Joerg

And are illuminated so much that they glow in the dark...

Nope. I checked the cults originating Charisma, and each of these cults has one of the runes. It would be weird for a cult to have non-associate magic using a rune different from the cult's (or its subcult's) runes. Under that reading, Charisma from Ernalda uses Fertility, Charisma from Yinkin uses Beast, and Charisma from Eurmal (also for Orlanth) uses Illusion. It also suggests that associate magic using an element rune may be useless to the associate cultist if she doesn't have a rating in that element (yet).

That's just the start of the part of the "Through Hell and Back" heroquest...

In HQG, you get three runes for your character, and you can assign some of your major ability ratings to one or two of them. That's what I did when I created a character for a memorable HQG session at Chimeriades a few years ago. These were the Gloranthan runes, but I didn't play a vanilla Orlanthi cultist, but rather a slightly weird spirit-talking shepherd boy whose signature trait was having this spirit owl companion - a break-out ability from my spirit rune. I actually based one or two more of my abilities on that rune, and that was how that character's magic worked. It is possible to base the runes on a profession, or the ability "rune-writing".

I have never seen the Storm Bull presented as a carrier of Harmony. Show me a Berserker embodying Harmony... Show me how mindless rage fits in with Harmony. YGWV. That character would probably be one of the Storm Bull priests under RQ2 rules... Storm Bull bands are a disorderly bunch. When they don't have Chaos to fight, they are little better than Gagarthi. To quote from the Urox description in Storm Tribe (p.156): All descriptions of Storm Bull cultists have been consistent with this description. (Including my own description of Hrut the Thirsty, an NPC description I coughed up in a discussion in 1994, with the expressed goal of breaking Gloranthan stereotypes.) Storm Bull holy bands near Devil's Marsh tend to be of as mixed origin as Gagarthi bands - e.g. Barzaad's band that got hired by Biturian. Such bands would hardly be sticking to tribal herds. Their best real world equivalent are violent biker gangs. There is one mention of a tribal group of Storm Bull Berserkers in Cults of Prax - a High Priest of the Impala tribe. Chalana Arroy's harmony is the weakness of the Berserker. Hate and Harmony don't combine well. I see how the Storm Bull medic would require a decent stat in harmony in order to cast these common rune spells with a decent chance, but that's a rules artifact based on the unholy mix of character traits that add up to 100% and magical aptitude that so buggers the cults based on Power Runes vs. those based on Element Runes. But then, at least in my Glorantha Storm Bull bands would mainly have first aid, and buy, hire or marry a healer to tag along. Not necessarily a Chalana Arroy healer, mind you, Eiritha is a lot more fun to have around. (Rand about how the opposed runes rules is unfortunate and how it contributed to my dislike of playing Pendragon deleted...) Storm Bull warriors would be diagnosed with PTSD from their exposure to Chaos. It makes them sociopaths, really.

I miss the mention of the excellent RQ3 products "What My Father Told Me" and "What The Priest Says" in this discussion. There ought to be a copy of the collection on the web that was assembled in the HQ1 era.

This looks like an edit gone wrong. Storm Bull and high harmony rune don't go together well. Another option for a philosophy strong in the Man rune is Malkionism. Their way of explaining the world isn't called the humanist perspective for nothing.

Only by allied spirits residing in that blade, I would guess. To be fair, most weapoins protrude significantly from their wielder's aura.

Cragspider's Great Trolls prove that paternal parentage does amount to something. So did Bina Bang giving birth to Pikat Yaraboom. I think troll matriarchs do have something like a concubinate where other matriarchs send their sons. The uz must have some sort of breeding pre-selection, possibly similar to the Esrolian model. Being selected for a mating is dangerous, painful, and very rewarding for male uz. What cult task could be more important than to secure the next generations? The Only Old One is the archetype for the shapeshifting Kitori, due to his mixed inheritance from Argan Argar and Esrola, and not a descendant of Kyger Litor. Hence not an uzuz. His species is an adoptive species - presumably since Eurmal slew his son during the Lightbringers' Quest. Adoptees can be human, uz or dehori, possibly others as well, and they breed true, so there are (now) Kitori by inheritance, but it is still possible to become a Kitori by adoption. Eristi the Doubter, and possibly Borklak. Jeset is a great-grandson of Kyger Litor, a demigod, but also an uzuz Only after the battle against Nysalor (which he may have entered as a troll or even as a chaos monster). I do wonder why he didn't become a Kitori rather than undergo the grisly rite of rebirth. But then, maybe he already had.

