So, our hapless gang had made an unexpected stir entering New Pavis. They also discovered fairly quickly that cults here were important (holding access to spirit magic, allowing recovery of rune magic, plus all the social implications which would end up being most important). The PCs scattered, more or less, looking for the cult best suited to their personalities. Because they were clearly very powerful foreigners, many cults took an interest, especially given the unstable political situation in New Pavis at the time.
Orlanthi cults had the edge, partly because Umbros Swiftblade was their guide to the world, and partly because the local Lunars were in disarray. The recent appearance of the White Moon had triggered trouble in the heart of the Empire, with some White Moon worshippers convinced that their time had come. The Lunar hierarchy was gathering initial information, and the leaders of the New Pavis cults were under heavy pressure to provide it to them.
Bothari was a priest of a particularly bloodthirsty War god. After conversations with Humakti and Orlanthi, he wandered over to the Storm Bull temple, and encountered the resident Storm Khan (a Sartarite exile--I'd decided he was an Illuminate, as well, but the PCs never picked up on it, though it gave them an easier time convincing him the new White Moon wasn't Chaos later on). He joined the cult after deciding it had the right level of savage violence... plus he rather liked being one of the more politically savvy members.
Volag, as a priest of commerce, gravitated to Issares, in large part because they put together a sweet trade deal for his wagon, involving large amounts of temple credit with the Lhankor Mhy. (The Issares convinced the Lhankor Mhy that they'd learn about the foreigners from the questions they asked, to get a small discount.)
Sebastian's deepest ambition was to be an Evil guy. He gave a princely gift to Krogar Wolfhelm, but decided after teaching sabre lessons at the Humakti temple that the Humakti had the right balance of honor and license to murder for his purposes. Ordomon, the head of the Humakti cult, discovered via the temple spirit that Sebastian had some affinity with vampires (he was only partially alive, in fact). He considered simply killing him, but he had a nasty idea that he might use Sebastian to weaken the Vivamort cult via experimental heroquest. Besides, if Sebastian turned out to be a vampire, he'd die fairly quickly after that came out, so making him part of the cult would put him close at hand if that were necessary.
Kastallanos was a jack-of-all-trades: lots of skills, fair combat ability, and he had wizardry, too. (I converted his limited number of D&D magics into RQ spells, and granted him innate MP storage to help power them.) Had he the ambition, he could have made his services most valuable to a range of local cults. But his main interest was women. He spent all his free time at the Uleria temple, and informed anyone who would listen that he was a LAY member. He and his friends were strange and powerful, so people pretended they'd never heard that one before.
Amarilys was a very strange case: he was actually a Jann bound and trained as an assassin by an agent of the Mother Orb/White Moon in the late days of the war, freed when the war ended. Although he appeared human, he had strong affinities to Air, Fire, Water, and Earth, and could potentially have chosen any to follow. His past experiences, however, led him to value freedom about all else, so Orlanth carried the most appeal for him, and with Umbros' support he became an enthusiastic initiate.
Nerlo was a priest of the God of Illusion. He also had the mind (and the attitude) of a trickster-type, coupled with sorcerous power. (I had used the character in my D&D game as a testbed for a new version of RQ-3 Sorcery, which I simply converted back to the RQ system when he crossed over. Western sorcerers in my campaign used this system, while Lunar magicians used the standard RQ sorcery rules.) His priestly vestments were robes that looked like the night sky, complete with glowing stars, so people frequently mistook him for a Sky cultist--though never longer than a minute after hearing him talk.
His approach was to rent a basement room at Gimpy's, and create an illusionary temple to his god when he wanted to pray. (That actually worked, in part because his deity was a sort of Overgod whose power spanned worlds.) He declared himself the local High Priest of his cult. Fortunately, he did no recruiting, seeing that Umbros was deeply disturbed by him already. (Things got bad the time he decided to try summoning a cult spirit to teach him a spell. "What kinds of spirits does your cult have?" Umbros asked him. "Dunno. I'm just going to try this and see what happens.")
And then there was Tobi. Tobi was special. Tobi was a Orc, raised by a tribe in a shamanic tradition. His people were peaceful, and coexisted with elves and humans, respecting nature and the land. Tobi claimed to be a worshipper of nature, as well as a skilled thief and warrior. In fact, he worshipped the God of Betrayal.
Unlike the elves in the party, who were human in Glorantha, Tobi was... something else. He looked like a very large trollkin, or a runty Dark Troll. Once Umbros saw him out of his plate mail, he commented as such, which led Tobi to go to the Argan Argar temple to talk to a troll. The conversation went a little like this:
"Hello, I wanted to ask some questions about the local Troll cults."
"You look kinda small and scrawny for a uz. You some kinda enlo?"
"What are they?"
"Trollkin? Result of the trollkin curse?
"Never heard of it. I guess we don't have it where I come from."
"Urk! What kinds of children do your people give birth to?"
"Pretty much like me. Usually one or two healthy babies."
"Uh... you better talk to the Kyger Lytor right away."
I should probably mention that Tobi wore iron plate mail and carried iron weapons. (As he was not really trollish, I decided he wouldn't have a problem with iron.) Later on, when he was introduced to Kyger Lytor trolls, everyone was really impressed to learn that he shaved with an IRON razor!
About a week later, Tobi was a Kaarg's Son and married to the High Priestess of Kyger Lytor, who was very interested to see what their offspring might look like. The trolls had not been happy since the arrival of the White Moon--unlike the Red, the White Moon gave off a constant light throughout the week--but with Tobi's arrival things started looking up. Or so they thought.
Needless to say, the gang would have some interesting times given that their only Rune Lord at this stage was a troll (of sorts) and secretly a worshipper of betrayal...
Powered by hypermail