I like dwarves because they are just so autistic about their jobs. Also, they are the most sympathetic to me despite their unhuman customs and overall weirdness.
The style of their art changed drastically over the years (sometimes to the bad), but I like best the illustration from Introduction to Hero Wars.
Dwarfs give us one of my favourite Greg quotes > I cannot find it easy to begrudge an entire race of intelligent beings simply because their inner nature makes them disagreeable, so I do it with difficulty.
Trolls because theya re the only ones to get fleshed out.
Where Elfpak comes out and w get to see what was any oggo out of the old Mongoose Elf book (same author) then we might see if playing an elf is as interesting.
Question: I've noticed some contractions in the lore of Glorantha from across the editions. Is this intentional since it was the inconsistencies that drove the God Learners mad? Or I'm I just a retard with poor reading comprehension?
In some cases likely yes but most of the time it was probably just the setting being further developed. Some lunatics believe that it was fully formed before Greg even thought of White Bear and Red Moon but that's not really how the creative process works and he was notorious for his retcons.
That pic also makes me think of all the cool scenes the official art could show but doesn't because we really need another Orlanth killing Yelm. I'd like the battle of Auroch hills or really anything from Ralios or Pent but I'll likely have to try drawing that myself if I want to see it. Seeing Broyan's face instead of just his arse would be pretty cool.
I lik to think of 3 sets of lore (as opposed to art where there were a lot more periods)
arly Lore, this lasts from White Bea Red Moon o the publishing of the Glorantha RQ3 books.
This is found in the wargames, RQ 2E books and Wyrm's Footnotes. Myth are true and Gods are individuals.
The RQ3 to Greg's Death lore
This is when Chaosium found the time to list everything, from Western sorecery schools to the divisions of Orlanthi society. Mostly an elabroation of what was in Wyrm's Footnotes. This is when the lore gets deep and anthropolgical with the publishing of Greg's notes as the Stafford
Library, where he delibertly obscures myths and sometimes write the known names of gods in the myths and gos back and changes them so they are obscured but consistant. Lots of focus on how myths are inherently unknownable and a massive multitude of Gods who change a shift by region and time period.
A Sub-period in the late 90s-2012 when they try to wind back the cosmipolitian RPG elements in favour of illiterate cow-rasing simualtor.
The post-Greg age.
Still very much about how myths are unknowable and Gods are reflections of deeper histories but a lot more focus on using generic terminology like Noble and Bronze Age socity. Even when Greg was alive RQRG was going back more of the Cosmipolitain Sartar of RQ2E. The primacy of Orlanthi religon is being reassessed, even stuff like 6 Ages reinforces the inherent myth of Orlanth killing Yelm and whoops end of the world.
But now much more dependant on Jeff's word and Jeff's view of how things go, where things he doesn't like are fanfic and Greg's lore is interpretable his way only. It's gone from clannish cow-simulator to Tribal aptronage simualtor, possibly undr Greg's desire to keep reinventing Pendragon.
Damn, I hate my broken mechanical keyboard.
Or to put it more bluntly, the lore started as Greg’s combination of King Arthur, Classic Greece and limited Bronze Age meets D&D and S&S.
It becomes more about the Bronze Age and reusing historical cultures from that period. Less fun from the 70s.
Now it’s about the Bronze age plus enough slackness to allow for adventures without it being weird. Still all about cults and hierarchy though.
The only thing that bothers me a bit about the current vision - besides Jeff's weird passive-aggressive attitude that sometimes flares up - is that, when they have to decide between presenting information in a way that's more 'immersive' for the world, but less easy for a newcomer to grasp, or presenting it in a way that's 'user-friendly', but less immersive, they don't decide consistently. So, you get things that are harder to grok, because they phrased it in a way that makes total sense if you already know the setting, but is confusing otherwise, but THEN, you'll get other things that are spelled out in as flat and generic a way as possible.
>you get things that are harder to grok, because they phrased it in a way that makes total sense if you already know the setting, but is confusing otherwise, but THEN, you'll get other things that are spelled out in as flat and generic a way as possible.
This is unironically what makes Glorantha Sourcebook unreadable. Any newcomer to the setting who wishes to learn it will be totally lost because of the lengthy histories of Dragon Pass and Lunar Empire but very short outline of pre-Time, and descriptions of many gods which newbie does not know how to treat. Also, hilariously weird text structure (Arkat and Nysalor are mentioned mulyiple times each before it is actually explained who they are). It's like they've tried to do the shortened version of GtG and failed miserably.
>Glorantha: Introduction to Hero Wars (2000)
While outdated, it contains almost all needed information on pre-history, history, geography and cultures of the setting. I would highly recommend it over Glorantha Sourcebook. > Cults of RuneQuest: Mythology
It suffers from the same problem of over- and under-explanation, but it is still preferrable over Glorantha Sourcebook, as it delves deeper into the common history and presents variations of myths. > Guide to Glorantha
After reading one of the books above one must turn to this, reading sections on parts of setting which interest him (as they are presented in great detail), but not trying to digest the whole thing at once.
the videogame :^)
The games can be used as an introduction too, but IMO, they are better when you already know what is going on.
4 weeks ago
Anonymous
>The games can be used as an introduction too, but IMO, they are better when you already know what is going on.
The nice thing is they work really well when you don’t know, because the people you are controlling don’t know either. >Sir Ethil-who? Weird horses? Yeah, sure, invite him to visit someday if he wants, he seems legit.
Theory: Humans are the true and original elder race for all the races that posses man rune. All the rest were made by taking some humans and altering them, the method for making humans into trolls still survives but first aldryami or wind children were made using similar methods. Many gods thought themselves smarter than the Celestial Court and used the human recipe make their own improved humans de novo instead, most notably Pamalt, but these attempts usually failed, the Men-and-half of Prax are surviving example of this.
Big fan of the Uz. They're a good balance of being inhuman yet sympathetic and understandable by human standards. Very well fleshed out as far as fantasy races come.
It bothers me that I don't know whether this is a shitpost, or an actual thing. Since I've never actually read Trollpak, but this is entirely plausible.
I have misplaced my picture of the two clan rings of the Runic Men. anyone got any pictures from the old saga?
Also, here is my group's bandit uroxi who likes it when people get along and is the best lawspeaker in the clan. because new people who dont know glorantha often do weird shit like this, but I like it
The only thing that bothers me a bit about the current vision - besides Jeff's weird passive-aggressive attitude that sometimes flares up - is that, when they have to decide between presenting information in a way that's more 'immersive' for the world, but less easy for a newcomer to grasp, or presenting it in a way that's 'user-friendly', but less immersive, they don't decide consistently. So, you get things that are harder to grok, because they phrased it in a way that makes total sense if you already know the setting, but is confusing otherwise, but THEN, you'll get other things that are spelled out in as flat and generic a way as possible.
More or less. The way I see it is Glorantha is in constant flux and because Greg is fucking dead now we will never have the One True Glorantha. Hell even when Greg was alive there wasn't really a One True Glorantha. That's just how it is at the end of the day. That being said I don't think 'Your Glorantha Will Vary' is the get-out-of-jail-free card for Chaosium that lets them make things less interesting by flattening it and then tell the people who have an issue 'well we're not changing the game at YOUR table :^)'. I actually think some of the interesting inner secrets are still there, there's still interesting stuff that's canon it's just not very forward facing. It comes up in some of the Published adventures I guess. Maybe that's not necessary for newbies I guess. I did show some of the stuff in the Mythology book to my friends, the stuff that tries to explain 'how to not make myth and religion in your tabletop a Themepark of Gods' and they found it really interesting and clearly different to other TRPGs and settings. So, Mythology book, not a total wash.
>I have misplaced my picture of the two clan rings of the Runic Men. anyone got any pictures from the old saga?
I still have all the images saved on my PC from when I ran that playthrough for /tg/. Is there anything specific you want?
Oh cool, does it take place during that time period or did they run into him Heroquesting? He spent a lot of time doing that.
Of course, he had an entire army from the Godplane show up to RSVP and then proceeded to die with a promise that he would stop holding back so as to become even more powerful in the next world. With that kind of ridiculousness there was plenty of material.
He just had to get to a wedding in prax.
In my game the Runic Men are ancient history before the settlement in Dragin pass. Probably Sven helped kick Nysalor's ass.
In this evening's session I ran my players through the praxian marriage quest.
The trader charmed a pygmy for information and did such a good job the pygmi fell in love with her.
She later gravely insulted the zebra riders by accident.
The chalana arroy healer got a trollkin pet from the troll lady.
While the warriors fought the bison riders the healer snuck away and found the kidnapper and the bride, who had been alerted due to a warding spell. The healer magicd the woman to sleep which drove the bisonrider into a berserk fury, the healer tried throwing a net at him but it failed.
That's when the trollkin pet threw a rock at the bisonrider, rolled a 2, hit him in the dick and did 18 damage.
None of the players were interested in "love" and such silly things and dragged the couple back to the town, but the pygmy prince stopped them on the way to get his bethroed back and kill the pc's so he could claim the glory, but the trader spoke so well she managed to cut a deal with him. When they got back the pygmy from before offered to marry the issaries trader. She hesitated but decided to go for a year marriage with him. however the bison princess refused to marry the pygmy prince and the pc's benefactor was most upset. Thats when our trader convinced everyone that a small marriage was better than none ans so she married her pygmy. Things worked out very well for the PC's and they all decided to never again go to the shithole known as prax.
oh shit. a living legend.
Nah I just used the runic men in my last session. Sven made an appearance.
this was the session in question. A strange man appeared out of the telmori wilds saying he had to fulfill an ancient obligation and so must go to a wedding and needed guards for his caravan. Once the PC's agreed he told them it was in prax and he hi-jacked a dragonewt road to take them there after telling them he was from the clan of the Runic Men, the greatest magicians in the world.
After the quest ended he thanked the PC's payed them and disappeared back into the trees. When the PC's tolød the story to the clan the clan shaman, keanu reeves, spoke thus: "The runic men? but that is a pre EWF clan! they have not existed for hundreds of years!" cue X-philes theme.
Oh cool, does it take place during that time period or did they run into him Heroquesting? He spent a lot of time doing that.
Of course, he had an entire army from the Godplane show up to RSVP and then proceeded to die with a promise that he would stop holding back so as to become even more powerful in the next world. With that kind of ridiculousness there was plenty of material.
Oh, you already answered, cool stuff. That's a good way of handling it.
How are trolls seen by other people? Sometimes we are told that they are seen as barely better than chaos monsters, but everytime they are actually encountered don't appear to be treated or thought of as any worse than other humans. I guess part of it is the heavy orlanthi perspective we have since they are known for their foundness of "savage" gods and historical connections to trolls. Thoughts? What are trolls like in your games?
In ther west they were seen as the same as Chaos, but in the old heartlands of Arkat's empire they are just a foriegn people who have thir own regions and trade. Fronela see them as ice demons. Peloria hates them as Darknss and dangerously foreign unless they are Blue Moon Trolls and then they are part of th Lunar traditions. Balazar hates them for competing with their hunters and eating people simultaenously.
Prax sees them as dangerous, but usefull allies against greater threats.
Kralorea hates them for being against everything the Dragonic state stands for but will trade with them from the Kingdom of Ignorance. So it's more a philosphical hate.
In Palmatea they are probally just seen as Anti-Elves.
The two smiling buddies from the original Trollpak
Someone put a pojnt on something that had been bugging me but I couln't quite put my finger on.
Once upon a time, Ernalda was the daughter of Gata (or maybe, of Asrelia) whose daughters were the Land Goddesses who were the brides of Genert. Esrola was the Land Goddess of the Holy Country region.
Now, Ernalda is the daughter of Genert and Gata, and the Land Goddesses are her sisters. Mostly. Esrola is a Grain Goddess but not the Land Goddess of her region (and poor Kero Fin even gets forgotten as a Grain Goddess over in The Earth Goddesses despite her grain being mentioned as originating in Dragon Pass...).
It looks like they partly merged the bit from Esrolia: The Land of Ten Thousand Goddesses about the Earth goddesses being sistr but kept only the half where all the land/grain goddess were sisters to Ernalda not the whole bit where the older two Earth goddesses were too.
And that is surposed to be a radical alternative interpretation to the standard generational way of looking at them.
Ernalda is and always have been the daughter of Asrelia (with the new books confirming Lodril as the father), and so the land/grain goddesses are her aunts. I have no idea where you got her being a child of Gata and Genert from.
What does illumination entail exactly? Realizing that chaos isn't all bad somehow? Or is it something more.
You gain a different understanding of how the universe works, with one of the effects being that you don't feel disgusted by Chaos instinctually anymore. Another effect is that you're no longer restrained by cult restrictions, atleast spiritually (so you can't be haunted by spirits of reprisal, but mortal followers can still kick your ass).
It bothers me that I don't know whether this is a shitpost, or an actual thing. Since I've never actually read Trollpak, but this is entirely plausible.
The average for dark troll female only have a single pair of breasts, but some are born with two pairs. Heroquesting for additional pairs is very real.
Where can I start looking into this system for free?
The official RuneQuest wiki provides some barebones look at the rules for free.
>You gain a different understanding of how the universe works, with one of the effects being that you don't feel disgusted by Chaos instinctually anymore. Another effect is that you're no longer restrained by cult restrictions, atleast spiritually (so you can't be haunted by spirits of reprisal, but mortal followers can still kick your ass).
+detect chaos no longer works on you
You basically get rid of the idea of chaos being something distinct from the world but that's a different debate about the nature of chaos.
4 weeks ago
Anonymous
the world originally came from chaos. A chaos creature, once illuminated, could become integrated with the world.
4 weeks ago
Anonymous
Note, of course, that the path of Illumination does not actually impart any sense of morality or responsibility.
Some Illuminated are wise peacemakers, recognizing ways different groups can work together without being in total opposition, even Chaos.
Some (like, I think, the Arkati) remain opponents of Chaos, but recognize that it's very helpful to have a more nuanced approach that 'grr argh smash alla time' that ZZ and Storm Bull and so forth have.
Then, of course, there's the people who think the Illumination just makes them better than everyone else, and use their insight to manipulate Chaos to gain power over everyone else without any of the drawbacks.
4 weeks ago
Anonymous
>Some Illuminated are wise peacemakers, recognizing ways different groups can work together without being in total opposition, even Chaos.
Yeah, like how some Illuminated are Wise Healers too, huh Gbaji?
4 weeks ago
Anonymous
Hey, now, there were many Wise Healers in the heartland of the Empire of Light, who cured many diseases!
They were even nice enough to cure diseases in the surrounding lands as the Empire expanded!
And if there weren't any diseases in those lands, they'd bring disease too, so they could cure them. Nice and efficient. Totally balanced.
He is the god of Hate and Terror, a truly primal deity of destruction. None know the reason for his hate, only that it's unending. He's one of the big contributors to why the world ended in the great darkness, killing among many Flamal the father of plants. He is hated by almost everyone but him and his cult is tolerated cause when the world was about to cease he stood at the frontline at the battle of Hate vs Oblivion. And to this day his cult makes for some of the most devoted foes of Chaos that can be found.
How are trolls seen by other people? Sometimes we are told that they are seen as barely better than chaos monsters, but everytime they are actually encountered don't appear to be treated or thought of as any worse than other humans. I guess part of it is the heavy orlanthi perspective we have since they are known for their foundness of "savage" gods and historical connections to trolls. Thoughts? What are trolls like in your games?
I wish I knew.
Really depends on where and which culture interact with the trolls. The Orlanthi overall don't have positive relationships with them but in the Dragon Pass region there's a history of trade and cooperation thanks to the Only Old One acting as a mediator. Arkat also helped with relations atleast for a while, which is why Ralios have a surprisingly good relation with trolls. Everywhere else they are viewed as foes at best and voracious monsters at worst, with many Malkioni even equating them to Chaos. Solar cultures in particular have a hatred for them.
As for how they are they are a pretty simple people that are mainly driven by the need to eat and survive. But they are far from stupid as some may assume by their primitive living standards. There's an underlying spite to their culture as they've slowly been diminishing in Uz-ness since they were forced out of Wonderhome. And they'll do anything, to regain that former glory.
The really ugly part of Uz culture are how they make the Curse of Kin even worse by treating the Trollkin like shit. Uz literally eat and enslave their own children and it's just considered totally normal. The grand manipulators of the Trolls, the Mistress Race, are pretty damn inhuman and have plans in motion that will fuck over lots of non-Uz. I kind of see the Elder Races slowly disappearing as kind of justly deserved, they're kind of cunts that can't let old grudges go. Trolls are maybe the most sympathetic of them, then Elves, then Dwarves. Merfolk are fine.
Interestingly, in Jrustela after the collapse of the God Learner Empire (but before the re-opening of the seas), Trolls, Elves, Dwarves and Merfolk came to the island (and its many many shattered pieces of land that created new island chains) and thought the whole rest of the world had been destroyed and Jrustela was all that was left. For a time this led to burying of the hatchets and a desire for co-operation, or at least benign isolation from one another. It literally took a belief that the rest of the world was destroyed for the Elder Races to stop wanting to knife each other in the throat. That's how bad it is between them.
ah got it wrong, it was the Trolls, Dwarves and Elves who chilled out. The merfolk in question (Malasps) were the ones who fucked up
Direct quoting the guide:
"The disagreements which arose were prevented
by great restraint. Peace remained between the elves,
trolls, and dwarves, for they believed that the old
world had been destroyed, and that it was up to them
to create a new, better world. Absolute separatism
would be practiced by all the races, save for when they
met for the Special Meeting. Thus, the Elder Races
coexisted in a manner unheard of since the Dawn.
Each kept to their respective island and prospered."
Some of the stuff in the Guide (volume 2) is so cool and different to the rest of the setting, like the East Isles and Slon. Shame it'll probably never get official material but the Jonstown Compendium might pull up the slack one day.
On some level, the point of the guide was recognizing just how much stuff Greg and Co had created for the setting, and how, with the spotty publication history that always has to begin with fleshing out Sartar AGAIN before we can expand, it was unlikely to ever see print in any other way.
The fact that it was done more purposefully is probably what makes it more 'canon' to Jeff and Co than the Stafford Library in the 90s, which was entirely just notes Greg had lying around for himself that they published just so that something was out there making money.
In King of Sartar, it's mnion that some Trollkin survived the Hero Wars and the 300 years of misery following it. Everyone though they and most Trolls had died out in the Rockwoods.
They were probally Superior Trollkin, which meant they were either multiple birth Trolls or Trollkin are undergoing the same sort of adaption Dark Trolls underwent, where they adapted to live on the surface (faster because of divine intervention).
Most Trollkin who give birth die because they are aready undedeveloped, but give it enough selection and mix in proper misidentified Trolls who would otherwise never mate with Trollkin and you get a stabler type.
always thought id would be fun to do an odysseus-like campaign in glorantha where the PCs are trying to get their ship back home and stop at all these strange islands
How do you join the cult of Arkat? My character guesses there is one and thinks Arkat the hotest man to ever live but knows not how to contact them?
Harrek's Circumnavigation seems perfect for this on paper, but I imagine it would be very hard to keep that from turning into "Harrek and Argrath do a bunch of cool shit while the PCs sit around and watch," and having your players be spectators to the action is a big RPG no-no.
I am sure that Harrek, being a pirate warlord he is, has more than one ship in his fleet, not mentioning other pirates leaders drawn to him hoping to get their share of loot. PCs in such a campaign could easily be pirates who got separated from the main fleet ny storm and are trying to catch up, experiencing exotic locations as Harrek seems to always be plundering some other shores.
4 weeks ago
Anonymous
Yeah, that's actually a pretty plausible (and potentially funny) way of doing it.
This won't necessarily be in the right order cuz fuck if I know the full timeline.
Here's the how: more or less
1. The Closing. Zzabur, Sorcerer Supreme, got off his ass to do one last thing of note. He closed the seas. IIRC any long distance sea travel is basically fucked, for almost all of Glorantha (There's a few spots that are fine like the bay of the Holy Country but nvm that). Since the Godlearner Empire was primarily maritime this would have instantly divided the Empire up and isolated elements from each other.
2. Jrustela goes boom. I don't even remember why but you can see the result on the map I posted.
3. Slontos 'rolls over'. The Land Goddess of Slontos, an area between Seshnela/Ralios and Maniria (area just west of the Holy Country) moves, with disastrous consequences for the God Learner civilization there. IIRC it was a significant God Learner stronghold.
4. Seshnela's shattering. This is probably the most important one given Seshnela was the other heart of the God Learner Empire. Purple Skinned Demi-Gods called the Luathans sailed from the Western Land of Dusk on a Swanboat, they struck pillars into the earth throughout Seshnela and essentially detonated the peninsula. The only parts that made it out ok were the eastern most portions of Seshnela. The formerly recalcitrant and problematic area of Tanisor (of the Vampire Kingdom fame during the First Age) became the heart of the new Seshnelan polity. The majority of the peninsula is lost, inhabited by Beastmen, Elves and patrolling Luathans.
As for the 'why', they abused the Universe so much to the point disparate elements came together cosmologically to fuck them over in quick succession. Think of it like "I Suffered, We Struck Back." There's very definitely an element to Gloranthan reality that seemingly separate events connect to each other, like in a web. No single thing is the driver of the causality, but all the different webs pull on each other at the same time.
You forgot the last part: a group known only as the Gift Carriers of the Sending Gods showed up out of nowhere, systematically merced everyone who knew the RuneQuest Sight, then disappeared as quickly as they arrived.
I thought the idea was that the PCs would take over Argraths part?
4 weeks ago
Anonymous
werent there originally five dudes named Argrath during the herowars?
4 weeks ago
Anonymous
4 weeks ago
Anonymous
In the original board game, Argrath is very much a specific heroic figure, standing in opposition to the Red Emperor the same way that Jar-Eel and Harrek are standing in opposition to each other. Then, at some point (either while writing King of Sarter, or before), the idea comes up that 'Argrath' is a title. King of Sartar has some conflicting chronology, and there's implications that there are several different Argraths potentially running around. More recently, Greg changes his mind, settling Argrath into one figure, very much his 'Arthur in Glorantha' guy. He then takes the 'multiple people with the same name' thought, and applies that to Arkat, having each aspect of the Arkat legend come back to life separately.
('Arkat' and 'Argrath' are both clearly inspired by 'Arthur'; originally, I think the stories he wrote featuring Arkat and the games featuring Argrath weren't the same world, but eventually both became part of Glorantha, at different points in the timeline.)
In RQG, Argrath is very much an NPC, whose rise to rulership is on the horizon. But, if preferred, that's simple enough to change, especially if the timeline is moved back a bit.
Anymore detail on what exactly went boom? Trying to make a new god? Trying to force two different gods together to soothe their collective autism. The Giants get pissed they where killing there kids in their giant cradles?
This won't necessarily be in the right order cuz fuck if I know the full timeline.
Here's the how: more or less
1. The Closing. Zzabur, Sorcerer Supreme, got off his ass to do one last thing of note. He closed the seas. IIRC any long distance sea travel is basically fucked, for almost all of Glorantha (There's a few spots that are fine like the bay of the Holy Country but nvm that). Since the Godlearner Empire was primarily maritime this would have instantly divided the Empire up and isolated elements from each other.
2. Jrustela goes boom. I don't even remember why but you can see the result on the map I posted.
3. Slontos 'rolls over'. The Land Goddess of Slontos, an area between Seshnela/Ralios and Maniria (area just west of the Holy Country) moves, with disastrous consequences for the God Learner civilization there. IIRC it was a significant God Learner stronghold.
4. Seshnela's shattering. This is probably the most important one given Seshnela was the other heart of the God Learner Empire. Purple Skinned Demi-Gods called the Luathans sailed from the Western Land of Dusk on a Swanboat, they struck pillars into the earth throughout Seshnela and essentially detonated the peninsula. The only parts that made it out ok were the eastern most portions of Seshnela. The formerly recalcitrant and problematic area of Tanisor (of the Vampire Kingdom fame during the First Age) became the heart of the new Seshnelan polity. The majority of the peninsula is lost, inhabited by Beastmen, Elves and patrolling Luathans.
As for the 'why', they abused the Universe so much to the point disparate elements came together cosmologically to fuck them over in quick succession. Think of it like "I Suffered, We Struck Back." There's very definitely an element to Gloranthan reality that seemingly separate events connect to each other, like in a web. No single thing is the driver of the causality, but all the different webs pull on each other at the same time.
Two events that get brought up a lot as examples of God Learner shenanigans:
1)The Grail. It wasn't actually called the Holy Grail, but, there was basically a powerful holy artifact; some culture had a big HeroQuest in which only the brave and pure could approach the guardian of the artifact. God Learners brought in godly muscle to beat up the guardian and cheat the HeroQuest, making the artifact available to whoever they wanted. (dunno if this means making it manifest in the world, or basically having a 'cheat speedrun' of the HQ.) This was fine for a while, but over time, the artifact's power started to dwindle, because they were wearing it out. Since the end of the 2nd age, both artifact and guardian are restored to their normal place in God Time.
2)The Goddess Switch. Somewhere (either in Slontos, or modern-day Esrolia), two areas had two very similar grain goddesses. Different names, and different crops, but their myths and methods of worship were incredibly similar. So, to prove that Joe Campbell is always right, they did a find/replace on the rituals, so that the two regions were now worshipping each other's grain goddess. This worked perfectly fine for about two years before both regions had catastrophic famine and fertility issues, and the God Learners actually locked down travel so people wouldn't find out about the fuckup.
(I imagine Jeff would prefer people not remember this incident, given his whole 'Elmal was Yelmalio the whole time' approach.)
