Joerg

Just to stir up muddy waters slightly more - if a dual wielder attacks twice, does this mean he used up his first, unpenalized parry, but can start parrying at -20%?

What happens when a stronger version of a non-stackable spell encounters a pre-existing weaker version of the spell? Like e.g. Enhance INT? Dispel and Dismiss target the intensity of a spell, which appears to mean the sum of magic points or twice the number of rune points put into the spell, or the points of Free INT required to cast this sorcery spell (including points prepared in an inscribed spell through sacrifice of POW). Does this ignore magic points used to boost a spell (like Axe Trance or Sword Trance)? Let's use a 5 point Dispel Magic on a person having a 2 point Shield and a 4 point Protection. What happens? Does the person casting the Dispel have to boost the spell with one MP in order to overcome the Shield's Countermagic effect? A sorcerer casts a 6 point Neutralize Spirit Magic on the person. What is the resistance to this spell? Let's use an 8 point Neutralize Magic on that same target aiming at the Protection, and succeed with the resistance roll, rolling 40%. Will the target still benefit from the Shield's Protection effect? From the Shield's Countermagic effect? Would a resistance roll of 69% still succeed? Countermagic gets eliminated when overcome by another spell for more than one point exceding its strength, including Shield. On the other hand, Shield can be upped by Countermagic (combined with a sufficient boost) in order to stack the effects. Shield also stacks with Protection. What happens when someone casts Countermagic on a person or other entity under the benefit of- Protection (or Spirit Screen)? Does a 1 point Protection prevent the recipient from receiving a 4 point Countermagic? Now lets add one point of Shield to that one point of Protection, and cast the same 4 point Countermagic on the recipient. What spells are in effect? Countermagic can be a nasty spell when cast on a combatant who has just gone down in a combat, preventing cheap Healings to reactivate them in a hurry (or to avert death). Not quite a Seal Wound, but potentially as deadly. A 3 point Dispel Magic hits a person affected by Neutralize Spirit Magic (Strength 2 Duration 2, i.e. 2 points of additional magic - but Intensity 3, or is it autmatically 2 points because of the spell cost plus 2 points for the added intensities?). Is this enough to remove the spell? Is it enough to target a specific other spell active on the target after winning the resistance roll? If not, how about a 5 point spell: Does it have to overcome the effect of Neutralize Spirit Magic first? Sword Trance doesn't combine effects with Berserker or Fanaticism, but it is theoretically possible to have both Sword Trance and Berserk active, say with a 90% skill in sword attack and 15 points boost the effective attack would be 240% (vs. 180% for just Berserker vs Chaos). Add in a Bladesharp 3, effective attack becomes 270% (vs. 240% for just Berserker plus Bladesharp cs Chaos). The other effects of Berserk are still on (like increased CON or Countermagic, or inability to parry or cast spells) would still be in place. Somebody casts a Countermagic on a Berserker. Does the effect stack with the 2 points already provided by the Berserker spell? Assuming that the caster can overcome the magic points of a person under Berserker influence, what effect will Logical Clarity have on that person?

May I refer you to Oliver Dickinson's "Holding the Baby"?

Magic points can still be used as a measure for magical attrition when a non-Channeler beomes the target of a weave. IMO the channelers of WoT grasping the Source is similar to the result of Tapping, holding way more magic points than they could generate on their own. But then, looking back at the three magics of Rolemaster, that is exactly what Channeling is about. Do you have any concept how to do the Dream activities?

Nandan is mentioned as a gender in RQG p.81, Sex and Marriage box.

In my scenario featuring female descendants of an Asrelia priestesses charged with bringing great-grandma's corpse to her maternal family's tomb I meant to have a pregnant woman and an woman with a toddler on her arms/being breast-fed as pre-gens. The version which I managed to finish so far went into the German HeroQuest scenario collection, and there both forms of maternality can be used as an augment. I see no reason why maternal activities should not be used as a passion in RQG, and I can see few activities more appropriate to accompany fertility magic. Yes, these women will carry their babies into conflict and possibly battle, and out of it as well, and be recipients of divine as well as human protection. In social conflict, like demanding hospitality from clans which may have a few in-laws, demonstrating maternality will be a good boast. Even in social situation with trolls this can be a powerful augment. Uz society is extremely matriarchal, and respect for childbearing or child-raising females is ingrained in troll behavior. True, there is the downside of holding a very tasty looking squirming snack in their arms, but trolls aren't monsters, with the probable exception of Death Lords and their gangs. Toddlers can disarm or distract most martial men, giving the mothers inroads to lay down the existence of another way. This isn't limited to followers of Orlanth.

