The Trader Princes developed out of a caravan route between Safelster and Esrolia that was established around 1200 ST. Caravanserai needed to be established and fortified, alliances needed to be made with…
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What to buy?
So from time to time I get asked what currently published Gloranthan material do I recommend buying (and what do I not). Here’s my thoughts: Must Buy: RQ Starter Set, RQ Core Rules,…
The Arstola Forest
There are some 230,000 elves in the Arstola, one of the six Great Forests. They are mostly brown elves, with a smattering of green elves in the higher elevations. That’s a LOT…
Notes on Maniria II
Most of the human population of Maniria belong to one of four Orlanthi tribal confederations formed along one of the main rivers (Ditali, Solanthi, Nimisotr, and Bastis). For centuries, these confederations were…
Notes on Maniria I
Maniria is a belt about 160-200km wide between the Mislari Mountains and the Solkathi Sea. It has a humid temperate to subtropical climate. Think Virginia or North Carolina. The Arstola forest hugs…
Men-of-All
So the Men-of-All have a curious place in Hrestolism. They are imagined as the safety valve in society – powerful, skilled warriors (and sometimes mages) who protect the weak, uphold the Invisible…
Who is Ginna Jar?
Ginna Jar is the ghost of something important that has been lost and is gone. The Orlanthi give it a feminine identity, but that may have as much to do with the…
More New Hrestolism Thoughts
New Hrestolism is arguably a more radical religious movement than even the Lunar Way. I don’t mean the “class mobility” features, that’s just a subset of it. With the Ban, the divine…
Four Magic Weapons subcult of Orlanth
This is a subcult often found with Orlanth Adventurous (or Vinga), that worships the Four Magic weapons of Orlanth. Each of these weapons are sometimes worshiped in other cultures as stand-alone gods…
Understanding Malkionism
There are somewhere in the vicinity of 8 million people that follow the teachings of Malkion and derivatives thereof. That’s a lot of people. Malkionism is often hard to get a handle…
Magic Systems I
In RuneQuest there are three nearly universal approaches to magic, as well as several less common and rare magic systems. The following are nearly universal: Spirit Magic: Nearly universal, this is the…
The Third Magic System – Sorcery
Sorcery is the third major magic system, after spirit magic and Rune magic. It is fundamentally concerned with understanding the source of everything and the ultimate principles underlying reality. In the core…
Into the 4th Dimension – Magic
I’ve been thinking of Glorantha as a four-dimensional setting. So three dimensions is pretty easy to get – we have geography, culture, and time, right? I’ve done a lot of posts about…
Notes on Fronela II
Fronela is one of the strangest and wildest regions in Glorantha. Normally when I try to get a handle on a region, I ponder its history, how the various peoples interact and…
Dragon People
The Seshnegi held that the rulers of Kralorela were Dragon People – a tribe of humans who were dragons and vice versa. Hykim is depicted as a great dragon, and all of…
Notes on Kralorela I
Kralorela has some 8.9 million people and covers around 625,000 square km. Kralorela is a relatively narrow arable band of land, islands, and shallows seas no more than 500 km wide, between…
Community and Heresy within Malkionism.
Malkionism, unlike other major Gloranthan religious experiences and philosophies, is based on the teachings of a mortal about the nature of the cosmos, the origin of the universe, the place of man…
Disease in Glorantha
Although I don’t make that much use of them in my campaigns, disease spirits are among the biggest dangers in Glorantha. The average disease spirit has a POW of 16-17 and has…
Zzaburi in the West
There are somewhere around 120,000 zzaburi in Seshnela and Ralios. Now of them, about 79,000 adhere to the Rokari school. That’s the approximate number of trained sorcerers in that area. This number…
Chaosium Interviews: Running the Same Campaign for Years
What’s the longest TTRPG campaign you’ve ever run? Chaosium’s Jeff Richard shares advice for those playing multi-year, or even multi-decade stories. He’s talking to James Coquillat as part of our Chaosium Interviews series.
Key Figures of the Hero Wars
We know that a lot of the Hero Wars gets driven by a several key figures: Red Emperor. He’s a mortal holding the office of a god. A war leader, a magician,…
Malkioni Heresies
Most Malkioni are far more concerned about heretical sects of Malkionism than about non-Malkioni subjects. Arkatism or “the Stygian Heresy” is considered one of the most heretical outgrowths of Malkionism. So for…
Chalana Arroy in Central Genertela
If we look at Chalana Arroy in Central Genertela, we find that it is actually a surprisingly big cult – some 140,000 members in total. The cult is most densely numbered in…
The central story of the Malkioni
As an aside, here’s an old snippet between Nick Brooke and I from some time ago which I was just dusting off: The central story of the Malkioni is that of the…
Lhankor Mhy in Central Genertela
There are roughly 100,000 initiates of the Knowing God in Central Genertela. This includes those that call the god Lhankor Mhy (probably about 60%), and those that call him Buserian (maybe 40%)….