Communiqués from the Wizard Caste

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 spent too much time ranting about various things that I didn’t have time to post some cool links and references in the “Arachne Solara’s web” section… sorry about that!

God Learner Sorcery

Here is what us God Learners were up to this week.

Lore, Tropes, and Goals: The Problem with New Settings

This is not strictly speaking a God Learner thing, but it’s a “Ludo” thing (that’s me) so that counts. Over at my personal blog I wrote an essay that challenges the idea that “too much lore” makes it difficult to approach a setting.

Some people are intimidated by vast amounts of existing lore because they assume that they need to assimilate most of it before they start playing. This is typical with old and multiply-published settings like Glorantha. But that’s not really what’s going on in my opinion.

Think about it for a minute. What is the game setting with the most amount of lore written for it? The Forgotten Realms? Star Wars? Nope, it’s Earth.

Read the rest here. Hopefully you find that article insightful!

Chaosium News

Here are this week’s Chaosium news!

Cults of Glorantha Update

The upcoming Cults of Glorantha was originally slated to be done as a slipcase with two books in it. But the manuscript ballooned from 50-ish cults to more than a hundred, plus a Prosopaedia, and oh yeah, a global pandemic mess up both printing and shipping businesses.

So back in August, Rick Meints was “doubting” that it would be a slipcase set:

We expect that the cults material will be about 800 pages of material when layout is finished. Thus, it will be multiple books. That does not include the Prosopedia.

We doubt it will be a slipcase set.

The newest update on this is from Rick again:

The Cults books will not be sold all at the same time. The Prosopaedia will be one of the first ones sold, as its layout is done.

It’s funny to me because we chatted with Rick back in episode 10, and during the interview I asked why Chaosium wasn’t adopting a “splatbook” model for RuneQuest. In this model, I imagined that there would be individual books for cults or groups of cults that players can buy, thus multiplying revenues compared to books that only a gamemaster would buy (this is one of the ways White Wolf made a lot of money with their World of Darkness line). Back then Rick said that it wasn’t quite possible because of how Gloranthan cults are all intertwined with each other… but now we might actually see these cults released in small groups! Lo and behold, RuneQuest gains splatbooks!

Should I take credit for this? Definitely not. Will I take credit for this? You bet your ass I will!

By the way, Brian Duguid (which we just recently chatted with for our episode on the Hsunchen) made this prediction on Discord that the cult books will be split by “pantheon” (which I agree with), and that this is what will be in each of them:

This is all completely useless (but fun!) conjecture of course, but that seems very likely to me. If I had to nitpick anything, I would move a lot of the cult spirits back into their respective “overarching” pantheons. For instance, I would expect that Earth Witch, Kolat, and Sun Hawk would be with the Earth, Storm, and Sun pantheons, instead of in a “shaman cults” book.

Regardless of how Chaosium slices the manuscript, you know that some people will find a way to complain about it anyway. That’s going to be fun…

Give These Creators a Boost

Chaosium is generally very good at supporting their community content creators. Case in point: they have recently given a little push to all the Jonstown Compendium books that are close to earning their first DriveThruRPG medal (the “Copper Best Seller” medal). Of note, they also did the same for the Miskatonic Repository. Time to spend a few bucks and encourage some creators!

A New Hero: Episode 08

The “New Hero” RuneQuest stream continues and I’m still catching up! But I still like it! Looks like they’re still stuck in the Upland Marsh, heee hee.

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.

Lunar Sages vs Esrolian Sages

In this note on Gloranthan education, Jeff compares Esrolian sages of the Lhankor Mhy cult with Lunar sages of the Irrippi Ontor cult. If you don’t know about Irrippi Ontor, it’s… basically the Lunar Lhankor Mhy. He’s one of the Seven Mothers and as most of them, he used to be human and became a god in Time.

If you’ve read the note (otherwise please do so now), you’ll notice that there’s an overlap in topics, but not in the methodologies to study these topics.

For instance, Lunar and Esrolians both study language, but they differ in their approach. The Esrolians reach to the Empire of the Wyrms Friends, with the language known as Auld Wyrmish. Auld Wyrmish is a tricky beast… it’s the language of dragons, but humans had supposedly lost the ability to speak and understand it back around the time of the Dragonkill War, because the dragons were so pissed off. But humans of the EWF also had previously figured a way to put that language in writing — something the dragonewts and other draconic species never needed. So I guess the dragons forgot to destroy the dictionaries and thesauruses, and humans regained their understanding of it from Second Age documents (although note that, by RuneQuest rules, they can’t get higher than 25% in that skill). On a personal note, I find all this quite ballsy: to do something that the dragons were pissed off about… people have short memory, I guess.

Anyway, this lack of draconic perspective is probably what made the Lunars rather oblivious to what was going on under their own temple construction in Sartar, and why the Dragonrise completely took them by surprise… on the other hand, I imagine that Lunars’ language studies involve a lot more etymology, semantics, semiotics, cryptography, and other such things that might be useful for achieving Illumination or, at least, in waging some Dart Wars across the Empire.

Similarly, both Esrolians and Lunars study music, but I imagine that this differs quite a lot too. Esrolians might research old forms of music and try to emulate the non-written components of draconic speech to better understand it (since “true” Auld Wyrmish is “musical” and “includes auditory, olfactory, and empathic components”). On the other hand, Lunars might innovate with modern music, basically the equivalent of ambient and prog-rock or something, in order to, again, help with Illumination.

The difference in how Lunars and Esrolians study metaphysics seems to be related to the sciences they do not have in common. Lunars study “suprasensorial perception”, i.e. all the meditation and LSD crazyness, while Esrolians study “knowledge”, which sounds like our own modern academia. As a result, I suspect that Lunar metaphysics are trying to be, you know, useful, because they could help deal with phenomenon outside of the mundane world. Nysalorean riddles can be redesigned as jazz songs you need to figure out… Meanwhile, Esrolian metaphysics are probably more like dry philosophical debates… although that could also have applications with, say, heroquesting, assuming nobody comes around and yells “that’s God Learnerism!“, that is.

Dealing with Superheroes

Any Gloranthan campaign will likely, at some point, introduce the setting’s “superheroes” such as Argrath, Harrek, Jar-eel, and so on.

These characters are important enough to be their own chits on the WBRM board game. They are heroes, even “superheroes”. Bringing them into your campaign can greatly enrich your players’ experience and immersion into the setting. But if mishandled, they threaten to steal the spotlight away from the players or worse become GM alter-egos.

Jeff outlines a few ways to handle this: put the superheroes in the background of the PCs’ heroic actions, have the superheroes help the PCs but somehow not take their spotlight, make the PCs companions of the superheroes, make the PCs key allies of the superheroes, or see the superheroes as guest stars with cameos in the PCs’ adventures.

Of course, I’ll add that Jeff’s advice is like a buffet — you’re encouraged to mix all these approaches in your game.

Personally, I find that this is one of my big challenges with Glorantha. Not so much because it’s hard to deal with a superhero with monstrous stats and a metaplot, but because I’m so used to telling “street level” stories. With my current RuneQuest campaign, I have to get myself out of my comfort zone and embrace the “epic heroes” aspect of Glorantha, and that doesn’t come naturally to me…

Battle Rules

Jeff talks about mass battle rules in RPGs:

Something I have long been frustrated by is the tendency that RPG battle rules have always been mass combat rules designed to determine the winner of a battle, rather than something player focusing – that tells us what our player characters did and experience in the battle.

This really depends on what the game is about, and what it’s trying to emulate. It feels rather ironic to me that someone who co-wrote a game that tries to finely model how skirmish combat works (complete with hit locations and individual wounds) does not see the appeal in modelling how mass battles work.

But I get it. RuneQuest’s combat is detailed because it deals with the character’s personal experience. Mass combat focuses on the entire battle, and is removed from that character… unless that character is actually the commander in chief, that is. I don’t have a lot of experience with RPGs with battle rules, but the couple ones I’ve seen do make the assumption that the PCs are in charge. As such, they might not even leave their tent at the top of the hill, and the whole thing is played through preparation, alliances, tactical choices, and successful Strategy rolls. Anyway, that’s another topic.

IMO, the GM should determine the outcome of the battle. That can be based on the player character actions (“if you can’t hold this position, the battle is lost” or “you need to defeat the enemy hero or the battle is lost”) or not (frex, in Shakespeare’s Henry V, the English have no idea that they have won the battle until it is over). In the Grand Pendragon Campaign, the battles take the latter approach (even telling us what Arthur rolled on his Battle skill!).

I personally prefer something a little more interactive with the players – give them a chance to have the spotlight on them (even if you have already decided the results of the battle, it is easy to say that the results are because of the players or despite the players).

I’ve seen some people online disagree or even complain about this bit here — especially from those who uphold player agency as of the utmost importance. There’s a bunch to unpack here.

First, the PCs can only influence so much stuff in the setting. Just as you can protest that the outcome of the battle is predetermined whatever the players do, you could also protest that the starting of the battle was also predetermined! Yet, I don’t know if anybody ever complained about that. Maybe it all happened while the PCs were travelling away from home, and they come back to these terrible news. Or maybe the PCs were at the meeting when the peace negotiation turned sour and the declaration of war happened, but if they were just one of the leader’s bodyguards, it’s not like they could do anything… or could they?

See, to me this isn’t a problem of player agency (not directly, at least) but a problem of narrative framing. What are the PCs really doing at the peace negotiation meeting? If they’re bodyguards that stand on the other side of the door only to witness history, that’s not dramatically interesting. However, if they are the bodyguards that can stop the assassin, that’s a lot more interesting. If they stop the assassin, the Kings and Queens realize that he was sent by a common enemy that was trying to weaken their nations by pitting them against each other. If they do not stop the assassin but still catch him after the fact, the situation become extremely complicated but war can still be avoided. And if they do not stop the assassin at all and he escapes, war is declared!

