Rob Darvall

Crocodile Broo?

Perhaps The Baths require checks on Highest Rune and then Truth AND Death, Movement AND Stasis, and Harmony (hence Satar the man?). They're meant to be nearly impossible. Of course ritual preparation and community support can boost these making a sort of pseudo temporary illumination. This also could allow a path for party play, your Humakti gets to sub in for the Death check etc.

He mentions them as either contrast or support for his point, along with equivalent native american bear-hunting rituals.

I'm finding some great insights into hunting generally, and bear hunts particularly, in this. It's also helping me understand the Kalevala. The Forestland’s Guests Mythical Landscapes, Personhood, and Gender in the Finno-Karelian Bear Ceremonialism Vesa Matteo Piludu It's a PHD paper on Academia (free) so things like the lit review are very dry, but the rest is quite readable. The focus is on the ritual interactions between village, hunters, bears, and the forest/forest spirits. EDIT https://www.academia.edu/67794203/The_Forestland_s_Guests_Mythical_Landscapes_Personhood_and_Gender_in_the_Finno_Karelian_Bear_Ceremonialism

The whole game is a Cow Tools moment. We're given just enough coherent information with fascinating dangly bits hanging off the sides to start us down rabbit holes of our own creation (Cf Mfbrandi's Yara Aranis thread).

Well my players identified the fact that the vale is comparitively small for grazing both sheep and cattle. So each morning both* are driven out to pasture either on the eastern slopes of Kargradus or via the reentrant behind White Bark that leads to the flats under Quivin peak. *Both the sheep and cattle, not the players.

Which is, of course, terrifying; regardless of which being is the singular winner.

It's really confusing because the answer is yes (or perhaps no, or even both). It's easier to comprehend (not understand, that's different) if you get what Nick and others are saying in your Western Myth question. All these things are both true and false at the same time. No-one knows who won the final confrontation between Arkat and Nysalor/Gbaji because what came out was essentially all of them. They all looked into the void and became the void so which body walked out was irrelevant. Whether that is hopeful or dismaying depends on your Gloranthan viewpoint. You find similar ideas in Odayla's pursuit of the Star Bear and Andrew Logan Montgomery's interpretation of the Fighting Pit in Orlanthi initiation. Your opponent is you/your shadow self etc.

As a drive-by thread-jacking: Has anyone got hints as to how to include Ernaldans in cattle raids specifically in Six Seasons? Also, back on topic, see if you can get Ned's Haraborn specific chargen worksheets. They're very handy.

Rather answers: If you want to play a homicidal lunatic you can, but the system gives the GM the capacity to measure your life expectancy in game weeks, I.E. less than a session. This also answers (for my table at least) the original question. Yeah you can play a techbro munchkin, but the system is created in ways that will foreshorten that experience if the GM wants their table to be free of it. This ability to squash arseholes with universe-defined but mechanically vague consequences (Gift Carriers of the Sending Gods, Ralzakark, etc.), serves to keep the setting both nuanced, and remarkably ethno-nationalist free. It's just too hard to munchkin effectively (I've tried), and the setting is too CA hippy to bigot well.

For atmosphere watch a couple of Spaghetti Westerns. Gun (sword) fights at noon, honour culture, lots of young idiots with weapons and chips on their shoulders in New Pavis. Pissed-off tribesmen appearing ominously sihouetted on skylines, desperate chases through badlands, bleached skeletons in the dust for Prax. Hard-scrabble farmers under constant threat from nomadic tribes and bandits, "corrupt" local sheriffs (Rune lords/Priests), and a touch of Deliverance for the Zola Fel valley.

Alternatively Babeester Gor guards the Earth and the initiates are her tools within time. So if the initiate is never called to hunt down an oathbreaker that is the will of the Goddess. Unlike Humakt, for whom death IS the purpose, Babeester Gor has people killed for specific reasons. IMG at least, a Babeester Gorite must be called to hunt down and kill people (as opposed to defending her person, honour, or the temple). Hunting oathbreakers, defilers, etc. is a religious ritual, embarked on as seriously as an unfamiliar heroquest. Just as most other worshippers will never stray from the standard weekly temple rituals, many Gorites may never engage with such a quest. Being a random murder machine is either a desperation tactic in defense of the earth, or a serious slide toward chaos (as is any abuse of mythic power). For mine, this also addresses some of the older depictions of these cultists: What we were given is the face the cult presents to the world. Death 90%, sure, but Intimidation at 175% prevents a whole lot more problems. The older images stress just how FRIGHTENING these people are. After all, the temple is defended if most would-be attackers walk the other way. A guarantee of some serious-minded berserk hunting you across Sartar to take your goolies as a trophy may cause many to question their life choices. Particularly as said berserk has the physical and mythic backing of the biggest network on the lozenge.

Dionysos is the god of wine-making, orchards and fruit, vegetation, fertility, festivity, insanity, ritual madness, religious ecstasy, and theatre. Performers fall under the rubric of the god of madness IRL. Eurmal has room for both the insane and the LeCoq style clowns. We have always been, and remain to a certain extent, part of a company that is semi-fringe dwelling. Eurmal as a god of clowns and madmen works for me; including being driven out of town, as per the English 1597 Vagabonds Act.

Is there a "sooth the savage beast " spell? If not my Glorantha now has a couple. CA has a straight cha based one and Donandar gets a musical one.

To reiterate: The various inhabitants could possibly pick up Elmal to defy Harvar. The rites still work but you're not tied to Harvar's worship practices. So Elmal is a 'revival' movement as a political statement. People have done dumber things as acts of defiance (cf Grizzly Peak). This gives you in-game reasons to use the WF#15 Elmal stuff while keeping Monrough down south and a Yelmalian continuity in the north.