EricW

He he - logically consistent, but not always knowable. Having said that, Glorantha has divination spells, and knowledge gods have even more extreme methods like reconstruction magic. Or they can talk to dead people and ask what happened. They have better knowledge of the past than we could ever hope for.

Isn't the diversity of contradictory stories leading up to the sunrise a completely understandable manifestation of the efforts of all to knit the broken world together? Different people's stories of what led to dawn contradict each other, but the contradictory stories are all true. People remember different versions of events leading to the dawn, because the world before dawn was broken - groups were leading completely separate lives, separated by unbridgeable gulfs, so there was no shared understanding of what constituted reality. The dawn, the creating of time, marked the beginning of a shared understanding of what constituted Gloranthan history, by knitting all the broken fragments of Glorantha which could be retrieved into a consistent whole. In that sense, Glorantha is surely a gestalt, a knitting together of contradictory realities, reconciled by the understanding that the dawn marks the point at which everyone agrees Gloranthan history should henceforth be logically consistent. There is one thread common to all the stories of cultures which witnessed the dawn. Evil was defeated in some manner. Because those fragments of the ancient world which didn't defeat evil, they simply didn't survive.

Indeed. But a major superhero has beaten pretty nearly everyone who had a problem with their choices. The same protection shouldn't necessarily apply to PCs, only if they develop their own terrifying reputation.

An illuminated trickster wouldn't necessarily know they were illuminated. I mean, the ability to break all the rules without feeling guilty? Trickster can already do that. Join other cults? Why bother? Trickster can supply an endless variety of interesting magic. I mean, Trickster is adept at lying to his own worshippers - including the illuminates.

Illumination should have dangerous consequences, otherwise everyone would be doing it. The slightest hint of illumination could lead to accusations the PC is a Lunar spy. Illuminated Lunars would be attracted to the PC. They could have all sorts of suspicious Lunar interactions, like Lunars acting hostile, arresting the PC party, then suddenly everything is OK when the priest sees them - though the priest wants a private word with the illuminate. "What was that all about?" - the PC better be quick on their feet with a plausible lie. Any attempt to power game could lead to hostile divination and accusation. Maybe better to kill the witnesses, even if they are friends. And of course, there is always the possibility of meeting an Arkati who assumes any illuminate they don't know is Gbaji - especially if the PC starts being careless about abusing their power, and the Arkati was drawn to investigate the PC.

You could have a lot of fun with this. Tempt the player to break the rules, like finding a scroll of sorcery skill, or other slightly forbidden magic. Put them in scenarios where they solve the problem by using the forbidden magic. Encourage them to convince themselves that rule breaking is justified by the greater good - I mean sorcery isn't chaos, and a little sorcery makes a great secret weapon which can save the party.

Trickster would get jealous!

EricW is good - thanks, flattered 🙂

The way I think of Shamen, a shaman is like someone who spends all their time looking at Tik Tok or youtube and posting comments to friends while walking down the street. They barely have time to learn physical skills because they're always messaging people. Occasionally they start babbling about some video they saw, which means absolutely nothing to anyone else around them because nobody else has seen the video. But boy are they well informed about esoteric stuff, so if the crops start withering, or someone has a sore which won't heal, the guy or girl with the mobile phone has access to the solution. Or perhaps the video they watched was total nonsense published by scammers.

Wasn't the chaos god Atyar believed to be lost in the catacombs of a Kraloralan city, or stranded on a remote lost island? Maybe too overpowered for your scenario.

I wonder if one of the most disturbing aspects for Red Moon advocates is the White Moon doesn't appear to provide any magic, or anything a third age Gloranthan would recognise as magic. An unsettling prelude to the metaphysical upheaval which follows Moonfall - third age power crazed red moonies fearing the loss of magical mastery which elevates them above other mortals. .

You can believe without wanting, so the characters in the movie “Warlock” believed in the magic of the Warlock, but didn’t also want to be warlocks. Of course, not everyone reads such books and is repulsed by what they read. HP Lovecraft wrote “The history of the Necronomicon”, that the book was outlawed as heretical because people who read it attempted monstrous experiments. There’s a great movie “Dagon”, which is a great intro the Cthulhu insanity and belief.