When faced with Humakti or a berserker, a sorcerer had better cast Dampen Damage on their weapon(s). That will put the incoming damage way more into the Ward Against Weapons useful range. (Does Boon of Kargan Tor increase the required spell strength for Dampen Damage?)

The Cannon Cult has human slaves and blind cave oxen. Do they have a similar deal as the Morokanth?

Uzuz males will be in high demand as mating partners for high ranking females. No idea whether that leaves much time for any other kind of adventuring (although the mating will likely have intermittent heroic tasks of slaying intruders or hunting). And much of this will be at least underground, and when possible deep in the Underworld in the roots of the Castle of Lead. Not sure I'd want to run such adventures, though. The fan-fic probably writes itself, but again, not sure I'd want to read it, either.

Has the player character become a running body of water? That might inconvenience the vampire quite a bit, as touching that body may sear at the Vampire's being. Sure, the character will probably suffer pain or wounds he needs to reform when the contact is over. But the Vampire will have the very same dilemma.

What do you call a creature? Is a Wind a creature? Storm worshipers can interact with winds, allie them - sometimes we talk about the spirit (or the soul) of such a wind, sometimes we call such entities elementals. Are those winds creatures? Same thing again with bodies of water or currents of water. An animist will tell you that all of that is quite evidently alive, often has an individuality, or else contribute to a hive individuality. Pasteur proved that water is very much alive unless you go to great lengths to remove that life from the water. No. Technically, that is transforming the fire potential in the fuels to flame and leaving behind ashes. While it alters a portion of the universe, it doesn't destroy it. Tapping does destroy those bits of the universe, or of Creation. When Tapping first was practiced, Creation was an ongoing process, even a process that had gone out of control. In those conditions, Tapping was just pruning Creation so that it didn't become hostile to itself. The birth of Time changed those rules. The process of Creation was limited severely, because the shards of the product of Creation hold together only by gossamer strands of the Web of Arachne Solara. It still is ongoing, but in a very limited way (usually), as removing the limiters threatens to rip even more shards of reality out of the Web. There are ways to tap such ongoing Creation ethically - when you limit yourself to the surplus Creation while sheltering the process as a whole. Unfortunately the heady sensation of the magic building up inside the Tapper usually blows away any thoughts of limiting that effect. A master of restraint might be able to adjust the flow of his Tapping with the influx of raw Creation. IMO on the contrary. An Orlanthi permeates the air around him with his breath - his air sensations project quite a way outwards from him. While this isn't a reliable sense for perception activities, any destruction of intermingled breath will cause him pain and wounds.

This is getting less and less a RuneQuest thread and more and more a Gloranthan lore thread. Continue at your own peril. I am fairly certain that they have a word for it. In fact, they have a rune for it - Magic is one of the fundamental building blocks of Gloranthan reality. (It doesn't matter that it is not used for Rune Magic or sorcery in RQ... there are a few other well-established runes that aren't used that way.) Agility= Being (your deity/philosophical ideal)? I.e. divine or rune magic? Knowledge: sorcery. Will? mysticism or heroquest effects. Then there are spirits in charms, things you have. Ok, a little bit of will applies here, too. No, instead we talk about them as knowing what conditions to subject the plant to, and remembering when the plant needs water and when not. But even in our secular western materialist society, we exchange magical blessings daily -- "Good Morning!" That's a little charm where you expend a little bit of magic to brighten someone else's day. "Bless ya!" One of our many small healing charms. And worst of all, "Good Luck!". Pure witchcraft. IMO Gloranthans are very much aware of magic. Only the Mostali might think of the various magical rites etc. as algorithmic instructions to the World Machine, but then they probably talk about energies rather than magic. Sorcerers talk about and use magical energies, stuff that is generated or perhaps better accumulated in the Inner World, poured down on the worlds of Glorantha from the source, shaped by the runes, and in part returned to entities closer to the source to manifest their runes. (Malkioni sorcerers skip the entities when doing pure sorcery, but are quite willing to engage in demonology summoning and commanding such entities.) Especially the priesthood (less so rune lords or people who heroform) apply well defined ritual activities to invoke feats or abilities or properties of their deities. That's more or less the definition of a spell, and in my opinion recognized as such by the Gloranthans.

