Darius West
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Posts posted by Darius West
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1 hour ago, Alexandre said:
Hi all,
what are the effect of the Windstop (from Orlanth is Dead) in RuneQuest terms? I can see several possibilities but I am not sure which one is the best. First of all I don't think it would apply to all Air magic (including Sorcery). So maybe just Rune Magic from Orlanth would not work? But this means that Rune Points could be used for associated deity's spells? Would it include spirit magic learned through Orlanth?
Thanks,
Alex
It wasn't just Orlanth who died at Whitewall, but Ernalda as well. The fall of Whitewall represented a huge catastrophe for the Orlanthi. Rune Magic became unavailable for those two gods. Other deities in the pantheon were unaffected, and a great many heroes started going on major hero quests to deal with the problem. Two years later the problem was fixed. In the interim, there was famine in Orlanthi lands, and an abnormally harsh winter, as Valind gained the supreme air rune and used it to overwhelm the Kalikos Icebreaker cult, leading to hard times and a vicious 2 year winter across the Lunar Empire too. Of course the Lunars still had other magic to draw upon to improve their situation as their main gods weren't dead. Of course Gods are immortal within Time, and so things restored themselves somehow. It is likely a bit like Earth in 536AD (the worst year in recorded history).
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On 4/9/2023 at 12:41 AM, Jeff said:
You are welcome to have your Glorantha be what you want. But that is not how it is going to be presented in the Sartar Book.
Yes, well, apparently Monrogh came on the scene and suddenly every disparate Yelmalio tradition across Glorantha instantly converted into a monoculture. That seems credible.
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On 4/9/2023 at 12:40 AM, Jeff said:
It is not a shame. The Thunder Brothers are a collection of storm gods numbering between three and sixty, usually led by Vinga. They likely have names like Thunder, Lightning, Wind, Sandstorm, Noise, Hail, etc. Those names do not have cults - they don't really have individual identities, although if you squint sometimes you can see a cult behind one of the names but that is us being God Learners.
Honestly though, we have so much room to make this more interesting. There are multiple named Thunder Brothers, and most Orlanthi clans could and should have a Thunder Brother secret that only they know, that sets them apart from other clans to some degree. Given that some of these "Thunder Brothers" have their own separate cults, like Vinga, Mastakos, and Elmal, don't the rest of them at least deserve a write-up as Orlanth associates or subcults? I mean Rigsdal literally became Orlanth in HeroQuest, and is actually a cut down cult of Polestar. Elmal similarly is supposedly a Thunder Brother, and yet is simultaneously Yelmalio accodring to some imo deeply flawed interpretations.
We know who the Thunder Brothers are:
Destor the Explorer of the Discovery Band, Drogasi the Bagpiper, Elmal the Guardian, Finovan the Raider, Hedkoranth the Thunderbolt, Helamakt the Fighting Wind, Mastakos the Charioteer, Rigsdal the Watchman, Siwend the Hunter, Starkval the Thane, Tatouth the Scout, Vanganth the Flier, Vinga Orlanthsdottir, Vingkot Orlanthsson, Yavor Lightning.
They are NOT "thunder", "lightning", "wind", "sandstorm, "noise", "hail" etc. The Thunder Brothers have NAMES. They are small cults in their own right, each with their own entries in the lore. The aim should surely be to build and improve the detail of Glorantha's lore. What does anyone gain by chopping lore out? Nothing. When it comes to writing up hero quests in the future RQG publications, the Thunder Brothers are going to become indispensable for the detail they can potentially provide for Orlanth cult background info.
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Oh, "statted" out a Chimera. I misread that.
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On 4/6/2023 at 8:44 PM, DrGoth said:
"Elmal? Elmal? Never heard of that guy. We worship Yelmalio. Always have. That's what Monrogh said, anyway." Sounds of Ex-Elmali furiously polishing their breastplates.
Nope. Hinterland Tovtaros Elmali never converted. Monrogh was a Lunar agent as far as they are concerned.
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On 4/7/2023 at 4:22 AM, hipsterinspace said:
I think they’ve stated that the only Thunder Brothers to get the full named treatment are Vinga and Hedkoranth, that the others are treated like Maruts, mostly unnamed petty gods of thunder.
