Joerg

Good point. Now what about (normal sized) termite, bee or ant hives, locust swarms etc. where the individual units fall below the normal POW range? Where do individual stats begin, anyway? Can I use Second Sight to hunt for Frog Woman's bounty in the absence of light? Locusts? (Not that 2 minutes of Second Sight for 3 MP is a very economical way to hunt...)

Plenty of spirits are bound to the mundane world but don't usually show themselves, at least in my view of the world. Second Sight lets the shaman or the caster of that spell perceive these spirits. My main minor problem with Second Sight is how the user perceives both the spirit of the land or similarly vast entities (in the sense of the bits of the surface world they are bound to) alongside the spirits of smaller entities. In POW terms, the land will easily outshine every local spirit, but it is spread so far that its "density" isn't something to read by in terms of aura unless you approach a holy place of it. You don't get safe footing in the dark using Second Sight just because you perceive the land spirit, do you? Then there are spirits with in game terms negligible POW that may contribute to a collective spirit entity. Any single grass plant won't have a single point of POW, but an ancestral grassland surely has. So what about a meadow or a glade? Same things with plants as they increase in size and age. Collective spirit entities and individual spirits, when and how do you perceive them? When looking at a herd of Praxian tribal beasts, do you first and foremost see the Protectress, or do you see a mass of individual beasts?

The spell description of Second Sight says that it works on creatures with POW. This does include elementals (p.247) and other entities that can be summoned, presumably including spirits. p.370 also talks about possessing creatures like disease spirits and passion spirits. By my reading, spirits are legitimate targets of Second Sight. A bit more nit-picking: p356: the fetch of a shaman can be seen with Second Sight. It is technically a spirit, right? p.358: and these other entities include spirit entities that have POW, like e.g. a fetch. p.366: and it was previously said that a shaman's innate Second Sight is the spell effect. Second Sight can identify an illusion, just like Pierce Veil and Soul Sight (though I wonder about the rationale for this if the illusion is of something else than an entity that should have POW).

Far from every clan has a shaman. A clan spirit talker wouldn't be much more appropriate than whoever leads the ancestor rites (no idea whether in the Daka Fal manner contacting individual deceased ones' spirits or in a much less personal, ancestors as an almost anonymous group entering ceremonies as a divine manifestation, as per HQ publications and King of Dragon Pass). The clan wyter usually communicates only with the clan leader, the Ernaldori should be quite unusual with their arrangement.

In the end, the ring positions are filled with individuals. There is a possibility that the Ginna Jar position might be a different delegate every session of the full council, though. Possibly decided by a vote among the family heads, possibly by lot, possibly chosen by the clan wyter. Possibly a medium speaking directly for the clan wyter. In the end, the chief is representing the entire community most of the time. The Ginna Jar position should only be filled when all other positions are present, possibly through a summoning rite re-enacting that stage of the Westfaring, producing the spokesperson that takes that position. That summoning might be as simple as the pre-decided spokesperson picking up the piece of clan regalia representing the Ginna Jar position, but it could happen that that piece of regalia chooses its bearer in the course of that rite.

I sincerely hope that we will find a better name. The Stygians aren't worshippers of Styg or Styx, either, nor are earth worshippers members of the cult of Chthon. Aether at least comes with "Primolt" added, from which (presumably) the term "Promalti" is derived.

As far as I am concerned, if a rock has a spirit that can be seen using Second Sight, it is alive for Gloranthan purposes. Ghosts are (and should be) visible to Second Sight. Whether that makes them alive might be a different question, but Humakti are cool with them, so I guess they are for a certain value of alive.

I am not quite sure whether these lycanthrope rules are in RQ2 because they are Gloranthan, or because they were a staple of rpgs. The RQ2 text surely does make an attempt to fit the trope into the setting. Speaking of genes is not what I expect in a Gloranthan context, really. If all lycanthrope shape changers are tainted by Chaos, then that's what Rastagar's heirs to the Kodigvari tribal kingship wielded when Heort steered his family group through the Greater Darkness, and Gbaji's (really Nysalor's) gift to the Telmori was to make his followers among the Telmori adopt these traits like the heirs of Rastagar had. Talor's curse removed Nysalor's shelter from involuntary transformation and imposed their Wildday madness. RQG bestiary doesn't have a general entry for lycanthropes any more (although there is a suggestion that certain animal spirits might be used to curse enemies (or bless zealot followers) into lycanthropy, presumably of variable beast association, hearkening back to the RQ2 types). Given that the term literally translates as wolf-man, these other types are not exactly ruled in yet, but the wider definition of man-beast shapechangers who undergo a mandatory change on certain nights (and/or days) probably still applies. After all, from Jeff's recollections I take it that tusk brothers are an integral part of his personal Glorantha experience.

