Interview with an unnamed Issaries trader, transcribed by a certain L.N., dated 1617. Retrieved from the tower’s second level.
I once met a trader named Biturian who told me that sometimes, to sweeten the deal, you have to literally sweeten the deal. He told me that some exotic foods often improve a prospective buyer’s perception of your cargo more so than the equivalent investment in more mundane items. Sweet products, spices, rare herbs are all good choices even for the most pedestrian interlocutor. He mentioned for instance that he would bring honey and sugar to some select Storm Bull Khans to buy protection while travelling through Prax.
What’s this “sugar” you ask? Oh yeah, I’m not surprised, very few people know about this. I’ve heard the term used for many things but I think the most common is for these tall, hard plants they cultivate around the Koraru Bay in Fonrit. I don’t generally like to go there (dangerous trip, and the Fonritians are tricky to deal with), but you can’t deny they have something special. The locals chew on it and spit it out, and I wouldn’t recommend bringing it raw like this here, it’s too bulky and heavy to transport, and last I heard it got a rather cold reception even in Nochet. But the Fonritians also crush it and make some sort of thick, black, honey-like liquid which can be used to sweeten dishes and drinks. It’s much better for trading, but transport can get tricky. It easily gets bad in a ship’s cargo hold. And if you spill it, it get real messy, trust me. The Fonritian drinks themselves are good for transport though. Very popular with some of the noble families in Esrolia.
Another lead I had is… well, I heard some Earth cult in Kralorela has figured out how to refine this black sugar liquid into crystals. Crystals! Can you imagine? I wonder what that looks like. And I bet it would make transport so much easier, but you know how it is, going there. And I would still have to figure out where exactly is this cult. Huh… I’ve got more interesting trade routes to test out first anyway.
That’s the thing, right? Since the oceans have become navigable again, there’s so many opportunities! Our parents and grand-parents have barely scratched the surface. And these exotic goods are what’s really driving trade, if you ask me. Anybody can get their metal, or amber, or salt, or whatever from… well, I mean, they don’t have to go that far. These are well established routes… and sure, in some places those routes got disrupted, like those going through Maniria. Heh, those were good wins, my uncle got wealthy avoiding all these tolls when he got his first ship. And Pent, too, nobody wants to go through that, right? But see what I’m saying? Our predecessors focused on trading the same things, but better? Same origin and destination, same cargo hold? It’s only now that people are wising up to what new things we could start trading. Thing we didn’t even know about before. And that’s really pushing the long travels. That’s why we dare sail past Mighty Magasta. That’s where I have some lead over the competition. Have you even heard of Spice Island? There are things there that…
Right, you want to know more about the sweet stuff, of course.
Well, I mean your safe bet is really honey. Yeah yeah, everybody has honey, but you know there’s a sizable market for the connoisseurs, right? They’re looking for new flavours, honey made from different flowers from this or that mountain or some desert or whatever… honey made from mushrooms, honey made by giant bees… I mean I’ve heard some trolls can train them to change the resulting taste. You don’t even have to go too far for that, there are giant bees here in Sartar. But if you want, like, some Kero Fin Lady Thimble honey, well you have to cross some fairly dangerous places on the way. As always, carefully pick your escort.
What else… oh, right. Tree sap. Some people love that stuff. I hope you’re not an elf-friend because they will definitely not be happy with you. One of the Colymar tribe clans in Sartar, I think it’s the Namolding clan? Yeah they do collect birch tree sap, make some sweet syrup with it, so they have most of the market around here. But you can help them export their stuff. I think a couple other Sartarite clans do something similar, so there sure are opportunities for grab. But for something a bit different, if you like long travels on land, I once visited Northern Fronela — the animal tribes there have a couple of trading posts — and they have some squirrel spirit cult that showed them how to collect the sap from the local maple tree. They have some Sea Season dance ritual for this, and all. Anyway, that maple syrup is quite different from the birch one, and better if you ask me. Plus, these Rathori and other animal people aren’t too interested in travelling out of their lands, so it’s easy business for us long distance traders.
Ok, now I don’t know if I should share this but… hum… I once heard about some “Aldryami Bloodwine” too… basically it’s the same idea as tree sap, but the trolls would bleed an elf to death instead of extracting the sap from a tree. Nasty stuff. Supposedly the taste changes depending on how they torture the elf, or not, before or during the bleeding, how long, and so on. I don’t even know if it exists for sure, frankly, it sounds more like the type of urban legends these Uz love spreading around… but who knows. You better be careful if you meet an Uz merchant who wants to sell you some tree sap, just to be sure. You definitely don’t want to piss off any elves, especially since they…
These documents are a mess but the notes in the margin seem to indicate there’s more to this interview. I’ll share more when I figure out in what order they’re supposed to go. In the meantime, maybe check this out for complementary information.
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.
We here at the God Learners have only recently moved into our new home. It’s a nice tower that belonged to a Malkioni school of sorcery for the most part of the Second Age, then probably a hideout for a bunch of bandits in the early Third Age until the surrounding lands were colonized by some Heortlings and some Lhankor Mhy sages renovated it and used it as a library temple.
Well, it’s ours now, and we’re pretty happy with it, it’s got a nice spacious level for our laboratory, another for the library, a few other buildings for our servants and guests, and so on. But it’s a mess in here. There’s a whole bunch of junk from the previous occupants, and we started the process of clearing it, sorting it, and archiving it. As we proceed, we’ll share the most interesting findings with you… we hope you’ll find them equally interesting.
Chaosium News
The White Bull Campaign Returns
The so-called Chaosium house campaign, aka the “White Bull” campaign, is finally returning to YouTube! If I remember correctly, we left the group just after their return from Kallyr’s Lightbringers Heroquest…
Progress on the Fantasy Ground RuneQuest Integration
Jonstown Compendium embassador and prolific Gloranthan author Nick Brooke has posted some comparison pictures of the differences between DriveThruRPG’s “Standard Colour” and “Premium Colour” options. This is especially important since the prices for “Premium Colour” have just increased significantly, to the point that some authors stopped offering it as an option altogether.
The cheap proof-print of Glamour looked absolutely fine, so I’ve set up standard colour editions of all my books, which are about 10% cheaper than the previous versions. These are produced on a cheaper printer, and you will notice the difference: the print is flatter and fuzzier, without the sharp edges and rich, deep colours we are used to in premium print. The paper is identical to the premium editions, it’s just the inkjets that are cheaper.
In the picture below, the standard colour is on the left, and the premium colour is on the right. Note the deeper reds on the Premium Colour but, just as interesting, the greens seem to be roughly similar.
Photo by Nick Brooke
Nick concludes elsewhere that “the quality overall is fine for a ‘cheaply printed’ version“. These “Standard Colour” printings are roughly 10% cheaper to produce than the pre-increase “Premium Colour” printings.
I’m really proud of the quality of these Rune Master issues of MOTM, but they take a lot of energy to produce. They’re a big piece of why you haven’t yet seen a volume 2 of Treasures of Glorantha! After a lot of thought, I’ve chosen to scale back the next few issues of MOTM, hopefully so I can create other Glorantha stuff.
While I’ll probably end the year with another long-ish issue (like The Quacken, last year), at the moment I’m not sure I’ll continue MOTM into 2022.
While these are sad news, we probably have enough monsters and NPCs to keep our players busy for a few years. Also, it’ll be exciting to see Austin tackle some other things — besides a new volume of Treasures of Glorantha, he has been teasing a potential Esrolia campaign on the BRP Central forums.
