Joerg

Great, now the hollri are going to be summer-hard...

I can only talk about arrowheads. Broadheads cause the most internal damage, but aren't used against armored opponents because they don't penetrate that well. Bodkins are great for armor penetration, but don't cause that much internal damage. However, you still do some damage where a broadhead would at best cause a slight punch. RQG (thankfully) doesn't compare weapon properties with armor properties where such considerations would flow into the simulation. With arrows, a greater weight falling from the same height will have better penetration - most military use of arrows was ballistic. Greater mass means greater penetration. There can be too much penetration, e.g. when hunting fowl, which is why arrows for that often have blunt points or splints orthogonal to the shaft to prevent the arrow from flying through the target. Direct heroic shooting like Paris or Teucer did, going almost into the thick to take out foes at almost point blank, is something else, and tries to aim for gaps in the armor of a moving target. While shooting into a melee, avoiding engagement or dodging out of it where and when possible. At least the audience of Homer thought that an archer dancing through the thick of combat was somewhat likely. RQG doesn't - "no moving while shooting". Yes, it is highly detrimental for accuracy. But so is riding a horse or other mount. Back to spears in melee - I wonder how much of the damage values are derived from looking at thrown penetration for different spear weights. And possibly durability when sticking the point into a target.

Invoking those Game of Thrones vibes? Frost demons (hollri) might be one of the things you want to keep out, making ice a less than optimal material. OTOH, you use what you have - I have a project for an even icier setting in the freezer. Size and period, mainly. Fürstensitze are Hallstatt period hill forts, oppida are La Tène and Roman era urban centers. One could develop into the other. Some of the larger oppida were outright cities, like Kelheim and Manching. Others have become the kernels of Provincial Roman cities.

Longhouses: Really are a central European thing that slowly expanded into northern Europe, and then saw a modification in building material on Iceland. They are about as much a "Viking" thing as are battle axes - Vikings are on record using both, after a history of three to four millennia of them having been in use in central Europe. You can of course create an ice cave, which may aid your storage capacity a lot. You had better think of a drainage system, though, as sooner or later the snow is going to melt. A variant of the square house is the three-sided stead, with a long house in the back and two longish halls on either side of the central yard. Connect the houses with a palisade, have a main gate opposite of the long house, and you have your earth rune longhouse stead. A farmer's guild? A guild is a clan by another name, applied to non-farming activities. But sure, use your nomenclature. Riverjoin is a lunar city, with Dona river folk and some Orlanthi sharing the place. The Lunars arrived during the Third Wane, fleeing from Sheng Seleris, a bit over 300 years ago. There was in all likelihood a market town here before the Lunars took over - a river junction is a logical place to transship goods. You might take some inspiration from the Alaskan gold rush look and feel (minus the guns and the gold) for Fronela, at least in winter. Round Keltenschanzen? Do you mean round earthworks a man or two high, possibly topped by palisades? The square Keltenschanzen I have seen in the wild (in Bavaria) were rather tiny enclosures, maybe enough space for four long houses and some walking space. Nothing near an oppidum. Of course, most oppida I know were built on natural rises, and were surrounded by Gallic Walls rather than mere earthwork (though those earthwork ramps did form the basis for the Gallic Wall at the rather atypical oppidum of Manching, which was situated on a river plain near the confluence of Isar and Danube). Oppida may have developed from earlier Fürstensitze, likewise built on hilltops or even plateaus where available. In case of Fronela, the question is who would have been the precursor civilizations that built these places? There isn't really a parallel for the Vingkotlings this far up the Janube. The Enjoreli bull people civilization was concentrated further west and south. The riverine Waertagi would have preferred to remain aboard their ships, but might have settled for housing directly on the river, perhapse in an Esgaroth way, or like crannogs. Brithini didn't stray this far upriver. Riverjoin lies way too far west to have come under Carmanian influence, but God Learner Akem influence is likely for precursor towns and cities - after all, they had spread all the way to Eastpoint at some time. The Bright Empire did rule all of these lands for about 75 years, and the Second Council probably as long before it became the Bright Empire, giving a fairly solid Theyalan basis, although with native converts rather than immigrants from Dragon Pass. Quite a few Hykimi beast totems got converted to Theyalan-style theism. But then, the bull people may already have had a precursor of that kind of magic when they first rode down the foothills of the Nidan range. The Musk Ox folk may have used an architecture based on their temporary constructions when migrating alongside their totemic beasts. I only know these beasts from their artificial habitat on Dovrefjell in Norway.

If you want to have fun, you can have them bring back quite a lot of treasure to the quest giver, who then distributes some of those gains according to the PCs loyalty score to him rather than as a compensation for their efforts, which might be rewarded in reputation instead. Imagine a party receiving an epic poem in reward, possibly by a well known poet or skald...

