dumuzid

In My Glorantha, in the Sea Seaon of 1626 Argrath White-Bull commissioned a great work of art and artifice from the Pavis Mostali: a living map of the lozenge wrought in silver, brass and quicksilver, kept up to date through interface with the deep earth spirits at the dwarves' command. The table-sized version the Mostali delivered in Fire Season was just a copy of the grand map they manufactured for the project, but it fulfilled the terms of the contract nonetheless. Yet it was not the only copy of this grand map that the Mostali created. They prepared an even smaller version, the size of a writing tablet and reinforced for travel and hardship, encoded with data drawn from the shattered Intellect of Artmal which lies beneath the Blue Sable Altar. That data was the original impact points and current positions of the six pieces of Artmal that remain within the Middle World in 1626. This is that map:

I'm pretty pleased with how it worked out. The survivors of our Unity Army resettled the no-longer-Smoking Ruins, creating a community of Old Tarsh humans, trolls and trollkin, green elves, and even Beast Valley folk who made it part of their seasonal round. The earth temple became a great worship center, sharing custody of the mirror fragment with the Clearwine temple over the course of the year, with our player character Ernaldan as its high priestess. She accepted the courtship of Asborn Thrice-Born, solidifying our alliance with the Colymar and opening the way for Sartarite settlers. My Argan Argar troll was acclaimed the settlement's first king and the first priest of its new wyter, which bound itself to his lance. He married a daughter of Oxus, the chief of the Four Gifts who'd led riders to the battle against Vamargic, solidifying our alliance to the west with the Grazers. With good relations to east, west and south our little settlement became a growing trade hub, with travel through the pathless places facilitated by insect caravans owned by my chacter's mother, an Argan Argar trade mistress from the Blackwell. Our first big Sacred Time heroquest was a version of The Wooing of Esrola where Ernalda and Maran Gor schemed with Argan Argar to free their sister Esrola from an increasingly unhappy marriage to Lodril; when we returned from the Gods World much of the ruined architecture of old Korolstead was magically restored, but all in obsidian, thanks to the compelled labor of Lodril. The magic of the quest, the mirror, and the restored Ernalda temple and Flamal grove transformed the valley beneath the settlement into a profoundly lush and fertile land. With a troll king and an earth priestess sharing rule over this fecund prosperity from a great temple and a palace complex of black glass, it all started to feel like Silver Age Esrolia come again. Afterwards we marched to war in Tarsh with the Grazers, rediscovered Golden Age myths using Ernalda's mirror fragment, wakened long-sleeping spirits and demigods to become protectors of our new community, defended our home against the invasion of Lunar and Chaos-worshiping mercenaries sent by the king of Tarsh, and fundamentally altered the course of the Hero Wars through our intervention at the unfolding Battle of Dunstop. All because Thinala gave her second life to save us from Vamargic, and we refused to simply let it lie.

Using Call on Stars from the Red Book of Magic you can get spirit magic quite a bit stronger than that. The spell's write-up mentions spending 4RP to get Bladesharp 8. For conventional spirit magic, it seems like the only hard limit is how much CHA you have to store spells with.

The wyter of the settlement my group founded the last time I was on the player side of RQG had rune points separate from its POW too, based on the same statted examples @lordabdul cites. It was a Darkness + Harmony entity from the Gods Age that helped officiate the wedding of Orlanth and Ernalda, and had RP in the Kyger Litor and Arachne Solara cults. Its most useful power was the sheer range of its senses though; bound to my character's lance, it made for a superb scout when we fought alongside the Feathered Horse Queen's forces in Tarsh.

It's an intriguing idea, but at my table only one of the five players has any RQ experience. Stacking learning HeroQuest on top of the main game would probably be asking too much of them.

While he lived in Jokotu, the City of the Free in Fonrit, he performed his mostly ad libbed ceremonies at the shrine to lost and unknown gods there. Since coming to Pavis he's worshiped in the Seven Mothers Temple, which is run by White Moon Movement members who've joined the White Bull Society (at least in My Glorantha), as a member of an associated cult.

I've been basing my game's heroquesting off the old Stafford Library book Arcane Lore.

