Squaredeal Sten

So let's say, theoretically, that while the Adventurer is discorporate someone steals his matrix from his left- behind body.. Now we have two matrices: The one in the shaman's spirit hands and the one carried away by the thief. How do you resolve that when the shaman returns to his body? How do you resolve that before the shaman returns to his body? For example what if the thief uses the matrix?

If an adventurer or adventurers discorporate and enter the spirit world (let's assume this is under the guidance of a shaman) Then can they use magical matrices? I am inclined to say no. If they want to use such magic items that are on their bodies then they need to use them before they discorporate. Once they are in the spirit world and away from their bodies they can't use the matrix. I can see this issue coming up soon, so want to check this opinion.

My own mental image runs to a very large crystal building which will accommodate hundreds or thousands. While it would have spires it would not be a spire.

Unquestionably yes. They are a variety of Keet so presumably they talk. It is in the Guide to Glorantha see the index. For instance 80 000 keeps in the East Isles.

Griffin Mountain indicated that the giants as a group eat infrequently. The elves appear to provide an annual caravan of greens, and Praxians sometimes trade a herd of meat. But it says nothing about Gonn Orta's individual appetite. I suspect that the frequency of giants' meals is inverse to their size, maybe an exponential function. So Gonn Orta might eat every decade or every century or two. At the other extreme a small giant only as tall as a two story house, such as you might meet walking the path by Snakepipe Hollow, might say "Fee, fi. Fo, fum" and eat you.

John Mith kept a house in Jonstown for some time before 1615ST / Griffin Mountain, and per the Starter Set is High Priest of Issaries in Jonstown in 1626. So he apparently started from one of the tribes of the Jonstown confederation. Therefore I would say yes. His base was always Jonstown even though in his youth he would not have owned a house there. He would have stopped making the Balazar trip in early 1626 after the Dragonrise, assuming his annual trip pattern which was to winter in Balazar and return to Jonstown when the mountain passes thawed. His first trip date is not given but in roughly 1615 he had been doing it for several years, indicated by his owning a house in Trilus. He may have traded to Prax as a young man but we don't know where he met his wife, who is from Pavis. Possibly they met in Pavis but possibly she met him in Sartar. Zix Porub is younger than Joh, and has been married to Joh for 11 years in Griffin Mountain, but that book has no definite Gloranthan date so you can say marriage in 1603 or 1604. But maybe he first did the trip before they married. So maybe as early as 1599? As for the Yellow Bear inn I doubt that anyone has published detail. Why would the player character go berserk? MAKING him go berserk sounds railroadish, in the absence of a reason. If the question is whether one can have a mounted werebear head or would the were revert to a human face on death, the Bestiary says nothing about it, in fact the only canon were are Telmori. The non Gloranthan trope is reversion. If you follow the telmori example then you might have it both ways, either the Chaos shape change persisting or a rune spell shape change reverting after 15 minutes. So whatever you think is fun.

"Learn". On the other hand in my Glorantha, we have a (male) Chalana Arroy who joined the cult during play. So he has Orlanth / farmer skill history from his youth / character generation and a little experience. He is not currently learning combat skills, but has used the old skill levels vs. Undead. And I see no reason he couldn't parry with a staff although his staff skill is beginner level.

From the back of the W&E book: Walktapus hide gloves. Long lasting and heat resistant, useful to smiths and other Gustbran cultists. Magically stabilized so the walktapus will not regenerate.

That particular point is probably not true for Aldryami: That is, while they are not going to get cholera, they may get plant diseases from decomposing plants. Example: In the Real World, the Texas freeze of 2021 damaged my fig trees and that summer I found a fungus on them which destroyed bark. It grew quickly. MANY branches died. I sought advice from the agricultural extension service and was told there is no cure, you should remove pruned branches from the area and probably burn them, and disinfect your pruning tools, else these will infect the healthy part of your trees. In such a circumstance infected Aldryami corpses would endanger others, and a good Gardener might indeed burn them instead of burying them.

