John Biles

Harrek is very much someone who would annoy the Esrolians just by being alive. But using someone you hate against someone you also hate feels Esrolian to me.

Water is the element which will rock you like a Hurricane.

Aether would be a fire on the earth until pushed away - air needs space and heated air expands, so his own power pushed him away from the Earth.

The Troll Queen didn't show up at all for me - I assume either your background choices or it was random. I got a chaos horde who offered to initiate us all to worship Malia and were very offended when I killed them instead.

It seems to me that one easy way to add in the importance of temple worship into Heroquest, etc without adding new kinds of fiddly bits or just trying to simulate Runequest is to establish that regular temple worship gives augments to appropriate magical abilities. So if you miss a holy day, that ability drops back to base level (or maybe even has a penalty) due to your not keeping up your relationship with the gods or spirits or not doing enough study time for your sorcery, etc. This gives the Lunars an edge during the Occupation of Sartar as they run around fat with power while rebels have it harder.

I played the Demo and had a lot of fun; I am really looking forwards to this.,

Didn't Darkness break out of Chaos, then we get Water? Darkness is the primal ME ME ME I EXIST.

Unspoken Word 2 has a lot of stuff on thieves and some adventures on that theme. Overall, it's about putting together a collection of gutterscum to help Argath liberate Sartar. Heroquests: The Taming of Valind The Sandals of Darkness Also, I agree with mfbrandi - in my own games, a lot of Lanbril heroquesting is about basically infiltrating other religions to steal holy power, heroquests, etc. To quote my ongoing Blue Moon Empire project: Imperial scholars have often wondered how the cult of Lanbril could muster enough power to do anything before it became an Imperial cult, how gangs of a few dozen can generate enough power to do miracles of Lanbril. The correct answer is, of course, that they *steal* it. Anyone initiated to Shadow Lanbril can attend any religious ceremony and steal some of the power for Lanbril. If a sacrifice is made, Lanbril gets a cut. If you do this right, the spirits of retaliation won't find you. Of course, if you've irritated Lanbril and you blow this trick, you are going to be in trouble. So don't blow it! Perhaps Lanbril's most annoying (to non-Lanbrili) power is the power to steal other Gods' miracles. This requires a heroquest and can backfire. The most common Shadow Lanbril quest is 'Lanbril Steals Orlanth's Sandals of Flight'. The one which makes outsiders the most nervous is 'Lanbril Steals Eurmal's Pants'. Even most Lanbrili aren't sure what that one does and they don't want to find out, really.

And I acted as editor to help clean it up! It's a great read.

He accidentally snapped his fingers at himself.

If they're in Ralios, there's a bunch of pretenders to the throne of Arkat running about. Have two show up and try to sway Foyalfine to follow their individual roads.

The Monster Empire is hard to judge because we barely know anything and what we do know comes from Argath worshippers. You could probably make a decent case for 'The lunar empire is basically a flaming wreck after Sheng Seleris II Boogaloo and Ralkazark marches out of Dorastor and just conquers everything'. Once he's in charge, it's chaos sandwiches for everyone.

Nysalor is an illumination salesman rather than the source of illumination. Though really not so much a salesman as someone basically created a way to use memes the way the creator of the idea of memes imagined them - an invasive thought-complex that pushes out other ideas and takes over a chunk of your brain., then uses you to spread to others. Which is why Nysalorean illumination produces people who create plagues; so above, so below.

My understanding is that there is one Superhero per Rune, while Heroes are tied to cults. Cragapider is the Superheroine of the Darkness Rune, Jar-Eel of the Harmony rune, Harrek of the Death rune, and so on. Given his Draconic links, Argath arguably becomes Superhero of the Dragon Rune. A Superhero could basically solo a tribal army and a Hero a clan's warband. (Six Seasons in Sartar and its sequels use a system for mass combat where each army is represented with the same kind of stats as a normal character, so you can use the normal fight rules, but Siz related to how many people, and so on. Superheroes can fight at the mass combat level with their normal stats.)

Just some thoughts, which are not canon, just my canon: The Elmali were horse-oriented, so the DP Sundomers maintain a force of cavalry in addition to their phalanx. Their job is to shield the flanks of the phalanx, since phalanxes are not so good at quick turns. After living in a clan structure for so long, it's not easily given up; the clans still exist, but no longer function as units of government - rather, they still structure who can marry each other, cooperate in agriculture, worship together, and so on. Agriculture is largely similar to that of the Orlanthi in terms of food eaten and growing methods.

I love these games, so I am super-excited.

Chickens were not a major food item until fairly recently because they were more valuable as an endless stream of eggs than as one meal. The exception was that you ate most of the males, castrating them, letting them bloat, then eating them; this was called 'capon'. So with beer in times past, you did a series of brewings off the same set of hops, malt, barley, etc. The strongest was the first, which was for party time; later brewings were consumed with meals, when thirsty, etc, because it was safe.

Barntar's key power is his ability to pull nitrogen out of the air and mix it into the soil through plowing. (Which is how an Air person affects crops.)

In my Glorantha, the nation of Holay is noted for producing skin cleansing oils with alleged youthening effects.

Given the Runes don't exist outside the context of Glorantha itself, a return to Chaos can't really fit with the Harmony rune, which is clearly about order and structure, not about ceasing to exist or Chaos. The law cannot order you to destroy the law. (Also, the way the Harmony rune is described in the latest Runequest has nothing to do with returning to previous states.)

I think he didn't convey Cambell's vision well - the life affirming ones say 'life has some bad things, but that's not a reason to reject the world, rather, you have to live in it instead of living for some other world to come'. Healing a body is not about synthesis. IT is, in fact, about returning to the pre-problem state as much as you can. The essence of being a doctor is not synthesis, it's about returning to the synthesis. If you had cancer, would you want to accomodate the tumor?

Uleria is the last of the old major gods left standing; all the rest died in various ways, from Ratslaff having Eurmal explode out of his head to Umath being killed by Jagrekriand. The gods of the celestial court died at the hands of each other, the forces of Chaos, exploding heads, and many other deaths as the world sank into darkness after Yelm's death. I expect Uleria survived by manifesting among her worshippers in the little pockets of stability which survived in the Darkness and using her magic to ensure they could grow food and eat even in the dark.

Argath is the equivalent of Arkat and Arkat would shove anything into the meatgrinder to get an advantage. Given the Telmori wiped out the Maboder, it can easily be depicted as justice for their crimes *and* everyone hates them. I can think of why Sartar would not want the Telemori initiating to Orlanth - the Telmori are Hsunchen and initiating to Orlanth basically would mean the beginning of the end of the Telmori and their special abilities. Sartar created ways for groups to cooperate without losing their essential nature and the Telmori worship spirits and becoming Orlanthi means moving away from being Hsunchen.

The 1700s???? How did that work?

The Telmori who turn into wolves on Wildday were cursed by Talor for serving Nysalor, who he thought was chaos-tainted (that Nysalor was Gbaji, in fact). That's why the Sartarites think they are Chaotic, though a lot of that comes down to 'they're really good at killing our livestock and us'. I'm pretty sure that the Telmori *did* guard Temertain. At least at first. Argath is not a modern hero, he's an engine of destruction. (He's certainly not a man of peace like Sartar was.)