Sure, any clan fielding two tricksters on the clan ring will be in serious trouble. And the Eurmal seat is optional in the Lightbringers' Ring, IIRC. I am not quite convinced that Ginna Jar is the spokes-entity for the ancestors, though. It is the entity that represents the community as is, with its current goals, likes, and dislikes, rather than what it was back when the clan was founded. Not just the voice, but the spirit of the sum of the population. It takes a rather strong character to take such a role. Right now I picture someone like Speaker Bercow in this kind of office, and yes, a person driven by precedent and tradition, but applying it to the current situation.

And isn't likely to start any feuds either A stickpicker or shepherd boy can start a feud all on his own, and so can a spiteful bride of mediocre standing. While it is always possible to exile such trouble-makers, elevating anyone to the clan ring will raise their status to that of thane for at least as long as they hold that office. And yes, that includes the trickster.

I disagree. Arkat apotheosized as a force of liberation. Yes, he was a hero of Humakt following his contact with the Orlanth-worshipping Enerali of Ralios and his joining of the cult of Orlanth. He had become a Man-of-All in Seshnela before in addition to his Brithini Horali origin, and afterwards a member of Kyger Litor and a hero of Zorak Zoran. Finally, he is said to have accepted Chaos in order to beat Nysalor in his final battle with Nysalor, and that final battle had its cost - he didn't emerge unscathed. (Of course Nysalor did even less so, giving up his identity.) The guy who returned to Ralios after cursing Dorastor was no longer a mere hero of Humakt. Nor was he all the Arkat that had accumulated before, but also a good portion of Nysalor (and probably some of the bad portions of Nysalor, too) contained in himself. Arkat went on to become the guardian of the Otherworld, to intercede with power-hungry questers taking the powers of the gods for themselves. He inserted himself (or heroes/avatars of himself) into every heroquest there is - you will always encounter a guardian in some form at some stage. And that is what apotheosized. (Of course, the God Learners worked mightily to undo his guardianship, and may have weakened it significantly, but however much they suppressed his cult, the guardians remain.) I'm game to discuss this further, but preferably over on the Glorantha forum as things about Arkat get esoteric by the very nature of the topic. Yanafal was instrumental in the Red Goddess quest (much as Harmast Barefoot was instrumental to Arkat's life quest) and became a deity through his own deeds. Teelo Norri fits your description, but the rest of the mothers have plenty of deeds to offer. Was it the will of Orlanth Rex? Was it a trade in the name of Issaries? Or was it a self-change in the same way Larnste escaped the destruction of the Spike? Or all three of these? Or did he carry over his kingship of Dragon Pass in a draconic utuma? Sartar never was a Rex tribal king - he had no tribe (other than the over-tribe he had formed), and his royal family was rather small, even if you include the personal retainers as his clansfolk. If you want to make a claim for Orlanthi kingship, you have to field Vingkotling kingship (without which you have no dynasty). Again, all of this gets quite esoteric, and not directly game-relevant. An argument can be made that Dormal was a hero of Diros the Boatman. Not that new as a concept. Breaking the Syndics Ban wasn't what his quest was about, it was more like a weakness in the Ban as its creators may have regarded the seas as impassable and left that entry path open by oversight.

Second Sight doesn't take you across the veil. It only shows you the otherwise invisible spirits on your side of the veil. As an analogon, heroquesters between quests don't get to watch the hero plane. To perceive and experience that, they have to cross over.

There are other outlets than just Drivethrough, but it is quite likely that getting a legal copy of MRQ2 titles might have become impossible due to loss of license a decade ago or so. Print copies should be available second hand. Chaosium.com has all its titles in pdf format, including stuff from earlier editions with no longer 100% canonical info. The Guide doesn't come cheap even as pdf, but 800 pages of massive info are worth it if you really want to delve into Glorantha. The Cult compendium contains the other two titles you found on Drivethrough. All of these are originally for Chaosium's RQ2 (aka RQ Classic, not identical to MRQ2), but the spells are quite easily ported to other editions, including Mythras.

