustrations of Kalin Kadiev to apply. Ample bosom and buttocks, etc...

Night Sky navigation is difficult. There are easy indicators for the east-west direction, but you don't get parallax to aid you with triangulation, as the Sun Path goes more or less right overhead, and the Polar Star sits right overhead, too, wherever you are on the surface world. There are no good ways to get latitude or longitude from watching the sky, although you get a very precise clock if you have a clear sky and good reference charts. That tells you zilch about longitude, though, as the sun rises at the same moment in all of Glorantha (despite those curvature effects - Yelm's gaze is straight). It also rises due east and sets due west, whether you are on Ygg's Isles or in the Sea of Worms. Only in the Outer World you may tell whether you are south or north of the Gates of Dusk and Dawn, or inside or outside some of the sky domes. But then, distances in the Outer World become different. The Red Moon may be the only object in the sky that changes its position depending on where you are in the world, but only the angular position - it always appears at the same elevation angle as long as you are outside the Glowline, and at a different one inside the Glowline. That means you can calculate the Lunar radiate you are on, but not where on that radiate you are. You would have to guess whether you're north-northwest or south-southeast of Teleos, for instance.

I would have read this as you get the meditation bonus on the spell or skil used when you end your meditation. It shouldn't be a lingering benefit, but an immediate, situational one.

I would expect some concave curvature of sea level towards Magasta's Pool rather than the convex one you showed. The optical properties may still be similar to your convex model due to the non-straight curvature of the visiual beams your eyes emit when you look at the landscape. Still, visibility from sufficiently high places is strongly dependent on haze rather than curvature. A good example is the visibility of the Alps from Munich. When there is Fön (an inversion weather situation pouring warm air over the Alps from the south), haze is strongly reduced, and you get an excellent look at the mountain range. Under normal conditions, you have to drive at least halfway towards Garmisch to begin to see the mountains (only to find them obscured much of the time by the foothills, except across Lake Murnau). Or, in another example, a vantage point on the Laboe memorial (about 200 feet above sea level) allows to see the Danish island coast some 30 miles away - but only on rare days with non-existent haze. Days with slightly above average haze will make it hard to see the Kiel broadcast tower about 12 miles away. Cute, but no. The glacier does cover significant parts of the Hudaro ocean, but it doesn't stand a chance to remain cohesive on Sramak's River which surrounds the Earth Cube. At least in summer there are ice-free fjords (if you disregard the occasional huge iceberg calved off the ice wall) that allow the stone-hulled Sendereven ships access to the city of the Altinae. One of the two version of the Kalikos myth have that entity shake or melt off the frost on the edge of the summer sky, pushing the dome back south, but given the daily rotation of the sky dome, that myth doesn't conform to Gloranthan stellar mechanics in the least.

I am curious about the reeds and sedges populating the "drier" parts of the marsh. There doesn't seem to be much of Phragmites reed (the stuff traditionally used for thatching in Europe), and rather lower stands of grasses. Not very much in the ways of Sphagnum peat moss, it seems, and neither carpets of lentil-shaped duckweed. Are those grasses rooted in the bottom, or do they form floating carpets that don't support anything heavier than a songbird? I am familiar with blackthorn (a low tree or high bush common in the wall hedges of my home, not commonly associated with wetlands), which is a variety of prunus, and of course with oaks. What I would expect in an environment like this is black alder. Are you suggesting that the Blackthorn of Delecti's Marsh is some fictitional form of riparian oaks rather than the fruit-bearing tree known by this name?

