EricW

10 hours ago, JRE said:

There are (as always) many different interpretations. Mine is that the Compromise exchanges freedom for survival of the world, and also of the Deities that joined it. Those that did not join will benefit in that the world is not breaking up fast anymore, but they are not protected from death, no matter their apparent power. 

That allows Zzabur to act within time, but also means he could be obliterated too, edwhile for a deity in the compromise you can decrease their influence, as Orlanth during the Windstop, but with effort you can still get through and access them in the Godtime.

That is the defining factor of the West. When they visit the Godtime they do not see their fundational heroes / gods performing their myths and showing the right way of living. They see their enemies, and only partial echoes of their own myths, because their founders did not join the compromise because for Zzabur being frozen in Godtime was worst than dying, and I suppose Malkion did too, and that is why he stayed dead and unreachable, when so many dead deities returned at Dawn.

That also explains why Western heroquesters adopt an exploitative approach to heroquests, something you do to get power, not because it is the way to be close to your deity and right living. Unfortunately their perspective has been adopted by many others in Glorantha and this approach is behind many of the heroes of the Hero Wars.

In my opinion the difference between pre-Dawn mortals that continue within Time, such as Zzabur or The Only Old One, and gods and goddesses within time, such as Nysalor, Sedenya and most of the Lunar pantheon, is that those so called deities either identify themselves with a deity from before time, so they are already in the compromise, though the mortal part could act in time before being subsumed in the deity, or they accepted compromise afterwards, and that is what apotheosis is, make someone a god, which in Glorantha means joining the Compromise loss of freedom, but also the protection from destruction.

Sartar apotheosized, so the Lunars cannot destroy him, though they can try to suppress his cult, murder his family and limit his influence, but he will be there yet for those who know where to look.

It also means the immutable Godtime is quite mutable. Welcome to Glorantha!

If Malkion had accepted the compromise sorcery might have stopped working at night. The gods resurrected by the compromise have to spend time in the underworld.

3 hours ago, Darius West said:

This is the first I've heard of it.  I thought the normal way things were handled is that the crime against the Earth is reported to an Earth temple and the message passed on to the BBGs who go on a rampage from there.

Me bad, probably non-canon - http://www.jane-williams.me.uk/glorantha/vinga/bgor.cfm

Doesn’t Barb Gore have some kind of “sense despoiler” ability? I think I remember reading it’s triggered by overt chaos like Broos, not so much by civilised Lunar chaos…

14 hours ago, Darius West said:

Yeah, infiltration requires an illuminated trickster like Elusu the Little Shit imo.  Illuminated tricksters can overcome their innate self-indulgence long enough to complete a mission.  Swallow is the strangest assassination method, but exactly what a Lunar deserves, given their Bat abuse.

I've always thought of "Swallow" as a Trickster version of "summoning of evil". Divination "Where is our missing relative / military commander / child" will point to the trickster 😉 

As for Elusu, I don't think Elusu gave up being a "Little Shit" just because of hanging around with Argrath. I mean, don't you think it would be irresistible if you were a trickster infiltrator brimming with subversion magic to spread a little paranoia, with trickster lies like "your commander is actually an ogre who is sizing you up for his next meal", or "your commander never intends to promote you", or "I've received intelligence that your underlings are plotting to assassinate you, because you punished the squad after they were defeated by rebels". Or simply lie for convenience, like if someone asks the commander / infiltrator about their response to a report, shout at the underlying "I told you to rewrite that report, you slacker! And this time include some detail!".

6 hours ago, svensson said:

Well, this is veering slightly off topic, but I don't see Eurmal as 'wasted potential'. Every society needs an element of healthy disorder in it... comedy, satire, irreverence, gadfly commentators, etc. For Orlanthi, Eurmal is that role. He's the 'Coyote'-spirit [in the Native American mythical sense] of the Orlanthi. He provides an outlet for the Orlanthi society's outliers to function within the law. Every society has a few iconoclasts in it; in Heortling /Sartarite society, Eurmal is their patron.

Eurmal is a lazy drunken glutton who spend all his time stealing, pranking serious folk, chasing pretty girls, creating confusion with his lies, and running away from his responsibilities.

Seems like "wasted potential" to me. The fact he helped save the world and is occasionally useful doesn't change that. A powerful Eurmali might accept a serious infiltration task, and genuinely mean to carry it through, but by the end of the day surely it would be fart cushions and total bedlam - competing groups on "special assignment" to root out traitors, pumped up on trickster lies, screaming and denouncing each other. Fistfights in front of the officers.

