Freddie

["Roger Irrelevant" warning] I once tried to cook up some stats for Anaxial's Rooster. "Crow fit to wake the Dead 3W". Never quite got there on the details. Oddly enough, I got the idea when I did the self-same typo myself. :-)

Reading through some old game posts, I happened upon the following: my impression of what it would feel like to have been trapped in the Harmonization of a scrawny, underfed, but hungry Jack O'Bear. Which, thankfully for my character, someone else killed sharpish. An attempt to get into the thoughts of one of those creatures outnumbered in battle but going down fighting... Hunger. Hunger and desperation. Hunger for the void. Un-fed for so very long. Emptiness upon desire upon the memory of the taste of moist flesh; then gnawing old bones on an empty pile. Teeth crack for the last of the marrow and still I am not satisfied. Too many of them, but death to these pickings. Eat or find the maw of the master. ...pain...run...bad... Urrgggh. The freed Hoskar shakes his head, trying hard to clear the fog of chaos and sensation which had assailed him....

As a sprog, I went for Humakt; but for the sheer range of what one can say and see Issaries is really growing on me. Not much good for a "combat character" of course. Curiously, I've found Orlanthi easy to play after-a-fashion but almost impossible to play well; what with all those interwoven and oft-conflicting responsibilities. If we were based in Dragon Pass, I imagine Yinkin would be a lot of fun; although maybe there would be a little too much by way of escaping from outraged husbands/spouses/partners/parents [and so on ad nauseam].

With muted apologies for the Questworld incursion, maybe you'd worship Aldrya as a stoner Nomad so you could sing "Food Song" over your nice secret patch of homegrown Jhope. "Greetings, fellow Wahanos. I am named Phinheas Free-Kears.". Wonder if that technique might work with Hazia instead. Hmmm.

PS: However, the history of Prax is littered with conflict between the riders of horses and the riders of Eirithan mounts. On that basis I'd be surprised to find a Praxian not utterly hostile to horses who did not also exhibit other odd traits.

I'm not aware of any specific canonical clarification. As I've always read it, the Zebra thing is about creating a not-horse that functions as a horse. Even my fairly pacific nomad in the Rpol "Three Feathered Rivals" game would have problems with horses even if alone/non-breeding.

Canonically, we have: "Horses are taboo amongst Praxians and are hated by all who follow Waha. Most Praxians will never touch a horse, not even to eat it. Most Praxians kill any horse they can. The Pol-Joni are hated because they ride horses, and feared because they are strong enough to force themselves onto the plains despite the enmity of all other tribes." (GtG Vol 1 sidebar p.30) "“Under what meager conditions would one allow a horse to live in one’s land?” [Joraz Khyrem 800-855ST] asked a priestess of the Paps one day. “In bondage,” she spoke, “Broken from kin.” She spoke with the words of the Goddess. “Need they be unhealthy?” he asked. “You aid herd men and giant lizards.” “Their health I grant, within their confines.” ("Pavis Gateway to Adventure" p.41) I've always played it pretty polarised; but as usual MGMV and indeed YGMV.

Although it's far from my heart to try and move anything away from the world-intent (any implication that I'm trying to do that will be wholly due to a lack of self-expressive ability on my own part), I am wondering whether the key point here might be to what extent a deeper and more structured insertion of runes into the gaming mechanism will change the world's sense of otherness and mystery. For example, I balked at the concept of "integrating runes" which cropped up post-RQ2 and which seemed to me to place needless mechanical boundaries on what could or could not be achieved. Reading this thread, I am put in mind of some criticisms friends of mine (with whom I think I concur, but whose depth of subject knowledge I cannot match) have levelled at developments in the Cthulhu mythos post-Lovecraft; especially in the writings of Messrs Derleth and Lumley. As I understand them, those criticisms are against a tendency to systematise what was once numinously amorphous; for example equating Lovecraft's creatures with elementals or seeking to synthesise disparate elements of his work into a single consistent worldbase as opposed to them being to some extent individual stories not necessarily fully consistent with one another. Thus: if the development of runes in the game mechanic (or their "retrofitting" into a mechanic to better reflect the original intent) serves freedom of expression in-play and the development of those interesting places of uncertainty which make the game so rich; and simultaneously avoids 'reducing' what was quite a mystical set of ideas into a mechanistically-consistent fully-explained rule-constricted set of possibilities (which is what I take "Godlearnerism" deployed as a negative to imply); I'll be all for them. If the reverse is true, I'll be sticking with RQ2's world-concepts but with reverence to runic consistency as a principle of play. I await developments and the new system with considerable interest; not to mention an equivocal blend of excitement and trepidation; but, for me, the design blog's Rune Points outline does look interesting...in a very positive way. In short: we all have an idea what the runes mean, we all have differing reception of how they act in-play, and one beauty of this Gloranthan world is its sheer intangibility. For me, if the new concept serves such an atmosphere, we're all winning. Incidentally, the other thing I've noticed here is the sheer shared depth of love we have for this Gloranthan world. Ohh, you wonderful people. My long hiatus is over.

That's an amazingly nuanced thought. Mechanistically a warped human (cf "Borderlands"), child of parents from Weis, spiritually of chaos. Is she more akin to Broo than ought else?

I've not long been caught up with the canon version of the survival contest, and the thought of near-veggie Morokanth is certainly news to me, so please go easy if I'm still behindhand on things in this post. Something my recent 'return to Glorantha' (after a 1990-2014 hiatus) has really brought home to me is the essentially mana-rich nature of the place. As a sprog, I was thinking far too 'mediaeval' about the whole thing. So, it occurs to me we might not have quite the problem with Morokanth raids and transport that we would in, say an Arthurian setting. It's only one idea of many possibilities, but how about... "While the Morokanth are known for the guile with which their raids are planned; using cunning in the darkness and weight of body to strike hard at the unwary and to discourage pursuit; there have been occasions when the tribes have learned to their cost that chasing after a Morokanth raiding party is not always a wise idea. Occasionally handfuls broken men have stumbled back to their khans speaking of spirit-haunted chariots; whether drawn by men or serpents they cannot tell; that seem to fly along the earth's top, telling of boggy places where there were none before and mounts mired so deep they must be slain to release their spirits back to the covenant's cycle, and falling silent at the thought of some dark magic that sought to engulf them as they fled." Or in game mechanics terms, chariots with spirits tied to them, affinity with water, and a tendency to trot out the Old RQ2 Reliable Shade Elementals. As I say, I'm not back in Glorantha long: I'd welcome any and all critiques (I'm conscious I might not merely be in error but possibly egregiously so). You gotta learn somehow.

My first time here: I play Hoskar in this merry escapade. Thought I'd best say "hello" as any infelicities in the previous post are likely to be mine - it's an amalgam of a lot of my postings with interpolations from our beloved GM, Ohanzee, and Kobal. I'm quite pleased with how this set of postings turned out...and it was a unique chance (for me anyway) to explore death and liminality in Glorantha.