Darius West

17 hours ago, jajagappa said:

For me, yes; for others...???

Well it does pose some interesting questions.  Could Gonn Orta actually become a new Genert?  And what will that Cradle Baby turn into down the track?

I created Saint Narthex, the Defender of the Faith, a Rokari Saint/Ascended.  His monks go deeply cowled and masked, having sworn to be anonymous in their faith and to erase their identities in life as they are in death subsumed into Solace.  They are overtly highly charitable, providing food and medicine for the needy, but they are in fact religious assassins, and they teach the spell Increase/Decrease Poison.  They also have a Pass Unnoticed spell.

Okay, so New Pavis doesn't have a sewer system (it has drains), but it does have a lot of basements, and quite a few of them connect.  Of course using the tunnels is fraught, as you are moving thru someone's property. Allegedly some of these tunnels are magical in nature, perhaps the product of Lanbril Divine Intervention?

I trust the similarity of Gonn Orta's name with that of Genert is old news?

Hi ZedAlpha.  You seem to want to run a sea based game with new deities.  There is a part of Glorantha tailor made for you.  It is called the East Isles.  It is an archipelago with thousands of islands, and each one has a unique deity, most of whom have never been written up.  For example, it has a deity called Rathmorasomangon aka Comb and Braid who is a god of barbers.  There are no doubt other deities such as those of Hot, Warm, and Cold Turtle Soup, each with their own island, a deity of skipping rope, a deity of infomercials who invades your dreams with amazing deals on wonder products, a deity of repurposing writing implements, a deity of woven string bags, a deity of patchouli, you get the picture.  It is the Wild East out there. Make up any deity you like. You can literally go crazy. 😵

On 8/29/2023 at 10:55 PM, Akhôrahil said:

I think it stands to reason that he has them - he's the ideal farmer everyman, and the ideal farmer everyman obviously has good and strong sons.

I would be unsurprised if there's not much particular to them, maybe not even as much as Lodril's ten little sons who at least have one characteristic each.

Look, I'm not going to say this is wrong in any way.  I agree that Barntar should have sons, but I can find no mention of any of them.  On the other hand, Barntar is a bit of a momma's boy.  He knows all about tilling a field and doing as he's told, but Orlanth must look at the kid and seriously question if He's the father.  And let's face facts...  Is he?  Is he really?  Does even Ernalda know?  😆

16 minutes ago, AndreasDavour said:

...and also...

we are all Arkat!

I'm Arkat and so is my Wife !

On 8/28/2023 at 4:21 AM, Zac said:

If they are Illuminated they should have lost their fear of Chaos. So why are they trying to destroy Chaos? Is it some form of false Illumination?

That's easy to understand... By analogy, cancer the disease isn't morally evil, but that doesn't mean you won't seek medical treatment like surgery to have it removed.  Chaos is the cancer of the goddess Glorantha.  Now take your average Dragon Snail; it is no more evil than any other unintelligent beast. It wants to live according to its instincts like any other animal.  If the dragonsnail rampages through cropland it becomes a threat and the illuminate will kill it.  But now suppose there is a person who is a kindly worshipper of Primal Chaos.  They control the dragonsnail and send it back to the area where the other chaos creatures are, thus averting conflict.  A Stormbull will be honorbound to slay the Primal Chaos worshipper just for their faith, but an illuminate could potentially see that the Primal Chaos worshipper in this instance isn't a threat, and may actually be a valuable friend who can keep dragonsnails from future depredations.  

Now Arkati understand that illumination allows the illuminate to potentially abuse a lot of people's trust if they want to amass personal power.  For example, the illuminate could turn to the worship of Thanatar and use Consume Mind to destroy people to get easy access to skills and magic, and nobody could tell the illuminate was a chaos worshipper.  Such is the temptation of chaos.  The Arkati enforce a strict morality on their members, because illumination makes them otherwise unaccountable, which is potentially a license to riot and become terrible "munchkins" like the God Learners. 

Now Arkati will understand that Chaos can potentially destroy the world, but that doesn't mean that individual chaos creatures are all bad of necessity.  By analogy, one might say correctly that not all Germans in 1940 were pro-Nazi.  That doesn't mean that one accepts or endorses Nazism, it just means you can recognize that morality is complex, and you might not want to kill every German you meet during WW2 even if you are a member of the Allied forces.

2 hours ago, Martin said:

Does anyone know the names of any of Barntar's sons?

