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.

Chaosium News

Here are this week’s Chaosium news!

The White Bull S03E04

The third season continues, and I’m still late for watching it! Aaargh!

The Glass Cannon Demo’ing Chaosium Games

Brian Holland runs the Glass Cannon people through no less than three Chaosium games: Call of Cthulhu, RuneQuest, and 7th Sea! These demos were part of a series of sponsored events at GenCon 2022. Obviously, each one of the three scenarios are super short.

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!

The Sunken Dead

This short adventure by Peter Harroun introduces new adventurers and players to the venerable tradition of cattle raiding in Sartar, although things might not go as planned.

Glorantha Up-Close, Gloranthan Settlements

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Mikael Mansen has released three maps: the Upland Marsh, Runegate, and the Wenelian Isles.

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.

Catalogue of the Gods

Jeff talks about the slow process of cataloguing the gods… not for the upcoming Cults of Glorantha books, mind you (although that’s probably applicable!) but for the intellectuals of the First and Second Age. Here’s the main bit:

The God Learners theorized there were approximately two hundred deities of world-wide significance. Not all of these deities had cults. […] Even the enemies of the God Learners accepted this structure, although they largely accepted those limitations imposed by the Great Mystery itself.

The Lhankor Mhy cult enthusiastically embraced the Mythical Synthesis Movement, and their Knowing Priests played a key role in the later God Learner movements. In the Third Age, Lunar philosophers have added another dozen or so deities (most importantly the Red Goddess and the Seven Mothers), but they too largely adopted the conclusions of the Mythical Synthesis Movement.

So as I understand it, the Theyalans and Dara Happans spread across large parts of Genertela in the First Age and told everyone that their local gods of this and that were just particular aspects of bigger deities some of their big heroes still remembered from before the Dawn. So these previously isolated cults change the name of their deities, add a moustache here and a snake there, and boom, they’re joining a growing set of standardized religions. But were the Theyalans and Dara Happan proselytizers really “right”, or was this all just a scam lasting several centuries? Mmmmh…

[…] We tend to assume that gods are complete cultural constructs – but in Glorantha that is not true. The God Time is real and tangible – our understanding of the gods is of course viewed through the lens of culture (but of course our interaction with the gods also changes and affects our culture), but the Gloranthan gods exist outside of us mortals.

Sure, in theory, Gloranthan deities “actually exist out there”. So Orlanth and Ernalda are not some of the biggest gods in Genertela because they have the biggest number of worshippers, but rather it’s the opposite: there are more people worshipping them because they are some of the most powerful gods.

Still, I can’t help but think there is a troubling parallel between how many places the Theyalans and Dara Happans managed to get to after the Dawn, and where we find worship of the most syncretic cults. Later when the God Learners reached a bunch of islands and distant places, they didn’t figure out that this or that local god was actually part of the monomyth, did they? The East Isles still have “thousands” of deities, for instance. You might explain this by saying that these cultures clung onto their deities from the God Time in their little shard of Spike-exploded-land, but I’m sticking to my theory of the snake oil Theyalan sellers, thank you very much.

Current Tarsh Politics

This note looks over the last few generations of the Blacktooth family. For instance, there’s a bit more information about Vostor Blacktooth, who is Fazzur Wideread’s father, and all of his sons:

Vostor had four sons and one daughter by two wives. They were all loyal and brave. The brothers all became Lunar soldiers who fought often for their king. The eldest son, Farrad, died at age 28 in the Battle of Grizzley Peak (1582) which smashed the Sartar army. The second son, Goslem, died at age 23 in the Battle of Bagnot (also 1582), when he acted rashly and attacked too soon. The third son was Wassail. He was quick to rise in the priesthood and helped Phargentes arrange the difficult magic which helped kill Sartar prince Terasarin in 1600. Fazzur was the youngest son, born in 1564. He was a gifted child and a talented soldier, receiving his commission early. Vostor’s last child, a daughter, was born in 1568 and was named Harsta. She was a proud and haughty noblewoman, and wed the son of King Phargentes – Moirades.

Joerg tells me that Jeff made a few typos in here — Wassail most probably helped King Moirades of Tarsh kill Terasarin with Lunar magic, not King Phargentes (Phargentes had died two decades prior to this).

The note continues with a fairly detailed list of Fazzur Wideread’s military accomplishments, although once again Joerg notes that Fazzur did not petition his brother-in-law in 1613, because that brother-in-law, King Moirades, died 3 years prior. The new king would have been at that point his nephew, King Pharandros, son of Moirades.

The whole saga of Tarsh, from its founding to its current status as a Lunar Province, has always been interesting to me. Plus, there’s this:

For three generations, the Eel-Illaro dynasty was so closely tied with the Blacktooth (Orindori) family, that the whole thing can be seen as a family soap opera.

Noble Patronage in Tarsh & Sartar

This an interesting note. We already know that Tarshite Kings and Sartarite Princes were almost always patrons of the arts and letters. They would build Knowledge Temples and encourage vibrant art scenes just as much as they would build trade roads and armies:

In short, a noble in Dragon Pass is expected to be not only a warrior and a priest, but also literate and cultured.

But Jeff also gives us a list of Gloranthan “classics” that nobles and scribes would be familiar with: “Songs of the House of Sartar“, “Pilgrimage and Commentary“, “Saga of the New Good Land“, and “The Roads and Graves of the Makers“. In the now Lunarized Kingdom of Tarsh, there would also be “The Lives of Our Red Goddess” and “The Redline History of the Lunar Empire“. All of them get a paragraph of description, and some might sound familiar to those who skimmed through King of Sartar and the Glorantha Sourcebook.

This feeds back into the evolution of Glorantha’s world-building over the past few decades:

So unlike the presentation of the Orlanthi in some of the Issaries material (in particular Thunder Rebels) where they appeared to be completely unknowledgeable about the next valley, let alone other lands and history, the ruling class in Sartar no doubt has at least a passing familiarity with the classics. Nobles likely pay scribes to teach their children how to read and write.

When the young adults are sent out of their home to undertake cult training, they often are given poetry to memorize and recite. They also learn to fight and are are taught dances and other useful things.

Indeed, between Thunder Rebels and the rest of the HeroWars/HeroQuest line, plus the King of Dragon Pass game, I can totally see how people would think of the Sartarites that way. I think it may be true of some people from some of the tribes, but the HeroQuest version of Glorantha was most crucially missing a civilized and cosmopolitan depiction of Sartarite cities. Even just taking into account the art direction, look at this comparison between Clearwine in HeroQuest and Clearwine in the more recent RuneQuest:

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And the same comparison for Jonstown:

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A picture is worth a thousand words, so art direction and budget is everything. It’s great to see Chaosium putting a lot of effort in that, even though arguably that only gets you so far if the players have no visual references for the antiquity. This is probably why Jeff also keeps trying everyone to watch shows like Rome.

Anyway, you can read the rest of the note for other interesting bits of information such as the difference in culture between Furthest, Alkoth, and Mirin’s Cross, or how educated Argrath is.

Harmast’s Saga

Now this is a bit cruel. Jeff shows off Greg Stafford’s Harmast Saga:

Why am I saying it’s cruel? Well because it’s practically impossible to find, yet Jeff describes it as:

Pilgrimage and Commentary: This is the most current version of the most influential text of the Orlanthi and a foundational text for Orlanthi literature (and influential far beyond).

The issue of course is that Greg’s unfinished works have a complicated history. Some of them have been published and are easily available in PDF and POD, but others were collector items sold at premium prices to hard-core fans in the 1990s (like, say, the Roots of Glorantha series). As far as I understand, this was back when Greg was in financial trouble, and some people recommended this as a way to stay afloat. Almost all of these books have nuggets of Gloranthan lore, but they aren’t meant to be taken at face value: those are almost literally Greg’s scribbles taken from his notebook. Or word editor. Basically, not much of it is necessarily “canon”.

Nonetheless, there’s a lot of people (myself included) who would like to peek inside these books. I understand that Chaosium doesn’t want to sell for $9.95 what was previously sold for $200, especially since Greg himself didn’t want to upset those who got them at those prices… but the issue of pricing and the issue of availability are two different issues. Selling these special items at $200 a piece is obviously for a very niche audience, but it’s possible. I think that the only obstacles to this are Chaosium having more important things to do, and Jeff not wanting to repeatedly say stuff like “no, what it says on page 23 of The Encyclopedia of Seshnela was just something Greg was thinking about, and he changed his mind 7 years later“. Either way, Jeff is very clear that these old books are not going to be published. Oh well.

Anyway, Jeff’s note goes over what you might find in the “in-world” version of this book… and maybe in the real-world version too! Who knows, except the lucky few who have it! My guess is that Jeff is playing with words to that effect, here. Anyway, this being a book about Harmast, there’s some early heroquesting discoveries, like:

Other commentaries explain some of the novel ideas which Harmast and his companions undertook at this time. Many of these practices, such as “dropping down” into the heroic landscape to travel overland became a well-known, though always risky, heroquesting practice.

The value of this text was tremendous, since Harmast was the first person to re-enact the Lightbringer’s Quest in its entirety, and this narrative describes his journey. We only wish it was more complete.

There is also a second note here with more about Harmast’s Saga, including quotes, controversies about Harmast, and Harmast’s main two foes.

Glorantha Literature

Jeff continues writing about Gloranthan classics — that is, the literature classics that exist in the world of Glorantha.

Of course the Harmast’s Narrative is not the only classic work of literature in circulation. In Nochet, the Draconic Secrets, a Second Age manuscript from the Shadowlands, is widely known and read. Except for inconsistently referring to gods and goddesses as Kings and Queens, Sorcerers or Demons, it is a mishmash of the mythologies of the Only Old One’s many subject peoples.

Another foundational text of learning is the Stela Corpora, a long parchment of extensive Celestiology notes, whose information is most certainly of Dara Happan origin (possibly even the Glorious Reascent of Yelm).

And more, including a comment on the percentage of literacy in Glorantha.

