jeffjerwin

5 hours ago, RHW said:

For purposes of game play, I'd treat Kitori as either human or Uz (their base species) who belong to a culture with a Darkness rune affinity (sub for Storm in standard Orlanthi creation, uz are standard). The ability to change shape would be rune magic available via a cult to be written, for simplicity sake a hero cult that could be worshiped as an associate of pretty much any (culturally) Kitori deity. AA, ZZ, Ernalda, KL etc.

DARK SHAPESHIFTING (3pt Temporal, self) The caster may change into an Uz, human, or dehori for the duration of the spell. Stats change appropriately. For example Humans gain +6 to their SIZ and STR when they become Uz, as well as gaining iron vulnerability, 1 pt skin, and darksense. Uz lose 6 SIZ and STR, lose 1 pt of skin and their dark sense, but are no longer vulnerable to iron. 

 

The most important aspect of being in uz shape is that you can eat everything, I think, from a cultural standpoint. That means that the Kitori can survive under hostile conditions where humans cannot - worship of Argan Argar was about surviving the Great Darkness and the rise of Chaos, after all. And when a dehori, you can basically use the ability to ambush/hide in the forests very well. 

5 hours ago, Khanwulf said:

Let me widen the topic only slightly by asking a few related questions that have niggled at me:

1. The PKs may receive [vast tracts of] lands for their heroics at Tintagel. Enough to constitute and estate and jump them to baron. If so, my assumption is that they would in fact receive an homage/loyalty passion toward Uther, who granted those lands directly. This then would create obligations to Uther as well as Roderick that could be used to complicate their lives further.

Unless they want to serve King Idres or his son Mark that barony won't last. I'd be reluctant to do that to players unless you are willing to compensate them in other ways during the Anarchy.

A couple (more) comments: People with Loyalty ... (16) may self-rationalize their continued loyalty. This is a pretty realistic psychological reaction. Complex and contradictory passions and loyalties are excellent for stories. Lancelot has a Loyalty (Arthur) and a Love (Guinevere). Eventually Ygraine will consent to marry her husband's killer and personal loyalty to her will not be in contradiction to loyalty to the High King. You could rationalize it as Loyalty (High King) and leave it unchanged. If so, the characters will feel compelled to confront Uther out of loyalty and honesty rather than keep their misgivings secret.

However, Uther's behavior did alienate people in the romances, and this alienation from the high kingship (and from his lineage) had observable effects on later history, particularly the Anarchy and the Boy King periods. Uther's behavior could be argued to be part of the necessary groundwork for the reaction against his attitude towards women that caused 'Romance' to take hold.

I ran my Cornwall game with the characters actually on the opposite side. They did gain a (Hate) Uther passion and definitely mistrusted Merlin (a fully justified tendency among PCs and NPCs). This made things complicated when Arthur appears.

An opposed roll between their Just and Loyalty (Uther), with if Just wins, Loyalty dropping by 1d6, perhaps? Their Just and Suspicious might get checks, and thus rise to compensate.

I have come to see Delecti as in part a hero of Nontraya (sort of Vivamort) who has actually usurped dominion over the Earth (Ernalda). To reverse things in a grand manner, one needs to find and resurrect the undead land goddess he keeps imprisoned in the Swamp.

54 minutes ago, TerryTroll said:

Is the best time to move from manor to estate during the anarchy period where you can just make a quick land grab, or offer protection to your neighbour if they basically become part of your holdings?

Marrying your son off to a allied neighbour seems a good move as well, if something were to happen to his sons.

 

On the other hand... I'm currently 490 marrying two of my Player Knights off to maidens from Cornwall as Earl Roderick thought it strengthen the relationship with Duke Gorlois... well if they must wait around so long, they will get pushed into a political marriage. Visiting any holdings they get could be tricky in the future.

There will be many widows in Cornwall in the coming years. Some may have grievances against outsider knights. Best be careful. Some might be grateful. Some are not.

(The women of Igraine's household may have learned potion-making like their mistress. Others, being pagan (Cornwall is only partly Christianized) have 'fiery dispositions' as the men of Logres might see it.)

Significant land can be gained by wooing heiresses and widows, but they should be significant NPCs in their own right., as important as other knights.

The Curvature of Glorantha is why Gata is female.

Start the characters younger with less occupational experience and less rune points and they will be on the level of starting RQ2 characters. They will also die more often. The premise of RQG appears to be well-trained and outfitted PCs that are on detail/on call from local clans, temples and or tribes for serious adventuring. The RQ2 would be more along the lines of accidental heroes.

PS. If my game gets together (I am very busy with gaming writing, which means, sigh... less time for gaming) I'll probably start characters as kids. Then jump forward in time...

Many of the heroes of Arthurian romance are quite young when they start out - younger than the basic starting age - 16-18 on the average. I'd use the rules Atgxtg cited, and fully embrace having teen knights.

I have some interesting plans. I'm not sure if its going to be run anytime soon, as I just got some more writing work over the summer.

I'll continue to develop it anyway. 