Where did you read about Barntar having sons?  Barntar has Mahome for a wife, but I've never read anything about them having children other than Mahome having a son by Yinkin called Hevren.

Just now, Akhôrahil said:

Sure, but Kralori Martial Arts are surely magical, something real-world practitioners don't have the advantage of? Anything in Wuxia movies should be within reach in Glorantha.

BUMP.  Please read my final sentence.  And regardless, I still suspect an iron clad Sword of Humakt will make short work of a Wuxia mystic.  It gets hard to refute all that damage.

On 5/24/2022 at 5:44 AM, Richard S. said:

I read it something like "koo-SHEEL" or "koo-SHEEL-ae"

I have always pronounced it Coosh-isle.

On 2/24/2023 at 12:11 AM, Nick Brooke said:

...but of course the God Learners were professional experts at logic-chopping and bending the rules, so make of that what you will...

IRL this skill is called Casuistry.  In Glorantha it is called Illumination.

Okay Bill, I've done the like and sub for your channel.  Keep up the good work.

On 8/25/2023 at 9:16 PM, Akhôrahil said:

"His hands are deadly weapons!"

Are they though?  Even using the Martial Arts skill, they don't do much damage really, and their SR is always about as bad as it can possibly be.  I have yet to meet a MA master IRL who wouldn't immediately admit that an armed person will always have the advantage over an unarmed person.  We need to face facts... To be a successful unarmed fighter, capable of standing against an armed enemy, a person needs to be a mystic of extraordinary skills and accomplishment.

On 8/21/2023 at 11:07 PM, Brootse said:

The quote is "Attacking an unarmed foe", so it could be read either way. If it happened in my table, I'd probably rule it to be per target attacked, regardless how many blows were struck. It could also be read so that you can attack your unarmed friends without penalty.

So essentially an opponent who is skilled in unarmed fighting like a Kralori martial artist cannot be fought by Humakti.  That's a problem imo.

I thought female Knights in Pendragon were called Dames?

Dames

On 8/20/2023 at 1:13 AM, Brootse said:

If the bandits drop their weapons, they can't be attacked honorably. A humakti can't just act like he doesn't see their surrender and keep on killing them. Well, at least without losing 5% Honour for each attack.

I debate the -5% per attack, the honor table says -5% per unarmed foe.

10 hours ago, Yazurkial said:

One of the interesting things in HeroQuest rules was its treatment of animism. It extended the concepts of worshiping spirits all the way up in power. So your magic from belonging to the cult of a great spirit was powered by spirits. And it was just as powerful as any other big deal out there.

RQG goes back to the approach of old RuneQuest (with lots of great improvements), which I enjoy enormously. But. Your magic there is either spirit magic or rune magic. Perhaps the label of "spirit" magic doesn't matter. We could just call it battle magic or whatever. But you do learn spirit magic from spirits, and you learn rune magic from the gods. Huh. As a born-again animist, that kinda rubs me the wrong way. It means that gods are big and spirits are small. It kind of breaks the notion of the four worlds.

Maybe one way to deal with it is to abstract a little. "Gods" like the Praxian ones aren't gods. They are great spirits. The difference between spirit magic and rune magic isn't spirits vs. gods -- its little vs. big. Great spirits grant rune magic, not because they are divine, but because that's the powerful stuff. We've got a game mechanism to describe powerful magic and weaker magic, but both work for divine stuff and spirit stuff. In game play, you just put the right chrome on the machine.

But ... sorcery. It works a different way. And it runs all the way from little to big, depending on what you pump into it. That makes it all asymmetric. Perhaps that's not a flaw and it's just my OCD. But if you are worshiping a saint through sorcery, surely you ought to be worshiping a great spirit through an approach that works for spirits and not for gods. And we don't use sorcery generically across cultures. (Though now I want to play a native Praxian wizard, whatever that would be.)

Perhaps mysticism isn't really a magic system, so we don't have to address it. But if it's a thing, then it would present the same issue as sorcery.

Someone thought about this, at least a little, in putting RQG together. What were the thoughts then? What have others thought?

There is a lot packed in here Yazurkial.

