Darius West

If you ever hear a fool complain he has too many beasts to care for, raid him.” Quote from Chuknal Khan (called "He who pulls the whiskers of Basmol") of the Avalanche (Green) Llamas.

Challenging what most people can do with a bow by bringing up Lars Andersen videos. Where have I seen this before? I would suggest you get yourself off to the Society of Creative Anachronism and do some shooting of your own to get a proper sense of what is possible. Lars Andersen is a bit of a marvel, a brilliant athlete and bow sportsman, and might be considered something of a hero level archer by Gloranthan standards. Lars claims that he has recovered techniques from Turkic horse archers and the Plains Tribes of America, and I don't dispute the possibility based on what has been written about them. They were cultures with a lot of master archers. In Glorantha we call what Lars does spirit magic like "multimissile".

I think you have a far more grandiose idea of what a sorcerous order is than I do. And anyhow, as the saying goes "To level a mountain one must first carry away small stones". You don't need to build a university, you can start with a rural kindergarten and work your way up over generations of thieves. Seriously, it is easy enough to make new spells, and not that hard to get a decent level of proficiency with a sorcery spell or two, especially if you are being trained. The more I think about it, the more I think many Zzaburi may well have their own personal cadre of thieves who do their bidding behind the scenes, much like House Tytalus in Ars Magica. Lanbril doesn't have arbitrary appetites? No rules? read the cult write up in Common Knowledge for Players more carefully. Sure, Lanbril has no spirit of retribution listed, but break the rules and see what happens. I would argue that the lack of a spirit of retribution is further proof of Lanbril's likely sorcerous origins in any case. In Malkioni lands Shamans are burned at the stake. While I completely concur that shamanic criminal organizations are and should be a thing, I think that denying a similar opportunity to sorcerers is arbitrary and ill-considered. Organizations that use sorcery for thieving lie well within the purview of what is possible.

There is no reason why an exiled or discredited zzaburi wouldn't decide to turn to crime, especially if they start with a compliment of illusion magic. Every sorcerer has the requisite intelligence to become an evil genius, even if there might be some deficits in the charisma department sometimes. Your exiled zzaburi then decides that they want to move silently and invisibly, overcome locks and barriers, and carry away large quantities of loot, while being magically undetectable. This sounds like a manageable wish list to me given what sorcery can do. All that is missing at that point is a few students who want to learn the tricks and you would have a sorcery cult run by an new enlightened master. The zzaburi just has to use spell creation to add in a lockpicking skill or a divination blocker and the matter is concluded I think. How will they finance this? By stealing money.

Fishing hooks found in Sakitari Cave in Okinawa are far FAR older. Rereading the article I can't believe that the Proceedings for the National Academy of Science uses the acronym PNAS btw. Have they never said that out loud without the implied punctuation?

A group has to start somewhere, so why not with its smallest constituent number? i.e. 1. Sorcery would potentially provide any group regardless of size with an edge that was not dependent on divine favor. Sorcery isn't hard to develop to a useable level, and if other people could see the benefits, it might encourage them to support the initial developer with a view to benefitting in the future from their research. Your position here is interesting, but perhaps the sorcerous group in question don't want to be beholden to a deity and their arbitrary appetites, spirits of retribution and rules, while also lacking access to a shaman who can offer them easy access to spirit spells? This would be a problem arising in Malkioni areas. I personally could easily see a situation where a Zzaburi forced into exile turned to crime only to become an "enlightened master" of certain specialist sorcery spells. It is not entirely impossible that this is the hidden history of the god Lanbril's emergence, given all the mechanisms and alchemy that cult is heir to. Divination Block smells of a sorcery fix to me, and Lanbril just seems like a sorcery cult pretending to be a religion.

Fishing with a hook and line is really ancient, like 22,000+ years ago ancient. It is also a lot less effective than fishing with a net (which is mesolithic). Why do I even know this stuff?

