Richard S.

1 hour ago, ZedAlpha said:

Yeah, no problem. Specifically I had an idea to crib the general Zhalfir concept from Magic the Gathering (tl;dr: Zhalfir was a continent in one of Magic's worlds that was zapped into its own time bubble pocket universe to save it from a horrific multiversal threat) and have a sort of lost island that just pops up out of nowhere, somehow being locked away from the rest of Glorantha since the God Time.

There's definitely room for lost islands, even floating ones. Kylerela is the most famous example for one that's both:

"An island is known to be floating upon the oceans of Glorantha. It is called Kylerela, or the land of Kylera, a daughter of the earth who was banished from her mother’s body when she was discovered to be bearing an incarnation of Trickster. Gata commanded an abortion, Kylera refused, and fled to the seas who supported her with love. The island is a weird one, with strange laws and unusual features, like the Singing Mountain, the Violet Forest, the Canals of Eroticism and the City Without Food or Sin. Some say it is now lost in Kahar’s Sea of Fog, while others say it is merely invisible and might be found anyplace." (GtG p643)

You don't have to use that one of course - it's got its own myths and mysteries - but it sets a useful precedent that there might be other lost lands floating around.

1 hour ago, ZedAlpha said:

 

Don't want to get too much into the story I have kicking around my head that relates to that, but the basic idea according to my rough notes is that the inhabitants (maybe a few thousand people living in a very small mostly-ruined city and a few fishing villages) worship:

• A deified ancestor who was the First Whaler or First Fisherman, a la Hyalor being the First Rider,
• A Water deity that might be related to Magasta that was the First Whaler/Fisherman's spouse
• A God of Shipbuilding
• A local craftsman god (probably First Whaler's child) who specializes in scrimshaw and doubles as a local god of writing and/or art
• A god of timekeeping--as in marking the tides and the time of day--whose priests probably locked the island away in the first place to escape the Great Darkness
• And a god of the wild, dangerous interior of the island, probably associated with wild boars or terror birds.

Okay, the idea that gives me is of an ancestor worship tradition of the Fisherman and his spouse, with an associate relationship with Magasta. The fisherman had three sons, who taught the three arts of boatbuilding, scrimshaw, and timekeeping, to help them survive in the wild oceans of the darkness, and their cults function as guilds for their respective crafts. The land goddess of the island was terribly wounded in the darkness and grew hostile towards any "invaders", and now her priests live on the outside of society and constantly work to propitiate the goddess, though they too become grim and solitary. Perhaps their separation from the world during the darkness is also why they only worship this small pantheon, their connections to the greater gods being lost, and with no Theyalan missionaries afterwards to help reconnect them.

1 hour ago, ZedAlpha said:

I could probably go into more detail, but that's the basic outline. I had an idea for a small group of gods who are very important in just this island, who suddenly find themselves back in the world with a small group of worshippers, and might be willing to bless weirdo outsiders who agree to spread word of them to the mainland.

Gloranthan gods don't really try and proselytize, save for the red goddess. Their worshipers might, if they care about the outside world, but I don't think their gods as described would be terribly useful elsewhere, especially the boatbuilder since Dormal has a monopoly on that.

1 hour ago, ZedAlpha said:

Of course if there are any already existing gods that can handle this, then I might just go with that instead.

Unfortunately we can't say for sure since the sea pantheon book isn't scheduled for another few months, but I think your idea is fine, especially since they all seem like relatively local cults. They make sense for a small, survivalist community that probably doesn't like the big powers of the world knocking at their doors.

Do you mind giving some examples/ideas? I like the idea, I just don't think I can give much feedback besides "if you think it fits" right now.

5 minutes ago, ZedAlpha said:

alright, cool. I take it that by that logic if I wanted to even make up an entire new pantheon for a specific region or one-off people, as long as it didn't steal too much narrative thunder from the existing stuff the players might use, and felt right to exist in the narrative, then that'd also be okay?

If you want to keep it RQG canon friendly that might be a little much, if by new pantheon you mean entirely new gods and not just variations on the current major ones. You could maybe pull it off if they're like the Praxians and their gods are only really widely worshiped within that society, being seen as very minor or subservient elsewhere, but it'd be very difficult to introduce cosmic peers to the likes of Orlanth or Yelm.

YGMV, you've got as much space as you need. If you don't want to radically interfere with canon, it's very easy to just set up a new god as a regional subcult or associate of another, like the one in the dragon of thunder hills. Or make them a spirit cult, there's room for a nearly infinite variety of those.

