Darius West

Scale is the wrong way of thinking about it perhaps. It physically co-exists in normal space, and dragonewts can fold things in and out of it. This video might help to explain it: Miegakure It is what gave me my "Goddamn, that explains Dragonewts!" moment. Within the Dragon Path (or my imperfect interpretation thereof), everything is measured on its scale of dragon-ness. Chaos is only an immature dragon that has diverged from the proper path. By draconic metrics, human gods like Orlanth are closer to dragon-ness than some dragonewts, and in fact some aspects of chaos can be quite draconic. The great problem with these non-dragonewts is that they are ignorant; they don't know what they know, while even a crested dragonewt understands; it knows what it doesn't know. Clear as mud?😜

We played a lot of RQ back in the day. I doubt I played any of the characters for more than 20 sessions at the absolute max, with the exception of Furius Rumpus, who came in and out of retirement a few times.

I have played a rootless elf thanatari called Thrakis who started an underground temple complex in the Hidden Greens and was eventually wiped out by Yelmalios. A stormbull minotaur called Launch who died in Balazaar after discovering that he had no means of hurting a gorp while berserk. A hunter baboon called Tarki who became chief through rat cunning, as he had terrible stats and was actually a pretty bad hunter. A vivamorti duck called Orluck, who was mainly a joke character and was only played for 3 sessions. A zola fel newtling called Taddy, who was a friend to the children of New Pavis. A trollkin of the black eater who had no name but eventually converted to Chalana Arroy and adopted the name Nun. I have also played a Yanafal Ta'arnils ogre called Furius Rumpus, who resisted the urge to eat people (repeatedly) and rose through the ranks of the Tarsh Provinical Army into the Lunar military proper as an officer, and died at the Dragon Rise.

I think of the Dragonewt rebirth issue like this... The Dragonewts are unlike other species in that they can experience and interact with an extra physical dimension. It isn't a spiritual dimension or shamans and other magical professionals could see it with spells. Their eggs act as the means of enfolding the dragonewt into this dimension so it can dream its body. While in the egg, they literally have to re-dream an entire body. As Dragonewts live, they set about building the body for their next stage of the cycle in their dreams, and it remains in this egg dimension. When they use Dragon magic, they cause part of their body to manifest prematurely, by folding it in from the egg dimension. This then causes that part of the dream to fade away and requires them to have to re-dream everything they just used. Sometimes it is worth it to do so, but dragonewts find dreaming a lot of work, so they don't like to use dragon magic. This is why the Dragonewt Rune looks the way it does. Imagine it like an iceberg (not a dragon's eye), with the dreaming part below the line and the simple triangle (reminiscent of the beast rune, no accident) above the line. The Rune references the egg dream. We see this referenced in Dragonewt architecture, which is built using this egg dimension, which is why the cities seem dimensionally warped to humans, who don't naturally interact with this extra spacial dimension and find it very confusing. Dragonewt architecture incorporates a lot of dragonewt egg shells to allow this to happen. This also goes a long way to explaining Dream dragons. This is likely the result of dragonewts who have become confused by human notions of souls and spirits and think they should have one too, but it becomes an expression of their repressed desires, like an ascetic's repressed desires becoming a demon. Dragonewts need the sacred utuma ritual to sever their spiritual connection to their former bodies by dismembering them. They don't like killing themselves this way, but it is preferable to some outcomes, so they will do it to prevent people making a skin suit out of their hide, and permanently sapping their magic points which would normally be going into dreaming up their next body, and potentially retarding them on the dragon path forever.

This made me smile. Yes, there is a point where things get a bit hair-splitting in some definitions. We are definitely on the same page I think.

