EricW

If the block was removed, Wakboth would likely destroy the world. Argrath faced the Devil but could even he have faced Wakboth in his totality, completely liberated from the Block?

The Shield of Time and other time patrol books by Poul Anderson. Beautiful descriptions of historical settings and a surprisingly Gloranthan feel considering it’s a time travel book. If you consider the distant future god like Danielans, who set up the time patrol, intervening to protect history as soon as time travel was invented, and journeys into the past as heroquests into myth which affect the present, then you will see why I say this. And of course, the stories have several cases where the future is overthrown by criminals, or one disturbing case where the future just collapsed by itself, and had to be reconstructed.

The alternative was rule by Wakboth, slavery as the plaything of brutal chaos fiends, until the final dissolution of the world. The world was already falling apart, a process which accelerated under the monster empire. Chaotic magic was causing manifestations like the shadow's good shadow; The "... fabric of the world coming unwoven ..." doesn't sound like a good alternative to Argrath pulling down the moon and ending the reign of horror.

The Telmori betrayed Sartar and sided with the Lunars from memory, and have a long history of siding with chaotic assaults on the Orlanth (eg siding with Nysalor in the First Age). And they do have chaotic shape shifters in their ranks, who involuntarily change on wild day, so strictly speaking wiping them out could be viewed as an Orlanthi cult obligation.

Yep - Eurmal the peacemaker :-). Isn’t there also a bab geas always kill seducer? Tells us all we need to know about the next morning 🙂

Someone who successfully escaped Arkat's Dorastan genocide is probably pretty difficult to kill permanently.

Could anti-heroes attempt to contact this aspect of Orlanth, and sacrifice to it for magic?

Hastur could cure the arm, if you make the unspeakable promise...

Children taken as hostages from conquered Orlanthi lands? They are forbidden from travelling by mundane means beyond the bounds of Glamour, if they try there comes a point where they cannot take another step away from the city. But otherwise they are encouraged to explore the city, to learn and experience the Lunar way, and develop personally and magically by the grace of the Goddess, so one day they can bring enlightenment back to their barbarian families in the occupied provinces. Adult supervisors bristling with detection spells and gentle but firm authority. Magical lessons from teachers with gentle smiles. But beneath the facade of benign guardianship and Lunar evangelism is the hidden side of Lunar experience. If you stand very still at midnight, staring across the bright lights and bustle of Glamour, occasionally the vision of fun and gaiety wavers and grows distant, everything becomes very quiet, the light of the moon grows harsh and bright, and the shadows of the windows on the surrounding buildings start to look like eyes, hungry shadows endlessly staring at the dormitory which houses the children.

An ocean going ship would be better. An 80ft sail boat, steamer or diesel boat would be more than enough to carry guns and party, and could carry enough fuel for long distance journeys. Oil extraction began at scale in the mid 1800s, Kerosene lamps were in common use from the 1860s, so there would have been plenty of kerosene supplies in major ports in Africa which could be used for fuel. The Germans deployed diesel U-boats in 1914, so diesel technology was well known and in use commercially by the 1920s, and kerosene lamp fuel, which could also be used in diesel engines, would have been readily available even in far flung corners of the British Empire.

They could lose most of their stuff in a forced landing - like the forced landing in “Lord of War”.. They’re PCs in a Cthulhu game, you don’t have to be nice to them 😉 You could have a lot of fun with this, one of the PCs could break their back during the landing, make a big deal of the difficulty, then an antagonist could offer to heal them - for a price.

I doubt Arkat spared the kids in places where “entire cities sprouted chaos features”. The morality of his actions is something you can debate indefinitely. I’m watching “The last of us”. One of the episodes a doctor in North Korea (?) diagnoses what has happened, realises there is an unstoppable infection which threatens the entire world loose in her city. When asked “what should we do?” she answers “Bomb. Kill them all. Spare no one”. I immediately thought of Arkat / Argrath. Or someone I know, who had to do unspeakable things to survive an impossible situation. He lived, the enemy died - but he bears the mental scars, every day for him is a struggle. I suspect he revisits hell on Earth every night. I hope I never have to face choices like that.

