Jeff

Most every Gloranthan has some experience "on the Hero Plane." When you sacrifice POW/regain your Rune Points, you experience your deity and gain the connection that allows you to briefly incarnate that deity in the mundane world. Every time you cast a a Rune spell, we get a momentary manifestation of the deity. I think a lot of people understate this - it is not Vasana who casts Lightning, rather it Orlanth's Lightning Spear that appears in Vasana's hands. The god is present with every Rune spell. But that stuff is handled through the Rune spell mechanics, and not what we likely mean when we talk about "heroquesting". To gain new powers, new gifts (and new banes and geases), you need to go outside and explore the Hero Plane. You might be armed with your stories, but they are simply guides of how things might be done - and things might not go that way. You need to make your own stories, participate in your own experiences, and risk transformation. That's not easy - in real life or in gaming. That's why people keep retreating to the King of Dragon Pass version of heroquesting - it is safer, more predictable, easier to control, and less likely to radically transform your character (and even your cult). But that is not really heroquesting.

Let's be precise about terms. Every initiate experiences the Gods World and interacts with it every time the deity is invoked with a successful Worship ceremony. But that's how far most people go. They stick around the God's Place, witness the god and its allies, but do not stray. A few people - mainly Rune Lords and Rune Priests - go beyond this, sticking to more familiar paths and interact with powers and entities outside of the god's control. Far fewer people - heroquesters - go off the familiar path and explore the Hero Plane.

We found in play that it is exactly the opposite. RQ3 falls apart for very large creatures - as they become nearly unkillable. Which we know is wrong because killing giants and other big monsters is a staple in Greg's stories. And before anyone says it is not realistic that Bigclub the Giant "only" has 28 hit points instead of 63 hit points, well if we want to be at all realistic, Bigclub can't actually walk.

Shrines and temples to Movement Gods are often (not surprisingly) mobile themselves. But they still need to maintain support from initiates and other worshipers in order to keep that divine link strong. So many Orlanth Adventurous temples have the shrine on a wagon, and go from place to place, gaining support from the communities they pass by and perform rituals and sacrifices as they travel.

Agreed. The Spike is a universal myth and the basic story is known to everyone - the world was held up by a Cosmic Pillar, Mountain, or Tree. That's where the Old Gods of the Celestial Court lived. Chaos destroyed the Spike and that is what destroyed the world, The world is now held together by the Cosmic Compromise, as there is no Spike holding up the Sun Dome anymore.

Remember a lot of the powerful entities out in the Wastes are things that were not tamed or defeated by Waha. Some are outright hostile towards mortals, others are powerful things that are broken shards of the former Golden Age. Some are alien, others are sad or angry, hungry, or long-forgotten. Like anytime you walk alone through the wild desert.

Now the Red Goddess was different. She is something that did not exist in the God Time. Our Red Goddess went deep into the Underworld, was defeated and lost, met the Cosmic Spider and was illuminated by Nysalor, and bound the Devil in order to change the cosmos. In short, she used Chaos to break the Cosmic Compromise and create a new archetype that had not existed in the God Time - the Red Moon. Sure there was a broken and dead Moon Goddess, several even. But they were broken pieces of a funhouse mirror. But the Red Goddess reassembled those fragments and used Chaos to do the impossible. The only other example that comes close is the use of the Pseudo-Cosmic egg by the Second Council to create a new god - Osentalka the Perfect One.

I'd carefully reread my earlier post. There's a lot in there, and the answer is definitely more than "can you make it stick".

More precisely, just because it is "fan-made and free" doesn't mean that it is not an unlicensed derivative work under Copyright Law.