That would be a shame.
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On 2/23/2023 at 3:54 AM, jp1885 said:
Would Fireball be effective against armour? I guess it depends on what the armour is designed to protect against.
On 2/23/2023 at 9:11 PM, Lynne H said:Ballistic armour would be effective against Fireball - it says so in the spell description.
I'd also include thrown weapons as melee weapons if we're talking about a stone or a tin of baked beans - javelins and spears slightly complicate things, though!
Correct. Ballistic armor is made of plastic fibers called Aramids that are actually quite good against heat and flames.
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Human beings have devised a great many ways of travelling upriver IRL without magic. The Nile for example has a prevailing wind that blows upriver off the Mediterranean most days. Towing via beasts has also long been an option. One thing that most people don't know is that while the main current in the center of the river flows downstream, the sides of the river have eddies that actually circulate in the opposite direction and can facilitate up river travel, if you have a long enough boat to benefit (hence the length of keelboats). You can brute force your way upriver, but this will require periodic beaching to recover one's strength. It is odd the sort of trivia that GMs have to know...
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18 hours ago, Jeff said:
Outside of Alda-Chur there are about 500 Seven Mothers initiates in the Princeros, about the same among the Vantaros, and about 100 among the Tovtaros.
Not for long. It is now 1626.
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Remember that "God Learner" is what their barbarian enemies called the Jrusteli. The Jrusteli called the folk who invaded the myths of other cultures "Hwarosian" who engaged in the Hwarosian Mysteries" afaik.
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I am really looking forwards to a great treatment of the many Lunar deities. I am also hoping for a detailed treatment of the Thunder Brothers many members. My outside hope is that we finally get a cult of Iffinbix write-up.
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On 4/2/2023 at 10:08 AM, svensson said:
The CGI wasn't too bad, although in some spots it was as bad as 47 Ronin. And it proves something d20 players have know since 3.0 came out: bards are useless. 😁
Actually you missed how the bard was using inspiration to improve the party's performances with all those pep talks.
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3 hours ago, DrGoth said:
Interestingly, no separate figure for the Tovtaros, but there is a "Other Tribes 1200". So maybe 100 for the Tovtaros?
The Tovtari are chaos fighting heroes who will not tolerate the minions of Shepelkirt in their midst. They have pity for those whose poverty drives them to tug their forelock to the moon for a bowl of red beans and potato bread, but Seven Mothers Initiation? Well, its a novel form of suicide...
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Good work Chaosium. My only regret is that I have but one "like" to give.
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Admittedly stripping the gun rules back to black powder does solve the Thompson Gun problem.
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I am surprised that we haven't seen an actual scenario dedicated to R Campbell's "The Inhabitant of the Lake" set in Gulshaw.
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On 3/28/2023 at 3:22 AM, David Scott said:
Than-Ulbar and the Valley of Pinnacles in the Wastesare an old volcanoes (you can see the crater rim in the AAA or Guide maps). There are no other I know of specifically (I did work on this section of the Guide). Just add them where you need.
Don't tell me the old volcano was decapitated somehow? I mean clearly the dome was removed... 😅
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On 3/29/2023 at 8:32 AM, Zouabar said:
I can't help but wonder if I'm forgetting some crucial mechanic that will come back to bite me as a Guardian though… Does anyone have any insight or advice that could apply to this situation ? I'd be really grateful ! Thanks in advance 🙂
Hi Zouabar,
I think I know this exploit your player is attempting. There is a protagonist character in August Derleth's works who is blind named Laban Shrewsbury. While Laban has developed the ability to "see without seeing" he can get around unhindered by his lack of sight due to his magical ability. The benefit of blindness is that "if you can't see the monster you don't take a SAN check" in CoC, or at least that is some people's thinking. The corrolary being that even the most ghastly noises could barely be considered more than a 1d6 SAN loss. Experienced CoC players know that a low Spot Hidden and a high Listen will often similarly help a character's longevity.
I strongly suspect your player is aware of this and is trying to "game the system". It is worth noting that guide dogs for the blind don't really start in earnest until 1929 in Canada, and only become a "thing" in New Jersey in 1931 if you allow this attempted rort. Frankly, just have a cultists keep stealing their canes and leading them into sewers if you are prepared to accept such munchkinery.
