Jeff

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!

Dwarfs have always been like they were in RQ2. The issue was the RQ3's hit point calculation would have severely punished dwarfs unless their CON's were raised to be absurdly high. RQG goes back to RQ2's approach, and so restores them to what they were. Humans had their SIZ increased to 2D6+6 in late revisions to RQ2, and then that was kept in RQ3. There really shouldn't be a statistically significance chance that a human being is smaller than a duck!

It is very unlikely that we do any sort of RQ3 "classics" treatment in the near future. Although RQ2 is backwards compatible with RQG, RQ3 requires a lot more work. As a result, it is more of a different product line than RQ2/3. So for the foreseeable future, you are going to have to look at discount shops and eBay for RQ3.

Dwarfs in RQ2 are the same as in RQG. The only change with humans is that their SIZ now averages 13 instead of 11. They have one hit point less than the average human despite being 6 SIZ points smaller. Again, this is not a problem in our eyes. Dwarves are not intended to be combat monsters, any more than ducks are. And their ranged weapons and explosives should be far more threatening than fighting them up close where humans longer reach and greater SIZ gives them an advantage. Part of this is how we look at the dwarfs. I view the dwarfs as being less like Gimli or Thorin Oakenshield and more like:

I view the White Bull more like this:

Oops looked at the wrong stat block! But still a dwarf has an average of 12, which is 1 point higher than the average human. RQ3 needed to massively hike their constitution to get to the same result. I am perfectly comfortable with the dwarf stats, as they reflect how we view the dwarfs.

Remember that hit points are not the average of SIZ and CON. The average dwarf has 18 hit points instead of the 11 hit points an average human has.

Correct.

Yes. For a cult to routinely have Rune Lords it needs to have an ongoing need for martial champions. Orlanth, Yelmalio, Humakt, Storm Bull, Babeester Gor, Waha, Yelm, Kyger Litor, Zorak Zoran, etc. These cults all have Rune Lords. Most of these cults have both magical specialists and martial champions, but In a few cults - Humakt, Storm Bull, Babeester Gor, Zorak Zoran, etc., - to lead the cult magically you NEED to be a martial champion. But most cults don't have such an ongoing need, or rely on other cults for that role.

There are certainly shake ups going on in the West Reaches. It (and its ambitions and threats) been locked behind the Ban for a long time and soon that is all going to be lifted. The Red Emperor has morphed from a Carmanian shah to a Dara Happan emperor in a little over a century. Treasures have been lost into pointless wars in Dragon Pass, while little is being done to defend the West Reaches for what happens when the Ban lifts. Invisible Orlanth factors into that (remember the satrap of Bindle is a big supporter, as are his warriors), as does the machinations of the Taloned Countess.

We know the major events of the Hero Wars, and have in fact known the contours of it since BEFORE RuneQuest ever came out. We have known since about 1976 that Argrath becomes Prince relatively early in the Hero Wars, regains the Far Point as part of Sartar, is allied with Harrek, Gunda, Jaldon, and the Praxians, and fights several campaigns against the Red Emperor over Dragon Pass, where he leads the Sartarites to go toe to toe against the best armies the Lunar Empire can muster. We also know that the Hero Wars involves periods where Argrath dominates Dragon Pass and periods where the Lunar Empire is able to sack Boldhome, etc. All of that was set in place long before RuneQuest was written. The game to look at here is Pendragon. We know the basic arc of Arthur's life - pulls out the sword, becomes the Boy King, creates his Round Table and era of tournaments and romances, and eventually it all falls apart and ends in a glorious battle where pretty much everyone dies. We that arc before we even open the rule book.