The Blue Moon magic in print at the moment (via Troll Gods) grants invisibility, through both the rune spell already available in the RQG core book and a spirit magic spell that I don't think has been brought into the current edition. The Blue Moon also grants a unique version of the Divination spell: each casting grants the worshiper true, but somewhat random and contextless information about the present or future. It's a great way to learn far-flung secrets and prophecies, but without some corroborating information the Blue Moon's sybils are a bit indecipherable. Once in a Blue Moon cultist's life one of her divinations may give a message particular and important to that person, which they need no further context clues to understand, though some of her worshipers live their whole lives without receiving that special message. She also has power over the tides, with myths about granting humans the power to quell rising waters and violent seas in Revealed Mythologies, though to my knowledge that magic has not survived in her land-based cult in Peloria. The Blue Moon cult in Teshnos might know them though. Her son Artmal grants the spell Vesper, which creates an aura that improves Spirit Combat and spellcasting rolls for the caster and their allies. Artmal's myths describe a great mariner and founder of kingdoms, including a mythical flying ship, but magic associated with those myths seems to currently be lost thanks to the brutal suppression of Artmal's cult by the slavers of Fonrit. If Artmal were a whole, healthy god he'd probably grant more magic, but he was dismembered and drowned in the Sea of Fire by Orlanth (called Baraku in Pamaltela) late in the Storm Age and most of his Gods Age existence remains inaccessible to his worshipers. As assassins, I'd expect the Blue Moon Assassins to wear whatever is appropriate to the locale while they're working in the field. When they're at rest, or performing cult functions? I'd assume they wear blue. The Jonstown Compendium adventure Blue Moon, White Moon has lovely illustrations of two Blue Moon Assassins.

there's always the Sumerian gur, which was the amount of a given substance that could be safely loaded onto a donkey's back

I'm running an NPC who's done this: Gabaryanga, the escaped Fonritian (Veldang) slave. He dedicated himself to the Blue Moon, Veldara, after his first revolt against the janns of Afadjann failed, according to the Guide. I have worked along the assumption that he visited the ruins of Blue Moon sites in northern Pamaltela to see whatever art and relics of Veldara survived, consulted entheogenic drugs and Veldang-friendly oracles, picked up whatever scraps of cult lore he could from the handed-down songs and stories of the blue slaves. Circa 1626 (in My Glorantha) he's a 5 RP initiate of this reconstructed Blue Moon worship, Artmal subcult, but doesn't really know how to advance into the rune levels without a temple structure to join, even if he could determine and meet the theoretical requirements. Luckily, he has a plucky band of PC Eaglebrown Warlocks interested in helping him find out. This reconstruction probably wouldn't be possible without the Blue Moon Plateau trolls and the surviving Blue Moon cult on Melib feeding her worship, though Gabaryanga hasn't met representatives of either group (yet) in my game. Don't how it'd work for a god with no active worshipers.

My GM tried to warn us adequately that standing up to Vamargic directly would probably wreck us, but we ignored or discounted the evidence of how dangerous a confrontation would be and gave it a shot anyway. Poor Thinala gave her second life covering our retreat, with my character unconscious and our Humakti's arm broken. We saw Vamargic add her eye to his necklace as we fled. We did recover the mirror fragment though! Our subsequent effort to gather a Unity Army from around southern Dragon Pass to defeat Vamargic + allies in open battle ended up defining the rest of that campaign. Our Humakti destroyed the enslaved revenant Vamargic made from Thinala's corpse in single combat, and my troll ate the Eye-necklace to dispose of it after the battle.

i like the symmetry implied by him somehow being OOO's lost son, who was murdered by Eurmal in the nadir of the Lightbringers' Quest, but there's no more evidence to support that than any other origin

One of the allies Only Old One called up to oppose Belintar's conquest was an enormous monster, which may or may not have been a true dragon. When Belintar slew it late in the conquest its body formed the Lead Hills. The Blackwell is a settlement Belintar commanded the trolls to build after he won the war, to keep watch on the place where the slain beast's brains leaked up onto the surface.

I introduced a martial artist NPC to my player group a few sessions ago, or at least the ghost of one. Dian Shu was a brother in a sun-contemplating Kralorelan monastic order when Sheng Seleris usurped the empire. His order refused to fight for or against Sheng, who took a tithe of the brethren anyway and kept them in iron cages hauled in the baggage train of his armies. Dian Shu died when Shen Seleris bartered his soul to Judge Dahak of Pavis, in exchange for Second Age lore possibly possessed only by Dahak at that point in history. Dian Shu was burned alive as a sacrifice to Dahak, and his spirit was imprisoned in a shard of yellow glass. Dahak learned a great deal about Kralorelan culture from the ghost monk, but Dian Shu's attempts to cure the ogre sorcerer's occlusion through contemplation of the infinite failed, and he spent much of the following decades resting on a shelf in the ogre's sanctum. Dian Shu is an expert martial artist, but without a body his skills apply to his Spirit Combat, rather than an Unarmed. He can still train the living in the art, and likely shall now that he's been won from Dahak in a wager, freed from his glass prison, and joined to a Tarshite philosopher as an allied spirit for the next year.

