Alex

"Not most", "60-70%", or "nearly every adult" -- Our Glorantha Has Rarely Been So Varied! But the Q&A disposes of that last (albeit rather generously to their own frankly poor wording -- initiated non-initiates? -- and rather unkindly to the hapless reader). The first two are actually rather compatible, if you apply the reading I suggested earlier: Sartar is noticeably initiatier than average. So the "not most" is lozengeally true in general, but the "60-70%" is true specifically for "hardcore Orlanthi" types.

Same thing, I believe. 'Vingan' is just a shorthand for 'female OA initiate', or in some cases (critical mass of such types, or a cultically important site, etc) a particular form of the cult. Local terminology and customs may vary, but in magical terms they get 'full recip'. Gets a little fuzzier for the Thunderous and Rex aspects, but Vinga is the route-in in those cases too, to whatever degree it actually occurs.

I think "Orlanthi all" are, at any rate. Adulthood and cultic initiation are parts of the same process, so you're a community member in good standing, you became one a couple of years after puberty for women(-path people), somewhat later for men(-path people). If you're not, you're the social equivalent of a child, stranger, weirdo, or combination thereof. Sartar might be just about Peak Initiate. Lots of the rest of the world isn't theistic at all. Or is more of a mix, pushing the numbers down immediately (unless we're juking the stats by working out what initiate-equivalent is in other money). Even their former homelands like Heortland, things are a little less old-school, due to varying amounts of Western influence. In the Lunar Empire, and I think even more especially in its subject and precursor cultures, initiation per se isn't such a common thing, and theism is less of a mystery religion/personal emulation thing, and is more of a sacrificial/collective worship thing. So if your local problem were 'large outbreak of undead', rather than having many villagers tool up individually with rune magic, the whole village engages in a common magical effort to solve the problem. Though I'm not sure if any ruleset really captures that distinction, even if it still is (or ever was!) officially part of the world. Headcanon for me, though. Lots of initiates might be minimally committed, of course. Or indeed 'behind in their dues', in either time or income commitment. But some of each is in effect "deducted at source" -- if you're a bog-standard Orlanthi female/male-path person, your Ernalda/Orlanth cult responsibilities and your occupational and social ones are distinguished at best fuzzily, and often not at all.

Or more of their initiates would be Humakti, at any rate. But most people in the Heartlands who are initiates, aren't initiates of Lunar cults as such anyway. Or are of cults that are Lunar just in the sense that they're seen as 'healed' -- you don't need to become or even attempt to become Illuminated to join Etyries, say. But most people in will still belong to (to whatever degree) a 'local culture' religion, rather than the Imperial overlay one -- the Solar pantheon, and so on. Though I suspect levels of initiation are lower for other reasons.

I guess that all depends on what you deem to be "abuse". (Or where you set the "badly" threshold.) I think at the very least there's the critique -- or what passes as critique in such circles -- of the type you see with Theravada vs Mahayana (if you look at it from the PoV of some of the "purer" Vithelan traditions, most notably). Kralori 'mysticism' evidently takes a much more compatibilist approach to things like other forms of magic (or mashups or combos thereof), and most glaringly of all, of the whole 'being mystics and an empire at the same time' thing. I think in practice there's almost two orthogonal axes at work. There's whether a practice is 'pure' mysticism, 'immanent' mysticism, or not obviously mysticism at all; and there's whether it's seen as Skillful Means of the bringing about Cosmic Draconic Realization by way of a Civilisation-in-Being strategy, as neither here nor there, or as to be strongly opposed as detrimental to that purpose. So some practices that seem suspiciously like bog-standard animism, theism, and sorcery, are deemed to be 'Draconic'; some practices that are overtly mystical, in magical terms or otherwise, are denounced as 'Undraconic'. Then you get muddled-up people like the PoIM who're sort of in the middle in both respects.

Welllll, it certainly had its own army and navy, at any rate! Likely not air force, admittedly, unless we go for an especially Clash of the Titans take on those wars... which given the forum we're in, obviously we very much should.

For about 3s I thought "most of those are Turkic languages, how hard can that be?!" before I looked up just how many different branches of Turkic were involved. Occasionally I imagine people applying the something like the RQ language-tree to real life... "Kurdish, huh? Well, that's an Indo-European language, I speak one of those, I should totally get 1/5 my skill or so!"

If Cat Scratchings are a semi-syllabary or some such, they might leave them in the position of "I can say this stuff, George, but you can't understand it!" Though written communication might conventionally be in a sort of Classical Theyalan, with the spoken languages more diverged in their actual realizations.

How very Augustinian of them! "O Deity, make my one with thy Infinite Majesty... but not just yet, we have the temple social tomorrow, and the big ceremony next week." Very much depends what manifestation of Chaos you ask... I think that's probably of limited practical use. While I dislike the idea that every sort of mysticism 'is' the same thing as Illumination, I'm not sure if the magical manifestations of mysticism are drastically incompatible with how that's cast in rules terms. Maybe in the form of sub-illumination-like disciplines allowing the likes of martial artists, physical adepts, and such like, to use mashups of the familiars forms of magic in externally unfamiliar but internally somewhat standardised ways.

Eternal Battle is the universal quantifier! That certainly makes sense. ∀t ∈ time . ∀ ︎c ∈ chaos . hate (t, c)

I have a vague memory of TotRM touching on this in some its 'Lunar regiments' material, if that's of any use to use. (And I can see where it might not be, given the vagueness and the antique source.) I think the gist of it was that Polestar was the Old Order cult of choice for being a staff officer type, but tending to be displaced in that role (and others) by YT in newer formations.

I think this is a good application of the Follow Chosen Sources mythlet! Pick the sources you like (whether generally or in the particular case) and go with the "obvious compromise" between them.