The first thing is, Spirits are finite and tied to the Spirit Rune, while all Gods are tied to the Infinity Rune, making them immortal and to their other descriptor runes through which, along with the myths that describe them, they draw their power.  There are certainly large and powerful spirits out there, but none can truly threaten a God.  That is not true of spirit magic and divine magic and the respective users of the traditions when facing each other however.  The transmigration of the spirits of the dead travel thru the spirit world on their way to the underworld, but Gods don't live there.  Gods live outside of Time while Spirits live within Time like humans and the other sentients, even if spirits often seem immortal and live in a "non-mundane" realm by Gloranthan standards.

In terms of Praxian gods, Waha, Stormbull and Eiritha are all Gods.  They share a divine lineage and they dwell outside of Time.  They do have a lot to do with spirits however, as Prax is replete with them and has a strong Shamanic tradition.  The Gods of Prax can trace their ancestry to the entities that formed Glorantha.  Spirits can take many forms, and some of them are even splinters of gods, but they are a different class of being, and not merely a case of big and little.  This is not to suggest that some spirits are not on the verge of becoming fully fledged gods either.  Oakfed is a Lowfire of Prax, and some would call him a great spirit, while others would call him a lesser god.  Oakfed is also able to claim a divine lineage and he provides divine magic.  So is Oakfed a powerful salamander or a god of Salamanders?  Perhaps he is an ancestor of salamanders?  These grey areas allow room for speculation and interpretation, which is good as YGWV.

As to sorcery... Weak sorcery spells are a lot like Spirit magic only weaker.  It is as if someone asked "What if we could simply find a way to amp up spirit magic with more raw magical energy from ourselves and our crystal power receptacles and no spirits?".  The answer is, it will work, but the spells will take longer to cast, require loads of study to internalize, and will require forming a connection with some very strange and abstract magical runes to work, but the magic will often last longer  and might even be stronger.  As to your Praxian wizard, he is probably a Pavic follower of the Iffinbix tradition.

Mysticism is described as a magic of refutation.  If you can refute your hunger, you need not eat.  If you refute gravity, you can fly.  This is performed via meditation.  Mysticism is also something of a magic of philosophy as well.  A classic real world example of this might be the classic arguments between the Jains and Buddhists about Spiritual Materialism for example, or when Shankara the Brahmin defeated the Buddhists in debate and reinstated the primacy of Hinduism in India.  Mysticism in Glorantha largely derives from the Dragonewts btw.

On 1/14/2023 at 10:43 AM, Erick Eckberg said:

Another player said, "Whoa!  A Humakti would never act so dishonorably!"   He read an excerpt concerning honor in general, as well as one aimed particularly at the Humakt cult.  

Not really.  Captured bandits only count as "unarmed foes" and thus attacking them is only a -5% Honor penalty.  The easier way to deal with them is to simply ignore their cries of surrender and offers of ransom during combat, as you are not obliged to accept them in that situation, and no penalty applies as they are armed.  As to attacking from ambush, no penalty applies as your enemies are armed, they just haven't drawn their weapons, and whose fault is that but that of their own incompetence?  If a Humakti has a geas against ambushing, that is a different matter again.

On 1/14/2023 at 10:43 AM, Erick Eckberg said:

Humakt?  Yeah, there's the attachment to the Truth Rune, but truth doesn't necessarily equate to honor.  Death Rune = Cold, Merciless, Cruel, Relentless.  Honorable?   I don't think so.  Death knows nothing of honor.  Visit a battlefield and see.         

There are many gods of war apart from Humakt, but Humakti do hold themselves to a warrior's code of conduct.  What is true of war and the battlefield in your example is true of Zorak Zoran, and many other warrior deities, but Humakti derive a measure of their power by being honorable.  Honor is a passion, and it inspires them in battle, while limiting their conduct and encouraging them to avoid the cruel excesses of warfare.  The Humakti thus hold themselves to be morally and spiritually superior to their enemies, and thus deserving of victory.  Humakt is Death serving the world, not wanton mayhem.

21 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

But that is why we love them. They might be jaded and cynical like Peggy Lee (apologies to Leiber & Stoller … and Thomas Mann):

    I remember when I was a very little GL
    Our lab caught on fire
    I’ll never forget the look on my tutor’s face
    As he gathered me up in his arms
    And raced through the burning building onto the pavement
    And I stood there shivering in my pyjamas
    And watched the whole world go up in flames
    And when it was all over I said to myself
    “Is that all there is to a fire?”

That quote is gold.  Kudos.

On 8/17/2023 at 9:07 PM, bronze said:

Heroquest: How the God Learners Heroquest served to further their empire-building? How their Heroquest is fundamentally, radically, distinct from the past and future equivalents? And if their Heroquesting is so powerful, so rule-breaking, why they still didn't manage to conquer the entire mortal realm? 

