Joerg

During the Vingkotling Age, most of Ralios was part of the Greatwood, which received a famous counter-raid visit by the Thunder Brothers called the Plundering of Aron, so I doubt there were many if any Vingkotling settlements in Ralios. THe majority of the Ralians following the Orlanthi creed in the Third Age would be descendants of the Dawn Age population of Ralios, which were Serpent Brotherhood Hykimi and the agriculturalist Enerali horse totem people of Safelster (which extended all the way to the Tanier Valley that, somewhat ironically, has become the core lands of the "Kingdom of Seshnela" in the Third Age). The Vustri are one of the four Enerali tribes who converted before the rest, in opposition to the rest who were clustered around Hrelar Amali, forming the Dari Confederation at the time the Lightbringer missionaries (entering from Slontos or Dorastor) arrived. There were immigrants through Dorastor, displacing local Serpent Beast folk and/or converting some of them. The Battle of Zebrawood established the presence of agriculturalists in northern Ralios. Safelster was following the Lightbringers' creed when the Second Council turned into the Bright Empire after the Sunstop. Many former beast totems became weird ancestral spirit cults. Arkat's Dark Empire aka the Archonate brought a measure of henotheist Malkionism to Safelster, which the God Learner conquest then used to establish their orthodoxy or their experimental sects. Urban and rural Safelster remains a mix of Malkionism and Theyalan theism. THe two predominantly Orlanthi regions are Lankst on the uppermost Tanier River and the East Wilds. Lankst seems to share the Korioni ancestry of the lower porion of the Upper Tanier River, thus giving them an Enerali origin, some continuity from the Dari Confederation. The East Wilds Orlanthi include the Vustri and apparently various former Hykimi groups. There is little direct contact between the Orlanthi along the Tanier and those along the Doskior. Not much love either.

Depends on whether they are incarnate or not. Incarnate demigods - for a given value of mortal - retain free will and may act as they please (within their divine and mortal nature). Demigods as cult object in Godtime are bound by the Compromise. Worshipped mortals might be limited in their choices by the force of their worshippers binding them to their feats. Orgorvale is the child of two demigods, Vingkot (son of Orlanth and Janerra Alone, a mortal of the On Jorri folk) and the Summer Wife (daughter of Tada - avatar of Genert - and presumably Ernalda). She, and her husband Ulanin, are living and dying in Godtime, their presence there imprinted on the make-up of the world, engraved in the myth. Can a deity that died in the Gods War be worshipped? Of course - all of the participants in the Ritual of the Web were technically dead. Orgorvale is at best a godling, but she has become a genius loci for Orgovaleland - the Quivini foothills - and would have been worshipped as such by her descendants and their in-laws in the region. The tribe named after her (rather than her rider husband) disappeared when the Kingdom of Orlanthland came into being following the Gbaji Wars. Most of the bloodlines of her descendants were killed during the fall of the EWF and the Dragonkill - mostly by the Pelorian invaders or famine. Some of her descendants made it south into Heortland, from where e.g. the Red Cow clan returned into their ancestral lands. The EWF managed to draconize her cult, projecting it onto a dream dragon (possibly of a Dragon Speaker?), making her original persona irrelevant. Events in the GM Screen Adventure Book may change that.

The eponymous founder of the Vathmai tribe rode a Tusker boar, too, and his descendant Lalmor who spread the Lightbringer message to Slontos probably too. At least following the Seshnegi annectation of Slontos, no pig riders have been reported in Maniria any more.

Varankol te Mangler was a Great Living Hero of the EWF who received worship, and his civilized Tusker-riding human Aramites were part of the anti-Machine league forces. The half-troll look and feel needn't have started long before 1042 when the dragonspeakers were killed. By 1120 (the Dragonkill) there were Tusk Riders like the modern day ones in the region, and they retained leave to enter Dragon Pass like other "inhumans" after the Cross Line and Death Line had been set up.

God of Fluid Dynamics? The zero of Death doesn't necessarily mean Fertility/Life, it could simply mean being non-aligned. Putting Eurmal at Zero death doesn't seem right given his Killboy aspect. Far from Truth, close to Death puts him nearly in the corner of Storm Bull.

In the Second Age, the (hen civilized, human) Aramites appear to have been something like a warrior caste for the cities of Dragon Pass, with their Tusker Boars pretty much present anywhere in the Pass.

