In the first place, the Malkioni experience ghosts, wraiths, and similar foul spirits just like everywhere else, so occasionally Malkioni spirits DO get caught on the mundane plane.
Next, "all Malkioni souls vanish from the cycles of the world", true enough. So do all non-Malkioni souls. However, you can still access (some) non-Malkioni souls via Heroquests, while Malkioni are not detectible by this means. Here I'm purposely not referring to various special effects such as Ancestor Worship.
Let me sum up some of the various cultural beliefs: The Orlanthi believe that their souls are recycled viareincarnation.
The Dara Happans believed much the same.
The Kralori believe their souls go to Vithela, and thence to an inaccessible afterlife.
What does all this boil down to? The bald fact that NO GLORANTHAN CULTURE has any evidence for an afterlife -- all the spirits vanish somewhere and are gone from all possible contact. The Orlanthi might claim they've been reincarnated, but the frightening truth is that this explanation is no better than the Malkioni one of Solace in Glory.
Sure, a few spirits survive after death -- Heroes (and Malkioni Saints!) can be seen on the Hero Plane. Ghosts haunt old houses (not much of an "afterlife", though).
Sadly, death is almost certainly as frightening to a Gloranthan as it is to an Earth human -- and they have no reassurance of _their_ personal existence after death.
That said, some theists have visited the Halls of Silence, where "all" the dead throng long walkways to be judged, and there are no Malkioni dead, so Something Different does happen to their souls.
>Does anyone know if the Malkioni believe in a Hell?
Most Malkioni believe that if you do not make it to Solace in Glory that your soul is just recycled into the great cosmic mass of POW that makes up the universe. The Valkarists call this the Soul Pool. It's a lot like the Mostali belief.
There are exceptions to this, of course. But most Malkioni believe that (for instance) the pagan belief in reincarnation is just a mask for the awful truth of oblivion which faces all such after death.
Erik Sleurin
>Dinosaurs earth-related?
Correct. They are the sacred reptiles of Maran Gor, because they are earth-shaking.
>However, I consider dinos primarily Dragon-related.
There are two (count 'em, two) sources for dinosaurs in Glorantha. FIRST: there are dinosaurs which descend from dragonewts but which are NOT dragonewts, and can never again be dragonewts. The dragonewts would probably not consider them dragon-related, but humans might I admit.
SECOND: there are actual real dinosaurs.
Triolina gave birth to water reptiles. Note that plesiosaurs are not dinosaurs. In fact, none of the giant water reptiles of the past and present were dinosaurs. Plesiosaurs, mosasaurs, ichthyosaurs, etc., all were non-dinosaurs.
>Earth for the heavy ones, water for the duck-billed, storm for the
>carnosaurs
Blech. For one thing, the duck-billed dinosaurs didn't live in the water -- they ate pine cones. Carnosaurs = storm? I'm sticking with all dinosaurs = earth.
If we need storm-related giant things there's plenty of Pleistocene mammals available -- mammoths, woolly rhinos, etc. These are especially common in Pamaltela, and some are comparable to middling dinosaurs in size.
And for water giant things there's so many different sea monster possibilities as to make a sailor swear off sailing.
For sky giant things we have rocs, griffins, & co.
And darkness giant things are best described by seeing movies: Them!, It Conquered The World, Tarantula, and so forth.
Paul Honigmann
Defending Lore Rolls
> It is my firm opinion that Lores should never have been introduced.
Oh yeah? Sez you. I regard them as an easy way to give a sagely type character something to learn, some evidence that he has accomplished something beyond the less erudite PCs.
>If a PC has never heard of X in the game, he's never heard of it.
Never? Ever?
> If there's a chance he's heard of Malkonwal / broo fertility
>ceremonies / inner secrets of obscure cults then fine, the referee
>should decide on the chance
Yes, of course -- That's what the LORE skill is for! It gives the referee a number to use as the chance that the player has heard of it. Nothing prevents the referee from ignoring the damn skill. I do so all the time. My players ask me, "I have a World Lore of 57, what's the chance I know about the island of Rathmorosomangon?" and I say, "Zip. No way, pal. Sorry. You'll have to ask locally."
The die roll, like all die rolls, is just a crutch. One could as easily argue against having a Jump skill. "Can't the referee just _decide_ whether his player could make the leap?" -- which is what you have to do in D&D, for instance. But having to decide whether someone could jump across a ditch or ride a horse or all the stuff was a pain in D&D, and is one of the reasons I switched to RQ.
The fact is that there are plenty of times when the referee doesn't really care whether the player knows or doesn't know something, or wants to determine the result randomly. Then a skill roll is useful.
Compare to Search. Sometimes you just want the player to see something and you outright tell him -- "You see a discarded dagger in the middle of the room." Sometimes you want the player to feel he worked for something. "Try a Search roll." If you want BOTH the foregoing (i.e., find it, and feel he worked for it) there's lots of ways to ensure it. Technique A: "Okay, let's have everyone in the party try a Search roll." Technique B; "You failed your roll. Dang. It takes a whole extra hour to search the room painstakingly enough to find the jeweled dagger." Technique C: "Describe exactly how you're searching the room."
AND NOW FOR ...
Sandy's diatribe vs. systemless "systems"
I know folks who praise systemless games, in which every single aspect is decided upon by what amounts to debate between the players and the referee. "I kill the monster with my axe." "No way, it has a tough armored hide and your blade bounces off." "Okay then, I aim for its soft underbelly" "It guards its vitals with its limbs." "I try to distract it by waving my scarf in its face, when it grabs for it, then I go for the belly." Etc.
I watched one such game in which there was little debate (at the time), because almost everything seemed to be being done by precedent. "I know I can climb that wall, because last week you let me climb the Ice Tower."
Either way the game seems way too burdensome for the referee. I have noticed that such games rarely much accomplished (not that that's necessarily a drawback -- I've spent many an evening unable to get my PCs out of the longhouse and enjoying every minute) and arguments seem frequent. I'd rather have a system to rely on for most cases, so that when the player wants to do something I haven't thought about I have a nice easy way to determine success or failure beyond my own arbitrary nature.
And I can still employ my arbitrary nature whenever I want. NOTE: I've striven to train my players to look beyond the rules, so they can attempt anything they wish. Thus, if they can't kill the monster with their axe, because its armor is too thick, they can go ahead and aim for its soft underbelly, or try to flip it over on its back, or wait till it opens its jaws and aim for the soft palate or what-have-you. They may not succeed, but they can always try, my guiding rule being, "will it make the game more fun?"
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