Alakoring’s Legacy
As a follow up to Heort’s Legacy, Edan and Alister Jones (a father/son team-up, as I understand) have now released Alakoring’s Legacy.
Just like its predecessor, this is a new questionnaire to be used as an alternative or complement to Sartar: Kingdom of Heroes’ original clan questionnaire. This is therefore mainly for HeroQ… err… QuestWorlds, but these things tend to be mostly system agnostic and therefore could also be used by anybody making their own clan in any system.
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.
Argentus in Glamour, Argentus in Sartar
Depending on how one views these kinds of things, the Red Emperor’s latest Mask, Argentus, is either a lazy hedonistic slob who delegates everything to the Seven Tharkalists and other lesser advisors, or a wise ruler who knows when to step back and let things go. This made him popular with a fair amount of his people, but there’s a growing discontent regarding the rise of revolutionary movements like the White Moon.
Interestingly enough, Argentus apparently spent a lot of his magic to turn a True Dragon away from Glamour (I assume this is the Dragonrise’s dragon). Or maybe he just claims that he did…
Most Sartarites wouldn’t know much about what happens in Glamour, so this would not impact many Dragon Pass focused games, but Jeff reminds us that it takes only a week and a half to go from Boldhome to Furthest, and then another two weeks and a half to get to Glamour. Some gossip might travel that way… which Sartarite or Kethalean spies would be listening to!
But the average Sartarite only knows that the Red Emperor is some kind of immortal wizard-king who never stays dead very long. Probably some Chaotic thing — Sartarites “totally do not buy the whole Mask thing“.
These write-ups feature a good amount of numbers (population total, militia size, number of thanes and priests, and so on), a list of the main personalities of the clan, some vague idea of where all the clan’s households are located, detailed economic figures, magical features and more!
I’m particularly interested in this type of number crunching so here are my takeaways on it:
Households come up at around 14 adults per household on average. That’s probably 20 people in total on average. Jeff mentioned in a comment that Boldhome residential buildings have between 15 and 40 people.
There are 70 households in Clearwine Fort. If I line this up with the map in the Gamemaster Adventures booklet, I think that a “household” would actually be 2 or 3 visible buildings on that map. Of course, it’s possible that these numbers hadn’t been crunched yet, so the map might be more figurative than representative, but in case you’re treating it as an actual “bird’s view” of the city, there you go!
For the “households” on the countryside, each of these might also be several buildings, such as a small clusters of farms, or a farm with a few lined-in buildings. We’ll know more when the Sartar Homeland Boxed Set is published, as the term “household” will be formally defined there.
Households are roughly the same size between the city and the countryside. I frankly didn’t know which one to expect being bigger, but I expected a difference… oh well!
The split between adults and children has changed, as far as I can tell. In the Gamemaster Adventures booklet (page 16) we are told that “a typical clan of 1000 people has about 450 adults and 550 children“. This is just above 50% of children, and this ratio is consistent with a variety of previous publications, including the HeroQuest ones. But I think that the average age for adulthood initiation has finally been brought down (which is good for better verisimilitude with Earth’s Bronze Age). It sounds like, going forward, adulthood happens around 13 years old. This lowers the ratio of children to something closer to 30%.
Jeff also shared the write-up of a Boldhome guild. Given how underwritten guilds have been so far in Gloranthan publications, this is very welcome… This sample guild is Boldhome’s Bronze Workers guild, centered around the cult of Gustbran, so in addition to a look at Sartarite guilds, we also get a look at a what a minor god’s cult looks like!
And since we’re talking about bronze working, how about taking a look at Copper Town? Located next to the copper mines of the Barastaros Hills, it is home to about 2000 people, none of which had a better idea for a name besides “Copper Town”…
Ore is brought from the mines and smelted outside the town in kilns and furnaces, and poured into molds. The copper bars are then transported by mule to Early Rise and then to Furthest, or shipped downriver to the Lunar Heartlands. Copper slag heaps from the last three centuries litter the landscape around Copper Town. The city is “owned” by the King of Tarsh and governed by his deputies.
Note that in these Lunar parts, Asrelia is the patron of mining, interestingly enough.
Taxonomy of Glorantha, by the God Learners
Apparently, we… did this? Yes, we did. That’s us. That’s how we figured animals are organized.
Photos by Jeff Richard
I don’t remember what the Cthuloid drawings are for (the Second Age was a wild time), but I definitely remember figuring out that horses are birds. Yep. That made sense at the time.
Behind the Art Scene
While we’re looking at rough sketches, take a look at some of Jeff’s sketches for various illustrations of Gloranthan books. For instance, this sketch vs final of Jar-Eel and Beat-Pot:
Jeff tells us that the wine in the Holy Country is mostly red and not watered down. It’s consumed mostly during religious feasts and celebrations. For everyday drinking, wheat beer is very popular (for instance, einkorn or emmer beer), along with young wines and fruit wines. Sages and other specialists can produce distilled wine, for the distinguished connoisseurs.
Note that violence is less common in drinking halls compared to Sartar. It sounds like Belintar is a bit more civilized than Heort… it might also help that incense, spiced food, and other intoxicants (coming in through Nochet’s very busy port, possibly from the Teshnos colony) help smooth things down. There’s less incentive to fight when you’re dressed in silk.
Drinking in the Holy Country goes often with music and dancing. The Jolly Fat Man is a local minor deity:
One of the sons of Ernalda, the Jolly Fat Man is a beloved Bacchus/Silenus figure, and at many feasts someone gets the honour of being the designated JFM to preside over the festivities.
Athletic contests are also very popular, especially as a “mundane” version of the Tournament of the Masters of Luck and Death:
The cult of the Strong Man is popular, and many cities have areas where muscled men work out and practice, often watched and celebrated by noble women.
If you want to derail your gamemaster’s campaign and go in the show-business, this sounds like a great idea:
As an aside, a Colymar adventurer in one of our campaigns with an 18 STR and 17 CHA joined the cult of the Strong Man in Nochet and made his fortune performing for the pleasure of aristocratic women. He concluded it was a much better life than being one of the bodyguards of Queen Leika.
Of course, if I was the gamemaster, this new derailed campaign would suddenly morph into a mix of “Freaks” and “Carnivale”, but hey, that’s just me.
Drinking and Loathing in the Lunar Heartlands
Comparatively to the Holy Country, drinking in the Lunar Heartlands is mostly for the Lodrilli peasantry. They do it a lot. Their stuck-up Yelmite leaders put “too much important on self-control and purity“, so they either drink lighter wine, or, you know, just pass out in private without the neighbours knowing. Public drunkenness is a lower-class thing.
Common peasant drinks includes maize beer, barley beer, and fermented rice drinks.
Orlanthi Sports
Okay we talked about drinking beer, but what is beer good for if you can’t drink it while watching some stupid sporting event? Well we have a few hints from Jeff regarding this (most of which will feature in the upcoming Sartar Homeland Boxed Set): foot and chariot races, throwing and hurling and shooting competitions, swimming and jumping and so on. Of course, fighting (with and/or without weapons) is bound to be one of the most popular activities, including the ancient form of mixed-martial-arts known as pankration.