Getting full use of all the weirdness in Glorantha takes some traveling. There are some places like the Skyfall Lake, the Block, the Footprint or the Eternal Battle where Godtime still interacts with the world, creating quite fantastic environments. There are important holy places with slightly less dramatic Godtime presence that you can visit, or you can roam the unusual geography like ginormous skeletal pieces of dragons, impossibly tall mountains like Kero Fin. When it comes to cities worth admiration, there is Pavis next to the Big Rubble, there is Boldhome high up in a mountain valley with parts of the city sculpted out of the mountains, there is Furthest as the closest center of Lunar culture, and there is the metropolis of Nochet. Boldhome is supposed to get an official description this year, the other three have descriptions in the Jonstown Compendium, with Pavis also having the RQ Classic treatment and quite a bit of lore to absorb - but that's a possibility for any city you might play in. I had not thought of using Indian influences for Esrolia yet, but Punjab might indeed serve as a role model for the riverine lowlands of Esrolia. Using the Dune theme might require a maguffin similar to the Spice, indispensible and unavailable outside of the (newly assigned) Atreides holdings. Hazia doesn't quite cut it, even though it may be an integral ingredient for the magical regiments on both sides of the hero wars. Something draconic hasn't manifested yet. A clash of houses and imperial institutions is a very Lunar Empire theme, with moonrock a possible unique resource. Have you used the family history in character creation leading up to 1625? In that case, without contradicting the timeline, experiencing the Lunar occupation would be possible a clan in the Far Place, as that portion of Sartar still is occupied by Lunar forces. Unfortunately, that makes Prax a little more distant than one of the tribes bordering the chaparral. Still, if you are anywhere near Alone, then possibly the Griselda stories might give you an inroad to Pavis, although no description of Pavis after the liberation/conquest by the White Bull brotherhood has been published yet. Being anti-Lunar might well result in seeking help from that warlord in Pavis, especially if your party experienced some trouble with Lunar occupation officials, which might be a starting adventure. My own games usually try to hook on something from the players, who may have a shared goal, or who may have to defend or increase something under their immediate daytime job. Herders dealing with cattle raids (on either side), diplomats striving to keep the aftermath of such raids gone wrong within acceptable terms might go together. With some buy-in from the player of the Heler hermit, you could have the Heler initiate captured and the onset of a drought "until the dragon is slain" in a light version of the Aroka quest. Or perhaps the Heler hermit getting trapped in a flooded cave, needing the others to rescue them by ripping something apart (a beaver dam?) in another such variation of the myth. Draconic upgrades are a possibility, e.g. a stray dinosaur involved in the mishap. They could chance on a bunch of Praxians chasing or escaping from some Lunars, introducing some of the weird steeds of the plaines. While your Issaries character is a diplomat, he might get involved in some hyena skin business which might lead him into Prax to find a Desert Tracker to pass this item on to.

Not quite correct. Dividing RQG skills by 5 produces a much lower power level in Questworlds as skills above one mastery aren't that rare, and required to have a somewhat similar success rate with opposed rolls.

The rules are up for sale as a pdf in the Chaosium shop. The game pieces and game board would need some DIY, but unit listings and unit graphics are available for the virtual tabletop. Check the God Learners episode on Nomad Gods (Part 1) transcript for the links.

IIRC there was an illustration in the HeroQuest 1st ed publication Dragon Pass: Land of Doom - a Gazetteer to Kerofinela. The caravan path goes underneath it, approaching it from the southeast means to walk right into its maw. The Dragonspine Ridges are the remnants of Sh'harkarzeel's spine after Orlanth beheaded that dragon, from where Orlanth carried off that head, using it in many a myth. This head seems too small to be that item, or an incarnation or dream of that item. No idea whether it was in place before the EWF ruled in the region, possibly an atonement gift by a draconic hero of Orlanth (such as Obduran the Flyer).

The stars on the rim of the visible sky dome include stars from below the horizon, especially at the winter solstice when the sky tilts far to the south, spilling heat into the Sea of Fire. Those stars shed light, just like those from above the horizon. The planets that enter the Underworld (Dendara/Moskalf and Lokarnos on the Sunpath, and the Southpath planets Tolat, Artia and Twinstars) and the Sun Disk, do shed (deadly/death-bringing) light in the Underworld. There remains a question whether those bodies will be above or below the observer.

Jaldon was a mortal who became an immortal, re-incarnating hero. Waha is a deity or greater spirit and might need (non-chaotic) support similar to the Bat if carried out of his turf.

