Joerg

First of all, have a supporter multispell Dampen Damage. That should take normal damage down into the low twenties. Even that is more than you would want to parry with enchanted dwarven Iron Shields and dwarven Iron Plate (or chain) and five or six points of Shield, so dodge instead. Use Shimmer 12 or something like that. Neutralize Damage will give you at least a second chance to avoid damage, however low it may be. Don't let them close on you, have them deal with two or three whirlvishes, salamanders or similar each. Earth elementals from below, Steal Breath... Use illusions or phantoms of yourself synchronized to yourself - keep them intersecting with your body until you are real close, then separate. Heal the opposing Humakti. That is bound to break one of his geases. Get Draconic Prehealing. In short - take away their advantage by any means you can imagine, avoid being hit. Don't get into melees. Send in the trollkin (Battle of the Somme style). A fair fight in a Champion's Battle means that you have a 50% chance for your demise. A Gloranthan warrior would find these odds acceptable. Once the game gets to damages in the twenties I probably would add a rule that attacking weapons have a maximum damage they can deal without taking the excess damage themselves in addition to the target. True Weapon could increase that value by the maximally added damage. And these are bronze implements... Morden has been published: https://www.glorantha.com/docs/morden-defends-the-camp/ It is playing the champions battle between heroquesters, yes. Hrestol's Saga is a rather ancient unpublished story, and has the knights errant questing into increasingly more magical lands, interacting with guides and temptations, occasionally proving themselves in preliminary deeds.

Avoid or be amputated/killed. If you are a rune lord, use Divine Intervention. If you are a heroquester knowing the backdoor out of Hell ending up dead, return some time later, probably in a new body. Heroform before entering a fight at these stakes. If you are able to take on a stature equivalent of your opponent, you will be able to take such a hit while in that form. Unfortunately, the rules for such heroforming (along the lines of Greg's story "Morden Defends the Camp") have not been published yet for RQG. Already Hrestol's Saga talks about entering the divine realm and becoming like unto a deity.

Au contraire. For one extra POW (a total of 2), a 1 point spell gets to affect up to 6 people, another point of POW will up that to 11, etc. - a massive saving already. If we go back to talking 6 points of Shield, the question is whether you pay 8 or 18 points for 66 points of shield. 18 is a bargain, 8 is over the top. King of Dragon Pass had "sacrifices before battle" which sounds to me like a worship service to top off the wyter's MP, and possibly invoke a blessing, then redeem it. That's a whole lot of POW traded, and some extra time spent in worship. If you have enough wyters, that's still a heck of holy day worship services (aka POW gain rolls) even at once per year. POW that might be obligatory to gift to the wyter.

I wonder what the Wyter POW for Runepower economy is. Effectively, initiates of the Wyter sacrifice for a one-use spell that the wyter will cast on behalf of the community, with a vast multispell advantage by allowing five more people affected for a single point of POW (presumably per point of the rune spell, or this gets into extreme munchkin territory). How often will initiates (e.g. members of a regiment) be called to be drained for such a sacrifice? Is it a quid pro quo deal (with the multispell effect giving the wyter some way to build up reserves)? Are the initiation points to the wyter available as "rune power"? Given the usefulness of wyters, are there communities with layered wyters (for subgroups and overgroups)? Take your average Joe or Jane Orlanthi. He or she can be initiated to the clan wyter, the cult's temple wyter, the tribal wyter, the city confederation's wyter, possibly the warband's or hero band's wyters. Especially tribal wyters will gain huge amounts of initiation POW when a clan joins, or when a clan presents the new adults to the tribal wyter. What is the time commitment for a wyter worship service? Does a wyter have holy days? If so, how often?

Basically, this is a whole economy of adventurer activities waiting to be written. If you look at Biturian's Horngate episode in Cults of Prax, there are a number of healing plants mentioned, but the section also has a CA runespell Refine Medicine which works analogous to Heal Wound to instill POT into herbs, or to transform their field of operation (moving along the table provided under the cult skill Find Healing Plants which apparently both Biturian and Norayeep possess). Unfortunately for both Biturian and us, there is no sale, and neither any information on the amount of plants required for a healing attempt, and the amount that can be harvested. The table has a number of cute ideas. Upon a quick check, none of the plants mentioned in the Biturian narrative made it into the RQG Bestiary.

