Joerg

I always wondered about these cannibal virgins. Are they obligate cannibals, eating no meat but from (sacrificed) humans, or are they the ritual eaters of some pieces of a sacrifice? Shaker Temple is known for its human sacrifices, and it is considered bad luck to get captured by the warbands worshipping there. I wonder whether they get voluntary sacrifices, whether they trade for slaves for feeding the sacrificial altar, or whether the surrounding clans don't have much of a penal system but are wont to nominate duty as sacrifice in case of major demeanors.

Female adventures are a bit diffferent, but females are essential on heroquests on behalf of a community. It is close to a miracle that the Lightbringers succeeded with only 1-2 females on board, but then the second protagonist spent much of the quest sleeping in the Underworld sending spiritual support, beckoning the questers towards her. I am in the process of writing a (HeroQuest, or rather system-less) scenario for the female descendants of a Sartarite Asrelia priestess and their associates. It contains things only the women can do (such as performing a burial and enbalming rite), and things everyone is somewhat good or bad at, such as negotiating, theft, feats of strength, and if unavoidable, combat. The group in the play examples of HeroQuest Glorantha is (somewhat loosely) based on Jeff's house campaign, which is female-dominated with four powerful but quite different female protagonists, doing heroquest stuff that might not be considered heroic in a swords and sorcery style, although such things appear in the sorcery part of Swords and Sorcery fairly regularly.

Wouldn't it be easier to use the labels, if there are system-relevant parts of the post? Three letters or numbers, and everyone knows what rules are asked for - RQG, RQ2, HQG, 13G...

The Kraken seminar on upcoming Glorantha publications was mostly recorded by Fabian Kuechler, and might be in post-production now. I think you have most of the topics and subsequent Essen game fair developments covered, at least those without the gentlemen's NDA that got recorded. You did miss out on the Kraken chapbooks which should have been made availale by now (at least as pdfs): last year's Robin Laws' Sharper Adventures for HeroQuest, and this year's transcript of Sandy's Secrets of Glorantha seminar from last year.

So here's an introduction of another newcomer to this site with a loaded history of activity in the RuneQuest and Glorantha community. I am Jörg Baumgartner, active on RQ- and Glorantha-related mailing lists and similar newfangled stuff like yahoo-groops, forums or social networks since 1993, and responsible for some sense and some nonsense on those lists, and in a number of cooperative efforts to explore specific corners of Glorantha like Whitewall, the Wilmskirk tribal confederation, or the city of Karse. I've been involved in the Chaos Society (officially Deutsche RuneQuest-Gesellschaft e.V.) almost since its beginning, in various roles (such as president, editor of the German fanzine for 6 issues, giant referee in the life action trollball games at Castle Stahleck, associate editor of Tradetalk), and a somewhat regular attendee at the German RQ/Glorantha/BRP related conventions at Stahleck and lately also the Kraken, as well as a couple of European ones (Convulsion, Chimeriades). Other than the (now defunct) Buserian Index to Glorantha that was hosted on an older incarnation of the Glorantha site, I still have to deliver my magnum opus for Glorantha. After a long pause I have returned to writing for publication of Glorantha-themed material, and I might even get around to getting my sentimental collection of Glorantha pages back into shape. I am without a steady roleplaying group right now (or rather I am on a long term leave from my former gaming group due to commuting interfering with my gaming time), so I do most of my roleplaying at conventions (and little enough of that, too). My major RQ/BRP project was a RQ3 campaign in a fantasy version of RQ Vikings, with a world inheriting from history, Norse myth, popular literature on Welsh and Irish myth, Midkemia, Glorantha and even Pern that also was shared with other narrators of my group. I modified some Stormbringer and Drakar och Demoner rules for inclusion in this world, too. I have a weird idea for a space opera setting featuring atolls and dugout ships from space plankton and nekton crewed by savages alongside with technologically more advanced human and nonhuman (and mixed) civilisations that I want to write up as a gaming background. (Those space organisms are the feral offspring of an earlier culture's biological space ships and stations. There are no psionic powers without sufficiently advanced technological crutches to explain them, a number of different methods for cheating interstellar distances in space, and a number of ideas for borderline transhuman cultures forming the leading edge of humanity's development.)