Back in my first RQ2 campaign we introduced a "god of luck" named Mora, who nowadays I'm pretty sure was just Eurmal. He just showed up to the players, said he was a long forgotten god seeking new worshipers, and gave them a sacred golden D6 through which he could talk to them. It also let them reroll some checks, though idr which or how often. They played along as his "priests", but nothing much came of it I'm afraid.

Illumination means that your soul doesn't automatically recoil from the idea of Chaos. Unilluminated simply don't have a choice in how they react to chaos, it's ingrained into their being thanks to the gods war and cosmic compromise. Illuminates can choose for themselves whether or not chaos is evil, unbound by what the universe says is right.

8 minutes ago, StephenMcG said:

Apologies.  I was only on p12 (books arrived today), where Yelmalio is listed among the God's of Storm.  Did not realise he would not feature later on (I have been flicking ahead).

He's reasonably important in storm mythology as Orlanth's ally (and their cults are occasionally associated), but he's much more important than as just an Orlanthi solar god so he gets put with the rest of his family in their own book.

There's also instances where you probably don't need to cast command to get the elemental to help you, so long as what you want it to do is reasonably within its nature (getting one of Orlanth's Umbroli to attack Lunars, for instance). Personally, even if they aren't sentient, I'd allow players to engage in some limited communication with elementals if they know the correct language.

Nice to see that the IG has been added to the cults series rather than waiting for the western sourcebook. It's unfortunate that my own western campaign will be long finished by the time it comes out though...

2 hours ago, Minlister said:

I always thought that Esrola was a sister of Ernalda, I understand that it is no longer the case?Am I right? Or did I misread the genealogy p. 13 of the Earth Goddesses? Esrola is not even mentioned in the who's who of the Earth pantheon, p. 8-11

That's a pity, I liked so much the myth of Asrelia distributing the Great, the Most and the Least [basically brutality, prosperity and sovereignty] to her daughters Maran, Esrola and Ernalda

I will eat extra cornflakes at breakfast to remember the lost sister.

Esrola is one of the land goddesses. I imaginee that myth still exists, but probably using the local land goddess as the middle sister (which would still be Esrola in Esrolia). Relationships like daughter, sister, or other self can be fluid in the god time, just ask voria/ernalda/asrelia.

I think the GM and players are intended to make her cult up themselves. She's too minor of a goddess to make the cults book by herself, though maybe she'll get a mention in someone else's cult.

9 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

Fool that I am, I thought that the split tongue was just a symbol — an outward sign — to mark that the real surgery had been done: cutting through the corpus callosum.

I believe mongoose's material required both a split tongue and a split brain to speak Auld Wyrmish fluently, but I don't think any other books have referenced anything other than the split tongue. It definitely seems likely there's some distinct mental and/or spiritual change required, considering that mortals seem to lack the ability to replicate some of the non-auditory elements.

"Their language of Auld Wyrmish includes visual, auditory, olfactory, and empathic components. They are unconscious of their own language and cannot teach it to others. Because humans are not naturally empathic, they can never learn Speak Auld Wyrmish at higher than 25%." RQGB p37

2 hours ago, Zit said:

what is the source of dragon magic ? Dragons dreams ?

I think it comes from the practitioner themselves. As far as we know, Dragonewts don't have to get their magic from another source like a god or spirit (though they might need to learn to control it), they just gain their abilities as part of their evolution. I think mortals might need outside help to awaken the piece of themselves that can do dragon magic, but afterwards it probably progresses similarly to the Dragonewts.

19 hours ago, Murf said:

A further questions about Dragon Cults:

Would there be Rune levels along with standard benifits such as Allied Sprites, increased chance for POW gain by priests, common rune spells (particularly spell teaching.) and devin intervention? 

A rune cult that worships a dragon might have the standard benefits if the proper paths have been set up in the hero plane, and I think some EWF heroes did try and do that, but I doubt it worked exactly the same as regular rune cults. I think most dragon worship is without direct magical benefit, the same as with worship of living heroes like the Red Emperor or Jar-Eel. They might teach their close followers some of their secrets, but those powers come from elsewhere on the hero plane, not from the hero themselves.

17 hours ago, metcalph said:

In RQ3 Gods of Glorantha, the Cults of Immanent Mastery and Godunya did have Rune Levels with access to reusable rune magic.  But they aren't conventional rune cults and so wouldn't have all the conventional benefits (neither cult had common rune spells, allied spirits, increased POW gain etc in the shortform writeup).