And yeah, I'm sure I fucked a lot of the details up, so feel free to correct.
4 weeks ago
Anonymous
>(I imagine Jeff would prefer people not remember this incident, given his whole 'Elmal was Yelmalio the whole time' approach.)
That would make a fun plot for a campaign. Suddenly all the horses in dragon pass become infertile and the players have to puzzle together what god learner fuckery Monrogh and Tarkalor were up to while Yelmalio cultists try to murder them.
4 weeks ago
Anonymous
* The merging of two unrelated cults (Caladra and Aurelion) into one, making it stronger, in Caladraland.
* The creation of an artificial man-made god, Zistor in the Clanking City, that urged the gods to intervene.
4 weeks ago
Anonymous
zistor was just the transistor of a computer. The barbarian misinterpeted the entire thing entireky wrong. as normal.
4 weeks ago
Anonymous
>(I imagine Jeff would prefer people not remember this incident, given his whole 'Elmal was Yelmalio the whole time' approach.)
And everyone knows Shargash is really Elmal. Consider this excerpt of the myth “Shargash the Destroyer” >Anything which was peaceful was destroyed in those wars, and Shargash slew everything which was good in order to bring it within his Enclosure.
>The greatest battle which Shargash ever fought was against the demon called Dromakus. It was the death of death, but Shargash the Destroyer destroyed himself to overcome this thing.
>Dromakus was a chaos monster which was invisible to Shargash. In Dara Hapan philosophy, Dromakus was the Other of Shargash, wherein the Other is a weakness which is invisible to the viewer. In almost every case of a fire god falling prey to a foe, it can be interpreted as falling prey to its own Other. This is explained to be because a deity of light is incapable of seeing the shadows it casts, never mind its own shadows. So they all fell. Yet Shargash did not.
>Dromakus was clever and had the power to take any shape. He tried to have himself killed too, so that he could come into the Enclosure. Dromakus disguised itself, changed itself, and attempted many deceits to enter the Enclosure. But he never did, for Shargash is a power which can not be tricked.
>Shargash sat in the center of the world and called his enemy to him. Dromakus, devourer of the universe, rushed up like a monster with many heads and mouths. It bit and mangled, but was incapable of tearing Shargash apart. The mighty god threw himself into one of the maws, and into the maelstrom of chaos he fell, yet caught himself fast when he reached the belly of Dromakus. It couldn’t swallow him. Inside its belly Shargash saw a sky full of stars. Shargash then burned his own way out of the demon, which was cruelly hurt but not enough to die.
Sounds kinda familiar doesn’t it? What are you waiting for, Jeff?
4 weeks ago
Anonymous
That's more "Yelm summons disorder/chaos to the Underworld, masters them, achieves enlightenment and returns to life". Remember the Enclosure is hell.
4 weeks ago
Anonymous
>Yelm summons disorder/chaos to the Underworld, masters them, achieves enlightenment and returns to life
So Elmal Guards the Stead
I think assuming anger on ZZ or his cultists part is a misunderstanding. They're berserks and he's a god of hate and senseless violence, yes, but I've always gotten the impression that it's all very cold, given the Darkness connection. A ZZ Deathlord isn't a frothing, incoherent rager like a Uroxi, they're a dead eyed, teeth clenched psychopath who doesn't even get their heartrate up while beating someone to death. Zorak Zoran himself is illuminated, unlike Storm Bull or even Shargash, and isn't hateful at anything in particular or even for any particular reason, he just is. His natural state is desiring the death an destruction of everything, he killed and ate Flamal for essentially no reason at all except for that he was a juicy target.
If Shargash and ZZ have any relation besides enemieis, ZZ is probably Shargash's other parent. Of course, ZZ is already, in a sort of sideways fashion, the mother of Aether and was midwifed by XU while AA watched so maybe Shargash just takes after his great grandparent particularly strongly. This was revealed to me in my darkest dreams and consequently cannot be the incorrect interpretation of the myths.
>The struggle between Light and Darkness is said to have begun even before the birth of Light when the foetal Aether huddled helplessly in the womb of its mother. Unborn, it lay in Darkness, and there the creatures of the dark came to investigate it … For a time they viewed it from a distance and made up their minds about what they thought it was. >There were three gods of Darkness viewing it. One was called Argan Argar, one was Xiola Umbar, and one was Zorak Zoran. >“It is Friendship from afar,” said Xiola Umbar. >“It is just another godling,” said Argan Argar. >“It is an enemy,” said Zorak Zoran, “and I shall eat it to hide it away from us.” Then he lifted the bundle and uncovered its veil. Zorak Zoran was burned horribly by the intense light and heat and made ugly to the light ever afterwards. Argan Argar, further away, turned his back from the view and had no permanent damage. Xiola Umbar, furthest from the light, blinked rapidly but remembered what she saw.
No, I mean the Aether. Causality in the Deep Darkness is a funny thing and is very difficult to pin down, at least as it is understood by un-benighted humans such as you or I.
There are organizations that follow and revere Arkat, but the paths of cult worship have been sealed off since the second age.
At least... they were. Arkat has returned - five times! - and his paths in the hero plane are open once more. Most of this is going down in Ralios, and is very much in the 'make it up yourself' category.
I think Cults of Chaos features the Arkat cult; it's the last cult listed in the book, and I think is also when Illumination was explained for the first time, both mechanically, and why it could be both good or bad, depending on the individual Illuminated's attitude.
I'm not sure. The "Cults of Terror" contains only the cult of Nysalor/Gbaji with small description of cult of Arkat.
"Troll Gods" does contain the cult of Arkat, but a) it is trollish variation, and b) it was RQ3, so it teaches only sorcery spells.
The Chaosium (hence the company name) is the font from which Chaos enters the universe, and it's at the very bottom of all things, close to where Hell and the underworld are.
(This is why Trolls and other creatures of the Darkness rune are reliable fighters of Chaos; a lot of practice.)
Short version of the God Time Myth:
1)Yelm Is Emperor of the Universe
2)Orlanth, Prince of Air, challenges him (Air and Sky hate each other for reasons), but keeps losing
3)Orlanth's brother Humakt finds this new thing, called Death (Eurmal's also involved, don't worry). Orlanth borrows it, challenges Yelm to a weapons contest, uses Death, and Yelm has to go to the underworld.
4)Orlanth is now Emperor of the Universe. This was a Terrible Idea. Storm people think it's rockin cool for a while, but things get worse and worse to the point where gods are openly killing other gods, the underworld is all borked because the sun's down there now, and then Chaos gods start ravaging everything.
5)After Ernalda dies/hibernates, Orlanth realizes he may have been wrong, and joined by several other gods, goes on a quest to get the Sun back. This is the Lightbringer's Quest
6)There's a crapload of badass battles against Chaos, including a mountain getting dropped on one, and also the moment called 'I Fought, We Won', where pretty much everyone in the world, thinking they're alone, chooses to stand against Chaos and they win.
7)Down below, the gods all meet up with Dead Sun. They kiss and make up, just in time for the newly-killed Chaos Gods to also show up. The gods all work together, and Wakboth the Great Chaos God is essentially destroyed, devoured by Arachne Solara, goddess of this new thing called Time.
8)The gods all come back up out of the underworld, alive once more. (The Great Compromise limits their ability to affect the world as they once did, but they live again.) After years of darkness, Yelm rises in the sky again, and Time begins with the Dawn Age.
Damn glorantha is kino as fuck, I’ve been just getting into it via reading these threads and wikis. Sadly the wiki seems ultra barebones, I may have to buy some books. Also I feel like someone should cash in on this IP and start making YouTube lore videos, those are super popular and practically zero exist for Glorantha
Also as an elder scrolls fan, I feel like elderscrolls copied its whole entire mythological metaphysics from glorantha, which of course is based in esoteric interpretations of real life mythology.
But the gods going by many different names and having different manifestations to different races and peoples is a super super well known elder scrolls thing, but clearly flora that did it first.
Some basic questions I have that I can’t easily solve with google.
1: is the lunar empire Chinese or Roman aesthetically and culturally, or a mix of both?
2: are the praxians amerindian aesthetically, or Bronze Age Scythian steppe nomads?
The Lunars are more a late Hellenistic Greek that's had splashes of Persian and Roman mixed in, at least currently. The Praxians are both and some other things, depending on the tribe. They have the least consistent/historically based aesthetic of the major homelands. Prax is such a jumble of different things, being a ruined garden and battlefield that drew from all over the world before time, that it fits.
Lunar Empire itself is more Graeco-Roman in style, but the Dara Happan culture it grew from heavily draws from IRL Ancient Mesopotamia. In the governing Lunar Empire is more akin to Achaemenid Persia than to Roman Empire. It is very culturally diverse, however, so different parts of the empire have different culture - there are former Orlanthi tribes and even pseudo-medieval Carmania inside its borders.
>Some basic questions I have that I can’t easily solve with google. >1: is the lunar empire Chinese or Roman aesthetically and culturally, or a mix of both? >2: are the praxians amerindian aesthetically, or Bronze Age Scythian steppe nomads
yes. to all those. i mean, not incanon, but I like your idea so do that
>Also as an elder scrolls fan, I feel like elderscrolls copied its whole entire mythological metaphysics from glorantha, which of course is based in esoteric interpretations of real life mythology.
It made have had some influence but they also pull from the same real world religious sources for that too.
Speaking of vidya, did you know Glorantha influenced Dark Souls? Queelag the Chaos Witch is a direct reference to the Cragspider from Glorantha and they even have the same name in Japanese (Fire Witch Cragspider).
just read about the death rune in elden ring.
Glorantha was kinda huge in japan at some point. AND YET we didnt get an 80's runequest anime. sad.
Pretend i posted the "hot Yelmalio" manga picture
On a side note the excellent anime Record of Lodoss War started as one mans re-telling of his table top campaign that started (I for get the exact order) as a AD&D game then a Runequest game and then a Tunnels and Trolls game. The original series is great and you can glimpse what lore and mechanics from the various systems inspired certain aspects of the anime.
4 weeks ago
Anonymous
There is a translation you can read of the original game sessions too, which were in a magazine for selling the new translation of D&D basic to japan. It's pretty fun stuff. The Elf was played by a guy who was a more veteran player and the DM comments on how a guy playing a girl was a little uncomfortable.
4 weeks ago
Anonymous
we will never see Glorantha Phantasma >published by Chaos Society in Germany >at a time when I was out of RPG and out of /a/nime
4 weeks ago
Anonymous
The RuneQuest/Glorantha General Hero Quest will be to get someone to get scans of this and the Japanese books online. Criminal they're not out there.
The Red Goddess is strange, because there's also this sense that she's partly an entity that wasn't allowed to be part of the Great Compromise, so is forcing her way in.
There's at least one Moon entity that was slain in the God Time, and the Red Goddess is partly her resurrecting herself, partly another return of Nysalor, and partly something new.
I think; it's an area where my understanding of the lore gets spotty.
Part of the reason things at the end of the Ages get so crazy is that, with the Compromise already broken, additional breaks happen in order to fix it.
And the End of the Third Age is rapidly approaching.
Well, maybe not 'rapidly'; it took about fifty Earth-years to move ten Glorantha years...
I think it's an open question if the Red Goddess hanging in the Middle Air is >right now< an ongoing Compromise break. Her fight at Castle Blue absolutely was one, but I think the issue here is by winning she proved her status as a Greater God and she is now also part of the Compromise. HOWEVER, her chaotic nature and her dogma is not really on board with the Compromise and that's enough reason to fight her.
Note, the Compromise DOES include Chaos. Not because Chaotic Gods also helped hold the net down on The Devil (I doubt they did) but because the consumed Devil was rebirthed by Arachne Solara as Time. A certain amount of Chaos will always exist within Glorantha, as that permanent entropic element.
Though there are other Lunar Gods that don't provoke the same frothing hatred for breaking the Compromise or being Chaotic. The Seven Mothers for example are basically just deified mortals, which is pretty standard practice across Glorantha and is very definitely not a Compromise break. Not anymore than Sartar being a God is. They're notable for their range of powers and collective power though, compared to the more restricted portfolio that Hero/Ascended Mortal cults get.
4 weeks ago
Anonymous
some of the art was used in the Imperial Lunar Handbook 2.
4 weeks ago
Anonymous
The problem with the Red Goddess and her sub-gods is that she continues to exist and directly act upon time from within it, which is a big no-no on the compromise. Other beings and mortals have become gods but then they fuck off, ascending away from the mortal world. Compromise Crisis gods like Gbaji, Zistor and the Red Goddess didn’t do that.
And while the compromise does include that Chaos exists it is also a part of the Compromise that it SHOULD NOT and does NOT belong inside reality. Opposition to Chaos is the inherent order of nature and reality. Wakboth the Devil is not the one that got turned into Time, that is Kajabor. Wakboth got crushed by The Block and the remainders of him got finely diced and scattered across the world. The Great Moral Evil of the world was defeated by spreading it everywhere.
4 weeks ago
Anonymous
isnt there something about the devil devouring kajabor and becoming it?
4 weeks ago
Anonymous
From Cults of Terror >At one point the armies of Kajabor and Wakboth began to devour each other, but philosophers dispute which one was killed, for no one alive or sane could know such things.
>Prevalent belief says that Kajabor was killed by Wakboth, leaving the world defiler to face the Storm Bull and the god of entropy to face the forces of the dead. This theory has much strength, since the mundane world (reconstructed later) was usually held to be the origin of immorality, while the combination of entropy and existence seem to synthesize into the God Time, who later rules the cosmos …
>A massive block of Truestone, a piece of Law cast adrift when the Spike exploded, crashed to earth and struck the Devil, grinding him and spreading him and his strength about. Afterwards other forces and beings further lessened it and destroyed its unity in the world forever.
4 weeks ago
Anonymous
Annilla was doing that since time begun albeit she exist in time only for a brief moment when the blue streak fall into magasta’s pool.
4 weeks ago
Anonymous
That isn’t really the same thing, as the Blue Moon only exists in time through nature and follows the same paths as she did in the past before time. That is like saying Elmal breaks the Compromise as he makes his journey across the Sky each day as the Sun. The Sun traveling the sky doesn’t break the Compromise, it is when the Sun stops in place at the center of the Sky that the Compromise broke.
4 weeks ago
Anonymous
I think sky and underworld exist outside time.
4 weeks ago
Anonymous
Why? Nothing seems to indicate that. Sky and the Underworld exist in the Godtime but also within Time as well, like many things.
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
>the same paths as she did in the past before time
Prove it. I'll wait.
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
It is the same proof that the sun does.
4 weeks ago
Anonymous
Where did Belintar fall in that?
He was a god, living in God Time, but then would pull a body switch with his 'hosts', who went on to live in God Time while Belintar used their body (or something like that). Is that a violation, or did he not actually count as a god?
4 weeks ago
Anonymous
I dont think he was but I think he wanted to be a god
4 weeks ago
Anonymous
There is no definitive information or answer on what The Pharaoh was. Many theories have him as a Mortal, so Demigod like Cragspider is probably the best designation.
4 weeks ago
Anonymous
Not even cragspider really, since Belintar manifests through unique individuals that through the tournament join their soul with the total Belintar in the otherworld. He doesn’t force his way into reality and is closer to how a worshipper may call upon their God. He wasn’t a full God though which both gave him additional access to interact with reality but also ensured he lacked the compromise protections of a true diety.
4 weeks ago
Anonymous
Belintar was a god, but The Pharoah was not, I think, might be a good way of explaining it.
>The gods all work together, and Wakboth the Great Chaos God is essentially destroyed, devoured by Arachne Solara, goddess of this new thing called Time.
Although it gets muddled sometimes that was Kajabor (entropy) rather than Wakboth (Evil). Wakboth got smushed but sealed beneath the Block rather than going to the underworld, with chunks of him becoming stuff like Cacodemon.
Before that happened, Wakboth turned on Kajabor and killed it which is why it went to the Underworld.
Some say this betrayal was purposeful so that Kajabor could go destroy everything killed in the underworld to finalize the deletion of existence but others just say that Wakboth is that much of an evil dick.
It makes much more sense when it is Kajabor rather than Wakboth down in the underworld, with Entropy becoming Time.
>In the Year of the Sun 111,221 occurred the most important act of creation. On that date our god Yelm, True Sun, Source of Justice, and Truth of One, ascended to his rightful place in Heaven. I beseech the One God to bless the good and faultless Emperor Khordavu who made this possible.
>I beseech the One God
This is a very interesting way to refer to Yelm. Considering that Orlanth has some monotheistic tendency could this point at something similar like Yelmic monism?
Spiritual enlightenment, recognizing the illusory nature of all things, understanding one = all, etc
Depending on the variety, it's like buddhist or hindu mysticism, but generally without the reincarnation and karma bits.
Also include a heavy dose of Greg hating the big contemporary surge of "gurus" doing all sorts of dodgy shit.
That's as you mentioned mysticism which is mostly draconic in Glorantha. No one really knows what illumination really is but it involves being exposed to different cultures and views of how the world works and realising your own isn't necessarily right. So it changes from "Murder bad" to "Murder bad is what they say". Pressumably it gives one a better understanding of how the world works. The way I like to think about it is a kind of nihilism but it's deliberately kept so vague you can make up whatever you want. You'll get a different answer everytime you ask someone what it is.
Damn glorantha is kino as fuck, I’ve been just getting into it via reading these threads and wikis. Sadly the wiki seems ultra barebones, I may have to buy some books. Also I feel like someone should cash in on this IP and start making YouTube lore videos, those are super popular and practically zero exist for Glorantha
Also as an elder scrolls fan, I feel like elderscrolls copied its whole entire mythological metaphysics from glorantha, which of course is based in esoteric interpretations of real life mythology.
But the gods going by many different names and having different manifestations to different races and peoples is a super super well known elder scrolls thing, but clearly flora that did it first.
Some basic questions I have that I can’t easily solve with google.
1: is the lunar empire Chinese or Roman aesthetically and culturally, or a mix of both?
2: are the praxians amerindian aesthetically, or Bronze Age Scythian steppe nomads?
>Also as an elder scrolls fan, I feel like elderscrolls copied its whole entire mythological metaphysics from glorantha, which of course is based in esoteric interpretations of real life mythology.
Irc. some of the guys that made elder scrolls originally came from runequest. Warhammer originally started from DnD and runequest miniatures too. Beastmen are based on broos.
>is the lunar empire Chinese or Roman aesthetically and culturally, or a mix of both?
What the other guys said plus some light mesoamerican influences. Not much but enough to make it a bit more interesting. The religion is also heavily influenced by hinduism but most things in Glorantha are.
In "The Glorious Re-Ascent of Yelm" it is told that the unknowable being Veskarvez emanated a being capable of knowing itself, Ezelveztay, or "the One". It emanated itself into Keskeskenni, "the Many", which are Runes. When there has become too many Keskeskennis, Ezelveztay had to depart from the world, so it picked a successor to become "One-among-Keskeskenni". This was Yelm. Thus he is worshipped as One God above all gods.
In "The Fortunate Succession" there is a description of evolution of Yelmite religion, but the Lunar consensus is that the One is a state of Illumination (which existed before Creation and was lost afterwards), that Yelm was Illuminated in the underworld, recreated the world and then separated the One from himself during the Sunstop, creating Nysalor-Osentalka, who showed a way to the One for everybody.
Interestingly enough, the Yelmite theogony is quite similar to the Malkioni creation myth (Veskarvuz = Makan/One Mind + Ferbirth, Ezelveztay = Kiona, Keskeskenni = Erasanchula). But, in the end, every creation myth in Glorantha is similar.
when yelm was gone the princes of the universe, the little suns, all vied for the throne. Except Elmal who only tried to protect the world.
So there were some light and some heat. but less and less until there were none.
then the dawn...
The gods of Water have always been interested in spreading itself and devouring all in its path, but they were kept in check by Yelm and his court. After Yelm went to the Underworld they didn't hesitate to start flooding. Every river in Glorantha started as an invasion path of the forces of water, flowing up from the seas up the mountains. Some water gods were subjugated or befriended by local gods which is why not everything got flooded, then as the storm gods became more powerful they drove back the seas.. Peloria suffered one of the worst floods which is where Anaxial came along as saved everyone with his giant boat. As for how they conquered the Sky they couldn't reach it until Heler (future god of rain) discovered a secret of The Young God which let them travel up the Skydome. On their way there Shargash clubbed the mass of water from which Heler fell down into the middle air, from where he then attempted his own conquest only to become subservient to Orlanth. As for the rest of the water forces they devoured all the fire they came across and filled the lower parts of the skydome with water, which is why the sky is blue nowadays. And if you travel to the sky you'll find a sea up there. There's also a hole in the skydome from which water falls out, called the Skyfalls, from which occasionally sky/oceanic monsters or treasures will drop.
It seems to simply be in the nature of water to conquer. Water will fill any space it can and in Glorantha the ability of water to dissolve substances is translated to it literally eating the material. Being spawned from Darkness would make it a very primal element, driven by base desires.
As for the draconic connections, I don't know. In real life rivers are likened to serpents and in china in particular dragons are connected with the element of water. In universe explanation could simply be that dragons find water to be the most suitable element for them as it's ever changing much like they can be.
I've thought about this a bit, I think it might be related to Water being the First Element spawned by the Grand Ancestral Dragon's Utuma (basically Dragon Enlightenment Seppuku for those who don't know).
Darkness was technically the first element created because it came from the GA Dragon taking the power of Disorder to beat back Chaos because it was interrupting the GA Dragon's meditation.
"This was the race of Darkness, made from the Dragon's Feet." But this is actually prior to the Utuma, so the way I read it is Darkness was spawned from the GA Dragon holding Disorder as a tool with its feet to beat back Chaos. So in a way, Darkness is only half from the GA Dragon. Whereas Water is the first element fully from it, being the blood that ran forth from his cut open loins. Its belly became Earth, Its head and eyes became the Sky and Aetheric Powers and its brains hatched the Ancestral Dragons.
Now this is all from a Draconic perspective, there might be other traditions in the setting that order the elements in different ways with differing amounts of responsibility from this or that Prime Mover.
Elaborating on this a bit, but there seems to be a pattern of "flaws" for each element. These are not universal to every deity of their respective element nor is this an official bit of lore, but you may see it if you squint enough.
Darkness: Hunger, or rather a need to follow the most basic of instincts. Many darkness beings are concerned with eating and survival, regardless of how it affects everyone else. But I wouldn't go as far as to label this as gluttony, as they feed not in excess cause they can, but because they must.
Water: Gluttony. Now this should not be confused with the hunger of darkness. I specifically use the name of the sin cause it's consumption in excess of needs. Water is not beset by constant hunger, but if given the chance it'll swallow lands and spread as much as it could. In an old HQ book there's a scenario where you can heroquest as a river deity and one of the roles specific traits is that they are never satisfied with what is offered and always want more.
Earth: Greed. The element is associated with providing bounty and riches but the deities of malign earth tend to show selfish tendencies. Best examplified by Ty Kora Tek who is the keeper of the dead cause she won't let them leave her cave once they are hers. Even her benign sister Asrelia, goddess of wealth, is quite a hoarder even if she can sometime part with her riches.
Fire: Pride and aloofness. This element tends to view itself as being better and above any other. Combine this with the association with purity and you have beings that will refuse to associate with others.
Air: Temperament. Beings of this element above all are the most prone to mood swings and to take to violence at the drop of a hat. While pride is also a common trait it's more will sock anyone that insults them rather than viewing themselves as better.
andom thought, RQ 2 had a fairly basic background chart for Orlanthi/Pavisites.
When Geg wrote his notes for the APA he made a different set of bakcground tables that fucking fixed he big problem in RQ 2 where starting players don't really survive to get cash, magic and experience.
It also changed the backgrounds but in a way hat's sort of incompadible with the core rules.
It's worth noting that RQ2 assumed characters would immediately go into massive debt to purchase lots of training, which would tie them to guilds and temples for "why are we doing this adventure?" reasons.
By the way, what do people think of the unpublished RQ4 "Adventures in Glorantha"? That pdf has been floating around for forever.
Like RQRG, a dense mess of nostalgic rules and setting details. But much more informed by whatever they wee smoking when they were making RQ3.
Honestly they should have used repurposed Stombringer/Magic World rules those were shorter and more "epic".
Here is the RQ2 original Sorcery ules, they are barely made and Greg Stafford basically gave up on them really quickly but I like them mroe than the complex RQ3 stuff we got in the end.
Here is the RQ2 original Sorcery ules, they are barely made and Greg Stafford basically gave up on them really quickly but I like them mroe than the complex RQ3 stuff we got in the end.
I hate to bring "realism" into this but HOW does an experienced warrior have a 3% chance of cutting off either one of his own limbs or his head? And what does this contribute to the game? Isn't combat deadly enough without warriors killing/maiming themselves by accident?
I've been looking at the Crimson Bat's stats in the RQ:G bestiary. It is truly ridiculous. I want to like the Lunar Empire but the Bat is like, a flying constant warcrime. It needs 220 souls a WEEK. A WEEK. There's 42 weeks in the Gloranthan calendar, so that's 9240 souls destroyed every year. IT EATS A CITY WORTH OF SOULS EVERY FUCKING YEAR.
No amount of Spiritual Liberation is worth eating a city's worth of souls ever year. Fuck the Crimson Bat.
I kind of just assumed it was a hold over to keep the Grogs happy.
I feel like after a certain point of weapon mastery fumbles should be nullified and instead count as failures if they happen. But if an enemy lowers your weapon skill (i.e. through having Shimmer stacked on them) it could get you back to the point where you can fumble.
