Joerg

Little has been published about them - their main activity was their role in the Night of Horrors (or was it Nights of Horror? I always get confused about where to assign the piural). Sandy Petersen mentioned that he did some exploration and definition of these sorcerers in his games, and said he would consider writing that up. Failing that, we'd have to quiz him at Kraken's Secrets of Glorantha panel. They don't appear to be connected to any of the Westerner sorcerers, and I hesitate to make them an entirely unconnected group, so what about a group of exiles from the East studying the magical opportunities offered by the Hellcrack? Alchemy, the Pill of Immortality and other sorcerous achievements are documented for Kralorela and beyond.

Do you want to run this as an initiation scenario (initiation of the characters, or initiation of (former) dependents of the characters), or do you want your players to run the quest as a problem-solving approach? Casting the characters in supporting roles of an initiation quest might put them through the events of I Fought We Won in a non-Heort perspective (e.g. depending on which Bad Uncle they represented during the initiation rite of someone else).

Sorry, @David Scott, yes, I am slipping - I was thinking of the clashing of arms and magic, which hasn't happened. Waha's people do cross the Zola Fel regularly, and few are the cases where a khan is drowned by an angry floodwave. And if you look at the rivers monomyth, washing away bad chaos and closing rifts is thre most honorable thing a river can do. Although the Syphon gets some bad press for syphoning off some of the Creekstream River's waters to deal with the Foulblood void in the Footprint, Sky River Titan set the example, and the rivers of the world followed suit. Waha only helped the Good River to do the godly work.

IMO the HQ stats give you a guideline to create the RQ character (of whichever edition), and little more. The HQ abilities don't map to the RQ skill list, with the possible exception of combat skills. If you want to do the scrunchy ability conversion, take into account that the HQ ability is rolled against a difficulty as an opposed roll. An unmodified RQ skill of 30% may map to a HQ ability of 13 for normal difficulty (haven't done the math).

The oases are all manifestations of water spirits in the Wastes. They are holy places for all Waha-ites, and there is a lot of mutual respect. Waha visits the oases and does his things about the Protectresses and the altars. No overt hostility here. Then there are the water spirits we know from Nomad Gods - led by Zola Fel, including Dew Maiden and River Horse. I cannot recall any hostility between Waha and Zola Fel. The untamed serpents of the Wastes and also Prax are different. They are violent invaders, much like the Godtime waters of the second Flooding (which saw the creation of Worcha). They threaten herds and clans when they rush by. Violent invaders must be fought.

Chris, you're basically reliving the RQ3-based discussions on the RQ Daily some 20+ years ago. Lots of amends were suggested to get the priest out of his temple at least part of the time. I'll suggest a couple of those time-tested amendments: While the priest (or advanced other Divine Magic User) has to stay a full day in the temple, performing a series of rites at the right time at the right shrines, there is lots of other time during which he will do the priest's other jobs. Participating in high holy day sermons will regain a point of reusable divine/rune magic for any cult member. Leading a holy day service will give your priest a POW gain roll (and enough time to regain a point of that magic). Holding services with a sufficiently large audience (all of whom channel magic to the god through the service of the priest) will do so outside of holy days, too. Performing the Spell Teaching requires the priest to overcome the spell spirit's MP to initiate spirit combat with the supplicant - POW gain roll opportunity. There is a "down side" here, too - assume that a lot of that divine magic is cast on behalf of the cult, in the temple, not for personal gain. It is nice that the priest can shave off the spell regaining from his cult obligation time (which may have been 60 or 90% of his available time IIRC). And while I am expounding on the RQ3 improvement discussions of those years, let me introduce you to the concept of a pool of divine magic points that can be applied to any spell the priest has sacrificed POW for. But you are right - successful POW gain rolls were rare in my RQ3 campaign. Probably because we didn't use that much offensive magic where you had to overcome a target's magic points.

