dumuzid

There are some very interesting 'hsunchen' among the fiwan peoples of Pamaltela. To address the dearth of were-reptiles in Genertela, Pamaltela has the Ngwena crocodile people and the Yaquma, the anaconda people. Maybe the reason one continent has were-reptiles and the other doesn't has something to do with Genert dying and Pamalt triumphing in the Gods War?

Troll worship of these powers is not nearly so cut-and-dry, as is often the case with trolls and the relationship between theism and animism. Per the old Troll Gods, Gorakiki hives have senior initiates called pupae, who would seem to be equivalent to priests under current Runequest rules, and the highest levels of the cult are only accessible to pupae who also become full shamans, called imagoes. The Aranea cult hierarchy, by contrast, goes straight from lay members to initiates to shamans, called Spider Masters, no 'priestly' rank at all. The structure of both is heavily, heavily reminiscent of the hsunchen beast cults we've seen, and neither actually makes much distinction between trolls and other potential Man Rune cultists.

I seem to recall I first encountered the idea in one of the older threads here involving the Hsunchen of western Genertela, either @scott-martin's or @M Helsdon's posts. I'm not exactly sure what the original source for the idea was, but I think it's connected to the reference to the Serpent Heads defeated by Hardros Hardslaughter per p. 79 of my copy of History of the Heortling Peoples. If anyone else knows better I'd be pleased to learn too, as flipping through HotHP, Heortling Mythology and the Guide to Glorantha didn't return the evidence I was hoping for.

For my own campaign I've written up an "unreformed" version of the Blood Sun cult dedicated to the god as it was before being overcome by the Black Sun in the Gods War, and they function a bit like this. Not berzerkers exactly, but driven by overwhelming hunger and the need to consume--either personally, or through dedicating mass sacrifices to the Blood Sun.

But if they didn't want to directly engage the trespassing Westerners directly, the spirits their shamans could round up to harass and misdirect Ethilrist's company might be.

Artisan-grade spidersilk comes down the Creek-stream River from the troll arachnid farmers around Skyfall Lake. Enough spices come north from Caladraland that, according the recent Equipment book, Esrolian cuisine is famous for its gumbo. Add to these an abundance of local copper as @jajagappa suggests, pearls from the Choralinthor, elf-goods from Arstola Forest, troll-goods from the Shadow Plateau (some of the best dyes in Glorantha come from the shells of their beetles), dwarf-goods from Gemborg Mine...and the list goes on. Then stack on the artisans supported by Nochet's grain surplus, turning a lot of those materials into even more valuable finished products. Nochet is a nexus for trade in all sorts of high value goods, many of them with excellent value to weight/volume ratios.

On a similar note, might there be a connection between sphinxlike chimeras and the Serpent Beast sorcerers of the First Age, who are described as taking on chimeric animal bodies with humanoid heads or faces? If you continue with my Blue Moon-sphinx connection, that whole socio-magical complex in western Genertela could've represented the survival of a tradition of sphinx-originated Blue Lunar sorcery. When the Blue Moon died and most of their original tutelaries went with her, the Serpent Beasts might've developed techniques to become sphinxes themselves to maintain contact with the highest mysteries of their tradition. Being a sphinx yourself, spiritually or physically, might be important to achieve the necessary interactions at Hrelar Amali and other points of contact with the Gods World to receive initiation into the highest levels of the Serpent Beast system.

For a number of reasons, I like sphinxes as creatures of the Blue Moon. She was up in the Sky, so there's a connection to other mythic winged quadrupeds like Griffin and Hippogriff, but the human heads are sufficiently distinct from the solar winged quadrupeds to distinguish the lunar chimeras immediately. They're vanishingly rare to nonexistent in our available material, which coincides well with them mostly dying with their parent goddess in the Gods War,. They may only 'now' exist in the parts of the God Time where she is still alive. Sphinxes' penchant for riddling also coincides neatly with the Blue Moon's oracular powers.

I've found in play that a truly powerful cult for these sorts of shenanigans is Heler. Being consort to both the biggest pantheonic figures in the Dragon Pass mythological space means tons of opportunities to regain power over a given season.