7 hours ago, two_fishes said:

I'm playing a Humakti character. Her backstory is that she became a Humakti initiate after her family and clan were almost entirely murdered by her treacherous sister, who had become an initiate of Thanatar. Now my character has killed her sister, and may soon kill her sister's master, successfully avenging her family and clan. This seems like a moment for profound change for the character, and maybe a place for her to start over. Might she leave the service of Humakt? Or are the Humakti always in it to the death?

I'd suggest that the character may now become a weapon master and sword thane to a clan, but is no longer bound to continue their quest. The exemplar is Humakt returning to Orlanth's service after turning his back on his brother, and being re-adopted into the Storm Clan. You will always be marked by death, but now your duty is to teach and to defend.

Vinga and Orlanth Adventurous do work in that way as you can transfer to another associated cult (a Vingan who dyed her hair and pursued vengeance can return to the Loom House and the hearth, and Orlanth has peaceable aspects that could be chosen when a violent, dangerous path has come to an end), or In mythic terms, a different related god, but Humakt has no kin; the only path is to chose a different face of the god, perhaps, as I suggest, the sword thane of Orlanth.

Somehow I overlooked this: 

"The women, children, and old were sent out of the city over the rough mountains through secret paths, although many chose to remain and defend their city." KoS p.117

So my idea seems to be canonical... Considering that the Quivin mountains have wyrms and 'ice crawlers' according to the Gazetteer, the adventure pretty much writes itself... From the heights, no doubt the PCs can see the battle of the Crimson Bat and the dragon, and the burning of the city...

As for the 'old wizard' character, Dunorl Brandgorsson is a sprightly 52 at the time of the battle, and he is busy escaping with part of the regalia (no doubt having foreseen Boldhome's doom) and Yanioth Two-Sight and her 3 year old son may also be with the refugees ascending Quivin; her husband Maniski having stayed with the defenders.

3 minutes ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

There's a ton of grasses & flowering plants that are usually only seen as weeds that are edible.  The common nettle is a good example, as is sorrel, thistles, dandelion, and a whole slew of other stuff. It's not going to be anyone's staple food, but it's nutritious and good to have alongside vitamin, and mineral-poor cereals and dairy. Additionally, considering they often come in early summer, they are probably going to be useful for supplementing the diet in the time when winter stocks are running low and the first harvest is not yet in.

There are also mushrooms of course. Some cultures have seen them as taboo IRL due to the difficulty at time of identifying poisonous variants from edible ones, but many others have used a lot of mushrooms.

Dragon pass might be good plum or cherry country for all I know. Good for drinks or pies (or whatever the Bronze Age equivalent of pies are).

In Crete, the old women gather 'weeds' every day for cooking, to my observation. There's also pine-nuts; pesto was invented as a food for withstanding a siege...

Way back in Wyrm's Footnotes (reprinted in Wyrms Footprints) there's a timeline that states that the population of Boldhome was slaughtered. In the latter it's on p.88: "Boldhome sacked, its temples profaned, and its people slaughtered. No member of the royal house is left alive in the land, though some flee south and some flee too Pavis."

24 minutes ago, Joerg said:

The civilian population of Boldhome doesn't seem to have suffered significant losses in the assault, at least we don't get any reports of massacres like that of Runegate. Sure, the Bat would have annihilated much of the population, had its attack been successful, but it looks like the champions' battle between Harsaltar and the Red Emperor was the decisive event in the battle.

Another question is the number of slaves carried off from this assault, the way they were selected, and whether they disappeared forever or whether some managed to return. We do know that there was a great amount of plunder even for the King of Tarsh when the main effort in the assault was carried by Heartland forces.

Boldhome remains a large city in the occupation, suggesting an ongoing settlement. And by Sartarites, rather than a complete resettlement with Tarshites.

So what would the immediate experiences of civilians in that conquest have been?

The fact that the Emperor had been temporarily killed might have triggered reprisals from the occupiers. These might have been been cut short by someone eventually, once the 'lesson had been taught'.

Of course, anyone related to the royal family would have good reason to try to escape, particularly once the assassins begin combing the city. As would people like Kallyr or Hofstaring.

1 minute ago, Bill the barbarian said:

A gandalf like figure who leads the kids the party to come in 1610 GST as they flee Boldhome in 02. He takes out the biggest bosses in a flash bang way but the kids have to get the small fry.

Interesting idea. A good hook for later on... I have some ideas for that.

I'm planning to start my game (finally roped in enough suckers... err... players) this August and my initial idea is to do a flashback to the character's childhoods (the game is set in the 1610s) with a daring escape from Boldhome as it falls. I've got a pretty good idea of how it happens, because the narrative hasn't changed much. The Bat attacks over Mount Quivin, where it encounters the (dream?) dragon, the Moon Priestesses over the western ridges (what would have to be Two Tree Ridge) and the Lunar army over the wall with the Emperor.

Nonetheless, this leaves very few places to escape from (I assume that other Lunar forces block the north gate). One possibility is through a tunnel in Troll Town, or on some sort of aerial steed, though that would have to escape the Lunar flying troops. And Hofstaring did make a great leap, but that's beyond the means of children and youths.

