Squaredeal Sten

And today Jeff gave the date on Facebook! 

https://www.facebook.com/groups/RuneQuest/permalink/2646377768871539/?mibextid=Nif5oz

(Oct. 9th. so you don't have to try to search Facebook.)

Congratulations on another landmark publication.

What is next?  

On 10/1/2023 at 4:03 AM, David Scott said:

Fertilize is only available to Caladra & Aurelion initiates or Asrelia & Ernalda as associate cults, so this is only going to be available in Caladraland or close by.

Which seems to me to reflect the well known Real World fertility of volcanic soils. 

So I don't know why Lodril doesn't have Fertilize.  Or maybe he does and we will find out when the Pelorian book comes out.

On 9/28/2023 at 8:12 AM, Akhôrahil said:

I think this is the theory - you should be in a clan, after all, andthe clan should hand out the land (for tenants if nothing else) - but that it can get upended by social turmoil. That clan the Lunars dissolved and grabbed the land from, those people still need to go somewhere and make a living. Showing up as itinerant agricultural labor might be one such solution, and could create interesting conflicts when some clan noble feels he doesn't need cottars for a piece of land but can run it on unlanded labor.

So someone can adapt The Grapes of Wrath to Sartar late in the Lunar occupation?  / Remember, that book has a depressing ending, so a heroic rewrite. or  follow-on story,  will be in order for MGF.

In a way [spoiler]  that situation is what Six Seasons series portrays.  But as I recall. the women and children of the broken clan go to their relatives in other clans.  Of course this fuels the rebellion, the men either leave Sartar or become guerrillas.  Great adventure fuel.

2 hours ago, Nick Brooke said:

How does it look?

Beautiful slick cover.  I bought the full color version, first time i have done that.  

 Interior map illustrations are pretty readable.  The zoomed-in ones of sections of the city are very readable, a good thought.

Colored  backgrounds behind the text on all the pages make the text marginally less readable - though cataracts developing in my eyes don't help.  (It could be worse, textured colored backgrounds would be really bad::  This effect of textured backgrounds is  verified by an interesting real-life accidental experiment about 25 years ago.)

I like the organization of the descriptions of parts of the city, 'From the north east", "From the Oslir river'.

I like most of the illustrations of people.

The Furthest map and Kingdom of Tarsh map on pages 6-7 and 77 needs a magnifying glass (which i have) or a really close look (my nose gets really close to the paper) , so I am ordering a poster, and it was a good thought to sell those through Redbubble.

I like the Gazetteer Index!

I like the hierarchy of headline fonts.

On 9/12/2023 at 4:51 PM, Squaredeal Sten said:

Ordered.  That was a quick hard copy status!  

Received my hard copy of Furthest today.  So 20 days from order to receipt via cheapest USPS.  

10 hours ago, Nick Brooke said:

Re-read it. The other Rune master participating in the trade passes their spell to the Issaries priest who cast the spell: nobody else. If that Issaries priest wants to pass it on to somebody else afterwards, that requires a second casting of Spell Trading (and a second profitable trade).

You're right, it does say 'the caster'.

That also seems to me to be an additional limit on someone wanting to go into the spell trading business in a big way: To eventually sell your spell, you need to risk a fumble a second time.    And of course you have to spend two rune points to get the spell and another two to sell it.   Despite the weekly market holy day, which will restore 4 RPs on average, that does seem to me to limit the size of the business:  It's only one such sale and resale per week. 

And that assumes the adventurer won't have other uses for the rune points.  When did we ever see an adventurer who didn't have other uses for the rune points?

49 minutes ago, Jose-san said:

So, if I understand it right, in game terms, Spell Trading is super powerful. And an Issaries priest can potentially amass a great deal of spells. Particularly because every Wildday is a minor holy day...

Yes.  However it does have dpwnsides:

(1) As I read it this is  oriented to trades between two other parties, facilitated by the Issarirs priest.

