Darius West
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Posts posted by Darius West
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8 minutes ago, EricW said:
Chaos Gift doesn't turn you into a Broo, so there must be a workaround. Follow the path of the Goddess and you will learn how to strengthen yourself with chaos, without developing unfortunate manifestations and transformations which mark you as an unskilled, inferior seeker of the deeper mysteries.
Chaos Gift isn't permanent. It's temporary rune magic. From memory it does give you a permanent chaos taint however.
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6 hours ago, Ian A. Thomson said:
Probably there has been some discussion on this somewhere/when, but my searches have failed to find it so far
Issaries has gone from Trade/Communication, Movement & Harmony in earlier rules
To just Movement & Harmony in RQG
Anyone know why that change happened?
* Just as simple as not needed?
* Communication/Trade subsumed into Harmony Rune?
I am in the process of adding Runes to the Cult variations and Rune spells in Vols 1 & 2 of the P&BR Companion Director's Cut, and since it contains a few unique Pavic variations I need to make a decision about retaining this Rune or not
(Updated version of Vol 01 will be uploaded in a week or so, as there has also been a bunch of small errors spotted)
Yeah, the Chaosium folk decided that the cool looking Issaries rune shouldn't be a thing anymore.
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20 hours ago, svensson said:
Nope. Not even. If you have a tentacle growing out of your head, no amount of Illumination is going to hide that fact. That take Illusion Rune magic, and lots of it. I've never heard of Illumination concealing overt signs of Chaos taint.
As to Illumination helping Chaotics, it absolutely does. Couldn't agree more. For one thing, Illumination helps the Chaotic be patient enough to learn tradecraft in the first place.
Only if you have turned into a broo is that a problem. Hence the "become broo" chance with chaos features.
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20 hours ago, metcalph said:
Kinda doubt that. Hiding the taint is not an automatic feature of illumination and even when you learned how to, the physical effects of a chaotic feature (such as a third arm or broo's horns) can't be hidden - they won't just register as chaotic, that's all. Now you could explain all this way within the Empire as a Chaos Gift but IMO you are still going to be ostracized.
The point being they won't detect as being chaotic. Yes, the overt signs will be present, but not all chaos features have overt signs. This is why Chaos features also have the "become a broo" chance. This is the point at which your chaos features can no longer be hidden, and you can no longer pass as your original species.
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On 11/23/2022 at 6:13 AM, metcalph said:
I have a lot of doubt over a cult of Thanatar active in Carmania and find the idea that Thanatari can keep themselves clean by being illuminated to be absurd - nobody suggests it for worshippers of other chaotic cults.
Well, illumination will hide the overt signs of chaos like a chaos taint or feature. It won't hide your Thanatar tattoo, or your talking severed head collection. Illumination is useful for chaotics but not enough on its own. For that you need tradecraft.
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11 hours ago, Erol of Backford said:
I have always liked the dreaded/annoying upstart Buddhist peasants - the Ikko-Ikki. We could use them as Kralori mercenaries/caravan guards.
These fierce religious extremist skinheads are clearly from Vormain not Kralorela 😉
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20 hours ago, Ali the Helering said:
I don't see that you limited it to pre-gunpowder societies in your post, but if I missed it, fair enough.
It is implied, not written. I mean this is Pendragon ffs 😅
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4 hours ago, PhilHibbs said:
Not sure what you mean by that.
Good call, I misinterpreted the info. I confused Common Magic with Spirit magic. 😬
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4 hours ago, Ali the Helering said:
I think we may be straying into the Thanatar thread, given the rearmost soldier! (Yes, I do know the historicity of it)
The spearman in question is still learning to count. He hasn't quite got the hang of 1 yet, hence the head. When he gets to 2 reliably he will quit and become a roady.
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On 1/7/2022 at 2:10 AM, Ali the Helering said:
Actually, there are many cultures that have romanticised egalitarian social structures, including most western liberal democracies. I am in favour of such social structures, but not in favour of romanticising them! The Arthurian myths are not so easily 'lumped together' though - there is a marked difference between the Mabinogion and the French geste.
I was specifically referring to pre-gunpowder societies. We are after all, referring here to Pendragon. You won't find much romanticizing of themes like Athenian democracy or Scythian egalitarianism until well into the early modern period.