It is when it is tied to a big rite in the real world, like the dedication of the New Lunar Temple (that was thwarted by the Dragonrise). Given that the White Bear Empire was the foe of Loskalm, and presumably the civilized city states on the Janube, there might have been a major magic of the White Bear Empire under way which might have served as the focus of the Syndics. No idea about specifics yet. The Death of the God of Silver Feet definitely implies that Death was used. This makes me wonder a bit about the consequences of the Lightbringers passing through the Gates of Dusk. We are presented with the weird stuff happening at the Windstop as a consequence of Orlanth having passed into the Underworld. But Orlanth didn't go alone, Issaries was among those who also were dead to the Surface World. Was there as much of a breakdown of communications as we are made to believe the death of Orlanth caused in the Darkness, or was there only a (significant) part of Orlanth away in the Underworld? From Glorious ReAscent of Yelm, it appears that Orlanth's Ring disappeared, with the stars of the Lightbringers. The Windstop did repeat that feature, world-wide, until the Dragonrise quest undid whatever the foul magics of Tatius had done to the sky presence of the Lightbringers. On the other hand, neither Issaries nor Lhankor Mhy or Chalana Arroy and least of all Eurmal experienced any problems with their magic inside or outside the Windstop area despite the absence of their stars. (Though, looking at the description of the Dragonrise in King of Sartar, the text doesn't sound like Orlanth's Ring had disappeared after Whitewall. That text complained that it emerged a few days early. KoS does mention the Eleven Lights, but doesn't elaborate anything about them, and the three new lights would of course have kept the two-weekly cycle of Orlanth's Ring in the sky. But then, Orlanth's magic has never been described as being subject to celestial visibility.) There is a dearth of written documentation about the Greater Darkness while Lhankor Mhy was in Hell. The Silver Age saw the magics of all Lightbringers and even the gifts of Ernalda return to the Surface world in small doses, although only the Dawn itself brought the full release of what was known within Time. With this in mind, maybe the Syndics managed to capture the God of the Silver Feet and to push him through a gate to the Underworld (possibly using the Gate of Banir rather than the Gates of Dusk). The slow process of the Thaw might be a parallel to the long ascent of the Lightbringers from Hell prior to the Dawn. Dormal's arrival in Loskalm (or maybe already at Threestep Isles) may have triggered something in the Underworld, or been accompanied by that. The Lunar efforts followed several years later, with the birth of Jar-eel and her participation in the infants' procession. 0

While I think that Arkati would be involved in such a drastic re-arrangement on the mythic landscape, I would expect them to be on the opposite side. Even after the God Learners cut off all paths to Arkat on the hero plane, there remained those dark warriors as heroquest obstacles or at least encounters wherever your quest would take you. Your post made me wonder if the Kingdom of War could actually have started as all those foiled guardians gathering mortal followers to right what the Syndics did wrong. The deity of communication would have been present whenever a negotiation or a deal was made as a stage of a heroquest, but not necessarily in a form you could attack. From the description of the event, it sounds like a coordinated commando raid at numerous points of attack, taking down the communication with teams far apart striking together. This is similar to the 1042 mass utuma of the dragonspeakers of the EWF or the Umathelan hunt for people who knew or even only knew of that special secret by the GIft Carriers of the Sending Gods. Snodal may have drawn on methods of Halwal, the God Learner who turned against the God Learners, allying with the most varying groups like pagans, Irensavalists or Arkati. The choice of the God of Silver Feet as the target was not (only) to undo the cohesion of the White Bear Empire, but to undo the spell by Zzabur that Snodal learned about looking at the future map of Fronela, showing much of it drowned. (Although I wonder whether that wasn't just a map of the world-wide great flood caused by the glacier plugging Magasta's Pool for a while...) Apparently Snodal had figured out what was targeted by that spell, and by removing the target, the spell wouldn't be able to take effect. The exact results of the Syndics' assassination will have come as unexpected consequences.

RQG p.298 claims that Lhankor Mhy cultists may only marry inside the cult. I recall quite clearly that earlier cult descriptions had the requirement that Lhankor Mhy cultists were only allowed to marry light cultists, emulating LM's partnership with the Lady of the Light of Inspiration (who may have been Ourania, Mistress of Heaven). It was quite hard to find female light cultists among the Orlanthi, unless you allowed Mahome as lowfire. My LM character went for an initiate of the Redaylda subcult of Elmal, which went well with the character's fascination with fast horses and attempts to breed ones near Karse from exotic stock. A weird passion for someone from Pelaskite origins and strong in his roots, but anyway... Then there is Broosta, Daughter of Pavis (the only female one) and Lhankor Mhy initiate, married to Fleeter Nemm, also a Daughter of Pavis. Does her priesthood in the Pavis cult override her LM marriage restrictions? On the other hand, Broosta gives a model how to get your prospective partner accepted by the cult if only marriages inside the cult are sanctioned. The prospective partner has to become literate and a LM initiate on the side, wearing that weird veil, etc. (I wonder whether henna tattoos or permanent ones on the chin, possibly in elaborate patterns, may serve for the "fake beard" requirement...)

Um, no? Channeling uses four elements and spirit. Strands of these are interwoven into the weaves. The strands can be maintained by the channeler, or they can be tied off. It is possible but extremely risky to pluck strands from an active channeling, making it unstable and prone to release its energies uncontrollably. Nynaeve's Healing knack is a weird Wilder talent augmenting her normal spell-weaving abilities for healing weaves significantly. She has an affinity to the patterns. You are mixing up the core components of the weaves and the purposes. These purposes are certain patterns in the weave, and those patterns can be modified or other patterns might be interwoven. I would call these "patterns", and give them certain requirements in the strands that are essential, and possibly common variations with extra strands. I think that the four elements plus spirit serve pretty much the same purposes as the elements in RQG. IIRC, two of the elements were more closely associated with female magic and the other two with male magic, but nonetheless both Aes Sedai and Ashaman had personal preferences overriding these gender affinities. Hmm. I recall this differently. The Aes Sedai would fill themselves with the source from the environment (or in rare cases where the environment wouldn't provide any, from personal storage), then use this huge amount of temporarily available power to put into their weaves. The amount of the Source an Aes Sedai could hold or channel could be increased through Angreal. I am not quite sure how much of this power came in elemental/spirit flavors, or whether those could be chosen by the channeler at will. Something like this looks like it is tied to a characteristic like POW, but might be an exponential effect of that characteristic. It should be a trainable characteristic. An Aes Sedai filled with the Source would have a huge amount of "magic points" available. There was a safe margin for filling yourself with the Source (or channeling it through you), and there was the risky way to channel more than you could normally contain, requiring ever harder rolls, with various risks like Stilling or explosions. Creating the patterns is a matter of skill, and affinities or lack of those to certain elements or patterns can modify these greatly. Is this a game convention? Most weaves in the series lasted significantly longer and also took longer to take effect. Healing weaves were a process of healing rather than toggling the health state. All of this sounds like all the magic comes from the caster, rather than the caster re-directing a bunch of magical flows into a pattern. IIRC the problem with channeling wasn't providing the power, it was providing the control over the flows opened, or containing the power. The latter wasn't helped by the euphoria that came with grasping the source and filling yourself with the power. This sounds like it makes for quite weak channelers. The Aes Sedai feel way more over the top with their abilities. They do get drained of something channeling the power, even though while holding on to the source the euphoria will carry them through the fatigue, only to crash a lot harder afterwards. This sounds like it does something with the channeler's constitution. Then there are the forbidden weaves - weaves that will other people fear and abhor Aes Sedai. Mind manipulation is one of the most common ones.