I don't think they need training. It's a relationship brought about by a magical covenant. In Sartar they need training. Horses aren't part of the Covenant, they need breaking and training. I wasn't referring to training the animals, but the riders and coordinating cavalry maneuvers. If the Praxian beast gets its basic training from the Covenant, the rider can concentrate on getting it to run in formation etc. Horses are tricky because they are (in Glorantha) carnivorous flyers reduced to running on the ground and feeding from grass and (if they can obtain them) grains. At least the Hyalor/Hippoi ones - the Galanin or western breeds might be different. They have no trouble interbreeding, though. In fact, I guess that hippogriff-descended horses should have been added to my list of naturally solitary beasts who have been forced into a gregarious herd lifestyle. (Or would you prefer to encounter herds of hippogriff hunting you and your lifestock?) Breeding the mundane horses out of the lineage appears to be non-trivial. Re: Unicorn procreation: I seem to (mis?)remember that unicorns would mate with virgin herd beasts suitable for riding - a Sable Antelope bears as much similarity to a unicorn as does a horse. (I admit that the other Praxian herd beasts - excluding herd men, but possibly including Morocanth - may look a lot sillier.) The offspring will be male and inherit the race of the father (one thing unicorns have in common with broos, although the mothers appear to contribute the shape to broo offspring). I have no idea whether a beast that has given birth to a unicorn can have more offspring - I would suggest not. The Green Age heroquest thing you suggest sounds fine. You don't tame a unicorn, you need to make The first contact to be allowed to ride it. The prospective rider needs to be pure to enter the riding/adoption heroquest. Just sending in a virgin girl won't tame the unicorn, probably wouldn't even get his interest. I guess it is about the sexual attraction that only works in a Green Age environment. There are bound to be entire libraries on the symbolism and esoterics of unicorns. I am not that fond of that approach, really. Once upon a time in Nomad Gods, we thought that all Praxian herd beasts were content to feed on the brown grass of the chaparral, but then we learned that that wasn't the case because those different herd beasts had urges and preferences that coincide with those of the real world animals (in case of bison, impala and sable antelope). I will grant you that the beasts and plains apes followed their founders down the slopes of the Spike into Genert's Garden, with plains apes and beasts having created a special ancestral bond through Protectress Eiritha and the Founder. The plains apes were creatures of storm: rowdy, randy and rough. And probably as bright as minotaurs (who may be regarded as a male-only race that retains the founder shape in the following generations, probably because of the non-involvement of Eiritha). (I like the notion that the eaters were cursed with increased intelligence by the outcome of the Covenant.) If we are to think magical fantasy world, then why the vegetarian Morocanth? What's wrong with meat eating tapirs feeding on the herd men who are fed a hay diet, in a magical fantasy world not real world animals? Mind you, I enjoy the implications of herd men meat from culling the herds used to feed the breeding herd men. We only got there because the plains apes don't have the ability to ruminate, even though the covenant magic could have given that to them. Some changes in behavior etc. are fine. Dropping most of the real world animal parallels for Praxian herd beasts (or alynxes before) will lead to alienation and a loss of suspense. Next thing we start to over-analyze why Gloranthan horses aren't, and how that manifests, and why you need to do the Hyalor quest in order to be able to ride even the least of them - while retaining real world facts that mules or cavalry zebras are sterile etc etc. I know that a lot of people are afraid to work real world insights (let alone science) into their myths, telling me they can't be bothered. I fail to see why. As long as the result is a myth that feels like an organic story that can be told in a sweat lounge or in a holy site, and not a rote "this is how we perceive things must be" snippet for completeness' sake, why not use the real world as inspiration? The ridicule for llama riders by other Praxians for their steeds' inability to feed themselves properly wasn't my idea, it is something I read, and I seem to remember Sandy's name attached to it. The picture I get from giraffes bending down to drink is that they spread their forelegs rather wide in order to reach down to the water - basically the equivalent of a push-up position, and probably not that comfortable. They also appear to need some time to return into a fleeing position. All the advantages they have are lost. I am quite dubious that Eiritha makes it that easy for the covenant beasts to get their food. IMO high llamas used to browse the trees of the Praxian savannah before the Oakfed fires, and still prefer to do so whenever they get the chance. The best browsing vegetation in the wastes is found along the rivers and wadis (aka serpents), possibly with wet ground, which is why the llama riders have the water rune as their tribal element. (Looking at the feet of their beasts, I doubt that they are well suited to wet ground.) The high llama tribe has a lot of advantages - an easy time for their herd beasts isn't one of them, though.

