Squaredeal Sten

What is the status of the Volsaxi in 1625-1629? The Sartar tribal map https://wellofdaliath.chaosium.com/the-tribes-of-sartar-1625-1626/ shows Whitewall as a tribe(!) At the southernmost edge if Sartar. The Heortland map https://wellofdaliath.chaosium.com/heortland-map/ shows the Volsaxi immediately south of that if I read it correctly. The history is that the Volsaxi became independent of Belintar, and under Sartarite influence and aid the Kitori were crushed, resulting in Sartarure control of the trade south to the Holy Country. Presumably the Volsaxi were nominally independent until 1619. But after the Lunar conquest, Broyan's revolt, and Broyan's death, Heortland descends into localism and warlordism. Are the Volsaxi, with their reputation for independence, still operating as a tribe or are they just a memory? When does Argrath acquire influence over Heortland?

Two thoughts on that: 1- the examples of illusory movement are that the thing created, moves. Not that the spell caster moves, because he is not the thing created. He has to do his own real movement. Each created feature (sight, smell, etc.) Is a perception of the thing created. 2-But if you don't accept that reasoning, the illusion(s) still would not apply to everyone else. So if there are witnesses, they still see the Eurmali who believes he has moved. They see him in his original place acting strangely.

I am with the limited munchkinery crowd when GMing - so: Not as I read it. They can make a new "there" around them. It just takes, as written above, somewhere on the order of a million Rune Points to make the "place", 1 point per 60kg or 12 SIZ points. GMs choice between those units. So making a hallucinated closet is easier than a city or ocean. A hallucinsated ladder or starcase would be about the capacity of most folks. Hallucinated air and a door in place of a stone jail wall? I am not sure that un- creating the stone is in the spell. But max fun, sure I'd bend the rule a little. Being teleported is a concept ( in RW physics terms an instant change in coordinates) while the Hallucinate spell makes things / perceptions in a limited way. "motion, odor, sight, sound, substance, or taste." No coordinates in that list. Coordinate systems are not a Gloranthan thing as far as I can see. But I would grant a lot of Wile E. Coyote play value.

Yes, specifically along the Zola Fel River, according to Borderlands. But I understand that Oakfed was "fed" with the oaks of Prax, so once upon a time in the godtime there were trees, when Prax was Genert's Garden. But today. In the Third Age, there are very few, only at oases and in the Zola Fel valley. And perhaps at marshes, though if I recall correctly the largest marsh in Prax is infested with Chaos which is bad for life in general.

I will look for it. ..... Temples & Towers? OK.

My own image of Prax is West Texas and New Mexico. Which is not very different from some of the Arizona photos Jeff has shown. There is plenty of fuel there other than herd beast dung. Wildfires are occasionally a problem. While at lower elevations trees are only found near watercourses, and large trees are very rare, seasonal watercourses are good enough to grow trees. The trees away from watercourses which are native to the area are usually Mesquite, which usually appears as "brush" but occasionally grows to 20+ feet and a couple of feet thick, like the one in my daughter's back yard. Anyway, the " brush" will support campfires. No big logs, obviously, so you have to keep feeding the fire. To the extent that the trees on watercouses are cottonwood, that is not good firewood. It burns too quickly. It's the cotton candy of trees, looks good but does not nourish a fire. If you give cottonwood to Oakfed, he probably curses you. At higher elevations in New Mexico there are pine forests. For thousands of years these provided lumber for roof beams for people who lived days' journeys away. Not firewood, that's too hard to haul without wheels.

Adobe (mud bricks) is dry climate architecture, needs a good roof and even with a roof sometimes needs repair because rooves leak. (Modern RW adobe in the southwestern US is sometimes stabilized for high end construction.) But I never have seen a comprehensive Gloranthan architectural guide. It would be good to see the art direction.

I don't think all that follows from flight. Your flying mount flaps its wings, is neither stationary nor a place where you can set up a level table and carefully measure angles. You couldn't do that on a horse, why will it work on a hippogriff?

No, I mean a grudge from before the Muse Roost battle. Not to deny that killing Gunda could get Harrek picqued.

I had the impression that Harrek had something against Ethelrist from earlier times. But I do not know what.

Muse Roost is in the Grazelands. So that raid is not a Tarsh event, though it is more or less a result of Argrath"s first Tarsh campaign.

I believe Muse Roost was heavily looted. But Ethelrist survives, and is evidently eventually welcome at at Argrath's court. At least that is what Ethelrist himself writes, see p. 750 of Guide to Glorantha.

Nick. I bought the Glamour books for background and found them great reading and instructive in NPC creation. But for me to make a jump to a campaign - I don't have enough to stand on. What the Lunar Empire needs as a Runequest campaign area is to be fleshed out with just such a campaign book as you just described.