The alchemist will spend some significant effort on making this potion, providing himself (and his dependents) with food and housing, maintaining (and occasionally replacing) his lab equipment (I work in a lab in real life, which means I have a good idea what things cost when the break down, how long certain implements remain usable, etc.), and paying taxes. Oh, and maintaining and expanding your library of methods and recipes. IIRC RQ2 and RQG both have prices for magic cast by NPCs on your behalf. Those might be a good way to adjust the different price tables to one another. In a way, the RQ2 Healing Potion almost feels like a pre-cast Heal Wound rather than a Heal. The RQG potion works a lot more slowly - one hit point healed immediately, additional hit points coming back one per hour. Having pre-cast spells on you to release with just one action is a huge force multiplier, as it doesn't dig into your magic economy. If I were manager or co-manager of a hero band, I would consider to hire an alchemist on retainer if the band had been successful. Yes - the temples (of LM, CA and certain Lunar cults) sell potion kits for 50L per potential POT. That doesn't mean that there aren't other sources for the raw material. In fact, the temples buy these in bulk, or send out parties of cultists on missions to acquire them in the field - your party will probably be tasked with something like that, or at least with running escort while a herbalist does the gathering. What they sell is the Gloranthan equivalent of a baking mix that only needs milk added and some stirring, and then careful baking, or those "brew your own little casket of beer" gimmicks. These ingredient kits are obviously made by alchemists using the alchemy skill, too, and that means that a dedicated player or sidekick alchemist could put in that work, too. On the other hand, you buy a well tested and complete set of ingredients. As anybody who ever worked in preparative chemistry can attest, each preparatory step towards a finished product comes with some degree of loss. In RQ terms, each such step comes with a failure likelihood that may ruin your material. In the long run, your process will have an unavoidable inherent waste rate for each step (rarely mitigated by specials or crits) multiplied by your chance of success at performing this preparation step. And worse, ingredients - even inorganic salts - don't keep indeterminately, and may have to be purified before using them (another step of loss, or else a greater risk at failure). On the whole, purchasing the fresh mix from the temple might be cheaper than trying to produce it yourself. RQG doesn't mention ingredients or lab equipment cost. It only gets specific by mentioning that alchemy requires "specific raw materials" - so no info available here. RQG treats healing potions as possible heirlooms (Harmast has drawn the "13" heirloom in the lottery).

To me the only "Viking" thing about the Orlanthi was the community-based campaign published in RQ3 Vikings and RQ3 Land of Ninja, each with a slightly different flavor, which was applicable to a Sartar campaign, too. I went for pagan Anglo-Saxons (also pre-migration) where I didn't go for Hallstatt and La Tene people (Celts), never making an issue about skin coloration until that came up by a surprising Greg post. La Tene mainly for the oppida, as the Danubian and Rhone Valley cities bear climatic and geogaphical similarity to how Dragon Pass has been described, the agriculture fits almost exactly (more wheat variants than barley anywhere in the Old World), military (dis-)organisation and the religious practices appeared to be reasonably close, too. Climatically similar Native American cultures never had plows (at least not before accepting stray European settlers into their tribes), and the Fertile Crescent doesn't fit climatically. How do you think these wounds were acquired? If done right - which means you need a maintainer on retainer for all the technical issues (like updating the infra-structure every few months) and at least one editor to publish and on occasion write material (summarizing or expanding on published stuff). The old glorantha.com site was ably maintained by volunteers combining these abilities. That doesn't give you graphics, and given the state of partial or major undress quite a few of these images provide, you also need the legalese electronic equivalent of a brown bag. Not the first time I lost significant effort to technical problems. This was my apprentice fee for using a low cost hosting service to put up the website. It was their content management software that allowed the malware insertion, and they made it my fault... Right now, I am not sure whether I should just make sure the site is backed up, or whether I should step up my investment to an infrastructure that allows me to create a real information system. That would come with a steep learning and re-learning curve at a time when much of my time is eaten up by keeping a house intact. In that regard, hats off to Sverre (aka @Trifletraxor) for his job in keeping this site up and running.