Between this note and the previous ones, your sages and noble characters should have plenty of book titles to quote from!

The Battle of Queens

If you play in the new RuneQuest timeline, starting in 1625, and if you follow the usual Gloranthan meta-plot, you’ll soon end up mentioning, or even featuring, the Battle of Queens, which happens in 1626.

King Pharandros took command of the remaining imperial troops in the provinces, and led them with the Tarsh army to conquer the disheartened Sartarites. Near where the Creek enters the Upland Marsh, some 5,000 Lunar soldiers faced off against less than 4,000 Sartarites led by Kallyr Starbrow. The Sartarites held a good defensive position at the base of Old Top Hill.

Jeff’s latest note gives an overview of this battle, but if you want more details, including a preview of the “Dragon Pass Campaign” and its battle mechanics, there’s this old post from Jeff on BRP Central (scroll down a bit).

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.

Uz! Uz! Uz!

The Kraken videos keep pouring in. This new one has Sandy Petersen going deep about the Uz, which is a topic he is most qualified for: he literally (co-)wrote the book on it!

Bud on the Red Goddess

Bud’s RPG Review takes a look at the Red Goddess, the Seven Mothers, and the Lunar Empire in general. At less than 9 minutes long, this is probably the best, most concise crash course on the topic, from someone who knows his Gloranthan stuff!

Exploring Glorantha Visits Prax

You know the drill! JM and Evan are travelling through the plains of Prax while giving us some nice shout outs!

ENWorld Reviews Pirates of the East Isles

Well-known RPG news website ENWorld has a review of Pirates of the East Isles, by Scott Crowder!

This laser focused small scale is my favorite kind of supplement. A GM can pick this up and get going quickly without having to learn about the entire setting of Glorantha. PCs will have homelands, family history, rune affinities, cultural skill bonuses, occupations, cults, and family heirlooms tied directly to the islands.

Read more here, and don’t forget to pick up the PDF!

Andrew Logan Montgomery Reviews Duckpac

Andrew Logan Montgomery, author of some of the best sellers on the Jonstown Compendium, reviews Legion Games’ Duckpac series, which provide background info, character creation rules, and a solo adventure for duck adventurers (with some gamemaster scenarios to come).

I’ve been saying in several of these reviews that it is really getting harder to tell what is a Chaosium product and what is a Jonstown Compendium product these days. DuckPac exemplifies this.

High praise. And deserved praise. In case you’re still not sure:

While the Ducks have had a sourcebook before (Mongoose published a Duck book for their version of the game), this is the first time we have ever seen anything worthy of the classic TrollPak. DuckPac is brilliant, a cohesive, sensitive, and sometimes tongue-in-cheek examination of what arguably is Glorantha’s most iconic species. It’s a “must have.” 

Read the whole review here.

Baboon Miniature and More

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On Twitter, Jeremy posted these pictures of painted Fenris Games miniatures!

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.

Initiation Episode 10: Chris, the Weird Magic, and the Importance of References

Episode 10 of the Glorantha Initiation Series is with Chris Webb, who gave up on Glorantha in the early 1980s after saving Gringle’s pawnshop without using any magic! Plus: the importance of having references, good friends, the best spell in RuneQuest, and Runes on your roof!

Chaosium News

Here are this week’s Chaosium news!

ChaosiumCon 2023

Tickets are now available for ChaosiumCon 2023! Head over to the official announcement and follow the link to Tabletop Events. You may have to create an account there before you can buy the tickets.

Updates on Upcoming Projects

Chaosium president Rick Meints updated the largely community-maintained “upcoming publications” post on BRP Central. I’ve reproduced below the latest version of that list (as of August 2022). It contains projects far enough along to have a good chance of seeing publication in the next couple years:

• Cults of Glorantha (multi-volume) – layout underway
• Spell Cards – manuscript complete, art commissioning and editing underway
• Dragon Pass Atlas/Gazetteer – manuscript complete, art commissioning and editing underway
• Prax – manuscript complete, art commissioning and editing underway
• Prosopaedia (systemless, overview of the deities, 128 pages) Done, off to print this year.
• Gamemaster Book (including heroquesting rules) – being written
• Pavis and the Big Rubble – by Robin Laws – manuscript complete, art commissioning and editing underway
• Sartar – manuscript complete, art commissioning and editing underway
• Chaosium Classics Volume I : The Stafford House Campaign – Done, debut printing sold at Chaosium Con, Gen Con and Origins. Available soon as a POD title on chaosium.com
• MIG III (The Meints Index to Glorantha) – About to go to the printer. PDF for sale soon

There are notable changes from what we previously heard.

First is the fact that the exact form-factor of the Cults of Glorantha is being reconsidered. I thought it was a done deal that it would be a two-volume-plus-prosopaedia slipcase set, but marketing issues, practical considerations, and cardboard shortages are on the table.

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. 

This isn’t the only item on the list whose format is undecided. The Pavis and Big Rubble sourcebook might be one or two books. Some at Chaosium wanted the Sartar Homeland sourcebook to be a boxed set, but that’s probably not going to happen. The Prosopaedia may be a separate product, or may be sold only with the Cults of Glorantha. There is a lot of stuff that isn’t finalized as far as I can tell, so take all of this with a grain of salt… especially when shipping rates and paper availability are still volatile enough to force publishers to think twice before releasing something one way or another.

The “spell cards” have been, I believe, briefly mentioned in an Impromptu Con. This might be new to some. The Dragon Pass Gazetteer was also mentioned recently, but some people might have missed that it has been separated from the Sartar Homeland sourcebook. Note how the Prax Homeland sourcebook is separate from the Pavis and Big Rubble books.

As for the Chaosium Classics Volume 1 and the Meints Index to Glorantha 3rd edition, I’ve seen them at ChaosiumCon so I can attest that they exist!

If you look at the “coming later on” section in the original post, you’ll spot other things we’ve heard about. The RuneQuest Campaign is a Pendragon Campaign-like treatment for the first few years of the Hero Wars, up until Argrath re-conquers Dragon Pass. The Heroquesting Sourcebook is supposed to contain more in-depth heroquesting rules (compared to the shorter version found in the Gamemaster Book) plus, I will theorize, a detailed hexcrawl treatment of the Hero Plane, including descriptions of mythical places, and stats for encounters therein. The Dragon’s Eye by Jonathan Tweet is still there even though it was announced two years ago — I’m going to speculate that Jonathan is super busy and that he focused on higher priority projects during the pandemic. Everything you need to know about Elfpack is in our Aldryami episode with Shannon Appelcline. The Culbrea sourcebook is by Beer With Teeth, so they have all the info. The Kralorela sourcebook has been in the writing and playtesting phase for a long time, I think. I played in one of its scenario a couple years ago, and it featured an iteration of the Draconic Mysticism rules.

Anyway, enough theorizing! Go read the post and tell us what you think!

The Adventure of the Sword Tournament

There’s a new Pendragon 6th edition Quickstart Adventure out! This one was being handed out during GenCon 2022, and is now made available in PDF to everyone. Now I guess you have two questions: wasn’t there already a Quickstart Adventure for Pendragon 6th edition, and what does that have to do with Glorantha?

The first answer is yes, indeed. There was previously a Quickstart Adventure called The Wild Hunt. I’m not sure how one relates to the other… I guess Pendragon gets two Quickstarts?

The second answer is “nothing, except for the author of the adventure”. But I want to point out that the blog post announcing the adventure also talks about the upcoming Pendragon Starter Set. This in particular caught my eye:

There are three books included in the Pendragon Starter Set: Book I is a tutorial solo adventure, similar to what you find in the RuneQuest Starter Set and Call of Cthulhu Starter Set boxes, for those of you familiar with those products. Book II is a condensed version of the core rulebook. Book III is The Sword Campaign, an introductory set of adventures developed from the most complete portion of Greg’s manuscript.

Note what the outlier is, here. Both the Call of Cthulhu and Pendragon Starter Sets have their “solo tutorial adventure” as the first book in the starter set. Only the RuneQuest Starter Set has it as the third book. What’s the big deal? To me it seems like a big deal.

In my review of the RuneQuest Starter Set (here, and a return to it here), I had to main bits of criticism: the unexciting write-up for the city of Jonstown, and how the RuneQuest rules are too complicated to let the solo adventure be the first book, despite attempts to simplify them.

If you’ve been reading this newsletter long enough, you know that one of my recurring crusades is the (in my opinion) critical need for a big streamlining of the RuneQuest rules, similar to how Call of Cthulhu was streamlined for its 7th edition (not similar in implementation, but similar in spirit, of course). Well I think that one goal for this hypothetical streamlining would be to make RuneQuest simple and consistent enough that the next Starter Set can begin with the solo adventure. I truly believe that if this was successfully achieved, RuneQuest would be improved not just for the slightly annoyed players like me, but also for reaching new audiences and making it more viable for actual plays.

Anyway, it’s my two cents. Let me know what you think!

The White Bull S03E03

Jeff Richard’s (and friends’) campaign continues! I still haven’t found the time to catch up with the new season but it’s in the watch queue! You know, the one that keeps getting longer and longer. Everybody has one of those, right?

What is Fantasy?

In this new interview with Jeff Richard, James Coquillat talks about fantasy in general. This isn’t directly related to Glorantha, but I’m adding it to the newsletter anyway given the interviewee. I can’t say I agree with Jeff’s super-broad definition of “fantasy” here (if everything that isn’t factual is fantasy, the term loses its meaning), but there are some interesting points being made regarding literature in general.

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!

Duckpac Book 3: Redfeather Dreaming

The soloquest for Duckpac is finally out! Grab it and explore the dangers of the Upland Marsh!

Remember that this is the 3rd book in the overall Duckpac series that provide material for playing duck characters in RuneQuest.

Holiday Dorastor: Woods of Terror

If the Upland Marsh is too nice for you, how about going to Dorastor? Stormspearia continue their trek around one of the most dangerous places in Glorantha. As always with their series on Dorastor, there are scenarios, spells, magical items, and a ton of other stuff!

