Rob Darvall

I'd hypothesise that todays is the Zombie flick'; an upgrade on Day of the Triffids, but it's usually still our fault. The Zombies are current angst about our own self-immolation.

Grassfires. Fast running, and if the grass is even waist high very bloody dangerous. And they turn REALLY quickly. You can be hosing down a 2 foot high fire and in less than a second have a six foot wall of flame in your face (I'm grateful for the CFA's PPE). Plus they feel malicious. I've seen fire creep across the dusty remnants of a suburban lawn to "get to" the dry kikuyu stands on the other side. I knew it was just physics but it felt like the fire was playing us. Prax after a good season could have a very high fine fuel load and go off like a bomb.

Others may see this as obvious or untenable, however: ALL the Little Suns have a HoG. ...the important part is the “left bleeding and broken but gets back up”... The details of who does what to remove which power is culturally variable and gives each culture access to different powers. BUT there are always "missing/stolen" powers that an initiate must sacrifice another power to gain if they so quest. So FREX an Elmali performing a Yelmalio HoG quest would loose Fireblade but gain Catseye, or similar (away from books ATM). So flogging dead lizards is of value to me at least.

For mine this is perhaps the core of Yelmalio; NO compromises. We WILL go up the hill, get beaten repeatedly, and endure. We WILL stand on the wall as the darkness decends because that's our duty. There may be "Another Way" but we refuse it because it lessens us. This placing of duty first is what lends Yelmalio to being a soldier's god. His faith empowers the individual to "stand and be still, to the Birkenhead drill".

Well we've got time to save up for it then.

Art aside (it's wonderful) I'd have to say augments. It vastly expands the range of usable PCs.

I use them as 1 day per type of love the classical Greeks recognised. Eros: Love of the body Philia: Affectionate love Storge: Love of the Child Agape: Selfless Love Ludus: Playful Love Pragma: Long-lasting Love Philautia: Love of the Self

Percy Jackson would give evidence to the contrary. My nephews are fans, and now 5 of 6 play RQG. As well as both my children and my niece. Of these 8 (none over 23, youngest now 11ish) 5 run their own games as well as the larger family campaigns.

My in-game response would be to have the senior Vingan present beat the Eurmali for being a troublemaker. Question settled.

Possibly not. The older folk will have aquired some level of prestige/notoriety. Even now you can see this at work in some environments that throw younger and older adults together in the RW. It's not ALL exploitation. Running a stead is a group effort, so remaining partnered (if not actually married) makes sense. As marriage involves oaths there may be magical benefit to marriage as opposed to just shacking up together.

This. With mythic transformation being possible later in life too. Folk do the best they can with the data available and the gods deal with the "misjudgements" the mortals make. Not least because there's gaming potential in the conflict. That said there WILL be folk who are obviously not suited to one initiation or other (or both) from a very early age.

Or possibly "deeper" and "shallower", maybe even literally.

Damned if you do, damned if you don't. The plaint of "nothing coming out" will still be made AND a marketting opportunity will be missed. Three of the next generation of my family now (one has started in the last week) GM RQG, using no more than the core book and in one case the addition of the Haraborn saga. They've 3 VERY different Gloranthas, but all run a Glorantha worth playing in. None qualify as experienced GMs.

Which may imply that there are other confrontations possible; the pits being one of a set of choices.

Yes. Although I've always assumed Ulerians of all genders. And the seven different forms of love the Greeks enumerated (Hence the week long Ulerian festival in Harmony Dark, 1 day each) Mythologically I'd think because the uncles are Orlanth's uncles specifically. The pit is a danger to men specifically because Ragnaglar is Orlanth's kin. It's as much Kinstrife as anything else.

Yes it does. And a stance which seemed peculiar in light of the general sex-positivity in Orlanthi society. BUT if Ulerians are successful initiates through a pit with a reputation for breaking people quite badly I can see the society treating them with suspicion that hardens into that prejudice. My point was not that Uleria is a demon but that in tribal Orlanthi society Ulerians are coming from the same pit as those broken by Ragnaglar which would account for something I saw as an inconsistent (and IMO thankfully retconned) attitude.

So what is the pit being prepared? 1) The pit and the "uncle" appear in the ritual spontaneously. So no one has prepared it. It's a consequence of some god plane shenanigans. 2) The pit appears as a perversion of another pit 3) The village DOES prepare the pit but there's an expectation of success. Hence (in part) my question. The answers of both Uleria AND Orlanth seem mythically justifiable. I lean toward Uleria because my feeling is that survival SHOULD be something unusual. However that leaves me with the question PhilHibbs has prompted above. What is the pit being prepared? And who is the uncle? (And does it matter? Is "wicked uncle" a sufficient mythic identification?)

I'd resist Eurmal on the grounds that he winds up as the answer to damn near everything that presents a bit of a conceptual challenge. That's just a PoV. Yinkin I think comes from the beast pit. Uleria, however, seems logical and also ties in with the old HW/HQ/QW notion of Uleria being a demon. The initiate is now someone VERY unusual indeed and bears close watching because and this is the pit from which bad things most frequently emerge.

But what if the kid does well? Resists, deals with the threat. To whom do they initiate? The other pits indicate a preference through success, the sex pit is only mentioned through failure. Conversely what happens to those who fail the other tests?

I think being accepted/not expelled proves you're sufficiently a woman for Babeester Gor's purposes. "Convincing the Examiners" may be a different story. Axe Sisters believing that they're the goddesses current spirit of retribution might take some persuading. And hey, the goddess never said the tests would be easy.

Hey, at least you now know where Voralans live. AND there's an adventure where a combat monster has to solve most of the problems with talking. [cue evil GM chuckle]

In my game they'd not be kicked out. BG would test them to find out if they were still a woman in spite of the unfortunate genitalia. Part of the test may be finding a way to recover, or it may be a requirement for another proof of womanhood. The latter I see as involving lots of entanglement with Ernaldans and, given the cause, Aldrya. All good adventure/heroquest fodder.

Why is this your go to? It completely misses the point I'm making. Babeester Gor (IMG) will not accept anyone who is not a woman. Ergo if you are accepted you are a woman. "They have to have experienced the world as a woman enough, and in the 'right' ways, that BG notices them AND that they can hear her." addresses the social construction of womanhood. Which consists of experiencing the world as a woman. If that is not the case what other way is there to socially construct a role? The whole argument turns on "lived experience". Which means that it's NOT simple. Catherine Mcgregor's lived experience being very different from Natalie Wynn's, and both from Germain Greer's. Not only that, it addresses the necessity of having experiences that would incline the initiand to "hear the call" and the Goddess to notice. Which in a game about myth strikes me as being somewhat important. What about that is reductive and biologically deterministic?

Not a bad idea. It's the "weird gods pit" until the big R shows up. So there would need to be: A cleansing/atonement ritual for when the worst happens. Perhaps divination to figure out how it happened. {Is it chance, Ragnaglar seizing a random opportunity, or sabotage of the rites?} Different effects for different gods (I just don't see Kolat manifesting in the same way as Yinkin frex) How does this play into the 'evil uncles' myth? Ie who chucks them down the hole when Heler chooses them?

Focussing on the important bit. Like Kinstrife, possibly not as badly, oath-breaking harms the whole group.