Darius West

On 2/11/2020 at 7:52 AM, YetAnotherArkat said:

Hello,

The Glorantha Wiki talks about Obduran and how he taught his followers to awaken Orlanth's Inner Dragon (Arangorf). Evidently Alakoring killed Arangorf and freed Orlanth. So I have two questions:

1. Anyone have insights into the origins of Arangorf and the relationship between Orlanth and dragons? (outside of History of the Heortling Peoples)

2. If Alakoring put an end to Draconic Orlanth, what's with Argrath and his draconic insights?

When Orlanth left his initiation among the hostile deities who called themselves his uncles, he was told a final mystery "There is a Dragon who follows you".  This bugged Orlanth, and he became a dragon slayer.  In time however he eventually came to listen to the Dragons, and learned their path.

This mystery went quiescent until the Second Age when a trickster in Dragon Pass discovered the way to learn Dragonewt Magic, via the dangerous split brain split tongue surgery.  This opened a large new military opportunity for Dragon Pass and began the EWF.

In terms of what the mystery is, the Dragonewts have their own take on Glorantha that is founded in the 4th magical path, and the only one for which we have precious little magic system, namely Mysticism.

Much the way the Mostali see Glorantha as a big machine, the Dragonewts see all living things in Glorantha as Dragonewts who have left the path and become heretics (not that Dragonewts are much into punishing heretics; they do that to themselves via stupid rebirths).  The Dragonewts believe that everyone has the ability to follow their path and become a True Dragon, but their path often seems extremely weird to non-Dragonewts because Dragonewts don't live, reproduce, and die the way normal beings do.  The Gods themselves are actually a long way upon the Dragon Path, and would find it easy to become Dragons, but they are lost in 'heresy' so they remain static pseudo-reflections of humanity, which is more demeaning to them than the Gods themselves would be prepared to accept.

Arangorf became the expression of Orlanth the Dragon.  He taught Orlanth Draconic Illumination and allowed him access to Dragon Magic.  Alakoring killed Arangorf using Orlanth's manifestation as Dragonslayer, which was actually (surprise surprise) a form of the Sacred Utuma Ritual, which speeds Dragons on to a safe rebirth without ties to their former body.  Alakoring rejected the Arangorf mysteries and his cult helped purge and extinguish the EWF and surviving adherents to Orlanth's Draconic Path.

That was all a long time ago now.  Argrath doesn't see things the way Alakoring and his people did, and instead sees the possibility of marching dinosaur armies over the Lunar Empire like in the good ol' days of the EWF.  Argrath knows Orlaront Dragonfriend, the notable "terrorist" behind the Dragonrise.  Argrath sees immense military opportunity in gaining the Dragonewts as allies, and dinosaurs as support troops (but perhaps not trying to turn the Rockwoods into Mega-Dragon this time), much like in the EWF.  What this means for the Orlanthi is a renaissance of Draconic mysticism within the Sartar Magical Alliance, with Argrath's usual magical/mystical pragmatism and Godlearnerism to create power gaming synergies not seen since the Second Age.

20 hours ago, Agentorange said:

Etyries is stated as being a daughter of issaries and that she became curious about the Red Goddess went off to find her and ended up being the Lunar Empires premier Goddess of trade.

Etyries was a minor deity who was a counter of pots and beans, and was a sub-cult of Issaries back in the day.  In essence Etyries was a goddess of the Market Stall, but not a long distance trader deity like her father.  The Lunars changed that.

There are quite a few Necronomicons out there these days.  Most derive in part from the Simon Necronomicon. Sadly it just doesn't live up to the hype.

On 1/30/2022 at 8:03 AM, Bren said:

It's more reasonable if an experienced chariot warrior is better at fighting from a chariot than an inexperienced warrior. I don't think this requires a separate skill for Ride (as opposed to Drive) chariot. Also, I can see an argument for the charioteer's Drive skill being more crucial than the Drive skill of the passenger/warrior. 