A Darker Shade of Night

Here’s a new sandbox-style adventure located in and around New Pavis. A powerful artifact is left in the care of the adventurers who find that, of course, it brings trouble.

Skyreach Mountains Map

Mikael Mansen has released another map, this time focused on the Skyreach Mountains area. As always, there’s one map with labels, and one map without.

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.

About King of Sartar

King of Sartar is an unusual book: it’s written by an unreliable narrator from the Fourth Age of Glorantha who collected and annotated various sources from “the past”, generally the Third Age. It takes what real-world historians have to deal with in their jobs, and uses that as a narrative device for a fantasy world. To some people it’s deep and fascinating, and to some others inscrutable or boring. If you haven’t checked it out yet, the second edition is available in PDF and eBook here.

On BRP Central, Jeff posted a bit about the creative process behind both editions of the book:

The whole idea of the 4th Age in [King of Sartar] was a framing device so that Greg could present many old notes and Glorantha stories in a single book without having to edit them for consistency. It also let us look at Glorantha “as through a glass darkly”, from a vantage where the “author” was uncertain what really happened.

A step back – most of King of Sartar was written around 1981 or so, for what was going to be RQ books. The Comprehensive History of Dragon Pass was part of the Encyclopaedia Glorantha, the Report on the Orlanthi was going to be in the Sartar Campaign book, etc. But with Avalon Hill deal, Greg lost money any time he wrote anything for RQ3 and so Greg’s Glorantha contributions largely went into his unfinished Arkat and then Harmast novels and projects like the Yuthuppa Book. I think it was David Hall who talked Greg into releasing a lot of this material as a book, so Greg cobbled together essays from many places, wrote a few additional bits and created King of Sartar. The 4th Age was a framing device that meant that contradictory material could be presented without concern. Also that’s how much of actual history reads – surviving primary sources are often contradictory, later traditions add new material that changes the history, and the past becomes a collection of later tales mixed with often contradictory primary sources.

One big complaint about the book was that Greg deliberately hid the ball even further, putting in dates drawn from stories from the late 1970s (originally Argrath’s hero wars were going to take place over a century or so, but then that became Ark’s Gbaji Wars) I then went through and very carefully edited the book to make it possible to discover the story we wanted to tell (which was a ton of work, because as I said above, the original book was edited to increase inconsistency). So the 2nd Edition is far more internally consistent. We kept the 4th Age framing device, even if by then we were tired of people treating the 4th Age as a defined 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.

Kraken Seminar Videos

As we mentioned last week, the Kraken convention happened and, as usual, it was full of interesting seminars… or so I’m told, I wasn’t there. But thanks to the magic of technology, these seminars are now available online for everyone to watch! So far four of them have been posted, including the above “How to Make Glorantha Fun” by Sandy Petersen.

You can also lurk around the archive of older videos for lots of other Gloranthan goodness.

Bud’s Hands Are All Over Six Seasons in Sartar

Bud, from Bud’s RPG Review, is telling you all about Andrew Logan Montgomery’s “Six Seasons in Sartar” in this video. Well, not all about it, since that’s only part 1, but you get the idea.

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.

A Year of RuneQuest Fun

I wrote a short (sort of) summary of my RuneQuest campaign so far. It starts with a tragedy, features many illegal shenanigans, much heroquesting, and some unexpected turns.

We started in 1611 with 10-year old characters being in-over-their-heads at Gamla’s Leap. The world comes crashing down around them and they join or return to the Bachad Tribe, in flames. Using some half-assed rules for playing a “kids on bisons” campaign, we went through some year-by-year adventuring, with quite a few vignettes and short scenes in between to punctuate daily Orlanthi life in the Far Place.

Give it a read and tell me what you think!

Chaosium News

Here are this week’s Chaosium news!

The White Bull Campaign

Episode 2 of the new season is out! I haven’t watched this yet, I’m still catching up on James’ “A New Hero” game….

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!

Pirates of the East Isles Update

Scott Crowder’s “Pirates of the East Isles” has been updated with a better layout, a whole bunch of new artwork by Simon Bray, some NPC portrait tokens, and more!

Note that I did some of the art in this book! I don’t know if that makes you want to buy it more or less but hey, at least you know!

Duckpac’s SoloQuest is Coming

Book 3 of the Duckpac series, which will contain a duck-tastic SoloQuest, is apparently almost ready to go out!

Jeff’s Notes

Jeff Richard, the current mastermind on everything Gloranthan at Chaosium, is often posting notes and thoughts on the RuneQuest Facebook group. Here’s our curated list from the past week. A partial archive of these sources is compiled on the Well of Daliath.

Skyfall Lake

Skyfall Lake is a large lake located north of Sartar. You can see it on this Argan Argar Atlas map below next to the major troll settlement of Crabtown:

Jeff’s note on Skyfall Lake, and his choice of references, gives a good idea of the place:

Skyfall Lake is remarkable place. The lake itself is at 1150 meters elevation and is about 17 km long and 10 km wide, nestled beneath 2200 meter high Black Dragon Mountain. To the west of the lake is an 8 km wide belt of marshlands.

Above the lake is a perpetual rainstorm, a waterfall from the Sky River. Monsters, treasures, and other entities from the Celestial Realm are known to fall down occasionally into the lake, where trolls try to fish or dredge them out.

Here’s Jeff’s video reference — imagine this rainfall, but stuck in one place, forever.

Note that this rainfall, and the lake underneath, are the main source for the “River” part of the Creek-Stream-River that flows through Sartar, all the way to Nochet. This is also the main holy place for Engizi, the Skyriver Titan, one of the few notable water deities of Sartarite Orlanthi, along with Heler, which is somewhat related too.

Within the lake are monsters – water wyrms, sea serpents, whales, etc., far too massive and many to be supported by the lake’s ecology. Many speculate that they enter the lake from the Gods Realm.

I figure that these monsters “too massive and many to be supported by the lake’s ecology” not only enter the lake from the Gods Realm but also exit it — otherwise they would accumulate over time and that would lead to obvious problems. But more importantly, it means that, assuming you’re crazy enough and can hold your breath for a long time, you might be able to ride one of those monsters and physically end up in the Gods Realm! For bonus points, you can get swallowed by a monsters and spat out once there!

The lake is incredibly deep. Far deeper than our Lake Baikal, and in places bottomless. There is widely rumored to be a city of Chaos below, kept at bay by the water and the endless rain.

Underwater city of Chaos! That sounds like an awesome place to visit! But more seriously, this is thematically appropriate since one of the big things about water deities is that one of their main shtick is to fight Chaos by trying to drown it or wash it away. That’s what the Good Canal is trying to do at the Block in Prax (wash away the Devil’s body underneath), and what Magasta’s whirlpool is trying to do at the centre of the world (fill up the hole left behind when the Spike shattered, and prevent Chaos from creeping back in). The sad thing is that it never seems to work.

I often imagine it as being kind of comparable to Lake Tahoe, although Tahoe is about twice the size of Skyfall Lake. Still Tahoe is a good reference for ideas:

In winter, all that rain coming down results in vast snow falls throughout the eastern Far Place and the Stinking Forest.

Dunstop

Jeff expanded on his previous note on Dunstop with this one, featuring more information and sketches:

Besides some generic (but useful!) information on the city layout, its surroundings, and its history, there’s this interesting bit:

The Lunars tried to deal with Orlanth worship in a lot of ways in Tarsh. The big thing was the Seven Mothers – think like the Spanish missions. The Seven Mothers is THE key institution to stabilizing the Lunar Provinces. So you get a nice temple built, a bunch of priestesses assigned there, soldiers to protect it, and the local rulers are told to cooperate with them. Some of the locals embraced the Seven Mothers, others retreated into Earth worship.

Jeff then shares the cult distribution in the overall Lunar Tarsh. The takeaway is that Ernalda and The Seven Mothers both have ~25% of the adult population, while Orlanth only has ~15%. Hon-eel is at ~10%, so that’s 25% of the population actively initiated into Lunar cults! And it’s very possible that, although half of the Ernalda cultists might be married to Orlanth cultists, the other half is probably married to Lunar cultists…

I suppose that the Orlanth cult is a major cult but far from having much power anymore. I picture a big chunk of these Orlanth cultists as being Orlanth Thunderous/Barntar farmers who stay out in the fields (Jeff specifies that “Orlanth worship is largely subsumed into Barntar cult in Lunar dominated areas“) The power centres, such as cities and tribal towns, probably have a bias towards Lunar, pro-Lunar, or neutral cults. After all The Seven Mothers is “hostile” towards the Orlanth cult, so there’s bound to be a lot of bias and discrimination. It took generations and a couple of civil wars, but the Lunars eventually Lunarized Tarsh, right?

By the way, Jeff added a nice short description of each Tarshite city:

Each Tarshite city has a very different vibe – unlike in Sartar (who built all the cities but Alda-Chur and Alone), the Tarshite cities developed separately.

– Bagnot – the old religious/political center of the Tarsh tribe, and home of the Twins Dynasty.
– Dunstop – agricultural center, tied in with the Earth Religion.
– Talfort – fortified border town. Goldedge – a Sun Dome temple.
– Slavewall – fortified border town and trading center
– Bjorni’s Landing – main river crossing and trading center
– Furthest – planned imperial city

The Fall of the Great Empires

Jeff reminds us that all the great fallen empires of Glorantha weren’t originally bad:

The Broken Council, God Learners, Empire of the Wyrms Friends, and the Lunar Empire all shared the same progression of endless new possibilities and optimistic enthusiasm that later becomes overtaken by ambitious power-seeking, cynical opportunism, and angry resentment. This progression is never quick, and often takes many generations. But there is something in mortal existence that subjects even the brightest of movements to the entropy of Time.

So when we complain about decadence of the God Learners or the EWF, remember that they too were once bright and filled with endless possibilities!

