Jump to content

dumuzid

Member
  • Posts

    605
  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    4

Posts posted by dumuzid

  1. 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?

    • Like 2
    • Helpful 1
  2. 3 hours ago, Darius West said:

    Troll worship of Gorakiki and Aranea is based around priests not shamans,

    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.

     

    • Like 1
    • Thanks 2
  3. 12 hours ago, Brian Duguid said:

    Where is this stated, please?

    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 HotHPHeortling Mythology and the Guide to Glorantha didn't return the evidence I was hoping for.

    • Like 1
  4. 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. 

  5. 1 hour ago, Brian Duguid said:

    The Caroni, goat Hsunchen, live in those mountains, but wouldn't seem likely to be described as "irritating sprites".

    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.

    • Like 2
  6. 5 hours ago, Crel said:

    It seems like Nochet and Esrolia have an analogous relationship to Athens and the Black Sea. Grain goes into the big city, and the big city creates stuff to trade back to the farms. The challenge is that Athens has Laurion, whereas I'm not sure what Nochet has. It's not clear to me how the cycle of trade got started in Nochet. In 1625, the engine keeps chugging because that's just where you go. But what started that process? What began the magnetism in Dormal's day?

    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.

    • Like 1
    • Helpful 1
  7. 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.

    • Helpful 1
    • Thanks 2
  8. 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.

    • Like 3
    • Thanks 1
  9. On 3/19/2022 at 6:11 AM, Nicochan said:

    Troll = an african click language

    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.  

    • Like 1
  10. 2 hours ago, JRE said:

    Forget Orlanth. The combo is for Argan Argar, who also has Create Shadow, which indicates that one point, that only creates a haze in sunlight, is enough to cast Dark Walk.

    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.

  11. 10 minutes ago, g33k said:

    I just can't get too worked up over the "awesomeness" of Dark Walk rune-magic when ordinary non-magical light can dispel it...

    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...

    • Like 2
  12. 12 hours ago, Darius West said:

    All this for a 1pt Rune Spell?

    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.

  13. 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.

    • Like 1
  14. 1 hour ago, JRE said:

    Trolls would not normally melt lead, at least not with heat.

    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.

  15. 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:

    Spoiler

    The defending force was a heterogenous collection of peoples from across Dragon Pass: Old Tarshite axe-women, Sartarite Orlanthi (both locals and allies come from  neighboring Colymar lands), dark trolls and trollkin, a few aldryami, Grazelander riders (led by my character's siblings-in-law), and a war-pack of Telmori.

    The attacking force was a combination of three mercenary bands sent by the king of Tarsh: the Company of the Manticore from The Smoking Ruin, a band made up primarily of Thanatari Tusk Riders, and a company of Cacodemon-worshiping ogres supported by summoned and magically controlled Chaos horrors.

    Our settlement lay on a plateau, at the southern end of an old mountain trade trail that rolls north past Wintertop into the heart of Tarsh.  The invaders set out as soon as the passes were sufficiently clear of snow, during a warm week of mid-Storm Season.  Our settlement was on good terms with the Shaker Temple and the Old Tarshites, and through them we got some advance warning of the enemy marching south.  Each side numbered in the hundreds at most: significant forces by the standards of Third Age Glorantha, but only barely 'armies' as such.  Our preparations took a few forms.

    We prepared considerable earthworks.  We dug trenches and pits, filled with sharpened stakes and hundreds of live snakes from our earth temple, disguised by rapid growth of grass and shrubs courtesy of our aldryami, to better control where the invaders could reliably launch attacks.

    Our disparate forces spent significant time training to coordinate together.  As just one example, the Grazelander horse warriors spent many nights in the weeks before the siege practicing riding over our prepared fighting ground in the dark of night, to ready them and their mounts for maneuvering under the cover of Darkness magic like Affix Darkness and Create Shadow.

    We offered worship and sacrifices to the oreiad of the mountains neighboring our settlement, through which the enemy would have to pass.  When the enemy was a week out we called on her to bring about a landslide across the path of their march, considerably slowing the enemy's approach, stretching their supplies and giving us extra time to prepare.  We had to swear an oath to the mountain spirit to repair her trails when the fighting was done, of course.

    We made two attempts at diplomacy, once while the enemy was still far off and once just before the final confrontation.  They refused all attempts to dissuade them from attacking, and so we began operations against them.  I based my strategy on accounts of troll warfare from Second Age Glorantha: a campaign of guerilla skirmishing and sabotage, bleeding and immiserating the enemy for as long as possible in preparation for final, decisive counterattack at a place of our choosing--in this case, the foot of our plateau.

    We began harassing the enemy well before they reached our settlement.  Our Telmori, troll and Orlanthi elements lured the mercenaries' scouts and vanguard into ambushes in the favorable terrain of the mountains, taking prisoners and denying them the freedom to forage on their march.  Our troll magicians summoned insects to foul the invaders' supplies and inflict general misery in their camp.  The enemy were known to be consorting with Chaos, while our settlement's founding myth was the Unity Battle that defeated the last Chaos horde of the Gods War--with a peaceful resolution off the table, very few rules of war were observed by either side, and invaders captured in this preliminary stage were given to our settlement's Kyger Litor and Zorak Zoran cults for sacrifice.

    My character and our community's wyter (an arachnid spirit with serpentine characteristics) were both highly skilled spirit combatants.  We kept our preparations secret from discorporate eyes by carefully trapping and devouring spirit spies sent by the invaders.