There's lots of things that seem to go against 'Maximum Game Fun' in RQ:G, unfortunately. I think the combat is lethal enough without needing that 3-5% chance of fumbles no matter how good you are at fighting.
>I think Humakt is right. We should just kill people and make sure they stay dead.
begone, angry wasp
I really like the composition on this, one of the best they've done. The placement of the thumb on the Red Goddess's right arm is fucking me up though, I've been trying to replicate the pose to see if you could twist your right wrist so you can grip an arm and have your thumb appear at the front of the image like that.
>I've been looking at the Crimson Bat's stats in the RQ:G bestiary. It is truly ridiculous. I want to like the Lunar Empire but the Bat is like, a flying constant warcrime. It needs 220 souls a WEEK. A WEEK. There's 42 weeks in the Gloranthan calendar, so that's 9240 souls destroyed every year. IT EATS A CITY WORTH OF SOULS EVERY FUCKING YEAR. >No amount of Spiritual Liberation is worth eating a city's worth of souls ever year. Fuck the Crimson Bat.
And let's not forget that those aren't the only human sacrifices happening in the lunar empire! Imagine the bureaucracy and ressources they need just to kill all those people. I wouldn't be surprised if entire tribes have accidentally been eradicated with the responsible officials ending up as sacrifices themselves.
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
but death is life, so it's not bad.
Checkmate, barbarian :^)
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
Humans are free. You can just make more whenever you want.
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
>The Crimson Bat must be fed approximately 220 living sentients each week, on Black and Dying days
Broos are living and sentient. They reproduce much faster than humans if you givde them some spare goats to rape. Existence is pain for broos and they are huge perverts, just thinking about being eaten by the Bat, who happens to be female, probably makes broos even harder than usual.
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
Who says they just feed humans to the bat, the only reason Broos wouldn't be first on the menu is that people kill them before anyone can muster the logistics to capture the disease-riden monsters.
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
Animals are sentient too, but from philosophical point of view feeding animals to the bat is as bad as feeding it with humans. Even broos are kinda iffy as they can seek purification. only chaos animals are morally acceptable bat fodder.
Looks like Nivorah, legendary lost Golden City from the Six Ages, the cradle of Solars and, especially, the Dara Happans . It's only rarely mentioned outside of the game.
This reminds me. A player of mine, a Grazelander noble and priestess of Ernalda and initiate of Arachne Solara, has gotten it in her head that convincing the Feathered Horse Queen to marry Ethilrist is the best possible course for her people. What are the likely consequences of this, if she succeeds?
>initiate of Arachne Solara
Wait, people can do that in the new version of Runequest? I thought it was pointless because of the scale she operates at and that she doesn’t even given powers, so only very few super powerful beings like the Cragspider worship her directly?
Well, Initiate may be overstating things, she managed to get 2 rune points dedicated to her and Devotion at 70% after some strange goings on and a brief dip in to the godtime at the Wild Temple but she's not really in the Arachne Solara cult so to speak. She can only cast common rune magic and Dismiss Magic with those points, as it is, but she's getting deeper in to it. But no, there isn't any actual Cult of Arachne Solara written anywhere, we were just doing some things out of the Smoking Ruin book and it felt like a path it would be appropriate for her to head down, so I eyeballed some things. Besides Cragspider and other bigwigs, the Beastmen worship her directly enough and she convinced them to teach her.
I've never read 'King of Sartar'; is Kallyr Starbrow's death first discussed there? If so, does that mean the Kallyr in KoDP is basically a 'prequel reference' to Starbrow's doom?
Before time the gods could do stuff and change how the world worked. When it was about to end the gods forged the great compromise to save it but it essentially fixed them in place and leaves them with only very limited options to influence the world. e.g. the sky is blue because a water deity invaded it. The water deity can't decide to leave. Should the sky ever stop being blue that would violate the compromise and be chaotic.
Essentially this is why some Gods are more clearly visibile inside of Time than others. Orlanth is literally the Wind/Storms. Yelm is literally the Sun that travels across the Sky each day and then goes into the Underworld and comes back each morning. Magasta can be see as the giant whirlpool that acts like a bathroom plug stopping the world from being drained into The Void. Finally, the Red Goddess is right there hanging in the Middle Air as the Red Moon. The Gods may seem to have motion, as these phenomena but they have very limited control over what they can or can't do. The bounds of their action is defined by what they did during the God Time. They can repeat things they've done, but they can't innovate or do anything 'new', violating that would break the compromise.
Though at Castle Blue Orlanth did bend the compromise a bit to try to fuck with the Red Goddess's ascension but by that point the compromise was already in the process of being broken.
If I had to tl;dr the Compromise:
Cosmic Non-aggression pact between all the Deities, so they primarily have to fight things out using mortal followers. Because they tried fighting personally before and it essentially killed the world which had to be re-born again. The Red Moon is trying to break it, the Storm God is upholding it.
>You gain a different understanding of how the universe works, with one of the effects being that you don't feel disgusted by Chaos instinctually anymore. Another effect is that you're no longer restrained by cult restrictions, atleast spiritually (so you can't be haunted by spirits of reprisal, but mortal followers can still kick your ass).
+detect chaos no longer works on you
You basically get rid of the idea of chaos being something distinct from the world but that's a different debate about the nature of chaos.
The Arkati Illuminates kind of have their cake and eat it too when it comes to illumination. They're illuminated but make the conscious choice to designate Chaos as a threat to the world that has to be fought. It's different to a Storm Bull driven by frothing anger. It probably manifests as a focused resolve to do what must be done.
On some level I've always thought that the Arkati Illuminates might be the closest to Gregg's actual beliefs. Because it sounds like a Comparative Mythology guy who has taken a step back from everything, seen the bigger picture, and decides to go along with the bigger picture instead of saying its false or a construct
>Finally, the Red Goddess is right there hanging in the Middle Air as the Red Moon.
That was a break in the Compromise, as she manifests her entirety in creation as a new thing that wasn't there before. Same issue with Nysalor and Zistor before. >Though at Castle Blue Orlanth did bend the compromise a bit to try to fuck with the Red Goddess's ascension but by that point the compromise was already in the process of being broken.
It isn't breaking the compromise or bending it when it is already being broken. When someone breaks it, it allows the others to step in against them more fully. The same thing happened before when the God Learners made their Machine god; it broke the Compromise and so Orlanth was able to step in to nuke their city.
The Red Goddess is strange, because there's also this sense that she's partly an entity that wasn't allowed to be part of the Great Compromise, so is forcing her way in.
There's at least one Moon entity that was slain in the God Time, and the Red Goddess is partly her resurrecting herself, partly another return of Nysalor, and partly something new.
I think; it's an area where my understanding of the lore gets spotty.
Part of the reason things at the end of the Ages get so crazy is that, with the Compromise already broken, additional breaks happen in order to fix it.
And the End of the Third Age is rapidly approaching.
Well, maybe not 'rapidly'; it took about fifty Earth-years to move ten Glorantha years...
>On some level I've always thought that the Arkati Illuminates might be the closest to Gregg's actual beliefs. Because it sounds like a Comparative Mythology guy who has taken a step back from everything, seen the bigger picture, and decides to go along with the bigger picture instead of saying its false or a construct
A bit like what Greg said about dwarfs.
Dwarfs give us one of my favourite Greg quotes > I cannot find it easy to begrudge an entire race of intelligent beings simply because their inner nature makes them disagreeable, so I do it with difficulty.
>I cannot find it easy to begrudge an entire race of intelligent beings simply because their inner nature makes them disagreeable, so I do it with difficulty.
Gods had a big war, aptly named the Gods War, which wrecked the world so much that Chaos seeped in and ended everything. The gods assembled in what was left and formed a magical compact which manifested as a net with which they could bind the Devil, after which Arachne Solara ate him and birthed Time which restored the world. It's in essence a magically binding non-aggression pact and alliance against Chaos.
The general deal of it is that it separates gods from the mortal realm except in doing their assigned tasks (the sun in the sky, winds blowing etc.) and they are bound to do those tasks. Gods that died before Time also have to spend half of their time in the underworld, so Yelms death means the sun has to set every night and Flamal being eaten results in plants only growing half of the year. In addition to Time it resulted in God Time, the realm of the gods where all mythical pasts happened. And finally it made it so that gods can only interact with their followers in specific pre-assigned ways, like during religous festivals or at certain holy sites.
Key thing is that mortals are exempt from the Compromise and can so affect the world in ways gods can't. But if any mortal ascends to godhood they need to become part of it or face destruction/break the Compromise.
Essentially this is why some Gods are more clearly visibile inside of Time than others. Orlanth is literally the Wind/Storms. Yelm is literally the Sun that travels across the Sky each day and then goes into the Underworld and comes back each morning. Magasta can be see as the giant whirlpool that acts like a bathroom plug stopping the world from being drained into The Void. Finally, the Red Goddess is right there hanging in the Middle Air as the Red Moon. The Gods may seem to have motion, as these phenomena but they have very limited control over what they can or can't do. The bounds of their action is defined by what they did during the God Time. They can repeat things they've done, but they can't innovate or do anything 'new', violating that would break the compromise.
Though at Castle Blue Orlanth did bend the compromise a bit to try to fuck with the Red Goddess's ascension but by that point the compromise was already in the process of being broken.
If I had to tl;dr the Compromise:
Cosmic Non-aggression pact between all the Deities, so they primarily have to fight things out using mortal followers. Because they tried fighting personally before and it essentially killed the world which had to be re-born again. The Red Moon is trying to break it, the Storm God is upholding it.
[...]
The Arkati Illuminates kind of have their cake and eat it too when it comes to illumination. They're illuminated but make the conscious choice to designate Chaos as a threat to the world that has to be fought. It's different to a Storm Bull driven by frothing anger. It probably manifests as a focused resolve to do what must be done.
On some level I've always thought that the Arkati Illuminates might be the closest to Gregg's actual beliefs. Because it sounds like a Comparative Mythology guy who has taken a step back from everything, seen the bigger picture, and decides to go along with the bigger picture instead of saying its false or a construct
>The Red Moon is trying to break it, the Storm God is upholding it.
Not quite. The Red Moon didn't try to break it, she wanted to be part of the Compromise, but on her own terms. Doing so put her at odds with the gods set up to enforce the Compromise, like Orlanth, and with the help of Chaos she managed to achieve the impossible and win. So she's part of it, but with the own clauses and exceptions that she finagled into the Compromise.
Where did Belintar fall in that?
He was a god, living in God Time, but then would pull a body switch with his 'hosts', who went on to live in God Time while Belintar used their body (or something like that). Is that a violation, or did he not actually count as a god?
Gods manifesting through mortals (heroforming) is part of the Compromise and Belintar was basically abusing that to a massive degree. Same how Sedenya being reborn a mortal didn't break it or Rathor being Harreks cloak doesn't break it.
>Not quite. The Red Moon didn't try to break it, she wanted to be part of the Compromise, but on her own terms. Doing so put her at odds with the gods set up to enforce the Compromise, like Orlanth, and with the help of Chaos she managed to achieve the impossible and win. So she's part of it, but with the own clauses and exceptions that she finagled into the Compromise.
That is like saying Gbaji and Zistor didn’t break the compromise because they existed and acted within time. Them doing that is them breaking it, just because the red goddess continues to flaunt it doesn’t mean she stopped being an affront and is why she is able to eventually be destroyed just like the others that did the same.
But Sedenya is officially part of the Compromise, that's the whole thing with the battle at Castle Blue. It was supposed to be the straw the camels back of her shenanigans and the gods would either smack her down or force her to take her assigned place. But that didn't happen. Against all odds she won and thus used the chance to do an addendum which made her chaotic shenanigans exempt from the regular Compromise rules. She made peace with most of the gods there, with notable exeptions like Orlanth, Eurmal and Kyger Litor, and got to join in with them in God Time.
But as was brought up in a somewhat recent post by Jeff her new position in the compromise is not as set in stone as everyone else. By joining the Compromise she needs to fulfill her mythic duties, which due to her being born in Time are very limited to fighting with the Air gods for dominance over the Middle Air. This is why the fighting between Sedenya and Orlanth is so bitter, if Sedenya loses or even just tries to stop fighting she risks the Cosmos resetting like it did when the Second Age ended and the red moon gets shunted out of the middle air. And Orlanth can't stop fighting either, cause one his Compromise duty is to battle Chaos and so he must fight or the Compromise breaks.
Do you think we will see a cults of Glorantha book based on dragons? Or maybe a newtpak of some kind? The draconic lore is quite cool, wish there was more.
Probably not a proper Cult book, but there are hints that there'll be books that focus on draconic stuff and higher tier dragons like Godunya somewhere in the far future. Most likely a Kralorela book, as that has also been mentioned in the past.
>But as was brought up in a somewhat recent post by Jeff her new position in the compromise is not as set in stone as everyone else.
Even Jeff labels her a compromise breaker. When did he say she is a part of it?
Her being part of the compromise is mentioned in the sourcebook. Quote: "At the end, the fight was over, and the Old Gods abased themselves before the Red Goddess and swore acceptance of her. Some swore allegiance as well. The Natural Order had been torn by the fighting at Castle Blue, and after peace came again the universe was made whole once more by including the Red Goddess and her powers."
And here's the specific Jeff post: https://wellofdaliath.chaosium.com/conflict-in-the-middle-air/
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
I’m reading that post and literally no where does he say that she is a part of the great compromise. Quite the opposite: >Can’t the compromise be amended? >That’s not how it works. The only way I could imagine it is to force every deity to agree – even Zorak Zoran, Kyger Litor, and Storm Bull. Every single one. And do it on the God Plane. Last time that worked was because the only alternative was the annihilation of everything.
She has made her own deals and arrangements but it is on a god by god basis, and those gods just act as they must because they are still bound by the compromise while she has leeway because she isn’t. She is neither bound by nor protected by the compromise, in the same way an outlaw is not bound by nor protected by the law.
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
If she wasn't bound in some way by the Compromise she wouldn't need to fight Orlanth in the way it's stated she must nowadays. She was free to make choices which gave her an advantage over the gods up until Castle Blue. It may not state word for word that she's bound by the Compromise, but she must be cause otherwise every god that didn't make friends or deals with her should gank her for being a threat like with Zistor. She wouldn't have needed to turn herself into a moon either and left the running of the empire to her son if she could just flaunt the rules of the Compromise.
Sounds like that passage is written in character rather than objectively.
It does but it quite apply describes something akin to the Compromise taking effect.
>She made peace with most of the gods there, with notable exeptions like Orlanth, Eurmal and Kyger Litor, and got to join in with them in God Time.
Btw. why do Eurmal and Sedenya hate each other this much? Has that been mentioned somewhere?
Afaik it has not been given an explicit explanation. But one can speculate based on what we know about them. Eurmal is inherently self-centered and Sedenyas alltruistic endgoals goes against his nature. Eurmal, as per Lightbringers, always go against authority and strength and she'd fit that after her victory at Castle Blue. Both are associated with illusions (Illusion vs Moon) so they may understand/be more similar than everyone thinks and despises eachother for it.
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
She fights because she must for survival, like the gods did during the Gods War. It isn't because she is bound to by the compromise like Orlanth does.
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
Eurmal tricked us all by pretending to be a retard when he is acxtually the wisest guru among all gods
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
Sounds like that passage is written in character rather than objectively.
>She made peace with most of the gods there, with notable exeptions like Orlanth, Eurmal and Kyger Litor, and got to join in with them in God Time.
Btw. why do Eurmal and Sedenya hate each other this much? Has that been mentioned somewhere?
>The general deal of it is that it separates gods from the mortal realm except in doing their assigned tasks (the sun in the sky, winds blowing etc.) and they are bound to do those tasks. Gods that died before Time also have to spend half of their time in the underworld, so Yelms death means the sun has to set every night and Flamal being eaten results in plants only growing half of the year. In addition to Time it resulted in God Time, the realm of the gods where all mythical pasts happened. And finally it made it so that gods can only interact with their followers in specific pre-assigned ways, like during religous festivals or at certain holy sites.
This of course divides the gods into an "elemental" and a "personal" aspect. The "elemental" aspect is rather easy and just consists of the parts you experience in the mundane world like the sun, wind or even something more abstract like trade. The personal aspect is a bit trickier and consists of the human traits and personalities ascribed to them. It's also a lot more interesting since it's more subjective and can be influenced by mortals though I am not sure to what extent. A storm god will likely be temperamental but does Orlanth need to be a king everywhere? Can he be seperated from his mastery rune?
Also makes me wonder how clear cut the borders between gods are. Irl it often happened that gods merged or split but in Glorantha that only happens to a very limited degree. They seem to be very clearly defined individuals but I think it would be cool if somewhere e.g. Orlanth and Heler merged into one god.
>Not quite. The Red Moon didn't try to break it, she wanted to be part of the Compromise, but on her own terms. Doing so put her at odds with the gods set up to enforce the Compromise, like Orlanth, and with the help of Chaos she managed to achieve the impossible and win. So she's part of it, but with the own clauses and exceptions that she finagled into the Compromise.
That is like saying Gbaji and Zistor didn’t break the compromise because they existed and acted within time. Them doing that is them breaking it, just because the red goddess continues to flaunt it doesn’t mean she stopped being an affront and is why she is able to eventually be destroyed just like the others that did the same.
That's at least Orlanth's perspective. Others are more willing to compromise.
That sort of stuff happens all the time, we're just used to the "standard" situation in modern south central genertela.
Orlanth Thunderous and Adventurous used to be completely separate religions that later came to be seen as aspects of the same god with the Theyalan movement. And did Humat used to be Orlanth? Or was he sort of Umath and sort of Humakt?
We have better sources for how the Pelorian and Pelandan religions got mixed up, merged, and divided in earlier ages, but it happened everywhere.
>The general deal of it is that it separates gods from the mortal realm except in doing their assigned tasks (the sun in the sky, winds blowing etc.) and they are bound to do those tasks. Gods that died before Time also have to spend half of their time in the underworld, so Yelms death means the sun has to set every night and Flamal being eaten results in plants only growing half of the year. In addition to Time it resulted in God Time, the realm of the gods where all mythical pasts happened. And finally it made it so that gods can only interact with their followers in specific pre-assigned ways, like during religous festivals or at certain holy sites.
This of course divides the gods into an "elemental" and a "personal" aspect. The "elemental" aspect is rather easy and just consists of the parts you experience in the mundane world like the sun, wind or even something more abstract like trade. The personal aspect is a bit trickier and consists of the human traits and personalities ascribed to them. It's also a lot more interesting since it's more subjective and can be influenced by mortals though I am not sure to what extent. A storm god will likely be temperamental but does Orlanth need to be a king everywhere? Can he be seperated from his mastery rune?
Also makes me wonder how clear cut the borders between gods are. Irl it often happened that gods merged or split but in Glorantha that only happens to a very limited degree. They seem to be very clearly defined individuals but I think it would be cool if somewhere e.g. Orlanth and Heler merged into one god.
[...]
That's at least Orlanth's perspective. Others are more willing to compromise.
The Elmal/Yelmalio situation is similar.
They're technically both Theyalan interpretations of The Lightfore; in the 90s, Greg felt that Elmal was the better interpretation, then changed his mind back to Yelmalio in the last few years.
(Somehow, it's been handled a bit awkwardly, but the basic gist is there.)
>They're technically both Theyalan interpretations of The Lightfore; in the 90s, Greg felt that Elmal was the better interpretation
Elmal wasn’t the Orlanthi Lightfore, he is the Orlanthi Sun.
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
wait, where did Yelm go after the dawn then?
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
It might be a metaphor for the reformation of the Darra Harapan Imperial government after centuries of being ruled by Hyalorong and Gamate (Riders and Wheels).
You have Antrius, the little sun also called Yelmalio who guarded under the Dome and through the Great Darkness and you have Elmal, who is also Lightfore and tried to first suceed Yelm then migrated with his people, eventually becoming the sun god of the horse nomads and the Orlanthi.
Eventually the Hyalorong and Gamate are sent packing into Pent, having reabsorbed all the Imeprial traditions. Their version of the Little Sun starts getting closer to Darra Harapan Yelmalio, meanwhile in the south Elmal remains with the Hyaloring/Orlanthi.
With the tradional Darra Harapan culture restored, Antrius no longer needs to step in for Yelm. Who symbolically returns.
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
Sory i should also say Antrius is Yelmalio/Lightfore, which means Little or Weak Sun depending on how the people pharse it.
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
yeah ok but if I ask an orlanthi "where is yelm?" what will he say?
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
Yelm is the sun. Elmal is also the sun. This is an enormous issue in-setting as well.
Elmal is "the sun being nice to us and obeying Orlanth". But when Heortling Elmali communities came back into contact with Pelorian Yelmites after the resettlement of Dragon Pass things started to kick off.
>These guys also worship the Sun. But they don't have to ritually submit to the Air temples, have amazing giant golden altars, possess incredible magic, and keep women in their place! >Maybe we should get in on this, and start adopting northern traditions. Especially that one which lets you summon a giant pillar of fire because I'm feuding with my king at the moment...
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
It dos open up an interesting persepctive if the reason Elmal is less attractive than Yelmalio bcause Yelm gives associate gods fire magic while Elmal/Yelmalio/Antrius/Lightfore/Random petty sun go of a Pelorian city state lost their own thanks to mythic cycles.
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
I think a big part is fallout from the EWF's collapse. Solar communities now have to choose whether they submit to priests of Orlanth Rex or Yelm Imperator, and that puts them right in the middle of political (and military!) conflict.
So when Monro comes along with his vision of the Many Suns, it's appealing to a lot of people. Here's a mythic construct that provably works - you get magic from it - but is free of loyalty to either side. "Oh sure he's the sun, but he's not THAT sun, but the other one. Sorry mister emperor, different thing."
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
>It dos open up an interesting persepctive if the reason Elmal is less attractive than Yelmalio bcause Yelm gives associate gods fire magic while Elmal/Yelmalio/Antrius/Lightfore/Random petty sun go of a Pelorian city state lost their own thanks to mythic cycles.
Except that is a recent Jeff thing. Previously Elmal absolutely had the Fire Rune rather than Light Rune, and as such had full access to your typical Fire Rune magics. This makes sense since he is the sun, including its warmth as said by Greg.
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
The only person who ever gave Elmal fire rune magic *was* Jeff (and even that's unclear, HQ didn't have a clear battle/divine magic divide), Greg listed his magics as:
> blessings upon the earth, good barley crops, healthy horses, and winter protection.
Which sounds like "replacement sun during the Darkness". It's all supposed to be super vague, and make you wonder if the Elmal cult was a way of worshipping The Sun / Yelm / Ehilm, or always a compound idea about the Little Sun. The sources are all biased and from uncertain periods.
None of which works for a fucking game set during the conflict, but it's always been impossible to pin down Greg further than his last drug binge (sorry, "shamanic vision"), so every attempt to lay it out in an RPG product has just made it more of a mess.
It doesn't matter, move on. There is no objective Greg-ordained truth.
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
Elmal still had the Fire Rune in Greg’s guide to Glorantha too.
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
so is the Elmalite civil war more a case of sartarites trying to become Yelmites until Monrogh gets them to become Yelmalions instead?
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
>Their original god Elmal was crushed under the culturally rich and materially successful Pelorian Sun religion, which eventually proved itself so enticing to the Sun‑worshiping hill folks of Sartar that the Tanahart Clan destroyed itself with kinstrife during the reign of King Jarolar, fighting to say which god was their god.
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
This is one of the thing which immediately annoys me about all the Elmal/Yelmalio drivel that comes up on this board, because most are zoomers who never met Greg, screeching out in unison with the rest of the parrots. So to explain how Elmal fits in with Yelm, its also necessary to touch on that.
Before Elmal was invented, there was Yelmalio and Yelm, but Greg realized that there was a hole in the fabric: who did the Theyalans worship as the sun before they encountered Dara Happa? The answer to this question was Elmal. After they encountered each other, the Theyalans and Dara Happans identified each other's gods in their myths, and many Orlanthi came to recognize the sun as Yelm: the god which Orlanth made the compromise with and brought back from hell. Elmali still had their place, and some magic from Peloria even became adopted by the cult, but they were made much smaller after this point. Elmal was not the emperor sun, but the friendly sun. Fast forward hundreds of years and Monrogh the lantern founds the Yelmalio cult.
Now before I go on, I want to emphasize that all of this was first introduced in King of Sartar. All of it. The idea of Elmal, how Yelmalio has superseded him, all of that was introduced in the 1993 King of Sartar. None of it existed before that point. The whole point of the King of Sartar was to both introduce Elmal, and explain why he has more or less been replaced by Yelmalio.
Fans at the time got angry about this because it contradicted all the established lore they knew about Yelmalio so far. The Yelmalio cult existed in earlier eras than just the third era: the idea of Elmal and Monrogh founding the Yelmalio cult seemingly contradicted everything about the Yelmalio cult. Funnily enough, people claim that Elmal is being rewritten out of the picture, but that was literally the entire point of why Elmal was introduced.
So when thinking about what Yelm and Elmal, it helps to have that history in mind.
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
My opinion is either you have Yelmalio always exist and it doesn't matter if the sun hates you for being Orlanthi, gods are just magic people you have to live with.
Or Elmal is a god in a broader set of mythical pantheons which can overlap and may be mythically the same, but can have differnt opiions and beliefs from each other. Elmal may be supplanted, but he and Yelmalio were seperate gods who happen to just be the same planet.
The first is how RQ2 does it and makes for a better game, the second is how Heroquest and Six Ages use them.
The seocnd one is much more anthropogically and historically accurete to the constantly overlapping sets of real-life gods.