Appears to be functional in Chrome, too. They can't in character creation, but I don't see why passions or non-opposed runes shouldn't be able to go there through play. And I wonder whether enlightenment/illumination can break the 100% total for opposed runes. Or Tapping. The upper limit of 21 is annoying, too - there are other races which may use a human character sheet (perhaps only with a small alteration in the Man vs Beast pair), and there might be other ways to break the human condition (like Chaos features). Form restraints can be a pain when they don't fit the work flow.. The Man/Beast pair is a bit counter-intuitive in that you need to change Beast for Man to adapt, even though the check box in the square sort of indicates that. Intuitively I start from top to bottom. Sorcerous Free INT is misleading. It calculates points above 13, which is wrong - a sorcerer with INT 13 can learn one technique and one rune, so the algorithm should substract 11. Anyway, the term Free INT is not used for the potential of learning runes and techniques, but for the un-assigned points of INT.

Storm Tribe p.194ff (for Hero Wars) has text quite similar to the quotes from Heortling Mythology. It suggests that the two sisters generally receive joint worship, which may (or may not) be outdated. Thunder Rebels (also for Hero Wars) named a couple of Mahome's brothers as husbands of handmaidens of Ernalda. p.190 "Torabran, who burns the dead to set our breath free, whose wife Teka was the first person cremated." p.87 has a text on funeral rites, which mentions the teka urn. "On the eighth day the family burns a man’s body on a pyre or a woman’s body in a funerary oven. After a man’s ashes blow away on the winds, the relatives place the bones and other remains inside an urn. All of a woman’s remains go into an urn. The funerary urns (known as teka) are buried in the urnfield." There appears to be a clear linguistic connection between the teka urn and the Tek part of TKT's title, and the Kora has been interpreted as another form of "Gor" (as in Maran and Babeester, denoting a Dark Earth connection). I am not quite sure whether Orlanthi practice cremation on female corpses. If they do, they might follow the practices detailed in Thunder Rebels, but I think that body burials with various embalming techniques are at least common, too, especially in Esrolia. And there is a possibility that Storm Tribe leaders of old received body burials, too. If only for the simple reason that burial mounds make for good locations in scenarios, and having a well-preserved corpse inside animated by intruder activity makes a good adversary.

Danmalastan emerged from the Green Age, as did the Six Tribes, if you subscribe to the Zzaburite version of Malkioni history. Alternatively, the Vadeli preceded the Brithini in the West, and may have been visited by Martalak. There is no contest that Martalak precedes Malkion Aerlitsson. But that doesn't mean that the Six Tribes didn't exist yet. Zzabur's One World is Early Creation Age, the same event as the Musicians, Dancers etc. in the East. Vith and his wives getting children is the same step as the formation of Danmalastan with its six tribes. That's an interesting hypothesis. You won't find any evidence for this in the Stafford Library or earlier publications - all of the Stafford Library is written under the doctrine of the Three/Four Separate Worlds. Meksornmali had three parts - square land, where the theists with their priests (priests? at this stage of Theism?) lived, semicircle land (admittedly not a good description for triangular Danmalastan), where the sorcerers lived, and triangular land, where the animists/shamans lived. Sorcery did not come from the north or the south, it came from the west, and only the west. The Jabbi Isles are well inside Sensan (aka Shan Shan) mountains (continued southwards, they would run on to Teleos). Agreed, as far as this statement goes. We do disagree about what else counts as sorcery.