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19 hours ago, Squaredeal Sten said:
Eff's " clan economics" thread from Oct 31 2020 gives a considerably different figure for how much grain is required to feed a person for a year: A bushel is 27 kg and at 1500+ kilocalories per kg of barley a person doing heavy labor will need about 2-3kg of barley a day if they eat nothing else.
This indicates that even if half the calories come from dairy, a little meat, legumes etc., a bushel of grain will feed the person for four weeks or less.
I stand corrected. It takes about 24 bushels to feed a human adult for a year. IDK where I heard that a Bushel was a years supply of grain. My memory is failing I fear.
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17 hours ago, Mirza said:
also how much grain does a person need per year?
One bushel per adult. It is like a koku of rice in old Japan. Acreage will have a fertility rating based on how many bushels it produces. Hârn products have each manorial district with a figure for land fertility next to them as you generate your income from this number in that game. You really want to have a fertility of anything over 1 bushel per acre.
17 hours ago, Mirza said:Alcohol: Here's the big unknown to me, is it just something for feasts? Or is their everyday water consumption have some diluted wine added to it to make it safe? Is everyone making some non-distilled hooch in an amphora in the house? Or is there still a single or small group of Minlinster (through Orlanth) cultists making the clans beer in the chieftain's longhouse?
You want 4-7kg of malted barley for 5 gallons of beer, plus whatever other grains you want to ferment with it for flavor. Wine is a lot more intensive. 5 gallons of wine requires 40+kg of grapes. There are also all the ciders, scrumpies, perries, meads etc.
17 hours ago, Mirza said:Meats: Only eaten during feasts or from small game hunting for the common man, more commonly eaten by nobles/priests from more commonly having the time for big game hunting (or trading for it), still not an everyday thing, farm animals require Peaceful Cut by a Waha layperson to slaughter the animal so a holy ritual, not the primary barrier to eating meat, but still one that exists, commonly there's a day of slaughter for the animals that aren't going to make it through the winter, but how often are meats preserved instead of directly used after the slaughter?
Most people are very happy with a 6oz steak, which is crudely about 1/6th of a kg. One point of SIZ (according to the CoC size table) is between 1 and 12 lb, or approximately 7kg per Size point, given that most creatures being eaten will be larger than 1lb (1 SIZE=12lb=7kg). Only 50% of most animals can be eaten however.
It is worth pointing out that when a clan sacrifices cattle to the gods, the meat doesn't go to waste. The animals aren't cremated, they are cooked (os they should be). In the ancient Mediterranean region only the fat of the sacrificed animal was cremated for the gods. The rest went to the priest and their family, and much was distributed to the poor. I think Orlanthi cultures would follow this pragmatic model.
17 hours ago, Mirza said:Eggs: The primary reason to keep chickens (the potential meat is a side benefit), an egg a day keeps Humakt away.
Some chickens lay an egg every day, others lay about 2 per week. So 1d6+1 eggs per hen per week.
17 hours ago, Mirza said:Milk/Cheese: Milk isn't directly consumed regularly, a person might drink it when prescribed by a Chalana Arroy or Ernaldan healer for a pain in the stomach (ulcer), I know the Grazelanders ferment horse milk into Kumis, an achoholic beverage, but cheeses are the most common dairy with rennet from bull calves stomachs (which subsequently the carcass gets used for veal), goat cheeses are never eaten due to the animal being taboo, but how often do they prepare cow cheese and consume it? Butter I'm unsure about since it spoils quickly, do the Orlanthi make Ghee? or is Sartar cold enough that butter is more common there compared to Esrolia? Yogurts?