I totally agree Eric. I knew a couple of geezers from back then, and they had a wonderfully alien mentality. If their toaster was broken they would pull it apart, and re-weld the element, or make a new spring. The idea of throwing it away never entered their head. One guy machined his own carburetor based on blueprints because the sort he wanted wasn't available in shops. They didn't buy car parts if they could fabricate them in their machine shop. There was an intellectual hierarchy for metalworkers with panel-beaters at the bottom and boilermakers at the top. One of them literally made my first bicycle from parts of other bicycles, but you couldn't have known, because it was all painted an looked pretty great. It only took him a few hours he said. If one of these old guys wanted lockpicks, he would buy or otherwise obtain a few pieces of steel and fabricate them from scratch. I'd say that if a character has access to a machine shop and Mechanical Repair of 40% they can make their own lockpicks for free out of scrap metal.

Look, twenty years into the Hero Wars when the war is a force unto itself and all the machinery of state is dedicated onto sending children into the mincer, I can totally understand why people might want peace but not know how to get it. After the Dragonrise, I think the Lunars are very much on the back foot, but Sartar is out for blood and independence and very much wants war and the Dragonrise is a total boon for their cause. Agreed. Kralorela likes to maintain the appearance of peace, but lets also face facts, ) life is a lot more peaceful in Kralorela than most places(if you aren't guarding the frontier. But that's sort of the point. Kralorela values peace, even if it is a bit of an illusion, and they are prepared to build peace through negotiation in ways those barbaric folk beyond the borders won't. This is a place where diplomacy can work as a driving force for a campaign. The players are working to secure Godunya's peace through just and honorable negotiation, just ignore the fact that their agents have threatened to expose the local yamen's pecadillo for chicken-based bestiality if he doesn't tow the line😁. Yeah, pretty much. I thought those episodes were Torchwood at its absolute best i.e. actually enjoyable, but perhaps I am too harsh given I sat through a good deal of Torchwood prior before giving up in disgust. Of course Glorantha before Death was also Glorantha before Time. Given that Time is space, it is hard to conceive of how things moved in the mythological pre-Time, but we can assume that they sort of did, just in a strange, osmotic, non-sequential acausal fashion. For example it is feasible to go backwards in pre-Time and reverse events, most likely, and I can see God Learners using such mechanics to hack the Hero Plane where those pre-Time rules still somewhat apply. This fullscale rollback isn't quite what I am suggesting. Greg also spoke about the substantial dangers of breaking the great Compromise. Nysalor followers did it in the First Age. Zistor did it in the Second Age. In the Third Age, events at Castle Blue nearly breached the Compromise, and the Death of Orlanth (and Ernalda, let's not forget) cause fresh problems for the Compromise. The notion I was presenting is that the Compromise breaks, and Eurmal and Chalana Arroy conspire to change the world and they succeed. As to getting these consciousnesses of the past age, well Pavis definitely tried to recreate the Green Age in Prax within the area bounded by his city and the Praxians hated his guts for it, despite his healing of Waha. It isn't like the Praxians don't know what the Green Age was like, but trying to live like that in Prax these days won't work. You need to slaughter a portion of your herd to get food. There will always be an advantage to swiping other people's herd. Chaos monsters get very intimate with those who live like it's the Green Age. And ultimately those past times were stultifying and static periods that only the Mostali could love. Despite how great they seem superficially, there is a good reason why those ages ended, and people in 1626 would actually not like those times if forced to live in them. I am put in mind of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's story "The Return of the Old Gods". (spoiler alert) Hopefully you can grasp the parallel I am alluding to here?

Yes, I sympathize. Presently the system amounts to a Manage Household roll, and the assumption is that players aren't interested in micro-managing their estates, and the game is made more boring by such. Personally I find my players are far more motivated to protect their homes and incomes than go adventuring, as a result I often use threats to their political or business interests as scenario motivation.

I strongly agree, and nicely put FDWC. It's a peace that may well be worse than war. On the other hand, consider Eurmal and Chalana Arroy conspiring to create a Mostali paradise🤪😝 ! ! !