Jeff adds a bit more to this, including what brings these empires to ruins, from a conceptual point of view. But ultimately I don’t think any of this is really useful for games set in the Third Age, except when it comes to designing some incredible-looking EWF ruin full of wonderful and scary things, or encountering echoes of the God Learners’ research while heroquesting or digging through old tablets. As far as the Third Age factions go, none of them have this facet of “bright, endless possibilities”. The Lunar Empire arguably has the latter, but not the former.

The First Council

Speaking of Fallen Empires, the First Council gets a detailed write-up. I’m all confused though… I think this council also gets called “Unity Council” and “World Council of Friends” in various material.

As far as I can tell, this is the council that was created in the God Time just after the Sun was brought back from the Underworld. This is important because this is all in the short era between the Great Darkness and the Dawn, before Time began… so the gods were still around. And indeed, Jeff lists the following six members, from the various races and factions that survived the Great Darkness: Aram Ya-Udram (human Orlanthi boar-riding hero), The Only Old One (troll-ish darkness dude), Kyger Litor (ancestress and main deity of the trolls), The Speaking Wheel (possibly the last surviving member of the strange people known as the Gold Wheel Dancers), the Inhuman King (dragonewt demi-god), and Orlanth (storm god).

This list differs from the one in the Glorantha Sourcebook. It’s probably because the Sourcebook describes the council after the Dawn, when Time has begun and the gods are bound away from the mundane world. So Aram Ya-Udram, The Only Old One, and Speaking Wheel are still there, but the gods Kyger Litor and Orlanth are replaced by the elf Fwalfa Oakheart and the dwarf Martaler The Blazing Forge. The Inhuman King may or may not still be there: the Sourcebook lists a dragonewt named Heart of Weakness in its place, but given the reincarnation tricks and mental transference shenanigans of the dragonewts, who’s to say…

The Second Council

After the First Council came… the Second Council. I know, shocking. It looks like this one also gets called “High Council of Genertela” in some material. Because of course we need more names!

There is a lot of stuff to digest in this note and I ran out of time to annotate it. Honestly, I don’t find some of these old histories necessarily useful for my games anyway. But what I like are maps! And over on BRP Central, Jeff expands a bit on the High Council with this political map around 410 ST:

[…] Greg and I played around with that era a LOT. It was a time of limitless opportunities, and Illumination opened wildly fantastic new vistas. New revelations and insights nearly overwhelmed the old, and seemingly impossible contradictions were laughed at. At least that is how those around Nysalor saw it. Further afield, the ambitious saw Nysalor as a vehicle to power and personal gratification. And beyond that, were those who “never got any spells, magic, insight, or especially good wages.” […]

One of the more interesting early maps is this political map of Central Genertela circa 410 ST. Note that Heortland (aka Dragon Pass and Esrolia), Saird, Delela, Slontos, and Saird are all marked as subjects. The Harandings and the Dwarfs are allies, as are Tandoor and Korion. Arolanit, the Enjorelli Tribes, Lankst, and Seshnela are all outside of the the High Council’s domination, as are the Trolls.

Seseine

Here’s a short note on Seseine, the Chaotic Goddess of Temptation. I can’t say I’m a big fan of what looks like a very Christian view on desire, passion, good, and evil… but hey, it’s here, and it will be in the upcoming Prosopaedia. Do what you will with it!

On Evil and Chaos

Speaking of Chaos:

Most creatures tainted by Chaos are simply evil. They tend to worship the gods of Chaos – the enemies of Creation – because no one else will take them. These entities are opposed by the gods, who uphold the cosmos as part of the Great Compromise. This isn’t just a Theyalan thing – no God Time deity untainted by Chaos is better than neutral towards Chaos; most are hostile or enemies. They have their stories as to why they are what they are, but in the end this is not a “misunderstanding” by the gods – beings such as Krarsht, Thanatar, Thed, Vivamort, etc. are evil..

The very life-cycles of many Chaotic creatures are corrupted in ways that most sentient beings find far more terrifying than mere man-eating trolls or alien dragonewts.

Jeff then gives a bunch of examples, briefly stating what makes the classic Chaos races tick.

And yet, there are those that claim that it need not always be like that. Nysalor taught that through Illumination our inherent fear of Chaos can be overcome – and also that the inherent hatred Chaotic beings have for existence can also be overcome. This is at the very core of the Red Goddess cult and is integral to the Lunar Way.

There are also stories of Chaotic creatures rejecting the Lords of Terror and seeking peaceful coexistence with the rest of the world. The fabled Cleansed Broo of the Rockwood Mountains, who devoted itself to Chalana Arroy is perhaps the best known, but there are of course others.

And thus even those tainted by Chaos have a possible depth, motivation, and the chance to be more than they are.

If you want more stuff on the topic, including a treatise on Chaos, ways to be consumed by it or be overcome by it, and some hopefully entertaining moral conundrum on Chaos, see my adventure “A Short Detour” on the Jonstown Compendium! It’s got several pages of my view on Chaos, way more than I could put here in this annotations.

Rural and Urban Kinship Ties

Jeff puts into context how tribes are spread between the rural hillbilly folk, the people in the tribal centre, and the people in cities such as the Confederation capital and Boldhome.

Let’s think about it this way. There are about 9600 people in the Cinsina tribe. 600 of them live in Jonstown, where they make up more than a quarter of the city’s population. Another 500 live in Boldhome. The rest are rural. Those who live in the cities are just as much members of their kinship groups as their rural cousins, but they also have ties to their guilds, their cults, and their cities that are often just as important or even more.

There’s also a mention about people travelling to big cities for important religious festivals and duties. With Lunar-occupied cities, people might have stayed in their village and refrained from travelling to urban centres, but this is changing after the Dragonrise:

Remember the scale of things in Sartar. A city is rarely going to be more than a long day’s trek away from any associated tribal settlement (and often just a few hours away). These are not Medieval English peasants, tied to the land, but free people used to moving around and traveling. The Lunar Occupation interfered with this, but it was the aberration, and besides it is over now.

Humakt and Yanafal Tarnils

As a good demonstration of varying Gloranthas, here are two different takes about whether a Humakti can easily convert to Yanafal Tarnils or not. If you need a refresher on Yanafal Tarnils, it’s the main Lunar soldier cult, and one of the figures of the Seven Mothers cult. As with most Lunar figures, he was a mortal who ascended to godhood. In life, he was… a Humakti who somehow “defeated” his god in battle.

Anyway, the “official” answer comes from Jeff:

To join the Yanafal Tarnils cult, a Humakt initiate MUST LEAVE the Humakt cult (you cannot become the initiate of a Neutral cult – only Friendly and Associated). That triggers the Spirit of Reprisal. Their geases remain, and they cannot use a straight bladed sword (broadsword, etc.). Of course if one is Illuminated, then the Spirit of Reprisal cannot act…..

Regardless, the new initiate must create a new Rune Pool – Yanafal Tarnils is not Humakt but a different god. Same thing with worship skills.

This bit is generally interesting for world-building around the Lunar Provinces:

There is a reason after all that the Humakt cult has remained strong in the West Reaches and the Lunar Provinces. The cult is a useful source of soldiers, and since you can’t just hop from Humakt to the 7 Mothers or Yanafal Tarnils, the Lunar Empire tolerates it (like it does with so many other cults).

On the other hand, Michael “MOB” O’Brien, Vice-President of Chaosium, “MGF-guy”, and all-around “funniest Chaosium person” in my book, has a different take:

IMG Humakti who switch over to Yanafarl Tarnils get to keep all their gifts (as long as they don’t break their geases) and can continue to replenish their rune points at Humakti temples. And I’m just going to take off my tinfoil helmet to note that Humakti can replenish their rune points in YT temples too, though they do tend to get a bit self-conscious during the liturgy, what with all the tambourines, guitars, and group hugs. YGMV.

When it comes to Yanafal Tarnils initiates replenishing their Rune Points at Humakti temples, here’s my take:

Revising Gloranthan Lore

I’m always happy when I get a glimpse of the creative process behind Gloranthan lore, especially material revisions. In this BRP Central thread about the various version of the Gold Gotti (a Wolf Pirate buddy of Harrek), Jeff shares this:

That Sourcebook section [on Gold Gotti] was written by me around 2014, maybe even earlier. It didn’t quite sit right with me but Greg was fine with it, although he thought it didn’t mesh with his original idea of the character – which he had written up around 1978 or so. Sadly that material, like so much of his late 1970s and early 1980s material, was presumed lost forever. So I ran with it, even though it didn’t feel right. 

Flash forward a few years. A kindly benefactor found and returned Greg’s lost notes. In there were detailed descriptions of every unit for WBRM, and Greg’s descriptions of many minor figures, as well as troves of Gloranthan gold. Greg and I talked, and agreed Goldgotti should be what he was intended to be – a very successful Wolf Pirate (it also gave the game a unit of Wolf Pirates in addition to Harrek and Gunda). And so there it is. 

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.

The Kraken Was Released

Last week, immediately after GenCon, was the much smaller Kraken convention in Germany! This is the successor of the Tentacles Convention which has many ties to Chaosium games in general and Glorantha in particular.

Judging from social media, there was some mask-wearing game of Lunar ritual disruption, a seminar on How to Make Glorantha Fun, and Doc Cowie (who was our guest once!) GMing a game where he got the date wrong (asking what year it is in Glorantha is a long standing joke among certain parts…)

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Take note of Doc Cowie’s t-shirt though!

For more pictures of the convention, see the Kraken’s Twitter feed!

Grognardia on RuneQuest Marketing

I have always been fascinated with this weirdly boasting ad for RuneQuest way back from 1980. It appeared in Dragon Magazine but it probably also appeared elsewhere — I don’t remember where I saw it first. Anyway, if you have never seen it, take the time to read it, it’s… something.

James Maliszewski gives his thoughts on the ad on his excellent blog GROGNARDIA.

I want to take a look at each paragraph of the ad, because I think each one includes some fascinating boasts about RQ. Before doing that, though, I simply want to draw attention to the ad’s title, which plays off a very common concern in the hobby during the early to mid-1980s – realism.

