Joerg

I too would welcome something like "The Stafford Legacy" with those old stories - possibly unedited, possibly annotated with current canon from the Guide. It can be an exercise in frustration unless you like unfinished fragments. And you could have hoary scholarly debates about the minutiae in those. Generally, the stories I have read or listened to have been shock full of interesting concepts and outdated/noncanonical yet cool ones. I have recently re-read the Hrestol's Saga fragments I managed to get for big bucks decades ago at Convulsion. It isn't quite an in-world document, but it might be made into one with a few twists. I have no idea whether it is possible to edit it in a way that it could be a forbidden yet popular romance in Rokari Seshnela. Although it might be possible to use it framed in the story of a reader and researcher persecuted by the Rokari watchers, and his interactions with modern Seshnela. But that requires someone quite talented to write a framing story worthy of that original as prose. As a scenario... maybe. And I thought we wouldn't talk about waste baskets any more... http://glorantha.temppeli.org/digest/gd5/1997.07/0100.html

Why not? It may have been a necessary part to establish the solar superiority, and it is not like the Mostali of Vanch are an integral part to the efforts to repair the world machine, except possibly in this role. Sometimes you have to put up a significant resistance to insert the tool extensions you want into your primary tool, and those tools rarely function correctly at first. The Vanch dwarves quite likely are heavily influenced by those Greatway heretics anyway. The Greatway (and Isidilian's) plans have provided much acceleration to the repair efforts, but they have done so in thoroughly unpredictable ways. The Decamony is worried, but believes that it has the situation under control. Yes. It hasn't started moving yet. They have a tool for that, too, named Argrath. See how much they control that one...

Fornoar offers quite similar encounters as do the Elder Wilds, only the dragonewts and dinosaurs have a much longer journey to get here. Instead of Greatway in the south, you get the (way more orthodox) Nida in the north. Aldryami are plentiful in Erontree and Ballid, and uz come from Guhan. Quite a few of the Griffin Mountain encounters can be lifted to Fornoar. Arolanit makes a weird neighbor, almost as inhuman as the dwarves. Recent history is a bit hard to write. Rindland and Tanisor are the core lands of Guilmarn and Theoblanc, and their re-conquest of Ralian neighbors has been the major news in the region. The conflict between the Chariot of Lightning and the Galvosti and the Safelstran bigger stuff in the Tinaros backstory may come to bear, too. Rather than Praxians, you can throw a few Hsunchen into the mix of playable characters - Pralori and Telmori might be the most likely (and interesting), possibly a few others. For many of those out of area refugees, you'll need a "reason to have left their home" portion, not necessarily in the generation of the player character - playing second or third generation refugees could be more interesting than playing newcomers.

What makes you think that there has to be vision? Why not have a species actively emitting pings of whichever nature and taking in that scan of their environment to create a model of their universe, a bit like the classic model of sight (with sight beams emanating from the eye) worked? If you have a planet in synchronous rotation around a flaring sun, then the goldylocks zone on the dark side is the only environment where life has a chance at survival. Their main modus of passive perception might be the echoes of the solar flares they receive, which might be how they learned of other bodies in their system (tidal forces of a moon might be another indicator, though - no idea how probable the presence of a moon around a tidally locked planet would be, though). Such an organism might be one of many symbionts or parasites of a huge host body rather than inhabiting the raw surface of the planet. Once these organisms develop technology, they would take host bodies and a selection of co-symbionts/co-parasites with them in their vehicles with which they cross interstellar distances. The host bodies or some co-symbionts/co-parasites might serve as their cultural memory, too, and communication with other cultural groups might resemble an act of mating between host bodies where copies of such memory-bearers are exchanged. Now imagine the first contact situation as your own vessel is sexually approached by this weird hybrid of organism and technology...

