Joerg

One of the joys or rewards of Glorantha is to look at some source or two and suddenly a couple of connections or possibiliies click into place, giving you the excitement of discovery and new ideas to follow, and then to be able to share and discuss these with the Glorantha Tribe. Building a cross-document index sounds strangely familiar.

Ernalda is as much the active component in the Making of the Storm Tribe as is Orlanth, and can use the same myth to assert authority over an unruly and diverse bunch of subjects. There are exclusively Earth myths about Orendana the Earth Queen, too, the queen who gets wooed for her command over sovereignty. One way to re-enact this is to become the object of a marriage contest, and then assert her dominant or at the very least equal partner in that marriage. Elmal has the myth how Orlanth going away entrusts the tribe to Elmal.

The sorcerers do recognize the existence of the tangible gods when they summon and manipulate them with their magic. They just don't worship them (as superior beings, ancestor worship can be very much a thing). The Brithini trace their descent from goddesses, and their founder and ancestor Malkion is both an individual born to a union of deities and an emanation of the One Mind. With this self-image, their ancestors and their kin (the gods) are like nothing more than more primal versions of themselves. The Malkioni blame a vast number of mistakes of the Gods War onto those deities, their kin who in their view chose self-aggrandizement over the logical perspective. (For some unclear reason, the Brithini don't include Zzabur in that array of self-aggrandizing powerful magicians. The no longer immortal Malkioni do point out at least a number of mistakes of Zzabur.)

I don't think that how recent the event was is relevant for its imprint on the Hero Planes (i.e. Godtime). The first quests against the Curse of Kin started during the Gbaji Wars, and 200 years later, the multiple birth trollkin were a sufficiently important part of the troll forces during the reactions to the Tax Slaughter that a trollkin lieutenant who had experienced care by Chalana Arroy priestesses led a mutiny which crippled the troll forces that had assembled to enforce Arkat's Command. Forgotten myths still are there on the hero plane unless their very actors have been erased from the fabric of the universe. It is possible to stumble into such myths, especially if they belong to the same archetype of myths that you used to enter the Hero Planes with. What has changed with forgotten myths is not the myth itself, but its expression onto the middle world. The return of a moon brought back all manner of largely forgotten or differently interpreted myths about moon goddesses. There probably was quite a bit of forehead-slapping in the manner of "so that's what this story was talking about" as the reality of the re-incarnating moon goddess was coming to the awareness of the Gloranthans. If you apply these considerations to the questing of the Seven Mothers and Teelo Estara, much of this applies. The Red Goddess quest that preceded her return to the First Battle of Chaos was extra hard. had extra-unforeseen consequences, and was admittedly awesome. (Her riding the Star Bear would have been quite awesome, too...)

Now, I think that you can. Every major event causes a Node on the God Plane and this allows HeroQuestors to travel to that Node. The Gbaji/Arkat Smackdown, Dragonkill, Battle of Night and Day, First Battle of Chaos, red Goddess at Castle Blue, The Dragonewt Dream, Wounding of Korasting and many more are events powerful enough and mythical enough to have created a God Plane Node. That's probably a continuum where there is a border what goes and what doesn't. IMO the final fight in the City of Miracles did collapse the altenate reality of the Bright Empire, but I don't think it was a moment that created a Godtime location. If it was, then the 1042 mass utuma that ended the EWF or the sinking of Seshnela by the Luatha would be within range, too, and if that, then why not the destruction of Akez Loradak and the death of Ezkankekko, and if that, why not Sartar becoming King of Dragon Pass, etc. ad absurdum. We have proof that questing related to Korasting's wound has happened, but it isn't quite clear whether the questers tried to intercede as the Black Eater, or whether they did an Underworld quest to heal Korasting. The Battle of Night and Day was a breach of the Compromise, a slip-over from Time to Godtime, and the formation of the Black Eater and its interaction with Nysalor probably was Godtime rather than Time. (Palangio did the breach, see History of the Heortling Peoples.) First Battle of Chaos: not necessarily a breach of the Compromise. Neither Teelo Estara nor the Bat were new to the world. Arkat had skinned it, giving it its distinct coloration. Castle Blue was a place not of the mundane world, and the presence of Alakoring makes it clear that it happened in Godtime, as Alakoring had been shot dead (and not resurrected) about 300 years earlier. The Dragonewt Dream probably was a superposition of Godtime or otherwise dragon reality over the mundane world, and as such already visitable if you just know where to go. The Dragonkill did not see a breach of the Compromise, either. Neither did the Dragonrise of 1625.

