Jeff

With anyone new to RuneQuest, it is best to let folk know that in Glorantha, the gods are the path to survival and success, but each god has very different demands and expectations. And this is a setting where the gods and spirits are very real, and not some cynical con job. If you chose to follow a god, it is dangerous to blow off those demands and expectations. If their background is playing murder hobos in some OSR-style dungeon crawl, then of course let them know that many of those assumptions can be very counter-productive, even dangerous, for their character. One of my play testing groups for RQG included Rob Heinsoo and Jonathan Tweet. Rob kept diving into combat like it was D&D or 13th Age, only to realise that even for his very skilled and dangerous Axe Maiden, that was very dangerous!

To paraphrase Borges: The visible universe is an illusion or more precisely a sophism. Mirrors are abominable because the multiply and disseminate that universe! Take a razor and end that needly multiplication lest we end up in Tlön!

I find it is very easy to get newbies to play CA cultists. Emphasise that you have sworn a sacred oath to your goddess to never harm another intelligent being (which also includes strict vegetarianism) - if you violate that oath you lose your connection with your goddess. Given that is the very purpose of the character - to Heal - I find very few players even skirt the line. Heck, they usually play up their perversely pacifistic ways far more than the goddess even requires! Same thing with Humakt. Newbies embrace the Death and Honour God with great gusto. They play up those geases, insist on honourable behaviour in battle and proper treatment of the defeated. Again, that's part of why they play the character in the first place. If you want to play a Healer - but aren't willing to accept Chalana Arroy's price, then there are plenty of cults with less impressive (but less demanding) healing magic.

Heler is atmospheric water - Rain. He's not the Cloud God - that's Orlanth Thunderous. It is worth noting that Heler does not have Cloud Call (he gets that from Orlanth Thunderous). So he's usually treated as an accoutrement of Orlanth, like Lightning, or the Sandals of Darkness, or the Mist Cloud. Orlanth is often depicted with a small blue god or goddess around him - the embodiment of Rain. Rain comes naturally when you have a lot of clouds gather together, so if you call on Orlanth Thunderous, you will probably get rain as a by product. If your ABSOLUTELY NEED to have rain, you call on the Rain God. But it works much better if the clouds are already there, and for that you need Orlanth (although you can get a centimetre or two even with no clouds). In Sartar, most people just call on Orlanth Thunderous and then ask the Thunder God to order Heler to appear. But you can worship Heler directly, and a few people do. However, for most people, it makes far more sense to worship him as an associated deity of Orlanth Thunderous. Among the Triolini, Heler is viewed as a tragic figure. The half-brother of Magasta, Heler invaded the Middle Air but was defeated by Orlanth and submitted to the Air God. Now he serves Orlanth instead of Magasta. The Triolini probably tell far more stories about Heler than humans do, but they do not offer him cult - he serves an enemy now.

Also remember, almost nobody will harm a Chalana Arroy cultist. A warrior - Orlanth, Yelmalio, Yelm, etc. - in the heat of the moment who strikes a Chalana Arroy cultist is looking at: 1. No healing from the cult 2. Spirits of retribution from their own cult. That includes accidentally harming a healer - intent is not required to piss off the gods. If you are so negligent as to fire arrows where healers are, that's your damn problem. If a healer decides to accompany a group of Lightbringers into some place like Snakepipe Hollow filled with things that would harm a Chalana Arroy healer, they better protect the healer!

There's a lot of "old school murder hobo" assumptions going on here (which is funny, because that is precisely why my gaming group left 1e AD&D for RQ back around 1980. As a general rule, I don't have a combat every session and am happy to let several sessions go by without a fight. During those sessions, a Chalana Arroy cultist is able to explore, investigate, and communicate as well as most anyone else - certainly not comparatively disadvantaged! In a combat, the Chalana Arroy cultist is usually able to cast Befuddle or Sleep - those she overcomes are under her protection, but again no big trouble. Her Healing magic is usually welcome to the rest of the party. She doesn't fight, but so what? I've even had Chalana Arroy cultists break up "stupid fights" by walking in between groups and daring people to hit them! In magical interactions, Chalana Arroy is in a good situation. Other gods and spirits tend to be positively inclined towards her - who needs to beat up a magical foe when you can offer to heal them or those they care about? In social interactions, Chalana Arroy tends to be in an advantageous position - people respect their holiness, tend to trust them (even though Chalana Arroy is not a Truth cult), and people tend to suck up to her cultists - who knows when you will need Healing magic? Finally, it is the Chalana Arroy cultist who has made the vows of non-violence. Chalana Arroy does not force others to do as she does, indeed her myths acknowledge this, as Chalana Arroy accompanied and aided Orlanth (and even Eurmal the Murderer) on the Lightbringers Quest. She just didn't harm anyone!