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On 11/15/2022 at 10:19 PM, Andrew M said:
Looking for opinions about applying Humakti gifts to weapons other than swords. In particular one of my players is likely to want to use a Bow a lot and it would make sense for her to try and apply gifts to that bow. What is the opinion about applying the double damage after armour to a bow .
I think that it can be applied to any weapon but with the bow the question is should the gift actually need to be applied to the arrow , making it useless or is it mystically appropriate if applied to the Bow
To be fair, the Humakt cult rules only say "bless a specific weapon", not "bless a sword" (p296). Of course Humakt's rune magic like sword trance and truesword won't work on the bow. The up-side is that Humakt has access to all common magic, which includes all the missile spells. The bow skill, once mastered, will count as one of the weapons needed to be mastered to become Rune Level in Humakt.
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On 11/20/2022 at 9:34 AM, Jex said:
Borders could change in ten years, sure, but it seems like a very weird change for a clan to leapfrog over another clan's territory into an entirely different place. You're probably right that the Well of Daliath map is the one more likely to match current canon.
I should have put this in my original post, but for comparison here are the relevant parts of the two maps; the first one is from Wyrm's Footnotes and the second one is from the Well of Daliath:
That's hilarious! Keep it! The Marshedge Clan has lost the village that is named after them, and so have the Poss! I put it down to Lunar restructuring post Starbrow's Uprising.
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On 11/20/2022 at 12:28 AM, Shiningbrow said:
So, it's bound to come up at some point, so how would you treat a player who wants to learn sorcery from the very basics? All sorcery currently presented presumes the character has been learning it for years.
And, it's fairly clear from the chapter on sorcery that it's a lot more than merely knowing a Technique and a Rune.
i was thinking of having a Sorcerous Potential skill, that needed to get to 100% before being able to actually use any sorcery (or even Master a Technique/Rune). But I think that won't really work too well...
Anyone have any good suggestions?
You don't need enormous skills. You use meditation and sympathetic magic to boost your sorcery skill usage. Sorcery is always time intensive, but it makes up for it with having potentially enormous durations. You get your tick and you roll your up.
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I'm not reading a lot about the main way humans hunt successfully, namely TRAPS!
Whether snares, deadfalls, pits, or whatever, traps are the best way to catch game. You literally set them up, cover your scent, wander off, and wait for the screaming to start.
Forget rune magic and who can turn into what. Forget missile weapons. A well-placed and undetectable trap is where it is at.
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4 hours ago, Erol of Backford said:
Ok so its difficult but not impossible... fun to try and role play.
You mean Kung-fu Shuffle Axe Men!?
Not really, I was thinking these guys... The "halberdier is using a "ge" or dagger-axe, you know, the one that does 3d6 damage. The crossbowman is a bit useless though; where are his bolts? "Has anyone seen my spear? How can I be a spear carrier without a spear?"
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Krarsht has an easy time of infiltrating societies that have sewerage systems. They get in everywhere, like rats.
Thanatar is more difficult and more interesting therefore
As to Thanatar, pretty much nobody can tolerate them, not even the Lunars. This means that they have a difficult time setting up anything approaching a shrine, let alone a temple at the best of times. There are chaos cults that can tolerate Thanatar, but they would likely be uncomfortable in dealing with them in the longer term. It is reasonable to assume that the major chaos hotspots have some sort of Thanatar presence i.e. Dorastor, Stone Woods, Snakepipe Hollow, and of course Than Ulbar, which is the cult's "capital".
If we assume that Thanatar is always going to be on the small size, that means they will need the following:
Site: 1 member. Shrine: 75 members Minor Temple: 125. Major Temple: 400. Great Temple 750.
Now moving into established areas, even if done with great discretion is going to attract attention. If you buy land and rock up in a province with a party of settlers anywhere in the Lunar Empire, you are going to attract attention from local authorities and neighbors. You will need to be paying tax to someone, and the more quite and irrelevant you make yourselves the better. It could be a very good idea to set up on the fringe of the empire, but the best option is always to set up in a ruin or cave complex with some pattern of past settlement. Ruins are great because they likely have water supplies, allow you to cannibalize previous dwellings for building materials. The problem is that you need to deal with any "residents". This can mean that simply creating a small innocuous settlement in the hinterlands can be perfect, even if you lack for certain supplies.