Griffin Mountain has player handout maps. They are route sketch maps. I will check A/H Trollpack when I get home, think there is at least one. OK, from the A/H (RQ3) Trollpack - there are three pieces of player handouts. They contain lots of text, a sketch of an Uz village, at least two cave/dungeon sketches, and this (upload below) is a scan of a map for a journey, about 4"x3" in the original.

It depends on what the Yelmalian surveyors were surveying for. Without knowing, I would guess surveying fields. Establishing boundaries for ownership and calculating area for taxation. The ancient Egyptians had that down. They may well have had local maps if only as an index to the tax records. But if that is the case, that doesn't indicate possession of accurate large scale maps to find your way cross country by. I definitely agree that the GM's maps will and should be better than anything the players buy in campaign.

There have been generations , very long generations, in mapping techniques. Before aerial photography (and no, flying on your hippogriff wont give you aerial photos) maps were harder to make and in the early industrial age were done with a combination of survey and a mapping table. As I understand the mapping table a very good draftsman would set up a table on a high point, orient it carefully, mark his location as a center point, and then carefully mark the lines of sight to ends of a ridge and sketch it in. Same with road junctions, woods. Towns. Continue until you have all the terrain features that you consider important. Do this from two or three intervisible places nearby and you can be pretty accurate about distances. That is the way that outstanding mapmakers did small scale maps during the American Civil War. I will look for a link that might help you visualize it. Here are a couple; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jedediah_Hotchkiss https://oldmapgallery.com/products/ma-nantucket-nantucket-harbor?pr_prod_strat=description&pr_rec_id=51709e792&pr_rec_pid=6727210369206&pr_ref_pid=6727210270902&pr_seq=uniform But that is a technique for small scale maps. And I don't know of any evidence that this technique goes back anywhere close to the bronze age. So while it could have been done earlier, the evidence I have seen indicates either not done at all or rarer and cruder. If you look at pre industrial revolution maps they look much cruder. The best are large scale maps based on measured latitudes but they have inaccurate longitude. Coastlines are sometimes pretty good sketches done by skilled navigators. Other times they bear little relation to modern maps of the same areas. Before measurement of latitude was done well, you would have done better to navigate use books of sailing directions. And that is what sailors actually did in the 1500s and 1600s. Maps were for strategic planning, not for actually going anywhere. So far I haven't gone back anywhere close to the bronze age. We should all be grateful for the clay tablet map above. I will look for an article reporting a Celtic bronze age map of a single small kingdom, basically one watershed, carved into a stone slab. It is cool but also rare and not portable. Here it is! https://www.archaeology.org/news/9580-210407-bronze-age-map Anyway, another series of developments is the symbols used to represent land forms. Now we expect topographic maps to use contour lines. Go back 100-300 years and they used hachures to indicate the slopes of hills and mountains Before that things are much cruder. That clay map tablet pictured above uses different symbols that we are not used to interpreting. But that also held less information. Look at this article too: https://www.archaeology.org/issues/337-1905/features/7542-ancient-maps which shows different Real world styles of mapping from different times and places. A third difference between the modern era and ancient times is map reproduction. Maps used to be rare and precious things. Even a good map will lose accuracy if it is hand copied a few times. There are neither xerography nor offset presses on Glorantha. To get back to Glorantha: No, I doubt that they would have acceptable maps by modern standards or even 17th century standards.. A hide with landmarks and turn directions painted on it, or a piece of wood like that Inuit coastline map. Basically notes to remind someone who had been to a place before, is what I would expect. More of a visual aid for a verbal explanation, than what we think of as a map.

