Joerg

I don't either, but mere walking would not be enough to reach such an item. Flying would be the very hard but very magical way to go about that, climbing and balancing the more mundane version. Narratively, bringing the right tool should be rewarded with one spotlight scene. There might still be another point in the narrative where the bearer of such an immunity might be asked to lay it down for a challenge and/or reward. It all depends on how much weight you are giving to this achievement, and whether or rather how the achievement has long-term consequences. Would you let your player characters experience something like antarctic expedition of Robert Falcon Scott, reaching a hard to reach place only to find some other party beat them to it?

I think my Cave of Winds would have had a chasm where you need a wind or storm to carry you across by design. Does that cloak allow select winds to ignore its presence?

Herders may get a herding alynx, too. Or a herding dog, if herding alynxes break your immersion.

There is such a thing as a selection bias for those who survive dealing with problems, probably well covered by the "roll 4 D5+1 drop the lowest" method. (Rerolling results of 1 on D6 effectively creates a D5+1.) A straight 3(D5+1) averages out at 12. The setting has a high mortality, creating this selective bias. Now stats aren't everything, and most aren't fixed, either. One might argue that everybody starts without any disability, or without previous stat loss.

One effect of brewing was to get rid of all the spelt along with the tossed (well, beast fodder) remnants, something hard to accomplish for (or with) milling with early breeds of wheat. As a trade commodity, you might wish to transport the undliuted wort rather than the finished watery solution, increasing your trade volume somewhat, but other than water transport, neither grains nor beer are going to travel far. Which is why cities only came up in areas with water transport, often where irrigation brought water all the way to the fields. But then, irrigation is what requires coordination and hierarchy in the first place. This seems to be even more pronounced for rice farming. On the other hand, the Frisians and Germanic neighbors demonstrated how communities a fifth the size of a Sartarite clan could do communal water works (and land reclamation) on a similar scale without having those deep hierarchies.

Huddling down in the clan halls to get a kind of bunker view on some of the dangerous stuff, possibly changing "hiding places" between rites and ritual preparations, and yet providing valuable support by doing so. There may be minor "x protects the children" heroquests where some previous protector has to leave and another, not quite qualified protector needs to step in and deal with these dependents. The goal of these is to maintain the innocence of the group while the other stuff goes on.

Yanafal started out as a rebel against the system that had produced him. He got mixed up in a wild heroquesting conspiracy with the aim to get rid of the Carmanian overlords of which he was one. The success in incarnating Teelo Estara turned him from rebellion to religion, but also gave him a very mixed array of forces to lead into warfare. He embraced Death when he exchanged his life for that of Teelo Estara, down in the deepest Hell beyond where others had trod, in a desperate attempt to regain his reincarnated goddess. All of this is a very human background, a political one, rather than deeply rooted in death mysticism. That may have come after accepting Teelo Estara's death as his own, but it is a experience thoroughly different from what his Carmanian cult of Humakt the wasp-headed god of death held at its core. Carmanian Humakt is probably the least Arkat-impressed variant of Humakt in Genertela. The Carmanian immigrants came from Talor's kingdom, as dissidents against the Adalla dynastic takeover instituting Seshnegi-style Makanism. Their notion of Humakt (possibly related through the Bright Empire, possibly through a companion of Harmast, but certainly not by Arkat) probably does share the general outline of the Sword Story with the Theyalan Humakt we know since Cults of Prax. Despite pretty nefarious deeds and feats, it looks like Yanafal was obsessed with honor. I find that apostasy hullaballoo made by Theyalan Humakti towards Yanafal rather dishonest. Their Arkat-shaped cult probably outcompeted the previous one that had established itself in Prax in 35 ST. Many of them probably run the risk of being excluded from Carmanian temples as vile heretics if not outright apostates. How much would they care about a former Carmanian Humakti politically excommunicated and then outheroquesting the cult? The questions about the "betrayal" of Arkat are far from set in iron, either, at least IMG.

This is getting into Settlers of Catan silliness: "Got wood for sheep!"

Does Heroforge enable darker hues of skin? These are all a lot paler than how Sartarites are described.

If there are several generations of this sword, I bet every single specimen has its own unique series of owners. Uxoral ecstasy might consist of getting breakfast in bed, finding the garbage taken out, the kitchen cleared up after having been served some slab of meat from the grill, and maybe flowers?

While not at all connected to Glorantha, The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind was heavily influenced by RuneQuest. More in the ways of gameplay than in the setting, obviously. There are board games that use Glorantha as a setting, but AFAIK of those there is only one currently available, Khan of Khans, a rules- and lore- light dip into Glorantha on a game engine by Reiner Knizia. Out of print and/or yet to be reprinted board games include Dragon Pass (earlier White Bear and Red Moon, also Le Guerre des Heroes in the French edition), Nomad Gods (Les Dieux Nomades), and Sandy Petersen's Glorantha: The Gods War. Some of these might be available as virtual tabletop games. Another board game that was available as print-your-own is Last Faction Hero. In addition, there are at least three published fan-adaptations of the Britannia rules for areas of Glorantha, published in the Rule One online fanzine as free pdf to print your own: Fronela (#3), Peloria (#7), Kralorela (#5). Maybe not that newcomer-accessible, but there is an English language podcast dedicated to Glorantha and RuneQuest, the God Learner Podcast. (Neither of the current hosts is a native speaker of English...) Once you're on the German language page, the links work, and you can select your language of choice again under the flag. Might be a problem with insufficient cookie information, permission, or usage. The main problem with the Prince of Sartar webcomic is that it is breaking off in the middle of the action.

