Orlanthatemyhamster

17 minutes ago, Richard S. said:

Lodril doesn't have Stasis, so I don't think he can provide Support. I'd guess Earthwarm.

His children do.

16 hours ago, Richard S. said:

Pulling this out of Shargash's thread for clarity's sake.

For skills, I'd give her the same set as Engizi: Boat, Cult Lore, River Lore, Speak Boatspeech, and Swim.

She probably has God-talkers along with regular Rune Priests.

Her Rune spells were given in another thread as Breathe Air/Water, Command Crocodile, Command Fish, Control Flood, Dismiss Water Elemental (any size), Flood, Summon Naiad, Summon Crocodile, Summon Water Elemental (any size), and Water Walk.

As of the last cults draft that the Well documented, she's associated with Biselenslib, Everina, Jadarenasa, Lodril, Pelora, Orlanth Thunderous, River Horse, Shargash, Yelm, and Yestendos. No clue what each of them provide though.

Uggh, how dull!
No offence but we [you and I] can do better than that.

I've given her an Oslira voiced/centred myth and history [rather than the usual Orlanthi one masquerading as the God Learners], Summon Naga Rune spell and others away from the usual run of the mill ones [someone really has had a failure of imagination], and actual connections with the gods of where she is most important, rather than being associated [Associated!!! WTF?] with the god that supposedly destroyed her. Someone really seems to think that every female god that Orlanth looks at wants to get into his pants.
Living in the 80's much?

Is there any newer news, please?

On 8/28/2023 at 9:33 PM, jajagappa said:

That has been noted elsewhere that the labels are correct. (Note that you will also find an illustration of Maran dancing atop a mound of skulls on p.98)

Not talking about the skulls, but about the dinosaurs, but whatever.

Rowdril, is that Lodril with a lisp? Who dreams this stuff up? Lay off the wacky backy mate.

In the illo with the labels for the Goddesses, the labels for Barb and Maran have been switched.

Barb is with the Dinos, surely that should be Maran?

On 5/26/2022 at 5:29 PM, radmonger said:

It's not just Kuschile Archery; as far as I can see all the other RQ2 legacy cult-specific skills are a bit of a rules wart that don't really fit with the RQ:G model of a short list of universal skills. 

What would probably work better is to treat them as _cult secrets_, using the template:

If you know _a secret_, normally taught at _cult rank_,  then you may substiutute _this_ for _that skill_ under _these circumstances_.

So:

- if you know the secret of Kushcile Archery, you may substitute Yelmalio Cult Lore for Riding when using a bow from horseback.

- if you know the secret of the Peaceful Cut, then you may substitute Waha Cult Lore for Bargain when dealing with spirits killed under the terms of the Survival Covenant.

- if you know the secret of Sense Chaos, then you may use the passion Hate Chaos to replace Scan or Search when Chaos is suspected.

- if you know the secret of Dormal's Opening, then you may use the skill Shiphandling on open waters.

I think that scales a lot better to having that kind of as unique and useful heroquest rewards, wihtout ending up with a character sheet with a dozen such skills all at 15 to 25%...

 

 

Have you seen the levels [lore] starts at or Sense Chaos?

No thanks.

On 5/25/2022 at 6:36 PM, Lordabdul said:

you could consider that a third of your army is shooting arrows with no penalty from their mediocre Ride skill. That suddenly doesn't sound too bad.

No, it sounds bloody awful!
It means that 2/3 might well have a penalty, so, many will be ineffective. I want all of my army to be effective as they can be. Battle is harsh and chaotic enough without parts of it being useless. 

On 6/30/2022 at 12:44 PM, David Scott said:

They follow the same Yelmalio that all Praxian Animal nomads follow. Just use the Yelmalio cult in the Core Rules. Obviously as they are mounted, don't choose Pike as a cult skill, so they don't learn the combined pike and shield. Everything else works just the same. If you want to be an Ostrich Tribe warrior, you'd choose:

