Adkiel, Lady of Trickery Cult

I am going to try to layout an RuneQuest Classic cult for my Khamad Setting using my limited knowledge of the cult rules and history.

Adkiel, Lady of Trickery

Background

The Adkiel cult has been prevalent in the Realms for centuries. Some saying that the Lady of Trickery arrived with the migration from the south thousands of years ago. The cult has always been a small one hiding in shadows but bent on influencing the leaders of the city-states. Thieves, merchants and politicians are attracted to the cult.  Adkiel is pictured as a bald, tunic clad young woman with twin daggers.

Runic Associations

Disorder, Luck.

Reason for Continued existence

Adkiel serves a purpose among the court intrigues between the city-states and in the governments of the cities. Her cult is particularly strong in Balanz.

Social/Political position

Adkiel often influences the rulers of the Realms through the scribes and advisors to kings and lords.

Friends/Enemies

Adkiel frequently travels with Aniyam and takes the advice of Irat. Zeriel is a friend.  Her rival is Peniel (Lady of Lies) and Aedith (God of Treachery) is a long held foe.

Organization

The cult does not have a lot of organization. They meet in secret in Balanz where there is a fairly large membership of 500+. In other cities in the realms the worship is secret.

Holy Places/Holy Days

None.

Lay Membership

Any human.

Requirements

A tithe of 10% of earnings.

Mundane Benefits

There are safe houses of Adkiel in many cities. The cult is heavily centered around Balanz and it sends agents to other cities who can be called upon for help.

Skills

When trainers are available all skills are available at normal cost.

Spells

When magical trainers are available all skills are available at normal cost.

Khadath Tunnels & Trolls Map

I am looking at some of my earliest digital maps today.  I have a couple of images of a world I developed called Khadath.  I had purchased Tunnels & Trolls (the boxed version with the Corgi books paperback) and I wanted a different kind of setting to play it in.   The maps were created on a long since forgotten DOS image program.

Khadath Setting authour early 1990s

But one thing I do like about this map is the world depicted is an island-continent centered on the north pole of a world.  This is something that always fascinated me. It would have to be a significantly warmer planet. I have jungles and deserts 500 miles or so from the pole. If the planet had a significant axial tilt you could have snow in the winter but I believe the thought was a temperate game world.

The concept was a dying world where the survivors have moved to the far north as the planet gets hotter.  Great civilizations existed in the past and the ruins are still present.  So delving is an important pastime to locate useful material for the dying, resource poor world.

All lot of the place names came from the Commodore 64 computer game Exodus Ultima IV. That game had a lot of enormous dungeons with names like “Moon Gate” or “Fires of Hell”. I had envisioned a world with walled settlements clinging to the coastline, trading by sea as the interior is overrun with goblinoid races and trolls.  At the same time the location of well known lost civilization ruins are marked on the map and are well known to all.

The risks of venturing out into the badlands outside the cities are outweighed by the riches that could be found in the ruins deep in the earth.

The second map is a closer view of the town of Kosht which was the starting citadel - city state for the players in the campaign.

Kosht

The more I look at these maps the more I want to create a new version with more original names for a Classic Runequest setting.