The Dwarfs have sealed their palace.

I could imagine a PC's father or uncle or such trading something precious to the trolls to help their family get away, but that depends on whether the trolls have dug their way through the Quivini mountains, and where they might have an escape route. I find it plausible that the the trolls would have some means of getting out but whether it involves giant insects or the lava tunnels made by Quivin himself is another matter.

Posting here if anyone has ideas, quibbles, or observations...

15 minutes ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

Or she might be the original inhabitant that made the EWF set up an experimental site there in the first place.

True. The EWF is more about remaking the lost and old and awakening the mystic and draconic nature of a thing than making something utterly new. Even the Stitched Zoo was a 'reconstruction' of the Green Age.

18 minutes ago, Bohemond said:

Shifting gears somewhat, and speaking as a gay man, I've always found it fascinating that same-sex desire can be expressed in certain ways in a culture but not in others. (For example in the 70s, there was a somewhat greater acceptance of homosexuality and bisexuality among entertainers--those theater people, you know...) 

Donandar seems to have a fluid gender like Heler, which makes sense too.

15 minutes ago, Bohemond said:

I guess I've never found the idea that Heortling society recognizes neuter and hermaphrodite sexes to make much sense. Perhaps I've missed something, but there aren't any neuter or hermaphrodite deities in the Heortling pantheon (Eurmal might be exception, as he usually is, but I haven't seen any myths that explicitly reference him that way). The only hermaphrodite I know of in Glorantha is Androgeus, and everyone seems to regard Androgeus as a freak. Given the powerful concern with fertility in Heortling religion and the deep xenophobia it has, neuter people seem like they would be seen as highly problematic, even potentially chaotic. 

Given that there are probably neuter and hermaphroditic spirits, however, Heort (or his unnamed revisers) felt that it was a natural thing to be, and better to include as acceptable than rule out. Note also that a 'person' in Heort's Laws includes nonhuman persons (and there are several sentient peoples in Glorantha with these genders naturally) so long as they belong to Heortling culture and religion. Also, 1620s Heortling society is very different from the Dawn Age, when the Laws were supposedly written.

Androgeus definitely was present in Heortling myth in history as well, but s/he belongs to as yet unwritten set of stories.

Edit: remember that Heortling society can be quite xenophobic (because of Chaos and Meldeks etc.) so inclusiveness is important and needs to be spelled out, or the law won't protect the strange person.

I was working on Cornwall with Greg.

Ygraine or Eigyr in Welsh legend was the daughter of Amlawdd, originally the Jutish hero Amlethus or Hamlet (with a dash of Anlaf Cuaran), but he was grafted onto a branch of the Cornish royal house. Saxo depicts Amlethus fighting for and marrying a British queen in his stories, which probably influenced (in their oral antecedents) the fragments of the Welsh story.

She also has numerous sisters, including the mother of Cador/Cadwy.

In KAP she was represented as coming from Ynys Avalon or the Summerlands in the Great Pendragon Campaign; I left it so her origins are unclear. I gave her a younger sister Yvaine so Cador, who is stated in print to be her kinsman, had a means of being so.

In the German romance Diu Krone, Ygraine is apparently the sister of one Enfeidas, Queen of Avalon. This suggests the Avalon connection isn't just a modern notion.

If Elemenoria was summoned or created by the EWF and it was a perversion/mistake, it was because they wanted to formalize a critical mystic step on their draconic path: the place where the mystic must either embrace or reject materialism. The problem is in 'automating' it I think, not that it exists at all: every mystic must do so.

10 hours ago, Joerg said:

At least in the case of widows dyeing their hair red, I would think that they take on vingan behavior, but that is temporary. There are surely other cults that take in vingans, like e.g. Redaylda, Lhankor Mhy, Issaries. I wouldn't speculate on gender in Eurmali characters - there probably is a story how Eurmal got pregnant.

Gender probably stays immutable for most - an 'Orlanthi all' - of course. The red-headed widows are the exception.

PS. There has been a helering or more likely nandan king - Tarkalor. He was the lover of a Telmor bodyguard and I suspect of Monrogh as well.

28 minutes ago, soltakss said:

Vingans are female adventurers, or Adventuresses, they worship a female version of Orlanth Adventurous.

In my game, they aren't men-as-women or women-as-men. They are women who Adventure.

...

Don't bother about True Glorantha. 

Whatever makes sense in your games makes Glorantha True.

Just so we're clear on canon, word of Greg (RQ:G, p.81) is: "Heort’s Laws (an ancient document stating the laws and customs of the Heortling people) recognize four sexes (female, male, neuter, and hermaphrodite) and at least six genders (female, male, vingan, nandan, helering, and none). Unmarried sex between adults is not frowned upon, regardless of the sex or gender of the parties."

Sex = ability and role in reproduction

Gender = culturally based behavior

Hence, vingans presumably can have children, as they are usually female by sex but vingan by gender. But because they aren't 'female' by gender they aren't expected to...