By shifting the story from “the NPCs are negotiating for peace” to “the PCs try to stop an assassin threatening a member of a peace summit“, we shift the focus from the NPCs to the PCs. In doing so, we bring back player agency on world events that they aren’t supposed to be able to affect usually. This is pretty much what Jeff is talking about, I think.

The other point here is that there is a lot of wiggle room even once the GM has decided the battle’s outcome. The players could still shift things a lot within that outcome. For instance, there’s a big difference between “the Lunars crushed everybody and your tribal king is dead“, “the Lunars won and your tribal king has been captured“, and “the Lunars had a narrow victory but have lost many soldiers, so they left your lands mostly unoccupied and your tribal king has escaped“.

The gamemaster could have decided that the Lunars would win either way, but use the players’ actions and their successes and failures to decide between these three aforementioned outcomes. Those are vastly different outcomes that propel the campaign forward in completely different directions. That still qualifies as player agency in my book. And you can mix that with the previous narrative reframing that puts the PCs at the pivotal moments! For instance, one of the battle scenes could have been the PCs stumbling upon their King, wounded and surrounded by Lunar Tarshite soldiers. It’s up to the PCs to fight/intimidate/negotiate and see whether the King dies, gets captured, or escapes. I’ve heard a few people who placed their PCs near Kallyr in the Battle of Queens, and ended up saving her from Lunar assassins, for instance.

What should be the center of the session’s activity is what the players characters do and experience during the battle. Do they spend most of the battle standing in a line dealing with missile weapons and spells? Do they engage in single combat with champions? Do they try to rush an enemy leader or hero? What goes on elsewhere in the battle is usually unknown to the players and they should only learn about it after the battle is over.

The upcoming RuneQuest battle rules (and their cousin, the upcoming Pendragon battle rules) are doing more or less that. We had an early preview of what these rules might look like in the White Bull campaign S02E09 (although I’m sure that was an early work-in-progress version of the rules, so don’t get hung up on details). Back in issue 12 of the Journal of Runic Studies, I had even taken the time to write a summary of what I gathered from the actual play. This might still be useful as we wait for these rules, possibly in the RuneQuest Gamemaster Guide.

Lay Membership and Extra Magic

The short version of this note is: encourage your players to have their PC become a lay member of a few cults.

So for example, IMG, most full-time warriors in Dragon Pass (and Pavis) are lay members of Humakt. That gets Bladesharp, Fireblade, Protection, Parry, Coordination, Vigor, Strength, and all sorts of other good combat-oriented spells. You also get discount training in sword and other combat skills.

This might affect your Gloranthan world-building a bit but yes, it’s not too hard to become a lay member of Humakt — it’s neutral to a lot of cults, and most people who would be interested anyway (Orlanth or Yelmalio cultists) share the same sort of “honourable behaviour” stuff that is required anyway.

So that’s one way to get extra magic, such as a Yelmalian getting Bladesharp. There’s another way: local cult variants. It’s easy to have a particular shrine or temple worship a variant of the god, a notable hero, a special cult spirit, or whatever that provides one extra/different spirit spell or Rune magic.

Note that the “easy” part is on the gamemaster: take a map of Glorantha and throw a dart at it. That’s where that shrine or temple is. The hard part is for the PCs! They need to learn about it, travel to it, and convince the priest or priestess to let them get that spell! If you’re like me, that will probably take three months of gaming…

How Common is HeroQuesting?

Another good question on heroquesting from the BRP Central forums: how common is it? Jeff answers here and here:

Let’s be precise about terms. Every initiate experiences the Gods World and interacts with it every time the deity is invoked with a successful Worship ceremony. But that’s how far most people go. They stick around the God’s Place, witness the god and its allies, but do not stray.

A few people – mainly Rune Lords and Rune Priests – go beyond this, sticking to more familiar paths and interact with powers and entities outside of the god’s control.

Far fewer people – heroquesters –  go off the familiar path and explore the Hero Plane. 

So heroquesting is very common when it comes to worshipping, or acquiring new Rune magic… but it’s so safe and common that it’s abstracted with, at most, a simple roll in the RuneQuest rules. The couple times I’ve had players acquire new Rune magic, I did try to spend at least a minute or two describing the ceremony and the heroquest involved in it. But not more than that.

Most every Gloranthan has some experience “on the Hero Plane.” When you sacrifice POW/regain your Rune Points, you experience your deity and gain the connection that allows you to briefly incarnate that deity in the mundane world. Every time you cast a a Rune spell, we get a momentary manifestation of the deity. I think a lot of people understate this – it is not Vasana who casts Lightning, rather it Orlanth’s Lightning Spear that appears in Vasana’s hands. The god is present with every Rune spell.

But that stuff is handled through the Rune spell mechanics, and not what we likely mean when we talk about “heroquesting” […]

Heroquesting that sticks to “familiar paths” can be played but, as people who went through the HeroWars/HeroQuest ruleset can possibly attest, there was something fishy, gameplay-wise, in going through an adventure for which you know what’s going to happen, and you need to act so that it keeps happening that way. Sure, the rulebooks did recommend to throw a few surprises here and there, but by and large it was a scripted affair.

To gain new powers, new gifts (and new banes and geases), you need to go outside and explore the Hero Plane. You might be armed with your stories, but they are simply guides of how things might be done – and things might not go that way. You need to make your own stories, participate in your own experiences, and risk transformation. That’s not easy – in real life or in gaming. That’s why people keep retreating to the King of Dragon Pass version of heroquesting – it is safer, more predictable, easier to control, and less likely to radically transform your character (and even your cult). But that is not really heroquesting.

So as far as I can tell, the new approach that Chaosium is taking with the upcoming RuneQuest rules is to focus almost entirely on the last category outlined in the first quote: people who treat the God Time like Oz or Narnia or Wonderland or whatever. It’s heroquesting as isekai, more or less. You go to the God Time to try and solve a problem (get some McGuffin, destroy a source of evil, whatever), and you have to survive long enough to get there, and not mess up your community and yourself in the process.

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.

Update on the Escalation! Magazine Lunar Issue

Evan posted this update about the upcoming Lunar issue of the 13th Age focused “Escalation!” magazine:

And the final pieces of the manuscript are now with art and layout. Those “departments” are one fantastic person who does it out of love and kindness and has other real world responsibilities and priorities, so it won’t happen fast, but her part of Red Moon and Warring Kingdoms will be amazing. I feel totally unworthy of the art that has already been produced! All hail the Reaching Moon! We Are All Us

As a reminder, we have seen two pieces of work-in-progress art for this:

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Six Ages Sequel Update

Here’s the latest of the Six Ages: Ride Like the Wind sequel, tentatively called “Lights Going Out” (it’s set during the Great Darkness).

The big change that occurred between “Ride Like the Wind” and “Lights Going Out” is the destruction of the cosmic mountain which housed the Celestial Court. Needless to say, the world was a much worse place afterwards.

Here’s an “early draft image“:

As for the current status of the game, they’re getting through the artwork backlog and working on music, testing and tuning. Here’s some artwork:

Thank you for reading

That’s it for this week! Please contact us with any feedback, question, or news item we’ve missed!

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.

God Learner Sorcery

Here is what us God Learners were up to this week.

Episode 17: People of Glorantha: The Hsunchen

Episode 17 of the podcast is out, and I can now write “Hsunchen” properly the first time! This is thanks to Brian Duguid, author of the Children of Hykim and all-around expert on the Hsunchen. We chat about these stone age people of Glorantha, their totem animals, their culture and magic, and how to include them in your games.

Runic Rants: POW Gain House Rules

Here is a guest article by Austin Conrad, author of the Monster of the Month series (among many other things) and editor on both my adventures (A Short Detour and Bog Struggles). Austin shares his current POW Gain house rules for RuneQuest!

Chaosium News

Here are this week’s Chaosium news!

A New Hero Episode 06: Marsh of the Undead

As previously advertised, Chaosium’s “New Hero” actual play for RuneQuest is back! This makes me happy because I like the whole crew here, but most notably I really like James’ GMing. Anyway, the Varmandi siblings try to figure out what raised the dead near their home in the last adventure… and by doing so have to go near the dreaded Upland Marsh. But it’s not all doom and gloom: they fight a big thing that delights Bridgett and David!

I have caught up to episode 6, but episode 7 is also already out!

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!

Children of Hykim POD Preview

If you’ve been listening to our latest episode, you should already be buying Children of Hykim on the Jonstown Compendium… but if you need more motivation, look at this super gorgeous new cover by Kristy Jones that Brian is going to use for the upcoming Print-on-Demand version of the book!

The Crimson King is Coming

Nick Brooke has a preview of the absolutely amazing cover for his next RuneQuest adventure, The Crimon King. The art is by John Sumrow.

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.

The Size of Genertela

Jeff talks about the size of Genertela, which is roughly similar to the continental United States.

When I first got into Glorantha, I found it surprisingly small. Some of it has to do with the tropes I somehow grabbed upon. For instance, the Lunar Empire as a sort of fantasy Roman Empire. But when it comes to geography, that’s totally not the case:

Dragon Pass covers about 67,000 square kilometers. That’s a little smaller than Austria. Or a little bigger than West Virginia.

So if you think about the Lunar Empire, it covers about 390,000 square km, or about 5% of Genertela. That still is enough to make it the largest empire in Genertela.

But even so, the Lunar Empire is comparable to the size of modern Germany (it is a bit bigger). It is not the Roman Empire (which would cover 75% of Genertela).