So what I'm going to do is to limit the passenger's attacks and parries to the lowest:

1. The passenger's weapon skill
2. The charioteer's Drive skill
3. The average of the Drive skills of the charioteer and the passenger

This prioritizes the Drive skill of the charioteer, while making the Drive skill of the passenger matter, but it is of lesser importance.

Thoughts?

I draw your attention to pages 213-214 of RQG; specifically 'shooting at moving targets' and 'shooting while moving'.  The present rules for chariots only cover the "shooting while moving" portion of that, and remember also that the charioteer is subject to the Obstacles Table on page 221 that will penalize their skill, and thus also penalize their passenger's ability to fight from chariots.  All-in-all, I think the rules are pretty great in this respect.

17 hours ago, Orlanthatemyhamster said:

How does it assist in divination? 

If you want a "cheap and nasty" fix to this question, consider the following option, which is something I do when someone has a skill that would be immensely helpful in "buffing" another skill in a given situation...

In the case of Divination, the base chance for a correct reading is casters POWx5.  To use Celestial Lore in this situation, treat it as a passion roll that will buff the base chance, but make this a cult secret known only to Buserian worshippers.  This makes Buserian worshippers pretty amazing at divination, which seems perfectly reasonable to me.

On 1/31/2022 at 8:08 PM, polemikus said:

Hi All!

I am a new RQ GM and we started off with the Starter Set and played some Apple Lane Stuff from the GM Pack. The players got into a fight and we had Vishi Dunn with us. During the fight, his player asked me: "What can I do with him in combat... you know... as a Shaman?" 

Vishi isn't a shaman, he's an apprentice shaman.  His spell load-out is all-but entirely devoted to dealing with spirits.  Spells like Axis Mundi and Discorporate will be immensely helpful in contacting and dealing with spirits, but they are hour-long rituals.  Vishi will be of great value on occasions when the party is attacked by spirits.  On other occasions he is very helpful because of his dagger-axe.

I happen to really like Vishi as a character, but he often seems a bit weak.  He would benefit from better armor and a more versatile list of spells.  At the moment he is a very vulnerable glass cannon, in that he can slam with a dagger-axe, or charge for murder-damage on his llama, and is pretty good with spirits, but is basically running around naked in armor-terms and with only 1pt of Healing is going to go down and stay down for what other characters would consider 'tickle damage'.

On 1/28/2022 at 2:37 PM, Storm Khan said:

So, I have an initiate NPC that renounces her cult membership in The Seven Mothers.

I was thinking of having a small demon come after her; if the party takes her under their wing, it would be a decent encounter.

On the other hand, something I have read LONG ago is scratching away, suggesting that a spirit of reprisal shouldn't have claw at 50% with 2d6 damage: Too much.

Opinions are appreciated.

Because the Seven Mothers is an illuminated sect, they don't go in for spirits of retribution.  Instead the initiate remains permanently linked to the Lunar Cycle.

Now if you want to persecute a Lunar character, why go for some pathetic scratchy little critter they will kill with one encounter?  Send in a Tax Demon to audit them, starting with any backlog of undeclared treasure that should have been part of their 10% tithe.  A scratchy little nuisance is not memorable, but a tax audit is terrifying.

3 minutes ago, Martin Dick said:

It does mean of course that the GM has to be willing to provide opportunities to use all of your skills on a regular basis and not just your combat skills.

But for games that want to be a bit looser, it can be fun to relax that. In the L5R campaign I run, I let players use their XP at anytime to raise any skill. All samurai are masters of riding you see, so it's perfectly natural, if all of a sudden, Mirumoto Sukune can ride. It's in tune with the manga/Hong Kong Action theatre style of story.

Perhaps, but then how do you mitigate the fellow who only ploughs XP into his primary weapon, even in situations where he didn't use it (which decrease exponentially as when the only tool you have is a hammer, everything increasingly looks like a nail)?