Is that an Official Change? IIRC the (Chaosium, not Mongoose) RuneQuest Companion (about to be reprinted) has an article on unicorns which details the breeding habits of unicorns. That's a bit like riding a stallion rather than a gelding - you get a much more aggressive mount, but it will act more on its other urges. For numerous reasons, some people still ride the stallions rather than a gelding. Your upcoming Prax book, I take it? I hope that the Praxian rhinos have better eye-sight than our rhinos, then. I suppose a good deal of their reputation for being irritable is their short-sightedness which makes them check out any potential source of danger pro-actively. No kicking out camp-fires, either... Will there still be such slight oddities like High Llama riders dismounting to hold up ground-hugging foliage to their steeds that we learned about some twenty years ago when Sandy joined the RQ Daily. So you say that a Praxian beast mounted cavalry would be easier to train than horse cavalry?

When discussing the Rhino tribe of Prax, I noticed that there are a number of beast folk forming human-shaped societies rather than their totemic beast's solitary life-style. For the Rhino Tribe of Prax, the problem is solved by the magic of Waha's covenant. According to @David Scott, by entering a Covenant herd the rhinos stop behaving like the solitary behemoths they are and become a flock of bad-tempered individuals tolerating others of their kind within looking distance (i.e. very close by). Which places all of the concerns of how the society adapts to the human/beast bond on the herds. How is herd leadership arranged? What about mating rights? Do you get bachelor herds for excess males and "queen cow"-led herds of females with a stud? Another difficult case are the Rathori. Bears are solitary beasts requiring quite a bit of territory to feed their bulk and get some fat for the winter. The only occasions that bears come together are salmon season or (in case of the non-Gloranthan Polar Bears) waiting for the sea to freeze over. If the Rathori pair up with bears that don't change into humans, they'll need lots of territory. Even the few people sharing a tent are way more social contact that a wild bear would tolerate. Both with Rathori and Telmori, the human organisations appear to institutionalize the pup groupings under a mother (bear) or a mated pair (wolves). (The old myth of wolf packs having alpha males and non-related adults accepting that leadership results from observations of an artificial pack in captivity.) Pup behavior allows adults to remain with their leaders instead of taking off on their own. The result of this behavior of wolves in our world was the domestic dog - with some selective breeding to adapt the dog to the human signals, which isn't required among the Telmori because they have learned the wolf signals. Still, a pack of non-man-shaped wolves accompanying a Telmori group will behave much different from feral wolves. A group of bears in Rathori company must be in it for the salmon, or whatever other goodies the humans have to offer. The human-beast bond with one specific totemic beast is another unusual relation. For most Praxians this is their personal mount, which may be awakened as an allied spirit by those strong enough in magic. Praxians, Pralori, Mraloti (?), Galanini and presumably the moose-, yak- and reindeer hsunchen form a rider-steed connection. (Thankfully the Telmori don't...) The steed benefits from an extra pair of eyes and weapons to defend it from predators. (Benefits for the riders should be obvious.) Communication between rider and steed is mostly tactile. A Sartarite riding a Praxian herd beast will have a lot less control over and communication with his steed than a Praxian riding his totemic beast - something of a problem for the mothers of the unicorn tribe, too - they get to ride the (step-?) mothers of their unicorns, or prospective heifers for mating. Makes me wonder how a "cattle" raid by unicorn riders works out - the unicorn stallion singles out a heifer, impregnates it, and makes it follow him to the waiting women who welcome it into their herd? Steeds (or beasts of burden) don't get to exhibit much of a feral beast's behavior while serving their humans. How much of a nomad's day is dedicated to letting his steed vent out it animal instincts, rolling in the dust (or mud), lazing around chewing cud or socializing with the other herd beasts? The Telmori brother bond between human and wolf is another highly artificial behavior. The Basmoli of Seshnela appear to have had a similar bond, so I would guess that the same pattern can be found with leopard, tiger or Andrewsarchus hsunchen. The term "brother" indicates a litter-mate relationship without any of the partners in a superior role, or a situation where yearling or older siblings take care of their cubs (which role division may flip back and forth between four-legs and two-legs depending on the challenge they face), at least with pack predators like wolves or lions. With tigers, it could be an emulation of the mate bond. I wonder what visiting a camp of wolverine hsunchen (after befriending at least one of them) would feel like.