I am with @Julian Lord that there is a divide, and a qualitative difference. The Elder Races hearken back to a Green Age or early stage of collusion which saw an intermingling of the theist and the animist world, and their Otherworld beings have their roots or feet in either camp. Something similar occurred with defiant Umath and his offspring. Storm Bull's ancestry from Mikyh (and Eiritha's from Hykim) blurs those lines further, taking the Beast Riders quite some steps into the animist side of things. The Cult of Daka Fal really is a problem, here. Remembering many a talk with Greg on this subject in that seminar room of Castle Stahleck, the impression I was left with is that most entities of the Other Side have their roots clearly on one side of the divide, although they may have a significant domain on the other side of that divide. Greg once said about the Orlanthi religion and worship that it is about 70% theist, 30% animist in nature. (End Greg paraphrase...) That doesn't mean that the Orlanthi deities are only 70% theist - most are fully theist in nature - or that 30% of the Orlanthi are animists while the rest are theists. It means that the Theyalan worship has a more personal interaction with the deities than pure theism would have. The high proportion of initiates actually would be a symptom of this somewhat animist mode. Neither Kolat nor Earth Witch are approaches to the deities holding the runes of Storm and Earth respectively, they are approaches to the runes, and part of the religion, but not the cults. Yelmic shamanism among the horse people or shamans of Waha are part of those cults, and probably part of the identity of the cult entity. But then Yelm has been known to absorb planetary entities (check the Copper Tablets in the Guide, or Heortling Mythology for Makestina) that needn't have been divine in origin. Reladivus/Kargzant may be ambiguous in his (or her) mode of contact, too. Daka Fal as an Underworld entity and Judge of the Dead has every right to be ambiguous, but the nature of the ancestors contacted through the rites of his cult is troublesome. Mortals are of the world, and "The World is Made of Everything", so each mortal will have a number of elemental souls, possibly also mystical ones, a spirit, and a materialist essence. These may be of different strengths. Depending on their religion and inside that their cultic preference, the mortals have expressed a spiritual organ to interact with the otherworlds using their souls and spirit and possibly essence. Upon death, these components dissociate, with the deities to which the individual was initiated laying claim on various portions of their souls not already given over to that deity (e.g. via rune points) - the individuals have expanded into those dominions already in their lifetime. Their spirit will be released, and (if all goes well) join the ancestors in the spirit world, or roam alongside their deity if said deity has a dominion in the spirit world. Rune-owner deities have such a dominion in all the Otherworlds. In reply to @g33k Most Otherworld entities. Magical entities with a firm residence in the Middle World are Made of Everything, though probably much less so than entities native to the Middle World. Which leaves us with ambiguous genii loci. And put together again by the Web, and conjoined worship, from the tatters left by the Gods War. The problem to keep them apart is when everything is a reconstructed mosaic of tattered pieces, with missing bits replaced by glue and worship.