The issue of how the God Learners used HQs for empire building is complex.  It begins with their uncovering of an Arkati text on HQs in an old architecture book, combined with the Sharp Abiding Book, from which they are able to deduce the Rune Quest Sight.  The joke being that the God Learners effectively uncover the RQ rules book and proceed to minmax like munchkin imperialists.  They then send out what might be described as "weaponized anthropologists" who were likely illuminated, and they would infiltrate the societies that the Jrusteli had come in contact with, and gain access to their magical secrets, and thus to their HQ path knowledge.  This allowed the God learners to start mapping the interactions of God Time.  The map had a mathematical component to it, but essentially formed the Monomyth i.e. a relatively complete and detailed description of the comings and goings of a great many deities in the God Time, which all run like clockwork because there is a "narrative direction" but no true Time.  By use of the map and their myth navigation calculus, they are able to go so far as to bust walls from one myth into adjacent myths, and effectively plunder "pagan" mythologies for magic weapons and special powers.  The God Learners as a result have more Hero level characters than have ever existed in Glorantha, and that is extremely important on a Gloranthan battlefield.  They also unlock huge magical powers that can be activated by sorcerers acting in concert, as well as flying ships and other wonders.  But as with every Empire, they become hubristic and over-reach themselves.  The creation of the machine deity Zistor breaks the Great Compromise, and unleashes the Gods themselves to set the world to rights.  Zistor is quickly destroyed.  Special divine assassins make short work of those with the Rune Quest Sight.  And of course Zzabur closes the oceans, driving all ships from the open oceans of Glorantha for centuries.  

As to why the Jrusteli empire didn't conquer everything, well, they tried quite hard.  What stopped them was partly their own hubris and over-reach, but that extended to magic as well.  There is also the issue that enemies will search out weaknesses and develop new tactics.  For example Hon Hoolbiktu realized that the cavalry of the 6 Legged Empire (the Jrusteli in his part of Pamaltela), had beasts that were very thirsty and dependent on water in the hot climate.  Thus they set about denying the cavalry access to water supply, for an obvious logistics win.  All the cultures resist their conquest, some more successfully than others, but ultimately Glorantha is forever changed by the God Learners.  For example, the HQs of the main Lightbringers, and likely Humakt too are all permanently mythically altered and rationalized by the God Learners, and this is happening at the same time as the same cults are also being Draconized by the Empire of the Wyrms' Friends.

It should also be pointed out that if you see technology that you want in your Glorantha, but it isn't Bronze Age, you can claim that it was a God learner invention during the Second Age.  Examples may include stirrups, clear glass, and chimneys.

On 7/24/2023 at 6:19 AM, jajagappa said:

Curious little bit of trivia: the Red Goddess, Jannisor, and Sheng were all born on the same day... While Jannisor was uniting the Orlanthi and defeating the Red Emperor, it was thought that he was the Red Goddess' Shadow. That turned out not to be the case. 

Or perhaps he was the Red Goddess' shadow, but she reconciled with him on her illuminated path?  After all, Jannisor does become the Red Emperor...

On 8/15/2023 at 2:07 AM, Bill the barbarian said:

Oh sure, go and ruin a perfectly good joke with logic!!!
damn Lhankor Myan!
😝

Nothing personal, its just I have actually made a study of militant Buddhism.

On 8/15/2023 at 6:50 AM, Erol of Backford said:

I thought it was mostly on the God's Plane? Wouldn't Lhankor Mhy will the temperature for storage of scrolls and bound rare books to be between 18 °C and 21 °c or 65°F to 70°F with the relative humidity (RH) be between 40%-55%.

Low RH levels can make bark much more brittlerer. 

I was of the opinion that river deities could invade the God Plane.

On 3/27/2023 at 4:24 AM, Bill the barbarian said:

Militant Buddhism?

No, Jains practice increasingly extreme pacifism and extreme veganism.  As your ascetic practice develops you make a point of taking fewer and fewer lives.  Eventually you go naked but for a large broom that sweeps your way clear of small bugs and eat nothing but fruit that falls from trees lest you do the tree violence by picking the fruit.  You achieve enlightenment by dying at exactly the same moment you lose all desire to live.

Not so much Militant Buddhism as Chalana Arroy's "don't kill anything" taken to its logical extreme.