> I didn't realize how much the West was influenced by the GLs. I
> wonder what they did before the God Learners appeared... perhaps
> they used pure Brithian sorcery, or just their own homebrew.
> Actually, when _did_ Malkionism begin, anyway? From what I've read,
> Malkion seems to have been a GodTime hero, and the almost "athestic"
> attitude of the West would have been very hard to keep when you have
> gods running amuck all over Glorantha. Perhaps they weren't really
> like this until the GLs came?
What a perceptive fellow you are, Trent! These were questions and problems I wrestled mightily with while writing up all the historical background for our 80-player Malkioni church freeform, "How the West was One", three years ago. A lot of the answers we came up with are now enshrined on my homepage:
<http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/Nick_Brooke/>
This includes a "Brief History of Malkionism" (from the Golden Age of Logic through to the Downfall of the God Learners), and several less "finished" articles exploring the differences between the Brithini, Malkioni, Hrestoli, and scriptures of the various sects. These aren't "official" (though I'm still waiting for anything better to come along, he said modestly), but the Brief History has been published twice and translated thrice (to my knowledge), and is probably my best work yet.
You'll also find a link there to the "Splintered Sects" collection: these are write-ups of many of the Malkioni "heresies", mostly written by myself and David Hall (with much-appreciated help from Greg Stafford and Sandy Petersen, and with Web space and a Carmanian sect from Loren Miller), giving outlines of the history, theology, beliefs and saints adhered to by all of the major Western religions and several of the weirder ones. No RQ rules, though...
Although issue #13 of "Tales of the Reaching Moon", our "Go West!" Special, did include full RQ3 sect write-ups for the Holy Rokari Church of Seshnela and the New Hrestoli Idealist Faith of Loskalm. As well as lots of other yummy stuff (saints, crusades, Q&A with Greg & Sandy, and a lengthy Malkioni-centric adventure set just south of Dragon Pass).
Which brings me neatly on to:
> Tales of the Reaching Moon: Okay, how do I subscribe to this?
Who you should contact depends where you live, as the tentacular clutches of the Megacorp are world-spanning.
UK: David Hall <glorantha_at_compuserve.com>
USA: David Gadbois <gadbois_at_cs.utexas.edu>
Oz: Andrew Bean <zbraun_at_minyos.xx.rmit.edu.au>
Other: ask your local distributor for help. We have local
reps in many European countries, plus New Zealand and Japan.
Any of these good fellows can help you get a subscription to "Tales" (and recent back issues), and will also do their best to sell you the other fine products published by the Reaching Moon Megacorp and other Gloranthaphile self-publishers around the lozenge.
> It sounds interesting, to say the least...
Ta!
> POW and one-use spells: ...one-use divine/rune magic seems almost
> useless. It certainly couldn't be used with any regularity, or the
> caster's POW would drop to nothing fairly quickly.
It's worse than that: the only initiates who would make it to Priest would be the ones who *never* invoked the Divine power of their god. (You need to hold 10 *uncast* points of one-use rune magic to become a priest, by the book). This gives us Storm Bull berserkers who've never cast Berserk, Humakti afraid to use Truesword, and other daft anomalies.
> I like what somebody said about the spell "coming back" on holy
> days, though; this makes the spell somewhat more useful.
Also makes High Holy Days more important and more magical. Important, because you *have* to attend a big worship service if you want to get your rune magic back. Magical, because in the weeks on both sides of a High Holy Day, the god's worshippers will be tanked up with castable "one-use" rune spells: before the HHD, they "might as well" cast any runepower they have handy (as it'll all come back then anyway); after, they all have full-strength magic until they start to cast it.
(That's the gist of my Tales #12 article, BTW, though David Cheng's piece on RunePower in the same issue is also well worth reading if you can get your hands on it).
> I think (2c worth) that one of the "secrets" of the GL was that it
> took the Gods so $_at_#^& long to realise what was happening and to do
> something about it! The Gods were so harnessed by firstly the
> compromise (can't break that!)...
Especially if the GLs were doing all they could to *reinforce* the Compromise through their monomyth. :-)
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