Joerg

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.

If the game rules have rules how to break their own rules, fine. I don't deny the possibiity. I deny that such rules exist in the present day. RuneQuest is a system which has a much greater reliance on obeying rules than other approaches. That's its strength, really - a set of rules and meta-rules that are easy to apply and to conform to, so you don't have to learn every exception. The D100 system still breaks down when abilities range far above the randomisation range of a D100., and the straight substracions create about as strange distortions of probabilities as do most attemmpts to reflect the outcome of democratic votes in representative democracy, and approval or disapproval of those shifts may depend on whether you are on the winning or on the losing side of those statistics. Trying to define capital-H Heroes in percentiles or spell points is an exercise in futility, IMO. Those shouldn't be the source of their powers or their influence. They draw these powers from a combination of the meta-rules of magic (support group size and intensity), from the willingness of their followers to be led and swept along by them and their agendas. Only after those factors, personal prowess and possibly individual stats on a standard character sheets come to bear. Yes, there will be situations in which these capital H or even S guys act as individuals, in highly magical environments where other individuals might have a chance to challenge and even overcome them. But such duels - like Harsaltar vs. the Red Emperor in Boldhome 1602 - are not decided by die rolls yielding crits, but by breaking crucial geases or similar, rather extracurricular abilities. RuneQuest is (or at least can be) a vehicle to accumulate such abilities. But extreme mastery of the blade coupled with extreme blade magics will only be matched by a similar champion alongside one of these heroes, and deadly wounds in a duel are a mere inconvenience for these types. It must have been really frustrating for Belintar's opponents in the years between 1613 and 1618 to kill, dismember and even devour him again and again only to have him return with a new army and new magics. Tackling these capital letter heroes is bound to be similar.

Gloranthan superheroes break the rules of the world, and by extension every rules system applied to the world. Capital H Heroes are within the grasp of player characters who are experienced and accomplished heroquesters and find communities willing to bet their magical resources on them rather than on some specialized deity. Carving out or taking over some stronghold in an Otherworld may be part of that. Aside from that, a capital H hero has support from a dedicated bunch of sidekicks of hardly less accomplishment.

I've taken this from a thread discussing whether RQG has priority over HQG to this forum, since it is of more relevance here and applies to all the current systems for playing in Glorantha. Yes and no. Yes, there are ways to make any kind of adventure into a heroquest. And no, there are things that are at best quite hard to translate into a heroquest. There are quests that serve to give the questers a personal exposure to the deeds of their deity in order to acquire their magic and an understanding of the deity's role in the world. The magics gained on such quests can be means for problem solving, to be applied to the specific task that is at hand. On the other hand, this works only for problems with sufficient build-up time. There are quests where you enter the Godtime and interact with the myths directly, taking the role of your deity or a role that fits your position in life without being dedicated to that deity. Entering the Godtime and acting there requires identification with some actor or at least observer in that myth. (The type of quest mentioned before works both in a This World quest in ritual re-enactment and in actual crossing over to the Godtime, which entails ritual re-enactment, too.) Mostly, you will do like your role has done, and re-inforce the existing myth. Quite often, that will aid your cause by setting something right that has gone wrong, often through enemy action. But then there will be moments where myths provide a choice, different versions to choose from, and your choice may affect the outcome, and how your actions in Godtime reflect to what happens to your community (or the community you have been recruited to serve). And there will be moments where the myths originally didn't have such choices, but you introduce one, and deviate from well-known paths. That may result in you getting new and surprising powers out of that, and that's already a great achievement. That may result in creating a new path through Godtime that others may traverse, reinforcing that branch of the story. And that may ultimately change mythic reality for all of Glorantha if you go deep enough, reinforce that new path enough, and find the way to make others accept that path. That's creative heroquesting and can be about the rise of a new way of magic, like the Red Goddess did and like Argrath is about to begin, and it can be vile God Learning, destroying the way the world works.