It's alos more Jeff's tone, it's no long YGMV (though it never reallyw as) it's Jeff's Glorantha and anything that contradicts it is fan-fiction. Even the Heorquest books under the same art irection and authors where Elmali were showing up (in very reduced numbers) even in 1618.
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
>The first is how RQ2 does it and makes for a better game, the second is how Heroquest and Six Ages use them. >The seocnd one is much more anthropogically and historically accurete to the constantly overlapping sets of real-life gods.
My biggest problem with RQG is that it feels like the design team can't pick one of these approaches and stick to it.
If they did one or the other, they could point to pdfs of the various old products over the years, pretty much all of which they offer, and say 'this does the other approach better, so take a look if you want more of that'.
But instead, you get a very muddled vision of the world, that's hard for newcomers to grok, but *also* loses a lot of - I don't want to say 'verisimilitude', but I don't know what other word to use.
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
I think it's too early to say what their approach truly is really until the solar book comes out. Jeff has been more or less dictating the setting out in an authoritative way, since as
I do get where Jeff is coming from. He's trying to publish a resurrected game line, and doesn't want its socials filled up with the same arguments from the 90s.
He was the big Elmal pusher that helped make him a fan favorite, and then spent years working more closely with Greg trying to forge that mess into something coherent until he just got fully fed up. And still managed to include Elmali in the Colymar material.
Healthy young RPG author goes to shaman, gets pumped with massive shot of Many Suns, doesn't feel good and changes - YELMALIO. Many such cases.
says, Jeff is trying to stop the grognards from gatekeeping. The irony is that he has become THE gatekeeper of Glorantha. How much is just some emotional reaction to some forum post, and how much is going to be published, that is yet to be seen.
It seems like his broad aim is to bring Glorantha and Runequest to a new generation, which requires a clear message that is not confused by old guard debates and squabbles. This is reasonable on the surface, but I ultimately think its going to come back to bite Jeff in the arse. Jeff would be like the father of a new generation of Runequest players, but the problem with that is that children eventually grow up. The coming new generation of Runequest players will grow tired of being 'fathered' by Jeff and being told what is the 'proper' thing to do. It certainly doesn't take nearly as long to learn about Glorantha as it takes to grow into adulthood, and Jeff is certainly old enough to be the father, maybe even the grandfather, of the market he is reaching out to.
That I think will be the big difference between getting gregged, and getting jeffed: getting jeffed is more like listening to an out-of-touch dad who is trying to help/connect with you.
>he and Yelmalio were seperate gods who happen to just be the same planet.
Except that wasn’t even the case since Elmal was the Orlanthi sun, not the lightfore, and had the Fire Rune.
>had the Fire rune
This doesn't mean as much as you think it does. You are coming at this from an RQG lens.
Elmal still had the Fire Rune in Greg’s guide to Glorantha too.
>Greg's guide
You do realize that the second author for the GtG and the editor-in-chief was Jeff. The GtG literally exists because of Jeff.
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
>This doesn't mean as much as you think it does. You are coming at this from an RQG lens.
Like how it isn't important if Yelm has the fire rune either or Orlanth the air rune.
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
>It seems like his broad aim is to bring Glorantha and Runequest to a new generation
If it is he's doing a phenomenally bad job. The way Cults of Runequest is structured it is specifically for collectors and not players. They could have published a "Major cults of Dragon Pass" or similar book which would have been great for players. Instead we get a mess where your average adventuring party an easily require 3 different books because Gagarth had to be a package deal with Orlanth. And don't forget the Prosopaedia. You know what a short paragraph for everything would be great for? A FREELY ACCESSIBLE WIKIA. The amount of interest this could spark by new players could maybe even exceed the money you make from poor sods who actually got that book. I tried getting into the setting by checking out things on the internet and it's basically impossible without buying a book. Do you think I'm going to spend 40 bucks just to find out if I am interested in the setting? I know that most people won't.
Jeff is mostly just interested in doing his thing and everyone else seems mostly interested in keeping Jeff happy. 99% of the very few new players come from the video games because WHERE ELSE ARE YOU GOING TO FIND OUT ABOUT THIS SETTING AND GAME? Even among niche nerd stuff Runequest is obscure and it will likely stay that way until the fanbase finally dies of old age. Thanks for coming to my Ted talk.
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
>phenomenally bad job
You say that, but the fact that this thread exists and very clearly is inundated with neophytes is evidence to the contrary. Could it be done better? Is Jeff up his own ass? 100%. Yet it is clearly working slowly and surely. The fact that people such as yourself are even trying to breach that wall is just as much evidence.
The cults series is odd since it was originally started in the same era as the guide was published, and wasn't originally designed with RQG in mind. This is not an excuse for them but just context worth keeping in mind.
As for future publishing, next year they said that they will be publishing the Lunar Cults, Sartar Book and Solar Cults. I might have heard the Argrath campaign mentioned, but I don't have solid evidence that is planned to happen. The Sartar book will probably be the most important Runequest book that they publish next year. The Solar and Lunar books really appeal to old timers, who have seen things like the Sartar book before, but the Sartar book needs to be what makes RQG accessible to newcomers from a game perspective. If it doesn't do that, then I really think its missing the mark on what Runequest needs to survive.
As far as I'm aware, there's no timeline on when the GM's guide is coming out. That is another huge issue.
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
It's almost a Rite of Passage to be told by Jeff, directly, that you are wrong about something. At least once.
Also it's still kind of wild to me that so much Chaosium gameline discussion happens on Facebook apparently. And at the same time they want to reach out to younger people.
>phenomenally bad job
You say that, but the fact that this thread exists and very clearly is inundated with neophytes is evidence to the contrary. Could it be done better? Is Jeff up his own ass? 100%. Yet it is clearly working slowly and surely. The fact that people such as yourself are even trying to breach that wall is just as much evidence.
The cults series is odd since it was originally started in the same era as the guide was published, and wasn't originally designed with RQG in mind. This is not an excuse for them but just context worth keeping in mind.
As for future publishing, next year they said that they will be publishing the Lunar Cults, Sartar Book and Solar Cults. I might have heard the Argrath campaign mentioned, but I don't have solid evidence that is planned to happen. The Sartar book will probably be the most important Runequest book that they publish next year. The Solar and Lunar books really appeal to old timers, who have seen things like the Sartar book before, but the Sartar book needs to be what makes RQG accessible to newcomers from a game perspective. If it doesn't do that, then I really think its missing the mark on what Runequest needs to survive.
As far as I'm aware, there's no timeline on when the GM's guide is coming out. That is another huge issue.
Lunar and Solars is going to be critical because it will probably be mostly new material and be more of a bellwether to judge the writing chops of RQ:G's future. Lunars especially kind of surprises me when I think about it, because you think they have so much history and lore, and they do, but they don't actually have that much in the way of official writeups for use in a game.
Sure some of the Gods may have gotten Gods of Glorantha writeups but those were like a page at most.
Sartar book will be even more important though, for the reasons you outlined.
I'm not convinced the GM book is ever happening lol. That one's absence is a blackmark on the RQ:G gameline.
Not to diminish the horror of it, but that level of feeding is for getting the Bat ready for war; normally it's about a tenth of that.
I don't want to say you're wrong, but this is from the RQ:G bestiary, which I don't see say it's for war preparation explicitly. I mean this is the writeup for it for use as an enemy with stats so maybe that's the case. All it says about being fed but 'not enough' (and not days missed, if you miss feeding day on Black and Dying moon days, you're FUCKED). if not fed properly 'it has a percentage chance of becoming uncontrolled equal to 1/10 the magic points due to it.'
Anyway, Crimson Bat is bad news. I still think its the most legitimate reason to despise the Lunar Empire. It will never not be odd to me that core to RQ:G is 'ooh but the Lunars aren't THAT bad'. Sure individuals are fine, but the Crimson Bat is PRETTY FUCKING BAD DUDE. This then gets kind of funny when you find out the only reason the Bat exists is so the Lunar player in White Bear/Red Moon can circumvent the Moon Cycle mechanic by using the Bat's Glowspot, so the opposing player can't just abuse the Moon Cycle constantly.
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
the time is ripe for someone young and hip to make a glorantha lore channel. I would, but I do not have enough knowledge.
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
>I still think its the most legitimate reason to despise the Lunar Empire.
shit, what other reasons de we have? they dabble with chaos and they dont like orlanth. aside from that there is npthing that makes them different. same sexual morals, same laws, same clothing, same building materials, same stance on tattoos. they have slaves and we have thralls.
not exactly Romans vs Gauls this. not even Persians vs Greeks
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
This is from the Sartar Companion: >The Crimson Bat must feed on live sentient beings every week. If not fed, it diminishes in size and power while becoming harder to control; but as it feeds, it grows in size and power. Normally, the Crimson Bat requires 25 sacrifices a week; when it is preparing for war, its food consumption increases by a factor of ten and must be fed twice weekly.
(In the campaign timeline, it's mentioned that the Bat is fed 500 sacrifices immediately before the assault on Whitewall.) >If the Bat is not properly fed; the High Priest killed or loses his concentration; or anyone not of the cult, the Bat Guard, or a direct descendent of the Moon rides it; the Bat will attempt to break control and run amok devouring friend and foe alike until it vanishes from the mundane plane on the next Godday. The secret rituals to resummon the Crimson Bat are long and arduous, requiring three to seven years to complete and the personal attendance of the Red Emperor at their culmination. At the climax, the current High Priest is fed to the Bat and a new High Priest chosen.
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
ty for digging that up Anon, it made me go look in Cults of Terror again. Still a great book after all these years. I really like the Paulis Longvale/Oddi saga stuff in it. Talastar would make a great place to centre a campaign. It is the easiest explanation to have Theyalan, Lunar, and Solar cultists all rubbing shoulders and having to be buddy buddy because Holy Fucking Arkat Dorastor is RIGHT THERE DUDE and the Unicorn Emperor grows stronger year by year.
I remember hearing that there was an original Cults of Glorantha preview.
Was there ever a pdf copy of it?
nah pretty sure we'd have it somewhere if there was. I'm reasonably sure whatever preview or pre-layout books exist were looked at or given to like 5 people at a gencon once
You can't make an omelette without feeding a few thousand eggs to giant demonic chaos bat.
Wake up from your utopian fantasies and start living in the real world.
This user has sacrificed almost all POW to the Bat. He will be fed to it after the Lunars suffer a devastating loss.
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
So, Dorastor is *not* part of the Lunar Empire? The nature of Illumination means that the Lunars can meet with him diplomatically, but at the end of the day, he's still an adversary?
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
The empire doesn't love chaos, it just knows it can be used for good. Ralzakark doesn't get used, he uses you.
Things reportedly do not go super great for everyone when he seizes the lunar throne.
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
Ralzakark has agreements with the Lunars, but he is definitely not a subject. He probably thinks he's a peer of the Emperor. He fights with King Oddi (who is a provincial king under the Red Emperor i.e. a subject and someone who should be under Moonson's protection). And some of the hints at what's going to happen in the Empire as the Hero Wars progress imply that Ralzakark is up to some shit.
You know? I find side-crushingly funny that just as the Jeff and the mainline attempt to move the setting away from Elmal we get not one, but TWO games in which he is not just a major character, but the main god of the peoples you control and at least three different cultures, expanding his myth into a saga in which you follow his direct descendants during the literal most important cosmic moment in Glorantha's lore.
Elmal was a cool yet ultimately minor god in the tabletop. Now David turned him into the literal embodyment of undying hope in the face of Chaos inevitable victory, turned his small myth in a generational struggle in which you end up facing a chaos god in the depths of the very void and remaking the world with Arachne Solara.
Is just so puzzling that the videogames and the official setting are going in pretty much opposite directions just when Chaosium wants to reach the wider public.
Yeah Elmal is sick as fuck lmao. He's great. When all the other Gods died (by going to the Underworld deliberately or not) Elmal is the one whose fire never quite went out. He endured till the Sun came back. He is our Guardian and Protector.... Now in RQ:G canon that God was Lightfore. But the Yelmalio of the Third Age can be hard to love, Elmal in Six Ages is OUR BOY and we are given very direct reasons to like him. It's very well done.
Like the other anon said give it another 10-15 years and new Chaosium writers will probably revive Elmal after having played those games.
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
I really feel like Monrogh wad on to something but was tricked by the lunars and that he did not complete his revelations. In my mind, the true path of the bright protector in the dark must end with a, if not heroic and selfless cult, then at least one that gets along with Orlanthi
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
At this point, I'm looking forward to, in 10-15 years, new post-Jeff people taking over writing stuff, deciding that they like Elmal better than Yelmalio after all, and all the people who came into the game through RQG getting as up in arms as possible.
Part of me even wants to believe Greg wanted it that way, for maximum lols.
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
Yeah I wouldn’t be surprised.
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
>he and Yelmalio were seperate gods who happen to just be the same planet.
Except that wasn’t even the case since Elmal was the Orlanthi sun, not the lightfore, and had the Fire Rune.
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
>he and Yelmalio were separate gods who happen to just be the same planet.
What is the “objective” truth in game reality for things like this? Are the gods just patterns used by mortals to gain magic? What is the structure under the myths. How do different societies have different myths when there are long-lived creatures whi were there when the events of the mythology actually happened? How can all these gods be “the” god if the sun when there is only one sun?
The metaphysics of this setting don’t make much sense to me. A lot of people seem to like it, so I presume I’m missing some important facts about how the setting worlds.
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
before the compromise there was no time, so every eventuality that COULD have happened played out at the same, er...time.
or at least, and this is something six ages have made me umderstand, I think the gods and their worshippers lived by the prime rule of magic: As above, so below. bit also: as below, so above.
Elmal marries Redalda because Beren marries Reydalda because Elmal marries Redalda.
Thus, Every culture before time could have their own relarionship with Elmal and he with them (if they worshipped him at all) and he could be a different figure, a differen relationship to each of them.
Then time begins and the relationship changes.
Argrath will also change the relationship between man and god again, but I suspect it wont be for the better...
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
The problem really comes from two places:
1)King of Dragon Pass was the jumping-on point for a lot of people; in it, we have plenty of Elmal worshippers, as well as the infamy of the 'Elmal Guards the Stead' heroquest. (personally, the quest where your herd priestess gets eaten by wolves always seemed tougher to me.) There's no mention of Yelmalio; this all makes sense, since we're very much in-between Sun Dome Temples. (The bit where Theyalans start with Elmal, switch to Yelmalio, then get hit on the head and forget Yelmalio exists for the length of an age or two, does always confuse me.)
But even if you could argue that KoDP is not official, there's also...
2)HeroQuest Glorantha was still being published right up until RuneQuest Glorantha came out. And in HQG, you have Sartarites worshipping Elmal, and almost no mention of Yelmalio whatsoever. It's not until RQG comes out that there's the immediate about-face.
Now, there's nothing intrinsically wrong with that - it produces a Dragon Pass that looks much more like it did in the old days. But, it was a sudden and immediate change to the lore. Even if it *was* always the intended result, it didn't look like at at the time, and Jeff's explanations are incredibly dismissive.
(I tend to have little sympathy for game designers incapable of admitting when they've created their own problems.)
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
I might be naive here, but couldnt this all be solved by saying that Yelmalio was the sun of yelm, then yelm died and ELMAL went to find himself (hangs out with orlanth), dawn happens and Yelmalio comes back as a complete god.
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
Yelmalio is the Lightfore, the little sorta shiny planet has the opposites place from the sun in orbit, so it travels when the sky when the Sun goes to the underworld at night. Just a bit of light, no heat. Or at least he is now. Sometimes he is also referenced as being the light of the sun without the heat, like the sun as felt on cold mountain peaks (which you might think would be warmer since they are closer to the Sun).
Except there were many suns during the darkness, not just one. Hell, Yelm might just be a reconstruction within time of the many parts rather than the sun or the Dawn.
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
Yelmalio was around doing stuff during the darkness too. Mostly getting the shit kicked out of hum by everything else. He even loses to Zorak Zoran, a god he should hard counter and lost fire to him.
3 weeks ago
Anonymous
>Yelmalio is the tiny spark of hope, carried by people in the darkest days, that will allow the dawn to spark again >Elmal is the loyal thane, patrolling the stead and lighting the world, keeping it safe with the higher lords are elsewhere
Honestly, their myths and practices are so different, that it would have been easy enough to have both of them still present, just declaring 'in the modern days, Yelmalio is much more prominent, due to various cultural factors that make a lot of sense.'
Instead, they went with 'Elmal was just Yelmalio the whole time, deal with it lol.'
A hilarious reversal of the 90s version, 'Yelmalio was just Elmal the whole time, deal with it lol', apparently showing they learned nothing in three decades.
Was rereading the Stafford House Campaign, and I noticed an interesting line.
That Horali can take a geas to never use magic in return for their iron weapons and armour to count as the Countermagic spell, 1 point per 1 ENC of gear.
We never got Greg's actually Western book nor will we ever now. So this is just an orphaned reference.
Why do Lunars bother with the Bat when they can get their secret police to summon a dozen selenes a.k.a. poison gas elementals and send them to visit enemy tents at night.
Because the bat is a WMD and a tool of terror as well, keeping both enemies and civilians in line through fear. Nobody wants their soul devoured and so people just vote for their criminals to become bat food.
in my game, being eaten by the bat was so bad that your name disappeared and people forgot you. You may be able to remember that you once had a father and what hapenned around him, but he was just a hole in your memory and any writing of his name became unintelligble scribbles
Wakboth being the one that got sucked by Arachne Solara to become Time also doesn’t really work with the Guide to Glorantha, since Wakboth is still listed as the owner of the Chaos Rune.
So whats the better system to learn if you want to get some RuneQuest on?
Ive always loved the setting, read Guide to Glorantha and am planning on ordering the Prosopaedia as well and I get that I'll never actually get a chance to play so I might as well learn to run it.
It's not as bad as RQ2 where combat only started to rise above 100% with lots of effort and qualifying for Runelord status, but Defence coul make combat eally tedious.
Defence was a % that Lowered your opponent's Attack %.
And there were spells and mutations that could give up to +20% Defence.
You could make almost all normal opponents rolls 15-25% or less in all combat but you still neded to rolll in case one actually did hit you.
>It’s not that hard for some characters to go to 200 even
This seems like a bit of a stretch. Anyone without magic as powerful as Sword Trance is going to need heavy investment and probably decades of experience to get that high.
I didnt get this for a long time, that chaos should be hard to face. Because nowhere in the rules does it say that facing chaos creatures requires a test or anything. there's just randomass spells like "face chaos" that you might not even notice.
All this "spirit of Ernalda", "ghost of Glorantha" is a cover-up. Mysterious character met on the edge of the sea who convinietly knows the secret paths though Underworld? Wake up sheeple!
I do get where Jeff is coming from. He's trying to publish a resurrected game line, and doesn't want its socials filled up with the same arguments from the 90s.
He was the big Elmal pusher that helped make him a fan favorite, and then spent years working more closely with Greg trying to forge that mess into something coherent until he just got fully fed up. And still managed to include Elmali in the Colymar material.
Healthy young RPG author goes to shaman, gets pumped with massive shot of Many Suns, doesn't feel good and changes - YELMALIO. Many such cases.
The old 'Etyries' website seems to be gone for good now, sadly, but it provided a great screenshot on how people felt about the setting, and Greg's capacity for 'Gregging' things up, in the 90s and early 00s.
It went down because it was backed up onto the Well of Daliath! Navigation on that site is a nightmare, but it's been doing a great job of archiving so much material.
Honestly I would think that doing any heroquest would have some skill or stat bonus, solely as sort of a residue of having briefly been coterminous with a god. What skills or characteristics would then just be a feature of what God or myth you were heroquesting. Heroquesting Stormbull fighting the Devil might give Wrestling, Str, Punch, or even Siz. A hero playing the role of Eurmal in the Lightbringers quest would get Charm or Fast Talk. Yes you're performing as the God but some of them would end up sticking to you when you come back too. In general I don't think anyone could do a heroquest of any kind and not get a POW bonus on top of whatever else.
I would look at Geas for Yelmalio and Humkt for guidelines. They are the only way other than eating Giant Bee honey to increase certain unraisable stats. And they provide big skill boosts.
I would do it like this
Succeed on a Heroquest: Rolls to passions, elements and opportunities to spend Permanent POW to get a Geas benefit.
Sort of pass a Heroquest: Rolls to passions, elements and opportunities to spend Permanent POW to get a Geas benefit and penalty.
Fail a Heroquest: reducing rolls to passions, elements and get a Geas penalty no benefit.
Some of the other possible benefits could come from the Heroquest gifts in 13th Age Glorantha.
A Heroquest that a lot of players have done is killing the Rock Lizard Mother in the original The Rainbow Caves. Her blood spurting around gave everyone +1 AP to their skin and that was sorely needed.
Do you think we will see a cults of Glorantha book based on dragons? Or maybe a newtpak of some kind? The draconic lore is quite cool, wish there was more.
Unfortunately it seems like the only draconic God or power slated to have a cult write up in the current series is Godunya, based on him being featured on the little cult relationship chart that Chaosium showed off a while back. Unfortunately a newtpack would be years and years away, currently we know they have updated trollpak and an elfpak in the pipeline but Runequest stuff is released so slowly we don't even know when to expect them.
Well the only way you get offered the Crown of Berne is an event where it is offered by the Chaos God Terghen.
Surely you would take the Crown when offered, right Elmal?
I’m a bit confused about Yelm. If he is the Sun, and came back to life after the compromise, why are there so many Sun cults that worship sun gods but not THE Sun God? Has he just faded into obscurity after his resurrection in favor of his fragments/children?
Because there isn’t just one pantheon of gods, but rather pantheons for each culture. As those cultures mingled they began to associate gods from their own pantheon with gods from others, like how the Romans did in our world.
Yelm didn’t exist at the dawn, more even during the first age as the god we know though neither did orlanth. There were other sun gods such as Antirius, Elmal, Ehilim and Kargzant (which have basically all been shifted into yelmalio). Orlanth wasn’t Rebellus Terminus of the Dara Happans (which is actually a label used for Shargash but that can get you some serious illumination if you think about it too long) and their sun god was not the bad emperor of the Orlanthi.
It was the coming of Nysalor and the breaking of the compromise that changed things. By merging Orlanthi and Dara Happan cultures into a single empire through his chaotic illumination, the two entered a synthesis with each other. From this the Yelm from the current day begins to form, within the confines of time.
However, just because gods are similar does not mean they are the same, as the godlearners found out and tried to hide, much as Jeff tries to do so now.
Before the Bright Empire it was Orlanth the Lifebringer, who brought back his wife Ernalda to the world to save it. His return freed Elmal to once more spread his warmth and light across a revitalized Earth, rather than needing to remain at Orlanth’s stead to guard and lead the Storm tribe in his absence. There were other sun gods during this time too, it wasn’t just Elmal. The bad emperor was not necessarily the same as the emperor Yelm.
Sunlight ain't free. The stead of the Storm Tribe gotta be litterd with the tears of loyal thanes. YELMailo LightFART aka "loser" is not my Sun God. He's Lunar agent and probably chaotic as well :DDD ORLANTH and Elmal, not Orlanth and YELM ok. Praise Elmal
Nope. >The God of the White Pillar: >Glorantha’s skies are a physical dome, separated from the firmament by four pillars (one in each direction). The White Pillar manifests as a huge, white-bearded god struggling to hold up his corner of the sky. Our heroquesters are approaching the edge of the world and can now clearly see the celestial Sky Dome and the White Pillar god.
The part were Valind gets beat up is shown in King of Sartar though from the opposite perspective >King Argrath was sometimes aided in this war by the Lodrilli, a confederation of tribes from Peloria. One of them told Argrath about the annual expedition which the Lunar Empire sent to assist Kalikos Icebreaker. {Kalikos was an ancient demigod who had helped drive back Valind, the God of Winter, during the Gods War. Each year the Lunars sent out an expedition to reinforce Kalikos in his annual fight against Valind. As a result the demigod had held back all bad winters in Peloria for many centuries.} >Argrath recognized the unnaturalness of this act, and vowed to help fix it. With his own companions, he set off across the invisible road to find the house of Kalikos. However, the house had moved from its old place. They did not find it, for the Two‑half Bears delayed them and slew Harmast. >Instead of dying, lost on the glacier, they found Fankrios Unlaba, a woman frozen in the ice. She brought them to the house of her chieftain, Hend Valindsson, an old hero who was bound to this fight, and could not escape, and was sadly waiting to fight Kalikos and the rest of the Lunar expedition. Argrath gladly took the fight for the old man. Inandana Daughtersdotter was the Lunar hero who came, expecting another easy victory. Instead, Argrath slew her. Kalikos was wounded and driven off.
>We know Orlanthi perform Lightbringers heroquest if they feel they can pull it off. Do Lunars perform The Lives of Sedenya?
but you repeat yourself
More seriously, doing a LBG is a fair bit more serious than that. Communities do it every Sacred Time, but only on a superficial level - same for Lunars.
Going whole hog Harmast style is far, FAR more rare.
question.
My players may come upon an old abandoned shrine to maran gor next session. If the, now weak and tiny, shrine guardian spirit possess one of the PCs could it conduct a dacrifice there to power maran gor and itself?
and what else might one find in a long abandoned shrine to maran Gor? I kinda wanna tempt the players to loot it too and see what they choose.
Dinosaur bones! There is even an event for that in KoDP. Besides that, probably blunt weapons, maces or hammers, and maybe musical instruments like drums or gongs. Wealth from the northern Dragon Pass, since the center of MG cult is in Tarsh.
If you're interested in how gloranthan religions change and develop, I highly recommend reading the chapter titled "The Cult and Worship of Yelm" in The Fortunate Succession.