I tend to regard spaceships as three-dimensional mazes with access crawls to whatever piece of equipment is crammed into this volume inside the hull (or connected on the outside). Think e.g. of the position of the crew quarters on the Firefly - below the access corridor to the bridge. You'll find clean corridors mainly in passenger-accessible areas, and depending on the availability of artificial gravity and acceleration compensators there would be a varying regiment on loose parts inside the ship, whether during planned acceleration phases (such as airplane take-off and landing) or during cruising periods. A military transporter won't have any smooth corridors except where needed for speedy exits - expect utility hand-holds, cargo nets clamping optional equipment to the bulkheads, and low comfort for the payload (i.e. the grunts or special forces). A ship for exploration missions - whether intelligence gathering for military, political or economic purposes, surveying of ressources, or scientific expeditions - will have corridors stuffed with workplace niches for specific instruments/experiments, even if those are usually overseen from a central control area, if only for maintenance purposes. If you have gravitation control, you could have segments with different directions for "down" in your ship, allowing for a foldout floor map wider than the exterior bulkhead, with creases offering some transitional effect similar to the centripetal space stations of e.g. Babylon 5 or Clarke's 2001. This can be especially fun for investigating unknown space ships or space installations.

You could create a template for kingdom stats similar to the ship stats that exist in a number of RuneQuest variants and use those. I would rather look at what wargames or strategy would make of information like those about provinces and lands surrounding the Roman Empire in Cthulhu Invictus, and use that kind of data. I would work with subdivisions of those kingdoms (that could change their administration without the former owner being put out of business), and assign traits to those subdivisions. Traits like overall satisfaction of a subdivision, of social groups inside those subdivisions (e.g. nobles vs. freemen vs. serfs, and minority groups). Loyalty to the king would be an important stat, likely modified by satisfaction. And I'd include a rule that too high levels of satisfaction create new demands by groups within that subdivision that have to be met to maintain satisfaction. Factors like military expenses, military presence, presence of peace-keepers, access to luxuries, education, healing, food, water, arable land for expanding populations all would figure. I played in a game with a similar premise under a variant of the Heroquest rules at last year's Kraken convention. There the status of the kingdom was formulated by internal and external problems, or problems resulting from interaction with a rival group. Basically, the skills of the kingdom were matched with the severity of the problem and the applicability of those skills. Something like this should be possible with the percentile skill system of BRP, too.

I don't see why the Lhankor Mhy sages would need any outsiders to clash about such a topic - there are entire schools of LMites dedicated to oral tradition. Given my moderate knowledge of European languages, there is a continuum of similar sounds for certain consonants or consonant combinations. The sequence g - k - kh - ch - kj/sh/sch/sk - zh/j - y (the latter a consonant as the J in my name or as in "you") doesn't really have distinct steps if you take local variations of Scandinavian, German or Romanic languages. A Switzerland ch and a Norwegian k (followed by an e, i, y or umlaut) or kj can be quite similar, or worlds apart. Not to mention the subject of long glottal consonants (as kk in Finnish). Then there are pronunciation differences on an entirely different level: Do you say Lodril, Vestkarthen, Turos, Baba Ulodra or Balumbasta?