Sure. To me, these images have been pluripresent in various posts. But then, the original question would have been repeated along the line "nice images, so I guess they are Celts/Phrygians/Successor State Hellenized Persians" or whatever someone might wish to recognize there. You have to realize that these are raw, unhealable wounds for some of us. Yes, it would be great to have a well organized official website giving official information and showing these copyrighted pictures. (I think linking to the artists' portfolio pages here is fair use, but displaying them on a website of my own would incur license payments.) Maintaining such a website can be a painful experience - my German language Glorantha site was hacked, the data lost. That's not what happened. Rather the reverse - my response was closer to "don't go haring off following real world stuff labeled Bronze Age which is at best tangentially relevant if you want to learn about these cultures." I am willing to give hints and explanations, and to expand at as much length as my time allows and the person asking is willing to tolerate. I've been called out to keep it short and not to frighten people away with information overload, so I give hints where to look at the IMO best sources.

The gifts (wishes granted) themselves wouldn't be dangerous, but the balance is terrible. If the people were Maranites, then blood to the earth will be a likely answer, and Maran is hungry, so potentially lots of blood. And if it is a price to pay, probably blood you wouldn't normally want spilled. I think I would go for the nymph/genius loci explanation. Granting wishes at a terrible price sounds like some Balancer entity, and the entire temptation stuff fits into the non-illumination insight school of arduous mysticism. Not really draconic mysticism, either. Nysalorean riddles appear to be a non-meditative form of mystic insight, planted on you by riddlers and waiting to be realized.

My thoughts were "wrong bear, wrong beard." A polar bear is going to be a lot more baseball cap than that short-nosed brown bear.

Those geese tend to bite you, or at least natter loudly at you at the slightest movement. Vicious things, plucky as hell, better bring pliers. But then, those cultists you are supposed to lead by example can exhibit the same nasty traits, and they would be less tasty when roasted. Seriously, I don't see spirit mastery or spirit plane travel as normal rune lord powers. The backdoor from Hell quest and jts stakes and cost should be written up for both RQG and HQG, and it might well include some permanent loss of rune points when necessary. It is far more convenient than normal resurrection, as you don't need your old body to return (as proven by Belintar, who returned a couple of times after his body had been destroyed or eaten). You might have to hunt for your old body up and immolate it properly, or something like that, similar to the quest of that unlucky dragonewt (in Griffin Mountain, IIRC) hunting down the skin of its previous incarnation which had been made into dragonewt armor. A copy of the Book of Belintar should be helpful to learn this quest. It might have been a standard reward for surviving participation in the Tournament of the Masters of Luck and Death as anything but the winner, at least after a certain point in that questing tournament. That means you will have lost at least one Heroquest challenge... might still be worth the price.

There is dead to the world (which you are as soon as you enter the Underworld, in a Schrödinger's Cat way) and dead to the Underworld (bereft of agency). Your companions might still be able to drag you back out of Hell. You will be either freshly dead, as Time doesn't corrupt you in the Underworld, or dead for the length of your absence from the surface world. Questing into the Lands of the Dead shouldn't be the norm, IMO, unless you are about to steal Death from Darkness or to bring back someone long gone from the world on the LBQ, or similar. (There are underworlds which aren't part of the Lands of the Dead, like the one ruled by Lodril or Monster Man. You might use the Castles of Lead or the stairwell beneath Shadow Plateau to descend without having to pass the Court of the Dead, but if you wish to proceed to Ty Kora Tek or Maggotliege, you will have to cross another barrier of Death. The feasting Hall of Argan Argar should be reachable without formally having died (being a former part of Lodril's domain), but you would arrive there without being drawn towards the hall of Maggotliege where you might claim an entity of light for your price. The dungeons of that place would be part of the Lands of the Dead, though. IMO, you should leave Death behind if you want to enter the Golden Age or some previous period. That shouldn't mean you have to do the entire Westfaring/Descent stick whenever you quest - it gets as long in the wind and tedious (to play or narrate) as the stairwell into the Cthulhu Dreamlands. (That might mean that in order to go to Orlanth's final contest with Yelm, you'd have to wrestle away or steal Humakt's sword on the quest.)