Ya know its a bit hard saying you're the Only Old One when you can wander north and find Kyger Litor still hanging out there 😉 (just trolling)

People can become thieves for a variety of reasons, but one thing is certain; urban populations are universally more literate than rural ones. I suspect it would be relatively easy for a literate person to wind up on the wrong side of the law, especially a corrupt bureaucrat who knows how to cook a book. As for long periods of study, I draw your attention to all those sympathetic magic bonuses on p387-388 of RQG. You can boost a low level of competence by using these, and that will get you your seasonal ticks assuming training is not available. I have seen a player get their Defense stat from RQ2 up to 120% over the course of a campaign and getting better at sorcery seems easy by comparison.

IDK, I could see something like a sorcerous thief cult occurring in Fonrit. If you think about it, sorcery is the easiest form of magic to learn, because all you need is a grimoire and the time to puzzle out how to cast spells. Also, the spell creation rules on RQG p390 would mean that you could cobble together some useful new thief specific magic.

Is Garundyer a superhero?

The dynamic between the various deities on the matter of death is interesting. Humakt is neutral to pretty much everyone, except he seriously hates the worst excesses of Chaos and likes Orlanth. Daka Fal likes racial ancestor deities like Aldrya, Kyger Litor, and even Thed, but is hostile to nearly all other deities. Ty Kora Tek is tied to other Earth Pantheon deities, and not much more can be said for certain. The rule of thumb these days seems to be that Undead have magic points but no POW.

RQ3 had a concept called Fixed INT, which applied to animals. Fixed INT meant that the intelligence of the creature wasn't rolled and it wasn't sentient in the same sense a human or a trollkin is sentient. Animals function according to instinct or some-such under the Fixed INT rule, and can only understand a few words in terms of their language acquisition. Awakening a herd man was simply removing their Fixed INT status, plus some small physical changes. Awakened herd men are essentially human beings. The fact is, an obstreperous human prisoner of the morokanths can be subject to Alter Creature and become a herd man, and when his friends pay his ransom plus casting fees, he can be changed back to a human being. Herd men "awakened" this way are a bit like feral humans; they likely have few skills and little language (except maybe Understand Beast Speech?), but they now have full sentience and so can learn far more easily. Cosmetically, herd men have large teeth, and it is at the GM's discretion whether the Alter Creature spell changes this.

Surely Ty Kora Tek is more important as a deity of death than Daka Fal in Esrolia/Nochet?

Nochet is a hotbed of Lanbril activity according to what I have read, with multiple competing Lanbril families controlling different districts, and the cult grows as the city grows. They operate very much like the armed night gangs of ancient Rome. No doubt there are other criminal organizations in such a large population, but Nochet is not well organized, and such law as there is will be mercenary warriors paid for by the matriarchs of the noble families, who are unlikely to be impartial arbiters of the law.

I hate to say it, but the Man Rune conspiracy may well mean that Pavis was closer to the latter than the former. It suggests that he was part of an experiment to recreate a person of the primal man-rune incorporating all the Elder man-rune races into one person. The man-rune conspiracy involves the shadowy parents of Pavis, who were allegedly of Godlearner stock hiding out in Adari during the Second Age after the fall of Robcradle. They were hooked into the lost lore of Prax, and were interested in Genert's Garden, and worked to "build-a-brat" Pavis into a Green Age expression of the man rune, from before there were properly defined races. This in turn would open certain ritual opportunities to recreate the Green Age, which sort-of happened when Pavis built his city.

Actually, not really. Why would they need to cure their mother twice? These aren't teenagers with social prospects, they're likely 10 y/o or thereabouts. They need to pool their resources to achieve anything much.

There are places where people never see the Sun such as Far Point where it rains continuously due to the Skyfall Lake weather system (?). There it is Elmal who is the Sun, who is witnessed as the Light in the Hills.