Both of them are inseparable from Gbaji while they remain apart, and even after overcoming that distance and shedding superfluous parts in their duel in the City of Miracles, a significant and necessary part of Gbaji remains in the new whole that curses Dorastor (or rather its excess of Occlusion) and founds the Autarchy in Ralios.. I like to think that Sheng had already overcome simple occlusion. Sheng chooses the Cosmos over the Transcendent. I am not even clear whether he sees himself as the equivalent of the Inhuman King, the one to re-unite the Solar Unity of the Golden Age Sunstop, before the Solar empire fell apart into a number of separate Solar realms like Dara Happa, Kralorela, core Vithela (Vormain), Hrelar Amali, and others (possibly also including Elmal's Kerofinela). Sheng works towards a greater goal, much like that EWF project of the Great Dragon. It is possible that he is part of the Mostali world repair plan, too.

As I understand it, the Many becoming the One is one step of it. Ultimately, all enlightenment is leading beyond the One, and there are quite a few ways to get there. Illumination as you present it is the power of Rashoran(a), titled "the last born of the Young Gods" in the cosmology of Cults of Terror, of unknown parentage (Guide p.119). That paragraph sort of suggests that Rashoran's message was not to fear the Unknowable that lies beyond, and by extension nothing that springs from that. As much as there is Union with the One, there is also a strong element of separation in Enlightenment. Illumination is the power to look beyond the disjunction that the unbridled potential of the Void (or whatever) beyond the Cosmos inside the Cosmos causes (annihilating Creation), possibly even beyond that Void once you advance far enough. I strongly disagree with the use of "Order" in Gloranthan context. The proper term would be Cosmos or Creation. Disorder and Illusion are valid and necessary parts of Creation. It does present a merger of (apparent) opposites, and may be interpreted as a lesson in Illumination. Gender fluidity is way older than Rashoran(a). The ancestry of the Sea Tribe does depict one entity in each of the primal generations as taking both stances of sexuality, and since only productive unions are depicted, the option of taking neither isn't represented in that family tree. I think that every major player in the myths and in the history of Glorantha included more than the entity normally described by that name. "Orlanth" includes a significant part of Ernalda much of the time, for instance. Arkat, Nysalor and the barrier between them known as Gbaji are the result of the failed experiment to manifest the lost Unity inside the universe of Time. There is no Nysalor without Arkat, and vice versa, and there is the Deceiver separating the two. It took their final confrontation to reunite the separate parts, and to separate out parts that did not belong. Both Arkat and Argrath work from a "platform" of mystical enlightenment. It isn't quite clear to me who Argrath's Other is, if he has one at all. I disagree. This is the fallacy of Nysalorism, the victory of Gbaji. The male principle is the principle of contrarianism and individualism, the one which you claimed in point 2 to have been overcome. It hasn't. Sedenya is (part of) Rebellus Terminus. When both Umath and Verithurus(a) were cast into the Underworld, before both Umath and Shargash returned and Umath was dismembered, Umath and Verithurusa united, and a child was born (or unborn) from that union. Declaring the ruler and savior of the Sky (not just the Middle) throughout the Darkness as not part of the One that is aimed at by Lunar illumination proves that - for all of its acceptance of Chaos - the Lunar conception of One is incomplete and flawed, and that it has to transcend that. Though the other deities have to transcend, too, and it looks like the Hero Wars give a majority of them the opportunity to do so. Arkat was an incomplete individual until he faced Nysalor and Gbaji. While we do know a lot of what Argrath does, we don't know exactly what he is. His journey through the Hero Wars is one of self-discovery, too, even with very much of this already having been going on since his initiation. Identification with Sartar (and possibly further, Larnste) is one such event. Just like with the idea of the 1042 end of the Dragon Experiment being a mass utuma, I think a lot of evidence points to Argrath liberating the old gods, elevating them to a new and way more remote level of existence, not exactly eliminating them. Tearing down the Red Moon is a necessary first step to this effect.

I spent a couple of hours (well spent) on this series about the prehistory of Britain. What is nice about the series is how it conveys a feeling for a probable spiritual world of these early (and long replaced) immigrants to the island, how their life-style reflects the formation of their beliefs, and how early elites grew up from that. The presenter's accent, while charmingly localizing the history, might take a little getting used to to non-British English speakers, but he does manage to convey his fascination with the matter. Plenty of ideas especially for the material culture and how it translates to heroquests to steal for Glorantha.

