Joerg

Though not your own, as a parry fumble only allows the opponents to get a hit.

Interesting question. This has never come up in play yet (for magic point matrix enchantments in my RQ3 games, which work just the same). Another question would be if two people touching the same crystal could load it or draw on it simultaneously. I don't think that a charge transfer from one such object to another is possible, though. MP need to be used fueling some magic. I'd also be hesitant to allow stored MP to be the only MP sacrifice on holy days. I'm fine with such a source being used for additional MP sent to the deity, though (as someone with very low POW in desperate need of a success in Worship (deity) might want to do). (Which brings me to another weird dilemma - can a person whose POW was reduced to 1 participate in a worship ceremony? Will their blacking out for the day be acceptable to the deity?) I would say yes, too - after all, that's what happens if a bound spirit is tasked to refill it for a character's use.

Both places have entries in Dragon Pass - Land of Thunder in the category Resettlement Sagas, naming the founders or co-founders of these settlements and their memorable activities.

I've seen that claim all over, but then where are the wizards unable to wield a sword? Gandalf is a master of his sword. The cleric of the anonymous deity owes a lot to Bishop Odo of the Bayeux tapestry fame. D&D is a mash-up of numerous tropes. The entire thief guild trope has been lifted from Lhankmar, where it was introduced as a paradoxical institution. The main Middle Earth contribution to D&D are the halflings, dwarves and the seed for various goblin types, including the orc and the half-orc. The elves crept in via Middle Earth pastiches rather than directly, and inherit from other sources like Poul Anderson's Sword and the Stone, too. I usually argue that the Brithini are a rather good parallel for Tolkien's high elves, in a process of parallel evolution - immortal island in the west, and all that stuff. Which leaves the aldryami as a diminutive version of ents. Tunnels and Trolls uses the same races as the Fellowship of the Ring, too. Were halflings a playable race in OD&D, or did T&T start the halfling madness? IMO the most playable dwarves and elves are the ones from Midkemia, another early rpg setting which became influential through Raymond Feist's novels starting with Magician. It notably made do without orcs and hobbits. The Warhammer skirmish rules with their takes on the Tolkien monsters probably were as influential. The later whimsical Europe WHFRP setting took that lead minis inspired setting to a new direction. When it comes to modern influences, I guess Warcraft is at least as great a carrier of memes as is D&D, and to me it looks more like it inherited from fantasy skirmish games like Warhammer than straight from the D&D memes. The player base of such computer games is easily as big as that of D&D. Baldur's Gate has of course infected the computer "role playing" game world with D&Disms. Elder Scrolls with its shared RQ design DNA might be a better base to jump off than D&D.

About time. I hope that the lost article about the shrewbush, their main food plant, will be found as well.

Kolat has rather weak ties to the Gods World, other than to Umath himself. Oakfed on the other hand is one of the lowfires who exist in both the spirit world and the gods world equally. The Great Spirit Oakfed that is worshipped in Prax is different from the untamed divine brother of Gustbra in the details, but the entity behind those variations of that power is one and the same.

Jeff has thankfully provided a definition of the various Other Side realms: The image is in the Guide, and was provided by Charles Corrigan. I still think that the "Otherworld" viewable from all three perspectives is the "Middle World" portion of the Hero Planes, the part "Made of Everything". There will be places where a certain influence is significantly stronger or significantly weaker than the others, and there will be Otherworlds exclusive to one of the modes. These places are outside of any notion of Time or at least temporal change, they are simply eternal. Your view on them might be colored by a perception of Godtime cycles, though, like the visits to the Storm Village that can be experienced in the course of the flight to the next Great Mountain in Orlanthi worship rites when leaving the banquet to relive a major feat of the deity. There is no place for a divine view of the spell "space" of the sorcerers. Simply "being" in that space doesn't convey any insight on the magic of those spells, you have to know them, it is a place of the mind. Likewise I expect the presence of the Great Spirit, both before and as a consequence of his dismemberment and transformation, to be something that is quite unavailable for perception from the other perspectives. The orthodox mystic paths on the other hand will confront the mystic with all of these unique existences, and more, as an opportunity to either externalize or encompass them in their alienness. Visiting them is an advanced variation of the initial forms of austerity in meditation. So yes, everything you see in the God Learner maps of the Godtime (aka the heroplanes in the sense of "The World is Made of Everything") can be perceived meaningfully through all three methods/modes, but trying to make sense of the Storm Village beyond time through runic energy bands alone will fail you, as will observation of Creator/Earthmaker through the same application of runes. The overpowering presence of Storm and Spirit respectively will blind the alien practitioner from what is going on, and his mundane senses will be led astray by mortal preconceptions. Observing either the Great Spirit or Orlanth in the Godtime will be possible as runic interactions or movement of spirits, but his home turf will be intransparent to someone limited to an alien perception. The mystic doesn't require perception for his confrontation with these realities beyond normal realities. He will meditate through them, either absorbing them into his greater self (Venfornic mysticism), or purifying his greater self of the shackles to these realities (orthodox Mashunasan mysticism and related practices). Either way is a valid path to the Absolute and hard to discern at the end of the path.

