Akhôrahil

You still cap at 21 unless Yelmalio, though, so it merely delays things a little. Spell matrices is the most obvious answer, though. It’s very close to having the Rune Points.

My reasoning is that sine you can feed those spirits POW, and since you can feed Ancestors POW, it means that you can feed spirits generally POW (how could you even give them POW for a Pact if you couldn't give them POW in the first place?). It's a great currency for making (expensive) deals with spirits, too. And everyone can at the very least feed spirits POW as part of worship, so it makes sense to me that they can also feed spirits POW more generally, although this is less clear cut. (Further, since you can take POW from certain spirits, such as Disease Spirits...) But anyway, off-topic! If your GM agrees that this works, it's a great sink for POW until your Allied Spirit is full, is all I'm saying.

And with any spirit through Spirit Pacts (p. 358), which certainly sounds as though shamans can give away POW freely (even if you couldn't perhaps formally Spirit Pact an allied spirit). And by feeding POW to an ancestor, at least for Daka Fal.

Shamans certainly can, although this doesn't necessarily help here. Even worst case, you could make some kind of switcharound where you feed POW to a shaman's project and the shaman feeds POW to your Allied Spirit.

I think it's not being used in that form, at least. I kinda liked the idea, though - I'm concerned that shamans will run away with irresistible Spirit Magic, and a Hero Soul "Rune Fetch" seemed like a nice way for Rune Cultists to be able to keep up.

You can feed POW to any spirit, I'm fairly confident. It effectively costs 1 POW, assuming you want to replace that RP.

It's Common, so you don't even have to buy it once - it comes for free. ("Beginning adventurers know all common Rune spells"). It works for all cult spirits.

Feed POW to your Allied Spirit, which then sacrifices for Rune Points. Since you and your Allied Spirit share both Rune Points and spells, investing in it works much the same as getting personal Rune Points. When this is also full, sacrificing POW for enchantments is good. If you're a Rune Lord, converting POW to other stats using DI is absurdly powerful (and I have indeed house-ruled it away - a middle ground would be to only allow it for the stat that correspond to its element).

To lose one allied spirit may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose two looks like carelessness.

I would apply this only if you didn’t pay the ransom. Being captured is unfortunate, but not the end of the world, and if you get captured, it isn’t weird if your sword, cat or bison also gets captured.

Most of them are in an animal or an item, so it doesn't seem so hard?

Yes, completely agree, but quite often, ransoms will be paid within the culture. So if it’s Orlanth or Ernalda, there might be priests who express their Opinions.

You could also decide that Loyalty (Red Emperor) applies to the position and not the individual, if that helps.

Same as the person’s, perhaps? So often 1000 L? Seems like a reasonable sum to me. I could imagine cult interventions in some cases, because it’s possibly mildly sacriligous to keep the spirits of your god hostage. Sacred animals in general would have at least the same wergild as a free person. I believe there’s something about this in Storm Tribe or Thunder Rebels. Plus again, the sacrilege angle.

Or perhaps rather, as the song has it, ”I get knocked down, but I get up againYou are never gonna keep me down”

That was my point. It turns Yelmalio into a functioning warrior cult. It’s a big deal

I don't think one-use Sunspear for High Priests matters much. Shield on the other hand, does. It's the difference between a functional but unimpressive fighting cult, and mere crud magically speaking.

Where does this bit come from? I wouldn’t have thought Chaos Worship his style.

Supervillain? 🙂 But yes, surely the most powerful Orlanthi hero pre-HeroWars? Not that this is necessarily enough.

Alakoring feels possible to me. Not because of “mere” dragon-slaying (something other decidedly non-super heroes did as well, like Iddi Scorchbane), but because he provides a full cultural, history-changing package in one person. How should we think of super-heroes when relating to real-world mythology? Presumably Heracles is the only candidate in Greek mythology? Norse mythology doesn’t have one? Indian probably has a few (not my area)?

It seems that the tricky bits is differentiating between hero and super-hero, and between super-hero and demigod. Especially the latter - people like Belintar, Takenegi, Sheng Seleris, Godunya and Ralzakark are up there, but count (for reasons that aren’t immediately obvious to me, but also kinda make sense) as demigods instead (or maybe Godunya is not that either but a dragon?). I would not hazard to provide a definition of the difference. Was Hon-eel a super-hero? She feels like a candidate, at least?

I created a skill to handle all kinds of working with wood and trees that isn't carpentry - picking out good trees; making charcoal, tar and resin (more advanced stuff, like varnish, goes under Alchemy); tapping trees for maple syrup or birch sap; and so on. Then connected a new "Woodsman" profession to it.

Some ancient (well, modern as well) fishing was done with thrown nets. In this case, I would allow a Throw Net weapon skill to be used for fishing as well.

It’s also super weird that Hunters don’t have Device as a skill.

Well, Occluded.