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Major RuneQuest Settings – Dragon Pass & Prax

Posted on December 13, 2023

Dragon Pass and Prax are the settings for the overwhelming majority of all RQ games ever played (a distant third is Balazar from the RQ2 days). In the coming year, we are going to be providing a lot of support for GMs and players for those those two settings.

Dragon Pass is a pretty small area by modern standards. About 250 km (156 miles) by 250 km, you could fit the whole area in the Front Range urban corridor in Colorado. Or just about squeeze it into the states of Maine or South Carolina. You can comfortably fit Dragon Pass into modern Austria or Bavaria.

One way of thinking about it is that the area is dominated by two competing city-states, each with their alliances of local tribes, lesser cities, and other settlements. One is Boldhome, the other the Lunar colony at Furthest. These areas are better developed and settled than the rest of the area, much of which is mountain wilderness. A system of good stone roads make travel fairly easy (as long as you stick to the roads).

To the east of Dragon Pass is Prax, which is mostly arid plains. The ruins of God Time conflicts are visible in the landscape, with features such as the Block, Tadas High Tumulus, and the Eiritha Hills. It is populated by nomads and their livestock herds (which are an important source of meat and leather in Dragon Pass).

To the south of Dragon Pass is the Holy Country, a long-civilized land around the Mirrorsea Bay. It is much more densely populated than Dragon Pass and is home to one of the largest cities in the world, Nochet, the center of sea-borne trade. The Holy Country is in the midst of a decade-old political and civil strife, as the demigod who long ruled it is now gone.

To the north of Dragon Pass is the Lunar Empire, an aggressively expansionist power. The Lunar Empire is hated and feared by its neighbors, not merely because of its imperial ambitions, but because of its willingness to use Chaos to its advantage. Its military uses this magic to terrible effect.

However, the Lunar Empire itself is not huge by modern standards. It is a little larger than the state of California or about the size of modern Iraq. It is big, but hardly ruler of most of the world (even if it aspires to that).

To the west of Dragon Pass are the high Skyreach Mountains and the Western Rockwoods. This is wild land, with few passes. Beyond it is Halikiv and Ralios.

Avalon Hill Dragon Pass Board Game map

My goal with that post is to show how easy it is to introduce Dragon Pass to players and gamemasters – and also to help give a sense of scale that is often missing.

What about the South of Sartar and the Hendriki lands? The Hendriki are part of the Holy Country. They are part of that political and civil strife in that land – arguable the most successful rebels against the Lunar Empire from 1619-1625, but they fell apart after their king was killed in 1625.

Jeff Richard

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