Looking at the Afidisa story, a limited recurrance of innocence is possible, up to reviving the ruined Camp of Innocence on the shores of the Sea of Blue Flame (Revealed Mythologies p.47f). The story (told from a Doraddi perspective) claims that the Artmali of that period were not awake, like themselves were. This does indicate that a mental regression of a portion of the populace might be able to impose a state of innocence that might even be reflected by a land susceptible to this. Even ravaged Genert's Garden, all of whose surviving inhabitants have a deep yearning to the better times they had deemed lost forever. Even if that means a reversal of the effects of Waha's covenant. I am less inclined to believe that anything like this might work for the Orlanthi, but I am willing to be convinced otherwise.

This still will mean that pairings of roughly equal status couples will live patrilocal, unless they find a shared time solution like Sartar and the first FHQ found in their contest of 1493 and 1494, resulting in Yorestina staying with her Grazer kin and Saronil remaining in Boldhome (before he was fostered to the Shaker's Temple in Tarsh). Powerful females have an easy way to keep the offspring of powerful partners to themselves - undergo a non-permanent form of marriage that will terminate the marriage before the first visible signs of pregnancy. There is still a chance that the father will acknowledge the offspring, but the opportunity to raise these kids will go to the maternal community (clan/family or temple). Note that child-raising is a typical grandmother job, even more so for magically and politically active powerful women. Once the children are weaned, they join the group of sub-adolescent family children supervised by the alpha female of the household, usually delegated to another family female or two with special affinity to this task. The concept of a core family might be more common in the smaller cottar households if they are isolated. At larger steads with carls and cottars cohabitating, the cottar offspring is as likely to join the more numerous carl children and share in their upbringing, with a chance to become boon companions of the higher status playmates once they reach adulthood. The differences between Orlanthi domestic life and concepts of property and those of 20th and nowadays also 21st century players can be worth exploring in play, although I probably wouldn't hit absolute newcomers from much less immersive game systems and settings frontally with this, and start with a mercenary/boon companions of high ranking individuals party rather than with ordinary Orlanthi conditions. There is story and character development potential in thinking these relationships through, though. Most easily in HQG where social skills can be as deadly as martial ones, probably a lot less so in 13G or any incarnation of RQ, unless you express these through sidekicks and other followers. Most of the published exploration of Glorantha and especially Sartar and Prax has been from a male perspective, with Yanioth the only exception in the current line-up of sample characters, and Norayeep possibly approaching such a role, though her initial position as a slave thoroughly downplayed that role in Biturian's travelogue. The Paulis Longvale story doesn't have any major female protagonists. In the classic and renaissance RQ scenarios, the empowered females all had taken male roles and cults (yes, including Yelorna, which is a cult about role reversal), and likewise in the Sartar campaign around the Temple of the Wooden Sword. Benava Chan is the only typical Ernaldan prior to Ernalsulva and Yanioth and the Red Cow line-up of the women's circle. All the ruling tribal queens in Sartar since Kallyr's rebellion have been warrior queens, not a single priestess matron queen among them (with the possible Kyger Litor exception for the Torkani). I know that Jeff's house campaign has had empowered Ernaldans, and it looks like the Ernaldan class in 13G works in a similar way, but both of these are rather recent additions to Gloranthan canon. John Hughes' approach in Thunder Rebels did offer some new magical roles for Ernaldans, but on the whole these were rather domestic and puritanic, something correctly challenged by Jeff's bunch of female players. But then, bringing pregnancy or breast feeding into adventure situations might be as alienating to the typical female role-players we'd like to rope in to our niche of the hobby as it may be for the average adolescent (or late fifties still adolescent) male players, even though a toddler on the arm can be more disarming than a troop of spearmen for an Ernaldan. I found addressing those family issues to strike a chord with committed female partners of established male roleplayers and some experience with child care, however. In my Hero Wars Balmyr game, my former partner (a divorced mother of two children, who made up the rest of the party's players) felt right at home with a career Ernaldan healer whose children from temporary marriages were raised by their paternal grandmothers, or by her own mother and aunts. The emotional issues with that provided some deep character motivation. The issue of temporary or terminated patrilocal marriages brings a whole lot of personal connections and even awareness of clan secrets with more than one clan other than the native clan, and also the issue of offspring outside of the character's normal daily life. Depending on the circumstances of termination of the marriage, and on the relationship to her mothers-in-law, such females may make excellent diplomats and essential companions or at least advisors of the clan trader when visiting those clans, with a chance for a mother to meet her foreign children once in a while. Similar with females accompanying the trader/diplomat to their clan of birth. A bit of the same goes for males who had joined other clans as the result of temporary or terminated matrilocal marriages, of course, but that kind of distance makes developing paternal feelings for those distant offspring a bit harder. Even though Orlanthi males are more sentimental and emotional than Ernaldan females, but the maternal bond epitomized by Ernalda is a very strong magic and sentiment that will interfere with the more rational outlook of Ernaldan females. I wouldn't dare to run a game of Robin Laws' drama system around these issues, though. A game of magical and political intrigue mixed with as many action sequences as with such passions is as far as my storytelling will go. And I will have to test the RQG passion system for its ability to reflect such issues. Interaction between patrilocally raised Sartarite females and the dominantly matrilocal culture of Esrolia (and especially Nochet) is something I am still mulling over for the Nochet part of my funerary pilgrimage scenario.