(2) If the IIssaries trades spells on his own account, my own question is whether and how he is limited by his CHA, as he is with his inventory of his own kmown Issaries spells.

(3) It has some risk:   If the person castng the spell fumbles. it is cast on the recipient rather than traded.  That's just a financial loss if the spell was Bless Pregnancy, but could be fatal if it was 3 points of Ligtming.

Wheel Shield ,

Adding Yelmalio and AA will involve you in rewriting what sounds like the male initiation chapter, which indicates cult choice.    I guess both those players are male, just a guess.

-and should also have effects on interactions with the Ring NPCs in later chapters,

-also with the PCs and players'  identification with what is going on in the final chapter.  I can see that neither of those cults would necessarily care about defending an open air Orlanth temple. But the Black Stag initiation should provide motivation.

Plus when and if you get into Company of the Dragon, Yelmalio identification will have effects on at least one possible adventure. and Argan Argar identification will affect that one too in a different - opposite - way.  I don't want to throw out a mess of spoilers here. But they should end up rolling vs. conflicting  Loyalty passions where other characters would not.

Yes access to holy rites / local shrines, would require that you do some rewriting of the Haraborn clan and their local map.  It is a small clan and I am pretty sure it can't account for enough worshipers for either cult having a temple there.   This implies road trips to Temples as Jajagappa wrote.   Neither is an associated cult with Orlanth, so no dual initiations.   Maybe the Vale can support a Site, which is less than a Shrine.  But if you really want to, you can handwave that.  Anything less than a Temple will only teach one Rune spell, though, RAW.  And if you give them frequent trips to the nearest outside temples of these cults you will lose the inexperienced rural kids vibe that is part of the current story.  

Just to read background, both history and myth, you might get the Glorantha Sourcebook.  https://www.chaosium.com/the-glorantha-sourcebook-hardcover/.

To get some of the original RQ2 charm, buy Cults of Prax and read Biturian's adventures.  Yes some of the cults are in there and it's generally a good orientation on them also,  but those RQ2 writeups are being superceded by the RQiG cults books as they come out.

But a lot of the setting is included in the RuneQuest in Glorantha rules, which are not just rules.  Have you studied the homelands section of that yet?  Just asking what you have read to date.

On 9/24/2023 at 2:18 AM, Joerg said:

Rather than asking what rune spells are available, I am curious who is teaching these rune spells, and how are the sources of these rune spells paid?

Daka Fal as presented in the LIghtbringers still is a cult which uses shamans to call in the ancestral spirits via Axis Mundi. Now shamans are pretty much the antithesis of Malkioni society in Genertela, they have always been presented as the one group of enemy magicians whose dark arts would summon spirits that the wizards aren't really equipped to deal with effectively, whether the Serpent Brotherhood or the White Bear Empire.

 

There has been a schism in Hrestolism between Fronela and Seshnela since Hrestol's return from the Vadeli Isles and him establishing the kingdom of Loskalm in the third decade of History. Hrestol's teachings in Fronela were more advanced than the Seshnegi model, possibly imposing a greater responsibility on the men-of-all than the very adventurous Seshnegi ways that Arkat learned and perfected during his war against Gaalth, the prophet of Nieby/Nysalor in those lands.

Both these ways received the impersonal revelation of the Abiding Book from Jrustela at the time the Return to RIghtness crusade began liberating Seshnela from foreign (Tanisoran, then mercenary) rule. The kingdom of Loskalm wasn't experiencing an existential crisis at the time (yet), and the Loskalmi would have time to study and absorb or critically reject or censor the bits of the Abiding book that would be new to their scripture.

Monastic sorcerers seem to have been a God Learner innovation on Jrustela, quite likely the powerful New Order that was so powerful, imposed on Seshnela during the Return to Rightness Crusade, and in 1050 transplanted into Jonat's nascent kingdom in eastern Fronela. There is no indication how the Fronelan Hrestoli zzaburi were integrated into that society - they could very well have continued the hereditary Zzaburi caste which we also find among the Aeolians, and apparently also a significant amount of Old Seshnegi zzaburi as inherited by the Pithdarans just before the heyday of the New Order led by Pilif the Magus, brought to heel by Saval, the founder of the Middle Sea Empire.