It's an overview of how Peloria's urban elite had their religious views vary enormously over the centuries due to foreign influence and political movements.
And that's not even counting normal people, but that chapter is unfinished so not terribly useful to read.
You know? I find side-crushingly funny that just as the Jeff and the mainline attempt to move the setting away from Elmal we get not one, but TWO games in which he is not just a major character, but the main god of the peoples you control and at least three different cultures, expanding his myth into a saga in which you follow his direct descendants during the literal most important cosmic moment in Glorantha's lore.
Elmal was a cool yet ultimately minor god in the tabletop. Now David turned him into the literal embodyment of undying hope in the face of Chaos inevitable victory, turned his small myth in a generational struggle in which you end up facing a chaos god in the depths of the very void and remaking the world with Arachne Solara.
Is just so puzzling that the videogames and the official setting are going in pretty much opposite directions just when Chaosium wants to reach the wider public.
I was quite happy to write of Elmal in favour of Greg’s explanation, as a second place approach to just using RQ2 lore which I believe much more useful for RPGs not settings. But Six Ages squared that circle for me about why Elmal was so distinct and what his mythological place was.
A member of the city-based sun cults each which vied to be the replacement sun. All of Yelm’s post-death son/suns trying to occupy the same niche.
My anger exists pretty much because Jeff decided that Elmal didn’t exist anywhere in the new edition, even in Runegate. When he could have just said they were like Heroquest, very small numbers of bitter people. The Solar book is going to have Elmal as a subcult of Yelmalio, so they could just be worshiping that and plotting mythical urspation.
This builds on the real reason I don’t like Jeff’s work. It’s simplification without simplifying thing.
Stafford went back in the late 80s and early 90s to take all the lore from Wyrm’s Footnotes and Cults of Prax and say it was mostly God-Learner stuff or scholarly works and really each culture had its own radical take on mythology with stuff like Orlanth killing Yelm and the Lightbringer Quest only being developed by the Theylan missionaries.
This complicates a fairly in-depth RPG mythology but is much more anthropological. Jeff wants to go back to the original myths but keep the complications that were explicitly there to dismantle the originals.
how many generation after Monrogh did it take before the sun dome (which confuses it with the sun county in Prax so we should use the name Vaantar) in sartar went from an ally of the state to become a subversive element?
Well the alliance ended when Tarkalor died (it was a personal agreement), so that lasted about three years. Maybe another three if you include the protracted succession crisis.
They pretty much sat out Sartar's invasion of the lunar empire and the following counter invasion, and only signed up with the occupation after Kallyr's rebellion failed. Fazzur certainly knows how to pay his soldiers. At that point they were technically working for the prince of sartar, and loyalty to the state gets a bit messy.
So call it 20+ years of not causing any trouble?
Better than them all going Yelm and swearing fealty to Moonson.
redpill me a bit on the dragonewts a bit.
Soon my PC's will move west of the donalf flats and through dragonewt lands, I want to try and understand how the dragonewts will react to this without making them so esoteric that they act lolrandumb.
I like the aldryami but before they got the nu-Glorantha treatment.
How are they different?
I like dwarves because they are just so autistic about their jobs. Also, they are the most sympathetic to me despite their unhuman customs and overall weirdness.
The style of their art changed drastically over the years (sometimes to the bad), but I like best the illustration from Introduction to Hero Wars.
They look totally human, until they open their mouths and start rambling about Latest Revises to the Repair Plan.
Dwarfs give us one of my favourite Greg quotes
> I cannot find it easy to begrudge an entire race of intelligent beings simply because their inner nature makes them disagreeable, so I do it with difficulty.
Gotta be dragonewts for me
Trolls because theya re the only ones to get fleshed out.
Where Elfpak comes out and w get to see what was any oggo out of the old Mongoose Elf book (same author) then we might see if playing an elf is as interesting.
Trolls
They seem simple on the surface but you can do fun stuff with them. I also like horror in my fantasy and trolls are great for that.
Trolls are cool, Ducks are a close second.
Question: I've noticed some contractions in the lore of Glorantha from across the editions. Is this intentional since it was the inconsistencies that drove the God Learners mad? Or I'm I just a retard with poor reading comprehension?
>contractions
Contradictions*
Looks like I might just be a retard after all.
In some cases likely yes but most of the time it was probably just the setting being further developed. Some lunatics believe that it was fully formed before Greg even thought of White Bear and Red Moon but that's not really how the creative process works and he was notorious for his retcons.
That pic also makes me think of all the cool scenes the official art could show but doesn't because we really need another Orlanth killing Yelm. I'd like the battle of Auroch hills or really anything from Ralios or Pent but I'll likely have to try drawing that myself if I want to see it. Seeing Broyan's face instead of just his arse would be pretty cool.
That has been happening since Jeff is in charge.
I lik to think of 3 sets of lore (as opposed to art where there were a lot more periods)
arly Lore, this lasts from White Bea Red Moon o the publishing of the Glorantha RQ3 books.
This is found in the wargames, RQ 2E books and Wyrm's Footnotes. Myth are true and Gods are individuals.
The RQ3 to Greg's Death lore
This is when Chaosium found the time to list everything, from Western sorecery schools to the divisions of Orlanthi society. Mostly an elabroation of what was in Wyrm's Footnotes. This is when the lore gets deep and anthropolgical with the publishing of Greg's notes as the Stafford
Library, where he delibertly obscures myths and sometimes write the known names of gods in the myths and gos back and changes them so they are obscured but consistant. Lots of focus on how myths are inherently unknownable and a massive multitude of Gods who change a shift by region and time period.
A Sub-period in the late 90s-2012 when they try to wind back the cosmipolitian RPG elements in favour of illiterate cow-rasing simualtor.
The post-Greg age.
Still very much about how myths are unknowable and Gods are reflections of deeper histories but a lot more focus on using generic terminology like Noble and Bronze Age socity. Even when Greg was alive RQRG was going back more of the Cosmipolitain Sartar of RQ2E. The primacy of Orlanthi religon is being reassessed, even stuff like 6 Ages reinforces the inherent myth of Orlanth killing Yelm and whoops end of the world.
But now much more dependant on Jeff's word and Jeff's view of how things go, where things he doesn't like are fanfic and Greg's lore is interpretable his way only. It's gone from clannish cow-simulator to Tribal aptronage simualtor, possibly undr Greg's desire to keep reinventing Pendragon.
Damn, I hate my broken mechanical keyboard.
Or to put it more bluntly, the lore started as Greg’s combination of King Arthur, Classic Greece and limited Bronze Age meets D&D and S&S.
It becomes more about the Bronze Age and reusing historical cultures from that period. Less fun from the 70s.
Now it’s about the Bronze age plus enough slackness to allow for adventures without it being weird. Still all about cults and hierarchy though.
The only thing that bothers me a bit about the current vision - besides Jeff's weird passive-aggressive attitude that sometimes flares up - is that, when they have to decide between presenting information in a way that's more 'immersive' for the world, but less easy for a newcomer to grasp, or presenting it in a way that's 'user-friendly', but less immersive, they don't decide consistently. So, you get things that are harder to grok, because they phrased it in a way that makes total sense if you already know the setting, but is confusing otherwise, but THEN, you'll get other things that are spelled out in as flat and generic a way as possible.
>you get things that are harder to grok, because they phrased it in a way that makes total sense if you already know the setting, but is confusing otherwise, but THEN, you'll get other things that are spelled out in as flat and generic a way as possible.
This is unironically what makes Glorantha Sourcebook unreadable. Any newcomer to the setting who wishes to learn it will be totally lost because of the lengthy histories of Dragon Pass and Lunar Empire but very short outline of pre-Time, and descriptions of many gods which newbie does not know how to treat. Also, hilariously weird text structure (Arkat and Nysalor are mentioned mulyiple times each before it is actually explained who they are). It's like they've tried to do the shortened version of GtG and failed miserably.
What is the best place to start with the setting then? (That is currently in print)
the videogame :^)
>Glorantha: Introduction to Hero Wars (2000)
While outdated, it contains almost all needed information on pre-history, history, geography and cultures of the setting. I would highly recommend it over Glorantha Sourcebook.
> Cults of RuneQuest: Mythology
It suffers from the same problem of over- and under-explanation, but it is still preferrable over Glorantha Sourcebook, as it delves deeper into the common history and presents variations of myths.
> Guide to Glorantha
After reading one of the books above one must turn to this, reading sections on parts of setting which interest him (as they are presented in great detail), but not trying to digest the whole thing at once.
The games can be used as an introduction too, but IMO, they are better when you already know what is going on.
>The games can be used as an introduction too, but IMO, they are better when you already know what is going on.
The nice thing is they work really well when you don’t know, because the people you are controlling don’t know either.
>Sir Ethil-who? Weird horses? Yeah, sure, invite him to visit someday if he wants, he seems legit.
Resume, FUCK JEFF YOU GOD LEARNER SHITE.
Jeff = Gbaji (the Deceiver)
Wake up sheeple
Greg did refer to himself as Arkat on at least one occasion...
Arkat and Nysalor fought. Gbaji won.
Theory: Humans are the true and original elder race for all the races that posses man rune. All the rest were made by taking some humans and altering them, the method for making humans into trolls still survives but first aldryami or wind children were made using similar methods. Many gods thought themselves smarter than the Celestial Court and used the human recipe make their own improved humans de novo instead, most notably Pamalt, but these attempts usually failed, the Men-and-half of Prax are surviving example of this.
Anything in the lore that contradicts this?
>Anything in the lore that contradicts this?
Big ass milf Uz-mommy multi-milkers
Big fan of the Uz. They're a good balance of being inhuman yet sympathetic and understandable by human standards. Very well fleshed out as far as fantasy races come.
Also this
Uz women usually have to heroquest for extra pair. Only mistress race women have them naturally.
It bothers me that I don't know whether this is a shitpost, or an actual thing. Since I've never actually read Trollpak, but this is entirely plausible.
I have misplaced my picture of the two clan rings of the Runic Men. anyone got any pictures from the old saga?
Also, here is my group's bandit uroxi who likes it when people get along and is the best lawspeaker in the clan. because new people who dont know glorantha often do weird shit like this, but I like it
The exception to the rule is common. There is always someone who sticks out in a historical era and they have to do well or be dismissed as a weirdo.
>uroxi who likes it when people get along and is the best lawspeaker in the clan
I’d say he has bring future as a storm Khan before him. Nobody promotes regular murderhobos to rune levels unless the cult is absolutely desperate.
he's cool anon, t for sharing
More or less. The way I see it is Glorantha is in constant flux and because Greg is fucking dead now we will never have the One True Glorantha. Hell even when Greg was alive there wasn't really a One True Glorantha. That's just how it is at the end of the day. That being said I don't think 'Your Glorantha Will Vary' is the get-out-of-jail-free card for Chaosium that lets them make things less interesting by flattening it and then tell the people who have an issue 'well we're not changing the game at YOUR table :^)'. I actually think some of the interesting inner secrets are still there, there's still interesting stuff that's canon it's just not very forward facing. It comes up in some of the Published adventures I guess. Maybe that's not necessary for newbies I guess. I did show some of the stuff in the Mythology book to my friends, the stuff that tries to explain 'how to not make myth and religion in your tabletop a Themepark of Gods' and they found it really interesting and clearly different to other TRPGs and settings. So, Mythology book, not a total wash.
I have a few, I think.
bless you
>I have misplaced my picture of the two clan rings of the Runic Men. anyone got any pictures from the old saga?
I still have all the images saved on my PC from when I ran that playthrough for /tg/. Is there anything specific you want?
oh shit. a living legend.
Nah I just used the runic men in my last session. Sven made an appearance.
Oh cool, does it take place during that time period or did they run into him Heroquesting? He spent a lot of time doing that.
Of course, he had an entire army from the Godplane show up to RSVP and then proceeded to die with a promise that he would stop holding back so as to become even more powerful in the next world. With that kind of ridiculousness there was plenty of material.
He just had to get to a wedding in prax.
In my game the Runic Men are ancient history before the settlement in Dragin pass. Probably Sven helped kick Nysalor's ass.
In this evening's session I ran my players through the praxian marriage quest.
The trader charmed a pygmy for information and did such a good job the pygmi fell in love with her.
She later gravely insulted the zebra riders by accident.
The chalana arroy healer got a trollkin pet from the troll lady.
While the warriors fought the bison riders the healer snuck away and found the kidnapper and the bride, who had been alerted due to a warding spell. The healer magicd the woman to sleep which drove the bisonrider into a berserk fury, the healer tried throwing a net at him but it failed.
That's when the trollkin pet threw a rock at the bisonrider, rolled a 2, hit him in the dick and did 18 damage.
None of the players were interested in "love" and such silly things and dragged the couple back to the town, but the pygmy prince stopped them on the way to get his bethroed back and kill the pc's so he could claim the glory, but the trader spoke so well she managed to cut a deal with him. When they got back the pygmy from before offered to marry the issaries trader. She hesitated but decided to go for a year marriage with him. however the bison princess refused to marry the pygmy prince and the pc's benefactor was most upset. Thats when our trader convinced everyone that a small marriage was better than none ans so she married her pygmy. Things worked out very well for the PC's and they all decided to never again go to the shithole known as prax.
this was the session in question. A strange man appeared out of the telmori wilds saying he had to fulfill an ancient obligation and so must go to a wedding and needed guards for his caravan. Once the PC's agreed he told them it was in prax and he hi-jacked a dragonewt road to take them there after telling them he was from the clan of the Runic Men, the greatest magicians in the world.
After the quest ended he thanked the PC's payed them and disappeared back into the trees. When the PC's tolød the story to the clan the clan shaman, keanu reeves, spoke thus: "The runic men? but that is a pre EWF clan! they have not existed for hundreds of years!" cue X-philes theme.
Oh, you already answered, cool stuff. That's a good way of handling it.
I loved Orlkarnth. Big ol Humakti champion who just wants kids to read good.
What wisdom has Orlaront to share?
And some fanart.
Okay, I think that's all I have.
Here is some of the most recent "fanart" I saw for it.
Use it wisely.
Orlaront Chaos-Tickler
Tell me about Zorak Zoran, Lord demon of the underworld. Why is he so angry?
How are trolls seen by other people? Sometimes we are told that they are seen as barely better than chaos monsters, but everytime they are actually encountered don't appear to be treated or thought of as any worse than other humans. I guess part of it is the heavy orlanthi perspective we have since they are known for their foundness of "savage" gods and historical connections to trolls. Thoughts? What are trolls like in your games?
I wish I knew.
In ther west they were seen as the same as Chaos, but in the old heartlands of Arkat's empire they are just a foriegn people who have thir own regions and trade. Fronela see them as ice demons. Peloria hates them as Darknss and dangerously foreign unless they are Blue Moon Trolls and then they are part of th Lunar traditions. Balazar hates them for competing with their hunters and eating people simultaenously.
Prax sees them as dangerous, but usefull allies against greater threats.
Kralorea hates them for being against everything the Dragonic state stands for but will trade with them from the Kingdom of Ignorance. So it's more a philosphical hate.
In Palmatea they are probally just seen as Anti-Elves.
best picture of a troll to show my players?
The two smiling buddies from the original Trollpak
Someone put a pojnt on something that had been bugging me but I couln't quite put my finger on.
Once upon a time, Ernalda was the daughter of Gata (or maybe, of Asrelia) whose daughters were the Land Goddesses who were the brides of Genert. Esrola was the Land Goddess of the Holy Country region.
Now, Ernalda is the daughter of Genert and Gata, and the Land Goddesses are her sisters. Mostly. Esrola is a Grain Goddess but not the Land Goddess of her region (and poor Kero Fin even gets forgotten as a Grain Goddess over in The Earth Goddesses despite her grain being mentioned as originating in Dragon Pass...).
It looks like they partly merged the bit from Esrolia: The Land of Ten Thousand Goddesses about the Earth goddesses being sistr but kept only the half where all the land/grain goddess were sisters to Ernalda not the whole bit where the older two Earth goddesses were too.
And that is surposed to be a radical alternative interpretation to the standard generational way of looking at them.
Ernalda is and always have been the daughter of Asrelia (with the new books confirming Lodril as the father), and so the land/grain goddesses are her aunts. I have no idea where you got her being a child of Gata and Genert from.
You gain a different understanding of how the universe works, with one of the effects being that you don't feel disgusted by Chaos instinctually anymore. Another effect is that you're no longer restrained by cult restrictions, atleast spiritually (so you can't be haunted by spirits of reprisal, but mortal followers can still kick your ass).
The average for dark troll female only have a single pair of breasts, but some are born with two pairs. Heroquesting for additional pairs is very real.
The official RuneQuest wiki provides some barebones look at the rules for free.
>You gain a different understanding of how the universe works, with one of the effects being that you don't feel disgusted by Chaos instinctually anymore. Another effect is that you're no longer restrained by cult restrictions, atleast spiritually (so you can't be haunted by spirits of reprisal, but mortal followers can still kick your ass).
+detect chaos no longer works on you
You basically get rid of the idea of chaos being something distinct from the world but that's a different debate about the nature of chaos.
the world originally came from chaos. A chaos creature, once illuminated, could become integrated with the world.
Note, of course, that the path of Illumination does not actually impart any sense of morality or responsibility.
Some Illuminated are wise peacemakers, recognizing ways different groups can work together without being in total opposition, even Chaos.
Some (like, I think, the Arkati) remain opponents of Chaos, but recognize that it's very helpful to have a more nuanced approach that 'grr argh smash alla time' that ZZ and Storm Bull and so forth have.
Then, of course, there's the people who think the Illumination just makes them better than everyone else, and use their insight to manipulate Chaos to gain power over everyone else without any of the drawbacks.
>Some Illuminated are wise peacemakers, recognizing ways different groups can work together without being in total opposition, even Chaos.
Yeah, like how some Illuminated are Wise Healers too, huh Gbaji?
Hey, now, there were many Wise Healers in the heartland of the Empire of Light, who cured many diseases!
They were even nice enough to cure diseases in the surrounding lands as the Empire expanded!
And if there weren't any diseases in those lands, they'd bring disease too, so they could cure them. Nice and efficient. Totally balanced.
He’s the original war god, he predates the concept of honor, rules of war and other such stuff.
He is the god of Hate and Terror, a truly primal deity of destruction. None know the reason for his hate, only that it's unending. He's one of the big contributors to why the world ended in the great darkness, killing among many Flamal the father of plants. He is hated by almost everyone but him and his cult is tolerated cause when the world was about to cease he stood at the frontline at the battle of Hate vs Oblivion. And to this day his cult makes for some of the most devoted foes of Chaos that can be found.
Really depends on where and which culture interact with the trolls. The Orlanthi overall don't have positive relationships with them but in the Dragon Pass region there's a history of trade and cooperation thanks to the Only Old One acting as a mediator. Arkat also helped with relations atleast for a while, which is why Ralios have a surprisingly good relation with trolls. Everywhere else they are viewed as foes at best and voracious monsters at worst, with many Malkioni even equating them to Chaos. Solar cultures in particular have a hatred for them.
As for how they are they are a pretty simple people that are mainly driven by the need to eat and survive. But they are far from stupid as some may assume by their primitive living standards. There's an underlying spite to their culture as they've slowly been diminishing in Uz-ness since they were forced out of Wonderhome. And they'll do anything, to regain that former glory.
The really ugly part of Uz culture are how they make the Curse of Kin even worse by treating the Trollkin like shit. Uz literally eat and enslave their own children and it's just considered totally normal. The grand manipulators of the Trolls, the Mistress Race, are pretty damn inhuman and have plans in motion that will fuck over lots of non-Uz. I kind of see the Elder Races slowly disappearing as kind of justly deserved, they're kind of cunts that can't let old grudges go. Trolls are maybe the most sympathetic of them, then Elves, then Dwarves. Merfolk are fine.
Interestingly, in Jrustela after the collapse of the God Learner Empire (but before the re-opening of the seas), Trolls, Elves, Dwarves and Merfolk came to the island (and its many many shattered pieces of land that created new island chains) and thought the whole rest of the world had been destroyed and Jrustela was all that was left. For a time this led to burying of the hatchets and a desire for co-operation, or at least benign isolation from one another. It literally took a belief that the rest of the world was destroyed for the Elder Races to stop wanting to knife each other in the throat. That's how bad it is between them.
ah got it wrong, it was the Trolls, Dwarves and Elves who chilled out. The merfolk in question (Malasps) were the ones who fucked up
Direct quoting the guide:
"The disagreements which arose were prevented
by great restraint. Peace remained between the elves,
trolls, and dwarves, for they believed that the old
world had been destroyed, and that it was up to them
to create a new, better world. Absolute separatism
would be practiced by all the races, save for when they
met for the Special Meeting. Thus, the Elder Races
coexisted in a manner unheard of since the Dawn.
Each kept to their respective island and prospered."
Some of the stuff in the Guide (volume 2) is so cool and different to the rest of the setting, like the East Isles and Slon. Shame it'll probably never get official material but the Jonstown Compendium might pull up the slack one day.
On some level, the point of the guide was recognizing just how much stuff Greg and Co had created for the setting, and how, with the spotty publication history that always has to begin with fleshing out Sartar AGAIN before we can expand, it was unlikely to ever see print in any other way.
The fact that it was done more purposefully is probably what makes it more 'canon' to Jeff and Co than the Stafford Library in the 90s, which was entirely just notes Greg had lying around for himself that they published just so that something was out there making money.
In King of Sartar, it's mnion that some Trollkin survived the Hero Wars and the 300 years of misery following it. Everyone though they and most Trolls had died out in the Rockwoods.
They were probally Superior Trollkin, which meant they were either multiple birth Trolls or Trollkin are undergoing the same sort of adaption Dark Trolls underwent, where they adapted to live on the surface (faster because of divine intervention).
Most Trollkin who give birth die because they are aready undedeveloped, but give it enough selection and mix in proper misidentified Trolls who would otherwise never mate with Trollkin and you get a stabler type.
always thought id would be fun to do an odysseus-like campaign in glorantha where the PCs are trying to get their ship back home and stop at all these strange islands
Just go to Arkat's hold
Harrek's Circumnavigation seems perfect for this on paper, but I imagine it would be very hard to keep that from turning into "Harrek and Argrath do a bunch of cool shit while the PCs sit around and watch," and having your players be spectators to the action is a big RPG no-no.
I am sure that Harrek, being a pirate warlord he is, has more than one ship in his fleet, not mentioning other pirates leaders drawn to him hoping to get their share of loot. PCs in such a campaign could easily be pirates who got separated from the main fleet ny storm and are trying to catch up, experiencing exotic locations as Harrek seems to always be plundering some other shores.
Yeah, that's actually a pretty plausible (and potentially funny) way of doing it.
You forgot the last part: a group known only as the Gift Carriers of the Sending Gods showed up out of nowhere, systematically merced everyone who knew the RuneQuest Sight, then disappeared as quickly as they arrived.
I thought the idea was that the PCs would take over Argraths part?
werent there originally five dudes named Argrath during the herowars?
In the original board game, Argrath is very much a specific heroic figure, standing in opposition to the Red Emperor the same way that Jar-Eel and Harrek are standing in opposition to each other. Then, at some point (either while writing King of Sarter, or before), the idea comes up that 'Argrath' is a title. King of Sartar has some conflicting chronology, and there's implications that there are several different Argraths potentially running around. More recently, Greg changes his mind, settling Argrath into one figure, very much his 'Arthur in Glorantha' guy. He then takes the 'multiple people with the same name' thought, and applies that to Arkat, having each aspect of the Arkat legend come back to life separately.
('Arkat' and 'Argrath' are both clearly inspired by 'Arthur'; originally, I think the stories he wrote featuring Arkat and the games featuring Argrath weren't the same world, but eventually both became part of Glorantha, at different points in the timeline.)
In RQG, Argrath is very much an NPC, whose rise to rulership is on the horizon. But, if preferred, that's simple enough to change, especially if the timeline is moved back a bit.
Someone reminded me why the God Learners's civilization went boom again.
they
>fucked around
>found out
Anymore detail on what exactly went boom? Trying to make a new god? Trying to force two different gods together to soothe their collective autism. The Giants get pissed they where killing there kids in their giant cradles?
This won't necessarily be in the right order cuz fuck if I know the full timeline.
Here's the how: more or less
1. The Closing. Zzabur, Sorcerer Supreme, got off his ass to do one last thing of note. He closed the seas. IIRC any long distance sea travel is basically fucked, for almost all of Glorantha (There's a few spots that are fine like the bay of the Holy Country but nvm that). Since the Godlearner Empire was primarily maritime this would have instantly divided the Empire up and isolated elements from each other.
2. Jrustela goes boom. I don't even remember why but you can see the result on the map I posted.
3. Slontos 'rolls over'. The Land Goddess of Slontos, an area between Seshnela/Ralios and Maniria (area just west of the Holy Country) moves, with disastrous consequences for the God Learner civilization there. IIRC it was a significant God Learner stronghold.
4. Seshnela's shattering. This is probably the most important one given Seshnela was the other heart of the God Learner Empire. Purple Skinned Demi-Gods called the Luathans sailed from the Western Land of Dusk on a Swanboat, they struck pillars into the earth throughout Seshnela and essentially detonated the peninsula. The only parts that made it out ok were the eastern most portions of Seshnela. The formerly recalcitrant and problematic area of Tanisor (of the Vampire Kingdom fame during the First Age) became the heart of the new Seshnelan polity. The majority of the peninsula is lost, inhabited by Beastmen, Elves and patrolling Luathans.
