For this fourth episode of the Initiation Series, we chat with Discord regular Skulldixon, which is apparently how everybody actually calls him except for his parents. Skull (let’s call him Skull for short?) talks about his campaign, all the numerous things he likes about Glorantha and the RuneQuest system, how to deal with mountains of lore, and more.
Welcome to a new issue of the Journal of Runic Studies, the premier Malkioni publication for studies into the nature of Glorantha. If you haven’t subscribed yet, please consult with the spirit bound to the appropriate electronic page.
This week was rather quiet, which is nice. I think I have to thank Jeff being on vacation or something for that. I have resumed work on an old Jonstown Compendium book I had half-written way before I wrote A Short Detour, and started organizing my thoughts about putting my “Goonies in Glorantha” kids campaign down on the page.
This is one of those things that RuneQuest players love to argue about ad nauseam, using increasingly convoluted abstract situations. The spell says that it detects “any being intending to harm [the caster]“, so what does “being” mean? Does it detect animals or undead? Can a wild creature “intend” anything if they lack INT and are driven by instinct? What if the danger is a colony of flesh eating ants who, individually, don’t “intend” anything because their attacks are the result of an emerging group behaviour? What if…
Chaosium released this very nicely done “trailer” for the RuneQuest Starter Set. It features animated versions of some of the art found in the booklets, and some voice-over narration by the delightful Becca Scott (who plays a lot of Call of Cthulhu, but also a bit of RuneQuest).
I wondered if it would mention anything about RuneQuest, and I was not disappointed. As I read the short advert for the new edition of RuneQuest I immediately thought “what were they thinking?” Here’s a small example of how Chaosium earned its “quirky game company” reputation back in the 1980s.
Jonstown Compendium
The Jonstown Compendium is Chaosium’s community content program for all Gloranthan games, hosted on DriveThruRPG. Disclaimer: all the relevant links are affiliate links that hopefully will let us cover some of the hosting and maintenance costs for the website and podcast! Thanks for using them!
Matthew Cole is teasing “Vistas of New Pavis”, which will surely use all the 3D reconstruction work he has done on New Pavis in the past few years. It’s on track for a 2022 release.
Jeff’s Notes
Jeff Richard, the current mastermind on everything Gloranthan at Chaosium, is often posting notes and thoughts on the RuneQuest Facebook group. Here’s our curated list from the past week. A partial archive of these sources is compiled on the Well of Daliath.
Chaotic Associations in Gods
Thankfully for my week’s productivity, Jeff has only posted one interesting note:
For most Gloranthan religions, Chaos is something outside of the realm of gods and spirits. There are a few gods or spirits that were corrupted by Chaos or who otherwise embraced it during the Greater Darkness. The Orlanthi, Praxians, Malkioni, Doraddi, and followers of the Old Gods (animism) all agree on this.
Most celestial cults agree as well, but Yelm is oddly associated with two Chaos gods – Nysalor and the Red Goddess. Perhaps it is Yelm’s claims to universal rule, which would include Chaos along with everything. Or perhaps it is Yelm’s inability to see his own Shadow.
I love those last two statements, and I think they’re probably important to grok Yelm.
Entities like Thed, Ragagnalar, etc. are not invoked in most magical ceremonies or heroquests – unless they are specific enemies to be overcome as part of a magical defeat of Chaos. Death, disorder, and lies are all part of the cosmos – but Chaos is outside of it and antithetical to existence.
That last statement is also important in my opinion — the line between “evil” and “disorder” and “Chaos” and all that is one I explored in my first Jonstown Compendium book. A lot of what Jeff writes below is addressed in my book too:
Getting back to the original thought, most Gloranthan religions hold that Chaos is “outside” of the cosmos. It precedes it, and the cosmos was formed out of the Primal Chaos. Chaos is an assault on the existence of the cosmos itself and is thus wholly different from every other element or power. To analogise, the other elements and powers are jostling against each other within the confines of the cosmos; Chaos threatens to return the entire system to where it came from – the gaping maw of Chaos.
Illumination allows one to understand that is not per se evil and not to fear or hate it. But for everyone else, that is a bridge too far including for Chaotic tainted beings such as broo, scorpion men, vampires, ogres, and the like.
So regardless of how dangerous, treacherous, or even evil deities like Zorak Zoran, Eurmal, Gorgorma, Wachaza, or Gagarth are – they are “of the world” and still preferable to things like Thed, Vivamort, Primal Chaos, the Crimson Bat, or Krarsht.
Also:
The mindless devouring maw of Chaos continually threatens Glorantha’s existence. In the Greater Darkness, existence very nearly ceased. [I Fought We Won], Arachne Solara and the Net of Existence – these are mythic events where existence itself was able to continue due to the deeds of one who was all.
Deities such as Orlanth, the other Lightbringers, Storm Bull, Babeester Gor, Yelmalio, Zorak Zoran, Kyger Litor, and Magasta are very much defined by the struggle against Chaos. They fought terrible rear-guard battles against Chaos to continue to exist. It is not surprising that their cults hold true to that.
The Red Goddess is of course different:
At a certain level, the Red Goddess is something of Wittgenstein’s duck-rabbit. Does she threaten the existence of the cosmos or does she liberate us from fear? Both can be true, depending on the viewer!
The community roundup is our highlight of interesting things being mentioned in the Glorantha-related Facebook groups, sub-Reddits, and other similar online places.
JM and Evan Interview Rick Meints
Taking a break from their regular “Exploring Glorantha” chats, JM and Evan had a nice chat with Chaosium president Rick Meints about… well, many things Chaosium-related.
More Snakepipe Hollow Explorations
D R has posted another update of their 3D explorations of Gloranthan dungeons. We had previously seen some of the Rainbow Mounds, but they’re also working on Snakepipe Hollow, here with a particular look at the… well, I don’t know if we can have spoilers for a 40-year old book, but it’s in the video title. Avert your eyes if you don’t want to know!
A Sartarite Elmali clan scene featuring three clan leaders (followers of (left to right) Vinga, Ernalda and Esrola/Uleria) and two young children blessed by Voria and Voriof.
More here too, and his entire website has lots of Gloranthan goodness.
Elsewhere on Arachne Solara’s Web
Not everything is about Glorantha, although most things are! Here are loosely relevant things that we found on the interwebs.
Babylonian Sheep Stew
Max Miller, of the “Tasting History” channel, is cooking a 4000 years old recipe… and you can easily follow at home!
Thank you for reading
That’s it for this week! Please contact us with any feedback, question, or news item we’ve missed!
Runic Rants is an irregular series of thoughts, opinions, and experiments about RuneQuest.
I’m recycling one of my old BRP forum posts for content but I think this is one of the good ones. It came from a question about the Detect Enemies spell, and what it can actually detect.
This is one of those things that RuneQuest players love to argue about ad nauseam, using increasingly convoluted abstract situations. The spell says that it detects “any being intending to harm [the caster]“, so what does “being” mean? Does it detect animals or undead? Can a wild creature “intend” anything if they lack INT and are driven by instinct? What if the danger is a colony of flesh eating ants who, individually, don’t “intend” anything because their attacks are the result of an emerging group behaviour? What if…
No. Stop. Just stop. And I’m also looking at you people in the back who are still arguing about the precise limits of Chalana Arroy’s pacifism vows.
Instead of trying to figure out what “intent” is biologically, psychologically, and philosophically speaking (good luck with that), or trying to figure out the exact scientific mechanism powering a made-up fantasy fun-time magic spell (good luck with that), think about it in narrative gameplay terms.
Figure out if you, the gamemaster, intend to attack the adventurers with that NPC or creature or animal or whatever. Do you have plans to do that at some point in the current scene? Are you thinking about how that NPC or creature or animal or whatever might be tracking the PCs, observing them, catching their scent, or hearing them approach? Where they might pop out from for a good jump scare? If the answer is yes, then Detect Enemy lights up, simple as that.
Unless your players are rules lawyers who love arguing about that kind of stuff (good luck with that), or you’re an old-school confrontational GM (good luck with that), there’s no point trying to be nit-picky with words and definitions and philosophy. It’s called “Detect Enemies” and everybody knows what it’s for. “You’ll know it when you see it.” And the last thing you want is for a player to have paid good money to learn the spell, only to realize it’s not as useful as they thought, slows down the game with lengthy debates, or both. When in doubt, lean in the player’s favour — it’s just easier and in good spirit.
Messing With Your Players
Now, “leaning in your players’ favour” doesn’t mean “making it easier”. As you know, I’m a big Call of Cthulhu and Delta Green player. It’s always scary when a player asks for grenades and the gamemaster shrugs and says “yeah, sure, there’s a handful in the local safehouse“. It’s scary because the player then knows that grenades are not gonna help.
I love messing with my players, and even the Detect Enemies spell has some opportunities for that.
First, the spell is Instant and Ranged, so it only detects any enemies that are within 50 meters right now. Most sentient beings, and particularly professionals like mercenaries and assassins, will stalk their enemies out of that range if possible. Spirit Magic generally doesn’t work farther than 50 meters, and people in Glorantha had at least a hundred generations to internalize this as “the safe distance”, so you can bet they’ll stay back far enough (again, if possible) until it’s time to attack. Hey, maybe even wild animals learned this over time, if you think that life in Glorantha has anything like Earth’s evolution. So if the spell detects anything, there’s a good chance the attack is coming in the next round or two… I hope you can make that POWx5 roll to buff yourself up in time!
Second, the Detect Enemies spell doesn’t work through one meter of earth or stone or metal. The enemy might take cover behind a large boulder (roughly the size of a small boulder), burrow into the ground, and otherwise use the environment to their advantage.
Last, the Detect Enemies spell only gives the “approximate direction and distance from the caster“. Remember Aliens? When the space marines have motion detectors that, well, give the approximate direction and distance to any nearby xenomorphs? Yeah. Good times. Do that!
If you have any comment about this Runic Rant, or some ideas for a future installment, please send them to us!
Welcome to a new issue of the Journal of Runic Studies, the premier Malkioni publication for studies into the nature of Glorantha. If you haven’t subscribed yet, please consult with the spirit bound to the appropriate electronic page.
Here is what us God Learners were up to this week.
Episode 8: The Early Days of Glorantha (Part 1)
Episode 8 of the podcast is out! We are joined by Andrew “Doc” Cowie, who has more than 40 years of experience with RuneQuest. He talks about what it was like to play RQ2 as a teenager in the UK, how the complicated publishing history of Glorantha affected his gaming, and lot of other tangentially related topics.
Thanks to all of you who bought the book, left reviews, or sent me private messages via email, Facebook, and Twitter! It’s all very much appreciated!
Chaosium News
Here are this week’s Chaosium news!
A Few Jokes at Glorantha’s Expense
I love the “Out of the Suitcase” articles from Rick Meints, and here’s a new one! It deals with Gloranthan jokes making it onto some of the order forms found in Chaosium products… I won’t spoil the punchlines so go read those (arguably terrible) jokes here!
New Upcoming RuneQuest Actual Play
Chaosium has just started advertising an upcoming Actual Play for RuneQuest… and no, it’s not the return of Jeff Richard’s “White Bull” campaign, but a new campaign with James Coquillat as the gamemaster! And not only that, but a few players from Brian Holland’s recent one-shot (below) are also coming back, such as London Carlisle (playing Varakos), and Cynthia Marie (playing Vasana).
Rounding up the group are Chaosium’s Miskatonic University ambassador Bridget Jeffries (playing Yanioth) and Chaosium’s digital content manager David Naylor (playing Mago).
The game will start on Monday, February 14th at 3PM Pacific on Chaosium’s Twitch channel. I’m certain that episodes will later show up on Chaosium’ YouTube channel for those not watching live.
Complementing the RuneQuest Starter Set Dice
If you are looking for getting more of the same dice that came in the Starter Set, Rick Meints shared what they are: Hengda Dice SKU HDP-08.
Photo by Dice Market
I think that they’re the “Golden Pearl” model pictured above, which you can get here on Dice Market (but you should ask your friendly local gaming store for them).
Here is a nice post from Ian Cooper, talking about how much he tried to “give the nod” to fan material when writing The Coming Storm:
We incorporated ideas from material that had been developed in TradeTalk (I tried to at least ‘give the nod’ to much of the fan creativity of the 90s if we could).
Interestingly, I originally wrote Jonstown, from the Sartar Companion, as part of The Coming Storm, with the idea being a campaign that moved from clan to city and back, but we moved it to SC. Again I tried to ‘give the nod’ to that earlier material.
Where Do Morokanths Come From?
Well, obviously, when two Morokanths love each other very much… but no, this is a question on BRP Central about what gave Greg Stafford the idea to make sentient tapir creatures. David Scott posted this page from a book presumably owned by Greg, with the following quote:
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the Moeritherium is on the same page (read the entry). I think he was leafing through books to find cool things to use. […]
I also think that Moeritherium is mashed with an -akanth tail from another creature (see chaos-ium)
Swedish RuneQuest News
Joerg is pointing me to this Facebook post which mentions progress on the exclusive campaign book that will accompany the Swedish RuneQuest.
If I am to trust Google Translate, this new material is focused on Skanthi and its capital of Oxhead. This is an Orlanthi region stuck between the Lunar province of Aggar and the Chaos infested Dorastor. Skanthi itself is not quite yet a proper Lunar province, and the Guide mentions a very familiar struggle between the rebellious traditionalists and the pragmatic collaborators. This sounds like a fun way to bring back the “Lunar occupation” gameplay of RQ2’s earlier timeline, while at the same time giving an entirely new spin on things due to the new location.
Anyway, the post says that you will do, among other things:
– Pull out on raids and looting trains. Everything from stealing a few dozen sheep from a neighboring clan to a large-scale raid on the lowlanders in Lakrene. – Negotiate a marriage with a person from the neighboring clan to strengthen the bonds between the two families. – Escort the trolls’ winter caravan to the town of Oxhead, where they will sell their exotic goods. – Participate in the annual Great Hunt, where the country’s foremost hunters are chosen, and where the winner must have laid a magical quarry. – Sent by the chief to spy in the border areas where the chaos beasts came from during the war, and to investigate whether new attacks are in the trade. One consequence may be that the adventurers get the honor of fighting next to Stormbull’s cultists when Chaos once again threatens to pour in from Dorastor. – Help the fraternal clans of Aggar rebel against the Moon Empire and fight the brutal General Roan-Ur. At the same time, the adventurers can examine the truth of the rumors that the Moon Empire is preparing an expedition to Aggar (Skanthi’s eastern neighbor) to lay the foundation for a new temple for the Red Goddess cult. – Fight the ice demons to drive back the winter – for this year. – Follow a shaman – maybe one of the adventurers? – into the spirit world to annihilate an old curse. – Make their own social, political, religious and magical careers. An adventurer who starts as a young adult has a whole life ahead of him with unimaginable possibilities! It is even possible to participate in shaping the next age, now that the third age is suffering towards its inevitable end.
Sounds great, but I sadly don’t think the 8 hours of Swedish lessons I once took will be enough to read this…
The Jonstown Compendium is Chaosium’s community content program for all Gloranthan games, hosted on DriveThruRPG. Disclaimer: all the relevant links are affiliate links that hopefully will let us cover some of the hosting and maintenance costs for the website and podcast! Thanks for using them!
These index….es? Indices? Err…. these compilations are useful for gamemasters looking for the best Jonston Compendium book to buy and fit into their ongoing campaign.
Jeff’s Notes
Jeff Richard, the current mastermind on everything Gloranthan at Chaosium, is often posting notes and thoughts on the RuneQuest Facebook group. Here’s our curated list from the past week. A partial archive of these sources is compiled on the Well of Daliath.
Belintar
Jeff talks about Belintar, the mysterious heroquester and founder of the Holy Country:
We all know about Belintar’s first incarnation – from when he appeared off the shore of Kethaela in 1313 and his titanic struggle with the Only Old One that resulted in his apotheosis as the God-King of the Holy Country. We also all know that Belintar’s mortal shell expired many times, and that the Tournament of the Masters of Luck and Death was a great magical-mythical contest that selected the new incarnation of Belintar and kept the Divine Realm in close proximity to the Holy Country.
The Only Old One was some kind of half-troll (or something), the son of Argan Argar (the troll God of Surface Darkness) and Esrola (an Earth goddess). As far as I understand, Belintar sort of cheated: he was killed by the Only Old One, but came back the next year to try again, succeeding.
The “Divine Realm” mentioned here is, I think, the Holy Country version of the Proximate Holy Realm, which was mentioned in issue #30. Basically, the mythical design of the Holy Country, and the regular Tournament of the Masters of Luck and Death (MOLAD), maintained some kind of magical field over the whole place, which made it easier to… do stuff. But, like, cool stuff.
Belintar had a cult and many priests in each of the Sixths who offered him magic points, incense, and other accoutrements of worship. This worship aided him in doing many miracles, such as extending the Magical Roads that connected the Sixths to the City of Wonders or indeed in maintaining the City of Wonders itself.
The City of Wonders was in the centre of this magical mythical Disneyland we call the Holy Country. The “Sixths” were each of the themed lands of the metaphorical amusement park. Clockwise from the south, the Sixths were the Rightarm Islands (Water), Caladraland (Fire), Esrolia (Earth), the Shadow Plateau (Darkness), Heortland (Air), and, God Forgot (Joerg tells me it might stand for the Man Rune, but also points out that Prince of Sartar hinted more simply towards the last elemental Rune, aka the Moon Rune… but maybe to represent spirituality rather than the present Red Moon).
The prime function of each incarnation of Belintar was to maintain the proximity of the divine realm with the Holy Country. In some ways, Belintar can be thought of as a high priest of each of the gods whose job was to communicate between the gods and their worshipers AND between the gods and themselves. He reconciled the needs of the gods and their many different cults.
Now Belintar was rarely powerful enough to impose his will on the gods. Instead, he needed to work with the gods, and often interacted with them in the divine realm for the benefit of the people of the Holy Country. This involved near constant heroquesting. Like the time Belintar brought the Jolly Fat Man to Nochet so he might reside within the city. Or the time Belintar brought Heort to Stormwalk Mountain so they could both view the Holy Country. Or when Belintar got Argan Argar to invite him to share a meal with the Mistress Race Trolls beneath the Tarpit.
Each incarnation, regardless of their mortal identity, always appeared as Belintar in the Hero Plane. The gods recognized him regardless of incarnation and the many pacts and bargains he made were always upheld by the gods. Because of the proximity of the divine realm with the Holy Country, gods often manifested in the Holy Country, visiting their worshipers even outside of the worship ceremonies!
Belintar rarely got directly involved in governing the mundane affairs of the peoples of the Holy Country. Each of the Sixths more or less followed their traditional ways – of course those traditions were changed by the very presence and role of Belintar. When a cult’s leaders might refuse to accept Belintar or reject his advice, Belintar was known to bring the cult’s own god into the discussion! But Belintar’s demands were few and always reasonable, and it was usually quite easy for cults and tribes to accept what he had to say.
We’ve already read Jeff mention it before, but a lot of the important people in modern Sartar gained heroquesting experience in the Holy Country, especially while Lunars occupied their lands:
Belintar and the Tournament of the Masters of Luck of Death served as a heroquesting school for the Sartarites. Heroquesting techniques that were lost or rejected by most cultures were developed and refined in the Holy Country.
