Joerg

Ralzak Ark(at) might be the sum of the pieces of Chaos Arkat (and possibly slain Nysalor) shed when Arkat returned to a human shape. He is a Hero (in the sense of the board game), which means he can use heroic escape, and if he has stolen a page out of Jaldon's play book, he can be summoned again to wreak more havoc.

IMO the Slontos problem wasn't caused by Chaos, but by the Boggles. These creaturöd üp+sflknüälk + piks+fpdgj+ü h+po

You might think of the opening as replacing one material (or material property) for another, but you might as well hallucinate extra space where there was none before, and move through that. To onlookers, it might look like the Trickster got two-dimensional before disappearing into the wall (or other such obstacle). As a general rule, Trickster spells imbue a "reality" that resembles "Who Framed Roger Rabbit".

The need to tap people has largely gone now that we have spells that tap the power of Orlanth directly (Steal Breath doesn't have to be cast on people, it will work on even still air). Tapping captured enemies might be seen as good use of spoilt resources, but tapping s Pelorian families (Lodrilites) have similar sizes of kinship groups and mutual care. Leaders of such kinship groups are comparable to clan chiefs in terms of care. A member of an administration is ideally somewhat remote from their administrative unit. A Kitori shadowlord and Lunar tax collector have about the same amount of care for their clientele. Most Lunar officials will be part of a network of noble houses ultimately headed by some of the great families of the Empire, which is little different from how the Houses of Esrolia are nested under the Great Enfranchised Houses. As such, these officials will remain thankful to their sponsors, keeping a benevolent eye on those who operate under the aegis of said sponsors. This form of tribalism is not that different from actual tribal societies.

You are confusing RuneQuest initiation with worship here. The number of initiates may be low, but the number of (lay) worshipers is the adult population of the Heartlands. There is a grass roots illumination movement with agitators spreading riddles and "mobs" of simple folk without any possessions (or goals) hanging on their every word. The Lunar Way is open for everybody, regardless of birth caste. Not all entry paths lead to the top, though.

I didn't quite count the WF15 article since it has been deprecated in a great number of points (most importantly the Ergeshi). Now, with the more cosmopolitan outlook, it would be weird not to have a Vega Goldbreath/Starnia Stormrender equivalent.

There has not been a published Sun Dome temple staff (full or minor) without a Light Lady in charge of the military. Just saying...

There is an Entarios in 1992's King of Sartar, a Provider companion of Argrath "who did not return from it".

That belongs to the "How does your Glorantha vary" thread rather than here. The Lightbringer myth was always (in Gloranthan history) fundamental to the role of Orlanth within Time. Harmast set up a script stringing together a series of myths which may or may not have been part of the Godtime experience, but have been since his return with Arkat. I would like to know Kargzant's Hill of Gold myth. Apparently he is Lightfore, so he should have it. (And old Praxian Sun Daughter, too... or "why do these scuptures deep in the Paps show Yelmalio as a woman?")

Elk

In that case, resonably modern France would have been an influence on Glorantha, too, if you look at some player character names in the Wooden Sword environment. Viking influences are strong behind the RQ1/2 magic systems, as per the preview pages of https://www.chaosium.com/the-stafford-house-campaign-pdf/

In my games, ordinary activities may have mythical resonance that could pull people into other peoples' heroquests. This is in some part modeled after Biturian Varosh's Zorak Zoran encounter, something he might rightly blame Rurik Runespear for (again). Invoking circumstantial bonuses for casting rune magic is a form of heroquesting (or alternatively, creating a minor variant of the Proximate Holy Realm, which isn't much different). Traveling along those fine roads in Sartar, or on the Daughter's Road in the Lunar Provinces is a heroquest-adjacent activity. Interesting rules implication there - passions are one type of abilities routinely used in heroquesting, as well as in performing arts. (Or in Trickster pranks.) (while picking on word meanings: "trivial" used to mean "logical, well ordered and well presented". Can't have that with heroquesting, can we? Or does that make us god learners?) I don't think that I would have any myth where Orlanth buys the milk. Stealing the milk, sure - if only as a sidekick of Yinkin - but the only stories I can think of where Orlanth ever got close to paying something was the story of Aedin's Wall and the compensation offer to Thed for Ragnaglar's misdeeds. Maybe respect to Yelm in Hell.

Get creative with your adulthood initiation, like e.g. Ingolf or Argrath, or those and you know why people should stop HeroQuesting. What good did Harmast bring from his heroquests? Arkat's Command, enslaving the Heortlings to troll tribute, and the Telmori curse which would hit them in the Third Age.

Most of the time, the cloud cover will obscure the view of and from the peak of Kero Fin. Even when you see the sun directly through a gap in the clouds. Yelmalio's golden Sun Dome will be obscured by the blue sky at day and by Xentha's cloak at night.