This is a great example of how to teach mythology to kids. A really well produced website. I am also a fan of the sheer ghastliness of the Aztec pantheon regardless. One of the few true horror religions.

It is a staple from my Prax notes. In other words, I made it up. You're right, of course, but that does make Pavis' half-elven status even odder. I mean we all know about the Green Age Man Rune conspiracy of the Godlearners in Prax which produced him, but...

It is fought outside Bagnot, and Harrek manages to kill Jar-Eel, but not permanently.

So... These elves... Do they eat poop? 🤔 I only ask because of their strange behavior after we ate near their camp. They kept following us around with "the shovel" and handfuls of pre-picked leaves of Old Friend (the wiping leaf). Is this the origin of the old Gloranthan saying "never kiss an elf?", and why half-elves are so rare? For the record: Old Friend This is a perennial and fast growing weed of Glorantha, having travelled the world, likely with the God Learners on their ships, if not traded far and wide by Issaries merchants in the First Age. Old Friend has a soft, broad downy leaf that is fibrous and doesn’t tear easily. The down of the leaf is actually its seeds. Old Friend is used for wiping bottoms, and in the process of doing so, its seeds get the nutrients it needs to grow more Old Friend. Old Friend does need more water than is commonly available in Prax, and hence it is mainly found growing at Oases, or the banks of rivers, and seasonal rivers. As a water-rich plant, grazing animals like to eat Old Friend’s succulent leaves, and propagate it in their dung. If picked and allowed to dry, Old Friend can be burned to produce a very smoky fire, which sometimes has signaling value. The down of Old Friend can be scraped and collected in a laborious process that produces a pinch of material per leaf, and can be used to season with a mild taste which has a gentle nutty bittersweet flavor, with hints of pepper, citrus and anise. The leaf itself is safe for humans to consume but has little to no taste, and has very little nutritional value, but has plenty of water content. Praxians are not at all squeamish about eating a plant normally reserved for wiping bottoms, especially if they are thirsty.

I believe there are chaotic Yuan To snake-men native to Kralorela.

I have done this at least 3 times in my life. Step 1. You need to establish trust and understanding with your players and their expectations. You think you need to explain Glorantha to them, but that is impossible, so don't do that. Instead explain that you are going to teach them the game by letting them grow up in Glorantha and learn the game by interacting with the world. Don't be afraid to let them read some source material. Step 2. Raise your players as good Orlanthi. That is... Run some scenarios set in a standard Orlanthi setting, with them as kids initially. Make these adventures easy and childish, but memorable. Then run their initiation into adulthood as a scenario. Then have them run into Lunar trouble in some form. If they are clever they don't get exiled as outlaws. Don't push them into combat stories, or encourage combat. Combat is a product of role-playing context. If there is no good political and contextual reason to get into a fight, then players need to understand that fighting for its own sake isn't desirable. Step 3. There are plenty or resources regarding the views of the various cults, so have them roleplay encounters with the priests of the deities they are interested in. As GM you play the priest and answer the questions they have a la "Staves of the Storm Priest" etc. Step 4. Build a consistent reality with re-occurring NPCs whom the characters can have meaningful interactions with on a regular basis. Players turn into murder hoboes when they don't value NPCs lives. Give them friends and family who are useful and care about them and matter. This will potentially raise the emotional stakes of the game and help the players invest in the story and the causes become motivations in the story. Let the players choose their path, but remind them that they have friends and family who will judge those choices. Yes they can join the Seven Mothers, but their parents may well disown them, for example. Step 5. Set the characters up with the training they need to become decent examples of their cult and society, give them the grounding in the world they need by teaching thru play, and then "chuck them out of the nest". The simplest example of this is having them need to seek safety in New Pavis and begin the adventurer lifestyle there, but as rounded characters with a lived/played back story.

I would not be so absolute on this matter. There is nothing in the Yelm cult that suggests that an initiate of Yelm may have no other cult.