Akhôrahil

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.

It’s worth mentioning that the Dragonrise being unintential is a retcon - in Sartar Rising, it’s clearly Orlaronth’s and Kallyr’s plan all along.

Since you can pop Countermagic (although not Shield), a smart caster would boost the first spell in order to have it take down the Countermagic, so that it's gone for the follow-up spells.

This is sensible - it's about the same way as a Dispel works. Note that a Countermagic spell can also be taken down by just blasting through it, which is the far more likely way to pop it.

I think that going strictly by the rules, it's the same enchantment (only improved), so that the 1 mandatory POW for the enchanter has already been provided (that is, it's 1 POW per actual enchantment, not 1 POW per enchantment event). However, since presumably another enchanter can improve on the enchantment, if that happens, the new enchanter has to add one point of his own POW the first time.

Ironically, the unusually weak Lhankor Mhy sorcerers might well be the more playable ones, because at least they can back it up with more immediately player-useful Rune Magic and don't have to bother the same way with caste restrictions.

I don't believe this is the case at all. There are enough heirlooms floating around that most PCs own something enchanted. Magical places will often be enchanted. I assume every temple of any decent size includes a number of enchantments (wardings, bound spirits, and so on). Enchanted weapons are incredibly useful. Any Priest or Rune-Lord can potentially make them (there must be thousands of them in Sartar), and will often have good reason to (and pick the spells accordingly), and you can even get away with doing it with Spirit Magic (handing out fetishes with bound spirits is going to be one of the more important tasks for a shaman in a shamanistic society). Most initiates can cast a Warding. While my players have PCs, of course, one of the first things they did when getting their new longhouse in the Risklands was to slap a 4-point Warding on it, which is pretty brutal.

The web of Arachne Solara was, the web of Arachne Solara is, the web of Arachne Solara will be. It's a bit like space-time in a deterministic universe - a single existing unchanging chunk, and "time" is just your current perspective on it. Plus the idea that all time is the same time, all space is the same space, all souls are the same soul... it's hard to get much more mystical than that.

There are probably limits to how hard the higher-ups can push these things - at some point becoming an intelligent magical dinosaur might not seem so bad in comparison... 🙂

If we don't get any new dragonewts, you have to wonder what kind of fuckups are still merely Crested after 1600+ years. 🙂

It’s also possible that some very old eggs might hatch at times. We know there has been plenty of destruction of eggs, so they must be around, and will presumably hatch on occasion.

I wonder what happens to them during wartime (which there will be a lot of in the future), when trade presumably more or less collapses? It would make sense that they will have to quarter troops, with or without the owner's agreement? (No third amendment in Glorantha!)