We know about the Brithini sorcerers inhabiting towers to aid them in collecting and maintaining the mana transferred to them by the other castes, aided by Kadeniti city-building feng-shui, but also working when built isolated from the humdrum of that civilization, possibly modeled on Malkion's Citadel of Thought. The archmage of Arolanit inhabits one such glorious tower, there are a few such towers documented in Safelster. (They also make a nifty game piece in the Gods War board game which has a game mechanic for such architecture strengthening the units of the Invisible God faction, at the cost of being incompatible with the temples used by all other non-chaotic factions and the Lunars.)

Kadeniti-invented city planning later was spread by the Jrusteli and can be found wherever they (or the Carmanians propagating the pre-God Learner Fronelan version) influenced the (re-)building of planned cities. (Much like the urban planning of Hippodamos of Milet was found in barbarian Celtic Manching. Angkor Vat might have inherited his methods alongside the spread of the Heracles cult, too, but Mayan, Aztec and Inka urban planning would have to be a parallel evolution.) Ancient cities would have to be re-built fairly often as major disasters would destroy wide areas to the foundations, like earthquakes or major fires, or hostile conquerors and ambitious rulers wishing to leave a mark on history as well as architecture.

 

The modern Kingdom of Seshnela really is the Kingdom of Tanisor claiming a continuation of the legitimacy of the peninsular Kingdom of Seshnela that was destroyed in 1049. The fact that some outlying areas in the lower Tanier Valley were exempt from the curse of transformation into beastman that the Luatha released on the core lands of peninsular Seshnela might be (somewhat maliciously) interpreted as the citizens of lower Tanisor not qualifying as Seshnegi, or it might simply mark the outer extent of their sorcery. (Pasos was hit by the sinking, the fate of the original inhabitants of this part of Seshnela is unclear. The Isles could have been re-settled after the cataclysm. The Tanisoran urge for expansion is documented in the acquisition of the island of Gilboch that the aldryami ceded to the Bailifide princess Gwelenor a few generations ago.

The Rokari movement originated in Leplain, in a border region of Safelster. The majority of the natives are of Enerali or Hykimi (as in Old Beast Alliance) descent rather than of Brithini ancestry, with the exception of the nobility which had been marrying in adventurist men-of-all into old Fornoari nobility. (A noble heritage quite likely shared by one of the greatest kings of Seshnela, Gerlant Flamesword, although an age earlier.) Bailifes and his brothers in arms came from Rindland, the core region of Fornoar and the Autarchy. They might actually have lineages tracing back to the elder children of Nralar leaving their homeland to Jrustela, from conquerors forcibly marrying into Autarchy nobility which in turn may have followed Arkat from Seshnela or even Brithos and mingled with the native solar nobility for a veneer of inheritance of descent from the land goddess for their dynasties.

The Earth Goddess of Rindland and Tanisor would be the Green Lady of Ralios rather than serpentine Seshna Likita, though. Seshna's serpent-legged descendants had expanded all the way into Nolos in the second century, conquering the territories of the two eastern Pendali tribes before their non-Serpent-legged successors lost them to the Pralori. While the Green Lady enjoys serpentine symbolism almost as much as Seshna, only Seshna is depicted with a serpentine tail rather than human legs among the land/grain goddesses.

The Tanisorans clearly have (need for) a rice goddess alongside their spelt wheat goddess. They might have introduced Krala or Miyo from Kralorela during the Second age, or they might rely on Safa (the lake goddess) instead.

Wow!  A complex yet cogent explanation of the various Malkioni sects and their geography.  I hope something like this with an accompanying map will be in the Sorcery book.

re

3 minutes ago, Akhôrahil said:

By the way, does anyone have an idea how cottars get their fields plowed, given that by definition they don’t have a plow team? Borrow one (this means that there has to be excess plow teams available for it)? Work the fields it by hand (doable, but I doubt you can manage a full hide that way)?