The other reason I found Glorantha surprisingly small is that you can find dramatic changes in cultures and biomes across very short distances. Prax, its chaparral desert, and its nomads are right next to Sartar with its proto-Celt or proto-Greek (pick your publishing era) Orlanthi. And not too far from there are the sunny rice-paddies of the Lunar Provinces. This all looked very weird to me at first.

Of course, I later realized that this is sort of explained thanks to the massive influence of magic and gods over local climate and crops, for instance. So yeah, there’s a desert in Prax where there probably shouldn’t be a desert because some gods died a long time ago. And it’s a lot sunnier than it should be near the Dara Happan lands because that’s where the sun god’s strength is.

But… you know… still.

One of the things I really like about the scale of Genertela is means that every part of the continent has some contact with the rest of the continent. Let’s give a real world example – Pre-Columbian North America had extensive trade with Mesoamerica, and we know that the Mississippi River Valley facilitated trade between Wisconsin and the Gulf of Mexico. The Iroquois of the 18th century were known to travels from the St. Lawrence Seaway to the Carolinas to wage war on the “Flatheads” (aka the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, etc.), as far as 1000 km away. In Glorantha that’s roughly about the distance from Glamour to Boldhome.

We know that Kralorelans sometimes travel to Dragon Pass and vice versa. Balazarings sometimes make their way to Prax. Merchants from the Holy Country can be found in almost every corner of the continent. People from the Lunar Heartlands make their way to Fronela and Ralios. And so on. The various cultures in Genertela are not hermetically sealed.

Tell that to the people under the Syndic’s Ban… but yes, sure. A smaller world means it’s easier to go murder-hobo’ing around it like Harrek and Argrath. Which is all the more ironic that 40 years of RuneQuest gaming have been focused on New Pavis and Sartar…

The White Bull Society

Speaking of Prax, here’s a note on the White Bull cult that expands into a lot of good contextual information on Prax vs the Wastes, the Lunar occupation, and more. I don’t have anything to add so just read the thing.

Can the God Time Change?

A thread on BRP Central asks whether the God Time can be changed, such as changing the nature of a god or changing the course of well known events. Jeff answers:

The archetypes and patterns of the God Time are eternal and fixed. But what we in Time experience of the God Time, what we call things, what we offer magic points to and draw upon when we use magic – that changes as we mortals do. “Myths” are the stories we tell about the God Time – we can see the God Time in our rites, our ceremonies, and when the Gods World is close to us. Sometimes we can even interact ourself with the archetypes and patterns of the God Time – that’s what we call Heroquesting.

The way I see it is something a bit like the story of the blind men and the elephant. You probably all know that story but, for the sake of God Learner inclusiveness, the gist of this Hindu parable is as follows: a bunch of blind men, who have no idea what the hell an elephant is, are trying to assess what a… well, what an elephant is. So they touch various parts of it and come up with different conclusions. One touches the trunk and says it’s like a snake. One touches the ear and says it’s like a fan. One touches it leg and says it’s like a tree. You get the idea.

So that’s how I figure the God Time works. It’s a big ass elephant, and people get a more or less incomplete picture from traditional stories passed down to them, and from heroquesting. If the elephant stomped on a monster that attacked your ancestors in the Great Darkness, maybe you have a story of a big sacred tree trampling your enemies. And maybe another tribe a few valleys from you has a story of the elephant blowing water into a well to give their ancestors something to drink, and now they have a sacred snake that can fix droughts, or something.

These stories are the myths, but they’re only one facet of what really goes on in the God Time. So when you enter the God Time through the rituals of your tribe, you indeed see some big-ass tree stomping poor little monsters… but maybe you can push further. Maybe you can climb the tree, or shine some bright light towards it, and you’ll see that its canopy also looks like bark — something that either escaped your predecessors, or something that was hidden from them because they saw what they wanted to see. Next thing you know, you’re climbing up something totally unknown, and maybe you slide down its trunk and end up in your tribal neighbour’s heroquests, and they go “hey what the fuck, how are you coming from the other end of that snake? we could never find that other end!” (and that’s why they called it “The One-Ended Snake”).

At this point you can completely change the myth (it’s not a story about a snake and a tree, it’s a story about an elephant), while not changing what happened in the God Time — there’s still something thing that brought water to some people, and crushed other people’s enemies. This can bring some opportunities of friendship between the two aforementioned tribes, and so on. The trickiest parts in all this are (1) proving your discoveries to the tribal elders and (2) coming up with a name for the elephant.

Of course, since the BRP Central thread had predictably gone in the “Yelmalio Problem”, Jeff address that next…

Yelmalio – Little Sun – is a title. We apply it to the Light in the Darkness, the light remained when the Sun was killed and the light that refused to go out in the Darkness. We have places where we can meeting the Little Sun, where he is so close you can reach out to touch him. We can walk in his path and ascend to the Hill of Gold and try to fight against the Darkness, but we know that our god was defeated by Orlanth and robbed by Zorak Zoran – that’s part of his definition. If we do not experience that, we do not follow in his path. Like a Jesus who is not crucified.

For those of you new around here, the “Yelmalio Problem” has to do with the many people who talk about “fixing” Yelmalio’s main myth, in which he gets (among other things) attacked by the troll berserker god Zorak Zoran and gets his fire powers stolen (which is why Yelmalio cultists don’t get any fire magic)… as if you were to “fix Superman” by preventing Krypton from blowing up or, as Jeff puts it, “fix Jesus” by avoiding the crucifixion.

Frankly, apart from a few minmaxers, I think (for what it’s worth) that most people are not actually looking to change Yelmalio’s myths. Rather, Yelmalio’s myth is an easy one to grab when you want to try and wrap you head around what the fuck is heroquesting and how the fuck does it work. With its heroquest that contains something you’re supposed to fail, and consequences that affect other myths and cults (Zorak Zoran’s story, in this case, and his cultists’ access to fire magic), it’s got quite a few properties that make it practical for thought experimentation — which is an inevitable step of any newbie Gloranthaphile until we have an actual heroquesting sourcebook that explains all this shit.

But perhaps something we thought was the Little Sun – his Golden Spear perhaps – is something that we can draw power from directly. We can worship the Golden Spear as a god, separate (but associated) with Yelmalio. Or perhaps we see the time that Yelmalio worked with Orlanth and decide to focus only upon that, and call that subset of Yelmalio with the name Elmal. Or perhaps we experience Yelmalio as merely the light that emanates from Yelm, and worship Yelmalio merely as an attribute of Yelm.

Perhaps on a heroquest, we follow Yelmalio’s path, are extinguished but rekindle ourself with our purity. We bring this back to our temple with a new Rune Spell of one-use Resurrection or maybe just Restart Fire.  Perhaps we gain a new gift, not on the list, or take a new geas, not previously seen. In this way, cults may change.

So Yelmalio’s story, his myth, is just one story we tell about the “immutable pattern” of the “Light The Didn’t Go Out In The Darkness”. There could be a completely different story about this… the question is whether this different story covers as many bases as the Yelmalio story, which has been “researched” (heroquesting-wise) for generations. That story needs to cover the same bases as Yelmalio’s in terms of correctly representing all the facets of the original patterns, such as its connection (whatever it is) to the Sun, and so on. Chances are that if you make up an alternate story, it might not model the original pattern as well, and as such you might not draw as powerful magic as through the Yelmalio myth… or maybe you will! Go crazy with your games, I’m not your mom!

As for the Red Goddess, Jeff adds:

Now the Red Goddess was different. She is something that did not exist in the God Time. Our Red Goddess went deep into the Underworld, was defeated and lost, met the Cosmic Spider and was illuminated by Nysalor, and bound the Devil in order to change the cosmos. In short, she used Chaos to break the Cosmic Compromise and create a new archetype that had not existed in the God Time – the Red Moon. Sure there was a broken and dead Moon Goddess, several even. But they were broken pieces of a funhouse mirror. But the Red Goddess reassembled those fragments and used Chaos to do the impossible. 

The only other example that comes close is the use of the Pseudo-Cosmic egg by the Second Council to create a new god – Osentalka the Perfect One.

This all reminds me a bit of Unknown Armies and its Invisible Clergy, made up of 333 “Archetypes” of humanity and reality (The Mother, The Warrior, The True King, The Usurper, etc.) Their Avatars and Godwalkers try to emulate these archetypes as best as possible to channel their most potent magic and, eventually, ascend themselves and replace the previous Archetype. In at least one scenario, someone taps into the zeitgest of the 21st century and attempts to create a new Archetype that didn’t exist before. Does that all sound familiar?

There are a few other games that also follow along similar lines, but Unknown Armies is the one that I like best, and also the one in which this whole idea is best described and executed as far as I’m concerned… at least if you’re into urban horror.

Note that Jeff posted most of this note on Facebook, and as such it’s been archived on the Well of Daliath.

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.

Calling the Praxian Founders

The RuneQuest “Call Founder” spell gets some good coverage on this BRP Central thread. Of course, Praxian expert David Scott (who guided us through the Nomad Gods rulebook on the podcast, here and here) shared the most awesome bit, which is a table of possible stats for those founders. With STR and POW in the hundreds, this isn’t your usual cult spirits!

Anyway, David’s table made me go “huh” because I hadn’t really thought of associating each Praxian tribe with a different Rune, like he did here: Bison/Air, High Llama/Water, Morokanth/Darkness, Sable/Moon, and so on. I’m not sure where the rest of the independent tribes goes in this model, but… well… “huh”.

