EricW

I think its difficult to capture how interesting London can be if you haven't spent time there. There is (was?) a tunnel entrance to Waterloo Station which at times is full of drug addicts - extremely dangerous, like Skid Row but underground. There are dark places and violence, even today, streets where muggers hang out in dark corners, like Roupell st between Southwark and Waterloo stations, which have probably been a mugger's haunt for centuries - yet nobody provides street lights, the locals just know to avoid that street at night. All those old little pubs, some of them seem to go out of their way to hide themselves - yet they are full of people. The old shops around Leister Square, where you really can find ancient tomes covered in dust, that can't be found anywhere else. Or that open market book stall under London Bridge, which nobody can remember when it started. A city full of life - yet turn a corner and you can suddenly find yourself in a very dark place. A place where people know each other but don't. Gangs and strange alliances and desperation bubbling just under the surface. An impersonal place - but sit down and very someone will approach you, for their own reasons - to ask you if you are OK, or to beg for a place to stay that night, or to invite you to a Dyanetics meeting, a political protest, or their small church group, or who knows what purpose. ** Don't worry I never get mugged. When you are 6'2 and 150Kg, muggers tend to approach you then change their minds...

If your Yara is a Godlearner, then the "elephant" could be his doom, held in check for centuries since the fall of the God Learners. Or you could make it like Bridge of Birds, in which a sorcerer achieved immortality by an unspeakable heroquest abuse. Liberating the elephant sets nature right (cue sorcerer crumbling into dust, or being carried off screaming, or whatever). So many options to choose from...

Of course its not just the divorce. There are several scary Earth cults women can join if they feel bitter about their treatment. I'm not sure what the options are for guys, I suspect nothing remotely socially acceptable...

Personally I'm shocked at the laziness, I mean criminals have all that desert to bury bodies, yet they can't be bothered digging a hole, just dump the body in the water supply.

Time to sign up to that secret cult, and join the back of the nom nom queue for the sacrificial feast which will herald the return of the Great Old Ones… 🙂

I've never got it straight, what exactly is preventing Belintar from returning, which hero questers can't fix? My understanding is JarEel did something bad, but it seems strange that no Vargast Redhand or Harmast Barefoot has appeared to set things right?

Maybe we're looking at this wrong. "... What the police did extract, came mainly from an immensely aged mestizo named Castro, who claimed to have sailed to strange ports and talked with undying leaders of the cult in the mountains of China. ..." - seems pretty structured to me. Maybe when the GOO finally arise, the undying cult leaders simply come out of hiding, and become the aristocracy of the cruel empire, by guiding humanity into a structured pattern which allows people to co-exist with their new masters, at least until the monster food runs out. Perhaps CoC story gave us a glimpse of this cruel future. The undying leaders gave instruction to Castro. Castro's group in turn preyed on the locals. But in time perhaps the locals would have come to an accommodation, where they provided sacrifices of their own free will, in return for Castro agreeing to be more socially sensitive about selecting sacrifices - like the villagers in “The Shadow over Innsmouth”. Most people in such a settlement - the villagers - would have been relatively sane, aside from the pain and loss of sacrificing a few of their number every month. Most of them would have had more sense than to go into the woods to spy on the cultists. The cultists in turn would have themselves been barking mad, but a functional form of insanity which allows them to co-exist with the normals, though there is no doubt who is in charge in that arrangement. Welcome to the cruel empire.

Hmm. Rigidly ritualistic doesn't seem much like "... for then mankind would have become as the Great Old Ones; free and wild and beyond good and evil, with laws and morals thrown aside ...", though to be fair maybe the ritual enabled those who embraced it to survive the "... holocaust of ecstasy and freedom ...". Perhaps most of them just keep their eyes closed during the interesting parts of religious services, have lots of group therapy sessions, and quietly dispose of the wizards who develop insanities which are un-conducive to community harmony. Do the GOO actually care what humans do with the sorcery they learn, so long as the sacrifices keep flowing their way? Nyarlathotep might occasionally take delight in taunting individual humans, or entire societies, and Cthulhu might be a bossy micromanaging b*stard, but most of the GOO seem way too impersonal to care what humans do with the power they share. Or maybe the humans in the cruel empire are all utterly insane. Old Castro in the Lovecraft CoC story was able to be civil, answer questions and give coherent descriptions of cult activities, but as an active and knowledgable participant in awful sacrifices and rituals he was probably totally insane in game terms.

