Joerg

The seven ancestors have two renowned chaos fighters, too, with Vaneekara possibly exhibiting the most effective feat.

I would expect the term "audience" to be more appropriate than "spectators"... why should a trollball game be played under the light of Yelm? Because the giant referees rely on sight. Still, use of shadows above the pit doesn't violate the rules against magic use, and selective apportioning of sunlight might be hard to prove as a foul. Did any troll ball team ever employ a traded or mercenary Sunbright behind their own goal?

Anything that happens to stray into its target funnel. Remember Tattooine, the location where Leia wore that bikini. Herd beasts, even predators - think of the La Brae (sp?) tar pits and its costumers. A giant ant lion might use bait the same way. Anaxial's Roster has a story how the ants received a curse of shrinking upon their exodus from the Underworld, which is why giant ants are rare on the surface. No idea whether there is any canon about that, but it's a nice story, and who needs giant ants when you can have giant locusts. In swarming mode.

Can you cast "Create Wartree" with high Extension on the tree of a dryad? (Preferable to carrying it around in a flower pot...)

A magical unit in Dragon Pass has about 50 master magicians. With the rather small sorcerer population among the Esvulari (2500 are 5% out of the 50k total population) up to 100 wizards might be available if the pay is good.

My old campaign borrowing quite a bit from Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe had the cities of Jansholm and Mt. Passant overseen by deputies of the governor, aka shire reeves. My out of date concept of Heortland had the three large cities Jansholm, Durengard and Mt. Passant as district capitals of what later would be known as New Malkonwal, with Durengard doubling as capital of the Sixth. The Volsaxi did their own thing since Belintar's conquest, and Karse was directly subject to Belintar rather than part of the Sixth - possibly an agreement with Tarkalor, possibly a much older tradition due to the Pelaskite origin of the city which may have played a role in one of the heroquests that shaped the Holy Country. Owain was my invention, and a concept quite different from Orngerin, but the similarity in names is somewhat serendipitious. I suggest to disregard that name.

The dissolution of the Kultain may have been overstated. They still are part of the Wilmskirk federation in the core rules.

It is a rite holy to Zorak Zoran, with a suspension of in-game death for the players (but not the "balls"). This is similar to the "you cannot die on a certain type of heroquest" assumption. This might have been a rite to settle dominance quarrels for Death Lords, created by uz heroes.

The RQ3 Gods of Glorantha gave initiates of the East Isles deities the option to use sorcery as personal magic, but that was at a time when "intensity manipulated only" sorcery was the personal magic of the Malkioni. Compared to many of the East Isles, the Marazi society doesn't really have to hide. Historical maps of the Second Age show the island as part of the Duchy of Eest, a Seshnegi/Jrusteli occupied country with God Learner presence. However, there are no great stories about God Learners infiltrating local cults beyond attaining sovereignty. For the Marazi, inserting a God Learner into the cult mysteries would be quite difficult, even for the Duke of Eest possessing (but not wielding) the Red Sword of their deity. Teaching Malkioni sorcery to a portion of the amazons might have been the Jrusteli method to gain a foothold on the island, although I am curious about the availability (and indeed acceptability) of female sorcerers doing the teaching or female talars overseeing the process of male teachers in the Middle Sea Empire. There are eastern traditions of sorcery, while inherited from the Malkioni by way of Martalak (one of the Sheradpara), which spread throughout the Vithelan sphere of influence, and may have been available to the Marazi. I wonder whether the East knows the sorcerous Star Seers of LM Buserian by a local name. Silly hats appropriate, silly fake goatees not so much.

You might have read one of the later books in the series?

The entire discussion about the POW farm resembles that about Tapping. Essentially, you force your demand for magical juice on a non-consenting or at best minimally consenting group of victims. There is one group in Glorantha that voluntarily sacrifices their soul to imbue matter with magic (and stability): the Mostali. This might be their way to deal with defective clay mostali - milk them dry for POW, then recycle the material (Alpha Red) and breed new ones. Note that that treatment isn't fundamentally different from the way the uz treat the enlo. And an uz enchanter might offer food trollkin a running chance for their contribution, with the alternative being a mangled rest in a stomach. And then there is the concept of Humakti lottery swords. Rather than POW, the participants sacrifice a gift but keep carrying the corresponding geases. What about systems that don't have a measurement for soul strength? This is still about giving away a portion of one's soul, of one's magic. In Questworld, this might be simulated by lowering a rune ability by a certain amount in order to receive a new ability "magical item" (which might be a break-out ability of that rune while the item rests with the creator), with the item's rank being equal to the points put into the item. In 13G, the corresponding concept might be level, or giving up a feat (or whatchamacallit). But in the end, an item that the creator poured their soul in will be magical.

Where are spirit cults on this demand of "friendly relationship"? Could a Humakti pledge to worship Firshala?

Not really. In RQ3 it seems that the enchantment holding the spirit overwrote the previous localization.

As I understand the intent of the RQG sorcery rules, a sorcerous spell is a magical creature called into being by the sorcerer's investment of magic and will. It works as an ephemeral spirit. Are there ways for the sorcerer to pre-program activities or responses of the spell? For comparison, let's look at shades or lunes. Are effects like the fearshock attack of a shade or the madness attack of a lune active abilities, or are they triggered by entering the volume of these elementals? Could a sorcerous spell act similarly conditional?

