Joerg

They could, if they exchange their armor for Orlanth's footwear at the Hill of Gold. Just a minor tweak of that quest, not as big as getting Fire powers, or the vaunted indestructability of the true masters of that quest. Edit: and yes, like in the Morokanth thumb quest, that Orlanthi would lose his ability to use Darkwalk.

Compared to RQ3 rune levels get fewer reusable divine magic if you don't allow some replenishment every few weeks, even if you use the"one point per day of ritual activity for rune levels. Under those rules a Chalana Arroy priest(ess) could perform one Resurrection plus Heal Body a week. Or a few Treat Dieser.

There is nothing disloyal in joining a spirit cult for some specific rune magic unless there is definite antagonism between the spirit and your usual deity. If the antagonism is only on the part of the spirit and the spirit still accepts the initiate of the antagonistic deity, then that is an answer in itself. The other way around would infringe loyalty, and probably any passion of Devotion.

The multipartite soul and (in addition?) your spirit allow the individual to go to multiple places after Death. If having multiple initiations, there are multiple pre-paid afterlife gods' realms, too, where the pre-dedicated portions of the soul rest, possibly surpassing the usual cultural number of souls. Troll default afterlife may be as part of the Hellmother, until spawned again to lead a mortal life.

Rune levels leading a worship ceremony gets to replenish their RP. Does this include RP used in the rites? Hopefully yes, especially if Sanctify is needed to turn a Temple to All Deities into the cult's holy place to do the rite. Rules-lawyering demands that there are 50 worshippers present for the rite, or if there are less worshippers, that they make up for the missing numbers by greater effort (higher MP sacrifices) and possibly use of votive figures to catch some of the slack. Worship leaders include God Talkers, and there are plenty culte where God Talkers go without the priestly benefits, effectively initiates of the cult whose worship they are leading.

Not so natural, as it doesn't have any more POW than the vampire has in any other shape, and if a bat wing or wolf leg is reduced to zero (after the doubling of the location hit point), you will be dealing with the smoke form, too. Basically, the doubling before turning to smoke involuntarily is the equivalent of reaching full negative hit points in a location, only without loss of function. Severing a limb in a single hit might still be feasible, with both main body and severed bit turning to smoke, I suppose, but the reforming body potentially unable to re-connect with the limb.

Not quite true - his big contribution to the Sea Tribe may have been stirring the incoming rush of water to seal out the Chaos Rift, and the Maelstrom may be where he spends the rest of his time, moving very fast almost in place. IMO Orlanth retrieved Mastakos when he went to Daliath's Well of Wisdom, undergoing the Baths of Nelat on the way. Through the funnel of air inside the Maelstrom, as far as I can tell. This doesn't stop Orlanth from using Mastakos' chariot prior to the Breaking of the World. Godtime moves in mysterious spirals up and down such major changes to Godtime, and pre-shadowing is common, like Vingkot's death by self-immolation to escape a lethal wound received in the Battle of Stormfall long after his reign and life"time".

Boiling oil seems to be an invention of over-active cinematic imagination, on par with flame arrows in field battles. Dropped rocks and tossed ones figure even in the battles around Troy - IIRC one of the Ajaxes did a mighty toss. The Assyrian siege-craft may not have been quite at the level of Caesar's engineers at Alesia, but between them and Alexander at Tyre doesn't seem to be an insurmountable gap on the attackers' side. Glorantha can do better than molotovs, it has fire elementals, and other similarly powerful entities fairly easily summoned into siege warfare.

There's also that weird island in central Jrustela with the giant beast-headed humanoids.

That urge to expand implies that there is a population pressure after the starvation etc. of the Windstop. Is there? Or are there any plots in Sun County so marginal that moving to Weis Cut would be preferable?

Canonically, the Ecclesiastical whatsitsname is taking place in Seshnela, and is an inquistional tribunal rather than a philosophical discourse. The Freeform had a bishop Gwydion of Sklar accompanied by Tanisoran-born Gerard de Montanmpein as Aeolians and Lunar convert Rikard the Tigerhearted in the Carmanian delegation.

Death (or conflict, or separation) is the only Power Rune we know (=have a story about) to have received an upgrade at the end of the Golden Age, and while Kargan Tor remained around at the Celestial Court until the Spike imploded (when Kargan Tor derelicted his post, though), it was others who wielded death under the "supervision" of Eurmal. Humakt retrieved Death only in the Underworld, IIRC prior to the Ritual of the Net, when apparently all the other powers (except Fertility) got re-assigned, too.