Here’s an example of a local sporting event:
There is an athletic competition in Two Hour Town, where a biennial competition is held to celebrate Orlanth’s wooing of Ernalda. One of the events is to run from Two Hour Town to Sartar’s Palace (culminating in running up the Thousand Steps) about 20 km away. While wearing a full kit of bronze armor – helmet, cuirass, greaves, and vambraces. In early Earth Season, when the temperature is going to be in the mid-20s.
Another:
The Sartarites do have game of “common ball” – the teams play it nearly as violently as a battle. Highly teamwork oriented, the game is played between two teams of usually 12 to 14 players each, with one ball. The rules of the game allow using hands. The teams try to throw the ball over the heads of the other team. There is line between the teams and another white line behind each team. Teams charge the ball often until one of the team is forced behind the line at their end.
Sun County expert and Chaosium vice-president MOB shared some of the hoplites’ own sports:
Long ago, the Sun Domers of Prax raised horses and entertained themselves with such games as polo or racing. Today, the people the Sun County no longer ride, and their passion is now a sophisticated martial sport called Shield Push.
Many people joined in with other suggestions: yodeling pageants, duck golf, belching and farting contests, eating competitions, greasy pig chases, and more.
What’s it all for? Well these are good opportunities to impress people with your skills, be they a prospective mentor, love interest, or chieftain with some promotions to hand out. This is also where rivalries are born or increased, and drama can strike!
Eat at Geo’s
Here’s a nice meal from Geo’s Inn at Duck Point. Maybe that’s for Claudia Loroff’s years-in-the-making Gloranthan Cookbook? Or maybe that’s just what they eat in Germany on the week-end, who knows.
Photo by Jeff Richard, cuisine by Claudia Loroff
Boldhome Pockets
Chaosium cartographer Matt Ryan shared his creative process to map the dwarven-built “pockets” of Boldhome, which were carved directly into the mountainside.
So my thinking was this: the people asked the dwarves to build them homes. The dwarves said sure, see you in a year (or however long, the point is it wasn’t a long meeting). The dwarves observed the people to see what they needed. They saw a short-lived species who ate constantly, revered their dead, honored their gods, kept pets, and bred prolifically. A herd creature that gathers in large groups. They wanted to give them heat and cooling and running water – advances the people didn’t have – and figured they might as well throw in forges and workshops because everybody uses forges and workshops, right? I figured it would be like a bunch of rabbits asking Frank Lloyd Wright to design their warren. Then I took a bunch of pictures from an old architectural textbook that was floating around the house, cropped them and repositioned them without much thought, letting the coffee-spirits guide me, and then threw labels on it.
Michael O’Brien continues the history of Sun County (in Prax). It started in 1621 with the Giant Cradle came through Pavis, and we’re currently around 1624 if I’m not mistaken.
I really recommend you read it (especially since it’s in on BRP Central and not behind some privacy wall like Facebook) because it contains a lot of great stuff:
A look at some recent politics between Pavis, Sun County, the Lunars, the Praxian tribes, etc.
Several heroquests, including a couple really big epic ones.
A good example of incorporating material from classic RuneQuest books such as NPCs from Runemasters, magical objects from Plunder, and scenario bits from Pavis and The Big Rubble.
The origin story of one of Glorantha’s most infamous figures: Melo Yelo the Yelmalion baboon!
…and just quite a few cool adventure ideas!
RuneQuest Thursday: Beastlords
The D-Infinity network continues their “RuneQuest Thursdays” (there are quite a few to check out!). It’s not actually every Thursday, but it’s always on a Thursday, so I guess the title is accurate… anyway, this week’s article is on “Beastlords”, a cabal of sorcerers who specialize in shapeshifting and other animalistic magic.
Elsewhere on Arachne Solara’s Web
Elder Scrolls: An Oral History
If you’ve played any of the Elder Scrolls games and wondered about some similarities with the world of Glorantha, you can check out this oral history Morrowind, courtesy of Polygon. In particular, note how the game’s lead designer Ken Rolston is also well known in roleplaying game circles for contributions to D&D, WFRP, and, of course, RuneQuest — in particular his role as editor during the first “RuneQuest Renaissance” under Avalon Hill. About Morrowind, he says:
I would also say that not video games, but games like RuneQuest Glorantha were a shared language for most of the writers: Kirkbride, Kuhlmann, and Todd to some extent.
Glorantha Wins the Totally Serious and Official “Best Setting” Frankenstein RPG Poll
The title basically sums it up:
And in case you don’t know about Frankenstein’s RPG, it’s a podcast in which guests talk about their favourite games and, collectively, try to put together a “perfect game”, if that’s even possible. Give it a listen!
Thank you for reading
That’s it for this week! Please contact us with any feedback, question, or news item we’ve missed!
Edit: a previous version of the text implied that wine was watered down in Sartar but that was I think a misreading of Jeff’s comments on Facebook. It has now been removed.
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.
The RuneQuest Rune Spell Reference is now an official free PDF, available for download from Chaosium. You can get it from the Red Book of Magic’s store page (scroll to the bottom), or directly from here.
Starter Set Unboxing
While we eagerly wait for the RuneQuest Starter Set to slowly make its way to Chaosium’s various warehouses, Chaosium president and aspiring ASMR video-maker Rick Meints soothes our impatience with this nice little unboxing video!
When I mentioned that my OCD was triggered by Rick sometimes putting contents to the left with the back cover up, and sometimes with the front cover up (guess which one is wrong!), Rick replied that he’s part of the Chaosium, not the Orderium… I guess that’s a valid point 😆
We are getting a whole bunch of sneak peeks at the upcoming Sartar Homeland Boxed Set! Let’s start with some gorgeous art from Ossi Hiekkala and Anna Orlova. We had seen this first piece before (that’s Raveena, a mercenary with quite a long resume), but what follows is new!
Here we have the Inkarne (the current Feathered Horse Queen) and Argrath White Bull. Keen eyed people (or those with pet peeves!) might notice that the Grazelander monarch is flipped horizontally in that first picture (to go with her soon-to-be lover… unless she likes to switch her weapons around based on her mood). Also note Argrath’s famed Ormsword, and the Stafford/Sartar Rune on his shoulder.
Some stray Facebook comment from Jason Durall gives us an updated look at Chaosium’s production pipeline:
The Gamemaster’s Guide is in development and will probably be available early next year. We’ve got the Weapons & Equipment Guide going into layout soon, the gigantic Cults of Glorantha right after that, and then the Sartar boxed set to get through the pipeline before the GM book, along with some smaller things to accompany the Starter Set. The name is not set in stone, as it has gone back and forth between Gamemaster’s Guide, Campaign Guide, and Gamemaster’s Sourcebook, for various reasons.
You can follow @MadBeardMan for more updates on that Fantasy Ground system support, there have been other similar screenshots these past few weeks. This is great news for those who will keep playing online indefinitely even after (we hope) most people resume face-to-face gaming.
Community Roundup
Zomdryami!
Shannon Applecline, famous RPG historian and expert on Gloranthan elves, continues his Aldryami mythology posts on the Gloranthafans Facebook group. This time it’s about elf undead, with the story of how Nontraya (who is better known as Vivamort) took refuge in red elves forests after being chased off by the humans. There, he created many types of Aldryami undead (which Shannon describes), and later went on to invade more elf lands before moving on to more hellish accommodations… but all these corrupted swamps and dead woods are dotting the landscape, waiting for unexpecting adventurers to stumble into them!