RQ2 prices are in the table on p.48. Selling price is 200 L per point of healing. Potion cost is ten times ingredient cost, potion potency is limited by your knowledge and your training in making the potion. If you want to make them yourself as associate member of the guild, you need to sell about 30/potion strength plus 12 potions to break even (paying for training cost and guild association), compared to buying them from some alchemist. If you decide to learn a stronger version, it's 12 sold potions again. As with casting Battle Magic, you should be able to make a weaker potion than your training would allow you to produce.

My contact with D&D lore was through ADHD 1st edition, which no longer had such discrimination. It also had the dreaded half-elves. Revealed Mythologies is the best collection of such snippets. Add the description of Arolanit in the second volume of the Guide, the snippets in the God Learner Maps, and you have pretty much all that was officially published. There is quite a bit more in unpublished stories by Greg, but those were produced in a very small print run as rewards for 1000$+ backers of the Guide, or some of them auctioned off as single copies of ring-bound photocopies at conventions. Given how much I paid for my copy of Hrestol's Saga, that backers reward was a steal. I own German translations of the red and light blue Moldvay boxes, but never played those. In the mid eighties northern Germany, playing the Moldvay boxes was akin to playing DSA (the first and second editions, nowadays The Dark Eye), and not that well regarded by the D&D and convention grognards from the late seventies. Were these in the rules, or did they appear in scenarios? Not published as the complete setting, but plenty high quality locales. Check out https://www.rpg.net/columns/designers-and-dragons/designers-and-dragons13.phtml The setting of the Riftwar era could be reverse engineered from a combination of those products and the novels by Feist. There is a wiki: https://midkemia.fandom.com/wiki/Midkemia_Wiki To be honest, I never played either. The only such game other than rogue-like ASCII questing (mainly Nethack) that I ever played a tíny bit was Betrayal at Krondor on someone else's computer (still was using my Atari ST at the time). I did play the original Warcraft.

Not ok. I've been called out for that, correctly, but I still despair about Orlanthi hoplites. Orlanthi in conquered or imitation hoplite armor are acceptable, although their magic and heavy armor don't gel that well. I am a representative of the grumbling grognards, really. I am mightily irked at "don't use land-locked Vikings any more" when we get "use land-locked Achaeans" instead which makes about as much or as little sense, and it doesn't make sense for a culture that has been described as non-Greek (aka Barbarian) until the most recent re-phrasing as "bronze-working tribal chiefdoms" in the Guide. Greek parallels are fine for western Peloria, which even has two large lakes and navigable rivers to play around with penteconters. Glorantha doesn't have any parallel for the Mediterranean (any more). The Homeward Ocean is aptly named for the sailing conditions it offers. Its real world parallel could be the Indic Ocean, but not the Mediterranean where triremes could opeate in fair weather. Don't get me started on ram-armed bird-headed penteconters for Wolf Pirates originating from Ygg's Isles when the ancestrally neighboring Loskalmi have long ships and knarrs for their sea transport and warfare...

The prophecies are made about M.Blue, not by him. The prophecy that none of his children will read doesn't really foresage the Illiteracy Era, as only Karendra doesn't die out of the four children born to him. Estkepo is only mentioned in a Fourth Age document, which makes it rather unrelated to anything we know. Unlike the report on the trolls with its "subtly hidden" secret message in bold typeface, this text is sigificantly shorter, has no obvious markings (which may admittedly have been lost in copying), and is dated to the eve of Phargentes' invasion of Dragon Pass. The 1629 events are interesting, too. "We kill Dinacoli." They have always been a problematic tribe, and were part of the anti-Telmori alliance that became the Jonstown confederation (of six tribes if you include Telmori and Torkani). "Telmori promise revenge, quarrel with Argrath." This is cryptic. Revenge sounds like the wolf-skinning already has been done. Do the Telmori quarrel with Argrath, or do Minaryth's company (that of Asborn Fourborn) or the Wolfrunners quarrel with Argrath after the wolf-skinning?

