Joerg

Storm Bull's Sense Chaos is not directional, and neither that reliable. Do you see these berserks systematically isolating everybody they suspect of being the source of their Chaos headache, and then parade enough of their detectors past the isolated individual to see whether someone's sense gets tickled? And then there is a 2-3% chance that the Sense Chaos gets fumbled, and a false positive result keeps the subject under surveillance until the next false positive result occurs. You also don't see Storm Bullies slaughtering every Telmori they encounter.

I think the solution is fairly simple: Nysalor is very likely to appear in the Lunar book rather than the Lords of Terror one. That still leaves the Lords of Terror a no-go area while making player character illumination a separate thing.

The status of the children would be tricky - they would have been born to their home clan, and even if the non-local parents revert to their clans of origin, these children would remain in-laws to those clans unless adopted. And while that adoption is going on, there could also be a (lesser status) marriage of the other parent.

Given the requirement of Henosis to become a Hrestoli Man of All, it could be argued that they are as much a part of the mind of the Invisible God as the sorcerers. And recipients of Joy (as per the Hrestoli definition) should count as well, whether they have mastered the four trades or not. The Rokari sorcerers seem to want to abolish a lot of the Hrestoli flimflammery of non-wizards intruding into the sorcerous realm of oneness with the Creator.

Bredjeg failed with his invasion into the veldt when his cattle (or whichever beasts he brought for his wagons) died off due to malnourishment.

There are two different sources for magic - the harder to get and replenish rune points which indeed are a limited pool which usually only gets replenished in the downtime between adventures, and the daily recovering magic points that power the more accessible but weaker spirit magic spells which are the standard fare when it comes to magic. Think Rune points like potions - you have some that you use up, and need to re-acquire. The different timing comes with the suggested "one scenario per season" tempo for which the rune point recovery speed is optimized. From my experience playing RuneQuest, it can be quite hard happily playing say an overland travel with interesting and picturesque encounters with some moderate challenge to the PCs (show the setting, do not just tell). Despite being adventurers, the player characters are supposed to have a life where they need to make a living.

I suppose it is a bit of a status question. There are comparatively cheap import rides, some of which have excellent performance but still may be frowned upon, and there are prestigious rides only nobles can afford, and that don't get confused with meat animals. Harmast's Zebras combine rather high status import beasts with a breed that is a heroic achievement for his cult (after all Issaries herald is a major cult for the Praxian zebra riders). Vasana's bison is the equivalent of an imported pickup with reinforced front spoilers...

We know that all Eiritha humans can breed with each other, but when it comes to her beasts, things require major magic. (As do any human-Morokanth sacred concubinations). Bison and cattle might be a special case. Possibly tied to the possible shapes of Minotaurs - I don't think there are antelope or high llama variants of these, but there are bison ones and aurochs ones. What good (or bad) would such Eirithan crossbreeds be?

Argrath may have been the bringer of viagra with his Giant's Drinking Cauldron quest. There is no canonical crew roster for the departing Cradle, and neither do we know how many of the human and/or troll (duck, newtling, baboon) crew (would have) remained with the Cradle rather than join Harrek's Circumnavigation or be killed by the White Bear or other attackers. As far as I am concerned, the young giantess was last seen sailing the Boat Planet during its Third Age maiden voyage alongside Dormal's remaining crew and various other questers.

Add an agricultural heroquest, and/or frame this as a Questworlds resource managing adventure with suggestions how to carry things over to RuneQuest, and you'd be fine. Both Jeff and Greg have run convention HeroQuest adventures with community resources as the only abilities which then were pitted against regular and special upcoming challenges.