Perhaps thousands of years have provided a way to live with the mind wrenching fear. They might be insane from our POV, as per the prophecy in CoC. But it would be a very short lived empire if say kids couldn’t grow up into viable adults, whatever that would mean in such an age. “…The time would be easy to know, for then mankind would have become as the Great Old Ones; free and wild and beyond good and evil, with laws and morals thrown aside and all men shouting and killing and revelling in joy. Then the liberated Old Ones would teach them new ways to shout and kill and revel and enjoy themselves, and all the earth would flame with a holocaust of ecstasy and freedom.…”

I always figured the Plateau of Leng was the horrible reality underpinning the myth of Shangri-La. Perhaps it is buried under ice, but will be revealed when global warming disturbs the balance, and the Great Old Ones begin stirring back to consciousness. As for the cruel empire, I doubt we fully understand it. The protagonist enjoys a long association with a resident of the empire in The Shadow Out of Time. I suspect people in the empire are not necessarily insane, the way people of our world go insane, more they have somehow made an accommodation with their horrible reality.

Could explain Yelmalio fighting himself…

Oh my, maybe the Hill of Gold like the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, where different groups of Christians regularly battle with clubs and other weapons over physical control the church, to decide who will perform important services to honour the Prince of Peace.

Dorastor's chaotic leader Ralzakark claims to have been born in the Emprire of Light, but somehow survived Arkat's purge, until he was awakened in the second age (Dorastor - Land of Doom). I suspect there is a high chance any other powerful survivors of the Empire of Light would be similarly horrifying and perverse, and likely extremely dangerous - but very illuminated. So they wouldn't necessarily look dangerous.

I'm a fan of The Chronicles of Bael, about a Lhankor Mhy who gets in way over his head with a chaos plot, but the last update was 2019...

I'm wondering if it might be like a meeting of the Skeptics Society. I have fond memories of those meetings, the trivia contest which featured questions like "What did H*tler eat for Breakfast?", "How many grains of sand in this jar?" and "What sex was the first computer?". And there was always a speaker, sometimes a really famous speaker like James Randi, who explained what he had been doing to drive back ignorance and expose the lies of mystics and other deceivers. In a Gloranthan setting the speaker might be a learned guest sorcerer, explaining why theism is so ridiculous. Zabur would have a standing invitation to attend as honoured guest, but always turns it down. I figured out the first computer was female, but we lost that point because the rest of the team disagreed. I can't explain why in polite company ;-).

I suspect if Arkat died it was by choice, like choosing to spend all his time somewhere else, rather than an event he could not avoid. Someone as powerful as Arkat could have performed one of the immortality heroquests with ease, if he wanted to.

So is Hrestoli initiation interchangeable with riddler illumination, in terms of protecting you against the consequences of sorcerous wrong action? Does Hrestoli initiation provide protection against theist spirits of retribution?

I would argue there are very few rules Arkat didn't break...

Jeff gave a great description of the rightness rules caste sorcerers must follow. My question is, what impact does illumination have on these strictures? Are illuminates liberated from having to follow Malkioni rules, in the same way illuminates can break the rules of theist cults? Can an illuminated sorcerer commit wrong action without consequence, other than the possibility of being pursued by their society? Or do the benefits of illumination only provide the ability to break theist religious strictures?

When I studied Chemistry at university lab coats and protective gear were mandatory when messing with chemicals. Obviously a data scientist can usually get away with just wearing a T-shirt…

I think possibly the rewards come from the method rather than piety as such. Imagine an ancient Celt trying to describe a modern scientist. They would see special dress codes (lab coats, gloves, protective eyeware), respect for more senior people who carry large books, and inexplicable miracles. Would an observer from antiquity understand dedication to upholding the scientific method? Or would they see a strict dress code, holy books, deference to seniors and miracles, and conclude the miracles are made possible because of acts of piety, adherence to the strict dress code and reverence for seniors and their holy books? I strongly suspect the description of sorcerers in Glorantha is incomplete, maybe even a theist attempt to describe something which is beyond their understanding. All those strange rituals and dress codes and apparent acts of piety likely stem from a deeper logical method, just as the funny dress code and behaviour of our scientists comes from a shared dedication to building scientific knowledge based on testing theories with observations.

Lokamaydon’s secret wind god? Pelangio incarnated Yelmalio at least once, so their might have been an opportunity for the god child nobody talks about…

Its possible someone like Muriah could nurture and maintain a secret identity, some spotlessly reputable affluent citizen who is away a lot, who might attract the Duke's eye. She'd need some heavy duty magic to conceal her true identity from divination and other attempts to find her. Working secret vengeance seems a very Malia thing to do.

As an illuminate she already makes her own path, she wouldn’t have to worry about retribution or spiritual difficulties with Malia. Probably an infuriating loss of useful chaos features and inability to work with diseases for a while. But Arroins blood would have no power over her mind, and she can already pass as a non chaotic because of her illumination.

How about simply have the PCs fail, the giant laughs at them and swats them out of the hero quest. Nothing permanent just a little humiliation. That way they know they must be much better prepared for the next confrontation. Then you can run a whole buildup series of quests to achieve their goal.