Joerg

I posted this on Facebook, but I find this forum more suited to my kind of discussion: Rivers in Glorantha have a headwater - the furthest place from their to which their inland crawl proceeded in Godtime - and a "source" beyond their estuaries, their connection to the Heart of the Seas. Rivers and sea currents are similar in nature, but sea currents never leave their element, whereas rivers ultimately do so, invading a territory that is alien and all too often hostile. Sshorg was the First River, a tendril exploring the land after the Togaro Sea had risen above ancient Keetela in the southeasternmost corner of the Lozenge. People called her a serpent or called him a dragon as it made its way past the Spike and north towards Dragon Pass, and then beyond. The tendril arched high above the land surrounding the initially shallow bed carved by this entity. With its head it would savor the riches of Earth and Soil there for the taking, sending down the delicious stuff back to its source through its interior, dropping out detritus when the good stuff between it had been digested and enriched. Sshorg spawned many children, including mighty Seolinthur, the river that entered Genert's Garden, and spawned children of its own, of whom Zola Fel is the greatest, but also the Teshno River entering that land, and branches further northeast. On its approach to Kero Fin, a bunch of other rivers had parted their currents from the parent current, tendrils of their own semi-merged with the parent tendril. These were the greater and lesser rivers of Kethaela, remaining behind when Sshorg had overcome the upland that would form the watershed between Kethaela and Peloria. Sshorg's head had proceeded all the way to the northern edge of Peloria when its back was broken across that watershed. Essentially, it had become beheaded, a truncated tendril no longer exploring inland, although its spawn still did, to the south of Kero Fin. North of Kero Fin, what remained was a head and neck just within reach of another lead to the Heart of the Seas from which its parent Togaro had risen, although this one led through the Hudaron waters and its child Arcos. The re-connected Sshorg turned inward to itself, its head climbing back the way it had descended. The children of the rivers were tendrils of their own, interwoven with the parent river and sea currents where the parent current separates from the currents of the seas when reaching back to the Heart of the Oceans, but separating more and more until finding a bed of their own. Sky River Titan's battle leading to the Skyfall, and then Magasta's call to all currents (including the rivers) to lend him their strength to contain the Chaos Rift in the center of Glorantha caused the rivers to change their nature. Rather than bulging high out of their beds, they now have mainly flat surfaces and stay rather deeply inside their beds, and normally only the seaward current that used to be their inside remains somewhat strong. These currents still retain some sense of identity when tributaries join greater rivers, and then seas, all the way to the Heart of the Seas where Magasta draws on their strength to keep the rift contained. When crossing coastal flats, these currents may disperse into rather flat bands, or possibly even split up for a while before reuniting on their way to Magasta's Pool and beyond.

The common hope about Glorantha is that it was Kajabor (the misplaced unlimited potential) who was consumed with all orifices to give birth to Time rather than Wakboth (who is both moral evil and annihilation, but born of and into the cosmos of Glorantha). This would mean that the entropy inherent in Arachne Solara's Web is not evil, but that a suppressed evil still is trapped in the world.

