Joerg

How catastrophic would the failures have been prior to the first successful one? In Heroquesting, nothing comes without a price, an exchange. For instance the Lightbringers' Quest makes Orlanth give up enmity to the resurrecting Emperor. That's not to say that heroquesting would be a zero-sum activity. Even Chaos gets the boon of re-affirming its role in the Universe from the Hill of Gold quest. That's the view I would subscribe to. Which then leaves the obvious question which region in the Empire started the business, which satrapial families supported the earlier instances magically, and how they shouldered the price of failure in the earlier attempts. All of which would give us some valuable insight in the magic and intrigue business going on in the Empire.

May I politely suggest to relegate the All Ducks mode to an optional modus, or a mod?

I more than once managed to parley a rune spell into expiration... the two minute limit will mean that spirit magic runs out in mid-combat if players put on a layer of spells all by themselves starting the round mechanism ticking before actual combat breaks out, as they were wont to do in RQ3 which had a lot less spirit allies or non-combatant supporters (at least in my experience). Players without supporters will have seven or eight melee rounds in combat before their spells wear off, as the risk to lose all attack options in late spell casting is IMO too high for front line combatants. In my experience the best defense in a RQ combat has always been to take out some of the enemies fast. But then a lot of Augmentation has been moved away from spirit magic into invoking runes or passions, which I understand as unrelated and therefore "free" actions in a melee.

New threads will ease finding the cult in the archives.

The Closing is basically the magical end to sea traffic that kept the Middle Sea Empire civilization alive and wealthy - never mind the failure of conquest of Jolar or the failed Zistor experiment. So yes, the Opening is re-igniting the supra-regional exchange, and we are really more in the Phoenician and Greek expansion theme of the earliest Iron Age and beginning of the Classic period compared to the eve of the naval Bronze Age that created the Mesopotamian and Mediterranean cultures, while those heroic models never were removed from Theyalan society. Which is why I am very convinced that the Nordic Bronze Age and the continued bronze production in and distribution from the Carpathian basin which was rather unaffected by the collapse of the cultures to the southwest are a lot closer to what we find in central Genertela. The Carmanians escaped that collapse, too, and managed to hamper the EWF expansion spreading thin in Peloria, and a similar thing happened in Ralios, but it took the Mass Utuma of 1042 to end that experiment more or less from the inside. But here, too, we find a sudden loss of communication as wyrm riders who had taken over from the Nardain society to bear messages across vast distances failed to work. The recovery of Gloranthan isolated cultures took only about 200 years from the cataclysmic end of the Age, except for the depopulated (and/or drowned) centers of civilization like Dragon Pass or Old Seshnela. The magical nature of the Closing delayed the return to sea trade by almost four more centuries. Unlike the Bronze Age Collapse, there was no loss of literacy anywhere, possibly owed to the premature dominance of alphabetic scripts rather than syllabaries (as e.g. the Japanese katakana present). But then, this is a known (magical) outcome for the coming Hero Wars, at least in northern Dragon Pass. @Sumath: Soil degradation isn't exactly outside of Glorantha. The recent spurt of growth in the Lunar Empire was possible due to the introduction of maize, a form of agriculture that drains the magic of the land unless sufficient bloody sacrifices are offered in return, and from what I have glimpsed of future major players in the Empire, the amount of sacrifice required to keep the current amount of productivity going may be on the rise. The Dara Happan tripolis might be less affected, but Glamour is more or less dependent on imported food, and the grown urban mobs are, too. Your points about the Sartarites are on spot, except for the detail that they are recent immigrants to the country - a country depopulated by the collapse of the EWF in 1042 (with draconicized crops and herds failing big way, in addition to vengeful Carmanians, Sairdites and Dara Happans plundering the Pass, sending tens of thousands of refugees down to the Kingdom of Night), their repeat visit and the total (human) depopulation of Dragon Pass by the Dragons and their kin and allies in 1120 (sending another wave of refugees south at least as large as the army sent north). There was a centralized kingdom of the Orlanthi south of the Crossline which even conquered more than half of Esrolia in the Adjustment Wars which were ended in a Sword-and-Helm Saga way, collapsing the kingdom about a century before Belintar's arrival. The Adjustment Wars were a way to re-distribute the second- to fifth-generation Dragon Pass refugees to the rich lands of Esrolia, forcibly returning a more Heortling outlook to vast parts of that country. Belintar's Holy Country was an anomaly without direct parallel in real world history.

