Joerg

That's the site of the Tentacles conventions, Castle Stahleck in Bacharach on the Rhine, the previous German convention organized by Fabian. The Kraken convention is in a different venue, Palais Neuhausen in Brandenburg. There still is a RQ/Chaosium/Glorantha-related convention at Castle Stahleck, Eternal Convention, with another international crowd. Gaming at the castle still is a thing (not just for the RuneQuest crowd, there are other German fan associations using the castle at dates other than Whitsun).

Check Drivethrurpg for the pdfs. DIY printing will result in practically the same quality as the originals.

@Eff did a great summary about the available sources.

Valley of the healers, blood beer. I always felt like this was similar to the Humakti Lead Cross heroquest.

No one might be a bit of an exaggeration if you think of the Mraloti subjects, but possibly noone within sight of the sea. My main problem with Khorst is how it manages to feed itself - Cajun-like harvesting the marshes to support an urban population?

The Weapons and Equipment Guide has a good list.

The Ernaldori priestesshood of the Clearwine temple uses matrilocality and matrilineality while the majority of the Colymar practice patrilocality and patrilineality. At least some of the Hiording nobility trace their origin to Hiord, suggesting patrilineality.

Sources: RQG GM Screen package Colymar Adventure Book, King of Sartar: Jalk's Book, HQ2 Sartar: Kingdom of Heroes, and most importantly what I can recall without actually looking at these sources right now: The Colymar entered Dragon Pass as a single clan "around 1300" in 1317 or 1318 upon the defeat of the King of Heortland against Belintar, or upon his return a year after he was slain by Belintar. The clan prospered, and split into six clans forming the Colymar tribe. Several of these clans were led by descendants of Colymar and Hareva, others weren't. One of the initial six clans was destroyed around 1350 when the Second Wave clans and tribes entered the Stream Valley. Other clans which had settled north of Tarndisi's grove joined the tribe (making it multilineal if it had not been previously), starting with the Hiordings and the Karandoli, a warlike clan also in the neighborhood which had started the Taral War (IIRC, might have been the Zarran War first) which involved one of the two triaties in the northern parts of the Colymar lands (as of prior to 1613), the Hyaloring or Runegate triaty and the Tree Brothers triaty. Both triaties each lost the integrity of one clan, which then was rebuilt by some of the original Colymar clans "lending" Colymar-descended nobility to that clan. A similar fate befell the Karandoli clan after it had started in strength (even fielding the sixth, IIRC, king of the Colymar shortly after joining the tribe). At least two more individual clans joined the tribe during these troubles, the Varmandi and the Jenstali, all in the northern portion of the tribal lands. Little is known about the origins of the Hiording clan other than the "heroic" tale of its founder Hiord stealing and hiding the swan garment of his later wife who enjoyed a skinny dip in human shape. After she had given him a few heirs, she somehow retrieved her swan garment and returned to her beastmen kin, IIRC.