There are a number of stories around the Cradle incident that would benefit from some exploration. How was the cradle built, was there a baby shower by the Elder Giants of the Rockwoods? With the mother busy giving birth, I suppose it is up to the Elder Giant father to construct the Cradle and to equip it with its magical implements and crew. I suspect that it is traditionally built from Redwood Trees from east of Dagori Inkarth, possibly Nemolayope's entire dryad's grove gets transformed into the ship and its animated crew. I think it is safe to assume that the person Gonn Orta was searching for all those years was Urrrgh the Ugly, whose prayers awakened Pinchining the Gold Wheel Dancer. I don't know how he died (all I know is that Londra of Londros was heir to his hoard of gold wheels), but he is present on the Cradle as Blorn the Statue. It would be a strange but possibly entertaining scenario to assist Gonn Orta in assembling the Cradle or its treasures. The Lunar side of the Cradle scenario is strangely one-dimensional. The best piece of motivation we get for a Lunar participant is the description of the priest covered by hoplite and peltast guards exploring the Cradle after they managed to capture it north of the Rubble. In fact, the Lunar command of the Cradle actions would be a worthy freeform the size of Tarsh War. Tatius the Bright oversees the siege of Whitewall, and any direct order by him will reach the Lunar forces only towards the end of the journey downriver, even if carried by magic or wyvern. I think it is safe to assume that the use of the Watchdog of Corflu has his personal approval - he might even be present for this part of the scenario. Tatius will have a direct representant of the Lunar College of Magic in Pavis, though, who will act in his interests. And one known interest of the Dara Happans is to retrieve those treasures they sent to the EWF overlords all those centuries back which disappeared before or during the Dragonkill War. Pavis with its EWF connections is a legitimate source of plunder for these folks, and I suppose that's what the majority of the Lunar commanders behind the imperial side of the Cradle incident is motivated by. With different opinions about the distribution of any plunder, of course. Sor-eel is a member of the Eel-ariash clan, as ambitious a bunch of heroquesters as you can find inside the Empire. I would be astonished if he didn't have secret orders by his clan to deal with opportunities on giant artifacts that don't necessarily comply with what Tatius or the army wants. He might even be behind a Lunar pro-Cradle black ops team. Gim-gim might have yet another agenda. He too might have hidden agents among the defenders of the Cradle, or infiltrate some when it lies beached. I am not that familiar with the Lunar elite of New Pavis, though - I'll leave it up to you old Pavis hands to come up with other Lunar characters to mis-manage the Cradle incident. Then there is the off-screen hunt/quest for Pinchining, in the script performed by Garrath/Argrath and his personal retinue between the liberation of the Cradle and its arrival in Corflu. There is no reason not to play this quest. Any ideas what stations there would be?