That's horses. A common mistake among the sunny-boys...

That's very helpful, thanks. No second ransom for you, then, and you used this one up. Vasana has left her ransom deposit with Harmast's cult, which makes a lot of sense since ransoming captives of war is a time honored function of the Issaries cult, and one reason they will receive some form of free passage even from Wolf Pirates and the like. In the end, it is her employer who bails her out. In the case of a less well connected Orlanthi, the clan chief or perhaps the tribal king, otherwise a superior in the temple will be named as an influential go-to to redeem the ransom offer. IOUs aka favors are a big part of Orlanthi transactions.

On the other hand, a troll would see garnished fowl...

A dead crystal is magical - you can store MP or spirits inside. Live crystals are even more magical, but Detect Magic is qualitative, not quantitative. At close range, and it is a three point spell. So a crystal has 14 MP. Is either a spirit or a live crystal part of the living, or is Soul Sight limited to the MP? Can it discern between a dead crystal inhabited by a spirit and one just full of MP? Soul Sight is a one point rune spell - less force than Pierce Veil, less information. For that test, you need a Storm Bull... Are there any Storm Bull Sword Sages?

Sure, but RQ2 had nothing about the weregeld economy. Cults do act as bail lenders to members in good standing. And the friendlies in good standing keeping the valuables for the characters are quite likely their clan and/or their cult - everyone else trustworthy is in the same situation as themselves. As Joe Nobody of the Orlmarth, I do expect my clan to cough up my weregeld in cash should I come into a ransom situation. And once I paid that back by extra effort or similar, I am eligible again. Why in the world shouldn't it? People invest (e.g. in herds), and those investments may return more profit that is eaten up by their daily demands.

Yes, you can, and there are things that can be run as a heroquest that are not bad-ass at all. Take for instance the Spare Grain myth of Harst (a son of Issaries), this is about loaning some spare grain, making the tour of your neighbors trading up, and returning the spare grain with a profit. Sure, you can spice this up with encounters that need fast-talk or similar Issaries skills to avoid, but it remains a mercantile exchange at its core, and if you get into a heroic fight, you did something wrong. You cannot heroquest into the Gbaji Wars to re-enact the final fight between Arkat and Nysalor (and Gbaji) as a heroquest as that was a moment in time. You might be able quest into a few of the Timeless events when the Compromise was broken - like when Nysalor/D'Wargon hurt Kyger Litor/Korasting by burning his way out of the womb of the Black Eater during the Battle of Night and Day. Hero cults are usually tied to some other deity's Godtime events. Harmast Barefoot established the Lightbringer's Quest as a complete hero path for mortals, but the Godtime events are all Orlanth's. Is it possible to bring Arkat back again that way? You could try that out in Ralios...

The best known "Cat Witch" is Onelisin, granddaughter of Sartar the Founder. I don't see any sign for her (or indeed any Yinkini) to be a spirit master - Yinkin's myths are quite explicit in that regard, he chose the gods of his half-brother over the spirits of his father.

I wonder where exactly is the place that you die (or "go sleeping") - is it crossing the first threshold to the Underworld, or is it when you face judgement of Daka Fal? If you manage to enter the staircase of what used to be the basement of the Obsidian Palace, you have another path of descent into the Underworld, leading to one of the stations of the Lightbringers' Quest - specifically the feast in which Eurmal performs his betrayal of hospitality (for which Orlanth has to take responsibility) by confessing that he slew the son of their host (like, just now). While descent through the Tar Pit is likely to be difficult and highly unpleasant, the entire stump of Veskarthan's entry point to the underworld of Ernaldela is riddled with caverns and passages, housing the tens of thousands of local uz and their insect lifestock, and other critters of Darkness or Shadow seeking the shelter or company of these. Entry through the Styx Grotto sounds quite promising. (Plus I have the suspicion that the name Styx Grotto hints at some of the waters from the Creekstream River actually do feed the rivers of the Underworld, and that it should be possible to dive there, and possibly even to boat down there.) The Blackmaw just outside of the Nochet Wall facing the Antones Estates (aka the local necropolis) marks another entry (and unfortunately also exit) point to the Underworld. The deep chaos holes of Snake Pipe Hollow and the Footprint might have trails leading to some of the nethermost hells. Unless you already are steeped in mystic refutation or chaos taint, these routes aren't good choices, but your Lunar zealot might just brave them. But back to more hospitable parts of the Underworld/Hell: Wonderhome used to be a pleasantly dark place crawling with insects and other arthropodes, and probably soft-bodied life as well. This is the place where Orlanth stole those Sandals of Darkness, and when he did that, it wasn't yet the realm of the dead but just another subterranean and dark habitat full of life. The basement of the Obsidian Palace may be a similar case of not clearly post-Death location (despite being part of the Sword Story after the first two slayings, and the site of another slaying perpretrated by Eurmal).