7 hours ago, svensson said:

To elaborate on my Eurmal suggestion...

a] There is nothing that says a Eurmal cult can't be 'organized'. Even anarchists here on Earth have hierarchies and task-leaders. If a Eurmal cult decided that the greatest prank of the decade would be to get one of their cultists into a senior position in a Lunar infantry regiment, I believe that they could focus their energies and efforts into realizing that goal. While this goal might take years of work, it certainly ISN'T a permanent situation. Eurmal cultists are not intelligence agents, they're pranksters in both the positive and negative senses.

b] There would have to be a significant non magical component a serious infiltration attempt. Solid percentiles in S/R/W Other Languages, Customs, and Cult Lore in the target society would be absolutely necessary and some Fast Talk and Orate wouldn't hurt either. And this is in addition to the 'professional skills' of the role the infiltrator will play in the target society.

c] Magical support would also be vital. Not just Illusion spells for the senses of the Mundane Plane, but also methods to disguise one's loyalties and affiliations. Cults have the manifest powers of their deity on their side in order to detect false worshipers, so it's probably best if infiltrator is an Illuminate anyway.

YGMV, but Orlanth had to bind Eurmal to make him stop messing up, and even then Eurmal did bad things on the LBQ.

And much of the second age was Eurmal’s fault, after he taught humans to speak to dragons - for a laugh.

Eurmal might have lots of useful spells, but he is the embodiment of wasted potential.

1 hour ago, svensson said:

Of such things are Eurmal cultists made!

With all the Illusion spells available to them, Eurmal and Lanbril cultists are a natural for short- and medium-term infiltration. And with enough points of Extension, you can make the illusion last YEARS. Of course, you're still gonna have to make some pretty serious Culture rolls and that assumes you've mastered the language of your cover identity.

In truth, Lunar culture will be easier to infiltrate because of their 'We are all Us' social mores. Sartarite culture is more difficult because of it's clannish 'everybody is somebody's cousin' nature. It's not hard to travel from one end of Sartar to another to check up on someone's cover legend. The Lunar Empire covers a lot more ground and a profession of conversion and a couple of 7M Cult Lore successes can cover an awful lot.

In other editions, there has been some discussions about cult tattoos magically changing if someone becomes apostate and so on, but as far as I know that hasn't been much discussed in RQG. That probably lies in the 'YGMV' side.

Infiltration seems way to organised for Eurmal, kind of like Jim Carrey's character in "The Mask" trying to use his sneak skill. 

Lanbril might do it, but Lanbril has no especial loyalty to Orlanth, huge risk of being sold out?

The following is an example of Trickster attempting to infiltrate Lunar headquarters.
 

15 hours ago, JonL said:

It's a shame that there's no secret god of thieves who infiltrates other gods' myths through impersonating side-characters. Their followers would be super helpful for this sort of thing, if it were worth their while.

Cacodemon, Thanatar, Gbaji, take your pick 😉. Ralzakark might offer advice if you ask, and offer him an especially interesting magical artefact as payment.

1 hour ago, JRE said:

As mentioned by EricW, illumination is your friend for those swaps. That would allow a Humakti in Yanafal, or an Irripi Ontor scholar lie his way into Lhankor Mhy. It would not help a Humakti to roleplay an Issaries trader, however. Some Eurmali can be trusted somewhat, but it should be short term. Just pick someone with a very strong passion, either Loyalty or Hate.

Illumination is how all those Arkati secret societies keep going secret. If necessary it would allow you to use an abomination, like a White Healer Sword of Humakt. Or Argrath's loving companion infiltrating the Lunar camp and keeping Jar Eel busy during the battle of Dwernapple.

I love the example in Lords of Terror of K'Rana, Scorpion Queen Sword of Humakt. Her illumination which she picked up while working as a caravan guard for Lunars enabled her to retain her sanity when she was reborn as a Scorpion, and helped her reconcile her life as head of a chaos tribe with her faith to Humakt. Now she's trying to help her tribe improve their lot by training her more advanced hatchlings in the ways of Humakt. 

I think given that example, an illuminate can pretty much impersonate anything they want. The question is, would Orlanthi rebels who badly need intelligence on Lunar activity tolerate and trust an illuminated spy? My guess is most wouldn't - which puts them at a significant strategic disadvantage to the Lunars, who have no problem messing with cult strictures in the name of the empire.