The Dead of Glorantha One of the greatest magics in Glorantha is the living body of a person. There are magics to partake from this magic for other purposes – voluntary sacrifice of magical energy, blood, emotions, even pain and death, but also involuntary donations such as a wraith's or vampire's drain of life, a sorcerer's Tapping, or gruesome sacrifice to enemy demons or deities. But the dead still retain quite a bit of the magic that the life person had. Why else would there be head-hunters (besides the Thanatari) or reliquiars of ancestors or heroes? Even in societies that destroy the body (by cremation, exposure to scavenger birds, ritual consumption of the dead by friends and family, or unconserved burials leaving the body to the worms), there are remnants of the dead which can (or need to) be interacted with. Death was introduced to Glorantha via the Sword Story and subsequent branches of that story. Apparently, destruction or annihilation of a person or deity was known before Death entered the world – Umath for instance was shattered into more pieces than could reassemble. However, Death wasn't the end of existence. It only marked the transition to another stage of being. Something important was lost, but there remained enough that was recognizably the former person. One of the most important cultural accomplishments in order to start into Time was the Separation of the Living and the Dead, a feat usually assigned to the Silver or Gray Age that followed the Greater Darkness (for those who recognized or remembered such a period). King Heort did this among the Theyalans, and other Darkness survival heroes did so among their own cultures. Even after this separation, the dead didn't simply disappear, but they were excluded from the activities of the living for most of their existence (time). With Death also came Undeath, where the dead prey on the living. The Vivamort (or in Ernaldan myth, Nontraya) myth is a companion of the Sword Story, of sidestepping Death by giving up an important portion of Life. A common tale of horror and woes is the rise of dead bodies that attack their former kin or foes, usually under the influence of some foreign and malign controlling agent. If the dead rise on behalf of their kin/comrades, these actions may be regarded as laudable and beneficial to the community, and not necessarily as undeath. In other places, the dead are made to mimic the actions of the living, or do so out of their own volition – e.g. the Fonritian or Dorastan plantations tended by the dead, or the zombie rowers of Kralori warships. Another not so uncommon occurrence in Glorantha is the prescence of a spirit, shade or other uncorporeal remnant of the deceased, as exemplified by ghosts. Sometimes these are counted among the undead – usually when forcefully attached to some remnant of their dead body – but in other cases they are regarded as restless dead. And not all cultures think that the dead should rest – even the Death fanatics of the Humakt cult accept the continuing service of their comrade's ghost to the cult, although they strongly oppose any case of somebody or something else controlling these ghosts than their cult. Then there are the revenant dead - vampires, liches, draugr, active mummies, or even weirder forms of dead flesh animated by its own spirit/soul/whatever (thinking of the impressive noble undead as seen in Tekumel here), fueled by a self-inflicted or external curse. The different cultures have vastly different ideas about what they are made of, what's important about that, and what changes when they lose Life. The Malkioni regard themselves as embodied intellects and energy, and possibly the impression they make on other minds, including the World Mind. Depending on their school of philosophy, their identity simply disappears (Brithini), enters Solace, enters Joy, or even attains an angelic or saintly existence. Theists say that they are made up of souls (some define their body as one form of their soul), and assign different origins and functions to these souls. They also expect the part of their soul that formed a connection to their god(s) to return to the deity's realm in the Otherworld. (They don't have any problem with that existence to be in different "places" of the Otherworld at once, having experienced the non-linear Godtime themselves in their cultic practices. Hence there isn't a conceptual problem for initiation into multiple cults, either – being in one Otherworld place doesn't preclude a simultaneous existence in another place and/or perception. Illumination makes it clear that these really are perceptions of the Otherworld if viewed from beyond.) The Kralori think of their souls as a unit that goes to the waiting place to join the god/dragon-emperor when he ascends. Animists perceive themselves as part of the spirit world to which they will return after their embodied existence. Possibly to be cleansed of identity, possibly to be reborn, possibly to retain their identity in the company of their ancestors (and after a while their descendants, too). All of these cultures accept that they leave something behind, too, and that the stuff left behind still has some connection to whatever notion of self they have. That's why they have funeral rites or commemoration services, even for absent bodies (like e.g. drowned sailors, victims of "natural" catastrophes, or bodies lost on a battlefield yielded to the victorious side.) All fear the abuse of these remains. I wonder if there is (or was) a culture in Glorantha that had its members turn into a trove of memories (like a book, grimoire, clay tablet, seal, or a crystal storing visual memories, to be left in the care of their surviving kin/company. If the Praxians summon their ancestors to stand besides them in battle, is this viewed as necromancy by their foes? If a dead cultist continues as a cult spirit aiding a living member of the cult, is this sidestepping Death? When a dead hero is manifested by its worshippers to aid them, is this breaching the searation of the living and the dead? When the dead claim the place of the living on those special holy days in Nochet, how do the many non-Esrolians deal with that? And are their own dead – probably having received a funeral service in the manner of their own culture – participating in this parade of the dead? Will smoky bodies of cremated Orlanthi walk in stride with mummified buried bodies of Esrolians, and possibly skeletons picked clean by scavenger birds (in Grazer style), and whatever burial customs the other foreigners in Nochet practice? Would Kralori who expect their dead to wait for Godunya's ascension meet the "rest" of their deceased? How do the Malkioni deal with this (and the proximity of the Antones Estates to their own part of Nochet)?

According to Fabian of the Kraken convention, I am.

The normal course of the adventure is that the Lunars succeed to stop it, but that the rebels re-capture it. One point about the scenario is the return of Pinchining to the Cradle. Without the Gold Wheel Dancer, the entire trip onto the ocean is pretty pointless. If the Lunars manage to hold on to the Cradle, the next question is whether they'd kill the baby or whether a blue moon connection is emphasized by the Lunars.

This is one of the few Gloranthan terms which I pronounce in German: h Soon KHen (with KH for the scottisch "loch" sound). I tend to lose the initial h in hsunchen, but never in Hrestol. For me Lhankor gets a faint aspiration after the L. I wouldn't insert any glottal stop after the L. Similar e.g. the Khor in Khordavu, or in the alternate spelling Lankhor. Another (potentially personal, possibly German only) strangeness is my tendency to ignore the h in th at the end of names, as in Orlanth(i), Skanthi or Glorantha. At the very least, a t- or d-like sound may creep in instead of the sharp th (the one in "think").

Before I misbehave over here (too), what level of Gloranthan esoterica is tolerable in this forum? I don't mean to revive the trollkin urine thread, but...