IMG, Lo-metal stands for Lorion's metal rather than Lodril's, and the deity is a mis-attribution by the Dawn Age Seshnegi author who lacked the syncretic insight of the Theyalans. "The Metals of Acos" is an in-world document, after all, and thus is allowed to make mistakes. The mostali caste system on the other hand should know the truth. Lodril's metal really is tin admixed to copper. The Mostali call this brass, and won't have anything to do with that disastrous storm metal that came from destroying their world machine. Tin is the seed of the Sky, inflicted on the broad earth. The entire two-letter-code for Gloranthan metals adds a level of obscurity that may throw off even veterans every now and then, even more so as it uses an obscure Ralian pantheon (of Hrelar Amali, I suppose) to name the elemental deities. The question what would be the correct Gloranthan term for a specific metal has plenty correct answers, as there are plenty Gloranthan languages across which those names differ. For the "most correct answer", we would need the name in the relevant elemental language for the native metal(s), or alternatively the language of the Celestial Court rather than that of one of its reflections.

Redsmiths... the Red Cow village is special for having a blacksmith, and for who that blacksmith is. And I sort of doubt that Willandring ever was offered a guild membership... Actually, that opens a can of worms with regard to unfree practitioners of a craft. Are those to be regarded as property of the associated guild, or is their owner (i.e. the Red Cow clan in the case of Willandring) somehow associated with the guild like a journeyman member, with similar duties? The guilds will be centered in the nearby city, but may be activein its environment, and run dependencies - possibly with only journeyman or clerk representation, possibly with detached masters. As I understand Apple Lane, the stable master is part of the horsemasters' guild of a nearby city. Probably Runegate rather than Jonstown, because horses... the weapon masters will be associated with the Jonstown hiring hall, which in turn may be closely intertwined with the Two Ridge (Malani) temple of Humakt. Jeff's preview of the Boldhome Bronze Workers guild and its inter-relation with the cult of Gustbran shows that the guilds do run parts of their business outside of the city walls. Guilds in lesser cities may maintain some sort of dependency with those in bigger cities, or with guilds that predated them in the region. Wilmskirk was the first center of guild crafters in the region, and its guilds may have some traditional influence on those in other cities founded after them.

One way could be to give them a passion like "distrust rustics" (or something else that makes it clear that people living outside of suitably enclosed settlements are not really worth their affection). Otherwise, both limiting and expanding the passion to residents of the place is possible, and may have interesting effects e.g. in their relationship with Willandring the giant smith. What follows are effectively my house-rules: Most guild members would have a special relationship to their (possibly former) master and his workshop, to the members of their workshop, to the guild, and to the community the workshop is a part of. Much of the time, these could be the same abillity, possibly with a bonus or a penalty for certain individuals or sub-organisations. Effectively, all greater groups - family, guild, clan etc. - will have subgroups or individuals with modifiers to the general skill. Inside a guild the master will have a rival, with a workshop of their own, and members of the rival workshop will have a penalty. Inside the master's workshop, there will be an individual rival, and possibly an ill-tempered slightly-higher-up with no chance at promotion, who will incur such a penalty, and there will be personal allies as well. Within a certain limit, these loyalties or hatreds can be covered with just one skill and a few modifiers. Only when these characters are brought into the game outside of that community context their directed passion gets separated from the community-directed passion.

Neuters aren't barred from sexuality, just from reproductive sex. Opera eunuchs were quite the rage as they promised safe extramarital affairs. But yes, what is the stance about loss of reproductive sexuality by trauma?

There is always the search for the Red Sword of Tolat, gone missing when Avalor carried it off to free his wife. She may have had some fruitless endeavour in Corflu about Selenteen's expedition, and might look for that hidden history in the Holy Country. Possibly on the trail of a conspiracy to keep those Teshnites forgotten? But the Amazons would not have been part of that.

IMG the Orlanthi are pragmatic. If the body is able to bear children, it's the Ernaldan puberty rite, in the other cases it's running with the wild boys. Thus femalle and herm sex will undergo Ernaldan puberty rites, everybody else will get the Uncles, and probably the Star Heart. Vingans and male-leaning herms undergo the Orlanth rites, too. Nandan boys and neuters undergo a different Ernaldan introduction, not so much an initiation - and yes, this is somewhat unfair. The Uncles and the Star Heart are not an automatic initiation to the Orlanth cult. Possibly up to one third of the wild boys participants may choose not to start cultic initiation with Orlanth, with Daka Fal probably taking a major portion of these, and the specialist cults a lot of the rest (including Nandan or Ernalda lite/grain goddesses/Eiritha without wearing women's clothing).