Less than that, IMO. My personal experience in a river would match the Stream to the Amper, a tributary of the Isar west of Munich. 20 meters in an untamed river bed rather than the maybe 8 meters in the channeled course of the Amper, with the deepest parts maybe a bit over 2 m towards the outer curve of the bend of the current course. The river bed might well be a wasteland of pebbles too large and heavy to get carried away by the seasonal floods with the actual river meandering inside, much like the Lech upriver from Landsberg (the next tributary of the Danube west of Munich). Both these rivers run through the foothills of the Alps into the alluvial plain of the Danube, which sort of matches the situation in the Stream Valley west of the confluence with the Chorms at Wilmskirk.

Swenstown might become such a bed of problems with Kallyr gone and the Dundealos reforming, and grievances connected to the Lunar Temple project simmering.

River width is variable by nature, and an upland river tends to have a wide bed rather devoid of vegetation inside which the actual river meanders. River widths are almost never represented accurately in maps as that would reduce visibility. Same goes for settlements and roads. The Stream has Kjartan's Pool as a reservoir from which it is fed after the Sea Season combination of precipitation and melt-off. Given that a lot of Glorantha tends to be larger-than-life, I would expect regular floodings in Sea Season, and the few bridges need to be rather high and very sturdy to outlast these floodings. Given the rather small intake area of the Stream (plus a somewhat larger area for the Chorms), it would take a secondary Skyfall at the headwaters of the Stream to make it any wider than 20 meters under normal conditions (and about 200 meters under flooding conditions, which would make ferrying or fording a very dangerous proposition - the Dragon Pass board game has rules for that as consequence of one of the Storm Walkers exotic ability options).

As the designers like to insist, RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha is not meant to be SimGlorantha.

At least in the updated French edition of Nomad Gods (Les Dieux Nomades, using the Charette rules rather than Greg's original, often fiddled with result tables) suggested that the player allying Chaos would suffer a -1 on all die rolls from the moment of alliance onward, which is a major hindrance under those rules, halving the maximum possible damage.

The tribal deities (or spirits) seem to have been available already prior to the Hero Wars. Nomad Gods is about the Jaldon games, communal training exercises/holy ritualized warfare between the tribes. No idea whether bringing along the tribal deities would work outside of Sacred Prax and/or the Wastes. The oasis spirits are localized entities which may be unavailable outside of the Praxian theater.

This might compare to the combo of Rathor and Harrek, with the difference that Harrek's taxidermy stunt changed who is in the driver's seat.

Orange skin is a possibility for Orlanthi - there was a Pol Joni hero of Humakt with orange skin mentioned in the Cults of Prax write-up.

Use the Trickster spell Vomit on the guest, then Heal Body. The Gloranthan version of rescuing Red Riding Hood, if coupled with a Resurrection. Overall I am reminded of a certain Babylon 5 episode

The understanding of Luck probably depends on your linguistic background. In German language, Luck ("Glück") is always fortunate. "Bad Luck" is not a term in German, the phrase would be similar to "dry water". There is "Unglück", which doesn't mean "Bad Luck" but rather catastrophe or bad accident - the German word for that is "Pech" - a word that also means pitch, possibly associated with not-luck in the meaning of the bad stuff that the devils shovel with their forks in Hell sticking to someone. (Ok, there is "unglücklich" in the meaning of "unlucky", but that English language term in itself implies that luck is something positive.) In French, Luck translates as "chance", a term that is neutral in itself, requiring a "bonne chance" as a blessing rather than the "lots of luck" German term "Viel Glück" which does not mean we wish each other a very randomized day. English, inheriting from both these languages, sits somewhere in between. French "chance" implies randomness, but there is a Gloranthan rune for that already: Disorder. Fate on the other hand is a pre-determined outcome. In Greek myth, none of the deities can change a fate once it is assigned. Some mortal heroes (like the demigod Achilles) get to choose their fate, gods never do. This does sound a lot like the Cosmic Compromise that bars the deities from exerting Free Will upon the World of Time or the Godtime following the Greater Darkness. Sending city-uprooting divine boars like Gouger in retribution is within the response patterns to mortal worship and willful negligence thereof. leo.org offers a lot of alternate terms for the German translation of Fate (Schicksal), including fortune, lot, luck, destiny, doom. Fate is tied to the concept of Free Will, something that moral philosophers (and jurisdiction) rave about and modern physicists like Sabine Hossenfelder cannot accommodate in their deterministic world view. But hey, we aren't discussing the real world here, but our fairy playground Glorantha, and in at least one important approach by Greg on the topic of heroquesting involves the abilities of mortal heroes to spend a currency called Free Will on imprinting themselves or their feats onto Godtime and the Hero Planes. Exchanging it for Fate, I suppose? People can bind themselves to Fate - like Argrath swearing upon the "Styx" to tear down that Red Moon (or perish trying). (In RuneQuest terms, he acquires a surefire passion, possibly somewhat re-usable in heroquesting ventures, and possibly a slot or three of imprinting his Other Side actions onto Godtime.) Other people are born into a fate, like Jar-eel (who still has to work on achieving it). Fate might be related to Truth and geases. A geas taken is a Fate to fulfill, an obligation waiting to be broken. While unbroken, Truth stands upright, when broken, it is overlayed by its mirror image (on a horizontal line through the junction), resulting in the Fate Rune. Luck is a portion of Fate. As far as I am concerned, one resulting in good outcomes rather than doom. Not only did the people hiding beneath the city gate of Runegate escape being devoured by the Bat, they also seem to have escaped madness despite witnessing that horror.

