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…
Latest posts
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%)….
Issaries and Etyries
In Central Genertela, there are about 140k Issaries cultists and about 90k Etyries cultists. Both cults are active outside of their home areas, and can be considered “frenemies”- they are both associated…
Storm Pantheon art preview
Orlanth is the grandson of Earth and Sky, his siblings are the winds, a bull, a cat, violence, evil, the mountain snow, and Death. He married the Green Lady, and his offspring…
Ralios Orlanthi
The Holy Country has about 357k Orlanth initiates (and I mean initiate of Orlanth, not Orlanthi culture). Peloria has 225k and Dragon Pass has just under 100k. But Ralios has some 560k…
Religion in Safelster
There are approximately 3 million people in Safelster. This politically decentralized area around Lake Felster in Ralios is one of the more densely populated areas in Glorantha. It is also one of…
Top of the World
In Dragon Pass, Kero Fin is the mother of Orlanth, but for much of Peloria, Fronela, and Ralios, Orlanth resides atop Top of the World. This high peak is some 10,000 meters…
The Orlanth Cult in Peloria
There are some 225,000 Orlanth initiates in Peloria, making it the fourth biggest cult in Peloria (tied with Ernalda). Only Seven Mothers, Lodril, and Oria have bigger cults. During the rise of…