If you read older material, you might see Belintar referred to as “pharaoh”, but that term is now abandoned because it obviously gave the wrong idea. Similarly, don’t imagine Belintar’s Holy Country as a well organized machine (which is probably where the comparison with Disneyland falls down). It sounds more like some underground artist venue:
What never really developed around Belintar was the sort of court administration as you see in Glamour. Belintar surrounded himself with philosophers, mystics, magical individuals, adventurers, and vacationing gods. When young Tarkalor visited the City of Wonders, he met:
– Belintar, who was a woman at the time – Enamyx, the “False Daughter” of Belintar (she was the daughter of a previous incarnation) – Darkasten, Prince of the Hendriki – Antagorn, the Rich Thief of Nochet – Bardranu, the Teshnite nobleman – Mister Bondaru, the philosopher – The Tanist, Belintar’s identical stand-in
As well as such strange beings as the Dwarf Giant, the Spirit of Freedom, The Constant Guard, The Five Physical Spirits, The Reef Master, and the Tide Lord.
I’m getting Andy Warhol & The Velvet Underground vibes here.
Anyway, the Lunar Empire wanted access to the sea, and to the trade that comes from it. As a point of reference, Jeff mentioned in passing that the Kingdom Sartar was richer than most Lunar provinces thanks to this trade… so they got Jar-eel ( the bad-ass Xena Warrior Princess daughter of the Red Emperor) to remove the only thing that stood in the way:
But now Belintar is gone. No heroquest is going to bring those tattered webs back into place, or rebuild Humpty Dumpty’s broken egg. Jar-eel tore it into parts, shattered the pillars, and broke the Tournament of the Masters of Luck and Death so that it always fails. That magic is still churning and looking for an outlet, but can’t find one. The divine realm is still in proximity with the mundane world and is now easy to grab. And that goes a long way to understanding the Hero Wars.
As I understand this, because there’s so much magic hanging around, instead of a “normal” war between the Lunars and everybody else, it’s now a war between gods and heroes and spirits too. The Third Age was due for a reboot anyway.
Later, Jeff talks about Belintar’s effect on the neighbours:
Increasingly I view Belintar as the mentor or godfather of the Sartar Dynasty and later the Sartar Magical Union. He is a big reason why the Orlanthi of Sartar really don’t resemble the Orlanthi of King of Dragon Pass or Thunder Rebels.
It sounds like after looking at Sartar in relation with everything around it (Peloria, Prax, the Holy Country), Jeff realized that it would be better to emphasize the trade and heroquesting aspects that the Kingdom gets from its neighbours. That makes it a lot less about “isolated hillbillies” and a lot more about “proud tax-taking hosts and
And Belintar was there for centuries. Not really a single individual, not really an office, but definitely a single soul that had many incarnations.
That’s the hardest thing to get around – that Belintar had many incarnations, each with their own personalities and appearances, but the same powerful soul. And each incarnation knew secrets that only Belintar could know.
Who is the other big guy with multiple incarnations again? Oh, right, Moonson, the Red Emperor:
Moonson is certainly similar. But if you dig you find some big differences. Moonson was created by the Red Goddess to manage her worldly affairs after she rose into the sky as the Red Moon. Belintar made himself through contests, pacts, and proofs that he made throughout the Holy Country and now must make anew roughly every generation through the Tournament of the Masters of Luck and Death.
And remember, every incarnation of Belintar has managed to succeed in the Tournament of the Masters of Luck and Death, which is a far more “experimental heroquest” than the Ten Tests of a Dara Happan Emperor (and much harder to rig in your favour). Politics plays much smaller role in selecting the new incarnation of Belintar (usually none at all) than it does in selecting a new Mask.
The “Ten Tests” are a bunch of magical challenges meant to prove that you can be the rightful Emperor of Dara Happa. By now, I’m not sure if the Red Emperor needs to do them anymore, but historically several Red Emperors completed them to prove their rule over the former Dara Happan lands that make up a good chunk of the Lunar Heartlands.
Anyway, we have a guy who has a “mortal element” that he swaps with a new one when the previous one dies, and an “immortal element” that carries on, like some Methuselah from Altered Carbon. Who else does that in Glorantha besides the Red Emperor?
[…] there’s probably a dozen or more entities in Glorantha that do that.
Just off the top of the head – Mani, Jaldon Goldentooth, the Founder Khans, Aronius Jaranthir, the Only Old One, possibly Waha, and Arkat.
Oh boy, I don’t know half of these names… time to look into some PDFs!
Mani is the guy who gives his name to Mani’s Fort in the Big Rubble in Prax. He’s known as Mani Tor or Mani of the Many Lives. He reincarnates into his tribe (the well named Mani tribe) every two or three generations.
Jaldon Goldentooth was a Khan of the Bison tribe who kicked the Pure Horse People out of Prax (they went to the Grazelands), sacked Pavis a few times, fought the Empire of the Wyrms Friends, and is generally considered as a hero of all Praxian tribes, having united them against a common enemy during his lifetime. He has been “summoned” a few times since, whenever the Praxian tribes needed unified again, including by Argrath during the upcoming Hero Wars. Several of his bodies lay at Jaldon’s Rest, which you can find in a Dragon Pass map somewhere between Dangerford and Moonbroth.
I had no idea who the “Founder Khans” were until Joerg pointed me to Nomad Gods (whose rules booklet is available in PDF here). Without much surprise, they are the original founders of each of the Praxian tribes. In the Nomad Gods board game, a current tribal Khan can “call” upon their Founder and make them appear on the board.
Aronius Jaranthir is a Carmanian hero who helped the Red Emperor twice, more than a century apart, having died in between.
We already mentioned the Only Old One, the sort-of-troll who ruled the Shadow Plateau.
Waha is one of the cults in the RuneQuest rulebook so we know who that is, but it’s indeed worth mentioning that he seems to show up occasionally in history. I’ve got no idea how that happens though… he seems to just be there.
Arkat is the big scary guy who fought Nysalor’s Empire of Light and ended the Second Age. He was killed a few times, but that didn’t stick. It seems more like self-resurrection, or enough bad-assery to walk out of the Underworld, rather than some reincarnation shtick like Belintar, but what do I know.
I think that King Ironhoof might qualify too — he’s the leader of all the Beast People of Beast Valley, and every now and then (when needed) he reincarnates into the current Centaur King’s body.
What does it take to be the next Belintar?
I think we modern Westerners tend to have a very ego-centric sense of the self. Think of Belintar as a hero out of some young adult fantasy series. Belintar is dead, so now we have a big contest and tournament to choose the new Belintar. During this contest, our hero succeeds in making the pacts and winning the contests that are necessary to magical unify the six lands, including displaying the necessary temperament and self-discipline to serve as Belintar, and in the process starts to communicate with all the previous Belintars. Many Who Are One. In the end, our hero triumphs and becomes the new Belintar, aided by all those who came before.
And our new Belintar is capable of calling upon all their prior selfs. But is also their own self. And all share in that mighty soul called Belintar, which is recognized by the gods and spirits of the Holy Country.
There were a lot of interesting comments on the previous item, so I’m taking some of them into their own item:
The Only Old One had endured for over a thousand years. He was the offspring of Argan Argar and Esrola, but also at some means a mortal or demigod rather than a full god subject to the constraints of the Compromise. He regularly acted in Time, but is thought to have had several incarnations. He definitely did not require something like the Tournament – instead it would appear that his connection to the divine realm was his Palace of Black Glass that enabled him to directly access the Underworld.
He was destroyed by Belintar, but it might not be the last we hear about him:
There are rumours that the Argan Argar cult seeks to reassemble [the Only Old One’s] pieces so that he may return to the world, but nobody other than the Argan Argar cult thinks that would be a good idea. There isn’t exactly a lot of nostalgia for the OOO in the Holy Country, outside of Argan Argar and the trolls.
Belintar was fair with the trolls and took no action against them despite his war with the OOO. The trolls participated in the Tournament and even won on at least one occasion. But now that Belintar is gone, I wouldn’t be surprised if there are some trolls searching through the Underworld for a way to find the OOO.
The Red Emperor’s Titles
And here’s another comment from the Belintar thread that I think is worth reading:
Remember that the Lunar Empire is not truly a “state”. It is dynasty appointed by the Red Goddess to manage her worldly affairs. The head of that dynasty holds several “state titles” like Emperor of Dara Happa and Shah of Carmania, etc., but in the end his rule rests on things like:
1. His position as the head of the Lunar Religion 2. His ability to command the Yelmite nobility 3. His personal power 4. His ability to give out gifts to powerful supporters, soldiers, and magicians. 5. His command of the Crimson Bat 6. His ability to keep other powerful individuals and groups satisfied. 7. His ability to maintain his system of satraps and client kings.
And so on. The Red Emperor has tremendous power but in none of these categories is it unquestioned. For example, his position as the head of the Lunar Religion requires accommodating Great Sister and Jar-eel. His ability to command the Yelmite nobility means doing Yelmite things. And so on.
I had never heard of Great Sister before so I assume some of you might need this: apparently she’s a demigoddess daughter of the Red Moon, and as such she answers directly to her, and not the Red Emperor. She controls an independent military unit (the “Sister’s Army”), and reincarnates every now and then — although her current incarnation is more than a century old.
So the basic story is that Argrath was exiled to Prax as a youth. He was taken as a slave by the Bison Tribe, but while a slave he found/freed the White Bull spirit. The White Bull is a son of Storm Bull/brother of Waha who the Praxians believe will lead them to fight a final battle against Gbaji or Chaos or whatever.
Argrath, as the person in direct contact with the White Bull, becomes the leader of this new magical society, which thanks to the Lunars spreads quickly within all the Praxian tribes.
But meanwhile, Argrath is part of the Sartar Dynasty (from a minor branch, but thanks to the Lunars that’s really all there is) and is an Orlanth Adventurous cultist. He is an experimental heroquester (where do you think he found the White Bull?) and is seeking things in the weird recesses of the Hero Plane – the Drinking Giant’s Cauldron, the Dragonteeth, etc. When a baby giant is born as an unexpected side effect of one of these quests, Argrath protects her on her voyage to the sea. This brings him into contact with Harrek the Berserk.
The Lunar ran an assassination campaign against all heirs to the Sartar throne in the early 1600s, which is something you can see in the RuneQuest Glorantha character creation, during the family history step. So that’s why Argrath is “viable” as a Prince even though he’s like a grandson of a cousin of something.
It’s interesting however that he’s an experimental heroquester from the beginning of his “career”… as far as I know, he went pretty quickly from his adulthood initiation to being exiled to Prax, so he’s doing all this on instinct, as a prodigy. It’s probably only later that he goes to the Holy Country and gets even more experience heroquesting.
It’s also interesting that the giant’s cradle, which is such a big element of the old RuneQuest Praxian campaigns, is directly linked to Argrath’s heroquesting.
After a rocky start, Harrek and Argrath become allies and they circumnavigate around the Homeward Ocean, plundering and adventuring, and seeing all sorts of things. Teshnite sun priests, Teleosites, bat-hsunchen in Laskal, Doraddi, Fonritian Ompalam cultists, the ruins of Jrustela, Seshengi sorcerers, and so much more. By the time Argrath gets to the Holy Country, he is one of the most broadly adventured people in Glorantha.
From the Holy Country, Argrath returns to Prax where the White Bull movement has spread during his absence. He gathers members from all the tribes and summons Jaldon Goldentooth so that he can conquer (liberate) New Pavis from the Lunars. After that he quickly unrolls the Lunar garrisons in the River of Cradles.
Shortly after, he gets his first major set-back. Argrath tries to conquer Dragon Pass with his Praxian allies, but is beaten by the Lunar College of Magic at Hender’s Ruins. He returns to New Pavis to recoup, but in the meanwhile the Dragonrise happens and Kallyr Starbrow is acclaimed Prince of Sartar.
This brings us to 1625, the starting date of RuneQuest Glorantha.
Kallyr’s rule of Sartar is short-lived and Argrath returns to Dragon Pass with an army of Praxians and adventurers. After forcing the Lunars out of Alda-Chur, Argrath marches on Boldhome and is acclaimed Prince of Sartar. He has little direct relationship with the traditional Sartarite leaders – the tribes and the city councils, but he is backed by Orlanth Adventurous, Storm Bull, tricksters, an army of Praxians, plenty of misfits, adventurers, outlaws, hedge priests, shamans, and weirdos – basically everything that Thunder Rebels says isn’t there.
Its clear that the new Prince with a seasoned army (and plenty of cavalry) plans to strike against the Lunar Empire, but first he needs to get his ducks in a row, so to speak. But the clock is ticking as the Red Emperor and Jar-eel have suppressed the revolt in the Redlands, and are restoring order to the Lunar Provinces.
That’s the scene in 1627 when the ball really starts rolling. At that point we are in the White Bear and Red Moon board game.
I’ve heard before of the “Multiple Argraths” theory, which stipulates that all the deeds attributed to “Argrath” were actually done by multiple people, because obviously one guy can’t have done all these things. Even the Glorantha Wiki (at the time of writing) embraces it completely with their article on Argrath. But that theory is officially non-official:
Greg and I both concluded that the “multiple Argraths” turned out to be a failure and an obstacle for gamesters. And a nightmare if we ever want to do RQ fiction. You’ll see that we abandoned that approach in the Guide to Glorantha, Glorantha Sourcebook, and everything since.
Like any major historical figure, he has many contradictory stories about him. For example, a story might put in him in Nochet at the same time he is supposed to be in Pavis or tomb raiding in Jrustela. That’s totally fine – and the same thing is true of Jar-eel, Harrek, Arkat, etc.
Lunar Point of View
Jeff commented on this question on Facebook with his take on the average Lunar’s opinion of the Empire:
In character: because I grew up in Furthest or Jillaro or Yuthuppa or wherever. I am a citizen of city X and a loyal person of our Red Emperor, the Moonson and the ruler of the world. The Red Goddess is our patron and she remade the world in our benefit.
Look into the sky! There She is – the Red Moon. She blesses us with Her very presence. She tasked Her son with ruling the mundane world and protecting Her people.
Many enjoy Her blessings but do not know Her secrets. However, I was initiated into the Seven Mothers as a young adult, just as my parents were before me. I have felt the desperate need that drove the Seven Mothers to find *something* that could remake the world and save them – that *something* is none other than the Red Goddess.
This was followed by some extra notes:
I think the overwhelming majority of Lunars justify being a Lunar in some manner like the above. To be outside of the empire is to be a barbarian, a rebel, a monster. The Red Goddess is the patron of the empire and her son is its ruler.
If I wanted to be outside of the empire and justify it, it is easiest to point to the millions of Pelorians who have enjoyed peace and prosperity over the last century and a half. Most Lunars have not seen or experienced war or privation in their lifetime or that of their parents or that of their grandparents or that of their great-grandparents or…
I personally think very few – if any – Lunars justify their religion or empire by referencing the Orlanthi or Pentans or who ever – the year is 1625 not 1275 after all! The Lunar Empire is its own justification, as is the Red Moon in the sky. It is there, we benefit from it, and have benefited from it for as many generations as we can recall. The Red Goddess has proven herself, and for countless generations, her initiates and religion have blessed us. It is simply who we are now.
Similarly, the conflict between the Lunar Empire and the barbarians/rebels/monsters outside of it is taken for granted by most people. The Lunar Empire has all sorts of ceremonies that define the world and if you are a Lunar, you are on the inside. The Orlanthi, Praxians, Pentans, trolls, dwarfs, elves, dragonewts, etc. are by definition on the outside.
Most Lunars fear Chaos in the same way that they fear Death, although perhaps even more viscerally. Everyone knows that the Crimson Bat is a terrible monster, but one that serves the Red Goddess (and more immediately, the Red Emperor). Everyone knows that broo, ogres, and other monsters are evil, but they can serve the Red Emperor if they submit to him and obey his commands (like do not kill my people). Philosophers and mystics may raise questions about the Compromise, but the Red Goddess overcame the limitations of the Old Gods and proved her power at the Battle of Castle Blue, so why are you going on about that?
Another thing is to think of the Lunar Religion as a series of mystery cults placed inside of each other. We start with the Seven Mothers or their equivalent (Hon-eel, Hwarin Dalthippa, etc). That’s about as deep as most Lunars ever go. It celebrates the birth (and life) of the Red Goddess, and embraces both Life and Death – but is not Chaotic.
Let me repeat that for emphasis – the Seven Mothers are NOT Chaotic.
But the Seven Mothers grounds us for the next level. See chief priestesses CAN Bless folk with Chaos through the Red Goddess. Sparingly, and the Chaos Blessing is temporary. Priestesses learn more, experience more, and can study the Nysalorean Riddles.
And once Illuminated, a priestess can go much deeper and learn the mysteries of the Red Goddess. They can learn to warp the Spirit World. And they can learn to call upon Primal Chaos. Because the Red Goddess embraces both Life and CHAOS – a deeper understanding than what the Seven Mothers can provide. At that point we are ready to explore like the Red Goddess herself did.
But this final group is a tiny percentage of the Lunar population. There are probably fewer than 10,000 Red Goddess initiates in the entire Lunar Empire. Probably half of them are in Glamour. The next big batch is the Lunar College of Magic, key officials in the satrapies and provinces, etc. The ruling elite.
It is the right time of year (at least in Colorado) to talk about the trinity of winter deities – Valind, Inora, and Himile. These gods are much more important than their tiny cults would suggest.
Valind is the Winter King. He is a dangerous and powerful god who brings the winter storms, snow, and ice across Genertela. In the Lesser Darkness he ruled much of the world, and his glacier – a vast accumulation of ice and snow – displayed his might. Each winter, he advances from his glacier stronghold and tries to conquer Genertela. He is initially aided and later opposed by his storm god kinsfolk, but he always is eventually forced back so that spring can occur.
In recent decades, the Lunars send an annual group of heroquesters to fight him on the glacier and force him back, as the ancient hero Kallikos did before Time. This has weakened his advances into Peloria, and shortened winter. But Valind himself remains powerful and has built up resentment against Peloria like a river against a dam. Now if the Lunar heroquesters ever fail, winter will return with a terrible vengeance.
I wonder who’s going to make these heroquesters fail? Mmmmh…
Inora is the goddess of the snows, particularly the mountain snows that remain year round. In some lands she is viewed as an enemy; in others she is the primary source of water and fertility. She is the half-sister of Orlanth and an ally of Valind.
Huh, I didn’t know about Inora before (although I think I came across her name once or twice). I guess I should mention her in my Alone Confederation campaign, since the Indigo Mountains have a few glaciers… although Skyfall Lake and Engizi might be more important for bringing water and fertility to the valley in this particular location.
Himile is the god of cold itself, a dark and hungry god, even more terrible at night than day. He is perhaps the most dangerous of the three gods of winter, but the least obvious.
That’s interesting… Himile is related to the Darkness pantheon, and is said to be worshipped in “cold places”. Trolls in Pent have a sizable worship of him, for instance. I’m getting Wendigo vibes here. Which is a good thing.
Safelster is a fascinating area, both familiar and very different. Some 2.9 million people are within 100 km of Lake Felster, which itself is about 200 km long. The area is densely populated, with an overall average density of 21 per square km. However, it gets closer to 80 per sq. km near the lake and lower the further away you go.
Let’s put this on the AAA maps. Lake Felster is west of the Mislari Mountains, and northwest of Maniria. It’s two-thirds of the way from the Holy Country to the west coast.