Looks like you, @French Desperate WindChild, are about as dogmatic about this as I am. Which is unnecessary. Flowers are the sexual organs of plants. Mythologically as well, btw. There is a reason why lifebringers like Voria make the ground bloom. And why Voria adorns hersefl with mutilated sexual organs (flowers) like her slightly older sister Babeester. Flowers as food are a great exception. Flowers as source of flavours or of colour are known, but like every grower of buckwheat or sunflowers knows the seed follows a stage as flowers, and there are bees or other such agents involved. That's both the science and the myth about bees. Take away one, and you lose the other. Unless you think of Lotus Eating, which is a thing in Ignorance, and a potential export good if you ask Can Shu, Glory of Ignorance. Hazia is a case of flower stamen used as drugs. Saffron is a case of flower stemen used as (food) dye and/or spice. (Admittedly, there are Real World flowers which grow fruit but not seeds thanks to human interference, like the industrial banana of the western world, or like seedless grapes. These are aberrations, the kind of stuff that caused the downfall of the God Learners.) Our ancestors saw flowers before they had the capacity to think about them. But our ancestors also began to cultivate pseudocereals like buckwheat, or actual flower seeds like sunflowers, and they could observe how many berries or similar edible parts like strawberries retain the outer leaves of the flower. At some point, humans understood that following their sexual urges would result in babies. And as hunters, they observed this in their prey as well as in their carnivorous rivals. And as gatherers, they observed how pollination resulted in fruits forming, and how lack of pollination left the flowers barren. Our ancestors were not idiots, but keen observers. Whether they knew exactly what pollen or stemen were for or not, they easily observed a connection. And for the steps they did not understand, they found spirits etc. as explanations. So maybe pollen was some kind of fairy dust to them? Regardless, it had to do with carrying fruit, and fruit had to do with seeds which in turn often resulted in plants growing. From such observations our neolithic ancestors in many parts of the world cultivated certain grasses or flowers to provide them with more and bigger and better accessible seeds by processes of selection, long before a monk by the name of Mendel set out to do some math about that. Divinity can be mindless, too. Like volcano gods receiving food sacrifices on Java, with the people sacrificing the food not minding that there are poor people in the inside slopes of the crater catching and consuming their sacrifices, as long as these sacrifices have been properly offered. Is there reason behind worship and sacrifice? Is it some form of social ostentation - both among the people performing it and towards the divine? How much of that is identary (creating the in-group) rather than aiming to reassert reality? Do sun worshippers perform mourning rites each sunset? If not, why not? Read photosynthesis as creating fertility from sunlight or lesser sunlight, something mythically required by modern Gloranthan plants since the birth of Aether fairly early in the Green Age. Plants crave and require Sunlight, whether you call it photosynthesis (literally "making something out of light (and used-up or "stagnant" air, and water)" said with Greek syllables, without any reference to chlorophyll or osmosis or anything molecular) or "showering plants with life- and growth-enhancing light". So, yes, if you have plants that like Yelm (like Aldrya's), you have and need photosynthesis in the literal sense. We also have stygosynthesis by Mee Vorala, turning rot into growth. Fire elves and their habitat in southernmost Pamaltela probably has pyrosynthesis instead. You might also have aeolosynthesis, plants making stuff and harvesting energy from moving air, if you want. Pollination can be a divine or spirit act, but its presence in Glorantha has been documented. The gods have plenty justification for making such things happen now that they have ruined the Green Age when it may have been superfluous. It is their fault that this is necessary, and it is their responsibility to make it happen. Pollination seems to be part of the power of Flamal (fathering seeds). Shedding light so growth can happen used to be Aether's job but was inherited by Yelm. The gods, or at least the runes wielded by them, are required - even your most materialist and atheist sorcerer will corroborate that. So, again (and again and again): Glorantha is not a world without "spreading growth-enabling dust from blossoms" or "making stuff out of light". These myths are foundational, and removing them will crash the world. They have deities associated with this whose very being is to enable such stuff. You don't empower these deities by taking away stuff that results in bees being useful to flowering plants, you castrate them and the meaning behind them, making them cartoon versions of themselves. Do you want Yelm Squarepants?

Sounds like good material for long distance relationship marriages, then. Come home for some make-out sessions after some serious bathing and grooming, then send them off as far as possible to do boy stuff while keeping the more useful sons around to do man stuff. I wonder how much of a bestiality taboo holy people of Storm Bull and Eiritha have towards their totem animals, or towards minotaurs. If you look at the Founders, they basically are minotaurs of the corresponding totemic beast. That's barely human, too...

While that is true not just for sewers but also for any other kind of confined underground cavity, keep in mind that most ancient world sewers are first and foremost drainage systems for rainwater, often with the additional purpose to collect the water for cisterns, rather than the almost sludgy stuff in the collection tubes from modern cities which often have separate systems for rainwater, too (if for other reasons - mixing rain water with highly polluted water actually makes treatment harder and more expensive). So, when you set up a sewer system, first think whether you have toilets flushing into this system. Most toilet systems in older cities were mainly holes in the ground collecting whatever fell into them, with the liquid slowly seeping into the ground around them. Dangerous places if you fell in - there is one report from Lübeck where a groom and his brother lost their lives down in the loo on the wedding. Trolls can eat anything, including air, and possibly also bad air. There might be trained food trollkin tasked with eating up the bad air in the tunnels.

Over here in Europe, the GW RQ3 creatures hardcover may be easier to get hold of second hand. IIRC it included some of the statted samples in RQ3 Monster Coliseum. Sadly not the RQ3 Gloranthan bestiary, but still a much improved product.