(This would work out easier if they had a smaller patch of land and then had to put their excess labor to work on someone else’s fields.)

Cottars who farm work someone else's land and the "someone else" owns the plow and oxen as well as the hide of land.  They are the agricultural laborers who are not members of the steadholder's family.   They may actually guide the plow or goad the oxen, they hoe the weeds, they swing the sickle and bind the sheaves.   They get paid with use of enough land for a hut plus a garden, which is worked with a hoe or even a digging stick. and probably are paid wages and fed in busy seasons.   They may get their cash money from selling garden vegetables.

(Glorantha appears to have no modern style itinerant farm laborers, so the farmhands have to be provided for somehow and are members of the clan, meaning they have more rights in practice than your itinerant laborer even though they cannot vote.  Tom Joad is not born yet.)

Cottars who herd, don't need a plow team.  These are many of your shepherds and cowherds.  In summer they are expected to camp near the flock in the high pastures.  In winter they have a hut at the stead or the village, and if they are lucky they are employed feeding hay to the herd.  Maybe they also helped cut that hay.

Otherwise like many other peasants in  winter, cottars eke out a living as generic crafters.  Maybe also as construction laborers; When your Adventurers buy land improvements IAW W&E, who do you think makes the adobe bricks or digs post holes and hauls logs for a palisade?

Do give them Hataborn information including who is on the clan ring.  Stuff that anyone in the clan will know.  It's a small clan and they will have seen the Ring members all their lives.  IMG The Ernalda priestess knew my PCs since they were born, literally midwifed them.  Told embarrassing baby stories to one.

Remember. they don't choose cults and get initiated into cults until after the adulthood initiation, The Riddle chapter for girls and Rites of Passage chapter  for boys.

For me this meant that I interrupted my players' character creation after step 4 and choice of parents' occupation in step 5. They don't get the cult skills and magic until later.  Nor the weapons, they do the initiation essentially naked.  See RQiG page 25 box on "inexperienced adventurers".

So they start out young, without the experience (skills and magic)  ordinarily credited to ages 16-21.  They will gain some of this in subsequent chapters.  I assumed accelerated adulthood training by the clan will give them more of that up front, rather than evenly distributed across five years, so they got free training each season.  That is essentially the step 7 personal skill bonuses plus the step 5 occupational and step 6 cult stuff.  Note that role playing this as Haraborn will make it hard to begin with the Heavy Cavalryman occupation, for example, or Lankhor Mhy library use.  Instead my players had to essentially get a job, and the choice of jobs was limited by the situation.

But when the 6th season ends they will still need four of their five years to age 21.  So think now about what you will  do after the 6th season.  You can go directly to Company of the Dragon.  But note that ALM's advice and plan  in COD is that within limits you as GM choose from a menu of adventures, and you can inject your own.  Do write the COD adventure sequence out (on ALM's runic form)  because many of these build on each other.    My own choice, (since COD was not quite out yet but was imminent) was to send the group out of Sartar for a game year of seasoning, and I worked in some classic RQ2 material as well as an adaptation from the Heroquest Sartar Companion for their return.  Now is when they can try to get other jobs.  Lots of choices for you as GM  here and your Glorantha will vary.

Good luck.  It's fun!

In my opinion it is too much trouble -  and takes too much time -  to re-calculate the skill category modifiers for temporary and situational things like this.

So I would only apply it to rolls against the raw charisma  score.

18 hours ago, Rodney Dangerduck said:

🙂  I think so

Historically, mothers died in 1-2% of births (each birth) , ...

That maternal death figure seems low considering the anecdotal info in biographies.  Yes it is anecdotal.

