EricW

I get the impression Gargarthi are also kind of lazy? They're opportunists rather than an organised threat? Orlanthi, Humakt and Storm Bull make an effort, while Gargathi brutalise and rob people because the beer ran out? They're the dirty slobs on your street who terrorise the local kids and piss on your lawn?

Since we're resurrecting this thread 🙂 If Gargarthi hunt hero questers on the heroplane, the obvious reward for successfully hunting a heroquester is to rob them of their heroquest abilities - vengeance for what Orlanth did to Gargarth before time.

Yikes my bad.

In HP Lovecraft's universe modern Egypt is a thin veneer over an ancient mythos tradition - at least that was my impression reading "Under the Pyramids". In Under the Pyramids, a visiting stage magician gradually becomes ensnared by an ancient evil. Everywhere there are hints the locals are at least partly aware of the evil, and are subservient to it. Some actively help and participate. There are also hints some strong willed rulers of Egypt attempted to clean house, to rectify the worst abuses - but if "Under the Pyramids" is any guide, they were less than successful. Or maybe the evil seeped back in after the various attempts at cleansing. The mythos version of ancient Egypt then is a magical battleground - under the veneer of calm, it would contain insane cultists almost openly practicing their abominations, with frantic and continuous efforts by decent people to destroy and disrupt their activities, sometimes helped, sometimes hindered by the ruler. In the midst of this chaos, gods would sometimes take human form and manipulate events for their eerie amusement, or perhaps for motives utterly beyond human comprehension. I sure hope this age is fleshed out. Maybe even scenarios which lead modern people into an adventure in the ancient past, perhaps a quest to save a child who would one day become one of the great cleansers, and save the modern world from an unbearable burden of mythos evil. Terminator meet Cthulhu 🙂

Knights of old used lances and spears, the sword was a spare in case the spear broke. But spearing someone while flying would be a very bad idea, unless the spear was thrown. Imagine an airplane trying to spear opponents and you get the idea. Surely if flying attacks are attempted, some sort of projectile weapon, the lighter the better, would be the realistic first choice. Even a bunch of spikes dropped from a height would be devastating. A melee weapon would only be useful if you ran out of javelins, arrows, stones, or other projectiles, and had to fight your way back to the supply depot.

In King of Sartar it is implied the red emperor bound the empire, that with the final death of the emperor at the hands of Shang Seleris, shared worship of the goddess wasn't enough to keep the empire together. Perhaps the fragmentation was a manifestation of those "terrifying freedoms"? Does this mean the emperor, while he lives, has a role in deciding what is doctrine and what is heresy?

I don’t see death as being part of Kargan Tor, because death collapsed the ancient world. If Kargan Tor was flexible enough to accept death he would have put up a much better fight when Wakboth attacked the Spike. Perhaps Trickster stumbled across death when casing Subere’s endless realm of darkness, looking for stuff to steal. Death attracted Trickster’s attention because this secret was so important and interesting it had a guard.

Whatever it is would have to be trapped in the ruins, otherwise it would be a well known threat to a larger area. A troll vampire which has been trapped in the ruins since before time, and begs players to help release it? Trolls who made a pact with local chaos to survive, chaos which demanded such great sacrifices their city is now in ruins and all but depopulated? Lots of fun.

Is death and war really the same thing? Nowadays sure, but what about in a world without death? Surely Kargan Tor was the god of war, before war meant death? Perhaps one of the reasons he fell is war without death no longer made sense, once death was introduced to the world - he was simply superseded?

You could handle it sensibly. For example if a formerly sedentary character walks on foot across half of Africa, their strength and endurance should improve a little, as much as if they did some training. Of course if they stop walking so much maybe they get fat and flabby again.

It's easy right? Just walk up to the bat, grab a tooth, then run? I would have thought carrying bat poop might provide a short duration magical boost, based on quantity. But collecting the poop, there's a non zero chance of being caught in a deluge of excreta, resulting in horrible chaotic mutations and / or possible total dissolution. At the very least it would make a great trickster lie.

I think you can have a lot of fun with madness. For example, if a player becomes paranoid, why tell them? Much more fun to take the player aside, and tell them they just noticed something suspicious about one of their fellow PCs, like a glint of green in their blood, or some other indication they are not what they seem to be. If done right, the paranoid PC themself might start denouncing their fellow PCs, leading to all sorts of fun. That way they still get to play as a PC, but their perceptions and senses are distorted by their madness, so they are interpreting things differently to their fellows. If they recover sanity, you could point out they suddenly realise blood is supposed to be green / blue sometimes - veinous blood.

Just how dangerous is life as a Lunar? Should Lunars have a Call of Cthulhu style SAN stat? Are magical classes or illuminates more or less susceptible to the insanity of life under a goddess whose magic creates madness? Is just learning Lunar mysteries enough to drive someone mad?

Regarding usurping rune spells, I suggest consume mind is an attack on the god worshiped by the victim as much as it is an attack on the victim. Tien established in god time he could usurp the powers of other gods. While Atyar is weaker than Tien, he still retains the power to steal rune magic. Who knows how powerful the original spell was. I suggest rune spells stolen by consume mind should be reusable if the victim was a priest - and can be recharged by worshipping Atyar, celebrating the evil god’s success at stealing a fragment of the power of another god.

I am concerned this makes Thed too powerful, she was utterly defeated in god time and a remnant of her only survives because of the compromise? But a wicked shaman might quest to restore a more powerful Thed hero cult. Restoring Thed would probably make a whole bunch of gods unhappy

The first age Gbaji priests cured plagues they themselves spread, to promote worship of Gbaji, so I could easily imagine Lunars trying the same trick. Of course they would need to obtain lots of divination block magic to hide the plot from suspicious lightbringers. Call it the “red pestilence”. Only the light of the moon can cure it, unless some courageous PCs undergo a dangerous heroquest and confront Lunar conspirators on the heroplane, to unravel the mystery of why the healing magic has failed.

