Bohemond

Humakti chieftains seem to be common among the Malani, and probably among the Lismelder as well. The chieftain of the Hillhavens (one of the Lismelder clans) is a Kolating shaman, so not even a theist. In my game, almost any cult can serve as a chieftain, although some cults are much more common than others.

Ulanin the Raider is one of the lesser-known Thunder Brothers, IIRC. The Thunder Brothers are probably a catch-all place for clans to justify what makes their particular clan hero so great--he's a son of Orlanth! Sure, he's not one of the really important ones like Hedkoranth, but he's still one of them.

If your clan has ogres as its Ancient Chaos Enemy, it's highly likely that members of the clan suffer a penalty on efforts to detect them as chaotic.

This is one of the big differences between gods and spirits. Gods have to operate within mythically-defined boundaries. If you perform certain sacrifices correctly, Orlanth has to send rain. If an Ernaldan asks for help in the mythically correct way, his worshippers have to give it (or weaken their connection to Orlanth). In contrast, spirits are free agents, able to make whatever deals they want, the way a businessman decides if he wants to sign a contract. Once the contract is signed, spirits mostly have to obey it, but if the other party fails to keep up their end (ie. breaks the spirit's taboo), the spirit can walk away from the deal.

According to the Greydog campaign, which seems to be essentially canonical, Indrodar's last act was to go into the Upland Marsh to kill Delecti. That is when Humakt punished him, presumably by withdrawing his protection at a crucial moment. Exactly what happened isn't entirely clear, but Indrodar's undead corpse still walks the Marsh. For those who haven't played the Orlmarth campaign, I won't give away the spoiler, but it's an especially poetic punishment. So it's not so much that Humakt turned him into an undead as Humakt allowed the worst possible thing to happen. It's really quite suiting--for me, it captures some of the feeling of medieval literature.

In Irish literature, which is where the concept of a geas comes from (fun fact: it's pronounced more like 'gaysh' than 'gee-ass'), when a hero breaks his geas, he will die. It's just game over for him. So if you're running a more epic-level game, breaking a geas ought to be something earth-shaking for the character. Things should never be the same again. Look at Indrodar Greydog--he broke his geas to not marry and although it took Humakt a while to punish him, Indrodar came to the absolute worst end a Humakti can have--he became undead.

I think if you look at the range of abilities that a theist can get from an Air-rune god, one sees that Air is more than just wind. Orlanth's Air allows people to fly, predict the weather, control the weather, produce thunder, and improve their sword fighting. Urox' Air allows people to fight with great strength and violence. Odayla's Air allows people to hear at a distance, throw things a long distance, fight ferociously or with great strength, and take prey's last breath. So it seems that Air spirits could reasonably do more than just serve as Air elementals.

He succeeded. The amusing part was that he was the one everyone had written off as a crackpot. But his quest proved that his system was the one that LM had always used, so they had to accept that he was right.

Years ago I ran a Pavis game in which the LMs were constantly arguing about which organizational scheme to use. Toward the end of the campaign, one of the NPCs did a hero quest to organize the whole library according to his system.

Do we know anything about what Crown Tests look like? KoDP suggests that they are somewhat arduous undertakings, since candidates occasionally die during them.

What the cult really needs is a hero who can organize its libraries according to a standard system.

Ah, my bad. You seemed to be describing a group of non-warriors--women, children, and old men.

