Joerg

Living weapons might be a thing - imagine something like the larvae of the great diving beetle (IMO the inspiration for the xenomorphs in Alien) or chalk needles projected by sea urchins or nettles ejected by sea anemones or jellyfish. Projectiles might be a lot slower, and possibly more like torpedoes.

I find this definition too narrow. Yes, Arkat had that all-consuming mission to defeat Gbaji, which ended up in joint dismemberment of Chaos Troll Arkat and Chaos something Nysalor on the highest tower of the City of Miracles, with a re-constituted all-human appearing Arkat emerging. (He might have employed the Kitori Night Cult secret that may have allowed him to alternate between human, troll and dehori shape - at the very least, in the wake of the victory over the Bright Empire the Shadow Tribute collecting Kitori were referred to as Arkati by the Heortlings under their supervision, according to a few interesting passages in History of the Heortling Peoples. Still, a lot of the "hatred" for Arkat announcing Arkat's Command (expanding the Shadow Tribute to northern Heortlings who had long been unaffected by that, funneling the gains to Dagori Inkarth) may have resulted from the Heortling failure to keep collecting tribute from their conquest of Dara Happa. Arkat was not too disappointed about the Heortlings' choice to attack Dara Happa while he, his closest followers and his troll allies pushed into the heart of Chaos that Dorastor had become. Without the Heortling conquest, the defenses of Dorastor would have held out a lot longer. His troll allies had little chance to collect any plunder halfway equivalent to the gains of the Heortling conquest while pulling off the harder task, and in recognition Arkat arranged for a fair portion of the Dara Happan tribute to be diverted to his allies in Dagori Inkarth. And while the Heortling occupation of Dara Happa lasted, everything was fine. It was the failure to keep the Dara Happans occupied that turned a fair share of war booty into an onerous extra tax. And it was haughty nastiness that led the Heortlings to rebel against the Shadowlords, who were conflated with the Arkati at the time. Even though Arkat spent 75 years of his life fighting a war against impossible odds, he spent his last fifty years establishing the Autarchy of Safelster, uniting the Enerali (even the sun worshippers), the people descended from the Serpent Brotherhood and the trolls into a prospering realm, with Malkioni philosophy and Lightbringer Unity combining into a better society, far surpassing any other Malkioni society (other than ancient Danmalastan) to that date. That twit son of Gerlant whose main achievement was to avoid dying of old age had the nerve to demand tribute from the autarchy, and confessed an outrage when that outrageous demand was politely ignored. The Seshnegi looked at the Autarchy with quite some envy, and when the prospective heirs of Nralar found that they were likely to succumb to old age long before their father would, many took the "Froalar solution" to carve out new principalities on the newly colonized continent of Jrustela, a piece of Danmalastan formerly belonging to the Vadeli (or their ancestors) that was found to be devoid of humanity. There they began to discuss the Malkioni philosophy, egged on by the Autarchy's example, yet hanging on to their airs of superiority by lineage. They somehow compromised on a doctrine that manifested itself as the Abiding Book, in a (most likely sorcerous) miracle "enabling the Invisible God to manifest the Right Way for the Malkioni" (cynical readers confess to smell some whiffs of Vadeli duplicity emanating from these lands), disavowing quite a bit of Arkat's symncretism with Lightbringer Theism and the secrets of Darkness (as much as conserving what remained of the original pure strains of all of these). And somehow they managed to pull off a Double Belligerent Assault against the Autarchy, dismembering that superior yet too honorable way, and demonizing the ascended Master/deity. The Autarchy was a period of respectful unity in diversity, quite comparable to the Unity Council, solidified both through heroquesting and through regulating access to the Other Side, guarding what preserved both the diversity and the unity. Having devoted much of their elites to those tasks, the mundane terror of the Righness Crusade caught them under-prepared, and caring more about preserving the Other Side and preventing the Jrusteli from learning their ways than keeping them out of their lands. The Arkati of the former Autarchy preserved some aspects of unity along with their aspects of diversity even under the yoke of the Jrusteli, and that may have been what baffled Halwal, the great God Learner who resisted the other God Learners. Unable to provide a single heir to Arkat's teachings (something he succeeded with with the Irensavalists in Loskalm), he went forth with three of these, each with their own followers and philosophies. It was enough to face the God Learner "orthodoxy" on an even field of battle and magic, but led to mutual annihilation of those forces. Another option is to have genuine Safelstran Arkati active in Sartar. Minaryth's collection of Arkat and troll research in RQ3 Troll Gods mentions an aide of the Purple Sage, Jalques de Galin. Would this gentleman have been the only Safelstran active in the region? I don't think so. Everything may have a foothold in Nochet. That city has been sadly under-used...