I think the path of immanent mastery is closer to a Hykimi cult than a dragon one, and most stuff points towards it being very deeply flawed compared to actual dragon magic. Godunya is a true dragon but I don't think he's indicative of a "standard" dragon cult, if such a thing exists.

13 hours ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

do they have rune spells ? That is the question. There are two options

1) human are able to use dragonewt magic in that case no rune spell because it means the draconic magic is the dragonewt magic (bestiary) for all species

2) the opposite : dragonewt magic is for dragonewt only. Other species can’t use it. It means then that rune spell(game design definition) is the way for human (or other man rune species) that doesn’t mean they have the same gloranthan mechanic but from rules you must sacrifice pow, create rune pool , use it, replenish it (by meditatio ?) when dragonewt can do magic without it (but the price is different)

I think humans can learn the same dragon magic that dragonewts use, based on what's been posted about EWF magic on the well of daliath, but those who knew it and could teach it was limited mostly to the third council and their students. There are some examples of rune spells that mimic dragon powers, such as those used by the path of immanent mastery, but those are called out pretty clearly as not being actual dragon magic.

15 minutes ago, Joerg said:

Thanks. but that's not what I meant.

Even the best researched cult may not cover the full real-in-Godtime entity.

Ah, my bad. I agree with that - the gods are just too big for mortals to fully grasp imo. The cults books I think are best thought of as how Gloranthan mortals understand the gods as of the third age. That may not make their interpretations of the truth the absolute truth forever, but after 1600 years of exploration and worship (and the God Learners) I think they probably have a pretty good grasp on the basics, such as which powers are truly separate and which are just different names for the same being.

3 hours ago, Joerg said:

Do the RuneQuest cults describe the entirety of the deities that are real parts of the cosmos? I doubt that is possible.

The other half of that post, from https://wellofdaliath.chaosium.com/about-the-new-prosopaedia/:

With over 600 entries the book helps show the breadth of Glorantha’s mythology without going down an endless rabbit hole of local variant names and local sub cults.

"Wasn’t there a raccoon god?" At the Dawn, there was a people called the Tunalorings who among others worshiped a Racoon God. They and their cult didn’t survive into the Second Age.

Note that the Prosopaedia isn’t just edited for space but for relevance. The Prosopaedia is not intended to define everything that is, but if it isn’t in the Prosopaedia, it probably is of very limited relevance.

So among those 600 some entries, let’s say maybe 300 or so are obvious. Of course Orlanth, Godunya, Malkion, Pamalt, Babeester Gor, and Vivamort are going to get included – they have cults that at some point will be published or they are significant references within those cults.

The other half were chosen because they were relevant or useful in my opinion. Sometimes an alternate name or localised manifestation was included because I thought it was useful – eg., Kargzant, Veskarthan, Jagrekriand, etc. But many others were not, because I did not find it so. If one of your favourite local manifestations didn’t make the cult, c’est la vie.

Some very minor cults made it because they have a long tradition in RuneQuest games – Black Fang Brotherhood, Frog Woman, etc. Others did not. There are probably thousands of minor gods and spirits that did not make the grade, and so there is room to plenty of such minor deities into your Glorantha.

2 hours ago, Ian A. Thomson said:

Hey folks. Where can I find an index to this publication?

Not quite an index but here's what it includes: https://wellofdaliath.chaosium.com/home/catalogue/publishers/chaosium/cha4042-cults-of-runequest-the-prosopaedia/prosopaedia-contents/

Oh boy here I go pasting links again:

https://wellofdaliath.chaosium.com/coinage-and-value/

https://wellofdaliath.chaosium.com/silver-lunars-and-costs/

https://wellofdaliath.chaosium.com/lunar-legacy-in-sartar/

In general it looks like those who care are settling for defacing over re-minting. The kingdom just doesn't have the resources to mint a whole lot of coins yet, and I can't imagine they really get the Guilder machine rolling until a bit into Argrath's reign.

I thought I remembered something about the God Learners being the ones to popularize silver coinage, but I can't find it now.

5 hours ago, JRE said:

"Orlanth pillow talks with Ernalda" could work and fill both requirements. 

Of course, that one always comes with the risk of Orlanth convincing Ernalda to run away from the Emperor's palace with him...

2 hours ago, Soccercalle said:

To give some context. I run a Six Seasons/Company of the Dragon campaign and my PCs (including THE Griselda) plan to kidnap Fazzur Wideread in his palace in Dunstop. They want to get information and hope that he will be pissed at Tatius et al.