Science and the Lunar Way

Eff is back to writing pseudo-Socratic dialogues for more obscure Lunar lore… with footnotes! (Footnotes make everything look more serious)

Years later, I learned that what I had thought was the great difficulty there- the fact that some facts would block the view of other facts, just as one can only see the first few ranks of trees in a forest- was not that at all, because what I had been taught was a metaphor. 

“Knowledge,” the sagacious lady said, “Is not simply a matter of sensory experience. Do you know that the Sun will rise tomorrow?” I nodded, hesitantly. “How do you know this?” She pointed at me with a curved rule. 

Anyway, time to roll Illumination and see if you can raise both Illusion and Truth.

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.

It’s Tutankhamun Month!

Howard Carter (re)discovered the tomb of Tutankhamun, a short-lived Pharaoh of Egypt from the 12th century BCE, in November 1922… which means we are celebrating the 100th anniversary of this seminal archaeological event this month!

Many history websites and podcasts have done at least a few “specials” for the occasion, and I learned a whole bunch of stuff about good ol’ King Tut! From the reasons his tomb was miraculously spared from looters for more than 3000 years, to the sheer amount of stuff found in there (almost 5400 different items!), I realized I had only a microscopic understanding of this guy.

The Ancients podcast is running a number of episodes on the topic. This one with Professor Joyce Tyldesley gives a good overview of the “Boy King”. The second one has Bob Brier tell the story of Carter’s dig, and of who really found the tomb’s entrance, among other historical details.

The excellent Tides of History podcast has an interview of Toby Wilkinson about Ancient Egypt and what we learned from the trove of items from Tut’s tomb. The Ancients podcast actually also had Toby Wilkinson in a previous episode, for the release of his new book on Tutankhamun which shines the light on the most interesting items from his tomb…

If you want to know what Tutankhamun’s trumpets looked like, look at this:

That’s a silver trumpet, by the way. The wooden thing below is the trumpet’s mute.

And maybe you even want to know what they sound like! Well, there’s this:

Of course, we have no idea what ancient Egyptians actually played on these trumpets…

Maybe you’ll be more interested in the Boy King’s board games, which looked something like this:

You can learn more about this sort of game here… anyway, happy tomb-raiding anniversary, King Tut!

Thank you for reading

That’s it for this week! Please contact us with any feedback, question, or news item we’ve missed!

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 newsletter is (again) one day late this week because a windstorm caused multiple power outages around Vancouver where I live. My modem seems to have been damaged during that time, so I have been without internet for three days. My ISP sent a technician yesterday (Monday) and I’m back online, but that means I couldn’t work on the newsletter over the weekend.

In unrelated news, the next episode of the podcast is ready to go out but Joerg had problems of his own so I’m waiting for his show notes and transcript for the episode. Hopefully it will be released to you in the coming days.

Chaosium News

Here are this week’s Chaosium news!

How to Run RuneQuest

Here’s another one of James Coquillat’s interviews! This one is geared towards the complete newbies who want to pick up RuneQuest as their first gamemaster experience or, even, as their first roleplaying game experience. Jeff keeps things very simple, which is good — although his advice of not sweating the details of combat rules will fall flat for some people (I still remember how RuneQuest combat rules looked like on first read… it wasn’t pleasant).

Anyway, I don’t think the experienced RuneQuesters and Gloranthaphiles in the audience will learn anything new here (once again, this is more of a “forward this to a friend” sort of video), but I was very pleased to hear Jeff describe Glorantha as “ancient world fantasy” instead of “bronze age fantasy”!

RuneQuest Glorantha 1.2

Anybody who’s run RuneQuest for more than a couple sessions knows the problem: the rulebook is an editing mess. The number of corrections and clarifications on the Well of Daliath is, let’s say, rather large. It’s not surprising then that the question of an updated version of the rulebook was raised on BRP Central. Chaosium president Rick Meints replied:

We want to do an updated rulebook (not a new edition) in the near future.

Now I wouldn’t get too excited — I’m pretty sure such an updated book wouldn’t change any actual rules. But it’s notable enough that Rick used the term “updated rulebook” and not just “a new printing” or something. This is because we know there are already two versions of the rulebook out there: the first printing, and the second printing which simply fixed some typos and incorrect stat values.

My totally uneducated (and therefore worthless but hey, this is my website) prediction is that this updated rulebook would represent an editorial pass on the text that help increase clarity and reduce confusion. For instance: remove RQ2-isms such as using POW instead of Magic Points, improve the verbiage around combat action economy, expand the text on enchantments and wyters, possibly even expand some of the spell descriptions. That kind of stuff. Who knows, maybe some of the occupations (like Fisher or Hunter) will even get fixed (although I wouldn’t hold my breath on that, Jeff made it clear he likes it this way).

This isn’t totally unheard of. Mongoose Traveller just recently saw such an updated rulebook, with many rules tweaks and expanded or corrected text. Plus some new art.

Anyway, it doesn’t sound like anybody at Chaosium is actually working on it yet so I don’t imagine we’ll see this new rulebook before 2026 or something.

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.

Esrolia’s Population and Fleet

Here is some good world-building information on Esrolia, in case your players are headed there soon. The gist of it is: lots of villages close to each other everywhere, smaller farms with richer land, and lots of people working Earth temple-owned lands.

But few starve or go hungry thanks to Ernalda’s bounty. The productivity is incredible – not just einkorn wheat, but oranges, wine, apricots, strawberries, cherries, olives, chilis, sugarcane, beans, onions, and even tomatoes. Livestock is mainly pigs and fowl (chickens and geese), although Longsiland is famed for its herds of sheep and cattle.

Of course, the Mirrorsea Bay also helps feed the teeming throngs of people. Fish, waterfowl, crustaceans, etc. Lots of fishermen, merfolk, ducks, and newtlings.

There’s also a bit on the difference in diet between Esrolia and Sartar, if you want to drop a few colourful dishes into the game when the PCs are staying at some local inn.

And if you’re going to the Mirrorsea Bay, there’s another note on Esrolia’s navy, which I’m skipping over because it’s late…

Sartarite Inns

Speaking of inns, here is a note on the now famous Sartarite caravanserais that Chaosium is highlighting a lot more in RQG than in past editions.

When we think of Sartarite inns, that’s what they are – caravanserais more than pubs. Travelers are welcome there, they usually have places to store goods and watch animals, or arrangements with local stables to do the same.

This mix of “trade highways” and secondary roads dotted with caravan-friendly inns is in line with what we know of the ancient world, such as the Persian Royal Road that marks the origins of the Silk Road.

This page from National Geographic shows Silk Road caravanserais from a much later period, but it gives a good enough idea of what it looks like for the purposes of a roleplaying game. Note the blue points on the map!

Most artistic reconstructions I can find attempt to illustrate the Marco Polo era of the late 13th century, but, again, that’s good enough for me:

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Jeff gives another possible reference and source of inspiration:

Somewhat similar were the shukuba post stations of the Edo Five Routes in Japan or the roadside stationes, tabernae, and mutationes, where travelers could rest and their animals taken care of.

The most famous of Sartarite inns is the franchised network of Geo’s inns, whose founder, Geo, is even a the subject of a minor traveller cult.

Like a lot of things Geo’s is both comical and deadly serious. They were originally established as caravanserai which were ALSO places where any friend or supporter of Sartar could find a safe bed, friends, and a warm meal. Most of the cult’s income is generated from paying, non-member customers who stay the night and otherwise avail of the services provided by the inn, such as stabling and fodder, food and drinks, entertainment, and warehousing of goods.

During the heyday of the Principality, Geo’s inns were typically supported by the Prince, which made them very desirable to travelers. Well-maintained, steady food, and protected by the Prince.

Gloranthan Dwarfs

The fact that we spell them “dwarfs” instead of “dwarves” isn’t the only way that the Mostali are different from their D&D counterparts!

Always keep in mind that Gloranthan dwarves are most emphatically not the Scottish-accented dwarves of the Peter Jackson movies or of most D&D campaigns. A small Gloranthan dwarf might only weigh 10 kg (22 pounds) and be 60 cm (23 inches) tall. That’s about the same size as my cat (admittedly she is a Maine Coon)! Dwarfs often have grotesque (but not hideous or repulsive) facial features, disproportionate and gnarled limbs, hunchbacked and twisted.

Larger dwarves exist, of course. A large dwarf might be 140 cm tall (55 inches) and weigh 75 kg (165 pounds). So there is a bewildering variety in sizes and shapes among dwarfdom. A dwarf like Ginkizzie or The Dwarf might be almost human sized, while other dwarfs in the community are no bigger than a large house cat.

In a related BRP Central thread, Jeff also notes that the stats of dwarfs have changed across editions of RuneQuest.

Back in RQ2, hit points were determined by CON, and modified slightly by SIZ and POW. Dwarfs (spelled “Dwarves” back then!) had CON 2D6+6 and SIZ 2D6, for 12 hit points on average.

But RQ3 changed both the spelling (“Dwarfs”!) and the hit point computation (now the average of CON and SIZ). Dwarfs would have had only 10 hit points on average if RQ3 didn’t also vastly increase their CON, to 1D6+12… and technically that only gives an average HP of barely above 11.

RQG kept RQ3’s spelling, but went back to RQ2’s hit point computation and, therefore, RQ2’s dwarf stats.

Eiritha

Here’s a note on the Praxian goddess of cattle, and possibly (at least in my experience) one of the least-often played cults in the rulebook. I found this interesting:

Eiritha had many children – cows, bison, impala, high llamas, rhinos, sable antelope, and so on. I’ve even heard that Mother Morokanth was a daughter of Eiritha! She is not associated with sheep, deer, pigs, etc. so she is not the goddess of all ruminants. She is the mother of deer and elk through another husband.

