Akhôrahil

Quoting Conan’s dad: ”In their rage, the gods forgot the secret of steel and left it on the battlefield. We who found it are just men. Not gods. Not giants. Just men. The secret of steel has always carried with it a mystery. You must learn its riddle, Conan. You must learn its discipline. For no one - no one in this world can you trust. Not men, not women, not beasts. [Points to sword] Conan's Father : This you can trust.” (It turns out he’s wrong - no Valhalla for Conan’s dad - but hey...)

Do you trust all your friends, neighbours, relatives and co-workers?

And the Carapace spell is quite simply the best bang for the buck you can get for pure armor. Combine it with natural armor and worn armor, and it becomes a lot, very quickly.

Depends... it’s not difficult, but there will be a fair amount of work (lots of NPCs to stat up), as well as some improvisation during play for how to translate the much looser HQ challenges into RQ format.

The Red Cow campaign (The Coming Storm + The Eleven Lights) is in my opinion not merely the best Gloranthan campaign bar none, but quite possibly the finest Gloranthan writing out there in any format.

I tend to sum up armor and HP and treat it the way you would a weapon’s HPs. This is basically the same thing, except that it makes it a lot more likely that you can do 1 point of damage.

I would guess at your third suggestion - the hero has a permanent connection to either the gods’ world or some hero plane. This is probably what makes hero-worship possible. It might also be associated with the Mastery rune, which is apparently a hero-thing now.

That seems like a very quick spread, especially as the Bright Empire was land-locked (although conceivable, agree). And would Brithos even accept such missionaries on the island? Openness to new ideas isn't exactly their thing.

Occupational experience?

This is so interesting - it shows that Elves already had a somewhat independent tradition of Illumination. Picked up from pre-Nysalor Solar connections?

Agree - "Daka Fal" is basically just a label to put on "Ancestor Worship".

Although Daka Fal used to be an associated cult of Kyger Litor's (and at a guess, will be again), so supposedly it's available to trolls as well?

Yeah, just jails. Why have a prison when you can have a DX-run re-education work camp somewhere horrible instead?

Mmm, I run Illumination more as an elite state, something the overwhelming percentage of people will never achieve (and probably even fewer chaotics, as mental discipline and intellectual excellence tends to go poorly with chaoticism in most cases), no matter how practical it is. The Lunar Heartlands is almost certainly the most illuminated place in Glorantha, and I can’t imagine more than a couple percent of the population are Illuminated.

In my book, this would absolutely require Illumination - Vivamort/Nontraya is the archenemy of Ernalda (and I see Land/Grain Godesses mostly as local variations and subcults of Ernalda). Without Illumination, Spirits of Reprisal would hit you like a brick. It’s only one step up from Humakti vampires. Of course, you have a partially Chaos-aligned Dorasta, which makes this more feasible. But even so, there’s an obvious tension between a fertility cult and vampirism (which is all about stealing life).

My take on Dorastor is that I keep turning it down from 11. 🙂

Even when it’s something very different from my own view - I just jumped in my seat at the Neverdead text where there’s a pro-Undead (!) Earth Great temple with multiple Vampire-priestesses (!!) and 200 (!!!) god-talkers there. I mean, not in my Dorastor, but the idea of an obscene little Illuminated Earth cult there is still a nice idea regardless.

You need Unknown Armies for your Pornomancy rituals.

Aren’t those (possibly excluding Arkati) the same thing? I meant that I’m not sure that Arkat was accepting of Chaos, which would indicate that he wasn’t Nysalorean/Rashoranically Illuminated.

I can't say how canonical it is, but it's stated outright in Cults of Terror/Lords of terror/Cult Compendium "The illuminated one will know as truth that chaos is, in itself, neither evil nor inimical. This secret knowledge is the source of the other five benefits of Initiation." I would add that "accepting" here doesn't mean "like" - your phrasing of "neutral" is just as good. There's nothing special about Chaos in the eyes of the Illuminant. I suppose you could argue that Arkat's problem wasn't with Chaos in general but with Nysalor in particular. (I personally don't think it's meaningful to talk about what gods are Illuminated or not. You will only interact with gods through the raster of your myths anyway. It doesn't matter in the slightest what they "really" are outside of their myths, if it's even a meaningful concept.)

Are there any cults where you have to become human to join?

“The real Argrath was inside you all along.”

It is, and there’s not a lot to be done about it. Reading the Glorantha Siurcebook is one of the more accessible entrance points, but even that’s not so easy. Fortunately, you don’t need a full and wide understanding. Start in a small corner, the more remote the better, and you may never have to learn about Harmast Barefoot’s 12 Heroquests or the details of the Lunar bureucracy. It’s not exactly sword & sorcery - if you want a genre description, it’s more sword-and-sandal. More Troy or Harryhausen, less Conan or Elric. There are places in Glorantha that would support sword & sorcery (like Safelster), but they have never been detailed. And Glorantha has a much, much heavier focus on culture and social context than sword & sorcery typically has. You’re more likely to be a farmer who takes up arms to protect his clan, than a rootless wanderer like Conan or Elric.

I swear my first thought was "post-modernist ritual, huh?".

HQ writing is so good. Reminded me to go back and read up on Odayla and Yinkin in the far and away best source for them, Storm Tribe.