That definitely sounds ambitious. A slave collar would probably be the easiest method like others have said, plus a few rune masters of your own to watch him. Unless your players are unusually familiar with Lunar myths, a heroquest trap probably won't work (and I'm not sure if Yanafal even has any appropriate ones in the first place). The hardest part will probably be capturing him in the first place.

Considering how important trade is for Sartar and how much of it comes from the Lunar Empire I doubt there's any realistic way to remove Lunars from circulation. They may well start minting Guilders again, and some particularly fanatic supporters of the Prince might refuse to use Lunars, but I doubt most people who use coins can afford to do that.

I've never spoken to anyone who sees Glorantha as a prehistory and I don't see any evidence for it in the material we have. The Elder Races might be fading, but magic itself doesn't seem to be at risk. Even if we take KoS literally, iirc it only says the relationship between gods and men was changed, not that it was destroyed. And no mention was made of how sorcery and spirit magics were affected, if at all.

Edit: of course, since Greg was a shaman, it's completely possible he didn't see the supernatural disappearing as a necessity for it being a prehistory.

You'd just use their Darkness rune rating, yeah. I don't think RQG describes any god using subrunes or combinations, they just use the appropriate core runes.

I don't have anything to add myself, but I've trawled up some stuff from the Well that might be useful: https://wellofdaliath.chaosium.com/some-notes-on-sartarite-land-ownership/

https://wellofdaliath.chaosium.com/orlanthi-ownership/

https://wellofdaliath.chaosium.com/sartar-communities/

https://wellofdaliath.chaosium.com/hiording-clan/

https://wellofdaliath.chaosium.com/ernaldori-clan/

https://wellofdaliath.chaosium.com/varmandi-clan/

I don't think there's guidelines because stuff relating to dragons and dragon magic is usually NPC-only. Honestly though, I'm not sure if there'd really be a point besides upsetting the Dragonewts. Maybe you could sacrifice MP and POW to the head, but I doubt you'd get anything in return since there's not something on the other side to give anything. A few EWF heroes supposedly found other side pathways to set up theistic dragon cults, but that's very much in the realm of exploratory high level heroquesting. Maybe the head could be of use in gaining draconic insight through meditation or something? Idk, it seems to be a firmly "GM can do what they want" kind of deal.

24 minutes ago, Hellhound Havoc said:

To me, this sounds more like they're a race of big dumb brutes rather than perpetually hungry; but it'd make sense if they were, because this reads almost like anti-Uz propaganda tbh.

It's not propaganda, it's pretty accurate actually, but Trolls definitely aren't just big dumb brutes. Trolls, and all the elder races, are fundamentally different from humans in how they think and act. What's logical and right to us may not be for them, and vice versa. I'd recommend checking out Trollpak to get a better understand of why they're the way they are. Unfortunately we don't have similar resources for the other races yet, but if you take into account that trolls are the "most human" of the elder races you can get a pretty good idea of how alien the others are.

32 minutes ago, Hellhound Havoc said:

Honestly, I don't like the Aldryami a whole lot and I think that's colouring my perception of them. I just resent the perception that "nature and growing = trees and forest." You can see that too in Prax, as it's described as a grassland because the god who lived there died. It bothers me in part because one of the most important biomes where I live is a form of grassland / savannah similar to Prax, and it's hugely important for the ecosystem, so having the elfs just existing to yabber about cutting down trees but not having a similar people to yabber about animals eating grass- with the implication that the forest is somehow "more alive" than the grassland and chaparral - just makes me a bit angry at them.

I'm pretty sure Prax was always plains, Genert's garden was in what is now the Wastes. Also, the Aldryami aren't "nature and growing", Aldrya is explicitly a forest goddess. Grasslands are more the domain of the grain goddesses I feel, and nature in general belongs to Arachne Solara.

In terms of cultural diversity, there definitely are different factions and subtypes within each elder race, but each race is more mythologically unified than humanity since each of the elder races has more or less a single origin point they can point back to: the Uz were born of Kyger Litor in the underworld, the Aldryami and Mostali were both created on the Spike by Aldrya and Mostal, respectively, and Dragonewts remember being born of immature dragons. All humans can say is that they're descended from Grandfather Mortal, which is also true of all the elder races except Dragonewts, and there's not an agreed on place where humanity first emerged. Also, each of the mortal elder races is very tightly tied to a single rune alongside man - darkness, plant, and stasis respectively - while humans only have the man rune, without a second unifying affinity.

That is still a houserule though

7 minutes ago, Lordabdul said:

It already exists:https://greathall.chaosium.com/

I meant something like this: https://rqwiki.chaosium.com/

Basically an online, abridged version of the rules and lore from the starter set