• Homeland Base Passions (page 27)
• Choosing Your Elemental Runes (45), I use Earth +10% (Ostrich Mother's mother is the Earth)
• Homeland Characteristic Modifiers (page 53), just use Impala Riders as they are also pygmies.
• Homeland Cultural Skill Bonuses (page 60) doesn't include Ostrich riders, but these are the same for all Praxians:
• Ride (Ostrich) +35% Customs (Ostrich Tribe) (25) Herd +30% Peaceful Cut +15% Spirit Combat +20%, Dagger +05% (as Impala) then it's down to weapons (4 slots): Boomerang +20% (From HQG), Blowpipe +10% (from Khan of Khans), Short sword +10% (seemed a sensible pick like impalas), Small Shield +10% (from the Nomad Gods Counter).
• Occupation: Light Cavalry (page 73). For Light Cavalry I usually choose Composite Bow, 1H Weapon (pick type) - Pick Long Spear, Small Shield. Note that 1 H Long spear covers Lance too.
• Cult: Yelmalio (page 308). Cult Skills: Battle, Bow, Celestial Lore, Cult Lore (Yelmalio), Listen, Long Spear, Pike, Scan, Search, Speak (Firespeech), Worship (Yelmalio).

There's no problem with becoming a Rune Lord as A candidate must have 90% in Bow or Javelin, Scan, and any Spear skill, plus 90% in two of the following abilities: Battle, Honor, Listen, Move Quietly, or Search.

Note that in upcoming Cults of Glorantha, the Cult Starting Skill, Sing +10%, becomes Sing +10% or Ride (horse) +10%. In this case just change to Ride (ostrich) +10%.

The only real change from normal Ostrich riders and Yelmalion Ostrich riders, is that they don't usually use boomerangs and blowpipes, which of course make them slightly odd to other Ostrich riders. However I suspect that most would keep them as secondary weapons.

In my Prax the Praxians have no Rune Priests, only Rune Lords (Light Khans). There's only about 90 Ostrich Yelmalions and a single Light Khan. As with all Praxian Yemalions, they hold the Sun domes sacred.

A long time ago I ran a Yelmalion campaign, made up of Sun Dome Sartar (RQ2 cult write up), Sun County (RQ3 write ups), Ostrich folk Yelmalions (Heroes v2 #01). There are slight differences in the write ups that made for excellent gaming fun.

 

The Praxian starting skills in the book are fecking awful, I'm not sure why there is such a discrepancy in skill points given out, are they all held back in school or something?
I've never understood why some cultures are less skilled than others in some editions of RQ. Bias in a way that makes no sense.

On 1/9/2019 at 10:49 PM, womble said:

It's a damn long stalk on chapparal. And they have to have the Ostrich come out from whatever defilade they were hiding in for the time it took to get among the target herd to spirit the successful raider(s) and their putative load(s) of "choice [speed-butchered] cuts" before any of the other more competent tribes catch the dismounted pygmies and take them prisoner. Operating dismounted robs them of their speed advantage.

Let's start at the beginning. It's spelt chaparral, and Prax is not, 'chaparral' anyway. But that's by the by.

They have a substantive number of Yelmalio initiates in the tribe, so Catseye and Farsee become a great ambush combination. Speeddart can deal with the 'thickest' nomad armour [use your common] and surprise attacking from the rear at night could give you a pretty good chance of an aimed blow [heh, sic] and if you miss, no one is going to notice anyway. Have others create a diversion then overwhelm the guards that are left.

So yeah, pretty good at night attacks me thinks.

On 5/23/2023 at 9:05 PM, metcalph said:

I think Hyalor is about capturing wild horses rather than breeding and riding them.  Command Horse seems to me a rather pointless spell otherwise.

Fun to use on an opponent's steed, and horses aren't born broken.

On 9/8/2021 at 8:03 AM, Darius West said:

Sry. Kajabor=/=Wakboth.  

For almost everyone in Glorantha there is absolutely no difference. Or if you want to be absolutely clear, you could, just about, get a cigarette paper between them. Gloranthans don't sit upon high being able to view the world's deities with our understanding.

On 9/1/2021 at 9:57 PM, Akhôrahil said:

Fighting the impossible fight is right up their alley.

'Making an absolute cockup of everything, like their god, is right up their alley.'

On 2/10/2023 at 10:18 AM, EricW said:

Arkat was famous for his shifting cult allegiances and his ruthlessness in pursuing his single minded goal of destroying Gbaji. Were there any limits on his willingness to use whatever tools were available to advance towards his goal? 

How dare you cast suspicions on our beloved Arkat! Isn't he the incarnation of the great Argarth?

Wasn't compassionate? Loving all men, roasted or scraped raw? Carefully choosing those he sent to the rack, or the slow embrace of the Bronze Friend? How could such a man be called cruel?

Wasn't he fair, killing only those who hesitated to surrender longer than an hour, leaving their children younger than 10 alive in the city after all others had perished? How could such a man be called unjust?

