Bohemond

I was looking at the rules for elementals last night (RQ Bestiary, p. 176-82) and I noticed that in the descriptions of their various attacks, there is no mention of a skill roll or percentage for their attacks. In the case of Dehori and Lunes, they have to make a role to determine the degree of effectiveness of their attack, but otherwise their attack just automatically succeeds. Am I reading this correctly--there's no way the target can dodge the attack or otherwise defend themselves? That seems extremely powerful.

In my game, the Blackthorn dryads are the daughters of Horalin, the original dryad from Yellowflower Isle who was forcibly transplanted and corrupted by Delecti. One of their uncorrupted sisters remains as the dryad of Yellowflower Isle. Her deepest goal is to either cleanse or kill her mother.

I want to suggest something very different. Everyone here is framing the issue in a very monotheistic 'religion is about moral behavior' way, which makes sense because we live in a monotheistic culture. Polytheism, especially the ancient polytheisms that Gloranthan religion is modeled on, isn't about proper moral behavior. It's about correct performance of ritual and ritual purity--it's about orthopraxy (proper performance of ritual) not orthodoxy (proper belief). The gods aren't primarily interested in the moral behavior of their worshippers. They are interested in whether their worshippers follow the rules properly, because not following the rules offends the gods and makes the worshipper unclean and unacceptable. The whole 'spirit of reprisal' concept is Greg's attempt to simulate the way that ancient gods got offended at ritual impurity and caused bad things to happen to the offender. For the ancient Greeks, doing a ritual incorrectly or breaking one of the gods' rules attracted miasma, a sort of exaggerated bad luck. People with miasma in Greek myth go insane, they commit horrible actions like rape or incest or patricide, they trigger plagues and other natural disasters, and so on. Miasma was contagious, so when someone was perceived to have it, they were ostracized. For the ancient Romans, any incorrect performance of a ritual could trigger vitium, which was similar to miasma, but more focused on the state. If a government official performed a religious ceremony incorrectly, the state would suffer. For the ancient Hebrews, violating Yahweh's rules meant supernatural disaster--the guy who reached out to keep the Ark of the Covenant from falling off a cart was struck dead for violating the ban on touching the Ark, even though he had good intentions. It's not a matter of sin and penance--the god can't 'forgive' the offense because the offender is still tainted and the god wants nothing to with them. The holiness of the god cannot abide the stain of the offender. How do you get rid of miasma? Through ritual ceremonies--sacrifices, purification, and so on. So the offending CA is dirty--filthy in the eyes of the goddess, who wants nothing to do with him until he is made clean. The healer still has his spirit magic, but his CA divine magic doesn't work because the goddess is offended. He has to go on a journey to some shrine where cleansing is possible. It might be a CA shrine (such as the House of Peace in Jonstown), but maybe not. Maybe it's not a CA shrine at all but the shrine of a deity associated with cleansing--perhaps the River Voices of Zola Fel or other members of the Cleansed One subcult know how to do it. Teelo Norris shrines certainly do... Now, you could make the case that Chalana Arroy is a bit different from the other gods--there is a more moral element to her cult than to most others. And in some ways Sartarites consider her an idealistic weirdo, offering a more moral-based approach to religion to people who see religion as all about ritual. But overall, I don't want Gloranthan religion to feel like modern religion but with more gods. One of Glorantha's strengths as a game world is that it actively tries to take players out of their modern headspace and put them in a very different culture, and I think presenting religion as more orthopractic can play an important role in that.

Sounds to me like something some of the Star Captains brought with them. It might allow easy movement between the Sky and the Earth, which explains why they were able to come down from the Sky safely. Since not all of the Star Captains survived the fight during the Great Darkness, it stands to reason that some of these crowns remained behind. They are probably cult treasures in temples, but one or two might be in the hands of clans descended from a Star Captain. I'd treat such an item as a Rune Spell Matrix, with one or two castings of Travel to/from Heavens. It needs to be recharged through worship at a Sky temple or perhaps a shrine to the Star Captain who originally wore it.

At the risk of completely derailing the original subject of the thread, most experts who study torture argue that it is generally an ineffective and inefficient way to get reliable information. It generates such a large volume of false confessions and misleading information that even in cases where it produces some useful information, it can be extremely difficult to find the accurate information amidst all the 'noise'. Wikipedia has a page with some good sources, if you want to chase this down further. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interrogational_torture#:~:text=Beyond torture's moral repugnance%2C most,and impairs subsequent information collection.

If a player somehow has an actual Torture skill, it has to be useful in some way--otherwise the player is going to feel cheated, especially if they put points into it. But I would generally reserve a skill like that for an NPC character, like a worshipper of Ikadz. If they don't have an actual skill for that, I'd use Intimidate instead and make the test to see how much work they have to put into it before they get something that they decide is the truth. And while we know that torture doesn't work in the real world, the idea of a professional torturer is such a stock thing in fantasy literature (like that other nonsensical trope of fantasy, the Thieves' Guild) that I'd concede an NPC could actually have a skill that doesn't exist in the real world. I suppose this also depends on how gritty and morally grey you want your campaign to be.