The revised hardback edition of King of Sartar has made a few small alterations to the Events of My Life list, including mentions of the Great Winter that were absent from the softcover edition. It deviates from the information given in the Adventure Book - Minaryth claims that Fistivos, Colymar king before Kallai, died fighting Telmori, whereas the Adventure Book credits Kallai with killing is predecessor. Now what business would a Colymar king have fighting Telmori in1603? The closest ones would be in Boldhome, as part of the royal bodyguard, although the absence of a Prince might mean that the Boldhome contingent was absent prior to the discovery of Temertain. It surely would have been a bad environment for Goram Whitefang, son-in-law of Terasarin and connected to the House of Sartar through his grandmother Onelisin. (There is a remote possibility that Fistivos may have been involved in the assassination of Terasarin's daughter Tarkala, or have given shelter to one of the assassins, and that Kallai assisted Goram in taking revenge. Fistivos' Seven Brothers clan is absent from the Colymar clan list, and his appearance so shortly after the Lunar conquest is suspicious, too.) One entry I wondered about is "1607: Clearwine burned." This is in the middle of King Kallai's reign, with no mention in the Colymar King list or the history of Clearwine. "Minara killed" (same year). There are a few deaths mentioned in the list, probably kinsfolk of the author, but he also keeps track of royalty. Minara probably is a fairly common name in Sartar. But this could also be the daughter of Onelisin, born in 1639 as the presumably youngest of the triplets born to Onelisin and Jostharl. Another thing that is somewhat strange that Minaryth keeps accompanying his mother through her marriage to the Orlmarth. How does a Hiording woman end up in Tarkalor's Keep with a son not claimed by either the local clan or the Hiordings, or if he remained Hiording, why did he grow up among the Orlmarth and in those many places?

Checking "Evens of my Life" by Minaryth Blue, who was gifted with a writing quill at birth, shows no sign of such an internship.

One book I found quite instructive is The Way of Wyrd by Brian Bates, telling the story of a monk's introduction into the quite shamanic ways of a pagan magician. For a historical fantasy, I enjoyed Poul Anderson's King of Ys series - four books on a fictional Phoenician city in Late Roman Aremorica (actually using Martin of Tours as one of the protagonists), about a Mithraic Roman prefect in the service of Magnus Maximus, based on the Bretonic myths about the drowned city. I found it influencing my views of the Holy Country. I eventually read it, but his first novel really made a barrier to his others. Greg wrote a huge endorsement for the mythic aspects of Watership Down. The fact that the protagonists aren't human makes this quite good preparatory reading for anyone wishing to play non-human species. The social moles of the Duncton Chronicles by William Horwood are another example of "furry" spirit quests, biologically implausible, but possibly quite Hsunchen. Chronologically, Maia is a prequel to the events in Shardik.

The Zistorites (not the God Learners in general) were mass-producing magical swords that worked just fine in Zistorela on Kostern Island (in God Forgot) but which became basically mundane weapons (of inferior quality to Heortling ones) when removed from that place far enough. The crystals powering that magic clearly drew on some magic source inherent to that place, or inherent to the God Machine running below the Clanking City. Another way to create a magical artifact is to take an ordinary item to a heroquest, identify it with a mythical item, and return holding that artifact. This method is commonly used by all heroquesters, and the number of such items depends on the number of your heroquesters and heroquests. In this, the God Learners certainly had an advantage over most other cultures, although the Holy Country proved to be a hotspot of heroquesting, and its daughter culture in Sartar as well. The HeroQuest 1 material had the Chain of Veneration for the Malkioni, a method to channel and redistribute the magical advantage accumulated by their Worship Invisible God rites somewhat more directly to their zzaburi, possibly side-stepping the formation of a wyter, but then the history of Hrestol does suggest that he was more than aware of wyter magics. His quest to slay Ifttala, daughter of Seshna Likita and ancestress of the Pendali, was basically the quest to slay the wyter of the Pendali peoples. Snodal's quest to slay the God of the Silver Feet is similar. It is worth mentioning that these God-Slaying quests have very negative consequences for the questers.

