EricW

6 hours ago, Darius West said:

No character has access to that many RP, plus it is subject to the Lunar cycle (RQG p322).

The bone I have to pick is that unless the character is illuminated they will detect as chaotic thereafter.  That isn't a good look for someone who wants to be an unobtrustive infiltrator.

I meant pass for human in polite society, like ogres do :-).

but yes, if said veteran wanted to live in Storm Bull territory, illumination would be a plus.

Having said that, how many non-illuminated veterans who had used chaos gift or otherwise become tainted retired to occupied lands anyway, without the protection of illumination?

The locals hated them anyway, so I’m not sure a chaos taint would have made that much difference to the level of risk. 

I'm surprised Yomat never became a Troll trickster god - darkness, illusion, disorder? The child of a trickster and a darkness demon would be a terrifying encounter. "Dad, mum says its your turn to do the babysitting".

7 hours ago, Erol of Backford said:

Would being with the Halfbird allow you to move back from the Underworld more easily or is the benefit only between the Hero Plane and not Hell? How id Hero Questing to Hell or the Hero Plane different if it is at all?

You could have some fun with a power like that - like if the eye allowed you to see and potentially enter the realms you see, then the moment you start looking other things have a chance of seeing you, and can attempt to drag you into their realm. So an artefact which grants significant power, the price of which is some interesting encounter rolls. 

I wonder if the Styx could be summoned? As the God Learners summoned the God who Burns Water, maybe heroic magic on a similar scale could summon a rain of Styx water on a battlefield, or a Styx water undine. Bad news for any Lunar vampire regiments.

I'm a fan of the idea they are heretical, at least from the POV of other dwarves, but they also don't age. If Glorantha can simultaneously contain contradictions like Elmal and Yelmalio, why not multiple contradictory visions of the correct adjustments to fix the world machine?

Obviously this would be deeply troubling to establishment dwarves, because how could they be sure their path was the correct path, if there are a multiplicity of divergent solutions which pass validity tests, and which may or may not lead to the same objective?

The need to study these divergent but disturbingly coherent solutions might be the only thing preventing a murderous "correction" of Flintnail's heresy.

I can't help thinking following a troll river down to hell isn't exactly a leisure outing - a significant chance of meeting heroic and demigod level darkness entities which attempt to show you their version of a shortcut to the underworld. 

18 hours ago, Darius West said:

Chaos Gift isn't permanent.  It's temporary rune magic.  From memory it does give you a permanent chaos taint however.

How does that invalidate my point? Perhaps temporary gifts are the price of avoiding the risk of transforming into a Broo - being strengthened by chaos, but keeping it temporary. Temporary transformation seems very much in tune with the ethos of the Goddess, use chaos but keep some distance. At least, that seems to be the ethos before the rise of the monster empire.

A Lunar veteran with access to multiple chaos gift spells would be more formidable than most chaotics - and the veteran would have the advantage of being able to pass as human most of the time.

Perhaps one day some Lunar will discover a hero quest which grants access to heroic casting of chaos gift - as many castings as you want, as you can power. There is a hint such things might be possible in "Dorastor, Land of Doom" - one of the Slime Broos has the power to grant a random temporary chaos feature by touch.

17 minutes ago, Darius West said:

The point being they won't detect as being chaotic.  Yes, the overt signs will be present, but not all chaos features have overt signs.  This is why Chaos features also have the "become a broo" chance.  This is the point at which your chaos features can no longer be hidden, and you can no longer pass as your original species.

Chaos Gift doesn't turn you into a Broo, so there must be a workaround. Follow the path of the Goddess and you will learn how to strengthen yourself with chaos, without developing unfortunate manifestations and transformations which mark you as an unskilled, inferior seeker of the deeper mysteries. 

13 hours ago, Squaredeal Sten said:

Here is a grim scenario seed counter to that.   Feel free to use it in your game:

A Thanatar cultist achieves a job taking charge of prisoner of war slaves and moving them to Peloria.  This is a perfectly respectable Lunar government position achieved through good connections. Or maybe a contractor position which goes to the lowest bidder, and this is why he bids low.  Lunar logistics may vary in your Glorantha.

He or she skims off the magically powerful ones.   There is always a little shrinkage in a coffle.  Maybe some escape, yes that's what he writes down.    Maybe some were rebels sentenced to be crucified or fed to the Crimson Bat, and he just reports that this was done. Who audits that?  Maybe they died of natural causes or disease  or wounds suffered when they were captured.  Maybe he reports that one was disobedient and was flogged to death, it's necessary in enslaving people, maintains discipline you know.    As long as 90% arrive in Peloria, or he can attribute 80% arriving to bad luck, who will inquire deeply into this?  

