EricW

8 hours ago, Akhôrahil said:

I agree with this. The Red Goddess 100% has the Chaos rune, for instance. Ralzakark really is Chaotic.

Maybe illuminates can detect as chaotic if they want? Or is the Red Goddess’ chaos nature inferred from the company she keeps?

in which case where does that leave Humakt? Humakt accepts chaos, like Ralzakark’s sword Broos

I think the Monster Empire and the final days of the Empire of Light are the answer to what is wrong with illumination.

Illumination is like being asked to mind a million dollars.

Days, weeks, years pass. Then, one day, the day before pay day, your run out of money. Family emergency. Your kids need to see the doctor. So, you will get paid tomorrow, surely there is no harm borrowing the money from the cash pile, you will replace it tomorrow. 

After succumbing to temptation, it becomes easier to do it next time. Until one day there is a big hole in that cash pile, and your intentions of paying it back have been indefinitely deferred. 

You can think of a whole pile of scenarios like that. A Lhankor Mhy sage, who desperately needs to decipher and learn a scroll, to save their people. For an illuminate there is an easier way. Beleaguered defenders, taking a chaos taint to strengthen them against their foes, to protect their loved ones. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

4 hours ago, jajagappa said:

I think it's better to say that during certain events the Godtime is close or proximate to the real world.  You can quest to the mythic events in the Godtime that were proximate when those events in the past occurred, but not to the actual past events.

 

But surely when the compromise breaks and time stops, the real world enters a period indistinguishable from other parts of the godtime, other than that big spider crawling towards the sun?

2 hours ago, Akhôrahil said:

I like this a ton!

Fifth Age seems like awesome gaming material! Can you HeroQuest into the future the way you can into the past?

This is where it gets weird. Time travel is impossible - but time doesn’t exist when the compromise breaks down. Heroes from the future can visit the Sunstop and other breakdowns in the compromise.

So what happens when a hero from the future spills information about future events, to other participants in such a cataclysm? Are they just too busy to pay attention?

5 hours ago, Beoferret said:

There's a definite Mythos vibe here. I could see a RQG campaign centered around stopping a group of Chaos cultists (in the Lovecraftian sense) who've decided to try and speed things up. Lots of room for parties made up primarily of Lhankor Mhy devotees who've teamed up with a couple of Uroxi. Wacky hijinks ensue.

 

Lords of Terror this was part of a report written by a very frightened illuminated Lunar spy who wanted out before it was too late.

From Lords of Terror;

Quote

 

The Deliverance

Three Ages of the world have passed, and three more are yet to come. The freedom brought by time is an illusion, but a comforting one. Our world is doomed to replay the folly of the Gods Age before the divine plan of the Goddess can be completed. The False Gods interrupted the cycle of creation, rebirth and destruction by sabotaging the coming of the sixth and highest element.

Six is the perfect number. In each recreation of the world, six ages are experienced. The great powers of Godtime failed because of their weakness and fear, letting chaos into the world and disrupting the plan of the Goddess. We who live within Time must struggle to succeed where our predecessors failed. Only in this way can our flawless creation be consumed and reborn to a more perfect state, as was planned from the Beginning by She Who Devours the World.

The First Age is the Age of Darkness, and ended in the Darkness brought by Arkat the Destroyer. The Second Age is the Age of Water, and was destroyed in Water with the sinking of Seshnela, Births, and Jrustela. Our Age is the Age of Earth, and will end in Earth.

The Fourth Age is the Age of Fire, and will be like the Golden Age of Godtime. For five centuries the world will live in peace and light. Mankind will be happy, but will fall away from the worship of the Goddess, until only a few true believers are left. But ever will the children of the Goddess wait with patience, far beneath the troubled surface world.

Then will stagnant peace be shattered again. The Fifth Age, the Age of Storm, will come after the great fires destroy the world. Mankind will be a pitiful remnant once again, and monsters of the Outer Void will freely roam the Earth. At the end, Orlanth will dominate all as he did before, but his victory will be an empty one. All will suffer as he is chained, as was his father before him. Then he will perish in his own storms.

Then will the Sixth Age come, as it could not before. The Perfect One will return to heal the daughter of the Great Goddess, who is the New Goddess to come. The Shattered Moon will reunite, and rise once more to rule the Age of Moon. The broken body of Glorantha will be healed, and the true Arachne Solara will rule for a thousand years of harmony and peace. 

Then when the world is healed will the Goddess rise to devour all. Krasht's true name will be revealed at the end of Time, and the Goddess will be left alone in the Void. Then will She give birth to the new world, as She herself was reborn. Those who served Her in this lifetime will be rewarded in the new creation, ruling it as the gods of old ruled this world. 