Pun intended? And "equally ineffable" is the same as "equally effable". Also quite effable, otherwise we wouldn't be able to discuss any of this. Glorantha is an overarching myth composed of multitudes of more specific myths. The truth of myths is found in their resonance with the audience, the recipients. H..as canon changed, or do we have different canons depending on publication period? There are people out there who swear that Glorantha is not complete without rune priests of Humakt and rune lords of Issaries, Chalana Arroy or Daka Fal. There probably are even players of White Bear and Red Moon or Dragon Pass or Oriflam's Le Guerre des Heroes who know a lot about Argrath and Sartar but who have never heard about Orlanth or Ernalda. "current" is an interesting qualifier. From the outside, even Gloranthan history has much in common with Gloranthan Godtime as the layered foundation of our narrative. While there might be a few names that could be correct answers for the question "who is the current prince" in 1627, the question about their personality and reputation has more answers than this forum has threads. Was Monrogh right? is a valid topic for disagreement, at least as much as whether a holy person of Lightfore should be allowed to wear women's clothing. You are welcome to live in a 1990 bliss where Yelmalio was an uncontested and cool deity that kicked ass, with only Yamsur casting some doubt on his uniqueness as the lesser sun, and maybe a nagging doubt who that Ehilm flame guy might have been. And without any idea that Yelmalio had anything to do with the planet Lightfore bathing nightly Glorantha in about as much light as our world's half moon. "Who should we worship" is a question that many players (and GMs) confuse with "Which cult should we initiate into". Most Gloranthan humans expect a list of names (or "The Invisible God") as the answer. Often with cult entities that are hostile to one another on the same list. "How shoud we worship entity X" is another important question - should it be propitiation to simply ward off that entity's displeasure, or should it be some form of devotion in the hope of magical aid? And should that magical aid be wielded by the individual worshiper or by a cult official on behalf of the worshipers?

It's also the spot where you can find Pole Star (under his local name Rigsdal, if you insist). Basically, the top of Kero Fin is the summit of the universe viewed from the surrounding lands. It takes a celestial observation platform to recognize Kero Fin as the equivalent of the Footstool in Raibanth or other such local summits in the Decapolis of Murharzarm, as illustrated in the Copper Tablets (from tablet 5 onward as you get the Spike or Kero Fin perspective). The upper crown of Flamal at Hrelar Amali was a similar spot, occupied by Ehilm. And quite certainly Genert's Palace had a high spot occupied by Yamsur. We don't see the Storm Village inside Aedin's Wall any more in recent publications. I am quite fond of this Storm Realm outside of the normal layers of Godtime, and sort of parallel to the Spiral Map of Belintar.

Personally, I find the Elmal/Yelmalio "schism" or disagreements minor compared to the mix-up of Antirius and Reladivus/Kargzant (and whatever the world may have fogotten about Yamsur). The Bridling of Kargzant in the Dawn Age is a merger enforcing some sort of identity that wasn't there to begin with, creating a hybrid Lightfore. (Almost like a centaur - part man, part horse.)

Eaten is relative... Gorp will consume whatever they engulf, but is that eating? Sort of... Enlightenment usually means confrontation with the Absolute, which is distinct from Kajabor, found on the opposite end of the Cosmos, even though insights into that may come from meditations of the Void "below" everything. IMO a true ascension will consume the physical existence through the ascension rather than giving it over to entropy. Descent into Entropy (whether Kajabor, Wakboth or the threatened (but modified) Blaskarth experience/non-experience of the Red Goddess) deletes not just the current identity, but eliminates the victim from existence past and present (and future). A form of ongoing Hell, yes. Outwardly the victims have been claimed by Chaos, even though the process might be ongoing indeterminately for the victims. We don't get any first hand experiences, I suppose - a heroic escape from the Maw of the Bat will send the escapee through Hell, but not into Chaos. Krarsht may be the most "Eaten" of all these examples. And possibly the most "recoverable" of demises. I would not be astonished if Belintar underwent this once or twice in his career. One possible parallel for souls being eaten by the Bat might be objects ripped apart and "parking" in the accretion disk around a black hole, without any hope of escaping the attraction while still undergoing that destruction.