On 1/31/2022 at 11:13 AM, jajagappa said:

Note: Refuge is not Sanctuary and certainly won't be presented as such in Chaosium materials. (Nor can it in Jonstown Compendium materials.)

3 hours ago, Cassius said:

I don't understand this last sentence.

In answer, there was a supplement called Thieves World based on a fantasy anthology written in the 1980s around a city called Sanctuary.  Refuge, the city in in the Heortlands was specifically mentioned as the place that could stand in for Sanctuary.

Anyone who can shed light on Iffinbix will get my vote.

23 hours ago, Martin Dick said:

Well, they are more effort than the tick system, which is one of the advantages of them. And the D&D method of gaining experience points by killing monsters is a relic, I agree, but it is far from the only way of using them, e.g. DragonQuest, where the XP awarded is based on time played or even the milestone method option in 5e D&D.

Or it could be based on specifically increasing only the skills the character actually used during the scenarios the character has been involved in.

On 12/26/2021 at 6:50 PM, ColoradoCthulhu said:

 

Chapter 2 - Look to the Future

There was no possible confrontation with Lostalus Black, Carl Stanford, or the others during our playthrough of this chapter. The investigators almost immediately sought to break into the Brick Annex and then the Meeting Hall bunker the same evening after a disguised investigator attended one of the weekday "Look to the Future" meetings.

When I was last a CoC Keeper I had fun with the "Look to the Future" organization.  Amongst other things there was a showing of a glimpse of the future in the form of a documentary called Star Wars, which told the story of plucky Americans fighting against the British Empire in space.  It went over quite well given the failure of Wilsonian diplomacy during the Versailles negotiations, and the threat of increased global imperialism.  The Death Star was obviously a reference to what would happen if naval and related military technologies were allowed to proliferate without civilized checks.  I made all the characters take a 1d4 SAN loss for seeing the movie, because I remember what it was like in 1977 when it hit the screen, and I can barely imagine what it would have been like to see a color and sound movie of this type in 1921 (when I set the scenario).  The characters came out of the "special viewing" entertained, but shaken to their cores by what they had just witnessed, and desperately wanting to see it again to confirm that they hadn't somehow dreamed the whole thing.  Obviously this clued the players in to the notion that there was some sort of time travel involved, but gave them the opportunity to roleplay a very strange situation and they loved it.  Suffice to say that Look to the Future also made money from various souvenirs of the movie they referred to as "merchandise" for some reason.

On 1/29/2022 at 7:30 AM, Orlanthatemyhamster said:

Bit of a blow out then? 😉

Thanks for the info. 

The death of Vadrus might be considered a bit of a blessing in many ways.  Thanks Chaos. 😈

It is worth pointing out that Sartar himself was likely a Larnsting mystic, dedicated to the magical principle of Change and movement.  He never killed anyone, but he did turn them into "unflattering" things.  Larnstings generally keep to themselves, but periodically one may mobilize to counter a particular problem, but historically they have protected the Heortlings by interfering with their politics when things were getting out of hand, and often at the turning of an age.

On 1/26/2022 at 6:52 AM, AlHazred said:

 Like, the dwarves don't look like short humans but they might at least be "humanoid" with two arms and two legs. But my impression (possibly derived incorrectly!) rereading the old Wyrm's Footnotes and other old material was that True Mostali might be completely alien in form. A Sartarite would at least picture Vingkot in human form on a piece of art.

The present batch of clay dwarves were manufactured incorporating the self-replicating and self-healing technology.  They are made en-masse as cheap and disposable components for the war machine to counter the various elements of Glorantha's mechanism that are presently out of control.  They are built primarily with the purpose of emergency maintenance in mind and are created for subterranean operations.  Once the emergency is over, the Mostali will return to creating Mostali of the older models according to the old plans, with modifications and redundant fail-safes to help overcome previous errors those units encountered that led to the present emergency.