Attack on Tin Inn

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Mark Austin is taking “miniature combat” to a whole new level!

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.

Last week was GenCon and Continuum! Chaosium and Chaosium contributors won some Ennies for various works around the Call of Cthulhu franchise, so congratulations to them! Hopefully we’ll see Glorantha come back to the Ennies in 2023 when (hopefully) the Cults book is out and eligible for something…

Chaosium News

Here are this week’s Chaosium news!

RuneQuest Weapons & Equipment is Out in Hardback

The RuneQuest Weapons & Equipment guide is finally out in hardback, after having been released in PDF last December… this shows you how messed up the printing and shipping industry is right now.

If you already bought the PDF, you should have recently received your discount code for the hardback version. If you’re going to order multiple physical books from Chaosium’s recent releases (like, say, Cults of Cthulhu or Time to Harvest), don’t forget to contact customer support and ask for a combined discount code, since Chaosium’s website doesn’t support more than one code. Also, don’t forget to check that the books you’re ordering are in the appropriate warehouse for more efficient shipping… for instance, I’m waiting for Weapons & Equipment to reach the Canadian warehouse before ordering it.

Remember that this is probably the last book that received the “early PDF release” treatment. Chaosium communicated over the last few weeks that they would stop doing it for now.

The White Bull Campaign Returns

After a long hiatus, the White Bull campaign has returned to YouTube! This is Jeff Richard’s RuneQuest Glorantha game featuring several designers and collaborators from the Chaosium sphere. If you want to get back up to speed quickly, BRP Central has an episode list for both season one and season two, which ended after the Battle of Queens, when Kallyr Starbrow’s body is burned and the adventurers return to Argrath in Pavis.

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!

Duckpac Book 2: Duck Adventurers

It’s here! The second book of the Duckpac series it out and will let your create Duck adventurers in way more detail than what you had in the Glorantha Bestiary. This includes a custom Family History, duck-tastic boons and heirlooms, a sample Duck community to start from, some pre-generated Duck adventurers, and more.

The fist book on Duck Lore, Legends, and Myths is available here and is a Silver Best Seller. Books 3 and 4 will respectively be a soloquest and a set of scenarios.

The Seven Tailed Wolf

The trilogy of campaigns started in Six Seasons in Sartar and continued in Company of the Dragon is finally complete with the release of the Seven Tailed Wolf! The Company returns to Black Stag Vale but they’re immediately pulled into many defining events of the meta-plot: Kallyr’s Lightbringers Quest and her brush against Jar-eel the Razoress, the Battle of Queens, and more!

The Lottery

This scenario by Robert Stoll takes part in the Lunar Provinces, at the edge of the Glowline, and sends your adventurers up against some “terrifying cult” that threatens their family and the entire region. It includes pre-generated characters, so you could run it as a one-shot interlude or convention game!

An Orlanthi Wedding

This “small adventure” can be slotted into any campaign where “one experienced Orlanthi male initiate adventurer” gets married to an NPC. If things go according to plan (for a certain definition of “plan”), the players will go into some unplanned heroquest!

The Howling Tower is Available in Softcover

What it says in the title! Grab it here and go treasure hunting in the Upland Marsh!

Cover Preview of the Periplus of the Mirrorsea Bay

Martin Helsdon’s next Jonstown Compendium project is an exploration of the Mirrorsea Bay, and it’s being illustrated by the excellent Mark Smylie. Martin shared a preview of the cover on Facebook and it looks amazing!

Here’s a bit of description from Martin:

A round ship is towed by tugboats towards the quays of Nochet. A patrolling triaconter exchanges news with her crew, as two merfolk also talk with a sailor. Beyond rises the temple of Issaries, with the Great Market before it, and behind lies the massive bulk of the Grace Temple. The temple of Dormal is off to one side, and a floating shrine used in festivities sits at anchor nearby.

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.

Escalation! Issue 10

Escalation! is a magazine for 13th Age, the unholy child of the 3rd and 4th editions of D&D, plus some other stuff thrown in. You might be familiar with 13th Age: Glorantha, the game that lets you play epic heroes in Glorantha with a D20.

Well, anyway, Escalation! only had one issue that I know of that was dedicated to Glorantha, but it looks like they’ll have another one with issue 11, as announced here:

The Escalation team’s next project is the Red Moon and Warring Kingdoms book, describing how to play Lunar characters in 13th Age Glorantha. It may be a while before we come up for air, so please be patient with us in the meantime.

Evan Franke, of Exploring Glorantha’s fame, announced that the Lunar-focused issue is indeed next, after years of work involving several other authors and editors and such. He even shared the Spotify playlist he uses to get inspired about Fronela, with a piece of art representing the great Lunar City of Riverjoin.

The next issue of Escalation! might not be out until early next year, but I’m still looking forward to it!

Partidas Vetustas

The actual-play channel “Partidas Vetustas” has run a bunch of RuneQuest games (among other systems), which I think start in Apple Lane, then go to Snakepipe Hollow, and then return to Apple Lane. I have no idea if this is good, since my knowledge of Spanish is “half-forgotten high-school education”, and, well, did I mention this channel is in Spanish? It’s in Spanish.

Anyway, if you understand Spanish and you have watched it, please tell me what you thought about it!

Elsewhere on Arachne Solara’s Web

Not everything is about Glorantha, although most things are! Here are loosely relevant things that we found on the interwebs.

The Lady of Elche

The Lady of Elche is a limestone bust discovered in the late 19th century in Spain. It dates back to the 4th century BCE, and is considered to be Iberian with strong Hellenistic influences. I could see it used as a visual inspiration for an Ernalda priestess or, with a bit more imagination, a Maran Gor priestess (although it’s not too far fetched given the actual goddess this bust was supposed to be associated with).

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You can easily find many people dressing up with the iconic Princess Leia-looking coils (known as “rodetes”), although these coils aren’t specific to the Lady of Elche per se. But unless I’ve missed some other cultural significance, I guess the Lady of Elche is quite famous in some circles. In fact, you can even get a glimpse of her in the latest Marvel movie, Thor: Love and Thunder! (along with a bunch of gods and goddesses from all kinds of pantheons… one of the only good things about this movie, if you ask me)

Wind Shaman

This “wind shaman” from Karl Simon could be a great inspiration for a Kolat shaman or any other Gloranthan shaman for that matter! Thanks to Thomas Iverson for bringing it up.

Concretion

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Concretions are… well, some weird-ass rock things (if you’re really interested in how they form, you can start here). What you need to know is that they’re mostly round, they’re a bit strange, and you can of course use them as inspiration for a weird landscape in Glorantha. Are they sleeping Earth elementals? Are they Maran Gor’s necklace pearls? Are they Lodril’s balls?

Either way, thanks to Susen Saha for bringing them to our attention!

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.

There was a big heat wave here this past week so the motivation to collect and annotate Gloranthan things was at an all time low, especially since I also had our new episode to edit… but today was cooler so here I am, with as much as I could gather.

God Learner Sorcery

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

Episode 14: Nomad Gods (Part 2)

In episode 14 of our podcast, we return to our exploration of Prax through the lens of the 1977 board game “Nomad Gods” (part 1 was here). David Scott expertly guides us through these strange lands. We discuss the French version of the game, the magic rules, shamans, spirit societies, chaos monsters, and more!

Chaosium News

Here are this week’s Chaosium news!

Don’t Balance Your Games

Jeff talks about game balance again, but this time as an interview with James Coquillat. You can tell this is a topic they both are very interested in because you’re looking at an almost hour-long interview. Usually, these Chaosium interviews are between 10 and 20 minutes at most. This extra time lets Jeff better share his opinions on the topic, compared to the shorter notes and comments he posted online previously.

There’s a lot of good stuff in there. James’ questions are absolutely on point, even if Jeff doesn’t always answer them directly. I appreciate that several aspects of “balance” were mentioned, like “spotlight” balance and “premise fit” balance, and not just purely “mechanical” balance. They also mention the “Pippin vs Aragorn” problem, but one I find a lot more interesting is the “Hawkeye vs Captain Marvel” one because, unlike with Lord of the Rings, superhero RPGs have seen a lot more iterations and experimentations over the decades — including a large spread from simulationist to story-driven mechanics. Jeff sounds unconvinced about the latter however, which I think is common from gamemasters who run simulationist systems as story-driven anyway.

One thing that I think is worth touching upon in these parts is the big difference (in my opinion, of course) between Pendragon & Call of Cthulhu, and RuneQuest. While they all aspire to provide a broad range of gameplay experiences, I find that RuneQuest has the most “unbalanced” set of mechanics. Pendragon’s breadth of gameplay is supported by many mechanics: skirmishes, battles, running a manor, organizing a feast, romancing, jousting, and so on. These mechanics might vary in size, complexity, and time to run at the table, but not too much, so they’re pretty “balanced” in a sort of “mental overload” way, along with the various knights that specialize in one or the other. Call of Cthulhu, especially its 7th edition, has a more minimalist approach in order to make things rather equivalent: combat has been simplified quite a lot compared to the previous editions, and other sub-systems like chases, sanity, and magic have an equivalent light weight. By comparison, I feel like RuneQuest is a lot more unbalanced in that way. Starting a combat scene will most likely take you at least an hour of play, while most other activities are, technically, resolved in a couple rolls. A good gamemaster might be able to expedite a combat when needed, and dwell longer on a crucial scene of tribal politics with many suspenseful rolls… but RuneQuest as a system puts a lot of emphasis on combat and magic, and by all means this signals that the game is about combat and magic — I’m a big fan of “show me what your mechanics are and I’ll tell you what your game is about“. So of course a combat-focused system will attract combat-focused players. Oh well.

A New Hero Episode 5

Speaking of James Coquillat, his RuneQuest actual play continues and is now at episode 5! Oh my, I’m still catching up so no comments from me at this time. Are you following the game? What do you think?

