metcalph

Nobody knows. He may have: Simply eaten the flesh of his enemies in the way that other Orlanthi took heads. Been an Ogre. Had an unfortunate journey and been reduced to eating the corpses of his dead companions to survive.

I would say that the Slontans are Malkioni, not Helerings but more importantly you are just wasting time with this sort of remark. The culture of the Orlanthi is not to be found in what they might have heard before their supposed ancestors left Maniria but in the following influences: 1) The extinct Storm worshipping culture of mythical Umathela (Baraku, Desero etc). Forget Maniria - this is what is important. 2) The God Learners 3) the Elves. Secondary influences would be: 1) The Vadeli 2) The Fonritans 3) the Cult of Silence. Focus on these influences and not waffle at length about whether Ehilm is a Ralian sun god (Who cares?) or whether the Elves might have heard of Baraku (I would have thought the mentions in the Guide that he was known to the Armali to be quite sufficient). If I had to hazard a guess as to the origin of the Orlanthi, I would observe that they could have just as easily been the farmers and warriors of the Umathelan Coalition who were directed to sacrifice to the Gods at the direction of their wizards. The False Gods caused them to reject their Malkioni customs and take up Orlanthi one. That explains the remarkable lack of ethnic differences (as opposed to cultural differences) between the Orlanthi and the Malki Six centuries is not "over a millennium" and more importantly I've never denied Aldryami influence. This is just dire. If I am a God Learner, I do not think in terms of "gaining heroquest powers", nor would I restrict myself to testing exchangability theories (whatever that is supposed to be). The God Learners basically RULED Umathela for four centuries - no way would they restrict themselves to "meddling". The few described instances of God Learner meddling that occur in the Guide are places where they did not rule. I would point out how wrong this was but I fail to see its actual relevance to the subject matter.

I'm no great fan of attempts to infer the practices of the Orlanthi from their supposed Manirian heritage or what they might have heard then. The theory for widespread transportation of the Orlanthi from Maniria is quite weak and there's very little signs of Orlanth worship in Jrustela, an important waypoint in their journey. Nor can I see a good reason why the Waertagi would have been transporting Orlanthi instead of the Slontans with whom they would have have greater kinship. The religious practice of the Orlanthi would be better understood I feel as being part of the God Learners who were their rulers for four centuries.

I'm not seeing the Eurmal component myself. Baraku is closer to Vadrus or Storm Bull in his capacity for violence. While people may think they are the same god, their worshippers would resist any attempt at identification for the same reason that Elmal or Yelmalio would - they simply don't like each other. I don't see Baraku as as a life stage for the Umathelan Orlanthi in worshipping Orlanth. He's a parallel worship of Orlanth but with his own myths, strengths, associated cults and enemies. Most of the Umathelans would acknowledge Worlath but as you get closer to Fonritan lands, you will find gangs of Baraku worshippers here and there.

My opinion from the few details in the Guide: Orlanth exists in two forms: Worlath (which is closer to the classical cult) and Baraku (which is a Fonritan version worshipped by Bandits). Humakt is known as Humct (based on Humct Garlo and the RQ3 Gods of Glorantha). The Sun is known as Ehilm but might be closer to Elmal (Just as RQG calls the Grazer Kargzent "Yelm"). Eurmal would be known as Jogrampur whose worshippers believe they are following an ancient mystical cult from the Eastern Isles. In truth, they have Illusion spells and no mysticism.

It depends on the definition of seperate god you chose. At one level, Elmal and Little Yelm (Antirius) are different gods from different areas. Elmal is the solar god of the Vingkotlings who defected from the Fire Tribe worshipped by their ancestors. Little Yelm is the God of the Dara Happans. Yet at another level, they are the same god: the Sun God in Winter. Both nations receive different magics from him depending on their needs and there are similarities between them. Arkat and Harmast developed the basis of experimental heroquesting in the Gbaji Wars when they saw similar patterns. According to the second definition, Yelmalio can be seen as Elmal under another name. This identity is not automatically obvious which is why Elmali can deny that he is Yelmalio with no retirbution from their god.

The best reference is in Borderlands and the Oakfed mention is: In one of the Tales, there was a development of that idea in which the Lunar Magicians summoned up Lodril who then said "Oakfed! I am your father!!" causing Oakfed to meltdown and burn his shamans (or something to that effect). That however doesn't sound quite right to me as battlefield summonings of the Gods isn't the Lunar thing - summoning a volcano or massive sunspear, yes, but a direct physical manifestations, no.

