Akhôrahil

And as regards strength, apes and monkeys tend to be buff.

I would assume Grandfather Baboon (i.e. Daka Fal) would use Beast instead of Man for the rune? With regards to som other points in this thread, Gloranthan baboons are clearly significantly larger than Earth ones. 3d6 SIZ is almost human-sized, while Earth baboons max out at considerably smaller (40 kg for the largest kind, and smaller yet for others).

Word of mouth?

Seems likely, but we can dream.

This makes sense to me - we may well see her cult if the Pamaltela cults book happens.

I read this to mean that they have a Dex SR of 1 for non-SC purposes, but that large spirit magic spell will still take longer to cast in the usual fashion Also, they can (by QA) cast multiple spirit magic in a turn, same as everyone else.

I would love to see a bunch of different Arkat-cult write-ups - that could be so interesting, and offer upp all kinds of new magical avenues, including for sorcerers.

My impression is that Tatius was a mix of brilliant and idiot, seeing only the path for success while discounting any possible problems. ”Oh, here’s a huge source of unknown magical power, I’m sure it will be well-behaved and nothing bad will come of it.” ”I’m sure the locals won’t manage to pull anything sneaky off when we consecrate the temple.” ”Orlanth and Ernalda are dead, so there is no way they could return from the Underworld, why that would be unheard of!”

I mean, you need the balance, but that surely can't be all that hard and is mostly in the shaft, assuming the tip is already the right size?

Testing seems to indicate that the intentional bending is a myth - the design is for armor (or specifically, shield) penetration. Bending could still occur as the iron isn't all that (and it's perhaps unsurprising that archaeological fins would sometimes have a bend), but it's not the design. Matt Easton has some great videos showing how a pilum will punch straight through a shield and how the tip is long enough to go into an arm or even the body afterwards.

Javelins seem like they would be the most common missile weapon among Heortlings, and it's not like you can carry just one if you're a skirmisher. The only way to get truly cheap skirmisher equipment is if they're slingers (slings are garbage, but they are cheap...).

I believe the argument is that by any standard it should cost more to equip a carl fyrdman (medium shield, composite helmet, spear) than a cottar skirmisher (several javelins, emergency light melee weapon). But javelins are so expensive that this doesn't hold true.

I'm in favor of this - there is extremely little written about something as magically important as dreams, and most dream-related stuff is draconic (Dream-dragons, Dragonewts Dream). Since even draconic entities aren't supposed to get tangled up with the obligations of the mundane world, perhaps it's seen as an inferior dream-like version of a higher reality, Platonism-style, and engaging too much with it damages your connection to the absolute draconic reality?

But in a spiritually enlightened way, of course! (Man, it doesn't actually improve things to consider tantric dragon sex...)

I've been thinking of putting some EWF survivor draconic mystic (perhaps as a wyrm) into my campaign, and I've been considering what kind of model draconic magics could use in RQG. Some thoughts: There's a lot of decent stuff in MRQ, and we have the Sun Dragon cult as a template for EWF draconic cults Using Dragonewt magic (did the EWF ever do that?) Path of Immanent Mastery (Gods of Glorantha), developed from one of the quick-fix draconic EWF paths Any other ideas? Anything we know will turn up in the Cults book?

This goes perhaps even more so for shields - those prices are bonkers. I mean sure, you need planks, glue, leather and preferably a metal boss for a large wooden shield, but half a year's gross income for a Carl family for an item that's more or less expected to get worn out in a battle? And why would anyone in their right mind pay eight times as much for that as for a strictly better Large Wicker Shield?

Bret Devereaux (antique military historian) talks a lot about RQ-adjacent subjects on his blog A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry, https://acoup.blog/ . His discussions on how bread was made, polytheism, and steppe nomads in the Dothraki context, might be particularly relevant.

Those courses are excellent. The thesis that the Iliad is fundamentally about kleios aphthiton (Undying Glory) and the Odyessey about xeniea (Hospitality) strikes me as very sound. This was the course that made me understand why Achilles is sulking in his tent - it's not just about something as trivial as losing his girl. Her Herodotus course is great as well, and spends the whole first lecture on the very first sentence. Listened to the Steppe one just months ago. In TMS meanwhile, Michael Drout is great when it comes to Tolkien, fantasy, the Anglo-Saxons, and more. TTC has a great series of Early, High and Late Medieval, although this isn't very RQ-adjacent. (Completely outside the topic, but the TTC course The Fall and Rise of China is incredible, just amazing.) I have the TTC courses Maya to Aztec, Neolithic Europe, The Pagan World and Understanding Imperial China queued up at the moment. Thanks, will pick this one up.

The Great Courses (that is, The Teaching Company) is amazing. I think they tend to be the perfect length and structure to get a solid layman's understanding, and the catalogue is just ridiculously big by now. As a subscription service, the pricing is pretty tolerable, and you can often find deals in various YouTube and podcast ads. There's also a free trial. The Modern Scholar series is about the same quality and the same concept. (It has Tolkien scholar Michael Drout in a number of lecture series, too.)

Perhaps the most official place we should expect it is if the addendum to Red Cow about the Dragonrise gets published for HQ? Unless the line is completely dead now?

Yes, I completely agree about this - all the prepwork point this way, and they seemed to have their exit strategy well planned when they saw that it was going off properly, so at the bare minimum they know they're adding some draconic mess to the general mayhem they're performing. Maybe Kallyr didn't plan to wake a dragon exactly, but there could have been no possible doubt that they were doing something with multiple draconic connections. Actually, what does happen with the Brown Dragon after the Dragonrise? I can't remember seeing it being particularly important?

I'm assuming the attack would have managed to mess up the consecration of the temple even without any dragons showing? Nowhere near as dramatically, of course, but definitely set it back by a lot, and killed a bunch of the ceremonialists. That's a big win already.

I agree we shouldn't discount Broyan, but Kallyr also worked her ass off for the rebellion, and without aborting the Temple of the Reaching Moon, it would probably all have been over for the Rebellion anyway. This is the destruction of the Death Star, and without her, would there have been much of a rebellion in place to even rise afterwards?

They're like lobsters - you need to crack that shell in order to get to the goodies inside.

'The myths can be changed. Maybe this time the Dragon will devour the Emperor ... I have heard there may be a fourth dragon in our land. My associate Garstal claims to have seen this "Jarn-thing" ... ' —Minaryth Purple, The Gathering Thunder p. 50 Totally agree here, it's definitely his style. When he becomes king, it was Kallyr who did all the heavy lifting with the rebellion, and it more or less falls into his lap.