Darius West

You think that's bad? Apparently each iron Warhammer costs 40K! Dwarves are a craft-heavy race. They make things, hence weapons that are similar to tools likely come with a hefty racial bonus to skill or some-such. I imagine they may well have war adzes, war drills, war-awls, war spanners and so forth as well.

So a bit like the collapse of Civilization that happened at the end of the Bronze Age?

Pfft. Don't be Daffy. 😎

Yes, like that only magical. I wonder if Mostali might know about your terrifying alchemical wonders however?

He's a pregen in the Starter Pack I believe, but not in the RQG rules.

It is more of a matter of slaves lacking the means to record and research these things. Propaganda and brainwashing is extremely effective. More cultish than cult. If you don't believe me, ask friendly Mr. Hypnotoad.

Yes, they're called Runes. Everything is made on them. The God Learners knew about their abilities to form bonds and specific densities etc. That knowledge was lost when the Gods destroyed the Rune Quest Sight.

I like seeing Kesten Blackblade. I will generally pick him or Vishi Dun when I play the RQ starting characters at tournaments. It would be a fine thing if there were go-to models of all the RQ starting characters available on Heroforge. Then you can start in on the military units of the Hero Wars (hehe nudge nudge).

When running RQ3 I envisaged Invisible Orlanth as a far more recent eventuality. There were always regional ties to the Orlanth Pantheon due to Castle Blue, but since the Lunar victory at the Battle of Castle Blue, that power has diminished. Instead of referencing ancient ties to the indigenous religion of Carmania, Invisible Orlanth started as a slave cult. Conquered Orlanthi, sold as slaves, were maintaining their worship in secret. This was also being done with the covert connivance of their Noble Carmanian owners, as Orlanthi terrorists could be of immense value in Dart Competitions. In turn, subjected to a very alien Carmanian worldview, and in order to keep an emergent secret slave army under control, a new hybrid Orlanth/Idovanus cult emerged, pointing out that "you can see through air, ergo, it is invisible, ergo Orlanth is invisible for He is air, ergo Orlanth=Idovanus/Makan." It is a rudimentary theology at best, but fit for slaves whose only contact with its "mysteries" will likely be receiving some sorcery spells being cast upon them. This also became the training ground for another Orlanthi mystery however... the Orlanth Murderous subcult of teleporting assassins. MGDV. Later in the Hero Wars, the Orlanthi diaspora in Carmania have been exploited for their martial prowess and become part of a Mamluk-style slave cavalry employed by the ever treacherous Carmanian nobles, and become cataphracts armed with spears of lightning, after the fashion of the emergent Aeolian Knights who are the "Shock Cavalry" of their society. I still see little need to gild the lily with a huge exegesis on how Invisible Orlanth has "always been a thing" in Carmania. It seems incredibly "tacked on", and I am still inclined to treat it like a diaspora slave cult, similar to Voodoo or Early Christianity, that may yet awaken some sleeping local powers of Orlanth long dormant in the region. It just seems like a better fit to me. Invisible Orlanthi slaves would benefit from "Rightness" caste magic, and would become a tool of intrigue for their masters. After all, at the end of the day, they're still killing Lunars right?

I suspect that Argrath and the Sartar Magical Union will change people's perspective on sorcery. It's only bad when the enemy is doing it to you. When your sorcerers are doing it to the enemy... not so bad.

Crossbows can work underwater, as can bows, but not if their strings get soaked to slackness. Popular wisdom suggests that fire generally goes out in water. You can argue that a fireblade spell is supernaturally hot, and it will bubble away in the water, potentially doing reduced damage. idk, it would be a house rule. Yes. Yes, they work and become enhanced by an AoE. Electrical discharge in water is (shocking) potentially capable of killing a lot of people. They go off like grenades, losing 1d6 per meter from the initial target. The Storm Gods regularly ravaged the Sea Pantheon, and this is part of why that happened. I actually knew someone who was struck by lightning and died while swimming. The people around him were badly shocked and burned, as well as somewhat deafened. Fire and light don't do as well against water. I'd say sunspear loses 1d6 damage per meter of depth. It is at best a surface spell imo.

I find hiding in an alley with a sock full of lead sinker, then ambushing and coshing passers by works well. They are really in the C'thulhu mindset when they come to, ducktaped to a chair in a darkened room. (jk)😎

Thanks for neatly summarizing what I was trying and failing to say davecake. Obviously Arkati would be in an invidious position, given their illumination, if they thought illumination was intrinsically a chaotic abuse of the natural order.