The ard used by the Orlanthi without magical support magic may be less efficient than the Anglo-Saxon ploughs from around the Tribal Hideage or the Domesday Book. With full magical support, a plow driven by a Barntar godtalker is bound to approach the efficiency of a small modern tractor on hard terrain. While RQG doesn't lend itself to simulating ancient agriculture, RQ3 DeLuxe Gamemasters' Book had an excellent chapter on how agricultural societies divide up their lands, with radii around their villages as an easy approximation. With 3 km (2 miles) between hamlets (of 50, IIRC), there would be one quarter the distance for plowland, up to one half for pasture (haymaking), and the rest of the distance managed roughs for pig-herding, woodcutting and other "forest" activities allowed for semi-free farmers or better. Assuming a triangular grid of hamlets for optimal division of terrain, we get 3 quarters of the good density terrain as roughs, 3 16ths of the terrain as pasture, and 1 16th as plowland. A hex 8 miles across would have space for 16 such hamlets (the AAA hexes are rotated 30 or 90 degrees, but the area distribution doesn't change): or 800 inhabitants. It is possible to re-arrange the land use around a few central villages as long as no field is more than an hour's walking from the living place of the farmers (or their storage facilities). (I remember the super-sized Tripolje culture villages being a bit of a problem for the theories about their logistics.) Few places in Sartar would allow for such an even distribution, most would have to arrange with the ridges and river bottoms dictating the distribution of arable lands, nearby pasture and roughs. RQ3 went on to say that under optimum conditions like the Nile Delta the roughs could be ignored, allowing four times the population density. At a guess, the Esrolian Mesopotamia can be considered the equivalent of the Nile Delta. Which brings us to the amount of Bless Crops required for a group of 50 (i.e. 30 adults): 5 rune points for a simple bonus, 8-10 rune points for double bonus (with a few individuals spending 3 points on two hides for double bonus, the rest 2 points on a single hide) unless you assume better-than adventurer priestesshood individuals getting the sweet deal of spending 6 rune points at once for double bonus all five hides, or 7 for triple bonus, 8 for quadruple etc. This does leave discretionary non-adventurer rune points for the blessing of births and other such long term blockades of regaining rune points. A blessed breeding bull or ram is a lot more rune-point efficient, leaving herders with more reserves for protecting their herds. five hides per small hex in my scheme above, or 20 hides for Esrolian density farming. That's 10 people per household, or 6 adults putting in their contribution to the household earnings. Which then breaks down to 10-15 lunars per adult on a hide per year as surplus divided up in taxes etc.? And still a character takes out 60-80 lunars out of their household's discretionary spending, paying tithes etc. and incurring a 20% penalty on the household income for a season of missed participation. To me, some of these numbers need to start making sense. The only way this can work is that basic feeding of the household members is already included in the deducted cost, which also accounts for the survival of destitute standard of living individuals. Tenant farmers are expected to use the equipment belonging to the Thane household but assigned to the rental stead, and same with the oxen. The Report on the Orlanthi mentions the weirdness of half-carls with half a plow team or the plow in the possession (rather than loan) of those folk (with three halves making a whole, but whatever). In Greg's Harmast novel "patreon" project "Ten Woman Well Loved" the protagonist cottar farms a plot of cabbages rather than grain while working on the communal (clan or tribal temple) fields as well (when not employed for the special service of rain-making by having sex in the fields with an earth cultist who has an attachment to that land). The cottage seems to have sat right on the cabbage plot, as his marital activities kept the cabbages well watered throughout Palangio's and Lokamayadon's drought.

Which calculates to about 100-120 arable acres out of four times that amount as possible maximum for Esrolia. Assuming these standard measures as an average, that would mean 400,000 to 500,000 square meters of arable land per hide. Or 0.4 to 0.5 square kilometers, about 1the one percent of the total area of a hex. As a German, I am familiar with the Morgen, a quarter of a hectare or 25,000 square meters as the amount of acreage that could be plowed in one morning - half a day. 20% more for a full day - bloody German efficiency at work, or just more modern plowing equipment? Even a predominantly grain-cultivating clan would need to dedicate a fair bit of area to pasture for their oxen and the cows required to re-plenish the stock. Still, quadrupling the population for Esrolian conditions will be very hard unless there is less land left fallow over there. A herd hide would include pasture near the stables for hay-making and pasture in the outlands where transhumant grazing takes place. My question really is how to deal with at best moderately well-off households with the equivalent of two to four core families under one roof run by the parents of at least some of these core families.

Source? The Chaosium is the organ of Glorantha that turns the "stuff outside" into Creation. It was there for all the elemental stages of the world, like the primal Darkness of space or the most ancient Sea drawn from Edzaroun.

Apple orchards provide additional pasture and second grade hay. An acre is an area measure that is about as useful to people like me (outside of the US) as would be square stadia or square leagues. I still run with the concept that one AAA map hex ("of 8 miles") will feed 500 people with three quarters of the land non-arable commons, as that is roughly the population density of Sartar. I cannot find how many people are supposed to work on a hide - an extended family household will easily have more than a dozen actual family members, and possibly some associated people of lower class relying on the productivity of the household. It is also hard to tell how a large household with more than one player character will be impacted by the characters taking more leave than the rules assign. So yes - the rules of RQG are definitely not useful for SimGlorantha. Having a SimGlorantha might be useful for some GMs.

