metcalph

I don't think the passage in the Middle Sea Empire should be considered canon any more. I doubt the Trader Princes have a coherent body of philosophy and moreveover I do not believe they could re-interpret the First Action in a heterodox manner. Not even the Trader Princes would be at all interested in discussions about the natuire of an Invisible God. That's wizard talk and nothing to do with them. It's like expecting a CEO of Bethesda to have firm and detailed knowledge of the lore of the Elder Scrolls.

A lot depends on what exactly you mean by sorcerous. If you mean knowledge of sorcery spells and the like then not even the Seshnegi nobility would be considered sorcerous. If you mean they have a wizard hanging around casting spells and such like then yes, they are sorcerous. There is practical God Learning in which a Wizard casts spells on a HeroQuest to tip the scales so to speak. Thus a Trader Prince might be laden down with Rune Magics despite being rather worldly and having little interest in the Gods. Since Maniria is rather fragmented and disorganized, any such magical paths would be limited in effect (ie nobody is going to become a near hero).

What's wrong with worshipping an ancestor? A lot of Seshnegi worship Ancestors and don't consider themselves any less Malkioni for it. Issaries as the Truest Identity of the Invisible God doesn't work because Issaries is not that big a God (unlike Orlanth or Yelm). What I think you have to understand is that the Malkioni are not Malkioni because they believe in the Invisible God. They consider themselves to be Malkioni because they have Wizards who mediate between themselves and the Cosmos at large. Their religious conduct is governed largely on what the Wizards say is proper - if the Wizard tells them that worshipping the local earth goddess is fine then they will quite happily do so. As the Trader Princes are Safelstran in origin, they will regard the concept of not worshipping the Gods to be baffling nonsense to such an extent that even their wizards will worship the Gods (there's another philosophical reason for the attitude of the wizards but it's unimportant to the general rank-and-file Malkioni). It depends on what type of Wizard the Trader Prince has hired. The relationship between a Trader Prince and his magician is rather commercial: the wizard casts spells for the benefit of the Trader Prince and his household and the Trader Prince gives him a lot of stuff. The Wizard might be Arkati, Rokari, Brithini or even Ramalian - the Trader Prince doesn't really care. But he's not described as a philosopher but a trading hero.

The Trader Princes are related and do have a common faith: Castelein. But making Castelein a Malkioni Philosopher just doesn't work in light of the new thinking on Sorcery (ie no churches or lay Malioni faith). It is better to make him a hero of Issaries as that creates fewer tensions.

There are Malkioni in Maniria, I just don't think they are anything like a organized church or even a widespread philosophy. It's noteworthy that the Guide makes no mention of Ashara. Malkioni that are in Maniria would be: Arkati pilgrims travelling to and from the house of Black Arkat. Ramalians haunted by the Opening of the Book of Secrets. Rokari from Nolos trading the coasts., You would have individual sorcerors here and there much like Urvantarn and Miskander. But they wouldn't have anything like a common philosophy.

I don't think Castelein is a philosopher/sorceror at all. Just have him as a regular trading hero of Issaries.

Hanfarador, Ignorance, Teleos, Haragala, Maslo, Kareeshtu and the Holy Country.

It's too specific if you ask me and it implies the other magic in the Entekosiad was also sorcery which doesn't sound right to me.

My guess is Teshna. First my reasoning. The oldest statement about the Goddess Switch is this: The RQ3 cult writeup of Ernalda states the cults of Dendara and Ernalda were switched. This mirrors the language in the Guide: It's clear that the God Learners thought Ernalda was a manifestation of Glorantha ("always as a local deity rather than the cosmic entity she is"). Now for the effects: and: Now it's clear that EWF are ruling Esrolia at the time, so the Goddess Switch occred in a neighbouring land. Almost certainly this is Slontos. Now the other land has not been mentioned but there are numerous clues. Swapping around Seshna and Ernalda for example wouldn't be difficult as everybody agrees they are pretty much the same deity. So it seems to me based on the RQ3 extract, the God Learners swapped around two dissimilar deities (A goddess married to the Storm God and the Goddess married to the Sun God). The RQ3 said this was Dendara but Greg's thinking as evolved since (the RQ3 writeup doesn't mention Faranar for example). So what we are looking for is the Earth Goddess of a Solar Pantheon. There were two Solar lands under God Learner hegemony - Fonrit and Teshnos. Now Teshnos is interesting because there's a fair bit of interesting detail about infidelity. Seeing that the other land suffered marriage failure, it seems that the formerly faithful Teshna underwent a personality change ("She has taken many lvers, sometimes not entirely of her choice") and took up with Tolat and others. This scandalous behaviour led to the removal of her and related goddesses from the Teshnan canon leading to "Her cult [...] receded into the background in the Third Age" and "It lost some of its gods". This mythic even might even be the origin of the Marazi whoses claimed mythical origins are somewhat impeached by the fact they don'[t seem to ruler their island until the Third Age.

I'll have to partially recant on this. It's occurred to me that the singing of animal heads onto the pommels of swords is not sorcery but similar to the singing of animals in Wendarian cave art that forms much of the Entekosdiad. So what Piku has is not sorcery but ancient magic of limited use.