Orlanth is dead specifically says at the height of the Sartar occupation Orlanthi lands are full of spies - likely lay member low level informants, returned child hostages, maybe the occasional illuminated infiltrator.

But it would surely be difficult to return the favour. Lunars make heavy use of mind link, and would likely coerce anyone they suspect into doing something chaotic, like casting an Etyries traded chaos gift spell, to prove they were not a lightbringer.

An illuminate could get away with it - but their Orlanthi handler would at least suspect they were illuminated, so would have trouble trusting their own spy.

Maybe Argrath had a handful of deep cover spies. And we know he had a least one chaotic informant, the not a man who pleaded with him to save the world

On 5/7/2022 at 2:28 AM, D said:

I've been trying to make the wriggling red worms in the maggot tunnel for about a week, I've come up with this. any thoughts?
https://youtu.be/-Q9cCj-x0UE

You could try making them twinkle rather than wriggle. Slightly elongated spots which twinkle as they move above and below the surface of the muck might work better - eye catching but ambiguous.

2 hours ago, AndreJarosch said:

IMHO Ethyries can stand in for Issaries, because even if the don´t have the exact same backstory, they are both into trading and communication, so most of the impulses an Etyries worshipper would follow are in line what an Issaaries worshipper would do. 
Etyries as a stand in for Orlanth is a totally different thing. 

If you are a car salesman and have to take a job as an Avon agent you would lack the expertise of the wares you are selling, but the basics (sales, communication, psychology of the potential customer) are the same. 
If you are a car salesman and have to work as a hairdresser: you are lost!

But Etyries is the messenger of the chaos moon. How would this impact a LBQ?

The real world name is Maroochydore.

1. Everything is dripping wet, mouldy and sticky. The waves of the Pacific Ocean continuously pound the nearby shore. 

2. The locals are afraid to go out at night, and are frightened of talking to strangers.

3. Everything closes at 9pm. Then the streets are deserted, except some small. late night pubs, where surly locals ply visiting tourists with alcohol.

4. There’s lots of suspicious activity in the woodland near the shore.

5. Everything is heavily barred and locked at night.

The future. As technology advances, human knowledge edges ever closer to revelation and madness. The most advanced AIs, driven by unfettered corporate greed, and a desperate, amoral hunger to maintain their company’s razor thin technological lead, are beginning to penetrate the mysteries, to piece together the true nature of the universe. Corporate assassins and violent psychotics roam the streets, frequently augmented with stolen or experimental military implants. The darkest corners of the immersive 3D successor to the internet require a san check.

… 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. … “The Call of Cthulhu” by HP Lovecraft

There are examples in HP Lovecraft stories, of people who performed incredible feats while in the delirium of temporary insanity. One of my favourites is "Under the Pyramids", which Lovecraft co-wrote with the famous stage magician Harry Houdini, about a supernatural being who takes offence at a stage magician character's mockery of his art. 

The main character sees something which sends him temporarily insane, and in his delirium he does the impossible, finds his way out of the horrific catacomb in which he has been imprisoned, hundreds of feet beneath the Sphinx in Egypt.

The point is, the characters who perform these feats are not in their right mind when they do these things, and rarely retain a clear memory of what happened. So arguably the player should not be fully in control of their character in such circumstances. 

One thing which comes through clearly on HP Lovecraft's books is mythos characters are usually highly dysfunctional, focussed on their own problems rather than taking over the world, or both. They're vulnerable, or should be - once you know who they are.

The villagers in "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" mostly just wanted to be left alone, so they could finish metamorphosing into Deep Ones. They tried to conceal their secret and discourage contact. The last thing they wanted was a fight - they all expected to live forever, and you don't get to live forever if you start gunfights all the time.

Old man Whateley and Wilbur Whateley from The Dunwich Horror - they came the closest to being world conquerors. But Old man Whateley was senile, and Wilbur was struggling to pass for human. Maybe if Old Man Whateley had tried his plot when he was younger - but there were still missing pieces to his knowledge. Maybe he didn't know how when he was younger.

Robert Suydam in the Horror at Red Hook - he sought immortality and power through necromancy. But in the end something went badly wrong. The hero Malone noted "He would often regard it as merciful that most persons of high intelligence jeer at the inmost mysteries; for, he argued, if superior minds were ever placed in fullest contact with the secrets preserved by ancient and lowly cults, the resultant abnormalities would soon not only wreck the world, but threaten the very integrity of the universe.".

But smart people mostly aren't put in contact with the mythos. And we have another clue why it generally doesn't work out, even when they are.

