Squaredeal Sten

Coming to Jonstown Compendium August 1st: Caravanserai Is it time for your RuneQuest in Glorantha adventurers to have real lives with more ties to Gloranthan society and economy? Are they rootless, and need a place of their own? Or have they outgrown the economic limits of their home clan? Is it time for the Issaries character to shine in doing bronze age business – or perchance to blunder at it? Caravanserai is intended for at least one experienced and prosperous Key Adventurer-with at least 2,500 Lunars, probably an Issaries initiate (and ideally his or her companions), to open and own a caravanserai, which is a highway inn with a walled compound of outbuildings and stables. And where’s the adventure in that, you say? Adventures beginning at an inn are such an old role playing game trope that I am sure you can think of some. But two follow on adventures are included. Plus a chapter on the Gloranthan lodging industry in accord with the canon information from RuneQuest Roleplaying in Glorantha (RQiG) and Weapons and Equipment (W&E), and an aid which will help you Gamemaster this business easily. The chapters of Caravanserai can easily be interwoven with other adventures in your campaign.

Read COD, then! It appears you are going to GM it anyway. This will fill you in about what that particular soul fragment does, which changes when another is found. You will want time to research the indicated educational stories, which you should provide frequently. At least that will fill you in on Andrew L. Montgomery"s concepts, which seem very good to me. And more important, they are part of the plot. Much more useful than speculation on what dragons in general would talk about.

I always thought that most of the 10,000 goddesses of Nochet were Genius Loci and house or guild wyters, most with a single street corner shrine. And never expected a list.

Having run all three books- This starts as only part of the dragon's soul, and it begins without clear knowledge of its drsgon self. Having had the magical equivalent of a lobotomy. So it won't have or give all the answers to the universe. That adventure p.104 it says it comes and goes as it pleases. You will note that it does not intervene in the later fights through chapter ten. It does however do something significant pages 110-111, a big favor to the Haraborn. As written it really doesn't get more informative until Company of the Dragon. I would limit its unscripted conversation to telling its priest how to Worship it. And possibly repeating its desire to unite the fragments of its soul.

I don't see that in the text, see below. It looks to me as if (unless you use a specific form of the spell) it's the god's or the GM's choice. I note that the more specific summoning spells have specific rune requirements. From RBOM p.89, This spell lets the caster ask their deity to send a cult spirit to their aid. The size of the spirit depends on the number of Rune points stacked for the spell. As a rule, greater deities have more sizes and types of cult spirits. The summoned entity arrives at the end of the round, on strike rank 12. This spell may be cast simultaneously with Command (cult spirit) (page 30). Summon Elemental is a specific example of this spell, but many other variants exist. Chalana Arroy cultists use this spell to summon a healing spirit, and Engizi cultists use this spell to summon a naiad of the Creekstream River. See the Glorantha Bestiary, pages 169–182, for examples of cult spirits. And that page range covers most spirits, not just cult spirits. i do wonder why Hollri and River Horses are left out (they are on pages 184-185) and i wouldn't allow genius loci myself unless someone was summoning one by name in its usual location. other thoughts: Unlike Summon Ancestor there isn't a helpful table for cult spirit size, spells, or friendliness. I suppose the GM could refer to the Creating A Spirit table on page 165 of the Bestiary for guidance if there is no particular spirit indicated in the planned scenario. If I am GMing I might deliver a specific spirit if the player could name it; however an Orlanthi who names a Thunder Brother would not get it for one measly rune point.

Perfect consistency is what we see others lack, but we imagine we have it ourselves.

Spirits. Auto spelling scrambler is active today.

In my own imagination cult spirits would include the spirits of dead cult initiates, as well as spirits eligible to be allied spirits. So as I understand it, if you want to see a specific spirit that you can name, you can use summon cult spirit to do that. Or if you are promoting an initiate to priest and they get an opportunity to ally a cult spirit, that is how you get the spirit, but you don't invoke a name. On the other hand if you just want a generic spirit to deal with a problem, you can use the same spell. IMHO Waha's summon spirit of law and Chalana Arroy's summon healing spirit are just special cases of this, with a specfication added to the spell. That way the Waha cultist gets a spirit that will attack Chaos rather than the spirit of his grandpa who will say " boy you are in a jam now, I'll give you some advice. ". Cults with Elemental spirits might produce an Elemental. But the generic spirit summoning will get you a random spirit while the spell summoning an Elemental is sure to get you an Elemental. Many cults don't get elementals. .

It would be hard in that GM-facing book, to conceal the Chaos rune. You can only do so much 'pro'. I imagine that most GMs and scenario writers would like to write scenarios that use Ompalam's cult as the enemy. For adventurers from outside Fonrit, they will want to avoid being enslaved. For adventurers originating in Fonrit - well I don't yet have a good enough vision of Fonrit to generate that.