Earth is the source of Food, of Life Energy. The Seas have always eaten away at Earth, even when it still was in its watery womb, and deposited depleted stuff (chalk) on its surface. There is no way that the waters hate Earth or regard it as dead. Heler yearns for Earth, his waters are starved for its minerals, but as soon as they touch upon it, he loses them. Only within the rivers the waters of Heler can partake of the energies of Earth. But Storm keeps ripping Heler out of these shelters, calling it dragonslaying. I believe that Heler was banished into the Lower Skies even before Umath was born. The Keet migration myth has a Sea deity separated from its home, and a terrible revenge by that sea deity's kin against the lands of Vithela.

Which face of a deity is treated as the subcult and which face is treated as the main cult is a decision made by the cult, and doesn't really make a statement about the deity, only about how the worshippers and more importantly the cult leaders relate to the deity. So yes, equally valid from a God Learner perspective, without taking note of secondary characteristics like "Is Lightfore a child of Dendara?" There are also different ways to pronounce the name of a deity. When English-speaking people mention "zooss" I need to do a mental translation into "tsoys" to understand Zeus and think of Dyaus Pater (Jupiter, or Jove, and no idea how the Romans came up with this declination). And which deity owns the myth about tearing a dragon apart after capturing its breath in a bag of winds previously emptied onto the hapless critter? Is it Vadrus, Orlanth, or Barntar? Is Barntar just a face of Orlanth? And if so, is Orlanth being the father of Barntar meaningful in any way? Is Orlanth just an echo of Vadrus? Are there other dragonkillers using this (or a very similar) method to deal with the serpent, or with a river, or with a sea current? Is the Orlanth vs. Aroka myth about taming a wild river for irrigation to weather a drought, or is it just a rain-making myth? Pars pro toto, a common slightly poetic use of kennings in many languages. Or a bad case of cultural appropriation of a term coined for the coastline of Brasil and Argentina by a German map-maker. No idea whether there are indigenous myths naming the continent in a consistent way. Few ancient cultures were familiar with the notion of a continent. "We never were part of the Evil Emperor, but we acknowledge the Life-Giving Sun." Part of the Monrogh deal was to accept magic from the old Yelmic Imperial cult without subscribing to the Empire. Especially the Sunspear, a solar magic that was not available to the Dawn Age horse warlord emperors contemporary with Avivath (who possessed it). There are different cults of the cold sun. The Golden Spearman is different from the Sunhorse Rider (Kargzant) or the Sunhorse itself (e.g. Galanin). There should be a Lightfore figure or two outside of Genertela. Is Vangono a Lightfore? The business with the Sun Dome remains somewhat iffy, too. Elmal never stood for something like that, and neither Reladivus Kargzant. Antirius (the portion of Yelm rather than his offspring through sexual procreation) might have. We have tales about Lightfore, the favourite of Dayzatar, fighting in the Gods War, even getting lost and getting rescued by Dayzatar.

Deities merge at times - when it comes to sun deities, we have two cases where two different deities merged into one, along with their celestial bodies. The first such case is documented in the Copper Plates of Yuthuppa - when Umath disrupts the Perfect Sky, the northeastern Planetary Son of Yelm rushes towards his progenitor and gets subsumed in it. The second such case was the Bridling of Kargzant, a celestial event which resulted in Reladivus Kargzant and Antirius Lightfore being merged into a single object in the Night Sky. Prior to this, the Fragment of Yelm and the Rider/Horsefriend Wanderer had distinct and separate myths. Afterwards, Elmal and Yelmalio shared the wandering celestial body of Reladivus and no longer had any meaningful connection to the (no longer) Golden daytime Sky Dome, aka the Sun Dome.