Darius West

The answer to this question is as likely to be no as yes. It might appear as magic to some, but it is the product of a lore skill, ingredients, and manual preparation, and so while the effect of alchemy might seem magical, there is no reason to presume that it is (or isn't). In the present RQG manifestation where alchemy relates to poisons, cures, and healing, it seems more medical than anything else, but alchemy potentially is not necessarily so limited in its scope. If we look at RQ2 Battle Magic potions, they would seem to be actually magical imo, but are they even in the game anymore? Let's quote Arthur C. Clarke and say alchemy looks like magic, but probably isn't most of the time.

I'm not sure how many Uroxi really even understand the niceties of consent half the time.

I don't think Iffinbix is a Mostali deity, but never say never; it is a remote possibility. He's some sort of Earth sorcery "deity" associated with the City Sorcerers of Old Pavis. I have been collecting snippets of lost and hidden Iffinbix lore for a while now.

Alchemy and Herbalism within Glorantha have long been more-or-less untouched. Greg was never particularly happy with the Alchemy rules in RQ1 and 2, and didn't see them as being particularly Gloranthan, but grudgingly conceded that Alchemy probably had a place. I don't think Greg was as negative about herbalism. Some cults have a lot to do with alchemy. Chalana Arroy and Lhankor Mhy are good examples of cults that teach Alchemy as a cult secret, but Lanbril the thief god also makes use of alchemy for sneeze powder and other concoctions useful in larceny. We may ask whether Mostal is really a cult, but certainly the Quicksilver Dwarves have potion enhancing magic, and are often regarded as the greatest alchemists. The Malkioni have the Ezokites, primarily in Leplain, Seshnela. The Kralori have the Thalurzni and the Goldern Elixir Monks. The folk of Fonrit also have alchemists who specialize in perfumes apparently. There are lots of write-ups relating to herbs and plant life found in Prax and other regions. For this reason I wouldn't be surprised if the Pavic Rubble cult of Iffinbix once had alchemists, given their reliance on a poison with the agipith root as an antidote to protect their temples in the Rubble. Iffinbix smacks of alchemy, likely based on herbalism to me, but was mainly sorcerous. Using sorcery to amp up the effects of herbal concentrates and poisons could be very powerful. Personally I have no problem with Alchemy, and see it as a logical outgrowth of the World Machine and God Learnerism. I am surprised that Zzaburi aren't all running about with INT and MP enhancing potions and the entire engagement with the study of Alchemy seems to be localized in Leplain. To my mind, it surprises me that alchemical studies aren't more widespread in the Genertelan West. Historically on Earth, Alchemy was intimately involved in medicines, poisons, metallurgy, recreational and religious drugs, the creation of dyes and mordants, perfumes, Greek fire, corrosives (acids and bases), phosphorus matches, gunpowder, surfactants like caustic soda that make soap, concrete, and likely a few other things I haven't listed. RQ2 used to allow for potions that could hold Battle Magic (aka Spirit Magic) spells, but that is apparently no longer the case. I would imagine if alchemy can hold spirit magic, it can hold sorcery. I seriously think that these systems need more attention, and have taken a few tentative steps in that direction myself, having put together collections of herbs and some notes on potential alchemical rules for "matters alchemical" not included in RQG.

I seem to recall reading about Arkat essentially turning into a chaos monster while fighting in Dorastor. In typical fashion, Arkat likely betrayed the Trolls to gain new allies among the chaos folk to complete his quest to destroy Nysalor. I would put this down to Arkat having joined a cult like Krjalk which I believe allows monstrous transformation. The point is, it would be a temporary effect a bit like the Lunar Chaos Gift spell. Akrat would have carried a chaos taint were it not for his illumination. We know that after the duel in the Tower of Wonders, Arkat departs for Ralios as a normal looking man, you see.

It's a good thing most Catholics have thick skins on these issues huh?

Hmm... I wonder... Tetrahedral temples...?

There are relatively few Bronze Age medical texts. One of the few sources is Ancient Egypt, and they don't describe the digestive system despite their work on anatomy afaik. The Yellow Emperor's Classic of Medicine (which is iron age but a very early surviving medical treatise) describes the Digestive system as working like a fuel burning stove. This clearly can't work with Glorantha, as Fire is associated with Intellect, not Constitution which is Earth or devouring which is Darkness.

