Onslaught's Stats.

From: MSmylie_at_aol.com
Date: Tue, 30 Apr 1996 13:27:25 -0400


Hello all.

I just wanted to throw out a couple of observations on Onslaught and his Stats, most notably on the contention that his Stats are a reflection of "30+ years" of constant fighting and warring across Genertela. A few years back I played in what I considered to be the most "heretical", loosely run RQ campaign I'd ever been in, which began as a pure lark and wound up lasting quite a long time; the GM was the first to admit that he considered it atypical and Monty-Haulesque (although considering some of the comments the Onslaught thread has generated, I'm not entirely sure that was the case in retrospect). As seems to be the case with Martin's campaign, it was based mostly on RQ2 rules structures (most notably, 5% experience blocks and the old RQ2 rules about funky training manuals).

The two main PCs wound up campaigning for well _over_ 30 years of game time; if they weren't out killing things, they were busy training. By the end of the campaign, they had filled a hall (a really big one, mind you) with the skulls and trophies of their conquests -- the sanitized trinkets and remains of dozens of plundered Chaos shrines, cave troll skulls, lead ZZ war mauls, Red Scimitars and Lunar standards, pirate flags, Orlanthi banners (their local city cult was as opposed to Orlanth as the Red Goddess), two preserved Dream Dragon skulls with spines and skins (killed back-to-back in the same melee while on a heroquest; my PC lucked out and rolled two seperate critical impales to the chest), etc. They had fought golems of stone and bronze on the Plateau of Statues, sacked an intact and heavily-protected God Learner temple (it took them months to cart off the scrolls and books), performed a bunch of minor (?) heroquests -- including one that allowed my PC to join the cult of Wachaza and another that took them into Hell to bind a Dehore -- and eventually led a small army to throw the Lunars out of their city. Several points:

  1. My PC, a fellow named Rook, was considered the "combat specialist" of the bunch (in a bunch that was arguably dominated by combat specialists) and one of the most extreme characters any of us had ever seen produced, though admittedly much of his skills and training were not combat oriented; he wound up the Champion Rune Lord/Priest of an exceedingly martial city cult and an associate Priest of Wachaza. Onslaught makes Rook look like a beginner. Even berserkered and bearing the iron sword used by the city's founder and a Fang-enspelled iron spear, wearing dwarf-made iron armor and protected by heroquest-gained magic, backed by the equivalent of two allied spirits and a couple of summoned ancestors, one-on-one Rook would get turned into so much cheese whiz by Onslaught unless he were really, really lucky. Do I consider Onslaught's Stats a bit overdone? Err....yes.
  2. While I think of the campaign as Monty Haulesque, the GM delighted in throwing just about everything in the book at us (while cackling madly, of course); the opposition was insane. Of the two main PCs, mine tended to be in the front rank during combat (the other main PC's player was much smarter, and waited in the back throwing spells and spirits until the opposition was softened up). Onslaught and Rook strike me as being similar on this point
    (and I suppose that they could even have been friends if they didn't try and
    kill each other first); I would want to point out, therefore, that over the course of 30+ years of gametime Rook _died_ on at least three occasions, and had to be resurrected, and came close on innumerable other occasions and was only saved by his companions. It's bound to happen sooner or later by the sheer "luck of the dice" (you know, the Yanafil Tarnils Rune Lord rolls a critical hit to the chest when you've got your berserker spell up and you aren't parrying), and resurrection is presumably not an option for Onslaught
    (unless, I suppose, he were illuminated?).
  3. What ultimately made the two main PCs so dangerous was not simply their own skills and powers (IIRC the other main PC, a fellow named Mott, was an illuminated shaman of Black Fang and Daka Fal, a master alchemist, and I think belonged to several Chaos cults in secret; he's the guy that bound the Dehore), but the fact that they were eventually backed by retinues of powerful NPC followers. By the end of the campaign Rook, frex, rarely entered combat without being backed by at least 5 NPC rune levels (including two RL/Ps) and a squad of hand-picked initiates all on the verge of becoming rune lords themselves (combats at the end of the campaign routinely involved at least 30-40 people on each side and took hours to finish), connected to him by years of shared hardship and sacrifice and no small amount of religious fervor. In fact, despite the Monty Haul nature of the campaign, it was impossible for the PCs to get anywhere without the help and aid of others, and this strikes me as a fundamental part of the nature of Glorantha: the (unswerving) support of cults and temples, networks of hirelings, allies, friends and contacts, favor answered by favor and obligation (in fact, Rook owed several of his followers his life, literally: on one of the occasions he died, his own DI failed and he was only brought back through their interventions). The more powerful the PCs got, the _more_ connected they were to the world around them, not the _less_, and the greater their obligations to their friends, associates, and communities. Onslaught as the Man Alone strikes me as being utterly atypical in this regard, using Harrek as an unfortunate paradigm.

A side note: In the end, in fact, despite the frightening nature of the two main PCs, we all came to the conclusion that if the campaign had continued, the most frightening products of it would have been Rook's _children_. He had married a retired Uleria priestess who was also a priestess of the city cult (hmm; talk about male fantasy -- though I swear the marriage had more to do with the fact that her father had huge tracts of land ;-)) and they had had two sets of twins, the eldest twins girls, the younger a girl and a boy.  From the moment they opened their eyes, they were being raised, trained, groomed and tutored not only by their mother and father (both illuminates by the end of the campaign) and their stone-killer retinues, but by Mott
(remember, an illuminated shaman and probable Chaos cultist), his mysterious
friends, an illuminated Kralorelan sorceress and the entire hierarchy of the city's cult, with access to considerable wealth and an entire God Learner library at their disposal. Now give _them_ 30 years, and you've got some truly frightening folks to deal with. Do not beware of Heroes; beware of their children.

Just some thoughts,
Mark


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