This has to do with Gloranthan cosmology and the concept of Godtime. While Glorantha kept evolving and devolving throughout its mythical ages (Green Age, Golden Age, Storm Age, Lesser Darkness, Greater Darkness, those "Gloranthan pasts" have never gone away (except for the bits which were rent apart retroactively in the Greater Darkness - while you may visit Genert's Garden with a plethora of his allies, you won't be able to recognize many of those which had been eliminated by the Chaos horde. But in Godtime, the Golden Age keeps going on. Umath is born in an undying moment, and in another one he is fragmented into too many pieces by Shargash/Jagrekriand, and it is possible to visit these in reverse order (especially for Lunar questers knowing the technique of Chronoportation). Heroquesters visit these events to experience their deity in them if theist (divine rune magic is the magic of being your deity), taking that feat back to the mundane world as an ability for themselves or to be shared with their (divine) cult, or the cult worshipping them as heroes. There is also the possibility to cross the paths of other heroquesters, and to exchange powers with them throuh a heroquest challenge. This does include obscure witnesses on some station of the myth your quest is following, too, if you can make a sufficiently reasonable identification. In the end, it is about getting magical effects - either directly affecting the mundane world you return to, or affecting your own ability to wield magic in the mundane world and in Godtime. Think of "Dream Journey to the Unknown Kadath", which has both the conventional, bookish way to enter the Dreamlands, and being suddenly dropped inside a dream. That's like visiting the caves near to the Maggot beneath Snake Pipe Hollow, or sailing beyond the Inner World. There are realities (or perhaps rather irrealities) in the Cthulhu mythos which are much like Godtime, and then there are simply distant worlds, and there are the Dreamlands. You can visit those, or chase villains on power trips there, and if you visit Yuggoth, you're likely to return with Mi-Go technology. Wielding the Ultraviolet or a sword taking on abilities of the Unbreakable Sword isn't that different. In Dreamlands interactions with other Dreamers, you can alter the experience and knowledge of these, and of course your own. You might destroy them in a meaningful way. The Eleven Lights (the campaign companion to the setting description in The Coming Storm) has the Red Cow heroquest, a clan secret which is regularly repeated in order to retain the distinctive magic of the red cows for the clan herd. It also has the Eleven Lights quest which takes you on a grand tour of the Outer Worlds of Glorantha, a different form of the Hero Planes. Get these books... Sartar: Kingdom of Heroes has heroquests, too, but the two mentioned above are possibly more typical. Another good introduction to heroquesting is playing King of Dragon Pass, the computer game for mobile phones and tablets by A Sharp, or its successor (and, in a way, prequel) Six Ages: Ride Like the Storm (?). Read the reports on the Lightbringers' Quest in the Glorantha Sourcebook. It tells the journey of Orlanth and his Lightbringer Companions into the Underworld, to restart the universe. And then read the story how Harmast Barefoot brought back Arkat (and later Talor) by following this quest, with changes to the quest due to incomplete information and different choices in the Godtime. In a way, yes, a heroquest is a very dangerous adventure where you go to weird places. What you do in those magical/mythical places will affect the magical reality of the mundane world you started from - much like time