Illusory sheep might very well be able to headbutt, trample, smother or even warm people, and they should be able to eat whatever people have on them - textiles, parchment, food... If this is a Trickster spell, the spell caster wouldn't be immune against head butting etc., but might even stage-dive onto them. I'd make that spell stackable, allowing one command per extra rune point rather than 1D4 extra sheep. One use might be to make them form up in a circle and jump over a fence again and again... requiring a CON roll every few melee rounds of any observer to avoid falling asleep.

It would convert a dead thing into magical energy you can use to power your spells. That would beTap Dead. Not sure such a spell exists, but then, it is similar to the magical source of power of ghouls, so why not. No, if you tap Death, you tap the power that keeps the unliving from moving around, from following their basest instincts and hunger. One of the most important thing the victors of the I Fought We Won battle did afterwards was to separate the living from the dead, affirming the power of Death. If you start tapping into that, the dead may rise once more. IMO Tap Death would leech away the magic put into the funerary rites of people, nullifying them over time. And even if you are an ancestor worshipper you wouldn't want them to rise uncontrollably from their graveyards (outside of the proper dates to do so, if you're in Esrolia).

The problem people have with the "Lie" spell is that it mis-interpreted as making people believe in something that isn't true. In my opinion, "Lie" is a specific form of Illusion magic, creating a temporary truth, only it is a memetic truth, tied to the spoken word and gestures of the person using the spell. Pronouncements by somebody using the Lie spell will detect as Truth. If somebody has a spell to detect Illusion, that would register, too, but only on the person under the effect of Lie, not the pronouncements themselves. That's why there is no resistance roll against Lie. The audience isn't the target of the spell. Reality is.

Firefarming has been practiced in Australia for more than 50,000 years. Encouraging growth of fresh greens and keeping the undergrowth low. It isn't quite clear whether this works in the very reduced ecosystem of Prax - if it does, the Morokanth might be the prime practitioners of this, while the fire-friendly Impala riders with their beasts' preferred diet are the least inclined to practice this, though. In the Golden Age the Tada-shi built great ziggurat temples like the one in the image of Pimper's Block, and they erected a huge necropolis of mounds around Tada's High Tumulus. Theirs was a thriving society of at least horticulturalists, possibly agriculturalists, amidst a lush savannah. I don't really see them as much of pastoralists, though - the Good Shepherd is also known as the Father of the Independents, which means he is tied to the Beast Nomads descended from Eiritha rather than directly from Ernalda. I doubt that there are any serpent-drawn chariots anywhere besides the one of Ronance. Not even the sea-chariots are drawn by anything other than sea-horses, which admittedly may be serpentine/piscine behind their shoulders (much like the celestial capricorn). Darkness appears to be the only element not sporting chariots - presumably they aren't practical in the Underworld. I wonder whether there should be actually three serpents rather than two, conjoined at their tails, forming a Mobility Rune. But then, the serpents wouldn't have to slither over the ground if they can make the ground carry them forwards, so maybe the third serpent is the road, lying belly-up to transport the chariot.

Nothing so paltry as a few raised stats. Harsaltar and his sisters had taken the really heavy duty geases when they formed the Household of Death. Harsaltar was killed by the geas, not by the Emperor.