There's a problem with this "folk horror" approach to Thanatar. Let's face facts... Nobody joins Thanatar because they want to become a farmer in a tiny isolated village. They will end up slaughtering each other out of sheer boredom.
So there is a better approach... Namely, "hijacking". And by hijacking I mean infiltrating existing settlements through patronage.
The great appeal of Thanatar is that it provides a marvelous means of getting a lot of power quickly by stealing heads and devouring minds and books. The Lunar empire is also replete with opportunists, wealthy people, illuminates, as well as corruptible and mad folk. You just need the right one, and the list is likely to be long. As such, Thanatari agents need to maneuver themselves into contact with a corruptible person of influence and offer them services such as "murder for hire", as well as potential membership in the most forbidden cult of all, which they will never show up as a member of due to illumination. It helps if the agent already has some means of blackmail to hold over the individual they are approaching.
Having reached an amicable arrangement with the owner to fast track their initiation into Thanatar, the agent establishes themselves in one of their new patron' plantations, and gradually filters in their cult members, while putting fear into the slave population. The slave trade has umpteen benefits for the Thanatari, as you will see. All the slaves get replaced over the course of a year or two under claims of "financial restructuring" or some-such, if anyone cares to even ask. Thus the plantation becomes a place where most of the slaves work the land and live in terror but will know nothing about the proclivities of their owners. The settlement becomes a slave trading and breeding hub. Expert slaves are brought in. Some of these experts are retained to train slaves to improve their value for sale, but others get sacrificed to the cult, and records most likely show the missing slaves having died and been cremated (thanks Lodril customs). When the cult operates committing murders, it does so as far afield as it can, and as discretely as it can. It might even be that the Thanatari run a "gladiator ludi" as cover for training their agents. Slaves with excavation and masonry skills are put to work creating a subterranean temple complex. As Thanatar requires the sacrifice of a Humakti, a Stormbull, a Yelmalio and the burning alive of a Lhankor Mhy, the slave trade allows them to basically buy what they need in the slave markets without raising any eyebrows. All this requires is a veneer of Lunar worship as cover.
Of course succession poses problems. Once your pet madman dies, what becomes of the plantation? Who inherits? You know that this sort of intrigue will be very interesting to play.
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4 minutes ago, Erol of Backford said:
Are these places large enough to keep Pentian Nomads from destroying them? Wouldn't the Nomads be the biggest threat to any caravan passing east-west?
Would the Nomad leaders be paid tribute by each caravan?
A light tribute/tax is a fair price to pay for safe passage through a nomad's territory
The thing about the free market is that if you kill the merchants you kill the goose that lays the golden eggs. The merchants have great things to trade, but if you tax them too heavily, they stop coming, just like if you killed them. The other thing is, merchant pack animals aren't generally much worth stealing by Nomad standards, I mean, better than nothing but never exceptional. The chief quickly realizes that it is worth his while to tax them lightly but leave the mule men alone.
9 minutes ago, Erol of Backford said:What protects a caravan? How large are they on average to make such a long journey? Makes me think of those on the south continent and that they are huge due to safety in numbers...
It might be any number of things. Kralori Dagger-Axemen. Kralori Crossbowmen. Red Headed Steppe children of the Lunar Empire. Pentan nomads themselves (of different tribes). Wayward Praxians. Scorpion Men (apparently some people hire them as caravan mercenaries). Trolls and trollkin. Hsunchen guides...
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The goods of the civilized world are brought north. They include silk, lacquerware, porcelain, tea, spices, incense, medicines, rice wine, fragrant jungle timbers, furniture, metal goods, cotton, grains, paper, literature, magic items, riding animals, carpets, and other assorted wealth.
The goods going south will include rare furs, slaves, gems, unprocessed ore, jade, mast timbers, oily fish, wool, felt, amber, weird alcohols, hemp, soybeans, soy sauce.
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16 hours ago, Akhôrahil said:
To a large extent, this is a matter of semantics. There’s interaction with a myth when you go full heroquesting to kill the Emperor, as well as when children play it as a game. There’s just vastly more of it in the first case.
I don’t think we should discount yearly HQs too much though - the Red Cow HeroQuest certainly feels like a full (if small:ish) HQ to me, even though it isn’t creative or exploratory.
