EricW

39 minutes ago, Jeff said:

The God Learners were fascinated by the Trickster Archetype. They believed (quite correctly) that this archetype was powerful and a key driver of the events of the Godtime. Eurmal was the most fully-fleshed out Trickster cult, but there were so many others. Raven, Rakenveg, Firebringer, Bolongo, Ratslaff, and more. Members of one cult could use magic from another, and so on. Another theory was that Arkat-Nysalor might be somehow connected to this.

And so the God Learners gathered everything they could and made a veritable Clown College in Thanor. Great insights and discoveries were made - and at its height, the seas came in and Thanor was submerged. Everything figures that was just another one of Eurmal's jokes - a thank you for bringing all of his parts together in one place.  

I suspect more likely it was one or more of the cultists who inadvertently caused the devastation. Imagine academic rivalry in place of study where there were an infinite range of prank spells available, and everyone knew God Learner sorcery to extend the intensity, range and duration of those spells.

The God Learners likely found all the power they hoped for, but lost interest in using it, except on each other. No doubt those magics included lunar / draconic style mind links, so the duration and intensity of the spells they learned was only limited by the number of people in their faction - Eurmal loves over the top special effects. But before they could share this discovery with outsiders, the academic rivalry got completely out of hand, with Eurmal himself whispering new ideas into the minds of rivals smarting under the latest outrage from their colleagues.

The water will recede as soon as the Eurmal great flood spell duration expires, or someone casts a really powerful dispel magic.

Image enhancement is your friend. This deck plan has been processed by GIMP filter unsharp mask default settings.

Original: https://www.wikiwand.com/en/PS_Violet_(1880)#Media/File:SS_Violet_1880_Plans.jpg

6 hours ago, werecorpse said:

Don’t underestimate the impact of San rewards at the end of the scenario- for overcoming mythos threats or rescuing threatened persons etc.
Fwiw I have found that the rewards at the end of the scenario can result in the character ending a scenario with more San than they started if they are generally successful! This is by no means guaranteed but is frequent enough that it’s not an outlier. This is in both CoC and DG and especially the case if the characters are regularly making their San checks (so not losing all that much in scenario) & in DG’s case pushing off San loss onto bonds. This IME is the main source of San repair and does facilitate campaign play; ime I think the amounts granted can sometimes be too high. 

I understand your concern, but if you think about it mythos knowledge provides a counter to excessive rewards for defeating threats. People with very little mythos knowledge might be able to recover lots of sanity, but as your mythos skill increases, your maximum sanity is capped - effectively you are becoming increasingly aware of how little difference your minor victory has made to the overall threat. 

One interesting point, soap has other uses than washing. According to “Wild Food in Australia”, the Australian aborigines used a soap producing plant to hunt fish, messed up their gills. Kind of a Stone Age version of dynamiting the lake, they used a natural soap instead of dynamite.

20 hours ago, Darius West said:

What do people think about the possibility of soap in Glorantha?  I mean, it isn't very bronze age, but nor is it an overly complex recipe.  Is it the sort of thing the God Learners might well have popularized or are the people of Glorantha still cleaning themselves with denatured urine, vinegar, pummice, sand, ashes and/or strigils?  

Soap is not an essential part of cultures - there are records of peoples who rarely washed. For those who did use soap, many of them used plants. There are plants don't need any processing or need minimal processing to produce a soap, just pick the flowers or roots or whatever and start crumbling them into a lather. Or just pick the lumps of fat which drip into the ashes of the fire, they're already soap - fat + soda ash from wood fires + heat = soap. 

No idea what Gloranthans would do. Plenty of magic, and a much lower risk of death by disease. Probably widespread knowledge of plants, or simple magic cantrips which make the dirt jump off. Worst case you could always hit that verruca with a disrupt spell. 

13 hours ago, soltakss said:

The God Learners had a Great Temple to Eurmal, where they collected every single RuneSpell that Eurmal taught and made them available to all the Eurmali in the Great Temple.

Apparently, they thought that this would be a wonderful idea.

Who knows if they were right or wrong?

In any case, the Temple was sunk, so now lies at the bottom of the sea, still populated by the descendants of the original Eurmali.

I think that they have not yet realised that the waters are about to crush them, in cartoon fashion, so they are waiting for reality to re-exert itself.

 

But what do they eat? 🙂

You could add some interesting twists to this quest.

For example, the Hellwood elves would be able to provide some pretty interesting elf bow seeds, through their secret connection to chaos - maybe your character earns the gratitude of a Hellwood elf (rare!) and receives a rather special gift, or simply finds the bow by the body of a dead elf.