I tend to disagree about the "very text-lite" bit, and would prefer to have such illustrations with at least fragmentary prose detailing heroic moments or mythical events, in the style of Biturian, Paulis or Vasana at least, or in King of Dragon Pass/Six Ages style. Getting a KoDP/6A art-book (or several) would be a good project, too. Rather than through the in-game multiple choice, many of those stories could be narrated in one of the possible resolutions (although I have no idea whether I would choose the Triceratops Miltary Charge over the Triceratops Plow Team illustration if these were to be in one definitive story, and probably the same for many other such stories). Getting that Tusk Rider returnee saga in full, or the side sagas like the Grazer exiles, could be a good way to make Glorantha alive to a non-gaming public.

That is bound to get rather free-form, as normal rules of any game break down at this level except for the very abstract HQ conflict resolution or similar purely narratice approaches. The likes of Harrek or Jar-eel are capable of taking on the Crimson Bat when it is well-fed or hunger-crazed. Conflict between the likes of them shouldn't be taken to detailed dice rolling IMO. Bringing back The Green Age should be cosmologically impossible, as it would be reverting all of history and the Gods War. Bringing back an aspect of the Green or at least Golden Age like the forests of Prax or even reconstituting Tada or Genert should be possible, but even a re-constituted Genert would be able to have all his Golden Age comrades like Yamsur or Seolinthur around, let alone those no longer remembered. Entropy is a real thing in Glorantha, and can always only be partially inverted, and possibly with as great or greater cost somewhere else. The early Artmali (Afidisia) did manage to return Innocence to the Gods War, but in a very limited way. A "realistic" way to change their part of the world this way (amidst the general ruin all around them) would be to do something similar to what Sartar or Belintar did. Go about to aid (and gain subsequent support of) communities in dire straits, build up that support until you either apotheosize or become a godking demigod. In the interest of on-going playability, the godking demigod goal might be more to your player's taste than achieving his goal through leaving the physical existence in the middle world.

