Joerg

9 hours ago, Ynneadwraith said:

Have herdmen lost the Man rune entirely? Or just had it proportionally diminished? We know people can have more or less of a given rune, considering blue people are blue because of a greater amount of Water rune within them...

At the very least, herdmen are not eligible targets of the Thumb Quest.

Herdmen and Midget Slashers (troll descendants who lost their Man Rune) now seem to have the Beast Rune. (Which implies eyes, too.)

People are made up from all the runes, but they can express only three of those magically through their normal adulthood initiation under HeroQuest: Glorantha rules. They can acquire more through interaction with the Other Side, and they may lose them.

The Sun Dome Temple just south of Karia may have been instituted by Palangion the Iron Vrok, much like the one at Vanntar. The followers of the deity may have kept contact with those in Fronela, or through Maniria, but as Sun Dome Temples go, it is pretty isolated.

With the Evil Emperor often equated with Malkion, Ehilm can be a somewhat neutral, aloof sun god. Both Galanin and Ehilm are associated with the urban Safelstrans more than the backwater Orlanthi of Vesmonstran and Delela.

1 hour ago, Ynneadwraith said:

That's an awfully evolutionary argument for a world that has no evidence of evolution taking place (at least, not in any way we understand it). Some morokanth have opposable thumbs, but that implies nothing about an arboreal natural history to Glorantha's tapirs.

An argument might be made that Glorantha allows Lamarckian evolution (like the dark trolls inheriting the burns of their ancestors), although the Morokanth thumbs aren't one of these - they still have to be obtained individually by winning a contest against a human. (BTW, a contest can be lost - what does a human contestant have to gain other than keeping their thumb?)

1 hour ago, Ynneadwraith said:

I'd argue it's more likely that the Man rune has 'eyes' as part of its form, meaning anything with the Man rune has eyes of some sort. Glorantha operates under fundamental laws very different from our own.

Any runic loreperson will assure you that sight is a function of the Fire Rune, but accounts about the construction/creation of Man by an assortment of deities always have them insert Fire.

It isn't clear whether Kyger Litor came into being possessing eyes, or whether she acquired them along with the Man Rune that she passed on to her descendants. Sandy Petersen's Gods War miniature (heh) of the Hellmother doesn't show any eyes, but the stelae with the moomin-troll-like Kyger Litor undergoing her trials in Troll Pak has a very humanoid Trollmother.

1 minute ago, Agentorange said:

Except it's not about mythology it's about fantasy literature as a reading genre. Obviously there is some overlap:  Gilgamesh, Odysseus, Arthur etc are myth cycles, but they are also stories to be told as entertainment and for enjoyment.

Myth has always had an entertainment component. By giving the forces of nature a face, they become an entity you can deal with - even if it is the baby-faced smiling sun of the Teletubbies.

9 minutes ago, Agentorange said:

Looking at some of the themes often seen in such literature: portals, gods and deities, hero journeys etc etc. it's not aimed at the hardcore mythological buff it's aimed at book lovers and readers..

Speaking as a reader, looking at a book on diplay behind glass is not even close to reading. It isn't even a potential read like you get when you visit a library.

Seeng an rpg on display behind glass is like seeing the shrink-wrapped collection of a hard-core collector. Personally, I prefer shelfies of rpg books that have seen some use, that wait to be pulled out and put to work. If only to give ideas for a different rpg's session.

An interesting collection of way too short glimpses into the wider genre, but visiting it as a museum exposition would feel a bit weird to me. On the levels of the experience of myths that are presented in Cults of RuneQuest: Mythology, this is (barely) the first level, reading about there being myths. Little context is given about the people who are the target group of these myths - we might recognize ourselves in quite a few of the exhibits, but we may also feel ourselves being misrepresented. Not dissimilar from Imperialism Age anthropology exhibitions if visited by people from the cultures exhibited, I guess.

52 minutes ago, Shiningbrow said:

Well, I'm reading this as a bit of a history lesson for Orgovale Summer... but doesn't really address the relevant questions - how fragile/powerful is she compared to others with that classification (demi-god or godling...), and how much freedom from the Compromise does she have?

IMO she is somewhat upward from your typical wyter deity - an entity from Godtime, thus bound by the Compromise, but not bound to a piece of regalia, rather to the land her tribe had claimed around the Quivin Mountains. She might become the (minor) land goddess of the Kingdom of Sartar, on a hiearchy level below Kero Fin, but possibly with fertility and defensive blessings.

The Vingkotlings were a warlike culture, and at the very least she would have been giving support to her husband Ulanin, one of the seven husband heroes of the Vingkotlings shortly mentioned in the Orlanthi myths. While Ulanin seems to have been a Hyaloring, his adventures would have gone both against the Dara Happans of Anaxial's dynasty and against the winter foes. The giants of Red Cow Fort would have been a side issue.

That power over forces of the riverine empire to the north might have hampered the conquest of the Kingdom of Sartar by the Lunars, and may well hinder a future attempt at controlling the land. (The same could be said for the draconic alternative, though. Either way, the sovereignty introduced by Sartar would be backed up by a sovereignty from that piece of land.)

Unless Orgorvale finds an avatar to reincarnate into (possibly something akin to that weird self-destructive dance in

) I don't see Orgorvale as having any physidal agency in the Surface World. Her cult can, though, and cult heroes might add to the magical arsenal of the cult. An existing Thunderqueen magic might be co-opted and integrated into the cult, especially if the draconic version wins out.

The Dream Dragon alternative is an incarnate form that returned from dormancy, with a wider range of choices and agency.

19 minutes ago, Ironwall said:

So where do the Ralian Orlanthi come from Mythically. Additionally what are the religious and cultural differences from the more known Heortling Orlanthi.

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.

27 minutes ago, KungFuFenris said:

What ARE DemiGods? Are they bound by the Compromise?

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.

54 minutes ago, Erol of Backford said:

Assume they hated then as well...

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.

6 hours ago, Jens said:

Divide the skills by 5 instead and you have the basis of Hero Wars 😉

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.

11 minutes ago, Darius West said:

Does anyone know where I can get a copy of Nomad Gods btw?

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.

4 hours ago, Erol of Backford said:

I saw that on the Sartar map. Who knows how large it is?

Which Dragon's skull is it?

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.

5 hours ago, John Biles said:

People incarnating Jaldon can raid Sartar, so I would assume Waha could ride you all the way to plunder Glamour if you didn't die first.

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.

14 hours ago, Erol of Backford said:

I am guessing not more than 3-4m deep at center on average?

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.

10 hours ago, Super Thunder Bros. said:

Oh this is gold I gotta say! I will run with this, thank you so much 

One thing I was wondering, reading about Jonstown I really like how the cities are presented with citizens etc And I really want to emphasise the urban nature of the Orlanthi

With this in mind would not-Bartertown work better as a town under a tribe or a Jonstown style city with feuding tribes?

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).

3 hours ago, PhilHibbs said:

I think the “priestess will cast Bless Crops” is a world building thing that wasn’t really thought through properly.

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

7 hours ago, davecake said:

I definitely don’t share this feeling. We’ve known the Praxians, a very anti-Chaos culture, will use broo as mercenaries. A temporary alliance with Chaotic beings for pragmatic reasons does not seem to make you Chaotic. I think Chaotic taint is a personal thing from personal acts. 

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.

3 hours ago, soltakss said:

Don't forget that the excellent Nomad Gods has many of the Deities of Prax present and incarnated on the gameboard. The Hero Wars allows such things.

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.