travel does in softer SF or the Cthulhu Mythos. Having the hero chalenge is a bit a mechanical way of asserting that (and how) the journey into the realm of the myths has changed the protagonists. But note that this quest isn't among those I suggested above. IMO this quest is rather specific and not that typical. There are a few heroquests in the Sartar Rising scenario series for Hero Wars/first edition HeroQuest. And 13th Age Glorantha has a bunch of other fun concepts on heroquesting, like the concept of a living dungeon, but that's a third rule system you would have to break out. In a purely scenario-design aspect, that is correct. Basically, if your adventure is about very mundane activities, there is a good likelihood that it does not turn out to be a heroquest. On the other hand, much of the mundane reality of Glorantha has its definition in Godtime, and it is possible that a perfectly ordinary cattle raid (or counter raid) suddenly turns into a Godtime myth that has a very similar story. Or possibly a bunch of very similar stories, leaving you the choice to choose one. And no, only very few of these stories have official write-ups. The ones we have a good format for their descriptions are from the King of Dragon Pass computer game. A few of these are reprinted in Sartar: Kingdom of Heroes, IIRC. The complete collection should be in the Stafford library Vol.11: Book of Heortling Mythology. The myths of Glorantha are more than background fluff. You can ritually enter them, and play them out as you know them, and learn how to be like your god, and to use the magics of your god. You can more physically enter them hoping to solve a problem you have, identify certain stations of the myth and protagonists therein with your foes, summon them into this myth and deal with them having the advantage of the mythical structure of the world behind you. However, you're hardly the only one to do so, and you may be drawn into this as one of the bystanders or opponents, making stations that sound like easy pushovers suddenly deeply challenging, and what you might have perceived as being in your advantage might turn out to be working against you - possibly on a different issue - as your opponents frame the mythical context. It is possible to invoke a mythic parallel for a situation at any time in an adventure. Your player characters or the patron of the adventure may do so, and so may the opponents. This can elevate an ordinary conflict into a major magical change in the world. The challenged opponents may turn down the transfer into the realms of myth, or they may steer you into a very different version of this myth, or a different myth altogether. Reading the Glorantha sourcebook should give you a good basic idea of how the various Gloranthan deities are interconnected, and how they turn up in each others' myths. Over time, you will discover other possible connections, and testing these out - whether as a thought experiment or as an actual scenario - is pretty much like a heroquest for you as a player or GM (in addition to being one for your character or party). Entering the Cthulhu Mythos, leaving ordinary sanity behind, is quite similar, but there the big goal is to return to a world unchanged by great magics. In Glorantha, everybody has left ordinary sanity behind and is quite willing, sometimes even eager, to accept such changes to their world, without ever jumping over the fence that Call of Cthulhu ultimately provides for the characters who have delved too deeply into the Cthulhu mythos, forcibly retiring them to a sanatorium or an evil cult. I think this exchange does make a good thread for the Glorantha forum, which is why I will start a thread there.