RQG could use a more in-depth system for crafting and all forms of economic activity. TBH, I have always tried to insure that my players are combat shy enough to look for "another way" before shrugging, declaring a negotiation "too hard" and opting to fight. I even go so far as to consider how a scenario can be resolved peacefully, so that is always an option for those who do their "due diligence". As Sun Tzu says: "To win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the apex of skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the apex of skill." As a result I often wind up running intrigue heavy games, where information gathering, rumor mongering, disinformation, divide and rule tactics , leveraging, bribery, and other chicanery get employed. Having read over this, it is a good system and I can see how it can be used to good effect. I would suggest that it doesn't adequately accommodate the effect of laying a groundwork of intrigue before the debate occurs, but there is not reason such a system can't be retrofitted to do so. I have developed an espionage system where you can send infiltrators into another faction, and they get a periodic event roll. Sometimes that event is good, and they get a chance to improve their influence or something, and other times they are endangered or threatened with exposure. These infiltrator agents form cells, and can perform missions, generally resolved with a single skill-based die roll, than nominally take a month to lay the groundwork for and a week to complete. You can rush them but they become less effective. Oh, and gods help you if you don't pay your agents. Using this system I had a situation where my Tovtari rebels were using their agents to covertly support the very worst and most militaristic elements of the Princeros called the "firebrands", to the point of sabotaging their Vantaros allies attempts to undermine and destroy the Princeros firebrands, because they knew that the firebrands were doing more to alienate and cause hostility towards Harvar Ironfist than any other faction. They wound up exposing the Vantaros agents and were promoted by Ironfist for doing so, while pushing for Ironfist to follow the stupider firebrand policies while insuring the rebels knew where the blows would fall in advance, and uniting more people in the region against Ironfist in the process. Poor Ironfist soon found that his administration had become riddled with factions, blackmail, foul rumors, corruption, and mismanagement to the point where Ironfist himself needed to start fudging reports to Tatius the Bright. Argrath's arrival was as much of a sigh of relief to Ironfist as to the rebels. Every now and again the players would get their report from their agents, and they became quite engrossed and amused by following their agent's progress and all the twists that occurred.

Yes, this is a pretty good summation of my opinion on this too. I have no problem with a game that subverts expectations, quite the reverse, but I think most people need to be able to suspend disbelief, and for an old school grognard like myself, the idea that all of these inter-avalanching prophecies and cultures will suddenly just give up and opt for peace when Sartar suddenly has a clear advantage for once is not something I can swallow. Maybe people who don't know the setting of Glorantha well yet can cope with it? I think Kralorela would be a much better fit for a peaceful diplomatic campaign than Dragon Pass. Dragon Pass diplomacy circa 1626 is all about "sending ducks to Delecti with a note that says Delecti can have the ducks as zombies if Delecti joins their side" if we look at the wargame. I have run an idea in my head about Eurmal conspiring with Chalana Arroy to stage a coup, and he steals Death again and uses it to kill Humakt, so that now nobody in Glorantha can die. I call it the "Strange Aeon Glorantha" hypothesis. What shape this new immortality takes will have a lot of effect on what sort of societies emerge. This is one of the few ways it is plausible for there to be no more wars, to my way of thinking. I mean, a world where you can dismember people but they stay alive doesn't necessarily invalidate war as a political instrument (plus it could get yucky). For optimal plausibility there would need to be a situation where Chalana Arroy gains universal dominion and basically uses her new infinity rune to heal anything that gets injured instantly and automatically. So if your head falls off, it jumps right back on again at the start of the next round, and nobody dies of old age. Of course this means that the Great Compromise ends with the Dragon Rise for some reason, and all the gods are active participants in the world again, at least for a little while, before they doze off again. In the long term, everybody becomes overpopulated with withered old liches and the world becomes a Hell-scape of desiccated beggars who want to die but can't, using this model. The question of what can be eaten when plants and animals instantly heal their severed parts back on also becomes a serious issue. Thoughts?

