EricW

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.

1 hour ago, John Biles said:

The point of the healer slaughter is that Eurmal saves some of the healers by turning the blood of the dead into beer and getting BG drunk to the point of collapse.

 

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 🙂

On 3/8/2023 at 8:25 PM, Akhôrahil said:

The real mystery is how Ralzakark (at least of a kind) can be the Monster Emperor after Oddi slays him (in 1631) in a way that there really should be no returning from (and LoT even says "final death"). 

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

Quote - King of Sartar

 

The Arming of Orlanth

One day, at the Hill of Victory, Orlanth met with the Vingkotlings for a Property Celebration. There he planned to review his possessions, and those of his tribe, as was first done at Longhearth. But the feast went poorly. First, Orlanth’s wife was not present. This disturbed the god, as it always did, for the seat beside him was empty, and half of his conversations were spoken to empty space. And others from his household were gone, too, so that the beer was flat, the hearth was cold, and the food was no better than cold porridge. Furthermore, the feast was disturbed. Whenever some person was called upon to admire or present a tool, he was called away by some combat or other duty elsewhere. Often they did not return.

At last Orlanth lost his temper. “What is this?” he cried. “Not since Ernalda was borne away have I felt so angry. Where is the respect which is due me in this time?”

And they said, “It is with the Grand Order, Great Lord.”

“And where is the Grand Order?” he demanded. And everyone agreed that it was gone, because the god of it had been taken away by the darkness.
Orlanth brooded so darkly that he made the Bad Rain. When clouds gather black, and do not drop their rain, and sink to the ground, monsters can come out of them. They did then, the first time, and Orlanth had to rise from his chair to drive Nasty Urain away.

“The world has fallen,” he said afterwards, “when a chief cannot have peace through a meal. I will go and regain this Grand Order.” He called for the Knowing God to come to him, and asked what the Grand Order was.

 

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...

4 hours ago, Nick Brooke said:

I was sketching out a campaign premise -- the adventurers would be young kids coming to the big city from all parts of the Empire, and meeting up for the first time when they become roommates. As well as running errands as a group which take them to different parts of the city (exploring the Glamour map the same way David Scott suggests unpacking Apple Lane: a little at a time, in an episodic TV-series style), they'd also get embroiled in personal stories through their different day-jobs (e.g. the Esrolian political refugee could begin as a make-up artiste and theatrical understudy, only to end up taking a lead role when something happens to the star of the show; the tough Rathori kid starts out in fighting-pit security and clean-up, before achieving gladiatorial greatness); I'd sprinkle the Insula's adventure hooks around generously, and develop relationships with the other residents if players wanted to; there'd have been sundry Carmanian and even Arrolian machinations (because I'm me), but the game would start out very much at street level before the inevitable invitation to provide entertainment at the City of Dreams.

For my game, I'd have treated that as like stepping into Faerie, or a heroquest -- visiting an incredibly dangerous party on the Other Side, among a glittering host of the great and good, with lasting, life-warping consequences if you accept any gifts or pleasures from the denizens. Proper Goblin Market stuff. That could then warp the second arc of the campaign, with visits to noble estates and ruined sorcerer's towers in the Horns of the City, political shenanigans in Halfway, the Senate and the Temple of Peace, and the cults of the Emperor and Glamour becoming ever more prominent. And some adventurers might be working towards secret goals (getting access to hard-to-reach people or places).

But my lockdown players asked me to run Masks of Nyarlathotep instead, bless' em, which saved me a crap-tonne of work. Thanks, players!

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. 

12 hours ago, Darius West said:

I can't see why people would prefer a plane to a ship of some description.  Remember that Lindberg only flew the Atlantic back in 1927, and flight is still very dangerous.

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.

15 hours ago, FG-ziZxvoFRHduKepRbPGuFEb said:

Basically, I need to keep reminding myself to not hold too much for "realism" as long as I have "verisimilitude", and if they want it to feel like an Indiana Jones movie, that doesn't hurt anything.  I mean, we're not playing Pulp, so they're all probably going to die in the end anyway. 🙂

 

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.