In meeting trolls, I'd expect a memory of 'clicking' to come not from the trolls' speech as such, but the experience of them echolocating with their darksense. When my players meet trolls I always emphasize the sensation of the trolls pulsing their darksense to fully perceive the scene, and for meetings with elder matrons and Mistress Race trolls I've drawn on accounts of free-diving with sperm whales, whose echolocation can be felt as much as heard.

I did something like this for a whole battlefield once by having the storm worshipers on our side call cloudbanks to create huge swathes of shadow. Argan Argar is always strongest when he's working together with his friends.

Granted, I can say from experience that Dark Walkers working in conjunction with Storm and Sky cultists to manage the light environment of the battlefield to their mutual benefit is extremely effective, but that gets into a whole other level of magical interactivity. The early armies of the Unity Council fought like that, after the pattern of the Kimantorings of Nochet, and it must've been something beautiful...

counter with the 1pt common rune spell Soul Sight, available to just about everyone at initiate level. edit: if memory serves, according to the old Greg story "I Hate Trolls," using the equivalent sorcerous effect, Pierce Veil, is the standard Brithini Horali answer to fighting trolls cloaked with Darkness magic.

I can't speak for most of the troll cults, but from what I've read Argan Argar has a great mansion in Hell that his worshipers head towards after facing the Judge of the Dead, and at the close of each day they emerge with Argan Argar and Xentha to dance the night across the face of the world. The Only Old One is supposed to have his own manse beside it.

There is a cult of trollish sorcerer-smiths in the HeroQuest book Unspoken Word: Uz. They are regarded as bizarre, dangerous tricksters by all right-thinking trolls for their willingness to work with flame and heated metal, but I'm sure they're capable of all sorts of horrific siege engineering when it comes to applications of boiling lead.

I played an Argan Argar priest-king who commanded the defense of a settlement through a siege, during Storm Season of 1627. A brief one, because we sallied out early and forced a conclusion to the affair. Here is how that went:

If they're adventuring on temple business, absolutely. As an example, the call to action of The Smoking Ruins adventure is a mission from the priestess of the Clearwine earth temple; going on that mission could be temple business for a rune-level of any Earth or Husband-Protector cult, doing Ernalda's business in her stead or on her behalf.

I would argue that the trade-off for Dark Walk remaining consistent through attacks is that, since it's a visual effect rather than a form of magical misdirection like Invisibility, it can be thwarted by anything that lets a character 'see' other than light: a shaman's Spirit Sight, or the Soul Sight rune spell, would seem to counter the protection offered by Dark Walk and Chameleon pretty effectively, while Invisibility would function unimpeded, with its normal limitations.

Or when he's off in the south serving as Pamalt's scout, under the name Jmijie, for that matter...

I instead imagine packs of small bipedal dinosaurs, like compsognathus. Nipping at bison flanks to keep the beasts moving, dodging agilely from the hooves and horns sent their way.

I've only played or run RQ using voice chat over discord, and it's always been theater of the mind.

split tongue, sure, but split brain too, according to some versions

except maybe with Yellow Elves, who are supposed to like a little actual flesh with their greens

I've been running the version of the Tolat cult practiced by the Marazi amazons and Zaranistangi as having True Sword and Sword Trance, given the importance of the mythical Red Sword(s) to them. By the same token, the Artmal cult gains True Sword as an associated cult of Tolat's, through Tolat's mythical gifting of the (a?) Red Sword to Artmal at the end of the War in Heaven. I've also long thought that the cult of Daxdarius, the mythical conquering king of Pelanda whose cult claims he invented hoplite warfare in north-central Genertela, should have True Spear.

It actually has some ecological basis: reindeer are known to predate on small animals near the end of winter, when their fat reserves are at their lowest. Reindeer hsunchen becoming manhunters as the world died is certainly a grim evolution for them, but that sort of thing was rather in vogue in the Greater Darkness, unless you happened to be friends with Ezkankekko or Pamalt.