dumuzid

Ompalam is the source of the Fonritian social system, as interpreted by Garangordos and his successors, then augmented by Fonrit's experience with the God Learners. I would expect that Gark's relationship with Ompalam is the same as that of every other cult accepted by the janns as legitimate, that Gark is one of Ompalam's slaves.

Fonrit's the heartland of Gark worship, the city Shun Mun is entirely owned by the cult and corpses are sent there from all over fonrit to serve in Gark's temple.

There's a few big blurbs of Zaranistangi lore on p. 429 of the Guide to Glorantha, and the war of the Yranian Leapers is covered in the last paragraph of p. 553 and the first page of p. 554 of the same book. There's more information on the Zaranistangi in the sections of the Guide on Teshnos and the Gods World.

Then you should look into the Zaranistangi, aka the Yranian Leapers, who combine Blue Moon magic with the worship of Storm powers and Tolat, and claim descent from the Blue Moon and the god of the star Orlanthi associate with Mastagos. Some of them appeared in Afadjann around the same time the Red Moon was reborn in Peloria, and seem to have wielded the same counter-slavery magic the Artmal and Blue Moon artifacts hold, but on a reliable and repeatable basis. They led a war of liberation in Afadjann that saw whole slave populations freed of Ompalam and Darleester magic and brought the Afadjanni slaving system to its knees, before they mysteriously disappeared back into the otherworlds.

When the Veldang slaves in Fonrit unearth relics of Artmal and the Blue Moon the interaction often frees them of Fonritian enslaving magic, allowing for the eruption of fearsome slave rebellions. There is probably a cult to Artmal Liberator in Jokotu, the City of the Free in Fonrit, attempting to explore this effect.

We did this Saturday in my campaign, my PC group's Heler initiate was elevated to God Talker. They wrote up a myth of Heler (more specifically of Heler's offspring Rainbow Girl), the group did the legwork of putting on a this-world heroquest of the myth by way of liturgical dance, and since everyone hit their marks during the performance it deepened into a Gods World quest that revealed new elements of the myth to the participants. It was something we'd been building up to for a while, and just one of several major religious rites going on at Ayos, Fronela on Earth Fertility Waterday, 1627.

I've got a Helering in my player group and she makes a Predict Weather roll every in-game week to get a sense of what's likely to happen. On the actual day I usually use a chance die to determine what the weather is like if it comes up, with the outcomes of the roll based on the accuracy, or lack thereof, of the Helering's prediction.

While I agree that this is the case in terminal Third Age Nochet, I wonder whether it wasn't different back when Esrolia had strong, monarchical husband-protectors to the city queens. I would not be at all surprised if whichever shadow lord Ezkankekko delegated command of the Nochet Kimantoring garrison to were responsible for maintaining the 'public safety' of the city, protecting the Earth against uncontrolled manifestations of the other elements (fire, flood, storm, Chaos in the form of murder and similar crimes, etc), just like Argan Argar was responsible for protecting Esrola from those things in the myths. Argan Argar conquering the god of the Vent is a ready-made mythological metaphor and precedent for some sort of fire brigade system, for instance. His spell Safe is one of the premiere magical methods for opposing burglars, too. If anything like this were the case, I would expect Belintar to institute something similar through his governors and garrisons once he took power.

For the god Artmal, it took scattering his bones across the worlds after Orlanth drowned him in the Sea of Fire in the utter south of the world. I expect Gargandos and his Glorious Ones performed some aggressive heroquesting in the First Age to raise up his aspect of Artmal the Slave while keeping the rest of him thoroughly dead and dispersed.

this figurine or one of its sisters is used as an example of a Pelandan Uleria statuette in the Entekosiad, too Though that one was described as originally being larger than a person, and made of a pliant substance better than flesh, but it shrank and grew hard (more Koverian, per the Pelandans) within Time.