His chest of heads may get heavier as the trip north goes on.  What's that? Just some souvenirs.

What a terrific if grim idea. If the cultist just uses "Consume Mind". The bat still gets their sacrifice, or the rebel is still crucified. Who would know? If they don't talk much when they are being crucified or fed to the bat, maybe the experience has driven them insane. That way the Thanatari gets to feast on the magic of the victims, and no chest of heads to give the game away.

How much of a problem is Thanatar and Krarsht in the Lunar Empire?

I’ve seen references Lunars find it difficult to contain hidden chaos, because of their tolerance and lack of cults with sense chaos ability.

How do any difficulties manifest? Does it pay to wear an iron collar if walking the streets of Glamour? Do the basement levels of fashionably decadent entertainment venues all have basements and doors which lead to lower levels?

Or does the empire keep a strict rein on such manifestation?

Thoughts?

5 minutes ago, Richard S. said:

Spirit cults usually center around special shrines using a focus attuned to the spirit. They need less total worshipers (10 minimum), but more frequent worship (weekly). It's not clear whether spirit cult foci are portable or whether the shrine needs to be permanently established. For shaman cults that aren't spirit cults, they follow the normal rules, though I'd assume Waha and Yelm have some sort of portable temple, a special tent or artifact or something.

Perhaps a totem or fetish? If anyone can do a portable shrine it would be a shaman - they're known for carrying odd things of spiritual significance. And a powerful fetch is a potent warding. 

2 hours ago, Erol of Backford said:

As we always and still do play RQ3 I never thought that a Sanctify allowed Divine spells to be regained. Is this the case, that within the Sanctified space spells may be regained no matter where you are, priest or no priest?

Do Shamen have temples? If a Shaman wants to contact Oakfed to obtain fire magic for themselves and their followers, do they build a temple, or do they find a place which is spiritually significant to Oakfed, light a big bonfire, get the worshippers praying, and enter the spirit plane to try to make contact?

Obviously a Shaman on home turf might have a few wards and props set up, but if the Shaman is wandering around on a spiritual journey, or helping a group because it is part of their personal journey, they still have the power to contact powerful spirits and gods. Though obviously if they are in a place which is significant to a particular god, they have more chance of contacting the god they want to contact.

Shaman can summon spirits for a worship ceremony so in principle a Shaman Orlanth tradition priest could probably consecrate a service without any props. 

I think Gloranthans knowledge of the past would be far better than our world, at least in cultures which summon their ancestors during high holy day ceremonies. I mean, we all have a vague idea of what Egyptian Pharaohs were, but what if you could talk to Ramesses every year for a few hours, to ask questions which help your understanding? 

There's an example of ancestors being summoned in "Orlanth is Dead", to find out what has happened, and the ancestors give some very useful hints based on their experiences.

Use the Lord of the Rings make them enter Moria solution - chase them in. Suspicious people with unblinking eyes, groups of people following them, escape routes slowly being closed off, uniformed officers gathering in the area around the party.

Someone staring at them speaking into a handheld radio or tapping on a morse key.

When they try to escape, one of the officers looks up and starts walking towards them. If they move back towards the building, the officer is suddenly distracted by street hooligans.

Completely justifiable in terms of game mechanics - the building wants them to enter.

Of course there is always the sliver of a possibility of enhancing divine power, like that trickster who brings back the secret of the stink spot, a surprisingly soft and squishy holy relic whose secret, concealed in the bag which must remain tied, redoubles the power of trickster’s magic within it’s smelly aura.

1 hour ago, Eff said:

There's at least one myth which, disconnected from obvious EWF influence, suggests that yes, he was at one point. What that says to me is that you can't just arbitrarily conjure things out of nowhere and nothing- the changes encounter inertia or resistance- because we don't really have an example of an entirely ex nihilo alteration like this. The closest might be Zistor and Zazistor, who... had to be constructed in the material world rather than via pure mythological manipulation. 

But in Subere’s realm in the underworld anything can be found, including impossible paths to Lunar hell. Or someone could visit one of the infinity of other worlds, and bring something back.

My point is probably something has to be found rather than created, but there is an infinite range of myths and items to be found, which is functionally equivalent to being able to invent something entirely new.

Of course if you wanted to say bring proof Orlanth is part of the Lunar pantheon back to the mundane plane, expect a rough ride on your return journey.

1 minute ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

 

 

but what you both describe are discovered myths , aren't they ? or did they build from scratch new myths ?

Was Orlanth ever a dragon? I would suggest the line between “discovered” myths and new myths is a little blurred.

It certainly is possible - the red moon was created by people. And the Lunars also tampered with myths in “Orlanth is Dead”, along with the God Learners before them.

Or take the Empire of the Wyrms Friends - Orlanth is a dragon!