We might want to start with the published clan chiefs - Narmeed Whirlvishbane of the Singing Flower Bison clan comes to mind here. I'll admit that I am at best a transient in Prax, so I'll let people with actual experience of the place take over.

Population numbers are in the Guide (or the Genertela Box). 500 heads per clan is the number that has been used for most population calculations throughout these numbers, and probably applies universally wherever something like a clan can be identified. Whether those units actually stay together is yet another question. I guess that this is about the number you need for a genetically and culturally viable unit, give or take a factor between 0.25 and 4. (And the old chestnut who is counted among these numbers - children, slaves...) In Prax, this may be somewhat different due to different herd sizes (but then the ratio of herd beasts per owner does vary between the tribes, too, with far from all Rhino riders actually owning a tribal mount (if that ancient statement by Sandy still is official). Not that rhinos ever conformed to the term "herd beast" - they are about as gregarious as bears. Which leaves us in the strange situation that we have societies of humans forming communities that cannot conform with the life style of their totemic beasts. But that's probably better discussed in a separate thread.

I wonder how the Kralori view the dead remains of their mortal bodies. We know that Kralori war barges employ zombie rowers, but these may have been recruited from wrongdoers rather than levied from the general populace (of dead bodies). Does the Nochet enclave have a mandarin or minor exarch in charge of expediting the spirits to the waiting place, possibly through a bureaucratic audition(, and the corpses to the home country)? What other cultures present in Nochet may have strange adaptations to this procession of the dead?

Sending the dead back to their graves probably is a huge no-go - you can't show your disrespect much stronger short of destroying the walking corpses. And that on their holy day - when they have strong magic backing them. Warding the houses probably is done. Are there Malkioni dead among the procession? If so, restricted to the Aeolians, or also including Rokari or (linealist) Hrestoli? How would that interfere with the Malkioni concept of Solace? This touches on the question whether the Malkioni are soulless or not. (Which, given that the Theyalans regard the body as one of several partial souls, is a hard concept to withstand physical evidence...)

Both the Hungry Plateau and the Shadow Plateau were made by a spear-wielding god decapitating a mountain. It isn't known where the top of the Shadow Plateau went, though. In case of the Shadow Plateau, it was Veskarthen struggling to escape his bonds, and Argan Argar keeping him in those, forcing him to build the Obsidian Palace. (From the debris?) Gerendetho smashed an inhabited palace. As a walker, he wouldn't have had use for a permanent housing. Maybe this is an ancient struggle between nomadic ways and sedentary ones, at first going against the sedentary life (of Turos/Lodril). If that was the case, the choice of Gerendetho as a patron to maintain a nomadic way of life would be a very necessary role for the Sable tribe of Kostaddi. The creation of the Jord mountains probably was incidental. (There is one more myth in which the ruins of a smashed mountain were pushed aside to form a new chain of mountains - the ruins of the Spike pulled onto Jrustela by the Magnetic Mountain.) I don't see any evidence for the former mountain that became the Hungry Plateau having been quarried. Close to where I live, a single rock pierced the glacial deposits at Bad Segeberg, and on top of it a castle had been built - the Siegesburg. The castle was destroyed in the 30 Years War, and subsequently the rock (gypsum) was quarried for stuccato works all over the baroque northern Germany. The activity left only a stump of the rock just slightly above the roof line of the upper houses on that picture (and a hole that now is used as an amphitheater). All of this was done on a much smaller scale, but the point is that the material was used for building efforts. I don't recognise any such in Jord, and I don't think that the Krarshtkids are at fault there. All that we see in Jord is a jumble of rock that used to be the top of the Hungry Plateau. This is different from the giant slabs of stone that make up Sambari Pass between the Quivin Mountains and the Storm Mountains - here we had a giant building a wall to connect the two mountain ranges. No such effort is seen between Kostaddi and Imther. If we want to see the Jord Mountains as a defensive bulwark, against whom? Does it protect the goat herders of Jarst and Garsting against the Alkothi?