In my Glorantha, elemental water is isotonic, containing the same amount of salt as human (or merman) blood. Both freshwater and seawater are deviations of this norm. The dissolved minerals aren't just the Gloranthan equivalents of sodium chloride (rock salt as used by humans), but also chalk (calcium hydrogen carbonate) and other kations and anions (potassium, magnesium, lithium, sulphate, iodide) leading to all manner of marine sedimentation - limestone, red sandstone, salts, natron, gypsum. Isotonic elemental water is associated with Triolina, desalinated (rain) water is associated with Heler, brines are associated with Nelat (whose caustic baths are in all likelihood alkaline rather than acid, turning organic tissue into soaps). Heler is the Sea deity who tragically lost their connection to the Seas, leading to an enrichment of salts in the oceans. There are numerous variants of stories telling how a sea deity lost their ability to re-join the seas, e.g. the beginning of the Keet epic in Revealed Mythologies (where the sea deity has a totally different name). Yes, and there is more to it than just potability. What I meant is hostile to the Godtime rivers. Look what happened to Sshorga - backbone broken by Orlanth, enslaved by the Dara Happans, resurging in the Flood only to be diminished again by joint efforts of Orlanth and Valind. Other rivers had to overcome local resistance, often leaving battlegrounds behind. We don't know how many rivers were spawned and then overcome by foes, perhaps leaving a valley or a salt deposite behind, but their names forgotten. Rather than alien, the surface of the Dry Earth that escaped the Seas in the Green Age was alienated from the rightful feeding by the Seas. Many a Godtime river might have had a history as a current accessing the submerged Earth Cube from above prior to the Green Age, attempting to return to its old feeding grounds and encountering new and alien things refusing it entry or nourishment. The Flood era during the early to middle Storm Age returned many such currents to their old homes, but only for a short while.

An alarming portion of this community is of that generation, or only half a generation away from it. Our experience is that of a living and changing document, with freezes to an invariable state only a temporary thing.

Stone (the brother of Mostal, the Rock of all rocks) was killed, and you will find that rocks have much reduced spirit nowadays. More often than not, the spirit may be not about its material body, but about a collective entity (like a place) they belong to. I can see a definition that life requires a metabolism, an intake of fuel and "oxidizer" and exhalation and (possibly) giving off waste, or an intake of energy and nutrients with an exhalation and possibly generating waste. Does this have anything to do with generating magic? Is this different from an elemental occupying a portion of its element and regenerating magic points? Part of the events leading to the Dawn was heroes like King Heort separating the Living from the Dead, and e.g. Vogarth Strongman trapping the dead of Esrolia in Koravaka/Necropolis. Now these dead were ambulant and would exact force, and they might even have consumed food, if only out of being used to that. (Note that on the Esrolian day of the dead, offerings of food are integral to dealing with their annual visit.) Beside birth of all types, you might have to consider different types or expressions of death, both of minor and capital D death. "She is not dead but sleeping" - a state so like to Death that it fooled Nontraya and his host of the dead, and yet reversible. One of those intermediate states. How many of your body's atoms are the same as in your body of 25 years ago? An elemental may have a somewhat faster exchange of body matter. Yeah, the elemental might just take the spirit of its body mass with it when it returns to wherever it came from. Spirits within spirits, within spirits... Much like a dragonewt possessing an intact egg. If someone performs a Lightbringer's Quest with you as the reward, you will get a new body matching your sense of self. You'll become what Xeotam calls a Kaelith. Acrually, the Source of all energies uses entities possessing a quality that RuneQuest identifies as POW to imbue its magicsl energy onto Creation. POW generation is generally an autotroph process, with only some aberrations like sorcerers' Tapping or vampires' blood drain operating in a heterotroph function. Unless your Glorantha has an ecosystem of spirit entities feeding on other spirit entities. Bunny spirits taking energy from carrot spirits, and in return providing energy to wolf spirits. The same goes for living beings, according to most schools of Gloranthan metaphysics (as in Revealed Mythologies). The Ultimate or Source emits energies through runic channels that are accumulated by Life Force, which then can be expended, ultimately dissipating into the Void. The body no longer has the spirit, and the spirit no longer possesses the body. It only haunts it. Does the spirit regenerate MP if its MP had been depleted at the time of death? Apparently yes. Things lacking (any trace of) POW, things that have (been forced to) consume(d) their life force. Undead for instance. Things tapped to oblivion. Sometimes a shape may have a spirit if the material (e.g. metal) is largely devoid of it. Made things like mostali creations (Jolanti, Nilmergs/Gremlins, Gobblers) may count as living for some degrees of living. Dead crystals of the Gods are not alive by definition. Which is sort of the point of this thread. IMG spirits have ecologies of their own. Maybe not every single instance of a thing will have a spirit on its own, but regardless whether there are individual spirits or not, there will be collective spirits of such matter. I like the vision of Prax (and Genert's wastes) providing a spirit vegetation that the Eirithan herds feed upon alongside some less nutritious plant matter.

IIRC that's Ivex Devouring Dog.