This is the Way and the Plan of the Great Goddess. Those who threaten Her threaten the rebirth of the world. They must be destroyed, fed to the Goddess to fuel Her recreation at the end of Time. We hope that in their next incarnation they will see the error of their ways, and come to serve the Goddess, even as we do. Praise the Goddess, and you will feel Her blessing up you. Milk.

 

Makes the White Moon cult look tame...

If you wanted to be really cruel you could go with Krasht. A Krasht worshipper wouldn’t necessarily attack non chaotic PCs, they might even offer services, become a useful procurer of difficult items or information, seek to corrupt their judgement by being a false friend. Keep your enemies close and all that.

On 1/12/2022 at 2:28 PM, Bren said:

I was also thinking of something odder like a buried egg shaped structure designed to aid an EWF person in trying to ascend to Dragon-hood. The eggs shape is in imitateion of the eggs that Dragonewts hatch out of in their various incarnations.

Most such artefacts would be an abuse of the draconic path. Blood of Orlanth (not sure if its canon anymore) has an example of a perversion of right action which dragonewts hate but human EWF subjects find unspeakably tempting.

4 hours ago, soltakss said:

Also, there would be an awful lot of Thed HeroQuestors trying to stop you from succeeding in the HeroQuest, so nobody said it would be easy.

Trickster might be able to hide Thed from Ragnaglar, I don't think a direct confrontation would work out for most heroes.

Of course, Ragnaglar would probably just find someone else to abuse, with potentially horrendous consequences - imagine if your attempted intervention created a new chaos threat for elves, if in your legend Aldrya became the mother of the Devil? Or say a darkness deity?

I think the victims of your quest might want to have a long chat with you when you returned to the mundane world.

19 hours ago, Darius West said:

In RQG the world is made of runes not atoms.  Spirits have spirit runes in their make-up.  Undead have undead runes in their make-up.  It is these runes that Detect Spirit and Detect Undead can find. 

(Don't ask me how Detect Enemies works, I can only guess, but if anyone else has an answer, consider making a separate forum topic about it.)

As to what constitutes undeath? Well, in Glorantha it seems to be about making dead bodies move around, and also have no POW. (It may be that what POW they do have has been turned into CON but that is only a guess.)  This is true for skeletons, zombies, ghouls, vampires, and revenants.

Spirits can possess a living person, but that doesn't make them undead.  In fact within the Humakt temples of Glorantha, there will be many spirits of the Einherjar, who are dead Humakti returned in Ghost form to protect holy sites or serve as allied spirits for the cult.

I hope that helps.

Are Thanatari severed heads undead? While in the possession of their owner, and afterwards as insane ghosts?

Publicly accusing someone of being an illuminated Lunar spy would draw attention. Any illuminates in the audience would know you were lying (unless you weren't), but it would be unwise for an actual illuminate to let on how they knew for sure you were wrong. Letting Orlanth vindicate the honour of the accused through a duel would be a quick solution.

On 1/3/2022 at 8:17 PM, Darius West said:

There can be little doubt that the Sorcerers of Orathorn have access to chaotic magic, as they are on record as having summoned headhangers during the Night of Horrors, and are served by the undead.  Given the proximity of Than Ulbar, it is reasonable to suppose that they may have received some magic from there.  It is also worth pointing out that Urrquong has repeatedly said that the Sorcerers are not considered enemies of Chaos, which raises a lot of questions.

The immortality of the Sorcerers of Orathorn raises more questions.  If they were vampires, surely they would be referred to as such.  If they were mere Thanatari, they would be called such, and the Stormbulls would have levelled their stronghold long ago. 

I instead propose that they are a small outpost of Vadeli.  As to why they are there, solitude would seem the obvious answer.  It is a fine place to set up a small self-sufficient settlement, well away from everyone and everything, with nice high walls to keep all but the most determined raiders out.  I am not going to pretend that I know what sort of Vadeli they are, but all Vadeli castes use sorcery, and none have any compunction about using chaos.  If you mainly wanted to do research, well away from the threats of the world, it is hard to imagine anywhere more remote than Orathorn.  Perhaps they are researching the Hellcrack?  Perhaps not.  Given that Gonn Orta is a dealer in magical items, one might suppose that the Sorcerers of Orathorn are at least semi-regular customers, given their mutual interest and proximity.

Given the "Night of Horrors" involved many worlds, couldn't the Sorcerers of Orathorn simply be one of the other world horrors which washed up in Gloranthan reality, and somehow never left?

This would explain the puzzling lack of connection between the sorcerers and anything else, and why the Emperor's chaos magic suddenly went so wrong - the sorcerers, perhaps fleeing the collapse of another reality, might have seen a weakness and pounced. A flood of other beings could have entered through the breach they created, but most were expelled when the breach was closed.

8 hours ago, AndreJarosch said:

Where was tzhe original Abiding Book located when the Closing, and Sinking of Land stroke?