Actually Trollpack (RQ Classics edition) page 25 says that Dark Trolls can see red. This would explain their original production of cochineal for their own use, not just for export to humans. And I suspect that the lichen dyes do not look like a uniform gray to Uz, but instead show them different shades of gray and red from what they see in undyed cloth. But the Uz probably regard the human partiality to lichens yielding yellows, greens, and violets as very peculiar and almost inexplicable, much as humans regard Darksense or a hound dog's sense of smell: It is reproducible, so there must be something there. And humans pay for it.

An additional Uz product, in accord with Nochet, Queen of Cities, https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/446503/Nochet-Queen-of-Cities-RuneQuest Is "earthblood" from the Shadow Plateau: that is Petroleum. Which had ancient uses including as tar for waterproofing ships and boats. Of course its incendiary use will also occur to the munchkins among us, but note that crude oil doesn't make good Molotov Cocktails. For that you need a refinery.

Detect everything should be a huge magic point sink, sorceror or not.. Even a combined detect weapons, armor, and asassins/ criminals/ enemies should be a huge magic point sink. Let it run for a while and you won't have the MPs left to deal with a serious threat. And similarly, a "sense" that duplicates that for free seems to me to be an exercise in munchkinry.

Congratulations on going Copper Best Seller the first day!

Pennell Ford and the siege of Nochet come up in so many character history rolls in the RQiG tables - it would be great to have one of those actually played out during character generation or very early history.

@jajagappaWhat relationship does this book have to the Holy Ciuntry material that you have in Chaosium's publication queue? I uderstand that Nochet, Queen of Cities is a sandbox of msterial underlying your own campaign, and I have the impression that the forthcoming publication by Chaosium will overlap it but be less sandbox-y , will emphasize different details, and perhaps be wider in geographic scope. Are you at liberty to comnent on that?

Congratulations!

This implies thar for salt "regionally traded" includes, for example, Prax to Sartar or Balazar to Imther. And implies that Heortland to Sartar is also likely, as it is no more distant than Prax.

? I thought Orlanth's birthplace was Kero Fin. That's his mother, but she is also a mountain and mountains don't travel around.

At this point I am just trying to get oriented on the continent enough to run some trading adventures to and in Pamaltela. I have a long way to go. Let me think about questions.

To my knowledge there isn't much material available on Pamaltela besides the Guide to Glorantha. There are a few pieces in Tradetalk issues, whose canon status is highly questionable. In J C there is War Elephants of Fonrit, but that's not about Fonrit but just about the elephants. Was there a great Pamaktelan boom in fanzines decades ago, and I just missed it? It seems that Pamaltelan population maps were once worked out but have now vanished from the Web. https://wellofdaliath.chaosium.com/home/catalogue/websites/old-glorantha-com-news/guide-to-glorantha-news/population-detail-maps-for-pamaltela-complete/

How about sea routes between Genertela and Pamaltela? Would you go more directly south avoiding Magasta's Pool, or via the East Iskes to make sure you avoid it? In the first case a storm or navigational error can take you down, down to the Chaosium, in the second case the Isles are known breeding grounds for pirates.

Indeed. It's clear in Griifin Mountain that Gonn Orta and his smaller giants trade regularly for food, and they keep many items for other trade. Also that he has a monopoly on direct trade between Prax and the Elder Wilds. I doubt that caravans pass through Gonn Orta's castle. They just pass to it.

On the other hand, for an expert swordsman to evaluate a sword doesn't seem magic to me. An alternative would be to simply use the sword skill or to make it an augment to Evaluate. And on a success I would give specifics, for example if a masterpiece is +10% to hit the Swordsman should know that it has uncommonly good balance and lightness. Similarly an Issaries has the Evaluate skill and should be able to tell whether a deal is fair, and to augment it with another cult skill.

On the other hand in the Real World it was common for a new regime to re coin old currency. The reason was to get the king's (or in this case the Prince's) image out there (next best thing to TV ads) , and to show everyone who was newly in charge. (Sometimes the reason for re coining was also to debase the currency and inflate the treasury. But that is for old regimes struggling with debt, not new ones like Argrath's. Because when the debasing becomes obvious people can see that you're a cheat.) But realistically you can't re coin it all very quickly. You"re making coins one by one with a hammer and a pair of dies. Making or reproducing the dies will be a difficult process in a low tech world. (IMHO it would be worth using iron for dies, even at 700L a Thing In Glorantha. Because you don't want them to wear out.) There would be both old and new coins in circulation for a long time. And as the Guilder and Lunar are approximately the same weight of silver a handful of them is likely to be mixed. Also remember that trade with Peloria continues and the flow of silver is evidently southward rather than being balanced.

Of course the trolls are still around. If you don't beleve me then just spend some time looking at Quora.