The Glorantha Sourcebook says that “she is the source of fecundity and rich milk for all hooved and horned creatures.” You’d think that “hooved and horned creatures” would include sheep, but maybe that doesn’t count because many domestic sheep don’t have horns? Maybe domestication actively changed the myths over time? Is this another God Learner fuck-up? Can you fulfill some Praxian prophecy by bringing back horned sheep to Prax?

Also, if Morokanth are possibly descended from Eiritha, does that mean they used to have horns? (they technically have hooved toes, I think, so that works for “hooved creature” part) Did the humans, feeling cheated during Waha’s Covenant business, cut off the Morokanths’ horns? Or maybe the Morokanth cut their young’s horns for some cultural or spiritual reason? Maybe the Morokanth khans or shamans are allows to grow big horns and therefore look twice as scary?

Am I reading too much into one line of the Sourcebook? Maybe… but hey, horned Morokanths!

Deep Lunar Synthesis

This is the kind of stuff that somebody much more clever, educated, and crazier than me (I’m looking at you Nick and Eff) would better comment on: some weird-ass “source note” from Greg Stafford.

One of Greg’s deep background notes that I refer to an awful lot when I think about Glorantha is this chart that he put together to try to think about the basic sources for the Lunar understanding of the 3 percepations: Mystical, Cosmological, and Materialist.

Jeff explains a little bit of it, but you’ll mostly have to figure out what the hell this means for yourself. I’ll… err… I’ll be over there if you need me.

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.

A Happy Character Sheet Accident

Over on Reddit, RoyalAlbatross has been copying various pages from RuneQuest 2nd edition to prep for their game, and ended up making this happy accident:

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.

All Hail the Red Moon

It will probably be over by the time your read this, but today there was a total Lunar eclipse, which means a blood moon! If you want to go dance naked outside with a couple of scimitars while screaming something about your devotion to Jar-eel, I will totally support you… just don’t mention me when the cops arrive.

Thank you for reading

That’s it for this week! Please contact us with any feedback, question, or news item we’ve missed!

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 newsletter is one day late this week because yesterday was the day of propitiation for the spirits of Darkness. The children dressed up as Underworld creatures and went around the clan’s tula with the local shaman. People gave symbolic food offerings meant to appease the dwellers below for the coming season. If all goes well, we will have uneventful weeks leading to Sacred Time…

Of course, now we also have a shitload of unhealthy food offerings left in our house, so that’s not going to be good for my health. But it will keep me warm as I finish editing our next podcast episode!

Chaosium News

Here are this week’s Chaosium news!

A New Hero: Season 2

Good news! James, Bridgett, and David’s campaign “A New Hero” is coming back for a second season! Season one (only five episodes long) is available here.

QuestWorlds Update

Ian Cooper, line editor for QuestWorlds, has posted a short update about the state of the game (originally written as a twitter thread):

Editing. I am working through the Core book with a development editor (Susan O’Brien). As I wrote most of it, I can’t also do development editing (that’s marking your own homework). We are about 50% through that process.

Art: All but two pieces now in, that’s on me to do art direction for the last two.

Once we have all that there are some conversations to be had around graphic design before going into layout.

I expect some tweaks/typos to go into the SRD. All minor, but I’ll probably leave it to the end when we can get the final set in and move to v1.0

Steady progress, though it always feels slow at the end. As always it will be done when it’s done. 

As a reminder, QuestWorlds is the new form of the game formerly known as HeroQuest, formerly known as HeroWars. This is the rules-light, narratively focused game system that was created by Robin Laws and Greg Stafford for Gloranthan gaming in the early 2000s. Some people will argue that it is a much better fit for Glorantha than RuneQuest… (personally, I think something in the middle would be best, around the crunch level of Pendragon).

Anyway, you can play QuestWorlds today (and you have been able to for a long while, too) by checking out the SRD (System Reference Document), available here.

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!

Zenith Counters: Marble Phalanx

Dario Corallo keep churning out art and I don’t know how he does it so fast and so well! Anyway, he is back to his Zenith Counter series, which provides all kinds of tokens for your VTT needs. The latest entry is the Marble Phalanx (with a typo on the cover image… oops), a troop of soldiers that was stationed in New Pavis before Argrath re-conquered it.

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.

Canonical Corpus

Here is Jeff’s list of “canonical” books for Glorantha. This isn’t the first time Jeff shares this list, and nothing much has changed since last time, so I won’t comment much on it (and besides, I’m very busy this week and I don’t have the time). Remember the context of this list:

Again, canon doesn’t matter AT ALL for running a game. As my original posts states: “this only matters if you want to write for Chaosium or get your work published by Chaosium.”

Remember that Jeff tweaked this list a bit based on which version of which text is best available (such as in PDF via Chaosium’s RuneQuest Classic reprints)… so if you’re wondering “why book X instead of book Y“, that’s generally why. There are also a few books that are only there because they have a chapter or a map about some particular area of Dragon Pass.

Note that with the exception of Troll Gods, Haunted Ruins, and Dorastor, all of the listed publications are currently available. And honestly Troll Gods is only there until the Cults Books come out. Haunted Ruins is listed because of the great map included in it. And Dorastor is there because it is the sourcebook for anyone doing stuff in Dorastor.

Jeff reminds us that the Sun County book, specifically on the Praxian Sun Dome, isn’t representative of all Sun Domes elsewhere — that one is an outlier, so “many other Sun Dome Temples are not nearly so xenophobic!“

Last, King of Sartar and the two original board games (White Bear & Red Moon and Nomad Gods) are listed as usable “as sources of inspiration rather than canon“. In particular, King of Sartar is deliberately self-contradictory, placing it in a unique position in the canon.

Here’s a relevant bit on the now superseded HeroWars and HeroQuest books of the early 2000s:

I tell people writing for Chaosium to not reference or rely on them. At all. Where they are right, there are better sources (such as the above list), but all of them have stuff that I would prefer not to have to edit out. Referring to the subcult of Desemborth the Thief or Daylanus the Conquering Wind or Gravlor the Gladiator – that’s just generating work for your editors.

[…] they are filled with things that have been rejected (like Misapplied Worship, or having to try to figure out the deep “real nature” of a cult before you can even use it in game), its millions of subcults (“Orlanth the Carpenter”? Really?), and other stuff that just makes an editors job nightmarish. Best to just ignore it entirely.

The RuneQuest companion is also in a similar situation:

Note that there’s a lot of wildly non-canonical material in the RQ Companion. And the stuff that is canonical is better presented elsewhere.

As for the Mongoose RuneQuest books, Jeff, half-jokingly (probably) answers that “there were no Mongoose publications.“

Anyway, read here for the nitty gritty details.

Now, as stated at the beginning, this is for writing Chaosium material. What about simply running a RuneQuest game? Jeff’s list is much shorter: the Starter Set or the core rulebook, and the Bestiary.

You might have noticed that these two books constitute our minimum assumption for what the listeners of the podcast have read. We try (and probably fail… but we try!) to explain everything else that isn’t explained in those two books.

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.

King of Dragon Pass is 23 Years Old

From A-Sharp, the publishers of King of Dragon Pass:

The original version of King of Dragon Pass was released on 29 Oct 1999. To celebrate this anniversary, the iOS version (updated with more content and streamlined play) is now 40% off on the iOS App store for a limited time!

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By the time you read this, the offer might have expired, but the game is well worth its (very affordable) full price anyway. And personally speaking, I think a tablet is the best way to play this game… anyway, happy birthday KoDP!

Runeblogger on Tales of the Reaching Moon

Runeblogger writes in English again (yay!) to take a look at the Tales of the Reaching Moon, a Gloranthan fanzine from the 1990s generally credited for keeping the Gloranthan fandom alive in a dark period of the game setting’s history, and for producing a whole new generation of Gloranthan authors… many of which are now working for Chaosium, or publishing books on the Jonstown Compendium. Even Greg Stafford and Sandy Petersen contributed a few articles to the fanzine.

They started by publishing two issues annually, and from 1995 onwards only one every year, but the quality and page number increased little by little. For example, starting from issue 12 covers became full-colour. The main editor of this fanzine was David Hall, who started out with a couple of friends, writing and laying out the fanzine. However, from the fourth issue onwards several die-hard fans joined the team like Rick Meints, who took care of layout, or Michael O’Brien, who edited, wrote, and distributed the fanzine in Australia. I wonder if they had believed anyone telling them at that point that they would one day become president and vice-president of Chaosium (!).

Runeblogger tells you everything you need to know about the context of the fanzine’s publication, its contents, and its legacy. It’s a great read for any Gloranthaphile who is only vaguely aware of Reaching Moon Megacorp and its pivotal role in the setting’s history.

Writing Riddles: Babalon and the Red Goddess

Andrew Logan Montgomery published his second article on the topic of Illumination. The first part looked at inspirations for what Illumination is, how it possibly drives some of the main themes of Glorantha as a setting for telling stories, why it’s considered “bad” in most Gloranthan societies, and how the Lunar Empire managed to integrate it.

This is what the second part focuses on, viewed through the lens of gnosticism in general, and Aleister Crowley’s Thelema in particular. We are shown the Red Goddess as Babalon, the Scarlet Woman and Mother of Abomination (a comparison that Jeff already made in the past), we get a walk through various numbers of souls, we learn more about Chaos, Tarot cards, the Whore of Babylon, and ancient female deities riding big beasts…

Anyway, Andrew is still working on “The Final Riddle”, his next RuneQuest campaign which deals, of course, with illumination and madness.

GoblinCaveTV Creates Some RuneQuest Characters

Live roleplay and “Roll20 embassador” group GoblinCaveTV has recently done a live stream in which “Karsh the Goblin” creates a RuneQuest character. The video is currently only on Twitch, but there’s a good chance it later shows up on their YouTube channel too.