Arkat notably conducted experimental heroquests to obtain the power to defeat - aha - a god created my mortals.

And Sartar created Orlanth Rex cult from memory.

Most of the time this kind of tinkering ends badly. I’m sure people try this a lot, most of the time they end up lost forever on the hero plane, or meet a huge monster with lots of tentacles. Or if they “succeed”, the world spends the next few centuries cleaning up the mess.

The Man who could Work Miracles. It was made in 1936, so it has a very early 20th century feel, provides plenty of glimpses of life in that era, and as an extra bonus it is a movie about immensely powerful alien beings messing with the Earth, the end of the world, and the corruption of a magician's sanity. The special effects are decades ahead of their time. The author of the original story was H.G.Wells, who also wrote The Time Machine.

Summoning gods is difficult and time consuming and normally requires lots of help from screaming cultists. Maybe not completely impossible for one person to do it, if they are extraordinarily powerful, like Wizard Whateley, but people of that calibre are also very rare. 

As for Azathoth, Azathoth summonings result in cataclysms which usually destroy the summoner. A suggested example of a possible Azathoth summoning I read once was the Tunguska Event of 1908, which struck with the force of a 12Mt nuclear explosion. So summon Azathoth is kindof difficult to get hold of, because most of the people who try this interesting new spell are obliterated, along with the rare manuscript which provided the spell.

If someone does start tampering with Azathoth magic, I once read a delightful but probably non-canon explanation of what Azathoth does to a place which has been afflicted by his influence, that suggestion was insanity made manifest. Delusions become reality. So if someone develops a split personality, when assuming their alternate personality their appearance changes to match their personality. If they think they are a cat, they grow fur and a tail and walk on all fours. If they are a pyromaniac, they find it really easy to start fires. If they think they are a monster - I think you get the idea. Azathoth makes your worst nightmares a physical reality, and the very physical laws of a region under his influence bend and warp to enhance the manifestation of whatever insanities people are experiencing. I'm sorry to whoever thought of this but I have forgotten who wrote this idea originally.

Kind of like the movie...

One theme which re-occurs in H. P. Lovecraft's books is the bouts of insanity are often functional. One of my favourite examples is "Under the Pyramids" by H.P.Lovecraft and Harry Houdini, in which the insane flight through an impossible labyrinth leads the protagonist to safety. So in a sense that moment of insanity is also a moment of clarity, a brief period during which the human mind can function at a level which offers a slim possibility of surviving whatever horror they have encountered. 

In game terms, maybe they all rolled a special or something, but each "bout of madness" which helps the victim survive, teaches the victim that madness works better than sanity in some circumstances. And every time it happens, it gets a little easier to go mad the next time.

1 hour ago, mfbrandi said:

I was thinking only that life is finite and that that is fine.

Is life “meaningful” only if prolonged indefinitely or repeated on the hamster wheel of reincarnation?

People might be mortal but they strive to live despite their mortality, if they are healthy and happy.

I remember a radio discussion once about assisted suicide, the guest described a conversation with a Nordic doctor “this old lady, all her kids had abandoned her, every day was miserable, so we helped her die”.

”Why didn’t you buy her a cat?”

”Wow, I wish we thought of that”.

My vision of the Lunar void is it is always there, an option. And nobody is going to buy you a cat on the moon.

20 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

Well, an eventual and permanent return to the Void is fine. It is a matter of whether they were ready to jump into the memory crater, or whether someone had to stamp on their fingers as they clung to the rim.

A lot of gods illuminated by Rashoran “succumbed without struggle”.

Maybe the final step in lunar enlightenment is Rashoranic illumination, the realisation that life has no meaning, that shunning the oblivion of the void is simply delaying the inevitable. 

So kindof a mockery of “I fought we won”, I succumbed we lost.

Nobody forces them to step into the void, they walk in of their own free will, when they lose interest in continuing.

21 hours ago, JRE said:

I would expect there are many such elevations after the manifestation of a new mask of the Red Emperor, including many of the associates of the departed mask. Unless we have a ritual sacrifice by the Great Sister, when many of those associates will suffer the same fate, to keep the moon free of such failures. 

That would be one of the desired effects from a well conducted Dart war operation, getting one of the candidates to satrap of Holay appointed as Sacred guardian of the blessed moon fruit, after the current holder suffered an indigestion from eating unholy green tomatoes.

I wonder if the old dignitaries kindof fade away? If the moon is a chaos wound in the world, in the body of Orlanth, then hidden behind the glamour is a void. But not the traditional unsubtle void, all terror and screaming, something more hidden. Perhaps people who ascend to the moon eventually go missing, and if anyone asks they are told their old friend or guide or whatever has ascended to a higher plane. Lunar Mysticism meets Soylent Green.