While I wouldn't expect to find Professor Tolkien or C.S.Lewis on the Rubble walls, there might be some features up there that could support small patches of vegetation, but given the general dryness of Praxian climate, lichen would have a hard time, and so would mosses. Around the Garden I would expect a thorough invasion by vines, and after years of neglect also a bit of topsoil protected by such vines, possibly allowing some stunted tree growth, or possibly Angkot-Vat like formation of roots reaching down on both sides of the wall. Much of the surface material will be processed Giant Jolanti material, with only occasional bits of Paragua's stone slabs peeking through at the surface, possibly cropped by the Flintnail cult to provide a sufficiently smooth surface. I don't recall any crenelation on the Rubble Walls, but there might be some uniform raised balustrade on both sides, though not necessarily more than a meter. Flying creatures would perch on the wall before swooping down onto any prey. Whether any of the creatures that named the old Rubble Gates will be present in the Modern Age is a different question. Gargoyles are possible, as are meditating dragonewts. On the troll-adjacent walls, trollkin may keep the top of the wall clean.

Participants in holy rites may claim exemption from marriage vows, although high honor stats might take a minor hit if there is more debauchery than religious practice involved. Adultery with initiates or rune levels of Eurmal, Uleria, Yinkin or Orlanth Niskis can be regarded as holy re-enactment, too, but that's a thinner excuse, especially away from sanctified ground. Day marriages undergone with sufficient ritual oomph might turn what would otherwise be adultery into legitimized polyandry/polygyny, too - always depending on the level of exclusivity in the marriage vows. Another passion that might take a hit is "love <marriage partner>" or "love <family>". On the other hand, passions like "sensual" or "promiscuous" might be created or reinforced. There might be in-laws willing to sue participants from stricter forms of marriage, and some might be powerful enough to even take on a major temple like Three Emeralds. In the end, this is a matter of player-buy in and circumstances, and/or GM nastiness. Especially when failure to participate might affect Devotion passions.

How Gorakiki Bee lost Darkness? How Gorakiki Bee collected Sunlight, and was changed by that? Hoy exposure to Aether caused Gorakiki to grow hymenoptera wings? (She, or her mother, may have mixed in to the Three Curious Spirits encounter with fetal Aether, and may have been impregnated with light?) And that's just using Gorakiki. Verithurusa's dip into the Underworld following the encounter with Umath in the sky might have spawned (some, or possibly most) moths, for instance. Another approach might be the life cycles of higher insects, with a Darkness stage (the maggot/larva), an Earth stage (the pupa) and a Sky/Fire/Air stage (the imago), plus whatever rune you might wish to assign to the egg stage. Certain types of insect like dragonflies or great diving beetles might use Water for the larval stage (although the hunger drive is important there, too, as anybody who has witnessed a great diving beetle larva among tadpoles will be able to attest - with a nod towards Giger's xenomorphs). Another thing for your friend to explore could be the various timinits of Jrustela and Umathela, currently only described in the Guide p.503, although there were some stats for Myrmidons and Lucans in the RQ3 Gloranthan Bestiary, and a few more in the Jrustela books for MRQ 1 and 2 and the associated bestiary books. There are no known ancestral ties to Gorakiki or Aranea.

Sounds a bit like a Thursday Next cross-over.