Speaking of timelines, what I don't know of is a source for family history tables suitable for non humans. It is my understanding that for many events the non humans wouldn't be involved or the effects would be different. Of course anyone would see and feel the Dragonrise. But the Aldryami would not be involved in the Lunar conquest and loss of Sartar until the Great Winter, and then I would expect them to go inactive. Where humans have die rolls for conflict with neighboring clans, Aldryami should have a chance of Uz raids and conflict with neighboring humans. But maybe not in the same years. So when you get to that stage of character creation you will have to improvise or skip it. That stage usually yields some passions, perhaps some assets, and some skill increases. Overall I think a character gains by it. Think about replacing a loyalty: clan with a loyalty: forest. A bigger issue for me is what would start an Aldryami adventuring with a group of humans. I understand two possibilities; an elf born (sprouted?) with missing empathetic tie with the forest, or an elf performing a diplomatic and trade function. An Aldryami should be uncomfortable around humans. They burn trees for firewood and cut down trees for houses. Imagine living around people who routinely burn piles of what is to you corpses, in their houses! The stench should put you off.

It is interesting that the Glorantha Bestiary lists giant wasps, beetles, dragonflies praying mantises, and bees - but not ants. However it does list giant ant lions. I wonder: What do the giant ant lions live on? Besides Adventurers. Are ants intentionally omitted because an ant colony would be too tough to fight?

I will make the correction. And that's a good thought about the double eagle.

You have listed a number of good reasons why it would be rare even within the cult. Another reason it should be rare, IMHO, is that the priest doing the enchanting has to put one of his own POW points in at a minimum. So he is not going to be mass producing enchanted rain barrels or whatever. One more reason: 200 L per POW, (edit) 10 Wheels, is standard annual pay for a noble. So the number of staff the clan or the temple can keep will be limited by such paid production: They don't have a lot of discretionary cash, not on that scale of expenditure. And look at the income figures occasionslly listed for clans and temples. That could cut into the patronage jobs. Despite all this I agree with a previous poster that it makes sense for a clan to make some powerful magic items for "clan magic." It depends on how strategic they are, or how much they have to live from hand to mouth. I also have misgivings about the high price of POW, as follows: Usually I am the one being told not to extrapolate "the real Glorantha" from game mechanics, but now I am saying it. 200L per point of POW is derived from setting a cost for one-time Rune spells. But that is really for parties of adventurers who don't know anyone in town and have a pressing need for help. In "the real Glorantha" most use of rune magic probably is done not on a financial basis but on a social basis. For example a female farmer initiate of Ernalda, with a Free SOL of 60L for her entire household, does not get rich casting Bless Crops at 20L a point. Even though she can replenish RP at weekly Ernalda holy days. Instead she blesses her own family's crops and then helps her neighbors out. That is why Gloranthan farming is so productive. She doesn't do it for pay and they can't afford to pay her that much, it's more cash than a Poor or even a Free family has on hand. She gets social benefits: They owe her favors, she has status in the community, she is working toward God Talker, that's why she is worth so much ransom, she is a more desirable wife. And if you cross her she just may not bless your crops. And she is also being a better Ernaldan, perfecting her imitation of her archetype goddess.

And as I understand it the Argrath innovation is to mix types of magicians. Some shamans, some Rune priests, some sorcerers. If we look at availability with Argrath's base in Prax, a unit of 50 might be 20 -25 shamans, 20 rune priests, 5-10 sorcerers. Draconic magic would be a 4th category, YGMV. So he doesn't need to recruit large numbers of Esvulari.

i don't know how it is in your Glorantha. But in mine, Argrath starts recruiting Esvulari wizards for his magical units in 1627ST after he is invited to be Prince of Sartar. That is how he intends to develop magical parity or superiority over the Lunars. How does that square with the coming canon view?

OK that indicates the Kultain are still their own tribe in the post Dragonrise period, and Twotop is or was their center. Maybe they lost a clan to Olontongi but that's in the past. And Kultain would be a Sartar tribe not a Heortland tribe. That simplifies the immediate politics to intra 'Kultain. How about that library they were guardians of? It would appear to be in Whitewall territory.