I think several hundred would be the minimum necessary to create a viable clan. Much less and what you get is more like a bloodline or a fragment of a clan that would probably need to join a new clan. A brand-new clan is very vulnerable. Until it finds a new tula, it's just wandering rootlessly like the Deadwood (who first appeared--I think--in a scenario in the old Tales of the Reaching Moon, but who seem to be semi-canonical). Once they find a new tula, they need to forge bonds with any supernatural beings on the tula, acquire a new wyter, build alliances with neighbors, and persuade a tribe to let them in. All of that is on top of the basic survival stuff like building steads, marking out fields, etc. And remember that the thing that deters aggression against a neighbor is the threat of reciprocal aggression from the neighbor or the neighbor's allies. So a rootless or newly-settled clan is going to be vulnerable to aggression from all its various neighbors until it has managed to build up those various bonds. A clan without a wyter is particularly vulnerable to magic aggression like curses. A clan without political allies is vulnerable to military aggression. So founding a new clan is risky business. It happened a lot in the settlement period because everything was in flux, but by the 17th century it's probably an unusual event in Sartar because much of the decent land is either occupied or else problematic to exploit (like the Staglands because of the Telmori). Ivartha the Skinner's attempt to colonize Torkan's Vale ended in disaster because of the Telmori, even though she had the support of the Maboder tribe. So the specific scenario you mention--a group of women, children, elderly farmers, and livestock, without warriors, attempting to form a new clan--strikes me as likely to end in failure unless the women have a LOT of magical resources to back them up. For example, if the group is lead by an Ernaldan who has powerful peace-making magic or a Maran Gor who can intimidate enemies with threats to destroy crops or buildings, they stand a chance of surviving, assuming they can attract husbands quickly (to provide farmers, warriors, and a critical component in fertility rituals). But a clan that goes a long time without warriors is probably doomed to be destroyed. The question of where to get husbands from strikes an interesting spark for me. According to Roman history (which is probably legend and not rooted in fact), the Romans started out as an all-male group. They conducted a festival and invited the neighboring Sabines and then during the festival the Roman men seized the unmarried women and took them as wives, sparking a war that ultimately led to the unification of the Romans and the Sabines. Perhaps there's an Ernaldan equivalent of that--a festival in which the women use Ernaldan magic to make all the unmarried men fall in love with them and declare year-marriages with them. As I write this, I like the idea so much I'm going to find a way to use it somewhere. A more realistic option for what you're describing is your suggestion that they find a clan that has more land than it can exploit for its population and seek to join that clan as a new bloodline. They would need to intermarry with the clan as part of the clan-building rituals probably, and their treasures would become part of the clan regalia.

Yeah, being chaotic, they can mature as quickly or slowly as you need. In other words, they grow at the Speed of Plot.

My older brother found RQ within about a year or so of its original publication. I was about 11. We all gave up D&D and never went back. While I love HQ and the things the system makes possible, I still find myself pining for some RQ hack n slash. I think my next campaign (once the two I'm currently running wind down) will be RQG.

Would you mind sharing the details? I'm always looking for myths and quests to work with.

I don't think so. If you break my arm and it gets healed, you've still demonstrated that I'm not good at defending myself. The thing that deters violence in a society like this (one without a strong central authority that enforces the law) is the threat of violence vengeance. So if you've shown that I'm weak or cowardly, others are going to start aggressing against me because they think they can. So even if the physical injury is healed, the moral/reputational injury remains and I need to demand compensation (or inflict a reciprocal injury) in order to discourage others from aggressing toward me. Not demanding compensation is the thing that will harm my reputation. The absence of a law-enforcement mechanism changes cultural expectations in ways that modern Westerners have a lot of trouble wrapping their heads around. In the Icelandic sagas, men who ignore injuries without demanding compensation are subject to ridicule. If you want to see how this works, read the short tale "Thorstein the Staff-Struck" Almost everything that happens in the story is about reputation and communal goading of two men who really don't want to fight each other. Bjarni doesn't want to fight Thorstein because Thorstein is a much better warrior and Bjarni doesn't want to be responsible for Thorstein's invalid father, while Thorstein doesn't want to fight Bjarni because Bjarni is way more important politically (and killing him will create a host of new problems for Thorstein). Despite this, the community basically forces them to fight by ridiculing both of them until violence occurs. The duel at the end is bizarre until you realize that they are both looking for a way out of the violence, because if either one gets killed, the survivor has new problems on his hands. "Violence is always an option" means that once violence has started, a violent response is culturally expected. "There is always another way" means that there is an alternative way to resolve the problem, but ignoring the offense is not that way (unless you're a Chalanan).

It's important to realize also that the system doesn't attempt to be 'fair'. Each family looks at the issue from the standpoint of their own injury, and in the absence of any central authority to impose justice, there is no one trying to be objective about 'who started it'. So witnesses are not necessarily intended to be impartial in a modern sense, just truthful. Also, intention doesn't play a role in the law itself. To the law, it's irrelevant whether Swen was drunk when he stabbed Hrolf or if Swen tripped and stabbed Hrolf by accident or if Swen pulled his knife in anger and tried to kill Hrolf. In all three situations, the issue is not how or why Swen injured Hrolf, but the fact that Swen inflicted an injury on Hrolf. Intention might have played a role in the negotiations around the compensation, but the law itself doesn't seem to have cared about the intention. Indeed, in some cultures a doctor who kills a patient while trying to save the man's life with an operation is just as guilty of killing as someone who intentionally stabs the patient with a sword. Questions about fairness as an element of justice are much more of a modern concern than they were to the people whose cultures spawned this system.