The False Gods revolt in late Second Age Umathela had the cults of Worlath, Ehilm and Jogrampur displaying real magic. Not so surprising for Worlath and Ehilm.

The hole pre-existed, the former Stairway to Heaven (and Hell) which now is plugged by the Tar. That's an awful lot of brain, even if the OOO blew himself up to the size of the giant skull in Dagori Inkarth (which weirdly doesn't seem to be made of lead).

Speaking of Crimson Bats, isn't the Lunar iconography of the Goddess wrong? When Teelo Estara returned from her Goddess Quest, her faithful followers saw her riding a giant hummingbird, not a Chaos bat.

Maybe because all sky-related entities have fathers, even if there may be no mother. Argan Argar's cult in RQ2 Trollpak present him as first god of Darkness born on the surface to Xentha, who was among those who fled Hell when dead Yelm descended - possibly before he even reached Wonderhome. If AA was another parthenogenetic child of Nakala, we would be talking about ZZ, AA and XU as triplets. Instead, ZZ and XU are the manifestation of the original Twins with the Darkness rune. AA is a wisp of Darkness either losing his Cold in the curious spirits event or never inheriting it from his mother Xentha when manifesting on the surface. AA becomes something like Darkfore, the helpful Darkness entity roaming the surface world, helping peoples to survive. And possibly, like Lightfore, he collects other identities to become the one remaining guardian of his element.

Only one step away from the party returning with the still smoking boot of their friend who happened to coincide with the fireball tossed to the resurrector to do their stuff. Now imagine someone else with the other, likewise smoking boot doing the same with another resurrector, asking for six rune points to be spent, Heal Body and Resurrection. Suddenly that spirit combat with the spiritual part of that resurrectee becomes a tug-of-war...