An alternative to spending hero points in all but name would be to take a lasting disadvantage for bumping a roll (something like a disability that may either be kept or bought off with HP or possibly some kind of in-game activity not quite in line with character expectations). That way the player can decide when or whether to buy off that disadvantage, or whether to make it a new defining trait of the character.

I always perceived the White Bull as an aspect of the Silver Deer, the uncatchable beast of prey, applied to the tribal beasts of Prax. The desirable beast for the herd that you just cannot reign in. Except that Argrath did catch it, and possibly integrated it into his self (lacking a herd to integrate it to - a lesser parallel to what Harrek did with the White Bear spirit, which may have been in part an aspect of the same myth, although the non-hibernation and great ancestor aspects certainly are more important).

This is a name from the list of names of Orlanth (or portions of Orlanth) presented e.g. in the Stafford Library book Heortling Mythology p.7f, and was first published in the Hero Wars book Thunder Rebels (which introduced oodles of subcults, probably more than anyone asked for). On the other hand, the name-dropping of his foes like Lord Kavan who imprisoned him in the Ebon Cage or Elvor, the maker of the Sandals of Darkness, does give a little more hint of personality for the darkness foes this thief aspect accrued (although they, too, are likely to be titles or aspects of darkness deities better known by another name, such as Argan Argar). A deity performing deeds under an alias isn't exactly unusual. When the deeds of the alias accumulate, it may be conceived as a separate entity, and possibly worshipped as such when the service to a community (or sub-community) becomes significant enough to warrant this. Stealing goods or artifacts isn't exactly a high prestige form of theft. The high prestige goes to the cattle raider (going by the name of Finovan) who brings home palpable wealth instead of gimmicks and baubles. For the retreaval or absconding of clan or tribal regalia this subcult is the specialist you would go to. Raiding cattle, stealing goods, or demanding tribute are all respectable forms of taking wealth from other clans, but they do have their repercussions. The theft of objects without harming anyone from the formerly owning community might put the lawspeakers to a quandary in terms of fines for a settlement. When a feuding clan is holding back due weregeld, breaking in to retrieve items of roughly commensurable value might even be a way for a weaker clan to satisfy their claims (and thereby their ancestors). Thunder Rebels does give the Illusion rune for the Stealth feats, but I wonder how much that is congruent with the use of that rune in RQG. Avoidance of perception is more an antithesis to the elemental sense addressed rather than trickery, and might thus be used under the Storm Rune rather than the Illusion Rune as Storm has been in opposition to all other elements.

That's weird, as I picture them being cohabitants of the less hairy Columbian mammoth in the savannah of central North America prior to the ice age. I have no problem imagining Amazonian sloths in the jungle, obviously, but these ground sloths require more open woodlands than I would expect in the Pamaltelan elf jungle. On the other hand, lowland gorillas live in such an environment, so having such big vegetarians down in the jungle must be possible. Still, a lot depends on what kinds of jungle we find in the Errinorru forests. Gigantism is thought to be a reaction to predators getting bigger (and vice versa), and Anaxial's Roster describes one such arms race in the relationship between wolves and deer, leading to horned wolves and shell deer. So which large predators forced the ground sloths to become even larger?

Aren't these the finer points of Glorantha we discuss over in the Glorantha forum? (And what does a jack-o-bear do, in the woods or elsewhere?)

I am curious about "a few". Would such self-contained spells be something like guild secrets? They would be quite rigid in application as there is no way to manipulate the effects of the spell by non-sorcerers, and they might negatively affect the ability to use general manipulation in terms of Free INT for all the extraneous info replacing the fundamental techniques or rune mastery. Still, using such magic might be preferable to consorting with spirits or deities to receive personal magic in orthodox Malkioni society outside of the zzabur caste. Such spells might even give Rokari nobility the semblance of the original "man-of-all" concept, which would be appreciated in the provinces outside of Tanisor and Rindland. Only zzaburi and men-of-all (or trainees for these) are in the position to sneer as none of the other Malkioni are expected to understand sorcery. When displaying such understanding might be sufficient grounds for persecution of breaking caste laws, most Malkioni would probably refrain from opinionating before any zzaburi (or man-of-all) has spoken to that extent.