16 hours ago, Bill the barbarian said:Agreed. I read Jeff's post and to my mind it says pretty much what I said a little earlier. Semantics... But in a land of magic, and deities in streams and souls in rocks, I will always see room for a quest of heroic proportions (dare I say an HeroQuest) in a child's game. Sorry Darius, we usually agree, but here... we diverge.
When Red moon hits your eye and you go mad and die
That's a Hero Quest
When the world seems to shine like you've stepped Before Time
That's a Hero Quest
Magic rings ting-a-ling-a-ling, ting-a-ling-a-ling
And you'll see pretty colours
Swords will slay stabby-stabby-hay, stabby-stabby-hay
Like some Humakti fella
When the stars make you drool like an Eurmali fool
That's a Hero Quest
When you glide down the street with a cloud at your feet
You've got sylph
When you walk in a dream but you know you're not dreaming, you've guessed
Scusa mi, but you see, back among Orlanthi
That's a Hero Quest
When Red moon hits your eye and you go mad and die
That's a Hero Quest (That's a Hero Quest)
When the world seems to shine like you've stepped Before Time
That's a Hero Quest (That's a Hero Quest)
Magic rings ting-a-ling-a-ling, ting-a-ling-a-ling
And you'll see pretty colours
Swords will slay stabby-stabby-hay, stabby-stabby-hay
Like some Humakti fella (crit you well huh?)
When the stars make you drool like an Ermali fool
That's a Hero Quest (That's a Hero Quest)
When you glide down the street with a cloud at your feet
You're got sylph
When you walk in a dream but you know you're not dreaming, you've guessed
Scusa mi, but you see, back among Orlanthi
That's a Hero Quest (a Hero Quest)
That's a Hero Quest\
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13 hours ago, svensson said:
And all that is a whole lot more important than 'Grandfather Racoon's skin'.
Nope. That F***er has to DIE! Over and over again, if necessary, until it takes (hero quests are incremental). I'm gonna double down on this one. 🦝👎
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20 hours ago, mfbrandi said:
I don’t know when/where this originated, but it made it to her entry on the Well of Daliath:
According to Beer with Teeth at least, it is not just a pot, but a food pot.
Curiouser and curiouser 🤔
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I also think that a warrior cult that has no weapon enhancement Spirit spells is dubious. Obviously Yelmalio can't have firearrow, but it should have multimissile and speedart, and definitely Bladesharp. It probably wouldn't hurt if they had some sort of defensive spell as well.
I know that Yelmalio gets gifts, and they include weapon masteries, but having access to a few other spirit spells won't seriously unbalance this cult.
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10 hours ago, mfbrandi said:
Why is Xiola Umbar depicted as a pot in this illustration? Or is she a drum perhaps? Very odd.
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42 minutes ago, mfbrandi said:
“She who waits” — depicted as a jar in Under the Red Moon. G = Glorantha. Ginna Jar = Glorantha in a Jar. A funerary urn. Arachne Solara understands creation through destruction — even self-destruction — better than anyone. But the ruling class of the empire probably wouldn’t want too many people dreaming Arachne Solara-sent dreams of the future: Sheng eats the emperor, the red moon is destroyed.
She Who Waits is the Wyter of the Seven Mothers afaik.
39 minutes ago, mfbrandi said:But if they are protected, they won’t turn into little Arkats, and then who is going to grow up and “end” the world for us?
But I thought Zorak Zoran LIKED Arkat?
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Chaos, Time, & the Great Compromise
in Glorantha
Posted
You are putting the cart before the horse here. The equatorial climate and fertility of Pamaltela is due to the fact that Pamalt lives.
Really they difference between Time and Entropy is slender.
Chaos stems from the ritual pollution of the Primal Plasma by the Unholy trio, turning it into the Chaosium (or source of all Chaos). The beings born from this were linked to annihilation, and they pollute and corrupt the world. If you don't believe me, feed your children to a Bagogi queen, or let them be decapitated by Thanatar, or perhaps offer them to the broos and see what happens. Chaos is the death of the world, and if you love the world, you fight for its survival against chaos. If you are debased and foul, wanting power even if in its ugliest forms, then you fight for chaos.