I seem to recall an Impala Yelmalion statted out in The Pegasus Plateau who got Speak With Impala rather than Speak With Horse from Yelmalio

The second paragraph of the Rune Magic chapter of the core rules, p. 313 says, "When an adventurer casts Rune magic, the caster acts as the deity. The caster imitates the deeds of the deity and thereby magically partakes of the deity’s power." Emphasis mine. My understanding was that this has been the case going back to Greg and Arcane Lore. If you've decided to revise that interpretation, fair enough, but I'm trying to go by what's in the books currently available to the public. The 'inherent nature and attributes' of a Gloranthan god can vary pretty wildly depending on which stage of their mythology you're looking at, the obvious example being Yelmalio before and after the Hill of Gold. Your examples are mixing up the cause and effect. Orlanth didn't reconcile with Yelm through 'reconcile with those you've wronged' magic, he accomplished the deed of reconciling with Yelm, creating a mythic event for his followers within Time to emulate and draw power from. There probably should be some sort of specific power for elemental reconciliation available to Orlanth worshipers, at least within a particular subcult (Orlanth Repentant?), which may have been lost to the cult within Time. Beyond something specific, the Rune magic made available to Orlanth's worshipers by the several interconnected mythic events of the LBQ must surely be embodied in some of the selections from his Lightbringers associate cult spells? Chalana Arroy's Restore Health, for instance. Yelmalio accomplished the deed of Guarding the Stead/Sleeping Forests/etc. Per the core book, this deed should create a mythic event that mortal followers of Yelmalio can draw upon for power in reproducing the deed within Time. You could argue that this is covered by worshipers gaining individual access to special magic from heroquesting, and I'd answer that 'enduring as the last light' is at least as essential to Third Age, Central Genertelan Yelmalions' understanding of their god as, say, Orlanth's deed of winning the Thunderbolt back from Shargash is for Orlanthi. On that basis the events are equally worthy of reification in a Rune spell. Yelmalio is a Solar God, Yelm's Heart of Justice and the Last Light. He has Rune magic that reflects one of these qualities, geases that reflect another, not much for the third. Yelmalio's qualities of perseverance and honor allowed him to carry on when all hope seemed lost. Those are his inherent stick-it-out-ness. That's the 'inherent nature and attribute' of him that could be the basis of a Rune spell related to the event. The same as Storm Bull's rage, in many battles but especially the Eternal Battle, is the basis for his mortal worshipers' Berserk spell.

Because each Rune spell is supposed to be a reification or incarnation of a God Time event, and Yelmalio sticking it out past all hope is a core mythic event for him. Same reason he has Sunbright and Catseye. He's got good magic for Light, you'd figure he would have good magic for Last too.

The campaign I run is specifically about the characters participating in the hero wars: as the hero band that forms the core of the Veldang Revolution in Fonrit. My plan for getting them from starting characters to the point where they can participate at that level is simple: yoke their characters into a truly world-spanning quest (the rejuvenation the god Artmal). I essentially took the outline of Argrath's background and decided to subject the player characters to similar pressures and magical influences, including a circumnavigation of the world, to build them up into figures of similar stature as him. We're around two years into the game, and they're starting to pull off some very surprising things, now that we're in Fronela and participating in the War Against War (gotta traverse the Janube to get to the Blue Moon Plateau and the next piece of Artmal). If you want your players to engage with the setting at that level, I say go for it, just bear in mind the sort of legwork and tribulation it takes to get player characters believably into that league.

If the last campaign I'd played in had gone one more in-game year...

Yes and no. Going back to the God Time the Esrolian cities have relied on two main forms of military mobilization: a militia system capable of mobilizing much of the male population for defensive military service (called the Irillo Hundreds in Nochet) and a corps of professional soldiers/warriors. The militia system has survived successive political changes in Esrolia, but the nature and recruitment of the professional component has varied considerably within Time. The professional tradition goes back to the Darkness, when Queen Norinel entered into a strategic marriage with Ezkankekko, bringing his troll followers to defend Nochet in exchange for a share in Nochet's food. Ezkankekko participated in the human society of Nochet under the Esrolian name Kimantor, and the body of warriors and magicians who served him by defending Nochet and venturing out into the dying world of the Darkness to maintain contact with other outposts of life took their name from him: the Kimantorings. After the refounding of Nochet at the end of the Darkness and the start of the Silver Age the Kimantorings were formalized into the standing army of the Kingdom of Night, serving as the personal army of Ezkankekko, presumably supported by the proceeds of the Shadow Tax, with local control delegated to his Shadow Lords. The Kimantorings recruited from the several species and societies within the Kingdom of Night, and would've served as the earliest core and pattern for the armies of the World Council of Friends that fought against Alkoth and Dara Happa after the Dawn. The Kimantorings waxed and waned as a body through the vicissitudes of the Kingdom of Night. They were defeated in Belintar's conquest of Kethaela, but they survived as an organization, retaining their barracks-temple in Nochet, at the cost of being restricted by Belintar to defensive campaigns. After he won, Belintar instituted an essentially similar new organization, a royal army of his own recruited from each of the Sixths of his Holy Country and directed regionally by his governors. Belintar's royal army would've been the core and cutting edge of the forces that defended the Building Wall against the Lunar invasion. Like everything else to do with the Holy Country, the system unraveled swiftly after Belintar died, with consequences I'll address in a moment. Throughout Time the great houses of Nochet have maintained their own military forces in parallel to the royal armies. These are mainly mercenary bodies, though I'd reckon male offspring of the great families often find their way into these forces. They recruit from the war cults and Esrolia's neighboring lands, and are directly beholden only to their patron house. The forces of the great houses have swelled with recruits from Belintar's disintegrated royal army, and have now replaced it as the de facto professional military of the Esrolian cities. If Broyan had lived he might've instituted something new, or revived one of the older traditions, but whatever plans he had died with him. Thus, in the 'current' circumstances of circa 1626 ST the armies of Esrolia are absolutely dominated by mercenaries, but based on the region's history their prominence will likely recede in favor of a new royal formation should a new regime establish itself as the husband-protector of the goddess, or something analogous.