2 hours ago, Orlanthatemyhamster said:

Wasn't he fair, killing only those who hesitated to surrender longer than an hour, leaving their children younger than 10 alive in the city after all others had perished? How could such a man be called unjust?

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!

16 minutes ago, David Scott said:

Zoo or Zoopolis as it was known has a reference in History of the Heortling Peoples. Have a look at Pete Nash talking about a Bestiary product in 2012, A Tiger? In Africa?

Basically, Zoopolis was built by Semeren of Malkonwal and stocked by Danakil from his world wide trip. It's a huge ruined complex. Basically put in those wonders you need from the Bestiary... I'd run it like the areas of Westworld, including underground worlds for the Darkness creatures. It's only about 25x5 miles in size so perhaps only five different areas and one underneath: IceWorld, JungleWorld, DesertWorld, WaterWorld, etc.

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…

39 minutes ago, Darius West said:

Perhaps preserving the skin will cause the critter to start regenerating... Mwahaha!

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?

3 hours ago, Darius West said:

Hundreds of miles on a loose cushion on a motorbike saddle?   If that were the case, everyone who ever rode a horse would use a cushion instead of getting monstrously saddle sore.  I have strong doubts.

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 :-).

3 hours ago, Darius West said:

Assuming you had a cast iron @ss.

Or a cushion 🙂

On 2/15/2023 at 10:51 PM, Darius West said:

AFAIK during this period, automobiles are generally more expensive than houses.

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. 

10 hours ago, Darius West said:

The other gods came back in their previous forms.  Yelm is back, looking much as he did during God Time, even if he isn't stuck on the Spike any more. This whole Rashoran-as-Nysalor thing is highly dubious for a deity. Then we find out that Nysalor has a Chaos Rune.  Just because he can hide his chaos taint, doesn't mean he isn't a chaos deity, it just means he's a chaos deity with fresh dirty tricks.

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

53 minutes ago, mfbrandi said:

But what is chaotic magic, anyway? Is the insight that there really is no difference between Chaos and non-Chaos itself chaotic magic? His illumination pre-dated his anti-Nysalor fanaticism rather than being a tool sought to aid the fight, right? Perhaps the illumination even caused the fanaticism. I imagine his illumination was incomplete (or at any rate unsatisfactory) and that the fight against Nysalor was his inner struggle to eliminate the bright side of his illumination — leaving only the Stygian purity of black light — splurged bloodily across everyone else’s reality. The turn to ZZ wasn’t a pragmatic resort, it was just who he was — with Nysalor as his Yelmalio.

Sourcerous tap is considered chaotic, Krjalk magic to gain chaotic abilities, consume knowledge and other chaotic knowledge magics, to learn new skills?

59 minutes ago, mfbrandi said:

Where are all the quiet Gloranthan illuminates? Carrying out a secret Bene Gesseritesque breeding program to produce the enlo Kwisatz Haderach, one suspects. (You have to watch the quiet ones, too: for every “there really is no difference between Uz and human”, there is a “there really is no difference between Galton and sanity.”)

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? 

4 hours ago, jajagappa said:

Of course the Bat might do a number on the insides of said Trickster.  Might be like the vacuum monster in the Yellow Submarine when he sucks up the entire landscape and then itself.  You end up in Nowhere Land.  But that's somewhere - and getting back from there ought to be interesting.

When the Trickster swallowed the PC's in my game to help them escape from a Lunar encampment where they were prisoners, they ended up in one of the borderlands of Hell and had to escape through the Fog of Illusion.

 

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?

On 2/1/2023 at 10:17 AM, jajagappa said:

In my opinion, if it was that simple to gain control of the Crimson Bat, a monstrous demon of Chaos, then it doesn't pass my fantasy credibility test (one of the reasons I like RQ/Glorantha and not D&D). 