There’s also a lot of people living there: about 3 million humans according to the Guide. Compare that to the mere 655,000 humans in Dragon Pass…
Lake Felster is somewhat smaller than Lake Ontario, just to get a feel for it.
Which means it’s big enough that when you’re standing on the shore, you can barely see the other side, and on most days, it’s like standing next to the sea.
Rokari, Orlanthi, Old Gods, Stygians, and numerous other Malkioni sects and heresies all can be found here. There are trolls and elves, but few dwarfs. The Lunar Empire is nowhere to be seen, but an ascendent Kingdom of Seshnela aspires to hegemonic power.
Malkioni sects are basically different schools of thought for western sorcerers, and each often comes with a different focus. So just like RuneQuest cults are more than character classes because they come with a culture, traditions, specific world-views, and so on, Malkioni sects are also a bit more than just “Fire College of Magic” or whatever.
The Rokari school are, as far as I can tell, the “die hard” Malkioni people who follow the Abiding Book to the letter, and put everybody in castes for life (noble, wizard, soldier, farmer), as opposed to, say, the Hrestoli who encourage caste mobility so that a small elite becomes “Men-of-All” (i.e. people who can do everything).
By Orlanthi, I think that Jeff here means some sort of henotheist school where they consider the Invisible God to be the supreme divine entity, but still acknowledge and worship whatever “lesser” gods (in this case, Orlanthi) is appropriate for the area?
Stygianism is the Malkioni school that holds Darkness as the source of everything, and that everything will eventually go back to Darkness. Possibly related to Arkat (he’s a big deal around here), but regardless, this is your ticket if you want to do cool Dakrness sorcery.
The Kingdom of Seshnela used to be to the southwest of Lake Felster, but it was destroyed in the Second Age, literally: their peninsula was shattered and only islands and ruins were left behind. The new Kingdom of Seshnela is now futher east from where it was before, and therefore close enough to Safelster to cause trouble.
Politically, the area is divided among more than a dozen autonomous or semi-autonomous city-states. Most are more populous than Sartar. In the Third Age many hegemons have momentarily unified Safelster:
1100 – Kingdom of Jorstland 1240 – New Dangim Alliance 1325 – Nedurant 1350 – Estali 1400 – New Dangim Alliance 1455 – Kingdom of Seshnela
Since 1515, no power has been able to dominate Safelster, although many have tried and failed, most recently the Duchess of Sentanos with her Proven Appearance of Arkat. Many fear the alliance between Kustria and Galin is a new attempt to dominate the region.
So you can imagine this area as something politically like the Italian city-states in the Late Medieval or Renaissance eras.
I love city-states, because there’s so much gaming opportunity to be had everywhere you go. But anyway, let’s look into all these unknown (to me) names:
Sentanos is a state that includes the handful of cities immediately north of the lake (you can spot it on the map). The Duchess’s “Proven Appearance of Arkat” is a political movement that apparently has totally failed to make Arkat appear lately (whatever that means), which is why it’s losing steam.
Kustria is another state that includes another handful of cities, immediately west of the lake (you can also spot it on the map).
Of course Galin is not a state, because in Gloranthan fashion we never quite know when a name relates to a geographical region, a country, a cultural land, a city, or what… So Galin is a city: it’s right at the eastern tip of the lake. The new city queen is politically on the rise after marrying the King of the aforementioned Kustria, which is the allegiance Jeff is talking about here.
There are only a few paragraphs for each of those places in the Guide, but there are so many cities and states in Safelster overall that you still end up with more than half a dozen pages of material anyway. And it’s all so evocative that you’d have to be dead inside if it didn’t fire up your imagination… by the way, if you are indeed dead inside, please report to the Upland Marsh for updated orders, thank you.
Community Roundup
The community roundup is our highlight of interesting things being mentioned in the Glorantha-related Facebook groups, sub-Reddits, and other similar online places.
I am talking to Fabian about the practicalities of this. We wouldn’t just re-release them though, but update them as well. So a fair bit of work, but feels worth it to get the material out there again. Anyway, practicalities talks have begun
Gaming news website Dicebreaker has a roundup of the 10 best tabletop RPG boxed sets for new players. They have a few classics and obvious choices, but they also have a few surprises. Meanwhile, they have both the Call of Cthulhu Starter Set and the RuneQuest Starter Set! Not bad, Chaosium. Not bad.
What Would The Smart Party Do Podcast RuneQuest Episode
Guest submission by Jörg
In this episode Baz and Gaz discuss the history of RuneQuest from the perspective of players in the United Kingdom, a perspective which may differ from the experience in North America. We learn how RuneQuest ended up being the alternative Baz did not choose to pursue when an opportunity presented itself.
The episode has a few memorable quips, like “the game should come with a grognard in a box” as a GM, or the Gloranthan/RuneQuest “fan base is like barnacles – you cannot shift them.”
I find it interesting that Baz did attend the German RuneQuest and/or Glorantha conventions Tentacles and Kraken without getting much exposure to the setting, but the lack of exposure to RuneQuest results from these conventions happening during the HeroQuest era, before RuneQuest and Glorantha were re-married by Chaosium. The lack of Mongoose’s Second Age Glorantha on these conventions may have something to do with the history of how our conventions spread into the UK and North America via the digests.
To recapitulate Baz asked Chaosium for a copy of the Starter Set Box for this solo project of his, which he has planned to do for 101 days this year, and Chaosium complied.
The podcast is quite honest and offers a really fresh view from a long-time D&D/D20 player looking out for what makes both RuneQuest and Glorantha special, and doesn’t spare the authors from expectations not quite met or being underwhelmed by some of the content, although the later episodes slowly see the sparks draw not just smoke but also some flame.
One telling question was the question whether it was wise to produce a starter box that offers content for long-time players of the game, but as we can see from the fact that the UK warehouse completely sold out the first delivery of starter set boxes, economically this made a lot of sense as the sales volume by those old timers easily supported the probably rather marginal net revenues of this really tightly packed box. One criticism Baz mentioned about Book 4: Adventures is that the box doesn’t really address people who are new both to roleplaying/GMing and to the setting.
While he liked the first two Scenarios, I found the comparison with the D&D approach which leaves the dungeon with sessile monsters only after the DM has leveled his players and his GMing skills to level 3 rather telling. But then, Chaosium’s participation with the New Gamemasters Month is addressing exactly that problem.
Speaking of that, the New Gamemasters Month February post now is asking for feedback on a quick form, or on one of the discussion platforms. Unfortunately, those have only very few posts yet. We’d be interested to hear about participants’ experiences trying out RuneQuest, too.
My favorite part of the book is how much new detail (well, new to me, anyway) it provides about Peloria and Dara Happa.
[…]
On my “tabletop/armchair” spectrum, A&E fits firmly in the “armchair” category. The gamemaster will get a lot of use from A&E—inspiring story hooks, antagonists, etc.
[…]
To be honest, if you’re going to buy only one “reference” book to support your RuneQuest collection, don’t buy the Guide to Glorantha—buy A&E. I feel A&E is more relevant to the action of an RQ campaign than the Guide, providing useful, story-generating details.
Welcome to a new issue of the Journal of Runic Studies, the premier Malkioni publication for studies into the nature of Glorantha. If you haven’t subscribed yet, please consult with the spirit bound to the appropriate electronic page.
When the adventurers stumble upon a mother and her son being attacked by wild boars, they are thrown into a tricky situation in which multiple powerful factions are on a collision course. What will your players do when they can decide who lives and who dies?
A Short Detour is a straightforward adventure for RuneQuest Glorantha that will take about one big or two short sessions of play. It can be placed anywhere around Sartar, with the text assuming that your campaign is based in or near Colymar lands.
In addition to the adventure, A Short Detour provides an insightful look at the nature of Chaos, with rules for Chaotic corruption.
Of course you should buy the book because it’s great (hopefully)… but if you want to support the God Learners newsletter, blog, and podcast, then you can buy the book to make me think it’s great, and encourage me to continue the other things too!
Characteristic Rolls vs Skill Rolls
I also wrote a new Runic Rants column this week on one of my pet peeves with the Chaosium’s system:
It’s kind of funny: BRP games like Call of Cthulhu or RuneQuest are among my all time favourite RPGs, but BRP itself is not even close to my top 5 systems. One of the reasons for this is the split between characteristics and skills, which don’t interact much with each other. I’m a kid of the 90s: characteristics and skills are meant to be added together, damn it!
Anyway, this split means that the gamemaster needs to decide when to ask for characteristic rolls, when to ask for skill rolls, and what to do when both could apply. Here are some thoughts.
Most of you might already know the story, but it came up again recently so it’s always good to repeat it: Greg Stafford owned the first copy ever sold of D&D.
Here’s what happened… Greg and a buddy had been working in Lake Geneva WI area as itinerant belt buckle salesmen (“Real hippy job. I’d take buckles, hitch hike around and sell them to shops, etc.”)
It was Greg’s buddy who met Gary Gygax in a Lake Geneva print shop one day in early 1974: Greg by then was back in the Bay Area, working on his own first game ‘White Bear & Red Moon’, which was eventually published the following year by his new game company The Chaosium.
It had been a while since we heard about this, but it looks like work is still going on. Details on Passions are now accessible in the VTT interface.
Jonstown Compendium
The Jonstown Compendium is Chaosium’s community content program for all Gloranthan games, hosted on DriveThruRPG. Disclaimer: all the relevant links are affiliate links that hopefully will let us cover some of the hosting and maintenance costs for the website and podcast! Thanks for using them!
Here is another Mikael Mansen map! This time it’s about the Blue Moon Plateau, up in Peloria.
Jeff’s Notes
Jeff Richard, the current mastermind on everything Gloranthan at Chaosium, is often posting notes and thoughts on the RuneQuest Facebook group. Here’s our curated list from the past week. A partial archive of these sources is compiled on the Well of Daliath.
Let’s keep in mind quick how the Grazeland functions in the present age (rather than how the Yelm cult likes to tell stories about the good old days).
There are about 40,000 people living in the Grazelands, divided into three groups: agriculturalists, horse herders, and townsfolk. All land is “owned” by the Feathered Horse Queen who resolves all disputes between the groups, interacts with outsiders, and unites the nation.
The groups are in a symbiotic relationships – the agriculturalists provide grain, fruits, vegetables, and “lesser meats”, the townsfolk provide crafted goods, and the horse herders provide military protection and animal products from their herds. The horses benefit from this – the horse herders raise them and tend them, the farmers provide them with additional fodder, and the townsfolk trade part of the herds to outsiders in exchange for goods and coin which benefits everyone.
These groups are actually pretty small – there are about 18,000 farmers, 18,000 horse herders, and about 4,000 townsfolk. The area is geographically not all that big, only about a 1000 square kilometres, which actually means that the Grazelands are about as populated as the settled parts of Sartar.
Ernalda, not Dendara, is the Earth Goddess. She is the spouse of Yelm AND Orlanth, and unites horse herder and farmers together. Her cult is the largest in the Grazelands – as large as Orlanth and Yelm’s combined! The Ernalda cult is led by the Feathered Horse Queen. When the Pure Horse People and the Orlanthi farmers seemed destined to destroy the Grazelands, a priestesses descended into the womb of the Earth and returned with the secrets and power of Ernalda the Earth Mother, whose favors both Yelm and Orlanth must contest for.
This is the story of first Feathered Horse Queen. As far as I can tell, the historical context starts with the settling of Tarsh’s Twin Dynasty, which we talked about last week. When they entered what would become Tarsh, they met the Purse Horse People, the horse herding Grazelanders we were talking about. There was some falling out between the two, so that the Purse Horse People stuck to their side of the land, and the Tarshites to the other side.
For a while it seemed like the Grazelanders would be stuck in the hills for a few generations until they faded away from their reluctance to spread around, and their growing infighting. But in the early 1450s a priestess of the ancient Earth cults of the Grazelanders went into the Earth and gained the blessing of the local goddess, which was revealed to be Ernalda, I guess. The priestess came back with not only the blessing, but also some really cool headdress that reminded everybody of old Earth traditions of the Pure Horse People. The Sun King of the Grazelanders tried to protest but he lost the contest against the new Queen.
And so this new Queen is yielding a lot of power while also walking a fine line between the solar and storm cults. The interesting thing is that against the worse instincts of the concerned parties, the Feathered Horse Queen is making this cohabitation work: storm-worshipping farmers and sun-worshipping horse breeders, kept in check by a powerful earth-worshipping population. Talk about a menage a trois… literally. I imagine that heroquesting the Grazelander mythic realm is like some kinky sitcom. But that’s what the Earth is good at: weaving communities together, finding compromises, loving everyone. And everybody gets something from it anyway: the farmers get protection, and the Pure Horse People have the support system that lets them live their magical nomadic life “purely”.
The other Lightbringers are also important – more than half of all townsfolk follow one of the Lightbringers. And Humakt is also important as the primary War God.
The prevalence of Humakt’s cult in the Grazelands also seems to be a consequence of the early Feathered Horse Queen’s political moves. She restored a Humakt-related cult among her ranks and got some scary looking bodyguards, just in case.
Jeff adds a few comments:
A lot of the wrong assumptions about the Grazelands is a result of looking at Dragon Pass from stories that largely predate the Feathered Horse Queen or Sartar.
In the 1450s, the Pure Horse People were staring at extinction. Tarsh had built up its own cavalry force and no longer needed the Pure Horse People – even worse, they were importing Praxian mercenaries! The local Orlanthi farmers who had been forced to raise grain for the Pure Horse People needed only ally with Tarsh and could be rid of the Pure Horse People. Worse yet, the Sun Lords of the Yelm cult couldn’t see this and insisted that the Earth priestesses remained subservient in the traditional “Dendara role”. One of the Earth priestesses descended into the womb of the Earth in search of secrets.
Queue the history I told above.
The Feathered Horse Queen is who emerged. She placed the farmers under her personal protection and defeated the Sun Lords in magical contests, forcing the Stallion King to submit and pledge obedience. She issued the Marriage Contest to find allies and it was Sartar the Prince who proved his worth. Sartar built trade posts with temples to the Lightbringers, issued coins, and facilitated trade through the Grazelands. The trade posts became towns where crafters congregated. In short, the Grazelands were radically transformed by the Feathered Horse Queen AND by Sartar into something new. Horse breeder and farmer found a way to coexist through the person of the Feathered Horse Queen. The trading posts brought wealth – but also scribes, merchants, crafters, healers, mercenaries, and the rest of the accoutrements of civilization. The Pure Horse People certainly tell stories about how they are Yelm’s chosen and the spiritually elect and all that jazz. But it was the Feathered Horse Queen that allowed them to survive. And everyone knows that.
And thus just like the Orlanthi tribes of the Quivin Mountains were transformed by Sartar, the people of the Grazelands were transformed by the Feathered Horse Queen. Add more than a century to build upon that transformation and you have the Grazeland Pony Breeders we first saw in White Bear and Red Moon.
There are a little less than 1.4 million humans in the Lunar Provinces. Looking at the Provinces as a whole, the largest cults (those with over 10k cultists each) are:
Etyries is at less that 10k, so doesn’t make the list… the Provinces are mostly Orlanthi culturally speaking so their merchants are probably leaning towards Issaries.
Looking at it as a whole, there is a big Lunar belt stretching from New Lolon to Furthest and centered on Mirin’s Cross. But beyond that, the Provinces are pretty much Orlanthi. And it also has a few interesting localized cults like Jajagappa (with less than 10k cultists in total), some enclaves of the Shargash cult and over 5k wagoneers. There’s also a lot of Storm Bull cultists in Aggar – there are about three times as many Storm Bull cultists in Aggar than in Sartar!
Jajagappa is a psychopomp of the Dara Happan pantheon, a deity who fights the dead who escape their place in the Underworld. Shargash is a primal war god who destroyed the world.
I’m not sure why there are lots of Storm Bull cultists in Aggar though. Looking at the maps, I figure that it’s probably because Dorastor, land of Chaos, is nearby. These Storm Bull cultists might have less to travel if they were based out of Skanth or Bilini, but according to the Guide the Bilini tribes are little more than a bunch of bandits, so maybe Aggar is the nearest best thing to get some good drinks.
Here’s a little more about the Lunar cults themselves:
The way it works is that we have many Lunar cults, each founded by a heroic figure who achieved god-hood in Time, plus a handful of associated cults (Yelm, Gorgorma, Natha, etc.) who have ties to the Red Goddess cult itself. The main vehicle are the Seven Mothers – Danfive Xaron, Deezola, Irrippi Ontor, Jakaleel the Witch, Teelo Norri, and Yanafal Tarnils (She Who Waits has no real cult) – either individually or collectively. They are the mortals who “gave birth” to the Red Goddess and form the mainstream mortal path to her secrets.
I’m not super knowledgeable about who the Seven Mothers are so let’s quickly look into it:
Deezola was an Earth priestess, and now the “Keeper of Vows” and “Avenger of Wrongs”. Sounds a bit like a Babeester Gor sort of cult to me.
Irrippi Ontor was an outlawed sage, which shows you can still do great things even after you get kicked out of school. He’s the “Master of Secrets”.
Yanafal Tarnils was an exiled nobleman who somehow “defeated his master, Humakt, in battle”, and became the immortal Lunar war god.
Jakaleel the Witch was a shaman-priestess, and became… err, wait, another “Keeper of Secrets”. Well I think Irrippi Ontor is more for knowledge, and Jakaleel is more for magic. Sounds to me like maybe she’s doing secret Lunar sorcery stuff.
Danfive Xaron was a “bloodthirsty outlaw who volunteered for the most dangerous task” in the ritual to recreate the Red Goddess. He’s now the “Gatekeeper”, whatever that is. I seem to recall his cult is also good for atonement of crimes in the Lunar society.
Teelo Norri was an innocent child, plucked from the streets, who didn’t know anything about the ritual… because apparently that was an important element of the ritual. She’s now the goddess of Innocence and Experience. Whatever that that is too.
She Who Waits was a mysterious person whose identity is only known to Illuminated followers of the Red Goddess. My theory is that this was the Red Goddess herself, coming from the future or whatever. She helped with her own rebirth because she’s also cyclical overall inside of Time. Don’t listen to me though, this is nonsense… OR IS IT?
There are other vehicles as well – Hon-eel, Etyries, Hwarin Dalthippa, Glamour, Yara Aranis, Aronius Jarathir, etc. Plus there are those old gods who were associated with the missing goddess – Yelm, Gorgorma, Natha, etc. and of course Nysalor. So Natha has a tiny little cult that is associated with Gorgorma and Danfive Xaron.
Hey, plenty of names that I only vaguely know, or don’t now at all! Let’s get through them:
Hon-eel is one of the daughters of the Red Emperor, who conquered many lands and discovered maize… because apparently everybody forgot about it.
Etyries is basically the Lunar version of Issaries, the trader god.
Hwarin Dalthippa is another daughter of the Red Emperor, also known as the Conquering Daughter, which we already talked about previously.
Glamour was I think the first daughter of the Red Emperor but is also the city of Glamour? I’m not sure that Glamour ever walked around like the other daughters, though: I think she might have been created as a city from the start.
Yara Aranis was the next daughter after Glamour, and the one whose powers maintain the Glowline, which we talked about here and here. Plus my look into the different versions of the rules.
Aronius Jarathir seems to be a noble who became famous for his wars in the West Reaches. Somehow I suppose he built a hero cult for himself, but I don’t know more.
Yelm you should know, that’s the sun god, duh!
