EricW

18 hours ago, Darius West said:

I was under the impression that Arkati don't infiltrate chaos cults, but have taken severe oaths never to serve chaos, likely invoking Humakt Oath spells or worse in the process.  There are very good reasons for this.  Firstly, to serve chaos is to fall into the trap of Nysalor/Gbaji, and secondly, to those in the know, Arkat likely did succumb to the tempatation of chaos while fighting Nysalor in order to better represent the fact that Nysalor's whole notion of Illumination was hideously flawed and merely a license to riot. Of course Arkat later expunged the chaos from himself when it had served its purpose, likey in much the same way the Cleansed One did.

I made a mistake with that introduction sorry (see above), I don't think the source I quoted was canon. 

18 hours ago, Darius West said:

 The notion of a special and select group of Arkati devoted to chaos hunting in the name of Arkat the Destroyer is interesting.  They certainly wouldn't ever tell anyone in any of the chaos hunting cults that they even existed and would likely have to be relinquished of certain oaths an have to swear other ones involving the protection of their secret identity and the identities of others in their espionage cell, so that they literally couldn't release the information without dying "like a good ninja".  

That being said, I haven't read about Arkati chaos cult infiltrators anywhere. I think their current focus, as I have said above, is presently on protecting the Hero Quest Plane from people doing God Learning.

It seemed a very natural thing for an illuminate to do when I read it. Nobody but an illuminate could infiltrate a chaos cult without getting busted by divination or detect enemy, especially a paranoid knowledge cult like Thanatar or any of the Lunar cults.

I'm sure Lunars must be infiltrating LightBringer groups with illuminated spies, it doesn't make sense that there is no intelligence gathering occurring in the other direction, even if only on a small scale.

15 hours ago, David Scott said:

What's the reference for this.

My apologies, the reference came from an online writeup of Arkat the Destroy which I can no longer find. Probably not canon. Me bad.

Arkat the Destroyer's illuminated followers infiltrate chaos cults like local Thanatar nests, learn their secrets, then use that information to help destroy the temple and kill the chaos worshippers.

How do Lightbringers and chaos fighting cults like Storm Bulls and Zorak Zoran react to this kind of skullduggery? Is there any possibility of at least limited tolerance for their activities? I mean, the Arkati are illuminates, they give power to chaos during the infiltration stage, but they help destroy chaos, providing information which might not be obtainable by other means, helping to gain access to hidden temples, improving the odds of success, helping to ensure none of the chaos scum survives the raid.

Without them, there would be more chaos. 

5 hours ago, Ali the Helering said:

As you stated in a thread relating to 'dragonewt wierdness', to gain any such understanding would at minimum require the splitting of tongue and brain.

The trauma of this being imposed instantly would certainly cause mental damage, if not death.

Consume mind is traumatic, there is a substantial risk of failure in the write ups I’ve read. But there is also a chance of success.

Thanatari have knowledge stealing magics, they can steal the skills of their victims, or remove the head of their victim and enslave the soul of the victim to their will.

What happens when a Thanatar worshipper attempts to use these chaos magics on a captured Dragonewt?

EWF tried to manifest a dragon from the land, geography was important to their great dragon project. Perhaps the EWF effort was an imperfect attempt to replicate what Dragonewts do instinctively. This could mean the location of the nests critically important, shifting the nest would potentially undo centuries of painstaking magical effort.  

My vote is Delecti - a god learner turned EWF who mastered both sets of magics and who knows what other vile powers sufficiently to survive the dragons. He is now contained rather than destroyed.

Dodging long range attacks is difficult.

Ever tried to catch a cricket ball? It’s difficult to exactly judge its trajectory, you have to move, then see if the ball is coming straight at you or appears to be moving sideways.

it takes time and attention to get the trajectory right, both of which might be in short supply during a melee.

A failed dodge would inadvertently take you *into* the path of the projectile. I’ve been hit plenty of times by cricket balls I was trying to catch, or balls I thought I had dodged.

Ever been to Britain? Old countries tend to have huge diversity, travel just a few miles and the place feels completely different.

15 hours ago, Joerg said:

Which only means that such knowledge will be preserved in the Restricted sections of the library (and it should be fairly easy to re-theme that other Knizia boardgame for Chaosium to be set in a Sairdite LM/IO library in Mirin's Cross, or Tarshite near the Reaching Moon Temple east of Furthest).

Maybe - but it would be like reading Cthulhu Mythos books.

A sage might skim the book to gain some insight into stopping some horrible plot, but what if the book caused illumination and mastery of a chaos skill? 

Even if the sage’s intentions were good, the temptation to use that awful knowledge might become too great, if the situation was desperate.

Take the legend of Arkat stealing Zabur’s blue book, so he could bring sorcery to the trolls. The legend glosses over exactly how Arkat mastered the contents of the book so quickly, or what happened to the book afterwards. Let’s just assume Arkat succeeded because he was a hero.

Lhankor Mhy is a Lightbringer, so I could imagine scholars burning books tainted by chaos, such as a book of Atyar knowledge consuming skill, or a book which teaches mastery of the lunar magic system. To study such a thing would be to risk your sanity.

Has anyone ever written up the cult of the Devil? What terrifying magics could a worshipper of the ultimate evil in Glorantha sacrifice for? Is it possible for a mortal born inside time to hero quest to the greater darkness to connect to this terrifying being, and to bring access to those powers back into time, either for personal use or as the focus of a new hero cult?

