Wrestlepig

there aren't sleep rules in the first place.

4 hours ago, Bohemond said:

Also, intention doesn't play a role in the law itself. To the law, it's irrelevant whether Swen was drunk when he stabbed Hrolf or if Swen tripped and stabbed Hrolf by accident or if Swen pulled his knife in anger and tried to kill Hrolf. In all three situations, the issue is not how or why Swen injured Hrolf, but the fact that Swen inflicted an injury on Hrolf.

one of the many tricky aspects of "Nobody can make you do anything". The Orlanthi generally reject the concept of blaming external factors.

They'll probably do an Invisible God cult that has unique mechanics/upsides (or maybe just very good starting professions). The brithini will probably be outside of player hands but otherwise be "here is a shitton of MP and POW"

Pantheon stuff will probably just be the same as having a single cult, for ease of use. We do have an example of it already in the Seven Mothers cult. I'd say the game should encourage having PCs as initiates, it's better from both a gameplay thing to get the increased power and differentiate characters, and on the narrative side to bake in a personal relationship with responsibilities.

 BIRTH OF BABEESTER GOR HEROQUEST

This initiation into the ways of Babeester Gor is not taken lightly, for it is a path that cannot be left. Still, many understand why it is taken. There is always another way, and this is one of them.

The initiation is started at sunset. The subject is brought to the women's shed by a female warrior of the clan, preferably a Gorite but a Humakti  or any woman with a good death or truth rune is acceptable. They make sure she's ready and willing for what is to come. Babeester Gor takes Consent very seriously.

The women of the tribe handling the procedures are prepared for a funeral, wailing and singing laments for the death of ernalda in the darkness and the death of the girl that is to initiate. At the height of the song, a white cow (not a bull) is taken to a large patch of dirt, preferably in a cave. the cow is milked with no bucket, letting the milk spill onto the ground. Then its throat is cut, and the blood is drained to soak the ground, creating a small pit of reddish mud, roughly human-sized. The girl is then stripped, and feels a compulsion to enter the bloody mud. Once she has done so, there's no turning back.

When she is subsumed in the mud, she rests, possibly dead, or possibly unborn. Either way, she dreams. The dreams are of unrequited cries for justice or of pain, coming from the women of the clan. The longer she dreams, the more cries she can hear. There are wails of the dead, from the past and future, of animals and plants, and eventually the very earth itself. Eventually, it becomes unbearable to just listen. She claws herself out of the pit, and is reborn into the great darkness. (Mechanically, gaining Earth Rune and Gor-specific passions, as well as Plot Hooks if you want them)

There is almost no light in the sky, and the earth is dry and dead. The ground around you has huge spikes of some sort of stone driven into it, cracking the ground into rifts that lead into a seeming nothingness. Behind them is the corpse of whichever woman's suffering led her on this path (or Ernalda/her mother if it's her own or you want to get more mythic). The only light in the darkness is a flaming halo around a dark figure with a double-headed iron axe.

The Figure is mythologically Zorak Zoran, but the questor sees a hulking and exaggerated version of whoever they seek vengeance against the most, bearing fire and the axe of death. The Questor is standing between them and the corpse, with only the mud caked on them, painting their hands and feet red. The figure approaches slowly, but the questor feels the axe calling to them, to reach out and grab it. Once they touch it, they get their Death Rune affinity.

She then tries to rip the axe from the figure's hands. If she succeeds, the axe is hers, and the figure is drained of all courage and flees pathetically. On Special or Critical Successes, she manages to wound the figure, severing a hand. She may chase after him, and extract some magical benefits from it as a heroquest challenge. If she fails, she must fight for the axe, and suffers a wound in the process. Either way, the figure flees, teaching the questor the first secret of Babeester Gor: men are cowards.

(mechanically at this point I'd go Opposed Roll of the death rune or relevant passions/keywords. I haven't put a standard Fail condition considering that this is probably the first session for the character, they don't have much power and the narrative possibilities are really not pleasant. Your tolerance for having sexual violence as a subject on the table or character death will vary, but I'd say don't go there now at the very least.)

When the figure has fled, there's a point of variability. The Gorite has awakened to the powers of death. At this point, Babeester Gor went on a rampage and killed a lot of things. You're probably better off doing this as a montage, where she wreaks vengeance on those who have wronged the earth or got near her. You can add in a couple of scenes here if you want length, like have her fight broo or pacifist healers. Maybe even have a scene with Eurmal to lighten the mood. Whatever you do, She ends up in the underworld, in front of an open door leading towards a feast, full of joyous song and the laughter of women. As she approaches, it slams shut, and a deep woman's voice sings out from the darkness.

"that life is not for you and I

who have heard the dead earth cry

so that they may have no fear

you and I shall stand guard here"

The singing voice comes from Babeester Gor herself, in all of her terrible glory. She is armored and bloody handed, towering over the questor. She is covered with trophies severed from men, and holds an axe just like the questors. She offers a mug full of what smells like alcoholic blood that tastes invigorating, like you just got righteously angry at something. She and the Questor stand watch in front of the door for what could be an eternity. As the watch goes on, you sense the presence of craven threats in the darkness, unquiet dead, damned souls and cruel demons, at the edge of your vision, kept away from destroying the feast by their fear of you. As you stand firm, you also sense a great host with you, made of the spirits of everyone else who pledged to this cult.