Gogorma I don’t know much: she has two mouths, devours things, and is Dendara’s sister Dendara is Yelm’s wife, the docile and well-mannered version of Ernalda, I think… so maybe Gogorma is sort of a Maran Gor?
Natha is the “Goddess of Balance”, and I don’t know much either. She can bring all kinds of opposites, from Life and Death to Light and Darkness and whatever. It sounds like she’s scary and better kept propitiated without asking questions.
Nysalor is, well, a whole thing. He was created by the Broken Council, founded an empire who was supposed to bring Light and crazy-ass Illumination to the world, wounded Kyger Litor and create the trollkin curse (woopsie), and got into a big war with Arkat.
Each of the Seven Mothers is associated with a moon phase:
Black Moon – She Who Waits Crescent Come – Danfive Xaron Empty Half – Yanafal Tarnils Full Moon – Irrippi Ontor Full Half – Teelo Norri Crescent Go – Jakaleel Dying – Deezola
See – each of the Seven Mothers represent a phase of the Red Moon, but only the Red Goddess represents the whole.
Now some Lunar scholars try to map some other old gods onto that scheme to aid in heroquesting. So Orogeria gets associated with Crescent Come, Natha gets associated with the Full Half, Gerra with the Dying Moon, etc. Even poor Dayzatar gets associated with the Full Moon in some schemes. But this is more of an attempt to create a Lunar heroquesting map than anything that is widely practiced.
The Lunar Heartlands are home to almost 5.4 million humans. This is the center of Lunar culture and the Lunar religion, a fact made omnipresent by the presence of the Red Moon looming over the Crater.
The largest cult in the Lunar Heartlands is, not surprisingly, the Seven Mothers. If we combine their worship collectively and individually, we come up with a grand total of an amazing 850k cultists. That easily makes the Seven Mothers one of the largest cults in Glorantha, and one of the Big Three in Central Generela. Not bad for a desperate cabal of heroquesters!
And when we add the Lunar Provinces and the Western Reaches we easily get above 1 million members (probably above 1.1 million). So that is one BIG cult.
After the Seven Mothers, the largest cults in the Heartlands with over 100k cultists each are:
Yay, once again names that I don’t know much about. Let’s gooooo:
Lodril is a lustful fighter god of the Sky. He love to get down with the Earth deities, and he became the Volcano God. I’ll wait over there while you unpack the not-so-subtle phallic ejaculation references here. I’m not sure exactly what good Lodril is for nowadays… given the number of worshippers, I imagine he’s good for anybody who Works Hard, Plays Hard? But more seriously, I think he’s the farmer/fighter god of the Pelorian farmers. Sort of like Orlanth/Barntar for the Orlanthi, but with more dick drawings.
Oria is the Pelorian Earth Goddess, and the Maize Mother. Her and Lodril are the main Sky/Earth power couple for the Pelorian masses, I suppose.
Dendara, as we mentioned earlier, is Yelm’s wife. Although she’s associated to Earth goddesses, I get the impression that she’s more linked to the household, with good manners and well behaved children, rather than linked to the crops and fertility. This split between Oria and Dendara sounds interesting for Pelorian world-building because it doesn’t exist much in Sartar as far as I know.
Oslira is the goddess of the Oslir river, and as such probably comparable to Engizi in Sartar. Her cult must be important for all the irrigation needed around the rice paddies that dot the Pelorian landscape.
Yelm is, again, the sun god, duh. He’s historically important given that the Lunar Empire used to be a Solar Empire at some point.
Hon-eel we also already mentioned. Lots of maize fields here.
Surenslib is… err wait, Jeff talked about that one.
Now that last one is a bit surprising – that’s the ancestress of the Darjiini, and is a rather big cult. She didn’t make the cut in the Cults Book despite her size because her influence is totally localized and she’s not really of cosmological importance outside of Darjiin and Doblian.
Ok so that didn’t help much. As far as I can tell, Surenslib is the Heron Goddess, responsible for marshes and other wetlands, and… (checks notes) known as “lewd”. Yes, she’s wet, and lewd. My god, Lodril and Surenslib is what happens when game designers get horny.
Anyway, I checked out Darjiin and it’s a very densely populated Lunar province with lots of rice farmers, marshlands and small lakes, and a tight grasp on their old gods. Hence an obscure wetland goddess making the cut of the top 10 cults in the Lunar Empire.
We can think of Yelm+Lodril+Oria+Dendara+Oslira as being the backbone of the old Dara Happan civilization before the Red Goddess. But the Seven Mothers have now definitely eclipsed the old Solar Pantheon. They are still there, but more in the background. With the Red Emperor recognized as the avatar of Yelm Imperator, the old gods of Peloria now serve the Red Goddess.
And speaking of the Red Goddess, what’s her cult like, given that the requirements to join it are pretty insane? (you need to be a Runemaster of a qualifying cult, and be Illuminated) Well, Jeff thinks there might be around 8000 Red Goddess initiates.
The Eel-ariash Clan
A bit of a deep cut here, but Jeff is talking about the Eel-ariash clan, a prominent noble family in the Lunar Empire:
The Eel-ariash come from Doblian, and were the family of Sandene, a village weaver woman who had protected the Red Emperor when he hid from Sheng Seleris. The family first appeared in the chronicles around 1460s thanks to the deeds of their most famous daughter, Hon-eel the Artess, who was revealed to be the daughter of Sandene and the Red Emperor.
The Eel-ariash accompanied Hon-eel on her rise, becoming her priests, administrators, and household. When Hon-eel resettled Oraya, one of her kin was appointed Satrap in 1587. The family was greatly weakened in the Nights of Horror (1506) and lost control of that satrapy but they aided the Molari-sor in seizing that satrapy in 1521 and one of the most famous Dart Warriors of all time, the Chain Dancer, was a member of the family. In 1543, the Eel-ariash took over the Oronin satrapy, despite the opposition of the Red Emperor.
You might remember that Sheng Seleris was a sort of Solar Genghis Khan figure who almost destroyed the young Lunar Empire with his horse-riding nomads. The Nights of Horror was one of the biggest battles between the two.
Dart Warriors are the operatives who take part in the Dart Competitions, a sort of “officially covert war” between Lunar noble families. I thinking “Roman Senate meets Jason Bourne”, here.
It is said that every action Chain Dancer made was part of a magical ritual taught by Hon-eel in his dreams. The results of his dance was the birth of the woman Farangold, who served as the concubine of the Red Emperor and gave birth to Jar-eel the Razoress in 1588.
So the Red Emperor needed some hardcore CIA spy to get a date? Wow, what a dork.
Among the relatives of Farangold was her nephew, Sor-eel, who was given command of the conquest of Prax in 1610. He was aided by a Tarshite officer, Fazzur Wideread, who became governor of Dragon Pass in 1613. In 1621, Sor-eel was relieved from his governorship of Prax by the Red Emperor after a remarkable magical artifact – a Giant Cradle – slipped out from his fingers. Sor-eel returned to Glamour, and he now serves in his cousin’s household.
Now obviously, the Eel-ariash are an extraordinary family, but we have a family descended from a weaver woman and the Red Emperor, whose descendants include a corn goddess, two children of Yelm (!), one of the most skilled Dart Warriors of history, satraps, generals, governors, and of course Jar-eel the Razoress.
First, let’s figure out where Alkoth is, thanks to the Argan Argar Atlas. You can spot the city in the middle of the map, along the Oslir river. It’s one of the three main ancient Dara Happan cities, with Raibanth and Yuthuppa, and the last of them to have fallen to the Lunars. That’s possibly because Shargash (a primal war god) is the city’s official god, so they are known to have pretty bad-ass warriors. There’s more information in the Guide about this big city (classified as a “metropolis”, which means 25,000 residents or more).
The city is the center of the Shargash cult, with roughly some 4000 cultists. It is a Lunar city and has 5000 Seven Mothers cultists – most here are going to be dedicated to an individual Seven Mother (Deezola, Yanafal Tarnils, and Irrippi Ontor probably the biggest cults). It is also one of the centers of the Yelm cult with 2000 members. There’s another 9000 adults in Alkoth – so we have lots of Dendara, Oslira, Biselenslib, Lodril and Lowfire cultists as well. I expect there might even be 150-200 Red Goddess initiates.
The ruling elite in Alkoth are going to be Lunars. Some are Yelm cultists, some are Shargash cultists – but all of the ruling elite accept the Red Emperor. In fact, this is where much of the conflict within the elite comes from: competition for the attention and favour (or disfavour) of the Red Emperor and his court (in reality it is mainly his court).
Free, family Alkorneval is an ancient family with members holding senior positions within Yelm and Shargash cult (particularly the Alkor subculture), as well several Red Goddess initiates, officers in the Yanafal Tarnils cult, Irrippi Ontor scribes, etc. They have been leaders in the city since the liberation of the city in the Fourth Wane. However, they are largely of regional ties and importance, with few contacts outside of Henjarl.
The liberation mentioned here is because Alkoth was occupied by Sheng Seleris and his Pentian nomads from 1404 to 1423.
Alkorneval are locked in conflict with the Full Moon Blesses Us family, originally from the Hungry Plateau. They were installed in several key city positions about a dozen years ago, due to the intrigues of the Mother of Strength and the Tharkalists. They revere the Seven Mothers (in particular Yanafal Tarnils and Deezola), but are headed by a Jakaleel-Red Goddess shaman. The Full Moon Blesses Us family have relatively few local connections (although they were given ownership of the Raus domains in Kostaddi after a rebellion about a decade ago), but they have very good ties to Glamour and Two Tower.
Ok, let’s look at the names I don’t know…
The Hungry Plateau is visible in the map above, east of Glamour. There’s a tribe of Sable Riders living here, related to the Praxian Sable Riders. No idea if the Full Moon Blesses Us family are Sable Riders who became sedentary or what… but I assume so, since the Mother of Strength who put them in Alkoth is their shaman ruler (and the ruler of Kostaddi province).
The Tharkalists are the seven daughters of the Red Emperor, born some time in the mid 1570s. They’re all born from different mothers, but are identical except for one feature each. It’s a Village of the Damned sort of situation, I guess (you might be more partial to the older 1960 movie). Now grown up, they are at the head of the newest of the big influential noble families. Creepily enough, the Tharkalists had children with the Red Emperor… yeah. Ewww.
These families are engaged in a low-level Dart War, with spies and assassins trying to embarrass the other family in the eyes of the Imperial Court.
Remember that Dart Wars are the covert schemes that Lunar noble families run against each other to maintain or increase their position in the court.
So both families likely motivate themselves with their Loyalty to the Red Emperor – heck they want to show how loyal they are and how disloyal their rivals are. These conflicts are over power, status, and personal connections, and not really ideological as we would understand them.
Jeff then gives pointers to bring another faction — possibly a patron for adventurers in a Lunar campaign:
Now if we want to throw another family into the mix, we might have some powerful administrator appointed by the Court, perhaps even a son or daughter of the Red Emperor. He has a lot of those, and this is from a previous Mask, so no particular personal connection with the current Mask. But it is a child of Moonson, and thus a grandchild of the Red Goddess (and theoretically a sibling of Jar-eel and others) so is owed respect and fealty (especially from the Yelm cult). But of course, the reality is that they need to build their own power base and has decided to start here in Alkoth.
So now you have a three-way conflict. Given the size of Alkoth, there are likely far more than this, but at least we can see the contours of elite conflict.
Many heroes and “living gods” have cults while they live. Those cults provide the hero with magical resources – however, these cults do not directly provide the worshipers with Rune spells. Instead they insure that the hero can continue to protect, defend, bless the community – or sometimes just so that the hero is well-inclined towards the community!
In RuneQuest, mechanically speaking, I suppose that these cults provide the hero with “Hero Soul points”, which were obtained during heroquests and other epic magical feats. From what we know of the upcoming heroquesting rules (and the preview from The Smoking Ruin & Other Stories, page 187), these points are like Rune Points, in that they let you cast special magic, but they get replenished not when you worship someone, but when people worship you.
The Red Emperor is probably the most widespread example of this sort of “living god” cult, although Belintar, Sir Ethilrist, Cragspider, Jaldon Goldentooth, Jar-eel, and others also have cults (Godunya’s cult is a very different animal).
Now these cults have priests, some who are secunded from other associated cults (like the Red Emperor’s cult being built off the Yelm Imperator infrastructure in the Lunar Emperor or Jaldon Goldentooth using the existing Waha cult. They get material benefits from the hero (like access to spirits or special spirit magic).
That’s a clever way to get a whole bunch of potential worshippers, but I imagine you have to make extra sure the primary deity won’t get pissed off that you’re taking a cut of the action… I wonder if someone ever got in big trouble for that…
When a hero is associated with an existing cult, their cult might function as a subcult that provides access to special Rune magic from the god – not from the hero. The hero might show a path towards that Rune magic, but the god is the source of it, not the hero. Think of the hero as the guide that shows the way to the god’s special magic, and not the source of it.
I guess that’s a good way to introduce new Rune spells!
So in the Holy Country, Belintar had many temples and countless “lay members”. He had priests – but those priests were also priests of the gods of the Holy Country and led Belintar’s worship ceremonies as well. In addition to provide massive magical resources for Belintar, these ceremonies were connected with the Tournament of the Masters of Luck and Death, and Belintar carefully made sure that the various gods of the Holy Country had their representatives in his “cult”.
Leftarm Islands
And since we were just talking about the Holy Country, let’s go there!
Off the southern tip of Heortland is the area called God Forgot. It is associated with the Bandori valley and the Marcher Lands. Collectively this area has about 100,000 human inhabitants, roughly evenly divided between God Forgot and the territories on the mainland.
The Bandori valley is around the river that passes through Refuge. I’m not sure where the Marcher Lands are but I assume they’re the wetlands to the southeast of Refuge.
God Forgot is dominated by a pre-Hrestoli variant of Malkionism. More than half the adult population (20k) worship no god except the Invisible God. These people strictly follow an ancient caste system of laborers, soldiers, sorcerers, and rulers. The rulers of this area are claimed to be from Brithini, as are several sorcerers. They came here in the Second Age and managed to survive the wars that destroyed the Machine City. There is a sizable minority of Aeolians (7.5k) particularly among the farmers and soldiers. Many coastal fisherfolk worship Choralinthor (3k) and there is a small cult centered on Casino Town that worships only the Goddess of Luck, Who Giveth and Taketh Away.
Aeolians are sort-of-gnostics who believe the Invisible God to be the creator of the cosmos, but also consider the gods to be “emanations” of him… so they are basically Orlanthi people who go “<wink wink> we know who Orlanth and Ernalda really are, right? <wink wink>“. For more on Aeolians, see issue #24 of the Journal.
The Mirrorsea Bay (in the centre of the Holy Country) is also named Choralinthor Bay, so you can bet that Choralinthor, the god, lives down there. It’s probably a good idea to worship the guy when you live on its shores.
Refuge is another Brithini outpost that follows the ancient caste system. Almost half the population of Refuge follow the Invisible God (1.5 k), with the next most important cults being Aeolianism and Choralinthor.
Rural Bandori and the Marcher lands are more like Esvular in Heortland. The largest cults here are Aeolianism, Orlanth, Ernalda, and Eiritha. Humakt has a major temple at Marcher Fort, which defends the passage to Prax.
The city of Refuge is port city in God Forgot and a Brithini outpost which continues its tenuous existence using the old caste systems of Brithos. Cautious and defensive, the rulers are ancient and canny politicians and rarely act rashly. The city has an ancient alliance with a tribe of Esvularing peoples called the Bandori. Beginning in 1620, a flood of refugees from Heortland has swollen the city’s population.
This would be refugees fleeing the Lunar Empire’s expansion, I suppose.
Refuge has a great temple to the Invisible God, major temples to Aeol and Choralinthor, minor temples to Orlanth, Ernalda, Issaries, and Lhankor Mhy, and shrines to Chalana Arroy, Dormal, Humakt, Waha, and Eirtha. Because of the refugees from Heortland, the temples to Orlanth and Ernalda are now effectively major temples.
There must be interesting stories to tell when a minor temple’s resources become strained under the pressure of too many worshippers… Not just because there’s not enough room for the ceremonies, but also because there’s not enough staff to teach skills and spells, or because the temple wyter can’t get everybody onto the God Plane for big rituals. The leading priest there might be quite liberal in appointing God Talkers, which means that adventurers could easily get a promotion even if they barely qualify…
The ruler of Refuge is the brother of the Talar of God Forgot. He is a Brithini, and is aided by several sorcerers and by his fearsome bodyguards.
About a third of the city’s population are God Forgot Malkioni. About 10% are Aeolians. The rest is a motley mix of Heortlanders, Praxians, Boat People, and Esrolians.
There are caravans that head out from Refuge to the Monkey Ruins and into Prax. That route is greatly preferred to the route to Corfu and then upriver to New Pavis.
It’s a fun route: you pass by the Monkey Ruins, with plenty of baboons and Oakfed cultists, and then you get to Biggle Stone, with its weird humid mushroom forest in the middle of the chaparral. It’s a nice change from Caravan Alley!
Karse (large city): This ancient port city is an important trade center with Dragon Pass. Goods are transferred from ship to caravan here. Karse is located on the coast, a few kilometers from the mouth of the Marzeel River. The high Heortland cliffs rise a few kilometers behind the city and the Shadow Plateau. Karse is a very old city, dating back to the Dawn. Temples to the Sea Gods stand near the harbor, a natural inlet that has been worked on for the last 1500 years or so, most recently by Prince Tarkalor Trollkiller and his Sartarite stonemasons.. The city has many warehouses and inns, including a Geo’s Inn.
Karse was listed as a “small city” (500 to 6000 residents) in the Guide to Glorantha. Jeff lists it as a “large city” here (6000 to 25000 residents). Given that Jeff also notes that the city’s area is 40 hectares, with about 150 people per hectare, that comes up to 6000 residents, which is exactly the cut-off between the two categories. The city might have grown a little bit between the Guide’s 1621 and RuneQuest Glorantha’s 1625, enough to push it in the next category.
Either way, you can see Karse in Hendriki on the map featured a few sections above. And here’s a sketch of the city itself, which we already saw in a previous Journal, when we compared Karse to Massalia:
Unlike Massalia, though, the high cliffs around the city means that it’s probably in the shadows for several more hours every day, with less daylight than other cities in the region:
I expect night comes a little early to Karse, as the kilometre high cliffs of the Shadow Plateau are only about five kilometres away. Before the Only Old One was defeated by Belintar, the Tower of the Palace of Black Glass would have been clearly visible about 20 km away, a huge structure that rose to the Middle Air.
And with the Shadow Plateau nearby, “Argan Argar is of course important in this area, second only to Orlanth and Ernalda“.
[Karse is] a stronghold of the Argan Argar cult, so very troll-friendly (by necessity if not by inclination).
On a trade and travelling note, Karse is the beginning of one of the Royal Roads of Dragon Pass, which lead you to the Sartar Roads and, if you want to go that far, the roads leading to Pavis or Tarsh and Peloria:
Karse is an interesting base for a campaign as it has very strong connections to both Sartar and Nochet. It is the southern terminus of the Dragon Pass caravan route and so has merchants from the Lunar Heartlands, Esrolia, Prax, and even over the seas. Orlanthi are of course welcome there, but there are even some Lunars who remained after its conquest by the Hendriki.