Historically, wergeld (compensation) evolved in a wide variety of cultures (modern Afghan society still uses it, and there are a few vestiges of it in Saudi law) that lacked a strong central government that could impose punishment for crime. It was up to the victim or more precisely the victim's family to avenge an injury done to them, generally by inflicting a reciprocal injury on the offender's family. Wergeld emerged as the alternative to the violence, and it was based in the notion of paying the victim('s family) for the loss inflicted on them. Different body parts and types of injury merited different levels of compensation (in the earliest English law code, a bruise that can't be covered by clothing is worth more than a bruise that can, because it injures the victim's pride and reputation, for example. So the injury isn't just physical). A major element of the size of the wergeld is the degree to which the injury might incapacitate a person or reduce their ability to function--the loss of a limb would be compensated more highly than the loss of a finger. Compensation for a death pays the family for the loss of the deceased's productive capacity (and related issues). Understanding the logic behind this system helps address some of the issues that have come up in this thread. 1) There is no compensation for the death of a Humakti, because the Humakti has no family who can claim the wergeld. 2) A wound that has been healed (such as a Chalanan re-attaching a severed limb or resurrecting the victim) merits much lower compensation because the productive capacity is restored. However the moral aspects of the injury (loss of honor and reputation) can't be healed that way, so some compensation could still be demanded. 3) The main reason to pay compensation is that the offender fears violent retribution from the victim('s family). Uroxi are typically unafraid of their opponents because they berserk at will, so Uroxi generally refuse demands for compensation. (In Norse sagas, this is one of the things that characterizes berserkers. Being badass warriors that intimidate everyone allows them to get away with all sorts of bad behavior.) Similarly, a clan with a high War rating is going to be less willing to offer compensation to a clan with a low War rating, unless that second clan has strong allies. Peace clans need War clan allies in situations like this, unless the Peace clan has a high Magic rating and can respond to violence with things like Blast Earth magic to destroy the War clan's food-producing abilities. 4) Laws dictating compensation aren't set in stone (because there is no central authority strong enough to enforce the law). Instead, they probably act as points for a starting point for negotiation about how much is owed. "Orlanth's law says that Swen is owed a cow for the ruining of his arm. Our healer wasn't able to fix the injury, so we demand that the full price be paid." "Nonsense! Everyone knows that Swen's a lazy drunk who can barely plow a furrow. Orlanth's law is for a true hardworking carl, not a layabout like Swen. We'll offer one sheep instead." "One sheep! That's outrageous! Swen has four children to feed, not mention his wife. Three sheep." "We'd pay three sheep if Swen's kin were men we fear. But his brother is a Lhankor Mhyte who can't pick up a blade without cutting himself and his father's so old he runs into things when he tries to walk. Two sheep and you'll thank us for our generosity."

Given that retconning and Gregging has been part of Glorantha almost since the start, we really shouldn't say YGMV. We should just say GWV, Glorantha Will Vary.

I would really like to see a book of questable myths. Maybe a collection of Lightbringers Myths with a quest or two for each deity. The same for the Earth tribe. The same for the rest of the Storm tribe. Questing looms so large in what Glorantha is about that we need to have a good range of them. But I'd also love a campaign book ala Coming Storm/11 Eleven Lights. Maybe something set near Alda Chur or a campaign about the Dundealos Revolt (although it's gonna be a downer...)

My Chalanan PC decided he's going to try this quest to make peace between the Red Cows and the Telmori. Given that this is 1619 in the Red Cow campaign, that really threatens to derail 1620, but I'm all about letting my players have a lot of control over where the campaign goes. But this raises a question for me: In KoDP, a successful heroquest has automatic effects--your enemy clan stops feuding or whatever. How does that work in HQ? The idea that the PC comes back and the Red Cows have 'spontaneously' decided to make peace with the Telmori feels a bit lame. So my thinking is that the PC gets a substantial bonus to all rolls related to making peace, but he still has to work for it. Anyone have any other/better ideas?

Thank you!