Given that the creator of the world was practicing shamanism and included his personal experiences in the game's approach to shamanism, I would say that these experiences have a high degree of relevance (to avoid writing a weird version of Germany). Instead, they can end up in psychosis or coma, at least as far as materialists observing them are concerned, which may be attributed to their use of psychoactive and poisonous substances. In case of doubt, undergo the steps of "Becoming an Initiate" pp.274f., adapted to the entity. At least those before the POW sacrifice - replace those with the acceptance of taboos. That's my main worry with a party with only few people able to discorporate, too. At the very least, you will have to deal with a split party.

I don't know whether I can agree to that blanket statement. Children don't receive any personal magic (spirit or rune magic), but it will be hard to keep them from exercising their passions. Do their runes manifest in the course of the adulthood rites? Or are they there already, only not yet tattooed? Children will learn the public dances of the rites, and will be encouraged and often even required to participate, in order to receive blessings. They will learn the general overview over their myths, their lineages, and quite possibly the markings used by Issaries to count and label goods or harvested items. They are likely to pick up Tradetalk, too, and possibly some understanding of the rote verses in Stormspeech and Earthspeech used by everyone in the liturgies. And sooner or later children will become initiands who are taught the basics of magic in preparation for their adulthood rites. Not yet actual spells, but controlled sacrifice of magical energy in the worship services, for instance. And already small children will be taught how to invoke (passive) protective charms that aid them against e.g. spirits.

The historical equivalents are numerous but not that well known unless you spent some time "researching" cultures as ancient as their real world parallels. Greeks invoke images of Marathon, Salamis, Thermopylae - and that's as little in-period as the armor style in Excalibur for early British dark age Romano-British heroic militia. The culture of the Orlanthi is that of lactose-tolerant farmer-herders that came into being at the start of the Bronze Age, with agriculture having radiated out from the northern bend of the Fertile Crescent all over the Old World, and dairy-dependent pastoralism added around the same time that Bronze replaced copper tools. Where agriculture or sacred services required communal works, cities and bureaucracies would have come into being - often before the adoption of pastoralism. The Orlanthi live in a region that has real winters, with snow and frost. That is bound to be reflected in their housing and their winter dress, but need not carry over into their summer and battle dress, as military operations in the winter are not a good idea. They are a mix of free and tenant farmers, where the tenants are less wealthy but beyond those economic considerations as free as the free farmers. All men are warriors when given the need or opportunity. Equipment will vary. You will find a similar social structure in Germanic farmer republics, some of which managed to maintain much independence from royal interference into the early modern Age. Most people north of the Alps or the Danube had such social structures in the Bronze Age. In the fertile Crescent and the Mediterranean, often a lot less so, as their continued welfare required coordination and organisation beyond what free farmers organized in extended family groupings (clans) could provide. Orlanthi usually inhabited hilly country, with uplands that are too inhospitable in winter but good grazing in summer, which leads to the practice of transhumance, leading a significant portion of the lifestock away from the permanent settlements into these uplands. Elsewhere, herds would follow the rains, here the herds avoid the snow. The Anatolian uplands do offer such conditions, so maybe the Anatolian Bronze Age cultures (think allies of the Trojans in the Trojan War) might be an appropriate parallel. Otherwise, the precursors of the Thracians and Dacians, the Hallstatt Culture people and their Urnfield precursors are my favorite parallel, as I know too little about Bronze Age Afghanistan or Northern India to decide whether those conditions and social structures were similar enough. The cities in Sartar are mostly the centers of tribal confederations, with the surrounding tribes owning significant parts of the cities. There are also non-tribal city folk, the well-to-do organized in guilds or similar clan-like organisations, the poor as destitute beggars, entertainers, street vendors or day laborers. Most cities were founded less than 150 years ago and were planned cities, copying internal organisation and architecture of the Holy Country or the dwarves (who were very friendly to the dynasty until a century ago). The cities made it through the Lunar conquest and the liberation without signifciant damage. The only walled settlement that was destroyed in the conquest over 20 years ago is Runegate, rebuilt as described in the Adventure Book of the GM Screen package, and that was not a typical Sartarite city but a fortified tribal center. Seafaring: Sartar is completely land-locked, and while it lies on two trade routes leading to the major sea ports for central Genertela, it has no naval experience at all except for some of the closest companions of Argrath and a few far-travelled individuals. Water traffic is limited to the mostly durulz (duck)-operated river boats on the Creek-Stream River to Nochet (which had been severely diminished due to a pogrome a dozen years ago). RQ3 had rules for ships and sailing, but the only Glorantha publication digging deeply into that topic is "Men of the Sea" for HeroQuest 1 (not RuneQuest). Excellent book, cheap as pdf, highly recommended even though some details are no longer supported as canonical. Seafaring in Glorantha was impossible until two generations ago, due to a great curse that swept the Gloranthan seas free of all ships about 700 years ago. The last 45 years have seen the return to the seas, almost with a vengeance. Naval trade, journeys of discovery, raiding and conquest have blossomed in the last two generations, ancient port sites have returned to prominence lost during the long curse. A few coastal waters and one notable inland water (Lake Felster) had managed to maintain some naval tradition. If you want Aegaean style seafaring in a rather narrow water, Lake Felster at the heart of Ralios is your friend. Fleet sizes are rather small compared to the Aegaean, but so is the available area of water. The lake is connected to the sea by the Tanier river, a quite broad and fairly navigable waterway, but political divisions prevent an exchange of fleets between the lake and the open seas so far. The major power on the river once controlled all the lands between the sea and the lake, but at that time the seas still had not been opened. The local naval power used to be the Holy Country, but that entity has largely fallen apart into its constituent portions since its Godking did not return from the Dead nine years ago. Others like the Lunars or King Broyan temporarily unified some of those lands, but currently there is no unified government, the Wolf Pirates are back from their circumnavigation of the inner ocean of Glorantha, and naval trade has become risky once more.