From Karse, a campaign could easily link Sartar to the far off islands of Jrustela or Teshnos, get involved in Esrolian politics, and have to fight off Wolf Pirates.
Jeff also mentioned Prince Tarkalor Trollkiller: he fought some war here in 1560 against the trolls that almost caused these trade routes to be closed. I think these trolls are the Kitori, although they might be a slightly different kind of trolls, created by The Only Old One, the ancient ruler of the Shadow Plateau and son of Argan Argar… I’m not clear on this whole affair. Anyway, these trolls’ territory is now reduced to the Troll Woods, and the trade routes are relatively safe… or are they?! (cue some adventure seed)
For more notes about Karse, including what the labels point to on the map, again, refer to issue #27 of the Journal. Jeff adds a few details though:
There are a lot of inns – caravanserai – in the city, including a Geo’s Inn.
And:
The main city is strongly fortified with two main gates – a Land Gate (the main gate) and a Sea Gate that leads to the harbor – and a fortress that guards the harbor. Despite the seemingly impervious fortifications, Karse fell to the Lunar Army in 1619, after a dramatic assault by land and sea.
Karse has major temples to Orlanth Adventurous, Ernalda, Issaries, Argan Argar, Choralinthor, and Aeol, minor temples to Chalana Arroy, and Lhankor Mhy, and shrines to Diros, Dormal, Humakt, Lanbril, Magasta, and the Seven Mothers.
Another bunch of unfamiliar names!
I’m not sure who Aeol is but I assume that’s the person who created Aeolianism (see above, and issue #24), worshipped as a cult hero of the Invisible God or something.
Diros is the “God of Boats”, whose cult originates from the Second Age’s Middle Sea Empire.
Dormal is the guy who “reopened” the oceans to deep sea travel, after figuring some sort of workaround to whatever magical mess caused the Closing.
Lanbril is the Heortling Thief God. I’m curious about whether his temple is public, or something more clandestine, maybe along the lines of “everybody knows mafia boss Jimmy Two-Guns is found at the Strike One bowling alley“. I’m also wondering how it differs from Eurmali thieves.
Magasta is an important Water god. He’s generally busy operating the whirlpool that bears his name at the center of Glorantha. Under the whirlpool is the hole left after the Spike exploded in the Gods War. I suppose that people sailing to Pamaltela (the southern continent) need to do a minimum of worship to Magasta to travel safely past him.
There likely was a shrine to Yelmalio but it was abandoned in 1619 and the cult played no part in the city’s liberation by the Hendriki in 1624.
And now what’s up in 1625 and beyond:
Not surprisingly, Karse after 1625 is in post-Liberation turmoil. The Lunars are gone, the Hendriki are leaderless and their brief kingdom is falling apart. Esrolians queen does not rule outside of her lands, although she has great influence on Karse. In the Shadow Plateau there are those that want to extend the Shadow again. But trade with Sartar is returning, and there is once again a free Prince in Boldhome.
Argrath becomes Prince in 1627 and one of the first things he is tasked to deal with by the Heortlanders and Esrolians is to stop the Wolf Pirates.
It sounds like Karse is often depending on Sartar:
Not only is Karse dependent on trade through Sartar for its livelihood but between 1570 and 1600, I would expect that most of the public architecture in Karse got built by the largesse of the princes of Sartar. Harbor, gates, temples, etc.
That stopped after the conquest of Boldhome, and then it was whatever the city could get the merchants to pay for – either directly through gifts and donations, or indirectly through market fees and tolls. That stopped in 1619 after the city fell to a Lunar military assault. After 1621, trade was severely disrupted due to war. The Lunar garrison was withdrawn late in 1624 or early 1625 and the city was ruled by the Hendriki, but they collapsed early in 1625. So it would seem likely that the place the oligarchs of Karse look to is Boldhome, now that there is a Prince again.
Caladraland is one of the regions of the Holy Country, and one people don’t pay enough attention to! If we look at Caladraland as a whole (so Highvale, Porthomeka, Vinavale, and Thomble), the most important four cults are:
Ernalda 102k Caladra and Aurelion 59k Lodril 30k Orlanth 30k
We already just talked about Lodril (see above), but here we’re dealing with the Holy Country version of his cult, which is bound to be different since farmers here would worship aspects of Orlanth most of the time.
Caladra and Aurelion are Lodril’s twin children, although there’s a bit more to them than that (see below).
A few interesting observations. If we look at Caladraland AND Esrolia, we have around 90k Lodril cultists in the Holy Country. That’s a lot. Sure the Ernalda and Orlanth cults are a scale of magnitude bigger than that, but Lodril has a bigger cult in the Holy Country than any of the lesser Lightbringers and is about tied with Argan Argar.
So of course the Orlanth cult of Dragon Pass is familiar with Lodril. They probably associate him more with the Vent than with Peloria. And yes, they know that the Volcano God of Caladraland (called Veskarthan) is Lodril and since the Second Age that name is likely more prevalent.
Caladra and Aurelion is also interesting. There’s over 60k members of that cult throughout the Holy Country, making it a solid second tier cult behind the likes of Lodril and Argan Argar. But the cult is almost completely localized in Caladraland, so there they are the biggest cult after Ernalda (and in Highvale they are actually much bigger than Ernalda or Lodril). Again, most Orlanthi in Dragon Pass have likely at least heard of the Twins. The Twins are children of Asrelia and Lodril, and thus siblings of Ernalda and Maran Gor.
The Guide mentions that the cult of Lodril in Caladraland (back when it was called Veskarthan) was “disrupted by the God Learners” with “their cult of Caladra and Aurelion”. I wasn’t sure what that meant but thankfully Jeff explained:
The God Learners realised that Caladra – a cult centered on the Vent was tied with Aurelion, a cult on the island of Jrustela. Both could be contacted together at Meetinghall Mountain in Slontos. The priests of each cult quickly embraced the connection to the other, as they realised their cult had a twin deity!
The cult was promulgated throughout the Middle Sea Empire from its core areas of Jrustela, Slontos, and Caladraland. However, with the collapse of the Middle Sea Empire, the cult only survived in Caladraland and environs.
So it sounds like the God Learners tried to bolster their volcano god by tying it to another volcano god, and the Caladralanders ended up with two gods for the price of one, all for themselves to enjoy. Neat!
Sartarite Land Ownership
This is a common question with newcomers to Glorantha: do you own the land your farm is on? Jeff has some answers:
In theory, all arable land belongs to the Earth Goddess. As a practical matter, cultivable land is usually allocated by her local husband (in Sartar, this is the tribal Orlanth cult or by the clan, or both). Normally, the clan claims what it can defend and work, and the tribe backs that up. As long as the rights and wishes of the Earth Goddess are upheld, the Earth temple goes along with this.
I read somewhere once that the Babeester Gor’s cult is responsible for enforcing this. So if someone messes up with the stones that delineate the plots of lands, they get a visit from… well… let’s just say no one messes up with the stones.
The tribe or clan might alienate their community rights over some piece of land and assign it to a temple, another tribe, or even to the Prince of Sartar. This is how the cities worked – the tribes all gave up their exclusive rights to part of their land and gave it to a council made up of all the tribes. It is even possible for a tribe or clan to be convinced to alienate some land in exchange for a lot of silver. But again, in all of these cases the rights of the Earth temples need to be acknowledged (which is usually a percentage of the harvest). All of this ends up involving a lot of haggling between armed kinship groups. But in theory, the tribal king can have the clans give up land in order to support retainers, priests, etc (which is exactly what happens in a few scenarios). This land usually already has people that are working it, so it is really about who gets the additional renders – the clan, a thane, the tribe, a temple, whatever.
Pasture lands are handled differently. The livestock graze wherever they can be defended. If you graze your herds in lands claimed by another tribe or clan, they might gather some warriors together and chase you off. If you can defend your herd then either the clan or tribe needs to get a bigger group of warriors or needs to tacitly accept it. Clans mark their boundaries in order to signal what they are willing to protect and claim as their own.
If this whole thing sounds pretty turbulent, that’s because it is. Thanks to the Sartar Dynasty, there has been a non-violent means of resolving disputes over land – appeal to the Prince. That’s kept these borders from changing a lot, which in the long run tends to make things more secure. But from time to time a clan or tribe loses land because it simply can’t protect it any more and the Earth Temple no longer acknowledges them as its protectors.
At a certain point, Orlanthi land rights are what you can get others to accept, mainly though kinship ties, cult status, and personal might.
I think this is broadly speaking the system of land ownership found throughout the Orlanthi Belt from the Holy County through Maniria, Dragon Pass and the Pelorian hills to Ralios and Fronela. I expect we have a different system in Dara Happa and in the Malkioni West.
So for example in the Lunar Heartlands, we get a complex and hierarchical land ownership system. Here’s some thoughts:
The Red Emperor owns personal and royal property which is used as he sees fit. He additionally exercise dominion over conquered lands (such as in the Lunar Provinces), and can give this land to whoever he wants. Owners of conquered lands are rarely displaced and are usually allowed to continue living on and working their lands. However, they have to share the profits of the land with their imperial overlords.
Nobles can own land on a restricted and unrestricted basis. Nobles obtained land by purchasing it from other nobles or as a gift from the emperor for service to him or the Lunar religion. Purchased land can be sold or willed. Land grants from the emperor sometimes have conditions that required them to be returned to the emperor upon the death of the owner. Lunar citizens have similar rights to purchase land or receive it from the emperor. Institutions such as the army, temples, and certain public offices could also own land which was received from the Emperor. These entities own the rights to the profits from the land and use them to support the office holder. However, the individual office holder did not own the land.
Commoners cannot own land on an individual basis. However, they have access to land through their village or kinship groups and they are permitted to choose a headman to manage the distribution of communal land. This land is given to individual families, and generally stayed with the family unless it goes uncultivated for two years or the family moves away. If this occurs, the unused land is then redistributed to other families.
And now some comment on conquered lands, in both Orlanthi and Lunar cultures:
When the Lunars conquered land, the Red Emperor (through his proxies and representatives) claim the right to dispose of such lands as they wish. Of course, they have to be able to enforce these decrees, which means it is actually usually just demanding that they get paid a portion of the harvest or market fees etc.
Sartarite conquests tend to be more limited. A defeated locality is forced to acknowledge the authority of the victorious king or tribe or whoever. So a village might be forced to stop supporting the defeated tribe and to join the victorious tribe instead.
In the Hero Wars, when Argrath conquered locations, he generally stepped into the shoes of the defeated rulers, taking those properties the Lunar government had reserved for itself, and generally leaving other arrangements aside.
Community Roundup
The community roundup is our highlight of interesting things being mentioned in the Glorantha-related Facebook groups, sub-Reddits, and other similar online places.
Exploring Glorantha Episode 14
JM and Evan take a look at the Aldryami, the elves of Glorantha. I haven’t watched this because I was a bit busy this week, as you can see from the very first item in the newsletter!
Jonstown Compendium POD Unboxing
God Learner friend RPGImaginings is showing off many Jonstown Compendium books in this video, which is great if you want to check out what the printing quality looks like for these print-on-demand titles.
Starter Set Unboxings and Short Reviews
Did you think everybody had done their unboxings and reviews of the RuneQuest Starter Set by now? Think again! We have two videos this week: one from the Tabletop Gaming Guild, and one from Erik Tenkar (of Tenkar’s Tavern, a pretty well known community around the D&D/OSR crowd).
Keith aka Modoc reviews Apple Lane (now available in print-on-demand), the 1978 supplement for RuneQuest. While many old-school RuneQuest players here might have fond memories of this classic, it’s always good to realize that it hasn’t necessarily aged well in many aspects. Check out the review to see what the module looks to fresh eyes!
Six Ages at GDC
Talk about the intersection of my job and by hobby! Here is David Dunham at GDC (one of the main game developer conferences in the world) talking about the design of Six Ages. This is a presentation for game designers and developers, so while it’s not super technical, it does go into game scripting, procedural generation techniques, and so on.
Elsewhere on Arachne Solara’s Web
Not everything is about Glorantha, although most things are! Here are loosely relevant things that we found on the interwebs.
The Gavrinis Passage Tomb is an ancient burial ground which is thought to have been constructed around 3,500 BC. The site features a stone burial chamber which is covered in a cairn, or stone mound, with a mound of earth packed on top of it. When the tomb was constructed thousands of years ago, the island of Gavrinis was still connected to the mainland.
We are joined on this trip down memory lane by Doc Cowie, Doc sums up his credits as “40 years RuneQuest player, published one scenario”. Ludo also gets Doc to talk about his custom-made bronze shield depicting Chalana Arroy fighting Chaos, made by Type 40:
Doc offers a very UK-centric perspective of how one would encounter and learn about Glorantha.
The first big UK release was “The Lair of the White Wyrm”, a RuneQuest scenario in White Dwarf in 1979.
Doc holds up his Games Workshop edition of RuneQuest 2, which he acquired at age 12.
Doc had actually picked up Cults of Prax at the Games Workshop store before acquiring RuneQuest, and remembers how he was awed and overwhelmed by that tome..
Doc outlines the competition of D&D and AD&D: There was Tunnels&Trolls and Traveller, and there was RuneQuest.
Doc recalls being intimidated by the entire concept, and kept it on the “mystical and somewhat obscure” pile of games.
Having played and enjoyed the Apple Lane scenarios (Gringle’s Pawnshop and Rainbow Mounds), the game went into a hiatus because his group was unsure what to do with this game beyond those published scenarios.
Griffin Mountain (the Games Workshop edition, again) came as a revelation what to do with RuneQuest. Doc recounts how their group distrusted the cults, and how their group had a Zorak Zorani troll and an elf in the party, with the two characters being good friends.
We discuss the sophistication of early teenage boys tackling a fantasy setting, roleplayer elitism and an instinctive “Your Glorantha May Vary” stance as the GM.
Doc recounts his experiences as regular GM until one of his players started to run a Pavis and Big Rubble campaign, alternating with Doc’s Griffin Mountain game.
Dpc pulls out his stack of photo-copied reference sheets, hand-outs and index cards.
When asked about the timeline, Doc confesses a God-time like timelessness for his Balazar campaign, with the only future event that mattered being the Cradle Scenario as the immense finishing piece for a Pavis-based campaign, always looming, never played.
Then came a disappointing hiatus when there weren’t any players of RuneQuest at Med-School, although a game was picked up again after a year or so.
We briefly touch upon the Dragon Pass boardgame, and then we go on to Doc’s almost traumatic experience of the first Convulsion which left him with the impression that everybody knew everything about Glorantha and that he sucked at RuneQuest.
He did meet Greg Stafford, though, and while he feared the “You’re not playing Glorantha as it is meant to be” boogeyman hiding behind the door,
Doc actually lent Issaries Inc some money to get the Hero Wars started, and with Hero Wars actually and finally providing some rules for heroquesting, he got interested and bought the material.
What re-ignited the Gloranthan fire was the Guide to Glorantha kickstarter (of 2013, fulfilled in 2015)
“I have Passion Glorantha 90%, but Knowledge Glorantha 40%.”
Doc goes on to enthuse about having played HeroQuest with Ian Cooper (who is currently in charge of the Questworlds successor line) and how that lends itself to go on mythical exploration.
Ludo brings up MAR Barker’s Tekumel and how he encouraged people to find out what is in Glorantha. Doc regales us with a private conversation with Greg Stafford, and how he reacted to Greg’s offer to explain a thing about Glorantha, and Doc felt he didn’t really have a question to ask. Instead, they discussed rearing children in a shamanic culture, and how myth contributes to that.
The weight of information behind Glorantha helps making it real and solid, even if you don’t apply that much of the vast amount of information.
From his current game, Doc tells about finding an actual bone of a god and making a magical dagger out of that, or finding an iron hauberk and giving it to the Earth Temple because it felt right, rather than one of the characters using it – something that would not occur to any player in a Dungeons and Dragons game.
We talk about everybody having magic and how that affected the way the game and its setting felt, and how people felt about playing that.
Ludo mentions the Year Zero Podcast with the impression that “everybody is playing a cleric.”
We talk about the impact of RuneQuest 3rd edition and how it was a disaster for the UK game scene.
Jörg gets to waffle a bit about his initial experiences starting with third edition RuneQuest and the Vikings box.
Doc sums t up that however much aspects of the rules might annoy him, there is still that way that certain outcomes make you feel which bring back the love you feel for the system.
Runic Rants is an irregular series of thoughts, opinions, and experiments about RuneQuest.
It’s kind of funny: BRP games like Call of Cthulhu or RuneQuest are among my all time favourite RPGs, but BRP itself is not even close to my top 5 systems. One of the reasons for this is the split between characteristics and skills, which don’t interact much with each other. I’m a kid of the 90s: characteristics and skills are meant to be added together, damn it!
Anyway, this split means that the gamemaster needs to decide when to ask for characteristic rolls, when to ask for skill rolls, and what to do when both could apply. Here are some thoughts.
The first three characteristics are easy because they don’t really compete with any other abilities: there’s no skill for raw strength like kicking a door down (STR), resisting poison, fatigue, or harsh environmental conditions (CON), or being lucky or strong-willed (POW). So these should be easy to use at the table.
Interestingly enough, RuneQuest doesn’t mention POW or SIZ rolls on page 141, like it does for the other characteristics…
For POW, it’s maybe because the magic rules are already using POWx5 rolls often enough, or because, unlike other characteristics, POW is meant to go up and down quite a lot, making it unreliable to use consistently during play.
For SIZ, it’s just hard to imagine when that can be useful… but I’ve heard of SIZx5 being used to augment Intimidate!
DEX
With DEX we start to hit the problem of skills competing with a characteristic. There’s a dozen skills for all kinds of actions based on agility or manipulation, so what’s left for DEX itself?
Frankly, I can’t recall any other situation besides bad footing and balance: I would make players roll DEXx5 or DEXx3 during an action scene where the ground is difficult to run around on, or their character is in an unstable situation. One of my players also once used it when two characters raced to grab their weapons, making a DEX roll to see who grabbed them first. And of course some spells like Illusory Motion or Shake Earth require DEX rolls from the casters or victims.
If we look at the rulebook, the chase rules call for DEX rolls to see who is fastest, while the falling rules specify a DEX roll to land on a specific hit location. There is also a mention of a DEX roll for throwing a simple object at a target (such as throwing a rock to create a diversion), or catching it. But catching objects can also be done with a Sleight skill check, so the gamemaster might be met with the classic (at least for me) player request to roll under their characteristic instead of their skill… at least until Sleight is increased above DEXx3 or DEXx5. We’ll get back to that problem later.
INT
There are even more knowledge skills than agility and manipulation skills combined, but we can consider INT as raw memory, intuition, and logic. So I sometimes let players roll INTx3 or INTx5 to remember something an NPC said to their character, such as instructions or directions, or to have some revelation about “what’s really going on”, such as a conspiracy against the King or discerning reality from visions.
CHA
This is the one that I had the most problem wrapping my head around. CHA is supposed to represent how charming a character is, or how much of a natural-born leader they are, but there are already skills like Charm or Orate!
Moreover, figuring out when CHA rolls can be used is particularly important if you consider spells like Glamour or Charisma. You have combat Rune spells that can double your weapon skill or more, but these two spells only gives you, like, a +15% bonus to communication skills or something? How is that worth casting when you can get more for free with a simple augment? These CHA-boosting spells must be good for something, right?