Might have become the ambling hill of Mt Passant.

I have an older edition of Drakar och Demoner from a late eighties visit to Göteborg which still has percentile dice and skill steps of 5% (just like RQ2), and I too saw the D20 equivalent when looking at it. The only bonus application is "stat x3" or similar multipliers different from 5. The finer distinction for specials and criticals can be had by re-rolling the D20 (or chasing the first with a second) to check for specials or crits, even without doing any math. If percentile dice are your measure of BRP-ness, you can train your multiplication by five skills and use the numbers. There is a difference in what a single MP can do in magic. DoD spells from back then tend to have more effect for the magic point than Battle Magic (when they don't just copy those), and no comparison to RQG sorcery with its wastefully high amounts of MP (which are required as the force of the MP in the spell overcomes resistances rather than the POW attribute of the caster).

Mongoose did receive some material from Greg, and on the slim chance that they actually incorporated it as intended in the crazy short development cyces Mongoose put out to their authors, such parts may well remain. However, the Second Age had a different flavor of heroquesting with the God Learner RuneQuest Sight that was thought to be a good stand-in for actually getting the deep secrets from identification like the Arkati did. Post-God Learner heroquesters lacked that reductionist ability and had to go the more immersive ways of Arkat or the classical theist and animist questers whose main goal was and is to re-inforce the Web of Arachne Solara. (The Man-of-All otherworldly trials were similar before they too got enthusiastic about RuneQuest Sight).

That's assuming a plutonic/Lodrilic origin of the metals. This is Glorantha, though, where the sediments were formed as a side effect of the Gods War, allowing gods' bones to be deposited with the sediments, or driven into them as part of the struggle. Ores form when corrosion takes its toll of the native metal. Most Gloranthan ore deposits resemble archaeological finds of metal artifacts, as that is what they are. Lodril did carry that conflict into the deeper layers of upper Earth when Aether and Gata got things going and the divine phallus did his work. The mountains are indeed where you find deposits of copper or brass (Lodril's Burtae mountain god kids, with their often molten skeletons). The Auroch Hills (and any Star Captain landing site) are places of meteoric deposits, of sky entities falling down. Tin is probable due to the Shargash connection, otherwise small finds of silver (for star entities) are a possibility. (Did the Star Captains come down as individuals, or did they bring small squads of companions?) The rivers will actively have dug into the earth to extract magic-rich remains of other deities, possibly ignoring much of the metal which usually is harder to float inside them, creating similar sediment traps in fast-flowing water like the black gold sands, or the tin ore wash-outs that must have helped start the Bronze Age while they lasted. (Typically less than a generation of intensive panning, I suppose.) That kind of activity leaves hardly any archaeological evidence, since holes in or near running water are likely to be claimed and carried away by said waters. That's only since Lorion/Engizi reversed the direction of the rivers. Which in itself is a problematic assumption, as the rivers used to be tendril-like organisms with internal counterflow to carry off energies and stuff they wanted to keep. Jelly-fish like serpents/dragons, so to say. Much of the plateau is karst, deposited by the seas before the earth broke the ocean surface, and more by initial floodings in the Storm Age that were beaten back by the Storm Tribe. That means that quite a bit of the erosion doesn't leave solid material but gets dissolved and carried off instead. Returned to the seas that originally deposited these, really. There are beavers, there are tree trunks carried down causing the occasional blockage, and IMG the river gods don't mind leaving their passive river beds every now and then to reclaim a little more of their formerly bigger beds. In Gloratha as well in the real world, water will eventually find its way. Only Heler is exempt from that truism, as he has lost the ability to return.

Tunneling is riskier and takes up a lot more lumber to keep the tunnels from caving in. Even harvesting motherlodes on the surface of cliffs needs such bracing.

The Broken Council was providing background information for a freeform, which makes using it for canon intrinsically problematic. Details in the Guidebook contradict official information, like getting Darkness or dragons replaced for the God Project.

As a result of the Hill of Gold, Inora reflects the light on the mountaintops. The Heortlings look up to Kero Fin as the resting point of the Cold Light that brought them through moxt of the Darkness. The Pole Star is never far from the peak of Kero Fin when you look up. The top of Kero Fin traditionally being obscured by clouds makes this a bit problematic, agreed.

If you have ore processing or "traditional" mining with shafts and tunnels, waterworks for crushing rocks, panning, and pumpiing have been the norm, apparently already in Imperial Roman times, although well documented by Georg Agricola. A drop hammer for crushing ore-containing rock requires just a single block and might be operated by muscle power and gravity, no worse than Quasimodo operating the Notre Dame bells. I need yet to be convinced that the alchemy of smelting is widespread in Glorantha. The Mostali have it, the Third Eye Blue have it, but it is possible that most metal using cultures make use of metallic rather than ore deposits that are panned, whether from fluvial erosion (like you pan for gold), or from crushing rock in a motherlode with nuggets of the known rune metals. The Mostali of Gemborg and the Dwarf of Dwarf Run have been using human assistance for long, and those assistants may have leaked secrets to the cult of Gustbran beyond welding or melting down the nuggets and metal sands.