As for the 'why', they abused the Universe so much to the point disparate elements came together cosmologically to fuck them over in quick succession. Think of it like "I Suffered, We Struck Back." There's very definitely an element to Gloranthan reality that seemingly separate events connect to each other, like in a web. No single thing is the driver of the causality, but all the different webs pull on each other at the same time.
Two events that get brought up a lot as examples of God Learner shenanigans:
1)The Grail. It wasn't actually called the Holy Grail, but, there was basically a powerful holy artifact; some culture had a big HeroQuest in which only the brave and pure could approach the guardian of the artifact. God Learners brought in godly muscle to beat up the guardian and cheat the HeroQuest, making the artifact available to whoever they wanted. (dunno if this means making it manifest in the world, or basically having a 'cheat speedrun' of the HQ.) This was fine for a while, but over time, the artifact's power started to dwindle, because they were wearing it out. Since the end of the 2nd age, both artifact and guardian are restored to their normal place in God Time.
2)The Goddess Switch. Somewhere (either in Slontos, or modern-day Esrolia), two areas had two very similar grain goddesses. Different names, and different crops, but their myths and methods of worship were incredibly similar. So, to prove that Joe Campbell is always right, they did a find/replace on the rituals, so that the two regions were now worshipping each other's grain goddess. This worked perfectly fine for about two years before both regions had catastrophic famine and fertility issues, and the God Learners actually locked down travel so people wouldn't find out about the fuckup.
(I imagine Jeff would prefer people not remember this incident, given his whole 'Elmal was Yelmalio the whole time' approach.)
And yeah, I'm sure I fucked a lot of the details up, so feel free to correct.
>(I imagine Jeff would prefer people not remember this incident, given his whole 'Elmal was Yelmalio the whole time' approach.)
That would make a fun plot for a campaign. Suddenly all the horses in dragon pass become infertile and the players have to puzzle together what god learner fuckery Monrogh and Tarkalor were up to while Yelmalio cultists try to murder them.
* The merging of two unrelated cults (Caladra and Aurelion) into one, making it stronger, in Caladraland.
* The creation of an artificial man-made god, Zistor in the Clanking City, that urged the gods to intervene.
zistor was just the transistor of a computer. The barbarian misinterpeted the entire thing entireky wrong. as normal.
>(I imagine Jeff would prefer people not remember this incident, given his whole 'Elmal was Yelmalio the whole time' approach.)
And everyone knows Shargash is really Elmal. Consider this excerpt of the myth “Shargash the Destroyer”
>Anything which was peaceful was destroyed in those wars, and Shargash slew everything which was good in order to bring it within his Enclosure.
>The greatest battle which Shargash ever fought was against the demon called Dromakus. It was the death of death, but Shargash the Destroyer destroyed himself to overcome this thing.
>Dromakus was a chaos monster which was invisible to Shargash. In Dara Hapan philosophy, Dromakus was the Other of Shargash, wherein the Other is a weakness which is invisible to the viewer. In almost every case of a fire god falling prey to a foe, it can be interpreted as falling prey to its own Other. This is explained to be because a deity of light is incapable of seeing the shadows it casts, never mind its own shadows. So they all fell. Yet Shargash did not.
>Dromakus was clever and had the power to take any shape. He tried to have himself killed too, so that he could come into the Enclosure. Dromakus disguised itself, changed itself, and attempted many deceits to enter the Enclosure. But he never did, for Shargash is a power which can not be tricked.
>Shargash sat in the center of the world and called his enemy to him. Dromakus, devourer of the universe, rushed up like a monster with many heads and mouths. It bit and mangled, but was incapable of tearing Shargash apart. The mighty god threw himself into one of the maws, and into the maelstrom of chaos he fell, yet caught himself fast when he reached the belly of Dromakus. It couldn’t swallow him. Inside its belly Shargash saw a sky full of stars. Shargash then burned his own way out of the demon, which was cruelly hurt but not enough to die.
Sounds kinda familiar doesn’t it? What are you waiting for, Jeff?
That's more "Yelm summons disorder/chaos to the Underworld, masters them, achieves enlightenment and returns to life". Remember the Enclosure is hell.
>Yelm summons disorder/chaos to the Underworld, masters them, achieves enlightenment and returns to life
So Elmal Guards the Stead
I think assuming anger on ZZ or his cultists part is a misunderstanding. They're berserks and he's a god of hate and senseless violence, yes, but I've always gotten the impression that it's all very cold, given the Darkness connection. A ZZ Deathlord isn't a frothing, incoherent rager like a Uroxi, they're a dead eyed, teeth clenched psychopath who doesn't even get their heartrate up while beating someone to death. Zorak Zoran himself is illuminated, unlike Storm Bull or even Shargash, and isn't hateful at anything in particular or even for any particular reason, he just is. His natural state is desiring the death an destruction of everything, he killed and ate Flamal for essentially no reason at all except for that he was a juicy target.
he might also be a cavebear
>implying Zorak Zoran and Shargash are not the same god
If Shargash and ZZ have any relation besides enemieis, ZZ is probably Shargash's other parent. Of course, ZZ is already, in a sort of sideways fashion, the mother of Aether and was midwifed by XU while AA watched so maybe Shargash just takes after his great grandparent particularly strongly. This was revealed to me in my darkest dreams and consequently cannot be the incorrect interpretation of the myths.
I think you mean Yelm, as Aether is one of the primoridals.
Which is weird as Yelm is probably AA's father.
>The struggle between Light and Darkness is said to have begun even before the birth of Light when the foetal Aether huddled helplessly in the womb of its mother. Unborn, it lay in Darkness, and there the creatures of the dark came to investigate it … For a time they viewed it from a distance and made up their minds about what they thought it was.
>There were three gods of Darkness viewing it. One was called Argan Argar, one was Xiola Umbar, and one was Zorak Zoran.
>“It is Friendship from afar,” said Xiola Umbar.
>“It is just another godling,” said Argan Argar.
>“It is an enemy,” said Zorak Zoran, “and I shall eat it to hide it away from us.” Then he lifted the bundle and uncovered its veil. Zorak Zoran was burned horribly by the intense light and heat and made ugly to the light ever afterwards. Argan Argar, further away, turned his back from the view and had no permanent damage. Xiola Umbar, furthest from the light, blinked rapidly but remembered what she saw.
No, I mean the Aether. Causality in the Deep Darkness is a funny thing and is very difficult to pin down, at least as it is understood by un-benighted humans such as you or I.
well fuck
>he killed and ate Flamal for essentially no reason at all except for that he was a juicy target.
The reason was that darkness tribe wanted to dominate the surface and Flamal was in the way. Didn’t he also kill Ernalda for the same reason?
How do you join the cult of Arkat? My character guesses there is one and thinks Arkat the hotest man to ever live but knows not how to contact them?
There are organizations that follow and revere Arkat, but the paths of cult worship have been sealed off since the second age.
At least... they were. Arkat has returned - five times! - and his paths in the hero plane are open once more. Most of this is going down in Ralios, and is very much in the 'make it up yourself' category.
I think Cults of Chaos features the Arkat cult; it's the last cult listed in the book, and I think is also when Illumination was explained for the first time, both mechanically, and why it could be both good or bad, depending on the individual Illuminated's attitude.
I'm not sure. The "Cults of Terror" contains only the cult of Nysalor/Gbaji with small description of cult of Arkat.
"Troll Gods" does contain the cult of Arkat, but a) it is trollish variation, and b) it was RQ3, so it teaches only sorcery spells.
So the land of the dead is part of Chaos?
The Chaosium (hence the company name) is the font from which Chaos enters the universe, and it's at the very bottom of all things, close to where Hell and the underworld are.
(This is why Trolls and other creatures of the Darkness rune are reliable fighters of Chaos; a lot of practice.)
I keep reading that Yelm was killed, but there is still a sun in the sky. What happened? Why are the so many solar cults?
Short version of the God Time Myth:
1)Yelm Is Emperor of the Universe
2)Orlanth, Prince of Air, challenges him (Air and Sky hate each other for reasons), but keeps losing
3)Orlanth's brother Humakt finds this new thing, called Death (Eurmal's also involved, don't worry). Orlanth borrows it, challenges Yelm to a weapons contest, uses Death, and Yelm has to go to the underworld.
4)Orlanth is now Emperor of the Universe. This was a Terrible Idea. Storm people think it's rockin cool for a while, but things get worse and worse to the point where gods are openly killing other gods, the underworld is all borked because the sun's down there now, and then Chaos gods start ravaging everything.
5)After Ernalda dies/hibernates, Orlanth realizes he may have been wrong, and joined by several other gods, goes on a quest to get the Sun back. This is the Lightbringer's Quest
6)There's a crapload of badass battles against Chaos, including a mountain getting dropped on one, and also the moment called 'I Fought, We Won', where pretty much everyone in the world, thinking they're alone, chooses to stand against Chaos and they win.
7)Down below, the gods all meet up with Dead Sun. They kiss and make up, just in time for the newly-killed Chaos Gods to also show up. The gods all work together, and Wakboth the Great Chaos God is essentially destroyed, devoured by Arachne Solara, goddess of this new thing called Time.
8)The gods all come back up out of the underworld, alive once more. (The Great Compromise limits their ability to affect the world as they once did, but they live again.) After years of darkness, Yelm rises in the sky again, and Time begins with the Dawn Age.
That is pretty rad. Clears up a lot of my questions.
>Prince of Air
Wait a minute...
Damn glorantha is kino as fuck, I’ve been just getting into it via reading these threads and wikis. Sadly the wiki seems ultra barebones, I may have to buy some books. Also I feel like someone should cash in on this IP and start making YouTube lore videos, those are super popular and practically zero exist for Glorantha
Also as an elder scrolls fan, I feel like elderscrolls copied its whole entire mythological metaphysics from glorantha, which of course is based in esoteric interpretations of real life mythology.
But the gods going by many different names and having different manifestations to different races and peoples is a super super well known elder scrolls thing, but clearly flora that did it first.
Some basic questions I have that I can’t easily solve with google.
1: is the lunar empire Chinese or Roman aesthetically and culturally, or a mix of both?
2: are the praxians amerindian aesthetically, or Bronze Age Scythian steppe nomads?
The Lunars are more a late Hellenistic Greek that's had splashes of Persian and Roman mixed in, at least currently. The Praxians are both and some other things, depending on the tribe. They have the least consistent/historically based aesthetic of the major homelands. Prax is such a jumble of different things, being a ruined garden and battlefield that drew from all over the world before time, that it fits.
Lunar Empire itself is more Graeco-Roman in style, but the Dara Happan culture it grew from heavily draws from IRL Ancient Mesopotamia. In the governing Lunar Empire is more akin to Achaemenid Persia than to Roman Empire. It is very culturally diverse, however, so different parts of the empire have different culture - there are former Orlanthi tribes and even pseudo-medieval Carmania inside its borders.
>Some basic questions I have that I can’t easily solve with google.
>1: is the lunar empire Chinese or Roman aesthetically and culturally, or a mix of both?
>2: are the praxians amerindian aesthetically, or Bronze Age Scythian steppe nomads
yes. to all those. i mean, not incanon, but I like your idea so do that
>Also as an elder scrolls fan, I feel like elderscrolls copied its whole entire mythological metaphysics from glorantha, which of course is based in esoteric interpretations of real life mythology.
It made have had some influence but they also pull from the same real world religious sources for that too.
Speaking of vidya, did you know Glorantha influenced Dark Souls? Queelag the Chaos Witch is a direct reference to the Cragspider from Glorantha and they even have the same name in Japanese (Fire Witch Cragspider).
just read about the death rune in elden ring.
Glorantha was kinda huge in japan at some point. AND YET we didnt get an 80's runequest anime. sad.
Pretend i posted the "hot Yelmalio" manga picture
On a side note the excellent anime Record of Lodoss War started as one mans re-telling of his table top campaign that started (I for get the exact order) as a AD&D game then a Runequest game and then a Tunnels and Trolls game. The original series is great and you can glimpse what lore and mechanics from the various systems inspired certain aspects of the anime.
There is a translation you can read of the original game sessions too, which were in a magazine for selling the new translation of D&D basic to japan. It's pretty fun stuff.
The Elf was played by a guy who was a more veteran player and the DM comments on how a guy playing a girl was a little uncomfortable.
we will never see Glorantha Phantasma
>published by Chaos Society in Germany
>at a time when I was out of RPG and out of /a/nime
The RuneQuest/Glorantha General Hero Quest will be to get someone to get scans of this and the Japanese books online. Criminal they're not out there.
I think it's an open question if the Red Goddess hanging in the Middle Air is >right now< an ongoing Compromise break. Her fight at Castle Blue absolutely was one, but I think the issue here is by winning she proved her status as a Greater God and she is now also part of the Compromise. HOWEVER, her chaotic nature and her dogma is not really on board with the Compromise and that's enough reason to fight her.
Note, the Compromise DOES include Chaos. Not because Chaotic Gods also helped hold the net down on The Devil (I doubt they did) but because the consumed Devil was rebirthed by Arachne Solara as Time. A certain amount of Chaos will always exist within Glorantha, as that permanent entropic element.
Though there are other Lunar Gods that don't provoke the same frothing hatred for breaking the Compromise or being Chaotic. The Seven Mothers for example are basically just deified mortals, which is pretty standard practice across Glorantha and is very definitely not a Compromise break. Not anymore than Sartar being a God is. They're notable for their range of powers and collective power though, compared to the more restricted portfolio that Hero/Ascended Mortal cults get.
some of the art was used in the Imperial Lunar Handbook 2.
The problem with the Red Goddess and her sub-gods is that she continues to exist and directly act upon time from within it, which is a big no-no on the compromise. Other beings and mortals have become gods but then they fuck off, ascending away from the mortal world. Compromise Crisis gods like Gbaji, Zistor and the Red Goddess didn’t do that.
And while the compromise does include that Chaos exists it is also a part of the Compromise that it SHOULD NOT and does NOT belong inside reality. Opposition to Chaos is the inherent order of nature and reality.
Wakboth the Devil is not the one that got turned into Time, that is Kajabor. Wakboth got crushed by The Block and the remainders of him got finely diced and scattered across the world. The Great Moral Evil of the world was defeated by spreading it everywhere.
isnt there something about the devil devouring kajabor and becoming it?
From Cults of Terror
>At one point the armies of Kajabor and Wakboth began to devour each other, but philosophers dispute which one was killed, for no one alive or sane could know such things.
>Prevalent belief says that Kajabor was killed by Wakboth, leaving the world defiler to face the Storm Bull and the god of entropy to face the forces of the dead. This theory has much strength, since the mundane world (reconstructed later) was usually held to be the origin of immorality, while the combination of entropy and existence seem to synthesize into the God Time, who later rules the cosmos …
>A massive block of Truestone, a piece of Law cast adrift when the Spike exploded, crashed to earth and struck the Devil, grinding him and spreading him and his strength about. Afterwards other forces and beings further lessened it and destroyed its unity in the world forever.
Annilla was doing that since time begun albeit she exist in time only for a brief moment when the blue streak fall into magasta’s pool.
That isn’t really the same thing, as the Blue Moon only exists in time through nature and follows the same paths as she did in the past before time. That is like saying Elmal breaks the Compromise as he makes his journey across the Sky each day as the Sun. The Sun traveling the sky doesn’t break the Compromise, it is when the Sun stops in place at the center of the Sky that the Compromise broke.
I think sky and underworld exist outside time.
Why? Nothing seems to indicate that. Sky and the Underworld exist in the Godtime but also within Time as well, like many things.
>the same paths as she did in the past before time
Prove it. I'll wait.
It is the same proof that the sun does.
Where did Belintar fall in that?
He was a god, living in God Time, but then would pull a body switch with his 'hosts', who went on to live in God Time while Belintar used their body (or something like that). Is that a violation, or did he not actually count as a god?
I dont think he was but I think he wanted to be a god
There is no definitive information or answer on what The Pharaoh was. Many theories have him as a Mortal, so Demigod like Cragspider is probably the best designation.
Not even cragspider really, since Belintar manifests through unique individuals that through the tournament join their soul with the total Belintar in the otherworld. He doesn’t force his way into reality and is closer to how a worshipper may call upon their God. He wasn’t a full God though which both gave him additional access to interact with reality but also ensured he lacked the compromise protections of a true diety.
Belintar was a god, but The Pharoah was not, I think, might be a good way of explaining it.
>playing Six Ages 2 while not knowing any lore
>meet the giant fucking spider
>attack it
>it dies and everybody's fucked
Well excuse me.
>The gods all work together, and Wakboth the Great Chaos God is essentially destroyed, devoured by Arachne Solara, goddess of this new thing called Time.
Although it gets muddled sometimes that was Kajabor (entropy) rather than Wakboth (Evil). Wakboth got smushed but sealed beneath the Block rather than going to the underworld, with chunks of him becoming stuff like Cacodemon.
Before that happened, Wakboth turned on Kajabor and killed it which is why it went to the Underworld.
Some say this betrayal was purposeful so that Kajabor could go destroy everything killed in the underworld to finalize the deletion of existence but others just say that Wakboth is that much of an evil dick.
It makes much more sense when it is Kajabor rather than Wakboth down in the underworld, with Entropy becoming Time.
>In the Year of the Sun 111,221 occurred the most important act of creation. On that date our god Yelm, True Sun, Source of Justice, and Truth of One, ascended to his rightful place in Heaven. I beseech the One God to bless the good and faultless Emperor Khordavu who made this possible.
Hope that clears things up for you.
>I beseech the One God
This is a very interesting way to refer to Yelm. Considering that Orlanth has some monotheistic tendency could this point at something similar like Yelmic monism?
That's as you mentioned mysticism which is mostly draconic in Glorantha. No one really knows what illumination really is but it involves being exposed to different cultures and views of how the world works and realising your own isn't necessarily right. So it changes from "Murder bad" to "Murder bad is what they say". Pressumably it gives one a better understanding of how the world works. The way I like to think about it is a kind of nihilism but it's deliberately kept so vague you can make up whatever you want. You'll get a different answer everytime you ask someone what it is.
>Also as an elder scrolls fan, I feel like elderscrolls copied its whole entire mythological metaphysics from glorantha, which of course is based in esoteric interpretations of real life mythology.
Irc. some of the guys that made elder scrolls originally came from runequest. Warhammer originally started from DnD and runequest miniatures too. Beastmen are based on broos.
>is the lunar empire Chinese or Roman aesthetically and culturally, or a mix of both?
What the other guys said plus some light mesoamerican influences. Not much but enough to make it a bit more interesting. The religion is also heavily influenced by hinduism but most things in Glorantha are.
In "The Glorious Re-Ascent of Yelm" it is told that the unknowable being Veskarvez emanated a being capable of knowing itself, Ezelveztay, or "the One". It emanated itself into Keskeskenni, "the Many", which are Runes. When there has become too many Keskeskennis, Ezelveztay had to depart from the world, so it picked a successor to become "One-among-Keskeskenni". This was Yelm. Thus he is worshipped as One God above all gods.
In "The Fortunate Succession" there is a description of evolution of Yelmite religion, but the Lunar consensus is that the One is a state of Illumination (which existed before Creation and was lost afterwards), that Yelm was Illuminated in the underworld, recreated the world and then separated the One from himself during the Sunstop, creating Nysalor-Osentalka, who showed a way to the One for everybody.
Interestingly enough, the Yelmite theogony is quite similar to the Malkioni creation myth (Veskarvuz = Makan/One Mind + Ferbirth, Ezelveztay = Kiona, Keskeskenni = Erasanchula). But, in the end, every creation myth in Glorantha is similar.
when yelm was gone the princes of the universe, the little suns, all vied for the throne. Except Elmal who only tried to protect the world.
So there were some light and some heat. but less and less until there were none.
then the dawn...
I am curious to know more about water gods and their conquest of land and sky.
The gods of Water have always been interested in spreading itself and devouring all in its path, but they were kept in check by Yelm and his court. After Yelm went to the Underworld they didn't hesitate to start flooding. Every river in Glorantha started as an invasion path of the forces of water, flowing up from the seas up the mountains. Some water gods were subjugated or befriended by local gods which is why not everything got flooded, then as the storm gods became more powerful they drove back the seas.. Peloria suffered one of the worst floods which is where Anaxial came along as saved everyone with his giant boat. As for how they conquered the Sky they couldn't reach it until Heler (future god of rain) discovered a secret of The Young God which let them travel up the Skydome. On their way there Shargash clubbed the mass of water from which Heler fell down into the middle air, from where he then attempted his own conquest only to become subservient to Orlanth. As for the rest of the water forces they devoured all the fire they came across and filled the lower parts of the skydome with water, which is why the sky is blue nowadays. And if you travel to the sky you'll find a sea up there. There's also a hole in the skydome from which water falls out, called the Skyfalls, from which occasionally sky/oceanic monsters or treasures will drop.
why were the watergods so horny for conquest? and what is their connection with dragons? it seems a lot of rivers are draconic spirits?
It seems to simply be in the nature of water to conquer. Water will fill any space it can and in Glorantha the ability of water to dissolve substances is translated to it literally eating the material. Being spawned from Darkness would make it a very primal element, driven by base desires.
As for the draconic connections, I don't know. In real life rivers are likened to serpents and in china in particular dragons are connected with the element of water. In universe explanation could simply be that dragons find water to be the most suitable element for them as it's ever changing much like they can be.
I've thought about this a bit, I think it might be related to Water being the First Element spawned by the Grand Ancestral Dragon's Utuma (basically Dragon Enlightenment Seppuku for those who don't know).
Darkness was technically the first element created because it came from the GA Dragon taking the power of Disorder to beat back Chaos because it was interrupting the GA Dragon's meditation.
"This was the race of Darkness, made from the Dragon's Feet." But this is actually prior to the Utuma, so the way I read it is Darkness was spawned from the GA Dragon holding Disorder as a tool with its feet to beat back Chaos. So in a way, Darkness is only half from the GA Dragon. Whereas Water is the first element fully from it, being the blood that ran forth from his cut open loins. Its belly became Earth, Its head and eyes became the Sky and Aetheric Powers and its brains hatched the Ancestral Dragons.
Now this is all from a Draconic perspective, there might be other traditions in the setting that order the elements in different ways with differing amounts of responsibility from this or that Prime Mover.
Source is page 68 of the Glorantha sourcebook.
>Darkness
>Water
>Earth
>Fire
So that covers almost all the elements… but what about the 5th element Moon ?
what about BORON?
Elaborating on this a bit, but there seems to be a pattern of "flaws" for each element. These are not universal to every deity of their respective element nor is this an official bit of lore, but you may see it if you squint enough.
Darkness: Hunger, or rather a need to follow the most basic of instincts. Many darkness beings are concerned with eating and survival, regardless of how it affects everyone else. But I wouldn't go as far as to label this as gluttony, as they feed not in excess cause they can, but because they must.
Water: Gluttony. Now this should not be confused with the hunger of darkness. I specifically use the name of the sin cause it's consumption in excess of needs. Water is not beset by constant hunger, but if given the chance it'll swallow lands and spread as much as it could. In an old HQ book there's a scenario where you can heroquest as a river deity and one of the roles specific traits is that they are never satisfied with what is offered and always want more.
Earth: Greed. The element is associated with providing bounty and riches but the deities of malign earth tend to show selfish tendencies. Best examplified by Ty Kora Tek who is the keeper of the dead cause she won't let them leave her cave once they are hers. Even her benign sister Asrelia, goddess of wealth, is quite a hoarder even if she can sometime part with her riches.
Fire: Pride and aloofness. This element tends to view itself as being better and above any other. Combine this with the association with purity and you have beings that will refuse to associate with others.
Air: Temperament. Beings of this element above all are the most prone to mood swings and to take to violence at the drop of a hat. While pride is also a common trait it's more will sock anyone that insults them rather than viewing themselves as better.
>Lights Going Out is just a 50 year long version of Elmal Guards the Stead
Kino.
andom thought, RQ 2 had a fairly basic background chart for Orlanthi/Pavisites.
When Geg wrote his notes for the APA he made a different set of bakcground tables that fucking fixed he big problem in RQ 2 where starting players don't really survive to get cash, magic and experience.
It also changed the backgrounds but in a way hat's sort of incompadible with the core rules.
Maybe someone can figure out how they intersects.
Here is the RQ2 corebook one
It's worth noting that RQ2 assumed characters would immediately go into massive debt to purchase lots of training, which would tie them to guilds and temples for "why are we doing this adventure?" reasons.
By the way, what do people think of the unpublished RQ4 "Adventures in Glorantha"? That pdf has been floating around for forever.
Like RQRG, a dense mess of nostalgic rules and setting details. But much more informed by whatever they wee smoking when they were making RQ3.
Honestly they should have used repurposed Stombringer/Magic World rules those were shorter and more "epic".
im not reading all that.
it's orlanth!
cope
Here is the RQ2 original Sorcery ules, they are barely made and Greg Stafford basically gave up on them really quickly but I like them mroe than the complex RQ3 stuff we got in the end.
Is this still true?
fumble charts with self hits are still a thing, but battles are handled differently, similar to Pendragon (when the GM book comes out, in 2045).
I think there is only like three in onehundred chance of striking yourself, if no allies are near
That seems really high. A master warrior would not be wounding himself making hundreds of blows.
I hate to bring "realism" into this but HOW does an experienced warrior have a 3% chance of cutting off either one of his own limbs or his head? And what does this contribute to the game? Isn't combat deadly enough without warriors killing/maiming themselves by accident?
>how
Elmal made it so for slapstick value
I've been looking at the Crimson Bat's stats in the RQ:G bestiary. It is truly ridiculous. I want to like the Lunar Empire but the Bat is like, a flying constant warcrime. It needs 220 souls a WEEK. A WEEK. There's 42 weeks in the Gloranthan calendar, so that's 9240 souls destroyed every year. IT EATS A CITY WORTH OF SOULS EVERY FUCKING YEAR.