Yep, that's how I read that scenario. Jaldon used the existing altars for this type of conflict. There is no indication that he erected the altars, all he did was to set up the manoevre that would assign one of these altars to each faction. In the French remake Les Dieux Nomades there are Great Spirits for all the elements associated with the five great tribes. Are those tribal altars identical to the altars where the Great Spirits can be allied in that version? IIRC Malia got moved out to Malia's Stool. Monkey Ruins is the starting place of the Bisons in the original, though, and the altar for Oakfed, so that's not a direct fit unless those places where the Great Spirits can be contacted or the assigned territories have been changed accordingly.

Power lines in Prax: These power lines were an aspect of the Nomad Gods Map (and the Dragon Pass map) that was also known as the HeroQuest Roads, like the one from Cliffhome to Stormwalk Mountain taken by the Redbird expedition that brought Temertain to Sartar. This came up in discussions about a possible third boardgame (Masters of Luck and Death) in the WBRM-Nomad Gods series for the complete magical game. The project faltered before there was anything to playtest, and my role was little more than providing opinions about some ideas. So, quite likely not anywhere in published canon. What's your reference for Jaldon inventing the altars? Jaldon was born around 890 in the Wastes. The oases and the ancient (Golden Age) buildings which house (or are) the altars certainly predate that - I would credit Tada rather than Jaldon. Given his mobility rune and the chariot, I would favor Mastakos if it has to be a water deity. The Eirithan Genealogy in Cults of Prax that names Ernalda as his mother gives Tada as his father.

I guess I would tie RQ3 Vikings divine magic to Futhark runes, possibly in a system similar to RQG. Inscribing the runes to gain the divine favor, which then is a derived ability from the applicable rune with the best rating, and can be augmented with an appropriate secondary rune. Some of the runes could be matched to the Gloranthan concepts, inheriting those associations. Such inscribed runes would be something like words of power - inscribing and then invoking them could release the magic. As we are talking about HeroQuest, the individual feats should be somewhat based on myths from around Yggdrasil. Rather than requiring initiation, I would make this Viking magic opportunistic polytheism, where even svartalfr or trolls could be invoked by the magician. Always for a price, to be paid in blood or blot (sacrifice). (I'd probably produce a number of skaldic kvaths in alliterative poetry as examples...)

Ronance's roads are the power lines between the altars of Prax, most of which coincide with the oases, but judging from the map of Praxian catchment areas provided by @David Scott, oases have separate aquifers independent from these power lines. Ronance is after all an Earth Spirit, so his power should be Earth magic rather than water magic.

I've played in a test run of Ian Cooper's Dragonrise scenario (admittedly HeroQuest rather than RuneQuest), and what made my character shine was his herder background when fighting our way past Oxbow and neighboring bullish constellations on Umath's (accelerated) Trail to the Celestial City (which he never reached, unlike his son, who later turned out to be its greatest defender against the Sky Terror). In heroquesting, these farming skills may be more valuable than brute swordsmanship. Free farmers used to be quite badass fighters. As late as the year 1500 saw the free farmers of Ditmarsia defeat a royal elite army of the Danish king at Hemmingstedt more than ten times their number (bogging them down after opening the dams of the nearby Miele creek). Likewise, the Swiss pike formation was born from free farmers standing up to oppressive feudal landlords. Only the farmer uprisings in Svabia during the Reformation were military failures, but that may be because those farmers really were unequipped serfs. Then there is the term "buying the farm" that apparently was coined in the US military but wouldn't be out of place for a Roman veteran trying his hand at growing cabbages after his term of 20 years of service. While not that common in clan-based societies, the imperial outskirts would regularly be re-settled with veterans receiving some land (often with tenants) as their severance bonus. Wulfsland used to be such a place. Do we have any info on what happened to Wulfsland after the Dragonrise? Would the Maboder-born wives of some of the retirees or their sons remain on those lands after the duke disappeared at the Dragonrise? Or did the Telmori do the job of clearing that place of their Lunar and Orlanthi foes? I suppose that between Sacred Time household rolls and adventuring, the skil sets between fighters and farmer/herders would become fairly similar after a while as experience checks get diminishing rewards as the skills reach expert levels but are way more likely to result in improvement while in the "just competent" range.