Follow up question: 
Were the pages of the original Abiding Book waterproof?

Nothing a "repair" spell can't handle 🙂

I think the solution would be to hero quest to see a Malkion saint, and ask them for a copy. Or reconstruct the original event, or do what Argrath did - have a chat to the ghosts of the original God Learners. 

Obviously there would be terrifying dangers, you might encounter horrifying guardians placed by people who never want God Learnerism to threaten the world again.

I think of experimental hero questing like gain of function virus research. You might discover important clues about imminent problems, or you might accidentally release a terrible problem on the world.

My interpretation of the hero wars is they forced the Orlanthi to reconsider religious conservatism. When the Wind Stop occurred, imagine the shock to Orlanthi and associated cults. Here they were complacently believing Orlanth was the king of the gods, maybe even that Orlanth would take care of the goddess if they were devout enough, then suddenly their security was taken away.

Even worse, when they started exploring the hero plane before the Wind Stop, they found the Lunars had been there first, tampering with the myths, closing their access to power to fight the overwhelming magical prowess of the chaos moon.

This is why IMO Argrath's draconic mysticism and temples of the reaching storm and other odd powers were accepted. When Orlanth vigorously rekindled the flame of Sartar after Argrath entreated him, they knew whatever odd things Argrath did were OK with their god, so they wholeheartedly followed all his breaches of tradition to free their lands from chaos.

For some reason I just got a vision of Storm Bullies ripping a "chaos vegetable" field apart, building a big bonfire, then changing their minds after the potatoes started cooking... 🙂

6 hours ago, dumuzid said:

i've always thought potatoes as a child of aldrya and lodril, and a staple crop of lodrilli peasants

Surely that child would be a hot chilli pepper? 

16 hours ago, Akhôrahil said:

I wonder whether a big Earthquake spell would make the Chaos situation better or worse?

One of the few mitigating factors of Snakepipe Hollow is the cliffs help contain the monsters. If you knocked some of the cliffs down with a hero scale earthquake, not only would you mortally offend Maran Gor, who went to all the trouble to create the cliffs in the first place, you might find the chaos monsters now find it easier to climb the resulting piles of rubble and escape. There's a real chance the infection would spread.

Was there a time when Argrath was vulnerable, when a different decision by Lunars could have ended his rebellion or permanently destroyed him? What would have happened if they had?

The Great web has power over fire. The spider ended the sun stop by dragging the sun back on course. Arkat's darkness defeated Gbaji. Zorak Zoran stole fire. So it makes sense that an extremely powerful darkness entity has power over light and fire.

On 12/15/2021 at 6:59 AM, Joerg said:

After the moon has fallen, yes. Before that, he is a driven fanatic who has sworn to do so, but hasn't, yet. Still vaporware, so to say.

 

Summoning a dragon and destroying an entire city + lunar magicians + major command post is pretty convincing 😉

Argrath is a terrifying warrior mage who took down the Lunars. Even before the dragon rise people would have been in awe. I think people would no more defy him than they would defy the Crimson Bat or Harek.

Friends or kin can cooperate across cult hostilities, otherwise how do you explain the Seven Mothers? What a motley crew they were!

Probably some friendly sparing, and the occasional heated argument. 

Having said that the unnatural cooperation and lack of observance of cult hostilities by the Seven Mothers led to very bad things happening. So if they say all tried to go on a hero quest together, some odd things could happen - they might find themselves facing each other on the hero plane as adversaries, or worse, they might cooperate in ways which violate the myths and invite unwelcome consequences. Maybe they encounter an empty shadow which invites them to discover new ways to resolve cult hostilities, if they overcome it - just like the goddess did.

15 minutes ago, g33k said:

Recall their very-profound links to Air / Storm.  For all the similar LOOKS, they are not human, and don't have the human propensity to spread into every niche, adapt themselves to every rune...  Fire/Sky - aligned Uz, or Triolini, or Mostali?

Say rather, none of the Wind Children have "tried anything new" that has taken hold, in their culture.

Argan Argar, for example, seems like a Troll who "tried something new" (trade) as does Zorak Zoran (fire); but those are MUCH more numerous races; so if fewer than one in a thousand of the (already rare) wild-eyed dreamers actually bring their dreams to fruition, there will still be a hundred-fold more Uz who do so than Wind Children (and you can count the Uz on one hand).

I wondered how Wind Children were treated by the EWF? If they stuck to old ways they might have been seen by EWF leaders as rebel sympathisers. If they embraced Draconic Orlanth they might have had contact with Fire / Sky powers - Draconic Orlanth comes close in a sense to being a reconciliation between air and sky, which might have been very appealing to winged Orlanthi. 

I doubt even the EWF would have hunted Wind Children down, but the relationship may have been uneasy in some respects.