metcalph

Just because a ship has to pay a fee doesn't mean that the Malasp are going to lift a finger if it gets attacked by another fee-payer. What the Malasp want is more fees - they are not really collecting fees as the social contract. A good way to play this might be to have Malasp clans responsible for collecting the tribute in different places with differing policies. Thus an enlightened clan might decide to protect good earners while a rival clan, seeking to humiliate it in front of the Voice of the Deep, might collaborate with humans to raid the good earners.. Hence piracy is perfectly possible within Umathela

Because the sorcery spells in RQG are the most common sorcery spells known in Dragon Pass. Truth (and fire) is because of Lhankor Mhy while water magic is from the Holy Country.

Another possibility is that the secret of the cho-ku-nu leaked in the east. There's two dwarf cities there - one was overthrown by the Kralori and the other in Teshnos embraced Octamonism.

A teshnan crossbow is shown in the Guide p437 So is a Fonritan One (p565) No idea what a Malkioni Crossbow looks like.

There is the Dagger-Axe which is up to 2 metres long and two handed as well as the Great Axe (RQG p208 and 210)

It's really unclear. I personally believe the God Forgotten use the blue moon in order to purify themselves to make them worthy of God's attention once again. This was the origin of the Purification Rune that the God Learners used to make Zistor. The communities themselves practice various different types of inventions. One community may specialize in craft golems to do all the farmwork around the place As for whether they are immortal, my personal impression is that they have been so since Steelfall which robbed them of their dreams according to King of Sartar p81.

There's no Aeolians among the God Forgotten - they were a separate neighbouring tribe. How Brithini the God Forgotten were unclear. All that the guide p248 says is that "The people of God Forgot are now ruled by ancient immortals using the Brithini forms of life and government." but the definition of ancient is unclear. Carvak Zirvan for example is only three centuries old. Did they adopt the Brithini lifestyle after the calamity of Steelfall or before?

Carvak Zirvan is blue because he is a Zzaburi. The Talar is Golden, the Horali are red etc. They had a similar colouring scheme in earlier ages but not as strong (see the Guide p415 for how they would have looked)

That may be but the skill referred to unarmed combat use, like a fist or a kick. It has occurred to me that there's one group of people in Seshnela who might use Martial Arts because they are forbidden to use weapons - the Wizards. Perhaps it's intended to enhance their sorcery?

Just came across the following passage in RQG I can imagine the Loskalmi martial arts to be a version of Pankration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pankration but anybody have any idea what the Seshnelan version is?

Generally speaking the Vadeli didn't invade. They overawed the populace by sailing on the Ocean and demanding to be worshipped as Gods. Those who continued to dispute their divinity were killed. So I would recast the first year as a choice being bowed down and worshipped the Vadeli and fled to the interior with death being a rare occurrence. It is only through subsequent years that their greed becomes too much and the chance for death should rise.

I'm seeing a problem right there in the bold and underlined section. What's to stop the local muscle from killing the farmers and taking the gold for themselves? Or at least ratcheting their payment to 90% of the hoard's value?

I think the farmers with the gold would really be worried as their new-found wealth would mark them for attention by bandits and the authorities (not because the rich farmers have done anything wrong but the authorities are always on the lookout for more wealth).

I think the Colour of Magic put it best: If everybody has gold then the price for everything in gold rises. This won't affect the Orlanthi all that much since they can pay in cows (and silver to a lesser extent).

The DP gazetteer is no longer canonical. Hence events mentioned therein may not have happened. The Throne was mentioned as being in Clearwine in Sartar: Kingdom of Heroes p300 and p314 so it's more likely that the Tarshites never retrieved the Ivory Throne.

I dunno about the destruction of the economy as it looks a little too sophisticated for the Uz, even for the Argan Argar cultists of the Shadow Plateau. As for the second, that sounds like a variation of the Swarm - an army which moved from Halikiv to Dagori Inkarth circa 1622 ST (Guide p94)

I think they weren't given a choice. Sheng leaves them to cook for a certain amount of time and then just before they are ready to decide, he pulls them out and quenches them. That way he has intentionally made them into failures.

This sounds hideous to my ears, reeking as it does of a bland magical effect given out because of some throwaway comment. The Zolathi have endured the World Of Hurt for far longer than ordinary mortals have been alive. They are as a result immune to spells that cause pain and suffering or spells designed to lead them astray. Variants of the World of Hurt have been developed among the subject populations of the Celestial Empire - the All, the World of Flame, the Agony of the Six Suns etc. Each of these confer different strengths and weaknesses. Being still in great pain, the Zolathi can make others briefly aware of the torment of the World of Hurt. Whenever someone attempts to do magic upon them, they become briefly exposed to the World of Hurt and must suffer greatly to complete their magic.