Cheese is the best way to turn excess milk into an edible product that keeps over time. It takes 2.5 gallons of cows milk to produce 1 kg of cheese. Goat is 1.75, sheep is 1.5 and bison is 1 gallon per kg. For the record, Impala cheese is spectacular as they produce a sweet milk that lends itself very readily to cheese making. My game includes these 3 Impala cheeses (and cheeses for other Praxian tribes where appropriate) as a result:
Impala Lippawaha
As strange as it may seem, Impala cheese is very palatable. Impalas produce a rich creamy milk full of butter-fats and protein that can be made into a number of delicious cheeses and is in many ways superior even to the milk of cattle. The most popular Impala cheese in Prax is called Lippawaha, as it was favored even by Waha. It is a rich pale yellow-to-white cheese that is very similar to mozzarella, only able to form longer strands and with less taste of fermentation, and more of a sweet whey flavor that mixes with salt to become very savory and more-ish. Lippawaha is nearly everyone’s favorite cheese and is effectively the cheddar of Prax due to the vast numbers of impalas (though arguably it is a better cheese than cheddar with better texture, and taste).
Impala Trade Cheese
One of the problems of Impala Lippawaha cheese was that it didn’t travel as well as it might. As a result, traders would enjoy the product, but never actually consider it as an item they might risk trading for. This was before a mysterious individual from the early years of the Third Age, known only as “Face-bear”, a tall outsider, taught the Impala Pygmies the mystery of how to make their cheese grow a thick tasty white rind that vastly increases the shelf life of the cheese. This greatly increased the shelf-life of impala cheese, and produced a cheese that is highly reminiscent of a high quality wheel of softest, creamiest brie. While the cheese spoils quickly after being cut, it seldom lasts an hour once people taste it.
Impala Sweetmelt
Impala sweetmelt is closest to Havarti in its character. It is a very soft, sweet cheese that pairs well with fruit, honey and berries and other sweet things. It is also around 1% alcoholic. It is called sweetmelt as it is typically served as a form of fondue for one, having been heated to the point of melting before being served. While not as popular as Lippawaha, it is still a very palatable and desirable cheese that can be used with sweet foods as a sort of "long life" cream substitute.
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On 3/28/2023 at 12:55 AM, svensson said:
Building on @Darius West's comment,
Um, isn't corporatization bringing some of Cyberpunk future nihilism into our society now? And how much worse will it be for our children.
Honestly, it would be a small step from corporatism to a corporate co-operative business model which would likely be more left wing than any society on the planet on the moment. This was an important political feature of Bruce Sterling's "Islands in the Net" which I encourage you to read, as it is one of the few up-beat happy cyberpunk futures. If corporations had a more-or-less flat hierarchy (by having the shares and voting rights transformed into a co-op), it could become a pretty decent model for arranging human affairs and encouraging sustainable prosperity. The fact is, may corporate execs live in a measure of fear of how potentially powerful a co-op model could be, and how attractive such an outcome looks in comparison to the world atm. This is potentially a way better model than, say, Marxism, which could critique Capitalism but actually produced atrocious outcomes, not only destroying their environment, but the rule of law and their people as well.
On 3/28/2023 at 12:55 AM, svensson said:So I think it's a misnomer to call the whole cyberpunk genre a nightmare of the Communists when it was the Communists that created a far nastier dystopia in their zones of control.
While Gibson did deal with the USSR in stories like "Red Star Winter Orbit", for the most part, the USSR was an irrelevance in his novels, which was surprisingly prescient imo. I think, writing in the 1980s Gibson envisaged a world of the future that seemed to ignore the Soviet Union as a meaningful part of the world. R Talsorian games' Cyberpunk included a USSR which had big clunky cyberware, but it was never a good fit, and always felt tacked on. The fact was, it was harder to fight corporatism as a player character in Talsorian's Cyberpunk when you had the horror of the USSR or other murderous Communist regimes as the model for the alternative society you were fighting to create. Thus the preference seemed to become some form of anarchy, which is also unsustainable, as some people like having little things like a reliable electricity and water supply, which anarchy can never provide, as it requires people to actually turn up to work without any incentive, or the means to acquire the skills required even if a hot bath was enough incentive.
The critiques we can make of Gibson's ideas is that he seemed unable to understand the role of the state, and assumed that National Governments would be superseded by corporate structures in a anarcho-libertarian free market, when such an unstructured system would collapse rapidly as Marxism correctly points out, Capitalism has a 40 year business cycle of three small crashes and three small recoveries, as well as one boom and one large crash, reliably over time, and few corporations could survive these vicissitudes without a strong government bailing them out when they screw up. I am no fan of libertarianism, as I think it will promote the reintroduction of slavery as an inevitable outcome.