But there is this info:  https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/3511335/

and this https://www.brandeis.edu/now/2023/may/mothers-day.html#:~:text=Most historians agree that child,from complications related to childbirth.

indicates a 30% cumulative probability of death in childbirth in ancient Greece.  Of course the rate per individual pregnancy is much lower.  But if I assume fertility from age 16 to 35 and pregnancy one third of the time, that would be about 7 pregnancies in a full life, which seems to match your child survival rate and replacement assumptions fairly well.  That indicates a per- birth rate of maternal death over 4%. 

Anyway the 30% cumulative is pretty daunting for me, a man.  And reminds me unpleasantly of my wife's experience with our first child: a 10 hour labor and Caesarian, she (the baby)  wasn't turned right.  So Bless Childbirth seems to me to be very desirable, not magic whose acquisition would be minimized in the fashion that large corporations have been minimizing hospital beds to minimize " excess capacity" in the RW.  Which turned out to be unexpectedly risky in recent years, indicating that minimizing investment does not minimize tragedy.  

9 hours ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

however, what about people (community) who don't worship any deity providing this spells ? Is there any statistic difference ? Are malkioni weaker than ernaldan countries ?

Or is Ernalda worshipped every where, with the same ratio ?

it is "no brain" if you consider it from an irl player perspective. But if you consider it as an opportunity offered by Ernalda and only chosen women can learn it (aka that is not pc who decide what is learnt but only p-layers for their play/pleasure) there is no question of brain then 🙂

I have read more about Malkionism than I absorbed, so I don't pose as an authority.  But there seem to be strict and loose sects of Malkioni.  The strict ones not dealing with gods, and the loose ones using gods.

I can see at least three possibilities:

1- Strict Malkionism with No childbirth magic.  Worse childbirth outcomes limit the sect's population growth and recovery from disasters.  Sect has limited influence in the world.  People who see that there are better ways to live, leave, perhaps to be less strict, perhaps to be theists or shamanists.

2- Strict Malkionism, but Wizards create childbirth sorcery. (Not in RQiG rules example spells, but we have been told what is in the rulebook is a truncated version of sorcery for Lhankor Mhy.)

3- Loose Malkionists worship Ernalda, or know someone who does.  They use what works for them.  This practicality gives us the Esvulari of Heortland, if I understand them correctly.

I will say that  Bless Crops must be what accounts for the productivity of Gloranthan agriculture , and applying this rule  to the Blessing spells means that every stead had better  have an Ernaldan or two with Bless Crops,

- or really needs a generous neighbor who will extend her blessings.  Those blessings should return big obligations and social status too.

An Ernaldan in the farming occupation who does not take the blessing rune spells first, seems to me to be a power gamer from that time forward. 

As for the warrior's / thane's / chieftain's wife,  she really needs Bless Champion and/or Earth Shield, and enough RPs to cast Extension, if she does not want to be a widow.  Add in blessing crops for the tenants of five hides, and blessing pregnancies, maybe Healing Body, a Household Guardian, , and she should sacrifice a lot of POWer.  We are not talking  about 1-point initiates here.

The other side of this is that NPC Ernaldans' MPs should normally be lower than their POW.

Thanks, Phil Hibbs.

We have been told that temples will have shrines to associated gods.  So Ernakda temples will have shrines to Babeester Gor.  

Therefore doesn't it seem reasonable that Axe Hall, as the foremost BG temple, would have a shrine to Ernalda?  And since it is on the edge of Esrolia, perhaps shrines to other Earth goddesses, all  of whose cults BG initiates protect?

This should give enough access to Fertility that Axe Hall can have associated garden and farm areas.  So they need not haul every bite they eat up from Esrolia below the plateau.

9 hours ago, Darius West said:

Don't get too bent out of shape by this Joerg.  Consider; Before Time the whole conception of location and movement is a lot less concrete and a lot more plastic and malleable.  The relations of the creatures of that world may have a conception of the 3 dimensions of space, but there is no 4th Time dimension yet, thus it was far easier to be in two places at once.  Much later in the Second Age, this  offended the God Learners, who set about constructing the Monomyth specifically to retro-engineer Time into their mathematical model so their minds could cope with all the temporal contradictions.  The monomyth is an artificial timeline superimposed onto static information.  If you move within the environment without Time, then things seem to move too.  Your internal movements count too, thus you cannot pause the God Time unless you can freeze your own organs and blood supply.  Some mystics can, no-doubt, achieve this.