This gets muddled up even more if you consider that a hit in a melee round might consist of several contacts of the weapon with the target, even though only one hit location gets the damage. A series of chain punches in kung fu may connect twice per strike rank. For all its appearance of gritty detail, the RQ combat system is an absraction.

Just add "you understand that" in front of the statement.

Another possibility for a failure to transit properly. Or a short-cut to Transcendence? I am not quite sure whether the Young Elementals were tied to Her ascension into the Sky - they may just as well have resulted from Her intimacy with Blaskarth during her Goddess Quest. According to etyries.com, already the nativity rite in Torang brought them into the world.

DI used to be a weirdly variable one-use spell, transferring a portion of the petitioner's soul into the realm of their god in case of success, and leaving behind a rune magic effect in the world of the living, hopefully for the petitioner to enjoy. Devotion is a passion, and starts at 60%. I don't think that anybody thinks that three out of five petitions for a deity to intervene are answered... Allowing Devotion to augment the petition sounds fair. Placing all the soul drain on the current POW score, or POW + unspent rune points for rune levels, makes DI pretty fatal for all but a few lucky D10 DI rune lords. With the caveat that at least one rune point or point of POW is permanently lost regardless of the rolled result, I might be willing to roll a D20 in case of a successfully augmented DI and substract that number from the D100 roll to determine the loss in POW and rune points. This may result in some rather cheap DIs, but will also increase the risk for a complete premature ascension of the soul to the deity. I might also accept Worship <deity> as the augmenting skill. Usually that should be lower than Devotion, but you never know how players may roll for their skill raises. Altruistic DI - on behalf of companions - will leave an effect regardless whether the petitioner survives the successful invocation. A very special kind of munchkin might use a string of augmented DIs to avoid the route to judgement by Daka Fal to join their deity... If the charcter is an oath-breaker, this might be desirable.

One is the Deceiver, the other the Liberator. Both claim to be the Liberator. Both may be right about the other.

You would have to cross the Crater Wall, which takes quite a bit of climbing, and then crossing over into the right reality to prevent you from falling off the hollow inside. My theory is that the silhouette Crater Wall inside is seen as the outside of the Crown Mountains on the Red Moon. The hole beneath the Crater is spherical and extends outward, to a total width about twice the diameter of the Crater itself. If you make the right transition, you might be able to descend the Crown Mountains onto the surface of the moon. If your transition is lacking, there is just a dark and deep hole inside, allowing you to fall beyond the lands of the living before your body impacts fatally with a surface deep below. Features on the moon, beyond the Crown Mountains (i.e. out of sight from anywhere on the Surface World) are semi-mystical, possibly chaotic, like the Bat Cave. Crossing the Crown Mountains multiple times leads into ever stranger realms of semi-existence. The entire concept is supposed to be mad, with just a small amount of plausibility. A practical and physical pilgrimage ever deeper into Illumination, without any guarantees for a return. (Or is it just a hungry Bat?)

A single Lie spell works best as a medium to convey a provable truth that is doubted by the recipient. Multiple castings can create a network of false, but mutually supporting statements, a bit like the Bielefeld conspiracy. Or less innocent recent disinformation campaigns...

Once upon a time, proving Doburdun's identity as a storm brother means that you are a Culbrea stopping to be a meek, subdued Lunar lackey. That was part of proving that Orlanth's magic never had gone quite away, and helped re-establish Orlanth's magic. It takes more than that to become eligible as a God Learner. This was supposed to be part of the Sartar Rising arc for Hero Wars / HeroQuest 1st edition. What made it into Orlanth is Dead is a diplomatic encounter with King Ranulf, and in Gathering Thunder Ranulf appears as a quest giver after a scripted encounter. No mention of the Doburdun discovery, though, instead Doburdun folk are used as antagonists.

When it comes to meteorology, don't go for the lesser evil.

No need to call in the Crater Makers...

Londra was reported as acting household head at Old Wind, the resident priest approachable for normal administrative concerns. in the Moon Design description of the place, as of 1621 or so. Her Taraling ties appear to outweigh whichever Zethnoring ties her parent may have had.

The failure of Ingolf and the inability of Isgangdrang and their disciples to attain True Dragonhood may be the draconic equivalent. Sheng's personal decision against attaining the Ultimate (or Bodhisattvahood) and grasping the world of entanglements may be occlusion in its ultimate form. Sheng is supposed to be the Other of the Red Goddess (though not Sedenya).