Since the host spends a lot of time explaining a lot of things to the audience, the overall process takes almost 3 hours and a half, but of course it would be quite a bit faster if you did it on your own… although we all know that RuneQuest character creation is extremely slow compared to most games (which is sadly ironic given how deadly RuneQuest can be). Karsh ends up with a large, Orlanth-worshipping Sartarite warrior.

They also have a two-episode actual play of “A Rough Landing” from the RuneQuest Starter Set.

GMSMagazine’s RuneQuest “Blast from the Past”

YouTube channel GMSMagazine has a video comparing 1984’s RuneQuest 3rd edition delux box set with 2022’s RuneQuest Glorantha Starter Set. Of course, it’s not an apples-to-apples comparison, which the host notes at the beginning, but the point is really to have fun looking at how RuneQuest has evolved, and how production quality changed over almost four decades.

It’s fun to see the host realize how the four books of the Starter Set make up a big map when you turn them over…

Some Dan Barker Work in Progress

Dan Barker has shared this cute little ice demon:

Decided to revisit some pencils I had in a drawer, of a Hollri (ice demon) being worshipped by Uzhim (snow trolls) on Valinds’ Glacier. Not quite there, but rough direction.

I’m looking forward to the full drawing!

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.

Nijmegen Helmet

Do you have some important Lunar NPC in your campaign? Do you want to make him or her super bad-ass? How about a cool looking mask helmet?

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The Nijmegen Helmet is a Roman helmet that was probably worn by some elite cavalry soldier. It dates back to the first or second century BCE and was found in the Dutch city of Nijmegen. Parts of it are made of iron, while others are made of bronze or brass. The right cheek apparently has a name scratched on it (thought to be “Marcianus”). I suppose it’s easy to misplace your super cool metal mask helmet when you’re in the elite cavalry and everybody has super cool metal mask helmets. Hashtag Roman Military Life.

There is no information on who the five figures are on the crown, but we all know these are five of the Seven Mothers. Maybe two fell off. Or maybe that soldier didn’t feel like having Danfive Xaron and She Who Waits, or whatever, on his helmet. Or maybe the helmet crafter messed up.

You can find this item in the Museum Het Valkhof Nijmegen. Since 2020, the city even has a big replica of this helmet as a piece of urban art:

Thank you for reading

That’s it for this week! Please contact us with any feedback, question, or news item we’ve missed!

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.

God Learner Sorcery

Here is what us God Learners were up to this week.

Glorantha Initiation Episode 12: Chris, Lived-in Worlds, and Grounded Campaigns

We released episode 12 of our Glorantha Initiation Series, in which we welcome Chris who went from RQ2 to RQG in just a few weeks! He doesn’t have an ongoing RuneQuest game yet but we talk about his sudden love for Glorantha, playing soloquests, “grounded” adventures, and his plans for a future Esrolian trading campaign.

Chaosium News

Here are this week’s Chaosium news!

The “Write Your First Adventure” Workshop Returns

The RPG writing workshop that guides you through making your first adventure is returning for the winter! Chaosium is presenting again their two “paths”, one for writing a Call of Cthulhu adventure, and one for writing a RuneQuest adventure. The course will run through the month of November and costs $39.

Halloween Sale on DriveThruRPG

Chaosium is part of the Halloween Sale on DriveThruRPG, including a few items from the Jonstown Compendium such as the Seven Tailed Wolf or Holiday Dorastor: Woods of Terror. All these PDFs are 20% off. Check them out!

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!

Hero Wars in the East Isles

Hannu Rytövuori, David Cake, and Nils Weinander have released their two books about the East Isles, giving you a lot of material to play in parts of Glorantha that definitely won’t look like anything you’re used to.

The first volume is a sourcebook about the Korolan archipelago. It details the island’s history and geography, the people who live there and the gods they worship, and even a chapter about East Islander martial arts!

The second volume contains four scenarios to play in the Korolan islands, which is enough for decently sized campaign away from the stereotypes of Dragon Pass!

Holiday Dorastor: Ragnaglar’s Breath

Simon Phipp continues his long tour of Dorastor with a new entry in the “Holiday Dorastor” series, which he apparently wrote while following that “Write Your Own Adventure” workshop.

Here, you will find three new locations, and a set of scenarios and HeroQuests allowing you to banish Ragnaglar’s Breath from the Risklands.

News About Duckpac

Neil Gibson shared some great news on Facebook:

We’re incredibly proud to announce that DuckPac – Book 1: Myths, Legends & Lore has reached Electrum bestselling level!

As such we’ve been given the thumbs up from the ever supportive Chaosium team and can let you know of the impending Print On Demand versions.

The current plan is to release:

– Books 1 & 2 in a single hardback book.
– Book 3 (Redfeather Dreaming SoloQuest) in a standalone softback book as suits the play-style. and finally…
– Book 4 will be released simultaneously in both digital AND Print On Demand formats (currently ~170 pages in hardback)

We’re currently finalising POD versions for 1, 2 & 3 and playtesting the scenarios for Book 4. Given our location (down-under AND the UK) we’re hoping for an early December launch.

You can get the PDFs of Duckpac here: book 1 (sourcebook on ducks), book 2 (adventurers), and book 3 (soloquest).

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.

The Invisible God

The Invisible God is one of Glorantha’s cool secrets:

The Invisible God is abstract, the ultimate reality in the universe. It is Brahman, the Ein Sof, the Unmoved Mover, the One. The Invisible God does not change, but is the cause of all. The Invisible God is unity, undivided, infinite, and the single binding truth behind diversity in the universe.

The name-dropping merits a bit of annotation:

• Brahman is the Hindu metaphysical concept that binds all of the universe. It’s the universal principle of reality, and the truth that many strive to uncover and experience. It’s also probably something I just very badly described. But you get the gist.
• Ein Sof is sort of the same thing, unsurprisingly, but in the Kabbalah. Hebrew scholars interpret it as God as it was before it manifested itself anywhere in the spiritual or physical worlds.
• The Unmoved Mover, or Prime Mover, is from Aristotelian philosophy. It’s the first thing that every did a thing in the universe without having had a thing done to it first. You could say it’s the first quantum event in all of time.
• The One is many things — a Chinese restaurant in my neighbourhood, a shopping centre in Hong Kong, an action movie starring Jet Li, or a comicbook series by the amazing Rick Veitch. But I assume Jeff here is referring to the Neoplatonic concept of the unknowable beginning and end of all existence. But maybe he’s talking about Jet Li. I think both really apply here. I may or may not imagine the Invisible God as a dimension-hopping Jet Li, now. This opens up so many possibilities…

Next to the Invisible God, all others are infinitely small, localized, and insignificant. They may be called on or used if necessary, but the Invisible God is the All.

The zzaburi are, among other things, the “priests” of the Invisible God. The Invisible God provides no Rune magic, not spirits, or Divine Intervention. But as the ultimate reality in the universe, study and contemplation of the Invisible God gave rise to sorcery, a rational system that allows mortals to understand and command the natural laws of the cosmos.

The way I see it, these sorcerers developed sorcery the same way Plato developed western philosophy and Galileo developed modern western science. This is very unlike the other types of magic that are directly provided by spirits and gods.

So one way of thinking about the zzaburi is that they are brahmins, performing Brahma-yajna before the altar of the Invisible God, surrounded by geometric mandalas that depict cosmological mathematics. They chant, sing, and recite, while the rest of the community come by and offer gifts and obeisance.

I think defining Malkionism raises some of the same problems as trying to define Hinduism. Malkionism includes a diversity of ideas on spirituality and tradition, and within Malkionism are polytheists, pantheists, pantheists, henotheists, monotheists, and even atheists. Even caste is a subject of debate within Malkionism. Maybe it is merely the presence of sorcerer-priests of the Invisible God that makes it Malkionism? Maybe not even that?

Brahmins form the “priest caste” of Hindu society… which is funny because I just now realized how the Hindu castes are very reminiscent of the Malkioni society:

• In Malkioni society we have the Dronars (workers and farmers), Horali (warriors and soldiers), Talars (rulers and nobles), and Zzaburi (priests and sorcerers).
• In Hindu society, we have the Shudras (artisans and laborers), Vaishyas (farmers and merchants), Kshatriyas (rulers and warriors), and Brahmins (scholars and priests).

And if you want some ideas for Men-of-All, the Hrestoli Malkioni people who try to master all castes’ secrets, there is also some historical evidence for Brahmins that also became farmers, warriors, traders, and other occupations.

However, Jeff warns against taking the analogy too far between the Zzarburi and the Brahmins. For instance, it looks like Brahmins are supposed to live in strict austerity and voluntary poverty, but I very much doubt many Zzaburi wouldn’t be dressed in elaborate clothes and living in big towers full of esoteric stuff.

What I mostly take from this analogy is that, just like the Brahmins, the Zzaburi might be split between many different occupations: teachers, authors, philosophers, priests, jurists, alchemists, warrior-mages, and so on.

The Vadeli

Here’s a note about the Vadeli, the immortal colour-coded sociopaths who mostly live in the islands far off the western coast of Genertela. There used to be four types of Vadeli: the blue-skinned wizards, the yellow-skinned… err, I assume leaders, the red-skinned warriors, and the brown-skinned sailors and merchants (and probably other types of workers). We’ll skip quickly on the unfortunate choice of skin colour for the worker caste, and go straight to the fact that only the brown-skinned Vadeli survive to the modern day, with a few red-skinned warriors. They are have immortality as long as they strictly adhere to their precise caste rules.

There are about 150,000-200,000 Vadeli in Glorantha, most in the Vadeli Islands or Pamaltela. That’s roughly the same number as Brithini in Arolanit and Sog City.