The original LBQ managed to resurrect all the dead gods assembled at ash-liege's court. Harmast was the first to return a specific captive of the Underworld this way, and he did it twice, and a handful of others managed to do so once. There is of course the magic Chalana Arroy gleaned from her LBQ experience to return the soul of an individual to its body, but I don't know of other Godtime feats penetrating to the Court of the Dead and beyond to return an individual. We have a few other quests where a single individual is rescued from a state of death, like Heort liberating Ivarne Frozen Woman from the ice, and there is the sorcerous reanimation of recently died Brithini that all Brithini expect to receive in case of fatal accidents. There are countless pre-Sword Story ways of returning a slaughtered beast or even a slain individual to life, provided all of the necessary parts were available (in case of slaughtered beasts, obviously not including the meat consumed by those who feasted on it), but those ceased to work over the course of the Gods War. The Lives of Sedenya tell us about a later quest of Sedenya (the one illustrated by the seven disks) which involved Yanafal Tarnils going down to the deepest hell on the trail of his goddess, which may have been similar to the Seven Mothers' quest, or which may have been modeled on another "rescue from Hell" quest we don't know about, or possibly the Carmanian rendition of Harmast's second quest (after all, Syranthir's followers who became the Carmanians were heirs of Talor). That quest goes on somewhat differently, but then Teelo Estara's communion with Blaskarth was a new concept as far as I can make out. The closest Godtime parallel would have been Uleria's taming of the Boggles, but that was a destructive power of much lower threshold. Arachne Solara's interaction with webbed Kajabor doesn't quite fit that myth, but it might make part of the Seven Mothers' quest without following the pathways laid down by Harmast, and in Teelo Estara's quest, no birth resulted and no demon was consumed with all orifices (if anything was consumed, it was Yanafal's life and Teelo's body, both to be returned afterwards - Teelo's even twice, once as Estara, once as Norri).

There is also the point of Ginna Jar being the part of Ernalda not sleeping, during the Lightbringers' Quest, joining her husband's efforts to remake the world. In a Lightbringer's Ring, the Ginna Jar position might very well be traditionally awarded to Ernalda in recognition of her active role in the LBQ. The odd man out still goes to Flesh Man, and the contrarian voice goes to the seat of Eurmal.

At a guess, the animist perception of the runes is as even Greater Spirits beyond the Great Spirits that are the equivalent to the (greater) gods. There is a layer of the Spirit World adjacent to the Mundane World and to the Outer Worlds, with a few exceptions like the Dead Place in Prax. IMO there are still portions of the Otherworld that are unique to one of the magic systems, but the old (HQ1 era) adage "The World is made of everything" does no longer end where the Otherworlds begin, but overlaps into Godtime, but then, according to Greg's Separate Otherworlds model, the hero planes aka Godtime have always been part of that "Made of Everything" bit, too. Possibly it was more a misunderstanding of where the World of Everything ends and where the Otherworlds begin. Greg did say that the diffenences between the Otherworlds weren't set for eternity, and indeed he had plans to make the "globalization" of the Otherworlds part of the themes of the Hero Wars. As far as I am concerned, this may still be appropriate. I am not quite sure that something like the Storm Village as portrayed in Thunder Rebels (and to some extent also in Heortling Mythology) was part of Godtime, but might even outside of that Cyclical Time. Possibly always has been out of the reach even of the most advanced Arkati and God Learners.

Necessary nitpick: The Telmori were cursed by Talor the Laughing Warrior in or around 450 ST, when there was no such thing as a red moon. It is a coincidence that the full moon face of the Red Moon coincides with Wildday in Dragon Pass. In Fronela, the day of the week would be two or three days remote. (Don't ask me in which direction, though - it is hard enough to remember to put the clock an hour forward tonight...) The Zorak Zoran cult has no qualms about using cave trolls, so its tolerance to similar Chaos as in lycanthropes should be about as high. ZZ hates pretty much everything that opposes him, and tolerates what aids him. Calling such powers chaotic and Humakti geases not is possibly a disservice. Both are some expression of mysticism, contact with forces from outside of this world.

Having the wyter on the ring basically gives the person who can communicate with the wyter a vote on the ring. If that coincides with the chief, he will hold two votes. Which, having the last word on any decision anyway, doesn't make much sense.

Shadowcats may have been understood as just another breed of house-cats at that time. Anaxial's Roster has a Kralori myth about house cats, so their existence alongside alynxes or big cats (like leopards, panthers, pumas, lions or tigers) hasn't exactly been challenged. We still don't know how their relation would be towards alynxes. The Yinkin myth almost suggests that Yinkin is at odds with all other carnivore descendants of Fralar. Certainly with the bobcats of Fronela, so why should alynxes be tolerant of house cats or ferrets?