Wasn't he true? Didn't he cleave to his purpose when the good all around begged him for some understanding of the people he injured? Wasn't he single minded in his destruction of all that was in his way? How can such a man be called extreme and inhuman?

45 minutes ago, mfbrandi said:

45 minutes ago, mfbrandi said:

It wasn’t just your hamster: he ate all the hamsters. Now he is eyeing-up the guinea pigs.

 

He's having a go at the Guinea Pigs now!

It might be interesting to have this aspect as one of the Rebel Gods, Orlantus, Terminus, other, as a Jakob Marley like figure in the Dara Happa pantheon? Chains an all.

Do we really need another Orlanth subcult?
 

On 11/15/2022 at 2:14 PM, scott-martin said:

Orlanth and Pamalt are the ones who make it their problem. We can dismiss how well they do at that based on how we see their followers behave themselves, but on the whole the world seems to be holding on so somebody is holding it together. I like to think the Net is truly collaborative and you need all the known gods to keep pulling at every station to hold up the cosmos. Some gods need more outside validation than others.

And I think this is part of the baby boomer aspect of Orlanth in particular. He's one of the first of the gods who didn't make the world. He wasn't around for much of creation. All he really does is live here and arrange the resources of the postwar surplus. He invents rock and roll, gets involved in exotic spiritual systems. But push him and he might get a little bewildered and huffy about why there's suffering. It's not really his fault. He was just born here. The government and human nature did it. 

He's not really a martyr in the texts. We can find room for that in there but on the whole the Bath doesn't even appear in the RQ2 version: suffering is something that happens to other people, mom and dad, and we're going to find a new way that gets them a better deal. The emphasis is on adventuring because this is Adventurous. He could forget what he's learned on his adventures at any time, relapse and go back to being Orlanth the teenage dirtbag until the next time the campbellesque Adventure came calling.

I really do think Harmast is where it changes. What Harmast is looking for in his era when whatever archaic storm man they had was almost entirely suppressed was his childhood god, the god of his fathers, an entity he could embody who was still bigger than himself. Someone to look up to. A grownup. In his era, the storm god had been pushed down to the kiddie table where a lot of people still make Barntar sit today. So Harmast gathered up the dad left in his head, went looking and found some friends along the way. He learned how to emulate that dad, be dad, get married. It turned out the god of his fathers and the father of his god were in a similar predicament. He tried to help out.

They are a pastoral people after all. Herd sacrifice, substitutions, the sins of the fathers are visited. Anyhow his adventure brought them into contact with foreign ideas when they needed a boost. They've gotten pretty comfortable lately . . . I can't imagine Kallyr and her people considering even symbolic sacrifice of the central ego as the key, they were instead just looking for a quick and dirty do ut des in their dogeared copies of Umath Arcana or whatever. If we do this thing, a thing happens. It's so predictable we do it every year. But when it stops working, you need to take a deep breath and get back to basics.

I always liked how it used to be such a surprise that Argrath comes back with Sheng. If you look at it closely, it's not business as usual down there. He really has to push until they come up with something truly unexpected and spectacular. The texts always used to be very clear, very few people even think to try this . . . and very, very, very few of them succeed at this deep level. Harmast did it. Argrath does something like Harmast, apparently. 

Wrote, 'Orlanth and Pamalt are the ones who make it their problem.'

You probably know better than me, but Pamalt never killed the Sun out of envy, so quite a big difference between the two?

Orlanth only does something when his halls are and empty and he notices (Notices!) his wife has been gone for the longest time, he's pretty much a terrible leader. He doesn't regret in any way what he's done admits it was even partially his fault, he's mostly going to find out where the hell [sic] his wife is (has she run off, or been unfaithful?).

Not much evidence for Orlanth the Repentant I think.

 

On 9/23/2022 at 9:02 PM, Erol of Backford said:

They are illuminated...? A Lhankor Mhy wants it to study and to question/interrogate so a larger strike against chaos may be had against the Print? Maybe the want to milk its poison to develop antidotes?

I think you maybe missing the whole point of StormBull. He's mindless violence against Chaos, fighting fire with fire, that's how he won, not with clever plans or cunning, but brute force. Best buddies mates and pals with ZZ, who's mindless violence against everything.

'Slowly Slowly catchee monkey.' just isn't him.

On 8/17/2022 at 9:39 PM, jajagappa said:

The Red Worm of Snakepipe Hollow is simply one manifestation of the Tongue of Chaos as it protrudes into the mundane world.

I knew there was something 'cheeky' about Snakepipe...