Although they are descended from Malkion, the Vadeli are antinomian and knowingly transgress against the laws that bind other Malkioni. Despite this (or perhaps because of this) they are immortal and unaging.

As far as I can tell, the Brithini are like the Vadeli, in the sense that they live in a caste system derived from Malkioni laws, and that they’re immortal as long as they follow their caste rules. The main differences are that the Brithini aren’t colour-coded, and, as noted in the quote above, that the Vadeli actively reject Malkioni laws, so their caste rules seem to be, on purpose, going against these laws. It looks to me like they both achieve immortality by either doing what Malkion said, or by doing the opposite of what Malkion said… maybe if you do everything to piss off the laws of the universe, the most important law of the universe, Time, is also pissed at you and doesn’t apply to you.

Almost all Vadeli encountered in the mundane world belong to the Brown Vadeli, mostly sailors and traders. A few unfortunates have encountered Red Vadeli, the warrior caste.

You might not see a Red Vadeli very often outside the Vadeli Isles, but I figure you would definitely spot a few Brown Vadeli in Nochet, Karse, and other major market ports. There might be an odd one or two passing by Boldhome or Furthest, but I think they mostly stick to maritime trade.

Given that the Brown and Red Vadeli look different (the Red Vadeli have red skin after all!), we might actually be dealing with different types entities all classified as “Vadeli” and these might be more like different “castes” in an ant community than the castes we see with mundane Malkioni.

In the Guide, the Vadeli are portrayed as normal humans with coloured skin, but maybe they don’t actually look human? Maybe they are close, but not quite? Some sort of uncanny valley people?

Glorantha is a Bronze Age Setting

Jeff gives the familiar lecture about Glorantha being a Bronze Age setting but with many differences.

People use bronze instead of iron, use ox-plows, and so forth. But it is a fantasy Bronze Age setting, not a historical one set in the real world. We have silver coins, plenty of writing, ship transport between the continents, and giant flying Crimson Bats.

In short there are Real World historical analogies to use, but they are just analogies and sources of inspiration – recognize their limits. Glorantha is a fantasy, not a historical simulation.

I’m torn about this. I increasingly find that “Bronze Age” is a problematic term here.

Before I got into Glorantha, I only had a very vague conception of what the Bronze Age is exactly… so when I looked it up to educate myself a bit, I obviously ran into this “upper limit” of 1200 BCE, which marks the Bronze Age collapse (at least around the Near East and parts of Europe and Maghreb). So this got confusing given how Chaosium is basing a lot of their world-building on both Bronze Age and post-Bronze Age things like Alexander’s conquests and empire, the Peloponnesian War, and so on.

On the other hand, Glorantha is such a mix of various influences that it’s hard to pinpoint the best starting point for an elevator pitch in the form of “it’s like X, but with Y and Z“.

Personally, I would start with something more directly familiar, even if it needs to be course-corrected later in play. For instance, I would start with “Sartar is like Ancient Greece, but up in the mountains, and with magic everywhere.” Or “the Lunar Empire is more advanced, like the Romans, only with crazy-ass weapons of mass destruction like meteor magic and big monsters“. Or “Praxians are nomads like the Dothraki if you’ve watch Game of Thrones? But they’re split in tribes that each rides a different beast“.

I’m sure many of you are already jumping up, ready to go “well no…” but I’m gonna stop you right there. The point here is not to be exact. The point is to give a hopefully exciting starting mental picture upon which to build something. My reasons for these choices are:

1. Ancient Greece and Romans are very familiar, so almost everybody will be able to picture them. Scythians, Mesopotamian city states, or the fine points of Hittite society aren’t.
2. Many things that Gloranthan fans think are important are actually only details. Most sane players don’t care that their weapons are “actually made of bronze, not iron“. Sure, it’s notable, but that doesn’t need to go in the elevator pitch. Even saying that Lunar weapons are “actually curved blades, like Persian weapons” can be specified later when the party encounters their first Lunar people. It’s not important when painting a general picture of the world in two minutes.

But the problem remains about how to describe Glorantha as a whole… I do agree with Jeff that “Iron Age” is a bit problematic too, although to me it’s mostly because, again, it requires knowing what qualifies as “Iron Age” or not, whereas Jeff is mostly concerned about, like I said, a simple detail:

Note that calling Glorantha “Iron Age” gets very misleading. First and foremost nobody except the dwarves makes widespread use of iron (and most bronze in Glorantha is a mixture of tin and copper).

At this point, I would frankly describe Glorantha as an “Ancient World” setting. It’s maybe a bit less catchy than “Bronze Age”, but anybody who looks up that term will find that it covers everything from the Stone Age to the Bronze Age to the Iron Age, neatly covering a lot of bases for all Gloranthan cultures. Would this simple change have reduced my initial confusion with Glorantha though? Hard to say.

Edit: over on Discord, Effy tells me in, errr, a menacing way that she would use “Antiquity” instead. That’s another fine choice! I like that it better signals that we are talking about a historical period (whereas “Ancient World” could be seen as just a turn of phrase). I just find it even harder to use in a slogan (“Glorantha is an antiquity setting”?).

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 Goes to Esrolia

You know the drill by now, I hope! JM and Evan tell you everything about Esrolia, the “Land of 10,000 Goddesses”. Remember that if you support Iconic Productions on Patreon (which includes a lot more than just Exploring Glorantha), you get perks such as the full notes that JM and Evan use for their shows. I found that it’s a great resource to use as a first research step, like an index of sort.

Lunares Eunt Domus

As mentioned previously, the Lunars are Romans… so it follows that multiple people will want to make some Monty Python joke out of it. And while you’ll find a few Jonstown Compendium publications including it in the text, Chris Went seems to be the first genius who made it as a miniatures scene!

Thank you for reading

That’s it for this week! Please contact us with any feedback, question, or news item we’ve missed!

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 is rather expedited in terms of the newsletter. I have been busy with work, family life, and writing & illustration, and a few other hobbies… so that left little time for the Journal. Oh well. And if you want to help, remember that you can always send us a guest segment!

Chaosium News

Here are this week’s Chaosium news!

The 2022 Greg Stafford Memorial Award for Gloranthan Fandom goes to Andrew Logan Montgomery

Surprising absolutely nobody, I think, Andrew Logan Montgomery finally got the Greg Stafford Memorial Award for Gloranthan Fandom! Congrats and well deserved, Andrew!

This award is given every year since the passing of Greg Stafford to celebrate a notable member of the Gloranthan community. Andrew definitely qualifies, with no less than three best-selling RuneQuest campaigns on the Jonstown Compendium, and many insightful articles on his blog. You can read more here, including the past award recipients.

Assembling the Stafford Campaign Notes

Last week Chaosium released the Stafford Campaign in PDF and print-on-demand: a collection of essays and notes from Greg Stafford, some of which had been published in APAs such as The Wild Hunt in the mid-1970s. Rick Meints also posted another “Out of the Suitcase” entry on the Chaosium blog about the occasion:

What most people may not know is that many of these “articles” were published back in the day while the campaign was active. That stems from the fact they were published in a relatively obscure and very difficult to get a hold of fanzine called The Wild Hunt. About 200 copies of each issue were printed using mimeograph machine technology. Articles were often typed on typewriters using stencils. After 40 years, many of the original issues have not survived the ravages of time, especially as they were printed on inexpensive paper. I doubt even half of the copies printed still exist. I’ve been tracking them down and pursuing them for over 30 years and my personal set of The Wild Hunt is far from complete. 

Note that the first two chapters of this newly released “Chaosium Archival Collection” are available to read for free here. If you’re sold on it, it’s available in softcover and PDF.

Fantasy Grounds Update

You might remember that official VTT support for RuneQuest is underway for Fantasy Grounds (among possible others), as we had a few updates here and there in the newsletter. Here are some latest screenshots… it sounds like it’s almost ready for release.

If you look closely, you’ll see an “Opposed & Resistance Rolls” dialog for, well, making opposed and resistance rolls. The resistance roll comes out like this in the chat:

There’s no official release date or pricing info yet but the latest status updates from the developer made it sound like it was down to the last few known bugs and some polish… fingers crossed!

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!

Teshnos Companion

Paul Baker has released a companion book to his Houses of Teshnos, with further explorations of this seldom covered area of Glorantha.

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.

Followers of the Prince of Sartar

Jeff describes what the royal Sartarite entourage looks like: the Prince’s household, the High Council, the Wolfbrother Guard, lots of scribes, artisans and artists leading royal projects… but most importantly, each Prince has a group of “companions”:

The Prince is always escorted by friends and companions, who accompany them at court and in battle. They hunt, feast, and drink with the Prince, serving as personal attendants and bodyguards. During the long rule of the Sartar dynasty, leading members of the tribes competed to serve as friends and companions of the Prince. Many of these friends and companions went on to become tribal kings, temple high priests, or the leaders of cities.

Player characters could belong to any of those groups but this latter one is probably the easiest way to have an eclectic bunch of adventurers be brought into royal circles… and benefit from it. It can even be a way to get in trouble:

And that’s the other nebulous thing – what role is actually being invoked? When the Prince speaks, well everyone knows that is with semi-divine authority. But when one of the Prince’s drinking buddies speak, what does that mean?

Dragon Pass Logistics

Jeff continues to run us through the various spreadsheets he has for central Genertelan states. This lets us look at Sartarite, Lunar, and Esrolian affairs from an economic and materialist point of view.

