Okay, so I've been playing/refereeing RQ since 1987. I never found
Griffin Mountain or Apple lane, but the other scenario packs were
terrific. I never liked RQ3, although I use certain ideas in very
limited ways. Then I blew it: I started web browsing and found all
this fascinating background material and cross fertilization of ideas.
Problem with that is my original campaigns, cults, cultures, etc.,
have greatly diverged from the direction GS and friends have gone.
My Sartar is not Celtic/Saxon, it's more Teutonic with a hint of
Frankish. That's the smallest difference. My latest campaign is set
in 1660's, nearly two generations after Dragon Pass threw off the
Lunar yoke. I used Campaign Cartographer software to create a map of
Dragon Pass but increased the scale of the original map roughly 4-
fold. I rotated it about 210 degrees. The pass is on the northern
part of my continent, made more hospitable by volcanic activity. My
Pol Joni were central to the guerilla warfare which convinced the
Lunar Empire to give up their dominance of the pass. When the Pure
Horse tribes came into the pass after leaving Prax, they were
welcomed by followers of Bakhti' Dragonmaster. The Dragonmasters had
survived the Dragonkill War sheltered by a radical nurturing dragon
known as She Who Whispers in War. The two groups became assimilated
into each other, and became the Grazelanders. After driving off
Tarshite invaders, there was a schism. Aided by Sartar, a splinter
group led by dragonmasters left the Grazelands, to raise cattle in
the hills (formerly troll country: NW edge of Prax on the original
map). These people became the Pol Joni. My Pol Joni and Grazelanders
worship the twin children of Orlanth and Ernalda (known only as the
Twins). They call their cult Pure Horse/Giver. The Twins mostly hid
from the other gods during the Greater Darkness. They are a
combination Trickster/Waha/Eiritha type. I didn't find the Hippoi
cult on the web until much later. Pure Horse/Giver would be out of
balance for a more orthodox Gloranthan campaign. But it could be
scaled down for a parallel universe. I have detailed writeups (preRQ
3) for Pure Horse/Giver, Bakhti' Dragonmaster (a warrior/guardian),
Glisn'vaj (Morning Frost, sister of Dawn and Mist), and Lothlosh
(Mistress of Entropy/Pain/Suffering). Lothlosh is a Chaos/Stasis god,
who used Chaos to shelter innocents from Chaos (a maneuver fraught
with peril). She turned Chaos on itself, causing the armies of
Wakboth and Kajabor to begin devouring each other (and themselves).
Some claim she provided the power of entropy which ZZabur harnessed
to bring new life to the world, thus securing a permanent place for
Chaos in the world. Death is not an end (unfortunately), but Chaos
offers an ultimate escape from the cycle of death and rebirth (with
all of its suffering). Creation and destruction are inseparable,
since life serves entropy and entropy allows life. I would be happy
to e-mail my cult writeups to anyone interested. Right now, I'm
pulling my hair out and I think I have Brain Fever because I want to
integrate the kool stuff I found on the web into my alternate history
(or at least explain the differences for my own sense of campaign
consistency).
My e-mail address is jkrl89a_at_prodigy.com, alternate is torrestm.
hqamc_at_mhs.safb.af.mil.
Timothy Torres, O'Fallon, Illinois