"The origin of the ducks of Genertela is a mystery to outsiders. They claim to have once been the rulers of the world until their own sins and errors forced them into subservience to lesser races (elves, trolls, etc.) and, later, to humans. Others tell of them as an avian folk who forswore their allegiance to Yelm to follow Orlanth and were denied the sky as punishment."

Perhaps this is why the Spike needed to be destroyed?  I personally would like to thank the forces of Chaos if this is the case...

On 1/29/2022 at 11:54 PM, kr0p0s said:

 

• Would these temples have their own (lesser) radii, as the Temples of the Reaching Moon do?
• Would the influence of Orlanth be lessened as a result and the local population lean more toward other Lightbringers, Ernalda and local gods? 
• Would there be penalties for worship, POW gain, Heroquesting or Rune Inspiration outside the range the magical geography of a god?

What would the magical geography map for other gods look like? Would Ernalda be contactable more widely that Orlanth and The Red Goddess, except in areas of blight and chaos? Is it possible that we will see some further maps in GoG when it comes out?

In answer to your questions, imo:

1st Question.

The Temple of the Reaching Moon is a form of magical technology that extends a certain amount of Lunar magic for Lunar initiates to call upon beyond that which their cyclical magic would provide.  We know it is just a form of magical technology because they are retro-engineered into Temples of the Reaching Storm later in the Hero Wars. Other temples don't work that way at all because they aren't tied to lunar cyclical magic and don't need that artificial boost.  Yes, temples are created via a sanctification of a space in the name of a specific god or pantheon, but that is where the similarity with the Glowline ends.  I would also point out that the Glowline doesn't represent a sanctified area, as non-Lunars who are killed within its borders can still use Divine Intervention, whereas if you were within the temple of a hostile god, that wouldn't be the case.

2nd Question.

The influence of Gods is proportional to their propitiation.  The more worshippers there are of a specific god, the more power that god has in Glorantha in general and in a specific region in particular.  I draw your attention to RQG page 284.  The number of worshippers determine the scale of the temple and the size of the blessing that can be obtained.  Worship amounts to the people saying "Hey you big wonderful anthropomorphized cosmic principle, remember us?  We formed a metaphysical connection with you a while ago, well, we have been mainly faithful to your preferences, and now we have made you a marvelous magical POW sandwich and in return we would like you to lend us your specific abilities as per our mutual agreement.  We hope this meets with your approval."  The bigger the "sandwich", the bigger the return.

3rd Question.

Yes.  Absolutely.  If you are in an area unknown to your god, you might also be "lost in the Hero Plane".

There is an interesting parallel to be made with how most cultures (as diverse as Norse and Koories) deal with the sacredness of land that likely applies to Glorantha as well, as it seems to be an integral part of Glorantha too.  Deities moved across the world, and interacted with it, altering the world and creating the landscape.  Moderns like ourselves look at a mountain and see interesting geomorphology.  A Norseman literally sees the grave of a giant.  Strange features on the mountain will be interpreted in light of the death of the giant.

Within Glorantha, one of the most difficult things to understand is what Glorantha was like Before Time.  Time is a recent thing. It may actually signal the slow motion death of the world through Entropy.  Perhaps time was cyclical before?  Perhaps not.  What we can say however is that Gods moved on the face of the world and altered it, and where they performed their deeds became forever linked to them.  The world back then had no Time, but it had Space, and the stories of the Gods play out across that territory.  Does it have a chronological order?  Sort of.  For example, we know most gods have a notional birth and childhood, which would seem impossible to us without Time, but can be understood within Space instead.

4th Question.

You ask about magical geography and what those maps would look like. Actually we already largely have those maps, because the gods have power where they are worshipped, with the exceptions of those lands that have sunk or been destroyed, such as the Spike.  Think about all the Yelmish hero quests that are no longer possible because the Spike no longer exists.  Destroy the land, change the story.

5th Question.