The archetypes and patterns of the God Time are eternal and fixed. But what we in Time experience of the God Time, what we call things, what we offer magic points to and draw upon when we use magic - that changes as we mortals do. "Myths" are the stories we tell about the God Time - we can see the God Time in our rites, our ceremonies, and when the Gods World is close to us. Sometimes we can even interact ourself with the archetypes and patterns of the God Time - that's what we call Heroquesting. Yelmalio - Little Sun - is a title. We apply it to the Light in the Darkness, the light remained when the Sun was killed and the light that refused to go out in the Darkness. We have places where we can meeting the Little Sun, where he is so close you can reach out to touch him. We can walk in his path and ascend to the Hill of Gold and try to fight against the Darkness, but we know that our god was defeated by Orlanth and robbed by Zorak Zoran - that's part of his definition. If we do not experience that, we do not follow in his path. Like a Jesus who is not crucified. But perhaps something we thought was the Little Sun - his Golden Spear perhaps - is something that we can draw power from directly. We can worship the Golden Spear as a god, separate (but associated) with Yelmalio. Or perhaps we see the time that Yelmalio worked with Orlanth and decide to focus only upon that, and call that subset of Yelmalio with the name Elmal. Or perhaps we experience Yelmalio as merely the light that emanates from Yelm, and worship Yelmalio merely as an attribute of Yelm. Perhaps on a heroquest, we follow Yelmalio's path, are extinguished but rekindle ourself with our purity. We bring this back to our temple with a new Rune Spell of one-use Resurrection or maybe just Restart Fire. Perhaps we gain a new gift, not on the list, or take a new geas, not previously seen. In this way, cults may change.

Middle Earth is a registered trademark and as we all know the Lord of the Rings and related works are copyright of others. Lets not publish unlicensed BRP adaptations of other people's IP please.

A few points: The Lunar imperial presence in Prax was an existential threat to the Praxian way of life - much as the westward expansion of settlers into the Great Plains endangered the Plains Indians or the settlement of the Russian steppes endangered the steppe nomads. You can sugar-coat it as much as you want, but the Bison and Impala have largely been forced out of Prax into the much harsher Wastelands, and the High Llama have lost their good grazing in the River of Cradles. Even the Morokanth are under pressure. Only the Sable Riders have prospered although they are riven by religious and social strife. And this is after only a little over a dozen years. The Lunar presence is basically a repeat of the events of the Second Age, with the added elements of cult hostility. At the end of the day, Waha, Storm Bull, and Orlanth are all hostile towards the Seven Mothers and enemies of the Red Goddess. That's just baked into the cults. So things are a powder keg in Prax. The White Bull Society is throwing a hand grenade into the powder keg. It is somewhat analogous to the Lakota Ghost Dance. It is a millenarian movement - associated with the Jaldon Goldentooth hero cult, and other cults in Prax. The White Bull is expected to unify the Praxian nations and liberate them from the yoke of the Lunar Empire, bring spirits and gods to fight on their behalf, and triumph over Chaos - and everyone expects the real battles to be in Dragon Pass or even Peloria (as they were in the First Age). The spirit is not obscure - pretty much all Praxians were familiar with it - but nobody expected that an outlander slave would be the one that finds it and allies with it. Which gets us to Argrath's role in all of this. He's tied to the White Bull, but is an outlander, and one somehow also linked with the dragons. Like Arkat before him, Argrath embraces contradictions and works with enemies to fight against Gbaji (now called the Red Goddess). You'd think the Lunars would grok him (as in so many ways his story is like that of the Red Goddess herself), but they do no more than the Nysaloreans did Arkat. You can call his war senseless, but to me it is no different than the Red Goddess' wars against the Carmanian Empire. Perhaps the Red Goddess sees the parallels - but her mortal followers sure as heck don't. At least yet. So the Praxians follow Argrath into Dragon Pass. They are rewarded with new grasslands, tribute, and unity that they have lacked since the First Age. Who knows how much of the drive into Peloria comes from Argrath, and how much of it comes from the Praxians' own expectations and demands. After all we had Bison Khans in Sylilla and Vanch even in the Third Age, and the Sables know full well that they have a branch on the Hungry Plateau.

Villages in the Lunar Heartlands are not walled. They are typically a collection of huts - usually mud-brick in construction. There's usually a shrine or minor temple to Lodril and Oria (or one of the other Grain Goddesses), and often a shrine to the Seven Mothers.

Normal population for a village is around 100-500 people.

It can be whichever we think works best for our story or our campaign. I tend to describe it as the spirit was always there and it is awakened. So that ancient sword? Humakt has awakened its spirit so that it can work with you. That big sacred bison? Storm Bull awakened it and it is now able to communicate with you. But there is no need to establish a one true method. Maybe it works better for you to imagine that Orlanth sent a spirit to possess the shadow cat or a sword or whatever. Then just make it so.

As one should. At the table, the needs of MGF should always trump fidelity to lore.

OK, wearing my canon-consistency and editor hat - almost everything mechanical about Arlaten would have to change. RQG sorcery is very different in play from RQ3 sorcery. He'd require pretty much a complete rewrite, as would Mikos. I suspect the resulting character would be far less powerful and need far more support and assistance from the player characters, which would be a good thing. Azios would also require a heavy mechanical rewrite, if you even wanted to use her at all. My recommendation would be to drop her entirely, in favor of a major troll assault by one of the established clans, using Rune magic and spirits, where the players have to take a more pronounced role, assisted and supported by their sorcerer ally.