Cradle Aftermath Continues
Michel O’Brien continues his history of the Sun Dome County in Prax, bringing us up to 1623. I sadly haven’t kept up with it yet so I can’t give you a good summary or a bunch of highlights, but I’ll try to do that in next week’s newsletter (unless one of you fine readers want to send us submissions… we are the God Learners, so making people do the hard work is kind of our thing!).
1. Until recently, they have enjoyed peace in the Lunar Heartlands since about the end of WW1. That is a long period of peace, longer than the peace of the Five Good Emperors of Rome.
2. Many of the cities of the Lunar Heartlands are pretty new, being refounded in the “late 19th and early 20th century”.
3. A lot of the cultural variation in the Heartlands described in Glorious Reascent of Yelm is largely gone.
And:
The Lunars view the time from the late 1960s to now as their new golden age. This is the heights of Lunar splendor. Physical and magical arts have blossomed. The fields almost grow by themselves. The Lunars don’t look backwards to the past for answers — they look forward to an ever greater future.
At least they did until a few years ago. Cracks have opened in that confident edifice. Cracks that open ever wider. And recently twin military disasters have struck the empire, shaking its resolve and confidence.
Lunar Heartlands Peasantry
And since Jeff mentioned the Glorious Reascent of Yelm, he went on to talk more about how the Dara Happan society survives in the modern Lunar Empire. The split between the urban people living in the cities along the Oslir, and the many peasants who grow rice, barley, and (for the past couple centuries) maize, is particularly interesting:
There are about 5.4 million people in the Lunar Heartlands and about 80% of them are rural peasants. Although many peasants have embraced the Lunar Way (in particular the Seven Mothers), they still retain much of their traditional peasant culture. They are “semi-free” at best, bound to their professions and working land that belongs to others (usually temples or the Yelmic/Lunar nobility). Many are “property” of these groups. They live in villages overseen by officials appointed by their rulers. Villages are highly collective; there are strong pressures to conform and little room to deviate from custom (except through the Lunar Way).
Think Egyptian fellah, Russian serfs, or Japanese heimin.
A few details are given about the Pelorian cults: Lodril and Oria are common peasant cults that feature a lot more debauchery than the urban Dara Happan norms. Lunar cults such as the Seven Mothers offer an alternative path that presents more spiritual development and social mobility, so almost everyone is at least a lay member, and a quarter is initiated.
At the most basic, they are initiates into a Lunar cult or its associates – including obvious things as the Red Goddess, the Seven Mothers, Hon-eel, Yara Aranis, and the Crimson Bat, but also in the Lunar Empire such cults as Yelm, Annilla, and Gorgorma (but those are generally not Lunar cults outside of the Lunar Empire). It also includes non Lunar Empire cults as the Red Mask secret society in Prax. It often includes Nysalor but not always.
[…]
Many people in the Lunar Empire are Lunars, but not everyone. Except that just about everyone in the Heartlands offers at least a little worship to the Red Goddess and the Red Emperor. Most Lunars live in the Lunar Heartlands, which is the center of the religion, but there are many Lunars outside of the Lunar Empire. Some even oppose the Lunar Empire. In short, Lunar is not an ethno-religious category like Orlanthi or Malkioni — anyone can be a Lunar.
This last part is especially interesting: I interpret it as the difference between the Lunar Way and the Lunar Empire. A lot of people might believe in the well known message of inclusivity, and even maybe the path towards illumination, but be staunch opponents to the Empire’s ruthless expansionism, its use of weapons of mass destruction, and its increasingly corrupted leadership.
There is also some info about Dara-Happan cities: in comparison with the drunken and sexual debauchery of the countryside, the city people “view themselves as the most perfect human society possible, living in accordance to divine laws and capable of great spiritual development”. The Yelm cult is in charge, which means that all the people in positions of power strive for purity and virtue, with a strongly patriarchal bias permeating through city life, from fashion to acceptable public behaviour, and to what you do in the bedroom. But the Lunar way offers alternatives:
…within the Lunar cults, women enjoy equal rights to men. As the Yelmic leadership IS Lunar, this means that effectively the Lunar Way has greatly moderated traditional Dara Happan patriarchy. The traditional cults such as Yelm, Dendara, Polaris, etc, which have thoroughly accepted the Red Goddess as part of the celestial hierarchy and acknowledge her place within that pantheon.
Still, Dara Happa is less multicultural than Dragon Pass or the Holy Country.
It’s Flat
And last, in case you still had any doubts, Jeff wanted to make it clear that everything people say about Glorantha is true: it’s (mostly) flat, it’s (mostly) square, and it’s 8000 kilometres on each side. You can trust us, we’re the God Learners, we measured. This also includes the distance to the Sky Dome and the stars, the Red Moon, and so on. Things look familiar to us Earthers, but they are far from it upon closer inspection… for example:
Interestingly, our own terrestrial moon is about 3500 km in diameter (a little less than 100 times wider than the Red Moon) but is about 384,000 km away from Earth (or more than 100 times further away than the Red Moon), and thus the Red Moon usually looks about the same apparent size as our moon (however, it looks smaller from Pamaltela).
Of course, everybody is free to make their Glorantha vary, but Jeff wants to warn these people that future Chaosium material (such as, maybe, the most epic adventures of the Dragon Pass Campaign book?) will invalidate any Glorantha that features more, let’s say, “realistic” elements.
Jonstown Compendium
Here are the news for Chaosium’s community content program for Glorantha games. As always, links on this website include an affiliate code that helps us a little bit with hosting fees!
The Sky Dome tilts and turns, Ernalda grows and withers, the Red Moon waxes and wanes, and Austin Conrad keeps delivering issues of the Monster of Month series… since time has lost its meaning in our pandemic world, that’s how I actually know what month we are now: it’s Volume Two, Death Lord of Zorak Zoran. Which means it’s around summer. And maybe a Monday? Who knows.
Anyway, Grungnak Fearless is a monstrous Rune Master of everybody’s favourite berserker (come on, you know that Zorak Zoran is much more fun than Storm Bull!), and this issue dedicated to her contains the kind of extra material we have come to love and expect from Austin Conrad, such as special magic items, cult write-ups, and secondary NPCs.
Cups of Clearwine
After the Dregs of Clearwine, which detailed a slum neighbourhood of the titular Colymar tribe capital, the folks at Beer With Teeth have now released Cups of Clearwine, a similar supplement for RuneQuest that focuses on a more typical part of the city. Many diverse NPCs are presented, with accompanying adventure hooks! Given the Colymar focus of the official Chaosium adventure books, this one is a no brainer!
Holiday Dorastor: Spider Woods
Do you want to spend your holidays in Dorastor? Of course you want to! Simon Phipp knows all the most festive places, since he knows all the Secrets of the place. The newly released Spider Woods is the second expansion book to Secrets of Dorastor, after the Temple of Heads.
This sourcebook details the titular forest at the edge of Dorastor, with enough arachnid NPCs and monsters to make it clear that this is, indeed, the Spider Woods. A handful of scenarios, special items, and new spells round up this pretty hefty book.
Skull Dixon gives an exhaustive overview of the adventure (which is useful if you’re planning on running it and want a summary of the whole storyline), along with some recommendations about what he changed in his game. Some of these, like when to introduce some key elements as foreshadowing in previous sessions, are very useful!
But it took me a long time to accept this. I used to be so hung up on a very narrow understanding of seriousness that I was unable to recognize the need for a little weirdness and levity. Ironically, it was Steve Gerber, creator of Howard the Duck, who summed it up quite well in a 1977 interview, in which he explained the origins of the character. According to Gerber, the whole point of the character and the comic in which he appeared is that life’s most serious moments and most incredibly dumb moments are often distinguishable only by a momentary point of view.