Another possibility, the Elves had a special connection to Nysalor in the First Age. Maybe somewhere out there in a distant part of the hero plane is the secret of building a bow which is associated with a special kind of light which does terrible harm to foes, especially trolls, as Nysalor used light to injure Kyger Litor at the Battle of Night and Day.

Both scenarios would lead to a bow which was terribly powerful, but metaphysically harmful, and could put all sorts of people on the trail of your PC - Hellwood elves who are furious at the leaking of their secret, and want to tie up a loose end, Lunars who want to learn the secret of creating a uniquely powerful bow, Storm bulls who sensed something bad in the woods, Trolls who want to find out who is using horrible magic to scorch and kill their friends, and make the corpses smell so bad they don't feel like eating them.

The solution of course is to destroy the bow, and get as far as possible from the pile of ash - but your PC would need to figure this out.

I have a non-cannon theory that Eurmal caused the Abiding Book to appear, the book which started the God Learner mess. 

Then when Orlanth said "Its your mess, go fix it".

Eurmal responded by teaching men to speak to dragons, which led to the creation of  the Empire of the Wyrms friends, a draconic Orlanthi religion so confusing the God Learners couldn't subvert it - a major force to oppose the God Learners.

"See Orlanth, all fixed".

Then later, after the dragons got fed up with the abuse of their magic, and the victorious old ways traditionalists marched on Dragon Pass, Orlanth caught up with Eurmal and said "see what you have done now?". So Eurmal went to the place where dragons sleep, yelled "yoo-hoo".

The dragons all instantly awoke. "Its him, get him guys!". Eurmal flew screaming to Dragon Pass, and only escaped when the dragons got distracted by all the free food on offer.

OK the cannon part is Eurmal teaching men to speak to dragons, so his contribution to God Learner fiasco was creating a major opposing force, but the rest fits in a kind of funny way, yes?

There was also that God Learner attempt to create an Eurmal Great Temple in Slontos, which may have sunk under the weight of Trickster magical abuses, when they obtained access to the full range of Eurmal's divine spells.

I think be very cautious. A lot of people can’t handle thinking of Cthulhu scenarios as a game, they would see it as unspeakably horrible, like walking into a party of serial killers revelling in their hideous crimes. And probably try to have you shut down.

if you plan to open your church of starry wisdom, vet the initiates 🙂

A daughter of Ernalda who hates undead despoilers and can grant a military blessing sounds a lot like a Barbeester Gore subcult.

The “lunar secret” might be a secret connection to the moon - maybe the hero quest foes are weakest during dark moon. Or strongest. Or there might be a lunar talisman which grants passage at a critical point in the quest - maybe the vampire bats don’t attack if you carry the talisman or speak a secret password.

Reward - Something Earth related, like heroic summon gnome, or heroic use of great parry against the undead?

I think leaving a scorpion man alive for training is using chaos, with all the metaphysical harms that can bring - unless the scorpion man is killed quickly in a religious service or some such, like using it as the enemy in a holy day ritual.

1 hour ago, metcalph said:

Heroquest involves dealing in forces of the Other Side which is Bad in Dwarven eyes.  The magics of the material world are best - iron, blackpowder and naphtha.

Perhaps "heroquester" is the wrong word, I meant Dwarves from other ages, pouring through the breach in the compromise. In human terms this would be a heroquest. In Dwarven terms, navigating the world machine to reach an important objective?

8 hours ago, Erol of Backford said:

Do dwarves hero quest and moreover are they not really god learners? Possibly they were fighting against the clanking ruins due to jealously?

Surely visits to the other side are required to gather knowledge and apply corrective procedures to the world machine?

The compromise broke at the end of the iron war. Could they have been heroquesters from other ages?

6 hours ago, Shiningbrow said:

Ummm... ok. I'm not sure how you see those relating to my post.

While Stonehenge (and other henges around the world) may well be 'astronomical calenders', that in no way means there weren't pagan rites being held there. After all, the sun was seen as a deity...

The smoke would have interfered with the astronomical observations? 

20 hours ago, Shiningbrow said:

Depends on the group.

For some I've been part of, no kids at all. But then, that was the "secret initiation" stuff.

For others (eg, solstices and equinoxes), kids were most definitely allowed to watch or participate (depending on their age and whether they were having a tanty or not at the time). That's been for kids as young as 6.

However, if you take a look at the rites at Stonehenge every year, you don't see kids in the middle - it's all the elders (but then, again - only the initiated are in the inner circle.. everyone else is outside looking in).