Miner/artisan hasn't gone away. What has gone away is the concept of the dwarf kings, especially the heroic fighting dwarf kings like Thorin or his cousin Dain, thanks to that minerals caste system. Rulers are gold caste, which doesn't fight, perform magic, mine, or craft. The Greatway dwarf party in Griffin Mountain (which does obey the post-Tolkien cliche) is probably the least canonical bit in that sandbox. The dwarves of The Hobbit have come a far way from the original helper prototypes of Aule, and somewhere there appears to have been a multiplication step to get from the original seven to their tribes. But then, dwarves have been treated like Easterlings in the Silmarillion - some good, some evil, all greedy. In fact, Tolkien's dwarves are serving lots of racist stereotypes of his era (and those of C.S. Lewis in Narnia aren't any better). They are a step above their Icelandic precursors, though. But then, the origin of the Tolkien dwarves as living tools of the Maker is really close to the origin of the Mostali. True Mostali are a lot less dull than their host of clay dwarf clones, a species of limited functionality with rapid self-replication being their main redeeming feature. True Mostali replication and Iron Mostali replication are a bit unclear. We know that Mostal and the "castes so far" were required to initiate the first batches of True Mostali, but we have no information about batch sizes or repeated use of those production containers. The Iron Mostali were the first batch of Mostali produced without Mostal, and they already were created with attrition in mind (unlike the previous batches). It isn't clear to me whether there are any iron caste clay dwarves, or whether all Iron Dwarves are actually Iron Mostali, not quite True Mostali, but neither the cheaper Clay fabrication. The Iron caste certainly wears several helmets - that of the front line fighter, of the weapon smith, and of the strategist. The Greatway dwarves and their satellites (Dwarf Mine, Imther, Jorst, Pavis) are the least obnoxious mostali anywhere on Glorantha, IMO. The Gemborg ones are a treacherous lot, given their conflict with the Only Old One and their interference with the Machine Ruins. It isn't quite clear to me which side the quartermaster dwarf belonged to. For some reason (probably overbearing EWF demands, possibly more recently Saronil's "betrayal") Greatway refuses to deal with Dragon Pass, but does maintain low-level contact with Balazar. The presence of the Tusk Riders on their doorsteps might be a factor in this, too - to Greatway, the Aramites probably still appear as humans. There are the Slon humans - possibly descendants of the Vadeli-owned slave population - and there are the refugees from the Dragonkill in Dwarf Mine who form the Cannon Cult. The Cult of Caladra and Aurelion appears to be dependent on the goodwill of Gemborg. And there is Ginkizzie's mother, a daughter of Pavis. This should be the complete list of converts. Other humans have been converted... into food, though, which means only very indirectly into Mostali. Humans with a taste of Clay Dwarf life? Or just cohabitating with Isidilian, and mustered out of the Cannon Cult for whichever reason? Together with apostates or isolated heretics? Isidilian pursuing his own prophecies? Something Sartar did? The Slon mostali have a pretty sweet deal with their slave population. Nida shuns humans or other species, and probably did so already before Gonn Orta's attack. Curustus only sees Vadeli, their slaves, and Wolf Pirates. Of two Shan Shan colonies, only one survives. The Iron Mountains were invaded and subdued by God Learner sorcerers.

Yes, but these are more abstract, rather universal. When they are smaller, localized versions, they usually take on a local aspect that includes elemental connections - "of a spring" means a Water connection, "of a mountain" a land (i.e. Earth) connection. The mixed children of the Powers like Chalana Arroy, Issaries and Lhankor Mhy and their aspects/children are the ones that are ready to accept non-divine magics, blurring their identifications. Nymphs are sitting right on the divide, too. Do you regard them as minor deities or as spirit entities? That's another border situation, especially with the Nomad Gods/Great Spirits situation in Prax. The Protectresses in Prax are responsible for the sum of all herds of one type (e.g. bison) rather than individual herds. Is there such an entity for the Uncoling reindeer or the Pralori deer? Orr herds of beasts without any (surviving) human relation? I don't quite agree. The God Learner categorization would have been empirical, as in "susceptible to this class of spells". Their error was to assume that this susceptibility was all there was to the entities.

I still wonder about the 1616 fleet. Harrek had plundered Sog City in 1615. In 1617 he received the Ice Serpent on Ygg's Isles. But in 1616 he leads a wolf pirate fleet against the Holy Country. The Guide p.229 makes it sound like Harrek "settled down" on the Threestep Isles only two or three years after receiving the Ice Serpent. His arrival in the Mirrorsea Bay in 1616 doesn't mean that he had already the Ice Serpent. There is a possibility that the 1616 raid was an intermezzo before he recruited the third emigration wave from Ygg's Isles, with a different fleet. The colony on the Threestep Isles was established already in 1605, as part of the second emigration wave (the first one would have been the Vadeli-led one that settled Ginorth and Gothalos). It is likely that Harrek ended up there after taking sail in Sog, and before raiding the Choralinthor Bay and destroying Belintar's navy. That fleet would have absorbed a variety of vessels during the decade of its activity and would have been less uniform than the Yggite one he led to the islands a year or three later. The Yggites first had the chance to inspect the Dormal shipwreck left on their coast, then they were recruited (and possibly partially equipped) by the Vadeli in the years following the Opening in the Neleomi Sea. A good number of them may have drowned in Vadeli service at the Battle of Oenriko Rocks.