"Sorcerous cult" is already a contradiction in terms... It is quite possible that Invisible Orlanth has sorcerers attached who provide the magical extra to the warriors. I understand that you discount- the possibility of men-of-all from non-Rokari denominations to learn sorcery, but I need better arguments than "it isn't that useful in the middle of combat". Now it is me who is saying "that's just a lore skill", one allowing to make predictions and to milk the utmost out of beneficial constellations for rituals. This works for a purely theist priesthood just as well. Buserian is named as the overseer of Abgammon in the Decapolis, which is dated at YS 60,000, whereas Umath's invasion of the sky ("first rebel gods come to Yelm) is dated at 75,000 YS or later. The eight planetary sons might be the orbs standing above the cities, but then the copper tablets show only one planet in each cardinal direction, and one each in the four lands. (The position of the inverted pyramid/ziggurat isn't quite at dezarpovo, either). Does it? The caption (or preceding text) says that it shows the sky from above. I see the symbols of all the planetary sons of Yelm. It is possible that Dayzatar and Yelm are superimposed, but I think it is more likely that we see this from Dayzatar's position. What's the source for this? The map on page five is titled "the last stable sky", which means to me that this was the formation visited by Umath, and not some draconic precursor. But all of this is straying from sorcery, and doesn't really tell us why the overseer of the city of priests of all celestial people should be the one wielding sorcery. Unless this is based on the similarity between the rune of the (near) eastern son and that of Zzabur in HQ1. I am happy with Pelorian sorcery being primarily of Fronelan origin (or at least passage, and this includes Syranthir's Carmanians) until the EWF and Sheng brought in other (human) varieties. This still leaves Kachisti, Vadeli and Waertagi for various shades of blue-skinned sorcerers in Entekosiad, native Pelandans learning or stealing from them, and pale-skinned ones accompanying Syranthir. Irensavalists only? RM names Ferbrith as the entity contacted by Hrestol's Joy, and that applies to a significant portion of Loskalmi even after Halwal helped overcome the God Learner dynasty. Maybe it is just me thinking in two languages at a time, but calling a dualist theology strict monotheism sounds fairly paradoxical to me. "Spirit Screen" or "Banish Spirit(s)" for starters. Something to counteract spirits. Never mind that Siglat is a demigod with divine ancestry and essence. Do you really think that Siglat or his followers fought in the nude, without any magical protection? We know from the city descriptions in the Guide that there were both weird Hsunchen and Orlanthi trapped in Loskalm after the Ban fell. Those opponents in the frieze appear to be Orlanthi. The description also says that this is an artistic convention rather than the actual equipment. If it was, what business does Meriatan have wearing all that shiny armor, and bringing his sorcerer companion to the meeting with Congern and his wife? The Loskalmi victory certainly was supported by virtue of having the better armament. Hrestol had his revelation through the experience of Joy. Afterwards, he became the first Man-of-all, and after leading a force to a victory against the Pendali as a fighting commander, others like Faralz took up this way. Arkat learned sorcery as part of his becoming a Man-of-All in Seshnela. It was this sorcery that was inherited by the uz, not that of any zzaburi companions of his. Never mind modern Loskalm. Let's look at the Men-of-All before the unholy rise of the Rokari school with its perversion of the original caste system, turning the entire talar caste into mounted warriors without first qualifying as men-of-all. Experiencing Joy is what being a Hrestoli Malkioni is about - that is what set them apart from the Brithini. All the Makanist Hrestoli of the Middle Sea Empire were encouraged by seeking Joy rather than being promised mere Solace. The Irensavalist dualism is a splinter group of Hrestolism that gained great purchase when Halwal (a Makanist Hrestoli wizard) supported them against the God Learners. There is no evidence whatsoever that Talor was an Irensavalist, only conjecture. Prince Hrestol himself surely was not an Irensavalist. So basically the New Idealist Hrestoli Men-of-all are a form of illuminates, from whose ranks some rise to the rank of wizard? Note that the experience of Joy is open to the Dromal caste of Siglat's Loskalm, too, and doesn't result in elevation to the Horal or Man-of-All caste. Your reduction of Hrestolism to just what Siglat and Gaiseron created from Halwal's inheritance in Fronela may work for Loskalm and parts of Junora. It doesn't work for southern Seshnela, Umathela (where Makanist Hrestolism underwent changes after the Cult of Silence), Safelster, or Maniria. Understanding non-Irensavalist Hrestolism should come before postulating stuff about offshoots, whether in Loskalm or the East Isles. There is even a chance that RuneQuest Sight tied into Joy, too. Rokarism denies Joy of Heart, Ascended Masters, Men-of-all, and various other fairly ubiquitious Hrestoli notions which are found in all other sects except the Rokari. Even the Aeolians may be descended from Hrestolism, or adopted it along with (bits of) the Abiding Book. The magic of Malkionism is called the Materialist or the Humanist world view. Making the entirety of Loskalm a sect of mystics somehow leads this description ad absurdum. Malkioni magic is about the mastery over the material world, not of liberation from it. Not even Irensavalist wizards should be created that way.

Orlanthi families don't work like core families, anyway. It is quite common for children of career parents to be raised by uncles or aunts, together with a whole bunch of first cousins or even young uncles and aunts. If your father is a herder, odds are that he was away for all the summers of your childhood, and that your male role model was that uncle or cousin working at the stead. I am a bit puzzled why "ancestral pride" is limited to direct ancestors, but it probably saves explaining Orlanthi family structures until far later in the learning process about them.

Another thought on parrying a blow with two blades instead of one - what AP rating will be used in a parry with crossed blades (or bo sticks, or whatever)?

YGWV - your Glorantha will vary. I expect the upcoming cults book to provide all the cult restrictions etc, so then you may decide how to deal with spells that shouldn't have been available to your characters. In case of doubt, the spell knowledge could always have come from Spell Trading, or from a special blessing by the deity. Play your game with the resources at hand. Your game doesn't have to be canonical. If you think that an idea of yours might cause trouble later on, just ask folk with access to more material. Providing useful answers to concrete questions might cut down on snarks and ill-tempered replies.