You are welcome to do whatever you want in your Glorantha. However, in canon lay members and initiates of Chalana Arroy are forbidden from learning combat skills and take an oath against harming an intelligent being. They do not carry weapons - after all, who would harm an initiate of Chalana Arroy? Personally I find Chalana Arroy to be a great player character cult, and we've had many Chalana Arroy initiates in our parties over the years.

Going all the way back to Cults of Prax, LAY MEMBERS of Chalana Arroy are "forbidden to learn any combat skill."

The main cults for Aldryami are: First Tier: Aldrya exclusively. That's about two-thirds or more of brown and green elves. Second Tier: A significant minority (20-25%) of elves worship these cults. These cults often have around 5-7% each. Ancestor Worship Ernalda Flamal Grain Goddesses Third Tier: A small minority of elves worship these cults (10% or so). These cults rarely have more than 1-3% each. Yelmalio Babeester Gor. Chalana Arroy. Voria Eiritha (yes indeed!) Everything else is a rounding error.

There was no King Owain. Greg quite deliberately rejected the description of Heortland from Tradetalk 5.

The attached map shows the approximate tribal boundaries circa 1625-1626. Things are a mess around Whitewall, as new groups and leaders appear out of the wreckage of the short-lived Hendriki kingdom. Tribal groups dissolve only to partially or completely reformed. And there's still a few more years of war down here to keep things shaken up.

Nope.

Here's a common Orlanth-Ernalda marriage rite - Ernaldan priestess bride stands above a kneeling Orlanthi groom. Both are painted with woad. She with green, he with blue. She has placed her one foot on his shoulder and she is sheathing a scabbard on his sword. They are standing inside a circle which inner layer is made of flowers and outer from swords. People around them are dancing and throwing flowers and grain.

Not all that much. Honestly not that much has changed since the revised Cult Compatibility Chart was published in the RQ Companion. It just has gotten much bigger.

The requirement that you can only initiate into friendly or associated cults goes back at least to Cults of Terror. So 1981.

Remember if you want to belong to multiple cults, each cult needs to be at least mutually friendly. Humakt tends to be neutral to almost everyone (except Orlanth).

If this is going to become a discussion of Dragonbane's non-BRP rules system, it should go somewhere else.

Steal Breath - and in fact all the Tap spells - are really powerful. Their restraints are largely social - many Malkioni sects ban it on the grounds that one should not ruin that which you love. Most non-Malkioni figure anyone casting a spell that destroys air, water, or whatever is an evil sorcerer. And what the heck is an evil sorcerer doing in Dragon Pass?! But if I have my breath being stolen by a sorcerer, I have a few options: 1. I attack the sorcerer. This is an active spell and if the sorcerer takes damage they need to make a concentration roll. 2. Cast Dismiss Magic. That's a common Rune spell. 1 point will get rid of the base Steal Breath spell. Then I go on and kill the sorcerer. Now maybe Jorjera the Sage has gotten her hands on such a spell and is using it to overcome a giant. That's cool and great. Why penalise the character for having done so? If she starts to abuse the spell, then go on and let her find a text explaining that this is a Vadeli/Mostali spell that nearly broke the world, aided Chaos, and turned entire lands into lifeless and spiritless ash. And then arrange for her high priest to meet with her...

None of Mongoose's material was never considered "official" by Greg or I.

And please people, Greg and I did develop an internal "monomyth" for King of Sartar, so we could determine which stories were false and which stories would be used in the RQ campaign. For "King of Sartar" as a literary device, we could keep all sorts of questions open, but to create something like the Great Argrath Campaign, certain questions needed to be answered so that this could be run as a game (as Greg did for Pendragon).

One should keep in mind the other key figure in Argrath's "Empire" - his wife Inkarne. Although we talk a lot about King of Dragon Pass, largely because of the computer game, it should be remembered that she is Queen of Dragon Pass, and the source of sovereignty. And according to traditional sources, her reign lasts generations after Argrath's apotheosis.

When the Campaign Book comes out, there will be a LOT more information on these characters. But like the Cults Books, these are things Greg and then I have been working on for decades.

Yep. My daughter (age 10) is a huge fan of Greek mythology - not because of me, but because of Percy Jackson, and things like Goddess High School.

This has far more truth in it than the previous speculation.

I agree fully. Math is not complex in RQ - there are "complex systems" in RQ but kids have no problem navigating those (you should watch my 12 year old play games like Terraforming Mars or Agricola, which have far more complex systems).