Looking at the Runequest in Glorantha rules page 175, which describes the alchemy skill, and lists four types of potions; Healing, Antidotes, Poisons, and Medicines- I see a subtle difference from RQ2 pages 48 and 50 on potions. Which lists "Battle Magic" as a general potion type. Therefore I beleve that there may be no spirit magic spell potions in the RQiG version Glorantha.

I was always told that geometry grew out of surveying fields. Certainly on the Egyptian side. So the resulting surveys might - or might not - be used for large scale maps, mostly for purposes of land ownership and taxation. But measurement in degrees is also useful for astronomy / astrology, for which they were famous, and the old style observatory before telescopes appears to have been a high point (hill or ziggurat) with reference points and angle measuring tools.

The reason I was thinking of that today is that I was consideting a possible Lankhor Mhy character who is a geographer. Possibly under the Lunar domination he even studied mapping in Peloria. Now post Dragonrise he may be one of the rare people Argrath would want to make maps for both military and civil use. Of course having studied in Peloria he is sometimes suspected of Lunar sympathies.

This brings up questions of Pelorian mapping and land navigation techniques: as far as I observe, the paradigm for the Lunars has shifted from Roman to Mesopotamian. If that is the case we should not assume Roman. But it leads to another train of thought: I was taught that the division of the circle into 360 degrees is Babylonian geometry. So at some point the Babylonians were using it, and I presume they measured degrees as well as just talking about them. I don't know whether any archaeologist has found an ancient protractor, but I believe they existed. Ancient theodolite? Probably not although the Antikithera device shows the ancients were capable of some very exact metalwork So back to Glorantha: Might the Lunars' Pelorian mapping techniques have included use of not only a plane table but also a protractor - and of course the magical compass needles which would point to a particular city or temple, or perhaps to Magasta"s Pool, the center of the world? If you combine those (and have needles for three or four widely separated cities) then with very careful observations you should be able to make a set of tolerably accurate maps at a small scale, and make a usable world map or at least Genertelan map, even by RW modern standards. This does not give you modern topographic maps. But then, an uncomfortable fact: most RW modern people have not been taught to read a topographic map, so that may not be relevant to our RQ games. And another uncomfortable fact: my marketing research work indicated that about 25% of the population I was dealing with are what I call non mapping; For example they may be familiar with where two transit routes go, but not realize that two destinations on different routes are only a few blocks apart. I have other corroborating stories. Navigationally, these folks are still back in pre industrial times, using itineraries / directions, in their day to day life. And that is what a GPS app on their phone gives them. So don't look down on ancient folks too much when we talk about their using itineraries.

It seems that most of us who spoke up so far have had most of our contact with heroquests in King of Dragon Pass. "Us" definitely includes me. I have used a KODP heroquest in my own Zoom campaign. And I have used one from Greg Stafford's material, with less appeal to the players, in a different campaign. Another very short one based on Chaosium's published material. I would like to GM more heroquests based on canon material / deep lore. I appreciate the published advice to let the players write their own, but do not have players inclined to do that so far. For me the Other Side can / should be pretty reachable from the mundane Glorantha. It is my understanding that there should be many traditional "in world" heroquests performed especially at Sacred Time. And that their closeness to Godtime can be escalated. Ideally there would be a library of these for GMs.

This has an obvious tie-in with that Gloranthan astronomy book you haven't written yet!😀 I know the tidal variation can be considerable, but I am no oceanographer and don't know what produces famous RW tidal locations like the Bay of Fundy. Have you looked into this, and the implications for Gloranthan coastal locations?

Sacred Time is coming up. We know that Lightbringer Quests can be dangerous and no one wants to go down like Kallyr. What is a different Orlanthi heroquest to strengthen the clan? Dig into that mythology, guys.

Nevertheless these events are to the advantage of Sartar. 1) Sartar is not the war zone, instead Tarsh is. For a change. 2) Sartar can trade freely from rebel Tarsh to the Holy Country, this is nearly as good as the old days before the Lunar invasions. 3) With the Lunar Civil War starting, Sartarites can trade even farther north. With some risk. 4) And unless I am wrong Argrath forms a league or alliance with the disparate parts of the Holy Country.

Sartar or Argrsth? Anyhow, thanks.

It strikes me that we have been told Chaosium deals with more than one printer. While it appears that the Cults of Glorantha series is all going to one printer, probably for consistency and price, it may be that other Runequest projects can go to other printers while the Cults series is still in initial production. If so we will all be happy. Here's to hope. And congratulations to Jeff and everyone who worked on the Cults books.

Sure, you already have my email too. Or can do it my message here. Either one.

The southern parts of Tarsh that are in rebellion are probably going to see less of anything coming south on the Oslir. This looks like an opportunity for the Salt trade to restructure.