Where does this come from? Sure, the individual's credit rating with the cult will have taken a hit, and the ransom backed by the cult may be a lot lower than last time, but no ransom at all doesn't sound right to me. After all, the cult may or will ask for (and likely get) some recompensation from the individual's other ties, like the clan, or other such solidarity institutions (warrior societies?). In the end, the individual will be expected to make up for the expenditures on his behalf, and then some good will bonus.

Your ghoul's preferred outcome should be the result of a total loss of the player characters. HQ2 and HQG aren't really simulations of the game world. The rules are protagonist-oriented, not antagonist-oriented. The goals of said ghoul should affect how its actions are narrated, but the outcome depends entirely on the stakes set by the players, the difficulty you assign to that, and how the opposed rolls turn out. The players frame the contest, and how much they risk or take voluntary lasting consequences to adjust their chances for success. A ghoul won't usually accept ransom or negotiation, so for the player characters it is fight and/or flee/retreat. If the Humakti insists that the ghoul must be killed, adjust the difficulty and the risk. If the rest of the party is willing to drag a paralysed Humakti companion away from the ghoul in a fighting retreat, their chances to survive the contest go up. If they stand in unyielding defense over their fallen comrade, chances are that they approach a total loss. The ghoul will want to "kill as many of the intruders for the larder as is feasible, and drive the excess ones off if he cannot kill them all." Depending on the development of the conflict, it might have to scamper off without any kill to try another ambush. If the ghoul manages to paralyse the entire party and to pull them into its larder, it might start eating a total casualty while some of the other party members begin to shake off their paralysis - possibly at the bottom of a stack of lifeless or at least paralysed bodies. TPK V2, with a slight chance to revert their luck from deep disadvantage. In a typical Bond movie, when the protagonist is put away as his interrogation has been interrupted, and needs to improvise his escape, and that of his girl of the week.

@Quackatoa is that duck literate, or does that scroll just serve as kindling? True. The trick is to keep your allied or bound spirit in a flea or similar parasite and then let it dominate the tame but non-intelligent rubble runners of yours, as per "The Smell of a Rat"... The ideal trickster setup would be to jump your identity into one of the Rubble Runners and have an Alter Creature victim as your familiar, officially your handler.

Calculating from the data in the Bestiary, its minimum requirements is 100 people a week, which calculates to a minimal appetite of 4200 souls per year. Its wartime appetite is 500 to 1000 souls a week (it will be satisfied eating a cavalry unit), which calculates to a minimum of 21,000 victims if kept at wartime hunger for the whole year. Usually way more. The risk of the Bat coming along to visit might actually be a point for incarceration or press-ganging criminals rather than performing direct executions - you would want to keep as large a buffer between the Bat and yourself and your family as possible. For that same reason, you wouldn't send criminals off to the bat, except for your worst enemies. In case of a missed feeding, do lay members of the Bat count as Lunar cultists? How long does such lay membership last? Note that the hungry bat won't stop feeding on non-Lunars, they just don't satisfy its hunger any more.

Reproduce ensures conception, and is hence cast before pregnancy. Bless Pregnancy affects the womb of the mother and averts pains and sicknesses, and possibly takes out the rune magic of the blessing priestess for the duration of the pregnancy if additional rune points are spent to ensure superior characteristics. (I wonder when the characteristic maxima of the child are rolled - after conception, or at birth?) Bless Animals is the discount version of Reproduce for non-sentient beasts, especially if cast on studs rather than pregnant females. It does reduce the chance for begetting a new stud, though, but then what do you expect from a discount spell? No idea what would happen if you blessed a herd man bull this way, then awakened it. Would it still affect only herdman women? Would the effect be canceled if the herd man is not a beast any more? (Speaking of this, how much is intercourse with awakened herd-men in the neighborhood of bestiality? When you awaken your bison or sable steed, you still expect it to copulate with other herd beasts, so what is the deal with awakened herd men?)