It is hard for us to deal with the mystically different pre-Time situation. To me, no time also implies no sequence and no causation.  But obviously in Gloranthan myth that is not so, because there is plenty of causation and even sequence in the myths.   There is no need to imagine freezing your own blood supply, clearly that was not the ore Time situation.

Orlanth uses Death to kill Yelm, that is causation.  Orlanth's contests with Yelm precede that killing, so there is sequence. 

So I am left with Time as the ordering of  the actions of men, just as you might start with a basket full of pieces of yarn all tangled, and then you might take them out, straighten them and lay them out side by side or end to end or in a matrix and weave them together.  

But the godtime myths, being generally pre Time, seem to stay in the basket.  Even though in myth we clearly have divine parentage: Umath is the father if Orlanth, so there is sequence and causation.  We have a young Orlanth put in a pit by his bad uncles, and a later Orlanth who has learned his capabilities.  .  I suppose that " no time" means that in the godtime that was not necessarily before or after Orlanth's contests with Yelm. but any two strands legend could cross anywhere.

So I understand the God Kearners' impulse to order myth, because now in Time that is the only way we can understand things.

4 hours ago, Erol of Backford said:

Creepy but fun!

Mushrooms and roots... not citrus likely but wouldn't a large temple tend to also be somewhat able to support itself? I still think of pools of goop that grow vegetation for sustenance, some elves for gardening, well protected of course from the trolls, they are also BG initiates. Maybe the staff asks the PC's to run to Munchrooms and bring plants and or Dark Elves to assist with the garden or cavern food growth. IIRC there is a huge Chaos Garden which grows more than enough food for denizens in Shadow on the Borderlands.

 Giant mushroom blood soup with onions and other roots. The trolls want that with meat of any type thrown in.

How many at Ax Hall, I'd guess 400-500 including tent village? Pilgrims would add another 100-250 depending on season and day.

That would be another rabbit hole and another thread. We avoid healers for instance our Basmoli was raised at the Paps and learned some basic healing skills before departing and our party leader, the Vingan was to have been a Chalana Arroy healer but decided that violence is always an option after learning some basics...

I agree, think on it, the Shadow Plateau is about the same height as the Blue Fox Hills or Rich Post. In the clips below the Shadow Mesa (it's a mesa isn't it) might look like this from say Duck Point but yes much much greener. The sand would be removed and given to the "glass blower craftsmen" who use imprisoned Lodri to create some of the most exquisite obsidian sand blow glass in all of Glorantha.

  

Ha, a new reason to come to Ax Hall besides Blood Beer.

But the Blood Beer does come in square bottomed bottles for more economical packing which also pays homage to the Earth Mother via its shape.

 Yes, yet another rabbit hole:

https://www.beachcombingmagazine.com/blogs/news/west-indies-treasure-trove-of-black-glass

Someone had mentioned a scenario near Geos by the Marsh where vampires stole the beer shipments? Does anyone recall as that would be something we could use if there is a source?

Still also trying to find a copy of the of the old scenario Into the Wasp's Nest...

 

I think of the Tarpit, where the Only Old One was killed, and which Is a blocked access to the Underworld basement passage,  as in the former palace of black glass.  Which would have been  big, but would not even come close to covering the whole plateau.

That would have left a lot of land for the Uz to live off of, which they would have needed with the larger pre-destruction population.  

Axe Hall at the other end of the plateau would not have been involved in the falling palace.  Sand blowing in later, yes, but no big chunks falling from the sky at Axe Hall.