On 1/25/2021 at 12:19 AM, Ian Absentia said:

Is the thread title a statement or a question?

Yes.

On 8/1/2022 at 12:50 PM, Zelmor said:

This strikes the nail on the head. No communication, no release date, not a whole lot in the form of expanding the product line in a meaningful way. In the meantime, look at Mongoose pushing hard on their Traveller edition. You might not like the way things are done there, but as a new Referee, I'm showered with options and products on a regular basis. I bought and kick-started all the JTAS volumes, bought adventures, got the core books. That got me interested in older editions of the game, so I even got the original books and older source books to read for fun. Most importantly, we play that game and people love it.

 

Compare this to the RQ books on my shelf, which have by now accumulated a thick later of dust, with no change is sight. It may not be the legal state, but for all intents and purposes, it is a dead and abandoned game. 

This will keep me from buying into Pendragon also. I wish Cthulhu was my thing, alas it is not.

I can feel the love from many of the other commentators from here. Not.

Losing new players is always bad, and not fulfilling on something that was officially advertised 3 years ago is bad, no matter how you look at it. some older players here think they can keep the game going single handedly, they can't. I went to a big RQ con this weekend and not one of the players in any of the RQ games I played were under 30 [and I'm being very very generous in that] That is not good, not good for the game at all.

On 8/1/2022 at 12:44 PM, Zelmor said:

This is not a defendable position I'm afraid, that something didn't happen for 40 years so we have to wait more. I will be selling my books it seems. I purchased the box set, source book and the red cow campaign book in the hopes that the company has a release schedule and will be slowly filling the void that is left by not including a GM book in the initial release. Keep in mind Earthdawn's newer editions did include the GM book in the initial release line when they decided to split the core book into two volumes. And that is not a new and hip product line or fantasy world either.

The lack of a GM book is why I'm not not able to realize my dreams of running the Red Cow Clan campaign. I need some guidance as an inexperienced RQ GM who didn't start in the 80s, and no, not in the form of forum posts from old-timers.

Not to derail, but I didn't understand the the need for a started package either, when there is no GM book. I'm not being helped as a new player by that release, and thus skipped it altogether. The reason we don't play RQ in my group is because I as a GM I have no grounds on which to build my work. So we play other things while our interest in Glorantha slowly fades away.

It's a pity you didn't get/ aren't getting the starter set as I think it would help you with the world and system at least a little. But I really understand your disappointment. The line manager decided to go with the great big book of cults instead of the GM's guide in the production line, so maybe that might change your mind?

The only other thing I can say is, sorry you are leaving.

1 minute ago, Ali the Helering said:

Nah.  Probably 'smack on the nose if you disagree' kinda way

I meant 'I will do it by', but I can see the subtle use of persuasion some leaders are able to employ, by your example.

7 hours ago, David Scott said:

With all of the great art being done for the Cults of Glorantha book by Katrin Dirim (https://wellofdaliath.chaosium.com/earth-goddesses-wip/), I thought it would be help to add some links to the British Museum's Feminine power, the divine to the demonic exhibition. If you are able to visit, it's open until the 25th of September. The exhibition contains a broad array of goddesses, from all times (including contemporary).

• https://blog.britishmuseum.org/an-introduction-to-feminine-power/ 
• https://www.britishmuseum.org/sites/default/files/2022-05/feminine_power_exhibition_large_print_guide.pdf
• https://www.britishmuseum.org/sites/default/files/2022-06/feminine_power_image_bank.pdf
• Sadly they only show Lilith's head on the web, but here's the entire piece here: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/486711

 

There were two small things I found interesting:

A sacrificial sword:

Sekhmet Egyptian Lady of Slaughter

The beer in this instance was stained with pomegranate juice (7,000 jugs of it), but you can certainly see the source of Babeester Gor's myth.

Has anyone noticed the very Durulzy look Sekhmet has...

On 7/18/2022 at 5:32 PM, David Scott said:

 Yinkin initiates just follow their leader.

That's very rare in cats. Is in a, 'By sometime next week.' kinda way?

2 hours ago, EricW said:

Jeff gave a great description of the rightness rules caste sorcerers must follow. My question is, what impact does illumination have on these strictures? Are illuminates liberated from having to follow Malkioni rules, in the same way illuminates can break the rules of theist cults? Can an illuminated sorcerer commit wrong action without consequence, other than the possibility of being pursued by their society? Or do the benefits of illumination only provide the ability to break theist religious strictures?

Yes.