It is perfectly possible to run Gloranthan adventures under Mythras - it has a Gloranthan DNA, after all, being the descendant of MRQ2, which was the revised rules system for the Mongoose Glorantha Second Age series, then divorced from Glorantha as RQ6 with its own bronze-agey setting(s). It is a lot of work to interweave the setting with the game system to a similar degree as RQG (or the other two official Gloranthan game systems). But then, that much interweaving isn't strictly necessary to start having the Glorantha experience. While the sourcebook is quite centered on Dragon Pass when it comes to local detail, the myths in it are way less localized and useful for most of Genertela. But yes, to play somewhere else, with local detail in the character or clan creation rules, you will need to invest some work as the GM (or part of a GM council), with a bit of world building. Although I find communal world building where all players contribute NPCs, background detail etc. to be a very good idea in general, and perfectly applicable to whichever part of Glorantha you might want to pick as your stage. It is possible to use the Guide to Glorantha as your entry point for most places in Glorantha (although it is weak on detail for the magical places in the Outer World). There are a few other HeroQuest publications which are quite rules-light and can serve as good background fodder for a different sort of campaign, e.g. the Men of the Sea book which gives great advice for ship-based campaigns (advice which works just as well for other settings, up to space opera), and gives quite a bit of Glorantha detail which doesn't get contradicted much by later publications. The Mythras magic systems in general are very close to the ones dictated by the Glorantha setting. Details vary from RQG, in some parts significantly, but that doesn't matter unless you plan to cross over characters from other rules systems back and forth (not quite advisable, but neither impossible, although in my experience such a thing works best by creating a similar character with the same character concept rather than trying to convert every detail). I can think of a number of other rpg rules systems which could be used to run Glorantha, too. In all cases you need to define cults and cult magic to the extent the game system requires, which can be quite a bit of work for some rules systems, and a piece of cake for others (Mythras among these if you get cheap access to the Glorantha 2nd Age cult books for MRQ2). There are a few I wouldn't use, but more from personal preferences than from actual impossible combinations.

The attack spells cast on it sort of duplicate (and then expand) the Disrupt function of Warding (the divine magic equivalent) or its Issaries derivate Market, so they don't surprise me much. At least they aren't backed by infinite MP (causing automatic damage) but by the MP spent to boost the circle. I see great potential for phantom spells placed on protective circles... you could replicate many a D&D favourite "rune" spell with those, or other not really protective spells. (Provided the phantoms do count as an attack of sorts...) Almost (?) enough to make a trickster study sorcery.

Only after a detour into the more fertile parts of Prax as allies of Orlanthland, then the EWF. In Prax, those who would follow Issaries got their horses striped and became kings of the city of Pavis. The remaining True Horse folk may have been less inclined to trading. It took the contest of Sartar (founder of the kingdom of the same name) with the emerging Feathered Horse Queen to set up the three trade posts in their territory. The Grazers had a terrible conflict between conservatives and progressives around that time, and Sartar and the FHQ helped the progressives to emerge victorious. Ironically, the traditionalists then join the newly founded Pol Joni tribe and return to Prax, but herding cattle. It makes them soft and almost sedentary, relying strongly on grain as horse fodder rather than pasture. They still delegate the actual trading to Vendref stewards.

Our main source for how Truestone works in relation to rune magic from a Gloranthan perspective still is the Biturian Varosh narrative, despite the ludicrous exchange rates given in the trades. Biturian offers a piece of Truestone with a good deal of his pathfinder magics to avoid a quest into broo-infested Sog's Ruins at Horngate. It isn't quite clear whether he was able to regain those spells at his next temple visit, but the story almost makes it sound that way. If Biturian was able to regain use of those spells without new permanent POW sacrifice that would suggest that he only placed rune point uses in the stone, rather than the entire spell knowledge. Basically, an empty spell trading (but then that may have been what he did, rather than place the spells directly in the stone?) without any return magic. @Sumath I guess to still enjoy those singles, being truly stoned might help. (And it makes me feel rather old having been in the age bracket to have listened to those ditties...)

Using dinos as beasts of burden or warbeasts was common in past ages. The domesticated beasts of the late EWF were only remotely bovine, and use of dinosaurs may have been as common. Golden Age Dara Happa used "gazzam" (earth shakers) as their main domesticated beasts before bulls and oxen got introduced. While the Gods Wall has various mammal deities on the second and third tier, these may not have been mainstream in Dara Happa proper. It remains unclear whether such use of dinosaur relied on capturing and taming young adult wild specimen or raising them from the egg (as the ones in King of Dragon Pass were). Given the anti-draconic iconoclasm that accompanied the fall of the EWF, there are hardly any older depictions of dragons left in central Genertela. We have no Third Age proof of pre-EWF use of dinosaurs as husbandry. Given the Second Council origin of the wyrms, I wouldn't be that astonished to find some dinosaur husbandry in the same era.