Griffins and Hippogriffs are sapient, to some extent Manticores are, too - at a lower level than minotaurs or gorillas, but not entirely animalistic. You forgot to mention satyrs as the third sapient culture of Beast Valley, and the Fox Women and Swan Maidens from Chinese or Germanic myth are present, too. The People of the Forest - dryads, Forest Kings and their daughters (marrying the demigods of the Serpent King dynasty) are present in his Dawn Age Seshnela writings, without any explicit elves. There aren't any uz, aldryami or mostali by that name, but instead there are elemental creatures like the Likiti of the Earth, Dehori of Darkness (which may or may not include uz following ZZ), a different name for the Stone people, etc., but no chimera creatures in Hrestol's Other Side journey to slay Ifttala. Another very short Dawn Age Seshnela fragment mentions a famous lion as quest object for an aspiring Man-of-All (still spelled "knight"), only to be snatched up by some more prestigious knight, leaving a mystery entity at a magical lake for the protagonist of that short fragment. Hybrids enter Seshnela only with the Luathan transformation of the inhabitants of Old Sesnela into beastfolk, or at least the parts that were not drowned. Sky or Storm critters with extra wings are known, some pure animals like the Sky Bulls, others with above-bestial sapience. But there are also monkeys and apes with above-beast sapience - the Baboons of Prax, the Gorillas of Caladraland, the Orang Utans of Fethlon. There are serpent women guardians at the Paps, and Rakshasa temple guardians associated with Babeester. Anaxial's Roster had elephant-headed elephant seals and similar weirdnesses, and there are fish-tailed versions of horses and other land animals in the seas. There are weird Green Age creatures, not restricted to Grotaron Maid Stone Archers or Pamaltelan Hoolars and Jelmre. The extinct Lascerdan civilization of Umathela is another example of weirdness. There is a place for some of these beings in the Upper World, from which they could descend on occasion or in special places - similar to he hippogriffs of Pegasus Plateau. Or in the Outer World, too, again with special places and magical circumstances that could bring them into the Inner World. Some of @Crel's Monsters of the Month were of this type. Other such creatures fall under the wider definition of "draconic" creatures, or sub-types of (lesser) dragons.

The Lammasu representations of the Storm Brothers are a close equivalent to Sphinxes, sharing some of the ungulant body parts with the Hieracosphinx (as per Monster Manual) overcome by Oedipus. I doubt that lion imagery is very popular in Esrolia, although it might be appropriate for at least one of the gate keepers for the setting sun. The other should have a wolf physique, though, honoring the myth how Telmor ate the sun (and creating the bridge between Telmor and Humakt). On the Theya side, the Phoenix might be the correct guardian (or at least one of the Guardians). But the Gates of Dawn appear to be as much of a one-direction portal as the Gates of Dusk, with guardians potentially on the Underworld side rather than the Surface side. Leonine imagery is common in Dara Happa, with two different aspects of the lion for eastern and western Peloria, and King Griffon as something like the predecessor sky ruler then relegated to the steed of the sun. A predator on horses might be a popular choice of totemic / heraldic creature for the dynasty which broke the yoke of the horse emperors following the few noble ones.

Those statues were made for a reason and will be part of the dwarf plan. They might be connected to the Somelz restoration project that is starting up in the southwestern corner of the world. That iron bolt was thought to be a message sent in the timeless border area between Life and Death halfway down Magasta's Pool. Reclamation may be posponed for the time when that void gets repaired. It might not even be a message, but the first clamp in order to close up that void. There are three or four fault lines in the Earth Cube coming together at the Pool, and the dwarfs mean to pull those back together eventually, like they have started doing with the Slon shard that slowly gets realigned to its proper position between Jrustela and Umathela. In case of the Iron Forts, those appear to have been made by the Babadi of Light Mountain in the northern Shan Shan, rather than those of the (still extant) strictly octamonist colony in the southern Shan Shan. The northern colony was exterminated, and the southern colony has a taboo about working iron, possibly to escape a fate similar to the northern colony. As said above IMO it takes unadulterated Stone (though not necessarily Truestone) to manufacture Iron from a non-metallic state. Another reason why these huge iron structures are inviolate might be the existence of gobblers and gremlins, two types of animate dwarf creations that punish violators and thieves of dwarfen Making. Dismanteling a dwarf creation may require some knowledge if you want to recover more than slag (using Oakfed) or gorp-riddled remnants (applying Primal Chaos to isolate manageable portions). Pavis used the aid of Flintnail and his followers to dismantle the Faceless Statue after it had run out of the power that animated it, resulting in more than just masonry from the quarries of its remains. Come to think of it, much of Old Pavis may be similar to the construction of a Waertagi Dragon City ship, with a semi-alive construct serving as source of all the building material. This may explain how the Old Pavis architecture retains roofs etc when any wooden beams or constructions would long have been devoured by hungry insects.