I doubt that that is the intention behind the ritual spell being described as sorcery. In the HQ1 rules, Open Seas was sorcerous in nature, but a common magic spell that could be learned by just about anyone without a magical purity taboo. RQ3 had it as ritual magic, no magic system specified, which worked similarly.

When it comes to sea bird migration (something my part of the world gets two annual spectacles out of), I am not sure how much of that is going on in Glorantha. The extreme migration from one polar summer to the other cannot occur on Glorantha for lack of poles and antipodean temperature patterns. Birds partaking in the "false plenty" of the Pentan grasslands are quite a possibility, as mosquitos and moths are likely to partake on that. The region used to be one of the major bird culture regions of Glorantha, too. When did the birds start hunting insects for food in myth, however? Are there mosquitos, worms etc to be found in the Golden Age surface world, or are such entities still where all beings of Darkness belong, in the Underworlds? (And when did Aldrya start to rely on wind pollination?) Flowering plants might have gotten by with the services of hummingbirds, starting with the emergence of Sky. But then, there are birds that forage directly on grasses, most prominently geese and their duck kin, plus there are a plethora of wading and diving birds harvesting their food from the waters. These could still follow seasonal patterns. With the caveat that such patterns only emerged within Time. One of the many things going on in the Dawn Age would be Nature adjusting to the new cyclical patterns, not always succeeding.

Love this, as it shows the God Learners being thoroughly ignorant of Bolongo. It makes it harder to make a case for Bolongo's ownership of Disorder.

Except that this is a misnomer, since Redalda is not the goddess birthing horses (as for instance Uralda does for cattle), although she is the goddess of horse breeding. There is also Enferalda, the "backboy" or supporter aspect for Ernalda, which doesn't have any mother aspects. Rather than mother, how about having "alda" stand for mid-wife (or nurse)? "Wise woman"?

That was "The Journeyer," a Marco Polo novel by Gary Jennings, I think. It had several other such grisly details and events, as typical for the author (whose book "Aztek" featured similar horrors).

While that is true, hand-waving without any idea how technology achieves such results won't improve credibility to the tech nerds that form a significant subset of Glorantha nerds. I cannot be the only Glorantha fan who also reads science fiction for the science in that fiction. I too have some doubts, as my simple experiments with galvanic plating of copper coins using just salts and some vitriol solvent resulted in lead-colored silver plating due to irregular surface structures even after some polishing. Much of mediaeval and early modern age alchemy was mystical allegory rather than natural philosophy on material (it is way too early to talk about the scientific method that stepped on the stage only since Lavoisier, on the eve of the French revolution which cut short that first scientist and his career). Newton was a natural philosopher part of the time, and a mystic in his later alchemical works. Mint masters and prospectors were more like modern day chemists than most alchemists ever were. But then, the purity of coin alloys had been a subject of scrutiny since the middle classical era, and hence just falls into the latest part of your era of interest. The archaeological record covers only a fraction of the amount produced by any period, and metal objects are as prone to have been recycled as are glass shards. Pottery is about the only one-way material known to the ancient world, everything else was re-used over and over unless devoted to the gods. You need a culture with strongly non-destructive burial customs and a tradition of rich grave goods (rather than mainly symbolic ones) to get anything resembling an insight into the material culture. Everything else is at best a glimpse. I am not sure how well electrolytical coated material would have withstood corrosion, providing a metal-metal phase border usually invites galvanic reaction at just these transition places. It sure is a problem in modern day fresh water tube systems. Use of mercury for fire/wash-gilding probably is where medieval alchemists got the idea for quicksilver as the universal metallic catalysator. Modern chemical insights show that electronegativity of alloys can be significantly lower than that of pure non-classical metals, and that producing them for alloy purposes as amalgams is within the possibilities of real world chemistry. Georg Acricola cites classical authorities in his 16th century treatises on mining, and looking at some of the standard works the Romans had on waterworks, I wouldn't be astonished if they had similar treatises on metallurgy and mining, too. There are a few first century books on civil engineering like waterworks that still are part of the engineers' foundational syllabus, and the Hippodamos principles on urban planning are as present in the oppidum of Manching as they are in the layout of Washington DC or Manhattan.

King of Sartar explicitely tells us that Harrek spent the gold taken from the solar priests at Pennel Ford for drink and other pleasures in Nochet. Presumably some companion of Harrek actually handed over the wealth, likely on Harrek's more than slightly hung-over demand to put an end to that nagging. Possibly Gunda, whose unflappable sober hostility might be what goes for the best diplomatic ability in Harrek's circles.