The one account we have of when lots of people delved into the mythos in a short period of time was the period following the publication of the Necronomicon, in H P Lovecraft's "The History of the Necronomicon". 

Quote (The History of the Necronomicon) 

 

... He [the author] is said by Ebn Khallikan (12th cent. biographer) to have been seized by an invisible monster in broad daylight and devoured horribly before a large number of fright-frozen witnesses. Of his madness many things are told. He claimed to have seen fabulous Irem, or City of Pillars, and to have found beneath the ruins of a certain nameless desert town the shocking annals and secrets of a race older than mankind. He was only an indifferent Moslem, worshipping unknown entities whom he called Yog-Sothoth and Cthulhu.

In A.D. 950 the Azif, which had gained a considerable tho’ surreptitious circulation amongst the philosophers of the age, was secretly translated into Greek by Theodorus Philetas of Constantinople under the title Necronomicon. For a century it impelled certain experimenters to terrible attempts, when it was suppressed and burnt by the patriarch Michael. After this it is only heard of furtively, but (1228) Olaus Wormius made a Latin translation later in the Middle Ages, and the Latin text was printed twice—once in the fifteenth century in black-letter (evidently in Germany) and once in the seventeenth (prob. Spanish)—both editions being without identifying marks, and located as to time and place by internal typographical evidence only. The work both Latin and Greek was banned by Pope Gregory IX in 1232, shortly after its Latin translation, which called attention to it. The Arabic original was lost as early as Wormius’ time, as indicated by his prefatory note; and no sight of the Greek copy—which was printed in Italy between 1500 and 1550—has been reported since the burning of a certain Salem man’s library in 1692 ...

 

I surmise there is this period between someone beginning to lose their mind to the mythos and mastering some really bad magic, when they are vulnerable. People mostly don't tolerate the kind of behaviour "terrible attempts" entails. Even after they master bad magic they are vulnerable - the mad Arab was killed by his own magic, or perhaps by a rival, who knows.

Other sorcerers like the old witch in "The Dreams in the Witch House", she lived in an attic kidnapping children - not someone who seemed particularly active attempting to conquer the world. Or Crawford in "From Beyond", the Church of Starry Wisdom in "The Haunter of the Dark" both seemed so fascinated by their dark knowledge, they had no interest in the human world, other than perhaps a source of victims.

My point is if you fight the mythos head on, you're mostly going to lose. But the human antagonists generally are not Professor Moriarty orchestrating a fiendish plot of exquisite cunning, they are usually unbalanced madmen who are totally out of their depth, messing with evil powers they cannot comprehend.

So if players stick to figuring out the identity of the perpetrator and burning their house down when they aren't surrounded by servitors, or when their god is not sitting on the altar behind them, they should have a pretty good chance of surviving - and are following a well worn tradition which has served mankind since the mad Arab wrote his book all that time ago.

I think I read somewhere some trolls can transform into humans? Are the Hsunchen out there who worship transforming into humans? That could make for a fun scenario.

19 minutes ago, Darius West said:

Honestly, my players were such degenerates that they never tried to destroy any magic items, instead favoring figuring out how to exploit them for $$$.

My personal favorite schtick is wearable items that you can't take off.  I had one player who put on a familiar summoning ring that couldn't be taken off, but he figured out how, using a micro-gate, and then on his next character he put on the Pallid Mask AND read the King in Yellow.  The mask doesn't come off either, and sort of welds to one's skin.

I think any item destruction needs to be a scenario in itself, with attendant dangers.  On the other hand I think it is wiser to take the eagles to Mt Doom with the ring.

 

"What do you mean I've got to throw this ring into the volcano?!" 😉

21 hours ago, JDS said:

How do you handle it in your campaigns?

I'm referring to the amulets, dagger, and other ominous life-changing trappings that crop up frequently in scenarios.

Whatever best serves the plot. I love HPL's story The Hound, which centres around a dangerous amulet - the stealing of which triggers a series of horrible events, which would likely not have ceased even if one of them attempted to destroy the amulet - or maybe it would. Or you have artefacts like the glowing trapezohedron from The Haunter of the Dark, which likely can't be destroyed by any human agency, though maybe it could be buried in concrete or something. 

I certainly wouldn't want to breath in the dust if you tried to destroy an amulet by hitting it with a hammer. Ditto the smoke if you threw it into a fire. Maybe the amulet in one piece traps the malign influence in one place, prevents it from spreading. Imagine the amulet is made of radioactive material - attempting to destroy it might spread the contamination, make it impossible to escape the effect. Imagine carrying a piece of the amulet in the form of dust in your lungs or splinters inside your body forever. 