In my current campaign an important companion NPC carries and gets significant use out of a kora, a real-world West African stringed instrument, something like the child of a harp and a guitar. IMG it's an major cultural instrument in Fonrit and wider Pamaltela, and the Agimori of Prax brought it to Genertela in their great migration. He carries his in a heavy-duty rhino hide case manufactured in Pavis, usually slung like a saddle-bag during travel. It's featured prominently in some of the campaign's magic, but only in ritual circumstances where 'spelunking with a delicate stringed instrument' would not apply.

The Blue Moon Trolls found the goddess dead on the ground in the great God Time migrations, and worshipped her back into power, much like other trolls did on the other side of Genertela with Basko, the Black Sun. Depending on who you ask the Blue Moon is the child of Darkness and Water, so trolls connecting to her was never so far of a mythical leap.

A big factor at my table is the stealth penalties that stack up with heavy armor. We favor a lot of stealth and ambush tactics, and going with lighter armor can be very helpful with that. There's always lead armor if you don't want to trade durability for subtlety, but then you run into the issue of being strong enough to fight effectively under all that lead.

What's the rune there that looks like an arrow pointing up?

I don't know of any Chaos gods with the Water rune, Water is one of the staunchly anti-Chaos elements, but Chaos did have some gruesome victories over Water powers. Pocharngo the Mutator, the Cosmic Cancer, is the main god I know of to have won victories over Water, he was responsible for warping and fusing a great host of merfolk and water gods into a horrible living bridge over which the Chaos hordes assaulted one of the slopes of the Spike.

See, what I would argue is that Genert had double-Earth too, and Ernalda has only moved into his permanently vacated seat. She's 'owner' of the Earth Rune within the version of the Gods War that ended with Arachne Solara's Web, while Pamalt is the 'owner' within the version that ends with the Necklace of Pamalt. All that's just me spitballing of course, based in part on what Sandy's done with the Earth faction in his Gods War game. e: I suspect the God Learners of the Six Legged Empire probably made some attempts at asserting Ernalda's primacy over Pamalt, to force Pamaltela to yield suitable fodder for their horses 'naturally,' among other motives, but we know how that worked out for them.

Excellent, excellent. Is there any indication from RQ3 of what Pamalt's runes ought to be? I'd guess Earth, Fire and Man from his myths, probably a double Earth like Ernalda under the current system.

I like Pamalt, a lot. I like his myths, I like his way of doing things generally. In the game I run my players have encountered a few of his worshipers among the Agimori of Prax and Pithdaros, and there was enough in the Red Book of Magic for me to approximate things at the table. What I'm curious about is the current, broader thinking within the community and among the actual developers on how to render Pamalt's cult in RQG rules. What would be his special rune magic? How would his cult be structured? Is Greg's idea from Revealed Mythologies that Doraddi societies reject sacrificial worship of the gods still a part of the equation? Going deeper, what sorts of magical interactions arise from the Necklace of Pamalt? Does the Necklace affect Pamalt's access to associated cults, cult spirits etc.? In all my scrounging of older-edition texts i don't think I've ever seen a Pamalt cult write-up, though I suspect there might be one in Second Age Glorantha. What does the tribe think the cult looks like?

The Guide includes the Siwafu Army Ant People with the sentient giant apes of the Haxamu Jungle as examples of Pamaltelan beings that are wrongly conflated with fiwan. Something else seems to be going on there; just what is a mystery. They sound like quite fearsome foes or allies for Darkness-friendly Pamaltelan campaigns though.