For Argan Argar, "Equal exchange leaves everyone richer"

The First King, a recent-ish Italian film about the lives of Romulus and Remus. The way it treats gods and spirits, blood sacrifices straight out of the Shaker Temple--it's the closest thing I've seen in film to how I imagine Dawn Age Tarsh.

Orlanth's Ring is a separate celestial body, Entekos is one of the eight regular planets that move along the Sunpath. Her path marks the boundary between the Middle and Upper Airs according to the Guide.

My own players used a multi-stage magical ceremony taught to them by the Cleansed One to erase the Lunars' 'programming' of the Watchdog, before the group's Pavis rock mostali performed some mid-battle engraving on the Watchdog's back and a high-stakes Worship (Flintnail) roll to overwrite its 'operating system' while the rest of the team covered them. If your player can disrupt the Lunars' control even temporarily, do they have something to substitute in its place? That could turn the machine into an asset, beyond just rendering it inert.

I seem to recall that it takes a minimum of 1,000 regular worshipers to elevate a mortal into a capital H Hero, with a presence in the Hero Plane independent of any gods they worship, with more worshippers raising them to demigodhood, and ultimately apotheosis.

I forget where I read it, but I seem to recall that rats are already a cult creature of Argan Argar. e: to the extent that rats were suggested creature for binding cult spirits to familiars

Trolls have been raising their children in quarantine ever since Yelm died.

I would suggest that most, if not all, trolls raised in troll communities are at least lay members of the Kyger Litor cult (trollkin excluded, naturally) in addition to their other affiliations. Given how carefully child and adolescent trolls are kept secluded from the world beyond their clan's caves, I would expect most initiation rites to begin with Kyger Litor, with the young troll crawling from the embrace of the Mother to assume their new role in society.

My player characters are Eaglebrown Warlocks working directly for the White Bull and his companions. Elusu showed up to hook them up with some New Pavis underworld contacts, and they're answering to Orlaront Dragonfriend on campaign north of Corflu right now. Two of the player characters actually live in Argrath's palace complex (in what used to be the Lunar barracks in New Pavis) when they're not out in the field or otherwise adventuring. The 'celebrity' NPC who's had the most screen-time with the player characters is undoubtedly Gabaryanga though, the Fonritian escaped slave destined to lead the Great Revolt in the Hero Wars. In My Glorantha he emerged from the space between the Pairing Stones during Sacred Time 1625-1626, at the end of a perilous magic road through the Otherworlds that left him with nothing but the clothes on his back. He followed the line of the Zola Fel to Pavis, where Argrath ad-libbed him into the highly esoteric Sacred Time rites going on at the palace, and let him stay on as a guest of the king after. He first met some of the PCs in Sea Season, when Argrath asked him to collaborate with them and see what the combination of Blue Moon sacred music and Ernaladan sacred dance could accomplish: with some prep, and after some false starts, they managed to make the Blue Moon briefly visible on the Sky Dome, and got seeds from the Blue Moon to germinate and flower within Time. In Fire Season Gabaryanga joined the PCs as a member of their warlock band on a journey down the full length of the Zola Fel River, on which he's been a lodestone for various fragmentary Blue Moon influences drifting around the river basin. He's also helped out with sword and javelin when that's been needed. For a few of the player characters he's become a fast friend, with Passions tied to him even, and he's been integrated deeply enough into their group that he's developed a Loyalty passion to them in turn. The time is coming when the player characters will have to choose between a more 'conventional' warlock career riding with Argrath into Dragon Pass, or joining Gabaryanga on the lozenge-spanning quest to find the Bones and Red Sword of Artmal. Even if they don't go with him they've already helped him take the quest to restore Artmal further than any other seeker Gabaryanga's ever heard of--and probably attracted the baleful attention of the janns of Afadjann to their efforts.

To add a little more substance, and maybe corroborate @Ladygolem's point, one of the more important mystical (as opposed to Illuminated) traditions in the late third age must be the Order of the Rising Sun in the East Isles. The Order has its primary temple, the House of the Rising Sun at Luma, the so-called "Bright City" of Haragala. Their main claim to fame is that after the Opening was revealed to Haragala by Kralorelan trade ships, members of the Order traveled to Teshnos to study its powerful solar cults. When they returned to Luma they used insights gained from the Teshnan theists to develop the first sunscopes, devices composed of a mirror and focusing crystal capable of projecting killing beams of condensed sunlight. The devices are the lynchpin of Haragalan naval power, and only adepts of the Order of the Rising Sun know how to operate them. Maybe not the most enlightened use of mystical power, but if the Kralorelans can use emulation of the Dragon rune to build and maintain an empire, nothing says the Haragalans can't emulate the Fire/Sky rune to do the same.

I like this interpretation a great deal.