That's where the paradigm shift from "let's roll dice to feel the struggle continuing" to "let's have a single die roll to determine the outcome" hasn't reached everybody's gaming style (most certainly hasn't reached my narrating style). My usual players expect "struggle" to mean they have to put in extra effort, to challenge them again in a rules-related way. I.e. roll dice again to avert the looming disaster, or to ride them even deeper into troubles. "No, we rolled that already, just narrate it" doesn't work with those guys. They want that extra randomizing input to the story they tell. In BRP games I feel confident that I can toss up manageable additional tests to make them feel the struggle and near despair while controlling the odds. This is a form of "pass fail cycle" with some little remaining uncertainty about the outcome. "As you land, the edge of the pit begins to crumble under your feet. Make a dex roll times (a whole number raising the chance to about 70%) to get away before it tumbles in." "Ah, you failed that, so you join the soil gliding down. (Player interaction - grabbing for a root.) Make a luck roll. (Again a 70% chance, on average.) Too bad, that root you grabbed joins the downward slide." "One of your buddies tosses you a rope. You try to grab it. (This time a dex roll adjusted to a 50% chance.)" What are the odds for this character to finally fall into the pit? 0.3 * 0,3 * 0.5 = 4.5% - and that is after a bad roll for jumping. Did the player break out some sweat to save his character? I hope so. Having him roll the dice thrice more did make him feel his struggle against a dangerous world. Did this break up the narrative? Yes, for small cliff-hanging moments which emphasize the involvement. Sure, these interchanges might be done leading up to framing the contest. This is a different narrative skill that a narrator based in Old School roleplaying still needs to develop, or be taught, even after all these years HQ has been around. In a game of Fate, the struggling character would probably invoke his fear of heights or something similar for grabbing the spotlight in this situation and reaping a mechanistic benefit. And possibly to the effect of the other players thinking "ok, grab your point, and get over it." In HQ, the player has to provide these moments of doubt or desperation for his character himself. The "roleplaying magic" of embedding the struggle at the edge of the pit as an experience rather than a narrated bit is shifted from the narrator to the player - I am talking about how the player will relate to this scene say half a week later over a shared meal with the other players. I really like playing HQ and the ease of scenario preparation when passing my gaming ideas on to other narrators - doing so for RQ always is a struggle with numbers and skill expectations. HQ scenarios are written in the way I do (not) prepare my RQ or other BRP games. As a narrator I want my players to reminisce about their struggles in the same way as if we had a field trip in the wilderness. So, I want advice how to convey this to my simulationist-trained players with a "you rolled a marginal success" result. I'm pretty much in the same situation as @Baroque. How do I get my players to remember the struggle of getting there on a visceral enough level through simple narration? How do I embed the memory of the struggle in the shared player experience? Using RQ/BRP mechanisms (or similar rules systems) I have my techniques to immerse my players past the beer&pretzels situation we meet in. In a freeform game where everyone puts in some identification with their character through props, possibly costumes, or sheer attitude, and referee-less player interaction this embedding of experiences works fine, too.

What function of Waha exactly does Gerendetho replace, and what functions still remain with Waha? If Gerendetho doesn't have the death/Covenant/butchery connections, then he takes over the caretaker of the land role. "Waha saves his sisters" doesn't mean much in Kostaddi, but Gerendetho's relation to the land does a lot. The Paps are a mythical place in a faraway land. The Kostaddi Sable people probably have another earth temple as their magical source of fertility, tied to Gerendetho and the local land goddess. (IMO not Pelora, but her Kostaddic daughter - more specific, less applicable outside of the territory.) I wouldn't transplant that rune from Pamaltela - it has its very own meaning in the myths of Pamalt, which don't apply to the Earth Walkers north of the Rockwoods IMO. Genner is repeatedly mentioned among the Erasanchula in the Zzaburite texts. He would have been known by his own rune among the Jrusteli mythographers - probably that of Theism since that was the realm he ruled (even though he was firmly said to be a Great Spirit in that era of Gloranthan scholarship). Sounds like a parallel to Calyz. A bit closer to the Lodril end of the spectrum rather than the Genert end.