Digging into cold soil can replace mud as a heat receptor. Little of that available in the Praxian afternoon, however, unless they dig deep. Given the Rhino tribe's earth connections, this kind of heat exchange with the earth might be runic in nature, and might ignore normal physics.

Send a bound spirit to do the job.

But that's the point with Neutralize - the magic will pop up again as soon as the Neutralize spell effect is over, it is just a damping field. So if you have a spirit spell matrix worth 2 points, can it be activated in a 6 point Neutralize Spirit Magic? Can the user access the spell knowledge, or is that function of the artifact temporarily unavailable? Same thing with Neutralize Rune.

Provided you were allowed to use it just for holding it. If it has a specific user condition, only those who fulfill that condition can find out what the spell is without Analyze Magic. They don't need to cast the spell to find out. Sure. Which is why an enchanted item can be decorated with almost all the core runes. It's not like all spirit spells have a clear runic association.

Wrong reaction. Here's a better continuation of the GM dialogue: "Can you overcome his POW of 21? Yes? Ok, the befuddled NPC has mistaken his target for his original target. On to the next round." How many players do you have that you have to ask something like this? Or are these newly created characters?

In that case, cast the spell on an area. The spell is ranged, so it might be argued that it has a zone effect rather than affecting only a human(oid) target. Does this spell interact with enchantments? Those are classified as spirit magic, too.

Bubba gets his shot first, yes. Do you want to tell me that he should only get to strike once Quicky has closed up enough to strike with his short pecker? Extra actions when a foe is down - as I read the rules, allowable if that outcome basically ends the engagement in melee for the attacker, in the next melee round. And anybody who voluntarily plays a duck is enough of a masochist to take rules disadvantages in stride. There is a sweet spot at not too high differences in skill where splitting puts the 96-100% automiss disadvantage to the other side if you are facing a single opponent, including the 20% penalty for subsequent parries. Facing multiple opponents creates yet other tactical and statistical situations.

Inside melee, you either attack once (or with split attacks twice), or you may do any repeatable actions like missile use, spell use at DEX SR (plus MP penalty for spells stronger than 1 intensity), etc. When entering melee, you can first cast a spell or throw a weapon before striking if you aren't too slow. And sure, puny little fighters have it hard to close to an opponent, as do fighters with very short weapons. If Bubba's SIZ SR plays any roll, he has decided to attack with his maul, and unless he can split his attack, that is his one offensive action. No spells or missiles allowed after the first melee action. He might choose to cast a spell before engaging, once (or as often as he has taken down an isolated opponent and emerges disengaged from that melee). Quicky has the same options. He might be pecked in the posterior when it comes to splitting attacks, but given his twice as high DEX and a 12 SR melee round, he should be able to attack twice with his empassioned Short Sword attack of 110%. I can see the point in switching to a tact-driven melee system for climactical duels/showdowns with players relishing to play out their tactical options. The simulative equivalent of slow motion in action scenes. Not for each and every combat encounter, however.

I was aiming for a Lunar starch-providing tuber that would be used by a cult like Teelo Norri for alm feedings, and not necessarily the underground root nodes of something resembling the tomato. We know that the Teelo Norri cult did provide alm feedings before Hon-eel brought back maize. The Seven Mothers "potato" bread notion in the Seven Mothers cult write-up would be that plant, that the locals - who might have heard about the Veldang tubers, possibly via Zaranistangi contacts - would have named a different plant whose produce somehow resembles what they were told about the potato. And that's why I thought about reed rhizome knots. If the potato proper has a Veldang origin, it would obviously have its origin on the surface of the planet/moon Veldara.

A BRP/RQ treatment of native American background might work as an expansion or parallel game for Mythic Iceland, since part of that game is set in Vinland.