Somehow making things more ordered seems like a misuse of the term 'Gregging'!

It's above the gods' pay grade! But travel to the void might readily do either of those things. Or much else besides. Whether you see it as a high cosmic mystery of a seething morass of raw entropy, going there is beyond the difficulty of any 'ordinary' heroquest, and correspondingly the results could be broader, deeper, and more drastic. Mainly the latter if you get it wrong. Being above the Sky Dome 'merely' puts you into the theistic Solar otherworld. Beyond that you'd reach the Aether, which you might see as a High God or fundamental rune sort of level of being, if like you me you have fond memories of the (admittedly ridiculous) cosmic scale of target numbers from the HW era. The void/chaos is way beyond that too. But many Gloranthan cultures and belief systems would see the too as the same, or at least inherently related. For the theistic conservatives, because they see 'mystical' malarky as deeply dangerous in essentially the same way as chaos is -- it'll not just kill ya, it'll destroy you utterly on a spiritual level too. And indeed, destroy the universe if you don't keep a close eye on. And conversely for the mystics -- or at least prominent examples thereof -- they see the manifest forms of chaos differently from the 'kill it with lightning bolts!' squad. The dragons are an interesting case. Clearly even hardcore traditionalist Orlanthi see Dragon and Chaos are distinct -- but both being so fearful that the distinction is almost moot. That gets more complex still when the Dragonfriend craic starts happening all over again, of course. "It's a safe and renewable source of limited mystical understanding!" "Sounds like what got us all killed last time, but we're desperate enough to give it a try." For me, the outer chaos is the source of creation of the world-as-is. The Chaosium is the ultimate source of creation within the world. Turns out a lot of creation ends up being bad -- whodathunk.

I've some sympathy for this view, but I suspect it's more usefully gamified as as 'snark freely available from Kralori and East Isles sources' than as inferior magical powers manifest in the one as in the other. (Which isn't to say I think that these are all equivalently the same 'Illumination' as such. (Which isn't to say that I don't think Chaosium may well think they are.))

I feel much the same. Not merely out of sentiment and stubbornness, as because that habit's going to be mighty hard to unlearn after those neurons firing in that manner for all these years now... Perhaps much as, post-Hollow Crown and gags on Pointless I've started to think of Richard II and Henry V as Henry IV, Parts 0 and 3 respectively I can do the same with Hero Wars and QuestWorlds...

I've accomplished this feat in the form of Maharaja and Maharaja. In the same order from a since-defunct US boardgames company. Their demise I'm sure not directly related to their mistakenly shipping it to "IR(an)" rather than "IR(e)L(and)" and them not arriving for nine months... Can recommend the former; the second was once described with cruel accuracy as the world's first 3 1/2 player boardgame.

§5.6 Extended vs Scored Contests vs Chained Contests: Should read "see §2.6.2"

I think that's definitely possible. At least in the post hoc sense: do ritual, have several Dark Troll children consecutively, retire from the field victorious. Was it an entirely successful HQ? Just getting entirely lucky on the Big Random Table Beloved to Gamers? Bit of both? Not readily distinguishable in practice.

That'd be sequential hermaphrodism, then (a la many species of fish), rather than simultaneous (divers gastropods, most notoriously). Or gender- and sex-fluidity at John Varley tech levels, if you will.

Too lazy to look up the full list right now, but most forms aren't about either party being "subordinate", they're just tidying up the contractual details concerning the prospective kiddiwinks, and any property involved. If the woman is a hardcore active Vingan, then the patrilineal, patrilocal form might suit them rather well. "OK, I've done the 'hard labour', it's over to you and his 'aunties', pops! Back at the end of the currently prevailing emergency conditions. Bye-ee!" If they're less active as Vingans -- taking a break from taking a break from the traditional female/Earth path, as it were -- matters might be a little different. Taking us back to "treat as entirely normal marriage", really.

Sounds spectacular! Was this at a con, and were the players hardened Gloranfans, newbies, or scattered across that spectrum?

There's couple of differences in that Elmal is, on the one hand as pointed out earlier, a minority clan leadership cult, and on the other, pressed into the role of a ritual enemy, when an Evil Emperor surrogate is required. Those are likely to conspire to create a sense of grievance that, say, Humakt worshippers wouldn't experience. I greatly enjoyed Jeff's piece on the clear objective superiority of Yelmalio over Elmal. I was almost waiting for the companion piece from the Elmali POV! I'll be a little disappointed if "official Elmal" just makes him straightforwardly worse, rather than "yes, I can see the magical, mythic, and political motivation for why most of them switched -- and why some of them didn't". Some of the more overtly "low" fire powers ascribed to Elmali might be a bit much. But shouldn't Elmal have at least some more overtly "sun" magic than Yelmalio? Given the latter's status as "no madam, we don't have a sun god, but we do have something similar" cult.

Over and above standard "YGWV" disclaimers, "outdated" is especially relative here. The Lunar material has been through several iterations, each contradicting as much as it adds, and sometimes appearing to row back in the original direction. So who knows, the new old might be the old new. I'd advise just using what you find best, and drifting it in whatever direction appeals... With regard to the 7M version of the cult and the full/Heartland one, my intuition would be that the Humakt-like angle is greatest in the former, for the very reason of presenting a compatible face to converts. The worship elsewhere will resemble Humakt less, whether or not they're truly related at any deep level. Having said which, somewhat like Humakt but moving in the direction of 'soldier' and 'officer' (and by implication, somewhat away from 'solo killing machine') isn't a terrible starting point, either, absent much in the way of definitive detail otherwise.

Apparently Chrome*OS* is more vexatious still, though. But I should be able to run something via crouton/Ubuntu, or if all else fails, find a Steampunk relic from a bygone age that should be able to run it.