While his journey to the Threestep Isles certainly proved the concept of the Opening to Kethaela and Handra, it didn't start the Hero Wars any more than Sartar's founding of the kingdom bearing his name or the 1602 conquest of Boldhome. Tatius' escalation of the Siege of Whitewall resulting in the Windstop is fairly legitimate as starting date. There may be other events in other parts of the world roughly in the same period, but with less obvious ubiquitious effect. There have been others. Arkat apotheosized around 500. Pavis (Second Age) and Sartar (1520) are known examples preceding Dormal. And there is a whole bunch of Lunar mortals who became deities, like the Seven Mothers, Etyries and others less well known in Dragon Pass. Hon-eel is a borderline case. She does have a cult which provides divine magic, but her disappearance at the Battle of the Night of Horrors is similar to Alakoring being chained to Sheng's Hell. But then Dormal sailing across the borders of the Inner World is similar to that, too.

As a rules artefact, yes. As a combat situation - only if the intruder is part of a general rush and the defender concentrating on another incoming opponent. A bit like defensive play in handball, only with a lot less restrictive rules regarding how to deal with the opposition. Basically the defender who didn't get to hit the intruder when coming in gets to attack him from his rear as he engages someone else further back. Doing a penetration attack without trusty wingmen to cover one's rear is suicide in a combat system like any incarnation of RQ. But then, any combat situation where there is no fixed formation (such as a shield wall or a phalanx) will involve lots of footwork and in-combat movement. A single warrior holding a bridge won't remain in one spot all the time (making it harder to harpoon him from below).

The splitting of diamonds using a directed force along one of its crystal planes is essentially the application of a flint knapping technique to the diamond, and one that doesn't rely much on hardness but on natural surfaces that can be revealed. Rubbing diamond against diamond is the only known way to grind diamond (although nowadays the diamonds you grind with are minuscule ones strewn over (and slowly worked into) a rotating metal disk). By applying the grinding to the edges of the octahedron, you get the octagonal pyramid that forms the long end of a brilliant. By rounding off the square from the splitting and the edges around it, you slowly approach something like the brilliant shape with its internal reflections that create the gloss that is valued in clear diamonds. Gem carving appears to be quite ancient. The Griffin Warrior agate gem from Pylos has a level of detail that is hard to perceive with the unaided eye, and must have been even harder to produce. Agate is a fairly hard mineral sillica glass, similar to jade. My main exposure to it is as mortars and pistils or ball mills for grinding other minerals down.

Sounds sincerely wrong to me.

They must have been very obscure, then. I was tackling the problem that an attack of a defender that would go off at the earliest of say SR7 would give the person running in earlier a free pass past him despite having the weapon ready. Did you mean that a SR of 7 means you have to act out your stated action on 7 and not on a later SR? That your runner would arrive at SR 8 or 9 and the defender had his action not any longer? That's not the point of the SR. It gives the earliest moment you can strike in comparison to the opposition, not the exact or the latest moment the action can be performed. To repeat your complaint: What exactly is your problem? Do you have these guys lined up in a one person wide corridor? In that case, running past them will require a knockdown for every goon in the way. I assumed that the playing field is fairly open ground, with the goons irregularly placed on the field - some to the left, some to the right of the course of our runner towards his desired foe. The runner starts, and the defenders edge in on him. The reckless runner would still select a course that would keep him from direct contact with any of their starting positions, right? That can mean that he gave goon 1 a wide enough berth that goon 2 gets into striking range first. What is the problem with that?

Depends on their lateral displacement to the course of the intruder. If the defenders have a very open formation allowing movement between them without running directly into them, they will use the 1m per strike rank in combat movement to approach the intruder. I still say this is very much a strawman setup. And I also say don't mind strike ranks except for relative first strike option between opponents. The rules are fairly clear on this. You move into the envelope of the foremost defender and are engaged (unless the NPC is befuddled and doesn't make his rolls). If you still say you plow on, the defender gets an unparried attack if he has a weapon ready. If you decide to parry or dodge, you slow down to combat movement rates. And positions on the grid are what there is at the start of the melee round. Decreasing would make sense, so the attack can take place. Increasing means that the attack opportunity doesn't come up because every 12 seconds everything grinds to a stop, and then some characters will start moving. First rule of GMing: there is NPC info that PCs don't need to know and don't get to know. Just because something is written in the scenario notes doesn't mean it has to be played out exactly like that.

There is no weird turn by turn movement of people in Glorantha. If someone has their weapon ready, anybody running by will be a the sharp end of their weapon if they declare so, strike ranks be damned. The example makes it sound like there is a pause in battle every 12 seconds until the fastest people start acting. That's simply not the case. And yes, it can mean that the second NPC bypassed gets to strike before the first NPC bypassed gets to do so. So what - they will have moved slightly. It still results in two (or three) attacks rolled at the person trying to bypass them before arriving at the selected target. The question only arises if the NPCs bypassed don't have their weapons ready. In every other circumstance, common sense and a wise GM will roll the attacks. It's not like the players have a need to know the exact strike ranks of the opposition anyway.