It should be noted that the vast "homogeneous" area which emerged from the Ban as Loskalm had a significant amount of minorities inside its borders, like those musk ox people trapped in Loskalm, and plenty barbarians. That relief (Guide p. 202) showing Siglat and a male and female companion of his mostly in the nude fighting slightly more dressed opponents obviously played out during the Ban (with significant amounts of armor and padding worn by the Loskalmi).

Generally true. CO2, CH4 and H2S are naturally formed by decay, usually through the agency of anaerobic metabolism. True on all accounts, but this gas is only produced in combustion processes with insufficient aeration. In addition to being toxic by bonding permanently to hemoglobine, the gas is also flammable. It burns with a blue flame, as you can observe at the lower edge of a candle flame. There are no bacteria that emit carbon monoxide to the atmosphere - this stuff is still reactive and contains potential energy, and nature doesn't usually waste energy when a bunch of rivaling organisms breaks up organic matter. There is still a chance to encounter this gas in tunnels, if people have lit a significant fire down there (e.g. to exert thermal stress on the rock to make it break away easily when digging a tunnel). Possibly also in the aftermath of the swamp gas explosion in the tunnels. You'd have problems breathing such atmosphere anyway, because of the soot and the low oxygen content. Sewage tunnels are quite likely to transport water similar in quality to the rivers downstream of industry in the sixties or seventies. They are not the equivalent of modern waste water leads that are laid independently of rain water, transporting organic freights in the range between 200 and 6000 mg chemical oxygen demand per liter. (In comparison, milk or liquid manure or the content of biogas plants has easily beyond 10000 mg/l COD.) In my professional opinion, only the late Iron Age/Imperial Roman sewers fed by those public loos or waste water downstream of tanneries will have come anywhere into the neighborhood of modern day communal waste water. If only for the simple reason that you need lots of at least moderately fresh water in order to keep such cloacas workable, as the freight of human waste requires quite a bit of mechanical pummeling to distribute into the liquid. Septic tanks show you quite drastically what happens to the stuff when there isn't that much movement in the water. On the other hand, when you have less agitated sections of underground waterways, then the sludge can settle down and continue its biological processes. Unless disturbed, a lot of gas may build up in that sludge that isn't usually given off to the atmosphere. But have a merry chase wading through that kind of sludge, and nice, tennis-ball sized bubbles of miasma will pop up and deliver all those gases even into a previously well ventilated tunnel. In this context, here's a couple of fun facts about hydrogen sulphide. Yes, in small amounts, that stuff reeks of foul eggs (although to the modern human, foul eggs reek of hydrogen sulphide). The higher the concentration in the air, the less intense this smell gets. Medium high concentrations remind slightly of the smell pork gives off in a hot pan. At some point, your nose won't register H2S any more. That's roughly the concentration that is acutely toxic (btw a concentration one or two orders of magnitude lower than the lethal concentration of cyanic acid). In Glorantha, the odors of decay (including ammonia, amines and hydrogen sulphide) are associated with darkness entities and the element of darkness. As a consequence, I would expect troll physiology to be a lot more tolerant to these gases, and the same goes for trollkin. It should be possible for trollkin to retreat into tunnels that would poison or suffocate human pursuers. There is a sweet spot between toxic and breathable that likes to go boom in the neighborhood of open fire (such as oil lamps, candles or torches). Just a little ventilation might be less of a friend than you might think. For more info on this topic, I suggest a read of "Thud!" by Terry Pratchett rather than some dry safety instructions. Mostali ventilation shafts may have worse surprises, basically imagine the full selection of D&D breath weapons as possible effects of their alchimical/industrial exhausts. Or combinations thereof.

Ah yes, about your gases - carbon monoxide only crops up in connection to combustion and is not a natural subterranean hazard (unless you have regular fires in badly aerated caves). Unleashed water is another hazard, whether underground (you might find a pocket of air to sit out the drowning hazard for a while, but you need to be lucky for that, and the air won't last forever) or above ground. And the other three elements can come in as terrifying and lethal fronts.

Yes and no. Yes, there are ways to make any kind of adventure into a heroquest. And no, there are things that are at best quite hard to translate into a heroquest. There are quests that serve to give the questers a personal exposure to the deeds of their deity in order to acquire their magic and an understanding of the deity's role in the world. The magics gained on such quests can be means for problem solving, to be applied to the specific task that is at hand. On the other hand, this works only for problems with sufficient build-up time. There are quests where you enter the Godtime and interact with the myths directly, taking the role of your deity or a role that fits your position in life without being dedicated to that deity. Entering the Godtime and acting there requires identification with some actor or at least observer in that myth. (The type of quest mentioned before works both in a This World quest in ritual re-enactment and in actual crossing over to the Godtime, which entails ritual re-enactment, too.) Mostly, you will do like your role has done, and re-inforce the existing myth. Quite often, that will aid your cause by setting something right that has gone wrong, often through enemy action. But then there will be moments where myths provide a choice, different versions to choose from, and your choice may affect the outcome, and how your actions in Godtime reflect to what happens to your community (or the community you have been recruited to serve). And there will be moments where the myths originally didn't have such choices, but you introduce one, and deviate from well-known paths. That may result in you getting new and surprising powers out of that, and that's already a great achievement. That may result in creating a new path through Godtime that others may traverse, reinforcing that branch of the story. And that may ultimately change mythic reality for all of Glorantha if you go deep enough, reinforce that new path enough, and find the way to make others accept that path. That's creative heroquesting and can be about the rise of a new way of magic, like the Red Goddess did and like Argrath is about to begin, and it can be vile God Learning, destroying the way the world works.