Richard S.

Fireblade is perfectly compatible with Truesword, so RAW yes, you can have a 6D6 weapon for the low cost of 1 RP and 4 MP.

Officers will probably worship the same cult as their men, being the rune lords and priests of the society, especially considering how societies are essentially big extended families. Hrestol is an extremely uncommon cult across all the west, even within Loskalm, and Gerlant is a Talar ancestor that I doubt they'd appreciate lowly Horali worshiping. Arkat, from what I've picked up, is still hated by most Malkioni outside of Ralios.

Caste Magic, something special to the Malkioni caste system and its many rules. Follow the laws, retain Rightness, and you get some pretty nifty rewards. Magic isn't just limited to the three big systems, there's tons of smaller systems, unique abilities, and just special things that don't fit. Edit: Here's what we know about caste magic and rightness so far:

As an example of how limited their magic is, Hrestol only provides three spells: Dismiss Magic, Shield, and Spirit Block. And no access to the common list presumably. He does give the benefit of being able to act outside your caste restrictions as long as you're doing it "Justly", though. The Talar don't use sorcery themselves though. Their biggest compensation for limited Rune magic is instead the power they get from their caste, which allows them to compel other Malkioni castes to obey them.

I think Jeff elaborated somewhere on facebook, but basically Open Seas is a "package" sorcery spell exclusively taught by the Dormal cult to their initiates. I call it a package spell because Dormal apparently figured out how to encode all the necessary Runes and Techniques into the spell itself, so non-sorcerers can learn and cast it without knowing either. It also can't be manipulated for that same reason. And yeah, it is technically a Dormal cult secret so an LM knowing it is a little curious. Maybe they helped save a ship at one point and were taught it as a gift? Or maybe they are or at one point were an initiate of Dormal themselves?

The "source" referenced in the text is the same for everyone, just given different names depending on how the sorcerer views it.

If a CA or Issaries knows sorcery it could be from anywhere - LM, Malkioni, Lunar, Kralori, etc. Them allowing it just means you won't get kicked out for knowing any, it doesn't mean they actively teach it or have easy avenues for learning it.

Based off of what Jeff has said, I don't think the Zzaburi have a problem with ancestor worship, including animal societies and things like Issaries-as-an-ancestor. What they and seemingly the Talar have a problem with is worshiping gods as gods, which involves acknowledging them as superior beings to humans. Worshiping your ancestors is acceptable since you're ultimately worshiping humans (though the definition of "human" can seemingly be stretched a good deal).

I think it's more supposed to mean that the types of spirit magic they can learn are limited, since shamans aren't as readily available and their ancestral cults don't have a wide selection.

The way I see Talar ancestor worship is that it's mainly worship of heroes and gods in a typical rune cult format, with simple offerings and prayers given to the generic ancestors. If there is actually a Daka Fal presence, it'll be something like a family elder who's been initiated by the ancestor spirits (since spirits can be a part of the cult iirc); no full shaman required, just someone who can talk to them and maintain the family shrine.

Considering all the current folios are free, I don't see any reason why these won't be.

Are there any connections between Grandfather Mortal and Malkion? Then Zzabur would simply be a mortal via inheritance. As for him being the personification of Law, uh something like "Law is created by Mortal man's perception of/interaction with the universe" seems like a suitably philosophic thing to say.

Kind of expanding on my heroquesting answer, as I understand it most heroquests are like putting on a play, but when you're done parts of the story you were telling remain as real things. Like say I heroquest King Arthur getting Excalibur - I wouldn't actually go back in time to some mythical England and pull Excalibur out of the lake, I'd go to a nearby lake that represents the one from the story and get a normal sword out of it. When the quest is over, the sword I got has been changed into something like Excalibur, I haven't gotten Excalibur itself. Of course, that's really just a this-world quest, where all the magic is just overlayed on top of the mortal world. If I was feeling particularly brave or foolish I could do an otherworld quest, and actually enter the story as it endlessly recurs on the other side, but I'd still probably just get an enchanted version of a sword I brought with me, since the otherworld version isn't the original either, it's just an echo, a looping record ever degrading and warping. You have to go very deep to find a version of the story that's close enough to the original that it can retain substance when brought into our world, and that risks you losing yourself, your soul, your mind, or all of the above. I hope that makes some sense, someone else please correct me if I made any major goofs.