The Sky Dome rotates around the Pole Star, which (in first approximation) stands direcly above Magasta's Pool. A rotation of the Sky Dome (at least the constellation visible on the sky dome) takes roughly as much as a full day, but there is a daily overshoot or undershoot (no idea which) which causes a precession, so that the constellation of Lorion is visible above the Gates of Dawn at sunrise at the spring equinox (Day 1 of Sea Season) and above the Gates of Dusk at sunrise at the autumn equinox. According to the Copper Tablets (in the Guide) there were no stars or constellations before Umath invaded, but this rotation of the sky dome seems to have been active even before, defining the "days" of the Golden Age and later when the sun(s) stood motionless in the sky above holy mountains or ziggurats. Planetary motion to Hell and back seems to have started irregularly upon the sky invasion by Umath, and regularly after the disintegrated Yelm marked the path and Dark Dendara completed the circle, as did her child Lokarnos. (Veldara went a different way, following Lorion). The Sky Invasion of Umath caused the northward tilt of the Sky Dome, when Shargash/Jagrekriand crashed the Storm King into the North Pillar. That tilt was countered by Kalikos at a later point of Godtime, and reversed southward, until the Sky Spill burnt away the Nargan Sea, and the lightened Sky Dome tilted back upwards. After the Dawn, this tilt had become an annual cycle. The Sunpath from the Gates of Dawn to the Gates of Dusk past Pole Star is now shared by several celestial bodies that move along it with different speeds. Mastakos/Uleria is the fastest, needs 8 hours to run across the Sunpath, then reappears immediately at the Gates of Dusk. Yelm takes the entire day to traverse the Sunpath above (and the night to traverse it below), and Lightfore takes the entire night to reproduce Yelm's path from half a year ago against the Nightsky. The Sunpath is also traveled by Dendara/Moskalf and Lokarnos. There is another planetary path, the Southpath, which is shared by three bodies - Shargash/Tolat, Artia the Bat, and the Twinstars (a double body). It starts slightly north of the Gates of Dawn and ends at a range of positions in the southwest. There is the Red Moon, immovable above the Crater, usually in the northwestern sky unless you are too close to the Crater or too far northwest in Glorantha. There are thee jumper stars visible in the night sky, Rausa the Dusk jumper around sunset in the west, Kalikos the northern jumper around midnight in the north, and Theya the Dawn jumper around dawn in the east. There is Orlanth's Ring, rising from Stormgate (a fixed spot in the western sky) up to Pole Star, over the course of a week, then disappearing beyond the Sky. There are a few other irregular celestial objects, like Zenith (stationary), the Juggernaut (completely irregular), Stormgate (mentioned above) and a few rarely occurring effects, and there is a panoply of fix stars on the sky dome, with Pole Star in the center of the sky dome. The stars occupy four major regions of the sky, the Sky River dividing the lower sky in a half and then going around the celestial city in the center of the sky dome (as the second of the regions), the forest and the desert. Only the stars that occupy the lowest part of the sky dome get to rise and set across the horizon when the tilt is strong enough. Mainly in the north around Midwinter, but possibly in the south around Midsummer too. No following the sun (or rather Lightfore), but rotation instead.

Unless you bring in terrain and other such limiting factors. The Munchrooms from Trollpak are a classic example of such a case.

Proper Cthulhu style would be to have the armor fade away as the wearer takes on the features of the slain foe, including its memories. Armor protection remains the same, but now provided by the wearer's body rather than the accoutrement. At some point, the dragon will awake into the nightmare of being restricted to a mostly human body.

Funnily this is exactly why I feel a lot more comfortable creating a RuneQuest opponent on the fly than creating a HeroQuest or Questlines opponent on the fly. With RuneQuest I have a good sense of the probabilities which allow the player characters to hit or be hit, and how much damage to expect, and whether or not to be able to deal with the consequences, by having these steps in segments. With the opposed rolls of the narrative system, I have much less an idea how often the opposition will wipe the floor with the player characters (or rather force me to deal with die results that derail the story, rather than player decisions). The most deadly encounter of my career GMing RuneQuest in scenarios of my own was two people trying to hunt a small herd of bisons from the front. One dead, one successful DI costing all but 2 POW, outside of the prepared scope of the scenario. The most deadly scene I had when running a scenario as written was with RQG, applying night visibilty and slippery ground penalties in a hamlet plagued by a weird monster leaving crushed bodies behind, including a third of the party, caught by a whip (a weapon that only became available to players with the W&E Guide). I knew that monster was TPK bad news and inexperienced monster design when I saw its stats, but running a scenario from the text was a test.

While you are waiting, take a look at Nick Brooke's suggestion: A sundial would show how many more or less hours a day has on our planet. In Glorantha, you can match the movement of Lightfore (the opposite of Yelm's path) against the revolutions of Mastakos/Uleria to know about night length, and hence about day length. Zzabur has (or at least had until the Dawn) the Red Sands of Time. Mostal is a clockwork deity... who needs Galileo? Remembering the illustration of the Starseers in the Guide, I think a water clock would look exactly right in that kind of environment. Triremes are Iron Age. Silver and gold coins are Iron Age. Stone bridges crossing rivers are Iron Age. All of these exist in canonical Glorantha. There is even at least one Aeolipile like the one built by Heron of Alexandria. While I would have been happier with "Leonardo the Scientist" having used the name "Archimedes", the trope is the same. Stuff invented and built by Archimedes is well within the capability of artificers in Gloranthan history or present.