I don't think an Issaries priest would be BOUND to Friedman's point of view. Maybe vulnerable to it, which is not the same. The essence of Issaries as an archetype is doing trade in which both parties bargain and come out ahead, that is they are satisfied with the trade. With a margin of profit for Issaries. But his mythic trading does not contain an element of compulsion, go back and look at Cults of Prax.

Just one minor point on which I ask for clarification or correction: P.109 of the RQiG rules says in its paragraphs on the Wilmskirk confederation, that the Kultain were broken up and became part of the Olontongi as of the base date, 1625 ST. (Olontongi are listed under both Wilmskirk and Whitewall on that page.) So is Twotop the Olontongio tribal center? Are the Olontongi Volsaxi tribe, or their own tribe? Twotop as an Olontongi tribal center seems improbable from the discussion of Whitewalll, but i may have misunderstood.. If Twotop is no longer a tribal center, that will have implications for my campaign outline, only significant because i am working with tribal politics as part of a scenario. I currently lean in the direction of it having suffered in the Lunar retreat, and Twotop would merely be the center of the Red Hand clan, with a potentially valuable location near the trade road into Heortland.

Real World is the answer. Magic is not real but animals, humans, and goods were all sacrificed. We know how that worked / works. POW sacrifice is magic so not real. If the question ia about POW sacrifice then it is self contradictory. Let's go back to RQ questions.

The "cult magics" part seems very reasonable. And that and the GM's evaluation of voluntariness seems to me to be sufficient to stop a POW farm. Except, as you say, under special circumstances that basically exclude Adventurers. I'm pretty sure that the x2 and x3 POW loss part is neither necessary nor supported in the rules. But what is left is sufficient, and gets us past rolling against suddenly created passions. Now what's needed is to make that a brief official statement in Q&A.

In the discussion above we discussed various degrees of voluntariness vs. compulsion applied to donation of POW. Examples included (1) Slavery in which POW is extorted by threat of violence, or possibly deprivation (as coercion of a slave may include deprivation of food or of movement). This includes prisoners of war or captured criminals, as well as the possibility that Nick's trollkin examples are slaves. This situation is morally objectionable to most of us, though I pount out it is not morally objectionable to chaotic cults. (2) Destitution in which economic incentives operate. The destitute party responds to poverty, possibly including hunger and an increased likelihood of childrens' death (per RQiG income effects in sacred time rolls). If Nick's trollkin are "wild" they would be in this category. Nick points out that this is not morally objectionable to people who follow Milton Friedman, who consider all market interactions just. (3) Cult membership in a cult whose demands go beyond the standards in RQiG's Cults chapter. This implies a threat of a spirit of retribution if the member refuses POW donation, but also the incentives of cult membership, which may be both social and magical advantages as well as the ideal of following your god's archetype. We haven't really discussed the moral status of extraordinary cult demands, and there are no book examples of cults which make such demands beyond "standard". But I do consider them possible within the rules. (4) The original bargaining situation which set off Nick's question, in which bandit prisoners' situation began as compulsion but now bargaining with offers and counter offers introduces a voluntary element and moral ambiguity. I see how French Desperate Windchild"s proposed passion rolls may deal with the voluntary POW donation rule for category (1), but not the other categories. Would category (2) require the GM to make a Hate Being Hungry passion? Would category (3) imply a roll vs. Loyalty to Cult passion? Would category (4) imply opposed rolls between a Fear of Death passion and a Love of Freedom passion, and if so what % would you set those passions at? I estimate that anyone who practices banditry must have a fear of death at less than 100%, but there is no book example of considering this a passion nor of considering love of freedom a passion at all. Or do we fall back on "No one can make you do anything" and deny the reality of compulsion? While we are at it let's note that the proposed passion rolls do not make Nick's POW farm uneconomic. They just reduce its yield while providing an easy calculation of the proportion of slaves who will be flogged, or of the destitute who will be hungry.

They are essentially very durable asbestos gloves. Beneficial to smiths and other adherents of Gustbran. Described in Weapons & Equipment book. Of corse their provenance may bother some people.