This note summarizes why Jeff goes to all this trouble to model population and cult distributions, finances, trade routes, and more. I know that some people sigh when they see number crunching like this but I find it a useful tool for world-building, so I totally agree with Jeff when, for instance, he says this in a subsequent note:

And again, none of this is necessary to run a RQ campaign or even write scenarios. BUT it helps me understand some of the pressures and changes going on in Sartar, that can be the source of scenarios and campaigns.

Lunar Empire

The second note on Lunar Imperial Finances follows from last week, still using “talents” to make numbers shorters (a “talent” is 300 Lunars). We get a rough breakdown of the imperial revenue, split between agricultural taxes, tolls and trade taxes, and other miscellaneous revenue streams. I’m surprised to not see Lunar cult tithes here: I would have expected Lunar temples from all around the empire to contribute financially to the state….?

Anyway, Jeff continues to illustrate the problems of the Lunar Empire through numbers and it doesn’t look good. Although it does look good for any campaign in Lunar provinces:

I expect what we will see is a combination of things. Some debasement (but not so much as to risk the veteran soldiers getting pissed). Looting of Lunar temples (“I am the son of the Red Goddess, and this stuff is mine anyways”). Confiscations, revocations of privileges and exemptions, etc.

[…]

I imagine that there are thousands of Irrippi Ontor cultists redoing assessments, looking up old rights, and doing the equivalent of looking for loose change under the mattresses. Every talent matters!

There’s a bunch of adventures to be had following one of those Lunar scribes going around some province to take back gifts, “negotiate” increased taxes with local chieftains, inventorize old cellars, loot ancient Dara Happan burial sites, and more…

The change of vibe for the Lunar Empire is also notable:

For decades, we were presented with a Lunar Empire of infinite resources, both financial and military. Rebellion was impossible because the Lunars could just throw money and troops at the problem.

But if we look more carefully, what we find is that the Lunar Empire has a lot of resources, but they have limits. And seven years of war, combined with conspicuous spending has made that worse.

This helps explain, at least to me, why the Empire could not easily reconquer Dragon Pass after the Dragonrise – and why Sartar got several years of breathing space after the Battle of the Queens.

Esrolia

The Royal Economy of Esrolia shows us how things changes in that corner of the (now former) Holy Country. The revenue streams for the Esrolian Queen are similar to those of the Lunar Empire, although I’m happy to see “temple contributions” mentioned here. I don’t know if it was an oversight for the Lunar finances, or if Lunar temples are indeed more financially independent… either way, one big difference in Esrolia is off course the big role that Nochet’s maritime trade brings to the table.

One thing I didn’t expect was that the Esrolian Queen in Nochet doesn’t necessarily sit at the top. Other city states like Rhigos are very important:

All of this revenue was collected at a “provincial” or “queendom” level and then the queens (advised by the Asrelia priestesses), allocated it among themselves. About half ended up at Nochet, a little over a quarter at Rhigos, and the rest split between the North March and Longsi Land. In the event of a dispute, they appealed to Belintar, who always wisely resolved the issue, sometimes paying out the City of Wonders vast treasuries.

Some notes here:

• Rhigos is just a couple dozen kilometres south of Nochet, as you can see on the map below. As far as I can tell it’s one of the rare city states of central Genertela. The city queen is the High Priestess of Delaina, the city’s patron deity and one of Ernalda’s sisters. You might have heard about the current queen, the “Demivierge of Rhigos“.
• The North March is the area around Valadon, north of Nochet. I’m not sure why they get their own revenue but I going to assume it’s got something to do with the Argan Argar cult and the Shadow Plateau next door.
• Longsi Land is the area between (and including) Belernos and Kosh, in the top-left corner of the map. It probably gained some sort of political and economic independence from the overall Esrolian Kingdom when they helped against the Hendriki during Aranda’s War in the mid 1100s. The city of Kosh was actually part of that deal.

Unlike the empire or Sartar, much of this was paid in kind. The agricultural tax in Esrolia is paid in kind, with wheat, barley, fruits, salted pork, whatever. This is brought to the Asrelia temples (which are big storehouses and granaries), to be released upon demand from the queen – for support of the priestesses, her household, payment to followers, distribution against famine, etc. Scribes and grandmothers oversee all of this, and everyone is kept plenty busy.

There is a lot of other good stuff in this note: what Belintar’s disappearance means for the Holy Country and Esrolia in particular, Esrolia’s problems with the Ditali and Solanthi raids of the late 1610s, the alliance with Argrath and Harrek in return for the plunder rights of the City of Wonders, the difference between an Esrolian court and a Sartarite court, the cost of maintaining a trireme army, and more!

Note that, in this note, Jeff states that the Queen of Rhigos is paying the warlords of Porthomeka (the region immediately to the south of Rhigos) with her riches. I wasn’t clear about this relationship from the short write-up found in the Guide. Maybe that will help someone else clarify this too.

Sartar

Feeding Boldhome goes over the logistics of agricultural production around the Sartarite capital. If you ever wondered where the grain silos are, and how big they are, now you’ll know.

Sartar’s Roads explains why the vast majority of trade crosses Dragon Pass through Sartar instead of the Grazelands. Of course, it has to do with those nice roads that Sartar built… and it doesn’t help that the Grazelanders run a protection racket.

Sartar Money and War is interesting because it looks at the logistics of the armies serving the Red Emperor, Kallyr Starbrow, and Argrath. The rationale about Argrath’s nomadic army being easier (at first) to feed and pay is particularly notable and might help you better place, foreshadow, and portray Argrath’s faction in your campaign.

Kallyr’s Lightbringers Quest

This note goes quickly over how Kallyr’s “stationary” Lightbringers Quest in 1626 is done as a “conventional” (dare I say “boring”?) heroquest:

Kallyrs Stationary Lightbringer Quest was much like how many people understand heroquesting. She got the tribes and temples to perform a giant ceremony filled with pageantry. People wore masks and sacred regalia and tried to carry out their sacred tasks as Kallyr and her companions moved around Sartar performing their reenactment of the Lightbringers Quest myth.

Spirits and people were summoned from outside. Yelmalion cultists showed up as did trolls and some elves. Others made sure the dragonewts did not enter. Monsters appeared and weird foreigners arrived. Broo and zombies both tried to exploit opportunities.

This is definitely an event that you want your players to participate in, whether they are doing some summoning on the sidelines, dealing with intruders, going along as part of Kallyr’s entourage, or maybe even taking advantage of the whole thing and riding on the massive amounts of magical energy for their own ends… this is what I assume most of the intruders are doing, actually. Spirits and monsters might show up knowing full well that the ceremony will be well defended, but the temptation of an easy gateway to the Hero Plane and its mythical riches might be too strong.

Of course, there’s also the possibility that these spirits and monsters have been simply “magically summoned” by the ritual, but frankly this sort of cheap narrative loophole is something I’ve grown to dislike about Glorantha. “The Broos are here because the myth had Chaos monsters in it, so of course they show up“… blech. Nope. Not in my Glorantha, thank you.

Gloranthan Terms

A lot of older Gloranthan material used terms with specific connotations, especially in the HeroWars/HeroQuest books. Terms like fyrd, cottar, moot, and so on summoned images of celts and vikings that wasn’t necessarily intended, and Jeff puts the blame on Greg being split between Glorantha and Pendragon. The most egregious terms that Jeff doesn’t mention here are probably the infamous “knights” of western Genertela, and all the Sartarite NPC names using the scandinavian “-sson” and “-dottir” suffixes.

With the revival of RQ, pretty much all of that has been swept away. About the only one we’ve kept is “thane” – which literally just means “retainer, attendant, companion,” which we could also transliterate as “Lord” or “Sir,” if we felt so inclined.

That’s good as far as I’m concerned. And the reason is sound:

Our mental visualization of Glorantha is shaped by the words we use to describe it. A big reason to get rid of those terms is to break the assumption that the Orlanthi are Germanic Northern Europeans. They aren’t. Those cultural elements they share with the ancient Germanics they share with plenty of other cultures – Thracians, Mycenaeans, Hallstatt Celts, Macedonians, Gandharans, Pashtuns, Mesoamericans, early Indo-Europeans, etc. “Militia” works just as well as “fyrd” and lacks the other connotations of the latter. It is also a lot easier to translate into other languages!

The Fourth Age of Glorantha

Jeff talks about the Fourth Age of Glorantha, the age that supposedly comes after the Hero Wars and its apocalyptic end (whatever it is). This is also the time from which the “unreliable narrator” of King of Sartar writes, so Jeff gives us some info and context to digest that.

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.

Bud Explains Illumination

Bud, from Bud’s RPG Reviews, has a series of short (but packed!) videos explaining various aspects of Glorantha. This latest video is about Illumination and you might have to pay attention because it’s a heavy one! But it’s very well presented and edited so you will enjoy watching it a couple times to unpack it all.

SkullDixon on Running Battle Scenes

SkullDixon (which we interviewed in our initiation series) has a blog article about running a big battle scene in RuneQuest! He writes it from the perspective of running Urvantan’s Tower (from The Smoking Ruin & Other Stories), so watch out for spoilers on that adventure.

In the Battle of Trueford section, it reads, “If desired, rather than delve into a round-by-round battle where every single combatant is tracked. The gamemaster is encouraged to make this fray more visceral than specific, using narrative description where possible to keep the pressure and intensity driving, and breaking combat into short, brief, and brutal encounters.”

[…]

Unfortunately, the adventure doesn’t give much advice on “make this fray more visceral than specific, using narrative description where possible.” So that’s what I hope to do with this post. Give some guidance on how to set up the battle for your game to make it easy to run and enjoyable from a gameplay perspective while still being more thematic than a slog full of moving pieces.

Get your practical advice here!

Thank you for reading

That’s it for this week! Please contact us with any feedback, question, or news item we’ve missed!