Radiation

[Qizilbashwoman]

As a thought experiment, if you were going to model radiation ☢️ how would you present it, mythically, with Gloranthan ideas?

I am just playing around in my head mostly with ideas about Zistor and Zistorite horror, and I thought probably Chaos, because it is a taint? But it works like Death, it doesn't mutate you.

[Baron Wulfraed]

Radiation sickness => I'd toss in as some sort of Disease, with a very difficult "cure" rate; need to work out degree of exposure. Children conceived after a survivor "recovers" might have a Chaos mutation, although increasing end-of-year child mortality rate may be sufficient -- mutations may be stillborn or miscarried.

Alpha particles (helium nucleus) are stopped by paper, so one would have to essentially eat or be injected with an alpha emitter (Plutonium?) to really be affected by alpha particles -- external exposure might, over a long period of time, trigger skin cancers.

Beta particles (electrons) can be blocked by thin metal sheets (but may generate gamma radiation in so doing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beta_particle ). Distance in air depends upon energy level.

Gamma/X-ray is the most penetrating, and most likely to cause DNA damage.

[French Desperate WindChild]

47 minutes ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

I am just playing around in my head mostly with ideas about Zistor and Zistorite horror, and I thought probably Chaos, because it is a taint? But it works like Death, it doesn't mutate you.

radiation mutate you (well I think..) and you die because you mutate too much

So for me there are two options

- chaos (as usual)

- rune change and or impact. For example, the transformation was based on some flower essence or thing like that => you gain rune plant % (like chaos taint, for example "detect aldryami" would show you) and / or you lose / gain HP or characteristics or special feature and some visual aspect

 

at the end of the day that is the same, you may alter your rune % (chaos or other) and you get some weird feature;

a lot of people* will see you as chaotic (because you are weird) and storm buller would say they fail their detect chaos roll so you must be destroyed. Just the smarter may see beyond , and those who takes the time of divination

and a lot of darkness people would smell the aldryami part in you, so your taste would probably be interesting

Don t know what is the best end:

- too much mutation so death (in few minutes / hours / years)

- too many berserkers so death (in few minutes)

- too many eaters  so death (in some ... hours, better to eat a living person for sure)

[Akhôrahil]

1 hour ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

As a thought experiment, if you were going to model radiation ☢️ how would you present it, mythically, with Gloranthan ideas?

I am just playing around in my head mostly with ideas about Zistor and Zistorite horror, and I thought probably Chaos, because it is a taint? But it works like Death, it doesn't mutate you.

I like the intense Death rune presence, so high it damages you (CON damage, I would say, to make it more annoying to heal) just from sticking around, and you have to decontaminate yourself of it later (through magical rituals of course, not showers). Longer exposure might begin to shift your Death/Life runic axis (perhaps in this particular case, your Death rune can go to 100%, which means you die). It even works with some ideas about Death-presence among Humakti (IMG, it's supposed to be bad if a Humakti's shadow falls on a pregnant woman).

Given that this is Glorantha, the Death "radiation" should be worse in Death week and less bad in Fertility week. The strength can be modelled either as a contested roll against the local Death rune strength, or as POT using the Resistance table.

Edited October 7, 2021 by Akhôrahil

[Joerg]

Black Moonglow (or Black Sun emanations).

Targets CON, using disease rules for affliction, but you have to remove exposition rather than a spirit.

May cause chaotic growth (roll hit location) - high likelihood of cancerous deformations, some likelihood of gaining chaotic features.

Can be amputated at Dezarpovo.

May be soothed by red or blue moonglow, except that such exposure increases risk of chaotic features manifesting.

[StephenMcG]

When I read the question my immediate thought was a rare form of light elemental.  You take damage when engulfed and it should be able to enlarge itself to engulf others...though doing so might reduce its coherence and cause it to dissipate.

A radiation elemental would be invisible to everyone but a light or darkness cultist and those light cultists would have a natural immunity to the elemental...

Stephen

[Lordabdul]

At a very high level, radiation is an area-based effect that weakens you and kills you... in Glorantha, everything is spirits... so I'd start with the vague idea of some kind of spirit vortex that attracts a certain kind of Disease Spirits, and they just hang around there, killing vegetation and animals slowly. And if you come too close, a few of those spirits grab on to you and start sucking the life out of you. No need to necessarily model it on real-world radiation (these spirits could make you turn purple and and suck your INT for what it's worth), but that's still what's familiar to players so I think it would be some kind of death spiral mechanic around rolling/losing CON and/or DEX and/or CHA.

[Alex]

5 hours ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

radiation mutate you (well I think..) and you die because you mutate too much

That's exactly right.  You mutate on a cellular level, so mostly they cells just die, as they've been damaged beyond basic metabolic functioning.  Which is fine at low levels (we'll just replace those), but causes radiation sickness and in sufficiently severe cases death, from losing too much metabolic function at once.

And then there's the more subtle cellular mutations, where they continue to live and multiply, but malfunction -- including, ironically, when programmed cell death is mutated to 'off', and the cells become "immortal".

What you don't tend to get is the chaos-feature or comic-book superpowers sort of mutation (kinda not biologically possible), or the "turning into a new species" mutation (too low-probability an event, so takes multiple generations).

But this is Glorantha, so the question is, where do you want to configure it between strict physics and biology realism, and general fantasy or particularly lozengey ideas?

[soltakss]

7 hours ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

As a thought experiment, if you were going to model radiation ☢️ how would you present it, mythically, with Gloranthan ideas?

A high mortality disease. Start the CON roll at CONx5 for low doses, then reduce the multiplier to CONx1 for very high doses.

Lose general hit points every time the radiation strikes, for high doses it will strike every turn or so. Essentially, you get it at a more deadly stage the higher the dose.

I wouldn't let it give you chaos powers or super powers, though.

[Akhôrahil]

54 minutes ago, Alex said:

But this is Glorantha, so the question is, where do you want to configure it between strict physics and biology realism, and general fantasy or particularly lozengey ideas?

I think the first thing you do when you get out of bed each morning in/near Dorastor is count your number of arms and legs.

[Alex]

1 hour ago, Akhôrahil said:

I think the first thing you do when you get out of bed each morning in/near Dorastor is count your number of arms and legs.

"I get up every morning and read the 'wanted chaos horrors' list. If my name's not there, I eat breakfast."

[Shiningbrow]

As @Joerg or @lordabdul above, but roll a Reverse Chaotic Feature.