Agreed. North and South on a planet or moon are defined by its rotation, even if it is tidally locked to a bigger body like our moon is to our planet. A flat world with an overarching sun path might require different directions, like Pratchett's Diskworld rotating on the backs of four giant elephants which has Hubwards, Rimwards, Clockwise and Widdershins. Things get strange when you should tell which direction to look for the sun at noon. Except for our antipodean friends, most of the Glorantha fans are used to find the sun in the south at noon, but in Glorantha it actually stays mainly above, like it does in our equatorial regions (which somehow have fewer Glorantha fans). Having lived north of the Arctic, that summer had 12 very long hours by that definition... You need to qualify that statement to "at the Equinoxes", especially if you have variations in day length like you have at rather high latitudes, or like you have in Glorantha where Midsummer has a 16 hour day and an 8 hour night. Yes, counting Cesium atom vibrations is tedious, and you quickly run out of number words and symbols. And you must remain within certain speed limits. Finding and isolating them requires some work, too - as does constructing them out of Element and Power runes. More importantly, even though this is an integer operation, effectively you are limited to very few significant numbers when measuring things. Heartbeats or breaths are a common measure, but will vary depending on agitation and exertion. Hourglasses are known to the Brithini, demonstrating that physical experiments work in Glorantha, runic or atomic. Water clocks (or other liquids) are feasible for measuring time. Pendulums are. A rotating device letting out steam when placed above a fire can be used to measure or record Mostali work cycles. RuneQuest spirit spell duration might be a tempting gamist's measure... A Light spell will give you exactly two minutes of light, unless activation time (the strike ranks needed to finish the spell) is deducted. Except that the world doesn't know the game, and things like this might be (and should be) fuzzy. And your RQ3 Light spell will last five minutes.

That is a Binding Enchantment using an animal to house the spirit. (Still something that can be given to a starting character "as a heirloom", btw.) Naturally you don't inscribe a spirit-housing matrix that can be re-used for other spirits of that type for an animal companion spirit. That kind of Binding will fade away with the death of the Binder. Something like that could become a nasty plot element if the creator of your animal companion given at character creation dies - a possible but not really player-friendly way to introduce a plot, killing off a familiar sidekick without much a player can do about it. An NPC follower that will have become a fixture also in the other players' experience of the game. Just by GM fiat.

How would such "support" have to look to satisfy your demand for guidance? An actual play of such a complex battle? (Note that there is a sample of guidance in the third scenario of The Smoking Ruins, for the antagonists of the first year.) In the past, GMs have improvised and winged this, e.g. in the Haunted Ruins module that got played by the Temple of the Wooden Sword cast of characters. The scenario is in RQ2 Troll Pak, an action report (though rather un-detailed) is in the Stafford Campaign notes. Both are available from Chaosium. Especially these troll tactics have been explored in some detail, both in Troll Pak and in the Big Rubble. How such situations play out depends on the GM and the players about as much as on the context given by the scenario material. I made my first steps in such a direction with the RQ3 Vikings box, which had a very useful booklet with pre-rolled adversary or allied vikings for the GM to pick individuals from and to send into the breach. RQG has something similar in the Starter Set - generalized stat blocks for normal residents of Jonstown and some more experienced upgrades thereof. It also has the sample characters. The rest is a learning experience, taking into account the possible consequences of e.g. Divine Intervention or of coordinated NPC tactics, or of less well known rune spells suddenly landing in the situation.

The general agreement seems to be that a Gloranthan year is the equivalent of a terrestrial year for biological purposes. Day length, while measured in 24 hours by some, doesnt have to be the same as the terrestrial day, although it might. (It does work as a standard circadian cycle.) YGWV - play with whatever concept gives you a narrative kick, or ignore such minor discrepancies if they don't make a fun story to explore for you and your (current) group.

You might remember the warrior dragonewt by the name of Inoi Sessele in Griffin Mountain Dream Dragons don't exactly re-incarnate after having undergone utuma, although they might well be a recurring dream of their "ancestor", and at the very least they will be something like a piece of memory for the dreaming dragon. Now, if somebody successfully bonded with an armor made from that dragon's skin (or possibly a whole set of matching armors, possibly for the whole party, considering the size of such a dream dragon), that piece of dream and/or memory may be (temporarily) lost to the dreaming dragon, but keep drawing magic from it. Sooner or later, the Inoi Sessele story might have to be acted out by that dreaming dragon, or at least by some dream dragon emanated in stead of the slain one. Do true dragons shed skin and/or scales? If they do, do they routinely devour what they shed to avoid being targeted via sympathetic magic? Can they overlook small pieces (much like Siegfried did not notice the linden leaf on his shoulder)? There is a remote chance that dream dragon material that is destined to disappear after some time (often only after years) might be stabilized by bits and pieces of the dreaming True Dragon. And given that dragons can pull their environment in to form a gigantic body, there may be ambient former material of the dragon in the region, possibly as soil or rock. If that dreamer was the Brown Dragon, residual draconic matter will be at the site of the New Lunar Temple, with some ruins possibly still accessible after the eating. And possibly there will have been people visiting that site and taking souvenirs, such s dust or temple pieces or... TLDR: there is some creative potential here that might be fun to explore.