That said, we know it can be done.  Broyan and his heroic companions did so at the Battle of Whitewall.  But by the "historical record" (YGMV) it wasn't achieved in 1602 nor in the Dorastor setting with Hahlgrim and Paulus.  

So, if you go back to the Crimson Bat's description in Cults of Terror, we can look at some features of the Bat itself that makes this challenging:

Item 8: The Bat will absorb all the battle magic cast or in effect within the Glowspot. Priests and Rune Lords of the Bat will be unaffected.  (Sorcery wasn't around back in RQ2, but would not surprise me if that was the case.)

Item 10: The Bat absorbs all magic, battle or Rune, cast at it.  (And I'm sure sorcery would fall within this.  Of course, you're thinking of targeting the high priest, not the bat, but between this and the item above, the Crimson Bat largely negates magic in its vicinity.)

Item 9: All discorporate or unbound spirits (except fetches) which come within the Glowspot will be absorbed instantly by the Bat.  (Possession by a friendly ancestor won't work - it has to discorporate to try to possess and in the process it's absorbed.)

Item 4: The Bat never can be surprised. (One might conclude that it anticipates your attack, so it attacks you either one of its tongues, or its eye spit, or simply its chaotic keening.)

As for the Rune Priests, they know Absorption, so would naturally use that to absorb your magic if they are in a fight with you.  They can cast Bat Wings, so they can fly away or around or above you.  And they can sacrifice for Mindblast to disable you. 

What you will need:  Rune Magic or Heroic abilities.  Probably that can be cast upon yourself.  Get on the bat's back (where hopefully the eye spit and tongues won't reach you, though the giant ticks will) and hopefully have a chance to kill the Rune Priests (if they're using Absorption, they probably can't use Shield at the same time).  

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.

Given trolls left the underworld after Orlanth killed Yelm, and all dead things (including trolls?) end up in the underworld, surely there are well trodden paths dead trolls could take which would return them to the surface world? Why isn't this a regular occurrence? After all, the surface world has lots of yummy food, and I'm guessing even dead trolls get hungry?

12 hours ago, radmonger said:

Certainly if you don't get the rune, then knowing rune magic that uses that rune is pretty pointless.

There is a caveat here, that correctly being draconic is a big complicated mystical thing that isn't a matter of merely having a rune. The caveat to the caveat is that humans who want to fly, breath fire and have diamond skin are not always capturing that subtlety. 

The dragonewt rune, at some level, is clearly a mistake. The historical question s whether it was a mistake made by the Empire of Wyrm's Friends itself, or a mistake made by the god learners in understanding the EWF.

 

KOS suggests draconic consciousness comes before knowledge or magic. 

King of Sartar - The Dragon Wars

 

... One day Eurmal found a new way to betray his master. He found a foolish man, and he split his tongue, the way that a bird’s tongue can be split to make it talk. And he also split the man’s brain, and his heart. That way the man would understand dragon speech.

The man, who is called Rostand the Speaker, enjoyed the effect. The dragonewts, which were always something to fear, spoke to him and he understood. He found his way to a dragon, and rather than being eaten, he learned a song from it! ...

 

So unless something changed (maybe?), all you need to do is convince Eurmal to "split your tongue, brain and heart", and you'll become draconic. You can then approach dragons and have a chance of not being eaten. 

On 8/15/2017 at 6:24 PM, metcalph said:

According to HeroQuest: Glorantha p203, Illumination is known in Jrustela.  I presume that the result of being exposed to forbidden God Learner secrets.  As for whether the God Learners were mystical, the description of them as the "Most Learned but Least Wise" remains the best summary to date.

The God Learners plundered the dark empire, at least some of them must have become illuminates.

What I don’t understand is why wasn’t Thanatar a significant force amongst the God Learners? Consume mind seems a quick path to mastering all sorts of foreign skills and magics.