Akhôrahil

First demi-god, then god. Baby steps. 🙂

This is a very interesting question - to what extent is Honor a universal system, and to what extent "right action for a person like you". No Babeester Gori should spare a rapist just for being unarmed, but does this mean that they don't do honor, or just that they have a different system? The rules seem to suggest the former. (There's a great passage near the end of Lone Wolf And Cub where the ninjas actually manage to get the better of Itto Ogami, by having one ninja act as a sword sharpener for him but secretly weakening his sword so that it breaks at a crucial moment. The last of the ninjas makes a dying apology for their dishonorable action, but Itto Ogami praises them, saying that an act like this is a ninja's honor and that they should take pride in their success. Similarly, of course, Itto Ogami himself breaks all rules of Samurai honor to achieve his own proper action by walking the path of Meifumado.)

There's a very nice map - better even - inside the Dorastor book. I presume it's the color map that you lost?

While I have my issues with Harrek, even he didn't just randomly kill his god during initiation - he was an accomplished gladiator and dart-warrior, and had killed the Red Emperor, escaped through Dorastor, and at least in my headcanon caused so much small-c chaos there that it triggered the Seven Troubles from Dorastor. Only after that did he do the Deed. One thing about extremely high-level play in RQ is that it's a game with a large rules overhead, that swells to immense with very powerful characters. Be prepared for a lot of book-keeping, and I say that as someone who can enjoy that. Becoming rules-mechanically powerful in RQ is all about racking up a breadth of stuff, with dozens of crystals, matrices, other magic items, bound spirits, multiple cults, rune points all over the place, and so on. I'd fire up an Excel sheet, personally.

Honor cultures are common even today. Even many European countries have problems with honor killings among immigrant populations. As we see in Glorantha, an honor culture is a way to achieve a modicum of order in a pre-state society, through the credible threat of retribution. it’s not even particularly about religion.

1. As others have already said, there The Pure. While they are most common in Ralios, they exist in small numbers on the Eastern side of the Rockwoods, for instance in Dorastor. Probably not canonically in Dragon Pass, but that's a small enough change if you want to make it for your campaign. 2. Adoption into the Telmori exists, I believe. You can't join the Cult of Telmor and you don't become a werewolf under any normal circumstances. However, there's good game fodder in the Ituvani, a caste of non-Telmor shamans that aggressively (and dangerously) bind hostile spirits and create magical tattoos, and that a non-Werewolf might potentially join. And HeroQuesting isn't a normal circumstance - "discovering" Telmori ancestry during a heroquest seems perfectly legitimate.

Also, "Velhara" is the Lady of the Wild among the Heortlings, which strongly suggests that there's a non-Heortling Lady of the Wild, only not under that name (explicitly among the Grazers, for instance). So while there may be no Velhara in Balazar, the Lady of the Wild might still be present under a different name. I would also hypothesize a connection to the Wild Women, the "mobile nymphs" of the Bestiary (Wild Women: These petty goddesses rule the wilderness, roaming across hills and valleys. As they go, they dance in wild ecstatic celebration, giving blessings to those that please them and withholding their blessings from those that displease them.) Since the Lady of the Wild is Odayla's mom, presumably she is known in the Bear-worshiping parts of Peloria?

There's definitely a tension in the rules between Honor as a warrior virtue and Honor as something that applies to everyday people, agree. The RAW would presumably be that if you don't have the Honor passion, then it also doesn't get modified. But it seems really weird if a lot of people wouldn't be bound by the rules of Honor, such hospitality. (I always allow my players to pick up a free passion or two, so in my house-rules this would always be a deliberate choice.)

I agree with this, especially in Skanthiland. The Skanthi were a Penenthelli clan, and hence had a major Lady of the Wild cult during the Great Darkness. They also ended up in a particularly wild and infertile region where hunting is going to matter a lot more than usual.

Not having an Honor passion has got to possible - for instance, a trickster is going to have an empty honor score, as might other characters (Storm Bulls don’t do the honorable combat thing, I believe - Chaos needs to be fought by any means, fair or foul). The question is what the in-game effect would be of running a character that doesn’t do the honor thing. It essentially means not signing on to the social standards.

Under the definition, it seems like you’re allowed to outflank your enemy on the battlefield, but not send a flanking march in secret (as this wouldn’t be deploying openly). Looting the baggage train has to be fine - it’s probably more about how you treat the staff.

Or put another way (I think?) - do you get the same powers as your god has, or do you get the magic to emulate his deeds?

Compared to RQ3, bad Rune Magic hurts a lot more (as you have it reusable from start), and gaining a weapon at 90% is lot less beneficial (as getting 90% at start is easy anyway). This weakening is surely not by design.

This I feel I can be on board with. Honorable battle can be meritorious (earning you Honor) without ambushes being dishonorable and worthy of condemnation. Humakti try to push their line on how you should do things, but it’s up to you whether you go for it. A good ambush can still net you plenty glory, as well. But no-one is likely to go on about how honorable it was.

Also, if you never have any problems using your pike in enclosed spaces, your GM just isn't paying attention...

This is kinda how a shield wall works under the rules, but unfortunately shield walls only make sense for incompetent combatants. It’s an ideal way to organize the militia, but not a tool for adventurers.

RQG, p. 294. "Storm Bull: The Storm Bull is worshiped as Ernalda’s husband in Esrolia and by the rare Ernalda worshipers of the Wastes. He provides Impede Chaos." He's also a husband-protector among the Bilini, as per Dorastor: Land of Doom, and presumably in other places that have Storm Bull without having Eiritha.

Well, Storm Bull. 🙂

I can actually buy the argument that it should only be a semi-decent cult for warriors, because its focus is soldiers. The problem is that it doesn't really deliver ruleswise there either.

And it would give the Sun Dome Templars some actual battlefield magic - it’s supposed to be a soldier cult, but it’s not obvious how it holds it own against units with proper magic. Yes, pikes are nice in the right context, but…

Sure, but this - that it's super easy to get a ton of additional effective actions through spirits - is a game design problem. It's not really any different than having a bunch of crummy human followers support you with Spirit Magic spells, apart from the spirits normally being less squishy and obtrusive. It could be solved by ensuring that spirits have to be told to do something using your own SRs, but I think it's fairly clear that the rules aren't intended to work that way. This (perhaps unfortunately) isn't something the game bothers with.

You have a point there - the players just need to be told in no uncertain terms that the character is already dead and no amount of healing can fix that.

That was so great! You got to have final words, deliver a dying prophesy, and all kinds of things that just aren't possible under RQ rules.

My PCs die a lot less than I expect them to, even though I don’t hold back. Rune Magic is just devastatingly powerful when it gets turned on. I fully expected someone to die in the Scorpionman Raid scenario in Dorastor (because it has two enemies that can easily one-shot anyone (POT 53 Poison, sheesh!) and others with 14 pts of armor). So I no longer even feel concerned about doing things like ”I will design this Bad Dog by lightly tweaking an Allosaur”.