Such "dark alchemists" could be good associated members and customers of the alchemists' guild and the knowledge temple, with something like a "registered small business" e.g. in antidotes (which require the same ingredients as venoms). In the Rubble, the Black Fang poisoners may run material collection quests for the guild. The Knowledge Temples are massive money sinks, and while royal stipends are nice, personal luxuries and rare book demands may exceed those stipends, which explains their astronomical research fees. The associated guilds like alchemists, perfumers, parchment/paper makers etc. serve as money-makers and don't ask too many questions about their customers.

There is slightly more text in the now semi-canonical and out-of-print HeroQuest publication "Dragon Pass: Land of Doom - A Gazetteer of Kerofinela". And there was some online discussion about that, possibly already somewhere in the mailing list archives at http://glorantha.steff.in , or possibly in the Google+ archives that ended up on Tapatalk IIRC.

RuneQuest monsters or beasts are rather easy to design. The Third Edition had a range of tables for hit locations which calculated hit points by simple fractions, but the current edition has switched back to less mathematically elegant lookup tables that scale better at extreme values of SIZ and/or CON. If you can find it second hand, the Games Workshop hardcover of the generic RQ3 bestiary is a good set of examples to modify for other creatures of a less Gloranthan spin, and the Alternate Earth RQ3 boxes for Vikings and Land of Ninja have adaptations to those myths and ecologies. What really makes RuneQuest monsters apart is their role in myth and ecology, and the resulting typical behaviors upon contacting them. Those take some work if you create your own or if you want to flesh out why this species from game X (say Talislanta) appears in your game setting, if your game and your players need any such justifications. Human opponents are a lot more typical in RuneQuest than in other rpgs. With significantly different background cultures., and cults, this human variability replaces a lot of the humanoid monsters say from the goblin range. Glorantha outside of Dragon Pass has plenty monsters which aren't that hard to put into stats. Some have been statted out in RQ2 or RQ3, or have just received descriptions like e.g. the Pamaltelan Hoolars. There are various antigod races with a generally humanoid body (although parts may be grotesquely enlarged), like the huan-to of the Shan Shan mountains separating Kralorela from Pent and Genert's Wastes, or the gorgers of Kimos. We have other names, with other grotesque details hinted, that can easily be extrapolated from that, or from troll stats (just another race of underworld humanoids, after all). Do you want the Starspawn of Cthulhu as RuneQuest monsters? We have hit locations for Walktapi and for winged dragonewts pr Wind Children to adapt. Balrogs? Use Cacodemon, or in case of doubt dragonewt ruler hit locations.

Aggar has a few possible EWF remnants. The City of Ten Thousand Magicians had been ravaged by its former uz student from Yolp, but somehow survived. Possibly the anti-dragon alliance considered that troll raid sufficient to cleanse the draconic taint (and more importantly, grab all the valuable plunder). The city might have had a short troll occupation - not really comparable to Old Pavis, but possibly some similarities. Plus there is that prophecy... Ormsgone Valley is the logical place for any mystics attempting to harmonize with the Red Dragon and its dream. Karse may be an outpost and possibly a recruitment center. The school might actually be inside the dragon's dream. The Green Dragon is too recent to have any EWF attachment, and even more so for the Brown Dragon Lair beneath the devoured New Lunar Temple. Ormsfang in the Rockwoods might have something. If the Black Dragon of Cliffhome has anything, Cragspider will have acquired that.

One of the functions of a self-assembling von Neumann drone is self replication after having completed its cycle of self-assembly. This would have begun after completing the elemental balance, a process that got disrupted by the Birth of Umath rather than the manufacturer of the Moon engines which were to be the child drones. One surviving early prototype was found in the Feldichi ruins of Dorastor, the Pseudocosmic Egg which was used to breed Osentalka, the Perfect God. The limitation of the Young Elementals to Darkness, Water, Earth and Fire either suggests that this was the entire list of pre-designed elements (the absence of a Bronze caste of Mostali, with a Brass caste as one of the three derivations of the Tin caste instead, seems to support this) or that this was one of possibly several items under construction. The moons of the Storm Age may have been other such mechanisms prematurely released by the birth of Umath, with the one resulting in Nysalor and Arkat possibly being rather far from completion.