I think it’s OK to visit places before time or where the compromise has broken, but frightfully dangerous. Before time is easy. If you change something radically, you may never find your way back - this should be a lesson that all the events which led to time, good and bad, were vital to the salvation of Glorantha. If you visit a breach in the compromise, good luck surviving that. Whatever hideous threat broke the compromise, is now your problem. How many trolls have thrown their lives away pitting themselves against Gbaji at the battle of night and day? Imagine witnessing the battle of Castle Blue, seeing the goddess manifest as a Lune of infinite power? Obviously there must be a way for players to return, unless you enjoy creating new characters, but pitted against forces of that magnitude there is not much they can do to change an outcome - and even if they somehow do, time will protect the integrity of all which came before their attempt.

I think make it real - instead of allowing characters to say roll to persuade the guard to let them pass, make the party fully role play, speak directly to the NPCs. If the PC tries to bull through, have NPCs react negatively, much as if someone pushed past in a rude way in real life. You could also add something which encourages the PC to engage more fully with their character, say they could develop a feeble psychic talent which might encourage them to interact with people and try to develop their talent. Of course, treat this with care - psychic talents in the mythos universe expose you to danger, they're more a curse than a blessing.

Maybe a cult for children? That lets kids get an introduction, without the obligations of adulthood?

I always figured the damage which led to death is the damage which has to be repaired by POW, but your thought is a good one - the actual mechanics of the resurrection might differ, so for example the resurrection of an Oakfed associated shaman might involve ritual rebirth from the ashes, as homage to Oakfed, and just because they can. Given the Shaman is still in close contact with their body, and has a strong intent to re-enter it, I have always assumed any allied spirits and fetch would hang about waiting for their master to return. I mean, death and disincorporation are pretty similar when you think about it, other than fatal damage to the body in the case of death. If a shaman stays too long away from their body the death maybe becomes official. State of the body - who knows. Resurrecting a finger or a pile of ashes (outside maybe the Oakfed ritual), might be a big ask. Though Shamen with different affiliations might have particular skill at handling various problems, so an Oakfed shaman might be good at dealing with fire damage, and Earth spirit shaman might be good at handling crush damage, etc. Of course, parties hostile to the shaman might know special tricks or rituals for making resurrection particularly difficult, if they don't want the shaman to return. Of course, messing with the body would be pretty risky, a shaman powerful enough to cause that kind of hatred would probably take a few precautions.

He he - you could give Glorantha its own "Cordyceps" plague, like "The last of us" - the sword can infect and enslave whoever it strikes, who can then go on to infect others if commanded to do so. And I don't see why keeping an edge would be a problem - the fungus could manifest sharp barbs or fruiting bodies through the rotten wood. There is precedent, one of the Dorastor books, I forget which, has an example where Hellwood elves would infect humans with a plant which takes over their nervous system, forcing them to do the bidding of their master. Of course the legitimacy of such magic is highly questionable - infecting an enslaving others is a morally dubious act which would be looked upon as chaotic by most people who worked out what was happening.

Physics genius Ludwig Boltzmann, who developed the mathematical description of the second law of thermodynamics, also gave us a glimpse of the mythos. He developed the concept of a Boltzmann Brain. The Boltzmann Brain is a thermodynamic thought experiment, intended to illustrate that the second law is probabilistic, that given enough time entropy can reverse by random chance - that a replica of any living person, or a being of immense power, could simply pop into existence. In his book "A brief history of time", Stephen Hawking mentions once giving a lecture to catholic scientists in which he explained Cthulhu might really exist - thanks to the Boltzmann Brain. Scientists seem to hate the Boltzmann brain concept, they think it represents an undiscovered flaw in their cosmological theories. But so far the brain hypothesis has survived at least 2 fundamental revisions of cosmological theory. But what if it is all true? Well a really large Boltzmann brain would have structure, order, physical laws - it might look a lot like what you see around you, when you gaze up at the night sky. What about the other Boltzmann brains? Well here it gets interesting, and we're going way beyond known physics with this conjecture. If there were other Boltzmann brains, and if there was a way for them to interact with each other, what they would crave above all else would be pool of low entropy on which to feed. Most Boltzmann brains would be feeble and small. Only by discovering patches of low entropy, like our universe, attaching like vampires, and feasting on the work that low entropy made possible, could these lesser Boltzmann brains sustain and extend their existence. What if there was a way for humans to somehow bridge the gap, to make it easier for such incomprehensibly alien monstrosities to sink their feeding appendages into our cosmos? Well the region where these entities manifested, the physics of our universe might be weaker, and the alien physics of the monstrosity which had manifested a little of its presence in our reality would have some influence. Of course all of this is wild conjecture and speculation. But thinking about it shook my faith in atheism. Note none of this provides any evidence that entities described in the world's mainstream holy books are real. But a world where there is a remote chance supernatural entities might actually exist, and the likelihood such entities would be utterly inimical to anyone who cared about the security and integrity of all that is decent, and the even more remote possibility such entities might be able to offer unnatural advantages to those who serve their hunger, is a world where it pays to keep an open mind. Sleep well tonight, fellow mythos dweller.

What the goddess swallowed that day was illumination. I don’t think a healing spell can fix that.

Both? And what happened to trolls who hung out with Arkat? Humans who hung out with Arkat tended to become illuminated. Were Arkat’s friends also injured by his illumination?

If Kyger Litor was suddenly illuminated, that would certainly explain the confusion. Trollkin might be because some days illuminated Kyger Litor can't be bothered to do her job right. I guess that doesn't really answer the question of whether illumination is chaotic.