Depending on how long you will be playing in the setting, the players may eventually heroquest: enter the realm of their gods, experience their feats, and bring back magic from those experiences to change their fate. Knowing Jeff, I expect that the first heroquests for RQG are written, but I have no idea when they will be published. Why do they enter the myths? Because some problem requires bigger than normal magic, possibly even some permanent change to the myths. Until then, they will be tasked to help their communities to navigate difficult times. Indeed. The near future of Argrath will see his wooing of the Feathered Horse Queen (presumably covered at least in preparation in the announced Grazeland scenarios), a trip to the Holy Country to make peace there and to hire the Wolf Pirates, and his campaign to aid the Fazzurites against the King of Tarsh, leading to the conquest of Tarsh and the foul play of Mularik Ironeye on Argrath's honor - at least if your campaign (and the near future supplements' timeline) follows the outline in King of Sartar. There are other things your campaign might do, in order to prepare the community for survival, possibly tied to some later activity of Argrath, and not necessarily always on his side. The Telmori massacre is an opportunity to take a dissident position, at least to a faction among his supporters. The Wolf Runners may end up to be the Telmori tribe sworn to the Prince (whether from the bottom of their heart or in self-preservation), rather than their prospective slayers, and the actions of your players might create that outcome. Whichever side the player party may end on, the outcome will be significant to them.

Orlanthi worshipping "Eurmal, Friend of Men" and "Vorthan" (who appears in Dragon Pass as an enemy deity named Jagrekriand) and putting way more weight on bull traditions than the shepherders of central Genertela are bound to be somewhat different. I agree - Fronela appears to be a lot easier to handle, with resident Orlanthi, Malkionized Orlanthi, and initiate-to-Rune Master people rising from the population. That used to be the case when Seshnela had (Castle-Coast) style Men of All rather than Rokari style military Talars, although there used to be a significant overlap between Talar-caste nobles and Men of All. The short passage in the RQG rules suggests that the Horali use Hykimi beast magic, possibly variants of Hsunchen shape changer magic adapted to Malkioni soldiery, taking on magical but not bodily aspects of that change. That's why I would play this from the perspective of Gebel and his quest for the Sword of Tolat, making Gabaryanga his tragic at first noble then more and more corrupt ally.