I am not a rules expert (although possibly a rules lawyer). That disclaimer out of the way: This seems to be a typical course for a wyter quest - contact an ancestor of the (ancestrallly tied) group you want to make a wyter for, or contact a hero whose goals coincide with that of your hero band, and invite them into the wyter object. Not exactly a spirit binding operation, but somewhat parallel to that. Traveling the Godtime is both similar to and different from discorporating to travel the Spirit World, which is what shamans do to pick up spirits in order to manifest them somehow in the Mundane World. Discorporation doesn't usually allow you to bring spirit containers or other non-spirit items. Heroquesting on the other hand used to have a meta-rule that you cannot bring physical objects from the Hero Planes (targets of the Lightbringers' Quest aka Kaeliths being an exception, as forming their new body might be an acquired or innate ability of theirs). Many heroquest items are a kind of "contact relics" - physical objects created in the Mundane World to resemble the holy artifact, carried over into the heroquest to function as the original, and somehow retaining some of that ability upon the return. Under HQ1 and HQG rules, you would spend a hero point to cement such an item as an ability. I haven't watched Jeff's actual play videos to the extent that I could comment on whether or how much his playtest Heroquesting rules reflect that approach. Bringing back someone's ghost by associating the Godtime encounter with an actual possession of his carried into Godtime should be a viable binding method sidestepping enchantments. Of course, this will mean to face that person's opponents, ideally at the moment of his death. Otherwise,

Given my currently resurging research into tides, I wonder how the Boat Planet (on the visible side of the sky River) and the Blue Streak (on the outside of the Sky River, and parting ways from its ascending path starting at Lorion) interact, and whether the Boat Planet might add another influence on the tidal cycles. Do we know where on the Celestial River the Boat Planet will rise? On the Youth side (which seems to be in the East at Dawn on Voria's day), or on the Lorion side? WIll it travel with the Blue Streak, or against it? (Given the Waertag association, I would be in favor of traveling with the force behind the tides, but the Waertagi control over tidal waves gives other options, too.)

If you have it, The Gathering Thunder, part 3 of the Barbarian Adventures series of Hero Wars/ HeroQuest 1 scenarios, has the quest to return the Boat Planet as a central theme. The question "when exactly" is already hard for the question when exactly did it disappear, and did it disappear everywhere at the same time? Quoting the intro to the scenario (p.48 of the booklet): So already the disappearance is problematic. Zzabur presumably cast his great spell in 920 S.T., or at least that is when it took effect: (Guide p.139, boxed text): The disappearance of the planet started the wave-front (initially literally so, as the clutter in Ozur Bay showed) of the Closing spreading out over the seas of the Inner World of Glorantha. (We don't have any information how the Outer World may have been affected.) Generally, ships braving the Closing would have to fight fiercely with hostile entities and hostile conditions, but sufficiently sturdy ships with sufficiently heroic crews would be able to survive such voyages, although with a great risk of not making it. There is the famous last ship from Jrustela that reached Seshnela in 996 (Middle Sea Empire p.27f), and there is the entire fleet of Kralori ships that reached Vormain through Kahar's Sea of Fog despite the Closing (but which was destroyed by a mighty holy storm, something which reads like kamikaze in Japanese). The expansion of the Closing took 50 years to cover all of the inner Seas of Glorantha. Dormal's Opening journeys started in 1580, with the Boat Planet being raised in 1624. It is one of four planets raised in that year, with the three new planets in Orlanth's Ring the other ones. And Sartarite heroquesters are involved in all these raisings, although the Boat Planet heroquest in Gathering Thunder shows a multitude of participants on that ship carrying Dormal and Gonn Orta's daughter (from the Cradle scenario) into the Sky. The Eleven Lights quest would have seen concurrent heroquesting elsewhere in the world, both acting for and against this new phenomenon. My pdf of the Glorantha Sourcebook states (p.37) that the Boat Planet re-appears in Sea Season 1624, which is congruent with the story in Gathering Thunder, although it also says that it rises in 1625 (p.103). The Gathering Thunder scenario apparently starts some time in 1623 (p.:50 Minaryth Purple presages the New Lunar Temple ceremony as imminent in two years time). But then, on their return the participants learn about the assassination of Termertain by the Humakti led by Sarostip. Many of the assumptions in this story arc are clashing with the current canonical Glorantha, such as the inclusion of "Argrath Maniskison" as one of Kallyr's companions. It is still a rather grand approach at heroquesting into the Sky World, different in style from the journey of the Eleven Lights or the Dragonraise dancers (as GMed by Ian Cooper). The Eleven Lights Heroquest in the HQ2 book The Eleven Lights (p.115 onward) has Kallyr behind that celestial quest, too, taking place during the Windstop and helping to end it concurrently with Broyan's Battle of Iceland.