Skip to content
The Well of Daliath
Menu
Menu

Dual Cult Membership

Posted on December 28, 2024

Most adults in the main homelands initiate into the deeper mysteries of only one cult, but continue to worship the associated deities and are often lay members of other cults. The cult you initiate to is your patron deity – your personal god. Your Rune points represent the mechanic depth of that connection.

Initiating into a second Rune cult is usually a possibility, but it is rare. This is not lay membership-plus, there is a deep spiritual connection to both deities. One can only initiate into cults that are associated or friendly with the first. And the other cult may impose obligations of devotion and other duties fully as much as the first. Still it is done.

Joining a spirit cult in addition to a Rune cult does not pose these problems and is common. The spirit asks relatively little beyond the initial sacrifice of POW, and regular offering of magic points and sacrifice. I think many campaigns understate how many spirit cults are likely out there.

In my experience running or playing RQG, belonging to more than one Rune cult is fairly rare. I think in the hundreds of player characters I have seen, there’s been less than five player characters initiated into more than one Rune cult. Certainly less than 5%. Spirit cults I see far more common. In a longer campaign almost every player character might be a member of one or more spirit cults.

Note that ancestors are typically spirit cults at best. At best because unless you are doing this through Daka Fal, your tie to the ancestors is rarely going to be as significant as your tie to your personal deity.

So if I am an initiate of Orlanth, I KNOW what happens to me upon death. I join Orlanth in his Palace in the winds, along with my companions and some of my ancestors, until I return to this world. Of course I offer worship to my kin and to the spirits of my kinship community, but my deepest spiritual commitment is to Orlanth.

If I am an initiate of Daka Fal, I am responsible for maintaining that connection and tie with the ancestors. My deepest spiritual commitment is to the ancestors, not the Rune gods.

Spirit cults are easy. They are established all over the place. So there might be a spirit cult to the founder of a community or to an ancient king or to some old hero. That’s not “to the ancestors” – that’s just a local small cult maintained by a shaman or priest. Shamans can easily create new spirit cults based on necessity or convenience.

Your close ancestors are probably not spiritually powerful enough to be able to easily access between worlds. And it is very doubtful they have a lot to directly offer us in exchange for amount of sacrifice it takes to maintain that access.

More likely we just regularly say a thanks to them – and the rest of our ancestors – as part of being a member of a kinship group. Like Lay Membership, but no need for a mechanical treatment.

Now the Daka Fal cultists say that they doesn’t give much, but our collective mortal ancestors give us a tremendous amount. So they maintain a cult of the ancestors, sacrifice POW and magic points and the like, and keep that access open. But for most people being able to gather or dismiss the clouds, bless their crops, and fight their foes lead them towards the major cults.

That’s not really hierarchical or very organized. Its just a recognition that there is only so much to go around.

This is one of the reasons that I think RQ does a much better job with Greg’s thoughts about Gloranthan religion than HW/HQ/13th Age – bandwidth and resources matter much more in RQ than in those other engines. Heck, Greg used to play around with the allocation of resources in one’s unconscious mind just to get a better feel of things.

Are Issaries and Argan Argar an realistic option? The cults are friendly so it is certainly possible. But socially that is not going to be easy in many places.

Orlanth and Humakt? You can initiate to Orlanth and Humakt at once. Both are friendly towards each other. That being said, it is never easy to be an initiate of multiple Rune cults.

Personally I think that the disadvantages of dual Rune cult initiation are rarely worth it, UNLESS I am really trying to game the hero world.

Jeff Richard

Next
Previous
Daka Fal, Initiate, RQG

Sections

  • Search Tips
  • Current RuneQuest Glorantha Publications
  • RuneQuest Glorantha Corrections and Q&A
  • Catalogue
  • References for Glorantha
    • Gloranthan Canon
  • Gloranthan Documents
  • RPG Systems & Versions
  • Gallery
  • About This Site
  • Get involved!

Latest Posts

  • The Nine Good Giant Mountains

    The Nine Good Giant Mountains are about 60 km or …
  • Why Most Sartarites Hate the Lunar Empire

    From time to time it is worth reminding people why …
  • Suntown and the Eiskolli

    Suntown has always been in the hands of the Sun …
  • A Few Notes on the Grantlands

    To the south of Sun County are the former Grantlands, …
  • Sartar Cities

    Sartar can be thought of a confederation of small cities …
  • Catalogue of the Gods revisited

    This piece from the Mythology book is among my absolute …
  • Thunderbolts in Art

    One of the things that really got me down the …
  • RuneQuest Art

    So let’s talk RQ art for a moment. For the …
  • Top Five RuneQuest Cults

    So it is absolutely no surprise to me that in …

Links

  • Chaosium
  • Chaosium’s RuneQuest RPG Wiki
  • Glorantha on BRP Central
  • RuneQuest on BRP Central
  • RuneQuest on Discord
  • Prince of Sartar Webcomic
  • Glorantha G+ Archives on Tapatalk
  • Search mailing list archive

Latest from BRP Central

  • Odayla Initiation Heroquest
  • Did anyone get a good look at WB&RM?
  • Clearwine Assembly Hill and Orlanth's High Holy Day
  • Sun County pdf is drivethrurpg’s Deal of the Day for July 1st
  • Permission to use exerpt from map in Starter Set in a Jonstown Compendium release?
  • Summon of Jaldon
  • Jonstown Compendium: Spawn of Molokka - The Cephalopods of Glorantha
  • Runelords and Retirement
  • Hospitality Hearth spirits - what are they ?
  • Clearwine Burned & Argrath's Orphan Childhood

Popular Tags

1625 ST Boldhome (large city) Chaosium Colymar (Sartar tribe) Contents Cult demographics Cults of Runequest (preview) Ernalda Esrolia (homeland) FRA Furthest (large city) G+ post Gods Wall Greg Stafford Guide to Glorantha (preview) Humakt Jar-eel Lunar Empire Lunar Pantheon Magazine Malkioni pantheon Map Michael O’Brien Mongoose MRQ1 New Pavis (small city) Old Glorantha Q&A Orlanth Orlanthi pantheon Photo reference Population demographics Prax (homeland) RQ3 RQG Sandy Petersen Sartar (homeland) Spirit Cult Star Subcult Tarsh (homeland & Lunar province) Troll Pantheon Yelm Yelmalio Yelm Pantheon Youtube

Recently added or updated

  • CHA4037 Dragon Pass – Q&A

  • CHA4034 Red Book of Magic – Chapter 02 Rune Magic Spells Q&A (A-M)

  • CHA4043 The Lightbringers – Q&A

  • CHA4029 RuneQuest Gamemaster Screen Pack – Q&A

  • CHA4036 RuneQuest Weapons and Equipment Q&A

  • The Garden, Big Rubble II

  • The Garden, Big Rubble I

  • Half-folk

  • Orlanth Rex and Sartar’s Lineage

  • The Triceratops Queen

  • 1557-1600 Conflict with the Lunar Empire

  • Why Most Sartarites Hate the Lunar Empire

  • The Nine Good Giant Mountains

  • Trolls of The Big Rubble

  • Dorastor (FRA-1993)

  • AH8592 Dorastor: Land of Doom (1993)

  • Rynglorem

  • Hobimarong

  • Sun County Continued part 1

  • Suntown and the Eiskolli

©2025 The Well of Daliath | Design: Newspaperly WordPress Theme