I couldn’t figure out when it was ever OK to use CHA rolls until I checked the “Skill and Ability Time” section (RuneQuest page 139). Skills like Fast-Talk or Bargain usually take a minute or more, according to this list, and skills like Charm take 5 minutes or more. So one way to look at it is that a CHA roll is for anything that’s faster than all of these: between a few seconds and a melee round. CHA is how you get things done quick: getting past a guard (unless the guard is bored or patient enough to listen to someone yap for two minutes!), getting some bystanders to help during an action scene (the character probably only spends one round on this!), or postponing an execution (“wait, no, don’t kill him yet, there’s something you need to know!”).
So in my opinion CHA is what makes people pay attention to you. With a very high CHA, you can get people to look at you, to listen to you, or to follow you… but then you have to back it up with actual skill. You might have gotten the King’s attention, but you have to follow it up with an Orate or Battle roll to convince him that an alliance with the Telmori is needed to win. You might have gotten the soldiers to follow you in a surprise flank maneuver, but you have to show some fighting prowess or they will lose faith and retreat. You might have postponed the execution, only to find your arguments rejected and the prisoner beheaded.
Success At A Cost
There are still situations where a player might ask for a characteristic roll instead of a skill roll. In my Call of Cthulhu days, this might happen because of a dramatic scene in a previous session in which I made a ruling on the fly to roll some characteristic to make things interesting… only to realize that it set a precedent of sorts!
So I started to consider characteristic rolls as “less good” than skills rolls. By definition, they often represent a “brute” approach to problem solving, rather than one based on knowledge and experience. The idea is to make characteristic rolls a good fallback plan, but keep skills as the best thing you can use. In this approach, characteristic rolls would have the following downsides:
Obviously, succeeding with a characteristic roll doesn’t give you an experience check. You don’t learn from the experience.
A successful characteristic roll should be a “success at a cost”, i.e. a success that isn’t as good as a success with a equivalent skill (if any).
So for example:
Kicking down a door would alert a guard, while lock-picking it would not.
Keeping your balance on a boat with a DEXx3 roll might still give you a small penalty to all rolls. By comparison, succeeding with a Boat roll, showing actual experience with sailing, would remove all penalties.
I generally don’t have to think about these things unless they come up with a specific player. If we take the example of the adventurers being on a boat, I might start with a DEX roll to keep their balance, only to realize that one adventurer has the Boat skill, and the others don’t. I would probably want to give that player an advantage for that, therefore adjusting the ruling on the fly to make DEX rolls not as good.
Do you have examples of using characteristic rolls in interesting ways? Please share them!
If you have any comment about this Runic Rant, or some ideas for a future installment, please send them to us!
Welcome to a new issue of the Journal of Runic Studies, the premier Malkioni publication for studies into the nature of Glorantha. If you haven’t subscribed yet, please consult with the spirit bound to the appropriate electronic page.
This week I was fighting the spirits of Mallia so this issue of the Journal might not be as complete or insightful as usual. It’s usually insightful, right? I hope it is… you wouldn’t believe the sort of review processes we have here. Malkioni castes like their 360 Feedback, you know.
I’m getting close to releasing my first Jonstown Compendium book, a simple adventure called “A Short Detour” which also contains a not-so-simple deep dive into the nature of Chaos. I hope you will all like it!
And yes, it’s here at the top, instead of in the Jonstown Compendium section, because it’s my book and my newsletter and I should be allowed some selfish promotion once in a while!
Chaosium News
Here are this week’s Chaosium news!
ImpCon 4
Chaosium’s Impromptu Convention 4 happened this week-end, and was a pretty nice way to connect with the rest of the tribe as usual. There’s not much to say since Chaosium is politely asking everybody to just keep the magic to themselves — ImpCons are just coming and going, like a Dimensional Shambler at the scene of a crime, or like Jar-eel in a Sartarite heroquest.
The next convention should be Chaosium Con, and I hope the pandemic situation won’t prevent me from attending… it’s not looking great in the US right now though.
ChaosiumCon VIP Sessions
Speaking of ChaosiumCon, Chaosium has posted a list of the “VIP Sessions” for it. It shouldn’t be a surprise that the list includes RuneQuest sessions by Jason Durall and Jeff Richard.
The QuestWorld rulebook is off to copy editing, and with a slogan like “2022 is going to be the year of Questworlds!“, we can potentially expect to see the new game this year.
The new ruleset is best described as HeroQuest 2.3 (check out the SRD here), but the rulebook will be a generic system, with only a few “example” settings. No Glorantha in there, sorry, but I’m sure it will be easy to do some light tweaks on the existing HeroQuest Glorantha to play with the updated rules… that is, if that currently out-of-print book is rebranded and re-released.
Jonstown Compendium
The Jonstown Compendium is Chaosium’s community content program for all Gloranthan games, hosted on DriveThruRPG. Disclaimer: all the relevant links are affiliate links that hopefully will let us cover some of the hosting and maintenance costs for the website and podcast! Thanks for using them!
Dario Corallo has more cardboard monsters for the new year! I believe that some are using illustrations you’ve already seen in his art packs, while others are new drawings. Eitherway, they are meant for table play, but can easily be converted into VTT tokens, even though they are drawn from the side and not the top.
Mikael Mansen continues to churn out the maps. There are multiple new generic settlement maps, and a close-up of Griffin Mountain (pictured above).
Jeff’s Notes
Jeff Richard, the current mastermind on everything Gloranthan at Chaosium, is often posting notes and thoughts on the RuneQuest Facebook group. Here’s our curated list from the past week. A partial archive of these sources is compiled on the Well of Daliath.
Tarsh was settled by two very different waves of colonists. The first was the largest. These were settlers from the area traditionally called Saird (modern Holay, Aggar, Imther, and Vanch) that came to Dragon Pass in the aftermath of the Conquering Daughter.
It’s easy to get lost with all the history and all the names so let’s bring out the AAA maps:
Sartar is in the bottom right corner (you can see Runegate there). You can see the faint Glowline extend up to around Furthest, and covering some of Tarsh (dividing it between the colonized “Lunar Tarsh”, and the “Old Tarsh” of the rebels who stay close to the Shaker Temple and Wintertop. In the north is Glamour and the heart of the Lunar Empire.
You can also now spot the places Jeff mentioned, from where the original Tarsh settlers came before they moved close to Kero Fin. This happened around 1330, when the aforementioned Conquering Daughter did the aforementioned conquering of Holay. Her real name was Hwarin Dalthippa, and she was a daughter of the first Red Emperor (it seems a bit more complicated than that but I don’t understand all the nuances yet… bear with me). If you’ve see the “Daughter’s Road” on the map, she’s the one who got that built.
Now the distances involved are not very great – it is only about 150 km from Filichet to Bagnot – which meant it was easy for waves of settlers to travel with their herds and families into what became Tarsh.
Saird in the First Wane would have been a collection of chieftains and petty cities at the frontier of Dragon-haunted Dragon Pass, loosely united into the Kynnelfing Alliance. Generations before many had fought for Jannisor. The people were farmers with herds of sheep and cattle. The people were mostly Orlanth Thunderous or Adventurous types, with a large minority of Yelmalio cultists and other Lightbringers. However, they had centuries of sustained cultural interchange and trade with Dara Happa – Yelm was viewed as a more or less equal contender with Orlanth for rulership of the world and for the love of Ernalda.
The “Dragon-haunted Dragon Pass” is because at this time, Dragon Pass would have still been in the Inhuman Occupation. That’s the period of time when no humans lived there, after the Dragonkill War of 1120 had the dragons kill most of them, and got the rest to flee. The area was resettled more or less simultaneously by the Grazelanders (from Prax in the east), the Tarshites (from Saird in the north), and the Orlanthi (from Heortland in the south).
The Kynnelfing Alliance was the Holay Orlanthi kings’ alliance that tried to resist the Conquering Daughter… and failed. Jannisor, one of the rebel heroes, even came pretty close to invading the city of Glamour itself in 1275. Interestingly enough, he was allied with the Sable Riders of Prax at the time, because they had some kind of immunity to the Lunars’ powers… but the Lunars knew of the deeper connection between the “Lunar Deer” and the Red Goddess, and turned the Sable Riders against Jannisor. That’s when the Sable Tribe started their long tradition of working with the Lunar Empire!
By 1450, these Orlanth Thunderous types had settled a broad belt alongside the Oslira and Black Eel rivers, up to Shakeland and Wintertop and then hopping over the River to the Far Point and the Donalf Flats. A powerful Orlanth Rex dynasty based at Bagnot had ruled over them for over a hundred years, but the dynasty was killed without heir in 1448. After a civil war, a new dynasty from Wintertop was crowned in Bagnot.
The “powerful Orlanth Rex dynasty” is the legacy of Arim the Pauper (who led the Holay exiles south and founded Tarsh in the first place) and Sorana Tor (some sort of Earth Goddess found at the foot of Kero Fin). Their kids started the “Twin Dynasty”, which is what ended in 1448. The civil war lasted until 1538 when Palashee Long Axe took power and allied Tarsh with Sartar, but he was killed in 1555 and Tarsh has been a Lunar Provincial Kingdom ever since.
These settlements would have been indistinguishable from those in Holay, Aggar, or Imther. Wheat and barley would be the main crops, pigs, sheep, and cattle the main livestock. Villages were initially unwalled, but the dynasts built many fortresses and walls after 1375 and unwalled villages were rare by the time of the civil war.
Saird itself is mostly riverine plains surrounded by a bowl of hills maybe 75 km by 140 km in dimension. Think something like the Pannonian Basin around Budapest. Building techniques would be heavily influenced by Dara Happa (just as in Sartar they are heavily influenced by Esrolia).
I’m not going to start looking up architecture differences between Dara Happa and Esrolia, but I’m going to hazard a guess that the former has more golden tall phallic structures, while the latter has more colourful square buildings.
Beneath the dynasts and priestly lineages at Shaker Temple or Haruvernalda, most folk would belong to free settler families or their unfree slaves (taken in war with the Lunar Provinces or the nomads). However, between these groups were an influential class of mounted warriors (“thanes”) who gained power, wealth, and status in the wars against the nomads of Peloria. Cavalry mainly took the form of heavy, close combat cavalry backed up by light scouts and horse archers.
I’ve got no idea what Haruvernalda is, but I had heard about the “rise of the thane” in Orlanthi society. After almost a century of fighting Sheng Seleris’ Pentian nomads, it was pretty well known around the Lunar Empire that people on horseback can kick some severe ass. So surely a few people started getting the idea of doing the same… possibly just to look cool at first, but quickly because they realized horses are damn useful. And that’s why your thane of Apple Lane now has a fancy title and a fancy mount!
The answer is the Seven Mothers, either collectively or individually. About 24% of the population in the Heartlands belong to the cult. All of the other Lunar cults total about 10% of the population. So a little more than a third of the population in the Heartlands belong to Lunar cults (we are talking more than the minimal lay member rites).
I assume that another third of the population would be lay members, if not more.
The next biggest cult in the Heartlands is Lodril at about 14%. In third is the Grain Goddess Oria at about 10%.
So where is Yelm, you might ask? The Yelm cult is very magically, socially, and politically important, but it is comparatively small numbering about 4% of the population.
As far as I know, only the powerful noble families with lineages dating back a few centuries have true Yelm initiates and priests… most other people are lay members.
Dendara is at about 5% overall. And Shargash and Polaris are each no more than about 2%.
Dendara is Yelm’s wife apparently, but I have no idea what she actually does. The other two are war gods of the sky pantheon.
And again, Tarsh resembles the Lunar Heartlands in that about 25% of the population follow the Seven Mothers and 10% follow Hon-eel. Where it gets VERY different is the rest of the population largely follow Lightbringer gods and their associates.
Initiates are those who have experienced the cult’s magical secrets. They are able to act as conduits for the deity and wield its Rune magic. That is a deep connection, like being married or the member of a family – it is not something that is done casually.
Casual members are lay members – those are the folk that show up to the worship ceremonies and feasts, learn some spirit magic and skills from the cult, but might have a deeper tie with another cult.
Lay members are here for the free t-shirts and the cheap hot-dogs. Initiates have to hand out the t-shirts and cook the hot-dogs.
Associate members are initiates of one cult who can participate in the magical secrets of another, closely connected cult. They might even have special roles in that closely connected cult. As a result they have a deeper magical connection with the other cult than mere lay members, even though technically they are not actually members of that cult. A good example would be the tie between Issaries, Chalana Arroy, Lhankor Mhy and Orlanth, or between Orlanth and Ernalda.
Another example might be Babeester Gor initiates taking part in Ernalda’s ceremonies as guardians.
In some communities most members of a cult are initiates or associate members – think like the members of the Orlanth cult in an Orlanthi clan or the Pavis cult in the Real City. In other communities, most members of a cult are lay members – think the Pavis cult in New Pavis or Pavis County.
As of 1626, there are about 25,650 humans residing in Pavis County – this includes Argrath’s companions but does not include those nomadic bands that might winter in Pavis County. There are about 19,000 humans residing in Sun County.
The biggest cults are: – Ernalda 5325 (with another 4375 who are mere initiates of the Grain Goddess for a total of 9700) – Yelmalio 4900 (575 in Pavis County and 4375 in Sun County) – Orlanth 4700 (all in Pavis County) – Zola Fel 3500 (1500 in Pavis County and 2000 in Sun County) – Pavis himself has about 1000 initiates.
Now Orlanth punches higher than that, if you add the 650 Humakti and 550 Storm Bull cultists in Pavis County (many of whom are sworn to Argrath), and the other Lightbringer cults. But it does give you an idea of the relative numbers of the various cults. Post the Liberation of Pavis, the Seven Mothers cult is very small, only about 500 members, and all in Pavis County).
I don’t have much to say about this whole thing, so here’s a wall of Jeff quotes… sorry!
For a point of comparison, in all all of Sartar (including Far Point and Sun County County) there are 6525 Yelmalio cultists. Of that, 2700 are in Sun Dome County and 1725 in the Far Point. There are more Yelmalio cultists in New Pavis than in Alda-Chur, but the Alda-Churi can also call on the 1000 Yelmalio cultists in the Vantaros tribe.
So let’s just ignore the Yelmalio cult in Tarsh, and focus on the cult in Sartar and Civilised Prax.
The cult in Sartar is about a quarter bigger and is definitely richer. The Sun Dome Templars in Sartar are definitely more militarily skilled and disciplined. But they also must deal with a far more powerful and established Orlanth cult. It may be autonomous, but generally the Sun Dome is an ally of the Prince of Sartar. In Sartar, the Sun Dome and Varntaros are effectively just two more tribes among many.
The cult in Civilised Prax is smaller, but can approach the Orlanth cult as a peer. They are objectively weaker than the Sun Dome templars in Sartar but compared to their neighbours they are much stronger. They can be far more independent and autonomous than their kin in Sartar. And within Sun County, the cult is far more dominant than in Sartar. In Sun County, the traditional “Ernalda cult” is effectively a Grain Goddess cult and is long-tied to Yelmalio – but in Sartar, the Ernalda cult can always call upon the Orlanth cult for protection and support, and has ties to Esrolia.
So even though they are the same cult, worshiping the same god with the same myths and rules, the cults behave differently.
That being said, Sun Dome County in Sartar maintains close religious and cultural ties to Sun County in civilised Prax. Two of the last three counts of Sun County have been Sartarite, and Yelmalio cult in Sun County was among the first to follow Monrogh’s vision (after the Sun Dome itself).
A final thought, that island of just under 5000 Yelmalio cultists exists in a sea of Praxian nomads. Many of them also worship Yelmalio, although no doubt the cult is adapted for nomadic life (the came into Prax in the Second Age). There are some 15,000 nomads in Prax and the Wastes that follow Yelmalio, two thirds of them from the Impala Tribe.
Now that doesn’t mean that the Impala Riders don’t raid or threaten Sun County – tribal identity often overrides cult identity. But it does mean that like among the Orlanthi, they follow rules of honor.
And although that sounds like a big number, remember the nomads are spread throughout Prax and the Wastes, at a very low general density. And those Yelmalions belong to tribes dominated by over 60,000 Waha cultists (there are also another 19,000 Orlanth cultists among the tribes).
As an aside, here’s the Big Rubble’s population:
The Big Rubble has several other cults of importance:
There are about 250 “others”, from baboons to dragonewts to ogres and whatever.
If you’re wondering why there are so few Troll gods initiates given the big Troll population of the Big Rubble, don’t forget that two-thirds of that population are lowly trollkins. Jeff has a rule of thumb for that, actually:
As a general rule, for any group of 100 “trolls”, the assumption is that there are roughly:
– 20 adult dark trolls – 8 immature dark trolls – 4 Great Trolls – 3 Cave Trolls – 65 Trollkin
Some communities have few great trolls or cave trolls, some more. But this is the benchmark.
The dwarfs are an often underestimated and underrepresented Elder Race. In Sartar, they arguably played a bigger role than any other major Elder Race. They built the walls of Sartar’s cities, the Pockets of Boldhome, and built the initial King’s Road between Boldhome and Jonstown (in particular the incredible path through the Quivin Mountains).
And yes, Chaosium writes “dwarfs” sometimes and “dwarves” other times. It looks like they settled on the former for the new RuneQuest line, though.
Dwarfs might look more like humans than aldryami or trolls do, but they are more distinctly alien. Only the dragonewts are considered more mysterious and enigmatic.
Unaging, secretive, and possessing incredible skills and lore unknown to the rest of Glorantha, the dwarves view trolls and aldryami as implacable enemies and humans as fast-breeding pests.
Lovely. Thankfully, the dwarfs who live near Dragon Pass often adhere to Openhandism, which means they openly trade and interact with non-dwarf races (mostly humans). This is because they believe they can get us to help them repair the cosmos that was broken during the Gods War… so your dwarf NPCs will be mean and grumpy and weird and alien, but they’ll be there talking to your players!
Jeff then adds this on dwarf history in the Third Age, starting from the Dragonkill War which we already mentioned previously:
The danger from the human empires was largely broken in 1120, but the dwarfs were incredibly weak. Greatway was the most important stronghold in central Genertela, and the dwarfs were extremely risk adverse, needing to rebuild. So things start off with the elves trying to reclaim the Pass from 1120 to 1150. Reinforced by Brown Elves from the Old Woods, the Stinking Forest expands to the Indigo Mountains (as well as down the Dragonspine).
Around 1150 the trolls, aided by the half-trolls, defeat the Marching Forest with beetles, poison gas, and spirits. The angry ghosts of the elves still haunt the Deadwoods. And around 1180 the trolls and half-trolls fought.
Of note, the players in one of my campaigns have freed up the Deadwoods from their curse! So it should start growing back now. You can bet the trolls are going to be pissed.
After that came the dark troll period of supremacy, which was broken in 1222 by the dragonewts. Also around 1240 the trolls distract themselves by defeating the Praxians and conquering Pavis. After that the Grazers and Beast People have their period of importance. Which lasts until about 1320 when the Orlanthi return to reclaim Dragon Pass.
The dwarfs did not stir until after 1240 or so, until the trolls sacked Pavis, with its dwarf secrets. Sometime before 1490, the trolls made an assault on the Door That Goes Nowhere in the Three Little Giant Mountains. The Dwarfs were forced to temporarily withdraw from Door Mountain, sealing it off from the rest of the Greatway.