The Legacy of “Home of the Bold”

On the Chaosium blog, Nick Brooke has a slice of Gloranthan history for us as we celebrate the 30 years since the “Home of the Bold” freeform live-action roleplaying game. This took place at the Convulsion 1992 convention, and its historical significance in the history of Glorantha, RuneQuest, and Chaosium is all up there in the article. Thanks Nick!

Of course, Rick Meints brought his A-game to the discussion on Facebook by showing off his Gloranthan convention booklets… you can’t beat that, can you?

Fantasy Grounds Update

The Fantasy Grounds VTT Module for RuneQuest is almost ready to be released, but not quite:

Down to 4 things I need to address before it can be released and just ran out of time, as full-on GenCon prep now. Snippet of the Bestiary which will be the next release.

RuneQuest Weapons & Equipment in Hardback

Chaosium announced that they would have the print version of the Weapons & Equipment sourcebook at GenCon next week. We might therefore expect to see it on sale from Chaosium’s website at the same time, or shortly after. Those of you who bought it in PDF will receive a discount code when that happens… although don’t forget to contact Dustin at customer support if you need to combine multiple codes!

About PDF and Print Releases

Speaking of hardcover releases, you might remember that I mentioned in a past Journal issue that Chaosium was going back to synchronous PDF and print releases for their future products. No more PDF release ahead of time. Chaosium president Rick Meints clarified the reasons for doing this in a post on BRP Central.

The first reason Rick mentions isn’t really a reason for going with synchronous releases, but it does address a related change to the release process which is that future RuneQuest books won’t have any “crowd-sourced proofreading” anymore (for example, here was the proofreading thread for Weapons & Equipment). From now on, Chaosium will be hiring professional proofreaders, which is an excellent news given how past RuneQuest books have been riddled with editing issues.

Some of the other reasons are pretty convincing to me:

• The need to spin up two marketing cycles instead of one, with the inevitable confusion from gamer audiences who might think “wasn’t this already released?“
• The management overhead of processing discount coupons, especially if you’re like me and often wait a couple months to do a bulk purchase and save on shipping cost. Like I said above, this requires contacting Dustin so he can issue a combined coupon code by hand… Chaosium could invest in a better e-commerce website to fix this, but I imagine the database migration costs might not be worth it.
• The desire to just “fuck around and find out” (well Rick didn’t say it like that of course). Chaosium did a whole bunch of PDF-first releases, and now it sounds like they want to compare it to combined releases. Do some people buy the PDF early and then don’t bother with the printed book when it comes out, when they might have bought both if available? Hard to say. I guess this will be interesting.

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.

Plant Genealogy

Another Cults book genealogy preview! These are the plants, and other related entities. This is where you can see that Blue and Black Elves aren’t “Aldryami” per se (they’re not descended from Aldrya), so you can’t always trust the God Learners.

Gloranthan Distances

Jeff talks about the size of Glorantha… I promise I won’t start complaining about Gloranthan map scales!

It is approximately 4250 kilometers from the Holy Country to Pamaltela, although most sailors travel clockwise around the Homeward Ocean, taking about 3 weeks to get to Maslo, give or take a few days.

To put that in context, the distances involved are significantly less than crossing the Atlantic from continental Europe to the Caribbean or North America.

Generally speaking, Glorantha is much smaller than Earth. The entire continent of Genertela fits inside the United States, more or less. This is why I felt a bit “constrained” when I first looked at the maps — we end up trying to fit a lot of cultures and biomes in not much space. It sort of looks like an open-world video game in some ways. And sure we can explain a lot with myths and land goddesses and weather deities and such, but that only comes later. If you’re like me, you started with the map.

Anyway, the rest of the note won’t be surprising: the Opening of the Seas is still new in people’s mind, trade with distant lands is warming up, and lots of profits can be made for the enterprising merchant that makes it to Pamaltela or the East Isles, where the truly exotic stuff is.

This detail on the Vadeli is interesting:

The Vadeli are not what I would call Genertelan explorers and traders. They did briefly establish an empire in Pamaltela (Umathela) in 1585 after the Opening, presenting themselves as gods and demanding tribute and worship. However, their empire collapsed after the Vadeli fleet was destroyed in 1594 by a naval alliance of Kareeshtu and Flanch.

The Vadeli are evil immortal Malkioni people who date back to the Gods Age. Just like the Brithini, they don’t age as long as they follow strict rules of conduct. The Vadeli live to this day on a couple large archipelagos far off the western coast of Genertela — although it used to be one large “Vadeli Island”. Like most Malkioni, the Vadeli are split in castes. Only each caste has a different skin colour… yep, you read that right. Brown Vadeli are the immortal sociopath sorcerer-sailors, and Red Vadeli are the also-immortal violent sorcerer-marines-soldiers. Good luck including that in your game in a sensitive way! There were two other castes (Yellow and Blue Vadeli) but they have gone extinct somehow.

As Jeff notes, right after the Opening of the Sea, the Vadeli built a fleet and reached Pamaltela. They ruled a large part of coastal Pamaltela for a little while until they lost a decisive battle in 1594. There is still a sizable community of Brown Vadeli left behind in Pamaltela who act as expert sailors and shady merchants. Given their low morals and immortal ways, you probably get a mix of slaves and ancient magical secrets from dealing with them. If you want a super shady merchant NPC at a port city, you can make them an evil immortal Vadeli. Which leads us to this detail on Nochet, also worth being highlighted:

Nochet has almost 10,000 inhabitants that are not from Central Genertela (Holy Country, Maniria, Dragon Pass, Lunar Empire). That’s a large city’s worth of foreigners. That also includes people from Fonrit, Umathela, and Maslo.

Now you know where you’ll find that super shady and scary Brown Vadeli trader.

Genertela Line Map

Speaking of fitting Genertela inside the continental United States, Jeff talks about it here. There’s a few more comparisons, but most importantly there’s a link towards a line-map of Genertela that is usable under Chaosium’s Fan Material Policy, among several other maps.

Tradetalk

Since we were talking about merchants and sailors, remember that the Issaries cult made up Tradetalk to help with that — especially around the various markets they setup everywhere during the First Age:

Tradetalk spread early – it was used by the First and Second Councils to facilitate communication between different species (humans, trolls, elves, dwarves, etc), tribes, and with outsiders. It was embraced by the Jrusteli who used it as the lingua franca of the Middle Sea Empire, and was also used by the Empire of the Wyrms Friends.

It is hard to find places where Tradetalk is unknown. Perhaps in Kothar and Tarien, and in Vormain.

More here.

Dormal

Finally, all this talk of travelling the across the oceans wouldn’t be complete without the guy that made it possible. Remember that the oceans were “closed” by some disaster that sunk various parts of Glorantha, destroyed a few peninsulas, and generally did bad things, from roughly 920 to 1050. Since then, any ship that lost sight of the coast would just… disappear. Or something. But in 1580, this guy called Dormal found a way around it and manage to sail across the oceans. His workaround is called the Opening Ritual, you have to do it in order to sail, and you have to be an initiate of his cult in order to know it. This guy is clever, isn’t he?

But it gets scary:

One more thing about Dormal, his initiation rites are performed on a ship beyond the sight of land. The initiate is presented to the gods of the sea for acceptance. As a result, the initiates of Dormal really do view themselves as the Men of the Sea – folk who can exist on the open seas.

So yeah, you need to place your ship in the situation where it would normally have bad things happening to it before you can do the thing that prevents bad things from happening! Make sure you have all the ingredients for the ceremony before you leave!

In the rest of the note, Jeff looks at the rough number of ships, sailors, and Dormal initiates around the Holy Country and elsewhere, so if you need these numbers for your campaign, now you know where to find them.

Discorporating Others

Note quite a “Jeff Note” but a “Scotty Note”. Still, it’s from someone at Chaosium, even if David wasn’t using his “official” account when posting this, which indicates that it’s his personal take on it. But hey, that still comes with a hefty weight of authority as far as I’m concerned.

Anyway, this deals with the ever-thorny topic of Discorporation in game. The problem, you see, is that it’s unclear how an assistant shaman gets the ability to discorporate, and it’s even less clear whether they can take the other player characters with them (which is desirable for obvious gameplay reasons). In our recently released episode (and in other online places) David did share that the upcoming Cults of Glorantha book somewhat fixes this loophole for assistant shamans by giving the Horned Man one spell: Discorporation. He shows you how to do it, but you don’t cast it through him — you still cast it through your god, using your god’s Rune Points. The Horned Man isn’t a god and doesn’t have Rune Points.

David also often gives his shamans a custom-made shamanic ability called “Discorporate Others”. But that’s not idea when the group only has an assistant shaman, or when the shaman doesn’t have that ability because you just learned about this possibility now.

Well, David has some more suggestions! The whole thing is on BRP Central, but here are the interesting bits:

So in RQ terms, the shaman’s discorporation ability, and any discorporation rune magic provide a controlled entry and exit from the spirit world (needing an hour long ritual to work). Hazia, Black Mushroom Drink and most other plants that can help achieve discorporation, fall into the uncontrolled category.

There is also the matter of an Axis Mundi, an important adjunct to travelling to the spirit world – a safe starting point. At large ceremonies, a shaman need only cast Axis Mundi and make sure all the participants are inside its diameter. Everyone inside is effectively in the Spirit World, everyone knows not to move as to do so moves you out of the protective area into the spirit world.

So If the shaman want’s everyone to travel with him into the spirit world, everyone takes the supplied Entheogen (what ever it is), does the hour ritual, pays 5 magic points, and makes a meditation roll (including ritual preparation bonus). The shaman then casts Axis Mundi and everyone moves off through the now open gateway to the spirit world.

So it sounds like you could use Axis Mundi as a “Discorporate Others” sort of spell if you want. And since not all cults provide it, you could even say that you obtained it via the Horned Man, just like Discorporation.

Discord Transcripts

There was a rare appearance from Jeff on the Discord server, and David graciously archived that impromptu Q&A.