It also marks the narrowest stretch of the lower Zola Fel valley in terms of distance between the Eiritha Hills and the Condor Crags, creating a gateway for the river that way. That was my interpretation of the meaning of "gate" in that place name. Anything but exciting, I'm afraid, but then place names like "Long Dry" aren't that exotic either. As to "Ex", as far as I know, Greg's separation from his wife Cam occurred at a later date, so that interpretation is unlikely.

Yes. Note that I was only talking about cast steel. I wouldn't take up a sword of cast bronze mixed with slag unless in very dire straits, either, and that's a pretty fair description of cast iron. Reliably creating bronze casts without hidden flaws is a high art, too, when all you have for non-destructive material testing is the sound the blade makes when tapped with some other metal implement. Yes, I was talking about the steel casting that was invented in the late 19th century here. I would hazard the guess that the inventors of iron on cyprus produced the first (but useless) objects of cast iron before they found out that the stuff could be improved significantly by angrily pounding on it with their hammers. If you have ever seen the lumps of "iron" you receive from processing bog iron in small earth crucibles, you would doubt that you even succeeded in reducing the stuff to metal. It takes lots of heating and pounding to create anything resembling an ingot from that spongy stuff, and probably half of it will be lost as slag (which can be recovered in the next melting batch with bog iron, though, increasing the yield significantly). So no enchanted metals? No dwarven magical equivalents of electro-melting ores? No alchemical transformation of ores into metals via amalgams and subsequent removal of the quicksilver? And then there are those Seleucid era galvanic cells which are suspected to have been used for silver-plating more base metals. At times, we tend to underestimate our predecessors badly, though there are many ludicrous pseudo-scientific drivel statements to the contrary on the web. (I sort of hate-love the fatal misconception of piezo-electricity in the videos spouting the use of the Egyptian pyramids as electricity generators...) Quite annoying to both hard fans of the world and to geeks, I guess. It takes a certain pacing in the story to make the smithing process worth the while, usually reserved for a maguffin like in Highlander 3 (the least terrible of the squels IMO).

I would do so only in cases where the real world metal has significantly different properties, and the only case where that needs to be considered really is IMO aluminum. Gloranthan quicksilver has a strange color and behaves strangely when poured into water, but is still sort of recognizable. Except when it is. Smelted from nuggets of gods bones of earth and sky, more often than not. I do think that smelting metal from non-metallic ores is a thing in Glorantha, too, but the product is inferior to gods bone metal in terms of hardness and durability, though preferable to having no metal at all. Metal deposited in metal nuggets is the main source for metal in Glorantha, but I am fairly certain that the big kingdoms and empires have to rely on smelting ores rather than nuggets to satiate their hunger for metal for everyday use. To confuse the issue further, the alloy "bronze" is referred to as "brass" by the mostali (they named their alloyist caste that way) and by the volcano woshippers of Pelanda. The Volcano mountain god children of Veskarthan and the Earth or Land have mixed elemental origin, too - fire and earth, which translates to tin and copper, aka bronze if we use real world terminology. Personally, I speak of brass when the bones of mountain gods are concerned, and of bronze when the bones of Storm gods are the source. Dragon Pass being rich in bronze must either mean that the Vingkotlings were a lot more divine than we tend to assume, or that we have a mix of Lodril-descended and perhaps fallen star and earth deities here. Fallen against Chaos in between the Unity Battle and I Fought We Won, the same period that saw the desperate defense of Baroshi and the death of his parents. How metallic are the skeletons of demigods? Real world brass isn't even quite an alloy (which has sliding degrees of composition and random placement of atoms in the crystal lattice) but a mix of two well-defined metal-metal compounds of copper and zinc, a metal unknown in the pure form to the metallurgists of old who still were able to create brass from the ores. More often than not fragments of these, and in case of ores, what corrosion left of shards of them. Distributing iron might be an ongoing mostali plot to weaken the two other Elder Races that are susceptible to damage by iron. Humans are gleeful accomplices in this. The mechanical properties of unenchanted iron are little different from bronze, without any rules effect other than to block magic when present in suitable amounts. Only Enchanted Iron has the super-metal effect in RQG. Bronze can be enchanted - this is rarely done, as the benefits are small. I houseruled that enchanted bronze blades could hurt creatures only hurt by magical damage, but unenchanted bronze with silver inlays had the same ability.