Rokari zzabur caste members all are sorcerers, and don't use rune magic. The Aeolian castes are endogamous castes where far from all zzabur caste members qualify for sorcery, at least sorcery at any useful level. These non-sorcerer members born into that caste may still serve in some lesser religious function, possibly wielding rune magic.

How do you expect to be a full sorcerer and priest with those time constraints? Not possible IMG unless you had centuries to build up both.

The dancers might be living people with a modified Invisibility spell cast on them.

Those who cannot master sorcery might.

While I have one solo-play Gloranthan character who dabbles in horse breeding and having those horses trained, that's a hobby project of his where he burns extra funds from adventuring or successful training rather than a source of wealth... It can be, as Nick proves with "Duel at Dangerford" and "The Black Spear", but for many GMs RuneQuest is one of the best games for pedestrian (or in this case equestrian) roleplaying with attention to small details. RuneQuest excels at the grit of fairly detailed while still somewhat manageable combat where the dice and the abilities allow both a reasonable forecast how an encounter will play out and where extreme rolls can alter the outcome dramatically. The game comes with world building advice that goes beyond what many other as or more (economically) successful games offer. I have played in experimental multi-year heroquest games both Greg and Jeff have run on conventions in Germany where economy was presented as opposition of varying difficulty to be dealt with alongside other ongoing projects. In these games, that mundane challenge was mainly another problem to be overcome while the cool stuff went on. That said, I love myself games where you simulate building things up, where you face a challenge while leaving your imprint on the world. And Glorantha is such a place, look what the Founders like Pavis or Sartar did, look at how Belintar took the ruined conquest of the Kingdom of Night and turned it into the Holy Country. Heck, look at what the EWF achieved before they lost their ways irredeemably and the dragonewts had the experiment terminated in 1042. RPG designers seem to dread player (characters') plans that succeed (for a while) and make life better, not just for the player( character)s but also for their society. And Chaosium in particular is known for creating games in which everything is getting worse and worse - even King Arthur Pendragon is doomed to end in failure and misery. What is the problem about player characters enjoying hard earned resources that do better than break even? Prosperity and having a chance at "world domination" provides challenges of their own. I tried my hand at a character with a similar idea, a human Argan Argar worshipper planning to buy food category trollkin for clearing forests or debris from roads and tunnels (feeding the material to the trollkin), with the idea to find those trollkin too smart and uppity for their own good who get lumped into that category, giving them a chance to become the (somewhat respected) foremen or mother figures of that venture. Needless to say, the GM wasn't too happy to let such a venture develop. But hey, possibly an interesting NPC for the JTC even with the limited amount of gametime the character saw. For the assumption above, here are a few of my thoughts: Meat horses are basically the drop-outs from someone else's attempts to upgrade them, a recovery of failure cost. At a guess, the horses sent to the meat market are geldings or infertile mares too hard to break into good mounts (or draft beasts). That's how the trollkin in the food category who aren't too deformed end up in that category. Nobody goes about breeding beautiful food horses with further potential. Still, playing a horse whisperer undoing the damage earlier attempts at training the beasts left behind is a cool concept, and might be workable. Finding a steady flow of cheap horses to make such a project profitable might be harder. Easier if you have providers of masses of horse flesh for a wealthy buyer, like the Lunar Cavalry Corps. IMG Fazzur Wideread has a family business (run by cousins) that provides horses, horse-tack, and other such military equipment to the Cavalry Corps. Still, such mass operation (similar to that you outlined above) will have its dropouts, specimen that are unsuitable as cavalry or even riding horses. And that's the kind of horse that ends up in the meat category. Some of these horses may have an evil temperament that cannot be handled by just about any rider. These horses might be good candidates for warhorse-hood, but that is two whole other levels of work a trainer needs to put in. Domestic horses in our world all are the offspring of the Sintashta breed from around the Uralic Mountains, some time inside our very own Old World Bronze Age away from the Fertile Crescent. Even the mustangs of North America which lead a feral lifestyle are ultimately the product of selective breeding to make horses trust humans as riders. While there may have been way earlier successes at riding horses, possibly as early as the Botai culture (a historical culture that may have earned the name "Pure Horse Tribe" based on their diets of horse meat (easily identifyable from bone remains) and mares' milk (a lot harder to infer from residues inside ceramic vessels)), these horses were no "mounted warrior" cultures. Prior to the SIntashta breed horses were trainable to pull chariots and to be ridden in non-combat situations, possibly for herding, but leaving the rider with no time for horseback antics like couching a lance or drawing a bow in stressful environments. Horses of the Daron breed are similarly long domesticated and generally selected for usability. It we are talking mares, non-breakable mares without body defects will be bought up for a little better than meat category prices and mated with donkeys to provide the Issaries cult with its mules. The bastard species has a different inherited character and will serve as beasts of burden or riding beasts by inclination, although with a certain amount of resistance inherited from the donkey parentage. Daron mares for mule breeding will produce extra powerful mules. There is a business behind that, and it is run by the Issaries cult. That leaves geldings and the few stallions that people attempt to break for the saddle. And for whichever reason, the breeders and their trainers who raised these 3 to 4 year old geldings from colts to prepare them for the saddle botched up their job, leaving these horses as unprofitable to tame for their standardized methods, probably after handing them off to another trainer of similar skill to see whether they are salvageable. Raising horses for 3 or more years from the colt in a sedentary culture is more expensive than raising children in the same amount of time, and the previous owner will have given it a few more tries before selling them basically under cost. Horse nomads feeding their beasts mainly on migratory pasture will have less actual cost, but will have to migrate, and I doubt that the Daron breed will survive such a nomadic life-style as well as the mustangs left behind by the Spanish invaders in a territory without direct competition for horse-specific food. Some of the worst tempered stallions will be employed for horse-fighting, earning their keep or a mercy slaughter. But that means that the worst temperament has been selected out, unless you get your horses from a breeder who breeds for horse-fighting rather than riding and left you with those too timid to compete in horse fights. Snip snap, although too late, and you will end up with an unmanaged gelding. So, what went wrong in those earlier attempts? There you even have some potential for roleplaying, investigating those trainers. Now imagine your horse trainer has skills near the abilities of the Horse Whisperer played by Robert Redford in that movie (which I haven't seen, BTW - my niece is the horse maniac in the family, not me). Assume that somehow you get the debris of someone else's basic training approach to make your and your investor's somewhat cosy family life. Or you could put this skill into the service of a local, maybe regional big player, become a valued retainer living in palatial luxury much of the time doing the same kind of work on the highest category specimen. What would your choice be?