Lots of options.

16 hours ago, davecake said:

To Ancient Greek philosophers, the term sub-atomic is nonsensical because if there is something smaller than an atom, it’s not an atom. And the idea that we have a God Learner sect trying to turn the universe back to when the Zzaburite worldview was true, before Hrestol and Arkat and barbarian gods were necessary, appeals to me more than some sort of Moorcockian multiverse interacting with Glorantha does (not that Moorcockian multiverses don’t have their charms). But that’s just my personal reaction - I don’t think there should be any official position on such obscure single references, and we can interpret them to suit the exciting ideas they invoke in us as we wish for our own wildly speculative campaign ideas.

Glorantha has other worlds, and has strange and terrible realms like wherever the gate of Banir led to, and the Red Goddess' private hell, which may or may not be part of Glorantha proper, but is incredibly difficult to reach, without the help of the Goddess. And of course there is wherever the dragons hang out, Arkat's stead, various places of preparation or waiting, and hideous places like the Plateau of Terror, which may or may not be accessible by some path.

So I suggest Gloranthan Canon is already brushing the edges of a Moorcockian multiverse. You could argue these different realms are all part of the Gloranthan underworld or whatever, but isn't that just code for saying "I don't know where it is"? Surely describing all the other places as part of the underworld is just what surface world dwellers say about strange and terrible realms which they cannot properly describe, which they know only by whispered rumour and the rantings of madmen, and which they likely will never visit in person ;-).

10 minutes ago, PhilHibbs said:

Well all three of those have already happened in Glorantha.... or is that your point, that Nysalor, The Red Moon, and Argrath's warlocks are all the OAE's fault? There's a thread for that... 😆 You could have thrown in "an immortal god-emperor that washes up on the shores one day". Maybe he was the new pseudo-cosmic egg.

I should search the Dumbest Theories thread to see if anyone's already suggested Belintar was an OAE, that's got to be a thing already.

No, I'm not suggesting any of those events were due to OAE. What I'm suggesting is given the history of what happened when new things entered Glorantha, a group of people who deliberately venture outside Glorantha in order to bring back new things, even if that is just new knowledge, is probably not an activity which will have a happy ending.

@PhilHibbs I think speculation on who the outer atomic explorers are is reasonable in a thread which asks who and what the outer atomic explorers are 😉

If they are fools who venture outside of Glorantha, then if they bring a piece of the outside inside, whether that be knowledge or a physical artefact, how can that be a good thing? I'm sure if they try hard they might find a new pseudo-cosmic egg, or a special way of mixing different magics, or a new rune.

What happens if Etyries stands in for Issaries in a lightbringer heroquest? Or even stands in for Orlanth? Does it work? Or does it go horribly wrong in some way?

On 4/2/2022 at 10:38 PM, Darius West said:

Honestly, berserking is not all its cracked up to be.  Attack heavy, defense light, and thoughtless offensives are no great problem to a cunning enemy.

I have seen a berserk Stormbull minotaur utterly die to a single gorp for want of any means to hurt it, as gorps can only be destroyed by fire or magic and the minotaur had neither.

And how does a berserk Stormbull cope when the shortest distance between them and their enemy is thru a trap?

Berserkers are tough but they are operating largely on autopilot.  Dumb autopilot. Stupidity isn't strength.

Now if Orlanth could conquer Stormbull with nothing but a rope and a stick, how much easier will it be for Chaos, who will literally stoop to any depths of rat cunning?

As for chaos organizations who can stand up to Stormbull, the Lunar Empire has it covered nicely.

I agree berserking isn’t an ideal choice in terms of game mechanics , but given all the descriptions of rampaging chaos armies in the greater darkness it seems odd chaos doesn’t have access to at least one divine battle frenzy spell.

There was a non canon description of Urain which made a case I liked, that other religions berserk fury had a purpose, while for chaos berserk fury was the purpose. So a chaotic mockery of Storm Bull’s righteous wrath.

6 minutes ago, g33k said:

But as lust is a perversion of love, etc; it seems (in principle at least) that there "could be" a Chaotic battle-frenzy spell that gave boosts similar to "Berserker" spells...

 

Exactly - hatred of life, willingness in some cases to sacrifice self in the cause of ruin, seems like a good fit for a battle frenzy spell. I'm not dissing Storm Bull, all I'm suggesting is there should be a chaotic mockery of Storm Bull's vigour.