Didn't feel like that to me, but I take your point. So were you speaking about the divine ancestors of ordinary plants, or do you want your ordinary plants to follow these Green Age rules despite all the detrimential influence of several cataclysms, and Time in general? Gods as well as mortals were created through a variety of processes. The three fiery sons of Aether were thought into existence, as was Dayzatar's offspring. The first mortal humans spring from a variety of origins, including being made of clay with various magical additions, being the lesser children of deities or runes, or resulting from often weird matings, or from parthenogenetic births. Durev (a common ancestor of many Orlanthi) was carved out of a tree by Orstan the Elder. Emperors often beg to differ. While talking about different effluvia of Moonson, the two MOB stories about the Red Emperor's chamber in the Rough Guide to Glamour do indeed assign divinity to the profane. Properly administered, it may trigger the magic of creating a new life. Plants do thrive on nutrients - Pamaltelan lineage plants for instance thrive on the graves of the Doraddi ancestors and their descendants. Not necessarily IRL processes, but personally I find eliminating the concept of pollination quite drastic - effectively, it removes all male plants or plant components except male elves, and it makes flowers or pre-seed plant organs unnecessary. It is possible to design such a world, but IMO Glorantha is not that. IMO it does, elevating the work of bees that may originally only have been a convenience to the planta ss receiving that attention into a vitally important one. Troll Pak has a scenario set on the edge of the Valley of Flowers, in the Bee Tribe of Dagori Inkarth, where various outputs of their giant bees are discussed, including: (Into Uzdom p.31) YGMV, of course, but at least for giant flowers in Dagori Inkarth pollination by giant bees is an established fact. Applied with all the consequences, your Gloranthan flora would barely resemble that we are familiar with. An interesting assumption for a different world, sure, but not applicable to my personal understanding of Glorantha. (Which is far from a knock-out criterion.) Hunter-Gatherers annd their harvesting have been impacted by these ecological changes just as much as agricultural crops and their tenders. The rites at Wild Temple are just what you described above. Only in the sense that all sky creatures are birds. A bit like saying that jellyfish and shellfish are part of the genus of vertebrates inhabiting water that we commonly call fish, like e.g. sharks, herrings, flounders, or even lampreys. All horses are creatures of Fire by descent. Hatching from eggs? I'll have to check Pegasus Plateau for the information of the early life cycle of hippogriffs, and Griffin Mountain for that of griffins, but I don't recall any egg shards as potential loot. On the other hand, in Greek mythology Leda having intercourse with Zeus in swan shape resulted in her laying two eggs with twins in each. Neither the Grazers nor those crazy Char-un have yet produced an egg-laying mare, at least according to official publications. Horses lactate (in Glorantha, too), not so sure about hippogriffs though. Weird pipe dreams are always an option in Glorantha. Each damaging of Hippogriff may have come with a gift, possibly an unintentional one, for the broken creature called Hippoi. Horses certainly breathe air. Whether centaurs do (and how they do it for their huge horse bodies with those tiny respiratory holes in their human portions) can be a matter of debate. There is something to be said in favor of player characters encountering plants that behave in the magical or archetypical ways you describe. In my games, I would reserve such encounters for areas within the Proximate Holy Realm or outright on the hero planes or Godplane. Such specimen would be powerful artifacs if retrieved and introduced in Surface World Glorantha, but compare the one known introduction of a new agricultural plant to Glorantha, maize, and the harvest sacrifices required to grow it. You could create a flower that provides the equivalent of sunlight in underground caves, enabling an entire photosynthetic ecology in its wake, whether you sell that as bioluminescence or as tapping directly into the Source of All Energies far above the Sky Dome, but there are other underground biomes we might construct, like e.g. a colonoy of fire elves (originally from the top of the Spike) inhabiting a scorched portion of Wonderhome, surviving in the glowing ashes of Bijiif. Removing bees from the reproductive cycle of plant life leaves us with a couple of problems. Starting with the euphemisms about flowers and bees when teaching the presumed innocent about sex becoming irrelevant.

Make that "Dragon Pass Orlanthi", generously allowing for Heortland, Aggar and Holay to be included. Shadowcats are tied to Kero Fin, after all, and while Lightbringer missionaries may have taken them along to awaken more distant peoples (or just their memories of Storm myths), those more distant Orlanthi are not cat people. If you include the Esrolians, maybe 20% of the Orlanthi in Glorantha are "Dragon Pass Orlanthi". Of course your gaming might never encounter any Orlanthi from outside of that region, especially not if you stick to the officially released adventures (other than Riskland which allows for Orlanthi from elsewhere to join Renekot's tribe). Maniria, Ralios, Fornoar, southwestern Peloria and Fronela provide the rest of the Genertelan barbarian belt, with no significant populations of alynxes mentioned anywhere. And when it comes to Umathela, I wonder whether there are any shadowcats down there at all. How these distant Orlanthi are supposed to be cat Nazis when they don't have any sort of feline to offer somewhat reliable cooperation is beyond me. Vanchites are Raccoon people, Sylilings are Bear People, Fronelans are Bull People unless they are Bear People or Boar People without any preferred carnivorous companion defined. Pendali were Lion people, and some of their descendants still are (such as Greymane), but that doesn't make them Cat People. Alynxes appear to belong to the same group of "small felines" (or purring felines) as housecats, wild cats, cheetahs, pumas/cougars, rather than the large cats from the Panthera family (lion, tiger, jaguar, leopard) or the lynx family. Edit: At the Dawn, the Praxian Tribes were somewhat modified Orlanthi pastoralists without any cats but keeping and cooperating with dogs.