It utterly depends on the creature and its physiology. There are distinct advantages plot-wise for a GM to having the creatures leave little to no evidence, as you can't take the remains to a lab or a newspaper or the police. We know specifically that the Mi-go dissolve, and I would imagine that other creatures likely would as well, such as Hunting Horrors, but Deep Ones leave bodies. Leaving a body to autopsy can destroy the mystery of many of the creatures, but it can also be an opportunity for fresh horror and appalling revelations. Autopsies reveal weaknesses too. It is important to keep the body count skewed in the favor of plenty of dead humans.

And here I was thinking they were kinda canon...

I'd settle for an Elf Bow that didn't die when a non-Aldryami touched it.

Where does the Atroxic Church fit in all of this? In HQ Ethilrist is a leader of the Atroxic Church. I was under the impression that HQ lore was still Glorantha?

Everyone who follows Malkion is a Malkioni. Brithini are Malkioni. Hrestoli are Malkioni. Arkat begins his life as a Malkioni, going from Brithini to betraying them and becoming a Hrestoli before betraying them to become a Pagan. As a pagan he chooses to worship Humakt, and is sometimes called Humaktson, because of his unbreakable sword. Clearly joining a pagan cult was seen as opportunism and betrayal by Malkioni. I like this idea, but there are problems. The first one is that Humakt isn't an emanation of the Death Rune, or he would be named in the sorcery spells that use the Death Rune. Instead, we have the Celestial Court member Kargan Tor named. Humakt doesn't emanate from the Death Rune, but is an emanation of Umath, that comes to reinforce the Death Rune, (possibly because Umath is a Primordial Breath, and the dead don't breathe, but that's stretching it). The fact is, every ascended master is seen as a person within Malkionism, and Humakt and other gods will be seen as ascended masters, not runic emanations. You can only become a Man-of-All if you are a Hrestoli. When Arkat left the Brithini and joined the Hrestoli it was a betrayal of the Brithini. When Arkat left the Hrestoli to join the orlanthi it was a betrayal of the Hrestoli because he joined a pagan cult and joined the traditional enemies of the Hrestoli. Foundational historical episodes are not forgotten, and serve as a basis for all future events. Perhaps that is true of village idiots, but you are lightly dismissing historical events which occurred to a Grimoire culture where books are all-important and everything important is recorded. The Hrestoli bemoan Arkat's treachery from when he joined the Orlanthi, just as the Orlanti remember how Arkat betrayed them and became a troll. You misunderstood my question, so let me rephrase it... If the God Learners had always followed the Orlanth Pantheon, but used a practice of Malkioni Rightness on top of it, why did then need to steal myths from the Orlanthi to hero quest with? There would be no need to do so. They would know all the myths already, and had a head start on the Orlanthi because the God Learners knew about hero questing, and few Orlanthi in that period would know about hq-ing at all.

No, this makes no sense to me. If this was true, then Arkat wouldn't be considered a Traitor by the Malkioni for joining Humakt. In fact Arkay would likely have worshipped Humakt for most of his life since becoming a Hrestoli. Similarly why would there be Orlanthi resistance to missionizing as it says on The Middle Sea Empire pp34-35. And why would the Malkioni have needed to infiltrate other societies to "God Learn" their hero quests if they already practiced them? Then on page 38 of The Middle Sea Empire we see that the Emanationists take a very dim view of the "pagans and their spirits", and are encouraged to completely destroy them and their belief systems. This is an odd comment, considering that the Malkioni have always worshipped the same gods according to some people. Then on page 41 we see that the God Learners were apparently quite happy about destroying the Pagan Worldview. How can this be, if they are partaking of it, and allegedly always have? There are too many things that don't fit the facts. This looks like a great big retrofit to me, and a clumsy one at best. This is not to say that I dislike the idea of Rightness or Caste Magic, but the notion that Pagan gods are routinely worshipped in Malkioni areas seems extremely far fetched when Pagan is unquestionably a pejorative term and the whole idea flies in the face of the existing literature and established lore. For a start, why would the Westerners essentially piggyback onto the Orlanth pantheon, and not have their own specific deities that they control the institutional structures of? It makes no sense, given they could literally have built them during the God Learner period, and yet we know that the Orlanth Pantheon existed before time, and the Malkioni don't control it, despite the God Learner period. Why didn't they follow the Solar Pantheon and its extremely orderly and hierarchical social system, which already mirrors Malkionism in many ways (certainly a lot more than Orlanth and his pantheon does)? Why not the Earth Pantheon? I could understand that, for the Dronar class at least. Or why not a completely different Pantheon based on the abstract concepts of Sorcery?