For our first episode of the God Learners Podcast we are visiting Neil Gibson, proprietor of the Black Alynx inn in the seedier parts of Jonstown. Neil’s podcast “Tales of the Black Alynx” had a series of interviews with creators of the Jonstown Compendium, but it is missing one significant contributor – a certain Neil Gibson, author of “LEGION”. We are aiming to amend this omission…
Recent News Items:
The Red Book of Magic is available as a hardcover now (at the point of writing this, not yet in Austrailia).
And if you like the great cover by Mark Smylie and want it as a print or on any number of useful items like mugs or shower curtains, Chaosium’s Red Bubble store will take your money.
There have been plenty of postings by Chaosium with previews of the art that is going into the Gods of Glorantha books.
Loic Muzy has contributed 170 pieces of art, among these a portrait of each of the 100 cult deities. There is a huge piece by Agatha Pithié depicting the monomyth, or at least an impressive number of important scenes from it, and the Prosopaedia will be illustrated by Kathrin Dirim.
In recent time, Jeff Richard has also shared numerous previews on his current Glorantha developments on Facebook, and because of the fleeting nature of Facebook streams, these posts have been documented in other places, among others in our newsletter.
Jeff shared a list of foundational documents of Glorantha lore, and a list of some other publications which are strong but not infallible influences on the current Glorantha canon, among other places on the Well of Daliath. While we’re at it, we talk about our own research and inspirational sources.
We are talking about the imminent price raise of high quality Print-on-Demand books from DriveThruRpg, including those of the Jonstown Compendium, and a sale on such books before these new prices hit the platform.
We talk briefly about the change in the portrayal of Sartar from a land of rural clans with heroic but rather hidebound hill dwellers to that of a cosmopolitan crossroads of trade and magics with vibrant cities full of architecture that you expect from ancient civilizations.
We talk about real world information on the Bronze Age and related periods.
Interview with Neil Gibson
We ask Neil about his beginnings in roleplaying, and Neil tells how the switch from D&D to RuneQuest changed the way of playing.
We learn about his experiences exploring the Big Rubble and the Elder Wilds with RuneQuest Second Edition, his path through other systems like Call of Cthulhu, Bushido, and Car Wars, how his roleplaying career took a hiatus when Gloranthan RuneQuest disappeared, and how his enthusiasm was re-kindled with the publication of RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha.
Neil relates his efforts roping in his children, and his online experience on early Sunday mornings, a RuneQuest third edition game set in mythical Wales, and plans to run a local RQG game from the Starter set.
We talk about Legion Games and “LEGION“, Neil’s first offering on the Jonstown Compendium.
Ludo meant to cite Jason Durall, not Steve (Perrin?)
Neil talks about the fun he had creating these broos, and gleefully presents the fun that can be had with diseases carried by broos, including a few new ones he published there.
We talk a bit about NPC collections as roleplaying supplements, and how they evolved from mere repetitive stat blocks into collections that give us motivations, interaction with other NPCs, and scenario hooks.
Neil reveals how LEGION was created as a practical application of creating a script to produce stat blocks for another project he has in the works.
LEGION is in fact the first of quite a few publications in the Jonstown Compendium by Legion Games, a company that Neil created with Drew Baker, the author of the Rubble Redux series and a number of other Legion games supplements. Neil and Drew have some projects in the pipeline, too, including a board game.
Other than broos, Neil is in the process of preparing a collection about an even more vile foe: Ducks. (But then that remark may have been quackist.) The ducks are to avoid the Disney tropes and the pure comic relief approach, and will detail two quite different populations of ducks – downtrodden ones in Dragon Pass, and fairly successful and proud in Esrolia. Neil has roped in a new artist for this project, Thomas Connell, who offers a preview of the Duck style on his ArtStation page.
Neil continues working on his campaign putatively titled Into the Wastes, planned as a series of three books, the first named Flower Girl set around Bullflood in western Pavis County, the second in Indagos a little further to the east, and finally an exploration of ruins of Genert’s Garden in the Wastes. The books are planned to provide some gazetteer of the places, scenarios and plot hooks.
We talk a little about publishing on the Jonstown Compendium, how the earnings from sales mostly bolster the war chest from which illustrators are hired to increase the quality and appeal of the products, often after the initial release.
Neil has his own podcast, The RuneQuest Project, available on all the major podcasting platforms. Starting out with actual play episodes, about a year ago Neil switched to a series of interviews with publishers on the Jonstown Compendium, starting a series titled “Tales from the Black Alynx”. Neil is planning to pick up some interviews, and plans to go after the artists now.
Neil talks about his most anticipated releases from Chaosium for Runequest, the Sartar box and the Starter box in particular.
Finally, we ask Neil for his personal runes. With Neil’s choices the only cult we could think of is a revelation of the God Learners…
Credits
Images in this post are courtesy of Legion Games. The intro music is “The Warbird” by Try-Tachion. Other music includes “Cinder and Smoke” and “Skyspeak“.
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.
The Red Book of Magic has been released in hardcover and leatherette versions! As always, if you previously bought the PDF from Chaosium, you should have received a coupon to get the corresponding discount from the physical product. And if you were waiting for several books to come out to make a bulk order, don’t forget to contact Dustin and request a combined coupon code.
Jeff keeps sharing many interesting things on the RuneQuest facebook group. Here are the highlights from this week!
The Lunar and Roman Empires
Even though comparisons between the Lunar and Roman Empires are easy to make (if only for the resemblance of lingo and names between the two), there is still one big difference: the Lunar Empire is tiny by comparison.
[…] both in terms of territory and population. The Lunar Empire includes about 8.5 million humans, with another million non-humans (elves, dwarfs, trolls, etc.) in its orbit.
By most accounts, the Roman Empire at its height numbered around 40-50 million people and Han China somewhere around 50 million. Likely the Assyrians or Neo-Babylonians or some of the Successors are better points of comparison in terms of population and territory. Rome or Han China – that’s like the Middle Sea Empire at its peak.
In case there was any doubt, when we say that the Roman Empire is a useful model for the Lunar Empire, we don’t mean that the Lunar Empire’s capital is Rome and that it extends from the Sahara to Germania, and from Britannia to the Parthian desert, with a similar population (size, density, ethnic composition, religious affiliation, etc.).
We mean that Lunars in your games can look and act just like the Romans you’ve seen in “Gladiator,” “Rome,” “I Claudius,” “Life of Brian” and “Carry on Cleo” (among other impeccable sword & sandal sources), with appropriate localisation (Moons and Bats, not SPQRs and Eagles), if that works for you. That’s what analogies and models are for.
The invisible God is all things. He is beyond knowing or feeling or being. He contains all things and will contain them all in the future. He is beyond life or entropy.Within the Invisible God is Existence, and within Existence were conceived the Laws. All things outside the Laws were excluded and cast down, and those things were of chaos and entropy.
This is an interesting one because it reframes most of the monomyth’s big events with the Invisible God and the concepts of Wisdom and Ignorance, and Malkion and Zzabur as the main protagonists.
Jeff’s comments provide a lot more insight, especially about Brithini philosophy and how they view mortals. These wizards are at minimum 12 centuries old and have seen many generations of “simulacra” (humans and other mortals) go by. The Brithini are not emotionless, as they have developed a deep understanding of emotions and life experiences, but most will have long lost interest in mortals and their affairs.
