Ian_W

Argrath might be hard-wired into the setting. Argrath the GM's Pet that defeats every threat, ignores every restriction of the setting and has an overwhelming victory against the future of Glorantha isn't. If Glorantha wins the Hero Wars against Argrath and the Dragons don't get to murder Glorantha's magic, then we get much more interesting futures. And it's not just the Lunars that have reasons to want him stopped.

He had to do a fairly desperate Lightbringers Quest to bring back Sheng Seleris, who did most of the actual destroying of the Lunar Empire for him. He also had massive gregged-rune related plot armour regarding the Sartarites being 100% fine with bringing draconic mysticism back to Dragon Pass, after the last time it happened led to a destruction of the Orlanthi religion in the area in favour of dragon worship, followed by the killing of all humans in Dragon Pass by dragons. Never the less, once the Praxian warlord brings back dragons, and dragon worship is installed in Sun County, the Sartarites are 'yay !' ... if they had noped out at this point, things get harder for him. But everyone's favorite 1.5 dimensional cardboard cutout had a lot of plot armor, so he just rolled through it all.

Or if it's still there after the God Learners went through the place like ants at a picnic.

How much do you know about Arkat/Nysalor/Gbaji and the fall of the Bright Empire ? Unless you want to learn about another couple of probably false, might be true myth cycles, I'd strongly suggest having a chunk of the Building Wall *named* after Arkat, because he's scary and mythic and hopefully makes the Lunars think twice (*) ... but have no actual link to Arkat. (*) This might have been a spectacular failure, in that the Lunars go 'Fuck. They do have an Arkat. Time to beg for help from Jar-Eel'.

If they were anywhere, it would be among trolls of the Shadow Plateau. And they probably aren't talking. Some of these trolls might be in Nochet. Note Black Arkat is (a) male, (b) has weird magics, (c) was endarkened in Time and - finally and most importantly - (d) is not a good loyal, obedient son of Kyger Litor who looks after his mother.

The other thing to think about is that we are talking about societies here. A follower of the Healing Goddess is going to be in a network of relatives, associated cult members, or will have non-CA hospital staff. Most of the moral dilemnas outlined above can be resolved by having a friendly cult member seeing what needs to be done, and then doing it so the Chalana Arroy stays clear of ritual pollution - ideally without orders. For example, the boar is threatening the child. The Chalana Arroy says 'Save the child' and the Storm Bull bodyguard throws a javelin and looks forward to a very good dinner. The healer didn't say to kill the boar, and didnt do it themselves, so no ritual obligations were violated. Specialist healers are an incredibly useful resource. They can routinely accomplish miracles that devotees of other gods with healing powers cannot do (even without Resurrection, Regrow Limb !). So any society that wants to keep them happy and around makes sure to do what they can to keep them in good standing ... and that means helping save them from moral dilemnas.

The Orlanthi sun god is, was, and will always be Yelm (*). Yes. He's an old enemy. Yes. He was the Emperor of All, and a tyrant, and an oppressor. Yes. Orlanth killed him in God-time. Yes. His followers are regularly at war with the cultures that follow the Lightbringers. But that big shiny hot yellow thing that goes across the skies, and then descends to the Underworld each night ? That's Yelm. And if it's not, then the Lightbringers Quest makes a lot less sense. (*) Subject to the usual 'All Orlanthi' means 85%.

The collective horizontal position of the Kingdom of Sartar regarding Argrath's Second Empire of the Wyrm's Friends is ... interesting ... given everything else we got told about how Orlanthi and Sartarite culture and history worked. At minimum, the return of draconised Solar worship to the Sun County should have been the signal for the Lightbringer worshippers in Dragon Pass to either peace out or leave before Argrath brings back worship of Orlanth the Dragon and Scaled Ernalda.

However, what is more in the interest of the cult - mere cash, or the item staying in friendly hands, or the spiritual power remaining within the priest ?

The cost of living is low, but the cost of high end magic isn't. Which is how it should be ... a spell matrix for a level 4+ spell *should* be a clan treasure, not an impulse purchase.

Given a non-magical sword costs enough to feed a family for a year, spell matrixes are being bought by the very, very rich. Anyone with that sort of money wants the very best, yeah ? I'd absolutely expect a Protection-4 amulet to sell for more than twice a Protection-2 amulet.

Just thinking out loud here, but one of the things that Arkati and Lunar sorcery might do is to tactically *disguise* what sort of magic they do - the ability to do a quick and dirty sorcery spell that looks like using a bound spirit or bringing forth battle magic could be very useful in a fight against people who are aware of magic use, which in Glorantha is "anyone dangerous". The more I think around this, the more I feel some schools or Lunar magic - those with connection to the Illusion rune - would do this.

Joonas, do you have a copy of the now-mostly-unavailable Mongoose Pavis Rises, set in the Second Age ? If you don't, while I cant give it to you, Im happy to answer questions from it and quote stuff.

Of course, if you're actually adequately trained, you attack in the instant down the line the attack is coming down in such a way to set aside their attack ... thus combining attack and parry like you should in the Lichtenaeur/Fiore tradition of using two handers. But again, we didnt know that in AS 10, so thats not how the BRP rules work. Back then we really parried then attacked with two handers.