Carrying a thread back from Glorantha to RQ: Quoting Peter Metcalfe: I like that, I was thinking about using a familiar to 'store' spells for quick casting but I really like the idea of sorcerers using scrolls. So the sorcerer creates a scroll for a spell capturing the potential for the spell to be cast rapidly, but thy must devote a point of Free INT to hold enough knowledge, linked to the expression of the spell in the scroll, in memory to be able to use it. Nice. Is the scroll expended in the casting though, or is the the Free INT released when doing so? What's the rationalisation for that? Perhaps the spell is actually cast into the scroll, which has to be destroyed in order to release it? I thought that keeping a spell at the ready should diminish the ability to cast other spells a bit. In my example of the movie-style taoist, he could have a few stacks of papers linked to different spells, and activate those at combat speeds (with one SR, probably up to two or three of these per round). When all prepared papers are used up (or get destroyed, the point of Free INT is freed again. Each of those castings should be pre-paid in full, with the activation point an extra expenditure. For more powerful spells, that's an awful lot of MP to put in. RQG sorcery doesn't have a multispell, but the Combine technique might be useful to chain several spells of the same kind. Alternatively, there is one spell to prepare the recipients of this pre-cast, and then each of them needs to be cast individually. Not sure whether this is balanced for RQG, but it might be a nice way to have a wuxia magician with RQG-based rules. If using a scroll, that would be expended in the casting, or probably the seal on it will be expended. Without the seal, the remains of the scroll would be just a piece of parchment (clay tablet, papyrus, or whatever). For some reason (possibly just indoctrination from an exposure to AD&D) I think I would prefer scrolls to hold one seal/spell activation per item only. Creating these scrolls and seals should have some material cost, too, in addition to production time. Creating scrolls for someone else might be possible, but should involve that other person in the making of the scroll. The blocked point of Free INT might affect both the spellcaster and the scroll user. A procedure not that different from Issaries' spell trading rune magic, there applied to rune points. With a scroll, the person activating it would still have to target the magic (the taoist variant above would target by touch - the paper touching the target, released from short range), involving a skill roll (for touch a roll on unarmed combat?).

With the RQG paragraph on Rokari personal magic in the sorcery chapter, I find it hard to name significant differences between a run-of-the-mill Rokari peasant and a Carmanian peasant. Orlanthi peasants are about 95% initiates of deities or spirit cults. Lodrili peasants do sacrifice, but apparently as a group rather than as individuals, receiving the divine magic through the priesthood performing those sacrifices. Personal initiation to specific cults appears to be rarer than among Orlanthi. Only two types of Malkioni learn sorcery now, it appears - zzabur caste members with sufficient talent, or men-of-all with sufficient talent. The Rokari solve the problem by recruiting children with proven high INT for the celibate Rokari caste at age 5. I wonder how they manage to do that... in Germany, pupils are made to select their branch of school at age 10, and that may be too early for them to show the extent of their mental capacity. The New Idealist Hrestoli claim to have a meritocracy. Now it is possible that members of the Malkioni culture receive a cultural INT bonus in character creation. Loskalmi encounter sorcery training only after having been raised to the "knight" caste, misleadingly called "men of all" when they have mastered neither zzaburi nor talar caste abilities yet. The older Hrestoli ways as practiced in southern Seshnela in covert defiance of the Rokari, and on the Castle Coast and in parts of Ralios in open defiance of the Rokari. The rest of the Malkioni use spirit magic and/or divine rune magic. Now how are they different from pagans in Safelster or Dara Happa? Does mandatory attendance to the "Worship Invisible God" rites on Goddays with the magic point sacrifice make them any different from Turos worshipers in Doblian doing the same for their Carmanian culture overlords? The idea of sorcerous orders whose scripture gave access to spells and blessings which were associated with the major schools of sorcery/philosophy (to avoid the word "church") was touted in HeroQuest 1. It made some sense that communal donation of magic could be turned into blessings by the orderlies. I also feel that rote knowledge might be all that is required to create a magical effect, it doesn't always have to be deep understanding and deduction. That's not quite how the pre-ancient world worked. Single-use enchantments, like scrolls, or taoist seals, might be another way to have sorcery rather than a divine uplink to create a magical effect triggered by a secondary action (that still needs to be learned), but here we get into the territory of "something you have", which is a (slightly weird) generalization of animist magic. Right now we are in a situation that both HQG and RQG use the same concept of the six techniques with their inter-relations (Command and Tap inferring all other techniques, the other two pairs only inferring their respective opposite), without making them an ability that is rolled but more like an initiatory state - you know a technique direcly, can infer it from another technique you know, or don't know it at all. "Mastery of the Runes" is a bit unfortunately named in RQG since it has a quite different meaning in HQG, where passions rather than skills can be rolled as activity in a conflict, and mastery is measured as a scale rather than a on/standby/off model. The HQG sorcerer uses his grimoire ability as the basic ability, with spells as break-out. The RQG learns all the spells individually, based on the written sources available to them. On a non-rules level the sources we have around the Abiding Book or Zzabur's writings and how they contain magic were interpreted like that in HQ1. This has been lost to some extent with the HQG approach. In an ideal game system we would have techniques and runes that have become a part of the magical self of the sorcerer enabling him to interpret a piece of scripture and make into a spell creating an active magical effect in the world, or learn how that spell does what it is doing to reproduce the effect. (Whoever said sorcery would be easy?) This doesn't get easier with the way "high level" practitioners of shamanism, theism and sorcery access the magic of divine level magical entities. Shamans approach such entities on something resembling their turf and negotiate or gamble to get them do a thing for them. That's a bit different from taking a lowly spirit, giving it a charm to inhabit to be in the world of life, and release it to do its stuff, but not too different. "Something you have" doesn't quite describe how a Soul Wind is released... High level Theists become their deity, and just perform the feats. Easy enough. Sorcerers make magical entities do their bidding through their runic natures. "You there, you are a second tier air elemental that deigns to take on a useless identity by the name of <X>. As a second tier air elemental, through my knowledge of your nature I bid you do <Y> (something that is part of your nature)." Taking that to the lowest level isn't really much different from spirit magic. "Spirit, I bid you enter this housing I prepared for you." "Spirit in the housing, by the nature of you and the housing you reside in, I bid you to do <Y>." That housing would be almost indistinguishable from a spirit spell focus, and the effect indistinguishable from a spirit spell effect. I do put some stock in certain societies being different from the spirit magic users in Prax, Maniria and Peloria, especially the westerners, but why not also a good portion of the easterners? It is true that we never received the equivalent of the Genertela Box' Players Book for the parts of Glorantha presented in The Missing Lands. We did get Elder Secrets for Mostali and Aldryami, without any attempt to make the Mostali any more playable. I don't have access to the full range of ancient notes and scribbles, but from mentions in old interviews or APAzine articles, concepts like the ancient home of the keets are at least as old as the heyday of RQ2, so the weird east, the invasion of the seas ending much of that great culture, and that weird presentation in the Jonstown Compendium show that a lot of the basic thoughts finally presented in Revealed Mythologies are fairly old - the story of Kahar, Harantara and Nenduren is a good explanation for the otherness of the Zabdamar which has been there ever since the Gloranthan Bestiary got published or Kahar's Sea of Fog mentioned. (Kahar's Sea of Fog was present already in 1978 for it to be shown in that world map on p.6 of RQ2, although the implications may have grown gradually). RQ offered two significantly different magic systems, battle magic and rune magic. Cults of Terror published the four world views, which somehow became the Four Separate Worlds by the time Hero Wars was published, and probably at least a decade earlier. Greg was fairly emphatic about that "magical organ" that a person developed to interact as a conduit with the world of magic, or in case of mystics as an isolator or reflector already in the middle nineties. The mysticism of the east has its pure form - the meditating mystics spending ages or centuries in contemplation and/or otherworldly experiences, or the "applied mystics" who accumulated insight by living right, as exemplified by the dragonewts and apparently also a good portion of the Eastern humans, keets and even merfolk. Not certain about the eastern Ludoch, but sure about the Zabdamar. In a way, this goes for the eastern Antigods, too. They seek to attain oneness with their activity or rune of focus - be it an elemental rune or some other principle. And their presence may just be a manifestation of austerities of the greatest mystics. Revealed Mythologies sort of re-introduced spirit magic to the East with the spirit master of the three Sheradpara brothers, but the presence of the sorcerous Sheradpara brother Martalak remains, so we have to deal with Eastern sorcery. Mystical martial arts are something you learn and then perfect. The RQ3 Land of Ninja ki system was an interesting way to tie this in with a skill system, but suffered from the "initiate gap" the same way that only very few and exceptional RQ3 player characters ever made it to rune levels unless more or less created that way through inventive application of the Previous Experience system and starting with old characters. It is fine to have a skill threshold to reach before you can start developing the quasi-magical effects of the ki skills, but putting it at 90% just to start developing it is basically taking these out of the game. I would be happy with a more reachable ki skills approach for mystical martial arts, including stuff like seals, and the original Men of All having something vaguely similar. Not all men-of-all are Irensavalists like Talor, although all should be able to draw on the experience of Joy. I think that the Malkioni use sorcery for battle or quest preparation the way an Orlanthi would use a sacrifice. Martial arts cliche has opponents do a kata or a swirl or the like before initiating combat. Think of that as casting the spell. Likewise, the self-presentation of the heroic warrior primes the warrior for his magic in combat. Sorcery is a literate magic, and inscribing a formula shorthand through motion of the weapons and/or the body might be another way to activate a spell. I would like to see meditative katas transforming into effective battle actions. The martial arts styles we have been presented so far don't have clear core rune affinities associated to them, and any such system needs to start looking at the documented instances and explaining those (or giving extremely good reasons to discontinue them). That's not what Egil and other famous Viking sorcerers did. The question remains whether this calligraphy would be a sorcerous spell or rather something like a ki skill, but yes, this is what I was thinking about when considering how cinematic or manga taoism could translate into Eastern Gloranthan mystic warriors or spell casters. Ways to limit this in RQ might be temporally blocking Free INT for a spell effect, with a limited stack of applications (and paper sheets) of that ability tied to the intensity of the pre-cast. While it could be possible to block more Free INT, the maximum intensity of the pre-cast will be reduced with each additional stack - a game of diminishing returns. The MP cost during activation, even if drawn from a storage, provides another limiter. Tapping hit points creates all sorts of mechanical problems and should be avoided. However, whatever we define for RQ had better also have a manifestation in HQ. How to do a ki skill in HQ? A breakout of another ability at one mastery less? I don't know enough about 13th Age rules to be qualified to suggest something for that system. More later, work calls.