Tribulation, you mean?

Isn't what Lodril is holding the Dara Happan wet farmer mattock?

http://etyries.albionsoft.com/etyries.com/folktale/massacre.html

That question takes an uncontested top position in the Lunar necromantic attempts to get an after-action report from Tatius. Although by this time, the political and military leadership of the empire should have learned that entrusting an Assiday with military resources results in losing those, be it the Building Wall Battle, the battle at the Hill fo Orlanth Victorious, the siege of Whitewall, or this little incident. A for the masterminds behind the Ring of Orlanth quest, Orlaront and Minaryth, I suppose that they did expect a discharge of the draconic energies when they carried the Dragon's Head to its pre-severed posiion next to the constellation of the Dragon. They might have prepared some Aroka Quest items to flood the Lunars away, possibly wishing to inflict burning heavenly water onto the rite (Tanian may have been one of the new lights for the Ring, after all). And maybe the questers had come off their pre-plotted course checked and re-checked by Minaryth, who was already dead at this point. That specific alignment might have been unplanned. Minaryth was the other mind behind this quest, with Orlaront possibly being more an advisor and less the planner of this invasion into the celestial dance. The point of the exercise was to revive Orlanth's Ring, and thereby return the deity completely. That much succeeded admirably Rather than just the three new stars, now all eleven stars of the Ring of Orlanth traversed the sky, making Orlanth's visible presence in the sky stronger than ever within History. There was a celestial dance done by Grazelanders, too. It isn't clear whether they took part in the rite, or whether they had a different dancing ground adding their own magics to what Tatius made reverberate throughout the future extent of this Reaching Moon temple.

It does have the Abyss...