The Sword Story tells us that Eurmal gave Death to the Mostali who made copies of it. This could be a reference to the Mostali cooking up the Iron Mostali as a joint effort of the eight castes using the original, and then the Iron Mostali made copies both of themselves and the blade of Death, although reshaped into an axe. The true copy was lost by the Mostali (suppose Eurmal stuck around and took his toy back) and then lent it to Zorak Zoran who felled Flamal (at Hrelar Amali). ZZ afterwards lost the original (guess to whom) and some while later High King Elf takes revenge by putting the axe to the roots of the Spike, participating in the Breaking of the world with Zzabur and the Chaos horde invading the Spike. The Iron Mostali were the first model of man-rune tools mass-produced by the Mostali, but even that was not sufficient to replace their losses, so the suivors of the eight castes and some of the Iron Mostali got together to design the self-replicating Clay Mostali, imitating a method of making man rune critters employed by a couple of deities (such as Pamalt and friends, Yelm and family, Viimorn, Soli (of Thinobutu), etc.) but without the need to keep doing so.

Wait, this isn't about helicopters?

Orlanth has more than one shield. The Shield of Justice taken from Yelmalio at the Hill of Gold, the Shield of Arran he wields for his wife, and possibly more. His Hill of Gold appearance has some things in common with Eurmal. The myth should be somewhat different from the Sword Story, though. Might Eurmal have impersonated the missing shield, absorbing damage for their weilder while in that shape? Possibly just some detached body part? What is the True Shield? Possibly the Sun Dome above? The shell of Darkness below? The hardness of the Lozenge, with the Spike as its buckle?

What does this tell us about the many EWF era ruined cities (many of those having been around a lot longer) and their founders? Do the founders stick around even when a city is (mostly) abandoned? Is there a city god of. say. Lylket or Orin Jisteel waiting to be awakened?

IMG iron "ore" is Stone, a rare remnant of the original Stone that has not undergone subsequent transformations (e.g. as igneous rock precipitated from magma melted when Lodril descended, or from hydrothermal solution of portions of Sea which had dissolved parts of the Earth, then captured inside the cube). It takes Rock caste Mostali to find and extract, possibly Quicksilver caste to extract and purify, and them Iron caste to smelt, with Brass caste aiding the heat control. Possibly Silver Caste to extract any remnant magic. No idea what the contributions of Lead, Copper or Tin would be, with Gold of course supervising. The Iron Caste is not really part of the original plan of the World Machine, but an addition cooked up by the other eight castes to deal with problems resuting from the World Machine having gone out of order.

"Kithis Ikadi" is very reminiscent of "Prince Kadakithis" from Sanctuary, so probably firmly in the non-canonical corner (since coming from a copy-righted source, as opposed to say Väinämöinen/Vanamuine). There is Sog's Ruins on the southern edge of Prax, now a land-logged place but apparently a Waertagi drydock in the Gods War. The Waertagi might have explored the Solkathi flood, but their outreach really only reached the southern edge of Prax after the Breaking of the World, allowing their presence in the Gray Age and Dawn Age. A Waertagi shipwreck may have happened fleeing the Closing, just about anywhere on the coast.

RQ3 used to present zombies as undead things made by shamans, using spirit methods, which is why I don't think that undeath is a state alien to the spirit world. IMG Undeath really is a power of the Underworld, where the dead are tolerated walking and doing things, rather than something intricately associated with Chaos. The main Chaos connection is when the lord of the Undead, previously known as Nontraya, encountered the Devil and accepted the sacrifice of (what remained of) his soul to the Devil for contiued existence, reducing the mastery of the post-Death experience to Vampirism.

Weird - in the myth Artmal gets the sword from the Red Planet god.

I suppose only the Ankh Morpork PD does categorize werewolves as undead...

Unlike other fantasy games, I find RuneQuest to emphasize the character's abilities to usually trump equipment quality. Personal magic like bladesharp rather than permanent +X enchantments. And the setting Glorantha does so, too. Iron does come with increased toughness which is nice to have and nicer to parry with, but has other properties like the anti-magic when unenchanted which may help or hinder. Dealing with hostile trolls and elves, iron does offer an additional advantage, but then it may make these elder races more hostile just for equipping the stuff. And dwarfs might assume that all iron is illicit unless shown a proof of origin. (And non-Openhandists may ignore such evidence.) Unless you are a death dealer, having iron doesn't "augment" your magic the way the appropriate rune metal will. And in the setting of Glorantha, there is more to a character's activities than fighting.