Although all speak of an “Invisible God” as the ultimate reality, they are differ in their views and practices. Some view the lesser divine entities as emanations of the Invisible God, others view them as mere anthropomorphic embodiments of natural forces, and still others view them as self-deluded siblings of Zzabur who conflate themselves with the energies they have mastered.
The interesting bits for me however were in the comments:
So it should be clear that for me the Malkioni are a vehicle for exploring logic and philosophy. They include Plato, Aristotle, Heraclitus, and Zeno, as well as the Upanishads, the Brahma Sutras and Gaudapada.
And:
Also when thinking about Malkionism, remember that it changes over time. Before the Dawn, the Brithini dealt with the gods as near equals and the Seshnegi worshiped Malkion and Seshna Likita the Earth Goddess. In the Third Age, the main Malkioni schools no longer interact with the gods as equals, but also do not worship gods other than Malkion and his family, and a few important heroes.
And:
This divergence between Brithinism and Hrestolism occured over 1600 years ago, and Malkionism has developed radically differently from their Brithini origins.
It sounds to me like having your players run into some Western philosophers would be a good way for them to question why their Lhankor Mhy cultist is called a “philosopher” too when what they do is really just boost the fighters’ weapon damage and detect traps when going into dungeons… 😋
The accession of the God-King in 1318 also marks the beginning of the term Holy Country to describe Kethaela, and it soon gained a reputation for being a place of mystery and wonder.
[…]
The God-King kept good contacts with all the gods of the Holy Country, and to the rest of the world this was a part of the Otherworld manifest in the mundane world. Occasionally, gods or great monsters visited the Holy Country, and there were known to be many secret gates into the Otherworld.
The God-King showed little interest in expanding his realm. He used friends and allies to guard his borders, sent messengers and merchants outward, to the west, through Maniria to Ralios.
This last paragraph is important, especially when you consider that the Holy Country has often been summed up as “Mythological Disneyland ruled by a God King fueled by Battle Royale” (which, incidentally, is one of those descriptions that never fails to grab someone’s attention). Unlike the aforementioned real-world’s Empire of Entertainment, and unlike the other ever-reincarnating ruler that we love so much, it sounds like Belintar wasn’t interested in expansion and acquisitions, which I guess puts him out of the highly contested “top horrible Gloranthan figures” list.
And what about the City of Wonders? Well, it looks like this was the equivalent of Main Street, U.S.A, where you can take selfies with Mickey Mouse, Darth Vader, and any of the Disney Princesses before going for a smoothie at a nearby stand:
Gods and spirits dwelled in the City of Wonders alongside mortals and powerful magical entities like the Reef Master or the Tide Lord. So you might go to the Golden Anchor for a drink and meet a visiting Triton or a son of the Storm Bull who has come here from Stormwalk Mountain.
Look at this wonderful early map from Greg for the Holy Country:
A heroquest is a direct interaction with the divine realm of myth and archetypes. In a heroquest, you interact and experience the divine realm and bring back magic, be it Rune spells, guardian spirits, good harvest, a terrible curse, something long forgotten and hidden, etc.
As we interact with the kaleidoscopic divine realm, we of course change its arrangement. Like walking into a room of swirling smoke, our presence causes the mist to swirl around us, changing its direction and patterns. Most of the time we have little control of the changes – we enter the room, the smoke swirls because of our mere presence.
Arkat Chaosbane was the first individual to discover heroquesting outside of a specific cult myth. He underwent several secret initiations (and excommunications) which gave him an unusual transcultural view of the secret world of myth. His personal experiences gave him clues which he followed, exploited, and taught to others.
To those Gloranthans who do know of the monomyth it is a convenient philosophical overview, an attempt to translate peculiarities into universalities, to overcome the limitations and boundaries of language and parochial existence, or another deception by Gbaji to lead the world to ruin. But it cannot be forgotten that most of the inhabitants of Glorantha do not care about the mythic structure beyond their own belief structure.
She won because she cheated. She won because she did not obey the normal laws of war and of creation. Things which simply could not be, were! This was where she had one son, in many bodies! Where she had a body part, as a living being! Where she had her shadow self, better than her!
Of all the many crimes committed by the the Poisonblood Witch-Queen of the Lunar Empire, perhaps the greatest crime was when she assassinated Belintar the God-King and ended the divine proximity of the Holy Country. A crime boasted of by the Lunars, serving no purpose except to facilitate their imperial conquests.
I don’t know about you but “Poisonblood Witch-Queen” kinda makes me want to take her side… too bad she helped destroy Disneyland, though, that was definitely not cool.
Formative Female Experiences
In an interesting break of form, Jeff asked for ideas from the community on what would be the female gender role equivalent to the formative experience of the cattle raid.
This is always a tricky thing with Gloranthan lore and gaming: it tries to emulate the gendered roles of real-world mythology and ancient cultures, but this often leaves female gender roles as very passive. Staying home to be pregnant isn’t a very exciting prospect for female characters, in addition to the patriarchal worldbuilding issues it brings with it. Some comments offer interesting ideas, but I think this is an issue that Glorantha game writers will keep struggling with for a long time. I wonder if it would have been easier in the end to prioritize gameplay rather than spiritual verisimilitude during Glorantha’s early years?
Of course, the Jonstown Compendium titles are participating in it, so buy them while you can, especially titles like Valley of Plenty which are actually going to become PDF-only in a couple days! In fact, the Jonstown Compendium books are completely smashing DriveThruRPG’s “hottest community books” category, as you can see below:
Most of the non-Gloranthan books in this top-16 sample are from the Miskatonic Repository, which is the community content program for Call of Cthulhu. Way to go, Chaosium fans!
Other books might interest the RuneQuest Glorantha crowd too, such as the recently released (and well received!) Mythic Babylon for Mythras.
Each of the cults in this book get very detailed write-ups, providing plenty of insight not just into the beliefs and activities, but also their place within the setting of Glorantha. It’s in this area where Cults of Terror excels. In some ways, it’s even superior to Cults of Prax, because much more is revealed about the myths, history, and cosmology of Glorantha.
I also found it surprising that the purpose of RuneQuest is clearly laid out here: Adventurers gain experience, magic, and treasure by overcoming the scenarios the GM creates for them. Then they use that treasure to purchase training to further develop their skills until they are so proficient they meet the requirements to join a rune cult. Acquiring rune magic seems to be, then, the quest referred to in the name of the game.
Well, I guess the newest version of RuneQuest then starts us off with that quest fulfilled! Not much else to do with these new characters besides murdering and looting, eh? 😇
Thank you for reading
That’s it for this week! Please contact us with any feedback, question, or news item we’ve missed!
Thank you for subscribing to 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.
We are obviously not going to look into everything that happened since the last newsletter (even when they’re very funny), but we’ll mention the most recent important things, along with this week’s news.
Since the trademark for HeroQuest was recently sold back to Hasbro after a couple decades in the hands of Moon Design Publishing (and therefore Chaosium), all of the “HeroQuest-branded” books have to be decommissioned. This will happen on July 15 so if you don’t have any of these books, now is the time to get them! You should at least get the PDFs, because I assume they’re going away too, and although old books are available on the second hand market, PDFs are not (legally speaking).
There is a good chance that some of these books come back in the future with some simple branding changes on the cover and replacing mentions of HeroQuest with QuestWorlds, but we don’t know when that might happen.