Magical assassinations have the extra advantage that someone else may well take the blame for the act. Assassination is not war, it is the removal of a single person by murder. As to Esrolian grandmothers having more affinities, well, really? You get a lot more power through a successful adventure than you do by taking the slow path of sitting in a temple praying all day. The other thing is that sitting in a temple all day leads to a certain systemic and predictable way of thinking that makes you a weaker opponent. Status quo thinking always loses. Having someone default on their debt makes them publically disgraced. Nobody else will want to trade with them as they can't be trusted. And, if they can't be trusted as traders, they can't be trusted as allies. There is no need to use force to destroy an organization that is unable to meet its debts. Debt is quite capable of destroying an empire, let alone a less large and robust aggregation of power. It is absolutely artificial because the natural tendencies of matter don't suddenly stop people from hitting each other. Also, what happens to all the war gods? Do they just STFU all of a sudden? Every time humanity pushes the gods, they wake up and push back, and humanity never wins. What makes you think that a sudden peace craze would be any different? The seeds of every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Also, just because the Lunar Empire and Sartar opt for peace doesn't mean their neighbors do. The Lunars will be ripped apart by the Pentians, the Kingdom of War and every sub-faction within the empire that still thinks war is an option. As for Sartar, well it becomes Praxian or another occupied kingdom of the Westerners. Peace only works if everyone chooses it and that won't happen when there are so many war gods.

Assuming armies of any size are 'off the table', there are still a number of options. For example, most clans are reasonably skilled at laying down curses to destroy the fertility of other people's land, and are able to offer some defense against such attacks. Starvation is a potent weapon, and can lead to the starving people being absorbed into another clan as thralls or cottars. Then there is the trickster option. Imagine a trickster who knows the maxim that the best lies are mainly true. Now imagine a lie spell being used to convince a clan ring to act against their clan's best interests by such a lie. It is distinctly likely that they would never admit they had been duped. This is the art practiced by con artists, wherein they get away with things because the victim doesn't want to lose face publicly by admitting what they got into. It always works better if the victim is implicated in corruption by their actions. There are a number of ways that assassination can be performed entirely by magic, so that isn't ruled out. Theft by stealth remains an option too. There are a number of position plays that can be used by a cartel to surround and cut off some groups in a "go" (Chinese game) fashion in order to subordinate them. Obviously getting people into trade debts can become a powerful form of leverage. On the other hand, the most likely response is not what you think. When people have their liberty curtailed they want to know why. The heroes of the world will inevitably hero quest to demolish the artificial peace. There are simply too many skeins of fate coming to a knot during the Hero Wars to be cut off. The first group who figures out how to end the peace will have a huge advantage and will rapidly wipe the floor with the other side for quite a while. That advantage alone makes it super-attractive; the war mongers are inevitably going to win this situation, it is only a question of when.

That sounds familiar and it would make sense.

Unlikely that this would occur given that Belintar likely ended up in a Lunar Hell, at least until he escaped and was reborn as Harshax.

Adoption rituals historically are quite interesting. Often it would involve a symbolic birthing ritual during which the adoptee would be passed between their new mother's legs. The Blood Oath (Sharing of blood though a cut between two sworn friends to make them 'blood brothers") can be seen as a form of adoption ritual. I would imagine that in Glorantha if a clan wants to adopt an outsider it would involve a ceremony wherein the outsider is introduced to the clan's Ancestor ghosts, possibly by them sitting an overnight vigil in the graveyard. Of course they would not be alone, and would likely have a Humakti and a Grandfather Mortal priest watching over them so the ancestors don't decide to snack on the newcomer's spirit. They may need to give up a point of POW to form a connection to the clan's ancestors and wyter.

Does anyone know if there any culture that performs hangings? IRL history it was (and in some places remains) a preferred method for mass executions because rope is cheap, and trees are plentiful. The literature implies that if someone is due an execution in Orlanthi lands that a weaponthane basically just runs them through. No decapitations, just a stab through the opening in the clavicle and into the heart with a straight blade, most likely. I would personally not want to execute a Malia worshipper this way, as it involves close physical proximity. Better to send them to a fire.