This could resemble the way the Varangians traded along the rivers with the horse nomads they encountered - leaving a trade offering on a site designated to that task (Tradethink Market) and waiting for a counteroffer, upon which the traders leaving the first offering would allocate some of the offer to match the counteroffer. How to do that with magics is a bit more complicated, but communication isn't as limited, either. Or some Lunar or Darkness rune magic... Psychedelic spell-casting?

A spell with the motion rune added to the portfolio would be able to follow a target, possibly easing the concentration requirements. I wonder whether one could create a "Tap and Charge" spell that puts the tapped MP into MP storage. Would a spell like that have to be active(ly controlled by the sorcerer)?

Gustbran. The smiths and cremators are quite closely associated to various activities of the Humakt cult.

Scenarios are like four chord pop songs. You describe a setting, the deeds and plans of an antagonist, and provide place descriptions and data on opponents and possible allies or additional hindrances, and a few suggested paths and sequences of hints for the player characters to follow. Quite a lot of standard situations haven't been described yet. Despite there being a scenario carrying the name "Cattle Raid", there is no scenario giving you game data and GMing details for your player characters to actually go and bring back some cattle from a rival clan or tribe. Is that too generic? Ok, let's up the Gloranthan ante: your neighboring clan has the best bullocks for a certain type of sacrifice your clan or warband desperately needs to succeed in, one they are preparing themselves. Can your heroes provide such a bullock, possibly the one your neighbors have groomed for this sacrifice? Can they replace that perfectly colored specimen with one whose color results mainly from shoe-shine? Will they find out that the perfect specimen they acquired is wearing as many cosmetics? Still too simple? So what about those third clan adventurers who pulled that same stunt just before you did? Led by the (current or prospective) husbands of some of your sisters, or a half-brother born into a different clan? Want more spice? Prevent a small mob of feral broo from fertilizing the target herd with their offspring, pay off trollkin or durulz bandits on the way...

Most of the "land type" nymphs are minor Land Goddesses, with the exceptional major ones thrown in (Kero Fin), thus Earth is sort of the default of a nymph. Brastalos might be "the" Air nymph. Moon nymphs are conceivable tied to all that blue moon fallout distributed across the world (Croesium, Blue Moon Plateau, Artmali places). For the Red Moon, Glamour is a Lunar nymph, but I am not sure whether Yara Aranis might qualify as one.

IMO all nymphs "inherit" from the Tilntae form, the Life (or Love) nymph daughters of Uleria, including the dryads. They don't seem to have their own form rune, although they might deserve one. Dryads are a special case of nymphs as they are tied to their trees in a narrower and to their groves in a wider sense. A dryad's grove is comparable to a limoniad's meadow or an oread's hilltop, a domain attached to the locale they are in. River and lake nymphs are anchored in the locale and the body of water, with the body of water able to change its bed or even leave it temporarily during greater floods. Nymphs of the open seas exist, too - probably lesser forms of Natea rather than Niiad Triolini, although those share quite a few traits with nymphs, too. Inora might be the archetype/ancestress of glacial or snow-field nymphs, possibly a Cold adaptation of oreads. Darkness nymphs may use manifestations of Shadow as their domains. They might be doomed to diurnal phasing since the Dawn, but they would have been quite common before that. These Cold, Shadow or Darkness nymphs do imply the (previous) existence Fire, Light or Heat nymphs, too, although the Lesser and Greater Darkness may well have caused their extinction, or possibly some bare-bone survival in a few sheltered places. Light without Heat might well have joined Inora. Heat without (much) Light may be the true origin of Caladra, the otherwise unheard-of Volcano Daughter of Lodril/Veskarthan. Firshala from Griffin Mountain might be the closest thing to a Fire Nymph besides Cragspider (an existance that defies taxonomy). There might be star nymphs in the Upper World. Aldrya is the Great Nymph whose grove contains all forests on land. Possibly also those on/in Fire, of the White Elves on top of the Spike. Is there an equivalent for Murthdrya, though? While kelp may grow to similar heights as jungle trees, it remains a lot more vulnerable than those trees. Another type of underwater dryad-like nymphs might be found in coral reefs.

Not quite correct. Hags are nymphs of such places, but have nothing to do with trees. They are comparable to Limoniads or Oreads, nymphs of meadows or mountains. Hags correspond to uz ideals of beauty rather than human or aldryami ones. "Terrible" is not a negative value for uz.

Mangroves are a type of land-reclamation war-tree.

That's the Platypus myth.

Stasis doesn't stand for the absence of motion, but for the absence of irreversible or unontrolled Change. The daily rotation of the Sky Dome is Motion as the Maker meant it to be. Making is an acceptable form of irreversible but controlled Change. So is Transmutation of Matter, or refining of Matter. Energy as much as the Void outside of the world is the potential for Change, but good Mostali creations will harness the energy into stabilizing Matter, especially Made Matter. Procuring ten thousand Iron Dwarfs is the Mostali equivalent of re-enacting the Gods War. Doing so inside ten years of conflict is a tight schedule, and it might be a good thing that the veterans among the ten thousand managed to handle Renvald as an example pour encourager les autres. I suspect that there may have been plenty raw recruits among the host showing up from below. Nobody is talking about all those non-Iron dwarfs invested in this venture. Hundreds of Rock Dwarfs to create and maintain the access tunnel, several teams of Lead Dwarfs to handle water seals, a whole bunch of Quicksilver kitchen workers, gremlin and nilmerg Tin handlers, Gold foremen, and Silver sorcerers taking down God Learner wards, and Brass dwarfs recycling those geared prayer combination machines.

I wonder whether there are Mostali traveling into the Godtime to study the blueprints of the World Machine in action.