Jeff Richard, whose brain is currently holding the entirety of the Glorantha monomyth, has been posting a lot of interesting bits of information on the RuneQuest Facebook group — from random thoughts to previews of upcoming books. Because Facebook is a notorious black hole when it comes to past content, several people are trying to archive these things. David Scott in particular has been making edited backups of the highlights on the Well of Daliath, Chaosium’s “knowledge base” for Glorantha.
Here are some recent notable additions:
References for Glorantha: A list of foundational texts that Jeff Richard uses for all his Gloranthan work. There are some interesting or surprising choices in these lists but one thing is clear: not only were the RQ2-era books cementing much of Glorantha, the very original games, White Bear & Red Moon and Nomad Gods, still very relevant in many ways. It’s good to know that they are going to be reissued by Chaosium in the coming years.
Recent Timeline of Dragon Pass: Jeff assign the “current date” of the RuneQuest setting to the current year (2021), and shows how long ago major events would have been. This helps a lot in figuring out how PCs and NPCs might relate to these events. For instance, Starbrow’s Rebellion would have been in 2008, the Lunar conquest of Sartar in 1997, the Battle of Grizzly Peak and Opening of the Seas in the 70s, the apotheosis of Sartar during WW1, and the recolonization of Dragon Pass by humans in the late 17th century.
Dragons of Glorantha: Jeff explains what dragons are in Glorantha, and what that means for the various draconic myths such as Orlanth and Yelm slaying these beasts. Interestingly enough, Steve Perrin, one of the designers for the original RuneQuest, dropped by for a bit of trivia: “Strictly speaking, dream dragons draw from D&D, because the authors (me and the Friends) felt a need for dragon opponents, and Greg had already defined true dragons as sleeping army killers. So we tapped into the dreams of the sleeping dragons to provide dungeon-size opponents for our adventurers.”
The Pockets of Boldhome: Jeff briefly talks about the “pockets” of Boldhome, which are dwarf-made buildings carved deep into the Quivin mountains. These might look like the tombs of Petra, or the dwellings of Mesa Verde. The video game Skyrim even makes an appearance, since the city of Markarth has often been suspected to be inspired by Boldhome, given the lead designer’s history with Glorantha. For more information on Boldhome, see also this and that post. You can refer to Olivier Sanfilippo’s older map for comparison.
Revenues of the Red Emperor: the short version is taxes, taxes, and taxes. These come from the Lunar Heartlands, from tributes from the West Reaches and Provinces, and from tithing of the Red Goddess and Yelm cults.
Quite a few tidbits of information about Esrolia and the Holy Country: there’s a lot, from the revenues of the Esrolian Queen (short version: Nochet import and market fees) to the cults of the Right Arm Islands (sea gods and figures first, Orlanth and Ernalda second), evolving boating practices and manufacturing (thanks to Dormal), and even a glimpse at what happened at Corflu. Choralintor merman security services and Wolf Pirates make an appearance, and some population stats are given. Harald “Jajagappa” Smith has been archiving those on BRP Central.
Vasana’s and Yanioth’s initiations: Jeff shared what Vasana’s and Yanioth’s childhoods looked like between the ages of 13 and 15, during which they were sent to a “camp” for a couple years of learning how to fill the tribal “male” and “female” gender roles. However, I’m told that “camp” invokes the wrong mental picture for native English speakers, so what happens, apparently, is that Vasana spent these years surviving in the hills of the Starfire Ridges, along with 300 other “young men” (some of them being female like her) while Yanioth interned at the Clearwine temple. “Male” gender roles are gathered and initiated as big tribal groups every few years (five year schedule for the Colymar tribe), which is why Vasana was in such a big group, while “female” gender roles are handled more locally, typically at the clan level, which means that Yanioth was most likely only one of a dozen or so young women serving the temple.
Finally, Jeff isn’t the only one being prolific on Facebook, as Michael “MOB” O’Brien is also telling us what happens along the River of Cradles after 1621. Thankfully, he’s also archiving these posts himself over on BRP Central.
The art for the upcoming Cults of Glorantha book keeps coming in, and Jeff generously teases us with some of it every now and then. Here’s a late Third Age fresco depicting the contest between Orlanth and Yelm, by Loic Muzy!
After Call of Cthulhu creator and long-time Glorantha contributor Sandy Petersen showed his board-gaming shelves on Twitter, people (including myself!) asked to see his role-playing shelves… which he gracefully agreed to. In response to this Chaosium president Rick Meints showed a small part of his Chaosium collection — featuring a sneak preview of the RuneQuest Starter Set box. If you like gawking at other people’s gaming shelves as much as me, you should definitely check these out!
Jonstown Compendium
The Jonstown Compendium is Chaosium’s community content program for all their 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!
Warning: Print on Demand Price Increase!
Before we dive into what’s new on the Jonstown Compedium, you need to know that DriveThruRPG’s printer, Lightning Source, is increasing their prices for “premium colour” books. Standard colour and black & white printing stays the same, but with most of the Jonstown Compedium’s books using premium colour for their Print-on-Demand version, many authors are left scratching their heads. Some of these books might get a significant price increase, while others get downgraded to standard colour or even, in some cases, cease to offer Print-on-Demand altogether.
This affects all Print-on-Demand offers on DriveThruRPG so this goes well beyond the Jonstown Compendium circles.
The price increase goes live on July 1st, so place your orders before then:
Drew Baker’s “Quick and Dirty” series (which started with a bunch of pre-generated family backgrounds) continues with “Alogo’s Caravan: Riding Animals of Dragon Pass“. Apparently, Drew’s idea of “Quick and Dirty” is almost 150 pages of material… anyway, if you need a mount for a PC or NPC, a herding patron (the titular Alogo), riding-related scenarios, or anything else related to riding animals, this is the book for you.
Austin Conrad keeps releasing his Monster of the Month issues, although they have been more about Elder Race NPCs lately rather than straight up monsters. The most recent issue is Ehnval Tallspear, a Wood Lord of Aldrya, and as always it comes with a bunch of extra material.
In addition to that, Austin released the “Pay What You Want” play aid “Rune Spells“, which is a printer-friendly list of Rune Spell tables organized by Rune and by alphabetical order. All the spells from The Red Book of Magic are in there.
The Crimson Bat Battle
Prolific Gloranthan illustrator Dario Corallo continues to produce VTT tokens for pretty much everything you can think of… or, in this particular case, simply the last thing you can think of: the Crimson Bat! Surely this sounds like the end of a campaign, so why not do it with style?
Notable Updates
Austin Conrad is running a sale on the POD and POD+PDF bundle versions of Treasures of Glorantha (Volume 1). Grab it before the price increase!
Finally, Secrets of Dorastor is also available in POD. Grab it… you know the drill. However, note that Simon Phipp is running an experiment in PDF discounts, for those who had already bought the electronic version. If people are reasonable and polite, he may repeat the offer with his future books. See his BRP forum post for more information.
The fund raising campaign ends on June 30th, 2021 so you have roughly a week to back it. I’m sure the products will be available later on the Infinity Engine website if you miss it, however.
Miscellaneous
Katrin Dirim’s Art
Art by Katrin Dirim
Do you want to see how Gloranthan artist extraordinaire Katrin Dirim made the picture above? Check out the timelapse that she posted on Twitter…
Dendera Temple Complex
The Dendera temple complex in Egypt could have looked like this during its heyday in the Ptolemaic period. This should give you permission to make your Gloranthan holy sites BIG!