The old (Hero Wars/HQ1) model actually said that there were four initial worlds with completely separate magics whose collision formed Glorantha (and presumably the Spike). The implosion of the Spike had nothing to do with these three separate worlds (the mystical way of the east did not add its own magical realm, although it later contributed the dream and nightmare short worlds). That strict dogma used to be broken only by defiant entities (Disorder entities) like Eurmal and Storm Bull. But (thankfully) the HQ2 releases and the Guide have softened that back to the understanding we had prior to the Hero Wars strict doctrine, so we don't need to discern between three names for any kind of entity based on different otherworlds. Quite a lot of that still lingers here and there, and more so in the Stafford Library, but the softening of the differences needn't wait to be a consequence of the Hero Wars any more. At least we don't need to bother about "misapplied worship" any more. That said, there are entities that are clearly closer to the animist spirit world than to that of the elemental deities of theism, but especially the Beast Rider deities are sitting pretty much on the border.

That "I will command the wyter" or "I will exploit the wyter" should be equivalent to "I can command the community" or "I can exploit the community". Can the elected chief exploit the community that elected him? Without application of the necessary checks and balances, yes he can. And also by sidestepping those checks and balances. But can he do so through the wyter, through commanding the wyter? There is a lower limit at which using the wyter is becoming unattractive and inefficient. Refueling a wyter through worship depends on the officiating priest, not the wyter, but casting magic through commanding the wyter is using the wyter's abilities, which in turn may rely on the wyter's magnitude of powers, stats, abilities. Being loaned a (portable) wyter object for a heroquest is the equivalent to full, unambiguous support to the quester by said community. The rules for this differ somewhat, but in effect the magic to be drawn out of the wyter is limited to rather few significant uses even with the ablative wyter powers of RQG, and one use (though potentially lingering) with HQG. (Non-portable wyters still can give support as a lingering benefit from the "Arming of ..." rite performed in their place, and a quest with multiple protagonists may have multiple such rites that may be sponsored by different communities with fixed place wyters.) Over-use of the wyter may be seen as weakness of the leader who commanded that. Doing so on a heroquest may have a delayed effect, as the backslash may be delayed until the quest is finished, and a successful quest may replenish the over-used wyter as if nothing adverse happened to it, and even load it with a future advantage. In reverse, an unsuccessful quest relying on a wyter that was used responsibly will still damage that wyter's magic significantly. How much personality does the wyter have? And how much does that count against say the collective personality of the ancestors that dictates the customs of a kinship community?

I suppose that the Rathori dialects may vary as much as the Old Norse-derived languages spoken across Scandinavia (where assuming a unified way of pronouncing Old Norse or it having a consistent vocabulary over its distribution is a fairly risky bid, too). Hsunchen cultures in contact with other Hsunchen appear to be bilingual - using a common language or at least pidgin to communicate across beast totems. That language is likely to be used for terms about technology traded from others. I'll assume that spoken Hsunchen languages are intelligible to their beast brothers and totem animals - not necessarily spoken by them, though. (Sofali would be very strange...) Certain types of native technology probably can be communicated in those languages. (This doesn't get easier when the different populations use different technology for the same term, like e.g. Sofali boats.) Palaeolithic technology may be presented as the equivalent of parts of beast bodies - blades could be fangs, points could be spines - and material would be the closest similar natural material. Technology from the outside will be hard to communicate in the native language, and may lead to quite different neologisms between separate populations if the need to communicate them to their beast partners arises. The Hsunchen are likely to use tradetalk (or the local equivalent) terms in their normal conversations even when speaking their native languages. Migratory Hsunchen might even have the need to speak two different trade languages when communicating with other Hsunchen from the far ends of their migration routes. The Pujaleg include a vast variety of totem beasts, from fruitbats via insect eaters to vampire bats (and the latter apparently are (or as of 1624 were) the backbone of their empire in Laskal. When hsunchen lord over other humans, they don't appear to teach their beast language to their subjects, which means that the imperial language is likely to be one of the conquered peoples' language, or a lingua franca pre-existing in their community. In western Genertela, that would be Kachasti or Theyalan Tradetalk. In western Genertela, I think that there was a continuum from hsunchen languages to those of the local urban populations, unless the urbanization of the Pendali, Enerali, Enjoreli relied completely on the older Likiti culture, and urban languages were Likiti rather than Hykimi in nature. Some places like the City of Wolves retained the Hsunchen lifestyle and in all likelihood the language. There is another possible non-Hsunchen influence here, that of the Kachasti/the God of Silver Feet. It appears like most theist cultures speak languages based on elemental languages, including those groups who have strong beast totem ancestry like e.g. the Syliling bear worshipers, or the Arakang worshipers of Doblian. Possibly different elements, too.