In Glorantha, the death penalty is largely ubiquitous for any number of crimes across all major cultures. Non-Lunar citizens who perform capital crimes against the Lunar Empire are likely to face crucifixion i.e. they are nailed to a wooden death rune, which denies them the possibility of resurrection. I believe I have read about criminals being buried alive in Esrolia. What else do we know about public executions as practiced in various Gloranthan societies?

If a troll shaved his whole face every day I am sure he would wind up looking like a bear eventually due to the thickening of follicles caused by repeated cutting. I had a boss who used to shave the tip of his nose every day for good luck. It grew stubble. Would not recommend it.

The magical ecosystem isn't the problem, its the lack of explanation. If you have access to the pile of documents required to piece the info together, you can make sense of it, but have a care for new GMs.

The Light in the Hills suggests the answer is no.

Strangely enough I was asking myself the same question earlier in the week for an unrelated reason. The Stafford Library Book of Heortling Mythology is a good source. There are a few stories. Umath and Asrelia (tragic), Durev and Orane, Velhara and Ironhoof, Arim the Pauper and Sorana Tor, Yinkin and Tarhelera, Orlanth and Nira Bistosdotter, Niskis and Tarhelera, Vinga and Parties unknown, Heort and Ivarne, Orlanth and Enferalda, and Ernalda's Other Husbands. The Yelmish pantheon doesn't seem to deal in love stories, but the Lunars have a few, such as Takanegi and Felkenna, Hon-Eel and Pyeemsab, and Jar-eel and Beat-Pot.

Regarding the crested dragonewts, they are completely asexual, and have no idea that the rat is awkwardly positioned, as they could barely figure out how to tie it in place in the first place after they caught it. They also haven't figured out what food is. They will throw their sticks haphazardly in the direction of a threat and flee.

If you want to be a bit lazy, you can have them hide on the side of a road somewhere, and then roll random encounters. You can prepare them in advance so that nothing too game-breaking occurs. A good deal of fun involves giving the different characters in a bandit ambushed party names, histories and specific personal motives that will affect their reactions to being robbed. The players may become quite circumspect about who they try to rob after a while. For example: -A troupe of baboons in ill-fitting and likely looted pieces of lunar army surplus, come down the road screeching at each other. The screeching is growing more intense and they start pelting each other with their own turds. Beastspeech speakers will discover that they ae abusing each other for getting lost, and they have no idea where they are. -7 Mostali wander down the road, (perhaps from Delecti's Ruins?) carting the body of a human girl in a glass coffin. The party is not overly armed or armored and their destination is unclear. - A party of 2 dark trolls and 10 trollkin wander the road at night. They have a number of pack beetles and bear Argan Argar runes, and seem to be in a hurry. The party is decently well equipped with weapons and armor. -A party of 4 young grazelander boys, lightly armed and armored. Each has a horse and a remount. They are travelling very fast. -Here comes a frikkin' walktapus. It is wearing a wooden barrel to hide its nakedness apparently. -A herd of fallow deer cross the road. -A group of uncomfortable looking men with darkish skin and obsidian tipped spears, come along, they are all shivering under blankets they are wearing, and curse the weather in heavily accented Esrolian. -A fat faced merchant girl on a mule cart with 10 fyrd level guards and a fellow with some iron in his armor mix. They are leading a huge black bull behind them. -An extremely sour looking bearded fellow in good bronze armor comes down the road. He is pushing what seems to be a baby cart. -A mixed rune party of 4 including a Chalana Arroy, an Uroxi, a Yelmalion, and an Orlanthi. They are wary and leading their horses. They are also well armed. -A group of very emaciated looking crested dragonewts armed with pointed sticks. One of them seems to be wearing a live rat as a codpiece. -A Lunar regiment is coming down the road. They are peltasts, and there are about 300 of them. -A surreptitious Aldryami scoots across the road with a stolen sack on his shoulder (it contains manure).

I imagine you use it in scythe-like swinging attacks from the side. (That's the way I use my rhomphaia in Bannerlord and it is a phenomenal weapon in that role. Straight up Crimson Bat level carnage. "So choice". ☺️)