    When the enemy finally reached striking distance of our settlement we mustered most of our defense in the valley below our plateau, behind our earthworks.  My Argan Argar priest-king cast Affix Darkness over the part of the earthworks where we'd built a ramp to facilitate a sudden, devastating downhill charge by the Grazelanders, shrouding the weakest point of our field fortifications in midnight darkness.  The Thanatari and the Company of the Manticore met us in the valley, while the ogres relied on their sheer brawn and the cover of their flying Chaos monsters to attempt an assault up the side of the plateau with mountaineering equipment.

    In the valley, before general fighting commenced, the Thanatari sent forward a champion to challenge our best to personal combat: a Chaos-tainted great troll wielding a two-handed sword, with the animate severed head of a vanquished Humakti affixed to his shoulder by a bronze spike run through the Chaotic troll's flesh.  Our best was an Esrolian Babeester Gor initiate, who stepped out of the shroud of Affix Darkness to face the troll.  She beheaded the troll with her axe in the first exchange of blows, chopped the Humakti's head free of the troll's corpse for good measure, and withdrew back into the darkness with both heads without saying a word.

    The Thanatari captain rode forward then and attempted to dispel the Affixed Darkness with the stolen magic of his animated heads, but he failed to overcome our magic.  Frustrated, he began a great sorcerous shaping to smite the patch of darkness (we learned later it was a high-MP Moonfire spell, which could've caused devastation), but we answered with volleys of lead slingstones from our trollkin, and a lone fire arrow my character's Yelornan sister-in-law, to disrupt his casting.  The moment his casting failed we finally charged out of the darkness, Grazelander cavalry and were-form Telmori first, with the troll, trollkin and human infantry close behind.  The warriors from our settlement took on the Thanatari while our allies from Clearwine engaged the Company of the Manticore on the other side of the field, shieldwall to shieldwall.

    The ogre mercenaries, meanwhile, had to contend with an hasty gathering of our townsfolk simply dropping rocks down the side of the plateau on them as they climbed.  Our settlement was an only recently restored ruin; between new building materials and old debris, there was plenty of masonry to drop.  Supporting the human townsfolk were our aldryami contingent, firing with their elf bows at the ogres' flying monsters and climbing soldiers.  Those ogres who actually reached the top were met by a huge Earth elemental summoned by our settlement's Ernalda priestess.  The day went poorly for them, in spite of their monsters and their leader's cruel magic, which summoned enslaved spirits to attack and possess our people.

    On the valley floor, the Thanatari company wavered while the Company of the Manticore held firm.  The Thanatari performed a Chaos-corrupted invocation to the Bloody Tusk, conjuring a rush of acidic blood onto the battlefield, but our Kyger Litor cultists used the power of our earlier sacrifices to summon the ghost of a great Mistress Race ancestress, who neutralized the Chaotic magic with her own power.  My character, stalking the battlefield under the cloak of Dark Walk through the shadows created by our storm-worshipers' manipulation of the weather, commanding through song and the telepathy of the community's wyter, managed to slay the Thanatari captain's tusker with his braced fighting lance, then clobbered them unconscious with a heavy mace as they struggled to free themselves from the weight of their mount's corpse.

    The centaur commander of the Company of the Manticore fought the leader of our allies, Annstad of Dunstop (fighting nude under a coat of woad), in an honor duel that ended only when Annstad's sword was ruined.  The Company of the Manticore threw back the Colymar forces and charged our settlement's contingent, but by then they were simply too few and exhausted.  Their defeat was sealed when we called up our last reserve: out of the caves beneath our settlement rushed Zorak Zoran trolls and animated dead they'd made from the prisoners captured in the mountains.  The Company fought until their commander was finally brought down (unconscious) by my character's lance and the lightning of a duck weaponthane. 

    With their commander defeated the rest of the Company of the Manticore surrendered, and as the only contingent of the invaders who were not direct Chaos worshipers we took them as prisoners under honorable terms.  The ogres fled into the trackless mountains, while the Thanatari attempted to retrace the invaders' steps back up the northward trail.  A sudden avalanche swept down over the Thanatari as they fled, annihilating the last of them and their tuskers in a matter of seconds--a second, unasked-for gift from the oreiad of our mountains. 

    The survivors of the Company of the Manticore we ransomed back to their respective homelands, and between those and the mercenary companies'  captured paychests  and baggage our young settlement was suddenly flush with wealth.  The Thanatari and ogres we didn't kill were offered to Arachne Solara in that year's Sacred Time rites just a few weeks later, including the Thanatari commander, and all the animated heads of their past victims were ceremonially smashed and cleansed with the assistance of the Colymar Lhankor Mhy cult.

     

    • Like 1
    • Thanks 1
  16. 4 hours ago, Soccercalle said:

    Would it be possible to have a priest in a traveling adventure group or should it be a god-talker instead?

    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.

  17. 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.

    • Like 1
  18. 11 hours ago, JRE said:

    still believe dogs are the wrong animal for herding Praxian beasts.

    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.

  19. 8 hours ago, Joerg said:

    giving them to plants which are in need of them without being in the immediate food cycle is acceptable behavior, while chewing on meat probably is seen as highly aberrant.

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

    • Like 1
  20. 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.

    • Like 1
  21. 2 minutes ago, Garrik said:

    To ascribe cannibalism and manhunting specifically to the Uncolings/reindeer people sounds strange.

    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.

    • Like 3
    • Thanks 1
×
×
  • Create New...