I think we agree that city gods of urban centers the size of Pavis, Jonstown or Wilmskirk don't usually have rune lords, or indeed a hierarchical priesthood. I reserve judgement for really big cities, though - the office of the champion of the city god does have some logic to it, and it may be part of the Dara Happan inheritance that the city of Old Pavis undoubtedly had, given the role of the Arrowsmith dynasty. And yes, Joraz Khyrem was a hero of Issaries. He still was a high ranking rune level of Yelm, too, in his role as king of the Pure Horse tribe that rode striped horses. The rules of Old Pavis are built on those of ancient Nivorah as much as they are on the emerged urban centers of Orlanthland, which in turn inherited from the Bright Empire and Esrolia, giving another nudge toward Solar urban administration. I assume that Malkioni influences are rather minor. The Pure Horse warlords appreciated having an allied city on the Zola Fel river during the period of Robcradle, but weren't exactly fond of or intermarried with the Middle Sea Empire adventurers and settlers there. Old Pavis was a fairly large city, and the temporary home to the nomadic Zebra and Pure Horse tribes of the region, too. The cult of Pavis is the city cult, and not the wyter of the surrounding upper Zola Fel valley called Pavis County. The structure of the priesthood suggests that it started out as a manifestation of the Pavis dynasty - not a dynasty of rulers, but a dynasty of spiritual leaders. Pavis left rulership of his city to his main ally, Joraz Khyrem. I would think that he married one of his daughters to the ruler of the city, but I cannot recall any canonical source saying so. What I am arguing is that Pavis was more than just the city god. One purpose of the cult of Pavis may have been the continuation of the experiment that created Pavis the Hero. That would explain the sorcerous component of the cult. I didn't mean to. This thread is about the dual role of the cult of Pavis and Pavis as the city wyter. On the other hand, the Pavis box still remains the most detailed canonical source for urban government in a Sartarite city. Yes, it suffers from rules artifacts and concepts that may have been overthrown since. I agree - it should be rare for a city god for a city the size of New Pavis (plus the human population of the Rubble) to have a hierarchical priesthood. That's why I too think that the Cult of Pavis is not just about Pavis as the city god. When it comes to larger cities or metropolises, the situation may be different. Especially if the city god (like e.g. Raibamus) is also the ruler cult for the surrounding lands. Entities of this scale are likely to have a hierarchical priesthood, possibly a champion (temporary avatar) of the deity (aka Rune Lord), and may well be outside the scope of a wyter, or be the wyter only in a secondary manifestation. There should be significant strangeness in the origins of the Pavis Cult, owning to the magical experiments that were carried out alongside the draconic ones in Orlanthland and the EWF. The Orlanthi have a history of weird magical experimentation with ancestry. The Second Council produced Seri-phy-Ranor, a magical hybrid similar to Pavis though of Gold Wheel Dancer ancestry rather than aldryami, and it produced the species of the wyrms. The Heortling disagreement with the direction the God Project was taking stifled Heortling experimentation for about a century during the Bright Empire/Gbaji Wars, but afterwards this seems to have re-appeared or just continued. King of Sartar mentions other directions of such experiments, such as longevity, too.