Nope, Brangbane. Urgrain is the Heortling bad king (who frankly wasn't as bad a king as Brangbane). Brangbane is the Sartarite Dinacoli Bad King who became king of the ghouls because Sartar transformed him.

If there is not, how do you account for the ability to digest food in Glorantha? The fact is, Glorantha is based on Earth. I like realism. I like my players to get the sense that there are substantial similarities between Earth and Glorantha. While there is a lot of "a wizard did it" in Glorantha, there are loads of physical systems that no deity is monitoring and without physical systems underpinning its reality Glorantha would be Chaos, and chaos. The fact is, the God Learners were correct about far more than they were wrong about. On the contrary. We don't have a periodic table of runes. We do know however that various elements affect the man rune, such as if you have strong Fire Rune associations, you will get +2 Int etc. Next, it is an obvious truth that living creatures in Glorantha eat plant runes and beast runes, and sometimes if they are bad they eat man runes and dragonewt runes etc. Any description of the physical systems involved will need to account for these facts. The first being bodies are clearly animated from multiple elemental runes. That is implicit in the RQG runes. Yes there is Earth in people, but that only governs Constitution. Living things are complicated. So... Life and Death Runes, Spirit Runes, are all in a Man Rune being's make-up. Why not plant runes for stomach flora then? It seems increasingly likely that living things are a microcosm of the Runes in Glorantha. The runes are all there to some degree, and can go out of balance or have their arrangement disrupted by death runes "crossing" them out (pardon the pun). Obviously this is references Harmony and Disorder, Truth and Illusion, etc. Sentience seems to be tied primarily to the Fire Rune, hence its rules association with Intelligence. They obviously bump Life Runes until they tap into the Infinity Rune and capture a Spirit Rune. Mostali explain it in terms of a mortar grinding away in a pestle. But these runes consistently produce outcomes that create physical systems which are very similar to Earth. Even Gloranthan magic, which is mainly very "Buff" oriented magic could be explained to psychological effects like the placebo effect or confirmation bias, with the release of some colored light runes granting the individual the psychological permission they need to perform better. Not really FDWC. The fact is the World Machine has always been part of Glorantha, by which I mean the mechanical physical systems that we associate and describe with disciplines like Physics and Chemistry on Earth, but unequivocally have their Gloranthan equivalencies such as Alchemy and the Lores. The fact is, unless someone is casting a spell, Glorantha behaves much like Earth. Also, many spells behave much like Earth were it not for the colored lights and spell effects. This is hardly surprising, given that we want a world that is like Earth but with fantasy elements. It takes many types of subatomic particles to create 102 types of atoms to build an Earth and its universe. We don't have that many runes to play with, but we know that the outcome is very similar.

I for one am fascinated about how to run missile combat in HQ.

How? The fact is our world is a complex place and so is Glorantha. The Runes are never going to be able to explain it in their present form without some added complexity in the descriptive process, and yet we know that the Mostali, Feldichi and the God Learners did exactly that. Well, my glorantha will vary. More importantly, allows ordinary phenomena to be explained by the runes in an objective fashion, which is lore friendly, because the Mostalie, Feldichi and the God Learners were able to do so. That is your perspective davecake. The fact is that the World Machine is every bit as much a part of Gloranthan cosmology as any other, and it is a neglected part too. Glorantha has its own Science, and it is not contrary to the cosmology in any way. It has always been there and I like to tease it out. Glorantha is clearly quite similar to Earth in terms of human experience, but that would be impossible if Glorantha has no physics and chemistry, even if those disciplines rely on radically different runic processes rather than atomic ones. Why not? I'm sure these are all things a Lhankor Mhy sage with a background in the Torvald Fragments would find fascinating. Remember that while Glorantha has magic, it is a Low Fantasy world most of the time. All science did was render many physical processes explicable, allowing for accurate predictions of how these processes would behave. And for the most part, the physical processes of Glorantha are reliable and predictable, and the physical processes of the world behave much as they do in our own world. Why would that be, unless processes that mimic our world were in play at some sort of default level? Sure, magic can change things, but most Gloranthan magic is "Buff" magic, wherein someone's ability to do something improves. Not much Gloranthan magic transforms materials or brings objects into existence. As such we could choose to talk about all Gloranthan magic in terms of the Sorcery Technique runes without encountering many outliers. I may even do something on Jonstown Compendium about this one day.