I have seen it confidently and repeatedly stated that while a rune spell is "up and running", in other words a spell with duration is in effect, the rune point(s) used for it cannot all be replenished.

This raises its head not only when the adventurers are worshiping under a Sanctify spell, but also when spells such as Bless Pregnancy, Bless Crops, or Bless Champion are cast. Also, presumably when an Issaries Create Market is cast.

But i cannot reference that assertion in the RQiG rues, nor in the Q&A in Well of Daliath.  Not in RQiG page 315 Replenishing Rune points.  Not on page 244 under Worship. 

Is that just someone's house rule, or is it actually an official written rule, or derivable from the written rules?  If so, how and where?

2 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

Well, maybe there is — I wouldn’t want to tell you to rule it out (there are/could be other earth presences) — but would bring fertility to a pile of ground glass? Maybe — only maybe — BG likes it because it is dead and black. (IIRC, flipping the Egyptian colour-coding: black = fertile soil (Nile flood plane); red = nasty burning chaos (desert, foreigners).)

There is no reason to assume that there is not potentially fertile soil under the fragments of obsidian.  Volcanic activity often comes up through weak points in sedimentary rock layers.  So when the Palace of Black Glass was intact the rest of the plateau may have been a fertile place.   A little volcanic debris from the Gods Age would probably add to its fertility.   If you scrape off the black sand you may still have fairly good soil under it.  

1 hour ago, g33k said:

TYVM!
Tho at the end there -- "the brew is of the blood of gods, the company is perfect and all pain, suffering and worry of the cultists is removed" -- it almost seems like they've been transported to that other Axe Hall... the one in the Underworld, where Babs herself resides.

it sure does.  Maybe Axe Hall is like some other holy sites, where the membrane between the Middle World and the Gods World is thin -  and with the proper ceremony it is permeable.  Maybe it is like a kind of second initiation: The pilgrimage is more than just touristing and buying souvenirs. 

Sure at the temple they give you a drink of ordinary blood beer. But that is just the start: You pass from world to world, you are drinking with Axe Sisters that you would swear are dead, you get a drink of the godly blood beer, you're drunk on your ass, you see things out of myth, but when you wake up the next day you may get another benefit (and it's not necessarily sex with Eurmal, or if it is, then we have to ask ourselves what BG learned from that episode, and translate that to an effect on the character). 

That line about removing pain and worry may be an invitation to remove a bothersome passion from the character sheet, or perhaps to heal old scars.   (Though BG has Heal Body anyway if i recall correctly.)  Maybe you can give up POW and get a Rune spell, which is not very strange for learning the myth behind the spell.  Maybe you can get something else, the GM's choice to push you along the Goddess's path to Rune status.

6 hours ago, Erol of Backford said:

...

Does BG forbid non humans to join? Maybe there are some troll females in the ranks as most troll warriors, that I've seen are males, possibly a female troll BG initiate would be a fun change?

///

The Earth Goddesses, page 53, first paragraph under Initiate Membership,  says "Trolls must pass an additional CHAx3 test to join the cult."

On the preceding page it says lay membership is open to all the Elder Races.  The only limitations are "non-Chaotic sentient".

So BG does not forbid non humans to join. It doesn't even look as though you have to be female to be a lay member, since "Lay members are often merely the militia for lands that worship the many Earth goddesses."  (page 51).  Of course the men never get promoted to Initiate.  But "During wartime they may wrest whatever comfort is possible from the camaraderie of their comrades."

The last lines of "Greg Sez: Esrolian Q&A (2001)" explains what Axe Hall is like for the pilgrim.

https://wellofdaliath.chaosium.com/home/gloranthan-documents/greg-sez/esrolian-qa/

"24. Is Axe Hall on the Shadow Plateau a site holy to Babeester Gor? What happens there?
A: It is her biggest holy place. She there struck down Ovodaka. Babeester Gor worshippers try to pilgrimage there because their goddess is very powerful. The brew is of the blood of gods, the company is perfect and all pain, suffering and worry of the cultists is removed."