(chuck in a fight or two if you want some action. Give them all their rune magic and watch them absolutely fuck up a Broo or Zombie, or whatever)

Eventually, the door opens, and Ernalda walks out, bringing the resplendence of life. she approaches the questor and gives her a warm, motherly hug and she says

"I thank you, my daughter, for being and doing what I cannot. Go now into the world of life and light, and know that I will always love you."

Babeester Gor's reaction to these words is a cult secret. Few will talk about their own, either.

She then gestures towards the path the questor approached from, where a new dawn is illuminating the cavern. When you emerge to the light, you return to the real world, anew with purpose, ready to learn the skills your cult demands.

On 4/3/2019 at 10:14 AM, gochie said:

I think all of those God's would be excellent. More Shaman references would be great, and I would love to see how Subere looks compares to all the house rules out there. 

 

Edit: Will there be an Arkat cult coming out at some point? 

I think Arkati stuff will be covered enough when they get to the West. It'd mostly work like standard Invisible God stuff with Sorcery but with dabbling in other cults and methods, which you can represent by picking up a couple rune points elsewhere. There might be some Arkat cults that are a weird path to Humakt/Zorak Zoran/Primal Darkness stuff, which you can do by just using that cult with appropriate spell choices, maybe a couple tweaks. As for True Arkat Worship, that'll probably only come out in a Ralios book in the GM's Only section.

You break out the dinos when there's a feud on and send them to the far steads. Try Cattle Raiding this, you bastards

I don't think there's a restriction established, although its discouraged by the availability of resources. Join and start as many Spirit Cults as you can.

As for the second part, ultimately it's up to the GM what will anger the spirit. Having it be based on a Week is overly restrictive, IMO, so you should be able to hash out an alternative so you can actually go on an extensive adventure. Maybe fob it off to an assistant, that's what they're for.

And we all know who Esrola ended up with anyway. Although that was Surface Darkness but it still kind of works.

Harrek's noted as being respectful to the poor, I'd imagine if he goes to some dive bars or kebab cart he'd throw money around but would prefer to trash a fine establishment.

Argan Argar might be a good choice. His darkness magic would be very handy, although the cult skills probably aren't relevant.

could be space aliens. just saying

It is, but it does make a pretty solid argument.

On 12/23/2018 at 3:28 AM, jeffjerwin said:

Correctly posting this in Glorantha...

 But one is the stockade at Too Far, on the very rim of Lunar Tarsh. 

Why?

It's only appropriate, any self-respecting puppeteer knows to take their performances Too Far.

I wonder what would happen if you mined a true dragon. Maybe that's what Isilidan's up to.

you can, although you'll have increased tithes and requirements, which can complicate becoming a Rune Lord or Priest. In some cases the cults can clash badly. It does work well for Shamans, surprisingly, since they probably won't take higher advancements in cults and the typical rune spells available to them aren't great. God-Talkers are also a good choice, since you get a lot of the benefits of being a priest without as many responsibilities you can't handle.

"You got Owned!" is a common refrain among victorious Fonritan Warriors.

To truly find authentic slang we need to define Gloranthan Teens

as a teller of Riddles, a Sphinx would ideally be related to Nysalor. I can just imagine travellers arguing about how there's other differences between righteous intent and righteous action aside from Power and that answer doesnt make any sense before they get eaten.

I'm the most curious about the Malkioni ones. I can theoretically hack up a cult on most gods but I feel like there'd be interesting mechanical differences for the very Sorcery-focused ones. I'm also curious about Lodril's supposed update for Gods of Glorantha, and I'd like to see Fonrit stuff, especially Artmal.

I wouldn't really worry about it. Rune Priest powers are nice, but they don't make you significantly more powerful, just more reliable.

The writing of the whole book is really not clear at all since it intermingles so much GM advice and discussion of tone between the actual rules, which makes it hard to figure out or use as reference. outside of rejigging all the writing I'd reccomend having something like the Heroquest Cheat Sheet on Glorantha.com included

http://www.glorantha.com/docs/heroquest-cheat-sheet/

The first one is Stasis Contained with in Law, it's probably a Mostal thing.

I'm pretty sure land is public property but if a trollkin came up with enough gold to make my own Sun Dome people would change their tune. Or just kill the trollkin, take the gold and have the same effect on the economy

1 is pretty much correct. Impaling's only really a disadvantage for spear-focused characters and even then it only really matters if there's multiple attackers or it's a cool magic spear. It's very useful for Ranged attacks: A good archer with Speedart has about a one in 5 chance of stopping a big shield-less guy in their tracks.

With 2, you can use the half the higher skill, but that doesn't mean you replace it. I'm not sure if it actually counts as using the Axe skill if you do that, but it wouldn't increase from half your dagger-axe. Fortunately using an off-brand weapon is going to be pretty rare since going at half your skill is worse than using a different weapon 99% of the time. Weapon skills are way too granular IMO.

I'd really stick to standard human stats if I was in a Pamaltela game. To put it in crude terms, It really doesn't sit well to make different black people work differently than everyone else. I can't see the Men-and-a-half really causing a problem since it's a few minor differences that balance them against other Praxians but I'd be weirded out if every agimori was like that. that sort of thing is better represented by cultural skills.