Unrelated to Argan Argar, but another case of a deity looping into eras of Godtime "before" its birth is Mastakos. (Crossposting this from rpg.net) The myth of Orlanth descending to drink from the Well of Daliath would be connected to how the Spike implodes and both the Seas and a cone of air rush after to plug the rift in the world. I usually regard the implosion of the Spike as the start of the Greater Darkness, which puts a lot of the initial Chaos invasions in the Lesser Darkness aka Late Storm Age or Late Vingkotling Age. Despite that, we find Orlanth riding Mastakos' chariot happily during the post-Flood Storm Age while the Spike still stood strong. Likewise Magasta and Brastalos would only meet and unite in the plugging of the Void. Prior to that, Magasta pretty much hid in the Well of Daliath like this myth says Mastakos did - only when the Earth Cube broke into four shards, with the Doom Currents rushing into those breaks, did Magasta emerge and take priority before his siblings Manthi and Natea. Brastalos had been there since Umath made way for the world storm, she is the eye of the Hurricane which moves around from the center of the Surface World (where she was born) far out into the West in her annual cycle, bringing Outer World storm strength upon the East Isles. Her westernmost passage seems to be out on Sramak's River. That would have given her occasion to meet Lorion, Magasta's nephew. Mastakos is hardly the only deity whose myths loop willy-nilly through the Ages. His story is that of the charioteer acquired by Orlanth when he underwent the trial of the Baths of Nelat and took a drink from the Well of Daliath. And this story is strong enough that the archetypical charioteer of Orlanth in other stories is identified with this child of Magasta and Brastalos. When Orlanth had an archetypical Movement Deity as his charioteer during his exploits in Ages of the Godtime that still had the Spike, there is a possibility that whom we don't mention might be another, more important deity, who happens to be Orlanth's maternal grandfather - Larnste, the celestial court god of Movement and Change, including shapechanging, and likely not recognizable as that deity. King of Sartar lists Uleria as the only Celestial Court Power deity who survived the Destruction of the Spike, but speculates about Larnste also having escaped that cataclysm by changing himself into someone or something else. And after the Spike imploded, Orlanth follows the path of Brastalos (the core of the World Storm which he inherited from Umath), and finds his Cousin/Nephew at the bottom of that well. We certainly have the place and the opportunity, and a correlated Godtime event is as good as we get for time. Why is this a dumb theory? Because it argues from wishing to find a logical sequence in any of this Godtime stuff, which I keep telling myself is possible if you say good-bye to one-on-one identifications of the masks a deity archetype wears in the myths (often played by a mortal wearing a corresponding mask in the holy passion plays about that myth that we call This World Heroquests). I have a visualization of Godtime stories as looping lines around a central Spike, following the trail of a single protagonist with a general progress from Creation to the end of the Greater Darkness, although the trail may go up and down a couple of times while surrounding the central Spike. These lines enter the realms of Events, which may be simplified as separate story lines intersecting or joining in an archetypical story. That would be a story with an architecture told again and again with different protagonists and antagonists, with some stories even acknowledging an "earlier" form. Stories told by humans to humans only need to have enough internal consistence for that one story to steer around its major plotholes, it doesn't have to conform with all other stories about that protagonist and her companions that are around to be capital t Truth by simile. Myths are there to give a good story explaining why the world is as it is, or how it changed from a world we know that was into what came after. So we have the disappearance of the embodiment of order, purpose and fixed shape in the center of the world, the Spike, and the two fluid elements of the surface world rusing into that void. The result is the marriage of the Eye of the Storm with the Whirlpool that becomes the Homeward Ocean, and an unprecedented access for Storm to the deepest and secret parts of the seas. That access comes with some cost and trials - whether in the myth about Orlanth retrieving Mastakos only by suffering the searing Baths of Nelat, or in the studies in self-discipline aka Perfect Stillness Kahar has to undergo to become a viable suitor for Harantara. And we have the archetype of the charioteer with the movement rune. We get Ronance the Earth Charioteer, we get Lightfore the charioteer of the true, inaccessible sun, an entity of unlimited movement until the Bridling of Kargzant event, we get the storm charioteer Varnaval with his chariot drawn by ordeeds, and now we find a water deity with a wheeled chariot drawn by sheep in the depths of the ocean. Wheels. In the churning depths of the oceans. Sure, where else? Or we might have the Mover and Changer, giving his translocation to the various environments, required to entrap the Void replacing the Spike by giving Magasta's Pool that rotational energy, but now released back into the crumbling world to enable other movement, like the (highly necessary) Westfaring. Where we have an annual re-enactment of the Westfaring by the movement of the Doldrums in the weather patterns of the world. Brastalos being in two places at once, the doldrums and that column of air going down into Magasta's Whirlpool. Different angles to look at these stories.

Congealed Shadow, from the Dehori shape-shifting of the Nightcult shapes? Perhaps trapped inside some stuff from the Calada&Aurelion cult, and/or the Gemborg Mostali? Might be an alternative to the Iron Sword left piercing the Only Old One that the Shadow Plateau trolls would shower with Cure Iron Burn magic between the annual visits of Belintar who would shove the sword back. I don't think that the destruction of the Obsidian Palace included the demise of the Only Old One.

Funny that: One of my more recent ideas for adventuring in the County of the Isles is the discovery and either underwater looting or salvaging of a Slontan fire-turtle-galley that (was) sunk during the approach to or after the attack on Durengard. Especially the fire-spouting apparatus will be of great interest not just to the dwarves. Less specificly, such a wreck might be found in the waters of the Poison Shore, too, if you don't want to leave Caladraland.

Apparently Fazzur hired the Wolf Pirates using Corflu as the staging ground. The "marines" forces may have included the same dragonewts we meet two years later on the Cradle.