POW is expended to create a permanent magical effect. The existence of family heirlooms makes it clear that the creators of these items are long dead (whether they were part of the ancestors, or the beneficiaries of some non-ancestor enchanter). There is no requirement for the heir to re-spend POW to keep these going. Also, this view leads to an interesting conundrum in case the enchanter receives voluntary POW contributions by a bunch of donors. Does the enchantment get weakened as these donors die off? POW can be donated to spirits as part of a bargain. POW is donated to community wyters on a somewhat regular base. Does such donated POW dissipate when the donor dies? Would your wyter fall apart if all the most recent donors died? Would you want to keep track of this donated POW in your game? By definition, Dead Crystals are the crystallized blood of deities that died in the Gods War. Gods that weren't around when Time was conceived, who then left the Underworld - a few earlier than others (Tolat, Lightfore), others in a great big bunch upon the Dawn. Now Godtime is persistent, and deities that simply Died within Godtime without being returned to the Universe of Time still exist in that layered amount of Godtime. Their blood doesn't actively interact with the Source of Energy any more, though, and thus may only receive Life Force, but doesn't generate it any more. How would a deity be "entirely dead"? Umath was dismembered beyond any ability to re-assemble. The Thunderstones that can be collected in Thunder Delta still are pretty much "alive". Vadrus wasn't heard of any more after some point in the Gods War, possibly having suffered Death and/or dismemberment, or possibly transformed into something (or rather someone) else. It's either/or. From a minimaxing point, adventurers would only use low MP capacity crystals to store spirits if given the choice, and probably seek the aid of a specialist in case they obtain a lower capacity crystal than the one they are currently employing to hose the spirit. (Unless they prefer to house another spirit.) The hoary and very confusing RQ1/RQ2 chestnut of "temporary POW" rather than "MP". There is no information how long the "attunement" of an unpowered crystal takes, or what happens when you try to attune somebody else's unpowered crystal that contains either stored MP or a bound spirit while the former owner still is alive. Even worse, it doesn't tell us what to do with spirits bound into a crystal while you re-attune a dead crystal you de-attuned in order to attune to an unknown crystal, and how long that re-attunement takes. W&E p.119: Does that mean that all MP and spirits stored in the collection of unpowered crystals are lost (or need to be expended if you want to make the best use of them, or temporarily be housed elsewhere such as binding enchantments or a shaman's fetch)? A POW gain roll only applies to attuning the powered crystal. How long does this process take for each unpowered crystal (and how do you take that MP out of a crystal designated to hold a spirit?), and how long does it take for your powered crystal that you previously were attuned to? Without a chance of failure for the old one. Essentially, a powerful character could own a small selection of powered crystals, abandon attunement of the currently attuned powered crystal and re-attune one of the others. How long does this take? No spirit is powerful enough to push aside a droplet of the living deity's life force. You mean you don't get the egg-laying lactating woolly sow? The scenario authors have clearly disregarded limits put into crystals in the published scenarios (e.g. in the Smoking Ruins the crystals in Dera Zarka's harp with a capacity of 1 point each on p.18 or Urvantan's unpowered 17 points crystal on p.139). The "Extra POW, roll again and add 1D6 POW" on a roll of 02 does allow unpowered crystals greater than 15 MP. It also allows weird combinations of powered crystals. Leaving aside that I disagree with your concept of "mortal enchantments" as the norm: Essentially, how to kill (a portion of) a god? Tap Body (Tap SIZ) is the only sample "Tap <characteristic> spell in the rules, and it can reduce the target's SIZ down to 1. Tap POW might be able to go down to zero, killing the target. The vampiric re-awakening is similar to a resurrection in this regard - the former body becomes Dead. Any previous bindings etc. are lost.

The Monastery could be a dojo perpetuating some orthodox mystical martial arts from the EWF era. Certified dragon-free, I suppose, not at all like that Red Dragon School away in Ormsgone Valley. Possibly set up by Godunya to teach the Third Council by example after they strayed from the draconic orthodoxy of the Long Mountain Dragon School.