Agreed. While Hollywood films suggest that torture is a good way to get accurate information, in reality those being tortured say whatever they think their torturer wants to hear and rarely give accurate information. So unless someone actually has a dedicated Torture skill, I'd say the victim just tells the PCs what they want to hear. Remember that the god of Torture, Ikadz, is a Chaotic god. His worshippers may well have spells that enable them to extract accurate information via torture (such as Detect Lie or Compel Truth through Torture), in game terms torture is an evil up there with rape and incest and cannibalism (Chaotic activities all), so players should not be rewarded for something the game explicit frames as evil. Following the Gloranthan principle that those who engage in chaotic activity may become chaotic (rapists start to turn into broo, cannibals start to turn into ogres), players who insist on torturing may start being approached by a spirit of Ikadz.

So I'm running the River of Cradles for a party of mostly new RQ players, using RQ: RIG rules, and I just had a really amazing fight. (So if you haven't played that and don't want to see a spoiler, stop reading now.) They tracked Toadface's gang back to his cave on the edge of Eyes Rise and did a fairly good job of fighting the broo because they had the help of both Lunar settlers. After several rounds of casting spells at them, Toadface decided he needed to get out of the cave. He jumped past the group's two best fighters, one of whom got a really good hit on him, but he was able to jump up onto the plateau above the cave and just started jumping westward to get away. I really want to use him as a recurring villain. But the group's Ernalda cultist summoned an Earth element that grabbed him by the legs when he landed. He eventually managed to get away from it, but by that time, the Ernaldan and two characters with slings had managed to get up to the plateau. Toadface jumps 15 meters. The two slingers miss (which wasn't too surprising because they had mostly been missing with their slings up to that point), but the Ernaldan scores a special hit with a thrown dagger in his leg, incapacitating the leg so he couldn't jump. Toadface heals his leg and jumps. One of the slingers scores a special hit on his other leg and incapacitates it. They run to close the distance. Toadface heals his leg again and jumps. The other slingers scores a special hit on his head and takes him down. They run to close the distance. Toadface's fetch heals him up to consciousness. He jumps away. Both slings score a hit and take him down to 0 HP. They run to close the distance. Toadface's fetch heals him up to consciousness again, but now he's basically tapped out of magic points. He jumps. One of the slings scores a hit on him that takes him down to the edge of unconsciousness but not quite. They run to close the distance. Toadface jumps again, but one of the slings hits him and does just enough damage to knock him unconscious. The fetch can't heal him, so he stays down. The players hold their breath for three rounds to catch up, each round expecting he's going to get up again. But they get to his body and basically slaughter him. Goodbye recurring villain... Except that they don't realize that his fetch can eventually bring him back to life unless they burn his body. They burn all the other broo bodies but not his.... The players are mostly college age guys, so they're really competitive. It was great watching them hold their collective breath over whether they could kill him or not, and how much they hooted over their victory.

Yeah, I really like the Dog-and-a-Half idea as well. Perhaps he departed during the Godtime and they are still waiting for him to return, and therefore eschew lesser dogs as a gesture of devotion to the true dog.

To answer question 1: most clans have a single village (but a few have two). Most people live in small steads that might have some small out-buildings like a cow byre. So the village is where the clan gets together for social functions, worship, and politics. The same pattern is true at the tribal level. The clans are villages linked together around a larger settlement that is typically fortified so it can act as a center of refuge during times of strife. The same pattern is true at the confederation level. Several tribes band together to support a town, which will typically have better fortifications than a tribal fort.

I think what this discussion is missing is that Bless Crops is available to initiates, not merely priestesses. If the average (85%) woman on a tula is an Ernaldan, that means the initiates do most of the field-blessing and the priestess only gets involved when there’s particular land that might need extra help for some reason. Or perhaps she blesses the hide of land set aside specifically for cult purposes. Or perhaps her casting happens alongside theirs and helps boost it (although that’s not how the rules work).

Ah thank you! That is indeed what I was looking for. It seems very obviously an Argan Argar spell.

I have a memory of a rune spell of Argan Argar that allows humans to become trolls and trolls to become humans for the duration of the spell, but I cannot find the listing in any of the RQG listing for Argan Argar--it doesn't seem to be in the RQG book or the Red Book of Magic. Can anyone help me with this--what am I remembering?

Yes, but by that time they were very old-fashioned in doing so—other Celts had basically abandoned the use of chariots. As an isolated island population the Britons had less incentive/pressure to innovate. They appear to have abandoned them by the end of the 1st century AD or so—half a century after being conquered by the Romans. The last reference to them is in conjunction with the battle of Mons Graupius, where Tacitus says they were used on a plain (although given that Tacitus is at best using second-hand info, how accurate that description is is unclear). It’s also important to note that Caesar doesn’t say they fought from chariots. His description says they used them to throw javelins at the start of a battle, and then dismounted and fought on foot. And, of course, of the three battles where British chariots are known to have been used against Romans, the British lost the second and third.

How does one set a price on a crystal? The RQG doesn't seem to offer any guidance on this matter. You could say that they generally aren't sold, but in a magic-rich culture like Glorantha that doesn't seem likely. If they're brought out of the Rubble, the Lunars at least will demand their 10%, and temples will probably expect a 10% cut as well. For POW crystals, one might say 100 L a point. Since they are reusable and can also house a spirit, that seems reasonable. But what about crystals with abilities--Spell Reinforcing, Senstitivity, Healing, and so on. What about those with more than one ability?