Jeff

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).

Yes, this is pretty spot on. The QUEST is what matters - and what the QUESTER finds and how that experience (and the decisions they need to make) changes them.

Yes. So a mighty spell might Close the Oceans, but you can heroquest and find a secret way around the spell. You didn't change the spell, just discover a way around it. Same thing happens a lot in Greg's stories. The Orlanth cult has been hijacked by dragon-talking priests? Let's go into the Hero Plane and see if we can find the secret of Orlanth's kingship magic! And so on. But many heroquests are more along the lines of what I described above - something is wrong in the world because the magic isn't working how it is supposed to, lets go into the Hero Plane and find out what happened and bring back the good magic. Waking up a sleeping dragon is easy. Just build a big temple on top of it and wake it up with music and dancing!

On the GM side, I would make a little mind map of the Otherworld, and a few mythic locations and obstacles that they might overcome. So there is some sort of Chomping Maw at the bottom that they need to pass through; there's a Plain of Grey Ash, populated by red skinless trolls that breathe fire; there's the Path of the Dead (but don't follow them, they are going somewhere else) where they might get to talk to an old enemy or an old friend; there's a Ball Contest with the Striped God where the characters need to wager their arms if they want to get the direction to the Demon Lord; and so on. THere's even a Red Woman who offers to show them the way. Maybe they fight, maybe they talk, maybe they sneak, maybe they make bargains - all are options! In the end, they confront Monster Man, who has the Grain Goddess imprisoned as his house servant, but he's too strong in almost everything they try. But he's got a hideous wife who is surprisingly kind to the characters. She's willing to tell them her husband's weakness, for a price.... That kind of stuff. In the end, the characters interact with a number of archetypes which they might identify as various deities or entities. They get some neat powers or heroic abilities, get some increase in their Runic abilites, etc. They bring back the Grain Goddess and their community is filled with happiness. Or they don't and they get banished!

As an aside, most heroquests are not about changing reality, or rewriting major myths - for what it is worth, I find such heroquests are not all that interesting. They are about discovering something new - in the mythology or in the characters themselves. Here's a really basic one: The Earth priestesses are all in a worry this year as the winter solstice has passed and the Grain Goddess has still not begun to awaken. If she does not return, there will be no spring planting, let alone a fall harvest. Everyone is worried. Omens and divinations are taken, and it seems she is trapped in the Underworld by a "Demon Lord with a Bone of Power". The Earth Priestess writes names of those in the local community on shards of pottery and puts them in a cauldron. She picks them out in a ceremony attended by all- it is your characters who are named! She says that you all must enter the Smoking Cave (located near the Cinder Pits) and descend deep within until you pass out of this world. She gives you an emerald crystal with two powers - it is a spell reinforcing crystal of 4 points, and it glows brighter when held in the direction of the Grain Goddess! Now go for it!

1) not really. A heroquest is when a mortal interacts with the God Time in any sort of prolonged manner. Because we are mortals, such interaction takes place (or forms, depending on your perspective) in what is called the Hero Plane - a Ven Diagram overlap of the Mundane World and the Gods World. Now such interactions are dangerous - as you are interacting with the primal stuff that is Glorantha. Screw it up and you might disappear forever, or everything you touch dies, or your grain becomes inedible, whatever. So normally people stick to what they know, what their ancestors have always done, etc. Such things we know - that's Rune Magic. Go to the God Time, sacrifice that point of POW, learn a new spell. But for the really cool stuff - for the stuff we don't already have routines for - you need to go deeper into the God Time. And that's where it gets interesting! The only paths we have are what our Heroes have done (which is pretty few actually) or what we know the gods did in the God Time (lots more there). But again, we don't usually know each step they took OR even worse - we know many versions of the steps they took. 2) your story is what you experience. That experience is true, at least for you - and you might be able to teach others how to experience it as well. Somethings are hard-wired in all the stories - there is a basic structure to these stories. But even then there can be differences. In every story, the Storm God uses Death on the Bright Sun. That's why the Sun sets every evening and enters the Underworld. But maybe it wasn't the Emperor Yelm that was struck down, maybe it was Yelm's son, the Golden Emperor, who was killed and Yelm just collapsed out of outrage! Same basic story, but lots of variations. 3) Changing existing stories operates within that framework. We've all heard the story how Orlanth killed Yelm - every version of that story contains some elements of that archetype. Maybe Orlanth has help. Maybe Orlanth cheats. Maybe Yelm tries to cheat. But in every story, Yelm is killed. That's a cosmological truth - an archetype regardless of who we call the gods. Glorantha has lots of these. The Sword Story. Orlanth and Aroka. Magasta and the Homeward Ocean. Storm Bull and the Devil. Etc. But you can also create new stories nobody every knew before. And they are also true. Like the time Orlanth slew the Mover of Heavens. Or that time Eurmal saved everyone in the Underworld. You have more latitude with those. The downside is they are more dangerous as you are likely experiencing them for the first time.

Argrath had quite a few children. Probably his most famous child was Halifitoor, who became King of Dragon Pass in 1658.

I mean it in the same way that Thunderous, Adventurous, and Rex are all Orlanth. We could have exactly the same discussion about how Thunderous is a different deity from Orlanth, but that's not really true (at least in the last two ages) and is certainly not really useful for playing RuneQuest.

Just like sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, not all Red Women are the Red Goddess. And let's be fair, Vinga is the red-HAIRED woman (Orlanth also is normally described as having red-hair but nobody really cares about that). She is Orlanth's warrior "daughter" (or perhaps Vingkot's fully divine "sister") but her identity is Orlanth. Historically, her cult appears to have appeared as a tribal protector of the Bereneth Tribe in Saird, with their "Red-Haired Women." In stories all the daughters of Redayla Vingkot's daughter and Bereneth the Rider are "Red Headed Women". Heort's mother Drenyan was said to be a Red-Haired Woman of the Alynx Clan, which ties this altogether. In the Dawn, the Red-Haired Women were incorporated into the Orlanth cult, and the rest is, as they say, history. The Red-Haired Women get a lot of interest because Harmast's descent from the Bereneth royal line. Scholars latch onto it because it is a tantalising hint into the origins of the Orlanthi people, but it is just that - a tantalising hint. They are female versions of the one hundred sons of Dhritarashtra by Gandhari. In stories you'd have the many red-haired daughters of Redaylda and Bereneth fight battles, shake their spears, and be Thunderdaughters, female Maruts or a band of sister Amazons. To me trying to draw a connection between Vinga and the Red Goddess is a stretch too far. The Red Goddess is her own thing, and a world-changer.

Going back to the original post, Vinga is always worshiped in conjunction with Orlanth, just as Orlanth Thunderous, Orlanth Adventurous, and Orlanth Rex are. In New Pavis, she was worshiped at the Air Temple (previously the Orlanth Temple) during the Lunar Occupation. The temple was closed after the events of the Cradle inn 1621.

But we are now a long way off from talking about Vinga in Pavis or even Vinga at all. I suggest a new thread or threads be created.