What I like about GMing RQ3 is that you don't need much in the way of tables - most of it can be calculated, even on the fly if your arithmetic ability is above 30%. No weird look-up tables with weirdly broken up distributions. Previous experience in RQ3 was weird in assuming a steady annual increase of abilities starting at age 15. One of the best elements of RQ3 was the World Book for GMs, giving a GM an idea about how agricultural life and production would be organized in any non-technological setting, providing the underpinnings of world building. Quite applicable to Glorantha, too, as the detail overlay maps by Greg had this chapter in mind. RQ3 can be adapted to Glorantha, but it was never limited to that setting, much like the RQ2 rules. There are things in RQ3 that no longer (or never quite) make me enthusiastic. Spirit magic has a very colonialist feel to it - you need to conquer the territory of the poor spell spirit some priest or shaman sends against you (against its own nature or inclination). Rune Magic reusabiity and economy in RQ3 need some adjustment or a lot more God Talker intermediate level states than just the Acolyte presented with the Ernalda cult in the De Luxe box. Unfortunately, that cult lacked immediate playability, and was ignored by most players I met.

Alloying the two metals might give you Gloranthan Brass, which has nothing to do with the real world metal zinc, but with a copper-tin-whatever-else alloy that was melted and cooled down again, like the bones of the various children or incarnations of Lodril no longer aflame. The Brass Mountains in Carmania certainly are volcanic in their origin, and they provide much of the metal needs of the Pelorian basin.

I beg to differ. Pollen is another thing besides hunny and wax which you get from keeping bees. (There's also propolis and royal jelly.) It is the blessing of Flamal, spread by sunlight, wind, beasts, and aldryami. And it may carry the curse of Aldrya or Flamal, an old gift by Malia. So you are telling me that there was no need for Aether to ejaculate (through) Lodril deep into the Broad Earth (Gata) to sire Umath? Next thing will be that calves are grown in meadows, and have no need for milk? Sorry to have to tell you this, but we are not in the Green Age any more since there is a sky to look up to. Ever since the start of the Golden Age, people need to spread the seeds of the grains (and pseudocereals) of the Land Goddesses to be able to have a harvest. Ever since the dismemberment of Yelm, magic has been required, too. Weeds and molds might be a slightly different matter, weeds being the curse of Trickster or the challenge of the Lady of the Wild, and molds something Dark. Also, the "created" for your list of Earth/Plant/Fertility entities means they Grew or they Birthed/Sired such.

Monomythically, there was no wind to carry pollen, but there was light which would have been able to levitate it. We know that creatures of Darkness invaded the surface world already long before the devastation of Wonderhome - Gash and Gore for instance were extremely familiar with the backdoor towards the Surface. There is another myth about the ascent of the ants, and how they were cursed to shrink to their (real world) size. Nactar of flowers and berries are rewards for those who spread pollen and seeds. With the walking aldryami, you have pollinating pixies and seed-spreading runners and possibly elves.

The entire existence of the "walking aldryami" (elves, runners, pixies) is about independence of the Forest from any animals. While the animals may help with grooming the forests, the forest can do without them. Still, it can be safely assumed that Glorantha has these over-specialized synergies between certain plants and insects, birds or other beasts. Mythically, this may be based on marriages or similar adoptions of beast life. No idea how much the symbiosis between the forest and its fungal network beneath applies to Glorantha. If it exists, there must be myths about the roles of Aldrya and Mee Vorala, or the command of their shared father Flamal.

Given that one of Orlanth's greatest heroes, King Heort, was a shaman, I am a bit on the fence about the shaman prohibition, but then Heort lived in an Age where there was no Cult of Orlanth, at least not with a living deity.

That's the ecological role of sprites. Aldryami bloom was able to do without beasts of Darkness, but allowed them in.