In Hero Wars/HeroQuest 1.0, they had revived their avilry and had several regiments. But this revival is now non-canonical. The rarities survived into the Storm Age (there was a Bird-Riding Empire then) and were wiped out in the Great Darkness. Anaxial's Roster did say that they were different from the Demibirds for all that's worth.

Twisted mystics who would be still stronger than everybody else. Who cares it they are not demigods, they will still kick ass for Sheng. None of what you are revealing from your supposedly sooper-sekret chaosium source is actually new. It was published in the Glorantha Com IV compendium way back in 1997. it doesn't contain anything like do this stuff for less than a hundred years and you are a twited mystic,not a proper demigod like Sheng.. There's no cut-and-dried details on how powerful a person is depending on how long a mystic has been in the torture camp. All that is said is that the process took less than the 100 years that everybody knew that a large group of tribesmen were freed even earlier (and perhaps unfinished) when Sheng achieved apotheosis in (1)444. As matters stand, I'not particularly interested on maintaining total fidelity to some jottings over twenty years old - I'm interested in providing something that Jeff Erwin can use for his campaign.. That's not what is said about the Zolathi. The Fortunate Succession merely says "They were immune to many magics" FS p74. Many is not all. Let's see. Sheng preaches the worship of Jolaty whose followers are known as the Zolathi (from the Kralori runes Zho Lath Ey) but his elite warriors etc are not Zolathi? Not making much sense to me. Rather than state it should be so on the basis that what some document states, you should be using it as a springboard to describe what you think it should be like. I'm not particularly interested in arguments to the effect that because the Zolathi took a hundred years to make, the bursts cannot be Zolathi because they were with him in the very beginning. I would rather hear something like Shneg had a variety of people under his banner - Kralori, Teshnans, Dara Happans, Praxians and Ignorants. He organized matters so that with every fresh crop of Zolathi that he had, the Pentans (the bursts) were always a majority and his closest family and friends would be the strongest people in his Celestial Empire when the century was up. How do you know that? The source document doesn't say that. I'm simply supposing that because he had the capacity to get some out early, he chose to pursue to have some Zolathi mature early, some Zolathi mature in 25 years and some Zolathi mature in a 100 years time. I'm ascribing foresight and planning to a very clever Sheng.

That doesn't necessarily have to be the case. Assume Sheng lays down his first batches of Zolathi in 1355. One crop is filled with his strongest companions and he intends to reap them in a hundred years time. At the other end of the scale is a group is full of recent hanger-ons and he intends to reap them in five years time. When they report for duty, they will be tough but not so tough that he beat them all up with one hand behind his back. As time grows by Sheng acquires more potent Zolathi who are increasingly loyal to him. As the same time throughout that period, when Sheng acquires some new hanger-ons, he can easily give the best of them the five year treatment. In addition, Sheng has complete flexibility as to when he gets the new batch of potent Zolathi. He may intend one batch to be tortured for fifty years but because of trouble elsewhere, he decides to finish their torture in 45 years instead. There's also the possibility that some of his supporters (Praxians, Dara Happa on Horse) are busy making their own batch of Zolathi (such as the order of Kerestus).

The story I heard was that Zolathi was Jolaty written down in Kralori runes. Beyond his association with good slvary, nothing is knonw. It's possible that Jolaty could have been a Fonritan philosophy thatt Shneg encountered in Kralorela as stranger religious diffusions have occured in the real world (in particular, the Ahura Mazda of the Zorastorians is the same as in the Japanese car maker, the patron deity of Manchu rule, Gesar of Ling, turns out to have been based on Julius Caesar and some Aboriginal people in Northern Oz worship a supreme deity that they picked up from visiting Muslim sailors in medieval times).

Rather than have the Brithini being smaller than normal, I like to think their actual substance has been tapped out so they are slightly less substantial than the ordinary human. This carries over in combat where they can ignore the first few points of damage depending on how much they have lost. It's not a normal Tap spell but then again the Brithini invented Tapping so they can use whatever variant they see fit. And for the snappy monickers, call this the Brithini Nazgul theory.

I think from the brief description of Master Herds Allosaurs in History of the Heortling Peoples as a rebel, they lived in the Elder Wilds having broken away from the Dragon's Eye after the Dawn. That said there is a race of dog-headed lizards called the Agarzi who could have been Dragonewts. They were foes of the Darjiinians in the Golden Age and did not survive.

The xxed out text apparently says "or been conquored by an estimated" and not as I originally supposed "or been conquered by an eskimo".