It's difficult to make a generalized statement about heroquesting given how extensive it is, but usually if you get a physical reward out of a quest it will be a transformation/enchantment/etc of something you brought into the quest with you. Like if you're doing a heroquest where Orlanth got his scarf of mist, your cloak or scarf or similar might be turned into a rune spell matrix for the Cloak of Mist spell, or something like that. Occasionally, though, the reward might be something entirely new that you've physically brought out of the hero plane, a copy of the original, though that's usually reserved for the more dangerous and powerful heroquests. If I recall correctly, the God Learners actually succeeded at taking the originals of godtime artifacts out of quests, not just copies, though that's one of the big things that led to them collapsing so spectacularly. The most recent version of RQ doesn't have anything like Magic Circle yet, and while the sorcery rules in the core book aren't quite complete, I'll take Jeff's answer to mean they aren't planning on bringing Magic Circle back as a commonly known spell. I wouldn't put it past some clique of sorcerers to try and replicate the greater movement powers of Mastakos and Orlanth, but they'll almost certainly keep it a secret among themselves. Gloranthan sorcerers aren't exactly the sharing type when it comes to magical knowledge.

Heroquesting isn't time travel. The myths that are repeated in quests did technically happen in the past, but Heroquests are just reenactments, drawing on the patterns set down in the hero plane back when time had no meaning.

BBoZ is a fan site, run by @Tindalos if I'm not mistaken. The magazines are fan publications too. There's no harm in using them if you want, but there's no guarantee they'll line up with any future canon.

Large scale building and engineering is usually handled by Lodril and his sons or the Mostali. LM is more about gathering knowledge than actually applying it, unless said application is to get more knowledge.

Where are you getting that they have strong Air affinity? The Bestiary notes that both Air and Fire are common among them. And there wouldn't be any Yelmic centaur lineages since all modern ones (except maybe Ironhoof) are descendants of EWF experiments. The original centaurs went extinct in the darkness.

Etyries merchants aren't all going to be some sort of Lunar agents. Sure, they're Lunars, but they're civilians not soldiers, and probably pretty neutral as long as the trade routes stay open. Especially with how total warfare isn't really a thing in Glorantha (discounting age-ending cataclysms and such probably) I don't feel like war and trade are as mutually exclusive as they might be in some of our recent big wars.

That's not a dumb theory, that's just canon. Yelmalio hasn't been the sun since the Heortling's initial contacts with Dara Happa.

Since I know someone's gonna say it eventually, I'm gonna point out that the core sorcery rules are basically just a teaser until the proper ones come out. They're enough for a LM sorcerer to get by and for GMs to do a sorcerer NPC or two, but they're not a finalized system so you need to use a good bit of homebrew to do anything beyond a LM who starts out as a sorcerer.

Well this is a surprise, releasing what's essentially a starter set+ for free. Can't say I don't enjoy it though, this'll make introducing my friends to it a lot easier.

Another thing to note about the Atreides being caught with their pants down is that they didn't expect the attack to come so soon. IIRC, Leto and Thufir thought the emperor would wait until the spice production fell below acceptable levels due to the shoddy equipment the Atreides were left with, which would give the Harkonens a reasonable case before the Lansraad. Instead, the attack was launched mere days after the Atreides arrived.

Form/Set does kind of exist in Mostali sorcery, though under different names. Each MP affects one cubic meter, and there's a flat 1 POW cost per cast as well.

It's honestly not that surprising when you consider how often Orlanth and Umath get equated.