• The Seven Mothers cult: who joins the Seven Mothers cult as a lay member or full initiate and why, what the cult is for, and so on. I’m taking away that occupied Sartar had around 21,000 Seven Mothers initiates, two thirds of which were soldiers, officials, or other immigrants. Post-Dragonrise Sartar still has 5,500 members, most of which I assume are second generation natives.
• The cult of Heler: the various forms of Heler worship, from a minor aspect of Orlanth to the big cult of Sky River Titan near Skyfall Lake. Plus, economies of scale in Esrolia!
• Argrath’s Army: some thoughts on the logistics of having Praxian nomads all around Dragon Pass and Southern Peloria.
• The Guide to Dragon Pass: tiny bits of information about the upcoming “Dragon Pass gazetteer”.
• Weather in Peloria: some clarifications about the weather in Peloria, and how Orlanth and the various weather deities relate to it. Short version: Entekos is keeping things calm, dry, and warm for her big sugar daddy Yelm.

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.

Kylmä Tuuli Sartarin Yllä #6

No, my dog didn’t jump on the keyboard — this is the title of the Kalikos Society’s latest magazine issue. Google Translate tells me this means “Cold Wind Over Sartar”. You can buy it here, I think.

Kalikos is a Finnish collective of Gloranthan fans who has produced many fine things over the years, including the Zin Letters (which were written in English). Lately they’ve also been producing the only known active Gloranthan podcast besides ourselves: Dayzatarin Tähtien Alla.

Jar-eel and Beat-pot

Dan Barker did this cover a long time ago as a spoof of an Elektra: Assassin cover (visible here). I think I had seen it in passing once without knowing what it was about!

A Very Harmonious House, It’s True

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Chris Webb, which incidentally is our next interviewee in our Glorantha Initiation Series, sent us these pictures of a “small re-roofing project with reclaimed tiles”. Isn’t that awesome?

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.

Duck Uprising

This old comic strip by Mortel Pierre has been making the rounds on Twitter and Facebook… for obvious reasons.

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.

I actually added a warning message on the aforementioned page for those wishing to subscribe by email: it looks like, sadly, ad-blockers prevent Mailchimp for correctly registering you.

God Learner Sorcery

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

Initiation Series Episode 9: Scott, Grognard Jokes, Too Much Lore, and Letting Players Fill in the Blanks

We talk to another Scott this month for our Initiation Series. This one was recorded back in November 2021, which is why we still mention the very imminent release of the RuneQuest Starter Set. The Scott we talk to is one of the hosts of the Titterpigs podcast, and host of the Unprofessional Unboxing channel on YouTube!

Some Glorantha Fanzines

I managed to grab four old Gloranthan fanzines from the second-hand market… only they’re not all fanzines, and in fact most of them are freeform game reports. David and Joerg gave me some short background on each of them!

Chaosium News

Here are this week’s Chaosium news!

Running Side-Quests

RuneQuest line editor (among other hats) Jason Durall tell us all about running side-quests in your games! This topic is obviously a lot more generic than just Glorantha but it does get name-dropped so here it is!

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!

DriveThruRPG’s Christmas in July Sale

DriveThruRPG’s Christmas in July Sale is under way! There are many titles with discount prices, including of course Chaosium’s book and most of the Jonstown Compendium.

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Of course, my own books are 25% off: A Short Detour (moral conundrums and chaotic corruption!), and Bog Struggles (spirit-world body horror and cute newtlings!)

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Check out the other titles, and when in doubt, use Nick Brooke’s indexes (2021 and 2022) to figure out what to buy!

Monster of the Month Volume 2 Omnibus

For the aforementioned summer sale on DriveThruRPG, Austin Conrad made this omnibus of the Volume 2 issues of his Monster of the Month series! Note that DriveThruRPG knows what issues are in it, and will further discount the overall price by deducting the prices of what you’ve already purchased. Austin tells us that if you haven’t picked up the last issue, “To Hunt a God”, this is “probably the cheapest you’ll ever see it”!

Return to Big Rubble

Regular show guest Drew Baker got the same idea as Austin, and both his books on the Big Rubble are now collected in a bundle with a discount! Grab it now!

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.

Gloranthan Animal Taxonomies

Everybody loves the Gloranthan truth that “actually, horses are birds”. It’s not quite correct, but it’s correct enough to be funny! Jeff already posted notes on animal taxonomies in the past, but here we get another nice preview of the art in the Cults of Glorantha. Find some other funny stuff like “fish are water dragons”!

Arkat and his Dark Empire

Jeff looks once more at Arkat and his legacy:

From about 450 ST to 740 ST area now known as Safelster was part of a political entity that called itself the Autarchy or the Empire of Peace, but was known by outsiders as the Stygian Empire or Arkat’s Dark Empire. Despite the passage of some nine centuries, Safelster is still haunted by the ghosts of Arkat’s empire and the question of Arkat still drives theological and political conflict.

A super quick crash-course in Arkat is that he’s a very determined dude from Brithos who did some seriously advanced heroquesting, unlocked super secret magical powers, transformed into a troll (more or less), and used Darkness Gods to smash Nysalor’s evil Bright Empire which threatened to invade and corrupt the whole world… but in doing so Arkat also almost destroyed the world and transformed Dorastor into the horrible cesspool of Chaos that we know today.

If you’re not sure what to think about this guy, Jeff provides 7 possible views on Arkat, plus this:

The riddle of Arkat defies easy answer. Just when you think you have it answered, it finds a way to turn itself around.

More than anything it was pondering the riddle of Arkat back in the days of Cults of Terror that sold me on Glorantha as being the peak of fantasy literature. As they say, his riddle defies easy answers. It is perhaps best approached as a personal Rorschach test for the reader – as your answer says more about you than it does about Arkat.

Frankly I’m probably in team 1 — learning from Arkat and his crazy power grabbing heroquests, and try and do the same. Maybe that’s what the Red Goddess is doing, and why you have to be an Illuminate to join her cult, because otherwise you just can’t understand this stuff. The Hero Wars are partially about the return of dangerous experimental heroquesting, so I would encourage your players to follow in Arkat’s path and become bad-ass single-minded world-killing machines! Argrath can’t be the only one there, after all, right? Plus, it’s always fun to break your toys.

Arkat and Hrestolism Caste Restrictions

Speaking of Arkat, in this thread on casts restrictions in Malkioni society, Jeff posted this:

Arkat only violated his caste restrictions in the service of Justice and never wavered in his war against Gbaji. He joined the cult of Humakt but remained Hrestoli. He became a troll but remained Hrestoli. Perhaps he even became a Chaos monster and remained Hrestoli.

This may be a key to why the Rokari hate Hrestolism AND Arkatism alike. 

Some food for thought when it comes to both Arkatism and the “Rightness” mechanics mentioned in last issue. And if you wanted to ask Arkat for advice, now might be the right time:

Arkat exists in the Hero Plane. You could go to Statham Well and meet him. During the era of the Dark Empire, his most devoted acolytes did just that. But when his empire fell, the God Learners destroyed every path to Statham Well. Try as they might, nobody could contract the Great Hero.

Despite that, Arkat is somehow back in our world. How that is even possible and what that means is a mystery, but he’s back.

Brithini Immortality

Since we were talking about Brithos, let’s talk about their crazy rulers: Brithini are immortal (and arguably pretty inhuman) sorcerers. This is how they do it:

The Brithini have immortality because they haven’t changed since Death appeared.

Why we live forever?

When Zzabur asked his father, “How do we stay immortal?”the Prophet answered simply. He said, “Do not change. Do what you have done. Act within the Laws and Ways you have been given, for they are immortal. Your actions embody the One, your bodies enact the One. Anything new from this moment forward is Death.”

Thus we were never severed from Life, like the rest; from Magic, like the rest; from Divinity, like the rest; from Good, like the rest; from ourselves, like the rest. We are not mortal people, or gods, or good people, or our own people — we simply are. All else is a wane shadow of us.

When we die, the world dies. We are the last holders of the One. When we are gone, all else will go to. When we are gone, everything left is corruption and death.

Of note:

It is not possible for those not already Brithini to become Brithini.

Various Notes on Malkionism

Let’s keep going with Gloranthan sorcerers. First, a general note on the Malkioni. In particular:

Malkionism provides us with a detached and abstract philosophical approach to Glorantha. It is easier for us Westerners than the raw personal experiences found in most rune cults. With Malkionism we can reduce mythology to patterns and processes, or esoteric facts to be discussed or disputed, rather than psychological events to be experienced.

In short, most readers likely approach Glorantha like the Malkioni. Most players and GMs approach it like the Orlanthi or Pelotians or Praxians. Ponder that!

Next, Jeff muses about Malkionism as a “cult”. This is the interesting bit to me:

Magic points are offered to the Invisible God, and the worshipers gain satisfaction knowing that their sacrifice was accepted. Some sects have techniques by which the “priests” can use some of the magic points – by storing them in the Otherworld, using them to cast blessings (sorcery spells), and so on.

As for what magic the rest of the community gets, it doesn’t come from the Invisible God. Some sects (Rokarism and Hrestolism) allow non-priestly members to belong to priestly approved Rune or spirit cults, usually appropriate for their occupation or caste. Other sects (such as the Stygian Heresy) don’t care what non-priestly members do, as long as they regularly show up for worship (and do not worship actively Chaotic entities, such as the Lords of Terror). In general, most sects hold that such magic is inferior to the “priestly” sorcery.

So if your players are visiting some Malkioni-controlled regions, they might encounter various wildly different sects, or even “heresies”, with fairly different societal structures.

But Jeff went down a whole rabbit-hole of Malkionism. For example, there’s this closer look at the Rokari, who are but one of the different Malkioni sects. This one in particular allows the zzaburi (the sorcerers) to be entirely financed and supported by the state, through the worker and noble castes. So they enjoy the existence of entire complexes dedicated to their magical work. I guess they are a mix between a university, a monastery, and a governmental research laboratory?