Is Ernalda more widely contactable than Orlanth or the RMG?  Let me put it this way.  If an Orlanthi is able to breathe, they are in connection to their god, and their god is within them in their lungs.  On the other hand, does that mean that an Ernaldan cannot use her magic because she doesn't have her feet on the Earth?  Of course not.  What is important is not contact with one's deity's element, but initiation and the size of the channel one creates when you sacrifice POW to your deity.

13 hours ago, Martin Dick said:

That's fine, still having lots of fun, but I prefer more control over my character's destiny which is why I like XP systems despite their extra effort.

XP systems aren't extra effort imo.  What they are is a relic of D&D.  You go to the page and chalk off the monster XP at the end of the scenario.  Then you go up a level, just like in real life. 😉

On 1/24/2022 at 6:11 AM, soltakss said:

I prefer targeted XP, where I give out a number of XP, normally 1DN+N, (N=3,4,6,8,10) and the Players allocate them to any skills, whether they used them or not.

 

I actually don't like XP systems at all and think box-ticking is a lot better.  This is because XP allotment means that players can consistently and reliably dump their XP straight into the skills they need to make Rune Lord, which means that they can reliably know when they will be eligible.  You want a Greatsword skill of 200%+?  Just keep spending points into it, amirite? 

The charm of the box tick system is that you really have to work for your advancement, and you might wind up with a skill you never intended to be good at advancing far faster than expected.  For example, I have seen a player in RQ2 keep making the advancement rolls to get themselves the much coveted mastery of Defense (the dodge you have when your game has no dodge skill) making him an aikido master who now had the ability to train people in Defense.  Another player wound up with the unlikely home-brew skill of Dwarf Wrapping (base 15%)at 50% (when you have ample bandages, cloth, glue and paper, but no rope, and have taken mostali prisoners again).  I personally have a disturbing knack for rolling crits and ups with crossbows  to the point where I as a GM don't create encounters involving antagonists using xbows out of sheer "superstitious" dread of unintended  TPKs.  I really enjoy how these sort of odd things crop up using only the box-tick system, as it adds to the memorability of the characters.  

I am pleased to hear about Glorantha Skirmish wars.  If RQG is heading into the Hero Wars that sort of supplement becomes increasingly necessary.

2 minutes ago, HreshtIronBorne said:

This depends on how paranoid you are about fumbling.

There is a saying I once heard from a very wise man on this very issue. It went something like "git gud scrub" 😀

Someone had to...

On 1/19/2022 at 4:00 PM, Morien said:

This is hella strong, especially compared to other 'standard' solos in KAP 5.2. Just letting you know.

Yeah, I agree Morien, it's a bit too convenient.  Perhaps it needs to be randomized?

23 hours ago, Rodney Dangerduck said:

Shooting Blade Venom coated Arbalest bolts, from surprise (in order to have time to apply the blade venom) and then letting others cover her while she reloaded said arbalest?  Very very brave.

Very very smart actually.  AFAIK she did hand to hand as well, but if you own and arbalest, you should use it.  Nobody who enters Snakepipe Hollow is a coward imo.  Also I'm pretty sure that you can coat up your blade venom before going in.  I don't think it is so volatile that it has to be used on the spot.

On 1/26/2022 at 6:45 AM, Soccercalle said:

Queen Leika has Broadsword 105 at the age of 37. That seems very low.

It memory serves, back in the day Queen Leika's sword-name was "Leika Ballista" because she carried an arbalest (3d6+1 Damage) and became super-proficient with it.  Stack some blade venom on it and it was a damn near unstoppable combo.  For extra spice add multimissile.  Leika wasn't cowardly and it was no mistake about her having a low sword skill, because until she became a queen most of her fights were ended by decisive crossbow bolts in the opening rounds.  She used to have a crossbow skill well in excess of 120%.  If her outrageous crossbow skill didn't make it into the present stats, it is likely because she has had to put her crossbow away and be a more respectable Vingan matron, and odd mostali weapons are just not on.