Jeff shared this map to illustrate what the Door That Goes Nowhere might be:
The origin point of the Giant’s Walk being the Giant Stairs at Door Mountain has been on maps even since Trollpak at least, but this Door to Nowhere seems new. I guess it makes sense that there’s a door on Door Mountain, but it’s interesting that it might be where giants come from.
Meanwhile The Dwarf decides to ally with the Orlanthi and lends his aid to Sartar. Dwarfs build Sartar’s cities and roads. This is the typical dwarf response – use the humans as a counterweight to the trolls.
The capitalized Dwarf mentioned here is probably Isidilian The Wise, a.k.a. The Dwarf of Dwarf Mine, one of the friendliest dwarfs in the world. He’s very very old, having been “forged” before the Dawn, and has been a supporter of the House of Sartar for most of the kingdom’s history… until:
But to the dwarfs’ surprise, Saronil stole dwarf secrets and used them to build the Orlanth Temple. The dwarfs withdraw from direct aid of Sartar, but the damage has already been done. The Sartarites took the secrets of stonemasonry and other crafts. And although they certainly fought with the trolls, they tended to fight the wrong ones.
You’d think the dwarfs would give up on humans and turn back to their underground works, but hey, don’t underestimate how much they hate the trolls:
And so the dwarfs make contact with other humans as well. Other humans who will fight trolls and keep the Sartarites from exploiting the dwarf secrets they stole. But it is important to remember that the dwarfs really don’t give a damn about human theologies and politics, and probably have great difficulty telling them apart.
The Elder Race can’t help but fight each other and waste their resources. The humans are viewed by all the Elder Races as untrustworthy bit players. The other Elder Races are the real foes. Thousands of years of hatred and conflict, between species with some very long lived rulers.
A few more notes:
In Boldhome, the dwarfs have a sealed-up complex, called the Inviolate Dwarf Palace. Dwarf constructs are sometimes seen deep in the Pockets.
And:
The most commonly encountered dwarfs are rock and copper dwarfs, especially in Boldhome and New Pavis (dwarfs are not an uncommon sight in either city). Most humans think of dwarfs as small miners, bronze workers, and stoneworkers, capable of amazing craftsmanship.
But the dwarfs nearest the Lunar Empire are not Openhandist and far less friendly than The Dwarf. So Sartar has likely gotten far more dwarf gifts than the Lunar Empire has in its entire history.
Remember, Dwarf Mine and Greatway are the center of Openhandism in Glorantha.
Community Roundup
The community roundup is our highlight of interesting things being mentioned in the Glorantha-related Facebook groups, sub-Reddits, and other similar online places.
Richard Helliwell of Infinity Engine has posted some sneak peek at an upcoming Arkat miniature, which I’m sure will delight Arkat fanboys like Bud from Bud’s RPG Reviews. The sculpt looks absolutely fantastic, and seems directly inspired by this amazing illustration from the Glorantha Sourcebook:
For our third episode of our Initiation Series, we interview Erin McGuire, who was only supposed to play RuneQuest for one night, but hasn’t stopped for the past couple years, and is now possibly an heir to the throne of Sartar. These things happen, you know.
Erin is part of the Beer With Teeth collective, who has published numerous supplements for RuneQuest on the Jonstown Compendium, and now works with Chaosium on “official” books.
Erin is also part of the Society for Creative Anachronism, which most of the creators of RuneQuest were also part of themselves a long time ago.
Welcome to a new issue of the Journal of Runic Studies, the premier Malkioni publication for studies into the nature of Glorantha. If you haven’t subscribed yet, please consult with the spirit bound to the appropriate electronic page.
This week I wrapped up one of my “Goonies in Glorantha” campaigns, with the second playtest group reaching the end next week. This is exciting: all adventurers have gone through adulthood initiation, ready for the shenanigans of cattle raiding and cult initiations. I hope to write this whole thing for the Jonstown Compendium… fingers crossed.
This is part 2 of last week’s video where James Coquillat interviews Jeff Richard about what he’s working on. Here’s the summary:
After the cults book is the Sartar Homeland boxed set, which is also project that blew up in scale and size. It’s not certain yet that it will be a boxed set (especially in these times of cardboard shortage), but that’s what Chaosium is trying hard to achieve.
There is new material on the House of Sartar.
There are guidelines for creating your own clan, guild, or temple, including Pendragon-like management mechanics.
Andrew Logan Montgomery (author of Six Seasons in Sartar and Company of the Dragon) has worked with Jeff on character adulthood initiations and the following apprenticeship years (also known as “the Ordeal”).
Boldhome gets described in detail, and there’s a “campaign” booklet which goes season by season between 1625 to 1627 where the adventurers are based out of the capital city but have opportunities to participate in all the big events of the “official” timeline.
The Dragon Pass gazetteer is there too, with the full poster-size map that Matt Ryan has done, and that we got a partial look at in the Starter Set.
Other books include the Gamemaster Guide book, Return to Snakepipe Hollow, Pavis & Big Rubble by Robin Laws, Sun Dome County (the one in Sartar, not the one in Prax) by Jonathan Webb, and some Prax Homeland book.
The video game that was teased a while ago is still going on, and apparently taking up a lot of Jeff’s time.
The reprint of the board games (White Bear & Red Moon and Nomad Gods) is still an ongoing project. Chaosium is considering having Loic Muzy redo all the counters.
As we continue to follow the Gamemaster’s Month initiative that helps new GMs to run a game of RuneQuest, you might want to learn about the whole concept from either Chaosium or the actual project site, which will also give you the links to the Discord or Facebook groups where you can chat with other new GMs – whether new to GMing at all, or new to GMing your system of choice for this year’s project.
For lesson 3 in the course, the general lesson to the GM is to relay, and to think more about creating a game flow than to get the rules exactly right, and all the RuneQuest section asks for some re-reading of the rules after you have played through the solo adventure.
This is followed by a closer look at the first adventure new gamemasters are suposed to run. In RuneQuest’s case, that is “A Rough Landing” of course, the first adventure in the Starter Set.
ImpCon Coming Soon?
Chaosium’s online “impromptu” conventions are possibly coming back on January 22nd. Jeff Richard just tested the waters on Facebook, but given the amount of positive replies, there’s a good chance it might happen.
Who’d be up for an Impromptu Con on the 22nd? And how about if it was noonish in the US and evening in the EU/UK?
So my thought is to have a chat on RQ, a discussion of heroquesting and the heroquest rules in progress, and maybe something on the setting (how Sartar works, Boldhome, etc.). Happy to have any proposals for ideas!
It’s not official yet so don’t get too upset if the date moves or if it doesn’t happen at all, but put a tentative event on your calendar just in case!
In the September 1978 issue of Alarums & Excursions #37 Steve Perrin laid out, in a very bare bones fashion how RuneQuest, Chaosium’s first RPG, blazed a new trail away from the main RPG that dominated the market. RuneQuest offered a stark contrast to what many players perceived as the one true way to play a game: Experience points, Levels, Fighters can’t cast spells, Magic-users can’t wear armor, and Clerics can’t use edged weapons. RuneQuest turned that world upside down or simply chose to ignore it. Almost 44 years later, we want to share how Steve explained it all those years ago, so here is that article in its entirety
Check Chaosium’s blog for the article in question, complete with an early method for converting D&D characters to RuneQuest, campaign ideas, typesetting issues, and what the hell is a “buck roll”!
I played through Griffin Mountain in the summer of 1981 shortly after it was published. It’s my favorite RuneQuest campaign. Here’s the story about how Griffin Mountain came to be. As luck would have it, the actual original layout still exists, and is part of our company archives.
Some of the backstory behind Griffin Mountain was already included in the introductions by Rudy, Jennell, and Greg, but Rick provides a whole new look at this classic campaign, complete with multiple photos of exclusive Chaosium archives’ items. Go check it out!
Jeff’s Notes
Jeff Richard, the current mastermind on everything Gloranthan at Chaosium, is often posting notes and thoughts on the RuneQuest Facebook group. Here’s our curated list from the past week. A partial archive of these sources is compiled on the Well of Daliath.
So often when we talk about heroquesting, it is in the context of gaining power, defeating a foe, exploring the mythic realms, learning magical secrets, and so on. Not surprising – that is the heroquests of the God Learners and of the post-Red Goddess Lunars. Such quests require knowledge, preparation, and magical power. They can achieve great things, but some theorize that the universe itself begins to react against them. Such heroquesters become trapped in Arachne Solara’s web unless they are very careful and respectful of what they do and where they tread.
Of course there are other more powerful contexts for heroquesting. One is desperate personal need. When one has lost everything and can lose nothing more, Arachne Solara herself shows a path through the wilderness. Such quests require true need and desperation – like that of the Red Goddess.
But the most powerful context is that of cosmic necessity. When the cosmos itself needs the hero lest part or all be destroyed by Chaos. Such quests are aided by Glorantha herself – or at least by her ghost. Some priests speculate that the full Lightbringers Quest requires both desperate personal need and cosmic necessity.
I’m gonna assume that “cosmic necessity” can work at various levels, for various levels of heroquesting and heroic gifts. A simple clan could be in dire “cosmic need”, just as the entirety of Sartar or Dragon Pass can also be in “cosmic need”… if only so that adventurers can go on justified mythic journeys appropriate for whatever is going on in the campaign at the time.
And this is why those who treat heroquests primarily as materialistic means to wrest power from the divine realm are doomed. And also why those with desperate personal need combined with cosmic necessity succeed on quests far greater than anything in the God Learners imagination.
If your players are heroquesting in order to minmax their characters, you have full license to mess them up! Yay!
The cosmos itself has spirit and/or intelligence. Call it Glorantha, Arachne Solara, Ginna Jar, or the Invisible God, but Glorantha is not a clockwork thing.
Unless you are a mostali. Then it obviously is.
Call it Glorantha, Arachne Solara, or The Gamemaster. Whichever it is, they’re going to come up with appropriate consequences!
There are some interesting parallels with elements of the 12-steps of AA or NA in some of the personal desperation quests. Common to both the Lightbringers Quest and the Red Goddess quest is a point where the quester is lost and defeated and must accept that. Only then can they continue.
Now of course, no good God Learner is going to find that an easy thing to do.
You can find these 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) and Narcotics Anonymous (NA) easily online, but I think Jeff is mostly referring to the classic narrative structure of the protagonist hitting a low point, acknowledging their flaws, going through some kind of transformation, and emerging victorious in their new state. I don’t imagine the God Learners did that: they probably just went through the motions to reach the God Time and then “fucked around and found out”.
The point is that not only is not every heroquest even, but not every motivation for a heroquest is even. Some motivations and psychological situations are more likely to produce results than others.
Most of those people permanently reside in the cities – Boldhome, Jonstown, Swenstown, and Wilmskirk – and might have for generations. They are nonetheless members of their tribes.
For example, in Boldhome an approximate breakdown is as follows: Aranwyth 350 Balkoth 200 Balmyr 350 Cinsina 500 Colymar 550 Culbrea 550 Dinacoli 150 Dundealos 250 Kheldon 900 Kultain 150 Lismelder 100 Locaem 200 Malani 300 Sambarri 350 Telmori 450 Torkani 300 Alone 200 Aldachur 350 Other 300
Note that these numbers are typically in addition to any tribal population numbers mentioned for a given tribe’s lands. So for instance, when the Gamemaster Adventures mentions that the Colymar tribe has about 12,300 people, that’s for their own tribal lands, and doesn’t include the 550 people living over in Boldhome (with possibly more elsewhere in other cities).
Also, of these 12,300 people living in Colymar lands, not all would actually belong to the Colymar tribe: spouses, expats, and guests from other tribes would make up several hundred people among that population.
The numbers in Boldhome are big: the Colymar living in Boldhome, for instance, outnumber entire clans that live in Colymar tribal lands… so their influence can’t be underestimated: when there’s a Colymar tribal meeting, there could be a whole bunch of expats from Boldhome and other cities showing up with their fancy clothes and sophisticated gifts, arguing for their own urban-driven agendas. The rural/urban divide isn’t just a modern political problem when you consider the urbanization rate of Dragon Pass!
Aha, you might say – that only totals up to 6500 people. But you have already said there are 10,000 humans in Boldhome!
Well, 3500 people in Boldhome, more than a third, aren’t Sartarite. About 2000 come from the Holy Country – say 700 from Esrolia, 1000 from Heortland, and 300 from the rest (probably mainly Caladraland). And another 1500 come from elsewhere – Grazelands, Prax, and Tarsh mainly.
There are also 1000 members of the Elder Races in Boldhome. The largest group are trolls – 675, although 300 are trollkin. There are also 200 elves in the city.
And just outside the city in the mountains are 2000 dragonewts.
Remember that Dragon Pass is a big crossroads, with a very diverse population who all have reasons to be there. Are there tensions between humans and non-humans, or between different tribes and kinship groups, ranging from petty bigotry to downright hate crimes and violence? You bet! But then again, that’s nothing new when it comes to big cities, and will hopefully be the source of many of your scenarios:
So you can see than the Kheldon actually have almost a 20% of their total numbers in Boldhome – 900 in the city and 4000 in their tribal lands. This is why the tribal manors are so important – they are places where tribesmembers can go to resolve disputes with other tribal members and where they can get support in any dispute that might need to go to the Prince.
So if your adventurer is a member of the Colymar tribe, there’s a good chance she has kin in Boldhome. And not just a few, the average Colymar clan would have 46 members in Boldhome.
When you write scenarios in Boldhome, here’s what the very high-level view looks like:
Thus in Boldhome, the Kheldon tribe are the most numerous and powerful tribe within the city. A distant second are the Culbrea and Colymar tribes, and third place is the Cinsina. Fourth place are actually the Telmori.
Everyone else is small potatoes. And periodically people have to be reminded that the Lismelder are a tribe (“the who?”).
I love the Telmori. They throw a wrench into whatever preconceptions players might have about what constitutes a Sartarite tribe. My second favourite are the Torkani, who also do that in a slightly less shocking way…
Telmori still exist as a tribe. Whether Sartar’s Peace can be reconstituted now that there is a new Prince is another question. The Telmori have not been enrolled as Kallyr’s royal bodyguard – the massacre of the Maboder and other Telmori depredations plus Jomes Wulf and the brutal reprisals against the Telmori are a lot to just sweep under the rug.
Playing a Telmori campaign where they are trying to get back in the good graces of the Prince would be interesting: they would need to justify their claims over the now vacated Wulfsland, show good faith by running missions from the Prince or for the Jonstown Confederation (we touched a bit on that in our last podcast episode), and demonstrate enough honour that Telmori bodyguards are a thing again… potentially the adventurers themselves!
Oh, and if you wonder what these Boldhome Telmori do on Wildday, when they transform into wolves, Jeff says that they stay in their tribal caves… I wonder what would happen if some bad agent was to let them out and use that as a proof that they can’t be trusted?
In Storm Season 1625, Prince Kallyr Starbrow summoned an assembly in Boldhome. Before the assembled citizens of many tribes, she formally made the Lightbringers’ Summons.
Chaos stalks my world. Broos have bruised me, the Hand has pawed me. I have taken up the impossible path, And seek those who must aid my task. You are not the first of my friends. Others walked with me to Heal. The Devil took them, they died. I failed to save them, Chaos grows.
According to the Book of Heortling Mythology (so take this with a pinch of salt and don’t hesitate to ignore it and make other stuff up), this is how Chalana Arroy summoned Orlanth and his friends in the God Time. Either way, it’s indeed a little speech that Lightbringer cultists, and Orlanth priests in particular, are pretty much obligated to answer, or run the risk of losing any favours with their deities. I think it only applies to Rune Level initiates, though.
But hey, remember the Proximate Holy Realm that was discussed last week? I wonder if the Lightbringers’ Summons, the Wind Lord Challenges (RQG p301), and other such “obligations”, might be part of what maintains this Proximate Holy Realm?
Any master of one of the seven Lightbringer cults must answer the legitimate call of the summons or lose all power and benefit of their god. The priests and lords present in Boldhome answer the call:
I hear and stand before you, But I am only one. What would you have of me?
Kallyr proclaims that to stop Chaos and restore the world, she and her companions shall perform the Lightbringers’ Quest during Sacred Time, and that all who answer her summons shall aid her in the massive ceremonies and rituals that will bring the Gods World in proximity with the mundane realm. Some respond enthusiastically; other priests and lords reluctantly, fearing the dangers and consequences of the ritual.
Now I want you to imagine how radical an event that was. Although components of the Lightbringers’ Quest are incorporated into Sacred Time celebrations, that is not what the Prince is proposing – she wants to perform the LBQ herself. No Sartarite leader has tried that at this scale – not Sartar, not Tarkalor, not even desperate Salinarg.
She’ll need the support of thousands to bring the divine realm into proximity, and she’ll need magical items, spirits, and blessings – and that support won’t be available for the usual needs.
I already mentioned how it’s quite unclear to me how much “magical support” you need to go on a heroquest…. can you start an LBQ with a piece of string and two sticks? Would it not work at all, or would it be a hundred times more dangerous and unstable than if you had entire tribes behind you?
Anyway, in this case, the tribes are being asked to provide support, which would divert resources from their own Sacred Time ceremonies to improve harvests and pregnancies and whatever… and many of these tribes have paid dearly for Kallyr’s violent rebellion against the Lunars.
But it is a valid Lightbringer Summons by someone with the authority to give it to all the tribes. So what do you do? What do you urge your kin to do?
Jeff adds a few comments for context:
However, it is worth keeping in mind that at this time, [Kallyr] has been Prince for no more than two seasons. Her last liberation of Sartar lasted just about this long. There are other tribal leaders and warlords who barely acknowledge her authority, and there is another warlord in Prax with an army of nomads.
So it is a damn high stakes play for someone without a lot of cards. No room for error, and everyone knows it.
But she’s succeeded in unlikely circumstances before, and she IS Prince. So what do you do?
And:
Regardless of the success or failure of her quest, the magical energies summoned successfully brought the divine realm into proximity with Sartar, at least for the duration of Sacred Time. Hers was not the only heroquest that took place during those two weeks!
By definition, everybody is heroquesting in some form or other during Sacred Time, but I assume Jeff is referring to Argrath here.
Now Kallyr tries to limit the dangers of the Lightbringers Quest by truncating its most dangerous parts, by having stand-ins at key points and containing it within her realm. She does not go to the Western Shore – people will carry her on shell-back, and others will represent the Luathelans. She hardly enters the Underworld, keeping the path to what she knows. And the ritual will culminate in the Royal Palace of Boldhome, with a polluted statue representing Wakboth (to be destroyed ritually by the participants).
Having stand-ins for as many figures as possible is actually a great tactic: my players did exactly that for their first heroquest in one of my campaigns, and it severely reduced the risks (at least as long as they picked people who could truly identify with the figure they’re supposed to stand-in for). They still had a few surprises of course, but it was an interesting exercise in improvisation.
But the Bad Rain needs to be summoned, and various foes and enemies are summoned by the magic. The dangers are real – just mitigated, hopefully.
We have already discussed the Bad Rain, which is what happens when Orlanth is brooding, thinking of how his mistakes brought the Great Darkness and all its monsters… and so you’ve got monsters literally showing up.
The idea is that by bringing the divine realm into proximity, even these stand-ins will successfully bring magic into the world. This approach was common to many heroquests in Dragon Pass or the Lunar Empire (an example of it was in Cults of Prax, with a Yelmalio Rune Lord performing the Three Blows of Anger). Perform the quest as a ritual within the Proximate Holy Realm, and it should bring forth the intended magic without as much danger.