YGMV. I am quite dubious of placing water spirits in a construct designed to ward off water without coercion. That's similar to DI to Orlanth for a hole in the ground or stale, unmoving air - outside of his domain, or against his nature. Does Zola Fel have an ancient rivalry with Oakfed? Without one, I don't see much traction in him having fire-dowsing spray of water spirits that willingly evaporate their watery body to drive back Oakfed. Having water elementals on call inside Dorasar's city wall that might form a coat of water atop those roofs strikes me as way more magical than I would give Sartarite settlements. Possible in the City of Wonders, probably even to be expected - houses covered by domes of living water instead of solid roofs. But in the arid region of Prax? Hate doesn't equal effective countermeasures. On the contrary, it might serve as an attractor to the Wildfire. That's more or less a common factor for all anciend cities. Potters' kilns and bakers' ovens would be on an industrial scale, possibly used by entire neighborhoods. A pastry seller on the street might pay a fee for access to a small section of a baker's oven, possibly buying the dough directly from the baker in case of in-bread pastries. (Another type would be clay-mantled pastries stuffed with rice or grain, gravy, legumes and a bit of meat.) Do masons usually employ charms against fire? The use of fire-glazed bricks might provide such, but I would see that more in the realm of lead mostali than of rock mostali. Lunar tricks? I'd expect those to work in Glamour or atop fragments of the Blue Moon, or alternatively using fragments of either blue or red moon rock in the building. Fragments of Blue Moon, or reed grown in Blue Moon soil or water, might attract water as its tidal effect. I can see a use like this in Glamour or in major temples in the Empire, but not on a street in Pavis. Reed huts in Moonbroth Oasis might have this, but do you have any indication that Moonbroth reed has been harvested and caravaned across the chaparral to the city of Pavis? And guarded by immortal guardians? Again, this is City of Wonders-level urban magic, possible in a strongly magical hotspot or powered by a dragon's dream. Living, shaped Redwood might have such properties, but I don't see any indication of such edifices in post-EWF Pavis. Apart from his temple comples in the Real City and the Rubble Wall, there are few places where Pavis' original architecture still is in use. I see Flintnail magics as being directed to mechanical stability, and maybe the masonry will take less damage from fires than chalcic rock (including Sandstone) usually does when exposed to hot fire. But then, Gustbran's is the hottest of the three Lowfires. Oakfed is bigger and more voracious, but not quite as hot. Mahome also is the spirit of the camp fire, taken from the embers left behind by the Wildfire. I wonder what Praxians would benefit from fire-farming as a hunting technique. The Men-and-a-Half come to mind, and looking at their diet, the Morokanth, but then they are Darkness-affiliated. Maybe Zorak Zoran serves in such a capacity? The Fire-associated Impala riders graze on the driest grasses and have the least need or incentive to burn those down for their herds. Nomad campfires are likely more aromatic than your average Pavisite might care for, relying on beast droppings for fuel. Releasing Oakfed? Probably by design rather than accident, I would guess. Why should they? Their god lost his fire powers to Zorak Zoran.

The way to get there by mechanisms already in the rules would be through divine gifts or their equivalent as heroquest rewards. Why not include an expanded rune point pool into those rewards? As the sidekick of Jar-eel, Beatpot has seen ten years of intense heroquesting, including the build-up for killing Belintar. Some of such values may be heroquest rewards, others may be the result of successful heroquest challenges - those quite likely already starting during his time as a rebel leader. In addition, he has access to Humakti-style gifts through Yanafal. And there is a possibility of Chaos Gifts, too - in case of doubt gained through Heroquest challenges, thus pre-selected from the original giftees. I wouldn't have increased the physical stats to that level (unless these are ongoing sorcerous boosts in addition to permanent increases), and his armor rating looks better than Siegfried or (post-Homeric, Lethe-dunked) Achilles. 10 point skin? When I see stats like that, I see a storm of magically enhanced missiles swarming in, with a 10-15% chance of landing a critical for each. Halved if a few meat shields engage him to prevent him from attacking the missileers. With a perma-Shield 8 (can that be dispelled, or only sorcerously Neutralized?), one spell I miss among his arsenal is Mindlink - you would need that to be able to cast any spell on him from inside his Countermagic effect. I do wonder whether some of such effect can be attained through "The Arming of <insert martial deity>" rites. In Prince of Sartar (1st chapter) parlance, this is Aelwrin with his Hero Light on.