The inference of what has been written above is that yes, you can be a Rune Lord or Rune Priest of a deity, who is considered an Awakened Master, and still get Rightness, assuming you adhere to Caste. When 90% of a population is involved in farming, pastoral, primary industry and artisan activities, and a further 8% is involved in the military, then the 1% Wizards a 1% Nobles are a veneer. The 2% are also likely the only pure Malkioni in the society that they lead. This means they need to lead EXTREMELY WELL not to be deposed. They are a pygmy child riding a Rhino. Control is an illusion. Well, for starters, Illuminates cannot be punished by breaking with Rightness, because "who is to say what is right or wrong?". Illuminates wriggle out of everything. The alternative, and more important issue is that you may well lose your rightness from breaking caste and rebelling, but once your bad leaders are gone, you re-establish your caste behavior, and start rebuilding your rightness. After all, when the peasants revolt, it is actually the Talar who has misruled them who is most likely the one to blame, and who will lose their Rightness. Most likely when the Castes break down, everyone will start losing their Rightness, whether they follow it or not. After all, is a Zzaburi who obeys a Talar who is not Right going to be doing the Right thing by following the orders? Of course not. Is a warrior who slaughters rebellious peasants following Rightness? Maybe... Maybe not... The way Rightness is described, is takes the form of a social contract that pays magical dividends. If the contract is broken in small and then larger ways, and then a Caste or a substantial portions thereof breaks away, then the entire system begins to break down, due to the system being intrinsically social and therefore relational, regardless of its logical or legal portions. Breaches of those relationships create contradictions which destroy Rightness throughout the system. Every system can be hacked, and a clever rebel can use that to cause the powers that be to make invidious decisions that destroy their Rightness in order to save their power.

Arkat's Rest is where Mularik Ironeye comes from. He identified Argrath Whitebull as the true incarnation of Arkat in the 3rd Age, now come as the shadow of the Red Goddess to shut down the catastrophe of another illuminism outbreak. Mularik becomes a long term supporter of Argrath, but ultimately over-reaches himself and grossly abuses Argrath's trust, causing a rebellion due to his misrule in Dragon Pass while Argrath is campaigning in the Lunar Empire proper. After the God Learner purges of the Dark Empire of Arkat, one of the few places where any Arkati could be found was in the Hero Plane, where they had gone to stop the abuses of the God Learners upon the Mythic landscape of Glorantha. They are likely still there, and any God Learnerist abuses of the myths are likely to awaken their interest, as they now police the myths. Sadly, as the Red Moon Goddess was not alive during time, the Arkati didn't know of her existence in order to police her myths and avoid abuses. The major tenet of the Arkati is that Illuminism is an abuse of the natural order, in much the same way that the Rune Quest Sight (Godlearner special power) is an abuse of the natural order. You must be an illuminate to become a full Arkati, and all other illuminates are deeply suspect and likely need to be killed, but once you are illuminated you must adhere to strict rules of conduct or your fellow Arkati will understand that you are a Gbaji and will need to destroy you.

So what about the ones who worship Saint Humath, or Saint Urox, or Saint Worlath? The fact is, they are part of a large and separate Theistic system which only has a veneer of Malkionism separating it from the Orlanth Pantheon. They may support wizards and gain rightness, but look again, and I see a group of people who could overthrow their Malkioni masters and still practice their caste and gain rightness, post revolution.

They are secret hidden Mostali air pumps that feed air into underground areas of Boldhome. They likely take the form of female idols, because why not? That's a cool design.

Okay, that makes things super risky, as you cannot guarantee everything horses need under such circumstances, try as you might. It also means trouble, as untrained horses don't deal well with imagined threats, let alone real ones. Horses have been known to become spooked over a mouse and bolt for miles, even throwing and killing their rider, and those are the supposedly trained ones. There is a lovely game called Harn with a very useful supplement called Harn Manor that covers such things. that can be retrofit into most games without any problems. You say this youngling, but you are not yet a grognard. You have not had your players decide to occupy and rent out a dungeon, or decide that they all want to play Lunar bureaucrats... This too will come in time... Agreed. The RQ:Gcore rules plus RQ:Weapons and Equipment goes a long way towards this without getting too fiddly about the details. I like the Manage Household skill, as it tells players that while THEY (the player) may have a great idea, their characters may not have the skill to pull it off, management-wise. To answer other questions, Book of the Manor is a good source, and so is Harn Manor, as it goes into more detail about agronomy.

No, the tougher, meatier version with all the trimmings, whistles and bells is what I mean. I have a feeling that not all Orlanthi are created equal. Well, given that we don't presently have info about what the Pamaltelan Orlanth cult (of God Learner origin) actually has access to, in terms of subcults, associated cults, etc. We don't know how different it is from more typical (setting-wise) Sartar/Heortland Orlanth worship. That means potentially you can tweak things a bit to fit imo.