Is this a rune that can be invoked for augments? If so, can it sink below those 60% for the carrier of such a feature on a fumble?

That needs to be multiplied by the six techniques and options for a second technique.

Rune points may be spent permanently, e.g. for certain spells, or when creating a divine spell matrix. And NPC stats in scenarios don't necessarily show the NPC's maximum available rune points, but their rune points at the time of the encounter.

I chose to post this in the RQ forum to avoid runes unavailable to humans under those rules. The more specific runes of the HW/HQ1 era leave little to the imagination which deity one follows. Disorder may be inconvenient and hard to keep peace with, but it makes for good assault forces. It is an attribute of Umath which he used to break the Imperial stasis. (And I know, Disorder is not opposed to Stasis, and that Umath also is on the record to have used Harmony against the Predark). Maran, Storm Bull, Zorak Zoran and Veskarthan all have Disorder, all are destructive, and in their myths that destruction is not directed at their own tribes (except as Veskarthan's punishment for submitting to the God Learners). Illusion has been weakened - first by Disorder, when the Boggles shred Tylenea, then by the selective nature of Arachne Solara's web. Temporary reality is behind both the EWF dragon dream and the Lunar glamours, which may explain its bad press. But however much Illusion is opposed to Truth, it is not identical with lies or dishonor except through Eurmal - whose main attibutes Death and Fire are generously forgotten. And unexpectedly for a deity free of the Mobility/Change rune, Eurmal still heralds Change. Troublesome change, but often grand scale, too. Personalities like Broyan (reviving the Kodigvari rune) and Argrath probably had Eurmal lurking among their omens. Speaking of ancestors, are these restricted to the resident clan of the parents, or are the in-law blood ancestors available, too? (E.g. what happens if a couple lives away from the clan in the city when the child is born? Or do we have plenty of highly pregnant women traveling more or less last moment to their clan of residence?) So basically, 6 out of 7 boys or girls prepared for their prophecied runic outcome will have received pre-initiation training that allows them a quick transition to cult initiation? Although, even though runically qualified, they might still decide to go for a different deity due to some experience on the Other Side, or some realized ambition. And among the runic misfits, often enough one of the runes may still be sufficiently in line with the cult's requirement, although the training might be a little harder.

No. But you suggest that gold was less valued than silver in (unspecified portions of) Europe and in the Chinese trade, and rebuked my statement that Roman gold made it to China. Wikipedia can be used to support any claim. Here's a nice piece of mine: It is true that Pliny the Elder values the trade deficit as 100 million sesterces (probably overstated by an order of magnitude or three), but that doesn't mean that that amount of silver coins vanished into the east. Please state your sources for that. The links you provided don't corroborate this. Yes, and gold wasn't used for normal trade in Europe, either, but for royal payments. Define late Roman Empire. Eastern Rome? Source? Plinius the Elder's 100 M sesterces? The Romans, the Venetians and finally the Fuggers of Augsburg depleted the accessible Alpine silver reserves. The gold reserves didn't last long enough for the Fuggers to have a chance at that. So which period of devalued gold are we talking about? Between the conquests of the Aztek and Inka empires and the discovery of Mt. Potosi, or earlier, or...? You are claiming that in Medieval and Renaissance times silver would have been more valuable than gold. Where, and when? As far as I can see from the examples in my history books, the Holy Roman Empire (which was under Spanish administration in that time) never valued silver over gold. I also suppose that would have been news to the Venetians or the Lombard bankers. With the exception of the Hajj I mentioned earlier, the flow of gold from the West African mines (then the main source for gold in Europe) into Europe usually was more of a trickle, and did at best compensate for the removal of gold from the currency either in art and architecture or in trade deficit with the far east. Livius: The Romans removed a few cubic kilometers of mountain at a silver mine in Spain by this method, which probably involved heated vinegar poured into the cracks formed by the fire, spreading the destruction a lot further than just fire-heating. At least according to a TV documentation I watched on that topic. Funnily that is the time when the Spanish sent out expedition after expedition to find the Golden City in the jungle, and not some silver place. I didn't doubt your numbers for the Spanish/Portuguese Imperialism. I just don't see Modern Age as as relevant. Even using the middle Roman Empire evidence is late by almost a millennium.