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On 3/28/2023 at 5:15 AM, Bill the barbarian said:
He's friggin great!
Hey Darius, you know you are ranting about an 8 year old post... hell, seneschal has not posted in over two years.😉
LOL failed to read the date. Still, seneschal's comments weren't accurate.
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On 3/21/2015 at 1:47 PM, seneschal said:
The whole cyberpunk thing is basically a Marxist vision of the end of Western capitalistic civilization: the mega-rich elite businessmen exploiting their hordes of mindless wage slaves until the oppressed proletariat, spurred by charismatic leaders, rises up to claim its freedom. Hmmm, we've all seen how that worked out in Russia, China, Cambodia and Cuba. Throw in 1960s and '70s era Cold War fears and you get the typical modern post-apocalyptic drama. I helped my Mom study Marx and Engels for one of her college classes before I attempted to read Walter Gibson's novels. When I broke open the latter, I said, "Hey, waitaminute! I've read this all before (minus the cool gear)."
Sorry, that is riddled with inaccuracies seneschal. I wouldn't argue that R Talsorian Games "Cyberpunk" the RPG has Marxist elements similar to what you discuss above, but that game has little to do with WILLIAM Gibson's novel Neuromancer, which is widely tagged as the novel that began Cyberpunk as a genre. Gibson was about describing an urban punk aesthetic for a near future society, complete with its own slang, and technology that is able to extend the abilities of tech we already possessed in the 1980s. The plot of the book is about two artificial intelligences becoming a godlike superconsciousness, not some banal Marxist revolution. Everyone in Neuromancer is at heart a capitalist, and there is no voice given to class warfare, other than the acceptance of the notion that some people are poor, mainly because they are drug addicts, but nearly everyone in Neuromancer is some sort of drug addict. If anything there is a sense of occasional urban grit combined with the artificial purity of the continuous airport lounge environment of the space station where the bulk of the plot takes place. Sure Case is a hacker and Molly is a thug for hire, but they are both essentially mercenaries, not Marxist revolutionaries. I don't think any of Gibson's subsequent novels are particularly Marxist either, but I haven't read them ALL, only most of them.
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On 12/18/2022 at 4:14 PM, Shiningbrow said:
Nice, except Logician is Active, and only affects 1 Knowledge skill at a time. I'd rule that any future casting over-rides the current (unless it doesn't have the points)
The rules don't say that. Perhaps they should, but they don't. There is no reason why you can't have multiple boosted lores, just as you can have multiple weapons in your possession all with Boon of Kargan Tor cast on them.
Elmal / Yelmalio in the Alda-Chur confederation
in Glorantha
Posted · Edited by Darius West
I have a lot of problems with this interpretation.
(a) Orlanth faces Yelmalio at the Hill of Gold, not Elmal. Orlanth is a god and could tell the difference between Yelmalio and Elmal.
(b) Elmal is a Thunder Brother. This makes Elmal actually a subcult of Orlanth.
(c) What happened with Monrogh was the history of Southern Sartar. This doesn't translate to every other worshipper of "the masks of Yelmalio" suddenly calling their deity Yelmalio and adopting a homogenized hoplite culture which ignores their clan's cults and traditions. A localized war in southern Sartar doesn't mean everyone suddenly accepts the same truth.
(d) to highlight (c) consider the Ostrich Riders. Their "Yelmalio" who we might call Khim, is inherited from the Rinliddi Bird Rider culture from Before Time. Ostrich riders gain nothing by homogenizing into a Yelmalio hoplite culture, in fact they lose out in every conceivable way. I mean Ostrich Riders even lose out on Kuschile Horse Archery, because they don't ride horses.
(e) Now, if the Ostrich riders opt out of the new write-up, then why won't the Elmali of Far Point? There is no discussion of the Elmali civil war spreading into the North, and I distinctly remember reading that Harvar Ironfist was very determined to wipe out the Elmali by conversion or execution and remake Far Point as a Yelmalio society. This happens after 1612 afaik. Personally this seems a lot more interesting as a second front religious war prior to the Hero Wars, and is an excellent basis for a series of scenarios for MGF.