Porting over from Axe Hall, where this blabbering has no relevance at all: mfbrandi and I were discussing the Obsidian Palace prior to 1318, and further down some ideas about Argan Argar. My current image of the Obsidian Palace is one of capillary glass tubes around the hollow of a central tube which has a spiral stairwell (possibly inside a spiralling tube of its own) with bubble-like chambers, opening out to balconies etc., at least for the first kilometers up. There is no lift for cargo or personnel, either you climb the stairwell, or you fly up on the outside, with the balconies as roosts. Darkness is not exactly known to be friendly to birds, while Lodril as Veskarthan is symbolized by a feathered serpent (or atlatl javelin), indicating quite some affinity to feathered life-forms. Which makes me wonder what kind of birds would roost on the flanks of the Shadow Plateau, and formerly on the outside of the spire? Xentha is a goddess of the sky, and may well have an affinity to birds of the night - owls, nightingales, ... maybe kiwis. And to bats. The Palace could have been a hang-out for pteranodons. Twiceborn fits somewhat. We never quite learn which sky god (if any) might be Argan Argar's father. His cult write-up tells us he was born (he took on substance other than Darkness) on the arrival at the surface. My best guess is that he remained a bodiless spirit and then took on his divine body walking the Surface World in the womb of Xentha. Which brings up questions about Xentha. It is no secret that the sky dome and the bowl of Darkness below meet at the edge of the world, somewhere around or in Sramak's River. There is an Underworld Sky which shows its firmament during the period of the greatest tilt of the Sky Dome, in the low northern sky (between the Gates of Dusk and Dawn) during the long winter nights, meaning that we get to see almost two thirds of the rim stars. That is a realm of Darkness, and gets visible only at night, but the stars there still shed light. (And then there's One Night Wish.) Xentha's realm extends all the way to Pole Star, except maybe for the hole where the tip of the Spike pierced the Dome, used as exit by the RIng of Orlanth aka the Sky Bear. Entekosiad has a passage about the White Empress that suggests that before the Sunstop of Brighteye Yelm there may have been a period of a rotating white and dark sun, Sedenya the Turner. If so, Xentha may already have been in the sky before the Brighteye usurpation. I'll stick to the elemental sequence in the self-construction of Mostal the clockwork snowball globe. First a bowl of Darkness around the base of the Spike (which may well have preceded the Darkness), then filled with (possible ever increasing) water (emitted by the Chaosium, quite possibly spilling out over the rim, creating a disk of water surface around the bowl from angular momentum, into infinity), then a cubic pearl manifesting as Creation from the Chaosium accretes the solid inside the water, slowly pushing up the Spike until it breaks free of the surface of the sea - quite likely leaving some sheer vertical walls to the sides above the sea, too - and then the Underworld Sky inside the Darkness bowl built up by tin mostali to complete the set of upper shells, pivoting on the tip of the Spike. With these done and arranged, Mostal had finished creating himself and his metal-caste helpers. Affix a golden source of light in the upper Sky (or three?), and enjoy. But wait, one of those lights is sent diving down into the Earth, and just 30,000 completions of sets of 294 rotation (or however many days a year had before the Sunstop) of the inner dome (with some precession caught up, so actually one more or less) a new element surfaces, pushing the upper dome of its pivot (but still allowing it to revolve) and the earth cube down into the waters so that water can creep back up on the corners. The Mostali then construct 4 columns in the cardinals of the world to keep the elevated dome from tilting, and for another 40,000 sets of such circles the slightly damaged Mostal remains semi-functional. The sky is plasma if you want to assign the states of matter to the middle four of the Gloranthan elements. Darkness would be space (possibly a combination of Dark Energy and Dark Matter?), and Moon... possibly vacuum plasma emissions or Bose-Einstein state matter interference? Bah, as irrelevant as the idea of super-critical fluids when liquid and gaseous states become indistinguishable. Yelm doesn't have to be the first sun. Plentonius posits a quite enormous Age of Aether before that of Yelm in Glorious ReAscent. Sedenya the turning sun (not yet moon) is mentioned, might be his precursor on top of the Spike, a roving searchlight allowing for Darkness up there, so we get both a sun and a not-sun. And Xentha could be a super-conductive plasma absorbing all light emanating from Aether, or simply a light-bending space. The three curious spirits linger around the Chaosium when they encounter Aether in the preparation stage. ZZ becomes burnt (pre-empting the burning of Wonderhome, becoming the Dark Troll (burnt troll) prototype) but learns that Fire can be stolen, or more likely already steals it but becomes unable to use it until Lightfore unlocks it, AA gains immunity to Heat and Lowfires (giving up Cold?) which allows him to wrestle Lodril, XU gains insight. The Dismemberment of Yelm doesn't make the Surface World fall into Darkness immediately, yet it gives way for Xentha to protect the fleeing trolls. The God Learner overviews of how the world looks in the Mythical Maps section fail to account for Xentha until way too late.

Lots of pipes, activity like in a coffee machine with steam bubbles pushing liquids up in some of these, and drainage pipes downward. Argan Argar is the son of Xentha, the Night goddess (a sky entity), and the Obsidian Palace used to be a stairway into her realm until Yelm smashed the top bit at the Dawn.