I was coming from my experience with fletchery which uses sticks with a point put into a metal conus. Now, if I wanted to fireharden that, I would just push it into embers for a short while before quenching it, possibly repeatedly, in effect leaving a central cone of non-charred wood with a crust of charred wood. I would probably subject it to non-combustion levels of heat beforehand to avoid explosive release of volatiles in this process. Your comment assumes that the entire tip would have been charred through and through - and I agree that would be so brittle that it would break off after a few strikes at most. The fire-hardened tip of an all-wooden spear (or javelin) is a bit like a made-to-break-off spear tip, a concept re-invented with the Roman pilum. And my solution was to give it a contact area which has taken all the hardening it can while dissipating the worst of the heat, above a core retaining the flexibility of the wood that makes it suitable spear shaft material in the first place. Yes, such a socket would deteriorate over time. Now, let's consider a two-partite spear head, say with a hard bronze head and a weaker but more heat resistant copper socket that isn't the direct target of the Heat Metal and already acts as a radiator. Enough to charcoal wood - which is why the "wood" inserted would be pre-charred. Deprived of oxygen simply by design - there is way more fuel than oxigen in the spear tip. Then the concept of heating the bladed point, but not the socket, leaving the socket and thereby the contact area with the shaft at a lower temperature already. Then choose a Heat Metal duration roughly compatible with the time you expect the spear shaft to last (you wouldn't want to transfer the hot spear point to another shaft). Lastly, in a world where there are creatures that withstand fire, their body parts will be great for an isolating layer inside the socket. I have no data on breakage of spear shafts, but they wouldn't have lasted indeterminately anyway. At some point, any spear will need repair or maintenance, or replacement.

There is no ban on procreation between bloodlines inside a clan, but there is no meaningful marriage system. The father simply doesn't get much say in the upbringing of the offspring as the unmarried daughter of a household produces new members of that household - unless she was impregnated on behalf of a cult which has a separate social standing inside the clan, which means that the offspring is raised by the cult rather than the maternal household. The Clearwine Earth Temple certainly is such an institution, but then it has almost a standing like a separate clan. I think that there will be certain blood lines that will predominantly be wed to a specific clan, some exporting (sending virtually all of their daughters into the same clan), some importing (taking nearly all their wives from a certain clan), but that won't be the rule. Still, the wise match-maker will consider carefully whether to put wives from feuding clans into the same household. They might, in certain cases (possibly when said household is on their nemesis list).

The Nysalor ritual was possible because of the Pseudocosmic Egg, which was a one of a kind artefact. Possibly the source for the Young Elementals now associated with her Redness. But no, this wasn't about the birth of a new deity, but about the resurrection of a composite deity that had never been quite that (but, to be honest, few deities like we met them in Cults of Prax had been like that in Godtime).

This document should be turned into a map application rather than just a print document, one where you can add and substract layers (like e.g. the political division maps in the Guide). And detail maps of locations where existing. You would still want a print option for a selected area.

We know that there was enough of Saraskos' body left to be exposed to the carrion birds, which doesn't sound like the head-taking was that successful. There's also the survival of Goram Whitefang, whose personal kinship to Sartar may have been unknown or regarded as irrelevant. Using Chaos to do so probably is possible for Lunar assassins. But this entire business sounds almost like the soul-stealing morganti blades of Steven Brust's Dragaera novels.

There has been a storm raptor since the Three Feathered Rivals, and extending that to one of the cloud layers was just an extension of Thunder Bird. Yes, Vrok Hawks are classically solar birds, manifestations of Vrimak. Speaking of hawks and rats - I wonder what pest-control animals are used in Dara Happa. Snakes might be possible, birds of prey are another possibility (although getting those house-trained is a lot harder than with cats.

Certainly a possibility, but do you really think a society which has alynxes prowling everywhere is a good place for a rat familiar?

Quivin as a son of Veskarthan should be a volcano god, which cries out either basalt or obsidian to me as the dominant rock of the Quivins. Definitely not chalk or sandstone. The lesser mountains around him may have other origins and less magmatic rock, but I wouldn't expect chalk or sandstone for them, either.