From the context, you might have seen that I threw this out in exasperation: Says the person who just gives the title of the book on the Wikia. I do use the wikia, try to improve it in small ways when entries are particularly unsatisfying or frustrating, suggest changes where my ideas of improvement might conflict with Peter's ideas about the course of the Wikia, and most of all I try hard to avoid edit wars. What I really want is an information system which makes use of all available publications, ideally able to open a pdf at exactly the places quoted from the memory device of the user (so that all you need to search a document is to tell the system where to find the searchable pdf in order to call up the source quotation), and able to provide a map with thematic layers pertinent to the request (something a GIS could provide). That way everybody could search their own library of Glorantha documents for quotations, or have to make do with Glorantha Wikia style one line "explanations" unless some editor wrote up a nice essay on the search term without violating any copyright. Just naming a non-searchable source like the Middle Sea Empire pdf isn't worth much, and referencing a 300+ pages book that you don't have a searchable pdf of is similarly frustrating. The Wikia also notoriously deleted references to published documents which Peter thinks are "post-canonical", obscuring a lot of potentially useful research links. The presentation and data structure of the wikia has been shaped by Peter, and it serves his preferences. It remains somewhat useful, but some functionalities like blind redirects to a page rather than having a list of terms which re-direct to an entry is far from helpful if your research lands you on the same page over and over again. .Try finding out in which region of Glorantha the last Jrusteli king of Melib left the Red Sword from the wikia. I don't know the conventions for creating a disambiguation page, and having no means to see which pages link to a given page is a serious flaw in the service provided by wikia. The lack of synonyms listed on a page is a serious flaw, and Peter's naming conventions and adjective formation are quite different from what I expect.