The issue is if you do, say, a back foot close that changes the relative positioning so that an attack launched down a particular line bounces off a shield, was that using Block skill, or was that using Dodge skill ? That's my fundamental issue - once you get beyond 'Newbie with five lessons' then dodge, block and parry are used together, and roll into one combat(style) skill. Armor comes into this as well - if I have full leg harness and they are using a sword, then I should have a bonus on my combat skill as I can ignore anything aimed at my legs. But thats not how we did things in AS 10, so thats not what the foundations of the BRP combat system does 🙂 Storm Bull says otherwise regarding rhinohiding, but that involves heavy use of cult magics 😉

If Jar-Eel turned up to some corner of the Lunar Empire armed with a smile and said the Satrap was X rather than Y, I think even Y's old friends would see it's time to switch horses. Lets maybe just say 'No ordinary mortal installs kings just by their reputation alone'.

Back in The Good Old Days of AS 10, a highly skilled warrior *was* at the 90% level, and yes, theory at the time said they don't have a chance of holding off three opponents. However, once you as a sub-culture get good at fighting and 90% is decent to okay and highly skilled warriors are at the 300% level (so "average dice" is a Special hit) ... then there's a lot more Dodge and Parry to be split. But good fighters will still prefer to kill several worse ones with footwork, positioning and movement, so it's a sequence of one on one fights, rather than by being better at hitting and blocking. Also, shields were absolutely designed to get enemy weapons stuck in them, and metal armor made you essentially sword-proof (cf the many illustrations from German fightbooks of people holding two handed swords by the blade and hitting them with the blunt bit). Get your players in the habit of bringing spare shields ...

Before you and your player go further in rules, you as a GM need to have a think about the Lhankor Mhy cult, sorcery and the society they live in. My two clacks worth is that Ljankor Mhy got heavily mucked around with by the God Learners, and their sorcerous tradition is a remnant of the Middle Sea Empire using the Lawspeaker cult as a means of finding out all sorts of secrets. If you've got a player who wants to go down that path, have a think about these specific issues In Your Glorantha. 1. What do the other Lightbringer cults know about sorcery and the LM, and do they have the same view on LM sorcery as the godless, probably chaos tainted sorcerous magics of the Westerners, Arkati and/or Lunars ? 2. What social roles do LM sorcerors fit ? Are they the sophisticated urban spirit specialists that Old Ways traditionally used Kolating shamans for ? 3. How do LM sorcerors think their magic fits the Western, Arkati and Lunar/Carmanian traditions of sorcery ? Or do they see it as something completely different ? 4. What do non-sorceror LM think about LM who use sorcery ? After you sort that stuff roleplaying and world building stuff out, you can then think about rules.

It'd be good if people remembered the BRP combat system got written by a couple of SCA guys in the late 1970s. This was post-Bellatrix, but we still weren't very good, so you had a system based around 'you attack, I parry OR block OR dodge', because in West Kingdom we weren't very good at that time. By the time of RQ3, Jade and so on were parrying, blocking and dodging at the same time, and attacks became sequences of multiple moves that flowed into each other (or 'gunfighters' who set up single attacks with deceptive movement). But the BRP system stayed stuck with the fighting systems of around AS 10. Similarly, it took a long time for the BRP systems to get a Battle skill, which is there to handle things like 'I'll hit for the legs to get him to lower his shield, and then when he does that, hit him inna head with the poleaxe'. And this was well before people started reading and using the combat manuals that got written by people like di Grassi, Talhoffer, Fabris and so on. So, yeah. It's a base that was kind of adequate at the time, but things happened within time.

Nahh, it's more the mindset of 'what happens if we enchant sacred-to-Shargash tin and mix it with the Earth-sacred copper' ...

Found the God-Learner !

Tin turns the copper everyone around was using around there near the Dawn into the deadly Bronze. Just saying.

If it's weird - for a Sartarite Ducks arent weird, for someone from the West heck yes they are, and for good Dara Happans tattooed storm-worshippers are absolutely weird - then the Third Age default is it is either chaotic, or it hangs around with chaotic, or its related to Godless Sorcerors, Those Guys Who Conquered Us Long Ago And We Hate or similar. Note the culture the cults of Chalana Arroy/Saint Xemela/Xiola Umbar share is *not* Third Age. Her myths seem to put her as one of the few survivors from The Spike, and she's happily part of any of the Lightbringer, Solar, Troll and Western systems. She and hers are accepting of all of the weird in the world.

Which is a major reason societies who don't have that view - ie the World Council of Friends, Arkat, Lunar Empire, God Learners, EWF - are more successful than those who do, until they get flattened by some magical cataclysm or other.

If you're an Illuminate, yes. If you're a sophisticated close-to-Illuminate from a civilised culture, yes. If you're a God Learner, absolutely. If you're a chaos-hating barbarian, it's pretty simple. If it's weird, it's probably Chaos. Do the Holy Senses of the Bull make it smell like chaos ? If no, then are there behaviors that indicate it might be of Gbaji the Deceiver, who Inner Storm Bull cult secrets whisper can make what is of Chaos smell pure ... asking weird questions, stuff like that ? In the case of the Telmori, nope and nope, so they are man-wolves who turn into wolves and have some secret magics. On the other hand, the Lunars hang out with actual chaos monsters, and are proud of it. And do the Chalana Arroy talk in public about Chalana Arroy-worshipping Broo ? Heck no. That's up there with Storm Bulls discussing the secrets of the Bulls Secret Parts, or Orlanthi admitting Ragnalaglar is actually the brother of the King of the Gods.