What pieces comprise the Royal Regalia of Sartar? I know that Orstalor Spearlord carries the Trowel of Sartar, but that's the only specific piece I can think of off the top of my head. In Orlanth is Dead, Kallyr is described as waring the Iron Band of Sartar, but I'm unclear if that's a literal item or a reference to her being the leader of the group. Do we know any of the others?

This is the revised version of the Heler side of the myth. It's mostly just some cosmetic changes. The Contest between Heler and Elmal (Helerite Version) Once when Heler was out roaming, he looked down and saw the loveliest of all goddesses, Esrola, walking the land. The radiant goddess was stunning to him, with her golden hair in the Courting Braids, with a jeweled comb to hold it in place, and wearing her dress of Life. He desired to court her, but her beauty daunted her, and he feared to approach her. But he saw that she was suffering from Elmal’s oppressive heat. She was fanning herself and lamenting for all her children around her who were withering from Elmal’s relentless glare. So Heler sought to cool her, in hopes that she would appreciate it and thank him. So he gathered his flock of clouds around him and led them toward her, to shield her from Elmal’s heat and provide her with a refreshing rain. But when Elmal saw Heler and his flock rolling in, he was angry, for he was seeking to impress the lovely goddess with the blaze of his heat. So Elmal called his thanes and with his fiery warband, he came roaring at Heler and his flock, striking the flock so hard that it scattered in all directions and sending Heler retreating from that place. When Heler collected himself, he realized that his flock had been scattered, and there was no way he could comfort Esrola without first gathering his flock. And so he went searching for them. He put on his cloak Blue Misty and took up the unbreakable Hailstone Shield and armed himself with his spears Downpour and Torrent. The blue god was unsure where to look for his flock. So he sought out his highest children, the Cloudhawks, because they are known for their keen eyesight, watching the world from the top of the Middle Air. Most of them were too flighty to have paid attention, and they could not say where his flock had gone. But one of them, Tolartora the High-Sighted, had watched Elmal’s attack and saw where the sheep had scattered to. She promised to help her father search them out. First Tolartora took him to find Fog Lamb, the youngest of his flock, who is as quiet as the mist at sunrise. She had been captured by one of Elmal’s thanes, Roaring Maw, who intended to roast her and consume her utterly. Roaring Maw was so powerful that Heler could not possibly get close enough him to do battle. But when Roaring Maw opened his maw to swallow Fog Lamb, Heler threw his spear Downpour into Roaring Maw’s mouth, so that he could no longer roar at all. Roaring Maw fled, and Heler was able to rescue Fog Lamb. Then Heler wanted to find Soggy Fleece, the wettest of his flock, who is as gentle as the summer showers. Tolartora told the rain god that Soggy Fleece had fled into the midst of the Tanglewood Thicket and had gotten caught there. When Heler entered Tanglewood, the Queen of Tanglewood was angry with him, because she felt that everyone was her enemy and that no one should enter her lands. She demanded that the rain god leave, saying that everything that came there belonged to her. But Heler showed the Queen that he was no enemy but rather promised to always be a friend to her and her people if she would allow him to reclaim his sheep. The Queen of Tanglewood agreed and allowed him to rescue Soggy Fleece, and since then Heler has always been welcomed among her people. Finally, Tolartora led him to Thunder Hooves, the most warlike of his flock, who is as loud as the booming lightning of Orlanth’s storm. Thunder Hooves was being stalked by one of the Hell Hounds, Bargrau, who had three tails and six ears and teeth like spears. Bargrau was too strong for Thunder Hooves, who fled him but was unable to escape him. Tolartora swooped in to help rescue the thunder ram, but Bargrau caught the swift cloudhawk’s wing in his teeth and broke it and threw her down. When Heler saw this, he struck Bargrau so hard with his spear Torrent that it broke most of his teeth, sheared off four of his ears, and sent him fleeing with all of his tails between his legs. Having gathered his flock to him, Heler returned to offer comfort to Esrola. First Fog Ewe crept in, and made it impossible for Elmal to see anything about him. Then Thunder Hooves raced after, making so much noise that Elmal’s thanes could not hear him when he called for them. Then Soggy Fleece came in, bringing with him a gentle rain that cooled Elmal’s oppressive heat and revived Esrola’s withered children. Esrola rejoiced at this gift that Heler had given to her, and she allowed him to court her, which he gladly did. The Life-goddess called him her Year-Husband and took him to bed and her children flourished and grew well, thanks to his cooling rains.