On the reeds vs. wood battleground: We know that only one of three families originally able to grow or build and operate moon boats remain. The lazy explanation might be that the reed variety may have been the original version used by the two lost families, and that the wooden variant folk wiped out the competition when the Emperor was busy hiding from Sheng Seleris, or that Sheng Seleris found a means to unravel the reed ones but not the wooden ones. Possibly the surviving family was the only one that found a way to escape the anti-reed boat magics (which in all likelihood come from Darjiin or Alkoth). With the Waertagi identified as the ancestors of the blue boatmen of the west (Sweet Sea, Poralistor and Oronin rivers and lakes) Artmali contacts on those waterways become rather unlikely (except as slaves of Vadeli, but then the local Vadeli diaspora that became overlords with the Nidan uprising had plenty Kachisti subjects to manage). The fleets of Jarkartu, the Indigo Conqueror, don't appear to have retained any levitating or cloud-like qualities. They do seem to have mastered (enslaved?) the winds for propulsion. Any remnant solidified moonglow would have been restricted to small, personal items like armor, weapons and jewelry rather than entire vessels.

Moon boats have a propulsion system similar to drifting like a raft on a current or like rudimentary sailing, hence the comparison to a bireme or trireme doesn't make that much sense to me. Those are vessels specifically built for ramming operations, until the Romans found a way to avoid tests of seamanship in favor for boarding actions.. If anything, the Punt ships found at that cave seaport on the Red Sea would be my analog for the "liftwood" variety. A multi-purpose craft (in its fields of employment similar to a Hanseatic Cog) without any dedicated military application. I mean, ramming other moon boats doesn't make much sense, and there aren't any other such levitating vessels to combat around. That would leave use against ground troops as bombers or in sieges as siege towers from above. Neither is documented anywhere, although the bomber platform isn't contradicted anywhere. They appear to be similar to zeppelin dirigibles in most regards, including vulnerability to certain types of ground or aerial based magic /fliers, lightning, dispels) and rather ponderous movement, and a strong dislike for strong winds. The ships are basically the gondolas of blimps of moonglow. This might mandate a minimum distance between moonboats..

Getting from Peloria to Ralios after the onset of the Ice Age is pretty hard. You have to go south first, which means follow the route of Beren and Ulanin, and then continue onward into the salt desert left behind by slain Faralinthor, and then migrate north again. Going west would send your riders into the pastoralist migrations of hill barbarians, like the Andam Horde, or the Bull Riders who dominate much of southern Fronela, with only the Jonating ancestors with their bear worship interrupt. Dorastor and Kartolin Pass were not Chaos wastes yet, but were inhabited by the mysterious (and apparently mischievous) Feldichi people. Beyond the pass you have a mix of Hykimi beast folk, including the Kivitti elephant folk of Karia, and the creature that lent Zebrawood its name, and presumably humans to accompany those. And beyond that, you will find the children of Galanin, who was here already before the Rockwood Mountains were raised.

IMO the Artmali used metallized blue moonglow for their initial, highly mythical boats and constructions. As the Blue Moon rose higher, and then was brought down in a far far place, that "technology" got weaker and eventually mostly lost. Edit: A woolgathering search into the 2008 World of Glorantha list brought up a message by Greg confirming the use of metal and clouds.

So you get another giant bear, possibly big and strong enough to wrestle the Star Bear.

Makes me wish for a "hound to alynx" filter...

Let's assume the adventurer goes full penalty for that year's income, so affluent with plunder that she can both afford as many trainers as possible and keep her family afloat for that year. How much can she cram in every season?

Most of the borders of the Lunar satrapies (other than Silver Shadow, which was defined by the naturally occurring Glowline emanating out of the Crater) follow rivers. However, the Oronin satrapy - taking over much of the Carmanian heartlands - has two straight borders with its neighboring satrapies (Doblian and Karasal) radiating out from some (rather random?) point in the Silver Shadow, somewhere southwest of the Crater in the Guide, somewhere in the western part of the Crater area in the Sourcebook's 5th Wane map. I wonder how this border came about. The only measurable thing I can see for these two borders would be the shared day of the Full Moon effect, somethng very unique as all the other satrapies straddle more than one seventh of the circular border of the Silver Shadow. The Redline History tells us that the clan of Vakthan, a son of the Red Emperor, more or less single-handedly cowed the rebellions in the West Reaches in the first and earliest second wane. That means that the Empire used a system of satrapies already that early, although the Redline History only shows the Heartland satrapies for the Fifth Wane. Have the satrapies retained their area throughout the history of the established Lunar Empire? Or did Sheng Seleris's interregnum depopulate existing organisational structures in the west to an extent that new satrapy borders could be drawn in effectively no man's land? Could there be a ghost satrapy, lost to the ravages of Sheng, with a satrapial mansion still in upper Glamour? Doblian and Oronin satrapies cover half of the original lands of the Lion Shahs of Carmania. Northern Oronin has quite a bit of Spolite territory, or at least some of the heartlands of the Spolite Empire that Syranthir's followers destroyed, and the empire of his son kept hold of. Do we have any records about the internal organization of Carmania before its conquest of Dara Happa?