What she did not know is that Jar-eel had learned how to use that Proximate Holy Realm as a highway, and that she could enter among the stand-ins. This came as quite a shock to Kallyr and her household (although it is something that Argrath was already aware of, having encountered that in the past and even exploited it to his advantage on several occasions).
Now if we go back to how heroquests are best performed (when you’re at rock bottom), we can see why Kallyr’s LBQ didn’t start with the best chances:
Kallyr pushes for the LBQ at the very height of her power. Argrath tries at its nadir.
Sacred Time, 1625
By now, most people (even the newbies) will have gone one to 1626 or 1627 at least, but if you want to start another campaign, Jeff has some ideas:
Because of the magical energies released as part of the preparations for the Lightbringers Quest (and perhaps because of the awakening of a True Dragon with the Dragonrise), much of Sartar could be said to be on the Hero Plane during Sacred Time of 1625. While Kallyr and her companions traveled about Sartar performing the Westfaring and Descent, there were manifestations of the divine realm throughout the realm. Many people reported seeing battles in the sky, burning footprints, marching trees, the Night Wolf, and the Black Eater. A few saw stranger things, like the Stream being filled with corpses or the Three Feathered Rivals. One even claimed to have found herself at the edge of the world.
Such manifestations and events became increasingly common during the Hero Wars, as even greater releases of magical energy occurred.
The Westfaring and the Descent are the first two big phases of the Lightbringers Quest, which Kallyr Starbrow tried to perform after the Dragonrise to restore cosmic balance in Sartar or something. I don’t know, people in Glorantha use the LBQ for the most convoluted reasons sometimes…
That said, these are cool epic manifestations that Jeff mentions here. Again, this is the stuff I need to be better at to give some mythical dimension to my games. However I’m afraid it only comes with either (1) deeper Gloranthan lore knowledge or (2) deeper familiarity with real-world myths? We’ll see…
I post this in order to provide some opportunities in your game (this is going to be presented in far more detail in the Sartar Book). In Sacred Time 1625, you can have your adventurers see a battle in the sky – and maybe even participate in it – or maybe meet an imprisoned or broken deity, or witness marching trees or whatever. They might get something new and magical from the experience. They might even decide that they want to explore the mythic realm more!
Jeff adds some comments about Kallyr’s heroquest:
It is thought that Jar-eel was able to exploit the Proximate Realm to manifest herself in an unexpected manner during the Lightbringers Quest. If true, this would be a stunning tribute to her power and her mythic virtuosity – as appearing in more than one place at the same time is sign of divinity. Tosti Runefriend later speculated that Jar-eel might have Discorporated, entered the hero plane, appeared in the ceremony, and then manifested physically – but such magic is godlike and perhaps the counter-explanation is even more frightening than just saying that Jar-eel is the incarnation of the Red Goddess.
Jar-eel’s intrusion into Kallyr’s heroquest is featured in Jeff’s “While Bull Campaign”, which is available on YouTube. I always assumed that Jar-eel showed up because she heroquested the same myth at the same time (based on information from spies in Kallyr’s entourage), or used a magical road to the heart of Sartar, or something… I would not have guessed she used the Proximate Holy Realm, especially since I didn’t even know about it until last week anyway.
My current understanding is that running your own heroquest and hoping to get “matched” with someone else’s heroquest has a low hit rate, and you show up as a certain mythic figure, which might be good in some cases, but potentially limiting (and a little bit insulting) for someone like Jar-eel. She wanted to intrude as herself, or maybe as the Red Goddess — neither of which feature in the Lightbringers Quest.
Jar-eel’s willingness to tread very dangerous paths and embrace even more dangerous associations proved to surprise the Orlanthi, who could not imagine a mortal would be able and willing to do what she did.
More Heroquesting
I guess that’s the theme this week — maybe an indication that Jeff is tweaking the heroquesting rules for the Sartar Homeland scenarios? Anyway, here it is:
One of the great benefits of heroquesting is the ability to gain magic outside of what can be gained from one’s cult. These magic abilities often operate mechanically similarly to Rune spells. Sometimes these new spells can be incorporated within the cult structure, creating a new subcult. For example, Garundyer gained the spells of Hailstones from Siglolf Cloudcrusher – these spells form the basis of the Cloudcrusher subcult of Orlanth Thunderous.
A subcult of a subcult? Hah! But more seriously, I’d love to see some player character heroquest deep enough to bring a new Rune Spell and start a new sub-cult.
Alternatively, these new spells can form the basis of a new cult similar to a Spirit Cult. Hon-eel brought forth Bless Maize which became the basis of her cult. Argrath brought forth the White Bull which has become a popular Spirit Cult in Prax.
Oh, I guess the player character needs to do some really hard-core heroquesting then.
Most often, these new abilities are personal to the quester. Sarostip has the ability to kill with his left eye. Hofstaring had his flying spear. Jaldon Goldentooth has his ability to bite through walls. Harrek has his God-Spirit White Bear Cloak. Many heroes possess the ability to return from the dead or to Discorporate their spirits.
The best way to give player characters a good heroquest power is to work with the player, and agreeing on a power that feels right.
The distinctions between these approaches and why an ability gained on a heroquest might be personal or might be incorporated into a cult can get more than a little fuzzy or contradictory, but there are certain generalizations. Powers gained on quests where the hero travels in the footsteps of their god are easiest to incorporate into their cult. Powers gained on new quests that can be repeated but are outside of the mythos of the cult must become a new cult. And powers not shared with others remain personal.
Now I say these often operate similarly to Rune Magic, but it is also possible to gain powerful Spirit Magic as well. Spirit magic that does not count against spell holding limits, or is of permanent duration is well known, although such abilities are always personal.
And a few of the powers or side effects gained through heroquests don’t fit into either Rune Magic or Spirit Magic. The best known is of course unaging, but also things like lack of shadow despite the sun, no sweat (while being unaffected by heat, cold, or exertion), and so forth.
It is important to keep in mind that abilities gained through heroquests are exceptions to the general rules of magic. They are examples of direct interactions with the raw source of magic, rather than the more formulaic expressions of rune magic, spirit magic, or sorcery.
In all of Dragon Pass there are about 18,000 Yelmalio cult members. That’s:
6000 in the Sartar homeland (largely concentrated around the Sun Dome, Alda-Chur, and Boldhome). 12000 in Tarsh Negligible numbers elsewhere.
In the River of Cradles there are about 4500 Yelmalio cult members, with about 4000 in Sun County and 500 in Pavis County.
For comparison, in all of Dragon Pass, there are about 111,930 Ernalda cultists, 85,000 Orlanth cultists, and 66,500 Seven Mothers cultists.
There are about 8700 settlers in and around Alone. About 2000 Orlanth cultists, 2000 Ernalda cultists, and about 300 Yelmalio cultists. 275 Maran Gor, 250 Humakt cultists, and about 130 of each of the other Lightbringers.
There are about 31,000 permanent residents in the area centered on Alda-Chur, including the Dinacoli, Princeros, Tovtaros, and Vantaros tribes. This area, called the Far Place, speaks Tarshite but has had close economic and political ties to Sartar since the foundation of the Principality, and joined the Principality shortly after the Battle of Grizzly Peak.
The ten largest cults in the Far Place are: 5825 Ernalda 5300 Orlanth 1700 Yelmalio 1600 Seven Mothers 600 Engizi or Heler 520 Storm Bull 500 Humakt 470 Issaries 435 Maran Gor 380 Daka Fal
The Dinacoli clan is further south: it used to be part of Sartar, but around the time of Kallyr Starbrow’s rebellion in 1613 (which they did not support), they changed their allegiance to Alda-chur.
The close proximity with Snakepipe Hollow, a well known Chaos-infested area neighbouring the northern-most tribes, means that there’s a high presence of Storm Bull initiates at any point. But there’s a high turnover:
[…] many are not residents. It is not uncommon for bands of Pol-Joni Storm Bull cultists with their Praxian allies to come to Snakepipe Hollow to fight Chaos.
As of 1625, the Alda-chur Confederation is still under the indirect rule of the Lunar Empire through Harvar Ironfist, a Yelmalion Rune Lord who violently took power in 1611. Depending on your timeline, Harvar might have been eaten at the Dragonrise, but his forces might still be in power despite this. I think that in Chaosium’s Glorantha, the area is only freed a bit later when Argrath starts to move into Dragon Pass.
Personally I would have Harvar simply send some representatives to the Lunar Temple opening ceremony and subsequent destruction, which leaves open a cool showdown between himself and Argrath… or the adventurers…
Anyway, all of this to say that the area is still a Lunar colony in 1625:
And given that Storm Bull hates the Red Goddess as much as Orlanth does, imagine the consternation caused when a band of 100+ mounted Storm Bull cultists show up on a sacred quest to hunt and destroy Chaos. Can’t act against them – Storm Bull is beloved for keeping Chaos out of the Far Place – but can’t really allow them to stay.
Harvar Ironfist is from the Vantaros tribe, which is where the bulk of his Yelmalion hoplite army is from:
Of the 1700 Yelmalio cultists, 1400 of them are either in Alda-Chur or among the Vantaros tribe.
So how, you might ask, could 1700 Yelmalio cultists dominate a tribal confederation with 5300 Orlanth cultists? Three things:
1. The Yelmalio cult was more centrally organized, with Harvar able to gain their support and defeat foes piecemeal. 2. Harvar had strong Lunar support. Money, mercenaries, you name it. 3. His rule was pretty tenuous once you got outside of Alda-Chur and the Vantaros tribal lands. The other tribes paid tribute and stayed out of trouble.
I would also assume that about 2/3rds of the Orlanth cultists are farmers belonging to the Thunderous or Barntar subcults: they know fighting only as far as the tribal militia membership goes. The Yelmalions are pretty much all professional soldiers, and are much better individually trained, in addition to what Jeff said about them being better organized as a whole.
Back in 1611, Harvar brought in Gagarthi warbands (plus maybe some miscellaneous other mercenaries) to seize power violently, getting rid of several Orlanthi leaders. Once those are gone and most of Kallyr’s rebellion fled far away south or east, there probably wasn’t enough motivation left for anybody to organize a serious uprising anyway. So yeah, most of these tribes pay tribute and stay out of trouble… except for the the tribes around Alone, maybe, because that’s where my players are, currently in 1615, fresh out of their adulthood initiations and ready to kick some ass!
[…] Lets start by remembering that those that Dorasar encountered (and made himself ruler or overlord of) were the descendants of settlers that had been isolated from Dragon Pass for over 400 years.
To place things in historical context, Dorasar founded New Pavis in 1550. The Dragonkill War which started the Inhuman Occupation (when no humans lived in Dragon Pass) happened in 1120, so that’s what I think Jeff is referring to.
However, the return of human settlements in Dragon Pass started in the early/mid 1300s, with Heortlings like King Colymar coming from the south to settle the first Sartarite tribes, Arim the Pauper coming from the north to found the Kingdom of Tarsh, and the Pure Horse people coming from Prax in the east. I’m not sure how “isolated” the people of the River of Cradles would have been even after three generations since the foundation of the Kingdom of Sartar (in 1492), which, given Sartar’s modus operandi, would have had some good trade going on by then.
My guess is that trade with Prax was limited, or even non-existent. The Grazelanders, still traumatized by their defeat and subsequent exile from Prax in the mid 1250s, might have told horrible stories about the Praxian nomads to the Sartarites, stories that might have stuck in everybody’s mind well into the 1400s, if not later. And the Sartarites might have been more interested in lucrative trade between the Holy Country and Tarsh anyway. The few brave traders who had the idea of checking out what can be done to the east might have come back robbed of all their stuff, including a few limbs: “don’t go to Prax, there’s crazy nomad people there“.
Think of them like some of the Greek communities in Central Asia that survived the collapse of the Hellenistic empires, or like the Crimean Goths. Isolated, tenaciously defending their identity from the Praxian nomads and the trolls, refusing to become another “Oasis people”.
So effectively, the violent and conservative Praxian tribes might be what isolated the Zola Fel settlers from Dragon Pass.
They succeeded, and the Yelmalio cult was key to that. But during the long period of solitude and isolation, that cult dwindled and diminished. Perhaps only about 1000 cultists survived to great Dorasar and Varthanis Brighthelm. By that time, the Yelmalio cult was little more than a Spirit Cult, associated with a Grain Goddess, who he defended from nomads and trolls, and friendly with the local river nymphs. They had a big temple they could hardly maintain and stories of Yelm the Sun God, whom Yelmalio defended and was the son of.
It sounds like the original River of Cradles version of the Yelmalio cult was, by necessity, an increasingly xenophobic (towards the Praxian tribes) and conservative affair.
Varthanis brought them the Yelmalio of Monrogh Lantern. With gifts, geases, more spells useful for fighting trolls, and brought them into contact with Dragon Pass – which meant bronze and allies. The Grain Goddess became recognized as Ernalda, but that also brought in rivalry with the Orlanth cult brought to Pavis by the Sartarite settlers. The population of the farmers grew and the Yelmalio grew to dominate Sun County.
Varthanis was a Yelmalio companion of Dorasar, so he arrived with many of the new doctrines “discovered” in Dragon Pass when Monrogh Lantern helped the Sartarite cult of Elmal evolve into the more modern cult of Yelmalio.
But this area was a periphery. Contact with Dragon Pass was largely through Pavis, not Sun County, and even Pavis is a frontier settlement. If Pavis is our Wild West town like Santa Fe then Sun County is even more remote, one of our more successful Spanish missions.
This all sounds like good world-building that paves the way to the Sun Dome book in Sartar presenting a widely different take on Yelmalio compared to Prax…
Keeping Your Adventurers Prisoners
On Facebook, Wesley Samsal asked about the old “slave bracelets” that are mentioned for instance in Cults of Prax. These used to act as magic dampeners, preventing people from using magic. As far as I know, they’re not “canon” anymore so how do people keep other people prisoners? Jeff has some answers:
Characters with Honor aren’t going to escape if they are being ransomed. Given the importance of Honor in Orlanthi culture (and Lunar military culture), the broad assumption is prisoners aren’t killed, but they don’t try to escape. And your community rarely is going to reward you for breaking the rules.
This answer of course assumes the most common situation, which is: the PCs fought some NPCs, the fight didn’t go well, and the players decided to surrender and invoke their ransom (the sum mentioned in the Occupation chapter of RQG, p63-73 is usually good enough, but throw in a bag of chips or a box of chocolates to the gamemaster, for good measure).
If you escape from captors you surrendered to, then those captors will not trust other folk from your community. Which can be a very bad thing.
The whole purpose of the ransom system is to avoid killing people defeated in combat or war. Several powerful war cults strongly uphold it – breaking those rules can make other dangerous enemies.
Ransoming someone back usually only requires keeping them captive for a few days, but other situations might involve keeping them as “non-free tenants” (or similar) for longer, such as someone working off their defeat and capture in battle for a season, a year, or more. I imagine this is more common for prisoners of war, from a defeated army, than for someone being captured after a cattle raid or highway robbery… but I think similar guidelines apply either way.
So if your players surrender only to escape a bit later, the following comes to mind:
If possible, have a messenger already on their way to the PCs’ community to get the ransom. The first thing captors will do is probably ask where the funds are, and send someone there. That could be one of their own but, preferably, the messenger is one of the PCs’ companions, if applicable, or a third party, I think. Now the PCs have to intercept this messenger, otherwise they will not only still have paid their ransom, they will also have a very awkward and humiliating situation on their hands.
If the PCs escape and get out of paying a ransom, word gets around and a couple seasons later a handful of people from their community get killed instead of being ransomed back. The killers will of course have left a clear message: “the last people we captured sneaked away like dishonourable tricksters, even though they didn’t carry his marks… we’re not taking any chances this time: we’re taking our ransom from their dead bodies“. The PCs will have to restore their standing with their community if they want these new spells or skill training. This is especially true if one of those killed people carried an important tribal item!
Of course this is Glorantha so you can always bring in angry spirits: that ancestor who was big on honour, some cult spirit that thinks you’re not worthy anymore, or worse.
Not all consequences are bad, though! People might be interested in the PCs’ lack of respect for traditions. Some Chaos cult might approach them, which I’m sure won’t lead to anything problematic, right?
Her enemies are the gods of Chaos (all of them), the Red Goddess, and Mostal.
So as far as the Mother of Trolls is concerned, Orlanth is as bad as Aldrya, Yelm, Yelmalio and the Seven Mothers. But she will cooperate with any of those against Chaos (which includes the Red Goddess). Of course afterwards, she will likely to devour her erstwhile allies, so you take your risk.
It’s interesting that Kyger Litor cultists don’t even like Chalana Arroy. They have their own healer deity (Xiola Umbar, I believe), but still, healing is healing. Apart from that, I assume that Lightbringer cults are hated for their association with Orlanth, who slew the sun god and forced trolls to flee the Underworld, Solar cults for obvious darkness vs light reasons, and Lunar cults and miscellaneous ones like Telmor for their association with Chaos.
As always, those are generalizations. Your particular Troll adventurer might have a personal history that, despites their Kyger Litor cult membership, makes them somewhat friendly to, say, other adventurers belonging to Lightbringer cults. Adventurers are often exceptions after all. Buf Jeff gives some better advice:
So smart Lunars try to approach Kyger Litor through Jakaleel or Annilla if possible. Smart Orlanthi try to approach her through Ernalda or Humakt (who are Neutral) – or Argan Argar or Storm Bull (who are Friendly).
I could imagine a duelling group of delegates to the Castle of Lead – a Lunar group with Blue Moon cultists and an Orlanthi group of Storm Bulls and Earth Priestesses. Both have about the same chance of success (unless the Lunars are dumb enough to hail the Red Goddess).
I think the politics and spygames around the Castle of Lead’s agenda in the Hero Wars have been quite underused so I’m always happy when it crops up like this!
Community Roundup
The community roundup is our highlight of interesting things being mentioned in the Glorantha-related Facebook groups, sub-Reddits, and other similar online places.
Beer With Teeth’s Self-Publishing Advice
Friend of the show Diana Probst posted some in-depth article about self-publishing gaming material on DriveThruRPG (and elsewhere), based on their experience with Chaosium’s own Community Content Program. It’s full of good advice!
SkullDixon discusses group climbing on his blog. Interestingly enough, he adopts the reverse approach from my own Runic Rant article on the more general idea of group rolls: instead of having characters help a “leader” through augments, SkullDixon has the “leader” augment everybody else’s rolls.
Not everything is about Glorantha, although most things are! Here are loosely relevant things that we found on the interwebs.
Ancient Table Manners
Guest entry by Joerg
If you want clues about housing and everyday obects, this German language website has thousands of photographs showing actual artifacts and reconstructions for several cultures – Romans, Greeks, Etruscans, Celts, Germanics, Iberians, Egyptians, and a few others with less documentation. Romans and Greeks are best documented. There are sub-pages on the house, the furniture, table-ware, food selection and preparation, table manners (like us of hand-cloths in Roman depictions). Most sources are Iron Age rather than Bronze Age, but they should give some impression what you might find in Glorantha.
It won’t hurt to look for sources outside of Mediterranean and central Europe, though. A recent video on the Tlaxcallan culture in Mexico before the arrival of Cortes discusses and shows some impressive table ware 8:20 minutes in.
Thank you for reading
That’s it for this week! Please contact us with any feedback, question, or news item we’ve missed!