Another way to induce this might be found in the WIndstop event. There were clans who "survived" by going into the Deep Sleep, and she might have been one of the guardians maintaining the undisturbed rest of those clan members. Ty Kora Tek is often depicted as a heroquest obstacle in the Underworld, she needs to be overcome through persuasion or self-sacrifice to release a soul in her care. The Ernalda Quest in King of Dragon Pass has Ernalda bargaining for her son Barntar with TKT. But at the same time, TKT is the guardian against the desires of Nontraya. A scenario of mine has preparation for a body burial as a set of side quests organizing materials for optimum conservation of a corpse (without going all the way to Egyptian mummification) leading to a set of rites. Esrolia has two giant necropoleis, the Antones Estates west of Nochet with easily twice the "inhabitants" than the living city, and Megapolis Koravaka aka Necropolis surrounded by the artificial lake made by Vogarth Strongman. Both these places will have a significant priesthood of TKT, with lots of magics to return "uppity" corpses to rest, to deny Undeath, and to keep foes out of hallowed ground. Other magics of the Goddess may be rites to prepare a soul for rebirth, and might actually be part of Earth conception magics. This might be some kind of heroquest path rather than anything spell-like, though.

So basically a character who wants to go all defensive can use this series of parries after a similar series of dodges. Does dodging successfully save you a parry attempt?

Says the person who just gives the title of the book on the Wikia. I had been referencing the terrain maps of the various homelands as having less generalization before,. This means that for some reason the location of the place has shifted upriver. Knight Fort made its first appearance on the gameboard of Les Dieux Nomads, and was associated with a counter of heavy cavalry ranked among the Independents (much like the SUn Domers) that wasn't anythng like the Pol Joni (who appear in the Barbarian Hord of Le Guerre des Heroes,/Dragon Pass but don't get representation in that boardgame). The intent behind this was a representation of western-style horsemen shielding the Holy Country (source: personal communications with Stephen Martin, discussing ideas for playing the "mundane" game of hex map and stacks for the Holy Country). The holy places and ruins of Prax are designed to lie upon straight lines across hex borders, aka Ronance's trails, so a position on the intersection of the line going through Stormwalk and Monkey Ruins and a north-south line through Tada's Tumulus would have made sense, too. The map as published in Dieux Nomads had a few mistakes in that regard (in addition to a hex pattern that didn't quite match up with the geography), but the hex map on etyries.com corrected those mistakes. Checking the position of the fort on the hex map, it lies soutwest rather than northwest on the hex map, but on the same river/serpent running down from the Storm Mountains. That position would have placed it squarely on the edge of the Marcher Baron territory where it belongs. So yes, Knight Fort has been moved in this map (p.111), bears an outdated name, and makes a lot less sense. Good catch wrt the repositioning. My suspicion is that we see a mapping error here. I don't know whether the place is on the transparent layers of maps that covers all of Genertela all the way from westernmost Seshnela to Vulture Country (and possibly a bit beyond). I know that the maps for the Guide were created from those layers, leaving out a great deal of detail in and around Dragon Pass. Jeff's 2015 text clearly marks it as part of the Marcher Barons fortifications, too, which is consistent with what has been written about the place since Dieux Nomades came out. No need to pour it out with the Hendreiki knights' bathwater. Nowadays those heavy horsemen are likely to be warlike Esvulari talar caste folk in service to marcher barons.