This is a great idea Xorgrim and a fascinatingly awful period of European history. I am a great fan of the Thirty Years War as it is one of those "grimdark" eras that lend themselves to RPGs, like the Late Roman Empire and present day West Virginia (I'm not even joking). My advice then is to brush up on doing a few different accents to lend your NPCs a measure of authenticity. It is a really good idea to have a stable of persistent NPCs with whom the players interact and build relationships. Friendly NPCs are very important, even if it is just a camp follower cobbler who has an ear for gossip. Also, make sure you have some sort of realistic price lists from the period, because you will need them. That is great. I personally enjoyed Bertold Brecht's play "Mother Courage", more for the evocation of the free wheeling and somewhat desperate camp follower market economy of the war that the moralistic Marxism implicit in the narrative. Knowing your source material well is crucial, so take some confidence from that. Remember also that Europe is ablaze before and after the Thirty Years War (lol did the Thirty Years War really end?). The Swedish invasion of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth really serves as a continuation of the Thirty Years war, coming only 7 years after the end of hostilities. Spain is fighting the Ottomans and the Dutch before and after the Thirty Years War. The Three Musketeers is set prior to the Thirty Years war. Also French Philosopher Renee Descartes served in the Battle of White Mountain and is at large in Europe at the time, as are his contemporaries. Okay. Your players CANNOT, WILL NOT, AND CAN NEVER be controlled. They are there to tell their own stories, not your NPC diarist's. You would do well to even allow your players to alter history. The first thing to remember is that RPGs are about allowing the players to tell their own stories. You are not there to retell history, you are there to entertain the players, just as they are going to entertain you with their antics and poor life choices. Players WILL be agreeable about being somewhat railroaded during a massed battle as they need to follow orders. You will need to have a really clear idea of how you want to stage this sort of event to maximize the impact and immersion on players. Handled well, massed battles are gripping RPG experiences. Handled badly, they become a boring combat chore of dice roll+ consulting sheets ad nauseum. Building the threat and tension of a massed battle, the insecurity of not knowing what is happening vs the horror of witnessing too much, the press, the sweat, the blood and entrails. It is often more stressful before the fighting than during the actual combat if you run it well. One of the great ironies of the Thirty Years War is that most mercenaries didn't care about what they were fighting for. They were fighting for a wage and personal advancement and had no religious ideological "dog in the fight". Don't neglect the possibilities of Rosicrucianism and Hermeticism which were the New Age movement of the day amongst the Intellectuals (including Descartes).

We're gettin' old. Personally I'm so short sighted I can see atoms.

Is there a worse curse to be visited on a clan than a chief with a lunar wife? I foresee that in far future retellings of the Bad King Brangbane story, he too will develop such an affliction.

But all animals ARE ACTUALLY a little bit plant. Animals, like humans, have stomach flora that is responsible for digestion. Plus many creatures digest plants and thus have plant runes being reintegrated within them as fuel for their bodies. I am of the opinion that the Godlearners were never able to properly understand draconic mysteries as they had great trouble with Draconic mysticism and the application of the Dragonewt rune. The best they ever managed on that score was the Path of Immanent Mastery. This is a large part of why the EWF was able to stave off the Jrusteli Empire. Remember also that all humans have integrated elemental runes that in RQG govern and modify their stats. Fire for Int, Air for Str, Earth for Con etc. It's in the rules. I like the idea that while certain runes predominate, that as with plenty of non-carbon atoms in our bodies, that humans have aggregations of specific runes in Glorantha, even if the man rune forms the shape of the human body and likely predominates as the main rune. This is a great way of reconciling a bit of science into the system imo, if only on a basis that it is lost God Learner knowledge known only to a few specialized sages.