Assassin’s Creed: Discovery Tour
Do you want to visit Ancient Greece is a virtual way? The team behind Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey have released many “documentary” videos where they use the game as visuals for a historical visit of Ancient Greek landmarks.
The good folks at Chaosium have now organized three “Impromptu Conventions”, nicknamed “ImpCon”, where they get online on Discord and Zoom and chat in a totally informal way with their gamer community. The idea is that it’s a virtual “after-con” experience, comprised of liquor drinking and chatting, entirely skipping the “moderated panels and game slots” step.
In lieu of games and formal panels, ImpCon has (virtual) lobbies, where people can chat about whatever comes to mind, with all of Chaosium’s game designers dropping by to partake in the socialization. The schedule is made up of thematic video chats for all of Chaosium’s present games (Call of Cthulhu, RuneQuest, QuestWorlds, 7th Sea, and even BRP itself!) and future games (Rivers of London, Lords of the Middle Sea). It also involves fun activities such as John Wick’s “watch along” parties where he provides live commentary on movies like Pirates of the Caribbean or Princess Bride.
The much awaited Cults of Glorantha book is still in production, as artists such as Loic Muzy, Agathe Pitie, and Katrin Dirim are hard at work on the many, many illustrations needed for the two-and-a-half book set. By Chaosium’s request, we can’t share the exclusive previews that were shared during ImpCon3, but we can definitely repost other previews that Chaosium has shared publicly shortly before or after.
I’m sure that Agathe Pitie’s giant monomyth painting will be analyzed by fans for quite a long time! I wonder if Waldo’s in there?
We learned a few things about the Sartar Homeland Set, such as the contents of the box: a Player Guide, a Sartar Gazetteer, a Boldhome booklet, an Encounters booklet, some posters, and the much teased big map of Sartar.
Player Guide will feature a new customized character creation in which, for instance, players decide if their character is from the countryside or from a city. This should affect starting skills such as Farm and Herd vs Tradetalk, for instance.
A tattoo guide would also be included in the Player Guide. We hope that it comes with a “blank” sheet like in HeroQuest’s Sartar book, where players could draw their character’s tattoos.
Last, some household management mechanics inspired from Pendragon’s Book of Manor will appear in the Player Guide, probably expanding on the Sacred Time mechanics which were already taken from Pendragon’s Winter Phase.
The Sartar Gazetteer will present the Orlanthi kingdom as a much less “cattle herding hillbillies” region, and a more “urbanized silk road” setting. As often with Gloranthan lore, things evolve and change with time, which is bound to frustrate as much as it excites. I’m definitely looking forward to gaming in Bronze Age cities which, as I educate myself on the topic, seem full of surprises in terms of density, scale, social layers, and much more.
Further down the road Chaosium is working with various authors on settings and adventures books for Pavis, the Big Rubble, Nochet, the Upland Marsh, Talastar & Dorastor, Sun County (the one in Sartar!), and more. To round this up, the Dragon Pass Campaign book, pitched as “The Boy King campaign in Glorantha”, is still being written, and the Gamemaster Guide, Heroquesting Guide, and Weapons & Equipment Guide are at various stages of completion.
Of course we want to thank again all the people at Chaosium for organizing this and for their willingness to open up in front of an ever demanding crowd of grognards. We’ll see you all again for ImpCon 4!
You may have noticed that things are changing around here, starting with the domain name and title which have been taken over by the venerable sages of Jrustela known as the God Learners (for more information, listen to our “Interlude” episode). This realignment ritual will occur for a week, as the wizard caste gathers the necessary magical energies.
In the meantime, please continue your caste-appropriate activities. A wizard will contact you if your magical essence is required for extraction.
In this short interlude, Joerg and Ludovic announce their return to Gloranthan podcasting with a new name!
Shortly after this airs, all of our website and social media presence will migrate to a new place. Visit the God Learners for more information… if you get the “Coming Soon” page, it means we are still heroquesting deep into the bowels of the internet!
Episode 8 airs with a few weeks delay compared to our usual rhythm, as we wanted to feature our Glorantha Has Talent?-contest in this episode. We found the wait worth the while, and so did our judges.
Herald’s Podium
While we have moved the complete coverage of news about Glorantha to our Wind Whispers newsletter, we still pick a few items for our voice reporting.
Glorantha Fan Awards 2019 and 2020
In memory of Greg Stafford passing away in October 2018, Chaosium announced the laureates for Gloranthan fan activity for last year and this year, Congratulations to Martin Helsdon and Nick Brooke!
RuneQuest Classic (second edition) titles available as Print-on-Demand
The titles from the Crowd-funding for the Gloranthan Classics edition are finally available as print-on-demand hardcovers from lulu.com.
Art Packs: Gloranthan Stock Art for Creators on the Jonstown Compendium
Martin Helsdon started an experiment offering three packages of illustrations from his works “Armies and Enemies of Dragon Pass” and “Men of the West” as illustrations for creators – Orlanthi, Lunars, and Hsunchen, Nomads and Beasts.
Dario Corallo followed suit with the character art he provided for Gianni Vacca’s Last Faction Hero.
The Pendulum and the Pit
A new free 48 pages product on Jonstown Compendium, a slightly horror scenario for Sacred Season and thus probably fit for a Halloween game.
Glorantha Games 2020 Experience
Ludo reports about his gaming on Pookie’s online convention and leaks tidbits from the Kralorela RQG project under development by David Millians.
Kraken 2020 as a hybrid convention
While we were recording this, a much reduced face to face convention in one of the remotest corners of Brandenburg reached out to the internet. We’ll try to get feedback from the organizer and attendants. There is a little digression about the history of Glorantha-themed conventions in Germany.
RuneQuest Glorantha German Edition Crowdfunding
Jörg reports about the success of the German Crowdfunding and his experience on German language platforms during the CF. We compare international editions, extras to be had, and errata to be included.
Glorantha Has Talent!
The first of our main sections, wherein we are joined by our three judges to listen to the entries, get their feedback on the submissions and announce the prizes and their ranking.
We talk about the rules for contestants and judges, and present our team of three:
For the whole list of contestants, entries and individual recordings (some in the original stereo) as well as some of the splendid supplemental material we received, follow this link. We don’t want to spoil the results just yet.
Heartfelt thanks to everybody who contributed to the contest, whether as judges, sponsors, or participants!
Artistic Contests in Glorantha
After enjoying the fruits of the contest, Bill, Jörg and Ludo plough onward to discuss how such contests can find their way into your games. We digress a lot, as usual:
The Garhound Contest – the growth of a myth out of a scenario
Bill shares his admiration for Michael O’Brien’s main scenario of the RQ3 Renaissance book Sun County, the Garhound Contest and Melisande’s Hand, and speculates how a contest which might have once been a way to keep the youngster’s energy away from trouble becomes a myth or gets caught up by myth.
Singing for the Ludoch – a Choralinthor Bay Myth becoming a ritual contest
Jörg presents another story about the Choralinthor Bay Ludoch and Fisherfolk and tries to provide artistic expression as another way to solve conflicts. (Transcripts of both these stories will be made linked as text soonish.) We also touch upon the uncanny attention that use of the term Ludoch creates for one of us….
A Look at Donandar
Ludo explores the cult of Donandar and its role in the world. We discuss Illusions, stage craft, and a Marvel heroine in the course of this.