The Red-Line The "Sorcerous metal-workers" is used in the Brass Mountain description of the Guide but not of the TEB elsewhere. Which is repeating text from the original Redline History from Wyrms Footnotes. This is roughly my thinking., Again that's the Brass Mountains TEB. Other material on the TEB: Piku of Apple Lane. Goatmeat? In Apple Lane?!? Piku's magic is pretty unremarkable and is repeated in the RQ3 edition which had sorcery in the main rules. The next source is the Sartar Companion How much of this is still correct is up for debate. Sartar Companion was published in 2010 before Chaosium went to back to basics on Sorcery.. There is a shift from Piku being a lay member of Ernalda in the RQ2/3 material to not offering any sacrifices in the HQ material. I doubt that Piku was ever qualified as a sorceror but I do believe that singing animal heads onto pommels is a sorcery spell in action although it is the only one that he knows. Piku is not around in 1625 in the RQG material. So Piku doesn't need sorcery to work metal - which is to be expected as the mostali don't either. He does know one sorcery spell of limited utlility. Based on this, I'd say he or his forebears come from the Brass Mountain TEB (in addition, he bears the name of the God there). Now the Entekosiad: There's a fight with the Bull People on the Entekosiad p45 but that's fought using earth magics. This looks like TEB magic. So my thinking is as follows. The TEB has a metal-working kingdom in Fronela - maybe late Golden Age/Early Storm. They are related to the Blue People/Waertagi in that they have adapted the later's Blue Skin for the ability to see the metal. Their Fronelan Kingdom was destroyed by Nida in the Middle Storm Age and thyey have been wandering smiths ever since. The Brass Mountain TEB aquired sorcery with Daxdarius's help (Early Storm Age). They used it to enslave the mostali and became largely isolated. This changed when Syranthir brought in a fresh influx of Fronelan TEB smiths into Peloria. They contacted the Brass Mountain TEB and disseminated their metal working to the rest of Peloria.

I doubt that Piku and the like actually use sorcery spells (when they ally with Daxdarius, they are described as magicians who want him to destroy some sorcerors Fortunate Succession p82). More likely it's rune magic of how Piku stole the metal-making secrets from the dwarves.

Greg was pretty insistent that Sorcery was written magic and I assume that this would include abstractions and symbols. That said, A philosopher could apply logic to actual myths and we have an examples of such:, Khormesha the Sage who was a Philosopher of Light at Raibanth (Glorious ReAscent p40) and Verlotina (Entekosiad p54) who helped the Pelandans deal with Dead Gods. In such cases, the Philosopher isn't studying the myths to get spells. That's easy work. What is being done is to study the myths to better understand the God. The population and priests support them in this because with better understanding of the God, they also get better magic (ie a Philosopher could look at the actual surviving rituals and conjecture a ritual that must have been performed in the Golden Age). So a sorceror could study a secret song but it would not be a grimoire but a manifestation of magic that he seeks to understand and duplicate. Sorcery is big magic and reserved by custom and by practice for the Zzaburi. A Sorceror might study plants, ancient fertility rituals etc and use his knowledge to bless the farmers but he will be a Zzaburi, not a Dronar.

AFAIK the Sky Ship Quest still happened. The description of it in Gathering Thunder howvere has some issues making it less than ideal. m

They can still exist. Tap is after all fundamental to Malkioni sorcery. There's nothing to prohibit Malkioni from becoming Draculas and Renfields other than the opprobrium of their former colleagues.

There's Arlu of the Eastern Isles and Nontraya of Genertela. I understand Nontraya is analogous to Vivamort in the same way that Yelmalio is Elmal and Antirius while Arlu also represents Wraiths and Hungry Ghosts.

RW Vapire weaknesses don't exactly fit well in Glorantha. Too much weight is placed in the Cults of Terror Vivamort writeup about how all these gods have cursed Vivamort for his perfidy yet the other two participants (Humakt, Eurmal) get off scot-free. The Death Rune weakness is the only one that gets the tone right.

A simple answer to Xiobalg and Durag might be that the Cult of Bloody Tusk is three gods (Aram, Gouger and the demon) so the CHA limits for Bloody Tusk magic is actually tripled.

While they probably don't have a god, I don't have a problem with their knowing spirit magic (although casting hostile magics on others, such as demoralise, befuddle or disruption, would be a violation of caste and so Taboo). They could know rune magic through emulating Horal and other famous Brithini warriors. How this would work might be based on what Jeff has said in the past is practical God-Learning as practiced by the modern Hrestoli -getting a Zzzaburi to cast protective sorcery and then send you into the Hero Planes. There are some hints in both published and unpublished materials. For example "After several initiations Arkat noticed that he came to the same “places” during the ceremonies, though in different roles" (Guide p130), one of those initiations was as a Brithini (otherwise there would only be two which is hardly several). Such rune spells would still be subject to the same caste limits - no hostile magics, healing others is either Zzaburi or women's work etc. Given that we are talking about the Holy Country here (whose Zzaburi are notorious for the Eye that does Too Much Acid (Guide p248), I expect them to have a variety of spells.

I'll bite: Why?

I'm not wasting further time enabling your insinuations.

This has come up before and the word has been that there is no CHA requirement for a rune lord of the Bloody Tusk.

Spell-Trading requires consent of various cults to differing degrees (see the spell description RQG p340). Hence I strongly doubt that Chalana Arroy would just trade the spell. RQ2 Harmonise merely made the victim duplicate the actions of the caster or (in the case of a Jack-O'Bear) freeze the victim. The spell that made people give up violence is either City Harmony in the case of Pavis (Not described in the RQG rules) or Peace in the case of the Three Bean Circus and Eiritha (RQG p336)

Elder Secrets. Given that Tusk Rider Rune Lords do not have a CHA requirement whereas most other cults do, I daresay the writers at Chaosium are aware of the change and have no problem with it.

The only cult that grants the Harmony spell is the non-violent Chalana Arroy.