Again, I don't think the Yelmalio cultists are even "Yelm supremacists" - what they are consistently described as is "unnecessarily aloof" and "tends to regard outsiders as unclean." The Yelmalio cult manages to maintain its own separate identity in an overwhelmingly Orlanthi world through its practices, its different customs, and by stubbornly asserting its differences with other groups. That could easily track with attitudes towards Judaism in the Greco-Roman world, Mormonism in parts of the US, etc.

A few points on the "vendref" - the cultural material on the Grazelands in KoS is largely from the Pony Breeders perspective from before the Feathered Horse Queens became rulers. So although Lodril is mentioned as one of the "vendref deities," this is likely a reference to Pelorian lowlanders that fled to Dragon Pass during the wars of Sheng Seleris. For more than a hundred years, the fortunes of the Grazelanders were closely linked with the of Sartar - it is worth remembering that every Feathered Horse Queen since the first has been a descendant of Sartar. In fact, Inkarne is a generation closer to Sartar than Argrath is (and like Inkarne, Argrath's descent from Sartar is primarily matrilineal)! In the Hero Wars era, the farmers who support the Pure Horse People have a lot more freedom than KoS (and some of my previous material based directly on KoS) would suggest. To the extent Lodril is worshiped at all in the Hero Wars era, it is mainly in conjunction with the other Lowfires.

Yelm and Govmeranen were identified with each other by the God Learners. Govmeranen is called HeenMaroun by the Kralorslans, the Second Emperor. Like many people - including many Dawn Age people - most East Islanders do not believe the sun to be Govmeranen reborn. The God Learners considered this to be analogous to Ehilm, which is a far less personalised version of Yelm.

The allied spirit did not take over the body of animal. The animal or item is awakened by the god, or alternatively the spirit physically manifests as the animal or item. So for example, Jareena Alone becomes a Wind Lord of Orlanth Adventurous. During the ritual that creates that magical link with the god, the god sends to her an allied spirit, who manifests in this world as a shadow cat.

Along the theme of size, it is 43 kilometres from New Pavis to the Sun Dome Temple, so it is possible to ride there in a hard days travel (although normally it is a two day trip). In comparison, the distance between Hobbiton and Bree is almost 200 km.

As a followup thought, remember that Gloranthan dwarves are most emphatically not the Scottish-accented dwarves of the Peter Jackson movies or of most D&D campaigns. A small Gloranthan dwarf might only weigh 10 kg (22 pounds) and be 60 cm (23 inches) tall. That's about the same size as my cat (admittedly she is a Maine Coon)! Dwarfs often have grotesque (but not hideous or repulsive) facial features, disproportionate and gnarled limbs, hunchbacked and twisted. Larger dwarves exist, of course. A large dwarf might be 140 cm tall (55 inches) and weigh 75 kg (165 pounds). So there is a bewildering variety in sizes and shapes among dwarfdom. A dwarf like Ginkizzie or The Dwarf might be almost human sized, while other dwarfs in the community are no bigger than a large house cat.

Something that seems to constantly get lost in discussions about the Praxian Sun County - distance and size. Sun County in Prax has a population of about 19,000 people. It is next to Pavis County, another mutually intelligible agricultural community of about 25,500 people. These communities are not hermetically sealed from each other - we know that there are many ties between Sun County and Pavis County, including a minor Yelmalio temple and so on. The Yelmalio cult has a reputation for being "unnecessarily aloof" and often accused of treachery by their Orlanthi neighbours. So the roughly 5000 Yelmalio cultists in the River of Cradles tend to do their own thing, refuse to be part of councils with the Orlanthi, and generally demand the right to do things "their way". Their streets in New Pavis are oriented a different direction, etc. But the cult works with outsiders - they are just mercenaries who are willing to work for the Orlanthi AND/OR the Lunars, depending on who makes the better offer. But that's Yelmalio. Ernalda is the main Earth goddess in the River of Cradles, and her cult keeps Orlanth and Yelmalio in competition. Issaries is present at the Sun Dome Temple, and so on.

Some dwarves are definitely smaller than ducks! In fact the smallest dwarves are smaller than the smallest ducks!