The way I interpreted the text, mastering the Moon rune doesn't grant any insights to the other elements, but the Lunar cult of the Young Elementals grants access to all elemental runes except air through the Lunar school of sorcery. Carmanians might be able to add Air, too (Invisible Orlanth...) Ancient Brithini: Passions don't play into the INT-blocking acquisition of Runes and Techniques - do you mean the Powers? According to the rules, a rune or technique mastered cannot be unlearned. An ability to compress them into a single rune might be an advanced form of magic, possibly taking a century or two to learn. The Zzabur rune as the combination of all six mastered techniques, a pentagram as the combination of all the elements, an eight-branched stick for all the Powers, and something else for all the Forms might be possible. In order to do something like this, you might have to have mastered all of these in their own right before starting the amalgamation, a serious drawback to practical applications. I expect the Mostali to have Mostal's tools rather than logical applications. Jeff mentioned the Mostali "technologies" that power their sorcery: https://basicroleplaying.org/topic/7439-glorantha-technology-and-glorantha-material-technology/?page=2&amp;tab=comments#comment-104041 While some of these appear to be purely mechanical or chemical contrivances to us (black powder, cylinder pumps, gears, steam tubes), the other ones are pretty much the sorcery I expect from Mostali. The claims that all these inventions were stolen from the Mostali is dubious, to say the least. The Kadeniti claims for inventing architectural technologies and civic engineering are at least as good. Zzabur's Spirit Trap was engineered using Malkioni sorcery rather than Mostali alchemical transformation, and while it does mostly the same thing the Mostali device does, it is a feat of imitation rather than theft. I have little doubt that the Mostali stole or imitated much of their technology from other, precursor races, like the Feldichi or the Gold Wheel Dancers and probably hundreds others that we lost memory of in the Gods War. The Mostali will hotly deny this, and believe their claims much like people enamored with "alternate facts". I don't think that Dara Happan Star Lore has many spell applications, but I agree that by its very nature ()something learned) it has aspects of sorcery. It probably uses or replaces gears and similar devices for reproducing and predicting stellar movements. Personally, I prefer a purely light-based magic with crystal prisms forming the Firestick axis in their Star Towers. Personally, I see Buserian as the sacrificer of cattle (or bulls, compare Busenari, Mother of Cows). That activity probably predates the emergence of the Stars in the wake of Umath's celestial rampage. The original bearer of stellar lore may have been Zaytenaras, the other planet (in addition to Entekos and the eight planetary suns/sons) in the sky. The Carmanians are heirs to various traditions - the Spolite sorcery quite likely hearkens back to YarGan's minions. The 10,000 bring pre-God Learner Loskalmi/Akemite sorcery to the shores of Lake Oro In the time of the RQ Daily, I compared notes with Nick Brooke about Persian-inspired cultures using a priesthood of the High One(s) and a caste of sorcerers keeping the Dark/Underworld/Demonic/Disruptive forces of the world in check. My own RQ3 (modded) setting's Fharsistan has a mock-Mithraic Light Side deity and mag wizardsi keeping the demonic side in check, dealing with summoners using blood rites on two fronts, one human and imperial, one non-human and horde-like. Nick expanded his Gloranthan insights on the Spolite Darkness and its Ganesatarus links. The various (and different) blue-skinned sorcerers encountered between the Sweet Sea and Lake Oronin (formerly Mt. Turos) had not yet taken as much shape as they received in the Entekosiad, but definitely were there in some form, tied to Castle Blue. This would be true of the New Idealist Hrestoli/Irensavalists had not had a history of 14 centuries of struggle with the various beast toten peoples of Fronela and Ralios/Seshnela. The Enjoreli bull folk were as much a threat to Talor's Loskalm (or to that of Talor's predecessors) was very real, and I think that the magic deployed against these had a tradition of its own in the ranks of the Men-of-All. The higher consciousness magic you propose may come either through vision/grail quest like exposure to the Otherworld or be practiced by the wizard caste after the other stuff had been mastered. RQ3 had that weird Godunya's magic which was basically using rune points to do sorcerous manipulation of magic, and said to be draconic in nature. But there was of course the New Dragons' Ring under ShangHsa MHNBC with their Seshnegi sorcery somehow adapted to Yanoor's Kralorela. Sheng Seleris also brought Pelorian concepts to Kralorela and Kralorelan concepts and magics (and personnel) to Peloria. And then there are the Huan-to and their human servants with their adpara sorcery. There is Sheradpara sorcery in what used to be Govmeranen's Realm, and according to RQ3 that even replaced spirit magic for the Parondpara of the East Isles. With the RQG approach that limits sorcery to a small portion of the population (unless the sorcerer caste is generous casting long term Enhance INT on their less giftet kin). I am still somewhat caught up in the notion that a lot of the martial arts may practice some form of sorcery, limited to their combat styles. I wouldn't mind seeing more of a form of spell-casting that uses writing, or pre-written foci, to release sorcery. We know this from various east Asian fantasy movies where patches of calligraphed paper fly between sorcerers and demons. (And we find this in a very unlikely place, too - Egil Skallagrimsson carves runes into pieces of wood in a very similar manner.) I am not sure that Tishamto had sorcery, although I would be less surprised if the Veldang picked it up or even brought the core concept with them and spread it to the Doraddi. But Bolongo makes a singularly unsuitable candidate to be saddled with sorcery. A Bolongo-influenced anti-Pamalt-pantheon north of the Fensi mountains might, though, and that appears to be what Garangordos came from before his studies of Vadeli secrets. The Fonritian sorerers did of course inherit a lot from the Malkioneranist God Learners (more so than from the original Abiding Book movement, IMO). The purge of the God Learners was complete and drastic in Umathela, but I wouldn't be surprised if at least some of the God Learner teachings survived unter the mantle of slavery. Fonrit is also where I would for remnants of Six-legged Empire sorcery. I doubt that, really. Most Vithelan practices of magic are about dealing with the world, IMO, purifying the world to create conditions in which the sages can pass on their meditative wisdom. There is of course the myth about sorcery coming from Meksornmali, and it is distinct from that of Babadi, one of the Adpara servants or allies of Bandan. (Taktari, lord of the stone monsters, sounds like another form of Mostali troubles in the east.) Point of contact with Danmalastan could have been a stray Kachisti colony, stray Vyimorni/Vadeli explorer-raiders, or Waertagi support bases at the furthest reaches of the waters of the Neliom currents (presumably also with Kachisti or Kadeniti pesonnel brought there on their ships). We know about Sog's Ruins, which is situated on the shore carved by Worcha out of the land of Prax. It is a major feat of Waertagi land-bound engineering (a bit of a contradiction in terms, really), and appears to have been given up in favor of Nochet by the Silver Age. We do of course know about a colony of "Brithini" in the neighborhood, without surviving port structures for big Waertagi vessels. There may have been similar structures south of what remained after Worcha's rage had been spent against the Vingkotling lands, we just don't have any maps showing what went on there. The Waertagi might, and given that they weren't on good terms with the God Learners and impossible to infiltrate after Tanian's Victory, the Middle Sea Empire never managed to get that information (which would have been pretty useless for practical purposes). But then there was Teleos somewhere in that region, which nobody knows much about. But, like with Kralorela, I see various schools of mystical warriors and sorcerous magicians banishing or trapping demonic entities, in the best tradition of also Korean cinema.

In which case the map entry might indicate a network of marcher fortifications rather than a single site. A map of Prax detailing the environs of Pavis doesn't have to be accurate in Heortland-occupied territory, so unlike Christian's Bay I won't discard the notion of one larger, better fortified place between the distributed lesser forts. After all, the map in RQG clearly shows Knight's Fort.