I'm an amateur pilot. There is a route from USA to Europe for light aircraft, Nunuvut, Greenland, Iceland then Ireland. Carrying a whole pile of guns could be an issue, guns and ammo are heavy - maybe they should be shipped separately. The biggest issue though, is all the attention it would attract. Cairo and Nairobi were part of the British Empire in the 1920s. To reach Africa you would have to wire ahead, arrange fuel drops and supplies. This would create a lot of interest, fabulously wealthy people flying a large private plane (who can afford that?!), in places which where a plane is a rare sight. Maybe even newspaper articles and questions in parliament, about the strange planeload of Americans invading Africa. On arrival they would run head first into a crowd of newspaper and radio reporters demanding details of their mysterious trip to Africa. They might even be followed everywhere they go. Lets hope the bad guys don't read the newspaper!

Or Logan's Run - bits of the zoo breaking down through long neglect, going dark, turning really dangerous, and PCs trapped, following clues to find a working exit.

Many ducks are Humakti, some have likely heroquested for more death magic to fight Delecti’s undead hordes. Probably not a group you want chasing you to avenge an outrage…

I like it - hanging on to a piece of a bad dream 🙂

You could go all Cthulhu on it, and have the dream dragon pursuing players to get its skin back. Maybe over time the dragonewt gratitude could turn to hostility. You don’t need to explain why, what human understands draconian right action?

You forget this was the age of DIY - they made everything themselves. Shops sold needle, thread, cloth and leather, only rich people bought already made clothes. My grandma made their clothes and repaired curtains and made cushions. My grandpa made his rocking chair, and other chairs, fixed the table, even rigged up a hot water system which circulated water through coper pipes he braised himself, which ran through the back of their wood stove in their kitchen. When the motorbike needed a new part, like when the clutch lever broke, I saw him make it. He sat by the fireplace whittling mild steel with a small cold chisel. Each cut with that cold chisel only abraded the tiniest shaving, almost too small to see, but over a few months the new lever took form. He even built his own air conditioner, a huge evaporative machine. It was enormous and noisy, but it worked, and made a gun with the most beautiful action you ever saw, though he deliberately made the barrel undersize so it could only shoot blanks, back when such guns were legal. So if they needed a comfortable cushion, they'd make it and keep adjusting it until it was right :-).

Or a cushion 🙂

A lot of people rode motorbikes to keep costs down. My grandpa used to pile a family of 5 on an old BSA with side car (not the bike below). BSA started producing motorbikes in 1911, and were wildly successful. There were also plenty of attempts to motorise pushbikes before this - all sorts of weird and wonderful contraptions, including steam powered pushbikes, some of which might have been available to PCs. Every town had tinkerers who could supply something unusual. 1911 BSA 1868 Steam Pushbike - Roper Steam Velocipede. Don't underestimate these contraptions, they were slower than today's vehicles but they revolutionised personal transport, you could travel hundreds of miles on one.

Krjalk Conversion spell doesn't work on the chaos tainted and illuminates, according to Lords of Terror...

Sourcerous tap is considered chaotic, Krjalk magic to gain chaotic abilities, consume knowledge and other chaotic knowledge magics, to learn new skills? Busy putting together fragments of old gods... oops 🙂

Arkat was famous for his shifting cult allegiances and his ruthlessness in pursuing his single minded goal of destroying Gbaji. Were there any limits on his willingness to use whatever tools were available to advance towards his goal?

Mythologically Trickster is good at swallowing chaos or anything else which annoys him. Of course, there would be consequences. The trickster would jump to the top of the most wanted list, loads of people would want to join trickster, and even the Orlanthi would be worried - I mean, even if you were a light bringer, would you really want a trickster who can swallow a small town anywhere near your place of residence?

Doable - a 400pt +/- Trickster Swallow spell, enough for the bat, the fleas and the riders. The rune magic spell is cast on the trickster, so it doesn't get absorbed. The trickster probably has some substantial bonuses to hit something as big as the bat. And when swallowed, the bat passes out of the mortal world into whatever strange realm things swallowed by the trickster end up - difficult for even the Lunars to reach. Now all the Trickster needs is to figure out how to get the power to sacrifice for such an enormous swallow spell.