Basically, any descent into the Underworld that has a return to the surface world is a heroquest. It is a passage to the Other Side, the characters leave the Middle World. (Spirit journeys are handled somewhat differently, but that may be a consequence of the spirit world being neither fully here nor neither fully there in the Godtime cycles.) The Underworld has strange rules and peculiarities. To surface world dwellers, much of it is a place of Death, but there are regions down there teeming with life and Creation. Still, the journey depicted in S:KoH in the third chapter traces the steps of Grandfather Mortal and Yelm to the Court of Silence - the road of the Dead. This is Orlanth's Lightbringer Path, with the Westfaring skipped by going through the exit from Orlanth's Hall. The other paths will sooner or later join this path. Bringing back X from the Underworld is one of the archetypal quests. It is involved in all sunrise (and planetary rise) rites and myths, but it also features e.g. in the Sword Story or in the escape from the initiation pits in The Initiation of Orlanth. The Orlanthi are the result of the Lightbringer myth, and it is a powerful tool (because of the victorious return) that lends significant magical advantage to derived quests. The liberation of Hofstaring is not a full Lightbringers' Quest, as it only uses the Descent to Hell portion of that, and it relies on Hofstaring's Leaping magic and his personal path back from the Dead for the return. Because of the alien place of his imprisonment, Hofstaring is not an eligible returnee from the Lands of the Dead. IMO the Heroquest Challenge is possible as the antagonists are recognizable as questers, too.

In my world building, I have two types of "demon" - one is the more general notion of beings from another universe or plane of existance, the other is more specifically an entity participating in a higher (magical) energy realm brought into a more mundane realm and manifesting some of that higher energy as magical effects. There is a possibility that the amount of energy carried over with an individual is dependent on the summoning. In Stormbringer, the summoner provides the entry window through the magic of souls consumed in the summoning. The success of the summoning technique determines the power the entity manifests in the realm it has been summoned to, likely capped by the energy provided in enabling the passage. If the entity was part of a collective rather than a self-aware individual before the summoning, then its control over this magic will entirely depend on the summoning. If the entity already was self-aware, it may still carry over a lot more power than it would have handled on its own in its other realm habitat - a bit like the boost John Carter experienced on Mars. A similar effect might come into play when people from the mundane world enter other realms, like heroquests. The magic expended to enable their transfer may temporarily charge them up beyond their normal limits and abilities.

Basically, it is ritual re-enactment of Godtime events without actually entering Godtime. The simple form of this is holy day worship where your cycle of linear Time coincides with the Godtime cycles, and where your activities resonate with the Godtime, bringing the magic of the gods into the world. (In RuneQuest terms, you gain or regenerate rune points.) The mythic re-enactment often is limited to sanctified proxies like masks whose bearers just "dance" the Godtime activities of the deities represented by the mask. Other deities may be represented entirely by statuary only that may be moved on a dais or similar, e.g. in processions. Then there are considerably more lengthy such ritual activities. One example are pilgrimages where the people use the magic of both temporal alignment and location alignment with the Godtime events. This may still be limited to masks, or just bearing symbolic regalia of the deities and presenting them at the locations. These activities go significantly beyond the normal worship services. They are undertaken to gain magical aid beyond the normal annual blessings, too. Rewards may include the cure of a lingering ailment (think Lourdes), battle luck (all the way to the Carmanian Seven Year Build-up sacrifice of an entire army led by the brother of the Shah in order to overcome Dara Happa), or some form of relief from a disaster (either already happened, or prophecied to come). When it comes to magical crafting, this is in itself a process that re-creates the deeds of the Maker deity (or deities) in Godtime, and with suitable preparation and accompanying ritual deeds, the crafting process becomes walking in the steps of the original maker of that kind of implement, and the result may be a copy or perhaps rather an instance of that mythical implement made in Godtime. Of course, going to the Other Side and performing these activities there will make them a lot more real, but that will also increase the risks of something unexpected to happen, with unintended consequences for the questers and their communities. The material investment (sacrifices, time away from productive work while doing the ritual activities) may be similar to those expended when entering Godtime's Other Side. And (at least in my way of playing in Glorantha) part of the time the activity occurs both in the mundane world and in Godtime.