The Sedalpists are undefined in many matters so what you are thinking is perfectly compatible.

CHA as written in RQG seems to operate like Mana in the polynesian sense as opposed to the received RPG sense. Half-Trolls and Great Trolls are not just ugly they are also somewhat lacking in spiritual presence., Hence I don't think lowering the CHA limit to species max will work. Another possibility to handle the CHA requirement is to create a shadow-CHA or Infamy, which is a statistic that reflects all the really bad things you have done. Thus to qualify for Rune Lord, certain gods accept a Infamy of 18 for acceptance as a rune lord.

Judging by the HQ rules, 90% in one or more spells possible.

I would organize the merchants into Houses, each with it's own preferred style of magics. Looking at RQG, learning spirit magic is taught by people who know the spell (as opposed to the rules in Gods of Glorantha where you had to do spirit combat) but the person has to be a Rune Master and the person required about a week. So I suggest that a benefit of successfully completing Sedalpist meditation (as opposed to practising it) would be to confer the ability to teach spirit spells. A feature of the Sedalpists is that they split themselves into subcastes (Guide p623). My understanding of such societies in the RW is that these subcastes are actually clans labelled as subcastes to make them look more impressive in certain circles (We Sedalpists are so civilised we have no clans!). Likewise the sentence "Caste Distinctions are maintained [...]" suggests a less than fundamental acceptance of Caste is in play here. Hence I would have the House as being a collection of Commoner Caste clans, each with a firmly defined demarcation of duties. In practice, the demarcation is ignored until somebody gets caught and it goes to court - then a fine is handed out and a required period of absolution. Heading the House is the Noble clan, whose members are legally adopted as adults from the best and brightest of the lower clans.

One thing you could do is to make the Sedalpist wizards caste being one of renunciates. Every Sedalpist upon reaching adulthood is sent to the local Sedalpist commune to live a chaste lifestyle and mediate for a couple of years. Most simply learn the rudiments of their faith and flunk sorcery before heading out into the world again. A few, or rather the Sedalpist wizards caste proper are those who have succeeded in their meditations and elect to remain within the caste rather than return to the outside world. I think Sandy's version of the Sedalpists was actually Chaosium's thinking on them once, although as you note it is difficult to reconcile that with the politics of Umathela.

Since they accept Self-Defence, the answer is probably yes. Although some of the more pacifistic Sedalpists much feel the need to let it be known they are protected by such magics to avoid people casting lethal magic at them. Dominate spells are perfectly fine. It's only when you use the Dominated person or creature that the moral questions arise. Most Sedalpists would say that any deaths caused by the Dominated is the problem for the Dominator.

Sorry that should have been p387-388 of the RuneQuest Glorantha book.

"Exploring jargon" at arcane length is a waste of time when what was being asked for were RQ rules in an RQ forum. I don't see these so-called loopholes allowing the Sedapists to have combat wizards. All that it suggests when required to go to war, they strongly prefer to get others to do it for them. How this can be morphed into having a specialist order of wizards doing cleaver magics to kill people indirectly is beyond me. A difference in interpretation about how to practice Sedalpist philosophy is not a "doctrinal difference". Nothing is said about permission being required to eat fish, only that many of the Sedalpists who abstain from eating meat, most of whom still eat fish and some go further (the sentence can be interpreted differently as to who most refers to). A doctrinal difference requires a legalistic mindset which is at odds with the Sedalpist description as being "notably tolerant of different viewpoints" (Guide p621). Except that Tortica is not ruled by the Sedalpists.

The God Learners treated them as the same. Everybody else thinks there might be something to it but are unwilling to say so because they saw what happened to the God Learners. (Where's Kalwoan from?)

Joerg, I really wasn't interested in what the point of the Seven Steps was all about. I presented it as an example as something that was easy to understand. Talking and distinguishing between Mind/Intellect/Thought whatever is just a sequence of words of the order of which could be totally jumbled up and nobody would be any wiser. Map it on places on the God Time and other people *understand*. You could have explained your philosophy in the paragraph above without going into an in-depth analysis of comparative mysticism. "The Sedalpist do not need rules for mysticism because the mystical awareness they seek confirms them in the Good Life" is the type of answer that the OP was seeking. Whether I agreed with it or not is neither here or there, what matters is what the OP wants. Because I do see a Soldier Caste, but no Men-of-All who might be the other group which might have access to Sorcery as personal magic. I feel you blur the issue between magic that a caste might be expected to use as part of his job and magic pursued as a private devotion or study. The RQG rules make it clear that the Malkioni commoners use spirit magic for the most part. That doesn't mean they can't study sorcery if they wanted to. Hence I don't see the point of forbidding other castes from using sorcery. Except the Sedalpists are non-violent whereas the Rokari are not. And I doubt the Sedalpist would be impressed by the argument while violence against another sentient is bad (Guide p634), magical spells against them are perfectly okay. The attitude of the Arolanit Talars arises because their philosophy is strictly rules-bound. The Sedalpists are not rules-bound and their philosophy is a reaction in part against the oppressive brutality of the Fonritans. Somehow saying the Fonritans are oppressively brutal which is bad but we are subtlely brutal which is permissable comes across as too cyncial for the Sedalpists.