I will admit that I was projecting some personal quirks of mine on both Hoolars and Cyclopses that might be shared with people in the autistic spectrum. Of course Hoolar are alien, they retain a Green Age perspective. Are they distractable? Yes, as long as it doesn't affect their core priorities. Do they have problems communicating? Yes, in that their context and that of their conversation partners will be quite different. Do Hoolars speak a dialect of Firespeech?

They would be savants, inheriting just the skill of their maker and an overwhelming creative urge they must act upon. Probably without much control over those urges, possibly unable to alter even the slightest detail from their inspiration, possibly pausing to watch a tree grow into just the right shape for their project. Woe to those who happen to have just the right eye for their project, although the Hoolar might just choose to accompany that person and watch over the safety of that eye waiting for the person to agree to pass it on... The Hoolars bring a Green Age naivety to their manufacturing, too - what works for them won't work for anyone else, with details other manufacturers would have to sweat over ignored without affecting the outcome.

Are ogres cannibals? Do they feast on other ogres? If not, than they are just external predators to mankind who happen to look very similar and who can have mixed offspring. Maneaters yes, cannibals only on others of their own kind. IIRC ogres are the offspring of Cacodemon, which is in turn an externalized part of Wakboth the Devil. There may have been human hosts involved. Do mixed offspring automatically join the ogre side of their ancestry? Apparently not, there seems to be some measure of choice, at least when the Cacodemon blood is sufficiently diluted. Externalisation of defective children is practiced by many a human culture, the typical method being abandonment and exposure in the wild by humans, relying on external predators to do the deed. In the case of Gloranthan ogres, any offspring lacking the potential to become an ogre is defective, and may be culled. Waste not, want not... There may be some measure of fate involved. If you are born to monster parents without being a monster, the odds have already been shuffled against you. You are the trollkin equivalent in the family. If you somehow survive having been born to ogres without awakening your ogre ancestry, you may continue to live as a human, passing on that risky ancestry to any offspring you may have with compatible mates, whether ogre or human. Things may get weird if a human with ogre ancestry becomes a man-eater. Such a person would be a cannibal. For some species, being born to the right parents is only the beginning. A Kitori couple where both parents are full shapeshifters may pass on a certain runic preference, but without initiation into the Nightcult the offspring won't become a shapeshifter. From the description in TCS the mixed blood initiate has some agency whether to become an ogre or not. How much does being or becoming chaotic play into this? Possibly by accepting the link to Cacedemon during initiation, the Chaos Features may or may not appear. Now how much will a latent but existing Chaotic ancestry influence such a descendant? In case of feral broo, the racial behavior is hardwired, but how much does this go for their nephews and nieces from their "brother" (or was it sister?) Cacodemon?

They might be experienced in directing the avenging god pigs to some of the prominent cities in the region, like happened with Gouger, the God Pig slain by Aram ya Udram. Other than the lion-descendants of Greymane and his immediate family, a lot of the Orlanthi in Maniria are descendants mainly of the Entruli, the ancient pig-totem cousins of the Dawn Age Aramites.

Ask yourself: What skin color will show if you shave a lion? At a guess, it will be dark brown or even black. Fur pigmentation may be lighter. Pamaltelan Basmoli are definitely Agimori in appearance. The Basmoli berserkers of Prax are supposedly Wareran in appearance, but that doesn't mean light skin color any more than it does for e.g. the Impala riders. The Pendali (descendants of Basmol and Seshna Likita) may appear Wareran, too, although there may have been pure-blooded Pamaltelan Basmoli among them when they or at least their deities arrived in Seshnela. IMG the Pendali are a demigod ruling lineage no longer quite as Hsunchen as their kinsfolk descended only from their beast deity ancestors, more versed in other magics than Hykimi shape-shifting. The Serpent King dynasty faced three children of Basmol and a Pendali great-great-granddaughter of his, including a "sorcerer" making dark pacts with quite evil deities, and a witch sister who ends up confronting her sorcerer brother after having been "tamed" by one of the Seshnegi men-of-all for a while. Later, as a widow, she becomes the wife of one of the less militant Pendali "kings", and her sons play various roles as the conflict fades out in favor for the Malkioni. As of the Dawn, the Wareran farmer caste folk are nearly as dark-brown in skin color as some of the Agimori of southern Pamaltela, never mind the broad range of skin color among the Thinobutan "Agimori" who populate much of coastal Pamaltela, strongest in Maslo and Kimos, dominant (but still enslaved) in Thinokos in the eastern part of the Fonritian peninsula, and surviving on the Kumanku archipelago.