That's semi-true. By heating to certain temperatures in oxygen-rich atmosphere, you can lower carbon content, by pushing the blade into glowing embers at certain temperatures you can increase carbon content. I find the chicken-shit step for de-phosphorizing his iron after creating the first raw stave, then shattering it and feeding the shards to his chickens extremely ingenious in lieu of an oxygen lance to be dumped into the crucible of molten iron (a technology a La Tene era smith certainly couldn't have employed). The nitrate in the bird feces does provide the oxygen to get the phosphate oxidized and wandering into the slag. But that's just my personal, trained chemist's interpretation of that weird production step - a theory I haven't seen in any publication, but then few material scientists write papers on old Germanic poetry. Based on an experience I had when I had to do a wet analysis of soft (carbon-free) iron, where the only impurity I could find was phosporus from the faint (but still toxic) smell of phosphane when I treated the stuff just with hydrochloric acid. (Adding some peroxide did take care of phosphane formation, but any attempt at wet chemistry determination of phosphorous failed, so I had to rely purely on my nose.) In fact, bronze blades can be hammered starting at room temperature, although a skilled blacksmith can hammer a piece of iron or steel to at least red glow from room temperature, too. Anyway, real world bronze doesn't come in laminate layers of growth patterns as gods bones do, and I bet working such a laminated bronze when artificially created (perhaps through a dipping process) would require techniques quite different from working cast bronze. Whether it would have superior or inferior material properties in the Real World is yet a different question. If you actually can cast steel, a cast steel sword probably is the equal of a cast bronze sword, but I guess we're talking alloy steel rather than carbon steel in such a case. The problem with casting steel is the temperature needed - castin bronze does well with red glow, while casting iron or steel requires white glow, or you don't have a liquid. (There's a Lindybeige video pointing out this flaw in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy showing the open cast casting of the Uruk Hai swords, and how the metal in question must have been aluminium rather than iron.) The blacksmith has an advantage over the Redsmith that he can alter the final hardness of a blade through tempering in moderately aerated coal embers, but using different types of steel for key parts of a blade, or using laminated (damascened) steel. The almost mythical reverence for damascened blades (when Uthberd steel blades actually were superior to swords imported from Damascus) was what made me suggest growth rings in Gods Bones to account for the superior performance of Dragon Pass bronze blades versus standard cast bronze (or cast "brass") blades when analyzed by a materialist Gloranthan metallurgist.

I doubt that Harrek's debauchery paid by a single item would have lasted longer than a few hours, if collateral damage is figured into the bill. We know you believe to have a problem when you hire Harrek to solve it. And we know that as soon as you hire Harrek, you have a problem.

Ex is at best a ruin of a Godtime city, but it is not an oasis or altar. I am not certain about Winter Ruins, but I am positive that there was no human name for the source of Monkey Ruins, though possibly a person exchanging the offer of their name being immortalized for a location from Jungle Book to be included in the map (as happened with Duckton on the WBRM/Dragon Pass map). I'll yield you Horn Gate and Agape, which might count as oases though not altars. I named both the Paps and the Block as (likely) exceptions - you never know with family names. Agape is of course a nerdy pun in itself, as we don't know whether the Greek term or the English adjective are meant. The retcon about William Church's son Christian getting a feature on that map is balanced with the inherent pun in the Real World name of that individual, and possibly what was covered up by Corflu. Immortalizing a dental technician uncle at Jaldon's Rest is a deviation of the "appeared in the credits" rule, too, but that applies already to White Bear and Red Moon and is (from memory) the only location shown on both game boards. Mallia's Stool is a later addition and doesn't appear on the original board.

I would agree - most of the time, Danfive is what the Empire would like Orlanth to be, and Yanafal is something else, but considering the various stations of the LBQ as known in Sartar, I think that Yanafal would perform a lot better than Danfive in the bids for recognition and friendship, and everywhere where Orlanth's sword solved problems. Guide of the Dead sounds a lot like the Underworld function of Issaries after the Compromise, but it is not his role in the LBQ. There is one Storm God that was chained by the hostile sky - that is Umath. Those chains took him out of the rest of the Gods War, however, leaving the action to his sons.