No amount of Spiritual Liberation is worth eating a city's worth of souls ever year. Fuck the Crimson Bat.
I kind of just assumed it was a hold over to keep the Grogs happy.
I feel like after a certain point of weapon mastery fumbles should be nullified and instead count as failures if they happen. But if an enemy lowers your weapon skill (i.e. through having Shimmer stacked on them) it could get you back to the point where you can fumble.
There's lots of things that seem to go against 'Maximum Game Fun' in RQ:G, unfortunately. I think the combat is lethal enough without needing that 3-5% chance of fumbles no matter how good you are at fighting.
I really like the composition on this, one of the best they've done.
The placement of the thumb on the Red Goddess's right arm is fucking me up though, I've been trying to replicate the pose to see if you could twist your right wrist so you can grip an arm and have your thumb appear at the front of the image like that.
Skill issue.
>No amount of Spiritual Liberation is worth eating a city's worth of souls ever year
It's mostly foreigners souls, though. Barely a problem.
>I've been looking at the Crimson Bat's stats in the RQ:G bestiary. It is truly ridiculous. I want to like the Lunar Empire but the Bat is like, a flying constant warcrime. It needs 220 souls a WEEK. A WEEK. There's 42 weeks in the Gloranthan calendar, so that's 9240 souls destroyed every year. IT EATS A CITY WORTH OF SOULS EVERY FUCKING YEAR.
>No amount of Spiritual Liberation is worth eating a city's worth of souls ever year. Fuck the Crimson Bat.
And let's not forget that those aren't the only human sacrifices happening in the lunar empire! Imagine the bureaucracy and ressources they need just to kill all those people. I wouldn't be surprised if entire tribes have accidentally been eradicated with the responsible officials ending up as sacrifices themselves.
but death is life, so it's not bad.
Checkmate, barbarian :^)
Humans are free. You can just make more whenever you want.
>The Crimson Bat must be fed approximately 220 living sentients each week, on Black and Dying days
Broos are living and sentient. They reproduce much faster than humans if you givde them some spare goats to rape. Existence is pain for broos and they are huge perverts, just thinking about being eaten by the Bat, who happens to be female, probably makes broos even harder than usual.
Who says they just feed humans to the bat, the only reason Broos wouldn't be first on the menu is that people kill them before anyone can muster the logistics to capture the disease-riden monsters.
Animals are sentient too, but from philosophical point of view feeding animals to the bat is as bad as feeding it with humans. Even broos are kinda iffy as they can seek purification. only chaos animals are morally acceptable bat fodder.
Not to diminish the horror of it, but that level of feeding is for getting the Bat ready for war; normally it's about a tenth of that.
What does illumination entail exactly? Realizing that chaos isn't all bad somehow? Or is it something more.
Spiritual enlightenment, recognizing the illusory nature of all things, understanding one = all, etc
Depending on the variety, it's like buddhist or hindu mysticism, but generally without the reincarnation and karma bits.
Also include a heavy dose of Greg hating the big contemporary surge of "gurus" doing all sorts of dodgy shit.
where in Glorantha is this?
Looks like Nivorah, legendary lost Golden City from the Six Ages, the cradle of Solars and, especially, the Dara Happans . It's only rarely mentioned outside of the game.
This reminds me. A player of mine, a Grazelander noble and priestess of Ernalda and initiate of Arachne Solara, has gotten it in her head that convincing the Feathered Horse Queen to marry Ethilrist is the best possible course for her people. What are the likely consequences of this, if she succeeds?
>initiate of Arachne Solara
Wait, people can do that in the new version of Runequest? I thought it was pointless because of the scale she operates at and that she doesn’t even given powers, so only very few super powerful beings like the Cragspider worship her directly?
Well, Initiate may be overstating things, she managed to get 2 rune points dedicated to her and Devotion at 70% after some strange goings on and a brief dip in to the godtime at the Wild Temple but she's not really in the Arachne Solara cult so to speak. She can only cast common rune magic and Dismiss Magic with those points, as it is, but she's getting deeper in to it. But no, there isn't any actual Cult of Arachne Solara written anywhere, we were just doing some things out of the Smoking Ruin book and it felt like a path it would be appropriate for her to head down, so I eyeballed some things. Besides Cragspider and other bigwigs, the Beastmen worship her directly enough and she convinced them to teach her.
Where can I start looking into this system for free?
I made her chief AND queen of the tribe. think I can make her queen of dragon pass?
>Kallyr
>he doesn't know
I know.
I can save her.
I've never read 'King of Sartar'; is Kallyr Starbrow's death first discussed there? If so, does that mean the Kallyr in KoDP is basically a 'prequel reference' to Starbrow's doom?
Kallyr is just a name. Steve, it's just a different Kallyr.
I love her so much, bros
Can someone give me a breakdown of what the great compromise was?
Before time the gods could do stuff and change how the world worked. When it was about to end the gods forged the great compromise to save it but it essentially fixed them in place and leaves them with only very limited options to influence the world. e.g. the sky is blue because a water deity invaded it. The water deity can't decide to leave. Should the sky ever stop being blue that would violate the compromise and be chaotic.
Essentially this is why some Gods are more clearly visibile inside of Time than others. Orlanth is literally the Wind/Storms. Yelm is literally the Sun that travels across the Sky each day and then goes into the Underworld and comes back each morning. Magasta can be see as the giant whirlpool that acts like a bathroom plug stopping the world from being drained into The Void. Finally, the Red Goddess is right there hanging in the Middle Air as the Red Moon. The Gods may seem to have motion, as these phenomena but they have very limited control over what they can or can't do. The bounds of their action is defined by what they did during the God Time. They can repeat things they've done, but they can't innovate or do anything 'new', violating that would break the compromise.
Though at Castle Blue Orlanth did bend the compromise a bit to try to fuck with the Red Goddess's ascension but by that point the compromise was already in the process of being broken.
If I had to tl;dr the Compromise:
Cosmic Non-aggression pact between all the Deities, so they primarily have to fight things out using mortal followers. Because they tried fighting personally before and it essentially killed the world which had to be re-born again. The Red Moon is trying to break it, the Storm God is upholding it.
The Arkati Illuminates kind of have their cake and eat it too when it comes to illumination. They're illuminated but make the conscious choice to designate Chaos as a threat to the world that has to be fought. It's different to a Storm Bull driven by frothing anger. It probably manifests as a focused resolve to do what must be done.
On some level I've always thought that the Arkati Illuminates might be the closest to Gregg's actual beliefs. Because it sounds like a Comparative Mythology guy who has taken a step back from everything, seen the bigger picture, and decides to go along with the bigger picture instead of saying its false or a construct
>Finally, the Red Goddess is right there hanging in the Middle Air as the Red Moon.
That was a break in the Compromise, as she manifests her entirety in creation as a new thing that wasn't there before. Same issue with Nysalor and Zistor before.
>Though at Castle Blue Orlanth did bend the compromise a bit to try to fuck with the Red Goddess's ascension but by that point the compromise was already in the process of being broken.
It isn't breaking the compromise or bending it when it is already being broken. When someone breaks it, it allows the others to step in against them more fully. The same thing happened before when the God Learners made their Machine god; it broke the Compromise and so Orlanth was able to step in to nuke their city.
The Red Goddess is strange, because there's also this sense that she's partly an entity that wasn't allowed to be part of the Great Compromise, so is forcing her way in.
There's at least one Moon entity that was slain in the God Time, and the Red Goddess is partly her resurrecting herself, partly another return of Nysalor, and partly something new.
I think; it's an area where my understanding of the lore gets spotty.
Part of the reason things at the end of the Ages get so crazy is that, with the Compromise already broken, additional breaks happen in order to fix it.
And the End of the Third Age is rapidly approaching.
Well, maybe not 'rapidly'; it took about fifty Earth-years to move ten Glorantha years...
>On some level I've always thought that the Arkati Illuminates might be the closest to Gregg's actual beliefs. Because it sounds like a Comparative Mythology guy who has taken a step back from everything, seen the bigger picture, and decides to go along with the bigger picture instead of saying its false or a construct
A bit like what Greg said about dwarfs.
>I cannot find it easy to begrudge an entire race of intelligent beings simply because their inner nature makes them disagreeable, so I do it with difficulty.
Gods had a big war, aptly named the Gods War, which wrecked the world so much that Chaos seeped in and ended everything. The gods assembled in what was left and formed a magical compact which manifested as a net with which they could bind the Devil, after which Arachne Solara ate him and birthed Time which restored the world. It's in essence a magically binding non-aggression pact and alliance against Chaos.
The general deal of it is that it separates gods from the mortal realm except in doing their assigned tasks (the sun in the sky, winds blowing etc.) and they are bound to do those tasks. Gods that died before Time also have to spend half of their time in the underworld, so Yelms death means the sun has to set every night and Flamal being eaten results in plants only growing half of the year. In addition to Time it resulted in God Time, the realm of the gods where all mythical pasts happened. And finally it made it so that gods can only interact with their followers in specific pre-assigned ways, like during religous festivals or at certain holy sites.
Key thing is that mortals are exempt from the Compromise and can so affect the world in ways gods can't. But if any mortal ascends to godhood they need to become part of it or face destruction/break the Compromise.
>The Red Moon is trying to break it, the Storm God is upholding it.
Not quite. The Red Moon didn't try to break it, she wanted to be part of the Compromise, but on her own terms. Doing so put her at odds with the gods set up to enforce the Compromise, like Orlanth, and with the help of Chaos she managed to achieve the impossible and win. So she's part of it, but with the own clauses and exceptions that she finagled into the Compromise.
Gods manifesting through mortals (heroforming) is part of the Compromise and Belintar was basically abusing that to a massive degree. Same how Sedenya being reborn a mortal didn't break it or Rathor being Harreks cloak doesn't break it.
>Not quite. The Red Moon didn't try to break it, she wanted to be part of the Compromise, but on her own terms. Doing so put her at odds with the gods set up to enforce the Compromise, like Orlanth, and with the help of Chaos she managed to achieve the impossible and win. So she's part of it, but with the own clauses and exceptions that she finagled into the Compromise.
That is like saying Gbaji and Zistor didn’t break the compromise because they existed and acted within time. Them doing that is them breaking it, just because the red goddess continues to flaunt it doesn’t mean she stopped being an affront and is why she is able to eventually be destroyed just like the others that did the same.
But Sedenya is officially part of the Compromise, that's the whole thing with the battle at Castle Blue. It was supposed to be the straw the camels back of her shenanigans and the gods would either smack her down or force her to take her assigned place. But that didn't happen. Against all odds she won and thus used the chance to do an addendum which made her chaotic shenanigans exempt from the regular Compromise rules. She made peace with most of the gods there, with notable exeptions like Orlanth, Eurmal and Kyger Litor, and got to join in with them in God Time.
But as was brought up in a somewhat recent post by Jeff her new position in the compromise is not as set in stone as everyone else. By joining the Compromise she needs to fulfill her mythic duties, which due to her being born in Time are very limited to fighting with the Air gods for dominance over the Middle Air. This is why the fighting between Sedenya and Orlanth is so bitter, if Sedenya loses or even just tries to stop fighting she risks the Cosmos resetting like it did when the Second Age ended and the red moon gets shunted out of the middle air. And Orlanth can't stop fighting either, cause one his Compromise duty is to battle Chaos and so he must fight or the Compromise breaks.
Probably not a proper Cult book, but there are hints that there'll be books that focus on draconic stuff and higher tier dragons like Godunya somewhere in the far future. Most likely a Kralorela book, as that has also been mentioned in the past.
>But as was brought up in a somewhat recent post by Jeff her new position in the compromise is not as set in stone as everyone else.
Even Jeff labels her a compromise breaker. When did he say she is a part of it?
Of course, that isn’t to say I put much value into what Jeff says which is why I didn’t bother to cite him on it earlier.
Her being part of the compromise is mentioned in the sourcebook. Quote: "At the end, the fight was over, and the Old Gods abased themselves before the Red Goddess and swore acceptance of her. Some swore allegiance as well. The Natural Order had been torn by the fighting at Castle Blue, and after peace came again the universe was made whole once more by including the Red Goddess and her powers."
And here's the specific Jeff post: https://wellofdaliath.chaosium.com/conflict-in-the-middle-air/
I’m reading that post and literally no where does he say that she is a part of the great compromise. Quite the opposite:
>Can’t the compromise be amended? >That’s not how it works. The only way I could imagine it is to force every deity to agree – even Zorak Zoran, Kyger Litor, and Storm Bull. Every single one. And do it on the God Plane. Last time that worked was because the only alternative was the annihilation of everything.
She has made her own deals and arrangements but it is on a god by god basis, and those gods just act as they must because they are still bound by the compromise while she has leeway because she isn’t. She is neither bound by nor protected by the compromise, in the same way an outlaw is not bound by nor protected by the law.
If she wasn't bound in some way by the Compromise she wouldn't need to fight Orlanth in the way it's stated she must nowadays. She was free to make choices which gave her an advantage over the gods up until Castle Blue. It may not state word for word that she's bound by the Compromise, but she must be cause otherwise every god that didn't make friends or deals with her should gank her for being a threat like with Zistor. She wouldn't have needed to turn herself into a moon either and left the running of the empire to her son if she could just flaunt the rules of the Compromise.
It does but it quite apply describes something akin to the Compromise taking effect.
Afaik it has not been given an explicit explanation. But one can speculate based on what we know about them. Eurmal is inherently self-centered and Sedenyas alltruistic endgoals goes against his nature. Eurmal, as per Lightbringers, always go against authority and strength and she'd fit that after her victory at Castle Blue. Both are associated with illusions (Illusion vs Moon) so they may understand/be more similar than everyone thinks and despises eachother for it.
She fights because she must for survival, like the gods did during the Gods War. It isn't because she is bound to by the compromise like Orlanth does.
Eurmal tricked us all by pretending to be a retard when he is acxtually the wisest guru among all gods
Sounds like that passage is written in character rather than objectively.
>She made peace with most of the gods there, with notable exeptions like Orlanth, Eurmal and Kyger Litor, and got to join in with them in God Time.
Btw. why do Eurmal and Sedenya hate each other this much? Has that been mentioned somewhere?
>The general deal of it is that it separates gods from the mortal realm except in doing their assigned tasks (the sun in the sky, winds blowing etc.) and they are bound to do those tasks. Gods that died before Time also have to spend half of their time in the underworld, so Yelms death means the sun has to set every night and Flamal being eaten results in plants only growing half of the year. In addition to Time it resulted in God Time, the realm of the gods where all mythical pasts happened. And finally it made it so that gods can only interact with their followers in specific pre-assigned ways, like during religous festivals or at certain holy sites.
This of course divides the gods into an "elemental" and a "personal" aspect. The "elemental" aspect is rather easy and just consists of the parts you experience in the mundane world like the sun, wind or even something more abstract like trade. The personal aspect is a bit trickier and consists of the human traits and personalities ascribed to them. It's also a lot more interesting since it's more subjective and can be influenced by mortals though I am not sure to what extent. A storm god will likely be temperamental but does Orlanth need to be a king everywhere? Can he be seperated from his mastery rune?
Also makes me wonder how clear cut the borders between gods are. Irl it often happened that gods merged or split but in Glorantha that only happens to a very limited degree. They seem to be very clearly defined individuals but I think it would be cool if somewhere e.g. Orlanth and Heler merged into one god.
That's at least Orlanth's perspective. Others are more willing to compromise.
>That's at least Orlanth's perspective. Others are more willing to compromise.
Personal or individual compromises are not the Great Compromise.
The only being who can speak directly for the Compromise is Arachne Solara and she put Sedenya into the web after Castle Blue.
That sort of stuff happens all the time, we're just used to the "standard" situation in modern south central genertela.
Orlanth Thunderous and Adventurous used to be completely separate religions that later came to be seen as aspects of the same god with the Theyalan movement. And did Humat used to be Orlanth? Or was he sort of Umath and sort of Humakt?
We have better sources for how the Pelorian and Pelandan religions got mixed up, merged, and divided in earlier ages, but it happened everywhere.
The Elmal/Yelmalio situation is similar.
They're technically both Theyalan interpretations of The Lightfore; in the 90s, Greg felt that Elmal was the better interpretation, then changed his mind back to Yelmalio in the last few years.
(Somehow, it's been handled a bit awkwardly, but the basic gist is there.)
>They're technically both Theyalan interpretations of The Lightfore; in the 90s, Greg felt that Elmal was the better interpretation
Elmal wasn’t the Orlanthi Lightfore, he is the Orlanthi Sun.
wait, where did Yelm go after the dawn then?
It might be a metaphor for the reformation of the Darra Harapan Imperial government after centuries of being ruled by Hyalorong and Gamate (Riders and Wheels).
You have Antrius, the little sun also called Yelmalio who guarded under the Dome and through the Great Darkness and you have Elmal, who is also Lightfore and tried to first suceed Yelm then migrated with his people, eventually becoming the sun god of the horse nomads and the Orlanthi.
Eventually the Hyalorong and Gamate are sent packing into Pent, having reabsorbed all the Imeprial traditions. Their version of the Little Sun starts getting closer to Darra Harapan Yelmalio, meanwhile in the south Elmal remains with the Hyaloring/Orlanthi.
With the tradional Darra Harapan culture restored, Antrius no longer needs to step in for Yelm. Who symbolically returns.
Sory i should also say Antrius is Yelmalio/Lightfore, which means Little or Weak Sun depending on how the people pharse it.
yeah ok but if I ask an orlanthi "where is yelm?" what will he say?
Yelm is the sun. Elmal is also the sun. This is an enormous issue in-setting as well.
Elmal is "the sun being nice to us and obeying Orlanth". But when Heortling Elmali communities came back into contact with Pelorian Yelmites after the resettlement of Dragon Pass things started to kick off.
>These guys also worship the Sun. But they don't have to ritually submit to the Air temples, have amazing giant golden altars, possess incredible magic, and keep women in their place!
>Maybe we should get in on this, and start adopting northern traditions. Especially that one which lets you summon a giant pillar of fire because I'm feuding with my king at the moment...
It dos open up an interesting persepctive if the reason Elmal is less attractive than Yelmalio bcause Yelm gives associate gods fire magic while Elmal/Yelmalio/Antrius/Lightfore/Random petty sun go of a Pelorian city state lost their own thanks to mythic cycles.
I think a big part is fallout from the EWF's collapse. Solar communities now have to choose whether they submit to priests of Orlanth Rex or Yelm Imperator, and that puts them right in the middle of political (and military!) conflict.
So when Monro comes along with his vision of the Many Suns, it's appealing to a lot of people. Here's a mythic construct that provably works - you get magic from it - but is free of loyalty to either side. "Oh sure he's the sun, but he's not THAT sun, but the other one. Sorry mister emperor, different thing."
>It dos open up an interesting persepctive if the reason Elmal is less attractive than Yelmalio bcause Yelm gives associate gods fire magic while Elmal/Yelmalio/Antrius/Lightfore/Random petty sun go of a Pelorian city state lost their own thanks to mythic cycles.
Except that is a recent Jeff thing. Previously Elmal absolutely had the Fire Rune rather than Light Rune, and as such had full access to your typical Fire Rune magics. This makes sense since he is the sun, including its warmth as said by Greg.
The only person who ever gave Elmal fire rune magic *was* Jeff (and even that's unclear, HQ didn't have a clear battle/divine magic divide), Greg listed his magics as:
> blessings upon the earth, good barley crops, healthy horses, and winter protection.
Which sounds like "replacement sun during the Darkness". It's all supposed to be super vague, and make you wonder if the Elmal cult was a way of worshipping The Sun / Yelm / Ehilm, or always a compound idea about the Little Sun. The sources are all biased and from uncertain periods.
None of which works for a fucking game set during the conflict, but it's always been impossible to pin down Greg further than his last drug binge (sorry, "shamanic vision"), so every attempt to lay it out in an RPG product has just made it more of a mess.
It doesn't matter, move on. There is no objective Greg-ordained truth.
Elmal still had the Fire Rune in Greg’s guide to Glorantha too.
so is the Elmalite civil war more a case of sartarites trying to become Yelmites until Monrogh gets them to become Yelmalions instead?
>Their original god Elmal was crushed under the culturally rich and materially successful Pelorian Sun religion, which eventually proved itself so enticing to the Sun‑worshiping hill folks of Sartar that the Tanahart Clan destroyed itself with kinstrife during the reign of King Jarolar, fighting to say which god was their god.
This is one of the thing which immediately annoys me about all the Elmal/Yelmalio drivel that comes up on this board, because most are zoomers who never met Greg, screeching out in unison with the rest of the parrots. So to explain how Elmal fits in with Yelm, its also necessary to touch on that.
Before Elmal was invented, there was Yelmalio and Yelm, but Greg realized that there was a hole in the fabric: who did the Theyalans worship as the sun before they encountered Dara Happa? The answer to this question was Elmal. After they encountered each other, the Theyalans and Dara Happans identified each other's gods in their myths, and many Orlanthi came to recognize the sun as Yelm: the god which Orlanth made the compromise with and brought back from hell. Elmali still had their place, and some magic from Peloria even became adopted by the cult, but they were made much smaller after this point. Elmal was not the emperor sun, but the friendly sun. Fast forward hundreds of years and Monrogh the lantern founds the Yelmalio cult.
Now before I go on, I want to emphasize that all of this was first introduced in King of Sartar. All of it. The idea of Elmal, how Yelmalio has superseded him, all of that was introduced in the 1993 King of Sartar. None of it existed before that point. The whole point of the King of Sartar was to both introduce Elmal, and explain why he has more or less been replaced by Yelmalio.
Fans at the time got angry about this because it contradicted all the established lore they knew about Yelmalio so far. The Yelmalio cult existed in earlier eras than just the third era: the idea of Elmal and Monrogh founding the Yelmalio cult seemingly contradicted everything about the Yelmalio cult. Funnily enough, people claim that Elmal is being rewritten out of the picture, but that was literally the entire point of why Elmal was introduced.
So when thinking about what Yelm and Elmal, it helps to have that history in mind.
My opinion is either you have Yelmalio always exist and it doesn't matter if the sun hates you for being Orlanthi, gods are just magic people you have to live with.
Or Elmal is a god in a broader set of mythical pantheons which can overlap and may be mythically the same, but can have differnt opiions and beliefs from each other. Elmal may be supplanted, but he and Yelmalio were seperate gods who happen to just be the same planet.
The first is how RQ2 does it and makes for a better game, the second is how Heroquest and Six Ages use them.
The seocnd one is much more anthropogically and historically accurete to the constantly overlapping sets of real-life gods.
It's alos more Jeff's tone, it's no long YGMV (though it never reallyw as) it's Jeff's Glorantha and anything that contradicts it is fan-fiction. Even the Heorquest books under the same art irection and authors where Elmali were showing up (in very reduced numbers) even in 1618.
>The first is how RQ2 does it and makes for a better game, the second is how Heroquest and Six Ages use them.
>The seocnd one is much more anthropogically and historically accurete to the constantly overlapping sets of real-life gods.
My biggest problem with RQG is that it feels like the design team can't pick one of these approaches and stick to it.
If they did one or the other, they could point to pdfs of the various old products over the years, pretty much all of which they offer, and say 'this does the other approach better, so take a look if you want more of that'.
But instead, you get a very muddled vision of the world, that's hard for newcomers to grok, but *also* loses a lot of - I don't want to say 'verisimilitude', but I don't know what other word to use.
I think it's too early to say what their approach truly is really until the solar book comes out. Jeff has been more or less dictating the setting out in an authoritative way, since as
says, Jeff is trying to stop the grognards from gatekeeping. The irony is that he has become THE gatekeeper of Glorantha. How much is just some emotional reaction to some forum post, and how much is going to be published, that is yet to be seen.
It seems like his broad aim is to bring Glorantha and Runequest to a new generation, which requires a clear message that is not confused by old guard debates and squabbles. This is reasonable on the surface, but I ultimately think its going to come back to bite Jeff in the arse. Jeff would be like the father of a new generation of Runequest players, but the problem with that is that children eventually grow up. The coming new generation of Runequest players will grow tired of being 'fathered' by Jeff and being told what is the 'proper' thing to do. It certainly doesn't take nearly as long to learn about Glorantha as it takes to grow into adulthood, and Jeff is certainly old enough to be the father, maybe even the grandfather, of the market he is reaching out to.
That I think will be the big difference between getting gregged, and getting jeffed: getting jeffed is more like listening to an out-of-touch dad who is trying to help/connect with you.
>had the Fire rune
This doesn't mean as much as you think it does. You are coming at this from an RQG lens.
>Greg's guide
You do realize that the second author for the GtG and the editor-in-chief was Jeff. The GtG literally exists because of Jeff.
>This doesn't mean as much as you think it does. You are coming at this from an RQG lens.
Like how it isn't important if Yelm has the fire rune either or Orlanth the air rune.
>It seems like his broad aim is to bring Glorantha and Runequest to a new generation
If it is he's doing a phenomenally bad job. The way Cults of Runequest is structured it is specifically for collectors and not players. They could have published a "Major cults of Dragon Pass" or similar book which would have been great for players. Instead we get a mess where your average adventuring party an easily require 3 different books because Gagarth had to be a package deal with Orlanth. And don't forget the Prosopaedia. You know what a short paragraph for everything would be great for? A FREELY ACCESSIBLE WIKIA. The amount of interest this could spark by new players could maybe even exceed the money you make from poor sods who actually got that book. I tried getting into the setting by checking out things on the internet and it's basically impossible without buying a book. Do you think I'm going to spend 40 bucks just to find out if I am interested in the setting? I know that most people won't.
