Akhôrahil

And to be fair, you don't need spells like Hide Wealth if you don't have any wealth to hide. Agree that this has to be something for wealthier families.

With a 300L buy-in, the number has got to be a bit limited... it's 60% of the value of the farm!

Isn't people among the worst things to make zombies out of? We're not good for much except doing things with our hand and our minds, and that's of little use when it comes to mindless shuffling zombies? A zombie horse is a lot nastier!

I think it’s fair to be quite loose with DI. Would allow.

Also, you have to wonder if it’s a boardgame:ism, there for the balance. You need to sacrifice say 1000 people. Do you a) sacrifice one of your badly needed military units during an ongoing war, potentially not just weakening your own forces but also hurting morale if it gets out, or b) round up a bunch of no-good civilians (something you’re used to doing for Bat-feeding anyway)?

This is my line of thinking as well. Spirits can have Rune Magic, so why not Wyters? But they can’t do their cool community casting with it. It seems weird that something like a Snake Daughter wouldn’t have ”personal” Earth magic (and apparently whoever wrote the Bestiary item for them agreed).

Magic like divinations (to know when nomads are coming), "harmony" with them (as in, only take most of our food), being able to hide away stuff, and so on will be very useful. There are likely spiritual reserves that can be brought up if any occupiers completely misbehave and the local spirits get roused. There may be nomad stories about someone who got cursed that way - the moral is that there's got to be limits even when you come for the Oasis Peoples.

I wonder how that is done in practice - it will have to be a pretty pious unit to put up with it willingly for the Glory of the Empire, and a military unit must be one of the more difficult things to sacrifice if it resists. Is it just "go attack the Hydra, guys!" or "and then you will marsh into the swamp here on your sacr— I mean punitive expedition"?

This does seem to be something of a pattern in Glorantha, though - for whatever reason, it's the more "primitive" societies that are more inclined to have shamans. There doesn't seem to be any obvious in-world reasons for it, unless you want to argue that theistic worship arises in more complex societies and then take over. And as seen for several cults in this thread, there are a number of exceptions.

1: If you want to tackle the subject, one enormous issue is the presence of non-human races - how does this affect what you think of other human peoples? Quoting Terry Pratchett, "Black and white lived in perfect harmony and ganged up on green." You will have to decide whether a troll makes a stranger seem more like a fellow human, or whether it just makes you more suspicious of any strangers. 2: Obviously our people is the best in the world. Obviously everyone else is at best weird and dangerous. This is just the default tribalism and xenophobia, not itself racism. It has been noted that about half of all peoples' names for themselves in the real world mean "the people", "the real people", "the actual humans" or something like that. 3: You hate the Lunars for being rapacious occupiers who killed your uncle and try to keep you from worshiping your gods. Looking Pelorian (even for those that do) probably comes far down your list of issues with them. Basically, most every people in Glorantha is going to have much more immediate issues to hate their neighbours over than any abstract racial stuff. 4: To Sartarites, Tarshites speaking and dressing funny is a far bigger deal than any minor differences in appearances.

PM

That could certainly do it - it means going for broke, and I don't imagine it happens every hunt, but it's certainly a potential winner! I'm going to run a Great Hunt for next session, but with only one PC as an actual Hunter (although we've noted that Herders get a probably better skill-set for hunting than Hunters do...) and three Yinkin/Odayala initiates or wanna-bes, no-one is actually expecting or really going for a win this first time. Instead I have a small scenario with Lunar meddling baked in. The one player whose PC really didn't fit in the Great Hunt situation will borrow a scenario-relevant NPC hunter (Orogerian, no less) to run. I'm thinking they will also run into that Zong hunter they have met before.

Question: about what size/quality of game do you think is necessary to win in an average year? Magical deer?

I like to picture that there's a "base camp" that the hunters will return to (or arrive at, if it's the Skanthi great hunt that doesn't assemble people together in the first place before the hunt). Other party members can get to hang around there and have intrigues and minor adventures.

Mark Galeotti is on Facebook, if nothing else. Unsurprisingly, he's getting a bit of exposure these days.

Yeah, this is an interesting outcome of the rules - apart from better child survival, a higher SoL mostly just means (purely rules-wise) that you will have a more expensive ransom and resurrection cost...

In Lords of Terror, there's an Illuminated Scorpion Queen Sword of Humakt who has learned how to "bend" her geases - she can use her stinger because that's "inherent" poison so that's alright, she gets to ambush people who has ambushed her at some time, and so on. I kinda like it.

Ancestor worship (Daka Fal) is surely widespread, with the Man Rune focus meaning that they're not opposed to civilization, so DF shamans ought to work for this. Of course, some shamans pick up oddball geases or issues that might push them outside society, such as the somewhat crazy DF shaman in the Quickstart. Black Fang is urbane as well.

I would say yes if they do it full-time, no if it’s within their adventuring time. This goes for all occupations.

Even the RAW five SRs is pretty cheap, considering what a big advantage getting your opponent on the ground should be. I would run getting up as taking an entire turn during which you can only defend (and even this is quite kind, really).

Creatures have those, like Rubble Runners on Glorantha Bestiary p. 158. "Standard NPCs" like this don't really exist, though (a lot of adventures include statblocks like "typical militiaman" and so on, but that's likely to be more of a help about being in line with publications rather than something that can be outright referred to). If the publication has the space for such stat-blocks (very useful for any gaming), this seems like something that could be farmed out?

I also get the impression that Scorpion-Arm-Ralzakark might well be the original (or at least more original than the Unicorn). Did he split at some point? Did someone else usurp much of the transcendent ”Ralzakark” entity, becoming Ralzakark? Was it yet another Ralzakark that was killed by Oddi during Hahlgrim’s War? Maybe even two of them, seeing as he killed ”Ralzakark” twice in one day?

While I’m leaning in that direction, it’s not really clear from the text. Also, who is a ”worshiper”? Does lay member count?

Whoa! It’s not for old ladies, it’s for wealthy old ladies!

Lunar propaganda (literally - D:LoD p. 18)! Good thing it's in writing so that there's no risk it reaches the Storm Bullies...