Pentallion

I remember well the days when playing D&D got people labeled as Satanists.  Nearly two decades later, MtG dropped their iconic card Wrath of God just to not piss off the American Taliban.  Retconning the west to make it not a parallel to Christianity feels a lot like paying tribute to the American Taliban.  It doesn't really matter whether it's like Hindu, Jewish, whatever, so long as it's never, ever like Christianity.

Well, F that S, is how I feel about it.  

Cross breeding elementals to make a more powerful strain of god?  Please, tell me more.

Hearts in Glorantha, Issue 1 Vol 1, page 22. 

In the Eastern Wilds, Nysalor’s taming reign was
destroyed by Darkness loving trolls and traitorous
humans known as the Karns, powerful seven foot
tall warriors with troll blood in their veins.
Many a wise priest of Nysalor was killed by a Karn
assassin, burning with hate and envy.

Awesome!  I have the first volume complete.  Very nice stuff and glad to see more is coming.

Except that Stormbringer was printed in 1965 and the Silmarillion was printed in 1977, but written decades earlier.  So they were truly independent and the parallels were coincidence and more to do with common source inspirations.  Tolkien's characters in the Silmarillion are not given much depth as the book is more akin to King of Sartar than an actual story.

Roleplay:  Subere draws a circle in the sand and you both cast your bones.

Mechanics:  You roll 7 d6.  All ties are said to be bones touching.  All 1's are bones that fell outside the circle.

Roleplay:  Subere draws a rune in the sand with her stick.

Mechanics:  Player names a rune, picks bones that are "touching".  Must all be the same number.  Cannot pick 1's.

Roleplay:  Bones are affected per the rune.

Mechanics:  Lots of runes, I don't have time to list what each one did.  Motion would bring back bones that had fallen outside the circle.  Death would destroy bones. Fire burn them, etc. 

Then the other player draws a rune and so on.  You could only draw a rune once unless you were master of that rune, which is only Subere, the Mistress of the Darkness Rune, so she can play it multiple times and it cannot be played upon her.

As long as they don't call it RQ Gateway, I'll be happy.  That name brings back horrible memories of Avalon Hill tearing the heart out of Glorantha.

We did this in our campaign.  They first had to carry out the Dancer, the Darkman and the Night Hag heroquest where they went to Hell to find Subere and learn a secret from her - the whereabouts of Pinchining - by besting her at a game of sticks and bones.  Invented all the rules to the game, involving runes, etc.  It was so fun that sometimes we'd sit aroung playing sticks and bones just for the fun of it.  Was rather proud of that game within the game.  Then they had to quest to get Pinchining back from the Green Age.  No weapons allowed, lots of restrictions on their available actions or they'd get booted from the quest.

I hear the heroquest works best if you bring along a donkey and a piglet.

The Karn are described as having troll blood, being larger and stronger and being known for their assassins, which suggests an affinity to darkness.  Yet they are neither Tuskers nor do they give birth to trollkin.  So I would think that A:  Tuskers could be troll related and B: the answer to the cure to trollkin lies somewhere in the answer to why at least Karn don't breed trollkin like offspring.

Let's not forget one of the greatest heroes of this age, perhaps the greatest one of all, is Elusu the little shit, a female Trickster.