A towering reputation as an extremely successful raider, with the charisma of an alpha-lion and the magic of Orlanth. He seems to be a bit of an analogon to Ariovist, the Suebi leader that caused Caesar quite a bit of trouble with his Gallic allies, or to the leaders of the great Danish army/fleet collecting the Danegeld from the Anglo-Saxon kingdom for years. As far as I know, tribal warbands plus adventurous "knights" from the Trader Prince castles seeking loot and maybe some glory. The Solanthi are happy to follow his summons, and the Ditali prefer following him to raid Esrolia over his raiders looting their lands rather than just requisitioning their food on their way through. The promise of the big loot from temples and cities too large and too well defended for lesser alliances to overcome. Don't expect much organisation or cohesion while on the march, these will be a lot of disparate war bands following the signals of one of Greymane's lieutenants as promptly as they feel like. The need for cooperation against the hard targets is what keeps cohesion, the same way Jaldon leads disparate groups of Praxian raiders into Dragon Pass and beyond. Hiring out as mercenaries takes a little more coercion and cohesion, but nobody expects the western barbarians to behave in any other way than as barbarians, and woe to the natives that they take up quarters with. There is a good reason why there are hardly any scenarios where player characters join one of these raiding ventures. A big raiding army like this will commit atrocities along their way. The leaders will be happy if they can avoid bloodshed between the disparate bands, protecting the farming population that they rely on feeding the troops is well beyond the control even Greymane can command. Check these excellent three blog posts on ancient logistics: https://acoup.blog/2022/07/15/collections-logistics-how-did-they-do-it-part-i-the-problem/ https://acoup.blog/2022/07/29/collections-logistics-how-did-they-do-it-part-ii-foraging/ https://acoup.blog/2022/08/12/collections-logistics-how-did-they-do-it-part-iii-on-the-move/ Greymane is a raider, not a major campaigner. His warriors will be mostly self-sufficient warriors, with rather few noncombatant supporters, and porters captured during the plundering as human chattle is one of the rewards for plundering overpopulated Esrolia.

Is there an equivalent of bikini armor for unicorn barding?

Not necessarily. Lodril was Yelm's wayward brother, but not important for the Sun Dome. As with Sartar, Mahome and Gustbran would have more importance for the hearth fire and the forge fire. There is still the possibility for Lodril as a plow god, at least amongst those Pelorian "immigrants" working the slave manors or building the Enstalos tribe. But that aspect is well covered by Lodril as husband-protector or father of Ernalda (or both) and might be at home in the Ernalda temples and shrines.

Minaryth was already dead at the time, held aloft by other questers. This does make me wonder about the dragon's jaw and teeth, though. The purple sage's heels would be minuscule compared to a single tooth, even if we assume something similar to shark dentition.

It is Chaos when in contact with reality(Creation. Or it lends its potential to the manipulations of a mystic shielded by (an instance of) the Abslolute. (Most Lunar illuminates aren't shielded that way IMG.)

The way these Lore skills are presented, they look a bit like formal training.or book learning. Maybe to increase these lores, the traveler has to write (or dictate) a travelogue and deposite this with a Knowledge Temple (or a priest for one of these). Producing the essay to the temple might be both the training and the training cost. This obviously should be more than the "covering the research cost" snippets found in the Jonstown Compendium entries in the RQ2 Companion, more like the contributions of the excerpt that came in Troll Pak. There was a short post by Jeff about learning from books or scrolls two to four years ago. Creating documents that work to raise a lore up to a low total at full value and offer a training chance above that level (basically reading the document might give you an experience tick for a skill that doesn't have one, or in this case, creating the document) could be a way to handle this in a way that is friendlier to both GM and players. Does the Weapons and Equipment Guide offer anything helpful in the cost to produce such a document?

I demonstrated how you could construct a Law rune out of Disorder runes, and in the spirit of the material I concluded the demonstration with the quoted line below. Ouch Wrong punctuation? Should I have inserted a comma?

This needs a NSFW alert, or at least a Not Safe With Cats alert. Both sound samples irritated my office feline a lot...