Stonehenge was an astronomical calculator, helped determine whether spring started or summer ended. 

https://blog.britishmuseum.org/here-comes-the-sun-stonehenge-and-the-summer-solstice/

Wicker man was more of a family event, where people went to see all the criminals roasted alive. “See Johnny if you don’t behave that could be you one day!”

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wicker_man

Just give them a Browning 1911 specially chambered for .45. There were tons of them around after WW1, and they can always change magazine if they need more shots, or even have a special magazine made. 

People were tinkerers back then, so no problem with the availability of modified kit.

Are people inside contact barriers like the Syndics Ban able to communicate with their gods? If so, why can't gods provide information about what is happening in those regions? If not, what happens to the worshippers and their descendants? 

Quote - Guide to Glorantha

Charg: The hilly land of Charg, almost 50,000 square miles in area, is Glorantha’s most hidden land. It is cut off from all outside contact by the Syndics Ban, which has thawed away from most of Fronela, but left this huge region between Fronela and the Lunar Empire. What lies within, waiting to be revealed when the Ban thaws? No one knows, but before the Ban, Charg was a war-like Orlanthi kingdom famed for its berserker Urox cult.

Did Orlanthi lose their ability to teleport?

Doesn’t Elmal help take care of the stead while the grownups are off heroquesting? And maybe Barbeester Gore, guarding the stricken Earth?

That could be fun, Babs and Yelmalio trying to share a quiet afternoon. “Whose turn to change the nappy?”

PCs only know they are losing sanity because they can look at their own stats. What happens to NPCs who are exposed once too often to the mission, who leave their humanity behind in their fanatical quest to destroy the mythos threat?

Do NPCs who hit SAN 0 always end up joining the other side, or do some of them stay "true" to their quest, like war criminals who have spent too long on the battlefield, who believe their atrocities serve a greater cause?

There is an awesome Spanish film adaption of The Shadow Over Innsmouth. This isn't a scenario, but might help with ideas.

On 8/31/2022 at 2:38 PM, sadz said:

I was wondering, if the character goes insane again within 1D10 hours, will he gain 1 points?

If the PC is spending an educational afternoon with Nyarlathotep, you could probably bend the rules and allow multiple SAN losses and mythos points. But a person who attracts that kind of attention is likely already doomed. 

Maybe Argrath had his kids after the moon fall. Which brings the question, what happened to Argrath?

Probability is fun, well worth reading an introductory book.

Some of it is very non-intuitive. For example, if you have a 10% chance of succeeding and you have 10x attempts, your success probability is not 100%. 

In this case you have to multiply the failure probabilities, so:

90% (chance of failure) x 90% x 90% x 90% x 90% x 90% x 90% x 90% x 90% x 90% = 35% chance you won't succeed after 10 attempts. Even after say a million attempts, you have a small chance of failure.

Even less intuitive, say someone presents you with 10 boxes, one of which contains a prize. The game master asks you to pick a box. Then the game master throws away all the boxes except the box you picked, and one other box, and asks you if you want to stick to your original choice, or pick the other box. In this case it always makes sense to pick the other box. Even though you now only have two choices, the history of how you arrived at that choice matters - it is far more likely the prize is in the other box (90%), than the original box you picked (10%). The reason - the probability you picked the right box on your first choice is still only one in 10, 10%, so the probability the other box contains the prize must be 90%.

All good fun. 

According to King of Sartar, Eurmal taught men to speak to dragons. So the question is, was there ever an Eurmal Draconic cult? What was it like? Could Eurmal be persuaded to do this again? Who was the foolish man?

Quote - King of Sartar

 

The Dragon Wars

From the beginning of Time, Orlanth and the dragons have been enemies. Orlanth slew Aroka and Sh’harkazeel, and many which were lesser. They had, in their turn, ever plotted against Orlanth and humankind, who had robbed them of their ancient world.

One day Eurmal found a new way to betray his master. He found a foolish man, and he split his tongue, the way that a bird’s tongue can be split to make it talk. And he also split the man’s brain, and his heart. That way the man would understand dragon speech.

The man, who is called Rostand the Speaker, enjoyed the effect. The dragonewts, which were always something to fear, spoke to him and he understood. He found his way to a dragon, and rather than being eaten, he learned a song from it!

Rostand though this was great fun, and so he got his friends and his family to try it. It was a simple operation; soon they were all doing it to each other.

It was easy to understand the dragon speech, and to learn to do new magic from them. Many people wanted to do this, and did.

 

Dragon Pass surely has a slightly draconic Earth Goddess? Maybe the idol is her statue?