Yes, that character did the impossible, doing it over and over again, until the world reacted. Now, if you don't have Greg as a GM and haven't ever heard about Gold Wheel Dancers (I wonder whether Greg had, at the time), what would you pull out of your hat? And does it have to be a critical success that triggers awesomeness? In the end, Urrrgh did a This World heroquest, again and again. And what he received wasn't an immediate magical advantage (although it ultimately gave him a second go at existence, with a significant improvement in a number of stats... including INT and CHA). The anecdote is great because it shows that players can affect the mythical reality by (re-) discovering something in Godtime. These days we have volumes of notes on the myths of Godtime which a GM might study (or ideally have studied) to pull out this or some other such rabbit out of his hat. But back to facing those capital H heroes or even superheroes directly. In the end, I would probably set this up as a heroquest, where preparation and symbolic activity create a build-up that scale what amounts to a world-shattering conflict down to a duel between individuals, with their skills and magics adjusted by what went on before. Greg's story Morden Defends the Camp shows how someone with the right preparation can perform on that level, and how he can prevent his opposition from maintaining that level. I trust myself to have a sufficiently good idea what myths or just mythic episodes the participants might have encountered that may be a good or at least adequate choice for interaction with the story. I'd also allow the questers to call for extra encounters, allowing them to attempt to seek out or summon those encounters. RuneQuest has skills like Cult Lore to simulate character knowledge independently of player knowledge, but I would delegate such die-rolling mainly to the preparations for the actual quest, or allow it when the prepared solution has gone haywire for whichever reason (e.g. an opponent coming up with a different version of the myth and the player characters allowing him to drag them into his mythical terrain rather than to keep him on their path). I wouldn't hesitate to improvise such a game, but it takes quite a bit of familiarity with the myths, or otherwise great creativity on the spot, to come out with a satisfactory set of mythic alternatives. Writing up such a sandbox of mythic scraps is a lot harder, but might still be feasible, possibly in the style of encounters similar to those in Griffin Mountain or Borderlands, but with additional identifications for the encounters. If you had the chance to play the freeform "White Bear and Red Moon", you might have had prepared alternative scraps for the rituals, or you might have been able to intrude into a station of the rites where you had little or no business, and challenge the questers. I have participated in this twice, once with very improvised alterations to the proceedings which left quite a few participants with meaningless lines and no support for ideas how to get out of that, and moreover lengthening that scripted part of the game significantly more than you might want to tolerate for such a multi-player event. The other run offered prepared deviations rather than that freeform approach, and while that was more railroading, it did speed up those ritual parts. Basically, I am grasping for a way to create a sufficient basis of either prepared fragments of myth (e.g. cards, with runes, passions, or mundane skill tests or even melee) or rather generalized bits that can put the player characters' nemesis onto the playing field. I have a good idea how to improvise such a game, and some ideas how to bring in some semi-random elements. Possibly in the shape of a player aid quite similar to Chaosium's foray into collectible card games, Mythos, or using something like Topi Pitkänen's GloranTarot cards which provide an alternative to a D20 with five sets of runic cards with associated runes, deities etc., giving both the narrator and the player the choice what aspect to identify with and to bring into the evolving story. And possibly some mechanic like the corrals in Khan of Khans where the questers can take their current achievements to the bank, from which to determine the post-quest effects. As you can see from these thoughts, this touches on narrative gaming, a weird sort of magical resource economy, improvisation, and the rpg rules not exactly getting the main focus. Something like opposed rolls between "my story" and "their story" and how much either side has invested, maybe. Defining the number of tasks and their nature for each stage, leaving it to the protagonists and the antagonists to choose their identifications and resources. So, back to the original question - how would I stat the npc protagonists and antagonists? What skills matter? What weirdness do I leave for the spur of the moment to pull up, or not? When GMing Harrek as the antagonist in a player character attempt to thwart the Berserk, do I use one set of stats, or do I have a couple of character sheets with Harrek in different moods, with player character actions deciding which mood (and set of skills) I employ against them? Must I expect effective weapon skills of the players in the 150% range, or do I have to deal with stuff like Weapon Trance and effective skills in the 300% range? Will Harrek be well represented with relaxed 200% combat and perception skills, or do I pull the bear's pelt and let him turn out some 500% heavy hitting in berserk mode? Does damage go to the bear aura, or to the human body, and why? Other weird things I expect to have to deal with: If player characters bring one-use special magics into the fray (e.g. through Spell-Trading), will they be able to use their normal, highly developed rune ratings, or will they possibly have to use under-developed runes to activate the magic? Does the antagonist use similar one-use effects that the players may be unprepared for, but with much reduced attack chance? And when?

IMO Ulanin the Rider and his brothers in law aren't quite in the same league as the Thunder Brothers populating Orlanth's Storm Village with their own households. They lived as demigods, and may have apotheosized upon death. Where they have a cult, it is mostly quite localized. But yes, they may have counted as part of the Thunder Brothers collective at times. You won't find them mentioned in shrines away from their direct descendants or their area of influence. Ulanin just happens to be the Vingkotling husband-king for what became the lands of Sartar.