Bison and sable antelopes are common in Pent, too, without any overt Praxian connection. They are described as "northern bison, giant sable, and red sable" - perhaps to make a slight distinction to the barely domesticated Praxian varieties. I don't expect the original sable rider grant to be exactly in the borders of Kostaddi satrapy - I seem to recall bison descended dynasties from riverine Kostaddi satrapy, too. I still think that sending one of these Yelmite bison families into the River of Cradles would be good fun for exploring their roots. Possibly as settlers in Sun County rather than the Grantlands, or at least refugees to Sun County when the Grantlands are overrun.

Lutz Reimers translated Bagnot as "Bettelnich", "don't beg" - I think he did so after a divination with Greg. Remember that the founder of Tarsh was named Arim the Pauper.

I guess that the Lunar-friendly Sable clans may consider emigrating to Kostaddi after the Battle of Pavis. There are plenty other Sable rider clans that are friendly to the White Bull, and I don't think that these might be interested in taking up closer relations to the heretic exiles of Kostaddi. The Antelope Lancers from Kostaddi have this joke (according to Sandy) - "What has six legs, two horns, and an asshole on its back?" - about the feral Lunar-friendly Sable clans due to these folks' attitude. This doesn't bode well for any reunion.

They are the remnants of the Chaos invasion into the Underworld. Chaos didn't do too well there since the defenders knew many of its tricks. But wherever you have a hellhole, Xamalki might emerge.

There is another issue here: transliteration of sounds that come out wrongly if taken directly. Nochet is a typical case: the German transliteration is "Notschet", as the ch sound is pronounced as in "loch" in German. Taking this to an extreme, we might get the ruling storm god "Orlänf" in the world of "Gloränfä"... Some sounds like the "th" don't have equivalents in civilized languages, either, or are spelled "c" (followed by an "i" or "e") as in Spanish. Getting the "wh" and "r" right is another issue, as are sharp "s" sounds.

Gerendetho appears to be a (not) missing link for Earthwalkers between Genert and Turos/ViSaruDaran/Lodril, the volcanic/fiery squareheads of Peloria. I don't quite see him as a volcanic deity, but he appears to be a mountain giant, which can have some Fire-in-Earth connections. The older the giants get, the less pronounced the elemental affiliation may become.

These creatures could be done for an urban fantasy catalogue just as well (thinking of Butcher's Dresden Files, Hearne's Iron Druid, Aaronovich's magical Britain with the Newtonian magics, TV series like Lost Girl or True Blood). They mostly come with a home territority, often enough with an Otherworld of their own, too, and don't usually go with the times where technology is concerned. This makes them universally useful whether you are playing in a paleolithic, Bronze Age, Iron Age, mediaeval or modern magical setting. If you provide information how to use some of them as player characters, you have an entire supplement.

What, not the Woolly Rhino?

Tricky, that, given the presence of mortals (even if that distinction was introduced only later) in the Green Age. The Theyalans are the culture of Orlanth (a god born in the Storm Age) - clearly younger than any of the gods born on the Cosmic Mountain - and Ernalda (and by extension Asrelia and even Gata) which reaches back into the earliest moments of the Green (or Earth) Age. Sure, the culture didn't survive unchanged, but it persisted. With the cyclical nature of Godtime the opposite argument is as valid - that the actions of Man enabled the development of the gods. The Cause and Effect experience of Danmalastan can be applied to the developments of Issaries and Lhankor Mhy. In the same breath, we find Lhankor Mhy in myths older than Orlanth, e.g. in the Compact of Nochet. Which is bending cause and effect a lot, also because it has Kodig participating in an event before the birth of Orlanth, unless we regard Kodig, Rastagar and Finelvanth all as bearers of a certain soul that is reborn again and again to wreak havoc with the Grandmothers' dark designs.