There is a multiverse of World Machines spanning the outer realms between the Source and the Void. These are the implementations of Blueprint limiting the potential of the Void with the Energy from the Source. The World Machines started out as a fabricator that transformed itself to the thing we call universe. It is a self-extracting package placed in between the Void of Unlimited Potential ()a very dense state of quantum vacuum) and the Source of Unlimited Energy (unlimited at least for the period of observation available to us). Basically, it is a von Neumann-drone seeded into this inter-dimensional non-space outside of the Void. It had a collector and filter for the raw potential, the Chaosium, and it had another collector for the raw energy of the Source. The World Machine had a self-extracting blueprint, which was inscribed in adamantium on the surface of the Spike as it was made from the output of the Chaosium. The Chaosium had a blueprint of its own which it spawned as the emerging elemental blueprints were acted on. This was Grower, a force designed to collect energy from the Source and to manifest as living matter, to be consumed by the Maker. This blueprint was not set in Adamanrium, but imprinted on far more malleable elemental bodies, which allowed it to alter over generations of reproductive cycles. Many of these alterations were predicted by the blueprint, but they did not account for the random waste that could escape the Chaosium when there were unpredicted fluctuation in the intake of potential from the Void. Usually these fluctuations would be contained by incorruptable Adamantium containers and fed into the Chaosium in periods of lesser activity, but even this precaution measure, while being designed to expand along with the base of the Spike. The Chaosium was expanded only with the power of 2 of the extension of the Spike and not with the power of 3 like the matter extruded, which should have allowed control of the Void intake. Unfortunately, the initial assignment of Void Storage ran slightly above predicted future capacity during the adjustment phase. As a result, there was occasional spill-over into the Darkness Below. The Master Blueprint, while inscribed in Adamantium, was a living entity, which mortals recognize as the Greatest Goddess Glorantha. (More to follow, with more World Machine perspective and possibly unnecessary details on the implementation of the Blueprint, in a separate post. Stuff of interest only to the Mostali.) The Invisible God thought things up, and energy interacted with matter according to primal principles. Batteries included, no assembly needed. Did he think up the Blueprint for Glorantha? If yes, did he assign Danmalastan to the World Machine project in one of the four slots around the Spike?

I still need to be convinced that "living" requires a permanent physical body. Take a spirit to the Dead Place and it will manifest physically. POW is the measure of the magical productivity of an entity's life force. Spirits do produce magic, that's why people are eager to bind them. If not life-force, what do they draw the energy from? Can't be the spirit plane if they are imprisoned in the mundane plane, or can it? Living doesn't require biology, either - "the living land" or "living rock" aren't impossible in Glorantha. And microbial activity often translates as elemental activity. A Binding other than storage in a crystal or a purpose-made matrix? Putting a spirit into one of these doesn't require POW, just highly ephemeral MP or rune points. Placing such an enchantment on a physical biological being (such as an animal or a tree) removes the "object" from the enchantment. If it is this kind of animal companion that you mean with your category "created binding", I am with you.

Zzabur begs to differ, in his One World text in Revealed Mythologies. Neither the One World or the Maseren/Paseren concept were incorporated into the Monomyth, yet they remain somewhat relevant to Malkioni sorcery and use of the Abiding Book.

In case of an orderly transition from owner to heir and a spirit in an artifact or a crystal, all it takes is a "Control entity" spirit spell and a "Bind Spirit" spell. The Control Entity" spell could be cast by just about anybody, calling the spirit out of the object and to stand ready for a binding (perhaps even "don't resist the re-biniding"?), while the Binding needs to be cast by the "heir" whose life now is supposed to maintain the enchantment. With animal companions, this does not seem to be feasible.

YRQMV. Presenting a deity just as a character template is somewhat beside the point IMO. Something like a set of quick reference cards? Sounds like a different product, really. Might be feasible.

When it comes to binding a spirit into a dead crystal, one may argue that the binding is into a Godtime object that transited over into the Middle World. Can a spirit volunteer to bind themselves? The Humakti "Bind Ghost" seems to suggest such a thing. And the reason for ghosts is lingering attachment to the Middle World, isn't it? As usual, the rules keep a number of options away from the player characters because the designers don't think of these as enhancing their and/or their main audience's game fun. If there was a sustainable way of producing powered magical artifacts that survive the death of the maker, certain players would latch onto that idea and possibly flood their environment with such. A non-sustainable method might be an artificer master's "dying breath of bestowal", transiting part of his life to a small range of to-be-finished master pieces which then would indeed be pieces of the master. Something like that would be harder to exploit.