In answer to your cries Sir Ukpyr, it is very important to realize that most Player Knights will never be able to complete the Grail Quest. It is almost certainly beyond them to heal the Fisher King. I would suggest therefore that you explain the symbolism of the mysteries in terms of the religions of each of the players. For the Christians, the Grail is the Cup of Christ. For the Pagans it is the Cauldron of Bran. For the Norse, it is the Mortar of Eir, or perhaps the Sampo of Ilmarinen of Finland. Others less righteous might even see the Green Gem struck from the brow of Satan by the Archangel Michael that holds the mysteries of magic. The Grail Quest Wasteland may well have real world analogues, and be a reference to 536 AD The Worst Year to be Alive. The order of the world was destroyed, and this catastrophe could only be understood in terms of the mythological world view of the time. The Fisher King was struck in the "leg", which is a Bowdlerized way of saying, his 3rd Leg, rendering him infertile, and his sacred connection to the land was therefore severed, bringing about the wasteland, plague and famine. One would think it was wise to replace the King, but the King was holy and extremely wise and just and nobody in their right mind would consider that any more than they would murder loving parents. Instead they sought to restore the King's fertility and connection to the land by healing him. The king is the keeper of the Grail and need only sip from it to be cured, but he doesn't think about himself and his own needs, and needs to be reminded to do so by a similarly pure soul. Instead he languishes in his sickbed, while doing his best to save the people from the catastrophes of the Age that is come upon them. Of course there is also the Satanic Knight who sees the Green Gem, not the Grail, and seeks to claim it from the weakened king by force. This, the players can deal with...

This is a great topic Joerg, and well worth the time to discuss. We are used to a game wherein society for our adventurers is very currency or livestock driven, as these are measures of wealth we have become familiar with. Originally in RQ1 and RQ2 everything was currency driven. At some stage in RQ3-Pendragon Pass-Hero Quest days, and when the KoDP computer game came out we became more familiar with running a cattle based economy for clans. You are challenging us to remember that during the Bronze Age, if you lived in a city, you were likely an artisan paid for by a Ruler and a beneficiary of the tax and tribute a Ruler received. We forget that the alleged "culture hero" responsible for the invention of currency was King Gyges of Lydia who died in 644BC, well after the Bronze Age, and that the great Kingdoms and City States of the Bronze Age had no coins. Instead they traded bulk commodities like 60 amphorae of lamp oil for 20 measures of scented timber from Lebanon, not less than 1 Stadia in width and 3 Stadia long (etc.). This idea of a top-down economy based on food allocation was normal for city dwellers and actually persisted in the world for a very long time. For example, even today the Emir of Dubai pays for everyone's cooking gas. This system of patronage was also prevalent in Europe but was slowly dismantled in favor of coin and the belief in the Market Mechanism. The top down system is heavily centralized; a command economy model. The King takes tax and redistributes it to his artisans who make weapons for his army and wealth for him to distribute and maintain his prestige. Of course it is not "communist" as it incorporates an implicit class system in the distribution model. It is a very different way of thinking about Gloranthan economics however.

😆 😂 Boffer? I love it! "Come at me with your pool noodle you damn dirty troll!" More seriously, I think Dullblade needs to be viewed from the perspective that afaik only Chalana Arroy teaches the spell (apart from shamans).

While there may be very old Dryads and Mostali, the intent of this challenge seems to be to name a given individual. Here are some ideas: Androgeus was around Before Time. Given his size and the fact he is bigger than many mountains, we should consider quite how old Gonn Orta might be. Allegedly Kyger Litor is still at large in the Castle of Lead. For that matter, does Yelm count? If Yelm counts, what about Uleria?

Tell that to the Bat.

This would be far easier in a land of Earth Worshippers, gnomes and potentially Gemborg Mostali being hired. Plausible.

Bread. Is potato.

I think Arachne Solara likely has the most in common with the Egyptian deity Neith. Neith is the preparer of ways, and a primordial goddess whose weaving is associated with spiders. Similarly Arachne Solara keeps the Sun in his course in the sky, keeps the dead on their path to the underworld, and created the compass rose of the directions and even the Lozenge itself with her eight legs and the weaving of her web. She is the wyter of the world, but arguably all deities might be wyters at some fundamental level, but they gain new powers every time they cross some arbitrary total of adherents giving them POW and MP. Most importanty however she is the devourer of Entropy and the Mother of Time. Darkness was the first Element, and it is therefore no surprise that the primordial goddess of Glorantha is connected with the spider goddess Aranea, who carries the Fate and Darkness Runes, especially as the Fate Rune is described as Arachne Solara's Web. But there is a mystery there... Why does the Fate Rune have six legs not eight? I ask you to look at the Luck Rune. It has 4 "legs", but if you flip a duplicate Luck Rune upside down and combine them, they forms a Fate Rune as four of its legs become two. Good Luck plus Bad Luck (Luck Rune inverted)=Fate. Is Arachne Solara benign? I suppose the answer depends on how much you enjoy living in her world. Your Answers May Vary.

Four corners, four sides, eight legs, Lozenge. Just add spider goddess and her adhesive webs.