That's just a label and Revealed Mythologies is notoriously inconsistent about what the labels actually refer to (is there any real difference between Logic, Thought and Reason? I couldn't tell after reading RM). That's why I specified the action and appropriate region of God-Time following the example of the Seven Steps of the Red Goddess as it gives a clearer idea of what's being talked about. Moreover - how would you do this within the RuneQuest rules (which is what the OP was asking for)? Why strictly? (Why do you call the Zzaburi an over-caste?) I would have thought that if the other castes wanted to learn some sorcery then it would be permitted. I don't think anybody would normally bother with combat sorcery but sorcery magics to aid Sedalpist meditation would be reasonable (uncommon but still reasonable). For example, a spell which increased the chance of runic inspiration by +5% would be useful in meditation (ultimately it would be a crutch that must be discarded).

Malkioni outside the Wizard Caste are definitely not like any other Theyalan, except for the Aeolians. If you want a constructive discussion about magic in Malkioni society in general, start a new thread but please leave this for handling mysticism within the Sedalpists.

RW Magnetism affects everything, even flesh and concrete. Magnetic substances are just far more sensitive to the attractions and repulsions of magnetism than everything else (which is barely noticeable except for accurate measurements). So cites showing that Magnetic Mountain affects the entire world does not show that gloranthan magnetism is different to RW magnetism. Magnetic Mountain still attracts everything - the humans are just too uneducated to notice.

As an example of a mystical ritual. The Sedalpists aim to seek Perfect Reason. The basic mythic pattern is the Five Actions. 1) The Sedalpist starts with the Fifth Action (Great Darkness), which is destruction. He mediates upon the Death Rune, representing the destruction of worldly distractions. 2) He then moves to the Fourth Action (Storm Age) He mediates upon the Movement Rune to move his spirit to a higher place. 3) He then reaches the Third Action (Golden Age) by meditating upon the Harmony Rune to align his soul with the Cosmos. Now he has reached Makan, his intended spiritual goal. Going into the Green Age etc is Illumination and requires more than just meditation on another rune. I really don't know what the effects of this will be as a lot will be dependent on what the Gamemaster's Guide will say about Illumination and Heropowers. Conventionally Unity of one's mind with Makan is henosis that allows the sorcerer to create new magics . The Hrestoli go further and seek contact with the Hidden Mover and what happens there is dependent again on the Gamemaster's Guide.

My own thoughts on Mysticism are pretty nebulous. I think the best way to handle it in RQG would be through Runic Inspirations (RQG p227). Instead of using a runic inspiration for an augment, the character uses it to achieve a specific mental state. Through repeated attainments of these mental states, one achieves the desired spiritual goal (Henosis, Illumination, Enlightenment etc). Now the character will generally follow a ritual (the Seven Steps of the Goddess being the best described example) and will use sympathetic magic (p338) in order to aid his chance of success.

Laskal gets flooded in '52? Harrek's going to be pissed.

Another possibility is that Dwarves see air as a manifestation of pneuma or magic*, a disruptive force that must be contained or controlled. It would thus be the province of the Silver Dwarves (among other things, like spirits). States of air that can be affected by the change state technique would be: turbulent, foul (poisonous), stagnant, etc. Stabilise Air is probably what the Dwarves are doing on Nida and Greatway (Guide p297) with detrimental results for the local storm worshippers. *A much better word would be Gas which was historically coined from Chaos. But this has the tendency to be drowned out by its alternate meaning of petrol.

I think the Produce Flame, despite its pedigree, has a problem in that it creates something from nothing which isn't reflected in the Maker Magic section of the Bestiary. I would instead rewrite the spell with Heat being the substance acted on by the Six Techniques. Another way to do this might be Measure Self in which the Dwarf knows whereabouts in his body, he can extract the required substance with each caste having its own list of substances, it can provide.