What exactly would you call Trickster runes? Combinations like Vasana's, with Moon as secondary element? In the normal RQ character generation, it is possible to select Disorder and Illusion as main powers, but does that make the character a Trickster? Getting Chaos through hereditary predelection would take quite a bit of GM interference. I thought that there would be post-birth blessings and omens which would offer first indications. Stuff like the violet eyes/left-handedness apparently are recognizable at birth. But then, initiation is a heroquest, and decisions or unexpected failures may alter a course otherwise taken for granted. Like the encounter with cacodemon.

Usually that object needs to be seen or touched. So if you keep your spirit-holding crystal in a bag, the enemy caster might detect it, or even perceive its presence with Soul Sight, but would not be able to target it directly (any more than Soul Sight would allow to target a Disrupt through a sufficiently thin wooden door or similar). If someone with the Control (Entity) spell gets their sight on the item, they may take it over without going through the usual spirit combat sequence because the holding item takes care of that. And yes, a shaman could discorporate, approach your item, cast Visibility, then the appropriate Control spell. You don't connect a computer without any firewall, password or anti-virus software to a site known to infect machines, do you? In praxis, the danger is moderate. The caster needs to know and see the binding item and the correct type of Control (Entity) spell, and active Second Sight or similar to target the entity. Identifying the item could be done through a Detect (Entity) spell. Now if you are specialized in hunting down Malia cultists, the combo "Detect Disease Spirit" and "Control Disease Spirit" might be good to have. Still, even while the Detect might show you which of the leather bags on the belt of that disease master contains a crystal with a held spirit, your "Second Sight" won't be able to target it through the material. You might get lucky if you have darksense and the sorcerous Pierce the Veil, assuming that darksense can be used just like vision to target sorcery, as darksense may penetrate leather. (Yes, those trolls will see that you are naked underneath your clothes...) Elementals are risky - there are only five types, and using them is hardly covert, so there is a good likelihood that your opponent may have that spell in his arsenal if he prepared for the encounter, so you better had that entity in an access-protected binding enchantment. Spirits held in animals have fused with that animal for the duration of its (or the caster's) life. (Until the confirmed, irrevocable death of the caster, I would rule - a Rune Lord returning from Death through Divine Intervention should retain his allied spirits.) Spirits held in crystals are a liability, but as the holder of the item, you get the power to give a "Control (Entity)" command for free. I wonder whether a melee round spent instructing the spirit to ignore all commands but your own would counter any such control attempts for the next two minutes. Would this prevent any enemy caster from controlling the entity? The spirit spell "Control (Entity)" is as impractical for combat use as ever. It is a finishing move for spirit combat to imprison a spirit in a binding, which is the only action any entity with zero MP can perform. And, to add insult to harm, if you are able to discorporate in order to initiate spirit combat, chances are that you are a shaman who has a fetch able to capture such spirits without requiring any control spell. This leaves the spell only one sensible use - to instruct a bound entity to do the caster's will for the next two minutes. This allows you to release a spirit, let it act on your command for nine melee rounds and then bind it back in the tenth (taking all of your actions for that re-binding). There is no practical use for Control <animal> as the animal in question will be unconscious from having zero MP, unless you use Extension. (If a creature regains an MP within the 2 minutes the Control spell lasts, you wouldn't have been able to beat it down to zero anyway...)

Aram ya Udram (human ancestor of the folk that would become the Tusk Riders in the EWF era) did exactly such a feat to Gouger, the son of the earth goddess. That (and possibly some certain animal charme) earned him the Necklace of Kero Fin, the approval of the local earth mother, and the position as human representative on the Unity Council. A demon pig can be seen as a punishment by an angry earth goddess, but also as a test for a possible mate. Given the location, the reward after this test (and probably a few more) might be an intimate relationship with Tarndisi?