Jeff is mostly just interested in doing his thing and everyone else seems mostly interested in keeping Jeff happy. 99% of the very few new players come from the video games because WHERE ELSE ARE YOU GOING TO FIND OUT ABOUT THIS SETTING AND GAME? Even among niche nerd stuff Runequest is obscure and it will likely stay that way until the fanbase finally dies of old age. Thanks for coming to my Ted talk.
>phenomenally bad job
You say that, but the fact that this thread exists and very clearly is inundated with neophytes is evidence to the contrary. Could it be done better? Is Jeff up his own ass? 100%. Yet it is clearly working slowly and surely. The fact that people such as yourself are even trying to breach that wall is just as much evidence.
The cults series is odd since it was originally started in the same era as the guide was published, and wasn't originally designed with RQG in mind. This is not an excuse for them but just context worth keeping in mind.
As for future publishing, next year they said that they will be publishing the Lunar Cults, Sartar Book and Solar Cults. I might have heard the Argrath campaign mentioned, but I don't have solid evidence that is planned to happen. The Sartar book will probably be the most important Runequest book that they publish next year. The Solar and Lunar books really appeal to old timers, who have seen things like the Sartar book before, but the Sartar book needs to be what makes RQG accessible to newcomers from a game perspective. If it doesn't do that, then I really think its missing the mark on what Runequest needs to survive.
As far as I'm aware, there's no timeline on when the GM's guide is coming out. That is another huge issue.
It's almost a Rite of Passage to be told by Jeff, directly, that you are wrong about something. At least once.
Also it's still kind of wild to me that so much Chaosium gameline discussion happens on Facebook apparently. And at the same time they want to reach out to younger people.
Lunar and Solars is going to be critical because it will probably be mostly new material and be more of a bellwether to judge the writing chops of RQ:G's future. Lunars especially kind of surprises me when I think about it, because you think they have so much history and lore, and they do, but they don't actually have that much in the way of official writeups for use in a game.
Sure some of the Gods may have gotten Gods of Glorantha writeups but those were like a page at most.
Sartar book will be even more important though, for the reasons you outlined.
I'm not convinced the GM book is ever happening lol. That one's absence is a blackmark on the RQ:G gameline.
I don't want to say you're wrong, but this is from the RQ:G bestiary, which I don't see say it's for war preparation explicitly. I mean this is the writeup for it for use as an enemy with stats so maybe that's the case. All it says about being fed but 'not enough' (and not days missed, if you miss feeding day on Black and Dying moon days, you're FUCKED). if not fed properly 'it has a percentage chance of becoming uncontrolled equal to 1/10 the magic points due to it.'
Anyway, Crimson Bat is bad news. I still think its the most legitimate reason to despise the Lunar Empire. It will never not be odd to me that core to RQ:G is 'ooh but the Lunars aren't THAT bad'. Sure individuals are fine, but the Crimson Bat is PRETTY FUCKING BAD DUDE. This then gets kind of funny when you find out the only reason the Bat exists is so the Lunar player in White Bear/Red Moon can circumvent the Moon Cycle mechanic by using the Bat's Glowspot, so the opposing player can't just abuse the Moon Cycle constantly.
the time is ripe for someone young and hip to make a glorantha lore channel. I would, but I do not have enough knowledge.
>I still think its the most legitimate reason to despise the Lunar Empire.
shit, what other reasons de we have? they dabble with chaos and they dont like orlanth. aside from that there is npthing that makes them different. same sexual morals, same laws, same clothing, same building materials, same stance on tattoos. they have slaves and we have thralls.
not exactly Romans vs Gauls this. not even Persians vs Greeks
This is from the Sartar Companion:
>The Crimson Bat must feed on live sentient beings every week. If not fed, it diminishes in size and power while becoming harder to control; but as it feeds, it grows in size and power. Normally, the Crimson Bat requires 25 sacrifices a week; when it is preparing for war, its food consumption increases by a factor of ten and must be fed twice weekly.
(In the campaign timeline, it's mentioned that the Bat is fed 500 sacrifices immediately before the assault on Whitewall.)
>If the Bat is not properly fed; the High Priest killed or loses his concentration; or anyone not of the cult, the Bat Guard, or a direct descendent of the Moon rides it; the Bat will attempt to break control and run amok devouring friend and foe alike until it vanishes from the mundane plane on the next Godday. The secret rituals to resummon the Crimson Bat are long and arduous, requiring three to seven years to complete and the personal attendance of the Red Emperor at their culmination. At the climax, the current High Priest is fed to the Bat and a new High Priest chosen.
ty for digging that up Anon, it made me go look in Cults of Terror again. Still a great book after all these years. I really like the Paulis Longvale/Oddi saga stuff in it. Talastar would make a great place to centre a campaign. It is the easiest explanation to have Theyalan, Lunar, and Solar cultists all rubbing shoulders and having to be buddy buddy because Holy Fucking Arkat Dorastor is RIGHT THERE DUDE and the Unicorn Emperor grows stronger year by year.
nah pretty sure we'd have it somewhere if there was. I'm reasonably sure whatever preview or pre-layout books exist were looked at or given to like 5 people at a gencon once
This user has sacrificed almost all POW to the Bat. He will be fed to it after the Lunars suffer a devastating loss.
So, Dorastor is *not* part of the Lunar Empire? The nature of Illumination means that the Lunars can meet with him diplomatically, but at the end of the day, he's still an adversary?
The empire doesn't love chaos, it just knows it can be used for good. Ralzakark doesn't get used, he uses you.
Things reportedly do not go super great for everyone when he seizes the lunar throne.
Ralzakark has agreements with the Lunars, but he is definitely not a subject. He probably thinks he's a peer of the Emperor. He fights with King Oddi (who is a provincial king under the Red Emperor i.e. a subject and someone who should be under Moonson's protection). And some of the hints at what's going to happen in the Empire as the Hero Wars progress imply that Ralzakark is up to some shit.
Yeah Elmal is sick as fuck lmao. He's great. When all the other Gods died (by going to the Underworld deliberately or not) Elmal is the one whose fire never quite went out. He endured till the Sun came back. He is our Guardian and Protector.... Now in RQ:G canon that God was Lightfore. But the Yelmalio of the Third Age can be hard to love, Elmal in Six Ages is OUR BOY and we are given very direct reasons to like him. It's very well done.
Like the other anon said give it another 10-15 years and new Chaosium writers will probably revive Elmal after having played those games.
I really feel like Monrogh wad on to something but was tricked by the lunars and that he did not complete his revelations. In my mind, the true path of the bright protector in the dark must end with a, if not heroic and selfless cult, then at least one that gets along with Orlanthi
At this point, I'm looking forward to, in 10-15 years, new post-Jeff people taking over writing stuff, deciding that they like Elmal better than Yelmalio after all, and all the people who came into the game through RQG getting as up in arms as possible.
Part of me even wants to believe Greg wanted it that way, for maximum lols.
Yeah I wouldn’t be surprised.
>he and Yelmalio were seperate gods who happen to just be the same planet.
Except that wasn’t even the case since Elmal was the Orlanthi sun, not the lightfore, and had the Fire Rune.
>he and Yelmalio were separate gods who happen to just be the same planet.
What is the “objective” truth in game reality for things like this? Are the gods just patterns used by mortals to gain magic? What is the structure under the myths. How do different societies have different myths when there are long-lived creatures whi were there when the events of the mythology actually happened? How can all these gods be “the” god if the sun when there is only one sun?
The metaphysics of this setting don’t make much sense to me. A lot of people seem to like it, so I presume I’m missing some important facts about how the setting worlds.
before the compromise there was no time, so every eventuality that COULD have happened played out at the same, er...time.
or at least, and this is something six ages have made me umderstand, I think the gods and their worshippers lived by the prime rule of magic: As above, so below. bit also: as below, so above.
Elmal marries Redalda because Beren marries Reydalda because Elmal marries Redalda.
Thus, Every culture before time could have their own relarionship with Elmal and he with them (if they worshipped him at all) and he could be a different figure, a differen relationship to each of them.
Then time begins and the relationship changes.
Argrath will also change the relationship between man and god again, but I suspect it wont be for the better...
The problem really comes from two places:
1)King of Dragon Pass was the jumping-on point for a lot of people; in it, we have plenty of Elmal worshippers, as well as the infamy of the 'Elmal Guards the Stead' heroquest. (personally, the quest where your herd priestess gets eaten by wolves always seemed tougher to me.) There's no mention of Yelmalio; this all makes sense, since we're very much in-between Sun Dome Temples. (The bit where Theyalans start with Elmal, switch to Yelmalio, then get hit on the head and forget Yelmalio exists for the length of an age or two, does always confuse me.)
But even if you could argue that KoDP is not official, there's also...
2)HeroQuest Glorantha was still being published right up until RuneQuest Glorantha came out. And in HQG, you have Sartarites worshipping Elmal, and almost no mention of Yelmalio whatsoever. It's not until RQG comes out that there's the immediate about-face.
Now, there's nothing intrinsically wrong with that - it produces a Dragon Pass that looks much more like it did in the old days. But, it was a sudden and immediate change to the lore. Even if it *was* always the intended result, it didn't look like at at the time, and Jeff's explanations are incredibly dismissive.
(I tend to have little sympathy for game designers incapable of admitting when they've created their own problems.)
I might be naive here, but couldnt this all be solved by saying that Yelmalio was the sun of yelm, then yelm died and ELMAL went to find himself (hangs out with orlanth), dawn happens and Yelmalio comes back as a complete god.
Yelmalio is the Lightfore, the little sorta shiny planet has the opposites place from the sun in orbit, so it travels when the sky when the Sun goes to the underworld at night. Just a bit of light, no heat. Or at least he is now. Sometimes he is also referenced as being the light of the sun without the heat, like the sun as felt on cold mountain peaks (which you might think would be warmer since they are closer to the Sun).
Except there were many suns during the darkness, not just one. Hell, Yelm might just be a reconstruction within time of the many parts rather than the sun or the Dawn.
Yelmalio was around doing stuff during the darkness too. Mostly getting the shit kicked out of hum by everything else. He even loses to Zorak Zoran, a god he should hard counter and lost fire to him.
>Yelmalio is the tiny spark of hope, carried by people in the darkest days, that will allow the dawn to spark again
>Elmal is the loyal thane, patrolling the stead and lighting the world, keeping it safe with the higher lords are elsewhere
Honestly, their myths and practices are so different, that it would have been easy enough to have both of them still present, just declaring 'in the modern days, Yelmalio is much more prominent, due to various cultural factors that make a lot of sense.'
Instead, they went with 'Elmal was just Yelmalio the whole time, deal with it lol.'
A hilarious reversal of the 90s version, 'Yelmalio was just Elmal the whole time, deal with it lol', apparently showing they learned nothing in three decades.
Was rereading the Stafford House Campaign, and I noticed an interesting line.
That Horali can take a geas to never use magic in return for their iron weapons and armour to count as the Countermagic spell, 1 point per 1 ENC of gear.
We never got Greg's actually Western book nor will we ever now. So this is just an orphaned reference.
Why do Lunars bother with the Bat when they can get their secret police to summon a dozen selenes a.k.a. poison gas elementals and send them to visit enemy tents at night.
because we can summon a dozen other spirits t oguard our camp.
The bat is an "I WIN" button
Because the bat is a WMD and a tool of terror as well, keeping both enemies and civilians in line through fear. Nobody wants their soul devoured and so people just vote for their criminals to become bat food.
in my game, being eaten by the bat was so bad that your name disappeared and people forgot you. You may be able to remember that you once had a father and what hapenned around him, but he was just a hole in your memory and any writing of his name became unintelligble scribbles
Still better than what Kajabor did to stuff, but not by much.
idunno. kajabor atleast had no malice
Kajabor did nothing wrong.
Wakboth being the one that got sucked by Arachne Solara to become Time also doesn’t really work with the Guide to Glorantha, since Wakboth is still listed as the owner of the Chaos Rune.
I think Humakt is right. We should just kill people and make sure they stay dead.
>I think Humakt is right. We should just kill people and make sure they stay dead.
Don’t be so certain.
I disagree
>I think Humakt is right. We should just kill people and make sure they stay dead.
begone, angry wasp
So whats the better system to learn if you want to get some RuneQuest on?
Ive always loved the setting, read Guide to Glorantha and am planning on ordering the Prosopaedia as well and I get that I'll never actually get a chance to play so I might as well learn to run it.
Combat skills over 100 are unfairly brutal to lesser foes. It’s not that hard for some characters to go to 200 even.
So? Just do it if you don't want to get bullied.
It's not as bad as RQ2 where combat only started to rise above 100% with lots of effort and qualifying for Runelord status, but Defence coul make combat eally tedious.
Defence was a % that Lowered your opponent's Attack %.
And there were spells and mutations that could give up to +20% Defence.
You could make almost all normal opponents rolls 15-25% or less in all combat but you still neded to rolll in case one actually did hit you.
>It’s not that hard for some characters to go to 200 even
This seems like a bit of a stretch. Anyone without magic as powerful as Sword Trance is going to need heavy investment and probably decades of experience to get that high.
Berserker can get you there when you face chaotic foe and have 100 in the combat skill. You can start with 100 in the relevant combat skill in RQ:G.
I didnt get this for a long time, that chaos should be hard to face. Because nowhere in the rules does it say that facing chaos creatures requires a test or anything. there's just randomass spells like "face chaos" that you might not even notice.
Also, are Stenogs stegosauruses?
Personally I think it is okay for the chaos fighting cults to be good at fighting chaos.
Could the waters of Zola Fel purify the Crimson Bat?
I don't think there would be much left after purifying it
Ginna Jar = Annilla
All this "spirit of Ernalda", "ghost of Glorantha" is a cover-up. Mysterious character met on the edge of the sea who convinietly knows the secret paths though Underworld? Wake up sheeple!
That sounds like gbaji riddler talk to me…
Quick, kill him before he changes form!
I do get where Jeff is coming from. He's trying to publish a resurrected game line, and doesn't want its socials filled up with the same arguments from the 90s.
He was the big Elmal pusher that helped make him a fan favorite, and then spent years working more closely with Greg trying to forge that mess into something coherent until he just got fully fed up. And still managed to include Elmali in the Colymar material.
Healthy young RPG author goes to shaman, gets pumped with massive shot of Many Suns, doesn't feel good and changes - YELMALIO. Many such cases.
The old 'Etyries' website seems to be gone for good now, sadly, but it provided a great screenshot on how people felt about the setting, and Greg's capacity for 'Gregging' things up, in the 90s and early 00s.
It went down because it was backed up onto the Well of Daliath! Navigation on that site is a nightmare, but it's been doing a great job of archiving so much material.
https://wellofdaliath.chaosium.com/home/catalogue/websites/nick-brookss-etyries-website-2001-2004/
Any idea for heroquests where the rewards are just straight boosts to skills.
Honestly I would think that doing any heroquest would have some skill or stat bonus, solely as sort of a residue of having briefly been coterminous with a god. What skills or characteristics would then just be a feature of what God or myth you were heroquesting. Heroquesting Stormbull fighting the Devil might give Wrestling, Str, Punch, or even Siz. A hero playing the role of Eurmal in the Lightbringers quest would get Charm or Fast Talk. Yes you're performing as the God but some of them would end up sticking to you when you come back too. In general I don't think anyone could do a heroquest of any kind and not get a POW bonus on top of whatever else.
I would look at Geas for Yelmalio and Humkt for guidelines. They are the only way other than eating Giant Bee honey to increase certain unraisable stats. And they provide big skill boosts.
I would do it like this
Succeed on a Heroquest: Rolls to passions, elements and opportunities to spend Permanent POW to get a Geas benefit.
Sort of pass a Heroquest: Rolls to passions, elements and opportunities to spend Permanent POW to get a Geas benefit and penalty.
Fail a Heroquest: reducing rolls to passions, elements and get a Geas penalty no benefit.
Some of the other possible benefits could come from the Heroquest gifts in 13th Age Glorantha.
A Heroquest that a lot of players have done is killing the Rock Lizard Mother in the original The Rainbow Caves. Her blood spurting around gave everyone +1 AP to their skin and that was sorely needed.
Do you think we will see a cults of Glorantha book based on dragons? Or maybe a newtpak of some kind? The draconic lore is quite cool, wish there was more.
Unfortunately it seems like the only draconic God or power slated to have a cult write up in the current series is Godunya, based on him being featured on the little cult relationship chart that Chaosium showed off a while back. Unfortunately a newtpack would be years and years away, currently we know they have updated trollpak and an elfpak in the pipeline but Runequest stuff is released so slowly we don't even know when to expect them.
>Lights Going Out
Can you get the full royal regalia?
Well the only way you get offered the Crown of Berne is an event where it is offered by the Chaos God Terghen.
Surely you would take the Crown when offered, right Elmal?
Does setting for Abrahamic God stuff?
>Does setting for Abrahamic God stuff?
Does English for speak?
So if Elmal is meant to be light/truth now, which god is fire/truth?
why do they keep making Elmal the coolest nigga in the vidya games when they are trying to bury him in the books
I’m a bit confused about Yelm. If he is the Sun, and came back to life after the compromise, why are there so many Sun cults that worship sun gods but not THE Sun God? Has he just faded into obscurity after his resurrection in favor of his fragments/children?
Because there isn’t just one pantheon of gods, but rather pantheons for each culture. As those cultures mingled they began to associate gods from their own pantheon with gods from others, like how the Romans did in our world.
Yelm didn’t exist at the dawn, more even during the first age as the god we know though neither did orlanth. There were other sun gods such as Antirius, Elmal, Ehilim and Kargzant (which have basically all been shifted into yelmalio). Orlanth wasn’t Rebellus Terminus of the Dara Happans (which is actually a label used for Shargash but that can get you some serious illumination if you think about it too long) and their sun god was not the bad emperor of the Orlanthi.
It was the coming of Nysalor and the breaking of the compromise that changed things. By merging Orlanthi and Dara Happan cultures into a single empire through his chaotic illumination, the two entered a synthesis with each other. From this the Yelm from the current day begins to form, within the confines of time.
However, just because gods are similar does not mean they are the same, as the godlearners found out and tried to hide, much as Jeff tries to do so now.
I don't think that's correct
So orlanth killed elmal, who then was his loyal thane who joined him, on his quest to find and bring back elmal? That doesn't make much sense to me.
Before the Bright Empire it was Orlanth the Lifebringer, who brought back his wife Ernalda to the world to save it. His return freed Elmal to once more spread his warmth and light across a revitalized Earth, rather than needing to remain at Orlanth’s stead to guard and lead the Storm tribe in his absence. There were other sun gods during this time too, it wasn’t just Elmal. The bad emperor was not necessarily the same as the emperor Yelm.
Sunlight ain't free. The stead of the Storm Tribe gotta be litterd with the tears of loyal thanes. YELMailo LightFART aka "loser" is not my Sun God. He's Lunar agent and probably chaotic as well :DDD ORLANTH and Elmal, not Orlanth and YELM ok. Praise Elmal
We know Orlanthi perform Lightbringers heroquest if they feel they can pull it off. Do Lunars perform The Lives of Sedenya?
The Kalikos heroquest seems to be the most important one in the Lunar empire. It's mainly about beating up Valind so the winter isn't too cold.
wait, is valind holding the skydome?
Nope.
>The God of the White Pillar:
>Glorantha’s skies are a physical dome, separated from the firmament by four pillars (one in each direction). The White Pillar manifests as a huge, white-bearded god struggling to hold up his corner of the sky. Our heroquesters are approaching the edge of the world and can now clearly see the celestial Sky Dome and the White Pillar god.
The part were Valind gets beat up is shown in King of Sartar though from the opposite perspective
>King Argrath was sometimes aided in this war by the Lodrilli, a confederation of tribes from Peloria. One of them told Argrath about the annual expedition which the Lunar Empire sent to assist Kalikos Icebreaker. {Kalikos was an ancient demigod who had helped drive back Valind, the God of Winter, during the Gods War. Each year the Lunars sent out an expedition to reinforce Kalikos in his annual fight against Valind. As a result the demigod had held back all bad winters in Peloria for many centuries.}
>Argrath recognized the unnaturalness of this act, and vowed to help fix it. With his own companions, he set off across the invisible road to find the house of Kalikos. However, the house had moved from its old place. They did not find it, for the Two‑half Bears delayed them and slew Harmast.
>Instead of dying, lost on the glacier, they found Fankrios Unlaba, a woman frozen in the ice. She brought them to the house of her chieftain, Hend Valindsson, an old hero who was bound to this fight, and could not escape, and was sadly waiting to fight Kalikos and the rest of the Lunar expedition. Argrath gladly took the fight for the old man. Inandana Daughtersdotter was the Lunar hero who came, expecting another easy victory. Instead, Argrath slew her. Kalikos was wounded and driven off.
>We know Orlanthi perform Lightbringers heroquest if they feel they can pull it off. Do Lunars perform The Lives of Sedenya?
but you repeat yourself
More seriously, doing a LBG is a fair bit more serious than that. Communities do it every Sacred Time, but only on a superficial level - same for Lunars.
Going whole hog Harmast style is far, FAR more rare.
question.
My players may come upon an old abandoned shrine to maran gor next session. If the, now weak and tiny, shrine guardian spirit possess one of the PCs could it conduct a dacrifice there to power maran gor and itself?
and what else might one find in a long abandoned shrine to maran Gor? I kinda wanna tempt the players to loot it too and see what they choose.
Why not
Dinosaur bones! There is even an event for that in KoDP. Besides that, probably blunt weapons, maces or hammers, and maybe musical instruments like drums or gongs. Wealth from the northern Dragon Pass, since the center of MG cult is in Tarsh.
its an EWF shrine so probably nothing tarshite in there
I remember hearing that there was an original Cults of Glorantha preview.
Was there ever a pdf copy of it?
If you're interested in how gloranthan religions change and develop, I highly recommend reading the chapter titled "The Cult and Worship of Yelm" in The Fortunate Succession.
It's an overview of how Peloria's urban elite had their religious views vary enormously over the centuries due to foreign influence and political movements.
And that's not even counting normal people, but that chapter is unfinished so not terribly useful to read.
You can't make an omelette without feeding a few thousand eggs to giant demonic chaos bat.
Wake up from your utopian fantasies and start living in the real world.
You know? I find side-crushingly funny that just as the Jeff and the mainline attempt to move the setting away from Elmal we get not one, but TWO games in which he is not just a major character, but the main god of the peoples you control and at least three different cultures, expanding his myth into a saga in which you follow his direct descendants during the literal most important cosmic moment in Glorantha's lore.
Elmal was a cool yet ultimately minor god in the tabletop. Now David turned him into the literal embodyment of undying hope in the face of Chaos inevitable victory, turned his small myth in a generational struggle in which you end up facing a chaos god in the depths of the very void and remaking the world with Arachne Solara.
Is just so puzzling that the videogames and the official setting are going in pretty much opposite directions just when Chaosium wants to reach the wider public.
I was quite happy to write of Elmal in favour of Greg’s explanation, as a second place approach to just using RQ2 lore which I believe much more useful for RPGs not settings. But Six Ages squared that circle for me about why Elmal was so distinct and what his mythological place was.
A member of the city-based sun cults each which vied to be the replacement sun. All of Yelm’s post-death son/suns trying to occupy the same niche.
My anger exists pretty much because Jeff decided that Elmal didn’t exist anywhere in the new edition, even in Runegate. When he could have just said they were like Heroquest, very small numbers of bitter people. The Solar book is going to have Elmal as a subcult of Yelmalio, so they could just be worshiping that and plotting mythical urspation.
This builds on the real reason I don’t like Jeff’s work. It’s simplification without simplifying thing.
Stafford went back in the late 80s and early 90s to take all the lore from Wyrm’s Footnotes and Cults of Prax and say it was mostly God-Learner stuff or scholarly works and really each culture had its own radical take on mythology with stuff like Orlanth killing Yelm and the Lightbringer Quest only being developed by the Theylan missionaries.
This complicates a fairly in-depth RPG mythology but is much more anthropological. Jeff wants to go back to the original myths but keep the complications that were explicitly there to dismantle the originals.
Runegate has a major temple to Elmal, who is the protective deity of the Runegate clans. He's described in the book as "a local variant of Yelmalio".
I thought the map of Runegate straight up called it a temple of Yelmalio.
praise be
how many generation after Monrogh did it take before the sun dome (which confuses it with the sun county in Prax so we should use the name Vaantar) in sartar went from an ally of the state to become a subversive element?
Well the alliance ended when Tarkalor died (it was a personal agreement), so that lasted about three years. Maybe another three if you include the protracted succession crisis.
They pretty much sat out Sartar's invasion of the lunar empire and the following counter invasion, and only signed up with the occupation after Kallyr's rebellion failed. Fazzur certainly knows how to pay his soldiers. At that point they were technically working for the prince of sartar, and loyalty to the state gets a bit messy.
So call it 20+ years of not causing any trouble?
Better than them all going Yelm and swearing fealty to Moonson.
not helping at all and then taking the occupiers money to fight their battles is not exactly good.
People constantly claim that Elmal is only more popular because of the video games but a big part really just is that Yelmalites are utter cunts.
redpill me a bit on the dragonewts a bit.
Soon my PC's will move west of the donalf flats and through dragonewt lands, I want to try and understand how the dragonewts will react to this without making them so esoteric that they act lolrandumb.
The sacred time has passed, a new year has begun!
New thread here