Lovecraft's The Haunter of the Dark might be a good template Humans discover a horrific artefact which summons a being who provides insane magical revelations in return for blood sacrifice. The old "church" congregation was arrested and shut down, but the creature (possibly a manifestation of Nyarlathotep) still manifests in the Church of Starry Wisdom, which nobody dares to enter. Once the monster makes contact with your mind you're doomed. If the church hadn't been forcefully shut down, the worshipers likely would have become coenobite like - totally twisted and revelling in their wicked inhuman knowledge, rapidly losing their connection to humanity.

I think murdering someone even in self defence is worth a san check. People in desperate situations like soldiers can get inured to it to an extent, but a lot of them come back pretty messed up. I know someone who had do so something horrible in Iraq, I think what he did was right and justified, but what he had to do to achieve that justified outcome was so horrible it left him profoundly f*cked up. At a fundamental level he cannot reconcile committing such an act with being the good person he imagines himself to be, and actually is.

I think horribly murdering someone without desperate provocation is a pretty insane act. I think I remember reading somewhere to say sacrifice someone for a grisly magic ritual you have to *fail* a SAN check to proceed - so murdering people in gross ways gets easier as you lose sanity. Should probably lose sanity as well just for committing such an act, a save means you convinced yourself your action was justified.

Most cults are recognisable ad sub cults of other cults. For example, the cult of skiving teenagers who want to fake illnesses who avoid their chores is a Trickster subcult (the Malia subcult is the version where the illnesses are real, offers spells like "school plague" and "defer exam"). Poison - Black Fang hero cult. It's pretty hard to think of a cult which isn't derivative of one of the existing cults?

I'd be surprised if there were no devices for firing toxic or irritating compounds in the 1920s. There would have been no problem creating a device to produce pressure on demand, everyone knew about carbide lamps, devices which drip water onto calcium carbide to produce acetylene, which burns with a brilliant white light. My grandpa showed me once, if you add too much water they fizz up very rapidly. Or they could just have used a water pistol action. As for the irritant, extract of crushed onion or chilli would have worked fine.

I wonder if there might be some insane level of conformity, amongst the leaders at least. My thinking is, no communication is required, if everyone thinks the same. Such suppression of individuality would stink of chaos.

I would have thought Trickster is mostly about cheating when it comes to gambling, he is full of illusion and deceit.

The moral relativist path to chaos doesn’t explain why chaos gift gives you a taint, and implies illuminates with mutations might actually not be chaotic. Lunars casting chaos gift are acting within the moral bounds of their society - so why the taint? I suspect while immorality, acting against your conscience, might lead to chaos, copying the godtime betrayal of glorantha’s enemies always leads to chaos, even if illuminates can conceal their treachery with Gbaji deception. This further implies Sedenya is an agent or manifestation of Wakboth, the chaos gift corruption she provides must contain a fragment of that great betrayal.

I like it but it may be too powerful. Like why bother being a Thanatari if you can just join Lanbril and steal similar power with far less risk? Lanbril stole magic in god time. I think each act of theft should be a dangerous separate heroquest, so if you manage to steal Orlanth’s chariot, you get teleport - but good luck sneaking up on Orlanth!

How Lanbril stole death might be an interesting one - find someone who is hero questing somewhere on the trickster stole death then passed it around cycle and steal death from them. Death is separation, such as separation of people from their belongings, or separation of people's abilities and powers from their person, so a Lanbril thief in possession of a piece of death would be terrifyingly capable - maybe even able to steal heroic abilities, as Lanbril stole magic from the gods in godtime.

Kallyr returns in the Battle of Moonfall? She’s listed as one of the heroes sent to support Argrath?

I think there’s a strong hint in Orlanth is Dead that things magically return to normal after the battle of Iceland - at least for people who didn’t defect to the seven mothers. So cattle turn out to be fine, and lots of people who everyone thought were dead turn out to be alive?

In the fantasy which is Glorantha, Argrath turned away from genocide. Arkat tried genocide and it didn't work. Argrath tried something else, and was much more successful at ending the chaos threat, or at least deferring it into the impossibly distant future. Glorantha is full of uncomfortable topics, it has always been a playground for philosophy and ideas, where consequences can be explored without the risk of people actually being injured or killed. I'd rather explain to someone why they are wrong, than silence them for advancing an idea I don't like.