The greatest of these is Leplain, a vast complex of temples and “universities”, often called the Blue Temple. There might be as many as 3000(!) sorcerers training and studying in the Blue Temple! This is the center of Rokarism, and I suspect most young recruits to the zzaburi caste are sent here to learn and train.

This bit in particular nicely sums up the zzaburi in a Rokari society:

Ideally, the zzaburi would prefer if the rest of the population relied completely on them with regards to magic use, but of course that is not going to happen. There are numerous spirit cults, deified ancestors, revered heroes, abstract entities, and so on.

So when we thinking about Rokarism, it is worth keeping in mind that it was a reaction against the widespread destruction caused by the God Learners. Malkioni philosophers reached back for a primary source – the original teachings of Malkion, cleansed and redacted by Rokar. And so the Rokari look to the Brithini as analogues (but believe the Brithini are in error rejecting the later revelations of Malkion, such as Solace).

Many Rokari prefer an abstract and philosophical concept of the Invisible God, and imagine the Runes as abstract archetypes, like the Major Arcana, personified as gods (e.g., Worlath, Ehilm, Humct, Gata, Seshna Likita, etc.). These gods are not given cult by the Rokari, and the personifications are usually considered wayward.

But beneath this Rokari philosophical abstraction is a churning sea of folk religion. Ancestor worship, spirit cults, old tribal cults, local deities, more abstract deities of phenomena and behaviour, etc.

But we’re not done! The Stygian Heresy was mentioned above, so here’s a note about them!

This is a big tent, with some 700,000 followers. One way of thinking about the Stygian heresy is that it is tantric Malkionism. Transgressive, antinomian, esoteric, with secret initiation rites and interaction with raw elemental forces.

Sounds like a bunch of zzaburi hippies to me. If there can ever be such a thing.

Finally, how about some demographic data on the Malkioni? Of course you want that! These numbers are ballparks but still interesting to world-building fans like me:

When thinking about Malkionism, keep in mind that In Genertela, there are:

– Around 2.5 million Hrestoli (various schools)
– Around 1.5 million Rokari
– Around 750 k followers of the Stygian Heresy
– Around 250 K followers of the Chariot of Lightning
– Around 115k followers of the Carmanian heresies (mainly Idovanus and Malakinus)
– Around 40k Aeolians
– Around 15k followers of Trader Prince Malkionism

Odayla as an Orlanth Subcult

Note quite a note from Jeff, but a worthwhile preview from the upcoming Cults of Glorantha, courtesy of David Scott:

[…] what you do get are the two paths of the Bearwalker (Rune Lord): the Bearwalker path (solitary wilderness only) and the Champion’s Path, where they enter service as the champion of the king or chief. It’s likely the latter that can be a subcult of Orlanth, giving the rune lord full access to their spells from the Orlanth temple (can be a minor temple). The Bearwalker need only a pay a point of POW for this to work (per the rules).

If an adventurer is lucky enough to have a Bearwalker Champion in their clan, this is how they could join the cult and access magics.

You can read more here, here, and here, including how David uses the “fluidity in the cults system” to reconcile mechanics and world-building, where the Bearwalker champions might be, and more.

Converting to Another Cult

For some reason, people are asking for special rules that provide a cheap way to convert a character from one cult to another, such as an Ernalda initiate who gets upset and becomes a Vinga initiate. No idea why, but hey this prompted Jeff to clarify what Rune Points are for (not that there was any doubt but hey, I’m occasionally trying to be a completist about these notes):

Your Rune point pool represents your connection with THAT deity. If you have a big pool, that represents that you are deeply and intimately connected with that deity. If you join another cult – even an associated cult – that Rune pool does not transfer over to the new cult (except in a very few exceptions which are the exceptions that prove the rule). They are different gods with different magical secrets after all.

Normally what people do is worship the other deities associated with their god as associated deities. So an Orlanth initiate also worships Ernalda and has access to Heal Body from her, the other Lightbringers, etc. You can your Orlanth Rune pool for those associated cult activities as well – but that does not give you the full panoply of the associated cult’s magic, just the spell it gives your cult. You want to learn Ernalda’s deeper mysteries – join her cult!

Not that there was any doubt either but here’s how Jeff stats up his NPCs:

[…] most people have 1-3 Rune points. That’s it. So for most people, joining another cult means sacrificing a point of POW and creating a new Rune pool about the same size as your old pool. Maybe you put extra points of POW into that pool because this is such a big deal.

There’s more in that thread (like this) but, again, probably nothing new to most of you.

Pole Star Cults

A thread on BRP Central about Pole Star clarifies a few things about the god that put the “star” on Kallyr Starbrow’s forehead. Jeff says:

Polestar is a very minor cult in Sartar – I am not sure it even has a cult outside of that around Kallyr Starbrow.

And:

[…] all magic drawn from [the Polestar] comes from the same source. Kallyr Starbrow manages to bring that magic down (and it is no doubt part of her hero cult), and there is no doubt a shaman or two that knows how to do that among the Sartarites. 

But in the Lunar Heartlands, Polestar has a major cult with some 45,000 initiates. They know more about Polestar and his magic than any Sartarite ever will (Kallyr might still enjoy Polestar’s favor more than even the High Priest, but that is different). 

Note that David Scott gives some useful recommendations for your games, including treating Polaris as a cult spirit in Sartar (unless you’re close with Kallyr):

Rigsdal is Polaris worshipped as a spirit cult by the Orlanthi of Dragon Pass, giving a single rune spell, Captain Souls (RBM 23). So a very small following, appearing in the Other category for cults. As a spirit cult can be worshipped by anyone with a 50% rune affinity of Fire or Stasis. So Yelmalio worshippers or Orlanth worshippers with no emphasis on movement for example (Orlanth Thunderous). 

You can find Rigsdal’s mythology (including Rigsdal and the Too-Face-Horde) in Heortling Mythology (page 159)

Note that the Hero Wars publications of 20 or so years ago had him overrepresented and overdeveloped.

About Entekos

Entekos is the “primary atmospheric deity in the Lunar Heartlands“. But because the Orlanthi, experts on the Air pantheon, associate Entekos with a deity named Molanni, mother of Daga the god of drought, the Lunar Heartlands end up with a fairly dry weather. Between this and the fact that, as a good little subservient deity of Yelm, Entekos keeps the skies clear, the Pelorian bowl ends up with quite little rain, and relies on irrigation to make use of the otherwise fertile soil.

Jeff uses the Montana grasslands as a possible reference for what the Lunar Heartlands look like:

Check the archived post for more information about Entekos.

Miscellaneous Notes

• Dragonewts and other lizard-like people (some of which have unknown origins) have been at times hired as mercenaries by various factions.

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 Tarsh

JM and Evan continue their tour of Dragon Pass by visiting Tarsh! If you want to learn about Tarshite history, the Tarsh rebels, the Glowline, and so on, this is the episode for you!

RPGImaginings Reviews Life of Moonson

Prolific Chaosium reviewer RPGImaginings looks like “Life of Moonson” (Volume 1 and Volume 2) and now understands the Lunar Empire! Maybe. We’ll know if he suddenly disappears to join the illuminated cult of the Red Goddess.

Earth Goddesses References

David Scott has some good references from the British Museum for your Earth goddesses! More in this thread.

Glorantha & Jonstown Compendium on Confessions of a Wee Tim’rous Bushi

Rob welcomes Jonstown Compendium embassador and all around enthusiastic Gloranthan proselytizer Nick Brooke on his podcast, “Confessions of a Wee Tim’rous Bushi“. You can listen to the episode here or, of course, in your favourite podcast app.

Update on To Hunt a God

Austin Conrad posted an update about the upcoming second part of “To Hunt a God“, and why it’s taking more time than expected. Short version:

[…] if Life permits we’ll have motion coming soon on To Hunt a God. I’m working on edits and art direction, and I hope to move to be laying out new text soon (even if just in a quick-and-dirty version, so I can get you the long-promised content).

Plus: a picture of a wonderful little fox spirit thingie!

Andrew Logan Montgomery on Old-School RuneQuest

Is RuneQuest an “old-school RPG”? To me that’s a definite “yes” (with all the problems I have with it). But if you’re looking for a slightly longer argument on the topic, you can turn to Andrew Logan Montgomery’s blog!

Plus: an RQ OSR hack sidebar!

Elsewhere on Arachne Solara’s Web

Not everything is about Glorantha, although most things are! Here are loosely relevant things that we found on the interwebs.

The Well of Hell

The Hellcrack in pent is an 80km long and 30km wide crack into the plains of Pent that leads directly into the Underworld. The Earth took many wounds during the Gods War and this is the biggest that didn’t heal. But there are probably other, smaller wounds still open!

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A good reference for those might be the “Well of Hell” in modern day Yemen. It’s only 30 meters across but it looks pretty rad! And guess what… the bottom of it was only explored in 2021! Last year! Unbelievable.

I’ll let you read more about it (including its various creation myths) over at the ever-excellent Atlas Obscura blog. There are even pictures of what the exploration team found at the bottom, and how it links to the many rumours around the hole, including foul odors and contaminated water… I’m sure you get at least a couple adventure ideas for your group!

Five Things About Vikings We Get Wrong

This article from Cracked is written by Jess Nevins, so that’s been a badge of quality research in my book even since he did the annotations to The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (the brilliant book, not the forgettable, at best, movie).

Anyway, if you want to learn about the job description of Vikings, their diversity, the way their perceived gender, their sexuality, and their violence, head out here!

Aztec Feathered Shields

A Chimalli is a mesoamerican shield made of animal skin, plants, a bit of metal, and lots of feathers. Below are some Aztec warriors with those shields (from the Codex Mendoza), and the shield of King Ahuitzotl, who lived in the 15th century CE.

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I’m sure that you can put some cool feathered shields anywhere in Glorantha, but given that most birds are associated with the Solar Pantheon, maybe they’re best found in classically Dara Happan regions? Or Pent?

Thank you for reading

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