After all, for all they know, there are still dragons waiting to eat anyone who makes themselves too obvious! Then there are grazers, beast men, trolls, and other odds and ends (you've played KoDP, lots of ideas in there!). So you could start off with them being the advanced party for the clan, having to negotiate/fight/sneak around various people and other dangers. There are a number of TV and movie (and epic poem!) sources for this sort of thing.
Kero Finnela is only so big, so you couldn't stay in that vein for ever, but you could run a fair number of episodes, as they get used to their characters and Glorantha, building to a climax where they overcome obstacles to stake out a tula of their own, finally. Then you could move in to a KoDP like phase if you wanted (all about building the clan), or they could be the roaming trouble shooters, still going strange places and dealing with strange people (less direct involvement with the clan, but the clan's needs can push them to take on dangerous missions).
A good thing about this style is that their characters are almost as ignorant as the players about what they might encounter, at first, and they learn together.
I totally agree with the other comments about figuring out what sort of story you want to run. Runequest can be good for making death always feel a knife edge away, but makes it more challenging to have the crazy overcoming of impossible odds due to some insane/brilliant scheme.
If you think your players are the sort to want to deal with belligerent minotaurs by finding the misfits in the group and winning them over with tea and sympathy, HQ is your game. On the other hand if they would more enjoy holding the ford against waves of trollkin while their health is slowly wittled away, and at the end they are on one good leg, holding their sword in their off hand, while the last of their vitality drains away in the water, trying to stay alive until sunrise, RQ might create that more naturally. (although you could run either scenario in either rule set, of course).
One suggestion, whichever rule set you use, might be to use clan abilities (magic, wealth, morale, military, maybe some others). So that the player character actions slowly influence those ratings (along with other story elements).
I hope this helps in some way!
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