Given the magical upheavals at the time of the fall of Jrustela, is it possible that any heroquest roads were temporarily unusable? This would reconcile the existence of such roads with the sorcerers being unable to escape their doom.

The Terrible Old Man didn't have any problem handling multiple armed assailants. The Terrible Old Man was never alone, he had lots of companions other people couldn't see, companions capable of rapidly inflicting horrible damage on people he didn't like.

A large armed group can ruin a sorcerer's day, for example in The Call of Cthulhu the group of devil worshippers in the New Orleans woods were rounded up and arrested by the police.

But guns against sorcerers is very risky, especially when attacking elderly sorcerers who have probably seen a lot of guns in their lives.

2 hours ago, Joerg said:

Delecti was a sorcerer, or other such strange magician. He may have been Jrusteli-taught, just like Arminius was Roman-taught.

In Blood of Orlanth its pretty clear that Delecti the Inquirer was a senior God Learner Sorcerer who defected to EWF. As someone with both God Learner and EWF abilities, who survived the cataclysmic end of EWF, I think it would be difficult to argue that he doesn't or didn't at some time know the secret. 

Ralzakark is also mentioned in various sources as having been raised by God Learners in the second age, and immediately enslaving his rescuers, so its difficult to see how he wouldn't know the secret.

I've lost track of whether all this is still canon or not, but its evidence that a few uniquely powerful beings retained secret knowledge from the second age - though whether they can still use that knowledge is another matter.

There is at least one being who knows the God Learners secret in the Third Age - Ralzakark (assuming he is still cannon).

So it doesn’t seem unreasonable an extremely difficult heroquest could uncover the secret, and that someone powerful enough to uncover the secret could also fend off the doom. Although someone who is already that powerful probably mostly already knows the secret, or as much of the secret as they need to further their goals..

But my question was more about more or less normal lunar college of magic types who somehow seem to tinker with myths on a scale comparable to God Learners, though possibly all the difficult work is done by very advanced heroquestors?

The Lunars tamper with myths and bend the rules. Even the Godlearners never attempted to kill Orlanth. The Lunars openly use and accept chaos, well beyond whatever use God Learners may have made of chaos.

What protects imperial sorcerers from the Doom Guardians? Given all their abuses, what more would Lunars have to do to trigger immediate retribution?

Showing a corrupted creature what it could have been without chaos, how it could be liberated from pain and hate if it renounced chaos, what it would have been had it taken a different path, a glimpse of its healed self, could be deeply confusing.

I don't see how the Stormbull guard around the Block would be possible without bulls having at least some discretion about whether to charge chaotic foes, otherwise all the block guards would have been killed resisting the Lunar incursion.

I mean imagine a Lunar raid for truthstone around the block, if Bulls couldn't behave strategically the raid would start by luring out all the Stormbull guards by driving a herd of obvious chaotics past the Block, then ambushing them and cutting them down with a barrage of long range missile weapons after they go berserk. The bulls might have taken heavy casualties the first time this was attempted, but if they kept falling for this trick every time there would be none left.

19 hours ago, Darius West said:

Nysalor carries the Chaos rune like most other chaos deities, but doesn't detect as chaotic.  Illumination therefore is all just another chaos trick that we must not fall for.  Yeah, you could argue... but really, what's the point if the outcome is identical?  Any chaos? All chaos!  Know them by their deeds.  As to what a perverted chaotic version of Yelmalio, would look like, I have no idea as I have never met  a non-Chaotic Yelmalio.

I've never met any Yelmalio ;-). 

Darius, Illuminated Yelmalio serving Nysalor during the first age is canon. In the third age, the HellWood Elves somehow mix chaos with their mission to protect the forest.

You could argue that illuminated elves (or humans) ignoring cult rules and embracing chaos is not the same as a perverted chaotic version of a cult, but the outcome is pretty much the same - so are the concepts  really so different?

What happens when an illuminate goes on a heroquest and does something really bad?

22 hours ago, Darius West said:

It seems to me that trying to heal the world with chaos is about as sensible as becoming a sex criminal in order to protect one's virginity.  

Ha - a bit like elves who turn to Yelmalio the Krjalk to protect their forests? 

Or maybe a group of illuminated Arkat followers who join chaos cults to save the world from chaos?

Our world's history is full of groups which embraced insanity with the best of motives, like one group which believed that the softness of modern life had derailed natural selection. They believed that internment, sterilisation and ultimately mass murder was required to restore the balance which our foolhardy failure to embrace the cultural wisdom of our forefathers had upset. 

So its no stretch to suggest that a fictional group which plans to reengineer the universe and its gods to heal the imperfections of the haphazard Godtime mythscape would be prepared to embrace chaos, to risk the end of the world in order to achieve their rose tinted vision of how the world should have been, and could yet become.

Remember the Lunars believe they can control chaos - they likely believe the risk of accidentally destroying Glorantha can be managed, through careful planning and meticulous mystical research and engineering.

You can read most lovecraft stuff for free online. Much of it is out of copyright.

http://hplovecraft.com/ 

Trollkin are badly deformed trolls.

I guess most deformities in Glorantha can be healed, in a world where limbs can be reattached or regrown someone local has “cure deformity” skills.

Only very poor people or people afflicted with powerful curses would have to endure unwanted physiological problems.

Ride. Motorbike is very different to a car, more like riding a pushbike.